> Fallout Equestria: Renewal
>  by ElbowDeepInAHorse
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Generation
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aurora Pinfeathers awoke to the soft tick of her homemade timer. Her pale green eyes slid open as the lights in her room slowly brightened by degrees, courtesy of a dimmer she’d installed years ago. She inhaled deeply, resigning herself to the beginning of a new day. 
The synthetic sheets whispered across her cutie mark as she rolled out of bed: an outstretched steel wing that reflected a ribbon of green and blue light across its metal feathers. It was another footnote in a long history of cutie marks that seemed to embody its owner’s name rather than a special talent. Most ponies in Stable 10 reported their cutie marks appearing on the day of their first job assignment. Few ever saw a correlation between their mark and the work the overmare assigned them. Some called it a side-effect of living in a Stable. Most didn’t think about it at all.
The single-occupant room Aurora occupied between her shifts down in Mechanical was little different than the other hundreds of personal compartments spread throughout the Stable. Every pony was given a bed, a simple metal desk complete with a personal terminal and a partitioned washroom compartment that was small enough to touch either wall with her wingtips. 
A row of hooks studded the wall next to the hydraulic steel door. A worn set of saddlebags hung on their straps from one. Next to them, a pair of fitted wing guards - protective sheaths which prevented a host of injuries made possible in their confined home - showed few signs of actual use. On the last hook, a crisp blue and yellow Stable coverall dangled by its collar. She didn’t remember the last time she’d actually worn it. 
Aurora carried herself to the washroom and looked herself over in the mirror. A long streak of machine grease hung in her white mane and had painted her right cheek as she slept. She grimaced and turned to look at her bed.
“Millie?” she said.
A soft tone chimed from the overhead speaker in the main room. “Yes, Aurora?”
She turned back to the washroom and lifted the sink handle, cupping her wings under the stream of clean water. “Order new bedsheets and a pillow.”
She pressed her face down into the pooling water while the Stable’s artificial intelligence processed her request. It flowed over the top of her mane, soaking down to her scalp and washing away the last ghosts of sleep. She was staring down the barrel of a ten hour shift with the Stable generator today. No one would notice if she skipped a shower.
“Order complete. A delay has been noted.”
Aurora’s shoulders slumped as she rose her head out of the stream, her mane mopped over her muzzle. She picked a mostly dry towel off the floor and rubbed her face into it. “What kind of delay?”
Millie paused, then politely chimed: “Logistical. A forty-four minute loss of power was logged by the Fabrication Wing. Your order will arrive no later than 8pm tomorrow evening.”
Aurora pressed her lips together and groaned. Ever since Tally Mane had been assigned production lead in Fabrication he had developed a tendency to push the equipment harder than necessary to meet his own fictitious quotas. She had personally sent his terminal more than a few warnings that he was drawing more than his share of power from the Stable grid. His replies were professional, polite and ultimately non-committal. Aurora had met seized engines that cooperated more willingly than Tally Mane.
She tipped back a capful of mouthwash, swished and spat. Her wing tipped the faucet handle up, then down, rinsing the sink. “Millie, take a letter addressed for Tally Mane in Fabrication.”
A pause. Aurora listened as she walked into her room and lifted her saddlebag off its hook. “Tally Mane is not assigned in Fabrication. Would you like to address the letter to Tally Mane in Sanitation?”
Her eyebrows sprung up and she snorted, sliding the saddlebag around her flank by her teeth and shifting her hips until it felt comfortable. As she tightened the straps she considered sending Tally a letter of congratulation, but the machine grease that mottled her rumpled bed reminded her that she didn’t have the luxury to be vindictive. She imagined Tally pushing a mop through the mare’s restroom and smiled before moving on.
“No, Millie. That will be all for now,” she said.
A soft chime toned above her and Millie was gone.
She bit the straps tying the pair of wing-shaped imitation leather together, tugged the gear off their hook and slung it over her back. Her wings dipped into their guards while she pressed the button next to her door with a hoof. It slid up with a hiss of a well cared for machine. 
For a moment she considered the blue and yellow pinstriped coveralls. Sledge would tear her ass in half if she showed up without it after his warnings, but she knew Sledge. His bark was always worse than his bite, and she had her reasons to leave them on the hook. Most pressing was that the generator room had an ambient temperature that hovered somewhere between welding burns and balefire.  
Aurora shut the door behind her and walked out into the hallway.




 

Ponies milled through the hallways, some stopping to chat with friends while others ducked their heads while navigating around the chattier clusters while trying to shake off the vestiges of sleep. All of them wore wing guards.
Stable 10 was populated solely by pegasi. The exact reason had always been murky. Most residents presumed every Stable was designed around and tailored to each of the three races for the sake of efficiency during construction. Others thought it would ease the burden of population control. Some had darker theories that the overmare worked hard to quash. Whatever the reason had been, it was too late to change it. Stable 10's dice had been thrown generations ago. The duty of its residents was simply to survive.
Aurora nodded greetings to those who would make eye contact with her and found other things to look at as she brushed past others whose gaze drifted lower. 
When the Stable sealed its doors two hundred and twenty years ago, Stable coveralls were a peculiar piece of dress code meant to instill a sense of community among a disparate group of survivors. It worked extremely well. They became the new normal and within the span of a few short years, nudity slid into a gray area between tradition and taboo.
Aurora’s eyes wandered the fabricated murals that broke up the dull passageways, not paying attention to any one image in particular. Along the well-worn path to Mechanical each scene drifted by her like an old friend. A panorama of a green pasture with a pink barn nestled against a vast orchard. An artist’s rendition of a stained glass window depicting a horned serpent surrounded by the lost princesses. A blown up photograph of Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetiebelle standing in the lobby of the newly constructed Stable-Tec HQ building, smiling patiently for a forgotten photographer. 
None of them wore a stitch of clothing save for the coats on their hides and the uniquely similar set of cutie marks on their hips. Aurora failed to suppress a wry smile as she turned the corner toward the service elevators.
Solidarity.
She joined the queue outside the row of double-doors and sidled into the first available lift. A dim yellow light flickered to life when she pressed the button marked Mechanical. A mahogany coated pony reached over her to press a button a few levels above them and sighed in resignation as the doors closed and the lift began to descend.
“I heard Jenny shit the bed this morning.”
Nearly everybody on the lift turned to the source of the voice with varying degrees of confusion. Aurora’s ears drooped, recognizing the owner of the voice as soon as she heard it.
“Generator,” she clarified, more for the benefit of the ponies around her than for the jet black stallion over her left shoulder. “Good morning, Carbide.”
Carbide continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Last shift couldn’t figure it out. Thinks you might have an idea. Flux thinks one of the rotor poles might have gone to shit. Threw her off alignment again. Rumor is they may need to put us on backup power to do another teardown.”
Aurora suddenly wished she had checked her terminal before she left. The lift slowed as it approached Mechanical. The gentle hum of the lift gradually gave way to a deeper vibration that reverberated through the walls around them. Aurora spared a glance at Carbide and saw something other than borderline jokes on his expression. He looked worried. 
“Sledge is in a bad way, Aurora. Don’t push him today.”
The doors separated and immediately the lift was assaulted by a cacophony of noise. Aurora and Carbide stepped out, leaving the rest of the ponies on the lift to flatten their ears and hastily punch at the DOOR CLOSE button.
This was the world Aurora knew. 
The Mechanical wing was noisy at best. Deafening at worst. Few visitors ever ventured down to the bottom of the Stable where welding torches flashed together what the fabricators couldn’t print with sintered metals, where broken tools too valuable for the recyclers were carted down to have new life breathed into them. And where the Stable’s climate control systems struggled to keep the temperature below sweltering. The stinging odor of burnt grease and sweat permeated the air and seeped into anything porous and even some things which weren’t.
It was home. 
Mechanical was one of the few places in the Stable with the exception of the atrium that offered a space that couldn’t be described as a hallway. The walls had all been ripped out in favor of an open floor plan that allowed crews to navigate pallet jacks loaded with tools, material, and scraps across a vast concrete floor divided up by scuffed lines of paint. Somewhere on the floor, a pony pushed a pallet jack over a bit of debris, embedding it into the flat composite wheel, adding a manic tak-tak-tak-tak-tak to the din.
Aurora didn’t hear him say goodbye, but she caught the mock-salute he made as he trotted off to punch in. Aurora nodded back and watched him go, the start of her shift tainted with bad news before it could begin. 
She cast her attention past the meticulous chaos of mechanics and repair ponies, past the lines of blue plastic crates piled high with snips of pipe and plating, to the far wall of Mechanical. She swayed between ponies moving in and out of the main walkway toward a door not much larger than the one to her personal compartment. A small black semi-sphere was inset next to the door, a pinprick of green light glowing at its center. The light widened into a thin line that swept down her face, comparing her to the handful of ponies on file with access to the generator room. The door emitted a heavy clunk and slid into the ceiling.
Immediately she knew something was wrong.
She pinned her ears back against the thundering reverberation of the Stable’s heart. She couldn’t hear the door sealing her inside a massive space reserved for an equally massive machine. The top half of the generator stood two levels high, easily ten ponies tall. The bottom half was sunk deep into the Stable floor where its behemoth rotor spun at several thousand RPM within a cage of metal and cables thicker than Aurora’s barrel. The ground beneath her hooves was made of steel plate that allowed them to access the junctions and wires that snaked out from the generator and up into the Stable above. The generator wasn’t built in the Stable. Stables were built around their generators. For ten hours of every day, Aurora was responsible for making sure it kept spinning.
The steel panels beneath her hooves sang with the vibrations emanating from the center of the room. Her hooves tingled as they absorbed the alien harmonics of a machine that was doing something it was never designed to do. 
To her left, behind a wide shatterproof window set into the concrete wall that ringed the generator milled a small cluster of ponies from the last shift. She adjusted her wings in their protective guards as she trotted to the access door a few meters down from the window. The roaring hum dimmed to a muffled drone as the door sealed behind her. A bank of lockers led her to the control room.
“--output has stayed consistent since it began. It doesn’t explain any of this.” Aurora recognized the reedy voice of Flux, the team lead for third shift. She sat in front of a terminal built into a half-wall of centuries-old meters and gauges that twitched in the same way they had twitched since Aurora could remember. The bank of readouts had been wiped clean recently, a centuries-old task that had eventually scarred their glass windows. On the desk next to the terminal, a thick layer of dust sat atop a fire-red telephone.
Around Flux stood six engineers from her shift, none of them willing to speak into the silence. Their Stable coveralls were caked with grease, showing the signs of a hard night. Flux looked as if she were lost. The yellow pegasus pressed her closed eyes against her foreleg, trying to rub the exhaustion out of them. 
Behind the cluster of worried faces loomed the reason nobody was forthcoming with suggestions. The Head of Mechanical had the same softness and disposition of a brick wall. Where the stallion’s ruddy coat wasn’t smeared with grease it was slick with sweat. His right foreleg was a patchwork of scars from an accident that should have taken his leg off, but by luck or his own stubbornness had remained attached. Most ponies knew to give Sledge a wide berth unless they wanted the full brunt of his attention.
Currently his brown eyes were slowly burning a hole in Aurora’s chest. 
“Of all the fucking days, Pinfeathers,” he rumbled, pushing past the third shift. Anger radiated off of him like a furnace as he came to a rolling stop in front of her. Flux’s team pretended to look busy as Sledge unfurled his wings. “Of all the fucking days you decide to show up naked.”
She and Sledge had a mutual respect between one another that few ponies were aware of. Sledge had spent years building his reputation as a brute that took exactly zero horseshit from anybody. Aurora had known him long enough to realize he was smarter than he let on and that his famous tirades were made with purpose in mind. When he realized she’d seen through him without trying to take advantage of it, he took her under his wing as his apprentice.
Fifteen years later she still wasn’t sure whether that had been a curse or a blessing.
Working under Sledge was a trial by fire. He never mollycoddled her. Her workload doubled some days. Tripled on others. He gave her tasks intended to fail and when they inevitably did he drilled her on the “why.” It didn’t take her long to start owning her mistakes while recognizing the challenges that were outside her control. Sledge fed her knowledge and experience spoonfuls at a time until she began to seek out the bowl on her own. She learned. She grew. Eventually, she came to work alongside him on the generator. Their job titles were different but for all intents and purposes, they were equals.
Their mutual respect ran deep, but her stubbornness about the coveralls ran even deeper.
She set her jaw and stared up at Sledge, knowing the routine. Interrupting Sledge would only get her ears chewed off faster and likely land her working overtime with the next shift. 
He jabbed a cracked hoof into her bare chest and gestured out the window at the machine that powered their world.
“Do you think this is a joke?” he bellowed. Aurora blinked at a speckle of spit that landed under her eye. “Is that damn machine so low on your list of priorities that you can’t be bothered to wear a fucking jumpsuit around it? Look at this!”
He held his scarred foreleg up to her face. Where the rolled sleeves of his coveralls met his red coat, a wet lather slicked his fur. “It’s called sweat, Pinfeathers. Some of us here have the decency to endure it.”
She sucked her teeth, waiting for him to decide whether he was done. The silence began to stretch.
“You know why I don’t wear it,” she said evenly.
“Aurora.” Sledge bent his neck so he was eye level with her. She recoiled slightly. This was different for him. Shaming. He never shamed her. “What I know is that you’re standing here in your bare pissflaps while our generator is doing a better job at tearing itself apart than we are at stopping it.”
Her eyes widened. Behind Sledge, Flux stared through the terminal. None of the third shift ponies made eye contact but she could see the ears trained on her. The generator droned uncaringly. She grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes at Sledge. He’d crossed a line.
“Don’t,” he said. There was something brittle in his voice. “Not today.”
She saw it for only a moment. A twitch at the corner of his lip and she knew what it was he was desperately trying to hide by tearing her hide. 
Sledge was afraid. 
Aurora closed her eyes and took a calming breath. They weren’t done, but she could afford to be embarrassed later. Something bigger is happening, she reminded herself. She caught a glimpse of apology on Sledge’s face that the others couldn’t see. She swept past him, his misstep forgiven. 
“Tell me what happened,” she said to Flux. 
It took several seconds before Flux refocused enough to speak. 
“A few hours ago the floor started picking up vibration. We thought it might have been the rotor poles but we can’t find anything wrong with them. Ratchet thought it had something to do with Fabrication tripping their breakers at the start of the shift but everything is behaving like it should on paper.” Flux shook her head and stared at the stream of data that steadily trickled across the terminal. “All of the data says nothing’s wrong, despite all… this.”
Aurora scanned the terminal and saw that Flux was right. Voltage readings were fine. Temperature sensors were well within the safe ranges. The vibration warning light on the console was dark and the liquid-filled gauge labeled VIBE barely moved at all. She pored over a dozen other gauges, watching the needles for anything resembling an oscillation. Something that indicated any one of the sensors might be seeing something. 
Nothing.
The floor thrummed with a deep, hungry energy that insisted she think harder. She remembered something Sledge had told her years ago when she was still apprenticing: if you aren’t seeing the problem, you’re not looking at the problem.
The gauges waved lazily behind their windows.
“It’s not the generator,” she said, piecing together a theory. “It’s something else.”
“There’s nothing else in the Stable powerful enough to vibrate an entire wing,” Sledge countered.
Aurora looked to him, then back to Flux. Neither offered further suggestion. Both ponies had hit a road block and Aurora was fast approaching one as well. She spared a glance at the other technicians and saw more than a few eyes had settled on her hip, proving Sledge’s point that leaving her coveralls behind had been a poorly timed distraction.





 

When Aurora was a filly, Nimbus Pinfeathers had read her stories from before the war that attempted to describe the beautiful sheets of color that had once drifted over the infinite Equestrian sky. There had been ponies who believed the lights arose from unicorn magic, possibly created by Luna herself as a good omen. Many earth ponies suspected that the living world under their feet had a magical power of its own and that the lights were a manifestation of something far greater than unicorn magic. Among the pegasi of Equestria, a less popular opinion prevailed that the aurora was a natural event no different and less wondrous than the thunderstorms that gradually assembled in untended sections of sky. 
Her mother believed that all three stories were true to some degree, and had the war been avoided they might have been able to learn that truth. It was a lesson she reminded Aurora of whenever the opportunity arose. Not having all the answers was its own kind of magic because it meant there was still more out there to discover.





 

Aurora tried to see what was magical about being in a control room full of ponies who didn’t understand why their world had been plunged into chaos and came up with empty hooves. The only thing magical about a generator that seemed intent on turning itself into shrapnel was the ignition talisman that had spun it up over two hundred years ago.
Her heart skipped a beat. The harmonics weren’t mechanical.
“It’s magic,” she said.
Flux looked at Aurora for the first time, her eyes widening with understanding. “The ignition talisman.”
“It’s the only thing that fits,” Aurora said, nudging Flux away from the terminal so she could find what she needed. She found it buried deep in a hard drive partition that hadn’t been opened since the first years of the Stable. A diagnostic tool for the magical artifact that had been used to turn the generator’s hulking rotor after it was constructed. An artifact that had supplied it with a tightly calibrated flow of rotational energy that the generator whipped into an electric frenzy that fed the Stable.
Aurora opened the diagnostic tool. The terminal stuttered. A lockout notification appeared on the screen. 



- RESTRICTED ACCESS -
CRUSADER-LEVEL CLEARANCE REQUIRED
[|  ]



Her muzzle wrinkled. “Why would this be locked out? It’s a diagnostic.”
Sledge looked over her shoulder at the screen. The cursor patiently waited for an override code far above any of their pay grade. “Someone doesn’t want you to use it.”
“But it’s a diagnostic,” she insisted.
“Someone really doesn’t want you to use it,” Sledge answered. Aurora looked up at him and saw a weary smile tugging at his muzzle. His eyes were intent on her. She was focused on the wrong problem.
“The Crusaders were what the Stable-Tec founders called themselves.”
“So they say,” Sledge nodded.
“They’re all dead. Who has that kind of access anymore?”
The floor sang dully beneath their hooves in answer. Aurora silently wished that her hunch was wrong, that a magical artifact nobody in the Stable had any idea how to repair had become unbalanced. That, even if they knew how to fix it, it couldn’t be done with a welding torch. The Stable above her began to feel heavy.
Her eyes moved to the dusty red telephone. 





 

Two hours later, Aurora had her answer.
They were alone in the humming control room. Sledge occupied a chair to the left of Aurora who hadn’t moved from her seat in front of the terminal. Overmare Delphi, a thin, rose-tinted mare stood behind them unsure of herself in this stifling, unfamiliar corner of the Stable. Her graying mane clung irritatingly to the sweat forming around her neck but she made no complaint. Flux and her engineer team had been sent away with orders to say nothing. 
Whatever was happening, she needed to contain it. Let the rumor mill churn for now. She would cobble together a formal announcement afterward to explain her unprecedented visit to Mechanical.
Aurora stared over the peak of her hooves at the terminal. The overmare had opened the lock on the ignition talisman’s diagnostic tool and the dapple gray mare had gone to work taking output samples from the artifact. 
At first nothing looked suspect, but nobody was sure what they were looking for. A spreadsheet labeled with unfamiliar abbreviations flickered open on the first tab, strings of numbers rising or falling by decimal points. The second tab looked similar to the readout of Aurora’s old oscilloscope. A sine wave shimmered on the screen measuring the rotational frequency of the talisman. She moved onto the next tab. Some sort of diagram that represented the talisman’s inner architecture. A few of the boxes looked as if they might be programmed to toggle on or off. She didn’t touch those.
She kept returning to the second tab just to see something familiar. She’d been to this screen more times than she cared to think about. The green line drew the same sine wave thousands of times per second. Out of habit, she ticked the ZOOM+ key a few times to view the crests of the wave. She blew the image up until two thin waves filled the screen. She measured their crests. The same. She measured the troughs. The same.
She looked again.
Nearly the same.
Aurora blinked hard to refocus her eyes and zoomed in on the troughs. Where the bright green lines should have gracefully arced back up toward the edge of the screen, they flattened. It was barely imperceptible to the naked eye. Five pixels interrupted the curves in a straight row as if something had pressed the wave against a table. Her heart sank.
“Sledge,” she said, indicating the terminal. She reclined in her chair. The plastic crackled in protest.
Sledge squinted at the screen.
“Well shit.” Sledge rumbled. “It’s braking.”
Overmare Delphi looked between the two, uneasy with being the third wheel to anything. “What will you need to fix it?”
Aurora looked over her shoulder at the older mare, not bothering to swivel the chair. “Not breaking. Braking,” she said, but the confusion in the overmare’s lavender eyes remained. “The generator is being decelerated.”
Realization dawned on Delphi’s face. “Can you stop it?”
Sledge grunted. “Seen any unicorns around lately?” He quickly added, “Sorry, ma’am.”
Delphi nodded and chose not to pursue the slight. She looked out the window at the mysterious machine that kept her Stable alive and wondered why she hadn’t come down here before now, but she knew the answer. Mechanical was a self-sufficient wing. Any problems it created could be resolved with a memorandum sent by terminal. She let ponies like Sledge keep their jobs so they could put down any unpleasantness through more personal means.
“Ma’am,” Aurora began, “Nothing is telling the ignition talisman to do this. The talisman is doing it on its own. It’s… built into the spell matrix. This was planned. I don’t know how to stop it.”
Sledge sneered bitterly at the floor. The overmare simply sat down on it, stunned.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
“It’ll kill anybody who touches it without a horn,” Sledge said. The scarred stallion stared through the floor. He knew that wasn’t the answer to Delphi’s question. “Brownouts. We’ll start seeing them where the power draw is heaviest. Fabrication, first. Maybe Hydroponics after. At some point we’ll have to start cutting the power to ration what we have. Keep the food growing. Keep the air recyclers...” Sledge’s throat constricted. He cleared it, looking away. “We’re going to run out of power, Overmare.”
Aurora could feel her heartbeat quickening. For the first time in her life the walls of the Stable began to look like the walls of a tomb.
A long silence filled the control room.
“How long?” The aging mare whispered.
Aurora reached to the terminal and plotted the slow death of the generator. “A year. Less, if there’s a panic.”
“Of course they’ll panic,” the overmare scoffed. “Who wouldn’t?”
Briefly, a flash of anger scorched Delphi’s face.
“I knew they would do this,” she said ruefully.
Aurora’s ears pricked up. She and Sledge turned to look at the overmare who in turn looked up at them, her eyes brimming. Delphi raised a hoof toward the generator. “This is what they do. This is what they’ve always done. They build a pretty box, wrap it with a pretty bow and tell hundreds of pretty ponies they’ll be safe inside. And then they… crush it to see what colors leak out.” Tears drew trails through her coat. “This is why they didn’t give us a single unicorn. It’s another one of their Celestia-damned experiments.”
Delphi wept. Sledge brooded. Aurora’s eyes fell to her lap, her dapple gray coat shining with the sweat that Mechanical had been wringing out of her for the last fifteen years. She felt a pang of guilt for having stubbornly left her coveralls in her compartment. She heard Sledge’s voice in her head. Of all the fucking days.
Aurora turned her hooves in her lap. It was the first time that she’d gone this long in Mechanical without getting them dirty. “Maybe…” she began, but fell silent before she could give the idiotic idea a voice.
Sledge brow rose as he looked at her. “We’re all ears, Pinfeathers.”
Aurora tipped her head left to right, considering the risk of what she wanted to suggest. She looked at the overmare and was caught off-guard by the intensity of her stare. Delphi’s lavender eyes shone wetly. She looked so small in that moment yet so very desperate. Her Stable had been given an expiration date. Any alternative was better than starving to death in a blackout. 
She looked back to her lap, unsettled by her reflection in Delphi’s eyes. 
“Maybe they have replacements.”
Sledge puffed through his nose. “No. No, I don’t think we do.”
“Not us.” Aurora said, chewing on her lip. “Stable-Tec.”
Sledge stood abruptly, his chair squeaking away from him. “No.”
“Sledge…”
“Absolutely not.” He thumped his hoof into the floor for punctuation. “That is not an option. That is death. End of story.”
Aurora swiveled to face him. “It’s our only option right now! Stable-Tec made the ignition talisman. There’s a good chance they may have more. They weren’t able to finish all of the Stables before the bombs fell so it stands to reason--”
Sledge’s hooves landed hard on her chair’s armrests forcing it to sink several inches on its piston. “NO.”
Aurora stared at him, her eyes wide with fear.
Sledge realized what he was doing and recoiled. Her chair hissed relief.
“Look.” His voice softened as he chose his words. “We’re not going to figure this out today and the longer we sit here doing nothing the more worried everyone out there is going to get. Aurora, take the day off. Go up to Mercantile and get something to eat. And take a shower, you smell like I look.”
Aurora bit down a smirk, but he saw it try to surface all the same.
“Overmare, ma’am, I’m not giving you any orders but I would think someone in your position would want to put on a strong face and tell those ponies out there that everything is under control.”
Delphi blew out a breath and nodded. “I’ll need something believable.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sledge assured her. He looked down at the gauge labeled VIBE and struck it with his hoof. The glass window splintered, deforming the needle. “You’ll tell them what they want to hear: that I was wrong. That I rushed Flux’s team and they overlooked a faulty gauge. Flux will know it’s horseshit but she’ll keep shut if it comes from you. As far as the Stable needs to know, the generator is running a little rough and we’re looking for the best time to schedule a tune-up. It’ll buy us time until we can think of something more convincing.”
Delphi stood up and wiped her eyes, smearing her makeup in the process. “If we make it through this, you might consider running for overstallion when I retire. You definitely have the mind for politics.”
Sledge snorted. “I know where I belong. Bathrooms are behind you, next to the lockers.”
Delphi looked at the traces of eyeliner on her foreleg and tipped her head to Sledge in thanks. She met Aurora’s eyes for a moment, something unsaid passing between them.
Aurora broke the gaze and listened to the restroom door sigh open on well-oiled hinges. The gray pegasus looked up at Sledge through her mane. The same strand of grease swayed in her view of him. “I’m not wrong,” she said as she stood.
Sledge pressed his tongue under his molars, shaking his head. “We’ll think of a better idea.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed. Her mentor went stock still before patting her back with confusion. Aurora let go and turned away before he had a chance to see her face. She walked across the control room back to the access door. He spoke just as she set her hoof on the door handle.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow, then.” 
Aurora looked back at the stallion who taught her how to dig straight to the root of a question and pry out the right answer. She wondered if he would regret that.
She smiled, nodded. Her eyes were stinging. "Tomorrow, then."
> Chapter 2: Broken Seals
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aurora felt the weight of guilt around her neck as surely as if she had been wearing a yoke. She passed through the racket of the workbenches and stepped onto the lift without daring to look anyone in the eyes, afraid that they might see in them what she couldn’t say out loud. That this was her fault.
The Stable had been handed a death sentence the instant its generator had been turned on over two hundred years ago. The magical talisman that kept it spinning had been designed to fail. For several months it had slowly, imperceptibly slowed the mammoth rotors while masking its work with fictitious readouts. Whether they were supposed to notice this earlier was anyone’s guess, but the earsplitting resonance of the generator hall had been the giveaway that raised the alarm. Overmare Delphi’s override code had given them access to the damning evidence that made it clear Stable-Tec was not the benevolent savior they all believed.
Her neck ached.
The lift released her midway up the Stable in the Hydroponics wing. The central corridor on this level was empty save for a brown courier pony pushing a blue bin filled with packages. As they passed each other he offered a quick nod, his eyes on her hips. He didn’t notice her bristling at him as he continued on his way.
Aurora slowed to read the worn plaques fitted to the thick frame of each door, denoting one or more of the staple crops that had been ferried underground by her ancestors before they shut out the world. She came to a stop outside a door simply labeled PERMACULTURE 19. She took a steadying breath and pressed the door switch. The metal slab hissed into the ceiling, opening into a lush garden. She stepped inside and drank in the humid air.
It carried the rich odor of damp soil and fertilizer. Rows and rows of tomato plants hung lazily in white fiberglass trellises, rooted in troughs of loamy dirt that stretched from center walkway all the way to the walls of the garden space. Nonslip rubber walkways divided each row of plants, allowing workers to walk between the lush stalks to log and monitor the growth of each plant. The tomatoes were vibrant green, barely larger than a grape. In the next couple of weeks they would be fat, red and ready to be harvested for the Stable.
Aurora looked left and right as she walked past the thick walls of vines and leaves, trying not to think of how many harvests this garden had left.
She found him at the rear of the garden, halfway down a row of ripening plants with a trowel pinched between his teeth and a heavy canvas bag laying open at his side. The speckled gray pony dipped the trowel into the soil and turned it over in a practiced motion that didn’t disturb the plant while allowing him to access the darker soil below. 
Dusky Pinfeathers was thinner than the last time she’d visited. Older. She saw lines around his eyes she didn’t recognize from before. A different kind of sadness squeezed her chest.
Her father heard her arrival and glanced at her as she walked between rows of greenery toward him. He set the trowel down on the rubberized walkway, fresh dirt pattering into the grooves cut into the material, and dipped his nose into the canvas bag. He emerged with a short plastic tube pinched delicately between his front teeth.
“Hi Dad,” Aurora said quietly.
Dusky set the vial on the floor in front of him. It wobbled briefly then settled upright.
“Hey there, Fixer,” he said, using the nickname her mother had given her. He offered a fatigued smile before turning to the shallow hole he’d dug. “It’s been a while. How’re things at the Bottom?”
Aurora heard the implication and shifted one leg in front of the other. The real question he was asking was Why did it take you five years to come visit? She’d had plenty of time to contemplate that as the months stacked between them. Sledge keeps putting me on double-shifts. Flux needs me on-call in case there’s trouble. My schedule never matches up with yours. 
It was almost convincing, but she knew a lie when she heard one and she couldn’t fool herself. I volunteer for overtime. Flux rarely needs me to answer questions anymore. I begged Sledge to let me work first shift so I didn’t have time to see you.
And at the core of it: You didn’t come to Mom’s funeral.
She watched her father do the work he’d always done, ever since he first brought her to the gardens as a filly. She remembered him showing her how to hold a sample tube between the primary feathers of her wings while pouring in soft clumps of black dirt with her hoof. He took great pride in his family’s unusual dexterity and would constantly remind her, to the point of great annoyance in her later youth, that there was a time when pegasi flew.
Aurora looked at the leather guards that now held his wings to his sides. He’d never worn them as long as she could remember and yet there they were. A silent confession that he, like every pegasus in the confines of Stable 10, had given in to the reality that their wings were a burden. She subtly flexed the weakened muscles that strung her wings to her shoulders. More and more she found herself putting hers on. They always felt too tight.
Her father had stopped working and was looking up at her, waiting.
“Things are busy,” she said, embarrassed she’d drifted off. “Sledge has me on the generator now. First shift, in case Flux has any more problems.”
Her father nodded and retrieved a dropper of clear liquid from his bag. He squeezed it into the tube where a sprinkle of black soil sat at the bottom, placed there while her mind had wandered. The liquid turned a faint pink. Healthy soil.
“She might learn more quickly if she didn’t rely on you so much to fix her mistakes,” he said.
Aurora looked at the floor, torn between defending Flux from her lie at the risk of opening up a line of conversation she felt too ashamed to visit. She changed the topic.
“When did you start wearing wing guards?”
Her father winced a smile and lifted his wings up in their guards, bringing them halfway up before they began to tremble. He settled them back against his sides and looked at her with a little shrug. 
“Arthritis. It’s easier to wear the guards. And this way I don’t have to take a pill every morning.” He looked at her. “If I have to be honest, I’m more surprised to see you wearing yours.”
Aurora smirked and mimicked his shrug. Dusky tipped his head to the floor next to him, inviting her to sit. She dropped to her haunches and realized how much she’d missed him. The nostalgia and guilt coiled together in a lump that lodged itself in her throat. It snuck up on her like a sucker-punch. She swallowed hard and mustered up a weak, “Yeah.”
Dusky set the sample in his bag and took a deep breath. Exhaled. He stared through the rows of trellises and the vines that climbed them, his mind elsewhere. 	Aurora could feel him working up the courage to ask her why. Why the fifteen minute walk to their home was too much for her. Why she had reached out only once, and then not at all. She hadn’t come up here to open that wound. To pick at the stitches before the skin had a chance to knit itself shut. She felt keenly aware of her own breathing and how strained it sounded in her father’s silence.
Her father tilted toward her and smiled. “Still not wearing your coveralls?”
Aurora coughed out a laugh that nearly turned into a sob. She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head, laughing while wiping the tears that had spilled onto her cheeks. Her father chuckled and bumped her shoulder the same way he had done when she was a filly, letting her know she’d be alright.
She sniffed and cleared her throat, happy for the release of all the tension she’d dragged in with her. She looked down at the lighter traces of gray fur that highlighted her chest and underbelly with another laugh. 
I’m living my life the way it was intended: naked as the goddesses and twice as pretty, her mother would say much to the chagrin of anyone brave enough to comment on her refusal to don the standard Stable attire. Young Aurora soaked up her mother’s confidence like a dry sponge, but the pressure of fitting in ensured her coveralls hugged her shoulders whenever she left the compartment. It was only after her mother died that Aurora realized that life was short. Too short to waste it tiptoeing around another pony’s squeamishness.
Aurora put them on for her mother’s funeral. When she emerged from her compartment the day her bereavement hours expired, the coveralls stayed on the hook.





Nimbus Pinfeathers died when Aurora was twenty-three years old. Nimbus had been a repair pony, spending most of her time in Mechanical except for the time she went on-call for repairs around the Stable. On one such call she was assigned a work order that took her up to Hydroponics to fix an irrigation leak. The leak, as it turned, was caused by a dapple gray stallion who had sliced open a buried drip hose with a trowel while showing off to his coworkers. 
They struck up a conversation while she ripped out the old hose and installed a new one. It was the shortest repair she’d had in months and she took advantage of the extra time. Dusky eventually admitted to being the culprit behind the damage and Nimbus had goaded him into demonstrating just how he’d managed it. He’d picked up his trowel with his primary feathers, something she’d never seen a pegasus do, and flicked it down at the dirt with a gust of wind that tousled her mane. 
The trowel speared the dirt up to its handle. Water immediately gushing up from the dirt around it.
Dusky’s face turned several shades of pink. Nimbus asked him to dinner.
She gave birth to a foal two years later.
Nimbus stayed home to raise Aurora while Dusky continued honing his speciality in the gardens. School taught Nimbus about her history and their future. Her parents taught her to think for herself, the value of knowledge and her responsibility to share that knowledge so the next generation had the chance to do the same. When Aurora was old enough to choose a profession, she followed her mother to Mechanical. 
Nimbus never knew about the clot in her wing. Chances were it had lurked there for years, the blood in her disused wings diverting to other veins ready to accept the load without much complaint. It loosened bit by bit until it simply let go, drifting toward her heart while she slept. 
Dusky woke up alone and Aurora’s world came crashing down around her.





 

Aurora rubbed her hoof against the bare fur of her foreleg and leaned into her father’s shoulder. He smelled like rich soil, fertilizer and so many other things that reminded her of a world that had ended with the death of her mother.
“I wore it for her funeral,” Aurora said quietly.
He shifted and wrapped his arm around her, rubbing her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go alone.”
She choked, the tears falling freely now. Her voice wavered. “It’s okay...”
Her father cleared his throat and squeeze her against him, a gesture that stopped her from continuing while keeping him composed. 
“It wasn’t okay.” He said roughly. Aurora’s throat hitched as she wept against him. “It was selfish. You both deserved better from me.”
Aurora shook her head. “She always told us to forgive each other for the stupid mistakes so we could be strong for the big ones.”
The leaves blurred with the dark soil, but she didn’t wipe them away. She’d needed this. Her father needed this too. She stared at the soil every pony was buried in when their time came. Bodies nourished by the earth returned to the earth to provide for the next generation, the same as it had been before the Stables. It was the reason why her father refused to be transferred from this garden. Nimbus had been buried here like so many others. Aurora felt some comfort knowing some good had come from her death.
Her father lifted his wing out of its guard and spread his feathers across her back like he’d done whenever she needed comfort as a filly. She accepted it and closed her eyes, mourning alongside her father like she’d wanted to five years ago. The tears came steadily and, as time passed, they slowed and finally stopped. They stared into the garden until their faces were merely damp. Her father’s wing returned to its guard but his arm stayed on her shoulder.
“I’m happy you came to see me, Fixer,” he said.
Aurora wanted to smile at that, but it wilted on her face as soon as it arrived. She looked at the floor, past it, down to the Bottom where the seams that held the Stable together were beginning to tear. Where the immortal generator was fighting against an unwavering magical force that was dragging it to a slow, fatal halt.
She imagined the lights in the Stable slowly flickering out, corridor by corridor, compartment by compartment. The sound of the air recyclers whispering and then silent. The entire Stable thrown onto batteries that would only sustain them for a few days. Just enough time for fear to erupt into panic. For violence to spread like a fire that would devour everything it touched.
“Aurora? What’s wrong?”
She blinked.
Her father’s arm was on her shoulder. Tomato plants waved their leaves in the light breeze of the recyclers. She was safe. Her father was safe. She pressed her cheek into his shoulder.
The talisman inflicted itself upon generator.
She took a breath. “Dad, do you remember Sledge?”
He nodded ruefully. “Everyone remembers Sledge.”
A smirked touched her cheek. “He’s a good pony, Dad. If something... if the Stable ever has any trouble, I want you to find him.”
Her father removed his arm and frowned at her. “What kind of trouble?”
Her ears flattened at the sudden concern in his voice. She steadied herself, committed now. “I can’t say. It might be nothing. It might be… everything,” she hadn’t intended to sound cryptic, but there was no avoiding it. She met his eyes and saw the pain she was causing him. 
“Mom always said that the strongest bridges are built on trust. I need you to trust me, Dad.” Aurora got to her feet. Her father did the same as if it would help him better understand her. “If something bad happens, find Sledge as fast as you can. He’ll tell you where to find me.”
Her father looked at the garden around him as if trying to see the threat Aurora was warning him about. When he looked back to her, his daughter’s expression had an intensity that he didn’t recognize yet fit her all the same. He’d almost forgotten that she’d grown up. Now she was trying to protect him from something.
“Does the overmare know?” he asked simply.
“Yes,” she answered.
“How will I know?”
“It’ll be pretty obvious.”
Her father nodded, his eyes wandering as he pieced together why his daughter had finally come up to visit him. Then he saw it. He saw Nimbus, and he knew there was nothing he could say to stop her.
“Aurora.” He searched her eyes. “Are you saying goodbye?”
Her voice caught in her throat. She’d never seen her father this vulnerable before. Standing among the vines, working alone save for his one visitor, she realized how alone he must feel. He didn’t look like the pony that she once thought knew everything. Like the superhero she’d once thought of him as. She saw a regular pony whose flaws and insecurities made him mortal. 
She was leaving him alone. The last bit of his family carried away from him.
Aurora choked on the last word. “I hope not.”
Dusky snatched up his daughter and squeezed. She buried her face in the crook of his neck but forced down the urge to sob. The visceral pull to break down in her father’s arms and take refuge in the safety there. To hand the burden of leaving the Stable to the pony who had already sacrificed so much and waited so long to see her. It would be easy and even almost feel right, and she would regret it until the morning she woke up and the lights didn’t turn on.
She broke the embrace and sniffed. “Dad, I’m going to fix this.”
“You’ve been known to do that from time to time,” he said, a sorrowful smile playing on his muzzle. “Promise me you’ll be safe.”
“I’ll try,” she promised.
He nodded, accepting the truth of it. “That’s why you’re my Fixer. Best get to it.”
Aurora hesitated for a moment, their eyes meeting one last time, and she turned away. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She trusted herself less to look back. She walked through the garden that her father had grown, fed by the body of her mother and which would feed ponies unaware of the dark months ahead.



	 
Aurora stood in her compartment running through her mental checklist for the third time. She had spent the afternoon gathering supplies and rehearsing her proposal to Overmare Delphi. They needed a new talisman or a unicorn with expert knowledge of a 220-year-old magical manufacturing process. She wasn’t holding her breath on the unicorn. That left the talisman. 
Nobody knew how many Stables were still due for construction the day the balefire fell. The final day of Equestria was described as an attack that came without warning, which suggested to Aurora that Stable-Tec likely hadn’t finished building all of its Stables. That meant storage depots for construction material and, even more likely, ignition talismans that hadn’t made their trips underground. Stable-Tec HQ was the logical first destination to look. She only needed to convince the overmare to open the Stable and let her walk out.
“Goddesses watch over me,” she muttered.
Stable-Tec HQ was several hundred miles east in the heart of Fillydelphia, one of the many coastal cities to see sickly green mushroom clouds that marked the end of the world. The map on her Pip-Buck displayed the small mountain Stable 10 had been built underneath along with a web of roads and highways snaking toward Fillydelphia. She zoomed out so both points on the map were visible on opposite margins. She had no reference for that scale of travel.
The portable Pip-Buck clamped to her foreleg had steadfastly outlived every pony who had owned it dating back to the first days of the Stable. Many of its components had been replaced and replaced again, but the resilient little device soldiered on. It’s green-on-black screen shimmered cheerily at her as she told it to recheck her numbers.
Her saddlebags sat on the grease-stains in her bedsheets, the bulging leather suspicious but unavoidable. Her Pip-Buck estimated it would take close to a week to make the five-hundred mile journey on hoof, drawing a line that followed the majority of a road labeled EQ HIGHWAY 51. Given the map was 220 years out of date, she doubled that estimate to two weeks. The apples and water she’d stuffed into the left bag would last maybe five days. Hopefully enough time to establish whether there was edible food or water outside the Stable.
She shifted the saddlebags off her bed and over her hips, obscuring her cutiemark and eliciting a muffled clatter from the tools and medicine she’d stowed in the other bag. Her Pip-Buck chirped as it detected her saddlebags, updating the inventory screen accordingly. She scrolled down the list until she was certain she hadn’t forgotten anything, ticking through the medical supplies that had cost her over three months worth of bits to pay for. The nurse’s assistant at the Infirmary most likely flagged her account, for all the good it would do.
Nearly satisfied with her preparations, she opened the door to the corridor and walked to the lifts. Her hoof pecked the button marking the top level of the Stable. She had one last item to check off of her list before she spoke to the overmare. The doors to the lift slid shut and the floor bucked gently as she rose closer to the surface.





 

The Atrium was the largest open space of the Stable, second only to Mechanical. Rather than a flat ceiling, the Atrium boasted high walls on either side of a common gathering space. They lifted the roof high enough to fit a second level in the same space. Ponies born before the war might have thought it looked uncannily similar to the shopping malls that had been growing in popularity at the time, save for the lack of skylights. Steel buttresses framed the walls in regular intervals like the ribs of a gigantic beast. The spaces between them were occupied by a variety of small shops, restaurants and more than a few recreational areas around which ponies and foals gathered to blow off steam and enjoy themselves. The Stable designers had wanted its first residents to have a place to come that would be familiar. A taste of home. 
A pair of security ponies wearing protective barding loitered along the railing of the second floor walkway, the door to the deputy station standing open behind them. They chatted between each other as their eyes lazily scanned the crowd knowing that the hours between shifts would be their best chance at getting away from the boredom of paperwork.
Seated high in the center of the Atrium’s far wall hung the medallion window of the overmare’s office. From time to time the overmare could be seen looking through it at the ponies milling about in the commons. 
Down on the the Atrium floor, one could only see the rich mahogany crown molding and painted ceiling. Some of the preserved maps and posters that framed the walls were visible from the shops on the second level, but nothing more. There was something to be said about sitting in the literal highest office. 
Aurora sat inside a small restaurant on the first level and poked a spoon into a steaming cup of onion soup. The Brass Bit had been a favorite of hers since her parents first took her here years ago. It was the only restaurant in the Atrium that stuck to its original pre-war menu with a stubbornness that rivaled Aurora’s own. It was also one of the few eateries that could quickly wipe out a week’s pay for any pegasus that didn’t pay attention to the bill. For the first time, Aurora didn’t have to worry about the bits.
The imitation cheese stuck to her spoon like a tent. She pressed it beneath the soup and brought a pool of flavorful broth to her mouth, indulging in the small luxury. Delicious flavors exploded in her mouth and she hummed in approval. Her wings bristled involuntarily in their imitation leather guards as she tucked into her bowl, savoring each sip.
“Good soup?”
She nodded and swallowed, looking up at the slim buckskin mare standing next to her table. A small notepad stuck halfway out of the server pony’s pocket, the scrawl of Aurora’s order visible at the top. The name tag stitched into her overalls read Caramel Delight. The name fit. 
“Great soup,” Aurora answered around a mouthful. 
Caramel wore an amused smile and surveyed the small dining room. Business would pick up during the shift change but for now things were quiet. Only two other tables so far, a family of three and a young couple, and both were just starting into their main dishes. Plenty of time to squeeze in some small talk before they needed refills. She tapped Aurora’s saddlebags with a hoof. “Do they make you carry that much all the time?”
Aurora felt a bolt of worry shoot up her spine and fought down a powerful urge to grab her bags. She shrugged as calmly as she could manage and nodded in answer, spooning out a melted strand of not-cheese while the server moved away from her bags. Her body relaxed with the warmth of her meal. After swallowing she said, “My supervisor can be a slave driver sometimes.”
Caramel snorted and pulled out a chair for herself, “Only sometimes, I hope.”
Aurora watched the attractive mare sit, her soup briefly forgotten. She tipped a head at the cozy decor of The Brass Bit, deciding a conversation would go well with a meal. “How long have you been working here?”
Caramel shrugged, an answer in itself. “Ever since I could. How about you? Where do you work?”
“Mechanical,” she said and paused, remembering her saddlebags. “Mostly. When the boss doesn’t have me running work orders.”
The server pony smiled and perked her eyebrow, “What’s wrong with running orders?”
It took longer than Aurora would have cared to admit to catch the joke. She laughed and bowed her head, her white mane nearly grazing her soup. She held her hoof out, “Aurora.”
“Caramel,” the buckskin mare answered, shaking her hoof. “So what do you do when you’re not working?”
Aurora took another sip and tick-tocked her head from side to side as she tried to think of an interesting answer. There really wasn’t one. Her work was her life and she was one of the few ponies in Mechanical who willingly threw themselves into it. Her downtime was spent sleeping, eating and answering the calls of nature. She hadn’t even bothered to decorate her compartment like most ponies did. 
“I guess I spend a lot of time thinking,” she said.
Caramel brought her elbows to the table and set her chin atop of her crossed hooves. There was an edge of playfulness in her voice bordering on flirtation. “What kind of things do you like to think about?”
Aurora opened her mouth to answer, and closed it. She felt the heat rise to her face as she looked at her bowl hoping to find an answer there. A lick of steam rose from the broth. No. Bad soup. 
From the other side of the Atrium, a yearling squealed with excitement as he galloped into an arcade. His mother trotted behind calling for him to walk not run. Aurora turned to watch along with the other ponies in the restaurant, happy for an excuse to stall for time. A dozen other ponies in the Atrium watched as well with amusement, including a familiar mountain masquerading as a stallion and the older rosepetal mare that was accompanying him toward the second level stairwell.
What was Sledge doing up here?
“Foals, right?” Caramel said.
Aurora nodded, watching her mentor follow Delphi up the steps to the second level and into the overmare’s office.
“Yeah…” she said. Maybe they were working on a solution after all. “Yeah,” she repeated, turning back to the table, “I’ve used impact drivers that were quieter.”
Caramel made a face. It was subtle, but it was there. “I mean, they’re not that bad. You can honestly say you’ve never thought about signing up for the lottery?”
Aurora flushed. The lottery was the best method Stable-Tec had devised to keep population growth under control. At the beginning of every month a lucky couple would be selected from the pool of pegasi who had registered. The winning couple was awarded a week of paid vacation during which they were allowed the opportunity to conceive a foal. For couples who couldn’t take the traditional route to parenthood, surrogate mares and in vitro fertilization were available. Couples whose names weren’t pulled for the month’s lottery wished the lucky winners the best of luck while quietly rooting against them, hoping to see the open slot added to the next month’s lottery where their chances of winning were slightly better. 
Aurora didn’t know the first thing about foals beyond they were incredibly noisy, had enough energy to short-circuit the generator and through means unknown to her were able to make every surface they came into contact with sticky. Foals terrified her. The only ones she could tolerate were the ones who she could give back to their parents.
“I haven’t given it much thought,” she said.
Caramel offered a shrug that said fair enough and checked over her shoulder at the two tables behind her. She looked back at Aurora and indicated the other customers. “Empty glasses. I should get back to it,” she sighed and stood up. “You know, my shift ends in a few hours and you seem pretty nice. Maybe we could pick this up again over dinner?”
Where were you a week ago? Aurora couldn’t decide if she was the unluckiest pegasus in Stable 10 or if spending every waking hour hiding in Mechanical was finally coming around to bite her in the ass. She was pretty sure it was the latter. As she fumbled to string together the right way to say no without sounding like an idiot, the Stable public announcement system chimed twice. The murmurs in the Atrium fell silent. An announcement from the overmare.
Both pegasi looked up in the rough direction of the nearest speaker. Aurora felt her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs. Sledge had found something. A file or a schematic that detailed an alternate solution. Why else would he have come all the way up from Mechanical with the overmare except to coach her through the technical details so she could explain them to the average layperson. Relief washed over her while a nagging voice urged her to listen first. She swallowed and raised her ears toward the ceiling.
“Good afternoon, Stable 10. I apologize for interrupting your day but I have important news and I promise to be brief.” Overmare Delphi’s voice filled the Atrium and every corner of the Stable. Until this morning, Aurora didn’t know Delphi’s mannerisms very well but she thought she heard a note of sorrow in her voice. “Due in part to personal developments, I have decided that my role as your overmare must come to an end.”
Aurora tried to match the surprise of the ponies around her. One of the ponies seated at the back of the restaurant gasped. Voices buzzed excitedly in the Atrium, threatening to drown out the overmare. Yet Delphi was well-versed in the art of public speaking and anticipated the rising chatter in the Stable. She raised her voice just slightly, commanding silence without having to ask for anything.
“For me to claim ownership of this office until I grow frail would be a disservice to every pegasus in this Stable,” she said, tapping her hoof three times against her desk for punctuation. “Stable 10 is not a monarchy, nor shall it ever be. We are a community first and foremost. We are the legacy of the pegasi who survived the end and we will continue on as we have for generations. That is why I am stepping down as overmare effective immediately. In keeping with tradition I am appointing our Head of Mechanical, Sledge, as interim overstallion until such time that Stable 10 selects a new overmare or stallion. I don’t doubt that many ponies who know Sledge may feel uncertain about his new role, but I can assure you that he has spent no small amount of time trying to convince me to change my mind. Humility makes for the best leadership, in my opinion.”
The overmare’s voice dimmed a little as she turned away from the microphone, “Sledge, I know a good heart when I see one. You have that and more. I only ask that you keep the profanity to a minimum while you hold this office.”
Aurora heard a deep chuckle from the speakers that was echoed by several ponies in the Atrium. 
“Serving this Stable has been the highlight of my life, however I believe the moment one feels ill-equipped to lead is the right moment to allow a stronger mind to step forward. I’d like everyone to join me in welcoming Sledge as Interim Overstallion of Stable 10.” Delphi tapped her hoof politely against the desk, and soon the Atrium echoed with applause as hooves thundered against the floor. Aurora tapped her own against the table, careful not to upset her bowl. When the din eventually drew down to a dull roar, Delphi returned to the microphone. “The floor is yours, Overstallion.”
A pause, a fumbling of hooves on the stem of a microphone that popped in protest. Then a sonorous voice rolled from the speakers. “Thank you, Delphi.”
He spoke with a practiced ease that told Aurora he’d probably been practicing his lines at the same time that she’d been gathering supplies. “Thank you, Stable 10. As interim overstallion, I’d like to assure everyone listening that I’ll be doing everything within my power to give this job to somebody else as soon as possible so I can get back down to Mechanical.”
Polite laughter rolled through the Atrium.
“Special elections are to be held in one year. Candidates can make themselves known in the usual way and will be expected to follow the Stable laws defining acceptable use of resources, public spaces and terminals. I am exempting myself from participation and there is nothing any of you can say to change my mind.” Sledge said.
He continued. “However, while I hold this office I do have one announcement to make that I think many of you may feel is overdue. Beginning this week, we will be scheduling rolling power holidays to allow the repair ponies in Mechanical time to upgrade the Stable’s aging electrical infrastructure. For those of you who are not already aware, the Fabrication wing experienced a blackout this morning that has had repercussions throughout the Stable. We’re long overdue for an overhaul and I trust that everybody will cooperate with Mechanical as repairs are made. Heads of each wing will receive dates for scheduled brownouts from Mechanical within the next few days.”
Aurora’s heart dropped like a stone as she understood the subtext.
They didn’t have a solution. They were stalling the inevitable.
She pressed her hooves against her eyelids. “It’s not going to work,” she muttered.
Sledge continued into a prepared speech about accountability and sharing the load before he thanked everyone and promised to do right by them. He signed off to a smattering of applause from the Atrium, many ponies less enthused about the prospect of power outages on the horizon. 
Aurora hadn’t listened closely by the end of his speech. Sledge was the new overstallion. Possibly the last overstallion given the generator would likely begin to fail well before the end of his one-year term. At least the power holidays had been a clever idea.
A muffled pop echoed from the Atrium.
The closer the generator slid toward failure, the less reliable the power would become. The power holidays would mask the generator’s brownouts with scheduled ones. They would buy Sledge more time to find a solution from within before the Stable realized the true horror of what was staring them in the face. It wasn’t a permanent solution but it would delay the panic long enough to…
A scream pierced the Atrium, followed by a second. Aurora was shaken out of her brooding and spun around to the sound of raised voices and the sight of ponies staring up toward the medallion window.
She stepped out of The Brass Bit and followed the eyes of dozens of mares, stallions and foals. They stared toward the medallion window, eyes fixated on the spray of blood that drizzled down the ornate mahogany crown molding. The two security ponies who loitered on the railing earlier were at the door to the overmare’s office, fishing for their keycards to override the lock. Many more ponies had already begun rushing the stairs with the inevitable mixture of real concern and clawing curiosity, gathering behind the two security ponies in a thickening crowd.
Aurora wriggled through the straps of her saddlebags and dashed into the crowd, her mission all but forgotten in the chaos. She needed to know if Sledge was okay. Or if he’d done something catastrophic. She hauled herself up the stairs to the second landing and pressed her way through the solidifying crowd. The door to the overmare’s office stood barely five meters ahead of her when the security ponies bypassed the lock. 
The front of the crowd surged forward a few feet before several new screams caused the wave to collapse backward, threatening to crush her and several others in the pinch. She felt her rear leg slip on someone’s tail and the sudden loss of balance coupled with the threat of being trampled by the panicking mob kicked instinct to the front of her brain. She reared and swept both wings out of their leather guards, hurling them into the air and then hard toward the floor.
Aurora lifted a scant foot into the air and she clamored onto the back of the pony ahead of her, wings flapping out of sync and striking several pegasi over their necks and backs. She panicked, her thinking brain shoving instinct away from the controls when it realized she was doing something dangerous and untested. Her wings pinned themselves back to her sides and she fell. Her full weight crashed over the heads of the ponies at the front of the gathering, throwing several into floor. A stallion pulled himself out from under her and pelted her with a litany of profanity. She picked herself up and stood at the threshold to the overmare’s office, the verbal lashing lost to her as the full scope of what had happened lay before her.
The two security ponies trying to secure the scene were overwhelmed. The older of the two spoke frantically into a black radio clipped to his shoulder, using codes that she didn’t understand and staring wide-eyed through the crowd that boiled outside the door. The younger of the two faced the corner of the office, his stomach not yet decided on whether it was finished contributing to the hardwood floor.
Aurora didn’t register them. She didn’t hear anything. Her eyes were fixed on the fan of blood and matter that had already begun tracing ugly red lines down the sky blue wallpaper and over a framed painting of Cloudsdale. She followed the stain as the lines it drew crossed and thickened on their way to the floor, pointing to the place the pink mare had come to rest. The tip of a long weapon rested against her chest, the force of the shot kicking it out of her hooves and shoving the butt into the legroom under her desk. Her final expression burned into Aurora’s mind. The physics of the gunshot had done cruel things to Overmare Delphi.
Aurora felt bile rise into her throat and she looked sharply away, willing herself back in control. When the urge passed she looked at the red stallion standing over Delphi’s body, his mouth hanging slightly open as if he’d been stopped mid-sentence and didn’t understand that the conversation was over. The front of Sledge’s blue overalls were misted pink. His face glistened with it.
She took a step forward and the older security pony moved in front of her, saying something she didn’t acknowledge. 
“Sledge, are you alright?” 
The words felt like a punchline to a bad joke as soon as she spoke them, but they brought Sledge back to reality. He blinked several times, his eyelids sticky with blood already beginning to thicken, and saw Aurora at the door. His lips shaped out silent words as he looked through her, around the office and then back to her place in the doorway as if he’d forgotten something important and was retracing his steps back to the answer.
“I tried to stop her,” Sledge spoke barely loud enough for her to hear over the crowd behind her. He looked at his hooves and squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on the words. “She said she’s sorry. She said there’s nothing we can do… because they wanted to know if we could survive it. But the experiment changed. I don’t know what that means, but…” Sledge swallowed. He looked at her as if only just recognizing her. “Pinfeathers? When did you…”
“Move back!” several voices yelled from the Atrium. Four security ponies were shoving their way into the crowd and turning to press it back from the overmare’s office. Aurora ducked past the security pony standing in her way before she could be dragged back into the Atrium with the rest. “All of you move back, now!”
Two of the security ponies marched into the office and surveyed the scene while the other two stood guard outside. One of them aimed a hoof at Sledge and Aurora and addressed the two stallions who had arrived first, “Escort the overstallion to the deputy station. Who’s she?”
Aurora froze. The older security pony she’d snuck by began to speak but Sledge, finally coming back to his senses, spoke over him. “She’s a friend.”
The security pony didn’t seem to care. He looked back at the older pony at the door. “Chaser, take them to the deputy station. Stratus, Windsong, start documenting everything in the room. And one of you close that door before somebody out there finds a camera.”
Chaser escorted them outside and led them across the short stretch of the second landing to the deputy station. Aurora caught a glimpse of Caramel Delight standing at the fringes of the crowd that had been pushed down to the Atrium commons. She followed Sledge in silence and ducked into the sparsely decorated deputy station.
The deputy station was a simple affair and notably smaller than what Aurora had expected. Six holding cells lined the right half of the room, little more than walls made from intersecting bars with simple mechanical locks welded onto rolling doors. They were rarely needed except for the odd case of drunkenness, and even then it was easier to confine intoxicated ponies to their compartment.
The left side of the small station amounted to a compact office area where security ponies could fill out reports while monitoring anyone who might be passing time in a cell. The workspace boasted four green painted metal desks butted up front-to-front in pairs. Further back, a bank of lockers stood against the wall for the deputies who needed one.
Aurora’s attention was focused on the locked door at the far end of the deputy station. A card reader sat underneath an aging metal plaque. Simple black letters spelled out the word ANTECHAMBER. Her mouth went dry. The antechamber for the Stable Door.
Chaser offered Sledge a rag from a locker, presumably his own. Sledge accepted it and rested his haunches on the floor, dabbing the rag at the red spatter on his overalls. 
Chase cleared his throat. “For your face, Overstallion.”
Sledge worked hard not to show a reaction, only nodding as he pressed the rag into his face patch by patch.
Aurora slipped her saddlebags off next to one of the cells and sat. Ten minutes ago she’d been sitting at a table tasting what might very well have been her last home-cooked meal and enjoying the flirtation of a distinctly attractive mare. Now she rested the back of her head against the cool bars of an empty drunk tank while the new overstallion of Stable 10 wiped the blood of the former out of his coat. The broken talisman was surprisingly effective at throwing her entire world on its head.
Aurora waited for the grief to hit her, but it didn’t come. She felt numb. This must be what shock felt like. Sledge was clearly in the same way.
She loosened the flap on her saddlebag and nudged it open, removing a ripe red apple with her teeth. Sledge watched her impassively as she set it down and pulled out another, transferring it to her hoof and offering it to him. He set down his rag and caught it gently between his hooves. 
Aurora looked over at Chaser who had resigned himself to standing guard near the door, watching them. “Want one?” she asked. He shook his head and found something else to look at.
They ate, punctuating the silence with the sound of crunching fruit. She tried to think of something to say that might comfort him but everything that came to mind sounded like a recycled platitude. She wasn’t good at this. It didn’t help that Sledge’s face was a placid mask of non-emotion. He just stared, eating, the stained rag at his hooves forgotten. His half-lidded eyes staring at the pile of shining apples peeking out from her open saddlebag.
Her heart started beating faster. His eyes turned to her like cold boulders. 
He knew.
Sledge finished the apple, core and all, and sighed as he stood.
“I thought I told you no,” he stated.
From the door, Chaser glanced in their direction.
Aurora rolled her half-eaten apple between her hooves, watching the bites appear and disappear from view. “I never agreed to that.”
Sledge’s tail flicked the metal desk hard enough to elicit a hollow ring and to make Aurora flinch. He strode toward her saddlebags and stared down at the small hill of apples she’d collected. He shook his head once in disgust and tore open the flap to the second bag.
Aurora’s tail wrapped slowly around her feet as Sledge glared down at the canvas roll of tools she’d taken from Mechanical, shifting it aside to see a second toolbox hiding underneath. His shock flared into anger.
“You stole from me?” he asked incredulously. The raw note of betrayal made the world shrink around her.
“I might need them,” she said quietly.
“You might need them,” Sledge muttered, his hoof shoving the tool roll away and lifting the lid of the toolbox. Metal jangled harshly as he stirred through it, biting off the list of the first items he saw, “You might need a pipe wrench. A socket set. Chisels? How much epoxy do you think it takes to survive the apocalypse, Pinfeathers? Do you think there’s enough here to keep the radiation from melting your skin off or would you like to go down and take a few more?”
She turned the apple as she said, “Nobody knows what’s out there.”
Sledge’s leg whipped out of her saddlebag and slapped the apple out of her hooves. Her canvas roll flew out of the bag and struck the cell bars in the same motion, spilling an assortment of steel tools across the floor. The security pony at the door spoke to his radio, keeping well away from the confrontation.
His voice boomed in her ears. “That includes you, Aurora! You don’t know what’s out there! You don’t know what you’ll expose the Stable to by leaving!”
Aurora got to her hooves and jabbed one in Sledge’s chest. “Then tell me how you fix this, Sledge! Tell me your plan is more than just power holidays and horseshit!”
Sledge said nothing.
“I am one pony,” she pressed. “There are hundreds here. Hundreds of perfectly capable ponies that can think of a better solution, if there is one. But it doesn’t make sense to gamble everything on an idea we don’t have yet. If there’s a chance that I can find another talisman out there, I have to try.”
“And what if you die out there, Aurora? What do you think that will do to your fa-”
She cracked him across the muzzle with her hoof. Tears stung the corners of her eyes. “Don’t.”
He stared at her, shamefaced.
The station door slid open and Stratus entered, clearly irritated to be pulled away from the overmare’s office. Chaser started to speak to him but Sledge caught Stratus with an expression that made it very clear he wasn’t needed. Stratus shot Chaser a withering glare and strode back through the door.
Sledge fixed Aurora with menace in his eyes. “The answer is no.”
“That’s not your…” she cut herself off, Sledge’s stony expression daring her to tell him what his job was now. “You know I’m right,” she finished.
Sledge craned his head up toward the ceiling, listening to the dull crackle in his neck. He closed his eyes and turned away from Aurora, his voice resigned. “I need you to tell me you’ll drop this.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes at him. “Not until you suggest something better.”
He didn’t move. For several seconds neither of them spoke. Neither willing to give ground. A minute passed. Then another.
When Sledge finally spoke, he addressed Chaser. “Deputy, I’d like to place charges of theft against Aurora Pinfeathers. Please show her to a cell.”
The blood drained from her face. “What?”
“You stole equipment from Mechanical,” he said flatly. “And you need time to get your head straight.”
Chaser was already standing at the cell nearest the Atrium doorway, the deputy’s face unreadable as he tugged a ring of keys from his breast pocket with his teeth. The old lock clacked and he slid the door open, giving her the opportunity to comply peacefully.
She stared incredulously at Sledge, waiting for him to give her another option. To change his mind. He turned slightly to watch her from the corner of his eye but said nothing.
Her hoof bumped a screwdriver Sledge had knocked out her saddlebags. She kicked it toward him, clattering against his rear leg as she walked toward the open cell. “Control what you can control, right?” 
“That isn’t what this is,” he said flatly, but the words had cut him. He averted his eyes and walked toward the station door.
Aurora stepped into the cell and turned to watch him go. The heavy bars rolled inches from her muzzle but she didn’t take her eyes off Sledge. The cell door clanged shut like a broken bell. The station door slid closed behind Sledge with a whisper.
Chaser turned the lock and put the keys back in his uniform. With nothing left to do and seeing that she wasn’t intent to move from where she stood, he began picking up the tools Sledge had scattered and dropped them one by one into her saddlebags. She watched him lug them away from the cells and set them next to his desk before pulling out the chair to sit and boot up his terminal.
Aurora lay down on the hard concrete floor and watched Chaser begin filling out a report with her name on the header. Her muzzle crinkled and she looked away, doing the only thing she could do.
She waited. 





 

Security ponies filtered in and out of the deputy station, the proximity to the overmare’s office turning the small room into a hub of evening activity. Some wore emotion on their sleeves, fear and adrenaline coloring their chattering gossip like a toy wound too tightly. Others simply packed it all away and quietly did their jobs with robotic efficiency. None of them spoke to Aurora, but a few had nodded to her with something like sympathy while the rest ignored her outright. A pony stole a quick glance at her bare hip as he passed by, the overmare’s bloodstained rifle under his wing. He leaned the rifle against the lockers and told the pegasi at the desks to get it cataloged, none of whom looked up from their heaps of paperwork. Aurora began to doze.
A pegasus brought up coffee from one of the Atrium eateries. The scent alone pulled Aurora from her sleep, but only briefly. When she opened her eyes again the station was empty save for a security pony she didn’t recognize who silently pecked at the keyboard of his terminal. The lavender mare didn’t acknowledge her when she stood and stretched, her open wings bristling the bars of the cell. Aurora looked at the clock hanging over the two pairs of desks. Three fifty-five in the morning. In five minutes the timer to her compartment would begin drawing the lights on. She tucked her wings away and walked a few circles around her cell to get her blood flowing. 
The lavender mare’s ear spun toward the ticking of hooves on concrete. Her typing slowed, then stuttered as the distraction burrowed into her sleep-deprived brain. Finally she stopped typing altogether and pushed away from the desk, her ears pinned back as she went to the Atrium door.
“I’m going down for coffee. I’ll bring you a cup and some clothes if you get that out of your system by the time I’m back,” the mare said, her eyes carefully averted as she walked by. She didn’t wait for an answer as the door slipped open and she stepped outside, locking it behind her.
Aurora hadn’t been listening. She’d stopped in the middle of her circuit, her eyes on the short L-shaped nub of a hex wrench laying in the shadow of the cell bench. It was one of the tools that Sledge had inadvertently scattered from her saddlebag. She looked at the cell door behind her. At the ancient mechanical lock.
Aurora launched herself onto the hook of steel and clattered to the door. She reached through the bars, shoved the long end of the hex key into the keyhole and wriggled it around until she found leverage. She brought her wing to her mouth, bit down on a long primary feather and yanked hard. The pain was powerful and brief. A spot of blood stained the end of the hollow shaft. She used her free hoof to negotiate it into the lock and aggressively raked the pins, feeling the feather travel more smoothly with each pass. The resistance from the hex wrench vanished with a click and the lock turned.
She slid through the door, her heart hammering her chest. How long did it take to get coffee? Five, ten minutes? Not enough time. She ran to where Chaser had set her saddlebags next to the desks and dug through the disorganized contents in a frenzy. She retrieved a pry bar and a stubby set of cable cutters and hurried to the Atrium door. 
The ID scanner was a part of a larger removable panel secured into a fitted recess in the door frame. She didn’t have time to make the work pretty. She slammed the pry bar under the panel, wriggled a corner of metal away until the tool had enough grip to strip the threads of the screw holding the panel in place. She repeated the step for two more until the panel swung away on the remaining screw, scarred and misshapen. Aurora pushed aside the rat’s nest of dusty cables and wires until she saw what she was looking for. The fat black hydraulic line that did the physical work of lifting the door. She set the blades of the cable cutters around the inch-thick line and backed herself into the recess of the Atrium door, the cutter handle snugged against the wall of the wiring compartment. She hooked the pry bar around the far handle of the cutters, ensuring that no part of her legs were exposed to the air in front of the compartment, and yanked the cutter handles together.
The hose went off like a gunshot. Aurora stumbled backward while the cutters spun away down the row of cells. The air was immediately thick with pungent hydraulic fluid that coated the walls and pooled out of the wiring compartment. Her mind began drawing comparisons between the overmare’s office but she shoved them away. Aurora got to her hooves and carefully avoided the cone of fluid that had slicked the floor. She retrieved the cable cutters and dropped them into her saddlebags along with the pry bar.
Once she’d secured the flaps, she wriggled her saddlebags over her hips and rushed to the door marked ANTECHAMBER. She examined the card reader. Brute-forcing her way through was too risky. One broken lead on a circuit board and the door wouldn’t open for anybody. She’d need a card.
She trotted to the cluster of desks and began searching. As she slammed an empty metal drawer shut, a chirp emitted from the Atrium door and a puff of air and brackish fluid sputtered from the severed hydraulic hose. A muffled voice said something on the other side and the door chirped again without opening. Aurora ignored the security mare’s hastening attempts to open the door as she whipped open drawers filled with blank forms, nubs of pencils, half-eaten oat bars and unrecorded holotapes.
The security mare heard the racket through the door and pounded a hoof against it. Aurora closed the last drawer and turned to the row of lockers. She yanked each door open and searched the security ponies’ belongings, scattering them to the floor in heaps. In the last locker, the one Chaser had retrieved a rag from earlier, she spotted a laminated rectangle with his name printed at the top sticking out from the pocket of a clean set of overalls.
She snatched out the badge and hesitated, her eyes stopping on the barrel of a long rifle leaned up against the side of the locker wall. Firearms were restricted in the Stable - carried only by security ponies and, apparently, the overmare. Her eyes traced the polished walnut stock, clearly cared dearly by all of its owners. The only wood that existed in the Stable had been brought in before the door sealed shut, and most of it had been broken or sanded into worthlessness over the centuries. The bolt-action rifle had belonged to one of the first residents, and it was anyone’s guess to how old it had been when it arrived. A thick leather strap dangled from a brass mount in the forestock and slung down to its twin under the rifle butt. The weapon was a beautifully maintained heirloom of simple design. 
The only guns Aurora had experience with fired nails. This was a weapon that, despite the beautiful craftsmanship, dealt in death. The rifle’s muzzle was still marred with the browning spatter of its most recent use. Her heart clutched at the sight of Delphi’s blood. She hadn’t known the overmare closely. Yesterday morning had been the first time Aurora had gotten to speak with her, and even that had been brief. She didn’t pretend to understand Delphi’s mind. Looking at the evidence left behind from the overmare’s last living act, she didn’t think she ever could.
Her body would be planted in the gardens. The rifle, along with the rest of her possessions, would ultimately be fed into the recyclers to be broken into their constituent parts and turned into something new that could benefit the Stable. In a way, it was a form of mourning. To Aurora, it felt like forgetting.
She picked up the rifle and slung the strap over her neck. Her Pip-Buck chirped. The glowing screen displayed her updated inventory with a listing for the antique firearm: Desperate Times.
Aurora frowned at the name. She hadn’t entered it. Was it registered somewhere?
The pounding of hooves on the Atrium door had graduated to the whine of tools. The security mare had found help. Aurora needed to hurry. She swiped Chaser’s ID through the reader and the antechamber door chirped twice, sliding above her.
She stepped into a short hallway closed off by a second door. Three tubular arches fitted with spray nozzles framed the hall. She recognized the decontamination showers and flinched in preparation to be doused. A sensor pinged softly and the archways remained silent. The door ahead of her slid open and she stepped through.
Her eyes grew large at the sight of the antechamber.
It was like she’d walked into the belly of a mechanical monster. With the brightly lit rooms and corridors of the Stable behind her, she stared into the dim half-light of the chamber at the edge of her world. The smooth cement had been replaced with diamond-textured steel grating beneath which lurked an immense capillary system of pipes, cables and vents. The smooth metal panels that she grown to expect along the walls and ceiling were gone, revealing the steel girders that rose from the floor and stretched across the ceiling in symmetrical lines. Bulbs in wire cages set between the wide spaced girders were the only sources of light. They cast more shadows than they scared off. 
At the center of the far wall stood the great circular blast door of Stable 10. Nine massive cogs studded the circumference of the the gear-shaped door, a design that had inspired safety in the minds of millions of ponies centuries before. Huge titanium rods built into the gear’s frame, each easily the width of her torso, speared the great blast door and pinned it into place. A complex series of mechanisms build into the face of the door gripped notches in the pins, lending it the stability required to withstand the titanic stresses of a balefire strike.
A grooved hole had been machined deep into the center of the door. It suggested some kind of massive key. She looked up and spotted it. It looked like the mother of all power drills suspended from a mechanical arm, tucked partially into the antechamber ceiling. The parallel grooves of the drill bit coupled perfectly with the grooves carved into the surface of the blast door. She’d found her key.
A portion of the floor sank toward the bottom of the immense gear, the top of the ramp was guarded by an empty chest-height kiosk that had acted as a checkpoint for the first residents. Aurora eyed a console built into the kiosk. Her hooves echoed off the metal grating as she approached it.
The flat control board of the console was painted industrial yellow. Blemishes of rust had begun to peel the paint way around the edges but the controls were intact. A cluster of control knobs rested at the bottom of the board while a large red button dominated the center of the console, protected by a locked plastic case. An orange light built into the button sat dark, waiting. 
She looked at a familiar socket recessed into the left side. Faded black letters scrawled the words PIP-BUCK REMOTE LINK. Aurora turned her Pip-Buck over and tugged the short cable from its housing. 
She paused and looked up, scanning the corners of the chamber ceiling until she saw the small black dome of a camera. Chances were slim that anyone was watching the live feed, but she was willing to gamble that wouldn’t be true for long.
“I don’t want to go,” she said to the camera. “But if I don’t somebody else might and by then it could be too late. Sledge, if you’re seeing this, I forgive you. If there’s a way to fix this you’ll find it. I hope you beat me to it. And Dad… I love you.”
Aurora seated her Pip-Buck cable into the console. The screen flickered, scrolling through lines of updates for which her vision was too watery to read. She squeezed her eyes shut, clearing the film of tears, and focused on the task before her.
The lines stuttered by more slowly, ending with a brief notification that her Mechanical credentials had been accepted. The screen vanished and reappeared, displaying a short list of maintenance options. At the bottom of the list read two words: TEST CYCLE.
Desperate Times swayed from its leather strap. Now or never.
She tapped the option and the chamber awoke.
Diagnostic data filled her Pip-Buck so quickly that she had to look away. Klaxons reverberated against the walls while orange lights bloomed and rotated on either side of the door, turning the antechamber into a disorienting carnival of moving shadows and noise. 
The massive armature in the center of the chamber descended from the ceiling and slid on heavily greased rails toward the gear-shaped blast door. It slowed to allow the coupler to align itself with the grooves in the door. Aurora flattened her ears as the tip mated the socket, steel shrieking against steel. A deep boom shook the floor when the coupler made final contact. Then the massive key began to spin.
For a split second she imagined the tip of the coupler as a gigantic drill bit that was trying to bore straight through to the other side of the door. It might have scared her if she wasn’t already terrified. The mechanisms that shackled the titanium pins in place released and the pins began to back out of the door. The coupler wound down as the pins crossed the threshold that separated the blast door from the skin of the Stable.
The chamber thundered as the entire structure of the blast door jerked as if something on the other side had struck it. The armature began to back away by inches and, incredibly, the entire door heaved away from the walls with it. Aurora watched as foot after foot of shining steel slid out of the wall. Suddenly the other side of the great gear slid into view and a widening ring of blackness replaced the space behind it.
It took her several seconds to understand what she was looking at. As the armature rolled the blast door to the left along a cogged track in the floor, Aurora stared into the void and felt electric fear snake up her spine. The pitch black hole stared back into her home like the pupil of a colossal predator. 
Stable 10 stood open for the first time in 220 years.
> Chapter 3: Blue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The blackness on the other side of the great gear of Stable 10 existed like a physical thing. It devoured the dim orange light that escaped the antechamber and for a moment Aurora feared it would slide over the reinforced threshold of her home and consume her too. She descended the ramp, aware that every step she took was irreversible. The seal had been broken and she was committed.
The ramp gave way to a wide catwalk that spanned the final ten feet of the Stable. She noticed a rusty red toolbox laying forgotten under the span and wondered whether it had been there since the beginning. The catwalk sang gently under her hooves as she approached the very limits of her home, a yard-thick wall of steel and concrete that defined her universe. She lifted a hoof and stepped into another.
Her hooves scuffed against weathered concrete. The light from the Stable door illuminated a scant few feet of a semicircular platform that sat flush with her home, a reflection of the massive gear that had already begun its lumbering roll back to where it had rested for over two centuries. Aurora turned to watch. 
A powerful urge pressed her to leap back inside, delete the console’s records and accept an easier punishment than what she was about to inflict upon herself. She nearly did when a ragged voice echoed out of the darkness behind her.
“Seal the door!” it cried, distant but approaching quickly. “Seal the door!”
The silhouette of the great gear was already beginning to eclipse the light spilling out from the antechamber. Her heart thundered. The darkness was swallowing her after all. She fumbled for her Pip-Buck as the door sank into the cogs along the track behind her. Panic fogged her ability to think as she pressed button after button, frantically trying to toggle the built-in lamp while the screen taunted her with flickering menus and maps.
“NO! DON’T LET THEM INSIDE!”
The switch clicked and the Pip-Buck’s green screen flared, pouring light into the darkness and illuminating the three milky-eyed monsters skittering onto the platform. Aurora opened her mouth to scream just as the nearest creature threw itself onto her hard enough to steal the air from her lungs. It drove her backward into the hard steel of the Stable door, knocking her saddlebags to the ground and sending her wing guards skidding away. The creature shrieked with an unbridled rage that washed her heart with ice.
She tried to twist away but the movement of the door against her back threw her off-balance and the creature wasted no time throwing itself into the crook of her knees, jaws snapping and cracked hooves scrambling to find purchase around her hind leg. She barely registered the boom of the Stable door as it changed direction and begun sliding forward into the massive socket. The shrill noise of an animal caught in a trap rose into the air and fell silent as the light from the Stable vanished. Aurora had scant seconds to put the two sounds together before she felt a set of teeth settle against the skin above her hind knee and clamp down, hard.
She screamed and tried getting back onto her hooves to run away but the barely equine creature locked its jaws, blood sheeting across its muzzle as teeth popped through flesh. She screamed again and violently shook her leg, feeling the skin tear deeper. A second creature hurled itself onto her, straddling the barrel of her chest and pressing her face into the cement as it frantically searched for her neck. Aurora realized she was about to die.
Lightning flashed and the creature’s face disintegrated into pulp. It crumpled away from her like a marionette thrown from its strings.
The creature chewing on her hind leg spun its head around fast enough for Aurora to hear vertebrae crunch. The hideous pony that wasn’t quite a pony stared at the source of the gunshot but didn’t move to attack. A flash of fire and her eardrums kicked inward. The creature’s body spun away independent of the remains of its head. Its hooves tapped madly against the concrete as it spasmed before finally going still.
Aurora gulped down air as the echoes of the last gunshot faded into the blackness. Her stomach threatened to crawl out of her throat but she fought it back down with a ferocity. She tried to stand but her hind leg folded under her with a bolt of searing pain. She raised her Pip-Buck, aiming the green lamplight toward her hind leg and her eyes widened. A ragged strip of flesh was simply gone. The crater under her hip filled like a cup fed from the bottom. Blood sheeted across her leg, the green light turning it black.
“Are you alright?”
The owner of the ragged voice stood barely two feet from her. She turned her Pip-Buck toward the source and shrank back at the sight of yet another monster. Its eyes were without irises or pupils, staring down at her like uniform sheets of cloudy jadeite. Plates of chitinous black skin wrapped a vaguely equine shape in a mosaic that looked as if it had been shattered and pieced back together by amateur hooves. Holes clustered up and down its legs, the largest few boring tunnels completely through the limbs. Where mismatched plates pulled away from each other and deep within the holes in the creature’s legs, pale green light dimly emanated from its softer skin. 
A charcoal black horn rose from its forehead, a deep fissure running its length.
Aurora felt for the strap of the overmare’s rifle but came up empty. A coldness blanketed her. 
“Stay away from me,” she warned. 
The collage of nightmares eyed her bleeding leg as it took a step back. Its voice churned like something in its throat had rotted and come loose. “You’re hurt. I want to help you.”
Aurora squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force them to focus. Pain radiated from her hip in waves that made her nauseous. Her head felt heavier, or maybe her neck felt weaker. She opened her mouth to speak and heard a howling scream echo from the deep darkness of the tunnel. 
The blackened creature pivoted and pointed its right foreleg into the darkness. The gesture struck her as strange. Then she saw the rusted shotgun strapped to the inside of its foreleg. A corner of her brain tried to puzzle out how he got it on.
Wind washed over the platform in a gust that scoured it clean of dust. Aurora heard the beat of wings above her and tipped her Pip-Buck upward, the green light blooming around the deformed pegasus hovering above them. Its foggy eyes bore into the sealed Stable door like a predator that had lost its prey. Then they snapped toward Aurora’s Pip-Buck with terrifying speed. Sinew in its sunken cheeks pulled its jaws tight. With one powerful beat of its wings, it hurled itself toward her like a bullet.
The blackened creature bellowed. “BLUE, STOP!”
The pegasus landed inches from Aurora’s head, hard enough to split its front hoof deep into the living bone. It shook like an engine that had thrown a rod, torn between instinct and command. The turquoise pegasus stamped its cracked hoof, spread its wings open and drained its lungs at Aurora with a shriek that crackled with disuse.
“Blue!” the creature rumbled. “Be calm.”
The pegasus slapped its wings to its sides like a book cover, spinning vortices through the cloud of ancient dust. It turned away from Aurora and walked to the Stable door, its vacant eyes staring up at the massive 10 painted on the face of the gear.
The black creature said something to her, but somehow the words sounded distant and muddled. She could hear her heartbeat pounding rapidly in her ears. She watched the twisted pegasus press the top of its head against the Stable door, its milky eyes staring through the concrete platform below.
Aurora’s thoughts drifted as darkness encroached the edges of her vision. Her leg was wet but she didn’t remember why. The cold concrete pulled her down, bidding her to fall asleep.





 


Fire plunged into her hind leg and she kicked hard with a sputtering curse. Her hoof connected and suddenly the gurgling voice of the black creature was yelling at Blue to back away. Aurora turned over to see the winged monster poised between her and its chitinous companion, staring daggers at her inches from her muzzle. Behind it, the black pony held a hoof to its jaw. 
“It’s okay,” it said, though Aurora wasn’t sure to which one of them. “Go home, Blue.”
Several expressions puzzled over the pegasus’ face.
“Go home, Blue,” the voice repeated firmly.
It looked up at the Stable door for several seconds and chuffed with irritation. Its wings lifted high and swept down, the pegasus lifting into the air before its wingtips could touch the concrete and slipping silently down the darkened tunnel like a ghost.
Aurora lifted her head, watching Blue fly away with a mixture of relief and astonishment. It was the first time she’d seen a pegasus take flight.
“How’s your leg feeling?” the black pony asked.
Aurora moved a strand of white mane away from her eye and looked back at her hind leg. She was surprised to see a thick wrap of dirty brown bandage where the ragged gash had been. A deep red circle had leeched through the rags but didn’t seem to be growing any larger. She flexed the muscle and hissed as the skin under the bandage throbbed in protest.
The black pony tucked an empty syringe into a tattered saddlebag on its hip. Aurora hadn’t noticed the bags before. The wrongness of the chitinous creature had been a powerful distraction. “That bite’s deep. I have another stimpack and some antibiotics back home. Can you walk on it?”
The lengthening silence pressured her to answer.
“I think so,” she said and pushed herself up. She leaned carefully on the injured leg and felt dull pain bloom under the bandage, but it bore her weight. She looked down at the stiffening pool of blood that covered the platform and a large portion of her right side. How long had she been out?
It occurred to her that the black pony had saved her life, twice. If it was planning to kill her, then it was doing so with remarkable patience. She looked at the corpses of the creatures near the Stable wall. The damage done to them by the shotgun tied around the black pony’s foreleg was gruesome. In the seam of the great gear of Stable 10, the rear half of a third creature hung from the edge of the door - the other half presumably inside. A second faster and it would have been staggering inside the Stable, waiting to ambush the security ponies once they reached the antechamber.
“What were they?” she asked.
The black pony turned away. “You need medicine, Stable dweller. We can talk about them on the way.”
It began walking toward the edge of the semicircular platform and waited for Aurora to follow. She took a few tenuous steps forward with a noticeable limp. When the black pony was confident she could move under her own power, he descended the steps of the platform and led her into the tunnel.
The green lamplight of Aurora’s Pip-Buck cast long shadows among the detritus that littered the tunnel floor. She recognized the small piles for what they were, but the piece of her that would have recoiled with shock had already been beaten numb. Dark clusters of bone lay huddled around the thick pillars that held up the tunnel’s ceiling, some sitting alone while others had gathered around smaller figures that Aurora tried not to linger on. Suitcases and saddlebags lay open everywhere she turned her light, the contents stacked in neat piles alongside the containers with the reverence that suggested someone had taken care with their looting.
Hanging above the bodies that had come to rest against the far walls, faded and flaking signage bore reminders to keep fillies close. To remain in line. To have identification ready. To stay calm.
“There was barely any warning before the bombs fell,” the black pony said, noticing her wandering gaze. It looked at the passing bones as if recalling a distant memory. “We were told to be ready to leave at any moment, but it was easy to get complacent once you had a spot in a Stable. Knowing we had a safe place to go made us feel safe. Nobody was prepared to leave when the bombs started falling.”
Aurora could see an orange light at the end of the tunnel far ahead. It felt strange to walk in a straight line for so long without needing to turn down a corridor or take a lift to another level. She looked over her shoulder and could barely make out the dark shape of the Stable door.
She looked back at the pony with the strange, chitinous skin and asked the obvious question. “You were here?”
It nodded. “I was working when the news came that Cloudsdale had fallen. It took more than an hour to fly home and...” it stopped, then moved on. “The air smelled like old coins on the way here. I’ll never forget that smell.”
Aurora moved around a discarded suitcase and walked alongside the black pony. Its eyes regarded her for a moment before returned to the flagstone floor. 
“What’s your name?” she asked.
It shrugged as it walked. “It doesn't matter. Most ponies call me Roach. Beats being called it.”
Aurora winced. Roach didn’t seem to notice.
“Mine’s Aurora,” she offered.
“It’s a pretty name,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, “Ponies tend to excel at those.”
Roach snorted, the tension in his shoulders loosening by a few degrees. 
Aurora let herself smile a little as they approached the end of the tunnel. Her expression sank when she saw the hill of broken cement and boulders that rose from the floor toward the ceiling. The cave-in sealed the tunnel shut like a cork.
Roach noticed her dismay. “A balefire bomb dropped on an ammunition depot a few miles south of here and kicked off a landslide.” He pointed a perforated leg toward the right corner of the debris where a smaller tunnel had been burrowed into the rubble, shored up with bent lengths of rebar. “It’s a little snug, but it gets me in and out just fine.”
He led her toward the source of the light, between two pillars and to a thin metal door near the rubble labeled ELEC PANEL RM 02. Dented and rusted jerry cans stood in a neat row along the wall left of the doorway. Several trunks and more than a few of the sturdier suitcases from the tunnel sat against the wall on the opposite side, most of their lids fastened shut. Aurora hesitated outside the doorway as Roach stepped inside.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “The war was two hundred and twenty years ago. Nobody lives that long, especially outside of a Stable.”
A battered green hurricane lantern burned softly in the middle of the small maintenance space. Roach lifted it by the wire handle and jostled it, listening to the fuel sloshing in its reservoir. Satisfied, he set it down and walked to the far corner of the narrow room where a disheveled turquoise pegasus lay on a tattered sleeping bag. Blue’s milky eyes stared at nothing from behind a thin veil of gray mane. Roach lifted it behind her mangled ear. The pegasus didn’t react.
“Ghouls do,” he said. “She did.”
“What’s a ghoul? I still don’t…”
“I know,” Roach said, his expression strained. “Bear with me. When a pony is exposed to radiation, that pony gets sick. Coats start falling out, the skin dies, organs start to be affected, the whole nine yards. Either that pony gets away from the source and recovers, or they don’t and eventually die. Radiation is a binary thing. There’s usually no middle ground.”
Roach sat down on the yellowed linoleum, idly caressing the ridge of Blue’s neck. If the attention was soothing to her, she didn’t show it and Roach didn’t look for it. Blue stared through him without blinking, seemingly lost in her own thoughts or simply drifting along separate of them. Aurora leaned against the open door frame, her bandaged leg thanking her for the relief, and listened.
“Balefire wasn’t just radiation. It killed just as effectively, if not moreso, but the untethered magic that powered the bombs turned it into something darker. Nobody thought or cared about the aftereffects of balefire until it had already decimated Equestria. The vast majority of ponies exposed to balefire died slowly or died quickly.” Roach looked over at the gas lantern ruefully, “Except some didn’t.”
His jade eyes sparkled as a long-forgotten memory rose to the surface. He looked at Aurora with a sad smile. 
“When I was a little colt, my mother used to keep a big crystal dish of hard candy on the kitchen counter. I would sneak some into my bags before school so I could have something sweet to eat when I got bored. Whenever Ms. Cheerilee caught me with it she’d ask, ‘Did you bring enough to share with the rest of the class?’” 
Roach pressed his lips together and reached a hoof to the lantern, adjusting the flame. 
“Balefire was a lot like that. It killed so generously that it didn’t have enough to share with everyone. Ghouls don’t die. We just forget pieces of who we were until there’s nothing left to remember. The ghouls that attacked you went feral from the start. They never bothered me and it made sense to keep them around in case raiders ever figured out what was under this mountain.”
Aurora furrowed her eyebrows. “You used them to protect the Stable?”
Roach nodded.
“Why? Those things seemed more interested in killing me than guarding a door.”
Roach looked up at her. “I thought I had better control over them, and I wasn’t exactly expecting visitors from that end of the tunnel. When they heard the door opening they just started running.”
“Did you know them?” she asked.
Roach squinted at the floor, thinking hard. “No, I don’t think so. I think they were good ponies.” 
Aurora tried to think of a fitting condolence and inevitably failed. What could she say to somebody who lost everything he had and was keenly aware that he was forgetting what little he remembered? Standing in a tunnel buried by the corpse of a dead world, sharing a moment with a pony that it refused to kill, she was at a loss for words. 
“I’m sorry,” she offered.
“Me too,” he accepted, taking his hoof from Blue’s mane and pushing himself off the ground. “Let’s get you something for that leg.”
Aurora bit the inside of her cheek and tipped her head to her saddlebags. “Thanks. I don’t have any bits to repay you… do you like apples?”
Roach offered her a cracked smile. “That covers the medicine, but you owe me a story. Tell me about what it’s been like in the Stable.”
Aurora sat down inside the narrow room and picked up a thread beginning with her fillyhood. Roach listened as he walked outside to the trunks and came back with a syringe, a bundle of brown cloth and a crumpled tube of ointment. Surprisingly and just a little unsettling, she recognized the brand. As he tended to her leg, she told him about the ponies she knew and their hopes to one day leave the Stable when the world was safe again. 
She paused when he pressed the needle of the stimpack into her hip, the pressurized cartridge sinking the plunger automatically, and watched as Roach carefully removed the bandages over the wound. It bled weakly as the last layer peeled away. Roach squeezed a strip of antibiotic ointment into the deep gash and dressed it with bandages that didn’t look much cleaner than the old ones.
Roach dropped the empty syringes into a container outside and accepted an apple from Aurora on the way back in. He showed it to Blue as he sat down next to her in the corner and brought it to his strangely decayed mouth. The fruit crunched loudly and he closed his pale eyes, savoring the taste as a rivulet of juice ran between the cracks in his chitin. He finished the apple, core and all, enraptured by the stories from a Stable he’d been locked out of.
He resumed stroking Blue’s mane while she told him about the generator at the bottom of Stable 10 and the fatal flaw that had been designed into its talisman. How she had said goodbye to her father in her own way, that her mentor had been thrust into a new role as overstallion and the suicide of Overmare Delphi shortly after. She confessed to stealing the rifle slung over her shoulder and to being the least qualified mare to carry it. She eventually told him her plan to find a replacement talisman for her Stable.
When she finished, Roach looked at her with something akin to respect. “I don’t think I’ll ever bet against a pony willing to hot-wire her Stable door.”
Worry creased her muzzle. “I just hope that Sledge will let me back in if… when I get back. Stable-Tec could have a wheelbarrow of working talismans somewhere out there. They won’t do any good if they decide they’re safer with me out here.”
“Maybe,” Roach said. “But it sounds to me like you’re the only chance they have to survive. The way I see it, you’ve got this Sledge guy by the balls.”
Aurora cringed at the mental image.
“Either way, you’ll eat yourself alive worrying about it before you need to.” Roach continued, “I can’t speak to whether you’ll find any salvageable talismans in Fillydelphia, but last I heard Stable-Tec Headquarters survived the worst of the bombing.”
Aurora hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility that it might not be standing. Had she made the journey only to find it in ruins...
“Lloy,” Blue murmured.
They both turned their attention to Blue, whose gaze seemed fixed on a patch of air just in front of her muzzle. Confusion pinched the corners of her eyes.
Roach reached behind her with a grunt and extracted a large book from beneath the torn flap of her sleeping bag. The lavender tome was scuffed and bent, its spine barely more than flaking leather clinging to ancient fiber and glue. The pages showed several dark stains where they had been exposed to a variety of fluids, but despite the significant wear Aurora saw the gem-studded pink horseshoe embossed into the cover. In the center of the shoe sat a jewel in the shape of a star. 
She knew it immediately. Any Stable pony would. It was the only book authored by the six friends who would eventually become the ministry mares of Equestria. The Friendship Journal was a mainstay of any yearling’s early education, but the one in Roach’s hooves looked like an original.
Roach set the book down in front of the turquoise pegasus. Aurora watched the ghoul’s eyes gradually focus on the worn cover. Blue shifted forward unbidden, nudging the book open with her muzzle and pushing her nose into a shallow void that had been cut into the last third of its pages. She dragged an ornate golden necklace from the book and set it down in front of her. Nestled between two clouds that streaked away toward a sturdy clasp, an empty socket in the shape of a lightning bolt flared with the light of the lantern.
Aurora felt a stone land in the pit of her stomach.
On the dirty sleeping bag, Rainbow Dash gently curled her body around her necklace and shut her eyes.
Here lay one of the greatest pegasi to have ever lived. A heroine of Equestria many times over, now reduced to a state of existence so detached from what could be called living that it spoke volumes to the capacity of the outside world’s cruelty. Rainbow Dash had dedicated her life to protecting Equestria and it had returned the favor by chewing her up and spitting her into a cavern where death ignored her and her mind decayed.
“No… no, I can’t do this,” Aurora whispered. Tears pooled in her eyes and she stood up, her legs trembling as they took her out into the tunnel and away from the forgotten husk that had once been of the Element of Loyalty. She heard Roach’s hooves scraping against the linoleum behind her as he followed after her.
“Aurora, wait.”
She didn’t wait. 
Roach caught up to her. “Aurora, I’m sorry. I should have warned you before...”
“You’re fine,” she said, a sob bubbling into her throat. “It’s just too much all at once, you know? What made me think I could handle all...” She gestured at the bones around her. “All this. She was the best of us. Where do I rank? Goddesses, I left my only family for this!”
Roach nodded. He followed her in silence until she found an upturned length of flagstone and sat down. “She had family, too,” he said.
Aurora sniffed. The warm glow of the lantern flickered through the doorway a few meters away. Roach’s chitin scraped against the flagstone as he sat down next to her. She looked at him, embarrassed at the tears stinging her eyes, and looked back at the light.
His voice was quiet and melancholic when he spoke into the silence.
“She arrived here not long after I did. If the world hadn’t been ending, I think I would have been a little more excited to have beaten Rainbow Dash anywhere,” Roach said, smiling for a moment. “I didn’t find out until after the landslide sealed us in that she’d come looking for her parents. The scene she made once she realized the door wasn’t going to open was… well, she lived up to her reputation. She only stopped beating on the door after I told her that her mother and father had made it inside.”
“Did they?” Aurora asked.
Roach looked her in the eye. “Does it matter if they did or didn’t? There was nothing any of us could do at that point. The rocks had sealed the way out and Overmare Spitfire wasn’t about to unseal the Stable with radiation seeping into the tunnel. We needed her to stop panicking so that everybody could focus on digging out the tunnel.”
Aurora looked at the small piles of rubble that had been scooped away, clearing the way for the shored up tunnel at the foot of the hill. Then she looked at the bones of the pegasi, unicorns and earth ponies that lay dead around her. “It doesn’t look like it helped.”
He shrugged dispassionately. 
“It gave the adults among us something to do that didn’t involve panicking. We had to think about the foals that were with us, Aurora.” Roach took a deep breath and exhaled, composing himself. “We ran out of water on the second day. Somebody remembered they had a bottle of pills for insomnia and we agreed that the young shouldn’t have to watch their parents starve to death. The foals just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
Roach’s opaque eyes shined with tears. Aurora’s Pip-Buck ticked, unnoticed.
“After, a lot of ponies found quiet corners of the tunnel to kill themselves in. Someone had brought their family pistols with them and the guns just made the rounds each night. A hoofful were too afraid to pull the trigger and found other ways. I found Rainbow Dash holed away in that room. Neither of us had the stomach for suicide, so we waited to starve instead.” Roach cleared his throat and swallowed. “It didn’t quite go that way. I became what I am. She got stuck somewhere in between. Probably something to do with being the bearer of an Element, or maybe just because she’s too damn stubborn to let herself go feral.”
“Or guilt,” Aurora murmured.
“Or that,” Roach agreed.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. Aurora tried to imagine what it might be like living in a fog of disjointed memories after having lived through the last days of the tunnel. She felt an irrational anger toward her kin that she struggled to process. So many died because one overmare had refused to open one door. Overmare Spitfire had never featured prominently in her history books. Now Aurora suspected she knew why.
Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, was so regularly idolized by fillies and colts that it became something of a running joke between the residents. As an Element of Harmony she had helped defeat Nightmare Moon and Discord. As a Wonderbolt she had enjoyed fame as an elite flyer. As the leader of the Ministry of Awesome, her role in the war effort was shrouded in mystery as the oddly named ministry developed technologies that would ultimately change the way battles were won. And then, as every young learned, she died when balefire dropped Cloudsdale from the sky.
In reality, she had spent her last nights listening to hundreds of ponies kill themselves in plain view of the door to Stable 10.
Now Aurora sat outside that bastion of security and recoiled when she realized the same tragedy was threatening to play out inside her home. The lights would fail, gardens would wither and the pegasi trapped inside would be forced to make the same impossible decisions that these ponies had made.
Despite her failure, Rainbow Dash had fought tirelessly for the very same goal. 
“How did she do it?” Aurora asked quietly. “How does anybody do what they did, knowing it could all end up like this?”
Roach looked at her from the corner of his eye. “I feel like you’re fishing for a pep talk.”
Aurora wiped her eyes with the back of her leg. She could feel her resolve gathering in her chest. “I could really use one.”
Roach blew out a breath. “Well… Rainbow Dash did what she did because it was the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter that she failed. What matters is that she tried at all. I think the same applies to you. I don’t know you very well but it seems to me that you already made your decision when you left your Stable. There’s ponies worth saving in there, and you’re going to try because it’s the right thing to do.”
Aurora blinked and looked at Roach. “Wow.”
He winced. “That bad?”
“It wasn’t great,” she laughed, “But I get your point. Thank you, Roach.”
Roach nodded pensively. “Maybe I can get better at it on the way to Fillydelphia.”
She shot him a look that quickly softened. “Don’t joke about that. Wait, really?”
He offered up an expression that asked why not? 
“The way I see it, you have no clue what you’re doing. You’re carrying a rifle you don’t know how to use, you don’t know which areas of the Wasteland to avoid and I’m willing to bet that you don’t have the first clue how to fly.”
Aurora lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure you didn’t miss anything?”
Roach turned up his front hooves in an exaggerated shrug. “You’re also the only pony I’ve met within the last hundred years that hasn’t said anything rude about me being a changeling, and I really miss having conversations.”
Aurora slipped off the flagstone ridge and stretched her legs with a grunt. “What’s a changeling?”
Roach opened his mouth, stopped himself and closed it. He looked down at the dapple gray pegasus he’d only just met and watched her stretch her wings hard enough to make the tips tremble.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just a word.”
Aurora looked up at him skeptically and decided she could ask him about it later. She turned her eyes to the hand-dug tunnel that disappeared into the rubble. Her ears caught the sound of wind whistling somewhere on the other side.
“If you say so,” Aurora said. “Now hurry up. I want to see the sky.”
> Chapter 4: Junctions
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Further east. There. Mark it.”
Aurora tapped a button on her Pip-Buck and a tiny green flag flashed into existence at the empty crossing of Highway 51 and a smaller unnamed back road stretching south. Before the war, nothing stood at the crossing worth mentioning on the map. Now Roach claimed it was the nearest trade hub between the Stable and their destination in Fillydelphia on the east coast. Junction City would be their first stop, and a crucial one at that.
Satisfied Aurora wouldn’t get lost should they be separated, Roach nosed open one of the trunks outside the tunnel where Blue still slept. He lifted two brown packages that rattled when he dropped them into his saddlebags.
“Medicines and chems tend to get a good price anywhere you bring them,” Roach said, closing the trunk. Aurora realized he was teaching her something and listened closely. “Junction City is no exception. The same goes for your apples. Fresh fruit is a luxury. We’ll be better off selling them and using the caps to get you kitted out so you can protect yourself.”
She nodded, not exactly thrilled with the thought of selling food that had taken a hefty chunk of bits to purchase but relieved to know there would be other sources of sustenance in the wastes.
Roach nudged open a small suitcase and moved two small boxes of shotgun shells into his bags. Aurora watched him press a release switch on the side of the shotgun strapped to his foreleg and catch the magazine as it fell. As he fished the loose shells out of the corner of the suitcase Aurora noticed the rail that attached his weapon to the heavy straps around his leg. The mechanical puzzle scratched at the base of her brain.
“Can you show me how that works?” she asked.
Roach followed her gaze and turned his leg so she could better see the weapon and its strange rigging. With a quick forward jerk of his leg the shotgun slid out along the rail, the muzzle coming to a stop well past the end of his hoof. The same motion released a slender hook of iron from behind the magazine port, a trigger ready to be pulled. With an opposite jerk, the trigger collapsed into the body of the rifle and the weapon slid behind his hoof.
Aurora slowly mimicked the gesture with her own leg and tried piecing together the rail’s design in her head. A frown creased her muzzle as she quickly thought of several ways the design could fail, some of them catastrophically. 
She eyed Roach’s horn and the fissure that ran through it. “Wouldn’t it be easier to use your magic?”
Roach answered with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Easier isn’t always better,” he said. He plucked several shells from the suitcase and pressed them into the magazine with his hoof with practiced efficiency and slapped it into the base of the shotgun with a satisfying clack.
Easier isn’t always better. Aurora had probably espoused the same sagely advice to the pegasi she’d trained year after year in Mechanical. When faced with long hours, constant work orders and a limited variety of challenges that got old quick, anyone would be tempted to take shortcuts to make their lives easier. It took time and experience for a pony to learn that those shortcuts would come back to haunt them at the most inopportune times.
Aurora considered sharing that nugget of wisdom with Roach, but the look he’d given her suggested there was something she wasn’t seeing. Magic was something she’d only read about in books or heard about in stories from before the war. She couldn’t think of a reason to consider it a shortcut. Still her question had clearly tread somewhere unwanted. Reluctantly, she left it alone.
Roach didn’t say much else as he rummaged through the row of trunks and suitcases. He carefully considered his stock while Aurora’s attention drifted to the sleeping form of Rainbow Dash. From outside the room, she watched the ghoul’s chest rise and fall as she dreamed. 
If she dreamed. Whatever peace she found now, it came from the empty golden necklace glinting between her hooves.
She waited while Roach snapped his saddlebags shut and stepped into the small room toward Rainbow Dash. He bent down, his muzzle tucked against her ear as he whispered something to her that Aurora couldn’t make out. Rainbow Dash’s eyes opened just barely, still fixed on the jewelry that once held her Element of Harmony, and slipped shut again. Roach kissed her on the forehead, a paternal gesture that tugged at Aurora.
“Ready to go?” Roach asked as he pulled the door shut behind him, the gas lantern swinging gently from his jaw. The door creaked on old hinges and clicked shut. He tried the handle, ensuring it was locked. 
A sudden urge to protest rose in Aurora’s throat but she swallowed it down. The implication was clear. She could still hear that furious scream as clearly as if Rainbow Dash was standing over her again, eyes alight with an inner rage that seemed too large for the withered pegasus sleeping her immortality away in a darkened room. 	Whatever she was now, it was a far cry from the pony she’d once been. If the Stable doors opened a second time, the ponies who ventured over the threshold wouldn’t have Roach around to call her off. 
Aurora shuddered.
“Lead the way.”





 

Aurora had navigated dust-choked ventilation ducts with more room to move than the tunnel Roach had burrowed into the rubble. Compacted soil and huge slabs of buried concrete hadn’t been dug out so much as dug around, forcing the tunnel to bend and arc around the unnatural geology of broken cement and immovable boulders. Here and there rusted lengths of rebar jutted out of the walls like bent fingers, pushing back the weight of the mountain above.
At first she assumed Roach had placed them there as shoring to keep the tunnel from collapsing. Now as she shimmied her way over a lip of cement that dug her back against a protruding metal rod, she realized they were just the byproduct of the landslide Roach had been forced to navigate through.
Roach’s back hoof slipped on a damp patch of dirt and flicked soil into her face. She blinked the grit out of her eyes and heard him grunt and apology, his voice suffocated by the porous walls. The gas lantern scraped and banged against the terrain, throwing an uneven light that cast his chitin in a silhouette that Aurora didn’t think could get any blacker.
If she was at any risk of feeling claustrophobic, it had come and gone. She blew the air out of her lungs and squeezed through the tight gap, feeling it hug at her ribs until she slid forward into a space barely large enough for her to inhale again. The forward joints of her wings kept thumping blindly against every obstacle Roach led her past. If they weren’t bruised yet, they would be.
Roach’s saddlebag snagged on a length of rebar and hooked him to the wall. He cursed and shifted, trying to see where he’d gotten hung up. 
Aurora thumped her hoof quickly against his hind leg and said, “I got it. Stop moving.” 
She squeezed her hoof between the dirt and his hip and pulled the satchel of his saddlebag toward her and off the rebar. His chitin had more give than she expected, like pressing on broken china floating over skin. She pushed the bag between his hip and the rebar so it wouldn’t snag a second time and tapped his leg twice when she finished. He said something that sounded like “thanks” and resumed his forward crawl. She followed close behind.
They eventually came to a thick metal bollard embedded at an angle in the dirt, rust visible where yellow paint had flaked away. Aurora pressed herself under the pole and realized the dirt was waterlogged. It squelched and soaked into her coat as she pressed through it. The air was thick with the rich odor of mud. 
She could hear a steady crackle coming from her Pip-Buck and stopped crawling. She reached her leg forward and wiped the mud off with her cheek. The needle of its radiation gauge hopped above the zero marker where it had always rested.
“Roach, I think…” she started, but fell silent when she realized there was no place in the tunnel to turn around. She tried to ignore her chattering Pip-Buck and pushed past the heavy bollard, following the incline that the tunnel had begun to take.
Rubble gave way to pale roots that fell behind Roach like a veil. Aurora pushed through them with the top of her head and heard a hollow thump. She looked up and watched him push a wooden board away from the end of the tunnel. 
Diffuse light streamed in around him like a halo as he lifted himself up and through the opening. Aurora sidled forward and grabbed the edge of the boards with her hooves. As she pulled herself up out of the ground, she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by what she saw. 
Roach had led her to the inside of a dilapidated wooden shed. It was significantly smaller than her compartment and twice as empty inside. A broken pegboard hung on her left while a rodent-eaten sleeping bag lay crumpled in the corner to her right. A picture frame lay propped against the plank wall next to the sleeping bag. Two brightly colored stallion pegasi beamed behind a layer of clouded glass. Behind them, a modest cabin sat on the edge of a placid lake. The shorter of the two held a key with his wingtip. 
Aurora lingered on the photo before turning her attention to the weathered walls and ceiling of the structure itself. The entire thing was nailed together with old boards of different shapes and shades of lumber as if they’d been salvaged from several other structures and assembled here.
“If I could get this house into the Stable, I could retire twice over just by selling off the wood,” she said.
Roach tore himself away from the framed photo on the floor and looked at her with a puzzled expression. “It’s a shed, not a house.”
Aurora shrugged and squinted up at the construction of the sloped roof. Hazy light filtered between some of the boards, moving in tune with a soft breeze outside. “It looks like a house.”
Roach rolled his eyes, or the best approximation of it for a pony without irises, and nudged the trap door back into its frame. The uneven lengths of boards slipped into place with a thud, blending seamlessly into the floor. He turned the knob on the battered and muddy lamp, dousing the flame before setting it atop the hatch. 
Roach turned and beckoned Aurora to follow him. He worked the door’s simple latch and held the it open for her.
The rustling breeze outside pulled at her. She stepped across the old wood floor and, hesitating briefly, stepped onto the dry soil of Equestria.
Her heart leaped into her throat. “Oh my goddesses.”
Aurora stood at the edge of a high wall of trees that stood taller than anything she’d seen before in her life. Thick branches swayed against each other in a steady breeze that coaxed soft thumps and creaks into the open air. Most of the trees were dead, held up by the clusters of living neighbors they’d become entangled in. Those that survived wore crowns of yellow-green leaves that shaded large swaths of underbrush beneath them. 
“I thought all of the forests were…” she whispered, and fell silent as her eyes looked past the tops of the trees at the impenetrable ceiling of clouds high above. Her mind railed against the vastness of it. 
Aurora’s world had been defined by walls and ceilings, doors and hallways. A world of wing guards and elevators and stairs. Where they breathed recycled air and drank recycled water. Proximity meant safety but it also meant everything had to be shared. Even the food they ate grew from the graves they rested in. Aurora stared up into the chasm of a cloud-choked sky and felt something she’d never felt before.
She felt robbed.
High above her, impossibly far away, she watched the formless gray mass of clouds flow like a silent river.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Roach grunted, his ragged voice not agreeing with so much as simply acknowledging her. He closed the door to the shed behind him and walked past Aurora toward the forest of dying oaks. “It’s something. Let’s get going.”
Aurora frowned and trotted to catch up. Desperate Times thumped against her side, the overmare’s heirloom providing some comfort despite its lack of ammunition. As she walked, she looked back at the old shack that concealed the path to Stable 10 and the slope of rocks behind it which buried its true entrance. The old landslide had been reclaimed by scrub brush and a few struggling saplings. Above it, the worn hillside of a small mountain stretched skyward.
She opened the map of her Pip-Buck and zoomed in on the thin triangle that showed her position. The mountain she stood at the foot of had once been named Foal Mountain. She placed a marker on that spot and typed in a name: Home.
The forest swallowed them. Roach’s leg-mounted shotgun clacked lightly with each step he took on the uneven terrain. Aurora found herself having to watch where she placed her hooves for the first time in forever. Thick roots curled up out of the ground where dry brush wasn’t obscuring divots in the soil. Her frustration slowly built as she found herself stumbling in spite of herself, self-conscious of the sound of her own hooves scrabbling to stop her fall. Roach passively observed but didn’t stop to help. It was like working under Sledge all over again. A mentor watching to see if his apprentice will learn from her mistakes or continue making them. She bit down her irritation and paid closer attention to her footing. The dull throb of her hind leg faded behind the deeper burn of unused muscles.
Aurora nearly fell again when her ears caught the familiar sound of dry metal squeaking on a neglected hinge. She tracked the noise and spotted a brown lump of rust off to their left, a heavy door swaying back and forth in the light breeze. Further ahead, another rusting hulk lay enmeshed in tree roots. The more they walked, the more of the large hollow objects they passed. When they drew close enough to one to justify a detour, Aurora veered off to take a look. Roach stopped, sighed and turned to follow.
“It’s a carriage,” he said.
Another bit of vocabulary from the historical record came to life in her mind. She peered inside the carriage. Scraps of cloth and foam clung to the rusting frames of four seats inside. Attached to the front of the carriage were two long metal rods that were deformed as if they’d been stuck into a forge for too long. It took her a moment to realize that they were the traces for a harness. 
She looked at the trees around them and frowned. “Why are they in a forest?”
Roach scraped at the forest floor with his hoof, drawing Aurora’s attention. “Once upon a time, this used to be a road.” 
A few inches below the surface, a dark gray stone appeared. Aurora looked at the other carriages and realized they drew a straight line through the trees. Here and there she spotted more asphalt lifting out of the forest floor. Remnants of a road that led back to the tunnel of Stable 10 and which Equestria’s forests had gradually fought to reclaim.
Roach led her back to the trail and the carriage shrunk into the distance only to be replaced by others. Some fared better than others. Flecks of paint stuck to rust where the wind hadn’t been able to reach. Many still held the bones of the ponies who had ridden inside.
“These were earth ponies,” Aurora said.
“Shelter is shelter,” Roach answered, holding up a low branch as Aurora passed. “Even if that shelter is exclusively for pegasi.”
She felt a twinge of shame, unsure how to feel about that. When the Stable door closed, it sealed out hundreds of pegasi. Many of them had spent fortunes acquiring a ticket. The rest had simply been selected for reasons known only to Stable-Tec. All of them had been locked out for the simple crime of arriving too late. To a degree, it even made a little sense. The door couldn’t stay open forever.
Yet as they passed another rusted carriage protecting the bones of its owner, she couldn’t help but wonder why it was that only pegasi had been offered protection in Stable 10. Earth ponies clearly knew the Stable existed. Did they know they would be turned away at the door when they arrived?
Too many questions, not enough answers. She pushed them out of her head and focused on the walk.
Gradually, the forest thinned around them and opened up to an even more desolate vista. Barren hills rose and fell toward the horizon speckled with patches of hearty scrub grass that grew out of deep cracks in the soil. Away from the canopy of trees, the rolling ceiling of clouds were darker and slid ominously across the sky in great smothering sheets. The beauty she’d seen before withered.
Not far from where they walked a shattered strip of concrete drew a pale line in the dirt from east to west. Dozens more carriages lined the road like broken teeth, evidence of a failed evacuation toward the rumor of safety.
They followed the remains of asphalt across what had once been a field until it met the cracked and uneven concrete of Highway 51. Roach climbed atop a nearby carriage. The rusty roof crackled under his hooves. Aurora watched him peer down the western stretch of road for several seconds. Then he scanned the other direction. Satisfied, he hopped down from the carriage and started east.
“The roads are dangerous, even when they don’t look it,” he said. “Always keep your head on a swivel and don’t trust anyone  out on the roads. If somebody thinks you might have something they need, they’ll put a bullet in you if it means they can get it.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Personal experience?”
Roach’s voice hardened. “I’m serious, Aurora.”
She flinched. “Sorry.”
The ghoul shrugged and led her through a mangled pile of carriages. All of their doors had been forced open decades earlier. Pieces of luggage rotted in the dried ditch beds alongside the road. Aurora tried not to look at the crumbling white chips peeking out of the packed dirt.
“We all had to learn the hard way in the beginning,” he said. “All of the laws of your Stable? All the rules, the values and whatever rights you might have as an individual don’t mean a thing out here. In the wastes you’re either alive or dead, and there are ponies who will disagree with you on which they prefer you to be.”
Aurora looked at Roach and saw the pinched expression of somebody who lived long enough to have scars on top of scars, but who also had enough time to accept the reality of where they had come from and why. The reality of the wastes was a bitter pill he’d learned to swallow not because he cared for the flavor but because it was the only thing the world would give him.
The rifle strap dug into her shoulder like a yoke. In Mechanical, Aurora was a force to be reckoned with and she prided herself in her ability to break unruly machines over her leg until they performed to her standards. Out here, she felt like a yearling playing at a game where the rules were being made up on the fly by the older ponies. It didn’t sit well with her.
“When we get to the city,” she said, eyeing the overmare’s rifle, “I want to learn how to shoot.”
Roach’s expression softened by a few degrees. “It’s on the list. You’ll need to have your rifle modified to fit your wing so you can actually use it, but I know a pony who doesn’t mind working with pegasi for a few extra caps.”
“Caps?” she asked.
“Bottlecaps,” he clarified, “Currency, like bits used to be. Sparkle Cola and Sunrise Sarsaparilla, mostly.”
Aurora gave him a look of disbelief. “From soda. You’re kidding.”
He smirked. “It sounds silly, but I’d rather carry a bag of caps than a bag of gold coins.”
She lifted her Pip-Buck. “I’ll take digital storage over counting out physical currency any day.”
This time it was Roach’s turn to look at her with scepticism. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve heard of. Cut one cable and everybody goes broke? Pass.”
Aurora snorted and thumped him in the shoulder. “Remind me to show you how to use a punch press sometime. We’ll be millionaires.”
“After I teach you to shoot.” Roach chuckled. Aurora smiled and watched the thick clouds roll across the sky. “It feels good to have a conversation again. The ghouls I’ve met who still remember the times before the war tend to avoid talking about how strange things have become.”
Aurora stepped around a small sinkhole in the highway. The remains of a carriage sat at the bottom, slowly folding into itself as rust digested the frame. “What was it like?” she asked.
Roach took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled a long sigh. His eyes grew distant. “It’s not easy to put into words. Equestria was… more. Ponies were kinder, for the most part. They’d go out of their way to help one another. When I first came to Equestria, it seemed like there was music everywhere. They would celebrate just about anything and more often than not break into song because there was something to sing about. 
“Spontaneous music,” he shook his head. “It drove me crazy at first. I nearly went back to the hive just to get away from it, but after a while it started to grow on me. It’s one of the pieces of the old Equestria that I miss most, now.”
Aurora thought about the songs she’d been taught to sing as a foal. Songs from a time she had no frame of reference for and whose verses had been things to memorize but never to fully understand. Songs about the end of winter, destiny and grand galas that were sung for ponies of a bygone age and meant little for a filly living underground. But Roach hadn’t grown up in a Stable.
“You came from a hive?” she asked. “Like a bee?”
Roach laughed, his torn voice startling her. “Sort of.”
Aurora let the silence stretch, urging him to continue.
He puffed a breath through his nose, realizing he was trapped. “Changelings are… we’re not ponies. Not exactly. My hive used to be in the Badlands beyond the southern mountains and for the most part we kept to ourselves. We had our own magic,” he said, indicating his black horn, “and we used it to disguise ourselves as the creatures we fed from.”
Aurora blanched. “Fed from?”
Roach nodded. “Emotions, mostly. Love was the most potent and most plentiful, but any emotion felt strongly enough could absorbed for food.”
He saw the revulsion surfacing on Aurora’s face and looked away. “We didn’t have a choice, especially when we were young. We served the Queen because it was what the Queen required. Believe it or not, individuality wasn’t a common trait in the hive. The ponies we chose didn’t know they were being fed on, and we rarely ever hurt them. Most ponies would fall asleep for a day or two and wake up feeling fine. I think they named a disease after it.”
Aurora nodded, thinking. “Are you feeding off of me?”
Roach recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “No. Aurora, the last time I did that was the morning the bombs fell. Even if I wanted to - and I don’t - I can’t. I left my hive because I hated it. Stealing emotional magic from ponies and delivering it to a monster who aspired to exterminate them wasn’t a life, it was a sentence. She was a warden that reaped the rewards of her prisoners.”
“So I flew away,” he said. “I disguised myself as a pegasus and came to Equestria. I found work wherever it was available and saved enough bits to rent an apartment outside Manehattan. I fed only when I had to and never took more than I needed. I lived in Equestria as a pony for almost ten years right until the end.”
He cleared his throat, frowning at a bit of gravel that skittered away from his hoof. “When the bombs trapped us in the tunnel and the radiation started leaking in, it did something to my magic. With everyone so afraid, it should have been easy to use. But it wasn’t. The radiation was like interference that corrupted my magic. It turned it into something I didn’t know how to use. Becoming a ghoul stole my wings and my magic. My disguise failed after a few days but by then it was just me and Blue left.”
A gentle wind pushed snakes of grit across the highway. It smelled faintly metallic. Aurora’s Pip-Buck ticked quietly on her foreleg but she ignored it. There wasn’t anything she could do about the contamination around her. When she was sure Roach was finished, she spoke.
“How did she react?” she asked. “When she saw you change, I mean.”
Roach’s cheek tugged his lip. “She asked me to do it again.”
She smiled. “Pretty on the nose for the Element of Loyalty.”
“It really was,” he agreed, and they continued on in silence.
They picked their way eastward until the bones of ancient carriages lay far behind them. Foal Mountain was nothing more than a distant hill now. To the north, the faded peaks of a high mountain range studded the horizon like hazy rivets, their snow capped peaks barely visible against the cloud bank. Desolated farmland rolled away to the south. Here and there a fallen barn or rusted tractor slumped into sprigs of hay that grew wild in the once-fertile soil.
Aurora found that she enjoyed the companionable silence. It felt a lot like the time spent in Mechanical on first shift. They could spend hours saying nothing as they sweat water as fast as they replenished it, buried in maintenance checklists or heaving on wrenches longer than they were tall to get into parts of the generator that needed to be gotten to. Occasionally someone would break the quiet to tell a trashy joke or recite an old bit of Stable gossip they’d heard a hundred times before, and then the silence would resume.
She occupied herself by lifting the overmare’s rifle in her wing and manipulating it with her primary feathers. It was heavy and well-balanced. Roach watched her press the butt against her shoulder as she walked, the muzzle bobbing madly in front of her like a conductor’s baton. It surprised her how hard it was to keep the tip of her wing steady with so much weight levering down on it.
It didn’t take long for her to become infatuated with the rifle’s scope. Squinting through it, the world rushed toward her. She had to stop walking to keep the distant scenery from blurring up and down. She turned back toward Foal Mountain and searched for her home. A grin spread over her lips as the mountain bobbed behind the crosshairs, close enough to touch. She looked up from the scope, swung the rifle back in the direction they were travelling and peered down the highway like one of the early Equestrian explorers in her history books.
A cluster of small buildings appeared in the distance. They were still too far out to see much detail but the small town was unmistakable. She took her face from the scope, blinked to adjust her eyes, and looked down at the map on her Pip-Buck.
“I can see Junction City,” she announced.
“We’re making good time, then.” Roach said and resumed walking.
She didn’t follow. Her eye was against the scope again, her brows knitted together. Halfway between the city and where they stood, she saw a large covered wagon being pulled behind a stout earth pony. Four ponies wearing what looked like hoofmade leather barding walked alongside the wagon in pairs, all of them unicorns and all of them carrying long weapons over their backs.
“There are ponies on the road headed this way,” she said, and swallowed. “They’re armed.”
Roach stopped and backtracked to her, concern edging his voice. “Let me see.”
She gave him the rifle and watched his face twist with irritation when he saw the other travelers. After a moment he gave Aurora her rifle and considered their surroundings. No cover whatsoever. He decided there was nothing for it and continued up the road, motioning for her to follow.
“Traders,” Roach said as she trotted behind him, “Or slavers. I’m not sure which. I didn’t see a collar on the one pulling the wagon, but they wouldn’t necessarily need one since they’re all unicorns and he’s not.”
“What do we do?” Aurora asked.
“Be polite and don’t talk to them,” he said. “And stow that rifle under your wing. Pre-war weapons in that condition are valuable. If they see it, they’re going to want it.”
Aurora did as she was told and slung her wing over the rifle, covering everything save for the end of the barrel. Roach released the safety on his shotgun.
As they drew closer to the travelers it became clear that they had been spotted. Two of the unicorns trotted ahead of the wagon while the remaining two kept close to the rear wheels where cover was more readily available. One of the lead ponies lifted a hoof in greeting and Roach did the same, hoping to keep their meeting amicable.
The travelers steered the cart out of the middle of the road and Roach nudged Aurora to the opposite, both ceding a lane to the other as they approached within yelling distance.
“Good afternoon, folks!” the lead unicorn called.
“Afternoon,” Roach called back, nodding at the group in a general greeting when they grew closer.
The stallion smiled pleasantly as he approached, his pale yellow coat strapped in pieces of protective armor that covered most of his chest, neck and legs. Aurora noticed the faint lines of blue and white pinstripes drawn into the armor with some kind of grease pen. The three other unicorns bore the same strange design over their own armor, all of them silent as they watched Roach and Aurora approach near the wagon.
“Headed to Junction City?” the professionally cheery unicorn asked, turning to put himself between them and his wagon as they walked by. “Not much there to trade for, I’m sad to say. We spent nearly every cap we had and I’m afraid we might have cleaned the place out!”
The unicorn gave them a practiced wink and waved a hoof at the wagon. “If there’s anything you’re planning to buy in town, I guarantee I can give you a fairer price right here. F&F Mercantile has no qualms about trading with changelings,” he said, and after eyeing Aurora’s wings, “or Enclave, for that matter.”
Roach shook his head and offered a polite smile. “We have everything we need, thank you.”
The yellow stallion was unfazed. He trotted - nearly pranced - a few steps ahead of Roach and addressed Aurora with a wink. “Why not let the lady speak for herself? The name’s Cider, by the by.”
Aurora bit back the first words that rose to her lips. Her wing pressed her rifle tighter to her side. “I don’t need anything,” she said.
Cider didn’t miss a beat. “A rare luxury, miss! Perhaps instead you’d consider making a sale,” his eyes dropped to her foreleg like a sprung trap. “It’s not every day that you see a functional Pip-Buck on these roads.”
Her neck stiffened. “It’s not for sale,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Cider pressed, his smile stretching too wide. “I’ve never met a pony without a price.”
Aurora regarded him with a withering glare. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
Cider’s smile tightened. He stopped pacing them once they were past the rear of the wagon and let them continue on alone. “There certainly is, miss. Safe travels.”
The wagon creaked into motion and before long they were barely a smudge on the road behind them. Aurora and Roach kept checking over their shoulders to make sure the group of ponies hadn’t turned to following. 
Cider’s aggressive sales pitch stuck to the back of Aurora’s brain like a tick. She glanced down at her Pip-Buck and back up at the settlement on the horizon. An hour after their encounter, with Junction City growing larger, Aurora finally unlocked the clasp of her Pip-Buck and pushed it deep into the bottom of her saddlebag. 
The breeze chilled the newly bare fur and she felt the ache of her injured hind leg rising back to the surface. With a foreign city ahead of her and unfriendly travelers behind, she couldn’t help but feel more vulnerable than ever.





 

Junction City was less of a city and more of a loose collection of repurposed storefronts and houses grouped around the intersection of Highway 51 and a two-lane road that led north and south. The tallest buildings of the town stood two stories high around the four corners of the main intersection. Wooden signs hanging under a few of the second floors advertised overnight housing for passing travelers. Smaller signage promised more private services for an additional fee.
Aurora noticed several mares and stallions loitering outside the storefronts, their tails cut short or wrapped high with decorative lengths of cloth that left little to the imagination. Her cheeks burned hot and she averted her eyes to the hoof-worn pavement.
They walked into the center of town where dozens of ponies milled outside open-front stores. Salesponies called out their wares to passers-by like a bazaar. Roach attracted far more attention than Aurora had expected, little of it positive. She felt no small amount of sympathy as eyes and conversations fixated on him as if he were a wild animal escaped from its cage. The thick air of mistrust didn’t seem to faze him at all.
He led her to a store where various cuts of cured meats from creatures Aurora didn’t recognize hung above a glass countertop, the shelves beneath the glass filled with various cutting implements that ranged from pre-war to recently made. A lithe stallion leaning under the storefront awning watched Roach pass with open disdain, and turned his attention elsewhere.
The rotund unicorn behind the counter regarded the changeling ghoul with resignation as Roach parked himself in front of the display, staring.
“Thought you were dead,” the unicorn muttered. “Since when did you start eating food, Roach?”
“Around the same time you stopped,” Roach answered. “We have some things to trade.”
The unicorn crossed its hooves over the countertop and shrugged, clearly unimpressed with the insult and the offer. “I don’t trade with ghouls. Especially asshole ghouls.”
Aurora cleared her throat and the unicorn turned to look at her as if he hadn’t noticed her standing in front of him until just now. “He’s not trading, I am.” 
She opened her saddlebag and produced one of the ripe apples from the Stable gardens in the tip of her wing. The unicorn regarded the fruit with suspicion. A faint blue glow shimmered around the apple and it drifted up over the counter where the unicorn plucked it out of the air with his hooves, scrutinizing it from top to bottom.
“When was it picked?” he asked, his voice dropping into the low derision of a well-honed haggle.
Aurora offered her best estimate. “Two, maybe three days ago at the most.”
The overfed unicorn set the apple down and looked at her. “Which is it? Two or three?”
Her back stiffened. “Three.”
“Horse shit,” the unicorn barked. “There ain’t no orchards within a week’s walk of here that puts out product like this.”
She raised her left wing, keeping her rifle obscured under the right, and gave him her best are you blind stare. He scowled.
“Yeah, no. You didn’t fly here to sell apples. Two caps apiece,” he stated flatly.
Aurora felt a tap against her leg and looked at Roach who was watching her with a blank expression. He tapped her leg again, five times.
“Five caps is a fair price,” she said.
The unicorn snorted. “An apple is an apple, lady. Three caps. Take it or walk.”
“Four caps or I will,” she countered, lifting another fruit from her bag. “You and I both know these are the best apples you’ve seen in years. You’re not going to turn this away for one lousy cap.”
Roach coughed. The unicorn’s eyebrows closed in over his forehead. “Listen you Enclave shitbird. You’re not the first pony set up a grow room. This area’s lousy with them. You are, however, with the bug. So you get bug prices. Three caps.”
She felt her hackles start to climb but Roach interrupted before she could give the vendor a teardown built for Sledge. 
“It’s a deal,” he said, and quietly to Aurora. “It’s fine.”
Aurora clenched her jaw, stared at the waiting unicorn and finally filled her wing with just shy of a dozen perfect apples. The unicorn levitated them away and lined them up neatly on the shelf of his display case. He ripped something behind the counter and Aurora watched as a roughly torn bit of paper glided alongside the newly displayed fruit: 20 CAPS.
A small stack of thirty caps clicked on top of the counter. The unicorn smiled as Aurora snatched the metal away and jabbed it into her saddlebag.
Her ears lay flat against her skull as she stalked away from the shop. Roach steered her away from the center of the road as a wagon rolled in front of her. He steered toward the next vendor like a father guiding an angry foal. 
“He swindled me!” she snapped.
“He did,” Roach agreed. “That’s his job.”
“I hopes he chokes on it,” she muttered, not sure what it was just yet but feeling a little better for having said it.
Roach chuckled. “It was your first trade and you got an extra bit out of it. Call it a win and learn from it. We have a few more trades to make, then we should look at finding a room for the night.”
The sky was beginning to darken and she could feel the muscles in her legs aching for a rest. Her injured leg throbbed, causing her hip to drop as she walked. Aurora looked at the second floor windows of the combination inn and brothels and groaned with disgust.
“Can’t wait.”
Roach led her to an apothecary’s stall where he sold his boxes of chems for nearly ten times the caps Aurora had earned for her apples. At one of the many weapons vendors he traded a salvaged pistol for two boxes of .308 ammunition and a smaller pile of caps, hefting the lesser over to Aurora while the caps trickled into his bag. The boxes were surprisingly heavy for their size and the brass rounds jingled in her bags with every limp.
Finally, Roach led her across the road toward a storefront with two worn pony mannequins posed in the cracked front window. One wore a set of polished metal barding that looked like it weighed half a ton. The other sported a simple set of leather shoulder and leg armor held together by expertly designed straps. The store’s name was stenciled onto the window with the long crack dividing the name as if it were an intentional feature.
“Gussets & Garments?” Aurora muttered as Roach pushed open the front door. “What’s a gusset?”
A polished bell tinkled on a bend of metal above the door as they walked inside. The shop was narrow, barely wider than the front window but several times deeper. Decoratively stamped aluminum ceiling tiles stretched from one wall to the other, reminding Aurora of the corridors of the Stable. They reflected the waning light that came in through the window, illuminating the patterned green wallpaper and making an otherwise cramped store feel much more inviting. Worn hardwood flooring creaked under their hooves as the door closed behind them with another ring of the bell.
Mannequins stood in display-perfect clusters of threes throughout the store, each grouping advertising a unique theme. Aurora passed a trio donned in prewar military fatigues that had been cut, fitted and given leather trim that matched a set of saddlebags and ammo belts each form wore over their hips and chests. Another set advertised a mishmash of leather and metal-spiked armor while yet another displayed heavy pieces of white plastic sewn into various warm weather coats.
She looked at the mannequins with skepticism and followed Roach further into the store, toward the muffled noise of a machine she didn’t recognize.
Tucked against the left wall was a wide wooden checkout counter. A single unicorn mare stood behind it, bent over a cast iron sewing machine on the far end of the counter that looked as if it doubled as a workspace. The unicorn’s walnut coat was offset by a short-trimmed strip of red-orange mane that swept over the left side of her face like a fiery veil. She leaned into her work, pressing a thick strip of worn leather under the machine’s heavy needle.
Her ear flickered at the sound of their approaching hooves but she didn’t look up. “I’ll be with you in a moment, darlings.”
Aurora followed Roach to the counter and noticed the tiniest smile playing across his face as he watched the unicorn work. The antique black sewing machine slid a dense cord of thread in and out of the dark leather, creating a tight seam that gently puckered the material as it passed through. The machine barely made a sound except for the soft pecking of the needle through the thick hide. 
The sewing machine had to have been an antique even well before the war. How this pony kept it working, she couldn’t fathom. 
Aurora was impressed.
The mare pursed her lips when she realized her customers were hovering nearby and found a place to stop. “This stitch will be the death of me,” she sighed, and looked up with a practiced smile that broke into an elated grin. “Welcome to Gussets and… Roach!”
Roach beamed as the walnut mare galloped around the counter and snared her hooves around his neck. “It’s been years!”
“Good to see you too, Ginger,” he rumbled.
Ginger leaned back and looked him over as if trying to assure herself he was real. “I thought you’d left! How have you been?”
“I’m doing alright,” he said, pulling away from the embrace so she could see Aurora. “We’re just passing through, but I hoping you could help my friend with a few things before we head out.”
“Oh? Well, I’m always happy to help a friend of a friend,” Ginger said, her ocean blue eyes turning to Aurora with new curiosity. She placed the tip of her hoof against her chest. “Ginger Dressage. And you are?”
The sudden attention from the unicorn caught Aurora off-guard. “Aurora Pinfeathers,” she said, before quickly adding, “Ma’am.”
Ginger chided her with a soft smile. “Just Ginger, thank you. I’d like to live another twenty years before anyone has to call me ma’am. What is it you need help with, Miss Pinfeathers?”
Aurora blinked, the formality strange but not entirely off-putting. Carefully, she lifted her wing and shrugged off the overmare’s rifle with her foreleg. Ginger’s eyes darted down to the weapon and seemed to understand it was being handled by inexperienced hooves. She politely stepped to the side, away from the barrel.
“I need to have this fitted for my wing,” she said, hoping the parlance Roach had used made sense coming from her mouth.
Roach added, “She’ll need armor too. Something lightweight.”
A bronze aura surrounded the rifle as Ginger lifted it away. She tipped the barrel toward the floor and the bolt slid back with a hard clack showing her an empty chamber. The empty magazine slid out of the bottom and hovered nearby. The aura brightened around both ends of the weapon as she pivoted it in the air, looking over the wooden stock and polished barrel. 
“A Reinlander Model 700. It’s in remarkable condition for its age,” she commented. A frown played over her face as she touched a cream hoof to the stock. “It would be a shame to mar it with a wing fitting, darling. The rear mount would need to be drilled directly into the wood. Are you certain?”
Aurora watched the rifle float, the simple act mesmerizing.
“Miss Pinfeathers?” Ginger prodded.
“Sorry,” she said. “How many bits for the modification?”
Ginger looked at her with curiosity for a moment before resigning herself to causing the antique some minor damage. “With time and materials, normally four hundred caps. But since you’re a friend of Roach’s, I’d be happy to quote you for three hundred and fifty.”
It amounted to nearly all of the caps they had earned with the day’s trading. Aurora felt the sting of embarrassment return from being swindled at the butcher’s counter. She turned to ask Roach for advice and was surprised to see him already setting his caps on the smooth countertop. 
“Simple enough, I suppose,” Ginger said, and set the rifle next to the caps. She trotted to the opposite side of the counter and began tallying the caps. Aurora chewed her lip, wanting to contribute something, but the transaction had already been decided. 	The bell tinkled at the front of the store. More customers and less opportunity to debate with Roach whether it was worth spending all of their money on a rifle she didn’t know how to use.
Shadows moved across the silver ceiling as a set of hooves clicked toward them. Aurora glanced to the front of the store and immediately recognized the yellow stallion in blue pinstripe armor. Cider’s eyes bore down on her like a predator that had sighted its prey. Outside the window, two of his associates stood watch.
“Little miss,” Cider grinned, “I feel like we got off on the wrong hoof earlier today and it wouldn’t sit well with me at all if I didn’t give this another try.”
Roach’s throat rumbled with a low warning. “Aurora, behind me. Now.”
Cider’s horn glowed green for barely a second. Roach’s shotgun spat out its magazine and ejected the shell from the chamber. The magazine hadn’t stopped spinning on the hardwood floor when it vomited the shells like a tilted pinball machine. 
The salespony met the ghoul’s glare with a plaster smile and closed the distance to Aurora. 
“Cider,” Ginger warned, “There will be no violence in my shop.”
The stallion sidled to a stop inches from Aurora’s muzzle. Aurora backed up a step, her ears flat. She could feel the heat of Cider’s breath as he spoke.
“But Ginger,” he said, his eyes never straying from Aurora’s, “I was recently informed that there’s a first time for everything.”
All of the formality drained from Ginger’s voice, replaced by something more final. “I am in the middle of a transaction. Leave before I make you.”
Cider ignored her. He reached out to Aurora with his magic and wrapped it around her newly bare foreleg. Her other hooves locked to the floor like vices. He chuckled with something like pity, lifting her leg into the air like a rabbit he’d caught in a trap. “Where’s your Pip-Buck, little miss?”
Aurora’s eyes flickered from his, to his horn, and back. She could feel herself shaking but couldn’t do anything to quell her nerves. There was a cold promise of something worse behind his eyes if she tried to pull away. Her mind ran and her heart raced. Adrenaline flooded the veins of a cornered pony who had no way to burn it off. She shook hard.
“You’re trembling. Did you sell it?” he asked, the strain of his smile pinching the corners of his eyes. They drifted to her hips and stared at her saddlebags. “No. You hid it.”
Hooves on hardwood turned her ear toward the counter. Cider’s grin faltered and the magic around Aurora’s leg vanished, causing her to stumbled backward and fall. 	Everything happened within the span of a breath. A copper glow flashed in the corner of Aurora’s eye and the yellow magic surrounding Cider’s horn blew out like a snuffed candle. An aluminum tile tore out of the ceiling above Cider’s head and sheared itself in half like a torn slip of paper. One half clattered to the floor while the other glowed with Ginger’s magic. The razor-sharp sheet of metal blurred through the air behind Cider and came to rest gently under his tail. The stallion froze, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
Ginger walked between Aurora and Cider, her magic forcing the stallion’s neck to bend low until his ear brushed against her lips.
“If you don’t leave my fucking shop right now,” she purred, “I will geld you.”
She held him in place for several long seconds before her magic evaporated. The shard of decorative metal clattered to the ground between his rear hooves and he staggered away from it. For a brief moment, Cider stared at the makeshift weapon and back at Ginger who waited with a pleasant smile.
“Try it,” she said.
He spat a curse and walked away. As he did, the flap of his saddlebag lifted open and a stream of caps floated out and toward the counter. Cider watched wordlessly as they ticked together in organized columns until his bag was empty.
“Handling fee, darling,” she sang.
The stallion shoved the door open and stalked out. The bell tinkled happily as his entourage followed.
Once she was sure Cider was gone, Ginger levitated the two halves of ceiling tile behind the countertop and turned to Aurora, her hoof extended. Aurora allowed herself to be helped up but said nothing. She could still feel Cider’s magic pulling on her foreleg. She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered.
“You’re shaking,” Ginger said. She led Aurora back to Roach who put a leg around her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I have tea in the back,” Ginger said. “Just a moment.”
Roach gave her a squeeze and watched Ginger disappear into an office behind the counter. She returned with a dented green thermos and three shallow cups floating ahead of her. Roach’s caps and Aurora’s rifle slid apart as she poured an amber drink into each cup. 
“Drink. It’s chamomile,” she said, nudging a cup toward Aurora with her hoof. “It’ll help calm your nerves.”
Aurora took the cup and sipped. The flavor reminded her of the gardens.
“Thank you,” she said.
Ginger capped the thermos and set it aside, taking her own cup with her magic. “Don’t thank me, dear. I should have neutered him.”
Aurora’s cheek turned up a little. Roach shifted uncomfortable on his hooves.
Ginger sipped and set down her cup. Outside the shop, the sun had begun to set. “I hate to pry, but it is getting rather late and I don’t trust either of you outside while Cider nurses his ego. Have either of you made sleeping arrangements?”
“That was next on our list,” Roach said.
“Check it off,” Ginger said. “There’s plenty of room upstairs for both of you.”
Roach opened his mouth to decline but Aurora elbowed him, shaking her head again.
Ginger nodded gratefully to her and regarded Roach through her fiery mane with a placating smile. “Consider it payment for allowing that oaf to set hoof in this shop. It’s my fault he got as far as he did. A safe place to sleep isn’t much to offer but it’s what I have at my disposal.”
“I could use some rest,” Aurora said. Her muscles ached from walking and a deep throb pulsed under her bandaged hind leg. “And I’d like to get off of this leg for a while.”
Roach sighed and nodded his thanks to Ginger. She dipped her head politely and gathered their cups with her magic. He bent down with a grunt and started picking up the scattered shells on the floor. “Stairway still in the back room?
“They aren’t known to move around, darling,” she said with a smirk. “I’ll take your friend up to the guest room if you don’t mind locking front door before you come up.”
He dropped a shell into his bag and nodded before searching the floor for the others. 
Ginger beckoned Aurora to follow, leading her into the back office where a simple stairwell led to the second floor. “Don’t worry about your rifle, it’ll be safe in the shop. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at that wound. It’ll give us an opportunity to talk.”
Aurora winced as she limped up the stairs. Her hind leg radiated angrily as the chamomile pushed the adrenaline out of her veins. “Talk about what?” she grimaced.
Ginger gave her a knowing look. “After everything that just happened? Darling, where do I even begin?”
> Chapter 5: Storm Damage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The stairs creaked in weak protest as she ascended.
Aurora grit her teeth against the familiar pain of an injury she’d pushed too hard. The hours of navigating wide fissures and miles of uneven pavement had forced her to use muscles she wasn’t accustomed to relying on. Her calves burned with a deep, dull pain that felt like it had soaked into her bones. Compared to the searing heat that stabbed the rear of her hind leg, her road-sore muscles were a footnote.
She allowed herself to be led up to the second floor of Gussets & Garments in spite of her newly minted disdain for stairs. Ginger smiled expectantly over her shoulder at her as she reached the top. Aurora’s mouth sagged open as she found herself climbing into a richly adorned parlor.
Whether by force of will or simply in the spirit of defying the decay of the Equestrian wasteland, Ginger had found a way to blend the aging materials she had at her disposal into a lavish living space. The floors were layered with a hodgepodge of salvaged carmine and wine colored carpets, the solid designs bordering the walls while leaving a core of patterns in the center of the room. Original pecan wainscoting fenced the edges of the room underneath an upper stripe of plaster painted the same shade of red wine of her carpets.
The ceiling had fallen apart over the centuries and had been replaced by an assortment of wooden planks of differing lengths, widths and origin. The mural of lumber had been painted with several shades of whitewash that had cracked and pulled apart where planks shifted over the years. An assortment of crystals hung from gaps in the wood, glowing with an internal light. Sheer swayed on makeshift rods mounted above a row of three windows looking down onto the street below. At the back of the parlor, Ginger’s bedroom door hung open.
“This is beautiful,” Aurora said, marveling at the unusual sensation of tender carpets under her hooves. 
Ginger smiled at Aurora with polite acknowledgement and led her to the center of the room where two cream colored divans sat opposite of one another with a wide wooden coffee table propped between them. A column of prewar novels rested on the far end of the coffee table. Across from the books, the handle of an imposingly large knife protruded from a wide leather sheath.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing Aurora to the nearest divan. A spell leaped from her horn and several lavender crystals strung from the ceiling brightened the room with an internal light. “I should have clean bandages for your leg. Excuse me.”
Aurora dropped her saddlebags from her sore hips with a grunt while Ginger trotted through the open door of her bedroom. As Ginger rummaged through her belongings in the other room, Aurora hoisted herself onto the faux leather divan and winkled her lip when the back of her hind leg clipped the edge of the seat.
Lacking anything else to do, she browsed the bent spines of the paperbacks on the table. Full Bodied in the Vineyard, The Heat of the Moment, Night Mares: Vol. 6. At the top of the stack, the paper cover of Ship to Shore curled toward her featuring a dashing young earth pony the deck of a ship, a curved blade gripped in grinning teeth as she leaned over sparkling blue water with a hoof wrapped in the rigging. Aurora didn’t have the vocabulary for half of the things pictured on the book’s faded cover, but the swooning eyes of a unicorn mare in the background made it clear which boxes the novel would check.
“Put your leg up,” Ginger said, her sudden reappearance making Aurora jump.
Ginger sat on a floral patterned rug next to Aurora while a pastel yellow box emblazoned with three pink butterflies, evidently her first aid kit, floated to the edge of the coffee table next to the sheathed knife. A bronze glow slid the blade toward the stack of books whose spines had subtly turned away from Aurora. Ginger cleared her throat and tapped the back of Aurora’s bandaged leg with her hoof. “Your leg, dear.”
Aurora winced as she extended her hind leg to bridge the space between the divan and squat table. 
Ginger lifted the lid of the metal box to reveal a thick roll of gauze, several brown glass bottles and a small sewing kit. After inspecting her stock, she turned her attention to removing Aurora’s blood spotted bandages. Behind her, heavy hooves thumped up the stairs announcing Roach’s return. 
“Front door’s locked and the lights are off,” he rumbled. Aurora leaned back on her forelegs and offered Roach a she-made-me-do-it smile as he walked to the divan across the table. He considered the seat as he dropped his own saddlebags, essentially a couch without a backrest, and opted to lay on the carpet instead. He watched Ginger work as he adjusted his legs beneath himself.
“Thank you, Roach,” Ginger said. As the last layer of bandages looped away in an aura of her magic, a brown mat of blood-caked hair clung to the fabric strips behind her knee. A ragged wound emerged, red and angry, and a fat drop of blood rolled down the back of her leg.
Ginger swept up the droplet in her magic and let it fall into the wad of bandages on the table. She spooled a length of fresh gauze into a ball and pressed the mouth of an open brown bottle to the clean fabric. Dark yellow liquid soaked through the cloth in a widening stain.
She capped the bottle and floated it back into the metal box with a click. “If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been outside your Stable?”
Aurora gasped at the sharp burn of antiseptic as Ginger pressed the cloth into the raw wound. Caught off-guard, she tensed her leg and rode through the furious rebellion of raw nerve endings. She shot a glare at Ginger who stared back pleasantly, daring her to lie.
She spoke through grit teeth. “Is it that obvious?”
Roach chuckled, drawing a withering glare from Aurora. He shrugged. “Not many ponies wear a Pip-Buck.”
Ginger dabbed the edges of the wound with the medicated cloth. “Nor do they offer to pay in bits,” she said, looking up from her work with a patient expression that many teachers reserved for their duller students. “That and you’ve been gawking like a tourist since you walked through my door. The doe-eyed look is adorable but it’s bound to attract attention.”
The lump of antiseptic cloth pulled away from her leg, the edges of the yellow stain tinted with bits of clotted blood. The stinging dulled. 
Aurora gnawed on the inside of her cheek, considering that last part. The more she thought, the more she realized that she hadn’t planned for there to be anyone outside the Stable let alone what appeared to be a small knot of commerce barely more than ten miles away from her home. Everybody in the Stable assumed that the world had been so thoroughly irradiated that life simply wouldn’t be capable of sustaining itself. They were supposed to be seeds for a dead world but while this one was clearly struggling, it was alive.
It meant that she was two centuries behind the curve, and she had a decent idea of what would happen to Stable 10 if she didn’t catch up.
Aurora watched the soft amber glow around Ginger’s horn as she levitated the sewing kit out of the metal tin. A curved needle lifted into the air along with a dense length of black stitching thread. Magical energy. The idea hit Aurora like a sack of apples.
“Ginger, do you know anything about fixing broken talismans?”
The fine hook of metal stopped in midair. 
Ginger’s eyebrow went up as if Aurora had asked whether she wanted her mane shaved off.
“If I could do that, darling, I wouldn’t be scraping together rent every month in the middle of nowhere. The methods to creating talismans were lost generations ago.”
Thread slid through the eye of the needle and neatly tied itself off. She used her hooves to keep Aurora’s leg steady and the curve of metal slid into the healthy skin at the edge of the wound. The pegasus sucked air between her teeth, biting back ungrateful thoughts as the thread slowly pulled the gash together stitch by stitch.
“I assume it has something to do with your Stable?” Ginger asked.
She nodded, wincing as the needle sank into her leg again. “We need an ignition talisman for our generator. Ours is…” she paused, recalling the slow and orderly decline of the generator’s spin. “I think it was designed it to fail.”
The accusation drew a look of sympathy from Ginger, though there was no surprise in it. “I’m sorry to hear that. Stable-Tec certainly has a reputation for falling short of expectations.”
Aurora frowned, ignoring the needle. “I don’t follow.”
Ginger was silent until she finished the last stitch and drew the wound shut. The string snipped apart with a flicker of magic and she ferried the sewing kit back into the yellow box. She looked to Roach for help explaining.
Roach’s smile had faded into a flat line that made it clear Ginger had opened a line of conversation he’d been avoiding.
She pursed her lips and lifted the clean gauze out of the first aid kit, watching it hover in front of her for several moment before looking back to Roach. “She’s from your Stable?”
Roach went rigid. “Ginger.”
The unicorn bit her lip and nodded, chastised. “A conversation for another time.”
She turned her attention back to the roll of fresh bandage and pulled a length around Aurora’s extended hind leg. The roll swept around and around until a suitable layer covered a wide patch above her knee. She tucked away the loose strip of gauze and frowned.
“I’m afraid that will leave a scar once it heals,” Ginger said. Aurora let her hoof slide off the coffee table. The wound throbbed, but not as much as it once had. 
Ginger reached out to the first aid kit to close the lid.
A flicker of green light rumbled from the late evening sky, causing Aurora’s Pip-Buck to emit muffled burst of ticks from inside her saddlebag. 
Ginger sighed, let go of the lid and plucked a bottle of pills from the container. She popped one in her mouth and swallowed it dry, wrinkling her nose at the bitter flavor. Then she drifted the bottle to Aurora.
“You’ll want one,” she said. “The radstorms can get bad out here.”
The yellowed label on the bottle bore the name RAD-X in block letters. Aurora let her tip a chalky pill into her upturned hoof. She considered it for a moment before tossing it back. Another flash of emerald light seared the clouds and another thick burst of static complained from her saddlebag. Thunder rattled over the city with an unnatural distortion. Ginger rose to her hooves, walked over to the windows and began pulling exterior shutters closed.
“You should be wearing your Pip-Buck, Aurora,” Roach said. She noticed his face was pinched with a discomfort he was trying to ignore. 
“The first pony I met out there attacked me because he saw my Pip-Buck,” Aurora argued. “I’m not going to…”
“You’re going to attract attention no matter what you do,” Roach said more firmly. “You’re a pegasus. The only pegasi that come down here are Enclave, Dustwings or dead before they hit the dirt. You’re clearly none of those and it’s only a matter of time before ponies start asking where you came from. Wearing your Pip-Buck will answer that question for them and give you an advantage in a fight.”
Aurora felt the familiar irritation that rode tandem with a losing argument. Cider hadn’t injured her like the feral ghoul had, but he had deeply shaken her confidence. How could she win against ponies who could project their will with a passing thought? There was a reason Luna and Celestia had led Equestria for so long and they had stood atop their heads for centuries.
Ginger latched the last shutter and the Pip-Buck’s chattering lessened to a few faint pops. Aurora slid down to the thick red carpet and grudgingly sank a hoof under the flap of her bag, removing her Pip-Buck. 
She slid back onto the divan, careful not to disturb her newly bandaged leg. She laid back with her head against the soft armrest and transferred the little computer from her hoof to her wingtips, examining it. The heavy clasp swung loosely on well oiled hinges.
Aurora let the Pip-Buck thump against her chest. The screen cast green light against her white mane before she turned it face-down against her coat, snuffing it out. She watched Ginger hop up onto the opposite divan and lean against the armrest. The storm continued to build outside, but the lead-lined shutters caught most of the radiation. The Pip-Buck ticked a few times against her chest and went silent.
“What kind of advantage does this give me, exactly?” she asked dubiously.
“You’re listening to one,” Roach answered. “It’s been pretty much impossible to find a working radiation meter after the bombs burned out all the prewar stock. That’s one of the reasons why they’re coveted. Being able to detect radiation and walk the other way before you take a lethal dose isn’t a luxury most ponies have.”
Aurora turned the Pip-Bucks’s screen back up and looked at the tiny gauge embedded in the lower corner of the casing. Something Roach said didn’t make sense. She turned back to him, her expression puzzled.
“Why doesn’t someone make more of them?” she asked.
Roach looked up at Ginger on the divan, handing the question off to her.
Ginger slid the tip of her hoof in circles along the padded arm of the divan, watching the faux leather dimple and crease under the pressure. 
“There’s simply no infrastructure for that type of manufacturing,” Ginger said, looking up at Aurora. “Every so often you’ll hear stories of a group of ponies who manage to get a power plant working or somebody who might light the furnaces of an old forge, but it only ever lasts until something breaks that nobody knows how to fix. And that’s just electricity and smelting. Simple things. Precision tools like your Pip-Buck or even a simple radiation meter would require dozens of industries working together that simply don’t exist anymore.”
Aurora frowned. She let her eyes wander the room again. Everything from the nails in the ceiling to the Rad-X in her bloodstream were antiques. Two hundred and twenty years later, nothing was new. Everything was salvage.
She slid her hoof through the cuff of her Pip-Buck and locked the heavy clasp with a thick clack. A notification appeared at the top of the screen letting her know that the sensors built into the padding were detecting trace amounts radiation in her sweat. Nothing harmful, yet, but a number that had been steadily climbing since she left the Stable. She dismissed the notification with a tap of her hoof and stared at the painted ceiling.  
“This is ridiculous. Has anyone actually tried to fix anything out here or are they just happy living like this?”
Ginger stiffened in the corner of her eye. Aurora hadn’t intended to sound petulant, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Barely a half hour in the parlor revealed to her what it actually was. Scrap wood. Peeling paint. Pieces of a dead world stitched together into something serviceable but ultimately doomed to fall apart.
“Miss Pinfeathers…” Ginger started.
“Aurora,” she corrected.
Ginger’s polite smile evaporated, revealing a deep impatience. “Fine. Aurora, let me do you the service of being perfectly clear,” she said plainly. “You haven’t seen enough of Equestria yet to know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Aurora opened her mouth to interject and was quickly cut off.
“Shut up. This is the part where you listen,” Ginger said. “If you want to survive in the wastes, you need to stop looking at it like a Stable dweller. Equestria isn’t a stack of blocks that a foal knocked over and crawled away from. You don’t fix this by telling ponies it should be fixed. We’re not blind. We know the world is broken.” 
Ginger’s voice grew bitter as she spoke. “Ten generations ago our idiot “Ministry Mares” sank a rotten stick into a beautiful place and churned it into mud. We don’t get to live in that world just because we know what it looked like. You don’t stir the muck the other way and expect everything to go back to normal. The balefire didn’t just knock over buildings and kill ponies. It killed the foundation of what made the old Equestria possible in the first place.”
Distant thunder rattled at the shutters and another radiation warning appeared on the Pip-Buck’s screen. Aurora didn’t tap it away.
“What foundation?” she asked.
Ginger shrugged and sighed. “Unity. Commonality. That sense of trust that keeps our weapons pointed outward instead of inward. Equestria died grasping at the fog of mistrust and suspicion it created. Now its corpse is chewed on by factions, independent cities and opportunists. None of whom are willing to concede so much as a cap to the other without expecting two in return. We have what we have, Aurora. Living here is an exercise in keeping it.”
Having said her piece, Ginger flicked her tail looked away.
Thunder rippled the air outside while Aurora traced the cracks in the whitewashed ceiling. Ginger was right, she decided. Equestria and her Stable were two different worlds. Her focus needed to be on fixing her world before it died the same death as this one. The solution to her problem was somewhere in Fillydelphia. Equestria would have to find a solution to its problems on its own.
“It’s getting late,” Roach said, breaking the silence. He shifted to a more comfortable position on the carpeted floor. “We should get some sleep.”
“I imagine you should,” Ginger agreed, happy to put the discussion behind her. 
She dropped from the divan and lit her horn. The crystals hanging from the ceiling dimmed. Aurora blinked, her eyes adjusting to the sudden twilight.
Ginger’s hooves rustled over the carpets toward the stairs. “I have some work to finish in the shop. I’ll wake the two of you at sunrise, if you like.”
“We’d appreciate it,” Roach said.
Aurora nodded. “Thanks.”
Ginger doused the crystals and night wrapped the parlor. Aurora listened to her descend the stairs before stretching out on the divan, her head resting on her foreleg. She turned off her Pip-Buck’s display and looked into the darkness toward the patch of carpet Roach had curled up. A faint jade light glowed between his chitin like a jigsaw puzzle.
Ginger had wanted to ask her questions. Instead, Aurora had hijacked the conversation and asked all the wrong ones. 
She felt a twinge of guilt settle in her gut as she closed her eyes and let herself drift.





 

She jerked awake to a hiss of static in her ear and the hammerfall of thunder over her head. Her heart raced as the Pip-Buck fell quiet. The thunder rolled away and the parlor was filled with the strained whistle of wind between the shutters. Aurora stayed still, halfway sitting and halfway reclined, taking in her bearings.
Roach stirred on the carpet a few feet away. The skin between his chitin glowed brightly enough for her to make out the features of his face in the otherwise darkened room. His mouth hung open. A ratcheting snore rose from his throat as he slept.
Aurora’s head bobbled from exhaustion while she watched Roach sleep. When she was sure he wasn’t in the process of eating his own tongue, she laid back down and waited to drift off.
Or at least she tried.
Thunder exploded outside like a war zone. Her Pip-Buck chattered its warning at the flicker of every lightning bolt. Roach made wet, gargling noises that made her briefly consider wedging his hoof in his mouth. She wasn’t sure how much sleep she’d gotten, but it hadn’t been nearly enough. It was as if the world were conspiring against her.
To top it all off, she had to pee.
“Buck’s sake,” she grumbled.
Aurora dropped to the carpet and went downstairs. From the stairwell she could see light streaming into the office below. Ginger’s voice trickled from the door that led behind the shop’s counter. Guilt still nagged at her for letting the night end on poor terms with her. She crossed the office floor and poked her head out into the shop where she saw the coffee unicorn crimping grommets into a long leather strap. 
Ginger muttered to herself as she checked a yellowed diagram laid flat over the countertop. She rubbed her eyes against her leg and squinted at the paper.
Aurora tapped her hoof against the door frame. “Hey,” she said.
Ginger looked over her shoulder and forced a smile. “Mis… Aurora. You’re up late.”
“Nature calls,” she said, but her eyes were on the countertop. Desperate Times lay disassembled on a cloth stretched across the wooden workspace. Two bent lengths of iron had been drilled into its wooden body. She fought down the urge to overreact. “What do you have going on there?”
“Your order, believe it or not,” Ginger said. “I was hoping to have it finished by now, but I found mud in the receiver and… well, everywhere, actually.”
The crawl through the tunnel. Aurora groaned. “That was me.”
Ginger’s eyes went to the stains in Aurora’s coat. “I assumed you weren’t aware. It’s not a problem.”
Aurora knew the hallmarks of a rush job and there was none of that here. Every rod, spring and pin of the rifle lay organized in the rough shape of the weapon she arrived with. A stack of rags lay on the floor next to her, several coated in grime from her crawl beneath Foal Mountain. Aurora scanned the polished and oiled innards of the rifle and couldn’t help but appreciate the attention Ginger had paid them.
“Thank you,” Aurora said. “And sorry about earlier. I crossed a line.”
Ginger regarded her as if she was seeing Aurora for the first time. The leather strap hung in the air, not forgotten but no longer the focus of her attention. The bronze glow that held it aloft faded slightly as Ginger smiled. A genuine smile that, albeit small, creased the corner of her lips enough for Aurora to notice.
“I think it’s fair to say we both did,” Ginger said, and shook her head chuckling. “Poor Roach didn’t know what to do with himself.”
Aurora snorted, shifting in place. “I hate to change the subject, but you wouldn’t have a restroom I could use?”
“Oh!” Ginger’s eyebrows shot up with embarrassment. “Oh, I didn’t even think to show… through my office and out the back. I have a private outhouse behind the shop.”
A crystal sitting atop Ginger’s desk in the office bloomed with light, illuminating the building’s back door. Aurora mouthed a grateful thank you and turned back into the office toward the door. She twisted its brass knob with her wing and the wind nearly tore it from her grip.
The dark sky above writhed with a sickly green glow as she stepped outside. She had to lean against the door to get the latch to click, the wind buffeting her with a force that was as terrifying as it was thrilling. Bits of dust and grit dug up by the gusts stung her nose and ears like sandpaper while thunder and lightning, unfiltered by walls or shutters, rattled her bones.
The storm was dazzling in its fury. Aurora found herself staring at it for several minutes, the call of nature temporarily forgotten.
Flashes of light gave her glimpses of the dilapidated fence that bordered a small square of property behind Ginger’s shop. Several planks were missing or broken but the majority still held to their frame to create a meager amount of privacy. Several yards from the building, butted up against the far corner of the fence, a stubby outhouse withstood the worst of the storm without complaint.
She pinned her wings to her sides and crossed the property. The outhouse faced her and she had to pull the door against the wind. Mercifully, the wind drew the worst of the odor outside before she could smell it but the sight of the outhouse gave her pause. There was nothing inside except a wide hole dug into the dirt and a roll of paper hung from a nail in the wall. She grimaced, stepped inside and latched the door behind her. When she was finished, she pushed through the door and let the wind slap it shut behind her.
Her Pip-Buck crackled and the sky flashed as she walked toward the brick building. In the afterimage that lingered she thought she saw Roach standing at the back door. She squinted through the buffeting wind and followed the jade glow toward the doorway.
“I tried not to wake you up,” she called.
Lightning struck something nearby and the thunderclap was instantaneous. Aurora stopped walking, her eyes widening. She hadn’t been walking toward Roach.
There was no mistaking the pale green glow of Cider’s horn.
She spun on her hooves and ran.
Cider’s magic coiled around her forelegs like a whip and sent her sprawling. Her chin clipped the hard packed dirt and pain rang down her jaw like a bell being struck. She could feel panic clawing its way into her chest as she twisted as far as her pinned front hooves would let her and tried to scream for help. The sound lodged in her throat and for a moment she was confused. Then she realized she couldn’t breathe. Cider was choking her.
She thrashed on the ground, gagging on the sickly green aura that collared her neck. Panic ran wild in her veins as she wrenched back on the magic that bound her forelegs to the dirt. Her hooves slid barely an inch before the green aura brightened, stopping them as if a boulder rested on them. She looked back at Cider, pleading.
His face was devoid of sympathy.
The collar around her neck tightened. Her wings pounded at the ground, her body reacting out of sheer instinct. Ginger wasn’t coming to save her. Roach was still asleep upstairs. She thought of them finding her dead in the dirt. Just another unfortunate bird killed in a storm.
Her right wing struck a rock the size of a walnut and sent a bolt of pain into her shoulder. Without thinking, she wrapped her primary feathers around the the stone and whipped her wing back at his head with as much force as she could muster.
The rock shattered against the brick just over Cider’s left ear, spraying his face with shards of stone and eliciting a stream of profanity. For a few brief seconds his magic evaporated and Aurora gasped down a lungful of metallic tasting air. 
Running wasn’t an option.
In desperation, she pivoted and hurled herself head first into Cider’s chest. She was rewarded with a bright pain in her forehead and the satisfying sound of the stallion crying out in shock. The unicorn reared on his back legs against the bricks and Aurora pressed her attack, driving her hoof into the side of Cider’s muzzle with a wet thud. Blood and spittle stained her hoof pink. 
Every muscle in her body screamed that she had to stop him before he killed her. She reeled her leg back and speared it toward Cider’s head.
Cider’s horn flared like a living torch and her hoof skittered painfully across the bricks.
Suddenly the world lurched as if a hinge and the building slammed into her back. The impact stole the air from her lungs and for several terrifying seconds she didn’t know what was happening. She could feel her forelegs being pulled up the bricks wall while her rear hooves lay rooted to the dirt. Her wings stretched away from her shoulders hard enough to hurt. She couldn’t turn her head. Slowly, a familiar pressure applied itself to her throat, pressing on her airway.
Her heart crashed against her ribs like an animal trying to escape its cage but there was nowhere to go. 
Cider stood in front of her, the facade of the cheery salespony peeled back until all that remained was the promise of a slow death. The left side of his muzzle was already beginning to swell. His lips curled back like a predator preparing for the kill.
“All I wanted,” he snarled, “was to trade.”
She would have laughed if she wasn’t being suffocated. His horn flared again and she felt her Pip-Buck pull free of her leg, hovering into her fixed field of vision next to Cider. 
He stood up and dropped his hooves against the brick on either side of her head. His face leered at her close enough for her to smell his sour breath. The Pip-Buck stuttered indifferently as the storm flashed angrily above them.
“You could have avoided all of this if you had been smarter,” he continued, waggling the Pip-Buck in the air. “Tech like this can change lives. And you Enclave shits wonder why we hate you down here.”
Aurora didn’t have a clue what he was talking about but the magical garrote around her neck was making it hard for her to make sense of anything beyond the powerful spasms of her lungs. The edges of her vision began to bleed red. Her eyes watered with fear. She bent her spine away from the wall, trying to get free, and felt his magic nearly slip.
“Quit struggling!” Cider barked. His horn flashed.
She slammed flat against the wall and Cider jabbed a hoof into her chest. His lip twitched as he forced calm into his voice. “Quit struggling. That fashionista friend of yours isn’t coming to save you this time. I’ve already sent a messenger to F&F Headquarters. She’s blacklisted. She’ll be lucky if I don’t have her sewn shut for the stunt she pulled today.”
His hoof lingered on her chest. She watched as his eyes drifted lower. A cry of protest lodged in her throat as his hoof began to trace a similar line down her front. Her Pip-Buck wobbled in the air next to him, the aura around it dimming.
“Don’t,” she choked.
Cider ignored her.
Her lungs burned like they’d been splashed with acid. Her chest jerked and heaved, starving for air. She bent her head against the bricks and was surprised to feel the collar of magic around her neck flex slightly. Cider touched her and Aurora recoiled like a broken spring. 
She wrenched her knees up hard enough to feel the joints crack. The magic pinning her hind legs shattered. Cider realized what was happening and stumbled back, his horn thrumming as he refocused his spell. He was too late.
Startled, Cider gave Aurora too much time and too much room. He met her eyes and saw rage. She coiled her midsection and bucked both hind legs into the center of his throat. His larynx collapsed with a wet crunch.
A sharp wheeze rose from Cider’s throat and his magic vanished. 
Aurora fell to the ground and heaved, her lungs competing to suck air through the same airway that her stomach sought to empty itself through. She drank down lungfuls of air while her gullet sorted itself out.
Cider wasn’t having as much luck.
Aurora stared at him as he flailed, his eyes bulging. He clawed at his throat but the only sound he made was the scraping of hooves in the dirt. His hind leg struck her Pip-Buck and it skittered across the rocks to her feet. It sputtered static at her in greeting.
She looked down at the stain the yellow stallion had left on her hoof and realized she didn’t have to let him suffocate. She didn’t have to let him live, either. There was no doubt in her mind what he had wanted to do with her. What he had begun doing.
Cider was a problem she knew how to fix.
Aurora slipped the bulky Pip-Buck over her hoof and stepped towards Cider. He saw her approach and his horn sputtered briefly, tugging on her bare foreleg. She yanked free of his dulled magic and stood over him as he choked. She lifted her Pip-Buck, the object he’d been willing to trade her life and dignity over, and drove it hard into his temple. Something like fear gurgled past his destroyed trachea and he tried to roll away. She stopped him with her wing and struck him again. 
And again.
Her Pip-Buck came back bloody and she felt tears burning in her eyes. She grit her teeth and hit Cider across the muzzle, her foreleg becoming a hammer that she beat him with until he stopped moving. She kept hitting him until his face and the dirt beneath him were soaked black with blood.
Eventually her leg grew tired. Her shoulders burned. She ran out of tears and stood over him in the dirt, watching the life dribble out of Cider’s broken body. Lightning stabbed at the ground somewhere nearby. Thunder exploded overhead. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t feel anything.
It occurred to her that Ginger might come out to check on her if she stood here much longer. The storm would keep ponies indoors but eventually it would pass and Cider’s body would be discovered. There were no gardens for her to bury him in and no tools to dig up the hard, dry soil he bled into. She looked at the outhouse. 
That would do.
Aurora opened the door and let the wind slap it into the outside wall. The hole in the ground was little more than a foot across and stank with layer upon layer of offal. She returned to Cider’s body, looped her foreleg around the strap of his pinstripe armor and dragged him across the property to the outhouse. She dropped him halfway through the door and his head tipped backward. Briefly, she considered taking off his armor. That thought passed as quickly as it arrived. He didn’t have anything on him that she wanted. She dragged him over the pit and let go.
Cider vanished into the ground. The splash below served as his eulogy.
Aurora closed the outhouse door and turned the latch. She brushed dirt over the smears of blood on the ground and turned the screen of her Pip-Buck on, using the light to look herself over. Her legs and hooves were stained with Cider’s blood and her chin felt raw from her fall. There was nothing she could do about that. Ginger and Roach would have questions.
She killed a pony.
Aurora stood outside the shop’s back door and was startled by how clinical it sounded in her head. Cider had tried to kill her. He tried to rape her. She killed him for it. It would have almost been comforting to think about if she could just shake off the part of her that wouldn’t stop telling her she wasn’t alright. That this wasn’t something normal ponies went through. This was traumatic. She should be having some kind of reaction to it.
She tried to let herself cry but the tears didn’t come. Thunder rumbled overhead, disinterested to the violence she’d been subjected to. 
I’m fine, she thought as she turned the doorknob and limped across the threshold.

I’m fine.
> Chapter 6: Flight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The radstorm fell apart as it meandered east. Patches of the far sky glowed with the dim flickers of lightning, the thunder rumbling in halfheartedly. As with the passing of every storm, a few of Junction City’s residents would claim to have seen the true sky peek in between clouds. A clean, sparkling expanse that stretched well beyond the limits of impenetrable brown cloud layer that capped their world. The same social phenomenon played out across all of Equestria after any period of great unease. Spotting the sky, true or not, was a way to bring ponies away from the edge of violence with a promise of better days ahead.
Aurora didn’t want to look at the sky just yet. She sat with her back against the wainscoting underneath a window overlooking Junction City’s crossroads. Ginger’s first aid kit lay open at her side. Her right hind leg throbbed from the second row of stitches that crisscrossed over the ones she’d torn fighting off Cider. The scrape along her chin hadn’t been deep, but it had taken Ginger the better part of a half hour to pick the gravel out of. The stink of antiseptic so close to her nose had thrown her into a ragged coughing fit that aggravated the ugly bruises that showed through her gray coat like a dark collar.
Once she stepped inside, she’d agonized over whether she should approach Ginger or go upstairs to find Roach. Ginger had made the choice for her when she turned to look into the office and saw Aurora’s blood-soaked hooves. She barely knew Ginger, but she felt a stab of guilt when the unicorn gasped and her tools clattered to the floor. She couldn’t remember all the questions Ginger had asked her but they had all revolved around concern and reassurance. It wasn’t long before Roach was clattering down the stairs and launching into his own line of similar questions.
It was overwhelming. The two ponies were barely more than strangers to her and yet their shared concern was startling in its intensity.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“What happened to you?”
“Cider jumped me.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Under the outhouse.”
“Is he alive?”
“No.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Roach and Ginger pitched the same questions at different angles, trying to knock loose details Aurora was clearly withholding. She dug in her hooves whenever they asked her to explain how she escaped Cider’s magic. Roach had given up first, seeing the situation for what it was. Ginger was more persistent, clearly wanting to know how a pegasus had seemingly dispelled a fellow unicorn’s magic without a weapon. She let the question drop unanswered when she realized Aurora’s stitches needed to be resewn.
They had led her upstairs to the divan but Aurora had insisted on sitting on the carpet under the window. Roach sat next to her while Ginger commented on the state of Aurora’s new injuries as she administered magic and medicine to them.
At some point she awoke to Roach roughly shaking her awake by the shoulder, but the concern washed from his face when Aurora’s irritated expression made it apparent that she had only fallen asleep and hadn’t passed out. She drifted off for the third time that night and slept like a stone.
She woke up to the smell of strong tea and whispered conversation.
“I still feel the better choice is to leave him down there,” Ginger said. “Let them search if they like. They won’t find him.”
Roach grunted. “First place to look for a corpse is a hole in the ground, and he’ll float.”
Aurora inhaled deeply and stretched, mindful of the tightness under her bandaged leg. Her wings scraped along the wainscoting and shuddered under the exertion. When she opened her eyes she was looking at the open first aid kit, the back of the lid with its pink trio of butterflies facing her. A light breeze blew over the top of her mane. The metal storm shutters were open, letting the hazy morning light warm the tips of her ears.
Ginger tied a bow on the end of her conversation with Roach. 
“If they do find him, I’ll make it clear to them that he slipped and drowned. It can happen to anybody, really.” She turned her attention to Aurora and slid a tin cup from the coffee table toward her. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”
Aurora sat up and accepted the cup in her wing. She sipped and winced. It tasted like grass and orange skins, among other flavors she couldn’t place and could barely swallow. She managed to do so and gently set the cup on the carpet next to the first aid kit.
“Sore,” she said, her voice still marred with the edge of a rasp. Her brain gently nudged her to get up so she could take the lift down to Mechanical where the coffee pot percolated twenty-four-seven. It took her several seconds to bridge the gap between where she was and where her morning routine began. She closed her eyes and let the back of her head thump against the wall. “You don’t have any coffee, do you?”
She saw something pass between Roach and Ginger akin to an inside joke, or maybe a lost bet. Ginger delicately swept Aurora’s cup back to the table and hopped down from her divan. “I’ll see what I can find downstairs.”
Roach stood and stretched his legs, having still sided with resting on the carpets rather than the odd couch. His joints crackled underneath broken chitin. “Actually, I was thinking we should get back on the road before the rest of the town wakes up. Get some miles between us and what happened last night before anybody has a mind to start asking questions.”
Ginger paused before descending the stairs. “Then coffee will have to wait. Aurora, come with me please. I need to check the fitting on your rifle before you go.”
He held a hoof out to Aurora and she grabbed on, letting him pull her to her hooves and stirring up a mob of new aches and pains along her back and shoulders. She pulled up the map on her Pip-Buck and felt worry chewing at the back of her brain. Fillydelphia was still several days to the east and she already felt like she’d been pulled through a meat grinder.
She put on her saddlebags and followed Roach downstairs to the shop where Ginger had already taken her place behind the worn counter. Aurora stepped to the other side and couldn’t help but admire the way the aluminum panels reflected the dim morning light all the way to the back of the shop. Despite her soreness, she found herself smiling at the simple ingenuity. It faded when her eyes fell on the gap where one panel was missing.
Aurora turned back to see her rifle - the overmare’s rifle - hovering in a bronze field of magic next to her wing. Two beautiful curves of metal bent from the right side of the stock. The leather strap swung idly under the weapon. A sturdy iron buckle fitted midway down its length and a series of identical metal grommets at the end of the strap allowed it to be loosened or tightened more confidently than the fragile metal clip it originally sported. 
“Tell me if anything feels uncomfortable,” Ginger said.
Aurora’s shoulders went rigid as Ginger’s magic gently enveloped her right wing and drew it forward until her primary feathers pointed at the wall just over Ginger’s shoulder. The rifle drifted into alignment with her extended limb, the strap sliding over her shoulder. Aurora watched as the pair of modified hooks settled slowly over the top of her wing and Ginger’s magic vanished, letting the full weight of the rifle settle into place.
The tip of her wing dipped with the sudden weight and it took more effort than she was used to for her to level it out. Roach appeared at her side, directing the muzzle of the rifle away from Ginger and turning Aurora until it pointed at the rear of the shop. She gave him a thankful glance before paying attention to how the rifle felt. It was heavy, but not too heavy to hold aloft. It took more work to keep her left wing from lifting into the air, the muscles in her shoulders relishing the unusual exertion after a lifetime underground.
Frustratingly, the muzzle still wandered despite her effort to keep it steady.
“It feels good,” she decided, earning a smile from Ginger. She dipped her wing out of the hooks and let the rifle hang at her side. “I’ll feel better once I know how to use it.”
“We’ll sort that out once we’re out of town,” Roach said. His eagerness to leave was infectious and Aurora felt the weight of her bags grow heavier the longer she stood still.
Ginger looked to the front of the shop where an earth pony walked past the front door, silhouetted by the morning light. Aurora followed her gaze. Across the street, a covered wagon bearing the F&F Mercantile logo stood unattended. She wondered how long it would be until Cider’s entourage realized he was missing, and what Ginger would do if they found him.
She remembered something Cider said while he had her pinned against the bricks.
“Last night,” she started, watching as Ginger began lifting organized stacks of caps onto the countertop. She watched Aurora as she worked. “Cider said he sent a messenger out. He said he was blacklisting you.”
A roll of caps stuttered to a halt inches from the counter.
Ginger’s expression darkened like a bed of embers being doused with water. Her eyes flicked to the countertop and bore through it like a welding torch. She closed them, inhaled deeply, and jabbed the stack of caps against the countertop with a sharp clack. Her magic lingered around them like a fog.
Ginger spoke carefully. “Are you certain those were his exact words?”
Aurora hesitated before nodding.
Quick as a gunshot, the stack of caps collapsed like a can in a compactor. A single flame boiled up from the wood trapped beneath the disc of glowing hot metal. Ginger’s face twisted while a slowly expanding ring of charred wood formed beneath the pressure of her magic.
“That little shit,” she hissed, then saw the growing concern on Aurora’s face and looked down at what remained of the ten caps. Smoke puffed up from the desk as the newly minted coin cooled. Her eyes shone for the barest of moments before she blinked the unwelcome moisture away.  
“He had no right,” Ginger said bitterly. She looked at Aurora and saw the question in her eyes. “Cider is - was part owner of F&F Mercantile. They own most of the trade routes east of Canterlot Ruins. Cider has a reputation for not taking no for an answer, least of all from a capable mare.”
Aurora winced inwardly. Ginger was too incensed to notice.
“Now I’ve been cut out of that trade entirely, all because that walking, talking inferiority complex couldn’t handle a little embarrassment. He’s killing my business because he wasn’t stallion enough to broker a deal.” Ginger spat a curse and looked at the place in the ceiling she had torn a tile from. “Goddesses, maybe I did cross a line yesterday.”
Guilt pressed on Aurora’s shoulders like a heavy yoke and she found herself looking away, toward the clusters of displays in the half-lit sales floor. Strangely as many of the mannequins were dressed, there was real passion poured into their designs. She couldn’t help but feel responsible for bringing so much misfortune to the unicorn’s doorstep.
Roach cleared his throat, his expression telling Aurora that he was deep in the same line of thought as her. He nudged the hot bit of metal out of the divot it had burned into the countertop with his hoof and tamped the embers it left behind. A thin trail of smoke coiled up from the blackened surface and quickly dissipated. “I’m sorry, Ginger. I know how much you love this place,” he said.
Ginger regarded him for a long, silent moment. Then she chuffed out a breath and looked out at her shop, shaking her head. “Don’t be. Cider knew the rules. I shouldn’t have let him get the best of me in my own shop.”
“He didn’t strike me as the type to give a pony a choice,” Aurora said.
“No, I suppose not,” Ginger agreed. She watched as a denizen of Junction City walked to her front door and hesitate at the door before continuing on. “It doesn’t look like he wasted any time telling the town before he got himself killed.”
Aurora’s eyes dropped to the floor.
Roach shifted on his hooves. “That could be a problem for you if they realize he’s missing.”
“That’s less a question of if than when, once ponies put two and two together. Even if the math is wrong, they’ll think I killed him.” Ginger pressed the tip of her hoof into the char mark on the countertop and pushed flecks of ruined wood out of the divot. She drew in a breath, blew out and shook her head. “Goddesses, once Cider’s sister hears about this, the bounty alone… she’ll have me killed.”
“Autumn always did hold a grudge, that goes without saying,” Roach agreed. “So come with us. We can protect each other.”
Ginger looked at Roach like his head was on backwards. “Absolutely not! I can defend myself perfectly well enough on my own. If I’m seen travelling with you two…”
“As opposed to them already knowing that we spent the night here?” Roach interrupted.
“He was waiting for me outside.” Aurora added, pushing aside her irritation at the flickers of sympathy playing over their faces. “What are the odds that Cider didn’t tell his people where he was going, or that they won’t think of it once they figure out he’s missing?”
Roach looked from Aurora to Ginger, his expression setting like concrete. “He thought Aurora was from the Enclave, and the merchants already know she was accompanied into town by a bug.” He held up a hoof before Ginger could protest the self-deprecation. “Perception is reality. Cut it however you want, but the three of us are going to have crosshairs on our backs for the foreseeable future. We should stick together.”
Ginger’s bit the inside of her cheek as she swept the charred flakes of wood off the countertop and onto the floor with her hoof. Aurora half expected her to produce a broom and begin sweeping it up, stubbornly embedding herself into a routine that had been pulled out from under her. But she didn’t.
Her voice grew somber. She looked up at Roach for a moment before looking out at her shop. “Sometimes I wish I lived in the world you used to tell me stories about. It always seemed fairer than this one.”
It was Roach’s turn to look away. “Not all the time,” he said.
Ginger sucked on her lower lip, her attention fixed on the covered wagon that on the other side of the cracked display window. Her voice was rough when she spoke. “You’re right. About sticking together, I mean,” she said, clearing her throat. Her eyes went to Aurora. “And besides, there are more lives than just our own to consider.”
Roach followed her gaze to the dapple gray pegasus from Stable 10. “That there are,” he agreed.
A lump formed in Aurora’s throat at the same time that a shiver of pride rustled up her spine. She didn’t trust her voice to speak. When she had crossed the threshold of her home, Aurora thought she would be alone. There had been a gnawing fear in her gut that Equestria would be empty and she would have to turn back, empty-hooved. Instead, she had two new friends willing to help her save her home.
She couldn’t help but love them a little for it.
“Well then, I should pack a bag,” Ginger said, turning back toward the office door. “If there’s anything on display either of you would like, please take it.”
Aurora exchanged looks with Roach. 
With his help, Aurora picked out an assortment of armor pieces that offered a modest amount of protection. It had meant disassembling one of the mannequins in the display window and fighting with more than one buckle, but she left the shop feeling like she could take on the world. 
Four brown wraps of heavy leather hugged Aurora’s lower legs on buckled straps from her fetlocks up to her knees, reminding her of the safety gear the Stable provided to the engineers who often had to crawl into awkward cavities behind walls and machinery. A larger garment swept down her chest, between her forelegs and up over her shoulder blades just ahead of her wings. Three buckles along her back kept the heavy fabric snug against her barrel, adding a layer of protection around her heart. 	Roach called it a tactical vest and explained how the ceramic plates between the layers of black fabric would stop or at least help slow a bullet should a pony decide to send one her way. The price tag on the vest sat haughtily in the four figure range. She decided to drop two additional plates into her saddlebag just in case, and chose not to dwell on the possibility that someone might shoot at her.
For his part, Roach walked around the mannequins but didn’t take any armor. He stopped at the display featuring prewar outfits and lifted a set of Equestrian Army saddlebags off the hips of one of the forms. After transferring the contents of his worn bags to the new ones, he slung them over his hips with his teeth and nodded with quiet appreciation for their comfort. When Aurora asked why he wasn’t taking any armor, he smiled and shrugged. “Can’t get much deader than a ghoul,” and he left it at that.
Ginger’s hooves thumped back and forth across the ceiling as they shopped, occasionally punctuated with a hard thump of something being dropped to the floor followed by frustrated muttering neither could decipher. Roach was peering outside through the display windows when they heard her coming downstairs.
She emerged wearing a well-fitted black leather jacket that at first glance looked unimposing next to the armored mannequins. A few suspect bulges at the sides gave away the ceramic plating that shielded her vital organs, and the short hilt of a blade peeked from under her lapel as it shifted with her gait. With the exception of a compact black pistol holster strapped to her left hind leg, she carried little visible weaponry.
Aurora found herself following the holster up to a curving, coffee colored hip devoid of a cutie mark. She blinked confusion and averted her eyes before Ginger could catch her staring. 
“Traveling a little light?” Roach asked, noting her lack of saddlebags.
Ginger held a small ring of keys aloft in her magic and offered Roach a little shrug in response. “Old habits die hard,” she chirped.
She turned the deadbolt and opened the door. The bell above their heads jingled as the three of them filed out of Gussets & Garments. Ginger locked the door behind them and, after a brief pause, let the key ring hang from the door. If someone else wanted the business, they could have it. Whether she liked it or not, it was a closed chapter of her life now.
They stepped out into the street and Aurora marveled at how different the town was from the bustling marketplace she’d walked through the day before. The dusty road was empty save for a few errant carts stowed along the worn concrete lumps of what passed for curbs. An earth pony too busy to notice them stuck his head out of a corner store and set a broom against the side of the building before ducking inside for something else. Conversation trickled out of upstairs windows and the scent of morning meals wafted down to their noses. Aurora found herself smiling in spite of herself. Beaten down as Equestria was, there were still ponies that kept the old routines.
Old habits die hard.
Down the western stretch of highway, the same road she and Roach had just travelled, a short caravan of carts and ponies were already fading into the horizon toward Foal Mountain. The three of them waited to ensure the caravan was headed away before turning east. As they passed the covered wagon emblazoned with F&F Mercantile’s baudy logo, Aurora noticed the large square nut holding the front wheel to the axel. She slowed, then stopped and opened the flap of her saddlebag.
Roach bristled. “Aurora, what are you-”
She held a hoof to her lips and produced a modest pipe wrench from the tools she’d taken from Mechanical. With a few deft flicks of her hoof, she spun the jaws open and quickly set them around the nut. She stood on her hind legs and pulled hard. The wrench didn’t move. Then, slowly, a skin of rust crunched loose and the nut spun freely. Ginger caught the wrench in her magic as it clattered out of Aurora’s grip. Aurora grinned as the nut dropped from the axel and into her waiting wing.
Aurora stepped away from the cart, feeling the heft of steel in her wing as she twisted back and whipped the nut high into the air. It missed the rooftops by a scant few feet and disappeared from view. The three of them stared after it until they heard a faint thump.
She shuffled her wing against her side and faced Roach with a triumphant grin.
“Now we can leave.”







 

Behind the unbroken flow of dust-choked clouds, a hazy bright spot slowly rose toward the roof of the sky. Aurora found herself staring up at it from time to time until her eyelids rebelled and squeezed shut, leaving her with a strange blue afterimage of the sun in her vision.
Roach sighed. “Aurora, stop looking at the sun.”
“Sorry,” she chuckled, “it just doesn’t get old.”
“It’ll get old when you go blind, darling,” Ginger admonished, despite suppressing a smile of her own as Aurora darted her eyes left and right, crossing them on occasion and delighting in the simple pleasure of discovering something new. “I know a ghoul in New Appleloosa that would love you.”
Roach chuckled.
The joke went over her head but it didn’t bother her in the slightest. She blinked away the fading sunspot and turned her attention back to the road. The terrain west of Junction City had gradually changed as they travelled. The gentle hills of abandoned farmland had given way to higher crests of land that formed into low lying hills and bluffs that studded the area around them like a mountain range in miniature. Dead trees trunks studded their slopes like stubble. Here and there she would catch a glimpse of a ruined cabin tucked behind stands of deadwood, far from the highway. Most had collapsed into themselves over the years. The remaining were on the verge of doing the same but hadn’t quite gotten around to it. All of them were abandoned.
The highway had been cut through the low hills rather than built over the top of them, creating shallow walls of granite that rose and fell alongside them as they walked. Aurora brushed the tip of her wing against the exposed stone, following the beautiful patterns of sediment with quiet curiosity.
Ginger fell back alongside Aurora, letting Roach lead. She followed Aurora’s primaries as they hissed across the stone. “It must have been comforting to live beneath all of that stone,” she said.
“We never really thought about it like that,” Aurora admitted, tucking her wing. “But yeah, it was.”
“I don’t think I could do it. Living underground, crammed together with all that earth above me.” Ginger shuddered. “Didn’t anyone ever get claustrophobic?”
Aurora shook her head, then reconsidered. “Maybe? I’ve never gotten it, but sometimes we’d heard stories about someone who did. I don’t think pegasi were meant to live underground.”
Ginger’s eyes went to Aurora’s wing, her lip pulled back wryly. “I can’t imagine why you’d think that.”
Roach snorted.
Aurora flushed. “Point taken.”
They walked in amicable silence for a stretch. Guard rails that were little more than ribbons of rust lined the right lane of the highway as the terrain dipped toward a low spot between the hills. A break in the rail led their attention to the remains of a carriage lying at the bottom of the valley. A faint trail led from the road down to the carriage where countless travelers had gone to check the wreckage for anything of value. The three ponies continued on without disturbing it.
As the terrain rose and the highway cut through another length of hillside, Ginger noticed Aurora looking up at the edges of the bluff above them. The rock face was barely five meters from the road surface. She glanced at Aurora’s wings and tilted her head.
“Aurora, have you ever flown?” Ginger asked.
Roach looked over his shoulder at the two mares, concern plain on his face.
Aurora cocked her neck back and shook her head. “Never,” she said.
The unicorn lifted her nose up at the low rock face and looked back at Aurora. “This may be a good place to learn.”
Aurora back at the carved granite, her wings shuffling nervously against her sides as she considered.
“Hold on,” Roach said, slowing until the mares caught up with him. “She can’t just throw herself off a ledge and hope for the best.”
Ginger regarded him with feigned confusion. “How else is she supposed to learn?”
Roach opened his mouth, closed it, then exhaled. “Literally any other way. She could get hurt.”
“I’m right here,” Aurora said.
“What do you think is more dangerous for her?” Ginger asked, her voice challenging without hostility. A strand of fiery red mane fell across her eye. “Learning to fly, or not being able to at all?”
Aurora rolled her eyes.
“How about breaking her legs in the middle of nowhere?” Roach rumbled.
She gently chided him. “Roach, I can catch her when she falls. There’s no risk involved, considering pegasus instincts…”
The two turned at the sound of hooves clanging off the top of the guard rail and crunching in the dusty regolith on the other side. Aurora’s mind was decided and she wasted no time finding an eroded patch of granite that allowed her enough purchase to climb up to the top of the cut. Tall yellowed grass rasped against her knees in the light breeze as she made her way to the edge and peered down at her two companions. 
Roach’s opaque eyes were wide with worry, but he stayed silent. Ginger waited with open excitement.
Aurora opened her wings and felt a dormant part of her wake up at the sensation of air passing over her feathers. She shivered out of equal parts fear and excitement. Her mind went back to the crush of pegasi outside the overmare’s office. Bodies backing into her as more pressed her forward until her wings threw the air down beneath her and pulled her free. It would be like that. She knew it would. Her heart thundered like an unbalanced machine.
In the back of her head, Sledge’s voice scolded her. You’re overthinking this, Pinfeathers.
She jumped.
She flew like a stone.
For a brief moment, she was flying. Wind rushed beneath her wings and she never knew something could feel so right. It felt like the first seconds of rest that came after a double shift. A thing she had endured without for so long she had forgotten how good it would feel once she had it. Pegasi weren’t meant to be tied to the ground. They belonged in the sky.
Aurora was ecstatic. She let out a whoop even as gravity snatched her out of the air and dragged her down toward the pavement.
A warm aura wrapped her body and slowed her descent. Aurora’s heart skipped a beat at the familiar sensation of being handled with magic and her excitement was abruptly shoved aside by a rising sense of dread. But as her hooves neared the worn concrete, she could feel a difference in Ginger’s magic. There was a reassuring gentleness to it that allowed her pull herself away from the edge of panic. She touched down in front of Ginger and the aura faded.
Ginger beamed. “You forgot to flap your wings, darl-”
Aurora swept her into a tight hug that nearly knocked the wind out of the unicorn. Her wings draped over the mare’s back as she squeezed her eyes shut, unable to find the right words to show her appreciation. She had flown. Very briefly, and very technically, but she’d felt it in her bones and it counted.
Ginger struggled to turn her neck around far enough to shoot Roach a startled look that amounted to help me. The changeling wrinkled his nose in mock consideration before shaking his head with a grin. The encumbered unicorn stared daggers at him.
After several long seconds, Aurora loosened her grip and stepped back. She didn’t catch the fleeting moment it took Ginger to compose herself, her mind already tracking back to the road ahead and the many cuts that it gouged into the hills. Her blue eyes glittered at the sight of the higher cliffs and the prospect of putting more wind under her wings.
“I’ve got to try that again!” she blurted. Her wings shivered with anticipation as she danced in place on her hooftips.
It took Ginger a moment to realize she was being asked permission. She couldn’t keep the amusement off her face. “Maybe use your wings this time?”
Aurora felt like a filly and she didn’t care one bit. She kept up with Roach and Ginger as they continued down the highway, climbing up anything resembling an embankment in order to reach the next bluff. She leaped and Ginger caught. She flapped her wings and discovered she could slow her fall, but not exactly stop it. It took several attempts before she bolted off the edge of a high cliff at speed and discovered gliding.
“Holy shit!” she laughed. Her wings cut through the air as she descended toward the opposite side of the highway, stopping short of the rock face with the help of Ginger. Sweat shone against her hips as she spun on her hooves and attacked the next path up the ridge.
“Now you’ve started something,” Roach chuckled, his concerns set aside for the moment as he watched Aurora throw herself off yet another cliff. She glided for several meters before losing momentum like a paper airplane.
Ginger laughed soundlessly as she lowered Aurora to the ground, only to watch her shoot back toward the path uphill. She cracked her neck and eyed the sky for the next jump. “I’ve never seen anyone this happy before,” she said, careful not to let her voice carry up to the ridge looming high above them.
A flicker of wings and a sudden gout of dust exploded off the edge of the cliff preceded Aurora’s outstretched hooves. Ginger prepared her magic for the descent but Aurora pumped her wings as she crossed overhead, propelling her out Ginger’s reach and sending her shooting across the other side of the cut. They heard a panicked curse, the crunch of underbrush and then nothing.
Roach’s ears pinned back and his eyes went wide. “Aurora!”
Ginger seized Roach by the barrel and all but hurled him up the cliff face. Roach uttered an indignant noise as he clamored to get his hooves on solid ground and galloped through the high grass. He saw a wide gray wing lift out of the grass and slap back down at it, throwing dust his way along with the sound of laughter. Aurora had come tumbling to a halt atop a wilted shrub with her legs aimed skyward.
Her eyes lit up when she spotted Roach. “Did you see that?” she yelled victoriously. “I flew! I ate dirt but I flew!” 
Drunk on euphoria, she shot all four of her hooves out and whooped at the clouds before dissolving into a fit of giggles. Ginger was winded as she slid to a stop next to Roach, her short mane a frazzled mess that hung over half her face. Her fear evaporated once it was clear Aurora was fine.
Roach hooked his foreleg around Aurora’s and pulled her to her hooves with a grunt. A few broken bits of twig clung to her backside as she checked herself over. She flicked them away with her tail and flashed them a toothy grin.
“You’re a natural,” Ginger managed, winded from the exertion of catching the pegasus over and over again. “Maybe we could stick a pin in it for now? I haven’t used this much magic in years.”
Roach scanned the sky. “It’s almost noon. Let’s take a break and figure out where it is we’re going.” he said. He lifted his chin toward Aurora. “Congratulations.”
Her wings shuffled against her sides and she couldn’t help but smile as they made camp at the top of the ridge. They busied themselves with the simple acts of living; routines which felt both foreign and welcome to Aurora. Roach retrieved four shriveled strips of what resembled cured meat from his saddlebag and offered a two to each of the mares. Aurora tucked her nose into her pack and withdrew three plastic bottles of water. Roach declined the water but Ginger took hers eagerly, taking a moment to appreciate the clarity before removing the plastic cap and taking a sip.
“You’re not thirsty?” Aurora asked Roach.
He shook his head politely. “One of the few perks of being a ghoul.”
“Roach, quit being cryptic,” Ginger scolded, and turned to Aurora. “Ghouls don’t need to eat or drink. The radiation keeps them alive.”
Roach bowed his head deferentially.
Ginger nibbled the end of her jerky and downed it with a swig of water. “Speaking of, you should be checking your exposure more often,” she said, gesturing to Aurora’s Pip-Buck. “You haven’t looked at it since we left Junction City.”
Aurora held a strip of probably-meat between her lips and tapped the button on her Pip-Buck that brought up a display of her general health. Several notifications stacked atop one another with heart rate and blood pressure warnings. She suppressed a grin and cleared the messages. At the bottom of the screen, a thin bar that tracked her radiation exposure had filled by a scant few percent. The radial gauge to the right of the display showed only the faintest background radiation. Aurora leaned toward Ginger and showed her the screen.
Ginger squinted at the dosage meter and made a noncommittal face. “The Rad-X you took yesterday is helping, but keep an eye on it.”
Roach leaned forward to look at her Pip-Buck. She turned it so he could see it better. “We’ll need to pick up some RadAway at Blinder’s Bluff. That’s our next stop, about two days east if we stick to the road.”
Ginger made a noise that had nothing to do with the strangely sour taste of Roach’s jerky. “Blinder’s Bluff,” she said with open disdain. “Why the Steel Rangers let a raider settlement continue to operate is beyond me.”
“Because every cap they save not fighting raiders is a cap they can spend pushing against the Enclave,” Roach said.
“Who?” Aurora asked around her jerky.
Roach paused for a moment and looked at Ginger, who only tilted her head with a shrug. He had the floor. The changeling pondered before venturing into an explanation. “The Steel Rangers are… complicated. They started showing up across Equestria shortly after the bombs fell and their mission from the start has been to seek out and secure any prewar technology they can get their hooves on. What they don’t use to spread their influence they lock away, and whatever they don't lock away they destroy to keep other ponies from using. The Rangers like to claim that it's to keep us from repeating the same mistakes as our ancestors, but most ponies are bright enough to recognize that they're doing it to eliminate competition.
“As for the Enclave,” Roach’s muzzle wrinkled like he’d eaten something sour, “They’re the descendants of the pegasi who betrayed all of us at the end of the war and continue to claim to be the last surviving arm of Equestria’s prewar government. They’re the reason nobody has seen the sky in over two hundred years. The pegasi drown it in clouds in the name of self-preservation while the ponies stuck on the surface get barely enough sunlight to grow food. They also have a quasi-religious fixation on "purity." Everything the war created - ghouls, mutants, weird strains of corn, you name it - they seek to eradicate in the name of cleansing Equestria. The only reason the Steel Rangers haven’t knocked them out of the sky is that the Enclave beat them to the punch by finding stockpiles of Equestrian military tech.
“Both sides have been at a stalemate for over a century.” Roach scanned the ground around him until he found a dried stick. With the stick held between his teeth, he scraped the grass out of the dirt between the three ponies and drew a rough square in the soil. He drew an arrow indicating north and scraped a hole in the center of the square. He looked at Aurora and indicated the hole. “Canterlot,” he said.
Ginger frowned at the crude map but kept her criticism to herself. Aurora opened the map on her Pip-Buck and zoomed out as far as it would allow. She offered Roach the map but he waved it away. “This is quicker,” he said, though she doubted it.
Roach drew a wide circle around Canterlot, encompassing nearly a third of the map. “This is a simplified version, but the Enclave controls most of the territory surrounding Canterlot,” he said, tapping the circle. “Outside of that, the Steel Rangers tend to search for tech in the coastal cities and some of the prewar population centers further inland. The Enclave keeps the Rangers away from the seat of government and the Rangers keep the Enclave away from the metropolises. The lines barely ever move anymore and most ponies know not to openly declare for one side or the other.
“It’s why raider settlements like Blinder’s Bluff can keep chugging along like they do. The Rangers and Enclave need working settlements to feed them tech and the smaller factions need assurances that their claims will be enforced,” Roach said.
Ginger rolled her eyes and snapped her last bit of jerky in two, popping the smaller half into her mouth. “Your version is a little sanitized, don’t you think?”
Roach shrugged and checked the sun.
“So where do we stand,” Aurora said, gesturing at the dirt map, “in all this?”
“We don’t,” Ginger said. “Both sides are poison and they’re much larger than what we’ve set out to do. The best course of action is to keep our heads down and let the titans pit the little factions against each other like they always have.”
Roach leaned forward and tapped the outer ring controlled by the Steel Rangers. “From here to Fillydelphia, we’re in Steel Ranger territory. We don’t need to worry about the Enclave.”
“Except that most ponies will assume Aurora is an Enclave pegasi and the Steel Rangers would rather see your head on a spike than on your neck,” Ginger pointed out.
Aurora felt indignation rising in her chest. She finished the last slug of water in her bottle and said, “But I’m not Enclave.”
Roach held up a placating hoof. “Don’t worry. If the Rangers wasted resources assuming every pegasi was Enclave, they’d have emptied their coffers decades ago. As long as you don’t walk around claiming you are Enclave, nobody will bother you.”
“I’m more concerned about you, Roach,” Ginger said. “The Steel Rangers don’t take such a pragmatic approach with ghouls or changelings, or in your case both.”
“It is what it is,” he said, wiping his hoof over the dirt until the map was scoured away. “If push comes to shove, I can become somebody else for a little while.”
Ginger and Aurora frowned at him for distinctly different reasons.
“You said you lost your magic when you were trapped in the tunnel,” Aurora said.
“I said my magic changed,” Roach corrected, his eyes planted firmly in the dirt between them. “It never went away.”
“He means to say,” Ginger said pointedly, “that his magic has a tendency to dose everything around him with lethal amounts of radiation, which is why he doesn’t use it near his friends.”
Roach remained still, but his jadeite eyes flickered annoyance at Ginger. “Thanks,” he said.
Aurora shifted uncomfortably in the grass. The conversation had darkened quickly and she couldn’t help but feel trapped at the center of it.
“Listen,” she said, tamping down her own misgivings that Roach had kept quiet about the danger his magic posed, “if we’re going to do this together, we need to be honest with each other. If not, we might as well pack up and go back to where we came from.”
She saw Ginger look away, the corner of her lip pinched between her teeth. Roach stared past the dirt at some distant point below.
“That doesn’t mean we need to tell each other everything,” she added. The two ponies visibly relaxed. She dipped her head to the side and caught Roach’s eye, “But I kind of don’t want my grave to glow in the dark, you know?”
Roach snorted despite himself, and Aurora heard a quiet puff of levity from Ginger.
“If it’s any consolation…” Ginger began, but was cut off when Roach lifted his hoof in the air. For a split second she considered laying into him but before she could start, her ear twitched down toward the road. Aurora’s did the same and she turned to better hear the strange noise that strummed up from the road.
From the roadway, the quick jaunt of a deftly played guitar rose to their ears. The three ponies cautiously approached the ledge, just close enough to see the eastern stretch of road from which the music was approaching.


No one dared to ask his business, no one dared to make a slip.


The stranger there among them had a big iron on his hip.


Big iron on his hip.


 

Bobbing toward them a few hooves above the broken road was a lone metal sphere with an array of antenna splayed behind it. Streaks of rust marred the robot’s dull finish but it didn’t seem capable of caring. It broadcast a steady stream of music from its single, tinny speaker.
“Spritebot,” Roach said with relief. “They’re mostly harmless unless they’re broadcasting Enclave propaganda.”
A bright dent on the top of its shell suggested someone had taken a pot shot at it recently. The little robot passed through the cut in the road oblivious to its audience. 


Now the stranger started talkin’, made it plain to folks around.


Was a Marizonia ranger, wouldn’t be too long--


Pop.


 

The music cut off like a switch had been thrown and the little spritebot stopped below them. It didn’t turn to acknowledge them, but the voice that flowed from its speaker was feminine and dulcet.
“Hide,” it said.
> Chapter 7: The Cabin
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


 


*pop*


 


--allions had tried to take him, twenty stallions had made a slip


Twenty one would be the ranger with the big iron on his hip


Big iron on his hip.


 

The spritebot resumed its musical broadcast without skipping a beat. The lonely tune of a guitar mingled with the singer’s voice, the words reflecting off the opposing granite walls like a conversation in an empty corridor. Aurora, Roach and Ginger watched the little metal ball shrink eastward until its distant song was swept away from them on the wind.
“Okay,” Aurora said, breaking the silence. “I get the feeling that doesn’t happen very often out here.”
Roach stared after the spritebot, frowning. “Nope.”
“It’s a first,” Ginger added dubiously. “I don’t like it. Hide? Hide from what?”
“I’m not waiting to find out,” Roach said. He turned from the ridge and walked to the flattened circle of yellowed grass where they had camped. Aurora and Ginger followed.
They slipped into their saddlebags while Roach surveyed their surroundings. Aurora followed his gaze and tried to see the rolling terrain how she envisioned he saw it. There were no convenient doors to duck behind or hallways to use as detours. Everything she could see, from the thin grass atop the bluffs to the sparse trees that dotted the shallow valleys between, were too open. Too exposed. 
For her entire life she had lived in a maze of narrow corridors and thick walls that a pony could hide behind should the need arise. Aurora had known the layout of her Stable like the back of her hoof and used it with expert precision to avoid the ponies she knew to have an open work order with Mechanical. Get too close to one of them and they’re apt to try sweet-talking an unwitting pegasi out of the hallway in the hopes of skipping the queue. The face those ponies made when they saw her coming was identical to the last. Expectant, polite and a hint of impatience below the surface. Out of sheer necessity, she had become an expert at disappearing when the need arose.
Out here, not so much.
The ground dipped away from the ridge into a bowl of dry grasses studded with a few dead trees, none of which were grouped together or thick enough to hide behind. She looked to Roach whose jaw was set in a deepening frown. His scarred black ears were perked westward where the highway sloped gently upward before disappearing behind itself. The hurried clack of hooves scraped toward the top of the slope.
“Get down,” Roach growled.
They flattened themselves against the grass barely a yard from the edge of the ridge as the approaching hooves drew closer. Aurora shimmied up to the edge, hoping the grass would provide some camouflage, until she could make out the crest of the road.
A yellow mare bolted over the hill and galloped toward them, her ginger mane flapping in the wind. Even at a distance, the bloodstains on her back legs were evident. Her face was streaked with tears and she gasped every breath as she ran. A ripped and tattered red plaid shirt clung to her shoulders, barely. As the earth pony drew closer, Aurora could see the tattered strips of tape that wrapped the base of her tail. The mare struggled to keep her tail pinned protectively between her legs and she threw more than a few terrified glances over her shoulder as she fled.
“Help me! Please!” the mare cried as she descended into the cut.
Roach and Ginger lay stock-still in the grass, seemingly content to watch this mare drift away alone and forgotten. Aurora felt her skin bristle. She took a breath and opened her mouth to call out to the lone mare but a coffee colored hoof cupped her muzzle before she could say the words.
“Don’t,” Ginger hissed. “She’s bait.”
Her eyes flashed outrage at Ginger but the unicorn shook her head with short jerks, her eyes begging for her trust. Aurora exhaled with a scowl.
On the road, the yellow mare had slowed from a gallop to a trot. She turned her head left and right like she had expected to find someone. 
“Hello? I need help!” she called out. She sniffed and slowed further, scanning the ridges with an unusual intensity. Her eyes passed over them but she either didn’t see them or she had and was too distracted for it to register. The bloodied mare stopped, turned around and waited for several seconds before cursing at the westward road. “Brindle, you blind cocksucker.”
They watched the mare circle back several yards, passing underneath them a second time and whipping her tail irritably at the air. Aurora noticed the blood on her hind legs didn’t stem from any visible wounds. It was as if she’d been painted with it. The mare sat down in the middle of the road, put the tip of her cracked hoof against her lips and blew a piercing whistle that would have flattened Aurora’s ears if they weren’t already pinned back. She sat down in the middle of the road and produced a small fillet knife from her tattered shirt. Despite lacking wings or magic, she handled the blade with practiced ease. She flicked the flat side of the knife against her hind legs, removing the bulk of someone else’s blood until all that was left were ruddy stains the color of fresh scabs.
She mentally kicked herself. Ginger had been right. So had the spritebot. Aurora tried not to think about what they would be doing had Ginger not been quicker to stop her from calling out. The mare loitering on the road below them wiped her blade against her hip, smearing blood over the place where she’d just cleaned it. It wasn’t her own blood.
Aurora chastised herself and pressed herself flatter against the dirt. She needed to start being more careful.
Hooves - several sets of them - and the grinding crunch of iron rimmed wheels on flaking pavement rumbled from behind the hill. First quiet, then steadily louder until the first bizarrely dressed ponies strode into view. A few wore leather jackets and dusters in varying states of decay while the majority of the rest wore a strange variety of prewar formal wear that might have looked nice had they not been subjected to two hundred years of neglect. Colorful manes had been styled into mohawks, buzz cuts and everything else a rusty pair of scissors and moment of insanity could conjure up. 	Aurora would have laughed had the growing line of unicorns and earth ponies not been so heavily armed. Carts and wagons rolled over the hill one after another, lumbering behind the pairs of unarmed and unarmored ponies who pulled them. As the caravan turned into a convoy, she realized the ponies in leathers regarded the ponies wearing tattered formal wear with open disdain. The disharmony between the two was impossible to miss, but it was clear each side was tolerating the other. Whether it had to do with the wagons they were escorting or some future goal was anyone’s guess. The signs of a grudging pact were as obvious in the wasteland as they were in a Stable. Tribalism was alive and well in Equestria.
She didn’t have a frame of reference for the convoy’s size, but judging by the concern on both Ginger and Roach’s face, it was unusually large. As the head of the line approached the cut, and the knife-twirling mare sitting inside it, the last of the carts were being hauled over the crest of the hill. The convoy had to be at least a quarter mile long. Over two dozen covered wagons and a scattering of open carts slithered down the concrete like a serpent with guns for scales.
“Nothing again?” a voice shouted from the front of the convoy. A tall stallion with a patchy blue coat in black leathers was watching the opposing ridges as they passed into the cut. 
Aurora felt a tug on her vest and scooted back, away from view. She looked at Ginger in time to see her mouth a question to Roach.
Run?
He shook his head. No. Too many eyes.
Aurora could hear her pulse in her ears. They were trapped. She wanted to track down that spritebot and put a dent in it for not telling them where to hide. 
The sound of the caravan rose up above the lip of the bluff along with the voice of the yellow mare below.
“Brindle needs his fucking eyes checked. I’m getting sick of these false alarms.”
The stallion did a decent job of keeping most of his exasperation in check, but some leeched through. “You’re sure you saw a pegasus?”
A third voice, a stallion with a reedy voice bordering on a whine, piped up defensively. “Yes! He was jumping off the bluffs and climbing back up. He looked like he’d just shot up on psycho. I saw it.”
“Just like you saw the alicorn?”
“Oh fuck you, Lemon, that was a joke that everyone got except for you.”
“Your jokes get me put on runs, you ass. If you don’t start using your eyes, I’m liable to cut the damn--”
The blue stallion cut them off as if they hadn’t been speaking at all. “If either of you opens your mouth again I’ll put a bullet in it. Brindle, you’re off lookout. Give Lemon your kit and report to the rear of the column. Your people have plenty of ‘food’ back there. Go throw some salt on it before it stinks.”
Brindle’s voice was acidic. “The Epicurians don’t waste their food, Raider.”
“If I wanted a cannibal’s opinion on waste, I’d ask a ghoul. Back of the column, now.”
“We are opportunistic carnivores and--”
Brindle’s wheedling voice was cut short by the crack of a gunshot.
Aurora pressed her wings against the sides of her head and dug her face into the dirt to stifle the sickened noise rising in her throat. She saw Delphi laying on the floor behind her toppled chair, her blood trickling down the curves of mahogany molding. She felt someone’s leg on her back and vaguely understood that Roach was trying to comfort her.
The conversation from the road didn’t pick back up. Hooves plodded eastward while rimmed wheels crunched across concrete. Aurora focused on the smell of the dry soil and the texture of grass crushed against her muzzle. When someone in the convoy made a passing comment about Brindle as they passed, she concentrated on her breathing. 
In. Out. 
In. Out.
The convoy passed without anyone seeing them. Nobody climbed the ridge to check. The only one who believed Brindle was dead. The rest moved steadily forward to whichever destination had inspired cooperation between raiders and cannibals.
As the sounds of the convoy faded, she became acutely aware of how pitiful she must look. She settled her wings back against her sides, the steady weight of Desperate Times pressing on her right, and lifted her nose until she could see the cloudy sky past the top of the ridge. Roach’s hoof pulled away as she composed herself.
“I’ll never get used to that,” she said dismally.
Roach’s voice was unusually gentle. “Decent ponies don’t.”
She started to sit up, and when nobody moved to stop her she leaned back and turned to see the last few wagons of the convoy sliding around a bend in the road. She scooted past Ginger and lifted the overmare’s rifle to her cheek, tipping her head to peer through the scope. It took her several seconds to relocate the tail end of the convoy.
The last wagon trundled along, guarded by two ponies in gowns that were torn so short they could be mistaken as skirts. The flaps of the wagon hung open enough for her to see the red and pink masses of butchered meat inside. Her stomach twisted but she forced herself to look. Pieces of bodies had been skinned, stacked and packed thick with preserving salt. The rear of the cart was stained brown with old blood.
Ginger put her hoof on the rifle and mercifully pulled it toward the ground. Aurora let her, but her eyes stayed on the receding line of wagons until they disappeared around the bend.
“We should avoid the roads for a while,” Roach said. 
Ginger’s eyes lingered on Aurora before she nodded and turned away from the ridge where, presumably, Brindle’s body still lay. She flicked her mane back behind her ear and stared out at the small bluffs that studded the otherwise smooth, grassy lowlands. Highway 51 was, in a literal sense, a direct route to Fillydelphia. Picking through terrain better fitted for prewar hikers than postwar travelers would be difficult.
“Aurora,” Roach said. He was holding out her saddlebags for her. His were already slung over his hips. She slid her wing away from the rifle and accepted her bags with it.
“Thanks,” she said, depositing them across her hip.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, forcing a smile across his cracked muzzle. “You’ve got the only map so you get to navigate.”
She looked out to the miles of grassy bluffs and forested valleys that reached for the horizon, then down to the Pip-Buck strapped to her foreleg. She wiped the screen against her vest to clear the dirt away and opened up the mapping tool. As she swept the map up the line that delineated Highway 51, she noticed a new notification blinking in the margin of the screen. It simply said: UPDATE AVAILABLE. She tapped it, and her Pip-Buck stuttered. She could feel it chitter gently against her leg as it processed… something? Suddenly the screen went dark and two lines of florescent green text appeared.

 


DOWNLOADING UPDATES … 1 / 2,102


 

“Well…” she said, but didn’t know how to finish the sentence. She settled on, “shit.”
“Something wrong, Aurora?” Ginger asked.
She tapped the screen, but nothing happened. The Pip-Buck continued to process while ignoring its owner completely. “It locked me out,” she said.
Roach held out a hoof and turned Aurora’s leg toward him so he could read the screen. The Pip-Buck stuttered, and the 1 switched to a 2. He whistled when he saw the grand total of updates still pending. “Why didn’t the Stable update anything?”
She took back her leg. “We didn’t know there were still updates. Maybe the landslide had something to do with it.”
“Maybe. Either way, we can’t wait for that to finish. I want to get some distance between us and the road before another one of those convoys spots us. Come on.” Roach began picking his way down the hill. Ginger turned to follow, but Aurora hesitated.
She stepped toward the ridge and peered over the edge. A dark pool of blood thickened on the warm asphalt but there was no body to indicate why it was there. Brindle’s corpse was no doubt heaped somewhere in the butcher’s cart. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was responsible for that. Logically, she knew she shouldn’t feel sorry for a cannibal. Brindle had sent Lemon to kill her and had died because of it. That was the definition of justice, but Aurora was surprised how hard it was for her to square that in her mind.
Did the wasteland turn ponies like Brindle and Cider into monsters, or were they inevitably going to take that path on their own? Why hadn’t Roach or Ginger gone down a similar route?
She blew out a breath and decided to leave the philosophy to the ponies who had the brains for it. It only made her head hurt. Brindle was dead and she wasn’t. She’d hidden from hundreds of raiders and cannibals without being spotted. And spritebots wandered the roads dispensing lifesaving advice to its travelers.
She turned to follow her companions.
That was good enough for her.







The longer she walked, the more Aurora found herself appreciating the strange beauty that surrounded her. Every pegasus in Stable 10 had been told since foalhood that the outside world had been scoured clean by the balefire bombs. They had every reason to expect Equestria to be a cracked and desolate wasteland devoid of flora and fauna alike. The Stables contained the seeds to rejuvenate the world once the five-hundred year shelter period ended.
But Equestria wasn’t dead. Changed, yes. Struggling, definitely.
Dead? Hardly.
Leaves brushed over Aurora’s sides as she followed Roach and Ginger through a pair of scraggly shrub bushes that hadn’t tangled together quite enough to steal the diffuse sunlight away from the thin grasses beneath them. Trees straddled the bottom of a steep bluff. Most were dormant but a few had thrown taproots down deep enough to find the area’s water table. Their leaves varied from dim yellow to vibrant green depending on how well they fared. Most leaned toward yellow but despite being under constant stress, the trees clung to their leaves with a tenacity.
They passed under the shade of one of those trees and Aurora breathed deeply, sampling the cooler air. Her hooves rasped through thin grass that somehow survived in the hard packed soil. The valleys between the bluffs weren’t verdant by any means, but they were a far better picture than the blasted hellscape Stable 10 had painted.
She checked her Pip-Buck.


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She groaned. They had been walking for the better part of the afternoon. With the highway too much of a risk and no map to follow, they had resorted to navigating the sparsely wooded lowlands while staying some approximation of “near” the main eastern artery. The gentle hills looked inviting from pavement but once the uneven dirt was underhoof, the hills weren’t so gentle. They didn’t even have the decency to be steep. They just never ended. Aurora’s calf muscles burned like open blisters, but it was a pain she was used to. Years of hauling equipment, fighting rusted nuts and throwing her wings into work intended for hooves taught her everything she needed to know about pain. It didn’t mean she enjoyed it, but she could bully her way through it enough to enjoy the scenery.
In front of her, Ginger levitated a half bottle of water to her lips and took a pull before drifting it back toward Aurora. She took it in her wing and tipped it back.
Burning legs be damned. The view was worth it.
She caught herself staring and quickly averted her eyes, her neck and face flushed. What the hell was she doing? She held the bottle out to Ginger who floated it out of her wing, seemingly unaware of Aurora’s attention. The bottle slid into Roach’s waiting hoof, was capped and stowed in his saddlebag.
“You two are quiet,” he commented, sparing a glance over his shoulder at the two mares.
Ginger nodded, but didn’t seem willing to break the silence. She’d been lost in thought since the convoy.
Aurora tipped her chin at Roach to pull his focus from Ginger. “Sorry, just thinking,” she said.
They stepped over a fallen log one by one. Their hooves thumped over the hollow wood like a foreign drum.
“About?” Roach probed.
Aurora lifted an eyebrow and smirked at him. Of all the ponies she knew, Roach was the last one she’d expect to be uncomfortable with silence. She looked up at the heavy branches that hung overhead, a few of which were still thick with leaves. “About home,” she said, and decided to follow that thread. “About whether it’s right to keep ponies locked in Stables when the world outside is already inhabitable.”
Roach mulled over her words for a thoughtful moment before asking, “What do you think would happen if Stable 10 opened long enough for the residents to pack up and leave?”
A tendril of ground ivy caught around Aurora’s hoof and gave way with a gentle snap. She shook the plant away, her eyes pinched with thought. “Are we assuming the landslide isn’t blocking the exit?”
“Sure,” he said. “They all trot out into Equestria like it’s an early Reclamation Day. What happens?”
Aurora could sense Roach had a point to make, and he expected her to meet him halfway. If he weren’t a prewar ghoul, she would have assumed he was related to Sledge. “I think they’d have a hard time adjusting,” she said.
Roach winced a little. “Stable dwellers don’t usually get time to adjust,” he said. “More often than not, they come across slavers or raiders before they get a chance to find a settlement that’ll protect them.”
“Ah,” Aurora said. She let the tenuous hope of throwing open her Stable’s door being a solution drop into her mental shredder. A dead branch furrowed a line through the hair along her withers and she twitched away from it with a little irritation.
Ginger’s hoof struck a pebble and it skittered ahead of her, catching Aurora’s eye. It clattered against two strangely identical stones before lodging itself under a patch of weeds. Ginger didn’t seem to notice but Aurora found herself frowning confusion at the ground as she passed over it. Jagged bits of granite jutted out from under ivy and dotted the bare dirt in uniform little lumps.
“That’s… weird,” she said. “Hey guys?”
Roach and Ginger turned around. Aurora plucked a bit of stone from the forest floor and held it in her wing for them to see. Roach took it and looked down at the hundreds of stones embedded in the dirt just like it. 
“Gravel,” he said, but Aurora only looked at him like he’d made the word up. He clarified. “Crushed stones ponies used back in the day to make cheap roads. Might be worth following.”
“It hasn’t been touched in years, probably longer. I’d say it’s absolutely worth following,” Ginger chimed. Whatever thoughts had been weighing on her earlier had been set aside. Her neck craned from side to side, already trying to discern a direction from the thin smattering of granite. Her eyes focused on something distant. “There.”
She pointed northeast where bits of stone littered the ground like breadcrumbs in a gentle rightward curve. Unbidden, Ginger began to follow it. Roach offered Aurora a questioning glance that she shrugged at in response. The two of them fell in behind the unicorn.
“This is a lot like the forest outside the Stable,” she said.
“Minus the carriages,” Roach added.
“Yeah, I like this one better.”
The road twisted through the woods for several miles, disappearing in and out of sight seemingly at random. They had to stop and backtrack more than once when they realized they’d lost the trail. It led them through a large break in the trees that was awash with what looked like a scraggly variant of wheat crop. The road cut across the field in a straight line and disappeared back into the treeline. Jutting out of the forest stood a high hill roughly a half mile wide. The side facing them had sheared away centuries ago, exposing a sheet of gray stone.
Partially obscured by trees that had grown unchecked around the foot of the bluff, Aurora could make out the dark pitch of a shingled roof.
“I think that’s where we’re going,” she said.
“Mmhm,” Roach answered.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and caught the wistful smile on his face. When he saw her looking at him, he pointed his horn at the old rooftop. “It’s a cabin. I used to rent one on Saddle Lake during the summer for my--” his lip twitched and he stopped talking.
Ginger deliberately slowed until the two caught up to her. She whispered something into Roach’s ear and the changeling cleared his throat and nodded before trotting ahead of them. They watched him go for a long while. The trees on the other side of the clearing wrapped his dark chitin like an embrace.
Aurora stared after him. “Is he okay?”
“He just needs a few minutes alone,” Ginger said. “What about you? Are you okay?”
The question caught Aurora off guard. Had Ginger seen her staring earlier? She felt the blood seeping up her neck. She cobbled together an explanation to brush the question aside, but when she turned to look at Ginger she didn’t see accusation on the mare’s face she expected.
Aurora hesitated and glanced back to where Roach had disappeared between the trees. She felt the conversation veering toward terrain she didn’t want to revisit. She gave Ginger her best grin and hoped it looked authentic. “My legs feel like they’re about to fall off and I almost got us caught by roving cannibals, but I’m actually doing pretty good.”
Ginger offered a half smile that told Aurora she wasn’t buying it. The unicorn looked out at the wild field of wheat and took a deep breath. “I’m only asking because Cider had a reputation for… taking liberties.”
Her hackles went up. “I’m fine,” she said.
Aurora stood two inches shorter than Ginger. The pained sadness on the unicorn’s face made it feel like two feet.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she added, and hated how much it felt like an admission. Hated how Ginger nodded in response to it. It was an admission. She could already see where the conversation was going. The assumption that she had let Cider get farther than he had would force her to clarify exactly what he’d done, first to Ginger and then to Roach. 
She grit her teeth, angry at herself and not understanding why.
“If there’s anything to talk about,” Ginger said gently, “just know I’m willing to listen when you’re ready.”
Aurora recognized the out Ginger was giving her and almost took it. The words to make the entire inquisition go away were in her throat but she wasn’t able to speak them out loud. Something about the way Ginger spoke promised discretion that she assumed wouldn’t be an option.
She chewed her lip. “Thanks,” and added, “I’ll think about it.”
Ginger’s eyes softened and she looked forward with a reserved smile.
They passed under the arch of the treeline and the gravel road began to gently rise up the slope of the hill. It took them several more minutes of walking before the speckles of gravel gave way to a decorative cobblestone driveway. Time and weather had slowly pulled the bricks downhill, causing the pattern to buckle in several places. 	They navigated the uneven cobbles toward a wide veranda that encircled the aging structure. Aurora wasn’t sure what to think about the cabin. The steep triangular roof and the wrap-around porch made it look larger than it was. The large interlocking timbers of its four walls were bleached silver where they weren’t streaked with mint green patches of dry moss. A dead tree reclined across the side of the cabin facing the bluff, partially collapsing the veranda and gashing the roof open. The sturdy wall, however, still stood.
A strong breeze rolled through the canopy of dead and living trees. A few dried leaves skittered across the cobblestones in the wind.
Aurora spotted Roach sitting on a porch swing near the front door whose chain was well past the point of squeaking and deep into the years of rust crunching against rust. His hind legs swung gently beneath him and ruddy powder snowed onto his shoulder from the rusted chain above. 
He glanced up at the two mares and tipped his head to the open front door. “You can head inside. It’s safe.”
Ginger touched Roach on the knee and smiled sadly at him before stepping inside.
Aurora looked after Ginger and back to Roach. She wanted to say something soothing but her mind drew a blank. This was her father’s strength, not hers. Everything that came to mind felt cheap and recycled like the sympathy letters sent to her terminal the day after her mother died. She remembered how much it hurt to read I’m sorry for your loss and My condolences until the words lost their meaning.
He eyed her as she lingered. “I’m alright,” he said.
She scuffed her hoof against the weathered planks. “You and me both.”
Roach smiled ruefully. “Want to talk about it?”
“No,” she said. “You?”
“Not yet,” he said. “You should go inside. It really is something.”
She looked through the doorway and had to admit she was interested in what she saw. “I’ll see you inside.”
Aurora stepped over the threshold and into a living room from a different time.
The interior had been beautiful once. The ceiling vaulted up with the pitch of the roof and decorative timbers crossed the gap like ribs. Two ceiling fans hung from the beams to Aurora’s left and right, their press board blades long since rotted to powder. 	A wide fireplace built from heavy stones and mortar climbed the sealed wooden wall on Aurora’s right. A narrow metal rack held a neat pile of quartered wood still waiting to be burned. Two armchairs caked in dust faced the fireplace while a wide leather couch faced a floor television on the opposite wall. 
Aurora noticed that everything was covered in a thick layer of grime, not just the chairs. She looked over to Ginger who had opened the glass window of a barrister bookcase next to the television set. Her hoofprints let patches of dark slate flooring peek through the dust. Aurora swiped her own hoof across the floor, revealing a feathered pattern of charcoals and grays. Whoever lived here had bits to spare.
“This place is beautiful,” she said.
“It really is a treasure,” Ginger said. She closed the bookcase window and stepped over to a dark three-sided curio cabinet full of strange knick-knacks that rattled when she pulled open the glass door. Aurora joined Ginger while she perused the shelves.
Black and white framed photos stood alongside dozens of wooden carvings. Most resembled animals that must have lived in the area. A shaggy bear stood up on its hind legs, its tiny mouth open with a series of nicks cut out for teeth. Something with antlers that Aurora didn’t know the name of stared peacefully into the middle distance.
She picked up a picture frame, careful not to bump the carvings around it, and looked at the two ponies frozen mid-stride in dance. A stallion with a handsome streak of gray in his black mane dipped a mare whose face bore the first wrinkles of age, embarrassed laughter or both. They were too busy enjoying themselves to notice the picture being taken. Aurora squinted and saw that their cutie marks were similar. On the grinning mare’s hip was a pie missing a slice. The stallion’s bore the slice.
Aurora nudged Ginger, brushing dust off the frame with her wingtip. “Look at this.”
Ginger closed a small whittling knife hovering in her magic and looked at the photo. Her smile matched the dipping mare. “Oh, that’s lovely. Matching cutie marks were exceedingly rare back then. Even more so now.”
Aurora set the photo back into the curio next to an empty brass pedestal green with tarnish. “Do you think they owned this cabin?”
“Them?” Ginger shook her head, still admiring the photo. “No, color photography was around well before the war. This was an old picture even back then. I’d put my caps on those two being grandparents or great-grandparents to the ponies who lived here. Plenty of time for one of their descendants to find a talent for whittling something other than pies.” Ginger chuckled at her own joke and turned her attention back to admire the small collection of whittling knives on the bottom shelf.
Aurora stepped back from the curio and turned to the rest of the cabin, but not before stealing a look at the spot on Ginger’s left hip where her cutie mark should be. It puzzled her that a pony with such a clear eye for design wouldn’t have a mark and yet something a seemingly trivial as liking pie would earn two ponies an incredibly rare matching set. She wondered if Ginger might have had hers removed. Was that even possible?
“You’re staring, darling.”
Aurora jerked like she’d touched a live wire. She looked back from Ginger’s hip to see the mare wearing a shameless grin that edged close to laughter. Aurora’s wings lifted slightly as she stepped away in embarrassment. Her brain and her tongue tripped over one another. “I didn’t mean to… I wasn’t… goddesses, I wasn’t trying to!”
Ginger blinked several times as Aurora fumbled and her grin widened. When she spoke, her voice was punctuated by soft laughter. “It’s all right, slow down!”
Aurora burned like a furnace. Mercifully, Ginger didn’t seem bothered. “I… you don’t have a cutie mark.”
“So I’ve been told,” she said, lifting an eyebrow at Aurora. “I assume there are some pegasi in your Stable with the same condition.”
Aurora frowned. “Condition?”
Ginger closed the cabinet and rolled her eyes. “Their word, not mine.” She crossed the living room, beckoning Aurora to follow with a gesture. Two doors waited on either side of the fireplace. She walked through the one that stood open and stepped into the cabin’s small kitchen.
The walls were painted powder blue that had begun to crack and peel courtesy of a window that had been left open. A small eating nook sat under the window with a bench along the wall and two chairs sitting across the narrow table. A refrigerator, stove and sink stood opposite the nook, surrounded by cabinets that had begun to sag.
Aurora leaned in the doorway and watched Ginger begin rummaging through the first cabinet. Metal clattered as she shifted the contents one way, then the other. 	“Something about the war changed how cutie marks work.” Ginger continued. She grunted and pulled an old blender out onto the dirty linoleum before scooting over to the next cabinet. 
“It used to be that every pony received theirs sooner or later. Whether they symbolized an interest, talent or some mystical purpose divined from beyond the stars,” she added a mocking flare to the last one, “eventually we all got one. Except now some of us don’t. There are still late bloomers - there always have been - but maybe one out of every hundred ponies live their entire lives without a mark. There’s no shortage of theories for why it’s happening: radiation, bad genetics, lack of inspiration…”
“Which you have plenty of,” Aurora said.
“Thank you!” she smiled, and yanked a hot plate out from the second cabinet by its cable, sliding it over toward the blender. “The way I look at it, cutie marks are a curse.”
Aurora wrinkled her nose. “What, like zebra voodoo?”
Ginger winced. “Sorry, that was a little strong. I’ve had too much time to think about this and you did sort of open Palomino’s Box by bringing it up. Also, you’re staring again.”
Aurora sucked on her lip and made a show of staring at the ceiling. “’Cutie marks are a curse,’” she prompted flatly.
Ginger shot her a smirk and checked the stove before sliding over to the next cabinet. “Yes and no. Don’t get me wrong, most ponies truly do value the mark they get. They can define a pony’s future and open doors that would have been otherwise shut.” A cupcake pan slid free and crashed into the floor. “Agh, sorry. But that’s the problem with them. They give ponies a narrow path to follow that everyone else assumes is destiny or inevitability. Out of a million choices we have when we’re born, something we don’t understand brands us with one. It’s cruel.”
Aurora had a hard time arguing with her logic mostly due to the fact that she’d never considered it. Cutie marks deciding a pony’s future was something that happened in history books, not in a Stable. It didn’t matter what a pony wound up getting. There were only so many jobs to choose from and few residents cared whether the two aligned in any meaningful way. If you weren’t good at your job, someone else needed to take it. Destiny had nothing to do with it.
Roach coughed barely a foot from Aurora’s ear. “Uh oh, you-”
“Celestia’s cockratchet!” Aurora screamed and her hooves whipped out from under her, landing her hard on her side in a blur of feathers. Ginger banged her head against the inside of the cabinet and backed out quickly, dragging a cacophony of rusted bakeware out with her. “Dammit, Roach, I almost pissed myself!”
“I’m glad you didn’t, I was standing right behind you,” he deadpanned.
Dust drifted down around her in thick clots. She blew a clump out of her mane as she got off the floor. Her left side looked like a shop vac had blown up next to her. She leveled a feather at his nose. “Don’t scare me like that.”
He pushed her wing down with his hoof. “Then don’t let your guard down,” he said.
Aurora opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it. He had a point. She blew out a breath through her nose and made room for Roach to enter the kitchen.
“Find anything good?” he asked.
Ginger gestured to the blender and hot plate with a dismissive hoof while rubbing the back of her head with the other. “Eh,” she said.
Roach reached down and set the blender’s glass jar aside. He flipped the base upside down so he could see the bottom while Ginger peered back into the cabinet. “No rust that I can see. It probably has a good motor,” he said.
“I’m aware how scavenging works,” Ginger grunted. “I’m going to have a headache for the rest of the day, Roach.”
Roach nodded agreement and moved around Ginger toward the big blue refrigerator on the far side of the kitchen.
Aurora watched him with a measure of admiration. He’d seen so much death and lost so much. There were clearly still memories that haunted him. Some still had the power to rip open old scars. But he didn’t give over to his grief easily. Aurora wasn’t sure if that should reassure or worry her. She watched him turn the door latch and pull it open. There was only a calm curiosity in his eyes as he reached inside and twisted his leg left and right. The cracked chitin around his eyes pinched together in concentration as he continued to do something with his leg.
A wry smile formed on his face. He looked at Aurora like a magician getting ready to do a trick. “Ginger,” he said, “Look.” 
Ginger sighed and sat up to see what Roach was up to. When she saw him hiding his leg in the fridge, her expression changed from mild annoyance to revulsion. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” he declared, and carefully withdrew his leg.
Brown liquid sloshed inside three glass bottles standing upside-down by their necks in the strange holes that burrowed through Roach’s leg. Ginger rested her forehead against the countertop with the face of a mother who just discovered her child drawing on the wall for the third time.
“You’re incorrigible.”
He held his leg out to her. “Want one?”
Ginger glared at the offering from the corner of her eye. “If any of those touch me, I’ll put it in a different hole.”
Roach’s throat rumbled with a deep chuckle and he lifted his leg toward Aurora, unwilling to let the joke die just yet. He waggled his hoof and the protruding bottles sloshed in response.
Aurora squinted at the bottles with an even mixture of horror and intrigue. She couldn’t help but respect him a little for owning his strangeness. If it weren’t for the chitin, wanton perforations and featureless eyes, he would fit right in with the rest of the grease heads on her shift in Mechanical.
She stepped around the mess of bakeware on the kitchen floor and tugged a bottle out of his leg with her wing. His grin widened and he carefully tipped the remaining two bottles down onto the countertop, dipped the neck of one of them back into his leg and flicked his hoof . The bottle cap popped off and tinkled against the countertop.
“You’re not going to drink that,” Aurora said, but her confidence faded as Roach picked up the bottle. “Roach, that’s been sitting in there for two hundred years.”
“It’s still good.” He shrugged and tipped back the bottle.
Ginger speared her with a look that said, You encouraged him. She closed the cabinet and wrapped her magic around the remaining bottle on the countertop, snapping the cap off. A few small bubbles formed on the inside of the glass. A far cry from what should have been there when it was still within its sell-by date.
“Good and edible are two different things,” Ginger said. She sipped from the edge of the bottle and wrinkled her nose. “Sparkle-Colas are edible. They aren’t good.”
Aurora looked dubiously at the bottle in her wing. White stylized lettering painted onto the bottle curved around a deep purple background.


Sparkle-Cola


For that burst of Magic Energy!


 

“This has magic in it?” she asked.
Ginger snorted, eyeing the back of the label. “No, but it does have 55 grams of sugar.”
Aurora considered the centuries-old cola. She flicked the cap off with the tip of her hoof and lifted the bottle to her lips. Her first impression was that the lukewarm beverage tasted awful. It had an acrid bite like expired cloves or cinnamon and a powerful sweetness that lingered on the back of her tongue. Still, it wasn’t nearly as awful as the homebrewed beers that some pegasi sold out of their compartments back home. She took another swig.
Roach set his bottle down at the table and took a chair. Ginger leaned next to the sink and Aurora took the second chair for herself. The three of them drank in amicable silence until Roach pointed the bottom of his bottle at Aurora’s cutie mark. “You two were talking about cutie marks. What do you think yours means?” he asked.
Ginger’s ears spun toward them before she could turn her head.
Aurora glanced back at her own marking - a wing reflecting an aurora across its metal feathers - and shrugged. It was a question that bothered her when she was younger and one that she’d given up trying to answer now that she’d crept into her thirties. “I don’t think it means anything. I have wings, I work with machines and my parents named me Aurora,” she said bluntly, and tapped the marking with a feather. “Wing, metal, aurora.”
“Without sounding rude,” Ginger said, swirling her cola as she spoke, “that’s exactly the point I was making earlier. Cutie marks are an uninspired handicap. What if you hadn’t wanted to be a… a repair mechanic?”
Aurora winced. “Just ‘mechanic.’ And I did because my mom was a mechanic.”
“But what if you decided you wanted to do something else?” Ginger pressed.
She took a pull of Sparkle-Cola and considered that while Roach drained his first bottle and went back to the fridge for a second. Aurora swore she saw him grinning despite himself and suspected he had restarted the discussion for his own amusement. She scowled at the back of his neck. 
“I guess I would have gotten a different cutie mark,” she said, turning back to Ginger. “Does it matter?”
Ginger made a dramatic flourish with both her forelegs. “It does matter! It baffles me that a filly can show a little talent for knitting and suddenly a ball of yarn appears on her hips. Blammo! She’s destined to stitch until her mane turns gray? That’s insanity.”
Roach flicked his bottle cap into his saddlebag and sat back down in his chair. He lifted an eyebrow at Ginger. “Did you just say ‘blammo?’”
Ginger leveled her eyes at him dangerously. “It’s a valid colloquialism,” she stated and returned to her theory without skipping a beat. There was an intensity in her eyes that betrayed the fact that she’d been thinking about this for a lot longer than she was letting on. “Now, what if that filly decides she doesn’t want to knit? What if she realizes her true passion is, for example, fixing machines like Aurora?”
Aurora finished the last slosh of cola and set the empty bottle on the table. “Well, she’s already got her cutie mark…”
Ginger jabbed a hoof at Aurora. “Exactly. That’s exactly what everyone says and we all know that the pressure will keep building until that filly settles to do something with her life involving yarn, all over a cutie mark. It’s insidious.”
“Hey, if you’re not careful you’re going to end up making Aurora think you’re one of those conspiracy nuts,” Roach said.
The unicorn’s chest puffed with irritation and Roach chuckled.
Aurora shrugged Desperate Times off her shoulder and leaned it up against the wall next to the nook. Roach’s eyes drifted to the weapon, then to the empty Sparkle-Cola bottles collecting in the kitchen.
He slid out of his chair with a short grunt and walked to the refrigerator. Aurora and Ginger watched him as he rummaged around, removing an assortment of glass containers from the rusty wire shelves. He slipped two more Sparkle-Colas into his saddlebags and set an assortment of sodas, liquors and a jar of what had once been pickles and was now an organic slurry onto the countertop.
Ginger pointed at the pickle jar. “What on earth do you plan on doing with that.”
“I’m not doing anything with it,” Roach said. He lifted a box of .308 ammunition from his saddlebag and set it atop the lid of the disgusting jar. “Aurora’s going to shoot it.”
Roach had promised her shooting lessons and there they sat on the linoleum. Aurora watched the septic pickle brine swirl inside the jar.
“Fantastic.”







 

They set up in the cobblestone driveway.
Roach dragged the two kitchen chairs down to the edge of the treeline and tracked down a thick piece of fallen timber to lay across them. The rotted underside of the limb allowed him to scrape it relatively flat with his hoof before spacing a line of bottles and one pickle jar evenly along its length.
Then he trotted back up the slope of the driveway to where Aurora waited. Desperate Times sat awkwardly across her hooves like a foal she was trying not to drop. A 150-count box of brass rounds sat on the ground next to her saddlebags in front of her.
Ginger watched from the porch swing. A half-empty bottle of Sparkle-Cola floated near her muzzle.
Aurora’s ears perked as Roach approached.
“Alright, I think we’re ready to start,” he said. “Down on your belly.”
She set the rifle down and shimmied down onto the cool bricks. Roach got down next to her and told her how to adjust her posture. When he was satisfied, he picked up the overmare’s rifle and settled it against her shoulder. 
Her wing splayed sideways against the stones under the rifle stock like a skirt of feathers. The hooks Ginger had installed allowed her to hold the back of the rifle steady between her right wing and left hoof. She felt uneasy laying down with the weapon, partly because of the strange posture and partly because of what she knew the rifle could do. Wrenches didn’t kill ponies if you used them wrong. Not usually, anyway. Desperate Times was built exclusively for killing.
“You don’t have a bipod,” Roach said, and slid Aurora’s saddlebag under the rifle’s stock. “So you’ll want to stabilize it by getting something right under the furthest lens of your scope, like a fulcrum.”
He had her look down the scope and watch how the sight moved as she moved her wing, left hoof and shoulder. When she nodded understanding, he rolled the rifle on its side and showed her where the magazine seated in front of the trigger guard and how to drop it out of the rifle for reloading. She watched, then demonstrated how to press five individual rounds into the magazine and click it into place under the rifle.
“You treat it like it’s always loaded,” Roach said firmly. “Now say it to me.”
“Treat it like it’s always loaded,” she repeated, and not for the first time.
Roach spent more time than she expected to explain the basic components of the rifle. She learned how to pull back the bolt and startled when an unfired round sprang out of the ejection port. He made her keep cycling the bolt until she stopped flinching and she quickly disliked the tedium of pressing the same rounds back into the magazine. 
Eventually they moved onto the scope which was a tool she was already vaguely familiar with. The elevation and windage adjustments were a simple concept once she realized she could apply a few measuring tricks she’d learned in the Stable. When he was certain she had the basics down, he backed away.
“Good,” he said. “Now budge up a little.”
She shuffled forward a few inches until the butt pressed firmly into her shoulder. Roach rechecked her posture and crouched down on her left side.
“We’re going to aim for that pickle jar,” he said. 
Aurora’s stomach churned. She pressed her cheek against the rifle and looked through the scope. It took her a moment to find the jar of sludge. It filled her view and she frowned. She lifted her left wing to the scope and dialed down the magnification until the jar shrank to a more manageable target.
Aurora made herself comfortable and slipped her primary feathers through the trigger guard. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled while adding slow pressure to the trigger. The sight wobbled over the jar.
The rifle bucked back into her shoulder with a cracking explosion. Its echo rebounded off the neighboring bluff a few seconds later.
Aurora looked over the top of the rifle and saw the pickle jar still sitting on the branch.
“You were a little high,” Roach said.
She adjusted the elevation of the scope.
“Other way,” Roach said.
She adjusted the elevation of the scope the other way.
Aurora ran the bolt back and ejected the spent brass, pushed it closed and settled back into position. She pressed her cheek against the rifle. The pickle jar danced in the sight. She inhaled, exhaled, lined up the jar and pulled the trigger.
The rifle jumped and gravel spat out of the forgotten road. In the foreground sat a perfectly intact pickle jar.
She sighed through her nose and tried to gauge the difference between the hit in the road and the jar. Still too high. She ran the bolt again and twisted the elevation down another two ticks. Breathe. Aim. Squeeze.
Desperate Times barked and the pickle jar popped like a blister. It vomited its contents over the makeshift platform and onto the cobblestones in a mess of shattered glass and two hundred year old vegetable matter.
Aurora’s stomach lurched and she looked away for several seconds. It gradually settled enough for her to feel a happy tingle of success. She gave Roach a little grin and said, “Blammo.” 
He smiled and pointed at the remaining bottles. “Good shot. Now pick another target.”
They slipped into a routine. Aurora shot and Roach offered advice when he saw a need for it. As she sank rounds into the dirt and, on rare occasion, through a bottle, she wondered what might happen to the rifle when she returned to Stable 10. There would be no safe place to practice with it and most likely Sledge would want it preserved for the overmare or overstallion that succeeded him. 
The thought crawled into her brain: would she give it back? Would she, once the generator was fixed, want to continue living there? She looked over the top of the scope at the unending bank of tumbling clouds. Her wings twitched instinctively.
She looked back through the scope and aimed at the last bottle. Breathe in. Breathe out. Squeeze.
Her rifle punched against her and the bottom of the limb sneezed a clot of dry wood onto the cobbles. The impact popped the bottle into the air and it shattered on the ground.
“Dammit,” she hissed.
Roach clapped her on the back and pushed himself to his feet. “You’re doing fine. Try to hit the same spot on that log. I’ll find some more targets.”
Aurora watched him climb up the porch, plucking Ginger’s empty cola bottle off the railing as he walked. Ginger sat on the porch steps, watching her. The unicorn lifted a hoof and Aurora lifted her wing in acknowledgement.
Over the course of an hour, her aimed improved. Not significantly - she still had more misses than hits - but enough for her to know she was getting a feel for it. The approaching twilight was making it hard to tell the difference between the bullet-chewed log and the row of milk glasses on top of it by the time she dipped her wing into the cardboard box for another round and came up empty.
Aurora cracked her neck and felt the dull throb of her shoulder as she stood up. She’d been on the ground so long that it took her body a moment to pump blood in the right directions, giving her a brief bout of vertigo.
“Time for a break?” Roach asked, though it was more of an observation than a question. He stood, picking up the empty ammo box in his teeth, and stretched his legs. Chitin pulled apart along his joints like a black eggshell.
“Time for sleep,” she said. After last night, her internal clock was begging her to lay down and make up for the lost hours.
She slung the rifle over her shoulder by its strap and ejected the last round from the chamber, checking that it was clear before pushing the bolt back and pulling the trigger. It clicked empty and she set the safety.
Roach watched her stow the rifle under her wing and gave her a weary smile. “Good job,” he said.
The porch creaked as they filed into the cabin, and Aurora could see Ginger had been keeping herself busy. A neat stack of logs burned in the fireplace, throwing long shadows across the living room. Long, sweeping arcs of disturbed dust bent from where the old leather couch had been to where it currently sat facing the crackling fire. Ginger had tried to sweep the dust off the cushions but given the state of her jacket, much of it had found its way onto her.
She didn’t seem to notice. She leaned against the arm of the couch with her cheek balanced against the knee of her foreleg. A thin hardcover book hovered a few feet from her nose.
“Little warm for a fire,” Roach commented. He pushed the door shut behind Aurora.
“I might’ve gotten carried away with it,” she admitted. She covered her mouth with the back of her hoof as she yawned. “It’ll cool off tonight.”
Roach stepped toward the fireplace and flicked a couple charred nuggets of wood off the slate and into the flames. He dropped the empty ammo box into the hearth and walked toward the curio at the other side of the room where he was at less risk of combusting. 
Aurora hopped up onto the couch and took the opposite arm from Ginger. The heat soaked into her skin like a sponge and she settled comfortably into the thick cushions. She watched the fire burn with fascination. She’d never seen one burn freely before and the dancing flames were mesmerizing. Ginger turned a page and Aurora looked at the book she was reading. She could just make out the hoof-written words on the pages.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Ginger floated the book toward her and Aurora wrapped it in her wing. “It’s a journal,” she said.
Aurora squinted at the arcing loops and swirls of ink and wrinkled her nose. “What language is this in?”
“Cursive,” Ginger chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’re not missing much.”
She lifted the book out of Aurora’s wing and settled back in to continue reading. Aurora considered asking Ginger to read her a few entries but felt silly for thinking it. Still, for an uninteresting read Ginger seemed interested enough to turn the page.
Roach closed the curio door behind them and yawned. None of them were running on a full night’s sleep.
“Roach, there’s a bed in the other room if you want to turn in,” Ginger said, pointing to the door left of the fireplace. “It’ll be a bit cooler in there.”
He rubbed the side of his face with his hoof and looked blearily at the open door. Aurora yawned with sympathy. With the shadow of the bluff dropping the cabin into an early night, they were all starting to shut down. He tottered over to the doorway and poked his head in. “So that’s where that tree landed,” he said, and shut the door behind him.
“Poor thing,” Ginger chuckled.
“Hmm,” Aurora hummed, her eyes on the fire. “How long have the two of you known each other?”
Ginger closed the book and leaned back into the cushions. She tilted her head toward Aurora while she looked thoughtfully into the fire. “It depends on how you measure it,” she said. “I met him on the road maybe… fourteen, fifteen years ago? I had just left home and had no idea how to survive, so he taught me in exchange for keeping watch at night so he could finally sleep. He took me as far as Junction City and went back to guard your Stable. Ever since, he’s made a point to come visit once or twice a year to see how I’m doing.”
Aurora’s thoughts went to her father. How she’d made excuses not to visit out of thoughtless anger. Even after reconciling with him, she felt guilt twist in her chest. She’d never get that time back with him. There would always be a gap in their lives they couldn’t go back to fill. 
She could hear snoring grind out from the bedroom. Roach was out like a broken bulb.
Ginger glanced at the door, then to Aurora. “Has he told you why he guards your Stable?”
Her thoughts went to Blue. Once upon a time ponies had called her Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty, and ministry mare of her self-titled Ministry of Awesome. Now, impossibly trapped in a purgatory between pony and feral ghoul, she lay locked in a dark breaker room to keep her safe. 
Had Roach told Ginger about her? Was this a test?
“No,” she said.
A log popped and an ember skittered out onto the slate. Ginger picked up a rusted pair of iron tongs with her magic and used them to drop the ember back into the fire. “Before the war, Roach had a family; a husband and a daughter. His husband did some contract work with the ministries which was how all three of them were selected for residency by Stable-Tec. When the bombs fell, Roach ignored the evacuation procedures and went home to check on his family. They’d already gone to the Stable, and by the time he reached it the door was sealed. He never saw them again.”
Aurora slowly shook her head, listening to the quiet snoring rise and fall from the other room. She remembered Roach telling her that the only way he knew to keep Rainbow Dash from causing a panic at the Stable door was to tell her that her parents had gotten in safely. That she needed to set an example for the other ponies trapped on their side of the door. How hard had it been for him to say those words with conviction while knowing his family was sealed away without him? 
She remembered Roach kissing Rainbow Dash on the forehead before they left, like a father kissing his daughter before turning out the lights. Of course he treated her like a surrogate daughter. How could he have not? Together, they protected the entrance to Stable 10 and the descendants of their lost families for over two hundred years.
“That’s…” Aurora whispered, and failed to find the right word. 
“That’s why you need to be careful,” Ginger said.
Aurora blinked confusion and frowned at her.
“You aren’t the only pony with something to lose if your home goes dark,” she warned. “As far as Roach is concerned, anyone from Stable 10 could be a descendant of his husband or his daughter. He’ll do anything to protect them, and that includes you.”
She let that sink in. 
“Thanks for telling me,” she finally said.
Ginger nodded and, sensing the end of the conversation, opened the journal.
“And…” Aurora hesitated, but pressed forward anyway. “I’m sorry you lost your shop.”
Ginger pursed her lips and set the journal onto the arm of the couch. She watched the fire flicker between the charred logs. “I didn’t lose anything that can’t be replaced,” she said. Her voice was bittersweet. “None of it was your fault.”
She caught the double meaning and looked away, staring intently at the window in the far wall. The twilight had begun to darken and low branches swayed outside the deformed glass as cool air slid through them down the bluff. 
“He tried.” She looked furtively at Ginger and saw the question on her face. “Cider,” she clarified and looked back to the window. “He tried.”
Ginger didn’t reply. Anger and shame boiled up into Aurora’s heart and she fought to keep control of herself. Of course. Of course this the reaction she would get. Dead silence and more pity. Why did she say anything at all? Cider was dead. He couldn’t be punished any more than he already had, and she barely even knew-
Aurora felt Ginger’s hoof around her shoulders and she felt the a visceral urge to pull away. She stopped. That wasn’t normal.
Cider had changed her after all. 
The window blurred behind a veil of tears. They came faster than she could stifle them and dark, wet tracks streamed down her face. She bit the inside of her lip, bracing herself against the racking sobs that tried to break past her chest and into her throat. She stared bitterly at the flames, unable to focus her vision for what felt like ages while Ginger provided quiet comfort.
When she ran out of tears, they sat together in silence. The fire dwindled, replaced by a glowing bed of embers. It shimmered as the old cabin cooled. She was vaguely aware of the gentle light from Ginger’s horn and the sound of pages being turned. She didn’t remember closing her eyes.
Her head dipped into Ginger’s shoulder and she fell asleep.
> Chapter 8: Gliding
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


 








 


This journal is the sole property of TEAK BIRCHBARK
and should not be peeked at by ANYONE


 







 

 
September 2, 1074
My name is Teak Birchbark and my mom says I have to write in this stupid journal at least once or I’m grounded for a week. Dad bought it for my birthday and I didn’t even ask for it in the first place. They knew I want to get my lip pierced and they keep saying I can’t. It’s so stupid! I’m fourteen now! All my friends have piercings and it’s not fair that I have to wait a whole year until I can get any! Mom can be such a bitch.


Teak, when you are free
please come and talk to me.
- Mom



 
November 21, 1074
Sagebrush called me a zeeb today. I pretended that I didn’t care but I kinda do a little. I wish I didn’t have to live in Ponyville. Nobody talks to me here. There’s only one other zebra at school named Acacia but we’re not friends. She calls me stuff too because dad’s a pony and mom’s a zebra and she says that it makes me neither. If she keeps saying things about mom and dad I’m going to tell Principal Cheerilee that Acacia sometimes smokes fireleaf in the mare’s room.
 
 
November 23, 1074

I hit Sagebrush in the nose during study hall and I don’t care if mom says it gives ponies a reason to hate us. He deserved it and if he calls me a zeeb again I’ll hit him harder next time. They can suspend me all they want. It’s not my fault I have stripes. Daisy Cutter thinks my stripes are fashionable, Daisy knows fashion. She says she’s going to be the next Rarity and I think she’s right. I hid my journal under the mattress so mom can’t read it anymore. I got grounded last time. Daisy says zebras are naturally sneaky, so that’s what I’m gonna be.


November 27, 1074

I had to go back to school today. My teacher gave me six assignments I have to make up. At least Sagebrush didn’t laugh at me for it. I think he’s scared of me now. Journals aren’t so bad but I won’t tell mom or dad that I’m writing in it. I still want to get my lip pierced. Dad told me that before I was born, mom lived in a tree. Like an actual tree in the Everfree Forest! I told him he was pulling my tail but he has actual pictures to prove it! He said that mom used to live all alone and made everything from roots and mushrooms and stuff. She looks so funny with her mane up all straight but dad says it’s tradition where she came from. I wish I could visit Vhanna. The newspapers say it’s primitive there and there are lots of comics that show zebras blowing themselves up with Equestrian missiles. Mom showed me pictures from the village she grew up in in south Vhanna. It looked really pretty even if the roads are all dirt and there was no electricity then. She says Vhanna is more modernized now and that I shouldn’t believe everything I read in the papers. Dad doesn’t like to talk about the stuff going on in Vhanna. He says it’s because he’s a Royal Guard and they have to be careful what they say but I think it’s because he doesn’t want to make mom angry. 


December 8, 1074

Me and Daisy went to the Ponyville Theater and saw Ice Station Zebra. It’s about two ponies and a zebra who have to work together to find a top secret satellite that fell out of the sky north of the Crystal Empire. Sapphire Sandhoof played the zebra and they did a really good job painting stripes on her. I love Sapphire Sandhoof movies. She’s beautiful! I want to style my tail like her but mom and dad think short tails are “indecent.”


December 19, 1074
The Ministry of Peace mailed new posters today. We're supposed to hang them up but Mom and Dad never do. The ministry never comes to check. Everyone in Ponyville loves the ministry mares. Even Daisy. I don’t know if I like any of them. All they talk about is how we shouldn’t trust zebras and that Vhanna wants to destroy the Equestrian way of life. Mom says she knew Twilight Sparkle and her friends back when they were younger. She says I shouldn’t be mad at them because their jobs are really hard. I’m still mad at them. Fluttershy is the only one trying to stop us from going to war. The rest of them just do things to make ponies hate zebras even more. The Ministry of Peace poster just says WE CAN DO BETTER on it. I hope she’s right.
 
 






 


Aurora woke to a tickle on her foreleg. She ignored it at first, but it persisted with a quiet chirp that part of her reluctantly recognized to be her Pip-Buck. She stretched her hind legs as far as they would go with a quiet, satisfying squeak. Second shift must be having trouble if they were sending her a notification this early.
She pushed her sheet down but there was no sheet. Confusion muddled with disappointment. The comforting fantasy of waking up in her own bed faded and was steadily replaced by the reality of having left that world behind. The musty smell of the leather couch filled her nostrils as she inhaled a waking breath.
“Hmmgh…” she muttered. She opened her eyes, wiped the crust from them with her hoof and rested her leg on the couch with her Pip-Buck a few inches from her face. She looked at it through half-lidded eyes. A green cartoon pony, a trademarked mascot of Stable-Tec, winked at her above the message


Patch Installed Successfully!
Pip-Buck v3.4 Copyright © 1055-1297


Aurora yawned and tapped a button with her wing. Her Pip-Buck chittered as it booted. A familiar physical diagnostic menu flickered to life, showing her the live state of her health courtesy of the suite of sensors built into the cuff clamped snugly below her fetlock. Other than a small amount of radiation from the radstorm a night before, it reported her to be in good health.
A thought ran sluggishly through her head. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hoof and squinted at the device. Suspicion mounted and she sat up fully.
Ginger slept against the opposite arm of the couch. She lay with her hooves tucked under her chest, her nose absently keeping the pages of the journal she’d found open. Her left ear flicked the air when Aurora moved, but Ginger was sleeping too deeply to wake.
The cabin was still dark. Through the front window she could just barely make out the predawn silhouette of the forest. She dialed down the brightness on her Pip-Buck to avoid waking Ginger and narrowed her eyes at the screen. She tapped a button until it brought her to the tab marked RADIO. For a moment she thought her eyes hadn’t adjusted to being awake and she blinked hard to clear the fuzz from her vision. All her life, there had only been one frequency. Now there were two.


S10 Network (unavailable)
HIGHTOWER RADIO 99.5


She glanced at Ginger, then turned her Pip-Buck’s volume down to its lowest setting before tuning into the new station. Music whispered through an uneven haze of static. She could make out the smooth, crooning male voice singing a cheery, bouncing tune about picket fences and rambling roads. Aurora didn’t know what picket fences were or how a road could ramble, but she got the jist. She switched the radio off and idly tapped her thigh.
Her Pip-Buck had downloaded an update from somewhere. Several updates. If Hightower Radio wasn’t the source, it had come from somewhere else.
She sighed and opened up the map. It automatically focused on her location; a featureless patch of nothing several miles north of the thick green line that denoted Highway 51. She zoomed out until a marker drifted in from the west marked “Home.” She felt a pang of heartsickness at seeing how much distance already separated her from the place she was trying to save. She only had to zoom back a little more until Fillydelphia was visible. They were almost halfway there.
Much closer, to the southeast, sat a marker that hadn’t been there before. Blinder’s Bluff sat in the center of a shrinking ring of topographic lines just south of Highway 51. Judging by how long it had taken them to get to the cabin, Aurora guessed that they were less than a day’s walk to the settlement.
She toggled the screen off and set her hooves in her lap. The fire had burned out while she slept, scenting the air with rich wood smoke. The dim line of light on the horizon was a little brighter now. Aurora rubbed her eyes. Bits of sand fell free from the corners, too much to be from one night’s sleep. She grimaced as she remembered how last night ended between her and Ginger. She couldn’t decide if she was more embarrassed or relieved.
Ginger lifted a hoof to her nose and scratched it before going still again.
Aurora watched with bemusement and decided she was alright with either.
The sun rose behind the clouds, painting the sky in muted crimsons and golds. She watched the sky brighten. Something small flitted through the branches outside. It was quick, like a silhouetted bit of lightning, then it was gone.
Roach was the first to wake. She heard his hooves thump against the floor and the bedroom door creaked open. He looked at her with thick bags under his eyes and offered a slow nod, the universal good morning for those who weren’t quite awake yet. 	She smiled and aimed a hoof toward the window. She spoke softly.
“You missed the sunrise.”
Roach followed her hoof to the brightening sky and inhaled a waking breath with a shrug. “It won’t happen again, officer.”
Aurora gave him a confused look and he waved it off with a tired smile. “Before your time.”
They chatted while Roach stirred the coals in the fireplace. He retrieved his saddlebags and set about preparing what beginning to amount to breakfast in the wasteland: potable water and cured meat. Aurora’s gut rumbled in protest. She was determined to hold a grudge against the butcher in Junction City until her mane turned gray. In the rush to get out of the city and ahead of anyone keen on collecting on Ginger’s bounty, they hadn’t restocked on food or water. Aurora dreaded the long walk to Blinder’s Bluff.
Roach held out four strips of meat, two of which were for Ginger. She leaned over and nudged Ginger with her wing until the coffee mare wrinkled her nose and grumbled a little. Ginger cracked her eyes open, saw the rising sun and grumbled a little more. She accepted Aurora’s offering of jerky and started gnawing on the end of one.
As they ate and drank the last of their supply, Aurora told them about the little shadow she’d seen in the trees.
“Sounds like you saw a bird,” Roach said.
“Nonsense,” Ginger countered. “All the birds died out after the bombs fell. The radiation did them in.”
Roach shrugged. “Well if the geese survived it...” he hedged.
Ginger waved her jerky at him. “Geese are immortal bastards of the sky who cannot be killed.”
Roach laughed. A deep, throaty laugh that rumbled into wet, ragged coughs. Aurora sat up a little straighter but he waved off her rising concern. Ginger smiled patiently toward the window until he was able to stop.
“Sorry,” he said and cleared his throat. “One of the many perks of ghoulhood, along with longevity and dashing good looks.”
Ginger stifled a laugh and shook her head at the bad joke.
Aurora smiled at the floor. For all the lonely decades he spent waiting outside the Stable, Roach still had a healthy paternal streak. She supposed that had something to do with staying close to Rainbow Dash all those years. He had found something to hold onto while he watched the great cogged door slowly rust. Something to anchor him while the descendants of his husband and daughter grew up and had foals of their own. Her smile faded.
She remembered the unguarded panic in his voice when she stepped out of the Stable. A cold tingle washed up the back of her neck. The memory of feral hooves skittering toward her from the darkness chased by Roach’s cries to seal the door twisted at her gut. Even though she had know way of knowing some of her neighbors might be distant relatives of a ghoul posted outside her home, she felt a pang of guilt for having opened the door so recklessly.
Roach slapped his hoof against the arm of the couch, startling Aurora out of her fog. He chuckled and looked at her with a blend of humor and concern. “You’re brooding,” he said. “Brooding is my job.”
A weak smile crossed Aurora’s muzzle. “Just thinking about home,” she said.
Roach’s smile softened. He stood up and invited the two mares to do the same with a tip of his head. “We should get going. We’ll want a head start if we plan on getting into Blinder’s Bluff before the gates close for the night.”
One by one they got up and collected their things. Aurora found herself stretching more than once. Her calves ached from the last two days of walking and weren’t looking forward to a third. She picked up the overmare’s rifle… and it occurred to her that it was her rifle now. Delphi’s death had changed her. She was sure it changed every pony in the Stable once they heard the news. But the cutting edge of that memory was beginning to dull. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Aurora slung the leather strap over her shoulder, rechecked the empty chamber and draped her wing over the weapon. Their hooves ticked across the old slate floor. They filed out onto the porch, Aurora trailing them. It was so quiet out here. So different than the chaos of wrangling machines and answering work orders. Stepping out onto the old porch was like being able to breathe for the first time. She looked over her shoulder at the empty cabin and wondered if, one day, anyone would mind if she came back to live here.
She made sure the door clicked as she pulled it shut behind her.







 

“Shit shit shit shit shit!”
Aurora had made a mistake.
The trio had been making good time across the rolling terrain. They chose to navigate around the rolling hills rather than struggle their way over the top of one after another. Following the shallow path of valleys and fields that picked around the higher bluffs worked better than any of them had expected. Aurora’s Pip-Buck showed them nearly halfway to Blinder’s Bluff by the time they came to a wide, treeless rib of a hill that gave them the choice of a short climb or ten miles to get around. They chose to make the short climb and stopped at the top for lunch consisting of their remaining water and plentiful conversation.
The east side of the hill slid gently into a wide bowl of grass and cracked soil surrounded by dead or dying trees. Roach told them that it looked like a sledding hill he used to frequent as a colt, and then had to explain what sledding was. The thought of sliding down a hill had piqued Aurora’s interest. As soon as they began to descend the hill, Aurora flung her wings wide and hopped into the air. She glided nearly ten yards before the hill rose up to meet her hooves, and without thinking she kicked off and launched herself forward.
She felt the brief tug of Ginger’s magic against her rear hooves but she slipped through it like greased soap. Exhilaration was quickly shoved aside by the realization that she was speeding down the slope too fast to land. Worse yet, she didn’t know how to land.
Dirt and grass blurred beneath her hooves. Wind whistled higher and higher in her ears until it became a roar. The leading edges of her wings cut through the air like knives while the bottom of the hill rose up to meet her. The rational side of her brain observed that she would shatter her legs if she hit the ground at this speed. Instinct screamed at her to lean back. To beat her wings as hard as she could.
Aurora went with instinct and reared back.
The flats of her wings billowed with rushing air and she shot upward like a rocket.
“Oh fuck!” she screamed.
The ground receded alarmingly fast. Her legs and wings flailed as raw momentum flung her into the air like toy on a rope. Her right wing caught the wind and she cartwheeled for several nauseating seconds before gravity finally stalled her ascent. She gasped at the sudden sense of weightlessness. Then it was gone, and she was falling once again.
Her wings clawed at the air like it was something she could grab onto. She didn’t know how to pull out of a dive. She barely understood how she got where she was right now! As the ground reached up toward her she remembered the moment when she thought she would be trampled by the crowd of pegasi outside the overmare’s office. Something about that memory clicked.
Aurora aimed her back legs toward the dirt and suppressed the urge to panic. Falling hooves-first toward the ground, she lifted her wings and threw them toward the earth as hard as she could. In that moment, the air was tangible. She’d held it in her feathers. She flapped her wings again and felt herself slow even more. Her body twisted as one wing came down faster than the other on the third stroke, but she corrected on the fourth and realized she was getting the hang of it. Her plummet slowed and a tentative grin spread over her face
Her wings found their natural rhythm. She looked down and saw Ginger and Roach galloping down the hill several dozen yards below her. They looked like toys from where she hung in the air. She saw that they were yelling something but couldn’t make out the words. Ginger looked frantically toward the south before looking back up, her eyes wide.
Aurora squinted in the direction of tiny-Ginger’s worry and spotted a faint gray curl of smoke bending out of the trees. At the edge of the trees stood three dark shapes. She wouldn’t have seen them at all if it weren’t for the flash of light that came from the one in the center.
She heard a bug buzz by her left ear and she instinctively jerked away. Barely a second later, a primary feather dropped from her wing like it had been clipped off. Confused, she watched it spin away on the wind.
The third shot slammed into her sternum like a hammer. The bullet batted her out of the sky like an afterthought. She fell like a stone, unable to focus on anything except the shrieking pain. Her lungs flared with agony as she tried to catch her breath but the she managed to take sips. She was distantly aware of the fact that hitting the ground was going to hurt even worse.
The world turned amber and Aurora felt herself slowing like the last moments of a terrifying elevator ride. She hit the ground with a thud instead of the expected splat. Her chest burned for air and she punished her lungs with a slow, wheezing breath. 
She winced and rolled onto her side to see Ginger and Roach galloping toward her. Ginger was well in the lead and skidded to a stop next to her, the big knife from her former shop hanging in a cloud of magic.
“Shot…” Aurora took a slow breath. “Assholes.”
“I know,” Ginger said. She crouched down and made quick work of the fabric straps holding Aurora’s vest together. Roach crouched low next to Ginger, his eyes locked on the frayed hole in the center of the black fabric. The vest peeled back after she cut the last strap free. The interior lining bulged but hadn’t broken. The bullet hadn’t pierced the plating.
Before they could breathe a sigh of relief a fresh round slapped into the dirt only a few feet short of Ginger’s leg, spitting soil into her eyes. “Raider shits!”
“We need cover!” Roach said.
Ginger glared at him with one bloodshot eye. “I’m a little busy!”
Roach looked around for options and saw none. They were exposed. The raiders had them dialed in. There was no time to warn them. They wouldn’t be able to do anything if he had. He knew with terrible certainty that the next bullet wouldn’t miss. They needed cover, now.
Roach lit his horn with pale green light and the soil in front of him flowed upward as if filling an invisible mold. Muzzle flash flickered from the raiders’ position and the round skipped harmlessly off the rising edge of Roach’s wall.
“Roach, no!” Ginger yelled.
Aurora grimaced. Everything suddenly smelled and tasted like metal. She heard a quiet hiss coming from her foreleg and looked down at her Pip-Buck. The needle of her radiation meter hopped and stuttered in and out of the red. Aurora dialed up the volume and the hiss became an unearthly crackle. She looked up with horror at the green glow surrounding Roach’s horn and the several square yards of soil standing upright barely three steps away from her.
He means to say that his magic has a tendency to dose everything around him with lethal amounts of radiation, which is why he doesn’t use it near his friends.
Roach’s face was a mixture of deep concentration and apology. Except it wasn’t his face. Not entirely.
It was like staring into a mirage. His black chitin gave way to a sleek coat the color of cracked wheat only to fade back to charcoal skin. She caught a flicker of mossy green mane that grew paler as it traveled down his neck. A curl of it hung over honest-to-goodness eyes. His irises were a gentle, muted jade. She blinked and the illusion had moved on. She chased the illusion as it ebbed and flowed like light off disturbed water.
When Roach’s horn finally went dark, the illusion died. Aurora’s Pip-Buck chattered a little less frantically, but didn’t go silent. Questions tumbled over one another on their way to her lips. Chief among them were Who was that other pony? and How many rads did we just soak up?
Ginger got up and punched Roach in the chest, hard. “Are you insane?!” she railed at him. “We don’t have RadAway, Roach! You could have killed us!”
He accepted the blow with a wince. The wall was just high enough to shield them if they lowered their head while they stood. He didn’t meet her eyes as Ginger stared daggers into his. He looked at the divot at the top of his wall where the sniper’s round had skated off course. “The radiation will kill you in a week. That bullet had you pegged for today. You’re welcome.”
Ginger followed his eyes to the damaged edge of the wall. Her face went pale.
Aurora pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the dull pain in her chest and the taste of copper on her tongue. “Argue later. We need a plan now.” As if to emphasize her point, another bullet sank itself into the far edge of the wall. She lifted her rifle onto her wing and held it out to Roach. “Can you use this?”
“With magic, yes,” he offered. The implication of more radiation hung on his words.
“Which I’d like to avoid until we can purge the radiation we’ve already soaked up,” Ginger added, her tone humbled. “I’m useless at long-range, but if I backtrack up that hill I can use it as cover to get behind them.”
“You’ll be making yourself an easy target,” Roach said warily.
Ginger shrugged. “Aurora will distract them with her expert marksmanship.”
Roach and Aurora exchanged looks.
“It doesn’t matter whether you hit them,” Ginger added. “Just make yourself a threat by getting close. If they’re raiders, they’re not going to waste ammunition on a fleeing mare with nothing to take.”
She shrugged off her jacket and dropped it to the ground along with the pistol holster around her hind leg. They hit the dirt with a heavy thwump. Her knife, the same blade Aurora had noticed in Ginger’s lounge room, hovered to her right. It pressed flat against her ribs where their attackers had no chance of seeing it.
“What if they’re cannibals?” Aurora asked.
“Then I hope you’re a good distraction,” Ginger said.
Roach nudged Aurora with a hoof that held their last box of .308 rounds. “It’s a plan,” he said.
Aurora took the box and topped off her magazine. It clacked into the rifle with a decisive finality. Nobody needed to say they were in agreement. They simply were. Aurora winced as she slid the barrel of her rifle past the right side of the wall. A few strands of grass were her only camouflage. She could only guess at how far the treeline was. She arbitrarily doubled her scope’s elevation and a thousand rifle enthusiasts cried out in psychic pain. 
She spotted the trio of ponies in the trees and for a split second she saw herself, Roach and Ginger staring back at her. The raiders were distracted, having grown comfortable under the lack of any return fire. Their prey cowered behind a wall of their own making and had gone silent. From the casual shrug of the right-most stallion, they seemed to be debating their best approach.
They didn’t know Aurora was watching. They would shortly.
“They’re not watching,” she said to Ginger. “Go.”
Hooves scraped against cracked soil behind her with no hesitation. Ginger hurled herself toward the base of the hill and up the long, shallow slope.
Aurora watched the leftmost raider frown and lift a pair of binoculars. He spoke quickly and the other two took notice. Righty, a battered orange stallion, lay prone behind a rifle. He dipped his eye to the scope and shifted the barrel toward Ginger.
Aurora pulled the trigger and Desperate Times slugged her shoulder. The round burrowed into the side of a tree well behind the raiders, but it had been close enough to make them jump. She saw their ears spin toward her as the sound of the report reached them. Righty’s rifle spun toward her.
“Fuck me,” she muttered as she adjusted the scope with her free wing. She ran the bolt, squeezed off another shot and the bullet might as well have vanished into another dimension. She had no idea where it landed.
The muzzle of Righty’s rifle flickered and dirt geysered a yard to her right. The strike made her jump and she could feel her heartbeat double. This wasn’t fun. This wasn’t shooting pickle jars at the cabin. Those ponies wanted to kill her. Specifically her, and especially Righty. He was the only one in the group with a rifle that seemed capable of reaching out and touching her. The other two goggled at her through binoculars, likely reporting where his shots had were landing.
She pulled the trigger and it didn’t budge. Righty’s muzzle flashed. The bullet slapped the dirt near her hip.
“Fuck you!” she yelled, knowing full well they couldn’t hear her.
“Eject the cartridge,” Roach reminded.
Aurora yanked the bolt back and slammed it forward. She glanced at the hill and saw Ginger was halfway to the top and looked every part the mare who had decided to abandon her friends to save her own skin. Aurora turned her attention back to the raiders who were enthusiastically trying to drop a bullet into her skull and fired again.
This time she saw the shot split the bark of the tree Righty was hiding behind. It had been a completely lucky shot and the bullet had impacted more than a yard above her target, but the sudden anger painting his face was priceless. She dialed down her elevation and racked the bolt.
A familiar buzz tickled her right ear and she resisted the sudden urge to empty her bladder. Her brain lit up with a colorful variety of profanity. She shoved them away and steadied her wing. Righty’s shit-colored armor drifted behind her crosshairs. She steadied them and slowly emptied her lungs as she squeezed on the trigger.
Desperate Times bucked against her. There was a brief moment of nothing. Then Righty’s neck exploded.
Aurora’s eyes went wide. Things happened to Righty’s anatomy that shouldn’t happen. The expression on his face was horrific and involuntary. He was dead before he touched the ground.
Don’t think about it, she told herself.
She thought about it.
Her stomach crawled up her throat and dumped itself out onto the thirsty soil. She heaved again and spat out a mouthful of bile. She did something she couldn’t undo. She’d taken a life. She’d murdered someone.
She looked up the hill. Ginger was nearing the top. She swallowed and looked through the scope. Mercifully, Righty’s body was partially obscured by the tree he’d hidden behind. To her dismay, Middle had taken position behind the rifle.
“No, no, no,” she moaned.
Middle was what could be politely described as lean. Her ribs showed clearly under her lavender coat. She flicked her silver mare away from her eyes and stared at Aurora through Righty’s rifle.
Aurora squeezed the trigger and Middle jumped. The round must have struck something behind her. Aurora let the crosshairs drift slightly away from the mare. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to see someone die like that again. Before Middle could compose herself, Aurora racked the bolt and fired another shot.
“Just put it down,” she muttered. She scooted back and tried to ignore the wet sensation of her own sick soaking into her foreleg. With a click, the spent magazine dropped and she began plugging fresh brass inside. It clacked into place just as a bullet thumped fruitlessly into Roach’s wall.
“Ginger’s over the top,” Roach reported.
Aurora looked up. Ginger was nowhere to be seen.
She looked at Roach. He was looking at her foreleg with quiet sympathy.
“I got one,” she almost whispered.
“I saw. I’m sorry,” he said, and winced. “You still need to distract them.”
Aurora closed her eyes and shook her head before shuffling out of the wet soil and into position behind her rifle. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
She racked the bolt. “They need to run away.”
“They won’t.”
Aurora jerked the trigger back just to hear the rifle bark. “Fucking raiders,” she spat. She settled her cheek against the rifle and saw a flash. The bullet missed her head by inches. It punched through the tip of her ear instead. She instinctively ducked and threw herself behind the wall with a yelp.
Roach’s eyes were wide with worry. “Are you hit?”
“Yes I’m hit! My fucking ear!” She held her ear against her head with her hoof. Blood oozed into her mane and down her face. Roach moved her hoof away and didn’t seem nearly as horrified as she thought he should be.
“It’s barely a cut,” he said, his voice beckoning for calm. He saw the worry in her eyes and glanced at her rifle. “You’re okay. Take a break. I’ll take over.”
Aurora’s Pip-Buck crackled anew as Roach’s magic lit around her rifle. Her heart skipped a beat and she stabbed a hoof against her weapon, pressing it back to the ground. “Stop,” she said, then more urgently, “Stop.”
His horn dimmed. He grit his teeth and blew a frustrated breath through his nose. “Aurora…”
She cut him off. “I can do it. Just… give me a second.”
Roach held up his hooves and looked away. His face was a mixture of shame and irritation. Aurora felt a similar twinge for having smothered his attempt to help her, but she set it aside. Her ear stung like a burn. She ignored that, too.
The gaunt mare at the edge of the woods had her dialed in. She’d be ready to shoot as soon as she saw Aurora poke her head out. Her options were carved down to one: get her to waste her shot and shoot back before she could reload. Aurora steeled herself before diving behind the rifle. As soon as she landed she lurched away. No sooner was she clear than a bullet ripped through the air where she’d been like a furious insect. A chill ran up her spine as the gunshot cracked the air behind it.
She dove back onto the rifle and dropped her cheek behind the scope hard enough to hurt. She found Middle and leveled the crosshairs on her. The lavender mare was swapping out an empty magazine for a full one. It occurred to Aurora that if they got out of this that she should buy a second one. She fired and the face of the tree Middle hid behind scattered bark in all directions. The mare fumbled the magazine and sat up to see where it had fallen.
As Aurora ran the bolt back, she saw a silver streak flicker under the mare’s chin. The streak slowed enough for Aurora to recognize Ginger’s hunting knife. It pivoted, blade aimed at the dumbstruck mare, and plunged into her temple. The raider’s eyes lost focus and she crumpled forward onto the rifle.
Aurora felt numb. She couldn’t see where Ginger was hiding, but the bronze magic surrounding the knife as it snaked toward Lefty was hers. Lefty’s binoculars were glued to his eyes. His mouth moved as he spoke to the dead mare a few yards away from him. Ginger sank her knife into his temple and his mouth stopped mid-sentence. He fell face-first into the dirt.
The knife glided into the woods toward a fallen tree. Ginger stood up and hopped up over the log, meeting the knife halfway and wiping the flat of the blade clean against her flank. She squinted toward Aurora and Roach, lifted a hoof to her mouth and yelled something that neither could hear but the meaning of which was inevitable: It’s safe, they’re dead now.
“Ginger got the other two,” Aurora said. She didn’t look at Roach when he grunted acknowledgement. She was soaked with adrenaline and had nothing to burn it off on. It felt like punching in for her shift with a gut full of coffee and finding out she couldn’t do any work until someone on the other shift finished cleaning up.
She dropped the magazine, topped it off and slapped it back into the rifle hard enough for her wing to kick up a little dust. She could feel Roach’s eyes on her as she flipped the safety to ON and threw the strap over her shoulder as she got up. The sour smell of her sick stung her nostrils. The mud that stained her foreleg was rancid with it. She dragged the sludge against the corner of Roach’s wall, ignoring the slight uptick of chatter from her Pip-Buck as she made contact with the irradiated surface. 
She and Ginger had killed three ponies. Four, if she counted Cider, but she didn’t. She hadn’t left the Stable to kill anyone. She hadn’t left to be groped or shot at. All she wanted to do was find an ignition talisman, take it home and close the door behind her. Her fantasy of living a quiet life in the cabin evaporated as quickly as it had formed. She picked up Ginger’s jacket, threw it roughly over her back and started walking toward the treeline and the wispy tail of smoke beyond it.
Roach picked up Ginger’s holstered pistol and followed close behind.
“It was us or them,” he said to her back.
“I don’t want a pep talk right now.”
“You’re not getting one,” he said. “I’m telling you that if you two hadn’t killed those ponies, they would have killed you.”
Aurora scowled at a patch of passing grass. She could still taste bile on her tongue and spat. “It doesn’t make it right.”
“We’re all sinners out here. Sometimes you have to kill bad ponies to stay alive.”
“I hate this,” she said for the second time.
Roach trotted alongside her. “That’s the difference between you and a raider. Try to remember that.”
From the corner of her eye, she watched Roach’s hooves lift and fall. “And Ginger?”
It took a moment for Roach to catch her meaning. She looked at him and tried to hide the worry in her heart. This hadn’t been Ginger’s first time killing. Far from it. The way she snaked her knife into the two raiders betrayed practice and precision that didn’t come from an amateur.
“Growing up in the wasteland leaves scars,” he said as if that answered her question. When he saw that it didn’t, he added, “She’s seen the worst this world can offer and came out the other side a better pony than most. You can trust her.”
Aurora could see Ginger moving between the three ponies and pursed her lips.
“Hey,” Roach said, bumping her wing. She looked at him and he tipped his chin skyward. “Congrats, by the way.”
She flushed. Her glide-gone-wrong had been the start of this whole disaster, but she couldn’t help but admit it had felt amazing to hang suspended in the air under her own power. She recalled how the horizon had opened up around her like an endless disc of hills and clouds. Her wings felt warm. She’d flown.
“Thanks,” she said.
As they approached the trees, Ginger waved them away from the place where the three bodies lay and toward the spot where they had made camp. Three tattered bedrolls lay in a clearing around the smoldering remains of a cook fire. Playing cards lay scattered around the bedrolls. Aurora looked over her shoulder and saw the top of the ridge clearly between the trees.
Ginger dropped a bloodstained bundle of brown cloth next to the fire ring. Aurora tried not to focus on the wet edges of what had once been a shirt. Ginger pulled the bundle open with a broad smile, displaying the loot she’d pulled off the raiders.
Two pairs of binoculars, three dented canteens, and a small, half-full pouch of underripe berries lay in a small heap. Aurora picked up one of the canteens and it gurgled in her wing. 
“Anything else?” Roach asked. He turned one of the binoculars over in his hoof before depositing it into his saddlebag.
Ginger made a face. “Two of them had pipe pistols, the other had a customized rifle that looks ready to fall apart. Beyond that and some ammunition, this is it. They traveled light.”
“Must have been out looking for places to scavenge,” Roach observed.
“Mmhm,” Ginger hummed. She dropped one of the canteens into Roach’s saddlebag and hung the other over her neck by its strap. Aurora held out her leather jacket and Ginger smiled her thanks as she slipped it on. She eyed Aurora’s bloodied ear and clucked her tongue. “Here.”
She tore a strip of cloth from the shirt on the ground and wet it with her canteen. Aurora bent her head as Ginger folded the cloth over her ear, letting the water loosen the already tacky blood so she could wipe it away.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
Ginger gave a reassuring shake of her head. “Not bad at all. You’ll have a notch in your ear. Something to show the stallions when you get home, I suspect.”
Aurora snorted.
“It’ll be distinguishing when it heals,” Ginger continued. “Which reminds me, how’s your leg been treating you?”
Aurora watched Ginger’s attention shift from her ear to the filthy bandages wrapped around her hind leg. It occurred to her that she hadn’t noticed the ghoul bite hurting since yesterday. She held out her leg while Ginger’s magic peeled the pad of bandages back from the wound.
“These are ready to come off,” Ginger said. Her knife appeared next to her and she carefully lifted the bandages away from her skin and into the blade. Aurora bit back a frown upon seeing the blade.
The strips of cloth fell away and the warm air felt strange across her sweat-dampened coat. Black thread neatly crisscrossed four inches of pink skin. The redness from two days ago had subsided. She flexed the muscles in her leg and watched the stitches shift with her skin. She’d never had stitches before.
Ginger put a hoof on her leg and pressed it toward the ground. “Don’t fiddle with it. Magic or not, stimpacks need time to work. I want to get another one in you once we get to Blinder’s Bluff before I trust those stitches to come out.”
Aurora let herself smile a little. “Yes, doctor.”
Ginger smirked back and pointed a hoof at her nose. “And don’t you forget it. Now let’s pack all this up and get moving. The sooner we get to Blinder’s Bluff, the sooner you and I can get some RadAway in our systems. And Roach?”
Roach glanced at Ginger. He stood still, his face carefully neutral. She stepped around the shirt laying between them and drew him into a tight hug. “You saved our lives. I’m sorry I yelled at you for that.”
He cleared his throat. His stoic mask softened and he allowed himself a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll try to warn you next time I’m feeling heroic.”







 

January 1, 1075
Principal Cheerilie canceled school today because Sugarcube Corner blew up during the new year celebration last night. A lot of ponies got hurt and Ms. Cake got taken to Canterlot Hospital. Mr. Cake died. Mom says there was a gas leak in the bakery, but the neighbors keep saying it was a bomb. Everyone’s really scared.


January 4, 1075

Dad won’t let me watch TV or listen to the radio even though it’s homework! I have to write a paper on the EASA rocket test for science class tomorrow and now I’m going to get an F! Mom said she’s going to write me a note to give Mr. Skies but she doesn’t get it at all. I’m going to have to give the teacher a note in front of everyone and I know Sagebrush is going to say it’s because I’m a lazy zebra. I hate Sagebrush. He keeps telling everyone lies about me and nobody tells him to stop.


January 5, 1075
I learned how to whittle today. Mom taught me after school and I’m pretty bad at it. It’s kind of fun but holding a knife makes my teeth hurt. I found out why Mom and Dad wouldn't let me watch the EASA launch. Mr. Skies said it wasn't aired at all because of a riot in Manehattan. A bunch of zebras got arrested by the Ministry of Image and a lot of ponies got mad about it and started breaking windows and burning stuff. Mom and Dad didn't want me to see it and get worried but guess what, I'm worried anyway.


January 7, 1075

Pinkie Pie came to visit Sugarcube Corner today with a bunch of jerks from the Ministry of Morale. They said she wanted to see it before what's left gets demolished. They wouldn’t let Mom talk to her even though they’re friends. Pinkie looked so lonely. Mom says it’s because none of her friends came down with her. Lots of ponies keep looking at me funny.
> Chapter 9: Bad Faith
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


 


 

March 8th, 1075
I’m getting really good at whittling. Okay, not like good-good but a lot better than three months ago. I can carve really small feathers but I still have trouble with wings. There’s a lot of weird shapes they make all at once when they’re open. They’re easier to do when they’re closed but Mom wants me to keep trying like with the feathers. Dad says I’m turning my room into a birdhouse. I just really like birds.
 
 
March 15th, 1075
Who has four hooves and got her ears pierced today? THIS MARE! Mom took me to Carousel Boutique for my 15th birthday and let me pick which ones I wanted! I got gold hoops like hers and two studs with tiny hearts etched on both sides. I have to keep them in for six weeks and keep them really really clean, but I don’t care because I FINALLY GOT PIERCINGS!!!
 
 
April 4th, 1075
Everyone’s talking about the Stable-Tec commercial on TV last night even though nobody knows what it’s supposed to be about. It plays every hour and keeps saying the same thing: “Stable-Tec: The Next Revolution in Security” with a big yellow gear spinning behind the words. I don’t see what everyone is so excited about. Dad thinks it’s a teaser for a movie. If it is, it looks like a pretty dumb one.








 


Everything hurt. Her chest hurt, her guts hurt and most of all her head was killing her. It took several seconds for her to put together where she was. Shadowed pavement sped past at a sickening speed. Black legs flickered past one another. She was on top of Roach or, more accurately, thrown over him like a sack of apples. Vertigo and nausea hit her at the same time and she retched. Streamers of clear bile spun off in the wind and caught against Roach’s leg.
“Sorry,” she groaned.
“Did she say something?” Ginger called. 
“She threw up again,” Roach called back. The wind made their voices sound distant. Ginger didn’t sound normal but her hooves clattered against the broken road just outside Aurora’s view. She tried lifting her head to look at Ginger but vertigo spun her world around and her head sagged back to the pavement.
When had they gotten back on the road? More importantly, why did she feel so horrible? Roach hopped a fissure and landed roughly on the other side. Aurora’s skull felt like it was going to burst. She could feel her heartbeat stabbing at her temples. The more she tried to remember, the more she realized she was missing. She could recall leaving the raider camp. Bits and pieces of their walk stuck out. There had been a patch of woods that had been burned to the stumps, and the empty stone foundation of a house that was probably the fire’s source. They’d crossed a dry stream bed and Roach had shared a story about something he called fishing.
She remembered feeling suddenly ill and Roach made her stop to look at her Pip-Buck. There had been a dosimeter she didn’t know about. A little green bar that tallied her radiation exposure in something called rads. She didn’t remember how many she’d taken, but it had been a lot.
Aurora frowned. She wanted to tell Roach they forgot to bring her vest, but she didn’t trust her bobbing stomach enough to speak. She was sick. Really sick. And Ginger wasn’t far behind her.
She let herself doze, or pass out, she wasn’t sure which had happened when she woke up in total darkness of deep night. Roach’s chitinous back still scraped against her belly. How long had they been running? She squeezed one eye shut and lifted her head enough to see where they were going. Roach must have felt her move and looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes wide with worry. Aurora looked past Roach’s face and for a moment she thought she could see the stars.
Yellow diamonds twinkled against the black horizon and Aurora gradually recognized what they were. Light bulbs. Hundreds of them mounded atop one another so high that they looked like a mountain made of incandescent light. Blinder’s Bluff. It was beautiful. She opened her other eye and risked pushing herself up a little to see past the back of Roach’s head. The movement made her immediately dizzy and she swore under her breath. She slid back down and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will away her splitting headache.
She might have succeeded if it weren’t for the spotlight.
Light bloomed behind her eyelids like an explosion and she turned her head away with a wince. Roach’s gait slowed as they approached the source of the light. Aurora lifted a hoof and shielded her eyes, risking a glance in the direction of the electric glare. Roach carried her toward what could be generously described as a wall of garbage. A collage of plywood and rusted sheet metal sewed tight with barbed wire stood several feet above them. Worn carriage wheels secured to two makeshift axles pierced the bottom section of wall that didn’t sit flush with the rest. Shadowed figures peered at them through the gaps, weapons ready. 
Atop the wall, a half dozen strangely armored ponies assessed their harried visitors. A speaker crackled to life and a stern, male voice assaulted their ears.
“Stop. That’s close enough.” His flat tone carried a calm confidence of someone used to being obeyed. Aurora wasn’t sure why but she braced herself for a fight. She was pleasantly surprised when Roach slowed to a stop alongside Ginger. “This city is under the protection of the Steel Rangers. Who’s the pegasus?”
The suspicion in the speaker’s amplified voice was palpable. Roach cleared his throat. “Her name is Aurora. She was exposed to extreme radiation today and needs to be seen by a doctor.”
A strange stretched in which nobody said a word. It became clear that the gatekeeper was still waiting for an answer to his question. Aurora squinted through the glare, trying to see which one of the ponies was speaking but they were indistinguishable from one another in the shade of the spotlight. She suspected that was deliberate. The silence became uncomfortable. Then she remembered something Cider had accused her of in Junction City.
“I’m not with the Enclave,” she called. The sound of her voice buzzed in her ears from the effort and she felt woozy.
Another pause. “I find that hard to believe coming from a pegasus carrying a Pip-Buck. Would you like to try again?”
“I was given this Pip-Buck by my overmare.” She couldn’t keep the sharpness out of her tone. She already felt like a fool for being in the literal spotlight while her stomach was trying to crawl its way up her throat. Being called a liar was just salt in the wound.
“Is that so?” Aurora could hear the smirk in his voice. “Which Stable?”
She hesitated, actually feeling Roach stiffen at the question. He looked over his shoulder at her and gave his head a tight shake. Aurora looked up at Ginger and saw the intense focus in her eyes as she counted the guards on the wall. The faintest glow illuminated the inside of her jacket where she kept her knife. 
Fuck, she thought, and slid off of Roach and onto unsteady legs. She caught herself before she fell sideways and waited for the world to stop spinning. Whoever the Steel Rangers were, they were confident. They watched patiently as Aurora searched the wall for the nearest silhouette. She wasn’t sure if that was the pony she needed to speak to but it would have to do. If they were already convinced she was a liar, she could work with that.
“Alright,” she said, swaying a little on her hooves. “Hypothetically speaking…”
“Oh, naturally,” the gatekeeper agreed.
Aurora flattened her ears at the voice. “Okay, hypothetically, fuck you in particular.”
A chuckle escaped the wall and quickly snapped shut. Aurora resisted the urge to grin at the little victory. She could feel the gears spinning in her head. Her mind was back home, replaying the cheesy dialogue of her father’s favorite prewar radio play Counter Spy (featuring Buck Barding!). He made Aurora and her mother listen to it every night for weeks until he ran out of episodes. Then he started over to their dismay. Buck Barding’s silver-tongued voice was forever embedded in her brain like a tick.
“Secondly,” she continued, channeling the saucy confidence of her father’s favorite protagonist, “if I were Enclave, I’d assume your superiors would be pretty pissed off if you turned me away.”
The gatekeeper’s voice crackled a cautious response. “And why would that be?”
“Because I know things,” she crooned as much as someone on the edge of radiation-induced retching could croon. “I suspect I know a few things about the Enclave that your bosses might be interested in knowing. Things that could turn a stalemate into a decisive victory.”
“Dragonshit,” he spat.
She smiled to hide her nerves and pressed forward. “Is that how your bosses will see it? What would they say if they found out an Enclave asset walked right up to their doorstep offering information and you turned her away without even hearing what she had to say? You might smell dragonshit, but you’re here and they’re not. How confident are you that you’ll be able to convince them that what I had to offer wasn’t invaluable?”
“Give me an example,” the gatekeeper ordered.
Aurora lifted an eyebrow and shook her head in her best impression of Ginger she could muster. “Darling,” she said, “I don’t put out for free.”
Ginger’s posture turned wooden. With pinched lips, the unicorn turned her head toward Aurora so slowly that she expected to hear a hinge creak.
Hushed voices filtered down from the wall. Aurora desperately avoided eye contact with Ginger as the gatekeeper silently watched her from atop his perch.
“You’ll be kept under guard and will pay for your own treatment. A detachment will be sent to collect you in the morning for your first debriefing.”
Aurora’s stomach twisted. “Deal.”
He kept speaking as if he hadn’t heard her. “You don’t go anywhere without your escort. If you try to go anywhere without your escort, I will personally have you irradiated and thrown out of the city. Your weapons will be confiscated until such time we decide you can be trusted with them, if at all. Is that clear?”
Aurora arched her back and vomited. Roach braced her until the nausea ebbed. She lifted her head with sick clinging to her chin.
“Crystal.”
“Don’t get cocky,” he warned. “If I find out you’re lying, I’ll put you in crutches.”
Aurora swallowed a lump in her throat. After a several seconds the gate jerked and rolled aside. Behind it, a hulking machine resembling a pony glared down at them.
“Welcome to Blinder’s Bluff,” the behemoth rumbled. “Come with me.”








 


 

Blinder’s Bluff was the most beautiful fire hazard Aurora had ever seen. Strings of electric lights crisscrossed the narrow dirt alleys that made up the city’s streets. Short buildings made from the same debris that comprised the city walls sprouted haphazardly from the base of the bluff and wrapped around its northern slope like a shawl of light. Most of the windows were dark but a few still glowed, lending a dim glow to the streets below. High above them, the granite face of the bluff was splashed gold with light.
Despite her bravado outside the gate, radiation poisoning had taken her balance and thrown it out the window. She found herself unceremoniously thrown across the back of her metal retinue after falling for the second time. Roach and Ginger walked ahead of their metal escort where he could watch them.
“Turn right,” he said. Roach and Ginger obeyed.
Their escort’s voice was unmistakably male and carried the same built-in security in his own authority as the gatekeeper’s had. Aurora couldn’t help but marvel at the stallion’s power armor. Up until now she had only seen pictures of it in the history books back home. The mechanical suit stood a head taller than Roach, fully enclosing the stallion inside while still moving effortlessly as if it were its own being. Mounted to the suit’s shoulders perched two startlingly large guns.  
Aurora felt nausea creeping back up on her at the feeling of being carried sideways. She made a face and swung a foreleg left and a hind leg right, careful to avoid the armor’s pinch points while she pivoted to face forward. The stallion turned its head to look at her with a black mechanical eye. “Stop moving,” he said flatly.
He must have heard her shifting. Ginger and Roach looked back at her with concern but Aurora held up a placating hoof. “Sorry, just feeling a little queazy,” she said.
They passed a curtained window with a light on inside. A yellow unicorn colt no older than five appeared between the worn fabric and clung to the sill to watch them pass.
“Hi!” the colt chirped as Roach drew near. “Your legs got holes.”
Roach smiled. “They do, don’t they?”
“That’s weird,” the colt said and his attention flitted to the approaching suit of power armor. “Hi, Knight Latch!”
Even through the suit’s speaker, Aurora caught the exasperation in his voice. “Go to bed, Sunspark.”
Sunspark pointed a hoof up at Aurora and almost lost his grip on the windowsill. “Is she your marefriend?”
“Go to bed, Sunspark.”
Aurora chuckled. The stoic Steel Ranger was embarrassed.
“Mom’s not home yet so I don’t have to,” the colt declared. Latch ignored him. Sunspark grinned at Aurora at his little triumph. She smiled back as they continued past the window and further up the road.
“Bye, Latch’s marefriend!”
Aurora lifted a wing. “See ya, kid.”
Latch said nothing, save to tell them which way to go. They walked in silence for several minutes. The smile Roach had given Sunspark faded quickly and impatience settled back into his shoulders.
Ginger’s head dipped low as they climbed the ever-rising roads. Exhaustion, radiation sickness or likely both were starting to wear at her. Eventually she fell behind Roach, her eyes straining to focus on his hooves and nothing else. She barely acknowledged Latch when he told them they’d arrived.
They stopped in the middle of an alley in front of what could best be described as a very large shack. A wooden sign hung between the first and second floor that read: REDHEART CLINIC. A faded heart painted inside a medical cross garnished both sides of the sign.
An alabaster mare loitered beneath the sign with a lit cigarette dangling from her lip. Smoke curled up around a starched nurse’s cap. She looked up at them as they approached. Tendrils of smoke seeped out of the holes in her cheek.
Aurora felt a stripe of fear ripple down her back. Excluding Roach, the last ghouls she met had tried very hard to eat her. The nurse standing in front of them was clearly not one of those, but exhaustion and sickness were making it difficult for Aurora to shake her worry. The mare looked too much like the ferals from the tunnel. Strips of flesh were missing from her body as if they’d been torn off one piece at a time. A gash under her chin revealed the ragged musculature of her throat. Aurora watched with nauseating fascination as ligaments twitched under her jaw.
The ghoul stared back at her with the mild irritation of someone who knew their break was going to be cut short yet again. She took a long drag on her cigarette and dropped it to the dirt, crushing it under her cracked hoof. A key ring jangled on a strap tied to her foreleg. She nodded greetings to Roach before turning her faded blue eyes to Latch.
“Knight,” she rattled.
“Nurse Redheart,” Latch answered coldly. He tipped his head back toward Aurora. “You’ve got a patient from outside the wall.”
“I can see that.” Nurse Redheart sighed and walked past Roach, her gaze assessing Ginger as she approached Latch’s side. He kneeled down and Redheart reached up, dragging Aurora off his back and to the ground. Aurora’s knees almost buckled, but Redheart eased her descent with practiced ease. She helped Aurora toward the clinic. Roach and Ginger followed, as did Latch.
As she pushed through the wooden door, Redheart shot a look back at Latch. “You know my rule.”
Latch didn’t flinch. “They’re under my guard. Take it up with Paladin Flint.”
“I do not tolerate Rangers in my clinic. You can guard my patients outside.”
The Knight ignored her and pushed through the door. Redheart glared at him with open hatred. “I don’t take orders from Rots. Not even you. If it were up to me, your kind would be at the bottom of a burn pit where you belong.”
“Huh,” Redheart said. She led them through a small waiting area and through a set of rickety double doors into a medium-sized room filled with six empty beds. The beds were nothing more than bare mattresses on bed frames in varying states of decay. Fluorescent lights buzzed in dented fixtures hung from what appeared to be scavenged bits of wire. Several bulbs were dark.
“A burn pit. That’s a new one, Knight. Why don’t you write that down while I keep these two ponies from dying? That way at least one of us will be doing something meaningful with our lives.”
Redheart didn’t wait for a response from Latch. She helped Aurora onto the nearest bed, taking care with her wings as the pegasus settled in. Then she turned to Ginger and led her to the next one down. She offered Roach a chair, which he predictably declined. Aurora tried not to smile as Roach set himself down on the floor between the two beds. Latch positioned himself next to the double doors like a brick dipped in mortar.
Unfazed, Redheart pushed past him and walked out the door. Aurora could hear keys jingle and a lock turn. Metal clattered and soon wheels were squeaking against floorboards. She shoved a battered metal cart through the double doors hard enough to slap Latch’s power armor with one of them. He didn’t budge and she didn’t turn to see if he’d reacted. The door was incapable of scuffing the Knight’s armor, let alone damage it. She parked the cart at the end of Aurora’s bed.
“When were they exposed?” she asked Roach.
“Today,” he said.
“Impossible,” Latch said tersely. “The Rangers cleared out all the hot spots within a day’s walk of the Bluff.”
“And yet here we are.” Her voice dripped with accusation. Latch’s armor didn’t move but his silence was evidence that he was bristling at being told his kin had made a mistake.
Redheart’s eyes lingered on Roach before she went to Aurora’s side. She lifted her eyelid with a hooftip. The holes in her cheek crimped into a frown and she turned to look at Ginger. “Broken blood vessels, but no yellowing, so that’s a good sign. Your livers aren’t leaking out your pores quite yet. A few more days without treatment and that might change. I’m assuming the Rangers aren’t paying your expenses.”
“Not part of the deal,” Latch said.
“We have caps,” Roach added, his eyes narrowed at the Knight.
Redheart nodded and went to her cart. She slid open a drawer and dipped her nose into it, retrieving two IV bags full of liquid the same color as motor oil. Scrawled over the wrinkled paper label in thick black letters read the word RADAWAY. 
Aurora looked to Roach for assurance and he nodded.
They watched as the ghoul hung the bags on hooks above their beds and sank needles into their forelegs. Aurora’s leg burned as the dark fluid slid into her vein.
Redheart returned to the cart and retrieved two battered metal pails that gave off a slightly antiseptic odor. She set one down on the floor next to each mare’s bed. Roach glanced uneasily at the buckets flanking either side of him and decided the safest course of action was to move to the foot of Ginger’s bed. Aurora watched him slink away with a twinge of embarrassment, but she was at least thankful to have something to use instead of puking over the side of another pony.
Ginger promptly snatched up her bucket and noisily filled the first inch.
Near the door, Latch made a noise of disgust.
Redheart rolled her eyes at him. “Really. If you’re going to complain, at least do it while making yourself useful and get some water for them.”
“I’m not leaving them unattended,” he said with a little less surety.
She gestured at the two mares. “You’re afraid they’re going to run?”
As if on cue, Ginger retched again. Aurora and Roach flattened their ears to spare themselves from hearing it a second time.
Latch made a coughing noise within his power armor. “For Luna’s sake.”
“Don’t you even think about opening that suit. If I have to clean up after you, believe me when I say Paladin Flint will hear about your delicate stomach.” She let her words sink in before adding, “The water pump’s out back. If you need to puke, do it out there. If you managed to come back with some water for these mares, I’ll consider keeping my opinion regarding your constitution off your senior officer’s desk.”
The Knight said nothing. He turned and hurried out of the room.
Redheart didn’t speak until she heard the faint squeak of the pump handle outside. She looked at Roach with something like pity. “You’re the first changeling I’ve seen in over fifty years.”
“Living?” he asked, hopefully.
It took her a moment to catch his meaning. “No. Feral.”
“Oh,” he said.
Roach watched Ginger set down her bucket with a thunk and lay back down a little too quickly. She winced when her head bounced against the bare mattress.
“Not many ponies knew about us,” Roach said. He glanced at Redheart. “Prewar?”
She smiled and nodded, not without a little pride. She pushed a thin lock of pink mane behind her tattered ear. “One month away from retirement when the bombs fell. Forty years with the Ponyville Hospital and my pension literally went up in flames.”
They both chuckled at the joke.
Aurora and Ginger swapped wary expressions. Ghoul humor.
Redheart’s smile faded. “I’m sorry for what happened to your hive.”
Roach pursed his lips and looked at the floor. “Changelings were never friends of Equestria. Queen Chrysalis wanted to replace the princesses for decades. She would have tried eventually if the zebras hadn’t started an arms race.”
“Maybe,” Redheart said. “It still doesn’t make what we did right. You deserve an apology from someone.”
Roach’s lip twitched. During the last chaotic minutes of the war, as missiles tipped with balefire megaspells traced lines from east to west, one missile streaked south. With the sky falling down around their ears, few ponies noticed or cared about the single contrail that had gone in the wrong direction. It would take years for word to trickle back, and even longer for anyone to piece together what had happened.
“Thank you,” he said.
Outside, the pump stopped creaking.
Redheart inhaled and sighed. “The metal child returneth.” She looked at Aurora. “May I ask what deal you have with him?”
Aurora opened her mouth to answer but Ginger cleared her throat, cutting her off. The foreleg without a needle hanging out of it lay over her eyes. She bit off each word one by one. “In her infinite wisdom, Aurora has convinced the Steel Rangers that she is an Enclave operative turned rogue. In exchange for medical treatment, she has promised the Rangers valuable information regarding her exploits with said Enclave. Oh, and they took our weapons.” She turned her head slightly, peering at Aurora from under her leg. “Is that about right?”
Ginger’s words cut. Aurora bit her lip and nodded.
Redheart looked at the two mares. Her scarred face creased with confusion. “I’m missing something.”
Roach sighed. “She’s not Enclave.”
Her eyes went wide with understanding. “You swindled the Steel Rangers for RadAway?”
The double doors shoved open and Latch lumbered in with a bucket of water hanging from the barrel of his suit’s gun. He set the bucket on the floor near Redheart’s hooves and backed away from it, returning to his post next to the door.
The four of them stared at Latch. He stared back.
“What?” he asked.
The ghoul mare turned to Aurora. Her faded eyes were pinched with apology.
“I may be needing payment in advance.”







 

Aurora couldn’t sleep.
She stared at the light fixture above her bed, listening to the single working fluorescent tube’s electric buzzing. She knew the sound by heart. The ballast was going bad. The light would continue to buzz and buzz until it went out with a quiet plink. She’d replaced so many of the little bastards that she could probably fix the one above her bed with her eyes closed, assuming Redheart even had the parts. She doubted it. If someone spent the time to search for, collect and transport the fragile materials to Blinder’s Bluff, it would make sense that they would be valuable enough at that point to store them somewhere safer than a broom closet in a ramshackle clinic.
Not that she could afford one at this point. Redheart had been serious about being paid up front, and the cost had cleared out what little caps they had after leaving Junction City. Nobody had remembered to take the caps Ginger had taken off of Cider when they left. Several hundred caps were currently sitting behind the counter at Gussets & Garments. Redheart’s bill had tallied up to nearly a hundred caps more than what they had. Whether it had been kindness, altruism or just a way to get under Latch’s skin, Redheart chose to forgive the outstanding balance.
It still felt like a raw deal, but there was nothing for it. They would be flat broke but at least they wouldn’t be dead from radiation poisoning.
Her bladder twitched.
Joy.
RadAway, as it turned out, was not a magical miracle drug that whisked away radiation on a cloud of pixie dust. It was a cocktail of compounds that, in the simplest terms, bound to radioactive particles and encouraged her body to purge them. She’d lost track of how many times she and Ginger had gotten up to use the toilet, but at this rate she was surprised the thing hadn’t started glowing.
At the very least, they both had gotten pretty good at removing and reinserting their IVs. Aurora pressed the port down with her free hoof and pulled the needle free with her wing. She hung it on the hook the RadAway dangled from and got out of bed. The blue IV port stayed in her foreleg like a needle in a pincushion. 
On her way out the door she picked up the water bucket. Barely a puddle sloshed at the bottom, not even high enough to dip a ladle into without tipping the bucket on its edge. 
Latch’s power armor stood in the waiting area like a weaponized statue. She wondered it the armor made sleeping while standing more comfortable. Unfortunately for Latch, he didn’t qualify as the others. She tapped a hoof against his helmet and waited.
He groaned. The speaker in his suit gave his voice a tinny quality. “What?” he grumbled.
“I need to pee.”
He looked down and to his left, a gesture Aurora was beginning to suspect meant he was checking the time. She’d asked whether his suit used some sort of heads-up display, but he refused to tell her. Apparently he wasn’t allowed to tell the Enclave whether or not he used a clock.
“You just went forty-five minutes ago,” he said.
“You’re keeping track?” She glared at the lens behind his helmet’s black-tinted “eyes.”
Inside the armor, he shrugged. Outside, it looked like a servo shorted out in his shoulder. “Operational protocol. Everything you do will be cataloged.”
“That’s… creepy.” She lifted the bucket and hung it on the barrel of Latch’s shoulder rifle. “You can catalog my bladder while you pump water.”
He watched the bucket slosh at the end of his suit’s weaponry but said nothing.
Aurora walked out the front door and the Steel Ranger followed. She was already sick of making this trip and tried to ignore the thump of power armor walking behind her. She navigated the tight alley between the clinic and the neighboring tavern. It opened up into a tiny courtyard surrounded by makeshift buildings. In it stood two outhouses build side-to-side and a water pump built into a cement basin. A bench sat against the rear of the tavern. A blue-haired stallion splayed across it, passed out with a capped bottle held loosely to his chest.
Aurora had been pleasantly surprised at how little the outhouse smelled. The water pump in the middle of the courtyard fed into a pipe that drained beneath the outhouses. The city’s designers had taken advantage of the natural slope of the bluff and constructed a crude sewer that swept the city’s waste downhill toward a quarry north of the bluff. The water pump effectively turned the outhouses into crude flush toilets.
It was an impressive feat of engineering. The only part that left her wondering was where Blinder’s Bluff drew its water from.
Aurora stepped into the outhouse and listened to Latch work the pump handle. She scrolled through her Pip-Buck as she did her business, ignoring the slow ticking it made once she started. She checked her rad saturation and was relieved to see it had dropped into the four hundreds. Not great, but not fatal.
She tapped over to the radio menu. HIGHTOWER RADIO 99.5 still appeared just beneath her Stable’s unavailable network node. She selected the radio station and a mare’s well-worn voice filled the outhouse.
“...to me that they found something worth not killing each other over, at least not yet. My little birdies want you, dear listeners, to be careful out there. We all want a little peace and harmony but when the raiders are skipping down the highway hoof-in-hoof with the Epicureans, you know it ain’t good. 
“And now for something… poetic. Some of my listeners may have already heard, but for those just tuning in, listen up. Cider - yes, that Cider - was found dead yesterday evening in Junction City. Now I can hear you asking: But, Flipswitch, what’s so poetic about that? I’ll tell you. Cider, the reknowned co-owner of Flim & Flam Mercantile and notorious brutalizer, got his neck broken and dumped face first into an outhouse and you bet his sister Autumn Song is gunning for the ponies who did it. Now, this is just me thinking out loud here but it seems to me Cider got off easy. A quick death and a free burial? Usually you have to piss a mob boss in Las Pegasus to get that kind of service.”
Flipswitch broke into a self-satisfied laugh. 
“That’s all for now, dear listeners. As always, keep your eyes open and your ears low. And if you happen to be the pony Autumn’s looking for… stay safe out there. Now, keep it tuned to Hightower Radio on frequency 99.5 for fresh news and classic tunes. We haven’t heard this one in a while. Let’s get it on deck. Here’s A Good Stallion is Hard to Find…”
A shock of trumpets introduced the track and quickly mellowed as a prewar mare sang alongside a smooth trio of clarinets. Aurora let the music play for a little while before turning it off. She felt off balance.
A battering ram shook the outhouse. She yelped, torn from her thoughts. Latch knocked on the rickety frame again, his tired voice growling from the other side of the door. “Wrap it up.”
She made a face at the back of the door and turned off the radio. The door squeaked on old hinges and slapped shut behind her. Latch gave the pump handle a few presses and hiked his chin back toward the alley. Aurora bit back a clever comment and crossed the courtyard. The blue-haired stallion on the bench was awake now. He winked at her with a close-lipped grin.
Latch put an armored hoof on the bench and tipped it forward, spilling the drunk onto the ground. “Find a different peepshow.”
The stallion laughed, scooping his bottle off the ground. “Yes sir.”
Aurora pursed her lips and walked into the alley. Latch followed close behind her.
“Thanks,” she said.
“We’re not friends.”
Aurora opened her mouth but thought better of it. She said nothing as she pushed through the clinic door, leaving Latch to lock it behind them.
Ginger stood half-asleep in the recovery room doorway. She caught Aurora’s eye as she walked inside. “Did you refill the water?”
“Tin pony left the bucket at the pump.” Aurora hopped onto her bed, satisfied to hear Latch mutter a curse from the other room.
“You could have mentioned that earlier.”
Aurora settled into the mattress and shrugged even though he wasn’t in the room to see it. She could hear his hooves thump against the floor as he debated whether to drag her out of bed to retrieve the bucket. He wouldn't give her a choice if it came to that, but she wasn’t going to go out of her way to help him make that decision when he’d thrown her thanks back in her face. Her wing scooped the needle away from the wall and she carefully navigated it back into the port in her foreleg.
“I need to use the little filly’s room,” Ginger said. She rolled her neck and yawned deeply before nudging off the door frame. “I’ll pick it up on the way back.”
Aurora breathed a sigh and rested her head against her foreleg. It was the closest she would get to an actual pillow. She heard the front door squeak open and click shut and felt a little envy when Latch’s hooves didn’t follow. He parked himself in the waiting area, resuming his watch over the pegasus who claimed to be from the Enclave.
She stared at Ginger’s mattress and listened to the buzz of the lights. Roach stirred somewhere on the floor below her. His breathing settled into a slow, relaxing rhythm. She closed her eyes and listened to him sleep. And then she was falling. Falling. Falling.







 


April 20th, 1075
I got detention today for being a distraction. All I did was raise my hoof! Mr. Sky said that without the princesses the sun and moon would stop moving, but that’s just stupid. I told him he shouldn’t be telling ponies stuff like that but he said it’s a figure of speech, which is apparently supposed to make lying to your class okay! I told him so and he gave me detention for the rest of the WEEK. Mom says I need to be more patient with ponies, especially the ones who grew up thinking Celestia and Luna could do that kind of stuff. Why should I be the patient one? We’ve got rockets and satellites and pretty soon we’re going to send a pony into orbit on one. How dumb do you have to be to think one pony can move an entire SUN. If Celestia could do that, she wouldn’t have needed the Elements of Harmony to save her butt all the time. I don’t care what Mr. Sky says, he’s wrong.
 
 
May 1st, 1075
Mr. and Mrs. Cake are getting a memorial statue put up where Sugarcube Corner used to be and the Ministry of Morale paid for everything. They want it to be really big I guess, because Chipcutter said it’ll take a few months before it’s done. Mom had been hoping they would do something simple and plant a tree for them, but she says Pinkie Pie doesn’t know what simple is.
 
 
May 11th, 1075
Mom and Dad are fighting in their bedroom. I’m afraid to tell them to stop but mom is so angry she’s not even rhyming. She keeps screaming about wanting to protect my future and do what’s best for the family and I’m really scared because they’ve never been this mad before. Dad just said… I don’t want to write it. Mom’s crying and Dad’s gone. This is all my fault.
> Chapter 10: Bargain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


 


May 25th, 1075
Dad moved out. 

 







 

“Get up.”
Aurora startled awake to a room descending into chaos. Several ponies wearing dull brown uniforms stood around her bed while more crowded through doorway toward Roach. A stubbled gray unicorn stood above her, his expression impatient. She squeezed her eyes shut to get them to focus. When she opened them, the stallion’s frown had cracked into an impatient sneer.
“Get. Up.”
She recognized his voice from outside the wall. The gatekeeper. A sewn patch on his chest read IRONSHOD. She scooted to the other side of the mattress quickly enough to dislodge the IV. She barely noticed the needle’s pinch and risking a glance toward Roach. They were putting something over his horn. A silver ring? He stood perfectly still as they closed iron shackles around his hooves. 
Worry touched her voice. “Roach?”
The calm of his voice was betrayed by the fear in his eyes. “It’ll be okay, Aurora. Just do what they say.”
“I don’t underst-” Her words were cut off by a yelp as she felt a familiar, unwanted force drag her across the mattress and onto the floor. Panic leaped into her throat as she was hauled up by Ironshod’s magic and dropped onto her hooves like a puppet suddenly made to walk. She stumbled and was caught by two ponies in uniforms dyed brick red.
Every bit of her screamed to run away. Her hooves scraped at the ground in preparation to do just that when she saw the pleading tension on his face. She stopped. A lump built in her throat but she set her jaw, watching as uniformed ponies moved in to secure identical shackles over her hooves. They jerked her from one side then the other as a thick strap of leather was fitted around her chest, pinning her wings to her sides.
Ironshod’s horn lit with white light and shoved Aurora toward the doorway. “Walk,” he ordered. 
She tried to look back at Roach but the gray gatekeeper stood behind her, waiting. She bowed her head and allowed herself to be led out of the room. Chains scraped the floor beneath her with each step.
Knight Latch held open the clinic’s front door, giving her a clear view of the street outside. The diffuse morning light reflected off the curves of his power armor like a dusty mirror. Nurse Redheart watched from behind him, her blue eyes bright with outrage at the sight of her patients being handled so roughly. She looked at Aurora with an expression that tried to project reassurance, but Aurora avoided her gaze and stared at her shackles. The last thing she wanted to do was drag another innocent pony down with her.
“There was a third,” Ironshod said to Latch. The armored stallion visibly straightened. “A unicorn by the name of Ginger Dressage. She isn’t here.”
Aurora forced herself to pay attention despite her body’s lingering protests of being yanked away from bed. Ginger was missing?
The implication was unmistakable. Latch had been responsible for them and one had gotten away.
“She left to use the outhouse several hours ago and didn’t come back, sir.” He carefully left out the possibility that he might have sent her out alone to retrieve the water bucket at the pump. “She must have spooked and run off.”
Ironshod’s voice drew low. “I was under the impression that I told you to watch all three of them, Knight.”
“You did, sir.”
A pause. Latch was an asshole, but he was a smart asshole who knew better than to make excuses.
“Find her. Report back when you do.” Ironshod didn’t wait for a response. He shoved Aurora toward the door until her hooves were moving at a pace that suited him, and he followed close behind. A detachment of Rangers waited for them outside and fell into ranks around her. Their faces were devoid of emotion but their eyes lingered on her with varying degrees of curiosity and hostility. 
By her own words, she was their enemy. Her shackles settled uncomfortably against her ankle and she quickly began to regret plying Ironshod with lies to get through his gate.
She could make out the edges of the rooftops against the dark brown underbelly of Equestria’s permanent blanket of clouds. They curved downhill and abruptly ended at a dark line that drew an arc from north to south. The wall. Pinpoints of light moved along its length, some flickering with the instability of the city’s ramshackle electric grid while several others glowed steadily atop unicorn horns. 
Beyond the wall lay emptiness. Only a black void that seemed to lurk in the morning shadow of the massive bluff. The sun was rising somewhere behind her. Behind the escarpment of sedimentary rock that gave the city its surname. Here and there a light peeped on inside the hoof-built hovels that crowded around the city’s narrow streets. Early risers getting an early start on an early morning. More than a few faces peered through makeshift windows to watch the little parade making its way downhill.
The Rangers turned her down a wider street with a subtle urgency. Nobody spoke to her or anyone else. Aurora couldn’t help but think about the quiet funeral processions that squeezed through the halls of Stable 10, carrying the deceased to their final resting place in the gardens. Where her father or someone he knew would guide them toward the row where a deep hole waited.
Slowly, the road bent away from the wall and toward the foot of the high bluff. She looked up at the towering mass of shaded stone and felt impossibly small by comparison. 
She couldn’t help it. She had to ask.
“What’s going to happen to Roach?”
For a long while, nobody answered her. They passed a mare in the middle of setting up a vendor’s stall complete with a tattered blue awning. Aurora met her eye for only a moment, and then she was behind them.
When Ironshod finally spoke, there was an acidity in his voice. “The ghoul isn’t who you should be worried about. Keep walking and stop talking, or I’ll add a muzzle to your wardrobe.”
Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach. The corners of her eyes stung with tears. She squeezed them shut with renewed anger, wrenching herself back under control. This wasn’t the time.
She set her jaw and stared forward. A Ranger to her right gave her a curious look. She narrowed her eyes at him and enjoyed the little victory when he looked away. It occurred to her that she already knew these types of ponies. Give them a uniform, a rank and a noble purpose and their egos balloon like its somebody’s birthday. She’d had plenty of experience butting heads with bureaucracy back home. In one case, literally.
One of the inevitable moments for a pony who spent the entirety of her day sweating, spitting and bleeding in the bowels of Mechanical was the eventual invitation to share a drink with her crew. Un-breaking a Stable that constantly found new ways to break was thirsty work and Aurora wasn’t immune to the burning pleasure of her neighbors’ many sources of compartment-brewed hooch. While she never developed the creeping dependencies that plagued a few ponies who shared an after-shift night cap, she did develop a reputation for settling grudges over the odd cup of engine-quality ethanol. One such grudge came in the form of a towering red stallion named Sledge. 
Aurora suppressed a bittersweet smile at the memory. She couldn’t remember the exact insult he’d thrown her way, but he had done it in front of her peers and walked away without giving her a chance to answer. She’d been humiliated, which was exactly his intention. She hadn’t known it at the time but he’d been chipping away at her so he could build her back up from the foundation. After shift, an invite went out to taste Carbide’s latest alcoholic abortion he generously called rum and Aurora found herself suffering its wrath alongside Sledge. The drink had poured fuel on her smoldering indignation and after her third cup of Carbide’s criminally bad liquor, she picked a fight. Sledge turned her down. She clubbed him over the back of the head with her chair.
She’d been under the impression that Sledge would take it easy on her because she was a mare. She’d been very wrong. She spent the next week in the infirmary with more bruises than she could count and three fractured ribs.
But damned if she hadn’t gotten a few licks in. His muzzle still had a slight bend to the right from where she’d broken it against her hoof. He became the closest thing she had to a best friend ever since.
She was abruptly shoved out of her daydream by one of the Rangers when they diverted off the dirt road onto genuine cobblestones. It was a proper street with a set of prewar train rails sunken between the stones, evidently the Bluff’s version of a main drag similar to the one in Junction City. Carts and wagons lined the curbs, some in disrepair but all of them loaded with goods ranging from reclaimed lumber to disorganized heaps of scrap. She saw several covered wagons bearing F&F Mercantile’s whimsical logo from a bygone age. A few ponies in blue pinstriped armor stood about one of the carts, discussing prices with the first customer of the day. She craned her neck to see their faces but couldn’t tell if any of them had been a part of Cider’s caravan.
Her hoof clicked against one of the rails and nearly twisted into the narrow cavity alongside it. The rail was caked in flakes of rust and drew a straight line toward the bottom of an arch carved into the bluff. She blinked. Not a carving. A tunnel. A familiar tunnel.
Her heart skipped a beat. The tunnel was much shallower than the one in Foal Mountain but the architecture was the same. Pillars stood on either side of the rails with wide flagstones marking the end of the street and the beginning of something built and preserved for hundreds of years.
She saw it well before they entered the tunnel. A great steel gear with a bright yellow number 6 emblazoned across the center. 
Another Stable.
Ironshod pushed her into the tunnel without comment, but she didn’t need to be encouraged. The Stable door pulled at her with a force of its own.
It was too surreal. Light streamed down from utility lamps bound to the top of each pillar with a uniformity that suggested someone had put some care into their work. A few ponies milled in and out of the tunnel, some wearing saddlebags while others made do with hoof-made burlap sacks. Even in the barest first hours of the morning, the tunnel felt alive. Several ponies watched her as her escorts aimed her toward the Stable door.
Aurora didn’t notice them. Her attention was on the faded posters that hung on the tunnel walls in yellowed plastic frames, each bearing slogans and reassurances from a failed era. It was clear that great pains had been taken to preserve them. Heavy gauge cable was strung into makeshift fencing to keep ponies from touching them. Rangers patrolled nearby like docents in a museum.
Each poster was a little different than the next, but the overall theme stayed the same. Some were simply there to drum up support for the six ministries. Others warned her to be suspicious of their neighbors. That not all zebras had stripes. One had been torn to confetti by a long burst of gunfire. Aurora could barely make out the blue and yellow logo of the Wonderbolts that clung to the upper margin of its frame. A sign of some animosity she didn’t yet understand.
Aurora’s gaze was pulled away from the mangled poster to the one nearest the Stable door.
The kind eyes of a yellow pegasus gleamed behind a pink curl of mane. Fluttershy. Element of Harmony and later the head of the Ministry of Peace. She stared out from the poster with a melancholy resignation that made Aurora briefly forget her situation. At the bottom of the poster read a simple phrase:


WE CAN DO BETTER.


 

Aurora noticed more than a few Rangers glance up at the poster as they passed. How many times had they read those words and still felt the urge to read them again? Fluttershy’s eyes seemed to follow her as they passed through the door to Stable 6.
As she ascended the ramp into the antechamber, she had to remind herself that she wasn’t back home. It was strange. Doors she remembered jamming shut stood open for anyone to pass through. A Ranger glanced up from a makeshift guard station at the top of the antechamber ramp, looked at her, then returned to the book in front of him. Her escorts led her through the security office where three cells stood empty. It felt like weeks had gone by since she picked that lock. Pried open that utility panel and cut the hydraulic line behind it. She closed her eyes. This isn’t my home.
The Atrium opened up around her. The first thing she noticed wasn’t the bizarre, rickety shops crammed around the perimeter of the Atrium floor or the startling volume of the ponies below as they shouted cheerily to one another as they organized their wares. The first thing she noticed when she stepped into this strange new Stable was how dim it was.
It reminded her of when she’d built a dimmer switch into her compartment with parts she’d borrowed from the salvage bins in Mechanical. After a few failed attempts at creating her own variable resistor, she’d come up with a functional dimmer that made her infrequent migraines a little less horrible.
Except the Atrium didn’t have a dimmer to play with. A quick look at the dozens of recessed lights above gave her the answer. Barely half of the fixtures had bulbs in them. Those that did weren’t burning at full brightness. She felt the urge to check the work order queue on her Pip-Buck and had to remind herself that there wouldn’t be one. Not for her, at least.
They herded her down the ramp and into the corridors of the Residential wing, indicated by the green stripe on the floor that she’d been trained to follow as a filly. She prepared for the Rangers to rearrange their protective phalanx just to fit into the hallway, but they didn’t. They didn’t have to. A pair of chattering unicorns passed them in the hall, barely noticing them. Aurora balked at the generously wide corridor. There was enough room for two ponies to lay across the floor ass to eyeball and still have room to spare. 
The ponies who lived here would have never needed to wear wing guards just to walk from one place to another. The thought burrowed into the back of her head like an angry little tick. Why had her Stable been so… small?
To distract herself she read the nameplates outside each compartment door, half expecting to see one that read A. PINFEATHERS. The names marched by one after another. J. HARVEST, SHINE FAMILY (3), GOLDENSPARK FAMILY (4), O. MELODY. She smiled weakly. Roach hadn’t been too far off when he said ponies had strange naming conventions.
“In here.”
Ironshod stopped them outside a door labeled WORKOUT 1A. He flipped the switch and the corridor lights perceptibly dimmed as the steel door labored its way up into its recess. 
Aurora knew ponies who spent more time working out than they did working. Carbide was one of them, though he’d never admit it. She wondered if he knew what was happening to the Stable. Working so close to the generator, he’d know something was wrong. Every pony in Mechanical would. Without Sledge down there to keep everyone in line, she wondered how long it would be until word spread to the other levels of Stable 10 that something was deeply wrong with their insulated world.
The workout room had been cleared out save for a cluster of folding chairs and a metal table bolted into the concrete floor. The exercise equipment had been ferried away somewhere unknown, likely scrapped, leaving behind scuff marks and bolt holes where benches and weight racks had once stood. Fluorescent lights flickered on with the same electric buzz from Redheart’s clinic. Several tubes didn’t bother to light up at all.
Ironshod pulled a chair toward the table and gestured for Aurora to sit in it. It was awkward with chains rattling between her legs, but she managed it just as he pulled up a seat opposite of her. She tried to hide the relief she was feeling. An interrogation, then. Not an execution. Two Rangers stood guard at the door while the rest quietly congregated in the hall. The door sank back down with a prolonged hiss.
They stared at each other across the narrow table for a long while. They were close enough that, if she wanted to, she could grab his face and drive it into the table. It was a tempting thought but she didn’t like her chances in the moments that would follow after. She looked at his hazel eyes and wondered how many times he’d been in this room, sitting across a pony who had something to hide.
He reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and set something down onto the table. A brass pin made to resemble a pair of outstretched wings. A bisected steel circle sat in its center. Two alicorns, one white and one black, hung in mid-flight on opposite halves as if chasing one another around its circumference.
Aurora looked up at Ironshod with a blank expression. “What is it?”
“I thought you could tell me.” He pushed the pin across the table to her. She hesitated before finally picking it up in her hoof. Her chain scraped against the table as she looked it over. It was pretty and had clearly meant a lot to someone. The two princesses were worn almost completely smooth. “I found it on the body of a dead Enclave soldier back when I first conscripted. I didn’t know what I had until I interrogated a live one several years later.”
Aurora turned the pin over, expecting to find a simple press latch. Instead it featured a decorative brass cap with the letters RC engraved in the center.
“Remember Cloudsdale,” he said. He watched her face intently as he spoke. “The Enclave could never let that one go. Even now they wear it like an open wound.”
She set the pin back on the table. The links of her chain stuttered against the edge of the table as she pushed it back toward him. “I’m not with the Enclave.”
Ironshod stared at her for a moment before picking up the pin and returning it to his pocket. He tapped the table with the tip of his hoof, his head tilting slightly as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve. The silence stretched. Then his eyes dropped to her foreleg and the Pip-Buck attached to it.
He nodded at it. “Explain that.”
Aurora moved her hoof away from him. “It’s my Pip-Buck.”
“Tell me what it does.”
She lifted a confused eyebrow and gestured at the door. “You have an entire Stable of your own.”
He shrugged. “Humor me.”
She felt ridiculous and suspected that this was a test of some kind. Ironshod watched her impassively as she told him what every Stable pony knew since they were yearlings. “It’s a personal information processor, hence the pip. We all get one when we’re young.” She paused, but Ironshod gestured for her to continue. She sighed. “It gives me a live health assessment and lets me keep track of personal stuff like how many bits I have and which tickets I have assigned for my shift in Mechanical. I mostly use mine to keep track of project notes and sent memos when I can’t get to a terminal."
Ironshod leaned back in his chair and chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. “So you’re going to stick with the Stable-mare story.”
She rolled the flats of her hooves up in a mock shrug. “It’s the truth.”
His lips curled into a smile. There was no warmth in it.
“Do you know how many pegasi Stable-Tec assigned to the shelter program?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Zero. Out of all the Stables that stand open today, exactly zero percent of their populations have been pegasi. Now, would you like to guess how many pegasi come from the Enclave?”
Aurora looked at the ceiling and shook her head in exasperation. “All of them?”
“Damn near.” Ironshod leaned forward and pointed a hoof at her face. “You came here on the back of a walking corpse and with a unicorn who is wanted for the murder of an operator of this region’s largest and oldest trading company. The ghoul is clearly a historical asset to you or you wouldn’t be travelling with him. The mare is protection from other unicorns. And the three of you were trying to get somewhere but got dosed with enough radiation to force you here. Does that sound about right?”
He had the comfortable smugness of a pony who thought he had his prey cornered. Aurora had to admire him just a little. The story in his head could make for a decent thriller novel. If he had a mustache she fully expected him to be twirling it around the tip of his hoof.
As much as she wanted to slowly poke holes in his story, needle him until he lost his patience, she could tell that there was a side of him that wouldn’t tolerate disobedience. She’d known a few ponies with too much muscle with skin too thin for it. Ironshod seemed like that type. Provoking him to violence was a path she’d rather not explore.
“I told you from the start,” she said flatly. “I’m from a Stable.”
Ironshod scoffed. “The Stable without a number.”
“You don’t get to have that.”
He stared at her with a cool intensity. “Why?”
She met his gaze. “Because I have people to protect.”
Ironshod tapped the table once and took a breath. He sat up a little straighter. Something about his demeanor softened, but it was artificial. Something about it made the mane on her neck stand on end.
“At the wall you said you knew things about the Enclave that my superiors may be interested to hear. Things that could turn our stalemate with them into a victory. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what I told you I would do if I found out you were lying to me?”
She swallowed, then nodded a second time. “You said you’d put me in crutches.”
A smile creased the corners of his eyes. His voice was gentle like her father’s but the note of violence behind his words were unmistakable. “That’s correct. So what I want to know is which part is the lie: the Stable you claim to come from or the information about the Enclave that you promised me. If you tell me the truth, I’ll let you pick which leg I break. If you lie to me, I’ll break all of them.”
Her heart began to pound. The panic was rising in her chest again, urging her to run. Except there was nowhere to go. Her mouth went dry, making it hard to swallow. Calm down, she thought. You had a plan. Think.
She took a shaky breath and looked up at Ironshod. He sat like an overloaded spring that was waiting for a reason to shoot across the table. She tried not to wince. She nearly succeeded.
She spoke slowly, choosing each word deliberately. It terrified her to know her safety depended entirely on the sturdiness of Ironshod’s ego. 
“I didn’t lie. I told you that I might know things about the Enclave that the Rangers might be interested in. I said that those things could turn a stalemate into a victory. I never said that I had information you didn’t already have, or that it was of any particular value to you or the Steel Rangers.”
The room went deathly still. 
“We needed medicine,” she added, quietly. “You were going to turn us away because of my wings.”
Aurora’s heart hammered at her ribs as Ironshod leaned back. His chair creaked under his weight. The longer he stared at her, the clearer she could see the anger building behind his eyes. He traced his tongue under his upper lip and look away, shaking his head.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Then louder. “Son of a bitch, it really was all dragonshit.”
She sat perfectly still, unable to tell whether he was furious or enjoying the fact that he’d been duped.
“I’m hoping that means no crutches,” she said.
Ironshod snorted. “If you were Enclave I would’ve broken your neck.”
Her wings went rigid against their bindings. Ironshod glanced at them, then at her. “But you’re not Enclave,” he said. He produced the brass pin from his pocket and held it up for her. “You proved that when you gave this back. The Enclave treat these things like they’re sacred. They’d remove your hoof if they saw you give it back to a Ranger.”
He dropped the pin back into his pocket. She looked over to the door hopefully. “Does that mean I can go?”
“Not quite. There are still some elements of your story that don’t add up.”
She turned looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not giving you that number.”
It was his turn to frown. “What was your name again?”
“Aurora.”
He waited.
She pursed her lips. “Pinfeathers.”
He leaned forward and set his hoof over her foreleg, just below her Pip-Buck. She had to force herself not to show her revulsion.
“Aurora Pinfeathers, if I wanted to know where you came from, I would take this Pip-Buck off your leg and let the scribes pick it apart.” He took his hoof away and sat back. Aurora slipped her Pip-Buck under the lip of the table. “I’m not going to do that, though. Not unless you make me.”
There was something he wasn’t saying. Something he wanted her to work out on her own.
“You want proof,” she said.
He shrugged. “You said it yourself at the wall. You have information that my superiors would find interesting. I’m not too proud to admit that you pulled one over on me, and as a result I’ve made some… premature assurances to the Elder that I’m no longer in a position to fulfill. That’s a problem for me, which makes it a problem for you.”
She blinked and looked down at the Pip-Buck in her lap. Her muzzle twisted with worry. “What if I don’t have anything to offer?”
Ironshod chuckled. “Let’s not go down that path.”
That didn’t do much to settle her nerves. She’d promised Ironshod the moon and now that she was coming up empty-hoofed, he wanted something else to keep the axe off his neck. From what she’d seen of the wasteland so far, she wasn’t willing to bet that axe would be the figurative type.
The fluorescent tubes buzzed impatiently above her head. She squinted at the fixture and nearly considered offering to change the bulb for Ironshod. Thinking it might result in many months of crutching around the wasteland, she held off. Still, it was a problem she understood.
She caught Ironshod’s curious expression and gestured up to the fixture. “Do you mind?”
Bemused, he spread his hooves with invitation. Aurora pushed out of the chair and climbed onto the metal table. The chains made standing on her hind legs awkward but she managed to reach high enough to catch the edges of the noisy fixture. She looked back down at Ironshod and saw where his eyes were at.
“Seriously?”
He held up his hooves and turned his gaze up to the fixture, his eyes unrepentant. She grimaced and peered back up at the light.
The fixture creaked as she balanced against it. With her right hoof she pinned down the cable that fed it power, reading the tiny string of text printed in repeating strings along its cracked insulation. She had a hunch and squinted at the last ten digits in the dim light.
Everything fabricated inside a Stable had a shelf life. No pony reminded her of that fact more often than Tally Mane, the former production lead of Stable 10’s Fabrication Wing and current trainee in Sanitation courtesy of a forty-four minute blackout caused by his overzealous production goals. The Fab Lab never failed to print out the date and lifespan of everything they made, embedding them into the last digits of every product code.
Stamped into the black insulation was the serial 0409107725-S006. April 9th, 1077 with a usable lifespan of 25 years, fabricated for Stable 6. She blinked. The bombs fell in 1077. The cable was 160 years overdue to be replaced. These were the original lines from when the Stable was first constructed.
She quickly took her hoof away from the cable and hopped off the table, chains jangling in protest at their sudden mistreatment. Ironshod watched her face with curiosity as she shook her head at the other lights in the room.
“That’s why it’s so dark,” she said, turning toward him. He didn’t seem to be worried that she was standing. “You’re capping the power output.”
Ironshod only shrugged. “If you say so. The senior scribes are charged with keeping the city and Stable functional.”
Aurora stifled a derisive laugh. “This Stable is a bonfire waiting to happen. Your senior scribes are idiots.”
Ironshod’s expression chilled. “Elaborate on that.”
She lifted a hoof toward the ceiling and the chain nearly pulled her other leg out from under her. She bit back a curse and nodded at the light fixture. “That light is getting power through a century and a half old cable. If I was a betting mare, my bits would be on the rest of the Stable being in the same shape.” She paused. “Why haven’t you fabricated new lines?”
The stallion’s face was carefully neutral. He said nothing. To Aurora, it translated to Keep digging.
She did. Her chains jingled as she paced across the workout room. “If your scribes can regulate the generator’s output, they’d have to be smart enough to use the fabricators. Which means there’s something wrong with the fabricators.”
Ironshod steepled his hooves in front of his muzzle. The fact that he wasn’t trying to redirect the conversation gave her the impression he didn’t want to. This was new information for him. Possibly something she could leverage to her advantage.
She pressed on. “There are multiple fabricators for redundancy, though. Nothing should be able to break that another couldn’t make a replacement parts for, within limitations. You haven’t cannibalized the Stable for material, either, so it’s not a production issue. And you’re clearly using the Stable’s generator to power the city even if it means dropping the output to keep the wiring from catching fire. This place isn’t unimportant to you by any stretch, so… why not get the fabricators working and fix the Stable?”
She looked down at the patches of discolored flooring where the ghosts of workout equipment still lingered. A hazy idea began to form in the back of her head. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She looked at Ironshod with realization.
“The fabricators aren’t here.”
He frowned. “What makes you think that?”
Her eyes lost focus for several seconds as she gathered the foggy edges of her theory. The last pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. “If you had the fabricators, you would have fixed them. Nobody in the city would be living in shacks. With enough time and raw material, a fabricator could rebuild Blinder’s Bluff into a citadel instead of what it is now. The city’s been here long enough for someone to learn how to repair one. Goddesses know I’ve had to tear ours down more times than I can remember. That means you either dismantled the ones that were here for some idiot reason, or they weren’t here in the first place when you arrived.”
She stopped and narrowed her eyes at Ironshod. “How did you get into this Stable, anyway?”
He surprised her by answering. “I wasn’t even thought of when Rangers first set hoof inside, but the official record states that the Stable was already open when we arrived. All signs pointed to a total loss of life triggered by a sudden food shortage.”
“Stable-Tec.” She came back to her chair and sat down.
“Most likely it was one of their experiments, yes. I recall hearing something about crops modified to be sterile, but I won’t pretend to understand how that’s possible. Stable 6 evacuated less than a year after the bombs fell and nobody shut the door behind them.”
She drew a circle on the table with her hoof. Her tone darkened. “They need to be lined up against a wall and shot.”
Ironshod whistled. “You’re definitely not Enclave.”
He reached into another one of his pockets and pulled out a keyring. Aurora eyed the glittering bits of metal as he set them down in front of her. She didn’t reach for them but she didn’t dare take her eyes off them either.
“I think we’re past the point of restraints,” he said. “You want the little one in the middle.”
They sang against the table as she picked them up and sank the tiny key into the shackle locked below her Pip-Buck. It swung open. She wasn’t sure it was safe to be too thankful just yet and settled for a polite nod of acknowledgement instead. “Can I ask why the sudden change of heart?”
He watched the next shackle clatter to the tabletop with a small smile. “Well, I think I might know how you can be valuable to the Steel Rangers, for one.”
She crossed her hind leg over the other and opened another lock. The leather band around her wings made them ache. She winced. The last shackle fell from her leg and she stood up, relieved to have them off of her. “You want me to bring you a fabricator.”
He nodded. “You did say you had more than one.”
“No.”
A pause. His face darkened. “I don’t think you’re in a position…”
“For several reasons,” she continued, ignoring him. “One, they’re huge. You can’t roll one through a corridor without disassembling it, and even then they weigh literal tons which means you’d need to send Rangers to my Stable to move it. And I already told you that’s not happening.
“Two, my Stable doesn’t have that kind of time. The entire reason I’m out here is because Stable-Tec is slowly killing our ignition talisman and I need a new one. So unless you have a spare in one of your pockets, I’m still on that clock.
“And three,” she frowned for a moment, then looked at him with defiance. “I can’t think of a third reason right now but you can be damn sure it would have been a good one. The answer is no.”
She tossed the keys to Ironshod and he caught them in his magic. They fell into his pocket with a jingle. The firm disappointment of a career professional solidified on his face.
“That said,” she continued, bending her neck back until she could get the buckle of the strap between her teeth. Her words slurred as she worked it loose. “I could get you schematics. If the price is right.”
He stared at her, chagrined as the strap clattered to the floor below her. Years of crawling into tight spaces required a level of dexterity she excelled at. It was clear she was also making a point. Her eyebrow lifted a fraction of an inch as if to say, Don’t underestimate me.
Ironshod looked at the belt, nodded, and looked up to her. “I wasn’t aware we were bargaining.”
She let herself smile a little now that she had leverage.
“It’s more of a-”
Three heavy clangs rang against the door, cutting her off.
“-favor.”
Ironshod was already on his way to the door, offering no hint that he’d heard her. He toggled the door and the lights dimmed again as power diverted to the hydraulics. The door rose and a familiar suit of power armor loomed in the corridor.
Latch stood at attention, or as well as he could inside of a weaponized scrap bin. “Sir,” he said.
Ironshod looked behind Latch, then up into his visor. His tone darkened. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I thought I ordered you to find and bring back Ginger Dressage.”
“You did, sir. She’s not in the city.”
Aurora sprang to her hooves. “What?”
Latch looked at her. Ironshod closed his eyes and sighed.
“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize she-”
“Spit it out, Knight, or she’ll be badgering me about it for the next hour.”
Latch cleared his throat and glanced at Aurora again. Something about the way his armor shifted suggested he was uncomfortable with her listening in.
She stepped toward the door just behind Ironshod. “Where’s Ginger?”
He looked between the two of them, unsure which to address. He settled on the safer bet and regarded Ironshod.
“Somebody claimed her bounty, sir.”








 


 

The Rangers never took their eyes off Roach, and he never took his off them.
His chitin itched under the shackles. The outside air had always been too dry for him to be comfortable for long. He preferred the damp air of the tunnel. At least the floor was cool to the touch. Not nearly as chilled as the slate tile back at the cabin, but still soothing against his belly. He lay with his forelegs in front of him, one crossed over the other, and observed the Rangers as they passed in and out of the recovery room. 	
Nobody spoke to him and he was alright with that. Rangers weren’t as quick to kill sentient ghouls as the Enclave were, but they would if he provoked them. He was good at being quiet. After more than two hundred years in the serene darkness under Foal Mountain, silence had become a dear friend to him. He’d watched the tunnel age and decay with each passing day. The corpses trapped with him dried and settled with time and the colorful posters rotted into nothing until only the narrow frames were left. Even after his tunnel broke through the rubble and he took his first breath of fresh air, he never went more than a few days outside.
Bumping into Ginger on the road west had been a fortunate fluke. Normally he would have avoided her. Ponies had a tendency to assume his strange appearance meant he was feral and he’d been shot more times by panicked travelers than he could remember. Ginger had been unexpected. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen when he found her. Too young to be traveling alone, but there she was fending off a raider ambush and losing. He saved her life and, since it was on the way, escorted her to Junction City. She’d been too traumatized to object and he’d been too polite to ask about the film of mud she’d used to hide her cutie mark. He wished he had. 
He sank against the wood planks with a gentle sigh. He’d forgotten how quick ponies could become attached to one another. It was two years later that he found himself wandering back to Junction City and Ginger had almost tackled him. She peppered him with updates until his head swam. One of the locals had hired her as a shelf stocker and she was saving up caps to open her own business someday. When he congratulated her, she had beamed like she’d been waiting to hear it ever since he left. Friendship was strange like that. He smiled at the memory.
The door punted open and a stallion in an older model of power armor pushed into the recovery room. The only other stallion Ranger in the room rolled his eyes and slipped away unseen. By listening to the inevitable gossip between bored soldiers, Roach and learned the armored stallion was named Jester. To say he was unpopular among his fellow Rangers was an understatement. Jester had a reputation for talking for the sake of hearing his own voice. The fact that he included Roach in his one-stallion conversations was rubbing several of his brothers and sisters the wrong way.
Jester tromped over to the corner of the room and cracked open his power armor. The weathered and rusted plates bloomed open like a metal flower. Jester was a strange egg. His mint green coat clashed with the short-shaved pink mohawk that ran the length of his neck. Roach suspected his mane was dyed, but the odd look wasn’t entirely unattractive.
Old music streamed from a tiny speaker inside Jester’s power armor. He left the radio playing as he backed out of the suit, much to the irritation of the mare posted near the door. Jester winked at her and flopped onto the mattress next to Roach’s spot on the floor, his head thumping against the foot of the bed.
He spoke unprompted. “It’s gonna be a barn burner today.”
The mare at the door groaned and pushed through the door. Jester’s smile broadened a little. “Know how I know?”
Roach looked up at him with an eyebrow raised. It was easier to humor him than it was to ignore him. And to be fair, he wasn’t hard to look at. Jester was tall, toned and had a natural smile that could sell magic lessons to a pegasus. His hip was graced with a depiction of the grinning mask of comedy. Roach had to wonder what drew him to join up with an organization like the Steel Rangers.
Jester tucked his forelegs under his head and let a hind leg dangle off the side of the mattress. “I know cause the zebra station is real hard to dial into today.” He gave Roach a knowing wink and his horn glowed green. The radio in his power armor began to sputter static. “I used to be stationed in Appleoosa a few years back and one of the guys in the engineering corp told me about it. Y’see, there’s still zebras living out in Vhanna same as we’re still kicking over here. Bet you didn’t know that!”
Roach didn’t know that. He made a curious face and Jester’s smile widened.
The static gave way to a strange music he had never heard before. It was barely audible over the hiss of interference, but it was there. Several voices sang harmonies in a language he couldn’t understand. They sounded happy.
“So anyway,” Jester continued, “when it gets hot out west, the signals degrade. It’s hard to notice on the local stations but if you tune into something long-range like the stuff coming in from Vhanna, you can really notice it. So yeah, it’s going to be hot today.”
Roach smiled his appreciation and glanced over at the only other Ranger remaining in the room. She stared longingly at the door.
Jester radio twisted back to static and returned to the station he’d been listening to earlier. Roach recognized the prewar crooner’s voice and let his head bob gently to the prancing lyrics of Mister In Between. To his surprise, Jester swung his leg back and forth to the rhythm of the tune for an entire verse before speaking.
“I gotta ask, only because Initiate Rosethorn over there wants to know.” He craned his neck back to see if the mare on the other side of the room reacted. Her eyes didn’t leave the door but her tail whipped irritably behind her. Jester grinned at her and turned back to Roach, gesturing at his legs with his dangling hoof. “What’s with all the holes?”
The question caught him off guard. As he fumbled for an explanation, the song ended. It was replaced by the impassioned voice of a mare.
“Good morning, dear listeners. Flipswitch here, and I have bad news to share. Last night I told you about the death of a monster named Cider. This morning I have to inform you that the bounty placed on the mare who killed him has been claimed. Autumn Song, sister of-”
The Initiate that Jester had needled at made a face. “Turn that crap off, Jester. They don’t want the ghoul hearing it.”
Jester winced apologetically at Roach and lit his horn. Flipswitch’s report cut out with an electric pop. “Sorry,” he said. “Orders and all.”
Roach stared at the two Rangers with disbelief. The only pony he knew with a bounty was Ginger. He suddenly felt dizzy and tried to stand up, forgetting the chain clamped to his hooves. It yanked tight and he stumbled against Jester’s bed hard enough for its feet to peel loudly against the wood floor.
“Woah, take it easy pal!” Jester dropped to his hooves in front of Roach, blocking his path. He stood a good several inches taller than Roach. Stopping him wasn’t difficult but Roach tried to shove him aside anyway, first with his hoof and then with his magic.
A bright pain erupted behind his eyes like a migraine on steroids. His legs went out from under him and his first thought was he’d been attacked. He looked up at Jester who seemed just as surprised as he was. Then he remembered the ring they had put around his horn. A magical suppressor. It felt hot against the base of his horn.
Rosethorn was already making her way toward the door. “I’m getting a Paladin.”
Roach stared imploringly at Jester. If they thought he was out of control they’d kill him. Jester came to the same realization and bit the inside of his lip, his grin gone.
“Get back to your post, Initiate.”
Rosethorn stopped and glared at him. “He’s dangerous.”
“Not as dangerous as I’ll be if you disobey a direct order, Initiate.”
Her face twitched with anger. She set her jaw and turned around. “Yes, sir.”
Roach sat on the floor ignoring them both. His head pounded as the ring cooled around his horn. He wasn’t even sure how much he’d been trying to use, but the fact that he didn’t hear the radiation meter in Jester’s power armor screeching alarms was a relief. He needed to start thinking clearly but it was hard to focus.
“Hey.” Roach felt Jester’s hoof on his shoulder. “Your friend’s not dead. You gotta calm down.”
He looked up at the Ranger. His face was a war of anger and confusion, daring Jester to lie. “How do you know.”
Rosethorn answered for him. “It’s been playing on the radio for hours. She walked through the gate with a group of bounty hunters last night.”
Roach stared at the Initiate with open mistrust.
“Rosie’s telling the truth,” Jester said. Rosethorn shot him a look that he didn’t see. He held out a hoof to Roach who grabbed it after a moment of hesitation, allowing himself to be pulled up. “Flipswitch’s pissed about it. She’s got the same recorded lecture playing on repeat between every other song. It’s kind of annoying.”
Roach looked toward the open suit of power armor and debated his odds of getting into it before Jester could stop him. Then he remembered the chains around his hooves and reconsidered. He didn’t want to think about what might happen to his legs if the suit tried to move in a way his legs couldn’t follow through on.
He looked at Jester with a hard expression. “I want to hear the broadcast.”
“We’re under orders-”
Jester flipped the radio on before she could finish. A new song was playing. Jester looked over his shoulder at Rosethorn and winked. It wasn’t the flippant gesture of an oblivious, care-free stallion. There was an unspoken threat behind it that made the Initiate’s shoulders stiffen. Roach found himself unable to make heads or tails of the stallion.
The song ended and on cue, Flipswitch’s prerecorded voice played over the airwaves. Her voice was sober as she finished breaking the news.
“Autumn Song, sister of Cider and full owner of F&F Mercantile, has offered two thousand caps for the live capture of Ginger Dressage. I can’t say I’m surprised he was found so quickly, but I’m so disappointed that she was captured here in my home city. She was stolen away in the middle of the night by bounty hunters who value quick caps over decency.
“This is a message to Autumn Song down at the JetStream solar plant. Your brother was a monster who was killed by a mare who was only defending herself. Please, don’t-”
The radio clicked and the broadcast went silent.
“She gets sappy toward the end.” Jester doused his horn and hopped back onto the mattress. “But hey, good news right? All things considered, I mean.”
Someone outside broke into laughter. Several voices joined the first. Too many of them. He wasn’t going anywhere.
He felt a tiredness that went beyond the simple aches of a weary traveler. His knees popped as he lay down on the cool wooden boards and he allowed the righteous anger in his chest leech away. Eventually, Jester launched into another animated one-pony discussion that left Rosethorn rolling her eyes and Roach nodding whenever the oddly hued stallion paused for his input. As much as he hated it, there was nothing left to do except wait.
Roach was good at waiting.







 

“Let me go!”
Making a run for it had been a mistake, but what choice did she have? She needed to save Ginger. Not because it was heroic or romantic, but because it was her fault.
Over the course of the last several days, Aurora had learned that she could handle more than she would have ever imagined and the things that would take more time to process were surprisingly easy to pack away into the back of her mind until later. She’d seen death and she’d delivered it. She’d been chewed on by walking corpses, fought her way out of the cloying hooves of a drunken stallion, been shot, irradiated so badly that her piss glowed and murdered another pony. She knew it would take a while to reconcile the things that had happened to her, but she could handle it in time.
This? Being responsible for destroying the life of an innocent mare? She couldn’t handle this.
Despite losing her home. Despite losing her livelihood, Ginger had encouraged her to learn to fly. Ginger had given her the room she needed in order to talk about what Cider did to her. For all the hardship Aurora had brought to Ginger’s doorstep, she offered nothing but kindness in return.
Aurora refused to repay that kindness by allowing Ginger to suffer the consequences of Cider’s death.
Something that would be easier to accomplish if Latch didn’t have her pinned between his power armor and the corridor wall. As soon as he told her Ginger had been taken, she skirted around him like a startled mouse and broke into a gallop. She knew it had been a bad idea but she hadn’t expected a passer-by to leap in front of her pursuers. The good Samaritan fouled her up just enough for Latch to catch up and press her hard against the wall.
She had the sinking feeling this is what it felt like to fall into a trash compactor.
“Latch, I know we’re not friends but you have to let me go.”
He said nothing, but he subtly moved his armored hoof from her neck down to her shoulder. A crowd was beginning to gather in the corridor and he was perceptive enough to know what that could have looked like.
Angry tears formed a film over her eyes as the futility of her position sank in. Latch’s hooves held her against the wall like a vice. She had plenty of flexibility to kick at him but she doubted he’d even feel it under all that armor. She could feel Ginger slipping away as more ponies came to gawk.
Ironshod appeared in front of her. His mask of careful neutrality was cracking under the heat of boiling rage. She’d pushed him close to the edge. He stared at her, his words dripping with threat. “We weren’t finished.”
His casualness caught her off guard. “My friend is-”
“Your friend,” Ironshod interrupted, “can wait. We. Weren’t. Finished.”
He stood there waiting for her to answer him, but Aurora wasn’t sure what it was he wanted to hear from her. She opened her mouth hoping to string the right words together once she started talking, but she was too fixated on finding Ginger to say much else. Ironshod’s lip curled in frustration as his patience evaporated.
He shook his head incredulously. “You tried to run from me. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and you tried to run. Did you really think I would let you leave without paying your debt?”
Aurora’s muzzle wrinkled with confusion. “No, that isn’t-”
Ironshod’s hoof cracked across her mouth so abruptly that at first Aurora didn’t realize she’d been hit. Her formerly white mane, stained the color of dust from the wasteland, fell across her right eye like a dirty veil. The coppery flavor of blood pooled around her tongue as he mouth bled. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed at the blood that poured from both of her nostrils. She looked up at Ironshod first with shock as the pain began to register, then with rigid defiance. Pain lanced through her jaw in waves but she ignored it, letting the blood patter quietly onto the floor.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Latch look away.
Ironshod was becoming more agitated by the second, like someone itching to get somewhere but didn’t know which hoof to move first. He shot her a sideways glare and pointed a hoof at her. “You’re going to get me those schematics right now.”
Aurora swallowed the blood in her mouth and stared at Ironshod with disdain. Behind him, ponies were looking at her with similar expressions. She pulled her lower lip over her teeth and stifled a chuckle. “The schematics are on your servers, dipshit.”
Ironshod’s shoulder stiffened and she prepared for a second blow, but it never came.
“Which server.”
She looked up at him like he’d asked her how to build a balefire bomb. “How should I know? I didn’t work in I.T.”
“But you know how to find them.”
She could tell where this was going and shook her aching head.
“Show me.”
“No.”
He took a deliberate step toward and she stuck out her chest, daring him to hit her again. She stared up at Ironshod as blood slid over her chin and stained her neck. Let him see what he’d accomplished. He’d already shown her his cards when he struck her. She wasn’t going to let that slide. Not for free.
Her eyes flicked toward the Rangers approaching the back of the crowd of ponies, already beginning the unpopular task of dispersing them.
“This isn’t going to be a one-way transaction,” she said, looking back to Ironshod. His fury was abating now that the key to his fabricators wasn’t in a position to flee again. Watching his face slip from frenetic rage to a placid calm so quickly was disturbing. She tried not to focus on it as she led with her counteroffer. “I want two things from you in exchange for the schematics.”
He stared down at her like a landslide waiting to happen. She took his silence to mean he was willing to listen. She wiped her nose across her shoulder to give her a few seconds to think over what she was about to say.
“First,” she said, “I want Roach released into Nurse Redheart’s care for the time that I’m gone. If your people hurt him in any way, the deal is off.”
Ironshod squinted at her. “You’re not leaving until I have those schematics, so it’s a moot point what happens to your friend.”
Aurora pushed down the heat rising in her chest and continued on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Second, I give you the schematics after I get Ginger back. Not before. And lastly-”
He was shaking his head, his mouth opening to speak.
“Lastly,” she repeated, cutting him off, “I want your word that after this business between us is done, it’s done. The slate’s wiped clean.”
The corridor grew quieter as the last curious ponies were encouraged to find somewhere else to be. As the hall cleared and the prying eyes of civilians were peeled off of his back, Ironshod seemed to relax enough to consider her offer. He stepped back and walked in a slow, plodding circle. His eyes tracked her as he completed the circuit.
He nodded at Latch. “At ease.”
The immense weight of his armor vanished as he relaxed his posture and Aurora could have sworn she felt a few bones realign themselves. Ironshod watched her, apparently to see if she would try to run. 
She wasn’t stupid enough to try that a second time. She rolled the shoulder Latch had leaned on and relished the feeling when it popped, twice.
Satisfied she wasn’t about to bolt, Ironshod took a breath and slowly released it. The placid mask of perfect control fell over his face once again. The only difference now was that the taste of blood in the back of Aurora’s throat was there to remind her not to trust it.
He looked at her with a half-lidded expression. “If I let you leave, what assurance do I have that you’ll come back to give me the schematics?”
Aurora sniffed her bloodied nose. “Roach will be here,” she said as if that were obvious.
He shook his head. “Not for long, if he’s in the care of Nurse Redheart like you’re asking. I can’t trust her not to help him leave the city and rendezvous with you. Your ghoul will stay in our custody. To that end, I can assure you he will remain unharmed.”
Aurora frowned. “Alright, deal.”
“I’m not finished.”
A faint white glow around Ironshod’s horn caught her eye and her frown deepened.
“Here’s the way this is going to go.” His horn brightened, casting stark shadows across his ashen face. “I’m willing to let you leave to help your friend, but the reality is that I have no guarantee you won’t get yourself killed in the attempt. If that happens, I don’t get those schematics. If that happens, I will be forced to tell Elder Coldbrook that I allowed a self-proclaimed Enclave pegasus to leave without obtaining a drop of information out of her.”
Aurora felt a familiar click against her foreleg. She looked down, and confusion was quickly shoved aside by horror as she realized what was happening. Ironshod said nothing as he lifted her leg and slid her Pip-Buck down and away from her, its heavy clasp swinging freely in the white haze of his magic.
She opened her wings and lunged into the air after it. Her body jerked painfully to a stop with her Pip-Buck bare inches away from her hoof. Everything seemed brighter and she realized with sickening clarity that she was looking at the world through the fog of Ironshod’s magic. She hung in the air like a sculpture of a bird in mid-flight. Her heart crashed against her ribs as she slid closer and closer to panic. She watched her Pip-Buck come to a stop in front of Ironshod’s face, curiosity capturing his attention for the briefest of moments as he examined the dusty and scuffed screen.
“No! Give it back!”
He looked up at her as if noticing her for the first time. “This,” he said, floating her Pip-Buck next to him, “is how I know you’ll return. This is collateral.”
He set her back onto the ground and the magic around her vanished. Her wings dipped under the return of their weight. She folded them to her sides before she could give into temptation and snatch at her Pip-Buck with one of them. She didn’t doubt she could. She just didn’t want to find out what he’d do to her if she did.
The reality of it sank in like a stain. Her singular decision to lie to Ironshod outside the wall had brought her here. Ginger had known it was a mistake but Aurora had committed them to the lie without giving them a chance to think of something else. She’d acted on impulse with what little she knew about the wasteland and now Roach was sitting in shackles and Ginger was being carted off to suffer for Aurora’s sins.
“I’m glad we have an understanding.” Ironshod turned to Latch. “Knight, escort Miss Pinfeathers out of the Stable. Her time is precious and I wouldn’t want her to get distracted on the way.”
Latch held out an armored hoof in the direction she’d tried to flee, inviting her to follow.
She hesitated. “What about my saddlebags? My rifle?”
Ironshod looked at her as if she were a filly asking for candy before bed. “What about them?”
She stood there for several seconds, uncomprehending. Then she understood.
She looked away from Ironshod, and her Pip-Buck, and stepped toward Latch. The Knight began walking and she fell in next to him. The rhythmic hiss-stomp, hiss-stomp, hiss-stomp of his hooves drowned out everything else.
Unarmed, unfed and stripped of the one tool that gave her a fighting chance, Aurora walked back toward the wasteland unsure of what to do.
For the first time since deciding to leave home, she was afraid.







 


June 2nd, 1075
Dad came to the house to pick up the last of his boxes. Mom stayed in the back yard until he was gone. I tried to ask him why he’s leaving us but he wouldn’t say anything to me. Why won’t he talk to me? He’s my dad! What did I do wrong??
 
 
June 4th, 1075
Mom heard me crying and this time she wouldn’t leave me alone. I yelled at her and said a bunch of stupid things. I told her about dad and how he ignored me when he left. I felt bad for telling her that because she almost cried too. I’ve never seen mom cry before. She’s always so… calm. I wish I knew how to be more like her. I feel like I’ve been crying a lot lately. Mom said I need to be patient with her and that she’s trying. I know she’s trying. I just wish dad cared enough to try at all.
 
 
June 9th, 1075
Fluttershy came to our house this morning to talk to mom. THE Fluttershy. I mean I know there’s not a second one but still, oh my gosh, she shook my hoof and offered to make us tea! Mom showed her my whittling sculptures, even the really bad ones from when I was first learning. Fluttershy asked if she could keep the one of the jackrabbit I did. I really liked that one, too, but she looked so sad when she held it. And I can’t say no to her! She’s the only ministry mare that will even talk to zebras anymore. She was super happy when I said she could take it. I can whittle another one, anyway. Rabbits are pretty easy once you learn how not to break the ears off.
Fluttershy said that she needed to talk to mom in private so they could sign a bunch of papers. They wouldn’t say what for, even when I asked. Mom said if everything worked out, I might see her in the papers. 
> Chapter 11: Separation
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


 


 

June 16th, 1075
Mom’s been a lot less sad ever since Fluttershy visited and ever since yesterday she’s been really, really happy. She finally told me why during breakfast. I’m not supposed to tell anyone because she could get in trouble if it gets out early, but mom got a job as the Ambassador of Friendship to the Vhanna. I don’t know about the friendship part though. Nobody talks like that anymore. Well, except for Fluttershy and mom I guess. Still, it’s pretty awesome news! Once everything is official we’ll be moving to Canterlot! No more Ponyville, no more assholes at school and no more ignorant ponies trying to blame the Sugarcube Corner fire on us just because we’re striped. Goddesses, I can’t wait. 
Oh, and apparently dad left us because he knew mom was going to get the job. He thinks she’s a zebra sympathizer, which isn’t exactly wrong, but I didn’t think he would hate her for joining the peace effort! Mom kepts telling me not to be angry at him, but how can I not be?! He’s supposed to be my DAD and not just another asshole like Sagebrush. Mom’s trying to help end the war! Why would he be so against that?
I don’t care what he thinks. I’m going out to the Everfree Forest to find some birch wood. I think if I’m careful, I might be able to carve a white rabbit for Fluttershy before we have to pack.
 







The fearful silence coming from the strange pegasus next to him was painful to listen to.
Latch checked his power armor’s heads-up display. He’d need to stop at the quartermaster today and replace his fusion core. Another one hundred caps out of his salary, and every one of them worth it to keep his armor running. Most Rangers had to put their names on a waiting list for the next available suit, and with how rare they were to find and repair, it was a long list. He’d had the good fortune to find his during a recon mission down at Hayseed Swamps. It was half-submerged in an irradiated bog and had cost half a year’s pay just to recruit enough ponies to drag it out of the mud, and another month’s wages for the Rad-Away treatments needed to counteract the rads he’d taken walking the old thing back to the Bluff, but it had paid itself back tenfold the first time it saved his life. The thought of it made him check his radiation meter: barely higher than the usual background levels.
There wasn’t anything on the HUD that he hadn’t already looked at a dozen times already this morning, but it was something to do that didn’t involve thinking about the pony he’d been ordered to escort out of the Stable. What she did after that was her business. The odds weren’t great that she’d survive, but he supposed by the look on her face that she already knew that.
He realized he was staring at her wings again and looked forward before she noticed. Between carrying her on his back to the clinic and washing her sick off his armor while she tried to sleep, he hadn’t gotten much of a chance to actually look at her. Of the few ponies who had the luck to see a pegasus up close, only a fraction of them knew what they were actually seeing. Dustwings, a term unaffectionately given to the few surviving pegasi to live outside the influence of the Enclave, were notoriously hard to find even when you were looking for them. And the Steel Rangers were always looking for them. Trouble was, the Enclave had a knack for finding them first.
Aurora Pinfeathers clearly wasn’t Enclave or a Dustwing. He still wasn’t sure what to make of a pegasus coming out of a Stable. That never happened. Stables were uncannily notorious for being reserved for the unicorns and earth ponies who didn’t have the luxury of literally living above it all. How did a pony born to fly live underground and not slowly go insane? He was an earth pony and even he didn’t think he could hack it in a Stable if he didn’t know he could walk outside and see the clouds. He shook his head. Pegasi were made of tough stuff.
The walk to the Stable door made him feel like an executioner leading a criminal to the gallows. Granted, they didn’t use those at the Bluff. Rope was expensive and unreliable. Bullets were cheap. Still, something about this didn’t sit well with him. Most ponies would be able to scrape by out in the wasteland for a little while without much trouble, but that was because those who were too weak or ill-equipped were already dead. The wasteland had no pity for a pony unprepared for it and each day was measured by one simple fact: you lived or you died. Aurora was fresh out of a Stable and was being sent out into the jaws of Equestria without so much as a skin of water to take with her. 
Whatever his reasons were, it was unmistakable that Paladin Ironshod was setting her up to fail. He was grateful she couldn’t see him grimace behind his suit’s helmet.
If there was any doubt in his mind that she was from a Stable, she dispelled it when they passed over the threshold of the immense cog. Her body tensed as if she were bracing for something painful, and then she blew out a quiet breath on the other side. Latch frowned. He’d experienced enough traumas in his lifetime to know what a flashback looked like. This pegasus had more battle scars on her body than most Rangers had by the time they made Knight. A deep bite behind her right leg, a scabbed notch atop her ear and most recently a busted lip given to her by his commander while he was in one of his notorious flashes of rage. He wanted to ask her where she’d gotten the other wounds, but he suspected it wasn’t the best idea to start becoming familiar with a mare he was very likely sending to her death.
As he led her down the tunnel, he saw her look over her shoulder at something. Her eyes lingered and curiosity eventually got the better of Latch. He glanced back and saw what had grabbed her attention. The old poster of Fluttershy with her expertly honed sorrowful expression looked back at him, the words WE CAN DO BETTER chiding him.
He looked back down at Aurora and realized she was staring right at him. Her eyes were damp but the burning accusation behind them kept the tears from spilling over. There was a force of will behind that glare that he couldn’t help but be impressed by. The only other mare that could trick him into assessing his moral compass that quickly was his wife.
With Aurora trying to melt a hole through his helmet and the end of the tunnel and his assignment to her approaching quickly, he decided to break the tension with a question that had been bugging him since they arrived at the wall.
“Can I ask you something?” he said and was relieved to see some of the heat wear off of her glare. At least she was listening. “Why, of all things, did you try to convince us you were part of the Enclave?”
She flattened her ears and looked away, saying nothing. Judging by the tuck of her tail, Latch was willing to take her silence to mean she already understood how much danger she’d put herself and her friends in.
“Let me give you some advice,” he said, and pretended not to notice her mouthing Celestia dammit. “Don’t impersonate the Enclave.”
Aurora snorted under her breath. “Wow.”
Latch wrinkled his nose at the rebuke. Not far ahead of them, the tunnel opening widened. He considered just letting her go and leaving it up to her to figure out where the monsters of the world lived. It was tempting, given how absolutely stubborn this mare had been since minute one. His fellow Rangers wouldn’t blame him, either. But his wife…
He decided he preferred staying married.
“Come here,” he said.
Aurora shot him a wary look as he turned off the flagstones and walked toward the tunnel wall. After a brief hesitation she followed, drawing the curious eyes of the ponies who were only just noticing the pegasus in their midst. Latch stopped in front of one of the preserved prewar posters hanging on the high cinder block wall. He nodded greetings to the Aspirant Knight standing guard beneath it. The young Ranger clapped his right hoof against his chest in salute.
“Why don’t you take a ten minute break?” Latch said. To his credit, the younger stallion had good ears and read between the lines. He found somewhere else to be.
Latch waited until Aurora stood beside him and smiled when he saw her eyes already reading the poster in front of them. He looked up at the towering poster of Rainbow Dash and asked, “Do you know who that is?”
It was a dumb question, but then again he had never been great with subtlety. He watched as several emotions flashed across the gray mare’s face. Not the reaction he expected, but whatever got the ball rolling.
“Everyone knows who she is,” Aurora finally said.
Latch nodded. Rainbow Dash hung frozen in flight, dominating the center of the poster. A contrail of dazzling color traced a bold arc against the skyline of the Equestrian capital city of Canterlot. Printed in bold blue and yellow lettering in opposite corners of the poster read the slogan: TAKE FLIGHT! JOIN THE FIGHT!
“Do you know why this poster is intact and that one back by the door got shot to confetti?”
Aurora’s forehead creased and she looked at him impatiently. “I get the feeling you’re about to tell me.”
Latch sighed and looked up at the old poster. “We leave it up because she’s the one pegasus that we know of out of her entire ministry that didn’t turn traitor at the climax of the war. She’s a reminder that the Enclave formed in defiance of Loyalty itself, and it serves as assurance to Dustwings that the Steel Rangers are here to protect them.”
He winced inwardly at how much he sounded like his old recruiter just then, but Aurora didn’t seem to be bothered by it. She stared up at the poster like she’d just recovered a lost picture of an old relative. He frowned. Not the reaction he’d been going for, but it wouldn’t surprise him if all pegasi had a goddess complex with the long-dead Element of Loyalty.
When she spoke, all of the sting in her voice was replaced by something bordering on humility. “The Enclave betrayed her?”
The actuators in his helmet quietly hissed as he nodded. “Yep. Most of the Ministry of Awesome wasn’t involved, but enough of them got together and formed the Enclave as a contingency should the war go badly for Equestria. They made their own little shadow government within the ministry and used the war effort to build a small fleet of airships. As soon as the bombs dropped and Cloudsdale fell, the surviving members of the Enclave took their boats, choked the sky and left the rest of us to rot.”
He watched Aurora sit on the cold stone floor and wrap her tail around her flank. The shame on her face was plain to see. She had known some of this already. He lifted an armored foreleg and nudged her.
“Do you know what a Dustwing is?” he asked.
She looked up at him and gave him a noncommittal shrug.
“It’s what you are.” He pointed a hoof at the poster. “It’s what she is. Dustwings are the pegasi who live down here with the rest of us ground pounders, and they’re the ponies that the Enclave have hunted and killed since the day the war ended. The princesses died when Canterlot fell, but the sun and moon kept moving across the sky and the Enclave decided it meant they weren’t just an extension of the old government, but of the alicorn princesses themselves. They’ve been trying to elevate Equestria to the prestige it had before the war, but they’ve decided they can’t do that while pegasi still mingle with ghouls, mutants, and the rest of us.”
Aurora shook her head at the ground, unbelieving. “The rest of you meaning unicorns and earth ponies. They want to go back to the way Equestria was by killing two thirds of the ponies who used to live in it?”
Latch shrugged, a gesture that didn’t translate well in power armor. “Fanaticism doesn’t need to be consistent to be powerful. If enough ponies believe in it, then it must be true.”
The pegasi rubbed her foreleg where her Pip-Buck had once been. “And the pegasi that still live down here with you threaten that belief, and they hunt us for it.” She paused to soak that in. “I didn’t know.”
“Now you do,” he said, and her pained expression deepened as if he’d kicked her. He hastened to add, “If it’s any consolation, they haven’t made much progress with that goal.”
He turned away and began walking back toward the middle of the tunnel where the road would lead them back outside. Looking back over his shoulder, he realized she had gotten up but wasn’t following. He stopped. 
“Hey,” he said gently. “Time to go.”
She turned toward him and he saw the deep contemplation that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Her pale green eyes seemed to find his through the dark glass of his helmet’s visor. “What do the Steel Rangers believe?”
He hesitated, sensing a loaded question. “I don’t follow.”
She stayed rooted where she was, the stubbornness settling back into her shoulders. “You just told me what the Enclave believe in. I want to know what the Steel Rangers believe in.”
Latch tipped his head a little to one side and chewed on that. He knew the boilerplate by heart but the trouble with boilerplate was how hollow it sounded. Aurora was looking for a reason to trust him. He wasn’t going to earn that with a recitation. “We believe that the right path for Equestria is the one forward, not back. The Rangers, like most ponies, have accepted that the war ended an era of prosperity. That dwelling on what we might have had distracts us from what we can accomplish now.”
“And what do you intend to accomplish?” she asked.
Latch couldn’t help but smile a little. “Renewal. Not necessarily a return to what we used to have. There’s no spell that can undo two hundred years of radiation damage. But I like to think that Equestria could heal, given enough time. Maybe become a place ponies can feel safe.”
Aurora nibbled her lower lip, her eyes unfocused. “Which makes you the good guys?”
His gut reaction was to say yes, but then he looked at the ring of matted hair around her foreleg and thought better of it. “We try to be,” he said.
He watched her look up and blink several times before pinning him in place with a recalcitrant smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She held up that bare foreleg for him to see and said, “I don’t feel safe.”
Latch wasn’t sure what to say to that. Aurora shook her head, her eyes wet with emotion. “I don’t have a weapon. I don’t have food. I don’t have water.” She wiped her eyes angrily, smearing the drying blood from her nose across her face like expired paint. “My friend who had nothing to do with Cider is being carted off to die, and thanks to the Steel Rangers I don’t even know where to find her!”
Voices murmured behind him and he looked to see a small clique of mares watching them as they whispered conspiratorially from one of the pillars. Several other ponies frowned in his direction as they walked through the tunnel, unsure whether to stop and look or hurry up so they didn’t have to get involved.
Latch looked back to Aurora who glared back at him, unaware or uncaring of the attention she was drawing. “Look, I’m not authorized to requisition any supplies for you but-”
She stabbed a wing at him, the feathers curling against his armor. “Of course you can. You just won’t.” She retracted her wing fast enough to spin up a miniature vortex of dust behind her. It twirled toward the wall and disappeared. “Roach told me a few things about the Steel Rangers that you decided to omit.”
Latch rolled his eyes. The only thing ghouls had more of than scars were opinions. “I don’t put much stock in the ramblings of someone with a brain rotted by radiation.”
The pegasus stared at him as if he’d slapped her. Latch shut his eyes and thought, Shit.
“You’re an asshole. Have a nice life.”
She walked past him, her hooves clicking against the flagstones with a finality that prodded at him. He grimaced. “Wait.”
She ignored him and kept walking.
“Dammit,” he muttered. He pressed his armored hoof flat against the flagstone and angled the tip of his own hoof down, past the cushioned padding of his suit and into the eject switch just ahead of it. It clicked and he held it down. His HUD went dark and with a hydraulic hiss, his suit split down the line of his back and bloomed open. He walked himself backward out of his power armor, his front hooves scooting over the interior shell that protected his belly, and winced at the state of his uniform.
Aurora’s voice came from behind him. “Oh…”
He turned and saw her standing a few meters away, staring back at him with her bloodied lip parted in shock. It was an expression he’d had years to become painfully familiar with.
Latch wasn’t a particularly tall stallion and stepping out of the bulky power armor always felt like descending a pair of stilts, but that wasn’t why Aurora was staring. He smiled the same courteous smile he wore whenever a pony saw his burns for the first time. The majority of his right side, from his head down to his ribs, were a pink waxwork of melted skin and thick scars. His cobalt blue coat had grown back patchy along the fringes of his neck and shoulder, and his mane had been thinned to sky blue wisps of longer hair.
He couldn’t remember all of the details of how it had happened. Just that he’d been attached to a platoon assigned to clear a nest of raiders that were trying to fortify a small, abandoned village north of Appleoosa. Whoever threw the molotov had done so with impressive accuracy. He remembered the shock of the bottle breaking across his right eyebrow, feeling something wet splash underneath his leather armor and then the sickening realization that he was burning. At some point he blacked out. Then he woke up in a hospital tent back at base and his new reality began.
The burns had destroyed most of the right side of his face, save for muzzle. What remained of his ear was misshapen and didn’t move anymore. His eye had been a complete loss, leaving behind an empty socket that most ponies desperately tried not to focus on while speaking to him. The fire had burned beneath his armor and ignited the padding under the leather, searing his skin like a steak. The silver lining in all of it was that because the fuel had been caught up under his armor, the damage to his legs had been minimal and his cutie mark had gone unmarred. 
He’d gotten the broken amethyst geode on his hips during a prospecting trip with his father when he was young, and it one of the few things he had left to remember him by.
Aurora stared at his scars with the unabashed shock of a filly half her age. His smile tightened. He wasn’t ashamed of how he looked, but damn could it be a distraction.
“Aurora, I’m sorry,” he said, seeing her focus jump between his bad and good eye. “The Steel Rangers… Paladin Ironshod… we make mistakes sometimes. But I wish I could convince you when I say that what we’re doing in the grand scheme of things is to help ponies.”
He shifted his weight to one hoof and used the other to lift a leather strap up from under the collar of his shirt. The dull green clamshell of a hiking compass lifted up from the bottom of the loop. Bright steel shone along the weathered edges of the painted case where hooves older than his had pressed it open and shut over the years. Latch held it in the air for a moment to give himself time for any second thoughts to solidify. None did. He walked to Aurora and offered her his father’s compass.
“Your friend is being taken to the JetStream Solar Array. It’s a little more than half a day’s walk from here, but you can probably make the trip in a few hours if you fly.”
Aurora looked at his offering for several long seconds before finally lifting a wing to accept it. He watched her as she used her feathers to press open the case and hold the compass flat so that the needle could make its lazy trip around the bezel.
“Once you’re away from the Stable it’ll point north,” he added helpfully.
She blinked several times and nodded, her eyes glued to the compass.
Latch scratched his nose and glanced away. “Try to be careful with it. It’s kind of important to me.”
She nodded again and lifted the leather strap over her head to let it settle around her neck. The compass swung out of her wing and thumped against the thicker hair of her chest, and settled there.
“Can I ask,” she began, her voice subdued, “why you’re helping me?”
Latch shrugged and looked back at his open suit of power armor. “I’ve already got a compass built into my suit’s HUD,” he said, and smiled a little. He looked back to Aurora and added, “and because it’s the right thing to do.”
The corners of Aurora’s lips tilted upward, barely enough to notice. “What happened to ‘we’re not friends?’”
He surprised himself by chuckling. “We’re not. But that doesn’t mean we have to be enemies.”
“Fair enough,” she said. She pressed the compass into her chest with her hoof. “Thank you, Latch.”
He dipped his head to her and she gave his scars one last curious look before turning toward the end of the tunnel. Her hooves echoed off the dusty stone as she walked away.
Latch turned back to his power armor. He was settling his hooves against the sweat-slicked padding when he remembered something. He practically leaped out of his suit to catch up.







 


 

“Ma’am, are you alright?”
Sweat was pouring off Aurora’s nose like a leaky faucet and one of her knees had developed a click that hadn’t been there before, but she kept trudging. Her head wasn’t hanging low so much as it was dangling off the end of her neck. Latch’s compass danced between the droplets coming off of her like it was the star member of some maddening musical play. 
Of course she wasn’t alright, but that was his fault.
“I’m fine,” she said, and lifted another aching leg forward.
“If… you say so.” She side-eyed the concerned older mare and continued her torturous climb to the flat top of Blinder’s Bluff.
She wasn’t built for this. Walking, she could do. Running, she could do. This was something else entirely. The road that bent up the slope of the bluff didn’t even have the decency to be shallow. It just kept getting steeper. She scowled and watched the first floor of a shack continue level into the stones until she was passing a basement. If she ever ended up going to Tartarus, this was the punishment that was waiting for her there.
Hoof traffic was mercifully thin this high up the bluff and mostly consisted of ponies headed downhill to the marketplace outside the Stable tunnel. Most of the city’s services, including Redheart’s clinic, had been smartly grouped in the lower heights of the city where supplies wouldn’t have to be carted up to the windy heights she found herself scaling. With the wall protecting the face of the city the only open real estate for new residents was uphill. Aurora tried to imagine making this trip every day and briefly considered bashing herself over the head with a loose cobblestone instead.
Every so often she would pass the odd unicorn or earth pony on their way downhill. Some offered friendly, if not bemused greetings upon seeing a pegasus climbing their road. One stallion sent out his daughter with a dented ladle filled with warm water and, upon seeing her face, brought out a damp strip of cloth for her to wipe off the now-dried blood. His daughter, a unicorn filly with large hazel eyes, asked her why she didn’t use her wings to fly around. Aurora told her that a friend had told her not to. The understanding nod from her father was the first confirmation she had that Latch hadn’t been paranoid.
He’d caught her just as she’d begun thinking about how she was going to take off. She hadn’t been sure how to get into the air without a running start, but she was beginning to piece together how it might work when Latch stopped her. He told her about a Dustwing - she still wasn’t sure about that name - that had flown in over the bluff and was mistaken by some of the residents as a member of the Enclave. The result had been several weapons raised toward the sky and one pegasus falling from it shortly thereafter. Latch said that while word was being spread to the Rangers in the city that Aurora was harmless - she wasn’t sure about that either - taking off in full view of every bleary-eyed waking pony in the Bluff wasn’t a great long-term strategy.
When she asked where he thought she could take off without starting a minor panic, explained that the bulk of the city was crowded under the north face of the bluff. The only reasonably private place to take flight was the south side which, much to Aurora’s growing disgust, was most quickly reached by simply climbing all five thousand feet to the top of the bluff.
It didn’t help that she still had a full dose of Rad-Away happily turning her bladder into a sieve, nor did it help that she was past the elevation where building pump-fed outhouses was impractical and descending back down to find one was impossible. As she relieved herself in a shaded alley between two houses, praying not to be heard or chased off, she wondered if she’d done something in a previous life to deserve all this.
At the very least, the view up here was something out of a foal’s storybook. Each time she looked down the way she came, the sweeping arc of colorful square rooftops and inviting mazes of light-strung streets and alleyways grew longer and impossibly beautiful. Hundreds of sheet metal rooftops had been washed with paints, patinas and even fabrics to give the rusted metal panels bursts of colors unique to every household. There was nothing in her Stable that came close to comparison and it took everything in her to keep from sitting down and staring at it until her eyes were sore.
They made the climb worth it the suffering.
After a half hour of pressing cobblestones back into the dirt, she came to a point where the shanty homes of Blinder’s Bluff petered out and the cobblestone transitioned into a well-worn dirt path. She was high enough to look down the slope to her left and see the confetti rooftops curl down toward the east while the flat face of the bluff sheared up toward the peak on her right. To stand this high up and still have so much stone looming above her felt otherworldly. Along the dirt path, weathered wooden posts sunk into the bluff marked the route of a prewar hiking trail. Without the buildings to break the wind, it buffeted her from the west like a giant trying to ease her off the trail and down the rocky slope below. A thin layer of mud formed around the rims of her hooves where the sweat running down her legs met the soil stirred up as she climbed.
She wasn’t aware she’d reached the top until her weary hoof thumped against the first wooden beam of a step. A dozen of them lay half-sunk in the uneven soil, their middles worn down like a bent lip from constant wear. She looked up to see a strange sight.
A metal signpost, faded and rusted but its white-on-green lettering still legible, stood atop the final step.


HIGHTOWER FIRE LOOKOUT
Equestrian Park Service Personnel Only


Past the sign, standing precariously close to the southern ridge of the bluff’s flattened peak, was a tiny house perched atop a white wooden tower.
“What the…”
Aurora pushed past the last step and stared up at the strange construction with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. 
A tangle of steel antennae and capped broadcast dishes sat strapped to the north-facing leg of the tower connected to a rat’s nest of wires. The wires scrambled up the length of the tower and disappeared over the edge of the catwalk that ringed the small windowed structure on top. Staples held wide swaths of chicken fencing and a lattice of crisscrossing copper wire to the heavy timbers, as if the owner had wanted to create some sort of cage out of the open space within the tower’s legs. A workbench and an honest to goodness tool cabinet sat askew in the dirt within the fencing. She approached the apron of chicken wire and it rattled softly under her hoof.
A breaker box had been drilled into one of the timbers inside the fence. A single, thick black cable snaked out of the bottom and sank into the dirt, presumably to make its trek downhill to the city’s anemic power grid. More wires sprouted from the top of the breaker box and fed into a hole cut through the floor of the tower’s cab. When she listened she could hear the peppy tune of a long-forgotten band being broadcast to ponies for miles in every direction.
“Do you like the music?”
"Shit!” She reared away from the fence and stepped on the end of her tail in the process, sending her tumbling backward into the dirt. The ache in her legs returned with a vengeance. 
Sweet, airy laughter trickled down to her from the tower’s catwalk and Aurora looked up. 
Leaning over the painted railing was a creature unlike anything she’d ever seen before. It was huge; its long feline frame was equal to if not larger than Latch’s bulky power armor. Lean muscle rippled under a coat of dusty brown fur that lightened to a milky cream as it followed the line of her neck to her belly. 
It rested its strange avian face in an equally avian claw, its pale beak creasing the corners of its lavender eyes in a casually bemused grin. Its other hand hung over the railing, idly playing with a thick curl of wire that ran to a pair of battered gray headphones pulled down over her neck.
Aurora stared up at the creature with a mixture of awe and the primal fear that came with being the distant descendant of ancient prey. It watched her with growing curiosity, its large ears twitching and reorienting in the wind but always swiveling back to face her. Its large eyes narrowed and its smile widened.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” it said in a familiar, feminine voice. “You’re Aerie-something!”
She hesitated for a moment. How did this creature know where she’d been? “Aurora…” she corrected, her eyes still trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “Are you Flipswitch?”
The creature lifted her head and clapped her hands together, startling Aurora with the sharp pop of sound. “First try!” She dipped her head low over the railing and flourished her clawed fingers in a mock bow. “The Mare on the Air, at your service.”
Aurora squinted, unsure how deep down this rabbit hole she wanted to go. “Mare…?”
“Not literally,” she said quickly. “It’s just a pseudonym to help connect with the audience, you know? Oh, but I’m so happy to finally meet you! I thought maybe you’d been taken by that raider caravan but then I heard that a pegasus arrived at the wall on foot - er, hoof - and I knew it was you!”
The gryphon’s face bubbled over with excitement. Without warning she hopped atop the wood railing and dropped to the ground. Aurora scrambled to her hooves at the sight of Flipswitch’s massive wings billowing open to brake her descent. She touched down in front of her on a pair of feline paws the color of damp soil. 
But it was her wings that held Aurora’s attention. Her long feathers were a beautiful mosaic of silvers and tans and ruddy browns that fit no pattern except for the one that suited them. They reminded Aurora of the mural of Equestria’s southern canyons that graced the corridor wall near her compartment.
Flipswitch stood a full foot taller than Aurora and was nearly twice as long from stem to stern. She seemed to notice Aurora’s apprehension and sat down with a sheepish smile. 
Her excitement was contagious, squeaking a quick smile out of Aurora despite her growing sense that this was time Ginger didn’t have the luxury to see wasted. Still, something nagged at her about this gryphon and it wasn’t her terrifying size or the predatory talons that were kneading grooves into the dry soil.
She was certain she knew the answer to her question but she asked it just to be certain. “How do you know we came across a raider convoy?”
The gryphon’s eager smile took on a note of pride as she hitched a thumb at the tower behind her. “Spritebot feeds! I was the one who told you to hide, remember?”
It would be some time before Aurora forgot the face of the knife-twirling mare who had come looking for them, nor the crack of the gunshot that ended the life of the stallion who spotted her hopping the cuts in the road. The spritebot that had warned them to hide had been controlled by Flipswitch. Good to know, she thought. If the gryphon was as dedicated to news radio as she seemed to be, having a hoof-ful of spritebots at her disposal was a definite advantage when it came to information gathering.
Several more questions sprouted from Flipswitch’s explanation, none of which Aurora had time for. “Look, Flip-”
“Call me Fiona. Flipswitch is my stage name.”
She smiled but the stress of being held captive to this conversation was starting to wear on her nerves. If Fiona noticed the edge in her voice, she didn’t let it interrupt the smile in her eyes.
“Look,” she restarted, “I need to be somewhere. Maybe we can pick this up when I get back?”
Fiona’s eyes widened with realization. “Oh! I almost forgot that you were with Ginger Dressage when I saw you! Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to stop you from-”
“It’s okay,” Aurora said, caught between placating a creature she’d just met and finding a way out of the conversation. She opened her loaned compass and lifted it flat against her hoof until the needle steadied out to her right. She looked left, toward the southern horizon. “I have to go.”
She started walking toward the southern edge of the bluff and Fiona began to follow. Aurora tried and failed to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Unless you plan on coming with?”
Fiona laughed and it had a high, musical quality to it that Aurora was surprised to discover she liked. “To Autumn’s place? Nooo-no-no. With everything I’ve said about her family on the air, she’d kill me. If I’m being completely honest, Aurora, I’m not so sure you should go there either. Not without… well, anything.”
Aurora stopped at the edge of the bluff and looked down. It would be a long fall if she botched her take-off. Fiona stopped next to her and sat down, seeming to enjoy the strong breeze that played over her fur. Whether it was desperation or the loneliness that came with being separated from her only friends in this awful and beautiful world, Aurora found herself hoping that the gryphon would have a change of heart and come with. “The Rangers took my rifle, along with the rest of my stuff,” she said flatly. “I’m accepting donations.”
She saw a wince finally break the smile on Fiona’s beak. “I don’t really do weapons,” she said apologetically. “But if you have time, I could fly down and get you some food and water from the market?”
Aurora shook her head. “I don’t, but thanks for the offer.” She rolled her wings, preparing herself for the jump.
“Before you go,” Fiona hastily added, “could I get a statement for the show?”
She took a few steps back and opened her wings to test the breeze. Her mind was already swinging to focus on what she needed to do. “Ginger didn’t kill Cider. I did.”
“Wait, what do…”
She didn’t wait for the gryphon to finish. Every minute spent chatting was a minute Ginger didn’t have. She burst into a gallop, heaved her wings toward the ground and leapt. Her feathers dusted the edge of the cliff and she was airborne. Her wings billowed and quickly found their natural rhythm. Blinder’s Bluff, the lookout tower and a smear of colorful rooftops slid away behind her.
She pumped her wings, looked toward the flat rim of the southern horizon and tried not to think of what sort of danger she might be flying into.







 

Trotter tipped what was left of his whiskey to his lips and drained the bottle. Normally he was more prudent about how fast he went through his drink - the palatable stuff was getting harder to find these days - but today was a day worth celebrating.
His rented cart wobbled on dented wheels beneath his seat, but he didn’t care about that anymore. With the caps he was going to pull in he could buy his own cart. Maybe even lease one from Autumn Song and finally get his hoof into the trade business. He leaned back a little in the driver’s seat and watched the stallions that pulled his cart. If he’d had a choice he would have preferred to rent out a pair of mares to do the job, but he hadn’t been in a position to choose. Finding a rental in the middle of the night had been difficult with an unconscious unicorn to lug around, and he didn’t want to risk her waking up before he had access to bindings and a magic suppression ring.
It turned out he hadn’t needed to rush at all. For a while he thought he’d hit Ginger Dressage too hard. When the wanted mare had walked past his bench behind Redheart Clinic, he’d thought he was seeing things but her short-cut fiery mane was impossible to mistake for anyone else. When she walked out of the outhouse, Trotter was ready. He struck her over the head with his bottle and she fell like a bag of stones. By the time she came around, they were more than halfway to their destination.
The knots he tied around her ankles were strong and held up to her spirited struggling. Trotter didn’t know why they called it hog-tying, nor did he much care. All he knew was that it kept Ginger off her hooves. He decided not to gag her thinking he might use it to pass the time, but she fought rabidly against him even after he tried to beat her into a better mood. Dejected, he stuffed a wad of dirty cloth into her mouth and cinched a belt around it and the back of her head. She gagged on it for a while, but that was why they called it a gag.
Trotter considered her other end but the stench of urine put him off. Maybe Autumn would let him rent her once they cleaned her up, but he wasn’t going to collect his prize covered in a mare’s piss.
He squinted at the square bottle to verify there wasn’t a sip puddling in the corners. Nothing. He tried pitching it over the heads of the two stallions he’d rented but his aim fell short, thumping the pale lavender stallion on the right against the shoulder. The slave barely reacted as the bottle bounced off him and shattered against the cracked asphalt.
Trotter’s chest bounced with quiet laughter and turned around to check on his prize. Ginger faced the back of the open-topped cart, moving only when a wheel dipped into one of the road’s old ruts. A frown gradually sunk onto his face and he leaned back, slamming his hoof against the old boards. She shrank away from him, curling around her midsection where he’d tried kicking her into compliance earlier. Her forelegs were a mess of lumps and bruises from where she’d shielded herself. Her fault, not his.
Satisfied she was still breathing, he turned around. Her bounty was worth exactly zero caps if she died. He hoped Autumn wouldn’t take much off the total just because he roughed her up a little.
Two thousand caps for one pony. He chuckled, and dug a hoof into the rumpled saddlebags under his seat. He sat up and set into his lap an unlabeled bottle of an amber-colored liquid he was pretty sure was liquor. Even half the bounty would afford him a decent cart, and he was sure he could talk Autumn Song into letting him trade under the F&F Mercantile brand.
After all, he had her brother’s murderer. She owed him.
His eyes dropped to the bobbing flanks of the stallions hitched in front of him and his frown returned. They were slowing down again.
“Pick up the pace!” he shouted.
He chose to ignore the groan that one of them let slip as they synced their hooves back to the steady canter he’d demanded since they left the Bluff. He’d been assured that they would take him to the JetStream Solar Array within half a day. That was all well and good, but Trotter didn’t see the point in spending any more time out on the roads than he needed to. A single stallion driving a beaten up cart without a guard detail was essentially a giant neon sign that read ROB ME.
The slavers had estimated twelve hours. Trotter made it in eight.
He was halfway through his bottle, some kind of spiced rum that hadn’t gone quite bad enough to pour out, when the scorched asphalt began its gentle descent into a basin filled with clean, glittering water.
Trotter squinted at the unexpected lake and checked the sky to make sure the morning sun was still to his west. The bright patch of thick clouds confirmed he was headed in the right direction, but there were no lakes down here. The Badlands were a dry region.
As he drew closer, he realized he wasn’t looking at water. The basin was filled with mirrors.
He whistled. Thousands of mirrors spun around and around the perimeter of the shallow basin in concentric rings creating the illusion of a single unbroken reflective surface at a distance. A uniform cylindrical spire rose several hundred feet from the center of the solar array like the axel of a massive wheel. Two layers of reinforced steel fencing penned in the perimeter of the facility, broken only by four gatehouses equidistant from one another along its length. 
Trotter’s road descended toward the northern gatehouse; a squat, single-story building perched atop a cement curb behind the rusting fence. A mare and a stallion wearing the usual blue and white F&F Mercantile pinstripes stepped outside of the gatehouse and watched his cart approach, making sure he saw the compact submachine guns at their sides.
The rented stallions staggered to a stop outside the gate without needing to be told. The lavender pony collapsed, his barrel heaving up and down for breath. His pulling partner’s legs shook violently but he stayed upright, barely. Trotter pretended not to notice. He wasn’t in the business of rewarding dramatics.
As one of the guards began pulling open the gate, Trotter took the time to admire the large enamel sign still perched atop the gatehouse like a billboard in miniature.


JetStream Solar: Your Future, Today!
A Proud Subsidiary of the Ministry of Awesome.


The words swept across a picturesque, albeit faded and pockmarked blue skyline that Trotter didn’t recognize.
The gate banged open and the mare, a pretty little orange unicorn, casually tipped the muzzle of her SMG toward him and nodded at his cart. “This ain’t a trading post. Turn around.”
He looked at the mare’s weapon and felt jealousy crease his forehead. It was immaculately clean without so much as a scuff of dust on it. He didn’t doubt that if he lingered, she’d use it on him. He could see it in her eyes. To her, he was just an annoyance. A bug to be shooed away. By the way the stallion behind her looked at him, he probably thought the same thing.
“I have Ginger Dressage in back,” he announced, and relished the flicker of uncertainty that flashed across both guard’s faces. “Unless either of you have two thousand caps for me, I suggest you let me in.”
The stallion walked out to Trotter’s cart, far too confident for how thin he was, and peered inside. He frowned. “Where’s her cutie mark?”
Trotter shrugged. “Doesn’t have one.”
“Yes she does. Give me some water.”
He grunted and fished an untouched canteen out of his bags. The guard took it and pulled the plug out with his teeth. The unicorn stayed still as he climbed into the cart, sloshed the lukewarm water over her hip and harshly dragged his hoof against the grain of her dampened coat.
Ginger avoided the guard’s scrutinizing gaze as a thin film of coffee colored sludge formed along the rim of his hoof. He doused her again and scraped away the makeup layer by layer, ignoring her pained whimpers, until a faint image appeared. A coil of chain looped around a metal collar, the two items connected by a thick iron link.
The stallion looked down at his counterpart. “Radio for an escort. It’s her.”
And just like that, the gates to F&F Mercantile swung open as if he were royalty.
The slaves he rented for the journey were unhitched and moved - dragged, in one case - out of the way so two ponies in pinstripe armor could take their place. He was brought down through the field of mirrors in a hurry. He didn’t notice the disapproving glares from the ponies who moved his stallions aside, nor did he pay much mind to the scowls he got when he looked back at the mare charged with guarding Ginger inside the cart. Let them be jealous. It was about time they were humbled.
At the center of the mirrors, in the shadow of the strange pillar that rose out of the basin, stood the complex network of outbuildings, pipes and tanks that had once made this place worth building. Trotter didn’t pretend to understand how mirrors, even a few thousand of them, could ever create electricity. That was a problem of the distant past. Here, in the now, places like this were one of two things: fortifiable and unfortifiable. Those places that could be protected, were. Those places that couldn’t were stripped apart down to the screws and sold. The wasteland, for all of its hazards, was an easy place to understand.
The strange pillar rose out of the center of a squat concrete building that looked built for function rather than design. A rare thing, considering the love of flare and flourish that prewar Equestrians indulged in. As guards helped Ginger out of his cart, Trotter marveled at the pillar’s height. He wondered what its purpose had once been, or if there had ever been one in the first place. A trick of perspective made him feel like it was ready to fall on him, frozen in place by some invisible force. Somewhere nearby, a generator puttered away.
As Ginger was carried away toward a quartet of massive tanks, Trotter followed his escort through a pair of metal security doors and into the stout building at the center of the solar plant.
Admittedly, he hadn’t been expecting much. A dim room with rubbish pushed to the walls would have suited him fine. What he found himself standing in was much more impressive than the Equestria status quo.
Trotter stood inside a lobby straight out of a prewar magazine. Oak paneling wrapped the walls and deep ivory commercial carpeting tickled the undersides of his hooves. In the center of the lobby waited a pair of white leather couches sitting perpendicular to one another around the edges of a wide glass coffee table. Recessed lights glowed with warm light that made everything feel just bit unreal.
At the back of the lobby, behind a wide receptionist’s desk, waited a primly dressed white stallion replete with a tiny blue bow tie around his neck. Trotter’s entourage took up positions on either side of the door behind him, leaving him to approach the desk alone.
“May I help you?” the receptionist chirped. His eyes flicked to the trail of wasteland dust flaking off Trotter’s hooves onto the clean carpet.
“Uh, yeah…” Trotter said, aware that he was gawking but unable to make himself stop. “I brought Ginger Dressage. Bounty board said there’s a, well, a bounty. For her, I mean.”
The receptionist blinked rapidly and smiled a little wider. “Ms. Song has been informed. Please take a…” his eyes drifted to the immaculate furniture, and the certainty that he would be the one to clean it off later. “Please wait here. She’ll be with you shortly.”
Trotter nodded absently and decided to walk around the lobby while he waited. He found himself drawn toward a tall potted plant beneath a recessed light in the corner, its plastic fronds painfully green and bordering on cartoonish. A thin layer of dust collected at the base of each stem where a feather duster hadn’t been able to reach.
He moved toward the wide couches and felt oddly satisfied to spot evidence of repaired and patched leather. Not perfect, then. Just something someone had spent the time and resources on to restore. He rounded the armrest and was preparing to test the cushions when a door next to the reception desk swung open. Trotter froze, half standing and half seated, not noticing the reception stallion’s relief.
A pale yellow mare stood in the doorway, frowning at the stallion on the verge of ruining her furniture. The red and white curls of her mane were pulled back and secured behind her ears with a length of green ribbon that matched her eyes. The black suit jacket she wore was tailored to fit her lithe frame and she wore it confidently.
Autumn Song spoke to Trotter with a businesslike tone that didn’t fit the hawkish narrowing of her eyes. “I’m told I owe you some caps, mister…”
“Trotter,” he said proudly.
“Trotter.” She gestured for him to follow. “Step inside my office. I’d like to take a few minutes to get to know the stallion that brought me my brother's killer.”








 


 

Autumn had been in a sour mood since news came of her brother’s death three days prior, and it didn’t seem likely to lift in the near future. She knew on some level that Cider would get himself killed eventually, but she hadn’t thought he would be so stupid as to try to force himself onto a member of the Dressage family. She loved her brother, in her own way, but his years of insisting that he take new caravan leaders out on the trade routes had given her ample time to prepare for the day the wasteland eventually devoured him.
Still. At the hooves of a Dressage.
The radio wasn’t wrong when it branded Cider a monster, nor was it the first time she’d heard him given the label before. They came from a strong line of ponies stretching back to the original prewar business magnates Flim and Flam, and while the generations that preceded her tried to minimize their connection with the two ruthless brothers, Autumn had spent the majority of her life breathing fire back into the old family business. 
Cider had been on board from the beginning and quickly learned that their growing stronghold on the eastern trade routes allowed him to take liberties that would have earned any other pony a bullet and a burial. He took those liberties often. 	Personally, Autumn found her brother’s midnight dalliances with unwilling mares and stallions revolting, but his reputation backed by F&F Mercantile’s stabilizing influence on the wastes made for an effective combination that Cider always managed to transform into valuable goods and information. And Cider followed her rules. He had always been good about that. He never touched ponies involved with the Rangers, raiders or Epicureans though even he expressed disgust for the latter group. Rape was one thing. Cannibalism was entirely another.
As long as his off-hours activities didn’t threaten the business, he could do what he liked.
Which was why Autumn hadn’t been sleeping well for the past couple nights. Cider knew who Ginger Dressage was. They both did. Touching her or anyone with that last name was off limits. So what had he broken the rules now?
Something didn’t add up.
She brooded silently behind her desk while she watched Trotter fidget. The crescent-shaped wood desk had been found by her scavenger teams while F&F Mercantile’s operations were being moved to abandoned solar plant. The cost of having it restored had been egregious, but the smooth maple veneer against her hooves paid for itself.
The rest of her office was a showcase of her life’s work. A variety of notable items she had found interesting enough to keep during her early travels rested on simple glass shelves between an array of picture frames on the eggshell white walls. A rare bottle of Sparkle-Cola Glimmer, still full of artificial grape flavored cola, sat opposite of a gold pocket watch she found in the drawer of the desk she currently enjoyed. Embossed into the case stood three licks of fire that vaguely resembled some sort of bird. Despite it not working, Autumn had added it to her collection.
Framed Equestrian maps of varying age displayed highlighted trade routes that Autumn and Cider had worked to take control of from the raider factions that once ran rampant in the area. They read like a book without words. To her right, the first map highlighted only a single red line between Blinder’s Bluff and Rickshaw, her hometown to the north. It had taken her two painful years of begging and bribing to secure that route and most of that resistance had come from the Bluff.
Each subsequent map showed new roads highlighted in red right up to the most recent one she put up months earlier. A broad network of red roads and highways branched away from the JetStream Solar Array like arteries from a beating heart. Two of the longs routes stretched west for hundreds of miles - taproots she was determined to one day drive into the lavish markets of New Canterlot and eventually to the western borders. Both lines had stymied and shrank away from the stalwart bubble of Enclave territory that still encompassed the old Equestrian capital. No matter how many caps she threw at the problem, that invisible wall stood. Neither the Enclave nor the Rangers would permit trade to cross their borders.
It didn’t help her mood that Cider had sent a report from Junction City telling her he was tracking down something that might fix that problem for her. She hated when he was unnecessarily cryptic, but it was just how he was. Now he was dead and it didn’t matter.
Trotter cleared his throat and she looked at him with mild annoyance.
Her chair creaked as she leaned back to assess the drunk currently filling her office with the stench of sweat of alcohol. She addressed him as evenly as any other client, though it pained her to do so.
“How did you do it?” she asked. What she meant to ask was how does an earth pony subdue a unicorn?
Trotter seemed to sense the opportunity to brag and puffed up a little bit. “Clocked her over the head when she came out of the shitter, ma’am.”
Autumn’s smile drew tight. “Oh.”
The blue stallion grinned in return, clearly proud of his accomplishment. “Two thousand caps makes a guy brave.”
“Ah. Yes, I haven’t forgotten your reward. But before we get to that, I’d like to go over a few concerns that I have regarding Miss Dressage’s condition.”
Trotter frowned. “She’s alive, ain’t she?”
“That’s my first concern, Trotter,” she said. “If my physician is to be trusted - and I trust her with my life - Miss Dressage was beaten within the last few hours.”
She let the accusation hang in the air long enough for the words to sink in. Trotter’s forehead creased with the slow realization that Autumn wasn’t happy with him. “The bounty never said nothing about her being healthy,” he said defensively.
Autumn leaned forward and crossed her hooves on her desk. Her face was a calm breeze that masked the hurricane of anger behind her eyes. “Trotter, have you ever purchased any of our goods before?”
He hesitated, taking a moment to follow the new track of the conversation. “Yeah, sure. You guys keep bringing in that Prancing Mare bourbon from out east.”
She smiled a little. F&F had lucked out in recent years when they discovered wild corn growing near a prewar distillery. Cider had the idea to fix the place up and see if they couldn’t come up with a saleable product. They had. One of Cider’s more artistic employees had designed the logo: a nude mare frozen in mid-step with her tail hiked skyward, leaving nothing to the imagination. Autumn had been horrified when she receive the first bottle and saw herself on the label, but the brand had already begun to stick along the east coast. It was a bitter pill made easier to swallow by the fact that whoever had drawn her hadn’t known enough about her to include the freckles.
The memory did little to cool her temper. “Trotter, when you purchase a bottle of Prancing Mare, you expect it to be full. Correct?”
Trotter nodded slowly.
“Because a broken bottle wouldn’t be much use to you.”
He didn’t nod this time. He was beginning to understand.
Autumn steepled her hooves and pressed her lips against the point where they joined. “I requested Ginger Dressage to be delivered to me alive. You delivered her damaged. As such, your reward will be reduced significantly.”
Trotter balked. “Listen here you cheating bitc-”
An emerald aura wrapped around his muzzle and clamped his jaws together with enough force to crack his front tooth. The magic field remained in place, muffling his scream of pain.
“Furthermore,” Autumn continued, ignoring the pitiful noises coming from Trotter, “one of the slaves you rented to drag you here died outside my gate from exhaustion. The other one is saying you ran them nonstop from Blinder’s bluff, through deathclaw territory, to get here a few hours faster. Is that true?”
She released the muzzle from Trotter and set her hooves back on her desk. Trotter tentatively prodded his front teeth with his tongue and groaned. He tried to move but only jerked as if his hooves were dipped in cement, which they effectively were. Autumn pinned him in place like a particularly interesting insect.
Trotter was too distracted by his own sudden change of fortune to answer. Autumn helped him focus by jerking his chin to face her. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He nodded frantically. “I’m thorry! I didn’t know about the deathclawth!”
She shook her head and opened a drawer. A heavy iron six-shooter floated in her aura and settled against her desk, careful not to mar the polished wood grain. “You’re missing the point. You came here with one of my carts, killed one of my slaves, lamed the other, and took it upon yourself to beat my bounty for some quick entertainment.”
Trotter stared at the revolver on her desk. She felt the gentle tug on her magic as he tried once again to move away. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Pleathe…” he whimpered between his broken teeth. “I didn’t know they belonged to you.”
She ignored him. “Do you know how much you cost me today? How much you’ve put me at risk?”
He boggled at her, searching fruitlessly for understanding.
“Of course you wouldn’t.” She was sorely tempted to open the revolver’s drum and let him see the six brass cartridges resting inside, but theater was her brother’s thing. Had been. She looked up at him, the revolver slowly drifting up to follow her gaze. “I used to know a pony a lot like you. Interested in three things: fucking, fighting and drinking.”
Her throat caught and she lost focus. Thankfully the blue stallion was too terrified to notice his magical bindings loosen. She regained her composure before he could tell she’d lost it. “Your reward is forfeit, Trotter. All of it. And unfortunately, you’re too much of a liability for me to supply you with a fresh team of stallions for the trip back to Blinder’s Bluff.”
Fear and confusion fought through the thick malaise of inebriation. “How am I thuppothed to get home?”
Autumn leveled the revolver at Trotter’s head. The hammer drew back with a heavy click.
“You won’t be.”
She pulled the trigger.








 


 

Flying came naturally to Aurora. Flying well did not.
She was exhausted.
The first hour of her flight had been excruciating both physically and mentally. The wind, the lack of it, the thermals and the terrifying pockets of low pressure she only knew were there when she started to plummet all worked against her from the outset. It was like reliving her first day on shift as the newbie when her supervisor had given her a pained expression when he learned that she didn’t know how to tighten a bit into a drill. She knew how it should worked. She just didn’t know how to make it work.
She fought relentlessly for every bit of speed she could collect and spouted more and more curses when the sky decided to throw her a curveball that sapped it all away. It didn’t help that gulping down the dry high altitude air had parched her throat and made swallowing her own saliva a painful endeavor. It didn’t help that the constant eastward wind kept shunting her off course and no doubt added mile after mile to her journey. It didn’t help that she didn’t have time for this.
And yet she forced herself to continue on. And after that first infuriating hour, she started getting the hang of it.
She felt the warm, rising air pooling beneath her wings cooling and she started flapping to gain altitude. Less than a minute later she passed through the invisible column of the thermal and began to coast through the calmer air beyond. She was learning to gauge her speed by how far the feathers at her wingtips bent in the airstream. It was anything but a perfect measurement but at this height it beat trying to use the ground as a guide.
She groped for her compass and held it in front of her nose, bending her body to adjust for the uneven drag of her foreleg. The needle bobbed and swayed until she steadied herself. Once she did, it lined itself up with her right shoulder. She made a face and adjusted her bearing until it pointed slightly toward her left and hoped she would make up for the eastward drift.
Below her, geological and natural features were little more than smudges on a brown landscape. Hills looked like wrinkles in the dirt and buildings were barely the size of dice. Every so often she would drift closer to the surface and get a better idea of what she was flying over, but each time there was little to remark on. Everything looked a little more barren, a little more desolate the further south she flew. The dark smears of trees and grasses were far behind her, giving way to a cracked vista so flat that it unnerved her.
She flew above a narrow white line that she quickly recognized to be a road. It bent and swayed beneath her, navigating obstacles that were no longer there. Dozens of other roads fed east and west from dusty intersections before fading beyond her ability to tell them apart from the rest of the dirt. Twice she had seen roads lead toward distant towns that looked like Junction City. She’d been sorely tempted to stop to rest there, but something about this region told her to stay airborne. She could have sworn she could see things moving in the wide ranges between the roads.
High above, but not nearly as far as they had been, the dusty clouds that shrouded Equestria in permanent twilight seemed larger. More foreboding. They rolled and shifted silently into one another like boiling water, only slowed down. They made her think about the titanic beasts that had once been rumored to pull ships beneath Equestria’s oceans. She kept her distance.
“Shit,” she panted.
The dizzy spells were getting worse, and this one was a record setter. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for her balance to settle, listening to the wind as it sped over the backs of her flattened ears. It took nearly a minute before she felt normal again. Her mouth felt sticky and it was starting to become an effort of will to keep her wings extended. The signs of dehydration had been lingering with her for at least an hour, but now her body was making the decision for her. She needed to land.
She tipped her body forward and allowed herself to descend.
As the ground came up to meet her, she began looking for options. There were precious few. The last town she saw had been at least thirty minutes back the way she came. She spotted a cluster of broken-down carriages pushed to the side of the road but as she dove closer she could see they’d been picked apart. She flapped her wings to regain a little speed and slid a few dozen feet above the road surface.
A worry began to tickle at the back of her brain. Maybe she’d flown too far. Maybe she was flying away from Ginger.
She shoved the dark thought away and kept looking.
It was several minutes before she saw the dim shape of a building forming on the horizon. As she coasted nearer she began to see the defined edges of a small building set away from the road behind a wide metal awning. Her hooves clicked and scraped against the uneven pavement as she landed, bringing herself from a brisk gallop to a leisurely walk. She approached the edge of the lot cautiously, her eyes on the gigantic apple rusting atop the awning. Flecks of orange paint clung to the silhouette of a pony reclining against the apple’s giant stem, her western-style hat tipped lazily over the bridge of her nose.
She stepped around a fallen marquee sign and accidentally set her hoof onto a plastic letter tile caught in a patch of dead weeds that had grown and died in the cracked parking lot. The tile crackled indignantly. 
Beneath the wide awning sat a single rusted carriage next to an intercom speaker on a tilted pillar. Aurora glanced inside and saw a few bones mingling inside, many of which bore deep grooves from where something had chewed on them for a long while. She winced and looked at the wide signboard the carriage was parked next to. The words, sheltered from the dim sunlight by the tattered aluminum awning, were still legible.


Welcome to Red Delicious!
Please read the menu as your
meal number might have changed!


Aurora found herself scanning the menu and feeling a little jealous at the array of options. Hayburgers, fried potato wedges, spicy mushroom chili, salted caramel apples and no less than five flavors of Sparkle-Cola soda alongside a promotional offering of iced Celes-Tea. She winced and accepted the indisputable fact that the height of civilization would forever be remembered for its awful branding puns.
Even so, the washed out photo of iced tea being splashily poured into a clear cup dotted with condensation made her swallow reflexively.
She trotted across the sandy remants of asphalt and scanned the windows that spanned the first half of the restaurant. Advertisements that had been adhered to the interior glass were bleached white, their messages wrinkled and forgotten as the signage slowly baked over the decades. The dining room inside looked as if the entire building had been given one hard shake. Rows of pedestal style tables lay fallen in one direction, some resting on rusted stools caught beneath them. In the back, near the counter, one table had been righted and two stools stood neatly on either side. Two empty trays sat atop a nearby garbage can.
Aurora nudged past the front door and through a narrow vestibule where a wooden display sat stacked high with yellowed phone books. A warped cork board on the cramped wall held a laminated recruitment poster for the Steel Rangers.
She navigated the tangle of stools and tables and reached the counter where a pair of cash registers waited dutifully for her order. The faint scent of rot wafted from the dark kitchen space beyond.
Behind the counter, surrounded by pillars of red paper cups and a stack of dispensers filled with bright green lids stood a machine Aurora was surprised to have seen before. The soda fountain was a lot more decorated than its utilitarian cousin back at the cafeteria a floor above Mechanical. It had been installed with a fiberglass shell made to advertise the various flavors on tap. Without thinking, Aurora scooted around the counter, snatched a dusty cup from its pillar and pressed it to one of the levers beneath the row of spouts.
A fine spray of syrup spat out of the nozzle hard enough to make her drop the cup. She held her eyes shut and exhaled slowly, feeling the tacky mist settling against her face and neck.
“Fantastic,” she muttered.
She picked up another cup, hating the sticky feeling between her feathers, and tried the same spout a second time. It hissed at her as it blew pressurized CO2 into the cup, creating a little wind tunnel inside. Seconds passed and nozzle shuddered before, finally, a sputtering stream of mildly discolored water gurgled into the cup. She lifted it to her nose and gave it a sniff before tasting it.
The bitter, slightly metallic tasting seltzer water poured fire into the split lip Ironshod had given her and she jerked away. A thin rim of bubbles, what was left of the anemic carbonation, clung to the rim. Whatever flavor it was supposed to be hadn’t even made it into the lines. Even so, she knew she wasn’t in a position to complain. She ignored the pain and drained the cup, then filled it again. The warm water was a salve and she relished the simple relief of not feeling like her throat was trying to glue itself shut.
When she couldn’t drink any more, she turned her attention to the trays of sealed condiments below the registers. She pushed aside bloated sauce packets and briefly considered breaking one open when she spotted a plastic-lined box piled high with saltines. She lifted one out, its cellophane wrapper crinkling in her wing, and turned it over in the dim light. She wasn’t sure whether to feel encouraged or worried that the little crackers looked perfectly edible two centuries after their sell-by date.
She tore open the wrapper, took a bite and her nose crumpled at the cracker’s strange stale-beyond-stale pliability. Still, her stomach didn’t revolt. She wasn’t rolling on the floor foaming at the mouth. It wasn’t great food. It wasn’t even good food. But it was food.
With a sigh, she looked at the remaining cracker, popped it in her mouth and chewed.
She filled a second cup of water to wash down the meager meal and dragged the cracker box onto the top of the counter. It landed with a soft thump and an crackle of wrappers. Committed to whatever gastric distress she had signed up for, she dug out a wingful of saltines and began unwrapping them onto the counter in a neat stack next to her cup. Wrappers snowed onto the floor around her hooves as she worked.
Something thumped from deep within the kitchen and she froze.
She held her breath and listened. Nothing. Just the sound of her heart pounding against her chest. After several tense seconds she allowed herself to exhale.
Then she heard it again. A solid, thud, like meat hitting the ground followed by a deep, predatory rumble. Aurora turned her head slowly and peered into the black recesses of the kitchen. Two green globes reflected the half-light back at her. They narrowed and ice flooded her heart.
The bellowing roar that rippled out of its throat was louder than anything she could remember hearing. It lunged forward and she ducked just as it swung a fistful of claws through the space her head had just been. She threw herself down the length of the counter and bolted around the corner into the unlit kitchen. The soda machine crumpled against the wall behind her like a sledgehammer and the creature howled after her, claws scraping madly against the tiles as it gave chase.
“Fuck fuck fuck!”
Aurora took a risk and looked over her shoulder and saw the silhouette of something massive closing the distance behind her. She let out a scream as something grabbed her hooves, sending her sprawling over the tiles and into the base of a stained ice machine at the end of the cooking line. With no time to get up, she lifted her wings and threw them down. The meager thrust was just enough to slide her to the monster’s left, out of its path and into a mound of bones and shredded clothing. The creature’s nest. 
It hurled its bulk into the ice machine and it crumpled like an empty beer can. The complaint of shearing metal snapped her back to attention. She scrambled onto her hooves, scattering remains, and ran back toward the front counter as the creature’s feet thundered after her. The storm of claws and muscle barreled through its nest of shredded corpses, intent on adding her to the pile. 
She leapt over the counter. 
It exploded behind her.
She landed on the single table that had been set up some time before and launched off of it with wings open. The creature smashed into the tangle of overturned tables like a breaking wave. Stools hooked around its legs, then one another, and soon it was wading through the mass of jumbled steel like an animal stuck in quicksand. It howled at her as she landed unsteadily at the front door. She looked back at it for only a second, but it was enough to stifle her breath.
A monster looked back.
Bundles of muscle rippled beneath its muddy green reptilian hide. Serrated claws curled out of its fingers and toes like scythes, matching the yellowed fangs that crowded its stubby muzzle. It was covered from head to toe in disorganized plate-like scales. Two black horns curled along either side of its face, the left one broken just above its eyeline.
Those eyes locked onto her like she was the only thing in the world worth chasing. She had no doubt that if it got close enough to grab her, it would devour her without giving her the courtesy of death first. 
It whipped its claws through the hill of restaurant furniture, scattering chunks of tabletop and chair legs in a wide arc of shrapnel. 
“Shit!” Aurora ducked into the vestibule just as debris turned the exterior windows into clouds of shattered glass. She shoved herself through the front door hard enough to bruise her shoulder. With a shaky flap of her wings, she took to the air.
The monster bellowed as its meal escaped.
She landed on the aluminum awning, breathing hard. Below, she could hear the creature shredding tables and chairs like a box of nails dropped into a blender. More windows shattered, but the creature didn’t come outside. With the focus of its rage out of sight, it was as if she no longer existed. And yet it needed something to take out its primal fury on. Without a second thought, it took to gutting the building with a vengeance.
Aurora sat down to catch her breath and watched as a booth seat punched through the restaurant’s brick facade like a cannonball. It tumbled across the parking lot in a cloud of dust and shredded padding. Wood cracked and metal shrieked like it was being torn apart at the welds.
A rusting air conditioning unit that had spent the past two centuries rotting on the restaurant’s roof sagged downward. Aurora’s ears perked and she watched it tip, slowly at first, then more quickly. It rolled as if the rooftop was made of wet tissue and disappeared into the kitchen portion with a loud crash. The hole it made began to widen and after briefly stabilizing, the entire roof began to deform.
The center of the restaurant succumbed to the enormous damage of the creature’s rampage and collapsed inward, ejecting a cacophonous of noise that Aurora felt in her sternum. The roof dragged two of the walls down with it and ejected an expanding plume of dust through the various holes that had been punched into the building. Pinned somewhere beneath it all, the creature struggled to claw itself free.
She would have almost thought its muffled roar was pitiful if it hadn’t just come inches from taking her head off.
“Serves you right!” she yelled, riding the wave of adrenaline in her system, and for good measure added an enthusiastic “Fuck!”
The creature tried and failed to push through the mound of debris, but it was only a matter of time before it broke through. Aurora didn’t feel like being around when that happened. She navigated the awning’s old ribbing, crossing through the giant apple’s shadow, and perched herself at the edge facing the road. Looking down at her compass, the silver glint of something below caught her eye.
A metal sphere hovered silently above the parking lot. Its bristling antennae pointed low to the ground, giving the impression that the black lenses behind its sleek steel grille were watching her.
One of Fiona’s spritebots, undoubtedly drawn by the drifting plume of dust.
She sighed relief. Fiona would be able to tell her how far from JetStream Solar she was. “Thank Celestia you’re here. I don’t know where-”
“IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”
Aurora blinked at the heavily modulated voice. Not one of Fiona’s spritebots.
“Who are you supposed-”
“UNABLE TO VERIFY,” it buzzed. “IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”
Her forehead bent low. “You first, rustbucket.”
A moment passed. Then another. The creature trapped under the restaurant growled as the debris settled on top of it.
*pop*
Aurora narrowed her eyes at the spritebot as the robotic voice was replaced by the distant fumbling of a microphone. The tinny, nasal voice of a mare crackled over the speaker. “Alright lady, stop dicking around and give me your serial before that deathclaw gets loose and eats my bot. I’m late for my break.”
She snorted. The stranger’s voice gave her the mental picture of a tiny pony trapped inside the buckball-sized robot. After giving the ruins of the restaurant a glance to confirm the creature trapped inside was going to stay that way, she hopped off her perch and landed in front of the bot. It puttered backward like she’d invaded its personal space. Cute.
“Can you hear me?” it said. Several quick pops came from its embedded speaker. “Damn. Taffy, are you using your mic? I need it.”
“I can hear you,” she said. The bot-mare made an exasperated noise in her reedy voice. Aurora ignored it. This was the first time she’d seen anything in the wasteland that looked so new. With the exception of a little road dust dulling its shine, it looked like something freshly assembled.
“Look,” the bot-mare sighed, “my ticket queue is piling up over here so I don’t have time to play this game. I’ve got enough shots of you for the nerds upstairs to figure out who you are. I’m logging an infraction either way, but if you don’t identify yourself I’ll be adding dereliction to the list.”
Aurora resisted the urge to smile. “Before you do that, could you tell me which direction the JetStream Solar Array is?”
She did smile when the mare-bot didn’t respond, caught off guard by the abrupt change of topic. A long pause stretched before it spoke. “Twenty-one klicks east-southeast of this position, but I feel like I should remind you that the power station is a no-fly zone until our assets are recovered.”
Aurora already had the compass open in her hoof. Her confidence rose as she turned, settling the needle on the notch between E and SE. “Funny coincidence, I happen to be on a recovery mission.”
The bot swung in front of her. “You happen to be ignoring basic Enclave protocol by refusing to provide your serial to a ranking officer!”
Aurora hesitated.
“And to that point, violating a red level no-fly zone is grounds for immediate court marshal. I shouldn’t have to-”
“You’re from the Enclave?”
The mare-bot laughed her nasal laugh. “Oh, don’t even try pulling the Dustwing bit on me. You’re not the first conscript I’ve caught sleeping on the job, but you might be the dumbest. I have your cutie mark on file and this conversation is being doc-”
Aurora pivoted on her front hooves, lifted her hind legs and bucked the annoying machine in the center of its grille. The metal screen bowed inward and its internal components made a satisfying crunch. The spritebot rolled in a high arc before crashing against the broken pavement, sparks sputtering from its broken casing.
“Nope,” she said to the shattered spritebot. “Not dealing with that today.”
Behind her, the deathclaw emitted a grumbling growl from beneath the rubble. It was about as close to agreement she expected to get from the monster.
She gave the compass a final check before snapping it shut and looking east. A little over twenty miles on a belly full of questionable water and a couple incredibly stale crackers.
No problem.
She eased herself into a canter that quickly sped into a gallop, passing the smoking spritebot and lunging into the air with a brisk gust of wind from her wings. Euphoria and dread mingled in her gut as she lifted into the air and rode the light tailwind from the west. The restaurant, the deathclaw and her first faltering contact with the Enclave shrank away. The sky rushed in below her to fill the void.







 


June 23rd, 1075
Holy crap, mom made the front page of the Manehattan Times and put the JetStream Aerospace test launch on page two! I mean yeah it crashed again but still! Mom thinks that Fluttershy might have pulled some strings to make it happen but if you ask me, the papers know she’s the right mare for the job. 
Oh, and Fluttershy’s jackrabbit came out really good. The ears didn’t come off this time and I pinned a little bit of birch bark to its butt so it could have a fluffy tail. It’s a little more cutsie-wootsie than I wanted, but I think she’ll like it.
I’m so glad it’s summer vacation. I’m super proud of mom but I don’t feel like having to talk to the ponies at school about it. Sagebrush especially. Since we’ll be moving soon, I guess I won’t have to talk to him at all! Adios, asshole!
 
 
June 25th, 1075
We’re going to be spending the whole day today packing up the house. The Ministry of Peace had a ton of flattened boxes and tape delivered, and it’s starting to finally feel real. First thing tomorrow morning we’ll be following the movers to Canterlot.
P.S.  If I never have to build a box again, I’ll die happy.
P.P.S  Oh my Celestia I forgot about UNPACKING OH MY CELESTIA NO.
 
 
June 26th, 1075
I knew we’d be leaving in the morning, but the carriage came way too early. Mom practically had to drag me out of bed by my mane. The movers were already waiting to load our boxes into another carriage and I swear they all looked like the stallions from the magazine mom used to keep in her dresser drawer. All tall and handsome and perfect. Mom would have killed me if she saw me staring so I only stared a little. I guess they’re going to bring something bigger for the furniture. Celestia, I hope our new home in Canterlot has carpet worth sleeping on.
Mom’s got an folder thicker than Sagebrush’s head that she’s gotta read through before we get there. I guess the job technically started already and she’s getting herself caught up. She won’t let me read what’s on all the papers but I know her face. There’s a bunch of stuff in there she doesn’t agree with, but that super confident all-knowing-mom-smirk is there too. She’s going to be awesome at this.
 
> Chapter 12: Solace
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


 


 

June 27th, 1075
So we’re here, all moved in. Well, the boxes are moved in. The moving company didn’t hang around to help unpack, so mom and I are spending the day putting things close to where they had been in the old house. Easier said than done.
I’m not sure I would call this place a house. In my head I had pictured a big mansion with a butler like on TV, but this definitely isn’t that. It’s more… cottage-y than that. It kinda reminds me of dad’s cabin out east but without the fireplace, and with actual thatch on top of the roof like they used to have when mom was a filly. There’s a real roof beneath it, thank Celestia, or my allergies would be going nuts right now. I guess trends really do follow 30 year cycles. At least the walls aren’t purple.
We’re two blocks away from the castle and only a few houses away from the edge of the city, so we get our choice of tons of shade or tons of sunlight depending on the time of day. I haven’t had a chance to check out the view yet but from what I could see on the way up the mountain, it’s gorgeous. The farms are so small up here, like postage stamps all lined up. Mom’s not so excited about how high up we are. She hates heights with a passion, even though there are pegasi monitoring the edge in case someone falls. Apparently that’s been happening a lot more often.
Mom wants me to wrap it up. We’re going to meet the neighbors for tea (seriously, TEA) and then afterward she wants to show me her office at the Ministry of Peace. Okay she’s giving me the look. Gotta go!
 
 

	




	 


	 

The steel tanks looked in many ways like a dead giant’s hooves sticking out of the ground. A quartet of stout cylinders once used to store thousands of gallons of coolant now stood empty, waiting to be made useful again. Beyond those tanks lay a sweeping sea of mirrors and the fence that penned the solar plant.
One of two guards, bedecked in F&F Mercantile colors, nudged Ginger away from him as they escorted her toward the tanks. She’d begun to lurch again and gasped at the gentle shove, staggering between them as she recovered. Neither of the stallions said anything. If she’d chosen to pay closer attention to them, she would have seen they were making a concerted effort not to acknowledge her. She was a ghost to them. It took a force of will just to straighten her gait. Burying her shame was much more difficult.
Ginger had only been halfway through her RadAway treatment when Trotter ambushed her, and she wasn’t quite sure if the coppery taste on her tongue was the leftovers of Roach’s radiation or her own blood. She supposed it was a bit of both. The sharp throbbing coming from her ribs told her that at least one of them was broken, maybe more, and thanks to Trotter’s hormone-fueled tantrum her forelegs were a mess of bruises that forced her to favor her left step. She tried not to let it drag her too close to her guard a second time. 
Her odds of surviving had dropped precipitously ever since she met the pegasus from Stable 10. Aurora was a nice enough mare. A little naive, she thought, when it came to the reality of life in the wasteland but not the sort to freeze up and cower like some ponies would. Aurora had a spark of something that Ginger couldn’t quite put her hoof on. Roach had seen it too and no doubt it was why he’d chosen to follow her, but Ginger wasn’t sure what that it was. If any other pony had caused her to lose her business and gotten her face plastered on the bounty boards, she would have thrown them head-first into the nearest raider camp and watched from a comfortable distance.
And yet Aurora wasn’t any other pony. Ginger wouldn’t deny that she was attractive, much in the same way that flames attracted moths. It never ended well for the moth. Now that she was here, among the dead machines of this forgotten place, she worried that she’d already fluttered into the fire.
They entered the morning shadow of the tanks and a chill settled into Ginger’s coat. Her guards led her to a makeshift door that had been cut into the bulkhead of the nearest tank, bound shut by a length of rusted chain and an old padlock. The stallion who pushed her stepped ahead of them and quietly fought a key into the padlock. It fought back, refusing to turn until he banged it against the side of the tank. Embarrassment creased his eyes as he pulled the chain free and opened the door.
She was ushered through the doorway into the hollow belly of the container with little more than a quick shove. Her guards followed her inside, one posting next to the open door behind them while the other stepped past her toward a squat wooden chair at the center of the cylinder. Heavy leather straps hung limp from its arms and legs. Four track marks on the dusty floor led to a red tool chest waiting near the chair.
The septic odor of the container threatened to overwhelm her. Narrow cages barely large enough for a single pony ringed the tank’s inner wall like a pie sliced too many times. Dented buckets sat at the rear of each cage, their purpose already clear to Ginger’s nose. A damp layer of dirt had been spread into one of the cages where a bucket had been spilled, waiting to be shoveled outside. Dangling from a cable that snaked through a hole cut into the container’s roof glowed a single, bright bulb, lending a yellow pallor to this dark corner of the world.
Each cage stood empty, their residents recently vacated. The guard gestured to the chair and Ginger understood that this tank had been emptied for her.
“Sit down,” he said.
Ginger looked at the guard, an earth pony with a dull coat the color of sand, and hesitated. She considered running, even putting together the steps in her head. Grab the chair with her magic. Strike the stallion in the chin with the backrest. Turn around. Throw the remains of the chair into the pony behind her. Take the key from the strap around his neck and open the door. Use her magic to deform the door behind her, trapping them inside long enough to facilitate an escape.
There was only one problem. Trotter’s suppression ring, planted firmly around the base of her horn which sent her magic recoiling into her skull like a hammer blow. When he was too busy tormenting the stallions pulling the wagon, she’d tried to hook the ring against the uneven planks to jar it loose. It hadn’t budged, confirming her worries that Trotter had put a self-locking suppression ring on her. Hundreds of tiny, backwards-facing steel teeth lined the ring’s inner band. Getting one on was simple work. Pull it the other way and the teeth would bite deep into the living bone. 
She weighed the odds of fighting the stallions with her bare hooves and quickly discarded the idea. They were going to put her in that chair one way or the other. If an opportunity to escape was going to present itself, it would be more likely to appear if she wasn’t seen as a threat.
The chair creaked as she sat down. Suddenly conscious of the exposed mark on her left hip, she swept her tail around it while the guard secured her limbs to the old wood.
The dusty stallion worked efficiently with his teeth. Ginger always found herself surprised by how earth ponies made due with what little they’d been given. He jerked each belt tight enough to hurt a little, earning a wince each time. Then he stood up and took her horn in the crook of his foreleg and gave the underside of the ring a hard tap with his other hoof. Satisfied it was secure, he let her go.
The tool cabinet squeaked on old castors as the stallion pushed it near her chair. The second guard looked on expressionlessly. From the cabinet came a bag of clear liquid with an IV port dangling from the bottom, and the unmistakably chunky syringe of a stimpack.
Ginger watched with growing suspicion as the earth pony assembled the IV line. She narrowed her eyes at the bag of solution. “What’s in that?”
The guard glanced at her before tearing open a yellowed bag containing the needle assembly. “Something to hydrate you. Water, mostly. I don’t know what else.”
She creased the corner of her lip with mistrust, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice at this point. She doubted it was poison. If Autumn Song wanted her to die from an injection, she wouldn’t have wasted the resources setting this up. She winced as the needle pricked through the skin of her foreleg and sank through a bruise. The liquid that slipped through the line was crystal clear. Medical grade. She watched as a small fortune worth of sterile water slipped beneath her skin.
She was so captivated by it that she didn’t see the stallion pick up the stimpack in his teeth and position it near her thigh. With a flick of his neck and a bright hiss of pressurized gas, the stimpack dumped its contents into her femoral vein.
Ginger tensed at the burst of pain, but the relief she felt afterward was immediate. She made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. All the aches of the last few days, especially the ones Trotter had inflicted on her, began to melt away. The stabbing pain in her ribs dulled to a deep throb, then to a shallow soreness that she could breathe around. Her body was knitting itself back together. She tilted her head back and soaked it in.
After several seconds she opened her eyes and looked toward the tool cabinet, feeling oddly compelled to thank the guard that had only just strapped her to the chair. But he was gone. The cabinet sat alone, one of its drawers slightly ajar. In it she could see a long row of unused stimpacks.
The padlock rattled and Ginger looked to see both guards at the door, neither concerned with her. The lock clicked and the door creaked open.
“Excuse me?” she asked. The sandy stallion glanced at her as he walked through the door, but he remained silent. She watched with growing worry as it closed shut, leaving her alone in the empty container.
Ginger stared after them, baffled. She looked down at the needle in her foreleg, then spotted the emptied stimpack lying on the ground near her right hoof. What was the point of it all? Even after her best weeks at the shop, she wouldn’t have raised enough caps to pay for this kind of medicine. And it was medicine. Proper medicine from the days when it could be synthesized, imbued with healing magic and distilled to perfection instead of cobbled together with the scraps left over from the war. The haze of illness and confusion had begun to evaporate and she felt healthier. Why give her such a precious gift if they believed she was Cider’s murderer?
Confusion gave way to a deep, gnawing dread.
What if they learned she hadn’t killed Cider and this was Autumn Song’s way of gaining her trust? Scrub away any evidence of Trotter’s beating, clean her up and dangle carrots in front of her until she gave up the name of Cider’s true killer. She came close to entertaining the idea - to take the easy way out and give them Aurora’s name - but shame scattered the thought before it could solidify into something she couldn’t take back. Aurora might not be family, but over the last several days she’d become the second of two ponies she could truly call a friend.
Giving up Aurora wouldn’t just end that friendship. Ginger had few doubts that it would be tantamount to killing her. If Aurora died, her Stable died. What kind of life would she have if she had to live it knowing it came at the price of hundreds of innocent lives? No. Whatever Autumn might try, she would endure it. At the very least, it might make up for some of her own sins.
She tried and failed several times to find a comfortable position to sit. The straps around her limbs didn’t give her many options beyond shifting her weight whenever the muscles in her sides complained. It was a strange sensation to feel rejuvenation and back pain marching in lockstep. She tried to gauge the passage of time, but the only measurable change in the tank was the gradual rise of the air’s temperature. Likely it was midday by now, she thought, and the tank’s metal skin was soaking up the meager sunlight in earnest.
The chain on the other side of the door rattled and Ginger’s ears perked up. The door cracked open, then steadily scraped across the floor. A pale yellow mare in a neatly fitted suit jacket stepped through the doorway. From her hip hung a heavy steel revolver in a simple holster. Autumn Song’s face was a mask of disinterest, but there was an intensity in her eyes that betrayed the calm facade.
Ginger could do little else but watch as the door lit with an emerald glow and clapped shut behind her, ringing the tank like a gargantuan bell. As the last reverberation drew silent, the mare began a slow walk around Ginger’s chair. She said nothing as she completed the circuit. The only sound were the slow, calculated circle of hoofbeats.
She stopped at the tool cabinet and peered down at the drawer of high quality stimpacks. Just a flicker of a frown, as if she were making a mental note. Then her eyes shot up to meet Ginger’s.
“Do you feel refreshed, Miss Dressage?” There was a potency in her voice that made room for only one answer.
“Y-yes,” Ginger nodded. “I actually wanted to thank you. The efficacy of your med-”
The drawer slammed shut, making her jump. Autumn moved her attention to the IV bag laying atop the cabinet. Her eyes traced the line to Ginger’s foreleg. “When we first started this company, my brother and I, we hired discount mercenaries to clear out trouble spots along the new trade routes. One of them was a small hospital in a suburb of Manehattan.”
Autumn’s horn glowed and Ginger felt a gentle sting as the needle in her fore leg lifted out and away. It trailed the length of tubing as it coiled around the half-used bag. Autumn spoke as casually as if she were making small talk during morning chores.
“A raider clan had occupied the building for decades. Most travelers knew to avoid it but inevitably some would get too close, and the raiders would descend on them like vultures to pick them clean. We went through three teams of mercenaries before the hospital was safe. As it turned out, the basement level had flooded after the war and the raiders never bothered to drain it.” She pulled open the drawer, lifted out a silver stimpack and slid it shut. 
“Cider was the one who found the shipping manifest on one of the locked terminals. He was always good with computers. I didn’t think it was worth buying pumps over, but he was insistent. We could have filled a moat with all the water that had to be drained. Something about the water table being high near the coast. It just kept seeping back in. It took two weeks but it was worth it. With the end of the world on the horizon, someone in the hospital was prudent enough to order a replenishment from the Ministry of Peace. The delivery was still sealed, sitting inside the freight elevator, shielded from whatever was in those bombs that ruined Equestria’s magic. Cider had that smug look on his face for a full month. He never missed an opportunity to remind me he’d been right…”
Her voice faltered and she grimaced, turning away to hide the unwanted emotion playing across her face. The stimpack found its way to the tool cabinet and Ginger watched as Autumn approached the soil-lined pen. A portion of the gate glowed green and it creaked shut.
Ginger had to work to keep her breathing steady. She could see brass glinting from the cylinder of Autumn’s revolver.
“Why did you kill him?”
Ginger took a slow breath. “He… attacked a friend of mine.”
Autumn turned around, the businesslike mask back in place. “Did he rape her?” She said the word as casually as if she’d offered Ginger a drink of water.
Ginger hesitated before saying, “He didn’t get that far.”
“Why did you care?”
The question carried no anger. Just curiosity. Ginger didn’t know how to answer.
Autumn approached her chair. “I asked you a question.”
“I… I don’t-”
“You were a slaver,” she interrupted. “One of the Dressages out of New Canterlot, if my sources are accurate.”
The words fell into her stomach like lumps of ice. 
A pleasant smile crept across Autumn’s lips. “And they are accurate. I’ve done enough business with your family to verify all of it. So what I want to know…” Autumn leaned forward until Ginger could detect the sour scent of mourning on her breath. “…is why you had the audacity to kill my brother when you’ve done so much worse.”
She lingered there, a scant inch from Ginger’s nose, her ears pinned back and her eyes rimmed red from recent tears. Ginger felt an inexplicable need to keep her chin low as she leaned away, as if Autumn were some unnamed predator ready to take a bite out of her neck.
This wasn’t going the way Ginger thought it would. Her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it in her temples. “I left home over ten years ago. The things that they do - that I’ve done - still haunt me. But I-”
“Have you killed one?”
Ginger blinked. “What?”
Autumn took a step back. “A slave. Have you killed a slave?”
She dropped her eyes to the floor and stared at Autumn’s immaculate hooves. Memories she’d spent years burying drew dangerously close to the surface. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Yes.”
“Why?” Autumn pressed.
She was cutting deeper than she needed to. Ginger bit down the flash of hatred that threatened to spill into her mouth. “He tried to escape.”
“Ah,” Autumn said. “Why, I wonder.”
It was another question. “He had nothing left to lose.”
“From what I remember of your family, stallions always have something to lose.”
“He was already gelded,” she said miserably.
“Ah, that’s right,” Autumn chided. “Your father started that trend, didn’t he? It’s amazing how quickly it caught on. One snip and the fight goes out of them. The ones I’ve seen come through here seem almost happy to obey.”
Ginger said nothing. Her teeth chattered as she fought down the dark memories of adulthood.
“Did you know Cider sent a report to me on the day he died?” Her smile pressed into a hard line. Her jaws working to keep it from turning into something more violent. Ginger nodded. He had told Aurora as much in the midst of his attack. That he’d blacklisted her. Autumn lowered her head so Ginger had no choice to meet her eyes. “It wasn’t long, but something stuck out that I didn’t appreciate reading. He said that you threatened to geld him. He also said that you came dangerously close to making good on that threat.”
Ginger broke eye contact and stared into her lap.
“Old habits die hard, don’t they?” Autumn shook her head and exhaled through her nose. “My brother was no saint. He used to be better, but he was never a good pony. He was a violent drunk who had a reputation for sticking his dick where it wasn’t wanted. But this?” She gestured to the ring of slave pens surrounding them. “Cider didn’t approve of this. For all his crimes, he drew a line in the sand when it came to working with the slavers. Something about ponies like you turned even his stomach.”
Ginger looked at the pens. “Then why do you have them?”
Autumn offered a mild shrug. “F&F Mercantile has a standing offer to slavers that need to dump excess stock. The cost of a pony’s bill of sale is applied to their indenture, which they pay back as an employee of our… my company.”
Ginger was well aware of the indenture model, including the fees and interest that would keep a pony working long after their initial debt was paid. Depending on the terms of indenture, it was slavery just spelled with different letters. “How noble.”
The mask shattered.
Autumn’s horn flared to life and something shattered against Ginger’s temple.
“This from the mare who drowned my brother in a latrine!”
Ginger blinked hard and opened her eyes wide to push through the disorientation. The room had turned on its side and something warm was dribbling under her eye and across the bridge of her muzzle. A crumpled stimpack spun deliriously on the steel floor, its cherry-tinted medicine tainted with something darker.
The room took on a sudden emerald hue and turned right side up. The feet of the chair banged against the steel floor hard enough for it to echo for several long seconds.
“You should be thanking me,” Autumn said, her voice shaking with anger. Ginger looked up to see the mare’s revolver out of its holster and hovering in front of its owner. The cylinder clicked open and proceeded to spit out three rounds. Autumn gave it a hard spin and slapped it back into the frame. “I’m giving you a chance that you didn’t give Cider.”
Ginger’s eyes widened as the revolver swiveled toward her.
“Open your mouth.”
No, no, no…
Autumn was out of patience. Ginger managed a half scream of protest as her magic wrapped around her teeth and yanked her jaw open. The revolver dove through the gap like a rodent retreating into a dark corner. The taste of metal, spent gunpowder something worse stained her tongue.
Ginger lashed out with her magic but the ring drove it back into her skull like a dull knife.
Autumn pulled the trigger. 
The hammer slammed forward.
Click. 
The silence was deafening. Ginger began shaking. She couldn’t stop. She was distantly aware that she was crying. Tears streaked around the corners of her muzzle but the sobs, wherever they had gone, didn’t come. 
She hadn’t been ready to die. Oh, goddesses, she hadn’t been ready.
Autumn made a disgusted noise and holstered the pistol. “I wouldn’t get too excited. That was your last chance at an easy death.”
Ginger didn’t understand. She looked at Autumn’s hip where the revolver hung once again, the next shot primed to kill but clearly no longer intended for her.
The pale mare approached the tool cabinet and plucked a fresh stimpack from the lower drawer. Instead of clubbing her over the head with it like before, she swung the needle deep into the center of the chain and collar that branded Ginger’s hip. The actuator fired and the cool sensation of Cider’s once-in-a-lifetime discovery flooded into her bloodstream once again.
But Ginger was too distracted by the baleful twist of Autumn’s face to savor the effects of the prewar medicine.
Autumn’s smile returned, but her eyes were hard as iron. “Cider and I decided to keep these as a safety net in case business went south. An investment in the future, as mom used to say. I think you’re going to need them more than we did.”
Shock and confusion conspired to keep Ginger’s lips shut. She watched as Autumn discarded the IV equipment onto the floor and set one stimpack after another atop the red cabinet. A dozen in total. Twelve syringes, each one worth a fortune, each one containing spells that no unicorn had been able to cast after the bombs shredded the delicate fabric of Equestrian magic.
“Here’s how this is going to work. I have enough chems here to keep you alive for a very, very long time. During that time, you are going to hurt in ways you can’t imagine. I’m going to keep hurting you until you tell me to stop. Then you get a bullet and this all goes away.” Autumn lit her horn. “Do you understand the rules?”
Ginger shook her head frantically. Don’t, she thought. Please don’t.
She felt a gentle pressure slithering through the skin of her left hind leg. A gasp escaped her throat and she looked down in time to see the last motes of emerald light sinking beneath the muscle.
Autumn watched Ginger tense up as her magic probed, searched for and eventually solidified around the dense bone below her knee.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Autumn narrowed her eyes. “Let’s begin.”
Her leg deformed and she screamed as bone cracked like firewood.



	





The bowl of mirrors was astonishing.
Aurora wheeled above the power plant in wide arcs, careful not to descend low enough where she might be seen. Most of the ponies she’d met so far rarely even looked up past the horizon, but her luck had been awful as of late. She stayed high enough that she could blot out a good half of the plant with her outstretched wing. The ponies patrolling the outer fence appeared as small as the milling scraps she sometimes tracked into her compartment before bed. She was safe for now.
She lifted her chin to let the wind pull a clump of grease and dirt caked mane from her eye. Another perk of finally getting the knack of flying: she couldn’t smell herself. When was the last time she showered? At least a couple days before she left the Stable. Maybe longer. 
She blinked as the plant began to drift away on her left. She chastised herself and banked until she was on the approach again. It was so easy to get distracted.
A requirement of her apprenticeship in Mechanical was the completion of a stack of books on practical application. Just like the books she read during her schooling, there was a heavy emphasis on Equestrian history. In order to move forward, we must understand where we came from. Overmare Delphi’s mantra was like scripture in Stable 10, much like it had been when it came from all the previous ponies to carry that mantle. The intention was to keep the population in a constant state of readiness should the order come down to open the door. In reality, it turned every pony into an unwitting trivia buff. Practical application only worked when you had something to apply it to.
Aurora recognized the JetStream Solar Plant from one of the power management books Sledge required before a pony could step anywhere near the Stable’s generator. The picture of the plant had been yellowed and faded, resembling something closer to a sunflower. Up here, solar collectors drifted under her like a shimmering oasis of silver. She surprised herself by remembering the basic concepts behind how the plant worked. During the day, the mirrors would track the arc of the sun and focus sunlight on the pillar standing in the center of the facility. Water would be pumped into the tower where concentrated sunlight would flash it to a boil, and the resulting steam would be fed into a turbine. Once electricity was happily coursing through the grid, the steam would be pushed through cooling stations where it would condense back to water, be pumped into holding tanks and eventually directed back into the system.
No magic talismans. No coal. No oil. Just sunlight.
Aurora glanced up at the smothering cloud layer above and frowned.
She considered setting down outside one of the four gates and try to sweet-talk her way in, but the last time she tried that she landed herself in the care of some unhappy Steel Rangers. There was also the very real possibility that the ponies working for F&F Mercantile might have a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy in place, and working her way into the facility from the outer fence would give them the best chance at putting that policy to good practice.
She eyed the clusters of tanks and outbuildings that surrounded the plant’s central tower. If Ginger was being held anywhere, it was somewhere down there.
Tipping her center of gravity forward, she began to descend. The silver sea began to dissolve into distinctly individual mirrors. They cartwheeled beneath her as she bled off excess speed, sweeping the circumference of the array as she drew level with the top of the central spire. She braced herself as she saw several ponies below break into a run toward their stations while others stopped to stare.
She buried the growing urge to fly away, forcing herself to make another lap over the mirrors in hopes that someone below would send word that the pegasus flying overhead was unarmed. From what she could see, most of the ponies below were unarmed as well. Only the ones manning the gates carried weapons, and thus far none of them were trying to use her for target practice. She didn’t know why, but she’d expected a small army.
Rather than press her luck with a third lap, she skimmed against the breeze and banked toward the facility’s center. Mirrors blurred by the hundreds beneath her hooves while the tower rose up to meet her. She took a steadying breath and swept her wings forward, slowing her approach. A few ponies in blue and white painted armor had begun to gather near a squat structure encompassing the base of the tower. With little other option, she threaded the gap beneath a gantry clustered with old pipes and banked toward what was either going to be a welcoming party or a firing line.
Get in. Get Ginger. Get out, she reminded herself. As she touched down on the dusty concrete she hastily added, and don’t piss off the earth pony with the weird guns.
A group of four ponies waited for her outside the unremarkable door of an unremarkable concrete building. The apparent leader of the posse, a charcoal earth stallion, wore a pair of machine guns mounted to a strange contraption that wrapped the barrel of his chest. Two lengths of rigid conduit fed out from the tops of either rifle and linked below his chin. Atop that linkage rested a bite trigger.
The stallion regarded her with polite mistrust. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”
His tone was completely at odds with the menacing weapons leveled, intentionally or not, at her chest. To her surprise, he noticed her concern and subtly pivoted a few degrees so they aimed more or less past her left shoulder.
If working as shift leader for her Stable had taught her anything, it was how to recognize an opportunity to ingratiate herself with another department’s staff. She tried to match the politely neutral tone in the stallion’s voice while ignoring the silent scrutiny of the three ponies behind him.
“Good afternoon,” she parroted back. “I need to speak with Autumn Song. It’s urgent.”
A frown crept down the stallion’s lips. Something on the other side of the complex caught his eye for the barest second. “Miss Song isn’t available at the moment. If I’m being honest, I don’t think she was expecting you for another two months.”
Aurora blinked. That was unexpected. How did Autumn even know who she…
Oh shit, she thought. Oh shit shit shit…
His frown deepened as she tensed up. The stallion had eyes like a hawk, which might explain why he was wearing the nudist’s equivalent of Latch’s shoulder cannons on his back. She’d placed her hoof on a landmine without knowing it. Now she had to figure out how to step back without setting it off.
If he thought she was someone else, there was only one someone else she could be. It was Blinder’s Bluff all over again. 
"I don’t know anything about that,” she said noncommittally. “I came to talk to Autumn about a friend of mine here. There’s been a mistake and-”
The stallion cut her off with a wave of his hoof. “Your friend isn’t here. If you want to wait for Miss Song in the lobby you’re welcome to do so, but I can assure you she’ll tell you the same thing.”
She watched the stallion for a moment. She’d been in enough brawls back home to tell when someone’s posture was set to move, and this stallion was positioned to swing his shoulders toward her. But he was restraining himself because he thought she was someone else. Someone from the Enclave.
She was stuck. 
The stallion worked his jaw as if he were getting ready to say something, but a unicorn mare standing near the butt of his rifle took a step forward. “I can go get her, Buck.”
Buck stared at Aurora for a few tense seconds before sighing, and nodded to his counterpart. “Alright. Just make sure to knock first.” He looked at Aurora and tipped his chin toward the building’s bland door. “You’re welcome to wait inside.”
Aurora watched the unicorn peel away from the group and start walking away. It took a force of will she didn’t know she had not to follow the mare, but she could predict what would happen if she did. Buck wore a trump card over his back. Thus far he’d been courteous enough not to play it.
The mare slipped out of sight behind the corner of the building.
“Ma’am, I need you to step inside. We’re expecting deliveries today and Miss Song prefers to avoid any questions about taking sides.”
Buck was holding the door open as a pony might do for an honored guest or, in his case, an unexpected emissary of the Enclave. She noticed the other two members of the welcome wagon had already begun moving back to their posts, happy to leave Buck to handle this problem now that Autumn was being summoned. She didn’t notice the subtle wrinkling of his nose as she walked past him and into the lobby.
“Your people really know how to blend in with the dustwings,” he commented. “Word to the wise, you might want to dial it back a little.”
Aurora swallowed the litany of responses that tried crawling out of her throat and settled for the smoldering glare she normally reserved for Sledge.
Buck wasn’t phased by it. Much. “Just… don’t sit on the couch if you can avoid it. Quincy’s not having a great day.”
She shot Buck a parting look as he stepped back outside, leaving her to wait in the abruptly stylish lobby on her own.
For a short time, Aurora felt like she’d walked back into her Stable. No desiccated wood planks. No salvaged walls propped up with baling wire or rusted nails. The furniture, the decor, even the lighting seemed immaculate compared to everything she’d seen of Equestria so far. She could even smell the familiar antiseptic scent of Abraxo in the air. She wandered toward one of the twin white couches and pressed down on its plush leather armrest. Only when the material stretched could she see the webwork of cracks that had been repaired and sealed over, but at a distance it all looked brand new.
On the other side of the lobby sat a long glass-topped receptionist’s desk. The top half of a Robronco terminal peeked over the lip of the otherwise spotless surface. A few feet to the right of the desk, a genuine wooden door hung open. Inside, she could hear a scrub brush at work.
Curiosity and a more than a little impatience drew her toward the open office. As she neared the doorway, she found a slender white stallion bent kneeling on the office carpet. She assumed this was Quincy judging by the pink stain he was trying to work out of the carpet. His short-trimmed tail flicked irritation toward her as he bore his weight down on the brush.
She tapped on the door frame. “Hello?”
Quincy jumped as if he’d touched a live wire and spun around to attention, his rear hooves throwing a spray of pinkish suds from the stained carpet that spattered one of the many maps hanging from the office walls. “Miss Song! I’m so sorry but this stain is… oh!”
Several varieties of surprise played over his face in rapid succession as his wide eyes went from Aurora’s face, to her wings and finally to the grime that had tinted her white mane something closer to a shade of dirt. For his part, Quincy didn’t show his revulsion too prominently. He cleared his throat and stepped toward Aurora until she backed away so he could shut the office door behind him.
“Miss Song is currently unavailable at the moment.” He adjusted his bow tie and stepped behind his desk, hopping into a chair that brought him level with the glass surface. His blue eyes flitted up to her and settled on her wings, where they remained for several long seconds. “Important matters, I assume?”
She nodded once and offered a curt smile as her answer. Impatience was already starting to crawl up the back of her neck and she could tell this Quincy was itching for a conversation. She shuffled her wings and began walking back toward the couches.
“Is this about finding solace?”
Aurora spun an ear toward Quincy and frowned. The way he’d spoken sounded… off. Really off. She stopped and turned to face the stallion who had a look on his face like he’d just been caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. She stared at him with as neutral an expression as she could manage, the same way her mother had done when she needed to weasel the truth out of her daughter. Silence could be a powerful tool when applied correctly.
Quincy opened his mouth, closed it, then finally broke the quiet. “I’m just curious, is all. The last few pegasi to visit us kept talking about ‘finding solace.’ I don’t mean any offense, but it sounded uncharacteristically… noble. I was hoping you could tell me what they meant by it.”
Aurora couldn’t help but agree with the receptionist-slash-janitor. Given the secondhand accounts she’d gotten of the Enclave, it sounded more than a little strange that they were looking for some sort kind of inner peace. Proof, at least, that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover.
“Sounds like you should have asked them instead of me. I’m just here to find a friend.”
Quincy’s eyebrows fell. “A friend?”
“Yeah.” She noticed the unsubtle change in his body language and could tell he was starting to clam up. He knew something. She narrowed her eyes as she approached Quincy’s desk. “She would have been brought here today. Little shorter than me, coffee coat with a reddish-orange mane? Goes by the name Ginger?”
“Oh.” Suddenly, he was very interested in something on his terminal screen. “I don’t recall meeting her.”
“She didn’t have an appointment,” Aurora said. Her hooves clacked against the top of the desk, scuffing the glass. Her tone darkened as she leaned into his personal space. “She had a bounty.”
Quincy stared up at her, suddenly afraid. “Oh, her. I’m not sure I’m supposed to-”
Something about the air changed. A gentle pressure against her chest pulled her back from the desk until her hooves touched back down to the floor. Then it was gone. Confused, Aurora shot the earth pony an accusing look but saw the relief in his eyes as he stared over her shoulder.
She turned around to see a tall yellow mare standing at the front of the lobby. The door clicked shut behind her just as the emerald aura faded from around her horn. She smiled primly as she spoke past Aurora, but she couldn’t hide the concern in her eyes. “Quincy, is everything alright?”
He did a poor job of lying. “Y-yes ma’am. Everything is fine.”
Her smile stretched a little too long, and she was breathing just a little too hard. She looked like she ran all the way here. She probably had.
“That’s wonderful to hear.” She turned her attention to Aurora. “You’ll have to forgive me if we’ve met before but I don’t think I know your name, miss…”
“Pinfeathers,” she said. This was her, she thought. Cider’s vengeful sister, standing here in the flesh.
Autumn approached her and extended her hoof. “Autumn Song, but I assume you already knew that.”
She looked at the mare’s hoof for several dubious seconds before wrapping the tip of her wing around it. She forced a smile as Autumn shook it.
Autumn’s eyes widened a little. “That’s a strong wing, Miss Pinfeathers.”
Small talk. Aurora hated small talk, but Autumn had the wide eyes of someone who was trying hard to make a good first impression. She could see the assumption on Autumn’s face plain as day. Enclave. More of the damned Enclave. “It runs in the family,” she said.
“Clean genes since the beginning,” Autumn chuckled knowingly. She took back her hoof and glanced at her receptionist. “Have you finished cleaning, Quincy?”
Quincy began to answer before understanding that it had been less of a question and more of a polite invitation for him to be somewhere else. He dropped down from his chair and trotted back to the office. His hooves squished in the wet carpet as he closed the door behind him.
Autumn shrugged an apology. “He can be a little nosey.”
Aurora offered a sympathetic smile. “Stallions,” she said.
It was an disposable comment on Aurora’s part, but something about it tickled a genuine laugh out of Autumn. Her laughter had an unsurprisingly musical quality to it that was difficult not to enjoy. “You have no idea how much I needed that,” she grinned. “The last few days have been a trial.”
Aurora hid the jolt of discomfort behind a nervous smile. “Sorry to hear that.”
She waved her off. “Don’t be. It is what it is. I’m just relieved that it’ll be over soon. Speaking of which, a member of my security team pulled me away from something rather important to meet you here. Believe me when I say that I’m honored to offer the Enclave my services but I wasn’t expecting another check-in for at least another month or two.”
More subtext. What are you doing here?
Aurora hesitated. Part of her wanted to run with the lie that these ponies wanted to believe. Use the presumed authority of the Enclave to demand Ginger’s release. Then she thought better of it. Ironshod had made it crystal clear that the Enclave were happy to hunt and kill pegasi for the simple crime of being born beneath the clouds, and thanks to the chance run-in with one of their spritebots at the Red Delicious she was now undoubtedly on their radar. 
She was already in a hole. Best to stop digging before she couldn’t get out.
“I’m here because you’ve detained a friend of mine. I want her back.” 
To her surprise, she saw the briefest flicker of fear in Autumn’s eyes. “Oh,” the unicorn said, her voice suddenly guarded. “Well… I’m not sure detained is accurate.”
Something wasn’t right. She’d imagined this conversation a hundred different ways on the flight in, but this wasn’t what she’d expected. Ginger’s bounty was public knowledge. She’d expected Autumn to at least defend the decision instead of slinking away from it like a filly caught stealing sweets. Aurora decided to push the advantage while she still had it. “Kidnapped would be a better word for it. I don’t really care about the terminology. I need to see her. Now.”
Autumn nodded, not out of acknowledgement as much as she was clearly stalling for time as the gears in her head spun at double speed. She bit her lower lip for a few moments before returning to the present. “It’s hard down here,” she finally said. “On the ground, I mean. You have to understand that.”
Aurora tried not to look as bewildered as she suddenly felt. She gestured to the door outside with a wing. “I understand,” she lied. “I still need to see her.”
Autumn nodded and led her out of the lobby, back into the grainy midday light. Buck stood outside the door. He had likely been there the entire time, though he made no indication he’d heard anything. Aurora tried not to look down the barrels of his rifles as she walked through their sights.
She followed Autumn to the opposite side of the main building where a row of dock doors sunned themselves in the meager sunlight. Several lay collapsed in rusting heaps over the lips of the raised floor. The remaining few that still hung on their cables bore the faded JetStream Solar logo across their midsections. Crumpled against the furthest door, a large transport carriage sagged over deflated tires.
Autumn led her up a short stairway next to the docks and into the shallow garage space. A broken down version of the forklifts pegasi currently drove in the belly of her Stable sat snug against the far wall, a thick cable snaking out from a bank of ruptured batteries and into a charging port in the wall. Metal racking lined any wall space that hadn’t been claimed by doors or equipment, their shelves stripped bare by scavengers.
Autumn’s horn flashed, swinging open a far door that pivoted away from a dimly lit stairwell. The air smelled damp as they descended, an odor Aurora always kept her nose open for when she inspected the spaces between walls and floors back home. Too much humidity bred mold, and discovering mold meant days wearing stifling respirators and trying to keep bleach-tainted sweat from seeping under her goggles. She tried not to look too hard for what she could smell was already there.
Three circuits around the railing brought them to the bottom of the stairs where a locked gray door waited. An emergency light glowed dimly above it, feeding off the same power source that illuminated Quincy’s lobby. Aurora wondered about that.
Autumn stopped short of opening the door, her ears low with indecision. It was all Aurora could do to stop herself from shoving past her and yanking it open herself. Judging by the black card scanner mounted into the wall next to the handle, that wasn’t going to be a successful strategy.
“I just…” she said, but stopped herself. She gave her head an irritated shake and lifted an ID badge from the breast pocket of her jacket. The face on the ID was discolored and the laminate had begun to peel apart, but there was still enough detail for Aurora to spot the grinning face of a teal stallion in a JetStream branded polo. Autumn swiped the long-dead worker’s card and the deadbolt snapped out of the lock. The door groaned toward her on hinges misaligned by the years.
Autumn took the handle with her magic and stopped the door before it could open fully, the emerald light of her horn casting the stairwell in a sickly glow. Aurora felt heat flare in her chest at being held up. “I’m not looking for solace,” she said. Seeing the irritated look on Aurora’s face, she elaborated. “I promise you I’m not. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I found it. I only wanted-”
Aurora wrapped her wing around the door and yanked it open. Whatever Autumn’s confession was, whatever lies she wanted to tell could wait. Ginger couldn’t. The unicorn yielded the door as she shoved past and into the dimly lit room.
It had once been plant’s electrical maintenance space. Emergency lights studded the crown of the walls, giving the room a hazy yellow glow. Black rubberized mats lined every foot of a space measuring larger than the Quincy’s lobby. Floor to ceiling breaker cabinets stood shoulder to shoulder down the nearest wall while thick electrical conduit snaked out of the tops of each unit, creating a strange web of parallel lines and right angles that made sense only to the ponies that had maintained them.
A wire mesh security cage stood in the far corner of the room that enveloped a trio of dark server towers. Locked inside the cage with the servers lay a sullen green pegasus mare. A terminal sat on the ground in the corner, its screen glowing with unfinished work.
The pegasus lifted her head toward the sound of their hooves, her eyes knitting together over a swollen black eye. Her good eye narrowed at the sight of them and then she was on her hooves, shoulders low as if ready to defend an attack.
Aurora stopped a few steps beyond the door, dismay playing over her face at the sight of the caged pony. The wrong pony. Her heart dropped from her chest.
“Who the fuck are you?” the pegasus demanded.
Where the fuck is Ginger, Aurora thought.
Autumn strode to a stop alongside Aurora, slipping into an air of authority with a natural ease. It was almost believable. “She will be taking you back to your people, provided I have your assurance that your time here will be regarded as a misunderstanding.”
The caged pegasus laughed derisively. “A misunderstanding? Bitch, open this door and I’ll be happy to misunderstand my hooves up your ass. You should count yourself lucky that I haven’t kicked these computers into scrap metal while you were gone.”
Autumn’s smile grew brittle. “I wouldn’t advise that.”
The mare stepped toward the mesh until her nose was pressing against it. “If you think your new friend is going to make me play nice, think again. Open this door and I’ll kill both of you.” She regarded Aurora with her good eye. The anger on her face was primal. “Especially you, dustwing.”
Aurora hesitated. She looked at Autumn only to find the unicorn staring back at her, brow furrowed with sudden mistrust. Light danced along the swirl of her horn. 
Autumn took two steps away, far enough that Aurora could see the empty holster around her thigh. “Dustwing?” she asked.
Her wings tensed, lifting slowly from her sides. “Woah, hey, I never-”
The pistol slid through her mane into the ridge of her neck, stopping the words on her tongue. When Autumn spoke, her voice was stringent with the clipped tone of someone accustomed to deception but who never grew to appreciate being on the receiving end. “Miss Julip, I was under the impression that my guest represents the Enclave. She told me she intends to free you.”
Julip snorted. “That’s gotta be embarrassing for you. Enclave don’t recruit muds, and we have more eyes on this place than you do. You want to let me go? Crack this can open and I’ll go. But I ain’t gonna be seen leaving with her.”
The pegasus didn’t even flinch as she threw away her chance at escape. Her eyes burned with unfiltered hate as she stared at Aurora. Autumn’s eyes flashed toward her too. Suddenly, Aurora felt very outnumbered and the pistol against her neck felt very cold.
“I don’t think you’ll be leaving any time soon, Miss Julip. You still have important work to do.”
She snorted and formed her feathers into a gesture Aurora suspected she was the only other pony in the room to recognize. “I’m working, but not for you. Enclave’s going to purify this place of your taint once they work out where I went. Whatever deal you have with the uppers is void. I’m just sticking around to make sure you don’t get your hooves on those coordinates.”
Her eyes flicked from Autumn to Aurora.
“Do it,” Julip jeered. “Bang. One less fleck of shit in our skies.”
Anger climbed Aurora’s throat. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Julip ignored her, laughter trickling out from the mesh. “Song, did you really think she was one of ours? Oh Celestia, that is rich! She’s a mud crusher just like you, you ignorant cun-”
The barrel of Autumn’s revolver didn’t leave Aurora’s head even as green light enveloped the caged mare’s left wing and folded it in half like paper, turning Julip’s last syllable into an unintelligible scream. 
The Enclave mare scrambled to the far side of the cage and her wails quickly devolved into profane gibbering that Autumn flatly ignored. Her attention was still on Aurora. The gun still pressed to the back of her head.
She had to raise her voice just to be heard over the noises coming from the cage. “Explain, Miss Pinfeathers.”
“Explain what?” Aurora shot back. “She’s not the pony I’m here for! I came for Ginger!”
The words echoed against the hollow room, mingling with Julip’s promises to kill them both in a startlingly creative list of ways. Autumn was struck dumb by the admission but the pressure of her revolver never left Aurora’s neck. Her lip raised away from her teeth by the barest inch.
“The slaver,” Autumn said. “Your friend is the mare who killed my brother.”
Aurora blinked several times, trying to put the two statements together like a round peg going into a square hole. “She’s not a slaver. She owns a tailoring shop in Junction City where we met. And she didn’t kill Cider. I did.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “You...”
Aurora nodded as a lump rose in her throat. The revolver dug into her skin and it occurred to her that this hole in the ground would serve as her grave. Witnessed by a deranged Enclave pegasus she didn’t know and far from the home and the ponies whose lives she’d hoped to save. Bitter regret sank into her stomach as understanding hit her. She failed. Maybe Stable 10 would send out someone else and maybe they would even succeed where she hadn’t, but her story was ending. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for it to come.
“...are lying.”
The revolver lifted away. Startled, Aurora opened her eyes and stared at Autumn in the dim light. “I’m not,” she said thickly. “I killed Cider. Ginger had nothing to do with it.”
The pale mare shook her head. “No, you didn’t. My brother failed at many things in life, but he was an excellent magic user. He’d sooner grow a second head than let himself die the way he did at the hooves of a pegasus.”
The dismissal stung. 
She could still feel the rumble of thunder in her chest. Hear her Pip-Buck’s staccato chatter after each flash of lightning. Her throat ached with the memory of the crushing pressure of his magic around her neck. The bricks pressing against her back as Cider’s magic held her there, his attention guiding his hoof down her belly and turning himself into a problem that she had no choice but to fix. She could hear the wet crunch of her Pip-Buck connecting with his mouth, his jaw, his skull until the life spilled out of him into the dirt.
Aurora stared at Autumn as the memories washed over her.
Cider’s sister stared back as if she were a problem that she also knew how to fix. “Let’s discuss this somewhere more private.” Behind her, the door swept open into the stairwell with a peel of metal.
“No,” Aurora said slowly. “Let Ginger go, first.”
Autumn’s eyes hardened. “Don’t test me, Miss Pinfeathers. I’m happy to feed your corpse to the deathclaws right alongside your friend’s, if that’s what you want.”
She rooted herself where she stood, facing Autumn with her hooves planted wide. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until Ginger was freed. Not until she’d taken her place. 
Then her vision went emerald, and she felt herself lifting off the floor. 
“Now,” Autumn snapped.
Aurora swiveled toward the open door and slid toward it like a piece of luggage on a carousel. She opened her mouth to protest but felt Autumn’s magic coalesce around her jaw, slamming her teeth shut with a hard click that she felt in her skull. 
Behind them, Julip erupted with pained laughter, her voice dripping with glee.
“So that’s why you’re so pissy, huh?” she called out. “Big brother took a dirt nap?”
Aurora could swear the aura around her just grew warmer. She strained against it but it didn’t budge as she drifted over the threshold.
“So what does that make you, Song? Sole proprietor of your little empire? Queen of the nation that never was? How long do mud ponies wear black after a funeral, anyway?” Julip was digging her hooves in deep now, clearly probing for a reaction. Trying hard. Aurora could feel her anger bleeding into her magic. Whatever Julip was aiming to accomplish, it was working. “You two were close, right? Does that make you his widow, or...?”
Aurora jerked to a halt above the stairs. The emerald aura shimmered with heat.
Seeing she was getting somewhere, Julip doubled down. “Oh yes, the Enclave knows all about your little dalliances with Big Brother. The footage alone is something of a legend among the archivists.” She laughed. “I have to say, though, it’s not surprising. Some of the old records suggest Flim and Flam warmed each other’s bed from time to time, and the apple never falls far from the tree. I wonder what you’ll do now that you don’t have your brother to warm yours?”
Was Julip trying to get herself killed? Aurora began to list slightly to the right. The pressure holding her in the air was loosening. She grit her teeth and forced her neck to bend, the magic relenting until she managed to get an eye on Autumn. The pale mare had turned to face Julip. She was furious.
“And how has your bed been these last few weeks?” Autumn answered. “Cold? A little darker than you’re used to? I’ll tell you what, Miss Julip. If by tomorrow you don’t deliver solace to me, I’ll deliver a few of my best stallions to you. Does that sound agreeable to you? Is that the closeness you so clearly yearn for?”
Julip stiffened. “Don’t.”
The list was devolving into a lazy roll. Aurora strained her wings forward and tried to grip her feathers around the railing, but it hung just beyond her reach. She needed to get out of here. To regroup and think of something else. The sound of Julip’s wing crackling in half still scraped at her ears.
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Autumn said, stepping toward the cage and pulling the railing away from Aurora’s wings as she drifted backward with her. “And frankly it’s been so long since Buck has made time for himself, I don’t see why I couldn’t give him the night off. I can only imagine how appreciative he would be.”
Aurora held the door frame between her wings, feeling the sleeve of magic peeling away from her as Autumn slid toward Julip’s cage.
“Just kill me,” Julip whispered. Then, louder, “Just fucking kill me!”
This time, Autumn laughed. “And you’re weak. Next time, ask nicely. Don’t think you can goad me into it.”
Hooves slammed against the mesh. “Then do it! I’m dead anyway so just fucking do it!”
Aurora felt her wings slip free.
Autumn smiled. “Find solace, then you can-”
A gust of wind billowed into the musty room, hurling centuries of dust into the air. Autumn wheeled around in time to see Aurora touch down on the upper landing and kick off up the next flight of stairs.
“Fuck!” she snapped and quickly gave chase.
Aurora’s heart pounded as she half-flew, half galloped up the stairs. Her wings slapped the wall and railing as she hurled herself upward. She cursed herself as Autumn’s hooves echoed against the stairs below. A green glow snatched at her wing as it drifted over the railing but she jerked it away before it could solidify enough to snare her. 
This was a mistake. Coming here without a weapon, without a plan, had been an awful mistake. She’d hoped to be able to reason with Autumn. To explain what had happened and pray for whatever passed for mercy in this barren wasteland so that Ginger could go free. Instead, she fucked it all up. Again. This wasn’t her home. This wasn’t what she was good at. Why did she keep thinking she had any control over what happened out here?
Diving out of the stairwell and into the garage, she slammed the door shut with a sweep of her wing and bolted across the loading zone toward the nearest open dock doors leading outside. Her legs ached. Once she was airborne she could regroup and come up with a plan. Once she was-
The door behind her exploded open, throwing a shower of sparks as it skittered across the rough cement floor. The world went emerald and lurched sideways as Autumn swept her up and threw her like a brick. She crashed into the rusted panels of a surviving garage door, punching a hole through the rotted metal and sending a hail of shrapnel into the concrete with her. The sky and ground tumbled until she rolled into the rotted chassis of the ancient carriage.
Aurora lay there for several seconds, too stunned to do anything else but groan as her body checked off a fresh list of new pains. She rolled onto her stomach with a wince and looked back at her hind leg which burned like someone had jammed a hot poker into it. The pink skin that covered the bite from her first encounter with a ghoul had torn open and bled freely. She tried to stand, slowly at first and then more quickly as what was left of the garage door shrieked and peeled away from its mounts, announcing Autumn’s arrival. Her legs, however, refused to work with her. Confused, she toppled like a newborn foal. Her head throbbed where it had cracked against the carriage and the sky above spun like a drunken top.
Then it went green, and she knew she was caught.
There she was. The pale mare in her rumpled jacket and tousled red and white mane that threatened to spill loose from the green ribbon that once held it tight behind her ears. A candy stripe curl hung between her eyes as she looked down at Aurora, her face twisted with anger.
“Where do you think you’re going? Did you really think you could just waltz into my home, my place of business, tell me that you killed my brother and just… run away? No, my little friend. You don’t get to leave. Not anymore.”
Aurora tried to move but Autumn held her down like a lead blanket. She allowed her to escape once. It wouldn’t happen a second time.
“I just want to…” Aurora bit down as Autumn pressed her head down. “Please, just let her go.”
Autumn’s muzzle wrinkled with distaste. “Why?” she demanded. “So you can take her place? So my brother’s murderer can walk free? Do you even realize what you’re asking? What kind of message that would send?”
“Ginger didn’t kill him!”
Autumn bent her neck until her muzzle grazed Aurora’s ear. “It. Doesn’t. MATTER!”
The words echoed off the side of the building. Buck and two others appeared around the far corner, drawn toward the noise. Autumn shot an irritated look toward them that they couldn’t see, then lowered her voice as she turned her attention back to Aurora. “Do you know how hard it was to build this company? How many ponies died in order to make just a few of the roads safe to travel again? We did that. Cider and I. And right as we were on the verge of finding… right when we were in a position to make the world safe again, your noble little friend killed him. Or maybe it was you. It doesn’t fucking matter.”
She stepped back and wrenched Aurora off the ground, ignoring her cry of pain as she spun her so she could look her in the eye. “What matters is that Ginger Dressage needs to be made an example of so that nobody gets the idea to come down here and fuck with my work. Her death is necessary, Aurora. Much like yours.”
Aurora was oddly thankful for the paralyzing magic keeping her pinned to the air. Without it, Autumn would have seen her trembling. “You don’t have to do this.”
Autumn smiled pitifully. “I disagree. But before that happens, let’s pay your friend a visit. I’m interested to see which one of you dies first."
The horrendous pressure around her jaw returned, sending shots of pain down her neck. As Autumn turned toward the approaching guard ponies, she broke into a trot. Aurora suffered the nauseating motion of being carried as if she were little more than a tool bag. Her magic pressed against her like a pool of wet cement, allowing barely enough room for her to breathe let alone move. It was as close to suffocating as she could get without enduring the real thing.
Buck and his entourage slowed as Autumn drew nearer, their wide eyes set on the pegasus being held in the air. The charcoal stallion’s voice was carefully neutral as he asked, “Ma’am, is everything alright?”
Autumn waved him off as she passed by. “I have it under control. Miss Julip identified our new guest as a dustwing.”
Buck turned to follow her, his rifles bobbing as he kept pace. “She’s not Enclave?”
“She was happy to let us think she was, but no. She’s ground-born.” They turned the corner of the building and into the shadow of its central tower. “You’ll be spending the night below with Miss Julip. I want you to find out how she could tell that our pegasus friend was a fake, and give her ample encouragement to find solace before I speak to her again.”
“Spending the night?”
Autumn sighed. “Talk to her, interrogate her, fuck her, I don’t care which. Just figure it out. Oh, bring another chair and some straps to Tank 4.”
Buck nodded and peeled away with his entourage toward the main building rather than ask questions he didn’t want answers to. Autumn continued on toward a quartet of cooling tanks on the facility’s periphery, humming contently as she walked.
Aurora could only watch as the massive tanks rose above her. The domed tops drifted out of her field of vision and she found herself facing a worn and rusted metal wall. A sand colored earth stallion posted next to the makeshift door saw them approach and set to work removing the padlock. He pulled the door open toward himself in time for Autumn to nod her thanks and push her cargo through the door, following close behind. The door slammed shut behind them with a sonorous boom.
Ginger looked up from her chair with terrified eyes. They widened with dawning horror as she recognized the mare clutched in Autumn’s magic.
“Aurora?” she croaked. Her voice, torn ragged from screaming, sounded like it belonged to somebody else. “No, no, no… why are you here? You shouldn’t be here!”
The old padlock and chain rattled on the other side of the door. Autumn flung Aurora onto the ground and stared impassively as the pegasus scrambled across the rust and spatters of drying blood to the unicorn she’d come for.
Aurora threw her hooves around Ginger’s neck, her wings swinging around the chair like a coat of feathers tightly enough to lift the back legs of the chair off the ground. Beneath the drape of her wings she could make out the misshapen knots of swollen flesh. The layers of blood caked around her mouth, neck and down her chest. Fresh injuries mingling with recently healed ones. Beneath her, Ginger shook like a beaten animal.
Aurora struggled to keep her voice level. “What did she do to you?” Her eyes panned across the narrow cages that ringed the outer wall. They stopped at the bright red tool cabinet and the neat line of empty syringes laying atop the lid. She looked down to see at least half as many full stimpacks waiting in the bottom drawer.
Ginger leaned against her straps to press her head into the crook of Aurora’s neck. “Please,” she said, her voice hitching with a miserable sob. “Please, leave.”
She rested her cheek against Ginger’s head. Her mane was a tangled mop of sweat and filth, and the strange ring that clamped around her horn radiated an unnatural warmth. “That’s not going to happen,” she whispered.
“I don’t want you to see.” Ginger lifted her head, allowing the tears to flow freely now. Her eyes rippled like the sea whose color they shared.
Aurora grimaced and drew her wings together even tighter. “Too late for that. I didn’t fly all the way here just to leave without you.”
Ginger looked up. “You flew?”
Her face flushed with pride. “Yeah.”
The smile that spread across Ginger’s face was genuine and sad. She blinked several times, clearing the wetness from her eyes, and her expression changed into something else. “Then fly to Baltimare. Find your ignition talisman and go home.”
Aurora opened her mouth, but the words weren’t there to be spoken. Autumn chuckled mirthlessly as her magic peeled her wings back from Ginger and pulled the two mares apart. Aurora’s eyes pleaded with Ginger as the gap between them widened.
“A slaver and a pegasus,” Autumn chided. Her smile widened at the sight of Ginger’s dismay and Aurora’s growing frustration. Her magic swarmed around Aurora’s hooves, fixing her to the floor as tight as any weld. She smiled knowingly at Ginger. “You haven’t told her, have you?”
Ginger tensed against her straps.
“Go ahead.” Autumn sat down next to Aurora, her horn thrumming with green fire looking for something to burn, and threw a hoof around her shoulder. Aurora tried to recoil but her hooves remained firmly in place. “Or would you like me to? We have time.”
“Not here,” Ginger said.
“Yes here,” Autumn said, the humor draining from her voice. “Or else she’s going to spend her last hours wondering where that mark came from.”
Aurora’s eyes sank like an anchor toward Ginger’s hip, formerly a blank coat, now brandished with something that hadn’t been there before. A chain and a heavy collar. She couldn’t stop herself from looking up at Ginger, searching her eyes for understanding.
“I thought you said you never got a mark,” Aurora said.
Ginger stared hard at the floor. “I…” she stopped, a parade of emotions playing over her face. “I didn’t get my mark. I got this one instead.”
“A slaver’s mark,” Autumn clarified, her sour breath wrinkling Aurora’s nose. “They all get the same one, eventually. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Ginger didn’t lift her eyes from the floor. “When what.”
“When did you get yours?”
Aurora flattened her ears and looked at the cages around them. She didn’t want to hear this. Not now. Not here, of all places.
“Would you like me to guess?” Autumn asked.
Ginger’s eyes flicked angrily toward the mare. “No, darling. I wouldn’t.”
Autumn’s horn flared and Aurora was immediately aware of the weight doubling down on her hooves. It felt as if she were trying to drive her legs straight through the steel and into the dirt below. When she looked up she saw that Autumn was approaching Ginger with all the intent of a furious mother.
She dug her hoof under Ginger’s chin and pulled it up until she met her eyes. “Don’t darling me. The ponies that your family breeds are far from generous. You’re not her.”
Ginger’s eyes boiled with anger. “I didn’t choose my family!”
“Pity you!” Autumn laughed. She paced a circle around Ginger’s chair, sliding her tail beneath the unicorn’s chin as she passed. “Born into safety, wanting for nothing? What a hard life you live. It must have been terribly difficult putting a collar on your first slave. Did your pristine little hooves get dirty when it happened? Is that what inspired you to leave it all behind in the hopes that you might spend your days sewing your way to redemption?”
Aurora watched Ginger freeze. Her anger doused by shame. Ginger met her gaze briefly enough for her to see the tears returning in force.
“Oh, look at that,” Autumn purred. “That’s exactly when it happened, isn’t it?”
Ginger tried to turn away but Autumn’s magic latched onto her chin, forcing her to watch her captor circle into view. “That’s when you got your mark.” She stopped short of a full revolution, leaving just enough room for Aurora to watch. “When it appeared, were you happy?”
Ginger hesitated, then nodded silently. Tears fell quietly into her lap.
“Do you think the pony you collared was happy?”
“Stop it,” Aurora warned.
Autumn looked at her dismissively. “Then stop me.”
She lifted her wings and threw them to the floor, throwing a cloud of old dust behind her. The bindings around her hooves didn’t register it at all. 
She stared the pale mare down, daring her to loosen her grip.
Autumn watched the dust curl against the far wall with amusement. “Not many places to fly in here, little bird.”
“Let go of my hooves and I’ll take you on a tour, bitch.”
Autumn blinked, then inhaled slowly. She turned to Ginger and exhaled. A mote of magic drifted into the tool chest and lifted out a stimpack, its ruddy fluid burbling inside the gleaming steel casing. “Aurora, do you know how these work?”
She slid the syringe up to Aurora’s nose and let it hang there a moment, the tip of its needle tracing a narrow line up the bridge of her muzzle. Then it drifted away, back to Autumn. All three pair of eyes were fixed on the syringe. “Medicine, to be sure. I don’t pretend to know all of the compounds, but some of them still occur naturally despite what the war did to the soil. But the stimpacks we make today are lacking. They’re wonderful painkillers and work well enough to close a shallow wound, but they’re barely more than pisswater compared to what ponies used to have.”
A metallic jangling echoed off the tank walls. Aurora frowned and looked back at the door, thinking the padlock was being undone, but the noise wasn’t coming from there. She turned around and realized Ginger was trembling against her straps, the buckles clattering while her eyes splayed open at the sight of the needle. Eight empty needles glinted atop the tool cabinet like exhibits in a trial.
Aurora’s hackles stood on end.
“Before the bombs fell,” Autumn continued, staring bitterly at the syringe. “Before balefire almost burned all magic from the world, unicorns used to be able to cast beautiful spells. We could do more than just… touch. We could create. We could bend reality with a thought. The old unicorns wove spells into everything before the end. Even their medicine.”
She dipped the syringe toward Ginger’s hind leg, grazing her coffee tinted coat. Ginger began muttering the same word over and over again. No.
Aurora pulled against Autumn’s magic until her joints popped. “What is wrong with you? Stop!”
Autumn turned her head slowly toward the pegasus and smiled. “You’re right.”
She lifted the syringe away and set it onto the cabinet with the empties. Ginger swallowed hard, trying and failing to calm herself. Aurora watched Autumn step away from the chair and stroll toward one of the empty cages over Ginger’s right shoulder. The benevolent look on her face was anything but reassuring.
She opened the door with her hoof, smiled, and swung it shut with a bang that made both mares jump. “It’s a shame,” she said wistfully. “The spells in those serums survived the end of the era that birthed them. Survived two centuries at the bottom of a crumbling hospital, under ten feet of irradiated water. It’s a miracle they’re still viable, let alone work as well as they do. Using one without a good reason would be unthinkable.”
Autumn turned the lock on the empty cage and looked across the tank to Aurora, a pleasant smile lifting one of her cheeks as she stepped toward the pegasus. “So let’s give ourselves a reason.”
The aura around her horn pulsed brighter and Aurora’s eyes caught the green light that bloomed around both of Ginger’s forelegs. Ginger was breathing hard as the light didn’t quite dim, but sank beneath her skin like water into a dry sponge. It slithered below muscle and tendon and coalesced around bones that had been broken and healed on a cruel loop. Ginger was becoming frantic. She threw her weight against the straps, causing the chair to screech across the steel.
Aurora screamed for her to stop but the words bounced off the walls, blurring into a cacophony of gibberish. Hard as Ginger struggled, her forelegs remained perfectly still as if bolted to some invisible wall.
Autumn flicked her head.
The bones in Ginger’s legs cracked like twin gunshots. The bound unicorn lowered her head and screamed.
Aurora tried to wrench herself away from the sight of Ginger’s suddenly misshapen legs. Skin bulged where it shouldn’t. A sob rose in her throat as Ginger shook violently, her body railing against the outrage of being subjected to forces it was never designed to endure. And then, mercifully, she lost consciousness. Her chin thumped against her chest like a puppet without strings. 
A thin wisp of smoke flowed from the ring clutching her horn, its polished metal dulled by heat that had already begun to dissipate.
“And thus,” Autumn happily announced, “we have our reason.”
She wanted her rifle. She wanted to press the muzzle against Autumn’s heart and pull the trigger. She wanted to kill her.
Her voice shook. “How many times?”
Autumn looked at her, bemused. She crossed between her and Ginger and retrieved the syringe from before. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“How many times did you do that to her.”
Guided by Autumn’s magic, the needle sank into Ginger’s destroyed foreleg and deployed with a puff of compressed air. “You’re a big girl,” she chided, setting the ninth empty syringe atop the cabinet with the others. “Count.”
She did. Her heart sank.
Autumn lifted a tenth syringe from the open drawer and turned back to Ginger’s unconscious body, aiming to mend her other leg. Her rear hoof thumped the corner of the cabinet, earning a wince as she stepped away. The empties wobbled.
Aurora watched as the ninth syringe, the inspiration for Autumn’s segue to torture, tipped and fell. Had the needle not struck the floor first, it would have shattered and made an unremarkable mess. But it didn’t. The tip of the needle gouged the steel floor, deformed, and bent like a spring. The syringe spun like a top behind Autumn’s hoof before slowing enough to decide on a path to roll. There was only one decision it could make. Years of hoof traffic in and out of the tank had warped the floor like a pouting lip toward the door.
Toward Aurora.
She stiffened as the bulky syringe rolled toward her and thumped to a stop against her hoof.
Autumn sighed irritably and looked over her shoulder to see where the empty had gotten to. Then she looked left, toward Aurora, whose wing was bent backwards in a pitcher’s stance. The syringe glinted between her feathers. Her eyes widened with realization.
This.
This was a problem Aurora could fix.
Using Autumn’s bindings for leverage, she whipped her wing forward and released her grip. The stimpack whistled across the gap and exploded against Autumn’s muzzle, driving shattered glass and crumpled metal across the length of her face. Her magic vanished. Aurora threw her wings back hard and sailed into the unicorn, driving the air from her lungs as they sailed past Ginger toward the wall. Chain link cages crashed apart as they tumbled through one of the partitions. The two mares slammed hard against the tank’s outer hull. It toned like a struck bell.
Dazed and scared, Autumn tried to get her bearings as Aurora dragged her to the ground and straddled her waist. She struck her hooves into the unicorn like twin pistons, striking wherever she could land a blow and putting every bit of muscle behind them. They added up quickly, one after the other, with Aurora screaming like something fresh out of Tartarus. Autumn tried to lift her hooves around her head but they were quickly pinned down by two powerful wings fueled by unrelenting rage.
Aurora’s hooves collected blood like penance. A flicker of green light tried to coagulate around the butt of Autumn’s pistol and scattered just as quickly under the brawling pegasus.
All of the pretense, all of the ego came down all at once. Aurora saw the animal panic in Autumn’s eyes as her horn pulsed and went dark, unable to focus on her magic. Only able to think about surviving.
Overwhelmed, Autumn screamed.
This time someone answered.
Aurora’s head shot around at the sound of yelling outside the door. The padlock clattered loudly against the latch as the earth pony outside fumbled to get it open. He hadn’t been armed, but Buck and his cannons wouldn’t be far away.
Emerald light gripped her wings. Aurora spun around and stomped her hooves into Autumn’s chest hard enough to send her skull rebounding against the steel floor. Her horn doused and she curled around her sternum like a slug dipped in salt.
“Stay down,” she warned, and crawled over the crumpled fencing to where Ginger was strapped. Something hard banged against the door several times. The padlock. The earth pony was panicking. Good. Aurora dug her feathers into the buckle around Ginger’s healing foreleg and yanked at the strap, jerking it loose.
Ginger hissed inwardly and opened her eyes. “Stop, please,” she moaned.
Aurora looked up at her and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Hold on, I’m getting you out of here.” She bent down and bit the buckle around her other foreleg and pulled.
Ginger went rigid. “Stop!” she cried. “Stopstopstop!”
She didn’t listen. Her eyes misted over with frustration as she pulled the strap away. “I can’t. Just a few more and then-”
“Aurora, GET OUT!”
She recoiled like she’d been slapped. Another voice had joined the frustrated attempt to breach the door. Buck’s.
Ginger strained to focus on Aurora’s. Her eyes were awash with tears. “I can’t walk, Aurora. Just leave.”
“I can carry you.”
“Not through that door. They’ll kill you too.”
Aurora stamped her hoof, her voice choked. “Fine! I don’t care!” She wiped her face against her wing and started on the next strap. Something banged into the door. Then a second time. Hooves. Something was wrong with the lock and they were trying to kick down the door. The tank shuddered from the assault.
Her feathers slipped off the buckle, slick from her tears. She spat a curse frantically worked her feathers back under the loop.
“Aurora…” Ginger said. “Aurora, listen to me! How many pegasi live in Stable 10?”
She stopped.
“How many?”
She grit her teeth. “Nine hundred and eighty six.”
Ginger reached out with her damaged foreleg and set her hoof against Aurora’s cheek. “How many are in this chair?”
Aurora’s vision flooded. Her throat pinched shut. “Don’t…”
“How many.”
She tried to swallow but something got in the way. 
“One,” she said.
Ginger pressed her lips into a tight smile. “Do the math, darling. I’m not worth that much.”
Aurora looked over her shoulder at the deforming door. Light spilled through the gaps between the frame. “You taught me to fly,” she pleaded. It was childish and she knew it, but this wasn’t an argument she wanted to lose.
Ginger’s voice shook. “I wish I could be there to see it, Aurora, but you need to leave.”
She could hear someone calling through the gap for Autumn, asking if she was alright while Buck pounded against the door. “Ginger I’m not-”
“Go!”
She stumbled backward, the straps and the arguing and hope forgotten.
Ginger stared at her, adding, “Please.”
“Okay.” She scrubbed her face harshly against her feathers. “Okay, but I’m coming back. Just don’t…” Her voice hitched. She grimaced and turned to face the door. “Just hold on a little bit longer. I’ll come back.”
It felt like one of the lies a mother told her foals. Maybe after dinner. How about for your birthday? I’ll come back. She had every intention on making good on her promise, even though she knew Ginger would be dead long before she made it back to Blinder’s Bluff.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen...”
Boom.
The frame buckled.
“This is all my fault...”
Boom.
A hinge broke its weld.
She looked at Ginger one last time.
Boom.
“Please stay alive.”
Boom.
Metal shrieked.
Her wings flicked downward and slung her forward like a rocket toward the falling door. She twisted her feathers inward, pivoting her hind legs forward and planted them squarely against Buck’s dark chest, his eyes wide with shock. His cannons belched a single salvo through the roof of the tank as the bite trigger under his chin shattered beneath her hooves. Shouts rose from the half dozen ponies gathered around the door and she kicked off, launching herself vertical.
She flapped hard, propelling herself up, over and onto the roof of Tank 4. Gunfire crackled behind her as she scrabbled across the weather-worn dome, chased by an angry swarm of bullets. She was agonizingly aware that Ginger was directly beneath her, still half tied to her chair, listening to her run away. The gunfire cut off and Buck’s voice barked orders for anyone with a weapon to pursue. Aurora whispered an apology as she kicked off the far side of the tank and lifted into the air.
The staccato pop-pop-pop-pop of submachine guns resumed chattering one by one as she rose back into view. A stream of bullets snapped by her ear close enough to scare her into a dive. Streamers of lead traced lines around her as she descended over the sea of mirrors, the wide crescents of silver and glass flashing beneath her like manic strobe lights. She banked hard to the left just as a row of mirrors ahead of her spat a scattered line of powdered glass into the air.
She shot over the perimeter fence and pulled into a hard ascent that threatened to bend her wings backwards. She wobbled, nearly losing control. A well-placed round clipped a primary feather in half and she resisted the urge to watch it fall away. As she climbed, the swarm of bullets thinned. Then she couldn’t detect them at all. Far below, the chatter of gunfire became sporadic.
One by one the guns fell silent until there was nothing left to hear but the wind.
The mirrors, the tower and Ginger slipped away behind her, leaving her alone to water a sky that refused to rain. 

 


 







 


June 28th, 1075
Nobody told me the ministries were all in the same building! I always pictured them lined up on a big promenade, one for each of the Elements, but they’re all in one huge crystal building buried in Canterlot Mountain! Fluttershy called the front of it a pant-theon but that’s just for show. It has these six huge pillars, which I guess represent the ministry mares, but it just kinda looked like a rainbow to me. The real ministry is under all that rock and snow! The Ministry of Image is at the very top and the Ministry of Arcane Sciences is way down at the bottom. Nobody’s allowed down there, not even mom or Fluttershy.
The Ministry of Peace, where mom works now, is kind of in the middle. Being underground, even when we’re really high up, gives me the creeps if I think about it too much. Fluttershy says that it’s the safest place in Equestria but wouldn’t say against what. I know zebras are superstitious, but mom always said that’s because their gods live up in the stars. Why would they be afraid to go underground?
Mom’s office isn’t very big, but it’s right down the hall from Fluttershy’s. I’m really starting to like her. Fluttershy, I mean. She’s always so nice. I guess that’s why her element is Kindness. Mom showed me a map of Equestria and it’s way, way more detailed than the ones we have at school. Vhanna looks so small compared to us, and the ocean is so huge. I told her that it looks like it takes more effort to hate each other than it would to just pretend neither of us were there. She said I wasn’t wrong.
 
 
June 30th, 1075
There’s no public school in Canterlot, apparently. Just private ones. Today was my first day and the ponies there were nice, but I think they were faking it. It’s better than the weird stares I got in Ponyville, and way better than dealing with Sagebrush. But it feels weird. It’s like they’re trying too hard.
 
 
July 2nd, 1075
Rainbow Dash was on TV today. Is it weird that she’s the only one of the six that still wears her Element? I think it’s weird. She said that the Ministry or Awesome (weird name) was going to be working with JetStream Aerospace on developing a new source of electricity that would make coal and oil obsolete. She’s going to announce exactly what that is next week, but everyone’s already talking about it. Mom is pretty sure they’re taking another crack at solar power, and she’s probably right. JSA has been pushing solar since the start of the war, so it sort of makes sense. Fluttershy’s the only ministry mare besides Rainbow that will openly support it, but the other ministries won’t touch anything that doesn’t have a “strategic military value.”
I still like listening to all the theories floating around at school. Ms. Heartstrings had us write down our three best guesses in my Contemporary History class. The best one by far was “perpetual magic machine.” Ms. Heartstrings got nervous about that one, which was a bad idea. Now everyone’s thinking about it!
 
> Chapter 13: Reunion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Ministry Interoffice Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: Rainbow Dash
From: Pinkie Pie
Subject: Bereavement
06/28/1075

Hey Dash,
I know this is sudden, but I wanted to let you know that I'll be gone for the rest of the week while I get myself into a better head space. I sent a bulletin to my department heads letting them know I'll be out of Canterlot to recharge the ol' party batteries, but... I'm not sure how to bring this up with the other girls. Please keep this between us, Rainbow. I'm having the nightmares again. I can't sleep. I can't work. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't want the war effort to slow down because I can't go a day without crying. The only reason Sugarcube Corner got bombed is because I used to work there. I know it's not my fault but I can't stop thinking about the funeral and how everything could have been avoided if the Tree of Harmony hadn't picked me in the first place.
I hate this. I hate what we're doing, Rainbow. I don't like killing even if I'm not the one doing it. It shouldn't BE this way.
I'm sorry. A week off should help me get this out of my system. Maybe Dr. Meadowsweet will be able to give me something to take the edge off. I don't know. I'll send the girls something along the lines of a vacation notice. They'll see through it, but I don't think they'll care. It's not like I can quit, anyway.

Take care,
Pinkie





Three soft raps on her office door drew her weary eyes from the terminal. Only one pony in the entirety of Equestria knocked that quietly. Rainbow Dash rubbed the end of her muzzle into her wingtips and sighed. The war was taking a toll on everyone, but none more visibly than the Element of Laughter. She made a note to visit her in person this afternoon before she sank any deeper into her depression.
Another trio of knocks. Rainbow cleared her mind of the day’s worries and tapped a key on her terminal. The door buzzed, and she waited for Fluttershy to finish her customary hesitation before entering.
Rainbow looked to the trophy case that dominated the far wall and the layer of dust that had accumulated on the glass. Medals and plaques sat alongside framed photos taken years ago, glowing softly under the built-in lighting. She frowned, wishing she had time to get up and clean it off. She didn’t like ponies thinking she’d forgotten where she came from. Her eyes lingered on a photo of her with her friends, the six of them caught in a candid moment enjoying donuts and conversation at an outdoor diner in Ponyville. Life had never been easy after the Tree of Harmony chose them to bear the Elements, but it had been so much simpler than things were now.
The polished oak door swept open on whisper-silent hinges, admitting the pegasus she expected and two ponies she hadn’t.
“Good morning, Rainbow Dash.” Fluttershy smiled as she pushed a pink-and-gray strand of mane out of her eyes. They all had a little gray these days. “I’m sorry for not telling you in advance, but I’m giving the new Ambassador of Friendship a tour of the ministries and I thought you would appreciate a visit from an old friend.”
Rainbow’s smile tightened, masking her discomfort. Zecora followed Fluttershy into the office along with a lanky, younger mare who gawked at the trophies on the far wall. She vaguely remembered one of the girls telling her that Zecora was a mother now, but the detail had quickly faded. 
The young zebra gasped when she saw Rainbow reclined behind her terminal. She was what, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old? Right at that age when a pony thought they had the world figured out. Rainbow knew that feeling all too well. It had taken her longer than most to grow out of it.
Fluttershy stared at her with a pointed expression. Say something, it said.
Rainbow cleared her throat. “Congratulations on the new position, Zecora. Would you like something to drink? Can I get you some coffee?”
Zecora looked around the office with her characteristic smile. “I do enjoy my coffee black, but a brewing pot you seem to lack.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. Twilight made her take the coffee pot out of her office last year after she caught her working through the night on nothing but caffeine and hay cakes, and the idea of sharing the day-old brew in her smuggled desk thermos was mortifying. She decided to change the subject.
“Still rhyming?” she asked.
Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “I think what she meant to say-”
Zecora laughed. The same deep, rich laugh Rainbow missed from all those years ago in the Everfree. “Do not worry, Fluttershy. It’s an old joke between her and I.” Her smile grew as she noticed the ornate golden necklace glinting under Rainbow’s flight jacket. The bolt-shaped ruby had heft to it, but not enough for Rainbow to notice anymore. “It’s reassuring to see one of you still wearing your Element.”
Rainbow glanced at Fluttershy, who turned to inspect the bookcase of adventure novels next to the door. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw the girls wear theirs.
Neither of them commented on the absence of rhyme. Times changed, and Zecora had the awareness to know when her traditional cadence was becoming a distraction.
“It’s good to see you too, Zecora,” she said. She slid her terminal aside and looked over her desk at the striped filly. “Is this your daughter?”
Zecora nodded, putting a hoof over the young mare’s shoulder. “Say hello, Teak.”
Teak’s sunset orange eyes dove to the floor. “Hi.”
“Hi back,” Rainbow chuckled good-naturedly. Teak was quieter than Fluttershy in a church. “What do you think about your mom’s new job?”
Teak rubbed one foreleg nervously across the other. “It’s pretty cool,” she admitted.
“A lot of ponies are counting on her,” Rainbow said, though the words weren’t meant for Teak. Her old friend stood a little taller behind her daughter, taking them to heart. “She might just have the coolest job in all the ministries. Even cooler than mine.”
The younger zebra shrugged. “Well, yeah. Mom’s going to actually accomplish something.”
Shock and embarrassment leapt into Zecora’s face. “Teak!”
“What? It’s true!”
Zecora gave Rainbow an apologetic grimace before turning her attention to her daughter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to apologize.”
Teak spun away from Zecora and jabbed a hoof toward Rainbow. “Mom, her ministry is called ‘Awesome.’ Nobody even knows what that’s supposed to mean!”
Rainbow smiled politely at the smooth surface of her desk while Fluttershy tried to keep the two mares from devolving into a full-on family crisis. It wasn’t the first time she’d been accused of doing nothing with her position. It wouldn’t be the last time either as long as she did her job right. The work she did wouldn’t get done under the scrutiny of the Equestrian public. The girls had taken to calling her ministry The Bit Furnace. Experimental technology took money and rarely produced usable results. But it had to be done, and it was best done where prying eyes wouldn’t balk at the price tag.
She looked at the picture of the six of them frozen in mid-conversation. Rarity with her Ministry of Image. Rainbow always assumed she would go on to become a fashion icon and Rainbow wouldn’t have bet against it. Her creativity was endless. Now she sat behind a desk of her own, the singular hoof behind propaganda machine that some feared was the spark behind so much anti-zebra violence in Equestria.
Pinkie Pie wasn’t doing much to help that problem. With the bombing at Sugarcube Corner killing one of her oldest friends, she’d begun to turn inward. The Ministry of Morale had taken a darker turn in the wake of her grief. Rainbow wondered if Fluttershy would bother taking Zecora down to see her. She worried how Pinkie might react, especially now that she’d begun using mentats more frequently.
She’d find out, depending on which elevator they called. Fluttershy’s ministry filled the two floors perched above Rainbow’s office, her own being allocated a total of five separate levels. She needed the space, after all. But no, chances were they wouldn’t go any lower than where they stood now. Pinkie wasn’t a pony to bring a filly like Teak to meet. Not anymore.
Twilight’s Ministry of Arcane Sciences was off limits to nearly everyone excluding the other ministry mares. The only alicorn to reject the title of “princess,” Twilight had imported entire libraries worth of books to be filed and cataloged in the lowest floors of the ministry complex. Even if Fluttershy wanted to include her in the tour, the odds were that Twilight would be too busy researching some new spell to give them the time of day. For how raw her ear had been chewed for working overnight, Rainbow was pretty sure Twilight had smuggled a bed into one of her libraries to accomplish the exact same thing.
That left Applejack.
Rainbow pretended to listen to Fluttershy recite an old moral to Teak about the importance of being considerate, but her mind was elsewhere. Up until the advent of the ministries, she had played with the idea of seeing whether Applejack thought more of her than just a friend. There had been a spark there, once. One that she regretted not pursuing while she had the time. Then AJ was given the Ministry of Technology and the clock ran out. Like the rest of them, the former orchard owner was buried under her work. Equestria’s soldiers needed every advantage they could get, and much of the progress being made on the front line was due to Applejack’s high expectations within her ministry. 
“You know, Zecora,” Rainbow said, cutting into Fluttershy’s lesson, “one of these days, Equestria is going to need the Elements again. Don’t be surprised if Teak winds up with the Element of Honesty when the next bad guy shows up.”
Teak’s eyes widened at the recommendation. Rainbow didn’t have the heart to tell her it didn’t mean a heap of apples what she thought. The Elements chose who they chose. Even she didn’t know how it worked.
“Why can’t you use the Elements to end the war?” Teak asked. It was a question that Rainbow heard at least once a week, and she could always tell when it had been eating away at the pony asking it. “You defeated Nightmare Moon and Discord, and they were both trying to take over Equestria!”
“Dearheart, we’ve talked about this before,” Zecora said, saving the two pegasi from he daughter.
“You said-”
“I said that Vhanna is not a villain,” Zecora interrupted, a little more firmly than Rainbow thought was necessary. There were unspoken words on the zebra’s face. Her eyes fell on the new ambassador with renewed scrutiny.
Fluttershy shuffled her wings, drawing Rainbow’s attention.
“We really should get going.” Fluttershy extended her wing toward the door, inviting Zecora and Teak to step outside. “Twilight’s usually in the cafeteria near the labs around this time and I was hoping to make introductions. You know how she is.”
Rainbow watched Zecora lead Teak outside, offering a smile and nod as they disappeared into the hallway. 
“That’s the problem,” she said, her eyes turning to Fluttershy. “None of us knows how she is.”
She could tell the words stung her friend, but the truth was the truth. More often than not, Twilight was too involved in her work to give Rainbow the time of day. After a while she had stopped going down altogether. 
Fluttershy had the grace to smile at the floor and shrug as if she hadn’t caught the entire meaning. She turned toward the hallway with the door held in her wing. “All the more reason for you to make the time. She misses you, Rainbow. She just needs to be reminded sometimes.”
Rainbow looked away, rubbing her lip with her hoof as she tried to think of an answer to that. It turned out she didn’t have to. Her door clicked shut and Fluttershy was gone, leaving her alone once again.
She blew out a long sigh and reclined in her chair. Her eyes drifted aimlessly to the air conditioning vent in the middle of the ceiling and she instinctively pulled the sides of her jacket together. It was always too cold down here. She looked down at her Element, the immensely powerful gemstone warm against her chest. It glinted at her as she tilted the bottom up with her hoof.
If Teak only knew what they were doing down here, she would understand why they couldn’t use the Elements to end the war. Why the rest of the girls put them away behind display cases and inside safes. The problem wasn’t that they hadn’t tried. They had, and it hadn’t worked. The six of them had watched helplessly as zebras and ponies slaughtered one another from the trenches in Vhanna. Try as they might, the Elements didn’t answer their call. The Tree of Harmony, the mysterious intelligence behind the gifts that defended Equestria, wasn’t on their side. Not for this fight.
Rainbow let the ruby fall back to her chest with a soft thump. None of them had expected it. They had collectively asked a question and gotten an answer that they weren’t ready to hear. That what they were doing might not be good. That they might not be any better than the zebras they were researching new ways to kill.
Her chair creaked as she sat up and she dragged the blocky terminal in front of her. She stared at the blinking green cursor for several minutes, thinking hard about what she was going to write. Whether it was another waste of time. Zecora’s words, even though she’d been covering for her daughter, burrowed into her head like a tick. “Vhanna is not a villain.” It was so much easier to see them as the Ministry of Image made them out to be. Invaders. Murderers. Savages. They all knew better than that, but it was easier to sell a stereotype than admit they might be destroying families.
She opened a new message.



 

Outgoing Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: Jet Stream
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: SOLUS

06/28/1075

Dear Jet Stream,
I wanted to inquire whether your company has found funding for the SOLUS contract we discussed this past spring. If not, I’d like to make time to review your proposed budget. I realize you and the princesses haven’t been on great terms, but maybe we can work out a way to get the numbers down to a point where they can’t refuse to sign off on it. I want to end this war, and you’re the only one with a plan to do it peacefully. Please work with me on this. 
Let me know if tomorrow works. I’m free for dinner.


	




	 


	 

“DAMN IT!”
Aurora shot through a pocket of cool air that shoved her dangerously close toward the terrain below. She threw her wings down hard enough to hurt, bending fragile bones and aching muscles against a gale of her own making. She didn’t care. Jagged rocks and desiccated soil streaked beneath her hooves fast enough to shatter them at the barest contact, but she kept pouring on speed. The tears barely had time to form before the wind lifted them away.
She should have killed Autumn. The chance had been right there in front of her and she’d blown it. Uncut rage pushed her back into the sky like a missile. She had to fix this, but there was no time to get help from the Bluff. No time to convince the Steel Rangers to follow her back.
She leveled out, breathing hard, and searched the terrain. She found it near the horizon. A dark smudge on the edge of an unnaturally straight line in the dust. The Red Delicious restaurant. Her feathers pulled taut as she made a bee-line for it.
This was her fault. If she had said something sooner, told somebody back in Junction City the truth instead of letting Ginger bear the weight of a bounty meant for her, Ginger wouldn’t be strapped to a chair enduring Autumn’s twisted version of punishment. 
She grit her teeth and angrily choked down a sob. Her vision smeared. You just keep making things worse. She pushed aside the dark thought and focused on what was ahead of her. Autumn wasn’t the only mare in Equestria who wanted revenge, and she wasn’t above burning the bitch’s house down around her to get it.
The Red Delicious was the same as when she’d left it. She circled low around the parking lot, wary of the deathclaw that lurked beneath the collapsed roof as she scanned the ground. She spotted what she was looking for at the edge of the road, its silver grille still crumpled from where she’d planted her hooves.
Out of breath and fresh out of options, Aurora landed a few feet away from the Enclave spritebot. She prayed to Celestia that it still worked.
She hefted the buckball-sized surveillance bot under her wing and set it down on the hood of the one carriage still waiting for its order beneath the drive-in awning. Facing the mangled grille toward her, she took a steadying breath and said, “Hello? Is anyone there?”
The bot stared back at her in silence.
Aurora thumped the top of it with her hoof, desperately wishing she still had her tools. She turned the spritebot around and verified that while a couple of its antennae were bent, none of them were broken. She bit her lip and straightened the kinks from the two just in case. “I need help,” she pleaded. “Please, is anyone listening?”
She waited.
Silence. 
The cavalry wasn’t coming.
She crinkled her nose and furiously swatted the dead machine away. It crunched against the ground and tumbled into the rusted post of the menu board like a broken toy.
Aurora walked back to the edge of the road and sat down. The smoldering rage in her gut cooled to a dull ache. Of course this had been a bad idea. She was clearly filled with them. She wrapped her wings around her legs for comfort, trying to think of something else. Anything.
There had been that town a half hour’s flight north that she passed on the way down from the Bluff. If it was abandoned, maybe she’d be able to find something to improvise as a weapon. If it turned out it was occupied, maybe she could find someone there willing to help.
“-ENTIFY YOURSELF.”
She flung herself onto her hooves with a surprised yelp and spun around. The spritebot was hovering next to the menu board, facing a faded picture of a double-decker hayburger. Her heart leapt into her throat and she hurried over to it. “Hello?”
The bot sloshed around to face her, and almost got close. The drop from the carriage must have jarred something back in place enough that it cold boot back up, but it pivoted like a blind pony in a busy Atrium. “IDENTIFY YOURSELF,” it droned.
She hurried over to it and grabbed its chassis. “My name is Aurora Pinfeathers! I’m not with the Enclave but I need your help! Please, let me talk to the pony from before!”
Something she said triggered a reaction from the little bot. It ticked and chattered, processing the data flowing into its antennae.  Aurora thought better of clutching it by its damaged shell and let go, watching it wobble under its own meager propulsion.
“VERIFIED. AURORA PINFEATHERS. SHELTER PROJECT. STABLE TEN.”
Her jaw dropped. “How did…”
“OVERMARE SPITFIRE REQUESTS YOUR IMMEDIATE-”
Pop.
A stallion’s voice crackled through the bot’s chassis. Aurora blew a sigh of relief that it wasn’t the mare from her first encounter. “-must have repaired it somehow,” he said distantly, then more clearly, “You there. Name and serial number.”
This again. “I-I don’t have one,” she said. “I’m not with the Enclave, but please, I need your help.”
The clatter of a keyboard filled the spritebot’s speaker. “Aurora Pinfeathers. Female. Age thirty-three…” he listed each off with an Appleloosan drawl that carried as much emotion as if he were reading the news. “Stable Ten. Huh. Ma’am, what’re you doing all the way out here? And why did Parry log you as a dustwing?”
“I…” she hesitated, her train of thought flung well clear of its tracks. “Wait, how do you know who I am?”
“Ma’am, do you not remember giving the bot your name?” His voice took on an edge of genuine concern. The bot skidded around her on manual control. “It’s got a busted lens but I have you on infrared. Do you know where you are right now?”
She eyed the bot as it bobbed gently from side to side. They knew who she was. Worse, they knew where she came from and thought she was senile. Who were these ponies?
“I need help,” she repeated. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “My friend is being held at the JetStream Solar Array. Autumn Song is going to kill her. I tried to stop her I can’t fight that many ponies alone. Please, you have to send someone.”
A pause. “Ma’am, that area is under protection.”
“Whose?”
“Ours,” the stallion said flatly.
Aurora shook her head at the sky in frustration. It was like the world was conspiring against her, trying to push her to the breaking point. It didn’t know she was already there. 
Then she remembered something. “Are you aware she’s forcing a caged pegasus to find coordinates to something called Solace?”
The spritebot hovered silently for what felt like minutes. Aurora tried her best not to look nervous as a hoof muffled a far away microphone and the hums of multiple voices drifted from its speaker. She couldn’t understand what they were saying but the hurried tones read like an open book. She’d his a nerve.
The stallion’s slow drawl took on a serious edge. “Ma’am, could you repeat that last part for me?”
Jackpot. Fuck you, Autumn. “Autumn Song is looking for Solace. A green pegasus mare named Julip is caged under the main building with some servers and a terminal. I watched Autumn break her wing in half today. Best I can tell, she’s one of yours.”
The stallion muttered a curse to no one in particular before returning to the mic. “Has she found it?”
Aurora shook her head. “Not yet, but Autumn is pushing her hard for it. My friend Ginger is there, and she’s going through worse.” A pause. “We can help each other.”
“Ah…” he said, “it’s a little more complicated than that.”
She frowned. “Is that a no?”
“It’s not a yes.”
She grabbed the spritebot in her wing and glared at the cluster of spider-like electronic eyes behind its grille. “Then tell me what I can do to change your mind.”
The black eyes clicked and whirred as they drew her into focus. “You could start by letting go of my bot.”
She flicked the spritebot away with a noise of disgust. It spun like a drunken top before righting itself, eventually puttering back to her side. She stared past it in the direction she came. Toward the solar plant. Toward Ginger. “So you’re going to do nothing.”
Another pause. “You need to go back to your Stable, ma’am. You’re a pureblood. You don’t belong in the wastes.”
The laugh that rolled out of her was both bitter and exhausted. Her shadow, little more than a long smudge on the dusty ground, laughed with her. She sat down and shook her head. It was getting late and she was exhausted.
The Enclave wasn’t going to help. She took a moment to watch the bright scar of sunlight cut lower toward the cloud-choked horizon. The spritebot hovered nearby, occasionally turning to presumably monitor the surrounding area. She was a little surprised that its operator hadn’t disconnected yet. It wasn’t as if he had any reason to stick around.
Beneath the collapsed restaurant, the creature that had nearly killed her two hours earlier shifted within the debris. She watched over her shoulder and watched the lump of rotted roof raise and settle again, throwing a low plume of dust into the breeze. It had begun making a new den to replace the one she caused it to destroy. She looked up at the spritebot and notice it was facing the same direction.
“That’s a deathclaw, ma’am. You should find somewhere else to rest.”
“Uh huh,” she answered, her brow knitting together as a new plan formed in her mind. It was arguably the worst idea she’d had since… ever. But it was something. The more she rolled it around in her head, the more convinced she became that it might be workable. She got back onto her hooves with a grunt and started toward the section of restaurant that wouldn’t sit still.
“Ma’am, what are you doing?” the stallion said from behind her. 
“If you’re not going to help, the least you could do is shut up and let me do what I need to do.”
The spritebot drew up beside her, the Enclave stallion’s voice becoming more urgent. “Ma’am there is corrupted wildlife under there!”
She flicked her tail at the bot and continued toward the deathclaw’s den. “I’m aware.”
Rounding the building, she spotted a dull green mass plugging an open section of wall that bore deep, fresh claw marks. The deathclaw had been busy hollowing out the rubble while she was away, creating a new makeshift warren to hoard its meals. In the waning sunlight, she could make out the deformed plates that studded the length of its spine. It would be some time before she forgot how determined it had been to kill her. How easily it had shredded through the restaurant’s kitchen like it had been tissue paper. She remembered the wet mass of carcasses it had slept in before she wandered into its home. The smell of rot and decay. 
She dipped her wing into the edge of the rubble and scooped up a broken half of brick.
“Ma’am,” the stallion hissed, “put that down before you get yourself killed. You have a responsibility to survive!”
“Does that mean you’re going to help me rescue my friend?” She tossed the brick into the air and caught it in the curl of her feathers. It was plenty heavy enough.
A deep, thudding growl rolled out from the ruins of the restaurant. Aurora watched as the creature’s spine slid into the darkness of its den and a broad, jagged maw appeared to taste at the open air. Its nostrils flared at it scented familiar prey.
The stallion’s voice had reached the peak of frustration. “I am not authorized to disclose details of ongoing operations…”
She stopped listening at not authorized and arced her wing backward. Feathers blurred and the ruddy chunk of masonry whistled through the air. It cracked against the deathclaw’s snout with a meaty thud. The spritebot was silent. 
Aurora took a tentative step back, her wings open, ready to fling her skyward.
The ruins went off like a bomb and a beast born out of a nightmare boiled toward her in a fit of rage.


	




Blue was hungry.
She listened for the wind from before but it was gone now. The wind woke her up sometimes. It brought something into the dark that tickled behind her eyes and smelled like copper even though she didn’t remember what copper was. It was quiet now. It had been quiet for a long time.
Her leg hurt so she moved it. He sometimes moved it for her when it hurt but now she had to do it. She didn’t know where he went, only that he was gone too. Everyone was gone.
Blue’s belly clenched because it was empty. She knew that from before, back when she remembered things. She rolled over on her sleeping bag and listened some more. She was good at listening. She hadn’t been so good before.
Something skittered. She lifted her head to see but it wasn’t here. It was outside. Behind the door that he had closed when he went away. He closed the door a lot, but that was okay. It was okay to be alone.
She closed her eyes.
She opened her eyes.
Her leg hurt so she moved it. She screwed up her face and looked at her leg. It was hard to remember sometimes. Sometimes she went away from herself for a while. She didn’t know where. When she came back, she would be somewhere different.
There were rocks under her head. She lifted her head and tried to remember, but she couldn’t. She was in the tunnel now. She didn’t like the tunnel. Bad things happened in the tunnel one time.
A bug lay on the rocks next to her. It was empty now, except for the shell. She looked down at her stomach and saw that it bulged slightly. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
She looked around and saw the door to the small place standing open. It was safe there. Nothing bad happened in the small place. She got up and flexed her wings. Sometimes she didn’t move them for a long, long time and then it hurt when she did. Sometimes she had to be reminded. The good pony did a lot of reminding, though he wasn’t really a pony. But that was a secret.
Blue bumped the bug with her hoof and it tumbled down the hill of rocks and onto the parts that didn’t hurt so much to walk on. She followed it and looked inside, but it was empty. Someone had eaten it all. She stared at it, trying to remember, but it was too hard.
She walked toward the small place. Then she stopped and listened. Hooves, deep in the tunnel. Then they stopped. She frowned and tried to remember but she couldn’t. She faced the tunnel and started walking again. The other hooves started walking again too.
Then she remembered. Echoes. He told her not to chase the echoes.
She continued walking, hoping to find him. Hoping he would tell her why she shouldn’t chase the echoes. She didn’t look at the big pictures on the walls. They were bad pictures. They made her remember too much.
Sounds that weren’t real sounds got stuck in her ear again. Bangs and screaming and crying. Ponies that weren’t here anymore slept next to the pillars. She wanted to go back to the small place. Back to the sleeping bag and the book and the shiny thing that made it safe to sleep. She looked at her chest. She didn’t know why.
She climbed the steps of the big platform at the end of the tunnel. She had to be quiet. There were ponies sleeping here too.
The round door was still closed. It was always closed. Always and always and always. She lifted her hoof and touched it, trying to remember why.
She frowned. The skin around the corner of her lip split and it hurt. She licked the little wound.
No.
The round door hadn’t been closed. Not always. The Bad Pony had taken her inside once, a long long time ago. It hurt to remember. Not like how her lip hurt. A different hurt. The Bad Pony had done something she couldn’t remember. But she tried anyway.
She tried and tried and tried.
She gave up. It was hard to try.
Blue turned around and started walking back to the small place. Down the steps of the big platform. Back into the tunnel.
Of course they’re on the list, Dash. Your parents will be the first inside.
Blue whipped around, her tattered wings outstretched.
Her face was wet and it was harder to see. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again like when she went away and came back, only this time she stayed here. It was easier to see now.
Remembering hurt but she couldn’t stop it. She remembered lights and machines and lots of dust and ponies looking at blue paper. The Bad Pony had been there. The one who lied. The one who tricked her. The one who made her have to go to the small place while all the other ponies she tricked cried in the tunnel until there was nobody left to cry except for her and him.
She stared up at the big round door and screamed at it. She ran back and hit it with her hooves, trying to make it move. Hoping someone inside would see her and let her in. Mom and dad were on the other side with the Spitfire and they weren’t safe. They didn’t know, but Rainbow Dash knew. Rainbow Dash knew everything.
She battered her hooves against the same smudges she made every time the memories came back. It was all her fault. She’d been too late. She was always too late. Her withered chest convulsed with heaving sobs until the exhaustion made it hard to think. She pressed her head against the great door and watched tears slide down a muzzle she didn’t recognize. 
She frowned and touched her chest, expecting something to be there but unsure what it could be. She blinked, her eyes drying, and put her hoof down.
She was forgetting again. She tried not to. It was important that she didn’t forget. But she couldn’t help it. It felt better when she forgot.
She lay down on the cool platform and went away for a while.
Blue opened her eyes.
Her leg hurt so she moved it.

	 


	




 

Autumn woke to the sound of quiet murmuring and the acrid scent of disinfectants centuries past their shelf life. As soon as she became aware that she was awake, she also became aware of the shooting pain behind her eyes. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth and she winced at the shot of lighting that went through her jaw. Broken. Or nearly broken. She couldn’t focus enough to decide whether she wanted to know which it was.
She opened her eyes and squinted at the criss-crossing lines of a drop ceiling. The plush white cushion of the lobby couch cradled her right side, stained deep crimson where she had swiped a bloody hoof against the pristine leather. She could taste copper in the back of her throat and between her teeth.
The geometry of the ceiling made her dizzy and she shut her eyes. In the renewed darkness she saw that damned pegasus, Aurora Pinfeathers, bearing down over her with murder in her eyes. She only remembered pieces of what happened. The syringe shattering against her face like a glass missile. The two of them crashing into the far wall, and the sickening realization that the pegasus wouldn’t stop beating her until she was dead.
But she was alive. At the receiving end of a one-sided brawl, Autumn hadn’t been able to focus on much. She remembered the dread she felt when she reached out to her magic only to have her concentration scattered by Aurora’s hoof. The only weapon she had to rely on were her lungs, and they had saved her life.
Embarrassment washed over her but she managed to resist the reflex to grit her teeth again. Screaming for help. Her. She didn’t want to think what that was going to do for her reputation. Probably nothing substantial, she decided, but the fact of it happening at all stung. A well-oiled cluster of gears in the back of her head began to turn, already considering ways to spin this disaster of a day to her advantage.
She wrinkled her nose and forced herself to sit up. Unsurprisingly, the nearby murmuring was replaced by approaching hooves. If this were one of the prewar medical dramas Cider had inflicted on her since he discovered a stash years ago, she supposed this would be the part where she blearily ripped off sensors and set off keening alarms to the dismay of the medical staff. Except the luxuries of clean hospitals and confident physicians were gone. They lived off the dregs of what had been left behind, and that was all they would have. 
And what Autumn had right now was questions.
She opened her eyes a second time and lifted them to the only two other ponies in the lobby. She quietly thanked Celestia that neither of them were Quincy.
Buck stood pensively beside the arm of the opposite couch, the twin barrels of his battle saddle auspiciously absent from his charcoal back. His eyes were fixed on the disheveled blue stallion standing close enough to her that she couldn’t ignore the smell coming off him. When she saw the collar fixed around his neck, she knew why. Autumn shot Buck a questioning look.
“He’s a doctor,” Buck said, as if that was all that needed saying.
Autumn eyed the slave before returning her gaze to Buck. “Is?”
“Was,” Buck conceded.
She sighed and swung her hind legs toward the floor, ready to be seen on her hooves rather than on her back. A blue foreleg appeared against her chest, preventing her from getting down. 
“You shouldn’t walk until your leg is healed,” the slave said. He deflected her withering glare with the passive confidence of someone who thought they knew better. He didn’t. Her horn glowed with a weak light and she pushed the obstructing hoof away. She leaned forward, letting her front legs drop toward the carpet. “Miss Song I don’t think-”
Her right hoof landed on the soft carpet with a crisp click that she didn’t hear so much as she felt. White-hot pain detonated up her shoulder as if she’d stepped on a landmine. Her right hoof shot off the carpet to take the weight off, leaving her to sway unevenly on her left.
“You need more rest,” the slave half-heartedly reminded her.
Autumn glared down at her leg, her once-pristine mane clotted with blood like a tacky curtain that draped over her face. Her leg was wrapped tightly in strips of heavy canvas. Two rusted lengths of rebar poked out of either side of the makeshift bandage, creating a makeshift splint. Keeping her hoof off the ground was going to become tiring.
“I don’t need to be coddled by a pony in a collar,” she said, her eyes lifting to Buck with accusation. If he wasn’t wearing his battle saddle, then something had gone wrong. “Where’s the pegasus?”
If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she would have missed the flash of nervousness on Buck’s face. She didn’t. She watched as a stallion twice her size avoided her eyes like a chastised foal. She had his answer before he opened his mouth.
“We weren’t able to catch her,” he said.
Autumn let the silence linger rather than fill it with the pointless tirade that boiled in her gut. Buck stiffened as the seconds ticked by, clearly waiting to be berated or worse. It was better that he worry. It bred loyalty. A small price to pay for a bit of restraint on her part.
But not enough of a price to quell the malignant anger that grew inside her.
“Were any of our people injured?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Do we still have Miss Dressage?”
Buck nodded.
“Good,” she said. At least something hadn’t gone to shit today. “Take the doctor back to his pen. And give him some food and water for his services.”
She turned toward the slave stallion and moved him aside with what magic she could muster. He refrained from commenting as she limped past him with her broken leg bent toward her belly, but he did offer a small nod to her for the extra rations. She didn’t return it. Her good leg was far from “good,” but it was serviceable enough to let her walk. Bruised muscle cried in protest at every stumping hop toward the door.
Buck cleared his throat as her magic reached for the handle. 
“She was unnaturally fast,” he said.
She looked back at him and saw the shame in his eyes. Her lip lifted away from her teeth in disgust. “She was motivated. Now she’s gone. Your job is to figure out how to keep it from happening again.”
Buck straightened. “Yes ma’am.”
Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer. “When you’re done with the doctor, come find me at the holding tank. I’ll need a pair of hooves to carry Miss Dressage.”
“You’re moving her?”
She shook her head. She was good and ready to move past this whole fiasco. “I’m going to kill her. I’ll leave it up to you where you see fit to dispose of her.”
Buck’s tension lifted as a new normal settled into place. “I’ll see to it.”
Autumn tipped her horn to him and stepped outside.
The darkness caught her off-guard. She stopped momentarily to let her eyes adjust before hopping forward on her functional foreleg. It was slow going and she had to work to keep her temper at bay as the guards of the night shift carefully averted their eyes.
She’d never liked the dark. Ever since she was a filly the all-encompassing blackness that fell after the twilight hours smothered her with a quiet fear that she never grew out of. It made her miss the days before she and her brother moved from home to start what would become the business venture that surrounded her now. Back home, they could stoke a small fire in the shattered hearth that propped up the remains of their family’s houses. They had just enough to pay their tithe to the local raiders and so they could afford a little light at night. Now she sat on just enough influence and wealth to keep the raiders under her hoof, and her biggest concern was always the local predators. They flocked to light like insects, and the ones that called this barren region their home tended to be larger than a cloud of bloatflies.
A pair of guards walking the opposite direction passed her with a polite nod, the larger of the two carrying an energy weapon that gave off the faintest green glow of magic-infused plasma. Cider had acquired a small cache of the old tech from one of his contacts within the Steel Rangers. She vaguely remembered the argument that spawned from that decision, but whatever her point had been wasn’t worth dwelling on anymore. It wasn’t as if she had anyone left to debate it with.
She returned the guards’ nod and continued toward the general direction of the holding tanks. As the amorphous walls of black grew taller, her priorities solidified. Whatever chems the slave stallion had been allowed to administer had no doubt come from their regular stock. Slow-acting and incomparable to the few remaining syringes of unadulterated magic that she hoped still remained. She would use that magic to heal her wounds. Then she would kill Ginger Dressage. 
A broken neck, maybe. Something simple, quick and final. Much as she wanted to savor Ginger’s death, the day had been spoiled. She just wanted to be done with it.
With Ginger out of the way, she could finally focus on the important work. Julip was a stubborn mare, and Autumn had no illusions that there was anything she could to to force the Enclave pony to give her the coordinates to whatever this "Solace" was. All she needed was for her guest to know what she was looking for, and she would inevitably seek it out herself in an effort to bury it. It had been nearly a month since Julip failed to return home. It only took a week for Julip to begin digging through the cloned servers she’d been provided.
A tiny smile pinched the corner of her lip. Once this was over, she could finally sit down and see exactly where Julip had been digging. 
The guards posted outside Ginger’s prison noticed her approach and the unicorn among them lit his horn to better see her. The door to the tank was badly warped in the center. Bright gashes of scraped steel reflected the unicorn’s red magic like bloody wounds. The padlock, for all the trouble it had caused when it failed to work, had been discarded. The battered door was more symbolic than secure. It had to be physically levitated off its hinges and set aside to let Autumn inside.
A single gray feather lay inside the doorway. She regarded it with a frown and stepped over it.
The unicorn outside lit his horn to put the door back on its hinges, but she stopped him. “Leave it open. I won’t be long.”
The red glow faded, replaced by the bright glare of the single bulb that glowed at the roof of the tank.
Autumn approached the chair in the center. 
The coffee colored mare that occupied it stared back at her with those ocean-blue eyes she’d grown to despise. They were the eyes of a murderer. The last ones Cider had no doubt stared into before he was unceremoniously drowned. It infuriated her to watch Ginger sit there, tired from her ordeal but physically intact thanks to the numerous doses of prewar healing magic sloshing through her veins. All the punishment Autumn had inflicted, erased because of a single interruption.
She forgot about her injured jaw and clenched her teeth. The shot of pain made her tense as if she’d been shocked. Any one of her staff would have had the presence of mind to look away. Ginger stared. There was no malice in it. No sarcastic grin. Just quiet observation of a mare who had been gifted precious time to contemplate her end, and accept it. It was like seeing fresh fruit go rotten. She’d wanted Ginger to die in the throes of fear.
Autumn slid her tongue over her molars in an attempt to sooth the pain and approached the tool chest. It lay toppled over onto its back, empty syringes scattered behind it. Evidence of the sudden and unexpected attack from the pegasi. The ghost of pain tickled the side of her face where the syringe had shattered. The cuts had healed in her sleep, but the sensation was still raw in her memory.
“Is Aurora alive?”
She ignored her and tried to lift the tool chest upright, but the strain poured fuel onto the migraine already forming behind her eyes. She dropped it with a heavy thud that echoed against the walls of the tank. Ginger waited for her answer as Autumn pulled the bottom drawer entirely out of the cabinet and sat it roughly atop the void it left behind. 
“I’m told she escaped, yes.”
She tried not to react to Ginger’s sigh of relief and snatched up one of the remaining unused stimpacks from the drawer. A quick jab and it fired into the meat of her hind leg. The cool flush of healing magic rushed through her body like a thirsty sponge soaking up water. The sensation of broken bones seeking each other out made her shudder, but the relief that it brought kept her complaints at bay.
“Your brother was a monster.”
Autumn sighed. This again. 
“So I’ve heard,” she said. The migraine was beginning to subside. She made a mental note to keep the last two stimpacks someplace safe once this was over. 
As she waited for her head to clear, it occurred to her that her ears had turned toward the open door. She followed them with her eyes and noticed that both guards had moved from the narrow rectangle of light cast by the tank and had shifted into the shadow, voices low as they distracted themselves with idle conversation.
Pop. Pop.
One of the guards hushed the other and they went silent, listening. Autumn felt the tension rising in her shoulders.
Pop. Pop-pop. Pop-pop-pop.
Autumn took a slow breath and listened as the sound of gunfire became more persistent. Then another rifle joined. A crackling takka-takka-takka of an automatic. With each passing second more weapons joined the growing chorus. The glow of the tank dimmed in abrupt increments as spotlights bloomed to life outside. Somewhere in the rising din of chaos, a pony flipped a switch. An ancient air raid siren began to wail, low at first and then high as a dying animal.
They were under attack.
She turned and looked at Ginger. Then past her, at the wrecked pens where Aurora had pinned her. Her revolver glinted atop the bent links.


	




Peach Medley hated his name. It had an feminine undertone that he never grew used to. His parents, when they were alive, had been traditionalists. His whole family was that way. Old names from days long past. Prewar ponies had a strange fixation with naming themselves after food. He never understood that, but then again he wasn’t the creative type. As much as he wanted to change his name, he was never able to decide on anything that stuck. It wasn’t until he got hired on as security for F&F Mercantile that his coworkers gave him a nickname.
Everyone at the solar array called him Sweets.
He was a big stallion. Bigger than most, standing a full head taller than Autumn’s chief of security. The job was a natural fit even if the pay left something to be desired. He knew it was the best he could hope for and the job came with a bed and relative safety. But the biggest perk was the variety of goods that drifted in and out with the trade wagons. Sweets was particularly fond of a mare who owned a prosperous hard candy business not far from Canterlot. He made a point to visit her cart every time she rode in with her monthly dues. It didn’t take long for the nickname to stick.
Sweets’s jaw popped in the midst of a long yawn that he’d been fighting down. He hadn’t been this tired during a night shift since he first took the job. He preferred the nights because it was easy work. Every so often a radscorpion might wander too close to the wire, but all he was required to do was radio it in to the nearest of the four cardinal guard posts and the snipers would put the critters down. His job was to walk his section of the perimeter fence and observe. He didn’t even have to carry a weapon.
Easy work.
But damned if he wasn’t tired.
Everyone had been shaken out of their bunks early today when some pegasus attacked the boss. It still irritated him that he’d been pulled out of sleep just in time to do a whole lot of nothing. The pegasus was long gone by the time he’d gotten outside and the adrenaline kept him from falling back asleep. And he wasn’t the only one suffering. All the perimeter staff were traipsing on the edge of sleepwalking.
Sweets reached the marker on the fence that denoted the end of his section, a cue ball with the center drilled through so it could be strung up at eye level by a length of wire. Behind the lenses of his night vision goggles, it looked like a tiny green sun. Not that he knew what the real one actually looked like. He was pretty sure it didn’t have a hole in it, at least.
Further down the fence, he could see Tabby patrolling the next section with her neck bent low with exhaustion. The thought crossed his mind to radio in a comms check to nudge her awake before someone saw her, but another yawn snuck down his jaw and the idea faded with it.
He pressed a hoof under his goggles and lifted them up to his forehead. His eyes needed a break from the green-white sameness of his patrol, and it would give him plausible deniability for not reporting Tabby for taking eyes off her route. They deserved a break.
He closed his eyes for a little bit.
“Section 3. I have something on approach.”
Sweets’s head jerked up, startled. His chin was damp with drool. How long had been asleep?
His hoof felt like lead as he slid his NVGs back down, drowning his eyes in too-bright light. With his other hoof he pressed the toggle on his shoulder radio. “Uh, Section 1,” he half-mumbled. “I didn’t copy.”
It occurred to him that the ground was shaking.
“...ogey on th…” the radio crackled out, then sputtered to life again. The speaker was breathing hard as if he were running. “Section 2 it’s coming to you! Tabby you need to move!”
Sweets looked left, down the fence, and spotted the bright green form of Tabby leaning against the chain link with her nose inches from the dirt. Her goggles hung loosely around her neck as she dozed. Her ears didn’t so much as flicker to her radio. She must have turned it off. He turned his head to the fence, to what lay beyond, and spotted the almost white mass of infrared heat thundering toward her. His eyes went wide.
He punched his radio. “Section 1. That’s a fucking deathclaw!”
At that utterance, the radio lit up. Sweets bolted forward, yelling at Tabby as he made a bee-line into her section.
“East Gate. We have a deathclaw inbound. Wait, I have visual on a pega…”
A rifle shot cut through the night like a hatchet. Tabby jerked awake, clearly confused.
“North Gate. Say again, East?”
Another shot, the muzzle flash from the roof of the eastern guard post bright enough to temporarily blind his night vision. Then another. He looked away, risking a glance through the fence and he suddenly knew everything he needed to know. He wouldn’t get to Tabby in time. The deathclaw was close enough for him to make out its individual limbs as it hurdled toward Tabby’s section.
He keyed his radio with his chin and kept running. “Tabby, move!”
Tabby’s ears perked up with recognition and she turned toward Sweets. She almost had her hoof to her radio when the deathclaw exploded through the fence and lit on her like something out of a nightmare. Sweets almost fell as he skidded to a stop. He could only watch as the deathclaw bent down and closed its jaws around Tabby’s middle. Mercifully, she was too dazed to understand what was happening as it bit clean through her.
Light strobed from the east gate. Someone opening up on the beast from a laughable distance with automatic fire. Puffs of dust danced up from the dirt all around the deathclaw, some pitiful few actually hitting their mark. A spotlight flashed on and swiveled toward the carnage, whiting out Sweets’ vision. He squeezed his eyes shut and ripped the goggles off with an abrupt “Fuck!”
When he opened them again, he saw the deathclaw standing in the center of a wide beam of light. It stared at him, its misshapen mouth pouring with gore that had once been Tabby. It didn’t seem to care that it was being shot at. It barely registered anything when a bullet found its mark. The beast watched him, its nostrils flaring wide from exertion. Sweets had never seen an exhausted deathclaw before, but now that it had a meal in its gullet it would be a matter of time before it caught a second wind.
A gush of smoke from the east gate caught his eye and a bright point of light hissed through the night sky. Light, noise and flaring heat overwhelmed his senses just in time for the shockwave to punch the air out of his lungs. He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the ground. His ears were wet. He couldn’t hear anything except for a piercing whistle behind his torn eardrums.
Sweets tried to get up, but his hind legs wouldn’t listen. It occurred to him that everything was too bright again, but his goggles were gone. Wisps of smoke and dust coiled through the shaft of light that had once been trained on the deathclaw but was now aimed at him. He stared at the long drape of his shadow for several seconds, trying to piece together why it was moving when he wasn’t.
Something warm blew against the nape of his neck. He blinked and lifted his head.
The deathclaw’s open maw met him halfway.







Getting the deathclaw’s attention had been the easy part. Keeping it on her had been much more unpleasant.
Aurora’s wings ached from overuse. Muscles used to manipulating machines and lifting broken parts all but screamed in protest of having to bear her weight against the wind for hours on end. The mutated horror beneath her didn’t make things easier. While it easily outpaced her on the ground, it couldn’t keep up with her for long when she took to the air. As darkness began to fall it got harder to judge how far she was from the monster. More than once she flew too far and it lost interest in the chase, favoring the easier prey that began to emerge with the arrival of night.
She had to land several times over the course of the two hour trip, either to regain its attention or to let it catch up so it wouldn’t start hunting something else. It was like herding a gigantic, murderous toddler. 
By the time the mirrors of the solar plant came into view, her nerves were worn down more than her wings. The last bits of daylight had sunk beneath the overcast horizon and everything below her was inky black. Each time she landed to let the deathclaw approach, she worried the uneven terrain would foul up her takeoff. Or trap her hoof. Or that she would land too close to the creature and not know until it was too late. If she survived this, the nightmares would chase her dreams for weeks.
Whether it was good luck, good instincts, the good grace of the goddesses or a combination of all three, she managed not to get eaten.
With less than a quarter mile left to go before she reached the perimeter fence, Aurora took a calculated risk and bent her glide vertical. The deathclaw barreled forward along its path like a torpedo, not yet aware that its prey had vanished above and behind it. Happy her little ploy had worked, she pitched forward and settled into a silent glide high in the air. For a moment it she thought she could see it beginning to slow down like it had done so many times on the way back. Worry clawed into her gut. 
Then the snap of a rifle caught her ear and the monster barreled forward.
She watched with a mixture of horror and satisfaction as the deathclaw burst through the fence and onto a guard on the other side. This high above the ground, the gunfire below sounded like the crackle of popcorn. Spotlights snapped on and a siren wailed as she slid past the fence and down the gentle obsidian slope of mirrors. An explosion shook the air behind her and the shockwave rang through the steel posts of the mirrors like strange bells. There was no turning back now.
Somewhere behind her, a stallion screamed and a bellowing howl split the night.
The urge to turn around and help them kill the monster she’d worked to bring to them was almost impossible to ignore, but she sharply reminded herself why she was here and who her enemies were. The guards down there would just as soon turn their weapons on her as they would a deathclaw. They may not all be bad, but they were no friends of hers. She wasn’t about to trust Ginger’s life to the hope that they might show her charity.
The last of the mirrors slipped behind her and she squinted at the dark complex of buildings and winding pipes, trying to make sense of it all over again. She drifted low, carefully avoiding the temptation to flap her wings as she dipped toward the roof of the stubby building where she first met Autumn. Her hooves skidded across the dilapidated roof, kicking up old gravel and dirt as she slowed to a wobbling trot.
She walked to the edge and risked a peek over the side. Small groups of ponies gathered near the doors to several of the smaller outbuildings, none of them armed except for the odd flashlight that the passing guards yelled at them to douse. Aurora hadn’t seen this side of the facility before. Wagons and carts bearing versions of the F&F Mercantile insignia sat parked wheel to wheel in two neat lines down the side of the largest of the stubby structures. Several ponies were organizing an effort to carry supplies left in the carts for the night back into the building. More than a few guards had stayed to assist.
Thankfully, none of them had heard her scuffed attempt at a quiet landing. Their attention was split between emptying the wagons and listening to the distant chatter of gunfire. Though it was starting to sound a little less distant, now that she stopped to listen.
Move your hooves, she told herself.
She ran to the opposite side of the roof and stopped short of the ledge. Almost immediately she heard the frantic whisper of a familiar voice.
“...fucking bullshit, this isn’t my fucking job…”
She leaned forward. Directly below her, Quincy’s head poked into the night from the dark doorway of his lobby. A lit flashlight dangled from his lips as he complained. Even in the near-blackness of the unlit facility his perfectly white coat shone like a diamond in a coal pile. Aurora didn’t know much about him other than he was waifish for a stallion and a little on the quiet side. Right now, he didn’t seem much of either.
He stepped into the night as if it were waiting to devour him. Then, with a litany of profanity dogging his heels, he followed the wall of the building and vanished around the corner. Aurora frowned after him but didn’t have time to puzzle out what he was up to.
Another explosion lit the night sky and Aurora shrank away from the edge of the roof to avoid being seen. The battle had moved deep into the mirror field now. Flaming chunks of solar collectors littered the dirt and more tumbled from the beasts claws as it raked them at the ponies determined to kill it. Weapons crackled in earnest and fell silent, one after the other, only to be replaced by reinforcements arriving from the further reaches of the facility.
Her distraction was working better than she’d hoped.
She turned her attention back to the maze of buildings and girders in front of her. Ginger’s tank had been on this side of the facility, that much she was sure of. She scanned the darkened structures for something familiar. Something she could remember seeing when she was gracelessly carried to the tank. Seeing nothing besides a tangle of silhouettes, she opened her aching wings and hoisted herself back into the air for a better view.
A low structure slid to her left. Behind it, a bright square of orange light pouring through an open doorway. A doorway sitting at the base of a silhouette that looked like four banded grease drums minus banding. A quartet of tanks. Ginger’s tank.
Her heart beat her ribs.
She steeled her nerves and dove toward the tank with a hard pulse of her wings. Damn the noise. Damn anyone who noticed her. She was here to fix a mistake. To save a life that would make up for all the ones she’d taken. Her wings billowed open, braking her descent barely two yards from the empty doorframe and scaring a yelp out of the two guards she hadn’t seen standing just outside the light.
Time slowed.
Aurora’s mouth hung open in dismay. Two stallions, a unicorn and an earth pony both armed with stubby black submachine guns shielded their eyes from the sudden blast of grit thrown up by her landing. The unicorn’s horn was already beginning to glow with magic. The earth pony was spitting dust from his mouth, his mind far from his weapon with its strangely modified trigger. She had a brief window to act that was screaming shut. The unicorn’s weapon had begun to lift. She could feel herself starting to panic.
A memory rattled loose in her head. Advice Sledge had given her when it seemed like everything was going wrong at once. Take a breath and fix one problem at a time, Pinfeathers. Divide and conquer.
One at a time.
Her eyes locked on the recovering unicorn and she whipped her wings toward the dirt. She crashed into him with her hooves outstretched, latching around the barrel of his chest and hoisting him skyward with a second beat of her wings.
His eyes went wide as saucers as the ground sank away from them. His earth pony counterpart fired wildly into the sky but without light to see by, the staccato of gunfire was wasted. The unicorn’s voice came out several octaves higher than normal as he screamed, “What the fuck put me down put me down I won’t do anything I swear just put me down!”
It crossed her mind that it would be faster to drop him, and she couldn’t convince herself that it hadn’t been her initial plan, but his hooves had locked around her back in sheer panic. She couldn’t let go of him if she wanted to.
Far below, his counterpart’s weapon blended into the chatter of the larger battle in the mirrors.
She slowed her ascent and settled into a wobbling hover. His added weight threatened to throw off her balance and her wings railed against the sudden workload. “Get rid of the gun and I’ll land,” she ordered. His horn flashed and he wriggled the strap out from between them. He gave it a furtive throw and she watched the weapon tumble into the night. Good. 
“If you try anything, I drop you. Understand?”
“I won’t! I promise!” he wailed.
Not that she had much choice. Quickly as she could without risking turning an unsteady landing into an abrupt impact, she dropped back toward the facility and the chaos below. She touched down on a rooftop far from the tanks and the unicorn collapsed on shaking legs, sputtering thank-yous even as she took off again.
One down.
She found the earth pony where she’d left him, except now he was pacing in circles with worried eyes fixed on the black sky. He held his weapon by the strange protrusion she’d seen before which set neatly between his teeth. Some sort of trigger mechanism for earth ponies, she guessed, just like the one Buck had for the rifles he’d worn on his back.
He spun in circles, spooking at ghosts in his vision and firing quick bursts into the sky to chase them away. She wheeled silently above him in a wide arc, waiting for an opening. It didn’t take long. The lone guard spooked and squeezed off a burst of gunfire that ended with an abrupt click. When he spat out the trigger and fumbled through his pockets for another magazine, she snapped her wings back and plunged toward him.
Leveling out, she swept open her hooves, readying herself to grab him around the midsection and lift off like before. Instead, the frantic stallion looked up at exactly the wrong time and flinched backward. Her right hoof hooked around the back of his neck, sending the two of them sprawling over the dusty concrete.
A stabbing pain shot through her foreleg as she forced herself up. “Celestia’s sun,” she muttered. The stallion was rolling onto his hooves as well, his head whipping left and right as he searched for something. Then he looked back toward the shaft of dingy orange light leaking out tank’s empty door frame and he practically tripped over himself getting up. She followed his eyes toward the tank and saw the unmistakable black shape of his gun.
“Shit,” she spat and hurried to her hooves while he broke into a full sprint. She wrenched her body around to face the fallen gun and thrust her wings tailward. They rewarded her with a sharp sting of pain and a dizzying burst of speed that she subconsciously knew wouldn’t feel great when she landed. It didn’t disappoint.
With concrete blurring by her muzzle, she sailed past the guard and snatched up his rifle with feet to spare. She clutched it hard against her chest, doing the best she could to keep the muzzle away from her chin, and braced for the fall. Concrete dug into her shoulder like a belt sander and she rolled over and over again like a carnival ride gone horribly wrong. She came to a stop a good dozen yards beyond the stallion, who stood bewildered in the light.
She winced and pushed herself onto her hooves. The world pitched and wobbled as if she were a rowboat on some unforgiving sea. The stallion didn’t move, as if waiting out of some misplaced courtesy.
She squeezed one eye shut at a time, left then right, to force them to focus. The stallion frowned, and patted the flap of his jacket pocket. From it he lifted the slender black rectangle of a magazine. He looked toward her with indecision on his face. She glanced down at the empty submachine gun held in her wing.
“Call it a draw?” she offered.
He didn’t answer immediately, and suspicion crept into the back of Aurora’s brain. He took a deep breath and she widened her stance, waiting for him to rush her. He looked into the tank, swallowed, and dropped the magazine onto the cement before turning around and galloping away.
She blinked surprise as he made a bee-line away from the deathclaw’s roars.
A few long strides and she was alone at the entrance to the tank.
Finally.
A lump formed in her throat when she saw Ginger still there, her eyes shining with relief. It occurred to Aurora that Ginger had heard everything. The deathclaw, the ever-nearer sounds of battle in the mirror field and the scuffle outside her makeshift prison. Shame and pride fought their own small battle in her chest as she stepped up onto the tank’s rusted surface.
Aurora’s attention was so firmly fixed on Ginger that she didn’t spot the emerald glow just below her left ear or the slender muzzle of the revolver peeking through the curtain of her fire-tinted mane. She realized too late that the tears in her companion’s eyes weren’t from relief, but horror.
The first shot struck flat against her right shoulder with enough force to kick her backwards onto the hard concrete. Her jaw flung open with a scream. 
The second shot went off like a bomb, amplified by the hollow walls of the massive tank. The bullet slapped the concrete barely an inch from her face, peppering her with enough concrete shrapnel to blind her left eye. Blood sheeted down her face as she tried to get up to run away, but her foreleg gave out beneath her damaged shoulder and she crumpled back into the dirt. She looked at the disaster of pulped flesh of her shoulder and felt panic rising into her throat. She could feel the third bullet coming for her, vividly aware that she wouldn’t register the sound before it tunneled into the back of her head.
Fear is a great motivator, and Aurora was feeling extremely motivated.
Half-blind and unable to use her leg, she kicked hard at the concrete to spin her back half away from the doorway. She screamed again as shattered bone and damaged nerves ground into each other, unaware of the third round that exploded through the open doorway and burrowed into the patch of concrete her head had occupied less than a second earlier.
She twisted her hips, rolling the rest of her body with them until she was completely out of sight of the doorway. She bit down on her lower lip hard enough to draw blood, tearing her attention away from the throbbing pain radiating from her ruined shoulder. She touched the wound with her good hoof and a shock of pain forced her to jerk it away.
“You are nothing if not a tenacious little cunt,” Autumn’s voice sang through the doorway. It carried the thrilled excitement of someone who had every advantage the game would give them, and she wanted Aurora to know it. 
Aurora clamped her mouth shut as she pushed up with her good foreleg. The crippled one hung uselessly beneath her. Carefully, she slid a wing beneath it and held it to her chest in a makeshift sling. Blood seeped into the corner of her lip from the slices left across her face from the second bullet’s shrapnel.
With her good eye, she spotted the black shape of the submachine gun she’d dropped at the edge of the doorway. She reached out with her wing, hooked the strap in a feather and dragged it towards her. She shifted her weight with a grunt of pain and reached a bit further for the magazine the stallion had dropped before running away. Now she understood why he looked into the tank before leaving. He’d known Autumn was waiting for her.
She didn’t have time to appreciate the deception. She flicked her wingtip and the magazine clattered across the cement with the reassuring sound of neatly stacked bullets.
“Miss Pinfeathers, your friend is becoming distraught,” Autumn chirped with mock concern. “I think she’d appreciate knowing whether you’re dead or not.”
Aurora sat herself up, sucking in shaky breaths as the pain washed through her like ice water. She settled the submachine gun between her wings. Its black surface took on a wet sheen as blood smeared over the stock. She fumbled the magazine, her feathers trembling from shock.
A mangled roar echoed through the facility. It was much closer now, she thought, and the constant chatter of gunfire keeping it at bay had dwindled to sporadic bursts.
Autumn began to hum.
Aurora set her jaw and tried to ignore it. It was an unsettlingly pleasant tune and the sadistic mare had an excellent voice for it. The notes had a strange cadance to it that resembled a lullaby, or something near it. She wiped her bloodied eye against her good shoulder and forced it to open. Through her imperfect vision she fumbled her feathers around the base of the bite trigger, trying to work out the mechanism that would release it.
She could hear the smile on Autumn’s lips. “Are you still with us?”
The words fell out of her before she could stop herself. “Will you shut-”
A bullet punched through the tank wall before she could finish and spat the submachine gun out of her wing. She jumped back and the weapon clattered to the cement, bearing a bright silver scar behind the barrel. It was little more than scrap now. She wanted to scream.
She hobbled away from the holed section of tank as quietly as she could, feeling the barrel of Autumn’s revolver following her hoofsteps. Everything was going wrong all over again.
“You’re out of cards to play, Miss Pinfeathers.” The mare’s hooves echoed against the floor of the tank as she strolled around its circumference. “Do the smart thing and give up. She isn’t worth dying over.”
Aurora disagreed. Near the rear of the tank she came to a vertical section of pipe that rose from the concrete pad and bent ninety degrees to connect to the uppermost lip of the tank. A feed line for whatever the container had been designed to hold. She steeled herself and limped to put it between her and where she thought Autumn was standing.
She was disarmed and badly injured. The only chance she had was to goad Autumn into making a mistake. How it would help her, she didn’t know. Even if she could get inside the tank without taking another bullet, she wasn’t sure if she had the strength to disrupt her magic. She felt like a string preparing to fight scissors.
“I could say the same thing about Cider,” she called.
A crack, a spark of metal and the descending whine of a bullet spinning off into the night. Aurora took a shaking breath and exhaled it. Autumn couldn’t have many shots left.
“Maybe I should have given him my Pip-Buck like he wanted.” She held her breath and braced for the next shot, but to her surprise it didn’t come. Several seconds passed in silence. Aurora frowned and realized just how quiet it was. The nearby gunfire had stopped, meaning either the deathclaw was dead or there were no other guards left to attack it. She wasn’t sure which reality she wanted to be true.
When Autumn finally spoke, the musical quality of her voice had shifted to something more suspicious. “You don’t have a Pip-Buck.”
She’d taken the bait. Aurora risked a tiny grin. “I did when I met him. He wasn’t happy when I refused to sell it.”
Autumn’s hooves moved toward the hole she’d shot through the steel wall. “You’re a liar.”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard her. “He followed me back to Junction City and cornered me in Ginger’s shop. She convinced him leave,” she said, deliberately leaving out the part where Ginger had threatened to emasculate him with a shard of her own ceiling tile. “So he waited behind her store until I came out to use the outhouse. I think he wanted to kill me, but once he took my Pip-Buck off he started to get more familiar with me than I liked.”
Aurora let the words hang there for a moment, waiting to see if Autumn would waste her sixth and final bullet. She’d seen enough Appleoosan movies to know why a six-shooter was called a six-shooter, and her best guess was that Autumn’s revolver was one in the same. After she fired Aurora would have a narrow window to react. There were no guards to save Autumn now. If she could get around the tank and close the distance on Autumn before she could reload, she stood a slim chance. It was better than nothing. 
Instead, the answer she got was more pensive silence from the other side of the wall. She sucked on her teeth and kept searching for the exposed nerve that would get a reaction from the unicorn. “He said something to the effect that my Pip-Buck would change lives. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t even know who he was. All I knew was what he was going to do to me, so I did what I had to do to stop him.
“I kicked him in the throat,” she said. It felt good to say it outloud. To admit it. Her words had their own momentum now. “He was good as dead at that point, but I helped him along anyway. I beat him to death with my Pip-Buck while he choked, and then I dropped him into the outhouse. Your brother was a problem that needed to be fixed, Autumn. I’m glad I was there to do it.”
A slow breeze slithered through the facility, carrying with it the tang of spent gunpowder and blood. Aurora listened to the shaking breaths coming from the narrow beam of light that pointed out from the perforated tank. She’d found Autumn’s exposed nerve and driven a red hot nail through it.
“So it was you.”
The deadly chill in her voice pulled Aurora’s hackles upright. She leaned to see around the pipe at her back and realized the finger of light spilling from the hole was gone. Her stomach dropped when she saw Autumn’s narrowed eye glaring back at her.
Her vision went emerald and a familiar dread washed over her. 
She couldn’t move.
No, no, no, she thought.
Autumn backed away from the bullet hole and a small ring of the same light covered its sharp edges. The steel panel began to groan as the hole warped along a growing network of fissures. Aurora could only watch as quarter inch steel peeled outward like the petals of a blooming flower until the gap was wide enough for Autumn to drag her inside.
Aurora struggled as she was carried over the crumpled pile of chain link where she’d come so close to killing Autumn hours before. Ginger strained to see over her shoulder, her eyes wide with renewed fear. Tears spun down her cheeks as she strained to open her mouth, and Aurora understood why Ginger had been silent for so long. Autumn’s magic glittered dimly along her muzzle, keeping it shut.
The suppression ring lodged around Ginger’s horn was still there. The air around it shimmered like waves off a stovetop.
The world pivoted and Aurora was facing Autumn. Her hooves struck the ground hard, shoving a wave of pain through her shoulder. Autumn held her firmly like a foal’s toy and stared at her with murder in her eyes. This was what Ginger had been forced to look at since the moment she arrived. Those green eyes, empty of remorse or sympathy, promising a slow death.
The muscles in Autumn’s jaw went tense. 
Her horn burned with searing light and Aurora hurtled backward like a thrown grenade.
She spun like a ragdoll and the far wall struck her with an echoing boom. She woke up on the ground, dizzy and lost. Blood had pooled beneath her muzzle and she could taste more of it in her throat. Behind her, Ginger had finally been given her voice. She was screaming for her to get up.
Autumn’s magic scooped her off the ground and pitched her before she could brace herself. Her body crashed through the pens and slammed into the corner of the tank hard enough to startle a weak cry from her lungs. She tried to speak but her voice rolled out in a half gargle, choking on her own blood. She coughed into the air and it rained down on her face in thick gobbets.
Ginger’s voice rang in her ears. “Stop!”
Distantly, Aurora knew this was going badly. It was getting hard to breathe. Something in her chest wasn’t working right. She opened her eyes and suffered through the dizziness until she found Ginger. The mare was flailing against her restraints, the ring on her horn taking on a dim red glow. Aurora blinked the blood out of her eyes and thought she saw a grey streamer of smoke coiling above the unicorn.
She tried to straighten herself on the mangled fence but the world slid around her and she slumped back down.
The tank took a nauseating pitch downward. It took several seconds for her to understand she was being held up by her outstretched wings and even longer for her eyes to focus on the blood-crusted mare grinning in front of her. Autumn stood inches from her drizzling muzzle. To Aurora’s right, Ginger shook against her chair hard enough to make the feet dance against the metal floor. The ring on her horn glowed red like freshly smelted iron.
It’s burning her, she thought despairingly. The ring is burning her.
Aurora struggled to hold her head aloft. She watched as Autumn produced her revolver and slapped open the cylinder. One round left out of six. She blinked slowly. At least she’d gotten that right. The cylinder rotated until the single round lined up with the firing pin. It clicked shut and the hammer bent backward with a metallic crunch.
“Open your mouth.”







Ginger was intensely aware of two things. The first being that Aurora, a mare whose courage she’d grossly underestimated, was about to die. The second being that her skull felt like it was about to catch fire.
It started as soon as Trotter hammered the suppression ring onto her horn. At first it came in brief waves, like a headache that wasn’t sure whether it was committed to sticking around. But it got worse. Her first reflex to danger was to use her magic, and Autumn had spent close to twelve hours bringing her to the brink of death only to jerk her away at the last moment. She’d lost count at how many times her horn had tried to light, only to have the impulse pounded back into her head like a short circuit.
The stimpacks were making it worse. Something about them was wrong. It was like they were simultaneously trying to heal her and kill her. The headache had evolved into a migraine. For the last few minutes, the migraine had become something undefinable. The pain was a living hell that grew worse by the second. She’d lost track how many times she’d lost consciousness only for the residual healing effect of the stimpacks to wrench her back to the present. It was a never-ending slideshow that she had no power to stop, and now Aurora was back to watch it happen.
She watched Autumn fling her against the walls of the container as if she were shaking a bug trapped in a jar. The sounds Aurora made were too much to bear. Magic and raw emotion made for a potent combination, and the suppression ring was fighting against the massing pressure like a floodwall against a storm surge.
“Open your mouth.”
She jerked at her restraints, knowing what was coming next. She needed to get out of this chair. Aurora dangled by her wings close enough for her to touch, crucified on the very air that had carried her here. The pegasus was bloodied and beaten. Barely alive. Autumn’s gaze flicked to Ginger for a moment to ensure she was watching, and she smiled.
Aurora didn’t have any fight left in her. Autumn’s pistol levered itself between the mare’s teeth, lifting her head straight as the barrel slid into her mouth. Ginger heard Aurora gag and felt a sob rise in her throat.
Ginger didn’t want to watch. She lashed out at the pistol with her magic and shook violently as it rebounded.
“I want you to think about how much damage you’ve done,” Autumn seethed.
Aurora was looking at her and her breath caught in her chest. Her bloodied left eye, the one focused most intently on her, streamed with tears. Her mouth worked around the barrel of the gun, forming the words I’m sorry.
“How many lives you’ve stolen,” the mare continued.
Ginger grit her teeth and tried to take the gun. Her magic battered against the ring and rebounded off, but she wrinkled her muzzle and pushed back. Tears escaped the corners of her eyes as she gathered all of her pain, all of her regret and funneled it into the bottleneck. She could feel the pressure building in her skull. The odor of burning bone scratching her nose. The shape of something she didn’t understand taking form in her mind.
“And the fact that no matter how hard you tried, you died a pitiful little failure.”
Dark tendrils of smoke sputtered from the red-hot ring. Behind a black wisp, a flicker of something bronze.
“Goodbye, Aurora.”
Ginger screamed.
The ring exploded.
And then there was light.






It was blinding.
Aurora opened her eye and realized she was on the ground. In front of her nose, the handle of Autumn’s pistol, the hammer still cocked. She coughed hard, painting the back of the revolver with blood and spittle. The wet sound echoed strangely, as if the walls of the tank had grown much closer. She blinked to clear her vision and tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
Past the revolver, laying on the ground near the pens, Autumn stared at Aurora with open confusion. Her coat was a different shade than it had been before. Slowly, Aurora realized everything was the wrong color, like a terminal after someone screwed up the hue value. She looked at her foreleg, seeing no difference, then back up to the tank around her. Everything else had a faint hint of bronze to it. Everything except for Ginger, Aurora and a perfect circle of untouched steel that surrounded them.
Autumn staggered to her hooves, blood pouring freely from her nose. “What the fuck did you do?”
Confused, Aurora followed Autumn’s accusing glare. Still bound to the chair, Ginger had her head bowed in deep concentration. Bronze light thrummed around her horn, creating a gentle wind that stirred her mane. A charred stripe stood where the ring had been.
“Ginger?” Aurora croaked.
The unicorn shook her head once and said nothing. Aurora gathered herself and stood, uneasily, pressing against the floor with her wings to keep her balance. She flinched as Autumn lifted a broken padlock from one of the pens in her magic and pitched it at Aurora’s head, but something struck it halfway between them and it bounced harmlessly to the floor.
A dim ripple of light spread from the point where the lock had struck, tracing the faint shape of a dome around them. 
Aurora’s eyes widened. “It’s a shield.”
“How?” Autumn barked.
Ginger didn’t answer. Flickers of bronze sparked off the heavy buckles holding her straps in place, and they fell away. Aurora limped toward her to help her down, but found herself being pulled into a hug instead. Ginger buried her face into Aurora’s good shoulder and held her there for a beat before parting without comment. The expressions passing between them were enough.
She stood aside as Ginger turned toward Autumn.
The color drained from Autumn’s face as two narrow crescents of tangible magic peeled away from the surface of the dome. Aurora recognized the motion. She’d done the same thing with Cider, only then she’d sheared off a piece of her shop’s tin ceiling to create the blade. The shield flowed into the gaps as two bronze lengths of magic swept down and settled against either side of Autumn’s neck. The mare froze in terror.
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
“Why.”
Ginger was panting now, the exertion taking its toll. A narrow rivulet of blood trickled down Autumn’s neck where the blade sank below the skin. Autumn tipped her chin up slightly, too afraid to move. Too afraid to answer Ginger’s question.
“You took my livelihood from me,” Ginger continued, breathing hard. “Kidnapped me. Put a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger.”
Aurora hadn’t known that. She stared at Autumn as if she’d become a new kind of monster. Kill her, she thought.
“I know more ways to die because of you than I ever wanted to. And you just stood there, torturing me over and over again, telling me how you were going to make this world safe.” Ginger’s voice shook. “And you had the audacity to think you have a place in that world?”
Autumn straightened, but only a little. “Sacrifices have to be made before Equestria can be healed. Just look at what you’re doing, Ginger.” She tipped her chin toward the shield, then looked down at the crescents pressed under her chin. “S-structured magic. No unicorn’s been able to perform it since the bombs fell.”
Ginger’s lip curled away from her teeth. “Do you expect me to thank you?”
Autumn shook her head, the motion drawing fresh blood from Ginger’s blades. “N-no! But maybe I could help you. This whole ordeal with my brother was clearly a mistake on my part, and it would only be fair if…”
Aurora bent her mouth to Ginger’s ear. “She’s stalling.”
Ginger took a deep breath and nodded. She stared at Autumn through the shield, her lips forming a white line. “It’s like you say, Autumn. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices.”
In perfect tandem, the twin blades swung away from Autumn’s neck and snapped back shut. Autumn’s body went rigid. Then she screamed.
Her horn tumbled across the floor and rolled to a stop against Ginger’s shield.
“No! What did you do?!” Autumn scrambled to the ground and scooped up her horn in trembling hooves, staring at it in abject horror as blood traced dark lines across the bridge of her muzzle. Emerald sparks crackled from the stump of her horn, cleaved clean as if done with a pipe saw.
Ginger released the shield with a gasp. It ruptured at its apex and dribbled away like a waterfall without a source. The blades hovering behind Autumn faded, the blood that stained them landing on the rusted steel floor like rain.
Gentle bronze light lifted the horn from Autumn’s hooves and set it down on the bloodstained chair. Autumn’s face screwed up with rage. Her mangled forehead flickered weakly. The two mares watched Autumn absorb the fact that what had happened couldn’t be undone.
She stared at them. Then past them, her eyes becoming unfocused. Like that, the fight was gone from her. “Just kill me,” she muttered.
Ginger sighed and picked up the revolver in her magic. The cylinder opened with a click and the last bullet slid out. She set the pistol down in front of Autumn, and the bullet beside it. “Do it yourself.”
Autumn stared up at Ginger, her mouth hanging open. Then she looked down at her revolver. Her stump sputtered and she shuddered a quiet sob as she awkwardly knocked the bullet over with her hoof. It rolled away toward the pens. Slowly, she got up to chase after it.
Aurora looked at Ginger and was surprised to see tears pooling in her eyes. She nudged her, getting her friend’s attention, and tipped her head towards the door. “We should go.”
Ginger blinked rapidly and nodded. “In a second.”
A light bloomed within the tool drawer set atop the toppled cabinet and two familiar syringes leaped toward them. Ginger pressed the injector tip into Aurora’s good leg and the sharp pop-hiss of its centuries-old pneumatics pumped the healing serum into her bloodstream. The swift rush of painkillers and long-forgotten spells felt like crushed ice tumbling through her veins. 
The sensation was relief in its purest form. The narrow gashes across her cheek sealed together and her vision began to clear. She shuddered at the sensation of the shattered bones in her shoulder drifting into place like a puzzle determined to solve itself. Severed nerves knit themselves together. New muscle grew where Autumn’s bullet had carved a path of destruction. It startled her to see the flattened bullet pop out of the wound and she looked away as new skin flowed over to close it on both sides. 
Her eyes landed on Autumn who had managed to get the bullet onto the flat of her hoof. Autumn stared down at the nugget of brass, oblivious to Aurora’s restoration. She wondered if she would still be here whenever the Enclave got around to paying her a visit.
A hoof patted her on the shoulder, pulling her attention away. Ginger held the last of Autumn’s stimpacks out to her. “Here. In case you need another dose.”
Aurora curled her wing around, her feathers glowing with Ginger’s magic for a brief moment. Her shoulder was a mottled collection of bloodstains and new skin. The pain was melting away with each passing breath. Using it would be a waste.
“Actually,” she said, “there’s someone else here who might need it more.”







The security door at the bottom of the stairwell waited patiently for the correct keycard. Aurora knew where that keycard was, but she didn’t feel like rooting through Autumn’s pockets. Besides, she knew this type of door. It was the same model that blocked off the machining floor from the generator room back home. No matter how fastidious they were about keeping the ground swept, metal shavings inevitably got caught in the seams and jammed it shut. This door had a sibling she loved to hate.
“Straight up?” Ginger asked.
“Straight up, then let me push. I’ll let you know when to set it down.”
The heavy door took on an amber glow and Ginger let out a short grunt. It slipped up into its frame by barely an inch, just enough for the pins to lift out of the sockets on the other side. 
“Hurry up, this thing weighs a ton!” Ginger complained.
It weighed a third of that, but Aurora didn’t think Ginger would appreciate the object lesson. She leaned her recently healed shoulder into the door and pushed. The bottom edge caught the rubberized mats on the other side and she had to extend her legs to force them out of the way.
“Julip, cover your ears! Ginger, shove it over!”
Ginger gasped and shifted her magic to the top of the door, pushing it free of its frame and sending it toppling into the room like a felled tree. Three hundred and some odd pounds of metal slammed flat against the floor with an explosion of noise that shook Aurora’s chest and threw a choking cloud of dust toward the caged pegasus on the other side.
Aurora and Ginger squinted as some of the dust washed back into the stairwell, stinging at both their eyes. Julip arguably got the worst of it, her green feathers dulled with a fine coat of grit as she shielded her face.
“That’s her?” Ginger asked.
Aurora made a face, a little unsure of herself now that she was here. “Yeah, that’s her.”
Julip lowered her wing and watched the two of them approach the cage with distrust. “What the fuck is going on up there? Why the fuck are you back here? And who the fuck is she?”
Ginger pursed her lips into the forced smile Aurora had begun to expect when she was withholding a cutting response. Aurora cleared her throat. “We’re letting you out.”
Julip backed away from the cage, her shattered wing held tightly against her side. “If you open that door, I’ll kill you.”
Energy spiraled up Ginger’s horn and Aurora had to quickly settle a wing over her shoulders to ease her. Ginger looked at her for reassurance. “It’s fine,” Aurora said, and brought the edge of her wing to her teeth. She nipped a feather out with a wince and sat down to work on the old lock.
Julip glared between the two mares in turns before walking to the corner of her cage where the terminal sat, covered in fine dust. She swept it off the screen with her working wing and grimaced as static pulled the dust back in. “I’m not giving you the encryption key. And you didn’t answer my question,” she said, and began pecking at the keys with a primary.
Aurora scraped the inside of the lock with the feather clutched between her teeth. “Whifsh wun?”
“The one about what happened up there,” she said flatly. The fire in her voice was gone now that Aurora had called her bluff. She wanted to get out of here worse than they did. “Either I lost my mind down here or I heard a deathclaw earlier.”
Aurora nodded, gently raking at pins. “Thash mecause I let it here.”
Julip looked up from the screen at Ginger. “You speak ponish?”
Aurora felt the silence settling in the room and glanced up at Ginger. She was staring down at her with deepening concern. 
“You led a deathclaw here?” she asked.
The lock clicked. She snapped the end of her feather off inside and gave it a twist. Old hinges creaked as the mesh gate swayed open. Julip looked over her shoulder at the open door and frowned before turning back to peck at the terminal.
Aurora dropped the feather and stood clear of the cage. “Well, yeah. I needed a distraction.”
“Celestia’s sun, Aurora.”
“Kind of hard to believe, given there’s no deathclaw nests around here for miles.” Julip said. The terminal flickered and a black bar began to gradually fill with green. Above it, a simple graphic displayed a sheet of paper fluttering into a trash bin. “Where’d you find it?”
Aurora watched the familiar display screen. “An old restaurant. Delicious Apples or something like that.”
“Red Delicious,” Julip corrected. “That’s Mac’s territory.”
She made a little shrug. “He’s dead now.”
“Doubt it. Mac’s a legend. Been around for at least a century or more,” Julip said. “He doesn’t die, he just gets meaner.”
Aurora tried not to think about that.
The progress bar finished and prompted Julip with a simple Y/N prompt. She pressed a key and the terminal stuttered for several seconds before shutting down. Behind her, the trio of servers ticked off one by one. She stood up and turned around. With a swift kick, her hoof caved in the terminal’s plastic shell and the monitor shattered with a pop. 
“I wasn’t kidding about that key,” she said.
Aurora glanced at Ginger for clarification, but the unicorn shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Julip looked between them. “He didn’t send you?”
“Who?”
“The little shit-for-brains Autumn keeps around as her maid. Quincy.”
Aurora frowned at the floor, remembering seeing Quincy cursing into the night like someone had set his tail on fire. “Why would he have sent us?”	
“For the same reason Autumn dragged me here,” Julip said. She flicked the terminal’s debris off her hoof and cautiously approached the open gate.
Aurora held out her wing, offering the pegasus the last of Cider’s stimpacks. Julip’s eyes went wide. “Bullshit,” she whispered.
“For your wing,” Aurora added, as if to clarify why she was giving it to her in the first place. “I’m not interested in whatever Autumn was trying to do here. All I wanted to do was fix a mistake.”
She snatched the stimpack out of Aurora’s wing and lifted it close to her nose, squinting at the faded labels printed across the syringe. They waited patiently as she held the glass up to one of the lights on the wall, tipping the liquid this way and that to examine the flow for impurities. Inevitably, she found none. “What’s the catch?”
Aurora shook her head. “There isn’t one. I just didn’t want you to starve down here.”
Julip looked at the two of them, the doorway behind them, and then at the syringe. She sighed and sank the injector into her hip. She hissed through clenched teeth as the medicine went to work straightening the uneven fold of her wing and mending week’s worth of older traumas. When it was finished, Julip carefully lifted her wing. Slender green feathers ruffled against the inside of the mesh as she stretched it to its full wingspan.
Ginger noticed the question on Julip’s face and answered before she could ask it. “Autumn had a stash of them from an early exploit. That was the last one.”
Julip shook her head, unwilling or unable to make sense of a charitable gesture coming from two ponies who owed her nothing. She stepped out of the cage, slowly, and shook her head again as they made room. “I’ll… put in a good word for the two of you when I’m debriefed. It’s the best I can offer in return.”
Ginger thanked her with a polite nod, still visibly uncomfortable being in such close proximity to an agent of the Enclave. Aurora smiled a little more broadly. “Safe travels, Julip.”
“Likewise,” she answered, stepping atop the toppled door and into the stairwell before stopping. She looked back at them as if deciding whether to add something. Whatever it had been, she decided against it and hurried up the stairs.
Ginger waited until Julip’s hoofbeats faded before looking at the ruined terminal she’d left behind. “She certainly knows how to keep her secrets.”
Aurora scanned over the trio of unfamiliar black machines and the thick bundles of faded wires. Somewhere within that purged data had been the coordinates to something Autumn had called Solace. It was a mystery she didn’t have time for, but it didn’t stop curiosity from nibbling at the crumbs she’d been given.
“I don’t think I’d be able to hold out as long as she did,” Aurora agreed. She bent her neck from side to side, enjoying the relief as it cricked. “I think I’m ready to get out of here.”
Ginger sighed and followed Aurora to the stairs. “I don’t suppose we can ride your deathclaw back? I’m not looking forward to the walk.”
Aurora laughed. The first real laugh she’d enjoyed since they arrived at the gate of Blinder’s Bluff the night prior. She couldn’t shake how strange it was that one day could feel like months. As their hooves echoed up the steps, an idea formed in Aurora’s head. 
“Actually, I was thinking we could skip the walk,” she said. “How strong is your grip?”








It took ten minutes for Ginger’s chokehold to relax into something approaching a headlock. It took another twenty for her to stop screaming at the abrupt adjustment Aurora made when they passed through the unpredictable crosswinds that the pegasus insisted were weaker than the ones she’d flown in on. It took several agonizing miles for Ginger to believe that she wasn’t going to accidentally slide off the mare’s back and fall into the endless void. 
Gradually, reluctantly, she admitted that for a pegasus who hadn’t known how to fly barely a week earlier, Aurora had taken to the skill like a duck to water.
That said, she wasn’t about to loosen her vice grip around Aurora’s neck. Resigned to enduring the trip with as little complaint as she could, she pressed her head between Aurora’s shoulders and watched the rhythmic fluttering of the mare’s outstretched feathers.
An hour into their flight, Aurora turned her head and yelled, “How’re you doing?”
Ginger had to play back the words in her head to make sense of them over the deafening wind. “Better,” she yelled back. “Aren’t you tired?”
“A little,” Aurora said. “Wind’s a lot calmer, though. We’ll make it. Can you see the fires back there?”
She made a face. “Where?”
Aurora laughed beneath her. “Everywhere.”
Ginger didn’t appreciate being laughed at, but the genuine excitement in Aurora’s voice made her curious. She pulled herself forward and peeked over Aurora’s shoulder. Below them flickered a dozen or more points of orange firelight, some close enough to see the long shadows they cast and even more so far away that they barely registered against the black. She imagined this must be what it felt like when the ponies of old looked up at the stars.
“You can truly see everything up here,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s beautiful!” she said more clearly. And she meant it. Watching the fires drifting below gave her a sense of perspective she’d never experienced before. They were all little tribes, hiding around their little lights in the dark hoping to be unnoticed by their neighbors. She felt a pang of grief for something that had never been hers to lose. Philosophizing on why the war happened and what went wrong was grossly out of fashion, but here she lay wondering why ponies who had a beaming future chose to exchange it all for ash and sorrow.
“You okay?”
Ginger nodded against her shoulder. “Sorry, just lost in thought.”
Aurora turned her head to look back at her. “Anything you want to talk about?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s nothing.”
Aurora’s gaze lingered on her for a moment before she nodded, facing back into the wind.
Something sour twisted in Ginger’s gut. She tried to distract herself with the distant campfire below but her discomfort didn’t subside. Aurora had risked her life and the lives of the ponies at her Stable to save her. And after she failed, she came back again. She lured a deathclaw, a predator twisted into existence by the very balefire that ended a civilization, with no guarantee that her second attempt would fare any better.
The sight of the deathclaw dragging the wreckage of shattered wagons into the warehouse had chilled them both. Mac, as Julip called him, had stared up at them as they lifted into the air. The ground around him looked like the canvas of a painter at the edge of insanity. Bodies - pieces of bodies - lay bent beyond the limits of their anatomy. Sprays of blood covered everything like wild brush marks. The warehouse had been where the carnage came to its gruesome finale simply because Mac had run out of ponies to slaughter. And so when two ponies slipped through the air above him, he looked up and watched.
She had seen an intelligence in the creature’s eyes that belied its bestial reputation. It made her wonder whether Aurora had lured the deathclaw, or if the creature had simply known she would lead him to a feast.
She was grateful when they spotted the caravan of ponies trickling north from the solar array. A few carts had made it out along with dozens of haggard looking ponies carrying little except the skin on their back. Aurora had flown low enough for Ginger to make out the iron glint of collars around many of their necks, easily outnumbering the ponies without.
Ginger’s stomach twinged with guilt. “It’s…” her lip twitched with unsurity. “It’s not nothing, Aurora. I’m sorry I lied to you.”
Aurora glanced back at her. “When?”
She cautiously worked her jaw. “At the cabin. When I told you I didn’t have a mark. You deserved better than that.”
“Autumn said you used to be a slaver,” Aurora hedged.
Shame filled her chest like a ball of lead. She nodded. “I grew up with it. I never stopped to think…” She realized she didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Aurora gave her time to consider her words. The old defenses buzzed around her head like flies and when she recited them in her mind they felt just as worthless. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was too young to understand. It was a long time ago.
They flew through a crosswind and Aurora tipped into a gentle bank to compensate. For a moment Ginger thought she was falling. Her heart thundered against her chest and she took a shaking breath, her mind suddenly clear.
“I never apologized to any of them,” she said. The wind swept her tears away as they formed. “And I never did anything to make up for it. I just pretended it never happened.”
They flew for what felt like hours in the silence that followed. Ginger didn’t know what else to add. Everything that came to mind cheapened the first honest sentiment she’d expressed to anyone other than herself. Aurora simply flew.
“You’ve done awful things,” Aurora finally answered. The words caught her off-guard like a slap. “You’re going to have to own up to that at some point. Make it right.”
Ginger nodded. “I know.”
“The way I see it, you’ve already taken a step in the right direction.” Aurora looked back at her with a warmer smile than she thought she deserved. “You did a good thing. A lot of those slaves have a shot at going free.”
Ginger pursed her lips. “That was mostly you, darling.”
She felt Aurora chuckle more than she heard it. “Learn how to take a win, Ginger. I don’t know a lot about magic, but that shield you made had Autumn shitting bricks and that mare knew how to hit. You did something significant.”
“I know,” she admitted. “I think the stimpacks had something to do with it.”
Aurora turned back into the wind. “Shame we don’t have more.”
“Maybe. I feel like I could do it again without the stim. It’s kind of like… I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words. I could feel how it was supposed to work.”
“Ah, maybe not while we’re flying.”
Ginger smiled. “No, definitely not. I really don’t know how to explain it.”
“Well, let me know when you do. I’d like to hear it. But for right now, if you want to forgive your past you’re going to have to do something with your future.” Aurora’s wings widened as they slipped into a weak thermal, pushing them into each other. “It’s something my dad used to tell me, at least.”
Ginger smiled. “I like him already.”
She felt Aurora shrug. “I was a pretty shitty to him when my mom died. I like to think that if I can keep our Stable from collapsing, I might be able to look him in the eye again.”
“I doubt you need to set the bar that high, Aurora. He’s your father. I’m sure he still loves you.”
“Yeah,” she said thickly. A moment passed, and she cleared her throat, powering over the wave of emotion. “He told me so right before I left. Still doesn’t change the past, though. So I move forward. Same goes for you. You’re going to move forward. No more hiding what you did and no more lying about your mark. First chance you get to negate some of the evil you’ve done, you do it. Deal?”
Ginger tightened her grip around Aurora’s neck. “It’s a deal.”
The next hour went by in companionable silence. Ginger still felt a twinge of guilt for marring what Aurora no doubt intended to be a shared experience with the scars of her own past, but the sting was lessened by Aurora’s own admission. The two were far from equivalent. Ginger knew the road she had to travel dwarfed Aurora’s by comparison, yet Aurora had come from a place of genuine remorse. It was a rare salve that helped more than any prewar chems ever could. For the first time in years, she felt like the future might hold something brighter.
“Hey Ginger?”
Her ears perked up as much as the steady wind would allow. “Yes?”
“When was the last time you saw the sky?”
She quirked her head at what sounded like a nonsense question. The sky was there every day of her life. It wasn’t anything anyone ever bothered paying attention to except for when the odd radstorm moved in. The sky was so unchanging that most ponies forgot about it entirely. You could only see the same endless expanse of clouds before it just blended in with the scenery.
Ginger opened her mouth to ask Aurora what she meant when she saw the pegasus had her nose turned up toward the dimly illuminated masses above them. She watched them with her. They seemed close enough to touch. Then it occurred to her what Aurora meant and her heart quickened.
“Never,” she said. “Not once.”
She felt a shiver run down Aurora’s back.
“Me neither,” Aurora said. “You up for a detour?”







They began their slow ascent toward the dense ceiling of clouds one wingful of air at a time.
Aurora could feel Ginger’s anticipation grow as they drew closer and closer to the billowing black mammoths overhead. Her grip tightened by degrees as the approached, her chest swelling against Aurora’s back as perspective changed the clouds from an amorphous ceiling to a hazy line that divided the world of nightlit fires below and a shifting mass of black above.
They coasted along the hazy edge for a couple miles so that she could rest her wings, slipping in and out of the natural boundary between the cooler layer of air that the clouds had slid across without interruption for two centuries. Even with the remnants of Autumn’s pilfered stimpack in her blood, carrying a passenger this high was hard work and the familiar burn of overworked muscles had returned. Once it subsided enough, she pulsed her wings and took Ginger into the clouds.
The mist wrapped them like a cool blanket. Beads of water formed on Aurora’s nose and her dappled gray coat turned a darker shade as the moisture soaked in. The air felt thicker and her wings were definitely heavier, but the chilling moisture gave her a second wind. Her wings pounded against the damp air, leaving swirling trails of mist in their wake. They slipped higher and higher into what felt like the depths of an impossible ocean in reverse. Aurora started to worry. She could feel the ascent. She knew it was happening. But the unchanging mass of fog gave no clues to how high it went. It occurred to her that she might not be able to do this.
“Ginger, this might’ve been a...”
The words caught in her throat. 
As if waiting for its cue, the mist abruptly sank below Aurora’s hooves and the night sky erupted with stars. There, lay before them like diamonds, was eternity.
Aurora’s mouth hung open with awe. Thousands upon thousands of stars glittered in perfect clarity. From one horizon to the other, a breathtaking band of lavenders and pinks clustered dense with starlight hung above them like a lost treasure. To the west, Luna’s moon was well into its descent, the unique geology of its craters forming the mythic silhouette of a mare in crisp detail. Aurora had never seen anything so perfect and pure. Even her father’s gardens paled in comparison to the vast beauty that encompassed them.
The wind changed against her wings and she realized she’d begun to stall. It took a force of will to tear her attention off the night sky - the true sky hidden from the world below by her fellow pegasi - and concentrate on flying again. She dipped back toward the sheet of clouds below and leveled out a few meters above with a flap of her wings, pushing them into a gentle glide.
Ginger shuddered against her and her grip slid from around her neck to her shoulders. Aurora looked back, expecting her to be shivering from the damp. They both looked like drowned rats from the ascent and Aurora already had a few quips ready to lighten the discomfort. What she saw wasn’t anything she expected to see.
Ginger was nearly sitting upright, brought short only by her tenuous grip on Aurora's shoulders. She peered up at the sky with unguarded wonderment, her jaws clenched and her eyes shimmering with windswept tears. She swallowed, gasped, and bit down on the sob that lodged in her throat as she drank in the last vestige of natural beauty Equestria had to offer. 
Aurora cleared her throat and faced forward, the stars smearing in her vision.
After several minutes, her swell of emotion seemed to level out. Aurora subtly adjusted to the change in drag as Ginger settled back down between her wings, her forelegs once again weaving together around her neck. Then Ginger leaned forward, close enough for her mouth to brush below Aurora’s ear, and pressed her lips into her cheek.
“You really are something special, Aurora. Thank you.” Ginger said, her eyes lifting back toward the stars. “Thank you for all of this.”
A warmth filled Aurora that made her heart flutter. Her wings beat against the wind a little more eagerly. The aches from the ascent were a distant memory, replaced by something else. Something that briefly pushed the traumas of the day out of focus.
Wrapped by a moonlit vista that generations of ponies had gone their entire lives without seeing, one clutching the other, they flew north together.








Rainbow Dash pressed a blue feather against the rim of her empty glass, tilting it to one side until the remains of her ice clinked. She creased her lip, eyeing the basket of bread rolls. Any more of those and she wouldn’t have room for dinner, if it ever arrived.

As restaurants went, the Brass Bit was generally considered too middle class for the ponies that she knew from the ministry, but Canterlot wasn’t all upper crust and old money. At least, not to the degree that rumors led her to believe back in Cloudsdale. It cost a tall stack of coins to live this close to the castle, that much was to be expected, but as Rarity had recently reflected, there was always less glamorous work to be done and ponies willing to do it.

	The owners of the Brass Bit had seen a niche and swooped in to fill it. Instead of serving trendy dishes and gourmet delicacies, they offered dinner without the show. Hayburgers, soups and salads were their specialty, though recently they had put meat on the menu to capitalize on the growing tourist traffic from Griffonstone. Rainbow didn’t have a stomach for the stuff and had to bite her tongue when Jet Stream requested steak.
	He sat across from her, smiling with polite neutrality as he sipped from his glass. His tricolored sunset mane was trimmed short, not much different than the stallions she’d trained with on the Wonderbolts. He had requested privacy ahead of their meeting, and a fabric-lined partition normally reserved by larger groups had been rolled across the dining room to accommodate. They had half the restaurant to themselves, which was ideal for the purposes of their meeting. The other half of the restaurant was bustling with the sounds of music, clinking cutlery and conversation. All signs that everyone on the other side of the partition had been served their food.

	Rainbow stared at the empty square of tablecloth between her utensils. Her stomach groaned.

	“It normally doesn’t take this long,” Jet said, wearing the same half-smile that had spent more time on the front of the Manehattan Times than some of its columnists. JetStream Aerospace had taken Equestria by storm over the course of the last decade, abruptly recategorizing the concept of space exploration from fantasy to reality despite the princesses’ quiet attempts to steer public opinion - and his investors - against the idea. It almost worked, but Jet Stream had caught wind of what was happening and poured his company’s remaining funds into a mad rush to launch something - anything - into space. The move would have bankrupted him and arguably killed Equestrian space exploration in its infancy if it weren’t for his infamous tenacity. 

The launch had taken place eleven years ago, in a paved-over swamp south of the glittering lights of Las Pegasus. Not everything had gone right, but that hadn’t been the point. The point had been that not enough things had gone wrong to scuttle the launch. At the end of the day, a radio beacon barely larger than a coffee can was sailing above Equestria at 17,000 miles per hour, its eerie chirp being heard in every village and city the world over.

Jet started to get up. “I’ll see if I can flag someone down.”

Rainbow motioned with her wing for him to sit. They had already commandeered half of their restaurant. Late or not, she liked the food here, and she didn’t want to be known as the ministry mare who complained about their service. “Give it another fifteen. It’ll give us time to pin down some of the terms of your proposal.”

Jet sat back down and flattened his tie across his straw-colored chest. His full attention shifted toward her like a physical weight, the food forgotten. It nearly caught her off-guard and she began to wonder if the unusual delay from the kitchen wasn’t a business tactic meant for that express purpose. She wouldn’t doubt it if it was.

He nudged his water toward the center of the table and leaned into the empty space where his plate should have been. “I’m all ears.”

“My main concern is the cost, Jet.” She picked a roll out of the basket and nipped at the buttery crust. “It’s too much. There has to be a way we can pair that down to something reasonable.”

Jet nodded. “Two billion is the pared down version. Leaving Equestria’s atmosphere isn’t inexpensive, and SOLUS isn’t small. My team expects a minimum of eight launches to bring all the components into orbit. That’s all figured into the budget I sent you.”

Rainbow chewed on the roll, thinking. “How many launch failures is your team expecting?”

“Only one, but we’re hoping for zero.”

She nodded and set down the half-eaten roll before she ruined her appetite. “I imagine you’re accounting for damage to the launch pad and tower in the event of that failure.”

His smile widened. “In fact we are. Are you asking me to remove that contingency from the budget?”

Rainbow returned his smile with one of her own. “I am. Your proposal doesn’t mention a reimbursement for unspent funds, and while I respect what you’ve done to advance Equestrian science over the years, I have a feeling that any money we give you will be spent down to the last bit.”

She could see the gears spinning in his head as he stared at her from across the table. He picked up his bindle of utensils and slipped one of his feathers under the cheap paper strap that held the napkin around them. It split apart with a gentle flick of his wing and he began laying the silverware out onto the table in neat, parallel lines.

“You’ve done your research.”

“Of course I have,” she said. “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

It took a moment for the compliment to register. Jet’s smile softened into something a little more genuine. “Can I assume that means you believe the data we’ve published?”

Rainbow hesitated. Not because she wasn’t, but because admitting it was taboo bordering on heresy. JetStream Aerospace hadn’t shied away from sharing its science with the world, and that included an intensely divisive publication that crowned gravity, mass and momentum the true masters of the sun and moon. It had been a widely debated theory for the better part of the recent century, but the hard data pouring down from JSA satellites offered hard proof that Celestia and Luna, while powerful, were not as powerful as they claimed.

	She leaned back in her chair. “Can I assume this conversation doesn’t leave this table?”

	Jet nodded. “Off the record. Not as if we were ever keeping one. I’m just curious.”

	Just curious. Rainbow admitted she couldn’t think of a more neutral way of telling someone she wanted to know if they had rocks for brains. She offered a half-shrug. “It’s not even a debate. If Celestia could move the sun, she wouldn’t need the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon or Discord. Heck, they wouldn’t need us,” she gestured between the two of them with her wing, “to spend all year managing the weather. The princesses could do that in their sleep.”

	Jet picked up his glass and took a sip. “Not to disparage the hard work of Cloudsdale’s finest cloud wranglers,” he said, “but have you had the opportunity to see the wild storms in Griffonstone?”

	She shook her head. “I’ve been there, but it’s always been overcast. I’ve only heard of the storms out in zebra country.”

	Jet made a face. “Propaganda,” he said flatly. Rainbow blinked surprise at how casually he placed the accusation on Rarity’s doorstep. It wasn’t inaccurate, but it was the first time she’d heard it spoken so plainly outside her own office. “The zebras have their issues, but the Ministry of Image makes it seem as if they’re backwards savages.”

	“They worship the stars,” Rainbow offered.

	“We worship the sun and moon,” he countered.

	She didn’t have an answer to that.

	Jet took a deep breath and sighed. “I apologize. I’m not being fair to your colleague or her accomplishments as an Element of Harmony.”

	“It’s fine,” she said, waving him off. “Off the record, and all.”

	He smiled, but it came short of reaching his eyes. “Thank you. It’s just, seeing the world from up there makes all of this seem so… petty.”

	Rainbow’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve been?”

	He nodded. “Only once. Suborbital, a few years ago. We barely left the atmosphere, but it was far enough out to let me see how truly small we all are. I could hide Equestria and Vhanna behind my one hoof. The fact that we’re both willing to die for the other side’s dirt flies in the face of so much logic. That’s why I designed SOLUS in the first place. I want this war to end.”

	She quirked her lip and nodded. “You and everyone else in Equestria.”

	“And Vhanna,” he added.

	She nodded out of politeness rather than agreement. “I’ll be honest, Jet, and this stays strictly between the two of us. The princesses won’t approve anything if it means government bits are flowing your way. You’ve already accused them of propagating a lie that has kept them in power for a millennium. You and I both know EASA is years behind what your people at JSA are doing up there, and they’re not going to want to green-light a project that makes them look worse.”

	Jet’s nose wrinkled with irritation. “They would be playing a direct role in ending the war. How does that make them look bad?”

	It was a non-question. He knew why, but he wanted her to say it anyway. “Because it makes you look good. I know it’s narrow-minded, and I can’t speak for…”

	He interrupted. “It’s childish.”

	She lifted her wings in a shrug. “Jet, they’ve ruled Equestria on their own for longer than our history books go. They think that the girls and I broke through Luna’s insanity with the magic of friendship. Why do you think they still look for help whenever these things happen? They’re children.”

	Jet stared at her with an expertly neutral expression.

	Rainbow felt her pulse quicken. She looked down at the chewed roll sitting in front of her, cursing herself for letting her mouth outfly her brain. She wasn’t sure if what she’d just said broke any laws, but she knew it could easily cost her position in the Ministry. 

	“I can’t say I disagree.”

	She looked up and saw the same concern hung over his face that she felt in her chest. The princesses were easily the two most powerful creatures in Equestria, but they shied away from conflict with almost comical regularity. Except nobody was laughing at this war. It was a tragedy in every sense of the word. Even though the fighting was taking place an ocean away in the east, everyone saw the funerals playing out over the air. This war didn’t have a villain, and the princesses were ill-equipped to deal with it.

	She had to work hard to keep the relief she felt from hearing him agree with her off her face. Some of it slipped through anyway.

	“I can move some things around with the initial budget. It would be cheaper on the front end but I’d need you to agree to pay for any failures if they do happen, launch or otherwise.”

	Rainbow nodded and picked up her glass of ice. She fished out a melted cube with a feather and popped it in her mouth. “It’s a start.”

	Jet’s brow furrowed. “That’s my bedrock. I can’t cut anything else.”

	That was what she was afraid of. “Do you have an estimate?”

	He inhaled slowly and shook his head. “Assuming everything goes perfectly and there’s no mistakes, which has never happened in the short history of aerospace? One point eight billion. One point seven five at the very lowest.”

	“Celestia won’t sign off on that.”

	“What about Luna?”

	Rainbow shot him a frown.

	He sighed and ran his hoof through his short-trimmed mane. “So that’s it.”

	She almost said yes. The word danced on her tongue for a long while as she thought about what saying it would mean. JetStream Aerospace had been floating the proposal around for half a year, but nobody had bitten. Who would? The cost was astronomical, no pun intended, and it relied heavily on theoretical science and untested magic. He was basically handing out invitations asking for someone to put their wealth in the same basket as a lit stick of dynamite.

	But if it worked, it could solve the core issue that started the war in the first place. The dying could finally stop.

	Rainbow Dash rubbed the space between her eyebrows and felt her stomach clench. SOLUS wouldn’t get an inch off the ground without funding, and the Equestrian government was the only single body with enough bits to foot the bill. Celestia and Luna would never sign it. Not when it would seem they were bowing to the private industry that had spent the last decade hurling mud at them.

	She looked at Jet and took a slow breath. “The Ministry of Awesome can finance it.”

	Jet didn’t react, but she could sense a change in his demeanor just the same. “Are you sure?”

	Her resolve was already beginning to solidify. Taking risks, especially crazy ones, wasn’t a habit she’d been able to quit. “I’m sure. The princesses shovel bits into my ministry faster than I can spend them at times, and SOLUS technically qualifies as experimental technology. I’d need some time to restructure, though. Three months. Maybe longer.”

	“And if the princesses find out?” he asked. “They’ll try to put a stop to it. I don’t want to get halfway to the finish line and be forced to stop running.”

	She fished another cube out of her glass and pocketed it in her cheek. “I know how to finish a race.”

	He didn’t look convinced.

	“Three months,” she repeated. “Maybe longer, but it’s definitely doable. If the princesses do figure out what’s happening, you’ll already have bits in hoof. I’m not technically breaking any rules by helping you, either. Worst case, I lose my job.”

	“Worst case,” he said, “you find out where Celestia really banished her sister.”

	She shrugged. “Small price to pay for peace.”

	Jet chuckled. “Well said. We have a deal, Rainbow Dash.” He held a wing across the table and her smile widened into a toothy grin. She clasped his wing in hers and gave it a firm Cloudsdale shake.

	“So, where do we go from here?” she asked, settling back into her chair.

	Jet took the opposite route and pushed out of his. “Right now, I’m going to go find out where our waiter went. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
> Chapter 14: Rough Landing
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 29th, 1075

	Dad called and asked if he could come visit me sometime. He’s still living at his apartment in Ponyville but he says he wants to try making it up to Canterlot at least every month so we can hang out. I want him to try, but I don’t think mom does. Maybe it’s not a good idea. Ms. Tureen says I should give them time and that love is complicated. She’s one of the lunch mares at school and she’s always complimenting my mane. She’s super jealous of the stripes. Anyway, she says that I should give dad a chance and that mom just needs time to heal. I just want us to be a family again.
	
August 3rd, 1075

	Yesterday was… weird? I share a table in Contemporary Arts with a pegasus named Violet Meadows and she’s such a nerd, but like in a cool way. Like, she’s super smart. I think she’s the only pony I’ve met that gets that excited to learn. Even in the most boring class on the face of Equestria. Bleh. To each their own? I only took it because I thought we’d be making stuff like pottery or paintings, but it was a trap! It’s a second history class but worse. But hey, at least I know why kinda maybe Ponet painted blue squares instead of yellow squares. Awesome. Great. For Luna’s sake, the guy is dead!
	Anyway, Violet keeps us all awake by asking really good questions. I’d be failing if it weren’t for her. Yesterday we were learning about the sculptor who designed the statues in Celestia’s garden - I still think it was Celestia - and Violet asked how he knew when he’d carved deep enough. I’m not great at templating, but I know enough to explain how it works, and I answered her question before Mr. Tillshare could. Now I know what it must feel like to be one of her books. She completely derailed the class by asking ME questions and Mr. Tillshare made us move to the hallway so he could finish teaching.
I’ve been working on a scarab carving that I’ve been keeping in my locker. The woodshop teacher lets me come in during my study hall to work on it. Since we were already in the hallway, I took Violet to my locker and showed it to her. Most ponies usually just say my carvings look good and that’s it. Violet looked at it like it was a Reinbrandt. She asked if she could have it when I finish it and gave me this huge hug when I said sure.
So, I guess Violet and I are friends now?







Fiona worked her fingers across the switchboard with a deft skill that few of the ponies living below her fire tower rarely had the opportunity to see. Working down the sliders on the right side of the board, she queued up a fresh record with her left. She’d been working the boards so long that she didn’t have to look at what she was doing - just muscle memory and instinct for the right blend of sound. Careful not to touch the recorded surface, she lifted the played out vinyl between two taloned digits and settled the new record down with a practiced movement of the same hand, all as she monitored the needles of two volume meters as they bobbed and swayed with her voice.
She stole a glance through her cab’s line of west-facing windows and squinted, letting her lilac eyes adjust to the hazy bubble of light that grew on the overcast horizon. Time to wrap up.
“Well, ladies and gentlecolts, it’s a new day and that means your dearest friend Flipswitch needs to sign off to catch a few winks before all the good ones are taken.” She smiled at her double entendre as much as the pliable skin behind her sand colored beak would allow. “Thank you all for tuning in, and if you’re a new listener just passing through, keep your dial on Hightower Radio 99.5 FM with your very own Mare On The Air. Bringing you good news and good company during these long and lonely nights.”
She added a sultry sway into the final words as she signed off, knowing the ponies below would be eating it up like candy. It was crucial that she knew what the residents of Blinder’s Bluff wanted to hear, especially the Rangers who allowed her to tap into the juice provided by the Stable below. Without that, there would be no Hightower Radio or the free, albeit cramped, lodging that came with it.
A quick series of button presses and the new record spun up with the first twanging lyrics of If I Had a Great Long Pistol. Fiona snorted as she imagined the raised eyebrows and bawdy laughter coming from the homes and bars below. She slipped out of her headphones and pushed away from the desk, stretching her heavy wings until her feathers bent against the surrounding windows. Ponies always built things two sizes too small for her, but that was a complaint she had grown out of years ago. As far as she was concerned, it beat breathing poison in Griffonstone.
Picking up a bottle of something falsely advertised as rum that she’d been taking pulls off of for the last hour or so, she stepped over a plastic crate of records she hadn’t gotten around to cleaning and walked out onto the narrow catwalk that rimmed her tower. She finished off the bottle and set it down on the railing, trying to enjoy the meager heat of Lime’s weak alcohol. 
A steady breeze lifted the long, striped feathers that hung down the back of her neck. The ponies below had come to call the unruly sprig of “mane” zebra feathers, though they meant no harm by it. The old hatreds of their war had cooled over the centuries, aided sadly in part by growing evidence that most zebras had been wiped out during the tumultuous years that trailed the bombs. Occasionally the odd conversation about the war would crop up at one bar or another and sometimes spread from table to table like a virus. Debates about who pushed the button first and which side, if either, had the right to do it. Two hundred years later some ponies still got well and truly heated over it, especially the ghouls. Most ponies had the decency not to bring up the war around them, but some did it just to antagonize the decrepit creatures. Some of that was the liquor. A lot of it ran deeper than the drink.
Fiona avoided those discussions.
She dipped a talon into the neck of the bottle and tilted it to one side, admiring the hand-drawn label. Hoof-drawn, in the case of Lime Royale. Every one of his bottles featured a charcoal sketched label depicting aspects of the wasteland he thought reflected the drink. His rum always featured two radscorpions, their pincers locked together and barbed tails intertwined. A rough sketch of the southern desert wrapped the bottle. It cost 2 caps for a shot and 100 caps for a bottle. Most of the patrons of his bar, aptly named Someplace Else, came for the cheap drinks and not the overpriced artwork. However, given Fiona’s isolated circumstances atop the bluff, he offered her a deal. She paid fifty for the bottle, close enough to what he’d make on shots, and got some caps back if she returned the empty. Since his was the only bar in Blinder’s Bluff with a ceiling high enough where she didn’t have to duck, she was happy to make the trip back.
She pinched Lime’s bottle between her fingers and set it down next to the doorway where it wouldn’t break.
The thought crossed her mind to make a quick flight downhill and exchange the bottle for a late dinner, and her stomach seconded the idea with a rumble. She squinted at the horizon and judged the long shadow cast by the western hills. It was getting close to the end of shift for Lime’s night bartender. She got along especially well with him. A tingle ruffled her fur and she smiled. If she played her cards right there was a good chance she could walk out of Someplace Else with dinner and a show.
Fiona cracked her shoulders and readied herself to take off from the railing. As she spread her wings, her ears quirked to her right. The southern wind was being rowdy this morning, and it was carrying voices.
“Pull up!”
“I’m trying!”
She turned to witness the strangest thing she’d seen all week. Two ponies, grey and brown, flapping toward her tower like a pair of birds fighting over the last bit of fermented fruit. As she narrowed her eyes, she realized only one pair of wings was flailing in the crosswind. The other was clinging to the pegasi’s back like a wet cat on a raft. 
It was the mare from two days prior. The one who said she killed Cider. If that was the case, then the mare clinging to her back was the unicorn being blamed for the crime on all the city’s bounty boards. 
And if they didn’t slow their descent, they were going to fly head first into the side of Blinder’s Bluff.
“Shiiit,” she groaned.
She kicked off the railing hard enough to shake the tower, giving her wings a single, billowing flap. Not enough speed to keep her airborne, not by a long shot, but enough for her claws to build onto as they sank into the hard soil. She lunged forward and burst into a sprint. 
The two ponies lurched in the swirling winds that whipped the rim of the bluff. Fiona’s thick tail swung out like a rigid whip to adjust her own trajectory, aiming for the piece of cliff they were sailing toward.
She met Aurora’s eyes just long enough to see recognition bleed through the fear. The pegasus swung her rear hooves forward and threw the last of her strength into braking her speed with a weak pulse of her little wings. It gave Fiona enough time to slide her hind legs in front of her, slide over the ledge and cling to the jagged rocks with her wings spread wide.
Even though they were relatively small, they slammed into her chest like a pair of bowling balls. She grunted and quickly clapped her wings around them, saving them from what promised to be a long and messy fall.
Aurora stared up at Fiona through a tangle of grey and brown feathers, half her face painted dark with dry blood. All the winged pony could manage between pants was a single, meager syllable.
“Hey.”







Aurora collapsed onto the dirt as soon as their gryphon savior had carried them well away from the cliff’s edge. She sprawled onto her back and sucked in the cool air with her eyes pressed firmly shut. She wanted nothing more than to feel the hard ground beneath her aching bones and relish the first bit of rest she’d had in nearly forty-eight hours.
“I’ll see if I have any water,” Fiona said once they were free of her feathers. Their response came as a pair of shallow nods, too exhausted to speak. She hesitated before walking back to the old watchtower. 
Ginger stood near Aurora, stretching her legs until the joints in her knees let out several dull cricks. Satisfied, she sat down and blew out a sigh of relief. Aurora agreed with a sigh of her own. What an absolute mess. 
With neither of them quite sure what to say, silence quickly settled in, disturbed only by the sound of their heavy breathing and the gryphon’s rummaging. Aurora felt the apology dancing on her lip like an obligation, but she knew Ginger would reassure her that their nearly disastrous landing wasn’t her fault. The crosswind had caught them both off-guard. But Aurora could feel the sharp burning in her wings while they loitered above the clouds, soaking in the view as the pure dawn sky lit around them like a torch. She knew she was pushing herself too far. The three hour flight stretched into four. Then five. Ginger had asked if she wanted a break and her idiot pride answered in the negative. She didn’t want to go back below the clouds. Not ever.
She kept herself in the air for nearly six hours. Guilt pressed her into the packed dirt like it intended to bury her.
You need to apologize, she told herself.
She looked at Ginger and knew she would try to reassure her. Try to tell her that she had been witness to something that no sane-minded pony would want to fly away from. Aurora had begun to understand that Ginger was forgiving by nature. Not of herself - not easily, anyway - but certainly for those she cared about. If Aurora wasn’t going to allow her to wallow in self-pity, Ginger had no intention of letting Aurora beat herself up either.
Aurora exhaled and watched the clouds tumble overhead. Despite the deep ache in her wings and her searing lungs, she still felt drawn toward what she knew was beyond that blanket of mist. Until now, stars had always been white dots on the dark pages of her foalhood story books. Having seen the real things filled a part of her that she never knew was empty. It was like knowing a secret that nobody else knew, except that she shared it with someone else.
She turned her head and looked back at Ginger, whose ocean blue eyes had lifted toward the sky as well. Her shoulders seemed trapped in a half-slump, bowing but not quite resigned to the weight of everything that had happened to her. Aurora felt compelled to put a wing around her and pull her close, but stopped short of acting on it. Ginger didn’t have the look of a mare that wanted to be coddled.
The tower’s frame rattled and Fiona landed on the packed dirt with a soft pair of thumps. She held a foggy bottle by the neck in one hand, her thumb acting as a cork. Amber liquid sloshed inside. 
“Didn’t have any water, but I had this.” She sniffed the mouth of the bottle. “It’s brandy, I think. Maybe. Either of you interested?”
Ginger looked at the bottle’s dubious contents and shook her head with a polite smile. “No, thank you.”
Aurora declined tool, even though she hadn’t had anything to drink since being ambushed by a deathclaw named Mac. “I’m going to need a clear head to negotiate with Ironshod. Thanks anyway.”
Ginger frowned. “Who?”
“The stallion who has my Pip-Buck.”
“Why would…” she paused, and seemed to realize for the first time Aurora’s foreleg was bare. “Why in Celestia’s name would you give away your Pip-Buck?”
The maybe-brandy sloshed as Fiona took a swig. “You talking about Paladin Ironshod? Big unicorn, grey coat? Kind of an asshole?”
Aurora rubbed a hoof against her foreleg and nodded. It occurred to her that neither of them knew what had happened, or why. So she told them. The interrogation, Ironshod’s realization that she lied about being part of the Enclave and his insistence that she not be allowed to leave until she could offer him something of equal value. 
She told Ginger about the state of Stable 6 and how it was only a power surge away from being rendered inhabitable. The Enclave had stripped it bare generations ago, leaving the Steel Rangers and the ponies who built their sprawling town around it without a safety net should the worst happen. In exchange for her freedom, Aurora had offered to locate schematics for the one piece of equipment that the Rangers had never been able to get their hooves on: a fabricator.
“It makes sense that he’d want collateral,” she said. 
She dug her hoof into the dirt until a crescent shaped mound grew around its edge. Ironshod had taken her Pip-Buck with such casual confidence that she didn’t know what he was doing until it was levitating away from her. She tried to take it back and he had pinned her to the air like a butterfly. In that moment, she knew she’d lost. 
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “It has everything on it. And now he has it.”
Ginger’s leg settled over her shoulders and squeezed, pinning a wing between them. “We’ll get it back.”
Aurora allowed herself to be pulled into Ginger’s shoulder and nodded at her hooves. She couldn’t shake the feeling that for the last five days she’d done little except dig herself deeper and deeper into a hole that she didn’t know how to get out of. Ginger had nearly been killed. Roach was a prisoner, hostage or both. She wasn’t sure if the Rangers knew the distinction. Her traveling companions wanted to help for reasons that were their own, but a part of Aurora wanted it to be over. She wanted to go home, fix her generator and seal herself off from this beautiful nightmare of a world even if it meant Ginger and Roach would be on the other side of that door.
It was too simple of a solution, and she knew it. Ever since Junction City, the journey had gotten more complicated than she ever planned for.
“Hey.”
She looked up and realized she’d gone quiet. Ginger watched her with growing concern. “Are you okay?”
Aurora smiled. It was almost believable. “Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m fine.”
Glass clinked against the pebbles, interrupting the moment as gently as the gryphon knew how. She twisted the neck of the bottle left and right until the bottom sat flat on a disc of somewhat level soil. “If you need help with Ironshod, I could always talk to him.”
The offer hung in the air for a beat before curiosity pushed Aurora to ask, “You know him?”
Fiona’s beak cracked into an immodest grin. “In a sense. He and I used to meet more often a couple years back, before he made officer. Biggest feature on that stallion is his mouth.”
“Oh,” Aurora nodded, not quite catching her meaning. She stole a glance at Ginger who was sitting stock-still, lips pursed and eyes firmly fixed on the ground. It clicked. “Oh.”
Her reaction drew a bubbling laugh from the gryphon. She picked at her talons, her wide smile softening into something more genuine. “Sorry,” she chuckled, “too much?”
A miniscule smirk tugging at the facade of polite disinterest Ginger had been putting on. “Possibly a little.”
“Not to say any help you can offer isn’t welcome,” Aurora amended, giving Ginger a subtle flick of her tail. Whatever Fiona knew, and however she learned it, was her business. “Though we are in between caps right now.”
“Who said anything about paying?” Fiona said. “Ironshod’s always been an opportunistic prick, but extorting a Stable pony and sending her out into the Wasteland without even a gun is borderline raider behavior. Knocking that out of him would be a service to more ponies than just the two of you.”
Aurora frowned, forming her words carefully. “Who said anything about me being a Stable pony?”
“Just about everyone, now that the Rangers from the wall have had time to gossip.” Fiona gestured a wing toward the north side of the bluff and the sprawling shantytown that clung to its side. “Ever since you three arrived, I haven’t been able to get a bead on a good story because all anyone wants to talk about is the mysterious pegasus from a numberless Stable. You’re a minor celebrity here.”
Aurora licked her lips and blinked at the dirt. This had to be a bad joke. She could only remember bits and pieces of the night they arrived at the wall, and the clearest of them were of her hastily trying to convince the guards that she was with the Enclave. She vaguely recalled saying something about her home, but she couldn’t be sure if that had been fatigue or radiation sickness talking.
She felt dizzy and squeezed her eyes shut. “Great. How much credit for that do you get?”
Fiona paused. “When you left, you told me that you killed Cider and that Ginger got stuck with the blame. I assumed that was for the broadcast so I’ve been airing the correction since you flew off.” 
Aurora groaned, and Fiona took on a defensive edge. “Listen, my reputation depends on me telling the truth. You can’t blame me for telling your story when you drop it in my lap without telling me what you want me to do with it.”
Aurora massaged the bridge of her muzzle. “No, I guess I can’t,” she sighed and looked up at Fiona. “Sorry. It’s just been a long couple of days. I just want to find Roach, get my Pip-Buck and pass out for a few months..”
The gryphon’s expression softened. “Well, after you’re, do me a favor and track me down. There are a lot of ponies down there who are going to want to know how you both got back here alive and I’d be willing to trade some caps if either of you are up for an interview.”
Aurora looked to Ginger. “Up to you,” she said.
“I’ll think about it,” Ginger said, and pushed herself to her hooves. “For now, I think it would be best if we found Roach. He has to be beyond worried by now.”
Aurora stood as well, turning slightly so she could stretch some of the soreness out of her wings. She offered Ginger an uncomfortable smile. “Is it alright if we walk?”
Ginger chuckled. “I think our chances of survival are better if we do.”
“My ribs thank you in advance for not forcing me to catch you a second time,” Fiona added. “Come on. I can get you some water on the way down.”








The walk down the bluff was leisurely compared to the exhausting hike to the summit. Aurora’s cheeks burned when they passed the shack whose alleyway she had unscrupulously watered on the way up. It wasn’t the proudest moment of her life, but at the time she’d been suffering with the side effects of RadAway and she gave herself a pass. To her relief, nobody burst onto the cobblestones to gnaw her ear off. Most of the ponies that were outside this early were busying themselves with their own morning rituals, and as Fiona had predicted, most of the eyes that did find her were accompanied by curious whispers.
They passed a pair of older mares working a makeshift clothesline across two posts mounted atop their opposing shacks, clipping damp blankets into the early morning breeze. A few drops of wash water sprinkled their backs as they passed underneath. “Good morning, Fiona!” the elder of the two mares called down.
“Morning, Rosehip!” the gryphon answered, then to the younger, “Morning, Miz Marble! Need a water bucket run down today?”
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid,” Marble smiled. “Rose?”
“Mmm-mm,” the other mare hummed around a mouthful of makeshift wire clothespins.
As they descended, it seemed like Fiona knew half the ponies living on the Bluff. Aurora lost track of how many stopped to say hello, compliment her on the broadcast or suggest a topic for a future show. More than a few spoke to Fiona with their eyes plainly on Aurora, the sight of so much blood in her mane curbing the curious questions they clearly wanted to ask. 
Aurora exchanged a weary smile with Ginger. Even being on the periphery of the swell of attention was exhausting. Fiona, for her part, took it in stride.
Neither of them were complaining. Fiona had saved both their lives after Aurora’s humiliating mishap at the cliff. The crosswind couldn’t have come at a worse possible time. 
The two of them had spent the better part of an hour coasting over the clouds, marvelling at rising disc of pure sunlight that warmed their skin. The sky around them morphed from deep blue to gentle pink as night gave way to day, and for the first time Aurora understood why ponies at the peak of their civilization could understand so much about the world and still believe that the sunrise was a thing of magic. 
When they reluctantly agreed that it was time to head down, Aurora had looked at the golden carpet of clouds below and remembered the old stories of pegasi walking atop them as if they were solid ground. Unbeknownst to Ginger, who thought Aurora was giving them one last look at the real sky before their descent, she had let the tips of her hooves slip into the feathery edge of the clouds just to be sure. It was silly and indulgent, but she had to know.
For a moment she thought she could feel something there. A little resistance. A whisper of support. But to her disappointment, her hooves slid through the mist and the illusion vanished. 
She hadn’t realized how tired she was until they were back inside the wilder winds trapped beneath the clouds. The stimpack Ginger had administered had done its job to heal her body, but the high that had pushed away the ragged edges of exhaustion was flaking away like old paint on rust. The familiar drag of sleep deprivation, a dreary heaviness behind her eyes that she learned to ignore during her many thousands of hours on the clock down in Mechanical, sank into her body like an anchor. She knew that she needed to land soon, but the long black shadows that stretched across the terrain below made her think about the monsters that might be looking up at her with hungry mouths, and she kept flying.
When they sighted the bluff, Aurora was struggling just to keep her wings open. Closer to the ground, the winds had eased off and she’d been confident that the last leg of their return could be done in a shallow glide. She’d stopped paying attention to her speed, her eyes locked on the rim of the approaching bluff, when the violent crosswinds that wrapped the granite walls threw her left wing skyward and nearly hurled them both into a roll. The sudden pitch was like a bucket of ice across her back and in her panic she overcorrected. The last one hundred feet toward the cliff had been a mad dance of flapping wings and yelling that ended with the two of them hanging off the ledge wrapped tight in a pair of massive wings.
Her cheeks heated at the memory of it.
“Ten caps,” the gryphon said.
Aurora blinked and looked up from the cobbles. Fiona trailed a few paces behind them, taking a dented metal pail and a small fistful of caps from a unicorn standing on his side of the gutter. They nodded amicably to one another and she loped toward the two mares, the empty pail clattering between her feathers as she slipped between them and resumed parting the thickening hoof traffic a few paces ahead of them.
Aurora was more than a little impressed at how easily the gryphon navigated the crowd. Fiona was, at her most conservative guess, twice the size of most the ponies they passed on the narrow street. By all rights she should have been tripping over them, but her body slid through them like a languid stream. Aurora realized she was staring and looked over to Ginger, only to see that she was making similar observations. 
Midway down the bluff, Fiona stopped a young stallion on his way up the hill with four sloshing wooden buckets bending the long yoke around his neck. A quick exchange of words and the ten caps from earlier trickled from her hand to his saddlebag, and her let her pour four equal splashes of water into her own bucket. The entire exchange took less than a minute. 
Fiona held the water out to Ginger who didn’t hesitate to accept it.
Aurora felt a layer of worry lift off her shoulders as she watched the unicorn drink. When Ginger was done, she offered Aurora the pail. The water was cold enough to hurt her teeth and had more than a few suspect bits of debris floating on its surface, but Aurora drank eagerly, each deep pull from the old bucket soothing her parched throat.
“Woah, woah, woah,” Fiona laughed, pulling the pail away. “I didn’t pull you off my cliff just so you could drown yourself.”
Aurora wiped the sides of her face where water had splashed around the wide rim, soaking her speckled coat to a dark gray sheen. “Thanks,” she gasped.
She looked to Ginger, who was smirking while she used the wet flat of her hoof to work the dull brown stains out of her foreleg. Flying through the mist had loosened their respective crusts of blood that had dried into long smears once they were below the clouds. Ginger’s wounds had been concentrated along her limbs where bone had ruptured skin. Aurora could feel the tacky pull of the mess that clung to her face and desperately wished for a shower.
Fiona finished the last of swirl of water and hooked the pail through the tip of her wing, the metal clattering rhythmically against her hip as they resumed their descent.
The sun hung a little higher over the horizon when they arrived at Redheart’s clinic. Aurora had expected to see Steel Rangers still posted around the door, blocking entry to everyone except their own while Roach waited inside. Instead, the street outside the clinic was bare except for a single earth pony loitering near the door, the stump of a cigarette glowing between his lips. He watched Aurora and Ginger as they pushed through the narrow doors, but when Fiona parked herself outside he stamped out the cigarette and walked on.
Aurora and Ginger found Nurse Redheart at the plain table and chair that served as her reception desk. The old ghoul looked up from some hoof-written notes on yellowed paper as they stepped inside, her sunken eyes lighting up with recognition. “Aurora! Ginger! You’re back! Oh, and you’re both a mess! What happened to you?”
Redheart’s chair scraped against the uneven floorboards and she hurried over to Aurora, her cataracted blue eyes worrying over the dry blood clinging to her coat. Ginger took the opportunity to push open the door to the recovery room where all three of them had been held, but after a beat she closed it and shook her head at Aurora.
“Is this your blood?” Redheart fretted, squinting at the swaths of bare pink skin on either side of her shoulder. “Honey, you really need…”
“Nurse Redheart,” Aurora interrupted, her eyes matching the concern on Ginger’s face. “Where’s Roach?”
Redheart paused for a moment and frowned, as if in deep thought. Her eyelids fluttered before finally coming back to Aurora. “I told them, I said that if they were going to occupy my hospital then I was going to bill each and every one. Once for fouling up my clean beds and another for scaring off my other patients. And they know I could do it! I knew Elder Coldbrook when he was just a colt and that still means something to...”
Ginger put a hoof on Redheart’s shoulder to slow her down. “Nurse Redheart, please. We need to know where Roach is.”
She wrinkled her nose at Ginger. “I just told you. I kicked ‘em all out. They’re all in that hole in the ground they love so much.”
Aurora gently pulled free of Redheart’s grip and nodded for Ginger to follow. “Thank you,” she said, holding the door open for Ginger. Redheart pressed her lips together and shook her head as the door clapped shut behind them.
Fiona trailed behind the two as they crossed back onto the cobblestones. “No luck?”
Aurora shook her head, heading for the same narrow crossroads that Ironshod took the first time around. “Sounds like they took him down to the Stable.”
“Huh,” Fiona said. “They probably stuck him in one of the interrogation rooms.”
“Why would they interrogate him?” Ginger balked.
“You’ve been there?” Aurora added.
A smile creased the corner of Fiona’s beak. “I doubt they’d bother, and it’s a long story. The short version is that a few years back I might have gotten caught trying to splice into more of the Stable’s power than the Rangers technically agreed to share. Ended up spending half a week answering questions about what I was really trying to do.”
A cart jangled up the cobbles and they stepped across the gutter to let it pass. Aurora bit the inside of her lip at the sight of the F&F Mercantile logo as it trundled by. She wondered how long it would be until word spread that the company was effectively dead and its merchants on their own. When the cart was well behind them, she crossed back onto the street. 
“And what were you really trying to do?” Ginger asked.
Fiona laughed. “Trying not to get caught. On a good day, I get maybe a few hundred miles of range off my power allowance. A little more juice and I could double that, and quadruple my audience. Might even be able to do some good.” Her smile tightened self-consciously. “I don’t know. Something.”
“Why not broadcast during the day when ponies are awake?” Aurora suggested.
“I can’t,” she said. “The cloud cover’s hard enough to broadcast through. Throw in the sun and all the weird stuff it does with the atmospherics and I may as well just use a bullhorn.”
It was an exaggeration, but Aurora decided not to pry at it. 
She led them out of the narrow street and into the wide cobblestone boulevard that rolled out of the base of the bluff. It was the same scene from two days before. Merchant carts lined the hoof-made street, many proudly wearing the dead F&F brand around their frames, while ponies gathered in milling lines around the ones that were open for business. The shacks that lined the boulevard were larger than the ones uphill and doubled as small businesses for the ponies who occupied them. Aurora noticed Ginger’s eyes pouring over some of the more decorated doorways and felt a familiar twinge of guilt. Ginger’s shop dwarfed the little storefronts of Blinder’s Bluff, but they had the advantage of still being in business.
They followed the cobbles to the mouth of the tunnel, careful to avoid stepping into the gap that was left between the stones and the prewar rails that snaked out from the entrance.
Passing into the tunnel, their hooves picked up a hint of an echo. Here ponies mingled with Steel Rangers around the pillars that held the stone ceiling aloft. Most of the Rangers wore the same ubiquitous brown uniforms as the rest, but here and there some boasted a different shade or stood sentry in battle-worn suits of power armor that rose to eye level with Fiona. 
Aurora looked squarely ahead as she heard nearby conversations trail off and felt the sudden pressure of dozens of eyes on her back. It took an effort of will not to spin on her hooves and walk back out of the tunnel.
“Luna’s grace,” Ginger whispered beside her.
Aurora’s ear turned.
If Ginger was concerned by the attention the three of them were drawing, she didn’t show it. Her eyes were glued to the yawning maw of Stable 6. It occurred to Aurora that in the same way that she had never seen the outside world until several days ago, Ginger might not have ever seen the inside of a Stable.
Fiona strode next to Ginger. “First time?”
Ginger nodded, never taking her eyes off the looming gear-shaped opening at the opposite end of the tunnel. “I’ve never been beyond Junction City,” she said. “I knew it was here, I just never thought to see it for myself. It’s massive.”
Despite it not being her Stable, Aurora couldn’t keep from feeling just a little pride at Ginger’s reaction. 
Fiona looked over her to Aurora, tipping her beak toward the doorway. “Is it anything like yours?”
In truth, it was eerily identical to hers. The tunnel, the Atrium, even the halls seemed to be laid out the same. It managed to comfort and unsettle her in equal portions. It was a taste of home. A home whose gardens had been made sterile by the ponies who created it, giving its first generation of residents the choice to starve or flee into the freshly irradiated wasteland. It only reinforced Aurora’s theory that her Stable had been built to fail.
“I hope not,” she said.
Fiona flicked her tail with bemusement but didn’t ask for an explanation. Aurora pushed away the thoughts of what might be happening back home and focused on the task in front of her.
Standing at the threshold with a battered clipboard in his hoof and a nub of pencil between his teeth, a familiar cobalt blue stallion scribbled notes as the pair of traders in front of him waited with their open saddlebags. Had he not stepped out of his power armor when Aurora left, she would have walked right past him without recognizing him. Aurora led Ginger and Fiona past the short line of waiting merchants on the semicircular platform, drawing several irritated stares, and stopped next to the earth pony that had stuck his neck out to help her.
“Hi, Latch,” she said.
He shot a quick glance at her as he inspected the contents of the saddlebags set in front of him. Then he frowned and turned squarely to face her, his one remaining eye rimmed white with surprise. “Holy shit,” he said, the pencil dropping from his scarred mouth. “You made it back!”
For a moment Aurora thought she was at risk of being at the receiving end of a hug, but Latch quickly bent down to recover his pencil and finished writing his notes. “Go on through,” he said to the waiting ponies. As the next trader stepped forward with a set of saddlebags suspended in silver magic, he looked between Aurora and Ginger as if he wasn’t convinced they were real. “How’d you convince Autumn to let your friend go?”
Aurora opened her mouth to answer but Ginger placed a hoof on her shoulder, stopping her.
“This may not be the best place,” Ginger said, glancing at a pair of traders in blue and white pinstripes near the rear of the line. She looked at Latch with a deliberate intensity, patting her hoof against Aurora’s recently healed shoulder wound. “Suffice to say everything turned out better than I expected it to. Our priority now is to see Roach and ensure he’s safe.”
Latch looked at Aurora’s shoulder, then at the dark stains that discolored her face. He stiffened with sudden understanding and nodded, turning back to the unicorn who was waiting impatiently for him to check her bags. They waited as he took her name and scribbled a few notes on the pad, his face a neutral mask. When he was finished he looked past the line to a Ranger standing guard on the other side of the platform. “Hey Alder, take over for fifteen. I’m gonna use the head.”
The Ranger looked at the four of them and sighed. “Sure.”
Latch traded off the pencil and clipboard and indicated to the rest of them to follow. “Your changeling friend is fine,” he said as they crossed the threshold. “He didn’t like being brought into the Stable, though. Kind of freaked out on us, if I’m being honest.”
Ginger shared a worried look with Aurora. “How is he now?”
“Like I said, he’s fine. Calmed down as soon as we got him into the Atrium,” Latch said.
They filed past the empty cells of the security office, making way for a trio of stallions on their way out of the Stable. One of them looked up at Fiona with recognition and quickly averted his eyes. “You still owe me twenty caps, quickshot,” she called after him. The stallion hurried ahead of his friends.
Latch held the switch to the Atrium door as the three passed through. He scrutinized Fiona as her wings brushed the sides of the door frame. “Client of yours?” There was an air of judgement in his tone.
Fiona lifted an eyebrow at him in mild defiance. “Not anymore. Why? Are you interested?”
Latch’s jaw tightened. “I have a wife, Flipswitch.”
“I prefer couples,” the gryphon countered.
Aurora swatted her wing at Fiona’s side and shot Latch a look she reserved for Sledge. “Whatever this is, knock it off. Please.”
Latch held up a placating hoof and nodded. Meanwhile, Fiona stared down at Aurora with a curious intensity that made the blood rush into her cheeks.
Ginger cleared her throat. “Latch, you said you know where Roach is?”
He nodded again, tactically choosing to browse the thin crowd of ponies milling about down on the Atrium floor.
Aurora noticed a few ponies were looking back up at him, their eyes lingering on the burns that scarred the right half of Latch’s face before turning back to the wide variety of shops and makeshift stalls that ringed the Stable’s main public gathering space. She couldn’t picture herself getting used to something like that.
“Yeah, sorry,” he said, pulling his gaze from the ponies below and settling his good eye on Aurora. He looked meaningfully at her shoulder. “You can tell me about the other thing on the way, then I have to get back to my post.”
“Wonderful,” Ginger said. “Fiona, this may be an ideal time for you to speak with Ironshod.”
Latch risked a glance at Fiona. “Can I ask why?”
Fiona answered him with a diplomatic smile and said nothing.
“Alright then,” he said. “Ladies, follow me.”
Aurora nudged Fiona’s wing as she walked past. “Thanks for helping,” she said.
The sandy furred gryphon looked down at Aurora, her expression softening by a few degrees. She watched as Latch led the two mares down to the Atrium floor and through the crowd. They approached the mouth of a corridor flanked by Rangers and disappeared inside, continuing whatever strange adventure they’d gotten themselves into.







Fiona took the scenic route.
She didn’t know the layout of Stable 6 well enough to ignore the faded guidelines on the floor, but there were a good handful of corridors she knew by heart. The residential areas on the first and second level were one of those places she knew very well. As she padded down one of those hallways, converted to barracks decades ago if not longer than that, she watched as Rangers coming the opposite way either looked at her with hopeful interest or sheepishly avoided eye contact altogether. 
Steel Rangers had an annoying habit of taking a girl to bed and conveniently forgetting their caps back home. Fiona’s policy was to give them until the next morning to pay up. Most did, but every week or so she would stroll into the Stable and pay the real deadbeats a personal and very public visit. It wasn’t often that she needed to make a repeat visit.
She nudged up against the right side of the corridor to make room for two scribes on their way to their duty stations. The taller of the two met her eye as they passed and she nodded in greeting. He nodded back and then they were behind her. She let her tail swing lazily from one side to the other, knowing there would be at least one set of eyes trailing her. She smiled to herself as she pushed open the stairway door.
After descending the steps to the second level, she encountered much of the same. Ponies milling out of their barracks, some watching and some not. A slender, caramel colored mare stopped her and asked if she knew any traders that carried records. A Knight warned her to keep her recreational activities out of the Stable. Fiona wore the same polite smile for each of them. It never paid to burn bridges she might want to explore in the future.
Down on the third level, the tone was much different. Save for a single scribe pushing an old broom the corridor was empty. Bright rectangles of scrap steel bearing the ranks and names of officers hung next to each door like a badge of honor. These were the ponies who had proven themselves to be worthy of a soft chair and a desk. It seemed like a demotion to Fiona, but then again, her entire occupation centered around a DJ’s desk. Stones and glass houses, she reminded herself.
Most of the converted offices were closed, but every third or fourth door stood open. It wasn’t an invitation for anyone to enter. They were the hallmarks of claustrophobia. Not every pony liked living under several million tons of rock, and an open door provided the illusion of escape. The stallions inside - because of course they were stallions - hunched over folders splayed open on metal desks or clutched nibs of pencil between their teeth as they wrapped up morning paperwork. Several of them glanced up from their work and watched her pass their offices with eyebrows raised. 
Visiting enlisted ponies was one thing, but she never came down here. Not to these corridors. Higher rank came with the reality that those who held it had more to lose should they step out of line, and Fiona’s primary form of income was very certainly out of line for ponies with access to sensitive information. Squeamish little things, but she didn’t make the rules. Elder Coldbrook did. It was amazing how a higher pay grade mandated a sudden dose of morality.
Near the middle of the corridor, she found herself at a closed door with a dull plate marked PDN. IRONSHOD. She raised a knuckle to the steel and gave it a sharp set of knocks. Through the thick door she could hear a familiar rumble of profanity from the other side.
“Ma’am,” a voice came from down the hall. “He’s in a meeting.”
An orange head had poked out of the nearest open door. She gave him a winning smile. “Not the meeting he needs to be in, honey.”
As if on cue, the door slid open and Fiona turned to see the irritated grey face of Paladin Ironshod. For a split second he didn’t seem to realize he was staring at her neck. When he looked up, she saw the briefest glint of recognition in his eyes followed by the subtle slackening of his jaw. She smiled at his oh shit face and looked past him to the stallion sitting across from his desk. 
A senior knight she didn’t recognize, gaunt and barely able to fill in his uniform, looked between her and his ranking officer with confusion. Then something clicked in his head that told him he didn’t need to be a part of whatever this was and he dutifully found somewhere else to stare.
“Flipswitch,” Ironshod said, his voice hard as granite. “What brings you down here. To my office. Where I work.”
Fiona smiled. “I need a few minutes of your time, Paladin. It’s important.”
“I told her you were in a meeting,” Orange added.
Ironshod ignored the intrusion and glared up at her. “You know better than to come down here. You need to leave.”
She moved forward and leaned against the door frame, forcing him to take a step back. “Sure. Once we talk.”
It occurred to her that Ironshod had the option to press the door switch and send a quarter ton of steel square into her back, but she was willing to bet his mind was miles away from that possibility. He was fairly high up the proverbial Ranger totem pole. Not at the top, but near enough that a fall to the bottom would be painful. He wouldn’t risk assaulting her. Not where there were witnesses who had their own careers to protect, anyway.
She settled in and waited for him to decide whether to let her in or try to pressure her to leave.
His tail snapped at the air, resolving to stand in her way. “Make it quick.”
She quirked her head. “I’m not sure that’s a topic you want me to discuss in the hallway.”
Ironshod stood stock still, affronted by the insinuation. Fiona gave him a pleasant smile and looked over at the senior knight desperately trying to ignore the exchange behind him. She was breaking one of her own rules by disclosing details of Ironshod’s... limitations, but she wasn’t going to get him to hand over a Pip-Buck through an open door.
His eyes bore into hers with barely contained anger. “Knight, get out.”
The stallion didn’t waste any time. His chair squeaked against the floor and he muttered a quick, “Excuse me,” as he squeezed past Fiona.
“Inside. Now,” he growled and made his way around the desk. Two old bookshelves, one wider than the other, stood against the back wall on either side. Trinkets and bits of scrap that held stories known only to him were organized across the shelves in an attempt to give the bare office a personal touch. He even had books - real books in their original bindings - leaning along the top shelves of each. 
Fiona eyed the decorations as she entered, closing the door behind her. She waited as he lit his horn and neatly stacked a spread of papers into a worn folder on his desk. He opened the top drawer, dropped the folder inside and slammed it shut. 
“What do you want, Fiona?”
She considered the empty chair the Knight had left behind and decided it was too small for her. She hooked it with her tail and slid it to the far wall, choosing to sit on her haunches in the space it had occupied. “It’s not what I want. It’s what my friend wants.”
Ironshod pulled his chair back, sat down and steepled his hooves against the desk. “I pray you’re not referring to your…”
He trailed off, shaking his head. 
She fixed him with a cocked eyebrow. “My what?”
He scowled at her. “Nevermind. What does your friend want?”
Fiona watched him in silence for a good stretch. Let him wonder, she thought. And sure enough, she could see the idea forming in his mind. The temptation of possibility. The quiet hope that she’d come here only for him. It had been, what, two years since he last asked for her company? Ironshod didn’t make it out of the Stable most days anymore. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“You took something from the pegasus that came here a couple days ago. I’m here to take it back.”
Ironshod leaned back. “That item was freely given. And either way, the pegasus is gone.” He swiped the air dismissively. “Dead, most likely.”
“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” she said.
He shrugged and spread his hooves. “Free shelter, plentiful water, untainted food? She lived more comfortably than any other pony in the Wasteland. No, I can’t say I’m beside myself over a Stable pony’s first experience with hardship.”
Fiona nodded slowly at the floor, feeling a tickle of anger pressing behind her mask of calm. She blew out a calming breath and regarded him with the same predatory stare that she used on stallions who were especially stubborn about parting with their caps. “Have you ever listened to my broadcast?”
The question made him hesitate. “Once or twice,” he admitted.
“Been to any bars this week?”
He frowned impatiently. “Get to the point.”
She stood and ruffled her wings, subtly advertising her size without being too overt about it. Ironshod watched her in silence as she stepped around his desk and lifted one of the books off the shelves behind him. Centuries of neglect had worn the title off the cover, and the pages had fused together into a brittle brick of paper. Ironshod visibly relaxed when she set it back on the shelf.
“Don’t take this as a threat,” she said, and turned to face him. Sitting as he was, she towered over him. “It’s more of a warning. You and I both know that I have a certain amount of influence on the Bluff, and that’s because the ponies here know they can trust me. For the last several days my show’s gone on a bit of a tangent. Cider’s death was the first real bit of good news I’ve gotten to report on in months. It’s no secret that he victimized the ponies here. A lot of them. Ponies that your Rangers were supposed to be protecting.”
Ironshod stiffened. “The Steel Rangers are not responsible for-”
Fiona snapped her fingers at pointed squarely at his nose. “Shut up. I’m not done.”
He eyed the razor sharp talon hovering inches from his muzzle and raised his hooves, surrendering the argument. She dropped her hand to the floor and collected herself.
“My point is, the Bluff hated Cider even more than they hate the Enclave. Once word gets out that Aurora Pinfeathers was the pony who killed him - and it will get out - she’s going to have half the town fighting the other just for the chance to thank her.”
Ironshod stared up at her, unimpressed. “And you think they’re going to be angry at me for taking her Pip-Buck. Fiona, if I had a cap for every pony in the Bluff that didn’t care for my decisions, I could retire right now.”
She smiled at him the same way she smiled at a plate of iguana bits. “I’m surprised, Ironshod. I always had you pegged for a big picture kind of stallion.”
He blinked confusion.
“Here’s how I see this playing out.” She stepped toward him, her shadow sliding over his lap until she saw the flash of discomfort in his eyes. It was exactly the reaction she wanted. “I’m going to fly back to my cramped little tower and host a special daylight broadcast. I’m going to tell the Bluff that the pegasus you had detained was the one who killed Cider, and that she was forced to fly alone to his bitch sister’s base of operations to save the life of an innocent unicorn. A unicorn whose bounty was a lie that your Rangers allowed to be advertised without so much as questioning its motives.
“And once her heroic story wraps itself nice and tight around my dear listeners’ hearts, I’m going to tell them how Paladin Ironshod stripped that naive Stable pony of her Pip-Buck, confiscated her weapons and supplies, and sent her to face Cider’s sister in her place of power. Naked, afraid and alone. Because the best outcome for you was for Aurora Pinfeathers to die.”
Ironshod didn’t move. “That’s not... entirely true.”
“It’s true enough.” She leaned down and nudged her cheek against his until her beak was nestled against his ear. She had been here before. Judging by the sharp uptick in his breathing, he remembered too. “You have a choice. Give me the Pip-Buck and this story goes away. Your reputation will be safe. You’ll probably even keep your job.”
She slid back just enough to look Ironshod in the eye, her voice dripping with threat. “Or you do nothing, and I burn your house down around you.”
It took a beat for him to yank himself back to reality where Fiona’s threat lay bare for him to see. His face contorted with disgust as he shoved the chair out from under him and took a wide step away from her. “You manipulative bitch.”
Fiona chuckled. “I’m honest about who I am. What’s your excuse?”
She watched him as he stood in place, his face a battlefield of rage and embarrassment. His horn lit and for a brief moment Fiona worried he was about to make her kill him. Unicorn magic was potent stuff and it could hurt like a son of a bitch, but growing up in Griffinstone she knew how to use her claws with deadly efficiency. She didn’t want to kill him, but she would if she had to.
Ironshod was too wrapped in his own anger to notice her hind legs widen in preparation to lunge. He pulled a set of keys out of his uniform’s pocket and jabbed a tarnished nub into the bottom drawer of his desk. He yanked the drawer open hard enough to send the contents tumbling against the front end, including a bulky device adorned with black knobs, chipped brown paint and a filthy monitor. He snatched it up in his magic and tossed it hard at Fiona.
She caught it and promptly turned it over in her hands until she found the words PIP-BUCK 2000 MK II stamped on the cuff. If it was a fake, she really couldn’t be blamed for not knowing the difference.
“Take the damn thing,” he spat. “I already have what I need from it.”
 “Sounds like we’re both happy, then. You have a good day, Ironshod.” Her task complete, she pressed the Pip-Buck under her wing where it would stay safe and walked back to the door.
As it slid open, Ironshod spoke. “Do you know why it is you’re always alone up there?”
She stopped halfway through the doorway. Several ponies were loitering outside their offices now, their eyes bearing down on her.
“It’s the same reason you charge for your friendship,” he said loudly enough for his venom to carry out into the hall. “Nobody wants to be seen with a whore they’re not paying for.”
She closed her eyes and took a slow breath. It wasn’t the first time she’d suffered insults on her way out someone’s door. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a knowing smile. “You were always my favorite customer, Ironshod. No one else has the courtesy to pay for an hour and stick to the five minutes they need quite like you.”
Somewhere in the hallway, someone broke into laughter.
Fiona thumped the end of her tail against the door switch and adjusted the Pip-Buck under her wing. “See you around, quickshot.”
The door slid shut with a firm clunk, silencing Ironshod before the profanities could spill into the corridor.









“Holy goddesses,” Aurora groaned as another powerful yawn rolled through her. She hadn’t realized how badly worn down she was until they stepped into the elevator and waited for it to descend.
Ginger muttered her own curse as she caught the same bug. The yawn shrank her mild groan into a high squeak that drew a snort from Latch. She shot him an indignant look and he carefully stared forward, but not before allowing a smirk to crease his lip.
“How long have you two been up?” he asked.
Aurora looked at Ginger and tried to do the mental math. “I got a couple hours in a day and a half ago. I think.”
Ginger nodded with weary agreement.
The elevator ground to a stop seven levels down. The gentle shift in gravity tugged at the compass still dangling around Aurora’s neck. “Oh, shit,” she muttered, and lifted the strap over her head with a wing. “I forgot about this.”
She held it out and Latch picked it out of the air with a hoof. He slipped it over his head and flipped the casing open to watch the needle spin. “I was wondering if you were going to notice,” he said.
“Thanks for lending it to me. I owe you one.”
“I’m glad somebody thinks so,” he said. “Ironshod has me on door duty for the next month because of it.”
“Same pay?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Less work?”
He smiled. “Yep.”
“I take it back. We’re even.”
Latch chuckled dully and held the door for them. They piled out, drawing curious looks from a pair of scribes loitering in the empty corridor. When they caught sight of him, they trotted away, trying their best to look busy.
He led them down the hall toward a door flanked by a pair of Rangers. Aurora eyed them as they approached. The last guarded door she walked through ended with her having her Pip-Buck stolen. This looked a lot like that door, except for the yellowed placard on the wall that read PERMACULTURE 14. She blinked and looked at the door across the hall. It bore an identical sign, numbered one higher. She knew where she was.
“You’re keeping him in the gardens?” she asked.
Latch frowned. “No,” he said, indicating the sign. “We’re keeping him here in Permaculture. He requested it.”
She shook her head, trying to ignore her sudden homesickness. “We call it the gardens. My dad works here. There. Sorry.”
Latch nodded as if he understood and quietly dismissed the Rangers at the door. As the stallions departed, he pressed the switch on the wall and the door lifted away.
She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see. Back home, the gardens were vibrant green oases that ponies often visited just to get a scent of what they all imagined clean are to smell like. Freshly turned soil, rich with the robust odor of compost was the clearest memory she kept of them. She had watched her father’s gardens grow through every stage of life, from sprout to harvest, and was guilty as any pony of eating directly from the vine. There was nothing like it in the world.
The door thumped open and her breath caught in her throat.
The gardens of Stable 6 were dead.
“Aurora, are you alright?”
Ginger’s words didn’t register. She took a hesitant step forward, and then another. Where rows and rows of healthy crops should have been hanging from trellises, empty strips of desiccated soil lay barren in their troughs. Flecks of grey rubber hose lay in some of the plots where suspended irrigation lines had been left to crack and rot. The air smelled like dust. Like nothing.
She had known told the gardens wouldn’t be here. That the seeds given to the first residents had been sterilized, the reason lost to time, dooming their first harvest to be their last. The reality of it - seeing the source of a Stable’s collapse for herself - weighed more than she was prepared to carry.
Aurora sat down in front of the first row and gently pressed her hoof into the topsoil. It was so dense it may as well have been stone. A chip popped loose and her hoof ground the rest into powder. Nothing could grow here. Nothing was ever supposed to. Her vision blurred.
“You know, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
A charred, perforated hoof appeared in front of her. In it, a damp strip of deep pink litmus paper. Too acidic, her father’s voice chided. She blinked at the paper and looked up at the pony holding it. Roach sat next to her, his craggy face bent with a sympathetic smile. “Good to have you back, kiddo.”
Days of exhaustion, worry and guilt burst in her chest like a dam. Aurora threw her hooves around Roach and squeezed him hard enough to make him cough. She buried her face in his cracked shoulder and rambled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“Hey, woah, you’re alright!” he chuckled, wrapping his legs under her wings. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
She shook her head, her ears flat. “If I hadn’t flown down that fucking hill we wouldn’t have gotten shot at and you wouldn’t have had to raise that wall. I fucked up and made you poison us and now we’re stuck here and…” Her words hitched into a racking sob that shook her chest like a physical blow. She was too tired to fight back the tears. Roach held her, rubbing her back as she let the torrent run through her. 
It was some time until she could speak clearly. She swallowed the muck that had gathered in her throat and let go of Roach so she could wipe her face. A soft glow pulled her ragged mane away from her eyes and she realized Ginger had joined them. There was mist in Ginger’s eyes, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
Aurora felt the emotion rising in her chest again but managed to beat it down. She didn’t deserve the sympathy. Least of all Ginger’s. “I nearly got you killed,” she whispered. She looked at Roach and swallowed. “I almost got both of you killed.”
Ginger set a hoof on her knee. “We’ve been over this, Aurora. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
She tried to accept the truth of it, but her heart wouldn’t let her off the hook just yet. She looked back at the dead gardens and shuddered. “This is different. If I get us killed, it’s not just you and Roach and me. My Stable…” she hesitated, afraid to say the words.
“Aurora, no.” Ginger gathered Aurora’s hoof into hers and fixed her with a stare. “You can’t keep putting the world on your shoulders like this. That’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to the ponies who are depending on us. You’re going to make mistakes. I’m going to make mistakes. Roach is definitely going to make a lot of mistakes.”
Roach snorted, and Aurora felt a smile bending her lips to spite her misery.
Ginger gave her hoof a gentle squeeze. “Everyone in the Wasteland screws up, but the best of us get back up and keep trying. You saved my life with a deathclaw. You went out of your way to help a pegasus that nobody would have faulted you for leaving behind. You’re good, Aurora. I can’t think of better hooves for your Stable to be in than yours.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and offered Ginger a thin smile. Roach gave her room to wipe her face with the joint of her wing. “Sorry,” she said, wincing at yet another apology. “It’s a lot. You know?”
“It is,” Ginger nodded. “Just don’t forget that you’re not alone, alright?”
Aurora let herself smile a little more. “Thanks for the kick in the ass. Goddesses, I’m a mess today.”
She sniffed and wriggled her nose until she could breathe clear again. She shook her head and looked at the dirt, spotting the thin strip of pink paper lying in the soil. She pinched it between two primaries and offered it to Roach. “How long have they had you down here?”
Roach took the nib of litmus and helped Aurora to her hooves. “Couldn’t say, without a clock to tell the time. They needed someplace to put me so I suggested bringing me somewhere I could be useful.” He glanced at the dirt patches and shrugged. “Not that I got very far.”
Aurora followed his gaze to a recessed nook at the back of the room. It was strange being able to see the utility sink this far away, but there it was. The same square basin her father used to wash his testing equipment in. To the right of it was a black storage cabinet with one door ajar. The soil nearest the alcove was mounded onto the walkway from where Roach had been working.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Ginger asked.
Roach laughed. “I’ll have you know that I was a certified master gardener before the bombs dropped. It’s how I got selected for residency in the first place. I might not have gotten in, but I haven’t forgotten much either.”
Aurora glanced at Ginger, who exchanged bewildered expressions with her. She didn’t know what separated a gardener from a certified master gardener, but there was a note of pride in Roach’s voice that she wasn’t about to spoil.
“I told the guards all they really need is some lime and nitrogen fertilizer to get things going again. It’s been a couple hundred years but I wrote down the ratios for them. Best case scenario, they might be able to get some wild vegetables growing down here. Worst case, they have to flush out the soil and try again.”
Aurora glanced at the rotted irrigation lines. “They’ll need to replace all of that,” she said. “The filters might still be good if the Stable only got one crop in. Odds are any of the water in the cisterns would be septic by now unless the Rangers have been running the taps. I don’t know why they wouldn’t.”
It was all hypothetical, but it felt good to drag herself free of her doubts with something she knew she was good at. It felt even better to share it with a pony who knew what she was talking about. She had a feeling that Roach had steered her down this tract on purpose, and she was surprised at how much she appreciated it. Ever since leaving Stable 10, self doubt had plagued her every step of the way. Ginger was right. She needed to stop worrying about what she might break and start focusing on what she could fix.
“So, I have to ask,” Latch interrupted. Now that the room was safe to enter, he’d ventured back inside, his curiosity piqued. “All this stuff about crops and fixing the water. Are you two being serious, or is this all just wishful thinking?”
Aurora looked over her shoulder and then back to Roach. 
He shrugged, then nodded. “The infrastructure’s here. Given enough time and resources, there’s really no reason why someone couldn’t make some of these plots viable again.”
Latch approached the nearest trough and lifted a flake of dry soil in his hoof. “Then why hasn’t anyone done it yet?”
“Well,” Roach said as gently as he could, “a lot of knowledge was lost when the bombs dropped, and those of us who remember the old world aren’t exactly held in the highest regard.”
Latch let the dirt trickle out of his hoof and watched the dust spread. He offered a noncommittal, “Hm.”
Aurora stiffened her shoulders as a yawn sifted through her, then shouldered Ginger as it snuck up her jaw too. She had been meaning to ask about the shacks that lined the slope of Blinder’s Bluff, and how the majority of them were clearly built from the remains of larger structures. She felt like she had her answer now.
The infrastructure was all there. Broken, scattered and in some cases destroyed… but there. The ponies who knew how to repair it were either dead or unwilling to try. She couldn’t blame them. In a world where one deathclaw or the wrong group of raiders could tear down a year’s work in less than a day, why bother when it was safer to make do with what was lying around?
“I’ll make you a deal,” Roach said. “If I can trust that your people won’t throw me in another cage, when we’re done helping Aurora I’ll stop back here and see if I can’t help you get something growing.”
Latch looked at Roach. “I think you’ll find more ponies here willing to help than hinder if it means they’ll have a supply of fresh ruffage. My wife would kill for fresh potatoes.”
“It’s a start,” he agreed. “If you can get me some more paper and something to write with, I can make some notes on what you’ll need to repair. Aurora might be able to help with the mechanical side if… ah. Maybe you two should get some sleep first.”
Aurora realized she was being spoken to and opened her eyes. She blinked at Ginger who was in the midst of another squeaking yawn. Roach’s words slowly pieced themselves together in her head until she understood the suggestion. She nodded slowly and swung her head at Latch. “Got a place we could lie down?”
The Ranger dithered for a spell, considering the options. “The barracks on one and two are full up. You might be able to rent a couple rooms further up the bluff?”
Ginger lifted an eyebrow. “You took our bags at the gate, including our caps.”
Latch winced. “There’s a residential section on level eighteen, but nobody’s ever used them.”
“The Mechanical compartments?” Aurora asked.
He nodded. “If that’s what you call them, sure.”
“Perfect,” Aurora muttered, and trudged to the door. Ginger followed without second thought.
Latch frowned after them. “Do you need help finding it?”
Aurora shook her head as the door slid open. “I’m pretty sure I know the way.”









When the elevator doors chimed open, it felt eerily like she was walking into an abandoned version of Stable 10. The murals were identical copies of the ones back home, down to the little painting of a purple barn surrounded by apple trees. The colors were washed out from the constant glare of fluorescent lights, few of which managed to light when they tripped the dormant motion sensors in the corridor. She could remember being woken up in the middle of the night by maintenance ponies removing the thin wall panels once the first signs of discoloration showed, only to replace them with bright replicas printed up in Fabrication. It was strange yet deeply familiar to see them here, so far away from home.
Aurora led Ginger down the half-lit corridor past what she could only assume were identical compartments. She didn’t care. If she was going to sleep in a failed Stable in the middle of the Wasteland, she was at least going to convince herself she was in her own bed.
Five doors from the end of the hall, Aurora pressed a switch and listened to the door grind open on old bearings. She glanced at the nameplate on the wall and hoped S. SOCKETS didn’t mind the intrusion. To her amusement, the lights flickered on to reveal a compartment that was the spitting image of her own. Not a perfect copy, but close enough to make her feel comfortable. As she led Ginger inside, her eyes fell on the dusty wooden desk in the center of the far wall. A terminal waited in front of a small chair, its monitor dark and the power cable dangling behind the desk legs cracked with age.
Shoved into the left corner of the compartment was a narrow mattress on the same economy bed frame she’d grown to hate. The things had enough play in the connections that the bolts wore out faster than the mattress springs, and she resisted the urge to check them over. A white sheet and a slightly thicker Stable-Tec blue and yellow comforter lay in a heap on the floor from where the previous occupant had kicked them off. The pillows were presumably buried somewhere underneath.
She glanced at Ginger who was still taking in the utilitarian space and let her attention wander to the nook at the right side of the room. Her hopes weren’t high, but it was worth checking.
“It’s a bit small,” Ginger commented.
“One second,” Aurora said. She peeked into the small bathroom, looked dubiously at the stainless steel toilet and turned her eyes up to the showerhead on the far wall. The plastic curtain lay crumpled on the ground, succumbing to gravity and decay after two centuries of neglect. Aurora sympathised with it. She smelled as if she hadn’t showered in just as long.
“Aurora, what are you doing?” Ginger was halfway onto the tiles, standing next to a bowed shelf stacked with flat towels. She watched as Aurora fiddled with the showerhead until it faced the wall.
“I just want to test something,” she said, and turned the shower handle with her wing.
She trotted back to where Ginger was standing as the pipes started to bang. Air whined as it was forced out of the plumbing. Aurora braced herself for the unpleasant task of having to rush in and turn the water off before, or while, something ruptured.
Brackish orange water belched against the white tile wall and Ginger turned away with a noise of disgust. Aurora didn’t stop watching. The Stable had water pressure. She waited as the flow sputtered and spat a few more times before resolving into a steady stream of rust-stained water. It rushed down the tiles and into the drain at the center of the shower, the discoloration swirling in clearer and clearer arcs.
“Holy shit!” Aurora laughed.
Ginger turned around, her face twisted with apprehension. But instead of seeing a nightmare fountain of tainted water, they both watched as a steady stream of cold, clean water rushed out of the pipes.
“That’s not possible,” Ginger said cautiously. She stepped forward and tipped her hoof into the shallow whirlpool and watched as a thin trail of grime swirled off of it.
“I mean, of course it is,” Aurora said. “The Stable’s potable water gets pushed through a whole mess of filters, and this place barely had enough time to go through the originals. Even if the cisterns have gone scummy, all of that junk isn’t making it to this end of the plumbing.”
Ginger lifted a globe of water in her magic and held it to her muzzle. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”
Aurora chuckled. “It’s not supposed to. Here, let me try something.”
She nudged the crumpled curtain aside and approached a yellowed bubble of flexible plastic built into the tile. Behind it, a white push-button marked HEAT stared back at her. She pressed it, cracking the ancient protective layer in the process. Then she waited.
The pipe thudded again and the water flow slowed briefly before gradually building back up again. A thin fog of steam began to climb the tiles.
“Yes.” She stepped onto the wet tiles and twisted the showerhead with her feathers. Warm water - clean water - soaked into her mane and ran down her neck. She dipped her head low and groaned as the heat sank into the sore muscles of her wings.
“Budge over,” Ginger said, prodding her ribs until she relented and made room. “Luna’s grace, that’s good.”
“Mmhm.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder as days worth of grime fell away one layer at a time. Aurora checked the recessed shelf for soap and sighed when it came up empty, doubtlessly pilfered by the first Rangers to discover the abandoned Stable generations ago. She had to scrub at her shoulder with the flat of her hoof to loosen the flakes of blood that stubbornly clung to her coat. They flowed down her foreleg little by little until all that remained was a roughly star-shaped patch of fresh, pink skin.
Next to her, Ginger’s horn took on a gentle glow as she picked up spheres of water and slid them through her mane like a comb. The painstakingly blended makeup that masked her cutie marks swirled off her hind legs like mud until there was nothing left.
As Aurora worked her hoof against the old grease stain in her mane, she eyed the water trapped in Ginger’s magic and smirked. “That’s cheating.”
“Nonsense. I don’t have wings, you don’t have a horn. That’s as fair as it gets.” She smiled and saw the dark streak Aurora was trying to work out. “Hold still.”
Copper light lifted the mop of her mane, and Aurora watched with nervous fascination as Ginger threaded warm water over the stripe of machine grease. She held it there for several seconds, her eyes narrowed, and soon bits of grease were floating freely inside the globe. It slid down the length of her mane with a single motion, taking the weeks-old blemish with it.
Aurora watched the flecks splash against the tile floor and migrate toward the drain while Ginger tucked her mane behind her ear. “How did you do that?”
Ginger shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. I don’t doubt it has something to do with the injections.” She held a sphere of water between them and fixed it in her gaze. A ribbon of liquid, nearly as thin as a soap bubble, peeled out of the globule and silently weaved through the air. Aurora’s mouth hung open in a wide smile as she watched the display. The translucent ribbon slipped through the air like something alive, weaving between their hooves and up through the spray. It was a taste of old magic, something unseen since the war. 
She looked at Ginger, the unicorn’s eyes awash with joy and new confidence as she formed and weaved the water into beautiful designs around them. The liquid ribbon slid between them, glowing in Ginger’s magic as she urged it along. Aurora felt her heart beating in her throat. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking. She didn’t try to understand it. She only knew, in that moment, what she wanted.
She leaned into Ginger and kissed her.
The ribbon broke apart and rained down around them.
When she pulled away, a flush of embarrassment crept up her neck. Ginger stood motionless, her eyes staring, her horn darkened. Aurora realized with growing dread that this was a mistake. They barely knew each other. Why did she just do that? Why in Celestia’s name were they sharing…
“Why did you stop?” Ginger asked.
Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but the words evaporated as Ginger smiled and brought their lips firmly back together. Bliss, confusion and a different warmth exploded within Aurora. She drew her feathers around the back of Ginger’s neck and found herself being pressed backward with the same eagerness. In the back of her mind, she remembered that neither of them had closed the door.
It can wait, she thought.
She braced her wings against the wall for balance, not wanting to break contact. Barely caring about breathing. Her feathers, being what they were, held onto the slick surface like oil on water. Ginger broke for air first, her eyes hungry, and wrapped a leg around her neck. The shift in weight sent her wings skidding out across the tile wall and physics took over. Her hooves promptly squeaked out from under her and suddenly the two mares found themselves in a graceless tangle of legs and feathers on the wet tile floor.
Ginger, her face draped in a sopping veil of feathers, began to laugh. It was a high, uncontained laughter that left her pressing her forehead into Aurora’s chest as she shook with it. Aurora covered her eyes with her foreleg and chuckled in spite of herself while warm water pooled lazily around them.








October 13th, 1075

On a windy afternoon, perched at the edge of the grand platform leaning over the dizzying cliffside view behind Canterlot Castle, Zecora’s main concern was keeping Twilight Sparkle’s mane out of her mouth.
	The two stood beside one another in front of the same chariot that had ferried Twilight into Ponyville some twenty years prior. There was an unspoken symbolism in having Zecora ride the same chariot on her first trip to the Vhannan homeland since accepting the role of ambassador between the two bitter enemies. Fluttershy had insisted it be made available so as to reinforce Zecora’s diplomatic intentions. She wasn’t going to Vhanna as a spy or to make threats. With any luck, she was going there to begin healing a long-festering wound.
A gust of wind swept across the terrace and slapped Twilight’s mane across Zecora’s face. Flashbulbs and shutters worked vigorously to capture the faux pas. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a slow breath, letting the irritation settle back to placid calmness. It took a physical effort to keep the pleasant smile on her muzzle, but it was important that she didn’t let the press see her frustration.
Twilight, for her part, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. It had been years since she underwent the awkward growth spurt that came with accepting Celestia’s gift to become an alicorn. Even Zecora didn’t know how that elixer worked, though she understood the expectation it came with. Twilight had too, but it didn’t stop her from becoming the first and only alicorn to reject the title of princess. It hadn’t gone over well with the population at large, but she believed her deeds as the Element of Magic had given her some leeway in deciding her own destiny. Whatever she pictured her destiny as being, the eruption of war with Vhanna had twisted it into something much different.
Zecora had learned enough about the ministry mares in the last couple of months to know that this was one of Twilight’s migraine days. The Ministry of Image had done a masterful job of hiding the deep bags under her eyes and giving her something for the nausea, but Twilight wore her weariness in her shoulders. She was enduring this photo op not because she wanted to be here, but because her absence would become an even bigger headache down the road.
“Ambassador! What do you expect to accomplish in Vhanna that the princesses couldn’t?”
Zecora’s smile tightened as she heard Twilight exhale hard through her nose. The press pool had been given a specific list of questions to ask, and this was not one of them. Twilight squinted through the blinding wall of flashes, searching for the source of the unwanted question so she could shut it down. Zecora caught the eye of a diminutive reporter pinned between two camera wielding stallions. The mare could have been mistaken for a lost filly if it weren’t for the press badge clipped to her lapel. Twilight would eat her for dinner when she found her.
Zecora nodded acknowledgement toward the opposite side of the press pool and stifled a chuckle when Twilight’s attention bent away from the mare with the notepad.
“I do not plan to end the war in a single visit with ponies I have never met before,” she said, chastising herself a little for the lackluster rhyme. Still, a few mirthful murmurs rose from the pool. “Building peace between our peoples will take…”
She hesitated and smiled at the ground, the track of the rhyme disappearing before she could pin it down. Cameras flashed with renewed fervor, eager to capture the slip-up. Her smile widened and she looked up, her jade eyes finding the nearest camera and fixing on her reflection in the black lens. “The road to peace takes time. Tomorrow’s visit between myself and Ambassador Abyssian will focus solely on how our two nations choose to build that road.”
“What does that mean?” a second reported prodded, emboldened by Zecora’s break in her traditional cadance.
“We’re off message, Zecora,” Twilight muttered between her teeth.
“It means,” she said, ignoring the alicorn next to her, “that before we’re able to resolve the very real conflict between our two countries, we first have to establish a better understanding of one another’s needs.”
“And by that you mean ending the oil shortage.”
Zecora shook her head. “I mean the end of the war. The Vhannan ambassador and I agree that the war is forcing us to deplete all of the mapped oil deposits faster than we would have had Equestria been willing to purchase it.”
Twilight went rigid and a low murmur rolled through the press pool. Zecora lifted her chin, sensing the change in mood and wanting to fight it. She had told the truth. She knew it. Twilight knew it. The ponies clutching their cameras and notepads knew it.
Except nobody wanted to hear it.
“Ambassador Zecora, are you saying Equestria is to blame for the war?”
“What about the families who have lost loved ones on the front?”
“Are you suggesting we surrender?”
	The press pool was a ravenous beast that had scented blood. Questions and accusations blended into a whirlwind of voices. Twilight glanced to the head of her security detail and subtly shrugged her right wing. Without hesitating, a phalanx of royal guards casually approached the buzzing reporters.
	“Thank you all so much, but it looks like we’re out of time,” Twilight said, not that anyone was listening to her. “The Ministry of Morale will be providing a light lunch inside the castle where we will be issuing press badges for Rarity’s press conference next week. We hope to see all of you there.”
	Zecora watched as the press pool was herded away toward the castle, unanswered questions all but being shouted over the gentle pressure of the royal guards. She knew that little if any of what she’d said would make the papers. Not if they didn’t want to be blacklisted from future ministry press events. 
When they were alone, Twilight turned on her. “What the fuck was that?”
Zecora’s heart skipped a beat. She’d known Twilight for a long time, but staring down the barrel of an angry alicorn wasn’t something she thought she’d ever get used to. “It was the truth, Twilight. It helps to speak it once in a while.”
“Don’t…” Twilight said, shaking her head at the picturesque sky above. “Just don’t. You are an ambassador. Not one of Pinkie’s self-help books.”
Zecora’s expression hardened. “That’s unfair.”
“Unfair?” Twilight jabbed a wing over the edge of the balcony, toward the west. “What’s unfair is what they’re doing to us on the battlefield! What’s unfair are zebras forcing our brothers and sisters into trenches so they can throw grenades packed with blindweed in after them! They don’t need any more help killing us, so stop giving it to them by telling the fucking press that it’s our fault!”
Twilight’s feathers fluttered in the wind as silence fell onto the terrace. After a moment she realized she was still pointing and self-consciously folded it back to her side. Zecora clenched her jaw. She could feel her heart beating in her throat and willed herself to calm down, even when every fiber of her body wanted to reach out and slap Twilight across the mouth.
She swallowed, trying to work some of the dryness out of her throat before she spoke. “I was not saying you were being unfair to me. I was referring to you making light of Pinkie Pie struggling with the deaths of her closest friends. You know better, Twilight.”
Twilight stared at her for a long time with her jaw set, but her eyes had taken on a thin sheen. Then she turned away, walked to the railing and sat behind it. The fire in her had been doused. “Pinkie can take care of herself,” she said.
Zecora sighed and sat down next to her. “Pinkie is taking care of herself with mentats and seclusion. I worry about her. You should be too.”
“I do worry,” she said. She sniffed and scrubbed her foreleg against her eyes before a tear had a chance to fall. She cleared her throat and said, “But this war is bigger than her or me. It’s bigger than you, Zecora. If we fall behind, we’ll be defenseless. We can’t afford that.”
Zecora shook her head. She thought she’d been getting through to her. “That’s what they’re saying right now, too,” she said quietly. “We can’t keep doing this. I don’t want Teak to inherit this war.”
“Who’s Teak?”
“My daughter, Twilight. You met her a month ago.”
The alicorn half-shrugged. It wasn’t meant to sting, but it did. Zecora stood up and turned toward the castle. “I’m going to get my bags. Are you going to be okay on your own out here?”
Twilight stared toward the horizon. “I’ll be fine.”
> Chapter 15: Consequences
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Twilight Sparkle frowned through the stained glass as Zecora and her daughter settled into her old carriage. The sun would be setting in a few hours and a detachment of Luna’s personal guard busied themselves preparing for departure. The two zebras would be the first peaceful delegation to be sent to Vhanna since the war began five years ago. There would be a planned stop in Las Pegasus where Luna’s guard would be replaced by a preselected contingent  of experienced Wonderbolts who were better suited for the long flight over the western sea. Once they arrived in Vhanna, it was anyone’s guess. Zecora and her daughter stood a fair chance of assassination, if Rarity’s propaganda was to be believed.
Zecora clearly didn’t, or she wouldn’t have insisted on bringing her daughter along. Twilight chewed the inside of her cheek as she watched them prepare for departure. She was treating this as if it were a family vacation, trusting the tenuous promise of a warm welcome from the Vhannan ambassador over her own people. She sighed.

	At least Zecora’s migraine remedy was still reliable.
Whatever the outcome, it would make little difference as far as she was concerned. Like the thousands of ponies trapped in the trenches near Vhanna’s coast, Equestria had dug itself too deep into this fight to simply let it drop. She missed the days when she was young and naive. When every problem could be solved by befriending the transgressor. When the Elements abandoned them, she understood that this wasn’t a problem that could be solved through peace. The Vhannans didn’t want to be their friends. They wanted them dead. The only way to solve this was through victory.
Twilight turned from the window and walked across the ornate reception hall that had only just recently held a hoard of hungry members of the press.
No. If they wanted to end this war, they had to find a way to show the zebras that any creature bold enough to raise a gun to Equestria would quickly wish they had pressed the barrel under their own chin instead.
She passed the elegant maplewood tables that littered the room and plucked an uneaten teacake off one of them. No matter what the ministries had on the front burners these days, she always made certain that Rainbow Dash left money in the budget to spoil the press. Sentiment for the war had been bending in the wrong direction over the past year, and part of that came from unplanned outbursts like the one Zecora had made earlier today. She didn’t doubt the ability of Rarity’s ministry to encourage certain publications to rethink their editorials, least of all the Baltimare Bugle who no doubt snuck their reporter into today’s press pool on fake credentials yet again, but Twilight was nothing if not detail oriented.

	When Celestia and Luna had offered her a role in Equestria’s topmost echelons of leadership… she declined. Not because she didn’t want it. Not because she hadn’t earned it. But because she could see the chains that the title “princess” came with and she knew she could be more useful to Equestria without them rattling around her hooves. As the first alicorn civilian, she had a certain level of freedom that the princesses did not. Thousands of years of Equestrian culture didn’t just go away in a day. Ponies looked up to her regardless of whether a crown sat atop her head. And more importantly, they listened.

	Spoiling the press with good food, better drink and excellent accommodations while reminding them of the importance of their readers’ patriotism was an easy game to play. Some resisted, but Rarity’s people always found elegant ways to make them see the error in that decision. Usually at the expense of their press pass and, less often, their newspaper’s credibility.

	Twilight pushed open the grand double doors ahead of her and stepped out into Canterlot Castle’s south garden. Even though she wasn’t technically royalty, Celestia and Luna insisted she be accompanied by a security detail at all times. She agreed on the stipulation that she be allowed to select the members of her detail personally.

	Big Macintosh matched her stride as soon as she stepped into the garden, taking position on her right just a step ahead of her. “Where to?” he asked.

	Twilight inhaled the sweet smell of the curated flowers growing around the statuary around them and sighed, trying to exhale all of the stress she’d been balling up inside her since the day began. Three other royal guards appeared on the remaining three points around her, though she hadn’t bothered to remember their names. The entire point of selecting her own security was to get Big Mac on the detail. If any pony could badger a pack of royal guards into giving her some privacy, it was him.

	“Back to the real work,” she said.
Big Mac only nodded once, but the longer Twilight knew him the more she understood his subtleties. The more she trusted him. Honesty might be his sister’s defining trait, but Big Mac knew how to keep a secret.

	On their way through the hedges, Twilight made a point to divert down the path that would take them past one statue in particular. It was impossible to miss. Two disparate horns, a permanent look of shocked surprise and a source of constant irritation to the princesses and quiet embarrassment to Twilight and her five friends. Discord, Lord of Chaos, was a reminder that not all of their enemies could be destroyed. Some could only be imprisoned. As they passed his plot in the garden, she absently wondered whether he was conscious of his surroundings in his stone prison, and what he might say if he knew of the chaos her life had become in his absence.

	Their walk across Canterlot took place in relative silence. Big Mac had never been much for conversation and the rest of her entourage kept their eyes trained on the ponies that crowded the markets and dined at tables along the wide sidewalks. The princesses advised against walking the capitol ever since the bombing at Sugarcube Corner had begun inspiring copycats. She knew it was a security risk, but to who’s security? She was an alicorn. If somebody wanted to level a gun at her, then let them. She could fill a list of all the intimate places she could teleport an unwanted bullet.

	Big Mac cleared his throat and she glanced at him, noticing the distinct shine to his apple red coat. She frowned at the froth that was forming under the edges of the lavender armor Rarity had designed for them. “How are you holding up, Big Mac?”

	He cleared his throat again and shrugged without breaking pace. “Just side-effects from some medicine. Ah’ll be fine.”

	Twilight nodded and made a point to look elsewhere, as if the matter was negligible. She hoped it was, but her eyes kept finding their way back to the sweat pouring off the bulky stallion. Like so many other times before, that morning she had asked him to help her test a new spell she created. It mimicked the effects of a drug Pinkie called buffout that her ministry was pushing into development, but without the accompanying risk of heart attack. The concept was simple, but the execution was clearly flawed. Given the usual duration of her spells, Big Mac would be back to normal before his head hit the pillow. She hoped.

	Thanks to Big Mac’s artificially deep well of energy, they reached the The Pillar with time to spare.

	The design had come from an unlikely source. When the princesses created the six ministries, it became apparent that the hoofprint needed to accomodate so many branches of research was too large to just drop onto Canterlot Mountain. Not without demolishing several dozen city blocks of historic housing which, to everyone’s relief, was roundly regarded as unthinkable. Architects were consulted, designs were drafted and Canterlot’s elite repeatedly shot down every one of them. Nothing could be allowed to alter the skyline of Canterlot Mountain. Not even the war.

	Rainbow Dash, being who she was, lamented the impenetrable roadblock to the one pony that was happy to listen to her no matter the topic: Scootaloo. Over the years, the young mare had begun dabbling in the rapidly growing market of home and business security. Her first suggestion had been so painfully obvious that Rainbow Dash flew her straight to the princesses to tell them in person.

	“Why not build into the mountain?”

	Twilight trotted up a series of wide marble steps that took her to six distinct columns built from the solid stone of Canterlot Mountain. The architecture was strange to her eyes but it carried a sense of authority that even she couldn’t argue. Each massive column was engraved with the vertical letters of each of their Elements: Magic, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Laughter and Kindness. There had been some debate on the order in which they appeared, but this was war and Fluttershy knew her department would be playing second fiddle to the others for the sake of the nation.

	Beyond their columns stood a comparatively tiny pair of doors that were still at least twice as tall as Twilight. Big Mac and the other security pony stepped forward and pushed them open, rejoining her once she stepped into the Pillar’s main lobby.

	The design stood in stark contrast to the colors of the world outside. A white ceiling adjoined white walls to a black marble floor. Narrow square pillars, evenly spaced in two neat rows, led them through a set of metal detectors. On the other side, the close walls gave way to a vast monochrome rotunda. Intricate carvings nestled into their own shallow arches along the wall depicted proud points of Equestria’s history in stone relief dating back to the first banishment of the wendigos all the way to the present day. Brass nameplates inset into the white tiles of the dome above them marked the names of ponies who had distinguished themselves to Equestria over the centuries. At the cap of the dome, Celestia and Luna’s royal seal hung in full color, a stark contrast to the black and white space below. Twilight knew some of the names on the dome personally, and hers was up there as well, but the majority of the names accounted for the slew of benefactors required to fund the build.

	The Pillar sank deep into the heart of the snow capped mountain, providing enough room for their six departments with room to expand. Twilight and her security detail stood at the apex of the subterranean facility, and the only slice of it that was ever open to the public. Big Mac led them across the rotunda floor, over a circular medallion depicting their six elements, and toward a bank of elevators on the opposite wall.

	The three odd ducks of her security detail stayed outside the elevator as Twilight and Big Mac stepped in. One of them glanced at him and he stared back, his relaxed eyes taking on a sterner edge. The guard blinked and looked down as the doors rolled shut.

	“Do I need to have him replaced?” Twilight asked as they began descending.

	“Nope,” he answered.

	She looked down at Big Mac for a while before nodding. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

	He swallowed, then shook his head. Sweat pattered onto the elevator floor from under his armor. “Ah could do with some water.”

	“We’ll get you some from the lab,” she said. “I want to have some blood work done too, just to be safe.”

	He winced. “Ah hate needles, Twilight.”

	“I know you do,” She tried her best to sound compassionate, but as far as she was concerned it wasn’t up for debate. If he was having a reaction to one of her spells she needed to know what it was, and why.

	Big Mac didn’t argue the point any further. That was another thing she liked about him. He never whined.

	A momentary heaviness settled into their hooves and the elevator emitted a pleasant chime. The doors split open to a single busy hallway that stretched ahead of them. The Ministry of Arcane Studies was Twilight’s domain, something that didn’t need to be spoken for Big Mac to understand. She stepped off the elevator first and took the lead. 

Unicorns of every palette roamed the hall, their hooves muffled by dense lavender carpet patterned with magenta starbursts. The homage to her cutie mark came off a little strong, but she wasn’t about to have research stalled to have it ripped out now. A few new unicorns offered hellos and welcome backs while the longest tenured members of her staff settled for polite smiles and subtle nods. They levitated everything from lab notes to vial trays as each of them made their way through the organized chaos. One unicorn even carried a wooden staff tipped with a long crystal, clearly a relic of some sort, bound tight in several inches of bubble wrap.

Twilight was confident with this much brain power at her disposal, it was only a matter of time before one of the teams discovered something that would tip the scales in Equestria’s favor.

She slowed as they passed one of the wide viewing windows that gave fellow researchers an unimpeded view of the work of their colleagues’ work in action. Several ponies had gathered around the glass to watch a trio of unicorns test the latest draft of their spell. A small caliber pistol dangled from a beaker stand by its trigger guard. One of the researchers stepped forward - a team lead named Starlight Glimmer, if she recalled correctly - and bent her horn in concentration. A narrow filament of magic struck the pistol with a flicker of teal light, and Starlight straightened to observe the results.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the weapon took on a deep red glow that radiated from where the pinprick of magic had touched it. Within seconds, the weapon was little more than a puddle of smoking slag on the stone lab table. Several hooves thudded approvingly against the carpet and Starlight smiled in return. Her eyes caught Twilight’s and widened almost imperceptibly. Twilight, for her part, offered a mild nod of congratulations and moved on before the odd unicorn found a reason to pursue her again.

Starlight had come from a backwards village of her own creation, plucked from the middle of nowhere by Celestia herself after she inadvertently attracted the alicorn’s attention with a failed attempt at time travel. To her credit, the spell had worked. To her humiliation, the spell managed to lock her in stasis for several weeks before the members of her village resorted to seeking help outside their strange cult. Celestia, doing what she did best, spent a minimal amount of time helping reintegrate the wayward unicorn before delegating the problem of Starlight Glimmer to Twilight’s ministry not long after its inception. Starlight had rabidly chased after Twilight’s approval ever since.

“Could be a useful spell,” Big Mac commented.

Twilight offered a noncommittal tilt of her head. “Maybe. She keeps forgetting that not every pony on the battlefield has her proficiency for magic. There’s a reason she led the demonstration and not her peers.”

At the far end of the hall sat a wide pair of oak double doors. Matching signs on either side reminded staff that no books or scrolls were permitted outside the confines of the ministry library. The reasons for the extra measure of security should have been obvious, but fill several floors with magical scholars and the need for signage became a must. The last thing Twilight wanted on her desk was a report detailing how a priceless text was destroyed in a lab experiment.

Walking into the library was like taking a breath of fresh air. Twilight pushed through the doors and let the hint of a smile form on her muzzle.

It had taken over a month of constant debate with Scootaloo to get things set up the way she wanted it. The ministry’s Research wing accounted for nearly half of its allotted volume, and not an inch was wasted. Two floors worth of bookcases lined the sweeping arc of the Pillar’s outermost wall. Scootaloo had argued for metal shelves to save money, but Twilight staunchly refused to spend her days surrounded by cold metal. In the end, she won out and so did the carpenters of Equestria.

Beautifully stained slabs of oak stretched around her in every direction, stacked high with books and scrolls ranging from newly printed to hoof-written centuries ago. The oldest tomes were kept in hermetically sealed cabinets to protect them from humidity, carelessness and the rare insect. Twilight held the railing of the library’s ornate stairwell with the edge of her wing and descended to the lower floor where rows of polished wooden tables stood surrounded by comfortable chairs, many of which were occupied by unicorns hard at work copying what they needed onto blank sheets of paper.

	She led Big Mac around the bannister toward the corner where the stairwell joined the rear wall. A simple wooden door built into the base of the stairs waited for them there. It was enchanted with a spell of Twilight’s own creation and would only open for her, the princesses, and perhaps a sizeable chunk of dynamite.

	Twilight pressed her horn against the door and it shimmered with her magic before swinging open. Big Mac followed close behind as she descended the stairs beneath the stairs and arrived in a much cozier version of the library above.

	Twilight’s personal library was, generously put, a mess.

	The similarity to her old home in Ponyville was auspicious. Recessed bookshelves encompassed the majority of the available wall space, stacked high with leather bound tomes while other nooks served as temporary storage for artifacts whose utility she had yet to determine. Scrolls piled like firewood threatened to spill off of shelves while others already had. A wide alcove across from the stairs boasted a small laboratory space complete with a new centrifuge sent down from the Ministry of Technology. Twilight navigated through mounds of open books, past a central round table littered with empty coffee mugs until she reached the alcove.

	She slid a short stool upholstered in burgundy leather to her side. Big Mac climbed onto it without needing to be told, and he lifted a damp foreleg to the edge of the lab table. She waited until his eyes began to naturally wander the unique geography of her library before sinking a sterile needle into his leg. He closed his eyes and sighed as his blood trickled against the glass.

	When she was finished, she swiped a square of clotting gauze over the wound and dropped the sample into her centrifuge, closing the lid while it spun up. As the timer began to tick down, she lifted a blue mug from the central table with her magic and ran it under a stream of water from the sink at the end of the lab table. Clear liquid lit with purple light crawled over the cup until every speck of dried coffee had been lifted away. She filled the mug with clean water and held it out to Big Mac. He picked it out of the air with his hooves and drank deeply.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as she watched him drain the cup.

When he was done, he held it out to her for more. “Tired. Hot. A little woozy.”

She refilled the cup and gave it back. This time he drank slowly enough to breath in between gulps. She glanced at the centrifuge. “Tell me if you start feeling worse.”

He nodded and nursed the cup.

She allowed her mind to wander as the centrifuge timed out and she began the dull work of analyzing Big Mac’s plasma under a microscope. She absently refilled his mug a third time, barely looking up from the lens. Too many red blood cells for the sample size. Beyond that, nothing abnormal.

“You’re dehydrated,” she said. “Beyond that, no other symptoms?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

Twilight shrugged. “Better than buffout, then. I’ll see if I can’t revise the spell to be less aggressive. We can give it another try this weekend if you want?”

“Less aggressive would be nice,” he chuckled. His eyes wandered back to the center table. He nodded at it over the rim of his mug. “New book?”

Twilight followed his gaze to the little red book lying open, its pages face down to keep it from clapping shut. She nodded. “Epimorphic Regeneration in Tropical Reptiles,” she recited. “There are several species of gecko that can regrow missing limbs, even sections of their spines. I’ve been trying to understand how it works.”

Big Mac emptied the mug and set it down on the table. She picked it up and began refilling it under the tap when she realized he had gotten down from the stool and went to the table to look at the book.

She brought the mug to him and watched as he dog-eared the page she had left open before turning to the index. “I never would have picked you to be one for obscure biology,” she said.

A hint of a smile touched his cheek. “Just seemed interesting, s’all. Most this stuff is beyond me.”

“You’re selling that story to the wrong pony, Big Mac.” Twilight opened the book in front of him to the page he’d marked, straightening the crease. “I wouldn’t let you in here to begin with if I didn’t know you were sharper than you let on.”

He smiled a bit wider and leaned forward, pressing the book into the table with his hoof so it wouldn’t close. Twilight watched him scan the tiny notes she wrote in the margins. She saw the subtle changes in his expression as he found bits of text he didn’t understand, then referred to her notes to find clarification. He wasn’t a dullard. If anything, he was guilty of being humble to a fault. Ponies made a habit of underestimating him until it was too late to backtrack. That took a level of patient cunning that she couldn’t help but to respect.

“Knowing you,” he said, his eyes still on the page, “you’re fixing to make a spell that’ll do something like what these lizards do.”

She smiled and pushed the mug of water to him. “That’s the plan, at least. It’s all theoretical, but with the right magic, it’s possible that we could apply this in the triage tents on the battlefield. Just think of all the ponies who wouldn’t have to come home crippled. We could heal the ponies who already are and bolster the front lines with experienced fighters. It could change the course of the war.”

He sipped from the mug and nodded, his eyes on a professionally snapped photo of a dark green lizard perched on a twig. “All from one of these critters.”

“There’s no guarantee… but potentially, yes.”

“Hm,” he hummed, setting the mug down. “Seems like cheating nature, don’t it?”

Twilight frowned, unsure how to respond. There was no accusation in Big Mac’s drawl. No insinuation that she was doing anything wrong. Just a simple question. The Apple family had a tendency to lay their qualms out with little pretense involved. She had been on the receiving end of it for the better part of twenty years, courtesy of his sister.

When it came to the natural order of things, earth ponies often considered nature’s plan to be something on the edge of sacred. The Apples were no exception. Convincing earth ponies to get behind certain aspects of the war effort continued to plague Rarity’s propagandists. They could smell bullshit a mile away. The key was to avoid lying altogether. Twilight’s years with Applejack had taught her how to fold earth pony logic back onto itself until something unthinkable to an earth pony sounded palatable enough to try.

She lit her horn and slipped a red ribbon into the open book to mark her place, and gently eased it shut. “Big Mac, have you ever wondered how the zebras use magic?”

“Wasn’t aware they could,” he said.

“Some of them can. We’re seeing more and more of them casting primitive spells, and they’re getting better at it. It shouldn’t be possible given what we know. Earth ponies are attuned to nature and the pegasi enjoy a passive magical adaptation that permits them to walk the clouds, but unicorns are unfiltered conduits for raw magic. The Vhannans… the zebras never evolved to use magic. Up until the last century they’ve been solely agrarian by nature. Now they’re drowning in wealth, modernized and pouring their coffers into any research that can give them an advantage. Sometime in the last year they found a way to harness magic without the aid of a horn.”

Big Mac frowned at the book’s ruddy cover and looked up at Twilight. “So you want us to do what they’re doing and buck the natural order of things?”

“No,” she said. “Vhanna is under immense pressure to survive right now. The natural order of any species facing extinction is to adapt or die out. The zebras are adapting the same way ponies did millennia ago. Modern scholars are calling it forced evolution, and there’s a chance that they could outpace us. They’re doing exactly what nature intended them to do, except on a much smaller timescale. The only way ponies can hope to maintain the evolutionary advantage is to find our own way to adapt.”

Big Mac frowned indecisively. “By changing who we are?”

“By becoming something better,” she said.

His frown deepened. Coming off too strong, she thought. She sat down next to him, bringing her as close to eye level with him as she could manage. He glanced at her but said nothing.

“I’ve put my blood under the microscope more times that I’m proud of, Big Mac.” The admission hooked the edge of his curiosity and his frown softened out of consideration. She twisted her feathers together and watched the vanes split and pull back together. “The more I do, the more I’m convinced that we’re not some special breed of goddesses with an inborn right to lead Equestria.”

Big Mac sat perfectly still, his brow lifting with unease. “I’m not sure I know what this has to do with geckos.”

She blinked confusion. It took her a moment to realize she’d gone off on a tangent bordering so close to heresy that Big Mac, of all ponies, had begun looking for an escape route. “Sorry,” she said. “What I’m not doing a great job at saying is that alicorns already have a rudimentary regenerative process at work. If I could create a spell that helps our fighting ponies take that next evolutionary step, it could save thousands of lives.”

He stared at the book and nodded.

“It could win the war,” she pressed.

“Ain’t no ‘could’ about it. Zebras can’t fight an enemy that won’t go down.” He sighed and nudged it back open to the page whose margins were dark with hoof-written notes. “I’m just worried you’re about to ask me to help you with it.”

Twilight felt herself sober a little. Maybe she was pushing him too hard after all. “Why would that worry you?”

He turned from the book and looked her in the eye. “Because we both know I’ll do it.”







Aurora awoke slowly.
She lay on her side, her feathers stretched ahead of her as if they had stalled during a downstroke. One lay pinned to the mattress while the other wrapped loosely around the pony doing the pinning, their legs still tangled around one another. Aurora bent her nose into the nape of the mare’s neck and inhaled slowly. She exhaled, her breath warming her muzzle with Ginger’s scent.
The unicorn yawned and perched her chin between Aurora’s ears. The pillow they shared was barely thicker than the dilapidated towels from the bathroom, but it radiated their warmth as if it were newly made. Aurora listened to the sounds of their breathing for what felt like hours. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so relaxed. She turned her head a little and kissed Ginger’s neck simply for the pleasure of doing it, and settled back down to doze.
Ginger stirred. Aurora listened to her breathing grow deeper and more present, the only noise in the compartment besides the whisper of the ancient air return system.
“You awake?” Ginger murmured.
Aurora made a face and stretched her hind legs until they trembled, only vaguely noticing that something was weighing down her left hind hoof. Tired muscles sang relief as she let them relax again. Her hips ached from exertion that had nothing to do with their flight above the clouds.
She shook her head against Ginger’s shoulder and mumbled. “No.”
“Good.” Ginger wrapped a hoof under Aurora’s wing and draped it over her body like a blanket.
Aurora smiled and helped adjust her feathers. She wondered how long they could stay here before someone came looking for them. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she was tempted to run out the clock. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew they couldn’t. Every minute she wasted was a minute Stable 10 didn’t have.
“We should get up,” she sighed.
“Mm.”
Aurora folded her wing, earning a meek groan of protest in doing so. She mimicked the noise and Ginger scrunched her nose at her in stubborn refusal. “Come on. I need to check on whether Fiona has my Pip-Buck.”
“She did,” Ginger said. She pushed herself up slightly when Aurora tugged on her pinned wing, letting the warm feathers slide free from under her. “Or maybe I dreamed she did. Check your hind leg.”
Aurora frowned and sat herself up until her back pressed against the wall. The ungainly weight attached to her rear left hoof became more apparent.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, fumbling her feathers around the heavy casing in the pitch black. It was undeniably her Pip-Buck. “Why did she have to put it on upside-down?”
She felt Ginger pull herself up to a seated position next to her. “She was trying not to wake us,” Ginger said. “I think she was a little embarrassed when I woke up.”
“Bits to bread says that Fiona is incapable of embarrassment,” Aurora grumbled as her feathers slipped out of what she thought was the latch. Fumbling in the dark, she couldn’t be sure of what she was grabbing at. She needed light to see. “Millie?”
“Yes, Aurora?”
“Turn on the...” Her wings stopped and she frowned in the general direction of the darkened ceiling.
“Who was that?” Ginger hissed.
Aurora hesitated before saying, “Millie, turn on the lights.”
The fluorescent tubes clinked to life, forcing the two mares to squint in the harsh light. Aurora’s mind reeled. Asking for the assistance of her Stable’s AI had been a reflex built on a daily routine that spanned three decades. Millie was a fixture of her home in the same way the generator was. She was always just… there.
What she hadn’t expected was for Millie to be here, obediently awaiting commands from a population that very likely didn’t know she existed.
“Aurora,” Ginger said, her eyes scanning the empty room. “Who was that?”
“That’s Millie,” Aurora answered, despite not being quite able to believe the words herself. “She’s a Stable AI. I didn’t think she would be here.”
“Well, wherever she is…” Ginger paused to focus her magic around the Pip-Buck clamped onto Aurora’s leg. The latch sprung open after some manipulation and Aurora pulled her leg free, using her wing to scoop the device out of the air. Ginger gazed mistrustfully around the room. “Wherever she is, she seems to remember your name.”
Aurora frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. Securing the Pip-Buck to her foreleg, she looked up at the ceiling. There, in the center, was a perforated disc the size of a prewar bit. An identical one sat in her compartment back home. “Millie,” she asked, “How do you know my name?”
A pause. “All residents are registered in Stable-Tec’s personnel files after birth.”
“I wasn’t born here,” she stated. After a few seconds without a response, she added, “How do you have access to Stable 10’s records?”
This time there was no pause. “I’m sorry. You have insufficient permissions for this inquiry.”
Aurora’s frown deepened. She looked down at her Pip-Buck and pressed a chunky switch above the screen, turning it on. When it finished booting, she flipped through the menus, trying to think of another way to get her answer. She clicked over to the map and its topographical lines that wound from one edge to the other like hundreds of snakes in strange parallels. Far to the west, a single waypoint labeled HOME glowed reassuringly at her. She sighed relief.
Maybe it was possible that Stable 6 had detected her Pip-Buck somehow and added it to the registry. It didn’t seem too far-fetched.
“Millie, how many Pip-Bucks are registered to this Stable?”
“Six hundred and forty-two,” the AI responded.
Aurora shuddered. She tried not to imagine how over six hundred ponies would react when they learned they were eating the only harvest their Stable would ever bear, and that the only food available was somewhere in the freshly blasted wasteland.
“Is mine one of them?”
A pause. “No.”
“Huh.”
She noticed Ginger’s eyes on her Pip-Buck, particularly on the miles and miles depicted by its fuzzy green lines. She held her foreleg across her chest so that Ginger could see it more closely and tried not to tense up when her magic began gently manipulating the controls. Fond as she was of Ginger, she didn’t want her to erase that waypoint by accident.
“Millie,” Aurora asked, “how many Pip-Bucks are active in this Stable?”
“Two.”
She wrinkled her nose in confusion.
Ginger hummed disapproval. “It seems Paladin Ironshod bent the truth.”
“Seems so,” she agreed.
Aurora watched as Ginger began clicking the button that zoomed out her map. She remembered doing the same thing over and over again when she was a filly. Part of what made receiving her Pip-Buck special was being able to explore the old map of Equestria and seeing where everything had been. She had no doubt that maps were still used in the wasteland - she had caught a glimpse of several framed on the wall of Autumn’s office when Quincy had retreated inside - but judging by Ginger’s interest in her Pip-Buck, originals had to be hard to come by.
But curiosity still nagged at her. Something wasn’t adding up.
“Millie, which residents do those two Pip-Bucks belong to?”
“Aurora Pinfeathers of Stable 10.”
Aurora waited, but Millie didn’t finish.
“And who else?” she pressed.
A pause. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand your inquiry.”
“Celestia’s sunspot,” she muttered. “Who are the two Pip-Bucks in the Stable registered to?”
“Aurora Pinfeathers of Stable 10.”
She could feel her ears flattening with frustration. “I know that. Who else?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand your inquiry.”
Aurora took a deep breath and exhaled, resisting the increasingly powerful urge to find something hard and throw it at the speaker. Whatever the Enclave did to Stables when they stripped them clean, it hadn’t done Millie any favors.
She decided on a different tact. “Millie, how do you have access to Stable 10’s personnel files?”
“I’m sorry. You have insufficient permissions for…”
“Millie,” she interrupted. “Do you have access to files outside this Stable?”
“I’m sorry. You have insufficient…”
She cut her off again, irritation edging into her voice. “Millie, where am I from?”
“Shelter 10.”
“Well at least we agree on something,” she growled.
Then she paused, her face screwed up with fresh confusion.
“Millie,” she repeated, “where am I from?”
“Shelter 10.”
Shelter 10. Not Stable 10. She didn’t know anyone who referred to their home as a Shelter. It was always a Stable. Even Ginger had caught the distinction, her eyes pinched with renewed interest. An anomaly in Millie’s vocabulary wasn’t something that happened spontaneously. She wasn’t programmed to improvise. And yet that word surfaced without hesitation. Shelter. A place to hide, not a place to live.
It was a loose thread. She decided to pull at it. “Millie, do you have access to files outside this Shelter?”
A pause. “Yes.”
Her heart did a somersault. “Do you have access to other Shelters?”
“Yes.”
“Which?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand…”
Aurora bit back an ugly string of curses. “How many Shelters are still active?”
“Thirty-four Shelters are currently designated operational. Eighty-eight are currently retired.”
Her pulse was pounding in her throat. Thirty-four Stables out of one hundred twenty-two. She felt dizzy.
Ginger nudged her. “‘Retired’ is rather broad.”
Aurora chewed her lip and nodded. “Millie, explain what you meant by ‘retired.’”
“The parameters of ‘retired’ include: disabled, destroyed or no longer under the jurisdiction of Stable-Tec staff.”
Aurora gestured at the speaker in a universal expression of there you have it. Ginger nodded. 
“Millie,” she asked, then hesitated. Some things were better left alone, but this… it was a rabbit hole worth falling into. “Millie, were any Shelters retired as a result of a generator failure?”
This time Millie was silent for several seconds, no doubt connecting to whichever database she drew her information from. Aurora drew her knees to her chest and hugged them while she waited.
“Yes,” Millie confirmed.
“Fuck,” she whispered. “Millie, how many of those failures were a result of faulty ignition talismans?”
“Zero,” Millie responded. “Shelters 19, 32, 77, 102 and 132 were retired when their ignition talismans reached their scheduled depletion dates.”
Scheduled depletion dates. The words tied a knot in Aurora’s stomach.
“Millie, what is the depletion date for Shelter 10?”
“That information is restricted.”
No polite apology this time. Just a brick wall that told her what she needed to know. The fact that there was something to restrict meant that there was a date. Stable 10 was being shut down on a schedule.
Ginger slipped her hoof across Aurora’s wings and rubbed her shoulder, making the same connection she had.
She stared at the rumpled pile of sheets laying on the floor next to the bed, the thin film of dust that had collected on them barely disturbed by the compartment’s newest occupants. This Stable had died according to a different plan, but there had been a plan regardless. Centuries after the bombs scraped civilization off the map, the calendars left behind still held firm to the events scribbled on them by corpses. She wondered if any Stables were intended to last for as long as their inhabitants expected, or whether they were just death traps ticking down on different clocks.
Her eyes sank to her Pip-Buck and the wide map of Equestria glowing up at her. She found the waypoint she had set and her heart sank. Even if they found a replacement talisman. Even if they got it back to Stable 10 and it worked, what then? Would her home be safe or would they have exchanged one timebomb for another? What was the point?
“You’re making that face again,” Ginger said.
She scrunched her nose. “I’m not making a face.”
Ginger hummed her disagreement. “You were so,” she chided, catching the stubborn smirk that tried to kink the corner of Aurora’s lip.
“Maybe,” she conceded. Ginger waited patiently for her to finish her thought. 
“It just feels like we’re playing with half a deck.”
“It’s been that way since the beginning,” Ginger said. She scooped Aurora’s hoof into her own and examined its rough edges. “There are no guarantees in this world. Ponies have spent their lives chasing ghost and go to their graves with more questions than answers. Sometimes it’s best to be happy with what you have.”
Aurora watched as Ginger turned her hoof over, examining the sole as if she were telling her fortune while resting her head in the nook of Aurora’s shoulder. Old scars from her first shifts in Mechanical stood out like map lines, the marks of an apprentice unused to working with her hooves and wings in tandem. There were so many stories there, several of them dull. Most purely embarrassing. She looked at Ginger’s unmarred hooves and wondered what kind of stories she had to tell.
She tried to take Ginger’s advice and blew out a sigh.
She was alive and relatively healthy, breathing air unfiltered by her Stable and still kicking despite being told that leaving home before the all clear meant certain death. She could fire a rifle and had even learned to fly. Not particularly well in either respect, but she was getting better by the day. She had seen a sky full of stars and shared it with the mare sitting next to her. A mare who had been eager to share more in return.
All things considered, Aurora decided she was pretty happy with what she had right now.
But still...
Ginger set Aurora’s hoof down and offered her a knowing smile. “I look at it this way. If we do find a new talisman and it turns out to be tampered with like the one in your Stable, it won’t become a problem for many, many decades. That’ll be plenty of time to gather a few additional replacements.”
“You’re... actually making a lot of sense,” she admitted.
Ginger patted her on the leg like a teacher whose student finally understood her sage wisdom. This was well-tread ground for her, after all. “I expect you to say that often and enthusiastically.”
Aurora snorted, and Ginger bent up to kiss her. Aurora leaned back to meet her halfway, half-laughing into her mouth at the awkward angle but not willing to break away to find a better one. The affection reassured a self-conscious corner of her heart she hadn’t heard from in a long time. She didn’t want this to be a one-time fling. A temporary vent for their individual traumas. The longer she thought on it, the more she wanted this thing between her and Ginger to last. 
Aurora finally broke the kiss only when her neck started to ache in earnest. Neither of them were winning trophies for performance, and it felt good not to be worried about it. The important thing was that they were here together.
Lacking a headboard, Ginger leaned against the cool metal of the compartment wall and sighed. Her eyes traced their way back up to Millie’s speaker. Aurora’s followed suit. They stared at the innocuous disc for several quiet minutes, the silence giving both of them room to think.
“We live in a strange world,” Ginger observed. “Mysteries upon mysteries.”
Aurora nodded, still able to feel Ginger’s warmth on her lips. “Before I met you and Roach, the biggest mystery I had to worry about was why the same apple could cost five bits one month and ten bits the next.”
Ginger laughed. “Once we find your talisman, I wouldn’t mind seeing your Stable for myself. The way you describe it sounds like a small paradise.”
“Huh,” was all Aurora could think to say. She looked around at the compartment, with its identical walls, the same desk and terminal down to the model number. The partitioned bathroom encased in the same white tiles, the same metal toilet and even the same white towels. Despite the growing evidence that something was deeply wrong with Stable-Tec, the Stables provided a level of comfort and safety that couldn’t be found anywhere else in Equestria. The Stables provided a routine, and a promise of a better future when the doors finally opened. Every pony lucky enough to be born inside one shared the same noble goal of surviving where their ancestors had not. The Stables safeguarded the last vestiges of a better, brighter world.
Yet after seeing a brief glimpse of the world that had risen from the ash of balefire, Aurora wasn’t so sure that the Stables were the paradise Ginger envisioned. She had been taught that the world outside was dead. Burned to the dirt and swept away by the tornadic winds thrown out by hundreds upon hundreds of towering green mushroom clouds. The Stables were the seeds of a new future, and the mission had always been to wait. Wait until the poison had settled out of the air, until the soil could be tilled without infecting their precious crops with blight. Wait until the machines of war had rusted away, and the knowledge of how to build them was long forgotten. 
Wait until the world they destroyed was ready to give them a second chance.
But the world wasn’t dead, and it certainly wasn’t waiting for them to come fix it. It had been rebuilding itself without them for centuries.
“Dear, you’re brooding again.”
Aurora blinked. “Sorry.”
Ginger waved her off. “Don’t be. Between the two of us, I fear we have quite a lot to brood about.”
“One day at a time,” she said.
“Truer words.” Ginger tipped her nose toward the speaker. “You know, she’s clearly connected to the other Stables in some capacity. Do you suppose she would allow you to contact yours?”
Aurora’s throat went dry. The thought hadn’t occurred to her in the slightest.
The connection was there, however Millie’s software was undoubtedly a rat’s nest of permissions and protocols that Aurora was ill equipped to understand. She knew hardware. Things she could touch with her hooves and occasionally beat into metal confetti with a heavy hammer and a strong wing. Software was something for the ponies up in IT. A mysterious language that only they could decipher, and one that Aurora suspected they used to sandbag ponies like her while their coffee finished brewing.
Exploiting Millie’s unpredictable use of Shelter had been dumb luck. It shouldn’t have worked at all, but it had. Aurora wouldn’t have given it a second thought if Millie had stonewalled her instead.
Asking to contact home was different. It terrified her. What if it worked?
What if it didn’t?
She looked to Ginger and couldn’t help but appreciate the neutral smile she offered in return. There was no pressure to act one way or the other. Whatever decision she made, Ginger would support it.
“Millie,” she said. Somewhere out there, a light on a distant server flickered recognition. “I’d like to access my messages.”
A pause. “You have eight unopened messages. Three are flagged high importance.”
She swallowed and felt her heart tick a little faster. “Upload them to my Pip-Buck.”
“There are eight identical messages stored on your Pip-Buck. Would you like me to replace them?”
“No!” she yelped. When had she been receiving anything? She drew her Pip-Buck close to her face and punched through the menus, stabbing at the cycle button with a feather. “No,” she repeated more clearly, just in case Millie hadn’t understood. “Don’t replace anything.”
The screen flickered from the map of Equestria, through several tabs of empty inventory, and a detailed log of recent flagged health incidents, many of which bore the words RADIATION, LETHAL and CATASTROPHIC. 
She flipped past all of them until her message queue glowed on the screen. Normally, her inbox was empty save for one or two errant work orders. Sure enough, the first three new messages were from various departments of Stable 10 complaining about a piece of equipment that had broken or, more likely, been broken by the sender. She had to resist to open them out of sheer reflex.
Her eyes drifted to the five messages at the top of the queue. The oldest was from Tally Mane, of all ponies, with a subject line simply reading “Fuck yourself.” 
Aurora snorted, the fear of sending a message eclipsed by the written tantrum Tally had sent. Of course he would be so engrossed with his demotion to Fabrication that he wouldn’t know the mare he was spitting barbs at was halfway across the wasteland by the time he sent the message. Considering he had caused a Stable-wide blackout by using well over his department’s power allowance, ignoring her repeated warnings to dial it back, his reassignment to Sanitation was well-deserved.
The next message was a general announcement simply titled “Overmare Delphi.” Aurora opened the message and began to read.
In light of recent events, it is with great pain and deep sadness that I must inform you all that our overmare has passed away. Overmare Delphi was a beloved and respected…
Aurora closed the obituary. Not today. Not when she could still smell the blood and matter sliding off the crown molding in Delphi’s office. She became aware of Ginger’s hoof idly rubbing the crook between her wings in gentle circles, and it surprised her how much the silent gesture acted like a balm. The pain of Delphi’s death was still there and she suspected it would never completely go away, but the weight of it felt a few pounds lighter.
She scrolled up to the first of three priority messages at the top of the queue and read the subject line. A knot formed in her throat when she looked at who had sent it, and she set her hoof down in her lap. She stared past the mattress at an indistinct square of neglected linoleum until the edges blurred, knowing each message would hurt and hating the fact that they were waiting for her there at all.
When she left the Stable, she broke so many laws. Violated so many taboos by going outside and putting everyone she knew at risk in the process. 
Two messages from Sledge waited for her like an indictment, but her eyes were drawn to the most recent one. A lump grew in her throat so quickly at the sight of his name that she scrolled away from it as an act of self-preservation.
She selected Sledge’s first letter and opened it.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Overstallion Sledge
Subject: READ IMMEDIATELY
04/07/1297

Pinfeathers, if you’re reading this, you need to come back right now. Please. You have every right to be pissed at me for putting you in a cell but I know you understand why I had to do it. This situation with the generator can be fixed. The entire population is turning the Stable upside-down looking for a solution and we’re going to find it. You know as well as I do that Stable-Tec never makes anything without a backup plan. I need you here to help us put it into place when we find it.

Please Aurora. Your father trusted me with you after your mother died. Don’t make me have to tell him that he lost his only daughter, too.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Overstallion Sledge
Subject: I’m sorry
04/08/1297

Aurora, I’m sorry. You know it’s like pulling teeth to get me to admit when I’ve fucked up, but I’m starting to realize that I really fucked up. I treated you like a torn grease rag since you came on shift yesterday and by the goddesses I don’t know why I didn’t apologize for it in my last message. I lose track of how many times I’ve told other ponies to own their shit and there I stood knee-deep in mind pretending it was yours. I don’t know what else to say so I’ll say it again. I’m sorry.

On a lighter note, the eggheads in I.T. are telling me that your Pip-Buck is still pinging the servers and that the signal is getting weaker, which is apparently a good thing. I’m told that means you’re alive out there, Pinfeathers, and that you’re receiving these messages. I’ll be honest, I don’t understand half of what these computer ponies are saying, but hearing you’re still kicking was something I needed to hear today.

I.T. also wants me to tell you to keep your Pip-Buck turned on. They’re working on a software update for your Pip-Buck that you should start seeing this afternoon. It’s going to be a lot so try to stay put once it starts. They’re not sure what’ll happen if you lose signal before it’s finished. The dumbed down version is that your map will be getting updated so you can see all of the prewar points of interest so you have a better idea of where you’re going. There’s going to be a lot of junk info too, but we don’t think there’s time to filter any of it out before you’re out of range so you’re getting everything. I hope it helps.

One last thing before I sign off. The third shift down in Mechanical were able to get some info on the ignition talisman, and the biggest problem is going to be taking the motherfucker out of the generator without burning off our wings. It’s unicorn tech from top to bottom and there’s no off switch for it. I’m hazarding a guess that you worked that all out already, but in case you didn’t, keep an eye out there for any unicorn that might have enough brains to pull this old bastard out. Let them name their price if that’s what it takes. Carbide is leading a team that’s going to design a temporary containment system for it. We’re hoping to have it ready by the time you get back.

We’ll see you then, Pinfeathers.

Be safe,
Sledge







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Dusky Pinfeathers
Subject: To my remarkable daughter
04/08/1297

Hi honey,

Sledge stopped by my compartment today to give me the good news that you’re alive out there. I’m also told that you might be out of range soon and that I.T. is going to be sending files to your Pip-Buck to help, so I need to send this out quickly.

I’m so proud of you, Aurora. I knew the second you came into this world that it would be too small for you, and I feel nothing short of admiration when I think of my daughter surviving outside these walls. There is no doubt in my mind that this Stable was put here so that one day you could go out there and see the real world. If your mother were alive, she would be beaming. I know I am.

Aurora, when I heard you left I thought I lost you. I’m still afraid that I might. I want you to be careful. More than that, I want you to know that seeing you yesterday was the highlight of my life. Neither of us dealt with your mother’s death in a way she would have approved, but I shoulder the majority of that blame as your father. I should have done better. I should have visited you first, and more often than never. I only pray that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for being an idiot. If you’re reading this, I want you to know that I forgive you.

You are a pioneer. Win or lose, whether you find what you’re looking for or not, I want you to know that I will never stop loving you. You’ve always been destined for great things, Aurora. I’m looking forward to hearing about them when you come home.

Love,
Dad







	Aurora’s jaw shuddered as she read her father’s message. The letters were barely legible through the thick film of tears clinging in her vision. Her father had never been one to wax poetic. This was a new side of him. He thought he was saying goodbye.
More importantly, he forgave her.
“You’re lucky to have him,” Ginger spoke. Her eyes had taken on a shine of their own.
Aurora nodded, her voice husky. “Yeah.” She blew out a long breath and scrubbed the water from her eyes with the back of her hoof. “Millie?”
“Yes, Aurora?”
She cleared her throat and blinked until she could see clearly again. She hesitated for a moment before asking, “Where can I find an ignition talisman?”
It was a shot in the dark. She wasn’t surprised by Millie’s response. 
“That information is restricted.”
She wiped the rest of her face and blew out a long breath. “Of course it is.”
Ginger was unusually still against her shoulder, enough for Aurora to glance at her to see if she’d fallen back asleep. The unicorn wasn’t asleep. Instead, she stared at some invisible spot in the middle of the room, her face creased, deep in thought. Aurora stopped short of asking her if everything was alright. Whatever idea she was chasing, she barely had it by the tail. She gave her time.
When she finally spoke, she did so slowly as if she didn’t quite trust her own words. “Aurora… this Stable we’re in now. It works. It has power.”
Aurora gave her a concerned frown and looked up at the lights. “We can’t take the Bluff’s talisman.”
“I know that,” Ginger said, shaking her head to clear it. “What I mean is, this Stable shouldn’t have power.”
She tried her best not to look as confused as she felt. Ginger saw the lack of understanding on her face and sighed.
“Scooch,” she said. Aurora tucked in her knees to let Ginger slide past her to the floor where she could pace. The unicorn’s hooves clicked from the door to the desk and back as she organized her thoughts. Aurora took the opportunity to stretch her legs too, and skirted around Ginger toward the bathroom. She ran the faucet in the sink and waited for the water to run clear while Ginger clarified. “This Stable was… retired, as Millie called it, after its crops failed. Whether the original population evacuated or someone else got inside much later, it’s clear that the Enclave found Stable 6 not long after it failed. They did then what they still do today and stripped as much technology out that they could.”
Aurora nodded and dipped her mouth under the slightly yellowed stream and took a sip. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. Probably safer than anything in the wasteland. “Okay,” she said, wiping water from her muzzle. “But the Enclave is a fan club for pegasi. They would have had to leave the talisman behind.”
Ginger shook her head and stopped pacing. “Membership in the Enclave is exclusive to pegasi, but they’ll work with anyone if the potential gain is worth the inconvenience. I was raised in New Canterlot. It’s one of the few cities in Equestria that the Enclave controls, and they were always walking the markets looking for ponies to travel into Ranger territory for some prewar relic.”
“Maybe this Stable is different,” Aurora suggested. She eyed herself in the mirror and grimaced at her mane. Bedhead didn’t begin to describe it. Even Ginger’s skillfully kempt fiery locks were kinked and matted. Aurora began running her feathers under the faucet to wet the clumps of cream hair back into some semblance of dignity. “Maybe they didn’t know what to take back then and left the talisman behind by mistake.”
“No,” Ginger disagreed. “Even if they did, they would have come back to take it by now. Leaving it behind in a place like this… look at what the Rangers have done with the Bluff just by having one working Stable as an outpost. The Enclave wouldn’t clear out a Stable and leave the lights on for the enemy.”
Aurora worked her feathers through a tangle until it finally fell free. “So you’re saying they took the original talisman.”
“Yes. They stripped as much tech as they could and brought a few unicorns along to take the ignition talisman out before they left.” Ginger stepped next to the mirror to examine her own shorter mane and cringed. She lit her horn and began working on fixing it.
Aurora frowned up at the lights and finished Ginger’s thought. “And when the Steel Rangers discovered an ignition talisman of their own, they came here and plugged it in.”
Ginger made a face at her reflection and, carefully, used her magic to tease her short locks back into an elegant bob. “That’s my theory, anyway. Considering how many decades the Rangers have dedicated to stockpiling relics from the old world, it would make logical sense that they should come across a talisman or two in that time. Oh, no. Let me help you.”
Aurora had been using her feathers to comb her mane flat, which was always how she wore it. She felt a flush of embarrassment as Ginger took it upon herself to fix it for her. She had never needed to do anything with it before. There wasn’t much point when you’d be pulling flakes of metal out of it the next day. She dropped her wings and relinquished her mane.
As Ginger worked, tugging gently as she ran her magic through the damp strands, Aurora came to the conclusion that Ginger’s theory wasn’t just plausible, it was very likely dead on.
“And yet they left Millie operational,” she wondered aloud.
“Assuming they knew about her,” Ginger countered. “Even if they did, they may not have understood the extent of her connections. Or perhaps they couldn’t remove her because of it. If she’s on a network, it’s not outside the realm of possibility for her to be operating remotely.”
Aurora nodded at that. “Maybe. This place is definitely in bad shape. That’s why Ironshod wanted me to get him schematics to build a fabricator. With enough raw material, they could rebuild a lot of what was taken out,” she reflected. “He probably thinks he could make more talismans with one.”
“Could they?” Ginger asked.
Aurora smirked and shook her head. “I wouldn’t be out here if that were the case. Fabricators are great for replacing simple components of the Stable as they age, but they have hard limits when it comes to complex designs. I spent two weeks of my apprenticeship learning how to cut threads for new screws on a lathe because the ones that come out of Fabrication are garbage. We let the general population use them for their own projects but if one ever made it to Mechanical, Sledge would blow a fuse. You spend thirty years finding those little gremlins stripped out in your equipment and you would too.”
Ginger chuckled as she held several layers of Aurora’s mane aloft. “Perhaps you should tell Ironshod that story before he gets his hopes up.”
Aurora snorted. “Nah, wouldn’t want to ruin his day.”
“Mm.” Ginger’s magic wove her mane into loose curls that fell against her neck one after the other. “We should consider the possibility that the Steel Rangers may have more talismans in storage somewhere.” 
That was something to consider, but Aurora made a face when she remembered something else. “I might have told Ironshod that I was looking for one.”
“So?”
“So if we steal a talisman, he’s going to know it was us.” She waited as Ginger slid amber light through a thick clump of her mane, watching as the plain sheet of cream took on a silky wave as it fell against her neck. The last time she remembered doing her mane like this was the morning of the first day of her apprenticeship. It felt good to see it again.
“I can think of more pleasant ways to die than being caught stealing from the Steel Rangers,” Ginger chuckled. She eyed Aurora with a raised brow, but the smile on her lip undercut the chastisement. “New rule. No burgling fanatical military organizations.”
Aurora grumped and Ginger dropped a fan of her mane over her eyes in response.
“They burgled me first,” she muttered.
“I’ll burgle you myself if you keep it up.”
She lifted the mop of curls out of her eyes with a feather and looked from Ginger’s reflection to the mare standing next to her. “That sounds like an incentive.”
Ginger rolled her eyes and pecked her on the nose. “You’re incorrigible.”
Aurora grinned as Ginger turned her chin to face the mirror again. She settled in as layer after layer slid through Ginger’s rejuvenated magic. 
As the dim hum of the Stable replaced conversation, she found her thoughts drifting back to the events of the last several days. It comforted her to know that the strange updates on her Pip-Buck hadn’t come from some mysterious source, but from her home. Not only did they want to help, but they wanted her to come back.
She watched Ginger for several long seconds and her smile dimmed a little. Her original plan when she decided to step into the wasteland was to leave, find a talisman, and come home. It was a simple plan because simple plans had the best odds of success. Then the tunnel ghouls mobbed her and she met Roach. The plan got a little less simple. Then she met Cider, which muddied the water even further. And finally she met Ginger.
The mare was humming a pleasant melody she didn’t recognize. It was soothing to the ears and Aurora found herself wondering what words had been written for it, if any. Listening to Ginger’s music made her feel safe. Moreso, it made her feel at home. Her simple plan was suddenly a lot more complicated.
Three hard thumps rang the compartment’s steel clad door, shaking Aurora out of her reverie. Barely a breath later the door slid open and a Ranger she didn’t recognize frowned over the threshold. 
He spotted them staring at him from the bathroom sink and glanced toward someone else in the hallway. “I got ‘em,” he called.
The last strands of Aurora’s mane fell against her neck unfinished as Ginger whirled on the Ranger and stamped her hoof against the tile. “Excuse me, but we did not…”
Two uniformed stallions filed around the Ranger standing in the doorway, taking positions on either side of the door. Aged but well-cared for black rifles hung off their shoulders from heavy leather straps. The worn muzzles pointed lazily at the floor, but the fact that they were visible at all made it clear that they weren’t here to debate. Ginger pressed her lips firmly together without bothering to finish her thought.
The stallion who opened the door stepped forward, flanked by his armed counterparts. His eyes locked onto Aurora with a still intensity that lifted her hackles. “Elder Coldbrook has asked to speak with you,” he said. “We’ve been sent to escort you to him.”
The name was only vaguely familiar. Roach had said something about a Coldbrook in the garden, but she couldn’t place it. She stepped around Ginger until they were shoulder to shoulder. “I don’t know who that is.”
“That doesn’t matter,” the Ranger said. “You need to come with us.”
Aurora’s frown deepened. “Not until you tell me why.”
She watched the Ranger’s eyes dip impassively as he watched her widen her stance. This felt too much like the way Ironshod had pulled her out of Redheart’s clinic, only she knew better now than to let it happen. Her fight instinct was revving up hard.
“I wasn’t briefed on the Elder’s motivations.” The Ranger stood a little straighter, trying to look a smidge larger than he was. “I was ordered to find and take you to him, by force if necessary.”
Aurora sighed. More of this. The Steel Rangers seemed more and more like an organization that saw every problem as a nail, and relished in playing the role of hammer. She shrugged her wings. “Alright, fine, but Ginger’s coming with me.”
“Non-negotiable,” Ginger agreed.
The Ranger looked at each of them with equal disinterest. “I don’t care. Just stop talking and follow us.” He did a quarter turn and gestured past his two counterparts through the open door. “Now, please.”







Stables had a way of giving things a false sense of permanence. Day to day, things rarely changed on a visual note. Same walls, same lines painted on the ground, same ponies walking the same corridors. In some ways it was comforting. A pegasus knew what to expect when she stepped out of her compartment. In other ways, it was maddening. Ponies sometimes sought out a little chaos in their day or, in most cases, the evening after their shifts. It was the reason why Stable security found stills operating in bathrooms every month, and why while they might dismantle the homebrew operation, there was often little alcohol officially recovered on paper.
Stables were, by their nature, as boring as the ponies who lived in them. It took some real ingenuity to keep one’s self occupied. Or in Aurora’s case, a willingness to bury herself in her work and never come up for air unless it was to blow off steam with a few drinks and sometimes a few punches. She was careful never to take either one too far, however. It didn’t take much of a push to go from casual drinking to problem drinking in a Stable, and at the end of the day Aurora preferred the monotony of her day to day over the living under the watchful eye of a sobriety program.
As the Rangers led them through the surface tunnel and into the waning light of an overcast evening sky, years of living according to a fixed routine primed Aurora to notice that something was different on the Bluff. The steady mumble of conversation from trader wagons set up on either side of the wide cobblestone boulevard had taken on a note of consternation. Here and there, ponies argued more heatedly with vendors over prices. A unicorn scratched numbers on a slate with a bit of chalk in front of one cart, then trotted across the road to another with wild determination in her eyes. Several Rangers loitered on the sidewalks, their weapons in full view much like the ones escorting Aurora and Ginger.
Ginger nudged Aurora and pointed her horn toward a familiar white and blue pinstriped wagon. The whimsical letters of F&F Mercantile had been painted over with heavy strokes of white paint. A plain wooden board hung over the front of the wagon. Block-style letters, still wet, read HICKORY TRADING COMPANY. The wagon’s owner waved dismissively at a group of wagons still bearing F&F’s insignia on their canvas while he worked at separating a few caps from the stallion listening to his energetic pitch. The vendors at the F&F wagons stared daggers at him as ponies drifted toward the sound of his voice.
Word had finally reached Blinder’s Bluff.
It hadn’t taken long for the traders to react. Some were clearly being cautious about the news. More than half of the carts owned by Autumn Song’s company still bore F&F branding and their vendors were out in full regalia, quelling any doubt about where their loyalties lie. But some had seen the opportunity in front of them and took it. Carts laden with salvage and other useful items were suddenly without an owner, save for the ponies pulling them. Back at Stable 10, ponies called that seed money. Even as the market row drifted behind them, Aurora spotted a pair of earth ponies pulling the pinstriped canvas off their cart. Another defection in the name of entrepreneurism.
With the chaos behind them, their escorts led them downhill along the same street they had taken from the wall. The shacks near the bottom resembled something akin to actual buildings, something Aurora hadn’t been in the state of mind to notice on the way up. She remembered a colt greeting them from a window somewhere on this street and she idly searched for it despite knowing she wouldn’t recognize it from the ramshackle frames that rose to a second story on each side of the narrow street. 
Something savory wafted under her nose and her stomach creaked at the injustice of being so close to home cooking after being neglected for… she blinked. How long had it been since she ate anything? Ginger cleared her throat to distract from the peeling growl of her own gut. It occurred to her that neither of them had had any real food since the day they left Junction City. The smell of salted meat turned her body against her. It took a force of will not to break away from their escort to pursue that intoxicating scent.
The road bent toward the wall. For a terrible moment Aurora thought that the meeting had been a ruse and the real reason for their escort was to evict them from the city entirely. As they approached a small crowd gathered around a brightly lit plank building and saw the Rangers posted outside, she breathed a sigh a relief.
The crowd could be described many ways. Disruptive. Threatening. A public nuisance. Aurora went the more diplomatic route. The ponies standing outside were pissed.
Evenly spaced letters painted in flaking whitewash stretched from one corner of the building to the other, bearing the words SOMEPLACE ELSE. Two halves of a sandwich board hung by nails near the door, advertising all manner of food and beverage in neatly printed chalk. Several of the options were crossed out, the words “No Stock” jotted in place of the price. The bottom of each board urged patrons to speak with Lime Royale should they be interested in selling him ingredients.
As the Rangers pushed through the wide-set doors, several members of the crowd hollered at their backs in outrage. Aurora barely noticed. The smell of seared meat flooded her nostrils as the doors clapped shut, closing out the furious patrons behind them.
Someplace Else was a cross between the eclectic chain restaurants of yester-century and an old-timey Appleoosan saloon. Two dozen heavy wooden spools once used to wrap industrial wiring sat on their sides as tables, surrounded by all manner of chairs and stools ranging from simple wood to chrome plate. The owner had attempted to replicate booths along the far walls with couches, benches and in one case a pair of church pews facing one another under half of a dinner table. Various nicknacks hung from walls, wooden pillars and even the ceiling. It was charming, in its own way, and had been clearly assembled with some semblance of care. Aurora immediately decided she liked it.
The armed duo in their escort took their usual position next do the door while the third Ranger led them to the back. A wide bar dominated the rear half of the establishment and the earth pony tending it, a remarkably tall brown stallion wearing a simple green smock, stood in front of a wall of white-labeled bottles. Each one had something different scrawled in black on the label and Aurora could make out a few drawings that faced them. The bartender watched Aurora as she passed, looking at her wings and then the Pip-Buck on her foreleg. For the life of her, Aurora couldn’t decide whether the stallion cared much about either. Even so, his muddy brown eyes followed her as the Ranger led them to the only occupied booth in the bar.
A grey unicorn with a short cut silver mane sat in the last booth, a makeshift affair cobbled together by two iron park benches and a pair of square chess tables nailed together at the bottom to make something that approached a single dining table. A chipped ceramic plate sat in front of him, layered generously with steaming greens and something that looked suspiciously like steak. A knife and fork pointed into the shank of meat and, aided by a gentle white glow, neatly sawed a small triangle off the edge.
Elder Coldbrook nipped the morsel off his hovering fork and glanced up at the two mares as they approached his table. He smiled an apology and held up a hoof as he chewed, swallowed and washed it down with a glass of purified water. “Take a seat,” he said.
Lacking any real choice in the matter, Aurora slid onto the bench and Ginger followed suit. The Ranger escorting them, his role complete, thumped his hoof against his chest and left.
Coldbrook watched him go as the mares seated themselves, then turned his attention back to his plate. He sank his fork into a neat stack of greens that Aurora didn’t quite recognize. They looked like carrots, but thinner and paler. Despite the strange visual presentation, they looked and smelled fantastic. The stallion popped them into his mouth and chewed, earning a sympathetic groan from Aurora’s stomach.
“You’re hungry,” Coldbrook commented. His eyes didn’t leave his meal as he pricked another maybe-carrot with the tines of his fork.
“Such is life in the wasteland,” Ginger politely agreed.
“Such it is.” Coldbrook glanced up at the two of them, his weathered eyes creasing atop a widening smile. He straightened in the salvaged bench and let his fork settle on his plate. He reminded Aurora of the photos her father had of her grandfather, though Coldbrook couldn’t be much older than fifty. Still, there was a charm in his eyes that some stallions seemed to inherit with age. It was disarming, and she supposed that was the point.
“Mister Royale, these ladies look half starved,” Coldbrook called to the bar. “If you could bring us two more plates, please.”
The bartender grunted and disappeared into the kitchen behind the bar.
Coldbrook pointed a knife toward the bar. “Best cook in the city when there’s protein on the menu. Brandy’s shit, though.”
It was meant to be a joke, but neither of them laughed. Aurora set her hooves on the table and gently cleared her throat. “I’m sure it’s awful,” she said. “Can we get to the part where you tell us why we’re here?”
Coldbrook smiled and resumed cutting away at his steak, content to ignore her while he ate. Plates clattered in the kitchen. An abrupt sizzle of meat on heat tempted the mares’ eyes toward the bar. Coldbrook grunted his satisfaction as he chewed. “It’s hard to find good Ursa this far east. Either of you have the opportunity?”
Ginger pursed her lips and leaned back against the bench, choosing to let her eyes wander the nicknacks hung throughout the bar rather than entertain the stallion’s one-sided conversation. Aurora couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed that this was what they’d been dragged out to listen to. It was evident that whatever Coldbrook’s reason for meeting them here was, he would get to it at his own pace.
“I can’t say I have,” Aurora said
Coldbrook’s eyes glittered at the response. “At the risk of being presumptuous, I think you’ll find it better than the average fare you had back home.” His eyes dipped knowingly to her Pip-Buck. “I heard you had some trouble with one of my paladins recently. I believe you’re owed an apology for his conduct, but I thought I’d spare you the discomfort of speaking to him and offer you one myself.”
That was enough to catch her by surprise, but she held onto her suspicion with open caution. “Thank you,” she said.
The stallion nodded, as if that was all he wanted to hear in return. Aurora watched him tuck back into his meal with all the confidence of a pony who thought he had just resolved all of her grievances against Ironshod. She found herself watching him more closely, looking for a crack in the facade. It was hard to tell whether he was genuine or leading up to something else. 
She found herself doing an impression of Ginger, allowing her eyes to wander while Elder Coldbrook ate in happy silence. It occurred to her that the bar was adorned with prewar trinkets that very likely held some value, if they still worked. A blocky yellow alarm clock sat on a shelf above Coldbrook’s head next to a glass jar filled with old corks. An assortment of gears hung from the wall next to her, their teeth completely unsuited for one another but arranged with a surprising amount of care to look pretty on the wall. It was an offense to engineering that she was glad to forgive.
The half-wall partitions between each booth were held upright by thick wooden posts stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Several of them had coat hooks hammered into the wood, and Aurora found herself looking at the innocuous brown uniform hanging from the one near Coldbrook. Between the cloth folds glittered an assortment of gold pins and sewn ribbons. A large patch stitched onto the shoulder prominently displayed a black broadsword bisecting two outstretched wings of the same color. The feathers bent upwards, nearly touching the tip of the sword on their way around a trio of six-pointed stars. Two hundred years later, it was hard to find a pony who didn’t recognize Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark at first glance.
It didn’t take Aurora very long to conclude Coldbrook’s uniform had been arranged deliberately. He wanted her to know who he represented. Or, at least, who he thought he represented.
A renewed shout rose from the patrons gathered outside as a gust of wind made the bar doors shudder. Aurora and Ginger turned just in time to see the armed contingent of their escort take a cautious step away from the doors in either direction, their weapons lifting by the barest degree.
“Oh, can it, Feldspar. He’s with me.” The familiar voice was joined by the thumping of hooves on the boardwalk outside.
Coldbrook’s magic coalesced around the Rangers’ rifles, pushing their barrels down. The two Rangers looked down then over to their booth before finally standing down.
The old doors swung open on creaking hinges and Fiona sauntered through them, followed closely by a sheepish looking Roach. Her golden eyes locked onto them like she’d spotted a mouse in the underbrush, and her impressive catlike frame slinked through the crowded tables toward them. Roach nodded politely at the Rangers guarding the door and followed close behind.
Aurora glanced at Coldbrook, whose amicable smile didn’t show any sign of wavering. Fiona, on the other hand, looked ragged. The rims of her eyes were bloodshot and she looked like she was on the verge of falling asleep, which made perfect sense given she only seemed to broadcast at night. Aurora and Ginger had slept through the day out of temporary necessity. Fiona had been nocturnal for years. It probably didn’t help that she’d stayed up late to help Aurora retrieve her Pip-Buck. Judging by how she barely picked her wings off the floor as she walked, she was running on fumes.
Fiona’s eyes dipped to Aurora’s foreleg and she offered a tired smile of recognition. With nowhere else to sit, her butt hit the floor in the walkway outside the booth. Roach opted to lean on the post next to Ginger, his featureless eyes somehow managing to ask them both whether they were okay. The two mares offered mild nods in return.
Coldbrook dabbed his mouth with a grey square of cloth that amounted to a napkin and finished chewing. The utensils clicked against his plate and remained there. 
“Good. We’re all here.” He nodded his greeting to Roach and Fiona, though his eyes lingered briefly on the gryphon. “I recall sending a contingent of Rangers to escort you here, Ms. Goldbeak.”
Fiona flushed, something Aurora didn’t think was possible. “You did. And it’s just Fiona.”
Coldbrook nodded, a tightness forming in the corners of his eyes. “I take it they’re making the trek down the Bluff alone.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning his attention to Roach. “And you?”
“Fiona picked me up,” Roach said. It took them a moment to realize he meant it literally. Ginger barely stifled a snort.
Coldbrook looked at the four of them and shrugged. “At least their reports will be interesting to read for once,” he said. Straightening in his seat, his eyes drifted back to Aurora. “Well. Now that we’re all here, I think we can begin.”
The four of them exchanged bewildered expressions as Coldbrook pushed his plate to the side and dropped his napkin over the uneaten portion. His eyes were the color of sun bleached brick. They swept across the table, stopping briefly on each of them before coming back to focus on the three ponies occupying the other side of the table. “I realize the three of you may not who I am. Let me be very clear in saying that it’s important that you do. My name is Pickett Coldbrook. I have been entrusted with the station of Elder of the Second Equestrian Army. I am responsible for ninety-five thousand Steel Rangers spread over eighteen divisions, including the fifth division stationed here in Blinder’s Bluff. My sworn duty is to protect Equestria from all threats within and without, and I have been carrying out that duty for the last eighteen years. Each…”
The kitchen doors banged open and the bartender sidled backwards through them with one plate resting on an upward facing hoof and a second pinched delicately between his teeth. Coldbrook smiled as the stallion walked around the bar and to their table, setting both plates down with a single fluid motion.
Aurora’s eyes grew round as Ginger pushed one of the plates in front of her. An inch-thick slab of seared meat from something Coldbrook called an Ursa still hissed beneath an aromatic pillar of its own steam. It was surrounded by a bed of the same strange not-carrots the stallion had pecked at, seasoned with something that appeared to be salt and soaking in a thin pool of the meat’s grease. Her stomach felt as if it were on the verge of digesting itself out of sheer desperation. She reached over Ginger and snatched up her utensils between two feathers and proceeded to dig in. Ginger wasn’t far behind.
The bartender looked at the two newcomers and frowned a question at Coldbrook.
He looked between Fiona and Roach. “Would either of you like something to eat?”
Roach shook his head. Fiona offered a half-hearted shrug and looked at the bartender. “Any coffee?”
“Instant,” Lime said.
Fiona made a face. “Bring the carafe and put it on his tab.”
Lime looked to the grey stallion, who nodded. He disappeared back to the kitchen without a word.
Coldbrook’s smile was pinched. “I seem to have lost my train of thought.”
“You were telling us that we needed to know who you were,” Ginger deadpanned.
The stallion’s eyes swiveled slowly to Ginger and hung there for several seconds like ruddy weights. “How right you are, Ms. Dressage, though I feel it’s safe to assume you’d all like to know less about me and more about why you’re here.”
He let the silence stretch before continuing. “Simply put, you are all here because of your individual involvement in certain events that have taken place over the last several days. Some of them amount to petty crime,” his eyes moved to Fiona, then slid across the checkered table to Aurora. “Others are proving to be catastrophic, and will likely have effects lasting for several years.”
Aurora bristled. “If you’re asking me to apologize for…”
“I am not asking any of you to apologize for anything,” he interrupted, hooves raised in placation. “I only ask that you listen.”
“Then talk,” Fiona grumbled as she accepted a dented stainless steel carafe from the monosyllabic bartender. She poured something barely darker than tea into a metal cup and sniffed it before taking a tentative sip. She grimaced and took another.
Coldbrook watched her and smiled. “Let’s go around the room, then. Fiona, you recently paid a visit to one of my paladins. While I was relieved to hear that you weren’t there for your usual business purposes, I was disappointed to learn you extorted that paladin for the purposes of acquiring a valuable piece of technology currently wrapped around this mare’s fetlock.”
Aurora quickly removed her foreleg from the table, her eyes on Coldbrook’s horn for any sign that he was preparing to take it away. To her relief, he didn’t try. His attention was entirely on Fiona who stared back at him unrepentantly as she nursed her coffee. “I understand that Paladin Ironshod came to possess Ms. Pinfeather’s Pip-Buck through unconventional means,” he continued, “but I cannot tolerate civilians entering a restricted area to impose themselves upon one of my officers, no matter what the reason happens to be.”
Fiona rolled the cup into her palms, looking more inconvenienced than aggrieved. “Are we on trial, then?”
“We’ll get to that,” Coldbrook dismissed, having already shifted his attention to Roach. “I’m told you have some talent with gardening and have taken it upon yourself to provide us with notes on what we’ll need to resurrect the crops in our Stable. I want you to know your generosity isn’t unappreciated.”
“Thank you,” Roach said.
Coldbrook nodded. “With that said, the open hostility your people showed Equestria prior to and during the war was never officially resolved, and I don’t feel it would be in the best interest of the ponies under our protection to allow a changeling to reside in Blinder’s Bluff given your nature as a parasite. After this meeting is finished, your possessions will be returned and you will be escorted out of the city.”
Ginger all but leapt out of the bench in objection. “Roach is not a parasite,” she snapped. “He has done nothing but…”
Roach put a hoof on hers and shook his head. “It’s alright. We weren’t planning on staying long.”
Ginger allowed herself to sit back, but her face made it clear she wasn’t okay with Coldbrook’s decision. She stared daggers at the greying stallion. “He’s worth ten of you.”
Coldbrook surprised them by nodding. “I harbor no ill will toward your friend,” he said assuringly. “Were he just a ghoul like Nurse Redheart, I doubt I would have received so many concerns from the population. It’s not my decision to make, in the end. It’s the Bluff’s. As a small consolation, I’ve authorized three days’ worth of rations to be included in your saddlebags which you can reclaim at the gatehouse when you leave.”
He cleared his throat before the encroaching quiet had a chance to become more uncomfortable than it already was. Roach, for his part, seemed unoffended and was asking Fiona for a sip of her coffee.
“That brings us to the two of you,” Coldbrook said.
Suddenly under the spotlight, Aurora realized she’d been holding her knife and fork in mid-carve for the last few minutes, the meal suddenly unimportant as she waited to hear whether Ginger would want her help backing up Roach. It occurred to her that she was gripping the handle of the knife more tightly in her wingtip than she needed to, and she relaxed it slightly as Coldbrook addressed them.
“I genuinely don’t know where to begin,” he said with a shake of his head. His practiced smile vanished with the gesture. “The damage you two have caused to the stability of this region is nothing short of catastrophic. My job here, my only responsibility at the end of the day, is to maintain order. To ensure that every mile of Steel Ranger territory east of Canterlot Mountain is secure. Part of what made this territory safe to travel for the past ten or so years was the trade network that Flim & Flam Mercantile established.” He placed his hooves on the table and leaned forward. “Do either of you see where I’m going with this?”
Aurora finished cutting away the square of meat and dipped it in its own grease. So this was where Coldbrook’s casual banter ended and the demands began. She wasn’t blind to what was happening outside. Cider’s death and his sister’s, well, castration would accomplish the same thing that happened at any other time a business found itself without an owner. Competition would see the obvious opportunity and take some steep risks to fill the vacuum. Nobody abandoned a gold mine without someone else staking the claim in their absence.
She nipped the oddly flavorful meat off her fork and chewed, stubbornly determined to enjoy the first substantial meal she’d eaten in days.
“It was self-defense,” she said around the morsel. “Both times.”
“Both times,” Coldbrook repeated flatly. He lifted a hoof and scratched his lip, unimpressed. “I’m under no illusion Cider or Autumn were saints. The rumors surrounding them were disturbing enough, say nothing about the actual facts of what they did to accomplish what they did. But there are no saints in Equestria anymore.” He looked pointedly at Aurora. “I don’t know a single Ranger who would fault you for doing what you did to Cider Song. He was overdue, in my opinion.
“What you did at the solar array, however,” he continued, the irritation visible in the lines on his forehead. “That was recklessness writ large. You saw one ant and decided to throw a grenade on the entire hill. I can’t even guess how many years it will take us to clean up your mess.”
Aurora felt her ears flattening as she speared a stack of not-carrots with her fork a little harder than she needed to. “If you’re expecting me to apologize, you can save your breath.” She looked at Ginger. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Ginger winked at her, then glared at Coldbrook for a moment before returning to her own meal.
Coldbrook watched the exchange and smiled, his eyes dropping to the worn squares of the modified chess tables. He considered them for a breath before giving the wood two gentle taps and looking up at Aurora, his expression tranquil as if he’d come to a decision he hadn’t been certain about until now.
“There have been deaths,” he said simply.
Aurora looked up from her plate.
He held her gaze. “Word always travels fast among traders. It didn’t take very long for some of them to figure out their employers were out of business, and whatever goods they had in their wagons were theirs to do with as they saw fit. Our Rangers started hearing reports of traders attacking other traders as early as late morning today. Some of them decided they hadn’t gotten their fair share and came looking for their competitors for the excess. We’re seeing wagons coming into the city filled with double, sometimes triple the normal limit that F&F enforced. It’s a free-for-all on the safe roads right now. It won’t be long until ponies start risking the back paths and attract the raiders’ attention.”
Aurora tried to absorb that, and stopped. She had spent the last several days stacking every mistake on her shoulders and heaping guilt on top for good measure. Ginger nearly died because she’d been too wrapped in worry to do anything but be led like a sick pet. She stabbed the last bit of steak with her fork and ate it. This Coldbrook might have his sworn duty, holy oaths and whatever other divine farts on the wind his Rangers promised themselves to, but she had her own promises to fulfill. Whatever ponies chose to do to each other out here was their burden to bear. Not hers.
She took a long pull of water from her glass and set it down with an abrupt clack. “Did you bring us all here just to tell us how badly we fucked up your day, or is there a point you plan on getting to?”
Coldbrook looked between Aurora and Ginger with an edge of severity in his voice. “My point is that were it not for your minor celebrity here on the Bluff, the two of you would have been tied to posts outside the wall and shot for the damage you’ve done.” He leveled a hoof at Fiona, whose eyes were a little more awake as she nursed her second cup of tepid coffee. “The only reason either of you are still breathing is because of that gryphon’s broadcasts, and the simple fact that I don’t know whether the Bluff would denounce or celebrate your execution right now. The two of you are enjoying a rare moment of generosity from the Steel Rangers. Do not make the mistake of assuming my patience is infinite.”
He watched the expressions of his gathered audience harden as the implied threat sank in. Aurora set her fork and knife down and leaned back, giving Coldbrook her undivided attention. She stared sourly at his reddish eyes, waiting. Ginger continued to clean off her plate, her eyebrow lifted at the stallion in quiet defiance.
“Good.” Coldbrook put his hooves back onto the table and turned his head to Fiona. “Ms. Goldbeak, I said earlier that I couldn’t allow your actions against Paladin Ironshod go unpunished. Starting today, you will be barred from utilizing any electricity generated by our Stable for the purpose of broadcasting.”
“What?!” Fiona shot to her feet, sending the cup and carafe spinning into the bottom of a nearby spool-table. “That’s bullshit! You can’t just cut me off, I’m paid up for the next three months! For fuck’s sake, I have listeners depending on me to tell them where it’s safe out there!”
Aurora hissed a curse under her breath as Fiona grew more and more agitated. Roach lifted a hoof as coffee pooled toward him and Ginger’s horn took on a faint glow as she redirected the beverage as it puttered from the overturned carafe.
Coldbrook stared at her as if she were just another document to stamp and file away. If he had any sympathy for her, his quiet expression didn’t make room for it. “Fiona, sit down. I’m not finished.”
The muscles in Fiona’s jaw clenched and twitched under the effort it took to restrain herself. She grudgingly sat.
“You are also barred from selling your services to any Rangers stationed in the Bluff. Any infraction…”
“That’s over half my income, Coldbrook,” Fiona growled.
“Any infraction,” he repeated, “to this policy will result in your expulsion from Blinder’s Bluff and forfeiture of any property or possessions you have here. Do you understand?”
Fiona stared at the wood floor, her eyes wide with indignant shock. Filaments of wood curled up behind her talons as she absorbed her new reality.
“Elder Coldbrook,” Aurora said, her hooves upturned in placation, “I asked Fiona…”
He lifted his chin to her, his expression frosty. “I am not blind, Ms. Pinfeathers.” His eyes dipped to her Pip-Buck. “Now please, be quiet.”
Aurora closed her mouth and looked to Fiona, trying to think of some way to curb what was happening. She came up empty. There was no leverage for her to use here. No clever turn of phrase that could derail Coldbrook’s authority. The three of them had been reduced to spectators forced to watch as the dominoes they had unwittingly set up were knocked over by another’s hoof.
Fiona could see the futility in fighting it. The axe had been over her neck the moment she began making a name for herself. She lifted her eyes to Coldbrook, her voice smoldering. “The Bluff won’t stand for this.”
Coldbrook turned on the bench to face her directly, clearly unmoved. “The Bluff will find something else to entertain them. I strongly suggest you do the same.”
Fiona took a slow breath and exhaled, her talons digging shards of wood into her fists. For a moment it seemed she was gathering herself up to attack, but the moment passed. The gryphon seemed to deflate. It was over. With nothing left to discuss, her eyes turned to Aurora, then down to the Pip-Buck on her foreleg. “I hope that thing was worth it,” she murmured.
Aurora watched in stunned silence as Fiona rose from the floor and padded through the spilled coffee. A single repeating pawprint dampened the floor behind her as she slinked between the tables and shoved her way out the doors.
They clapped shut hard enough to bounce on their hinges.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Ginger said darkly. “You didn’t have to take away her livelihood.”
“Her livelihood was a liability, and frankly none of your concern.” Coldbrook gathered their plates in his magic and sent the stack hovering to the bar where Lime Royale was waiting to take them. With the table clear he leaned forward and regarded Aurora. “Let me ask you something, Ms. Pinfeathers. How much do your companions know about where you came from?”
Aurora leaned toward Coldbrook, mimicking his posture down to his penetrating stare. She was close enough that she could detect the stale odor of cigarettes on his breath. “They know plenty. How much do you know?”
Coldbrook’s icy smile widened until he shook with a quiet chuckle. He sank back into his bench and turned his hooves up as if he thought he could still pass himself off as humble. “Paladin Ironshod filled me in about what you’re looking for and why you left your Stable to find it. He said you called it an ignition talisman.”
Aurora didn’t move. “Okay. What about it?”
He shrugged. “I may be in a position to offer you one, provided you cooperate.”
Roach shook his head with disgust. “Why didn’t you lead with that?” he rasped.
Coldbrook didn’t react to Roach, his attention fixed firmly on Aurora. “Well?”
“How do I know this isn’t some kind of scam?” she asked.
Coldbrook’s smile took on an edge of indignation. “I’m the Elder of the second largest contingent of Steel Rangers on this continent. I don’t run scams.”
Aurora didn’t buy it. “You’re not telling me something.”
“Of course I’m not,” Coldbrook chuckled. “That’s how negotiations work. You only get as much as you give, Aurora.”
She felt Ginger’s hoof on her leg and looked to see the unicorn examining Coldbrook with open suspicion. Ginger’s eyes flitted to Aurora for a split second before returning to the stallion. “And what do you want in return for an ignition talisman?”
“Answers,” he said plainly. “Truthful ones.”
Ginger was unconvinced. “That’s all?”
Coldbrook tilted his head. “For the time being. First, I’d like you to answer some questions regarding some concerns shared by my scouts down at the JetStream solar array. Primarily why an open cage was found inside a utility room at the bottom of the facility, and why there were three very recently wiped servers inside of it.”
“Is that a question?” Aurora asked.
“Is that your answer?” Coldbrook replied.
She sighed. “Autumn had a pony locked inside. I let her out.”
Coldbrook nodded. “That would explain why one of your feathers was found in the doorway. Lockpicking can be a valuable trade, by the way. Now can you tell me who the feathers found inside the cage belonged to?”
She licked her lips and shrugged. “A pegasus.”
“A pegasus,” he repeated, nodding. “But not from your Stable, I assume.”
The opportunity to lie was right in front of her, boxed and wrapped and waiting to be opened. It would be easy. It was also a trap. “No,” she said. “I don’t know where she was from.”
“Then tell me this,” Coldbrook said, propping his elbows on the table and steepling his hooves against his chin. “Was she Enclave?”
Aurora could feel her heart ratchet to a higher gear. She needed to choose her words carefully. “That’s what she told me, yes.”
“Hm,” he hummed. “I genuinely expected you to deny that.”
“You said you wanted the truth.”
He nodded, his face lightening with something approaching appreciation. “I did. What can you tell me about the servers? Why did Autumn Song imprison a member of the Enclave and give her access to the solar array’s network?”
Aurora sat back and realized Ginger and Roach were watching her with a mix of trepidation and interest. “She was forcing her to look for coordinates to something everyone kept calling Solace.”
Coldbrook shook his head, confused. “I don’t follow. Did she say what Solace was?”
“Are you alright, Roach?”
Aurora glanced at Ginger, who had spoken, then followed her worried frown to Roach who was staring silently at the floor. His opaque eyes were distant, haunted even. It took him a moment to notice that Ginger was speaking to him, and a bit longer to answer. “Sorry,” he said, blinking rapidly. He looked at Ginger, then Aurora. “Dizzy spell. They happen sometimes.”
Coldbrook’s full attention shifted toward Roach and stayed there. His eyes bore into him like mining drills. “What do you know, changeling?”
Roach shook his head a little too quickly. “I’m not sure what you…”
“No, no.” Coldbrook’s smile took on an unpleasant edge. “Don’t lie to me. You lived before the bombs fell, and you’ve been sitting like a stone gargoyle since you arrived.” He pointed absently at Aurora. “But the moment she mentions Solace, you lose your composure. So let me ask you one more time. What do you know?”
Roach seemed to shrink under the elder Ranger’s withering gaze. He swallowed, opened his mouth and promptly closed it. He looked to Ginger and Aurora for help, but they were just as bewildered as he was. He shut his eyes, took a slow breath and said, “It’s not pronounced Solace. It’s SOLUS.” He spelled it out. “Just… agh, I don’t remember everything.”
Aurora leaned forward. “What do you remember?”
He stared at the table, tracing the light and dark squares with his eyes. The checkered surface blurred as he looked beyond it, as if searching for something in the middle distance.
“It’s a satellite,” he said.
“A satellite,” Coldbrook repeated dryly.
Roach nodded. “JetStream Aerospace had been putting them in orbit for several years before the war ended. SOLUS was supposed to be their first attempt at docking two spacecraft mid-flight.”
“Did they?” Aurora asked.
Roach shook his head. “I don’t know. World ended before we found out.” He paused, then added, “I assume if ponies are still looking for it, then it might still be up there.”
Aurora could see the wheels spinning in Coldbrook’s head. Anything worth kidnapping an Enclave agent for would most definitely be worth his time.
“Do you recall what this satellite was for?” he asked.
Roach looked at Coldbrook and nodded. “An observation platform, or something akin to that. I don’t remember the specifics.”
Coldbrook frowned, deep in thought. “I fail to see what value an observation platform would have for the Enclave if the only thing it can see are the clouds their factories pump out every day.”
“Maybe having something like SOLUS would allow them to stop producing them,” Aurora theorized. “It can’t be cheap maintaining that much equipment for this long.”
Coldbrook shook his head. “That doesn’t add up. What was Autumn Song planning to do with it if she couldn’t use it?”
“Trade it, probably,” Roach said. “Either to you or the Enclave.”
The stallion didn’t seem convinced, but the kernels of truth were all there. Just not enough of them to paint a full picture. He looked at the decorative gears hanging above Aurora’s side of the booth and let out a frustrated sigh as he mulled over the new information.
Aurora turned and looked over her shoulder toward the front of the bar. The light from the windows was fading quickly. Part of her brain told her to start thinking about finding a place to sleep, but thanks to the last few days her internal clock was missing a few gears of its own. She could tell she would be wide awake for the next several hours no matter what she did, and odds were good Ginger was in the same boat.
A sharp rap of the table snapped her attention away from the windows and back to Coldbrook. His pleasantly patronizing smile was returning in earnest, making it clear to the three of them he had decided on something.
“Now that I have your attention, here’s what I suggest,” he said, earning a glower from Aurora. “The three of you will continue your journey to Stable-Tec HQ as if nothing is amiss. Word will travel fast among the upper echelon of the Enclave that a dustwing rescued one of their agents, and they’ll have to assume you helped prevent prewar tech from being used to aid their enemy. Like it or not, they’re going to realize that they’re indebted to you Aurora. I don’t see a scenario where they don’t send someone out to recruit you.”
Aurora jerked her head back. “What do you mean recruit me? I thought they hunted and killed dustwings.”
Coldbrook held his hoof aloft and twisted it back and forth. “Sometimes, yes. But not always. Either way, it’s worth the risk.”
Ginger straightened in her seat, sensing the same thing coming that Aurora was. “What risk?”
“Should the Enclave contact you,” Coldbrook explained, “I want you to allow them to recruit you. Learn as much as you can about their operations, find out what the pegasus you freed knew about SOLUS, and report that information back to me. Once it’s verified, I will provide you with an ignition talisman and whatever assistance you require to return home safely.”
Aurora stared at Coldbrook for several long seconds. It was too convenient to trust, but the offer was right there on the table. She ran her hoof through her mane, trying to ground herself in a familiar gesture, but was distracted by a few loose white curls that spilled over her ear against her cheek. She pushed the stray locks back and tried to shove down the wave of adrenaline rising in her chest.
Her first instinct was to say yes even though she had just witnessed him destroying Fiona’s life mere minutes ago. She had no love for the stallion, but if he had an ignition talisman then he was the pony to please. The word was on the tip of her tongue when she glanced over to Ginger and Roach and saw the concern in their eyes. Ginger shook her head almost imperceptibly. Roach pressed his lips firmly together, the gaps in his black chitin glowing as they spread apart.
Their faces screamed no and as much as she hated to admit it, they were both right. Coldbrook’s words echoed in her head. That doesn’t add up.
She took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose, turned to face the silver-maned stallion and tried not to focus on the regret she felt for every syllable she spoke.
“I can’t do it.”
Elder Coldbrook’s expression darkened. He cocked his head at an angle, his brow creased and his smile tightening. “I’m sorry?”
“I can’t do it,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “The amount of risk you’re talking about, not to mention the time it would take… I can’t do that. I don’t know how long my Stable has before the generator fails. It could be months away or it could happen tomorrow.” She offered a weak smile hoping he might be sympathetic. “Maybe we could work something else out?”
He shook his head slowly. “Ms. Pinfeathers, there is no something else. This is it. This is the deal. There are no other talismans to be bargained for. We’ve found all of them. Either you agree to do this thing for me, or you can wander the wasteland until Stable 10 dies.”
“I… how did…” Aurora could feel her mouth drying up. She blinked and looked to Roach, whose eyes were as wide as hers.
He knew. Coldbrook knew.
“How did what?” he probed, his smile breaking into a narrow grin. “How did I guess your Stable number? Was that it?”
His eyes slid down to her foreleg and her heart sank. When he spoke, it was with the same tone her father once used when she skinned her chin after ignoring his warnings not to run through the corridors.
“Aurora, you’ve been gone without your Pip-Buck for nearly two days. Did you think Ironshod would put it on one of his shelves and forget about it?” Coldbrook’s chest shook with silent laughter. “The right information is worth more than all the caps in the wasteland, my dear. That’s a lesson your friends should have told you long before you ever stepped hoof in Blinder’s Bluff.”
Pieces of the puzzle she didn’t know she had clicked together one after the other. Cider had been willing to kill her to get at her Pip-Buck. Ironshod had stolen it off her leg in clear view of his subordinates only to inexplicably give it to Fiona and make no attempt to recover it while Aurora slept. Millie had told exactly what had happened and Aurora had dismissed it as a glitch. There were two Pip-Bucks in Stable 6. The owner was Aurora Pinfeathers.
Coldbrook had a copy.
Aurora felt her hackles rising. “Delete it,” she growled.
Coldbrook’s smile widened. “Don’t be ridiculous. That information is far too...”
She wedged her wing between the wall and the table’s edge and wrenched it sideways. Wooden feet squealed as the table shot past Ginger and Roach and slammed into the side of Lime’s bar hard enough to crack the leg off one of the stools trapped in its path. She dropped from her seat onto the filthy floor between them, willfully ignorant of the Rangers barking orders for her to get on the ground as they rushed to help their leader, and planted her hooves on the edge of Coldbrook’s bench.
Furious ridges formed down the bridge of her nose, which hovered barely an inch away from Elder Coldbrook’s. She repeated herself, slowly. 
“Delete. It.”
This close, there was nothing he could do to fully mask his reaction. While he still managed to maintain the same confident smile, his rust-red eyes were wider than before. She’d caught him off guard and for a moment he was afraid, but that moment was short-lived and his brow began its descent. Something hard stubbed against the side of her temple followed by another deafening order to get on the ground. Ginger was screaming for her to listen to them but her hooves stayed where they were. This was her nightmare come alive and she was wholly bent on smothering it in its crib or die trying.
Coldbrook looked past her and shook his head, motioning with his hoof for the Rangers to calm down. “Go outside now, both of you,” he calmly ordered. When they hesitated, his voice rose several decibels. “Give us the fucking room!”
Aurora flinched as spittle from Coldbrook’s obscenity landed above her lip. He took the opportunity to push past her and lifted his uniform off the post while she wiped at her mouth. 
“Brainless idiots,” he muttered as guided his legs through the shirt with the aid of his magic. He glanced at the ruined table and Lime, whose opinion on recent developments was clearly written across his face. Liquor pooled out from around the bar, mingling with glass shards lying on the wood floor. Then he looked back to Aurora. 
She stood in the space the table had once occupied, her wings half-extended from the adrenaline sloshing through her bloodstream. Ginger and Roach stood out of their way, horns lowered in preparation to aid her if required.
“I won’t ask again,” she warned. “Delete that data. It doesn’t belong to you.”
Coldbrook pressed his tongue under his lip and chuckled at the wreckage around them. “I’m starting to understand how one mare can tear down an entire trade network overnight.” He closed his uniform and leveled his eyes at her while his magic fastened each button. “I’m going to make you a final proposition that I think you’ll want to hear before you turn it down. Can I tell you what it is?”
Aurora clenched her jaw and nodded, once.
Coldbrook bowed his head with a deferential smile. “All I want is for you to find a way into the Enclave and bring back the coordinates to SOLUS. You will receive an ignition talisman in exchange for that information. That’s the offer.” His eyes drifted to Ginger and Roach, whose horns were still pointed toward him.
“But,” he continued, looking back to Aurora, “if you decline my offer, I promise you that my Rangers will travel to Foal Mountain and peel open Stable 10 like a tin can. We will replace its ignition talisman and we will remove the ponies living inside. It will be fortified and you will never step hoof inside that place again. Unless you agree to help us.”
Aurora bit down on her lip hard enough for it to hurt. She was out of options. “You motherfucker.”
Coldbrook finished the last button. “Is that a no?”
She looked away, afraid if she saw his infuriating grin one more time she would well and truly try to kill him. “It means I accept,” she said quietly. “I’ll get you SOLUS.”
He gave the wood floor a gentle stamp that made her twitch. “Good to hear! I’m looking forward to your first status report. I’ll be expecting to receive one each day until you have SOLUS.”
She shot him a withering glare. “How am I supposed to do that?”
Coldbrook tipped his horn toward her Pip-Buck and turned toward the front of the bar. “Send it to yourself, Ms. Pinfeathers. We’ll see it.”
With a departing nod to Roach and Ginger, Elder Coldbrook strolled toward the exit. “Oh, and don’t forget to pick up your bags and weapons at the gatehouse. You’ll be needing them.”
Aurora swallowed hard as the doors splayed open to reveal at least a half dozen Rangers, several in varying shades of power armor, waiting outside. The crowd of belligerent patrons were either silent or had been encouraged to find somewhere else to drown their sorrows. Coldbrook spared a glance over his shoulder as the doors closed behind him, a fox’s grin spread across his muzzle.
The doors clicked shut. 
Aurora’s hooves scraped against the gritty floor as she sat in the Ranger’s seat. She tried to process what she’d just agreed to but her brain kept choking on it. Her voice shook with fear. “Luna’s grace, what did I just do?”
Ginger stepped through the space once occupied by a table and placed a hoof on her knee. “You took the only option he gave you,” she said.
Roach climbed up onto the bench next to her and nodded. “He played all the moves before we got here, Aurora,” he rumbled, and thumped her on the foreleg. “You did good. You tripped him up. Otherwise we wouldn’t know he has a copy of your Pip-Buck. This is the best case scenario he didn’t want us to have.”
He was right. They both were. She nodded and deflated with a little groan. “We’re so fucked.”
“The wasteland has a tendency to do that,” Roach agreed, his eyes tracking to the doors. “And Coldbrook is too clever not to have already sent Rangers to the Stable. We need to warn them.”
Aurora looked down at her Pip-Buck, and the list of old messages still on its screen. An icon along the bottom margin indicated a strong connection to what remained of Stable 6’s network.
“I can do better than that.”







Droplets of condensation formed a ring on Overmare Delphi’s desk. A red aura picked the unlabeled bottle up by the neck and Sledge brought it to his lips, taking a long pull before setting back into its puddle with a heavy thunk.
Overstallion Sledge.
Nearly a week into his new role and the title still felt strange in his mouth. Here, at the literal top of Stable 10, he felt like an imposter. Every minute seemed to bring with it a new problem for him to solve and a new pegasus to convince that he knew what he was doing.
He didn’t have a clue what he was doing, or if he was doing it well. His message queue updated constantly with everything from belated congratulations to urgent-flagged requests from department heads complaining about the power holiday. He looked up at the half-lit fluorescent tubes and grunted with discomfort as they blurred around the edges. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking, but then again Delphi wasn’t supposed to be scrubbed off the wood paneling behind her chair. His chair. Fuck. He took another sip of homebrewed beer, a souvenir from his home down in Mechanical, and tried to think.
Delphi didn’t leave him instructions, and I.T. was still struggling to find a work-around for all the files she encrypted before she ate a bullet. He winced a little at how easy it was to simplify it like that. Something had been bothering the overmare well before Pinfeathers picked up the phone in the control room. Delphi had known something was wrong. Something that extended beyond their generator.
This is what they do. Her words echoed in his head like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing. They build a pretty box, wrap it with a pretty bow and tell hundreds of pretty ponies they’ll be safe inside. And then they crush it to see what colors leak out.
Sledge held the bottle close to his lips, his eyes stagnating on the terminal in front of him.
It’s another one of their Celestia-damned experiments.
He hadn’t understood what she meant back then. Hadn’t really given much thought to it with the looming problem of their failing generator right in front of him. Something about living in a Stable just ended up getting to ponies sometimes, and they cracked a little. It was something everyone dealt with at least once. Almost everyone came out the other side of it a little stronger and able to help their fellow residents cope with theirs.
But Delphi hadn’t.
He stared at the steady march of green text as new messages rolled in from all across the Stable. I.T. assured him that they would help him set up filters once they finished decrypting Delphi’s files. She had been trying to hide something, and he needed to know what it was. In the meantime, he would sit here. 
Maybe he would wait until the buzz wore off, then go take a walk. Being cooped up in this office was driving him crazy. He didn’t feel like himself this far away from Mechanical. More than anything, he wanted to check on the generator. See how it was doing even if the news coming from Mechanical’s new department head was getting worse by the day. Their initial estimate of the talisman’s lifespan had put generator failure out as far as a year.
Flux was reporting different numbers now. The talisman wasn’t braking at a fixed rate. Its deceleration was curving. Sharply.
Sledge considered the bottle and the bitter liquid that rippled in its bottom third. As a young colt, he believed the overmares and overstallions of each Stable could wake up in the morning and make up any rules they wanted. Cake for breakfast, candy for dinner, free plays in the arcade for life. When his sister had been alive, one of them would regularly be the other’s slave for a day. Him the overstallion and her the overmare. The mystery of the office he sat in permeated the entire culture of Stable 10 in so many unpredictable ways. From the Atrium floor it sounded like paradise.
Sitting here with a single medallion window to look out of, it felt like a prison.
He sighed and lifted the bottle, intent on finishing it off so he could start another, when something in the message feed caught his eye. He had to squint through the mild inebriation and wait for his eyes to focus.
When they did, the bottle dropped to the floor and shattered.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Overstallion Sledge
From: Aurora Pinfeathers
Subject: I’m Alive
04/12/1297

	Sledge, it’s Aurora. I’m sorry, I’m in a rush. Things are happening out here that I don’t have time to explain so I’m going to try to cover the important stuff and hopefully it makes sense but not all of it will. Okay. I got yours and Dad’s messages. Tell him I love him back and that I’m okay. Sorry about leaving the way I did, but you know how I get. I love you too by the way. Platonically, by the way. Don’t get any ideas. Fuck I’m rambling.
I need you to get I.T. to do something that’s going to sound crazy but you have to trust me. They need to revoke all of the permissions linked to my resident account. All of them, Sledge. If they can delete my registry altogether that would be better. DO NOT OPEN THE STABLE FOR ME. There’s a group of ponies out here called the Steel Rangers who made a copy of my Pip-Buck and I’d bet my ass they’re going to try to use it to get you to open the door. DON’T let them in, no matter what they tell you. You’re safe as long as you don’t open the door.
Which reminds me.
You probably already know this now that you’re overstallion, but there’s a tunnel outside the door from when the Stable was built. The entrance is blocked off by a landslide kicked off when the bombs fell. Sledge, this is going to sound insane, but there’s a pegasus trapped in the tunnel that needs to be brought into the Stable before the Steel Rangers get there. She’s in a utility room at the end of the tunnel. She answers to Blue and she’ll probably fight whoever you send out to her, but please don’t hurt her. She’ll have some jewelry and an antique book in the room with her. Make sure to bring those in. They seem to keep her calm. I’d tell you more but I don’t know if the Rangers will be able to read this once I send it. She’s important, Sledge. 
Bring her in and lock the door. Disconnect it from the main power if you have to.
I won’t be able to contact you with this name after I.T. locks it out, so I need you to do one more thing. Tell I.T. to watch for a new user trying to connect to the network. It’ll be a name you’ll recognize but the biometrics aren’t going to be mine, but it’ll be me. Limit that account to messaging only. No door access, no nothing. Just messaging. If you get pinged by anything strange, block it. This is the only thing I can think of, and my gut says it’ll work, but I know computers even worse than you do.
And Sledge, tell dad that I’m safe and that I have friends helping me. Tell him I’ve seen the sky, and it’s beautiful once you get above the clouds.

Stay safe,
Pinfeathers







“Do you think he’ll listen?” Ginger asked.
“I hope so. Hold still.”
Aurora held Ginger’s hoof in her lap with one wing while she pecked at the keys to the Pip-Buck clamped around the unicorn’s foreleg with the other. Roach lay behind a tree stump a few steps to the right of them. Aurora’s rifle, Desperate Times, lay in the crook of his shoulder, pointed toward the ribbon of broken highway that lay just a few dozen meters to the north.
The fallen section of tree was wide enough to give Aurora and Ginger enough cover to work in without being seen by the odd traveler heading to and from the Bluff. Even with the sun having sunk well below the horizon by the time they retrieved their weapons and supplies from the gatehouse, Aurora wanted to get as much distance between them and the city before Coldbrook learned about the message she sent.
They had managed to cover a few miles before pausing to work on the second half of Aurora’s loosely assembled plan, opting to keep the highway as near as they were comfortable without risking being seen. Blinder’s Bluff glittered like a beacon to the west of them, the individual lights blurring together into ribbons that wound their way up the slope. The pulsing red beacon of Fiona’s radio tower was dark now, extinguished by Coldbrook’s Rangers. Part of her wanted to find Fiona and apologize in earnest. She hated the feeling of leaving without having a chance to make it right, but it wasn’t hard to tell that the gryphon hadn’t been in a state of mind to forgive anyone when she left Someplace Else. Aurora barely knew Fiona, but the thought of losing a friend still stung.
The Pip-Buck chirped and prompted her to fill in another form. She didn’t know if contacting Sledge meant that Coldbrook’s deal was off the table, but at the very least she didn’t expect to see him holding a talisman in his hoof for her any time soon. She would cross that bridge when they got there. For now, she needed to finish setting up their dummy account.
Aurora ticked the knob through the setup menus, working by the dim green light of the display. True to its design, the Pip-Buck detected Ginger’s unique biometrics and promptly logged Aurora out. To her relief the setup was relatively straightforward. It requested a laundry list of personal information that Aurora didn’t have, so she filled the unnecessary fields in with N/A. It wasn’t important whether it was done correctly. All she cared about was that when the servers received and rejected the resident registry request, the name left on the logs would stand out like a sore hoof.
She glanced at the top margin of the screen, at the name she picked out, and a dull knot of guilt formed in her chest. It felt like sacrilege to use her name, but Aurora knew Sledge wouldn’t mistake it for anyone else but her when he saw it.
She tapped the final keys with her feathers and submitted the new profile. The screen went dark, replaced by a cartoon pony smiling down at a watch around his fetlock. A moment later the rejection appeared.


THE FOLLOWING RESIDENT COULD NOT BE VERIFIED:
- NIMBUS PINFEATHERS - 
PLEASE TRY AGAIN.


Aurora swallowed the lump in her throat and sent the request again. She needed to be sure it got flagged somewhere in the Stable’s system.
“May I ask who she is?” Ginger asked.
The failure notice reappeared. Aurora sent it again. 
“She’s my mother,” she said quietly.
Ginger looked down at the Pip-Buck attached to her leg and nodded understanding.
Once she was satisfied the attempts couldn’t be missed, Aurora lifted Ginger’s foreleg out of her lap and sat up straight with a soft grunt. The sound of rustling grass drew Roach’s attention and she nodded her head at him, signaling they were done. Roach returned the gesture and tipped her rifle onto its side, flipping the safety on before pushing himself to his hooves.
“How long until they make contact?” he asked.
Aurora’s wings bobbed in a noncommittal shrug. “Tonight, with any luck.”
Roach held her rifle out by its strap, waiting patiently as the two of them got up. She took it from his hoof with her wing and lowered it over her shoulder. The weight of the overmare’s rifle was a comfort she didn’t realize she’d been without until the Rangers at the gate handed it over. She had found herself hoping Latch would be there to see them off, but the Knight had been absent from the wall when they passed through the gate. If it hadn’t been for him, she might not have found the solar array in time to save Ginger. 
She owed him a proper goodbye if nothing else, but there was nothing to be done for it. The longer they lingered in the Bluff, the better their odds were of being escorted to another meeting with Elder Coldbrook. As far as she was concerned, locking the Steel Rangers out of Stable 10 was a fair trade. Something told her he would see things very differently. She didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out.
As Ginger fiddled with the clasp of the bulky Pip-Buck, Aurora and Roach secured their saddlebags over their hips. Roach squinted in the direction of the road where a gas lantern bobbed toward the Bluff.
“Night travel is going to be difficult,” he pointed out. “Moreso, if Coldbrook was telling the truth about traders attacking one another.”
“It’ll be more dangerous to sit here and wait to be seen.” Aurora watched the lantern fade away toward the city and frowned. “If both of you are up for it, I want to cover some of the ground we lost. We still have a ways to go until we reach Fillydelphia.”
Ginger slipped her knife out of the sheath wrapped around her hind leg and checked the blade before putting it away. “It isn’t as if we’re completely helpless. Provided Aurora doesn’t antagonize any more deathclaws, we should be fine. Besides, we slept most of the day away. If we’re going to be awake all night we might as well use the time productively.”
Even in the darkness, Aurora could make out the slender smile on Roach’s cracked muzzle. Unless she was seeing things, the changeling almost looked proud.
“Okay,” he said. “Where to next?”
Aurora instinctively looked to her foreleg for her map and sighed when she came up empty hooved. She wasn’t about to take her Pip-Buck off Ginger and risk missing a message from Sledge.  “Well,” she hedged, “I did see some backroads a few miles south of the Bluff when I left. They mostly kept in one direction from what I remember. Might be safer to find one and take it east for a stretch.”
Roach nodded his approval and looked to Ginger, who shrugged. “Alright then, let’s get going. Aurora, you and I will take point. I’m going to teach you what you need to listen for. Ginger can cover the rear.”
Ginger snorted and fell behind them as they struck out into the dry grass, leaving the highway and its myriad of new threats to shrink over their shoulders. Aurora flicked her tail under the unicorn’s chin and mouthed a wide-eyed behave as she moved up to match pace with Roach, thankful that it was too dark to see the flush of color rising up her neck. Ginger offered a teasing grin in return.
Roach shook his head with a wry smile and sighed. It was going to be a long night.







The flight to the Vhannan capital had been, in so many words, a mixed experience.

Zecora rubbed her daughter’s back as she leaned over the side of the chariot, her eyes clenched shut. Not long after departing Canterlot, Teak discovered to the dismay of the pegasi trailing them that she was prone to flightsickness. Everything in her system came up immediately. It wasn’t a pleasant eighteen hours.

	Only when the Vhannan coast came into view and the first fishing villages resolved through the mist did her black-tipped ears perk up. Zecora joined her at the side of the chariot as the villages drifted beneath them, too distant to make out any meaningful detail beyond a speckling of red rooftops connected by hair-thin dirt roads.

	“Mom, look,” Teak whispered, her hoof pointing to the western horizon.

	Zecora took a sharp breath as she saw what her daughter had spotted ahead of them. Thick, brown smoke rose toward the clouds below like an oily curtain that flattened out like an anvil. The red Vhannan soil darkened into a black stain that stretched from north to south and beyond. Reading about the front line of the war was one thing. Seeing it approach below them was something else entirely.

	The chariot lurched, their bearers putting more distance between them and the fighting as it slid toward them. Teak gagged at the sudden motion and groaned when nothing came up. 

Zecora squeezed her shoulder and said, “Shh. Don’t look. I’ll tell you when we’re beyond it.”

“Okay,” Teak moaned, and shut her eyes once more.

Even though they were too high to see the fighting, Zecora could make out the winding lines of trenches well enough to make her chest clench. The killing fields stretched on for miles like a sea of black mud. The curtain of smoke resolved into hundreds of individual stems that sprouted from bright orange seeds on the ground. Sickly yellow stains pooled over the battle lines, bleeding into the trenches like filaments of some unknown plague.

Blindweed.

The herb grew abundantly in the Vhannan swamps to the south and was even found in some stretches of the Everfree Forest, but coming in contact with it rarely led to more than an itchy rash where the oils managed to penetrate a pony’s coat. A few notable cases of ponies getting it into their eyes, resulting in temporary blindness, earned blindweed its name. In recent months, Vhannan researchers isolated several active compounds in the plant’s oils. Thousands of times more potent than their natural progenitor, blindweed grenades aerosolized the purified compounds. Reports of exposure were horrific. The toxins severely burned every inch of exposed skin they touched, scorching lungs and sealing throats shut in a manner of seconds. The Ministry of Technology was already shipping rubberized masks to the front lines, the first real line of defense to exposure, but the filters were imperfect. Ponies were still dying.

Zecora watched with growing sadness as puffs of dirt erupted along one of the lines far to the north, mercifully distant enough for the sound to be lost before reaching their ears. It felt unfair to watch tracers flicker across trenches, so far away that they may as well have been on a different world entirely for all the aid they could render. Slowly, the western front of the battlefield lumbered into view. The churned soil lightened, resuming its ruddy hue as trenches gave way to camps, and camps gave way to command centers. A village rolled by. Then a small town. Finally, as the last of the dark soil disappeared over the horizon, they began to see Vhannan cities.

Zecora gave Teak a gentle nudge. “It’s okay to look.”

Teak nodded, but her eyes didn’t open. Zecora pinched her lips and quietly sighed, worried that bringing her daughter along had been an awful mistake.

It was another half hour before the Vhannan capital of Adenia lifted out of the west like a piece of cut turquoise. They descended toward the savannan gem, its beautiful city center resolving into a myriad of blue and green glass. It looked nothing like the hard right angles of Manehattan or Fillydelphia. The skyscrapers reaching up to greet them were all curves and splendor, resembling a fleet of strange fishing boats on a red sea.

These were the enemies of Equestria. The savage zebras who frothed at the mouth in their quest to cross the land bridge that connected their continents and split the Lunar Ocean into north and south. Rarity’s ministry painted zebras with a singular brush to terrify Equestrians into supporting the war. No doubt, Vhanna had its own Rarity bent to the same task.

It felt different, seeing Adenia for what it was. No pyres burned in the streets. No strange tribal dances haunted the boulevards. Just zebras. Ponies born with stripes. Coming here, watching the hoof traffic come into clear view below, it reassured her that she was doing the right thing. That peace would be worth whatever trials stood in front of her.

The Vhannan palace stood in the center of a vast green space nestled in the heart of the city. She heard Teak gasp at the sight of its ornate copper dome, stained with intricate swirls sea-green patina that bloomed over the gleaming metal like painted vines. Narrow, marble minarets stood proudly at the four corners of the palace grounds, ringed with dazzlingly blue lapis lazuli tile.

It was an oasis within an oasis.

They descended over the simple iron fence that divided the city street and palace grounds, drawing the attention of the contingent of zebras gathered in front of the white palace steps that would serve as their reception party. A detachment of their escort stood apart from the zebras, having flown ahead to announce their arrival and spare the Equestrian delegation an abrupt and undignified end. Zecora was glad to see there were no panicked looks toward aimed at their chariot. They were expected. More importantly, they were being welcomed.

The chariot thumped onto the grass with the practiced ease of seasoned flyers, leaving the barest indentation of tread in the green as they rolled to a stop. Already, she could see Ambassador Abyssian, an unusually tall stallion, walking across the bright stone promenade and onto the grass to meet them. A pair of zebras bedecked in black sunglasses and black suit jackets flanked the Vhannan ambassador, their heads turned in the general direction of Zecora’s Wonderbolt entourage.

Abyssian stopped within hoof’s length of the chariot as watched with a patient smile while Zecora and Teak stepped out and onto Vhannan soil. His lavender eyes glittered with enthusiasm as he extended a leg and bowed to the two mares, a gesture that Zecora mimicked much to Abyssian’s delight.

“Welcome to Adenia, Ambassador Zecora!” he declared with a rich tenor voice that rose out of his chest. “And welcome to you as well, little one! It is so good to finally meet you.”

“Thank you for receiving us,” Zecora said, letting her eyes wander across perfectly manicured clusters of desert rose and flame lilies. The edges of the horseshoe-shaped promenade were vibrant with flowering herbs she had only seen in books or had to import dried. Even Teak seemed a little less green as she gawked at the exotic flora. “I regret not having the opportunity to visit my mother’s homeland sooner.”

Abyssian allowed himself a moment to admire the glass towers around them. “When I was but a colt, this city was a slum. I am proud to see how far we have come since.” His smile dimmed, touched with genuine sorrow as he regarded Zecora and her daughter. “I trust you have seen the fighting near the coast.”

Zecora nodded. “I have. It is a blight.”

“It is,” Abyssian agreed. He looked to the west for a moment and sighed, his eyes brightening a little as he turned and gestured toward the palace. “Come. We can discuss the sins of our nations over dinner.”

Zecora looked to Teak inquisitively. “Are you feeling up for something to eat?”

Her daughter offered a tired nod. “Maybe.” She looked sheepishly at the ambassador. “Do you have hayburgers here?”

Abyssian bubbled with laughter and Teak flushed with embarrassment. Zecora managed to keep a straight face, but only just. It took Teak a moment to understand that he wasn’t laughing at her. It was a release of tension. A good thing. Zecora nudged her daughter while Abyssian collected himself and gave her a wink.

“Ah, today is going to be a good day. No, my dear Teak, we have many dishes in Vhanna but I fear hayburgers have not yet reached us here. But I assure you we have something much better that you are sure to enjoy,” he said as they stepped off the grass and began making their way toward the palace.

“Tell me,” he said. “Have you ever tried kitfo before?”
> Chapter 16: Edibles
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Teak and her mother followed Ambassador Abyssian on what he reassured them would be a short tour of the palace. Much to her growing dismay, she discovered that hers and the towering zebra diplomat’s definition of “short” were measured on vastly different scales.

A pony could mistake the Vhannan palace for a museum and nobody would blame them. Teak didn’t have to know which of the long-forgotten zebra kingdoms inspired the ancient looking architecture to know that every inch of the palace had been painstakingly designed to reflect the long and fractured history of the continent. Vaulted ceilings replete with brightly polished copper tiles hung overhead like a second sunrise, each large square patterned with intricate symbols born from a quiltwork of cultures. Decorative pillars lined the walls of the main hallways, giving the illusion that they held the ceiling aloft. In the spaces between them, bits of Vhannan history stood on pedestals or lay under spotless glass within ornate display cases.

	Busts of recent leaders, painstakingly carved from obsidian, shared the same space as priceless artifacts. Everything from colorful tribal masks to a three foot slab of cinnabar with chiseled writing in a language Teak couldn’t read filled the palace at every turn. Each piece was accompanied by small, uniform placards, reinforcing the museum aesthetic. Abyssian stopped to share an anecdote or story about just about every one of them. It became evident that this wasn’t his first time giving this particular tour.

	Boredom set in quickly. 

For the sake of her sanity, Teak began tuning out the adults as they nattered on about Vhannan history. Their conversation truly hit it stride when Zecora mentioned that her mother, Teak’s grandmother, Olea had migrated from Vhanna to Equestria when she was very young. Teak had heard the story a dozen times before and while her grandmother had passed away before she could meet her, she felt a flicker of defensive heat rise in her chest to hear her mom speak so completely about a thing she discussed with Teak only in bits and pieces. 

	It didn’t help that the polished marble floor of the palace halls made it very clear who had the smallest hooves of the trio. She clicked alongside her mother, the high notes of her tapping in obvious contrast to the thudding clops of Abyssian’s pitch black hooves. Her mom’s fell somewhere in the middle, what Teak’s fifteen-year-old mind considered normal. She made a face at the chandeliers reflected in the floor, watching them slide through the stripes of black mineral that flowed through the otherwise white marble. Her hoofsteps echoed down from the vaulted ceiling in retort.
More than a few times, Teak found herself looking past her mother’s shoulders to the Vhannan ambassador. She didn’t have a good reference point for how old he was, so she settled on “dad age” to make life simpler. He was broad-shouldered just like the earth ponies back in Equestria and stood just as tall, if not taller, than the princesses. He was arguably the biggest pony she had ever seen, and yet he wore himself as if he were no more imposing than the exotic flowers growing in the gardens outside. He was, as far as Teak could fathom, a giant. 
She was anything but covert about staring, and it didn’t take Abyssian long to catch her looking at the strange, whorling symbols on his flank. Four symmetrical black spirals, their tails joining around a white circle at their center to draw a thicker line that bisected them into pairs, stood out on his hip in stark contrast to his stripes. Rather than chastise her for her rudeness, Abyssian smiled broadly and regarded his own mark with no small amount of pride. 
“It is called the Ram’s Horns,” he said in thickly accented ponish, answering the question she hadn’t yet asked. “Many zebras mistake its meaning for strength. It is understandable. Two rams, strong creatures to be sure, beating their heads together.” He stopped mid-stride, sat and raised his formidable hooves into the air. With a heavy thock he clapped them together, the sound echoing down the grand corridor like a gunshot. He chuckled and stood. “To a young stallion, strength can be the only thing that is important. But a ram is not all strength. It is humility as well. The biggest ram will humbly submit to slaughter if that is its destiny. One cannot be truly strong without humility, and vice versa. A good lesson, I think, considering our current circumstances.”
Teak nodded, a little absently, her eyes tracing the lines of Abyssian’s mark.

	“It certainly is,” Zecora agreed, then leaned down to whisper into her daughter’s upturned ear. “You’re staring.”

	Her eyes widened and shot back to the marble floor, cheeks burning so bright that she thought her own stripes would turn pink. In the reflection beneath her hooves, she could see Zecora and Abyssian exchange patient smiles that drove the heat in her face down her neck. The embarrassment of being caught by Abyssian was eclipsed by the shame of being called out by her own mother. Tail tucked with abject embarrassment, she kept her eyes planted firmly on the ground until the tour ended.

	At least there was dinner to look forward to.

She had expected their meal to be served in a grand hall with replete with long, elegant tables, heaps of delicacies and servants hiding behind doors with pans and trays balanced at the ready. She was surprised then when Abyssian led them through a door that took them back outside and into the lush confines of the palace garden.

	Decorative bricks sunk level with the grass edged swirling flower beds pressed to the far edges, creating a pocket of space shaded by trees she had only seen in books. Teak recognized dozens of carefully trimmed plants growing out of the chips as the same ones that her mother grew in her herb garden back in Ponyville. The memory stung and she looked away, focusing instead on the path of crushed quartz that led them to an ebony gazebo at the center of the garden. A low, circular table waited for them inside, surrounded by three simple cushions.

	Teak was barely seated when a lone zebra servant appeared pushing a wheeled cart made from the same wood as her namesake. The mare nodded polite greetings to all of them as she stopped the cart just shy of the gazebo’s single step. A formidable white plate resembling a blooming rose rested on the cart. Small flutes of rolled flatbread and cheeses rested in the depressions of each petal. A black stone bowl, mounded with a deep red paste that looked suspiciously like meat flecked generously with spice, sat at the center. The handles of three silver spoons stuck out from the mound like candles on a very strange cake.

	The servant slid the plate effortlessly onto the table. Abyssian was already complimenting the meal’s appearance before she could finish retrieving three glasses and a pitcher of a foamy amber beverage from the bottom of the cart, practically chasing her off with praise.

	Teak noticed her mother regarding the meal with a peculiar smile. Without waiting to be asked, she unrolled one of the bits of dark flatbred onto her hoof and nipped a spoonful of red paste out of the bowl. She pressed it into the bread, replaced the spoon, and folded the bread closed with both hooves before popping it into her mouth. She lifted her head toward the sky as she chewed, her smile widening with satisfaction.

	“Is it to your liking?” Abyssian asked, feigning ignorance solely to give Zecora an opportunity to pass back a compliment.

	“I haven’t been able to find good kitfo for twenty plus years,” she said enthusiastically, reaching forward for another bit of flatbread. “It’s excellent!”

	Abyssian glowed as he reached for a piece of flatbread, his eyes drifting from Zecora to Teak as he realized she hadn’t yet mustered the courage to try the strange dish. “I’m told carnivorism is still something of an acquired taste in Equestria,” he said, and spooned a dollop of kitfo onto the bread.

	“I’ve had meat before,” Teak said sheepishly, and reached out to pick out a nib of rolled bread. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. Not unless Abyssian considered the freeze-dried bacon bits Sagebrush had snuck into school last year meat.

She could feel the ambassador and her mother’s eyes on her as she bit the tip of the last spoon and lifted a lump of spiced meat from the bowl, dropping it onto the unleavened bread. She would have preferred her own plate but since it wasn’t provided, she assumed it was a cultural thing that she shouldn’t ask about. She considered the concoction for a moment before mentally plugging her nose and tipping the entire thing into her mouth.
The bread was fresh - warm even - from the oven. She bit down and the intense flavor of spiced meat flooded her tongue as it melted into an impossibly smooth liqueur. It was different than anything else she had ever eaten, and it was delicious. Before she finished chewing she was already picking out another piece of flatbread to fill.
She lost herself in the meal while her mother and the ambassador chatted about safe topics. Zecora spoke more about her mother and the events in her life that led to her moving out on her own to a hut in the Everfree Forest. Abyssian shared a story about his very first job working in a tannery in the slums, exposing himself to harsh chemicals before Vhannan science had caught on to the long-term effects they had. He credited zebra magic with his continued good health, a claim that Teak had to bite her tongue on when she heard. She had never once used magic in her entire life. That was solely a skill born into unicorns and, as far as Teak knew, there were no zebra unicorns.
As the kitfo bowl emptied and the honey-sweetened beverage Abyssian called tej drew low in its pitcher, the ambassadors’ conversation began to turn toward serious matters. Teak expected her mother to ask her to give them some privacy but was surprised when she made no such move to dismiss her. Even Abyssian didn’t seem to mind her continued presence, despite his previously jovial smile hardening into a grim line. His consternation didn’t appear directed at either of them, but at the idea of the war itself.
“It is the reason I do not sleep well at night,” Abyssian admitted as they came back around to the same immovable problem they had been paired together to solve. “We have made the mistake of gambling the futures of our people on a gift which the gods clearly did not intend for us to devour so ravenously.”
Zecora nodded, her muzzle pinched with her own well-worn concerns. Teak knew enough about the war, from dinner table talks with her parents to gossip at school, to know that at the center of the bitter fighting were the Vhannan oil fields, miles still to the east. Equestria had been the first to see the potential in the black muck that bubbled from the zebra desert, and Vhanna had been happy to allow eager Equestrian companies to pour bits into harvesting said oil. Equestria experienced a technological boom over the span of several decades. Every day seemed to give birth to a new industry. Plastics, standardized machinery, newer more potent fuels rolled out of soot-coated factories at the outskirts of every major city with foundations being poured for the next great idea in Equestrian innovation.
It didn’t take long for the citizens of Vhanna to see the prosperity of the nation across the sea and compare it to their own poverty. Zebras quickly stood up to demand a change in the status quo. Their leaders listened, not blind to the growing imbalances, and soon oil began flowing in two directions, not one. Vhannan engineers travelled to Equestria, took notes, and returned home with the keys to their own ascension. Slums were paved over and glistening cities rose out of the savannah. Modern amenities previously seen as luxuries reserved for the rich were suddenly available to anyone with the ability to earn a paycheck. Vhannan industry galloped through the hoofsteps of Equestrian progress, and for a moment it seemed possible that a golden age might encompass two hemispheres.
Then the wells began to fail.
One by one, well after well, they dried up. At first it was just a hiccup. New oil fields were staked, but those dried up even more quickly. Faced with the very real possibility that the vast deposit discovered in Vhanna might not be as vast as once thought, expeditions were launched to far-flung corners of the world in search of new sources. Small pockets were found, but none large enough to sate the demands of two hungry nations. Many new sites went bust within months of starting up. It became clear, to the growing horror ponies and zebras alike, that they had churned through the majority of a precious resource with reckless abandon. With so many powerful gears spun into motion, simply stopping wasn’t just unfathomable, it was impossible. The collapse of hundreds of industries was visible on a terrible new horizon.
Historians would eventually differ on who acted first. Some would argue that Equestria had acted as an aggressor by demanding Vhanna curb its “rampant waste of resources.” Others insisted that Vhanna had tipped the first domino when their leader deployed its military to “protect” the oil fields from foreign incursion. In the end, it was clear what was happening. Both sides were moving to monopolize the last drops of crude that the deserts had to give. 
Faced with the reality that one nation might prolong their collapse at the cost of the other’s immediate failure, the next step wasn’t far out of reach. 
Two months after Teak turned ten, Vhanna and Equestria went to war.
Teak folded a piece of flatbread over a morsel of cheese, the kitfo bowl scraped empty, and nibbled on the edge as she listened to the adults speak.
“We’ve progressed too far to fall back into squalor,” Abyssian continued, shaking his head for emphasis. “And yet, this war threatens to consume the last of the very resource we desecrate our own soil over. If the fighting were to end today, right now, without a greater solution… it will have all been for nothing.”
Zecora nodded, her eyes on the colorful orange flowers standing in the bright sunshine. “The ponies back home are unwilling to revert back to coal in earnest. They see what it has done to the air in Manehattan and Fillydelphia and fear it will blanket their best memories of Equestria in soot.” 
She rested her cheek against her hoof and sighed. “I would take an inch of ash over blood any day. It baffles me that the princesses don’t feel the same way.”
Abyssian tactfully avoided any comment on that last part. Even Teak stopped chewing for a moment, unsure whether they were allowed to speak about the princesses at all here, let alone so honestly.
“The sad fact of the matter,” he continued carefully, “is that before too long, time will make that decision for the both of us.”
Zecora nodded. They were at the same impasse they had run into several times over the course of the meal. The same roadblock that the ponies back home talked circles around ad nauseum. No amount of altruism was going to convince either side to willfully thrust their nation into a dark age so that the other had a fleeting chance of breaking their own fall. Not when so many lives had been spent between them like so much coin.
“What about solar power?” Teak chimed in.
Zecora and Abyssian looked at her as if they had forgotten she was still at the table. Her mother’s tense expression told her that she’d brooched a topic that wasn’t strictly off-limits, but closer than her casual nitpicking about the princesses. Abyssian’s face was unreadable, but something told her she had hit on something he’d been wanting to discuss all along. The silence at the table lingered a little too long, and Teak haltingly continued to relieve her discomfort in their sudden attention.
“I mean… everyone’s fighting because the oil is going to run out soon, but it’s going to run out anyway no matter if there’s a war or not.” She looked between the two of them and realized they were humoring her. Her ears grew hot. She wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t a hard problem to solve if everyone would just talk like normal ponies and not prance around the obvious answer. “If the oil runs out, the war isn’t going to end. The only reason ponies and zebras are still killing each other is because they’re afraid if they stop, the other side won’t. It’s stupid. If both sides had solar, there would be no reason to fight in the first place.”
Abyssian tipped the flat of his hoof upward with a mild shrug. “Vhanna is not unaware of the potential of harnessing the sun, but that technology is still in its infancy. To generate enough electricity capable of sustaining a nation is impossible, no?”
Teak could sense that he didn’t believe that, not entirely. He was challenging her to find a counterpoint. Making her think. She thought about it for a moment, her muzzle twisting with concentration.
“Not really,” she said cautiously, remembering a discussion she had in class not too long ago. “It takes more… factories and stuff to burn coal or oil for electricity. Solar doesn’t have to do any of that. If you need more, you just need to build more panels.”
Zecora smiled. It was a crude answer, but Abyssian had pointed her in the right direction and let her find it on her own. “It’s a matter of scale,” she clarified.
“Yeah,” Teak said.
Abyssian bowed his head, conceding victory to the young mare. “An astute point, little one. However, my country’s understanding of solar energy is many years behind your own, and your princesses have not been known for their charitable nature even before the war began. If Equestria capitalizes on solar energy and is unbound by our oil fields, I suspect few ponies would shed a tear at the sight of Vhanna collapsing into obscurity while your people vault into the future.”
Teak frowned and tried to think of something that would prove Abyssian wrong, but the seconds ticked by and all she could think about was the aftertaste of kitfo and tej in the back of her throat. She swallowed.
“And,” Abyssian continued, his tone shifting, “one does have to wonder, if Equestria does have the ability to convert to solar power, why do its princesses so publicly oppose it?”
Zecora took a slow breath and sat up a little on her cushion. 
“I can’t speak for the princesses, but it is a question I would like to ask Celestia myself should I ever be granted an audience,” she said. “The ministries, however, would never allow us to trade technologies with Vhanna. War or no war. But...” she said slowly, the wheels spinning in her head.
Abyssian turned to her, his lavender eyes narrowed. “Ambassador Zecora, I have not invited you to Vhanna to tempt you into compromising your loyalty to Equestria.”
Teak could see the familiar line form along her lips when she was trying to decide whether or not to make a promise. Whether or not to say something she couldn’t take back. Abyssian could clearly see that little battle playing out on her mother’s face as well, but he didn’t know her mother like Teak did. Fluttershy didn’t choose her for this job just for her stripes.
Zecora exhaled slowly as she made up her mind. “I would not dream of betraying the Ministry of Peace’s trust,” she said, carefully sidestepping the rest of Equestria’s leadership. “You said that solar research in Vhanna is still in its infancy, and I am compelled to agree. It leaves me to wonder whether you would be further along if Equestria had ever thought to share its knowledge with certain neutral parties who have a vested interest in seeing a peaceful end to this war.”
Abyssian frowned for a moment. “You mean Griffinstone.”
Zecora nodded. “Your western neighbors and our oldest friends short of the Crystal Empire.”
“There is hardly a plateau among their aeries wide enough for even a small solar plant, let alone one large enough to be of any benefit to them.” He spoke carefully, his voice low. “The griffins are friends to both our people. Any technology given to them would likely cross the border into Vhanna within a matter of days.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Zecora said. “It would necessitate promises of utmost secrecy from the gryphons.”
Abyssian snorted. “Secrecy. From gryphons?”
Zecora suppressed a smile. “I find that stereotype dated and baseless.”
The ambassador scratched his muzzle, staring at Zecora for a long while. The humor on his face subsided as the seriousness of what she was proposing sank in. Giving sensitive technology to an unreliable ally was negligible at best. At worst, it would be viewed as treason should the circumstances of that leak be made public. 

	Yet the end result might be worth the risk. Two opposing nations, strangled by their mutual need for a dwindling natural resource, suddenly in possession of the same technology. Played the right way, it could make the war obsolete. It could end it.

	Abyssian shifted in his cushion. “You are placing more trust in my hooves than I expected to come from a single meeting, ambassador. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I have to wonder what you expect to receive in return.”

	Teak watched her mother try to make it seem as if she had planned to ask for anything at all. She had never been one to strike bargains or make requests. She was a giver, but it was clear that Abyssian was not comfortable with receiving something for nothing. The Ram’s Horns on his hip might have symbolized strength through humility, but no one was perfect.

	Zecora considered Abyssian’s words for a moment. “I do not expect anything,” she said, “but if I could make a request?”

	Abyssian held his hooves out, inviting the question.

	“Find a way to halt the use of blindweed on the front lines,” she said. “It is a fickle weapon that does not care whether it kills ponies or zebras. The death it promises is cruel, and I fear its continued use will make our job all the more difficult.”

	A brief pause. Abyssian began to nod, and a more modest smile lifted his lip. “It is comforting to know I am not the only optimist at the table.”

	“We grow fewer by the day,” Zecora said. “This idea could work, ambassador.”

	“It could,” he agreed. His eyes fell to the table, little creases forming at their corners. “It is a gamble. One that you would be taking on the lion’s share of the risk by implementing. I imagine you will require time to, as you say, get the ball rolling?”

	Zecora scooped up a bit of flatbread and wiped it along the inside of the kitfo bowl, cleaning off the last of what was left before the flies could find it. She popped it into her mouth whole, enjoying the last burst of spice as she thought about the logistics of such a leak. It occurred to her that she couldn’t do something like this unnoticed. She would have to walk a delicate tightrope between befriending the right sources within Fluttershy’s ministry while keeping others in the dark. The problem she had was that she didn’t have much of any clout within the Ministry of Peace beyond a title. She would need to bring Fluttershy on board, sell Applejack on the idea of sharing the Ministry of Technology’s data with their legendarily unreliable allies… Abyssian was right. It would take time.

	The more she thought about it, the more the plan was growing on her. Despite the obstacles she would need to overcome, this could be the relief valve both sides of this deadlocked war needed. Short of any better ideas, it was something to aim for.

	“May we meet back here in a month?” she asked. The timeframe was a shot in the dark. “It would give me enough time to determine who I can trust with this.”

	“A month is a good start,” he nodded. “In the meantime, we will tell our respective leaders the expected news that we managed to accomplish little today beyond exchanging pleasantries and a delicious Vhannan meal. We will both be skewered in the papers and forgotten by lunchtime.”

	Zecora sucked a smear of kitfo off the rim of her hoof. “Twilight won’t let me hear the end of it when we get back.”

“The price of power, what little of it either of us are allowed in this strange world.”

His hooves scraped against wood and he stood with a satisfied sigh that came from a full belly and a time well spent. Zecora and Teak rose as well, nudging their cushions under the table as the meeting came to an end. Somewhere in the tall hedges an unseen bird took flight, its trill fading as it departed.

Abyssian turned to Teak, his smile at odds with his sheer size. “Thank you for your inspiration, little one. I trust that you will keep what we discussed today private?”

Teak nodded jerkily. “Yes, sir.”

“I wouldn’t have brought her along if she couldn’t,” Zecora reassured him. “Though next time we’ll see about taking the overland route.”

She flushed at being reminded of her flightsickness.

“Your discontent with flying was difficult to miss when you arrived. If your mother does not object, I have prepared a small gift for you to ease your nerves on the flight home.”

Zecora tipped her head with curiosity, inviting him to proceed. Abyssian grinned and thumped his hoof against the wood floor twice, hard enough for Teak to feel the vibration in her knees. Abyssian half-turned back toward the rear of the palace and lifted his voice in his own tongue. “Temanyuni amit’u!”

He smiled at them as the same servant mare who set the table stepped out from the palace as if she had been waiting there the entire time. Clearly she had. She covered the distance at a brisk trot without a serving cart or even a tray to hinder her pace. At first glance it appeared she was bringing nothing but herself, something that strained the smile on Zecora’s face as she approached.

Teak’s eyes dropped to the mare’s chest, where two white stones clicked against one another on simple leather straps. She stopped in front of Abyssian and bowed slightly, allowing him to lift the straps over her head on the tip of his hoof. He thanked her as she turned and trotted away.

“For you,” he said, holding the first stone out to Teak. 

She hesitated a moment before stepping around the table and accepting the simple ornament. Impossibly thin lines etched a dizzying pattern of symbols and designs into the alabaster that felt rough on the sole of her hoof. She bent her head through the strap and let the little stone hang against her coat.

She blinked and took a deep breath. All of a sudden she felt clearer, as if a fog she hadn’t known was there was lifting from her eyes. It was subtle but impossible to miss.

Abyssian held the second stone out to Zecora. “My mother used to call them fewisi stones, though these days zebras call them healing talismans. They are a rather useful curative for many little ailments and are popular among the fishing villages as a treatment for seasickness. Your daughter will no doubt enjoy a more comfortable flight home with the aid of hers.”

Zecora smiled recognition at the little stone and she slipped it on. “I once had a dreamer stone to help me sleep when I was little. My parents were furious when I lost it. We turned my bedroom upside down looking for it.”

“Are they expensive?” Teak asked.

Her mother began to nod, then shook her head. “These stones are carved slowly with magic. They take weeks, sometimes months to make a single stone like these and they are almost exclusively created as gifts. It would be exceedingly inappropriate to buy or sell them.”

Teak lifted the talisman on its strap, feeling the warmth it radiated. She looked from it to Abyssian, who regarded her with a gentle smile. “Thank you, sir.”

Abyssian dipped his head. “You are most welcome, little one.” He gestured toward the palace where two Wonderbolts were being led out into the garden to retrieve them. “I pray your mother will bring good news when next we meet.”

Zecora nodded, her face taking on the diplomatic mask that Twilight had spent so much time drilling into her before the trip. The last thing she wanted was for one of their Wonderbolt escorts to notice how much she had enjoyed this brief trip into Vhanna. Abyssian noticed the subtle change in the way she carried her smile and reflected it as the Equestrian stallions reached the gazebo to collect their cargo.

“Thank you for the meal, ambassador,” she said. “You were a gracious host.”

Abyssian nodded once. “And thank you for coming all this way to enjoy it. Perhaps next time we will have more to agree on besides the meal. Until next time.”

Zecora nudged Teak until she began following her toward the waiting pegasi. Their talismans swung like white coals below their necks in the bright Vhannan sun.







Aurora closed the flaps of her saddlebags a little more forcefully than she had to.
“Asshole,” she mumbled.
Roach dropped the flaps to his own with a small shrug that she would have missed, had her eyes not finally adjusted to the near impenetrable darkness of nighttime in the wasteland. The fissures in his chitinous skin glowed with dim green light as he shifted about on the uneven pavement. “Coldbrook may be that, but at least he isn’t a miser. These supplies will come in handy.”
Aurora flicked her tail at the air and sat down with an irritable sigh. “He’s a generous asshole, then,” she said sourly. “One that thinks he can buy our loyalty by flashing around a few bits.”
“Caps,” Roach gently corrected. His joins cracked as he sat down on the side of the old road with her. “And I wouldn’t bet a single one on the assumption he’s under the illusion that we’re loyal to him or his Steel Rangers.”
She allowed herself a little smirk at that and idly scratched the spot on her foreleg her Pip-Buck usually occupied. Elder Coldbrook’s calculated attempt to corner her had backfired spectacularly when he tipped his hand and revealed his ultimate goal to commandeer and strip Stable 10 down to the screws. Up until now, the Enclave had somehow managed to beat his Rangers to one opened Stable after the other, carving out as much valuable or sensitive tech as they could carry and leaving behind a hole in the ground barely more useful than the abandoned structures that speckled the wasteland. Thanks to the waypoint on her Pip-Buck, the Rangers had their first lead on a soon-to-be-retired Stable before the Enclave since the war ended. 
Coldbrook had too much dignity to froth at the mouth, but he had gotten close.
And yet he had taken a different tact with Roach. Despite the Rangers’ open distaste for ghouls, Elder Coldbrook seemed genuinely appreciative of Roach’s effort to return Stable 6’s gardens to fertility again. Coldbrook hadn’t made them rich, but they were certainly better prepared now than when they left Junction City. Their saddlebags weighed a little more and their contents slopped a little less with each step. Their canteens, looted off the raiders who ambushed them days earlier, sloshed with clean water. 
A modest stack of prewar granola bars that were stiff as bricks and which Roach assured them were still edible, sat in Aurora’s bag. Their silver and gold foil wrappers glinted like ingots atop her canvas tool wrap. The label Mairzy Dotes scrawled in cursive arced over the black silhouette of a nameless earth pony. It was enough food and water to last them a few days. Just long enough for them to reach Fillydelphia and the headquarters of Stable-Tec, if they hurried.
There was no point in arguing that it was a generous gift, but Aurora wasn’t anywhere near a point where she was willing to give Coldbrook credit for anything bordering on good will.
She flicked a lump of broken asphalt through a sprig of grass that had taken root in one of the cracks. It tumbled into the center of the road, coming to a stop between the faded yellow chips of what had been a painted centerline. Twin ruts in either lane pressed deep into the asphalt; lasting evidence of the traffic that once frequented this forgotten road. 
The night air was refreshingly cool as it whispered its way through the tangled wall of trees that grew on either side of the narrow lane. Branches thumped and scraped against one another and the air smelled somehow fresher here than the dusty breezes that blew across the highway that had taken them to the Bluff. She drank it in as they waited, listening for the telltale crackle of twigs that would alert them to Ginger’s return from the privacy of the treeline.
A smile crept across Aurora’s muzzle in spite of herself, and she ticked another bit of asphalt into the road with the edge of her hoof. It tumbled toward the first before veering off and dropping into one of the many fissures weathered into the road’s surface.
“I like what you did with your mane.”
She watched as Roach dislodged a bit of stone with his strange, perforated hoof and gave it a gentle kick toward Aurora’s pebble. It landed surprisingly close.
“Thanks,” she said, suddenly aware of the loose white curl dangling just inside her vision. She resisted the urge to pull it back behind her ear.
A fresh breeze slid out of the woods, cooling their backs.
“Congratulations, by the way,” he rumbled, loosening another bit of debris from the roadside.
Aurora pinched a stone between her feathers and lobbed it toward the others. “For what?”
“For finding someone,” he said, watching her stone bounce to a stop next to his. “You two are a good fit.”
She looked at the trio of stones and couldn’t help but worry a little that this thing between her and Ginger lacked something. Her mind drifted to what she remembered of her parents’ relationship and the slow, confident permanence that just came assumed with it. It was established, with roots running deep and strong.
The connection she and Ginger shared had formed over the course of the last few days and burst into something tangible out of the fires of their shared traumas at Autumn’s facility. The closer Aurora inspected the fibers of their new relationship, the more fragile and superficial they seemed to be. Logically, she knew every couple went through…
“Aurora, you’re worrying too much.”
She realized she’d gone silent and tried to brush it off with a chuckle. “I’m not worried.”
What was worse than feeling Roach’s eyes burrowing through the side of her head was the fact that she could see his eyes burrowing into the side of her head. They glowed with the same gentle green light that emanated from the cracks and fissures in the changeling’s shattered carapace, and they didn’t budge.
Aurora tried to pretend not to notice by focusing her attention on dislodging a golf ball-sized chunk of pavement from the road, but it clung stubbornly like a pebble in a chipped hoof. Finally, she gave up and returned his gaze.
“How do you know I’m worried?” she asked.
Roach smiled and blew out a slow sigh. “Aurora, I spent the first forty years of my life feeding off of ponies’ emotions and the last two centuries helping to keep Blue’s from getting out of control. You’re soaking in it like Blue Blood soaked in cologne.”
Aurora felt her wings lift an inch and suddenly felt exposed. “You can smell it? Does it… let you know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes and no,” he said through a jaunty laugh and that didn’t quite put Aurora at ease. The glowing cracks at the corners of his muzzle widened as he noticed the disquiet on her face. “It’s alright. I tune it out most of the time, and no, I can’t read your mind. I can just tell you’re hung up on something and it doesn’t take a psychic to guess that it has something to do with the mare you risked your life for.”
She sucked on her lip and nodded. “Well, you guessed right.”
“Guess nothing,” he smirked. “I raised a teenager, once upon a time. I wish she had been as easy to read as you are.”
Aurora kept silent, unsure how to respond to that or whether she was allowed to even ask about Roach’s daughter. She remembered how seeing the cabin had affected him, dredging up memories of the life the bombs had stolen from him. Time might heal all wounds, but the scars always took a little longer to fade away.
For his part, Roach didn’t seem put off by the quiet. His woes weren’t at the focus of their private discussion and he carried on without skipping a beat.
“Aurora, I found Ginger on the road when she was my daughter’s age. I know her better than most,” he continued. “She’s been alone for a long time. I thought maybe she would use Junction City to get back on her hooves and move onto greener pastures, but then she opened her shop and settled in. It was never any of my business to worry about her, but once you’ve been a dad it’s kind of hard to stop. I checked in on her from time to time and each time she was still alone, reading those dusty romance novels and getting disturbingly good at imitating Rarity in her younger years as a way to draw in business.”
Aurora looked at the pavement in search of a nugget to pry loose. At the outset, Ginger’s mannerisms were almost identical to the stock footage of Rarity the residents of Stable 10 were treated to, particularly on Remembrance Day, the one day a year set aside to reflect on everything lost when the bombs fell and the Stable door closed. The footage had been clipped together by the first generation of residents, selected piece by piece from the hundreds of documentaries stored in the Stable’s archives. Several minutes of the memoriam were dedicated to each of the Elements of Harmony, their lives and accomplishments told through various interviews that had taken years to harvest and stitch into a coherent film. 
Rarity had always seemed the most peculiar of the six, at least to Aurora. The way she spoke to the camera was completely alien to the world she grew up in beneath Foal Mountain. The prancing cadence of her speech was almost comical, like a caricature of itself. Meeting Ginger in her shop for the first time had been like stepping through the projector screen and into one of those old interviews.
She couldn’t help but smile. The tip of her hoof bent behind the black pebble and flicked it into the road. “I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed how often she kept calling me darling,” she said, following the pebble as it skipped over a crevasse and bounced off Roach’s rock. “She doesn’t do it as much as before, though. Not that I ever minded.”
“That’s because you’ve been drawing the real Ginger out into the open,” he said approvingly. 
Aurora shrugged, unsure she deserved that much credit.
Roach elbowed her in the arm. “Hey, if you’re afraid what the two of you have is just a flash in the pan, don’t be,” he said. “That mare spent the last decade pretending to be anyone other than who she was. Now she’s walking with her marks out in the open, talking with her own voice instead of a dead Element’s. She’s doing that because she trusts you, Aurora.”
Deep in the trees, Aurora started hearing Ginger’s hoofsteps traipsing back toward the road, her impromptu trip to find a suitable patch of woods to use as a restroom finished. She swallowed her nerves and lowered her voice. “What if I mess it up?”
“Then you fix it,” Roach said, his calm tone reassuring her as he stood. “Same as every other pony who falls in love. Just don’t take it for granted.”
Aurora draped a wing over his back for support and pulled herself onto her hooves. “You’re really good at this.”
He shrugged under her feathers. “You’re not that heavy.”
She gave him a swat with them before folding her wing back to her side. “I meant at talking.”
“It comes with the territory,” he chuckled and bent his neck to see through the dense treeline. Ginger’s horn glowed nearby, lighting her way as she crunched through thickets of dead or struggling underbrush while being entirely unaware that her path was bending parallel to the road. “You’d better go help her.”
Aurora snorted. She slid into the wide ditch and clamored up the other side, into the trees, calling Ginger’s name before she could get lost.







The trees came and went as they pleased, sometimes bunched so close to the warped and fissured road that their branches netted themselves into a natural tunnel while at other times dropping so far away that Roach felt like he was standing in a black ocean looking at a distant shore.
They were walking through the heart of what used to be Equestrian farming country. He could almost recall the way the wheat fields cut perfect right angles into the surrounding trees, now rounded and rough with centuries of overgrowth. Here and there a sprig of a wheat plant or a stalk of corn would stand in solitude among their few remaining peers while wild, deformed grasses pressed into the otherwise barren fields.
Roach remembered the terror he felt when he first crossed over Equestria’s southern border, knowing that in doing so he was renouncing the Hive and its queen’s slow descent into madness. At the time, he didn’t know if it was possible for a changeling to live outside the hive for long. His existence had always been an endless cycle of depart, harvest magic, return, deposit magic, repeat. Love was always the ideal source - incontrovertibly powerful even in small doses - but he had never been picky about which emotions he tapped into. It all sated his hunger one way or the other, and he suspected more than a few other drones were cheating in the same way. 
Chrysalis said she wanted love, but in reality she only wanted the magic that the hive squeezed out of it. Roach sometimes wondered if breaking that one rule was the reason he began to think beyond the scope of her demands. If there was another explanation, it was well beyond his reckoning. He remembered depositing his harvest into the capsules at the periphery of the hive, crawling back into the sunlight and flying back across a desert whose dunes and ridges he knew from a thousand trips before. Toward the hazy edge of the high cliffs that wrapped the badlands like a fortress intended to keep him trapped inside.
And then a thought occurred to him.
What if I don’t come back?
Depart, harvest, return, deposit.
Depart, harvest, return, deposit.
Depart, harvest… 
The thought was forbidden. He remembered trying to shake it off, but it clung to him like a tick. He remembered ascending, his insectlike wings propelling him toward the top of the cliff wall, and catching a glimpse of the greenery that waited on the edge of the horizon. He began to wonder why. It was dangerous, but he couldn’t stop himself.
Why did ponies live the way they did? Why did they have a queen - wait, no, princesses - but not a hive? Who gave them instructions? How did they know where to go or what to do? Chrysalis always said that ponies were chaos and changelings were order like it was inherently better… but if that were true, why were ponies so much happier when Roach was so miserable?
Why am I doing this?
For the first time, he felt an emotion that wasn’t stolen but instead was his own: fear. Fear of the sudden expansion taking place in his mind. Fear of what his queen would do if he disobeyed. Fear of what the ponies would do if he was discovered.
But most of all, fear of what he had decided to do.
He spun a ring of emerald light above the tip of his jagged horn and let the spell take over the rest. The light swept over his chitinous body like a shockwave and from the other side emerged the pegasus form he always used to fly out of the badlands. Roach’s coat shimmered with the golden colors of freshly cut chaff, his mane and tail whipping behind him in vibrant green curtains like spring leaves caught in the wind. 
He didn’t remember who he’d taken the form from. Up until now, it didn’t matter so long as it wasn’t compromised. Even now, walking through what used to be the breadbasket of Equestria, he wondered what kind of life that stallion had gone on to live.
A few paces behind him, he heard Aurora and Ginger chatting and giggling like school mares about lighter topics. They had been walking the flat stretch of road for nearly four hours and had only come across a small pack of mutated mongrel dogs that were scared easily a quick blast from the shotgun strapped to his foreleg. With nothing to encounter, keeping Aurora on point with him while Ginger trailed behind was, well, pointless.
He kept his eyes open as the scrubby cornfields on either side of the road were overtaken by more forest. It was hard to imagine at the time that anything would survive the bombs, but here they all were. Roach, preserved against his will by the strange radiation given off by the balefire explosions. Ginger, born into a society of slavers descended from the ponies who crawled out of the rubble and stubbornly clung to life long enough to rebuild. Aurora, a pegasus raised in the same Stable he and so many others had been denied entry so many decades ago. Even the flora found ways to make it through the other side of the apocalypse. Living trees deformed by cancerous knots or clinging to their dead neighbors for support waited patiently for the rains that rarely ever came. He suspected that they had adapted to throw roots deep into the soil, tapping into some hidden aquifer far below their hooves. How the grasses survived, however, was a mystery even to him.
He half-listened to their conversation as their hooves clicked over the uneven road. Aurora was telling a story about someone name Carbide, a stallion who had made repeated unsuccessful attempts at either courting or bedding her. He was the same stallion who was now expected to design a containment system for Stable 10’s active talisman once they were ready to swap it out. From what Roach could tell, Aurora had a complicated professional and unprofessional relationship with the stallion at one time, and Ginger was infatuated with squeezing her for more details.
The emotions streaming off the two mares was like wading through an ebbing tide that sucked at his hooves. Joy, love, lust, unease, a low buzz of nervousness and a myriad of other flavors tried and failed to draw the attention of his baser instincts. These days he was able to brush off the temptation to feed with little effort. One of the first things he learned about himself after leaving the hive was that he didn’t need to siphon magic nearly as often or as greedily as Chrysalis led them to believe. Taking too much was its own punishment. Watching someone collapse, seeing the fear in their eyes as they struggled to understand what was wrong with them was a violation. A trauma that lingered long after that pony recovered. 
He learned to pace himself. To sip instead of shovel.
It surprised him how much he missed this. For a little while, it was like he was back home in Canterlot again, sitting on his favorite bench in the park while he watched ponies live their lives in a way he once never thought possible. For the first time in a long time, he was able to relax.
“I smell smoke,” Aurora said.
Roach blinked, his daydreaming interrupted. He sniffed at the air out of habit, but his sense of smell had gone as rotten as his magic over the last two hundred years. He looked back to the two mares, their conversation cut short.
Ginger lifted her nose to the air and nodded. “So do I. Burning wood. We’re close to a camp.”
The breeze was subtle, but it was wafting in from the wood-shrouded road ahead. Roach slowed enough to rejoin the two mares, sidling up along Aurora’s right side as he slowly scanned the trees. He could see better and farther at night than either of them but even he couldn’t see any firelight to tell him where the smoke might be rolling in from. It could be miles away or it could be minutes. He became keenly aware of the noise their bare hooves were making on the pavement.
“Let’s get into the grass,” he said, indicating the narrow strip of scrub grass that rode the shoulder. “Single file. Aurora, you’re on point. Switch your safety off. Ginger, take center. I’ll cover the rear.”
This time there were no chuckles to his last point. They filed off the pavement and into the grass. The road was empty but Roach could tell by Aurora and Ginger’s sniffing that the odor of smoke was getting stronger. Aurora had her wing hooked under her rifle’s braces, the barrel aimed low and her feather curled through the trigger guard.
“Aurora,” Roach whispered. “Get off the trigger.”
He saw her ears flatten with embarrassment and her feather slipped out and settled against the side of the trigger guard like he’d taught her. If they could get past whoever’s camp they had come across without being noticed, all the better. It would be a more difficult task if Aurora accidentally sank a bullet into the dirt for every raider in the area to hear.
The road followed a gentle curve as it navigated the outskirts of what might have grown into a bluff had millions of years of geology panned out differently. Instead, the mound was just that. 
Roach spotted the wagon well before Aurora or Ginger had a chance to make out its silhouette in the darkness. “Stop,” he whispered. Mercifully, he didn’t have to repeat himself. Aurora slowed and Ginger followed suit, both looking back at him for an explanation. “Wagon ahead,” he said.
The tide of emotions pouring off them was vastly different now. Fear, chief among them, came off Aurora in waves. He couldn’t blame her, though he checked her feathers again to make sure none had found their way back to the trigger. They hadn’t yet.
He made his way past Ginger, his hooves rustling the grass. “Aurora, hold still, I need your scope.”
She instinctively began shrugging her wing out of the rifle’s bracing and he had to put a hoof against her feathers to stop her. “I can’t hold it near either of you,” he said. 
He saw the realization dawn on her face as she shut her eyes and gave her head a quick shake. “Sorry. Forgot.”
The lingering effects of the bombs hadn’t just corrupted his body. His magic, the very tool by which he once interacted with the world around him, had been tainted as well. Aurora had borne the brunt of that reality once already and the radiation had nearly killed her.
“No problem,” he said. He stepped next to her wing and guided it and the rifle it bore into the air with his hoof, aimed roughly at the wagon at the far side of the bend. It was awkward and Aurora’s nerves made the view through the scope bob and slide, but the dark shape of the wagon eventually came into focus.
It was a simple construction. An all-wood chuck wagon with the exception of iron bands nailed to the rim of each wheel. The front wheels lay canted into the road along with a central beam used to harness a team of two for pulling. To Roach, it looked as if the owners had been trying to turn around but were stopped during the attempt.
“I don’t see anyone,” he said. “Looks abandoned.”
“Raiders?” Ginger whispered.
He nodded. “That’s my bet.”
The longer the crosshairs drifted over the wagon, the more details he could make out. The back hitch hung open like a dead brahmin’s tongue, giving him a clear view inside. A couple repurposed crates and one barrel, all tucked to the front, all standing open and most likely empty of anything valuable. His first thought was that it was a trader wagon. Someone trying a different route to avoid the new dangers brought by F&F Mercantile’s plodding collapse. A pair of pillows and a cluster of what looked to be carved foal’s blocks suggested otherwise.
Along the central beam, two sets of harnesses lay in tatters on the pavement.
He let go of Aurora’s wing and pulled back from the scope with a tightness in his gut that hadn’t been there before. “I don’t like it. Let’s backtrack a mile or two and take the woods until we’re past whoever…”
“Evenin’, folks!”
The three of them jumped. Roach found himself struggling for balance as Aurora’s feathers slapped across his muzzle, her rifle leveled in the rough direction of the intruder’s voice. Ginger’s horn crackled, and a translucent amber half-dome flashed into existence between them and the trees. 
The speed of their reactions left Roach dumbstruck for a moment, but he quickly recovered when he spotted the figure standing across the ditch a few yards into the trees. He gave his foreleg a quick jerk and the shotgun fitted to it slid forward on its custom rail, giving his hoof access to the long hook of steel that served as its trigger. Aurora spotted him as well, the barrel of her rifle jerking toward him and holding there. There was no time to ask Ginger if her shield spell was bulletproof, though Aurora insisted it was what saved her from Autumn’s deranged attempt at an execution. At the very least, it had gotten the attention of the stallion that had caught them off guard.
The gaunt visitor was half-hidden behind the trunk of an ironwood tree, his single visible eye wide at the sight of Ginger’s shield. What Roach could see of his sunken face suggested he could hide behind a sapling and still go unnoticed. Whoever he was, he didn’t seem particularly afraid of them. Even the way he stared at Ginger’s magic - something once thought impossible since the fall of Equestria - had an air of calculation.
“Sorry,” the stallion laughed, his cheerful tone at odds with the weapons pointed at him. “Best way to get a feel for a pony is by seeing what they do when you put a good scare into ‘em.”
Roach kept his shotgun leveled at the intruder, his hoof pointed both with accusation and necessity. “It’s also a fantastic way to get yourself shot,” he rumbled.
That seemed to amuse their prowler. His deep green coat pulled taut around his face as he broke into a short tittering fit. The high, scraping sound of it bounced between the trees. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aurora’s feather slip into her trigger guard.
“Say, you’re a ghoul!” the stallion declared in an Appleoosan twang that might have been charming outside of their present circumstances. He giggled again. “So am I! O-or I will be, soon.”
Roach’s frown changed slightly and he narrowed his eyes at him. The signs were so subtle, he might not have recognized them at all. The deep-set eye, the sunken cheek. The way his thinning coat seemed deep green because the skin beneath it was pepper-black. The stallion was at the middle of his inexorable journey towards becoming a ghoul, whether he wanted it or not. A deep sense of pity loosened the knot in Roach’s gut. The process was already playing havoc with his mind. Roach had seen it before. At some point in the near future, months or even another year from now, he would lose himself completely and become feral.
“That’s…” Roach hesitated. “That’s very interesting.”
The skin around the stallion’s eyes pinched with a smile. He stepped out a little, enough for the three of them to see the dented laser pistol seated in the holster on his right foreleg. The modified bite trigger looked thoroughly chewed, but he made no move to reach for it. “Thank you. Never met a ghoul all cracked up like you are. My name is Gallow. What’s yours?”
He carefully adjusted the barrel of his shotgun toward the pistol. At this range, the spread wouldn’t be enough to drop him if he went for his weapon, but it would still hurt like a bitch. “I’m Roach,” he said carefully. “Can I ask you what you’re doing out here?”
Gallow smiled wide, displaying a row of deeply yellowed teeth. “I was going to ask you the same thing, Roach!” He gestured through the trees, toward the abandoned wagon up the road. “My ma and I got robbed today. Ain’t the first time it happened to us, but these ones were meaner. Thought it’d be funny to cut up our harnesses so we couldn’t take the wagon with us.”
Roach nodded. That would explain some of what he’d seen through Aurora’s riflescope. “That doesn’t sound very funny at all,” he said, earning another decayed smile from Gallow. “Where’s your mother?”
“She’s back at camp making dinner,” he said. Then he hesitantly added, “I guess you’re not raiders then, are you?”
Roach let himself exhale and shook his head. “No, just travelers passing through.” He let his shotgun drop a few inches, watching Gallow for any twitch that might suggest he was waiting for an opening. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to his weapon at all, his attention still absorbed by Ginger’s shield spell.
He gave his foreleg a little flick and the shotgun retracted along its rail with a soft click. “Sorry to hear about the trouble with your wagon,” he said.
“Aw, it’s nothing too bad. We ain’t dead, so...” Gallow trailed off and began picking his way through the brush toward them, seemingly oblivious to the one remaining rifle that tracked his approach. 
He slid down into the ditch, his saddlebags jangling when he stumbled at the bottom, and then climbed up the other side until the amber glow of Ginger’s shield lit his face entirely. Barely three feet away, the thick odor of rot and cook smoke wafted off him and through the barrier like an unwanted guest. Roach noticed that the right side of Gallow’s face was completely slack, as if the muscles beneath the skin had been severed. Tufts of green hair clung to his slackened cheek in sparse patches. At first glance, a pony might think he had mange, but to Roach the signs of radiation damage were impossible to miss this close to the stranger.
Gallow didn’t seem to care that they were staring. His grey eyes were lifted to the magic barrier between them, his muzzle split wide with wonder. He lifted a hoof and pressed it against the shield. Light rippled outward from where he touched it. 
“I knew a unicorn down in Dodge City who used to be able to teleport,” he said, and brought his other hoof up against shield to give it a harder push. Roach glanced at Ginger who was, unsurprisingly, less than comfortable with the sudden attention. The shield shimmered under his weight and he laughed, dropping back to the ground as if satisfied with his test. “It was nuts. One second he was right there, the next, poof! Gone!”
Ginger lifted one of her eyebrows and, slowly, lowered the shield.
“Aw,” Gallow complained, but his eyes flashed wide when he felt a tug from his holster. “Wh… hey!”
Roach would have been lying if he said he didn’t sympathize with the young stallion a little. As Ginger’s shield dissolved, a gentle glow wrapped Gallow’s pistol and lifted it from its holster. Hovering well out of his reach, Gallow could only watch with dismay as Ginger’s magic ejected the yellow energy cell from the side of the weapon. That done, she slipped the cell into Gallow’s holster, followed by the pistol atop it. If the earth pony had any thoughts of shooting them in the back, he would have to waste precious seconds dumping out his holster to do it.
Her harmless deception finished, Ginger allowed the amber light to fade. “It never hurts to be safe,” she said.
Gallow regarded his pistol like a foal who had bitten into a stick of black licorice, expecting red. “I suppose that’s fair.” He sulked for a moment more before his wry smile stretched his cracked lips once again. “Say... ma likes to make more stew than I can eat by myself, and y’all look like you could eat…”
 He turned at the sound of Aurora shrugging out of her rifle, his eyes fixed on her wings. A new source of intrigue.
“Sorry, but we already ate,” Aurora said flatly. Then to Roach, “We should get going.”
“W-well hold on now!” Gallow said, earning a mild glare from Aurora. “Maybe you’re not hungry, but it’s all we really have to pay you with.”
Roach frowned. “Pay us?”
It took a visible effort from Gallow to pry his attention away from Aurora’s wings. “Well, sure. I was gonna ask if you could help us out,” he said, his eyes dropping to his hooves. He scraped one sheepishly through the dirt. “Y’know, with our cart and all.”
He heard Aurora stifling a groan. He nearly let one escape his perpetually ragged throat himself. On his other side, Ginger made no qualms about wearing her suspicion on her sleeve. The corners of her eyes were pinched as if trying to suss out the real reason behind this young stallion’s neurotic approach to such a simple question.
Roach sighed and tried his best to look disappointed. “Look, we’d like to help, but we don’t have the materials to fix a harness. Might be best to leave the wagon behind and come back for it later.”
He turned and stepped back up onto the asphalt, a little sorry to leave the kid in a lurch but not enough to lose sleep over. He wasn’t alone and he was armed with a decent weapon. If they stopped to help everyone who wanted it, they would never…
“Ma and I have the materials, though!” Gallow called after him.
Roach stopped walking and breathed a curse. He definitely seemed like the type to take the long road on the way to anywhere. “You do, do you?”
“Sure do!” he said with the same lopsided grin. “I think, anyway. Ma always keeps a sewing kit even if she can’t use it on account of her teeth gone bad. Raiders didn’t have much use for it neither so they let us keep it.”
The dental problems in Gallow’s family were evidently hereditary. Roach had a feeling that Gallow would just as soon swallow a sewing needle before completing his first stitch. He didn’t even want to think of the logistics of what it took to sew with one’s teeth. The idea of biting a needle made him shudder.
He looked to Ginger, who was dutifully avoiding any and all eye contact with the rest of them. She knew what was coming next and was already trying to think of a way out of it.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She glanced at him, then at the dark stretch of road beyond. “We’re on a deadline.”
Roach waited.
Ginger eventually relented. “One, maybe two hours, depending on their materials and the way their harnesses were cut.”
There it was. He winked at her and caught the edge of a smile lift the corner of her muzzle as he turned to Aurora. “Sound alright to you?”
Aurora’s eyes lingered on Gallow with the same reservations that he and Ginger felt, but it was clear that none of them could think of a decent reason not to help beyond the simple fact that this was a detour none of them particularly wanted to take. Roach knew time was of the essence, but the reality was that he felt bad for the kid. He had to wonder whether Gallows could sense that he was destined to become one of the monsters that hunted from the forgotten shadows, or if he was clinging onto the thin hope that he might be one of the “lucky” few to exist as a sentient corpse.
To his relief, Aurora nodded. “A couple hours can’t hurt.”
Roach grinned wide enough to show his own dimly glowing gums.
“That settles it,” Roach said, turning to Gallow. “Lead the way.”







Rather than follow the road, Gallow followed the wavering scent of smoke into the trees. The underbrush clung to their legs as the four of them navigated the maze of living trees and fallen deadwood. A thick matte of dead leaves trapped between tufts of weeds made more noise underhoof than a herd of buffalo, though Roach suspected none of the others would understand the analogy. He ducked beneath a low branch, following close behind Gallow with Ginger and Aurora in tow.
“So where are you from?” Roach asked, though he already suspected he knew the answer judging by Gallow’s accent. 
“Oh,” he said cheerfully. “Noplace you’d know.”
Roach tipped his head, accepting the challenge. “I’ve gotten around. Try me.”
He couldn’t see Gallow’s face from where he stood, but he saw the little shrug play out across his shoulders all the same. “Weaver Farm,” he said. “It’s a few days west of Appleoosa.”
The kid was right, he hadn’t heard of it. “Well, I’ve been through Appleoosa plenty of times. Never had a chance to head west from there,” he said. The town had been teetering on the edge of city status by the time he abandoned his hive. Back then, nobody thought twice about the odd traveller wandering into town from parts unknown, and the peculiar accent its residents brandished wasn’t too hard for a changeling to mimic with a little practice.
It still surprised him to hear the country lilt going strong so many years later. Gallow didn’t lay it on as thick as some ponies were known to do, and it lent a bit of charm to his odder mannerisms.
He was certainly going out of his way to ingratiate himself to the group, trotting forward along what appeared to be some sort of a trail to hoist up a low-hanging branch for them to pass under and then crashing through the underbrush alongside them to make up the ground like a dog eager to please its new companions. Roach couldn’t help but be impressed by Gallow. It was like he knew these woods by heart.
Not long after leaving the road, Gallow found himself standing atop the trunk of a fallen tree with his hoof outstretched. He was insistent that he help them over the thing and he didn’t seem keen on taking no for an answer. The trio relented and he hoisted them up one by one, finishing with Ginger. He hopped down alongside her and matched her gait for several quiet seconds.
“So,” he said nervously. “You never did answer my question.”
Ginger arched an eyebrow. “I don’t recall you having asked one.”
Gallow frowned and was quiet again, as if replaying the last ten minutes in his head. “Oh, I suppose I didn’t. I was going to ask if you’d ever done it before.” he said. Seeing her expression, he flushed and he quickly added, “Teleportation, I mean. Not… that.”
Roach glanced back at Ginger and saw the polite smile affixed to her muzzle that she reserved for anyone who required a little extra patience. Gallow was either unaware or didn’t care much about personal space. Behind them, Aurora narrowed her eyes at the newcomer.
“I don’t know the first thing about it,” Ginger admitted while subtly putting a few inches of extra space between them. “You said you knew a unicorn who could?”
Gallow nodded vigorously. “Sure did! Called himself Orlov the Outrageous. He used to put on magic shows a while back. A lot of it was just hocus pocus and mirrors. Cutting mares in half, sleight of hoof, that kind of thing, but he was really good at it and it always drew a crowd. At the end of every show he would say, ‘Sim Saddle Bim!’ and poof! He’d disappear!”
Roach snorted. Of all the signature lines, this Orlov wasn’t afraid to use a lemon.
“It certainly sounds like an impressive trick,” Ginger said, plainly suspicious of Gallow’s claim. “But teleportation? Even before the war, performing a spell like that was exceedingly difficult even for the most talented unicorns. I mean no offense, but I don’t see why a unicorn would go through the trouble of mastering something so difficult only to use it in a travelling magic show.”
“None taken, ma’am. I was just curious whether you could do it, is all.” Gallow offered a smile, then shrugged. “And I wouldn’t say he mastered it or nothing, but I can promise you it was real. I was there for Orlov’s last show. He ended up teleporting himself right into the middle of the stage wall by accident. Cut himself clear in two. Hard to fake that.”
Ginger made a disgusted noise. “That’s horrible.”
“Sure was. Waste of a good pony, if you ask me. The unicorns in town took it harder than anyone else. He went and got their hopes up that the old magic might be coming back.” His eyes lingered on her horn for a moment and he grinned. “Guess they were wrong about that.”
Roach could see Ginger’s smile growing uncomfortable and he loudly cleared his throat, not that it changed the gravelly quality of his voice. “Hey, Gallow? Why don’t you come up here and show us where to go before I get us lost.”
Gallow’s ears perked up and he widened his gait until he caught up with Roach. His sheepish smile was even more apparent as he scanned the woods and turned them toward a thinner stand of trees. “Sorry, I can get distracted sometimes. It’s been a while since I’ve met folks I could just talk to, you know?”
He wasn’t shy about making up for lost time. Roach nodded, mainly because Gallow was looking at him to see if he agreed. “It can be a lonely world. Mind if I ask how old you are?”
The question seemed to catch Gallow off guard. He blinked several times and frowned as if he weren’t sure. Probably because he wasn’t. Seconds passed while he worked his tongue along the inside of his gaunt cheek, deep in thought. Roach was intimately familiar with the slow, sinking dread that settled into his gut whenever he realized he had forgotten something important. Sometimes with enough concentration he could grab the wayward memory by its tail and drag it back to the surface. Sometimes he couldn’t. He could only assume the descent into ferality was even more aggressive and he felt a twinge of guilt for asking the question.
“I…” Gallow began, hesitantly. “I think I’m sixteen?”
The cheery glint in his eye was gone, replaced with worry and uncertainty. He blinked again, rapid fire. Some sort of nervous tick or perhaps an artifact of his transformation.
“Yeah,” he said, more confidently. “Sixteen sounds right. How old are you?”
Roach surprised himself by laughing. He tamped it down before he could offend Gallow. “Older than sixteen,” he chuckled. “That’s a good age to be, by the way. I bet you’re all kinds of trouble for your mother.”
“Not really,” he said. His ears drooped. “I do all the hunting for us ever since dad died. Used to be I just did the butchering but now I gotta do both. Ain’t any time to do anything worth doing when I’m stuck doing all the work.”
Once again, he had seemingly stumbled onto a sore topic, though he wasn’t entirely surprised by Gallow’s reaction. At his age, the subject of family tended to draw out strong emotions from all ends of the spectrum, seemingly at random.
Gallow’s ears perked before Roach could stitch together anything amounting to meaningful advice. He watched the young ghoul as he trotted ahead, the excited curiosity sliding off his face and replaced by a tension that didn’t quite sit right.
The stallion’s eyes flicked toward them, then back to the trees ahead. 
Roach followed his gaze. The path ahead was as dark as ever. Then he looked up and saw them. Tiny motes of embers lifted into the trees on a barely perceptible pillar of oily gray smoke that would have been invisible were he anything but what he was. Two hundred years of living in the darkened tunnel outside Stable 10 had given his eyes plenty of time to learn how to see through the veil of night. Gallow hadn’t been so gifted and was navigating purely by scent and memory.
“Everything alright?” Roach asked.
“Huh?” Gallow was looking higher now, having finally sighted the embers twirling in the distant branches. “Oh yeah, no, everything’s fine. Ma likes to shield the fire so folks can’t see it from the road, is all. Makes it tricky to find her unless you got a good nose.”
His tone had changed. He was nervous about something. A cloud of sparks appeared between the boughs maybe a couple hundred feet ahead of them. Behind him, Aurora and Ginger took notice as well.
The trees parted only slightly as they came to what had once been a larger clearing that was in the late stages of being completely reclaimed by the surrounding forest. The remains of a small house, charred down to the foundation with the exception of the two furthest walls, one of which clung weakly to the remains of a broken chimney, sat at the top of a shallow knoll at the center of the old property. A ways downhill toward the far treeline stood a rusted aluminum shed. Its pitched roof bowed inward like a pouted lip. 
Tall grasses swayed lazily in the clearing, broken only by a ribbon of asphalt that rolled out of what might have been a connected garage and into a gap in the trees that Roach suspected led back to the road. Smoke, thick enough to see against the dark night sky, rolled up from what was left of the chimney. Roach eyed the exposed fireplace as they approached the foundation, his brow knitting as Gallow climbed three cinderblock steps to the main floor. Broken bricks lay stacked neatly in the hearth, sealing it off. More smoke slithered out through the gaps between them. 
“Hey Ma!” Gallow shouted, startling a curse out of Aurora. “I’m back!”
Roach stopped short of following him onto the charred floorboards, too blackened by heat for him to know what kind of wood they were. Gallow didn’t seem to notice or care, the flats of his hooves turning black as he stepped over the ribs of what had once been the studs of an interior wall.
Below the floor, the unmistakable sound of a skillet being dropped onto a stove caught Roach’s ear. A basement door peeled on old hinges and a shaft of orange firelight spilled out from a stairwell that Roach had mistaken for a cave-in.
“You’ve been gone less than an hour,” an irritable mare’s voice came from the stairs. “I’m not feeding you if you’re going to be lazy about your hunting.”
“Ma,” Gallow hissed down the stairwell through his clenched smile. “I brought friends.”
A long pause. “You brought friends.”
Hooves clicked on the steps until the eyes of a moss-tinted mare appeared above the burnt floor, reminding Roach of the prairie dogs that once lived out west. She lowered her eyebrows at him in particular. “What do you want?”
“They’re here to help us fix up our wagon,” Gallow said. 
His mother gave him a blank look. 
“The one we left on the road,” he prompted.
“Ah,” his mother said, her eyes passing over her son’s holster and the obvious lack of an energy cell present in his pistol. She took a slow breath. “The one you couldn’t deal with on your own.”
Gallow stole a look over to the three ponies standing in the grass, then back to his mother and nodded. “Yeah.”
Roach felt something tighten in his gut that he didn’t like. He turned to cough, eyeing Aurora and Ginger in the process. Their expressions had darkened in equal measure. Imperceptibly, Aurora’s wing had begun sliding into the hooks of her rifle.
“Well, the three of you are mighty kind,” the older mare said, her muzzle slowly dipping below the threshold of the floor. “Helphing my shon and all.”
Roach frowned at the change in the mare’s speech, as if her mouth was full. She stared at him without blinking, the top of her head growing perfectly still. Then the realization hit him. Gallow’s pistol had a bite trigger. His eyes went wide.
She was aiming.
Several things happened at once.
Gallow scrambled over the far edge of the foundation. A lance of crimson energy carved through the floorboards toward Roach. The shot, aimed at the center of his chest, deflected through the old wood just enough to save him the trouble of dying. The beam went high and wide, carving a shallow trough into the left side of his neck. He staggered backward and fell.
Aurora’s rifle cracked the air. The round sailed over the older mare’s ear, missing her by a scant few inches and forcing her back into the basement. Ginger’s shield came down hard enough to throw a wide circle of soil into the air, forming the same amber dome that had saved Aurora’s life a little more than a day earlier.
No sooner had the shield appeared, a second beam of light erupted from one of the basement windows. The lick of energy rebounded off Ginger’s magic and splayed harmlessly into the night sky.
“The fuck is that?!” the mare barked from her shelter. “Gallow you stupid little shit, why didn’t you tell me they had shield tech?!”
Gallow’s voice bleated from the far side of the house. “It ain’t tech, it’s that unicorn! She knows a spell!”
Another two bolts of energy stabbed toward Ginger, whose head was bent low in concentration. Crimson light fanned off its surface with little effect. “Celestia’s tits, you knew that and you still brought them here?”
“I didn’t know what else to do!”
As they argued, Roach lifted himself off the grass with Aurora’s help. He was distantly aware that she was trying to get his attention but the amount of pain seething through his neck took the bulk of what little attention he could muster. He tried to push her away but she was having none of it, her emerald eyes wide with fear as she caught a glimpse of his wound.
He lifted his hoof to his neck. It came back smeared with opaque green blood. He grimaced. “Fuck.”
Seeing Aurora’s reaction, he tried to soften his expression. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded, wincing at the jags of pain from the seeping wound. Ghouls weren’t known to bleed to death, and he ventured that Aurora would have reacted differently if he were gushing blood. The one benefit of being hit by an energy weapon was their tendency to cauterize the wounds they created. For Aurora or Ginger, it wouldn’t matter. The gash across his neck would be fatal with or without a set of burns to go with it. For a ghoul… well, ghouls tended to cling to life a little more stubbornly.
Red light lashed the side of Ginger’s shield, drawing his attention back to the stairwell. Gallow’s mother stood at the top of the steps, her eyes tracking the ripple that traced the circumference of the dome in search of a weakness. 
Roach flicked his foreleg forward, feeling the familiar clack of his shotgun as it slid forward on his homemade rail. He leveled the weapon at the mare who regarded him briefly before turning her aim back to Ginger.
She squeezed off another shot, seemingly for the simple pleasure of it, and started crossing the charred floorboards toward them.
“Ma,” Gallow said, peeking over the far side of the foundation. “Be careful.”
She rolled her eyes and silently mimed her son’s warning, smirking at Ginger as if they were sharing an inside joke. “Sho how long until thish bubble popsh?”
Roach walked to the edge of the shield and adjusted his aim, tracking her approach. “Aurora, cover the kid.”
The mare watched Aurora take a few steps to Roach’s left and heft her rifle toward Gallow. He ducked behind the foundation until only his grey eyes were visible. She sighed and shifted the bite plate to the side of her mouth, gripping it with her molars like a cheap cigar. “Look,” she said a bit more clearly, “It's not my fault that you’re here, but now that you are… I can’t exactly let you go.”
“That’s not a problem,” Roach growled. “You’re outnumbered.”
The mare descended the cinderblock steps in front of him and sat down on the last one, adjusting the muzzle of her pistol toward his head. “Judging by how worried that dustwing looked a minute ago, I’d say it’s a problem for at least one of you.”
Aurora snorted.
The mare ignored her. “I’ll make you a deal, ghoul. Put down your weapons and have the unicorn drop the shield. The two of you can go off to wherever you were going before my idiot son brought you here, and the mouthy one with the wings gets to stay here.”
“Sorry, no,” Aurora said. “We’re not doing the sacrificial lamb thing.”
“I don’t see what choice you have,” she replied coolly. “We can all either sit here and wait for your unicorn’s magic to give out, at which point several of us will needlessly die, or you can accept my offer and only you die.”
“Or,” Roach said, “we all walk away and nobody dies.”
The mare shook her head and smiled. “You’re not in a position to make demands any more than I’m in a position to allow a delicacy to just fly away.”
A stone fell into the pit of Roach’s gut. “Ah, great. You’re an Epicurean, aren’t you.”
“Did she call me a delicacy?”
The mare laughed, and for a moment the pistol in her mouth dipped. “No, no. We wouldn’t be living here if we had the caps to join up with the Epicureans. At least, not yet.” Her silver eyes walked their way across Aurora’s frame. “My son and I are more… enthusiasts, by necessity.”
“You’re cannibals,” Roach growled.
She offered a mild shrug in response. “And you’re edibles. Welcome to the wasteland.”
Roach had to resist the urge to pull the trigger. The last thing he needed was a faceful of buckshot ricocheting off Ginger’s shield. “That wagon back on the road,” he said dryly. “That wasn’t yours, was it?”
She chuckled. “I wouldn’t know anything about it. Gallow’s the one that does all the hunting. I just cook.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then turned his attention to the half-ghoul hiding behind the house. 
Gallow’s ears went flat, but he didn’t disappear entirely. The silence stretched. Finally, he piped up. “I-I make sure they don’t suffer,” he admitted. “We ain’t monsters.”
Roach’s eyes settled on the young stallion like lead weights. “You live less than a day’s walk from a fucking city, Gallow.”
“The food they got there ain’t the same,” he complained.
“Roach,” Ginger said, her voice unsteady. “Speed this up, please.”
Roach tore his eyes from Gallow and looked at Ginger. She was breathing hard from exertion, sweat trickling off her nose as she struggled to maintain the spell. The narrow filament of magic that fed the dome above them was widening into a dim cone. A hole the size of a carriage wheel had open in the dome’s roof and was slowly widening.
Gallow’s mother looked up at the hole and narrowed her eyes with a curious smile. “Gallow, go downstairs and get me my grenade.”
“Alright,” he said, and climbed up from the grass onto the charred floor. He hesitated at the top of the stairs and looked at Roach, shamefaced. “We ain’t monsters.”
His piece said, he disappeared down the steps.
“Clock’s ticking,” the mare said. “You have until my son comes back to make your choice. Put down your weapons and I’ll let you and the unicorn leave. Or don’t. I’m not above salvaging bruised meat.”
Down below, Gallow could be heard rummaging through containers.
Roach stared into the mare’s eyes, searching for some kind of bluff. There wasn’t one. 
He heaved a sigh. “Alright. Just know you did this to yourself.”
The mare quirked an eyebrow at him as he lowered his weapon and shrugged his saddlebags off his hips. He turned away from her and flipped open one of the flaps with the tip of his fissured horn, his eyes scanning the contents for what he wanted. The brown bottle lay beneath the binoculars they had scavenged off the raiders who made the mistake of attacking them in the field. He picked up the bottle between his teeth and flung it to Aurora, who caught it in her free wing.
“Both of you take two of those,” he said, then looked to Ginger. “Be ready to drop the shield.”
He watched Aurora twist off the cap and shake two doses of Rad-X into her feathers. She tipped them into Ginger’s mouth before taking two herself, wincing at the bitter flavor as she chewed them dry. When they were done, he turned to face the cannibal still perched on the makeshift stairs.
She tipped the muzzle of her pistol toward his head with a calm smile. He pressed the barrel of his shotgun against the shield toward hers.
“Found it!” Gallow announced from the basement.
Her smile widened. “Time’s up.”
He nodded. “Yep.”
Green light swept around Roach’s horn and surrounded the pistol clutched in the mare’s jaw. The Pip-Buck bound to Ginger’s foreleg chattered excitedly as waste radiation generated by his corrupted magic spilled into the dome like an invisible plague. 
Gallow’s mother frowned and bit down on the pistol, squeezing off an errant beam that flung off the failing shield and into the night sky. Roach yanked hard at the weapon, lifting the mare to her hooves as she fought to keep it. 
She flailed like a trout on a hook, refusing to let go despite the metallic taste flooding her mouth. Roach pivoted the shotgun against the shield, tracking her as she struggled against his magic.
“Leh go!” she shrieked.
He wrinkled his nose and gave the pistol a final, violent jerk. It tore loose with an audible scrape and tumbled into the grass. She howled as two of her teeth followed close behind.
“Ginger!” he yelled.
Behind him, Ginger released the spell with a gasp of relief.
Disarmed, Gallow’s mother watched with dawning horror as the shield standing between them spilled away. “Don’t-”
Roach pulled the trigger.
Her head snapped sideways in a cloud of bloody pulp. What remained of the mare lurched over the front stairs and slumped off the side in a graceless, twitching heap.
“MA!!”
The raw anguish in Gallow’s scream made Roach freeze in place. The stallion stood at the top of the basement steps, the grenade he’d been sent to fetch wobbling on the charred floorboards like a dropped toy, forgotten and, mercifully, with its pin still threaded through the handle.
Gallow stared, disbelieving, at the crumpled body of his mother. He walked toward the edge of the house where she lay, his eyes swimming as the undeniable truth of what he just witnessed began to sink in.
“No…” he croaked. His mouth twisted with grief. “Mama…”
It occurred to Roach that for the first time in a long while, he didn’t know what to do. 
He stared at the mare’s still form for a moment before blinking at the ground, his brow furrowed. This wasn’t his first time killing. Far from it. Raiders were commonplace outside the routes once protected by F&F Mercantile and a pony had to be willing to defend themselves to any extent necessary if they expected to survive. The mare lying at his hooves would have killed all three of them had she gotten hold of that grenade. He did the only thing he could do to keep him and his companions safe.
So why do I feel like the villain?
Gallow lifted his hoof toward the first step and stopped when he saw the spray of blood coating the cinder blocks. His lips peeled away from his stained teeth and a gutteral sob shook his chest. He stood there, shaken by grief, cut off from his mother by her own blood.
“I had to do it,” Roach said quietly.
Gallow looked at him, tears standing in his eyes, his mouth bent by a withering sneer.
“You murdered my mama,” he whispered. Then he screamed. 
“You murdered my mama!”
Roach cursed as the stallion leapt off the stairs, sending himself crashing squarely into Roach’s chest. Almost immediately, he could tell why Gallow had been able to sneak up on them through the woods virtually undetected. He barely weighed anything at all. Roach stumbled backward, leading Gallow away from his mother’s cooling body even as one of his frantic jabs glanced across the fresh scorch wound across his neck. He grimaced and continued to back away until his hooves scraped over the cracked asphalt of the driveway. It was far enough.
With a single motion, Roach ducked low and swept his hind leg through the tangle of Gallow’s hooves. The half-ghoul spilled onto his side hard enough to steal the wind from his lungs. His pistol clattered out of its holster across the asphalt. 
Roach pressed a hoof against Gallow’s shoulder and settled his weight into it, pinning him like a stone on a page of newspaper. It was as non-threatening a gesture as he could offer. Despite knowing what he was, Roach didn’t think he could bring himself to kill the kid.
“Are you done?” he asked.
Gallow sniffed loudly and stared forward, his jaw clenched. “Let me up and you’ll find out,” he petulantly murmured.
Roach sighed. He looked to Aurora and Ginger who had kept their distance during the scuffle and were now tracing their way through the grass towards them. Aurora watched Gallow with fresh mistrust. Ginger looked too exhausted to do much else except pant as she followed.
He looked down at Gallow. “I’m sorry for what she made me do. I truly am. You seemed like a good kid but…” he shook his head, his lip twisting with anger. “What happened here? This is your fault, Gallow. You brought us here because you wanted her to kill us. That’s on you.”
Gallow lifted his head off the ground and glared at Ginger, teeth bared as flecks of asphalt fell from his cheek. “If she hadn’t conjured that fucking shield back on the road, I wouldn’t have had to bring you here in the first place! This is her fault.”
Ginger narrowed her eyes at him. “So sorry.”
He ignored her. “It isn’t fair,” he said. “It’s my job to do the hunting. I forage for the herbs. I carve the meat. Ma cooks. That was her only job!”
Aurora came to a stop at Roach’s side. “You murder ponies and eat them,” she said dryly.
“We didn’t have a choice the first time! Ma didn’t have no caps and neither of us were any good at hunting. We were starving!” Gallow saw Aurora’s flat expression and dropped his head back to the asphalt, frustrated tears coating his eyes. “We… I was desperate.”
He was telling the truth. Roach could see it there on Gallow’s sunken face, in eyes that had once been filled with a disarmingly cheerful energy. Roach wondered whether some of that had been real, and if only part of it had been used as a ploy to get them to follow him into the woods in the first place.
“Ma got so weak she couldn’t get up anymore. Nobody would help us. The F&F wagoneers accused us of being bait and everyone else just pretended we weren’t there.” Gallow wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “Raider scout caught me out on the highway. Threatened to kill ma n’ me if we didn’t pay ‘em. Said a hundred wasn’t enough, so I killed him instead. He didn’t have any food on him, just a gun.
“I kept thinking I should have let him kill us because at least then we wouldn’t be starving anymore,” he continued, his eyes distant. “Then ma told me to carry him into the woods and build a fire, so I did. She told me to string him up and dress him like a stag, so I did. Ponies… we look so much like livestock once you peel the skin away, it’s scary. I kept thinking that I was going to get caught. Someone would see the fire and come looking and see me quartering that raider like he was a brahmin. But nobody found out, and ma and I survived.”
Aurora swallowed thickly, shook her head and walked away. Roach could see the revulsion crawling its way up her throat and didn’t object when she left.
Gallow didn’t seem to notice. “It’s addicting,” he said. “You don’t know you’re hooked until you run out of meat and realize you’re back to square one. Only when that happened, we had two choices instead of the one. We chose not to starve.”
Roach watched Gallow with a mixture of grotesque fascination and outright disgust. Cannibals were, despite wishing it weren’t true, not particularly rare in the wasteland. However, it was rare for one to speak so candidly about the dark reality of their diet, let alone admit to the circumstances that drove them to taking that first low step to Tartarus in the first place. 
The Epicureans, the wasteland’s predominant and most exclusive faction of high decorum cannibals, prided themselves on maintaining an air of secrecy around exactly what it was that made cannibalism their modus operandi. They believed that the mystery of the act would serve to bring like-minded ponies to their table, one way or another, and it was considered a faux pas of the greatest magnitude to paint their culinary choice with anything except a refined brush.
Despite his mother’s allusion to seeking out a place of her own in that exclusive club, Gallow had made it clear that he would never make that particular cut.
“You’re going to shoot me, aren’t you,” he said, his voice almost too quiet to hear. His eyes fixed on the shotgun strapped to Roach’s foreleg.
Roach looked up at the dark shroud of clouds overhead. They reminded him of the thunderheads he used to watch the pegasi herd over Canterlot when rain was scheduled. He hadn’t thought about that in decades.
He sighed. 
“That depends on you, Gallow.” He looked down at the half-ghoul and watched hope and mistrust play out on his face. Then he turned his head to the ruined house, past the body of Gallow’s mother and to the grenade that lay abandoned on the burned floor.
Gallow blinked confusion. “Are… are you robbing me?”
Roach took his hoof off Gallow’s shoulder and stepped away. “I’m giving you a choice,” he said. “Take a walk and cool your head. By the time the sun comes up, we’ll be gone. Or you can stay here, continue being a threat and see how far it takes you.”
Hesitantly, Gallow pushed himself to his hooves, his body tensed as if expecting to be shot at any moment. He made a visible effort to keep from looking behind him to where his mother lay. 
His eyes flicked to the pistol lying in the grass.
“Don’t,” Roach warned.
“I’m not going to. But…” Gallow hesitated. “Can you leave it here? When you go?”
Roach didn’t like the idea of leaving a weapon behind for Gallow to take up when he returned, but there was something in the way he avoided Roach’s gaze that made him understand what the young stallion was asking. 
He nodded. “We’ll put it up by the house where you can find it.”
Gallow let that sink in for a moment. Then his hooves scraped across the driveway as he turned and began walking away.
It was all the thanks Roach expected to get.
Gallow didn’t look back. Defeated, disarmed and completely alone, he followed the broken strip of asphalt into the trees and faded into the night.







Aurora made a face as she watched him go. The wild grass swept across her legs as she wandered the empty yard, her eyes turning back to the dark perimeter of encroaching forest.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” she asked.
“Probably not,” Roach admitted. “But killing him seemed like the least terrible option. We did enough to him.”
“Who? The cannibal?” Aurora shook her head. The reality of ponies like Gallow and his mother existing in Equestria refused to mesh with any of the evils she could imagine on her own. “I’m not sure I care whether or not we ruined his night.”
“He’s just a kid, Aurora.”
She rolled her eyes. They settled on the dark shape of the wood shed at the far end of the clearing. “They wanted to eat us, Roach.”
Ginger thumped her hoof into the dirt. “Stop it. Both of you.”
An awkward silence settled over the clearing. Aurora looked over her shoulder to see Roach quietly placing Gallow’s pistol on the corner of the foundation, turn, and begin searching for the missing energy cell. Ginger stood a few feet away, glaring at both of them like an exhausted parent. 
“Sorry,” Aurora said.
He waved her off. “Don’t be.”
It wasn’t exactly the me too she was expecting, but she got the impression that maybe she had poked at a wound of his that ran a little deeper than she expected. She sighed and decided to let it go. Her shoulders were already starting to tremble as she came down the other side of her adrenaline high. No sense in risking saying something she couldn’t take back while she was jumpy.
Her ears twitched at the sound of Ginger mounting the house steps. “I’m going to check the basement before we go.”
“Alright. I’ll keep watch,” Roach said. “Keep an eye out for ammo. I’m low.”
“Mmhm, twelve gauge for you and .308 for Aurora. I know.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’ll be an ignition talisman down there,” Aurora added.
Ginger’s expression softened slightly, but the attempt at levity didn’t relieve all the tension. She sucked the corner of her lip as she watched Ginger levitate the unused grenade back to Roach before descending beneath the blackened floorboards.
Aurora self-consciously shuffled her wings and turned her attention toward the rusting shed.
The deep gray structure lay sat slumped at the far edge of the clearing, its roof bent inward along the spine as rust and time chewed away at its bones. She plodded her way toward it, the tall grass snatching at her hooves in spots where it had been trampled into a matted tangle, probably by Gallow or his homicidal mother. A dim buzzing tickled her ears.
As she drew closer, dark shapes began to form inside the tree line around the shed. A tingle of fear shot down her spine for a brief moment, her brain instinctively thinking deathclaws when in reality the night-shaded silhouettes were ringing familiar bells for a different reason.
Wagons, she realized. Dozens of them, some perfectly intact and many others in the process of falling apart from neglect, their wooden wheels cracked and sinking into the underbrush like shipwrecks on a sunken reef.
Then the smell hit her and her unprepared gut lurched. She coughed to clear the stench from her nose but that made it even worse. Now she could taste it. It took everything she had to keep from retching. Any pony who attended a funeral in the Gardens knew that smell. It was impossible to forget. Like a physical thing, the thickly sweet scent of decay clawed its way up her nose and down her throat. It was thick as soup.
A fly buzzed just outside her ear and she jerked away, startled. It meandered around her before bobbing towards a gap between the locked door and the frame where something had struck it hard enough to leave a dent. Aurora squinted after it and realized the dim buzz was getting louder the further she got from the ruined house.
It was coming from the shed.
Through watering eyes, she saw the dark smears in the grass outside the dented aluminum door. Black specks, too small for her to properly see in the moonless night, flitted in and out of the locked door. In lieu of a padlock, the latch was held shut with a simple worn strip of leather.
Her stomach twisted as she approached the door. Every inch of her wanted to turn around. To get away from the smell, this shed and the lost wagons behind it. She already knew what was on the other side. She didn’t need to see it. She could turn around, walk away and never speak a word of it.
But a part of her refused to let her. As she wrapped a feather around the strip of leather and pulled it away, she kept thinking about the wagon back on the road and the harnesses that hadn’t been cut apart by raiders but by Gallow.
It’s my job to do the hunting. I carve the meat.
Only maybe he hadn’t finished. Maybe his most recent victims were still alive.
Maybe.
She let the strap fall to the matted grass, slipped her feathers through the gap in the door and pulled.
Fat, black flies poured through the doorway like a swarm of hornets, so thick in the air that they practically bounced into one another in the escape. Aurora did the only reasonable thing she could think of and screamed in panic as insects swarmed past her. She reared back and tried to turn away but her hooves tangled and she fell to the stained grass in a heap.
She started to push herself back up, but then she looked into the shed’s gaping maw and stopped. Back at the house, Roach and Ginger were shouting to know if she was alright, but she couldn’t answer. Her tongue refused to form the mollified words being birthed in her skull. She could only stare, silently, at the nightmares dangling mere feet from her hooves.
Four bodies hung upside-down from ugly metal hooks bolted to the roof. The curves of iron looped under thick ropes that bound their rear ankles together, their forelegs pointing to pools of clotted blood below them as if they were all frozen mid-dive. Muscle, sinew and bone glistened inside the gaping chasms of their opened chests, their innards scraped out and replaced by a glittering dusting of salt, their mouths craning open in silent screams.
“For Luna’s sake, Aurora, answer me!” Ginger’s voice came from behind. “Are you… oh my goddess.”
Aurora’s eyes didn’t leave the butchered bodies as she rose unsteadily to her hooves. She felt the familiar urge to scream, to sob, to break down and try to claw the memory of what she was seeing out of her head before it could take root. But she felt something else, too.
Roach appeared beside her and put his hoof on her wing, trying to lead her away from the open door. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She shrugged him away, breathing hard. Her eyes had settled on the last body hanging against the back wall, smaller than the rest. She stepped past Roach, walking forward until she was at the very threshold of Gallow’s shed. The putrid stench of offal assaulted her senses to the point where she couldn’t tell whether the tears staining her cheeks were from odor or grief.
The little colt couldn’t have been more than four years old.
Aurora spun around, ran past Roach and vomited into the grass. Everything came up. Her body convulsed until only bile ran past her teeth. She could see Ginger’s legs out of the corner of her eye and was vaguely aware of her mane being pulled away from her face so she wouldn’t soil it. Somewhere behind her, Roach closed up the shed.
She spat, trying to get the taste of death out of her mouth, but it wouldn’t go away. None of it would. She could feel the image of the foal burning itself into her memory like a brand. A sob shook her chest, but the next one evaporated as it slid past the glowing hot anger that rose in her throat like a scream.
Gallow did this.
She started to walk.
“Aurora,” Ginger said, trotting to catch up, “tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.” She lifted Desperate Times by its hooks with her right wing and used the left to pull back the bolt with a metallic clack. The empty brass from the shot she fired at the start of their encounter spiraled away into the grass, leaving a fresh round glinting in its place. She shoved the bolt shut, chambering the round.
Roach appeared on her other side, his eyes on her weapon. “That doesn’t tell me you’re fine.”
Aurora ignored him, slid her wing free of the rifle and broke into a canter towards the driveway.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
She could already feel him trying to think up a way to get her to reconsider what she was about to do. Her jaw tensed. That wasn’t going to happen.
“I’m fixing a problem,” she said.
Before he had a chance to answer, she threw down her wings and flung herself into the air. The wind quickly filled her ears, drowning out the voices that chased her across the clearing.
She lined herself up with the dark strip of the driveway and slid through the gap between the trees, her eyes scouring the asphalt for Gallow. The cracked strip bent left and she banked with it, branches reaching out to her on both sides, some coming dangerously close to swatting her out of the air. He couldn’t have gotten far.
It occurred to her that he might have veered off into the woods. He’d been living here with his mother, resetting this trap over and over again long enough for him to learn the terrain. Worry began to settle in. What if he had gone back into the woods? What if he was making his way back to the clearing?
The driveway bent left and abruptly ended where it intersected with another road. Aurora recognized it as the same road the three of them had been walking. She billowed her wings and swung her hind legs forward, stopping short of running into the trees lining the far ditch. Her hooves crunched on the weathered pavement, her head on a swivel searching for Gallow. 
To her right, an empty stretch of road. 
To her left, the same thing with the exception of the abandoned chuck wagon a quarter mile away. This time, however, she was looking at it from the front.
She lifted her rifle and peered down the scope.
On the side of the road, between her and the wagon, sat Gallow.
Her heart pounded as she dropped her saddlebags off her hips and crouched behind them, laying flat on the cool tarmac with the barrel of her rifle propped over one of the satchels. Even though he was well out of earshot, she moved slowly and deliberately to avoid making noise. She scooted the butt against her shoulder and slid her feathers against the trigger guard.
Gallow sat roughly the same distance away that the raiders had during their ill-fated ambush. She pressed her cheek behind the sight and worked on slowing her breathing. His gaunt form wobbled past the crosshair for several aggravating seconds before slowly, finally her wings grew steady around the rifle.
The half-ghoul didn’t appear to even notice her. For several seconds she watched him. He appeared close enough that she could see his lips moving, speaking to some unseen ghost known only to him. He stared at the ground, his hoof going through the same motion of digging up and flicking broken bits of asphalt across the fissures that she and Roach had done. It almost made him seem normal.
Then she remembered the bodies in his shed. The foal he had butchered. A family, maybe. Or part of one. She would never know for sure.
She could ask him, she realized. Sneak up on him, pin him down at gunpoint and demand answers. Make him tell her who they were. Where they were travelling to before he dragged them off to be carved up like cattle.
Her wings began to shake again and she forced herself to focus on her breathing. In, out.
In, out.
In, out.
Gallow remained where he was, content to flip rocks onto the road until the sun came up and it was safe for him to go home. Safe to eat his fill, reset the trap and wait for the next victims to get too close.
Aurora exhaled and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle bucked against her shoulder with an explosion that split the night air. The shot’s echo was still on its way by the time she got back behind the scope.
Gallow lay sprawled on his side, his legs scraping aimlessly at the pavement. His distant screams reached her ears seconds later. She swore. The bullet had gone low and bore through his hip, likely shattering against his pelvis. The noises he made were like cold water to her anger.
She swore again, but this time she couldn’t stop her wings from shaking. This wasn’t what she wanted. She pulled the trigger again, forgetting to breathe, and the round skipped against the road behind him.
“Fuck!” she yelled and leaned hard into her weapon, willing it to stay still as she tried to get Gallow behind the crosshair. She yanked the trigger and a bolt of pain shot through her shoulder as the gun kicked back.
Gallow kept screaming, and Aurora saw that the round had caught him through one of his hooves, turning the nail into shrapnel. He curled around what was left of it and tried to roll over, but the damage to his hips tore a fresh cry of pain from his ragged lungs.
She stared through the scope, horrified. With a shuddering breath, she tried to get herself under control. The crosshair wobbled over Gallow before settling on him again. If there was a Tartatus, she would end up there someday. Maybe then she could apologize to Gallow for making such a mess of his death.
She let the crosshair drift a notch above his head and squeezed the trigger.
He jerked one last time before falling still, his screams silenced.
It was several minutes before she finally stood, and only then because she could hear Ginger and Roach’s hooves galloping toward her from the driveway. She lifted her saddlebags over her hips leaving the rifle where it lay on the ground. Ginger was first to reach her, with Roach not far behind.
“Luna’s grace, you’re okay!” Ginger’s hooves wrapped around Aurora’s neck like a vice before she had time to open her mouth. “Don’t do that to me!”
She lifted a hoof around Ginger’s shoulder and returned the hug, her throat too thick to speak. Then she let go, hoping the shame on her face would be enough of an apology.
Behind her, Roach picked the rifle off the road and frowned toward the dark lump laying next to the wagon. Aurora reached out with her wing to stop him but he already had the scope up to his eye. She could see the muscles in his jaw slacken when he saw Gallow, and what she had done to him.
He lowered her rifle and gently shook his head. “What a mess,” he sighed.
There was no accusation in his voice. No anger. Only disappointment. Her Pip-Buck chattered on Ginger’s foreleg as he held the rifle out to her in his tainted magic, his gaze still fixed on the spot where Gallow lay.
“Take it,” he said.
She could taste metal on the back of her tongue. “I don’t want it,” she said quietly.
He turned his head and looked her in the eyes. “Take your weapon, Aurora. You’re soaking up rads.”
She snatched it out of the air with her wing and threw the strap over her shoulder, turning away from him as she jerked the bolt back and cleared the chamber of the last unspent round. With the magazine empty, she slapped the bolt forward, hefted the muzzle toward the trees and pulled the trigger. When it clicked, she set her jaw and stared at the pavement, waiting for the inevitable lecture.
Roach just stood in silence, watching her.
Her ears flattened under his quiet gaze. She made a face and turned to him. “Stop looking at me like that.”
He frowned. “Like what?”
“Like,” she swallowed to clear her throat. “Like I’m some kind of fuck-up.”
“I never said you’re...”
“But you’re looking at me like I’m one!” she snapped, cutting him off. “You keep looking at me like I’m a helpless idiot who can’t handle herself!”
His face hardened. He gestured to where Gallow lay. “Aurora, you’ve already proven that you’re not helpless, but you mangled him. Why?”
“Who cares why!” she yelled, stabbing a wing back up the empty driveway. “Fuck, I missed, okay? He didn’t deserve a clean shot! You saw what he did! He butchered an entire family. Literally butchered them! I… there were so many wagons in the woods, Roach. Did you even see them?”
She looked to Ginger for support, angry tears brimming in her vision. “That was a kid in there,” she said.
Ginger set a hoof on her shoulder to calm her. “We all saw, dear.”
“Then why are you two acting so fucking calm?” Her voice broke on the last word, and she felt the blood rush up her neck. She bit her lip, hard, trying to stay composed, and glared at Roach. “He was a monster. Why did you let him go?”
Roach looked at her for a moment, then blinked and turned away. “I let him walk because I thought killing his mother was punishment enough.” He glanced down the road. “When he left, he asked me to leave his pistol where he could find it. I know that look, Aurora. He was going to kill himself.”
She followed his gaze, the weight of Ginger’s hoof like a balm on a wound she didn’t know she had. “Well, now we don’t have to worry about it,” she said bitterly.
Roach pursed his lips as if deciding something. He took a slow breath, gave the pavement two quick taps with the edge of his hoof and looked at her. “Ginger and I didn’t know which one of you was screaming,” he said.
She blinked confusion. He waited, and slowly the realization of what he was implying dawned on her. The chilling noises that Gallow made in his last moments still echoed in her head. Pure agony distilled into a single, repeating soundtrack that cut off with a final gunshot. Her friends, the only ponies she let get close to her, had listened to Gallow scream and a part of them couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t the one making those noises. 
They had believed on some level they were listening to her dying.
The last embers of her fury went cold. She bowed her head, hoping to hide the mortification that bloomed across her face.
Ginger gave her neck a gentle squeeze.
“Look,” Roach said, his voice softening. “Gallow earned what you gave him. Nobody’s arguing that. But it was sloppy, Aurora. If he had gotten the jump on you and not the other way around, we wouldn’t have been able to help you. I don’t ever want to be in that situation again.”
She nodded, wincing at the pain in his admission. When she was forced to leave him behind at the Bluff while she went to save Ginger, she hadn’t considered what it had been like to wait for her, not knowing if either of them would ever come back. 
Her ears twitched at the sound of him approaching.
“So,” he said, dipping a hoof under her chin until she lifted her head. “New rule. We don’t run off without telling each other where we’re going, and we don’t get into fights without backup. We stick together. Sound fair?”
She smiled a little, despite how miserable she felt. “Yeah,” she said.
He returned the expression and clapped her on the shoulder. “You’re stuck with us, Pinfeathers. Like it or not.”
Aurora swallowed the lump in her throat. “Okay.”







As luck would have it, the double dose of Rad-X had done the trick. After each taking turns wearing Aurora’s Pip-Buck, they confirmed that the lion’s share of his errant radiation had been taken up by the chems. The immediate area around the body of Gallow’s mother, however, had become a hotspot.
Aurora and Ginger rested in the grass next to the driveway at the edge of the clearing, the former using a damp clump of bandaging cloth to scrub the radiation from her rifle while the latter tinkered with the Pip-Buck’s menus. 
Their exposure had been minimal. Not enough to send them rushing back to Blinder’s Bluff in search of Rad-Away, but enough for Roach to feel chastened all the same for putting them at risk.
As Ginger so eloquently put it, “It’ll be a few decades before we start sprouting tumors.”
He glanced over at the shed as he climbed up onto the ruined floor of what must have been a beautiful home back when he was still… him. The thought crossed his mind to burn the shed, to spare any other wayward travelers the trauma of discovering what waited here, but the smoke would only serve as a beacon. Burying them seemed the better option, but even then he worried that anyone who might come looking for them would be forced to dig them back up only to see what had been done to them. It would only bring more grief. 
In the end, the only option he could stomach was to leave them where they were. Let someone else decide what to do.
The stairs leading into the basement were little more than rough cut strips of lumber that flexed under his hooves. One step at a time, the space that Gallow and his mother had called home came into view.
It was a disaster.
Junk of every variety lined the basement walls in drooping heaps like they were there to reinforce them. Yellowed bottles of Abraxo mingled with a mound of telephone parts, the resulting reaction forming a thick paste of rust where the bare gears lay exposed. Crates of what looked to be crystalware filled one corner, the F&F Mercantile stamp on the bottommost container split apart by the weight as the rest slumped against what might have been clothing at one time but had been reduced to a dense, brown heap of rags. The basement was choked to the rafters with years’ worth of stolen goods. 
To a scrap seller, it was a treasure trove. Thousands of caps worth of salvage all in one place, and within spitting distance of the very wagons that had carried them this far.
All Roach could see was the lives Gallow and his mother destroyed.
He descended the last step and came to a stop on a layer of damp manila folders. The hoofprint of the house was easily several hundred square feet, yet the livable space down here had been reduced to nearly zero. Narrow troughs in the sea of garbage served as walkways between semi-organized heaps. How Gallow had found anything down here was beyond his reckoning. Some ponies just had a good memory, he guessed.
As he sifted forward through the garbage, keeping his eye out for anything that might help them on the next leg of their journey, he couldn’t help but notice the thick scent of smoke that permeated the basement. Pushing past a mixed pile of hot plates and half-crushed desk fans, he found the source of the odor budged up against a far wall.
A genuine cast iron wood stove, an antique even before the bombs, stood beneath what had once been the upstairs fireplace’s ash chute. The bottom half of the brick column had been demolished to make room for the stove and a hodgepodge of office ductwork and adhesive tape had been used to connect the flue to the remaining section of ash chute above. A cast iron skillet still rested on one of the burners, the charred strip of meat inside already cooling in a puddle of its own grease. Whether a miracle or a miscarriage of justice, Gallow’s mother had managed to create a kitchen in this mess without immolating her and her son in the process. There was nothing for it, now. He pressed forward.
Halfway through the basement, the path abruptly ended where a ceiling-high stack of books, old magazines and even a few prewar newspapers had buckled, pouring paper into the walkway like an avalanche. A narrow section of the wall had been pulled away to make room for something amounting to safe passage, evidenced by the dirty hoofprints staining and overlapping each other across the open pages. Peeking out from the toppled hill, a faded green book binding caught his eye. He recognized it immediately.
He lit his horn, confident there was more than enough junk here to absorb the minor amounts of radiation his magic generated, and pulled the book out by its spine.
Roach never considered himself much of a reader. Even at the height of the war with Vhanna, he rarely so much as picked up a newspaper. Anything he needed to know about the world at large would inevitably find its way to him via his husband. Left to his own devices, Bluegrass would turn anything in the news into an object lesson on pony history. It didn’t help that their daughter, Violet, encouraged him at every step. It drove him crazy. 
It had taken him decades to come to terms with the reality that he had lost something so perfect.
He turned the book over and smiled. Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone. Violet, like so many ponies her age, had been swept up in the series’ renewed popularity after the release of the movie bearing the same title. The centuries had stolen countless memories from him, but one thing he recalled with clarity was the day he gave Violet her first copy of the series. She had thanked him with that dubious teenage uncertainty fillies her age were want to use when their fathers bought them something that was “cool,” but that night the house was oddly quiet. No stereo, no muffled phone conversations with young stallions he had yet to meet. Just silence. Bluegrass had been the one to finally get up and check on her, and when he came back downstairs he told Roach that he might need to start looking for the second installment sooner than he thought.
He would have bought the entire series the next day if he had known how little time they had left.
Roach started to put the book down, but he hesitated. He stared at the worn cover and the worn graphic of the main character, the grey-maned heroine Violet adored so long ago swinging from a vine over a pit of voracious crocodiles, and quirked his cheek. He lifted the flap of his saddlebag and carefully secured the book inside.
He stepped up onto the mound of literature, following the layers of grime that trailed over it from who knew how many months of travel, and spotted the far wall of the basement through the gap. Pressed against the wall, he could see what looked to be a pair of browned mattresses laying on a patch of bare concrete that somehow managed not to be absorbed by the junk heaps surrounding them. Sitting between the mattresses was a medium-sized footlocker. A bright brass padlock stood perched on the lid, its shackle unlatched.
With a grunt, he wriggled through the narrow gap left by the fallen reading material and stumbled down the slope on the other side. 
He entered the shared bedroom space, his eyes on the locker, and reflexively wrinkled his nose. Radiation didn’t exactly have a scent, but ever since his transformation Roach had become especially sensitive to its presence. He could feel his throat drying out as he approached one of the hills to the left of the two mattresses, the familiar scratch that felt like a cold setting in that told him he was standing dangerously close to a stream of gamma particles. Well, dangerous for anyone else.
He coughed from old habit, trying to clear his throat of phlegm that wasn’t there. The mound was smaller than the others, standing only a few inches above chest height. Gun barrels bristled from open crates marked SALVAGE like a rosebush that had decided to favor thorns over flowers. The majority of the weapons were thick with rust, bent or damaged by failed attempts to modify them, almost guaranteeing that any round they fired would cause more damage to the owner than the intended target. 
He coughed again when he spotted a vein of ammo cans running through the pile, the twin white and black silhouettes of the old princesses still visible on some of them. Pinned beneath one of the boxes lay the dented bowl of what looked like a kitchen colander. He frowned and nudged the edge of the steel bowl with his hoof, catching a glimpse of what looked to be the body of a homemade pistol attached to the back of it. The exposed flesh between his chitin glowed a little brighter in its presence, happy to absorb the radiation like a sponge. 
Roach set his hoof back down and looked at the mattress directly behind him. The dark depression was significantly longer than the one on the other side of the locker. How long had Gallow slept there, unaware that the hoard he and his mother slept in was slowly poisoning him? How much longer did he have until the last fragments of who he was disintegrated. Until his mother awoke one day with a feral ghoul standing over her, driven by a hunger even she couldn’t understand?
He took some solace in knowing that, at the very least, he and Aurora had spared Gallow and his mother a worse fate.
His eyes wandered the stockpile of weapons. If he had Aurora’s Pip-Buck with him, its built-in radiation meter would be popping away right now. Whatever that strange dish-gun was, it had spoiled the entire stockpile.
Disappointedly, he turned and stepped over Gallow’s mattress to inspect the locker. He flipped the unlocked lid, the padlock sliding off onto the elder mare’s bed, and peered inside.
It was mostly empty, save for a stack of Sword Mare comics, a hardcover copy of The Pleasure of Cooking and a small leather pouch tied shut with a bit of twine. Roach lifted the pouch out with his pale magic and undid the knot.
Two neat stacks of bottlecaps, pressed tight into slugs of fifty, lay alongside a pair of energy cells. He tucked the pouch into his saddlebag and sighed. It was barely enough caps to last most ponies a week, and yet they were surrounded by a fortune in stolen scrap. They could have sold a tenth of it, moved anywhere they wanted and lived in relative comfort. Instead they lived… here.
Roach doubted he would ever understand it.
With nothing else catching his eye, he wriggled his way back onto the main path and picked his way up the basement steps. Aurora and Ginger still waited at the edge of the clearing, their faces lit by the glow of Aurora’s Pip-Buck.
Ginger looked up as he dropped off the foundation into the grass, scooping up Gallow’s pistol and dropping it in his saddlebag on the way. No sense in leaving it out here for the weather to chew up, especially now that they had a bit of ammo for it.
“I was afraid you got lost!” she called.
He shrugged. “I’m amazed they didn’t manage to burn the place down a second time. They had a working stove down there.”
“I told you it was a mess,” she said. “Find anything good?”
Roach nodded as he slowed, then smirked when he noticed Aurora holding Ginger’s foreleg captive in her lap, her eyes pouring over a block of green text on the Pip-Buck. “I’m guessing whatever’s on that screen is more interesting than a few caps.”
Aurora looked up long enough for Roach to see the tentative smile in her eyes. She nodded. “Sledge wrote back,” she said, and turned back to the screen, her eyes scanning the text.
Roach waited for her to elaborate, but it didn’t seem like she would be coming up for air anytime soon. He glanced at Ginger who sat patiently while Aurora claimed temporary ownership of her leg.
Ginger rolled her eyes at him and smiled. 
“Don’t worry. It’s good news.”







October 15th, 1075

“You sure we all hafta be here?” Applejack whispered.
Twilight shot her a withering glare. Behind the six of them, a flashbulb went off. Someone in the press pool clearly trying to snap a shot of something other than the ministry mares standing in one spot, staring stoically into the blue sky.
Applejack stood next to her, unphased. They had known each other since the day Twilight arrived in Ponyville in the same chariot that they were all standing here waiting for now. Before the strange potion that gifted her wings, and the alicorn power that came with them. She was taller now, sure, but Applejack had spent her entire life working around Big Mac. If Twilight was counting on a couple feet and a few feathers to spook her into silence, she had another thing coming.
“I’m serious, Twi,” she insisted while dutifully keeping her nose pointed over the ledge of the castle terrace. “I’ve got spec sheets for our new power armor prototype on my desk right now, and that project’s already months behind schedule. Don’t you think this might be, y’know, a little low on the totem pole?”
She watched Twilight out of the corner of her eye, taking a small amount of pleasure out of seeing her old friend struggling to conjure up some other way to shut her up. It wouldn’t work, but she waited for the attempt anyway. More and more these days, Twilight needed to be reminded that they were equals in this endeavor. Alicorn or not, if she expected her friends to bow to her, then she shouldn’t have rejected Celestia’s offer to be crowned princess.
“This is the first time an Equestrian diplomat has returned from Vhanna,” Twilight said, reciting the same line she’d been feeding the press for the past several hours. “We should all be here for it.”
To her right, Applejack heard Rarity make a noise of approval. She glanced at the alabaster mare, careful not to be seen looking away from the pastoral panorama stretched in front of her, and cocked an eyebrow.
“She’s absolutely right,” Rarity chirped. Her lavender curls swayed across her neck in the warm autumn breeze. “Today is a milestone, after all.”
“So is the tech I’m working on,” she answered back. “We all have work we should be doing instead of standing here so a gaggle of press ponies can snap pictures of our asses.”
“Applejack,” Twilight hissed through a practiced smile. “Knock it off. Now.”
She could feel the muscles in her shoulders tensing up. Were it not for the press standing yards away, she would have given Twilight a piece of her mind. As it stood, that option wasn’t remotely close to being on the table.
“Fine,” she growled, flicking the air with her tail.
A half dozen cameras strobed. She smiled a little more broadly, her eye on Twilight.
“Rarity,” Twilight said.
“I’ll have the photos confiscated,” she answered dryly. “Applejack, darling, we all have things we should be doing right now. Personally, I would appreciate it if I didn’t have to spend another one of my evenings preventing an entire nation from seeing photos of your country.”
Applejack snorted, nearly losing her composure. “Heh.”
Rarity bit the inside of her cheek to stop her own smile from spreading too far. Jokes had never been a notable part of her repertoire, but every once in awhile she still managed to surprise them with an unexpected line. It helped reassure Applejack that despite this shadow they found themselves living under, her friends were still there. Sometimes she just needed to pull away a few layers to help them find themselves.
Standing on Rarity’s other side, Rainbow Dash watched the skies with a broad grin. Her chest shook as she worked hard to stifle a case of her own giggles. She noticed Applejack staring and silently mouthed, Nice one.
She gave Rainbow a wink in reply. Rainbow, as brash and headstrong as she was, had made an undeniable impression on her over the many years of their friendship. As the blue pegasus would say, she had learned to lighten up a little. She found her eyes drifting to Rainbow’s neck where the gold edges of the necklace which held her Element glinted behind the collar of her flight jacket. Applejack couldn’t remember the last time she saw Rainbow without both of them on, even after the rest of them had found different reasons to take theirs off.
Her smile faded a little.
“Here they come,” Twilight said.
Applejack squinted into the afternoon sky. Sure as shooting, she spotted an organized line of dark specks approached the terrace from the western horizon. In the middle of the formation, sunlight glinted off Zecora’s chariot.
Shutters began snapping as the press pool took notice, capturing stills and recording footage of the ambassador’s return. Applejack snuck another glance at Rainbow Dash who was watching the formation approach with rapt attention, her eyes locked on the Wonderbolt contingent as they carefully maneuvered into position for the choreographed approach. Two in front wearing formal harnesses, two on either side and one trailing for protection. Their plate armor, purely decorative aluminum given the weapons of the age, shone with an acceptable amount of polish that belied the woven vests hidden underneath. 
Applejack allowed herself a tiny smile. It had been a challenge to develop armor strong enough to stop a bullet, but with a little advice from the design team in Rarity’s ministry, the tightly spun plastic fibers had passed testing with flying colors.
The formation banked, sliding off to their collective right side before turning again, this time with the widest length of the terrace lined up in front of them. They watched with practiced smiles as the chariot slipped past the empty balcony and touched down on the polished stone practically on top of the tiny black speck of tape laid out for them.
“Nice,” she heard Rainbow whisper.
A smattering of hooves from the press pool thumped against the flagstones behind them while those in charge of the cameras lit the terrace with a frenzy of flashes. Applejack felt a little sorry for Zecora’s kid who squinted away from the barrage. She didn’t know much about Teak other than that she apparently didn’t have a stomach built for flying and had emptied it across half of Equestria on their way toward the ocean. That surprised her, given how calm she looked seated next to Zecora.
When the ambassador stood, the six of them took their cue and stepped forward. She felt silly doing it, but it was what was expected at this point. They might not be royalty, but as ministry mares Rarity had made sure they looked as close the part as she could reasonably manage.
Teak watched them approaching with wide eyes, briefly frozen in front of the chariot’s open door. Most of them had met the kid already, sure. Fluttershy had made a point of taking them to every corner of The Pillar that their clearance would allow. But this was her first time meeting Twilight Sparkle. She locked eyes with the alicorn and froze, blocking Zecora from stepping out in the process. It was a missed cue. Something Rarity would have to encourage the media to forget about, on top of Applejack’s earlier display. 
A moment passed where Applejack was afraid Twilight might snap at the kid to get her moving. The way her wings were tensing up, the words were already forming on her tongue.
“Teak!” Rainbow whispered, catching the young mare’s ear. “Come stand by me.”
The little nudge pulled her back to reality, and with a little hesitation she hopped out of the chariot and trotted to Rainbow’s side.
As she passed by, Applejack couldn’t help but notice the white pendant bobbing against Teak’s chest. She had to work to keep the concern from reaching her eyes as she looked to Zecora and saw an identical necklace strung across her stripes. Some kind of stone, by the looks of it, or ivory assuming the Vhannans were still active in the trade.
She stole a look at Twilight and saw her friend’s eyes locked around Zecora’s neck, sighting an identical stone, but her pleasant smile didn’t betray any interest in it beyond being something novel to look at. Applejack knew her well enough to know just how many alarm bells were going off in her head.
“Welcome home, Ambassador,” Twilight said, her eyes tracking Zecora as she stepped out of her chariot. “How was the flight?”
“It was wonderful,” Zecora said, reciting her lines loudly enough for the press to take notes. “I have never seen Equestria laid out with such splendor than from her skies.”
“It’s quite an experience,” Twilight chuckled knowingly. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it myself.”
It took a physical effort for Applejack not to groan.
With the exception of Teak’s moment frozen in the literal spotlight, the pleasantries went off without so much as a hiccup. Conversation was limited between Twilight and Zecora while the rest of them stood where they were instructed, smiling as they practiced and listening to five minutes of happy discussions about nothing of substance. In other words, it was perfect.
At the end of the brief reception, Rarity bowed out of the group and picked up her usual duties of wrangling the press back into the castle where food, refreshments and some impossibly polite members of her staff waited to collect their film for review. 
That gave Fluttershy a few minutes to chat with Zecora about how she really felt the trip had gone, which seemed to align pretty much the same with the scripted conversation with Twilight. By the sound of it, little if any progress had actually been made beyond a tour of the Vhannan palace and a shared meal with their ambassador, but Zecora suggested that the Vhannans might be considering suspending their use of blindweed as a gesture of goodwill. 
Applejack wasn’t about to bet her last barrel of cider on that happening, but it was better than Zecora coming home with nothing.
“Hey, Twilight?”
Pinkie Pie spoke so softly that she nearly mistook her for Fluttershy. She stood off to the side, barely moving from her mark even after the gathering had begun to dissolve.
“Can I go?” she asked.
Twilight looked at her for a moment before nodding. “Sure, Pinkie.”
“Thanks,” she said, half-turned, then looked at Fluttershy. “Talk to you when you’re done.”
Quietly as she had made herself known, Pinkie Pie walked back to the castle, carefully avoiding the windows where the press typically lounged during post-event screenings. Applejack watched her go, knowing there wasn’t a whole lot she could do for her that Fluttershy wasn’t doing already these days. Out of all the roles the princesses had deemed worthy of their own ministry, she would have never guessed that the Ministry of Morale could turn on its leader with such ruthless efficiency. 
Tasked with the responsibility of keeping Equestria’s spirits high in the face of the bloodiest war in its history, Pinkie had begun struggling from the outset. She took every criticism a little more personally than the rest of them. Held herself responsible when a messaging campaign was derided for being tone-deaf. It was part of the reason Rarity devoted so much of her own ministry toward censoring the press. Pinkie was falling into a depression that none of them knew how to pull her back from. Every redacted article that painted anything but a picture of Equestria at its finest was one less step for her to descend.
Applejack nudged Fluttershy’s wing. “You think she’d mind a visit from me after you two finish talking?”
Fluttershy stared at the ornately carved door she had disappeared into. “Maybe. I’ll let you know how she’s feeling, after.”
“Applejack, I need you to look at this.”
Not surprisingly, Twilight had already moved onto the next thing. She mouthed “thanks” to Fluttershy before turning to see what the alicorn was looking at.
Floating in a haze of lavender magic was one of the curious white pendants Zecora and Teak had brought back from Vhanna. Twilight was squinting at the little stone, turning it this way and that with a growing frown. Zecora waited patiently, her neck bare. Teak looked after her mother with worry painted plainly across her face. She looked to Rainbow and whispered into her ear, likely an explanation she was too afraid to provide the alicorn currently inspecting her mother’s stone.
Rainbow frowned, then rolled her eyes and casually draped a wing across Teak, her go-to gesture to let the fans know they were cool enough to be considered one of her buddies. It seemed like a strange thing to do in the moment, even for Rainbow. As Applejack approached Twilight, she noticed a blue feather curl under the band around Teak’s neck and subtly ferry the pendant into the cup of her wing. Teak clearly noticed but didn’t seem to object as Rainbow settled her wing back against her side, their apparent photo-op moment ended.
Rainbow noticed Applejack looking and gave her a stare that said, “Trust me.”
She sent one of her own back that said, “We’ll talk about that later.”
Applejack stopped midway between Twilight and Zecora, her eyes lifted to the alabaster stone hovering a few inches above the brim of her hat. “Looks like a rock,” she said, careful not to dismiss the object outright. She looked at Zecora. “What’s it signify?”
“The possibility of peace, I hope,” Zecora said, her own tone strained because of Twilight’s impromptu inspection. “It is a healing talisman. A token gift given to me by Ambassador Abyssian.”
Twilight lowered the talisman into Applejack’s waiting hoof. At first glance, it looked like a simple spiral had been carved into its surface resembling something like the top of a sweet roll, but as she squinted at the seams between each whorl, she could almost swear she could see even smaller etchwork lining the larger impressions. 
She muttered a barely audible, “Huh.” Already, she began to feel different. Her eyes felt a little less tired. The dull throb in her right temple softened. Even her hind legs, beaten and worn down by decades of bucking apples, felt a little less sore. If it was truly a spell, it wasn’t a strong one. It worked quickly but stopped well short of curing everything that ailed her.
“I didn’t think the zebras had the tech to manufacture something this detailed,” she said. “Does it do anything else?”
Zecora shook her head. “It is carved with magic, not manufactured. A talisman is only capable of performing a single action. I assure you, Applejack, it is safe.”
“Since when can zebras do magic?” she asked, offering the talisman back.
Zecora lifted her hoof to take it, but Twilight’s magic quickly swept it back into the air where she could continue inspecting it. “Zebras can’t do magic,” Twilight corrected. “They can only tap into minor natural forces of the world around them.”
“Sounds like magic to me,” Applejack shrugged.
“It isn’t,” Twilight said more firmly. “If they could, they would have evolved a variant of unicorn by now. Only ponies are capable of creating magic. Zebras… just use what’s left over.”
Zecora took the unintended jab in stride, smiling a little more tightly than she usually did. “Twilight is referring to a philosophical debate. One which I particularly hate.”
Twilight frowned. “Don’t break out the rhyming with me. I wasn’t trying to insult you, I’m just pointing out a well-documented fact.”
“Documented solely by unicorn researchers in unicorn universities, I’m sure,” Zecora countered.
Twilight blinked. The lavender aura around the talisman turned bright fuchsia.
Applejack took a deep breath and stood on her hind legs to pluck the talisman out of Twilight’s surprisingly weak grip. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw Twilight embarrassed enough for her own magic to blush.
“Alright, y’all,” she said, pouring on her accent a little thicker to pull the two mares’ attention away from one another. “Break it up before I hog-tie the both of you, and don’t you think I can’t do it. Zecora, I’m going to need to borrow this talisman of yours for a little bit until my people can verify that it’s harmless. I trust your judgment and all, but I’d sleep a little better knowing that this pebble isn’t some kind of time-bomb.”
Zecora reluctantly nodded. “That is fair.”
“Twilight,” she said, “that’s what you wanted me to do in the first place, wasn’t it?”
Twilight narrowed her eyes at Applejack but didn’t answer. When she finally spoke, it wasn’t directed to either of them. “Fluttershy, you should get started debriefing the ambassador.”
There was a brief pause before Fluttershy realized she was being addressed. Her ears flitted backward with understanding and she trotted to Zecora with her wing outstretched, guiding her back to the castle.
“Shouldn’t I go, too?” Teak piped up, a little trace of offense in her voice.
Twilight looked at Teak as if she were a lost foal that had somehow wandered onto the terrace on her own. She glanced back at Zecora, then shook her head. “Rainbow Dash can take you home.”
“Twi, that debriefing is going to take a while,” Applejack whispered.
“So?” she whispered back.
“So, she’s a teenager that just got back from a foreign country who you’re sending home alone for the next few hours. How long do you think it’ll take her to get bored and start telling every friend she has about that adventure?”
Twilight chewed her lip, either stuck on the actual question or the simple fact that it had been a while since she had ever been asked to relate to a pony Teak’s age.
A small smile tugged at Applejack’s muzzle. Sweet Celestia, she might have honestly given Twilight her first taste of a midlife crisis.
“Hey Dash,” Applejack spoke, saving Twilight from any further embarrassment. “It’s going to be a few hours until Zecora’s off the clock. Why don’t you take Teak out for a late lunch?”
Almost immediately, Rainbow’s expression shifted from conspiratorial mischief to a noncommittal frown. Applejack could see the gears spinning in her head as she tried to come up with a way to get out of it.
“Or I’d be happy to do it,” she offered, her gaze dipping to the curl of feathers at the tip of her wing. “Provided you’re okay with taking Zecora’s talisman down to my people for me.”
Her people included her personal security, which were diligent in ensuring that anyone entering or leaving the Ministry of Technology passed through a full body x-ray. No exceptions.
Rainbow didn’t need to have it spelled out to her to recognize the warning. If she wanted to pull one over on Twilight, she could do it on her own time. If she tried to walk into Applejack’s ministry while doing it, she would have to explain where she found a second talisman.
“Yeah, I think I’m going to let you handle the paperwork, AJ,” she chuckled, nudging Teak with her wing. “Whaddya think? Lunch on me? There’s this little place on the north side of Canterlot that makes curry so hot I thought my feathers would fall out!”
Teak glanced at Applejack, Twilight, then back to Rainbow Dash. “Is that good?”
“I have no idea!” she laughed, throwing her wing over Teak’s back. She nodded at Applejack before leading the young mare away. “I tell you what. We start at the Tasty Treat and if you’re not a fan, we try something else.”
The young zebra picked up a little bounce in her stride. It reminded Applejack of the days when Rainbow would tour Scootaloo around Ponyville. Another fan latching onto an idol. She smiled after them, then stole a look up at Twilight.
She almost looked happy.
“Deal,” Teak said.
“That’s what I like to hear.” Rainbow gave Teak an encouraging shake as they trotted away. “If you can survive Saffron’s curry, you can survive anything. If you want proof, just look at me!”
Teak did.
Rainbow grinned.
“The way things are going, I’m going to live forever.”
> Chapter 17: Worlds Collide (Part One)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Ministry Interoffice Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: Rainbow Dash
From: Spitfire
Subject: New Clearance Restrictions
8/20/1075

Dear Rainbow Dash,

At your convenience, I would like to schedule a meeting to discuss your recent decision to restrict several clearances to the senior members of our finance department. While I understand that there may be good reasons for doing so, I have been fielding complaints that I don’t have answers for, and to be completely honest it’s starting to undermine my team’s confidence in me. I’ll have my Pip-Buck on me all day today. Let me know as soon as you’re free.

Thanks,
Spitfire







To: Rainbow Dash
From: Spitfire
Subject: Fw: Clearance Restriction
8/21/1075

Dear Rainbow Dash,

I wanted to verify that you’ve had a chance to read the attached message I sent yesterday. Finance isn’t happy. Whiplash has been on me all morning because he can’t access the general ledger. Ponies are starting to ask questions that I don’t have answers for, Dash. You need to message me as soon as you read this.

Thanks,
Spitfire







To: Spitfire
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: Re: Fw: Clearance Restriction
8/21/1075

Hey Spitfire,

Sorry about not getting back to you until just now. I’ve been trapped with I.T. for the last couple days. They needed to upgrade some of the firewalls in the ministry network and they wouldn’t let me off the leash until I signed off on it. You know how they get. They promised me none of the departments would notice the clearance reduction during the upgrade, so I didn’t think to let you know. That’s on me, and I totally owe you lunch for having to deal with Whiplash. Let Finance know they should have their normal clearance within the next hour or two, and that anyone affected will be getting an extra day of paid vacation for the trouble.

-RD







To: Rainbow Dash
From: Scootaloo
Subject: Shelter Project Funding
9/08/1075

Dear Rainbow,

I know I already talked your ear off during dinner last night, but I wanted to sit down and put into words what I don’t think I was able to properly express yesterday.

Thank you so much. When I left Robronco to start this company, I wasn’t sure whether I was freeing myself or making a huge mistake. But like Applebloom told me on my last day, nobody knows whether the parachute will open until they jump. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pay you back for being that parachute. Without your endorsement, Stable Inc. would still be some nobody construction company operating out of a warehouse at the foot of Canterlot Mountain. You gave me the chance to prove that it could be something greater. Designing The Pillar for the ministries has been the crowning achievement of my career. I can’t wait to show you what else I can do. 

Would you believe I actually thought about retiring after we cut the ribbon. I mean, how do you go back to designing backyard bomb shelters and single-family panic rooms after that? You allowed me to discover security - real security - on that scale isn’t just a fantasy. It’s a tangible thing now. Something we can step inside of and be proud of. And it should be shared.

The Shelter Project is the next step in this journey and I cannot put into words how grateful I am for the Ministry of Awesome’s continued funding. I’m not ignorant to the sacrifices you made in partnering with me on this, and I only hope that the two of us can support each other in the face of our detractors. Providing peace of mind in the face of war isn’t defeatism, it’s a moral responsibility. I welcome whatever tribunal or investigation comes once this war ends, because it will have meant the Shelters were never used. I don’t recognize the world I’m living in anymore. I don’t recognize the ponies we’ve become. Someone has to raise the alarm before we create a weapon we can’t take back.

Thank you for believing in me, Rainbow. One way or another, we’re going to save lives.

Your friend,
Scootaloo





To: Rainbow Dash
From: Spitfire
Subject: Clearance
9/19/1075

Hey Dash, I just got a visit from Whiplash. Finance is having issues with their clearance again. Looks like the general ledger and the transaction processing software are locked out. I went ahead and told Whiplash to put a work order in with I.T. to have them look into it, but I’d appreciate it if you would keep me in the loop on these firewall updates going forward.

Thanks,
Spitfire







To: Spitfire
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: Re: Clearance
9/19/1075

Sorry about that. Ledgers are back up.

-RD







To: Rainbow Dash
From: Spitfire
Subject: Re: Re: Clearance
9/19/1075

I didn’t ask for an apology, I asked to be kept informed. This ministry is the sole financier of the nation’s war effort. I take it very seriously when the department that facilitates those transactions isn’t able to do its job. Whiplash has been on edge since the first time this happened and now he’s demanding a complete audit of the general ledger. I’m running out of reasons to tell him why he can’t hold up the entire ministry with an unscheduled audit.







To: Spitfire
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: Issue Resolved
10/18/1075

Spitfire,

After speaking with I.T. this morning, we’ve determined that Tuesday’s glitch with clearance was due to a software conflict that arose when I transferred approved funds to Stable Incorporated. The denomination exceeded the preset cap allowed for privately owned businesses, which I overrode to save time. I’m told that going forward this won’t cause any more problems.

-RD







To: Rainbow Dash
From: Spitfire
Subject: Re: Issue Resolved
10/18/1075

Seriously, Dash? You couldn’t get off your blue ass to tell me that a MONTH ago? It’s Friday afternoon and Finance has been shut down since Wednesday because I finally told Whiplash to run his fucking audit! Now I have to go down and tell him he not only wasted four weeks growing an ulcer over nothing, but he also clogged up two day’s worth of work because you couldn’t bother logging onto your terminal?

I expected this kind of bush league garbage back at the Academy, but not from the head of a fucking ministry. 

Spitfire







To: Finance Team Leaders
From: Rainbow Dash
CC: Spitfire
Subject: Whiplash
10/19/1075

For Immediate Distribution to the Finance Team:

It is with mixed emotion that I must inform you that, effective immediately, Whiplash is no longer employed as the Ministry of Awesome’s Chief Financial Officer. Out of respect for him and his staff, we will be unable to share details regarding the reason for his separation. We wish him the best of luck with his future endeavors.

I would like to thank you all in advance for your discretion, and would ask that any resumes be directed to Spitfire’s office no later than next Friday.

Thank you,
Minister Rainbow Dash
Ministry of Awesome







To: Spitfire
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: Meeting
10/19/1075

Hey Spitfire,

Before you head out for lunch, stop by my office. We need to work out some boundaries.

-RD








October 19th, 1075

	Rainbow glared at the jewelry laid out across her desk. Gold plates ornately shaped to resemble swirling clouds bit into the wood surface as she held the necklace still, pinning the centerpiece with one hoof while keeping the lightning-shaped ruby centered in its setting. For the second time this year the gem had worked itself loose from the impossibly tiny prongs. It landed on her office carpet as unceremoniously as a dropped stapler, thankfully choosing to fall while she was throwing her jacket over her chair rather than during the flight across Canterlot. The last thing she needed was Rarity breathing down her neck about having to suppress rumors that one of Equestria’s Elements of Harmony had been discovered lying on the cobbles.
The weather was beginning to cool off outside. As advanced as the Pillar’s forced air systems were advertised to be, Rainbow’s office always felt like an oven during the first few weeks of autumn. She could already feel the sweat beading down the ridge of her muzzle as she worked.
Leaning over her necklace with the tip of a ballpoint pen pressed against one of the countless prongs, she was glad for once that the office hadn’t come with a window. She didn’t need word to get out that the one ministry mare who still wore her Element had somehow managed to break the damn thing.
Her stomach peeled in protest. Lunch was less than an hour away but she had skipped breakfast to put the finishing touches on her CFO’s separation notice. Now she was paying for it with a disgruntled chorus from her gut, though she couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t entirely due to hunger.
Spitfire was starting to become a problem.

She ignored the gnawing ache. “Come on,” she breathed.

The golden barb bent, slowly, until it folded flat against the ruby’s flawless surface.

“Yes!” 
She chewed her lower lip and grinned, moving the pen an inch along the gem to the next outwardly bent prong. One down, way too many to go. On the bright side, she had the better half of the next hour to finish up before her next…
Three unmistakably gentle knocks tapped her door.
...meeting.
She made a face. Were it anyone else, she wouldn’t have answered. Though Fluttershy never visited unannounced without a good reason, the mare had a tendency to sniff out the breaks in Rainbow’s schedule to show up. She sighed. Whatever it was, Fluttershy would have to make it quick or she would find herself directly in Spitfire’s warpath.
She reached her free wing across the desk and buzzed her in. The door clicked open and to Rainbow’s chagrin, Fluttershy stepped in with Zecora in tow. 
Fluttershy paused to look at the Element spread across the desk before pushing the door shut. “Did we come at a bad time?”
Yes, she thought. “You’re fine, I’m just… cleaning.”
Rainbow tried not to wince at the disbelieving look that played across Fluttershy’s eyes, but the rose-maned pegasus was polite enough not to press the issue. With her pen still poised to bend the next prong, she watched them climb into the comfortable chairs across her desk. Her smile strained. This wouldn’t be a short meeting. 
Something was off. She could feel it. Hell, she could see it. Fluttershy was blinking too much and she seemed incapable of making eye contact with her. She was nervous about something, just like the old days. If Zecora was suffering the same anxiety, she didn’t show it. She wore the same impenetrable smile she’d mastered when they were young. She was an open book written in a language Rainbow couldn’t read.
“No Teak, today?” Rainbow half-joked, hoping to ease the tension in the room.
“She is in school,” Zecora replied, diplomatic as ever. “I did want to thank you for keeping her company after our return from Vhanna last week. Had I known my debriefing would take so long to complete, I would have asked someone to take her off your hooves in the meantime.”
For a moment, she wondered if Zecora’s comment was a subtle dig at Fluttershy but a quick glance between the two mares was enough to convince her there were no hard feelings brewing between them. In truth, Rainbow had expected the debriefing to run longer than just a few hours. Zecora’s first visit to Vhanna was the first real tangible step Equestria had taken toward de-escalation since the war began. It was owed more than a cursory update.
“It was no problem,” she said, and meant it. The afternoon spent with Teak had been the first real free time Rainbow allowed herself to enjoy since taking on the mantle of ministry mare. Sneaking the young mare’s gifted talisman out of Twilight’s sight had been a spur of the moment decision, but it felt unfair to let her snatch it away without at least consulting them first. If there was even the hint of a chance that the little white stone was a threat, Zecora wouldn’t have let her daughter anywhere near it. 
When Rainbow offered it back to Teak over dinner, she made her promise to keep it between them. At the end of the day, she wasn’t about to blame the kid for letting her mom in on the harmless subterfuge. 
“She’s a pretty awesome kid,” she said.
Zecora mirrored her softening smile with one of her own. “She hasn’t stopped talking about it. You’ve made quite the impression on her.”
“She has a tendency to do that,” Fluttershy chuckled, though the tension in the pegasi’s voice betrayed her attempt at levity. Whatever they were here for, this wasn’t it.
Rainbow’s smile tightened a little and she turned her attention back down to the Element beneath her hoof. She pressed the tip of her pen against the next upright prong and carefully folded it toward the edge of the gem. 
“I don’t like seeing you on edge, Fluttershy,” she said, pressing the prong flat. “What’s up?”
Her office went quiet. It stretched. Rainbow glanced up from her Element and noticed the indecision playing across the pegasi’s face. She looked younger, somehow. Like back when a simple question was enough to send her cowering into feathers like a frightened bird.
It seemed like ages had passed since then, and yet here in Rainbow’s office sat the same young mare she had met so long ago. Except this time it wasn’t shyness pressing her lips shut. It was fear.
She frowned and pushed her Element to the side. “Fluttershy, talk to me.”
Fluttershy breathed deeply, her eyes fixed on the bland carpet. For a moment, Rainbow thought she would stay mute and force her to start guessing what was wrong. 
“First,” she said, her voice barely higher than a whisper, “I need to know that everything Zecora and I say here stays in this office. Undocumented.”
Rainbow paused for a beat, looking between the two of them for anything that might give her a clue to what they were really here for. Fluttershy stared back at her, on the verge of speaking but unwilling to do so until she had her assurances.
She settled back into her chair. “You know you can trust me.”
“I know,” Fluttershy said, lifting her gaze to the necklace on the desk. “I know, but I need you to promise me.”
There was something in the way Fluttershy looked at her Element that made her feel uneasy. The significance of what the gem and its inborne power represented wasn’t lost on her.
 “Okay,” she said. “On my loyalty as your friend, nothing leaves this office. I promise.”
Fluttershy let out the breath she’d been holding in. “Thank you.”
Rainbow nodded. “Just don’t go telling me you killed somebody.”
“Not on purpose.”
Rainbow went still. It took her a second to realize Fluttershy was joking. She sighed relief and shook her head.
A small smile appeared across Fluttershy’s lips and vanished just as quickly. “Have you spoken to Gilda any time recently?”
Gilda’s name caught her off guard. Her chair creaked as she leaned back, trying to think of the last time she and the notoriously standoffish gryphon crossed paths. “Not in a long time,” she said, then asked the important question. “Why?”
Fluttershy looked pensively to Zecora. The zebra cleared her throat. “My visit to Vhanna was more productive than I have led you all to believe. A path has presented itself. One that, with your help, may facilitate a peaceful end to this war.”
Rainbow regarded Zecora with polite skepticism, careful not to say the things Zecora had to know she was already thinking.
Since the beginning of the war, there had been no shortage of theories on how to end it. Every idea that could be conjured up had been, and even then more came rolling into the ministries from sources ranging from well respected newspapers to hoof-written letters from every crackpot with a pen and a free afternoon. Ponies from across the country demonstrated novel and disturbing levels of creativity in this single endeavor. Most ideas orbited the central notion that assassinating the Vhannan leader would finish the war, while others followed a more eccentric path. Everything from covertly flooding the newly densified Vhannan cities with tailor-made chems to enlisting Equestria’s pegasi to disrupt the weather and destroy their crops. Just about any pony had a theory on how to end the war, and precious few had anything to do with what Rainbow would call “peace.”
As much as she respected Zecora, Rainbow felt the same walls of doubt creeping into her mind. A pony could only sift through so many impossible ideas before the mere thought of one working seemed just as impossible.
Zecora noted her doubt and pushed forward anyway.
“Ambassador Abyssian and I feel that for either side to consider laying down arms, there must first be a light at the end of the tunnel. For both of us,” Zecora explained. She folded her legs across her lap and regarded Rainbow with an intensely neutral gaze. “We think that light may be solar energy.”
Rainbow blinked. First Jet Stream, now her? It took a conscious effort to mask her intrigue under a veil of vague curiosity. “Oh?”
Zecora nodded. “We all know the numbers by heart at this point. Equestria has two years before its oil reserves run dry, but Vhanna could have a decade or more waiting beneath the savannah. We could have retrofitted our refineries to burn coal again were it not for the war demanding so much from the private sector, and the princesses made it clear they won’t tolerate delaying the supply chain for anything short of a natural disaster, and maybe not even then. Our only options are to defeat Vhanna before we run out of reserves, which is becoming increasingly unlikely to happen the longer our front lines stay mired in trenches, or we find a different way out.”
“And you think solar is that way out,” Rainbow said.
“I do,” Zecora nodded. “Equestria and Vhanna are sitting on enough raw material to make real, meaningful strides in solar energy that would provide a growing safety net for our industries should we reach the bottom of our oil reserves. Ambassador Abyssian believes once Vhanna sees Equestria moving toward a solution that doesn’t require zebras to live in destitution as a side-effect, it could give him a strong case with Vhannan leadership to consider a temporary ceasefire.”
Fluttershy shifted in her seat. “Zecora shared with me that Abyssian also admitted Vhanna’s research into solar energy trails our own by several years. They would need to be caught up.”
Rainbow waited for the other shoe to drop, but the lingering silence told her it had already fallen. She was already putting her neck on the line for Jet Stream and his SOLUS project, but what Fluttershy and Zecora were suggesting bordered dangerously close to real treason. Providing aid to Vhanna was tantamount to picking up a zebra rifle and firing it at an Equestrian soldier. It simply wasn’t done. With Princess Luna’s legendary and often disturbing ability to peek into the dreams of sleeping ponies, it was hardly even thought.
She looked at the Element splayed across her desk and chewed the inside of her cheek. “You both know Celestia doesn’t like to see us playing with solar,” she warned.
“That hasn’t stopped you from diverting funds to Jet Stream Industries,” Fluttershy whispered, her eyes barely moving from the carpet.
Her heart skipped a beat. “I don’t know what you’re…”
“One point eight billion bits paid out through twelve shell companies over the past three months,” Fluttershy continued, her ears low with discomfort. 
Rainbow leaned forward and pressed her face against her hooves. “Fuck.”
“Don’t worry,” Fluttershy mumbled. “I haven’t told anyone.”

The payments were the lifeblood that would make SOLUS possible, a project set into motion despite both Rainbow and Jet Stream knowing they were risking the wrath of both princesses by endeavoring to complete a functional prototype. It was meant to demonstrate that the technology was possible. An orbital solar collector capable of beaming a measurable fraction of that energy to solar farms dotted across Equestria and any other nation capable of replicating the technology once it was published. Once the genie was out of the bottle, even Celestia wouldn’t be able to put it back inside. How she dealt with that was her business, but for the time being Rainbow had been careful to cover her tracks. To send the funding to Jet as quietly and through as many channels as possible. 
Apparently she hadn’t been subtle enough.
“How did you find out?” she asked.
Fluttershy squirmed a little. “You cut my ministry’s payroll budget down fifteen percent last month. I might’ve gotten a little angry with you.”
Rainbow stared at her.
“I’m good with computers,” she added sheepishly.
“You’re good with computers.”
Fluttershy looked ready to bolt, but somehow she managed to keep herself together. “I started teaching myself how they work in my spare time. None of you ever ask for my ministry’s help in anything, so I ended up with a lot of it. Robronco’s code was made to be intuitive so it wasn’t hard to learn, and my clearance lets me get a lot of places without needing to write anything new.”
Rainbow stared at her, dumbfounded. “You hacked us.”
“Just your finance department,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I was just so mad.”
Rainbow continued to stare, sliding her hooves over her short-cut mane until they settled behind her neck. She could feel a knot forming there. “Okay,” she said, forcing herself to keep the anger out of her voice.
Fluttershy had, through a volatile mix of boredom and frustration, hacked the Ministry of Awesome. That was… new.
Rainbow wasn’t sure if Fluttershy’s intrusion into the MoA was a blessing in disguise or a curse that had the potential to spread. 
“Okay,” she breathed. “How much did you see, exactly?”
Fluttershy forced herself to look up from the floor. “Just the transfers of funds and where they’ve been going. That’s part of the reason why I convinced Zecora that we should involve you in this. If you’re supporting Jet Stream’s research, that means you can appreciate how important it is to share what we’ve…”
Rainbow’s eyes shot wide as she shoved herself out of her chair, practically flying across the space between her and the walnut-laminated stereo credenza that rested against the far wall. She lifted the lid with one wing and flipped on the power switch with the other, filling the office with the pregnant hiss of speakers waiting for an input. To her relief, Fluttershy didn’t finish her thought until a familiar, if not embarrassingly catchy ear-worm from their first post-winter cleanups together drowned the room at a volume that bordered on painful.
Rainbow crossed the floor toward the two mares, both of which were pinning their ears at the onslaught of impossibly cheery music. Fluttershy dropped out of her chair and met her halfway, pressing her mouth close to Rainbow’s ear.
“We need your help getting Jet’s research to Vhanna,” she nearly yelled. “If we can catch them up with what we know, Abyssian may be able to organize enough support to push for a ceasefire.”
Rainbow winced as the key changed. “You’re asking me to help you commit treason.”
“Not if we use Griffinstone as an intermediary,” she countered. “They’re a neutral state and they leak like a sieve. Anything we share with them is bound to cross their border into Vhanna, and it’ll cross over faster with the right contacts.”
She glanced over Fluttershy’s shoulder at Zecora, who hadn’t moved from her chair. The zebra watched them with a stillness that defied the clear risk she had taken by not only involving Fluttershy in this plan, but a second ministry mare as well. Somehow, she’d managed to roll the dice twice and come up with the only arrangement of pips that wouldn’t end with her disappearing. 
Rainbow had a feeling Zecora was the sort of zebra who would willingly stare down the barrel of a loaded cannon if her convictions demanded it.
“Is that why you wanted to know if Gilda and I were still in touch?” she asked.
Fluttershy nodded, the edge of her ear tickling Rainbow’s lip. “You two were always close. She seemed like a good first choice to get a holotape to Vhanna.”
Rainbow frowned as Fluttershy unfolded one of her wings, producing a small square of orange plastic the size of a coaster between her canary feathers. The holotape rested in her wing with a gravity that defied its size, drawing her eyes with the weight of what it contained. It was half of a promise. One that Fluttershy nervously waited for her to complete.
“How did you…”
“It’s best that you don’t ask,” Fluttershy said, spreading her feathers a little. The holotape slipped between them and fell into Rainbow’s waiting wing. “That holotape has copies of everything Vhanna needs to modernize their solar industry. Blueprints, chemistries, even some of the atmospheric data gathered from the sensors during JSI’s early launch trials. It’s all there. We just need to get it to them.”
She stared at the diskette and all the implications that came with it. Loophole or not, no matter who eventually walked this information into Vhannan territory, this was treason in its purest form. Their good intentions wouldn’t matter if they got caught. Celestia and Luna were far from the pleasant and kind rulers they made themselves out to be. They had prisons for traitors. Very dark, very temporary prisons.
“Fluttershy,” she hissed, “this is dangerous.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” she said, her voice shaking. “We can’t do this. If Rarity finds out… if the princesses find out…”
“Which is why we’ll be careful,” Fluttershy insisted. She took a step back and placed her wings on either of Rainbow’s shoulders, her grip surprising her with how firm it suddenly was. “Rainbow, if you don’t want to do this, that’s okay. We were never here. You weren’t involved.”
Rainbow looked at Zecora who stood no chance of hearing them over the blaring music. Plausible deniability, she realized. If Luna ever decided to pay a visit to Zecora while she dreamt, all she would glean from this meeting was an obnoxiously overplayed seasonal song.
Fluttershy held her wing out for the holotape. “I know how to keep a secret. Just promise me you won’t tell anyone, either.”
Rainbow could feel her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. Hesitantly, her feathers closed around the holotape and folded against her side. She swallowed the nervous lump in her throat, trying to dust off the bravado of her youth. “In case you forgot, I’m the Element of Loyalty. I don’t rat out my friends. Least of all the ones who remember how we used to do things,” she said, taking a moment to gaze at her office. “Before we became this.”
She steeled her resolve before she had a chance to reconsider. “Just tell me when you need it delivered.”
Fluttershy’s features visibly softened. For a split second, she looked younger. “As soon as you can manage without anyone noticing you’re gone.”
The song ended. The brief silence gave Rainbow time to consider some options before the next track rose from the stereo to assault their ears. Doris Bray, an oldies favorite of Rarity’s, singing a slow, alluring melody called “It’s Magic.”
“Then I’ll leave tonight once the sun sets,” she said. The significance of not saying “once Celestia sets the sun” wasn’t lost on either of them. This was where her allegiance truly lay. “Two hours to get to Griffinstone if I stay subsonic, then two hours back. That gives me an hour or two to find Gilda and convince her to help.”
“And if someone needs to get a hold of you?” Fluttershy asked.
Rainbow thought about that. “Ponyville still has lousy surveillance. It wouldn’t be unbelievable if a weather pony caught me dozing on a cloud in the morning. I could say I needed a quiet place to sleep. Old habits die hard, and all that. Sign an autograph and get a name to fall back on if anyone in Canterlot asks questions.”
“That does sound like you.”
“Used to, anyway,” she agreed. “It’ll work.”
A worried smile creased the corners of Fluttershy’s eyes and she pulled Rainbow forward into a tight hug. Rainbow made an uncomfortable noise at the sudden contact and felt the heat rise to her cheeks as Zecora smiled politely at the far wall. Rainbow was closer to retirement age than she was to her first mug of spiced cider, and yet she was still never sure what to do in these closer moments. 
She lifted a hoof and gave Fluttershy an awkward pat on the back.
When Fluttershy finally freed her, she stepped away and dialed down the volume on the stereo until Doris Bray’s internationally acclaimed crooning dropped to a tolerable level. When she turned back, Fluttershy was looking at the necklace on the desk. She didn’t seem to notice Zecora dropping out of her chair in preparation to leave.
“You should have a jeweler look at that,” she said with a touch of worry.
Rainbow followed her gaze and allowed herself a smile. “It’s nothing I can’t fix myself,” she said.
Fluttershy quirked her lip at the Element before turning back to her. “Be careful with it.”
“I will,” she chuckled, but upon seeing the expression her friend wore, she realized they weren’t talking about the necklace. 
She sobered, meeting her eyes. “I promise I will.”
Fluttershy stood silent for several seconds, as if trying to think of a way to do this thing without involving one of her closest friends. Then she turned toward Zecora, who waited at the door, and glanced over her shoulder to Rainbow. “Let’s have lunch sometime this week. Someplace private.”
“I know a few places.”
“Send me some suggestions tomorrow morning. As soon as you can.” She stepped toward the door and set her wing against the handle. “Stay safe, Rainbow.”
“You too,” she said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She watched Fluttershy hold the door open for Zecora before following her out into the hall. Somewhere nearby, a pony was whistling the lyrics to the song that had just poured from her credenza. The door turned on well oiled hinges and clicked softly shut.
Rainbow lifted her wing and slowly unfolded the feathers. The holotape stared back up at her in perfect silence. It was just a thing. A collection of metal and plastic that could do nothing except exist. Here in this place, it contained little more than blueprints and equations of things that were already known. Knowledge gleaned from a road well-traveled. But to the Vhannans, it would be a scientific revolution. A eureka moment that could relieve the crushing pressure that forced their mares and stallions into the trenches. 
With some luck, it might just be the key to pulling Equestrian’s soldiers out of theirs too.
This was the right thing to do, she thought. No matter what the laws said, no matter what might happen to her if she got caught, this was the reason why the Tree of Harmony chose her to bear the Element of Loyalty. 
She closed her feathers around the holotape once more.
This was her loyalty.
Five bangs rattled her door and drove a bolt of terror ran up her spine. She grimaced. A second volley pounded against its frame before she reached her desk. The angry freight train that was Spitfire had arrived. Rainbow opened the top drawer of her desk and set the holotape onto a stack of crisp documents, shut the drawer and turned the lock with the nib of her feather.
Settling back into her chair, she took a slow breath to steady her nerves and pressed a key on her terminal. The door buzzed and it flung open hard enough for the handle to leave a dent in the strike plate on the wall.
Spitfire wrapped her wing around the door and slammed it shut behind her like a gunshot. With the other, she jabbed a feather at Rainbow from across the office, her eyes rimmed red with accusation.
“We need to talk.”








Sledge leaned against the countertop while he waited for the grease-crusted coffee pot to heat up. He pretended not to notice the eyes lingering on him as he spun the handle of his signature red mug left, then right, then left again. The dry mud built up over years of the same coffee still sat at the bottom. It had been almost a full week since he last set hoof in Mechanical. He couldn’t help but feel a little pride in that nobody had gotten up the courage to wash it.
The break room door swung open and a cacophony of air compressors, power tools and shouting ponies briefly banished the quiet. Sledge surprised himself by flattening his ears against the noise. He was growing used to the comparative silence of his office at the top of the Stable. Six days ago he would have let the onslaught do whatever damage it pleased to his hearing. Now he wondered how much of it he’d never get back.
The door clicked shut, sealing away the worst of the noise. Hooves approached and he glanced over his shoulder to see who they belonged to. Carbide, the stallion he’d designated from Pinfeathers’ shift to build a containment chamber for Stable 10’s faltering talisman, tipped his chin toward him as he pulled out his earplugs with a charcoal black wing.
“I heard you were down here,” he said with a weary smile. Sledge nodded.
Carbide dropped the plugs into the breast pocket of his jumpsuit and opened the cupboard, his yellow eyes searching the array of chipped and dented mugs. 
Sledge could see the speckled blue handle of Carbide’s mug hiding behind a heavily worn Wonderbolts collectors cup claimed by Flux, but he didn’t point it out. It wasn’t how things were done down here. He didn’t pretend to know why. They just weren’t because it was how it had always been, and that was good enough. He waited until Carbide’s feathers nudged Flux’s cup aside and found it himself. It clicked against the countertop next to the pot, which greeted it with a rising gurgle and the promise of good coffee.
Carbide leaned into the counter, mirroring Sledge on the other side of the pot. “Any news?”
The quiet chatter from the break tables grew just a little quieter, ears subtly turning toward this new conversation.
Sledge watched the first wisps of steam curl and dampen the sides of the filter basket. 
Two hours ago, he’d been roughly shaken out of bed by Opal Lace, Stable 10’s head of Information Technology. Pinfeathers’ duplicate messages had come pouring in some time during the night from a Pip-Buck that none of the servers could recognize, triggering warning prompts none of her staff could make sense of. At first Opal thought the system might have thrown a glitch that caused it to regurgitate an old, corrupted message on a loop, but when she opened it and read the tagline she dropped everything and sprinted up four flights of stairs to Sledge’s compartment.
He had read Pinfeathers’ message at Opal’s desk. Raw relief battled with the deep concern as his eyes skimmed across each line. She warned of a group calling themselves Steel Rangers who may try to coerce him into opening the Stable door. That they would strip the Stable down to the screws if he did. She claimed a pony named Blue was trapped in a tunnel outside and needed to be retrieved. Pinfeathers said she was important but stopped short of explaining in what way. That, more than anything else, stuck with him.
A thin black trickle of coffee sputtered into the stained carafe. The familiar scent filled his nostrils and seeped into his lungs, a sip before the first sip. He never knew he could appreciate the smell of home as much as he did right now.
Sledge noticed Carbide was looking at him with a touch of concern and it occurred to him that he had asked him a question. He considered avoiding answering altogether. The thought of saying nothing until he could make a formal announcement about Pinfeathers was sorely tempting.
He looked at the rising puddle of coffee and frowned. That wasn’t how things were done down here, either.
“She made contact last night,” he said. His throat constricted, catching him by surprise. He tilted his head and cleared it. “She’s alive.”
He watched Carbide sag slightly into the countertop. The dull murmur of chatter from the break tables went quiet. A chair scraped and a mare in a grease-stained jumpsuit hurried through the door. Sledge watched her go, then turned to the clusters of pegasi still at their tables. Some stared back, eyes growing damp with shock. A grizzled stallion he recognized from the scrap station pressed his mouth against the back of his hoof, tears staining his cheeks while his tablemate lifted a wing from her guard and wrapped it around his shoulders.
These were her people. The pegasi of first shift who she spent years learning from, working alongside and finally earning the trust and respect required to lead them. She’d grown up with them, shared drinks with them and bloodied more than a few of their noses during her time in Mechanical. 
Her father already knew. These ponies, these were her second family though the relief washing over them may as well have come from her own flesh and blood. If anyone deserved to know, they did.
He gestured to the door with his ruddy feathers and addressed the room. “Quit your bawling and get your asses out there. First shift deserves to hear it from first shift.”
Chairs stuttered against the pitted linoleum as pegasi stood. A few had to be helped to the door while others shrugged their wings into their leather guards. The last to file out was a young stallion, barely an apprentice and naked as the day he was born. Sledge and Carbide watched him as he closed the door behind him. A small but growing percentage of the Stable’s pegasi had taken to leaving their jumpsuits in their compartments, claiming a strange form of solidarity with Pinfeathers. Sledge suspected most of the participants were using it as an excuse to make fools of themselves, but he had enough on his plate as it was. Chasing down nudists wasn’t something he had the luxury to worry about.
Carbide scrubbed his feathers across the corners of his eyes with a shameless smirk, nodding after the departing stallion. “These are some strange times.”
Sledge welcomed the excuse to laugh. He shook his head, lifted the carafe off the warming plate and poured himself the first cup. Coffee sputtered on the hot metal while Carbide held out his mug for Sledge to fill. Sledge obliged, then returned the carafe to the coffee maker.
He lifted the steaming mug to his nose and breathed deeply. “Who’s he apprenticing for?”
Carbide set his cup on the counter to cool. “Who, the kid? He’s working under Amber.”
Sledge whistled, disturbing the column of steam. Amber was the mare responsible for training the majority of the first shift’s welding team. Married, too. “How’s that working out for him?”
The charcoal stallion shrugged. “I give her another day before she splashes slag across his bare nuts.”
Sledge managed to get his mug down onto the counter before he started laughing. It felt good, like a relief valve being spun on an overpressured tank. He had to prop himself against the counter with a wing as his shoulders shook, coffee slopped from his mug soaking into his sleeve. Carbide laughed along with him until both their sides hurt. It felt like old times even if those times weren’t so old yet.
When they calmed, Carbide pulled a clump of napkins from a dented dispenser and held them out to him. Sledge took them and mopped up the spilled coffee, using what was left to wipe off his sleeve.
“You know, when you told us she left, I didn’t believe you.” Carbide’s feathers played across the handle of his mug. “But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that of course Aurora would be the one to leave. Once she gets her head around some idea, it’s safer to just get out of her way. There’s not a wall thick enough that she won’t punch through if she thinks there’s a solution on the other side.”
Sledge nodded and lifted his mug to his lips. The coffee scalded them as he sipped, but he was well used to the feeling. It burned his throat and warmed his stomach. He took another sip and savored the taste before speaking. “I know you two used to be close.”
“Used to be,” Carbide agreed. “Didn’t work out, though.”
He grunted and continued nursing his coffee. Aurora and Carbide’s brief relationship, however serious it had been, came to an avoidably painful end not long after Nimbus died. The day after the funeral, Sledge discovered Aurora grinding the burrs off the unfinished steel panels at her late mother’s workstation. When he tried suggesting she take some time off, the look she had given him had stopped the words in his throat. He decided the best thing to do for her at that moment was to give her space to work.
Carbide flowed into that space as readily as grease in a chipped hoof. Despite her protests and the repeated warnings from several of the elder members of first shift, he smothered her. Each time he tried to fix her broken heart, it broke a little more until finally she reached her limit. Carbide spent two days in the infirmary with a broken jaw. When he came back, they were over.
“Still,” he said, finally picking up his cup. “I’m glad she’s alright.”
Sledge nodded, knowing there was nothing to add, and they drank in amiable silence for several minutes, an unspoken breakroom tradition that predated all of them. When his cup ran empty, Sledge poured half of what was left in the pot into his mug, leaving the other half for Carbide. Privately, he decided it would be good for him if he made this brief visit a daily tradition of his own.
He pushed away from the counter and held his mug out to Carbide who clinked it with his own. He drained what was left, rinsed it under the sink and set it in the dingy drying rack knowing that someone would eventually set it back in the cupboard for him to find tomorrow. One more layer of mud to add to the rest.
The lights flickered overhead. When they settled down, he could swear they were a little dimmer than before. Somewhere in the heart of their generator, their talisman spun a little slower.
He nodded, mostly to himself, and started making his way out.
“Sledge.”
He stopped at the door. “Yeah.”
Carbide stared into his cup as he spoke. “Next time you talk to Aurora, make sure to let her know she’s not alone.”
His mind went back to the last words of her message. “She’s not alone,” he said. “She’s made some friends out there that are helping her along.”
“Huh,” Carbide said, his head bobbing with surprise. He glanced at Sledge with a disbelieving smile. “Aurora Pinfeathers making friends. Who would believe it?”
Sledge chuckled his agreement and turned the door handle. “Like you said, these are strange times.”
He lifted a wing goodbye and stepped out onto the main floor, letting the door click shut behind him. His ears flattened against a deafening noise that, to his confusion, never came.
He stood there, confused. For the first time since he could remember, the bangs and peeling of tools and hot metal were absent save for the irregular thrum of the Stable’s waning generator. The pegasi of the first shift stood gathered in a dense knot at the center of the workfloor while smaller clusters gathered around its edges. Laughter, rich with joy, echoed against the high ceiling. Sledge watched them celebrate the first good news since Aurora left.
He wanted to join them. To laugh and cry and let himself share in the rare moment of revelry. But he was their overstallion now. He knew if he stepped out onto the floor with them, the moment might break like a soap bubble wandering too close to a wall. 
Nobody noticed him as he walked away, turned down the far hall and approached the service elevator waiting at its end. The call button chimed under his feather. The doors split open and he stepped inside, turned, and lit the button marked ATRIUM. 
The elevator closed, shutting out the laughter and ferrying him away.
He blew out a breath to clear his head. He needed his focus for what he had to do next.
The doors chimed open at the top of the Stable and he stepped out into a world he was still adjusting to. 
Pegasi milled through the corridors ringing the Atrium without so much as a mark on their crisp blue jumpsuits. A trio of foals bolted past the elevator door, squealing with laughter as they weaved around the hooves of adults who had once played similar games but had since forgotten the rules. Sledge nodded greetings to a mare carrying a pink paper box tied shut with a length of twine by her teeth, something he recently learned was a popular staple from the bakery in the Atrium. She dipped her nose in response, careful not to disrupt her pastries, before continuing on her way.
It was startling how quickly the Stable seemed to have adjusted to seeing him as their leader. Already, the signs of mourning for Overmare Delphi were beginning to fade. The rhythm of life marched steadily forward and each pegasi gradually fell back into their routines. Just a few days ago, the Atrium had been papered over with rose-colored ribbons, vibrant bouquets of artificial flowers and easels adorned with memory boards featuring key moments of Delphi’s life. Sledge had particularly enjoyed a foalhood photo of the overmare, her sleeping face mashed into the crease of a schoolbook that lay open on her bed. It reminded him that they had all been young once.
As he strode into the wide cavern of the Atrium, it felt as if the remembrance ceremony hadn’t happened at all. He tried not to let himself feel angry about it. Life had to move on. Otherwise, what was the point?
He ascended the steps to the upper level and spotted Chaser and Stratus waiting at the top, just outside the newly refurbished door to the deputy station. New, unpainted composite panels framed the same heavy door. The entire hydraulic system that operated it had to be ripped out and replaced in the aftermath of Pinfeathers’ jailbreak. The mare was nothing if not resourceful, much to the continued embarrassment of the security mare that had been responsible for keeping an eye on her.
“Sir,” Chaser said as the two stallions fell in behind him. “Are we still doing this?”
Sledge continued past the deputy station to the sealed door at the far end of the gantry. He fished his ID badge from his pocket between two feathers and slid it through the reader. It chirped and the door to his office slid open.
“Yes we are, deputy,” he rumbled.
Chaser and Stratus had both been there when Delphi announced her resignation, and as a result they had all been witness to what happened after. Later, Chaser would be the pony to place Aurora into her cell at his command. Whether that had bonded them, Sledge couldn’t say, but he wanted them with him for this.
He led them across the room to his desk where two freshly laminated badges lay in front of his terminal. The screen still glowed with the same pale green image taken by one of the cameras mounted outside the Stable door. He stared at it for a moment as he gestured for the two deputies to take their badges.
“Is that…?”
Sledge looked at Chaser, who frowned at the grainy still image. He hadn’t believed it himself, at first. He might never have without Pinfeathers’ message to confirm it. The camera was positioned high in the air, presumably mounted directly to the tunnel ceiling. At the top of the frame stood a slightly squashed shape of a gear emblazoned with the number 10 at its center. A rounded stone platform waited beneath it, leading to a flagstone pathway flanked by pillars that trailed off the bottom of the screen. Pale, unmistakably equine shapes lay in clusters around the base of the two pillars caught in the frame. It was a graveyard, but the bodies at the edges of the screen weren’t what concerned him.
Waiting on the platform in front of the great gear of Stable 10, was a single figure. Discolored by the phosphor green night vision, the pegasus was hard to distinguish from the bodies surrounding it, but there it had stood merely an hour earlier.
Standing, because it was alive.
Were it not for Opal and her team, chances were he’d still be in the dark about what waited outside the Stable instead of seeing it glowing on his terminal. Since the moment he put the call out for every department head to start looking for a solution to their failing generator, Opal had turned her entire team toward the task of scouring every server, every terminal and every Pip-Buck for any data the first residents might have brought with them that could help.
She ran into the first roadblocks almost immediately.
The first heavily encrypted files swam into their net within minutes. By the end of the first day, they had a few hundred. Then a few thousand. While it wasn’t out of the ordinary for these files to exist, the sheer quantity they were finding raised alarm bells. The bulk of them dated back to the first few weeks after the Stable was sealed, but some of them had been locked down before that. Everything ranging from supply manifests to early versions of the population roster had been sealed with an encryption that exceeded even Crusader-grade security. When Opal sent one of the documents to Sledge to see whether he override it, the system spat back a polite denial.
That lifted eyebrows. Whoever encrypted these files was trying to hide something.
Unfortunately for them, Opal and her team did not like being told no. With Sledge’s blessing, they bent their collective intelligence toward tearing through the prewar encryption brick by brick. It took them less than a day.
They found the camera footage from outside the door buried at the bottom of a chain of gibberish folders that hadn’t been touched in over two hundred years. The last user to open them had been the Stable’s first matriarch, Overmare Spitfire.
Sledge nodded at his terminal. “That’s our VIP. Remember, she answers to Blue.”
Chase nodded as he and Stratus each took a badge. “And these?”
“Hopefully unnecessary,” he said. “The door to your deputy station is keyed to those badges, and only those. I want to keep this contained between the three of us until we know what we’re dealing with. Pinfeathers said Blue may be violent, so there’s a chance we’ll have to detain her until she’s cooperative. Leave your guns on my desk, please.”
After some hesitation, the deputies complied and each removed a revolver from the holster around their foreleg. Stratus frowned as he set his weapon next to Chaser’s, his eyes on the figure frozen on the terminal. “Do we know if she’s armed?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Sledge admitted. “Pinfeathers never specified. There’s a lot of things she left out, and I get the feeling there was a good reason for it. Either way, I’m not willing to risk one of us accidentally shooting her in a struggle. Be ready to take some licks if she puts up a fight. Our job is to bring her inside without harming her.”
He stared down at each of them. “Any other questions?”
Both deputies shook their heads.
“Alright then,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They followed him out of the office in silence, flanking him on either side as the trio made their way into the deputy station. Chaser hung back to secure the door behind them, ensuring no visitors would wander in unexpected.
Sledge eyed the holding cells as they passed them and allowed himself to feel the guilt that formed in his chest. Having Pinfeathers thrown into a cell had, in retrospect, been a terrible mistake. If he would have listened to her, he might have been able to help her. Supply her with more than just a saddlebag full of apples and stolen tools. Maybe he would have even gone out with her.
Stratus trotted ahead and swiped open the door on the far side of the deputy station while Chaser went to the lockers and gathered three yellow flashlights. The passage containing the decontamination showers was narrow, forcing them to file through one at a time. Somewhere above them, a sensor pinged, startling a flinch out of Sledge despite knowing the showers wouldn’t fire when traveled in this direction.
The antechamber waited for them on the other side, dimly lit and bordering on a state of disrepair. He frowned at the thin patina of rust that coated the diamond-textured grating beneath his hooves, unable to help but notice that the network of pipes snaking beneath were dappled with the same brown stains. Several of the caged lights studding the spaces between the massive girders around the wall hadn’t come on at all, their bulbs left to decay until they finally went dark. It irritated him that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a work order come into Mechanical for this place. He made a mental note to have Flux add it to the rotation.
He tore himself away from the signs of neglect surrounding him and turned his attention to the reason they were here. 
Recessed into the far wall of the antechamber stood the door.
It was all so strangely familiar. He remembered sitting down in Opal’s chair down in I.T. to view the security footage captured by the black dome mounted above the door behind them. His office was still being sanitized at the time and he didn’t have the stomach to go near it until the work was done.
He watched Aurora silently appear on screen and make her way to the kiosk at the edge of the platform he stood on now. Dangling by its strap hung the same rifle Overmare Delphi had turned on herself mere hours earlier. Aurora stood there, reading something on her Pip-Buck before searching for the camera and finding it. He watched her mouth move but there was no audio to listen to. She spoke silently, the agony of what she was preparing to do plastered across her face. What she was actually saying was anyone’s guess, so Sledge chose to believe it was an apology. When she was finished, she turned and plugged her Pip-Buck into the kiosk. Minutes later, she was gone.
Sledge approached the same kiosk, his hooves making the panels beneath him rattle quietly in their frames.
“I’m going to need both of you down by the catwalk,” he said.
The deputies began their descent, their eyes slowly lifting as the titanic disc of steel rose above them. When they were in position at the edge of the catwalk, Sledge lifted his Pip-Buck and tugged the coiled length of cable from its housing. It sank into the marked socket on the kiosk’s control board with a sharp click.
Sledge waited as the screen went dark, then bloomed to life as a curtain of green text spilled across the screen. Eventually the wall of software checks and verifications settled and the quiet chittering from his Pip-Buck slowed. The screen flickered once and he found himself presented with a menu similar to the ones Aurora had once been offered. 
At the bottom of the list, the words TEST CYCLE greeted him like a taunt. He didn’t need the Stable closing behind them once they were on the other side. Instead, he selected an option Aurora would have never seen: OPEN DOOR. 
He tapped it with a red feather and watched as the chamber sprang to life.







Blue’s ear twitched.
She opened her eyes.
Ticky ticky ticky. 
That was the noise the bugs made when they didn’t think she could hear. But she did. She was good at hearing.
Ticky ticky ticky.
She rolled over on her sleeping bag and looked toward the door of the small place. It was dented and didn’t stay shut anymore. She wondered who did that.
Ticky ticky ticky.
Blue rose to her hooves and walked to the door. She pushed her head through the gap and it made a funny squeak.
Focus.
The noise was gone. She scared it away. She was alone again.
Her leg hurt so she moved it, stretching it behind her until it popped. It hurt a little less which was good. Sometimes he had to move it for her. He wasn’t here anymore.
She pushed the rest of the way through the door and looked at the boxes on the ground next to it. He didn’t like it when she looked in the boxes. She tried to remember why, but it hurt to try so she stopped. She left the boxes alone.
Blue opened her eyes.
The stone floor was warm against her face. She could hear whispers coming from the little tunnel. Not the big tunnel. The big tunnel was for her. The little tunnel was where he went to hide. She wasn’t allowed in the little tunnel.
Her ear twitched. She sat up.
She was next to the little tunnel. She must have come here when she went away. She went away sometimes but she always came back. A dark stain smeared the stone near her back leg. Bits of bug shell lay next to it. She didn’t remember catching the bug but that was okay. It was always good to catch bugs.
Whispers again.
She made a face and looked at the little tunnel. It was too dark inside to see. She tilted her head to listen better but the whispers were all mixed up. Did the little tunnel ever whisper? She wasn’t sure. Maybe he was coming back. Then she could listen to him sing.
She stood up and stretched her leg. 
Pop.
She turned toward the small place and stepped on a piece of gravel. It squirted out from the tip of her hoof and chittered across the stone, startling her at first. Then she smiled and trotted after it. Pressing her lips together between her teeth, she looked at the pebble and pressed the edge of her hoof down on it until it skipped free and hopped away again. Her eyes widened a little and she ran to where it stopped, batting it with her hoof and chasing it wherever it went.
Blue opened her eyes.
She was in the small place again. Her leg hurt, so she moved it.
Pop.
She frowned. It felt like someone had taken something away from her, but she didn’t know what. Lots of things got taken away.
Something loud scraped the floor behind her and she sprang to her hooves. Her mouth hung open, ready to hurt the Her. She was sneaky and she lied. She always lied. She lied about everything.
But she was alone.
Blue made a face. She didn’t remember why she was angry. Sometimes she forgot things. Her book lay on the floor, pushed up against the wall. Sometimes she bumped things when she woke up and they scared her.
The book wasn’t scary, though, even if it did scrape.
She bent down and gently took the open cover in her teeth. She moved it back to where her necklace slept and let it fall with a thump. Dust puffed into the air around her necklace and she watched how the little motes gently settled around it, but not on it. Dust wasn’t allowed on her necklace. Those were the rules. Sometimes when she was scared, he would put it on her. He knew how to make it stay and it made her feel better. Sometimes it made her remember, but mostly it didn’t. She liked it anyway. That, and when he sang.
She sat down on the sleeping bag and touched the necklace with her wing. For a moment she felt something come back. Colors. A ring of colors.
Rainbow.
Something exploded in the tunnel and she screamed.
Her heart pounded hard enough to hurt. The booming didn’t stop. It got worse. Shrieking echoes shook the walls outside the small place. Terrible, awful shrieking that wouldn’t stop no matter how hard she screamed back at it. 
It was happening again. Bombs and death and clouds of pegasi who tried to get away but died anyway. She remembered and it was bad. She saw their wings catch fire and watched the tips of her feathers blacken and curl. The flashes were so bright that she couldn’t see and the thunder cracked louder than any stormcloud she’d ever gathered. Cloudsdale was gone. Canterlot was gone. Everything was happening just like Scootaloo said it would. She needed to get to the Stable. She needed to make sure mom and dad were safe.
She moaned. “No, no, no…”
She flattened her ears and tried to squeeze out the noise coming from the tunnel but it didn’t work. It hurt too much. The sound, the light, the memories. It all hurt too much.
And then, with a sound like hammer striking iron, it stopped.
The thunder rumbled away. But the light.
The light stayed.
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and listened. 
Her heart raced. She licked her lips and stepped toward the dented door, her hooves turning the faintest shade of blue as they drifted into the dim light that spilled through the crack. She pushed it open and felt a lump rise in her throat at the sight that greeted her.
The Stable was open. She stared at it as tears misted her vision, causing the light to shimmer. It was real. She was here and it was real.
Three silhouettes stood on the platform, framed by a disc of golden light. She winced, her head already starting to feel fuzzy.
No, she thought. Focus.
Rainbow lifted her wings and pulsed them toward the flagstones. She shot into the stale air. Columns blurred past her outstretched hooves, each one capable of slapping her out of the air should she drift too close. She pulsed her brittle wings again, straining to keep herself level with the door. How many days had she beaten against it only to be answered with silence? She tried not to think about it. She didn’t know how long she had before it happened again, but she could feel it coming, like a fog pouring into her mind.
The doorway grew larger.
She could hear the screams. She could see the unicorns gathered on the platform, straining to force it open with magic that was inexplicably failing them. She remembered Sunny Meadows telling her that she had to be brave for them. That even though they were shut out, she had to convince them it would be okay. 
She remembered hearing the first gunshots and knowing it wouldn’t.
Rainbow hurled herself forward, over the platform, through the door and realizing with a yelp that she was going too fast to stop. The other side of the impossibly bright room swung toward her like a hammer.
It didn’t matter.
She was inside.
Her body slammed into the top of the ramp and bounced hard enough for her to hear bone break. Someone belted a curse as she crashed into the far wall of the room, hooves clanging against metal while she crumpled to the floor in a heap.
“Blue!” someone yelled. Another pony swore, his voice thick with revulsion.
Rainbow tried to stand and a red hoof dipped under her shoulder to help her up. She got her legs under her and staggered, the shock of the impact making it hard to concentrate. 
A bolt of pain shot through her right wing when she tried to fold it and she swung her head to look at it. The limb was barely connected, hanging on by only a few wet strands of gristle and sinew. The hollow bone stuck out like a tree root breaking soil. Blood, thick and dark, oozed from the wound like tar. 
She bent her head and tried to ignore how wrong it looked.
“We need to get you to the infirmary,” a deep voice rumbled.
Rainbow pushed him away. She needed to focus.
It was hard to focus sometimes.
She grit her teeth and tried to stay on track. She needed to find her parents, but the fog was getting thick.
“No,” she groaned. She swayed but caught herself against the wall. Her eyes tracked up to the stallion that stood over her. She didn’t recognize him, but the jumpsuit he wore was enough for her to know he could help. She wrapped her good remaining wing over his shoulder for balance and met his eyes. “Windy Whistles and Bow Hothoof. Did they make it inside?”
The stallion frowned confusion. “I don’t recognize their names, but…”
“My parents,” she insisted. “Did my parents make it in?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, bewildered. “Your name is Blue, right? We need to get you to the infirmary.”
Rainbow dropped her wing and staggered forward. She was out of time.
“Mom!” she yelled desperately. “Dad!”
The room lurched and she stumbled. Sometimes she fell, but that was okay.
“Mom!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “Please, I’m here! Dad!!”
This wasn’t the small place. They weren’t here.
She spun around, the remnants of her wing swinging across the floor like a foal’s toy dragged by an old length of thread. It hurt. The red stallion stood frozen in place, staring at her as if he were afraid to touch her. He’d better not. Two more stallions stood behind him with the same horrified expression. She followed their eyes to her ruined wing.
When had that happened? Blue frowned at it, unsure how…
“No!” she howled. “No, no, no please no…”
“Ma’am, just calm down,” the red one said. “We can help you.”
She shook her head hard, trying to make room in the fog. “Mom,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to go, please I’m sorry I don’t want to go I don’t want to go I don’t…”
Her hooves tangled and she fell. Her broken wing twisted between her ribs and the onrushing floor, pinched, and tore free.
Blue opened her eyes and screamed.







Chaser stumbled away from the decayed pegasi. “Fuck, her wing!”
Sledge saw. Blue clamored to her hooves while making an agonized noise he had never heard any pony ever make before. Her wing lay still, half trampled beneath her hooves as the mare frantically looked at her surroundings as if she were suddenly afraid of them.
No, he realized. Not afraid. Lost.
“Ma’am,” he said, stepping forward. Her head snapped toward him like a cracked whip, and he froze. “Blue, you’re hurt. I want to help you.”
Blue lifted her remaining wing, winced, and looked back at the nub of torn flesh behind her right shoulder. Then she spun toward Sledge, her face twisted with mistrust. Her eyes darted to the deputies behind him and her chest billowed. She let out a wordless scream, as if to ward them away, and took a step backward.
Sledge glanced at the deputies out of the corner of his eye, not daring to turn his head. Stratus had begun to approach. He slowly lifted a wing to stop his progress. “Stratus. Stop moving.”
The deputy did as he was told and nervously licked his lips. “What the fuck is she? She looks like one of those bodies out there.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Whatever the blackish substance leaking from her wound was, it was long past the point of resembling anything close to blood. Is this what happened to the descendants of the war’s survivors? Did they all look like this?
“She’s a friend of Pinfeathers,” he said, more for his own reassurance than theirs.
“She could be contagious,” Chaser warned.
Sledge shook his wing to shut him up. It turned out to be a bad idea.
Blue’s eyes locked onto the curtain of red feathers and launched herself toward them with an animalistic scream. Sledge jerked away, her one haggard wing slapping into his chest as she sailed through the space his feathers recently occupied. Momentum carried her past him and she barreled straight into Chaser.
The two of them tumbled over the grating in a flurry of limbs. Chaser yelled a string of curses as he struggled to separate himself from his attacker, but the mare was scrabbling against his jumpsuit like an angry cat. Before Sledge or Stratus could stop her, she was on top of him, hooves stamping against his chest in a frenzied attack. 
The jagged edges of her hooves sliced holes across his jumpsuit. In the space of a few seconds, they were coming up wet with blood. Sledge rushed forward to help but Stratus was closer and got there first. The deputy tackled Blue from the left, wrenching her off Chaser and dropping her hard against the floor. Blue let out a frustrated screech as she hit the diamond-patterned steel, her legs squirming and kicking at his underbelly all while he strained to wrangle them to the ground.
Sledge rushed in to assist. “Keep her pinned!”
“Not as easy as it looks!”
A hoof caught Stratus across the foreleg, knocking it sideways and freeing Blue’s shoulder, allowing her more freedom to twist away. Her pale magenta eyes searched frantically for an escape before locking onto the approaching overstallion. They shot wide. Fresh panic seized her and she twisted away so violently that an audible crackle ran down her spine. She slapped the grating with her last wing with enough force that Sledge worried she would break that one off too.
Stratus regained the advantage and shoved Blue’s shoulder down, pinning her back against the grating. Blue snarled up at him, craned her neck toward the offending appendage and clamped her teeth around his ankle. She bore down, hard.
The deputy’s usual gruff voice shot to a squeal. “Fuck!!” 
Instinct overrode sound logic and Stratus wrenched his leg out of Blue’s red-rimmed jaw, shearing off a ragged flap of flesh that remained clenched between her teeth.
Blue screamed again, another unmistakable attempt to make him go away. The bloody flap fell from her lips with another wordless bellow. Wherever the pony was who had flown in asking for her parents, she was gone, replaced by this terrified animal.
Entirely focused on his shredded leg, Stratus didn’t notice her coiling her hind legs beneath him until they pistoned up and into his belly. His spine arched from the impact and his legs folded under him. Blue shoved him away and hurried back to her hooves, her eyes wild and searching.
Sledge looked at the two deputies on either side of her. Stratus was down, struggling to catch his breath. Chaser was trying to sit up, staring at the blood running down his chest in shock. The lacerations were shallow, but Chaser was already starting to hyperventilate with abject panic. Sledge set his eyes on Blue. He needed to get this under control.
Blue was already turning toward the terrified deputy, his movements tickling some primal nerve in her brain. Her lips curled away from her teeth like a wolf sighting a threat. She was keyed up now and too fast for Sledge to risk going in for a tackle. He needed her to come to him.
“Hey!” He stamped a hoof into the grating with a satisfying clang. “Blue! Over here!”
The pale mare spun to face him, her teeth bent into a bloody snarl. She bent her forelegs low, preparing to lunge. It was like she had regressed to something more primitive. A primordial version of herself driven by an instinct to survive.
They stood barely ten steps apart. 
She closed the gap in three.
Sledge was no stranger to a brawl. Though his new role as the Stable overstallion demanded a level of decorum he was still adjusting to, he would always be the big red bastard from Mechanical.
Blue rammed into his chest, her patchy mane cracking against his neck like a whip. What she packed in speed, Sledge made up for in mass. He coughed out a grunt, stepped back and absorbed the impact. Blue’s ears flattened defensively as she realized the stallion hadn’t fallen like she’d expected, and Sledge used the break in her concentration to his advantage.
His left wing shot out beside her, practically scooping her off her hooves, and shoved her hard. Her nimble frame banged against the upper platform’s railing, forcing a panicked cry from her lungs. Before she could squirm out of his feathers, Sledge pivoted beside her and pressed his full weight into her ribs, fixing her to the sturdy pipes like a nail driven into a wall.
Blue belted a scream and stabbed the air with her hind legs, hoping and failing to strike anything that would set her free. Sledge wrapped a hoof under her neck and pulled her sunken cheek tight against his shoulder, immobilizing her head and, more importantly for him, preventing her from putting her teeth to use again. She twisted, trying to find some way to wriggle free and escape, but she found none. He adjusted his stance in step with her struggling, taking away any inch she thought he might give. 
Eventually, slowly, Blue gave up struggling.
Sledge held his grip, careful to leave just enough slack so Blue could breathe. He looked to where his deputies had fallen and was relieved to see Chaser back on his hooves, the underside of his jumpsuit a bloodied mess. He was helping Stratus up. They were bruised and beaten, but they would survive.
“How’s that leg, Stratus?”
Stratus sucked a breath between his teeth as he settled his weight on his damaged limb. Despite how ugly the wound was, his foreleg held. “Hurts as bad as it looks, but it’s nothing a few stimpacks won’t grow back. Which are coming out of your salary, by the way.”
Sledge looked to Chaser. “How about you?”
“I’m gonna need stitches,” he said irritably.
Sledge grunted. “Yeah, this didn’t pan out like I hoped it would. Let’s bring her inside. Chaser, I need you to hold her head still.”
“No offense, overstallion, but there’s no fucking way.”
“Yes fucking way,” Sledge rumbled. “Get over here and help me.”
Chaser narrowed his eyes at the pinned mare. 
Blue let a ragged growl rise out of her throat in response. Sledge felt her muscles go taut as she watched him approach. She flinched, flashing her teeth as Chaser tentatively lifted his wing toward her. Her hooves skidded against the grating as she tried to pull away, but she was too firmly trapped by Sledge’s bulk to succeed.
“Blue, you need to calm down,” he said.
She snapped her teeth at Chaser’s wing with an audible click. A snarl crawled out of her and she jerked her head against Sledge’s grip, the tendons in her neck pulling rigid. Chaser retreated a step as Sledge strained to keep her still with an irritated grunt.
“Blue, stop,” he grumbled, but she yanked back with renewed desperation. He clenched his jaw. “Blue, stop!”
She twitched as if she stepped on an exposed wire. Her struggling slowed and after a few tenuous kicks, she went perfectly still. For a terrible moment Sledge thought his grip might’ve been too tight and that despite his best efforts, he’d knocked her out, but when he looked down at her face it was clear she was still with them.
Only not quite.
Blue’s eyes stared forward, unfocused, but still strangely aware somehow. Her breathing relaxed and the tension that held her body tight like a cable began to soften.
Chaser took a step left, then right, seeing the change as well. She stared through him as if she didn’t know he was there. He looked up at Sledge. “I think you tripped her off switch.”
Sledge frowned at Blue, then at Chaser. 
“Back up,” he said, and the deputy was quick to obey. Slowly, Sledge eased his weight off Blue’s ribs. When she didn’t move to attack, he loosened his grip around her neck and gently took his hoof away. Her head sagged a little as if in a trance. 
“Okay. I think I can work with this,” he said. “Stratus, get the door. Chaser, go with him and open a holding cell.”
The two deputies didn’t need to be told twice. As they went to work, Sledge stepped alongside Blue and carefully draped his wing over her shoulder. Her lip twitched when his feathers settled over the nub of what was left of her right wing, but beyond that she offered little protest. She lifted her head a little, her eyes wandering toward him but never quite focusing. It was like she was sleepwalking, only something told him it wasn’t that simple. Something in her had simply shut down, like a machine with a blown circuit. The lights were on, but no one seemed to be home.
He nudged her away from the railing and, slowly, she followed.
“That’s good,” he reassured her. “You’re doing real good, Blue.”
Blue grunted, her head dropping again as he led her toward the decontamination chamber.
Now that she was calm, Sledge began noticing small details that he hadn’t been able to see before. Her coat was almost completely shed away save for a few patches of hair he could see under her neck and around her shoulder, leaving behind pale blue skin that bordered close to grey. Her mane, or what was left of it, was a thin curtain of knotted monochromatic stripes. This close, he could spot a few strands of green mingling behind her ear. He silently wondered what could cause a pony to decay so thoroughly.
As he led her under the narrow decontamination arches he adjusted his grip around her barrel, ready for her to panic. The sensor chimed above them and water sputtered from the nozzles in a hard spray. Blue flattened her ears against the jets and groaned with discomfort.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
Blue continued to make a miserable noise as a filthy puddle formed beneath their hooves. Sledge lifted his wing away from her to give the spray access to her right side, knowing the shower wouldn’t stop until the contaminants collecting in the tanks below registered safe levels. Blue shuddered under the barrage and soon the sour odor of urine filled the narrow chamber.
Sledge set his jaw, careful not to let her see any discomfort on his face. Eventually the smell dissipated under the steady wash and the water circling the drains ran clear. As the streams weakened, he put his wing back around her and felt the trembling stop.
“Good job,” he said.
The sensors chimed and the door to the deputy station slid open. Chaser stood waiting for them on the other side, a towel from one of the lockers held out in his wing. Behind him, Stratus sat at the nearest desk with a first aid kit open in his lap. He eyed Blue with open dislike.
Sledge accepted the towel and led Blue toward the cell nearest the Atrium door. He realized as he aimed her through the open bars that this was the same cell he asked Chaser to put Pinfeathers in. He tried not to read too much into it.
“Okay,” he said, guiding her to the steel bench that served as the cell’s bed. “Can you sit down for me?”
Blue slowly turned to look at the bench, then panned her head across the concrete floor.
She sat down on the floor.
“Close enough,” he said. Blue grunted agreement.
Chaser’s hooves clicked outside the cell door. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in there with her, overstallion.”
“I appreciate the concern,” he said, and used both his wings to part the beige corners of the towel. Careful not to startle her, Sledge lowered the artificially spun fabric over Blue’s back. It clung to her dripping coat like a second layer of skin and gradually turned a shade darker as it wicked the water off of her.
“Feel better?” he asked, knowing at this point she wouldn’t answer.
A droplet of water ran down the bridge of her muzzle and tracked into her nostril. Blue’s nose wrinkled, followed by the rest of her face. Her entire body bounced with a sneeze. Then she frowned, blinked and looked up at Sledge.
He held his breath. She fixed him with her gaze for what felt like minutes, her pale magenta eyes narrowing with unsurity. Then she turned and looked at the metal bench on her other side. Without a word, she crouched low and shimmied herself into the shaded pocket of space beneath it, the towel dragging behind her like a foal’s blanket.
She turned, curled up on her side and let her cheek settle onto the concrete with her spine pressed against the dark corner of the wall. Her wary gaze followed him from the safety of her little shelter as he stood up and walked out of the cell.
“What now?” Stratus asked, his face tight with discomfort as he held a gauze pad against his torn skin.
Sledge rolled the cell door closed, leaving enough room for Chaser to reach in and turn the lock. He watched Blue through the bars, wondering the same question himself. Pinfeathers had been sparing on the details when she told him about the mare trapped outside. When he opened the door, he expected to find a refugee of some kind. Violent, maybe, but someone he could reason with.
Blue’s tail thumped the ground beneath her damp towel. She nudged the end of her muzzle under one of its folds and huffed a sigh.
“Patch yourselves up and then get down to the infirmary,” he decided. “Tell them you got into a fight with a violent drunk from Mechanical if they ask what happened. They’ll believe it. Under no circumstances are you allowed to tell anyone that you went outside, or brought anyone in. I don’t want either of you kicking off a panic.”
Stratus winced as he tightened a strip of gauze around his bloodied foreleg. “We’re going to have to tell them eventually.”
“I will tell them when I have something to tell them,” he said, drawing a warning growl from Blue’s cell. Sledge ignored her and gestured toward the Atrium door. “The badges I gave you have priority clearance for that door. Only me and the two of you can open it. I did that because I trust both of you to keep this quiet.”
Stratus pursed his lips, then nodded.
“Are you going to stay here?” Chaser asked. The wounds across his chest wept through the damp fabric of his jumpsuit. As long as they stuck to his story, he would be able to deflect any questions that would eventually climb the Stable to his office. 
“I’ve got a few things I need to tie up before I can make a formal announcement.” He looked at the clock above the deputies’ desks. “The two of you should get going.”
He left them little room to argue. Chaser helped Stratus down from the chair and swiped his badge at the door. It hissed open on new hydraulics and sank shut behind them.
Sledge blew out a sigh and sat down outside Blue’s cell. The strange mare’s ear twitched toward him.
“What am I going to do with you?”
She looked at him and murmured a grunt.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me neither.”







This was bad. This was really bad.

Rainbow punched through the clouds as fast as she could manage without risking cracking the sky with a sonic rainboom. If that happened, everyone within thirty miles would know she was out flying, and right now she couldn’t afford to be seen. The October air sank through her blackened flight suit like a frozen knife.
She kept climbing, sliding higher into the thin night air. There was a full moon tonight and while she knew she couldn’t lay that at Luna’s hooves, she did anyway. It was one of the few things she could still blame the princesses for that wouldn’t land her in a prison cell, or worse, an unmarked grave.
This was their fault and they knew it. If Celestia and Luna hadn’t wrapped themselves so thickly with the myth that they controlled the sun and moon, they’d be able to open their eyes and recognize the solutions that the ponies they ruled could so plainly see. If it weren’t for the princesses, Equestria might have embraced this solar energy thing long before it went to war over stones that refused to bleed no matter how hard they squeezed. Jet Stream knew it. Fluttershy and Zecora knew it. Celestia and Luna knew it, and the only reason they continued to throw roadblocks in the way of progress was because they believed admitting they weren’t omnipotent meant admitting they had been lying to ponies for millennia.
They would rather see Equestria burn.
Rainbow pressed a hoof to her hip to reassure herself. The rigid lump tucked into the hem of her black flight suit was still there. Fluttershy’s holotape was a long shot, but it was better than nothing. Rainbow wasn’t even sure if the zebras had software compatible with Robronco format. She thought about how cruel it would be if she flew all this way just to find out Vhanna couldn’t translate the data.
She tried not to think about it. Her mind was already swarming with enough worry.
A thin veil of multicolored light began forming a dim cone across the tips of her outstretched hooves. She bent her wings down to slow herself even though every instinct screamed at her to push faster, to shatter the night with a dazzling ring of light that had become her calling card. She frowned as the colors brimming over her hooves darkened and disappeared. From the ground, a pony looking up in the right direction might have thought they spotted a shooting star.
She listened to the wind whistle past her ears, watching the dull black shape of Foal Mountain drift by on her left. Only a few miles behind the mountain lay the ruins of a village known as Hollow Shades. The only road that led there anymore was an old train line that had fallen into disuse, though she had heard rumors that Applejack had her eye on the secluded ruins as a site for another munitions dump. Judging by the glitter of construction lights coming from the black mass of trees, they weren’t just rumors.
They wouldn’t be able to see her up here from so far, but the lights made her nervous enough to bank away. On her new trajectory, she would thread the gap between Fillydelphia and Baltimare and avoid the lion’s share of any pegasi traffic near the cities.
She forced herself to ascend higher. The air was getting thin enough to become a concern but it also meant she could fly faster without risking a rainboom. The tradeoff forced her work harder to breathe but the burn in her lungs was worth the pace she was setting. The less time she was away from Canterlot, the less evidence Spitfire had to prove her case.
Rainbow grit her teeth against the wind and held back the urge to scream. It would only be fair if she did. Spitfire had already done her share of it.
She’d never seen her so angry before today. It didn’t make it any better that Fluttershy knew what was going on, too.
Maybe she should have told Spitfire about the bits being funneled to Jet Stream Industries. The two of them had been close, once upon a time, and that was exactly the reason Rainbow had chosen her to help manage operations within the Ministry of Awesome. In retrospect, Spitfire had every right to be furious.
Trying to mask the payments by locking Finance out of the general ledger had been a terrible idea, but she didn’t know how else to get it done without risking involving someone else. When Spitfire told her that Whiplash had started an audit, she panicked. Firing him had bought her time with everyone except Spitfire. If there had been red flags in her mind about what Rainbow was doing before, firing the one pony who was raising suspicions about the clearance glitches succeeded in dipping those flags in kerosene and setting them ablaze.
Spitfire assumed it meant Rainbow was embezzling ministry funds, though to what aim she couldn’t figure out. She threatened to go to Celestia if she didn’t explain herself, and Rainbow had no doubt in her mind she would make good on the promise if her answer left Spitfire unsatisfied.
Lying was off the table. The former drill instructor of her youth knew every tell she had, and if she was caught spinning yarns to her now everything would come crumbling down around her. The prospect of being fired or imprisoned was bad enough. What she feared most was sitting in a cage somewhere, forced to watch the war play out with no chance of stopping it.
So she told the truth. Most of it, anyway.
She told Spitfire about her meetings with Jet Stream and how she believed in his company’s dream of one day unlocking the stars. She told her that she felt it was her duty as one of Equestria’s protectors to support the ponies who could make a positive difference in the world, but that she was afraid the princesses would punish Jet Stream if they found out he’d accepted her help. She’d actually managed to get misty-eyed during her confession which seemed to distract Spitfire from pressing her for the exact details of what Jet Stream Industries needed the bits for. 
She was taking a big enough risk admitting that she had diverted funds out of the ministry in secret. Telling Spitfire about SOLUS would be admitting that she and Jet Stream were participating in research that directly challenged Celestia’s claim to power, and she wasn’t about to fall on that sword just yet.
Admitting that she tried to deceive Spitfire had been enough. She endured her outpouring of disgust and the accusations that she had betrayed their trust. She let Spitfire tell her that their relationship from this point forward was purely professional, and that any shred of friendship the two of them had once shared was gone.
Before leaving Rainbow’s office, Spitfire made her conditions explicit.
“If you ever pull this shit with me again, I promise I will come down on you so hard you will wish Celestia got to you first.”
Rainbow swallowed to slake the dryness gathering in her throat. To prevent any more misuse of ministry funds, Spitfire told her that she would be taking over Whiplash’s position as chief financial officer in addition to her current duties. In any other situation, that decision would come down from a ministry mare but she had Rainbow by the teats. She wasn’t about to test Spitfire’s resolve. 
Spitfire was now hellbent on completing the audit that Rainbow had tried to stop in order to suss out exactly how many bits had gone missing and where they had landed. That was fine, so long as she kept quiet. All of the funds Jet Stream needed to get SOLUS off the ground were spread across so many shell companies and foreign accounts that it would take Spitfire years of beating her head against the red tape necessary to siphon them all back to the ministry. Rainbow wouldn’t stop her from taking back what she could, but she’d never find it all.
It was a problem she would deal with another day.
An hour passed and the glowing cities of Fillydelphia and Baltimare slid onto the horizon. At this altitude they looked like puddles of light spilled on black velvet. The street lights of the suburbs that spilled between them gave off a dim glow in the vague shape of interconnected grids. The coastal cities of Equestria had grown impossibly large thanks to the population boom of the last two decades. It was part of the reason Equestria’s population still supported the war as rabidly as they did. With so many children to protect, no one was willing to give serious thought to the possibility they might lose.
The twin cities rolled forward until they stood at the tips of each wing, as if she were a scale holding them in some tenuous balance. Her black flight suit absorbed their light and gave a little back. She slipped over the waves of the Celestial Sea, unseen.
The autumn air over land was uncomfortable. Above the churning sea, it was frigid.
For nearly an hour, unstable winds buffeted her nimble frame, turning the crossing into a test of endurance. With no lights below to guide her she used the sky, keeping the bright spray of lavender stars on the tips of her hooves. She had made this journey many times before back when she was younger and her body better accustomed to the abuses that the winds sometimes inflicted upon its travelers. When she finally spied the bright lanterns of Griffinstone’s aeries, her wings trembled.
Little had changed for the gryphons since she last visited their ancestral home. Small, thatch-roof houses lay in tightly packed rows along any flat surface their architects had been able to clear in the craggy coastal mountaintops. It was too dark to tell whether the edges of their makeshift city had expanded since her last visit, but nothing remained static over a lifetime and she wasn’t willing to bet that the gryphons hadn’t founded new territories on neighboring peaks.
She could feel a cramp brewing in her right wing. The trip back home wasn’t going to be pleasant. She settled her feathers into the wind and banked around the large cluster of lights that made up Griffinstone proper. The last time she was here, Pinkie Pie had tagged along. The visit had become something of an impromptu adventure, which looking back seemed to happen to them more often than it should have. Gilda had been on the fence about leaving Griffinstone altogether back then, but last Rainbow knew her old friend had never made good on that dream. The ministries didn’t have much information on Gilda beyond an address and confirmation that she still lived there. At least it was something.
Rainbow slipped soundlessly over the aeries until she spotted a few familiar landmarks. A chipped wooden archway painted gold and bedecked with a shabby rendition of red wings. A dead tree spiraling out of a nearby ledge, the houses that once perched precariously on its limbs conspicuously absent now. She found herself above Gilda’s neighborhood and was relieved to see that the dilapidated and abandoned houses she lived next to had been rebuilt. 
The cobblestone street had been swept clean of debris and was adorned with functioning gas lanterns. Most of the windows were dark, but here and there she could see silhouettes moving past ones that were still lit. It took several passes before she was confident which of the near identical houses belonged to Gilda. The lights were off, which was a blessing in disguise. It meant that the alley behind it was dark enough to remain unseen.
Cobbles scraped under her hooves as she landed and her wings sang with relief. The alleyway was little more than a narrow paved strip that butted up against the back of Gilda’s house. She had no yard or white picket fence to lounge in, not when footage came at such a premium. A pair of trash cans stood sentinel next to the flimsy back door to her house. An entirely foreign smell rose up from them to greet her.
She approached the single step outside her door and nearly kicked over a coffee can half filled with bent cigarette butts. Rainbow frowned and lifted her hoof to the door, giving it a gentle knock that Fluttershy would be proud of.
She waited a moment before knocking again, more firmly this time.
An irritated “Fuck off!” snapped from the open window above her head. Rainbow had to suppress a smile and gave the door another series of thumps.
“I said fuck off!” the voice barked.
Were she here for anything else, the gryphon’s attitude would have been plenty reason for Rainbow to start playing her door like a bad set of drums. She resisted the urge and knocked again, trying to impress urgency with each thud.
She listened as a string of expletives followed their owner’s footfall through the house and down to the first floor. A light snapped on inside and Rainbow stepped back just in time for Gilda to yank the door open. “What the holy fuck do…”
Rainbow offered a sheepish smile as Gilda stood in the doorway, suddenly unsure how to finish her sentence. She was larger than Rainbow remembered, standing a good foot taller than she did. The feathers on one side of her face were mashed flat and the corner of her beak was slick with sleep drool.
A large part of her expected Gilda’s face to light up with excitement. To welcome her in and pepper her with the same jabs she did so long ago. Her smile widened expectantly even as Gilda pinched the ridge between her eyes and sighed.
“What do you want?”
Her smile faltered. “I…”
She cut her off. “Actually, you know what? Forget I even asked. Go home, Dash.”
Rainbow was barely able to get her ankle in the door before Gilda slammed it shut. The flimsy wood slapped against her leg and wobbled open again. She bit her lip to stifle the curse rising in her throat.
“Gilda,” she pleaded, “I just need five minutes to talk.”
Gilda scowled at her. “You want to lose that hoof? Keep it there.”
Rainbow could see her settling her hand back on the door knob in preparation to shove it closed. Before she could, Rainbow shoved her shoulders into the gap and stared at her with a desperate intensity. 
“If our friendship ever meant anything to you, you’ll give me five damn minutes to at least tell you why I’m here.”
Gilda pressed the door into her shoulder. “I can make you leave.”
Rainbow winced. “I hope you won’t.”
Gilda glowered at her for several long seconds before mouthing something unpleasant. She released the knob and turned into the house. “Five minutes,” she said. “Then you leave.”
Rainbow sagged with relief and hurried inside, pushing the door shut behind her.
She followed Gilda into what she could only describe as a cozy, if not cramped little kitchen. White cabinets topped with a grey granite countertop filled the right side of the space, interrupted only by a mismatched stove and refrigerator. The hardwood floor was clean, albeit heavily scarred by Gilda’s duelling sets of talons and claws. A square table rested against the opposite wall, framed by three sturdy stools. 
Gilda gestured to the table with a brown feather as she padded in the opposite direction to the counter. As Rainbow pulled out a stool and sat down, Gilda picked up a silver can from the edge of the sink and swirled it in her hand. Satisfied there was something left inside, she sat down on the floor with her back against the cabinets.
She aimed a finger at a decorative clock sitting in a recessed shelf above the table. It was made of solid brass with ornately curving rays intended to resemble their ancient sun god. Two brass gryphons kneeled at either side of it, their claws clasped as if in prayer. Rainbow couldn’t remember the name they had for him, but she was surprised to see the effigy in Gilda’s home.
“I didn’t know you were religious,” she said.
“I’m not,” Gilda said. “They were my grandmother’s. If you want to talk about her, that’s fine by me. Either way you’re down to four minutes.”
Rainbow nodded. It was now or never.
She dipped her feathers under the hem of her flight suit and set Fluttershy’s holotape on the table.
“Look, Gilda,” she said. “I came to ask you a favor.”







	Sledge stepped down the ramp toward the empty doorway of Stable 10.
He estimated it would be a few hours until Chaser and Stratus got back from the infirmary, and he had something left that Pinfeathers wanted him to do. He stared up at the gaping void left in the impenetrable skin of his home and wondered what thoughts might have gone through her mind when she made this same trip. Had it looked like the open maw of some nameless beast, patiently waiting for her to step past its steel teeth and into the nothing beyond? He shuddered.
Sledge had always prided himself in his ability to project calm confidence in the face of hardship. It was likely why Overmare Delphi had chosen him to lead the Stable in her absence. The trick wasn’t in training his mind not to feel fear or uncertainty. He was close friends with both. No, the trick was to occupy them so that they never thought to make homes in his eyes where other ponies would be able to see.
He walked up onto the extended catwalk and craned his neck at the impossibly large chasm the great cog had rolled out of. It was hard not to admire the amount of work that had to go into designing a blast door of this caliber. Even with an entire wing dedicated to fabricating and replacing the millions of moving parts that kept their Stable alive, they could never come close to the level of precision required to forge something like this.
A tiny smile curled his lip as he stepped out onto the platform, masking the thunder of his own heartbeat. 
He was terrified.
All it would take was one errant string of code to trigger the door and seal it shut behind him. There was no control board out here for him to use. No socket hidden near the door for his Pip-Buck. He’d checked. If the door decided to close, there would be nothing he could do to stop it. He knew on a logical level it would never happen. That there was no gremlin in the machine to betray him. It didn’t matter. Every instinct he had screamed at him to stop. He nearly listened.
Three yellow flashlights lay on the curved platform where they had dropped them when Blue darted above their heads. Sledge picked one up and clicked it on with a feather. Never in his life had he been thankful for fresh batteries. The beam sliced through the darkness like a knife, giving him courage. He swept the cone of light across the concrete pad until it settled on one of the two mangled bodies they had discovered earlier.
The nearest corpse was missing most of its face as if it had been sandblasted off. The one further away was absent of its head entirely, the same pulped injury visible over the stump of its neck. He knew another had been crushed in the teeth of the massive cog, but something about that body made his stomach flip when the others didn’t. He avoided looking at it. The two intact corpses looked as if they had been here for decades, but the smeared pool of blood clotted between them was clearly recent. 
He stepped forward, following the edge of the platform down onto the flagstone pathway.
His heart pounded across his ribs as the Stable shrank behind him. The lightless tunnel was silent save for the clicking of his hooves on stone, a sound that the cracked walls greedily devoured. He panned the flashlight toward the massive pillars that held the vaulted ceiling at bay and immediately recognized the shapes gathered around them. 
The still image on his terminal could only show him so much detail. Details that had been mercifully blurred now lay around him in crisp, unforgiving detail. Bodies, dozens of them, reclined against one another in lazy heaps as if sleeping. Partially mummified skin hung from their bones, some so decayed that they were little more than skeletons while others were so well preserved that Sledge couldn’t shake the fear that they would leap to their hooves and bolt toward him.
Clustered around pillars or laying alone or in groups against the far wall, there were hundreds of them. He passed the beam across the tunnel, frowned, and brought the light back to a trio of ponies huddled together at the base of a pillar. They were unicorns, all three of them. Sledge stepped toward them, unable to stop himself. He’d never seen a unicorn outside the murals and books back in the Stable.
He stopped short. His wing holding the flashlight sagged.
The two adults lay slouched toward each other, their foreheads touching, horns crossed. Their features had decayed so badly that the slightest touch might cause them to crumble. Beneath their horns, a much smaller body sat cross-legged between them. A tiny book lay open in its lap, the pages stiff and faded by time. The foal’s tiny head had come to rest against the leg of one of its parents, its eyelids shut as if it had only just fallen asleep.
He walked away, unable to shake the sense that he was violating a sacred place by just being here. He had so many questions and nobody to ask. The only mare who might know what happened here was miles away, and she had been so afraid to even ask him to rescue Blue that he wasn’t certain it was wise to ask her about the graveyard mere yards outside their home.
The most he could do was put one hoof in front of the other.
Luggage littered the floor in neatly stacked piles the further he walked. Clothing and other belongings lay in less organized mounds nearby. He wondered if Blue had done this, or if it was something the ponies surrounding him had done while they were still alive. He gave the mounds a wide berth.
By the time he reached the utility room Pinfeathers described in her message, the Stable door was small enough that he could obscure it with his outstretched hoof. He approached the misshapened door and shone the light into the confined space beyond.
Neat lines of conduit fed into breaker boxes along the wall. Every switch was still thrown into the ON position, dashing his hopes that he might be able to restore the lights and make his trip back a little less harrowing. He turned the beam to the far wall where a shredded bundle of brown fabric lay rumpled on the floor. There, splayed across the rumpled fabric glinted the golden plates of an ornate necklace. A book rested beside it, its yellowed pages wrapped in a cover he dimly recognized.
He crossed the tiny space and lifted the necklace by one of its clasps. It twisted gently between his pinched feathers, allowing him to admire the quality. The only visible defect it presented was the glaring omission of its iconic lightning bolt ruby. Besides that, it was a near-perfect replica. No wonder Blue would want it back. It must have cost a pretty bit to get someone to put this much work into making it.
Laying the necklace across the cover of the book, he bundled the tattered bedding around Blue’s possessions and tucked them under his wing. A few sweeps of his flashlight confirmed there was nothing else of hers to retrieve. He adjusted his wing and left the tiny den, careful to keep his eyes fixed on the flagstones as he hurried through the tunnel.
As he climbed up the platform toward the door, he slowed and then stopped. He looked at the edge of the catwalk that bridged the Stable threshold and it occurred to him that this was exactly the spot that Blue had stood when he found her on the security footage. He turned around and lifted his flashlight high, passing the wide beam across the ceiling until he found what he already knew would be there.
It was barely the size of a golf ball and perfectly black. Mounted to the ceiling in the middle of a line of air ducts hung a dark bubble. Inside, Sledge knew, was a small mechanical eye that stared back at him in amiable silence. Insulated by millions of tons of granite and fed a steady diet of power from the Stable’s generator, it had been built to last and could theoretically outlast the Stable itself.
A thought crossed his mind. How far back did that footage go?
He crossed back into the Stable and tried to dismiss the question. They had just taken in a mare from the outside. Sledge and his deputies witnessed her crash into the Stable so violently that she had torn her wing clear out of her shoulder and yet instead of bleeding out in the antechamber she’d thrown herself into a frenzy that had both deputies sitting in the infirmary. And then, just as abruptly, she disconnected entirely as if a breaker in her mind had blown. Out of all the problems he’d just inherited in the last thirty minutes, browsing old security footage wasn’t his primary concern.
And yet the question clung like a thistle. Opal had explained to him that the Stable’s servers had been built to act as time capsules. Everything was saved. Deletions weren’t just unheard of, they were almost viewed as criminal.
Out of all the documents, messages and voice logs that had been sealed behind a seemingly inexplicable fortress of encryptions… why had Overmare Spitfire chosen to bury the footage of that one camera, but not the feed from inside the antechamber? They both looked at the same door. Just from different sides.
He glowered at the diamond pattern of the floor as he ascended the ramp.
What was outside the door that Spitfire didn’t want him to see?
Blue’s severed wing still lay on the panels where it had sloughed off near the kiosk. Sledge gingerly stepped around it, making a mental note to have one of the deputies come back in and retrieve it for disposal.
Plugging his Pip-Buck into the kiosk, he punched the command to reseal the Stable and watched as the toothed megalith that withstood the end of the world slowly rolled toward the open void and slid into its perfectly matched socket. The complex system of hinges and bolts that pinned the door into place left him in awe. He envied the ponies who had been given the chance to create something so vital and pitied them for the end they faced after they were finished.
Sledge suffered the indignity of being doused by the decontamination chamber a second time while carefully shielding the bundle under his wings from the spray. 
Back in the deputy station, Blue hadn’t budged from where she had taken shelter from the bright lights and strange ponies who had captured her. She watched Sledge as he stepped out of the chamber and scrubbed himself down with a fresh towel from the lockers, leaving the deeply stained bundle of cloth while he underwent the transformation from soaking wet to only moderately wet. Satisfied, he retrieved the bundle and brought it to Blue’s cell.
A pang of guilt needled at his chest as Blue’s eyes tracked him from under the bench. First Pinfeathers, now Blue. His first week as overstallion wasn’t even finished and he’d already put two mares behind bars that he wasn’t sure belonged there. Not a great start, he thought.
“I’m back,” he said to her, earning a narrowed set of eyes as he set the bundle on the ground. “I brought something for you.”
Careful to avoid moving too quickly, he gradually pulled the stained bedding away from the items inside. One at a time, he pushed the book, necklace and finally the ragged fabric through the bars. Blue lifted her head off the cement to better see what he was doing and he swore there was a glimmer of recognition on her face as he passed the items through.
To his surprise, she cautiously shimmied out from under the bench and stood. The towel he’d given to her clung to her backside like the train of a dress, still damp and stained a rusty brown where it had originally covered the stump of her wing. The wound looked to have bled all that it would bleed and a thick, dark clot had formed over the torn flesh. If it caused her any pain, she didn’t show it.
She looked at the meager collection of her belongings and then up to Sledge. Her ears went flat and she opened her mouth, teeth bare, in a silent show of mistrust.
Sledge didn’t have to speak her language to know what she was saying. Get away, she said. He turned and walked back to the lockers where he waited. Slowly, Blue stepped toward her belongings and picked them up between her teeth, returning them to the shaded patch of floor beneath the bench one at a time. First the necklace, then her book and finally her bedding.
He watched with fascination as she dragged the bedding under the bench before carefully turning around and sprawling herself across it with her tail pressed into the corner of the wall. She glanced at Sledge for a moment before reaching a deeply cracked hoof toward the other two items and pulling them close to her chest. A barely audible noise rattled her throat that Sledge decided to interpret as satisfaction, though it could have easily been anything else. 
If nothing else she looked comfortable, and very likely that was the one thing Pinfeathers would want to hear from him.
Sledge pursed his lips and blew out a sigh. This was easily the strangest day of his life. He wondered if the same could be said for Blue.
It would be a while until Chaser or Stratus got released from the infirmary. Blue was comfortable, and she probably wouldn’t want some strange stallion staring at her in the meantime. If there was ever going to be a time to dig into the question that was burning a hole in the back of his brain, it was now.
He crossed the deputy station, followed by a mildly curious gaze from Blue, and walked back to his office.








“Dash, I can’t be involved in this.”

Her five minutes had expired an hour ago. Gilda across from her at the table, her elbow propped next to an empty can of Kirin Beer and her cheek resting against her closed fist. She stared down at the holotape in the middle of the table, shaking her head against her knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shrugging. “I mean, I know we were friends but this is… I don’t even know what this is.”
Rainbow leaned forward, seeking Gilda’s eyes with her own. “It’s a chance to end this war,” she said, and not for the first time tonight. She could feel Gilda slipping, but she was running out of ways to ask the same question. “Please. Just help me do this, then I’ll be out of your feathers forever.”
Gilda didn’t return her gaze. She looked toward the holotape, her eyes focused somewhere far beyond it. “Do the princesses know you’re here?”
She licked her lips, knowing she couldn’t avoid the question. “No,” she said.
Gilda took a slow breath and closed her eyes. “I didn’t think so.” She exhaled and looked her in the eyes. “Why are you so convinced that giving the Vhannans some tech will end your war with them?”
“I already told you why,” she said.
Gilda fixed her with an irritable stare. “Tell me again.”
The nape of Rainbow’s neck was starting to develop an itch from the sweat trapped under her flight suit. She resisted the urge to scratch. “The resource shortage is what’s fuelling the war. If the Vhannans get this data, they’ll finally be able to start building solar farms that will brace their industries’ demand for that fuel. It’ll relieve some of the pressure and give them something to fall back on when the last oil wells inevitably run dry. They already see us experimenting with the same tech on a small scale, but they see it as a way for us to prolong our ability to keep fighting. Sharing what we know might be the relief valve this war needs to finally end. It’s a way out for both of us.”
Gilda sat up and plucked the empty beer can off the table. She tipped the open mouth toward her to see if there was anything left, then set it back down with a hollow clink. “Do you know what I would do, if I were a zebra?”
Rainbow shook her head.
“I would take the solar tech, build as many solar farms as I could just like you expect me to, and I’d still keep fighting,” she said. She looked across the table at Rainbow, noting the growing frown on her muzzle. “Look, I don’t have anything against ponies. I’m just saying, that’s what I would do. Vhanna still controls their oil fields, and you guys are running on whatever reserve supply you stockpiled before you started the war.”
Gilda paused for a moment to see if she would try arguing that last statement, but Rainbow stayed quiet. They both knew she was right. “My point is, they have more fuel to burn than you do and a grudge to go with it. The princesses proved they were a threat to Vhanna when they gave the order to shoot. All they have to do to win is wait for you to run out of gas, and you giving them this,” she flicked the holotape’s corner with her talon. “This might do you a lot more harm than good.”
Rainbow watched the diskette spin on the polished wood. Gilda always had a way of pulling the rug out from under her, if not to prove she was right, then at least to prove she could. And maybe she was right about this too. Maybe the Vhannans would take their data in one hoof and keep beating the wardrum with the other.
But even if Gilda was right, it wouldn’t matter. Either the zebras would fight or they wouldn’t. What mattered was that she at least roll the dice and hope for a better outcome than the one they were marching toward now. Unless something changed, Equestria would be staring down the barrel of zebra cannons at the end of two years.
“This might not accomplish what I’m hoping,” she said, “but there’s no way of knowing unless I try.”
She saw Gilda’s jaw clench a little as the gryphon digested her answer. Gilda’s eyes dropped to her black flight suit and the obvious implication that she had used it to come here under the cover of stealth. “And what happens if Celestia or Luna find out?”
“They won’t,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” Gilda pushed back. “God, you never changed, did you? Try thinking about more than just yourself for once. Griffinstone has stayed out of this war because we wouldn’t stand a chance against either of you. Do you know how terrifying that is for us? To open a fucking paper every morning just to read about some new machine you two have invented to kill each other?”
Rainbow opened her mouth to answer, then stopped. A dense, black little ball formed in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know what it was like. She hadn’t even thought to ask.
“Gilda, I…”
“The thought never even crossed your mind!” She was incensed now. Her wings lifted from her sides with every furious accusation. “That’s why you thought you could just fly over and drop this in my lap, because who fucking cares what we think? Who cares if the mad queens of Equestria find out that a gryphon in some backward corner of the world fed their enemy knowledge? Am I close, Dash? Does that sound about right to you?”
Rainbow stared at the table. “You know I don’t think that.”
“Then why?” She slapped her hand against the table. “Why would you come all the way here and ask me to do this without giving the slightest thought to what might happen if the wrong pony connects the dots? What might happen to me. We have families here too, Dash!”
She put her head in her hooves. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Gilda said, shaking her head. “That’s about what I thought.”
A long silence passed over the table. Rainbow listened to Gilda’s clock tick away the seconds until the sound of it felt like a claw scratching against the surface of her skull.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t think this through.”
She reached for the holotape but was startled when Gilda palmed it off the table before she could take it. Rainbow watched her as she held the diskette between the knuckles of two fingers. Gilda stared back at her dispassionately.
“You never did, Dash. It’s what I liked about you.” She closed her fingers around the holotape. “I still kinda like it. I just needed to make sure you knew what you were risking by doing this.”
Rainbow felt the little ball of guilt grow heavier. “If you’re not comfortable with the risk, you don’t have to do this.”
Gilda snorted. “If I say no, you’re just going to end up doing something more stupid than flying across the ocean in the middle of the night.” She ran her fingers over her head, then settled her elbows on the table while gripping the back of her neck. She sighed. “I’ll do this for you, but this is the only favor you get from me. Okay? After this, we’re done.”
Rainbow nodded, trying not to think about the finality of that statement. “When do you think you can move it?”
The gryphon offered a noncommittal shrug. “Depends on what kind of risk you want to avoid. I know a guy that owes me some favors who crosses the border into Vhanna every few weeks to stock up on mesmer leaf. I can see when he’s making his next trip and have him drop it off where the right zebras will find it.”
“Do you trust him?” she asked.
Gilda chuckled and stood up to walk her empty can to the trash. “I think Gallus spends too much time getting high and not enough looking for a real job, but beyond that? Yeah, I trust him.”
Rainbow ran a wingtip over her mane until it settled over the back of her neck where a knot had begun to form. She let herself relax a little and her muscles sighed their collective relief.
“Long day, huh?” The can clinked into the trash.
“Long year,” she breathed. “Too many of them.”
“I hear you.” Gilda returned to the fridge and retrieved a fresh pair of beers. “You’re welcome to stay the night if you want. I could help you unwind a little?”
Rainbow settled her chin against her chest and let the exhausted smile spread across her muzzle. What she wouldn’t give to say yes. To spend one well-deserved, sleepless night in Gilda’s bed like they had done on the sly so many years ago. But she couldn’t. As much as her body ached for a reminder of one of those nights, she couldn’t risk it.
“I can’t,” she said. “I really, really want to but if I don’t get back…”
“I get it. You’ve got people watching you,” Gilda said, waving her off. She pulled the crisper open and put the beers back. “Hey, can I ask you something personal?”
She glanced at the clock, then nodded. “Sure.”
“Did you ever end up telling Applejack how you felt?”
Rainbow sucked on the corner of her lip. Her ready-made excuses for staying quiet on that subject rose to her mind’s surface, ready to deflect any question of why. She shook her head.
“Oh,” was all Gilda said. 
Rainbow shrugged meekly in response. “It would be a distraction,” she said. “Like you said, we have people watching us.”
“Well,” Gilda said, “I don’t want to get you in trouble by keeping you here. Would it be okay if maybe I swung by your neck of the woods sometime and we caught up?”
Sensing the natural end of her visit, Rainbow stood up from the table and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “That’d be nice.”
It was a rare sight to see Gilda smile unreservedly and yet there it was. Despite how tired she felt, Rainbow couldn’t help but do the same.
With nothing else to say, Gilda walked Rainbow back to the door. She reached for the knob, paused midway, and instead drew her arm around Rainbow and pulled her into a crushing hug. Rainbow let out a surprised squeak before relenting and giving her a hearty squeeze of her own. 
“Sorry it took me so long to visit.”
Gilda surprised her with a short, genuine laugh. “Same. You and I always sucked at this kind of thing.”
“We really did,” she chuckled. She broke the embrace and settled back onto her hooves. “Thanks again for doing this. You’re helping a lot of…”
“Nah nah nah.” Gilda shook her head. “Don’t get mushy. I hate mushy. I’m only doing this for you. You’re the one who thinks she’s saving the world.”
She let her have that one and pulled open the door, letting the cool autumn air flow inside. Gilda followed her to onto the threshold and watched her shiver against in the chill.
“I’ll see you around, Gilda.”
Gilda lifted the holotape between her fingers and shot her a tired smile.
“See ya, dweeb.”







Sledge dropped into his chair with a beleaguered grunt. The day wasn’t even half done and he was already feeling the familiar old aches of exhaustion. He stifled a yawn, forcing himself to sit up and roll closer to his terminal. He wasn’t done.
Something told him he wouldn’t be done for a long time.
The tip of his wing dipped toward the desk’s bottom drawer out of habit, seeking the bottle of amber liquid inside. His feathers were already wrapping around the handle before he stopped himself. He didn’t need Chaser and Stratus coming back up to find him two hooves into his drink. If anything, he needed to get the stuff out of his office entirely. It was getting too easy for him to open that drawer and too dangerous for Stable 10 should he fall into that spiral.
He folded his wing and turned his attention to the screen.
The still image taken from outside still glowed on his terminal, washed in phosphoric shades of green. Blue stood frozen in time on the platform, her dull eyes fixed on the sealed door. At the top right corner of the screen, a white timestamp read:


04-13-1267 05:11:29.


A little more than three hours ago. It felt like half that. Sledge tapped a key and the seconds on the timestamp began ticking forward. Blue remained still, just like when she first walked into frame. He pressed the same key again and the video sped up, minutes passing in the space of a few seconds. Blue began to move in jerky twitches, little shifts in her posture exaggerated by the accelerated passage of time. She alternated between looking at the door, then at one of the corpses near it, then back to the door. He watched her rear onto her hind legs and pound on the door for nearly a full minute before settling back on all fours. Then her head bowed as if she were sleeping, just like she had in the antechamber, and she lumbered out of frame.
Sledge stopped the playback. He knew what would happen next and his gaze drifted to the two revolvers laying on his desk. Having the deputies go in disarmed had been a risk, but he was happy he’d trusted his gut.
He turned back to the terminal, his attention hovering over the grainy image of the tunnel. There was something there that Overmare Spitfire didn’t want anyone, not even the overmares or stallions who came after her, to see.
He rubbed his eyes, unable to stop seeing the afterimage of that family of unicorns whenever he closed them. None of it made any sense. Stable 10 had been set aside to preserve the strongest bloodlines of Equestria’s pegasi so that one day they would once again tame the skies. It was something they all learned at an early age and was extensively detailed in Stable records. Survival wasn’t just their goal, it was their mission. Stronger Together and all that.
So why were there so many earth ponies and unicorns among the bodies outside? If Stable 10 was reserved for pegasi, what were they doing there?
They were looking for shelter, he thought to himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. The ponies outside hadn’t stumbled across the tunnel in the midst of panic. They’d brought luggage. Bags. Toys for their foals. The idea that they had somehow managed to pack during the apocalypse sounded like a bad joke. The ponies outside were prepared because they knew Stable 10 was here. They thought they would be let inside.
Sledge looked at the fuzzy white timestamp on the screen. Opal had tried her best to explain to him the sheer volume of data the Stable servers were capable of storing, and that a significant portion of that was being steadily claimed by this feed and several more like it. If there were answers to be found, they would be here.
He reached forward and pressed a different key. One by one, seconds began ticking in reverse. He tapped it again and the minutes dissolved.
Blue slid backwards into the frame and renewed her beating on the door. He tapped the key again, watching her stutter around the platform in the space of a breath and disappear off screen.
Hours on screen blinked by and Blue returned to repeat the same ritual at the door, then vanish again. Then she was back. Sledge watched her go through the same motions of visiting the door and disappearing over and over again until the timestamp had rolled back by several days. 
Suddenly a flurry of activity took place on the platform. The sallow green image hiccuped and the screen was briefly flooded with gold light and deep shadows. Sledge stopped the footage, and his terminal settled on the familiar still image of a sealed door and a darkened platform. Except now the cement semicircle was completely empty. The two mangled corpses were gone, as was the smeared pool of blood between them. Already knowing what he was about to see, he braced himself and played back the last few minutes.
After waiting, the perspective from the camera shuddered and a thin curtain of dust filtered down from the ceiling. He felt an eerie sense of otherness as he watched the Stable door begin sinking into the blast-proof wall that dominated the tunnel’s terminus. Seeing it from this side sparked something like awe in him as great shafts of light pierced the darkness. The image stuttered as the camera’s night vision briefly washed out and was quickly replaced by a scene he recognized. Golden light spilled over the grey platform and threw long, pitch black shadows behind the ridges of each uneven flagstone.
Aurora’s silhouette stepped silently into the open doorway. Overmare Delphi’s rifle hung off her right shoulder, its muzzle swaying in sync with her gait. With a single step, she became the first pegasus to leave the Stable in over two hundred years. Sledge found himself taking a slow, sympathetic breath for her as she stared into the darkness.
Then she froze. The natural light gave the footage better resolution than the night vision mode could manage, and he could see her ears spin forward. As if something pulled from a horror film, Sledge watched three black figures streak out of the darkness toward her. He saw her fumble for her Pip-Buck and switch on the lamp just in time to see the first one scrambling across the platform toward her. She barely had time to tuck her tail before the monster tackled her, sending the two of them sprawling into the blast wall. Then the second one was on her. He watched as the light from the Stable began to wane in the shadow of the now closing door. Legs kicked and flailed out from the dogpile, blood smearing the concrete with each frantic movement.
The third creature lingered nearby as if unsure what to do now that the frenzy was in full swing. Sledge watched its attention shift from Aurora to the closing door. He felt a flush of anger as the thing made up its mind and bolted toward the gap between the wall and the approaching gear. It mistimed the approach and dove headlong toward its own demise, spasming violently as its upper half was crushed in the uncaring mechanism’s jaws. Sledge made a face and looked away until the camera hiccuped and swapped back to the more forgiving green sea of night vision.
Two gouts of light flickered from the edge of the platform and Sledge watched the two monsters fling away from Aurora with each flash. Sledge watched as a black figure - a unicorn, judging by the dark spike jutting from his forehead - approached her. In the poor resolution he couldn’t make out the details of Aurora’s face beyond her wide eyes and the dark stain that had begun to pool around her hip. They seemed to speak for a moment before the unicorn spun around, caught by surprise as Blue’s decrepit wings slid into view and rushed toward them. But she stopped short of attacking, which seemed to be her sole intention.
He watched the next several minutes play out with little more than confusion. The unicorn stooped over Aurora, rendering her some kind of first aid that he had to assume was a stimpack of some kind, only to be rewarded with a swift kick to the chest. Blue moved in, ready to defend her counterpart, but the unicorn said something that made her back down. Blue left, and minutes later Aurora was on her hooves and limping away into the tunnel with the unicorn at her side.
Sledge rubbed his muzzle with his hoof, torn between worrying about the pool of blood she walked away from and the knowledge that she had survived. The temptation to get up and go outside just to give the two bodies on the platform a good hard stomp was hard to ignore.
Once his temper had cooled, he tapped the keyboard again. The footage began spooling backward. He sped it up, not wanting to see Aurora’s attack in any more detail than he’d already seen. 
The Stable door blinked and the platform was bare again.
He settled into his chair as the picture dove back into history. Days passed by with each second. When the timestamp had walked itself back to the tune of one month, he slowed the video a little.
It didn’t take long for Blue to appear again on the platform. Sledge shook his head, surprised to still see her there. A second figure wandered through the frame, its gaze unfocused and its gait unsteady. He recognized it as one of the creatures that would eventually attack Aurora and narrowed his eyes at it, willing it to get off his terminal. It did just that, wandering in reverse until it drifted off screen near the far edge of the blast wall.
Sledge tapped the keyboard and the footage leapt back again. He leaned on his armrest, watching Blue flicker in and out of frame so many times that he thought maybe it was a tracking artifact burned into the footage. He pressed stop and the date on the timestamp read 11-03-1262. Almost five years ago.
There, curled up outside the door, lay Blue.
“What?” he whispered.
She slept there until the unicorn who saved Aurora came to wake her. Sledge watched him gently shake her shoulder until she lifted her head off the floor. She stood up and seemed to take some time getting her bearings before following him down the short platform steps. She was limping, favoring her hind leg until she stopped altogether. She looked back at her hind leg, as if she didn’t know what to do with it.
The unicorn turned, saw she was struggling, and came back. She watched him as he sat down next to her and used his hooves to gently extend her leg until it pointed straight back. Then he pushed it forward, holding the hoof as close to her hip as she seemed willing to allow. He repeated the process several times until something he saw on Blue’s face let him determine it was enough. He got up and resumed leading her away. She followed close behind, her limp gone.
Sledge frowned at the screen as he set the recording to backtrack again. The tunnel must have been their home.
He stopped the video again, this time seeking out a more specific date. 09-30-1213. The day he was born.
The platform was the same as before. Empty, devoid of motion, and depressingly green. It felt as if time outside the Stable had no meaning. The same bodies loitered around the pillars and the same massive gear stood at the top of the screen, its bold number 10 standing tall for a lifeless, uncaring tunnel. Anything that was important was taking place on the other side of that door. Somewhere beyond that number, his late parents were deciding his name.
He indulged in a melancholic smile and wondered what they would say if they knew he was the overstallion now.
He lifted his hoof toward the keyboard, preparing to spin back the footage as far as it would go, but he stopped. He felt the creases forming between his eyebrows as he saw her walking out from the bottom of the screen.
Blue approached the platform, trotted up the steps and stopped outside the door.
“No,” he said.
He couldn’t be sure, but her mane looked a little fuller. Her tail a little less disheveled. She stood there as she had done all the times before. He saw her chest expand and slowly empty, her mouth open in a furious scream that no one could hear. Then she resumed attacking the door with her bare hooves. Sledge’s chair groaned as he leaned back, unwilling to believe that anyone could live in that desolate tunnel, performing the same ritual for fifty-four years.
Bewildered, he sent the footage creeping back. Blue backed out of frame and several hours later she reappeared to do exactly the same thing as before. Then she left, only to come back again with the black unicorn in tow. He watched as she curled onto the ground, the unicorn seemingly putting her there instead of waking her up, and then he departed just as quickly. Blue eventually stood, assaulted the door, and left.
Over and over again, the cycle repeated like a record stuck on a sickening loop, Blue railing against the door and the unicorn coming to calm her, without end.
Sledge threw the footage back another fifty years, knowing by then they would truly be gone. He punched the keyboard and the footage began to play. 04-02-1173. Almost the exact midpoint between now and the end of the war that put them here.
He stared at his terminal, at a loss for words.
There she stood.
Sledge put his elbows on the desk and dragged his hooves behind his head until his nose almost pressed against the wooden surface.
One hundred years. How did anyone live one hundred years?
He could feel his heart beginning to pick up its tempo as he looked up at the screen. It was undeniably Blue, and she looked markedly better than before. He could make out a definitive pattern of monochromatic stripes in her mane, and the bones of her hips were much less protruded than before.
The skeletal corpses surrounding the pillars and the far walls had changed as well. A few had shifted positions, sitting upright now rather than laying spilled across the stones. Fragments of clothing appeared on several of them, still little more than tatters.
He swallowed and sent the footage further back.
A decade slid by. Then another. He watched as the uneven flagstones began to shift, settling together until their seams came in line with each other as if seeking an equilibrium. The bodies around the pillars grew clothing. Then skin. They fattened and wide, dark stains took shape beneath them. Sledge grimaced as his brain made sense of what he was watching. Mummification was being undone. Putrefaction played out in the wrong direction.
He slowed the playback a little despite his growing discomfort. Decades slowed until only years were ticking by. 
1087. 1086. 1085.
Every time he slowed the footage, Blue dutifully appeared and flickered on and off the platform like frames from a prewar film reel. It wasn’t possible, and yet there she was.
1079. 1078.
The stains darkened and the bodies abruptly ballooned like a field of flowers blooming at the same time. Sledge recoiled. Blue returned to hammer door over and over again like awful clockwork.
1077.
Suitcases, luggage and all manner of belongings materialized around their owners cluster by cluster. Sledge all but jumped out of his chair in his rush to slow the feed.
12-01-1077.
He felt like he was stuck in a dream. Blue and her unicorn companion stood at the base of the first pillar, rooting through luggage, her ritual seemingly broken. They both wore something around their muzzles. Cloth, he realized, for the smell. The bodies would be fresh enough to stink. It was his first time seeing Blue doing something other than mill back and forth from the door, and it felt like he was seeing a glimpse of the mare who had begged him for her parents less than an hour earlier. She stood facing away from the camera, her shoulders bent as she busied herself empty the suitcase in front of her into a neat pile of clothing, papers and other personal treasures.
The unicorn lifted something in his magic for Blue to see. A flask he had found. He waited for Blue to look but she had stopped sorting, her head bowed. Sledge surprised himself by recognizing the significance of her slumped posture. She had done the same thing when he pinned her to the railing. Something in her had simply disconnected, like a toy robot in need of being wound up again. 
He watched the black unicorn get up and stand next to Blue, nudging her with his hoof until she startled out of her trance. They spoke, she shook her head in response to something he said, and though Sledge couldn’t hear the words he could understand the comforting leg that wrapped around Blue’s heaving shoulders. Her companion rocked her as she sobbed.
Sledge couldn’t shake the feeling that he was intruding on something intensely private and forced himself to look away. His eyes settled on the timestamp. 
December, 1077. Barely a month after spellfire turned the world to ash.
He keyed the terminal and watched the days count back.
Something was immediately different about the footage. Blue and the nameless unicorn were mysteriously absent. For several weeks the tunnel was motionless. Stains darkened beneath the larger gatherings of bodies, shrank, and disappeared.
Then, like a kicked anthill, everything came to life.
Corpses sprang to their hooves one by one, many preceded by flashes of white that Sledge distantly understood to be gunshots. Ponies he had only just begun to grow used to seeing as empty vessels were now milling across the flagstones in tight clusters. He watched their expressions shift from hopelessness to worry to fear and finally to abject panic. As the mixed crowd of ponies approached the peak of terror, the wash of green flickered white.
When the picture returned, it was in full vibrant color. The tunnel’s ancient lights, not too ancient back then, snapped back on and with them came crisp resolution that Sledge was grateful not to have when the tunnel had been lined with the dead. The clustered ponies began to spread throughout the tunnel, afraid but unaware of the darkness that would eventually come to consume them.
10-31-1077.
Sledge felt his heart beating again. This was the date. The day on which every history book ended and every terminal inside Stable 10 switched on. It was like pulling open the curtains on a great secret. He hesitated and allowed the video to keep spooling back. When he finally hit play, the tunnel was a different scene entirely.
The Stable door stood open like a promise. Twelve pegasi stood evenly spaced around the perimeter of the platform, each one wielding the unmistakable black shape of a rifle in the crook of their wing. Their slim blue and yellow jumpsuits were strangely familiar, and it took Sledge a moment to realize they weren’t Stable jumpsuits but instead Wonderbolt flight suits. 
The sight of them, even on his meager terminal screen, filled him with quiet pride. At the end of all things, the Wonderbolts had earned their spot as legends for risking their lives and getting the first residents to safety. 
He watched as pegasi arrived alone and in groups, several landing on the flagstones so hard that they fell and needed to be helped up by the unit members stationed at the platform’s rim. They hurried into the Stable half-flying, half-galloping.
Pegasi of every shade filtered past the armed contingent and into the Stable. As the minutes ticked away, new arrivals began showing up in worse shape than their predecessors. A mare landed on the flagstones with her foreleg sheeted in blood and needed to be carried inside. An older couple flew into frame so quickly they looked as if they had been thrown. There wasn’t so much as a suitcase between them as they bounded over the platform, their eyes wide with fear. Pegasi began flowing past the camera as if an unseen valve had been thrown open. They arrived by the dozens in a tangle of wings and jostling hooves, forcing the Wonderbolts to make room in their formation for all of them to pass.
The picture shuddered and the pegasi filtering through their ranks opened their mouths in silent screams. Some looked back toward the tunnel entrance. Most ducked their heads and shoved forward, following the crush of pegasi over the threshold and into the packed antechamber. Sledge tried not to think about the logistics of processing so many terrified residents.
As they pushed their way to safety, Sledge noticed a single pegasus shoving her way back out. Even in the chaos, her fiery slicked-back mane was impossible to mistake. Sledge watched Spitfire, the first overmare of Stable 10, navigate through the gradually thinning crowd and drop onto the platform outside.
It was surreal. Overmare Spitfire stood at the focus of the Wonderbolts’ arc, watching as the flow of pegasi became a trickle. She kept checking the sleek new Pip-Buck adorning her foreleg as if she were checking the time. After a moment, Sledge realized that was exactly what she was doing. 
Minutes passed and the flow of pegasi trickled to nothing. The camera shuddered again. The bottom of the frame bloomed with distant light for several seconds before returning to normal. The Wonderbolts on the platform shifted nervously on their hooves, eyes cast far off frame. 
Spitfire finally straightened and began speaking. She pointed a yellow feather skyward and spun it in a tight circle. Wrap it up.
Sledge could almost hear the sigh of relief that came from the Wonderbolts as they broke ranks and filed toward the open door. He didn’t know if he would have the discipline to walk as calmly as they had.
Then they slowed. Their ears and eyes turning toward a source of sound he couldn’t see. Their faces, particularly Spitfire’s, contorted with irritation as an earth pony laden with luggage galloped into frame. She was yelling something to the departing pegasi as she stumbled, caught herself and scrambled up the platform toward them.
One of the Wonderbolts looked to Spitfire, who shook her head in answer.
His unspoken order received, the stallion stepped toward the earth pony with the feathers of his empty wing spread open in an unmistakable gesture for her to stop. The mare’s ears went flat with confusion as two more Wonderbolts took up position behind him, their weapons held with quiet threat.
Sledge felt a stone tumble into the pit of his stomach.
The earth pony tried to step around the lead Wonderbolt but he moved to block her, his mouth working as he ordered her back. She shrank away, bewildered as Spitfire and the rest of her Wonderbolts retreated into the Stable. Behind her, another survivor galloped into the frame with a young filly in tow. Seeing what was happening, the breathless parent made a more concerted effort to lead his daughter around the guards and was stopped at the end of a raised rifle. The Wonderbolt wielding it shoved his weapon forward with unmasked aggression, pushing the small family back off the platform.
But they were arriving in groups now, a second wave of refugees that were entirely different than the first. Unicorns and earth ponies hauled suitcases bulging with whatever they could carry toward the platform, followed by a thin mix of pegasi that helped the others along. The camera shuddered, harder this time, and the trio of Wonderbolts blocking the platform began to grow nervous. They barked for the crowd to step back, shoving the frontmost ponies so hard that they spilled off the steps into confused heaps.
Sledge watched a Wonderbolt lift his rifle and squeeze off a stuttering burst toward the ceiling. The terrified crowd shrank back from the gunfire only to look up and see the other two weapons leveled toward them, their bearers screaming at them to back away. Many of them did, shielding their children behind them as they guided them back onto the flagstones. Others stood their ground, shouting in defiance of the rifles aimed at them and gesturing at the open Stable door with hooves, horns and wings alike.
The three Wonderbolts kept their black barrels trained on the crowd as they retreated toward the catwalk. A few stepped forward to follow but another strobe of gunfire forced them back. Sledge watched the ponies left behind scream and plead as the pegasi crossed the catwalk. At the front of the formation, he could see Spitfire holding up a placating hoof as if she were feeding them reassurances. Whatever she was saying, it was being shouted down by the ponies at the edge of the platform.
It didn’t matter.
Slowly, the Stable door and its massive 10 rolled into view.
A unicorn stepped forward, his hoof pointed at Spitfire in accusation. Someone pitched something small through the narrowing gap, striking a Wonderbolt across the shoulder. As it dawned on them that they were being shut out, there was a visible shift in the crowd. The devil behind them became more terrifying than the one staring through the closing door ahead. They burst over the platform en masse. At least a dozen auras swarmed the gear’s descending teeth in an attempt to halt it, but it continued lazily along its track without so much as slowing down.
The crowd reached the door just in time to watch the last slivers of the Stable disappear behind it. Hooves, wings and magic battered the steel as the unseen coupler behind it shoved forward, driving the door into its socket. 
And just like that, it was done. 
Several ponies wheeled around in abject panic, mouths open in silent screams as the realization of what just happened became clear to them. More pressed forward to beat themselves against the uncaring barrier, unable to know that their efforts would yield no fruit. Their futures were already written.
Sledge felt numb. He leaned his forehead against his hoof, staring at the keyboard beneath his nose. He closed his eyes and tried to make sense of what he just witnessed.
They had been told that they were descended from the best and brightest pegasi Equestria had to offer. That their Stable had been reserved for them so that when it finally opened with all the others, they would be ready to tame the wild skies. They were one of the many seeds strewn beneath Equestria’s soil, and it was their duty to survive. To keep living so that one day others could look up and see the sun.
It was all a lie.
Overmare Delphi’s anguished voice echoed in his thoughts.
This is why they didn’t give us a single unicorn. It’s another one of their Celestia-damned experiments.
She had known the truth. Maybe she hadn’t seen the footage, but she had known all the same. Sledge glanced up at the screen, at the crowd gathering outside the door, and tried to count the unicorns he could see. He lost track at fifty. There was no point in looking for more. All the unicorns they needed were laying outside where Spitfire had abandoned them to die.
He leaned back and stared past the screen, past the terrified ponies gathering there, toward some indeterminate point beyond his desk. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to be here anymore.
A flicker of color caught his eye and, grudgingly, he hauled his attention back to the screen. More ponies were flooding into the tunnel, too many to have come by coincidence. They were there because someone told them to be there if the worst ever happened. And yet they found themselves staring up at a dead end.
All of them, including a blue pegasus making her way across the platform.
Sledge blinked the haze from his eyes and squinted at the screen. The crowd made way for the mare, parting in front of her as if tugged by an invisible force. The expressions on their faces were unmistakable. Joy, relief, hope. She would do what they couldn’t. She would open the door and lead them to safety. She would save them.
Blue reached the door to Stable 10 and looked up, her magenta eyes pinched with confusion. Sledge barely noticed. He leaned forward in his chair, his gaze fixed on her short, multicolored mane. At first he thought he had mistaken her for someone else. That had to be it, he decided. Blue was the gaunt, shadow of a pony that had retreated beneath the bench of her cell like a kicked puppy. This mare - this impossibly familiar mare - passed through the crowd like a messiah.
The mare listened to the ponies around her as they filled her in on what happened before her arrival. But instead of performing the miracle they were praying for, the mare did something else. She placed her hooves on the surface of the door and looked up, her eyes seeking something high above her.
They settled on Sledge and grew narrow.
She opened her beautiful canopy of blue feathers and launched herself toward the camera fast enough to make him flinch in his seat. Suddenly, his screen was filled with Blue’s nimble frame, her face contorted with barely contained anger. She hovered there, treading air while she spoke to the unblinking lens. She spoke quickly, her lips moving too fast for him to read the anxious words tumbling out of them. Then he stopped trying.
His attention dropped to Blue’s neck, and the gemless gold necklace that hung around it. Then she turned, stabbing a hoof toward the sealed door below, and his jaw sagged.
Emblazoned on Blue’s hip was a cutie mark he and every resident of Stable 10 knew by heart. A cloud pierced by a tricolor bolt of lightning.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. Then the truth dawned on him in full force. He jumped out of his chair, sending it toppling behind him. “Holy shit!”
Rainbow Dash stared out from his terminal with desperate anger as she screamed at the camera. She was beginning to understand what Sledge already knew. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled across her cheeks as she tumbled into a frantic cycle of the same three words. Let us in.
Sledge reached forward and stopped the video, freezing Rainbow Dash’s terrified face mid-scream.
Let us in.
He stared back. They had let her in, he realized. 
Two centuries too late.







The door to the deputy station slid open and Sledge walked inside.
His hooves felt unusually heavy as he shut the door behind him. The station was quiet, save for the steady sigh of the air recyclers. It was almost peaceful. Blue looked up from beneath the bench as he approached her cell, but he knew that wasn’t right. Not anymore. Her eyes, though faded, could no longer hide the truth behind who she really was.
He shed his wing guards and lay them on the ground outside the bars. It was hard for him to explain, but they felt wrong. Maybe Aurora would know why that was. She seemed to have found so many answers out there already.
The lock let out a dull clunk as he turned the key. Part of him expected it to have been picked already, but it's lone occupant was too far gone for that. He slid open the door and paused to gauge her reaction. She gazed up at him with silent curiosity, her cheek still resting on her stained bedding. If she wanted to attack him, she would. He stepped inside anyway.
To his relief, she didn’t attack. Even when he lowered himself to the floor beside her bench, wincing when his right knee let out a sharp click, she only watched. The composite wall was cool against his back. It felt good to have something solid pushing back against him. The last hour felt too much like a dream.
He settled his hooves into his lap and looked at her for a quiet moment, then asked, “You’re her, aren’t you?”
Rainbow Dash’s ear flicked the air.
He offered a somber smile in return and looked down at the necklace beneath her foreleg. It wasn’t a replica. It was a part of a legacy that they would never get back. Maybe, somewhere out there, the other five Elements of Harmony were lying in the rubble of some forgotten ruin waiting to be discovered. Maybe they had all been destroyed except for this one empty necklace. It didn’t matter. The bombs had fallen. The time for saving the world had come and gone centuries ago.
He took a deep breath and let it out, slowly.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he admitted with a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t know if there’s a cure for what you have or… whether you can even understand me.”
Rainbow huffed through her nose. It could have meant anything.
Sledge sighed. “Would you believe last week I worked in Mechanical? I’m an overstallion now. It’s a pretty good promotion, if you can ignore the fact that this whole place will be dark within a month. The power holidays are helping mask the brown-outs, but pretty soon folks are going to know how bad it’s getting.” He tipped his head toward her. “I saw what happened outside. How afraid everyone was when Overmare Spitfire closed you all out.”
A low growl rumbled past Rainbow’s lips. Sledge tensed.
“Maybe I should change the subject,” he offered.
He took her silence as agreement. For a long while, they watched each other in amiable silence. Occasionally she would flick her tail or turn her attention to her necklace or book. She kept both near her head. Sledge wondered whether she knew what either of them were anymore. If their initial meeting or the footage were anything to go by, her state of mind ranged wildly between lucidity and a walking coma.
It reminded him of his father before he passed away. His dad had always been a pillar of the family. A guidepost that Sledge had striven to reach in his younger years. He was the stallion to never forget a name after hearing it. But then he did. Gradually, over the course of months, he began to lose track of things. Then ponies. The first time his dad looked at him and sheepishly asked whether they knew each other, Sledge knew he was gone. He died less than a year later.
This thing that Rainbow Dash had probably wasn’t what his father had suffered through. Not exactly. But it was close, and that was bad enough. Through some unimaginable process, her body had persevered while her mind decayed. Watching her rest, he wondered about those first moments in the antechamber. 
She had asked for her parents. Begged for them, even. In that brief span of clarity she had sought answers to a question that had to have been plaguing her for centuries. Sledge looked down to the darkened screen of his Pip-Buck and sighed. He might not be able to fix her, but at the very least he could offer her closure.
He pressed a feather into one of its recessed switches and the little computer woke up.
Navigating the archives was straightforward, even without an overstallion’s credentials to help him along. He descended through the categories layer by layer like a taproot seeking water. Preserved Documents. Public Media. News & Events. Birth, Marriage, & Death. Then finally, Obituaries. 
He filled her mother’s name into waiting field.
Whistles, Windy.
A single obituary scrolled down the screen accompanied by a grainy photo of a mare wearing a small, uncomfortable smile. Wrinkles pinched the corners of her eyes. Signs of a joyful life, his own mother used to say. He invited Rainbow closer with a gentle pat on the ground, but her expression turned wary. She didn’t move.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”
Rainbow flicked her tail. She eyed his Pip-Buck as he turned toward it and began to read:






Windy Whistles
1011-1097


Windy went to her final rest in the gardens on November 9th, 1097. In her own words, she lived a life “rich with spices that made each day worth living.”
She was born May 5th, 1011 in Cloudsdale where she was well-known as a notorious prankster. Being a single child, Windy turned the lion’s share of her mischief toward the unwitting pegasi in her neighborhood. A resident who lived near Windy at the time shared her story of Windy spending an entire night flying down to the farms on the ground for the sole purpose of abducting as many roosters as she could and depositing them into the backyards of her neighbors. Not a single pegasus slept in after sunrise that morning.
Her mother and father were not immune to her notorious sense of humor. When Windy was given a pet canary for her thirteenth birthday, she named him “Fart” so her parents would have to scream his name to come home whenever he escaped his cage.
At age sixteen, Windy began her long and illustrious career in education as a teacher’s aid at her high school. She graduated with honors, but did not attend the ceremony. She and her friends were preoccupied removing the top center drawers from every teacher’s desk they could get their hooves on and replacing them with ones taken from the furthest corners of the school.
Despite her reputation as a schoolhouse rascal, Windy had a well-known admiration for her teachers and went on to attend the University of Cloudsdale in pursuit of a degree in education. During her six years in college she met an athlete named Bow Hothoof, and the two made sparks. After receiving her masters degree, Bow proposed. They were married in the summer of 1035. A year later, Windy gave birth to her only daughter, Rainbow Dash.
Though Rainbow Dash was loved by many for her feats in service of Equestria, that loved paled in comparison to the adoration Windy had for her daughter. Those who worked with her at…





A soft scraping noise pulled him away from the text.
Rainbow Dash tentatively eased herself out from her nook. Bit by bit, she approached Sledge, her towel hooking the bottom lip of the bench and peeling away as she stepped out. 
He didn’t move, fearing if he startled her she might retreat or worse. She didn’t. As quietly as she had gotten up, she bent her knees next to him and settled back down with her head resting in his lap. There was a clarity in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. She watched the glowing text on his Pip-Buck like a filly waiting to have a fairy tale read to her. She was coming back.
Sledge leaned forward so she could see the screen. If the subtle adjustment bothered her, she didn’t show it. Acting purely on what felt right in that moment, he slowly spread his feathers open and draped his wing around her. She rolled her shoulder, tucking it under the blanket of feathers, and he smiled as he kept reading.





Those who worked with her at Little Trotter Elementary were regularly ambushed with new foal photos, stories and updates on the long list of sniffles and coughs every new parent has ever lost sleep over. Windy was known for smuggling her daughter into class whenever she couldn’t find a sitter, and on more than one occasion she was reprimanded when fellow teachers reported a rainbow-colored foal flying loose in the hallways.
Windy retired from Little Trotter Elementary after thirty-three years of service. She was a beloved teacher in reading, mathematics, and science courses during her tenure, however she often admitted her favorite class to teach was history. She and Bow enjoyed their retirement managing their community garden and maintaining a modest fanclub in honor of their daughter.
On October 31st, 1077, Windy and Bow received orders to evacuate. Like so many of us, they were unfortunate enough to see Cloudsdale fall. They were among the first to reach the Stable, but in the chaos Windy became separated from her husband. Only after the Stable was sealed and the survivors were registered did she learn Bow Hothoof had gone back out to help direct pegasi to safety. He is presumed to have died in the blast that struck shortly after the overmare ordered the door closed.





A gentle sob shuddered through her. He couldn’t see Rainbow’s face, but he could feel the dampness soaking into his jumpsuit where her cheek lay. He set his empty hoof over her shoulder.
“Welcome back,” he said. 
She wrapped one of her hooves around his foreleg and hugged it tightly against her chest, saying nothing.





Those of us who were blessed to know Windy Whistles knew the strength in her heart. Many of us, including Windy, lost everything that day. Mourning claimed more lives than we could ever imagine, but Windy managed to turn her grief into a purpose. When she received her assignment to Fabrication, she gave it back and refused to accept anything other than the job she knew. She resumed teaching, and for the fillies and colts who shared her classroom, she became a surrogate mother. She loved us, and we could only hope that she knew how much we loved her in return.
I lost my parents when the world outside ended. I was too young to understand at the time, but they had enrolled me in Stable-Tec’s Foundling program. They spent their life’s savings making sure if the worst ever happened, I would be safe here. When I went to school on level three for the first time, I remember not being able to stop crying. I wanted to go home so bad and I didn’t understand why no one would let me.
I remember Mrs. Whistles getting down on her knees and asking me if I wanted my parents to come get me, and I said yes. She didn’t know I was a foundling until she checked my resident file. I remember her looking like she was going to cry and feeling bad for making her so sad. She could have sent me to the counselor’s office and no one would have blamed her. Instead, she took me out into the hall and asked if I wanted to come live with her.
When I was eight, Windy formally adopted me. We were two rafts stranded in a stormy sea and she lashed hers to mine without thinking twice. She saw the best and worst of me every day and loved me through it all. She taught me the importance of finding joy in the little things, whether it be cleaning the compartment or watching reruns of bad sitcoms. She always shared stories of her life outside and what it was like to be the mother of an Element of Harmony. There have been plenty of opportunities for her to use her daughter’s memory to make life easier in some way, and each time she turned them down. She taught me how to be humble, and to never spend someone else’s honor for my own gain. Windy Whistles was the best mom I could ever hope to have. Someday I hope to be just as good a father.
Mom passed away peacefully in her sleep surrounded by family, neighbors and friends. Mourning her most of all is her son, Cirrus Whistles.




He cleared the roughness forming in his throat. “She was preceded in death by her beloved husband and daughter, together reunited in the garden of eternal rest.”
Those final words rang off the bare walls like a lonely bell. He closed his eyes and listened to her muffled sobs, like a small child only just realizing she was lost. There was no child in the cell with him. Only a skeletal mare who Death had chosen to ignore, leaving her to flake away in a black tunnel until she had been reduced to peering through the shrinking window of her own mind while baser instincts dismantled the foundation of who she had once been. 
He looked down at her, knowing there was nothing he could say that could fix her. Nothing he could do that would make any of this okay. Everyone she ever cared for had left her behind centuries ago.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He scrubbed his nose into the corner of his other wing and sniffed, unsure how to respond. The last few hours were not how he planned this morning to go.
Her sobs gently subsided and for a while she lay there, covered in his feathers, her eyes skimming the last lines of her mother’s obituary. She let go of his hoof to reach out and turn the black knob on his Pip-Buck, rolling back to the top of the listing until her mother’s picture slid back into view. She took a slow breath and shakily exhaled.
“How long have I been gone?”
Sledge’s lip twisted with hesitation. “The war ended two hundred twenty years ago.”
She went still. “Oh.”
He grimaced, wishing he’d used a softer touch.
“It feels like I’m trapped in one of her nightmares,” Rainbow continued, her eyes lifting from her mother’s photo to the dull walls of the deputy station. “I hoped I was, but… this is all real, isn’t it?”
She turned her head toward him, seeing him for the first time. 
He nodded. “Afraid so.”
Rainbow closed her eyes and pinched her lips together. She pushed herself up with a creaking grunt, leaving a damp patch where her cheek had rested against his jumpsuit. Sledge turned off his Pip-Buck display and followed suit, wincing at the sharp pop from his knee as he stood.
She stepped toward the cell door and frowned. Her ears dipped. “I hurt someone, didn’t I,” she asked.
“You got confused when we brought you in,” Sledge said, his eyes lingering on the ghost of her cutie mark. “Do you know why that happened?”
Rainbow looked back at him, shamefaced. “Not really. Only that it comes and goes.” She frowned, almost wincing. “He said the radiation does it, but I got stuck in between.”
“Your friend from the tunnel,” he said. “The unicorn?”
She began to nod, then shook her head. 
“Changeling,” she corrected. She turned away from the bars, her attention drawn by her belongings below the bench. As she crossed the cell toward them, she saw the confusion on his face. “One of the shapeshifters from Chrysalis’s hive.”
Sledge feigned understanding. He didn’t remember anything about shapeshifters from his prewar history classes growing up.
Rainbow scooped up her Element and sat down on the bench with it in her lap. She pinched one of the clasps between her feathers, frowned, and set it back down. She looked over her shoulder at the torn stump of her wing and let out a miserable sigh. “Great.”
“Here,” he said, stepping toward her. He picked up the necklace and she bent her head a little, allowing him to link them under the fringe of what remained of her gray mane. Stepping back, he watched her straighten and touch the edge of the empty socket with her hoof, smiling tightly.
“Thanks,” she said. Her smile dimmed a little and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “I knew this wouldn’t last.”
Sledge frowned. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head, less of an answer and more dismissal of his sudden concern. “I’ll be fine. Just take it off, please. I get panicky sometimes if I can’t see it.”
The clasp came apart with some difficulty, and in the meantime Rainbow’s breathing became more deliberate. She clutched her Element in her hooves, steadying herself.
“I haven’t been clear like this for a long time.” She glanced up at him and forced a grateful smile across her stricken muzzle. “I never got your name.”
“Sledge,” he said.
She repeated him, sampling how it sounded. “Can I ask you a question?”
He nodded.
“Why did she do that to us?” Tears played at the corners of her eyes. “Why didn’t she let us in?”
She swayed slightly, then further. Sledge placed a hoof on her shoulder to keep her from falling off the bench. She was fading again.
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
Her eyes went unfocused. “Find out,” she said. “She’s a murderer, Sledge. She killed us.”
“I know. I saw,” he said, guiding her off the bench and onto the floor. She blinked, looking at him with confusion.
“She killed us.”
Sledge nodded. “You’re safe now. Lay down for me, okay?”
She bent her knees, already drawn to the safety beneath her bench. Sledge held her Element in the cup of his wing as she crawled over her book onto the tattered bedding. Once she was settled in with her back to the corner, he laid her necklace on the floor where she could see it. She pulled her knees close to her chest, her expression slowly settling.
“Killed,” she murmured.
Like a cooling filament, the last glow of Rainbow Dash went dark.
Blue settled her cheek down into the stains and stared off toward nothing.







Aurora lay in the dirt, her breathing slow and rhythmic. Roach lay beside her with a self-satisfied grin pulled across his cracked lips. He was close enough that she could slug him if she wanted to, and oh did she want to. Out of the corner of her eye, he stared at her with that same dopey grin he’d been wearing between their turns, and if he kept it up he was going to find himself walking with a limp.
She sighed, lifted her cheek away from her rifle and glowered at him.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” he cheerily replied.
Aurora muttered a colorful threat that made him smile even wider, returning her focus toward the target on the far side of the mostly dry riverbed. At first they intended to only stop for a short rest before crossing the quarter-mile wide stretch of mud. Little remained of the bridge that once spanned the shallow chasm, worn down to its caissons which jutted out of the mire like broken teeth. After finding a comfortable patch of ground to sit and catch their breath, Roach took notice of a boathouse that had fallen halfway down the far bank. Whenever it had collapsed it dragged a woodpile down with it, strewing dozens of quartered logs around its broken frame.
The terrain was beginning to reflect a true wasteland now that they were drawing nearer to the cities of the east coast. Fillydelphia was only a few days away and their little country road had grown two more lanes, shed its asphalt for proper concrete and sprouted bent and rusted road signs pointing to places that no longer existed. The forests were behind them now, as were the rolling valleys and bluffs, replaced by a wide unbroken vista of cracked soil and strange outcroppings of regolith that Ginger referred to as “shock rock.” Shards of bedrock peeled out of the earth and thrown in every direction for dozens of miles when the bombs fell.
Roach explained that they were approaching one such bomb crater, though it was still several hours away. It explained why the flora had thinned out so abruptly. Apparently a small town of sorts had sprung up nearby and was the last pocket of civilization between here and the deserted suburbs surrounding Fillydelphia. It would also be their last opportunity to restock on supplies. 
After their encounter with Gallow and the fiasco Aurora had made of his death, a cloud had settled over the three of them that didn’t appear likely to clear up any time soon. The lumber spilled around the far bank presented an opportunity that Roach leapt on. After suggesting they take a break for some target practice and receiving stiff resistance from Aurora, he decided to challenge her to a friendly competition instead.
“Five shots each,” he suggested, pointing at the chopped timbers. “Loser has to sing for us, winner chooses which song.”  
Aurora was no stranger to carrying on a song once she had enough of Carbide’s homebrew sloshing in her gut. However, she was also notoriously terrible back home for not being able to carry a tune and she was unapologetic about singing the occasional verses out of order, much to the consternation of anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot. Because she was so terrible, she never sang sober as a personal rule. It was never a bad idea to have a built-in excuse for poor performance.
The bet tickled her interest, though. Roach’s voice was, to be generous, run ragged. It didn’t seem to bother him in the least bit and judging by the glint in his eye, he was counting on her to accept simply over the temptation to hear him belt out a tune. It was a hard gamble to turn down. After some friendly encouragement from Ginger, she relented and shook his hoof.
Looking back, that might have been a mistake.
Now she trailed one target behind him and he was doing his absolute best to make sure she knew it. 
“If you think you’re getting in my head, you’re not,” she said.
He shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Last shot to tie, by the way.”
She mimed him with a barely suppressed smirk and turned her eye back to the stub of quartered wood they’d selected for the next target. Despite the last several days and the traumas the wasteland seemed content to throw at them, moments like these made them bearable. Roach seemed to understand that most out of all of them.
“No pressure,” Ginger chimed behind her.
Aurora pressed her tongue against her cheek and tried hard not to chuckle. “Who’s side are you on?” she accused.
A gentle nib of magic ran down the back of her neck, trailed between her wings and followed the dimples of her spine. It did not help her aim in the least bit. Aurora sucked in a deep breath, trying to steady her aim in the wake of such blatant sabotage.
“I’m biased,” Ginger cooed. “I’ve never heard you sing.”
“Prepare to be disappointed,” she said, slowly bringing the chunk of wood behind the crosshairs. “I hope you like singing along to Doris Bray.”
She squeezed the trigger and the rifle kicked with a crisp, earsplitting crack.
The bullet missed and slapped into the muddy embankment.
She frowned. “Huh.”
“Did you miss?” Roach pressed eagerly. Seeing her face tense up, he slapped the dirt with his hoof and laughed. “You did, didn’t you?”
“I’m pretty sure I saw it move,” she muttered.
“Uh huh,” he said, holding a hoof out for the rifle. “Gimme.”
Aurora rolled her eyes, flipping the safety on before grudgingly allowing Roach to take her weapon. She shifted onto her right elbow and shot a look behind her. Ginger smiled sweetly in return.
“Oh, you whiffed it,” Roach laughed.
“I barely whiffed it,” she grumbled as she stood. “We’d be tied if Ginger hadn’t been playing with my ass.”
Ginger feigned guilt. “And I’ll never forgive myself for it.”
“Okay, rein it in a little you two,” Roach chuckled, his knees clicking as he pushed himself to his hooves. He held the rifle out to her, allowing her to slip her wing through the strap. “You owe us a song, Pinfeathers.”
She stifled a groan, knowing it would take some serious work to get Sledge’s preferred moniker out of Roach’s vocabulary ever since he read the message he sent.
Sledge had kept it brief. With some help, he managed to get Rainbow inside the Stable and had her temporarily housed in the same holding cell that she picked her way out of a week earlier. He knew who she was, and to Roach’s relief he stopped short of writing her name. She had injured herself to the tune of shearing off one of her wings in the process, but the injury didn’t seem to bother her.
If there’s anything you can safely share about her condition, let me know, Sledge wrote. I’m not sure I have my head around it as well as I should.
Roach had said he would try to think of a way to explain it that wouldn’t explicitly tip off anyone listening that Rainbow Dash suffered from the same process that created all ghouls. For all they knew, the Steel Rangers were oblivious to their ongoing communication with Stable 10, but none of them were willing to risk it. He’d been mulling it over ever since they left Gallow’s home.
Ginger spotted a thick root jutting out of the dirt nearby and neatly snipped a section off with her magic. She floated the short length of wood out to Aurora with a grin. “You can’t sing without a microphone, darling.”
Aurora laughed with a thick deadpan, pushing the “microphone” aside with her wing. “Hardy-har. Roach hasn’t even picked a song yet.”
“Give me a minute, I’ll think of one,” he assured her.
Ginger dropped the root back to the dirt and smiled a little more genuinely to show her teasing was over. She stepped toward the edge of the riverbed and peered down at the wide expanse of muck below. “Perhaps you could think of one on the way down.”
Aurora latched onto the suggestion like a castaway to a piece of driftwood. She joined Ginger at the edge of the bank in the hopes of delaying her sentence. Mercifully, Roach didn’t object as Aurora began picking her way down toward the riverbed. It was about time they started moving again, anyway.
They half-walked, half-slid down the slope with Roach nearly toppling them over as he pulled up the rear a little faster than he intended. The first dozen steps from the bank proved promising. The cracked ground was pliable like damp clay at first but quickly softened into a thick, shallow mud that sucked at their hooves and grew deeper the closer they came to the middle of the riverbed. 
It became apparent to Aurora they would be up to their chests before they were across and she stopped, stumbled around in the slop, and beckoned them back to the bank. “This isn’t going to work,” she said. “Let’s shake this junk off and I’ll fly you both across.”
It turned out to be a good call. By the time they reached solid ground, Aurora’s legs were aching from repeatedly hauling them out of the mud. They felt like they were coated in lead. As she scraped thick layers of muck out of her fetlocks, she tried not to think about what might have happened if they hadn’t turned around.
“It’s magic,” Roach said.
Ginger looked up at him, then at the bronze aura that was lifting the last of the riverbed out of her coat. “Okay?”
He shook his head, looking pointedly to Aurora. “I mean, It’s Magic, the song. You said you wanted to hear something by Doris Bray. So do I.”
Aurora snorted. “You want me to croon to you?”
Roach shrugged, undeterred.
She sighed, flicking a gobbet of mud off her hind leg as she tried to remember how it went. It was a slow song. One of those swaying, romantic tunes that ponies rarely listened to outside of weddings or the privacy of their own compartments, ideally accompanied by someone else. She could hear the melody in her mind and had to push down the bubbling urge to start giggling out of sheer embarrassment. She turned back toward the sucking riverbed, scanning the far bank for something to distract herself from the growing weight of silence as Roach and Ginger eagerly awaited payment for a bet gone sideways.
“You sigh, the song begins...” Roach prompted, his voice lilting with the first notes of the song.
“I know how it goes,” she said, waving him off. 
She cleared her throat, took a breath, and spotted something grey on the far side of the riverbed. “What is that?” she asked.
“Oh, boo!” Ginger heckled good-naturedly. “A bet’s a bet, filly. No sneaking out of it.”
Light glinted off the object’s curved surface. Her hackles shot up.
“I’m serious,” Aurora said, slipping a wing under her rifle and bringing the scope up to her eye. “There’s something up there.”
Ginger and Roach stopped wiping the mud from their legs and followed her sights to the opposite bank where a broken strip of gray asphalt hung over the ledge like a bent lip.
The object wobbled across Aurora’s crosshairs. She stared at it, her jaw clenched. The object’s steel grille stared back beneath a cluster of swept-back antennae.
“It’s a spritebot,” she said.
Ginger stepped beside her. “Is it doing anything?”
She nodded. “It’s watching us.”
“I don’t hear any music,” Roach said, and for a moment Aurora thought he was still on about that Doris Bray song. He clarified before she could ask. “They’re always blaring music.”
Aurora tried to listen. All she could hear was their breathing and the whisper of a very slight breeze. Somewhere behind them, she swore she heard a bird singing.
The spritebot made no sound. It simply hovered, observing them. Then it turned on its axis and slid away, disappearing behind the embankment.
Aurora lowered her rifle, frowning. “I don’t like it.”
“Could be one of Fiona’s,” Roach offered, though his tone made it clear he wasn’t about to risk his own caps on that wager.
She shook her head, remembering their first encounter with one of Fiona’s hijacked spritebots outside Junction City. It only made sense that she used Hightower Radio to take over the little bots from afar, and Coldbrook didn’t seem like the type to give back something he’d made such a performance over taking away. “No, I don’t think it’s her,” she said.
Her eyes lingered on the lip of the road, a new worry churning in her belly. There was only one other entity piloting the spritebots, and they knew much more about her than she did about them.
“It’s the Enclave,” she said. “They’re watching us.”
> Chapter 18: Worlds Collide (Part Two)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 20th, 1075

Spitfire stared up at the blank surface of her condo ceiling. The air was too warm. Her mattress was too warm. Even her pillow was too warm. The world was conspiring against her to be entirely too warm. She flipped her pillow over, plumped it, and tried to relax.
She couldn’t sleep.
She couldn’t remember how many times she’d peeked at her alarm clock, either. And yet here she was doing it again. 
2:09am. 
Flip-flip. 
2:10am.
“Luna’s grace,” she groaned.
There were pills now for nights like these. Spitfire tried one once and the following day had been an unwaking nightmare. They had pills for that too, apparently, but she could see where that rabbit hole led and gave it a wide berth. She could suffer a few sleepless nights. Considering what her job was becoming, she expected to have no shortage of them.
This one was gearing up to be a doozy. No sense in spending it staring at the ceiling.
She rolled off the bare mattress and stepped over the crumpled sheets on her way to the bathroom. A feather flipped on the lights over her landscape-wide vanity mirror, forcing her to squint the last few steps. She winced at the sight of the mare in the toothpaste-speckled reflection. She was reaching the point where she would have to stop saying she was getting old and admit she had finally gotten there. At fifty, she was learning that some honesty went a long way with one’s self. Still, this was one lie she was willing to cling to just a bit longer.
Running the tap, she plucked her comb off the edge of the sink and dipped it under the flow of water. She ran the wet bristles through her haggard mane until the yellow band her mother dotingly blamed for her notorious temper fell in line among the greater sweep of orange. Gone were the days when she moussed her mane into place for the cadets at the academy. The natural look was in, someone told her once. Looking at the errant locks already coming apart from her damp head, she smiled a little. Something told her this wasn’t what they had meant.
It was good enough for a workout, and she needed to burn off some steam.
She swiped her water bottle from the kitchen counter and slung a well-worn Wonderbolt duffel over her shoulder. She quickly scrawled the word “gym” on a slip of stationary and left it on the coffee table where he would find it and, if he had any brains, her. Sliding open the balcony door, stepped into the unseasonably warm night air and hopped off the railing. 
She didn’t bother to grab her keys. She rarely ever did. Front doors were more of a ground pony thing.
Her condo sat along Canterlot’s northern rim, close enough to the mountain slope for her realtor to sell her on the lie that the cool air coming off the snowcap would save her money on air conditioning. It was pricey real estate, providing an unbroken view of Canterlot Castle from her living room couch. She could even see the six columns of The Pillar built directly into the ancient stone. Between the two lay the historical district of central Canterlot replete with thatched roofs, faux stone walls and cobblestone streets. Spitfire thought it felt strange for architecture she’d grown up with to be labeled historic, but there it was. In the face of so much progress, she supposed it only seemed fair for someone to want to preserve a part of what was quickly becoming the old world.

Thankfully, she didn’t need to fly far to get where she was going.  
Mustang Fitness was barely ten blocks from her condo in what some stubbornly referred to as “new construction” and was one of the few 24-hour gyms that catered predominantly to pegasi. She landed on the cement sidewalk outside and trotted past the unbroken line of windows that dominated the front of the squat building. She stepped inside, setting off a two-toned chime that alerted a tired-looking fitness instructor behind the desk. He looked up, recognized her, and nodded politely before turning back to the tiny television Spitfire knew was hidden beneath the raised countertop.
The gym was always a different place after dark. Better, she would argue. All of the equipment was wiped down and clean. Benches were pushed neatly out of the walkways. It even smelled different. No lingering odor of sweat and musk, just a faint chemical-citrus scent of store bought disinfectant. But best of all, it was quiet. The one downside to a pegasi oriented gym was the necessity to equip the machines with lighter weights which made considerably more noise when the weights clacked into the stacks. 
It was a necessary evil. Pegasi could be just as dense as ground ponies, almost equally so if they were trying to impress someone. Put a stack of iron on one end of a pulley and eventually someone would come along who wanted to prove they could lift all of it. For ground ponies, it could lead to a torn muscle or a bad dislocation. For a pegasi, the same weight could amputate a wing.
Spitfire had never been much for weightlifting. Maybe in her younger years, but not now. All she wanted now was to run.
She followed the long line of treadmills that ran the length of the window, the dark street outside difficult to see behind the gym’s bright reflection. She walked behind a tall mare cantering on a machine near the middle of the row, noting the Wonderbolt-branded shorts gracing her toned flank. Spitfire pushed down the urge to ask her if she was enlisted, knowing the answer would likely embarrass the mare out of the gym once she recognized the pegasus asking. Wonderbolt marketing was nothing new, but since the start of the war it had changed from a niche fanbase of flying enthusiasts to a fashion staple for ponies seeking fitness cred. 
Turning the Wonderbolts into a brand had been one of Rarity’s less forgivable schemes. The only thing that kept Spitfire from marring Rarity’s flawless ivory face with a shiny new black eye was the mare’s unsettling ability to destroy a pony’s reputation in the space of a few words. She had more strings to pull than a shed full of spiders.
She left the mare to jog in peace and dropped her duffel next to the treadmill at the far end of the row, next to the wall. Setting her water bottle into the cupholder, she stepped onto the textured rubber surface and turned the machine on. The belt began to move and she eased into a steady, loping trot.
Much as she hated to admit it, the simple act of running on a treadmill calmed her more than flying the open skies ever could. Here, she could clear her mind and focus on nothing beyond the steady rhythm of her hooves. She didn’t have to worry about the pitch of her wings or how tiring the return trip home would be if she flew too far. Here, in the company of a few quiet strangers, she could stare out into the lamplit sidewalk outside the window and just be.
A pleasant burn bloomed in her hocks. She accepted the challenge and turned up the speed, willing herself into a mildly uncomfortable canter. In the window’s reflection, she noticed the pegasus in branded workout shorts giving her a sidelong glance. Spitfire ignored her, hoping she wouldn’t ask who she was or worse, stop and try to get an autograph. She was relieved when the mare eventually faced forward in silence.
She didn’t know how Rainbow did it every day. The prospect of constantly being stopped in the streets to shake someone’s wing or sign a random pony’s cutie mark was enough to make Spitfire break into a flop sweat. Ponies being afraid of her, she could handle. Bumping into the odd pegasi she trained back at the academy was barely an inconvenience. Facing down the steady march of adoring fans, all of whom professed an admiration she couldn’t hope to match? She’d rather pluck out her own feathers.
She picked up her water bottle and unscrewed the cap. 
Rainbow Dash.
She took a swig and put the bottle back into the cupholder. The balls on that mare. Rainbow was a lot of things. Brash, bullheaded, optimistic, faithful to a fault… but a liar? Spitfire could feel the angry flush crawling up her neck. It wasn’t just that Rainbow lied to her, it was the fact that she went over her head to fire Whiplash in full view of everyone who worked under her. And for what? To cover up the fact that she was siphoning ministry funds to one of Jet Stream’s delusions.
She turned up the speed again. Her hooves beat into a full gallop.
It wasn’t just the fact that Rainbow lied to her. Working near the top of any ministry was going to require a few gentle mistruths to grease the gears or else the entire machinery would bind up. No, it wasn’t the lie that stung. It was that their friendship meant so little to Rainbow that she didn’t trust her enough to tell the truth. She couldn’t remember the last time she tore into anyone as unreservedly as she did with her yesterday, but that mare needed to know she crossed a line. 
Spitfire wasn’t concerned about whatever it was Jet Stream wanted the money for. Like many ponies, she was privately eager to read about the new advances coming out of the stallion’s aerospace division. What bothered her was one of the few remaining friends she had left viewed her as an obstacle instead of an option.
Her muscles burned like she was wading through molten lead. She focused on her breathing and pushed through.
Taking direct control over Finance was going to make her job as ministry director that much harder. The Ministry of Awesome was more than just a terribly named conduit that fed taxpayer bits to the other branches. It was an opportunity for pegasi to prove their worth to the sister princesses. Spitfire had done her own headhunting for the past several years, seeking out talented pegasi who shared the same vision she did. With the right ponies, she could make that vision a reality.
The first days of the war had been brutal for the Wonderbolts. Equestria had led the incursion into Vhanna with pegasi leading the charge. The thought had been that their air superiority would overwhelm the enemy and push them back, making quick work of a short and painless war. The reality was that Vhanna had been prepared for years, and the canisters they fired into the skies had been a devastating success. Pegasi dropped from the sky like hailstones in a storm. Good pegasi died. Fleetfoot and Soarin were some of the first. By the end of the second week, the Wonderbolts had been decimated. The invasion slowed. With its precious few remaining aerial elements recalled from the fight, the war found a new equilibrium in the trenches.
Some pegasi volunteered to join the fight there, but Spitfire refused to let the rest of her Wonderbolts die a lonely death in the mud. They were meant for the sky.
She knew it would only be a matter of time before the fighting grew desperate enough for the princesses to call the last Wonderbolts back to the front lines. One hard push from the zebras and the order would drop down the chain of command like a stone. She wasn’t about to watch her people be sent back to the trenches of Vhanna just to be torn apart by zebra bullets. Not without options.
She could feel herself finding her second wind, the tension building in her chest relaxing. Rainbow was just as desperate as she was to end the fighting. She just wished the mare had enough vision to go about it the right way.
Her mind wandered while her hooves beat. In a few hours she would need to start getting ready for the day. It wouldn’t be worth chasing down what little sleep she might be able to sneak in during the meantime. She watched a group of unicorns barely into adulthood stumble down the far sidewalk, silver cans held aloft in sloshing fields of magic. One of them laughed loudly enough for his voice to echo in the street. Spitfire frowned after them.
She was nearing the end of her workout when a pair of dark wings shot across the pavement. The stallion attached to them skidded a good yard, his standard-issued shoes throwing sparks as he slowed to a stop. Spitfire felt a stone grow in the pit of her stomach as Thunderlane spotted her in the window, his amber eyes wide with relief.
The mare in the branded workout shorts let out an excited gasp at the sight of him. Thunderlane didn’t notice her. He stood there, his eyes fixed on Spitfire, his jaw clenched with concern. He had something, and it wasn’t good.
Spitfire stopped the treadmill and gathered her things. As she trotted to the door, the mare glanced after her with dawning realization of who she’d been sharing the gym with. Spitfire pretended not to notice and pushed through the door, the night air chilling her sweat-slicked coat.
Thunderlane joined her on the sidewalk and quickly led her away from the gym. His short powder blue mane looked as bad as hers. Worse, even.
“Bad news?” she asked.
He frowned, staring forward. “Can we go back to your place?”
If she hadn’t known Thunderlane since he was a rookie, she might have thought he was propositioning her. She might have even accepted if she wasn’t aware he was about as interested in mares as she was. Thunderlane’s relationship with Soarin wasn’t well known outside the Wonderbolts, but when Soarin died leading the spear’s tip above the Vhannan front lines, the stallion had taken it badly. So badly that Spitfire had spent the next month making regular visits to his apartment to help him through the worst of it. She’d stepped into that role as an instructor worried about the well-being of one of her charges. Now she regarded Thunderlane like the younger brother she never had, and he was fiercely loyal to her in return.
“Is it something that can wait that long?”
Thunderlane sighed uncomfortably.
“We can talk about it up there,” she suggested, pointing a feather skyward.
“Too many patrols,” he muttered.
He stopped outside a narrow alley between two small shops, considered the windowless walls for a moment and quickly ducked into the claustrophobic space. She hesitated before following. “You know those are our patrols, right?”
“Less ears are better.”
She frowned, trying her best to avoid stepping in the soggy trash collected on the ground. In the still air between the walls she could smell the sour sweat still drying on Thunderlane’s back.
“You’ve been flying,” she observed, concern gripping her around the throat. She hadn’t expected him to have to fly anywhere. Just observe for a while until Spitfire was confident Rainbow was truly finished trying to curry favor with Jet Stream. Thunderlane looked like he’d flown a marathon. “She didn’t see you, did she?”
He shook his head. “I was tailing above her the whole way to the coast.”
“The coast?” Spitfire stared at him, trying to determine if he was joking. The exhausted sag of his wings made it clear he wasn’t. Jet lived just outside Las Pegasus on the west coast. “You’re telling me Rainbow Dash flew to his home?”
“She went east,” he corrected. “She’s wearing one of the minimum-albedo stealth suits from R&D. Kept checking on something she had tucked underneath. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it was the right size and shape to be a holotape.”
Her mind began to race. It could be nothing, she told herself. “Do we know where she was headed?”
Thunderlane shrugged his wings. “That’s the thing, she just kept going right over the water. I followed her for a few miles just to be sure. My guess is she’s making a crossing.”
“In a stealth suit,” Spitfire said, probing him for any sign that he might be stretching the truth. “In October.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
It wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for her, but then again Rainbow Dash never was the type to shy away from a challenge. Donning a prototype stealth suit just to… what, sneak a holotape out of Equestria? The only thing on the other side of that churning black ocean was Griffinstone, and Equestria had no meaningful ties with the gryphons beyond a few tenuously friendly connections before the war started. Ever since the fighting started, Griffinstone had maintained their staunch neutrality. Spitfire couldn’t blame them. They were geographically pinned between two warring superpowers. If it weren’t for the jagged mountain range they made their homes in, the gryphons might have woken up to find ponies landing on their shore as well. Choosing a side would turn that nightmare into a reality and they had no interest in learning whether they could survive the wrath of either nation.
Which begged the question.
“What’s waiting for her in Griffinstone?”
Thunderlane blinked. “When we were in junior speedsters together, there was this gryphon that Dash would hang around with. Griselda something.”
“Gilda,” Spitfire said.
“You know her?”
Spitfire nodded. Gilda had developed a renewed propensity for appearing on academy grounds not long after Rainbow arrived for Wonderbolt training. Spitfire was willing to ignore it as long as it didn’t become a problem, but then a group of rookies discovered the two of them in the communal showers and it did become her problem. Rainbow had been mortified when she and Gilda found themselves hauled into Spitfire’s office, and the verbal beating she gave them had nearly put the mare in tears. For Gilda’s part, she endured the worst of Spitfire’s wrath with a placid smile, seemingly unconcerned that her midnight dalliance with Rainbow was an inch from having the mare’s dream of becoming a Wonderbolt pulled out from under her. Whatever Rainbow saw in that gryphon, it was a mystery to everyone but her.
“She has a reputation,” Spitfire said simply. She sighed and stared up at the sliver of sky visible between the rooftops. “Okay. This could be nothing, or it could be… more than nothing. Either way, I’m not going to sleep until I’m sure. Do we have any assets near Griffinstone?”
Thunderlane scratched the whiskers along his chin. “Not near, per se. Closest I can think of are the Barrel twins, but they’re on leave in Manehattan last I heard.”
“Pull them,” she said, the decision already made in her mind. “I want them kitted and airborne in an hour. Full surveillance on Gilda until we’re sure she isn’t involved with anything she shouldn’t be. If Rainbow is looking to rekindle an old flame, that’s entirely her business, but if she’s...”
She stopped short of saying passing intelligence. “...compromising the integrity of the ministry, I need to know.”
“And if she is?”
Spitfire chewed her lip. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, I want eyes on the gryphon.”
“Understood. I’ll get the ball rolling,” Thunderlane said.
She turned and began walking back toward the sidewalk, feeling a little more tired than she intended when she left her condo. Thunderlane’s hooves clicked in sequence with hers.
“Spitfire?” The worry in his voice was unmistakable. “What do we do if Dash is…”
“She isn’t,” she said, saving him the trouble of saying the words. “Like I said, this is just a precaution.”
“But what if she is?”
Spitfire stopped walking and closed her eyes. She turned and looked up at Thunderlane, placing a wing over his shoulder to calm him. 
“Then I will deal with it.” 








	Julip’s hooves clicked across a polished mosaic of lavender marble. Like so many pegasi before her, the interior of New Canterlot’s oldest chapel pressed her into subdued awe.
When the capital city of Equestria fell, it was said to have done so with horrific splendor. Reports from surviving evacuees told the same story. Celestia and Luna had stood together, shoulder to shoulder, atop the great promenade outside the castle. As the city’s population began draining down the mountainside, the princesses wove their combined magic into a mighty shield through which no weapon could penetrate. Or at least, that was what they believed at the time.
No one saw the missile impact, but everyone who lived through the blast agreed that a flash of light swallowed Canterlot Mountain for what seemed an eternity. The first signs that the princesses had fallen were seen in the scorched rubble tumbling like dark streamers out of the sickly green mushroom that boiled into the sky. As the light dimmed, the few remaining survivors watched as the bedrock supporting Canterlot crumbled beneath the city like chalk. What remained of Equestria’s seat of power slid down the slopes in a burning landslide, leaving a black, smoking scar in its wake. The princesses had failed. Canterlot and everyone in it died that day.
But the Enclave survived.
The Chapel of the Two Sisters had been built in the memory of the alicorns who died trying to protect their people. Most citizens simply referred to it as The Chapel, but Julip had always called it by its full name. Named after the castle where it was thought they were first born, it felt fitting to resurrect something forgotten in the service of preserving the memory of two ponies too important to forget. Even now, striding across a marble mosaic that had taken a generation of survivors to pull from the rubble of Old Canterlot, she felt like she was passing along a page in her people’s history.
Stained glass windows on the west wall caught the meager afternoon light, splashing dim rays of color across wide rows of polished wooden pews. Unlike the floor, the windows were near-perfect reproductions of the ones that once graced the halls of Canterlot Castle, each depicting a scene from Equestrian history. The bestowing of the six Elements of Harmony, the defeat of Nightmare Moon, Discord’s imprisonment and the ascension of Twilight Sparkle were all there in vibrant color. 
Julip couldn’t shake the sense that it was all too far away. When Old Equestria died, so much magic died with it that looking at these windows felt like she was looking into a fairy tale. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to witness the defeat of a magic-devouring centaur or stand against an army of insectile creatures bent on harvesting something as intangible as love.
And yet, it happened.
As she neared the steps of the chancel, she stole a quick glance down her chest and brushed a few green strands of shed hair off her crisp black uniform. Her feathers slowed over the brass wings pinned beneath the right side of her collarbone. A small monochrome disc joined the two wings together, split down the center with the silhouette of each princess captured mid flight in light and shadow. She pressed it against her chest, taking comfort in knowing she had earned those wings in the eyes of her fellow pegasi and the goddess sisters.
Julip paused to genuflect before the chancel’s two short steps, aware that more than a few of the eyes watching from the pews behind her were doing so with silent judgement. The two empty thrones in the center of the risen alcove loomed over her as if to remind her of her own insignificance in comparison to the two alicorns who once ruled from them. She bowed low, her wings spread wide until their tips grazed the broken tiles.
She counted to five and straightened, tugging her uniform flat by the hem before turning around.
A lone mare wearing an uncomplicated blazer watched her from the front pew. Her pale, pink coat and long aster-blue curls were comforting, in a way, like she might produce a tray of warm cinnamon rolls at any moment. At first glance she looked barely old enough to drink hard cider, but Julip was well aware that the youthful blue glint in her eyes belied the unfathomable depths of danger she represented.
The mare nodded toward the empty space beside her with a pleasant smile. Julip tried to ignore the pounding heartbeat in her throat and approached the single most powerful pegasus in New Canterlot.
“Minister Primrose,” she said, voice hushed to mask her nerves and avoid disrupting the quiet prayer of the smattering of pegasi seated elsewhere in the chapel. The pew creaked beneath her as she sat down. “It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am.”
“Nonsense,” the mare said, but not without a hint of a smile in her voice. “If I’m to believe the report from your debriefing, you’re a hero of the Enclave. The honor should be mine, corporal.”
Julip nodded, mindful not to let the blush of pride show on her face. She traced the edges of the two thrones with her eyes to distract herself from the nervous brew of fear and excitement churning in her stomach. With the exception of scheduled cleaning by a few trusted members of the congregation, Celestia and Luna’s thrones remained untouched.
“They’re beautiful,” Primrose prompted, as if reading her mind. “If I may ask, are you a believer?”
Julip allowed herself to smile just a little. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been a member of this chapel since I was old enough to choose. My family has attended every Remembrance Day sermon held here since I was a filly.”
“Every one?” the mare inquired. “You’ve never missed?”
She nodded, careful not to let her guard drop. “When I was ten I got feather flu on Remembrance Day and didn’t tell my parents because I knew they would make me stay home. The whole congregation caught it.”
Primrose turned to face her more fully. “On the bicentennial. I remember that sermon. And its aftermath,” she chuckled, surprising Julip. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Pastor Rivers. For a pious stallion, he certainly knows how to hold a grudge.”
Julip pursed her lips, knowing better than to insult a member of the clergy in the Sisters’ house. “Everyone has their sins.”
She thought she’d done a good job hiding her discomfort, but something she let through blipped on Minister Primrose’s radar. Julip pretended not to notice the flicker of a frown appear on the mare’s lip, or notice the abrupt change in topic.
“I read through your records, corporal,” she said so casually, she may have well commented on the weather. Julip tightened her posture. “You’ve been enlisted in the Enclave for twelve years now, but you never received anti-interrogation training. Is that correct?”
She paused, caught off-guard that someone like Primrose would know anything about her. “I… yes, ma’am. That’s correct.”
“Yet you were detained by Autumn Song for over two months and never disclosed any information regarding SOLUS,” she said. 
It wasn’t a question, just a simple statement of fact. She had spent the last forty-eight hours moved to and from a dizzying line of offices, interrogation rooms and guarded barracks while pegasi wearing more stripes than she ever hoped to see drilled her about the events of her capture, imprisonment and very unlikely escape. Julip knew not to add anything to Primrose’s summary or risk facing renewed scrutiny. She nodded.
Primrose stared at her for a long moment, then her smile returned. She slipped the tip of her wing into her blazer and retrieved a thin stack of what looked to be photographs from her breast pocket. “The Enclave needs more pegasi with your fortitude,” she said, holding the photos toward her.
Julip took the pictures and found herself frowning at them. “I can be stubborn sometimes,” she said, distracted by the scarred and bloodied stallion staring up from her at the top of the stack. His eyes were red from the camera flash. Something about the photo suggested it was the only light he’d seen in a long time. “Should I know who this is?”
The minister shrugged, her powder blue eyes tracking Julip’s expression. “I don’t know. Please, take your time with each and tell me if you see anything that stands out.”
She nodded with uncertainty and lifted the terrified stallion away to reveal another, this one frozen in mid laugh. He was seated in a public venue she didn’t recognize with several empty glasses grouped around his gesturing hooves. A heavy leather duster wrapped his shoulders, but he was too drunk or excited to notice the tips of his feathers were visible beneath their covering.
The next photo revealed a mare stirring a cookpot, the light from the small fire below it coloring the rough stone walls around her yellow and orange. It was a cave, Julip realized, and the mare was holding the makeshift wooden spoon between her feathers.
She narrowed her eyes. “These are all dustwings.”
“Keep going,” Primrose said.
Julip flipped to the next picture. A mare watching two young colts wrestle outside a weatherbeaten farmhouse, one of them grappling the other with his small wings. Then the next, a tired stallion bracing a wagon while his partner lined a wheel up to its empty axle. If Julip hadn’t already spotted the trend, she would have missed the barely noticeable ridges in their armor that masked who they truly were.
She moved onto the next photo and paused.
A dapple-gray mare’s face filled the frame, her mouth bent open as if she were arguing with the pony taking the photo. Her filthy white mane covered one of her eyes. The other blazed like a furious emerald lit from within.
Julip tapped the photo. “This is her. The pegasus who freed me.”
“How sure are you?” Primrose asked.
“I told her I’d kill her if she opened my cage, and she did anyway,” she said. “Even gave me a stimpack for my trouble. A good one. You don’t forget a face after that.”
Primrose nodded, holding her feathers out for the photo. “Do you remember her name?”
She handed the picture over. “Most I got was ‘Pinfeathers.’”
“Aurora Pinfeathers, if our records are accurate.” Seeing the confusion on Julip’s face, she explained. “This is a photo taken from one of our spritebots outside a defunct restaurant not far from where you were being held. She apparently reactivated the bot after attacking it a few hours prior in an attempt to elicit our help. Facial recognition pulled up a match from Stable 10.”
Julip frowned. Every pegasus knew about Spitfire’s Stable to the east and how the zebras had targeted a little known nearby village in the forest at the foot of Foal Mountain. The detonation was thought to have destroyed it.
“I thought Ten was gone.”
“Apparently it isn’t,” the minister said, her voice tinged with a bare hint of annoyance. “Spitfire’s old preservation project seems to be thriving, though it seems that she went through pains to make it seem otherwise. Stable 10’s signal went dead in 1077, but this Aurora’s Pip-Buck is behaving like a relay between us and whatever firewalls Spitfire built to keep…”
Primrose stopped speaking as a young, brown colt trotted to the front of the chapel and made a bee-line for the two of them. Julip pressed the stack of photos face-down in her lap and watched the little one produce a flip-book and a fountain pen in each wing, holding them up to Primrose without an ounce of reservation.
“Can you sign my notebook?” he chirped.
“Please,” Julip added.
The colt glanced at her, then back at Primrose with even wider eyes. “Please!”
The minister slipped Aurora’s photo into her pocket while simultaneously bending forward to accept the pen and paper from her fearless fan. “Absolutely, I can,” she said, her voice spilling over with exaggerated cheer that had the colt dancing on the tips of his hooves. “May I ask your name or shall I guess?”
“Jet Streak!” he said eagerly.
Julip noticed a flicker of hesitation in the minister’s eyes, but an instant later it was as if nothing had happened.
“Streak,” she said, beginning to write, “With a K?”
“Yes ma’am!”
She nodded with mock-serious frown that made little Jet giggle. The nib scraped across the lined paper in neat, controlled arcs, jotting out a simple message before dropping into the stylized loops of her autograph.


For Jet Streak,
Fate rewards the bold.
Minister Primrose


She returned Jet’s notebook and pen, and he bolted away so quickly he needed to flap his free wing just to stop himself from crashing into the far row of pews on his way down the aisle. A bay mare with black-tipped wings waited halfway down the chapel, the embarrassment visible even from this distance as her son returned to her. She bent down and whispered something in his ear, and Jet turned to cup his feathers around his mouth.
His echoing “THANK YOU!” caused several parishioners to jump in their pews and turn toward him with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.  
Primrose waved a wing to both him and his mother, the latter of which was doing her best to guide her son out of the chapel where she could focus on finding a dark corner to hide in.
“Cute kid,” Julip said.
“He has the lungs of a drill sergeant,” she agreed, retrieving Aurora’s photo from her pocket. “Corporal, I know you’ve only just returned home, but I would like you to undertake a mission for me.”
Her heart skipped. This was why she was summoned. Not to be interrogated or to have her loyalty tested, though she had the impression that the minister was surveying her responses for red flags. No, she was here to be given another opportunity. Another chance to show that if the Enclave invested in Mint Julip, it would pay dividends.
She swallowed. “What’s the mission?”
Primrose gave her Aurora’s photo and took back the rest. “I want you to go east and find this mare again. She’s a pureblood. Purer than any pegasus in New Canterlot. Purer than me, corporal. I want to know why she left her Stable and who authorized it to be unsealed. If Spitfire’s Stable did survive, it has done so without our guidance. Two centuries is a long time to go it alone, and there is the unavoidable possibility that Aurora’s departure might signal a deviation from Spitfire’s intentions.”
Julip pinched the photo between her feathers, dragging one across Aurora’s filthy mane. “Alright, but why send me? I’m just a technical officer. Shouldn’t something like this be handled by Intelligence?” 
The minister looked at her. “Are you trying to say you’re not capable of having a conversation with one mare?”
Julip felt the weight of her gaze, the mind churning behind it, and reflexively swallowed. “No, ma’am. I can do that, but I just think…”
She stole a glance at the minister and saw her expression darkening. This wasn’t an offer, she realized.
“I can do this, ma’am,” she said. “Do we know where she’s headed?”
“We do,” Primrose nodded, sifting through the photos until she found one toward the bottom. 
She slipped it between Julip’s feathers. Three ponies stared up at Julip from what looked to be a ravine. They were half-caked in mud and looked out of breath. The grey pegasus in the middle had a rifle leveled at the camera, one eye obscured by its scope.
“She and her companions are traveling toward Kiln. Are you familiar with the area?”
Julip shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
“You will be. Kiln is a not insignificant trading node under the Rangers’ protection, though you’re not likely to see any of them in the town proper. Ghouls built it on the north rim of a balefire crater, of all places, and peddle just about anything they can make from the glass littered inside it. The immediate area near the crater is highly irradiated. I would assume your target will have the sense to stay to the outer edge of town if they go there at all. Start your search there.” 
Julip nodded, her gaze drifting to the unicorn in the photo. “What about the muds?”
The minister’s tone hardened. “Rephrase that, corporal.”
She blinked bewilderment at the sudden change in her tone. “I mean the unicorns, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Do better, please,” Primrose said flatly. “That unicorn is Ginger Dressage and her family holds more influence here than most pegasi ever will. The other appears to be a changeling, if our intelligence is to be believed. If they’ve traveled together this far on hoof, there’s a good chance Aurora will have heard her fill of who her friends suppose us to be. I need you to approach the three of them with open wings, not petty insults, and prove them wrong or this will all be wasted effort. Is that understood?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good,” she said, tucking the remaining photos into her blazer. “Check in with Sergeant Hayflinger at the quartermaster’s station. He’s been instructed to have everything you’ll need ready for you to pick up. You’re to be in the air before sunset. I suggest you get something to eat before then.”
“Yes ma’am,” she repeated.
“Remember,” Primrose said, “our first priority is Stable 10. Find out what made this Aurora Pinfeathers leave and whether or not there is anything left of Spitfire’s program to salvage. As soon as you know, you report to the nearest relay station and await further instructions. Now get to it, corporal.”
Julip nodded, dropping out of the pew as if some invisible force was pushing her out of it. Her hooves clacked against the tile and for a moment she stood there, trying to think of something to say. Something to demonstrate her loyalty not only to the Enclave, but to the mare who stood at the helm since the days when balefire poured into the sky.
She took a breath.
Minister Primrose stared at her, waiting.
“Ah…” she said. “Yes ma’am.”
She clenched her jaw, snapped off a crisp salute and mumbled every gutter word she knew as soon as she was out of earshot.







“Okay, hold up a sec, I need to switch. This thing is getting heavy.”
Ginger gave Roach a knowing look as they slowed. He offered a small shrug in answer as they slowed, and not for the first time, while Aurora awkwardly uncurled her left wing and let the spritebot’s dead weight spill onto the roadway with a deep clank. It weighed close to fifty pounds if it weighed anything at all, but Ginger only had her guesses to rely on. 
As soon as Aurora had dropped them off safely on the other side of the riverbed she made a bee-line straight for the departing sprite-bot. It hadn’t gotten far. Ginger and Roach watched her land in front of the bot and immediately began asking it questions. As they approached, they watched the floating ball of circuits stare dispassionately back in the face of Aurora’s interrogation before abruptly going dark and dropping hard onto the pavement.
Someone, somewhere, had decided the best course of action was to deactivate it. Not one to be ignored, Aurora hefted the bot off the ground and resolved to take it with her.
When Ginger asked why, her answer had been simple.
“I’m going to sell it. If the Enclave’s going to spy on us, we might as well get something in return.”
Ginger waited as Aurora lifted the spritebot with her rested wing, her face pinched as she adjusted her grip. “If it’s getting that heavy, why not just let me carry it for a few miles? Give your wings a break.”
“I’m alright,” Aurora chuckled as she caught up. “Anyway, this is good exercise.”
Roach watched her trot ahead of them, eyeing the burden tucked snugly under her feathers. “You’ve been getting good exercise since we left the tunnel. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
If Ginger hadn’t been paying attention, she might have missed the brief flicker of tension that surfaced in Aurora’s shoulders. As soon as it appeared, it was gone. More and more, she was starting to recognize the subtler cues of Aurora’s body language. The way the muscles in her neck twitched when she was holding back a remark or the barely perceptible way she bounced her hips when she had a song stuck in her head. Aurora wasn’t quite an open book, not yet, but the more Ginger learned to turn the pages the more this thing they had between them felt right.
And yet she had her own worries. Questions she was too afraid to ask for fear that they might smother their seedling relationship before it could bloom. She could see the same uncertainties plaguing Aurora. Worries about whether this new and fragile relationship they were trying to cultivate might be premature. Superficial.
She and Roach caught up to Aurora, the debate about the spritebot cooling. Ginger made a point to nudge her ribs against her empty wing. 
Aurora looked at her and noticed the worry in her eyes. Her expression softened and she pecked Ginger behind the crease of her lip, her smile a little more genuine. 
Ginger allowed herself to smile back, grateful for Aurora’s reassurance whether it was intentional or not. She glanced at Roach whose eyes were fixed on the road ahead. She found herself sighing. Ever since Junction City, they’d been plagued with one bad thing after the other. Between Cider, his deranged sister, Coldbrook and most recently the horrors discovered at Gallow’s home, the three of them had their nerves drawn so tight they were at risk of snapping.
They needed a break.
“How long until we reach Kiln?”
Roach looked up, then at the surrounding regolith. The forest was far behind them now and the scrub grass had been quickly replaced with cracked earth and jagged, wind-whipped boulders. They passed a partially collapsed gas station several miles back but Aurora had been inexplicably resistant to go near it. From here, the coast was only a few days away. There would be no more trees, Ginger knew. Not enough to be worth counting. With the ruins of Manehattan, Fillydelphia and Baltimare spread out over the horizon, so too would come the great scars left by the end of the war. Wounds too deep and too wide for two mere centuries to heal.
They watched as he squinted up at the rolling clouds and the dim light of Celestia’s sun glowing through them. “An hour,” he said, then decided to hedge a little. “Two, maybe. We should have enough time to offload the spritebot and find someplace to sleep. Speaking of which, how are you two holding up?”
Ginger looked to Aurora who did the same to her. The two of them hadn’t slept since their night together at the bottom of Stable 6 and that had been over twenty four hours ago. It felt like weeks. The mere mention of sleep had her teetering on the edge of a yawn, but the prospect of shelter and a bed kept her moving forward.
Aurora, on the other hoof, seemed to have hit her second wind.
“Oh, I’ll wake up a little once I get something to eat,” she said, knowing she had to look as exhausted as she felt.
Roach tipped his nose toward the empty horizon. “The last time I came out this far was before either of you were born,” he said matter-of-factly. “Kiln used to be a gathering place for ghouls looking for somewhere to live. I heard it’s changed a little since then. Lot more non-ghouls living there these days, radiation or no radiation. You’ll both want to keep an eye on your exposure while we’re there.”
Ginger glanced at the Pip-Buck still clamped to her foreleg. It didn’t feel like wearing a boat anchor anymore, but it still took an extra effort to swing her leg forward when she walked. Every now and again the needle that ticked away each ionized particle slipping through its detector would bounce within the gauge, crawling millimeter by millimeter toward the yellow range. They were going to need to start looking for a source of Rad-Away or risk staring down the same unpleasant symptoms they’d experienced during their first night on Blinder’s Bluff.
She looked to Aurora, who seemed undaunted by the unwieldy weight of the Enclave’s spritebot. Her coat was slick with sweat, something that would normally concern most ponies in the wasteland, but in a strange way she seemed to be enjoying the physical challenge. No doubt one of the many ways growing up in a Stable differed from the outside. Something that one day she hoped to understand.
They settled into a not unpleasant silence. Roach spent the time observing the desolation as it passed around them, pausing to monitor the scant wildlife stalking the horizons. There were more rodents out here, large black things resembling prairie dogs that weren’t keen to approach the roadway but were happy to monitor them from a distance. Occasionally Aurora would key into something Roach had seen and that quiet fear would climb into her face, the apprehension of a pony finding herself in a strange and terrifying world laid bare. Nothing attacked, but plenty of things watched.
Eventually, Ginger lost interest in the surrounding badlands and turned her focus toward her magic. Ever since Aurora’s attempted rescue and Ginger’s subsequent leap ahead of whatever barrier stunted unicorn magic since the very first days after the war, the energy that spilled from her horn felt… corrected. She wondered if it felt the same way for Aurora when she was first learning to fly. It was strange to think of having magic “back” again when she couldn’t remember a day without it.
She lit her horn and focused on what she wanted. A small sphere of bronze light popped into existence a few feet in front of her, briefly drawing Aurora and Roach’s attention. 
Picking up objects, grasping them, moving them around all came to her by second nature. Learning to light crystals in the small apartment above her former shop had taken much more practice, but the crystals did most of the work once she channeled enough magic into them. Even so, it was a benchmark most unicorns couldn’t manage. Ginger knew it didn’t mean she was particularly powerful. Only that she had figured out how to organize her thoughts in a way that bridged the gap between what she wanted to happen and what actually happened. Once it worked, something in her head clicked and it just made sense.
Forming tangible magic out of thin air was much more challenging. When she dropped her first shield, the spell hadn’t come with any conscious effort. At that moment, all Ginger could think about was the revolver pointed at Aurora’s head and Autumn’s slow pull on the trigger. Centuries of pure magic pumped into her veins and the raw desire to get something in front of the imminent death leveled at the mare who risked her very home to rescue her had been more than Trotter’s suppression ring could hold back. The shield she so desperately wanted had suddenly been. Peeling the crescent blades from the dome’s surface had come like a second nature she didn’t know she had. Moving them toward Autumn’s horn made sense. In that terrifying moment, everything made sense.
Mindful not to step into the fissures that plagued the old highway, Ginger narrowed her eyes at the sphere in concentration. It gradually flattened on eight sides, forming an imperfect cube that felt as wrong as it looked. She dispelled it and tried again, first the amorphous sphere and then the structured lines of the cube. It felt silly, but she could feel a resistance in her mind that felt like progression. 
Baby steps, she reminded herself. She couldn’t always rely on things to work out in the heat of the moment. When Gallow’s mother fired shots into her shield, the impacts rang in her skull like flashes of a migraine, and she had come dangerously close to losing her grip on the spell. Aurora and Roach were already seeing her unlocked potential as an asset, but they couldn’t depend on her if she didn’t know what she was doing.
So she practiced, hoping to glean understanding from each failure. Maybe something would come of it. She hoped it would. The sphere became something else, imperfect and hard to grasp, so she started over. 
Again and again and again.







It appeared as a welt on the horizon. A shallow lump on the otherwise flat line that delineated lifeless soil from a smothering blanket of clouds. As they followed the dim path of the descending sun, the deformation widened until Aurora could distinguish between the solid rim of the bomb crater and the jagged collection of square buildings clinging to its left. The Pip-Buck on Ginger’s foreleg had already begun to chatter and they each took a dose of Rad-X before venturing further.
The highway itself bent directly toward the crater’s center, forcing them to divert onto a hoof-hewn dirt path staked on either side with rusted lengths of rebar. A steel sign taken from the highway stood atop two wooden posts outside of town, painted green from top to bottom in wide strokes. As far as Aurora could tell, the sign was well-cared for. A uniform, white border trimmed the edges, matching the neatly spacedwriting painted in the center.


Welcome to Kiln
- Founded in 1099 -
- by the survivors of Quarrytown -
ALL GHOULS WELCOME


Kiln reminded Aurora of the old Appleoosan films that would occasionally be shown back home by the Archive department. At the end of every month, pegasi would suspend a white sheet from a wire suspended across the Atrium catwalk, giving residents lucky enough to be scheduled off an opportunity to catch a glimpse of prewar entertainment. She found herself grinning at the unmistakably western architecture as they approached the edge of town. It felt like she was walking onto the set of High Moon, though Hayville had only been a fraction of the size of Kiln appeared to be and there were more cables strung across the main street than just telegraph wires. Ginger nudged her shoulder, giving her a curious look.
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, unable to wipe the smirk off her face.
It was too surreal. The false front buildings facing into the wide dirt boulevard screamed spaghetti western. 
They made room on the dirt road for a covered chuck wagon pulled by a pair of earth ponies wearing patchwork armor. A unicorn leaned out the front with a very modern rifle gripped in his magic, its muzzle aimed skyward while still making a clear display of his willingness to defend whatever it was his team was hauling. The canvas cover looked clean enough to be new. Aurora managed to resist the urge to greet the driver with a badly accented howdy, but only just. They passed each other without a word spoken or a shot fired.
As they crossed into the edge of town, she spotted a wide, wood-fenced area built against a slab of blackened regolith. Thick cables ran from the confines of the perimeter to a series of posts that led into town. Aurora listened for the putter of the generators and was surprised to hear none. Given the size and remoteness of the town, it made sense that the power was only switched on as needed.
“Looks like it grew since I was here last,” Roach commented as they crossed into the town.
Aurora nodded absently, her eyes drawn to the painted signs above the buildings they passed, a small part of her hoping to find a general store. She was a little disappointed when one didn’t present itself, each business instead bearing personalized signage and more than a few attempts at levity.
It was a strange dichotomy compared to the residents of Kiln. Aurora tried not to stare, pretending to struggle with the spritebot under her wing when one of the ghouls glanced her way. There were so many of them. Ponies in varying states of decay milled through the dusty street, gossiped along the wooden boardwalks and generally seemed content. A pair of mares, or at least she thought they were mares, crossed the street ahead of them with curious eyes turned toward the strange new visitors. It took them a moment to recognize Roach’s strange hallmarks of his own decay, but when they did they seemed to relax.
Aurora hefted the spritebot a little higher in the crook of her wing and leaned toward him. “I feel welcome already.”
He stifled a chuckle. “Not many smoothcoats frequent this part of town unless they’re trading in bulk. Most ponies stay on the northern outskirts where the radiation from the crater is less potent.”
She hesitated. “Then why aren’t we over there?”
“We don’t want to go up there,” Ginger said, biting off each word. Seeing Aurora’s confusion, she pursed her lips and looked north through the gaps between buildings. “Kiln is a node for slavers. Most of the ponies on the outskirts are either in pens or guarding them. I would much rather soak up the extra rads here than pay to sleep in one of their beds.”
An approving whistle peeled off the nearby boardwalk, delivered by a ghoul stallion who was unapologetically listening to her as they passed by. She cleared her throat and lowered her voice.
“Besides,” she said, “the company here is significantly more lively.”
Aurora lifted an eyebrow at the stallion that had whistled and shook her head, her grin gradually returning. There was definitely a different vibe here. Everyone seemed to wear their proverbial collars a little looser than the ponies at Junction City or Blinder’s Bluff. No one was shooting looks over their shoulders in search of the next great danger. It occurred to her that, nestled in the irradiated shadow of a centuries-old crater, these ghouls genuinely felt safe.
She had to admit despite the stares and curious whispers and the very real possibility that her pee would glow in the dark if they stayed too long, Kiln was showing some potential of growing on her.
A part of her wondered if Gallow would have fit in here.
She looked at Roach and waited until he saw she was staring.
“What?” he asked.
“Smoothcoats?”
“Ah.” 
She watched him fumble for words. 
“It’s a sort of blanket term for non-ghouls,” he said sheepishly. “It’s not meant as an insult.”
“Not usually,” Ginger clarified. She wore a small smile of her own at the sight of Roach’s sudden discomfort at being thrown under the carriage. “It’s alright, dear. He certainly means well.”
“Alright, now you’re both just ganging up on me,” he half-heartedly complained.
Aurora flicked him across the flank with her tail. “Don’t worry, I was just curious.”
He smirked and shook his head with the embarrassed relief of someone who just dodged a bullet. Aurora watched him out of the corner of her eye as he turned his attention back up to the signs posted above each business. He eventually spotted one that seemed to fit the bill - a place called Rusty’s Rectifiers - and gently diverted the two of them toward a storefront whose twin windows displayed a variety of small salvaged electronics.
As she stepped onto the boardwalk, she added, “You might’ve talked yourself out of that song, though.”
Roach and Ginger both opened their mouths to object, but it was far too late. Aurora hefted the spritebot through the shop’s front door while shooting a wry grin back to her companions. They followed her inside with a collective silence that foretold dire consequences.
The shop was small. Much smaller than Ginger’s back in Junction City. Bare steel shelving hung on rails hammered to either side of the cramped salesfloor, offering a variety of scrap in varying conditions. Everything from keyboards to vacuum tubes to spools of tarnished copper wire packed the shelves to the point where they looked less like displays and more like a junkyard brought indoors. Scraps of paper tied to each item advertised a price written in pencil. On what looked to be a salvaged kitchen island at the center of the shop, a medley of circuit boards lay over one another like slices of bread. Aurora recognized some of the parts, but most were entirely foreign to her. Things ripped out of technology that Stable-Tec deemed unnecessary for the longevity of her home and decided weren’t worth bringing inside. Curiosity bubbled within her at the sight of so many new gadgets.
The entire shop smelled like soldering smoke, a scent that got stronger as she approached the wall-to-wall workbench that served as the shop’s sales counter. The ghoul patiently waiting behind it was shorter than most ponies Aurora knew. His brown coat, drawn tight over protruding ribs, featured a long tear where a three-inch wide strip of leathery flesh was simply gone. The gash had taken his left ear and eye with it, leaving behind a strip of bare skull that eventually curled over the front of his muzzle. Aurora did her best not to react with anything beyond her now strained smile.
The ghoul smiled liplessly at her.
“Looks like you caught a whopper,” he rasped, grey eyes dipping to the spritebot beneath her wing. He patted the countertop with his hoof, disturbing the metal shavings that littered its rough surface. “You can set that down right here.”
As she did, the shopkeep nodded hellos to Roach and Ginger. Then he placed his hooves on the spritebot’s shell and gave it a slow turn, stopping briefly to make note of the large dent in its chassis where it had struck the road after deactivating. 
“Looking to trade or sell?” he asked.
“Just selling for now,” she said with a glance at the smaller shelves over his shoulder. A collection of more valuable scrap stood on display across the wall behind him, including a worn but intact cardboard box with original advertising for a do-it-yourself solar charger. The faded Jet Stream Industries logo was emblazoned across the top flap. She grimaced and turned her attention back to the bot in front of her. “I like your store.”
The dessicated muscles around his jaw twitched with the remnants of a real smile. “Thank you, miss. I do my best with what I have.” He dipped his head under the desk for a moment and returned with a long flathead screwdriver loosely held in the natural pocket behind his incisors. “I’ll be truthful, it’s not every day I have a dustwing in my shop, let alone one selling me Enclave tech.”
Aurora scratched the back of her neck, unsure how to respond.
“Well,” he said, pressing the rusted edge of the driver into a narrow gap in the bot’s paneling, “give me a few minutes to open this up and I’ll let you know what I can buy. Take a look around in the meantime. Name’s Rusty, by the way.”
“Aurora,” she replied, approaching a shelf along the wall. Ginger and Roach were browsing the circuit boards on display on the island out of politeness rather than any need to purchase anything.
An access panel in the spritebot’s chassis sprang open with a metallic snap. “That’s a pretty name. My wife and I went to the Crystal Empire for our honeymoon. The lights were so bright on our first night that we thought the sun was rising early.”
Roach looked up from the display with piqued curiosity. “You’re prewar?”
He nodded, setting the screwdriver down in order to pick up a narrow flashlight. He clicked it between his teeth and shone the light into the spritebot. “I was twenty-three when the bombs dropped.”
“I’m sorry,” Roach said.
Rusty shrugged and peered into the dark chassis. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago, and  I’ve had plenty of time to live a few good lifetimes since then.” He reached a hoof into the bot and tugged out a thick bundle of red cables that spilled onto the countertop. “How old were you when it happened?”
Aurora paused to glance back at Roach, who for a moment became distant and still.
“I’m not sure,” he finally answered. “We didn’t have birthdays where I came from. My husband and I used his birthday for the both of us.”
“Huh. I didn’t think your kind got married.”
A subtle smirk pulled at Roach’s lip. “We didn’t. I had to move to Equestria for that.”
Rusty gave something inside the bot a firm jerk with his hoof and carefully extracted a long, green circuit board that he laid next to the bot. “Well, changeling or not, I’m always glad to meet a new face from the old days. Kiln might be the largest ghoul town east of New Canterlot but most of its citizens caught the rot a long while after we blew up the world. Not a lot of folks around here want to hear an old fart tell the same stories about the times before.”
Roach chuckled sympathetically. “Ponies move on.”
“Ponies forget.” He dug out a black cube with two thick silver prongs on one side, set it next to the circuit board and ducked his hoof back in to continue gutting. “The Enclave and Steel Rangers are no different than Equestria or Vhanna, except instead of oil it’s old world tech that decides which side dies. Do you remember the day it happened?”
Roach nodded.
“But do you remember why it happened?”
“No one knows why it happened,” he said. “One day it just did.”
“Exactly,” Rusty said, peering over the top of the bot for emphasis. “One day it just did. There was no warning. Nothing on the news to tell any of us things were falling apart. Certainly no warning from the Ministry of Image. It was just another boring Wednesday morning and… then I noticed all the pegasi in the air. A whole mess of them flying east from Cloudsdale. I was out harvesting wheat and I remember my radio cutting out and hearing this mare reading a bulletin telling everyone to seek shelter. I was halfway to the house when I saw the first flash.”
Aurora set down the gearbox she’d been looking at and turned to listen. Ginger and Roach were doing the same.
Rusty took a ragged breath before continuing. “By the time I got inside, the sky was starting to go green in the west. It was like a wave that kept getting closer. I couldn’t find Firefly or the kids so I just assumed they were downstairs in the root cellar. It was always a mess down there. She had taken up making preserves and there were boxes of jars everywhere. I thought maybe they were hiding, but by the time I realized they weren’t in the cellar it was too late to do anything. One minute I was alone down there, the next I was watching our house being torn to pieces right over my head. The heat was so terrible and I remember thinking that if I didn’t get somewhere safe I would die, so I yanked the sump pump out of the basin and forced myself in as deep as I could fit.
“I remember thinking to myself as soon as this was over, I needed to go back upstairs and find the kids.” He shook his head with a bitter laugh. “Our house was being dragged into the firestorm one wall at a time and I still thought I might be able to find them hiding under their beds. Wasn’t until later that I remembered they were doing chores with their mother in the barn. By that time, everything was gone. The house, the barn, even the fields. All of it just… scraped black.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Point is, none of us knew it was going to happen until it did. It doesn’t matter what theory you believe in. What matters is that someone responsible for not pushing the button woke up that morning and decided it needed pushing. Every year that goes by, there are less of us who remember what it was like to lose an entire world.” He stared pointedly at Roach. “Nobody wants to hear old ghouls like us lament a time they were never around to see, and even less want to be lectured about how close the Rangers and Enclave are to making the same mistakes.”
Rusty gave the spritebot’s innards a hard yank, tearing something loose with the rapid pops of breaking wires. He dropped a pair of bulky vacuum tubes onto the growing pile of components and went right back in for more. 
“Anyway, you didn’t come here to listen to me bellyache.” He dropped the flashlight, picked up his screwdriver and spun the bot around. He glanced up at Aurora before attacking the screws that held the spritebot’s grille in place. “Mind if I give you some personal advice?”
Aurora shook her head.
“Don’t gawk so much,” he said, a gentler smile returning to his torn face. “It makes it more obvious you’re from a Stable.”
She coughed. “How’d you know that?”
Rusty wriggled the last screw loose with the tip of his hoof and slid the grille away, his dim eyes regarding the cluster of lenses within with something like approval. He looked up to her, screwdriver still bitten between his exposed front teeth and aimed at her. “Well, for one, you keep looking at those old motors like they’re worth doing anything with besides melting into bullets. And two, I own a radio. Doesn’t take much figuring to match you and your unicorn friend up with Flipswitch’s broadcasts this week.”
Aurora frowned. She hadn’t considered Fiona’s program had enough range to reach all the way out here. She pursed her lips at the fresh memory of her storming away after having her station pulled out from under her.  
She picked up the hoof-sized cylinder in her wing. “Well, not that anyone’s keeping score, but this isn’t a motor,” she said. “This is a SureDraft planetary gearbox. It’s a precision tool.”
“Sure it was, back when anyone knew what it was for,” Rusty conceded. “But these days I just call them motors. Makes them easier to sell for scrap. Only customers I ever get that know what half of these things were used for are Steel Ranger mechanics, old ghouls and Stable ponies. No offense, but you don’t look like Steel Ranger material to me.”
She set the gearbox back on its shelf, regarding the little paper tag denoting MOTOR, 19 CAPS with mild irritation.
“What about the Enclave?” she asked.
“Aurora...” Ginger warned.
Rusty looked her over for a beat before shaking his head with a dismissive laugh. “An Enclave pegasus might tolerate a unicorn out of necessity,” he said, nodding apologetically to Ginger, “but they wouldn’t be caught dead traveling with a ghoul, let alone enter a ghoul’s shop to sell their own tech. You’re about as Enclave as I am a Wonderbolt.”
Aurora glanced at Roach, who shrugged in response. 
“He’s got your number,” he said.
She snorted and watched Rusty pry the cameras free of their housing. “Just because I know the difference between a motor and a gearbox doesn’t necessarily mean I’m from a Stable.”
Rusty lifted the assembly out of the spritebot and peered into the lenses. “No, but that wasn’t my point. My point was that you’re gawking. You keep looking at my shelves like everything is new and interesting when it’s just junk I’ve scavenged or traded for. That, and you keep watching me like I’m going to take a bite out of you.”
She felt her cheeks grow warm. “That’s not what…”
“Oh, don’t worry,” he chuckled, waving her off. “Despite my current state of affairs, it takes a lot to get under my skin. And you’re not the first Stable pony I’ve met, either. If I were a betting ghoul, I’d say you worked somewhere in maintenance.”
“Mechanical,” she said, her chest puffing out with a bit of pride. “Led the first shift and generator certified.”
Rusty set the camera assembly on the desk. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I’m going to wager I was pretty close.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t make wagers with our dear Aurora. When it comes time for her to pay her due, she seems to get cold hooves,” Ginger chided as she browsed a shelf filled with spooled wire on the opposite side of the shop. Aurora shot her a look, but it was quickly returned with an arched brow and a you-did-this-to-yourself smile.
Rusty watched the exchange play out with open curiosity. Seeing no real animosity between the two, he set his tools down and turned to Aurora. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a Stable mare that would welch on a bet.”
“It was barely a bet,” she retorted.
The ghoul behind the counter was grinning now. “Barely still counts in my book. What was the wager?”
“Just one song,” Roach supplied, doing his utmost to play up his disappointment in her. “It’s Magic by Doris Bray.”
Rusty let out a low whistle and shook his head slowly. “Shame. That’s a great song.”
“It really is,” Roach sighed. “The last time I heard it was a century ago, and then I thought to myself, Roach, wouldn’t it be something if you could listen to it one more time? But I suppose it’s my fault for getting my hopes up.”
Aurora stared at Roach, dumbfounded.
He was pouting. He was literally pouting.
Behind him, Ginger was doing her best not to laugh.
Rusty thumped his hoof against the counter, drawing three distinctly different gazes. “Well, I’m sorry to inform you all that I can’t in good conscience do business with a grifter. It’s a personal policy, you see.”
“Wait,” Aurora said, her eyes dropping to the absolute mess of parts Rusty had turned the spritebot into. “Are you being serious?”
He nodded stoically. “I’m afraid so. Unless, that is, you’d be willing to give my friend Roach your word that you’ll make good on that promise you made.”
Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but upon seeing the three conspiratory grins turned to her, she knew there was no point in arguing. She was outnumbered, outgunned and at their mercy.
She tipped her head to the rafters and shook her head in resignation. “Fine. But only this once.”
“Oh no,” Rusty said. “You can’t sing in here. The acoustics are awful.”
Aurora felt a fresh flush of mistrust crawling up her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes at the ghoul.
“There’s a place on the east end of Kiln called the Glowing Gash that serves a decent beer, and the food’s close to edible,” he said. “Last time I was in there, they still had a working karaoke machine. Lot of folks there wouldn’t mind hearing a smoothcoat sing, either, if I’m being completely forthright.”
“Ooh!” Ginger chirped.
“Wait, hold on,” Aurora interjected, unsure she liked the excited curl of Ginger’s grin. “We need to find a place to sleep for the night first.”
“The Gash has rooms upstairs,” Rusty added.
“You’re a sadist,” she growled.
“And before that, I was a farmer,” he chuckled. “Reap what you sow, and all that. In the meantime, we’ve got a heap of good salvage to haggle over. You said you wanted payment in caps?”
She could practically hear her window for weaseling out of the ridiculous bet slam shut. Roach was smiling so wide she thought the broken chitin along his muzzle might develop new cracks. Ginger had a different flavor of eagerness in her eyes. She genuinely seemed excited.
It was no use fighting.
“Yeah. Caps are fine.”
Rusty leaned into the countertop, somehow managing a warm smile despite his lack of lips. “Alright then, ma’am. Let’s talk numbers.”







Aurora’s saddlebags let out a satisfying jingle with each step she took.
Despite the looming dread of things yet to come, she was proud of herself. The spritebot had fetched one hundred fifty caps which, as far as she was concerned, was a better trade than the apples she’d been swindled out of on her first day in the wasteland. She wasn’t much of a haggler but Roach had assured her that Rusty’s price had been a fair one.
The clouds above were turning a darker gray, signaling the waning hours of the day were upon them. As they followed Rusty’s directions east through town, a series of deep electric thunks began echoing from the direction they’d just come. They paused to look over their shoulders in time to watch the city of Kiln light up one block after the other. Incandescent bulbs, halogen rings and strings of lights caught the glow as it streaked ahead of them toward the other side of the settlement.
Something occurred to Aurora that she hadn’t realized when they first arrived in Kiln. This place wasn’t a cascade of ramshackle huts built from the bones of prewar structures or a carefully preserved pocket of buildings the bombs hadn’t been able to destroy. The structures that surrounded them were simple and almost uniform, wooden planks joined to wooden beams to create something that a pony or ghoul could live in. They were built to last because, at the end of the day, they had been built.
She wondered why that hadn’t been the case in Blinder’s Bluff or Junction City.
The buzzing glow of electricity brought with it another noise. A twanging, brassy sound that reminded Aurora of the times she would find the best after-hours parties in the Stable simply by following the sound of music played too loud. As they drew closer to the source, the tune grew clearer until she recognized the distinct trumpets of Root Petite rising through a pair of narrow, brightly-painted doors outside which several ghouls chatted and smoked.
“Oh… good heavens,” Ginger’s voice complained beside her.
Aurora gave her an incredulous look. “What, you don’t like rock n’ roll?”
“Yeah,” Roach said with clear apprehension. “Maybe we should find someplace else to stay the night.”
Aurora frowned at both of them, following their gazes to the wide, framed sign that dominated most of the building’s false front. Her eyes shot wide and she barked a laugh that drew more than a few amused looks from the ghouls gathered outside.
The billboard-sized sign depicted a painstakingly detailed image of the lower half of a decidedly female pony, her hind legs spread wide and skyward. The artist had made sure to leave nothing to the imagination. The gigantic mare’s impeccable white coat was marred with slashing black lines that spelled the words GLOWING and GASH across each upturned leg. Where the faceless mare’s legs joined, two neon green doors stood in place of her marehood, a matching pair to the doors waiting for them across the bar’s front boardwalk.
Beneath the lights, a purple sprig of tail curled toward the bottom of the sign. The words TIP GENEROUSLY were painted in small letters along the length of her dock.
“Ho-lee-shit,” Aurora laughed. “This is perfect!”
“I’m going to go back and kill Rusty,” Roach groaned.
Ginger nodded, her eyes glued to the sign. “I’ll help.”
“Oh come on,” Aurora jeered, throwing a wing over Roach’s shoulder. “It’s nothing you don’t already see every day. Besides, Rusty said they rent out rooms and I really don’t feel like knocking on doors all night looking for someplace else. Plus, I owe both of you.”
Roach heaved a reticent sigh. “You’re going to make me go in there, aren’t you.”
Aurora shrugged. “You’re the one who wants me to sing. Unless you want to call off the wager.”
His face hardened. “Never.”
She slapped him across the back with a grin and turned to Ginger. “You ready?”
Ginger pressed her lips into a tight smile and sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
Aurora danced a jig on her hooftips and led them up to the boardwalk. The ghouls gathered outside watched them step onto the planks with equal parts surprise and curiosity, though most of the latter was directed at Roach as he followed the mares through the narrow doors of the Glowing Gash.
Despite being seated in the irradiated shadow of a crater formed by one of the hundreds of bombs that killed Equestria, the bar was electric and alive. Aurora felt her jaw slacken as she took in what felt like a scene from another era.
The Gash wasn’t a large place, but it made efficient use out of the space it had. Three heavy square timbers held aloft lacquered rafters that gave the old wood a warm, almost vibrant red tint. Vintage gas lamps hung from the ceiling, snaked through with wires that lit their retrofitted bulbs. 
To the left was the bar proper, a long polished strip of oak that bore the wear of constant use and signs of fastidious care. To the right, two rows of tables just large enough to seat four apiece drew parallel lines toward a stone-mantled fireplace that dominated the rear of the establishment. 
Directly opposite the bar, positioned next to the smaller tables where patrons would have the best view sat a short, kitschy stage. Heavy red curtains hung on the wall behind a crooked microphone stand in an imitation of the grand performance stages that used to dominate the Manehattan theater districts. At the foot of the stage facing toward any would-be performers was a small terminal screen sitting atop a single, large wood panel speaker turned on its side. 
The stage was currently occupied by a pair of ragged stallions doing their best to butcher the lyrics of Root Petite as thoroughly as they could. As far as Aurora could tell, they weren’t even drunk. They were just having a good time at the expense of a little pride. She smiled as they stumbled and laughed through the final lines until the song mercifully ended. A smattering of applause rose from a pair of withered mares at a table near the front of the stage who the two stallions were trying, and succeeding at endearing themselves to. A few ghouls at other tables smiled in polite acknowledgement as they returned to their conversations or simply tried to tune out the singing altogether, preferring to focus on their drinks.
As the daring duo queued up another song, she realized several ghouls at the bar were  already beginning to notice them. For a split second she felt like the dusty outlaw taking her first steps into a crowded saloon, but the internal fiction soon faded as she realized none of the glances aimed at her or her two companions were particularly hostile. Just curious, as if wondering whether they knew they were on the ghoul side of Kiln. For the second time, Aurora had a burning urge to yell howdy.
It didn’t occur to her that she was drawing so much attention because she was blocking the door.
Roach gently cleared his throat, as much good as it ever did his voice, and nudged past her with a subtle nod for the two of them to follow. She walked alongside Ginger who seemed relieved that the inside of the bar wasn’t a direct reflection of the eye-catching advertisement it featured outside. He led them to the long row of bare wood stools in front of the bar and waited for the ghoul on the other side to finish with his customer before trying to flag him down. 
A cracked blackboard behind the bar advertised a long list of beverages and a substantially shorter list of food options. Ironically, despite the heavy emphasis the Gash had on hanging hunting trophies on its walls, the only meat the menu offered was something called rad-rat fillet. She wrinkled her nose at that culinary dice throw and decided the rations Coldbrook had given them were the safer option.
The bartender eventually, and a little reluctantly, slid down the line to serve the visitors that were drawing so much of his patrons’ attention. Roach kept the pleasantries brief, which suited the pale stallion just fine, and after a brief exchange they made the short walk to an open table near the stage with three mugs of house beer and one room key. A few eyes lingered on Ginger and Aurora as they dropped their saddlebags and took their seats around the little table.
After nearly a straight day of walking, sitting down in a hard wooden chair felt like bliss to Aurora’s aching hooves. Judging by the groan that slipped from Ginger’s throat, the feeling was mutual.
“All things considered,” she said, tipping her horn toward the bar as a whole, “it’s not nearly as tacky as I expected.”
Roach nodded his agreement, his eyes on the two stallions belting into the microphone on stage, and shook his head with a smirk. “I’m just happy it isn’t a strip club.”
Aurora glanced at Ginger, who shook her head in response. “Alright,” she said, “I’ll bite. What’s a strip club?”
Roach hesitated, looking between the two of them with a mixture of disbelief and a flush of embarrassment. Aurora took a tentative sip from her mug as she watched him debate whether to answer at all. Whatever the house beer was supposed to be, “consumable” was apparently an optional feature. It tasted how the river muck had smelled, with the added benefits of being room temperature and flat. It was absolutely undrinkable.
She took a second sip to be sure.
“They were popular in the larger cities before the war,” he said uncomfortably. “Folks would pay to watch ponies put on a few layers of clothes, come on stage and take them off.”
Aurora shot him a dubious look. “What, so they could get off?”
Roach shrugged. “Yes and no. There were strict rules against touching the dancers… or yourself.”
“And these places were popular?” Ginger asked, taking a moment to sample her beer. The flavor was enough to make her start coughing, and she pushed the offending mug away as if it had just bitten her. “I fail to see the draw to watching someone take off a few articles of unnecessary clothing on a stage, let alone paying for a service that you’re forbidden to enjoy.”
“I’ve heard of ponies being into denial,” Aurora offered, drawing a look from Ginger. “What? I’ve only heard of it. I’ve never… you know.”
“It’s not a denial thing,” Roach insisted. “It’s just common decency.”
Aurora rolled her eyes. “It sounds like extra steps.”
“Eh, don’t knock it till you try it.” He shrugged, his eyes drifting to the two ghouls on stage. “There are worse things to enjoy.”
Aurora cocked her eyebrow at him, shook her head and turned to find Ginger giving her a similar look. The unicorn’s muzzle curled with unspoken promises.
“I will say this much,” Roach continued, his tone softening, “It’s been one hell of a week.”
“It has,” Ginger agreed. “Not that I’m complaining. If I’m being honest, I was probably a year away from throwing that sewing machine through the window. The past several days have been refreshing, in their own way.”
Aurora took a swig to mask her sudden discomfort. The tepid beer was slightly better than terrible, which was par for the course back home. “All of them?”
“Well,” she conceded, “I could have lived a happy life without Autumn Song worming her way into it, but these things do tend to happen. Though perhaps not in such dramatic fashion as our experience. Either way, it feels good to have this… this thing we have.”
“A purpose,” Roach supplied.
“Exactly that,” she nodded. “These days it seems like the only ponies working toward something are doing it for wealth, glory or both. Autumn and Cider’s trade network, for one. Or the hundreds of raider warlords in the West. Even the Rangers do it, confiscating everything of value in the wasteland in the name of protecting us little ponies.”
Aurora watched her lean forward, retrieve her mug, and drink. When she set it back down she continued without missing a beat. “There’s so little left of the world for the rest of us. Merely existing feels like an accomplishment some days. I thought renting my own shop in the middle of nowhere was the start of something new for me, but it turned out to be a different prison.”
Roach glanced at her with genuine surprise. “I thought that shop was your dream?”
She laughed. “I did too. Growing up in New Canterlot, surrounded by all that history and Enclave loyalists pretending to have never left it behind, you start to believe you’re living in a place where the old stories seem possible again. It was infectious, especially among the lower breeds.”
Aurora blinked. “Breeds?”
She watched Ginger open her mouth as if to apologize, close it and smile. “There’s a... pervading belief within the Enclave of a natural hierarchy within the species. The alicorn princesses are unsurprisingly at the top of the pecking order, followed by pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies and… according to them, dustwings. In the absence of any surviving alicorns, the Enclave views itself as the proverbial beacon on a hill. The purest and nearest bloodline to the old diarchy.”
Aurora looked at Roach, the stallions belting a drunken duet of The Wanderer, and the withered ponies that filled the tables and barstools around them with the low hum of conversation punctuated by the occasional gravelly laughter.
“What about ghouls?” she asked.
Roach took a deep pull from his mug. He chuckled as he set it back down. “We don’t rank.”
She frowned. “But some of you were actually alive before…” she gestured vaguely with her wing, “...before all this happened.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean much these days.”
“Yes it does!” she insisted. He looked at her with a smile, but it was the same weary smile a parent offered to their energized children. “Every place I’ve been out here has either been nailed together with the old world’s leftover junk or repurposed from something that happened to survive. But this place,” she thumped the table for emphasis, “this place was built by ponies who remember how. That deserves something.”
“Damn right it does,” a voice rumbled from the table behind her.
She shrank a little in her chair at the sudden attention. Roach nodded acknowledgement to the ghouls seated over her shoulder, then tossed her a sympathetic wink as she drowned in her own embarrassment.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “the Enclave sees us as corrupted wildlife. They don’t hate us. They pity us for what we’ve become.”
“Only so they can justify the euthanasia,” Ginger added darkly. “I can’t say I’m terribly broken up about leaving that life behind when I did. Rather glad, actually. If I hadn’t, I would have never met either of you.”
“And they say you have to go to Las Pegasus to win the lottery,” Roach chuckled.
They settled into amicable silence as the weight of their travels sloughed away. Aurora finished her drink and watched with relief as another table urged one of their friends to take the stage while the two stallions finished what was looking to be their last song. The pale blue mare shushed her eager companions as the duo stumbled back to their table, leaving the stage open for her to approach the little terminal ahead of the microphone stand and begin sorting through its selection.
Meanwhile a waitress made her rounds between the tables, collecting empty glasses and jotting orders on a pad with a nib of pencil held between her teeth. Aurora tensed as the unicorn approached but Roach tapped her hoof beneath the table, his expression unworried.
The waitress lifted a narrow brow at Aurora’s wings as she cleared the empty mugs and took down a fresh order from Roach. The mare on stage was well into her third song by the time she returned with three black bottles bearing identical labels identifying them as something called Sparkle Dark.
Aurora turned hers over in her feathers with a dubious look. “Rum cola?”
“Aged to perfection,” Roach jokingly answered. “Don’t knock it…”
“...until I try it, I know,” she finished, giving the cap a firm twist. As with the Sparkle Cola they discovered back at the cabin, the bottle in her wing had lost its carbonation to the centuries. She dropped the bottle cap into her saddlebag and took a tenuous sip. The fumes alone made the roof of her mouth tingle, save nothing for the too-sweet flavor of liquor infused soda. She grimaced as she swallowed. “I’m knocking it. Oh, I’m knocking this so hard.”
“It’s not great,” he agreed. He slid his cap across the table along with Ginger, who seemed to be enjoying hers a bit more than the watered down beer. 
Aurora took another pull from the bottle and frowned at the label. Barely legible, she had to squint to read the words at the bottom: The Official Beverage of Twilight Sparkle. She snorted, pointing the tiny endorsement out to Ginger. “Is this for real?”
Ginger read the line and nodded. “Sure. It was one of the ways the ministries financed the war effort back then. A brand deal with a ministry mare was a license to mint bits depending on which one a company could sign. I’ve heard it said that the Ministry of Image originally came up with the idea and, ironically, Rarity’s endorsement was the most difficult to get.”
“Huh,” she said. She had assumed that the makers of Sparkle Cola had lifted the name for a fast profit without any actual consideration to what the Element of Magic actually thought about it. It felt strange picturing the indomitable Twilight Sparkle leafing through brand deals and deciding that the best product to put her name on was, of all things, a soda.
She took another swig. Sparkle Cola’s rum counterpart wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad enough for her to set down the bottle either. She wondered whether that was deliberate. “So what did Rarity endorse?”
Ginger offered a mild shrug. “Her own clothing, mostly.”
Aurora felt a twinge of disappointment at that. “That’s it? There weren’t any hot dog stands with her name on them?”
Roach laughed, drawing an irritated glance from the mare on stage. 
“Now that I would have paid to see.” He took a deep pull from his bottle and grinned. “I’ve heard Rarity called a lot of things and risk-taker isn’t one of them. She wouldn’t put her name on an orphanage if there was a chance one of the foals might grow up to be a dissenter. She was all about controlling the narrative, that mare, and she had most of Equestria wrapped around her hoof right up til the end. That kind of influence is a power in and of itself. She wouldn’t risk losing it by putting her name in the hooves of someone who might publicly step out of line.”
Aurora wasn’t sure she wanted to believe his depiction of the Element of Generosity. She shuffled her wings uncomfortably. “That’s definitely not the Rarity I read about back home.”
“Because she’s not the Rarity Equestria started out with,” Roach said. His voice fell a little as he spoke. “Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. I missed most of their early years.”
His tone made it clear he was referring to Blue. Aurora nodded and took a sip of rum, grudgingly enjoying the warmth of cheap liquor as it pooled in her belly.
Ginger set her bottle down and stretched her aching legs as far as the table’s center post would allow. “I wanted to be just like her.”
Roach chuckled and gave her a teasing smirk. “How simply dreadful, darling,” he rasped.
She kicked him under the table with a defiant smile of her own. “Oh, shut up. You know what I meant.”
He lifted his hooves in mock surrender and said no more. Aurora waited as she watched Ginger gather herself up to continue, her eyes becoming distant as she struggled to string the right words together.
She clasped her hooves on either side of her bottle and slowly turned it back and forth as she spoke. “Growing up in New Canterlot, my little sister and I fawned over anything to do with Rarity. She was an iconic unicorn of her time and even though most fillies our age eventually grew out of it, I just couldn’t get her out of my head. I had books about her, pictures, holotapes - you name it. If it was new and had to do with Rarity, I was usually the first in line to buy it. Growing up in our house, caps weren’t an issue. That’s part of the reason I was so drawn to her.”
Ginger paused to light her horn and take a sip from her bottle, her eyes briefly tracking the ghoul on the tiny stage as she set the microphone back in its stand and made her way back to her cackling friends.
“Rarity started with nothing,” she said, smiling in the direction of the baudy mares. “She fought, kicked and scraped for everything she would eventually have and none of it came easy. When she became an Element, she could have cashed in on the title alone and lived an easy life, but she didn’t. I thought she was being noble, but the more I learned about her the more I began to understand something that my parents weren’t interested in teaching my sister and I. They could give us everything. Money, gifts, influence, anything we wanted.”
She took another, deeper pull from her bottle and winced as the cheap rum burned its way down her throat. “All except for the knowledge that we’d done anything at all to earn it.”
Aurora watched her stare at the half-empty bottle and twist her face with frustrated embarrassment. She gripped the neck in her magic and slid it away from her toward the table’s center.
“Sorry,” she sighed. “I get chatty when I drink.”
Aurora stared at Ginger, puzzled. She had stopped short of something important and part of her wanted to help coax it out of her. She knew it was selfish, but there it was. In so many ways, Ginger was still a mystery to her. Like a book Aurora had only read the first chapter of. There was more there than a painfully privileged childhood and an obscure boutique in the middle of nowhere. Ginger had lived a life and Aurora was becoming keenly aware that she knew close to nothing about it.
“That’s because you’re drinking on an empty stomach.” Roach pushed back from the table and dropped to his hooves. “I’m going to see what they have for food. Give me a few minutes.”
They watched him weave through the tables toward the crowded bar while the ghoul on stage sang the last ragged verse of Way Back Home alongside the recorded tones of its long-dead trio of background singers.
Aurora nudged her bottle toward Ginger’s until they clinked. “You know, I never expected to get this far,” she said.
Ginger leaned forward, setting her cheek against the flat of her hoof. She allowed herself a small, weary smile. “Roach told me a little bit about how you two met. He has a tendency to be in the right place at the right time.”
She nodded. It didn’t take much to remember the sensation of teeth clamping against the back of her leg, or the relief she felt once she was sure Roach had appeared out of the darkness to help her.
The mare on stage finished, setting the microphone back into its stand before sheepishly heading back to her table to a smattering of stamped hooves. Aurora wondered what her voice had sounded like before she became a ghoul.
“We thought there was nothing out here,” she said. Her eyes panned the bar, the tables, the ghouls chatting around them in pairs and groups. Finally, she looked at Ginger. “Why hasn’t anyone tried to fix it?”
“What?” Ginger chuckled. “Equestria?”
She shrugged, then nodded. “I mean, yeah.”
Ginger smiled. “Most ponies are happy to just survive it, Aurora.”
“Sure, but…”
She trailed off when she caught sight of Roach walking back to the table with a chipped white plate heaped with some sort of sliced, dehydrated fruit clamped precariously between his teeth. Aurora couldn’t tell whether he was grinning at her or if it was just an effect of carrying the dish, but there was definitely a glint in his eye that hadn’t been there earlier.
Following close behind him was the bartender. As Roach set down the dish, the grey ghoul slipped wordlessly past their table and continued toward the stage. Several patrons took notice, including Aurora.
She eyed him, and then Roach with growing suspicion. Without a plate to mask it, his grin was unmistakable. “What’s he doing?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said, putting little effort into his feigned innocence. He picked up what looked to be a dried slice of apple from the plate and popped it into his mouth. “Looks important, though.”
She chewed her lip and turned to watch.
He looked like a strip of leather that spent an hour inside a Robronco industrial blender. His hide was sliced in more places than it was intact, a patchwork of wounds that didn’t seem to faze him any more than the ghouls that filled the bar. The speakers popped as he tapped a hoof against the empty mic, drawing the rest of his patrons’ attention.
“Evening, everyone,” he rasped. A murmur of acknowledgment rolled back from his patrons.
A shout rose up from the bar. “Oh, Brandy, sing us a song!”
He smirked as the rest of the bar chuckled. “Maybe next time, Stitch. Reason I’m up here is because we’ve got some new faces in the Gash tonight.” He gestured toward their table which was immediately followed by just about every eye in the building. “A unicorn, a dustwing and a changeling walk into a bar. Someone write that down for me before I forget.”
Several ghouls around her laughed.
“All jokes aside, I’m told that one of these ponies has a song she wants to share.” Brandy’s foggy eyes swung directly to where Aurora sat. Then he turned back to the bar. “Now when was the last time any of us has heard a smoothcoat sing? Too long, I’d say. So how’s about we give you rotheads a break and let our very own Aurora Pinfeathers put some time in on the mic?”
Aurora glared at Roach as a gentle thunder of hooves thumped encouragement from their tables. “I’m going to kill you.”
He gestured toward the stage with a wry smile. “A bet’s a bet.”
“Oh, don’t look so worried,” Ginger said, a dry slice of apple floating in front of her mouth. “It’s karaoke. The whole point is to sound foolish.”
She shuffled her wings again while the bar only grew more adamant that she take the stage. It was clear to everyone, not just her, that a trap had been sprung and with expert precision. Nobody was expecting a good performance. Only a little entertainment to ease them into the night. There was no malice in their applause. Just well-humored participation in the ambush.
Aurora tried and failed to stifle a smile. She gnawed her lip, eyed Roach’s bottle and snatched it up in her wing. Several whoops went up from the neighboring tables as she drained it, letting rum that was probably better poured into a sink fill her with not unpleasant heat.
“I see how it is,” she said to him as she pushed away from the table. “Just remember. You asked for this.”
Stepping up on stage, small as it was, felt surreal. For a brief moment, she felt like she didn’t deserve to relax like this, if one could call it relaxing. Even now, the generator she was charged with maintaining was winding down and she was still days away from knowing whether this journey to StableTec HQ was going to pay off.
Then the moment passed and she reminded herself that she needed this. Not an opportunity to butcher a perfectly innocent song, but the chance to unwind a little before the spring inside her snapped. She needed to be able to turn her worries off just this once and have a normal, stupid evening to herself.
She turned toward the microphone and faced the bar. It was like she was in that tunnel again, staring into the gaunt faces of ponies withered by generations of unstoppable decay. Only these ponies stared back, some busying themselves with drinks and idle conversation while others waited for her to sing with good-natured smiles across their muzzles. Back at the bar, Brandy busied himself with the backlog of drink orders that built up during his trip to the microphone. Sitting at their table to her left, only a few steps off the stage, Roach and Ginger waited with barely contained glee as she mustered the courage to begin.
Aurora didn’t sing. She loved music, sure, but singing out loud was something she only did in private and only when Millie’s speaker was turned up enough that she couldn’t hear herself over the recording. She couldn’t carry a tune any better than a unicorn could fly, and right now she was definitely considering the aerodynamics of the two horned ponies guarding her saddlebags.
“Come on!” a voice shouted from the back of the bar. “Before we’re dead!”
Chuckles rose from the bar as more heads turned to see what she would do.
She mimed their laughter, narrowing her eyes at Roach. This was his fault for suckering her into that bet knowing full well her shooting was years behind his own. 
He watched her with a victor’s grin, unaware of what she had planned for him.
The terminal perched atop the speaker in front of her glowed with the words YOU SIGH in bright green font. She wouldn’t need the lines. Her mother had been an unapologetic fan of Doris Bray for as long as she could remember, filling their compartment with her music so often that Aurora could identify her record by the scratching pops that played before the first track. The words were burned into her brain like a brand, and she knew just how to weaponize each one.
Scooping the microphone off its stand, she leaned forward and tapped the keyboard.
The bar that had been playing rock and roll since they arrived quickly filled with a swaying chorus of strings that swept up through the bars, hung suspensefully on a high, then dipped low to make room for the iconic voice adored by parents and loathed by their embarrassed children.
Aurora held the microphone below her lips, stepped away from the center of the stage and turned directly toward Roach.
“You smile,” she sang, “the song begins. You speak, and I hear violins. It’s magic.”
He blinked as she approached the edge, the microphone wire snaking behind her, realizing that her attention was fixed entirely on him.
She stepped down, continuing. “The stars desert the skies, and rush to nestle in your eyes. It’s magic.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Ginger casually place a hoof across her muzzle to hide a smile. Roach’s grin started to tighten as it dawned on him what was happening. That the trap he’d laid for her had just snapped shut around his leg. A murmur of laughter rose from the nearest table as the ghouls there came to the same realization. He was trapped.
“Without a golden wand or mystic charms,” she crooned, draping the feathers of her other wing along his shoulder. Her hoof wrapped around the leg of his chair, turning him to face her as she stepped forward. “Fantastic things begin when I am in your arms.”
His chitinous lips pinched together in a tight line as she drew the tip of her wing up his neck, gently cupping his chin. 
“It’s magic.” She fixed him with a coy smile as the band swelled, mercilessly aware of the discomfort her sudden attention was causing. His eyes shot wide as she drew close enough to him that she could taste the rum on his breath. “How else can I explain those rainbows when there is no rain?”
She sang bare inches from his lips. “It’s magic.”
His opaque eyes swiveled to Ginger in a plea for help. On cue, a gentle pressure formed against her chest, pulling her away from the mortified changeling. She grinned, allowing Ginger to foil her plan to wring as much embarrassment from him as possible.
“Why do I tell myself these things that happen are all really true,” she continued, turning toward Ginger for the last verse. The unicorn arched an eyebrow at her as she stepped toward her, snorting as Aurora batted her eyelids like a swooning mare on the old television soaps. “When in my heart I know, the magic is my love for you?”
A piano joined the sweeping strings of violins to play the last notes to a conclusion, followed by a smattering of applause from the bar.
“You’re terrible,” Ginger half-heartedly accused.
Aurora pecked her on the nose and grinned. “You’re next.”
Before Ginger could protest, she lifted the mic back to her lips and turned to address the bar. “Ladies and gentlecolts, as much as I’d love to butcher another song for you, my dear friend Ginger has been waiting forever to have a turn.”
She flicked the mic into the air, forcing her to snatch it out of the air with her magic. The speakers whistled with interference at the touch of her aura, sending a wave of irritated groans through the bar. She quickly adjusted her grip away from the receiver, gripping the mic around the base. The whining speakers quieted, leaving her speechless under the attention of dozens of ghouls.
Aurora leaned toward her as she pulled out her chair. “She’s taking requests.”
“Do something by the Pony Tones!”
“Show us your teats!”
Ginger shot a glare toward the last suggestion as Aurora sat down. “Jingle Jangle Jingle by Kabarda Kay,” she blurted before any more requests could bubble up from the crowd. Bronze light formed under Aurora’s foreleg, hoisting her up out of the chair. 
“What are you-”
“It’s a duet, darling,” she said, guiding her back toward the stage. “And by my count, you owe me a few of them.”








The air above the eastern wastes didn’t smell or taste any different than the murky sky above New Canterlot, but Julip could still sense a sourness building in the back of her throat the moment she crossed through the contested zone and into Steel Ranger territory. Short of carrying a physical map, the only visible signs that she had slipped over the lands controlled by their besiegers were the numerous forward operating posts that dotted what used to be verdant farmland. Dry soil churned dark by power armor and whatever machines the Rangers had been able to resurrect over the decades. Nothing the Enclave couldn’t repel, but daunting to see in any capacity nonetheless.
Sergeant Hayflinger had everything ready when she reported in with Supply, and she nearly let the disappointment show on her face when he presented her kit for this… diplomatic mission, was what he called it. Minister Primrose had insisted upon a subtle approach to increase the likelihood that Aurora Pinfeathers wouldn’t feel whatever trek she was on was being hijacked. Going in armed to the teeth wasn’t a good approach, she knew that, but after being abducted and imprisoned by that ambitious little mud pony, the prospect of traveling light rattled her. Beg and plead as she might, she knew Primrose wouldn’t allow her to leave armed for bear.
Her kit was lightweight and portable, or at least that had been Hayflinger’s choice of words in lieu of telling her she was being sent out underarmored and undersupplied. It was what it was. She had been requisitioned a reliable compact submachine gun with enough 10mm clips to last her through two or three fights if she was conservative. They were distributed evenly throughout the inner pockets of her Ranger-issued leather armor, which had been relieved from its original owner on some forgotten battlefield behind her. The Enclave had more of the stuff than they knew what to do with. Hayflinger had at least done a respectable job and sewn in fresh composite plates, for what good they would do against an armor-piercing around. At least if she accidentally shot herself she’d stand a decent chance of surviving that.
The final insult had come in the form of her saddlebags, or the lack thereof.
“Don’t want you to look too put together,” he’d said as he pushed her substitute across the supply counter.
She grimaced as the wind buffeted the canvas mail carrier’s bag slung over her shoulder. The thing was a relic, barely suitable to carry wasteland salvage let alone her meager allotment of supplies. She had enough for two days, maybe three. After that she would need to find sustenance from the polluted scraps these muds survived on. Again.
The twisting shantytown of Blinder’s Bluff glittered at her on the southern horizon, a lump of dirt that buzzed with electricity stolen from a Stable that the Enclave had either neglected or simply decided not to shut down completely. After the rise of the Steel Rangers, they had learned to be more thorough in leaving nothing of use behind.
Julip felt the urge to spit at the passing bluff, but she held back. That sort of behavior was for initiates drunk on their own pride.
She pumped her wings and let the town drift behind her.
In truth, she didn’t hate this place. Not really. She hated what it had become. A poisoned, disjointed land rife with chaos and death, all thanks to the twisted remains of a military that refused to die. The Rangers weren’t just content to be pretenders to the princesses’ thrones, they sought to hoard everything which had once made Equestria a great nation. They wore their technological riches like a badge of honor while the ponies they claimed to protect lived in squalor.
It infuriated her that the muds couldn’t see that. Couldn’t see how they were allowing themselves to be taken advantage of. How their unwillingness to fight back against their overlords was fuelling a machine that was slowly grinding away the Enclave at its fringes. New Canterlot was supposed to be the seed of Equestria’s new beginning. A better one, led by the only breed of pony left unscathed by the corrupting effects of balefire.
The innate connection earth ponies had to the soil had been severed. Magic had yet to coalesce after the bombs slashed it away like water kicked from a shallow puddle, making unicorns just as incapable as their hornless counterparts.
Pegasi, however, still controlled the skies. With alicorns gone from the world, it was their responsibility, their right, to take the reins and guide Equestria back to prosperity. To what it had once been.
She tipped her feathers to adjust her course and squinted at the dim orange point of light descending into the horizon ahead. For now, she had a job to do. Whether or not she wanted to wasn’t a concern. Minister Primrose had put her on this path for a reason. Stable 10 wasn’t just intact, it was operational, and the pegasi who freed her from the solar array was one of its residents.
What she couldn’t understand was why Aurora Pinfeathers, a pureblood, would leave.
Something bright caught her eye on the road below. Green streaks of phosphor drew lines that flickered like an aged neon sign. Tracers, she realized. Raiders, possibly, but more likely a fledgling trading company trying to eliminate a competitor. News of the decaying trade routes in the Rangers’ eastern territory had already reached the Enclave’s ears courtesy of assets already embedded in the area. The death of Cider and the subsequent dethroning of that horned bitch Autumn Song didn’t make F&F Mercantile disappear. It shattered, leaving the shards to be fought over by countless opportunists hoping to secure what meager power was still available to them.
No doubt some of those guns would turn toward Aurora should their owners discover she was responsible for their old employers’ collapse.
She continued east, always keeping the highway in view as it snaked through the flattening landscape like an artery across burnt skin. Gradually the sparse greenery began to thin and fall away until all she could see was a dull expanse of dirt. Waiting against the eastern horizon stood the dim silhouettes of the Pleasant Hills, a range of ancient mountains worn smooth over eons. Before the war, the low mountains had been a source of recreation and seclusion for the ponies who could afford to live there.
These days, the hills were a haven for raiders, corrupted beasts and worse.
The highway reached a shattered interchange, splitting the lanes and bending half of them toward the southeast. Firelight glowed beneath a portion of roadway that had yet to collapse, evidence of bandits or traders or both. She followed the new branch of road deeper into terrain that grew more desolate with every mile.
Black lumps appeared in an otherwise unbroken expanse of dead soil, deep gouges trailing behind them that all pointed toward the source of the explosion that hurled them here. As the sun slid below the horizon and a deep shadow swallowed the world below, she spotted the dim green glow of her destination.
The crater that swallowed Quarrytown so long ago was still alive in a sense. Though the lapping flames of balefire had long since been extinguished, radiation still smoldered across the glassed cup of its pit. Julip adjusted her heading toward it like a moth turning toward a particularly pretty flame. She tried not to think about it. The Rad-X in her bloodstream would protect her from most of the exposure and if things got bad enough, she had chems to help her flush anything else from her system if need be. Detoxing radiation was never a pleasant process, but the alternatives were even less so.
It was why so many ghouls flocked to Kiln. It was one of the few places in Equestria that the Steel Rangers were unwilling to pour resources into controlling. They kept a presence on the outskirts where the background radiation was tolerable, but they would never truly own Kiln. The ghouls saw their town as a safe haven. 
As far as the Rangers and Enclave were concerned, it was voluntary quarantine. It was one of the few things either side agreed on.
Despite her reluctance, she descended.
“Fuck,” she muttered into the wind. She could already taste metal.
Her hooves skated across the dirt as she landed, kicking up a light plume of dust while being mindful to do so behind one of the house-sized blocks of blackened bedrock that littered the area. Whether anyone in the town saw her coming down remained to be seen. Out in this blasted hell, the key to staying alive was knowing what you didn’t know. What she did know was that dustwings rarely took to the skies anymore. Not since the early years of the Enclave, when culling contaminated pegasi was necessary to keep the bloodlines clean. 
Dustwings had largely gone to ground since then, collecting in the darker corners of Equestria where the Enclave’s sprite bots struggled to detect them. It was believed that many had left Equestria altogether to avoid being hunted. That suited Julip just fine. Though she understood the cullings were necessary to prevent the defects of the wasteland from spreading to New Canterlot, she tried to avoid reading those articles on the notice boards. Something about them always left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She didn’t waste time. If the intelligence Minister Primrose shared with her was accurate, Aurora wasn’t shy about keeping her wings on display. If the rumor mill in Kiln was anything like the ones back home, the ghouls here would already be whispering about the new dustwing in town. If she was smart, she would keep a low profile and draw as little attention to herself as she could, but judging by Julip’s last encounter with Aurora, she didn’t think she was the type of mare to lay low. One pegasus showing up in Kiln would be suspicious enough. Two on the same day? She might as well land in the center of town waving an Enclave flag over her head.
She shrugged off her weapon and the heavy mail bag, scooping out a heavy bundle of brown leather from the latter. The jacket wasn’t her first choice in apparel for this mission, but then again, Hayflinger hadn’t given her much of a choice in the first place. She unrolled it, sliding her forelegs through the sleeves. As expected, it only reached midway down her barrel, leaving the final third of her wings visible out the back. With a wince, she shimmied her wingtips up the ridge of her spine until one set of feathers contacted the other. It was hardly comfortable, but it wasn’t her first time either. She knitted her feathers together until she was confident her grip would hold. 
A quick check over each shoulder assured her there were no errant feathers visible. She gave the joints of her wings a slight roll to flatten her profile. It wasn’t perfect, but it was serviceable. As far as any of the ghouls of Kiln would be concerned, she was just another earth pony wandering in from the wasteland.
She bent down and picked up her weapon and satchel by their straps, using her teeth to throw one, then the other, around her neck. The flavor of old leather coupled with her own stale sweat wasn’t much better than the radiation drifting in from the crater. She was just grateful she wouldn’t have to taste the worn bite trigger screwed to the side of her weapon. Hayflinger had attached it to the left side of the stock as camouflage, leaving the trigger assembly intact and available for her to use on the opposite side. A keen observer might see through-- 
“What are you doing?”
Julip flinched, barely stopping her wings from coming undone and reflexively grabbing for her submachine gun. The gravelly voice behind her bore an air of authority that expected an answer. She knew forcing herself to appear calm would just bring suspicion, so she embraced the unexpected shot of adrenaline and spun around.
“Excuse me!” she snapped, her words dripping with feigned indignant shock. She looked the ghoul up and down to keep him off balance, but the sight of a pony in such sorry shape carrying a rifle so large was threatening to throw her off hers. 
She took a step toward him. “What are you doing? I came out here to relieve myself, not to be spied on by every stallion in Kiln!”
The ghoul took a step back, but he wasn’t reeling from shame like she expected. He was keeping his distance, his eyes drifting from her weapon to the dry soil beneath her hooves. The frown that appeared on his muzzle was barely more than a twitch of his lip, but there it was, a sign that he was thinking a little harder than she could afford. She needed to derail that.
She flicked the black strands of her tail and clamped it down. “You know what? I’ll hold it.”
They stared at each other for a beat. The ghoul finally relented and tipped his chipped horn toward the town. “Rangers have latrines for smoothcoats on the north end of town, near the auction block. If you want privacy, I suggest you go find one.”
Julip adjusted the strap of her satchel with her teeth, careful to maintain a mask of irritation. “I suppose it was too much to expect some common decency,” she muttered, then added, “I told her coming here was a bad idea.”
“Kiln is a safe settlement,” the ghoul said.
She rolled her eyes. “And rife with peeping toms.”
His impatience began showing in the creases around his yellowed eyes. If he saw her land, he was doing a remarkable job of not asking her about it. He kept watching her face and the subtle twitches of the muscles along her neck, blind to the real threat folded neatly across her back beneath her jacket. She could draw on him right now and he wouldn’t know until the first burst punched through his unarmored, dessicated flesh.
To him, she was just an annoying earth pony that he wanted gone. She could work with that.
She mustered an embarrassed smile. “Look, I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. You just spooked me is all.”
He regarded her with an arched eyebrow before turning to leave. “You know where the latrines are, ma’am. Have a safe night.”
“Maybe you could help me,” she called after him. He stopped and sighed. If he had ears left, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see them flatten against his hairless head. “I’m trying to find my friends. There would be three of them, two unicorns and a dustwing with a white mane. Have you seen them?”
“Last I heard, they were at Brandy’s place,” he said. “The Glowing Gash, east side of town. Take the dirt road over there and follow it straight through, you can’t miss it.”
Strange name. Ghoul humor, she assumed. “Could you take me there?”
The ghoul snorted. Julip frowned.
“Trust me, ma’am,” he said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
With that, he departed, presumably back on whatever route his patrol normally took him on.
She decided not to wait to see if he would circle back. A quick shuffle of her wings gave her confidence that their grip across her back wouldn’t come loose. She trotted out from behind the blackened monolith and picked her way across the dirt to the strip of wagon-rutted soil that amounted to a road out here. 
It led her into the heart of Kiln, which was closer to the crater’s northern rim than she was fond of. Her mouth tasted as if she were sucking on a prewar bit, the metallic taste even more pungent as she entered the town proper. With the sun already set and the clouds turning deep grey above her, Julip couldn’t help but appreciate the effort these ghouls had gone through to install working lights along the boardwalks. Granted, they weren’t the reproduction lamp posts that graced the paved roads of New Canterlot, but it was better than nothing.
Here and there, a ghoul or two could still be seen loitering outside. A stallion nodded greetings to her as he leaned against the railing outside a tiny inn, a lit cigarette perched between cracked lips. She hesitated before returning the gesture, hurrying her pace a little as she did.
Several of the businesses lining the road were closed now, though many still displayed a sample of their wares behind dusty windows. There were a surprising amount of stores offering clothing, armor, even weaponry behind glass that would take little effort at all to break. She wondered whether Kiln had ever been attacked by raiders before, but then of course it would have. The stallion that caught her on the outskirts was evidence enough that the town was prepared to defend itself, and she doubted he was the only one here carrying heavy weaponry. Even if a thief were brazen enough to risk being irradiated by the eerie glow pouring out from Kiln’s crater, the odds they would survive long enough to escape with enough loot to make the attempt worth it were probably close to zero. These ghouls weren’t particularly wealthy, but given enough time, they would get there.
Midway through the town, she passed a storefront displaying, of all things, jewelry. Julip slowed a bit, unable to puzzle out why, of all creatures, ghouls would bother wearing a necklace or earring. She smirked derision at the glittering array of green stones dangling from scuffed velvet stands behind the glass. What was the point? A post for a rotted flap of ear? A pendant to accentuate the fashionably exposed sternum?
Then she noticed the advertisement posted among the displays.


BALESTONE FOR HER
Harvested Locally! Never Go Feral! Guaranteed Clarity of Mind!


“Crackpots,” she muttered, leaving the store behind. Given the right amount of desperation, ponies would buy anything with the right promises attached. In New Canterlot, it was zebra charms and miracle chems offering everything from longevity, lasting youth and cleansing properties. 
Apparently here the bogey pony was the inevitable loss of one’s sanity. She couldn’t fault them for wanting to prevent going feral, but even in Enclave territory it was well understood that some ghouls would inevitably just… punch out. It was a cloying fear that kept predatory businesses like Balestone For Her afloat, leeching caps out of ghouls in exchange for a misguided belief that a few shards of irradiated glass dug out of a balefire crater would prevent what was inevitable for some.
It was all shit. The knockoff talismans, the chems, the jewelry, all of it. Even the apocalypse couldn’t kill off the hucksters looking to make a quick cap. They were a part of the scenery, like radroaches in the cupboard.
She began to worry she’d passed the Glowing Gash when, finally, she saw it. 
Her eyes went wide. The ghoul on patrol hadn’t been lying, it was impossible to miss. The signage took up the majority of the building’s second floor and glowed like a house on Hearth’s Warming Eve. It took a moment for the shock to wear off and the indignity to rush in and take its place. It was clear who those splayed legs were meant to belong to, laid out like a common whore with none of the dignity or respect she deserved.
Julip forced herself to look away from the baudy depiction of Rarity, seething at the thought of how many ghouls had stood where she stood and laughed. The weapon slung around her neck felt heavier, begging to be picked up. To be used until the barrel was glowing hot and every bullet given a home. The Ministries were sacred. Of all Equestria’s many heroes, the five ministry mares had earned a better legacy than this.
Her jaw twitched as she fought to get herself back under control.
This isn’t your fight, she reminded herself. Calm down. Keep moving.
She kept her eyes low as she mounted the boardwalk and tried not to think about how the painted green doors were identical to the mockery painted above her head. A ghoul stepped outside as she reached them, allowing her to slip inside and saving her the displeasure of having to touch them.
Compared to the relative tranquility outside, the music inside the bar assaulted her ears like a physical thing. She flattened her ears in an attempt to drown some of it out, but it only managed to blunt the brassy notes flying off the little stage built against the far wall. The place was crowded with ghouls filling tables, stools and standing in clusters wherever space allowed, most holding drinks at varying stages of consumption.
She instinctively began moving toward the bar, but upon seeing it was standing-room only, she decided to deviate toward one of the pillars that seemed to draw an invisible line between bar space and table space. The air here was warm and thick, the product of too many ghouls and not enough ventilation. Probably no ventilation, since the fans spinning along the ceiling weren’t doing much beyond mixing the stale air. Not that anyone here seemed to mind. She heard the further along a ghoul made it through the transformation, the worse their sense of taste and smell degraded. There could be a corpse putrefying in the corner for all anyone here were concerned.
Julip thanked the sister goddesses that there wasn’t.
She sidled up against the empty pillar, ignoring the strange looks she was getting from the ghouls near her as she began scanning the crowd.
“Oh Sweetie Belle!” warbled the two mares on stage. “Though I may have done some foolin’ this is why I never fell!”
They were awful, turning a perfectly good song into a pitchless disaster. Julip scowled toward the stage, wishing someone would unplug that damn speaker so she could concentrate.
Then she blinked.
“Oh, no,” she groaned.
Aurora Pinfeathers and Ginger Dressage, the two mares in Equestria that had every reason to keep their heads down after causing the single largest disruption to trade in the region since modern civilization ended, were trading verses in front of a packed bar of what had to be approaching a hundred liquored-up ghouls. Julip blew out a frustrated breath as the two of them intoned about spurs that jingle-jangle-jingled to a jovial crowd of onlookers.
There was nothing for it except to keep an eye on them until they were finished. Best she could do for them now was watch the heads around the room and make sure nobody decided to settle a score with them. In a bar full of ghouls, she doubted there was much risk of that. It wasn’t as if F&F Mercantile ever hired rotters. Bad for business, or it used to be. As far as she could tell, the three of them were the only smoothcoats here.
She settled against the pillar, careful not to knock over a framed news clipping tacked into its polished surface, and watched as Ginger sang the lines of a long-dead stallion while Aurora pranced an alternating half-step around her in a blatant attempt to embarrass her. Julip shook her head and got comfortable. There was no line at the stage and those two looked as if they were only getting started.
It was going to be a while.







October 21st, 1075

	The morning sky blazed deep crimson as the sun crept up toward the eastern horizon. A handful of narrow clouds brightened to radiant gold, always the first to bask in the first rays of daylight. A grove of acacia trees stood black as ink a few miles ahead of them, their iconic flat canopies always the first to greet them during these long trips to the Griffinstone-Vhannan border.
Gallus took a long drag, pulling the bright ember down the final inch of his hand-rolled cigarette. He let the damp-earth flavor of the mesmer leaf smoke linger in his lungs for a moment before exhaling. The cool breeze swept up the haze and carried it toward Vhanna, the single best source of mesmer leaf in all of creation. Grinding the dim ember between his fingertips, he dropped the last nib into an empty soup can tucked away at the corner of the wagon. He leaned his shoulder against the canvas-wrapped bow at the front of the wagon and enjoyed the simple pleasure of being alive.
The interior of the wagon could be generously described as eclectic, though most gryphons regarded it as the typical chaotic mess of colors indicative of mesmer users. Gallus didn’t care. Stitched into the canvas roof were cloths of every pattern and color. He found most of them at flea markets in Griffinstone but ever since he and Cicada decided to travel together, she had begun adding strips of fabric from her home in Kafa. On a recent trip, she had brought him to a bazaar in neighboring Selale where a vendor she knew of sold tiny glass bottles in shades of pink and lavender. Now dozens of them dangled from lengths of twine along the ribs that held the colorful ceiling aloft, tinkling against one another behind him as they caught the morning light.
The rest of the wagon’s interior was stuffed with crates, boxes and even a small dresser filled with a blend of their personal effects and items they hoped to trade. Which items fell in which category changed day by day, but at the end of every trip the two of them were usually happy with how their deck of belongings had shuffled. They were careful to always leave enough open space on the floorboards for the half dozen blankets they’d collected which constituted their shared bed.
Gallus smiled. The wagon had cost him barely anything and it felt more like home than anything he had in Griffinstone. He might never be rich. He might never own a color television or know what it’s like to live in luxury like the ponies in Canterlot or zebras in Adenia. Here, under the endless sky, anywhere was home and everything felt like luxury.
And the view was to die for.
As beautiful as it was to watch the sun pour warmth over the horizon, it was nothing compared to the hypnotically gorgeous mare strapped into her harness a few paces away. When Gallus first met Cicada in one of Kafa’s many coffeeshops, he’d been convinced she was only listening to him talk about his dreams of travel just to be polite. But then she’d asked to come along for a leg of his journey, which turned into two legs. Then two days. He was admittedly slow on picking up on her signals. Zebra culture had more subtleties than gryphons and they had been travelling together for nearly a week before he realized his attraction to her was mutual. That had been three years ago.
They took shifts pulling, Cicada in the morning and Gallus in the afternoon. He smiled a little wider as he enjoyed his share of this particular ritual, knowing Cicada would be just as distracted when it was his turn to put on the harness. It never failed. Every time she settled into a rhythm, the striped dock of her tail would curl skyward, bobbing left and right with the tick-tock motion of a metronome. During the first months of their relationship she worked hard to keep her modesty in check. Now that they were well past the point of being shy around each other, they hid nothing.
Two of the wheels slipped into a rut left by another traveler, jerking the wagon’s frame and making the glass bottles bounce madly on their strings. Cicada bent her shoulders back toward the middle of the packed dirt road, hauling the wagon out before the wheels could bind up. Gallus put a hand on his hip, making sure the pouch tied to his belt hadn’t come loose. It was still there. He could feel the reassuring edges of the holotape beneath his fingers.
Cicada glanced back at him with apologetic orchid-tinted eyes. “Sorry, hon. Anything spill?”
Gallus shook his head. “Nope, we’re still golden.” If any of the crates had taken a tumble, they would have heard it. It took a force of will to tear his eyes from Cicada’s sidling hips to the road ahead of her, where deep slashes cut through the soil. “Too much load and not enough road.”
Cicada snorted. “Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard.”
He opened his beak, paused, and closed it. A wry crease formed around his eyes and he leaned back into the wagon, reaching for the hollow instrument hanging from a loop of leather he’d sewn into the canvas. “It’s not bragging if it’s true,” he said.
Settling forward with his kitschy instrument nestled in his lap, Gallus dragged his fingers across the strings and watched Cicada turn her head skyward in a wordless plea for mercy.
“Already with the banjolele?” she whined.
His fingers tweaked the tuning pegs while his eyes returned to his partner’s curving stripes. He’d found the diminutive cousin of the common banjo sticking out of a dumpster in Griffinstone and couldn’t resist saving it from an otherwise deserving death. Gallus had never once in his life played an instrument and his singing was almost criminally bad.
So naturally, he combined the two.
“Only because you’re so inspiring,” he said with an unmistakable grin in his voice.
“Uh huh,” she said. To his dismay, her tail descended and the world grew a little less wonderful. “Touch those strings and you’ll be cut off from my inspiration for the rest of the day.”
Gallus gave her his best pout, which didn’t amount to much without a lower lip. She looked back at him, eyebrow raised, but there was a hint of a smile on her ebony muzzle that told him there was hope for the future yet. He sighed, knowing it was best not to torment her this early in the day, and lay his banjolele flat across his lap in surrender.
She smiled more fully, shot him a forgiving wink and settled back into a rhythmic trot.
The wheels shuddered over another rut.
“You’d think they would know not to bring that much weight onto a dirt road,” Cicada complained. “They just paved the old trade road to the south. A hatchling could drive better than this moron.”
Gallus dragged his thumb along the smooth heel of the instrument, nodding agreement. One of the things he loved about Cicada was how unreservedly she adopted gryphon phrases. Whenever he tried to use her people’s terminology, the words felt clunky and disjointed. She never had that problem. Words specific to gryphon, pony and zebra flowed out of her like a second nature, and she readily encouraged him to keep trying. He was getting better at it, but even now words like filly and fetlock felt strange on his beak.
“Probably wanted to avoid traffic,” he offered. “Same thing we’re doing.”
She led the wagon back toward the smoother side of the road. “Maybe. Is it bad that I’m hoping to find them on the side of the road with a broken axle?”
“Careful,” he warned. “Honesty like that has been known to endow creatures with magic necklaces.”
“Yeehaw,” she laughed. “Didn’t your cousin know her?”
Gallus held his hand in the air and made a see-saw gesture. “Sort of, but only through Rainbow Dash. Gilda never hung out at her orchard or anything.”
He watched her nod and look out at the flat vista of ochre soil and scrub grass. The sun’s rim was cresting just to the left of where the road disappeared over the horizon, casting long crisp shadows behind every rock and blade of grass. He knew she loved this time of day more than anything. It was why she took the morning shift to pull. In a way, it let her participate with the waking savannah.
“I’d like to own a farm someday,” she announced.
He blinked. “What, really? Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounds peaceful.”
“Huh,” Gallus said, a little unsure if she was serious. “What would you grow?”
“Oranges,” she answered.
“Oranges,” he chuckled. “I don’t think we’re in the right climate for oranges.”
She arched her neck backward, smiling with those dazzling violet eyes. “So we go wherever that is and grow oranges. Easy.”
Gallus paused for a moment, watching the way her mane caught the wind as she trotted. Strange and out of the blue as it was, he had to admit that he didn’t hate the idea. He pictured her walking through a grove of trees with saddlebags or carts or whatever they used to harvest oranges and decided he kind of liked it.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll grow oranges.”
She looked at him with a puzzled smile. “Really?”
He shrugged and nodded. “Why not? Once we sell the holotape Gilda gave us, we’ll have enough coin to go anywhere we want.”
“We can already go anywhere we want,” she teased.
“You know what I mean,” he said, feeling the rising excitement of new possibilities. “We could go to Equestria, or the islands in the Celestial Sea. They grow mangos there. We could have a mango-orange orchard. Morangos.”
Cicada laughed. “Yes, and what else?”
“We could build a house near the beach,” he said, smiling in spite of how silly he felt. “I could watch you swim in the ocean, and you could listen to my music.”
“Is that what you call it?”
He lifted the banjolele out of his lap and pressed his fingers against all the wrong frets, his other hand hovering over the strings. “Careful, or I’ll claim one of the rooms of the house for my recording studio. I’ll make sure it’s right next to the bedroom so I can serenade you to sleep.”
She arched a playful eyebrow at him. “Then you’ll be spending those nights reacquainting yourself with that hand of yours.”
He gasped with mock surprise. “That’s both cruel and unusual.”
“Are we still talking about your--”
Cicada’s head jerked to the side as something punched hard into her neck. Her forelegs folded midstep and she crumpled to the dirt in a heap. The wagon’s momentum continued to drag her forward by her harnesses until the traces finally bit into the road, slowing the wagon to a stop.
“Cicada?” he whispered, frozen with disbelief. Blood pooled out of a small hole in her neck just above her shoulder. She spasmed with a wet cough that painted the rusty soil, eyes wide and searching. Something finally clicked in his head. He scrambled out of the wagon with a scream. “Cicada!”
The banjolele snapped when it struck the ground, the strings briefly tangling around his hind leg. He barely noticed it as he stumbled to a stop next to her, his hands stopping short of touching her as the wound in her neck pulsed with the terrified beat of her heart. She looked up at him, eyes full of tears, trying to understand what was happening. Looking at him for help. For answers he didn’t have.
“Cicada, it’ll be okay,” he tried to say, but the lump building in his throat turned his words into an unintelligible mumble. He pressed his hand over the wound to stop the bleeding, but the widening pool of blood forming in the dirt under her mane was enough to tell him there was another larger hole on the other side. 
Somewhere in his brain, he knew she’d been shot. He knew she would die and he knew he was in danger too.
A shimmer ran down Cicada’s body and for a brief moment he was staring at something beautiful and terrifying. Her damp coat was jet black, smooth and unyielding to his touch. Her mane was gone, replaced by a strange lavender membrane that he didn’t understand. A terrified sob caught in her throat as she shimmered again, and the creature vanished.
Gallus stared down at her, trying not to let her see the frustration building in his chest. She never liked it when he smoked, and now she was dying while the mesmer leaf conjured hallucinations at the worst possible time.
“M’sorry,” she murmured through a mouthful of blood.
He opened his beak to console her, but the bullet that plunged between his shoulder blades stole the words away. He crumpled to the ground next to her, vaguely aware of the dull echo of thunder that wasn’t truly thunder.
He tried to get up, but his arms and legs weren’t working. His eyes went wide with terror as he realized he couldn’t breathe. He could feel his lungs gradually collapsing, pushing the air over his tongue against his will. Panicking, he swallowed and tried to speak, but failed. Cicada shimmered again, her muzzle less than a foot from his beak, and his eyes widened with confusion at the sight of the opaque, lavender-tinted eyes staring back at him.
All he could do was watch her struggle. He could still see her in those strange eyes. Green light swirled around her horn and then she was back again, her beautiful stripes and that tear-streaked face. A terrible pressure was building in his head. He was going to suffocate.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes growing vague. “I love you.”
He mouthed I love you too and saw the smile begin forming on her lips when she understood. Then he watched as her light dimmed and, slowly, she grew still.
With nothing left to hold her disguise together, it dissolved. Gallus watched it fall away, leaving behind a black creature he didn’t understand. 
But it had her eyes.
As his vision tunneled and the Vhannan vista behind her went black, his last fleeting thought was that the creature next to him was still, somehow, his Cicada.
Wherever she went, he would follow.







	“Delta One, status.”
“Delta Two, both targets are confirmed down.”
“Delta One, copy. You are clear for retrieval.”
“Delta Two, copy. Moving in.”
Barley Barrel set the safety and pushed herself up from the ruddy soil, using her blonde feathers to dust off what she could from her pitch black flight suit. The wagon and its deceased occupants were hardly a smudge on the distant road nearly half a kilometer away.
She spread her wings and took to the air with the aid of a galloping start, gliding near to the ground to avoid kicking up a dust plume that might be seen by passing travelers. If she was lucky, the suppressor fixed to the end of her rifle muddied the reports enough to go unnoticed, but she wasn’t planning to be here by the time anyone who heard the shots arrived to investigate.
She touched down behind the wagon and climbed inside. The cramped space was filled with garbage and reeked of mesmer leaf smoke. Barley held her breath as she scanned the menagerie of containers, flipped through the blankets tucked between them and moved to the front of the wagon where she had watched the gryphon sit. Tipping the open mouth of an open soup can toward her revealed a half dozen crushed mesmer butts. Not what he was looking for. She spotted a footlocker tucked away along the opposite corner and lifted the lid. A few dozen loose gold coins from Griffinstone and a lanyard strung through a hundred or so donut-shaped Vhannan silvers. Still, no holotape.
She pursed her lips into a thin line, hoping the gryphon hadn’t hidden it somewhere in the mess behind her. If he had, Barley would search every box until she found it. If someone came up the road while she was searching… well, sometimes bad things happened.
She hopped out through the gap at the front of the wagon and landed on the hardpack with a grunt. The gryphon and his companion lay together like a scene out of a quarter-bit romance novel, except at the ends of those books the maiden tended not to reveal herself as a parasite.
She dipped her chin to speak out of habit, despite knowing the thin membrane adhered to her neck would pick up and transmit her voice without help. “Delta Two, were we aware the female is a changeling?”
“Delta One, we were not aware of that,” the voice chirped in her ear. “Female target is listed as a zebra identifying as Cicada. We’ll make a note. Proceed with retrieval.”
“Delta Two, copy.”
Barley glanced at the changeling, noting the clean shot through the base of her neck. She was proud of that shot. A little more so now that she knew she’d taken one of Chrysalis’ infiltrators. 
Hindsight being what it is, most ponies were of the opinion that the princesses should have sent the Elements of Harmony back to the changeling hive to wipe that threat off the map while its queen was still reeling from her failed attempt to usurp the princesses. Some were even known to whisper desires for the Wonderbolts to fly north to the Crystal Empire and tear it down too. These days, there was little love for the so-called Princess of Love. Not after she and her husband turned their backs on Equestria.
If that ever happened, Barley would pull every string she had to get assigned to that mission.
The changeling had nothing on her. She turned her attention to the gryphon and the belt around his waist. A small collection of pouches hung from bits of twine that threaded through holes he’d punched through the leather to keep them from sliding around. She snapped them off his belt with a firm jerk of her wing, one at a time. The first was empty, save for a bright blue guitar pick. The second contained a cheap flip-lighter with a generic zebra symbol etched into the front. She tossed it into the dirt.
The last pouch opened to reveal a single orange holotape. Barley discarded the empty pouch and zipped the holotape into the pocket sewn into the hem of her flight suit. Whatever was on it had been worth stealthing within spitting distance of the Vhannan border to retrieve. She wasn’t about to lose it.
“Delta Two, I have the package.”
“Delta One, copy. Fantastic work. Follow your high-altitude waypoints south-southwest back to the rendezvous and we’ll bring you home.”
Barley smiled as she tightened her rifle strap over her shoulder. Once it was secure, she pulsed her wings and slid skyward. “Delta Two, copy. Any word on my brother?”
A pause.
“Delta One, Delta Three reports mission success.”
She pumped her foreleg in silent celebration. “Good to hear, Delta One. I’m on my way to the rendezvous. There’d better be a drink waiting for me when I get there.”
A chuckle on the line. “Delta One, copy that. We’ll see what we can do.”
Barley breathed a contented sigh. This day couldn’t have started better if she tried. As she climbed through gryphon airspace, the sun lifted fully out of the horizon. A bright, yellow disc that warmed her skin. Her first mission outside Equestria had gone off without a hitch. Somewhere behind her, two enemies lay in pools of their own betrayal. How the gryphon got his hands on an Equestrian holotape, she would likely never know. It wasn’t important.
What was important was the fact that she and her brother had just saved the lives of countless ponies on the front lines by denying Vhanna something it wanted.
“Delta One, those drinks are going to have to wait until you’re back home,” her earpiece chattered.
Barley shrugged and copied back. The request had been a joke, anyway. She wasn’t expecting a party boat to be moored to the gryphon coast just because she asked for one.
“Delta One, you’ll be flying direct to Canterlot with your brother,” the voice said. “The commander would like to congratulate both of you in person.”
> Chapter 19: Chains
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 23rd, 1075

The radiator thumped as it warmed, sapping the chill from the afternoon air in Spitfire’s condo. She inhaled deeply as she walked the short hallway separating her bedroom from the living room ahead. The air always smelled fresher this time of year. It helped set her mind at ease for what would come next.
Autumn was a time for change and preparation. The earth ponies were nearly done bringing in the last harvest of the year, their golden fields below the slopes of Canterlot Mountain being scraped clean one square at a time. Winter was weeks away and the Weather Control Pegasi would be spending the next several months ensuring another season of mild, manageable snowfall.
She adored winter. It was the one time of year when Equestria was reminded that, without its pegasi, life would be a maze of unpredictable chaos. The unicorns couldn’t hope to control the tumultuous skies any more than the earth ponies. Ground ponies might dig in their fields and conjure spells, but without pegasi to keep the worst of nature in line Equestrian life would come apart at its seams.
She paused at the bathroom door and clicked on the light to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. A faint trace of citrus cleaner still lingered in the air, a byproduct of an entire morning spent turning her condo upside-down to ensure every mote of dust, stray crumb and smudged pane of glass was spotless before tonight’s dinner. Her modest bathroom was immaculate; one less thing to worry about. She turned off the light and stepped into the living room.
Her hooves sank into plush, ivory carpet as she ran through her final checklist. The decorative pillows that once dominated her sectional couch had been moved to the bedroom to maximize the limited space her living room offered. Afternoon sunlight shone in the polished wood surface of her coffee table where four place mats had been laid out for her guests. Living alone, she never saw any reason to make room for an entire kitchen table. Now she was quietly regretting that decision. Too late to do anything about it now, she told herself, and moved on.
She briefly glanced at the unbroken view of Canterlot Castle outside the sliding glass balcony door, then turned toward the kitchen. She’d considered seating everyone at the long countertop that divided the spacious living room/kitchen into their two distinct purposes, but the stools had a tendency to squeak and she wanted this meeting to feel more intimate than it would if they all just bellied up to the trough. The living room would have to make do.
A quick look on the oven clock let her know her guests would be arriving shortly. She cracked the refrigerator open and scooped a wide glass bowl out from the crisper. Setting it next to the sink and peeling off the film of plastic keeping it sealed, she fished a pair of wooden spoons from a drawer to begin tossing the dressed greens inside.
Another thing she loved about autumn. Sweet potato salad.
She felt the crack more than she heard it. The yellow tip of one of her primary feathers dropped from her wing and wafted into the bowl.
“Oh, for crying out…”
She had to use two more feathers to fish out the broken tip of the first, trying not to think too much about how long it would take to get the vinaigrette smell out of that wingtip. Sighing, she opened the cabinet beneath the sink and flicked the mess into the waste bin.
As if on cue, a clatter of hooves thumped onto the balcony.
She grimaced at the sound of the glass door sliding open. 
“Knock-knock,” Rainbow’s voice announced from the living room.
Spitfire shut the cabinet and straightened. “Wipe your hooves before you come in,” she called, turning on the sink so she could rinse her feathers. She watched Rainbow oblige, shimmying her hooves against the rough mat she’d made sure to leave outside, and went back to giving the salad a few more turns. “I have coffee, tea and milk. What would you like?”
“Water’s fine,” she said, sliding the glass door shut behind her. Her eyes wandered as she stepped into the living room, eyeing the mementos and photos that adorned several shelves on the walls. She shrugged off her flight jacket and draped it over the easy chair in the corner of the room. “Nice place.”
“It better be, considering how much they charge me for it.” She set the spoons down, glancing at Rainbow as she retrieved a pair of glasses from the cupboard.
Rainbow stood in the middle of the living room, seemingly unsure of where she should sit or what she should be looking at. Spitfire’s quip about her rent had either gone over her head or just hadn’t registered yet. She was definitely somewhere else, and Spitfire was pretty sure she knew where that was.
She dipped both glasses under the faucet, setting one of them on the countertop for her first guest of the night. “I’m not going to bite,” she said. “Sit down. Have a drink.”
Rainbow blinked and stepped up to the opposite side of the counter, perching herself atop one of the stools. Spitfire pursed her lips as the wood squawked in protest.
“So,” Rainbow said, sliding the offered glass the rest of the way over. “I heard you worked a double shift down in Finance yesterday.”
She sipped some water and returned to the salad, mindful to keep her anger over having to clean up Rainbow’s mess out of her voice. “Yep. It was a long day but everything’s pretty much back to normal. Ticker Tape is taking over candidate screenings, which gave me time to collate and file Whiplash’s audit. I was in meetings for the rest of the day, mostly with I.T.”
Rainbow took a drink to mask her wince.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she continued, “I took the liberty of telling them you’d approved my request to lead the Finance team until we find a new CFO. I needed some system permissions added so I could make some adjustments to the ledger.”
“What do you mean, adjustments?”
She gave the salad a final flip before tapping the spoons off on the rim of the bowl. “Rainbow, you left a paper trail a mile long when you dumped those bits into Jet Stream’s accounts. If I hadn’t been there to finalize that audit, the entire department would’ve known what you were up to. I made that go away for you.”
She picked the bowl up with her wing and carried it around the countertop toward the coffee table. Rainbow frowned after her. “I thought you wanted to recover those funds.”
“I did,” she said, placing the bowl in the center of the four placemats. “Then I realized doing that was just going to draw more unwanted attention and sow doubt in our ministry’s ability to perform its duty.”
“Our?”
Spitfire gestured for her over. “Well, not ours. Bottom line is, you’re welcome. As far as anyone in the six ministries are concerned, the bits you sent to JSI never existed in the first place.”
It took Rainbow a moment to process that. “So does this mean you and I are okay?”
She shrugged. “I think that depends on your definition of okay. It’s going to take a lot of bridge-mending to get us back to where we were, but I wouldn’t have invited you over for dinner if I didn’t think I could still work with you. The other day, you sent a message to my terminal that I can’t help but agree with. We need to set some new boundaries, because the ones we have now aren’t working. I was hoping tonight we could at least lay out the foundation.”
Rainbow took a sip of water, nodded, and swallowed. She looked at Spitfire and then the four placemats set out on the coffee table. “Who else is coming over to help with that?”
“Oh, those,” she said, forcing a smile as she spoke. “A couple of the newer Wonderbolts were asking to meet you yesterday and I remembered how much you used to love talking to your fans, so I may have invited them to join us. I hope you don’t mind.”
Rainbow swiveled in her stool, her gaze wary as she looked past her through the balcony door. “Will they be staying long?”
“Just long enough to trade some stories, maybe get an autograph or two. It’d be rude to eat in front of them, so I didn’t see the harm in laying out some spaces for them too.” She stepped back to the kitchen and began rummaging through the refrigerator, taking notice of Rainbow’s distant gaze toward the castle. “You look tired, Dash. Have you been sleeping?”
Spitfire watched Rainbow out of the corner of her eye, her expression darkening for a moment as the mare conjured yet another lie.
“Does sleeping in my office count?” she said. 
Spitfire had to force herself to chuckle. She picked a half-full bottle of dressing from the shelf and let the door slap closed. Scooping her glass from the counter, she carried both back to the coffee table. “It doesn’t seem to be doing you much good. Maybe eating something will wake you up. Come sit down.”
 She obeyed, the stool giving another creak as she dropped to the floor, her glass held aloft in her wing. Spitfire waited for her to seat herself on the carpet, choosing the corner of the table nearest the balcony. It could have meant nothing, but Spitfire was willing to bet her feathers that Rainbow was subconsciously looking for an escape.
She smiled as she gripped the spoons sticking out of the bowl like tongs and transferred some greens onto her plate. When she finished, Rainbow did the same.
“So,” Spitfire said, spearing a cube of sweet potato with her fork. “Boundaries.”
Rainbow didn’t take her eyes off her plate even as one of her brows crept upward. “You made it pretty clear this week where you want those to be,” she said, lifting a stack of glazed leaves to her mouth. “More transparency, less surprises.”
“Less lies,” she corrected. “I want to know that I can trust you.”
“You can always trust me, Spitfire.” Rainbow said. “Every decision I make is made with the good of Equestria in mind.”
Spitfire nodded, watching her eat. “I can tell you truly believe that, but I worry the stress of this war is leading you to make the wrong choices. Dangerous ones. I know you better than most ponies, and you’ve always had a tendency to leap before you look.”
Rainbow’s ears slowly flattened. “Celestia and Luna gave me this ministry because they trust in me.”
She swallowed - not enough dressing - and nodded. “And if you recall, you put me in charge of overseeing the department heads for the same reason, except I can’t effectively do my job if I’m worrying about you trying to fly under the proverbial radar without telling me.”
A long silence settled between them, punctuated only by the clinking of silverware against china. After a while, Rainbow set her fork on her plate and turned to look at Spitfire. “Then stop worrying about it.”
Spitfire sipped from her glass and gave a curt shake of her head. “That’s not an option for me. The decisions you make affect my Wonderbolts. Transferring war funds to a privately owned company - and trying to hide it - is exactly the type of thing that makes me worry about where your head is, Dash.”
“I told you already, that money is funding critical research.”
She nodded with mock-seriousness. “Oh, sure. Because Jet Stream Industries needs help figuring out how to improve the solar tech that they invented.” She pointed a fork at Rainbow. “Trying to sell me that bullshit twice doesn’t mean I’m going to buy it this time around. I know you’re not telling me something, and I have a feeling it’s because whatever Jet is actually using that money for is enough for Celestia to imprison you both.”
Rainbow’s expression hardened. “So, what then? You covered up Whiplash’s audit and scrubbed those bits off the ledger so I would owe you?”
“No, Rainbow, I did that because if word ever got out about one of the ministry mares siphoning taxpayer bits into a corporation already on thin ice with the princesses, there’s a good chance the Ministry of Awesome would very quickly become the Ministry of Nothing. This war is on a tightrope and the last thing we can afford is to take a hit like that.” She set her fork onto her placemat. “Those are the decisions that cause good pegasi to die. Needlessly, I might add.”
“Good pegasi. Not ponies?” 
She watched Rainbow pinch the bridge of her nose between her feathers. “Do you even hear yourself right now?”
Despite her best effort, she felt a flush of anger creep into her face. “What, I’m not allowed to worry about the lives of Wonderbolts after we sent…”
The balcony’s iron railing rang under the assault of clacking hooves, startling Spitfire out of what was threatening to snowball into an impassioned defense. Later, she thought.
Within the space of a breath, her eyes softened and the professional smile she’d learned to master spread across her muzzle before her guests had a chance to settle onto her balcony. 
Pickle and Barley Barrel waved behind the glass, their form-fitting blue and yellow uniforms all but glowing in the afternoon sun, waiting to be let in. The excitement was as plain on their faces as any one of Rainbow’s lifelong fans. Spitfire grunted as she pushed herself to her hooves, careful not to show any irritation as she passed by Rainbow on the way to the door. They were understandably nervous and, after all, she had invited them in the first place. If they wanted to show up looking like they were ready for a peacetime acrobatic routine, she wasn’t going to tell two of her best Wonderbolts no.
The Barrel twins straightened as she opened the door. Let them posture a little, make a good first impression in the eyes of their foalhood hero. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t earned the right.
“Evening, ma’am,” Pickle greeted, his sculpted shoulders coming level with her nose. She nodded as she made room for them to enter.
“Hooves,” she reminded. 
They dutifully scrubbed their soles against the doormat before stepping inside. Barley followed close to her brother, her eyes wandered past him to the mare still pecking at her salad. Spitfire could hear her take a steadying breath. “It’s an honor to meet you, Minister Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow extended a wing toward them with a smile, though she didn’t stand. Any trace of their earlier tensions were gone as the twins stepped forward to clasp feathers. 
“Dash is fine,” she said, her lips quirking as she looked between the two. Their flax tinted coats and mint-striped manes were identical down to the last hair. With the exception of Pickle’s swept-back mane and Barley’s much more slender build, they were identical. “Your last names aren’t Barrel, by any chance?”
Spitfire had to keep herself from rolling her eyes while the Barrel twins’ widened. She slid the door shut and gestured to the two empty spots across where she and Rainbow were seated.
Barley took the seat across from Dash, her voice piqued. “You’ve heard of us?”
Rainbow nodded. “I still get the Academy bulletin sent to my terminal every Sunday. If memory serves, the two of you broke some records during your first month of training.”
“Fill up a plate if you’re hungry,” Spitfire broke in, picking up her own fork. “There’s plenty.”
The twins obliged, lumping the colorful medley of greens onto Spitfire’s china. They barely looked at her at all as they spoke. They were here for Rainbow Dash, after all, Ministry Mare and Element. Compared to her, Spitfire might as well be a homemaker. She clicked her fork into her plate, stabbing a mouthful of diced sweet potato.
“We’ve been practicing maneuvers since as far back as we can remember,” Pickle said. “Our parents couldn’t afford to get us into the Junior Speedsters, but Hope Hollow Library had a few books on Wonderbolt formations.”
That caught Rainbow’s attention. “You’re self-taught?”
They both nodded. Barley gestured to her brother with her fork. “He broke his wing in three places when we were twelve because he looked at the forest outside our village and saw an obstacle course.”
He gave his salad a sheepish grin. “Nothing a little magic didn’t fix.”
Barley snorted. “You were in bed crowing about it for a week.”
“I don’t remember seeing that injury in your medical history,” Spitfire said.
Pickle blinked and looked at her, but his worry faded when she shook her head with a playful smile. “I’m pulling your feathers,” she chuckled. “If it makes you feel better, I tore a tendon in mine the week before my qualification exam. My drill instructor never figured it out.”
The twins shot her disbelieving stares. Barley looked at her as if she’d just noticed she was there. “How’d you even fly?”
“Painkillers,” she said with a sly wink. “Among other things. It was a different time.”
“I would have never pegged you for a high-flyer,” Pickle laughed.
Spitfire offered a mild shrug. “I barely passed. I’ve proven myself since then.”
He smiled more broadly, same as his sister, as he shoveled another forkful into his mouth. As he chewed, his face lit up with an expression that said he’d just remembered something and he held a feather in the air as he hurried to clear his maw. Spitfire pretended not to notice the dozens of green flecks covering his teeth as he spoke. “Barley, tell them what you’ve been working on between rotations.”
Barley’s lips pressed into a tight line as her eyes grew wide.
Rainbow looked between the two with something akin to well-humored pity on her face. She waited, taking a sip from her glass before finally saying, “Pretty sure if you don’t tell me, your brother’s going to.”
Barley scratched at her shoulder with her hoof. “I’m... trying to beat your speed record.”
Rainbow set her glass down. “No shit?”
She half-winced. “No shit.”
Spitfire glanced across the table to Pickle and was impressed with what she saw. Not a hint of jealousy or impatience on his part despite having to know that he’d just given his sister an unbeatable hand over any goal or aspiration he might try to share with his idol going forward. Dash was all about speed, even now with her fastest days behind her. Pickle had offered Barley up without thinking twice because he was loyal to her with a selflessness that was getting harder to find these days.
Rainbow could learn something from them.
“So, are your numbers still hush-hush?” Rainbow asked, her old competitive grin curling her lips. “Or can you share?”
It was common practice for Wonderbolts not to share their times with anyone, least of all their opponent, until they were official. Ever since Rainbow obliterated Spitfire’s record when she was younger, the only pegasi capable of exceeding those numbers was the same one who set them. Years later, new classes of Wonderbolts collectively agreed that aiming for Rainbow Dash’s top speed was futile and Spitfire’s second-place slot quickly became the accepted benchmark to beat. Every year, pegasi would shave milliseconds off that number to briefly claim the top spot, however none of them came within throwing distance of the standard set by the mare currently chewing salad in Spitfire’s living room.
Barley tried to suppress her smile, but it was a losing battle. “I can’t give you my exact numbers,” she said, pinching her lips shut for a moment as she considered her answer. “But... I’ve seen colors.”
A hush settled across the table. Spitfire frowned a little, unsure of exactly what she meant but fairly certain it had something to do with Dash’s heretofore unreplicated sonic rainboom.
Rainbow was enraptured by the mare. Her meal forgotten, she leaned forward as she spoke. “How far?”
“Just my hooftips,” she admitted, more than a little intimidated by Rainbow’s sudden attention. “I’m always exhausted by the time I get close, and the turbulence at that speed is… I don’t know how you do it.”
She waved off the compliment. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve already made it to the hardest part. All you need to do once you see those lights is pucker your butt and punch through.”
Barley laughed. “Easy as that, huh?”
“You think I’m joking,” Rainbow chuckled, “but it really is.”
The two of them chatted about ideal posture, angles of attack and a theory of Rainbow’s about scooping wind that sounded to Spitfire closer to quack science than anything real. She cleared her plate as Rainbow brought Pickle back into the fold, giving him a chance to brag about his accomplishments as a high-altitude formation flyer. When he credited his breathing exercises for his lung’s expansive volume, his sister didn’t hesitate to jab at him for holding the record for most hot air blown.
Spitfire stuck her fork into the salad bowl, picking out the brighter bits of sweet potato as the others bantered back and forth. She couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for putting this dinner together. It was a rare day when Rainbow had the chance to give her fans this much of her attention, let alone ones she got on so well with, but Thunderlane’s report had removed the luxury of choice in the matter. 
It was a shame, what she had to do, but she took comfort in the knowledge that it was also necessary. 
She chewed a morsel of sweet potato, enjoying the marriage of candied starch and tangy dressing as she waited for a break in the conversation.
Her opportunity came when Rainbow asked the twins about their service.
“Actually,” she said, pointing a feather at each of them, “these two just wrapped up a particularly daring mission, what, the morning before last?”
Barley pinched the fork between her lips and nodded. “Saturday,” she said, tucking the bite she’d taken into her cheek. “Are you sure we’re cleared to talk about it outside the Pillar?”
Rainbow chased a chickpea across her plate with her fork. “How thick are your walls, Spits?”
Spitfire answered with a nonchalant shrug. “Thick enough.” She nodded to the twins. “Go ahead.”
Barley glanced at her brother, who seemed unsure where he should begin, and sat up a little as she spoke. “Alright, so Friday morning Pickle and I get rousted out of our bunks by our CO. It’s barely two in the morning so we don’t know what’s going on. Everything’s all hush-hush. I mean, nobody is telling us anything even as they’re taking us to the admin building. I’m thinking, oh shit, here we go, Pickle’s gone and done something to get us both thrown out.”
Pickle cleared his throat, earning a wry smile from his sister.
“Anyway, it turns out we had orders to fly out to Griffinstone to run surveillance. First thought in my head was, why? The gryphons have kept their beaks out of our business since everything kicked off with the zeebs. They’re so far behind our tech, why risk causing trouble? Turns out, not everyone in Griffinstone’s as neutral as you’d think.”
Spitfire kept an eye on Rainbow as Barley spoke, noticing that the mare’s fork hadn’t left her plate for several seconds. Her jovial smile from before was frozen on her face, unmoving as it formed a mask over the worry Spitfire knew had begun brewing behind it. 
“So we get there, right? We’re exhausted and freezing our feathers off, but we make the crossing and set up camp in a crag a mile or so away from their aeries. Celestia’s wings, that place is a mess. One landslide and boom, their city would be at the bottom of that mountain. Anyway, we’ve got a target. This gryphon by the name of Gilda has managed to get her talons on an Equestrian holotape, and command’s worried she’s going to sell it to the Vhannans.”
Barley paused to take a drink, giving Pickle room to continue. He grinned at Rainbow, hoping to see her share in their excitement. Her smile was considerably dimmer. 
Spitfire could see her pulse beating in her throat. 
“Except by the time we get set up, it’s broad daylight,” he said. “We can’t wait twelve hours for Celestia to turn out the lights, so I figure we hide our gear and fly in like a couple of tourists. We get the green light from our mission commander,” he gestures across the table to Spitfire, who smiled politely back, “and we’re on the ground with the birds like nothing’s the matter. We make a few passes by Gilda’s last known address but she’s not home. The entire day she’s a no-show and we start thinking, well shit, she’s already on her way to Vhanna to make the sale.”
He tipped his head to his sister. “When we got back to camp, the speed demon here gets orders to move her flank east and get eyes on the roads near the border. I’m ordered to stay put in case Gilda makes an appearance, which she eventually does.” He paused, his smile faltering as he watched Rainbow. “Are you okay?”
Rainbow stole a sidelong glance to Spitfire, who watched her impassively. The ministry mare picked up her glass and took a sip, forcing herself to nod as she swallowed. “Just a little indigestion.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Go ahead, Pickle,” Spitfire urged. “Finish your story.”
“Well,” he said, trying to pick up his lost momentum, “like I said, the target came home late that night. Most of her shades are pulled so I can’t tell once she’s inside whether she had the holotape on her or if she already made the hand-off. Command, here, thinks at that point it’s worth the risk to make contact and find out. I make entry through the rear door and if you ever want to experience a shit-the-floor moment, try breaking into a gryphon’s house while they’re home. You think they’re huge when they’re being nice, but that’s nothing compared to when they’re pissed off.”
Spitfire chuckled and started gathering empty places as he spoke. She detected the faintest flinch from Rainbow when she reached in front of her to take hers. Good.
“So she’s standing there in the kitchen with a bottle of beer in her hand, and I’m barely through the doorway when she pitches the thing straight at my head. Would’ve punched my clock right then and there if I hadn’t moved when I did.”
Spitfire walked the dishes back to the kitchen while keeping an ear on the conversation as it unfolded. Setting the plates into the sink, her eyes went to a small manila folder sitting atop her unopened mail next to her flour jar. She set the empty glasses atop the dirty china and smiled.
“You fought?” Rainbow breathed.
Barley laughed. “He got his ass kicked, more like it.”
“Ha-ha,” he said, then turned back to Rainbow. “She didn’t give me much choice. Soon as she saw me, I could tell she knew why I was there. I know I don’t look it, but I’ve gotten into my fair share of hoofbleeders. Benefits of being built like an earth pony, I can throw a kick. That whole fight is mostly a blur, but I do remember that she kept going after my wings. Every chance she got, she’d try to get her weird yellow fingers around them. Wanted to break ‘em so I’d be grounded. Didn’t give her a chance.”
Pickle flushed with something akin to pride. “She got me on the ground, had this look in her eye like she was deciding whether to eat me or not. You know they’re all carnivores, right? Anyway, I had enough room to get my hind leg up and I caught her square in the kneecap. She went over like a sack of turnips and I was able to get my feathers on this gaudy clock of hers. Bashed her square across the head. One second she’s squawking, the other she’s not.”
Spitfire watched from the kitchen counter as Rainbow dragged her trembling hoof over the top of her head and down her neck, trying and failing to get her emotions under control. 
Rainbow stared down at her empty placemat, breathing hard. “You killed her?”
Pickle, too wrapped up in his story to slow himself down, nodded with waning excitement. “Not before she got a few good licks in,” he said, his feathers already fishing for the zipper embedded in the seam of his uniform. He pulled it down enough to show her three parallel scars that ran diagonally across his chest. Thick, black stitches held the angry red strips of puckered flesh together, still stained from the iodine used to clean them.
Rainbow looked away, her face a tortured mess of nauseated horror. She made a guttural noise and rose to her hooves, lurching toward the hallway as tears swarmed in her eyes. Spitfire feigned worry as she watched her bolt for the bathroom, her hooves clattering over the tile before the unmistakable sound of retching made the Barrel twins recoil.
“Oh dear,” she said as she rounded the counter. “Barley, Pickle, I think it’s best if we call it a night.”
Barley stood, her forehead creased with worry. “Is she okay?”
Spitfire nodded, gesturing them across the living room toward the balcony. “It’s just stress. With everything she has to worry about right now, I think surprising her with guests might have been a little too much.”
“Well, make sure to tell her that we had a fantastic time,” Pickle said as he pulled the door open. “Maybe we could try it again when she’s feeling better?”
Spitfire’s smile made it clear they wouldn’t. “Maybe. Thanks anyway for coming by. You two have a safe flight home.”
The twins filed out onto the balcony, said their reluctant goodbyes and hopped over the railing into the darkening sky. Spitfire watched them go, ensuring they wouldn’t have a change of heart and turn back around to console their idol. They didn’t. She shut the glass door and turned the lock just to be sure.
She crossed the living room and walked into the kitchen, picking up the manila envelope and turning to follow the miserable noises that echoed from down her hall.







	Rainbow Dash leaned over the porcelain as another heave disgorged a stream of vile tasting sludge atop what already swirled in the bowl. Her heart pounded in her temples and her skin felt hot, pouring sweat from every pore as if it were trying to wring her dry. What felt like a hundred fragmented terrors swam through her head as she repeatedly tried, and failed, to get her thoughts under control. But no matter how hard she tried, the unrelenting waves of nausea made it impossible.
Everything was coming apart. Her brain refused to accept the fact that Gilda was dead. Her murderer had sat within wing’s reach of her, laughing at her jokes, sharing some of his own. And Spitfire knew it. She’d given the order. She’d invited both of them here for the explicit purpose of making sure she knew it too.
“How are you feeling, Dash?” Her voice came from the doorway, dripping with concern that wasn’t real. Wasn’t meant for her to believe it was real.
Rainbow flinched at the snap of Spitfire flipping the bathroom lights on. “Get the fuck away from me.”
Hooves clicked toward her against the tile. She looked up from the bowl to see a canary yellow hoof press the handle, flushing the remains of Rainbow’s meal into the plumbing. “You forced me to do this, Dash.”
She cringed at the sensation of Spitfire’s feathers sifting through her mane, guiding the stray locks that dangled into the bowl back behind her neck. Every fiber of her being recoiled against that touch. She could picture herself turning around to strike the mare across the muzzle, to make her stop.
But the fight was gone. It drained out of her like there was a hole she’d never been aware of. One that Spitfire had torn wider than she could ever hope to heal. She sank against the toilet, tears splashing the rippling water that flowed back into the bowl.
Spitfire finished organizing her mane, laying it between her shoulders with almost motherly care, and turned her attention to an envelope she’d placed next to the sink. Rainbow didn’t look up as she listened to the familiar rasp of feathers against paper, knowing she was at the mercy of whatever it was Spitfire intended for her.
She imagined spending the rest of her life inside a dark cell in some forgotten corner of Equestria while the ponies who looked up to her, the ones who had made the mistake of befriending her, came to grips with the reality that the Element of Loyalty had betrayed them.
Spitfire’s feathers descended behind the veil of Rainbow’s miserable tears, holding something small and familiar between their yellow vanes for her to see. Rainbow blinked enough to confirm it was what she thought. A holotape, its ubiquitous plastic case smeared in the corner with a rusty streak of dry blood. Her vision blurred with fresh haze at the implication.
“I want you to tell me why,” Spitfire said, setting the holotape on the porcelain tank with a sharp click.
She gathered the bilious muck coating her mouth and spat it into the bowl. “Does it even matter?”
“No,” Spitfire said, “I suppose it doesn’t at this point. I already know everything I need to know. You lied to me, twice, and decided that the best course of action in that moment was to compile, what, two decades’ worth of highly classified intelligence and smuggle it into the hands of a foreign nation whose survival depends on its neutrality. I don’t need to know why, but I certainly want to.”
Rainbow stared at the worm of discolored spittle as it drew slow circles in the clear water, saying nothing.
“Solar tech,” she scoffed. “Banned research for the most part, though that hasn’t stopped you from pouring bits into Jet Stream’s coffers. Griffinstone doesn’t have the infrastructure to make use of any of it, so the obvious conclusion is that you were trying to get this holotape to the zebras.”
Spitfire’s wing slid under her chin and lifted it, forcing her to meet her eyes. “So. Once again. Why?”
Adrenaline flooded her veins, conspiring to shame her even more by making her body tremble in her former mentor’s grip. She had to flex her jaw just to speak. “To catch them up to us,” she mumbled. “So they have a reason to stop fighting.”
She watched as Spitfire narrowed her eyes at her with fresh scrutiny. It was like being back at the Academy, powerless to do anything but wait for the tirade. To get dragged out in front of everyone she knew and have every one of her failings laid bare.
“What you did wasn’t an act of mercy,” she said, tightening her grip around her jaw. “It was the single most misguided act of treason this war has ever witnessed. There isn’t a single pony out there right now who wouldn’t convict you for what you tried to do. Do you understand what that means?”
She glared up at her, eyes stinging. “It could have led to peace.”
The tendons in Spitfire’s neck drew taut. “It could have torn this entire country apart!” She let go of her, circling the bathroom tiles until she rounded on her again. “What was going through your head that made you think giving the zebras more capacity to fight us was a good idea? Things are already fucked enough that I don’t even know if we’re going to win this, and now I barely stop you from pouring gas in their tanks? You’re the Element of Loyalty for Celestia’s sake! Who are you even loyal to?”
Rainbow glared. “I’m loyal to my friends.”
“And now one of them is dead,” Spitfire snapped.
Her words landed like a slap. Rainbow clenched her jaw and looked away, her eyes settling on the stained holotape that Fluttershy begged her to deliver. So many dominoes falling in all the wrong directions.
“We can’t afford this kind of press right now,” Spitfire continued, looking down at her like some idiot animal that couldn’t help that it had soiled the carpet. “Rarity can’t keep all of the papers in line all of the time, and something like this has the potential to snowball faster than the ministries can control.”
“Quit telling me things I already know,” she murmured.
Spitfire slapped her wing against the side of the tub hard enough to make Rainbow flinch. “Then quit trying to fuck this war up any more than it already is! Do you know what kind of position you’ve put me in? What I have to do now just to keep your sorry hide on the princesses’ nice list?”
She looked at her. “I don’t follow.”
“Celestia’s tits, you are dense,” Spitfire sighed. “I’m covering your ass, Dash. Again. But this time I’m not doing it for free.”
Rainbow frowned, spat the last bitter flakes of salad into the toilet and pulled the lever. She regarded Spitfire with open mistrust. “You’re blackmailing me.”
Spitfire balked. “I don’t want anything other than for you to take your wings off the wheel before you drive us toward another cliff.” She sighed, setting a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder with a little more pressure than a reassuring gesture warranted. “I want you to understand something. These messes you keep making? The ones that I’m going through pains to keep anyone from noticing? Those only go away for as long as I decide they’re gone.”
Rainbow stared at Spitfire’s hoof like it was crawling with spiders. “This still sounds a lot like blackmail.”
“It’s insurance, Dash.” She kept her hoof where it was as she sat down next to her on the tiles, making it all that much harder for Rainbow to ignore her. “What this country needs you to do right now is step aside. You can keep your title, your office, even the salary. As far as anyone knows, nothing will have changed. You’ll still sit at the head of the Ministry of Awesome. You just won’t be leading it anymore.”
Rainbow tried to shrug out from Spitfire’s grip, but she kept her hoof locked on her shoulder. Something about this was wrong. The flicker in Spitfire’s eyes made her clear none of this had been decided here while she was throwing up dinner. She’d been waiting for this opportunity. Planning it. This was the finish line to a race Rainbow Dash didn’t know she’d been losing.
“You killed one of my friends, and now you expect me to give you my ministry?”
Spitfire nodded, her eyes assessing her like so much baggage. “Consider it a wake-up call. After all you’ve done, I don’t think you have much of a choice.”
She wrenched herself free of Spitfire’s hoof, her resolve finally beginning to take form. “I have powerful friends, Spitfire.”
The mare stood, smiling that infuriating smile even as she brought the stark reality of her prodigy’s position straight down onto her head. “You do. I won’t deny that. And what do you think Twilight would say if she found out you betrayed Equestria?” She tipped her head to one side. “Do you think she’d look back at all the years she spent with you and wonder if it all really meant anything?”
Rainbow took a shuddering breath.
“What about Applejack?” she continued. “I have more than a few birdies who tell me the two of you were practically joined at the hip before Celestia gave you the ministries.”
“Stop,” she murmured.
“Just one more,” Spitfire placated. “Just for funsies, let’s talk about Pinkie before you decide.”
Rainbow sagged against the porcelain as the nausea threatened to return.
“We both know how fragile she is right now. She knows there’s no room in this war for Laughter and yet she’s been tasked with keeping the ponies of Equestria smile-smile-smiling to ensure everyone goes to work, buys their bonds and keeps Equestria humming while their sons and daughters get pushed into the meat grinder. I couldn’t do that. I don’t think any pony could stay sane trying to shoulder that kind of burden, and yet that’s exactly what you and your friends are forcing her to do. Alone.”
“Not all of us have time,” she whispered.
Spitfire shook her head. “You had time to sit here and eat my food while your fans massaged your ego. You had time to fly halfway across the world and get two gryphons killed.”
“Wait,” Rainbow said. “Two?”
“Two gryphons and a changeling posing as a zebra, yes,” she answered. “Barley retrieved the tape from them within sight of the Vhannan border. If there’s any part of this I should thank you for, it’s that we know to what extent Chrysalis’ drones will go to escape her hive.”
Rainbow didn’t know what to say. Mortification clung to her like pitch, knowing she’d not only gotten Gilda murdered but one of her contacts as well. Even the changeling, whoever it had been, didn’t deserve to be dragged down by this disaster she’d created for them.
“Listen, Dash,” Spitfire said, her tone softening. “Like it or not, I’m all you have right now. You know me. I’m not one of those villains you used to fight when you were young. I don’t want to take over Equestria or pretend to be someone I’m not. I want to save it and… right now, it needs saving from you.”
Rainbow stared at her without saying a word because, the longer she thought about it, the more she realized there was no point in arguing.
Spitfire was right.
She wasn’t some power-hungry creature fresh out of legend, bent on destroying Equestria for the sole joy of doing it. She wasn’t a serpent whose single purpose seemed to be warping the fabric of reality for his own amusement. The Elements wouldn’t work on Spitfire any more than they had worked against Vhanna’s vast defensive lines.
She closed her eyes.
“How do you plan to lead the MoA without it knowing?”
She tried not to recoil as Spitfire’s smile widened. “You’ll need to make a few staffing changes before that happens. I already have a list of names to replace the current department heads. It shouldn’t cause too much of a disruption if we take it slow.”
“Celestia’s sake,” she muttered. “How long have you been planning this?”
“It’s called a contingency plan,” Spitfire said in the same tone she reserved for particularly dull trainees. “And I have plenty more. Now, can I assume we’re both in agreement on how we’re going to move forward?”
Are you going to give me the keys to the kingdom, or do you want to go down in history as the Betrayer of Equestria? was what she meant to say. 
Rainbow, reluctantly, nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Spitfire hooked her wing under her armpit and for a terrible moment Rainbow thought she was going to pull her into a hug. When it occurred to her that she was encouraging her to get off the floor, she stood.
“You don’t need to call me ma’am,” she said, and for the first time this evening, something in her smile looked genuine. “All I need is for you to keep doing what you have been doing. Represent the ministry. Inspire confidence in the ponies who look to you for it. And most importantly, I need you to trust me when I say you’re doing the right thing.”
Rainbow took a slow breath.
She wouldn’t trust Spitfire if she sprouted a horn and donned a tiara, but choice wasn’t a luxury she had.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Spitfire patted her on the leg.
“I know you will. Now, let’s talk about Gilda’s memorial.”







Midnight snuck up on them quicker than they expected.
From behind the bar a short, sharp whistle sprang from Brandy’s pinched lips. The bartender twirled a chipped hoof in the air in the timeless sign to wrap it up. Roach didn’t miss a note, taking the gesture in stride as his smooth-as-gravel voice scraped through the final verses of Tips Domino’s I’m Trottin’.
Ginger smirked at him from their table as she nibbled the last of their late dinner. The apples were dry to the point of turning to powder in her mouth, but that was fine. Food wasn’t truly food if there wasn’t at least one thing missing from it. That was her experience, anyway. She let her saliva rehydrate the chewed fruit and swallowed. Her stomach accepted the offering with meager disinterest. It felt nice to be full for once.
“He’s almost as bad as me,” Aurora giggled beside her.
Ginger grinned and shushed her with a wave of her hoof. She wasn’t wrong, though. Roach carried a tune like a sieve carried water, but that hadn’t been the point of getting him up there. As long as she’d known him, Roach had always been a hard nut to crack, but the infrequency of his visits to her shop and the stretches of time that yawned between them… well, she had repeated experience in getting him to open up.
Her horn glowed and she idly reached out to pick up her glass. When it didn’t come to her, she looked at it and realized her magic was grasping at the empty air beside it. She ignored Aurora’s snort as she refocused, picking up the glass and washing down the remains of their meal with murky water. Roach had made the decision to switch them all to something a little less potent, which was appearing to be a wise one. The water had been pricy, but it kept their hooves out of the rations Coldbrook had given them while also preventing them from getting so deep into the bottle that their eyeballs might start floating.
Not that they weren’t close to that point already. At least they were blending in with the rest of the bar’s patrons.
There were fewer ghouls occupying the tables now. Many had reached the end of their night an hour before, wobbling up to the bar to settle their tabs before swaying out the door to whatever bed awaited them. A few others seemed to leave in frustration, casting irritated glares at Ginger and Aurora as soon as it became clear they would be occupying the stage for more than a couple songs. For a while Ginger wondered if they had been hoping for a turn on the mic, but when more got up to leave, she decided it was more likely that the simple presence of smoothcoats in a ghoul bar was a little more than they were able to stomach.
Suit themselves, she thought. She and her friends were here to unwind after surviving some of the worst the Equestrian wasteland had to offer. If that meant a few ex-ponies had to find someplace else to drink, so be it.
She winced, knowing that last thought wasn’t fair. Ex-ponies was a term her father had spent a considerable amount of effort attempting to coin. In his mind, it was a way to put a finer point on the quietly spoken opinion that ghouls were no longer ponies once they turned. While it never caught on, the term was another lingering polyp from her childhood.
From the corner of her eye she watched Aurora stifle a yawn. Further back in the bar, Brandy stepped away from his patrons and began approaching the stage, ready to turn off the terminal now that Roach was wrapping up.
Ginger sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly, stretching her legs beneath the table until her lungs ached more than her calves. She and Aurora had been awake over twenty four hours now and their second wind was well behind them. It was time to call it a night.
She and Aurora thumped their hooves against the table as Roach finished. He made an exaggerated bow to them in response and stepped off the stage while Brandy went to work disconnecting the mic.
“How was that?” the changeling grinned.
Ginger slid off her chair as he reached the table, lifting his saddlebags for him. “Would you like an honest answer or a flattering lie?”
Aurora giggled again behind her.
“I already know the honest part, so you might as well give me the lie.”
She settled his bags across his haunches and recalled an audio log she once listened to from a long time ago. “You were absolutely marvelous, darling.”
“Woof,” he said.
“Ask and you shall receive,” she chuckled. “Speaking of, it’s about time we put that room key to good use and get some shut-eye before Aurora makes one of us carry her.”
Aurora gave them a half-lidded smirk as she adjusted her rifle strap over her shoulder. Even as she stumbled through the pit of exhaustion, she didn’t complain. Across the wasteland, Stable dwellers were regarded as weak, unprepared and entirely helpless as a result of living a life wanting for nothing. Ginger didn’t see that in Aurora. Behind those pale green eyes was a tenacity - a different kind than the wasteland bred into its survivors, but there it was, learned from a life that was utterly foreign to Ginger.
It was what drew her to Aurora, like a moth to firelight. The more Aurora spoke about her life before, the more Ginger wanted to learn about her. For someone to grow up with everything only to discover new ways to struggle… she understood that. It reminded her that food, water and shelter didn’t fix everything. They just gave a pony the luxury of seeing their world for what it had become.
“Drink some more water,” Roach said, pointing Aurora at the half-empty pitcher. The pegasus swayed back to the table, snorted as some of the water slopped out of the pitcher, and lifted her glass to drink.
“You too,” he said, eyeing Ginger. “Rad-X only works when your bladder does.”
Ginger raised a hoof in mock surrender, not wanting to delay sleep any longer by arguing the losing side of his point. As she filled her glass, she glanced down at Aurora’s Pip-Buck and squinted at the comically small rad meter. The needle dangled just below the second tick mark. Just shy of two hundred rads were in her system. Not enough to be fatal, but she would start feeling sick in a day or two without Rad-Away to clear out what the Rad-X hadn’t captured.
Aurora stood a couple inches shorter than she did and had been exposed to the same irradiated breeze. She decided that if things did get dicey, Aurora would get the first dose.
She downed her glass, glanced at the puddle of foggy water at the bottom of the pitcher, and promptly poured it into Aurora’s. The mare looked at her, sighed, and drank the last of it before following them to the back of the bar.
Roach, having been the one to barter for the room key, led the way. An open doorway and a set of stairs awaited them. Ginger’s muscles were quick to protest just the thought of climbing them.
Four ghouls sat at a table next to the doorway. Ginger didn’t realize they were staring at her until a hoof snaked around her hind leg, causing her to stumble to an ungraceful halt.
“Excuse me!” 
She jerked her leg away but the withered stallion kept his grip on her, smiling placidly as his eyes lingered on her hip. The companions at his table watched with lazy curiosity, one continuing to nurse his drink while the struggle played out. The ghoul holding her leg bore into her with pale, pink eyes. His mottled hide was entirely bald, as if the hair had been burned off of him.
Behind her, she could hear Aurora’s wing already shifting into the hooks of her rifle. Ahead, the subtle click of Roach releasing the lock on the shotgun bound to his foreleg.
“Settle a dispute,” the ghoul said, his voice burbling with a calm, wet rasp. “How many caps would you pay for me?”
Ginger made a disgusted noise. “I’m not your type, now let go of me.”
“Do what she says,” Aurora warned, the barrel of her rifle creeping up his reclined frame.
The ghoul only offered the pointed weapon a dismissive glance. He gave Ginger’s hind leg a tug, forcing her to backstep closer to him. 
“Don’t flatter yourself, I lost my taste for smoothcoats a long time ago,” he chuckled, tipping his head slightly to better meet Ginger’s eye. “It’s a simple question. How much am I worth?”
A cold stone slipped into the pit of her stomach as his eyes returned to her hip. To her cutie mark, making the meaning of his question painfully clear. Ginger’s eyes flicked to Roach, whose attention was scanning the rest of the table for movement, then to the rest of the bar where several ghouls were quietly watching events unfold.
Her silence gave him an opportunity to fill it. “I’m able-bodied,” he said, reciting criteria Ginger wanted nothing more than to forget. “I have a strong back. Reliable joints. My teeth aren’t so good anymore, miss, but I’m not picky about what I’m fed. I’m sterile, too, so… no unwanted foals to put down.”
Ginger stared forward as furious tears began to gather. The scars across his body were too familiar. The old wound ringing his neck was as familiar as the rooms of her childhood home. He knew exactly what to say because he’d lived the same life she did, only instead of holding the stick he’d been the one to receive the lashing end of it. He wore his hatred of her as comfortably as he would a collar, and unlike her, he wasn’t wishing he’d chosen to hide his marks.
She jerked her leg, hard, making the stallion wobble backward a little in his seat. When he settled forward, the muzzle of Aurora’s rifle pressed against his sternum. 
He offered Aurora a pleasant smile. “Put that down before you get yourself dead. I’m trying to have a conversation, here.”
“She’s done talking to you,” she said.
The ghoul chose to ignore her, looking back at Ginger instead. “I don’t think that’s true, do you? Any time you slavers come around to this side of town, you always got a sales pitch and a price tag. Call me crazy but I’ve never seen a singing slaver before. So, humor me. How much?”
She lit her horn, wrapped a cuff of magic around the ghoul’s grasping appendage and squeezed. He clenched his jaw for a brief moment, resisting the pain that was rapidly building in his leg before finally letting go with a discomforted grunt.
Ginger’s voice dripped with venom. “I don’t own ponies anymore.”
The ghoul rubbed his foreleg, watching Aurora lift her rifle off his chest with that same, confident smile. “And you say that with such a straight face, too. Do those collars on your ass earn you a discount at the auctions, or do you have to bid cheap like the rest of ‘em?”
Roach put a hoof around her neck and nudged her forward. “He’s drunk, ignore him. Let’s go upstairs.”
Ginger allowed him to guide her to the door, her jaw aching with the effort it took to keep herself from turning back and screaming at the former slave. She knew if she did, she would likely prove some point he was trying to make. Part of her didn’t care. She wanted to take his words and stuff them back down his throat until he choked. 
She squeezed her eyes shut to clear them as they mounted the steps. Downstairs, the ghoul’s voice chased after her.
“Must’ve done something pretty spectacular to get marks like that,” he jeered. “Hey, maybe you could show me!”
“Come on,” Roach urged, guiding her up the last of the steps. “He just wants a reaction.”
Magic swirled the length of her horn. “He’s about to get one,” she spat.
“Not now,” he murmured into her ear. “You’re exhausted, and he knows it. Don’t let him goad you into something you’ll regret.”
She glared at Roach as they climbed onto the landing, but he didn’t look away from her. He was right. He was always right, it felt like. She exhaled her frustration and let the power in her horn dim.
Three doors stood on either side of the stairwell. Once Roach was satisfied Ginger wouldn’t bolt back down to the bar when he wasn’t looking, he checked the number stamped on their key and scanned the door plaques for a match. As she waited, a wing wrapped around her midsection and pulled her against the mare beside her.
“He’s just an asshole, anyway,” Aurora said, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Besides, if he knew he was talking to the Ginger I know, he would’ve pissed himself.”
Ginger allowed herself a reluctant smile. “You make it sound like I’m some comic book hero.”
“Dark, mysterious past? Exposed to strange chemicals that give you superpowers that you wielded to save a damsel in distress?”
She rolled her eyes. “My magic is not a superpower.”
“Alright,” Aurora pressed. “Above-standard telekinesis. Still counts in my book. You’re a secret badass.”
She gave Ginger a little squeeze and, despite herself, Ginger felt herself relax a little.
“This is us,” Roach said, indicating the last of the six doors.
Ginger lit her horn and took the key from his hoof, sparing him the indignity of using his mouth. The deadbolt turned and the door squealed open on bone dry hinges. 
As the three of them filed inside, curiosity quickly turned to disappointment followed by disgust.
Save for a browning mattress slumped in the corner and a bare bulb dangling off a frayed wire from the ceiling, the cramped little room was empty. Layers of old and new odors hung in the stale air like a thin fog, most of which seemed to be coming from the mattress. Ginger wrinkled her nose and, for his part, Roach didn’t seem to notice. A bloodhound he was not. The myriad scents of urine, stale sweat and sex were hardly a shock to anyone renting a room in the wasteland, but at the very least those rooms came with an actual bed to sleep on.
She looked over to Aurora, expecting her to be well on her way to retching, but the mare seemed to take it in stride even as she made a bee-line to throw open the room’s narrow window.
“I take it you’re smelling something I’m not,” Roach said as Aurora went to work fanning some of the fetid air back outside.
“Many things,” Ginger agreed. “On a positive note, the mattress is all yours this time.”
He grunted. “I’ll stick to the floor.”
Aurora looked back to them while her wings swept gouts of rancid air toward the open window. “Great, then throw that thing out in the hall before it wakes up and tries to eat us.”
Roach shrugged at Ginger. “I would but...”
She looked reluctantly toward the misshapen slab of padding. “Radiation, yes, I know.” Her horn lit and her lips peeled back into a grimace as she hooked the corner of the mattress with her magic and lifted it toward the door. “Luna’s grace, it’s damp! Why is it damp?”
Aurora laughed with a combination of sympathy and surprise. “You can feel it?”
“Of course I can feel it,” she hissed. Magic was unavoidably tactile, and while nothing from the mattress would actually touch any part of her, the sensation of handling the mystery-meat equivalent of a wet sponge was not something that would readily leave her brain. “Keep laughing and I’ll wrap you inside it.”
Aurora shuddered and turned to whip some air across the room toward the open hall. The mattress left behind a series of dark patches where it had been reclining. Ginger hurried it through the door and dropped it against the end of the wall where it slumped, no doubt already making progress on making a new set of stains.
She flung the door shut after it for good measure. Her skin itched at the faintest thought of what might have been soaked into that padding.
“You may want to leave that open,” Roach said.
Ginger looked to him, then Aurora who was in the process of sliding the window shut. “I tend to agree with him, Aurora. I’d like to smell as little like this room in the morning as possible.”
“Okay,” she said, pushing the pane back up.
Already, Ginger could feel the cool air beginning to chill the floorboards. It was a small price to pay in the name of maintaining some dignity.
She watched as Roach sloughed off his bags in the corner near the door, opposite from where the mattress deposited its dubious stains. He pushed them into the corner and grunted as he settled to the floor, his cracked chitin scraping against the boards. He glanced up at Ginger, who watched him with a crooked eye, and lifted what amounted to one of his own brows. 
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Behind her, Aurora shuffled her wings against the cool air. Her eyes went from the soiled corner to the relatively clean one that Roach had quietly laid claim to. “Really?”
“What?” he said with a hint of defensiveness.
“I’m not sleeping any closer to that mess than I have to,” Aurora said.
Roach shrugged as if to say, I don’t know what to tell you, and began undoing the straps to the shotgun on his foreleg.
Ginger had known Roach for half her life, but what she didn’t know was beneath that docile, fatherly exterior was a calculated and clever little shit beneath. Even though he probably couldn’t smell the room, he had no intention of sleeping near the collective soil of the Gash’s previous patrons. Now that he’d been caught out trying to claim the safest corner of the room, he was doing everything he could to play dumb about it.
“Alright,” Ginger sighed. “Scoot over.”
Before he could protest, Ginger dropped to her knees on the boards beside Roach, effectively pinning him between her and the wall. Her horn glowed, hoisting Aurora’s saddlebags off her back and settling them next to his, each satchel providing a makeshift pillow. Seeing Ginger’s ploy unfolding beside a clearly uncomfortable changeling, Aurora licked her lips and dropped to the floor beside her with a tired grunt.
“I’m not moving,” Roach protested.
Ginger craned her neck around and smiled. He lay stubbornly on his back, his black legs held limp toward the ceiling. He looked like a wet cat struggling to assess the events that led it to being doused. 
“No one said you had to, dear,” she pleasantly replied.
He pursed his lips as she wrapped the straps of his shotgun in her magic and slipped it free of his foreleg. For a moment he looked like he might scramble to his hooves and find another corner to sleep in, but then the moment passed and he blew out a resigned sigh.
Ginger smiled and pressed her cheek against her side of the saddlebag, using her right leg to grip Aurora around the chest and pull her a little closer. Her wings were warm against her and despite having a bit of fun tormenting Roach, she could already feel her muscles releasing the tension they’d collected over the past twenty-four hours.
Laying on bare wood like a can of sardines with what felt like a bundle of wrenches beneath her head, she surprised herself at how relaxing this was. Even Roach’s breathing seemed to grow slow as he settled into what was admittedly the least graceful position she’d left him. The poor thing was like an upturned turtle, and yet he was either too stubborn or too bemused to complain. 
Aurora wrapped a hoof around hers and in doing so inadvertently toggled a switch on the Pip-Buck Ginger still wore. The screen blinked on, displaying a rough analysis of Ginger’s vitals on its bulky little screen. Aurora turned the device to face her, browsed the indicators for her general health, radiation exposure, even her hydration before using her other hoof to turn the screen off.
“You should take it back,” Ginger murmured into her ear.
“Mm,” she responded. “Probably.”
When she made no move to do so, Ginger nudged her. “Aurora.”
She felt her wings tense a little against her ribs. It was subtle, but it spoke volumes. She didn’t want it. Not after Ironshod managed to turn a piece of her home against her. Not after Coldbrook threatened to use a copy of her Pip-Buck to peel open and ransack Stable 10 if she didn’t comply with his demands to bring him information on SOLUS. Information that, as far as the three of them knew, even the Enclave didn’t have.
Ginger remembered the look on Roach’s face when the topic of SOLUS came up during their coerced meeting. The fear in his eyes as Coldbrook noticed his reaction and bent his entire attention on the changeling. Roach had told him SOLUS was an observation platform, a spy satellite built by Jetstream Industries.
She had a feeling she was the only pony in that booth who could tell he was lying. He knew something about the satellite, that much was true, but the way he pieced together his facts made it clear to her that they were anything but.
She sighed and let her hoof relax in Aurora’s softening grip. Already, she was dozing. At some point she would need to take this ancient piece of tech back. Coldbrook would have used his copy of her Pip-Buck to send the original a message by now, either to check in or make new demands. Even though her overstallion was aware of the risk to their Stable, she didn’t think it was wise to test Coldbrook’s patience. Stable-Tec might have made its name from building fortresses, but the Steel Rangers made theirs from breaking into them.
For now, she wouldn’t press the issue.
She adjusted herself against the makeshift pillow and reached out to the bulb hanging above them with her magic. The light winked out with a gentle click. Her eyelids grew heavy in the smothering dark.
“Goodnight,” she whispered, but Aurora had already drifted off.
Behind her, Roach mumbled something unintelligible.
She yawned and let herself relax more fully. The chill of the air flowing in from the outside balanced nicely with the warmth radiating off Roach and Aurora. This was nice, she decided. Silly as she felt for committing to the trap she hoped they might stay like this for a while.
She began to sink. Slowly at first as her breathing deepened and slowed, then more swiftly as her mind found that pleasant blankness every pony waited for in the pursuit of sleep. That blink between night and day, the points linked by a long and unknowable void of nothing. Ginger looked forward to the chance each night to turn her mind off and, for a brief while, not be.
Except as she fell away from the world, she found herself rising into a new one. One that had remained empty since the day Equestria burned.
For the first time in her life, Ginger dreamed.







A foal squirmed, lain bare on the cold surface of her father’s desk. Somewhere, far away and yet too close, a mare’s voice screamed nonsense against the uncaring walls of her master’s home. Sensing its mother’s distress, the foal began to bawl.
Ginger instinctively stepped toward the child.
“Don’t touch it,” her father stated.
“But it’s afraid,” she heard herself say.
Her father said nothing. He only stared at her, his angular face a mask of silent judgment. A curl of green flame danced along the fringe of his flawless black mane. He didn’t seem to care that the little mote was growing.
“This creature will never know fear,” he said, ignoring the foal’s growing distress. “That is the one blessing your deceit has purchased for it.”
A deep ache bloomed inside her. The pale blue foal needed to be held. Someone needed to console it, to tell it everything would be okay. That it was safe.
It wasn’t safe.
Ginger knew what would happen. She knew because she had lived it once before. Somehow she was living it again. The worst moment in her life.
Her father’s eyes pinned her to the blood red carpet of his study. New and ancient books, a fortune of paper alone, loomed above her head like titanic slabs. She imagined them falling. The noise they would make. The destruction they would bring to whoever found themselves trapped beneath them. Books filled with their history, their stories and their spells. All rendered useless by the slow, plodding death of their magic.
Her eyes drifted back to the desk, atop which her father had set a small plastic box.
No, she thought. I don’t want to see this.
He didn’t seem to care that the emerald flames had consumed his mane and were gradually charring his smooth, caramel coat. They migrated to his desk, trickling off his hooves like burning water. The foal continued to wail.
“I’ve never asked much of you, Ginger,” he said. Twin copper auras popped the clasps of the box and lifted the lid. “But keeping this from me? You’re thirteen years old. The help…”
The slaves, she thought.
“...look to you as much as the rest of our family for guidance. For direction, Ginger.”
He tugged a red handkerchief from the drawer of his desk. Ginger could feel herself beginning to sob as he draped it over the infant’s crumpled face.
Please, no.
“Every decision you make comes with a consequence,” he continued. From the plastic box, he lifted a narrow syringe and set it on the edge of the desk in front of her. He shook his head as if to say he had no choice in what would come next. “By allowing this to happen, you gave that mare something she hadn’t yet earned. Her mate will believe he can breed without consequence. That the rule of law has no meaning under our roof. Do you understand?”
Tears blotted her face as the foal struggled to remove the handkerchief from its face. He was going to make her do it. Her mother told her she would never have to see this part of their trade. She promised.
The flames climbed the curtains behind him, spreading to the books.
“This isn’t a punishment, Ginger,” he said, ignorant of the blaze that swarmed across his teeth. “A good unicorn owns her mistakes. That is the example we must set for those below us. I am asking you to have the courage to correct yours.”
The infant flailed beneath the square of cloth, too weak yet to roll away from it yet strong enough to try.
Her father nodded toward the needle. “Pick it up.”
Ginger felt herself struggling to light her horn, the magic coming to her too weakly to be reliable. The syringe and its yellowish liquid lifted, slowly, in the dim haze she’d conjured. Then it slipped free, falling like a pegasus through a cloud, onto the carpet. Humiliation seeped into her bones as her father sighed and stood from his chair, rounding the desk on thick hooves that spread the inferno.
“Concentrate,” he whispered.
Against her own will, she did. As he urged her to pool her magic around the syringe, he wrapped that fog in his own. She remembered the sensation of his power directing her, lifting the needle as surely as she would one of her own hooves. She wanted to douse her horn, to let go and run away, but this was her father. The stallion who she loved and trusted more than anyone in the world.
The stallion who guided the tip of the needle into the foal’s belly and pressed her magic against the plunger.
Ginger tried to pull herself away, to scream for it to stop, but her younger self didn’t have that courage. Not yet. She watched through crying eyes as the blanketed foal tried to wriggle away. Listened as its cries grew weaker. Quieter.
And went silent.
“There,” her father said. “All better.”
She stood there, frozen. Staring at what she had done.
Her father left her to open his study door. She heard hooves pad across the carpet and her elder sibling, Rosemary, walked up to their father’s desk with a small burlap bag floating ahead of her. Ginger looked down at the carpet, unable to watch her do the work.
“Good job, sis,” she whispered as she carried her burden back toward the door. Then she heard her hooves stop, followed by a tiny gasp. “Ohmigosh!”
Ginger blinked through her tears and stared after her. Rosemary beamed back, the burlap bundle beginning to smolder in the air beside her. 
Her father, still waiting at the door, had a similarly misplaced smile on his lips. “Congratulations, dearheart.”
She wiped her face, not understanding. Their eyes didn’t quite meet hers. Instead, they stared at her flank. A chill ran up her back at the memory. She craned her neck to follow their gaze and saw for the first time, while her home was devoured by flame, the symbol that a cruel universe had chosen for her mark.







She awoke with a start, breathing hard and primed to flee. It took her several seconds to piece together where she was.
A chitinous leg lay across her chest, its owner’s snores burrowing into the back of her mane. Pressed into her stomach were Aurora’s wings, still insulating her from the cool breeze flowing in from the open window. The sensation of paralysis was gone but the emotion of reliving that moment still lingered like a ghost in her mind. Damp lines chilled her face and her eyes were gummy with drying tears. 
It had felt so real. Had she hallucinated the entire thing? That day was fifteen years and several hundred miles behind her. It was a chapter of her life that she thought she’d moved beyond, and yet here she lay, plagued by the memory of the thing she did. She knew if she listened closely, she would hear the wails of that foal all over again.
She flattened her ears and buried her eyes in Aurora’s mane. No, she thought. She had suffered enough for what she did. What her father forced her to do. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life torturing herself.
Aurora stirred in her sleep and rolled over, draping a wing over Ginger’s body, feathers bending where Roach’s foreleg gripped her. Ginger allowed herself to be wrapped by them despite the growing feeling that she had done nothing to deserve her trust. She had tagged along with Aurora and Roach because the only other option was staying behind at her shop and waiting for a hunter to claim her bounty. They had anyway, and in doing so she had forced Aurora into a position where she felt obligated to save her and nearly died in the attempt. If they were a ship, she was most certainly their anchor.
As she watched Aurora sleep, she thought back to the flight they shared above the clouds. After discovering her past through Autumn, Ginger wouldn’t have blamed Aurora if she had left her at the array. Most would have. And yet, she hoisted Ginger onto her back and took her into the sky without reservation for how it might change them. Skirting below the Enclave’s permanent fog of clouds, they opened up to each other. Admitting to Aurora who she had once been - who her family had expected her to become - had been a relief she hadn’t known she needed. 
Somehow, Aurora had taken her confession in stride.
You’re going to move forward, she told her. No more hiding what you did and no more lying about your mark. First chance you get to negate some of the evil you’ve done, you do it. Deal?
She leaned over and kissed Aurora’s forehead. It still felt strange to feel this way about a mare she still barely knew. Aurora represented something Ginger wished she could discover in herself. An unashamed sense of what was right and wrong, and the courage to act on it. Ginger wanted to know what that felt like, and being near Aurora, she thought she almost could. 
Her thoughts swarmed around the promise they made. She thought about the caravan of ponies filtering out of the solar array in the aftermath of her rescue and wondered whether any of them had managed to escape. Chances were they were simply being escorted away by their masters, hurrying down the known wasteland trade routes that protected slavers and their cargo. Trekking to places like Kiln, Fetlock and the ruins of Appleloosa.
She could still hear the ghoul’s voice from earlier, clutching her hind leg and defying her to give him a price. He had been a slave, once. He knew the indignity and abuse that came at the hooves and horns of ponies like Ginger. She had wanted to tell him she understood despite knowing it was a lie. She could never understand. All she could hope to do was make up for her part in it.
A good unicorn owns her mistakes, her father reminded her.
She shut her eyes and tried hard to forget his voice. To forget the lessons he strove to teach her while the “help” broke their backs to ensure their masters wanted for nothing.
Her thoughts drifted to the strange vista of Kiln spread before them when they first approached. The oddly spaghetti-western style buildings constructed by the ghouls who lived in them, set apart from the smaller ramshackle structures thrown together on the northern edge of town furthest from the crater. A place assembled by slavers to safely move their cargo and loosely protected by Steel Rangers.
There were ponies less than a mile away, caged, waiting to be auctioned and delivered to whichever family had the caps to spend. She wondered if any of them would be taken west to work on whatever venture her former family dealt in these days. Likely there would be a few. Possibly more.
A thought occurred to her.
She’d never been east of here. Never been east of Junction City, for that matter. All she knew about what lay beyond the mountains ahead was what she had heard from travellers and scavengers who had come back from them. Vast corpses of cities many times larger than Canterlot, new and old, pecked at by raiders, ferals and nameless creatures that crawled out from the ruins to haunt the spaces not yet secured by the Steel Rangers. Anything of value beyond the mountains would be heavily protected by those who controlled them, and that included the slave routes.
Unlike Kiln.
The idea solidified in her mind and every inch of her rallied around it. This was the place. This was the only place that made sense. If she hesitated now, she knew she’d talk herself out of it. Find some reason to wait until the window was safely shut.
Gently, she lifted Aurora’s wing and folded it back against her side. She wrinkled her nose, then settled back to sleep. Roach didn’t so much as stir when she unwrapped his hoof from her belly. Best he didn’t wake up with his leg around her and develop a complex, anyway. She pushed herself up and turned, sitting with her half of Aurora’s saddlebags in front of her. Lifting the flap, she tugged the satchel up and searched the contents under the light of her magic. 
The Rangers charged with safeguarding their confiscated supplies during their stay at Blinder’s Bluff had taken some liberties with what they chose to return. Ginger’s pistol, one of the first weapons she’d successfully trained herself to use after leaving home, had unsurprisingly gone missing. As had her leather jacket and the bloodied combat armor Aurora had been shot in when she mastered gliding. Her knife however still lay in its sheath, thrown among the contents of Aurora’s tool wrap. The simple weapon likely wasn’t worth the trouble stealing for what little it would fetch from the traders. It would have to do. She buckled the blade to her thigh. The plastic clasp released a sharp click.
The stump of Roach’s ear twitched and his milky eyes opened. He looked up at her, at the knife she’d equipped, and frowned. 
“Where are you going?” he rumbled.
She stopped, closed her eyes and sighed. Of all times for him to be a light sleeper, why now?
“There’s something I need to do,” she said.
His frown deepened. “With a knife.”
“Hopefully not,” she said, her words clipped. Already, she could feel her opportunity slipping away. That gap between inspiration and action widening.
Roach pushed himself up without bothering to minimize the noise his chitin made against the rough boards. Aurora stirred in her sleep, her ears flicking at the noise.
When he spoke, there was an air of accusation in his voice. “What happened to us not running off on our own?”
She wanted to tell him that was his rule, not hers, but she caught herself. He was angry with her, but he was also afraid. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was already playing out a litany of what-ifs had she gotten out the door without waking him. Since the day they met on that lonely road east of New Canterlot, he’d taken up the mantle of being her protector. She knew part of that was his way of making up for what he couldn’t do for his daughter. He didn’t deserve to have his fear thrown back at him, least of all by her. 
He pressed her. “Does it have anything to do with the slaver hub north of town?”
“You know it does,” she whispered.
“Ginger,” he said, “that ghoul got into your head. You don’t have to prove anything to him.”
Aurora stretched her legs and inhaled deeply as she shed the last layers of sleep. “Prove what to who?” she mumbled. The fatigue was heavy in her eyes as she squinted toward the window. “Celestia’s teats. It’s still dark out. Why are you guys up?”
Ginger chewed her lip and stared at Roach, knowing her chance was gone now. She was caught. He leveled his eyes right back at her. He didn’t need to say a word for her to know he wasn’t going to answer Aurora for her.
Seeing the tension between them, Aurora sat up. “What’s going on?”
Ginger broke her gaze with Roach and sighed. “I was going to take a walk to the slave pens and…” she hesitated at how ridiculous it sounded now that she was saying it. “I wanted to set as many free as I could.”
Aurora’s lips parted with confusion as she absorbed what she said. “You were going to go alone?”
She felt Roach’s eyes on the back of her neck and the guilt that came with knowing what she had tried to do. “I didn’t want either of you to get hurt on my account.”
Aurora winced. It wasn’t much, just a twitch that was gone as quickly as it appeared, but the hurt in her eyes had been there all the same. Ginger’s ears dipped with shame. What had she been thinking? Why in Equestria did she think slinking off into the night to do something that could get her killed was a good idea? Her jaw clenched as she watched the mare who risked her life to save hers doubtlessly having the same thoughts. Possibly second thoughts.
She could still see her father standing in his study, the infant foal squirming on the unforgiving surface of his desk. She could practically smell the pipe smoke on his breath as he stood next to her, guiding her fledgling magic with his own, making her do something that sent her fleeing into the wasteland just to escape a memory that would dog her for fifteen years.
Something passed across Aurora’s face. She wiped the crust from her eyes and pushed herself off the floor. “I’m sorry, but I’m coming with you.”
Her heart skipped. “What?”
“Same,” Roach added, biting the strap of his saddlebags and throwing them over his back.
She watched him begin fixing his shotgun around his perforated foreleg, then turned to see Aurora begin pressing rounds into a fresh magazine. She wanted to tell them to stop, to forget she said anything and for the three of them to go back to sleep, but the determination on their faces made it clear that their minds were made up. 
Whether she wanted them to or not, they were going to help.
“How do we want to approach this?” Roach prompted.
“Well,” she said, and realized as she said it that she hadn’t thought that far ahead. She took a moment to consider her - their options. Roach deftly tightened the straps around his foreleg as she mulled it over.
They had a salvaged shotgun, a knife and a glorified hunting rifle between the two of them. Hardly armed for bear and most definitely not prepared to fend off a counterattack. Without knowing how many slavers were in Kiln, let alone how well armed they might be, their best odds rested in making as little noise as possible, which would be difficult to say the least.
She looked to Aurora. As much as that mare had managed to burrow into her heart, she was a mediocre shot at best. Her biggest advantages were her wings.
And then there was her magic, the single most difficult puzzle she was still trying to solve. The only spell she felt any amount of confidence using was her shield, but she wasn’t certain if she could hold it against sustained gunfire. When she put her magic between Aurora and Autumn Song’s bullet, the sheer rush of adrenaline kept her from feeling the worst of the pain. When Gallow’s mother fired one round after another into her shield, she had felt every shot as if the inside of her head were being rung like a bell. 
Kicking a nest of angry slavers was not the ideal stress test for her magic. Relying on that spell too much would land them in a heap of trouble.
This wasn’t a problem they could shoot their way through. Not without innocent ponies getting caught in the crossfire. Somehow, they needed to convince the slavers to part ways with their slaves without things devolving into a gunfight.
Then it hit her.
“I’m a Dressage,” she said, and a smile began to form on her lips. She turned to Roach, grinning. “I’m absolutely a Dressage.”
He shrugged. “Just because I escape a hivemind doesn’t mean I can read yours,” he said. “Maybe explain it for the duller students in the class.”
“I might need to copy your notes,” Aurora added with a tired smirk.
Their jabs aside, it relieved Ginger to hear them willing to listen. She felt awful for trying to skulk off without them, but knowing they were still here to support her soothed that ache.
“Our family,” she said, recoiling at the simple truth of the word our, “is one of the most premiere names in… that industry. My dear father is responsible for establishing many of the common practices used by dozens of the largest slaver factions east and west of New Canterlot. Suffice to say, the Dressage name carries some clout. I think it’s about time I get some use out of it.”
Aurora slung her rifle over her shoulder and turned it sideways to inspect the safety. Ginger couldn’t help but smile a little at how fastidious she was becoming with the weapon. Hardly anyone in the wasteland bothered to maintain them, let alone ensure they were safe.
“And that’s going to convince them to let their slaves walk free?” Aurora asked.
“Hardly,” she said, tipping her horn toward the collar and chain seared into her flank. “I’m going to purchase their contracts, and I’ll be using this abomination of a cutie mark as a line of credit.”
She watched as Aurora’s eyes widened and turned to Roach, who had a similarly impressed expression. “That’s not a bad idea,” she said.
“Sounds a lot easier than luring a deathclaw as a distraction,” he nodded. “Assuming this works, what are we supposed to do with these slaves? We can’t take them with us, and I doubt the Stable has time for us to take them back to the Bluff.”
“Well, for one, they won’t be slaves,” she said, paused, then added, “I hadn’t given any thought yet to what they would do after.”
The admission sucked some of the air out of the room. Her plan relied heavily on her charisma alone, but she was confident this could work if they played their cards right. Blinder’s Bluff was a day’s walk from Kiln. Longer if they stopped to rest. They couldn’t afford to backtrack all that way themselves, especially with Coldbrook likely still fuming over having been cut out of Aurora’s Pip-Buck the minute they were beyond the wall. One of them would have to step up and lead the rest.
“We can send them to Nurse Redheart,” she suggested.
Roach looked dubious. “That’s a lot to drop on one pony without warning.”
“But she would help them,” she insisted. “Redheart must have pumped a hundred caps worth of clean water and Rad-Away into Aurora and I without thinking about charging either of us. She’s a good pony. It’s a burden, but I think she’d understand.”
“Hm,” he muttered, chewing his lip before finally nodding. “She’s been a good one since the beginning. Probably knows a few ponies on the bluff that would be willing to chip in, too.”
“And by the time they work out they’ve been duped, their cargo will be long gone,” Aurora said. “It’s karmic justice. I like it.”
“It’s less than they deserve,” Ginger said, glancing between their meager supply of weapons, “but we can’t play cards we haven’t been dealt. We should go now while it’s still dark. I don’t like the prospect of pulling off this gambit in broad daylight when a slaver might be so inclined to follow us.”
Aurora wrapped her feathers around the doorknob and opened it. “You think one of them might try to pull something?”
Ginger and Roach followed her out into the brightly lit hall, the three of them squinting against the glare of the bulbs strung along the ceiling. The mattress she had discarded into the hallway was surprisingly occupied. A green earth pony lay curled atop it, her satchel and a compact weapon hugged beneath her foreleg. They stepped around her and descended the stairs to the bar.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Ginger said, recalling the thick ropes Trotter had used to bind her legs. She lowered her voice as they walked across the bar floor where a smattering of patrons still occupied a few stools in front of Brandy. “I don’t think it would send a convincing message for the slavers to see us heading east and their captives go west.”
Ginger spared a look back at the table where the ghoul stallion had hooked her leg. It was empty now. Chances were slim to zero that they would ever cross paths again, but that didn’t quench her desire to prove him wrong. She was more than a slaver’s daughter. More than a name or the mark given to her by an uncaring universe. When this was over, he would realize just how wrong he had been. 
At the end of the day, she could live with that. 
She pushed through the brightly painted doors and into the night with Aurora and Roach at her side. Fifteen years she wasted hiding from her past, pretending she was a mare who died centuries ago. Now, with the help of her friends, she was finally going to make up for the life she stole.
Bathed in the sickly green light cast by the gaudy sign of the Glowing Gash, breathing air tainted with the faint flavor of metal, Ginger turned north toward the slave pens.
Her friends followed close behind.







October 29th, 1075

Hardly anyone attended Gilda’s memorial.
The meager turnout didn’t surprise Rainbow in the least. To most ponies, Gilda was a name none of them had heard before. Rarity had ensured that her death was mentioned in most of the larger papers, but more than a few publishers found one excuse or another to relegate their four or five required sentences to the back pages. 
Rainbow didn’t blame them. Gilda had never gone out of her way to make friends during her brief stint in Equestria with the exception of herself and a wingful of other ponies. Why give an anonymous gryphon more space on the page than she’d earned? It wasn’t just business, it was basic logic. What more could anyone expect?
It still stung.
She stared out at Fluttershy’s vegetable garden, huddled in one of the creaking wicker chairs she kept tucked beneath the leaf-shaded veranda built into the rear of her cottage. A cup of chamomile tea rested in her lap, held by a feather that hadn’t lifted it to her lips for some time now. She sighed and forced herself to take a sip. After everything she put Fluttershy through this past week, it was the least she could do.
Fluttershy hadn’t taken the news of Gilda’s death any better than Rainbow. The tears and apologies spilled out of her like a broken dam before Rainbow had a chance to tell her that she hadn’t been implicated, and the only one of them currently under a microscope was herself. She had no choice but to tell her that Spitfire had made the decision to have Gilda killed, but Rainbow stopped short of sharing that she had quietly lost her ministry in the blowback. 
Keeping Fluttershy calm was paramount if she hoped to keep Spitfire from sniffing her way into the Ministry of Peace, and if that meant lying to one of her oldest friends to do it, then she would.
She sipped cold tea, enjoying its lingering sweetness while the evening sun turned the sky beautiful shades of golden lavender. Murmurs found their way to her ears through the nearby window as if to remind her that, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t sit out here forever. She would, she told herself, but not right now. Right now, she just wanted to sit outside and pretend she was okay.
The wicker chair crackled as she wrapped her free wing around her legs. It was cooling down in earnest now. The little garden was empty now, picked clean ahead of next week’s scheduled frost. Despite all the rigors of her duty as a ministry mare, Fluttershy never succumbed to the pressure of selling her home like the rest of them. When she offered her cottage up for the memorial, Rainbow leapt on it. She could count the opportunities the past year had given her to visit Ponyville on her hoof and she doubted the next one would present itself any time soon. 
As unnecessary as Rainbow felt it was, this had been her own small way of apologizing. Accepting was a kind of forgiveness, even though she could tell it would be a long while before Fluttershy gave herself permission to move on.
The murmuring voices inside the cottage coalesced into a chorus Rainbow recognized as goodbyes and a little twist of guilt wrapped around itself in her belly. Standing in Fluttershy’s den as one pony after the other offered her the same condolence, the same awkward hug and the same misty-eyed reassurance that they were there for her… she didn’t have the energy for it. The past week had been a constant parade of sympathy messages on her terminal, cards and impromptu visits from ponies whose names she couldn’t remember. To say it was exhausting would be the understatement of her lifetime. She’d been worn numb.
She tried not to grimace as the back door clicked open. Through the corner of her eye, she could see Twilight leaning out over the threshold.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash,” she said with the same delicate tone as everyone else, as if speaking too loudly might shatter her like the teacup in her wing. “I’ve got to head out.”
“Okay,” she said.
Twilight pulled the door shut behind her as she stepped out onto the veranda. “Is there anything you need?”
Rainbow pressed her lips together and shook her head, biting back a jagged remark that nearly made its way across her tongue. “I’m good.”
Twilight lingered for a moment, long enough for Rainbow to begin considering how not good she was. Sitting here, back in Ponyville with her closest friends reminiscing together for the first time in what felt like ages while she hid outside, she felt disgusted with herself. The muscles in her jaw ached with the effort it took to keep her placid mask in place. Despite her efforts, she found herself needing to blink the haze from her eyes.
To her credit, Twilight pretended not to notice. The last thing Rainbow wanted was for her to wrap her in yet another crushing hug and feed her reassurances. In the face of a tragedy that few of them were affected by, the only option any of her friends seemed to have was to do their best to squeeze the tears out of her until the tap ran dry.
“Well,” Twilight said, bowing her head slightly so she didn’t rake her horn through the living awning of leaves above her, “the princesses are inside right now in case...”
Rainbow shook her head.
Twilight nodded and lit her horn. “Okay. Take care of yourself, Rainbow. You know where to find me if you ever feel like talking.”
Behind a locked door that you never answer at the bottom of the Pillar, she thought. “Thanks for coming, Twi.”
She didn’t bother watching the shimmering sphere that swept into existence around Twilight. One moment she was there, surrounded by her magic, and then a flash and displacement of air and she was gone. 
Rainbow watched the last lavender motes of Twilight’s magic wink out of existence one by one, leaving her once again in relative peace. She cleared her throat and sniffed while the chilled breeze that slid across Fluttershy’s property did the slow work of drying her eyes. She lifted the cup of tea to her lips and drank what was left, hoping to drown the sour taste in the back of her throat with honeyed water.
Now that Twilight mentioned it, Rainbow could hear the almost musical voices of the princesses as they chatted with her friends. She set the empty cup down onto the wooden porch, knowing at some point staying out here would cross a line between taking a breather and blatant avoidance. She considered taking Twilight’s advice and getting up to make at least a brief appearance for the princesses, but as she shrugged off her blanket of feathers she could tell her heart wasn’t in it yet.
She sagged back into the chair and wrapped herself tight, content to watch the squirrels chase each other through Fluttershy’s empty garden a little while longer.
The sun had barely finished sinking below the horizon when the back door opened a second time. Rainbow jerked awake when it clicked shut, her brain rebelling against the task of dragging her out of the nap she’d just begun to settle into.
“Fluttershy said I might find you out here.”
Rainbow sat up a little at the sound of Luna’s voice. Gone were the days when she might have tensed with fear in the presence of the princess of the night, nor did she any longer feel obligated to jump down from her chair and prostrate herself before the younger of the two Celestial Sisters like most ponies were expected to. That didn’t mean she was immune to the undeniable force of Luna’s presence.
Her shoulder popped as she straightened in her chair. “Sorry, I must’ve dozed off.”
“Oh, I’m the last pony you should apologize to for that,” Luna said dismissively. “You’ve had a long week, and I know how exhausting these things can be.”
Rainbow offered a weak smile as the deep indigo mare stepped past her, considering an identical wicker chair near the porch steps. Luna was comparatively smaller in stature than her sister, but the mare still stood a full head taller than Rainbow. It was a toss-up whether the brittle furniture would support her weight, and one that Luna wisely chose not to test.
She turned toward the empty space next to Rainbow and indicated it with a subtle dip of her horn. “May I sit?”
It was kind of her to offer the illusion of choice. “Knock yourself out,” she said.
She watched while Luna made herself comfortable on the sanded oak planks, near enough that her shoulder brushed the right side of Rainbow’s chair. A quick flicker from her horn and her star-streaked mane began flowing away from her like a diverted river.
“Tia wanted me to give you her regards,” she said.
Rainbow allowed herself to relax back into the chair’s woven curves. “Is she still here?”
Luna shook her head. “She left a little while ago with everyone else. Fluttershy thought it best to spare you the trouble of seeing everyone off.”
“Great,” she muttered. One more screw-up to throw onto the pile.
“Everyone handles grief in their own way,” Luna said, her tone free of judgment. “I never had a chance to meet this friend of yours. Were you and Gilda close?”
Rainbow felt herself drawing inward again. “We used to be.”
Luna nodded as if she understood. “Ah. Is it safe for me to assume that you would prefer to talk about literally anything else?”
Rainbow surprised herself as a tiny smirk pulled at her lip. Despite having lived well more than a generation for every one of Rainbow’s years, the time it took Luna to finally shed her Old Canterlot verbiage and adjust to modern parlance had taken place in a relatively short amount of time. Speaking with her now, it was easy to forget that she was centuries - some believed millennia - old.
If anyone understood how tired she was, it would probably be her.
“You assume correctly,” she chuckled.
Luna leaned into the side of Rainbow’s chair, making the wicker creak. Her eyes traced the darkening sky as she decided on what to say. Gradually, a conspiratorial smile creased her cheek. “Did you know,” she began, “before Tia and I were born, magic was much less common?”
Rainbow furrowed her brow before twisting a little to better see the alicorn. “How so?”
“It’s difficult to remember the specifics. None of the scrolls I grew up with are around for me to reference these anymore, and I wasn’t a particularly good student as a filly,” she said, her tone melancholic as she sifted through her own memories. “But what I do remember is that the world used to be more… untamed than it is now. Unicorns only had a rudimentary understanding of magic back then. It was something they could feel, but there wasn’t enough of it for them to channel. There used to be a scroll about it, listing all the different cults and religions which grew up around the belief it existed at all.”
Listening to Luna speak was like salve to a wound. “If that’s true, then where did it come from?”
Luna shrugged. “Nobody knows. Half the fun of reading some of those scrolls were the theories. Some ponies believed magic was a gift from some ancient god or gods, which usually led to them leveraging their following in pursuit of influence or power. Those never lasted very long. Others thought that magic was a byproduct of our planet. Something leached out from the rocks that unicorns were uniquely equipped to detect. There was even a cult of alicorns that believed our world existed near a natural river of magic that stretches from one end of existence to the other, and that we’re slowly being pulled into the current.”
She paused to chuckle, and Rainbow couldn’t help but smile a little too. “I’m so glad we’re beyond debates like those. I can only imagine what it must have been like for every pony born with a horn on their head to have a personal stake in proving they were right.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around Equestria having enough alicorns to form a cult,” Rainbow said.
Luna rolled her eyes. “Believe me, we’re all better off that the Trinities bred themselves out of existence before magic started to truly bloom. Everything I remember reading about them pointed to their inability to stop stroking their own egos. Had one of them ever learned to manipulate magic, they most likely would have perished from dehydration in their chambers.”
Rainbow didn’t quite allow herself to laugh, but the mental image had her smiling at the floor nonetheless.
Luna hid her own smirk behind her hoof. “I’m sorry, that was a little more crude than the occasion deserves.”
“Trust me, if Gilda was here…” she stopped herself, feeling that familiar lump rising into her throat just in time to spoil the moment. She swallowed, hard, and shook her head with embarrassment.
Gilda never traded in vanilla jokes, preferring to sling whatever nugget of humor seemed funny at the time no matter what shade of red they tended to turn unfortunate ponies caught in the crossfire. She would have appreciated knowing one of Equestria’s royalty was capable of doing the same.
She didn’t want to think about that now.
“When did magic become,” she prompted, gesturing at Luna’s horn. “You know, what it is now.”
Luna took up the thread without skipping a beat. “From what I read, it took some time. Centuries before most earth ponies or pegasi agreed that existed at all, let alone was getting stronger. Unicorns would often report feelings as if it were pooling around them, sometimes manifesting from them at the urgence of a particularly powerful thought or desire. By the time Tia and I were born, seeing a pony harnessing magic was no more uncommon than finding a pegasus in flight.” She lifted Rainbow’s empty teacup into the air on a carpet of her own magic, admiring the delicate network of tea-stained cracks that webbed its interior.
She touched the tip of her horn to the cup’s rim and it split apart along those fractures, reducing it to a glittering cloud of porcelain confetti. Rainbow leaned against her armrest, happy to enjoy this little distraction as Luna formed vague shapes in the air with the teacup’s remains.
“We were only there to witness the very end of that golden age,” she said, forming the chips into dozens of nondescript equine figures. “All at the same time, those disparate theologies, faiths and doctrines were suddenly proven right. Magic was real. We could touch it. Change it. Even show it to those who couldn’t understand what we felt for so long but couldn’t properly express.”
The ponies evaporated again into an amorphous cloud.
“It was what destroyed them, in the end. What made any one of those religions special when all the others were experiencing the same epiphany as yours? The unknown mystery of magic was the glue that held them together. Take away the mystery and suddenly all of those gods and deities and prophets were open to scrutiny. To study. It turned the very bedrock of those beliefs to sand.”
Rainbow raised her wing and sifted the tips of her feathers through the constellation of shattered china. The razor-sharp chips flowed through the delicate blue vanes without so much as cutting a single one, simultaneously guided and shielded by the royal blue glow of Luna’s magic.
Whether it was weariness, middle-age or a visitation from her headstrong youth, Rainbow gave voice to a thought that she knew she should never utter. “That sounds a lot like how ponies believe you control the moon.”
She expected Luna’s tone to change. For her to demand an explanation, or warn her not to say anything she regretted. Something dramatic.
Instead, the princess of the night offered an imperceptible shrug in return while continuing to play with the remains of Fluttershy’s teacup. She looked at Rainbow with an inquisitive smile. “Do you believe I can?”
Her candid reaction caught Rainbow off guard, and for a long moment she didn’t know how to answer. Every neuron in her head screamed at her to make the obvious choice and lie, that anything else was risking the same fate Spitfire had used to threaten her into surrendering her ministry. Possibly worse.
Definitely worse.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat while Luna waited, patiently, for her to answer. The thought of stealing Spitfire’s thunder by handing her own destruction to someone else had a certain appeal to it.
“No,” she said, and with that word she could feel a weight being lifted from her shoulders. She took a breath to steady herself and added, “I think if you could raise the moon, it wouldn’t have just done it on its own.”
Luna blinked and looked past the floating porcelain to the distant horizon, where the waxing crescent of her moon hung low in the late evening sky. She sat there for several long seconds, chagrined as the moon continued its lazy ascent without her. Then she licked her lips and broke into a grin, her shoulders bouncing as she silently laughed to herself.
Rainbow waited for fire and brimstone to rain from the stars, but it never came.
Luna looked at Rainbow as if she were seeing her for the first time. Instead of anger, there was a tangible joy in her voice as she said, “And here I thought Twilight was the smart one.”
Rainbow wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she chose the safe route and kept her mouth shut.
Luna turned back to the floating bits of china and chuckled as she drew them back together, each shard sliding perfectly into place until the original shape of the cup solidified. She touched her horn to the aggregate form as she had when she split it apart, and the fractures clicked together with an audible clink.
She lowered the restored teacup back to the smooth boards. When her horn went dark, it was in better condition than when Fluttershy had carried it out to Rainbow on the veranda.
“You’re not angry?”
Luna shook her head. “I don’t see what good it would do if I were. Besides, it’s nice not having to pretend for one night.” Her smile wavered a little, and she regarded Rainbow with a serious edge to her voice. “I wouldn’t advise broaching that subject with my sister. In fact, I would rather you didn’t share any of what we discussed here. She has a tendency to overreact.”
Rainbow didn’t want to picture what an alicorn princess overreacting looked like. “Okay,” she said.
Luna’s eyes tracked her with something akin to curiosity as she adjusted her wings around her legs, trying to trap some of the warmth that had escaped when she passed her feathers through the cloud of teacup. “Something is still bothering you.”
It felt as if the mare’s eyes were boring a hole into her mind. Rainbow looked away, suddenly uneasy at this new attention. “I just miss my friend, is all.”
The alicorn made a face. “No, I know what grief looks like. I’ve seen it thousands of times over. You’re afraid of something.”
Rainbow chewed the inside of her lip, shaking her head. “It’s just stress from work,” she said. It wasn’t a complete lie, but the core of mistruth drew a frown across Luna’s muzzle. “Really.”
Luna placed a hoof on the arm of her chair, brushing against her feathers in the process. “Rainbow Dash, if you’re ever overwhelmed with your duties, I can always…”
“It’s fine,” she said a little more sharply than she intended, and quickly backpedaled. “I’m sorry, it’s just… Spitfire’s already offered to help me out while I process everything. I’ll be better in a week or two.”
Luna pulled back her hoof and nodded. “She’s a good friend for doing that,” she said, though there was a brittleness to her smile that hadn’t been there before. She pushed herself to her hooves, careful to keep her head low much like Twilight had done earlier, and regarded her for a moment. “I’m sure the guards are wondering where I am by now, and you look like you could use some sleep. Do you have anything pressing to take care of tomorrow?”
Rainbow almost snorted. Thanks to Spitfire, her agenda was getting lighter by the day. “Just a few meetings.”
“Skip them,” Luna said, arching her eyebrow as she spoke. “You’ve gone through enough and you deserve a break. Take the day off tomorrow.”
She pursed her lips, her mind already rifling through the list of excuses for why she couldn’t. They were all usually very convincing.
Luna’s wing settled on her shoulder, derailing Rainbow’s train of thought. She glanced down at the dark feathers gripping her, then at the alicorn they were attached to. Luna didn’t touch anyone. Nobody touched Luna. The hackles down her mane instinctively bristled at the unexpected breach.
Luna bent down until she was at eye level with her. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to burn out. Take a day.”
Rainbow forced herself to nod. “Okay,” she said, gently pulling herself free of Luna’s feathers. “Just the one.”
She folded her wing back to her side, her smile taking on a renewed warmth. “Good. Equestria needs you at your best, even if that means being a little selfish once in a while.” She turned and stepped toward the stairs leading to Fluttershy’s garden, turning her gaze to the first stars to peek out through the veil of night. “I enjoyed speaking with you. It isn’t often I’m able to be so candid.”
Rainbow slid out of her chair and quickly found herself shivering without her shawl of feathers to insulate her against the biting air. If it bothered Luna, she didn’t show it. “I should say goodbye to Fluttershy.”
“Please do the same for me,” she said. She unwrapped her wings as she descended the steps, testing her feathers against the slow breeze. “We’ll speak again soon.”
She watched as Luna flapped her wings toward the damp grass and pitched herself into the sky. Her dark coat bled into the deep blue of the night until Rainbow could no longer distinguish her from the surrounding stars. 
She stood there for some time, thinking about the strange history Luna had shared. An Equestria without magic, broken into strange factions with stranger beliefs. Cults and their unknowable gods.
She wondered if any of it was even true.







“Ugh.”
Aurora scraped her tongue against her teeth and spat. The irradiated breeze flowing in from the crater was not making her cottonmouth any better. All she could taste was sour metal.
“I told you to drink more water,” Roach said.
“I finished that pitcher, didn’t I?”
He shrugged in response. Technically she had shared it with Ginger, but that had seemed like plenty at the time. Her body disagreed. Thankfully Brandy’s selection of liquor had been so watered down that, aside from a dry mouth, they had dodged the less pleasant effects of a hangover.
Ginger seemed barely affected at all. In fact, she seemed more awake than ever. It was only a few minutes past four in the morning according to what Ginger reported from their Pip-Buck, which meant they had squeaked in less than four hours of sleep. Aurora trotted in place as they followed one of the narrower dirt roads north, toward the dim glow of what appeared to be stadium lights. It was an old trick she learned down in Mechanical whenever Millie woke her with the inevitable message that someone needed her to cover a shift. The exercise helped her get much-needed adrenaline to her brain, just enough to last her the trip to the break room coffee pot.
She wondered if slavers drank coffee. It occurred to her that since leaving Stable 10, she’d been on a strictly decaf diet. During the last six days she hadn’t had much time to consider that sad fact, but now that the idea was in her head it was all her body wanted.
Ginger eyed her as she rapidly alternated hooves. “Are you alright?”
“Just getting the blood pumping,” she said, trying to ignore the mad bobbling of her rifle on its strap. She knew she looked ridiculous, but that was alright. The important thing was that she could feel herself waking up with each puff of cool night air.
She couldn’t help but feel a little excited. Pulling one over on ponies who bought and sold their kin like loaves of bread appealed to her in so many ways she lost count. She clearly remembered the ring of chain link cages built into the walls of the tank Autumn had kept Ginger prisoner in, but until they left the array Aurora had never seen a real slave before. From so high up they had appeared to look like any other pony, excluding the explosive-laced collars around their necks. Ginger had told her there was more to it than that, and she believed it, but the concept of owning another pony was so foreign to her that in a strange way, her curiosity overrode her apprehension as they approached the encampment.
A wide stretch of dirt marked the end of what the ghouls of Kiln claimed as their settlement, and the simple constructed buildings fell behind them. Ahead lay what appeared to be an old running track of some kind. Behind it stood the ruins of a large, squarish charred structure that had collapsed some time ago in the past. A portion of billboard-sized signage leaned on a slant against the side of the building, standing on the stumps of torn girders that had once been its supports. Someone had to have placed it there, she realized. This close to ground zero, the area had been scraped clean. And yet, someone or several someones had organized to drag the top half of a billboard to the blasted remains of what must have been a substantial building. 
On it, the faded and flaking image of a comically muscled grey earth pony winked at her, wearing denim bib overalls and a miner’s helmet. He held a sizable pickaxe between his teeth, his lips split into a confident grin. Either the sign was charred black, or the pony was meant to look like he was covered in soot. The caricature stood framed by a slogan whose letters were difficult, but not impossible to make out.


WE’RE OPEN FOR BUSINESS! JUST 5 MILES TO QUARRYTOWN!
HOME OF THE FIGHTIN’ COLLIERS!


Aurora didn’t know what a collier was or what they were fighting over, but she suspected it was meant to be in good fun. Kiln had been built atop the remains of Quarrytown by its surviving residents, and it was clear just by looking at the quality of their housing that they took a measure of pride in keeping that memory alive. The billboard had to have meant something special for them to have dragged it all the way here.
To each their own, she thought.
They passed the billboard and drew up even with the blasted structure that held it up. The sign leaned against a pair of rusted beams that bent away from the crater like candles whose wax had softened and rehardened. Rivulets of solid steel drew paths down what remained of the beams. Inside lay a jumbled heap of black bricks, burying any evidence of what the building had once housed. More bricks scattered the grounds behind it, leaving a minefield of edged stones half-sunk into the dirt which drew a path straight to the slavers’ encampment.
“That must be where the colliers did their fighting,” Aurora said, half-joking, half-hoping one of them would explain the billboard to her.
Ginger didn’t comment. Her face was a mask of concentration. Roach was already surveying the scene that lay in front of them, making mental notes of any hidden dangers they might not have a clear view of once they entered.
The encampment sat atop an oval track that looked suspiciously similar to the decathlon running track pictured in the history books back home. A conglomeration of sheet metal, salvaged wood planks and chain link ran a complete circuit of the inside track, replete with barbed wire crowning the top. At least six ponies that she could see plodded along a platform behind the wall’s edge, providing them with as much cover as it did a view of the surrounding terrain. It was a crude but effective wall for any pony without feathers, but she had a feeling flying over the top of it would be met with a less than pleasant reception.
She kept her wings to herself as Ginger pulled slightly ahead, leading the two of them to a wide break in the wall near what used to be the starting line where two armed unicorns tracked their approach. Their shadows stretched ahead of them, thrown long by a bank of stadium lights propped atop makeshift scaffolding beyond the far wall. Three bulbs burned with enough energy to drag away the night and thrust the camp into an early twilight.
Past the entrance, a line of wagons and pitched canvas tents ran the circumference of the inner field. Through the gaps between them, Aurora could make out the forms of several ponies curled on the floor of cages clustered at the center of the grounds.
Her curiosity died on the vine.
“Stop.”
One of the unicorns, the color of honey, stepped out from the break in the wall with his magic gripping the stock of his “rifle.” Aurora squinted at the weapon. It looked like the product of a misbegotten romance between plumber’s scrap and a woodpile. If she didn’t know any better, the barrel was a length of half-inch metal pipe held to a two-by-four by at least a dozen steel cable ties.
The rifle’s threaded muzzle lifted slightly toward the dirt beneath their hooves. “That’s close enough,” the guard said. “Turn around and find someplace else to be. Camp’s closed until morning.”
The stallion wore the strangest armor Aurora had ever seen. Leather pads run through with sharpened stumps of rebar adorned both his shoulders, matching the shorter studs buried into the catcher-style padding down the fronts of his forelegs and chest. His mane was cut short, leaving little more than a couple inches of buzzed brown hair that ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck. His partner, a pink mare keeping her distance back at the break in the wall, bore the same manestyle and armor. 
Aurora tried to think of a reason to have three-inch long rusted spikes so close to either side of her neck and failed to come up with a good one. One wrong fall and he’d be chewing on one of those through his cheek. It must be purely for intimidation.
She worked to keep her face a mask of neutrality. These slavers looked ridiculous.
She noticed Ginger smiling at the stallion as if she were trying to instruct a lovably dense student. “Darling, I won’t fault you for an admirable performance of your role, but I haven’t come all this way from New Canterlot just so your boss can get his beauty sleep. Now, be a dear and tell the slavemaster that a Ms. Dressage is waiting outside with an offer he’ll want to hear for himself.”
The stallion narrowed his eyes at her and squinted at her mark in the dim light.
“Or,” she continued, “you can insist that I wait outside with my entourage until daylight and explain to him yourself why my offer just became much less generous.”
For a moment it seemed like the stallion was giving serious thought to stonewalling them out of sheer belligerence. He pressed his lips into a narrow line and let his strange weapon hang from its strap.
“Wait here,” he grumbled. On his way through the wall, he looked at his counterpart still at her post. “Make sure they don’t go anywhere.”
The mare indicated the ground they stood on and cocked an eyebrow as if to emphasize what they had already clearly heard. Aurora glanced at Roach, who was doing an excellent job looking bored, then to Ginger, whose lead they were both committed to following. 
The three of them stood in place, waiting for some time before they heard the crunching of hooves over packed soil.
A visibly irritated and compact unicorn appeared at the gate, bedecked in a rumpled cotton shirt framed by a red vest that he had buttoned haphazardly on the way. His coat was the color of old rust and was missing in several patches from what appeared to be a bad case of mange. If his appearance bothered him, he didn’t show it as he came to an abrupt stop beneath the arch of his wall.
He stamped the dirt with his hoof. “Come here.”
Ginger’s smile tightened as she led them to the gate.
“Pickett tells me you have an offer for me that couldn’t wait,” he said, his sunken eyes glaring up at her from his almost comically small frame. “I’m also to understand you claim to be one of the Dressages out of New Canterlot. I’ll do you the service of speaking plainly when I say I’m unconvinced of either.”
Aurora watched as Ginger pivoted slightly, just enough to give him an unbroken view of the chain and collar on her flank.
He lifted his chin slightly as he paused to consider. “Cutie marks have been faked before.”
“And I assume you’re well aware of what my family does to impersonators,” she replied, her voice as pleasant as if she were complimenting the unkempt mop of his white mane. “I assumed my escort would already speak to my authenticity.”
She gestured to Aurora, who straightened. 
The stallion turned to her, looked her up and down for a long moment, then pursed his lips and nodded once to her before turning his attention back to Ginger. “I suppose she does, though I feel the need to express my concern in bringing an Encl… an uncovered pegasus this deep into the wasteland.”
Ginger continued to watch him, waiting.
“Ms. Dressage,” the slavemaster grudgingly added. He shot Roach a mistrustful glance, his eyes lingering on the strange holes tunneling through the lower halves of his legs. He broke his stare and looked back to Ginger. “Name’s Ward.”
She smiled. “Well, Ward, I wouldn’t worry yourself about my traveling companions. They’re quite competent.”
“Mm,” the slavemaster grunted. “I ain’t so worried about them as I am about you. Last I heard, Autumn Song had a bounty on your head to the tune of two thousand caps for killing her kid brother.”
Aurora noticed the muscles in her companion’s shoulders tense by the barest degree. 
Ginger cleared her throat and proceeded to weave a lie with such casual confidence that even Aurora found herself briefly second-guessing the events leading to Cider’s death. 
“Her ‘kid brother’ had it in his head that their monopoly on the eastern trade routes put him in a position to leverage a twenty percent tariff against the slaver guilds,” she said, shrugging. “They both miscalculated.”
Ward blinked rapidly as her meaning sank in. “Ah,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I suppose that would explain why we’ve been hearing stories of Rangers turning caravans away from her headquarters. Then I assume the traders who still claim to represent F&F Mercantile are flying a dead banner?”
Ginger nodded. “Their company has been dissolved, in a manner of speaking, yes.”
“The world is changing,” he said, and met her gaze. “So. This offer you mentioned?”
His business-like tone couldn’t mask the eagerness behind his eyes. He lifted a hind leg and used the edge of his hoof to scratch a cluster of scabs on the inside of the other. Aurora wished to everything holy that she could unsee that.
“Before we discuss that,” she said, nodding past the tents and toward the ponies held at the center of the field, “I’d like to see your stock.”
Ward’s chest puffed up beneath his wrinkled shirt. Clearly he saw an opportunity forming beyond whatever deal awaited him. Aurora spent enough years in Mechanical to know what a brown-noser looked like, and Slavemaster Ward looked ready to bury his entire muzzle in…
She winced and banished the thought before it could sear itself into her brain.
“Right this way, Ms. Dressage,” he said, ushering them past the gate and into the encampment.
It was quiet beneath the stadium lights, as long as one ignored the ratcheting snores coming from the ring of inward-facing tents. Many looked custom crafted, stitched together from a patchwork of canvas and other materials. Dark layers of fabric and tarp draped over the openings of many of the tents facing the glare of the lights, some going so far as to hang their dusters to block the unwanted light. Embers smoldered in haphazard piles near most of them, remnants of cookfires allowed to burn out.
They followed Ward into the field where the slavers formed their modest trade hub around, and Aurora’s eyes quickly fell on the cages at its center. A lump of ice formed in the pit of her stomach.
She took a steadying breath and exhaled with a slow, bewildered shudder.
Ginger’s ear turned toward her and, carefully, she risked a glance over her shoulder, mouthing the words stay calm.
Aurora flicked her tail hard enough for the hairs to crack the air, but she forced herself to breathe again and steady herself. She felt disgusted in herself for wanting to see this just minutes before in some misguided desire to sate her curiosity. Up until now, slavery had resided in her mind as an abstract concept. Just a strange new word in her vocabulary that, shy of a few glimpses at the solar array, she didn’t have a context for.
Now she understood.
An uneven concrete pad had been poured at the center of the field with a forest of crooked rebar posts sticking up from it, drawing a deliberate grid of perpendicular lines in the cement. Those lines formed the walls of twenty cages divided into two rows of ten, broken only by twenty roughly welded rebar doors held shut by a padlock on a length of heavy chain.
The cages’ sheet metal ceiling was barely high enough for its occupants to stand upright. Ponies of every color lay curled at the bottom of each cage, either asleep or staring silently into the distance, three or four crammed into a space barely comfortable for one. They were like looking at a carpet of bulging ribs, a tangle of overlapping legs and bulging ribs as they did what little they could to rest.
As they drew near the cages, the flies began to land on Aurora. They sent her back to Gallow’s shed and the cloud of insects that had swarmed through the door. She closed her eyes for a moment and focused on her breathing. 
In. Out. In. Out.
It hardly did any good. When she relented and opened them again, she could see the distress on Roach’s face. He stared at the ground, his jaw clenched. She met his eye only briefly, and something passed between them. An understanding that what they were seeing needed to stop. One way or another, they couldn’t walk away having done nothing.
“This is it,” the slavemaster said, slapping his hoof against a length of rebar with a clang that startled its nearest occupants awake. “Thirty-six stallions, twenty-nine mares and six foals. Seventy-one in total and another twenty or so expected to arrive via caravan in three days.”
Ginger nodded, but said nothing. Her body was rigid like a board.
“Oh, I know,” Ward said with a sympathetic smile. “The smell can be off-putting around this time. We tend to wait until morning before we have them muck out their pens.”
Aurora felt her stomach churn as she noticed the fetid lumps heaped in the corners. There were no tools nearby. Nothing to aid them in completing that task. Every horn she could see bore the same magical suppression ring that had been forced onto Ginger. Every neck wore an iron collar to denote their lack of status. And yet they couldn’t be provided a single bucket to relieve themselves into, forced instead to use the floor they slept on.
“Do you see anything you like?” Ward prodded, noticing that Ginger still hadn’t moved.
Aurora followed Ginger’s wooden gaze through the bars to a pair of ponies barely half the size of the ones surrounding them. They stared back at her, their eyes dark and empty, jarred awake by Ward’s yapping and not likely to fall asleep again now that three strange ponies were gathered outside their cage.
She remembered enjoying a bowl of onion soup at the Brass Bit back at the Stable, watching a gaggle of foals chase each other across the Atrium with fearless abandon. They had to have been close to the same age as the two foals staring up at them from the mass of sleeping bodies.
When Ginger finally spoke, her voice had a husky edge to it. 
“All of them.”
Ward’s scabbed ear twisted toward her, drawing his attention away from a pair of guards making their way across the field on their regular rounds. “I’m sorry? All of them what?”
Ginger turned to him. “I’d like to purchase all of them.”
The stallion’s mouth hung open for a breath as he processed what she said.
“That’s the offer I came here with,” Ginger continued, the mask of calm settling back over her features. “There is a good likelihood that my family will be acquiring a series of mines north of Canterlot Mountain, and we’ll be needing a fresh labor pool to get them up and running.”
“And you want to buy me out of my entire stock to do it,” Ward said, his eyes drifting over the ponies locked in his cages. “Does your father realize not all of these slaves are ready for hard labor?”
She nodded. “He’s an ambitious stallion. He’ll find work for them.”
He considered that for a moment. “I don’t doubt he will, and yet I can’t help but wonder how he plans to pay for seventy slaves at the same time.”
“Seventy-one,” she corrected. “My father authorized me to offer you five hundred caps for each, regardless of age or condition.”
Ward’s eyes bulged.
“However,” she continued, “that payment is contingent on delivery, which our people will oversee. Once they’ve arrived safely in New Canterlot, a courier will be sent back with your payment and commendation.”
The slavemaster’s grin faded. He stared up at her with barely concealed suspicion. “You’re insane if you think the three of you can transport more than twenty times your number in slaves. They would kill you in your sleep.”
Ginger’s smile stiffened as she watched another set of guards pass by the far side of the cages. She waited for them to be out of earshot before tipping her horn back to Aurora. “Our mutual benefactor will be providing escort. Covered pegasi, of course, once they land.”
Ward turned his head skyward, squinting. There was nothing for him to see, but the lie had him convinced enough to make an ass out of himself anyway. When he finally pulled his head out of the clouds and looked to Aurora, she offered a single firm nod in return. It was everything she could do to keep herself from puking as she did.
“Thirty-five thousand, five hundred caps by my count,” he said, nibbling at the hook. “And an accommodation? What does that mean?”
“A title, to be chosen by my father, and property within New Canterlot on which to live on,” she said with a pert smile.
Ward surveyed his rusted walls and the makeshift tents clustered inside them. He had the look of a pony who had thought he had wealth but realized he’d been living in squalor compared to what was being offered. The gears were spinning so quickly in his head that they were close to flying apart.
“I want a stake in your father’s mines as well,” he announced.
Greedy little shit, Aurora thought.
Ginger made a show of being put off by the add-on, glancing at the ponies inside their rebar hell, then turning back to him with a thoughtful nod. “Two percent,” she said.
“Ten,” he fired back.
“Five.”
“Deal.”
He stuck a mangy hoof up toward her chest and, after a moment of reluctance, Ginger shook it. Inside the cages, several of the enslaved ponies shared hopeless expressions at the prospect of their new future.
Aurora chewed the inside of her cheek, wanting desperately to tell them not to worry.
“You picked a good time to stop by,” Ward said with the cheer of a pony who thought he’d just won the lottery. “The Rangers are out hunting wildlife near the foothills. Won’t be back until they see the next caravan, which means the friends of your friend shouldn’t have to worry about being seen.”
Ginger nodded, though her thoughts were already shifting to their next step. They needed to get these ponies moving. “That is good news,” she said.
Ward grunted his agreement. “All those ghouls have them too spooked to send more than a single squad in at a time. Between the radiation and the Rangers shooting at everything that moves out there, there’s barely a critter out there to worry about. Chased ‘em all up to the mountains. Hell, you could tell the Enclave to land right now and the Rangers wouldn’t believe a word anyone said.”
“That’s really great,” Ginger said, her eyes on the western horizon. In a couple hours the sun would be up. They needed to hurry this along. “I tell you what. All I need now is for you to bring me something with your name on it so I don’t forget it. And if you could bring a key with you as well so we can get things moving, that would be even better. Can you do that for me, dear?”
“Consider it done, ma’am.” He was halfway toward the largest tent in the encampment when he spun around on his hooves and called, “Don’t go anywhere!”
Ginger waved back, muttering through her teeth. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The slavemaster disappeared behind the flap of his tent and the three of them deflated.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Aurora whispered.
“Careful,” Roach said, eyeing a pair of nearby guards. “Eyes and ears.”
The three of them waited as the short-shaven stallions were past.
“How are we getting them all out without actual backup?” Aurora asked. “If these rebar junkies get the idea to help, we’re in trouble.”
Ginger focused on the dirt, deep in thought. “We do what they expect. Take a portion of them back into Kiln in shifts, small enough that they don’t feel obligated to assist. If we’re lucky, the ghouls in town won’t object.”
“That’s a big if,” Roach warned.
“You saw how fast that bar cleared out when they saw me on stage,” Ginger said. “Radiation isn’t the only thing keeping these slavers out of town. I get the feeling if they try entering in numbers, they’ll encounter trouble with the locals.”
Aurora nodded agreement. “We should get these ponies on the same page.”
Ginger cast a look over to Ward’s tent. “Do it. I’ll wait here for Little Red.”
“Got it,” she said, then to Roach, “You take this row, I’ll take the other.”
They got to work, moving as naturally as they could to opposite corners and moving inward. Aurora took note of the ponies patrolling the catwalk, each armed with a variety of the same pipe-based weaponry. Two more pairs walked slow circles around the grounds, their eyes occasionally turning toward their three new visitors. If anything went wrong, it wouldn’t matter how ridiculous the things looked. At the end of the day, a bullet was still a bullet.
“Tsst,” she hissed, causing a trio of mares laying in the nearest cage to flinch. They opened their eyes and looked at her with as much trust as they might a lit stick of dynamite, barely even moving their heads. Aurora let her eyes wander the grounds as she whispered, “We’re friends. We’re going to get you out of her. Just act normal and follow our lead when the time comes.”
For a moment Aurora didn’t think they would acknowledge anything she said. Then, a willowy voice:
“Okay.”
Aurora blew out a quiet breath and moved to the next cage.
She repeated the same line, keeping it quick and to the point. We’re here to help. Stay calm. Wait your turn and don’t do anything to arouse suspicion. By the fourth cage she was reciting the lines on autopilot, eager to make her way to the tenth cage before the slavemaster emerged from his tent.
She also realized that the ponies in each cage had been sorted. Stallions in one, mares and foals in the other. When she reached the fifth cage, two mares and a foal lifted their heads when her hooves stopped outside their cage. One of the mares curled her hind knees up to protect the foal nestled against her ribs.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
One of the guards on the catwalk had stopped walking and was looking at her. Aurora froze, unsure whether to keep moving or to risk speaking.
On the other side of the cages, Roach abruptly cleared his throat. 
“What’s the head count so far?” he asked, loud enough for his voice to carry. 
His eyes flitted to the curious slaver watching them, then back to her with a look of impatience.
“Two mares and a colt in this one,” she said. “I’m almost finished here.”
The guard swayed on his hooves before turning and wandering off down the catwalk.
She bent her neck toward the cage and eyed the two mares and the young stallion in their care. “Keep him close. We’re here to help.”
Before they could respond, Aurora hurried to the next cage.
In the sixth cage, four stallions lay stacked atop one another, eyes open and watching her approach. Three of them looked like they hadn’t eaten in days. They were skeletal, but alive, and Aurora had the sickening feeling that was the point. Somehow she understood that every unnecessary calorie would cut into Ward’s bottom line. They had crossed a threshold between a salable product and scrap, and a slaver wouldn’t be interested in spending caps they wouldn’t get a return on to revert that process.
The fourth stallion in the back of the cage was smaller, almost small enough that she mistook him for a colt. He was filled out better than the other three, healthy-looking even, if it weren’t for the smears of blood and offal that marred his snow white coat.
She went through her lines, careful to ensure there were no wandering eyes from the wall, when a familiar voice croaked from inside the cage.
“Miss Pinfeathers?”
She stopped.
Risking a glance into the cage, she could see the white unicorn stallion had lifted his head and was staring back at her. His left eye was ringed purple and swollen shut, but the other glared at her, blue as a glacier. The little black tie he had worn around his neck hung at an angle, filthy and crushed beneath the iron collar he now wore.
The last time she saw him, he was fleeing the array while a deathclaw shredded through his employer’s security team.
“Quincy?” she whispered. “What happened to you?”
Autumn Song’s receptionist narrowed his good eye at her. A mixture of anger and embarrassment played across his face as the mare who singularly turned his world upside-down watched him through the bars.
“What do you think happened to me?” he snapped loudly enough that Aurora immediately regretted asking. She hushed him but he ignored her. “I got away from that massacre you brought down on our heads and the next thing I know these brainless mouthbreathers are dragging me off the road in this fucking bomb collar!”
Across the cages, Roach looked at her with wide eyes. “Shut him up,” he murmured.
Aurora glanced toward the wall. Several of the guards had stopped their patrols and were looking down at them with renewed curiosity.
“Listen,” she whispered harshly, “we can talk about that later. You need to put a lid on it so we can help you.”
Several of the ponies in surrounding cages hissed for him to be quiet, but their participation was turning the guards’ curiosity into suspicion.
“Help me?” he spat. “The same way you helped us two days ago when you lied to us, got dozens of our best employees slaughtered and tore down our first real chance of rebuilding this shithole of a planet?”
“Everything alright down there?” one of the guards called out.
“We’re fine!” Aurora called back, doing her best to smile her way through the growing urge to reach inside Quincy’s cage and strangle him.
“Like hell we’re fine!” he barked, pulling himself out from beneath his cagemates and stumbling across them toward the bars. “I hope you all know they’re planning to kill you!”
Aurora, Roach and Ginger froze. The few guards who had been ignoring the ruckus up until now weren’t anymore, their attention bending toward Quincy and Aurora like a river eroding through a weak bank. Horns began to glow, forming auras around a menagerie of homemade pistols and rifles. The few earth ponies among them subtly widened their stances, ready to move to cover in the event things took a turn for the worst.
And they did.
The flap to slavemaster’s tend flew open and Ward stepped out, a ring of keys dangling in his magic and a visibly irritated expression on his face. His eyes snapped to his now stationary guards, then to his cages, then to Aurora. His frown deepened. 
“What is this?” he stabbed a hoof toward Roach and Aurora. “Are you insane? What’re you stirring them up for?”
“It’s just a standard head count,” Ginger said, hoping to calm the situation. “One of them went into hysterics, we don’t know why.”
Ward stomped toward the cages and sighed when he saw Quincy practically standing on top of the emaciated stallions. “Goddesses… of course you started him up again.”
He slammed a hoof on top of the sheet metal ceiling, causing all of the ponies beneath it to jump. A foal near Roach startled awake with a whimper.
Quincy flinched, spinning on his heels to find the slavemaster’s sunken eyes bearing down on him.
“Shut your hole before I come in there and give you a reason!” he barked. Straightening, he cleared his throat and turned to Ginger. “Sorry about that, he’s a new capture. Been spouting garbage ever since he got himself collared.”
Ward bent back down and met Quincy’s eyes. “And if he keeps it up, I will not think twice about teaching him the value of a still tongue.”
“She’s lying to you,” Quincy stammered. “I know these mares. They’re the ones responsible for destroying the JetStream Solar Array a-and tearing down F&F Mercan-”
Ward slammed his hoof against the cages again. “I don’t recall asking you to speak.”
A light-coated stallion laying beneath him knocked his hoof against Quincy’s in the hopes of shutting him up. Quincy swatted it away, emboldened now that he had an audience. He turned and pointed a hoof at Aurora.
“That’s Aurora Pinfeathers,” he said. “She’s the dustwing that got dozens of good ponies killed. Whatever she’s claiming to be, she’s lying. The only reason she’s here is because you’re her next target.”
Ward narrowed his eyes at Quincy but this time he didn’t try to silence him. Then, his attention gradually shifted to Aurora. “He seems to know you. Should I be worried?”
Aurora could feel her heart in her throat. She swallowed, trying frantically to come up with an alibi.
“I can barely hit a target with this thing,” she chuckled, shrugging her wing beneath her rifle. “Killing dozens of ponies isn’t exactly in my skill set.”
In the corner of her vision, Roach closed his eyes with a wince. Behind Ward, Ginger took a slow, tense breath. 
She had not given a gold star answer and Ward was quick to key in on it. “And when exactly did the Enclave start sending untrained pegasi into the wasteland?”
“She’s not with the Enclave,” Quincy whined.
Aurora grit her teeth. Shut up shut up shut up.
“She’s that fucking Stable pony that got Cider killed,” he continued, coasting fearlessly on his own momentum.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” she said.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. Who do you think Miss Song paid to relay her brother’s reports? Me. That used to be my job, you travelling shitstorm.” He turned to face her, pressing his face between the rebar until the rust stained his cheeks. “Cider called in to say he met a Stable mare travelling with a bug on the road west of Junction City. All he wanted was to buy your Pip-Buck and you killed him for it.”
Aurora pinned her ears flat. “He tried to rape me.”
Quincy scoffed. “Welcome to the fucking-”
He was cut short by the force of Aurora’s hoof crashing into his snout. He stumbled backward with a gutteral yelp, tripping over the stallions beneath him and earning himself a rough shove into the fly-infested heap of offal in the corner of the cage. His mouth twisted with disgust as he pushed himself off the floor and turned back toward Ward, grinning at his new master.
Blood ran from his nostrils, staining his teeth an awful pink.
“I told you so,” he said with all the defiance he could muster. “They’re all frauds.”
With those three words, Aurora knew it was over. She looked to Roach and saw him eyeing the open gate they had entered through. Ginger’s horn had taken on a preemptive glow, her eyes scanning the guards above them.
Slavemaster Ward stared across the cages at Aurora, his eyes hard as glass.
“All three of you lay down on the ground,” he rumbled.
“Now.”







October 30th, 1075

	Fresh, autumn air warmed by the late morning sun flowed over her bed, pressed forward by a gentle tide that guided it throughout the rest of the cottage. Rainbow awoke slowly, squeezing every precious second she could out of the first real chance she had to sleep past her alarm in years. She stretched beneath the secure weight of Fluttershy’s goose down comforter, reaching as far as her legs would go until her muscles trembled.
Rolling onto her back with a satisfied sigh, she let her mind wander.
The Pillar and the ministries contained within seemed so pleasantly distant now. Waking up in Ponyville, listening to the sounds of its newest generation coming in on the breeze, it almost let her believe she was young again. That, somewhere out there in the world, an ancient evil or impending cataclysm was looming which only the Element of Harmony could seal away. That, at any moment, Twilight might burst through the door with the girls in tow, ready to embark on one of their old adventures.
She draped her foreleg over her eyes and smirked. Back then, she would have given anything if it meant never having to encounter another domination-hungry villain ever again. Now she missed it? A weary chuckle rose in her throat. Maybe Spitfire’s heartless little coup was a blessing in disguise. Maybe Luna was right.
She sank a little deeper into the plushly padded mattress. Maybe she did need a break.
The shrill clatter of bells downstairs decided otherwise.
“Come on…” she groaned.
The kitchen phone ignored her, ringing over and over again until finally Rainbow threw open the covers and trudged down the steps to silence it.
The stairs emptied out into Fluttershy’s living room where Gilda’s memorial had been held the night before. After Luna departed, Rainbow had spent the better part of the next couple hours helping her move furniture back and wash the intimidating stack of dishes left behind. She confided in Rainbow that she had invited the princesses less out of politeness and more to see if they would. 
In her mind, it was a way for her to face her worst fear that despite all of Rainbow’s assurances, she might still be under suspicion. Celestia and Luna not only arriving but staying long enough to make small talk had alleviated much of that dread.
Rainbow had stood next to her, drying off plates while the yellow pegasus washed, listening to her while she laid out her regrets for not having been more careful. Fluttershy wasn’t sure how she or Zecora would move forward with the Vhannan ambassador now that their only current diplomatic inroad had been ruined. Rainbow wasn’t sure how to help her there. Diplomacy wasn’t her strong suit any more than sprint flying was Fluttershy’s. All she could do was say what felt honest and hope it would be enough.
A neatly folded blanket rested in the corner of the divan where Fluttershy had insisted she sleep, offering her bed to Rainbow and allowing her no room to argue. That mare had come a long way from the days when she let ponies treat her like a doormat. Once she was set on something, a pony would have better odds at chopping a tree with a chicken egg than they would changing her mind.
She scrubbed her eye with the back of her wing as the phone continued to wail, probably Fluttershy calling from her office in Canterlot to remind her where to hide the spare key. Her hooves clicked over the kitchen tiles as she pulled herself up to the counter and scooped the receiver off the wall.
“Hello?” she grunted.
“Mornin’, sunshine!” an unexpected but familiar Apaloosan twang answered. Rainbow slouched over the counter, smiling at the sound of Applejack’s voice. “Fluttershy said you’d still be asleep. How’re you holdin’ up?”
“Better than yesterday, hopefully worse than tomorrow,” she said, tracing a feather over the line of little roses glazed around the edge of a nearby flour jar.
“That’s good,” Applejack said.
Rainbow nodded as if they were in the same room. A large part of her wished they were.
“I heard Luna gave you the day off,” she said, though the pause that followed suggested there was more coming. When Applejack spoke again, it was with some hesitance. “But I was sort of hoping I could bend your ear about something, anyhow. It’ll only take a minute.”
Rainbow flicked a dusting of flour off the rim of the jar in disappointment, hoping Applejack had called to talk about literally anything else but work.
“Sure,” she said, trying to sound more chipper than she felt. “Go ahead.”
Applejack sighed relief through the speaker. “You’re the best. Alright, you remember the pendant we took off Zecora when she n’ her filly got back from Vhanna?”
She nodded again, recalling with a little pride how slickly she’d lifted Teak’s talisman into the folds of her wing before Twilight could confiscate it as well. The only pony who spotted the innocuous theft was on the other side of the phone, and judging by the fact that Twilight hadn’t come to berate her for it, Applejack hadn’t told anyone.
“Pretty hard to forget,” she chuckled.
“Well, lucky for you these talismans appear to be exactly what the Ambassador Abyssian claimed them to be. And yes, I checked both. Zecora had half the mind to tan your hide after she caught Teak wearing hers around the house.” 
There was no heat behind her statement. Any residual fallout from that revelation had already settled without Rainbow knowing. Applejack had a knack for sussing out which problems were worth getting worked up over and which ones were better left to cool on their own. They may just be an earth pony and a pegasus, but it didn’t take much for the two of them to separately agree that the gifts brought back from Vhanna weren’t a threat.
“Now, as far as we can tell, my people in R&D don’t reckon these healing stones are magical at all,” she said. “They’re mostly howlite with traces of white quartz. Same thing the ponies up here dump around their flower beds to make them look pretty. There’s nothing magical about them.”
Rainbow rummaged through the cabinets for a glass. “But you’re not calling me to tell me they’re just rocks.”
Applejack paused. “No. To be honest, I already tried talking to Twilight about it but the minute I told her these stones are magically inert, she lost interest. Figure, heck, Rarity’s too busy telling the world what to think to stop to look at a couple rocks and Pinkie… well, you know.”
“Yeah.”
Another pause. “Anyway, I don’t mean to make it sound like you’re my last choice. I just thought with everything going on this week…”
“I know,” Rainbow said before she could finish. She found the glasses above the sink and pulled one down. “So what’d you find out?”
Something squeaked on Applejack’s end of the line. The chair in her office. Even the Ministry of Technology had to contend with made-to-break office furniture. “It’s hard to explain, if I’m being honest.”
Rainbow chuckled. “Uh huh.”
“Har har,” she said, the smile audible in her voice. “But seriously, Dash, it’s wild. You saw how these stones are carved, right? How finely cut they are? Well, we put the one Zecora had under the best microscopes we’ve got. Those carvings never stop. They just keep getting smaller and deeper no matter what magnification we put them under. It’s like staring into two funhouse mirrors facing each other. That rock gave half my staff vertigo.”
“Freaky,” Rainbow said, hoping she sounded like she understood in the least bit. “Last I heard, zebra manufacturing still lagged us by a few years.”
“More than a few,” Applejack said with a touch of pride. Her ministry ensured hundreds of Equestrian industries felt the continuous, unyielding pressure to advance, and that strategy began paying dividends at the start. “But I’ve already spoken with Zecora and she confirmed our suspicion that these weren’t manufactured, but formed with magic. The zebras can’t channel spells like our unicorns, but they’re no more disconnected from magic than you n’ me. Same way I know the right time to plant and harvest without going off some bunk almanac or you can walk around on clouds like they’re terra firma, zebras have this sort of… meditation, Zecora calls it, that lets a buncha them concentrate their thoughts into making these little stones.”
Rainbow turned off the tap and frowned out at the little bridge that spanned the brook outside Fluttershy’s cottage. “So, what, they’re telekinetic?”
“That’s the first thing I asked Zecora, but she says that’s not it at all. She says it can take days or weeks of unbroken meditation for zebras to make them. It’s kind of like they push magic through the stone and it eats away at it until the right impressions are left behind.”
“Like a river eroding its banks,” Rainbow supplied.
“Kind of? I’m not sure I understand it all, but Zecora says these talismans tend to be pretty weak. They’re good for curing a headache or giving a warrior a little extra courage, but nowadays even the zebras have a pill for everything.”
Rainbow swished a sip of water around her mouth to clear the worst of her morning breath. “Mmkay. What’s to stop them from making a stone that could get someone sick?”
“Nothing, I suppose, though I think it’d be a waste to spend that much energy making something that would only end up making a pony queasy.”
Fair point, she thought. Her brain was starting to wake up in earnest now, eager to puzzle its way through this new line of thinking. “So the magic makes the talisman, but the stone itself isn’t magical. I assume you know how it works?”
“We think so,” Applejack said. “Soon as the stone’s internal structure is done, it’s effectively ‘on.’ The same naturally-occurring magic that’s present all around us is drawn into the stone like a weak siphon, passes through the artificial internal structure and gets emitted with properties identical to a rudimentary spell - in this case, a healing spell. Some of the unicorns down here have fiddled with Zecora’s talisman while it was under sensors and confirmed it.”
“Huh,” she said. “So if you pump more magic through it…”
“Already tried it,” Applejack said. “Doesn’t work. The output stays constant and everything else gets turned into waste heat. Trixie came a dog’s hair away from melting the thing before someone stopped her.”
Rainbow got a chuckle out of that. Trixie had surprised everyone when she applied at the Ministry of Arcane Science, and surprised no one when her resume had been roundly rejected. She wanted to help, but that bridge with Twilight had been thoroughly burned so many years ago. She made the rounds at each ministry and eventually Applejack had taken pity and gave her an innocuous filing position within the Ministry of Technology. Over the last several years, she managed to climb her way out of the archives and into a position within Research and Development, lending her somewhat limited magical abilities to whatever project required it. 
They were all well into their forties by now, and yet Trixie had never grown out of the mindset that she had something to prove. Rainbow wondered how many times her unfortunate coworkers had to save her from her own well-meaning ambition.
She gulped down the rest of the glass and set it in the empty sink. “So when exactly did you have the ‘yeehaw moment’ that made you call me up?” She couldn’t help but grin a little as she listened to Applejack make a series of flustered noises.
“Dash, I do not have yeehaw moments,” she said, trying to talk over the trickle of laughter coming from the pegasus. “But hypothetically, if I did, it woulda been a couple days ago.”
Rainbow chuckled. “And?”
“Well,” Applejack said, “for starters, I’m pretty sure we can reverse engineer the process. It’s pretty clear whatever magic does when it carves these things, it follows a predictable pattern, kinda like your river analogy. If I build a dam here, what’ll the water do? Where’s it going to divert to? That sort of thing. I’m pretty sure all these little pockets and voids the zebras make are like that. They might not know how it works on an architectural level, but they don’t have the resources I do.”
Rainbow waited a moment, then she sighed. “AJ, you’re losing me here. We have spells an order of magnitude more powerful than zebra talismans. This sounds like you’re trying to invent the wagon when you could be driving a gas-powered carriage.”
She leaned over the sink to watch a line of geese tracing their way south across the cloudless sky, thankful that pony invention was a long way from the day when self propelled vehicles might clog Equestria’s skies. In spite of the dreams of so many younger minds, she preferred keeping that possibility firmly cemented in the realm of science fiction having already seen what gas carriages had done to Equestria’s rapidly expanding road network. Even Ponyville was getting in on the pave-craze, giving up its charming central dirt road in exchange for unforgiving concrete.
“That’s just it,” Applejack insisted, holding onto a thread whose importance Rainbow was struggling to follow. “With the right talisman, ponies like you and I could cast a spell too!”
Rainbow blinked. “What?”
She couldn’t tell if Applejack even heard her. “I mean, just think about the implications this could have. Imagine if the earth ponies and pegasi out fighting on the front were able to use a healing spell without calling for a unicorn medic just by wearing a talisman? What if they could deploy a shield spell under heavy fire, or install one on their weapon… heck, we could probably fabricate talisman bullets. Gimme a second, I gotta write that down.”
Rainbow had no choice but to wait as Applejack set the phone down to pick up a pencil and scribble her note. Fluttershy’s kitchen window had the added benefit of facing north, giving Rainbow enough of a view to spot the hazy shape of Canterlot Mountain far to the northeast. The waterfalls streaming over the vast platform of their capital city appeared like grey, translucent wraiths as the autumn wind spun their tails into a misty fog.
The line clattered as Applejack worked the phone back into the crook of her neck. “Still there?”
“Still here,” she confirmed, adding, “Still kind of lost, too, but this is interesting. How about I just come by the Pillar and you show me what you’re talking about?”
Applejack hesitated. “But it’s your day off. I didn’t call just to drag you back into work, sugarcube.”
Rainbow couldn’t help but smile a bit wider at the affectation. There was something about her way of talking that made her feel happy. Grounded, even. “It wouldn’t be work for me. Just give me a tour of what you know so far. I’m a visual learner, anyway, and this is tickling that part of my brain that my old Daring Do novels used to. Plus, if you make me wait until our schedules align, it’s going to drive me nuts. Have mercy on me.”
She could hear her mutter something through one of her low, hitching chuckles on the other end. “I guess I did this to myself. Fine, come on over and I’ll show you what we’re working on,” she said. “But if Luna finds out and decides to give me the business over interrupting your vacation, I’m blaming you.”







Julip awoke to muffled voices and the reeking stench of the mattress beneath her. She wrinkled her nose as her tired brain reminded her that she was undoubtedly sleeping atop fluids she would rather not imagine the origin of. Wasteland ponies were disgusting, there was no doubt about that, but this was a far cry from some of the places she’d been forced to crash.
Thanks to the ghoul downstairs, she’d missed her opportunity to intercept Aurora. Reintroducing herself after threatening to kill her more than once was going to be tricky enough without Ol’ Wrinkledick putting her marks in a foul mood. Why these ponies tolerated the living dead in such quantity, she would never know. Their cards had already been punched. Allowing them to continue shambling around, competing for the living for precious resources, it was an insult to the natural order of things. Even the immortal princesses succumbed to death in the end.
And yet somehow, ghouls fancied themselves above that.
Now that Aurora and her friends were awake, Julip considered getting up and knocking on the door. There wasn’t going to be a neat and tidy way to ingratiate herself to them and now was as good a time as any. If they said no, so be it. She was nothing if not persistent. Her job here was simple: protect Aurora and discover what happened to Stable 10. Minister Primrose mentioned nothing about making daisy chain tiaras with them. Just keep the pureblood alive and grab any info she had.
Her wings ached from the flight in, however, and laying down on anything - even a semi sentient bacteria colony like this mattress - felt good enough that her muscles resisted the idea of getting up. Her eyes slid shut.
She awoke again to the door behind her being thrust open.
“You think one of them might try to pull something?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
She fought the urge to flatten her ears in frustration as they filed past., but relieved that neither Aurora or the Dressage mare recognized her. Okay, maybe she cared a little about how she presented herself. She represented the interests of the Enclave, after all. Being nudged awake on a discarded pad might be setting her pride a bit too far out of reach.
She cracked an eye as they descended the stairs to the bar. Where were they going? Who might try to pull something?
Red flags sprang up in her mind.
She forced herself onto her hooves with a heaving yawn and gathered her things.







They led her north, past the edge of town, and made a bee-line for the slaver encampment.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
Julip watched them from the shadow of the destroyed school. The Dressage mare chatted first with one of the guards, then minutes later with a short stallion whose clothes and air of authority made it clear he was the slavemaster of the outpost.
Something wasn’t right. Ginger Dressage had cut her ties with the trade back when Julip was still a young filly. Why was she leading Aurora here, and why were they being allowed inside?
She wouldn’t get any answers with that wall blocking her view. Quietly, careful not to disturb what remained of the precarious structure, Julip slipped inside the old school building and climbed the slumped shape of the collapsed roof. It took her just high enough that she could see over the top of the barbed wire, giving her a clear view of the unicorns patrolling the wall and the cages inside. She loosened her SMG around her shoulder and lay prone where the dust-covered roof rose toward the remains of the second floor window frames, ticking the selector switch on her weapon to semi-automatic. 
With some luck, they would be in and out and Julip could feel like a moron on her own time for indulging her paranoia. She didn’t trust slavers. They were just as liable to grease your hoof with a few caps as they were to lock a collar around your neck and drag you off to nowhere places like this dump of a town to be bought and sold. They were a necessary evil, but then again, so were bear traps.
Ginger loitered at the cages, talking to the slavemaster about something that seemed to get his attention. Caps, probably. Was she buying? What did they need a slave for? Whatever the reason, the slavemaster looked excited as he trotted away toward one of the tents obscured from Julip’s view by the near wall.
As soon as he did, Aurora and the ghoul did something strange. With a suspicious level of coordination, they made their way down opposite corners of the cages, stopping at each one and seemingly interested in anything but the slaves inside. At a passing glance, it looked like they were killing time while the slavemaster was busy. Julip squinted, wishing her weapon had a scope, and could just make out movement on Aurora’s lips. She was talking to them.
Why talk to the slaves? And why wait until their master was gone to...
Julip’s face went slack with understanding. A pegasus, a ghoul and an ex-slaver walk into a camp.
They were trying to free them.
“Oh, fuck,” she hissed. “You fucking fuckers.”
Her heart kicked into high gear. She wasn’t equipped for whatever hogshit they were intent on rolling in. She counted seven - no, eight guards on the wall. Unicorns, mostly, but she did spot two earth ponies carrying pipe rifles with those ridiculous bite triggers installed. Four more ponies patrolled the grounds below in pairs, distracted enough with their own conversation to notice what was happening at the cages.
That left the slavers still asleep in their tents. By Julip’s count, at least half would be occupied, likely accounting for the encampment’s daytime security.Not that any of it mattered. If Julip was right and they were about to attempt some sort of breakout, they would be woefully outnumbered once that hornet’s nest felt the kick.
She was too far out in the sticks to call for backup and too poorly equipped to risk preemptively firing on the guards without taking a hailstorm of bullets in return. The best she could do was hope they didn’t fuck up and get themselves killed. If they did, and Julip had to return to Minister Primrose with that report in her wing, desk duty would be the least of her concerns.
And of course, Karma reared her ugly head to remind Julip that she wasn’t finished making her life a living hell.
Aurora Pinfeathers fucked up.
One of the slaves started giving her hell so loudly that Julip could hear his shrill voice across the gap. Almost immediately, the hive began to buzz. Patrols stopped and turned to see what was happening. Horns lit around the perimeter wall like little fireflies, bringing their rifles to a ready position as whatever plans the three of them had devolved. The slavemaster reappeared, yelling something she couldn’t understand but undoubtedly translated to some version of what the fuck are you doing?
More yelling, between the unseen slave and his master. Her master? The slave’s voice was pitched so high she couldn’t tell if it belonged to a mare or a recent gelding. The slavemaster went still, looked at Aurora and said something while stabbing his hoof at the dirt.
And then something strange happened.
Something that made Julip forget her weapon and stare.







This was bad.
This was really bad.
Ginger reminded herself to stay calm. She needed to think.
Goddesses it was hard to think.
Ward wanted them on the ground. Not an option. If they submitted, on went the collars and rings. She didn’t think they even made rings to fit a horn like Roach’s, what with a fissure running down it like split bark on a tree. They would kill him because it was the simpler route. Submission meant Roach would die and she and Aurora would be in worse shape than they had been at the array.
Shooting their way out wasn’t an option, either. Cheap and easy as pipe rifles were to make and maintain, they were about as accurate as a blind pony chucking rocks, but they made up for that problem with sheer volume. It didn’t matter what the bullet was fired from. All it took was one, and they had plenty.
She stared directly at Ward, meeting his dark little eyes. Hostage, maybe? Maybe not. Slavers in small camps like these were loyal to caps, not the leader who doled them out. They might just let her kill him and choose a new slavemaster once they had them in shackles. She could still feel the ring Trotter had put on her, like a bottleneck in her brain stopped up by a valve that was never designed to open.
Then a thought occurred to her.
Suppression rings.
Growing ever more impatient, Ward lit his horn and drew a silver pistol from beneath his vest. An expensive weapon. Nickel-plated for the sole purpose of making it shiny. Flashy or not, it wasn’t a showpiece. He leveled it at Ginger, held in a white shine of magic, and tipped the barrel once toward the dirt.
“The ground, Ms. Dressage,” he ordered. “All of you.”
“I hardly think that’s necessary,” she said. It surprised her how much her voice trembled. Slowly, her horn took on a bronze glow.
Ward’s eyes snapped to the light and tensed. “Put that out!”
She didn’t. She couldn’t afford to.
Slowly, she lifted a hoof and gestured it toward Roach behind her. The flap of his saddlebag shimmered. “Ward,” she said carefully, “I am still willing to pay you as a gesture of goodwill. I’m just getting our caps to show you. Is that alright?”
He narrowed his eyes at Roach’s bag. “Slowly.”
She took a breath to steady herself and risked a glance behind her. Aurora stood stock-still on the far side of the cages. When they met eyes, Ginger prayed she knew how important it was that she didn’t move. That the odds were impossibly against them, and any sudden movements could cause the unstable ground they stood on to liquefy beneath their hooves. 
Turning her attention to Roach’s bag, she gradually peeled the flap back. He didn’t move an inch, watching her for a signal even though she couldn’t risk sending one. Not yet.
Slowly, their caps snaked into the night air, ferried toward Ginger in faint bubbles of her magic. They clinked together one by one in a floating stack, close enough to Ward that if he wished, he could reach out and take them. She needed to put him at ease. Show him that despite their attempt to deceive him, this was an honest offering.
She needed him to believe just one more lie.
Her eyes grew distant as she tried to focus on many things at once. The slow parade of caps was doing its job. In the edge of her vision she could see the eyes of the nearest guards watching the procession, weapons ready should she attempt to do something unfortunate like include a frag grenade into the offering.
It occurred to her that they did, in fact, have a grenade. The one Gallow’s mother had failed to lob into the gap in her shield just a day before. Ginger could feel her magic touch its cold, deadly shape within Roach’s bag. She left it where it lay. Another time, perhaps.
She focused. It was all she could do just to keep the caps moving. She could feel a headache forming behind her eyes as she ushered a portion of her magic further back, beyond Roach, through the bars of the slave cages, seeking. Feeling for what she needed.
She found them. Tiny pockets of nothing that gently resisted the touch of her magic.
Removing them was simple. A firm grip and a twisting pull. She braced to hear someone shout but only silence followed. Good. Onto the next.
A cap tumbled out of her tenuous grip and clinked against the dirt. She frowned at it, unable to afford the extra effort to pick it back up.
Twist and pull.
And again.
“We’ll be here until sunrise at this rate,” Ward growled. He waggled his pistol at her, urging her to hurry along.
She winced. It was everything she could do just to concentrate in silence.
Twist and pull.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’ve never been good… with magic.”
Ward sighed and looked up to the nearest guard. “I can see that for myself.”
Twist and pull.
And again.
One of the captives gasped surprise and Ginger watched as Ward’s attention shifted toward the noise. 
No. Keep watching me, she thought. The muscles in her jaw twitched, her horn faltered, and the faint magic holding the caps aloft evaporated sending the parade of bottle caps jangling into the dirt.
Twist and pull.
“For fuck’s…” Ward muttered, staring down at the mess with disgust. “Just leave ‘em and get on the ground before I put you there. All this bullshit for what, fifty caps.”
And again.
Her options were running low. Another delay and he would notice. Her horn glowed a shade dimmer, dark enough that the swirling force around it was all but translucent in the glare of the stadium lights. With no other choice, she bent her knees and settled her stomach against the packed ground. Her heart was ready to beat its way through her chest even as she swept her payload skyward, hoping beyond hope that none of them slipped through and fell as she felt for each one until she had a rough count.
“Hey!” he barked, gesturing his weapon toward Roach and Aurora. “That means you too!”
She turned her head left, then right, counting the guards on the catwalk. Eight in total, six of them unicorns. There would be enough.
“You!” Ward said, gesturing to one of the pairs charged with patrolling the grounds. “Collars and rings, go get them. And hurry up.”
Ward didn’t know. None of them did. Ginger caught Roach’s eyes and stared at him. He watched her, blinked, and noticed the wispy haze still wrapping her horn. She could see his chest billow against the dirt, understanding that something was about to happen.
Through the bars, past the slaves with naked horns, Aurora had already noticed what was happening. Her eyes flitted skyward, toward the guards spaced along the circular catwalk, like a foal who knew which jar the cookies were in and couldn’t stop looking at it. Ginger could feel the headache coming in full force now.
Ward turned back to her, his gaudy pistol still trained on her. He narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”
He tapped the muzzle of his weapon against the tip of her still-glowing horn. “Douse it,” he said.
Ginger met his suspicious gaze with one of abject defiance. “With pleasure.”
Her horn went dark.
The magic holding six suppression rings above the horns of Ward’s wall guards released with perfect synchrony. 
Holding them aloft had been easy. Tracking the tips of each unicorn’s horn by feel alone had been the driving force of the pain behind her eyes. Each ring found its target, snuffing their magic like so many candles. Rifles clanged against the catwalk around them in a jarring cacophony. 
For the briefest instant, Ward looked up toward his guards in confusion.
It was enough. Ginger’s horn flared, gripping those six rings and ramming them down hard onto their bewildered new bearers’ horns. Cruel backward-facing teeth bit deep into the living bone causing several of them to cry out in pain.
Before Ward could react, her bronze magic swarmed around his red and wrenched his pistol around until it found its owner. She didn’t blink. She didn’t hesitate. She pulled the trigger and the muzzle belched fire. The slavemaster’s head snapped back as if it had been flicked by the hoof of a giant, his lifeless body crumpling sideways into the dirt.
“Roach, Aurora!” she hollered. “Earth ponies first!”
She didn’t wait for them to respond. Catapulting back to her hooves, she swept up Ward’s fallen pistol bolted away from his body in time for the ground behind her to erupt from a swarm of bullets. The two earth ponies still wielding rifles on the wall fought the powerful recoil of their weapons with the force of their teeth alone, trailing a poorly aimed hailstorm of lead on the heels of Ginger’s hooves.
Roach’s shotgun clapped thunder and one of the attackers screamed. Aurora’s rifle barked its own report, dropping the second. The unicorns around them bellowed profanity as some shrank back against the barb-wire ledge for cover while the rest pawed with frantic hooves at the unforgiving rings latched onto their horns.
“We’ve still got four on the dirt!” Roach yelled.
“More in the tents!” Aurora added.
Two unicorns on the ground, caught off-guard by the melee and finding themselves in the firing line of all three of their aggressors, bolted toward the tents for cover. Ginger tracked them behind the green dot of the pistol’s foresight and squeezed off four shots, dropping both just short of their goal. 
Gunfire erupted behind them from the break in the wall, sending geysers of dirt spitting into the air deadly close to where Roach ran. He had been making a bee-line for the slavemaster’s tent where the second pair of guards had been sent for collars. They were hiding inside, waiting for an opening.
Ginger grit her teeth as she split her magic a second time, forming a disc of magic beside Roach right as another volley peppered the dirt around him. She spat a curse as several rounds slapped against her shield, forcing her to drop Ward’s pistol just to keep the barrier intact. The guards at the entrance held their fire as he vanished between the tents and began to move forward to intercept him.
Roach skidded to a stop beside the dead slavemaster’s tent and pumped four rounds through the canvas. The slavers inside barely had time to scream as they were torn apart.
Back by the cages, Aurora’s rifle cracked twice. The two ponies who greeted them at the gate minutes earlier crumpled as each of her shots found their mark. With their advance on Roach cut short, Aurora ducked behind the cages and began fishing through her saddlebag for her spare magazine.
“How many left?” Aurora called out.
“Tents and catwalk!” Ginger yelled back.
Slug after slug fed into the well of Roach’s shotgun aided by the green glow of his magic. Now wasn’t the time to worry about extra rads. “I’ll take the tents,” he growled.
“We’ve got the catwalk,” she called back and snatched Ward’s pistol off the ground. The barrel panned as she darted toward Aurora, the commotion of the disarmed unicorns above keeping her nerves on high alert.
Aurora already had her rifle lifted, settling on a unicorn along the northern wall who was struggling to remove his suppression ring. Further down the catwalk, a portly stallion was half-tangled and bleeding in the barbed wire in an ill-gotten attempt to escape by throwing himself over the wall.
Her rifle pounded against her shoulder and the first slaver’s body bucked back into the wire.
Ginger leveled her pistol toward the south side and took aim. One by one they removed the last threats above while Roach ran from tent to tent, passing some and firing into others as bleary-eyed slavers scrambled out of them. Gunfire flickered against the encampment walls like a radstorm gone mad until, gradually, it stopped.
Ginger gulped down each breath, riding the crest of her adrenaline. A high, insistent ringing whined behind her ears as she surveyed what remained of the slaver camp.
Bodies littered the catwalk. More lay motionless in the dirt. Inside the cages, seventy-one ponies stared out at the carnage with expressions ranging from relief to horror. Foals bawled, overwhelmed by fear while their parents looked on, trying to digest the reality of what they had just witnessed.
Roach stumped another lap around the perimeter, his shotgun poised to neutralize any stragglers. Blood drizzled from the catwalk above his head. More stained the floors of the tents beneath them, widening pools that flowed into the deep hoof marks scraped into the hard soil.
Aurora blew out a cautious breath. “Did… is that it?”
“We’re clear,” Roach called from the gate.
Ginger whispered a sigh of relief and let Ward’s pistol drop to the ground. She looked down at her chest and grimaced at the thin spatter of the former slavemaster’s blood. Things hadn’t happened the way she planned. She tested out feeling guilty for what they just did, seeing if maybe it would stick, but it slid off her like oil on water.
In some immeasurable way, Equestria had gotten just a fraction better.
“I think we did,” she breathed. She turned her head skyward and exhaled. “Holy shit, Aurora, that was close.”
Behind her, Aurora’s rifle let out a quiet rattle. Ginger turned to see Aurora’s wings trembling hard.
“Hey,” she said, worried. “Are you okay?”
Aurora looked over her shoulder with a reassuring nod. “Yeah, I’m okay. Adrenaline always gives me the shakes.”
Ginger’s expression softened and she stepped toward Aurora, intent on pulling her into a crushing hug. Aurora’s smile widened and she turned to meet her halfway, her quivering wings opening toward her.
From the corner of her eye, Ginger saw something move. A glint of blue light. A bloodied rifle turning toward them in a weak fog of the surviving slaver’s magic. Her heart dropped.
There was no time to move. No time to shove Aurora out of the way.
She could see the trigger retract.
Instinct took over. Her horn bloomed with magic bidden by a simple yet impossible thought.
GO AWAY.
A translucent bubble of magic flickered around the slaver’s bleeding body and popped.
With a rush of displaced air, he was gone.
Ginger blinked confusion. She pulled Aurora away from where she stood, out of what had once been the stallion’s firing line. In the place where he had lay bleeding, a shallow yet perfect bowl of soil was missing. The blood that had pooled around him now reversed course, drawing muddy rivulets into the otherwise flawless crater.
Aurora stared, bewildered.
“Did…”
“I don’t know,” Ginger said.
Aurora looked at her, mouth agape, then back at the divot. “Did you blow him up?”
She sat down, suddenly dizzy. “No. I don’t know,” she repeated. “I think…”
Then they heard it. A noise, faint at first but approaching fast. A high scream.
A scream coming from above.
They looked up just in time to see the flailing form of the slaver dropping from the sky like a missile. His hooves pinwheeled in abject panic causing the straight path of his descent to bend. The three of them watched his body slam into the stadium lights at terminal velocity, rupturing the bulbs in a spray of sparks before finally impacting the ground beyond the wall with a meaty thud. The makeshift scaffolding holding up the lights buckled under the impact, and they stared on as it lurched sideways, followed the slaver’s corpse the rest of the way to the ground with a metallic crunch.
Roach’s bewildered voice called from the gate. “What the hell was that?”
Ginger’s mouth tried and failed to form an answer. She looked up at the dark expanse of clouds that churned overhead, unsure whether to trust the words when they finally tumbled over her lip.
“I think I teleported him.”







The lone stallion standing beside Rainbow dutifully avoided eye contact as he waited for his ministry’s floor, which was an easy guess if she went by the trio of blue diamonds sewn into his lapel. Thus far, Rarity was alone in her efforts to coordinate ministry staffers’ dress code. For the rest of them, the sharp little suits she forced on her team felt a little too on the nose for comfort.
Their elevator had only just gotten up to speed before it slowed, chiming to a halt on the second floor. The stallion politely maintained his position of staring at the floor number mounted above the doors as if the two digits were the most entertaining thing in the world. Rainbow didn’t think she would ever understand this strangely popular elevator etiquette, but it was undeniably contagious. She stepped out into the Ministry of Technology’s front lobby without disrupting the strange pony’s studies.
Her hooves padded across what at first glance appeared to be polished wood flooring, stained to resemble well-worn cherry planks. A few steps across the strangely pliable surface reminded Rainbow it was just a vinyl substitute. She had to remind herself to pick up her hooves slightly more than she was used to, knowing from past experience that vinyl tended to grab at her hooftips and send her sprawling rather than allow them to slip forward like genuine wood.
The lobby was sparsely decorated, notably compact and heavily monitored. In other words, it was secure. Rainbow glanced up at each of the softball-sized black hemispheres positioned at either far corner of the lobby. They stuck out like a sore hoof against the soft, meadow-gold paint surrounding them. A single, black couch sat along the wall to her right, flanked by a pair of healthy ferns. To her left, a small table displayed a dozen or so different pamphlets containing easy-to-digest anecdotes about Applejack’s ministry. Above it hung a wide-set painting of Applejack’s family farm, her iconic purple-shingled barn surrounded by a sea of apple trees. 
Rainbow regarded the lobby’s single piece of artwork with a pang of nostalgia, but nothing compared to what Applejack must feel whenever she walked by. The war required all ponies to make sacrifices, most of all by those tasked with prosecuting it. While the birth of the ministries had meant the end of the Apple Family farm on paper only, being listed on the Ponyville ledgers as a community historical site that had since been kept up by trusted members of its community, the loss of that responsibility had taken Applejack years to adjust to. Rainbow knew she stepped into each day with the belief that the forfeiture was temporary and, after the war ended, she and her siblings would return to pick up where they left off.
She approached the far side of the lobby, toward a recessed kiosk that stood adjacent to a pair of grey, magnetically sealed security doors. A single mare sat behind the kiosk’s bulletproof glass, her brow arched above a pair of familiar blue eyes that softened in recognition. The sight of the merigold mare, now well into her sixties, still managed to jangle Rainbow’s nerves a little.
“Good morning, Minister Dash,” Ms. Harshwhinny greeted, her voice tinny through the speaker mounted into the narrow sill beneath her window.
“Morning, Ms. H,” she said, tipping her nose toward the nearest camera. “All clear?”
Ms. Harshwhinny smiled down at her terminal, a hoof held in the air as she waited for the system to determine whether to allow her through or to lock down until a security team could be sent to detain and eliminate her.
Rainbow could almost feel the sensors bouncing their array of invisible light off her body. Pillar security was daunting the first few times around, but at this point Rainbow hardly paid it any attention. Still, there was always that one corner of her brain she couldn’t shut up. The part that wondered what would happen if a glitch somehow caused Harshwhinny’s terminal to spit out the wrong conclusion. It had never happened before, and there were more than a few different tests in place to verify the first result, but on some level Rainbow would always be a worrier.
 Harshwhinny’s smile touched her eyes at the flicker of her terminal. “I’m happy to inform you that you are not a changeling,” she chuckled, and pressed a key on her terminal. The security doors emitted an electric buzz and the magnetic locks deactivated with a heavy click. “You can head inside, minister.”
Rainbow nodded back as she made her way to the doors, still unsure what to make of this version of Harshwhinny that had mellowed so much with age. She suspected Applejack hadn’t put her in that kiosk just to be a smiling face, and she definitely did not want to be nearby if that terminal had less friendly news to report.
The doors clicked shut behind her on whisper quiet hinges. The wood vinyl gave way to a road of plain, cream linoleum tile, directing her through an innocuous hallway that led her past a series of closed office doors and potted ferns. Rainbow stopped outside Applejack’s door, holding down the intercom buzzer in the wall and waiting for a response. Unsurprisingly, none came. Applejack had been the most vocal against the cookie-cutter design of their offices, but had lost out in the name of keeping the Pillar’s construction as streamlined as possible. She hated being cooped up.
A cream-coated earth pony Rainbow vaguely recognized from one of Rarity’s first boutiques came to her rescue, directing her around the corner into a hallway that led her to the Ministry of Technology’s R&D wing.
The doors here were adorned with simple, black keycard slots. Heightened security for more sensitive information. The narrow placards fixed to the wall above each slot assigned each room a lab number, offering little information to the average looky-loo to what might be going on inside. Rainbow wondered whether the keycard she kept locked in her desk might work on these. Most likely it would, though she doubted anyone inside would appreciate the intrusion.
The corridor came to a dead end outside another security door, this one manned by a single camera positioned in the center of the ceiling directly above it. No keycard, no pleasant face. Just a lone mechanical eye that controlled the lock. The placard next to the door read PROTOTYPE GALLERY.
An uncanny voice spoke through a speaker in the ceiling. “I’m sorry, the Gallery is currently restricted during testing. Please try again--”
Rainbow rolled her neck, ignoring Millie’s standard greeting. “Millie, please verify credentials and override.”
A pause, then a heavy clunk as the maglocks released. “Confirmed. Welcome, Minister.”
She pushed through while trying not to think too hard about Robronco’s creepy new artificial intelligence. As much as she respected Applebloom for turning her little startup into a titan of Equestrian industry seemingly overnight, the technologies her company continued to invent had begun to develop an almost invasive quality to them. 
“Millie,” the user-friendly name assigned to an otherwise less comforting Robronco Personal Assistance and Intelligence Network, or “R-PAIN,” had been retrofitted throughout the Pillar under the assurance that all aspects of its functionality was airtight. It would still be a few years until Millie found her way into the civilian market. Until then, she was another annoyance exclusive to the ministries.
	The doors thumped shut behind her, leaving her to stand alone in a cramped airlock beneath a trio of decontamination arches. She closed her eyes to keep her claustrophobia from hitting too hard. Worse than anything, she hated this. The arches sputtered and began dousing her with a measured combination of sterilized water and purified air. She lifted each wing, exposing their undersides to the deluge to hurry the process along. When the sensors chimed and the forward door slid open, she all but galloped through it.
She trotted through the large locker room situated beyond the showers, drawing a few notable stares from ponies in the process of donning ministry-branded jumpsuits in preparation for their shifts. Rainbow kept her eyes forward, knowing how ridiculous she must look now that she’d effectively stepped out of the world’s least enjoyable wash-dry cycle. Her tousled mane would smooth out, she told herself, and followed the rows of lockers and pushed through the far door that led out to the gallery floor.
The Prototype Gallery opened around her so pristine and white that it felt like she was stepping into another world. The damp flats of her hooves squeaked over bright, nonporous tile that lent itself well to the rigorous cleaning it was expected to endure. The gallery was far from sterile, but Applejack had made it clear from the beginning that everything her ministry put into the field needed to be reliable. That meant identifying line drips, venting gasses and chowdered flakes of metal early. The glare of a ceiling packed with fluorescents made sure everything was under a literal spotlight.
The gallery stretched. Two thick painted yellow lines ran parallel down its length, starting on either side of Rainbow’s hooves and ending at a single, thick rolling door. A bright orange forklift sat parked next to the garage door, its forks set into a pallet strapped tight with stacked plastic totes. The right side of the walkway had been repurposed since Rainbow last visited. Rather than hosting rack after rack of weapons in every shape and configuration she could fathom, the space now served as a parking lot for dozens of bright red engine hoists. Their stumpy frames held aloft webworks of eerily pony-shaped steel by hook points at what amounted to their shoulders and flanks. Rolling benches stacked with heavy, curved plates from which bindles of wire curled out from waited at the ready nearby.
Before she could wonder what the strange machines were, her question was answered when she turned to her left.
Along the wall’s length hung a narrow paper stripe printed white and black at even intervals. Rainbow recognized the measuring lines right away, having flown along them more than enough times back at the Wonderbolt Academy as they struggled to accept she was flying as fast as their radar reported. Sure enough, she spotted one pony in the process of packing up some expensive filming equipment while a second pushed a roll cart along the walkway toward Rainbow, one hoof pressed over the top of a dark terminal as he guided the equipment back the way she came. The stallion offered her a respectful nod as they made way for one another. The mare lugging the camera equipment lurched after him without so much as noticing her.
The track itself was little more than a series of black rubber mats lined end to end. Deep, hoof-shaped impressions led Rainbow to the far side of the track where a familiar orange mare glowered at the mechanical pony that left them. Applejack seemed less than impressed with the machine now that a pool of hydraulic fluid was sputtering from a joint in its shoulder.
Rainbow gawked at the thing as she trotted over. “You never said we were building robots.”
A trickle of sweat ran around the curve of Applejack’s muzzle as she cast a look over her shoulder that could melt steel. Her irritation quickly faded in recognition. “I ain’t,” she sighed, and turned back to the pony-shaped carapace. Rainbow noticed the handle of a wrench sticking out between two pieces of heavy plate. “This bucket of bolts has a genuine idiot inside.”
A muffled voice complained from inside the strange headpiece. “Hey!”
Rainbow chuckled as she came alongside Applejack at the front of the machine. There was only one stallion she knew with a voice as slow and low as that. “Big Mac? Are you… inside that thing?”
“Not by choice,” he muttered.
She lifted a hoof and gave the shell’s “nose” a firm thump. It may as well have been a solid statue for how little it moved. Beside her, Applejack positioned her hooves around the wrench and shoved the handle up until it bit into her shoulder. For a moment she stood there on her hind legs, sweat beading down her back while toned muscles rippled with effort. It was something to behold.
The wrench slid upward an entire inch before binding up again. Applejack slumped back to the floor, breathing hard, and glared up at the suit’s opaque black visor. “Are you sure it’s not responding?”
“I told you, everything’s baked in here,” Big Mac said with a hint of defensiveness. A steady clicking came from inside the foreleg next to Rainbow. “The eject switch is shot too.”
Rainbow leaned over to peek through the gap that Applejack had fed the wrench through. Hydraulic fluid dripped from a line that looked like it had snapped free of some kind of port, and the bolt the earth pony had been trying to turn looked like it had been stolen off a tractor. Letters that spelled RELEASE followed a curving arrow above the bolt.
“What happened?” she asked.
Applejack wrapped her forelegs around the wrench and jiggled it loose. The heavy end clunked against the immobilized suit. “He grew,” she growled. “And he’s being awfully cagey on how exactly that happened.”
Rainbow looked up at the suit’s visor, but it’s abashed occupant remained silent. “Okay. Anything I can do to help?”
“You could help me beat my brother’s ass once I get him outta this tin can,” she chuckled as she reseated the wrench. When she dropped to all fours again, the tip of the wrench hung a good two feet above her shoulders. “Should be loose enough. Big Mac, I need you to stay still for this.”
“Ain’t much else to do in here,” he answered.
“You’ll want to stand back, sugar,” she said, shooing Rainbow away from the front of the suit.
She backed away and watched while Applejack pivoted, lining her hips up with the exposed length of wrench and bent her front half low. Like a spring coiled too tight, she snapped her rear hooves out hard into the underside of the handle. The bolt emitted a brief, sharp squeak as the tool ratcheted backward with enough force that it left a bright silver scar on the suit’s shoulder plate.
The suit didn’t move, but Applejack seemed heartened as she spun around and retrieved her tool. After seating it again on the release bolt, it turned with hardly any effort at all. After a few rotations, something beneath the metal skin emitted a hiss-clunk and the suit split along a seam down its spine like a cracked walnut.
Applejack dropped the wrench onto the tile and kicked it away. “That should do it, Big Mac. Try now.”
He didn’t need to be told. The two halves that sealed the suit’s backbone slid open to allow a notably… larger Big Mac to back out of the complex webwork of wires and steel struts that comprised the suit’s inner framework, which seemed determined to make his exit as graceless as possible. The exoskeleton’s inner padding gripped his right foreleg tightly enough that he had to jerk himself free.
“You’re soaked,” Applejack complained before peering into the suit and making a face. “And so is my power armor.”
“Got hot in there,” Big Mac agreed. His hay-colored mane clung to his neck like a wet scarf.
Applejack stared up at her brother and shook her head. “Something tells me that has less to do with the batteries burning out and more with your growth spurt.”
Big Mac pressed his lips together and shrugged.
Something passed between the two that Rainbow couldn’t quite translate. Siblings seemed to have that effect. That indecipherable trust that some of them held in the other, even when they knew there was something being kept from them. 
Applejack finally sighed and shook her head in defeat. “Fine, I’ll stop prying. Go cool down and get some water in you. I’ll have someone from Manufacturing come up and take a look at that armor.”
“See you, Bigger Mac,” Rainbow added.
That earned an embarrassed grin from the stallion. “Good to see you too,” he said, then to Applejack, “I’ll let you know when this wears off.”
She lifted an eyebrow at him as he turned to leave. “You’d better.”
Big Mac plodded away, at least two inches taller than Rainbow remembered him. Standing inside that suit must have felt like having steel vacuum-sealed to his skin. The thought of being trapped inside that thing chilled the back of her neck.
Applejack shook her head as she watched him disappear into the staff locker room. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I thought I’d be able to squeeze this test in before you arrived. Didn’t think I’d end up having to pry him out at the end.”
Rainbow smiled a little as Applejack flicked her tail against the behemoth suit’s chest. She looked up at the darkened visor, then down at the intricate series of armored plates that clung to the suit’s exoskeleton. “Just glad you still have some buck in those legs,” she said, tipping her chin to the suit. “This thing looks like it could uproot a tree by leaning on it. I thought you were focusing on weapons systems this quarter.”
“Believe it or not, that’s what we’re tryin’ to do with this monster,” she said. She gestured to the dangling pieces of armor on the other side of the gallery. “But right now we’re still trying to work out the kinks with the power armor itself before we start adding weapon platforms. Folks down in Manufacturing are looking into a way to lighten the armor plates to give us more runtime, but the major flaw we have to patch right now is the power source. Robronco’s got some of the best made batteries in the industry, but they’re not designed to keep something like this movin’ for more than a few minutes.”
Rainbow traced the lines of the steel shell with her eyes, wondering where Applejack had even managed to store those cells. “For what it’s worth, AJ, it’s still pretty impressive.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Applejack’s lip. She looked up at the suit and sighed. “Forty-four prototypes ain’t nothing to sneeze at. Here’s hoping the P-45 turns out something we can field test.” She shook her head. “Either way, you’re here for talismans, not tin ponies. How about I show you what I was doing an awful job explaining over the phone?”
Rainbow held out a wing in a lead the way gesture and followed the mare out of the gallery.
A separate elevator at the periphery of the ministry descended far enough down its shaft that a frown began to settle on Rainbow’s muzzle. She looked at Applejack for an explanation and her friend offered a sheepish smile in return.
“We needed extra space for manufacturing,” she said simply.
Rainbow’s knees bent slightly as the elevator’s brakes engaged, slowing them to a stop. “How far down are we?”
The doors slid open to a polished concrete floor. Rainbow blinked confusion at the stark, steel panels that lined the corridor.
“A fair bit,” Applejack said, guiding her into the corridor. “Deep enough for us to link up with the train yard a ways down Canterlot Mountain, though the connecting tunnel’s still something of a climb. Celestia didn’t like the idea of shipping freight through the middle of the capitol, so this was the compromise Scootaloo conjured up.”
Rainbow hadn’t known that. At least, not completely. She’d known that the Ministry of Technology was self-contained, handling its own design, manufacturing and prototype testing within the Pillar in order to keep unwanted eyes away from the advancements they were making. She had just assumed that meant all three of those steps took place within the cylindrical walls of the Pillar itself. All of that was somewhere above her head. Now they were walking somewhere deep in the heart of Canterlot Mountain.
Sure enough, the corridor bore the unmistakable hallmarks of Scootaloo’s early Shelter Project designs. Bare steel walls joined by exposed girders every several meters, a webwork of plumbing and cables that ran the length of the slightly arched ceiling, even the bulky gasket-sealed doors that had featured prominently in Scootaloo’s initial presentation ahead of her request for funding. It was a little more bare bones than the updated schematics that she sold Rainbow on, but Scootaloo had definitely used this extension as a proving ground for her early designs.
“Applebloom really appreciates what you’re doing for her, by the way,” she said, making room for a grease-stained stallion lugging a pair of saddlebags that clanked as he walked.
Rainbow stared after him for a moment before nodding acknowledgement. “Scoot’s always been an ambitious kid. Applebloom, too.”
Applejack nodded, leading her into a wider intersecting corridor. 
They passed a stubby hoof jack parked flush with the wall. Its tines rested beneath a pallet stacked high with long wooden crates bearing black, stenciled letters describing weapon models Rainbow didn’t recognize. As they walked by, a winged mare carrying a clipboard stepped into the corridor ahead of them with a pen held between her lips. Her eyes widened for a moment as they approached, focused entirely on Rainbow. To her credit, she didn’t try to stop them or barrage Rainbow like some of her younger fans tended to.
Rainbow glanced at the illuminated sign above the door the pegasus stood in and was surprised to discover the room beyond was a test firing range. The ministry hadn’t wasted a single bit.
She led her past a long row of windows that peered into a wide, open air room that the sign above its central door simply called “Mechanical.” Ponies crouched over workbenches or huddled around machines taller than two of them stacked atop one another, none of which Rainbow had the first clue what they did. There were nearly as many rolling whiteboards scattered throughout the work stations as there were ponies to write on them. Minds that bent themselves to the goal of building the disparate inventions that would win the war.
“Y’all ever here from Sweetie Belle?”
Rainbow blinked, the abrupt question jarring from her reverie. The Mechanical wing drifted behind them, and Applejack guided her to a steel door resting below a lit sign in the style of all the other lit signs down here. It simply read FABRICATION L1.
“Last I heard, she was still in Ponyville,” Rainbow said.
Applejack made a face and punched the button to open the door. “One of these days I gotta convince Applebloom to forgive her.”
“Maybe,” Rainbow said, watching the heavy door slide into the ceiling. “I wouldn’t push too hard. Kick a tree enough times and it’ll stop bearing fruit.”
Applejack shouldered her as they stepped over the threshold. “I should introduce you to someone I know. She used to own a whole orchard and everything.”
“Har har,” she grinned and followed her inside. “So this is it, huh?”
Her question was rhetorical. After stepping inside, there was no mistaking the room for what it was.
The sign in the corridor helped, too.
The room was surprisingly compact for what Rainbow had been expecting. Barely half the size of the prototype gallery, the Fabrication room made use of every square inch it had been given. Ponies sat or stood around five rows of laboratory grade desks, plugging away on terminals while their colleagues offered notes or argued some arbitrary point of data.
As the door slid shut behind them, Rainbow watched a member of the fabrication team pluck a holotape out of his terminal and head further back into the lab with it gently pinched between his teeth. At the rear of the lab, six hulking white machines loomed between two trios of black server racks. Rainbow knew what the servers were - they were everywhere in the ministries these days - but the sleek, ivory cubes pinned between them were utterly foreign to her.
She watched the stallion bring the holotape to one of the cages and press the cartridge into a terminal mounted inside. Applejack led her past the forward workstations back to the six strange machines. The cube nearest the stallion emitted a cheerful chime as unseen parts within began to move. As they approached, a low hum began to roll out of its chassis, a noise that Rainbow felt in her chest better than she could hear. The stallion squinted at the terminal one last time before turning to the front of the machine where a square seam interrupted its otherwise featureless casing.
He spotted the two mares headed toward him and visibly straightened. “Ministers,” he chirped.
Applejack offered a disarming smile in return. “Don’t let us bother you, I’m just giving the tour.” She paused a moment and looked around at the various ponies working the lab. “Actually, can I ask you to see if your team can’t save your work and clear the terminal for a few minutes? It’d be easier if I had some visuals.”
The stallion fidgeted for a moment as if he were on the edge of telling her no, but thought better of it. He glanced at the humming cube next to him, pursed his lips and nodded quickly. “We can move over to Lab Two, sure. I’ll let them know.”
Applejack smiled as he trotted back through the tables to his team. “Five bits says one of ‘em gives me the stink-eye.”
Rainbow glanced at her and she winked back, nodding toward the four ponies the stallion was speaking to. Sure enough, a red-maned mare mouthed something that was probably best left unheard and shot a withering glare over her shoulder.
“Told ya,” she chuckled.
Rainbow clenched her teeth to keep a straight face as the team began feeding holotapes into their terminal and gathering up their paperwork. “We never shook on that.”
“I’ll get you one of these days,” Applejack whispered, turning briefly to the white machines behind them. She thumped her hoof against the chassis of the nearest one. “Now, the first step of the tour starts with these. They’re called fabricators and, get this, they do most of the fabricating.”
Rainbow pressed her tongue into her cheek and cocked an eyebrow. “Wow.”
“I never said it would be complicated,” she said with a smirk. “These puppies are basically glorified printers. Raw materials are fed in through lines in the back room and the techs here give them the instructions on what to spit out the front.”
She stepped over to the machine that was busily humming. A fan clicked on inside the ceiling vent above it, siphoning away the faintly acrid fumes that the fabricator gave off as it worked. There was a lot more going on inside that machine than Applejack was letting on, and that was perfectly fine as far as Rainbow was concerned. “What’s this one making?”
Applejack glanced at the terminal the stallion had inserted the holotape into. “Prototype fabric of some kind. Some kind of polymer threaded around a modified ceramic core.” She looked over to the group of techs headed out into the corridor, minus the stallion who was headed back to wait for the machine to finish.
“Body armor?” she asked, gesturing to the fabricator.
He nodded sheepishly. “Yes ma’am.”
“Send me the ballistic results when you’ve tested it,” she said, and clapped him on the back as she led Rainbow to the empty workstation. “Keep it up.”
The tech stared back at her, his eyes wide. “Y-yes ma’am!”
They left him to his work before he had a chance to start gushing. Applejack pulled a chair up to the terminal and carefully used the tip of her hoof to enter her credentials. Rainbow peeked over her shoulder as a list of schematics populated the screen.
She ticked down to a file titled TALISMANPRIME.SCH and tapped a key. The screen went momentarily dark before the walnut shape of Zecora’s healing talisman filled the screen. “Now, you’ve already seen this,” she said as she chicken-pecked the keyboard. “What we’re interested in are the internal structures.”
Applejack tapped a key and the terminal began to chatter like mad. Line by green line, an image began to load of something that resembled an ant colony but on a scale of complexity that made the little terminal’s fans kick in. 
Rainbow squinted at the impossibly alien curves, tunnels and branches that filled the monitor. “Woah.”
“Just wait.” She keyed the zoom feature and the image stuttered briefly before grinding through an even more detailed rendering of the seemingly random system of voids that filled the stone’s interior. “See what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow breathed. “How deep does it go?”
Applejack leaned back in her chair. “We’re seeing structures finer than peach fuzz,” she said. “The geeks upstairs are calling it a product of magical sculpting in the same sense that a stream erodes a canyon. Only with these talismans, it’s done with intent.”
Rainbow stared at the strange structures on the screen. “And here we thought zebras were magicless.”
Applejack shrugged. “Ain’t no shame in being wrong. What matters is what we do now that we know better.” She straightened in her seat and reopened the list of schematics. Just a few lines below the model of Zecora’s talisman was a long list of numbered files all bearing the same TALISMAP prefix. She opened one at random and, more quickly this time, the monitor began to draw a thin, tubular spiral down the center of the screen. Its length was studded with inward-facing hooks that appeared to be designed to interrupt the flow of the magic passing through it. “After scanning the talisman given to Zecora’s daughter and comparing them, we were able to identify some identical structures like this one found in both.”
“Which means you could build a blueprint for how they work,” Rainbow added, not quite able to hide the excitement pulling at her cheeks. Then she paused for a moment as she snagged on something Applejack said. “Wait, only some of the structures match?”
She nodded. “Less than half. We think it’s a combination of using a subpar medium for the talisman and inconsistencies in the way they’re created. The end result is the same, but chances are all this excess chowder in the design is part of the reason why both stones are so weak.”
Rainbow gestured to the image on the screen, drawing a feather down the irregular spiral. “But if you can figure out what these things are doing and refine them while getting rid of all the background noise, you could make a more potent healing stone?”
“Exactly,” she said. “And not just healing stones. If we deciphered this thing’s alphabet today, we could start printing custom talismans tomorrow. I mean, just think about how this could change Equestrian medicine or the field hospitals out on the front. We don’t know the limits to what magic like this could cure.”
It all seemed a little far-fetched to Rainbow, but she couldn’t deny the prospect of a painless future was an attractive one. Broken leg? Here’s a talisman. Bad heart? Here’s a talisman. The idea seemed like something out of one of her old adventure novels. Another mcguffin that, in the right hooves, could save the world.
She picked up a pen left behind on the desk and idly gave it a spin between her feathers. Before it had a chance to slow, she gave it another flick and watched as it gyrated along the black surface. “So, in theory, a talisman with the right design could cast any spell a unicorn can.”
“In theory, sure, but the first step is learning this new alphabet.” She tapped the screen with her hooftip. “This is just one letter, and right now we don’t even know if it’s drawn right. Once we’re sure, we can start learning how to spell words and stringing them into sentences. But when we do… I mean, Dash, this is going to be big. This is the kinda thing that draws the line between eras.”
Assuming Equestria held out long enough to reach it, Rainbow silently added. With Spitfire hijacking her ministry, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her wings were no longer on the wheel and the only option available to her was to sit back and wait to see where the war took them.
Listening to the Barrel twins revel in their victory, unaware they had executed Rainbow’s oldest friend, had been paralyzing. The option of feeding Vhanna the research they needed to advance their solar energy program and step away from the war was no longer on the table. In place of it was Rainbow Dash’s neck, and Spitfire had ensured she would be the pony to stand above her holding the axe.
What terrified Rainbow the most was that she didn’t know what Spitfire would tolerate before she finally decided to swing. Suddenly, her natural bravado felt like a liability. That one wrong word might be the end. On some level she knew Spitfire wouldn’t be operating on a hair trigger. She wanted the Ministry of Awesome and the more time Rainbow had to think about it, the more it became evident that Spitfire had been positioning herself to better influence the course it took from the beginning.
She needed to be careful. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Spitfire had allies helping her in the ministry willing to tail her in the middle of the night and kill without hesitation. She wondered how long it would be until Spitfire had someone reading the messages on her terminal. When would she come knocking on her office door asking about the messages she and Jet Stream had shared, demanding to know what SOLUS was. She had been sure to keep those communications intentionally vague, back when her primary concerns were the prying eyes in Rarity’s ministry.
It occurred to her that it might be wise to send Jet a letter warning him about Spitfire.
An orange hoof flitted past her muzzle, startling her back to reality. “Equestria to Dash,” Applejack said. “Anyone home?”
Rainbow blinked embarrassment. “Sure, yeah,” she rattled, then forced herself to slow down and start over. “I mean, yeah. I’m here. Sorry.”
She studied her for a moment before her scrutinizing expression softened to something closer to understanding. Applejack leaned toward the terminal and logged off. “It’s a little crowded in here,” she said. “How about we head topside for a bit? Get some fresh air?”
“Don’t you…” Rainbow said, but the meager protest fell apart as soon as she began to speak it.
Applejack glanced at her, that coy smile of hers pulling at her lip. She made no move to rush her decision, and Rainbow started to realize it was entirely hers to make. A part of her still wanted to finish her question and ask Applejack if she had work to do, to give her the option to back out despite being the one making the offer. The terminal ticked and the screen went dark.
When was the last time the two of them had spent time alone together that didn’t involve work? A year ago? More? Rainbow distantly recalled them sharing a meal back at Sweet Apple Acres. Back when she still thought the two of them might have a shot together. Before the ministries.
Before all of this.
Rainbow looked at her. What the hell, she thought.
“Yeah. That’d be nice,” she said.
Applejack dropped out of the chair, her hooves clicking on the concrete, and tipped her head toward the door. Rainbow followed her into the comparatively quiet corridor, already feeling the next words tumbling across her tongue before she could think better of them.
“Do you think we could grab some lunch?” She swallowed and added, “Somewhere quiet where we could just talk. Make up for lost time.”
Applejack chuckled. “Careful, sugarcube. That sounds an awful lot like a date.”
As they approached the elevator, Rainbow mustered just enough courage to shrug. “Would… that be so bad?”
She paused a moment before tapping the call button. “I guess I was under the impression you were too busy.”
“We all are. I just think…”
The elevator arrived with its cheerful chime. The doors split open but neither of them stepped forward. Applejack waited for her with a sympathetic smile.
“I’d like to try.”
Applejack nodded slowly before smiling a little more broadly. “Alright then.”
Rainbow’s wings spread with excitement as Applejack stepped onto the elevator. She followed her in, her heart in her throat. “Really?”
“Better late than never,” she chuckled, pushing the button to ascend. “Besides, this is a fine time for you to show me where you’re living these days.”
Rainbow blinked. “I thought we were getting lunch?”
“We still can. I’m talking about tonight,” she said. “Figure if we’re going to be making up for lost time, we might appreciate the privacy.”
“That would be kind’ve nice.”
Applejack stared at her, eyebrow arched. Rainbow stared back at her, wondering if she’d said something wrong. 
“What?”
“Dash, I thought you were the quick one.”
Rainbow frowned confusion. As the elevator doors began to close, her eyes shot wide with understanding. She looked at Applejack, at the playful smirk on her muzzle. Her ears perked up.
“Oh.”
> Chapter 20: No Good Deeds
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 1st, 1075

How do ponies LIVE like this?
Last night it got so cold that mom had to pull the extra-heavy blankets out. The weather mare on TV said it dipped below zero, but the wind makes it feel like negative one hundred. It’s only the first day of November! There’s still an entire winter ahead of us and Violet says that it’ll get even colder before the weather pegasi bring in the heavier clouds. 
On the plus side, I’m really liking my hang-out time with Violet. She’s like, really smart, and really fun. Her dads are pretty cool too, even though they couldn’t tell a joke to save their lives. But they’re nice, though, and not as stuffy as I thought they would be when Violet showed me the books they buy her. She wants to be an entim… entimogiest? Entomologist. A bug researcher. She knows a TON about spiders. Like, a lot. I thought it was creepy at first but she keeps telling me things about them that make them… I don’t know, not so freaky.
So like, when we lived in Ponyville, Dad had a toolshed that always had these big fat brown wolf spiders that would wait right above the door. I always thought they were about to drop into my mane. I hated them SO much. But Violet says they’re harmless and that they help keep the mosquitos down. They’re not even venomous. Or poisonous. I can’t remember which. Either way, thanks to her I’m not as weirded out by wolf spiders anymore… which would have come in handy if Canterlot had any. I’m not going to go looking for them like she does, but if I do see one again, I’ll try not to squish it.


November 14th, 1075

Mom’s been acting weird for the last few weeks and she isn’t telling me why. She walks around like everything is perfectly normal, but whenever anything about Vhanna comes up on TV or the radio, she gets super tense. I think it has to do with that thing we talked about that I’m not allowed to talk about during our trip. Secret agent mare stuff. I know how stupid it sounds now, but I didn’t know being a diplomat would be so stressful for her.
At least she says I might be able to have my talisman back before Hearth’s Warming Eve. The ministries are doing tests on them to make sure they’re safe, which is dumb because of course a healing talisman is safe. It heals! But those are the rules, or at least the ones they made up after Twilight took them away. Mom says I should be patient, but… ugh, I don’t know. If Rainbow Dash thought it was okay, then it should be okay!


November 20th, 1075

Violet and I stayed up super late last night to watch Jet Stream Aerospace test their new Friesian heavy boosters. I can tell space stuff doesn’t interest her as much as me, but it’s still pretty cool to have someone to geek out with. The press conference they had earlier this month kept going on about how they’re just testing the limits of the technology and that they were only interested in reaching higher orbits, but everyone knows they’re downplaying it in prep for something big. The launch even got some coverage on Good Morning Canterlot which… I mean, they never cover JSA unless something goes wrong.
Whatever they’re getting read for, it’s going to be huge.









Hoofsteps.
“How’re you feeling?”
Rainbow tipped her nose back until her head hung over the narrow end of her bench. Her ragged left wing hung limp toward the concrete floor, the tips of her feathers whispering across the worn cover of her Friendship Journal. Between her book and the gemless necklace clasped around her neck, they were the anchors that kept her from drifting too far from herself.
With the wisps of her mane dangling toward the ground, Sledge appeared to stand upside down beyond the bars of her cell. As little as she enjoyed her new accomodations, she wasn’t about to argue the logic of keeping her where she was. Getting out of that tunnel, being inside the Stable she had waited lifetimes to enter…
...she was pretty sure she was improving, that was the important thing. Her moments of clarity were definitely lasting longer. Not as long as the stretches where she wasn’t herself. Not nearly, but long enough that she could remember concrete details from the last times she surfaced. Her mother’s obituary was one of those memories she refused to let get away from her. She could remember the bland flavor of the rye cakes Sledge brought up from the commissary earlier in the morning. Even better, she could recall enough to know what day it was with some confidence. Compared to the shifting fog of half-memories from the tunnel, the past two days inside the Stable felt almost normal.
Sledge watched her, his expression tilting with worry as she stared at him in silence.
He asked you how you’re feeling, she chastised herself.
“I don’t want to jinx it,” she said, “but I’m about to set a record.”
Sledge turned the key to her cell with a heavy clunk. With one wing he pulled the door open. With the other, he carried a tray back to what she tentatively recalled to be deputy Chaser’s desk. 
He gestured for her to join him and took a look at the clock on the wall. “What’s the time to beat?”
Rainbow stretched her legs into the air, angled them to the side and let gravity roll her the rest of the way off the bench. Her hooves clicked firmly against the floor, and she only stumbled a little before catching herself. It still felt strange being constantly off-balance, but the more she threw her brain these curveballs, the more she knew her body would adjust. 
She absently shrugged the stump of her missing wing, still waiting for the harsh reality that she would never fly to kick in. Something told her that it wouldn’t. After seeing her entire world blacken and die, the loss of a wing felt incredibly small.
“Twenty-two minutes, I’m pretty sure,” she said as she stepped out of her cell. Even with her olfactory senses diminished, her nose could still detect the bright scent of the fresh citrus Sledge had brought for her. “I’ll pass that in another five, but I’m hoping to hit a half hour before it happens again.”
Sledge held a tender wedge of orange out to her as she approached, which she gladly popped into her mouth with a flick of her feathers. What remained of her taste buds came to life with a splash of tartness she’d nearly forgotten. She bent her neck back and made a noise unbecoming of a ministry mare. 
Fuck it, she thought. It wasn’t as if Rarity was around to send out one of her passive-aggressive interdepartmental memos anyway.
She paused, alternating from chewing her meal to chewing the inside of her lip. That wasn’t fair. She followed the bitter thought with an apology, hoping to herself that maybe it would reach the ears of the ponies who deserved to hear it.
Dipping her feathers among the selection of fresh fruit laid out on the desk, she picked up another nib of orange as well as a smallish half of an apple. Time and limited space were doing what Scootaloo’s projections had hoped they wouldn’t, steadily bearing down on the size of the Stable’s crops as their mother plants adapted to the stresses of their artificial homes. Taking a bite, she knew this Stable was nearing the end of its lifespan.
Judging by the rolling brown-outs Sledge already told her about, her new home had bigger problems than aging crops. 
“Any luck breaking Spitfire’s encryptions?”
Sledge held up a wing and waggled it side to side. As he described it, the vast majority of Stable 10’s records dating from the first decade of operation were either locked, hidden or wiped from its servers entirely. The ponies in I.T. were attacking the problem as best they could, but they were running headlong into unfamiliar code. Strange lockouts. Methods that predated the war and Stable-Tec design. After two hundred years of being told to maintain the Stable’s systems, now they were being forced to innovate.
“They’ve made more progress than expected but not as much as we’d hoped,” he said, stealing a piece of what looked like dried fig from the tray. “Opal is dead certain that Spitfire had the first head of I.T. write custom permissions into the system to supersede her successors. She has her team looking for a gap in the code that might let them create a superuser of their own, but it’s a case of a snake eating its tail. We need Spitfire’s clearance to make the new user, but we need the new user to get her clearance. Until we square that mess away, Opal’s team will have to hack what they can and pray for the rest.”
Rainbow’s expression turned sour. “Taking sole control of a Stable and locking ponies out definitely sounds like her modus operandi.”
Sledge cocked an eyebrow.
“It sounds like something she would do,” she clarified. “Spitfire had contingencies for contingencies, or so she kept reminding me. She never shied away from taking a hit if she stood to gain something from it in the long run.”
He nodded as he chewed. “Our revered overmare was trying to hide something, that I’ll bet my bits on.”
With the end of the world warming the hull of their subterranean lifeboat, the list of things worth hiding had to be a short one. “Maybe she wanted to preserve a better version of her legacy?”
He shrugged. “You knew her better than anyone.”
“Not as well as I thought.”
Sledge nodded, nibbling the figs that she actively avoided. 
They ate, allowing the silence to soak in. After a beat, Rainbow looked up and the clock and pointed her pale blue feathers at it like she was aiming a pistol. “Boom. New record.”
She lifted a hoof and held it up to Sledge. 
He looked at it, confused. “I’m not sure what you want me to do here.”
“It’s a hoof-bump,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. When he continued to frown at her, she looked at him with open dismay. “Please say ponies still hoof-bump.”
“Maybe they still do on the outside?” he hedged.
She dropped her hoof, grunted, and refilled the cup of her wing with the remainder of their fruit. “And here I thought Stables were all about preservation of society,” she grumped.
Sledge caught the note of levity in her tone and chuckled. Like it or not, things changed. It was only natural.
Yet, on some levels, the thought of living amongst ponies so separated from the life Rainbow knew excited her. She had spent a lifetime flying from place to place, crossing more borders than she could count and feeling that rush of newness when she landed in a place she’d never been. She couldn’t help but wonder what the ponies here were like. Heck, what ponies in the other Stables were like!
It felt like the old days, back when the world was impossibly large and the creatures spread across it still strange and unknown.
“So,” Sledge said, pulling her from her thoughts. “I have a question for you.”
She cheeked the fruit still in her mouth and slurred. “Schoot.”
Sledge rolled his wings with a thoughtful unease that reminded her of Big Mac, though the comparison might have also sprang from the fact that Sledge bore the same brick red coat and sheer mass. She stifled a tiny laugh at the thought that he was one eeyup away from making a passable impression.
“Opal thinks you might be able to help her prioritize the files her team needs to focus on cracking,” he said, gesturing to the terminal on Chaser’s desk. “You could use any of these, but I can’t shake the feeling that keeping an Element of Harmony in our drunk tank might be something that shows up on my permanent record after I kick the bucket. Provided we could do so safely, would you like to be assigned a compartment?”
Rainbow swallowed. “You mean, like, an actual room?”
He nodded.
She thought about that. Right off the bat, she had concerns. “What about the other residents? When I… disconnect, I’m not exactly the safest pony to be around.”
Vague as the memory was, she could still recall fragments of the events that transpired shortly after the Stable door rolled open. The frantic boil of animal panic that had driven her to bludgeon deputy Chaser and maul Stratus with her bare teeth had felt like being dragged behind a freight train; at the mercy of her own momentum despite how badly she wanted to stop. Two days later, she still feared what she might do when she was that other, broken version of herself. What happened if someone knocked on her door while she was in a state like that? What would she do if they opened it?
“I’ve spoken to a few friends in Mechanical who think they can wire up a card reader by tomorrow morning. You won’t be able to operate the door but you would have a bed, a shower and a terminal to work from.” His wings bobbed with a shrug. “It’s entirely up to you. After everything you’ve done for us, it’s the least I can offer.”
She lifted the last wedge of citrus to her lips and chewed thoughtfully.
Sledge wasn’t naive to the risk of moving her, and she wasn’t blind to the fact that she looked like one of the shriveled monsters from the comically bad horror movies she used to rent with the girls. Moving her could be a disaster, but there was something reassuring about Sledge’s confidence. He’d given this some thought.
She allowed herself a meek smile.
“As long as we’re careful,” she said. “Then… yeah. That would be awesome.”







Julip set her rifle down and stared.
Less than a minute. That’s how long it took for Aurora and her companions to turn an encampment full of slavers into a walled-in graveyard. Whatever the three of them had done up until now must have put them in the good graces of the goddesses themselves because, somehow, they were still breathing.
And yet that wasn’t why she lay in the shadows of a bomb-scorched school, wondering why she’d agreed to come here at all.
The stallion that fell from the catwalk had stubbornly clung to life. It was an oversight the Enclave trained its conscripts to be wary of long before they ever saw combat. Barring the traumatic destruction of the heart or spine, landing a shot center mass took a little time to take the full intended effect. Fresh out of a Stable, Aurora Pinfeathers wouldn’t have known what to look for. She hadn’t checked to see if he was still breathing and hadn’t noticed him reaching for his rifle.
And then poof. A flash of the Dressage mare’s magic engulfed the stallion and he promptly popped into existence several hundred yards above the dirt. The effect was instantaneous and fatal, and Julip found herself having a front row seat to watch him plummet to his death. 
She’d just witnessed teleportation in an era when magic was dying a slow, lingering death. The only question worth asking was how?
These three didn’t need her protection. The wasteland needed protection from them.
An unpleasant thought ran through her head. She was willing to bet that Aurora wouldn’t react violently to seeing her again. That mare had a compassionate stripe in her that most ponies had the good sense to let wither on the vine. Ginger on the other hoof was two very different sides of the same bit. She was unpredictable. For any other unicorn, that wasn’t usually an issue, but Ginger had just proven that she wasn’t any other unicorn.
There had been nothing on her file that suggested she could perform spells, and yet Julip had just seen it happen with her own eyes. Magic. Real magic.
Maybe it was a fluke. Judging by how the three of them froze down there when it happened, it very well was. But it was still dangerous. Too dangerous for her to just waltz in and say hello. She needed to be careful.
She needed to wait.







It didn’t take long for the ghouls of Kiln to come investigate the early morning gunfire. At first there were only a half dozen ready to risk approaching the slaver camp, all armed and primed to defend themselves should it come to that.
By the time Aurora noticed the ghostly eyes peering through the gate at the carnage inside, she had already snapped the shackle of her sixth padlock with a length of pipe she’d salvaged from one of the slaver’s rifles. She would have used the bolt cutters she’d taken from the Stable, but as she recently discovered, many of her tools had failed to make it out of Blinder’s Bluff when they collected their gear. Luckily, the locks Ward used for his cages were low grade cast iron and easy to bend, saving her the task of having to sort through the jangling mess of keys on slavemaster Ward’s ring.
The lock split apart with a satisfying crack. Aurora cleared the latch and swung open the door. As the two mares and the foal they were protecting took their first free steps, Ginger beckoned them toward her at the far end of the cages where a growing stack of iron collars lay in the dirt at her hooves, their explosive charges rendered inert by a gentle application of her magic.
As the freed unicorns walked away, Aurora stared at the ghouls standing on the threshold of the gate. The weapons slung over their shoulders looked strange even from a distance. Wires and conduit and strange green canisters glowed down their length, like something pulled out of an old comic book rather than a gun catalog. The ghouls didn’t seem hostile so much as curious, which made sense given what she had already pieced together about the shaky relationship between Kiln and its Ranger-protected neighbors.
Aurora kept her eye on the gathering as she drove the pipe through the shackle of the next lock. It was clear to both parties that they were no threat to one another and, slowly, the ghouls began to filter into the encampment to take stock of what happened.
Among them, Aurora recognized the stallion from the electronic scrap shop. Ratchet? No, Rusty. The strip of flesh missing from his face, exposing the bleached bone where lips would have otherwise covered his teeth made for a face that was difficult to forget. Despite the damage to his face, she could see the recognition in his one remaining eye as he approached the block of cages.
He glanced at Ginger with something like approval before finally approaching Aurora.
“Making friends, I see,” Rusty rasped.
The cage squealed open. She held out a wing to support an emaciated stallion as he ducked through the low ceiling. “Things got a little noisier than we hoped,” she said.
He nodded, watching as four ponies staggered out into the crisp night air.
“Is this going to cause any trouble for Kiln?” she asked, heading to the next lock.
Rusty looked over to Ginger as she lifted a collar off the neck of a waiting foal. He swallowed and nodded, his eyes turning to the catwalk where several bodies cooled. “Too late to be worrying about that. If it does, we’ll handle it. This was long overdue as it is.”
Aurora pinched her lips together, pushing down the natural urge to ease his guilt. Let them feel it so that next time around they wouldn’t stand to let this happen again.
“The guy who ran this camp said something about a caravan coming in the next day or so,” she said, sliding the pipe through the next shackle. “Am I expecting too much if I say I want to see these cages empty when we come back through?”
Rusty set his hooves on the long end of the pipe, helping her break the lock. “I can’t speak for all the ghouls of Kiln,” he said as she cleared the latch, “but I know a few who might be willing to convince this caravan to find somewhere else to be. At least in the short term. Slavers are like cockroaches. Give them enough time and they’ll build a new camp nearby.”
Aurora nodded. At least it was something. She glanced at the other ghouls inspecting the camp and frowned at the sight of one of them standing on their hind legs to peek at the contents of one of the wagons.
She pressed her feathers into her lip and belted a cutting whistle. “Hey hey hey! Hooves off!”
The ghoul quickly got down and hurried along.
Rusty chuckled. “Spoils of victory?”
Aurora shook her head and jerked her chin to the small gathering of ex-captives at the center of the camp. Some were in tears to the point of being inconsolable. Others just sat with thousand-yard stares.“
“Not until they get what they need to make the trip back to the Bluff,” she said, making room for him this time as they snapped the next lock. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem,” he responded, though he was clearly distracted by the state of the encampment. “Anything I can do to help?”
Aurora pursed her lips and looked to Ginger. “Ginger, Rusty’s looking for something to do.”
She paused to spare a glance their way, smiling a bit when she recognized Rusty. “Would you mind helping Roach take the…” she stopped short of saying corpses, her eyes flitting to the foals seeking comfort amongst the other freed ponies. She gestured to a nearby body. “Before they attract insects.”
Rusty nodded and began taking stock of the slavers still on the wall. “I can do that. What do you need from me after?”
Ginger’s shrug made it clear how much there was still to do. 
“Find a few more ponies like yourself, for starters,” she said. “We could use some help sorting through the supplies in the camp. Prioritize food, water and medicine and move onto weapons and armor from there. I want to give these ponies a fighting chance to reach the Bluff without being accosted.”
Rusty nodded and Aurora watched him go, heading straight to the tent line where Roach was busily dragging a limp slaver across the dirt by his tattered armor. There was nothing they could do to keep so many young eyes from seeing the death surrounding them, but chances were it wasn’t their first time seeing tragedy. Something about the way these foals searched the faces around them made it clear to Aurora that the mares they were caged with weren’t their mothers. She started to wonder why that was but stifled the thought before it could grow roots. She didn’t want to know.
An hour later, a proper crowd had formed outside the encampment. Word spread fast through Kiln of what had happened. Whether it was pity, guilt, shame or a blend of all three, the citizen ghouls had come to do the thing they should have done a long time ago. They offered help.
With the bodies dragged sufficiently far outside the walls, Roach and Rusty turned to conscripting a few willing ghouls to help them empty anything of value from the tents and wagons. It didn’t take long to discover that the cart beside Ward’s tent was the primary dump site for the items belonging to their most recent living acquisitions. Saddlebags, satchels, bedrolls and weapons lay in a mixed heap inside, waiting to be sorted.
Meanwhile Ginger had found a quiet corner of the camp where she had taken to entertaining six worried foals with her magic. Two mares bearing deep grooves from where iron had bitten into the necks looked on with weary smiles as Ginger formed her magic into ribbons and rudimentary shapes, dazzling the youngest four while the two eldest watched with neutral obedience. They knew all too well what could happen to them if they trusted the wrong pony.
For her part Aurora remained at the cages, now empty save for the one pony who nearly got them all killed.
None of them knew what to do with Quincy, though they each had their own ideas. He faced away from her, choosing to stare through the bars at the back of his cage rather than acknowledge her. 
Aurora sat outside the open door, her wing propped over the rebar to keep it from swinging shut.
“Are you going to talk to me, or are you going to sulk?” she pressed.
The corner of his jaw twitched with irritation, pulling at the matted ring of dirt where his collar once rested. After some protestations from the stallions who had shared his cage, Ginger had made it painfully clear that she wasn’t leaving Kiln knowing that she had abandoned a pony in irons. Quincy’s most dangerous weapon was his mouth, and he would use it with or without a bomb strapped to his neck.
Yet he had gone silent as soon as they began opening cages. Considering how close he had come to denying the seventy other ponies around him their chance at escape, it was no wonder he clammed up. Aurora may have been the sole focus of his outburst, but he had put the rest of them in very real danger. They weren’t likely to forget that.
Quincy, through his own recklessness, was an outcast.
Aurora waited for him to answer, but he stayed silent. She couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the stallion. He was an asshole, there was no arguing that, but hard as she looked she couldn’t see horns growing out of his head. No scales peeking through his white coat or claws erupting from his hooves. He wasn’t evil. He was stupid. He reminded her of the sullen young colts that Overmare Delphi sometimes sent down to Mechanical to have some sense knocked into them.
No doubt there were a few ponies here who would beat that out of him if he couldn’t let go of the chip on his shoulder. Not that she could blame him for having one. Food, water and security in exchange for sitting behind a desk couldn’t be an easy gig to find out in the wasteland. Benefits of working for the wealthy and morally corrupt, she supposed.
“How about this,” she said, leaning into his cage. “Where are you from?”
A derisive hiss passed through his teeth. After a moment, he muttered his answer. “You were just there.”
Fair, she thought. “I’m talking about before that. Where did you live when you were a kid?”
She watched the back of his head shake. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” she said, and she meant it.
Quincy turned slightly, just enough for her to see the offended twist of his lip.
“But,” she continued, “I think if the rest of those ponies see that we’re talking, they might not break your legs once you’re out on the road.”
A flicker of uncertainty passed over his face as his eyes turned toward the haggard ponies gathered around Roach and Rusty. “I’m not going anywhere with a bunch of half-dead slaves.”
“That’s great, because they’re not slaves anymore,” she said, trying hard to keep the edge out of her voice. “Even better, once we get them supplied and armed, they’ll probably be one the safest groups of free ponies on the road to Blinder’s Bluff. That’s where you were headed before you got picked up, I assume.”
The best part about educated guesses were that, more often than not, they turned out to be right. Quincy gave her a look that told her she’d hit the nail on the head. He flattened his ears and looked away again. “Oh happy day.”
Aurora’s grip on the cage door tightened just a little. “Don’t be a dick. I’m trying to help you.”
He snorted derisively. This time Aurora waited, letting the silence settle between them like a scratchy blanket. It took a physical effort to stay as pissy as he was when the person he resented was sitting there with a better reason not to be. Gradually, the set of his jaw relaxed some and the hardness in his eyes softened.
He stared at the ponies with whom he’d spent the last two days caged with, some of which probably passed through the gates of Autumn’s headquarters while he relaxed inside his impeccably maintained lobby. He sucked on the corner of his lip before finally turning his head toward her by the barest of degrees.
“Everfree Grove,” he said. “That’s where I’m from.”
Progress, she thought. “It’s a pretty name. Is that what they call the Everfree Forest now?”
Quincy inhaled a deep breath and exhaled. “It’s the name of our settlement. The only thing that changed about the Everfree Forest is how big it’s gotten.”
He spoke with a tone that made it seem like he expected her to understand what that meant. She only knew the Everfree by name because it was the rumored site of Nightmare Moon’s banishment and reappearance. Beyond that, it was a green blob on a map. Something to remember back when she had to worry about scoring passing marks in her geography classes.
“Can I ask why you left?”
Quincy looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since his outburst. “I didn’t want to waste my life chopping thorn vines. I wanted to see the world, so when I turned sixteen I started working with the merchants that kept our village supplied.”
“F&F Mercantile?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Wagon drivers make good caps.”
She tried to picture him sitting at the front of a blue and white wagon, rifle slung over his lap, looking younger than he did now. It didn’t square with the snow white stallion who stood an inch shorter than she did, but then again, stranger things could happen. “It must take some time to go from wagon work to Autumn’s personal secretary.”
“Not if you’re willing to do what it takes to get there,” he said. “You’ve met Cider before. He’s a simple stallion to please.”
She cringed inwardly as she caught his meaning.
Quincy noted her reaction and shrugged again. “You wanted to know.”
That was up for debate. He watched her, his lips and chin stained dark with the blood that had only recently stopped dribbling from his nose. Clocking him for his earlier remark about her encounter with Cider had felt amazing at the time, but not anymore. Like it or not, the two of them had something in common, and it was clear Quincy had experienced more of it than she did.
She opted to shift the subject to something less painful. 
“So now that you’re gainfully unemployed, what do you want to do?”
He took a moment to mull over her question, his eyes drifting over his shoulder to the small mound of gear that Roach and Rusty were sorting. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Before I escaped the compound, I stole some things from Miss Song’s office that looked valuable thinking I could get enough caps for them to start my own company. But after nearly getting eaten by a deathclaw I’m starting to think that might not be a good idea. I want to go back home for a while and just… chop vines.”
Aurora followed his gaze and watched Roach hold a set of beaten saddlebags out to the waiting hooves of a tired looking stallion. “What did you take?”
“The whole solar plant was coming down around me, so I didn’t take an inventory,” he confessed, not without a little embarrassment. “A couple revolvers, some holotapes from her desk, a pile of jewelry that Cider wouldn’t stop adding to… if it wasn’t bolted to the walls and looked important, I tried grabbing it. Even broke a bunch of her maps out of their frames thinking maybe someone might want them. Enough to get me back home, I hope, and it’s not like she’s going to miss them, anyway.”
She thought about Autumn, forced to chase after the single bullet they had afforded her before they left. “No, I don’t think she will,” she agreed. 
As she watched Roach checking the next satchel, calling out its contents until the hoof of one of the gathered ponies shot up in answer, a thought occurred to her.
“Any idea what she might have on those holotapes?”
Quincy shook his head. “Couldn’t say. I didn’t know she had them until I broke the drawer open.”
A locked drawer. They could be nothing, she thought. Anything from defunct plans to expand her business, blackmail on some unknown competitor, or even just a record of her dead company’s finances. Their usefulness could amount to nothing.
And yet that tickle in the back of her brain told her, why not. Throw the dice.
“Mind if I take them?” she asked.
He looked at her and frowned. “Why?”
“Why not?” she asked with a mild shrug. “Color me curious, I kinda want to peek at my almost-killer’s diary.”
She had to hand it to him, he wasn’t even trying to make her think he was buying it. He eyed her, sucking at his teeth as he considered. “What’re you willing to pay for them?”
The cage door squeaked back and forth beneath her wing. “How about I leave this unlocked and we call it even.”
He blinked. “That’s fair.”
“I thought so too,” she said, and got up. “Come on. Let’s get your stuff.”
She felt relief when she watched him tromp out of the cage and follow. He kept his head low as they walked to where Roach and Rusty were meting out supplies, carefully avoiding the eyes of the gathered ponies still waiting for their belongings. Aurora brought him to the back of the thinning crowd where they waited, hoping her presence was enough to signal that his outburst, at the very least, was behind her.
They watched while Roach dragged the next saddlebag out of the neat pile Rusty had stacked in front of the slavemaster’s tent. With the tip of his hoof, he rummaged through the contents until he found something of note. A silver plated pocket watch with an engraving on the back. He wasn’t through reading out the initials before a hoof shot up and the pony claiming the bag recited the second half of the inscription. Satisfied, Roach put the watch back in its bag and offered it to the waiting stallion.
The same process played out again and again until eventually Aurora and Quincy were the only ones remaining. His bag, uncovered and unclaimed, sat in the dirt behind Roach. Seeing Quincy was still waiting, he hooked the bag by the strap and plopped it down where he could see its contents.
“I thought this might be yours,” Roach said, lifting an eyebrow and shifting the contents around. “How much water did you pack?”
Quincy cleared his throat. “None. I was hoping to trade for a canteen on the road.”
Roach grunted, apparently satisfied with his answer. He closed the flaps and hefted the bags forward, allowing Quincy to take them. 
“Stick around,” he said, tipping his horn toward the ponies quietly milling together in pairs and groups near where the bulk of the wagons were parked. “See if you can’t make things right with the folks you’ll be travelling with. We’ll see that you have enough food and water to make it back to the Bluff.”
Aurora dipped her wing under the straps of his bag and pulled them toward her, feathers flitting through the contents while he watched. He hadn’t lied when he said he went straight to Autumn’s office to snatch up what he could. There was no organization to it. Everything - her weapons, jewelry, several half-crumpled trade maps, pistols and an assortment of junk - was thrown into a rough heap.
Quincy eyed her as she shuffled through his bags, but his attention was torn by something Roach had said. “What do you expect me to do, make friends with them?”
Roach shrugged, watching Aurora with mild curiosity. “You don’t have to do anything. It’s just a suggestion.”
“A good one, too,” Aurora agreed. “Blinder’s Bluff is a full day’s walk from here, and that’s if you don’t stop for a break. I hate to admit it, but the roads are getting more dangerous without F&F to keep the peace. Those ponies will be your best protection if something goes sideways.”
She found what she was looking for at the very bottom of the bag. Three scuffed holotapes laying loose beneath one of Autumn’s maps. She pushed the roughly treated paper aside with the back of her wing and scooped up the tapes. Then, on a whim, she grabbed a map as well.
Quincy’s lips bent in a tight frown upon seeing her taking more than just the tapes, but he didn’t argue. Aurora closed the flaps and slid the bags back to him, depositing what she’d taken into the saddlebags slung over her back. When she was done, she pointed a feather across the encampment to where Ginger sat.
“First pony you need to apologize to is right there,” she said a bit more sternly than she intended, but probably just the amount that was warranted. “Get going, and be nice.”
His eyes followed her wing to the fiery-maned unicorn and grimaced, yet to Aurora’s surprise he put on his bags and started walking across the field to where she was keeping the cluster of foals entertained. She kept an eye on him until Ginger noticed him approaching, his ears low with the embarrassment of a young stallion being forced to own up to his mistake.
“For a second there I thought you were going to send him to time-out,” Roach said, though his dessicated voice couldn’t quite mask his chuckle. He shook his head, taking a moment to watch Quincy stumble through the first words of his penance.
Aurora couldn’t help but smile a bit as she watched Ginger regard him with stiff silence, giving him nothing to indicate whether his words were landing. Even as he floundered, drawing curious looks from the foals who seemed to find more entertainment from him than the wispy aura hovering above them, he had to know he was getting off the hook easy.
And that was alright, Aurora decided. She didn’t know exactly how old Quincy was, but he was young enough to still be walking through the minefield of shortsighted decisions that even the wasteland didn’t seem capable of shaking out of headstrong stallions.
If stupid were a crime, well, nobody would reach adulthood without spending some time in a cell. Autumn and Cider took advantage of that. Coming to terms with that fact would be enough of a trial without her adding to it.
“So, are you going to fill me in on who that is?” Roach asked.
She tore herself away from Quincy’s confessional and shrugged. “I met him down at Autumn’s solar array. He used to work for them. Sat behind a desk and looked pretty, for the most part.”
Roach hummed understanding. “I don’t think I have the qualifications for that line of work.”
Aurora snorted, then caught herself. “Sorry.”
He smirked at her. “I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with looking like a broken dinner plate,” he said, and tipped his nose toward her saddlebags. “Anything special on the holotapes you took?”
“No idea,” she admitted. “He raided Autumn’s office before he bolted. Ginger and I got zilch. It’s only right for him to share.”
Roach looked at her skeptically.
“And he almost got us killed,” she amended.
“Ever the diplomat,” he said, shaking his head.
She felt her cheeks warm. Maybe she was being a little petty, but fair was fair. With some luck, the tapes would have something on them that a fledgling trading company might be willing to pay for. Worst case, they were worthless. The only other items of immediate value Quincy had taken had been a pair of revolvers nearly identical to the one Autumn had tried to kill the two of them with. She could live without having to see those irons again.
Following Roach’s gaze, she looked over her shoulder back to where Ginger sat. Her expression still carried a distant sternness to it, and her attention was focused on juggling a trio of amber spheres to the delight of the younger foals, but she was talking now. Quincy sat a couple yards off to her side, trying hard not to stare at the display as he replied to something she said.
“Well, she doesn’t look like she’s thinking about poofing him,” Roach chuckled.
Aurora nodded. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around how that happened,” she said. “That slaver had us dead to rights. Then, pop, he’s a hundred feet above us and falling?”
Roach grunted. “Might be why they call it teleportation.”
She gave him a sour look.
He held up a black hoof in mock surrender. “You said Autumn had been giving her injections before you intervened.”
“Stimpacks. Old ones made with prewar magic. Autumn and her brother found them sealed in the basement of some hospital somewhere.” She looked to where Ginger and Quincy sat. “Whatever the bombs did to weaken unicorns, those stimpacks fixed it.”
“That’s one theory,” Roach said, but before she could ask him to clarify he turned to the ghoul rummaging through the wagon behind him. “Rusty, they could use some help unloading the other wagons.”
He pointed a hoof toward the ghouls forming piles of supplies outside the remaining slaver wagons, their organization quickly deteriorating as the mounds grew. “It’s starting to turn into a mess.”
Rusty poked his head out of the wagon and frowned after the well-meaning helpers. He dropped down with more grace than a pony as decayed as him ought to have and began trotting after them. 
“And set aside some Rad-Away,” he called, to which Rusty responded with a mock salute that made Roach smirk.
“You two work well together,” Aurora said.
Roach grunted agreement.
“So what’s the other theory?” she asked. When he looked at her with confusion, she added, “On what happened to the unicorns, I mean.”
“Ah,” he said, then shrugged. “I don’t think anything is wrong with unicorns at all. I think the bombs did something to damage magic.”
Aurora stayed silent, inviting him to continue.
He cleared his throat. “The ghouls here, for example. More than half of them are unicorns but none of them are trying to use their magic.” He gestured to the gathered residents of Kiln as they transferred bags, weapons, food and drink to one another from mouth to mouth. Every horn among them was dark. “Talk to any unicorn ghoul anywhere else and they’ll show you they can still use theirs. It’s weak magic, but it’s there. These ones can’t even brighten their horns.”
“Maybe they can, but they don’t want to irradiate Kiln any more than it already is,” Aurora posited.
Roach shook his head. “I have yet to meet another ghoul who has this problem, and I’ve met hundreds.”
She looked up at his fissured horn. “What makes you so special?”
He laughed at that. “Subtle,” he said. “The best guess I’ve come up with is that it’s because I’m a changeling. We were bred to draw in raw emotion, or at least that was how we understood it back then. These days I’m sure that Chrysalis knew something we didn’t, and we were harvesting an amplified form of your magic for her to consume. Changelings are natural siphons for that sort of thing. We pull it out of the air as easy as breathing. When the tunnel back at the Stable collapsed and the radiation started bleeding in, I thought I could calm the survivors by taking some of their fear away. Looking back, I’m certain I was drawing in a good bit of the radiation with it.”
Aurora frowned.
“I’m past beating myself up over it,” he said, seeing her expression. “Can’t undo it if I wanted to. My magic’s tainted, sure, but it supports my theory that the balefire that the bombs unleashed had a direct impact on magic and not its casters.”
She watched him, trying to piece together the puzzle he was presenting to her, and found herself remembering something from the day they left the cabin. “When you used magic to protect us from those raiders, I saw you start to change into another pony.”
Roach smiled a little. “You saw Sunny Meadows, then,” he said. “I haven’t been in that body since the bombs dropped.”
“You were for a little bit,” she said. “At least…”
“Parts of me, yeah,” Roach finished. “I know. It’s an after-image. I don’t cast it intentionally.”
Aurora pressed her lips together, remembering the growing, shifting and shrinking patches of chaff colored coat and a tumbling moss-green mane that shimmered across his blackened carapace like a second skin. At the time, she hadn’t been able to really process what she was seeing. It was the first time Roach had used his magic around her and, in that moment when she thought she had been shot through the chest by a sniper’s round, her fearful mind had packed the strange sight away for later. 
It was later, now, she realized.
“Well,” she said, “if it counts for anything, you were handsome back in the day.”
He snorted, chuckling to himself to mask the embarrassment creeping up his muzzle. “Thanks, but I don’t recommend the balefire spa package.”
She gave his chest an admonishing thump with the back of her wing. “So you think balefire corrupts magic.”
“Maybe,” he said, clearly unsure even now. “I think damage is a better word for it. Or disrupts. Without knowing where it comes from, all we can do is throw guesses at it until something sticks. 
“We noticed it when we started trying to dig ourselves out. Unicorns were having trouble concentrating on their spells. Some of that was the radiation sickness, but then rocks would slide out of their magic like it wasn’t there. Soon we couldn’t even sweep away the debris. Once we realized something was wrong with our magic, that’s when ponies started to give up hope. They died before we ran out of food. It took me years to finish digging out on my own. After I broke through and met the ponies trying to rebuild Junction City, I found the same problems we had in the tunnel were affecting the unicorns on the outside.”
He spun his hoof around, trying to coax the words along. “A mare I spoke to said it felt like she was trying to suck water through a straw, but the cup was empty. She knew what it felt like to tap into Equestrian magic before the bombs and she could tell something was wrong. Like it was gone, or fading, or the bombs had shoved it all somewhere else where they couldn’t reach.”
Aurora watched the ghouls unloading the wagons, their efforts now turned to sorting the piles into more organized groupings of supplies. They bent down, picking up bundles in their teeth with practiced movements. They had been without magic for most of their lives.
Meanwhile, Ginger narrowed her eyes at a sphere of magic, slowly flattening it on six sides until it resembled a cube. She did so while still holding a conversation with Quincy. It was like night and day residing in the same encampment.
“So you’re saying the stimpacks Autumn gave Ginger didn’t fix her,” she said, beginning to understand. “They charged her up. Like a battery?”
Roach paused, then nodded. “That’s a good way to describe it, yes. The magic she’s using is probably finite. Your guess is as good as mine as to how long it’ll last.”
She felt her heart sink. “Does she know?”
“I’m not sure how to tell her,” he said. “It’s only been a few days and she’s already so attached to it. For all I know, we could be wrong.”
She sighed. “And yet.”
“And yet,” he agreed.
“I should probably give her a break,” she said, unable to quell the prickle of worry she felt now as she watched Ginger’s magic dance among the giggling foals. “Let her preserve what she has left.”
Roach looked at her, eyebrow raised. “You’re going to foalsit while we do the heavy lifting?”
The hairs on her neck stood upright at the thought of that. She didn’t mix well with kids. They were confusing, unpredictable and inexplicably able to make everything they came near sticky. 
“I’d rather get my wings caught in…” she cut herself off, remembering that Roach had once been a parent. The quiet expression he wore made it evident he was glad she’d caught herself. “Foals aren’t a skillset I have. There were a couple mares who were looking after a colt when we arrived. I’m going to track them down and see if they can’t take over while we figure out what we’ll want to take with us.”
Roach nodded toward the wagons being unloaded. “Send Ginger over to Rusty and I once you do, and I’ll talk to her about her magic.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
She started toward Ginger, her mind already wondering how much magic she had left in her, when Roach called to her.
“Hey, Aurora?”
She stopped, looking back to see that he hadn’t moved.
“We did really good today,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself.”
Aurora stood there, and for a brief moment it wasn’t Roach giving her a nod of approval, it was her father, his jumpsuit smudged with the damp, rich soil of the gardens. Her breath caught in her throat and she had to bite hard on the inside of her cheek to keep her composure.
Around them stood seventy-one ponies who an hour earlier had no future to look forward to. No aspirations beyond surviving the current day. No hope that the next would be any better. Things could have gone better. They could have gone much worse, too. They had done something today that Aurora had never expected to do when she stepped outside her Stable, and it felt right.
She smiled in spite of herself and nodded back.
As she crossed the field toward Ginger and Quincy, she could hear enough of their conversation to tell that some of the tension between them had eased. Quincy still looked prepared to hide under the nearest rock should a vacancy open up, but he did an admirable job staying put as Ginger gave him the foal-friendly version of what Autumn had done to her during her time in the holding tank. The young stallion looked paler than his white coat could provide on its own.
Ginger noticed her approach and her expression warmed enough that two of the younger foals turned to see what she was looking at. Aurora gave them a polite nod, hoping that was acceptable, and opened her mouth to speak.
A sharp whistle peeled into the air behind her, cutting her off.
“Ginger!” Roach’s ragged voice called from the other side of the field. Aurora frowned back at him. “We need your help over here with the sort! Bring the kid with you! Aurora’s going to watch the foals!”
She blinked. “Wait, I’m not…”
“Oh, I’ll be right there!” Ginger chirped. Before Aurora could object, Ginger was on her hooves and the streamers of magic evaporated. She smiled thanks to Aurora, letting her see a hint of the weariness in her eyes before addressing her little audience. “Okay kids, I have to go help the grown-ups pack up your bags for your big trip, but my good friend Aurora is going to keep you company while I’m gone!”
Oh no. “Ginger, I…”
“Now I bet if you all ask her very nicely, she’ll tell you what it’s like to fly above the clouds! Doesn’t that sound like a fun story?”
Six wide sets of eyes turned toward her with unbridled excitement. 
A yellow, pink-maned filly barely past her fourth birthday stared up at Aurora like she had just leapt out of a fairy tale. A breathless wow formed on her tiny muzzle upon sighting her wings.
Ginger stepped close enough to whisper. “Thanks, Aurora. I was beginning to think I would run out of shapes.” 
She pecked her on the cheek and motioned for Quincy to follow, leaving Aurora standing dumbfounded before a pack of awestruck foals. She looked back to the far end of the field where Roach and Rusty looked on, the former grinning like an idiot.
Treachery. That’s what this was.
Well, the joke would be on them. She could figure this out. They were just foals, after all. Spin up one or two stories from home and they’d be happy little lambs. How hard could that be?
A voice peeped up, making her jump. “Are those wings?”
A colt, not much bigger than the yellow filly who kept staring at her and had yet to blink, pointed a small hoof at her. Aurora blinked and lifted her right wing.
“Yep, this is a wing,” she said.
“How come you don’t gots a horn?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “Uh, I wasn’t born with one.”
“Why?”
She blinked again. “Because I’m a pegasus, not a unicorn.”
“What’s a pegasus?”
“It means I have wings,” she said.
“Why?”
“Wh… because all pegasi have wings.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Oh, she thought.
Oh no.








“You’re sure nobody’s going to freak out?”
“Provided you don’t rip off your jumpsuit and start yelling, ‘Hey everybody, I’m Rainbow Dash,’ I think we’ll be just fine.”
They stood at the door of the deputy station, Sledge to her right and Stratus trailing close behind. The entirety of Stable 10 waited on the other side. It was early in the morning, nearing the point where ponies would be waking up for the shift change. Rainbow wasn’t worried so much about being recognized as she was just outright scaring them. She wasn’t oblivious to how sickly she looked. The jumpsuit hung over her frame like a loose tarp, zipped up to her chin to hide the iconic necklace hidden beneath its collar. She was the postermare for a diet gone terribly wrong.
“I’ll try to avoid that,” she said, giving her wing a nervous shuffle. The stump behind her right shoulder waggled to mimic the gesture. “Time’s wasting.”
Sledge slipped his badge through the reader and the door emitted an approving chirp, hissing up and away.
Rainbow’s breath stuck in her throat as she stepped out into the Atrium. Below her, colorful little storefronts ringed a spacious pavilion. Most were closed, save for a few that were illuminated from within as their staff prepared for customers soon to begin arriving. On the far side a teal mare pushed a narrow delivery cart in front of her stacked high with blue plastic totes. She paused to set one down outside the darkened doors of what looked to be an arcade, its reproduction game cabinets just visible through its wide windows. Checking the delivery off her list, she moved on to the next without skipping a beat. 
Nearby, a pair of elderly pegasi sat next to each other on a bench at the center of the Atrium, flanked by a pair of potted ferns. They chatted as they watched the delivery mare make her rounds, their hooves resting atop the empty canvas shopping bags draped in their laps. Their attention drifted from the delivery mare to a nearby bakery. A stallion could be seen stocking a display case inside, dutifully filling the shelves with uniform cubes of bread ahead of the upcoming hour.
The elderly mare glanced up and noticed Rainbow staring over the railing. She squinted up at her with palsied eyes, a kind smile forming as she lifted her mottled brown wing in greeting. Rainbow hesitated before returning the gesture.
It was all still here. 
Sledge guided her away from the railing and led her down the short flight of stairs to the Atrium floor. Covered mostly by her Stable-Tec branded jumpsuit, she didn’t attract as much attention as she had feared. A few eyes turned their way but they were drawn to Sledge, their new overstallion. She was a footnote. Someone that a pony might wonder about in earnest after she was well out of sight. She felt relieved. 
He led her into a wide corridor where a stallion busied himself scraping a dust mop along the far corner. He nodded a reverent hello to Sledge as he passed, and was gone. A few doors down, they had to stop when a mare and her colt stumbled backward out of their compartment, the little one riding on his mother’s shoulders with his Pip-Buck held tight between his teeth. The colt’s mother hardly noticed that she’d nearly toppled into them, checking once to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything before hurrying ahead down the corridor. The little colt squealed as they rushed to get him to school. 
Rainbow allowed herself to relax as they walked the halls of the place that was meant to be a haven for her whole family. An elevator took them deeper into the Stable, a ride that was reminiscent of the lifts that stratified her friends within the Pillar. When they stepped out, her eyes were immediately drawn to the brightly colored murals adorning the walls. Even in the dim half-light of reduced power, they leapt out at her. 
Her pace slowed.
There on the wall stood Scootaloo, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, grown into three of the brightest mares Equestria ever had the privilege to know. They were flawed, deeply in some cases, but they had seen what was coming long before anyone else was willing to admit it could be a possibility. Rainbow Dash had been a part of that as well, providing the seed money to get Stable-Tec off the ground, but Scootaloo had done the hard work of cultivating what sprang from it, ensuring their joint venture remained hearty enough to survive until it was needed.
Moving forward, she found herself looking at a pastoral scene of Sweet Apple Acres in summer, something Applebloom no doubt wanted to see included in the decor. Rainbow could still remember what it felt like to walk those dirt roads, teasing Applejack about her work-a-holic family even though she privately admired them for the pride they took in their farm. She wondered if it was still there, overgrown or tended by a new family. She knew in her heart that it wasn’t. She kept walking.
The murals down here provided one gut check after another. Scenic vistas of Canterlot, Los Pegasus, the Smokey Mountains and even the striated mesas of the southern badlands adorned the walls like snapshots taken from her own life. She had been to all of these places once upon a time. She had smelled the air, flown through their skies and listened to their sounds as one trial after another pulled her and the girls to every corner of Equestria. Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis and Tirek. Four terrible creatures who suddenly chose to rear their heads within a short few years of one another, threats that hadn’t been seen in some cases for hundreds or thousands of years suddenly appearing at once.
Maybe that should have been a warning. The canary in the coalmine that something was wrong with the world, and that something worse was on its way. If it had been a test, they had failed spectacularly.
When she peered toward the next image her blood ran hot.
Spitfire stood above her, posed heroically in her original Wonderbolt uniform with a single hoof pointed toward a distant mountain. Tiny winged figures flew in neat formations from a familiar city in the clouds toward a gap at the base of the hill, guided by the silver-tongued deceiver who would become their first overmare.
Nowhere in the painting were the hundreds of earth ponies or unicorns who had fled to Stable 10 behind them. The road leading toward the tunnel, the one Rainbow remembered seeing choked with carriages, trucks and rickshaws packed with terrified survivors, didn’t make the cut. They had been erased. 
One of the lights above them buzzed harshly, sputtered and went dark. Sledge nudged her with the edge of his wing, trying to move her along.
“Your compartment’s a few doors down,” he murmured.
But her eyes had shifted to the portraits on the opposite wall, nearly blocked completely by Sledge’s bulk as they passed. She stopped, turned around and weaved past Stratus to better see. Her eyes welled as she stepped toward the six mares posed above the words HARMONY LIVES.
There they were. Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie, Twilight and Applejack stood shoulder to shoulder while Rainbow hung behind them, treading air with her signature bring-it-on grin. The mural had been modeled around a photograph taken during their youths, not long after Twilight received her wings and shocked the world by declining the mantle that came with them.
Her eyes drifted to Applejack, one foreleg characteristically crossed ahead of the other the way she always did when she felt comfortable.
Rainbow wanted to say something profound. It felt like the right time for it. To tell Sledge, or deputy Stratus or any one of the hundreds of ponies whose lives orbited within the safety of her mother’s Stable that the six of them had been normal ponies once. That the world splayed across the hallways wasn't just a story. That it had all existed once. 
She could feel her throat tightening and bit the inside of her cheek to stem the tears. With the back of her wing, she scrubbed the damp out of her eyes and walked back to Sledge.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
Dumb question. Judging by the sudden stiffness in his renewed gait, he knew it too. She forgave him and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Just something I have to get used to seeing.”
He nodded, trying to understand.
“Is it possible for me to get that photo in a frame?” she asked. “Without the text?”
“I’ll get it done,” he said.
“Thank you.”
She kept her eyes low for the short remainder or their walk, having had her fill of old memories for now. Sledge put a wing over her shoulder, gently slowing her as they came to the compartment that had been prepared. A simple steel nameplate adorned the wall next to the sliding door.
A. PINFEATHERS.
Rainbow read the name aloud. “That’s the mare you told me about.”
He nodded, swiping his badge through a card reader identical to the one at the deputy station. “I’m sure she’ll be alright with you staying here.”
Aurora’s door chirped and slid away, allowing Rainbow to step into the mare’s spartan living quarters. For someone as bull-headed as Sledge made her out to be, her compartment was surprisingly devoid of any decor. Along the far wall, a blocky old terminal sat dark atop a small wooden desk. To the right, she spotted a spray of tile beyond a narrow partition that separated the bathroom. 
On her left waited an unmade bed, the thin blue comforter slopped partway onto the floor where it had lay for a week since it was first kicked away. The rumpled sheets and flattened pillow bore a patchwork of grease stains, the sight of which wrung an irritated groan from Sledge.
“I told them to replace those,” he muttered.
Rainbow knew that tone. Someone’s head was going to roll. “I slept in a musty tunnel and ate mutated cockroaches for two hundred years. A few stains aren’t going to hurt me.”
“Still,” he said, and turned to Stratus. “Can you go grab…”
The deputy was already halfway through the door. “I’m on it,” he said.
Rainbow turned to watch him go and noticed the wing-shaped leather sleeves hanging from a row of hooks near the door. “What are those?”
Sledge glanced at them. “Wing guards. Keeps any pegasi in Mechanical from accidentally feeding feathers to the machines down below. Or catching fire from walking too close to a welding station.”
“You let pegasi weld?” she asked. “How?”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “Very carefully.”
She whistled, unsure she wanted to see what happened to feathers after holding a welding torch for any length of time. But given Spitfire had gone out of her way to filter the first residents like she had, she supposed the pegasi who made it in would have been forced to adapt.
She turned a slow circle in the center of the compartment. Four walls and a roof. That’s what Applejack always said she was willing to settle for if things ever went bad. 
It would be enough.
“It’s nice,” she said. “Thanks.”
Sledge dipped his wingtip into his saddlebag and withdrew the battered copy of her Friendship Journal. She accepted it, feeling its rough and warped cover between her feathers. Turning, she set it on Aurora’s desk and blew out a ragged breath.
“Home sweet home,” she said.
“If there’s anything you need, just ask and I’ll make sure you have it,” Sledge said. “Opal expects to have your resident profile finished before lunch, so you should be able to place orders with Fabrication and Supply. I’ll make sure you have enough bits to order whatever you need. Cost is not…”
Rainbow stared up at him, shaking her head. 
“Slow down,” she said, her lip twitching upward at the irony. “I don’t want to be pampered, and I don’t want you to pull strings on my behalf. I’m not an Element of Harmony anymore. Or a ministry mare, or a Wonderbolt. I haven’t been any of those things in a long, long time. Right now, I just want to work on being Rainbow Dash for a while.”
The discomfort on Sledge’s face was charming in its own way. She could tell that he wasn’t sure if she was testing him or being forthright. He wanted her to be comfortable. To feel honored among those who survived up to this point. She couldn’t help but smile.
“But you do deserve better than this,” he said, gesturing at the bare walls.
“Sledge,” she said, setting her wing on his shoulder, “if my mom was able to start over from nothing, then so can I. You opened the door for me. Anything you think you owe me is already paid in full. I don’t know if I can have a normal life, but I want to try. Let me earn my keep. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay. Just do me one favor.”
Her wing slipped off his shoulder. “What’s that?”
“I want you to let one of our doctors take a look at you,” he said. “Sooner than later I’m going to have to tell the Stable you’re here, and your… condition is going to raise some questions I’d like to be prepared to answer.”
Rainbow snorted and began fiddling for the zipper beneath her chin. “Sure. I’m probably overdue for a checkup.”
“You…” he stopped, pressing his lips shut as she unzipped the front of the ungainly jumpsuit.
She shook her forelegs out and used her wing to push the rest of the jumpsuit down to her hind legs. It felt loads better to have the stifling fabric off of her. She scooped the bundle up with a hoof and dropped it on the edge of Aurora’s bed in a heap. 
Sledge cleared his throat, carefully averting his eyes. “I’ll bring someone down to take a look at you this afternoon. I have some things I need to check on until then, but it’ll give Opal a chance to stop in and walk you through what she’s been working on.”
Rainbow lifted an eyebrow at him, noticing his inexplicable discomfort. “Everything alright?”
“Yep,” he said a little too quickly. “I’ll let you get settled in. If you need anything, just ask Millie.”
“Millie?” she asked. It took a few seconds for her to dredge her brain for a clue to where she’d heard that name before, and then it dawned on her. She snapped her eyes toward the ceiling where a simple, innocuous speaker rested flush with the metal panels. “You have a Millie system?”
Sledge followed her gaze, glad for the distraction. “Yeah, Stable-Tec installed the 1077 model before everything went teats-up.”
She snorted. “That’s... colorful.”
If he weren’t already red to begin with, he certainly was now. “Ah, sorry. Mechanical has its own language.”
“We had something like that back at the Academy,” she said, chuckling. “I like yours better.”
He allowed himself a little smirk. “Contact me if you need anything, but I’ll stop by a few times a day to make sure you’re doing alright,” he said, moving toward the door before stopping to add, “And maybe throw on your jumpsuit before Opal visits. It’s…”
Rainbow looked to the jumpsuit, then to the floundering overstallion.
“...nevermind,” he said. “Forget I said anything. Stratus will be back soon with new linens for your bed. Millie can contact my Pip-Buck if you need anything else.”
She tried not to smile too broadly. “Sounds good.”
“Alright then,” he said, and retreated the rest of the way to the door. It slid open and he stepped out, letting it drop shut behind him.
Rainbow stared after him and shook her head with a low chuckle. If she didn’t know any better, Sledge was a prude.
Still tittering to herself, she hopped up on her new bed and sprawled herself over the cool sheets. Compared to the filthy sleeping bag she was used to, the thin mattress felt like the peak of luxury. She lay there and sighed.
“Hey, Millie. Long time no twenty-four-seven monitor.”
A dual chime from the ceiling came in response. “Good morning. Please say your name to log in.”
She closed her eyes and shrugged. “Rainbow Dash.”
A pause. “There are no residents on record with that name. Please say your name to log in.”
“Minister Rainbow Dash,” she said.
“There are no residents on record with that name. Please…”
“Minister Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty, High Priestess of the Official Daring-Do Fanclub and Lord of the Rainbooms.”
She grinned as Millie shared the bad news a third time. Because of course it wouldn’t work. Spitfire never had any intention of letting her into the Stable in the first place, so why go through the trouble of adding her to the list of residents?
Oh well. Water under the bridge, whether she liked it or not. She shifted her shoulders until the little bone spur that remained of her right wing found a more comfortable angle to rest.
“Millie,” she said, “send a message to overstallion Sledge.”
“For messaging services, please log in.”
“Oh, for...” she murmured. “Aurora Pinfeathers?”
A pause. “Voice verification failed.”
“Overmare Spitfire,” she said.
“Voice verification failed. Resident deceased. A warning has been logged for review. Please be aware that access to services via this device may be temporarily revoked if further infractions are incurred.”
“Yeah, well fuck you too, sister,” she said.
A pause. “I’m sorry, I did not understand your request.”
Applebloom, she thought, I’m going to build a time machine and burn down whatever lab designed this idiot box.
She covered her eyes with her foreleg and tried to relax. 
At the corners of her perception, she could feel the fog beginning to trickle in. How long had she made it this time? Close to an hour, she thought. Not bad, but not great either. Still, she felt better knowing that even if she faded out for a little while, she would be alright in the long term. Blue would let go eventually. 
In the meantime, she had a minute or two to pester the mare in the ceiling.
She sighed, trying to think of what else to say. Of all the voices from her past, it somehow didn’t surprise her to find that Millie's was the one that survived an apocalypse. At least Stable 10 hadn’t come equipped with the little black half-dome cameras that Robronco insisted installing all around the Pillar. Something about not being sure which way that electronic eye was looking gave her the willies.
The simple reflection was just enough to jar something loose in her head. A bit of her daily routine from before the war, something she gave little thought to. Just another way to shut Millie up so she could get to where she needed to get to.
It was worth a try.
“Millie,” she said, “please verify credentials and override.”
A pause. It stretched until Rainbow was pretty sure she hadn’t recognized the command at all. She opened her mouth to try again when Millie chimed.
“I’m sorry, I am unable to verify your credentials at this time. Please recite one of the three security passphrases selected during registration.”
Rainbow moved her hoof and scowled up at the speaker. Security phrases? That was over two hundred years ago! She gestured blankly with her wing and took a shot anyway. “Twenty percent cooler,” she said.
“Verification failed. Two attempts remain.”
She groaned, remembering how hard she had tried to get that stupid catchphrase to stick. “Can I get a hint?”
“Verification failed. One attempt remains.”
A litany of profanity danced through her head. Why would she ever bother to remember something so pointless as a passphrase when a visual scan would do all the work for her? “Shove it up your ass, Millie,” she muttered.
A pause. “Confirmed. Welcome, Minister.”
She laughed, vaguely remembering Twilight sitting her down on their first day and forcing her to finish setting up her security protocols. Millie’s interface had been so irritatingly cheerful, it threatened to drive Rainbow up the wall. Somehow, Twilight managed to get her to sit still long enough to finish answering Millie’s prompts, but not without a little sass.
The fog was getting thicker now and it was getting harder to concentrate. Despite knowing she was safe, she could feel that familiar twinge of fear creeping up her neck as the moment approached when she would have to stop holding on and let go.
“Hey Millie,” she said, curling herself up in the middle of Aurora’s bed. “Could you play some music?”
“What would you like to hear?”
She thought about that as she pulled one of the pillows under her head. Her thoughts drifted for a moment, pulled briefly out of reach before flowing back, and she remembered the songs Sunny sang back in the tunnel to keep her calm. How long ago had that been? 
“Do you have anything by…” she hesitated. 
By what?
Where was she?
She curled herself tighter, confused. The words were there, but she had to reach deep to dredge them back up.
“Everfree Brothers,” she said.
Millie chimed. “I have fifty-seven songs composed by the Everfree Brothers. Would you like me to play a selection?”
“Mm-hm,” she murmured.
A pause, then a crackle of sound. Faint pops and a quiet hiss from a recording taken directly from the vinyl. A long-dead hoof flicked the strings of a forgotten guitar, strumming a strutting melody that made Rainbow gently bob her head in time. The smooth surface of her pillow rustled in her ear as she recited the words he used to sing to her.
“Bye-bye love,” she smiled, letting herself go. “Bye-bye happiness… hello, loneliness...”








Aurora’s hind leg hitched up, ready to kick. “Ow! Would you quit moving it?”
Several ponies looked their way as Rusty and a pile of other ghouls helped strap the strongest of the former slaves to their freshly commandeered wagons. The sun was creeping over the horizon now and the bulk of Kiln was either loitering outside the encampment or milling the streets at the edge of town in hopes of seeing the caravan when it departed. 
Half a dozen wagons, carefully scoured of any markings that would identify the slaver guilds who owned them, waited in a line that ended at the same gate Ginger had led Aurora and Roach through hours earlier. Those ponies who could walk were asked to do so in order to make room in the wagons for those who couldn't. There was enough food, water and medicine to get them to Blinder’s Bluff and more than enough weapons to defend themselves with. From there, their fate would be up to them. 
"You'll be fine," Roach rumbled. 
Aurora narrowed her eyes as she caught a glimpse of Roach rolling his. The medical supplies hoarded by the slavers had been abundant, but what they hadn’t stashed away were time or gurneys. They would have to take their Rad-Away while they walked. 
Roach bit the rubber tubing he’d wrapped around her thigh and gave it another firm tug, cinching the knot and earning another displeased grunt from his patient.
Pinned against her hide was a standard IV port that came packaged with most bags of Rad-Away, much like the one currently hanging from a length of twine he’d secured to the strap of her saddlebag. Brownish fluid trickled from the bag, fed through several loops of excess tubing and flowed through the flexible needle into Aurora's vein.
“I think you complained less when that feral took a chunk out of your leg,” he said, stepping back to inspect his work.
“I passed out,” she retorted.
“Well, there is that,” he agreed as he double-checked to make sure the line was flowing. "I'm not wrong, though."
Aurora stared daggers at him.
“It’s a little slapdash, but if you can refrain from dancing for the next hour it should hold up.” He gave her ribs a thump with the back of his hoof and quickly turned his attention to Ginger before Aurora could throttle him. “Any issues with yours?”
Ginger wrinkled her nose at the needle clinging to her lower thigh and the heavily worn saddlebags bearing down on her hips. “Dare I ask where you came up with this?”
Aurora lifted her leg up and forward like a cat wearing a boot it wasn’t particularly fond of and winced at the sensation of the needle resisting the movement.
“Aurora, stop playing with it,” he said. 
She glared at him, but he stared right back. She huffed a breath through her nose and dropped her hoof.
“It’s an old wastelander trick I picked up from a traveller I met, back when everyone was still working out how to survive after the dust settled. Clever stallion named Sandbar who said he learned to rig something like this up whenever he needed to pass through the irradiated zones.” Roach squinted at the needle standing out of Ginger’s thigh. 
It sat a few inches above the leather sheath that kept the thick blade of her newly requisitioned hunting knife from digging into her skin. After the fight they’d been through, and knowing now that her newfound magic was finite, she had no intentions of relying solely on her horn going forward.
Satisfied with his work, Roach nodded his approval. “Sandbar was good company. Bit of a smartass, but he taught me enough tricks to forgive that.”
Aurora took a few experimental steps, feeling her irritation wane a little when the needle didn’t tweak her skin nearly as much as she expected. Picking her rifle off the top of the empty cages, she looked over to the caravan as it readied to depart.
She watched as two ghouls helped strap Quincy into a harness attached to the second wagon, paired with a mare who looked capable of snapping him in half if he got out of line. The look she gave him when he wasn’t paying attention made it clear that was exactly why she was there. He had a fair bit more work to do before his traveling companions trusted him, but Aurora had a feeling he’d get there eventually. Volunteering for the hard work of pulling a wagon full of ponies and supplies was evidence enough that he was trying. She couldn’t help but smile a little at that. 
A leather ball flew out of the wagon, beaning Quincy in the back of the head before bouncing off toward the dismantled tents. The foals responsible squealed with laughter from behind the canvas as a beleaguered mare climbed out to track down their toy.
“Are you sure they’re going to be okay?” she asked, watching as Quincy shot them a smirk in spite of himself.
The strap of her rifle glowed amber and lifted itself over her neck. Ginger drew up beside her to adjust the way it set across her shoulder. “I truly pity anyone who would attack those foals after today,” she said. “Are you worried?”
“How can I not be? They’re just kids. They don’t know what’s out there.” Aurora gave her horn a worried glance. “Ginger, you shouldn’t waste…”
“Dear, this is my magic,” she said in a soft but firm tone that brooked no argument. “I intend to use it how I choose for however long I have it.”
Aurora clenched her jaw with uncertainty.
“This is a gift I’ve been given,” she said, cupping Aurora’s cheek with the flat of her hoof. Aurora softened as Ginger pressed her lips against her cheek in a gentle peck. “Something I intend to share until it’s gone.”
She sighed and nodded, knowing full well it wasn’t her place to decide how Ginger spent what remained of her magic. For all they knew, there was enough left to last her a lifetime. Or she could have spent the last of it helping her put on her rifle. They wouldn’t know until they knew, and despite how easily Ginger seemed to accept that fact, Aurora couldn’t shake the unfairness of it all.
“As for those foals,” she continued, nodding toward the caravan, “they do know what’s out there, and now that includes ponies like us.”
Aurora clasped her hoof in her wing and kissed it. “Yeah. They’re not that bad, either.”
“Are you including the yellow one who had your feathers in her mouth?”
She released Ginger’s hoof and spread her matted and bent primaries apart, trying not to grimace as several clung to one another as if they’d been glued. “I still don’t know how she got behind me.”
As if on cue, Roach appeared beside Ginger with an expectant grin. He tapped his cheek with a cracked hoof. “Hey. Where’s mine?”
Aurora averted her eyes as Ginger latched her foreleg around his neck, giving him a loudly exaggerated kiss on the cheek. “There,” she laughed, “do you feel included now?”
“Almost,” he said, casting his eyes forlornly to the ground. “Aurora’s been giving me the stink-eye.”
“Yeah, A for effort but you’re getting a failing grade on the execution,” she said, stepping away from both of them for emphasis. “I’m not kissing you.”
Roach tracked her with some of the most unsettling puppy-dog eyes she’d ever seen. It was like he was one of those kids, staring unblinkingly into the deepest depths of her very soul, but at least they had irises. “Well, I suppose that’s it,” he said with mock dejection. “I’ll just be your third wheel, then.”
She gave him a wide berth and started toward the gate. “Uh huh. Try not to squeak,” she said, smirking back at them and gesturing with her wing to follow. “Come on. I want to get on the road before we have to say a hundred goodbyes.”
She heard Roach chuckling as they trotted after her. With their saddlebags topped off, the first dose of Rad-Away chasing through their veins and an entire day of walking ahead of them, it was as good a time as any to leave. She was awful with goodbyes. Something told her watching a caravan of ponies who finally had their lives ahead of them again would turn her into a blubbering wreck.
As they neared the head of the wagons, she spotted Rusty talking to a pair of freshly harnessed stallions, the three of them going over the route back to the Bluff for what had to be the tenth time. Since the wagon’s wouldn’t make it over the dried-up riverbed Aurora had to fly Roach and Ginger across, they would be taking a detour to the south where Rusty knew a bridge still stood. It would avoid the main trade route and bend back to the quiet, tree-shielded road that passed by Gallow’s home. With the only threat on that lonely lane taken care of, it would be a relatively safe journey.
Roach broke away and bent toward Rusty, who smiled at his approach. Aurora couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but it was clear he was offering a more personal farewell. After a moment they clasped hooves, thumped one another on the back and returned to their respective tasks.
Aurora eyed him as they left the camp behind, smiling. “Well that didn’t take long.”
He smirked back at her and shrugged. “I could go back and crack open a bottle of Sparkle-Cola with him if you like.”
She mock-laughed in response and swatted him with the flat of her wing. Maybe it was the brightening of the clouds above or the euphoria of knowing they had accomplished something important, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that today would be one of the good days. 
For the first time since leaving her Stable, she could feel them getting close. Baltimare, Stable-Tec HQ and her best chance at finding an ignition talisman stood just beyond the range of mountains in the east. All they had to do is keep moving forward. 
Beyond the wall, ghouls gathered together in clusters to watch the caravan prepare to leave. Some had brought food and drink, picnicking on the irradiated hardpack with friends and neighbors. It was like the old photos in the history books, back when ponies used to gather in the grass to enjoy their countless seasonal celebrations. Aurora found herself wanting to stay here, despite the radiation from the crater or the creatures lurking behind the upturned regolith beyond Kiln. It felt like she was peering through a keyhole, catching a glimpse of a world she’d only read about. 
They backtracked through the dusty cross streets of Kiln, finding their way back to the main road with little trouble. Ginger’s hoofbeats quickly synchronized with her own while Roach’s loping gait provided a not unpleasant disharmony to the crunching path beneath them. 
Kiln’s electric lights had gone dark, unneeded in the growing daylight that seeped through the roof of clouds. Fewer ghouls were out on the main drag now that there was something more interesting happening back at the encampment. After everything that happened, Aurora couldn’t help but feel a little strange as the last hoof-built buildings slid behind them and the flat expanse of the wastes yawned open ahead. Kiln had been intended to be a quick pit-stop. Somewhere to resupply, fill their bellies and rest up before the next leg of their trip. 
They’d done a little more than that, and she already found herself missing the company of the ghouls they were leaving behind.
As Kiln shrank behind them and the hazy slopes of the Pleasant Hills inched higher on the horizon, they fell back into what was becoming a well-worn routine. Roach took point this time, leading them across the cracked terrain back to the old eastward highway. Aurora walked in lockstep with Ginger, occasionally reading a few entries from the hardbound journal she hovered in front of her nose when idle conversation naturally waned. 
Aurora had caught enough snippets of looping cursive to know the journal had belonged to a zebra filly from before the war, detailing the day-to-day struggles of a young mare blissfully unaware of what was coming.
After a stretch, Ginger clapped the covers together and slid the journal back into her saddlebag.
“Anything interesting?” Aurora asked.
Ginger paused before answering. “She made a pony friend at school. It seems to be going well.”
She snorted. “That’s pretty vague.”
“Something of a necessity, dear,” she said, glancing at Roach. Before Aurora could ask what she meant, Ginger slowed until she could press her nose between Aurora’s ribs and feathers. Without needing to be asked, she lifted her wing and settled it across Ginger’s shoulders.
“Cold?” she asked.
Ginger sidled against her. “It’s a little brisk.”
They walked side by side for several miles, parting only briefly to navigate the wider fissures in the highway or slip by the rusting remains of a carriage. Aurora noticed that they were coming across more of those than before, sometimes mingled together where two drivers had somehow come together at speed on this lonely expanse of road.
“I wonder what it was like,” Ginger said after another rusting wreck slipped behind them. “Sitting inside a machine and telling it where to go.”
“It’s not much different than a wagon, only gas carriages were a lot faster,” Roach said.
“You’ve driven one?” Aurora asked.
Roach tipped his head to the side. “I rode in one, once, and it scared me half to death. I stuck to flying after.”
Ginger opened her mouth to comment, but yipped surprise at the sudden chirp that came from her foreleg. Face pinched with fresh embarrassment, she glanced down at the Pip-Buck still clinging to her leg and the cheerfully cartoonish mare winking up at her from the little screen.
She squinted at the narrow green letters the tiny mare stood on top of. “It says ‘connection reestablished.’”
“We’re far enough from the crater for it to find Stable-Tec’s signal again,” Roach said.
Aurora cast a glance to the flat expanse of dirt and blast debris beyond the highway. “That means there’s another Stable nearby.”
“It’s probably one of the dozen or so Stables buried under the hills,” he agreed, gesturing toward the range ahead. “Must mean one or more of them are still active.”
“Think one of them might have a spare ignition talisman?” Aurora asked.
Roach looked back at her, eyebrow raised. “Did ours?”
She watched him, unsure how to answer that. It was the first time she’d ever heard him refer to Stable 10 as anything other than hers. Something passed across his eyes like discomfort, and he faced forward.
“There's a new message from Sledge,” Ginger said, the Pip-Buck hovering in front of her where she could better read it. “Do you want the long or abridged version?”
Aurora glanced at the wall of text flickering on the screen and winced. “Give me the highlights.”
Ginger took some time to skim ahead. “He says he’s going to move Blue to your compartment until you get back. She’s going to help someone named Opal unlock a cache of files owned by someone else named Spitfire.” She looked up at Aurora for clarification.
“Opal’s our Head of I.T. and Spitfire was Ten’s original overmare,” she said, wrinkling her nose with confusion. “Sledge shouldn’t need help opening anything, though. He’s the overstallion.”
“He doesn’t go into much detail on the subject,” Ginger said, scanning the lines a second time.
“Given what I told him about Coldbrook, I don’t blame him. What else does he say?”
“He says they’re making good progress building a containment system for the talisman, and to tell the unicorn from the access tunnel… I presume that’s you, Roach... thank you on Blue’s behalf. Her condition has been improving since she was brought inside, and…”
Ginger paused, narrowing her eyes at the screen.
“And?” Aurora coaxed.
She shook her head, her eyes focusing on the reflection as she slowly tilted the glass screen to one side. “Don’t stop walking and don’t look up. There’s a pegasus circling above us.”
Aurora and Roach bristled. Not good.
“How far up?” she asked.
“Hard to tell,” Ginger said, narrowing her eyes at the dark speck that wheeled in the sky’s reflection. “A mile, maybe less.”
“Close enough to drop a bullet with some accuracy,” Roach muttered, the stubs of his ears going flat. “Aurora, you’ve got the wings. How do you want to play this?”
She shook her head, the urge to look up like resisting a physical force. “No idea. I can’t shoot while I’m flying, and I don’t know what they’ll do if they see me taking off.”
“We don’t have cover, either,” Ginger said, scanning the flatlands and coming up woefully short of anything that might provide an overhang. “If they’re hostile, they’re not going to let us make it all the way back to Kiln.”
“The only reason they wouldn’t be hostile is if they’re another dustwing,” Roach said. “Even then, they could be a raider scout. I’ve seen it before.”
Even the good news was bad news. Aurora set her jaw and stopped walking. As she slipped her wing through the hooks of her rifle, she noticed the concerned looks from Ginger and Roach. “Relax, I just want to see who we’re dealing with. For all we know, that’s a buzzard up there.”
“Buzzards died out a century ago,” Roach said.
She shrugged the butt of Desperate Times against her shoulder and sat on the concrete to steady herself, hefting the heavy barrel skyward. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Keeping her feathers away from the trigger allowed her to keep the rifle relatively steady, balancing on her shoulder much in the same way her classmates used to balance broomsticks on the flat of their hooves. It was awkward, and peering through the sights at an endless expanse of clouds was disorienting at first, but eventually a dark shape slipped across the crosshairs. She held her breath and chased it until it reappeared, vaguely green and misshapen by the fluttering edges of what looked like some sort of clothing.
She frowned, wishing this highway had a concrete meridian she could use to brace herself against. At this angle the pegasus was banking away from them, forelegs tucked in as it gyred above them. No, not it. Definitely a she. That, or the most unfortunately equipped stallion this side of Equestria. Aurora felt a bit of heat rising in her cheeks, but there was nothing to be done about it now. The forest green coat and black tail clicked somewhere in the back of her head, and the rest of the puzzle fell rapidly into place.
“Oh, you’re not going to believe this,” Aurora half-groaned.
As she continued to bank, the mare’s face came into view. Her mouth was moving a mile a minute, every other syllable beginning with a very pronounced F. Aurora could count all the wasteland ponies who fit that description on exactly one hoof.
She lowered her rifle and sighed. “It’s Julip."







“Hey, Aurora. Remember me? I was in the neighborhood and fucking fuck that’s stupid.”
Julip glanced down at the distant stretch of highway and the three figures slowly making their way across it. Why the fuck did this have to be so hard? She was a representative of the Enclave, arguably one of those most well-connected mares this far east of New Canterlot, not the welcome wagon for some old timey friendship party.
Just go down there, explain why you’re here and see what they say, she told herself.
Easier said than fucking done.
Were this mission given to her by anyone other than Minister Primrose, Julip would have found some way to weasel out of it by now. What did they expect her to say?
“Hi, my name’s Mint Julip but everyone just calls me Julip. I know you rescued me and all but my boss told me to come back and tag along so I can make sure you don’t get your pureblood aerosolized by a shitass fucking landmine.” She pumped her wings and laughed miserably into the wind. “Oh and please tell your unicorn not to fucking pop me like a grape. Yeah, that’ll fucking work.”
If she weren’t five thousand feet off the ground, she’d kick herself for not pulling off this band-aid earlier. It would have been easier back at that dive bar in Ghoultown, but it was too late now. They were sobered up and probably on high alert after their massacre at the slave depot.
She wasn’t even sure what to think about that. What was the point of freeing perfectly good slaves? Most of them would wind up selling themselves back into indenture once they realized how hard it was living on their own. The Dressage mare had to know that, given her history. Why roll the dice with their own lives just to uncollar ponies who were only going to wind up wearing a new one later?
A thought occurred to her. Maybe she should scout ahead. The Pleasant Hills were a known hunting ground for raiders and other creepies. Maybe if she waited long enough Aurora might stumble too close to one of their camps. It could be a prime opportunity for Julip to swoop in and rescue them, or at the very least keep her target safe while the others served as a distraction. It would definitely cut past the awkward hello-I-was-stalking-you while making it clear that she could be trusted.
It was risky, sure, but then again welcome to the fucking wasteland.
She sharpened her bank, cruising in a tight arc that kept the three of them in clear view. Her wings were going to feel like jelly after today, and that was only if all this gliding didn’t bore her to death first. She squinted as she turned into the west wind, verifying that her targets were still moving.
She frowned. They’d stopped.
And there were only two of them.
“Aw, fuck,” she spat, scanning the road ahead and behind to see who had gone missing. This high up, they were just shapes against the terrain. Maybe one had wandered off to water the molerats. Or maybe they were too close together for her to trust her eyes to pick them apart. Grimacing, she began a shallow descent to verify.
A grey shadow whipped past her, startling a yelp out of her as it broke its ascent and began banking down toward her.
“Aw, fuck,” Julip moaned, recognizing the monochrome mare with growing dismay.
Aurora Pinfeathers wobbled slightly as she worked to match her speed and angle of descent, coming close enough that she risked swatting Julip’s wing out from under her. Julip clenched her jaw for a moment, swallowing the parade of fucks marching circles around her tongue, and met the eyes of a pureblood pegasus who had an arguably better reason to look as irritated as she did.
“Hey there, Julip!” she called into the wind. The tight pleasantness in her voice made it very clear how unhappy she was. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Goddesses, what did I do to deserve this?
She couldn’t bring herself to wear a fake smile, so she didn’t. She couldn’t believe she let Aurora catch her red-feathered. “Actually,” she called back, hesitating to even say the words, “it’s the other way around. I’m here to help you.”
Just let me read you this helpful fucking pamphlet. “The Enclave & U.”
Unsurprisingly, Aurora responded with skepticism. Her eyes dipped to the submachine gun slung tight around her shoulder. “Is that what you’re doing up here?”
Julip muttered a phrase of many colors into the wind. This whole thing was blown. At least now she didn’t have to worry about being subtle.
“I was given orders to locate and protect you,” she said, cringing on every word.
“By who? The Enclave?”
Our pamphlet has all sorts of information to help you accept assistance from your friends in New Canterlot.
She nodded. “Can we talk on the ground?”
Aurora shrugged. “I want that rifle when we land.”
“It’s not a rifle, it’s a compact…” Julip stopped herself before she could dig herself a deeper hole. “Fine, yes. If it makes you feel safer.”
“It does, thank you.”
Aurora dipped into a sharp descent, leading her toward the section of highway where her companions waited. Julip stared after her, perplexed as the mare flared her wings at too shallow an angle, causing her hooves to strike the pavement fast enough to force her into a skidding gallop. It was like watching a foal learning how to land for the first time, except foals usually had a parent around to keep them from snapping their legs in half.
By some stroke of dumb luck, Aurora stumbled to a stop without turning herself into a pancake. Julip kept her mouth shut as she gave her wings a series of hard flaps, bleeding off the last of her momentum until her hind legs touched the road.
Ginger and the ghoul watched her with open mistrust, the ex-slaver’s horn lit while the ghoul kept some sort of shotgun contraption fixed to his leg aimed just a few inches off her left shoulder. She waited for Aurora to backtrack from her botched landing and bowed her neck so that she could lift her weapon off by the strap.
“I’ll need that back when we’re done,” she said.
Aurora slung her weapon across her own shoulder and stepped back toward her friends. “We’ll see,” she said. “Right now, let’s talk about why you’re here and how you intend to help us.”
Disarmed and caught out, she didn’t have much choice. The only way this could get any worse was if one of her compatriots decided now to pilot a sprite-bot within recording range to watch her make an ass of herself.
“Well,” she sighed, plopping her backside onto the road. “Where to fucking start?”









October 31st, 1075

	“I should get going, sugarcube. It’s already past midnight.”
Rainbow pressed the bridge of her muzzle against the underside of Applejack’s neck, wedging herself a little deeper into that nook she’d been waiting more than twenty years to finally explore. She offered up a noise of complaint, hardly more than a sigh, and tightened her wing around the apricot coat of Applejack's midsection.
Her house was a mess, but it smelled amazing. Better than it did after flinging the windows open at the first break of winter. True to her roots, Applejack had come prepared, lugging in an old cooler filled with the essential ingredients for fried okra, tomato salad and something she called chicken fried steak, though it contained neither chicken or steak. Despite the migration of gryphon cuisine into Equestria, Applejack hadn’t yet brought herself to the point of eating another creature's meat, though the flavoring that came with the protein substitute had undoubtedly weakened that resolve by another degree.
The cherry on top had been the wide-bottomed bottle of cider she plunked down on the granite countertop. The Apple Family farm may not be owned or managed by Apples anymore, but that didn’t deter the Ponyville Historical Society from doing their best to keep the tradition alive. While it didn’t have the same taste that came with the oaken casks she remembered, the contents of the bottle branded with their iconic purple barn was sinfully good.
That bottle was empty now, and had been for the better part of a few hours. There had been just enough for the both of them to get to that happy middle between pleasantly buzzed and revealing their darkest secrets to the neighbor’s cat. They ate, drank and caught up on everything they had missed since taking on their ministries. It turned out there was a lot to catch up on. Enough so that the conversation had migrated from the dining room, tried its best to reach the bedroom before giving into impatience halfway and landing on the couch.
Rainbow inhaled, tasting the tangy scent of Applejack’s sweat mingled with the fruity aroma of her morning conditioner. It had been a good night.
Screw that. It had been a great night.
“Hey,” Applejack said, patting her on the shoulder. “I really do gotta get up.”
“Mm. Stay,” Rainbow murmured.
The mare beside her chuckled, a low and jovial noise that made all of the best parts of Rainbow’s brain light up like a little firework show. As she began to sit up, Rainbow let out a pleasantly tired groan that had nothing to do with the time of night. Applejack hooked her foreleg around the crook of her wing and gave her a gentle tug, urging her up.
She relented, allowing herself to be pulled off the couch. Her knees wobbled a bit as she found her balance. Applejack was already halfway across the living room, her hips performing a delightful sashay as she stepped into the dining room.
An unusually rational thought surfaced in her mind as she followed. “Don’t touch the dishes. I’ll do them later.”
She found Applejack at her modest little dining room table, a gift from her parents when she moved away to her first home in Cloudsdale. That seemed like ages ago, yet the medallion shaped table still held up. Two plates, the smears of their first meal now cooled and solidified, sat amongst the equally forgotten dishes clustered in the center. Rainbow felt a slight pang of guilt for letting good food get cold, but their priorities had… shifted.
“Hey,” she said, entering the dining room. “I said I’ll do the dishes.”
Applejack nodded, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes were glued to the red and green-pinstriped Pip-Buck she’d lifted off the table, now hanging off her hooftip.
“Everything okay?”
Applejack offered an almost imperceptible shake of her head and secured her Pip-Buck around her foreleg. “Don’t rightly know yet,” she said, dropping her haunches to the floor to free up her other hoof. “Want to guess why I have seventeen unread messages from Trixie?”
Rainbow blinked confusion. “Seventeen?”
“And now there’s one from Twilight,” she groaned, scrolling down the list to the earliest one. She tapped it open and skimmed the first line, her expression hardening. “Son of a… Dash, I gotta get to the Pillar. She says she blew up the fabricators.”
“Need some backup?”
Applejack shut off her Pip-Buck. “Not as bad as she does.”







The elevator ride to the Ministry of Technology’s deeply buried manufacturing wing was nerve-wracking. Applejack grew quiet as she gathered herself for whatever she was about to walk into, taking comfort in knowing Rainbow was beside her in case she needed extra help.
When the doors opened, a murky haze of dust slid into the car. Two ponies armed with slender black long guns stood outside like statues, their eyes flicking to the newly arrived mares and then to the rest of the elevator to ensure it was empty. Applejack strode past them without so much as a greeting. Rainbow followed close behind.
She heard yelling well before they arrived at what was left of FABRICATION L1. 
Steel panels from the lab’s exterior wall lay in the corridor like toppled dominoes kicked out by some monstrous force, liberally coated with shards of material that had once been desks, terminals and the ministry’s precious fabricators. More armed ponies stood on either side of the wreckage to prevent anyone from getting too close while a half dozen dazed technicians loitered on the far side of the cordoned-off area, staring across the debris field at the enraged alicorn that Applejack trotted toward.
Twilight stood over Trixie like an enraged goddess, stabbing her hoof at the destruction as she railed.
Rainbow matched Applejack as she picked up her pace, both hurrying to intervene before Twilight did or said something she might regret.
“...any idea how far this sets us back? Months! Months we don’t fucking have, Trixie! In what universe did you think it would be okay to treat this facility as your fucking playground? You might not have a family to go home to, but those ponies…”
Applejack interrupted her. “Twilight, that’s plenty.”
Twilight turned, glaring at Applejack and then to Rainbow.
She leveled a purple feather at Trixie, still riding the height of her anger. “I’m not done with her yet.”
Applejack’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. She deliberately came to a stop directly in front of the alicorn, positioning herself between her and the shamefaced blue mare sitting with her nose pointed to the floor. “You are. Last time I checked, this is my ministry.”
“And I felt the explosion through the floor of mine,” Twilight hissed. “She could’ve killed someone.”
Applejack looked to Trixie. “Is anyone dead?”
The mare shook her head so quickly that the singed tips of her otherwise white mane fell into her lap like snow. “I evacuated the lab before it went off.”
She turned back to Twilight. “There. No fatalities,” she said, brusquely adding, “That means I don’t need your help kicking a dog when it’s down.”
Twilight gave her a disgusted look and gestured past her with her wing. “She set off a bomb that destroyed four fabricators!”
“Then sit your purple ass down over there,” Applejack snapped, pointing a hoof the way they had come, “and let me talk to her.”
For a long, quiet moment Twilight stared at her as if she were preparing to say something. To her relief, she relented and walked sullenly to where Rainbow waited a few steps away.
Applejack sat herself down in front of Trixie, using her hoof to bring her chin up so she could see the extent of her injuries. The unicorn didn’t resist, allowing her to turn her head left, then right. A thin trickle of blood had traced a line out of her left ear and was mottled grey with the dust still lingering in the air. She delicately held her foreleg in her lap, limp as a marionette with a cut string.
Her eyes settled on the oddly twisted limb. “Is it broken?” she asked.
Trixie shook her head, her voice breaking. “Dislocated. I don’t know how to set it back.”
“Can’t say I do, either,” she said, frowning down both ends of the corridor. “How come Medical isn’t down here already?”
Twilight piped up, her tone distant. “I wanted to talk to her first.”
“Are you…” Applejack caught herself, her expression hard as she glared back at her. “Go. Get. Medical.”
She watched as Twilight set her jaw and looked away. Her horn flared and with a flash of displaced air, she was gone. Seconds later, she reappeared right where she had been, along with two unicorns toting a pair of bright red medic bags behind her. They staggered in place for a moment, evidently unprepared for the abrupt teleportation, before steadying themselves and heading toward the damage.
One of them spotted the technicians on the other side of the outwardly bulged stretch of wall and broke off, banging her way over the destroyed panels toward them.
Applejack fought the urge to scowl at Twilight, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. She made room for the medic as he dropped his bag next to Trixie. For several minutes, they waited as he asked her questions she should have been asked much earlier. They learned that the blast had thrown her as she urged the last technicians out, throwing her into the far wall with the rest of the debris.
All the while, Trixie chewed on the inside of her lip, fighting back tears.
“I didn’t think this would happen,” she said, glancing up at Applejack as they waited. “You’re not going to fire me, are you?”
Applejack wasn’t sure enough to give her a straight answer. “You need to tell me what happened, Trixie. What were you trying to do?”
She winced as the stallion probed her shoulder with the tip of his hoof, then gently wrapped her dangling limb in a white aura. With a confident, fluid movement, he sank her shoulder back into its socket. The pain was bright and brief, forcing a gasp out of her before quickly subsiding.
“Trixie,” Applejack pressed.
“Follow the light with your eyes,” the medic said, lifting a pen light to her face while holding her chin still.
She glanced at Applejack before relenting and tracking the light’s movement. “I ran a schematic through the fabricators to… test a theory,” she said.
Applejack could sense the nervousness in her voice. “Okay,” she said. “What kind of theory are we talking about?”
She blinked rapidly when the medic clicked his light off, her eyes flicking briefly to Twilight before coming back to her. “Magical theory.”
Twilight visibly stiffened but Applejack held a hoof out, motioning her to wait. “Just give me the nuts and bolts, hon. What happened?”
“It’s hard to explain without my notes. I was trying to design a…” she glanced at the medic, then looked meaningfully at Applejack. “A stone. Like the two we’ve been studying.”
A talisman. “I’m following you so far. Was it supposed to do…” Applejack gestured to the ruined lab behind her, “...that?”
Trixie swallowed. “No! I promise, it wasn’t supposed to do anything! I didn’t think they were even capable of…” she stopped to compose herself, closing her eyes until her nerves settled. “Last week, I was bored and started looking through the data we had on the stones, and I noticed a pattern in the thermal scans we took when they were first brought down. Wherever there was a hook formation in the internal structure, there was a coinciding heat spike nestled into the upstream side of the flow. A pocket of high pressure where the magic was being disrupted.”
Applejack frowned a little. “You’re starting to lose me.”
Trixie lit her horn, forming a hoofball-sized bubble of aura between them. With her uninjured leg, she swiped her hoof back and forth through the pink haze. “We always assumed magic was a manifestation of force. Not a physical thing. According to the best research we have, it doesn’t have mass or experience pressure. It just is.”
She stared at Applejack’s blank expression and grimaced, searching for a simpler explanation. Gently, and to the consternation of the medic checking her over, she lifted her other hoof and slowly pressed them together through her magic. “It doesn't have hydraulic properties, so it can’t be compressed.”
That, she understood. “Okay, but you think it can be.”
“I know it can!” she nodded. “I-I’ve seen it! I’ve done flow tests and run my numbers past the other techs. I’ve even scanned my own horn while I’m casting! It’s ludicrous that we haven’t thought to do this earlier! I saw the same temperature spikes in the pores of my own marrow and I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s part of the reason why some unicorns can cast stronger spells than others!”
“Alright, alright! Slow down!” she said, and looked to the medic. “Is it possible you can give us a minute?”
The stallion gave Trixie a final glance before nodding and stepping away.
“Okay,” she said. “I get that you’ve been thinking about whatever this is for a while, but let’s talk about what made that lab explode. From what I can gather, you’re saying you figured out a method to pressurize magic to… what, make a bomb?”
Trixie pursed her lips and blinked irritation at the ceiling. “I wasn’t trying to make a bomb. I wanted to see if a talisman, made properly, could act as a vessel to gather and store magic.” She pointed a hoof over Applejack’s shoulder toward Twilight. “And for the record, I will have you know that I succeeded!”
“Careful,” Twilight murmured.
“What practical application is there in storing magic?” Applejack asked.
Trixie leaned toward her, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Why do we store electricity?”
Applejack paused, then blinked. “It's a battery.”
“That was the plan, at least,” she hedged, mindful of the charred remains of the workspace behind her. “But this proves my theory is sound! I may have miscalculated the rate of magical flow into the talisman, but the fact that it exploded without any external influence proves there are internal structures that passively collect and store naturally-occurring magic! It worked.”
“Land’s sake,” she breathed. 
Bottled magic, in the most literal sense. It could change everything. Revolutionize not just the war, but Equestrian industry on a fundamental level. The ability to pull power from thin air was the dream of the solar sector, one that had floundered since the moment Princess Celestia sniffed out its existence and leaned in hard to stifle it.
Applejack stared at the gaping wound torn through the side of her corridor. This was a different beast entirely. It could be the equivalent of the day the first unicorn harnessed magic. A magical-mechanical bridge that could redefine the foundation of technological progress. Her mind whirled with possibility. 
“Trixie,” she said, “you’re a damned genius.”
The blue mare’s chest swelled with pride.
“Once Medical clears you, I want to see your notes on this project,” she said. “All of it. You're going to walk me through every step until I understand everything you do.”
Trixie nodded eagerly, then slowed as her eyes shifted to the pony looming over Applejack’s shoulder.
“You’re going to need the princesses’ approval before any of this moves forward,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes at Trixie. “This feels like the Alicorn Amulet all over again.”
“What? Twilight, that was more than twenty years ago!” Trixie snapped.
“And Tirek waited thousands before he returned,” Twilight countered. "Don't pretend you have a spotless track record."
"I've bent over backwards to make up for what I did!"
Twilight took a step forward. "Bend more."
Before she had a chance to get ahead of her, Applejack got to her hooves to position herself between the two mares. “Both of you calm down right now!”
Twilight inched toward Applejack, staring past her. “I’m very calm.”
Her voice dipped low. “Twilight. Walk away before we have words.”
One beat. 
Two. 
Twilight’s nose wrinkled with disgust and she turned away with a harsh flick of her tail.
“I want to talk to you later,” Applejack called after her.
She watched as Rainbow moved out of Twilight's path, the click of her hooves muffled by the dust settling on the floor. 
“I’ll add it to my schedule,” she replied.
Her horn flashed, and for the first time Applejack could remember, she flinched. A flicker of lavender light and she was gone, leaving a wisp of dust whirling in the air where she vanished.
> Chapter 21: Disharmony
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 2nd, 1075

Her ears pivoted toward the slow, heavy plodding of hooves. A sheet of old parchment clung to the corner of her lip when she lifted her head, eyes slitted while her sleep-deprived brain stuttered back into motion.
She inhaled deeply with a barely stifled yawn. Her neck was sore, the product of once again falling asleep on the plush rugs of her private library tucked below the Ministry of Arcane Science. The quill she’d been using to draft a formal letter to Celestia regarding Trixie’s fiasco lay crushed beneath her shoulder, a bit-sized spot of black ink staining her coat as well as the imported fabric. 
It had been nearly three days since the explosion that destroyed a ministry laboratory, and she still couldn’t decide on how to broach the issue with Celestia. Now that she’d already threatened to bring their talisman research to the princesses for review, she had no choice but to follow through. Magical research was the purview of her ministry, not Applejack’s. The fact that Trixie was flaunting that while facing no consequences for her little catastrophes made Twilight’s blood boil.
“Uh, Twilight? Are you down here?”
She rubbed the ridge of her wing across her nose and sat up, squinting in the direction of the unusually deep yet familiar voice. At the foot of the stairs, flanked on either side by shelves stacked high with thick books and brittle scrolls, Big Mac’s head peeked over the final step.
He was breathing hard, his amber mane clinging to him like a wet mop. He looked like he’d just cleared his family’s entire orchard by himself. Twice.
She pushed herself the rest of the way off the floor with a twinge of genuine worry. The door to her private staircase was charmed to open for him, however the “him” in question had been a good two feet shorter and half as wide when she cast the spell. The stallion stepping into her library stood a full head above her, something she hadn’t experienced since growing into her alicorn body.
“Something’s wrong with the spell,” he said, thudding toward her.
Twilight shoved aside her exhaustion as she hurried toward him, her hoof slapping aside a book unfortunate enough to be caught in her way. 
“Stop. Sit,” she said, careful not to allow her concern to show.
He knew the drill by now, swallowing thickly as he dropped his haunches to the floor and bringing himself eye level with her. He was right. Something was wrong, but it couldn’t be from her spell. She went over the stages and permutations enough times that she would bet her horn she had it right. Something had to be interacting with it.
She pressed the flat of her hoof beneath his jaw, feeling his pulse. Nothing abnormal there, but his skin was hot to the touch. “When did this start?”
He swung his head side to side like an anvil on a hinge. “Ain’t rightly sure when it started. I noticed it a few days ago. Got stuck in AJ’s armor prototype. Just been gettin’ worse since.”
She lit her horn and tipped his chin down. “Look to the side?” 
He did, and she spotted the barest hint of yellowing around the rim of his eyes. “Have you been eating anything? Drinking?”
“I’ve been eatin’ just fine,” he said. His ear dipped so subtly she nearly didn’t notice it. Just a whiff of irritation seeping through the otherwise stalwart stallion. “It’s your spell that’s doin’ this, not the haycakes.”
She released his chin, turning her attention to the thick mats of sweat-dampened hair down the ridge of his back. His skin twitched like he was beset by flies, trying to shake off the slow moving droplets. He was nervous. 
“I’m just checking some boxes,” she said. “How are you feeling right now?”
“Hot,” he said. “And cold. Like I got a fever without bein’ sick. I feel fine but I know I ain’t.”
She reached out with her magic as she listened, feeling the thrum of the spell she’d cast on him over a week prior. It still flowed through him like a hundred tiny rivers, eddying through his biology just like they had discussed it would. Her magic swarmed around his hips and hind knees, drawn most powerfully toward the years of slow, steady damage he’d built up in his joints. As far as she could tell, it was working exactly as she had constructed it. 
A simple seek-and-repair spell, or at least that was what she would call it once it was ready to publish. Advanced healing that would not only repair current injuries, but actively seek out new ones for the duration of the spell. The version she’d cast on Big Mac was designed to work slowly and delicately, and had at least another week before it fizzled out. Less if he happened to hurt himself. Here in Equestria, a conjuration like this could be worth billions to the right company. Something to consider once she had a fast-acting form of it to work with. 
A charm with that much potential would be headed straight to the front lines once it was perfected. No more hiding in trenches. No more reports of front line commanders too afraid to engage the enemy for fear of losing a few measly yards of mud. Thanks to a painstakingly designed blend of Equestrian magic and the regenerative DNA harvested from a species of lizard discovered in the Badlands, her spell would make it possible to send a swarm of ponies straight into the melee, unafraid of bullets, blades or the hideous effects of blindweed. Vhanna, faced with a rejuvenated, quick-healing enemy, would have no choice but to surrender or be overwhelmed.
She dimmed her magic and squeezed his sweaty shoulder between her feathers. “My spell is telling your body to heal things it didn’t know needed healing, and the fever and sweats are likely just a natural biological reaction to the process,” she said. “You’re going to be fine.”
Big Mac didn’t look convinced. “Twilight, I’m the size of a barn.”

I have eyes too, she thought. “It’s very likely a side-effect, I’ll admit,” she said, hoping to ease some of his discomfort. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. All of the growth spells I’ve dabbled with are generally harmless and tend to be short-lived. My best guess is you came across something that reacted to my magic. It’ll be a little more uncomfortable than we initially thought, but it’s best we let this run its course.”
He frowned at the rug beneath his hooves and blew out an agitated sigh. “If you say so.”
“Hey,” she said, bending down a little until he met her eye. “I’ll take a look over my notes this afternoon and see if I can find any imperfections with the spell, but there’s a chance that this just might be what has to happen for it to work. I know you’ll tough this out, Big Mac. You’re going to save lives.”
A spark of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, then faded just as quickly. “I’m not doin’ this for the war, Twilight.”
Twilight went still for a brief moment and pretended not to have heard him. “You look exhausted. If you want, I can get some extra blankets and clear out a spot in the library so you can get some rest. I can check on you in the morning and see if you’ve stopped… swelling.”
Big Mac turned to survey her library as if he were deciding, even though he already knew his answer. The stallion had been infatuated with her since the day she got her wings, and Twilight was relatively certain the attraction was less of an emotional connection and something closer to a personal proclivity of his. The feeling had never been mutual, something she’d made sure he knew early on, but some flames are hard to snuff. While she would never say it outloud, Twilight suspected that one-way attraction had played a large part in Sugar Belle’s decision to leave him.
“I guess some sleep couldn’t hurt,” he said.
She set him up on a white divan Rarity had brought down as a gift not long after the six of them took their posts within the Pillar. Big Mac dwarfed the mostly decorative bit of furniture. Its wooden frame creaked under his substantial weight, but it held, bowing as his hind legs dangled off the far end like a colt who had outgrown his foalhood bed.
While Big Mac settled in, Twilight gathered her aborted letters to Celestia from the nook she’d dozed off in and checked the time.
The wall clock above the stairs marked a few minutes before two in the morning. She grimaced. There was no point in going back to sleep now. Not when she was expected to be up in a few short hours to keep the unicorns in her ministry from finding new and creative ways to burn it down. She considered sitting down to finish her letter or perhaps get a head start on reviewing the spell Big Mac had volunteered to test, but he needed to rest and she knew he’d get around to misinterpreting her invitation for him to stay, given enough time. Best to be somewhere else when he did.
“I’m going to head out for a bit,” she said.
Half-asleep already, Big Mac mumbled something that sounded like “okay.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours to check on you,” she added, forming a tiny bubble of magic around her papers and quill. It popped, and they were gone, dropped into the locked drawer of her desk two floors above. It wouldn’t help the situation for him to come across a formal complaint over his sister’s ministry.
A second sphere of magic shimmered around her as the image of her destination formed in her mind. Somewhere secluded where she could sit down and disconnect from the world for a little while. Canterlot Garden sounded nice.
With Big Mac softly snoring at the far end of her library, she released the spell and vanished.







“I don’t trust her,” Roach said in his low, permanent rasp. He shrugged, emphasizing how hollow Julip’s convenient story rang with him. “The Steel Rangers wanting to harvest our Stable for tech, that I can believe.”
Aurora pursed her lips at the mention of Elder Coldbrook’s threat and glanced at the Pip-Buck still resting above Ginger’s hoof. Then she looked west, back down the highway where Julip stood unarmed, waiting for their answer.
“What doesn’t make sense is this story that the Enclave, who keep in mind make it their mission to hunt down and exterminate ghouls and dustwings since the dawn of armageddon, would send one of their own agents halfway across Equestria to render aid to the three of us, sight unseen.”
He leaned against the chassis of a burned-out carriage, the ancient steel complaining as he gestured to where Julip waited. “There’s obviously something she’s not telling us.”
Ginger sat sideways in the passenger’s seat, nodding in agreement as she kicked a bit of broken asphalt with the rim of her hoof. It skittered off across the travel lane and dropped into a dust-filled fissure. “It’s somewhat suspicious that the Enclave would send only her,” she said. “That’s assuming they did send her at all. She could be a deserter hoping we might be the ones to protect her.”
Aurora chewed her lip thoughtfully, the cool concrete slowly sapping the heat from her flank. She had no doubt Julip was omitting some details, but some of what she said seemed to have a grain of truth buried below the surface. The way she referred to her as pureblood, the word tumbling out of her mouth like an apology, felt genuine. Once they had stepped away, Roach and Ginger both verified that the Enclave’s figurehead was known to hold unadulterated pegasi genes in the highest regard.
The question she seemed unwilling or unable to answer was what the Enclave wanted in return for their assistance. Julip insisted that the Enclave only wanted to see Stable 10 continue, uninterrupted, and untainted by the radiation and disease of the wasteland. It was such a selfless offer, it almost sounded noble. Almost.
Which was exactly the reason why she didn’t buy it. There was a piece missing somewhere, and the fact that Julip was trying to hide it made the mane on her neck stand on end.
“I believe her when she says she’s Enclave,” Aurora said. “Back at the array, she shared some pretty colorful opinions about Autumn and me that fit the way you described them. I feel like we ended up parting on okay terms, but I don’t buy that she’s here just to be my volunteer bodyguard. She’s trying to keep a few cards up her sleeve and I don’t like it.”
Roach looked to Ginger, then Aurora. “Then we’re in agreement.”
They were. Aurora stood up and lifted a wing, signalling Julip to come back over. The moss colored pegasus trotted toward them, her ears standing forward as she glanced briefly over to Ginger and Roach. There was the faintest glint of dislike in her eye when she made eye contact with the ghoul which Aurora did her best not to notice.
“So,” she said, “our answer is no. We don’t need the Enclave’s help.”
They watched Julip close her eyes and exhale a quiet, choice profanity. “You do understand that I can’t go back home with a no, right?”
“That’s not our problem,” Roach said.
“I wasn’t speaking…” she stopped, turning her attention to Aurora. “Look, I wasn’t sent all the way out here to hurt you. This isn’t a thing where I stab you in the back, steal your caps and leave you the raiders.”
She pointed a green feather past them, toward the nearby hills. “Which there are a shitload of in there, by the way. You’re the first pureblooded pegasi to walk on Equestrian soil since the bombs. Everything the Enclave stands for demands that we keep you safe.”
Ginger lifted an eyebrow at Roach, who shrugged. “If she’s that important then why did they send only one of you?”
Julip regarded her with irritation. “How would you have reacted if an entire flight of pegasi you never met landed at your hooves? It’s hard enough for one pegasus to hide their wings without being noticed, let alone three. I got sent back out here because I’m a familiar face that you’d be less tempted to put a bullet through.”
“Look,” Aurora said, forestalling the debate before it devolved into an all-out argument. “We’re not stupid. Nobody here believes you’re standing there out of the goodness of your heart. You want something from us, and the fact that you’re not willing to say what that might be has me more than a little on edge about your offer to help.”
They waited, letting the silence settle in while Julip frowned at the concrete, deciding on her response. Her lip twitched with disgust, as if the conversation were giving her a headache.
“Alright,” she muttered. “Fine. Fuck it. Minister Primrose sent me here to keep you safe, and to figure out why you left Stable 10. Happy?”
Roach visibly tensed. “How did you know where…”
“It’s in her file,” Julip said, waving him off before turning back to Aurora. “You identified yourself to one of our sprite-bots the same day we met at the array, remember? Fucking freaked out half the brass when they found out you pitched a brick at a deathclaw right before it turned our bot into a tin frisbee.”
Ginger turned to her. “You contacted them?”
“I didn’t know what else to do!”
“Anything else!” she said, her eyes wide. “Aurora, we explained to you how dangerous they were!”
Aurora fumbled for an answer, but Roach spoke first, taking a step directly toward Julip. “What does the Enclave want with Stable 10?”
Julip held out her wings and stepped back. “Woah, woah, woah. Look, all we want to know is why you left and…”
“Horseshit,” he snapped, unlocking his shotgun from its rail. “I’ve seen what your people do to Stables, and if you think for a second that I’m going to stand by while you violate my daughter’s resting place for a few pieces of scrap, you’ll have to make sure I’m very well and truly dead before you try.”
Julip took two steps back for every one that Roach took forward, her eyes alternating rapidly between his and the weapon attached to his foreleg.
“You have three seconds to turn around and get out of here,” he rumbled. “One.”
He didn’t get to two. Julip’s hooves scraped a half-circle on the cracked pavement and she was airborne, pumping hard into the air.
Aurora blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and watched the pegasus fade against the grey dome of clouds overhead. A silence grew between them like a thick fog as they watched Julip fly away. It stretched, devouring the minutes even as the three of them eventually turned to resume their trek toward the mountains.
“Roach,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I didn’t know.”
He stared ahead, his expression unreadable. “It doesn’t matter. Everybody knows, now.”
The scaling concrete crackled under his hooves as he pulled ahead, taking point like he had in the beginning.
“Let’s get your talisman so you can go home.”







Her nostrils flared, taking in the earthy smell of dry leaves and the bright scent of the nearby arborvitae hedges. There were times when she spent so long cooped up inside her library that she forgot how full the world could be, even in the dead of night.
The air spilling into Canterlot Gardens was cold tonight. Colder than usual for early November, but then she knew better than to meddle in the business of weather ponies. Twilight could feel her winter coat chilling at the fringes. It would be another month before she had to start covering herself with something thicker. 
Her bare hooves were silent against the pliable loam paths of Canterlot’s famed garden. The smartly trimmed hedges towered above her, growing healthy and strong in a climate they normally had no business being in. The master gardeners hired by Blue Blood were experts at their craft, coaxing life out of the fragile flora unsuited for the altitude. Twilight had dabbled with gardening when she was younger, back when she still had the Golden Oak Library, and knew how much of an art it was.
She could still smell the smoke. Just another victim in a long line that followed in the wake of Lord Tirek. 
Historians still debated just how many ponies lost their magic at the hands of Tirek, but it had been enough to force Twilight into a corner. The fates of her six dearest friends and a single betrayer hung on which choice she made. To give up the barely tamed magic of the three alicorn princesses churning inside her and secure the release of her friends, or continue fighting in a stalemate that would likely raze Ponyville in the process.
She was distantly aware in that moment that she stood on a precipice. One way or another, the decision she made would alter their lives in ways she couldn’t hope to foresee. And then she had the epiphany. 
Tirek was a threat. Ponies wouldn’t suffer under his rule. They would die.
As he opened his mouth to demand her answer, she wrapped the magic of four alicorns around his horns and pistoned his skull into the exposed rock beneath his hooves. Stolen magic and aspirations for global domination paled in comparison to brutal, hard math.
Mass times acceleration equals corpse.
Tirek’s abrupt death brought with it a return to normalcy they hadn’t felt since they first became Elements of Harmony. Magic returned. Discord, for his betrayal, was returned to his stone prison, a sentence he surrendered to without so much as a quip. It had been a lesson in misplaced trust as much as it was a realization that desperate times sometimes required desperate measures.
They never did find that sixth key. There were days she wondered about the chest and why the Tree of Harmony sprouted it, but the longer peace lasted, the less she felt the need to seek out the test that would reveal whatever was inside. After a few years of waiting, the six of them had returned to the tree and pried out their amulets, safer in the knowledge that should anything ever happen again, their elements would be close by.
She followed the mossy path past the entrance of the hedge maze, leaving the nameless statuary of the garden behind. 
The deep night brought a sense of privacy that the towering hedges could not on their own. With her horn illuminated, she slipped through the dense walls of foliage as if they were little more than a particularly thick mist. She loved this spell. The book containing it had dedicated ten full pages to its application, describing a litany of ways it could go horribly wrong if cast incorrectly. It was no wonder it had been locked away in the restricted section.
She giggled. Her entire library was a restricted section.
Passing through the innermost wall of the labyrinth, she stepped into an ignoble little square clearing hardly large enough to accomodate the statue at its center. Most ponies passing by this little garden never realized they were at the center at all, mistaking it for a minor detour on the way to the end.
Once fully through the hedge, she doused her horn and walked to one of the four stone benches surrounding the undecorated plinth. Her eyes tracked up to the statue, to the draconequus that had caused Equestria so much disharmony. The Lord of Chaos sat frozen with his head bowed, his mismatched tail curled peacefully around his hind legs. Hands resting in the coil of his lap, a gryphon’s thumb softly kneaded the upturned palm of a lion’s paw. A pony wouldn’t be blamed for thinking he might have been in prayer, though she knew better than to expect something so primitive from him.
Twilight glanced at his face, noting the subtle crease in the corner of his eye as he winced in preparation for what had been coming.
“Twenty years later and it still feels like yesterday, doesn’t it?”
She grimaced, caught looking yet again. “Hello, Discord.”
“Hello, Twilight,” he said, merely a voice in her head but still very real.
They were long past the point of debate on whether he was a hallucination or a returning problem. The first time he reached out to her, she came deadly close to destroying his statue. She fled to find the girls, fearing he’d found a way to escape his prison, but when they came back with their Elements nothing happened. There wasn’t a threat to react to.
“Come to visit?” he asked. “I thought you’d stopped.”
She sat on the stone bench and sighed, leaning back until the ridge of her wings pressed into the cold surface of his plinth.
“Something like that,” she said with a meager shrug. “It’s been a day.”
A smile creased her lip as she listened to the rich chuckle echoing between her ears.
“You’re preaching to the choir, sister. The pigeons have been mistreating me for weeks, and I’m beginning to suspect the garden staff are neglecting to wash me off on purpose.”
Bending her head back until her nose pointed vertical, she could just make out the little white plops of bird droppings speckling his statue. She closed her eyes and tried not to chuckle. “I’ll have someone sent in the morning to scrub that off.”
“Nonsense. You know I’m only joking.”
She did, but she also knew how these little signs of neglect stung him.
“It’s rather quiet tonight,” he said. “Mind if I sit with you?”
She obliged, scooting down the bench until the draconequus appeared to fill the empty space. He wasn’t there, not in any physical sense that would allow him to be any danger. The strangely placid creature beside her could no more touch the grass beneath his foot and hoof than Twilight could turn off the sun. As Celestia had put it, the bridge formed between the Elements and the prisons they manifested was unavoidable. Until the spell was broken, magic would flow passively from the Elements, renewing the seal any time their bearers drew close enough for the connection to take form. Most creatures were unaware of the link between their prisons and their wardens, and those few who sensed it were far too weakened to make any use of it. 
Discord, however, was not most creatures.
“You look tired,” he said.
She tipped her head toward him with a weary smile. “I am tired.”
He sighed. “War will certainly do that.”
Twilight hummed agreement and watched as he lifted the thickly padded fingers of his lion’s paw, pinching them into a theatrical snap. A glass of chocolate milk appeared in the talons of his left hand, complete with a purple bendy straw. She couldn’t help but snort a little at the sight of it.
He offered a small smile and snapped his fingers a second time. A glass appeared on the bench beside her hip. “You look like you could use it more than me.”
She didn’t reach for it, knowing from past experience that these illusions of his were incredibly fragile. The gesture alone made her feel a bit warmer. “Not the drink I need right now, but thanks,” she said.
Discord brought his straw to his lips and sipped. It felt strange to expect the rim of the glass to sink rather than the surface of the milk, but that was Discord. She frowned a little as sweetened cream, or the illusion of it, did the perfectly normal thing she didn’t think it would do, spiralling up the straw and disappearing behind a subdued smile.
He swallowed, letting the straw to bob freely along the rim of his glass. “I’ve seen conflicts like these wear down creatures far more experienced than you, Twilight. As much as I’ve come to enjoy your company, you shouldn’t have to come to me whenever you feel overwhelmed.”
A cold breeze whispered through the hedges. She wrapped her wings around her legs to warm them. “I’m not overwhelmed,” she said, though her tone was unconvincing. He knew as well as she did that she confided in him because, at the end of the day, she was the only one left willing to visit him. Despite all of his power, he was trapped. Not even the garden staff could hear him. 
She glanced at him and his arched brow and rolled her eyes. “I’m… alright, fine. Maybe I’m a little overwhelmed.”
His smile widened and he bent his neck to sip.
“It’s just been a rough few months. Rainbow Dash just had a friend die, Pinkie Pie is barely keeping it together, Fluttershy’s stirring the pot by sending Zecora out on diplomatic missions, and if that’s not all bad enough, I’m pretty sure a spell that I wrote is doing something I didn’t tell it to do.”
“How is Fluttershy?” he asked.
Twilight pursed her lips, staring off toward the hedges. “She’s holding up alright.”
Discord set his glass beside hers, his expression cautiously hopeful. “If you asked for me, do you think she might…”
She shook her head. Fluttershy had made it painfully clear she would not be making any trips into the hedge maze unless it was to seal Discord a fourth time.
“I imagine I shouldn’t have expected otherwise.” His shoulders sagged and he leaned back against his own statue, unintentionally mirroring Twilight’s posture. He turned his eyes skyward and, eventually, Twilight did the same. 
They sat together in silence, watching the stars on their imperceptibly slow march across the night sky. In a few hours, Luna would be out on her balcony, telling the same little lie to the world for the sake of keeping order. Twilight wondered about that. Whether anyone would notice or truly care if one of them failed to make an appearance. She wondered whether admitting the truth would do more good than expecting the world to believe in myth.
“Ah, would you look at that,” Discord said, lifting a claw toward the sky.
Crossing the endless black dome twinkled a dim pinprick of light, sliding into the northern constellations on a fixed orbit.
“Ponies in space!” he abruptly laughed, spreading his open palms apart to make the declaration seem even more grand. “It’s such a rare treat to watch a civilization take its first step outside the nest.”
Twilight turned to look at him and felt a little warmer at the sight of him grinning at the passing satellite, tracking its path until it disappeared over the top of the hedge. “Some days I wish I could go to one of those other worlds,” she said. “What’s it like out there?”
He continued to stare after the little beacon, his grin fading a little at its departure. “Dark, infinite and more marvelous than you could begin to imagine. Or at least that’s how I remember it. This may surprise you, but I’ve been a part of the landscaping for the better part of a few millennia. I’m woefully behind on all the new hot gossip.”
“You had a couple breaks in between,” she noted. He glanced at her as she tried to think of a polite way to ask the question in her head, but her exhaustion muddled the attempt and she gave up. “Why didn’t you leave Equestria while you were free?”
“Because you ponies are far too interesting.” He crossed one leg over the other and added, “And, despite how many of you view me, I rather enjoyed getting to know the locals.”
“Does that include Tirek?”
Discord pressed his mouth shut and turned his gaze back to the stars. No matter what way Twilight tried to approach the question, he never answered. In the beginning it was maddening that he would have the gall to cloister himself to what felt like the most important question at the time, but as time passed she found it more and more difficult to keep letting it under her skin.
He never sneered at her when she pressed for an answer. He never mocked or derided her. He just looked sad.
“You make me feel so small sometimes,” she said.
He tilted his head toward her. “My dear, you are anything but small. You’re terrifying.”
She snorted. “I terrify you.”
He took a pull from his straw, nodding. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share that with Tia. I doubt that prodigious neck of hers would support the matching ego.”
She watched him, trying to suss out whether he was lying. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
“Twilight, I’ve been dipping my toes across the universe since this planet was still molten. I’ve encountered more civilizations than I can hope to remember and witnessed wars spanning galaxies. I’ve been many things to many people, and not all of them particularly nice. Do you know how many times I’ve been trapped against my will?”
She hesitated, watching him take a long sip from his straw while aiming an arched brow at her as he waited. When she didn’t answer, he rolled his eyes.
“Exactly four times,” he said. “Once by Celestia and twice by you.”
She frowned. “That’s only three.”
Discord rolled his eyes, though there was some mischievous pride in the gesture. “A very long time ago my peers thought it wise to strip me of my powers and throw me aboard a ship belonging to a starfaring man who I had a bad habit of pestering. As far as I’m concerned, it was all a misunderstanding and should hardly count.”
Twilight took a moment to let it all sink in. 
“Only a handful of civilizations sip from the wells of power,” he continued. “Most aren’t capable of detecting magic, or if they do they give it the wrong names. But you and your kind? You don’t just sip from that well, you gorge yourselves on it. You swim in it. Magic is the essence of creation itself and you ponies use it to wash your laundry. It’s what drew me here and in many unpleasant ways it keeps me here despite what I assure you have been very earnest attempts to leave. So, yes, Twilight. You scare me.”
She frowned at the grass, and he grimaced.
“Perhaps we should change the subject. I know you didn’t come here for this.”
“It’s fine,” she said even though her head was spinning. “You’re the one creature I know who can take my mind off of everything else I have to worry about.”
Discord tapped his claw against the side of his glass and smirked. “And you’re the only creature I know who would come to the Lord of Chaos for discount therapy.”
It was just ridiculous enough to tickle a laugh out of her. She pinched her lips together and smiled while he looked on and chuckled.
Discord finished the last of his milk and dispelled the glass with a snap of his fingers. Twilight glanced down at her hip to see hers still waiting for her, the glass sweating despite the temperature.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re using me again to procrastinate on something important?” he asked.
She glanced up at him and was surprised to see him wearing the same suspicious expression her dad used on her whenever she was trying to get out of something. “Probably because you’re right,” she murmured under her breath. “I wrote a new spell this fall and I’m starting to think I got something wrong. It’s supposed to regenerate a pony’s injuries, and it’s working, but my test subject’s experiencing some side-effects I didn’t plan for.”
“Ah,” Discord said. “Entropy can be such an irritating thing.”
Twilight looked at him, confused. “Entropy?”
He opened his palm and held it out to her. Looking into it, she saw a tiny green flame dancing between his fingers. “It’s been given many names by many peoples. Entropy, The Decay, Baal’s Fire. Nasty little thing, but essential in keeping magic in balance. It’s been nibbling at the fringes of everything since the beginning, making problems where there shouldn’t be, or fixing them, depending on your perspective.”
Closing his fingers, the little flame snuffed out. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Every civilization to tap into magic has struggled with it.”
She frowned. He was getting ahead of her again. “I don’t even understand what ‘it’ is.”
Discord reached over and picked up the glass he’d set out for her. His expression became distant as he sipped. “You’re in the majority, then. Starswirl came the closest of your people to truly understand entropy, though he had a tendency to muddy the water by waxing philosophical.”
Her ears pricked up. “You knew him?”
“He bore your Element, Twilight. Of course I knew him.” He disappeared the glass with a snap. “I don’t have to tell you what a brilliant mind that stallion had, but he had a personality like pumice. He would come to visit me with a list and a quill hoping I would give him the answers to every little question that kept him up at night.”
“Did you?”
Discord scoffed. “Absolutely not. That would be cheating. My role isn’t to hand out the answers like candy. I provided him with enough breadcrumbs for him to know certain possibilities existed, but it was always up to him to follow the path to discover whether I was being truthful.”
She could see where he was leading her and wrinkled her nose. “You’re not going to tell me what entropy is, are you?”
He shrugged. “I never planned to tell either of you it existed in the first place until you both came to me complaining about your perfect spells going wrong. What I can tell you is that understanding it wouldn’t help fix your spell. It’s hardly worth worrying about.”
A stronger breeze poured through the maze, bending the tops of the hedges and sinking deep into her coat enough to make her shiver. She tightened her wings around herself, gritting her teeth against the chill.
“You’re going to get sick if you stay out here,” he said. “Why don’t we call it a night? You can come back once you’ve gotten some warm clothes on and I’ll tell you some embarrassing stories about Starswirl.”
She sniffed at her running nose. “I’ll hold you to that.”
He smiled, and when she blinked she was alone again on the bench.
“Goodnight, Twilight,” his voice murmured in her head.
She stood, knowing if she lingered he would likely find some way to pester her until she went back home. “Goodnight,” she said.
The wind was picking up and the idea of strolling back through the hedges had lost its appeal. As she lit her horn to teleport back to the Pillar, she couldn’t help but wonder about the little green flame Discord had held in his palm.
Entropy. A balancing force against magic. She had never heard of anything like it before.
Canterlot Garden rushed away and her library swarmed in to fill the void. The warm, recycled air of the Pillar gave her a pleasant sensation of goosebumps as it chased the chill from her coat.
Big Mac still lay where she had left him, sprawled on his back across the divan with one leg slumped off the side. He snored loudly, making it clear her entrance hadn’t disturbed him.
Twilight glanced at the clock. She’d been gone less than an hour. Plenty of time left for some light reading. It wasn’t like she would be able to concentrate on fixing her spell until she scratched this new itch, anyway.
Besides. Starswirl was her favorite subject.







They made camp for the night at the foot of Pleasant Hills.
The walk from Kiln to the base of the eroded mountain range had been quieter than the previous legs of their journey, both in terms of danger and conversation. They made good time, stopping once to tuck into their rations and twice more to eliminate a particularly determined pack of mole rats. Roach had borrowed Ginger’s newly acquired blade to butcher the densely muscled back half of the largest, strips of which now roasted on a flat stone nestled into the coals of their fire.
The old highway didn’t cut through the shallow elevation changes here like it had back in the bluffs. It rose with them, bending where it needed to in order to follow the low spots between the growing humps of dusty soil. The prospect of camping out in the open on an unprotected highway didn’t appeal to anyone, but the bomb that made Kiln’s crater had stripped the soil bare of the few structures that once dotted the old road. Their only other option was to push deeper into the foothills in hopes of finding something less exposed, but as the sun dropped behind them and the shadows ahead grew longer and blacker, they ran out of time.
Faced with being stuck out in the open, Roach led them over the nearest hill where they were less likely to be noticed. A cluster of ancient tree stumps provided enough wood to start a cookfire, chasing the shadows out of the bowl-shaped depression.
They sat around the fire, watching as the cool evening breeze turned the coals into a rippling puddle of reds and blacks. Aurora found herself staring into the fire, mesmerized by it in a way she hadn’t been in the right mind to appreciate back at the cabin. The wood was so dry that it crackled like broken glass as it burned. It felt like mere minutes passed before the sparse fragments were reduced to glowing embers.
Ginger lay next to where Aurora sat, using the tip of her knife to turn over the pink strips of sizzling molerat while she read a dead filly’s journal. Some several dozen yards uphill, she could hear Roach grunt as he kicked at one of the crumbling stumps, breaking off shards of wood that would keep the fire going.
Wood crunched in the distance. Aurora tried to spot Roach, but his black chitin made the perfect camouflage against the deep shadow. She gave up and returned to staring into the fire with a sigh.
“He’s really mad at me,” she said.
Ginger closed the journal and looked up. “He’s mad at the situation, not you. Just give him time.”
Aurora didn’t share her optimism, but there wasn’t much else she could do. Another sharp clack of hooves against old wood echoed out of the dark. She tried to distract herself by fishing her canteen from her bags, unscrewing the cap and tipping a mouthful of lukewarm water over her tongue. With a full treatment of RadAway sleucing through their bodies, the unavoidable side effect that followed had both of them passing water just as quickly as they drank it. At least they weren’t wearing matching IV lines anymore. 
Aurora’s canteen sloshed with one or two mouthfuls of clean water remaining. Ginger’s had run dry before they made camp. That left the one in Roach’s bags, thus far untouched since his metabolism was apparently on a two-hundred year stretch of extreme fasting. As far as he knew, he didn’t need to eat or drink, but he could should the mood strike him. From what she observed Roach only did so communally, either when there was an abundance available or simply to participate in the oldest bonding rituals outside of procreation.
None of them knew what waited for them in the east beyond what Aurora’s Pip-Buck reported and Roach had made the decision not to consume anything they may need later. Aurora glanced at his bags slumped in the firelight and worried they would wind up draining that canteen sooner than they could afford.
In a strange way, the RadAway that was clearing their system of Kiln’s radiation was simultaneously forcing them to literally piss their lives away. She snorted and covered her mouth, waving Ginger off when she gave her a questioning look. “Sorry, just thought of something dumb,” she said, and glanced at the unicorn’s foreleg. “Anything new from Sledge?”
“Nothing since this morning.” She lifted her leg off the ground and used her horn to unlatch the heavy clasp. “Before we sleep, you need to check whether Coldbrook has sent anything. The warning you gave Sledge will have ruffled his feathers, and it bears on us to know how that might have changed the conditions of his bargain.”
Aurora held her tongue as she let Ginger slip the Pip-Buck onto her foreleg. The Steel Rangers ranked near the bottom of her list of ponies she wanted to hear from again, especially that crow-footed asshole Elder Coldbrook. Making her resort to flying south after Ginger unarmed had been bad. Taking the opportunity to create a duplicate of her Pip-Buck had been a betrayal.
Threatening to crack open her home if she didn’t help them discover the truth behind SOLUS? That was unforgivable.
As her Pip-Buck detected her unique biometrics and stuttered through the process of booting up her profile, Aurora felt certain Coldbrook would have flooded her message queue with threats of doom and destruction. When the little computer finished working and she tabbed over to her inbox, she was surprised to see one single message waiting.
A message from herself.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 6
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Aurora Pinfeathers
Subject: An Incentive
04/08/1297
[1 image(s) attached.]

Good morning, Aurora. 

I hope this message finds you in better circumstances than when you departed yesterday evening. My scribes have informed me that you relayed a message home not long after we spoke. After reading it for myself, the most I can say to you is that I’m disappointed.
Insofar as our agreement is concerned, the terms have not changed. An ignition talisman for your Stable in exchange for information and access to SOLUS. While I understand our discussion became heated, I am a stallion of my word. An Elder of the Steel Rangers would not stoop to a petty bait and switch, nor would my immediate successors tolerate if I did. I have attached a photograph taken from one of our stockpiles in order to impress upon you the legitimacy of what I’m offering.
Should you decline, either by your silence or outright refusal, the consequences will still be borne by Stable 10. I don’t take pleasure in playing the heartless landlord, but you must understand that these days there is no middle ground in the world. Either you are for the Steel Rangers and the good work we are trying to do, or you stand against us. I will not hesitate to evict those residents if it means keeping a functional Stable out of the Enclave’s bloodstained hooves. 
Understand that at the moment I write this message to you, a company of Rangers has been dispatched to Foal Mountain. If I don’t hear from you within three days of receiving this message, we will begin excavating. I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,
Coldbrook
Elder, Steel Rangers
Commanding Officer







“Asshole,” Aurora growled.
She checked the timestamp attached to his message and glanced at the date glowing at the bottom of her Pip-Buck. He’d sent it off to her not long after they left Gallow’s house. Below the attachment header waited a prompt to open it. Reluctantly, she spun the knob mounted in the casing until the field glowed green. With a click, her Pip-Buck went black and began chattering as line after line of fresh pixels scanned down from the top of the screen.
Slowly, the grainy green image of a crate began to appear. It rested between two identical boxes on a shelf of industrial racking, the cinder block wall behind them not giving away any clues as to where it might have been taken. The shot was angled down, peering over inch-thick planks bearing fresh marks of a pry bar.
Aurora’s breath stuck in her throat. 
A single, symmetrical black object lay nestled in a bed of dessicated straw. Six triangular facets joined together at the tips to create two identical hemispheres from a material so dark it may as well be raw carbon. 
She’d never seen a talisman outside of a few mentions in the training schematics for the generator, and even then the depictions had been vague and focused more on maintenance and power output tables than they did the object that made it all run. The hoof-sized stone on her screen loomed with a gravity all its own, tempting her to reach through the glass and grasp it.
“He wasn’t lying,” she whispered.
Ginger sat up to see, her eyes widening at the sight of it. “Is that it?”
Aurora offered a solemn nod in reply. Her eyes had drifted from the diamond-shaped talisman to the skewed letters stamped on the face of the crate.


HAZARDOUS CONTENTS
PROJECT M.A.S.T.
1 IGNITION TAL. MK. IV
PROP. OF STABLE-TEC


“That’s it.” She could feel her heart beating in her throat. “Either that, or it’s a convincing fake.”
She felt torn. Ahead of them, beyond the mountains, waited Fillydelphia and Stable-Tec HQ. The odds that a talisman waited for her there were high, but even if they came up empty there still might be information tucked away in a filing cabinet somewhere that would tell them where the talismans were stored. It was entirely possible that the stockpile from Coldbrook’s photo would be mentioned in one of those documents. It was also possible they would find nothing there except empty ruins.
She stared at the image. It was right there.
Without warning, Roach dumped a legful of wood shards at the edge of the light, startling both of them. Carrying one of the larger splinters in his mouth, he dropped it into the fire and sat down on Aurora’s left side.
She blinked at him as he stared forward, his opaque eyes watching the fire consume his meager offering. She had expected him to sit apart from them where he could brood in peace, but he sat so close that she could feel the heat radiating from his carapace like a small furnace. It occurred to her that she should tell him about the talisman still shimmering on her Pip-Buck, but something about the way he stared forward made her stop. He’d come to sit with her because he had something to say.
The silence stretched as the wood blackened and burned. Roach’s jaw worked back and forth, the tension coming off of him in waves. When he finally spoke, his voice was subdued.
“I was working in Canterlot when the sirens started up,” he murmured, glancing at the two of them and then back to the fire. He took a breath and continued. “When Saffron brought the registration forms home from work, they had this mandatory quiz at the end to make sure we’d read everything through. The first question it asked was what we should bring with us in the event we needed to evacuate to the Stable. The answer was nothing. Bring nothing but yourself and your family. Don’t pack a bag. Leave the family photos behind. Missiles fly faster than pegasi.”
He sneered at the fire. “I wasn’t thinking. When the sirens came on, I flew home to go get Violet and Saffron. When I got to the house, it was empty. It was a Thursday. Saffron was at work and Violet was still at school. Everyone was in a panic by then. I heard the neighbors screaming that the Wonderbolts had just pulled the pegasi students out of the school and were taking them east. They were both unicorns and couldn’t understand why the other foals had been left behind.”
The firelight shimmered in his eyes. He swallowed. “It was too late by then. I got back into the air and started making my way to the Stable. The skies looked like someone had kicked a tree full of birds. There were so many of us flying in different directions, trying to get to wherever we thought it might be safe. Then the first bomb fell in the west and it was like someone had pulled a rake across the sky. When the first flash appeared, everyone turned east to get away. It rained luggage. Suitcases, backpacks, anything slowing us down got tossed away. We could hear the bombs going off behind and those… long, long shadows on the ground below. I was too terrified to look back. I thought if I did I would die.”
He went silent for a long moment, his face churning with more emotion than she’d ever seen in him. Tears spilled from their pools and flowed into the fissures of his broken chitin as he struggled to maintain his composure.
Aurora didn’t dare speak. As he struggled to find the words, she wondered if this was something he’d been building himself up to since he first showed her the way out from the tunnel. Back when he had screamed toward the open door, begging her not to let the approaching ferals inside her home.
Their home.
“I made it in time to find out Overmare Spitfire had already sealed the entrance,” he said. “She waited long enough for a few hundred pegasi including her Wonderbolts to arrive. I didn’t know whether I should stay and wait or go back out and look for my family, and then the tunnel collapsed and made the choice for me. I waited a whole day before an earth pony told me she’d seen my daughter and her classmates being flown into the tunnel ahead of her.”
His voice cracked. “She got in safe.”
Aurora lifted a wing, paused, then settled it across his shuddering shoulders. He dropped his head and watched the tears patter into the thirsty soil. “Not knowing which side of that tunnel Violet was on was the hardest twenty-two hours of my life. If I hadn’t had Rainbow Dash to focus on, I would have been screaming at the door with the rest of them until my voice gave out.”
“Roach, I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I just want you to know that I know what it feels like to fear you’ve lost something irreplaceable. I would have done anything to force open that door just to know.” His chest swelled, and he blew out a sigh. “I wasn’t there when you went to save Ginger. I still don’t understand everything that happened down there. But I know how desperate you must have felt when you resorted to asking the Enclave for help, and I know I was wrong for treating you the way I did when I found out. I’m sorry.”
Before she could stop herself, she wrapped her other wing around him and yanked him into an awkward hug. She squeezed hard enough to force a tiny squeak out of his lungs, refusing to ease up until he was good and crushed. It was the kind of hug her mother had inflicted on her when she came home from her first days in Mechanical, near tears from Sledge’s merciless criticisms, wanting nothing more than to quit and try something easier. She’d engulfed Aurora in her white wings and let her cry while whispering encouragement in her ear, and that had always been enough.
She felt him relax in her grip, one of his hooves settling around her back in quiet reciprocation. 
“Thanks for telling me,” she said, giving him one more squeeze for good measure before finally letting him go. “I was starting to worry you would run out of stumps to kick and go digging for the roots.”
“The night’s still young,” he rasped, forcing a smile. Free from her grip, his gaze dropped to the flat piece of stone still resting in the coals. The corners of his eyes creased with a gentle wince. “Hey, Ginger?”
A misty-eyed unicorn looked up at him, using the back of her leg to wipe the damp from her face. “Yes?”
Roach nodded toward the fire and the shriveled, charcoal-black strips of molerat in the coals.
“I think they’re done.”


	





Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Ministry Interoffice Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: Applejack, Rainbow Dash
CC: Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Board of Directors
From: Scootaloo
Subject: Test Site Approval
12/20/1075

Dear Ministers,

I’m pleased to share that Stable-Tec and its board of directors have approved your joint request to temporarily delay construction of Stable 2 for the purpose of hosting your demonstration. All nonessential Stable-Tec personnel will be relocated for two weeks preceding and following the proposed date in order to give the Ministry of Technology the time it needs to set up and vacate any sensitive equipment. Please be aware that ministry personnel should refrain from “exploring” while making use of the facility. Stable 2 is currently on umbilical power from Stable 1 and we cannot guarantee that the diesel generator will support the additional power draw if ponies start flipping on all the lights.
While we’re excited to hear that the princesses will attend the demonstration, I would like to invite the Ministry of Technology to avail itself of our recently completed Stable 1 as a remote command post. While I understand this might create some technical hurdles for the test, the board feels that Celestia and Luna’s first impression of our work would be significantly improved from inside a completed prototype. Given the relative close proximity of both sites within Pleasant Hills, I can assure you the latency will be minimal.
I would like to personally thank you again for entrusting us with what we hope will be a pivotal moment in our nation’s history, and a first real step toward peace. 

Sincerely,
Scootaloo
Stable-Tec, CEO


	




January 15th, 1076


	BAAL’S FIRE:
A Treatise on Entropy
And Believing Tricksters.
By Starswirl


Twilight glared at the unlit candle on the table before her, then back at the monstrous tome beside it. What had survived of Starswirl’s treatise could have fit neatly on the back of a postcard. Like so many of his less known spells, this one had been ripped from the bindings of Twilight’s first editions by some nameless censor. Rather than giving up, she’d done what she always did when presented with a challenge and redoubled her efforts to find the missing spell. 
Her search had taken the better part of two months before coming to an end. It was almost cathartic to disassemble half her library again. She was a researcher, after all.
Starswirl’s spell had managed to sneak its way into a fifth edition limited reprint of an anthology that sold poorly and was quickly forgotten. The book was massive, heavy enough to make the little reading table in her library wobble under its weight. Twilight flipped forward a page, rereading the incantation for what felt like the tenth time, and turned back to the candle.
Closing her eyes, her horn glowed as she recited the words in her head. When she finished and opened her eyes again, the candle was unchanged.
This was the part she hated the most. Finding spells that relied on incantations was like reading assembly instructions written in gibberish. The words themselves didn’t matter so much as the intentions of the pony casting it, with the rare exception of that pony overthinking the pronunciation of a word she’d never seen before.
A category Twilight fell neatly into right now.
She dropped a hoof against the book and yanked it toward her, scanning the four lines of a painfully overused rhyme scheme and finding herself getting stuck on the final two words: “Baal’s Fire.”
What was a Baal? Was it pronounced “ball or bale?” What language was it even derived from?
She rubbed her eye and groaned, using her free hoof to flip back a page. Like her, Starswirl learned about entropy from his conversations with Discord. According to his notes, the name likely didn’t originate on this world at all, and was taken from one of the many other civilizations Discord had tormented during his travels. 
Starswirl wrote that the spell served no notable function beyond making the caster feel slightly queasy and creating a uniquely bright, green flame. In the final lines of the entry, he attributed his research as a wild goose chase created by Discord with the sole purpose of tormenting him for asking too many questions.
Prank or no prank, Twilight wasn’t about to give up on a spell that had taken her this long to unearth, let alone one that refused to cast. She briefly considered heading back to his statue to ask for the correct pronunciation, but the idea fizzled. This wasn’t a multifaceted scholarly brain teaser. It was one word!
“Fine.” She snatched her quill from its inkwell and crossed out the offending word, scratching four quick letters in the narrow space above it. “Balefire. Easy enough.”
Tipping her horn again to the unlit candle, she sealed her eyes and concentrated on the spell. Word by word she recited the incantation with a renewed confidence, feeling the familiar thrum of magic gathering. Her mind slid over the final, refined syllables and pushed the spell forward.
When she opened her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of a tiny green flame dancing at the tip of the cotton wick. It grew, taking root as wet wax puddled beneath it. She gave her wing a victorious little pump.
“Hey there, little guy,” she murmured.
She reached out with her magic, gently sweeping it above and around the dancing teardrop of balefire, trying to feel for anything that might signify its purpose. Already, she could detect the gentle pressure of nausea forming in the pit of her stomach. Discord’s apparent prank on her foalhood idol, transposed forward through the centuries to torment yet another caster.
Frowning, she tried to sense the delicate structure of the flame’s spell but felt nothing. No currents of magic, no eddys, nothing to even indicate it was influenced by magic at all. It was like touching a void.
Then the little flame did something unexpected. It pulled.
Not at her. Not at anything tangible. It pulled at her magic.
She doused her horn and frowned at the flickering flame. Curiosity piqued, she threw a guilty look across her empty library before turning to the tome in front of her and tearing off the corner of the page. Small sacrifices, she reminded herself. 
Holding the wedge of paper in her magic, she dipped it directly into the balefire. The flame curled up the scrap and touched the fringe of her lavender aura.
Balefire swarmed over her magic as if it were kerosene vapor, blooming bright enough to startle a yelp from her before it rebounded straight down the core of the candle like a lit fuse. The candle popped like a cheap firecracker, spattering wax chunks in every direction.
She doused her horn and shook bits of candle from her mane, her eyes darting across the library for any sign that the flame might have hitched a ride to a better source of fuel. To her relief, she found the wick lying on the rug below her chair, the flame snuffed. 
She lifted the blackened length of cotton back to the table and stared at it.
Whatever that was, it wasn’t just some prank. That flame hadn’t just been attracted to her magic, it had immolated it before she could pull away. She had felt her aura being deconstructed like a spell being passed through a paper shredder. How was that even possible?
She winced as her stomach churned with displeasure. Starswirl hadn’t been kidding about the nausea.
With some effort she gathered up the fragmented pieces of wax from the floor and deposited them onto the table in a loose heap. She was going to need something to settle her stomach if she wanted to test this spell more thoroughly.
She found herself remembering something Discord had said several weeks before. 
“It’s been nibbling at the fringes of everything since the beginning, making problems where there shouldn’t be, or fixing them, depending on your perspective.”
That tiny flame had done a bit more than just nibble. It devoured.
A spell that consumed magic. 
She wondered about that.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Proxy Connection :: Stable 1
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Aurora Pinfeathers
Subject: Re: An Incentive
04/10/1297

Elder Coldbrook,

You stole my Pip-Buck, used it to find my home and then threatened to attack it. You better believe I’m going to warn them. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.
As for your offer, I don’t get the impression you’re giving me much of a choice, so I guess my answer is yes. I’ll do what I can to get you information on SOLUS and I expect you to honor your word to leave my Stable alone while I work. Bear in mind that if I so much as hear that your Rangers are thinking about making an attempt on the door I will come back there, find you, and the two of us can find out how high I can carry a full grown stallion before I lose my grip.
Also, the photo you sent was convincing, but you’re going to need to send me some specs on that talisman before I buy that you’re not trying to screw me over. I want exact numbers on its dimensions, power output, and anything else that came in that crate. If you send me a guess, I’ll know. So don’t.
Now do me a favor and change the name on that cloned Pip-Buck of yours. It’s creeping me out.

Sincerely,
Aurora Pinfeathers
Shift Lead, Mechanical
Stable Fucking 10








She pressed send with a smug little smile, wishing she could watch Coldbrook read her response. If she was going to be forced into this partnership, fine. That didn’t mean she had to be his chipper little lapdog. Borrowing a bit of inspiration from Julip’s expansive vocabulary had been a fun little touch.
Of course, that brought up the question she’d been dreading. Now what?
A yawn clawed its way out of her as she got up, resuming her slow procession of laps around the rim of the small depression they’d camped in. With Roach emotionally drained and Ginger nodding off even while they gnawed on a charred strip of molerat, Aurora had volunteered to take the first watch. She knew enough from watching movies back home to have an idea of what that entailed. Her rifle bobbed lazily beneath her folded wing as she meandered, casting the odd look toward the vague shape of the highway further downhill before continuing on.
She was worried. With Julip gone, she wasn’t sure how she planned on holding up her end of Coldbrook’s bargain. There was always a chance they’d come across another Enclave sprite-bot, but what would they say if she suddenly appeared asking for help again? Would they even answer or just deactivate the bot if she drew too close like the one outside of Kiln?
Aurora let out a frustrated sigh and stared fruitlessly up at the rolling clouds.
The Enclave made those clouds, somehow, to mask their movements while they poked and prodded at sites of interest throughout Steel Ranger territory. At least that was how Ginger described it. Aurora wasn’t so sure. There was something about it that felt like it ran deeper than that. Like it was personal.
No pegasi wheeled below those clouds tonight. Just open sky half-lit by a shrouded moon. The clouds were pretty, in a sad sort of way, but they were nothing in comparison to the stars beyond them.
A deep, ratcheting snore reached her from their camp. 
She watched Roach shift in his sleep, his legs splayed out toward the dim pile of embers that remained of the fire. Ginger lay against him, her withers tucked between his ribs and elbow while her chin bobbed gently against her breast. Their unconcealed intimacy was yet another reminder to her that the two of them had known each other well before Aurora came along. Roach had been Ginger’s protector once upon a time, a relationship that grew into something more paternal as life went on.
A thought formed in her head. She frowned and tried to think about anything else, but the invading fear took root and blossomed before she could tear it out.
After this was done, after her Stable was fixed and their journey reached its end, what happened then? Would Ginger come with her or would she want to stay in the wasteland? What about Roach? The two of them had lived their entire lives on the outside. Forcing them to spend the rest of it inside a Stable, away from the world they knew, would be cruel. And that didn’t begin to address her own feelings.
The Stable was where Aurora’s family was. She had friendships there, ones that ran deeper than she’d been willing to admit when she left. She couldn’t stand the thought of watching that door close on her a second time. She also understood that, despite the ironic design, her home wasn’t a revolving door. Exposing the ponies inside to the wasteland would inevitably result in many of them dying in ways they didn’t deserve. 
The door had to remain sealed. The question was, which side of it would she be on when it did?
She needed a distraction before her idle brain drove her crazy.
Making her way around the rim, she descended the shallow slope toward the stand of tree stumps Roach had used to take out his frustration. She blew out a breath through pursed lips. He’d done a thorough job of it. Chips of wood peppered the dirt around them like confetti. There was a fair bit of heartwood left to work with, at least. Quietly, she dipped a wing into her saddlebag and fished out a woefully dull chisel she kept in her kit for knocking off welding slag. It wasn’t great, but it was something to do.
She went to work prying off chunks of near-petrified wood, gathering them in a neat pile and taking them back to their camp.
Laying Desperate Times on the ground alongside the weapon Julip abandoned when she fled, she sat down beside Ginger and began sliding one piece of wood after the other into the still hot coals until yellow flames began lapping at their edges. She stopped before going overboard, knowing a roaring fire would roust her companions from their sleep.
Ginger’s hind leg gave a gentle kick toward the fire. For a moment Aurora thought she would wake up anyway, but the mare breathed a deep sigh and rolled until her cheek came to rest against Roach’s neck. She didn’t blame her. Even with his belly barely touching her back Aurora could feel the heat that radiated from the changeling’s chitin. Roach was his own warming blanket.
The fire crackled. It was mesmerizing to watch. She understood why the old western flicks featured so many ponies sitting around one, staring into the flames. Despite the damage they could do, they were beautiful. Hypnotic.
She yawned and silently chastised herself for feeling so tired. She was supposed to be patrolling the rim, but sitting in the crease between Ginger and Roach, staring into a warm fire, she couldn’t convince herself to get back up. She could see the rim from here.
Her eyes roamed the black and red waves that drifted over the coals. The stubby mound shifted, sending a column of sparks into the black sky. She could feel her head becoming heavy. It bobbed. Once, then again. She blinked, slowly, and couldn’t think of a good reason to open her eyes.
She fell asleep.







High in the slopes overlooking the foothills, the west wind pulled smoke into the blackened grotto. A set of nostrils twitched. Malformed eyes slid open and sighted something peculiar beyond the mouth of the shallow cave. Sparks, twisting skyward.
The creature rose, disturbing its neighbor. It rose too, disturbing more.
They shambled into the diffuse moonlight and sighted the dim light of a fire. Disparate minds came to disparate conclusions.
Food. Danger. Seek. Eat.
The creature stumped forward on crooked legs, dragging the tattered shreds of a jumpsuit brought with it from a dark place it couldn’t remember. A skin that it couldn’t shed.
A deep, clicking moan gurgled up from its throats.
It descended the mountain.
The others followed.


	





January 19th, 1076
Pleasant Hills
Stable 1

Princess Celestia regarded the glowing wall of monitors with an impassive stare that she had whittled into an artform over the course of nine millennia. Her eyes slid from one screen to the next, pausing at each one before moving on, quietly hoping that what she was being made to look at would eventually make sense.
Columns of numbers, strange charts and diagnostic readouts hummed away at the periphery, spitting out updated information in real time. Screens closer to the center of the control board dominated her field of vision, displaying multiple angles of the same symmetrical black object. It rested on a simple white surface which she had been informed was nonconductive. 
What the significance of that detail was, she hadn’t a clue.
The entire Stable smelled faintly of gasoline, or diesel perhaps. She couldn’t tell the difference. Ponies from the Ministry of Technology monitored technical readouts behind two unbroken rows of blocky consoles set a few yards back from the wall of screens. Among them, Trixie Lulamoon, a unicorn whose name she only vaguely recalled from an incident stemming from an early rivalry between her and Twilight Sparkle. The little blue unicorn sat behind a console of her own with a thick binder spread open across her workspace. Like the rest of her team, she was painfully aware of the gathering of alicorns just over her shoulder. 
If the dark sheen of sweat along the nape of her mane was any indication, Trixie was on the verge of abject panic. She didn’t blame her. Celestia was in a less than charitable mood this morning that had everything to do with the fact that this test was being conducted within not one but two of the new bastions of surrender finally made real by Stable-Tec.
It was her first time visiting one of these shelters. Stables, they called them. Holes for ponies to duck their heads into should Equestria fall, though it was never stated so bluntly by their people. The vast, empty corridors of this prototype did little to impress her and she was willing to assume that, many miles away, the incomplete Stable 2 housing the black talisman displayed on those monitors would be equally devoid of merit.
What good would hiding underground do if the zebras did invade? Even if they could fill their bunkers with enough diesel to last the full five years their creator boasted, it was a strategic misstep. These ponies were spoiled by luxury. They didn’t understand how easy it was for a siege force to set up camp and wait their victims out.
The one saving grace of this entire fiasco was that her government was Stable-Tec’s single largest sponsor, and that was a tap Celestia was becoming impatient to shut off.
The CEO of Stable-Tec, Scootaloo, stood at the far corner of the room wearing a simple white collar and black tie. She was present only because she had offered two of her subterranean panic rooms for the test and was shrewd enough to leverage that for a seat at the table. She pecked at the buttons of her Pip-Buck, a sleek little thing that somehow sent messages without the aid of dragonfire or wire. Another departure from the natural order of things.
Celestia looked to her right where her younger sister stood. Luna gawked at the screens, doubtless finding them to be a source of endless entertainment as did seem every new electric bauble the world was intent on cobbling together. She coughed gently into the flat of her hoof. Luna glanced at her, saw the grim expression on her muzzle, and recomposed herself nearer something befitting her role.
To her left, Twilight Sparkle watched the preparations with a clenched jaw. Every few seconds her eyes would flick down to Applejack, who had seated herself beside Trixie shortly after Twilight arrived.
Celestia could sense the tension between those two like an unpleasant odor. Twilight’s repeated letters over the past two months made it clear she didn’t trust this project, but it was what her former student had omitted that finally wore Celestia down. Twilight deeply mistrusted Trixie and, by extension, Applejack. That needed to be resolved.
Minor infighting between her ministers was to be expected, even healthy in some cases. It demonstrated that they were invested in their work and its outcomes. However, she had known Twilight since she was a filly. A generous pony would suggest she was unusually driven. An honest one would call her obsessive.
She watched Twilight and saw the anger building behind that placid smile. As little as Celestia expected to glean from this test, her presence alone would likely keep Twilight’s emotions in check. In spite of accepting her ascension and despite being the first alicorn since the founding of Equestria’s thrones to turn down what many still regarded as her duty to lead, Twilight Sparkle was still the most qualified mare to lead the Ministry of Arcane Science. It would only do her good to have this fixation of hers smothered while it was still in the crib.
She stared forward as she brushed her wing against her sister’s. Luna’s ear turned toward her.
“How much longer will this test last?” she whispered.
“It has yet to begin,” Luna murmured. “Have some patience, sister. This is exciting!”
She sighed and continued pretending to know what it was she was looking at. The black object at the focus of this minor drama had a quality of looming that Celestia didn’t much care for. Barely larger than a chicken’s egg, its flattened hexagonal shape was reminiscent of Twilight’s cutie mark, were someone brave enough to connect the points and paint in the gaps.
Movement caught her eye. Trixie leaned back in her seat, crossed her forelegs and nodded to Applejack. Celestia’s Element of Honesty clapped Trixie on the shoulder and spoke a few words of quiet encouragement.
“Here we go!” Luna whispered.
Celestia said nothing.
The doe-eyed unicorn stood from her chair and turned to address the royalty at the back of the room, swallowing hard before she spoke.
“Your highnesses,” Trixie began, wincing as her voice cracked. “Minister Twilight Sparkle. Minister Applejack. I want to thank you all for coming today, and I would especially like to thank Stable-Tec for offering their Stables for this flagship test of the world’s first mass arcane storage talisman.”
She gestured toward the black object displayed in multiple behind her, as if expecting applause. When none came, Trixie cleared her throat and continued.
“M.A.S.T. is a reliable, resilient and reproducible source of near-limitless potential. It is a talisman inspired by and vastly superior to its Vhannan predecessor, capable of capturing and storing more magical energy than a single unicorn will utilize during his or her lifetime. What we will be demonstrating today is the capability of a M.A.S.T. talisman to convert its stored magical energy into raw, electric energy. The same energy we use to power our factories and illuminate our cities.”
She turned halfway toward the bank of screens, her aura highlighting the edges of one in particular that displayed a single figure:


0.00 MW


	“Our first designs, though flawed, were capable of outputs of 200 kilowatts. That’s enough to power several city blocks. Today’s M.A.S.T. was fabricated from a superheated obsidian filament which, with the skilled application of a unicorn’s magic,” she said, her eyes flitting to Twilight for a brief moment, “such as my own, conditions within the talisman become ideal for fractal voids to form within the internal structure. We can expect to see outputs approaching ten megawatts from today’s test. Enough to power the entire city of Canterlot.”
Trixie offered Celestia and Luna a polite bow before turning to a narrow microphone standing out from her console. “Proceed with the test.”
Celestia and the others turned their attention to the talisman on the monitors. A stallion wearing a Stable-Tec jumpsuit appeared slightly out of focus in the background. His hazy aura lifted the stone off the white surface, sliding a C-shaped device of some kind into the frame. Two thick discs the size of dinner plates connected by a fat band of insulated cable offered just enough space for the talisman to fit between them. A second cable snaked out from the disc resting on the table, dropping out of frame toward a machine in the background Celestia didn’t have a reference for.
The unicorn carefully slid the talisman between the plates until, almost violently, the six-cornered stone snapped into the space between them. The unicorn departed off frame, and the heavy clunk of a shutting door could be heard through a tinny speaker in the ceiling of the control room.
The stallion’s monotone voice crossed the gap between Stable 1 and 2. “The M.A.S.T. is primed. Beginning ignition in five. Four. Three…”
Celestia’s brow rose as the talisman began to rotate on its vertical axis. Slowly at first, but after the space of a few more seconds, she could hardly see its edges as they blurred impossibly fast. A growing whine peeled from the speaker until someone switched it to a different channel, dimming the noise to a tolerable level. A voice from Stable 2 reported nominal readings. The monitors grew fuzzy with static, giving the talisman a ghostly quality.
The power output on the monitor began to climb. Celestia heard her sister breathing with excitement as murmurs of approval rippled from the ponies below.


0.87 MW


	Trixie pivoted on her hooves with a bit of theatrical flare, smiling wide at the princesses above. “And there you have it. We’ve created literal lightning in a bottle.”
Celestia scratched the corner of her mouth with a feather to hide the crease of a smile. To her credit, Trixie had delivered. She turned ever so slightly to see Twilight’s reaction and was unsurprised to see the lavender alicorn staring at her hooves, her jaw locked. Like so many other times, she had miscalculated. Instead of shaming this unicorn, she had brought her accolades.


3.09 MW


Were she younger, Celestia might have consoled her with the obvious lesson this was meant to teach her. Give her a little light to fly toward while encouraging her to learn some humility for once. That was before Twilight accepted her wings with no intention of accepting the responsibility that came with them. That was Celestia’s lesson to learn, and learn from it she did. It taught her to be more cautious with these ponies. To stop playing the doting mother and resume her role as their matriarch.


8.98 MW


“I think we’re ready to call this a successful test,” Trixie announced. Beside her, Applejack smiled up at her from her seat.
A glint of purple light to Celestia’s left. She thought Twilight might have teleported away but when she spared a glance, the mare was still there, her eyes now fixed on the screens in front of them.


11.02 MW


	The stallion leading the team at Stable 2 clicked onto the channel. “Output is stable. Winding down in five. Four. Three…”
Through the snow on the screens, the talisman whirred like a top. Then the static shuddered and for a split second the image distorted. A burst of static came over the line, drawing a look of concern from the technicians stationed below.
Trixie’s smile faltered and she turned to look at the feeds.


29.11 MW


	The talisman’s shadow was beginning to widen at the poles. A low, rising hum began rising from the speaker.
“We’re observing a wobble,” a stallion stated.
Trixie bent over her mic. “Abort the test.”
Celestia frowned at the output monitor.
“Aborting,” he confirmed.


685.90 MW


The technician’s voice shifted up an octave. “We’ve got resonance. The M.A.S.T. is…” static chopped across the feed. “...ing itself.”
The hum rose to a steady wail. Static poured across the camera feeds in shifting stripes, giving the illusion that the talisman had begun to dance.
“Night Glider,” Trixie said, “get your team out of the test chamber now.”


9,113.97 MW


	His voice was barely audible over the haunting shriek burrowing its way through the line. The output monitor crashed through its seventh digit. Then an eighth.
“I’m goi…”
Static.
“...isconnect manua…”
Applejack leapt from her chair toward the mic. “Negative on manual disconnect, Night Glider! Do not-”
The speaker above drowned her order with a final, painful squawk that made the entire room shield their ears. Then, silence. The screens flickered and went dark. 
For several stunned seconds, nobody moved. Static hissed across the void between Stables. Bright green letters appeared on the camera feeds: NO SIGNAL.
Then, from nowhere and everyone at once, a titanic boom rang the reinforced skin Stable 1 like a struck bell. A collective shout ran through the gathered ponies as thin wisps of dust filtered down from the vents above.
Celestia lit her horn, poised to move everyone in the room to the surface should the mountain above give way, but while it took several long seconds for the walls to stop vibrating, the Stable held.
“Would somebody like to explain to me what just happened?” she demanded.
Her words jarred Trixie out of her trance. With a shuddering breath, she turned to face her princess with wide eyes. “I-it could have been a power surge,” she stammered, looking to Applejack for support. “Right?”
Celestia watched Applejack’s expression grow distant.
From the back of the room, Scootaloo’s shaking voice broke the silence. “Two’s network is down, and HQ is reporting that the hard line just stopped sending data.” Her ears lay flat with worry as her feathers blurred across her Pip-Buck. “I’m not getting anything from the cameras outside, either.”
A mare whose name Celestia didn’t know stood up from her console and turned to whisper something to Trixie. The unicorn’s ears dropped. Slowly, she nodded. The mare swallowed and sat back down, pulling a headset over her ears as she used a hoof to tap a series of keys. She pressed the speaker against her ear with the other and waited before seeming to deflate.
“Civilian bands are reporting a plume in the vicinity of Two,” she said, shaking her head.
“Let me see if I can get a picture up,” Scootaloo said. “There’s a firewatch tower not far from here. It’s a government feed. Princess, I need your permission to…”
“Do it,” she said.
Scootaloo’s short feathers went to work.
As Celestia surveyed the room, the few ponies with the courage to meet her eyes looked at her with open fear. Fear for having failed in the presence of royalty, yes, but more pressing was the terror of not knowing what had just happened. Whether the team down in Stable 2 were alive or, if they were, whether they would stay that way for long. 
The monitors flickered to life with the same image. 
Mounted under the eave of the tower’s square roof, the camera Scootaloo tapped into pointed toward the snowy, pine-studded mountains of the Pleasant Hills. At the left edge of the frame a dark, greasy smear boiled into a crystal blue sky. Celestia frowned.
Unnatural green flame churned up from the center of the plume like a chimney fire. A mist of pine needles tumbled in a slow arc away from the source of the explosion, but then it occurred to her that they weren’t needles but entire trees snapped clear of the ground, their stripped trunks hurtling through the air like burning confetti. Boulders the size of houses traced graceful lines across the sky before impacting the ground with such force that smaller, secondary plumes rose from the forest canopy through the entire frame.
The mare on the radio turned away from the screens. “Emergency services in Quarrytown are starting to get calls about the plume.”
Trixie dropped into her chair and put her head in her hooves.
Celestia took a breath and tipped her mouth toward her sister’s ear. “We need to get ahead of this,” she murmured.
“That will be difficult,” Luna said, her eyes flicking to Scootaloo.
“Bring her with us when we depart.” 
She turned to address the gathered ponies, noting that Applejack had already begun the grim task of having her team begin preserving all the data they’d collected. It took an inner strength few ponies possessed to create order from chaos, and despite the pain in her eyes, Applejack once again demonstrated that strength. There was a time when Celestia would have given the sun to have a pony like her among her generals.
“I want you all to remember that despite this tragedy, every one of you acted admirably in pursuing a better tomorrow. Their families will be cared for. I will see to it personally,” she said, watching their misty eyes turn to watch her. Trixie remained where she sat, head bowed, tears dotting her console. “Your work, however, is not finished. Your duty now is to ensure the preservation of the events we just witnessed so that we may learn from this mistake and never repeat it.”
She paused, knowing they would wait. 
“Dry your eyes, little ponies,” she said. “There is important work to be done.”
> Chapter 22: A Means to an End
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Julip wrinkled her nose at the flask clutched between her feathers, unscrewed the cap and tossed back a mouthful of the urine-tinted swill.
She hated Rebound. For as bad as the stuff tasted, it may as well be piss in a bottle. She chased it with a swig from her canteen and swished the brackish mixture through her teeth, mindful not to give into the powerful temptation to spit. She swallowed, winced, and scrubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth in a vain attempt to rid her palette of the flavor. 
The chem’s effects kicked in slow and steady. Julip could feel the weight behind her eyes lighten, the sluggishness slide out of her tired joints and a persistent nudge from her wings to get up and cut the air. Rebound was awful in every way except one: it kept her sorry ass awake.
She didn’t bother trying to guess how many doses she had left. When it ran out, it ran out. Not a common sentiment among wastelanders, especially the hopelessly addicted among them, but she always regarded chems with a healthy amount of mistrust. They helped, until they didn’t. 
Julip took a second swig from her canteen before packing it and her flask away. She didn’t know much about addiction beyond what little she’d seen of the used-up earth ponies loitering outside the slums of New Canterlot, begging for caps or offering illicit services in hopes of finding that day’s quick fix. Julip steered well clear of harder chems like Mentats, Psycho or worst of all, Jet. Any alluring qualities those tailored drugs might have were lost to her the first time she saw a lifeless stallion being heaped into the back of a wagon like so much cordwood.
The Enclave had a less-than-forgiving approach to chem abuse within its ranks. A pegasus who found themselves caught had the option of spending several months in a dark cell until the addiction burned its way out of them, or spend several months in a dark cell until it killed them. The strong survived and the weak weeded themselves out of the genepool. More often than not, pegasi didn’t come back from “treatment.” It was a powerful disincentive.
She bent her neck to the side, wincing until the stiffness released with a satisfying crick. The sandstone outcrop she’d perched herself on wasn’t much of a watchpost but it was good enough for the stallions she went out with. The little camp Aurora and her friends had chosen far below was almost inviting by comparison. Their meager fire colored the oblong dirt bowl they’d settled in a deep orange, throwing their shadows long like hands on a strange clock. 
Even with the cold sandstone sapping the heat from her backside, it wasn’t enough of a motivator for her to risk starting a fire of her own. Their shotgun-slinging ghoul friend made it clear what he thought of her - the feeling was entirely mutual - and Aurora and Ginger didn’t seem eager to intervene. Something told her he wouldn’t take kindly to spotting her lurking above them for a second time.
Why two perfectly capable mares would hobble themselves with a ghoul, a changeling ghoul of all things, was beyond her. What bothered her even more was that he was apparently connected to Stable 10. By a daughter, he’d claimed. She shook her head, watching the tiny figure of Aurora sitting down with the other two. 
Last she checked changelings couldn’t reproduce without a queen, so where in the wasteland did he find himself a kid? She grimaced and stopped herself from picturing anything she would regret later. He was probably just being theatric.
It didn’t take long for Aurora to nod off. Julip snorted. Some lookout she was. 
She tried not to read too much into the way the three of them seemed to naturally fold into one another. Warmth was warmth, and the nights out here were anything but balmy. Still, just because the world had gone to shit didn’t mean decency was dead too.
She sighed and settled in for another night of pony watching. A dim light glinted on the northern horizon, briefly drawing her attention. Too small to be a raider camp. More likely to be one of the hundreds of ponies that dotted the wasteland trying to eak out a life in whatever hole they called home. Julip didn’t understand why they insisted on living out here, entrusting their tomorrows to the whims of whichever raider or local wildlife might catch their scent. The Enclave offered safety. Stability, even. Yes, sacrifices were required in order to stay within their good graces, but what sacrifice wasn’t worth security?
It was like the ponies out here refused to make sense on purpose.
The wood Aurora had thrown into the firepit shifted as it burnt down, throwing sparks up through the narrow column of smoke. Julip watched the embers as they winked out one after the other, trying to imagine what would make someone leave a perfect life behind to live in a shithole like this.
She let her eyes wander despite there being so little out here to see. The dim glow of Kiln reflected off the clouds on the horizon, barely noticeable unless you knew what you were looking for. A scant few miles to the east, the low mountains of the Pleasant Hills loomed above them like the silhouettes of sleeping giants. Whoever had named them “pleasant” had a twisted sense of humor. They were anything but.
Julip knew she would need to approach them again sooner rather than later, ideally before they ran into one of the raider tribes that plagued the mountain pass. She might earn herself a load of buckshot for the trouble, but the ghoul’s shotgun was nothing in comparison to what Primrose would do to her if she stood by and watched a pureblood get herself killed.
As she scanned the dark ribbon of road leading deeper into hills, she noticed something strange. Movement. She narrowed her eyes.
Beyond the little camp, a dark shape was quickly descending the shallow hill on the far side of the highway. Julip frowned and dug a wing into her mailbag to produce a pair of worn but working binoculars. Goddesses bless Hayflinger for including them in her kit. Peering through the optics, she scanned for the same patch of road. 
Something sour rose in her gullet as she found what she was looking for. A dozen or more distorted shapes poured onto the roadway like a solid mass, shambling across the empty lanes toward the low incline that formed the bowl Aurora and her companions had chosen for their camp. They moved with the certainty of predators that had scented prey, and they were approaching fast.
“Fuck!” The binoculars hit the sandstone and she pitched herself off the outcrop, diving for the camp below. “Fuck-fucking-fuck!”







January 19th, 1076

	Celestia stared up at the afternoon sky, watching the hazy brown smear drift east toward the ocean that bore her name. If the ponies living in Manehattan, Fillydelphia and Baltimare hadn’t felt the explosion, they would doubtless smell the metallic odor once the remnants of its plume reached their homes.
Her guards had wasted little time barricading the local roads but the sudden influx of curious pegasi overhead had forced them to call in reinforcements from Canterlot. She didn’t have to speak with Rarity to know that word of the mysterious plume would be traveling wider and faster than her ministry’s net could cast. The ring of pegasi treading air around the site would carry word to any ear willing to listen, and there would be many of those in the coming days. Powerful as she was, there was little she could to to keep this accident a secret.
The Ministry of Image would have its agents pulling double shifts to pay visits to the largest publications. Even now their photographers snapped away, the flicker of flashbulbs drawing her woefully outnumbered guards like moths as they tried in vain to stop them. They likely knew their film would be confiscated and, loyal to their craft, they were burning through every roll they could in the hopes that one or two might make it back to their printers. Old habits died hard. 
Celestia wasn’t looking forward to what would inevitably come after the war ended and the ministries were finally dissolved. She wasn’t so naive not to believe there was a treasure trove of film, audio recordings and unpublished documents waiting to be released as soon as the censors disbanded. Newspapers would have a field day vindicating themselves by printing previously forbidden stories. Publishers would churn out books detailing a revised history featuring snappy titles and provocative covers. There would be decades of questions for her and her sister to endure. 
It would be an annoyance, but they would outlive the consequences as they always had.
She turned her attention away from the hovering belt of gawkers and down the burning slope toward what remained of Stable 2.
There wasn’t much left.
The cement-reinforced ramp that led down to the hinged blast door below simply didn’t exist anymore. The Stable’s superstructure and much of the valley floor above it had been blown clear into the sky like a monstrous pressure cooker releasing its lid. Deep, wandering fissures radiated out from the glowing pit the blast left behind, evidence that some portions of the Stable were still in the process of collapsing. Here and there, green flame still lapped up out of those fissures, burning through the roots of trees that bent away from the crater like the petals of an alien flower.
The chances that any of Stable-Tec or ministry staff survived the blast were so slim they weren’t worth exploring. There had been some intermittent chatter coming across the buried cables following the explosion but it hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes. If anyone was still alive in that pulsing inferno, death was likely a preferable option to survival.
“May we leave?”
Luna stood beside her, lips twisted with discomfort.
“The air here is making me feel ill.”
Celestia nodded with some reluctance. The inexplicable scent of ozone and metal had begun to make her stomach churn as well, though she was doing a better job of hiding it than her sister. Luna was right. There was something bad in the air here. Likely fumes from whatever materials Scootaloo used to construct her now destroyed shelter.
She turned and addressed the retinue of gold-clad guards behind her. “We’re leaving. Take a message to Applejack and Twilight. Tell them to be at the castle before sundown.” She glanced at the shadow beneath her guard and did the quick arithmetic she’d learned to do in her head centuries ago. “That should give them enough time to delegate what they need to here before departing.”
The lead stallion snapped off a crisp salute and pitched himself into the air. Celestia eyed the three guards who lingered. 
“All of you. Go.”
She saw a flicker of doubt pass across the eyes of the foremost mare before she saluted and led the others toward Stable 1. It wasn’t often Celestia asked to be alone, but these were unique circumstances.
Stepping away from the burning valley, she spread her wings and flung herself into the January sky. Her ear twitched at the sound of Luna taking off behind her and for several silent minutes they climbed. Only when the smoke and its ring of onlooking pegasi were well behind them did they speak.
Luna pulled up alongside her, the placid mask of royalty subsiding into an expression of hesitant concern. “I’ll have my night guard help with the recovery efforts after dark. There may still be data-”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” She grimaced, not for having interrupted her sibling but due to the unwelcome lurch of her stomach. She swallowed to regain her composure. “Let them collect what information they feel is necessary, but when they are done this M.A.S.T. project needs to be redirected.”
Luna was silent for several miles. Celestia didn’t need to look at her to know she would be disappointed.
“You don’t trust the Ministry of Technology with this work, do you?”
Her tone was brisk. “Twilight was right. Magical research belongs in the hooves of unicorns.”
“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
She blew out a long sigh and looked ahead, knowing it would be several more hours before Canterlot rose up from that distant horizon. “Ponies died today. We don’t have the luxury of coddling them anymore.”
“More may suffer needlessly if Applejack feels that she doesn’t have the support of her princesses,” Luna countered. “Taking this away from her could stifle her ministry’s production in the long run.”
“And what do you propose we do?”
She waited while Luna mulled her options. “I assume you want to give this project to Twilight.”
Celestia nodded. Twilight’s ministry had done little more than send a steady trickle of new spells to the unicorns on the front lines, most of which were so complicated that only a few gifted casters could wrap their heads around them. It was like she was hard-wired to make magic difficult.
“It would finally give her something tangible to work on rather than hiding away in that library of hers.”
Luna nodded, hardly willing to argue that point. “Then I suggest we have their respective ministries solve this talisman puzzle jointly. The Ministry of Magic can oversee research and development while Applejack’s ministry focuses on practical application.”
Celestia chewed on that. A division of responsibilities wouldn’t hurt. “I would expect them to conduct this research well away from Canterlot.”
“Naturally.”
“Ideally someplace where our subjects would be least likely to see detonations like the one we saw today,” she finished.
Luna hesitated. “You expect this to happen again?”
“I’m counting on it.”
She watched her sister’s expression darken as understanding took root. Luna’s wing twitched, a subtle movement that slid her a scant few inches away from Celestia’s feathers. “We can’t weaponize something like that.”
Celestia took a slow breath and stared down at the white expanse below. “I believe it’s our responsibility to do just that. A weapon that powerful, we likely wouldn’t need to use it. Vhanna has nothing to defend against something like this. We could force their surrender with threat alone.”
“And what if one of their spies catches wind of it? The zebras created the talismans in the first place. All it would take is one lapse in security and we could be staring down the barrel of a weapon just as deadly as the one you’re proposing!”
“Which is why we would need to move quickly,” she urged. “Sister, we’re running out of time to win this war. We’re not going to capture their oil fields before our own bunkers run dry. When that happens, it won’t be long until we see zebras landing on our shore instead of the other way around. It’s our duty to ensure that day never comes, and a weapon like this would secure that future for us indefinitely.”
Luna stared at her, the dismay on her face as clear as the anger behind it. Celestia knew she didn’t have to explain to her how dire the war had become in recent years, but it worked to drive her point home. Vhanna understood their only advantage in this fight was time, not technology, and they were content to wait out the clock in their muddy trenches while Equestria burned through its limited resources in the hopes of prying them loose.   
They were running out of options. Vhanna wouldn’t be content to run Equestria off its land. Once the oil ran dry, their industries would seize like an engine without fuel and their ability to continue fighting would collapse with it. The gates to Equestria would be vulnerable and Vhanna was not likely to show mercy to their former invaders until their monarchs were dead.
Luna glared forward and pumped her wings through the frigid air. “You’re gambling their lives on a future you only pretend to see. I want history to reflect that I’m against this.”
Celestia banked toward her until the white tips of her outstretched feathers mingled with the deep navy of her sister’s. Luna pretended not to notice, but the angry lump in her throat betrayed her indifference.
She swallowed and leaned away until, slowly, they slid apart.







Aurora’s ear flicked.
Time felt slushy as her unconscious mind clung to the ragged edges of sleep. The rhythmic rise and fall of Roach’s barrel beneath her cheek was soothing, radiating warmth that sank into her weary muscles and softened their aches. She shimmied forward until her hind legs grazed Ginger’s tail, and she let herself drift.
Her ear flicked again, spinning this time toward something. Roach took a waking breath, bending her neck sideways until the discomfort forced her awake. She grunted in protest and cracked her eyes, unsurprised to be greeted by a panorama of deep shadow and the knowledge that she’d been cheated out of yet another night’s sleep.
Roach lifted his head and peered back at the two mares curled against his belly with half-lidded eyes. His brief confusion at seeing Aurora there turned into a deeper frown as the remnant of his own ear twitched at the sound of scraping dirt, drawing his attention up to the rim of the camp. 
His eyes shot wide.
Aurora frowned, pushing herself up to follow his gaze.
Standing on the north rim of their camp a single figure stared down at them. The waning firelight traced a vaguely equine silhouette, but something about it was wrong. As her vision resolved Aurora could see that the pony’s hide was little more than pink skin hung from its skeletal frame like melted candle wax. Its neck bobbed, first left then right, swinging its head like a pendulum while its unblinking grey eyes remained fixed on the glowing coals.
“Roach.”
“Shh.” His breathing slowed as he brought a hoof to Ginger’s shoulder, gently nudging her awake. “Be quiet and don’t move.”
As Ginger stirred, a second creature appeared beside the first. Its shape was… wrong. Like a foal’s first attempt to draw a pony, brought to life. Its neck bulged with a tumor the size of a bowling ball. Its torso was too wide, propped up by at least six rigid stalks that could only loosely be referred to as legs. 
Aurora’s first thought was that they were feral ghouls, but as he brain caught up to what her eyes were seeing she felt the hackles along her neck stand on end. These weren’t ghouls. These were different.
The creature emitted a clicking noise from deep within its throat. No, throats. Two ponies, not one, fused unevenly down the center. Its too-wide torso was a ragged network of interlocking rib cages. The tumor standing out from its neck was nothing less than the remains of the second pony’s head. Aurora watched the slow motion of its vestigial jaws working open and closed as if trying to complain about the injustice of its fate. 
The dominant of the two heads locked onto the smoldering fire and let out a low, crackling gasp from the pit of its shared lungs. The monstrosity beside it stopped the hypnotic sway of its head to echo the noise.
Along the rim of the camp, more nightmares limped into view. Some dragged themselves forward on backward-facing limbs while others scrabbled over the dirt on stumps torn open by naked bone. A pony staggered forward, the trunk of its neck adorned by a head smeared to one side like an inexperienced stroke of a painter’s brush. Conflicting sets of eyes bent this way and that as they fought to turn their malformed gazes toward the dim light that led them here.
Behind her, Aurora could hear Roach and Ginger slowly getting to their hooves. The soft click of Roach’s shotgun unlocking from its rail coincided with the harsher clack of the safety on Ginger’s pistol. The lead abomination's head lolled toward the source of the sound, its pale eyes sliding away from the red glow of the embers and settling on the three ponies gathered nearby.
Its lidless eyes grew even wider.
Aurora watched in quiet terror as the creature’s barrel expanded, sucking air into its withered lungs with a buzzing wheeze. Its jaw lurched open, mimicked by the second mouth erupting from its neck, and released a wordless bellow. Then it charged.
A choir of wails went up from the gathered monsters and they poured into the depression like an overtopped dam. The creature leading the swarm screamed again, the pupils of its too-large eyes abruptly dilating as it decided on Aurora.
Gunfire coughed up behind her, startling a scream out of her chest as Roach planted slugs into the approaching monster’s body like lead seeds, tearing gouts of flesh away where the soft metal flowered and burst out the other side. 
The living horror didn’t care. It descended the slope of the rim like a starved animal carried forward by a primal will. It occurred to Aurora that Roach and Ginger were screaming. Not at the approaching horde, but at her, pulling at her shoulders as they tried to get her to move.
She stood there, frozen, overwhelmed by the nameless anathema tearing toward her across the dead soil. As it skittered into the dying light of their fire, something happened. 
A dark shape dropped out of the sky and slammed into the frenzied creature’s neck with a meaty thwack. It lurched sideways in a sprawl of flailing limbs and discordant howls, violently raking its many hooves through the air as its diverted momentum sent its body rolling across the coals.
An arcing leg caught its attacker across the crux of Julip’s wing, spoiling her landing and sending her sprawling across the packed soil with a string of curses. The creature shrieked as the searing embers blistered its flesh, spasming madly on the ground while glowing coals clung stubbornly to its skin. Its cries and the odor of fetid, burning meat filled the air. The twisted mass of creatures behind it stuttered to a halt, wary of its noises and the glowing fragments kicked out from the fire by its flailing hooves.
Aurora’s heart pounded in her throat as she struggled to cope with what she was seeing. She felt dizzy, like she wasn’t getting enough air. Her sense of reason was drowned out by the voice of fear screaming that if she moved, then everything she was seeing would become real. That if she did nothing, she would wake up and the mass of furious creatures stamping at the scattered remains of their fire would be forgotten.
Ginger stood face-to-face with her now, her mouth forming words that Aurora couldn’t seem to focus on. She stared past her at the churning wall of hungry flesh and knew she needed to get away. That if she listened to that voice in her head, she would die. But the distance between knowing and doing was so wide that the two may well be separated by an ocean. Her hooves clung to the ground as if they’d thrown roots. Even as one of the conjoined creatures grew impatient and staggered forward in a renewed charge, Aurora’s legs refused to budge.
She braced herself for the inevitable and watched as Ginger was shoved harshly aside by a bloody-nosed green pegasus. Julip lifted a wing high into the air and cracked Aurora across the muzzle hard enough to snap off two primary feathers.
“FUCKING RUN!”
The pain was sharp, instant and just enough to shock Aurora out of her paralysis. Her heart jumped into her throat as she darted forward, snatching up her saddlebags between her teeth and scooping her rifle into her wing. Pushed forward by Julip’s impatient wings, the four of them ran.
She could feel the thunder of their pursuers’ hooves through the dirt as she threw her rifle strap around her neck. Ginger and Roach were quick to pull ahead and crested the distant rim first, descending into the next valley beyond. Aurora felt her chest tighten as she lost sight of them, urging her hooves to move faster as she struggled to catch up. As she mounted the hill and caught sight of Ginger’s fearful eyes staring back at her, Aurora realized two things: she was a slow runner and the creatures bent on killing her were not.
She looked to the growing gap between her and her companions, then to Julip galloping beside her. “We need to get airborne!”
“No shit!”
“You take Roach! I’ll grab Ginger!”
“Wait, what?!”
“You said you wanted to help me so fucking help me!”
The creatures broke over the ridge behind them like a deranged tide, bellowing a buzzing chorus as they caught sight of their prey. The flecks of dirt kicked up by their misshapened limbs peppered Aurora’s hind legs as they closed in. There was no cover. Noplace to hide. Nothing but the gradual march of ever-steepening hills.
She gave Julip a look of desperate determination and flung open her wings. The relief she felt when she saw Julip spreading her feathers was indescribable.
They angled themselves evenly with the descending slope and for a few seconds Aurora was back in the bluffs, sliding down a shallow hill for the first time on untested wings. Except this time she knew what she was doing.
Ginger let out a startled yelp as Aurora grasped her by the midsection and pulled her off the ground. Roach uttered a curse of his own when Julip practically landed on his back and hooked both pairs of her legs around either end of his barrel in a single, practiced maneuver. They lifted into the air, chased by a cacophony of predatory howls as they ascended out of reach.
Julip grunted discomfort as she pumped her wings. “Fuck, you’re heavy for a bug!”
Roach ignored her and gave the creatures below a final look. “Where are we going?”
Aurora shouted against the wind to be heard. “Anywhere but down there!”
She tightened her grip around Ginger and risked a glance back. Even now, the monsters were little more than a slow-moving clot of black against the deep gray terrain. A few had given up the chase but the majority of the herd was still kicking up dust far below. Aurora banked gently to what she approximated as north and Julip mimicked the course change without complaint. She let herself relax a little as she watched the herd continue its mindless charge southeast, oblivious that its prey had changed direction.
Ginger’s heart pounded against Aurora’s vice grip. “What were those things?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Roach called back. “I’ve never seen ghouls like that before.”
“That’s because they weren’t ghouls.” Julip clenched her jaw as she trailed Aurora’s ascent.
Aurora frowned at Julip’s discomfort and leveled out. The foothills rolled beneath them like black waves on the surface of an increasingly agitated ocean, rising higher and higher to meet them the further they flew. “If they weren’t ghouls…”
“They’re not,” Julip said, her tone harsh. A flash of anger played across her face and was gone just as quickly. “They’re called centaurs and they’re not supposed to exist anymore.”
Roach craned his neck up to her. Julip lifted hers away with visible revulsion. “They were real enough for me.”
“Not the point.”
“Then what is? You’re not making any sense,” he pressed.
She adjusted her grip around him with a strained grunt. 
“It’s all rumors, but decades after the end came, survivors reported seeing them around a few remote facilities the ministries used to build the bombs. Every so often a warhead would come off the line with a minor defect and leak raw balefire. Normal procedure was to take them out and bury them somewhere, though anything that might detail where that was didn’t survive the war. When the bombs fell, the production sites went into automatic lockdown. You can pretty much figure out what happened next.”
Roach exchanged glances with Ginger and Aurora before shouting against the wind. “Some of those sites must have had defective warheads waiting for disposal when the doors came down.”
“Change some to all and you’d be right,” Julip said. “The second they went on lockdown, those places became tombs.”
Aurora tried not to think about how similar those facilities sounded to her Stable. “If they were exposed to balefire, why didn’t they just turn into ghouls?”
Julip pulsed her wing and hissed a curse as she struggled to stay level with her. “Best guess the archivists had back then was that they did, at least at first. Ghouls out here had the luxury of getting away from the sources of radiation that turned them in the first place. The ponies trapped in those facilities were trapped with the stuff and we assume it only got worse as time went on.”
Aurora shuddered at the thought of what that transformation must have been like. Roach had shared a few nuggets about his own change, and what she knew was enough to convince her not to ask for the gorey details. Balefire had some sort of deconstructive effect on the body that Equestrian science never had a large enough window to properly study.
In her head she imagined it as a droplet of liquid gallium being set atop a chunk of aluminum. For several minutes, nothing seemed to happen, but beneath the surface the invading liquid would seep beneath the surface of the aluminum, dissolving it from beneath a flimsy skin floating atop the liquid alloy. Wiped away, the reaction would stop but the aluminum would be irreversibly changed.
Left to soak, the gallium would reduce the solid aluminum to an unrecognizable puddle.
The centaurs had been left to soak. 
She tightened her grip around Ginger and tried not to think of what it might have gone through those ponies’ minds as they huddled together, terrified as they watched themselves deteriorate. Horrified at the realization that they were sinking into their neighbor.
She looked at Roach and saw that he was watching her. He pursed his lips as he recognized what was going through her head.
Ginger broke the lingering silence. “You said they weren’t supposed to exist anymore.”
“They aren’t. Once the Enclave realized what happened, we sent teams out to put the centaurs down. Back then the Rangers only controlled a few cities along the east coast. They were happy to sit back and watch us work.”
“I think it’s fair to say you missed a few,” Roach said.
“The Enclave doesn’t miss a few,” she snapped back. “We have every balefire production facility mapped. There’s nothing like that out here.”
Ginger grimaced at the deep valleys below. “Perhaps they migrated.”
“Not without being seen,” Julip said. “The Rangers might be dense, but they’re not stupid. They wouldn’t let something like that wander around their territory unchallenged. These ones came up from somewhere recently.”
A gust of wind flared up from the west, forcing Aurora’s wings to billow like a parachute in an updraft. To her right, Julip spat out a colorful string of curses as hers did the same. The feathers along Julip’s left wing trembled from the effort it took for her to keep her level. In the diffuse moonlight, Aurora could see a peach-sized welt forming where Julip’s wing joined her shoulder blade. With their adrenaline waning, the pain of the injury she’d suffered at the hooves of the creature she’d attacked had begun to settle in.
The Enclave mare looked ready to throw in the towel. “Start looking for a place to land,” she grunted. “My wing’s shot.”
Roach frowned up at her, then at Aurora. His expression was equal parts suspicion and worry, the latter of the two becoming much more prominent as he realized the mare carrying him likely regarded him as dead weight.
“Aurora,” he prodded. “Let’s set down.”
She turned her eyes to the dark expanse of rolling terrain below. Here and there, dim pinpoints of firelight flickered where travellers just like them hoped to go the night undiscovered. Many of them traced out the long line of the highway as it curved through the mountains, unaware of one another and apt to be less than friendly to uninvited visitors dropping out of the sky. 
She looked to Julip. “I’m open to suggestions.”


	



She didn’t need to be told twice.
Julip began to descend, slowly, settling on a tack that brought them farther north of the highway and away from the skirt of lights that speckled its path. The mountains rose up around them as they scoured the terrain for a suitable place to set down, but at this point she wasn’t in a position to be picky. Necessity won out over comfort as she spotted the unmistakable parallel lines of a prewar railway cutting through the hills several miles north of the main road. 
Her wing buckled a few yards above the rails, low enough for the ghoul to safely absorb the impact while still being high enough to knock the wind out of her when the changeling’s back rammed into her stomach. Aurora dropped Ginger off a few feet behind them, the two mares watching as Roach bent his knees to allow Julip to slide unceremoniously onto the loose stones next to the rails.
She sucked in a shallow breath and coughed out a wheezing, “Fuck…”
The ghoul flicked his foreleg forward, eliciting a muffled pop from his knee. “I can’t remember the last time I landed that hard.”
Julip glared up at him and took another breath. “...you.”
“Don’t start,” Aurora warned. 
The ballast stones scraped beneath Julip’s hooves as she stood up, making one hobbling turn to get her bearings. Aurora and her companions took her cue and cast wary glances at their new surroundings.
On the inside bend of the tracks stood a near-vertical monolith of cut bedrock that interrupted the otherwise continuous slope of the mountain looming overhead. On the other, a weather-worn descent led into a dry valley below. A few patches of scrub brush managed to make a home out of the deep grooves carved into the slope by ages of unimpeded erosion, leaving furtive brush strokes of hardscrabble flora wherever they could take root. It was nothing compared to the greenery of the bluffs back west, but it was a welcome sight after wasting the last two days in the blasted flatland that surrounded Kiln.
Thick scabs of rust flaked off the rails all down the line, tracing reddish parallel stripes east and west. The old train line clung to the girth of the mountains like a saddlebag strap cinched two notches too tight. Julip peered off in both directions, straining to see further and wishing she hadn’t left her binoculars back on the sandstone outcrop.
The uncertainty in Aurora’s voice was hard to miss when she piped up. “Are we sure those things won’t track us somehow?”
Julip sat down on the nearby rail, shaking her head. “I doubt it.”
She lifted her injured wing and sucked a breath through clenched teeth before folding it back to her side. “Fuckers kick like an alicorn in heat.”
The swelling around the joint of her wing had widened considerably over the last several minutes, but thankfully it didn’t appear to be broken. If it had been, at least one of them wouldn’t be here right now.
She watched Aurora pick her way down the stones toward the sheer wall while Ginger followed. The two of them sat down with their backs resting against the granite, making no attempt to hide their exhaustion.
Looking at the ghoul, she couldn’t help point out the obvious. “Maybe this time you don’t let the Stable pony take the first watch.”
“Remind me again why you’re still here,” he rumbled. “I thought we made it clear we didn’t require the Enclave’s services.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not the first time I’ve been accused of thinking for myself. And judging by that shitshow you three had starring roles in, I have to say I was expecting a little more gratitude for saving your lives.”
The ghoul narrowed his eyes but said nothing.
“Thank you,” Aurora said, pressing the back of her head against the cool stone wall. “We owe you one.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said. “You saved my life, I saved yours. That’s even.”
“There’s something we can agree on.” The ghoul stepped toward her and gestured west with a sweep of his hoof. “Now you can fly home with a clear conscience. You helped us. Mission complete.”
The balls on him. Julip shook her head at him incredulously and half-lifted her injured wing to drive the impossibility of his pipe-dream home. “I’m not flying anywhere like this.”
He shrugged, unmoved. “You’ve got legs. Use them.”
“Roach.”
She watched him turn to look at Ginger, who regarded him with a tight frown.
“Don’t be cruel.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line, took a slow breath and released it all in a displeased huff. The ghoul looked primed to argue with the unicorn, but despite his degraded nature he managed to think better of it. He shot Julip a look of deep mistrust before sitting down on the stones halfway between the rails and the granite wall.
While the ghoul sulked, Julip let a few moments pass in silence to observe the two mares. It didn’t take a head shrink to tell they were exhausted both physically and mentally. It had only been a little over three days since they met at the solar array and some of that time had to have been spent recuperating at Blinder’s Bluff. That left a day at most to make the walk from the Bluff to Kiln, and Julip had observed them spending the majority of the last trekking from Kiln to the mountains. A late night at the Gaping Gash, a couple hours of sleep followed by a wholesale dismantling of a slaver depot… these three had to be dead on their hooves. It was no wonder Aurora nodded off.
The ghoul wanted her gone, and judging by the way he continued to give her the side-eye, he definitely wasn’t going to let a gentle thump upside the head deter him from pushing the issue. Her window to appeal to them was closing.
She looked Aurora in the eye, drawing a tired frown out of her. Stable pony or no, she wasn’t stupid. Back on the road, she’d smelled her pitch coming from a mile away. But at this point, Julip didn’t have any other options beyond physically grabbing the mare and dragging her away from these other two. Or at least that had been an option before she fucked up her wing, and even then the whole point of her assignment was to ingratiate herself with them. Not kidnap her.
“Look,” she said, “I know you have your mind made up about me, but I’m not some evil boogeymare out to stop you from doing whatever it is you’re out here to do. Whatever rumors you’ve heard about us, they’re not true. Or... not all of them.” She eyed the ghoul. “The one thing I can say with confidence is that we don’t crack open Stables that are still operational. We only empty the ones that have already failed, and only to keep the tech inside from falling into the wrong hooves.”
“Like the Steel Rangers,” Aurora supplied.
There was an edge in her tone that suggested not all was well between Aurora and the self-appointed knights of the greater wasteland. Julip couldn’t help but smirk. “Like them, yeah. Sounds like they’re already on your shit-list. Can I ask what they did?”
The walls came down around Aurora in the form of a polite smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”
Stop pretending to be her friend, she reminded herself. She didn’t blame Aurora for not trusting her. After spending her time with two seasoned wastelanders, having a less than positive outlook of the Enclave was expected. If she came at this like they were going to end the day braiding each other’s mane, she may as well cut her losses and give this up. 
“I know I can be… abrasive. I get that. But if I go back to New Canterlot and tell Minister Primrose that you didn’t want my help, she’s just going to send someone else who’s more stubborn and a lot less charismatic than I am.”
The last bit earned a derisive snort from Aurora.
“I’m serious,” she said. “If they spot you and don’t see me with you… it wouldn’t be healthy for me. The minister sent me out here to ask you. If she has to send someone different, they’re not going to ask.” She gestured to Ginger and Aurora. “You two could have left me in that cage and not a single pony out here would have blamed you for it. That deserves better than just being strong-armed by whoever has to take over for me. All I’m asking is for a chance to prove I’m not trying to fuck you.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Ginger murmured.
Julip opened her mouth with a ready-made retort on the tip of her tongue, then thought better and closed it.
The three of them regarded her with varying degrees of suspicion. It was evident that none of them were ready to leap on her offer, but as the seconds ticked by Julip could tell that they weren’t as eager to dismiss her as they had been back on the highway. A full minute passed before the ghoul finally answered her.
“If you want to help,” he rumbled, “you can start by taking the rest of tonight’s watch.”
She blinked and looked at him with a healthy mixture of surprise and wariness. Aurora and Ginger shot him a similar look of confusion that begged an answer. It wasn’t the response they’d expected of him.
The ghoul regarded the three of them with tired indifference and waved his weirdly perforated black hoof at Julip. “She’s made it clear she won’t stop tracking us unless one of us shoots her.”
“Um,” she said.
“And as tempting as that is,” he continued, speaking to her directly, “you’re unarmed and you haven’t done anything to harm us… as far as we know. Besides, your people have a reputation for holding grudges and we’re already on the Rangers’ bad side. No sense in doubling our problems without a good reason.”
Suspicion mingled with the anxiety of knowing her weapon was laying in the dirt somewhere back at their camp. In hindsight, surrendering that submachine gun during their last encounter hadn’t been her brightest decision.
Her eyes went to Aurora who, in spite of everything, looked to be on the verge of dozing off again. Her rifle, with its beautifully preserved wooden stock, lay across the top of her saddlebags beside her. Something about it niggled at the back of her brain, like meeting a pony for the first time after only seeing them in file photos.
“I don’t trust you,” the ghoul continued, pulling her attention away from the rifle. 
“But if you’re going to insert yourself into what we’re doing then you’re going to demonstrate that you can be useful.” He nodded toward Aurora and Ginger. “They need a good night’s sleep before we go any further, so you and I are going to take watch while they rest.”
Julip arched her brow and laughed. “Us.”
“Yes us,” the ghoul rumbled. “Either that, or you’re free to walk home.”
She looked to the two mares in hopes of finding an opportunity to negotiate the changeling’s term’s. They stared back at her, exhausted and indifferent. Neither of them were champing at the bit to invite her to stay, but at least they weren’t trying to chase her off anymore. It was an improvement. 
Turning back to scrutinize the ghoul, she had to work to keep the contempt out of her eyes. A changeling. One of Equestria’s oldest enemies and, worse, a corruption. One of the millions who didn’t have the dignity to accept that their time had expired lifetimes ago, and who continued to compete for what little resources the world had left to offer to the living. It wasn’t enough for them to defy the natural order of life and death. They had to make living harder for everyone else.
She chewed her lip. Each breath they took was time stolen away from Equestria’s recovery.
Now here she sat, miles from the comforts of New Canterlot, taking orders from one of them. Pushing herself off the rusted track, she tried to think of it like her first days as a recruit. Nobody liked being told to dig a latrine, but saying no would land a pony in even worse shit.
“Fine by me,” she said.
The ghoul grunted acknowledgment and turned to his companions. “I’ll keep an eye on her. Get some sleep.”
They nodded and settled in as best they could on the loose stones. Julip watched as Ginger lay her head against Aurora’s shoulder, who in turn slipped a wing between the wall and the unicorn’s back. The simple act of intimacy was unmistakable. The two were an item.
She made a mental note of that and turned to follow their walking corpse down the rails.







Roach’s hooves thumped over the dense wooden ties holding the rails together, the spacing between them just wide enough that every third step or so would land in the stones between them. It wasn’t a pleasant walk, but he was used to the little discomforts the wasteland had to offer. The reliable pattern of wooden beam, stones, beam and stones was a marked improvement from navigating the webwork of fissured and uneven concrete that had taken them this far.
Ahead of him, Julip followed the rails as if she were on a death march: silent, sullen and under the watchful eye of the changeling behind her. Knowing nothing about her strengths, Roach wasn’t willing to let her walk beside him let alone where he couldn’t keep an eye on her. Her weapon along with Roach and Ginger’s saddlebags were far away now, laying in the misshapen hoofprints of the creatures who had ambushed them in their sleep, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous.
They paced a quarter mile east, turned and backtracked an equal distance west. 
He had the sinking feeling that those supplies were as good as gone now. Their caps, his shells and the last of their water had been in his bag when they were attacked. And that didn’t include the medical supplies and food Ginger had topped up on before leaving Kiln. They weren’t in the direst straits, but if something attacked them again in earnest, that would quickly change.
He frowned at the knot standing out from the root of Julip’s wing. It wasn’t a terrible injury. A common strain at most, but he remembered how badly even a bruised wing could hurt back when he was still able to shapeshift. He was impressed that she’d been able to carry him at all, let alone injured as she was. Even with his slimmer changeling anatomy, he wasn’t exactly a lightweight.
Julip slowed, forcing him to do the same. He watched as she scanned the tracks ahead, the cliff above, and then the deep valley below. Same as the last several intervals, there was nothing to report. Just empty rails and dark scenery. She turned and avoided his gaze as she stepped around him, beginning the long walk back toward where Aurora and Ginger slept.
He didn’t care for her any more than she liked him, and that was fine. Lift the tail of any Enclave soldier and a pony was sure to find any number of sticks rammed up their ass. Their inexplicable hatred of ghouls and dustwings were just the two most egregious traits the Enclave imprinted on its recruits. Even if she was telling the truth about wanting to help Aurora, he knew better than to believe there wasn’t an ulterior motive attached to her mission. The Enclave was many things: ambitious, ruthless, conniving. 
But it wasn’t a charity.
Julip’s hoof slapped against an upturned stone and caused her to briefly stumble, followed by a muttered string of quiet profanity. He tried not to take too much pleasure in her embarrassment. 
The silence between them was well-worn territory. If it weren’t for present company, it might have even been a comfort. The years spent guarding a place he’d been shut out of had given him a deep appreciation for the breadth of his own imagination. During those rare moments when Blue wasn’t sleeping or hunting the ever-growing cockroaches that made the tunnel their home, he would walk the old flagstones with her and weave new stories from the fairy tales he used to read Violet before she went to bed. Blue would listen sometimes, or at least pay attention to his voice, and that was enough for him. 
They passed the spot along the wall where Aurora and Ginger slept, the two sharing Aurora’s wings like a too-small blanket. Seeing them together like this at first had made Roach a little less than comfortable. The wasteland had a tendency to force ponies together for survival’s sake, and there was no stronger glue than a shared near-death experience. Those couplings didn’t often last beyond the first night, leaving both or more participants to awkwardly tiptoe around each other until the group found a reason to fall apart. Yet over the past three nights, he didn’t see that brittleness forming between the two. If anything, their bond was getting stronger, not weaker.
Sometimes two ponies rolled simultaneous sevens. It was like seeing something from a bygone age. He smiled a little as they walked by.
“Autumn Song chose the wrong unicorn to pick a fight with.”
Roach blinked at her, the passing comment so quiet that he nearly missed it. “Her brother was the one who started it,” he said.
He thought he saw her nod, but she walked for a long while without answering.
“Cider had that reputation,” she said. “Did he do anything?”
Roach felt his shoulders stiffen. “Not my story to tell.”
“Yeah, no. I get it.”
Of all the idiotic questions to ask. He glanced over his shoulder, thankful that Aurora wasn’t close enough to hear. The last thing she needed was for some newcomer to come along and rip that wound open.
“Let me ask you a question.”
He grit his teeth and sighed. “We really don’t need to talk.”
She looked back at him with irritation. “I really don’t need a walking corpse staring at my ass for the next several hours, but here we fucking are.”
Roach snorted, meeting her gaze. “Trust me, you’re not my type.”
Annoyance turned to disgust and she narrowed her eyes at him. 
He set his jaw and looked away, kicking himself for giving into being petty. Just talking about the Enclave brought out the worst in him. Being dogged by one of them until she finally forced herself into their group was wearing on all his nerves at the same time.
He tried to think about the days to come, and how he only had to endure this for a little while longer until Aurora was back safe at home. He sighed. “What’s your question?”
She ignored him just long enough to be a pest. “I doubt you’ll give me a straight answer.”
“I probably won’t,” he agreed.
Her ears flattened and she looked ready to fire another sour look his way. Instead, faced forward and kept walking. “Back on the highway, how close were you to pulling the trigger on me?”
“You don’t want to know,” he rumbled.
“I can probably guess. You said you had family in Stable 10, but that place hasn’t been open since before the bombs dropped. That means you’re prewar.”
“Move on. We’re not talking about my family.”
“I’m not asking that.”
Roach frowned, recognizing the question she was trying to get to. It was the same question most ponies asked when they met a ghoul from before. A chance to separate the truth from the myth and finally understand what it was they had lost.
It didn’t take a genius to tell that she didn’t know how to ask the question because, as far as the Enclave was concerned, they already had all the answers. It was that confidence in knowing their history that made it so easy for them to kill the ghouls who lived it. 
“You want to know what it was like.” He watched Julip as she kept her eyes forward, carefully not committing herself in any way to the question. “Well what do they tell you in the wonderful land of New Canterlot?”
She glanced down the slope of the valley, shrugging. “Same old, same old. Open skies, amazing food, no raiders or bandits waiting to strip you down and leave you bleeding on the side of the road. Kind of hard not to oversell utopia.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” he said.
Julip swung a hoof forward and kicked a stone laying on one of the ties. It clattered over the rusted iron and tumbled into the valley. “Then what would you call it?”
“Stressful,” he said. “You couldn’t open a newspaper or sit down for dinner without hearing something new about the war. It was a constant drumbeat right up toward the end. Equestria gained a hoofhold here, the zebras took back a trenchline there. On and on.” It always surprised him what little details bubbled back to the surface after he was sure he’d forgotten them. His lip quirked into a private smile. “But, if you could ignore the war, things were pretty nice. Canterlot claimed to have the best food, but you couldn’t do better than the strip in Manehattan. Gryphon cuisine was the big thing back then. Lot of spices, though.”
Julip glanced up at the mountain above, allowing him to see the conflicted frown in her eyes. “I didn’t think ignoring the war would be an option.”
It was his turn to shrug. “I had a life to live. I wasn’t going to spend it obsessing about something I couldn’t control.”
“Complacency like that is why the stripes won the war.”
The urge to roll his eyes was powerful. “Nobody won the war, least of all Vhanna. And don’t call them stripes.”
She looked at him with an eyebrow cocked. “They dropped balefire on us. I’m pretty sure that qualified as victory in their book.”
“Debatable,” he said.
“Then let’s debate.”
Roach shook his head. “If the Enclave wanted the truth, they wouldn’t be killing the ghouls who knew it.”
She stared back at him, chewing her lip before shaking her head and turning to watch the gently curving rails ahead. “There’s enough history scattered across Equestria to confirm what we already know.”
“Is that why Autumn had you looking for SOLUS? To confirm what you already knew?”
Her ears perked up for a split second. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A smirk crossed his lips. “Bit strange that she would think a ground pounder would know anything about that project.”
She continued to stare forward, offering him nothing in response.
“It’s because you’re not a soldier, are you? You’re an archivist.”
Her tone grew brittle. “If you say so.”
“I mean, it’s obvious once you stop to think about it.” He watched her gait stiffen and knew he was onto something. “Autumn picked you because she knew what you were. That’s why you got sent out to find us with such limited gear. The Enclave knew if one of us shot you, they wouldn’t lose anything they would miss.”
Julip was silent.
“Were you even combat trained?”
“I can fight.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Roach pressed. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
They reached a buckled section of track that had served as the terminus of this leg of their patrol. Julip cast her eyes ahead, then down the valley before turning around to glance at Roach. “You’re nosey, is what you are.”
He turned as she tried to step around him, intent on heading back the way they came. She frowned as he fell into step next to her rather than behind.
“If you’re trying to piss me off, bug, it’s working.”
“I’m not worried.”
She lifted a disgusted lip at him and stepped over the rail, putting the steel ribbon between them. Her hooves slopped and crunched over the looser stone but she stubbornly persisted forward.
From what Roach knew about the Enclave’s archivists, they were only put through the most basic of military training before devoting the rest of their time to learning how to identify, recover and restore the artifacts littering the Equestrian ruins. Scavengers who knew what to look for could identify a potentially lucrative location just by recognizing an archivist’s handiwork. Unlike ponies whose livelihood subsisted from tearing apart old tech for their component parts, both Ranger and Enclave archivists were well known to be more diligent in their hunt. Something as innocuous as an access panel laying against a wall with its screws set neatly on the ground was evidence that a site had been valuable enough to draw the attention of a specialist. It was the equivalent of an old-timey miner discovering gold sand in a stream. One word spoken to the wrong pony could and historically had turned many forgotten ruins into heated battlefields.
Archivists never left New Canterlot without an escort, which meant that whatever reason Julip had for being here on her own might actually be as important as she claimed. Which begged another question.
“What’s your specialty?”
She glowered at him out of the corner of her eye. Seeing that he had no intention of leaving her alone, she looked ahead and sighed. “Computer systems and prewar electronics.”
“Not too many of those lying around still working.”
“Yeah well, the ones that do are the ones worth cracking.”
He supposed that made sense, though it was just as likely that she was feeding him a line. “So you hack terminals and fix toasters?”
“That’s not…” Julip shut her eyes and took a steadying breath. Roach watched her with a pleasant smile as she composed herself. “What do you do that doesn’t involve lurking in dark corners?”
“I happen to like dark corners.”
She regarded him with something bordering on derisive pity.
He snorted. “I was a master gardener before all this.”
Her expression didn’t change. “You. A gardener.”
“Master gardener,” he corrected.
“So you grew carrots and watered flowers.”
Roach couldn’t help but chuckle at having his dig thrown back at him. Something told him Julip only had a passing understanding of what he was talking about much in the same way he hadn’t the first clue how to break into a terminal that didn’t want to be broken into. As much as he disliked his current company, the chance to talk about his old profession rarely ever came up. He realized to his own annoyance that he’d baited his own hook.
He wetted his lips. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Sounds like something someone might say when they want to tack ‘master’ onto their job description.”
“Look up Sunny Meadows in one of your coveted archives,” he said with just enough heat to make her lean away. “I was one of the ponies responsible for keeping Canterlot Gardens as pristine as they appear in your books.”
Julip eyed him for several seconds. “Horseshit. They’d never knowingly allow a changeling that close to the princesses.”
“Huh. Good thing they never knew.”
She stared, trying to see if he was bluffing. He watched her with calm indifference. Whether or not she believed him didn’t matter. He knew that garden from stem to stamen.
“So you were a spy.”
“Nope, just a gardener.”
“Master gardener,” she corrected.
He cracked the smallest of smiles at that and nodded. “That’s what it said on my nametag.”
Julip’s eyebrows lifted with exasperation. Roach waited, trying not to stare even as she appeared to argue something with herself. Almost reluctantly, she looked over to him and asked the question she’d been struggling with.
“Can you tell me about it?”
“The gardens? There’s a lot to tell.”
She looked up at the sky, still hours away from sunrise, and shrugged. “I’ve got time.”







February 10th, 1076

Big Mac waited with trepidation while Twilight rooted through the cluttered contents of her minifridge.
Mounds of books lay in disorganized stacks all across her library where she had picked up and dropped threads of research just over the last few months. She wouldn’t deny that her studies had been more harried than usual since Big Mac’s unfortunate growth spurt, but thankfully those effects had subsided over time. The red stallion was back to his normal stature and, to her relief, willing to give the spell another go. And this time she was confident she had it right.
Two black-capped tables sat corner to corner against the northeast nook of her library with the little icebox shoved underneath. The books on the shelves behind them had been hastily relocated, replaced by two green slabs of slate that hung precariously from the lip of the bookcase. Chalk dust peppered the far edges of both tables, a byproduct of Twilight’s tendency to jot notes on the blackboards with sharp little pecks. Beakers, vials and her prohibitively expensive centrifuge cluttered both tables, hardly leaving room for the chemical-stained terminal that glowed in front of her work chair. A younger version of herself would scream bloody murder at the mess but she didn’t have the luxury of a perfectly tidy workspace, nor did she trust the ponies in the Ministry of Technology to do the work for her.
Celestia knew they had made a mess out of simpler work.
Big Mac cleared his throat. “Are you sure it’s safe to be burnin’ candles in here?”
Twilight stopped digging long enough to glance over at the single candle burning on her reading table at the center of her library. The slender green flame danced around the wick on a breeze that wasn’t there.
“It’s part of a new initiative. Helps keep me focused,” she said, turning back to the fridge and spotting the particular vial she was looking for. She plucked it out in her magic and set it in front of her terminal. “You can blow it out if you want.”
Big Mac gave the candle a dubious look, but decided to leave it be. He turned his attention to the reddish fluid in the vial. “Is that it?”
“This is it.” She grinned as she retrieved a sterile needle from the desk and tore it from its wrapper. “Regeneration in a bottle. Maiden Pharmaceutical already put in an eight-figure offer for the manufacturing rights. If everything goes well, they’ll be able to keep the front lines topped up twenty-four seven.”
A broad smile crossed Big Mac’s lips. “Here’s hopin’ it goes well, then.”
The empty needle sank through the rubber stopper with a muted squeak. The medication - the reps at Maiden insisted it was easier to market if she stopped calling it a potion - drew into the syringe one milliliter at a time until the bottle ran dry.
“Bottoms up,” he chuckled.
Twilight smirked and guided the needle into the meat of his shoulder. The corner of his eye twitched with discomfort while she pressed the plunger. It was over in seconds.
Setting the needle atop the empty wrapper on her desk, she stepped back to him and placed her ear against his chest. Focusing her eyes on a patch of rug beneath their hooves, she timed his heartbeat while the medley of stimulants and meshwork of spells found their way into his bloodstream. Little by little his pulse ticked higher until, after nearly two minutes, it plateaued to a reasonable rate.
She stepped back and looked him over. No sweats, no signs of discomfort, no strange gigantism. Big Mac looked pleasantly underwhelmed.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Just a little warmth where you stuck me,” he said. “I feel good. More alert, if I’m being honest.”
“Must run in the family.” She opened a side drawer on the desk and lifted a clear plastic box out of it. “Ready to see if it works?”
Big Mac groaned. “I hate this part.”
“It’s either this or we wait five more years while Maiden Pharma tests it on lab mice.” She popped open the box and pulled out a fresh scalpel and a wrinkled silver tube resembling toothpaste in miniature. “Besides, you can’t even feel it.”
He eyed the scalpel with a dubious grimace. “Ain’t the point. I know it’s happening.”
“The price of expedience,” she said, uncapping the tube. Big Mac offered his foreleg which Twilight held aloft with a wad of gauze. Using her magic she squeezed a clear glob of gel onto the front of his pastern, massaging it through the red bristles of his coat and into the dark grey skin below. She gave the numbing agent time to work before removing the cap from her scalpel and drawing a smooth, shallow incision across the skin.
Blood welled up from the wound immediately, dribbling down either side of the limb and into the gauze waiting below. Big Mac let out the breath he’d been holding and spared a glance at the weeping gash she’d inflicted on him.
Twilight’s heart leapt into her throat as the bleeding abruptly tapered off. The two of them watched as fresh, pink skin flowed forward and knitted itself along the edges of the cut. Several days worth of healing took place over the course of seconds until, after a full minute, the wound bore little more than a pink scar in its place. 
“That’s faster than I expected,” Twilight whispered.
“I think you got it, Twilight.”
She nodded as she tugged and pinched at the healed wound. The new skin was tight as a drum, still not quite at the point where it could be considered fully healed, but they weren’t looking for cosmetic perfection. This worked.
The euphoria was enough to make her light-headed. She sat down on the floor, grinning like a fool despite Big Mac’s sudden show of concern, and shook her head with disbelief.
“I’m okay,” she chuckled. “I just… wow.”
As she set her tools behind her on the desk, Big Mac sat down beside her and held up his leg. The pink scar was already darkening to match his charcoal skin. “I don’t suppose this might be a good enough reason for drinks?”
She sputtered a little laugh and shook her head. “Not until the observation period is over, and that only started a couple minutes ago. Like your sister would say, them’s the rules.”
“How about after?”
He was nothing if not persistent. In the euphoria of the moment, she couldn't help but smile. “One drink.”
“Plus dinner.”
“Big Mac…”
He held up a placating hoof. “Now hold on, I ain’t tryin’ to get under your tail or nothin’. I just figure if we’re gonna celebrate, we should do it proper.”
She arched an eyebrow up at him but couldn’t quite bite back the smile on her lips. “You know there’s something to be said about being too honest.”
He shrugged. “Agree to disagree.”
Something told her that he would die before he stopped chasing the mares he took interest in. Oh well, she thought. Everyone had their sins. “Okay, but you’re picking and paying.”
She watched a grin split his muzzle. “Ever been to a Red Delicious?”
“If that’s a euphemism for…”
He shook his head and laughed. “Naw, it’s this restaurant chain Applejack endorsed last year, and it’s really good so long as you like greaseball burgers and haystack fries. Drive-up service too if you have a carriage, but I figure you can zippy-doo magic us there if that’s alright.”
“‘Zippy-doo magic.’ You mean teleport?”
If he weren’t already beet red by default she would have sworn she could have seen him blush. He nodded with a sheepish grin.
“Okay,” she said. “I can move some things around for tomorrow. And if there’s a place nearby that serves proper drinks, I don’t see why we couldn’t indulge a little.”
“I’ll try not to fill up on water until then.” He took a breath and let out a content sigh, eyeing the terribly warped divan on the far end of the library. “S’pose this means I’m spending the night one last time.”
“Them’s the rules,” she repeated, and he rolled his eyes. Her knee emitted a quiet click as she rose to her hooves, yet another reminder that her forties were a stone’s throw away. It barely put a dent in her excitement. “In the meantime, I need to make a call with Maiden Pharma and get them in the loop. With any luck I’ll be spending the next week signing contracts.”
Big Mac followed her across the library to where a cream colored vest hung on a hook beside the stairs. As she went through the cumbersome process of getting her wings and forelegs through the requisite holes in the right order, she couldn’t help but admit that while he wasn’t exactly her type, Big Mac had made sacrifices for her that not many ponies would have.
She zipped up her vest and sighed. Turning to face him, she wrapped a hoof around his considerable neck and pulled him into a quick hug.
“Thank you.”
He gave her a gentle squeeze in return and let her go. “Dinner tomorrow. Don’t forget.”
Taking a step back, she had to work to keep her smile under control. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She lit her horn and gave a quick thought to where she wanted to go. Lavender light flashed and with a rush of displaced air the library was gone, replaced by the frigid air just outside the castle.
Twilight peered up at the overcast sky and wondered if the pegasi were scheduled to bring in more snow today. She hoped so. Even in the dead of winter, fresh fallen snow had a way of making Canterlot Garden even more beautiful.
She wasted no time trotting toward the garden’s hedges. The phone call could wait an hour. It had been three months since her last visit, and between figuring out Starswirl’s spell, the princesses giving her the lead on the talisman project and finally perfecting a regenerative medicine that any pony, not just unicorns could use…
Her wings shuddered with giddy energy as she lit her horn and passed through the hedges. She and Discord had so much to catch up on.







The eastern clouds glowed the ashen gray hue that Aurora learned to coincide by now with early morning. The pale light chased the black edges of sleep away and, reluctantly, she came to the unpopular conclusion that she was waking up.
Her wing ached, not from the hurried evacuation of their last camp but from being squished between Ginger’s back and the stone wall she’d slept against. They sat reclined in the same position they’d fallen asleep in, sitting on an uncomfortable bed of grey rocks with her wing wrapped loosely around the unicorn beside her. It wasn’t that bad, she supposed. Ginger’s head rested against her shoulder, giving Aurora a place to rest her own. A loose curl of Ginger’s short-cut fiery mane tickled her nose. They were both getting a little rank, but she still loved her earthy scent.
A gentle clicking caught her ear, and curiosity coaxed her eyes open. Standing prominently in the center of her view was Ginger’s horn, glowing with a wavering bronze aura. She watched the warm light pulse and coil for several seconds, her eyes tracing the darkened band of blackened bone that Autumn's shattered suppression ring had left behind. 
She could tell by the gentle tug on her foreleg that Ginger was playing around with her Pip-Buck again. She took a slow, deep breath to let her know she was awake. Ginger’s head tipped up slightly in answer and Aurora took the opportunity to kiss the base of her horn. She felt the electric shudder run through Ginger’s body and chuckled as the mare sat upright.
“Roach is right there,” Ginger scolded.
“I plead ignorance.”
She glanced down the tracks to where Roach and Julip walked, their backs turned to them as they chatted back and forth on their patrol. She couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but whatever it was seemed to have turned into a strolling lecture.
“They’re still talking?” she whispered.
Ginger hummed in the affirmative. “Ever since they took watch.”
“I’m surprised she stuck around at all. Or that Roach hasn’t shot her yet.”
“She got him talking about his old line of work.” She turned her attention back to Aurora’s Pip-Buck, her magic working the large black knob with a renewed series of clicks. “Roach won’t stop unless one of us saves her.”
Aurora watched as the two ponies followed the tracks around the curve of the mountain, disappearing from view once again. She feigned despair as Roach’s voice faded around the cliff. “Oh no, please stop…”
Ginger giggled and turned her attention more fully to her work.
“Whatcha doing?” she asked.
“Just some light reading,” Ginger murmured, relinquishing her grip on Aurora’s foreleg so she could see the screen.
She scrolled back to the top of the open document and offered Ginger a perplexed smile when she saw the header. “You’re reading my old work orders? You know I have a whole library of books on here, right? You don’t have to skim my notes on broken plumbing.”
Ginger’s eyes never left the screen. “I wanted to know more about what you did down there.”
Aurora smirked to hide her discomfort. She’d been inside Ginger’s shop and even watched her work on installing the custom wing hooks to the stock of Delphi’s rifle. It occurred to her that she rarely spoke about her work back home beyond passing mentions of the generator, its talisman and the responsibility she felt for not catching the power bleed earlier. She grimaced, knowing the reason for that silence.
Ginger looked at her and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She waved her off and forced a smile. “It’s nothing.”
“Aurora, we’ve been traveling together for a week now. I can tell when you’re lying.”
“I’m f…” She stopped and her smile faltered. How many times had she said she was fine when she wasn’t? When was she going to stop packing her fears away for later and start dealing with them?
Ginger sat up a little straighter, the Pip-Buck forgotten.
Aurora felt rooted, keenly aware that she was at a place where she could choose to either continue the lie and pretend not to be worried, or be honest and risk hearing the words that she feared since the night they spent together at Stable 6.
Her mouth worked open but her voice didn’t come easily. Wincing, she tried again.
“When this is over,” she began, her eyes fixed on the stones between them, “I’m not sure what happens after.”
“After we fix your Stable,” she clarified.
Aurora nodded. “I want this thing we have to last, but...” Her throat tightened and she laughed a little to mask her frustration. Ginger gave her time to gather herself.
She’d always been too stubborn to cry. Whether she was being picked on at school, hazed during her apprenticeship in Mechanical or suffering through her painful breakup with Carbide, she rarely let herself go to tears. Self-pity wasn’t territory she had much interest in exploring when it was far easier to work out her frustration over a stiff drink and a good drag-out brawl outside a moonshiner’s compartment.
And yet, she had one soft spot that refused to scab over and the wasteland seemed to enjoy prying the damn thing open at the worst moments.
“My dad’s alone down there,” she murmured. “I’m the only family he has left and if I leave…”
She grit her teeth and swallowed the lump in her throat, the rest of her fears needing no further explanation.
Ginger sighed and gathered Aurora’s trembling hoof between the two of hers and layed it in her lap. Aurora wrinkled her nose and pressed the back of her head against the cold stone wall, bracing herself for the hard dose of reality that she knew was coming.
“I would never force you to choose between me and your family.” She stared across the tracks, across the valley and toward the range of mountains beyond. A sheepish smile quirked at her lip. “When we’re done, I’d like to meet him. I want to see where you grew up. I want you to show me how you fix these machines of yours and listen to your friends tell me embarrassing stories about you.”
Aurora clenched her jaw to keep it from chattering. A tearful smile pulled at her cheeks with a force all its own.
“There’s too much death and sadness out here, and I’ve always wondered what it might be like to finally let my guard down,” Ginger said. “I don’t know if Sledge will be okay with it, but I want to make a life with you and I can’t think of anywhere safer than your home.”
She wanted to stay with her.
Tears matted Aurora’s face. Without warning she gathered Ginger up in her wings and pulled her into a crushing, laughing hug. All the fear, all the worry dissolved away. She didn’t bother wiping her eyes as she lifted Ginger off the ground to stand on her hind legs, letting out an elated whoop. Ginger coughed out a surprised laugh as Aurora spun her in a tight circle among the stones before finally putting her back down.
Ginger blinked the mist out of her eyes and grinned at the sight of Aurora standing before her, wings spread with unabashed excitement. “I take it that was the right answer?”
Aurora swept forward, her saddlebags a hapless tangle between her legs, and kissed her. Ginger hummed a note of delight across her lips and pressed forward with enthusiasm, her horn igniting to stroke the back of her neck. Aurora felt a bolt of anticipation fire down her spine, sending the churning warmth in her chest on a journey to more distant and familiar locales.
As her tail bent skyward, a two-toned wolf whistle peeled across the air behind her. Aurora and Ginger’s eyes shot wide and they abruptly pulled apart, spinning to track the sudden sound.
Julip stood at the far bend of the tracks, still pinching a pair of green feathers between her lips. The grin on her face was a direct contradiction to the flushed embarrassment Roach wore as he carefully averted his gaze.
Ginger narrowed her eyes at the catcalling mare, then looked at Aurora. “She can still fly, correct?”
“With difficulty,” she confirmed.
“Lucky for her.”
Her horn flared and Julip found herself swamped in Ginger’s magic. The pegasus yelped as Ginger hoisted her into the air, yanked her wings open, and heaved her into the valley like a badly made paper glider.
As they listened to the indignant trail of profanity that chased Julip over the ledge, a quieter chime tugged at Aurora’s attention. She glanced down at her Pip-Buck while Ginger chuckled at the Enclave pegasi flailing back up toward the tracks.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 6
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Elder Coldbrook
Subject: Talisman Data-Sheet
04/11/1287
[1 file(s) attached.]

Dear Aurora,

I’m pleased to hear from you again and applaud your directness. I’ve sent orders to my Rangers to stand down until such time you become uncooperative. I expect to receive daily reports on your progress. 

Attached is the data-sheet for the ignition talisman, as requested. 

Sincerely,
Coldbrook







“Daily reports,” she muttered. “What is this, homework?”
She clicked open the attachment, setting her Pip-Buck chattering as line after line of scanned documents slowly appeared on the screen.
“Are you actually fucking crazy?!” Julip stormed across the tracks toward them, her eyes welded to Ginger. A narrow band of magic formed in front of her chest, pressing her back before she could get within reach of the smug unicorn. She leaned over it, incensed. “You could have killed me!”
Ginger arched a brow at her. “You look fine to me, darling. Call it a lesson in respecting one’s personal privacy.”
“Do that again and I’ll give you a lesson in breaking your fucking neck.”
Aurora lowered her Pip-Buck and stared at Julip.
“Sorry,” she ground through clenched teeth.
She looked to Ginger, who shrugged in return. 
“I suppose she has some right to be angry.”
“I could do without the death threats this early in the morning,” Aurora added with a pointed glare at their disgruntled guest. She shook her head and sighed, turning her attention to the changeling trotting up behind her. “So what’s the verdict? Can we keep her?”
Roach tipped his head toward Julip. “Probably best if you heard it from her.”
The three of them looked at her and waited. As the silence stretched, Julip turned to Roach to see if he was serious. He stared back at her with his characteristic nonexpression.
She deflated a little and turned back to face Aurora. “I’m not a soldier, I’m an artifact recovery coordinator for the Enclave’s research and development wing.” She frowned at Roach. “There.”
Aurora stared at her with a blank expression. “Okay? Is there a version for ponies who haven’t been job-hunting at the Enclave recently?”
“She’s saying she’s an archivist,” Ginger supplied, eyes narrowed at the mare with new curiosity. “I overheard them discussing it at some length last night.”
“Wait, you were up?” Aurora frowned, finally noticing the thin bags under Ginger’s eyes. “Didn’t you sleep at all?”
Ginger tried to reassure her with a weary smile. “We’ll talk about it later.”
There was nothing she could do about it now, though there was something in Ginger’s voice that told her there was more going on than a bout of insomnia. She pursed her lips and tabled it for later. “So you’re not a soldier,” she said, giving Julip a dubious look. “Okay, then explain why that’s important.”
Julip took the tacit insult in stride. “The ghoul thinks I can help you identify something, but he’s being cagey about what that is.”
She looked at Roach, who offered a mild shrug in response. “I figured it might help us know whether he’s on the up-and-up.”
Aurora chewed her lip, knowing Coldbrook probably didn’t expect her to run his offer by the Enclave for verification. She lifted her Pip-Buck and scanned the data-sheets he’d just sent, making a point to check the benchmark output levels against what she knew the Stable generator was designed to produce. At a quick glance, the numbers checked out.
She closed the document and brought up the photo Coldbrook sent. The carbon-colored diamond waited there in its bed of crushed straw, the heavy letters stamped under the lip of the crate advertising the ignition talisman inside. After a moment of consideration she ticked a switch on her Pip-Buck, zooming in until the identifying stamp was safely out of frame.
Holding out her foreleg, she turned the screen toward Julip. “Don’t touch it. Just tell me what it is.”
Julip squinted at the grainy image, then frowned at Aurora. “Really?”
Aurora lifted her eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
“It’s a shield talisman,” she said, glancing back at the screen. “An early model, guessing by its size. Maybe a mark two?”
Aurora’s frown deepened, bringing her Pip-Buck back to where she could see the black stone. “How can you be sure?”
“I mean, I can’t be one hundred percent.”
Roach spoke over her shoulder. “Could it be anything else?”
Sensing she was being herded toward a different answer, she knitted her brow and shook her head. “At the very least, it’s an emitter of some kind, but that diamond shape is pretty indicative of an early-model shield talisman. It funnels a barrier spell from the four points to form an oval shield in front of the bearer, or at least it was supposed to. They were never deployed to the front lines as far as anyone knows.”
Aurora turned off her Pip-Buck and swore.
“What?” Julip asked, a touch of worry on her face. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Nope, you pretty much got it right.” She pushed past her and climbed up onto the tracks. She needed to think about anything else right now before she flew back to Blinder’s Bluff and gave Coldbrook an extra hole to breath out of. “Where do these tracks lead?”
Ginger and Roach joined her, trailed by Julip.
“You’ve got the map,” Roach gently reminded her.
She bit back a frustrated remark and rebooted her Pip-Buck. As she waited for the lines of computer-gibberish to finish scrolling, Ginger nudged her hip to get her attention. 
“We’ll find another one,” she said.
Aurora wasn’t sure about that, but she nodded anyway. “It feels like ever since I left home, it’s been two steps forward and one step back. I’m getting tired of being yanked around.”
“Well, it’s best not to let him know that we know.”
“Yeah,” she muttered.
The screen flickered back to life and Aurora brought up its built in map. A swirl of elevation lines, roads and markers flooded the map until she could hardly make out where they were. She zoomed out, forcing the resolution to drop until the little green triangle appeared at the center right on top of a bending, hatch marked line.
The tracks continued on a relatively straight trajectory east. She toggled the map to the right, pressing the button a little harder than she had to, dragging mountains and crossroads over the screen until the topography drew lower and flatter. The highway to their south never left the frame as it branched off into dozens of smaller roads that fractured into a network of intersecting grids. An icon at the center of the maze read FILLYDELPHIA.
Straight east. Two days, maybe less if they kept a good pace, and they would finally be there. Fillydelphia and Stable-Tec HQ lay just beyond these mountains.
On a whim, she zoomed the map out as far as it would go. The highways blipped dark, leaving only a few notable points of interest and a single custom waypoint far, far away to the west. A little triangle marked with the letters HOME waited for her out there. 
She hesitated before dropping her hoof to the stones.
“This will take us the rest of the way,” she said.
“And does that include me?”
Julip loitered behind them, her stubborn bravado wavering slightly as she waited for permission. Aurora stared at her for a long moment, then turned to Roach. “Your call.”
He looked at her and shrugged. “She’s not the worst pony we’ve come across.”
“I’d rather not meet whoever they intend to send if we turn her away,” Ginger chimed in.
“Alright,” Aurora said, waving the sage-green pegasus over. “Welcome aboard, I guess. You get to help us after all.”







Twilight passed through the innermost branches of the castle hedge maze with a spring in her step. She hadn’t felt this hopeful for the future since the days following Tirek’s death. For the first time in years, she could see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Instead of sinking into the pristine snow blanketing Discord’s alcove, her hoof dropped into a rat’s nest of dead twigs. The sharp crackle of wood startled from her reverie, but not quickly enough for her to react when the narrow wooden sled beneath the detritus slid out sideways from under her.
She toppled, but was caught by a wheat-colored curtain of feathers. Blinking surprise, she peered down at a stallion wearing a grey knit toque kneeling in the snow below her. He stared back up at her with moss-green eyes twice as wide as hers. Still clutched between the feathers of his right wing was a pair of crescent-shaped pruning scissors, the open blades carefully pointed away from the alicorn who had nearly squashed him.
He gave her a push and she hurriedly found her footing, careful not to step on the sled she kicked halfway under the hedges. Dead sticks and brush stuck out from the snow around her hooves like strange new plants. As the strange pegasus struggled for words, Twilight realized there were several voids carved into the evergreen walls surrounding them.
Packed snow dropped from the thick leather wraps protecting the stallion’s forelegs as he pushed himself upright. “I-I’m so sorry, minister. If I had heard you coming I would have moved.”
“It’s alright,” she absently replied, her eyes passing over his handiwork like a parent deciding how angry she should be after discovering her foal had been drawing on the walls. “May I ask what you think you’re doing to our garden?”
The stallion removed his hat and wiped the wet blades across the wool before returning them to a leather sheath belted to his waist. “Pruning the dead patches before the next growing season, ma’am. I’m with the groundskeeping staff.”
She watched him tuck his ears back beneath his toque, then glanced at the ring of disturbed snow following the hedgeline. A few sprigs of brown poked up from his trail where the odd stick had fallen off his sled, lending proof to his claim.
“Huh,” she said, looking down at the haystack of snapped and tangled twigs around her hooves. “Well, thank you for not sticking me with those scissors of yours. Is there any chance I can convince you not to tell anybody I almost crushed you?”
He shook his head and extended a wing toward her. “No need. I don’t take part in the gossip mill. My name’s Sunny, by the way.”
Twilight grasped his feathers with her own and smiled a little, having chalked up these new wingshakes as something only younger pegasi did. She couldn’t help but feel a little silly doing it herself. “Twilight, though most ponies already know that.”
“Price of fame,” he chuckled, and released his grip. With an apologetic smile, he reached past her and hooked his feathers around the rope attached to his sled. Twilight stepped aside as he pulled it free of the hedges and began gathering the scattered sticks from the snow. “I should go dump this before I start any more cuts, but it was nice to finally meet you.”
“Oh, let me,” she said. Lighting her horn, dozens of lavender flickers illuminated the snow and in an instant the brush pile appeared atop the wood slats of his sled, neatly stacked.
Looping the rope around his wing, he nodded to her with an appreciative smile. “Thanks a bunch.”
“Next time I’ll try not to trample your work.”
He chuckled at that, already making his way to the western break in the hedge with his sled in tow. He did a decent job hiding his eagerness to leave, but by now Twilight knew how to recognize the subtle cues. Ever since getting her wings, ponies tended to be intimidated by her almost by default. It was irritating at first, but as time passed she grew used to it. The sting of it never quite faded, however.
She learned to let these chance happenings play out on their own rather than cling to them in the hopes of beating the odds and making a new friend. Sunny retreated into the maze without a goodbye, leaving her earlier brightness slightly dimmed.
“If it’s any consolation,” Discord’s voice murmured around her, “he’s a married stallion.”
She turned and found him sitting on his side of the stone bench, an open hand gesturing to the curl of white snow occupying the other. “I’ll stand,” she said, and he shrugged with a wry smile.
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.”
As expected, a glass appeared in his hand as it always did, filled near to the brim with chocolate milk. Frozen, this time. She smirked. A spoon appeared in his lion’s paw and he wasted no time scraping curls of sweet ice from the surface.
She glanced over to the grooves Sunny’s sled left in the snow. “And how do you know he’s married?”
Discord pointed a spoonful of ice shavings toward the maze entrance before popping it into his mouth. “He brings his husband to the gardens at the turn of every season. It’s a tradition of theirs.”
Seeing her expression, he gave her a peculiar grin. “Come now, Twilight. Just because I’m imprisoned doesn’t mean I can’t see or hear. Frankly, it would be rude of me to ignore them.” 
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, crunching through the snow toward the bench. Her eyes went to his statue. “Looks like they’re keeping you clean.”
Discord’s upper half twisted fully around while his casually crossed legs remained unsettlingly still. His jovial smile faded by the barest degree as he looked at the tired and beaten version of himself. “I imagine they’ll be less enthusiastic about it when the geese return in the spring.”
She snorted, then laughed when he cocked an eyebrow at her. “Sorry, sorry.”
He smirked and returned to chiseling away at his frozen milk. “You seem happier since the last time you visited.”
Twilight pressed herself up onto the tips of her hooves, her eyes glittering. “I am. We made a breakthrough today that’s going to save thousands of lives. Millions, once it reaches the civilian market.” She waited for a few beats, imagining her own personal drumroll in her head. “Tested and portable regenerative medicine!”
Discord’s smile warmed the same way her father’s did when she used to tell him what she learned at school that day. Having experienced so much already, he was a hard creature to impress. Still, that subtle curl of his lip was all the praise she needed. It was as close to a hint that she was on the right track that she would ever get out of him.
He scraped the shavings out of his glass and closed his mouth around the spoon, making a show of waiting for the metal to warm before removing it again. “Regenerative? Not healing?”
There was a subtle but detectable nudge to his question, the barest hint of what she suspected was his inner academic.
“Both,” she said, and not without a little pride. “I designed it to mimic the regenerative genomes of a species of lizard I had imported from the southern swamps. It took more than a year getting the magic and science to play nice together, but I finally figured out the correct strength and sequence of spells to make it work!”
She paced back and forth through the snow in front of him, flattening the soft powder into a dense crust as she explained the process in detail. Occasionally she would look up to see his reaction and each time he would smile back, giving nothing away as he enjoyed the illusion of chocolate shavings. When she finished, she couldn’t help but scour his face for clues.
He pecked at the edge of his frozen milk until a nugget broke off along the glass, which he promptly scooped out and pocketed in his cheek to suck on. “It feels like yesterday you ponies were still relying on poultices and boiled roots to cure yourselves. Now you’re bottling magic.”
“Is that good?”
Discord swallowed a bit of melted ice and smirked. “I suggest you take some time to celebrate your discovery before moving onto the next.”
She offered a noncommittal shrug and tapped the edge of her hoof into the line of packed snow she’d paced into the ground, idly nudging up a slab to reveal a mat of dormant grass beneath. “If you count cheap fast food and a drink at the nearest bar as celebration, Big Mac is way ahead of you.”
“Which one is he, again?”
“Applejack’s brother,” she said. “He’s half the reason my research ever got this far, but he’s a bit of a hopeless romantic.”
Discord caught her tone and nodded understanding. “I take it you don’t feel the same way.”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “He’s nice, but like I said. He’s Applejack’s brother.”
He frowned. “I thought the two of you were inseparable.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, flicking the upturned patty of snow away, “she likes to stick her hooves where they don’t belong.”
Discord watched her for several long seconds, then set his spoon across the rim of the glass and snapped then away with his fingers. She waited for him to say something, but he simply nodded to the open space between her and the far hedges. She turned to see five ponies waiting behind her.
Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie smiled back at her, their manes free of the stray gray hairs that had begun showing up in them shortly after taking on their duties as ministry mares. They stood as Twilight often pictured them, at the prime of their youth, ready to defend one another against whatever threat came their way.
At their center stood Applejack, with one leg crossed over the other and a lazy smile creasing her lip. The illusion caught her off guard, sending her heart into her throat.
“At the risk of being a little too on the nose,” Discord said behind her, “I’d like to be honest with you, Twilight.”
She took a deep breath and nodded as Applejack’s illusion stepped forward, smiling up at her. “Okay.”
“You’re afraid that you’re growing apart from them, but you haven’t told them that. You need to set the war and your research aside for one day and talk to them. You ponies are flying forward faster than you know. If you don’t hang onto one another, you’ll end up lost.”
Twilight stared down at Applejack. “It’s not that easy.”
“If it were easy, everyone would be doing it,” he countered.
“You don’t understand.” She turned. Discord reclined on her right while the vision of her friends lingered to her left. “Applejack’s ministry was running a demonstration last month and there was an accident. An explosion. One-hundred and seventeen fatalities, including twelve ponies sent in to try to put out the fire. She’s been taking it hard.”
Discord watched her while she spoke. “And you haven’t spoken to her about it?”
She shrugged, glancing at the younger version of Applejack beside her. “What’s there to say? She let an irresponsible unicorn develop an uncharted form of magic and called it a new technology to keep it within the purview of her ministry. Trixie dove into the deep end of the pool before she knew how to swim. I just gave her a small challenge to prove my point.”
The change in Discord’s tone was subtle. “A challenge?”
Twilight nodded, oblivious to the slight shift. “I used the spell you showed me last time we talked. The balefire.”
“I never showed you a spell.” Discord paused as a frown settled on his lips. “Balefire. Wait… Baal’s Fire?”
She stepped through the space where the illusions of her friends stood, making her way to the hedges where she slipped on Sunny’s sled. “I fed barely enough into Trixie’s talisman to light a candle,” she said, breaking a sprig of crisp smelling arborvitae from the wall with her magic. “And it just went up. Boom.”
Turning so that Discord could see, she cast Starswirl’s spell and the little branch ignited with a sickly green flame. Sooty black smoke spiraled up from the living wood as it curled and blackened. She dropped it into the snow where it continued to burn.
“It was bound to happen, and they’re lucky it did out where nobody else could get hurt,” she said, wincing as she snuffed the stubborn flame beneath her hoof. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened if they had run that test beneath Canterlot. Applejack would never have forgiven...”
When she looked back to Discord, he was standing.
“Put that out!”
She frowned. “I did.”
“No.” His voice brimmed with something she had never heard come from him before. “No, you wouldn’t know if you did or not because you don’t have the slightest inkling of what you’re doing!”
“Discord, calm down,” she said, stepping away from the blackened remains of wood. A few narrow filaments of smoke curled up from it, but the fire was out. “I’ve been casting this spell for three months. I got this.”
The draconequus vanished from the bench and appeared directly in front of her. He gripped both sides of her face and to her shock, she could feel his fingers digging into her coat. It took her a panicked moment to understand he was pouring everything he had into tricking her brain into thinking he was actually touching her.
It was a dirty trick, something he’d been keeping from her until now, but it was startlingly effective.
“Entropy is the death of all things.” His voice rang in her head as if he were speaking from a dozen mouths. “It is purposeless in its destruction and devours magic as if it were dry tinder. Every time you bring that scourge into existence you are lighting a match over a powder keg!”
This was a side of him she had never seen before, and it terrified her. She wrenched herself away from him but it felt more like he chose to release her rather than the other way around. Her hooves slipped in the snow and she stumbled backwards against the hedge, her feathers tangling in the dormant foliage as she landed hard on her backside.
Discord loomed over her, his eyes wild. “Promise me you will never cast that spell again.”
“Get away from me.” Yanking her wings free, she scrambled onto her hooves and stepped around him. Her heart hammered in her chest as she became painfully aware of how far she was from her Element.
“Twilight.” His voice grew desperate. “Please, promise me.”
“Get away!”
To her surprise and relief, he shrank back from her. His ruddy pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. He was as close to the verge of panic as she was, but for an entirely different reason that she couldn’t understand. How could he be so afraid of her casting a spell on a twig when she had watched an entire valley boil with the same green fire? The world hadn’t ended. No doom fell from the sky to devour them. The explosion had been stunning but the fires had eventually snuffed themselves out.
Of course, she thought. He’s lying.
“I don’t know why you would tell me about a spell this significant and expect me to ignore it,” she said, surprising herself with the heat in her voice. “But the only ones who are going to die will be the Vhannans if they don’t surrender this war.”
Discord stared at her, the betrayal in his eyes unmistakable. “You’re turning it into a weapon.”
She took a sharp breath and nodded. “One that we won’t use unless we have to. We’re not monsters.”
“Yes you are,” he groaned, as if discovering something he’d chosen to ignore. “You all are.”
He turned away from her, staring at his statue. “I want you to free me.”
Twilight blinked. “No. Why would I do that?”
“You imprisoned me because you wanted to banish me from your world.” He spoke slowly, each word measured and calm despite the terror in his eyes. “I want to leave it, now. Please.”
“Is that all this was?” 
She gestured at the bench where the two of them had shared more conversations than she could count. How many secrets had she shared with him, thinking she was doing so in confidence? How long had he been waiting to spring this on her?
“Just you looking for an opportunity to scare me into setting you free?”
“Twilight…”
“No,” she said, cutting him off with a slash of her wing. “One thousand years, Discord. That’s the sentence you earned for betraying Equestria. Why am I not surprised that you would try to trick me into getting out of it?”
“You are tampering with a force that has snuffed out civilizations in the space of a breath! One thousand years among yours is a death sentence!”
She shook her head at the overcast sky. “You know, I came to tell you what I’ve accomplished thinking in some weird way you would be proud of me. I almost thought you were getting better.”
Discord took a step toward her, his hands trembling. “Twilight, please don’t leave. Let me go. I won’t tell anyone. They won’t even know I’m gone.”
“The girls were right,” she murmured. “I should have never kept coming here.”
“Twilight, please just stay for-”
She pictured her office and lit her horn, barely hearing Discord’s desolate shout over the rush of displaced air. Her magic pulsed and she was gone. 
Without an anchor to cling to, his illusion collapsed, and the Lord of Chaos found himself wrenched back into a lonely statue at the center of an impossible prison.
> Chapter 23: Nightmares
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 10th, 1076

He missed his collar.
The thought stumbled into his head like it often did whenever he found himself stuck down here among Twilight’s books, with nothing to do for the next twenty-four hours but eat, sleep and think. His mind always did have a tendency to wander.
Before he and Applejack made the decision to sell the farm, letting his thoughts get away from him was a perk of the job. He enjoyed the quiet, preferring to listen to the sounds of the orchard over anything else. It was the sort of peaceful existence that he once had hoped would last him until retirement like it had for Granny. She’d gone peacefully in her sleep, content in her accomplishments and accepting of her shortcomings which, as far as he was concerned, was the best anyone could hope for. Big Mac fancied that was how he wanted to go, given the choice.
The chuckle that snuck through his lips caught him by surprise. He paced the bookshelves wrapping the walls of Twilight’s library and wondered if he was finally losing it. He couldn’t blame himself if he was. His eldest sister stood at the helm of a ministry responsible for developing weapons of war, aided in no small part by the new technologies that poured out of Applebloom’s startup-turned-robotics-titan, Robronco Industries. Equestria was ready to tear itself apart at the seams and his two sisters were doing more than their fair share of pulling to keep it together, and here he was lamenting about hanging up his old plowing collar.
Having that steady weight around his neck had always felt like a totem of strength. After a rough day of loading wagons, hauling supplies or pulling the latest harvest into town to be sold, he wanted nothing more than to flop back into bed and pull the covers up over his eyes until well after dawn. There would have been a good chance Applejack might have let him get away with it too, at least once in a while, but it would have also meant that she would be pulling double duty for the day. Chores waited for no one and he was raised better than to dump work on his siblings. Putting on that collar pushed him through the early morning funk and reassured him that whatever the day had in store for him, he could handle it.
With Twilight’s healing magic and a cocktail of unpronounceable chemicals flowing through his body, it felt like the right time to be wearing that collar. Even if it didn’t feel like it, he was doing important work right now. Arguably some of the most vital work any pony had ever done in Equestria’s storied history, and all it required of him was to stay sequestered inside Twilight’s library for the next... 
He squinted at the clock on the far wall. Nineteen hours. He grimaced at that, swearing it had been more than five hours since Twilight teleported away to make her phone call. His hooves let out slow, muted thumps as he plodded across the rugs that hid the harsh concrete floor. He stepped past a wide bookcase filled with ancient tomes she had scavenged from Celestia-knew-where, his eyes scanning the spines for anything that might distract him for the remainder of his quarantine. 
Selecting one at random, he nipped a musty-smelling spine between his teeth and pulled it off the shelf. Setting it down on the reading table at the center of the library, he took a moment to scan the title. He winced.


Houyhnhnm’s Guide to Magical Arcana
Volume Seven


After a few attempts, he stopped trying to pronounce the author’s name before he sprained something important. Reading had never been his thing unless he was counting the Power Pony comics Shining Armor had gotten him hooked on some years back. How that stallion had grown up to be an unapologetic nerd while his sister surrounded herself with some of the driest nonfiction written in Equestria was beyond him. Now that he and Cadence had a minor empire and a teenager to occupy them, he wondered if Shining ever got around to his old hobbies anymore.
Cracking open the book, he didn’t worry about the actual contents of the worm-eaten pages. It was getting late and it had been clear for a while now that his mind wasn’t going to settle on its own. He wanted to blame Twilight’s regenerative medicine for him being so wired, but that excuse held as much water as a screen door. The fate of Equestria might be running through his veins right now, but he was excited for tomorrow.
Dinner with Twilight Sparkle. He grinned to himself. The last time he had butterflies in his stomach this bad was the day he proposed to Sugar Belle. That felt like a lifetime ago, and the memory of signing the divorce papers still stung. He’d given enough time to that pain. Now he was ready to move forward. 
One-sided as his infatuation was, he had an eye for Twilight since she first came to visit the family farm. There was something about her that he could never quite put into words that just felt right. She was ambitious, self-conscious, kind and even a bit of a dork on the rare occasions she let her guard down. Between his tending to the farm and her obligations to Equestria, he’d given up on that fantasy a long time ago. Now, with the war on, it felt like they were being pulled together once again and Big Mac was happy to surrender to it.
He even had a plan. Once he was clear to leave the library, he’d call up the Town Hall back in Ponyville and reserve some time in the apple orchard. Sure it was the middle of winter, but Twilight never seemed bothered by the cold any more than he was. He could already picture the two of them walking through the snow, enjoying the stillness of the bare trees. They could warm up next to the fire back in the family house and talk about simpler times and, if he was lucky, maybe a future spent together.
He stifled the grin yanking at his mouth, knowing he was probably getting ahead of himself. Twilight had always been a solitary mare, and she wasn’t going to be begged into something she didn’t want. Real life was never as simple as a Harlequine Romance novel. 
Still, there was no harm in asking.
Setting his anticipation aside, he forced himself to pay attention to the words beneath his nose. Whoever this Houyhnhnm was, he or she wasn’t fond of short sentences. He did his best to follow the meandering descriptions of fundamental magic and its importance in a modern Equestria - ironic considering the author died centuries ago. He skipped over a theory that magic was tied to the orbits of certain heavenly bodies, something he didn’t think Princess Luna would appreciate catching him dreaming about, and soldiered on in the hopes that the dead unicorn’s words would lull him to sleep.
Ten minutes in, he frowned. Something was distracting him. 
Out of the corner of his eye, the green flame of Twilight’s strange candle flickered and danced around its wick. Despite her assurances, he found that he couldn’t stop worrying that bumping the table might cause the candle to tip and the flame to leap onto any one of the closed books lying nearby. Granted, the table was rock solid and he wasn’t exactly clumsy, but now that the thought was in his head he couldn't focus on anything else.
He leaned forward, pointed his muzzle at the little green flame, and puffed it out.
A thin filament of smoke curled up from the blackened wick, forming a haze that spread over the table. Big Mac wrinkled his nose at the faintly metallic scent and coughed as the smoke scraped at his lungs. He swallowed, then coughed again, harder. Shaking his head, he stood up from the table and stepped away from the lingering pall.
It didn’t help. It was like he’d inhaled fiberglass. He grimaced as his lungs rioted against the persistent irritation, forcing him into a hacking fit that left him dizzy and gagging. Stumbling to Twilight’s workbench, he fumbled the door to her minifridge open and retrieved a bottle of water from the back. He didn’t have patience for the cap. Clamping it between his teeth, he yanked until the plastic threading gave way and half the water geysered out of the bottle. He drained what was left. The burning in his throat subsided but his lungs continued to burn. He could feel it spreading throughout the barrel of his chest, like a coal mine catching fire from within.
He sagged against Twilight’s workbench and clenched his eyes shut, willing the pain to go away. 
Sweat darkened his coat to the color of wet bricks. He pressed his forehead against the cool tabletop and groaned. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
When he opened his eyes again they wouldn’t focus. This was bad. He needed to get Twilight. He swallowed again and his throat clung shut for an agonizing moment as if he’d swallowed a tube of glue. The library lurched as he pushed away from the workbench, his vision sloshing as he searched for the stairs leading up to the rest of the ministry. Someone up there could help. He just needed to reach the door. 
Racking coughs pounced on him again, this time hard enough that he retched up the water he just drank. Whimpering, his vision milky, he staggered forward in the direction he thought the stairwell was. His hooves swung forward and landed as if he were walking with someone else’s legs. His entire body burned as if it were on fire and he knew, distantly, that he wouldn’t make it to the steps.
The shelves surrounding him rolled, and he hit the ground. The wind rushed out of his lungs with an undignified grunt and gravity kept him there, pinned to the floor while his brain struggled to make sense of where up ended and down began. He vomited. Instinctively he moved his hoof to wipe the muck from his mouth, but he stopped when he saw it.
Through distorted vision, he watched his ruddy coat sloughing away from his leg in clumps. He forced himself to blink, to clear his eyes and dispel the nightmare, but it only made what he saw that much worse. His leg was too large. His hoof split down the center, weeping blood like a quartered piece of firewood. His coat came loose whenever he moved it, leaving a smear of red hairs wherever they touched the rug. Thick, foul-smelling scabs formed over the open wounds as regeneration and decay fought over him like a cheap carnival prize.
He opened his mouth and screamed. Not for help, but because the fire radiating from his chest wouldn’t permit him to do anything else. The smoke, he realized. 
There had been something in the smoke and it was killing him.







“We can always go around.”
Ginger scoffed. “As much as I would love to ‘go around,’ I left my mountaineering equipment back at Gussets & Garments. Unless you’re suggesting you can fly now, in which case I would ask why we’ve been walking in the first place.”
“You didn’t seem to care when you threw me off the fucking tracks.”
“And yet somehow you managed, dear.”
Aurora rolled onto her side and shushed the two mares hunkered down in the stones behind her. Ginger pressed her lips together and nodded an apology while Julip rolled her eyes to avoid both their gazes. At the rear of the group, Roach offered a lopsided shrug that said what’re you going to do?
Aurora resisted the urge to rub at the headache forming between her eyes. She was already beginning to regret allowing Julip into their little group. Not even half a day in and it already felt like someone had thrown a bag of sand into the gears of a well-calibrated machine. The prospect of keeping Coldbrook happy was stressful enough. Lump in the fact that he was trying to deceive her with a fake ignition talisman and the risk that he might try to break into Stable 10 if he discovered she’d seen through his lie with the Enclave’s help… 
She forced herself to focus. The last thing she needed was more distractions.
With Julip and Ginger’s bickering on pause, she rolled back behind the butt of Desperate Times and pressed her cheek behind the scope.
“There’s only seven of them,” she said. “I should be able to clear them out from here. Then we can see if there’s anything worth taking on board.”
On the other side of her crosshairs rested what was left of an old passenger train. Like so many aspects of the wasteland, Aurora had only known what a train was from the pictures in her schoolbooks and the odd film. There had been an entire section on prewar methods of transportation and trains were featured heavily throughout. Most of the ones she remembered had looked roughly the same: a sleek, pill-shaped diesel engine attached to a long line of containers bearing the logos of prominent Equestrian companies.
This one, however, was different.
Instead of the smooth, modern shape Aurora had come to expect, the black locomotive attached to the front of the line was the epitome of utilitarian design. Its long, behemoth boiler sat exposed, mounted atop an interlocking series of wheels and driveshafts that had been forged at a time when oil was still considered a novelty fuel. It was a precision tool no different than the generator back home, an unstoppable invention of Equestrian ingenuity.
Or, it had been right up until it derailed.
The locomotive and its attached coal car had skipped the rails and slid drunkenly against the carved granite wall, the centuries-old gashes still visible in the stone. The cars behind it hadn’t been so fortunate. While the first three followed the locomotive toward the safety of the mountain, the fourth had jumped the tracks at a diagonal that had swung the fifth out over the cliff overlooking the valley below. Even now that fifth car still hung there with the rear third of its cabin suspended over the drop. Its rear coupling had been sheared away by the force of the derailment, leaving behind a rusted claw of steel that had tried and failed to prevent the remaining cars from plummeting into the valley below.
Aurora considered taking a glide down to find the rest of the wreckage, but something about that thought felt wrong. Voyeuristic, even. Even out here where every ruin was a reminder of the holocaust that preceded her, she was starting to learn that there was a fine line between finding death and reveling in it. 
“Looks like they’re locked inside,” she said, panning her rifle across the ghouls standing inside the passenger sections. “All feral.”
It still fascinated her how something a quarter mile away could appear close enough to touch. The ghouls stood stock-still like half-dressed mannequins, oblivious to their visitors. They stared vacantly in the direction of the last thing to draw their interest which, for many of them, seemed to be their own reflections in the cracked and dingy windows. Bits of old clothing clung to some of them. A broken pair of glasses hung from the neck of a mare by a tarnished chain. Echoes of who they had once been.
She leveled the crosshairs on a withered stallion standing in the car dangling over the cliff. He seemed to stare back at her, curious about his new visitor. He looked just like Gallow. For a brief moment she heard his shrieks as she had struggled to put him down.
Aurora clenched her eyes shut and forced the memory back down.
When she opened them again the nameless stallion was still there, the remains of a black bowtie fluttering in the breeze against the knob of his shoulder.
She settled her sights over his temple and squeezed the trigger. Her rifle bucked against her shoulder, the sound of the report slapping her eardrums like a physical thing. In the distance, the stallion’s tiny silhouette flicked sideways and dropped beneath the window.
“One down,” she breathed, and settled her cheek back behind the scope.
The ferals trapped inside the train never fully understood they were under attack. At the sound of the first gunshot they had all turned to face her, their expressions twisted with something amounting to consternation as they began milling back and forth inside the cars. With every pull of the trigger they became more agitated, knowing there was prey nearby but struggling to find a way to reach it. 
The task of clearing out the ghouls quickly devolved into a twisted version of a shooting gallery as the train’s desiccated occupants hurled themselves around in search of an exit. A mare missing the majority of her lower jaw came the closest, crawling out through a shattered window and finding herself trapped again as the tatters of her sunbleached dress snagged on the broken glass. Half in, half out, she battered her cracked hooves against the wall of the car until a bullet thumped into the back of her neck and ended her struggle.
As the echo of the last gunshot rebounded off the mountains, Aurora continued sweeping her crosshairs across the train. Nothing else appeared in the smeared windows and no other ghouls rose from tracks beyond the locomotive.
“I think we’re clear.” She left the last round in the chamber as she stood up, listening to three sets of hooves scrape against the grey stones as they did the same. 
On Roach’s insistence, they approached the crippled train slowly to give any ferals that might still be lurking inside ample time to give themselves away. The wooden ties muffled their steps as they drew close. Scooping up a few loose stones between her feathers, Aurora flicked a wingful against the side of the rearmost car. Most thudded dully against the wooden chassis, shaking loose a snow of flaking green paint while the rest sailed through the windows with a bright crash of broken glass.
Nothing answered.
“Looks like you got them all.” Roach walked to the front of the car where two rusted steps hung out from beneath the lip of the sealed door. “Julip and I will check the rear two cars while you two look over the others. Sound good?”
Julip made an irritated noise as she trotted up the tracks to catch up with Roach. Aurora pretended not to notice her, instead glancing back at Ginger as the unicorn sidled up beside her.
“Sounds good,” they said.







Julip chewed the inside of her cheek as Aurora and Ginger trotted off to explore the forward cars. The swelling at the root of her wing had died down a little since the morning, no thanks to the unicorn Aurora had somehow become infatuated with since she found a way out of her Stable. A Stable that, as far as the archives were concerned, had been destroyed by the bomb that had collapsed a measurable percentage of Foal Mountain.
Now, it seemed, Commander Spitfire’s experiment had not only survived the end of the world but it had just ejected one of its residents into the wasteland for reasons known only to Aurora. She was on a mission, that much was evident, and she had been willing to enlist the help of a unicorn and the irradiated husk of Equestria’s oldest enemy to complete it.
As she waited impatiently for Roach to loosen the car’s rusted door, several thoughts passed through her head. The first one being how Aurora had managed to leave her shelter in the first place. Stable-Tec had layers of protocols in place to prevent unauthorized access to the primary door, least of which were the heavily guarded security offices positioned ahead of every Stable antechamber. Even if she had gotten through somehow, the door wouldn’t open for anyone short of an overmare or stallion.
Stealing a glance at Aurora as she fished what looked like a pry bar from her saddlebag, Julip was willing to bet she wasn’t the overmare.
However she managed to get out, it meant there was a way through the landslide that had buried the entrance and that the Enclave had missed it. To be fair, they hadn’t made monitoring several million tons of compacted rubble a top priority after losing contact with Ten. By then the remnants of Equestria’s domestic military had begun the long process of consolidating under an independent banner, and they were eager to plant that banner anywhere they could.
Julip sighed as Aurora pried open her door and led Ginger into the car. Half-standing on the step in front of her, Roach had only just gotten the handle to wiggle. Goddesses, he was slow.
If there was a silver lining in this whole debacle, it was that the Steel Rangers had done something to piss off Aurora well before the Enclave got word of her. The fact that Aurora looked ready to kick a puppy at their mere mention surprised even Julip. There was no arguing that the Rangers were opportunistic predators in their own right, but they also tended to have a deceptively good bedside manner. The “noble warriors of Old Equestria” bit was a sales pitch that ponies were annoyingly eager to buy into. 
And yet Aurora hadn’t.
The passenger car screeched open on rotten hinges, jarring her back to the present. She waited as Roach climbed up the steps, peeked down the walkway and stepped fully into the car. She felt some relief at the sound of his shotgun locking back on its rail and followed him inside.
The fetid smell of leaking ferals was rank. Two distinct bursts of dark matter painted the right side of the car, clinging to the wall and seats like old soup. She had to force herself to breathe, reminding herself that the smell would become less unbearable if she breathed through her mouth. At least that was what her wing leader used to say before Autumn’s people put a hole in his chest.
Her stomach lurched and she had to fight to keep it under control.
“Fuck.”
The two ghouls Aurora executed hadn’t been the only passengers. Bones littered the padded seats, some intact enough to resemble bodies while others were so scattered and tangled that she couldn’t tell where one pony stopped and the other began. The glass partitions that separated each pair of benches were smeared with brown streaks that had dribbled and dried along the edges of each seat. Dark stains discolored the floral pattern of a once-beautifully carpeted floor, marking where each passenger had decomposed.
She watched Roach make his way as close to the rear of the car as he was comfortable, staying clear of the section that hung over the ledge. He turned, looked back at her and indicated the broken glass partition that separated the seats beside him. “Everything beyond here is off limits. No sense in tempting fate.”
She swallowed her gullet and nodded. Knowing that she couldn’t fly back New Canterlot and take a long soak in a decontamination shower made the smell that much worse.
He arched an eye at her. “If you need to puke, do it outside.”
She shot him her best glare, but he had already set about unbuckling a suitcase on the seat beside him and didn’t notice. Probably the odor made him feel at home. She backtracked to the front of the car and tried to distract herself. Using the back of her wing, she swept a dead pony’s bones off a rumpled backpack and began rummaging.
Unsurprisingly, its contents had little value to anyone beside its former owner. A stack of musty textbooks, a thick green and white folder filled with neatly typed papers lay inside. A similarly colored sweater bearing the blocky logo of Fillydelphia University stared up from the bottom. Unimpressed, she opened one of the backpack’s smaller pockets to find an energy bar wrapper and a leather pouch filled with a modest amount of prewar bits.
She considered the bits for a moment before putting them back and dropped the bar into her mailbag. Turning, she pulled a briefcase to the edge of the seat behind her and popped the latches.
They worked in silence for several minutes, falling into an almost pleasant rhythm were it not for the decaying stench of the freshly re-deceased ferals they shared the narrow space with. As they pulled apart zippers and broke into hard cases, it became obvious the travellers that boarded this train centuries ago had not done so with any aspect of their own survival in mind. They found an abundance of clothing, literature, bits and a decent amount of uneaten snack foods that, while technically edible, were just as likely to make a pony sick as they were to fill their stomach. They pocketed the food anyway just in case.
As they worked toward each other, it became harder for Julip to ignore the strange reverence Roach showed as he looked through each passenger’s luggage. He took care to disturb as little as he could, avoiding moving bones whenever possible and only removing items from bags he intended to keep. Everything else got placed back where he found it. She frowned a little. As an archivist, she understood the importance of preserving important historical sites, but this was a common commuter train. He was treating it like the gryphons treated their sacred burial grounds.
She watched him step over one of the fallen ferals and couldn’t help herself. “Anyone you know?”
Roach stopped and looked at her for a long moment. He opened his mouth, then closed it with a shake of his head. She tensed as he approached her, but instead of lashing out like she half-expected, he squeezed past her.
“You can finish up here if you want. I’m going to start on the next car.”
She stared after him as he descended the first step toward the door. “It was a joke.”
He mouthed a silent, Ah, and dropped onto the stones outside.
For several seconds she stood there, dumbfounded that a ghoul would actually try to guilt trip her. This was the wasteland, not Nana’s Cottage for Sensitive Souls. Since when was a little humor off the table? 
Okay, she thought. Maybe it wasn’t her best example of wit, but Roach had over two centuries to grow some thicker skin. How was she supposed to get anywhere with any of these ponies if they couldn’t grow a pair. Figuratively.
Julip groaned inwardly as she listened to Roach working on the handle of the next car. What did he expect her to do? Feel sorry for him? Fuck that. There was only one pony alive in Equestria who earned the right to live this long and it wasn’t some ghoul in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. If he expected pity when she was the one with an expiration date, he had another thing coming.
The next door over wrenched open on rusted hinges. With a muttered curse, she trotted down the aisle and down the steps.
She climbed into the second car and found him in the process of navigating the cluttered walkway toward the back. A subtle twitch of his ear was the only acknowledgement he gave to her arrival.
“Look,” she said, her voice low. “I’m sorry, okay?”
He sat down on the filthy carpet and proceeded to lift the lid of an unlocked suitcase. “Okay.”
She blinked. “Wait, seriously?”
Roach looked up from the case and down the aisle at her. “What do you think?”
Her mouth hung open, abashed. He was actually going to hang onto this one. “Honestly? I think that you’re taking a joke about a mindless eating machine waaay too fucking seriously.”
He nodded and resumed leafing through the case. “You must not be much of an archivist if you believe they’re all mindless.”
She leaned against the partition at the front of the car, her eyes drifting to the splayed hooves of one of the ghouls that had fallen between the seats a few feet away. “So you’re one of those ponies.”
He shrugged, opting to read the engraving on a flask he’d pulled from the suitcase rather than answer. Setting it back among the other articles, he closed it up and leaned forward to lift a pair of foal-sized saddlebags off the floor.
“Name one feral that’s ever come back,” she said with a hint of challenge in her voice.
His lip curled with a sad smile. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He lifted a brick-shaped device out of the saddlebag and squinted at the dark screen. A green crust had seeped out of the toy’s battery compartment, ruining it. He set it back in the saddlebags and set them beside the small collection of bones tucked into the corner of the seat.
“You haven’t stopped prodding at us since we landed.” He gave her a knowing look as he pivoted to the pair of benches behind him. “When you told us you had a tendency to be abrasive I thought you meant that in a soldier-of-the-Enclave sort of way, but you’re just punching at every button you can just to see if we tell you something useful.”
Julip slid her tongue across her teeth and stared out the window. “It’s my job to ask questions.”
“Believe me, we can all tell.”
The dig was more subtle than she expected to come from a ghoul, and it stuck like a bramble. She narrowed her eyes at him, but his attention was firmly set to the task before him. When he didn’t acknowledge her glare, she gave up and turned to the seat beside her. She chose a satchel and started untying the strap. Much to her annoyance, Roach continued speaking.
His voice sounded like how it felt to step on wet gravel. “How long have you been with the Enclave?”
The satchel flopped open with a puff of dust. A gentle sweep of her feathers sent the motes wheeling toward the broken windows. “Eight years.” 
Roach made a thoughtful noise as he closed one case and shuffled sideways to begin searching the next. “Do you enjoy it?”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she pulled a stack of old magazines from the satchel by a band of twine. At the top of the pile, a well-muscled black stallion stared up at her from the cracked cover of Taboo Tattoos. A decorative knife-like pattern traced a white line along the curve of his hip before twisting out of sight around the inside of his leg. Julip’s eyes grew wide and she carefully snapped the fraying twine, sliding the magazine into her own bag.
“It’s steady work,” she said while leafing through the rest of the stack. Ponies hadn’t known how good they had it, being able to decorate themselves with magic like that. These days tattoos had to be done with ink and a hopefully clean needle. And even then a pony had to shave their coat down to the stubble if they wanted anyone to see the damn thing.
Her heart somersaulted into her throat as a pair of Wonderbolts appeared near the bottom of the pile, the two stallions grinning over their shoulders at the camera with their signature flight suits puddled around their hooves. Julip hadn’t known Wonderbolts could have tattoos there.
She swallowed to wet her throat and stowed the magazine away with the other. “Being an archivist doesn’t come with all the glamor of infantry work, but there’s something to be said about safeguarding our history from the Steel Rangers.”
“Is that what you’re doing,” Roach chuckled.
A frown crossed her expression and she looked over to him, only to realize he’d been watching her from across the car. Her neck warmed with fresh embarrassment, but she stopped short of saying anything that would give him satisfaction. After a moment he shrugged to himself and went back to scavenging.
“I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain the irony of the Enclave going to war with Equestria to preserve its history,” he murmured.
It didn’t take much effort to catch the subtext. She set her jaw, refusing to bite.
Then, a metallic click caught her ear.
“Come over here and look at this,” he said.
Against her better judgement, she spared Roach the slightest glance and saw a narrow thread of gold swinging from his upturned hoof. Laying open over his sole was a locket no larger than a bottlecap. Grudgingly, she closed the flap to her mailbag and picked her way across the car to where he sat.
From past experience she knew the locket would hold someone’s photo. They usually did. It was a trend that survived even the war, buoying their trade value well above what the raw metal was worth. She stopped a few steps away from him, but he was persistent and held the locket out for her to take. She accepted it if only to keep him from getting up to put it in her wing himself.
A fuzzy brown photo of a mare and what looked to be her foal grinned up from her feathers. On the opposite half, a tiny inscription had taken on a patina of rust that made the message illegible.
Roach watched her with his disconcertingly opaque eyes, making her feel like the dull recruit at the academy. “Okay?” she prompted.
“That’s history worth preserving.” He tapped the open face of the locket. It was everything she could do not to pull her wing away from his touch. “And that’s where the Enclave consistently gets it wrong.”
Of course he would try to guilt her again. “Oh for…”
“Just hang on for one second and let me finish.” 
He held out his hoof for the locket and she dumped it out of her wing with a flick of irritation.
“History is more than just artifacts,” he said, turning to the pink suitcase splayed open on the seat in front of him. A small box made of polished oak sat atop a folded yellow sundress. Roach pressed the locket shut and poured the trinket and its chain into the box, then slid the lid shut. He patted the musty dress with his hoof for emphasis. “It’s the ponies who lived it. You could take home a convoy of wagons loaded to the brim with antiques, but you may as well be saving the headline and cutting out the article for all the good it’ll do.”
Julip watched him close the suitcase. “We have an entire database filled with Equestrian literature. Anyone who was ever anybody has been preserved thanks to the work we do.”
“I think you’re smart enough to know that’s not the point I’m making.”
Her lips pressed into a narrow line. “So you lived back then. That doesn’t change the fact that ghouls are an aberration of nature.”
“I agree.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You agree.”
Roach shrugged, lifting his unarmed foreleg for her to see the obsidian chitin that had seemingly shattered and fused into a pattern of warped and overlapping plates. This wasn’t her first time standing this close to a ghoul, but the dimly luminescent flesh that peeked between his cracks made her skin crawl.
“There’s nothing natural about this.” The observation came to him as casually as if he were commenting on the weather. “Had the bombs never fallen, I would have died centuries ago. Same with all the first ghouls. But they did and we didn’t, simple as that. Nobody asked us for our opinion before they pushed the button. They just pushed it.”
Julip frowned and took a step away, careful not to disturb the remains of a unicorn sagging against the window as she sat on a nearby bench. The padding wheezed. She was starting to like this conversation less and less.
“In any case,” he continued, “you and I could bat this ball back and forth until we’re blue in the face and still get nowhere, so maybe it’s best we don’t try. What I would like to do is set some ground rules going forward.”
She snorted. “Oh joy.”
“I know, I’m excited too,” he said, mimicking her deadpan with a disturbing level of accuracy. “First, stop it with the ghoul jabs before Ginger overhears something and magics you into a mountain. This isn’t the Enclave. The whole holier-than-thou schtick isn’t endearing.”
She paused before reluctantly nodding.
“And second, don’t lie to us. I guarantee I know how to detect bullshit better than you’ve been trained to deliver it. We have more than a few doubts about why you’re really here and there are going to be questions you’ll be expected to answer if you plan on staying with us. If you want to avoid telling your minister you failed, you’ll be honest.”
That made her eyebrows drift skyward. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“Not when it comes to them.”
She glanced at him and noted the hardness in his expression. Ghouls were notoriously stoic, but this was different. An almost paternal protectiveness. Now she understood why he insisted on hitching his wagon to her despite them being, in every sense of the word, enemies.
“Fine. I’ll try to be… nicer,” she said carefully, “but I won’t be answering every question you ask. I have an ass to cover, too.”
To her relief, Roach nodded. “I can work with that.”
“Alright then.”
A quiet moment passed, signalling the merciful end to an uncomfortable discussion. On some level she knew she’d been pressing her luck antagonizing the ghoul, but how could anyone blame her? It wasn’t as if her previous encounters with their kind led to polite chats. They usually ended with someone on her team putting holes in them until they stopped twitching.
“So, is Julip your whole name?”
She wrinkled her nose at him, but his attention had been drawn to the trio of almond-shaped leaves on her flank. Without thinking, she covered her mark behind a drape of similarly tinted green feathers. “Not technically.”
Seeing his expression, she relented. 
“First name Mint, last name Julip. With an i. Like the drink, except my mother spent more time indulging her favorite cocktail than she did trying to spell it correctly on my birth certificate.” 
The heat in her voice caught her off-guard, and the two of them exchanged mildly startled expressions before Julip let out a chagrined chuckle. “Wow. I did not intend to tell you that.”
“Well,” Roach said with a careful smile, “at least now I know you’re capable of honesty.”
She nodded uncomfortably. “Any chance you’re capable of keeping that to yourself?”
By some miracle, his response came free of judgment. “When I abandoned my hive, I named myself after the weather and a particularly large field I once flew over. Then I survived the end of the world and decided to name myself after the bugs that infested the tunnel. Trust me, I know first-hoof how quickly a shitty name can stick.”
“So,” she hedged, “is that a yes?”
“I thought that was obvious.”
With a grunt, he stood and turned to face the remaining unexplored section of the car. It didn’t take a shrink to tell he was as dubious about their prospects of scavenging anything useful here as she was. His gaze turned toward the crooked-facing car’s line of broken windows and the three remaining segments of train resting against the rock face outside.
“Unless there’s anything in here you think we should look at, we should check on the ladies.”
Julip scanned the remaining jumble of unchecked luggage strewn across the seats. “You sure? Why?”
Roach nodded out the window toward the front of the train, a resigned smirk playing on his muzzle. 
“Because Aurora’s playing with the engine.”







February 11th, 1076

Twilight lit her horn. With a flash of light, the neatly stacked bindle of contracts and its requisite trio of holotapes containing the details of her regeneration spell vanished from her desk. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the unmistakable sound of the packet materializing on the other side of the line. 
“Thank you, Miss Sparkle.” The stallion at the helm of Maiden Pharmaceutical spoke in a measured, professional baritone. “Give me one moment.”
She listened to the receiver shuffle against what she assumed was the ridge of his chin as he began looking through the promised materials. She didn’t know Golden Dunes all that well outside his origins in Saddle Arabia and that he and his family maintained a home in Canterlot’s historical district. What she did know was that Maiden Pharma was the company best equipped to fast-track this spell to the front lines, and Golden Dunes had not been shy about his eagerness to purchase the manufacturing rights.
“Everything looks to be in order. Once we’ve synthesized a viable sample and verified the effects, the Ministry of Magic will see the second half of the agreed amount. Provided everything goes smoothly, we can expect to see manufacturing begin inside of three months.”
Twilight’s smile widened as her terminal chimed with a notification of deposit. She took a slow, deep breath to steady her nerves at the sight of the number. On paper it seemed so abstract. Now she was staring at more than twice her annual budget on one line. The fact that she could expect to see a second payment for the same amount had her quietly bouncing in her seat. The things her ministry could do with these funds felt boundless. It more than made up for Discord’s sudden tirade in the garden some hours earlier.
She glanced at the clock tucked away in the periphery of her terminal. Almost six in the morning. Normally she would be dead on her hooves having gone this long without rest, but she felt the exact opposite. In a short few months, Equestria would have its first real advantage over Vhanna in years: near-instant, fully regenerative healing. 
Let the zebras have all the herbs and poultices they liked. The war would finally tilt back in Equestria’s favor.
“Miss Sparkle, are you still there?”
Twilight shook herself out of her daydream with a silent curse. “I’m here. The first payment came through just now, thank you.”
“That’s good to hear. I’m looking through your notes and I’ll be honest, your reputation for thoroughness is well-earned. Our marketing division will be excited to know your technical analysis lines up with the paperwork in your preliminary offer. That’ll help keep the branding list concise.”
Twilight pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair, her eyes scanning absently across the three sparsely decorated walls beyond her desk. Even when she lived in the Golden Oaks Library, before Tirek saw fit to reduce it to burning splinters, she had never owned much. The books had never been truly hers, and the few framed photos hanging around her office rested in frames picked out by other ponies.
On the far wall near the door, a photo of her and the girls enjoying a meal at one of Ponyville’s outdoor restaurants had adopted a slight lean from what sometimes felt like the unending traffic in and out of her office. Identical copies of the same photo adorned the girls’ offices as well. The fact that it had been taken without their knowledge spoke of the height of their fame as Elements and the casual invasions to their privacy that they had been forced to adjust to. Fluttershy had taken a liking to the picture after spotting it in the Ponyville Gazette, and she had gone through great pains to track down the photographer for proper prints.
Now, among a few notable nicknacks she had managed to hang onto from their past adventures, that photo of the six of them had become something sacred for the six of them. As much as the war had irreversibly changed them, they all yearned for the day when things could finally go back to the way they used to be.
Golden politely cleared his throat across the line.
Twilight shot upright in her chair. “Sorry! Sorry. I’m still here.”
The sound of his chuckle was rich like honey. “It’s quite alright. Before I present these plans to the board, do you have any questions for me?”
It felt so strange to be spoken to by someone in a position of authority who didn’t wear a tiara twelve hours a day. The thought renewed her grin and threatened to make her laugh, something she didn’t think Golden Dunes would appreciate given the moment. She cleared her throat, trying not to mimic him, and decided she did have one question.
“I have been wondering,” she said. “What do you think you’ll name it?”
A pause. “Well, like I said, the marketing division already has a list. So far the frontrunner has been ‘StimPack.’”
“StimPack,” she said, testing it out. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Somehow she didn’t think it was possible for years of research beyond the fringes of magical theory could be boiled down to something so… clinical. 
Then again, that was probably the point. Unicorns didn’t need to be sold on the magic, it was the earth ponies and pegasi who would need help getting past the taboo of casting a prepacked spell on themselves. Clinical would be familiar for them, and in spite of the uninspiring name, she could already feel it rooting itself into her mind as the only reasonable choice.
“It fits,” she said.
“You sound just as disheartened as I was when I first heard it,” he said warmly. “Rest assured, my people are the best at what they do. Give it a year and StimPack will be a household name.”
She smirked at the glowing screen of her terminal and reached forward with a lavender feather, turning it off. “I feel like I should be toasting to that.”
“Clink,” Golden said.
She laughed and raised an imaginary glass in her wing. “Clink.”
“Congratulations, Twilight.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it. With the task of perfecting the single most daunting spell she’d written behind her, she felt like she could finally breathe again. “I should let you go. Call my office if your people have any questions about the spell structure, okay?”
“I think we can handle it, but we know who to ask if we do. Get some sleep.”
Just the thought of sleep kicked in a reflexive yawn. They said their goodbyes and she dropped the phone into the receiver. For several minutes she enjoyed the fullness of accomplishment. They’d done it. Even in her windowless office she could see the sun cresting a distant horizon. No more torturous updates to Equestria’s death toll. No more gruesome stories of ponies drowning in the yellow haze of blindweed. 
It slowly hit her that everything was finally going to be okay. She dabbed a feather against the corner of each eye, wicking away the moisture gathering there. One way or another, whether the zebras saw their end approaching on the wave of a rejuvenated Equestrian army or the glowing green plume of a new weapon her research division assured her would have the potential to devastate cities once it was finished, this war was coming to an end.
She needed to break the good news to Big Mac. Of all the ponies in her life, he’d given the same if not more time to this project than anyone. Keeping his symptoms a secret had been no small feat given his family’s tenacity at wringing information out of ponies. Knowing he could finally tell Applejack and Applebloom the honest truth of what he’d been up to for the past two years would be a heavy weight off his chest.
Dipping her horn, she cast the spell. Her office vanished and the secluded sublevel of her ministry’s library rushed in to greet her. As the familiar draft of the library stairwell cooled her flank, a gasp jumped out of her throat at the sight of the panorama in front of her.
It was all destroyed.
Paper and parchment littered the floor like ragged strips of confetti. Deep slashes ran in diagonals across her bookcases, leaving shelves quartered like dry timbers. Her reading table lay in a shattered heap in the nook she’d spent countless late nights sleeping in among half-written notes, the remains of which were indistinguishable from the shredded disaster of priceless Equestrian literature.
Her stomach climbed into her throat at the oily scent of smoke. The far corner of the library where her lab tables and a fortune of bits’ worth of precision tools had been gathered had been reduced to little more than a blackened scar. The bookcases she’d hung her blackboards from had been physically torn from the walls, adding to a charred mound that now dominated the former workspace. Taking a step forward, her hoof squelched into a rug soaked to the last fiber in soggy paper and gallons of lukewarm water. 
It took her a beat to understand that the blaze had triggered the fire suppression system. Yet while the mechanical triggers had worked as intended, the enchantments intended to shield her bookcases had somehow failed to deploy. Centuries of irreplaceable original works were simply gone.
Forget the books, she thought.
“Big Mac?”
The mound in her burned lab space shifted at the sound of her voice, followed by a low, rumbling moan.
Something about the noise stopped her hoof midstep. Her eyes widened as some deeper, forgotten part of her brain remembered a distant time before kingdoms or towns or locked doors. A remnant of an instinct that screamed at her to kick and yell and run.
As the seconds ticked by, something else settled into her subconscious. Worry. A different brand of fear brought on by the knowledge that someone she cared about could be hurt.
Stepping toward the mound, her voice was barely a whisper. “Mac? Are you-”
The pile shifted again, sending a cascade of torn books and wet ash sliding toward what looked like an opening in the burrow. 
“Away,” he groaned. 
Her heart leapt. She hurried forward, sending a spray of filthy water ahead of her.
The deep rumbling from beneath the wreckage grew with every one of her steps until she made the connection and stopped.
“No! Twilight, away!”
She lit her horn, intending to peel back the heap of damp debris Big Mac had taken shelter under. A faint haze of magic enveloped the blackened dome and, just as quickly, she lost her grip on the spell and it fell to pieces. Confused, she tried again. Her magic appeared, a lavender blanket, and then it was gone. Compounding her bewilderment, a sharp pain bloomed behind her eyes. The jagged edge of a fresh migraine, and a bad one at that. Already she could feel the nausea churning in her gullet.
Something was wrong. Not just with her magic, but with Big Mac.
Damn the magic. She didn’t need a horn to help a friend.
She stepped forward.
The den exploded.
Shards of shelves and wet clumps of pulped paper sprayed outward in a flat arc, painting the walls and Twilight’s chest black with the stinking material Big Mac had used to construct his makeshift hovel. The pony at the epicenter stood easily twice her height. Taller than he’d been when he’d suffered the growing pains of their earlier tests. Tall enough that he stood hunched, his shoulders dangerously close to crushing the recessed lights. Clumps of what appeared to be leather clung to his back and shoulders in strands that dripped with something pungent and mucosal.
Skin. It was his skin.
The thing that was once Big Mac craned his neck toward her and released a tortured scream. Her ears pinned back in a futile attempt to drown out a noise so deafening that it shook a slab of clotted, dead flesh sloughing away from his ribs. She was distantly aware that her bladder had begun to empty itself, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. 
Even now she could see what appeared to be muddy green scales boiling out from his bleeding chest like scabs forming on fast-forward. He stood on the shattered remains of what had been his hind hooves, the walls of which had split apart like the shell of a crushed walnut to give form to something more predatory. She watched as the sections of what used to be his front hooves flexed and clutched at the empty air, vainly searching for something to hold onto.
“Away,” he moaned. “Twilight, away, away… please, away.”
His knees bent and he clutched a loose bag of red-coated skin as it split and sagged from his face like the flesh off a bruised tomato.
Tears stung at her eyes as she took one trembling step back, then another. The sound of Big Mac sobbing into the hemorrhaging palms of his new hands skittered its way into her ears and seared itself into her brain like a physical thing. 
There wasn’t a spell for this. There wasn’t anything for this.
Her hoof pressed down on a wet chunk of shelf, slipped off and splashed into the fetid carpet below. Big Mac’s head whipped up from his hands like a gunshot. Without warning he charged forward, sending a curtain of matter splashing toward her. He stopped barely a wing’s length away from her and bellowed the only word he remembered.
“Away!”
Balling his fists together he slammed them into the floor, bringing the gruesome carnival mask of his deforming skull within inches of her. The sobbing hitch in his monstrous voice caused her own throat to catch.
“AWAY!”
On trembling legs she did as she was told, stumbling through the scattered debris until she reached the stairs. He stalked after her every step of the way to ensure she didn’t stop. Halfway up the stone steps, she hesitated and was punished by the sight of Big Mac forcing his shoulders into the narrow corridor in an attempt to herd her the rest of the way up.
He couldn’t fit. Even now, the effort it took to squeeze whatever he had become over the first step sheared away the last of his old flesh. She tried again to harness her magic, to teleport herself away, but the headache and Big Mac only grew more furious.
Covered in matter that she knew hadn’t all come from the sprinklers, she forced herself to ascend the last of the steps until she stood at the unimposing wooden door to the great library of her ministry. He couldn’t follow. He was trapped, bent into something that she couldn’t explain. 
He stared after her with a terrible sadness, and she knew they had come to the same conclusion. Big Mac was gone.
And the creature he had become could never be allowed to leave.







“Okay, I think I got it this time.”
“Aurora…”
“I’m serious! Just hold on.” She hopped out of the locomotive’s cab, billowing her wings to soften the landing. 
The passenger cars further down the tracks had offered little by way of useful supplies, though Ginger had insisted Aurora let her stow a bottle of crafting adhesive she’d found in a dead mare’s sewing case. Apparently the stuff had some value with weapons traders back in Junction City. She wasn’t about to argue the trading power of glue, and it did go a long way to explain the shoddy quality of the weapons the slavers had used. Every day spent in the wasteland gave her a new reason to be thankful for taking the overmare’s rifle when she did.
Ginger waited with patient amusement as Aurora gestured to the broad side of the hulking black machine.
“You just need to start out here to make sense of it,” she said, framing the attached coal car between her feathers. “Okay. Coal goes there.”
“Coal goes there,” Ginger repeated with a tired chuckle.
She slid the tip of her wing to the narrow platform connecting the coal car to the cab of the locomotive. “Someone shovels the coal from there into the fire… pit? Box. Okay, now come up here with me.”
She hurried back up the steps into the cab before Ginger could protest. Once they were both inside, Aurora aimed a hoof toward the rounded bulkhead in front of them. It loomed like the firing cap of a giant bullet festooned with a myriad of pipes, valves, levers and gauges. At the center of the bulkhead, just above the floor plates, a pair of thick sooty doors sat open.
Aurora directed Ginger to the hatch and continued her harried lecture. “Fire burns in here and the heated air gets plumbed through the boiler up front. Hot air heats the water tank, water turns to steam and builds up pressure.” She tapped the largest of the gauges where the needle rested against its backstop. “Pressure drives the pistons at the front, pistons push the drive shafts, and those turn the wheels. Boom, you’re moving!”
She waited for the same realization to hit Ginger, but she stared back with a tired smile that told her she’d gotten lost somewhere along the way again. Aurora let out a frustrated sigh as she tried to think of an easier way to explain it.
“I am trying to understand,” Ginger offered. “Really.”
She frowned at the maze of plumbing and levers and forced a smile. “I know you are.”
Ginger reached out with her magic, grasping one of the slender iron handles attached to one of the many mechanisms buried beneath the floor. She gave it a gentle tug and it clunked into a new position. “You told me they showed trains like these in those western movies you watched. What makes this one special?”
Seeing her tinkering with the lever made Aurora’s smile feel a little less forced. It was like watching someone experiment with a family recipe for the first time. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I can tell. Try again.”
She smirked and stepped toward the bulkhead, placing her feathers against the cool metal. “Being here… I don’t know. It’s different. I mean, for the longest time machines like these were the pinnacle of technology. Ponies were still using water wheels in some places back when these boilers were hot. Think about how driven ponies had to be to think something like this would even work, let alone build one.” She set her hoof on a levered plate mounted to the floor and pressed down. The double doors to the firebox clapped shut and her smile grew. “The principles behind it are so simple. Light a fire, boil some water and channel the steam. You don’t have to know what all the peripheral stuff is for to understand how a steam engine works.”
Aurora wrapped her wing around a cherry red lever, closed the grip and pulled it toward herself. A low, rusty squeak echoed within the firebox in answer.
“I have no idea what that did, but one time someone did. Someone had to figure all of this out before any of it could work, and they designed it into one interconnected system. How much airflow does a fire need to burn efficiently? How much fuel is too much? What are the pressure tolerances on the boiler? How do coal, fire and steam interact if you need to adjust your speed, or go up an incline? Not to mention the buildup of soot!”
She looked back to Ginger who offered a confused, albeit charitable smile in return. “I lost you again, didn’t I?”
“It was a valiant effort.” She gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and turned her eyes to the strange engine. “The only machinery I’ve had to operate was the sewing machine back at the shop. And, if I’m being completely honest, I hated that miserable thing. The pedal was torture on my hooves.”
“Yeah.” She nodded and dropped her wing from the lever. “I just… I like this stuff. And when you said you wanted to come back to the Stable when we’re done and see what I do, I don’t know. I’ve never had that before.”
Aurora blew out a resigned breath as she accepted the reality that it would take more than a ten minute tour to get Ginger excited about the mechanical ruins that had been a part of the Equestrian backdrop for generations. Like it or not, there was no way around the fact that their relationship was still young. In a twisted way, fate had done them a kindness by throwing Autumn Song into their path. That experience had formed the foundation of what they were building on now, but it was hard not to feel like she was at a disadvantage being unable to show Ginger pieces of her own life.
She felt a pleasant rush of warmth up her neck when Ginger pecked her on the cheek. “You’re adorable.”
Aurora wrinkled her nose in mock protest. “Those charges will never stick.”
“We’ll see.” She hooked her hoof around Aurora’s wing and gave her a gentle tug. “Speaking of which, it looks like Roach finished giving our little stalker a piece of his mind. Ready for more walking?”
Aurora let out a tired groan as she let Ginger lead her back to the steps. “The minute her wing gets better, we’re flying the rest of the way. My hooves are ready to fall off.”
“I think that depends more on whether Roach trusts her to carry him. Celestia knows you’re not going to let her carry me.”
Just the thought of it sent Aurora’s hackles bending skyward.
“Easy,” Ginger chided, lifting a hoof toward Roach as he and Julip trotted down the last few yards of track toward them. “Find anything?”
Roach offered a noncommittal shrug as the two descended the locomotive, his pale eyes scanned the machinery for any signs that Aurora might have actually gotten the thing started. “Just some energy bars I wouldn’t trust unless we’re already starving. Nothing we can use.”
“Any water?” Aurora hadn’t wanted to ask, knowing what the answer would likely be, but the Rad-Away she and Ginger had taken after leaving Kiln had pushed hydration to the top of her list of her concerns.
“Nothing,” he said, nodding toward the ledge. “If I had to guess, the dining car is somewhere at the bottom of the ravine. I doubt we’d find anything potable down there.”
“Great.” Her throat was already feeling tacky, and swallowing only served to remind her that she was getting thirsty. According to her Pip-Buck, the next notable landmark on their eastward journey were the suburbs surrounding Fillydelphia. There was no telling what condition they would be in once they cleared the mountains, or whether they would even be safe to enter let alone search for water. Pushing on would be a risk, but so was this entire trip. Flying all the way back to Kiln to top off their one remaining canteen would only expose her to more radiation, requiring another dose of Rad-Away and erase any gains by dehydrating her all over again.
Backtracking would cost her more water than she could carry, and then there was the issue of leaving Julip with Roach and Ginger alone. The only way forward was, well, forward.
She glanced at the canvas satchel hanging around Julip’s neck. It bulged at the bottom with whatever supplies the Enclave had given her. If she had water with her, Roach might know. He hadn’t let her leave his sight since she literally dropped into camp.
“Hey, Roach? Can we ta-”
“Halt, scallywags!”
The four of them spun around to level two weapons and a lit horn at the sudden intruder. A curtain of Ginger’s magic slid soundlessly across the rails, startling a surprised curse out of Julip.
The rails beyond the derelict train bent uphill and out of sight, following the steady curve of the mountains as they climbed skyward. Standing at the top of the bend was a pony too small to be full-grown. Aurora squinted through the shield, trying to make sense of what exactly she was seeing.
The pony, or rather the filly if her voice was any indication, wore a collection of dun-colored rags around her neck and what looked to be a genuine eyepatch over her eye. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but what had Aurora’s attention wasn’t her strange attire. It was the stubby curve of metal held aloft between the filly’s small feathers.
“Am… I the only one seeing this?”
Ginger’s shield began to fade. “If you’re referring to the tiny pirate foal waving a sword, then no. I see it too.”
“Be ye friend or be ye foe?” the filly shouted, giving her blade a threatening waggle.
Aurora glanced at Ginger. “Maybe we sh-”
“AHOY!” The gravelly burst of Roach’s voice startled a yelp out of her. He stepped forward, the confident smile on his lips suggesting he actually had some sort of grasp on whatever was happening right now. “We be friends to all except the bilge-sucking Enclave and their slaver ilk! And now I pose the same question to you. Be ye friend or be ye foe?”
Despite the distance, the sudden perk of her ears was impossible to miss. The strange filly bounced on her hooves, emitting an excited knicker at the realization that she’d found a playmate. She stowed her blade and half-ran, half-glided down the rails toward them. Once she was close enough to get a better look at them, she closed her wings and deftly trotted to a stop across the old wooden ties.
“I’m a friend, too!” Her hazel eye glittered with barely contained excitement. Then, hastily, she tried to imitate Roach’s deeper, ragged voice. “I mean, I be a friend! What’s your name?”
Aurora couldn’t help but chuckle. Beside her, Ginger appeared similarly charmed by the newcomer, but her eyes weren't on the filly. She was solely focused on Roach. Aurora looked to him and spotted the same expression her father used to wear when she was little enough to make up games for them to play in their compartment. There was an infectious warmth to it. 
This was well-worn territory for him.
“On these seas they call me Roach. These hearties behind me are known as Aurora, Ginger and Julip,” he said with a hokey grin pulled straight from the cover of an adventure novel. “And who be ye?”
“I’m Captain Beans!” The little mare’s voice cracked with an unbridled cheer. “Mom, Dad and me are the mighty crew of the, um… well we didn’t name it yet. Dad’s always busy and Mom’s really bad at naming stuff but I have a whole bunch of…”
The filly, hardly out of her foalhood years, tumbled into a breathless ramble like a stone rolling downhill. Aurora’s ears twitched and spun backward as Julip’s hooves crunched forward across the stones. 
“That’s a dustwing.”
Before she could take another step, Ginger reformed her shield inches from Julip’s muzzle.
“That’s a foal,” she hissed.
Aurora turned to see the Enclave mare staring down Captain Beans like a wolf sighting easy prey. The nib of one of Roach’s ears turned back toward them to listen, leaving Aurora and Ginger to stand between Julip and her newly acquired target. 
Julip licked her lips as she did the math. Rather than test her luck, she took a single step back from the barrier. 
Aurora’s eyes flicked to Ginger. She didn’t have to ask to know they were on the same page. Despite her purportedly peaceful intentions, Julip had been selected to represent Equestria’s most onerous juggernaut. She came with baggage. More than that, she had obligations to that baggage. By allowing Julip to see her, this filly had put herself in more danger than she could imagine.
Aurora faced Julip, keeping her voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond the four of them.
“You don’t touch her. You don’t threaten her. Are we clear?”
Julip grit her teeth through the haze of Ginger’s magic. “She has a fucking sword.”
“I don’t care if she has a fucking bazooka,” she snapped back. “She’s a kid. If she takes a swing, we will deal with it. You stay back and forget you ever saw her.”
“But-”
“Julip, this is non-negotiable. I saved your life. I’d like to make it home without knowing I had to take it.”
She watched Julip stiffen, then glare at the rails with an intensity that made Aurora’s feathers tighten beneath the hooks of her rifle.
“Fine,” she said, and thumped the edge of her hoof against Ginger’s shield. A dim ring of light rippled out from her touch. “But we’re going to talk about this, after.”
Aurora looked to Ginger who appeared satisfied with the compromise. Behind her, Roach’s pirate-speak still occupied the entirety of the young dustwing’s world. 
She relaxed before turning around to whisper to him. “We should get going.”
“Working on it,” he rumbled back, the bright pinpoints of his otherwise featureless eyes flicking briefly to the frustrated mare behind them. Then, to their blade-bearing visitor, “Alas, captain, my crew and I must continue our voyage. Time is precious and we mustn’t waste a minute of it. May we pass safely through your waters on our way east?”
Beans paused to unscramble his meaning before bobbing her head with a vigorous nod. “You shall, kind sailor! These seas be trench… treacher… dangerous, but you’ll be safe under my protection!”
Behind them, Julip groaned.
Aurora ignored her and let her wing fall away from her rifle. The weapon settled against her ribs with a reassuring weight. A week ago, she would have felt lost without her tools. Now she hardly had any of them left and, even more strangely, she was okay with that. The challenges of the Stable weren’t the challenges of the wasteland. Out here, she had different tools to work with.
As they walked, the rhythmic crunch and thud of stones and wood helped soothe some of her worry. Forward momentum. One more step toward their shared goal of fixing Stable 10, even if it meant enduring the presence of their Enclave “aide.”
Aurora and Ginger kept close to one another, mindful of the mare trailing them. Wherever this filly lived, Aurora hoped it was close by. She didn’t like the idea of running interference on Julip’s homicidal sense of duty any more than the prospect of walking off with someone’s kid.
Ginger bumped her shoulder and nodded at Roach. “He’s good at this.”
She watched him for a bit and nodded. “He certainly is.”







“Are you watching?”
Roach smiled. “I’m watching.”
Captain Beans balanced herself on the narrow rail and trotted forward two hooves at a time, her brown wings splayed out and waggling to keep herself from falling off. Flakes of rust crackled like puddle ice beneath her little hooves, coating her soles in ruddy orange powder. When one of her legs slipped onto the stones, she quickly recovered. For his part, Roach pretended not to notice.
He tried to remember how old Violet had been when pirates became the hip new thing at school. Ten, maybe eleven years old? Before the war, that much he was sure of. Beyond the southern border of Equestria, even further south than the hive, an author had written something of an unauthorized biography for a creature who had coined herself the pirate queen of that region. Captain Celaeno had carved out a significant amount of territory for herself in the southern deserts, though most ponies at the time argued there wasn’t much down there worth carving out in the first place. A few junk towns and a handful of smoke-belching airships an empire did not make. 
To the princesses, it was just another potential nuisance to monitor. To the ponies of Equestria, the biography sparked a minor sensation that triggered new fads in everything from fashion, cinema and literature. For a good two years pirates were everything, though the seafaring sort of the old days garnered more favor than the skyfaring birds that inadvertently kicked off the trend.
Saffron had given him some much-needed guidance on how to handle a filly who had taken a sudden liking to brandishing an umbrella and mercilessly poking at her fathers when they didn’t acknowledge her authority as Captain Violet, Empress of the Celestial Sea.
The memory rushed back to him with vivid clarity. Violet bounding into the kitchen, sliding across the linoleum with Saffron’s good umbrella clenched between her teeth as she reenacted scenes from her favorite movie. There was always a dent in the oven door where she’d slid too fast and crashed into it. Saffron had wanted to buy a new one but became one of those things they never ended up getting around to.
He savored the bittersweet memory while Captain Beans hopped off the rail and hurried over to the other. The “sword” that hung by a braided length of nylon rope around her shoulder wasn’t a sword at all, but instead the cutting arm of a prewar paper slicer. The last time he’d seen one of those was when he’d accompanied Violet to school for parent-teacher conferences. The cast iron bar had a convenient loop shaped at the end for gripping, though the inset blade had since been removed. Likely by someone who had an interest in keeping Beans from accidentally lopping off one of her legs.
“Beans,” he said, drawing a curious look from the filly. “Do your mom and dad know you’re out here?”
She nodded as she stepped up onto the rail. “Yup. Well, kinda? Dad’s at work and Mom’s napping, but the ghoul alarm went off and we’re supposed to always check if that happens.”
“The ghoul alarm?”
Beans took a few steps down the rail, jumped off and started hopscotching from one wooden beam to the next. “The train, duh! Dad puts the mean ghouls in the train and locks them up so they can’t get out. Sometimes ponies come up from the valley and find it, and they gotta shoot the ghouls before they can look for treasure. Dad’s super smart like that.”
He looked to Aurora and Ginger. They both looked equally as uncomfortable with the realization they’d set off a trap without knowing it. It did explain why an untouched passenger train had made such poor scavenging. The ferals had been bait and they’d done the hard work of announcing their own presence. He began to wonder how many other ponies had heard this ghoul alarm of hers.
“So, Beans, is it just you and your parents up here?” Ginger asked.
She nodded again. “Uh huh! Mom says we’re safer alone cause there’s lots of bad ponies that want to hurt me and Dad.”
Roach didn’t have to look to know Julip was already enduring the heat of two sidelong glances.
Almost as an afterthought, Beans frowned back at Roach. “But you’re not bad, are you?” Her hazel eyes drifted behind him, first to Aurora, then Julip. Her frown disappeared. “You’re dusties, like me!”
“Yep,” he said, speaking before Julip had a chance to say anything she’d regret. “They’re both dustwings. And we’re all good ponies, but you should listen to your parents. Not all ponies are-”
“Don’t move!”
Roach’s eyes shot up from the filly to see a giant galloping down the tracks toward them. She was tall, what ponies used to refer to as princess-tall, and the contraption mounted over her right shoulder only made her furious approach all the more disquieting. She had a protective momentum that screamed angry mother. Enclave, cannibals and balefire be damned. None of that held a candle to what was barrelling toward them.
The four of them stopped. Roach looked to Aurora who, thankfully, was raising her wing away from rather than toward her rifle. Meanwhile, Beans looked between Roach and the approaching mare with cheeks reddening from embarrassment.
“Mooom!” she complained.
Her mother ignored her, kicking up a hail of stones as she positioned herself between Roach and her daughter. She had the same hazel eyes as Beans and a stripe of cream that ran from her mane down to her flared nostrils. The rest of her chestnut coat glistened with the understandable fear of a parent who had caught her child being accompanied by four unknown strangers.
“Beans, stay behind me,” she instructed. 
The contraption rigged onto the ridge of her shoulder was unmistakably a weapon, and a completely foreign one at that. It looked like a cross between a gatling gun and a carriage muffler, and judging by the subtle dip of the earth pony’s shoulder, it weighed just as much. A thick post and ball joint secured the weapon to her barding via a pair of heavy leather straps. Near the end of the rifle, a worn bite trigger stood out on a smaller post barely an inch from her muzzle.
“All of you,” she said, her eyes on Roach. “Turn around and go back the way you came.”
The barrel of her rifle loomed toward him, the diameter of its bore belying the ridiculous size of its ammunition. There was no doubt in his mind she would bite that trigger if they didn’t listen.
“Mom, you’re not listening!” Beans whined behind her. “They’re friends! Two of them’s got wings like me and dad!”
The mare narrowed her eyes at Aurora and Julip, daring them to move. “Wings aren’t what make a pegasus a dustwing. You know better.”
“But they were being nice to me!”
She eyed them a bit longer before turning back to Roach. “How many of you are there?”
“It’s just the four of us.”
“Why are you here?” Her rifle swiveled on its post as she indicated the tracks, the ball joint creaking.
“We’re trying to get to Fillydelphia,” he said.
“There’s a perfectly good road that will take you there a few miles south of here. Go find it.”
“It’s not safe,” Aurora piped up, drawing her attention.
The mare looked at her as if she’d said the most obvious thing in the world. Probably because she had. “You’re definitely not a dustwing if you think…”
She stopped talking and frowned at her foreleg. “Where’d you get that?”
Roach risked following the mare’s eyes to Aurora, and the scuffed and battered device clamped above her hoof. He saw the flash of fear pass over her as she realized her Pip-Buck had drawn the attention of another stranger. It had been several days since she’d even spoken about the night Cider ambushed her, and it was clear on her face that she hadn’t forgotten.
“It’s not for sale.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to buy it.” Then she blinked and her expression grew more inquisitive. “You’re the Stable mare from the radio, aren’t you?”
Aurora’s eyes went wide. “Um.”
The mare looked to Ginger, the barrel of her rifle squeaking toward the unicorn. “And you’re that Dressage mare. I heard about the two of you on Hightower.”
Roach glanced at Beans, then her mother. She had a devil of a poker face and he couldn’t tell whether it was good or bad that she recognized Aurora and Ginger.
“Is that fused to your leg, or can you take it off?” she asked, pointing a hoof at Roach’s shotgun.
Carefully, he turned his leg to show her the buckles that kept the rail tight against his carapace. She eyed his weapon, then looked thoughtfully to Aurora’s rifle. “I can understand why you might want to avoid the road. The ponies working for F&F Mercantile were making good caps and now they aren’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them weren’t looking to even the score.”
She looked back at Beans and seemed to relax slightly. “If you give me your weapons, I’ll let you follow the tracks the rest of the way to Fillydelphia. You can have them back once you’re far enough from our home.”
“That’s insane,” Julip blurted.
The mare frowned at her but said nothing. She waited until, slowly, Roach lifted his foreleg and began undoing the straps with his teeth.
This wasn’t a situation where they had a choice. Not a real one. Beans’ mother wasn’t going to let them anywhere near her daughter while they were still armed. No reasonable parent would. They could turn around and make their way back the way they came, hoping to find a path back to the road, but he didn’t think that offer was truly on the table.
Were he in her situation, presented with four strangers who knew the area his family was hiding in and who stood to make a lot of caps by turning them into the Enclave, he wouldn’t let them walk away with that knowledge. Not very far, at least.
Behind him, Aurora’s rifle clacked against the stones. His shotgun swung loose from his hoof, dangling from his teeth by the final strap. None of this was ideal, but he didn’t care to find out what kind of stopping power the mare’s weapon packed. 
He pitched his shotgun onto the stones and stepped back.
She breathed a visible sigh of relief and went to work gathering their weapons. As she did, Roach watched Julip to ensure she wouldn’t try to stop her. Ginger’s eyes hovered on her as well. The jade-feathered pegasus looked about as happy as a fly on a web.
A minute passed as the mare used her teeth to eject the round Roach kept chambered. It was an awkward process for an earth pony, one that Roach had typically performed with his tainted magic before he joined up with Aurora, but once his weapon was safe to handle she held it behind her for Beans to take.
“I repeat,” Julip murmured. “This is insane.”
“Hush.” Ginger shot her a harsh glare that was fringed with exhaustion. “Be glad she isn’t throwing you off a cliff instead.”
Roach glanced at the two mares and noted Julip’s brief flicker of indignation before it shifted into something closer to recognition. She shifted on her hooves, eyes momentarily on Ginger’s horn as she understood. Roach and Aurora might have given up their weapons, but Ginger hadn’t. A perk of not only being a unicorn, but of one that was still exploring the limits of her abilities.
“Honey, keep your feathers away from the trigger. It’s not a toy.” Her mother shrugged at the strap of Aurora’s rifle until the muzzle tilted skyward. She stepped toward the wall and tipped her head eastward. “You four will be walking ahead of me where I can see you. Once I’ve decided we’re far enough from our home, you can have your weapons back and we’ll part ways. Understood?”
They nodded. One by one, the four of them passed Beans, her mother and the ramshackle weapon she carried. Julip was quick to put as much distance between her and the strange mare, falling in beside Roach at the front without a word.
“Mom,” Beans whispered, her words muddled by the straps clenched in the gap behind her teeth. “You’re being really mean.”
“It’s not mean, it’s safe. It’s good to be safe, Jellybean.”
The filly gasped, grumping at the use of her nickname. Roach smirked and stole a glance over to Julip, who looked wholly unmoved. His smile faded.
“So,” the mare said. 
Roach looked back to see her looking at him and Julip. 
“Do you two have names?”
Julip rolled her eyes. “Do you?”
“That’s Julip,” Beans announced. Roach’s shotgun thumped against her knees even as she resumed dancing along the narrow beam of the rail. “She’s the grouchy one.”
Behind him, Aurora snorted. Julip flattened her ears and glared forward.
He offered a polite nod to the heavily armed mare. “Roach.”
“Meridian,” she said. “You’ve already met my daughter.”
“Captain Beans,” the filly clarified while snapping off her best salute.
“Yes, and Captain Beans nearly gave her mother a heart attack when she flew off without telling her first. You’re lucky these ponies were decent to you.” Meridian gave her words time to sink in before looking up to them. “Thank you for that, by the by. Not all ponies are kind to children.”
Roach pursed his lips, his thoughts drifting against his will to the scene they had uncovered in Gallow’s shed. The foal on the hook.
He closed his eyes, burying the memory. “No, they’re not.”







Ginger’s legs were on fire.
She assumed following a smooth railway would be better than the harsher rise and fall of the highway back in the bluffs but their slow, steady ascent was proving to be an altogether different form of torture. At least the road had dipped downhill once in a while. These damnable tracks just kept going up, up, up.
Then again, it wasn’t all bad. Between the murmur of conversation and the slow, rhythmic crunch of their hooves over the dry stones, the broiling pain in her thoroughly abused muscles was the only thing keeping her awake.
She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, trying to chase off her exhaustion. For the second night in a row, her sleep had been interrupted by… whatever those visions had been. She hesitated to call them dreams. Those had died with Princess Luna. Hallucinations, perhaps, stirred to life by the very exhaustion that beckoned her to lay down. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that they were awful.
She absently tracked the motion of Roach’s hooves, watching them tilt the stones they landed on before kicking off to the next. His perforated extremities had always been a source of quiet fascination for her. Now her interest betrayed her by lulling her to sleep.
Her eyes drifted shut.
Green flames licked at the fringes of her father’s-
She stumbled forward with a gasp and pitched into Roach’s hip, nearly toppling both of them in the process. Aurora must have been watching her because a curtain of ashen feathers braced her chest before she could go the rest of the way over.
Their procession ground to a stop.
“Mommy, she’s sick,” Beans complained.
Aurora plied at Ginger’s cheek until she reluctantly met her eyes. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“Just a little tired, dear.” Her practiced impression of Rarity crept into her voice quicker than she could stop. She bit the tip of her tongue behind closed lips. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Do you need us to stop? We can take a break.”
If they stopped, she would fall asleep again. She shook her head hard enough for a lock of her mane to swing down in front of her eye. “No,” she said, pulling the stray curl away. “I don’t want to sleep just yet.”
Lighting her horn, she gently pulled Aurora’s feathers away. She knew she was putting her in a hard spot. She needed to lay down. She needed sleep. Yet every time she closed her eyes that wriggling foal on her father’s desk grew more tangible. The syringe heavier. The flames hungrier. 
“I have Rebound.”
She regarded Julip with exactly the amount of scorn her affiliations warranted, but the pegasus was too busy sifting through her ridiculous mailbag to receive the full force of Ginger’s disdain. In the short few seconds it took Julip to pull a battered flask into the daylight, the effort of maintaining her glare had already waned.
Aurora held out her wing to intercept the silver container. “And what is it, exactly?”
“It’s an illicit chem,” Ginger said, using her magic to ferry the flask out of Julip’s feathers and drop it back into her bag before Aurora could touch it. “A highly addictive one. I need rest, not party drugs.”
“What do you mean illicit, it’s barely worse than coffee!”
Ginger shot her a withering glare that made it clear she would brook no argument. When Julip rolled her eyes and looked away, she composed herself as best she could and turned to the towering mare behind them.
Her eyes lingered on the beastly weapon attached to her barding as she spoke. “Meridian, I understand we’re trespassing on your territory…”
Meridian nodded understanding. “But you want to trade.”
“If you have anything that might help, yes. If it’s not too much trouble.”
She looked them over, all of them, as she thought about it. As they waited, Ginger found herself wondering if it was possible for an earth pony to carry alicorn traits. Meridian wasn’t as slender as the princesses were usually depicted, nor was she particularly regal. Her body bore enough muscle to put Latch’s power armor to shame, something that must make it tolerable to carry such a cumbersome weapon. 
No, she thought, Meridian had just come into this world... large. “Built like a brick shithouse,” as they used to say at the slave auctions. She pitied anyone who came between that mare and her daughter.
Meridian’s eyes eventually settled on Julip. Her brow drew together as her attention settled on the pegasi’s bare foreleg.
“Which Stable did you say you were from again?”
“I didn’t,” Julip said.
For a moment, Ginger forgot her exhaustion and the potential of trade. She went rigid, as did Aurora and Roach as they turned to stare at the Enclave mare.
She looked at them each in turn. “What? I’m not going to tell her which-”
“Julip and I came from Stable 10,” Aurora interrupted, regarding Julip with a tight smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “No sense in keeping it a secret when everybody already knows, right?”
Julip frowned. “Everybody?”
The realization bloomed in Julip’s eyes before they could think of something to say to knock the thought from her mind. In that moment, she knew they’d gotten involved with the Rangers somehow. Her expression hardened with something like worry.
Behind them, Meridian watched them with growing concern.
“Julip,” she said, drawing the mare’s attention before she had a chance to say anything regrettable. “Tell Meridian how you lost your Pip-Buck.”
It was a gamble, but they couldn’t risk letting this snowball. Aurora had managed to avoid suspicion because she carried a visible relic of her Stable on her foreleg. Fiona’s broadcasts had greased that wheel even further by making it easier for ponies like Meridian to identify her at a quick glance. 
Julip didn’t have that luxury. It was clear by the way she carried herself that she didn’t understand how dustwings behaved. Ginger had done business with enough to know she wasn’t keeping an eye on the clouds from which Enclave hunters preferred to descend. She grabbed at everything with her wings, never once using her teeth like the earth ponies that dustwings pretended to be. And the more she talked, the more she sounded like a pony too confident in her own safety. Dustwings survived by minding their words and drawing as little attention to themselves as possible.
Julip’s open contempt screamed Enclave, and the matriarch that had taken a risk by escorting them across her territory was beginning to clue into those red flags.
“I didn’t lose it,” she said, standing a little straighter as she cobbled the lie together. “I sold it because we needed the money to eat. I don’t care what you say, I got a good deal on the thing. Two hundred caps got Aurora and I all the way to Kiln. That’s pretty fucking good for a beat up Model 3000.”
Ginger blinked surprised. She was actually pretending to be an idiot.
Meridian’s expression changed. “You sold a Pip-Buck for two hundred caps.”
Julip shrugged her wings with a little grin. “I could’ve gotten more if I wanted.”
“You could have gotten two thousand.” Meridian stared, trying and failing to understand how someone could get swindled so badly and still be so smug about it. Then she pointed a hoof directly at Aurora’s Pip-Buck. “Those things are worth their weight in gold.”
She shook her head at the clouds. “Two hundred. Good goddesses. That might be part of the reason Cider went looking for you. That stallion had a nose for easy caps.”
Aurora turned her eyes to the stones. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”
Ginger grimaced. This was starting to feel like playing buckball in a minefield.
“Continuing the topic of trade,” she prompted. “If you were to have any tea, or coffee, or anything that could get me through the next eight hours, I’d be more than happy to make a fair offer.”
Beans tugged down her eyepatch and excitedly patted her hoof against Meridian’s leg. “Mom, we have lots of stuff! We can share!”
She looked down at Beans and accepted that she’d been caught. She gently tousled the filly’s mane with the sole of her hoof and sighed. “I don’t drink caffeine, but my husband lives on the stuff. Though to be honest, it doesn’t look like the four of you have much to offer.” Her eyes went to Julip. “We don’t allow chems in our home.”
Julip scowled at the valley while Aurora shrugged out of her saddlebags to see what they had to work with. Her ears dropped as she moved a few of her remaining tools around and picked out a few of the dubious energy bars Roach had dropped into her bags. 
“Oh, if those are from the train, don’t eat them.” Meridian said.
Aurora lifted an eyebrow at her.
“Briar soaks them in castor oil and repackages them. Helps motivate travelers not to come back.”
Beans let out a conspiratorial giggle. “They make you poop!”
“Oh. Great.” Aurora tipped her wing and let the bars fall onto the tracks. “Are you willing to trade for some tools?”
“Caps spend better.”
“They do if you have any.” Ginger watched as she briefly touched the cover of Teak’s journal before laying it back on top of the holotapes she’d taken from Quincy. “What about work? Need anything fixed?”
Meridian’s cannon creaked on its mount as she shook her head, dismissing the offer with a chuckle. “You’re in the wasteland, honey. Everything out here needs fixing.”
Ginger stood up a little straighter. “Then that means you must have work for her.”
“I might.” She gave Beans a gentle nudge with her hoof. Roach’s shotgun swung beneath her teeth as she grinned up at her mother. “But we’re going to have to hold onto your weapons until she’s done.”
She looked to Aurora, who shrugged and said, “It’s basically what we’re doing right now. Think you can walk a little longer?”
Ginger nodded and took a heavy step forward, urging Roach and Julip to lead the way.
She blinked with heavy lids, hoping it wouldn’t be much longer.







February 26th, 1076

Twilight sat in her darkened office. Her leg bounced nervously beneath her desk.
She’d shut her terminal off and shoved it to the side. She needed to think, and she couldn’t do that with her rapidly filling inbox staring her down. There had to be a way to fix him. And yet two weeks had gone by and she’d come up with nothing. Not a spell, not a charm, not even a rough concept of how she might undo whatever it was she’d managed to do.
It was like she was trapped in a nightmare that refused to end. It didn’t make sense. The spell was sound. The serum had worked. Maiden Pharmaceutical had already sent her a congratulatory letter citing the meticulous detail to the recipe she’d spent more than two years of her life designing and their preliminary tests with it had gone off without so much as a hiccup. She couldn’t figure it out. Seven days holed up in her office and she couldn't figure it out.
She bent over her desk and dragged a hoof across her damp cheek. She needed a shower. She needed sleep. 
Applejack would never forgive her when she found out. If she found out. The thought made her breath hitch in her throat, threatening to devolve into another sob. She couldn’t decide what was worse. Telling one of her best friends that she’d turned her brother into a mindless, wailing monster or leave him buried beneath the ministries and deny Applejack closure.
Discord could probably tell her what went wrong, but she didn’t trust him not to dangle more hooks around her again just to see which one she’d bite. No, she was done giving him free therapy. Let him serve out the next ten centuries alone in a prison of his own making. She didn’t need to give him a reason to make this even worse.
Her phone rang, stoking the edges of a migraine she hadn’t been able to shake for days. At least her magic was on the mend. She lit her horn with a wince, lifted the phone and slapped it back into the receiver. Researchers within the Ministry of Magic were crawling up her ass about being locked out of the grand library, especially Starlight. For a mare who nearly froze herself to death thinking she could travel through time, she didn’t have the common decency to give Twilight one day to herself without calling her office for updates.
She needed her books. Not the ones in the grand library, where Big Mac’s moans echoed through the floor. The ones beneath it. The ones he’d spent the past two week tearing to shreds or dumping into the stinking muck that soaked her once beautiful rugs. Even if there was anything down there to be salvaged, he wouldn’t tolerate her presence long enough to let her find it. And yet, the problem remained.
She needed books.
Canterlot Library would have been an option had she not raided its shelves to fill her own. There was nothing of real value in Manehattan, Fillydelphia or Baltimare. Las Pegasus was steadily devolving into a gambling center and its public library was a joke. Cloudsdale exported its academic programs to the universities on the ground since they certainly couldn’t expect the non-flying population to attend where they couldn’t stand.
She blinked. Exporting.
The Crystal Empire had a library. A big one.
What time was it? She reached over and dragged her terminal toward her, flicked the power button and squinted against the harsh green light as it booted up. When it finished, its tiny clock indicated it was half past eight in the evening. If the library wasn’t closed yet, it would be soon. She hoped.
Her leg sped up its nervous bouncing. This was a bad idea. She didn’t even know what she was looking for, let alone if Cadance might have it on her shelves. Her stomach soured. Diplomacy wasn’t her strong suit, but she didn’t have to be Fluttershy to know how bad it could be for a foreign minister to be caught skulking over a closed border.
The phone rang again. She hung it up and took a deep breath.
Fuck it, she thought. I’ll be quick.
Her horn lit and her office vanished with a rush of displaced air. She appeared on the edge of a frozen lake north of Canterlot, one that she and the girls used to frequent during the summer months back when nobody knew it was here. She smiled at the memory and lit her horn again.
The night sky vanished and reappeared, cloudier than it had been before. She stood knee-deep in drifting snow, the temperature noticeably colder. In the distance she could hear the roar of Neighagra Falls. Pinkie had taken her here years ago as a surprise. She couldn’t remember what the occasion had been. There rarely ever had to be one for her.
The falls shrank away, replaced by a cabin. A light was on in the window and Twilight watched as a familiar stallion frowned from the seat of his rocking chair at the sudden flash. Bad memories here. She teleported away before her uncle could see her.
Jump by jump, she crossed the vast distance of Equestria’s great north in the time it took most ponies to buy a bottle of milk at the market. Her time as an Element of Harmony had given her countless memories to focus her spell on, like breadcrumbs leading her through the snow until she lit her horn and found herself standing within sight of the jewel of the Crystal Empire.
She would never admit it outloud, but the Crystal Castle made Canterlot look like a backwater kingdom by comparison. Even as the driving wind threw flecks of ice into her mane, she couldn’t help but appreciate the beauty of a structure whose existence was owed entirely to the same magic that held some of the worst weather imaginable at bay. 
One last time. She closed her eyes and focused on where she needed to go. If she miscalculated, if a crystal pony was standing in the wrong place or even if the furniture had been moved since the last time she was here…
Focus. She cast the spell, and the glittering panorama of crystalline architecture vanished.
When she reappeared, everything was exactly as she remembered it.
The castle library stretched in every direction. Books of every shape, size and design adorned slender mahogany boards set into the semi transparent mineral cases polished to a mirror-like shine. Royal purple carpeting covered every square inch of the floor, so soft against her soles that it felt like she was the first pony to stand on it. Glassy blue pillars stretched toward a vaulted ceiling adorned with glittering chandeliers, each one a work of art on its own and, to her relief, each one glowing with the dim half-light of a library past its closing hour.
It was magnificent as it was silent.
Long wooden tables stained to match the shelves surrounding them lay empty, their chairs pushed in, ink and quills stowed away until the doors were thrown open again tomorrow. Twilight felt her muzzle quirk at the memory of scratching notes from the tip of a feather. Nowadays everyone used ballpoint pens and pencils. She felt old.
Taking a breath through her nose, she found comfort in the scent of dusty books and weathered scrolls. If there was an answer left anywhere in the world that could help her, it had to be here. For Big Mac’s sake, it had to be here.
She walked the sections, reading the bright brass nameplates on each shelf until she found the rows for Magical Theory. Lighting the tip of her horn, she set to work.
It was slow going, and the hours passed like water through her feathers. The shelves dedicated to Starswirl’s works proved to be a disappointment. Transmutation had never been his speciality but she had hoped her idol might have some insights to offer. Reluctantly, she moved on to lesser known writers. Brighthoof, Fetlock, Hayber, Remedy… none of them wrote of a phenomenon that spontaneously turned ponies into monstrosities. 
Books littered the carpet. Just one more. She would pick them up later, she told herself. Just one more.
The night sky outside the library windows began to lighten, and Twilight resorted to skimming indexes. She was tired. Angry. Tears stung at her eyes as she realized her time was almost up. That the ponies back at her ministry would be wondering why she wasn’t answering her door. It wasn’t fair that she had to sneak around like this, trying not to be heard while she rummaged through her old babysitter’s library in the vain hope that she might trip over the right passage.
She didn’t notice the chandeliers coming to their full glow. She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. Sitting between the shelves, trying to keep it together even as she flipped through pages she could hardly read through angry tears, she didn’t know she’d been found until he spoke.
“Twilight?”
She looked up from the book splayed open in her lap and turned to see a face she hadn’t seen in years.
“Spike?”
He stood at the end of the row, his broad shoulders barely clearing the shelves. A silver key held between his scaled fingers reflected the shallow morning sunrise as it spilled through the east windows. That was right. Cadence had appointed him head of the royal library. There had been a ceremony.
His fingers and the key slid into the pockets of a hazelnut cardigan she’d never seen him wear before. He was careful to palm his claws to avoid damaging the cloth and stepped into the row, his docile face turned down to her. “You can’t be here.”
Twilight said nothing, afraid to speak. Unable to trust herself not to say the wrong thing and ruin whatever this was. He sighed, turning his eyes to the mess she’d made. She watched him bend down and pick up one of the books from the floor. 
He scanned the cover. “Do I want to know?”
She took a shuddering breath and shook her head.
“Can you at least talk to me?”
The invitation was the last crack in a dam she’d been trying desperately to hold together. The shelves around them blurred and the first wracking sob lurched out of her chest, followed by another. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d missed him until he was standing in front of her, and suddenly all those years apart came crashing together at once.
It was too much. She selfishly wanted Spike to rush forward and hold her, to wring the tears out of her until she was spent, but her former assistant simply cleared a space for himself on the carpet beside her and wrapped one of his heavy arms around her shoulder. Something about the politeness of the gesture, as if he were fulfilling the bare minimum of an obligation, made the tears fall even faster.
She wanted to go back. To do it all over again, to fix whatever mistake that led them all into this awful existence. Undo the war, undo the ministries, undo whatever she did wrong to ruin Big Mac. Undo the decisions she’d made to ruin her friendships.
She wanted Spike to stop rubbing her shoulder and just hug her.
After a while the tears ran dry and her sobs subsided. A childish part of her wanted to keep crying, to punish herself for feeling even a sliver of relief for having gotten it out of her system. Then Spike took his hand away and she knew the moment was over.
She dried her eyes as best she could and stared at the mess of books that surrounded them with painful clarity.
“I screwed up,” she choked.
She watched Spike lift the open book out of her lap and begin dabbing the corner of his cardigan against the dampened pages. “Yeah,” he said, “this is definitely a ‘Twilight-needs-to-fix-a-problem-right-now’ sort of mess. How bad is it?”
“Really bad.” 
She tried not to think about the sound of his mangled voice as he stalked her out of the library. The sight of his skin falling away from a body that had grown too big for it. The mindlessness of his attack when she’d tried coming back down the next day to see if he’d gotten better, and the realization that he’d gotten even worse. 
“I hurt somebody. And I’m starting to think there isn’t a spell I can learn to undo it.”
Spike closed the book and held it up between his fingers. With a puff of dragonfire, the pages ignited and reappeared on the shelf she’d taken it down from. “Something tells me you’re not speaking figuratively.”
Twilight frowned at the shelf where the book now rested. “No, I’m not. How did you do that? I thought your magic was tied to Celestia.”
He picked up another book and shrugged. “Cadence broke the binding. Don’t change the subject. You hurt someone so badly that you had to break an international treaty just to pillage my library. The least you can do is tell me why.”
The book vanished within his flame. A green flash lit the row behind them as it found its home. Curiosity nagged at her to ask how it worked, but she could tell his patience with her was already wafer thin. She didn’t exactly blame him.
“I wrote a spell.” Slowly, she began gathering up the books around her and slid them toward Spike. “It took a couple years to finesse, and we had some problems with early testing, but this time it was perfect. I accounted for every variable, every stray digit in the math. I still think it works but…”
She was sharing too much. Equestria and the Crystal Empire weren’t enemies by any stretch of the imagination, but her brother and his wife had sealed the border for a reason. They wanted nothing to do with Equestria’s war with Vhanna. With all the killing they had done up until now, one failed experiment wouldn’t sway the Crystal Empire one way or the other.
But it would for Spike. Big Mac had been one of his closest friends. Still was, as far as he knew. If he caught so much of a whiff of what had actually happened and to who, he would demand to see him. He’d tell Applejack in the hopes that she could force Twilight’s hoof, uncaring of the damage it would do to their ministries at such a delicate time. Telling him would have the same disastrous result as casting balefire on Applejack’s talisman.
She blinked. Balefire. 
The candle.
She swallowed. “I just thought I could find an answer here.”
Spike surveyed the floor around them and grunted. “No one can say you didn’t try.” With that, he got a foot under himself. His knees clicked as he stood. He held a hand down to her and helped her to her hooves, the two of them mindful not to step on any of the remaining books. “Twilight, we’ve known each other long enough that I think I can be brutally honest with you.”
He gestured to the half-empty shelves surrounding them. Her mind was reeling, swirling around the realization that it hadn’t been her spell. That candle. It had been that damned balefire. 
“You never know when to stop.”
She frowned and looked up at him.
“Normally, it’s fine. You’re driven. That’s what I always liked about you. You’d see something wrong with the world and, bam, you needed to fix it. No questions asked. Well, a lot of questions actually. And lists. Still, being near that, even if it meant I was just finding books for you or making breakfast in the morning… it made me feel like I was a part of something greater than myself, you know?”
She nodded, unsure how he’d managed to make a criticism sound like a compliment.
“But you also have this tendency to make up problems just so you have something to focus your energy on. Like that time Rarity mentioned she’d run out of silk and you took it upon yourself to travel halfway across Equestria just to find her some rare, magically infused silkworms.”
Twilight frowned. “I don’t see how that was a bad thing.”
“I’m not saying it was.” He gathered a stack of books and began setting them on the shelves by hand. “But she ended up selling them because she would have never had the time to learn how to spin silk, and she always felt like she needed to stay stocked up after that so you wouldn’t find out. She needed to go shopping, and you saw it as an opportunity to go on an adventure.”
“I mean, I get it,” he said, his brow knitting together. “You’ve always been a natural with magic. You make things that should be impossible look easy because, for you, they are. And I think that’s why you lose sight of the important things sometimes. Every little problem you can’t solve turns into the biggest problem in the world when it doesn’t need to be.”
He reached out and clasped his hands around the books she’d levitated into a neat stack. Gently, he pulled them free of her aura and started putting them away. 
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to. You can always say no.”
She watched him and noticed how, despite having freer reign of his own fire, he still seemed to enjoy the tactile sensation of the old bindings between his fingers. Maybe that was the point.
“I miss you, Spike.”
His scaled lips twitched into a melancholy smile. “I miss you too, Twilight. But you need to leave before someone walks in and sees you. We don’t close public buildings on Sundays like they do in Equestria, and I’d really like to keep this job.”
She pinched her lips together and nodded, knowing in some small corner of her mind that this was a problem without a solution. If balefire had been the catalyst behind Big Mac’s change, it would explain a lot. It would mean Discord had been truthful to some degree. That balefire was an entropic force that burned through magic like gasoline.
The M.A.S.T. explosion, Big Mac, the lapse in her ability to teleport out of the library… and at the core of it all, balefire.
“I should be getting back, anyway.” A book tumbled out of Spike’s hand as she wrapped her wings around him. He was nearly as tall as she was, no longer the tiny dragon standing on his tiptoes to get his arms up to her shoulders. For a long moment she rested her chin against his soft cardigan and sighed relief as she felt his palms settle against the back of her neck. “I’m sorry you had to leave Equestria.”
“Don’t be. I chose to leave.” He pulled away sooner than she wanted. With a pinched expression, he shoved his hands back into his pockets and stepped back. “I hope you find something that will help your friend.”
She wiped the corners of her eyes with the ridge of her wing and shook her head.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help him that wouldn’t make it even worse.” Lavender light wrapped the length of her horn as she prepared to depart, knowing the truth of her words even before she spoke them. “It’s like you said. I need to know when to stop.”







“Beans, stop!”
“Captain Beans!” she shouted over her shoulder, and fell into a fit of giggles as she raced across the last few yards of track. With a puff from her wings, she jumped over the rail and landed at the entrance of her home, spraying stones behind her as she came to a halt. “First! I win!”
Her mom trotted close behind, leading their four new friends with a stern frown that told her she probably should have listened the first time. At least it wasn’t her real mad face. Beans had only made her mom really angry a few times. The last time had been when she saw a flock of ponies flying over the valley below and tried to wave them over to say hello.
Her mom got so mad that she almost cried. She made her wait until bedtime before she and dad told her about the bad ponies who would always be looking for them. Beans hadn’t known they were hiding until then. Now whenever she saw ponies in the sky, she got low like her dad taught her and waited for them to be gone.
But she was older, now. When the next winter came and went, she would be ten years old. Double-digits. She was practically a grown-up and wasn’t afraid of no On-Caves.
“Your father and I are going to have a talk with you tonight about listening,” her mom said, and pointed to the granite wall behind her. “Now go inside and put your costume away, captain.”
She groaned at the thought of going back to regular old Beans, but she knew if she pushed her luck she might not see her sword or eyepatch for a super long time. She looked over to Roach and wondered what kind of costumes he had at home. He probably didn’t even need one. He already looked extra scary and did a better pirate voice than the ponies on her holotape player. Maybe if she was good, her mom would let them play pirates again before they had to leave.
“Hey, Roach!”
He was already looking at what she wanted to show him with those big flashlight-eyes. So were his friends. But they wouldn’t know how cool it was until she showed them how it worked.
“Watch this!”
Spinning on her hooves, she grabbed a clump of grey netting hanging against the dusty stone and threw as high as she could over her head. The momentary gap lasted long enough for her to zip into the cave on the other side and turn around in time for the net to drop back to the ground between them. 
“Ta-da! I’m invisible!”
Roach and his friends exchanged looks while her mother hooked her hoof around the far side of the net and pulled it away from the stone. “But they can still hear you. Wipe your hooves and go sit by the hearth. Then you can show me the safe way to start a fire.”







They followed Meridian toward what appeared to be a recently dug cave. 
The fabric net had been knitted out of braided strands of thick, monochromatic yarns that camouflaged the entrance better than it had any right to. Unequal gaps in the weave allowed for ventilation while adding to the illusion of jagged stones casting shadows over themselves during the daylight hour. Up close it was easy to pick out, but Aurora could see how at even a moderate distance it would blend seamlessly into the stone wall.
“Leave your bags by the wall and sit on the rail.” Meridian blocked their way, waiting for them to comply. After a moment’s hesitation Aurora and Julip obliged and stepped back, joining Ginger and Roach on the rusted iron with an air of uncertainty. 
Seeing their tension, Meridian held up a placating hoof. “I’ll put on a kettle and bring you your project in a minute. Just stay there and… don’t try anything to screw me.”
They remained seated while the earth pony vanished behind the netting. For the first several minutes the four of them stayed on guard for any hint of danger. Ears forward, eyes straining to see through the larger gaps in the weatherworn weave, they waited for the other hoof to drop. To Aurora’s relief, it didn’t.
She listened to the murmur of Meridian’s voice as she gave Beans instructions. Somewhere inside, a door clapped shut with the strike of wood on wood. She heard Beans apologize and hooves beat a short run over what sounded like loose planks and fabric. Then the noise fell below her hearing, and a wisp of grey smoke slid out from the topmost edge of the net. Aurora leaned forward and squinted, and the others eventually saw it too. A section of pipe fixed to the roof of the cave directed the smoke out to be dispersed by the steady mountain breeze.
“Seems a little dangerous,” Ginger mumbled, her cheek pushed up by the flat of her hoof as she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Starting a fire in a cave.”
“Something tells me they don’t have any better options,” Aurora said. “How’re you holding up?”
Ginger grunted. “My legs feel like hot rubber and my brain is made of pudding.”
She wrapped a wing around Ginger’s shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. “Wakey-wakey.”
“Mm. Trying.” Her head bumped against Aurora’s shoulder and stayed there. “Don’t let me fall asleep.”
The only thing Ginger needed right now was sleep. Aurora looked to her right where Roach had planted himself and gave him a questioning look. He shrugged, offering no answer for what was troubling Ginger. Further down the rail, Julip pointed a feather toward their bags and made a face that asked what gives?
She frowned at Julip and shook her head, forming the word no with her lips. If Ginger didn’t trust whatever Rebound was, she wasn’t going to push her into taking it.
Gradually, Ginger sagged against the bowl of her wing as she dozed off. Aurora made some adjustments to her grip on the sleeping unicorn and whispered at Roach.
“I thought she slept pretty good last night?”
He made a face that made it clear she was wrong. “You slept through it. She was up and down right until the centaurs showed up. Couldn’t settle down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He pursed his lips and winced. “She told me not to. Didn’t want to worry you.”
Aurora closed her eyes and tried not to be angry with either of them. It was hard work. “And earlier, while you two were keeping watch?”
“Pretty sure she was awake the whole time.”
“She hasn’t…”
She stopped before her voice had a chance to rise. With her free wing she pinched the bridge of her muzzle and tried to think of a cause. She snorted a quiet laugh. What hadn’t happened? They’d been ambushed by half melted horrors, killed an encampment of slavers while they were still sobering up from cheap liquor, seen the work of an actual cannibal in such detail that Aurora could barely shoot him when the time came and had been forced to leave Blinder’s Bluff under the threat of her Stable being cut open like a tin can should she disobey a high-ranking officer of one of Equestria’s two superpowers.
Celestia’s teats, she thought. If anyone should be losing sleep, it’s me.
Against her better judgment, she did the math.
Three days, give or take. The last time Ginger had a full night’s sleep was three days ago, right before their unfortunate meeting with Coldbrook.
She blew out a long breath and closed her eyes. “Maybe Meridian will let us camp here for a few hours while she rests.”
“Uh, Aurora?”
“Yeah?”
“We might want to move that up the timetable.”
Confused, she opened her eyes and turned to look at him. She got halfway before she saw it.
Ginger’s dome surrounded them, thrumming with unfiltered energy and painting the mountain outside a shimmering bronze. Its edges sank into the stones, forcing them up where they could shift away and gradually pulverizing them where they couldn’t. Rust trickled off the rails in a fine powder where her shield had fallen over the steel lines. As the unyielding pressure of Ginger’s magic bore down on the tracks, the rust began burning off. Slowly, the metal changed color, first blackening and then glowing cherry red as heat built up within the steel.
Julip let out a shout. Aurora looked to Ginger and her eyes went wide. Her horn had lit up like it had back at the holding tank, her face a twitching mask of fear behind still sleeping eyes.
“Ginger.” She sat up straighter, pulling the dozing unicorn off her shoulder in an attempt to wake her. She didn’t stir. Aurora gave her a harder shake, her heart climbing up her throat. “Ginger.”
Behind her, Julip hucked a wingful of rocks at them hard enough to hurt. “Holy shit, Roach get up and help me!”
Aurora cursed as a stone pelted her hip and she looked away from Ginger to see Roach already scrambling to his hooves to help the panicking mare. The dome had crossed the rails barely a foot from where Julip sat, trapping her tail against the rocks and forcing her to scramble to her hooves as best she could manage while the rail beneath her began to cook. The cramped edge of the bubble gave her hardly any room to work with, forcing her to turn sideways with the rail running between her legs and dangerously close to her belly. The glowing metal radiated like an oven stuck on broil, forcing a fearful whimper from her throat as her skin grew hot.
Frantically, Aurora brought her muzzle to Ginger’s ear and shouted for her to wake up, but save for the unsettling motion of her eyes shuddering behind closed lids, she didn’t flinch.
“Cut it!” Julip screamed, her eyes wide as dinnerplates as she bore down against her own tail. “Cut it off!”
“I don’t have anything to cut it with!”
She beat her hooves against the rocks, the heat causing her to shake uncontrollably. “RIP IT OUT!”
Aurora didn’t know what to do. She could hear Meridian shouting from the mouth of her cave. Her Pip-Buck hissed. At the same time she heard the unmistakable rending of hair as Roach used his poisoned magic to rip Julip away from the baking steel.
Through it all Ginger slept, and the confines of her dome grew hot.







“And where do you think you’ll go?”
“Anywhere but here!” she snapped, jamming the family first-aid kit flat into the bottom of her saddlebags. They’d been a gift from one of the many suitors her father had invited to the house. She didn’t remember which one. Didn’t care.
Three years. Three years she’d been sitting on the memory of that foal he made her kill. For three years, Hickory and his wife thought her family sold it off to be raised by one of the neighboring homes. And then yesterday, Thistle cornered her and asked for the truth and Ginger had been too startled to lie. So she told the truth.
The noise Thistle made would stay with her like a brand.
“What do you think is out there, Ginny? Verdant fields and white picket fences?” Her father stepped fully into her bedroom doorway. “It is called a wasteland for a reason. There is nothing out there but death and violence. Is that what you want for yourself? A short life and a painful death at the hooves of some nameless mud?”
Ginger pressed the decorative wooden box of caps next to the first-aid kit and carefully secured the false bottom across them. She knew from listening to the slaves that it rarely worked against a proper bandit, that they knew to check for compartments, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Over the false bottom went a change of clothes and a serrated knife she’d taken from the kitchen when the servants weren’t looking.
“Don’t ignore me, Ginger. I’m your father.”
Bitter tears ran down her cheeks as she laughed. “Oh, don’t even! You cashed that chip when you made me…” Her voice caught in her throat. She couldn’t say it. Even now, she was too afraid to say it out loud.
“You stained me.”
She lit her horn and tied the flap down by its delicately braided straps. She gave the knot a hard tug, jerking her head in a futile effort to put more force behind the motion. Several long strands of her mane fell into her vision as she spun the saddlebags around to check the other knot.
“I stained you.” Her ears went flat as she heard the scorn in his voice. “This house has rules. Rules that I didn’t think you, of all ponies, needed to be reminded of. You know what happens when they start to think they have influence over you. They will use you in any way they can in order to escape their responsibilities. You’re old enough to remember what happened to the Wiselucks. Do you want to risk putting your family through that kind of hardship over one mud’s foal?”
She rounded on him. “You are not my family, and if Rarity were alive she would be disgusted with us!”
Tongues of green flame curled over his eyebrows and spread to the ridge of his mane. She blinked in confusion at the sight of her armoire beside him blackening as the same fire consumed it, lighting the wallpaper behind it like a torch. 
Someone should do something about that, she thought.
“For goddesses’ sake, of all the unicorns you chose to fantasize over....”
Ginger ignored him and hefted her bags over the obscene mark her father’s beloved goddesses saw fit to burn into her flank. “I didn’t think I needed your blessing to respect an Element of Harmony. Now move. The sooner I’m gone, the sooner you can stop worrying about your daughter respecting someone with higher morals than you.”
Her father didn’t budge from the door. He stared down at her, his jaw cemented shut with rising anger. The curtains over her picture window began to smoke.
No. I don’t want to remember this.
She crossed her bedroom toward him, filled with a righteous indignation that had made her feel immortal. Her father towered over her like a stone, refusing to move.
“Take those bags off and you’re welcome to go wherever you like, but I will not have my daughter running off to her death over a temper tantrum.”
Don’t say it. You don’t have to say it.
“Why not?” she hissed. “Don’t you have a spare?”
He surprised her by stepping over the threshold of her bedroom, forcing her to take two steps back in turn. The flames were crawling down his mane, sending roots down his ribs as his coat boiled away.
“Watch your mouth.”
She moved to step around him. He reached out to block her but she slapped his hoof away. “Don’t touch me.”
His magic wrapped the crystal knob on her door and yanked it. The brightly painted wood slapped into the jamb barely an inch from her nose. Startled, she grabbed the knob with her own magic and plied clockwise until his grip finally relented. She shoved the door back open. Behind her, the room burned.
Stop.
“Ginger, I won’t warn you again.”
She pretended not to hear him and took a step into the hallway.
Her tail caught on something, and for a moment she was confused. Then her father wrenched back on it hard enough for her legs to stiffen and slide out from under her. Her chin contacted the polished floorboards hard enough that her gums would bleed for the next two days.
Behind her, her father was in a fury. He dug his hoof under the strap of her saddlebags and pulled hard. “Take these ridiculous things off.”
Just stop.
“Let GO of me!” Her mouth tasted like old bottle caps as she rolled onto her back to protect her bags. He reached for her. She wasn’t sure why. All she knew was that fury in his eyes was the realest emotion she’d ever seen in him before. Instinct took over and she kicked, hard. 
Her hooves struck at an angle, glancing off his burning ribs and spoiling the brunt of the impact. He stared at her, his dark mane spilling over his face as he realized what she had tried to do. In that brief moment, she was no daughter of his. She was just another mud who had made the mistake of striking out at her master. His eyes lit up like a furnace.
Ginger braced herself for what she knew would come next. The beating that would serve as her father’s final farewell, leaving her face swollen and bloodied in a final attempt to leave her too ashamed to leave his house. His hooves would fall on her like hammers while her mother and sister hid silently in their rooms, listening to it happen.
She shut her eyes and waited for the first blow. And kept waiting.
She cracked one eye open, then the other.
The burning room shimmered with bronze magic. Her magic, she realized. Her father still stood over her, beating against the dome with his hooves in a frustrated attempt to reach her. He shouted at her, his mouth forming shapes that didn’t match the words she couldn’t understand. For what felt like minutes she lay there, disoriented by the incongruity. The little bubble that kept her safe rippled with every impact, but it felt larger than what she was seeing. 
She wasn’t alone. Somehow, she knew there were other ponies with her. Ponies who needed to be protected, too. She grit her teeth and poured more magic into the shield to keep her enraged father at bay.
She tried to think of her future. Of her first terrified steps outside New Canterlot. Crossing the border into Steel Ranger territory, afraid that any one of them might recognize her and drag her back home. The raider ambush and the changeling ghoul who would save her life. Her shop and the pegasus who he would bring to meet her years later.
“This door shouldn’t be here.”
The voice came from everywhere, sharp and clear as if she were listening to a bell from the inside. Her shield faltered but she rebuilt it as quickly as it faded, pressing her father back out of reach.
“Oh.”
Oh?
Ginger strained to keep the spell intact as she bent her neck to the only door in the room. What she saw nearly caused her shield to collapse a second time. In the corner of her vision, a midnight-blue mare stood over the threshold. A mane filled with stars wafted and coiled around the doorframe. 
The mare’s tired eyes passed across the inferno consuming Ginger’s foalhood bedroom and frowned.
“You mustn’t dwell on bad memories, little shade,” she said. “It is better to pass over to what lies ahead. Let me help.”
Before Ginger could speak, the mare lit her horn and the dream fell apart.







She lurched against Aurora’s wings with a shout as she dropped out of one strange reality and into another. A rush of relief swept through her horn like a cramp finally releasing its grip. Her throat stuck to itself as she tried to swallow, dried out by a pall of stiflingly hot air that began to dissipate as the dome of her shield melted away.
“You’re awake!”
Her shoulders were sore where Aurora’s feathers tightly clutched them, the mare’s face full of worry as she yanked her into a crushing hug. Confused, she returned the embrace while watching Roach hurry after Julip as she staggered away barking a litany of obscenities. From the cave, Meridian stood outside the netting with an expression masked with confusion and mistrust. Beans hid beneath the drape of her mother’s tail, watching Ginger with wide eyes.
The steel rails clicked and pinged as they cooled. It wasn’t difficult to tell that something had happened while she was asleep. When Aurora finally let her go, Ginger’s hooves came back damp.
“You’re soaked.”
“Look who’s talking. Are you okay?” 
It took her a moment to realize she was right. Her short-cropped mane clung to the back of her neck like a mop. She looked down at her legs to see the slick sheen of sweat coating them. She felt as if she’d sprinted a good five laps around Junction City in her sleep.
What was happening to her? Her father, her burning bedroom, the appearance of a dark mare who up until now she’d only seen in photos taken before the bombs fell. It had all felt real.
“Aurora,” she said, frowning at the deep ring cut into the stones around them. “I think I've been dreaming.”
> Chapter 24: Trade
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 6th, 1076
    
    Spitfire chewed the nib of her pen as she scanned the paperwork in front of her. She found it was easier to write notes with her clipboard nestled in the crook of her crossed leg, a posture that in most circumstances was regarded as inappropriate if not borderline harassing. Tucked behind her desk, there was nothing for her candidate to see, but that hadn’t been the point. If she was going to trust anyone to be a liaison to her growing list of contacts, they needed to be able to handle a little discomfort.
The mare seated across from her appeared unbothered. Her adobe colored eyes wandered the surface of her desk, stopping to idle at the pewter figurine at the far corner depicting a Wonderbolt in mid-flight - a memento from her years at the Academy - before seeming to slide toward its center. There was nothing there for her to see beside bare wood. Spitfire’s eyebrow quirked as she realized her prospective candidate was likely imagining what was hidden beneath it. 
The mare made no attempt to hide it when she noticed Spitfire watching her, only smiling politely before turning her attention to the myriad awards and plaques hanging on the wall behind her.
Spitfire felt her lip twitch. For a mare who looked better suited to staff a cotton candy stand, she had brass balls.
Lifting the pen between her feathers, she dropped it to the mare’s resume and tapped it against the “i” of her listed name. She was qualified for the job. If she wasn’t, she would have never made it this far in the interview process. Only two other ponies had. One had been a brown-noser, the other had the personality of a rock. She didn’t need someone to sit outside her office and say “Yes, ma’am.” She already had Rainbow Dash for that.
Then again, it wasn’t much of an office. Being given the reins of an entire Ministry was one thing. Being given that control while preserving the illusion that Rainbow was still at the helm had to be done delicately. Her workspace wasn’t much larger than her first office back at the Academy which suited her just fine. The faux wood wall paneling helped create the illusion that she wasn’t sitting in a cement cube one hundred feet below the surface of Canterlot. She allowed herself to indulge in her “promotion” by swapping out the standard fluorescents with more expensive, full-spectrum lighting. She wasn’t shitting in a golden toilet by any means, but it was a nice perk to what started as a thankless succession.
Over the last six months, she’d worked hard to improve the thankless part. That started with the gradual replacement of the Ministry of Awesome’s department heads. If she wanted to get anything done, she couldn’t rely on Rainbow to act as a middle-mare. She needed to make room for pegasi she could trust.
Thunderlane was a natural first choice. His discovery of Rainbow’s attempt to feed information to the gryphons had shaken his trust in her more deeply than anything Spitfire could hope to do. He practically jumped at the opportunity to help keep his former wingmate on the straight and narrow. From there, the other names came more easily. Thunderlane had a short list of Wonderbolts who had become disenchanted with the notion of finding glory on the front lines. More came from her old rosters, colleagues from the Academy and a few powerful pegasi who weren’t above bending the rules for the good of Equestria.
Within the internal architecture of the Ministry of Awesome grew a deeper, more loyal framework of ponies who Spitfire could actually work with. Sure, it was a little more cloak and dagger than she was accustomed to, but it was working.
All she needed now was a liaison between her and the new department heads. Someone unaffiliated with the Wonderbolts, the Academy or any other aspect of Spitfire’s past. With the risks she was taking, she needed deniability.
The taffy-pink mare sitting across from her looked like she could fit neatly beneath a bus, should the need arise.
She clicked her pen and looked up. “It says here your name is Primrose.”
“That’s correct.”
Her voice had a sugary-sweet register to match her complexion. Like Pinkie Pie if she were a six year old. She jotted an X in the margin of her resume. Strike one.
“Mm. Would it be fair to say that you have a… well, a checkered past?”
Primrose lifted a wing to brush a baby-blue curl of mane behind her ear. “I’ve had opportunities to learn about Equestria’s justice system, yes.”
She chuckled at that as she lifted the bottom pages of Primrose’s resume away to scan the first of the many pages produced by her background check. The infractions ranged from minor to outright comical, most dating back to her years as a filly. Maybe that's where she got that cutesy voice from. 
“You committed criminal trespass four times when you were nine years old,” she said. “Care to explain?”
A tiny smile formed on the mare’s lips. “I tried to attend Canterlot’s School of Magic.”
She blinked. “You’re a pegasus.”
“I know. All the unicorns my age wouldn’t stop talking about the place, so I snuck in to see what all the gossip was about. It took a few tries, but once I saw it was just a bunch of unis polishing each other’s horns, I stopped bothering with the place.”
Spitfire smirked, lifting another page. “At age twelve, you were tried for larceny?”
Primrose rolled her eyes. “Alleged larceny. All I did was break into the restricted section of the Canterlot Library. I never actually left with the book.”
“The library?” She squinted at the page. “This was at the Museum of Magical History in Manehattan.”
“Oh, that!” The mare genuinely giggled. “I stole a bell.”
“A bell.”
Primrose twirled her hoof as she explained. “An enchanted bell that used to belong to someone who died two or three thousand years ago. Ended up being a replica, of course.” She let out a genuine giggle. “My foster parents were not happy when they found out.”
She giggled again. Spitfire flipped back to Primrose’s resume and jotted in another X beside the first. Strike two.
“For a pegasus, you used to have quite the fixation with magic,” she said. “Why was that?”
Her sweet smile hardened ever so slightly. “Because when I was little, I used to hear unicorns say that all ponies had magic. Pegasi have their skies, earth ponies have the dirt, all that good stuff. They said that like everything was fair when it clearly wasn’t.”
She waited for Primrose to continue, but she seemed unwilling or uninterested in elaborating further. Spitfire didn’t need to be a psychic to know the thoughts this younger mare had chosen to keep private. Unlike at the Academy, Ministry background checks were disturbingly thorough.
Flipping past her qualifications, her eight-year career as an administrative assistant to the lead editor of the Cloudsdale Gazette, and the litany of juvenile criminal offenses, Spitfire turned to the single sheet of paper that had originally caught her eye. To any other employer, the red-flagged document would immediately disqualify her.
The report briefly detailed an attempt by Primrose to publish a leaflet under a pseudonym. The publisher had flatly denied to print the leaflet, but not before lodging a complaint with the Gazette about its contents. She was fired, quietly, to avoid embarrassing the paper. Spitfire tapped the photocopy with her pen. These days, even joking about publishing something like this could land a pony in a cell.
She cleared her throat. “Did you author a leaflet titled Magic is Power: Unicorns and Equestrian Decline under a pseudonym?”
Primrose took a slow breath, her smile becoming brittle. “I did.”
“Why?”
She sat a little straighter in her chair, her eyes drifting to the silver clamp of the clipboard. “Ponies are entitled to their beliefs, are they not?”
Spitfire shrugged. “Ponies tend to believe things like the princesses moving the sun and moon, or that chocolate chips make a better cookie than butterscotch. You believe magic is a threat to Equestria.”
“Unicorns," she corrected. "Not magic.”
She waited before gesturing for Primrose to continue.
The mare licked her lips and grinned, realizing too late that she’d walked into a trap. Abandoning her rigid posture, she leaned into the cushioned backboard of her chair. “Unicorns are the threat. Magic is just the tool they use. They have an evolutionary advantage over every other creature on this planet. It’s a categorical fact, and yet the second one pegasus says it outloud it’s subversive or heresy.”
She lifted her wings, forming air quotes with her feathers and scoffed. “Compared to unicorns, we’re like bugs. Right now they’re happy to let us skitter around, plant their crops and tidy up their skies. But what happens when they conjure up a spell to do the work for them? How long do you think it would take pegasi to protest? And how easy would it be for the unicorns to make us bend our knees to them anyway? Not very.”
The silence lingered for several long seconds.
“A lot of ponies would say that’s a pretty grim outlook to have.”
“It’s a realistic one,” she countered. “This war will only wind up making things worse. Equestria has depots filled with more weapons than it knows what to do with. When this war ends, what do you think we’re going to do with them? Melt them down and forget we ever had them? Please. Give a pegasus a gun and she might actually stand a chance against a unicorn, and they’re not going to allow that.”
Primrose shook her head and let out an exasperated sigh. “Once this is over, things will only get worse for us. I guarantee it.”
Spitfire rested her chin against her feathers, watching the mare come down from her speech. It was strange to hear someone say the words she’d been thinking for so long. Strange not to be immediately feigning revulsion to protect her own hide. Risky, even.
She set the clipboard on her desk with a click. The mare across from her said nothing. There was nothing else for her to say.
Spitfire couldn’t think of a better fit.
“So Miss Primrose,” she said. “How would you feel about a tour?”







Meridian was in over her head.
The four strangers her daughter found digging through the train downhill hadn’t looked any different than the last group of travelers that wandered their way up these rails. That had been, what, three years ago? Turning them around had been an easy matter of firing a warning shot at their hooves and promising better aim if they didn’t go back the way they came. There was something about the way a half-pound railway spike landed that gave even veteran scavengers pause.
Staring out at the tracks with Beans hiding beneath her tail, she watched the bubble of impossible light drizzle away as Ginger snapped awake in Aurora’s wings. The other pegasus stumbled away the moment it came down, tucking what was left of her black tail between her legs while the ghoul hurried after her. 
Meridian looked back to Ginger and caught the unicorn looking at her with a mixture of guilt and lingering confusion. She watched her turn to Aurora and whisper something that earned a worried look from the Stable dweller.
“That was old magic,” she said, feeling her heart pumping in her throat as she interrupted them. The pensive look on Ginger’s face only made her more certain she was right. “What you just did. That was a spell.”
Ginger hesitated briefly before eventually nodding.
Beans let out an awed gasp. Lifting her tail away from her daughter, Meridian turned to her. “Go inside and watch the fire.”
“But-”
“Now, Jellybean. Please.”
For a moment she looked like she might argue, but upon seeing her mother’s expression she relented and hurried back behind the netting. The knot in her belly loosened a little as she listened to Beans’ hooves clatter deeper into the safety of their cave.
Once she was certain she wasn’t trying to sneak back to the net, Meridian took a breath and considered her options. She could tell them to leave, to keep heading to whatever they expected to find in Fillydelphia and make themselves someone else’s problem. Five minutes ago she might have considered it, but something inside her made her think better of it. These ponies hadn’t come looking to start trouble, and judging by the way Ginger kept avoiding her gaze she was clearly embarrassed for having lost control.
And after all, this was the Stable dweller. A helper, according to Flipswitch's broadcast. 
Were she ten years younger and Beans still just a wish on the horizon, she might have shot the four of them and been done with it. She stiffened herself against that thought. She left her fellow raiders to get away from that life, not use it as a crutch whenever things got tricky. More than that, she had Beans to consider now. She obviously liked these ponies, especially the ghoul they called Roach, and Meridian didn’t want to explain to her daughter why she decided to kill four unarmed ponies.
Well, three unarmed ponies.
She frowned at Ginger and wished Briar would get back soon. He had the soft skills for these sorts of things. Meridian had always been more comfortable letting her size do the talking for her.
“Do you,” she said, tipping her nose toward Ginger’s horn, “have control over it, or does that thing go off whenever it likes?”
Ginger stood with Aurora’s help, clenching her eyes around a fresh headache. “My horn is not a timebomb. I just…”
Meridian watched her turn to Aurora as if she were asking for permission. Or maybe just reassurance.
“I believe I had a nightmare,” she finished.
Ginger must have seen something in Meridian’s expression she didn’t like, and she quickly hedged her answer. “Or a hallucination. I’ve heard exhaustion can play havoc on the mind.”
“But you don’t think it was a hallucination.”
She shook her head no.
Meridian shifted her weight to her other hoof and weighed her options. They didn’t look or act like any con artists she knew, and if what she’d heard about them over the radio was any indication, they only seemed to cause trouble for ponies who deserved it. And the unicorn had magic. Real magic.
Maybe it was pity or maybe it was that lingering nostalgia everyone seemed to feel for better times most of them had only seen or heard about on old holotapes. Whichever it was, she found that the heartless self-preservation option wasn’t coming as easily as it had when she was young. If Briar found out he’d rubbed off on her this badly, he’d never let her hear the end of it.
“Let me see if I don’t have something around here stronger than tea. You two stay put.” She half-turned to the netting, stopped, and leveled an eye at Ginger. “And if you can help it, keep the glowstick turned off.”







Roach glanced several dozen yards back up the tracks where Aurora was tending to Ginger, and he hoped for their sake that Meridian wouldn’t take what had just happened as a threat. The mare had been hospitable, but she also had a foal. He hoped the two of them had the good sense to treat their situation with delicacy.
Ahead of him, Julip paced up and down the rails as she struggled to deal with a flood of adrenaline that had nowhere to go. She shuddered over and over and her teeth chattered loud enough for him to hear it when she spoke. Any lingering doubts he might have had about her not being a soldier were gone. As she flicked the air with the singed black tatters of her tail, he guessed that this might be the closest she’d ever come to facing her own mortality.
“Julip, you have to calm down so I can look you over.”
“Fuck you.” Her eyelids fluttered with embarrassed frustration and she pivoted to stomp away from him again. “Fuck her, fuck this mission, fuck all of it.”
Roach pressed his lips together and blew a sigh through his nose. He followed her until she turned back around to find him standing in her way. When she tried to walk around him, he backed up and blocked her path. He held a hoof toward her, bidding her to stop.
“I just want to make sure you weren’t burned.”
She slapped his leg away, turned as if to storm further down the tracks, then turned back toward him and jabbed a feather back up the way they’d come. “Burned by her. By a fucking narcoleptic unicorn with fucking superpowers.”
Roach said nothing.
“What would’ve happened if that thing had come down on top of my head? Magic is supposed to be dead and somehow the rich mare who ran away from home is using it in her sleep! How does that even happen?”
“That’s a question you can ask Ginger later. Now just slow down and breathe.”
“I am breathing!”
“You know what I mean.”
He watched her face contort with anger as she scooped a pile of stones into her wing and turned, flinging them as hard as she could down the empty tracks. She chased them with a colorful burst of language that would make a seasoned courtesan blush, then proceeded to sit down on the old beam and stare after where the stones had settled.
“Fuck.”
“Feel better?”
“No. Maybe. Don’t push it.”
 He thought he saw the edge of a smirk play on the corner of her muzzle, but he could have imagined it. She continued to stare sullenly ahead as he circled across the rails and sat down to face her. He ignored the sour look she gave him when he held out his hoof a second time and waited until she relented and gave him her foreleg.
Roach was no doctor, but he’d seen enough in his lifetime to know what a burn looked like. Julip’s coloration made it easy to spot the curled tips of singed hairs along the inside of her foreleg, but the extent of her injuries were mercifully superficial. The line of her belly had taken the brunt of what the superheated rail inflicted, searing her hair short enough that a few long patches of angry pink skin showed through the stubble that remained. At worst, he guessed it would feel like an inconveniently placed sunburn. Had she lingered over the steel any longer, it would have been an entirely different story.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
He gave her hoof back. “For what, cutting your tail in half? Anytime.”
She snorted and looked back at what remained of it. “You have a weird sense of humor.”
“I’ve been accused of worse.” He stood, and after a moment she did the same. “You’ll be okay, by the way.”
She pressed her feathers against the raw skin of her belly and winced, frowning with uncertainty. He waited with her for a while as she calmed down enough to look herself over, then he got back up and started walking back up the tracks. With some reluctance, Julip got up and followed suit beside him.
“I’m assuming she’ll want an apology,” she said, nodding up the hill at Ginger.
“Nah. You had a pretty bad scare. You’re entitled to blow off some steam after something like that.” He glanced down at her and noted the pinched expression as she nodded agreement. “You know, it’s funny.”
“Nearly getting roasted alive? Yeah, a real knee-slapper.”
“A what? No,” he said, and tipped his cracked horn back toward her ruined tail. “Before the bombs fell, it felt like every teenaged mare in Canterlot got the same idea to start wearing their tails in bobs. Violet used to beg Saffron and I to let her pin her tail up like that. Every couple of weeks she would have a new reason for why we should, and every time we told her no. She’d kill me if she found out I just gave you the same cut.”
She shook her head. “How long have you been waiting to dust off that old chestnut?”
He chuckled, letting her have that. Up the hill he could see Meridian had gone back inside her cave and that Aurora and Ginger were still where they left them. A good sign he assumed. Better than being escorted away at gunpoint, at least.
“How old was she?”
The question caught him off guard and he looked at Julip to see if she was serious. She shrugged at him, waiting for an answer.
“Sixteen,” he said. “She would have been seventeen that following December.”
“Pfft.” Julip arched an eyebrow at him. “You wouldn’t let her get a bob at sixteen? Jeez, I hope you didn’t forget to take your heart pills today, grandpa.”
Taken aback, he chuckled. “Of course we didn’t! Those tailstyles left nothing to the imagination.”
“Hate to break it to you, but that’s kind of the point.”
He closed his eyes and banished the mental image before it could form. “Okay, let’s change the subject.”
“Just one more question.”
He groaned with discomfort, but the look on her face made it clear she was going to ask him regardless of how much he complained. With a sigh, he waited for her to get on with it.
“Did she know about you?” Julip asked. “About the changeling part?”
He blinked, then nodded. “Of course she did. I was her dad.”
“And she was okay with that?”
Staring down at the passing rails, he nibbled the chitin on the edge of his lip. “Well, not right away. She was afraid to come near me for a few days after I showed her, but she came around eventually. That girl was tough. And it didn’t hurt that I could change into her storybook characters during bedtime.”
He glanced at Julip and thought he saw a note of jealousy in the way she slowly shook her head. “That’s insane,” she said.
“Phrase of the day for you?”
She smirked. “That, and fuck.”
Her nugget of self-awareness stole a genuine laugh out of him, and as he looked at Julip he was heartened to see her grinning at the stones.







    “How’s the coffee?”
“Disgusting as it is potent,” Ginger said, rolling the speckled blue cup between her hooves. A little less water and it could have qualified as mud, but she wasn’t complaining. The caffeine went straight to work the moment it hit her bloodstream, chasing away the stifling weight of exhaustion while filling her belly with a cozy warmth. She offered Meridian a reassuring smile. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
The statuesque mare nodded her approval before turning to the filly sitting beside Ginger. “Are you helping or just watching?”
Beans looked up at her mother, then down to the thick lock of severed black tailhairs held in her feathers. “I’m helping!”
They sat against the stone wall next to the entrance of her cleverly camouflaged home. Ginger took a sip of her too-strong coffee and used her magic to snake another pencil-thin clump of hair out of the filly’s wing. Julip stood in front of them, trying her best not to appear self-conscious as she faced forward while the two of them worked to restore her shorn tail. The flash of magic Roach had used to cut her free hadn’t generated enough radiation to be harmful, and it showed in the hasty diagonal slash of what he’d left behind.
Little by little, she wove each makeshift extension back into Julip’s tail with tight braids that followed the line of the original cut. It wouldn’t be the height of fashion by any stretch of the definition, but at least she wouldn’t look like someone had hung a grenade from her backside and pulled the pin.
For her part, Julip seemed almost calm after coming back. She wasn’t exactly handing out compliments or offering to carry anyone’s bags, but whatever Roach had been saying to her since deciding to take her under his figurative wing was having a dulling effect on the sharpest of Julip’s thorns. 
She watched Meridian walk over to where Aurora and Roach sat on the rail, glance briefly at the clouds above and then bend down to take Aurora’s empty canteen. On her way back she took Julip’s as well, a stainless steel container wrapped in a leather sleeve, and disappeared behind the netting to refill them both.
“I don’t get it.” Julip looked back at her with a dubious frown. “I’ve had stimpacks before and I never had dreams afterward.”
Ginger sipped her coffee and kept her eyes on her work. “It’s like I said, the ones Autumn forced me to take weren’t ordinary stimpacks. I’ve taken meds before, but this was the first time I felt my bones grow back together. It was awful. Her stims were made before the war with proper spells, not herbs or recycled chems.”
“Okay,” Julip said. “That might explain your magic, but a dozen old world stimpacks shouldn’t be all it takes to break through two centuries’ worth of dreamless sleep. Luna died when Canterlot Castle got hit, and she’s the one who created the dream realm in the first place.”
“Allegedly,” Roach interjected.
She ignored him. “Without her, the dream realm doesn’t exist. Period.”
Ginger slipped another lock of hair into Julip’s shredded tail and offered a noncommittal shrug in return. “All I can tell you is what I saw. When I fall asleep, I wake up at my old house back in New Canterlot and never at any moment that I would consider a happy memory. Maybe they’re hallucinations. Honestly, it would go a long way to explain why everything keeps catching fire. But whatever they are, they feel real enough to me.”
She stopped short of telling them about the mare who had stepped into her father’s office, the one with the starswept mane and clarion voice. Growing up so close to the ruins of Old Canterlot where the princesses were revered by so many including Minister Primrose as ascended goddesses, Ginger had ample opportunities to memorize the regal features of Equestria’s younger monarch.
Yet something made her hesitate to fully admit what she’d experienced, as if doing so would take her down the same path of delusion that drove so many ponies to build the Chapel of the Two Sisters and elevate them to deific status.
Eventually, Beans got bored and quietly snuck away to talk to Roach. Ginger smiled as she wove black hairs together, listening to the two of them growl silly piratisms at each other. Poor Aurora sat beside them with a lopsided grin, unsure what to make of this colorful version of their changeling companion.
It was hard not to notice Meridian monitoring the exchange from the entrance of their cavern home. Doubtless this group of travelers was as strange to her as stumbling across her family in the mountains was for them. She watched her daughter and Roach butcher one cliche after another with a tight smile, just enough to let them know she didn’t object while remaining restrained enough to remind them that they were guests who had very nearly exhausted her hospitality already.
As Ginger finished with the last of Julip’s tail, a muffled burst of static coughed from Meridian’s barding.
“Safe?”
The tinny male voice drew the ears of everyone gathered on the rails and pulled Meridian’s muzzle into a pinched frown as she pressed her chin into her barding’s collar. Embedded in the leather sat a barely perceptible lump of a pressure switch.
“Safe,” she replied.
The voice that buzzed back was nearly washed out by the embedded radio’s background static as if he were at the very edge of its operable range. “I’m wrapping things up with Snowblind, but we just spotted wings in the clouds above town. They’re flying west, taking the C route. Should be above you in a couple minutes. You know the drill.”
Ginger watched as Meridian’s frown deepened. “Beans, inside. Now please.” She pulled open the worn netting for her daughter and looked out to her unplanned guests. After a moment’s hesitation she added, “That goes for all of you, too.”
The air of relaxation evaporated as the four of them got to their hooves and followed after Beans.
Meridian dipped her chin against her radio as they filed past. “We’re getting inside now. Please say you were wrapped when you saw them.”
“Yes dear,” her husband chided.
Ginger waited for Aurora, Roach and Julip to step into the cave before following. She watched Meridian as they did, searching for any sign that this could be some sort of trap. But the earth pony’s attention was bent firmly toward the grey expanse of clouds that loomed above, her visitors temporarily forgotten as her eyes searched the overcast. It was no deception, Ginger decided, and stepped into a home hewn from the naked stone.
Despite the rugged location, Meridian’s burrow was a surprisingly cozy affair. Wood boards from a variety of sources lined the ground in a haphazard attempt to create a proper floor. Here and there a plank or two clung to their original coats of paint while others were so weathered that they were nearly as grey as the stone surrounding them. A black pot belly stove sat against the far wall with a dented kettle still bubbling away on its cast iron flat top. Roach was already craning his neck up to follow the dubious patchwork of salvaged air ducts bound together with silver heat tape that carried the stove’s exhaust to the open air outside.
A cluster of wall cabinets sat on the floor to the right of the stove, the furthest door hanging open just enough for Ginger to spy a yellowed plastic jar of instant coffee mix on the top shelf. On the opposite side, pushed into what amounted to the corner of the rounded space, the corner of a large mattress poked out from beneath a mound of heavy blankets. A short, white-painted bookcase waited beside the family bed stuffed full of narrow-spined foal’s books that Beans was probably already beginning to outgrow. A wooden trunk lay open beside the bookcase containing a small mountain of loose costumes.
Toward the back of the cave, a pair of half-parted house curtains hung on an old nickel rod mounted into the narrow point where two walls converged. A second room peeked out from behind the curtains where Ginger could just make out what looked like a tinkerer’s workshop.
Were it not for the chisel-scarred stone walls and the thick square timbers that shored up the roof, it was easy to forget that this roughly peanut-shaped home had been burrowed into the side of a mountain. The difficulties of getting supplies up here without being seen had to be staggering, but everyone in the wasteland knew that the problems that came with being born with wings were much much worse. 
Back at the entrance, Meridian went to work securing the net while Beans whispered memorized instructions to herself as she closed the vents to the stove in sequence. Barely a minute after she was finished, the thin curl of grey smoke venting outside dwindled to an invisible haze.
“And there they are,” Meridian muttered, her nose almost touching the grey weave as she peered through the gaps. 
Ginger stepped back toward the netting and squinted at the spot Meridian had locked her eyes on. They were tricky to see at first, but as she worked out where to focus on the eastern horizon she spotted five black figures tracing the bottom of the cloud layer in a tight V-formation. They slid across the sky like ghosts, producing no sound and never coming close enough for her to make out specific details about any one pegasi.
Almost as an afterthought, Meridian dipped her chin to her barding. “I see them, honey. Looks like another reconnaissance flight to me. They don't look interested in anything here. Any idea what they're looking for?"
Her radio crackled. “Snowblind says he can send a courier up the eastern pass and see if anyone on the road knows anything. Fifty caps if it’s nothing, seventy-five if it’s something we should be concerned about. Sound fair?”
Meridian crinkled her lip as the Enclave formation shrank into the western sky. “Tell him if he’ll do a flat twenty-five I’ll show him where we found that refrigerator with the ice-maker.”
A pause. “He says it’s a deal. Pretty sure you just made his month.”
“He’s been trying to get it out of me for longer than that. Hopefully he remembers when it comes time to scratch out backs.” With nothing but a dark smudge to stare at in the distance, Meridian tore her eyes away from the sky and turned to the ponies gathered inside. She glanced at Ginger - or more accurately her horn - and seemed to debate something in her head before speaking again. “When will you be on your way back?”
The stallion’s voice took on a note of concern. “I could leave now if you need me to. The usual caravan didn't show up this week so the vendors aren’t carrying anything new. Is everything alright? Were you seen?”
“Briar, take a breath.” She thumped up onto the mismatched floorboards and gestured a hoof to a red and brown tattered rug at the center of the room, silently mouthing for the four of them to sit down. “Bean and I are fine and no they didn’t see us. But your daughter did make some… friends today. You know that show we listened to a couple nights ago?”
Another pause. “Hightower Radio with Flipswitch, sure.”
Meridian let out a disbelieving sigh. “Well her headline story just sat down in our living room.”







July 16th, 1076

    The drive to the test site was possibly the most boring thing Rainbow Dash had ever endured, and that included all the lectures she’d been forced to attend back at the Academy. The trip from Canterlot to the barren badlands of southeast Equestria was not a short drive. Over a solid day of sitting in the back of a motorized carriage with nothing to do but stare out the window and watch the scenery drift by. 
           Oh boy. 
It wasn’t all bad, though. The glass partition that separated the back half of the vehicle from the front offered her and Applejack something close to privacy during the long drive. Cool conditioned air blew in through a pair of vents near their doors, a recent addition the motorized carriage industry had adopted in their continued focus on passenger comfort. The slight chill made Rainbow’s worn flight jacket feel luxuriously warm much in the same way her feathers must have felt around Applejack’s shoulders. With tires mutedly droning against a river of bright new concrete, they spent much of the time chatting.
“You know,” Rainbow had said as Canterlot faded behind them. “I could fly us there in half the time.”
Applejack had just settled into her smooth leather seat and smirked. “And you know just how I feel about flying.”
She’d rolled her eyes at that, still never quite understanding why some ponies feared something that was as natural as breathing. She knew not to push the issue too hard with Applejack, but she also knew she could get away with a little nudge. “You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do being dropped by a pegasus. Especially me.”
Applejack snorted at the self-aggrandizing postscript and took off her wide-brimmed hat, reached across her seat and plopped it unceremoniously over Rainbow’s mane. She gave it a firm wiggle with the flat of her hoof just to make sure it stayed put.
“Ain’t a matter of statistics, Dash. I know you’d never drop me, but there’ll always be that lizard part of my brain that goes nuts when I see the ground pull away.”
She shrugged, adjusting her mane beneath her new hat. “Maybe Celestia has another alicorn potion lying around.”
A wry laugh bubbled out from the earth pony, a soft noise richly flavored with her family’s accent. “Naw, there’s only one Apple I know who fantasizes about having wings and a horn and he’s…”
The words were out of her mouth before she knew it and the mention of Big Mac brought with it a dark cloud that had dulled their conversation for the better part of the next hour. It had been several months since any of them realized he was missing. The first sign something was wrong had come when Twilight asked Applejack if she’d seen him. According to her, he’d become distant after he found out she’d sold the research they’d been working on to Maiden Pharma. It didn’t take long before the royal guard and several of his concerned friends were standing inside his empty apartment at the center of Canterlot, searching for anything that might explain his absence.
What they found had broken Applejack’s heart. His closet had been left open with several articles of winter clothing left in a small heap on the floor. A stack of empty picture frames lay neatly on his dresser, the photos removed and presumably taken with him. Recent entries on his terminal brought up a list of prospective routes north. Everything pointed to the same thing: that Big Mac had chosen to flee north to the Crystal Empire.
It didn’t make sense at first, but then Twilight admitted that Big Mac had confided with her more than once that he was becoming frustrated with the titanic companies that had grown out of Equestria’s industrial boom. Their family’s repeated dealings with Flim and Flam came to mind and it occurred to her that there was a seed of truth to Twilight’s admission. It didn’t take long for that seed to sprout and for the reality of what her only brother must have suffered through in silence to take root. 
Whether he made it to the Crystal Empire safely or not, no one seemed to know. Cadence and Shining Armor assured her and Applebloom that neither of them had seen or heard from him nor were they aware he’d made plans to cross the border. In the dead of winter with seemingly no help from anyone, Big Mac had ventured off into the snow with the singular goal of leaving Equestria.
It was as if he’d just ceased to exist.
Applejack had been understandably eager to change the subject. As the highway rose and fell between the forest-shrouded bluffs east of Canterlot, she tapped a hoof against Rainbow’s hip and gestured to the yellow mare seated beside the driver on the other side of the partition.
“Isn’t this trip a little above her pay grade?”
Rainbow frowned at the back of Spitfire’s head and offered a mild shrug in response. “She’s the reason my ministry operates as smoothly as it does. I try to keep her in the loop wherever I can.”
It wasn’t so much a lie as it was an omission of context. At least that was what Rainbow told herself to tamp down the guilt of losing control of her ministry. Spitfire was the only thing standing between her and a sedition trial. When her former instructor caught wind that something important was slated for today, she made it known that she wanted a seat at the table.
Still, lying to Applejack was as painless as swallowing glass.
“That, and I owe her a favor,” she added.
Applejack nodded as if she understood. “Must be one heck of a favor.”
Yet thankfully she didn’t press for details. Applejack, presumably still the Element of Honesty, had given Rainbow her unconditional trust. Somehow that made her feel even worse.
Around what felt close to dinnertime their driver pulled into what he determined to be a “safe” place to eat. That determination wound up being one of the many Red Delicious restaurants that had begun cropping up around Equestria like weeds. Rainbow laughed as Applejack tried to subtly cover her face as a drive-through attendant wearing her cutie mark on his uniform levitated four grease-stained brown paper bags to the driver, but she found her well-intended ribbing turned against her as their dinner was passed back to them along with two sweating cups of fizzing, electric blue liquid.
Cartoonish yellow letters resembling lightning spanned the width of the licensed image of her silhouette. RainBOLT brand soda wasn’t the only endorsement she would come to regret, but the unnaturally blue beverage had become something of a cultural image for single stallions under twenty and not in a flattering way.
Rather than go through the embarrassment of having the driver take them back around and get something nontoxic, she and Applejack shared her sweet tea. With a full stomach and a long night ahead of them, Rainbow settled in and joined Applejack in watching the bluffs pass like waves on a darkening sea.
When she woke, the scenery was much different. The hills were gone, replaced by a flat expanse of sun-cracked soil that she only vaguely recognized from her very first trip down to Appleloosa. She was shaded in part by Applejack's silhouette as the early morning sun began its upward trek just behind her. For a brief moment she forgot that Spitfire or their driver were sitting barely a yard away, and she watched the love of her life doze against the dusty window.
It was another hour until they reached the perimeter of the site. Spitfire tapped the partition with the corner of her aviators and gestured with them through the windshield as the vehicle began to slow.
“Finally,” Rainbow murmured, sitting a little straighter as they rolled toward a gatehouse no larger than a tollbooth. It was guarded by two armed pegasi, neither of which looked happy to be there.
Applejack yawned against the back of her hoof as they came to a stop, and the two waited for the guards to approach their windows. A split second passed as one of the pegasi glanced at Spitfire and stiffened before continuing on to Rainbow. The other stallion approached Applejack’s and the two of them produced a pair of white, plastic pistols from their belts. 
Rainbow managed not to roll her eyes as the mare on her side of the car took her temperature, confirmed with a polite nod that she wasn’t a changeling doppelganger, and proceeded back to Spitfire to do the same. With the test site positioned at the very limit of Equestrian territory, they were closer to Chrysalis’s hive than they were the nearest city. One couldn’t be too careful.
Their identities confirmed, the guards waved them through. A few miles later and the checkpoint was little more than a hazy smudge in the morning heat behind them.
“Going to be a barn-burner today,” Applejack noted.
Rainbow groaned, earning a hearty chuckle from the mare.
“Twilight thinks this is the one,” she added, leaning toward her to peer through the windshield. The scaffolding that held the prototype weapon, something Twilight’s ministry was calling the Balefire Bomb, was still many miles away. Even from the bunker it would barely be visible.
Rainbow glanced at her, sensing the return of the foreboding that Applejack couldn’t help but express whenever they were called down for these tests. Three in the last month already and only one detonated with barely enough force to damage its platform. All duds. And yet if the video brought back from the explosion in the Pleasant Hills were to be believed, this balefire stuff had the potential to level cities.
“Hoping for another fizzle?”
Applejack pursed her lips. “You weren’t there for the accident. Of course I am.”
That was fair. As far as anyone seemed concerned, this was a weapon that could potentially end the war by merely existing. Even now she could make out the pillboxes dotting the outermost perimeter of the projected blast radius, their experimental high-speed cameras and sensors positioned for the best angles to capture the full majesty of the bomb. If everything went as Twilight hoped, Vhanna would be receiving a delegation from Equestria carrying footage that would leave them no choice but to offer unconditional surrender. 
Applejack, however, had already seen what the bomb could do. On paper the failed M.A.S.T. test had been laid at Trixie’s hooves. Had the ponies in Stable 2 simply been killed, she might have gotten away with supervised reassignment. Maybe a few years in prison to appease anyone who might otherwise object to a light sentence.
But not all the ponies in Stable 2 died. Not entirely. Probes sent into the labyrinth of buckled and warped corridors found… things. The remains of ponies who escaped the worst of the explosion in some far corner of the facility only to be trapped, soaking in whatever airborne residue the detonation had unleashed, and changed. Combined. They weren’t dead, but they weren’t quite alive either. The few ponies who’d seen the footage called them Melts. Once it was determined they weren’t mobile enough to escape the ruins of Stable 2 and would eventually succumb to their condition, they were classified as fatalities and left to their fate. Meanwhile researchers from the Ministry of Magic flocked to the crater to study the nameless invisible substance radiating from the site.
“Something about this just feels…” Applejack shrugged, visibly uncomfortable finishing the sentence aloud. Rainbow waited as she licked her lips and tried again. “It’s like we’re trying to get rid of ants with dynamite.”
“Vhanna’s full of some pretty dangerous ants.”
Applejack winced. “I know. Believe me, I get it.”
Several seconds passed as Applejack gestured feebly toward the barren landscape ahead. A squat rectangle of concrete had formed at the end of the dusty road, familiar to both of them at this point.
“Or maybe I don’t.” Applejack let her hoof drop to her lap and she deflated a little. Rainbow stayed quiet, knowing not to interrupt. “It just feels unnecessary. The zebra lines are already showing signs of breaking now that Twilight’s stimpacks have made their way into the trenches, and last quarter my people developed a M.A.S.T. talisman portable enough to integrate into our P-45 power armor which means we can finally move to the manufacturing stage. We’re already in a position to start pushing into the Vhannan heartland.”
She sighed. “I know how much Twilight loves to go above and beyond, but… this doesn’t feel like something the good guys would do.”
Before Rainbow could respond, the glass partition in front of them slid down. Spitfire half-turned in her seat until one honey-colored eye gazed at Rainbow from behind her aviators. At the same time their driver began to slow the car, tires crunching over parched soil as they rolled the last few yards to the bunker.
Among the wingful of ponies milling outside the protective concrete cylinder was a familiar stallion wearing his signature white collar and black tie. His sunrise mane would have been unmistakable even if Rainbow hadn’t already met him in person after he sent her his proposal for SOLUS.
Spitfire’s brow ticked up a faint degree. “Did I remember to tell you Jet Stream would be attending?”
“No,” Rainbow said, feeling her jaw stiffening as Jet smiled recognition toward her window and lifted a feather in polite greeting. She lifted one of her own in response even as she scrambled to understand why he was here at all. “Twilight was pretty clear she didn’t want civilian eyes on this test.”
“Twilight was the one who invited him.” Spitfire gave her a puzzled smile as if she were surprised Rainbow hadn’t been made aware. 
It was everything Rainbow could do to keep herself from reaching into the front of the car and throttling her. Each day that went by, her ministry fell further and further out of her control. At this point she had accepted it would happen, but Spitfire was getting dangerously close to flaunting that reality in front of the last pony she wanted to find out.
“Goes to show you can buy your way into anything with enough bits.” Applejack sank into her seat a little, regarding Jet through the glass with an unimpressed frown.
Spitfire shrugged. “Ninety-nine percent of the satellites orbiting the planet have his name on them for a reason. Equestria needs a reliable delivery system for this weapon and he’s offering one in exchange for a research partnership with the Ministry of Technology. He scratches our back, we don’t stab his.”
Applejack gaped at her, then Rainbow. “Why am I only just hearing about this now? I don’t care what he’s offering, I ain’t working with him! There’s a whole drawer in Rarity’s office filled with evidence he and his daughter…”
A muffled pop cut her off as Spitfire unlocked her door and cracked it open. Dry desert air and the murmurs of ponies gathered nearby silenced any accusation Applejack might have thought to give voice. Like it or not, Jet Stream was a critical pillar of Equestrian industry whose influence stretched further than a potential gift of much-desired rocketry. His laissez faire lifestyle made keeping details of his complicated family life relegated to the back pages of notoriously untrustworthy tabloids a constant undertaking for the Ministry of Image, but thus far Rarity had managed to keep him out of trouble despite his best efforts to get into some.
Spitfire smiled, knowing Applejack wouldn’t undo all that work on such a critical occasion. 
“I think you’ve been reading too many magazines in the checkout lane.” She pushed her door the rest of the way open and swung a hoof out onto the sunbaked terrain. “Come on. Ponies are waiting on us.”
Rainbow watched Applejack stare daggers after Spitfire as she dropped out of the carriage and made her way toward the group outside the bunker. 
“I know she’s your friend and all,” Applejack muttered, “but if she talks to me like that again I’ll kick her square in the teats.”
Rainbow winced at the mental image. “Please don’t,” she said. “I still have to work with her.”
Applejack made a noise in her throat that sounded like a grudging acceptance of terms. She blew out a slow breath to bring her boil down to a mere simmer and popped open her door.
They piled out into the uncomfortably warm morning air and made their way toward the bunker while the driver turned the carriage back the way they’d come. Several eyes turned briefly toward them, but only Jet’s and Rarity’s lingered as they joined the small gathering aboveground. More voices echoed up the cement stairs that descended into the bunker proper.
“Applejack, dear!” Rarity trotted toward them with the professionally honed smile of a mare who knew their arrival would be good enough reason to end the conversation that had been boring her up until now. “You finally managed to get her into a carriage! I thought I’d never see the day!”
Rainbow felt her neck flush as Rarity made a small show of kissing each of Applejack’s and her own cheeks. She could smell the burnt odor of cigarette smoke on Rarity’s breath as she went through the motions.
“The seating downstairs is the same as the last time, so we won’t need the dress rehearsal.” She took a step back and let out a conspiratorial roll of her blue eyes. “With any luck this will be the last time I have to drag everyone out here. I made Twilight promise me a successful test today.”
Applejack chuckled as she led them down the stairs. “Heck, who knew that’s what we were missing this whole time?”
Rarity’s smile touched the corners of her eyes and it was infectious. In a world that often felt alien to what she’d known growing up, Rainbow took comfort in knowing Rarity could still tee up a joke at her own expense. Leaving Spitfire to rub elbows with Jet, they descended the last steps into the observation bunker.
Solid concrete formed a single, sweeping wall of grey that began at the heavy steel bulkhead the three of them passed through and ended at a narrow viewing slit cut through the forward quarter of the cylindrical room. The thick layer of wire-reinforced glass that filled the cut gave them a thin but unobstructed view into the test range beyond. If Rainbow squinted hard enough she knew she’d be able to make out the tiny dark filament of scaffolding standing out in the desert with its deadly cargo perched at its apex.
A caged light fixture clung to the center of the ceiling, staining the walls with a yellowish tinge. Rarity led them past a uniformed mare speaking quietly into a radio, but not so quietly that Rainbow couldn’t hear her and Applejack’s names being announced. Fluttershy and Twilight had already found their seats at the front of two rows of chairs positioned at the rear half of the bunker. Pinkie, unsurprisingly, had found another reason to remain absent.
Twilight acknowledged their arrival with a nod toward their assigned seating beside her. “Same as last time. The test will start after everyone’s under shelter.”
Good to see you too, Rainbow thought.
Rarity peeled away to bring in the group outside while Rainbow and Applejack took their seats. On the other side of Twilight, Fluttershy leaned forward and smiled a silent greeting. Rainbow smiled back, trying for once to push away the guilt that had dogged them since Gilda’s death. Fluttershy’s plan to advance Vhannan solar research had backfired so spectacularly that her hard-fought self-confidence had been shredded as a result.
“I thought we agreed you would leave that in Canterlot.”
Rainbow looked at Twilight and realized she was addressing her. Her friend’s eyes were tilted down toward the Element glinting behind the open zipper of her jacket.
“Guess I forgot.”
She watched Twilight’s expression darken at her dismissal. “You for-”
“Rainbow Dash!”
From the bunker door, an orange and magenta mare decked in a slim-fitting black suit coat made a beeline to where they sat. The shining brass gear of Stable-Tec’s new logo caught the bunker’s light on her lapel.
Rainbow grinned up at Scootaloo and held up her hoof. The businessmare and lifelong fan didn’t hesitate to thump it with her own before hurrying to the row of seats behind them.
As Rarity ushered in the rest of the observers, mostly project techs and members of their various ministries, Rainbow turned to whisper over her shoulder. “Think it’ll pop this time?”
Scootaloo waited as ponies filed in front of her to take their seats, then leaned forward. “I’m hoping so. We have some new wall sections set up around the test range that should in theory hold up better than Stable 1 did during the accident.”
Frowning, Applejack leaned back a little. “I thought that’s the Stable we were in.”
“It was. The shockwave cracked most of the welds on the northern wall, though. We had to run pumps for two weeks just to keep the groundwater from flooding the lower levels while the ruptures were sealed. If there’s a silver lining to what happened back in January, it’s that we know the prototype Stables were fundamentally flawed from the beginning. Better late than never.”
Curiosity overrode concern for the politely distracted eyebrows from the ponies sitting nearby. “Flawed how?”
Scootaloo hesitated, mindful of the ears around her. “As in we were thinking too short-term. I designed the Stables to be a temporary shelter should the zebras ever reach Equestria. After witnessing the Pleasant Hills accident, seeing that we intend on weaponizing what happened there… it’s undeniable Stable-Tec needs to prepare for something on a much longer timeline.”
Rainbow turned in her chair, causing the feet to scrape the cement. “So less of a bomb shelter and more of a siege holdout? I’m not sure many ponies would be excited to spend their summer underground.”
Scootaloo winced, but said nothing. Her eyes were saying plenty.
She knew that look. “Worse?”
Scootaloo nodded, glancing down the row at Twilight. The alicorn had been pulled into a quiet conversation with Rarity. A clipboard and a pen hovered in the air between them. Scootaloo subtly gestured toward Twilight with one of her too-small wings. 
“Her ministry’s not saying anything official, but my people are confident that the Pleasant Hills explosion released some kind of toxin. We’ve taken soil samples from the immediate area and there’s nothing. No mites, no insects, not a living microbe. Completely barren. We had to stop sending ponies to the crater site because they come back spitting up blood, even the unicorns. Their shields just pop when they get too close and their magic just… stops.”
Scootaloo chewed her lip for a moment, shaking her head. “All the data we’ve collected is bad. If the zebras get their hooves on a weapon like this… if they find a way to use it on us? The half-life we're measuring on this toxin is one to two generations at least. We’re looking at agricultural collapse. Mass starvation. Equestria could…”
She stopped herself, realizing in time she was inches from saying something that could land her in a cell. She took a breath and composed herself.
“If the worst were to happen, we might be looking at centuries under heavy shelter, not seasons.”
A few nearby ministry attendees briefly glanced at Scootaloo, causing a lull in the surrounding conversation that lasted long enough to draw a look of interest from Rarity and Twilight. As the busibodies eventually turned back to their original threads of gossip and the murmur of voices rose back to something approaching normalcy, Rainbow tried to think of an inoffensive way to tell Scootaloo she had somehow left the realm of things that were real and dived head first into bad science fiction.
“Well,” she said, knowing how hollow the words sounded as they tumbled from her mouth. “Your heart’s in the right place.”
Watching Scootaloo’s reaction was like seeing a flower close its petals for the night. She blinked once, nodded stiffly, and smoothed the wrinkles from her suit jacket as she sat back in her chair.
Regret settled in Rainbow’s gut as if she’d swallowed ice, but before she could think of something to say to smooth things over Rarity’s voice pierced the air.
“Ladies and gentlecolts, your attention if you please.”
Dozens of eyes turned to the alabaster mare who now stood at the front of the bunker. Beside her stood a tiny, mottled stallion wearing one of the crisp suits that denoted him as a member of the Ministry of Image. A tiny blue diamond glittered on his lapel, further branding him as her personal staff. Beside him hovered a bulky camera fixed to a silver tripod, its lens pointed at the seated crowd.
Rarity allowed them a moment to notice the stallion before resuming. “You have all read and signed your MoI Etiquette Agreements prior to being given clearance to attend this test. That being said, I will remind you all that every aspect of this event is historical in nature and will be recorded. If at any point during the test you feel the need to use language that is profane, unpatriotic,” her eyes slid toward Jet Stream, who smiled back at her. “Or seditious, I strongly advise you to think twice.”
She let her words sink in before looking to Twilight, who simply nodded. On an unseen cue, the camerapony backed against the far wall and began setting up his tripod. Rainbow was well aware his wasn’t the only recording device in the room, nor the most sophisticated, but having a lens aimed at them would provide a more tangible reminder they were being observed than the little pinhole devices rimming the cylindrical bunker.
As with the three failed tests before, Rarity watched the enlisted ponies at the entrance seal the bulkhead door. The radio operator near them tapped her hoof twice into the cement.
“The test will proceed in two minutes. At ten seconds, remember to turn fully away from the observation window or shield your eyes completely in the crook of your foreleg. You will be told when you can safely look. Those of you with magic may feel nausea and will be temporarily unable to cast after the test. These symptoms are normal and will wear off within a few days. Any pegasi present are advised not to attempt cloudwalking during the same period of time. Earth ponies should be fine.”
A smatter of chuckles rippled through the room. Applejack’s chest rose and fell with an annoyed sigh.
The radio operator spoke up. “One minute.”
From the back, Jet Stream asked, “Anyone remember to bring popcorn?”
Another ripple of quiet laughter from the more senior members of the ministries, including Spitfire beside him. Rarity shot him a look that could make sand sweat. He maintained his perfect smile even as he lifted his hooves to reassure her he was done.
At thirty seconds, sirens began to wail outside. The mare beside the now sealed door turned up her radio until the hiss of amplified static joined the klaxons. A stallion’s voice came over the airwaves.
“Twenty seconds. Confirm all personnel are secured.”
A mare’s voice replied on the same channel. “Confirmed.”
“All personnel secure,” the stallion repeated. “Fifteen seconds.”
Several chairs behind Rainbow squeaked as ponies began turning away from the viewing slit. Before she covered her own eyes, she looked down the row at her friends. At the far end Fluttershy had practically gone fetal in her seat, trembling through the final seconds. Twilight and Rarity were among those who chose to turn away completely, eyes pressed shut and faces calm.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.”
Applejack stared back at Rainbow, her face a mix of apprehension and sadness. This was the culmination of an accident that had claimed the lives of some of the most promising researchers within her ministry and ruined the career of an ambitious unicorn she’d seen real goodness in. Now they were here, once again seeing if they could reproduce those destructive forces.
“Five.”
Forces that Scootaloo believed had the power to destroy Equestria.
“Four.”
Applejack shielded her eyes. Rainbow did the same.
“Three.”
Fluttershy whimpered.
“Two.”
Ponies held their breath.
“One.”
A moment passed. Nothing.
Another.
And another.
Then, light.
Gasps rippled through the bunker and for a split second Rainbow thought she’d accidentally opened her eyes. She could see her foreleg covering her face. Confused, she squeezed her eyes shut more tightly. The view didn’t change and she understood what she was seeing. Her bones. Veins. Arteries. Everything that made her Rainbow Dash exposed before her in front of a glowing sphere of impossibly bright light far beyond.
A startled shout went up behind her. Scootaloo, she realized, unprepared for what she was seeing. Unable to process the reality of peering through herself as well as the ponies seated in front of her.
After the light came a heat unlike anything she had ever felt. It was as if she were being poured through a glowing hot sieve. An almost unbearable warmth passed over and through her skin, swarming down into every inch of her body before dissipating just as quickly.
“Everyone, it’s safe to look.” Hard as she tried to mask it, Rarity’s voice carried an unmissable tremor. “Please remain seated until the shockwave pa-”
The leading edge of the blast struck the bunker with enough force to scare Rarity’s last word into a startled shriek. Rainbow shouted something that would have to be edited out as the rush of air punched her eardrums hard enough to hurt. She winced toward the viewing slit but all she could make out was a greenish haze of dust.
Confusion began to take hold among the gathered visitors.
“Was that supposed to happen?”
“I can’t see anything!”
“Does anyone else taste that?”
The complaints grew more agitated as dust continued to collect against the sliver of glass. Rainbow felt a pang of panic run through her as her thoughts conjured up images of being buried alive, and she stood up, wings held open on pure reflex. Applejack was beside her just as quickly, muzzle warming the cup of her ear.
“It’s okay, sugar. I'm right here. Take a deep breath.”
She took several.
“Everyone, please!” Twilight’s clarion voice cut through the growing panic like a knife. “You are all safe! We will be opening the bunker for outside viewing in a moment! Please form a line at the door and for the love of Celestia remember that you are being recorded!”
If Twilight was losing her composure it meant that the footage was already unusable for the general media. Nobody wanted to see members of the government screaming in panic in the face of their own weapon. Or maybe they would. Probably they would.
A puff of dust filtered through the door as it was pulled open. Rainbow followed Applejack up the stairs, smacking her mouth at the sudden unpleasant taste of metal.
One by one, their eyes were drawn up to an emerald sky. Thunder shuddered in their chests. Wind drawn back into the vacuum clawed at their hooves, urging them toward the terrible green maelstrom that burned away the clouds.
It mushroomed into the world like the clawing arm of an ancient deity. Scootaloo was right. 
They had harnessed Death.
Rainbow opened her mouth enough to whisper something Gilda used to say, back when she was still alive. “Oh my...”







“...god that still feels weird.”
Rainbow sat up on her mattress - Aurora’s mattress - and pressed her eyes into her matted and greying feathers. It surprised her how strongly Blue sometimes clung to her as she came back to herself, like a passenger floundering at the side of a lifeboat who didn’t understand how close they had come to capsizing it. There was a moment when feral instinct began to give way to rational thought, where simple emotions melded with deeper context and everything felt like she was living in a lucid dream.
Or at least that’s how she would have described it if she really wanted to. Right now all she knew was that she was back, and she needed to pee.
A familiar voice hummed a soft chuckle from her compartment door. “That didn’t last long.”
She dropped her wing to her side and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Sledge lay on the floor beneath the door’s card reader, his tree trunk legs tucked under his chest as he looked up at her from an open book in front of him. Rainbow recognized her old Friendship Journal and felt an urge to snatch it away from him, close its pages and protect it.
Sledge smiled at her, using one of his feathers to gently turn the brittle page. She decided it was probably safer with him anyway.
Stretching her legs until they shivered, she crossed the compartment to the closet-sized bathroom. The toilet waited just around the tiled entryway huddled in the corner next to a spartan sink and mirror. Not even a door to close for privacy, she mused. If Scootaloo were alive, she’d lay into her for the oversight. 
The memory of the young Crusader felt too fresh to be two centuries old. She sighed, flicked the remains of her tail aside and sat down. Biology took over from there.
“I can tell,” she said, referring to Sledge’s previous observation. “Did she even sleep while I was away?”
Her abrupt trek to the toilet hardly phased him. “Only for an hour or so. Blue spent most of the time staring at Opal.”
A third voice chimed in. “She was mostly interested in the terminal screen. You bite hard, by the way.”
Rainbow went rigid, the presence of the Stable’s head of I.T. startling a jet out of her. She could have cared less what noises Sledge overheard but another mare was an entirely different story, especially one who she barely knew. She must have breezed right by her without noticing she was in the room, though in her defense Opal wasn’t the largest pony by any measure. A lot of that had to do with her age. When Sledge introduced her that morning, Rainbow assumed she was meeting his grandmother.
She winced at her reflection in the tiles across from her, resigned to finishing what she started. “Sorry Opal, I didn’t know you were here.” Then something occurred to her. “Wait, why are you still here?”
A mirthful laugh trickled in from the main room. “It ain’t the smell, I can tell you that!”
Rainbow put her head in her hooves and swatted the flush handle with her good wing. Could ghouls die of embarrassment? If so, she was ready.
“Oh pfft.” She didn’t have to be able to see Opal to know she was waving her off. “It’s just nature. Reason I’m still here, oh, five hours later than I should be is because you made something of a mess of your user profile before I could even meet ya. D’you know how long it takes to reset permissions for a ministry mare?”
Rainbow understood exactly half of what she had just said. “Five hours?”
“More’n that, dearie. I still haven’t checked to see whether anyone out there noticed. You certainly do live up to your reputation as the troublemaker.”
There was a note of levity to her voice that reassured Rainbow she wasn’t in any real trouble. She finished, cleaned herself up and ran her feathers under the tap. When she stepped back into the main room, the old mare sat exactly where she expected, hunched forward in front of the screen with her feathers pecking at the keys like little jackhammers.
As she sat back down on the bed, she noticed Sledge smirking at her from the corner of his eye. She shot him a why didn’t you tell me she was still here expression, to which he simply smiled more broadly and turned the page.
“Sorry if I caused any problems,” she said, resisting the urge to beat Sledge over the head with her book. She turned toward Opal and glanced at the strange language of brackets, letters and gibberish she was writing in. “Is there anything I can help with?”
Opal paused her typing long enough to look back and assess Rainbow. Her colorations, from her dusty blue coat to the almost shimmering spectrum of hues in her mane and tail, was uncannily close to what her own had once been. A white star above Opal’s brow and matching socks that ran up to her knees were the only notable markings that set her apart from the mare she’d been asked to help. A part of Rainbow wanted to ask if Opal was in any way related to Windy Whistles, but then she remembered her mother died a widow.
“You asked me that before, don’t you remember?” When Rainbow shook her head no, Opal didn’t seem fazed at all. Her eyes nearly shut when she smiled. “Ah, well, we tend to get forgetful with old age. S’pose it makes sense since you asked right before you turned into that other version of you. Ornery cuss, that Blue.”
Opal turned back to the terminal, her feathers dropping to the keys once more. As she resumed her work, Rainbow noticed the knot of bandages taped to her shoulder.
“Did I do that?”
The old mare chuckled again. “Only because I reached for that necklace of yours. Ain’t every day you get to see an Element of Harmony even if it’s just the jewelry that used to hold it. It’s my fault for ignoring Sledge. He explained your condition and told me it might take Blue some time to get used to me. Luckily I learned after the first chomp.”
The screen blipped dark for a moment and lit up with a prompt that Rainbow didn’t bother trying to decipher.
“Anyhow,” Opal said, stretching the first vowel as she flicked through a tree of menus. “Cleaning up code is my job. Your job starts once I’m done, but in the meantime I was hoping you could explain how you tricked Millie into building you an account with full security clearance.”
Millie’s little speaker, a much less threatening interface than the black half-globes that once studded the ceilings of the Pillar, loomed overhead. Two centuries later and she still hated the idea of a machine listening in on her.
“By accident,” she admitted, flopping backward on the mattress. “The Millie we had installed back in Canterlot had an override built in so the girls and I didn’t have to stop for every keypad and card reader in the Pillar. I guess it works here, too.”
“Huh,” Opal murmured, her feathers never slowing as they danced over the keys. “That’s mildly terrifying.”
Rainbow and Sledge exchanged glances.
“Terrifying as in…?” Sledge prompted.
“Oh, well.” Opal stopped typing and pivoted in the chair, her lips pursed. “We already know some of the Stables are still connected on some kind of a network, or else we would have lost contact with Aurora a week ago. If Rainbow Dash was able to log in with her old credentials, it could either mean Canterlot survived the bombs or that the Stables are connected to the same network that the Pillar used. Or it could mean Overmare Spitfire added those credentials after she arrived. We really have no way of knowing until we break through her encryptions. And even then, we might not have the full picture.”
Rainbow frowned at the ceiling, trying to understand what exactly Opal was getting at. The aging technician noticed her confusion and sighed.
“Think of it this way,” she said. “We’re in a ship on a very dangerous ocean. Up until recently, our ship has done its job the way we need it to. Now we’ve learned that all the other ships out there might be connected to one another, and we don’t know whether that means we can turn on another boat’s deck lights as a prank or shut off its engine in the middle of a hurricane. Right now we’re pushing buttons hoping none of them cause us to sink.”
Rainbow blinked. “Oh. Yeah, that’s actually kind of terrifying.”
From the far side of the compartment, Sledge spoke with an uncharacteristic delicacy. “When you say someone on the outside could shut off our engine, do you mean like what’s happening with the generator?”
Opal screwed up her face and made a see-saw gesture with her feathers. “Maybe, but maybe not. After you told me what was really happening with the blackouts, I had my department scan the servers for any external communications. There’s nothing there. Not so much as a ping in two hundred and ten years.”
“Two hundred and twenty,” Rainbow corrected.
Opal shook her head and turned back to the terminal, her feathers diving back to their work. “Nope, two hundred and ten is as far back as we’ve been able to look. Whatever Spitfire was up to during that first decade is locked off in that encrypted partition of hers. If anyone did connect to the Stable from the outside, it would have happened in those first ten years. The only other entries to the log come from Aurora’s Pip-Buck after she left.”
Sledge hummed understanding, the Friendship Journal forgotten. “At least that rules out sabotage.”
“Unless Spitfire did something and that’s what she’s trying to hide.”
Opal and Sledge looked at Rainbow, their faces bent with concern.
Sledge was the first to speak. “Alright. For the sake of argument, what would she gain from sinking her own ship?”
Rainbow mulled it over but came up empty. Spitfire was a bitch at best and a monster at worst, but she held one thing above all else: preserving the lives of pegasi. The footage Sledge showed her from that first harrowing day in the tunnel made it clear Spitfire had gone through pains to ensure as many pegasi reached the Stable before any other pony. She would never put in the work only to scrap it all at the first sign of trouble. 
“I guess she wouldn’t,” Rainbow admitted.
“Which is why it’s important we get you to work,” Opal said. After a few more keystrokes, she clicked a button that set Aurora’s terminal into a tizzy.
Rainbow watched as the screen went dark, then flickered back to life with the familiar caricature of the Stable-Tec mascot standing in the middle. As the terminal booted up, Opal stood up from the chair and beckoned her over. The little green pony vanished as she took a seat at the terminal, the wood warm against her skin.
“I’m not really sure what it is you want me to do,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about hacking.”
Opal yipped with a laugh that made Rainbow flinch. “Oh, no no no! I have my ponies up in I.T. for that. What you’re going to help us do is determine which files to focus on. You knew Spitfire better than anyone here, so we’re hoping you might see something that could lead us in the right direction. A message chain, a journal entry, anything that might tell us why she blockaded so much of the primary archive and whether there are more landmines waiting to go off once we start rootin’ around down there.”
Rainbow stared at her reflection in the terminal, suddenly certain she was in way over her head.
“You used to be a big fan of the Daring-Do series,” Opal added. “Think of this like one of those books.”
She tried not to wince. “Can’t I just have Millie override the encryption?”
“Ah, well, no. Encryptions don’t work like that. You either have the original key or you don’t, and we don’t. Neither does Millie. Spitfire was annoyingly thorough about that.” Opal sidled up to Rainbow’s chair and leveled a slender feather toward the topmost line in the glowing list of options on the screen. “Partition 40. Go ahead and open it.”
Rainbow highlighted the line and clicked a key. The screen went dark for a moment before returning a substantially longer list of what at first glance appeared to be gibberish. File names, sizes, formats, an entire spreadsheet of information she didn’t understand. It trailed off the bottom of the screen where a tiny icon informed her she was on page one of nearly three thousand. 
Her frown deepened.
“This is everything we found on Spitfire’s partition so far, every bit of it locked down tighter than Blueblood's chastity belt. I know it’s a lot, but you shouldn’t have to worry about the technical junk. All you’re looking at are the file names. Spitfire renamed a lot of them for whatever reason, so focus on the ones which were modified most recently. I think she did it to make whatever we’re looking for harder to identify but she never got around to changing the timestamps.” Opal reached for the keyboard, scooting Rainbow’s feathers out of the way as she clicked back to the main screen. “You can access the Stable’s residential network from here if you get bored. Movies, music, other… entertainment. I know these screens don’t have the best resolution but if you-”
“I got it,” she interjected. “Thanks, I think I can figure it out.”
Opal cleared her throat and tapped the screen again. “Resident mail system is accessible through here. If you find anything you think we should look at, send it up and we’ll get to work on it. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Great, we’re all set! Sledge, if you need me for anything else, you know where to find me. Otherwise I’ll let you know if we make any more progress.” Opal turned to leave, but stopped to wrap a few feathers around Rainbow’s shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Ms. Dash, it really is an honor to meet you. You were my hero when I was growing up. Still are. If there’s anything I can do…”
“You’ll be the first to know. Thanks, Opal.”
The mare made a noise in her throat Rainbow was normally used to hearing from giddy fillies in their teens. She hurried to the door and swiped her badge before disappearing into the busy corridor. Sledge stood in the doorway until it shut, politely blocking the view of a few curious pegasi.
Rainbow spun around in the chair and set her chin against the backrest. “She’s interesting.”
“She’s got stickers of you on her terminal.” He smiled at her as her eyes widened, but the moment was short lived. Rainbow recognized the sag in his shoulders from her years in the ministry. He was tired.
“Want to talk about it?”
He shook his head and sighed. “Can’t. Gotta meet with the Mechanical heads and schedule the next week of blackouts, and then I need to check whether Aurora sent us anything new and start planning for what happens if she doesn’t come back.” He winced at the floor like he’d tasted something bitter. “I’ll have Deputy Chaser bring you dinner in a few hours, okay?”
She nodded and watched him as he fished his keycard from his pocket and turned to line it up with the strip on the wall.
“Hey,” she said.
He stopped.
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
He nodded, slowly. “Dash, if I tell you something, will you promise to keep it between the two of us?”
Rainbow frowned as she sat up on the mattress. “I promise.”
Sledge tapped the edge of his card against the wall, shaking his head. “The generator’s tanking. The ignition talisman is braking so hard now that it’s feeding oscillations into the main rotor. The generator’s going to tear itself apart well before it runs out of juice. We’ve got maybe two weeks. Probably less.”
His forehead connected with the side of the door with a gentle thump.
“I don’t know how to tell Aurora. The Stable doesn’t need more help. It needs a miracle.”







Aurora wiped a film of sweat into the back of her wing and breathed a curse. Ginger glanced to her from the curtain that divided the room, a small smile playing on her lips as she watched her companion work. 
In exchange for safe passage and some much needed coffee, the work Meridian put in front of her turned out to be simpler than she expected. Past the curtain that divided the two halves of their peanut-shaped cavern was a surprisingly robust little workshop. 
A semi-organized selection of rust-caked tools leaned out from a collection of wooden milk crates lined up along the wall near the curtain. Some still had thick rubber sleeves wrapped around their handles, an accessory Aurora didn’t understand until Meridian suggested she try turning a bare wrench with just her teeth. The thought of chipping a tooth while tightening a bolt made her shudder. 
Beyond the tools sat a stout metal work table topped with a small plastic cabinet covered from top to bottom in tiny yellowed trays. Each tray contained a selection of screws, washers, pins and bolts with a respectable variety of dimensions and threadings. A small pile of do-it-yourself repair manuals occupied the other corner of the table, the pages heavily dogeared and marked with labeled nibs of paper. When asked, Meridian admitted that her husband had been trying to teach himself how to fix the problem that had been dogging them for several days now.
That problem sat nestled between six blue plastic water barrels and what Aurora could only generously describe as a terrifying attempt at creating a backup power station. A myriad of cables in varying states of degradation wound their way from at least a dozen carriage batteries sitting atop a second workbench, spliced together to mate the power input of an electric water pump nearly as large as Meridian. 
The cast iron pump, unsurprisingly, was broken.
Aurora had dubiously eyed the batteries before turning her attention to the pump itself. It was a similar model to the ones that were regularly cycled down to Mechanical for maintenance, though the bright blue coat of paint she was used to seeing was replaced with a rough patina of orange rust. Were she back in the Stable she would have sent the whole thing over to Recycling to be ground into powder for the fabricators. That wasn’t exactly an option for Meridian, and a deal was a deal.
She went to work while Meridian stood watch, keeping a close eye on her and the rest of her unscheduled company in the other room while Beans kept them entertained. Despite the state of neglect their tools were in they did the job they were designed for, albeit slowly and only after several hard whacks from an old claw hammer. As she twisted what felt like the hundredth heavily rusted bolt from its threading and dropped the socket wrench over the next, she contemplated dragging the entire pump out of the cave and shoving it over the cliff just to see if it might jar a few bolts loose on the way down.
“Celestia’s…” she panted, dredging her brain for something profane enough to match her exhaustion. She leaned on the wrench’s handle and scrubbed the sweat off her brow with the back of her wing, coming up nothing. With a stomp from her hoof, the stubborn bolt cracked through the last of the rust and allowed itself to be ground out of the pump’s housing.
She dropped the bolt into a small pile at her hooves and looked over her shoulder to where Meridian stood. “Finally. Give me a hoof with this?”
The earth pony didn’t argue, and after seeing where the frontmost section of cast iron separated from the rest, she found a ridge to prop her teeth against and helped lift the casing away.
With the pump’s internals exposed, it only took a quick glance for Aurora to confirm her suspicion. The impeller, a glorified scintered steel fan built to pressurize the water it drew into the pump, had decided to fail in spectacular fashion. After two centuries of disuse, one of the impeller’s blades had simply given up and sheared away while the pump was running. The shard of met had lodged itself between the rotating disc and the housing with enough force to bend several of the other blades before killing the entire pump.
Aurora sucked a breath through her teeth and shifted back a few inches so Meridian could see the damage.
The mare frowned before giving Aurora a hopeful look. “Can it be fixed?”
“Not without the right welding equipment and a blueprint for the angle of that broken vane.” She shook her head, knowing this wasn’t the outcome Meridian had expected from their bargain. “You’d be better off replacing the entire part with a new one.”
“And that’s it? It’ll work with a new…”
“Impeller.” She gave the broken disc a jiggle, eyeing the bright slashes of damage to the housing. “I can’t guarantee there won’t be a problem further down the line, but yeah. I think that’s all you need. The tricky bit’s going to be finding one that fits the pump you have. These aren't exactly interchangeable.”
Meridian leaned until her shoulder settled against the rim of the nearest water tank, its murky contents sloshing gently inside. She stared at her party disassembled pump, seeming to consider her options until the water went still again.
She dipped her chin against her collar. “Safe?”
A few seconds passed before the radio coughed static. “Safe.”
Meridian’s chest swelled even as she tried to maintain an air of strength around her guests. “Aurora took the pump apart for you. She says the impeller is broken.”
A pause. “How did she get it open in the first place? That thing’s rusted solid.”
Aurora smirked at the mismatched floorboards and said nothing.
“You probably loosened it up for her, honey. She also says you should have bought that acetylene torch when you had the chance, you dummy.”
Several seconds passed as they waited for a response. In the other room, Beans shouted something about sea monsters as her tiny hooves clattered back and forth across the floor.
“At least we don’t have to replace the whole pump,” Briar conceded, craftily turning the conversation away from himself without acknowledging he’d made any of the mistakes his wife hinted at. “I can make a run down to the Boiler tomorrow morning and see if I can’t salvage one of the others.”
The Boiler? Other pumps? She was so used to living beneath the water table that she hadn’t stopped to consider where they were pulling their water from until now. Out here, the only likely source they could tap into was the groundwater under the valley floor a good quarter mile downhill. Something didn’t make sense.
Her eyes drifted to the bank of batteries on the table next to her and the fat black cable snaking down through a gap in the floorboards beneath them. Something was keeping them charged up, but she hadn’t seen so much as a windpump to explain where that power was coming from.
The curtain rings gently clacked as Ginger cleared her throat to get their attention. She looked ready to collapse, but the tired smile on her face reassured her that the caffeine and Meridian’s high-strung foal in the other room were keeping her far from sleep. 
“Come look at this,” she whispered.
Torn between the mechanical puzzle in front of her and whatever was going on beyond the curtain to make Ginger grin like a thief, Aurora put down the wrench and crossed the workshop to where she stood. Meridian said a quick goodbye to Briar and followed close behind.
Ginger held the curtain open and tipped her nose toward the scene that was playing out in the other room. Left alone to the mercy of Beans, Roach and Julip had been forced with differing levels of willingness to take on the roles the little filly imagined for them. Her trunk of costumes lay half-dumped onto the floor and thoroughly rifled through. It took Beans no time at all to relocate her pirate costume, complete with her bladeless paper slicer and eyepatch. She stood atop a wooden chair near the cave’s camouflaged mouth, the handle of her “sword” held out like a conductor’s wand as she directed a mock battle between her ship’s mate and a tentacled beast.
The scarves Beans had worn when they first ran into her now hung around Roach’s neck, one of which had been loosely tied over his right eye as a stand-in for a second eyepatch. Apparently in Beans’ imagination every pirate wore an eyepatch. Strangely enough, it suited him. The “sword” Roach carried - a broken length of broom handle shoved through one of the holes in his foreleg - was so absurd that Aurora’s jaw hung open with an unabashed grin.
Beans hopped up and down on her chair, cheering him on. “Fine work, first mate! Ye nearly have her finished off! Lop off another tentacle and the ship be saved!”
In front of him wobbled Julip, one of her hind legs tucked up against her buttock while the others trailed three heavy woolen socks. The fourth lay on the floor beneath her, evidently the severed tentacle, while she did her best to wave the others menacingly at Roach without falling on her face. A pair even dangled from the ends of her wings, turning her into a vaguely octopoid monster.
“Oh no! She’s rearing up for another attack!” Beans directed.
Taking her cue, Julip lifted a foreleg and took an exaggerated swipe at Roach complete with a trilling noise that she must have thought fit her new role. Beans whooped as Roach swung his impaled foreleg and swiped the sock off Julip’s hoof with the broomstick. Sensing their mock-fight might go on until every one of her fuzzy grey limbs were removed, Julip reeled back in feigned agony and shook off the remaining socks with a theatrically pained reaction to each one’s loss. Her hasty defeat was satisfaction enough for Beans who gave her wings a victorious pump, momentarily lifting her from the chair while Julip collapsed to the boards.
As she let out a guttural death rattle, the Enclave pony finally noticed the three mares smirking at her from the curtain. She flushed, got to her hooves and quickly began picking up the socks strewn around her. “Are you finally done in there?”
Aurora pushed through the curtain with a nod, casually pretending not to have seen what she’d seen. There was nothing she could do for Meridian’s pump without dragging it all the way back home. She eyed the floorboards as she slowly crossed the room, looking for a clue to where the cable hidden beneath them led.
“The pump won’t run without a new impeller, and they don’t have the tools to fix it here.” She frowned at the spot where the floorboards ended and the rocks just inside the netting began. Nothing there. They must have buried the cable to keep it out of sight. Smart. “Briar knows a place where he can find a replacement, so there’s that.”
A glance at her Pip-Buck showed her that their brief detour hadn’t been as brief as she’d hoped. Well over half the day was behind them now, leaving them with four or five hours of good daylight before they needed to choose their next camp.
She absently tapped the ridge of her hoof against the floorboards while Roach helped Beans finish putting away her costumes. A smile crept along her lip as she realized none of them were listening to her. Even Meridian had stopped to watch the post-production cleanup. Julip, keenly aware of the eyes on her, avoided all of them as she tossed her woolen tentacles into the costume trunk. Roach had to give the broomstick wedged through his foreleg a firm twist with his teeth before it came loose, much to Beans’ entertainment.
When the lid of the trunk thumped shut beneath her little wings, Beans gave her mother an expectant grin. Meridian pressed the flat of her hoof against her daughter’s head and did the earth pony equivalent of tousling her mane. The silence that settled in the room made Aurora hesitate to break it. Maybe the wasteland was making her cynical, but something about the simple normalcy of this family made it seem cruel that they had been forced to live in hiding.
Noticing her hesitance, Meridian spoke for her. “Well, let me top off your canteens before we start heading back down. There’s a section of track you’ll want to avoid a ways down just to be safe…”
Beans balked at her mother before turning to Roach. “You’re leaving?”
Unsurprisingly, he seemed prepared for this. He folded his front legs, chitin scratching against the floor as he got down to her level. “We have to. Aurora’s home is in trouble and her family is counting on us to fix it. It wouldn’t be fair to them if we stayed here having fun forever.”
For the first time, Beans scrunched her nose up at Roach and avoided his eyes. “I didn’t say forever. Just until dad got home. Tonight’s gonna be soup night.”
Confused, Roach looked up to Meridian for help.
“Briar’s been teaching her how to cook for herself. We do soups when one of us goes down the mountain to trade.” She sat down beside Beans and nudged her shoulder with the back of her hoof. “Maybe they can visit on their way back from where they’re going. How’s that sound?”
Beans grumped at the floor, unmoved. “Maybe just means no.”
For a filly her age, she knew how to work a crowd. Aurora spotted the glance Beans flicked in her direction before doing the same to Ginger and Julip. A little smirk crossed Aurora’s muzzle as she remembered being that age and doing the same thing, convinced with her own performance just as much as Beans was with hers. 
She stole a look back at the grey netting and the imperceptibly dimmer sky behind the thick weave. “How long until Briar gets back?”
The question was directed at Meridian, but Beans answered first. “Mister Scale’s camp is three hours on hoof and twenty minutes by wing. Dad doesn’t fly if he sees Enclave so he’ll walk home.”
Aurora’s eyebrows rose together, impressed at how precisely the little pirate queen had recited the figures from memory. She looked to Meridian who shrugged, but not without a little pride in her eyes.
“Briar should be back in a half hour,” she confirmed.
Thirty minutes was a small price to pay, especially considering the prospect of a hot meal to go with it. Considering the only food the four of them possessed was currently gathering dust at their last campsite thanks to the centaurs, delaying their departure in exchange for a full belly wasn’t the worst trade she could make.
“Alright,” she said, eyeing the workshop behind the curtain. “As long as your mom’s okay with it, we can stick around for a couple more hours.”
Beans gasped and looked up to her mother, hooves dancing excitedly against the floor.
Meridian was quiet for several seconds before slowly nodding, a gesture that drew a barely contained squeal from her daughter. She stood and plodded past the still-glowing stove to one of the cabinets leaned up against the rough stone wall. Lipping open a drawer, she retrieved a stack of browned paper that was neatly sewn together along the top margin by a length of silver wire. A nib of an old pencil lay sandwiched between the papers.
Turning back, she brought the pad of paper to Aurora and dropped it in her open wing.
“Write us a list of tools and equipment you think we need to keep what we have here working and we’ll call that payment for dinner.”
Aurora tugged the pencil free and touched the tip to the top of the first page. 
“Sounds like a deal.”







August 2nd, 1076

“You’re actually serious.”
“I wouldn’t be standing here if I weren’t.”
Celestia loomed before them as she often did, comfortably seated in the cushion of her sungold throne atop an ivory dais. Luna’s chair was empty, but not conspicuously so. If she cut her sleep short to attend every important meeting that cropped up during the day, she would never sleep at all. 
Besides that, Twilight knew this idea of hers would float better if she only had one princess to contend with.
Her ear twitched at the soft thmp-thmp-thmp-thmp coming from the nervous bouncing of Fluttershy’s hind leg. When Twilight proposed the idea to her, Fluttershy had enthusiastically jumped on board, so much so that Twilight worried she might go forward with it with or without Celestia’s approval. There had been a desperate glint behind those baby blue eyes that she couldn’t remember ever seeing before. A hunger, as if by doing this Fluttershy would finally prove something to herself.
Now, standing before the Princess of the Sun, that ambitious energy was swamped with anxiousness. Twilight opened her wing, tapping Fluttershy’s nervous leg with her feathers until she noticed and fell still.
Celestia watched the brief exchange with indifference, her focus sharply aimed at the proposition brought before her. “Twilight, when I gave your ministry a blank check to develop the balefire weapon, it came with the expectation that it would be used as just that. A weapon.”
Twilight nodded. Little over two weeks earlier, the six of them had stood on the cracked dirt of the Equestrian south, heads craned skyward as clouds shriveled against the wrath of their terrible creation. Figures from the test were still trickling in and the sheer magnitude of destructive energy unleashed by the prototype balefire talisman measured in numbers she struggled to put into context. There was no question. One way or the other, this bomb would end the war.
Yet as that emerald fireball climbed above her, she couldn’t help but remember what Spike had said to her between the shelves of his library.
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to.”
When she walked into Fluttershy’s office at the heart of the Ministry of Peace, she wondered if it was already too late. The balefire bomb had been built, detonated and thoroughly documented. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no such thing as an airtight ship. Word would spread. Whispers would reach Vhanna and the zebras would know technology like this could exist. It wasn’t a matter of if they found out, but when. The question now was how Equestria intended to tell them.
“I’m not suggesting we discard the balefire bomb as a potential weapon.” She held her breath as Celestia lifted a questioning brow. When the interruption Twilight was expecting didn’t come, she soldiered on. “What I’m proposing is that we show Vhanna footage from the test as a peaceful demonstration of what we’re capable of. Fluttershy still has her contact in Adenia…”
“Ambassador Abyssian,” Celestia noted, evidently deciding on the interruption after all. “I’ve heard rumors that he pulls more strings within the Vhannan monarchy than he lets on.”
Twilight blinked, turning to Fluttershy. The yellow pegasus was just as confused as she was. If Celestia had a point or if she was just being cryptic for her own enjoyment, they would probably never know. Twilight tried to ignore it.
“He and Ambassador Zecora have maintained something of a professional friendship since their first meeting last year, however a regular complaint that comes up during her trips is that Abyssian is still awaiting an invitation to visit Equestria.”
Fluttershy piped up beside her. “He thinks we don’t trust him.”
Celestia’s eyes slid toward her. “That is because we don’t. I hope you aren’t about to suggest we bring him to our homeland for the sole purpose of showing him the most heavily classified weapon in our arsenal.”
Twilight took a step forward and gently cut in front of Fluttershy before she could blunder into Celestia’s trap. “We wouldn’t be showing him the balefire talismans or acknowledging the origin of the weapon’s technology. He would be brought in under preapproved restrictions and shown the test footage once Rarity’s censors have had adequate time to redact any sensitive information. Every step of his visit would be tightly controlled.”
The sound of water babbling down the pools on either side of the dais’s carpeted ramp slowly dominated the vast throne room while Celestia stared down at her in quiet consideration. It was obvious that at least on principle she was against this visit, but Twilight had a suspicion that the prospect of bringing a prominent Vhannan official to Equestria wasn’t as bitter a pill as the princess pretended it to be. Not if the intention was to rub his nose in her success.
“I’ve seen the footage from the test the six of you attended,” Celestia said, her tone taking on a subtle, softer shift. “My advisors tell me the fireball was over ten miles tall. I would have guessed much less judging by what I saw on the screen. Why would Abyssian think any different? No one in Vhanna would blame him to assume you’re lying.”
“We’ll take him to see the crater.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could reconsider them. It was too late now. Celestia’s expression was already darkening at the suggestion but Twilight pushed forward, refining the plan as she spoke. “We could take the chariot and have the Wonderbolts take us through a few fly-overs so he can get a true sense of scale. Zecora could come with and give him numbers on the blast wave, thermal radius and maybe mention a few prospective Vhannan targets during the trip.”
Fluttershy winced but didn’t voice her objection.
Celestia was less moved. “And you’re confident this show-and-tell of yours will be enough of a deterrent for Abyssian to convince Vhanna to surrender?”
“What do we stand to lose from trying?” She approached the bottom of the ramp and set her hoof on its gentle slope. One of Celestia’s slender eyebrows lifted at the gesture. “If it works and Abyssian can persuade the zebras that surrendering voluntarily is preferable to what we would do to them if they don’t, Equestria wins. Vhanna would have to let us take back control of the oilfields and we will have bought the time we need to invest in sustainable energy.”
Even though Twilight couldn’t see it from where she stood, she could tell Celestia’s hackles were rising at that last suggestion. For years she had sought ways to stamp out Jet Stream Industries’ insatiable pursuit of solar power and every time she thought she’d put the issue to bed, a new shell corporation or branch of research tied to that stallion’s name cropped up like an unkillable weed. A thousand years ago she would have burned him to ash and have been done with it, but these days the world was more complicated. There were rules of society that her subjects looked to her to embody, and Jet Stream wouldn’t be the last pony to use them to get his way.
Twilight knew better than to admit she had a deep respect for his tenacious pursuit of knowledge, or to endorse his solar initiative in Celestia’s throne room. Contracting his company to share its understanding of rocketry with the ministries was as close to an umbrella as she could provide him, but it was a strong one. Equestria needed a reliable delivery system if they intended to use this bomb, but the fact that Celestia still allowed her to speak suggested she might be making progress in a different direction.
“The Ministry of Technology has made some refinements to the original M.A.S.T. project to make their ignition talismans less… volatile.” She tried not to think too much about who had caused that first talisman to run wild. “I don’t think it’s too far-off to suggest we could be powering our current infrastructure with talisman-generated electricity within the next half decade.”
Celestia grunted. “That sounds optimistic.”
“This whole endeavor is optimistic,” she countered, careful to keep her tone as agreeable as she could manage. “If Vhanna surrenders now, Equestria could enter a new age of prosperity. If they don’t, well, we can always reserve the right to provide them with a live demonstration.”
“But you don’t want that to happen.”
“I…” 
She hesitated, catching the light accusation in the princess’s tone. Any ordinary pony would be risking accusations of treason for suggesting the zebras be given a chance to decide their fate, but Twilight wasn’t an ordinary pony. She left that life behind when she accepted her wings and burned a significant bridge with Celestia when she declined the responsibilities that came with them. What little favor she held with Celestia was being spent on, of all things, a plea for mercy for the zebras she’d spent the last five years helping to kill.
“I’m trying to think of the long term ramifications, is all.” She tried not to smile at how strange it felt to be acknowledging her extended lifespan in front of Fluttershy. “The playing field won’t be the same a thousand years from now and Vhanna’s ancestors might one day find themselves in a position to do to us what we choose to do to them. If we give them a chance to surrender now, they might extend us the same courtesy then.”
Celestia narrowed her eyes at her. For a breath it looked as if she might ignite her horn and dispense immediate punishment, but then her expression softened. With a sigh she turned her gaze to the stained glass murals framed by the white pillars of a palace she’d spent a millennium ruling from alone.
“Don’t ever let the press hear you say something like that,” she murmured.
Twilight pressed her lips together and waited.
“You would have made a good princess. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that before, but it’s true.” She seemed to sag in her throne, not a minor feat considering the way she sat. “This war has made some of your rough edges even rougher, but I can’t say I’m not glad to see a little bit of the old Twilight beneath it all. This balefire weapon is your baby. If you think Vhanna deserves a chance at a peaceful surrender, I won’t stand in your way on one condition.”
Her chest swelled. “Name it.”
“Vhanna will have one month from Abyssian’s return home to issue their surrender. If they fail to do so by the deadline, we will attack targets within sight of Adenia until their citizens hang their king’s corpse from the palace walls. Do you think he’ll understand?”
Twilight licked her suddenly dry lips and nodded, trying to focus on anything but the rush of cold that washed her heart. Reality never hit softly, and this time it felt like a sledgehammer. She turned to Fluttershy. She knew Abyssian more than any of them. 
“It’s your call,” she said.
Fluttershy swallowed, her voice barely a whisper. 
“Yes. I think he will.”







    “You’re joking.”
“It’s true.”
“Seriously?”
“Pinkie promise.”
Aurora accepted a bowl of steaming broth from Meridian and the others watched with amusement as Ginger peppered Briar with question after question. His arrival had been as unassuming as he appeared; a cream coat mottled with flecks of caramel over his shoulders, all wrapped tightly in dull brown road leathers that looked like they’d been picked off some dead and forgotten wanderer. With the exception of the shock of orange that ran through his otherwise mud colored mane... he looked completely forgettable.
Given how much care he’d taken to hide his wings beneath his attire, she guessed that was exactly the look he was going for.
When Briar nudged through the netting, he regarded Ginger, Roach, Julip and Aurora one by one as if he were assessing potential threats. At the time, Beans had been showing the four of them recipes she had marked from one of her purportedly favorite cookbooks. The book’s binder rings had long since rusted away and had been carefully replaced by a trio of plastic zip ties. Its cover, however, had been remarkably well preserved for its age. 
A single water stain marred the top of the bubblegum pink cover, reaching just far enough to discolor the back of Pinkie Pie’s mane. The Minister of Morale stood frozen in mid-laughter behind a gigantic bowl of cookie dough and a batter-clogged eggbeater inexplicably held in the curl of her mane. The title of the book, Fun Confections and Foal-Friendly Foods, wrapped around the mixing bowl with the word “fun” spelled out in the batter with chocolate chips.
Briar’s arrival put an end to the cavalcade of desserts Beans hoped to someday make. The book snapped shut like a gunshot and just as quickly Beans was hurtling across the cave to launch herself into her father’s legs. Meridian, who had been rummaging through old bottles of spices in their salvaged cabinets, smiled at the helpless stallion as he endured the assault. Once his daughter had burned through the worst of her excitement, he gave her his saddlebags and sent her back to the cabinets to unpack the meat and vegetables he’d traded for.
He went down the line of introductions and admitted that thanks to their radio he had the advantage of knowing more about them than they did him. Julip was mercifully quiet during the first round of small-talk, doing nothing to expose herself for who she was but staying nearby so as not to seem like the odd mare out. As Meridian helped Beans prepare dinner, the five of them gathered near the netting where a pleasant breeze wrapped around the entrance. The short step from the plank flooring to the rough-cut stone beneath provided a makeshift bench behind the netting. Aurora didn’t hesitate to sit and Ginger plunked herself down beside her. Roach, per usual, lay on the cool stone beside the netting. Julip hovered nearby, occasionally peeking her head outside to monitor the sky. Briar took notice from his place on the far end of the planks, seeming to approve. 
As the scent of sizzling meat and something close to onions wafted out into the afternoon air, he asked why they were travelling so far. It was a question Meridian had already posed to them during their walk from the passenger train and undoubtedly passed on to Briar, but Aurora found she didn’t mind the polite cross-examination. They were, after all, intruders into the pocket of safety he and Meridian had literally carved out for themselves. 
When Aurora explained that they were headed to Fillydelphia, he asked what for. Painfully aware of Julip’s sudden interest in the conversation, she only admitted that there was a crisis at Stable 10 and that she had left to find a fix somewhere in Stable-Tec HQ. Briar didn’t try to hide that he’d noticed the casual omission of exactly what the crisis was or how she expected to fix it, but he didn’t ply her for more information either. 
Thankfully, neither did Julip. It wouldn’t do well for her supposed fellow Stable resident to start asking what they were doing out here.
Seeing that his line of questioning had taken them into territory he must have assumed was sensitive, he turned the topic around and informed them that he and his family had not only been to Fillydelphia but that they’d called it home up until seven years ago when they moved into the mountains. 
Meridian never took her eyes off Beans as she asked Briar to tell them what they used to do while they lived there. She spoke with a half-chuckle as if she were asking him to reveal a harmless but embarrassing family secret. Briar took a deep breath and smirked at Aurora.
“Meridian and I used to be raiders.”
Aurora’s attention turned to Roach, whose eyes had widened but who also didn’t seem ready to leap to his hooves for a fight. Julip didn’t seem impressed at all, her gaze still focused on the clouds she could see from where she’d parked herself next to Roach. 
But Ginger’s reaction surprised her the most. She looked intrigued, as if she’d just uncovered a rare and unique breed of spell. While Ginger dove into her inquisition, Meridian tapped Aurora on the shoulder to draw her attention to the wooden bowl held carefully between her teeth by the very edge of its rim. Aurora mouthed a thank you as she accepted it, not wanting to miss a word.
“Pinkie promise,” Ginger repeated as she took a bowl from Meridian. “At the risk of sounding crass, you two don’t strike me as the raider type.”
“Thanks hon,” Briar murmured, shrugging his wings out from under his leathers to take the next bowl. “We weren’t your typical raiders.”
Aurora brought the bowl to her lips and took a tentative sip as she listened. The soup had the color of muddy water, making it a challenge to identify the various lumps bobbing on its surface, but the rich, earthy flavor that filled her mouth and filled her nose roused a sound of pleasure from her throat that briefly stifled the conversation. It was like the soup she’d tasted at the Brass Bit back at her Stable but on an order of magnitude more flavorful.
Briar blew over the surface of his dinner before taking a sip of broth, sparing a smile for Meridian as she distributed the rest of the bowls. Soon, Beans had plopped herself down beside her father with a dish of her own. Aurora didn’t notice as she happily tipped her bowl back again, this time fishing for the chunks that flavored the dish. A knob of chopped carrot crunched between her teeth followed by a tender piece of meat that tasted vaguely familiar. She arched a questioning brow at Meridian which, by some miracle, she understood the meaning of.
“Vegetable beef soup,” she said as she sat down on the planks between Aurora and her husband. “It’s supposed to be a stew, but that takes too much firewood to make.”
Aurora bit through a chunk of fresh potato, too in love with the meal to care that it hadn’t had quite enough time to soften in the pot. It was like eating straight out of the gardens back home, something she hadn’t done since her father had caught her when she was little and given her the scolding of her young life. Eating raw from the gardens was tantamount to stealing from the entire Stable. It was part of why she’d drained her savings buying apples before she left rather than going to where she knew they grew. There wasn’t much point in saving Stable 10 if she’d spend the rest of her days scrubbing debris screens in Sanitation.
“Eh’s so guhd,” she groaned around a second mouthful.
Meridian chuckled and tested the broth herself. “It’s just soup, hon, but I’m glad you like it.”
“It’s certainly wonderful,” Ginger agreed, “but back to the issue of the two of you being raiders?”
Briar held up his free wing and made a see-saw motion with his feathers. “Former raiders, and not exactly the type you’re thinking of.”
Ginger’s bowl floated in front of her as she picked neat little liquid spheres out of it. Aurora watched with strange fascination as the little nuggets disappeared into her mouth and became acutely aware that the rest of them lacked anything that could be used as a utensil. She glowered at her soup and wondered if the apocalypse had taken all the spoons with it.
“I wasn’t aware there were different kinds of raider,” Ginger said without a hint of judgment in her voice. As kindly as this family had been, she wasn’t about to test their hospitality by making accusations. “What kind were you?”
Briar smirked into his soup and pulled a loose strand of mane away from Beans’ nose as she ate. “The kind that protects their own and tries to stay out of trouble.”
Aurora watched Beans bury her muzzle into the bowl, loudly slurping up her dinner while her father tried to keep it out of her hair. She wondered if he was directing that toward them.
“So not the leather straps and rebar spikes kind of raider,” Ginger offered.
Meridian snorted. “I mean…”
“Tiny ears.” Briar gave her a look that let her know he’d caught the entendre, then shook his head with a quiet laugh. “No, we never did spikes or body paint. Scale’s Scavs is more of a… how did he put it?”
“‘A well-defended family,’” she quoted with a low, stallionlike voice. Briar chuckled at the inside joke. “The Scavs don’t gallop around attacking anything that moves. That’s never been how Scale operates.”
“Scale?” Roach prompted.
“Head of the table,” Briar said, pausing to tip some soup into his mouth and chew. “Not a fan of being called the leader, or boss, or anything like that. Thinks it’ll give him a fat head. Probably would. Him, my father and a couple other families got together when they saw the only other way for them to be safe was to join up with Rangers or sign a contract with Flim & Flam Mercantile.”
“The latter of which you,” Meridian said, tipping her nose to Aurora, “already know about.”
Aurora nodded, still unsure what the general opinion in the wasteland was in regards to her and Ginger essentially decapitating the monopoly Autumn and Cider used to enjoy.
“Can’t complain now that all the new start-ups are trying to outprice each other. We normally can’t afford good beef.” Briar lifted his bowl slightly in a mock-toast. “Either way, Scale and the rest weren’t keen on living under anyone’s hoof, so they created the Scavs. Started in a camp in the mountains not far from here before they attracted a few other families and decided to move into an abandoned stretch of the Filly suburbs. The only way to keep the big hitters in the area from rolling over us was to advertise ourselves as raiders. Most ponies aren’t too excited about the idea of messing with a nest of trigger happy hornet seven on the best of days, and the suburbs are a rat’s nest of prewar sewer lines and abandoned settlements. Most ponies leave us alone.”
Ginger quirked her lip. “Most?”
“Eh.” Briar looked like he’d eaten something bitter. “Thing about calling yourselves raiders is that some folks get the idea that you’re going to come and, well, raid them. We never did stuff like that as a matter of principle. It’s not why the Scavs grouped up. Every year or so, though, some group of travelers or the odd vigilante thrillseekers would try something stupid. Attack one of our camps, kill a few ponies... never enough to uproot us.”
“Did you ever try to tell them you didn’t want to fight?”
Briar looked at Aurora and shrugged. “It doesn’t work like that out there. If you call yourself a raider, ponies are going to treat you like a raider. Kind of the one flaw in Scale’s plan, but it’s the price of freedom. Sometimes we can scare attackers away but more often than not they’re too chemmed up to see reason. Doesn’t hurt our image to have a few extra graves outside the wall, but it’s still something we have to carry with us.”
Aurora frowned, her thoughts turning back to Gallow and the knowledge that things between them had panned out the only way they could have. Much like the road they met on, there was only one path to take. The second Gallow spotted them from the trees, one of them was going to have to kill the other.
“I know that feeling.”
Briar pinched his lips together, nodding understanding. 
Beside him, Beans spoke. “Sometimes we have to do bad things. But that doesn’t mean we’re bad ponies.”
Aurora looked at Beans and opened her mouth to say something, but realized there wasn’t anything to add. For a filly her age she had a startlingly good grasp on things Aurora was only just beginning to learn for herself.
“And she,” Briar said, jostling the top of his daughter’s head with the cup of his feathers to her giggling protest, “is why we moved up here, away from all that.”
“Wouldn’t it be…” Aurora stopped as quickly as she began, her eyes falling to Beans and the adoring smile she had for her father. Wouldn’t it be better for her to live in a community?
Meridian set her bowl down on the planks, seeming to read her mind. 
“It isn’t safe for her to be down there when there are so many eyes up there.” She tipped a hoof toward the stone roof, and by extension the sky above. “They target dustwing foals because they can use them to flush out their parents. Two birds with one stone. When we found out I was pregnant with Beans, the rest of the Scavs promised that they would die to protect her and… I believe them. Briar’s always good about wrapping his wings but foals forget things. If the Enclave ever found out we were harboring dustwings, they wouldn’t hesitate to burn everything we’ve built to the ground just to find them.”
Roach gently cleared his throat, his eyes on his soup. “Tiny ears?”
Aurora looked to Beans who was looking up at her mother with reluctant understanding.
“There are some things she deserves to know.” Meridian regarded Roach with the sadness of one parent recognizing another. “We try not to dwell on it, though. We have each other.”
A deep silence settled among them as they each finished their meal. The mood had changed. Even the broth tasted a little less savory than it once had. As empty bowls settled into laps or clicked against the floorboards, Meridian stood and gathered them up to be set in a leaning stack atop the cabinet sitting beside the stove. From the same cabinet she produced an enamel bucket and carried it into the workshop where she could be heard filling it with clean water for washing.
“Beans, why don’t you help your mother clean up?”
She looked up at her father as if to be sure she was the Beans he was speaking to, then hopped to her hooves and trotted into the workshop after her mother with a subdued, “Dad says I gotta help.”
Briar smiled after Beans. Soon, the low gurgle of water could be heard splashing into the bucket. He looked to Roach and said, “I hear she likes you.”
Roach grunted his agreement.
“She spends a lot of time in her own world these days. Sometimes it’s hard to get her out of her shell, if you’d believe it.” He sighed, then regarded Aurora unexpectedly. “You’re probably her second favorite for how much you enjoyed her cooking. What did Merry end up prying out of you for the meal, if you don’t mind telling?”
She’d nearly forgotten the notepad that now sat on the chair Beans had stood atop of when she directed her mock performance. Leaning behind Ginger, she plucked the pad up by the tips of her longest grey feathers and held it out for him to take.
Briar took the pad and read down the long list of tools and supplies she’d filled the first few pages with. Slowly, he smiled with understanding. “Good to know,” he said, tapping the list against his thigh. “We weren’t sure where to start with the pump.”
Aurora chewed her lip and looked back over her shoulder through the open workshop curtain where she could just make out its disassembled casing. She considered keeping the question brewing in the back of her head to herself. This family had opened their home to them at great risk to their personal safety based on a few fleeting stories they heard about her and Ginger during Fiona’s broadcasts. They were here trying to survive. Their home wasn’t some puzzle for her to solve.
And yet.
It tumbled out of her like a long-held breath. “Can I ask you about that setup of yours? It’s been bothering me since I got here.”
Briar set the notepad down and shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“Where are you drawing power from?”
She didn’t mean for her question to land like a brick, but there it was. Judging by Ginger and Roach’s reactions, knowing how Briar’s family was keeping a single water pump churning had been the furthest things from their minds. They looked at her with equal amounts of confusion and curiosity as if they were just now being made aware of something important.
From her post at the edge of the curtain, Julip watched Briar with no visible reaction. Immediately, Aurora wished she’d thought of a way to get her out of earshot before she asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
Aurora realized Briar’s expression had become a mask of calm. She had tread onto sensitive ground and very possibly had gone a step too far. Embarrassed, the only answer she could give was an honest one.
“Curiosity, mostly?” She gestured through the netting where she could just make out the longer shadows of early evening stretching over the bare mountains beyond. “It’s just that you live all the way up here and there’s nothing I can see for you to pull electricity from. Or clean water, for that matter. You’re not even running a purifier that I can tell.”
“The world’s full of mysteries,” Briar agreed, following her gaze outside. A moment passed, and then another.
As the silence stretched, something she’d heard him say earlier surfaced in her memory. “Is it the boiler?”
He smiled and looked down, unconsciously hovering his chin over the subtle bulge of a switch beneath the collar of his leathers. The twin to the radio Meridian had used to keep in communication with him. “You heard that, did you?”
Aurora nodded once, dislodging a strand of blonde mane that swung into her lip. She tucked it back behind her ear, idly noticing that the gentle waves Ginger had worked into her hair were going limp and were caked in road dust.
“It stood out,” she admitted. “I can think of easier ways to generate power out here besides using a boiler.”
Briar laughed and picked the notepad up again, his eyes scanning the list a second time. “It’s a place, not a thing. I just call it the Boiler because it’s easier than saying The Uninhabitable Furnace At The Bottom Of The Valley every time it comes up.”
The four of them exchanged confused expressions.
“It’s a prewar hole in the ground,” he clarified. “Merry found it back when we were still doing supply runs with the Scavs. Thought it might be a Stable at first but it didn’t have a cog at the entrance, so our best bet is that it’s one of those missile command bunkers the old government was in such a hurry to build during the last year of the war.”
Aurora squinted through the gaps in the netting. “All the way out here?”
“Straight down in the valley.” He stood, as if the decision was already made. “Here, I’ll show you.”
Walking through them, he pulled aside the camouflage and gave the clouds a cursory scan before stepping out. The four of them followed him into the waning afternoon light and onto the rusted tracks. The loose ballast stones still bore the shallow ring-shaped depression where Ginger’s dome had cut through them. Briar kicked a few stones into the groove as he passed over it on his way toward the rough cliffside on the opposite end of the rails.
They joined him there and watched as he lowered a feather toward the valley floor. “Right there. Let me know when you see it.”
The four of them squinted in the direction he indicated, but Aurora wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Living in a Stable where every wall turned at a neat ninety degrees and every floor was perfectly level, she wasn’t exactly equipped to recognize which parts of a geologic feature didn’t belong. The valley did bear a few notable features. Greenish stands of grass and shrubbery clustered at the lowest points where, presumably, there was water available. Stumps of desiccated trees dotted the surrounding soil like stubble, a feature that coincided with what Roach hinted at a denser distribution of balefire bombs near the coastal cities. The sight of so many dead trees reminded her of the historical footage of the first bombs to be tested, and how one test had featured an artificial forest of old pines. Every year on the last day of October, the same memorial documentary was distributed across the Stable. It was a stark reminder of why they lived in hiding, and a reassurance that they were a crucial link on the chain to a generation who would one day rebuild Equestria.
Roach was the first to see the Boiler and guided the rest of them to where it stood. Sure enough, a few hundred feet uphill beyond the vein of struggling greenery was a forgettable looking lump in the dirt. From where they stood it resembled a pimple in the otherwise uniform soil.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s it.” Briar’s eyes flicked to the sky again, something Aurora realized was a learned habit. “It took weeks to strip out enough cable to reach up here. Even longer to find enough hose for the pump.”
Ginger glanced back to the cave. “And that?”
Briar followed her gaze. “The Scavs gave us a hoof with that. Benefit of calling yourself raiders, you inevitably pull in a few ponies with a penchant for explosives.”
“But how did you get the power back on down there?” Aurora frowned at the tiny mound in the distance. “What kind of generator does it use?”
The face Briar made told her the answer to that wasn’t nearly as simple as she thought it was. “That’s the thing. Far as Merry and I can tell, the Boiler’s generator isn’t running at all. The entire place is dark. Nothing works.”
Aurora quirked her lip at him. There was no way they were drawing power from nothing.
“But,” he continued, twirling a feather as he searched for words, “part of the fourth floor is lit up like a Hearth's Warming tree. I spent more time than I care to admit trying to track down where it was coming from, but all the lines on the floors above and below are dead. The energized lines on the fourth floor all eventually disappear into the outer wall, and with how hot it is down there I wasn’t willing to pick away at concrete just to electrocute myself.”
She frowned. “So you just spliced into an unknown power supply and called it a day.”
Briar shrugged. “I’ll leave the great mysteries of Old Equestria to the archivists to figure out. I just care about making sure my daughter can fill a glass of water at night.”
There was no heat in his voice but she could still sense the edge of a warning. He wasn’t out here to impress anyone, nor was he going to tolerate criticism. Aurora puffed out a breath and nodded. “That’s fair.”
He waved her off. “Ah, don’t mind me. Merry says I get defensive too easily.” Smirking at the ground, he nudged Aurora to the side and began scraping his hoof into the loose soil at the edge of the cliff. It crumbled away under the gentle assault until a thick, black cable began to appear. “You try burying a quarter mile of this stuff up the side of a cliff and tell me you wouldn’t get a little sour.”
Aurora pursed her lips to whistle, but stopped.
“That's a 6-gauge main line,” she said.
Briar hummed agreement. “Pretty standard stuff. It’s a lot heavier than it looks.”
“No, it’s not. 10 and 12-gauge are standard,” she said, crouching down to look at it. “I work with this stuff back home. We were forced to waste material fabricating this junk because we had so much equipment running the Stable at all times. If we used standard cable the whole place would have burned down on day one.”
“Oh,” he said.
Using her hooves, she scraped away the dirt to expose more of the cable until she found what she was looking for. A scuffed white serial stamped into the black insulation.


1172114225-S001


    Briar squinted down at the numbers as Aurora traced her hoof across them. Then he looked at her and saw the expression on her face. “I’m guessing those numbers mean something?”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Yeah, they do.”
She could feel her heart picking up again. That hard and steady drumbeat that marched along with her through the slaver camp, hunted Gallow down on the empty road, tortured her as she retreated from Autumn’s solar array and spurred her forward as she lured an abomination of nature back through its fences. The same heavy thud against her ribs that kept her alive long enough to lie her way into Blinder’s Bluff, challenged her to take the life of a genuine raider - her first time killing another pony - in order to keep Ginger and Roach safe, and which ignited in her the first flicker of a primal drive to fend off and put down Cider’s salacious midnight ambush.
It pounded in her throat as she understood the significance of what she was holding.
The tip of her hoof settled over the last four digits of the serial. S001.
She knew this format. She had seen it in Blinder’s Bluff during her interrogation with Ironshod. It was the same cable she had spent years of her life taking apart wall panels to find, follow, disconnect and replace. She knew this cable because it was her job to know. It was the same cable that spooled out of her generator and back in Stable 10 like great black arteries.
Setting the cable back into its trench, she pressed a feather into her Pip-Buck and opened up her mail. A recent message from Coldbrook burned at the top of her inbox but she barely noticed it, reading instead the header that appeared to her a thousand times before and never once drew her eye. Even out here, as her Pip-Buck connected to the same unexplained network that Millie seemed to be able to jump back and forth across, she hardly paid it any attention.


Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Proxy Connection :: Stable 1


She turned her eyes toward the tiny blister in the valley. Briar’s first instinct had been correct. Cog or no cog, it was a Stable. The first Stable. An abandoned bastion of safety just like her own and somehow still generating power. An entire Stable. A working ignition talisman, and it was being used to run a single water pump.
Just three ponies who she barely knew.
In exchange for hundreds.
Her throat went dry.
> Chapter 25: Stable 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We've gotta go down there.”
She didn’t have to look up from the cable in her feathers to know five sets of eyes were regarding her with expressions ranging from confusion to grim understanding.
This was it, she realized. This was the end of their journey. The dusty, speckled blister at the bottom of the valley, the dome of Stable 1, was the destination she hadn’t known she’d been working to reach. 
A Stable abandoned by its residents and left inexplicably intact by the Enclave. Why they hadn't stripped out its generator didn’t matter. There was power there. Real, genuine electricity still thrumming through its ancient wires like the nervous system of a pony in a coma that spanned generations. All that untapped potential stemming from the dutiful churn of a talisman buried deep within what Briar unaffectionately dubbed The Boiler.
It was down there. She could feel it.
“I’m not sure you want to do that.” Briar’s gentle chuckle jarred her from her thoughts. “It’s hot enough down there to burn the scales off a dragon.”
He had no idea. The tired smile playing across his lips, his casual concern for how she might respond to heat that he had already braved at least once. He wasn’t thinking about talismans or generators. And why would he? Why would he or Meridian be concerned with an old Stable’s centuries-old organs when all they needed was a decade or two of its blood? They didn’t need to understand the heart in order to tap a vein.
And now she stood above it knowing she had to tear out its beating heart.
She swallowed, staring at the burden held in her wings. “I can handle a little heat.”
While Briar regarded her with polite skepticism, Roach stepped beside her and leaned toward her ear. The look of reticent warning was unmistakable even in his strange, opaque eyes.
“Aurora,” he said, his voice hard. “We should talk about this first.”
It startled her to hear that finely contained emotion directed toward her. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t angry either. Not yet, anyway.
She turned, looking past Briar to where Ginger stood near the ledge they’d gathered at. She wore the same uneasy frown that told Aurora the two of them had done the same calculus and come to the same conclusion. 
Three ponies in exchange for hundreds. It was cruel math. 
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, hating how each word landed like a lump of concrete.
“Sounds like there’s plenty,” Julip murmured.
Anger rose in her chest like magma. “Mind your own business.”
“Hey.” Roach thumped his hoof against her leg just hard enough to make her jump. “Bring it down a notch.”
She shot him a disbelieving glare. “You know what she’s trying to do. All she wants is…”
“The two of you,” Roach growled, steamrolling the end of her sentence before she could finish it, “have been bickering since you both left the Stable. It’s unproductive, so stop it.”
His eyes flicked back to where Julip stood primed to leverage Aurora's admonishment for information. “You too.”
Aurora looked between him and Julip, then to a visibly concerned Briar. At the mouth of the cave, Meridian stood halfway through the netting with similar misgivings. She could tell by the lines forming on her brow that they were burning through the last of their welcome like a lit fuse.
She licked her lips and took a breath to steady her nerves, but they didn’t seem ready to settle. Julip had keyed into her reaction to the buried cable like a missile diving toward a heat signature. The mare wasn’t just here to help her, that much was obvious. Ever since she weaseled her way into their group she’d been listening, undoubtedly gathering information for this Minister Primrose she seemed to fear and revere in equal measure. Now she wasn’t just eavesdropping, she was actively poking at her to see what fell out.
“Aurora.” Ginger appeared beside her, startling her enough to make both of them flinch. Though she tried to smile it off, Aurora couldn’t help but feel trapped between her and Roach. It was like they were trying to squeeze her into submission. “We can’t. Not from this place.”
Ginger’s appeal stung like a betrayal, and Aurora grimaced at the cable laying motionless in its trench. “That Stable is dead. Mine isn’t. Ponies are depending on me to do this.”
“We’ll find another way.” 
There was no reassurance in Ginger’s voice. Merely a statement of fact. Aurora watched her, waiting for her to qualify her decision with something that might give room for compromise.
Ginger stared back at her, those ocean blue eyes now hard as sea ice. There was an unspoken warning behind them as if to say she was fast approaching a line that Ginger would not follow her across. One that would remain between them if Aurora chose to step over it alone.
It was that realization that slapped the fight out of her. She looked at Briar, then turned to where Meridian monitored them from the mouth of their cave. Beans peered out from between her mother’s legs, her wings wet from the bowls she’d left mid wash to see what the adults were arguing over.
Aurora sat down on the stones and breathed a quiet curse. How desperate was she that she’d been willing to entertain the idea of stealing a family’s means of survival? Willing, if only briefly, to ask the mare who encouraged her to fly to be the one to rip the talisman out of its generator? For a fleeting moment Aurora wished for things to be as simple as they’d been when she first knew Stable 10’s salvation lay beyond its walls. Back when she thought a saddlebag full of apples and a seven day walk through a dead wasteland was all that stood between her and her goal.
Staring down at her Pip-Buck, she caught a glimpse of Ginger in the screen’s reflection. A week ago, a setback like this might have moved her to tears. Now she only felt numb. Funny how quick those nerves could be dulled.
On the other side of the trench, Briar cleared his throat. “Call me paranoid, but I get the feeling there’s something the four of you are trying really hard not to say. What are the chances I could convince you to drop the vagueisms and share with the rest of the class?”
Aurora glanced at him, then past him to where Julip lingered along the cliffside. The Enclave mare shrugged indifference as if she could care less what details she chose to share. Aurora wasn’t about to spoon-feed her whatever it was she was hoping to hear.
“We’re looking for an important piece of equipment.” She sucked on the corner of her lip, choosing her words carefully. “It allows the generators that power the Stables to operate, and the one we have at Stable 10 has started to break down. We were hoping to find a replacement at Stable-Tec HQ but…”
“But you think there’s one down there,” Briar finished, opening a wing in the direction of the speckled dome below.
The heat of shame crawled up her neck and warmed her ears as she saw understanding dawn in Briar’s eyes. But rather than lash out or dare her to try, he just nodded thoughtfully at the cable lying between them.
Meridian crossed her front hooves and leaned against the solid rock of the cave entrance. “I’ve heard rumors that some Stables have machines in them that can make anything a pony wants.”
“Fabricators,” Aurora supplied, recognizing the question she was hinting at. “We have some of our own, but with restrictions built in.”
“They don’t want you modifying your generator,” Briar guessed.
It was a better excuse than they don’t want us fabricating our own talismans. She decided to go with it. “More or less. The generator is meant to last the lifetime of the Stable as long as there are ponies around to maintain it. Nobody expected it to start failing.”
“And that’s what you were all arguing about just now. Whether or not you should take this piece you need from the Stable down there and leave me and my family without power to run our pump.”
She hesitated. “Yeah.”
Briar blew out a breath and looked to Meridian. Something unspoken passed between them and a moment later he was nudging scoops of dirt back onto the exposed cable, burying it.
“Well, one thing’s for sure. We’re not going to let you cut off our water.”
“Which we’ve already agreed not to do,” Ginger quickly added.
He nodded his head toward her. “Good. That being said, I don’t understand why any of you are so worked up. I already told you that the Boiler’s completely dark except for one level and Merry and I are pretty sure it’s not drawing power off the old generator.”
Aurora hadn’t forgotten, but Briar was anything but an electrician. If Stable 1 was anything like Stable 10 it would have a hundred miles of cable running through it for every pony it was designed to house. Those wires weren't pulling electricity from thin air. Briar and Meridian were missing something.
She tried her best not to sound like she was trying to resurrect her earlier threat. “But what if you’re wrong?”
“About what? The generator down there still working?”
She nodded.
Briar nudged the last scraps of dirt onto the cable and wiped a few grey stones over the top for good measure. He chuckled, not taking his eyes off the ground as he considered her hypothetical. She could tell by the way he was smiling that he was giving it as much serious thought as if she’d asked him what he would do if he found a million caps.
He looked over to his wife and daughter and shrugged. “Then I guess I’d ask if you had room for three more in that Stable of yours.”
She didn’t need to think about it. “I could make that happen.”
At first Briar chuckled again, his eyes scanning the rough edges of the cave his fake-raider friends helped carve out for them. But the silence stretched and when the punchline he was waiting for didn’t come, his wistful smile faded and he narrowed his eyes at her. 
“Don’t joke about something like that,” he warned. 
When her expression didn’t change, he swallowed. “You’re being serious.”
She nodded again. “Meridian would be the only earth pony in the Stable, and once the door’s closed I don't think Sledge would let it open again. But there are plenty of foals Beans’ age to play with, and it's safe. It would be better than living all alone out here.”
If Briar heard the last bit, he made no indication. His attention was turned to where Beans waited beneath her mother, distracted by the slow rolling clouds above.
“She would never be able to fly down there. Not enough room,” Aurora said.
He swallowed. “It wouldn’t make a difference. She can’t fly out here either.”
She winced at that. Since leaving home a week ago she’d taken to the sky a good half dozen times with two of those flights spanning hours in the air without pause. She hadn’t understood at the time that each ascent risked an encounter with the Enclave. Up until today she’d never thought to look for their formations skirting through the clouds above. Now, presumably with Julip assigned to protect her, a chance run-in with the Enclave was little to no threat compared to what Briar or Beans might face in the same situation.
Broken as it was, it felt like she was cheating a system everyone else had no choice but to follow. The least she could do is give someone else that luxury. 
“Give me a few minutes to talk to Merry.” Briar looked hopefully toward her, drawing an arched brow from her. “Wait here. Please.”
He was on his hooves and hurrying toward the cave before she could answer. He practically dragged Meridian back behind the netting where a whispered explanation ensued.
Aurora stared after them and hoped Sledge wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. From the corner of her eye she noticed Julip sitting down in the space Briar had occupied in front of her. She tried to ignore her, but Julip hadn’t come over for the quiet company.
“You can’t let them in the Stable.”
“It isn’t up to you.”
“It isn’t up to either of us.” Julip shifted uneasily on her haunches. “Meridian’s an earth pony. Even if Briar were a pureblood, their kid isn’t. They’ll contaminate the genepool.”
Beside her, Ginger muttered something unintelligible. Aurora had to work to keep her voice to a whisper. “Contaminate the genepool? Do you even hear yourself when you talk?”
Julip squinted off toward the distant mountains. “It’s true.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care. Ten is my home. We’re not debating this.”
“I'm not trying to--”
Roach stood, cutting her off. “Julip, stop.”
She rounded on him and for a moment it looked like she was preparing to lay into him too. He stared back at her, his expression placid while he waited for her to push the issue. The moment faded and, reluctantly, Julip dismissed both of them with a lazy flap of her wings.
Several minutes passed before the netting parted from the cave wall and Briar held it open for his wife. Clenched between her teeth was Roach’s shotgun, the buckles of its bindings clinking like a wind chime as it dangled from its straps. Aurora instinctively looked to Briar for her rifle but she wrinkled her nose when she realized he wasn’t carrying it. Beneath his wing instead hung a familiar curve of heavy iron, its blade still missing. At the entrance of the cave, Aurora could see Beans’ wide hazel eyes peeking out from behind the netting, watching as her father offered Aurora her pirate sword.
Confused, Aurora held out her wing to take the length of iron. Her feathers slipped neatly through its handle.
“We’re going to take you up on your offer.” 
Aurora frowned at her new weapon. "Uh huh. With conditions, apparently."
Briar blanched a little as Roach accepted his weapon. “In a sense, yes. If we’re going into the Boiler, you’re going to need something you can use in close quarters. A long rifle would only be a liability.”
Aurora stared at the heavy bar in her wing. “This is a stick.”
“Pirate sword!” Beans shouted from the net.
She looked up at Meridian and gestured at the ungainly weapon strapped over her shoulder. “You’re wearing a cannon.”
“I’m staying behind to watch Beans,” she said. “And your rifle. You get it back when I get my husband back.”
Aurora gawked at Meridian but the mare stared back at her as if to say she was willing to listen to what was so unfair about the arrangement. 
Next to her, Roach had already set about securing the straps of his shotgun around his foreleg. For a creature without wings or safe use of his horn, he made short work of fastening his weapon with his mouth. Watching him gave her time to think. She looked at the bar in her wing and frowned.
“Are we expecting a fight?”
Briar held open his other wing and produced a mean looking rust-stained revolver. “The Boiler always puts up a fight.”







“Attention all residents, this is your overstallion. Please be aware that in fifteen minutes the following levels will rotate into their scheduled six-hour power holiday. Residential levels one, three, five…”
Rainbow Dash tuned Sledge out as he droned through the list of unlucky residents set to have their power restricted. Even though she wasn’t listening to the words, she heard the underlying murmur of exhaustion in his voice and couldn’t help but sympathize. It was a long time since she had to shoulder a burden like that, but she still felt the bruises it left behind.
The wooden chair squeaked beneath her as she paused to stretch her legs. Her knees let out a rippling pop that would have made Gilda and her noisy knuckles jealous. The relief that came with the release was always temporary and she would have to stretch again soon, but for now she felt almost normal.
Aurora’s terminal glowed in front of her, its little fans whirring away as it waited for Rainbow to make a choice.
Line after line of green text glowed at her with infinite patience. The files that defined Stable 10’s first decade after the bombs fell shimmered on the screen like a gargantuan haystack, and here she sat trying to find the needle. Opal’s suggestion to start with the files whose names had been changed turned out to be little help. It was like reading another pony’s chicken scratch without having any idea what it was about.
She scanned the rows with half-lidded eyes.
Name, format, size, date modified, access.
Name, format, size, date modified, access.


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If Spitfire had been trying to hide something, her method of misdirection was potently effective. Rainbow didn’t know what her expected lifespan was nowadays, but it didn’t matter. This job she signed up for was going to bore her to death.
On a whim, she tagged a couple files that looked promising and sent them up to Opal’s team for decryption. Promising in this respect boiled down to files that didn’t sound mind-numbing enough to be fatal. She wasn’t expecting to find a listing titled “AllMyDirtySecretsMwahaha.”
A subtle click and sudden dimness in her compartment signaled the beginning of the power holiday. The bank of recessed fluorescents above her had gone completely dark, leaving only the dim yellow glow of an emergency light beside Millie’s speaker to illuminate the space. Were it not for the abrupt glare of the terminal by contrast, she might have enjoyed the change in ambiance.
What felt like hours passed with nothing to do but browse Spitfire’s old files. A glance at the terminal’s clock informed her little over a half-hour had gone by, adding to the slow torture. As she rubbed her eyes, trying to force them to focus, the terminal chimed. She squinted past the ridge of her hoof at the notification that flashedvon the screen. Opal had sent back the files she’d marked for decrypting, and both of them were ready to view. Rainbow didn’t realize she’d be getting these sent back to her once they were done, but then again it only made sense to have Spitfire’s only living acquaintance look them over.
She opened the first attachment and was immediately underwhelmed. An appointment reminder Spitfire had set aside for herself. Annual physical. Rainbow doubted they made speculums in her size. The mental dig gave her a good chuckle as she closed the file and opened the next. Something about the Stable economy. A beige stallion appeared on the terminal with a short stack of papers laid out in front of him. Without preamble he launched into a plodding monotone presentation of the health of the Stable’s internal revenue which Rainbow promptly muted before she could pull out what was left of her mane.
Two more duds to throw onto a growing pile of other duds. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t have to stare at Spitfire’s bitchy smirk in every other file. Unsurprisingly she’d slotted into the role of overmare with just as much confidence and ease as she did Rainbow’s job as ministry mare. Spitfire thrived on leadership. A more forgiving pony might admit she was actually pretty good at it, too.
Every time Opal sent back a cracked file was another glimpse into what Rainbow began to see as Spitfire’s second life. A photo of her giving an award to a resident in her office. A shaky video of her eating lunch in a tiny break room with a group of starstruck pegasi. She had streaks of grey in her mane and the first signs of crow’s feet in that one. Rainbow was so focused on Spitfire’s face that she nearly didn’t notice the charcoal grey stallion grinning beside her.
“Thunderlane,” she whispered.
The thought hadn’t occurred to her that he might sign up for a Stable. He’d always been such a claustrophobe, even after Spitfire hired him into her ministry. But in the video he looked comfortable as a cat. She had an urge to reach back in time and congratulate her former wingmate for finally overcoming his fear, but then she remembered how distant he became toward the end and the temptation evaporated. 
By the time deputy Chaser brought her dinner, Rainbow had already conceded the fact that she likely wouldn’t be as much help as Sledge and Opal hoped. The mare whose compartment she now occupied was ultimately the best bet Stable 10 had. Rainbow was happy to help - anything beat sitting in an empty tunnel waiting for Blue to take over - but as she unwrapped the tinfoil from the baked potato on her tray she felt relegated to the familiar territory of being moral support while other ponies did the heavy lifting.
Unsurprisingly, Chaser didn’t stick around long and Rainbow found herself left alone with her dinner and her work. With a plastic fork held in her only wing, working the keyboard with her hoof became an irritating chore. Still, the food was good and the accompanying packet of butter almost passed for the real thing. By the time another file caught her eye she’d begun tearing off bits of potato skin to nibble on, something she used to give Applejack endless grief for before finally trying it out herself and finding it to be surprisingly edible. 
The file that drew her attention was simply named HappyAnniversary. For the entire time Rainbow knew Spitfire, the mare had never shown any interest in hitching her wagon to anything beside her career. She was the type of mare who bought candy on Hearts and Hooves day not because it was intended for someone but because it was on sale. Curious, Rainbow flagged the file and sent it up to Opal.
A little over an hour later, as Rainbow’s full belly was luring her toward a nap, the terminal chimed.
She queued up the video and this time she found the frame centered tightly on Spitfire’s face. Rainbow reflexively leaned away. She was sitting in what Rainbow assumed was the overmare’s office. Gaudy wood paneling filled the space behind her with the familiar sight of Equestria’s flag hung across it. She had dressed herself in the same black suit and tie she’d worn to the funerals of so many pegasi who were lost during the first weeks of the war. Now, instead of wearing the rank and insignia of the Wonderbolts, the corner of each white collar was adorned with a simple brass “10.”
As Spitfire spoke, it struck Rainbow how weary she sounded. She hadn’t just aged visibly. It was in her voice, too. A slight feathering of her words that belied a subdued calmness that she was never known for. Rainbow did the math in her head. She would have been in her early sixties by then. Nearly old enough to retire. 
“Hello, Stable 10.” She stared straight into a lens that must have been mounted in her terminal. “Ten years ago today, our homes, our families and life as we knew it came under attack. The zebras of Vhanna could not fathom a world in which they were not the victors and, rather than feel the sting of total defeat, they chose to burn it all away. Today is a day to remember those whose lives were taken from us as well as appreciate the ponies whose ingenuity allowed precious few of us to survive.
“Some of you were too young to remember the evacuations and that is why Remembrance Day exists. To remind future generations th…”
She pecked the keyboard and Spitfire lurched into a frenzied series of twitches and jerks. She wasn’t going to suffer through an entire speech. After a few seconds she resumed the playback.
“...darkest nights, but that’s exactly when we pegasi pull togeth…”
Nope. She spun the tape forward.
“...estria lives in each and every one of…”
She rolled her eyes and let the rest of the video play in fast forward. When it reached the end, Spitfire’s face disappeared and was abruptly replaced by a sunset photo of Canterlot Mountain with the capital city frozen in silhouette. Rainbow leaned back in her chair and stared at the shot of Canterlot for a long while. It felt like only days had passed since she woke up in her own bed to the warm scent of cinnamon waffles coming from the hallway. Another habit she’d picked up from Applejack, though not officially as healthy as potato skins.
Two hundred and twenty years. Every time she thought about it, it sounded like a bad joke. And then she remembered glimpses from the tunnel and knew it was real.
She closed the video and stared blankly at the files taken from Spitfire’s partition. An idle feather played on the arrow keys, cycling sideways through the column headers and flipping the sort of each column up and down. It didn’t accomplish anything except alleviate her dread of sending up another nugget of Spitfire’s carefree life within the Stable. Even in death she managed to get one last jab in. Ten years of her cultivating her legacy, all for Rainbow’s entertainment.
Ten years. Rainbow began toggling the date column back and forth, watching the 1077 flip to 1087 and vice versa. October 31st, 1077. The days the bombs fell. October 31st, 1087, the day Spitfire hid… what?
What dirt was so bad that Spitfire had gone through pains to seal away a decade of random data?
“Wait…”
She gave the list a mistrustful frown and bent her head toward the ceiling. “Hey, Millie.”
“How may I assist you, minister?”
“Call Opal.”
“One moment, please.”
As the airy static of a line waiting to be connected filled the compartment, Rainbow lifted her remaining wing and peered through the gaps between the old feathers. She reminded herself of a half-plucked chicken.
The static let out a pop and Opal’s voice came over the speaker. “Didja find somethin’?”
“Might have.” She folded her wing and wrinkled her nose at the ceiling. “Ever wonder why Spitfire encrypted those files in the first place?”
A pause. “Dearie, that’s what we’re all trying to figure out.”
“I know, I know. But why lock them? Why not delete them?”
“Oh, well that’s an easy one.” Opal chuckled. “Y’can’t! Whole point’ve the Stables is to be time capsules, and not just the ponies neither. No point in preserving our history if some fool can go in and delete the bits they don’t like.”
Rainbow frowned at that. “Okay… but then how was Spitfire able to change the names on some of these files?”
Another pause. “I don’t follow.”
“Are the original names saved somewhere?”
“Ah.” In the background, Rainbow could hear the tinkle of a spoon against a mug. She glanced at the time and wondered whether Opal was planning on pulling a coffee-fueled all-nighter or curling up with a cup of cocoa. “I see where you’re going. Small changes, sure, those are allowed. Millie gives residents just enough leeway to fix typos or rename files.”
“Millie does?”
“I figured you’da known that.” Opal sipped at whatever she was drinking and made a satisfied noise. “S’pose you don’t, though, since you're askin'. Not like there’s much to it. Part of Millie’s directive is to preserve data for future generations. That way if, Celestia forbid, a Stable collapses we have a clear understanding of what caused it.”
Rainbow nodded. Maybe Millie wasn’t totally useless. “But she has a threshold for which changes are allowed.”
“You’d be surprised how many ponies misspell their own name.”
“But if I wanted to, I could make small edits over time. A lot of them. Enough to corrupt a file?”
Opal was silent for what felt like minutes. “Given enough time, I suppose you could. Maybe you keep that hypothetical to yourself, though.”
“Will do.” She turned her eyes back down to the terminal. “But that brings us back to my first question. Why did she risk encrypting all these files when she could have just picked them apart a little each day? Why not destroy whatever it was she wanted forgotten? It wasn't like she had a shortage of time to do it in.”
“Hmm.” Another sip, followed by a soft click of ceramic being set onto a table. “I suppose if we were to split hairs, Overmare Spitfire wasn’t the one to seal that partition. Doubt she even knew deleting it wouldn't be allowed. Woulda been her head of I.T. who did it.”
Rainbow hummed. “So Spitfire tells them to destroy ten years’ worth of historical record…”
“...and they slap a padlock on and hide it where one of their successors might trip over it. Which I did.”
“Could’ve been an oversight,” she suggested.
Opal laughed. “Not this mare. In two centuries this Stable hasn’t produced a mind like hers. If she did disobey Spitfire, she did it because she wanted to.”
Rainbow let out an impressed whistle. “Shame I never got to meet her.”
“Well, you did meet her husband.”
She sat up and stared at Millie’s speaker. “Got a name?”
Opal was already clicking away at a keyboard. “Pretty sure I remember… ah, there she is. Delta Vee. Her husband was…”
“Jet Stream.”
“That’s the one. Starchaser turned missile manufacturer, toward the end.”
She nodded at the ceiling. “Twilight’s idea, but yeah. Jet had a reputation for being headstrong. Wouldn't surprise me if his wife was the same way."
A silence lingered between them before Opal finally spoke. “I think you’re onto something, Dash.”
She leaned forward and stared at the terminal. Somewhere in that haystack was the needle she was looking for, and this Delta Vee might just be her metal detector.
“So do I.”







Preparing for their descent into the Boiler wasn't nearly as painless as Ginger expected. Being the defacto guide for the expedition, Briar was in the enviable position of determining what they would be allowed to bring with them and what would be left behind for when they returned. Since most of their belongings had already been abandoned to the centaurs, sorting out what remained of their collective kit was more of an exercise in humility than anything else.
Ginger tried not to take the stallion’s reaction to their two surviving sets of bags personally. Were she in his position and four poorly-equipped ponies fell into her lap looking for help, she probably would have regarded their meager supplies with the same amount of pity.
He held up Julip’s flask with a dubious eye. “Dare I ask?”
“Rebound,” Ginger supplied, ignoring the irritated look Julip shot her. “We had to do some night travelling.”
Briar made a face and returned it to Julip’s bag. Considering he was offering to take them down to a dead Stable while his wife and foal stayed behind, she couldn’t blame him for wanting to verify they weren’t concealing more weapons than the ones Meridian has confiscated.
As the others waited at the mouth of the cave for Briar to finish, Ginger found herself wandering toward the section of track that her shield had nearly to slag. The rails had cooled by now but the blackened rust remained like a fresh tattoo, not unlike the fading stripe she knew was still visible around the base of her horn. On a whim she gathered her magic and formed a melon-sized bubble around an untouched bit of rail. A few layers of rust crumbled under the shield’s gentle grip, but when she dispelled the bubble and set her hoof on the metal it was hardly warm.
Stepping back onto the stones, she couldn’t help but worry about what Roach had suggested back at the slaver camp. That Autumn’s stimpacks might not have “fixed” her magic so much as filled up a sort of reservoir that unicorns had, and that every spell she cast let a little more magic drain out. He had no real proof or even a working hypothesis to explain it, but the possibility of finding herself once again struggling to hold aloft a small crate of scrap leather or draining herself just trying to light a few crystals at night put her in an impossible position of wanting to experiment with her new magic without losing it.
“You’re going to Freckle Hill without me?!”
Beans’ reedy little voice teased a smirk out of her as she turned to pace back up the tracks. The little filly didn’t try to disguise the fact that she wanted to come with and she sulked as Briar explained that leaving the cave this close to nightfall was too dangerous for her. Judging by the tone of his voice, this wasn’t his first time tamping down this particular complaint.
She peered down the valley at the shallow mound they would be heading for. Sure enough, the little white markings along its top did look something like freckles. At this distance she couldn’t quite tell what they were. Protruding stones, most likely. They reminded her of the speckled mushroom caps some of the traders in Junction City sold in the fall.
Lighting her horn again, she picked up a sharp sliver of limestone and wondered what her neighbors back in Junction City might have said when they learned their local Rarity fanatic had dehorned Autumn Song. It would take some time for the freed slaves to spread rumors that far west, but the thought of her neighbors knowing she'd accidentally managed teleportation made her a little giddy. Smiling to herself, she poured a little more magic into her horn and stopped pacing so she could concentrate on the limestone.
It took some effort. A lot of effort. Remembering how the spell felt during a burst of instinctual will wasn’t an easy thing, but the act itself had left an indelible mark on her. It was like knowing how to flex a muscle to trigger a cramp without quite understanding why the cramp happened. All at once her horn flashed and the stone vanished with an audible pop, only to reappear a split second later a few steps ahead of her. It fell out of the air as if gravity only just remembered it was there and pinged noisily off the rail.
“Having fun?” 
Ginger jerked in surprise as Aurora stepped beside her, eyes on the freshly teleported stone. She swatted her tail at Aurora, catching her along the saddlebags. “Not nearly as much as you have sneaking up on me.”
“Wasn’t long ago you were teaching me to keep my guard up. Oh, how the tables have turned.” 
Ginger rolled her eyes but allowed her companion to give her a peck on the cheek all the same. Hopefully she would think of better lines once they were safe within the walls of her Stable. She leaned into Aurora’s shoulder, smiling at the thought. “I take it we’re ready to go?”
“Briar thinks it’s safe enough that we can glide down, but he’s going to carry Roach since Julip thinks her belly's too raw to deal with his chitin.”
She nodded back to where Roach, Julip and Briar were gathering along the cliffside. To Roach’s visible discomfort, Julip had taken the liberty of giving Briar some last-minute tips on how best to hook his legs around the changeling during the flight down. Ginger and Roach’s eyes went wide for different reasons as Julip tapped a wing against the crux of his hip.
“I thought the Enclave hated changelings,” Aurora observed.
“They do, but she has orders to play nice. I suppose it doesn't preclude her from torturing us in other ways.” She turned and started walking toward the others with Aurora following at her side. As they approached, she interrupted whatever Julip thought she was trying to do to Roach with a slightly raised voice. “Shall we head down, then?”
Ginger feathered just enough disapproval into her tone that Julip’s ears dipped back in response. Julip adjusted the old mailbag around her neck and casually wove her way between the two stallions as if she hadn’t noticed, stopping on Roach’s other side and well out of Ginger's line of sight. The urge to punt the smug little mare off the cliff again was immense.
If Briar noticed the tug of tension between them, he didn’t show it. “Ready when you are. Remember, stay low to the ground and head straight for the Boiler. Single file, no detours.”
Ginger and the others nodded understanding and set about the blushworthy yet necessary preparations for departure. While climbing down the steep slope and picking their way across the valley on hoof wasn’t impossible, the Enclave’s recent patrol took the slow and steady option off the table. They would need to be quick and with three sets of wings between them the choice was simple.
That didn’t stop the bolt of electricity from shooting through Ginger's chest as Aurora climbed onto her back and unsteadily hooked one hind leg inside her hip. She cleared her throat gently as she widened her stance a little to keep the two of them from toppling. To her left, Roach stared straight ahead with a pinched expression. Briar at least had the decorum to mount him from the side and avoid any unspoken implications that came with a more ergonomic approach, but his considerations were seemingly lost on the changeling that now bore him on his back.
Before anyone had a chance to say anything they might regret, Briar opened his wings to their full expanse and threw them to the ground. Dragged upward in his grip, Roach’s cracked hooves lifted off the stones and slid into the open air. A silent gasp slipped from Ginger’s lips as Aurora’s legs tightened around her and the two of them hoisted into the air after them on a gust of feathers.
As Briar nosed into a steep dive, Ginger tried to brace herself as she felt Aurora do the same. Her world lurched forward and for a brief moment a part of her was convinced they would all be scattered across the stony cliffs. Adrenaline soaked through every inch of her as boulders the size of carriages blurred beneath her hooves. Her heart pounded so hard that she was afraid Aurora might feel it through her grip. As the wind buffeted their ears, Ginger decided that she would probably never get used to being flown around like this. And still, she thought to herself, there was a thrill to it that she didn’t think she could ever give up. Terrifying or not, she was starting to love this. 
Aurora gripped her harder as she followed Briar out of their dive, following the pitch of the terrain as the craggy mountainside eased into a smoother slope that leveled out over the wider valley floor. Her belly warmed Ginger’s back like a comfortable blanket that soothed her fears enough to let her enjoy the scenery. Down here the mountains towered on all sides like immovable giants, but rather than looming over them with the promise of danger as they had in the flatlands outside of Kiln they felt almost like protectors. A phalanx of impossibly large guardians whose duty it was to keep out the myriad dangers birthed by the wasteland. She could understand why Briar and Meridian chose this place to hide their daughter from the Enclave.
She stole a glance behind them where Julip cut through the air alone, holding her injured wing rigid with visible discomfort. They met eyes for a moment before Ginger set her jaw and turned her attention forward. A worry for the back burner, but still one to monitor. 
They whipped over a cluster of blistered molerats who squealed and dove for their holes. Ahead of them, the dome grew large and the white “freckles” that Beans had been able to identify from a distance of more than a mile resolved into individual shapes. A lifetime in the wasteland trained Ginger’s eyes to recognize the sunbleached remains for what they were, and as they slowed their approach to land she could tell something was very wrong with them.
The dome itself was easily fifty yards from end to end and as they followed its curve to the eastern side, Ginger could feel Aurora’s chin touching her ear as she too noticed the clusters of bones protruding from its surface. 
Under normal circumstances, finding the remains of ponies in the wasteland wasn’t unusual. They were everywhere, really. It wasn’t like there was anyone available to clean up the bodies after the bombs fell. 
Skeletons weren’t a particularly shocking find after an apocalypse, but once in a while a pony might come upon one that told an interesting story. These skeletons most definitely had something to say.
Hundreds of them lay buried at varying depths in the surrounding soil and even more were held fast by the dusty concrete of the dome itself. Thin patches of grass grew through the ribs of ponies whose lower halves were hidden beneath the dirt. A hip bone and two hind legs lay in a heap on the southern edge as if the pony they belonged to saw fit to swan dive into the dome but only made it partway. Ginger frowned as more and more strange half-burials slid below them, their jaws bent open with silenced screams.
As questions grew in her mind, Briar’s wings flared open to cut his speed. Roach’s hooves settled into the dusty soil and Briar, apparently aware now of the unintended effect he was having on the changeling, quickly slid off his back and took an apologetic step to the side.
Aurora and Ginger set down close enough that the two stallions had to shield their eyes from the dust they kicked up, and as if to continue the chain of punishment, Julip’s landing forced all four of them to do it again. The wind carried the dust away and the five of them settled on their hooves, their collective attention naturally turning to the stark feature cut deep into the soil before them.
A long concrete ramp sliced into the dome like a keyhole, ending at an imposing, rust-scabbed door at the bottom. There were no signs on the weathered walls to indicate what the dome was for or who was allowed inside. No painted warnings to ward off vandals or intruders, just a wide ramp and an unmarked square blast door. 
And the bones.
Ginger’s lips pulled away from her teeth in revulsion.
Just like they had through the top of the dome, the skeletal remains of dozens of ponies erupted from the solid concrete walls of the ramp as if it were once no firmer than water. Leathery strips of tendons and gristle clung to enough of them that the shapes of their protruding bodies had been preserved. Others had decayed so badly that anything that wasn’t held in place by their concrete tombs had dropped off and tumbled into the rough heap of remains at the bottom. 
Briar was the only one among them who looked unphased. Considering how often he must have come and gone from this place over the years, she supposed it was fair for him to be desensitized to… whatever this was.
“Scavs call it the Unicorn Bloom,” he said, jarring them from their silence.
Beside her, Aurora swallowed, her eyes searching the dead for understanding. “They’re in the walls.”
He nodded. “They’re harmless. Just be careful where you step and try not to disturb them. If the Enclave thinks this place was recently scavenged they’ll start scouting the valley more often.”
He stepped off the dirt and onto the ramp, his hooves echoing off the concrete enclosure as he led the descent. Gradually, the rest of them followed. Her curiosity unsated, Aurora spoke again. 
“How did this happen?”
Briar stepped around a skull partially submerged in the ground, its single eye socket staring blindly toward the door. He gestured toward the skull’s horn, then at the other skulls surrounding them, each bearing a horn of its own. “Answer’s in the name, isn’t it?”
Unicorn Bloom. Ginger grimaced as understanding dawned on her. They were all unicorns. 
“They tried to teleport out.”
“Emphasis on tried. Best anyone can tell, the unicorns got cold hooves and decided the underground life wasn’t for them. Probably couldn’t get the door open so they went with Plan B and tried to magic their way out.” He sidestepped a partial skeleton sunken up to its femurs and grimaced. “Apparently it’s not as easy as it looks.”
She was silent the rest of the way down the ramp, remembering the story Gallow had told about the magician from the south who had by unknown means acquired the same magic Ginger now possessed and, by sheer accident, miscalculated a spell and fatally teleported himself halfway through a stage wall. The bones that surrounded them belonged to unicorns who had met a similarly gruesome end. She could only imagine the panic they had felt once they realized their mistake and how it must have felt to die knowing their bodies were ruined beyond any hope of repair.
Aurora must have seen her shudder. The gentle weight of feathers draping behind her shoulders offered some unspoken and much needed comfort.
While the slab of rusting steel looming ahead certainly qualified as massive, compared to the hulking numbered cogs that sealed the Stables dotting Equestria, it was hardly impressive. A pony with a high enough jump might even be able to slap the socketed track it rolled across. 
“I don’t know,” Roach murmured as they came to a stop in front of it. The cracks along his muzzle bent into doubtful wrinkles. “It doesn’t look like any Stable I’ve ever seen.”
Ginger had to agree. Aside from its subterranean nature, there were no obvious signs suggesting it belonged to Stable-Tec. Briar’s original assumption that it was some sort of missile control outpost seemed closer to reality.
Aurora, for her part, was undaunted. A quick check of her Pip-Buck only strengthened her conviction. “It’s a Stable.”
She spoke with the firmness of a mare unwilling to budge on what she believed to be undeniable fact. There was a defensive bristle in her voice that hadn’t been there earlier, as if Roach’s mere suggestion might cause the strange facility to become something different. Ginger suddenly wished she had a wing of her own with which to sooth Aurora’s nerves.
Briar made a noncommittal noise, unwilling to insert himself into what-ifs, and trotted over to the seam where the door nearly met the concrete wall. Its leading edge stood ajar by a good ten inches, beyond which stood an impenetrable wall of black. He blew out a long breath and, without hesitating, squeezed through the narrow gap and into the darkness. Seconds later a brown wing appeared, gesturing toward the ground. “Don’t step on the dirt in the corner. Cable’s underneath.”
With so many bodies protruding from the concrete, none of them had taken the time to look at the sediment blown against the walls by decades of valley wind. Sure enough, the dirt leaning against the southern wall drew a thick line from the gap in the door all the way up the ramp. Brair's commandeered power cable hid under the debris where only dumb luck might coax an Enclave soldier to notice it. Ginger couldn’t help but appreciate the simplicity of the camouflage.
Hoof after hoof danced carefully around the deliberately placed soil as Roach and then Aurora squeezed through the gap. Ginger hesitated at the door as she saw the the track it rolled across. The urge to take a deep breath before pushing through pulled at her chest, but she resisted and emptied her lungs before stepping forward.
The door was easily two feet of solid steel. Friction tried to halt her progress as her ribs ground against either side of the opening, and as she slowed she could feel the claws of panic creeping into her throat. All it would take was one errant spark, one wire to come alive and the door could roll shut with her caught in the bite. Possibly. Maybe. Admittedly, she didn’t understand much about how these machines worked to know for sure, but the fear became so real that she contemplated backing out before she got well and truly stuck. Before she could, she felt two hooves plant themselves firmly against her rear.
“Excuse m-”
“Shit or get off the pot,” Julip interrupted, and shoved her forward.
Her hoof caught on the edge of something she couldn’t see and the momentum of Julip’s push sent her sprawling into the darkness, landing hard on her shoulder.
Hooves pounded past her over what sounded like metal grating and Ginger pushed herself up to see Aurora’s silhouette in the dim light of the doorway, inches away from a genuinely startled Julip who had only begun to cross the threshold. Aurora’s low, furious whispers echoed into gibberish off unseen walls as she threatened the Enclave mare with what could only be murder or at the very least grevious bodily harm. Whatever it was, it had every ingredient needed to devolve into a scene.
“Aurora, I’m okay,” she said, getting to her hooves. “I tripped.”
Aurora’s feathers shuddered, her eyes glued on the mare in the threshold. “She shoved you.”
“I had to or she was going to get herself wedged in like I’m about to if you don’t move out of my fucking way.” Julip didn’t wait for her to oblige and wriggled her shoulders through the gap, pushing the feathers of her injured wing into Aurora’s face to get her to back up. “Goddesses, you barely know each other and you’re already like a rabid dog with her. Which one of you has a light? I can’t see shit in here.”
A sharp click from Briar’s direction gave birth to a sallow yellow beam that turned to Julip and settled on her face. The old silver flashlight didn’t budge in his wings, nor did the stony expression caught in the glow behind it. Several long seconds passed in silence as Julip realized all eyes were on her.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m trying to work out why my eight-year-old has more sense than the twenty-eight-year-old I’m looking at right now.” He flicked the light down to the grated metal floor, confirming Ginger’s suspicions, but she blinked surprise at what his light had landed on.
Barely a yard from where she’d landed a large section of grating had been pulled away, below which lay a tangle of thickly insulated pipes and the exposed bolt of a valve missing its handle. A fall into that gap almost guaranteed some ugly injuries.
Julip stared at the missing panel and swallowed. “I… didn’t know that was there.”
“Now you do.” He shook his head and swung his light around the room they now stood in, letting the four of them see the strange array of plumbing that rose out of the floor and across the ceiling in neat, evenly spaced rows. Nozzles studded the blackened pipes every few feet. Ginger followed the sweep of Briar’s light back down the opposite wall and through the grating where she noticed more nozzles pointing up toward them. 
She lifted her hoof and held it in front of her face. Something dark smeared it in roughly the same pattern as the grating they stood on. Soot. 
“This place is dangerous. I know two of you are Stable ponies but I assumed you would all come to the same conclusion when we arrived.” The light found Julip again, forcing her to squint. “You can either try to be more careful, or you can wait here until we’re done. Your choice.”
Ginger expected her to respond with a quick little barb and push Briar into a full-blown lecture, but to her surprise the mare licked her lips and nodded at her own hooves. “No, yeah. Sorry. I’ll be careful.”
It was enough to satisfy Briar. He took a breath, puffed it out and by means only a seasoned father possessed he offered Julip a small, forgiving smile that signified the end of the topic and the beginning of the one they’d flown down for. He waggled his light at the floor around them, highlighting the other spots where grating had been removed or had rusted through. “I hope I’m not the only one who brought a light.”
In the blackened room, Ginger could see Aurora lift her Pip-Buck and toggle something she couldn’t identify. Suddenly the room was awash in the dim green light from its screen. It was startling how quickly the walls seemed to gobble up the glow. 
It reminded her of the plastic stick-on stars her sister used to have on her bedroom ceiling and how some of them would still glow a little when they held a flashlight against them. The cardboard box they came in was so worn that the corners only stayed together with the help of several layers of yellowed tape, but the instructions on the side had somehow survived. The manufacturer promised that the stars worked best with a standard light spell, but it didn’t explain how to cast it.
She briefly considered throwing a little bit of magic around just to see if she might stumble into something that worked, but then she remembered the Unicorn Bloom outside and decided against it. Instead, she conjured the same simple spell she used to distract the foals back at the slave camp. A tickle of pride warmed her cheeks as an amorphous sphere of magic popped into existence in front of her, giving off a faint amber glow.
With three different shades of light coloring an empty black room that actively resisted their colors, they traced Briar’s steps toward a smaller door on the opposite wall.
“They went a little overboard with the decontamination chamber,” Aurora observed.
Ginger let her light drift behind her, giving Julip and Roach something to see by. She remembered the decontamination chamber back at Stable 6 in Blinder’s Bluff. “I don’t think that’s what this is.”
Aurora gave her a curious look and noticed the black smear that covered her right shoulder from when she fell. Her face grew concerned. “What is that?”
“Soot,” Briar supplied. He stopped at the smaller door and dragged a feather across its surface. An oily black substance clung to its vanes. “Those old showerheads weren’t made to spray any water I’d drink.”
Aurora stared up at the heavy-duty nozzle with a mixture of disbelief and mistrust. “It’s an incinerator.”
Briar gripped the door’s handle in his feathers and shoved it down with a hard grunt and a shriek of complaining metal. Wiping the soot off on his flanks, he tucked his wings and shoved the door open with his hooves. “Bingo.”
Aurora let Ginger file through first, deliberately putting herself between her and Julip. “What’s the point in having an incinerator right behind the Stable door?”
“A trap for intruders, probably,” Roach suggested.
Ginger’s hooves passed beyond the door and clicked against smooth concrete, but it was the heat that swirled on the other side that caught her attention. She wrinkled her nose in the uncomfortably humid air and made an accompanying noise to let the others know it wasn’t pleasant over here.
“That was our theory too, at first.” 
Briar stepped across a narrow room lined with bars on one side and desks on the other. The jail cells were empty save for a few meager pieces of rusting furniture and a single, motionless form that lay curled in the far corner. The nameless pony wore a faded brown shirt and a simple gun belt around its hip. A ring of keys lay on the floor next him, each one methodically snapped in half. Beside that, the mangled pieces of a plastic keycard.
“Whoever he was, he did everything he could to keep the others here from leaving. Merry and I are pretty sure that’s what the incinerator is for, too.”
Ginger blinked at the dead guard, then looked at the door they’d come through. Flaking black and yellow stripes lined its edges. With soot coating every surface, she hadn’t noticed the small window mounted into the door. But on this side the glass caught their lights like a dark mirror.
“They wanted to keep them inside?”
Briar shrugged. “That’s my guess, anyway. Not like there’s anyone left to ask.”
The quiet security office felt claustrophobic with just five ponies milling around inside of it, and the suggestion that a place like this might have been built to keep ponies from leaving only added to the knot forming in Ginger’s gut. She stayed close to Aurora as Briar opened a desk drawer and began stacking parts to something Aurora called a pump jack atop a layer of moldy red folders. 
“One second,” he said, gesturing to the next door. It was a flat slab of steel with no visible means of opening it besides a dark keypad mounted to the wall beside it. “It’s a heavy son of a bitch. Thankfully once the Enclave clears one of these places out, they don’t usually come back to check the desks for pencils. Good place to stash tools.”
As they waited for him to assemble the jack, Ginger followed Aurora toward the sealed door. Even in the half light she could see the confusion and anger in her face. Eventually, she spoke.
“I don’t get it. Why an incinerator? Why build a Stable if nobody’s allowed to leave?”
The silence that answered her made it clear nobody knew the answer. Unsatisfied, she turned around and pressed the issue.
“We’re told from the day we’re born that we’re the seeds of the future. That… that when enough time has passed, the Stables will open and we’ll be the ones to give Equestria a second chance at life.” Her face twisted as she struggled to make sense of it. “If Stable 1 was failing they should have opened the doors, not…”
She looked at the body of the pony who had locked himself in the cell and destroyed any chance the ponies trapped inside might have had to escape. Ginger followed her gaze to the incinerator door and the shattered remains of the keypad on this side of the door. There was no handle here for anyone to turn. Just smooth, uncaring steel. 
Aurora fumbled for words before settling to repeat herself. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Whatever happened here,” Briar said, the assembled jack tucked under his wing below a rusty crowbar, “it happened a long, long time ago. The ponies who built these places were of the same generation that built the bombs. None of ‘em were in the business of doing things that made sense. Best to move forward and try not to trip over too many of their bones along the way.”
Ginger could tell it wasn’t the answer Aurora wanted to hear, but the defeat in her eyes let her know she’d given up asking for now. They made room for Briar to set up his tools at the door and waited as he pried the long end of the crowbar between the floor and the nonfunctional door. With nothing else to do but watch, Aurora opted to take hold of the bar and lever the door far enough up its tracks for Briar to slide the jack underneath. When she set it back down the jack let out a sturdy clank beneath the load, and Briar promptly went to work on the ratchet one pump of the handle at a time.
Despite her gloom, Aurora’s lip twitched up as the gap beneath the door widened. “I bet deputy Chaser wishes he had one of these when I…” She paused and glanced back to where Julip waited near the dead deputy’s cell. “When we broke out.”
“No, that’s fine,” Julip said. “Just take all the credit.”
As much as she disliked the mare, Ginger had to admit she was quick on her hooves when it came to keeping her identity under wraps. The Enclave did nothing if not churn out excellent liars. With the help of Julip’s patchwork, Aurora’s accidental truth sailed well over Briar’s head.
“Oh yeah?” He grunted, giving the jack lever another push. The door clanked up another inch. “How’d you do that?”
Ginger tried not to smile too much as Aurora puffed up a little, eager to brag. “I picked the lock and used bolt cutters to sever the security door's hydraulics. The deputy on shift got stuck out in the Atrium and went ballistic. I never ran so fast in my life.”
He let out an impressed whistle and looked at Julip. “And you?”
Four sets of eyes turned to the Enclave mare who offered a shrug in response. “I was too busy trying not to piss myself. Aurora’s the one who knew which things to break and in what order.”
That earned a chuckle from the stallion. He stopped and leaned on the lever long enough to catch his breath and pointed a soot-streaked feather between her and Aurora. “And you two decided the best thing you could do to help your Stable was to break out of it. I imagine something like that takes a lot of trust.”
Ginger watched Aurora put on a sheepish smile, shrugging a shoulder at Julip. “I mean, we’ve known each other since we were foals. It's what best friends do.”
Julip didn’t miss a beat, her own expression becoming brittle as she looked to Ginger with what looked like actual jealousy. “I wouldn’t say best friends, but sure.”
It felt like they were tumbling down a molerat hole with every new layer they added to their story, and Ginger could sense herself being sucked into playing a double role she wasn’t entirely up for. Damned if they weren’t good at convincing Briar that they were besties from Stable 10, but this whole thing was beginning to generate its own momentum. One more minute of this and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to tell truth from fiction.
Taking advantage of the awkward position Julip had thrust her into, she cleared her throat and gave Briar a pleading smile. “Maybe I can offer some help with that door. It’s starting to feel like an oven in here.”
He snorted and motioned to the jack as if to say, “By all means.” She hurried toward him, pulling herself out of Julip and Aurora’s absurd crossfire, and refocused her magic on the haggard lever. With a portion of the bar surrounded in copper light and Briar’s wings gripping the rest, they worked in unison to extend the door as far as the jack would safely allow. 
As the vertical bar clanked up into its final notch, Ginger was breathing hard. She couldn’t help but grin a little as she caught her breath. She’d assumed her magic would make the work effortless in the way Twilight Sparkle made it look in the old holotapes, but her pounding heart and aching head argued otherwise. Supermare, she was not.
Panting, she stepped back from the bar and tried not to look too disappointed at the fruit of their labor. She’d expected the jack to lift the door all the way to the top of the frame. What greeted her was a two foot gap. Maybe three, if she was being generous.
Briar clapped a wing against her shoulder, grinning over to where Aurora stood. “She’s a tough one. Might want to hang onto her.”
She glanced back at Aurora and flushed when she saw the look on her face. All she’d done was work a lever for a minute or two but the grin Aurora donned made her feel like she’d rewired some complicated machine on her own. For a brief moment she remembered what it was like to be a filly and hear a grown-up tell her good job. She frowned slightly, but it grew less slight as she remembered the stallion who she looked up to for that praise. Her father had always been eager to spur her and her sister on with his love, but those memories would be forever soiled by the things he did. The things he made her do.
Jovial as his intentions had been, Ginger shrugged out from under his wing and turned to the door. The moment was soured, now. She began to crouch, intent on pushing forward before anyone could ask what was wrong.
As she sent her magic through to light the next room, Briar’s wing quickly dropped in front of her.
“Ap-bup-bup,” he chattered. When she looked up at him, his expression was apologetic. “Gotta warn you, there are bodies on the other side.”
She lifted a hoof to push his wing away, impatience creeping into her voice. “I’ve seen bodies before, dear. We passed several dozen on the way in.”
His wing stiffened, resisting her attempt to move it. His jaw stuck out a little as he clarified. “We all have, but… there’s a lot of them, and they're not skeletal. The heat and humidity made them into a mess.”
She recognized the seriousness in his face and understood he wasn’t trying to patronize her. She let go of his wing and nodded. “Okay.”
“Just… be ready for it. Merry wasn’t.” 
He hesitated a moment longer before returning his feathers to his side. Ginger stared into the blackness beneath the door and realized there was an odor being pulled through, faintly sweet but tainted with the unmistakable scent of rot. They were close, wherever they were. She decided if she was going to have to crawl through, it might be better to do so without the benefit of sight this time. One sense was enough.
She shuffled forward, mindful of the steel slab looming above her neck like a guillotine no one had bothered to sharpen. One leg stretched forward and another pushed against the cement behind, one after the other, until she was laying on the ground beyond the threshold. Carefully, she stood and channeled her borrowed magic into a simple sphere in front of her. 
It glowed with gentle amber light that pulled shapes out from the shadows. Mounds of what appeared to be discarded clothing lay heaped against the walls on either side of her, spilling out into a vast and dark space ahead until both sides became one homogenous sea of rotting laundry far beyond the range of her light. 
Then her brain caught up with her eyes and she saw their faces. Hundreds of them, piled over and crushed beneath dozens upon dozens. Corpses stacked in a frenetic and failed attempt to batter their way through the door she just came through, their faces permanently twisted with fear, panic and rage. What she assumed was clothing were layers of flesh and muscle sloughed off and spilling into the bodies deeper in either pile. The combination of stifling heat and suffocating humidity had turned the corpses at the very bottom into a undignified mass of wet, anonymous gristle.
This wasn’t death the way she knew it. This wasn’t a rotten body discarded along the highway or a curious, sanitized sideshow of bones to speculate over. This was something else. Something she didn’t have the words to describe. Briar had tried to warn her, but what else could he have said? 
She closed her eyes and took a slow breath to calm herself, but the lingering scent of slow-cooked death invaded her nostrils like a disease. Her stomach lurched. Through the gap in the door, Aurora asked her something she didn’t have the luxury of parsing. Even with her eyes shut she could see dead surrounding her, made unrecognizable by time, biology, and simple gravity. She gagged again and knew she was going to be sick. 
Her mother’s quiet voice whispered in the back of her head.
Not here. Here we respect the dead.
An old memory from her first time visiting the family mausoleum when she was little. A lesson meant to teach her the difference between the ponies of New Canterlot and the scavengers of the untamed wasteland beyond. Back when she was too naive to understand that the wasteland was everywhere and that even the wealthy were willing to plunder the dead.
And yet her mother was right. She couldn't do it here. She hurried forward through the narrow channel cut between the mounds, aided by the dim light of her magic as she tried in vain to ignore the squelching and squeaking of her hooves across the wet concrete. Sheer force of will drove her forward, her focus so intent on getting beyond them that she barely noticed the plastic chairs she was knocking her way through. An overturned cafeteria table came and went unnoticed. The flimsy furniture bounced painfully off her forelegs and skittered into the growing void around her. 
Even as her stomach fought to empty itself, she noticed that there were no longer any walls in view. No low ceiling. Just a rat’s nest of overturned chairs and the inky black ahead. 
Then, a railing.
She came to a sliding halt against the old steel and it clanged in the empty dark like a forgotten bell, music to accompany her as she vomited over the side. Her vision swam as she heaved again, her body determined to purge itself of any memory of what she’d just waded through to get here. It was a nice gesture, but she could already sense those impressions hardening irrevocably in her mind.
Worried shouts bounced off unseen surfaces. She scraped the roof of her mouth with her tongue and spat the sour muck over the railing.
“I’m alright,” she murmured, staring bleakly into the empty black below. 
As she wiped the film of tears out of her eyes, she noticed the warm draft rising up from the void as if she were dangling above a blast furnace. Despite her nauseated contribution, the air that wafted up around her chin and through her mane didn’t carry any noticeable odor. The air was stale and smelled vaguely of hot metal, like a kettle left on the fire until the water boiled away. 
While hooves clattered over the floor behind her and more than a few noises of shocked disgust were uttered, Ginger urged a little more magic to flow into the amber blob floating beside her until it glowed with a diffuse firelight.
The blackness below her shrank away and a yawning, impossible chasm opened beneath her. 







May 10th, 1076

“A cylinder?”
Spitfire watched in silence as Scootaloo wiped the edge of her dominant hoof over a fresh tin of honey-yellow wax on the corner of her desk, a tactile enhancing product usually reserved for earth ponies who got tired of licking their hooves every time they wanted to turn a page. Scootaloo was too focused on the blueprints laid out across her desk to see the disdain flicker in Spitfire's eyes. She dragged the first sheet aside to examine the next, peering at the expertly drafted lines with a dubious frown.
Stepping back from the desk, Spitfire seated herself in one of the two plush mahogany chairs behind her. It sighed under her weight and she pretended to occupy herself by admiring the absolutely gaudy shrine Scootaloo had made for herself at the heart of Stable-Tec HQ.
Her office was so cluttered with bits, baubles and meaningless accolades that stepping into it had felt like walking into an old mare’s attic. Photos from various stages of her life seemed to hang in what little space had been left over by the myriad pennants, knick-knacks and even a foal’s blue scooter. One such photo featured an ecstatic Scootaloo in her twenties standing in front of a rusted out warehouse that would eventually become the first headquarters of the then-named Stable Incorporated. None of them, including Scootaloo, could have foreseen that the little home security startup would go from installing motion sensors to designing self-sustaining shelters meant to outlast the end of the world.
Scootaloo mumbled something incoherent as she traced a hoof down the center of the blueprint, pulled the page aside and shook her head at the matching set of lines beneath.
“Why is this shaft here?” she asked, tapping the center of the page with a hoof in a way that only drew attention to her diminutive, hardly functional wings. “It’s wasted space.”
Spitfire craned her chin forward  with mock-surprise, as if she hadn’t expected her to mark that particular detail for scrutiny. “That’s the central stairwell.”
She watched Scootaloo react with what a polite pony might call concern. In reality, the president and CEO of Stable-Tec looked back at her with a flabbergasted expression a professor might wear after opening a student’s dissertation only to find a drawing of a banana. 
She was fully aware that she’d missed the crux of Scootaloo’s question. That was the point, after all. As powerful as Scootaloo was within the civilian sector, among the echelons of government she was nothing. A contracted worker, at best. Someone who did not need to know why someone like Spitfire would come all the way to Fillydelphia just to breathe her air any more than a fish needed to know why the worm dangled in the middle of its pond.
To her credit, Scootaloo was doing an outstanding job at tip-hoofing around what she really wanted to say. 
“As far as I can tell, it’s the only stairwell noted in your design.”
It’s a deliberate inefficiency, and you’re not stupid enough to have missed it. Where are the elevators?
Spitfire briefly glanced at the dutifully silent mare seated in the chair beside her before turning back to Scootaloo and nodding. “Yes it is.”
Scootaloo stared at her, chewing the inside of her lip for several seconds before turning back to the blueprint. “Okay… so then you’re aware that this design doesn’t begin to meet basic fire safety codes.”
“Neither does the Pillar, but that doesn’t stop me from going into work every day.”
The frown on Scootaloo’s face became defensive. “The Pillar was cleared for construction by the Equestrian government and has dozens of carefully vetted safety procedures in place for…”
“Miss Scootaloo,” she said, raising her voice just enough to quiet the magenta maned mare. “We are the Equestrian government, and all we’re asking for is your cooperation in this. You and your company won’t be liable should certain aspects of engineering come up short.”
Scootaloo leaned back in her chair hard enough for the hinge to peel. She spread her hooves, indicating the blueprints with a flick of her eyes. “One stairwell for an entire Stable isn’t an engineering shortcoming, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. You're asking for residents to be tramples. What if there's an emergency? And why is it so deep? You’ve got a hundred plus floors here sandwiched together like waffles and ran an empty core through the center and the only thing keeping a pony from falling to their death if one railing.”
Spitfire nodded for what felt like an appropriate amount of time, then looked to the mare seated to her left. Primrose was as she had been the moment the two of them first seated themselves; polite, pleasant, and most importantly during this first glimpse into Spitfire’s world, silent. It heartened her to know she could be trusted to follow simple instructions.
“Ms. Primrose, take note of Scootaloo’s concerns and remind me to bring them up with the design team tomorrow. I don’t see any reason why we can’t make a few compromises.”
Primrose didn’t miss a beat and bent over the arm of her chair to retrieve a thin leather satchel from the carpet. Within seconds her pen was scratching slender, looping notes across a pad of paper.
Scootaloo watched her liaison write, the heat in her eyes cooling a few wary degrees. “This isn’t something a few quick tweaks will fix.” She pushed the blueprints a scant inch away, a subtle yet telling gesture that, coupled with her shift in tone, Spitfire immediately disliked. “You’re asking me to upturn the next year of Stable-Tec’s production schedule because… why? Because Celestia had a change of heart and is taking my work seriously?”
Spitfire straightened a little, feeling the hairs along her mane bristle. For a civilian owner of a glorified construction company, she seemed to have an idea in her head that she had the right to question the directives of a ministry. More than that, even if Spitfire hadn’t led into this meeting with some minor mistruths about Celestia’s sudden interest in Stable-Tec, questioning a princess wasn't something ponies dared do within earshot of their government. That wasn’t how this game was played.
“Not just Celestia,” she said. “Your government as a whole is looking to you for your cooperation. You’re one of the few civilians to set eyes on balefire technology and we trust that you understand the significance of that invitation. Your organization is a little closer to the fringes in terms of what the future may require, but Stable-Tec is the epitome of a good insurance plan. If balefire ever falls into the wrong hooves, we'd like Equestria to be covered."
She let the words linger in the air until Scootaloo finally gave in and played her part.
“Stable-Tec is aware of the danger balefire presents,” she said.
Spitfire smiled, nodding as she leaned forward and pulled the blueprints off the desk. Paper rustled between her feathers as she rolled the wide sheets into a narrow tube. “Which is why we trust you to know that these plans only represent one of the ten shelters…”
“Stables.”
Her smile tightened. “...Stables we’re asking for. It's an unorthodox design, yes, but the remaining nine would go forward unchanged.”
Scootaloo watched her retrieve the hardened cylinder from the floor and slide the blueprints inside. “I will admit, I appreciate knowing my government has faith in what we’re trying to do here. That being said, maybe you can help me understand why they don’t seem to trust me enough to tell me what they actually want with my Stables.”
Spitfire laid the tube across her lap. “I don’t understand what you mean. These ten would be reserved for grateful members of your government and their families in the event the disaster you had the foresight to predict comes to pass. It's a simple safeguard meant to preserve continuity of power.”
“I’d appreciate it if you stopped trying to flatter me into silence.” Scootaloo leaned forward and tapped the edge of her hoof against the spot on her desk the blueprints recently occupied. “Try to remember, I designed the Pillar your office is in. One thousand four hundred ponies. That’s the maximum capacity for that complex. Each one of these Stables is rated for two thousand, with an ideal population density at one. Even if you’re planning on housing every cousin of every intern that has ever thought of working in a ministry, you still wouldn’t fill all ten Stables.”
She jabbed the same hoof at Spitfire’s lap, a gesture that trampled every common rule of decency and sent a spark up her spine. “That Pillar on steroids your people designed? That’s ten Stables’ worth of space alone. It’s not enough for you to say you need our Stables. Now you’re asking my company to build you a functional city for free.”
This wasn’t how the game was played, at all. She could feel her leverage slipping. “Naturally, Stable-Tec would be compensated for materials and labor…”
Scootaloo cut her off. “At wholesale. Zero profit. You’re not seeing the point. Once the general public finds out about the Balefire Bomb, they’re going to put two and two together and start thinking how long it’ll be until the zebras have it. I’m not excited by the idea of having to tell that first wave of scared ponies that all the first tickets were bought up by their noble government.”
“Scootaloo, our offer implies that we would be willing to handle any and all PR issues.”
“Again, not the point. The point is no matter how you think you can handle it, I’ll have a mob outside my building with pitchforks and torches accusing me of putting the ponies who built the bomb ahead of the ponies it has every potential to harm.” There was a heat in her voice she was working hard to hold back, like a mare trying to talk herself down from starting a brawl all while aching to throw the first punch. 
She waited a beat, composed herself, and started again. “Look. I’m genuinely happy that the government is finally willing to give worst case scenario preparation serious thought, but you’re asking me to reserve a year of construction scheduling for something you’re not willing to fully explain. I didn’t make this company what it is to protect the ministries. I did it to ensure regular ponies had a chance to survive mistakes beyond their control.”
The implication came so close to the line without crossing it that Spitfire’s lip twitched with open irritation. “Careful,” she murmured.
“I haven’t said anything that isn’t true. Stable-Tec’s official answer to your offer is no. Our facilities aren’t for sale.”
Spitfire’s smile hardened as she imagined herself climbing over the desk and clamping her wings around that poor excuse for a pegasus’s little orange throat until she heard something break. It was a tempting thought, but one that would quickly unravel everything. Her jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth, waiting for the sudden flare of rage to die down to a tolerable simmer.
She turned to Primrose who, surprisingly, seemed to show no particular emotion at all. Maybe it was because she was here as an observer that she could maintain her composure so easily. Benefit of being the new girl, she supposed. As her liaison, Primrose’s only responsibility in this moment was to understand the facts. She didn’t have to burden herself with the shame of having them backfire.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that I wasn’t able to adequately convey the importance of this visit.” She slung the strap of the tube over her shoulder and stood, gesturing with a feather for Primrose to do the same as she continued with the hollow pleasantries. “I’ll touch base with some folks in Canterlot and contact you next week, if that’s alright.”
Scootaloo remained seated. “My answer will be the same then as it is now, Spitfire. Maybe you should look elsewhere for this project of yours. I hear Pintolski out in Las Pegasus has feelers out for investors.”
Spitfire pretended not to hear that last part. Pintolski was a leech looking to make a quick bit off of Stable-Tec’s rising popularity by marketing what were essentially blast-proof phone booths minus the phone. His poured concrete “preservation shelters” had cropped up all around the popular tourist destinations in Las Pegasus in an attempt to cement his company’s name in the public mind. He was actually making some headway in that regard. So much so that one of his pop-up shelters had been allowed onto the testing grounds for the most recent balefire test a week earlier. All that remained after detonation were the melted rebar supports.
Pintolski's concrete turds were a lost cause, and Scootaloo knew it. It was as close to don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out as she could get without saying the words.
“Thank you,” Spitfire ground out. “We’ll be in touch.”
Scootaloo smiled and gestured toward the door.
This was a problem. No, this was a disaster. As she stepped around the plush chair and listened to the soft carpet whisper against her hooves, she realized that somewhere along the line she had grossly miscalculated how much influence she thought she wielded. Rainbow Dash had been easy because she had all but laid out the blackmail against herself on a gold platter. Treason was a lever that could lift mountains. 
Scootaloo, however, had a record squeakier than an alicorn’s asshole. There was nothing on her. No convictions, no charges, not so much as a fine for littering. What she did have was a company and a goal, and Spitfire assumed it would be enough to come bearing a little honesty and an open checkbook.
She didn’t expect Scootaloo to actually care what she wanted the Stables for. She certainly didn’t think she would have the gall to decline the offer solely on the basis that it was her government writing the check.
This was going to require an overhaul of everything. She could feel it in her gut. Months of reworking timetables, sorting out who to approach and when. Just the effort of reaching for the doorknob and embarking on that long and frustrating process all over again was exhausting.
“I like you.”
Spitfire blinked and turned around. Primrose was still in her seat. Had she even gotten up? Her eyes were firmly fixed on Scootaloo now, the satchel she’d carried with her propped across her lap like an old mare’s purse.
Scootaloo looked equally perplexed. “That’s… nice, I suppose?”
“I like you a lot,” Primrose continued, undeterred. She lifted a pink feather into her baby blue mane and slowly pulled at one of her natural curls. It slipped free like a heavy ribbon, settling into the crook of her neck. “When I was little, a lot of foals would pretend they’d met the Cutie Mark Crusaders. All the blank flanks my age either wanted to meet you or just be you. Canterlot Elementary even had this program where the older ponies would help the younger ones try things that might help them get their cutie marks.”
“Mentors n’ Marks,” Scootaloo supplied, glancing at Primrose’s hip. “Is that how you got yours?”
Primrose followed her gaze to the rook on her flank and snorted. “Gods, no. I’d burn this thing off if it wouldn’t leave a scar. If I’m being honest, I used to hate the three of you. Running around selling foals onto some bullshit idea that they have to abide by an unknowable force that’ll someday give them a cutie mark? I don’t need some magical ass tattoo to tell me who I am.”
Spitfire blanched. This was a mistake. Celestia’s sun, this was all a mistake.
“Prim, we’re already done here. Come on.”
Scootaloo nodded. “I think it’s best you-”
“Shut up, please.” She didn’t raise her voice. She could have been commenting on the weather for all the force she put into those three words, yet a thick silence settled in like a fog. Primrose patted the sides of her satchel, making minor adjustments to how it sat across her legs. “I said I used to hate you. I like you now. Easy-peasy.”
Spitfire considered wrapping a wing around Prim’s leg and forcing her up from the chair, but there was something in the mare’s voice that stopped her. She wasn’t saying all this for a lack of self-control. The unassuming face, the polite silence, all of it was calculated.
Her plan was already shot to hell. Scootaloo was probably off the table, which meant Stable-Tec wasn’t in the picture, which meant months or years of laying new groundwork before she was ready to try something like this again. Whatever Primrose was doing, her plan was already sunk. A few more holes in the hull wouldn’t make a difference.
She let go of the doorknob and decided to watch.
“Do you want to know why I like you?” Primrose leaned forward like a filly with a juicy secret. Her satchel creaked. “It’s because you know exactly what you want, and you’ll fuck just about anyone to get it.”
Scootaloo stood. “You need to leave.”
She laughed. “Golly, you sure are tall! But sit down a minute. I’ll leave once I’m finished.”
Spitfire and Scootaloo frowned with varying levels of apprehension as Primrose dipped a wing into her satchel. From it she produced three bright red, unmarked folders. She set the satchel onto the carpet and began idly tapping the folders against her knee.
Tap. Tap.
“You're a mare in search of a legacy. Always were, I’m guessing. You’re intelligent enough to accept the fact that none of us live forever and on some level, all of us wish we could. Nobody wants to die and certainly nobody wants to die knowing they accomplished nothing worth remembering.”
Tap. Tap.
“And what better way to be remembered than to be known as a mare who dedicated herself to others?” She gestured to her right where the scooter hung from a set of padded hooks in the wall. Folded into neat squares and laid lovingly across its worn deck were three tiny red capes. A blue, homemade patch featuring the silhouette of a filly adorned each. “Whether that’s helping foals do something to define themselves or spearheading a company whose sole purpose is to give ponies peace of mind in these darkest days of our history, above all else you want to be remembered as a good pony.”
Scootaloo stared at her, mouth stuck halfway between a scoff and a laugh. She blinked, shook her head and turned to Spitfire. “Mind games? Really?”
Spitfire didn’t react. “Listen to what she has to say.”
The CEO of Stable-Tec licked her lips, understanding that neither of them were going to leave unless someone forced them to. Spitfire was well aware of the stone faced security personnel that roamed these headquarters and was not eager to be publicly dragged off the property. Still, this was starting to feel like a good bet. Her silence made it clear to Scootaloo that the ball was in her court.
The flinch that pulled at the corner of Scootaloo’s eye was barely perceptible, but it was there. She sat back down.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be remembered well,” she said.
Tap.
Primrose grinned. “Oh, I agree! And it’s that two-faced, holier-than-thou schtick that I just love!”
Scootaloo narrowed her eyes.
“You’re so good at it, you almost had me convinced! I mean, you just sat there and poured your heart out about how you just couldn’t conceive of disappointing your fellow Equestrians by selling the first batch of bomb shelters to their mean old government.” Primrose grinned as if they were longtime colleagues sharing a drink. “I am genuinely jealous right now. You can say all that without cracking a smile even though you’re willing to capitalize on the very fear your company generates by just existing.”
“That’s not what-”
“What does a ticket to one of your Stables cost again? Twenty… no, that’s right, twenty-five thousand bits per head. You have the clankers to bankrupt whole families on the slimmest chance that your Stables will even be needed, and all while knowing the only reason Stable-Tec exists right now is because those same families already bankrolled your spending spree through a generous donation of their hard-earned tax money, courtesy of the same ministry you’re thinking about turning down right now. I mean, bravo. That’s the type of silver tongue I have wet dreams about.”
Before she could object, Primrose slipped a feather under the cover of the topmost folder enough to display the thin stack of papers inside. “So. Now that we’re not pretending to be ponies we aren’t, let’s dispense with the rest of the bullshit and get down to brass tacks. Like I said, I like you, so you’re going to be privy to a special amended offer. Are you ready to listen?”
Scootaloo shrugged her diminutive wings. “I don’t seem to have much choice.”
Primrose grinned at that. “Good girl. The offer’s simple. You, i.e. Stable-Tec, are going to build your first ten Stables on your current schedule with the exception of the one detailed in the blueprints we presented. That one will be built as described with no alterations prior to Spitfire’s expressed approval. In exchange, we, i.e. your royal government, will pay for all aspects of said construction and future maintenance. We will also provide Stable-Tec with complete funding for up to ninety additional Stables that will remain under your full control, including any assistance you may need with land acquisition, permitting and alterations to existing infrastructure.”
Scootaloo grew several shades paler. “Ninety… you’re joking.”
She turned to Spitfire. “She’s joking, right? She can’t authorize something like that. That’s hundreds of billions of bits. There's a war to fund.”
Spitfire said nothing, afraid if she did she would begin screaming gibberish. They’d come here asking for ten Stables but Primrose was evidently used to playing at tables with richer blinds. This made the money Rainbow siphoned to Jet Stream look like pocket change.
Primrose gave Scootaloo a knowing smile. “Who do you think mints those bits? This offer should allow us the ten facilities we’re asking for without interrupting Stable-Tec’s timetables for the public market. Everyone wins.”
“Ah.” Scootaloo nodded, her eyes drifting to the red folders dangling in Primrose’s wing. “And I assume if I say no a second time, those come into play.”
Primrose leaned back in her chair so that the front two legs lifted off the ground. Spitfire met her eyes and saw the conniving grin on her face.
“I told you she was smart.”
She’d said no such thing, but that wasn’t the point. Spitfire played her part and smiled back, and Primrose dropped the chair back to the carpet with a sturdy thud. The cotton candy mare tilted the folders up from her lap and picked idly at the corner.
“Since we’re being honest now, I don’t see the harm in telling you that I’ve only been with the MoA for a little over a month. But even though I’m a newbie, I already know what my favorite part of the Pillar is.”
Scootaloo motioned for her to hurry up. Primrose ignored it.
“It’s Millie. You’ve heard of her, right?” She wriggled her free wing menacincly in the air. “Powerful, free-thinking artificial intelligence nightmare scenario that ended up being Robronco Industries most underwhelming product since the hoofless coat trimmer? Your earth pony counterpart Applebloom works there, right?”
She owned the company, but Scootaloo wasn’t in the mood to split hairs. “Just get on with it.”
Primrose smiled. “Well, even if Millie did just turn out to be an overmarketed personal assistant, she is hooves down my favorite part of working in government. All I have to do is ask her a question and beep-boop-beep, she spits out the answer. She’s plugged into so many public and private databases that she’s practically an oracle to a pony with the right clearance. So here I am sitting at my desk thinking to myself, ‘Wait, I have a crazy amount of clearance. I wonder what kind of skeletons does the most selfless mare in Equestria have in her closet?’”
She waited. Scootaloo swallowed, eyes glued to the folders.
Primrose wiggled in her seat with a victorious little grin. “Exactly. See, that’s why I choose to take my skeletons on walks and let them shit in the front yard for the neighbors to see. I’ve got nothing to hide, which means I’ve got nothing to lose sleep over. You, on the other hoof…”
She peeked into the folder and nodded her explicit approval. “Gee fuckin’ whiz, Scoots. You’ve got a dark streak in you. I could see how something like this could be, well… damaging.”
If Scootaloo was still breathing, Spitfire couldn’t tell. The mare had gone completely still.
“Oh!” Primrose held out a placating hoof. “No-no-no! Don’t be mad! You’re not the only one to make mistakes. These other two aren’t even for you.”
She spread the folders like playing cards, indicating them in sequence. “Look. One for you, one for Applebloom, and one for Sweetie Belle. Even your fellow crusaders screwed up here and there. Some of them worse than you. And best of all? You have the chance to make sure none of it sees the light of day. Ever.”
With a gentle motion of her feathers, the folders slid together and dropped neatly into the satchel beside her chair, her eyes never leaving Scootaloo’s.
“All you have to say is yes.”







At the sound of Ginger rushing blindly into the darkness, Aurora found herself shoving past Briar and pulling herself through the gap. Roach shouted something, probably a reasonable alternative to throwing herself into whatever lay beyond the door, but she wasn’t listening.
The bodies, stacked like molten slag, reached toward the light of her Pip-Buck with limbs so decomposed that Aurora felt her throat open up. She managed to quash her stomach’s brief rebellion and wriggled the rest of the way through. Keeping her eyes on the dim beacon of amber magic further ahead, she tried not to think about the jellied fluids sticking to her hooves and hurried into what she assumed was the Atrium.
The green wash of her Pip-Buck swung back and forth across plastic chairs grouped around at least a dozen round tables, many of them toppled toward the hill of bodies behind her. The echo of Ginger spitting the sick from her mouth bounced off walls too distant to be seen even in their combined light. Her hooves slowed as she crossed the concrete, the diminishing urgency gradually winning the battle against her desire to put as much distance between her and the ruined corpses at the door.
She caught a glimpse of a cafeteria line beyond the tables to her left, and the hazy film of something unpleasant growing on the plastic sneeze guards. White plastic letters still hung onto the black marquee board behind the line, but instead of describing the rotted contents of the square metal tubs below them they had been summarily rearranged to spell a litany of strange slogans.


FUCK THE UPPERS


UNICOWARDS


FIRE ABOV3 FIR3 B3LOW


    Aurora frowned and turned the glare of her Pip-Buck to the right. Empty poster frames clung to the gently curving wall, dusty shards of glass still clinging, the banners long since torn out. More graffiti graced those spaces, written in dark slashes of what she hoped was paint.
She reached Ginger at a railing overlooking what appeared to be an empty void. When she put her wing on her shoulder she could feel the cool dampness of sweat sink into her feathers.
“Are you okay?”
Ginger swallowed and shakily nodded. “I saw their faces, or what's left of them.”
Aurora squeezed, hoping to nudge her back into the now. “Let’s get you off this rail. Come on.”
She expected the metal to creak as Ginger took her hooves away and was oddly surprised when it shrugged her off without a sound. More than a week of walking from shelter to shelter across the wasteland had made her come to expect that everything left standing would be one strong sneeze from falling over. Even the Stable beneath Blinder’s Bluff had been so stripped down to the bolts that it seemed more reasonable to scrap rather than repair it.
If it weren’t for the sludgy remains of the residents the others were presently climbing through to reach them, she might have assumed Stable 1 had only just recently collapsed.
“Move, please.”
Aurora and Ginger looked back the way they came in time to see Julip hurrying stiffly toward them with one wing gesturing them out of the way. They moved and Julip promptly boarded the railing and heaved into the void below.
Following close behind, Roach and Briar appeared less disturbed about the slick mess that coated the first few inches of their legs. The four of them moved a few steps away from Julip to avoid the hot stink of half digested beef stew that threatened to rise back up on the sweltering updraft. 
“Sorry,” Briar said, aiming his flashlight at Julip’s miserable face. She shot him a sour glare as her gut lurched again. “There’s no good way to warn anyone about them. If it’s any consolation, there’ll be less the further down we go.”
“They looked like they suffocated,” Roach rumbled.
Briar hooked a feather around the crux of Julip’s wing to keep her from leaning too far forward. “Maybe. Not sure it matters anymore. The Enclave had this place stripped down years before any of us took our first steps.”
“Assuming they even bothered,” Julip muttered.
Aurora took a sharp breath as Briar frowned at her.
“What makes you say that?”
With the exception of him, the three of them could see Julip’s throat bob as she swallowed. She pressed her lips into a thin line as she cobbled together an answer. With her injured wing, she gestured vaguely into the pit beyond the rail. 
“That,” she said.
Briar followed her gaze and, to their relief, nodded understanding. “Ah. Good eye.”
Curiosity drew Aurora, Ginger and Roach to the very edge of the floor and they peered over the railing into the dark. At first there was nothing to see, only the absence of everything, as if the floor they stood on overlooked an endless underground canyon. Then the amber light beside Ginger grew brighter and soon a watery globule of her magic was swimming out over the void.
A massive pillar of smooth concrete loomed into the light like a lurking monster, the sheer size of it confusing Aurora’s perception of reality so badly that she couldn’t decide whether it was holding the roof of the Stable up or hanging from it like some gargantuan stalactite. As Ginger swept her magic across its cylindrical surface they were able to see at least a dozen walkways stretching over the gap between the pillar and the curving edges of the endlessly repeating floors below. They reminded Aurora of the spoked wheels she’d seen on the trader wagons, laid on their sides and stacked high. 
An open doorway cut to accommodate one of the walkways gave her a clear view of the darkened stairwell within the pillar. Her eyes narrowed as several questions formed in her mind, but the stairs and the pillar containing them weren’t what Julip had motioned toward.
Down the central shaft of Stable 1, below a dizzying amount of darkened landings and well beyond the reach of their meager lights, the dim ring of a distant level flickered with a weak glow of its own.
Aurora’s heart leapt.
Briar hadn’t been lying. Some way, somehow electricity still flowed in Stable 1.
“That’s I.T.,” Briar said.
Ginger peered over the edge, her eyes wide. “How far down is it?”
“Thirty-four levels. Takes about an hour to get there.”
Roach craned his neck over the edge, mistrustful of the railing. “An hour. For a few dozen floors?”
“Don’t look at me, I didn’t design this place.” He gave Julip a tug and, surprisingly, she came away from the railing without complaint. “You’ll see what I mean when we’re on the stairs.”
They followed him along the railing, tracing the unbroken arc it drew around the circumference of the central stairwell until the rail terminated at a vertical wall of reinforced concrete. The wall bore a single placard that simply said NO RUNNING.
An empty doorframe stood in the center of the wall like an open wound. The double doors lay bent and discarded on the floor behind them, broken hinges still attached. Beyond the doorway, a simple walkway bridged the void to the stairwell.
Aurora felt her legs grow stiff at the prospect of stepping out onto the platform. “How far down to the generator?”
Briar took the first step onto the platform and paused to smirk at her. “Much, much farther.”







Scootaloo didn’t accompany them out of her office. They left her there, alone, staring down at her own reflection in the surface of her desk, trying to rectify the coming golden age of Stable-Tec with the weight of having done it solely to keep a secret safe resting on her conscience. 
Their hooves clicked over pristine marble tiles as security led them out of the building's secure corporate wing and into the sunlit public lobby. Spitfire found her eyes pulled toward the tall, narrow windows that dominated the building’s western wall. The setting sun was just beginning to peek down through the glass, giving the vast lobby a golden glow that made everything feel a little richer. More defined.
Even Primrose, who practically pranced past the information desk a few paces ahead, seemed to glow a little.
She followed her past a large group of ponies waiting next to one of several information boards while their tour guide struggled to turn on a comically small Stable-Tec branded bullhorn. Voices echoed through the space like the constant hum of a great machine. In another hour the crowds and the voices would be gone, leaving behind the quiet whisper of a building gone to sleep.
Primrose pushed through the doors, turned, and trotted backwards with a theatrical twirl of her wing. Spitfire snorted, then pointed a feather of her own at one of the many cameras perched atop the parking lot light posts not far ahead. Primrose repeated the gesture at the nearest camera, no doubt to the confusion of whichever pony whose job it was to monitor them, and beat her wings toward the ground.
Spitfire followed suit and the sidewalk, Stable-Tec HQ and the metro area of Fillydelphia shrank away beneath them in a rush of cool evening wind. Rising into the open sky was like free therapy and Spitfire took a luxuriously deep breath as the chilled currents of air held her aloft. She exhaled with a low groan as the muscles in her shoulders stretched to their limits with a pleasant release of tension. Primrose fluttered on the breeze not far ahead of her, too far updraft to hear an old mare make old mare noises.
A few hard flaps and she was able to draw up alongside her unexpectedly skilled liaison. Primrose regarded her with an anticipatory grin. She already knew the question was coming, which made shouting it across the headwind feel a little redundant.
“What did you have on her?”
She could see Primrose chuckle, but the wind devoured the sound of it. “Nothing, but not for a lack of trying. Sweetie Belle had a few indecency charges in her late teens, but the other two? Clean.”
“But she looked petrified.”
“Figured she would be,” Primrose called back. She grimaced at the strength of the eastern wind and tacked her wing until it practically overlapped Spitfire’s, the difference in air pressure pressing their feathers together. “Goody-goodies like Scootaloo are always the same. Always trying to preserve the perfect record. She could’ve been thinking I found out she rode out a few hours on her roommate’s vibrator and would’ve shat diamonds at the thought of it going public. Probably not it, though. She has more teeth to be afraid of something petty like that.”
They passed into a small thermal and both instinctively beat their opposite wings to pick up altitude. As the edge of the bustling suburbs slid behind them and the eastern slopes of the Pleasant Hills presented themselves on the horizon, they leveled off and settled into a gentler glide.
Primrose continued like she hadn’t stopped. “My guess is she buried something damaging and assumed Millie somehow dug it back up. Doesn't really matter what it is, really. Red folders tend to make a pony fear the worst.”
Spitfire arched an eyebrow at her. “You’ve done this before?”
“Once or twice. How do you think I found out about this job in the first place?” She dropped her wing over Spitfire’s again with a friendly smirk. “Always keep a few ponies wondering what you have on them and someone will eventually start spilling beans to make you go away.”
“Who?”
“Gusty Gales down in Legal. Nice stallion, rotten lay. Gave me a case of the three-week pissburns back when we were in college and he was still worrying about popping the question to his current wife. So he technically owed me.”
She frowned. Gusty had never struck her as the type to sleep around. “If that’s true, I’m not sure I can afford to have him acting as one of our contacts within the ministry.”
Primrose shook her head dismissively. “Nah, keep him. Gusty might be in the family way, but he’d die for you.”
She chewed on that for a beat, wondering if she'd meant that literally. “You did pull a rabbit out of your hat back there. Maybe Gusty just knew you’d be a good fit. Still, though. Red folders?”
“Red folders.”
“I had to threaten Dash with treason.”
“Red. Folders.”
She stuck her tongue in her cheek and laughed to herself, shaking her head as Primrose grinned at her grudging approval. Something told Spitfire this might be the first time someone hadn’t slapped her on the hoof for playing dirty. New territory for both of them. 
“I’ve created a monster,” she chuckled.
Primrose's grin touched her eyes. “Nah, I always was one. You’re just letting me spread my wings.”
> Chapter 26: Descent
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 25th, 1076

“Is that her?”
“Yah-doy, look at her mark.”
“Well sorry, I couldn’t tell. Her mane’s usually...”
“Longer.”
“Don’t usually see ponies her age with manes clipped that short.”
“It’s definitely done up. She must’ve been to Snips’ Clips.”
“Please, she’s a minister. Why would she slum it all the way down here to Ponyville when she can prob'ly afford a live-in stylist?”
“I guess. Why do you think she’s here at all?”
The lines of the article Applejack was reading fell out of focus, her ears tuned to the gossiping mares just one bench over. Blood rushed up her neck when she heard them talking about her mane. She had, in fact, just walked out of Snips’ Clips an hour earlier but it wasn’t her reason for the trip. 
Sitting alone on a park bench beside a scruffy little poplar tree, a copy of The Manehattan Times crinkled over the incline of her crossed hind leg.
“You should run home real quick and get mom’s replica Stetson. I bet she’ll sign it.”
Applejack grimaced. She was never going to finish this article.
“I don’t think ministry mares do autographs.”
“Can’t hurt to try.”
“Maybe we could…”
She set her hooves over the newsprint and turned her head to the young mares. “Ladies, I’d like to finish readin’ my paper in peace if y’don’t mind.”
The two lookiloos jumped as if a power line had fallen across their tails and stammered off some embarrassed apologies as they gathered their saddlebags and cantered away. Applejack watched them go, her right hoof absently rising to touch the spot her ponytail had always settled over her shoulder. Now her straw-blonde mane barely swept past her cheek and, strangely, she wasn’t as confident about the decision to cut it now as she had been when she walked into Snips’ salon.
She’d wanted to cut her mane short for the longest time, but something always managed to stop her. Self-consciousness, usually. The worry that ponies might think she’d given into vanity when, ever since becoming the Element of Honesty, they viewed her as the humble country bumpkin who had no patience for chasing trends. 
Smoothing the paper across her leg with one hoof, she used the other to pull a stray lock behind her ear. With the gawkers gone, she had the Sugarcube Memorial Park all to herself.
Normally she would find some humor in the name’s irony, but it wasn’t named for her or the affectation she’d never been able to shake. The tiny park, barely a postage stamp on Ponyville’s slowly expanding sprawl, was named for the historic building that once stood here. Sugarcube Corner had been a hallmark of Ponyville until the day it was reduced to splinters by a terrorist’s bomb. The explosion took the lives of the Cake family members, some faster than others, and was the catalyst that had pushed Pinkie Pie into her ever-deepening depression.
She sighed and made a mental note to check in with Pinkie one of these days. 
A sigh pushed past her lips as she quietly watched Ponyville’s enviably light traffic make its way around the cobblestone roundabout that encircled the park. The putter of the occasional engine was nothing compared to the growing roar of noise that threatened to clog the urban centers out east. Ponyville had never been home to a wealthy demographic, and the new motorized carriages of this new generation had yet to flood her hometown. She was glad for that, and smiled as she watched a sturdily-built unicorn pull his genuine rickshaw around the bend.
A bronze statue of the Cake family stood at the center of the park, the four of them posing for a group photo as they had in a family photo that survived the fire. No heroic stances, no solemn stares off into the distance. None of the subtext that Applejack had grown so tired of seeing in monuments. Just a family, sitting together in a quiet plot of land, smiling as they waited for the photographer’s flash.
“Oh, wow. You cut your mane!”
Applejack smiled and looked up to see Applebloom trotting across the grass toward her. She didn’t have to check the clocktower to know it would be ten minutes to noon. Her sister, once a filly notorious for finding any excuse to drop her share of the chores so she could run off to her treehouse with her friends, now managed a finely tuned work schedule that made Applejack feel like the family slacker by comparison. She would be ten minutes early to her own funeral if she had her way. 
She set her copy of the Times down on the bench as she stood, pulling her sister into a bone-crushing hug. A moment passed, then another, and they still clung to one another. Applejack settled her chin against the top of her sister’s shoulder, holding her, feeling the silent sting of tears in her eyes as Applebloom swallowed the grief rising in her throat. 
One-hundred and thirty-five days. That was how long it had been since their brother went missing, his mind apparently set on leaving Equestria for the Crystal Empire without a thought for what he was leaving behind. She blamed herself. Always would, she'd decided. Talking Big Mac into helping her figure out the kinks in her ministry’s power armor, ignoring what must have been a steadily growing discomfort on his part while she and her sister traded data on where adjustments needed to be made, joints modified, hydraulic lines reconfigured. All the while him feeling what must have been paralysis at the thought of expressing his misgivings.
Maybe he’d known what she was thinking. That she saw this new power armor as a family enterprise as much as the farm used to be. Robronco’s exoskeleton design, the Ministry of Technology’s application of state-of-the-art armor plating and mounted weapons platform, and Big Mac’s tired shoulders being made to bear its weight.
“How’re you holding up?” Applebloom choked.
She shook her head, the pain in her little sister’s voice like a knife in her heart. “Good days n’ bad,” she whispered.
Applebloom squeezed her a little harder as her vision blurred. 
“I’m supposed to be consoling you, you turkey,” she muttered.
“Tough teats.”
She half-snorted, half-sobbed. “Language.”
“I’ll put a bit in the swear jar when I get home.” Applebloom chuckled, hesitated, then let go.
Applejack watched her sister look up at the sky as she wiped her face, careful not to use the foreleg bearing the blocky piece of computer tech just above her hoof. A Pip-Buck, her company was calling it. Applebloom was convinced it would revolutionize Equestrian society in the next few years, so long as Robronco Industries was able to get the rest of the budding tech industry leaders on board. She was meeting some resistance there, but “ahead of its time” was a phrase her company relished to hear. It meant they were on the right track.
“So,” Applebloom said, her misty eyes glancing at the paper Applejack had just been reading. “If your mane is any indication, today’s either a really good day or a really bad one.”
She coughed out a laugh and wiped her eyes, joining her sister on the bench. Once again, she slid a hoof through the short bob of her mane. “S'pose it’s a good one,” she said.
Applebloom nodded, her eyes lifting to the empty space just above her head. “No hat?”
“Thought I’d try going incognito for a day.” 
Not that it worked, she thought.
“Rainbow Dash better like it, if she knows what’s good for her." It felt strange hearing her little sister defending her honor, but it was nothing she and Big Mac hadn’t done when Applebloom brought home her first coltfriend. A pony broke an Apple’s heart at their own risk.
“She’s been encouraging me to go out and get it cut ever since I hinted at wanting to do it. I’m afraid if I stalled any longer, she’d up n’ trim it in my sleep.”
Applebloom smiled at that. “I’m really happy for you two.”
“Me too.”
A stallion pushed a stroller onto the grass beyond the statue, oblivious to the two mares sharing a bench on the other side of the memorial. They watched him pause at a public fountain, drink, then bend down to check on his foal. A small smile crossed Applejack’s lips as they watched him stand up and continue on toward the newly paved street.
“I don’t suppose you wanted to meet me here just to reminisce,” she said.
Applebloom shook her head. “No, but… we really should set a day aside.”
She nodded. “I know.”
The suggestion withered on the vine. 
Applebloom shifted on the bench. “Do you remember Spitfire?”
She blew a disparaging breath between pursed lips. How could she forget the abrasive old mare who went over her head and offered Jet Stream a civilian contract within her ministry? The last thing she wanted to do was work with a stallion so high on his own ego that he fancied himself some technological messiah, not to mention his other back-of-the-barn proclivities. Spitfire had dumped him in her lap like the most irritating daycare mom in Equestria. 
 “She’s stuck her nose in my business enough to make an impression, sure.”
Applebloom fidgeted with the corner of the newspaper. “Yeah. So, that sorta makes three of us.”
“Three? I don’t follow. She talked to you?”
The worry in her voice was unmistakable. “Scootaloo called me last month talking about some meeting she had with Spitfire and her new personal assistant, and they more or less blackmailed her into selling a bunch of her Stables to the Ministry of Awesome.”
She frowned. “More or less?”
Applebloom winced, her eyes lost in the grass. “I mean, kind of? I thought maybe Scootaloo was overreacting about a bad deal, but the way she describes it, Stable-Tec walked away from the table with the entire pot. The MoA is gonna fully bankroll their next ninety Stables in exchange for being given ten of their own.”
“That makes about as much sense as planting saplings in December.”
“I know.” Applebloom sighed, still clearly struggling to make heads or tails of it herself. “But Scootaloo was up in arms because they’re going to build some kind of… silo, right through where Stable 1 was being built. She said it’s like they designed it for maximum inefficiency and called it a deathtrap waiting to happen. Spitfire ended up threatening to leak some dirt she dug up on Scoots and that’s…”
The clocktower at the center of Ponyville cut in with a crisp chime of bells to announce the hour. Applebloom chewed her lip as she waited for the last note to ring. When it finished and they could once again hear the birds chirping in the trees, she continued.
“Scootaloo made me promise not to tell anyone, but two days ago Spitfire showed up with that assistant of hers at my office in Las Pegasus.”
Applejack stiffened.
“They brought a contract with them for me to sign. In exchange for a… ludicrously generous subsidy, Robronco Industries would provide a full license to our most recent iterations of the M.I.L.L.I.E. system. I thought she was joking. Spitfire was buying a bushel for the price of the whole orchard.”
She was getting confused. “But we already have a Millie system installed at the Pillar. What’s she need another one for?”
Applebloom leaned back. The bench creaked. “Search me. It didn’t make sense at the time, and sure enough, when I asked what it was for her sweet little assistant dove in with the dirt. No answer, no explanation. Just a red folder for me, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle.”
“What did she have on you?”
Applebloom shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I signed the papers.”
She looked at her little sister with bewilderment. “How does it not matter? She could have been bluffing!”
“She probably was.” Applebloom kneaded the edge of one hoof into the soft sole of the other. “Could’ve had an old littering ticket for all I care. She was offering a good deal and I needed her to stop digging, same as Scoots. You already know why.”
She looked away, chewing the tip of her tongue behind closed lips as she watched a group of teenage ponies meander down the sidewalk, one of them latching their feathers around the base of a painted green lamppost and swinging lazily along its axis, singing an exaggerated tune that Applejack vaguely recognized.
Applebloom watched her, waiting for her answer. 
She was well aware of the pocket-sized articles her little sister and fellow crusaders were publishing. The Song of Letters was originally a creation of Sweetie Belle’s. A way, in her mind, to push back against the damage she felt her elder sister was doing to Equestria from the helm of the Ministry of Image. It wasn’t the first subversive piece of print to roll off the press, but the one-shot articles it offered readers were far from the typical anti-war tirades that ponies associated with banned newsprint. They were professionally drafted, calmly written opinion pieces that argued, with dangerous honesty, against the war against Vhanna. And it had weight to it. While most ponies were content to ignore the Song, a growing group were starting to listen.
Had anyone else founded the publication, Rarity would not have hesitated to set their house on fire. But Sweetie Belle was her only sibling, and like it or not she shared that house. Covering up those connections was as much an act of protecting her sister as it was protecting herself. 
And now someone was threatening the only kin she had left.
“You look angry.”
She took a breath. “That’s the polite way of sayin’ it, sure. Right now I’m well and truly pissed.”
Applebloom continued to stare at her hooves. “Language.”
She smiled, but it didn’t last long. “I don’t like the idea of my sister being blackmailed.”
“That ain't all though,” her sister nudged.
“No,” she said, feeling the heat filling her chest. “No, it ain’t. Spitfire’s job is to manage the department heads in the MoA, not cut contracts with civilians at knifepoint. She doesn’t have the authority to make any of the deals you’re describing. Not without Rainbow Dash’s approval, and even then she already has a legal department to draw up those papers. Spitfire shouldn’t even be leaving the Pillar!”
Something was obviously wrong, but it was like trying to piece together a puzzle without a picture to go along with it. Spitfire had no business doing what she was doing, and yet… she was.
“Maybe Rainbow Dash delegated the work to her?” Applebloom offered.
She shook her head, dismissing the idea. “She would have to restructure half of the ministry just to make that work. Even if she did, Luna would need to authorize final approval. The rest of the ministries would have been notified, too.”
“Doesn’t seem like any of that stopped Spitfire. Maybe she’s acting on Rainbow’s behalf?”
She looked at Applebloom and saw the creeping doubt in her eyes. “Trust me, Sis. Rainbow wouldn’t do that to you. Scootaloo, least of all. Those two are as much family as we are.”
“Yeah, but Spitfire’s always been her idol and…” she stopped, visibly uncomfortable. “Look, I shouldn’t be talking bad about her. I just want to let you know what’s been going on.”
She nodded, but she wasn’t satisfied. She thought back to their carriage ride to the badlands. Rainbow’s stiffness when she asked why Spitfire was accompanying them and how, at the time, it seemed strange that Rainbow would sound so resigned when she credited Spitfire for how smoothly the MoA was running.
She frowned.
Applebloom nudged her hip. “You okay, AJ? You're starting to worry me.”
“Ah’m fine. Jes’... gimme a minute.” Her accent came back thick as the alarm bells in her head were loud. 
Bringing up Spitfire had gotten Rainbow’s hackles up. Applejack assumed she was being defensive. A remnant of self-conscious pride from when they were younger and she was used to firing from the hip and asking forgiveness later. But that hadn’t been it.
She thought back to what Rainbow had said. 
“She’s the reason my ministry operates as smoothly as it does. I try to keep her in the loop wherever I can.”
And then her tone had shifted. Grown barbs.
“That, and I owe her a favor.”
Applejack lurched up from the bench and spat a curse. A burning, white-hot anger ignited inside her as the last pieces of the picture fell into place. Somewhere nearby, Applebloom paced alongside her asking what was wrong. She was dizzy with anger.
Of course Spitfire had been able to get Jet Stream contracted with the Ministry of Technology without her consent. Of course she had been able to weasel her way into a demonstration of Equestria’s most deadly weapon. Of course she’d promised Scootaloo and Applebloom the moon without hesitating to blackmail them into signing on the dotted line.
Of course she would operate so far beyond the scope of her job that it would give Rainbow Dash no other choice but to lie to her.
Applebloom skirted in front of her, forcing her to stop. “What. Is. Wrong?”
She bit the back of her tongue hard enough to taste blood. Maybe she was getting ahead of herself. No. Something told her she was only just beginning to catch up. 
“I just don’t like the thought of her talkin’ you into a corner, that’s all.”
It wasn’t technically a lie. More like an omission of truth. Or suspicion. Maybe both.
Applebloom watched her, clearly aware that there were gears spinning in her sister’s head she wasn’t being made privy to. A moment passed, then another. Finally, Applebloom nodded, her eyes lowered. A carriage horn chirped a few blocks away, the noise of a pony with simpler problems.
“That’s the reason I came all this way to see you.” Applebloom paused to track a white stallion on the sidewalk as he trotted by. He noticed them watching, lifted a feather above his forehead and tipped an imaginary hat before continuing well out of earshot.
Applejack watched the stallion depart, knowing he would find someplace unobtrusive to stop and monitor them. “He’s one of mine,” she assured her.
Applebloom nodded, but lowered her voice all the same. “Scootaloo, Sweetie and I are as close to certain as we can be that whatever Spitfire wants with those Stables, it isn’t above board. The version of Millie we’ve licensed out to Stable-Tec is tightly controlled. The fact that she’s extorting Robronco for full access right after buying ten Stables has me worried. She could take all ten of them off the remote network. Scoots and I would be blind.”
Applejack frowned, realizing this wasn’t just a few red flags but an entire shipment of them. “Best assessment of what she’d want with ten off-the-grid Stables?”
Her sister shook her head. “If I had to guess, black sites. Or she just wants to cash in on ticket sales while ponies are scared. We don’t know, which is why we need your help to keep an eye on her.”
She lifted a brow and uttered a dark chuckle. “If that old bird is doing what I think she’s doing, she’s got a lot more to worry about than me lookin’ through her keyhole.”
“Maybe,” Applebloom nodded vaguely. “We’re thinking a little bigger than a keyhole. How do you feel about the Ministry of Tech branching out into the public works industry?”
Applejack blinked. “As in…?”
“Fiberoptic and high-voltage cable. We’re going to need enough to bury a few thousand miles’ worth. Maybe more.” 
Her lip quirked into a rebellious little smile. The same one she donned whenever she and her fellow Crusaders were about to embark on something equal parts dangerous and fun.
“Spitfire ain't the only pony who can play dirty.”








Level 16...


Level 17...


Level 18…


They had been descending the stairwell for what felt like an hour, but when Aurora slowed to check her Pip-Buck she was disheartened to see only half that time had passed. Round and round they trod until the slow clatter of hooves against antique steel treads sank into the Stable’s bowels.
Sweat gathered down the ridge of her spine, tracing faint lines of moisture down her ribs as it fell. The heat rising from below made breathing a labor, each damp inhalation more like a swallow. It simultaneously dried and wetted their throats the further they walked, an uncomfortable sensation that tickled the occasional coughs from everyone except Roach.
She couldn’t help but feel a tug of jealousy toward him, though becoming a ghoul was a heavy price to pay for the luxury of choosing when he needed to breathe. No one had noticed until Julip pointed it out, forcing him into the unenviable position of being at the center of a long discussion about the properties of his altered physiology. Aurora didn’t contribute any probing questions and tried not to groan as Briar filled the time with his own. The minor interrogation taught them that part of Roach’s unnaturally slowed metabolism allowed him to forgo the need to eat, sleep, drink and in their present case breathe for long periods of time. Interesting factoids, and none of them useful to the task of walking stairs. She considered forcing a change in subject, but Roach’s polite and clipped responses to Briar and Julip brought their questions to quick conclusions until the topic eventually stagnated on its own.


Level 19...


The monolithic black letters painted stark black slid past them along the endlessly curving wall. Below them, the landing to the massive donut-shaped disc of Level 19. Ginger passed her magic across the bridge connecting the stairwell to the darkened level, confirming that not all of the Stable's residents had reached the top. Leaving the bodies to their rest, she doused her horn and they continued down. 
Five more circuits around the great stairway until Level 20.
Ten more circuits until Twenty-One.
Fifteen until Twenty-Two.
The treads of the stairs overhead were so low that if Aurora reached up with her wing she’d be able to drag her feathers along the damp stalactites of rust growing from their undersides. The painfully shallow decline from one step to another made for slow progress, and as if to add insult to injury the stairs themselves were barely wide enough to accommodate two ponies shoulder to shoulder. It was as if Stable-Tec had gone through pains to invent the least efficient staircase to ever exist.
She tried and quickly failed to make sense of it. Her wing slid along the railing, over layers upon layers of chipped, colorful paint worn smooth by the hooves of the original inhabitants. Every half-turn, her feathers would bump into one of the welded steel braces that connected the railing on one side of the hollow column to the treads on the other. Another half turn and her feathers bumped over the next beam. And again. And again.
The descent gave her ample time to pare down the simple math of the stairs. Five full turns, then a landing. Five more turns, another landing. She noticed a strip of browning cloth, the remains of some sort of banner, dangling from the brace beneath her hooves and timed herself. Half a minute later, the banner was above her. Two and a half minutes between each level. A little more than an hour to reach Thirty-Four, assuming they kept this pace the entire way down.
She frowned. How far down was Stable 1’s generator?
As they passed into the Twenties, she began to notice signs posted on the wall. Most were at eye level but a few barely came up to Aurora’s chest as they passed. Signs that shouted NO RUNNING and YIELD RAILWARD TO STUDENTS slid by as if to chastise her for her inattentiveness. The shorter more colorful signs offered more cheery reminders such as TWILIGHT SEZ: DON’T PRACTICE SPELLS ON THE STAIRS! and THINK OF THOSE ABOVE - DO NOT PUSH OR SHOVE!
As they passed the cartoonish depiction of the Element of Magic and her cheery speech bubble, Roach glanced back at Ginger and pointed it out with mock seriousness. “Twilight says,” he chuckled, indicating her horn.
Aurora smiled as Ginger answered him with a haughty protrusion of her tongue, and hovering her apple-sized sphere of luminous magic near the tip of his own fissured horn for the next several turns.


	Level 26…


	Level 27…


	Level 28…


Past the mid-Twenties, the reminders for school-aged foals grew more infrequent and aging signs of violence became more apparent. As they rounded the landing to Twenty-Nine they discovered that the bridgeway had been ripped apart. Scorch marks blackened the concrete where a fire had burned and Aurora’s feathers came off the railing smeared with char. Graffiti written in beige wall paint flaked off the wall, announcing yet again, DOWN WITH THE UPPERS. Various other slogans adorned the next turn, some still clearly legible while an effigy of a unicorn appeared to have been chiseled out of the concrete by hoof. 
The signs of a Stable in collapse were everywhere. As they passed by the landing of Thirty, they came across a section of railing that had been sheared away and dangled precariously over the stairway’s central shaft. Someone had come in later and tied a length of rubber hose from one end of the gap to the other, serving as a makeshift replacement.
The hose had since rotted away, leaving behind the remains of two knotted pieces on either stump of railing. They gave the gap a wide berth as they passed.
Hooves clicked down treads gently warped by the heavy traffic that once thundered up and down them, and Thirty-One came and went. Then Thirty-Two. As they came to the landing of Thirty-Three, Briar clicked off his flashlight. The light from IT one level below filled the stairwell with enough residual glow that they could see without aides, and they descended the last few turns with a sense of something like relief.
Aurora kept her eyes forward as she crossed the bridgeway. In spite of her wings, something about this place seemed to be undoing the confidence she had grown in her novice skills at flight. Falling from here with so many obstacles waiting in the black below made her heart beat a little harder, and she hurried over to the landing where the others were already gathered.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as she walked into what remained of a beige, businesslike lobby decorated with equal portion informational posters and slashes of graffiti. The receptionist’s desk, a crescent-shaped curve of wood centered along a wall pockmarked with bullet holes, lay hunkered behind a jumbled barricade of waiting room furniture. Briar led them through a narrow gap in a tangle of chairs, their tan upholstery dark with different shades of mold. Aurora held her breath as she passed by, following the group through a doorway whose door had been taken off its hinges and propped against the wall.
Aurora glanced down at the trio of steel door pins set on the floor beside it, each placed parallel to one another like pencils on a supervisor's desk.
“Enclave’s definitely been here.” Roach's pale eyes lingered on the skeletal form of a unicorn that had been pushed to the side of the hallway beyond, the pistol laying near its horn, missing its magazine.
“They’ve been sending monthly patrols out to check on this place since before we moved to the mountain.” Briar gestured a feather toward a unicorn slumped in the corner where the hall bent right. Its skin hung on its frame like a deflated balloon, swallowed by the bulletproof vest it wore around its chest. 
A mean-looking rifle lay across its lap. Aurora could feel her grip loosening around Beans’ iron bar as she contemplated taking the forgotten weapon.
Briar seemed to read her mind. “Leave it there. That one's booby-trapped.”
She frowned after him as he continued around the bend, then looked more closely at the rifle. At first glance it looked fine. It even had a fresh magazine in the port. Then she bent to look at the end of the barrel and noticed the greyish matter smeared around its rifling, and the similarly colored lump stuffed a few inches deeper.
Her trust in the weapon gone, she trotted around the bend to catch up. “Is that cement?”
At the head of the line, Briar shook his head. “Plastic explosive.”
She blinked, unsure how plastic could be explosive, but the question crumbled when she noticed Julip’s ears stand up. Her head spun and she glared toward the baited rifle as if its mere existence was a personal affront. Then, realizing Julip and Ginger were watching from behind, she pressed her lips together and faced forward.
The carpeted hall took them past a line of open doors bearing the names of Stable 1’s final residents. Aurora peered into one of the offices, its overhead light buzzing resiliently. If it weren’t for the thick layer of muddy dust coating every surface or the withered legs visible behind the desk, it could have been just another workday. 
“Tickets, please,” Briar said, pulling her attention to where he slowed to a stop at the hall’s terminus. A steel door, barely larger than the office doors on either side of it, waited between two woefully underwatered potted ferns. Briar held a wing open toward Roach as if expecting him to produce a stub to be stamped.
As the rest of them gathered at the door, Roach uttered a ragged chuckle and shook his head. “Ticketmasters asked that before the train left the station, not after.”
Briar used the same wing to wave him off. “Ah, well, don’t tell Beans. She's young, but she is obsessed with historical accuracy.” He nodded back to Aurora, pointing a feather at the iron bar slung over her shoulder. “Yo-ho?”
Aurora sighed and lifted Beans’ make-believe sword. “Yo-ho.”
“Atta girl,” he said, then turned to the bulkhead. 
A silver keypad swayed on a tangled nest of wires where it had been pried from the wall. Deep gouges in the concrete around it pointed to some long-forgotten pony’s frustration of being kept outside.
“I guess I’ll ask,” she said as Briar squinted into the void left by the destroyed keypad. “What’s behind the door?”
“This is the server room for the Stable,” he answered, eyes locking onto something tucked up behind the wall panel. He stuffed the tip of his wing into the square cut-out and fished down a small cluster of frayed wires. “Also happens to be where the power comes in.”
Aurora quirked her lip, strongly doubting that. Even on its best day, the generator back home put out enough vibration to be heard through several layers of good soundproofing. A Stable this large had to have an equally large generator or, likely, more than one. It was quiet enough down here to hear things that weren't there, let alone something that actually was. If a generator was spinning behind that door she would eat her Pip-Buck.
Unconcerned by her obvious doubt, Briar had selected a pair of wires in each wing, winced, and scraped them together. His entire body jumped as a spark snapped across the frayed ends and the lights above momentarily dimmed. Momentum pulled the wires back apart and the connection broke. 
The security door clunked and swayed open.
“I hate maglocks!” he laughed, shaking his wings out to lessen the sting. “Goddesses, that never gets any better.”
Julip lifted a curious brow. “Goddesses?”
Briar paused, catching himself, then shrugged. He pushed the door the rest of the way open, ushering them through.
“Old habit,” he said, holding the door. “I grew up in Enclave country, back when they still held Steepleton. My mother was a lifelong believer with the Church  even after the Rangers pushed in.”
“I passed through Steepleton when I left New Canterlot,” Ginger said with a note of nostalgia. “It was a gorgeous little town.”
Briar nodded with a smile of his own as she walked by, but stopped Aurora as she approached the door. He held out his wing, nodding to Beans’ sword, which she lifted over her neck and dropped in his dusty feathers. With a grunt, he wedged it into the jamb. Aurora tried not to think of what might happen if the door swung shut behind them.
“Haven’t been a believer for a long, long time,” he continued, welcoming Aurora over the threshold with a sweep of his feathers. There was a pain in his smile that she saw as she passed, as if just by speaking he was pressing a hoof into an old bruise. “Hard to shake the vocabulary.”
Aurora nodded absently, her mind elsewhere as she gawked at the vast forest of servers spread out before her. Long rows of black, whirring obelisks frantically blinked and chittered on a perfectly measured checkerboard that stretched uninterrupted toward each of the room’s stark white walls. The linoleum beneath her hooves had once been white as well, but had since turned the color of dehydrated urine under the endless glare of the fluorescents above. 
She stepped toward the nearest of the servers and marveled at how… clean it was. The black pores of its cage were virtually devoid of dust. A jungle of meticulously pathed, color-coded and labeled wires snaked from a highway of conduit tacked into the ceiling and slithered their way into the cabinet to carefully organized racks. Green and yellow LEDs flickered along patch panels installed and switched on centuries before she was even dreamed of, dutifully doing whatever it was they were tasked to do, unaware that the Stable that surrounded them was long dead.
At the top of the server, several fans pushed warm air toward a waiting air duct. A bright, white 40 was stamped into the top of the cabinet in stark relief.
Julip hummed. “So, they don’t believe in goddesses in Ranger territory?”
Aurora took a breath. She was probing. 
Before Briar could answer, Ginger stepped in. “Much as I would love to talk religion at the dinner table,” she said, pointedly looking at Julip, “perhaps our time would be better spent discussing those.”
She motioned toward the servers. All eyes followed, but Briar had the look of a stallion who had outgrown the wonder of what lay before him and now viewed it with the same might-as-well curiosity as if it were an uninspired roadside attraction. 
“Not much to discuss,” he said, passing Aurora and wading deeper into the rows. “Best me or any of the other Scavs can tell, they’re just servers. Ruminating on old data like cows on cud, back when there were still cows.”
Aurora and the others followed. Heat boiled off of the servers like weak ovens, causing her throat to tickle. She cleared it just as Ginger drew up alongside her.
“It’s dry in here,” she said.
“Only place left in the Stable that can drive off the humidity,” Briar agreed, dragging his feathers across the front of a passing cabinet.
Each one, Aurora realized, had a different number. A different role. She nodded, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of… pity, maybe? It felt silly to feel something like pity for a machine, but there it was. She felt sorry for them. Like they were the last survivors of the event that doomed their minders. 
As if sensing her confliction, Ginger drifted toward her until their shoulders touched. Aurora glanced at the brief contact and offered a small smile of assurance. She was okay. 
Julip’s voice piped up from the next row over. “I’m surprised your Scav friends didn’t want to, you know, scavenge these.”
“Oh, they did. Still want to, in fact. This Stable is a gold mine of spare parts, old tech, tools, weapons… you name it.” He sidestepped a utility cart, tools and test equipment still waiting to be picked up again. “But for now, nobody wants to risk tampering with anything that might provoke the Enclave to come looking before we’re ready. Once Beans is old enough, we’ll rejoin the Scavs and bring a caravan to strip out what we can. Make enough caps to buy some influence with the Rangers, maybe even get their endorsement so we can quit pretending to be raiders.”
Aurora frowned. “I thought you wanted a spot in our Stable.”
He looked back at her and winced. “I do. Merry almost started packing Beans’ things when I told her you’d offered. There’s nothing more important to us than her safety.”
“Here comes the ‘but,’” Julip chimed in.
Briar frowned at her. “But, right now your Stable is, and I don’t mean any offense, a risk factor. That’s why we haven’t said anything to Bean yet. I don’t want to get any of our hopes up, especially hers.”
She couldn’t argue his reasoning, even if it did dampen the little lump of pride she'd felt for offering them what she viewed as a better life. She’d barely considered the possibility that Briar had plans, even aspirations of his own. Gradually, the what-ifs began creeping in. What if they asked to bring their family along too? What if the Scavs were their entire family and it turned into an all-or-nothing deal? What if Beans turned out to be claustrophobic or Meridian wound up ostracized for being an earth pony? What if, once they entered Stable 10, they decided they wanted to go back outside?
What if the other pegasi she’d spent her life with decided they wanted to leave like she did?
Ginger’s breath warmed her ear. “Breathe.”
She took a quiet breath, held it, and blew it out. The panic had crept into her chest so quickly that it left her shaken. So much of what she said, what she did, even where she chose to take her next step affected the lives of nearly a thousand pegasi waiting for her to fulfill a single promise. One mistake was all it would take to ruin everything.
Ginger’s shoulder continued to press against hers and, slowly, the fear abated enough for her to take the reins again. By the time she felt closer to normal, they had reached the end of the servers.
A blank white wall stood before them. 
“Wow,” Julip said, rounding the adjacent server. “That’s a pretty nifty wall.”
Briar shook his head and squinted at the yellowed linoleum beneath his hooves, his feather guiding his eyes as he scanned the tiles. He stopped when he found a square marked so faintly that it could have been mistaken for a fabrication error. Barely the size of a pinhead, the corner of one of the tiles was just barely darker than the rest. 
He pressed the edge of his hoof into the seam and the linoleum lifted away like a rug. Grabbing the flap between his feathers, he peeled away a three-by-three section of unglued flooring to reveal an access panel sunken into the bare concrete.
He slipped a feather through a ring in the center of the panel. With a jerk, the panel separated along a rubber gasket and lifted free. Setting it aside, Briar fished his flashlight out of his vest, clicked it on and pointed it into the hole.
A cockroach the size of Aurora’s hoof emitted a keening chitter and scurried down a bundle of wires on legs thick as pencils. She cursed and reared back hard enough to send herself toppling onto her backside, only to shove herself back even more with the meager purchase her hooves had on the smooth linoleum.
“What the fuck is that?!” she barked.
Briar, Roach, Ginger and Julip stared at her from the edge of the hole, equally surprised by her reaction. 
“It’s just a radroach,” Briar said, trying his best not to laugh. “It’s fine, they’re mostly harmless.”
Aurora shook her head. “No way. That thing was huge.”
Ginger trotted over and offered a helping hoof, her face touched with an apologetic smile. Then, as Aurora took her leg and hesitantly got up, Ginger’s smile bent into a confused frown. “Have we really walked this far without seeing even one?”
The blood drained from Aurora's face. “Do not tell me there’s more outside.”
Ginger stayed silent. 
A distant chitter echoed out of the open panel.
“Wait.” Julip wrinkled her nose and looked at the changeling beside her. “Is that why they call you Roach?”
Roach rolled his eyes and pointed to the hole in front of him. “Can we please get back to this?”
“Nope.” Aurora took a cautious step toward one of the servers, willing to try tipping it over the hole if it came down to it. “I don’t do bugs. No fucking way.”
Julip barely suppressed a laugh and gestured to Roach, much to his growing consternation. “Um, hello?”
“Roach is different. Roach sucks at karaoke and can open bottle caps with his legs. Roach is awesome.” She shook her head and stabbed a hoof toward the hatch. “That thing hissed at me and went to rat us out to its creepy-crawly nestmates. Also, fuck you, he’s not a bug.”
The Enclave mare’s mouth hung open, ready to return fire, but Briar was quicker on the draw. “Woah, woah, woah. Dial it down a little, you two. I don’t think Julip understands what she said.”
Aurora set her jaw, torn between monitoring the insect pit of death and dead-eyeing the mint green mare doing her best impression of a pony simply aghast at how quick to anger she was. 
Sensing the growing tension, Briar motioned to pick the panel back up. “Maybe we should take a few minutes and circle back when everyone has a moment to cool off.”
“No,” Aurora said, not wanting to have walked all the way down here just to hit the pause button. “Just… show us. Please.”
After looking at each of them in turn and determining the little moment of chaos was cooling to a simmer, he shook his head with a sigh and pointed his light back into the hole. “You’ll need to come closer to see, Aurora.”
Grudgingly, she allowed herself to be led toward the hole. She stopped a full step shy of it, opting to crane her neck forward to peer down where the light was aimed. The radroach was gone, but the scratch marks it left in the fine dust that coated the wires were perfectly visible. Her skin itched sympathetically.
The light tracked smoothly toward the wall where the splayed cables came together in a bundle thick as Aurora’s leg before similar bundles branched together into a torso-thick mass. The heavy line snaked into a stainless steel port built into the exterior wall and disappeared.
Aurora pressed her lips together and frowned.
“Even if that is the outer wall,” she said, “it’s not a concrete slab. There’s going to be another yard of reinforced steel webwork after that, and another concrete layer after that. It probably just follows the hollow space between layers.”
Briar shook his head. “Not this kind of cable. Look at the black wrapping around the biggest bundle. That’s solid dielectric insulation.”
Aurora hesitated. They were quickly approaching the limits of her vocabulary, and Briar seemed to actually understand what he was talking about. “So it’s an underground transmission line. We’re underground.”
“But you know what I mean,” he persisted.
She did, but that didn't mean she was sold on it.
“Merry and I took a compass around the valley and we found a weak magnetic field that starts at the ramp and runs east. It’s a buried line.”
“Could be ferrous ore,” she countered.
“It isn’t,” he said. 
He turned, lifted the cover panel off the floor and pressed it back into place, but the relief that washed over Aurora was short-lived. 
“I’ve been to the bottom of this Stable,” he said, something they all knew from the pump that now adorned the back of his cave. “I’ve seen the generator, and it isn’t running. All the pieces are still there, sure, but it ran out of gas a long time ago.”
Her leg was bouncing. She pressed down to stop it.
“No offense,” she said, mustering what she could of her crumbling confidence, “but I’ll believe that when I see it.” 
Briar shrugged, unsurprised. “That is why we’re here, after all. That and the family pump. Though, if it’s all the same to you I’d prefer to stay up here while you go spelunking. My leg can only take so much abuse in one day."
His disarmingly polite nature nearly had Aurora agreeing to leave him on his own no questions asked, but alarms sounded immediately in the survival-oriented portion of her brain. Briar was a nice enough stallion; married, a happy father, resourceful and what Aurora uncomfortably accepted as a fan of hers… but she'd known him for, what, three hours at most? For all she knew, he could be planning on running back up those steps and locking the door on his way out. 
Sure, it wasn't a creative betrayal. Or profitable. And they could cut his power and water in retaliation. 
She quirked her lip. The wasteland was making her paranoid. 
Roach seemed to be weighing his own suspicions, evidenced by the subtle tilt of his voice. "You've been walking fine this far."
"Old injury," Briar said, lifting his right foreleg and turning it over so they could see the ragged seam of gnarled, hairless tissue that ran through his fetlock and down to the base of his hoof. "The scar is more interesting than the story of how I got it. Stiffens up if I overwork it, and thirty-four turns on the merry-go-round is bad enough. Rather not lame myself up with the next hundred and ten."
Aurora's ears dropped. "How many?" 
"Toldja it was a ways down." He chuckled, but not without sympathy. "Maintenance levels start at the One-Forties. Bottom level is One-Forty-Four. That's where you'll find the cistern and the backup pumps. Generator room is down there too."
Against her better judgment, she started doing the math yet again. Five turns per level, thirty seconds around each turn. 
"That's over four hours, one way."
Briar nodded, and the air seemed to rush out of the room. Four hours on the stairs. The scale of this place made Stable 10 feel like a utility closet. 
Roach sat. “I’ll stay here with Briar." His tone made it less of an offer and more a statement of fact. “We’ll hold down the fort until you get back.”
“I’ll stay, too.”
Unsurprised, Aurora sighed as Julip headed toward Roach. Maybe it was instinct or something as simple as petty jealousy, but seeing Julip glued to Roach’s hip for the past day was beginning to wear thin with her. Even Roach seemed a little uncomfortable at the sound of her volunteering to stay. His original condition that Julip remain with him for the duration of her service seemed to be backfiring, especially now that she was insisting on remaining in close proximity to the only dustwing in the Stable.
“I’d rather you come down with us.” Aurora pushed away from the server, meeting her eye. “You’re the only one who knows how to safely remove a talisman, after all.”
Confusion flickered over Julip’s features and was gone just as fast. It was a blatant lie, but Julip was in no position to correct her. Her role as Aurora’s fellow Stable dweller was the only story cooling any suspicions Briar might have about her, and breaking that fiction would cause no small number of immediate problems for all of them.
“I guess I am,” she agreed, her path subtly bending away from Roach and toward Aurora. She curled her wingtip and thumped - as much as feathers could thump - it into Roach’s shoulder as she walked by. “You boys behave.”
Aurora rolled her eyes while Ginger once again sidled up beside her. If Julip did have one valuable skill, it was that she switched gears faster than a prewar transmission. 
“We’ll try to be quick,” she said. 
“Good luck,” Roach called back. “I’ll bang on the railing if you need to turn around.”
If I need help.
She considered changing her mind, let Julip stay here while she and Ginger made their way down, but Briar would have immediate questions. The dishonesty, though well-meaning, had locked them onto a singular path now. If Briar found out who Julip was, he wouldn’t think twice about picking up stakes and moving his family as soon as possible. Beans would be caught in the middle, put at risk before she had a chance to experience real safety.
Once she had the talisman and Stable 10 was in sight, then she could tell them. The Enclave wouldn’t be able to hurt them even if they wanted to once the great gear rolled shut.
The deflated bodies in the hall grinned up at them as they retraced their steps until they came upon the former resident whose empty pistol rested beside its horn. She scooped it up as they passed and gently turned it over in her feathers, checking it for the explosive plastic Briar warned them about. It was empty in that respect as well. Best case, they would come across matching ammunition. Worst case, she could sell it on their way back west.
Through the lobby and across the bridgeway, the great spiralling stairwell loomed out of the sweltering dark to embrace them once again.








Level 61…


Level 62…


Level 63…


Plip.
Aurora’s ear flicked the warm droplet over the railing only for another to land squarely on the rim of her nostril, prompting her to wipe an aggravated wing across her running nose. 
The once rough diamond treads had been worn smooth by generations of unrelenting hoof traffic, making for a slick and uneasy descent. The hot, humid air rising up from the darkness below resolved in the light of Aurora’s Pip-Buck as a thin mist, readily condensing on every surface it touched. Down in the Sixties, that included them. 
Water collected wherever it could. Along the rails, on the wall, and seemingly at the bottoms of Aurora’s lungs. She could smell and taste the musty air with every breath. She’d read about swimming when she was little and always wondered what it would be like to have enough clean water in one place to submerge herself in it, and now she felt like she understood.
Further back, Julip sniffed at her own runny nose. “I wouldn’t have guessed it could rain inside a Stable.”
Aurora coughed, her mane flopping against her cheek like a wet mop. The sound of water trickling down the walls of the surrounding levels would have been soothing were it not for the fact that it was quickly becoming the main cause of their exhaustion. Walking the stairs was bad enough. Her legs were already burning from the steady, merciless decline. But it was the unrelenting heat that was wringing the strength from her muscles.
She spotted the thick, black letters of Level 64 sliding around the damp concrete cylinder and tried - really tried - not to think about how many more they had left to walk.
Not to mention the ascent, after.
“Yeah,” she grunted.
Shadows of the passing rail swayed back and forth with each step she took, cast by the pale green light of her Pip-Buck. Ginger had since doused her horn. The wet concrete reflected enough light to illuminate several turns of steps above and below.
“I guess this is why Briar calls this place the Boiler,” Julip continued. 
Aurora sighed as she recognized the persistent tone of a pony who was trying to force a conversation. She had just begun to adjust to the quiet.
“It’s gotta be ninety degrees down here.”
It was warmer than that. Aurora’s Pip-Buck had buzzed against her foreleg once already, quietly alerting her to a potential fault in what it believed was Stable 10’s heat exchange system. If it weren’t so miserably balmy, she might have laughed at the thought of an automated work ticket popping up into the queue back home. She doubted it worked that way, but it was an entertaining thought.
“You could have suffocated.”
That got her attention. Her gait slowed and she looked at Julip with a bewildered frown. “Excuse me?”
Julip’s expression was every bit as uncomfortable as hers was confused. She avoided their gaze, choosing to stare down at the dripping treads instead. She looked like a filly debating whether or not to tell the teacher she’d stolen a caramel from her desk. For a moment it seemed like she was reconsidering it. Frustration, seemingly with herself, pinched the corners of her mouth into a tight line.
Aurora stopped on the stairs and waited for her to spit it out.
Trapped by her own words, Julip came to a slow halt and gestured vaguely at the unicorn between them. “Not you. Ginger. She could have suffocated. It happens sometimes.”
Ginger looked to Aurora for explanation, but she had none to offer. Turning to Julip, she asked, “I don’t understand.”
Julip offered a tiny shrug. “When I pushed you through the door. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole.”
Ah, Aurora thought. The tension in her chest loosened a little as she understood what this was. Why Julip had been trying to start up a casual chat in the yawning depths of a dead Stable. A mindless drone of the Enclave, maybe she wasn’t. Not entirely. 
Maybe she actually felt bad.
They gave her room to talk, and gradually, she did.
“Don’t take this the wrong way. I was watching you hold your breath when you started to go through. Then you stopped. You were about to back out.”
In the pale light, Aurora watched Ginger’s expression soften. She nodded.
Julip’s wings bobbed a quick shrug. “Sometimes, when we’re retrieving artifacts in the field, we have to wiggle through tight spots to get where we’re going. Collapses, mostly. The worst ones force you to empty your lungs so you can fit. If you screw up and try to take a breath, you plug the hole. Panic. Sometimes we can get ponies out before they get too wedged in. Sometimes we can’t.”
Ginger’s gaze grew distant as she understood. “You’ve seen it happen before.”
Julip swallowed, then nodded. “Pegasi my size have better odds of being assigned to the field. We can get into places other ponies can’t. Perks of being small.”
They digested that. Aurora’s first instinct was that Julip was spinning a yarn to wring a little sympathy out of what had until now seemed like an thoughtless act of spite. She’d already proven herself an adept liar insofar as it hinged on keeping Briar from realizing he’d been palling around with an agent of the Enclave.
She could still be lying now, but Aurora's gut told her she was being honest this time. Her ribs were still tender from being ground against the immovable steel door sixty-some levels above, and the thought of inhaling while pinned within its bite… Julip was right. Just the thought of being wedged there, her lungs burning, made her shudder. She wondered what exactly Julip had experienced to know a pony could die in such an uncomplicated trap. It seemed unwise to ask.
To her surprise, Ginger reached out and touched Julip on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said, adding, “Perhaps don’t keep something like that to yourself next time.”
Julip leaned slightly away from Ginger’s hoof, breaking contact as subtly as she could. “Yeah, well. Hard to do when you’re afraid someone’s about to make you swallow your own teeth.”
Aurora coughed a quiet laugh, decided that was fair and started back down the steps. After a beat, Ginger followed with Julip in tow.
The conversation faded as quickly as it had come. They weren’t friends, her and Julip. She didn’t see that happening even under the best of circumstances. Julip felt more like a shift supervisor that stayed on site long after she was supposed to punch out. A watchful eye who quietly compiled information for an organization whose motivations were, at best, highly suspect. 
Maybe Julip had acted out of the goodness of her heart when she shoved Ginger. Maybe under that thick, scabby layer of grating self-supremacy, there was a pony still capable of being decent. Maybe. But probably not. A turd with a gold nugget inside was still a turd.
Her left knee started to click as they passed into the Seventies. She sighed. The plodding, clockwise spiral of the stairs put just enough imbalance in her gait that it was only a matter of time before her joints began to protest. Little as she liked the idea of climbing all the way back up on a sore leg, there wasn’t any way around it. The gap surrounding the stairwell was spacious, terrifyingly so, but flying into the black with every chance of crashing into any number of bridgeways was a fast track to an unpleasant death. 
They were one stairwell away from the finish line, an ignition talisman and the salvation of her home. Briar and his wife had dragged that unwieldy pump up these stairs. She could deal with a little discomfort. 
Halfway through the Seventies, they began to smell something odd coming up with the rising mist. Ginger was the first to notice it. A pungent, almost overpowering scent tinged heavily with the odor of rot. For a moment Aurora was afraid they might be coming up on another mass of corpses like the gelatinous remains piled against the door to the security office up top. But as they drew nearer, it clarified into a much smoother and less unpleasant medley. Relief washed over her as the familiar scent of earthy decay filled the stairwell. She couldn’t help but hurry a little as they approached the next landing.
Ginger could tell she was thinking about investigating. “Pit stop?”
“Definitely,” Aurora nodded, peering across the walkway and into the deep shadows of Level 77. “Let’s take a break. I know where we are.”
Grateful for the reprieve, they followed her across the gap and through a sheet of warm droplets spilling down from the levels above. But instead of taking them to an enclosed lobby like they had in IT, the bridgeway terminated at a strip of open floor that, as far as Aurora could tell in their limited light, ran the inner circumference of the level in an unbroken ring. A wheelbarrow lay tipped on its side not far from the landing. A thick layer of mud clung to the lowest corner of the bucket, but it was the wheel that caught Aurora’s attention. She shined her light at it and squinted, confused by the state of it. The vulcanized rubber had been removed from the corroded rim. In its place, two halves of what looked like the composite wood formed a rough approximation of the original. 
Layers of masking tape had been added as a sort of tire, but it hadn’t lasted long. The wheel had split apart years ago, ruining the makeshift tire in the process. Likely taken for a trip on the stairs, she surmised. How much work had one pony put into making one wheel, only to discard the barrow for the rust to reclaim it?
And why hadn’t they gone down to Supply for a proper replacement in the first place?
Ginger drew alongside her and lit her horn, sending the little mote of amber light on a wide left toward a wall decorated with dilapidated posters and rusting benches, then to the right where it hovered toward a strange sight. A black cable dangled in from the void above the bridgeway, hanging from a series of steel straps that appeared to be hammered unevenly across the concrete ceiling. Ginger’s light followed it toward the wall where several more hooks led it to a power outlet near the floor. The outlet had been stripped and the cable, oddly enough, spliced in.
She eyed the condensation on the floor with some hesitation. “Don’t step in the puddles.”
It was easier said than done, but the scent wafting around them at least gave them their pick of which direction to proceed. The pungent odor of decaying plant matter was everywhere. She tilted her Pip-Buck toward the curving wall directly ahead where a door stood ajar, held open by something wedged beneath it. 
She recognized it immediately. A gardener’s trowel. She headed for the door.
Julip was quick to protest. “Are you seriously going toward the stink? It smells like a sewer in there.”
“It’s just compost,” she said, peering through the doorway and the narrow hall beyond. “How long ago did this Stable go dark, anyway?”
“A few decades at least.” Ginger followed her into the darkened hallway, sending her light flitting into the ransacked offices that passed them on either side. She made an uneasy face. “The, ah… Unicorn Bloom has had ample time to be picked clean.”
Their light caught the shape of a body on the floor as they passed a small conference room, the pony rendered unrecognizable by time and endless damp. It had long since ceased putrefying, lending more evidence that Stable 1 was not a recent failure.
And yet, the smell of compost lingered. Curiosity tugged at her, drawing her deeper into the corridor. It wasn’t long before she reached the end and was presented with two choices. Left or right. On a whim, she turned right. It was a good whim.
She spotted them as soon as the lamplight from her Pip-Buck passed over them. Leaves. Dark and pasted flat against the floor by rot and humidity, but still, leaves. She recognized their coarse, oval shape from her days spent wandering the gardens back home while her father worked. Looking up, she saw more forming a speckled trail toward an open door at the edge of her light. She followed it, turned her Pip-Buck through the doorway and grinned.
Apple trees. Dozens of them stretching all the way back to the far wall of what was unmistakably one of Stable 1’s gardens. Their branches were woven together like a second ceiling, twisted and gnarled with wild overgrowth, their leaves long since fallen to their earthen plots once neatly framed by rubberized walking paths. Those paths had since cracked and heaved. But the dead trees weren’t what stole Aurora’s breath. That had come at the sight of the six trees which survived.
Ginger and Julip approached from behind, the latter’s eyes going wide and sputtering, “That’s impossible.”
Aurora tended to agree, but there they stood, clustered at the furthest corner of the garden with leaves curled along their old branches. Julip was right. It was impossible. 
Which meant they were missing something. 
Her thoughts went to the cable routed along the ceiling and roughly spliced into the wall. Stepping into the garden, she swept her light along the floor and found it. An orange extension cord spilled out of a plug socket nearby and snaked between the dead trees until it disappeared from view. A thick cocoon of peeling masking tape held the male end in place, suggesting whoever plugged it in did not want it coming loose.  
She gestured toward the cord and began following it toward the living trees. “Looks like Briar’s not the only one stealing electricity.”
“Okay, Detective Pinfeathers, then where's the light?”
She chose to shrug off Julip’s tone, having already spotted the answer above their heads. Extension cables of every shade wound their way in and out of gaps in the dropdown ceiling, crisscrossing the uneven walkway and presumably cut into the grow lights above in the same haphazard way the cable outside had been spliced. Someone had been busy.
“I’ll bet he has it connected to a timer,” she said.
“He?”
She tried not to roll her eyes. “Whoever survived long enough to do… this.”
Stepping toward one of the living trees, she lifted a wing and curled her feathers around its lowest branch. Leaves rustled, shaking loose a quick downpour of water at her touch. Eyeing the irrigation lines above, she saw that much of the perforated hose had been replaced with what looked to be aluminum electrical conduits. Even more masking tape had been used to seal joints not builts for plumbing, and she could see the file marks where a survivor had ground drip holes into the soft metal.
It had worked, for a while. Maybe a long while. Time had ultimately accomplished what the Stable’s collapse had left unfinished. The unchecked canopy of branches had reached up toward the grow lights until, eventually, they tangled with the cables that supplied them with power. Aurora could see where frayed wires had been pulled loose and dangled uselessly in dead branches. At some point, there had been nobody around to repair it. Possibly no one alive who knew this garden was still clinging to life, set to a cadence of night and day that went unnoticed until now. 
She wondered if the dead pony on the conference room floor was the once who put all this work in. Whether he had done so with help, or just to give himself a purpose. 
 “Luna’s grace.” Ginger slid down a heaved section of the walkway and stepped into the damp soil. Her eyes were turned up toward the living ceiling, mouth open in a baffled grin. “This one still has fruit!”
An amber shell formed around a nearly ripe apple and neatly severed the stem. Julip joined her at the trunk, bracing herself against it as she stood on her hind legs to reach a nearby fruit with her outstretched feathers. The leaves rasped and dropped another deluge of raindrops when the apple snapped free, startling a string of profanity from her as she bolted out from the branches.
Aurora picked one for herself. Turning it over in the light of her Pip-Buck, she couldn’t see anything to suggest it wasn’t edible. Its two-toned red and green skin was firm in her feathers. No sign of rot. Lifting it to her teeth, she bit off a small chunk and chewed. The flavor popped in her mouth, bright and tart, and she smiled.
“Ish ghud,” she said, and swallowed. “We should check the other gardens.”
Julip sniffed her apple and took a skeptical bite. “Planning on starting a farm?”
Tearing off another chunk, Aurora savored the flavor before eagerly turning toward the exit. Her thoughts went to Stable 6 and the plots of soil that had been engineered to go barren after the first harvest. She wondered if Latch had made any progress with the instructions Roach had left with him.
“We might be helping someone else fix theirs. You coming?”
Her answer came in the form of hooves trotting to catch up behind her.
“Lead the way.”







Touring the gardens of Stable 1 was bittersweet.
Real effort had been made here. For one pony, or perhaps many, this collapse hadn’t been the end. Some survived the unthinkable, much in the same way that the ancestors of those ponies trying to make a life in the wasteland had done. The lights had gone out. The clockwork of routine that guided their hoofsteps from birth to death seized up and went silent. In the space of weeks, days or maybe just a few awful minutes, home had become a tomb.
And yet life had gone on for those left behind. Those who had seen the death at the top and chose to turn around and see what meager life they could coax from the darkness below. 
They found the source of the compost odor in a garden that once grew potatoes. The word FERTALIZER had been misspelled across the closed door in fat streaks of red paint, and with so much stink seeping through already none of them saw the need to force it open for further inspection. Deeper exploration discovered more wilted crops than living ones. A few rows of carrots had clung to life in one of the gardens, basking in the flickering purple glow of a light set to a different schedule. A third garden had been refurbished with the same makeshift wiring and homemade irrigation, but the plots were empty save for a few blackened vines in the damp soil.
After nearly completing a full circuit of Level 77, Julip was the first to discover the surviving remnants of yet another orchard modified by the survivors of the collapse. Aurora and Ginger found her inspecting the stringy branches of the nearest tree and their fuzzy green payloads.
“Radiation must be leeching in from up top.” She plucked one of the fruiting bodies, gave it a dubious turn in her wing and flicked it into the dirt. “These apples are all mutated.”
Aurora reached up to the same branch and pulled one down for herself, smirking a little as she used her feathers to force open the seam in the husk. “They’re pecans.”
The thin husk split, exposing the teardrop curve of a brown shell underneath. The familiar shape gave Aurora a gentle pang of homesickness as she remembered the day her mother had come home late from her shift in Mechanical, eyes beaming, a glossy paper voucher held in her cream-colored feathers, and the exciting news that her name had been pulled for the department’s Harvest Day dinner raffle. A younger, shyer Aurora remembered being confused by the significance of a little slip of paper, but when her mom explained they’d won a whole pecan pie as part of the prize, she nearly broken two lamps in her excitement.
They had gone up to the Atrium as a family and claimed their dessert at the participating bakery. Wisps of steam were still curling off the caramelized surface as they rode the lift back down to their compartment, Aurora all the while fearful her mother might trip or get bumped by a jealous neighbor. No such calamity befell them and that evening, after generous helpings of seasoned reconstituted potato, green beans and her father’s favorite recipe of cornbread flecked with rehydrated cranberries, her mother cut the pie and they ate themselves into a coma.
Julip watched Aurora as she reached up and began to gently strip the branches, her father’s voice in her ear from so many years ago, guiding her feathers toward the pecans whose husks had already split open and turned chocolate brown. Those were the ones that would have had time to dry, she remembered. The older, more seasoned harvesters would sometimes pretend to misstep as they worked, cracking the hard shell beneath their hooves and winking at her as they flicked bits of pecan into their mouths. 
The three of them filled Aurora's bags and, after some cajoling, Julip's too. At least half would go to Briar, Meridian and Beans once they were finished. A gift, rather than payment.
After a brief walk, they returned to the apple orchard and settled down to rest beneath the cluster of living trees. Aurora sat down beside her saddlebags, her back coming to rest against the bark of one of the trees with a satisfied grunt. Ginger joined her and they watched as Julip reclined against a tree of her own.
Satchels and saddlebags were quickly opened and fresh fruit passed around. Several minutes went by in amicable silence, the three of them resting tired legs and replenishing their strength. A canteen went around, aided by Ginger’s magic so none of them would have to get up to pass it on, and for a while things felt strangely normal. Nice, even.
Dipping her feathers into her saddlebag, she picked out an pecan and used her teeth to tear off the husk. The green flesh was tart on her tongue and she spat it into the dirt. It was dumb luck that the guards back at Blinder’s Bluff hadn’t stolen all the tools she’d taken from home, and a worn pair of pliers had been left behind. She used them to crack open the shell and the nut tumbled free into her feathers. Occupying as the task was, her eyes and thoughts kept turning to the mare in front of her. 
She popped the pecan into her mouth and chewed.
“Mind if I ask you a question?”
Julip’s ears perked and she looked up from her second apple. “Knock yourself out.”
Aurora swallowed and picked out another nut. “What happens to you once we’re done?”
A momentary pause, followed by a shrug. “I go home. Hopefully get assigned another field mission. Life goes on.” She bit the apple and pocketed the morsel in her cheek. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about asking me to live in that Stable like all the other ponies you’ve bumped into.”
She chose not to respond to that. “What about Briar and Beans? What happens to them?”
It was the question that had been dogging her since they first encountered Beans outside the derelict locomotive. She could still feel how her wing had tightened around her rifle when she saw the look on Julip’s face, like a predator scenting prey. It was next to impossible not to think about how that moment might have played out if Julip hadn’t lost her weapon fleeing the centaurs. 
Beans, Briar, even Meridian had no idea how much danger they were in. Getting them to the Stable was the only way Aurora could be sure they would be safe. And yet, even though she knew the answer, she wanted to hear her say it.
Julip finished her bite and swallowed. Her gaze settled on some invisible point between her and Aurora, her lips bending into an uncomfortable smile. “What, you’re interrogating me now?”
“Yes.”
She blinked. Her smile faded and she looked from Aurora to Ginger, who watched her with unsettling patience. “Is she serious?”
Ginger’s expression betrayed no emotion. “Answer the question, dear.”
Julip pulled her lower lip between her teeth and held it there, seemingly caught between the urge to laugh this situation off or take it seriously. They waited for her to make up her mind, letting the uncanny silence of the dead Stable apply the pressure for them.
Finally, she spat out her lip in a half-whispered, “Fuck. You already know what I have to do. I don’t have a choice.”
Aurora dropped the pliers into her bags. What was left of her appetite was gone.
“They’re dustwings,” Julip added defensively. She gestured vaguely at the space between them, as if Briar’s family was standing in front of her. “Nobody likes culling them, but it’s necessary for the future of our kind.”
Ginger snorted. “‘Our kind.’ Should I assume I’m excluded from that statement?”
Julip opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again with a flicker of stubbornness. “If unicorns were meant to guide Equestria, the goddesses would have given you their blessing too.”
Aurora looked to Ginger for clarification. “Blessing?”
Ginger rolled her eyes and looked at Julip as she spoke. “She’s a member of the Church of the Two Sisters in New Canterlot.”
“I’m not a member.”
She ignored her. “It’s a cult that deludes ponies into thinking the princesses chose pegasi to rule Equestria in their absence. They believe Luna and Celestia took our magic away as punishment for the bombs, as if we had any say in the zebras choosing to launch them.”
Julip glowered at Ginger. “I’m not a member,” she repeated. “I just think some of the things they talk about make sense.”
“Like killing dustwings,” Aurora murmured.
“Like keeping the bloodlines uncontaminated,” she snapped.
It was boggling how she could say the words without a shred of guilt. She looked almost offended, as if this line of questioning was crossing some line only she was aware of. Aurora could feel a little ball of heat begin to swirl in her chest.
“Is that what you thought when you saw Beans? That she's a contaminant?”
There, she thought. A subtle twitch behind Julip’s cheek. A hint of discomfort. Maybe even a crack in that miles-thick armor she wore. They met eyes, briefly, the same way they had when Julip realized Aurora had caught her playing the sea creature to Beans’ utter delight. Her eyes darted down to the apple still held in her wing, as if making sure they weren’t still wrapped in old socks.
She palmed the apple and pointed a feather toward Aurora. “You know what? Fuck you. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you wanted to kill Beans the second she found us.”
“I didn’t-” Julip stopped, took an irritated breath, and started again. “It must be fucking nice to sit there rubbing one out at the thought of you being the center of moral fucking universe. Do you think I haven’t heard this before?” She took on a high, mocking tone. “‘Oh me, oh my. The evil Enclave can’t leave well enough alone. If only they would see the light and pick daisies in the sunshine like the rest of us.’”
Aurora resumed working on the pecan in her feathers knowing that if she looked at Julip right now, there would likely be violence.
“Excuse me if the Enclave got stuck doing the hard work, Aurora fucking Pinfeathers. Not all of us have the luxury of growing up in a nice, shiny paradise. Some of us drew shitty straws and got stuck with the diseased, dying stinkhole the rest of you get to ignore.” She eyed Aurora’s pecan with disdain. “I don’t like killing. I don’t like the idea that dustwings are born with spoiled genes. I do it because it’s the only way to keep our race strong enough to make it out the other side of this shitty existence. Every day there’s a new mutant born in the wasteland. Real living, breathing monsters like that fucking deathclaw you herded through Autumn's front door. If we let pegasi blood get diluted… if we become weak? It’s only a matter of time before we die out as a species.”
Aurora discarded the husk for the dirt to consume and slid the slick shell between the teeth of her pliers. She stared past them, unwilling to accept the words she’d just heard had come from a pony who truly believed them.
“You think killing Beans and Briar would be doing the rest of us a service."
Julip hesitated, sensing what was coming.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she said, her voice quiet. “I don’t have a choice. I do what's required of me.”
Aurora set the pliers down, still clenching the unbroken nut, and let out a grunt as she pushed herself up off the ground. Her knees clicked to remind her of the beating they’d taken over the last week. She ignored them, too. This wouldn’t take long.
“Okay,” she said. “Get up.”
Julip frowned. “What?”
“Get up,” she repeated. “It’s not going to be a fair fight if you just sit there.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t do that. If Primrose finds out I hurt you…”
“Primrose isn’t here.” She stepped forward, gaze fixated on Julip’s bruised wing. It had been a while since her last brawl. Longer since she started one sober. “Trust me. I’m not worried about getting hurt.”
Ginger’s voice rose behind her. “Aurora.”
It was a warning, and it mystified her to hear it coming from Ginger. She stopped and looked back to where the mare stood. “You heard what she said.”
“Yes, and she cannot begin to imagine what I will personally do to her if she harms that foal.”
Aurora felt her jaw tighten. Her mind bent firmly toward a single thought: they couldn’t afford to leave Beans’ life to chance. To let her last moments be tarnished by the confusion of being betrayed by someone she believed was a friend. She'd given Julip a chance to walk away from that road and it was clear she wouldn't. 
In that sense, Julip was no different than Cider, or Autumn, or Gallow. She was a problem that Aurora knew how to solve.
She began to take another step. 
“Aurora, no.”
Her chest thumped into a sheet of amber light, stopping her midstride. With her focus still bent toward Julip, she pressed against the barrier, but it didn’t budge. Deep down, she knew it wouldn’t.
She pressed harder, watching Julip tense in response, until Ginger’s muzzle brushed her ear.
“Stop.”
She didn’t want to stop. This was an easy fix. Another life claimed by a dead Stable. No one would blame her.
“Come on,” Ginger said, carefully slipping her foreleg between Aurora and her own magic. 
Aurora started to pull away, but the anger in Ginger's eyes made her stop. 
“Let’s go outside," she said. "We need to have a talk.”







Roach finished his thirteenth lap of the servers when he finally decided that he was, in fact, bored.
Normally he didn’t have any trouble whiling away the time. For the last two centuries it was more or less all he did. That is, when he wasn’t telling Blue stories or venturing out into the local wasteland for the occasional supplies. Contrary to what most ponies believed about ghouls, they weren’t immortal. Or zombies. Wasteland ponies had a bad habit of latching onto that last one, assuming incorrectly that a ghoul could live forever without so much as a meal or breath of air to punctuate the decades. During the early years following the end of the world, he'd learned that the hard way. He went nearly four straight weeks without so much as a sip of water, and then one night he woke up to his stomach making such an uncomfortable racket that Blue had started growling back. 
Turning the corner, he followed the featureless wall down an identical line of black machines.
Boredom was something he rarely felt anymore. He likened it to adapting to minor torture. Eventually it stopped hurting. In the tunnel, there had always been something to do. Rainbow Dash would sometimes emerge and he would help her settle down, chat with her, watch her sink away again. Radroaches would draw Blue out of her sleep and he’d spend a few hours watching her hunt the steadily larger insects across the flagstones. And there were his memories. More than his share of life to reflect on.
But right now, in this room of chittering computers and blank walls, he was bored.
Briar waited around the next corner. He had the hatch open again, the linoleum flooring peeled away like a soft scab. Roach smirked at the sight of the stallion’s head poking up from the hole in the floor. He’d climbed down into the mess of cabling now. Aurora’s doubts about where the Stable’s power was coming from was infectious. He frowned at the wires with such intensity that it reminded Roach of how Saffron would spend hours at the end of each month glowering at billing statements, convinced the utility company was skimming bits out of their nest egg.
He slowed at the upturned linoleum. “Having fun?”
Briar sighed at the cables. “Just indulging in some good-natured paranoia. You didn’t happen to be an engineer for Stable-Tec once upon a time, did you?”
“Afraid not.” He chuckled and leaned forward to see the tangle Briar was standing in. “I worked with plants. Are you sure it’s safe to be in there?”
He shrugged. “Probably not. Give me a hoof?”
Roach hitched his leg around Briar’s and hauled him up. The fine dust from the cavity coated his lower half so thoroughly that he was practically wearing it. He gave Briar plenty of room to stamp the majority of it off and helped him close the hatch.
“Still think all this power’s coming from outside?”
Briar nodded, using the front of his hoof to press the linoleum flush to the ground. “Somewhere, yeah. Problem’s always been that we can’t figure out where.”
“Any guesses?”
He snorted. “No shortage of those. The Steel Rangers like to occupy the critical infrastructure that survived on the coasts. Could be they fixed up a power plant somewhere without knowing which lines they were energizing. That, or the old Equestrian government could have buried a mess of generators somewhere as a failsafe and left them running. I heard Autumn Song set up shop in the solar array west of here. Even with all the clouds, enough light gets through. Could be that's where it’s coming from.”
Roach doubted that last one, especially after Aurora and Ginger told him about the deathclaw that tore through a measurable percentage of the facility down during its rampage.
“Well, it’s an interesting mystery to say the least. Mind if I ask a stupid question?”
Briar cocked an eyebrow, and Roach gestured toward the forest of servers. 
“Let’s say you did design a Stable with a backup power supply. Why only power this one level? Why not revive everything?”
“Maybe they wanted to but it was too much juice,” Briar suggested. “I doubt it, though. Stable-Tec wasn’t known to skimp on anything they put their name on. Not that I was there, back then, but… y’know. Scavenging.”
“Sure.”
Briar approached the nearest server, the same one Aurora had reclined against earlier, and opened its cage door. “From what I’ve heard, Stable-Tec wasn’t as benevolent as ponies thought they were. You’ve been around longer than me. Bet you’ve heard the rumors.”
Roach pressed his lips together and nodded.
The server ticked and chattered along with its neighbors, hundreds of lights twinkling on and off in some mechanical language neither of them fully understood. “I had an uncle that used to tell this story to anyone who would listen. About a Stable he found on one of his trips up north close to the ruins of the Crystal Empire. He found the door to it in the sublevel of an old office building. Stable 88 or 89, I can’t remember. Anyway, he told this story about how the whole Stable was painted top to bottom with gibberish. The floors, the walls, the ceiling. Everywhere, symbols and nonsense.
“So he does what any scav would do, and he follows them. Sure enough, he starts finding the bodies. Some of them are wearing Stable jumpsuits, most aren’t. A lot of them are wearing robes, he says. Checks a few of them for caps but all he finds are these little pills. Good quality, he said, like they’d been made in a fabricator. Chems are just as good as caps, better when they’re prewar quality, so he goes about searching the corridors for more until he finds the overstallion’s office.”
Roach frowned a little when Briar paused to gather his thoughts. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had told him a yarn.
Briar closed the server door and leaned his shoulder against it. “The way he tells it, the overstallion’s desk had been converted into some kind of altar, or maybe a pyre. He never could decide which. Three foals were laid out across it, cut open like a bad surgery. Nasty stuff. My uncle got out of there as soon as he saw it. Lost his appetite for scrapping. Sold the pills when he got back to town.”
Roach blanched. “He sold them?”
Briar nodded, but not without some discomfort of his own. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty. He didn’t put together what they were until a few days later when half the local chem users were screaming themselves hoarse, fighting each other, pulling out their manes. He skipped town before anyone else could put together what was causing it. My guess is the dealer he sold the pills to did the same.”
Roach shifted on cracked hooves, trying not to think too hard about what might have happened had his family been designated to seek shelter there. “So Stable-Tec equips them with a schematic to a chem that gives residents hallucinations and waits while the entire community rots. And ponies wonder why zebras dropped the bomb on us.”
“Hindsight,” Briar repeated, his eyes wandering the servers. “Everything they did, they did deliberately.”
“Including hooking a room full of servers onto backup power while letting an entire Stable go dark around it.”
Briar blew out a sigh, shrugging a single shoulder in agreement. “At least some of it went to good use for a little while. It’ll be nice to live somewhere where Beans can move around without having to worry about watching for patrols, even if it is a Stable. Hopefully Aurora finds the part she's missing.”
Roach smiled and walked over to the server across from where Briar stood. He pulled open the cage door and tried to make sense of the meticulously bundled wires and flickering lights. “There’s a lot of data in this room. Have you or Meridian ever tried to open one up to see what’s inside?”
“Oh goddesses,” Briar chuckled. “Don't tell me you’re one of them.”
He turned and frowned at him. “Sorry?”
Briar looked like he was on the verge of laughing. He shook his head at the ceiling as if hoping for divine intervention. “The type of pony who has to stop at every terminal they find just to read two-hundred-year-old messages and interoffice gossip. Merry does that. Can’t leave a place until she at least has a working theory of what happened to it before the bombs fell. Drives me up the wall.”
He felt the corners of his lips curling. He knew the type.
“I’m just curious, is all. It beats grinding my hooves smooth walking laps.”
He noted the grimace form at the corners of Briar’s eyes. Several more hours of listening to Roach clicking around in circles clearly didn’t appeal to him.
“Well, how much do you know about computers?”
It was Roach’s turn to wince. “Next to nothing.”
“Woof.” Briar scanned the array of servers and sighed. “I guess late’s better than never. Okay, Gramps. Time for a crash course in professional guesswork.”







“I can’t believe you’re taking her side!”
Ginger squinted briefly as the full glare of Aurora’s Pip-Buck caught in her eye. She watched her pace one way and then the other, gradually burning off the worst of her pent up anger in the empty hallway.
“Aurora, I am not taking anyone's side.” Her expression hardened when Aurora shot her an indignant glare. Hard as she was trying to keep her voice even, Aurora was not making it easy. “I’m stopping you from doing something that you’ll regret.”
Aurora continued to pace, her eyes snapping occasionally to the orchard's darkened door. “I wouldn’t regret it.”
“Yes, you would.”
She watched Aurora shake her head, stop and turn to look at her again. “How do you even know?”
Ginger crossed the gap between them and pulled a loose lock of damp mane away from Aurora’s face. “I know you’re better than this. We don’t kill ponies for things they might do.”
“Really?” Aurora tilted her head away, pulling the strand out of Ginger’s magic. “Then what exactly was it that we did at that slaver camp? If I remember right, Ward wasn’t the one to squeeze off the first shot.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ginger could see the regret bloom in Aurora’s eyes. Too late. They cut her, those words, deeper than she expected. It wasn’t just that it was a reckless statement, it was that it came from her. The mare who set her whole world aside to save her. 
It took her some time to swallow the anger rising in her throat. She’d had enough of these fights to know how they always panned out. One accusation beget another, carving holes in the fabric of their fledgling bond until there was nothing left to hold it together. It was too easy to turn down that road and much harder to walk it alone. She refused to do that. 
“Aurora, I don’t like Julip.” She emphasized each word so they wouldn’t be mistaken. “I don’t like what she stands for or that she’s here with us. However.”
She waited until Aurora looked up at her. “We are not going to kill her to protect Beans and Briar from something she hasn’t done. Even if we did, the Enclave would send someone else to replace her and we can’t afford to do that with a family of dustwings in tow. I have enough magic to keep Julip from hurting them. They’ll be fine. Just… trust me, okay? We’ve already burnt bridges with the Rangers. We can’t afford to test the Enclave, too.”
Watching the guilt form on Aurora’s face was more than difficult. It hurt. Her first instinct was to reach out and pull her into a hug to let her know all was forgiven. But she couldn’t do that. Not this time. She needed Aurora to know that she’d come inches from crossing a line that, love or not, Ginger would not follow her over. There was a reason she hadn’t gone into that slaver camp with guns blazing. There was a reason she hadn’t killed Cider outright when he entered her shop.
It was the same reason she hadn’t snapped Julip’s neck the moment she descended within range of her magic back on the road outside Kiln. Like it or not, and most ponies these days didn’t like it, she believed in giving ponies a chance to be decent.
Few ever did, and Aurora was most likely right about Julip. As soon as her obligations were met, Beans and Briar would be high on her list of objectives to complete. But killing her prematurely wasn’t something she could stomach, and there was a good chance Briar’s family would have already arrived at Stable 10 by the time Julip had the opportunity to hunt them.
Her ears perked as Aurora took a slow breath.
“I wasn’t going to kill her,” she murmured. “I was just going to…”
Ginger frowned, watching her struggle for the right words. “Get her close?”
Aurora looked away and nodded.
She touched the tip of her hoof against Aurora’s chin and gently turned her face toward her. “I need you to be better than that. Can I trust you to do that?”
She could feel Aurora’s jaw work against her hoof as she swallowed. Something told Ginger she was starting to realize how close she’d come to that line. 
Her voice was rough when she spoke. “Yeah.”
Ginger nodded. It would have to do. “Okay. Then we should get moving again. I’ll let Julip know we’re heading back to the stairwell. Maybe... you should wait out here until we’re ready.”
Thankfully, Aurora didn't argue with her. She sat in the hall while Ginger went back to speak to Julip. The smaller pegasi regarded her with mild disdain even as she assured her she wouldn't be harmed. After several minutes, Julip slung her satchel over her shoulder and Ginger followed her out with Aurora’s bags in tow. 





Julip gave Aurora a wide berth as she left the garden. It was only fair.
With their respective bags laden with fruit and pecans they embarked down the last half of the great stairwell. Aurora found herself once again at the front of the line with Ginger behind her. Julip kept her distance, trailing them by nearly a quarter turn.
She didn’t know how much of their conversation Julip had been able to overhear. Probably all of it, with the way the walls carried their voices. Shame kept her silent for the first few levels, and neither Ginger nor Julip made any attempt to spark a conversation to pass the time. Turn after turn, they wheeled around the cylinder with nothing but the sound of hooves beating against the treads and the steady uptick of heat boiling up from the bottom to keep them company. 
It was a lonely walk.
Her mane wicked up sweat and directed it down the bridge of her nose. She flicked her head to throw the white mop of hair behind her ear, but gravity and the constant motion of her descent eventually pulled it back between her eyes. As they passed into the Nineties, she stopped fixing it altogether.
She glanced back at Ginger who offered a polite smile in return. Her mind was somewhere else. Likely thinking about the same thing she was.
In the moment she’d felt… justified. They’d both known from the start what kind of mare Julip was, even before they let her out of Autumn’s cage. Her reaction to seeing Beans only confirmed it. Whatever the Enclave’s intentions were in sending Julip to help her, it didn’t matter compared to the simple fact that she felt duty-bound to kill a foal who had shown her nothing but kindness. Even now, Aurora had to fight the temptation to turn around and remove that problem from the equation.
Ginger was wrong. Some ponies were just irredeemably ruined, and Julip was one of them.
And yet somehow she felt like a monster for believing it.
She thought back to the shed at Gallow’s home. The bodies of a family gutted and skinned like so much meat. The flies coming at her like a buzzing cloud. Gallow, screaming in agony as her amateur attempts at executing him turned into a mutilation. She was used to making hard decisions. Bearing the blame for her mistakes. Keeping the generator running smoothly, dealing with Sledge, that was easy compared to this.
The wasteland had been wearing away at her since she stepped out of the Stable. Every day seemed to grind off a layer of something important, something she didn’t think she could fix, until they met Gallow. That night the wasteland put down the sandpaper and picked up the hammer, and something inside her had broken away.
“Something on the stairs below us,” Ginger said.
Aurora blinked the sweat out of her eyes and looked down past the railing. A vaguely pony-shaped form lay over the stairs half a turn away. She tried not to look directly at it as she approached, but it was difficult to avoid stepping on the corpse without knowing where it was. There wasn’t much left. Bones, mostly. A few strips of brown tendon clinging where they could. A pocket of shapeless matter pooled in the sockets of its upturned skull.
The worst part wasn’t stepping over. That came half a minute later as they lapped where it lay and had to hurry beneath it. With one wing holding the rail, Aurora pressed her eyes, ears and mouth shut as she passed through the water dripping through those treads. When she finally did open them again, she spotted several more forms laying across the steps further below.
By Level 110, there wasn’t a tread they could see that wasn’t occupied by a fallen resident. Some still wore clothing. Tatters of jumpsuits, overalls and even a rubber smock littered bones whose flesh had long since sloughed off under the onslaught of unyielding heat and damp. They were earth ponies, she realized. All of them. Not a single one sported a horn or wings. It was a stark comparison to the congealed mound of unicorns at the top of the Stable, their decay snail-paced by comparison to the fallen deeper below.
Ginger was the first to comment. “It’s like they were stampeding up from the bottom.”
Aurora’s hoof squelched into a waterlogged mat of rotted fabric. She made a face. Even she couldn’t stay silent after that. “Makes me afraid of what’s waiting for us down there.”
“Probably the source of this heat. I’m starting to feel like a steamed vegetable.”
She looked back at Ginger and allowed herself to smile at the little joke. Ginger did the same, but her eyes turned back to the pit below.
“I can’t blame Briar for not wanting to make the trip,” she continued, floating a little sphere of light down to the lower turns. Where there used to be stairs, an unbroken path of bones spiralled into the black. “How can there be so many?”
Aurora didn’t have an answer for that. It was as if the entire population had decided all at once to run for the stairs and, just as puzzling, fallen there. There had been a panic. That much was obvious. But from what?
“It’s a repository.”
Aurora’s ears pinned back at the sound of Julip’s voice. Of course she would know something. They had already established that the Enclave had sent their honorary cleanup crew to Stable 1 after it collapsed.
Julip could have picked a better time for show and tell. She glared straight ahead, picking her way around a tangled heap of bones. “Been here before, have you? Nice of you to tell us now.”
“Aurora.”
Ginger’s tone was enough to make her grimace.
“Sorry.” She grudgingly amended her question. “A repository for what?”
The landing for 111 drifted by as she waited for Julip’s answer. The bridgeway was clogged with the dead. When Julip did speak, there was an unsubtle hint of defensiveness to her tone.
“First of all, this is my first time seeing this place in person.” She took a breath. “We all have to learn about it before we receive our certification for field work. Stable 1 is a classic case study on premature societal collapse and short-term resurgence.”
Aurora stared across the hollow void where Julip was picking her way down the steps. “I understood exactly half of what you just said.”
Julip made an irritated noise. “We use the data we harvest to train new archivists. Not every Stable fails in the same way, and knowing what to look for in different scenarios can mean the difference between recovering sensitive tech and leaving it for the Rangers to trip over.”
“Like a fabricator,” Aurora suggested.
“Or a Pip-Buck,” Julip agreed. “In a slow collapse, residents are more prone to writing down their last words and hiding their Pip-Bucks somewhere they think is safe.”
Aurora had to admit that the logic was sound. Most pegasi back home rarely took theirs off except to shower or cook. The clunky ankle-weights were precious commodities within a Stable. Moreso, apparently, out here in the wasteland.
Ginger chimed in behind her. “Then can you tell us what happened here?”
The Enclave mare seemed to debate whether to answer at all. Aurora wondered if she was even allowed to.
“Sure, I guess,” Julip said. “As long as that one stops grinding her fucking axe.”
Aurora held the back of her wing up toward Julip and lifted one feather, and just as quickly she felt her wing being abruptly pressed back down onto the railing in a haze of Ginger’s magic.
“Both of you, stop it.” Ginger said, her tone cutting out any room for debate. She looked back toward Julip and nodded. “Go ahead.”
With a defiant little roll of her eyes, Julip shrugged her wings and told them. 
“Well, from what I can remember, this place was basically a dumping ground for unicorns and earth ponies. The selection process wasn’t picky, so long as you didn’t have wings. Stable-Tec pretty much opened the door looking for warm bodies to fill the place.”
Ginger hummed. “Then what was the experiment?”
“No experiment,” she said. “At least, none were on record that I know of. Stable 1 was supposedly one of the controls. Drop in the residents, lock the door, do not open until Hearths Warming. Only it didn’t work out that way. You two saw that billboard leaned up against the high school on the outskirts of Kiln, right?”
Aurora vaguely recalled it. “The one with the miner on it, sure.”
“‘Home of the Fightin’ Colliers,’” Julip recited, surprising both of them. “Used to be a hoofball team for Quarrytown, before it was called Kiln. Their mascot was a coal miner. This whole area, from the Pleasant Hills all the way to Kiln, used to be coal country.”
Aurora could feel herself losing the thread. She frowned, confused. “What does that have to do with this place?”
“Everything,” Julip said. “This silo was built on the same site as Stable-Tec’s first prototype Stable. The original Stable 1 was demolished during the excavation for the Stable we’re in now. Turns out there’s a major coal vein that runs through the same spot, and they punched straight through it.”
She let the last word hang in the air like an omen.
“Back when Equestria was still learning how to make its own talismans, there was an accidental balefire detonation at the site of what was supposed to be Stable 2, not far from here. We think the explosion ignited the surrounding coal deposits including one that lead here. Coal fires burn deep and slow. Took a little over a century to start cooking the lower levels.” Julip glanced at them and shrugged. “By the time the residents noticed anything was wrong, it was too late.”







“You got it?”
Roach grunted as he dragged the terminals, along with the technician’s cart they were bolted to, through the server room door. He nodded, careful not to open his jaw as he pulled the handle with his teeth. Two of the cart’s wheels had snapped as soon as they tried to roll it and with the weight of two terminals weighing it down, hauling it out of the office they’d found it in had quickly become a chore.
The broken castors cut rusty brown lines in the soft linoleum as they hauled it toward the corner of the room where three other terminals sat on the ground. Next to the growing pile, the server bearing the number 01 on its cabinet waited in idle silence. 
Briar’s logic followed the belief that the most important data would be automatically stored on the server with the lowest number. Roach wasn’t convinced that was how it worked, but he wasn’t about to suggest they drag terminals all the way to the back of the room to test the opposite theory. The cart skidded to a stop beside their previous failed attempts, the relatively inactive server watching them with quiet indifference. 
The two stallions stopped to catch their breath. Roach could feel the heat pouring out from the fissures in his chitin and was grateful for the first time that he couldn’t sweat.
“This would be… a lot easier…” Briar panted, “if you just used… your horn.”
Roach shook his head and staggered to the cluster of wires at the rear of the twin terminals. Whoever designed them to weigh this much deserved to be shot.
“Can’t,” he said. “I’ll irradiate… the entire level.”
Briar gave him a dubious look but didn’t push the issue as Roach began plugging in what they hoped were the right hookups. The last three terminals they tried had all been locked out, and they were beginning to consider waiting for Aurora to return with her Pip-Buck when they discovered the technician’s equipment parked in the corner of a tiny office.
“I’ve taken my share of rads before. Just prefer not to go home with a blown back.”
“I’ll owe you a stimpack, then.” Roach chuckled with the silver prong of a cable pinched between his front teeth. “Let me know if that terminal does anything different.”
Sinking the end of the cable into the back of the server, he dropped back to all fours and came around the cart to see what, if anything, was happening. Standing beside Briar, they watched as the leftmost terminal on the cart began chattering in response to the connection. Like the other three, a cartoonish green mare in a Stable-Tec jumpsuit appeared on the screen, staring impatiently at her Pip-Buck. Unlike the other three, the little mascot blinked away and was replaced by what appeared to be some sort of directory.
“We’re in,” Briar said. 
Roach let out a groan and sat down as Briar began pecking at the keyboard. 
To him, it was gibberish. Files and folders, he understood. He remembered when Violet’s school sent out letters to parents explaining that the following year they should all consider purchasing their children a terminal to help with their homework. That school year never came, but Roach still recalled walking through a Robronco Store with Saffron and both of them staring at identical-looking floor models as a salespony half their age rattled off his memorized pitch.
They never did end up buying a terminal.
He felt just as bewildered as he watched Briar browse the directory, opening and closing files faster than he could read. His theory of the first server holding the most important information was quickly falling apart as Briar turned up everything from random stock images of the Stable-Tec logo, resident logs of supply requests, sanitation capacity charts and even some drafts to a cafeteria menu that was never finalized. It was all interesting, but none of it was particularly helpful, and quickly began feeling like they were picking random bits and bobs from someone’s junk drawer.
“Maybe it’d be easier if we found the overstallion’s terminal.” 
Briar laughed. “Overmare. And if you want to spend the next week of your life looking for her password, be my guess.”
Roach sighed and looked around for something that might help speed this up. A hundred or more servers stared back at him, offering little help.
“Oh, here we go!” Briar scooted over, making room for him. “Aurora said she worked for this department, right?”
He squinted at the document that filled the screen and skimmed the text. “A few times, yeah.”
It was a written warning from one department head to another. Its author, whoever he had been, had not been in a professional mood.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 1
To: Environmental Systems Department Leaders
Cc: Mechanical Systems Department Leaders
Bcc: Overmare Jewel
From: Tilly Fields
Subject: Final Warning - Excessive Power Consumption
8/20/1219

To all concerned parties,

This message is the last warning the leadership team up in Environmental Services will receive in regards to repeated and unapproved use of electrical resources well in excess of your department’s adjusted maximum budget. Beginning August 21st, further violations will result in your supply being hard capped to prevent unnecessary wear on the generator. 
While I understand the unicorns in the Upper Thirds may not be used to a little discomfort, I invite them to come down to visit us in the Bottom if they feel the need to complain about the heat. The earth ponies down here have been working doubles for two straight months trying to solve this problem, so when we hear the Uppers complain about - as the Head of Security recently said - “anemic air conditioning,” you will have to forgive us if we don’t feel inclined to sympathise. 
The faster we isolate the source of this heat, the faster things return to normal. That means unicorns will have to sweat for a little while. Blame us or thank us later, I don’t care. The fewer ponies I have to send up to replace blown fuses, the more I have down here to fix this problem.

Thank you for your cooperation,
Tilly.







Roach squinted at the date. “1219? That was what, fifty-ish years ago?”
Briar turned to him with a questioning smirk. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head and Briar’s smirk split into a well-meaning laugh. 
“It’s 1297. This message is seventy-eight years old.”
Roach rolled his eyes and waved him off. “Close enough. I haven’t had much reason to keep track.”
The stallion beside him shrugged. “Fair. Here, look. Tilly got a reply.”







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 1
To: Tilly Fields
From: Clover Hoof
Subject: Re: Final Warning - Excessive Power Consumption
8/27/1219

Good morning Tilly,

Sorry for the late reply, but we’ve been busy up here with some more pressing issues. I had some time yesterday to speak with the overmare and we agreed that it is in the best interest of the Stable for Environmental Services’ power allowance to be amended to include recent necessary increases in consumption.
This is not a matter of keeping unicorns comfortable, as you say. As you are already well aware, this is a matter of keeping the peace. The Lowers have had ample time to determine the reason for the temperature problem and thus far not a single earth pony has reported so much as a theory. While clearly unfounded in fact, there are rumors circulating that the Lowers have manufactured this problem as a tactic to force unicorn residents out of the Farms, and those rumors will only gain traction if they learn Mechanical threatened to cap our power allowance.
You ask us to suffer in silence? I ask you to consider the ponies living above the Hundreds. I mean this as a colleague and, hopefully, as a friend, Tilly. Unicorns will only tolerate so much. Now is not the time for a show of strength. Trust me on this one.







Roach frowned as Briar looked for a response from Tilly, but there didn’t appear to be one. Disappointed, he waited until Briar found a message that kept showing up in the Stable’s mail system. It had been sent by dozens of residents over the course of what looked to be several days, each of them identical, each of them addressed the exact same way.
Briar opened one at random.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 1
To: Level 1 Residents, Level 2 Residents, Level 3 Residents...
From: Hocks
Subject: NEVER FORGET RIVER RUN
9/9/1219

IT FINALLY HAPPENED, EVERYBODY. THE EARTH PONIES COULDN’T HANDLE LIVING AT THE BOTTOM SO NOW THEY’RE MURDERING OUR FOALS.
ON SEPTEMBER, 8TH, 1219 AT 7:45AM, RIVER RUN, A 7-YEAR-OLD UNICORN FILLY, BECAME SO DISORIENTED FROM THE HEAT BEING PUMPED UP FROM THE LOWER THIRD THAT SHE FELL OFF THE GREAT STAIRWELL ABOVE LEVEL 60. HER BODY IMPACTED A BRACE BEAM THIRTEEN LEVELS DOWN AND SHE WAS KILLED INSTANTLY.
RIVER RUN’S FALL WAS WITNESSED BY MANY OF HER FELLOW SCHOOLMATES, FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS AND WORST OF ALL, HER MOTHER AND FATHER WHO WERE WITH HER AT THE TIME. 
MANY UNICORNS ON THE STAIRS THAT DAY RECOUNTED FEELING UNSTEADY ON THEIR HOOVES, MANY OF WHOM HAD TO MAKE MULTIPLE STOPS FOR WATER. RIVER RUN IS ONLY THE FIRST. THE EARTH PONIES AT THE BOTTOM HAVE ONLY JUST BEGUN KILLING UPPERS. THE HEAT THEY FORCE US TO ENDURE IS DEADLY. IT IS TOXIC. AND IT IS INTENTIONAL.
OUR MAGIC MAY HAVE DIMMED, BUT THIS ATTACK ON THE UPPER THIRDS WILL NOT GO IGNORED. 
STAND READY.







The messages that followed grew darker as it became clear what was beginning to happen.
An announcement from the overmare sought to discourage residents from sharing the anonymous letter already circulating throughout the Stable, but it was already evident that too much was already in motion. Messages were flying back and forth between residents faster than IT seemed capable of removing them. News of an attack in the Nineties only threw fuel on the fire. A unicorn claimed to have been cornered and beaten by a gang of earth ponies from Supply, resulting in a mob of unicorns descending into the Hundreds and destroying several earth pony vendor stalls in a pop-up market. 
Briar tapped the terminal where a message from Security glowed, enacting a curfew on all ponies living in the Lower Third. “Stupid move, this.”
Roach shrugged. “Hindsight, right?”
“Hm.” Briar had narrowed the messages down by keywords. Lowers. Uppers. Oppressors. Muds. Hundreds of daily hits skyrocketed into the thousands after the curfew was put into place. “Doesn’t take a lot of brains to know what Stable-Tec wanted to happen by separating the unicorns from the earth ponies.”
“Assuming they’re the ones who did the separating,” he countered. Gesturing at the terminal, he shrugged. “This place lasted more than a century before all that. Could be this is just how things shuffled out over the years.”
Briar made an unconvinced noise.
“It’s how it was in some places, before the war.” Roach insisted. “Not many earth ponies lived in Canterlot. Mostly unicorns there. Some pegasi. Cloudsdale was made up exclusively of pegasi for obvious reasons. I’m not saying it’s right, but I can see how it might happen over time. Assigning ponies to their biological strengths above all else.”
“Literal stratification,” Briar murmured. He shook his head and tapped another message. “What a waste.”







Aurora clutched the rail and coughed, hard.
The air was so thick with moisture that it felt like she was drinking it with every breath. Her legs felt heavy. Even her wings had started to become saturated with the damp, the endless belching of heat from below seeming to melt the oils from her feathers. And she wasn’t the only one suffering. Behind her, Ginger had stopped more than once to catch her breath. Julip wasn’t faring much better, but much of that had to do with the fact that she’d spent the last dozen or so levels talking.
Maybe it was her irritation wearing off or their communal suffering that had exhausted Aurora’s willingness to stay angry. She still wanted to climb up those steps and crack her across the head, just once, for being who she was. She just didn’t have the energy to do it, that was all.
She spat over the railing and cleared her throat. “Okay, so let’s see if I have this straight. This whole Stable gets ramrodded through a coal deposit and nobody thinks to, I don’t know, insulate the walls?”
Julip shrugged. “It’s possible they did.”
They passed the landing of One Thirty-Three. Eleven more to go.
She stepped over a waterlogged saddlebag and a scattered mass of bones beneath it. The bodies had begun to thin out, but not completely. If they looked across the landings, it was clear not everyone made it to the stairs.
“And because the coal fire turned this place into a literal pressure cooker, the residents decided it would be a good idea to start killing each other.”
Julip winced a little, hedging her agreement. “Our records aren’t perfectly clear on who attacked first. What we do know is that there were many smaller incidents that boiled over into a fight between the unicorns in the upper levels and the earth ponies at the bottom.”
“That explains the bodies,” Ginger muttered.
“Not these bodies. These are all from the gas.”
Aurora stopped dead on the steps with a sharp clang. “Are you seriously telling us now that there’s gas down here?”
Julip was quick to hold up a wing, vigorously shaking her head. “No, no, no! It’s all gone, now. We pumped it out during the recovery.”
Aurora frowned, took a deeper breath, and waited for any strange effects to manifest. None did, and she cautiously stepped down to the next stair.
As they resumed the descent, Julip continued. “Eventually, someone got the idea to lead a group of earth ponies up to the deputy station on the edge of the Lower Third and break into the armory. It took twenty minutes for word to travel up the Stable that the earth ponies had armed themselves, and just under an hour for the unicorns working the third shift in Environmental Services to panic.”
She didn’t like where this was headed. “Panic, as in put something in the air.”
“Bingo.” Julip pointed a wing into the gap around which they walked, and where they could almost, barely make out a dark grey surface at the bottom. “The air here needs constant circulation or the ponies at the bottom end up breathing their own gases and keeling over. The unicorns up in Environmental probably knew turning off the blowers to the bottom wouldn’t work fast enough, so they did one better and pulled the CO2 from the sewage treatment levels and dumped it into the fresh air supply going to Mechanical. After that, they turned off the circulators and waited for the inevitable.”
Aurora grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s genocide,” Ginger muttered.
“Pretty much the standard answer for all trainees who go over Stable 1 in the Archives. It might surprise you to know that even the Enclave doesn’t condone what happened here.”
It took every ounce of strength Aurora had not to laugh. “How noble of you.”
Surprisingly, Julip didn’t take the bait. “Yeah, well, if you couldn’t already tell, the whole thing backfired on them.”
Aurora peered through the landing of Level 134 as it passed by, the sight of heavy decay becoming just another part of the scenery. “The heat from the bottom was enough to overcome the disabled circulators, wasn't it,” she said. “Pushed the CO2 up the stairwell on the draft.”
“And caused a Stable-wide panic,” Julip confirmed. “Exhaust gas flooded the lower levels and ponies in Mechanical were presumably the first to start dropping. Word spreads, slowly, but eventually most of the Lower Third understands that there’s some kind of leak. Earth ponies flood the stairwell like a fucking wave and the unicorns can hear them coming, so they gather what little magic they have and try to stop them at the upper Hundreds. Meanwhile the CO2 is coming up on the breeze and the unicorns start seeing earth ponies dropping. Then unicorns start going down too, and then everyone starts stampeding to get away.”
Ginger uttered a quiet curse. “And the unicorns who started it all? The ones in Environmental?”
“Probably thought the earth ponies were coming up to kill them and ran up the stairs with everyone else. The vents directors were in the same position by the time the Enclave arrived for artifact recovery.”
It made a disturbing amount of sense. The way Julip told it gave no indication that she had taken a side in what happened. To her it was just an event in history. Something other ponies had inflicted upon themselves, not her. Even the fact that they were non-pegasi didn’t seem to factor into her telling of events.
Aurora wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Ginger was confused by something else. “The pony that locked himself in the cell at the top of the Stable. He was trying to keep the stampede from getting outside. Why?”
“I’m guessing Aurora knows the answer to that one.”
Aurora hesitated. She had a decent idea.
“Stable ponies are told that the air outside is toxic,” she said, embarrassed by how absurd it sounded now. “One whiff is supposedly enough to kill a pony. I’m guessing somebody thought it might be a way to keep us from checking for ourselves.”
“And yet here you are,” Julip said.
The urge to reply with a jab of her own was undone by the simple fact that she didn’t have one. In retrospect, forcing Stable 10’s door into a test cycle was one of the least thought out things she’d ever done.
“Here I am,” she agreed. “I guess that answers the question as to why they installed a massive incinerator where the antechamber should be. What better way to keep residents from escaping than the risk of immolation?”
Ginger coughed, making a frustrated noise as she cleared her throat. “Bit over the top, don’t you think?”
“Depends on what Stable-Tec was hoping to accomplish,” Julip countered. 
Aurora felt a pang of relief as the landing to Level 140 slid by. Only four more to go. “You seem to know a lot about that subject. Maybe you could tell me why my Stable’s generator started winding down.”
A pause. 
She looked back at Julip and noticed the deep concern settling into her features. The mare hesitated a moment longer, as if debating to speak at all.
“Just spit it out,” Aurora said.
Julip shook her head, her pace slowing. “I thought you said one of the parts in your generator had failed.” She met Aurora’s gaze. “What do you mean it’s winding down?”
This time it was Aurora’s turn to hesitate. Ginger was looking at her with wide eyes but said nothing. From the moment Julip forced herself into their little group, telling her about the broken ignition talisman felt like a bad idea. Like telling an angry drunk not to kick your busted rib right before a brawl. Over the course of the last day and a half, circumstances had forced her to let slip that she was out here with the intention of fixing her generator. It was just vague enough to leave a variety of incorrect assumptions available to Julip while remaining honest enough to deter her from pushing for details. 
Something told her she had just whittled down that list.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aurora said, continuing down. “Now hurry up. I can see the bottom.”







Stable 1 experienced the last, heaving moments of its collapse in the middle of September. Strangely, Roach still associated the month in the same way he had when he tended the Canterlot Gardens. A time to trim the perennials down to the cedar chips, rake up a thousand wilting daylily fronds and clean up the flower beds in preparation for winter. That quiet time between harvest and the turning of the leaves. The fall was his favorite season, despite one of his most vivid memories being of balefire sweeping across the changing leaves.
They sat and watched the footage in mutual silence. A camera, fixed above the cafeteria line they had passed by on the top floor, had a clear view of the great stairwell on the left and the door to the deputy station they’d been forced to crawl through on the right. Unicorns milled around little square tables, chatting and eating from plastic trays while a couple stragglers followed the service line at the bottom of the screen.
A stallion loitered outside the deputy’s office, leaning against the open door frame with a white cup hovering near his mouth. Everything seemed fine until the deputy looked down at his uniform’s collar, seemed to listen to something and frowned. Unseen by the ponies at the cafeteria, he backed into the deputy station. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the door slid shut.
The camera recorded only video. There was no sound to help Roach or Briar identify what the unicorns left on screen had heard, but they all heard it at once. Ears turned toward the stairwell like whips. Several ponies stood, their eyes glued to the empty stairs. Roach imagined they could hear the stampede as it arrived. Hooves beating against metal like some wild, terrifying drumbeat.
And then, all at once, they arrived. Unicorns poured up the stairwell and over the bridgeway like a flood. The customers at the tables instinctively backed away as terrified ponies spilled into the open space and crashed against the deputy station door. Hooves pounded against its surface while more unicorns crushed in from behind, the stairwell belching up residents at an unsustainable pace. Traffic backed up on the bridgeway. A unicorn saw what was happening, tried to shove herself forward to the cafeteria floor and was roughly shoved back. Roach pressed his lips together and looked away as she tumbled over the railing and dropped.
As if sensing the danger, the tide shifted. Faced with being crushed to death or asphyxiation, the ponies trapped on the choked stairwell seemed to choose the latter. As quickly as they arrived, they changed direction and drained back down the stairwell for whatever safety they thought they would find. But not all of them went. The unicorns nearest the deputy door remained, continuing to crush against each other like iron shavings to a magnet. Magic clawed across every inch of the locked door, failing to overcome the locked hydraulics. It was several long minutes before the odorless, invisible vapor finally reached Level 1.
Unicorns stumbled, fell, and were climbed over by increasingly fearful survivors until they collapsed too. Gradually, in the face of a door that would not open for them, the last of them grew still.
Roach blew out a long breath while Briar tapped a key that spooled the recording forward. He tapped twice more until each day on the timestamp passed by over the span of a minute.
“That’s enough for me,” Roach said, pushing himself off the floor. He stretched, trying to turn his thoughts toward more positive things, but he found that difficult given what he’d just seen.
The terminal continued to play the same image at high speed. Roach glanced at it and quickly looked away at the sight. “They’re not going to do anything except decompose. You can turn it off.”
Briar forestalled him with a feather. “Just a sec. I want to see how long it takes the Enclave to respond.”
Roach blinked. That wasn’t a bad idea, but he wasn’t about to watch a pile of bodies putrify in fast-forward. “I heard they know as soon as it happens because they figured out how to monitor all those Pip-Bucks they hoard.”
“Same here. But can you imagine how much the Rangers would pay for an actual response time?”
Roach pulled a face and wandered over to the server marked with a 02. “Can’t say I put them very high on my list of paramilitary organizations to barter with. Wasn’t more than a few days ago that they put a leash on Aurora for having the audacity not to make a donation out of her Pip-Buck.”
Briar nodded with some sympathy, his eyes still on the terminal. “Would have thought she would have hidden it.”
“Didn’t have the luxury of time to think about that,” Roach said, recalling the harried ride to Blinder’s Bluff while Aurora and Ginger were suffering the effects of radiation poisoning, courtesy of his horn. “Now we can’t risk her taking it off. Coldbrook’s got her by the short hairs. Wants her checking in with him on the daily or he figures he’ll send his Rangers to dig out her Stable.”
He cracked open the server cage and noticed that it wasn’t generating nearly as much heat as its neighbors. 
“I wish she would have mentioned that before offering my family a home there,” Briar murmured. 
Roach grunted, walking a slow circle around the dark server. “She’s a good mare, but yeah. She might’ve jumped the gun on that one. Don’t mention that I said anything to you about it. She’s been so focused on finding this talisman that I think she’s been using it as an excuse not to think about what the Rangers might do after she brings it home. Whether they’ll allow her to bring it home, if I’m being honest.”
He glanced at Briar who for once wasn’t watching the terminal. The screen had gone black. Roach met his eye. “Out of film?”
“It’s digital,” he said, leaning back from the screen. “No power, no footage. Want some advice?”
He leaned against the cage of Server 02 and chuckled. “Be a nice change of pace from giving it all the time. Sure.”
Briar stood and began unplugging the hookups. “Talk to them about it.”
He frowned. “Them?”
Briar nodded, dropping a loose cable onto the cart. “Aurora and Julip. Start planning with them. Get them thinking about a way they can make things right with the Rangers so they don’t need to worry about them once they close the door.”
He mentally kicked himself for forgetting they had roped Julip into this fiction of theirs. The two of them had spun up that little lie faster than lifelong siblings. 
“Julip’s probably got it all figured out, knowing her. It’s Aurora I sometimes worry about. Anyway, it’s not my place to air their dirty laundry. I’m assuming you're not getting that response time?”
Briar shrugged his wings, a gesture Roach missed being able to perform. “Negative.”
“Hm.” He glanced at the server he leaned against and its strangely darkened lights. “What about this one?”
Briar turned to look at it, a yellow cable dangling from his feathers. “Looks dead.”
He grunted, thinking maybe the quieter state of it might mean it was full. Computers were never going to be his strong suit. He pointed a hoof at the server at the end of the next row, just beside the one Briar stood at.
“How about that one?”
It was marked with a bright 21 on the door, chattering happily within its ventilated cage.
Briar gave it a doubtful look. “Just picking them at random, then?”
“Unless you’ve got a deck of cards hidden somewhere.”
“I do, but it's a mile up a mountain,” he said. “Give me a hoof with the cart. If we find anything worth me breaking my back over, I’ll buy you and your friends a drink.”
Roach chuckled as he took one side of the cart and pulled. He remembered entirely too much of his solo karaoke act back in Kiln and wasn’t sure he was quite ready for a second show. “Deal.”
Hooking up to the active server went quicker than its quieter counterpart. Just as before, the impatient cartoon mare blinked onto the screen as the connection was established. A moment later, a similar directory appeared.
“All yours,” Briar said, gesturing to the terminal.
Roach looked to see if he was serious, and he very clearly was. “You didn’t say there would be a test.”
Briar grinned. “You didn’t say we’d be playing whack-a-mole with servers. This one’s all you, old-timer.”
He rolled his eyes and sat himself down in front of the terminal, scanning each line one by one while a little green cursor blinked at the bottom of the list. Frowning, he looked at the keyboard for something that would help.
“Just type the name of the subdirectory you want to look in.”
His frown stayed put. “Which ones are subdirectories?”
“All of them.”
He skimmed the list and slowly pecked the keys until the cursor blinked beside the phrase HIBERFIL.SYS, and waited.
“You have to hit Enter.”
Roach looked up at him, then the keyboard, and began typing “enter.”
“Ohhhkay, change of plans,” Briar said, nudging at him to move over. “You point, I type. Otherwise I might have to hurt you.”
Relinquishing the controls, Roach took the more comfortable observer’s seat while Briar opened up the subdirectory for him. The few files it contained were mostly gibberish and Briar politely moved them out of it before Roach had time to suggest further exploration. Gradually, as his suggestions ran into more dead ends, Briar finally did what Roach was quietly hoping he’d do and began once again navigating the server himself. 
 As with the first server, he quickly began perusing the resident mail system. They skimmed the subject lines, looking for anything of interest, though as they read the terminal hiccupped. Roach frowned as the list of messages jerked down, causing him to lose the line he’d been reading. When it happened again, he looked to Briar to see if he was doing it, but his feathers were off the keyboard.
"Glitch?” he guessed.
Briar crossed his hooves and stared at the terminal with open irritation. “New messages,” he said. “Look at the dates.”
Roach squinted at the text just as it jerked down again, the dates on the new entries impossibly recent. “These are from today,” he said.
Briar shook his head, doubtful. “Probably the terminal pulling up messages that were stuck pending when the network went down.”
It sounded reasonable. “This many?”
“Big Stable.”
Roach nodded, picking at the chitin on his lip with his teeth. Fresh messages kept loading as they watched. He tapped the screen with his hoof, indicating the ones he’d like Briar to open. Normally, this would be prying. An invasion of privacy on par with what Rarity’s Ministry of Image grew used to doing toward the end of the war. But these ponies were long gone. Their messages were more a matter of the historical record than anything else. There was nobody left to be embarrassed.
Someone making a complaint about the quality of the linens from Fabrication. A resident asking a friend if they wanted to meet up in the Atrium for breakfast tomorrow. A teacher sending a sick student copies of his homework with the firm expectation he will have it finished after his three day weekend. 
“Someone got caught playing hooky,” Briar chuckled.
Roach hummed thoughtfully, frowning at the message. “What day is it today?”
“Friday.” Briar smiled with understanding. “Yeah. Little creepy, huh?”
He continued to frown as Briar closed the message, and more steadily trickled in.
“Can I try something?” he asked.
Briar hesitated, then scooted over to let him have the keyboard again. “Just remember, I don’t live as long as you.”
“Har har,” he muttered, and successfully highlighted and opened one of the newest messages. According to the header at the top of the window, it had been written by a pony named Taffy Tart.
“Heckuva name,” Briar chuckled.
Roach let himself smile a little. Ponies didn’t often name their foals like that anymore. Or if they did, they weren’t named for anything sweet.
The mare - he presumed she was a mare - had written a brief message.

Taffy T.: Running late. Sandy called in sick again. Gotta close up for her. Sorry. I'll try not to wake you up. Tell the kids goodnight for me. <3

After a few tentative keypresses, Roach managed to highlight the button marked reply.
Slowly, at his own pace, he sent a message of his own.

sysadmin_s01: Hello.

Briar leaned back a little and swatted Roach’s shoulder with the back of his wing. “If I knew you were bored enough to talk to ghosts, I would have pulled up a copy of Striped Menace for you to play.”
Roach grunted, embarrassment warming his chitin.

Taffy T.: Um hi. Who is this?

Briar’s grin drained from his face. Roach’s eyes went wide.
“Bullshit,” Briar whispered.
Roach stared at the screen, disbelieving.

Taffy T.: Hello? I think I sent that to you by mistake. Is this IT?

“Bullshit,” Briar repeated. “This is just data storage. There’s no one else down here but us.”
Roach stood, scanned the servers, and started walking through the rows.
Briar scrambled to his hooves to follow. “Okay, now you’re freaking me out. Where are you going?”
He ignored the question, his eyes on the numbered servers passing by. “What was that Stable you were telling me about before? The one your uncle told stories about?”
“Stable 88,” Briar said. “Or 89. One of those. Why?”
Roach stopped, turned around, and backtracked until he found the server marked 81 and turned down the row.
82… 83… 84…
Blinking lights, stuttering platters and whirring fans passed him on either side, but his attention was bent toward the server near the end of the row. He stopped, his eyes turned up toward the top of the cage where a bright 89 stood out in high relief.
The server inside was as quiet as death.
“That’s it,” he whispered.
Briar was clearly not as enamored with Roach’s discovery. “What is it?”
“The numbers,” he said. His pale eyes followed a slow arc, staring at the nearly two hundred servers that surrounded them. “The backup power. They’re not all for this Stable. They're for all the Stables.”
Briar's eyes widened with understanding. 
"It's a network."







The last treads of the great stairwell sank into a mass of bones, clothing and jellified flesh. A faint, sick-sweet odor hung in the fog like a reminder. Here were the ponies who had fallen. Here were the forgotten.
A single corridor on the far wall of the circular landing branched off into the bowels of the Stable. A sheet of half-inch steel had been mounted above the entryway by heavy bolts sunk into the concrete. Rust and what appeared to be drips of old flesh had since coated the makeshift sign, but they could still make out the word MECHANICAL in the center.
Aurora willed herself not to look too closely at the compacted mass of decomposition.
Julip didn’t hesitate to share her opinion. She sounded on the verge of being sick as she said, “I’m not wading through that. No fucking way.”
“You won’t have to,” Ginger said, her horn glowing brighter. “Just be quiet and don’t wriggle like you did last time.”
“‘Last time?’ What…”
Julip fell silent as amber light swarmed around her. As they had when she found herself being picked up off the tracks, Julip’s eyes went wide as Ginger carefully hoisted her off the treads and past the railing toward the corridor.
“Do. Not. Drop me,” she growled.
Ginger blinked several times, her face a mask of concentration. Slowly, she guided Julip over the pooled remains and carried her into the darkened corridor. When she appeared to be past the worst of it, the spell popped and Julip dropped to the ground with an unmistakably wet splat.
“OH MY FUCK YOU DID NOT.”
Aurora carefully shielded her mouth with her feathers, undecided on whether she should laugh or throw up. For Ginger’s part, she appeared genuinely surprised.
“Are you alright? That’s as far as I can cast!”
“IT’S UP TO MY ANKLES PICK ME BACK UP!”
Ginger glowered in the direction of her voice. “I am not a crane! Just wait there or walk to where's it's more… shallow. I'm sending Aurora over next.”
She felt her stomach lurch. “I could probably just fly.”
“From a dead stop? I hardly think so. Now be still.”
She braced herself as she felt Ginger’s magic coil around her like a second skin, hardening just enough to resemble the sensation of a firm but gentle grip. A small gasp escaped her as she felt herself lift up over the railing and effortlessly drift across the congealed, nightmarish pool.
The light of her Pip-Buck illuminated the corridor as she drifted inside. Gravity, pressure and a constant stream of damp air had allowed the mass to flow in a good ten yards before its own viscosity barred further progress. Aurora felt her momentum slow as she neared the spot Julip landed, the Enclave mare already making her way to what amounted to dry land, which was to say not dry at all.
While the remains of fallen ponies only extended so far, beyond that stood a layer of murky water a good few inches deep. Her Pip-Buck caught its rippling surface just enough for her to see the slick of rainbows swirling in Julip’s wake.
Ginger’s spell dissolved and Aurora clamped her eyes, ears and tail shut as she sank a solid foot into what she tried to convince her brain was mud. Just plain old mud. Nothing but mud.
Mud, mud, mud.
Touching the wall with the tip of her wing, she guided herself out of the sludge to where Julip now waited. When she opened her eyes, Julip was staring past her with righteous indignation. 
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Shut up,” Ginger said through clenched teeth. “Trying to concentrate.”
Aurora looked back to see Ginger wobbling through the air, her body jerking and swaying as she tried to keep control of her spell while her deeper instincts fiercely tried to get her to right herself. Her legs shot out and clicked back together as if she were trying to stand on spilled oil, but slowly, unsteadily, she managed to pilot herself into the corridor until her hooves came to rest beside them.
She doused her magic and blew out the lungful of air she’d been holding, tipping sideways until her shoulder thumped against the damp wall. She stayed there, eyes bulging from exertion. Aurora used her feathers to pull a strand of her short fiery mane behind her ear, mirroring Ginger’s gesture outside the gardens. 
Ginger looked up at her and grinned through her exhaustion. “How’s that for magic?”
She dropped her wing over Ginger’s back and tugged her up from the wall with a smile of her own. “Try to save some for the generator, okay?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” 
There was a wistfulness in her eyes that served as a reminder that her magic would likely decay back to the state it had been when they first met. As long as she made the most of it, however Ginger chose to define that, Aurora would be happy to see her enjoy it.
Water splashed around their hooves as they walked the corridor, the lamp of Aurora’s Pip-Buck reflecting off to cast eerie green ripples of light on the walls and ceiling. In the dark depths of Stable 1’s Mechanical level, nearly every surface was plated with steel much in the same way they paneled the walls and ceiling with it back home. It was reassuring to see that another group of ponies had been irritated by Stable-Tec’s designer, custom-fit wall sections to a point where they scrapped them out and replaced them with flat, easy-to-replace steel.
The panels were so corroded that the waves they created pulled a thin swirl of rust confetti into their wake. Aurora paused at the first intersection, disoriented by so many familiar signposts in such an unfamiliar place. Back home, she would have walked straight off the elevator and made a bee-line across the main work hall to the generator room. Down here, she wasn’t sure.
“Clever stallion,” Julip murmured.
Aurora looked to her, then followed her eyes to the corner of the intersection ahead. Scraped into the rusting wall panel was a little silver arrow pointing to the right. Above it, the roughly scratched word PUMP.
“May as well check that box first,” Aurora said, though she wished Briar had thought to leave directions for the generator room as well. “Feathers crossed they’re easier to get apart than the first one.”
After a minute of walking, checking walls for directions and eventually finding the open door marked with the misnomer PUMPHOUSE, she learned that wouldn’t be the case.
The pump room was a simple setup. At the center of the large space, a deep square cistern sank well below the floor of Level 144. By design it was most likely the deepest point in the Stable, meant to collect groundwater before it could damage the Stable walls and pump it deep into the bedrock where it could disperse into the surrounding water table. Some of it would inevitably flow back into the cistern to be pumped out again, but that was unavoidable. The goal here was the same goal the smaller cistern back home worked to achieve: longevity.
Two beastly pumps loomed at the far side of the cistern, easily half the size of Aurora’s generator. They were the workhorses that kept Stable 1 dry, and not the ones they were looking for. Those smaller auxiliary pumps dotted the outer perimeter of the cistern, intake hoses dipping into the void as if they were trying to save someone stuck at the bottom.
Aurora looked at the cistern with no small measure of mistrust. The only time she ever had to deal with a large amount of water in one place was when she tried to install a bypass to the flow control in her shower and wound up flooding half the residential level. Something about an entire… cube of water, just sitting there, felt unnatural.
With Ginger providing steady light and Julip standing by with the few tools Aurora had left, she spent the better part of twenty minutes fighting one rusted nut after another. They budged only after she had given them their ounce of sweat, squealing loose to be discarded in the shallow water besides the deeper pool behind her. She tried not to think about it and dared not let anything fall into the deep. The fact that it was this close to her was making her skittish enough.
After fighting with the pump’s casing, it finally came apart with the sandy crunch of rust. The water around them turned orange with the fine material as Aurora loosened the impeller blade and pulled it free. It would need to be rinsed off and greased once they got it back up the mountain, but it would to the job.
Briar’s new impeller balanced out the weight of the food stashed in her other bag nicely. Leaving the pump room and its disturbing cistern behind, she felt a little more hopeful that this chapter of her life might finally be coming to an end.
Several wrong turns and one frustrating loop back to the stairwell later, they found the generator room at the end of a heavily graffitied corridor. The majority of the flaking paint had since sloughed off the rusting walls, but enough remained in places for Aurora to piece together a few scrawled words.


WE POWER THEIR POWER


RISE UP


BORN FREE, HORN-FREE


Seeing similar slogans painted at the top of the Stable had made her curious, but down here in a place so eerily familiar to her, it made her wonder if something like this could happen to her Stable. Whether the harmless daily complaints about the pegasi lucky enough to work a normal nine-to-five without coming home with bruised shins, aching wings and no energy to do much else except eat and sleep might someday turn into something dangerous. In her heart, she didn’t think it could. But then again, how many earth ponies at the bottom of this forgotten Stable had thought the same thing?
The doorway to the generator room was nearly identical to the one that sealed the servers, except instead of dangling from a few loose wires in the wall the door’s card reader had been neatly disassembled and tucked into its panel box. Even the mounting screws had been put away, as if someone wanted to leave themselves the option of returning for them.
Aurora glanced at Julip, who had grown noticeably quiet. She gestured to the reader with one wing while sliding the feathers of the other into the lip of the unlocked door. “Your people, I’m guessing.”
Julip nodded. “Mmhm.”
With no power to keep them extended, the magnetic locks had disengaged. A sliver of Ginger’s magic grasped the door as well and the thick hinges peeled in protest as they forced it open. 
As the gap widened, a bed of radroaches poured over the threshold and into the corridor. Aurora turned her eyes straight up and stood deathly still as a dozen of the horrible things splashed across the water, bumping against their legs as they emitted an excited chitter or liberation. She caught the edge of a sigh from Julip as the mare began using the cup of her wing to scoop up the wandering insects and fling them back down the corridor one and two at a time. Julip hardly seemed bothered by them. More annoyed than anything else. As one of the bugs scrambled toward her hoof she lifted it and dropped it hard in the center of its carapace, popping it beneath the water like Equestria’s most disgusting party favor.
 It was enough to give the remaining creepy crawlies the proper motivation to scatter back to whichever crack or crevice they called home. Shuddering, they opened the door to Stable 1's generator room and slipped inside.







October 21st, 1076

Primrose brushed a smudge of construction dust from her jacket and smiled at the rows of investors, press and honorary first residents of Stable 1.
They weren’t here for her, and neither was she smiling for them. She stood behind Spitfire’s left shoulder, close enough that she was able to subtly pick a few bits of lint from her dress blues while the cameras flashed. On Spitfire’s opposite wing stood Rainbow Dash, her vibrant mane swept back and the gold clouds of her element’s necklace glittering in the fanfare. Primrose watched as the so-called Element of Loyalty whispered encouragement into Scootaloo’s ear, the latter mare nervously tapping a stack of notecards against her haunches as she prepared to take the podium.
Flashbulbs strobed as Rainbow finished her pep talk and Scootaloo turned to face the microphone. Primrose straightened a little and faced the cameras, fully expecting to be cropped out of the frame once they reached the printers.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlecolts.” Scootaloo looked down at her notes as the flashes blinded everyone on the stage. “Today is an important day for myself, this company and the history of Equestria. Behind me stands Stable 1. The first of many self-sustaining, fully contained shelters capable of withstanding the full force of the bomb. Our hope is that these shelters will never be needed, but for those of us at Stable-Tec, hope has never been a plan…”
Primrose tuned Scootaloo out. She’d heard it all before. Feathers crossed we don’t have to use these, blah blah blah, thank you for your life’s savings, blah blah blah. For such a substandard pegasus, she did have a knack for pulling the wool over ponies’ eyes. It almost sounded like she believed the tripe she was feeding her rapt audience.
She scanned the crowd, careful not to let her smile slip. Plainclothes agents of the Ministry of Image milled through the crowd, the attention they paid to the ponies around them enough to give them away. The press members weren’t oblivious to their presence, but after a few years of hard reminders to stay in line, most of them were just here to snap photos. The byline was most likely being written for them by their Element of Generosity.
A wingful of wealthy earth ponies and unicorns stood together near the press pool, smiling with that self-serving sense of pride that ponies like them tended to do when they grew tired of pretending to be humble. Naturally, they thought they had things figured out. They had signed up for the same lottery everyone else had, and it just so happened that the lucky fifty first winners were ponies of status. Most of them, anyway. Primrose had opted to select a few token earth ponies from mud country to round out the demographic.
Behind them stood the smooth concrete ramp of Stable 1, its pristine dome bright in the midday sun. They couldn’t have picked a better spot for it. Above sea level, within proximity of a mountain-fed stream and a respectable water table to draw from, surrounded in every direction by ancient granite peaks and accessible by easily protected dirt roads on either end of the valley. This had proven to be a fantastic first step.
Scootaloo’s speech dragged. By the time it wrapped up, the gathered guests and press were eager to move onto the ribbon cutting and see the inside for themselves. As she followed Spitfire off the stage and stood on her mark behind the Stable-Tec branded ribbon, she wondered how their investors might hide their disappointment. It would be another four months before excavation wrapped up. Another six before Stable-Tec’s standby crew would begin taking shifts on the garden levels.
Scootaloo said a few words in the same thread of her speech and the ribbon was cut. The visitors formed an orderly line at the top of the ramp and whispered excitedly to one another as members of Stable-Tec security ushered them down to the open door. Primrose joined the line with a stallion she didn’t recognize, likely another glorified coffee-getter like herself, and watched as ponies reacted to the white tarp fixed to the bulkhead. The plastic tunnel was fixed to plywood flooring that directed them through the Stable’s first chamber and into the security office on the other side.
More than a few ponies asked the security team what the tunnel was for, to which they were given a generic excuse of fine silicate still being airborne from construction. Primrose hadn’t been sure how Scootaloo would divert ponies’ attention away from the incinerator, but this definitely did the trick.
She milled out onto the first level of the Stable, blinking against the odd flash from eager photographers while the majority of ponies headed toward the cafeteria space to sample “genuine Stable-Tec cuisine.” The smell of steamed vegetables, soups and fresh bread was almost tempting, but the line forming at the service line was already several dozen deep and steadily wrapping around itself. Rich or poor, free food was free food.
There wasn’t much to do for the first hour but wander. Spitfire would be busy for the entirety of the luncheon, fielding interviews for ponies who couldn’t lock down time with Rainbow Dash or Scootaloo, touching base with a few key pegasi from the ministry and eventually settling down at a table to tap out a few messages on her brand-new Pip-Buck. Primrose lifted a bread roll from one of the tables, winking at a press member who reacted to the theft with a smirk. 
She took a bite and strolled over to the railing where several other ponies had chosen to enjoy their meals. A nearby mare giggled nervously at the prospect of standing over such a long drop, making Primrose chuckle. The idle construction equipment parked at the bottom of the pit had barely scraped the surface of what would be Level 40. There was still a long way to go.
“Ma’am?”
She blinked and noticed the cremello stallion standing behind her.
“The bar will be opening in a moment. You’ll have to step away from the railing.”
No sense in risking someone stumbling over the edge. Already, members of security were asking the other patrons to enjoy themselves a safe distance away. Primrose smiled at him, taking a moment to appreciate the undercarriage, and meandered back toward the guests.
Spitfire was still at her table juggling conversation, lunch and reading her messages. They met eyes briefly enough for Primrose to see she didn’t need saving. She was in her element. If anything, she was putting on an impressive performance that would be best left uninterrupted.
A flicker of color - well, more color than usual - passed through the crowd near the exit. She caught a glimpse of Rainbow Dash nodding polite acknowledgements as she made her way off the main floor and slipped, alone, into the security office. 
Hm. That could be fun.
Nobody paid her any mind as she strode through the guests, ducked behind photographers and toward the security ponies at the door. An earth pony saw her approaching and stepped forward to quietly redirect her, but the pegasus beside him put a wing on his shoulder and gestured for her to go on through. Primrose nodded at him, letting her tail graze his ribs as she sauntered by.
She smiled. Loyalty deserved rewarding.
The tunnel crinkled as she trotted through and emerged onto the ramp in time to spot Rainbow Dash sitting down at the very top, a glass pinched between her blue feathers.
“Cider?”
As she climbed the ramp, she caught a glimpse of Rainbow rolling her eyes. She likely thought she was another fan coming to beg for her autograph. 
“Don’t know what it is,” she muttered, taking a sip. “Don’t really care. Do you need something?”
Primrose took a deep breath and shook her head. 
“Just thought I’d get some fresh air. Stretch my wings.” She gave them a quick flap, enough to seat herself on the retaining wall a few yards from where Rainbow drank. “Saw you out here and thought you might like some company.”
Rainbow took another sip and pulled a face, her speech touched with the hint of slur. “I’m out here to get away from the company.”
She kicked her legs forward and back, her hooves clicking against the concrete wall. A bad habit she hadn’t been able to shake from her foalhood. That, and other things.
“That bad, huh?” she asked.
Rainbow let out an impatient sigh. “You’re one of hers, aren’t you.”
“One of who’s?”
She watched as the Element of Loyalty downed the rest of her glass and coughed a rough chuckle. “Yeah, you are. She send you out here to s-s-spy on me? Make sure I’m being a good little girl?”
So much for playing the naive card. For a mare already half in the barrel, her wits were razor sharp. 
“She doesn’t pay me well enough to be your babysitter,” she said, hoping to smooth out some of the rougher edges of that paranoia. “I noticed you leave and thought I’d see what you were up to.”
Rainbow continued to stare ahead, watching Stable-Tec’s people finish packing up the stage. Not far down the dirt road, a line of carriages waited to take any non-flying ponies back home once the event was over. “Got a name?”
She smiled. “Primrose. My friends call me Prim.”
Rainbow glanced back at her and hummed recognition. “Spitfire’s receptionist.”
“Guilty,” she said, extending a pink wing. Rainbow leaned back and gave it a quick shake. “You look like you’ve seen better days. Everything okay?”
“This is my fifth glass of white wine, I think,” she replied, waggling the empty glass without bothering to look at her. “Yeah, I’m having an awesome day.”
Primrose was no detective, but she had the sense that Rainbow was employing sarcasm.
“Want to talk…”
“F-f-fucking don’t ask me if I want to talk about it.”
She held up her hooves, not that Rainbow could see, and decided to wait her out instead. They sat there, not quite together, and watched as an open box truck backed up to the disassembled stage. Like efficient little ants, the earth ponies tasked with packing it up went straight to work hefting panels.
“Today’s my friend’s anniversary,” she muttered.
Primrose glanced at her. “Not a happy anniversary, by the sound of it.”
“No,” Rainbow agreed. “Not a happy one. A year ago today. Got her killed. Poof. Gone just l-l-like that.”
Ah. The gryphon. Spitfire mentioned something about that.
“Know how many of my friends called me today?”
“Not enough, I’m guessing.”
“Bingo. Not fucking enough.” She held up a single feather. “Just one. And I guess… she didn’t even call, since we live together now. Applejack’s the only one that cares anymore. The rest of them…”
Her train of thought seemed to trail off as the wine took hold. She sat there for a moment, shaking her head, her feather still standing upright as if she didn’t realize it was still there.
Then she turned, halfway, that same feather leveled at Primrose. “I would have called if Maud died! Or Sweetie Belle, or… what’s-his-name, Fluttershy’s brother!”
Primrose waited as Rainbow exhausted her list, making a point to ask Spitfire to make her aware next time that the head of their ministry was carrying extra baggage.
“Fuck, even Twilight. If something ever happened to Shining Armor, I’d remember to knock on her fucking door.” She scrubbed her wing across her face, the last puddle of wine dribbling into the dirt. She let out a derisive snort. “God, I’m a f-f-fucking mess.”
She blinked, confused. “Who?”
Rainbow waved her off, leaning a little in the process. “Nothing. Something Gilda liked to say. Look… what’s your name again?”
“Prim.”
“Look, Prim. I’m gonna head out so I can get back pretending I have anything important to do.” She stood, unsteadily, and paused. “Am I supposed to know you’re one of her…”
“Spies?”
Rainbow shrugged.
“It’s fine, yes.”
She grunted, then nodded. “Tell Spitfire I said good luck with her new Stable.”
Primrose’s smile tightened. “You mean Scootaloo’s?”
“I meant what I said. See you around, Prim.”
With that, she opened her wings and threw them to the ground. A few seconds later, a crisp, unbroken rainbow erupted in the sky. The sonic boom thumped in Primrose’s chest like a physical thing.
Swinging herself off the retaining wall, she dropped to her hooves and narrowed her eyes as the rainboom gently pushed aside a wisp of clouds. She needed to touch base with Spitfire, and soon. 
One of the Elements of Harmony had been peeking.
> Chapter 27: Hardwired
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 12th, 1147
Sixty Years After The Bombs

Roach let out a little grunt of effort as he pulled himself through the winding tunnel he’d burrowed into the worst of the rockslide. The burlap pouch clutched between his teeth contained a respectable variety of jerkeyed meat and a small glass jar of genuine, homemade apple butter. The latter hadn’t been a part of the original agreement, but the elderly mare had insisted he accept it nonetheless. As a gift, she told him, not as payment. He knew Lily wouldn’t relent before he did, and the jar of sugared apple spread went into his bag along with a modest sprinkling of caps.
He’d begun making more frequent trips out into the wasteland over the last few decades, but rarely did he go out during the winter. Lily was a special exception. Of the scattered ponies who survived the turbulent years immediately after the bombs, she was one of the last of that melancholic generation. Pretty soon the only ones who remembered life before the war would be the ghouls. The thought worried him. Even without the bombs, the radiation and the strange mutations that plagued Equestria, the world had undeniably changed. It had become more violent. Less forgiving. So much was being forgotten that he wondered how long it would be until even the prewar ghouls would be viewed as an oddity rather than an anchor to a better time.
Lily’s reward swung beneath his chin as he pulled himself through the last stretch of the tunnel. He wasn’t the only pony helping with her little farm. More than once, he’d come to check on her when another survivor was already hard at work clearing tainted snow from her meager field. Most of them chose not to speak to him, or if they did they did so sparingly, referring to him as “changeling,” “bug” or, more recently, “roach.” That last one got stuck in his head for some reason. Seemed appropriate given the changing times. 
Lily was the only pony who still called him Sunny, and it was that reason he kept coming back season after season. Even so, he was minding his generously donated nicknames less and less.
Roach crawled out into the larger tunnel outside Stable 10 and tapped each of his hooves against the flagstones, sending bits of damp soil and melting snow tumbling from the cavities in his legs. The door to Blue’s utility room was pushed open which meant she was probably wandering among the pillars again. He stretched his translucent wings, letting the insulated air of the tunnel warm his sides while being mindful not to push them too far. The membranes had become brittle in recent years and he could already feel the joints growing loose in their sockets. Initially he’d thought he was finally going to molt out of his cracking chitin, but over the years it had become clear that wasn’t what was happening. The answer was much simpler. His wings were starting to decay. It wouldn’t be long until each one fell out like a dead tooth.
He settled them against his sides and pushed the superficial worry away. There were plenty of earth ponies in the wasteland who managed just fine. If or when it happened, he would just have to make do. Maybe he could look into the new bite triggers he'd seen the guards in Steepleton use. A project for tomorrow, he decided. 
His hooves clicked over the flagstones, making his way deeper into the tunnel. The framed posters on the walls drifted by in the comforting monochrome of his inborn night vision, the old slogans and fear mongering warning of a desolate future should Equestria fail in its duty to defeat the bloodthirsty zebras across the sea. He sighed. The old corpses surrounding the pillars lay as testament to that failure. Sixty years on, seeing them reclining against one another still elicited a twinge of deep sadness inside him. If he wanted to, he could still hear their desperate screaming. The panic in their voices as they begged the overmare to open the door. The quiet sobbing that echoed off the walls, made quieter with each passing gunshot.
Coming home never got any easier.
He found her at the end of the tunnel, curled up beneath the Stable’s immovable door. Her ears perked up as he climbed the steps and she bent her neck around to look at him, her face momentarily unsure of him before recognition slowly set in. She smiled.
“Hi, Sunny,” she murmured.
He smiled back and sat down beside Rainbow, happy that he’d made it back in time to catch her in one of her rare moments of lucidity. Lily’s jar clunked inside the burlap pouch as he set it onto the dusty concrete. “Hey, Rainbow,” he replied, using his teeth to toss open the pouch. “I brought you something.”
Rainbow sniffed as she sat up. She’d been crying. He pretended not to notice.
“Luna’s grace, if it’s a hayburger I’ll kiss you.”
He chuckled at the empty threat and lifted the jar for her to see. She wrapped her feathers around the glass and blinked at the murky contents.
“It’s a treat,” he said. “Lily made it for us.”
She smiled a little more eagerly and spun the lid. When she pulled it away, the rich scent of cinnamon, nutmeg and caramelized apples lifted into the air. For a brief moment, Roach was back home. His real home. He could feel the rungs of the kitchen chair against his back while he admired Saffron’s unbreakable patience for baking complex recipes. In just a few short minutes, Violet would wander into the kitchen for one thing or another, though her real goal would always be to sneak off with a taste of fresh batter.
He watched Rainbow Dash gently screw the lid back on, her jaw working back and forth as she set it beside the burlap pouch. It was obvious that she was enduring some powerful memories of her own, so he didn’t object when she turned and snatched him into a crushing hug. Her ragged wings wrapped them like a cloak for what felt like minutes. Neither of them spoke a word.
When he finally felt her feathers loosen, he let her go and settled on his haunches to face the door. His lip tilted up his cheek as he felt her scoot next to him and set her head against his shoulder. He’d lost track of how many times the two of them had sat like this, each of them wishing for different reasons that the Stable door would end its decades-long silence and roll aside.
He watched as she picked up the jar and tapped out a small puddle of apple butter into the upturned lid. She offered it up for him to taste. He leaned slightly forward as she tipped it against his cracked lips, letting the silk smooth dessert glide across his senses before pouring a little for herself. Roach closed his eyes and let out a contented sigh.
They ate quietly, each taking their turn enjoying the gently spiced treat until the jar ran empty and they were left with just the comfort of each other’s company. As Rainbow’s breathing grew slower, Roach started humming the melody of a tune Lily had been playing off an old record. Blue was always calmer when she awoke to music.
“I remember that song.”
He put a hoof around her shoulder, encouraged that Rainbow was hanging on this long. She was nearly as stubborn as his own daughter had been. Absently, he began rocking her side to side as he continued to hum the notes.
He couldn’t help but smile as Rainbow sang the words, their voices echoing off the immovable door in defiance of what had been taken away from them.







“...and what we are a part of is bigger than we know. And the height of our ability is further than we go.”
Rainbow turned her face toward the showerhead, laughing a little as she spat a squirt of hot water from her mouth. “And fear is just another problem we will figure out. And we will grow our garden come sun, flood, or drought.”
There was something about taking her first shower in two hundred and twenty years that coaxed the old tune out of her. It had been one of dozens of songs Applejack used to listen to regularly, songs which Rainbow had never been shy about giving her a little ribbing over their hokey rural themes.
She paused to watch the water swirl the drain between her hooves. What she wouldn’t give to have her back. Grimacing, she knew exactly what Applejack would say if she caught her pitying herself like this. There would be plentiful y’alls and ain’ts sprinkled throughout a lecture that could be boiled down to five easy words: you need to move on.
Easy to say, harder to do, but she indulged in a bittersweet smile at the memory of Applejack’s voice despite the pain of knowing she was probably the last pony alive who remembered how it sounded. Her time in the tunnel with Sunny felt less like centuries and something closer to a jumbled, weeklong fever dream. Sledge claimed to have surveillance footage of the two of them spanning that time, and maybe one day she would ask to see it, but first she needed to let herself process this strange new reality of hers.
And that started with figuring out what it was Spitfire had been trying to erase, and why this Delta Vee mare disobeyed her.
A deep thump caused the puddles around her hooves to ripple and the compartment abruptly went pitch black. Almost immediately, the emergency light above the toilet kicked on, bathing her in a dim yellow twilight. The shower sputtered and the water flow became anemic. Sighing, Rainbow used the weak trickle to rinse the suds from what amounted to her mane while the ponies next door uttered muffled complaints. Her shower cut short, she tapped the shutoff button and rubbed herself down with one of the neatly folded towels shelved near the open doorway. 
The blackouts were starting to crop up off schedule, now. 
Her eyes blinked open and she was in the main room, laying on the bed. Frowning, she pushed herself into a sitting position and wiped a damp streak of drool from the corner of her lip. The power was back on. On the desk, her terminal glowed with the dryly worded message of an improper shutdown. Blue must have gotten restless and taken her for a stroll. At least she’d decided to sleep on top of the bed this time, instead of underneath it.
Fixing her gaze on the featureless wall across from her, she focused on getting her train of thought back on track.
Spitfire. 
Wait, no. Delta Vee.
She got up and sat down in front of the terminal, dismissing the notification. It finished rebooting and presented Rainbow with a directory of options she was gradually starting to become familiar with. At the top of the list was the partition Delta Vee had sealed away, burying the first decade of Stable 10’s history beneath layers of deadbolt encryptions. Her first instinct was to reopen the partition and start the painfully dull process of reading filenames in hopes of bumping into something significant.
Something told her that was the wrong move. She leaned back in her chair, the feathers of her only wing sliding off the keyboard and onto her lap. 
Delta Vee. Stable 10’s first Head of IT. Rainbow couldn’t place the mare anywhere in her memory, but if she was Jet Stream’s wife there was a good chance the two of them had bumped into each other at the very least in passing. With curiosity biting at the back of her mind, she reached forward and ran a resident search on the mare’s name. Not surprisingly, only one result appeared beneath a subdirectory labeled DECEASED. When she selected the entry, a grainy photo of a baggy-eyed mare appeared beside her resident profile.
At first glance, very little about Delta Vee stood out. The greenwashed picture, an irritating limitation of terminals that Robronco never resolved, purported to show a pale blue mare with a short, bichromatic teal and navy mane. Dark eyeliner wrapped red irises that, despite the terminal’s singular palate, gave Delta Vee an uncannily piercing stare. The deep bags beneath those eyes hinted at many sleepless nights. For a photo of a mare in her early fifties, there was still a glint of rebellion there.
She scrolled past the general information. Weight, height, blood type… she was surprised to find that they had documented her addictions as casually as they might mention her favorite foods. They had been separated into two columns: PRE-RESIDENCY and POST-RESIDENCY. 
The first column was substantial: tobacco (cigarette, blindweed), alcohol, psilocybin (mushroom), cocaine hydrochloride, ketamine…
The second column was much more succinct: alcohol (intermittent recovery, functional).
Rainbow let out a low whistle. She’d known the ponies out in Las Pegasus had a reputation for hard partying, but some of the drugs Delta Vee had favored before the end had been highly illegal. She wondered whether any of that mattered once the Stable door was sealed. Maybe they viewed the withdrawals as punishment enough.
Continuing down, Delta Vee’s family history crept into view. Sure enough, Jet Stream’s grainy but unforgettable face drifted into view along with a brief summary of the two’s marital status. Rainbow couldn’t help but smirk, knowing he would balk at his legacy being boiled down to “husband.”
Beside his summary was a second younger face. The freckled mare, barely halfway into her twenties, beamed up from the terminal with barely contained excitement. Judging by the blank background behind her and her smart little suit jacket featuring the JetStream Aerospace logo on the left lapel, the picture had been pulled from an employment record. The cheerful mare was their only daughter, Apogee.
Someone had entered additional notes into Apogee’s mention. Unbeknownst to Rainbow at the time, Apogee had been something of an up-and-comer in her father’s blossoming private space program. No doubt nepotism played a heavy hoof in her being selected to pilot the first of many crewed missions, but the entries archived beneath her grinning face told a broader story of a mare eager to push limits that Rainbow hadn’t been aware of. 
She frowned at the mention of her holding the record for something called an “extravehicular activity” before realization dawned on her that the mare had gone outside while in orbit. There was no citation to support the claim, but something told Rainbow it was true nonetheless. She wondered how something like that worked. Maybe if Celestia hadn’t been so rigidly opposed to space exploration, she would know.
According to Delta Vee’s file, she was the only member of her family to make it to Stable 10 before Spitfire made the decision to seal the door. It was a story Rainbow knew too well. Delta Vee and Rainbow’s mother were only two of many pegasi whose families had been left behind. The only difference was that Rainbow had survived.
Her mother had grieved, but inevitably she found a new life within the Stable. She’d adopted an orphaned colt who would later call her his mother. Delta Vee seemed to have coped by burying herself in her work, eventually rising to the head of IT where she made the decision to defy her overmare. The question was why.
She looked at the greenwashed photos of Jet Stream and Apogee.
The answers, she realized, were staring her in the face.







Their hooves echoed off the generator room floor, a sound that deeply unsettled Aurora as the three of them stepped inside.
Green and amber light played across the rusting walls, offering them the first glimpse of two behemoth machines that looked nothing like she expected. Seated into the floor of a truly cavernous space, the twin generators looked like something out of a mechanic’s fever dream. Rather than the simple cylindrical shape Aurora was used to, these looked more akin to the locomotive stripped of its wheels and scaled up by a factor of ten.
They were large enough that the hexagonal room must have been built around them. Permanent scaffolding joined them together in a choreographed webwork of stairways and gantries. As Aurora approached, she rested her hooves atop a yellow safety railing that encompassed the work space around them. She was in awe.
Ginger leaned against the railing beside her while the globule of her magic flitted between the machines’ foundations. “These are what you worked on back home?”
She laughed. Not because it was funny, but because of how absurd the comparison was. These generators made what she did feel like foal’s play. “I’ve never seen anything this huge before.”
Behind her, Julip snickered. 
She ignored her, eyes turned up to where the very topmost gantries came within jumping distance of the ceiling. If she was a betting mare, she’d gamble that she was looking at the underside of Level 143.
Ducking through the railing, Aurora found herself walking through a workspace that must have taken dozens of ponies to manage. Parked beside the nearest gantry stairwell, an empty electric forklift sat in a puddle of heavy corrosion from its neglected batteries. A row of plastic pallets lay neatly at the foot of the first generator, stacked high with hard cases clearly labeled to indicate the replacement parts they contained. The closer she looked, the more she saw evidence of some sort of mass maintenance project left unfinished. A second forklift sat parked beside the first generator’s twin with a sheet of forged steel hanging from a chain secured to the forks. How the hydraulics in the mast survived under load this long, she didn’t know. The lift’s driver had died in his chair, hoof still vaguely reaching for the levers.
She caught a glimpse of more remains in the gangways overhead, their dark shapes casting long shadows in the light of Ginger’s magic.
Ginger and Julip followed close behind her as she walked a slow circle inside the perimeter of the safety railing. Their hooves clicked against dense unyielding concrete instead of the steel grating Aurora was expecting. There were no hidden underbellies to these generators. There very likely couldn’t be. In a way that made her task easier, but she wasn’t ready to celebrate yet. The talisman chambers could be anywhere on these monsters.
Glancing over her shoulder at Julip, she nodded up at the generator looming over them. “I don’t suppose the Enclave had you study the blueprints to these things?”
Julip shook her head, her eyes focused on something else. Aurora tilted her Pip-Buck’s screen toward whatever had caught her attention and frowned at the sight of an open access hatch in the side of the second generator. The panel leaned against the inch-thick chassis, alongside four heavy bolts set neatly in a row beside it.
Her gut began to churn with worry. The Enclave had been down here, rooting around inside the sleeping machines. She swallowed, refusing to let go of her narrowing chances that the Enclave had left the one component she came here for unmolested.
As silence began to stretch, Julip spoke. “Can I ask…”
Aurora’s ears went flat, her anger toward the mare still smoldering from her abortive attempt to beat her back in the gardens. “No. You can’t.”
She could feel Ginger’s eyes on her. Monitoring her. The fact that she was against her on this, that she was actually defending Julip’s right to a second chance they both believed she wouldn’t take, pissed her off even more. From the moment Julip tracked them down, she had been at the crux of every disagreement Aurora and Ginger were having. The fact that Aurora hadn’t told her or Roach about seeking out the Enclave outside the solar array. The decision to let Julip accompany them at all. The mare’s insistence that dustwings like Beans and Briar amounted to defects in the lineage of pegasi. Even her kiss-ass apology to Ginger earlier on the stairs. 
Everything had been fine between them until Julip dropped out of the sky. It made Aurora regret freeing her in the first place.
And yet Julip, a mare whose only skills seemed to be lying, stalking, reciting ancient history and not much else, continued to follow them like a first-day trainee who was too stubborn to get a different assignment.
Best of all, she was dead-set on testing Aurora’s withering patience.
“Since you just saw what I saw,” Julip pressed, “I’ll just go ahead and say it. A recovery team has already been through this Stable. It’s picked clean. That probably means your ignition talisman, too.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, give it a rest. You’re the one who insisted I come down here with you, and you’ve been telegraphing this whole generator problem of yours for the past two days.” Julip’s hooves clicked off the concrete a little faster, her tone growing more pointed as she drew up just outside of Aurora’s wingspan. “What did you think was going to happen once we got down here? Contrary to what you may think, I’m not an idiot. If you were looking for spare parts, you could have fabricated them without leaving your Stable.”
Aurora grit her teeth, her eyes scanning the chassis of the first generator while she tried to ignore the mare just a few feet away.
“Earlier you said your generator was slowing down. Not falling apart. Not broken. Slowing.” Julip cut in front of her. Were it not for the gentle pressure of Ginger’s magic, Aurora would have had no qualms about knocking the mare on her little green ass.
“Move,” she warned.
“You’re looking for an ignition talisman,” Julip pressed. “I can help you get one.”
“Don’t need your help,” she muttered, turned around and brushed past Ginger as she resumed examining the generators. “I got what I need down here.”
“Yeah,” Julip called. “Two broken down generators with no power supplies. That’s what you fucking have!”
Ignoring her, Aurora retraced her steps, walked toward the square section of panelling the Enclave removed and searched the ground. A heavy ratchet lay in the narrow shelter the tilted panel created. She scooped it up with one wing and shined the light of her Pip-Buck into the cavity of the opened generator.
She could hear Ginger behind her murmuring some choice words to Julip in an attempt to de-escalate the growing tension. It wouldn’t help. Aurora was one wrong word away from sending the ratchet hurtling toward Julip’s fat fucking mouth. She didn’t need this right now.
She struggled to focus on the words stamped across the myriad cables, hydraulics and cooling lines strung beneath the generator’s steel skin. Leaning in, she could just make out a void deeper along its superstructure large enough for a pony to fit inside. She backed out, avoiding any eye contact with Julip, and walked several paces down the length of the generator. Her lips pressed into a narrow line as she spotted another panel leaned up on the ground, bolts standing upright like soldiers lined up for inspection.
Grabbing the straps of her saddlebags, she flung them roughly over her tail and crawled up into the access hatch.
“Aurora,” Ginger called behind her. “That doesn’t look safe.”
She opened her mouth to reassure her but stopped short of answering. She was too angry to trust herself to speak. With the ratchet still clutched under her wing, she pushed herself into the cramped space and squirmed deeper into the generator’s corpse.
The narrow metal tunnel was packed dense with electrical lines, each of them stamped with serial numbers nearly identical to the cable Briar had buried outside his family’s home. The voltage ratings on the lines were terrifying to consider, so she didn’t. The generator was off. Any capacitance in the lines would have dissipated well before she was born. If there was a silver lining to squeezing her way through the claustrophobic channels of a deadly machine, it was that she didn’t have to worry about the cables rubbing against her wings shorting out and flash-roasting her organs.
She grunted as the ridge of her wing hooked through a limp coolant line, forcing her to drop the ratchet and kick it further ahead with her foreleg. Feathers designed to point one way pinched the sensitive skin they sprouted from as they were made to bend backward when she jerked herself free. The abrupt but brief pain put tears in her eyes, but it didn’t stop her from moving forward.
The tunnel bent ninety degrees to the right, forcing her to roll onto her side in order to squeeze around. As she made the turn, she frowned as the light of her Pip-Buck bounced off the panel of a dead end in front of her. It took a split second for her to spot the hinges. She awkwardly scooped the ratchet up in the crux of her foreleg and thumped it against the panel barring her way. It popped open, swinging lazily into a larger void within the machine. She crawled forward and dropped inside.
The space she found herself in was barely larger than her shower back home, but at least she could breathe. Setting the ratchet down, she directed her light around the small empty space and tried to understand what it was for. The cables spilled out of the crawlspace, followed the bare steel and sorted themselves into various, innocuous ports in the surrounding walls. She walked a tight circle, trying to get a sense of where to go next when a sharp bolt of pain shot up her foreleg.
“Ow!” She jerked away and turned her hoof over with fresh irritation. A dark bead of blood was already forming around the silver head of a security screw. Wincing, she gripped the screw between her teeth and yanked it out before she could think twice. It hurt more coming out and she kicked the wall behind her in a vain attempt to redirect the pain.
Spitting the bloody screw onto the floor, she grit her teeth as the pain slowly lessened. “Little motherfucker.”
The screw rolled into the corner where three identical points of metal stood upright near the wall. Aurora narrowed her eyes at them, then turned her light to the floor beneath her hooves. A seam, machined with such precision that it was practically invisible, drew a perfect square at the center of the space. There was no ring to pull. Not even an indent to manipulate with her hoof. Just a perfectly smooth piece of steel and four tiny holes at each corner.
Her throat went dry as she recognized its purpose. It was designed so that only a unicorn could easily lift it. Anyone else, whether they were earth pony or pegasus, would have to make a deliberate effort to pull it away in the hopes that they came to their senses before they succeeded.
There was only one piece of a generator that required a unicorn’s horn to handle. Her heartbeat quickened as she picked up one of the screws, seated it into the corner of the panel and gave it a few short twists. Just enough for the threading to catch. Just enough for her to have something to grip with her teeth.
She shut her eyes as she bit down around the head of the screw and pulled. The panel wasn’t designed to be lightweight, but she steeled herself and pushed down against her hooves. It lifted, barely an inch, but it was enough room to grab the ratchet on the floor and stick it through the gap. She breathed a sigh of relief as she set it down, ran her tongue across her teeth to reassure herself they were all still present, and wedged her wings through the gap to lift the panel away.
There it was. Seated within a glass chamber whose operation she only had a rudimentary understanding of. Two impossibly fine contact points machined to within a micron of accuracy, their conical points separated by exactly eight inches of space between which had rested the object Aurora had risked her life to find.
It was empty.
The ignition talisman was gone.
For a long while, everything felt too distant to wrap her head around. She sat down and her foreleg started bouncing with directionless energy. She stood, frowned into the empty chamber, blinked several times, and turned silently toward the crawlspace.
Something inside of her felt… disconnected. She wriggled around the tight corner, pushing with her hind legs and pulling with her front. Little grunts and gasps echoed dimly through the silent machine as she made her way out. In the corner of her mind, she thought about stopping. It was cozy here, safe and simple. She didn’t want to keep going, but if she stayed here someone would just crawl in to get her. 
It hadn’t hit her yet. As she stumped her way toward the dim amber light at the end, she wondered when it would.
Ginger’s face appeared at the other side, relief washing over her features as she backed up to make room. Aurora winced as she gripped the edge, pulled herself forward and dropped her front hooves to the concrete floor. She didn’t look at Ginger. She didn’t say a word to either of them.
Julip stood just beyond Ginger’s left shoulder. Maybe it was the look on Aurora’s face or the fact that her wings were empty that prompted her to say what she said. Either way, it didn’t matter. The words rolled off the little mare’s tongue like bile.
“Whelp.” Julip said, with just a hint of self-satisfaction. “Told you.”
That was it.
Her hind legs found purchase on the edge of the crawlspace and she lunged. A sheet of amber light wrapped against her chest but the anger was pouring into her now like hot slag. She scrambled over the top of Ginger’s barrier, fell, stumbled back to her hooves and had to sidestep another sheet of magic before throwing herself at the Enclave bitch.
Julip surprised her by ducking beneath the wide arc of her hooves and retreating toward the generator. Aurora landed in an uneven slide, the stab of pain returning to her injured hoof and adding another flash of heat to her frenzy. She spun around and sighted Julip who stood just close enough to the generator’s chassis to give Aurora some options.
She was going to hurt her. In the corner of her eye she could see Ginger yelling something, but the words weren’t registering. She was not going to walk out of this Stable without something.
She lunged again, this time intent on pinning Julip to the wall of the generator and beating her against it until she stopped making noise. Beans would thank her. Briar would thank her. Ginger, with her horn spiralling with fresh magic, would forgive her.
The shield dropped in front of her like a wall. Her wings struck open, closed even harder and propelled her across the slick concrete before the barrier could reach her. The gap between her and Julip slammed shut like a door with severed hydraulics. She threw every bit of her weight into the punch, driving the bloodied edge of her hoof toward Julip’s intense little frown.
She missed. 
In the blink of an eye, Julip darted sideways, latched her wings around Aurora’s shoulders as she slid by, effortlessly pivoted and shoved Aurora, hard.
Every part of her body slammed into the unyielding steel chassis at the same time, sending a shock of white-hot pain through her body like a hammer. A wavering second passed where she was too dazed to think, verging on losing consciousness from the sheer disorienting pain of headbutting the wall. Something wrapped tight around the roots of her wings, immobilizing them behind her back. 
Julip. 
Dizzy, but determined, she tried to jerk herself free but only succeeded in sending a spike of agony down her wings. The mare was leaning on a pressure point she didn’t know she had. Another hoof had wrapped tightly around her uninjured foreleg, restricting her ability to move in any direction that wouldn’t send the nerves down her back into a spasming panic. 
She said she didn’t know how to fight. Just an archivist, she said.
More fucking lies.
It was difficult to speak with her face shoved against the unforgiving steel. She couldn’t see Ginger. Why wasn’t she pulling Julip off? Where was she?
“Let me go,” she snarled.
“Stop fighting,” Julip answered.
Aurora jerked against her in answer, and Julip leaned harder against her wings to repay the effort. She knew what she was doing. Aurora had no idea how, but every movement Julip made was expertly effective in stopping her. She screamed over her shoulder.
“Get off of me you fucking cunt!”
Julip didn’t budge and, to her bewilderment, Ginger appeared in her limited line of sight. Her horn was conspicuously dark. “Aurora, stop. Right now.”
Confused and furious, her vision misted. Her voice cracked as she begged. “Get her off me.”
“Not until you calm down.”
The mist turned to tears. Ginger wasn’t on her side this time. She’d crossed the line. Her jaw worked back and forth as she tried to pull herself together but it was like holding water in her feathers. Unable to trust herself to speak, she pressed her forehead against the cold steel and blinked until her eyes were clearer. Licking her lips, she nodded.
A moment later, the pressure on her wings lifted and Julip took a step back. When the Enclave mare spoke, her voice was subdued. “Look, I shouldn’t have said…”
Aurora whirled around and clubbed her hard across the face with her hoof. Caught off guard, Julip toppled to the concrete in a heap.
“Aurora!”
She refused to meet Ginger’s eyes. Not out of anger, but because she didn’t think she could bear to see the disappointment in them another time. She watched Julip’s dazed expression slowly tighten with pain. A shallow gash had opened up across her left eyebrow and with any luck would leave a scar. She could see Ginger’s lit horn in the corner of her eye, ready to stop her from throwing another punch. 
She’d done enough damage.
Her hopes had gotten so high that the reality of what a mistake this all had been was only now beginning to register. How much time had she wasted by dragging them all down here? Time that Stable 10 didn’t have? That Sledge, her dad and even Carbide didn’t have? She could feel her thoughts sinking toward darker thoughts. Bitter tears once again pooled in her eyes. Everything was coming apart. This wasteland and its nonstop parade of traumas had pushed her past her limit. She couldn’t do this anymore.
Sparing a glance for Ginger, she could only see mistrust in her eyes. She turned and walked away.







June 26th, 1076

“Hold the door, please.”
A shockingly bright green stallion’s head snapped up from the newspaper hovering in front of him and quickly stuck his leg between the elevator doors. They jerked to a stop just in time for Applejack to squeeze in. As the doors slid shut, she leaned over and tapped the button for Rainbow’s ministry. Slowly, the elevator descended. 
A yawn snuck up on her faster than she could stifle it. She turned away from the stallion and cupped her mouth against the back of her hoof. Sleepless nights were something she was used to these days, but last night had been anything but normal. Yesterday’s visit to Ponyville had brought things to light that kept her mind from settling even as the sun crept toward the horizon this morning. On any day of the week, learning that her little sister was being blackmailed would be more than enough to make her see red, but as far as she could tell Applebloom had already handled it. They’d met outside of Canterlot so she could deliver a warning that something was rotten within the ministries. Applebloom had no idea how right she was.
The elevator chimed and Applejack pushed past the doors before they were fully open. A trio of pegasi waiting on the other side practically tripped over one another to clear the way. More than a few gathered in the semicircular lobby area regarded her as she passed with carefully neutral expressions, their eyes tracking her as she bore right and walked into a carpeted hallway.
She tried to talk to Rainbow about it during dinner. She thought that the privacy of their new townhouse just downslope of the capital might make her feel safe, but the second the word “Spitfire” rolled out of her mouth Rainbow locked up tighter than Pillar security during a drill. It was the first time she could recall seeing her choose to say nothing. Not a single word in answer to her question of what she meant when she said she owed Spitfire a favor. Why Spitfire might be acting on her behalf outside the Pillar. Whether or not she needed to intervene.
Rainbow’s eyes had remained glued to her dinner, verging on tears. Right until that last question, and the look of desperation she gave Applejack burned itself so vividly into her mind that she had lain awake beside her without so much as trying to sleep. The distress in her voice when she told her no, to please stay out of it, not to say anything to Spitfire at all. It was like she was trying to stop her from stepping on a landmine.
That hopelessness in Rainbow Dash’s eyes had been the final straw. Spitfire had gotten too big for her britches. Whatever she was doing, it was ending today.
She strode past Rainbow’s door, grateful that it was closed and that none of the pegasi walking the hall thought to greet her by name. Her eyes narrowed at the placard fixed beside the open doorframe.


CAPT. SPITFIRE (RETD.)
Minister Counselor


She shouldered past a departing page on her way in, nearly toppling the wiry stallion and startling an unfamiliar mare seated behind a bland desk on the other side of the room. A secretary. Since when were minister counselors assigned secretaries?
The mare stood, half-bewildered and half-annoyed by Applejack’s brazen intrusion, and politely positioned her cotton candy pink backside in front of the door to Spitfire’s office. “Ma’am, do you have an appointment?”
Recognition dawned as Applejack closed the gap. Pink coat, baby blue mane. This was the Primrose mare Spitfire had brought along to blackmail Applebloom.
“Ain’t got no appointment,” she growled, drawing up nose to nose with the pegasus. Her voice bore a threatening edge. “Move, before I move you.”
A flicker of deep malice shot across the secretary’s face, then it was gone. She stepped aside and Applejack wasted no time flinging open the door to Spitfire’s office.
She felt satisfaction at the sight of the orange-maned bitch jumping in her chair. The secretary who wasn’t a secretary drew up behind her, sputtering apologies intended to be heard by the ponies who had stopped in the hallway. Whoever she was, she was playing a character. Flying under the radar in the same way Spitfire had been doing.
Applejack looked back, placed the flat of one hind hoof against the secretary’s bubblegum pink chest, and shoved her hard enough to scare a yelp out of her as she tumbled backwards into the anteroom. She would be fine, which was more than she could say about Spitfire.
She closed the office door behind her and turned to face the former captain of the Wonderbolts. Spitfire had composed herself and now regarded Applejack from behind her desk with calm curiosity. It took every ounce of her strength not to throw herself over that desk and beat that serene smile off her smug little muzzle.
She crossed Spitfire’s office in four steps, pushing through the two guest chairs and planting her front hooves on the impeccably clean mahogany finish. Then she shoved. The desk began to slide and she leaned in harder, sweeping up Spitfire behind it as desk ornaments clattered off the wood and fell. The desk stopped when each side slammed into the display cases on either side of Spitfire’s shoulders, the glass panes shattering and showering onto the bitch that had the audacity to threaten her family.
Pinned between the wall, her desk and a confetti of glass, Spitfire opened her eyes and surveyed the damage with growing irritation. After another moment passed, she turned her attention to the mare who had caused it. “Minister Applejack. I almost didn’t recognize you with your mane so short.”
She opened her wings and calmly brushed the glass off of her lap. “How can I be of service?”
Applejack kept her hooves on the desk. “Shut your yap and open your ears, because I ain’t gonna repeat this. Stay away from my family. Stay away from my friends. Stay the fuck away from Rainbow Dash. Whatever it is you think you’re doing, it stops right now. If I find out you didn’t listen and I have to come back here, you best believe you’ll be picking your teeth up off this nice carpet of yours. Do you understand me?”
One second. Two. Three.
Spitfire’s chair emitted the faintest creak as she leaned forward, hooves neatly crossed over a desk sparkling with broken glass. It crackled under her weight as she looked up at Applejack with the faintest of smiles. 
“I understand.”
Applejack chewed on the inside of her cheek as she watched Spitfire, then took a deep breath and dropped to the rumpled carpet. “Don’t make me come back here,” she repeated.
Spitfire continued to smile as she departed, promising nothing. 







Aurora climbed the stairs, alone.
Her legs stank from the gelatinous mass grave she’d been forced to wade through in order to reach the bottom step, but her thoughts weren’t focused on the greasy offal that clung to her. They swirled around the prospect of what she’d lost. The expression on Ginger’s face, the sound of her yelling for her to stop, the desperate effort she’d put forth to keep Aurora from reaching Julip…
She’d been on the move since the very beginning. Every day had brought along new challenges, new ponies with ill and good intent, and even a gryphon whose career Aurora had singularly destroyed by dragging her into the mess that only grew with each step she took forward. They hadn’t gone a single day in the last week without some new roadblock appearing, and then Briar had shown her the cable he’d buried outside his home and her long trek to Stable-Tec finally seemed to be over. An empty Stable still generating usable power. It was as if the wasteland had decided to stop torturing her and give her the one thing she’d come here to find.
And just as the ignition talisman seemed within reach, the wasteland yanked it away.
All that disappointment, all that anger had to go somewhere and Julip had offered herself up on a silver platter. Only Aurora hadn’t expected the little archivist to fight back.
Her jaw ached from being slammed against the generator’s chassis. Any harder and she might’ve been forced to add whatever passed for a dentist in the wasteland to her list of things to find. There was a good chance Julip knew that too. A fragile, inexperienced bookworm she was not. Whatever Julip claimed to be, she wasn’t as sheltered as she pretended.
The levels slid by one after the other while gravity and exhaustion conspired to drag her back down. By the time she climbed out of the Hundreds, a deep burn had sunken into her legs. Navigating the traffic jam of bodies only made the going tougher, but she kept at it. The heavy rain of condensation on the steps resaturated her coat, rinsing the filth from her legs with water contaminated by the corpses lying on the stairs just overhead. 
She tried not to think about it and pressed on.
The bodies began to clear and for a few turns she felt herself settling into a comfortable ascent. It was reminiscent of the mandatory minimum workouts back home, before her work in Mechanical started to take its place. She’d never been fond of the treadmills, favoring wing curls more than anything else, but she wasn’t particularly fond of nutrient bars and she still ate them. This was a lot like running the treadmills. All she had to do was find a rhythm and set her brain to white noise for a few hours.
It worked for all of twenty minutes. By the time she reached Level 90, her legs were on the verge of folding under her. Her muscles felt like they were being sliced into by red hot knives. She needed a break.
The bridgeway to Level 90 clanked on loose bolts beneath her hooves as she hobbled across. Following the same pattern as the majority of the levels they’d passed, this one featured an open walkway that ran the inner circumference. Water globbed together on the impossibly smooth ceiling, releasing fat droplets that plipped against the concrete floor like a hundred leaky sinks. Aurora dug the battered canteen from her saddlebag, unscrewed the cap and positioned the container’s mouth below a slow trickle near the landing, then went to find someplace to sit.
She spotted a single bench set between a pair of plant pots whose soil had grown a healthy colony of milky white mold in place of whatever used to grow in them. The rusting steel let out a quiet crunch as she sat, peppering the back of her dangling hind legs with orange flakes. Her head settled against the cool concrete wall and she closed her eyes. A moment passed. Then another, but the tears she was expecting to come never formed. She let out a quiet sigh and resigned herself to watch the droplets fall through the light of her Pip-Buck.
As the warm bench sapped the ache from her muscles, a thought occurred to her and she tilted up her Pip-Buck to see the screen. She was surprised to discover the bulky device still had a strong connection to the Stable’s network, but the more she thought about it the more it made sense. She’d been picking up the signal since they left Kiln. Whatever the Stables used as antenna, they didn’t cheap out on signal strength.
Navigating the menus, she pulled up her inbox. Two new messages waited at the top of the list. Both were from Coldbrook. Both looked important.
She dropped her foreleg into her lap and whispered a tired, “Fuck.” Her hopes were set on seeing something from her dad, or maybe even Sledge, but of course there wouldn’t be anything from them. Not while she was the one wearing the Pip-Buck. Stable 10 was only able to communicate to them when Ginger had it on. Just another checkbox on a long list of things to backfire.
She cast her eyes around Level 90. Several bodies decorated the floor everywhere she looked. Ponies who had a little more to complain about than she did. 
She pressed her lips together and forced herself to put her problems into perspective. She’d crossed a line with Ginger and stormed off like a sullen filly. Not exactly one of her best moments, but probably one that could be salvaged if she kept her temper in line. Finding a talisman down here had been a long shot from the start, and a good majority of her disappointment was her own fault for willfully ignoring how slim those odds actually were. She’d made a mess of things, yes, but maybe it was still fixable.
Maybe. Going back down to apologize with Julip smirking over Ginger’s shoulder was a recipe for more violence. Maybe when they were out of the Stable there would be time to clear the air. To see if Ginger was even remotely interested in giving her a second chance.
She closed her messages. Coldbrook could wait.
With a wince, she slid off the bench and brushed the rust from her backside. Her muscles were reaching that tipping point between rested and stiff. Sitting alone feeling sorry for herself would only make the rest of the climb hurt even more. Things had gotten complicated enough already. No need to add laming herself to the list.
Keep it simple, she thought.
She pushed herself into a slow walk around Level 90’s inner walkway and gradually worked herself up to a trot. Her knees throbbed in protest at first but after a lap she began to settle into a comfortable rhythm. A few go-arounds and she’d hit the stairs. Just enough monotony to clear her head.
Stagnant water splashed beneath her hooves. On the second lap she plucked her canteen off the ground and took a swig of the Stable’s runoff, ignoring the brackish aftertaste it left on her tongue. At first she tried not to look too closely at the remains scattered along the concrete but after the third lap her apprehension started to wane. The bodies were too decomposed for her to be certain of their genders. Patches of leathery skin clung to hip bones and a few skulls, but beyond that there was little left of the ponies they once were.
She slowed, stopping beneath a bent ceiling light from which a thin stream of water drizzled. Draining her canteen, she held it aloft beneath the trickle and looked around at the fallen residents as she waited for it to fill again. Two crumpled forms lay together against the far wall with a large green tank nestled between them. The remains of an air hose and gas mask still clung to the face of an earth pony. The unicorn beside it had curled into a fetal position, its sockets seeming to stare at the tank. 
Aurora narrowed her eyes, capped her canteen and approached the bodies. She recognized the gas mask as the same type they kept in the emergency lockers back in Mechanical, but instead of plugging a filter canister into the muzzle port, someone had jury-rigged a high pressure hose into the port with a good half inch of duct tape. Careful not to disturb the dead, Aurora turned her light on the tank and let out a pitying sigh.
It was an oxygen tank identical to the ones that were sometimes sent down to her team from Sanitation’s gas reclamation system. The same system whose carbon dioxide flooded Stable 1. The irony wasn’t lost on her. Two ponies finding temporary salvation from the very same source of the poison that was killing them. Breathing pure oxygen to avoid suffocating was akin to putting more grease on a failed bearing. It was a patch, not a fix. The fact that these ponies had chosen to share a tank rather than rig up a second suggested they’d known that. They didn't come here expecting to survive. They’d come to do something before they died.
She found her answer behind an open door a few yards away. It had been forced. Deep crescent shaped dents clustered around a broken handle, the same size as the bottom of the oxygen tank. Lying on the floor, a black plastic placard had fallen from the wall. Water puddled across the neatly arranged white letters:


VENTILATION CONTROL


NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL


Aurora peered through the door but didn’t step inside. Her light passed over three parallel rows of desks, each workstation denoted by its own terminal and what was left of rotting cubicle partitions. A trio of offices hid behind glass doors along the far wall, the second of which had been shattered. It was the only sign of disturbance, suggesting the ponies crumpled beside Aurora had known where to go in order to put an end to the gas leak.
She pulled her head out of the control room and rested her cheek against the wall, her eyes settling on the ponies who likely made it possible for others to have a fighting chance. Despite their efforts the Stable had collapsed regardless, but she supposed that wasn’t the point. The point was that someone had survived. Maybe not long enough to figure out how to open the door, but long enough to make something of a life for themselves. Long enough to take power from IT and revive the gardens. 
Long enough to try.
“Good job, you two,” she murmured, and turned back to the stairwell.







Ginger’s ear twitched. Once again, the distant echo of Aurora’s hooves rang against the stairs. 
“Break’s over, she’s moving again.” Her muscles ached as she pushed herself up off the treads. Several steps down, Julip bent her neck to one side with an audible crack. They both winced. “Come on.”
They resumed their climb much in the same way they’d made the majority of the descent: in silence. They made no comment as they picked their way through the logjam of decaying residents, said nothing as the rancid water that rained through the stairs above pattered against their faces and soaked their coats all over again. There was seemingly nothing to say.
She noticed that Julip wasn’t hanging back as far as she had on the way down. She drew close enough at times to make Ginger feel crowded, as if Julip was doing everything she could short of actually touching her to get her to walk faster. Were there room, Ginger wouldn’t have been surprised if the pegasus took flight and left her behind. Letting Aurora get out of their sight was a decision Julip was clearly regretting.
Ginger had to admit she felt the same way.
They followed Aurora’s hoofsteps turn after turn, careful to give her the space she needed while staying on the edge of earshot in case she needed help. Every so often she would dim her magic and peer up past the railing. Far above, a faint green ring wound its way up the stairs like a distant lighthouse. There was something reassuring about knowing that if Aurora looked down, her amber glow would always be in sight. 
As they pushed past the Eighties, the prolonged silence between them started to become more irritating than the uncomfortable prospect of actually talking to the mare. Ginger let out a smallish sigh.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
A flash of annoyance forced Ginger’s thoughts into a tangle, and she bit back the reply boiling on her tongue. Clearly she wasn’t the only one stewing on what happened.
She kept her eyes on the treads. “You knew she was hurting. Saying ‘I told you so’ was just salt in the wound.”
A moment passed, then another. It seemed like they were sliding into another long chapter of uncomfortable silence when Julip muttered a curse under her breath.
“Yeah, well, she paid me back for it so I’d say we’re even.”
Ginger glanced over her shoulder. The blob of magic that hovered ahead of her cast just enough light for her to see the crescent-shaped mass swelling around Julip’s left eye. Even her sage coat couldn’t completely mask the purpling bruise.
“Thanks, by the way,” Julip muttered, her tone shifting. “For trying to keep her off me.”
She sucked on the corner of her lip and exhaled. “Sure. Just… stop needling her. She’s putting herself through tartarus to get back home and you’ve only been making things more difficult.” She faced forward, her eyes searching for the next bridgeway to tell her how much further they had to go. “That being said, thank you for not hurting her back there.”
A quiet snort punctuated their hoofsteps. “It’s not like I had a choice.”
It was about as close to a you’re welcome as she supposed she would get. Still, there was just a touch of something in Julip’s tone. Whether she intended for Ginger to hear it or not, there was a faint wisp of resentment around those words.
Maybe Roach really had cracked that armor of hers.
“They keep you on a short leash, don’t they?”
“That’s why they’re called orders and not suggestions.”
Barely a pause. Probably a line she’d heard from a dozen other Enclave soldiers. Just another tool to use when the ponies wearing their uniform started thinking a little too hard. Ginger considered letting the conversation fizzle out where it stood. Julip wasn’t exactly what she would consider a trustworthy mare, and something told her they were talking themselves toward a can of worms that she wasn’t sure she wanted to open. But it would be another couple of hours before they reached the others up in IT, and the prospect of making the climb stewing on her own thoughts was even less attractive.
“The Enclave does tend to be... rigid." She recalled the stone-faced pegasi who crisscrossed the skies above New Canterlot when she was younger. “Perhaps it isn’t my place to say so, but you don’t seem like their typical recruit.”
This time there was a pause. She could almost hear the shrug in her voice when she answered. “I don’t know. Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. And you’re using that Old Canterlot accent again, by the way.” 
She winced and quietly cursed herself for spending so many hours memorizing and mimicking the inflections of the late Element of Generosity. “Can I ask why you enlisted?”
“Like I said. Not much of a choice.”
Ginger quirked her lip. “For a pegasus in New Canterlot? I always assumed your type could choose whatever path you pleased.”
Julip puffed out a rueful chuckle. “Yeah, okay.”
The dismissal surprised her. “I’m being serious. I grew up in the south burrough a few streets down from Baker’s Corner. There was a stringwheat store on the corner that supplied half the neighborhood with flour, and the stallion who owned it was a pegasus.”
“Good for him,” Julip murmured. 
“Plenty of pegasi made good livings for themselves. The Thatcher family was always up and around shingling roofs after the spring windstorms, and there was a mare I remember as a foal who opened a soda parlor for a while before--”
“I get it.” The words thumped out of Julip’s mouth like rocks, bringing Ginger’s train of thoughts to a crashing halt. “I’m perfectly aware of all the successful pegasi in New Canterlot. I live there, remember? That doesn’t mean we’re all born rich.”
Ginger frowned. “My father always said pegasi were given a monthly stipend once they turned eighteen.”
Julip whispered something under her breath that Ginger couldn’t quit hear, but the irritation came across loud and clear. “Leave it to unicorns to believe in bullshit like that.”
A stretch of silence, then a sigh. “Sorry,” she added.
Ginger shrugged, unsurprised to hear her father might have taken it upon himself to spread baseless rumors amongst the rest of the family. “It’s fine. I just assumed.”
They passed the bridgeway to Level 90. Aurora’s hooves clanged against the treads that sounded like miles away.
“I didn’t exactly grow up in a family that was good with caps,” Julip admitted. “My mom didn’t work, and whatever money my dad brought home usually wound up filling the liquor cabinet before the dinner table. Most the time I had to feed myself, so I started picking up odd jobs as a courier. I spent the first year making enough caps to buy just enough food to keep me going, and then somehow word got out about the filly with the mailbag and I got roped into running chems for a family of earth ponies out on the west end of the city.”
Ginger blinked, then lifted a questioning brow at the tattered canvas bag slung around Julip’s neck.
She made a face. “It’s a running joke. I got sent out to deliver a shipment of Stiff to a brothel on the north side, but the door handle hooked my bag and I ended up spilling a couple thousand doses of dick pills in the madame’s lobby right in front of a pair of Enclave officers.”
Ginger couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Oh no.”
“Yeah. I got as far as the sidewalk before one of them tackled me. The only reason I wasn’t tied to a post and shot for chem trafficking was because we were in a unicorn brothel and half the ponies on the street got a clear view of what both those stallions were there for.” Julip’s voice grew a bit brighter, suggesting she’d had plenty of time to appreciate the strange predicament. “A pair of officers with their fifth legs wagging around while they try to arrest a mare half their size isn’t a great look, and that’s ignoring the fact that they were on the doorstep of a non-pegasus fuckhouse surrounded by enough dick pills to give a deathclaw a permanent kickstand.”
She was laughing in earnest now. “So what did you do?”
Julip was smiling now. “At the time, I wasn’t doing anything but trying to kick them in the family totem to get away. Turns out they were a little brighter than me. They dragged me back inside, had the madame clear the lobby and they offered me a deal. If I agreed to keep my mouth shut about their nightly visits to the Horn Hole, they would find me a position under their command in the Enclave where I wouldn’t have to sling chems for food.”
“That’s how you enlisted?”
“Yep. They made sure I got pushed through basic training and I ended up getting assigned to the one thing they knew I was good at.” She shrugged a wing, lifting the strap of the old mailbag with it. “I spent five years running missives between officers stationed around the territory, but I got tired of seeing the same towns over and over again. I wanted to see the rest of Equestria. So, a little over a year ago I put in for a change of assignment to the archivist division.”
Ginger pieced together the rest on her own. “Considering the state you were in when we let you out of Autumn’s cage, I’d say that might not have been an ideal career choice.”
Julip hesitated. “Yeah.”
She peeked over her shoulder at the smaller mare and noticed the humor had drained from her features. Julip’s gaze stayed fixed on the treads, her eyes conflicted.
“How long were you there?”
Julip pursed her lips and offered a shallow shrug. “About a month.”
A chill ran down her neck. An entire month under the so-called care of Autumn Song. Ginger had barely survived a day. She didn’t want to think about how much pain that mare had inflicted after having weeks to perfect the process.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said. It was all she could think to say. There was no way to erase an experience like that.
“Thanks.”
They passed the bridgeway to Eighty-Eight in somber silence. Ginger’s light passed over the thick black slashes of letters scrawled hastily along the curving wall. 


WELCOME TO THE LOWER THIRD
WE HOPE YOU’RE BREATHING WELL
THE UPPERS STOLE OUR FOALHOOD DREAMS
AND DRAGGED US ALL TO HELL


Ginger blinked at the last word of the poem. “What’s a Hell?”
“Gryphon mythology. Basically Tartarus, but with more emphasus on the torture.” Julip seemed to hang on a different line of the passing scrawl. “So… on that topic, Roach told me what Autumn did to you.”
She side-stepped a rotted pair of saddlebags molding on the stairs. “He did, did he?”
“Yeah. He didn’t say much. Just that Autumn did, well… a lot to you. And that she healed it so she could do it again.” She paused enough to tell Ginger she was choosing her words with care. “That’s where you got the stimpack from. The one you used to completely heal my wing.”
There wasn’t any denying it. She looked back and nodded.
Julip nodded too, as if she had confirmed a suspicion of hers. “And that’s why your magic is so powerful. Why you were able to make that bubble around us when you fell asleep outside the cave.”
Again, Ginger nodded.
“You can dream, can’t you?”
Her patient gaze abruptly dropped into a startled frown. “What?”
Encouraged by her reaction, Julip hastened up the stairs until they were shoulder to shoulder. “When you were asleep, you looked like you were fighting something. And then when you woke up… it wasn’t how normal ponies wake up. You looked scared, and not like something scared you when you woke up. It was like you saw something that scared you in your sleep. That’s what dreaming is supposed to be!”
“Okay,” Ginger managed, trying her best to douse this fuse Julip had managed to dig up and set alight in the space of a few moments. “That isn’t--”
“Did you see her?” The Enclave mare’s voice took on a hint of desperation.
“I don’t know who--”
“The night goddess, Luna,” Julip pressed, anticipating and trampling over Ginger’s sentences with disturbing accuracy. “Every pony who has ever dreamed reports seeing Luna, and right before they wake up she always tells them a forgotten secret. Did you see her? Did she tell you anything?”
What secrets? she thought, hoping beyond hope that Julip couldn’t read her thoughts. She wasn’t even sure if the mare she saw was Luna or just a manifestation of panic as she tried to fend off her father’s frenzied assault. For all she knew, the stress of the last week had caused her to hallucinate. Yet as she considered that possibility she knew it wasn’t true. The first instinct was often the right one, and her immediate thought after waking in Aurora’s grip was that she had just gone through something that few if any ponies had ever experienced after the bombs fell.
Ginger tried not to let frustration appear on her face. The eager desperation on the younger mare’s face was the same expression so many ponies belonging to the Chapel of the Two Sisters wore when they believed they were in the presence of Proof with a capital “P.” Proof that the princesses had ascended to a higher plane, reserving their grace for a day when Equestria finally healed and - according to the pegasi who dominated the congregation - restored the natural order of the three races. 
There was an opportunity here, she realized.
“I’ll tell you what I saw,” she said. “But I want something in return.”
Julip’s eagerness gave way to suspicion. “...okay.”
“I want your word that you won’t report Briar or Beans to the Enclave.”
Her mouth opened, stopped, then bent into an uncanny resemblance of betrayal. Ginger didn’t blame her. Most ponies didn’t react well to having something they considered sacred be reduced to a bargaining chip.
“I can’t agree to that.”
Ginger lifted an eyebrow as the mare fell out of sync with her hoofsteps, gradually falling behind. “Can’t or won’t?”
A silent moment passed and Ginger realized she was only hearing one set of hooves on the stairs. She stopped and looked back to see Julip staring up at her with the look of someone who had just been slapped across the mouth.
“Julip?”
Julip shook her head a little faster than normal. “You don’t understand. I have to report them. I don’t have a choice.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot, today.”
A mint green wing flung open over the railing hard enough for the tips of Julip’s primary feathers to crack like a whip. “Because it’s true! Do you not fucking listen?”
She held up a placating hoof and descended a few steps, hoping to take this pot off the boil before they both got burned. “Okay, I’m sorry. Help me understand why.”
Julip shook her head, harder this time. Her foreleg started to nervously bounce against the tread. “I can’t do that, either.”
“You’re not exactly giving me a lot to work with, here.”
“All I’m asking is that you tell me about your dream!” Julip countered, and Ginger could see the fine glaze of tears forming in her unswollen eye. “You almost killed me with that bubble. You owe me!”
A sigh pushed up from her lungs. As much as she hated the idea of Julip being right, she was. Even now in the dim light of her magic, Ginger could see the slight discoloration where the heat of the rail had left her with what could have easily become scarring burns. Thankfully she’d awakened before that could happen, but the sheer terror in Julip’s eyes as she had retreated down the tracks was hard to dismiss.
“Alright,” she said. “Fine. I think, maybe, I dreamed of Princess Luna.”
Julip stared up at her like a pony might regard a rusty landmine. “Prove it. What did she look like?”
Ginger hesitated. What had she looked like? She tried to remember the sudden appearance of the mare whose voice came from every direction at once. The exhaustion that lived in white, featureless eyes as she surveyed the wreckage of Ginger’s memory and the way her dream had pulled itself apart like froth in a muddy river.
“She had...” She stopped herself, her mind set on describing the Princess of the Night as her foalhood story books depicted her: a regal alicorn donning a crown blacker than midnight and a matching chestplate bearing the crescent moon, mane sweeping the air like a windblown banner of stars. 
But the more she thought back, more details surfaced. “She didn’t look like anything, exactly.”
Julip’s eyes grew narrow with doubt.
The words were irritatingly hard to find. “She was there, but it was like looking at the absence of something. Like a cut-out filled with stars. I don’t remember her face, or if she had one, but her eyes were there. They glowed, like Roach’s, but white like the moon and much, much brighter.”
The pegasus’s leg stopped bouncing and her expression slowly began to soften. “What did she say to you?”
“She said I shouldn’t be there.” She frowned. No, that wasn’t quite right. “She said the door shouldn’t be there. She called me… ‘little shade.’ I don’t know what that means.”
Julip closed her eyes, turned and sat down on the metal tread. All the resistance and outrage drained from her as if a plug had been pulled. “She thought you were a lost spirit.”
Ginger traced down the railing until she stood on the step behind the Enclave mare. She sat down, knowing she would pay for taking another break from the climb once she stood up again. “I think she’s the reason I woke up. She cast a spell and my grip on everything just fell apart.”
“Pastor Rivers taught us that when Luna ascended, she took charge of guiding lost spirits to wherever we go after we die.” 
She leaned forward enough to catch her eye. Julip looked at her, then at the glowing spiral of her horn, and a deeper frown settled across her lips. 
“Did I say something wrong?”
Julip shrugged, looking away. “Pastor Rivers also said unicorns and earth ponies can’t be Dreamers. Only pegasi have that ability, and only if we’re lucky enough to be chosen by the goddesses.”
Just another hook for the Enclave to hang their narcissistic hat on. Regardless, it didn’t seem like a good idea for Julip to go on thinking she was some sort of blasphemer. Not when she was the only mare keeping the rest of the Enclave from rendering their twisted brand of “assistance.”
“I could have been wrong,” she offered, hoping to ease the tension. “I hadn’t slept well in days. I wouldn’t be surprised if the exhaustion made me see things that weren’t there.”
She watched as Julip crossed her wings across her knees and settled her chin against the bed of feathers. “My mom might have been a drunk, but we always made it to church for Remembrance Day every year. We were there for the bicentennial when Minister Primrose told the congregation that she was a Dreamer and that she’d spoken to the goddess. The way she described her is exactly how you did. You weren’t wrong. Pastor Rivers was.”
It was like watching a single, critical thread coming loose from a skein of fine yarn. That look of smoldering betrayal once again bent the features of Julip’s small face, but this time it wasn’t directed toward her. She was realizing for the first time that, somewhere out there, a stallion she regarded to be infallible had been wrong.
It was the first time Ginger had ever seen the foundation of a believer’s faith crack.
“It’s against regulation for any pegasi to share Enclave secrets with anyone who doesn’t wear the uniform,” Julip murmured.
Ginger’s ears perked up as Julip chewed at the corner of her lip.
She spoke carefully, as if each word was a bullet that could spin back toward her at any moment. “Deviation from the mission is not acceptable. Mission failures that result in the loss of Enclave resources or artifacts is not acceptable. Upon return from every field mission, all participants are debriefed to verify that mission parameters were met as described and no discrepancies regarding actions, assets or artifacts exist.”
It was a recitation of some kind of rulebook. Laws, maybe. Something that had been drilled so deeply into Julip’s mind that she could regurgitate another pony’s words with clinical accuracy. Coming from a mare who moments ago described the circumstances of her conscription with absurdly crude detail, it was as if she were speaking a different language.
Tears were pooling in Julip’s eyes, and Ginger couldn’t escape the feeling that using something precious as a bargaining chip for Julip’s silence had been cruel. From the outside, the goddess cult that had formed at the center of the Enclave was a joke that wasteland ponies spent endless nights mocking. This close to it, however, was something entirely different. She’d taken something she hadn’t known was fragile and shattered it, and now Julip was the one left picking up the pieces.
Julip met her eyes and didn’t look away even as fresh lines traced down her cheeks. “Deception during any point of your enlistment is a criminal offense and is considered grounds for capital punishment. Inconsistencies that cannot be put to rights will be regarded as deception. Failure to relinquish any resources or artifacts during debriefing is regarded as deception. Failure to disclose all discoveries determined to be of significant value during field operations is regarded as deception.” 
She swallowed to clear her throat, took a slow breath, and continued. “Failure to report the existence of new or known dustwing activity is regarded as deception. In the event that any personnel is suspected of concealing or obscuring critical information from the Enclave, biometric and behavioral data will be harvested to aid an official determination.”
Ginger watched her scrub her face with the back of each wing and ply the black mop of her mane back behind her ears.
“If you lie to them, they’ll execute you,” she murmured.
A pause. Julip nodded.
“That complicates things.” She pressed her lips into a line and tilted her head until her neck released a sharp crack. The relief was temporary, but welcome. “If you think about it, this could be an opportune time for you to part ways with the Enclave.”
Julip shot her a look. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
Ginger gestured vaguely at the air. “Basic survival?”
She watched as Julip made a noise of disgust and shoved herself onto her hooves. Mimicking the gesture, Ginger found herself following Julip up the stairs instead of the other way around. Absently, she noticed the braids of Julip’s mended tail were holding up well against the perpetual damp.
“If you think turning traitor to the Enclave is an investment in my health, you’re fucking crazy.” She was marching up the treads with purpose, now, forcing Ginger to keep up. “I’m not afraid of a few rules if it means I’m getting three square meals and a good night’s sleep every day.”
“Like you are right now?”
Julip’s ears pinned back, but she said nothing.
“Okay, let’s try this instead.” She sped up until they were shoulder to shoulder again. “You’re the only one who got assigned to this mission, right? Nobody else is here who will argue what the truth actually is, so when this is done and they debrief you, there’s nothing to stop you from telling them the truth as you understand it.”
Julip gave her a strange look. “What, like brainwash myself?”
She shook her head. “Aurora offered Briar’s family a place at Stable 10. Once we have the ignition talisman, they’ll be coming with us. Chances are high that we’ll pass through Blinder’s Bluff on the way. So, when you get back to New Canterlot for your debriefing, tell them you found a family of dustwings and the last you knew they were headed to Blinder’s Bluff. You would be telling them the truth, technically, and whether the Enclave goes looking for them won’t be a problem because they’ll be inside the Stable by then.”
“That’s one idea, I guess. Doesn’t explain why I let them get away, though.”
Ginger tipped her chin to indicate the mailbag bouncing against her shoulder. “We disarmed you and forbid you from attacking them. Easy.”
Julip looked at her before turning ahead, her attention bending toward the long climb ahead.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Easy.”







Roach’s ears, or what was left of them, twitched at the sound of distant clicking.
With one hoof he tapped Briar on the shoulder, motioning for him to stop typing. With the other, he flicked his shotgun free of its rail. 
“Aurora?” he called.
A moment passed before her faint, familiar voice echoed from the far side of the server room. “Present.”
Stowing his weapon, he let out a ragged sigh while Briar turned back to the waiting terminal.

They were connected to what Briar was calling a “zombie” server, a name no doubt inspired by the ghoul lurking over his shoulder. Roach let his gaff slide without comment as they poked at what was left of Stable 21. The database, like the other darkened servers, had been uploaded for preservation after an apparent evacuation order was issued by the overstallion. The connection was severed several days later, suggesting either the server or the hard line that linked 21 to this network had been destroyed. Scavengers, maybe, but more likely the Enclave breaking the Stable down for sensitive tech.
Which left one question burning in the back of Roach’s brain. If the Enclave had been here to strip down the Stable, wouldn’t they know the IT level was still active? And if they did, why leave something so valuable so poorly guarded that any pony with a crowbar could reach it?
“Over here,” he said, catching Aurora before she could venture too deep into the servers. “How’d it go down there?”
She poked her head into their row and paced her way toward them. “Not great.”
He frowned as she approached, stepping back from Briar and the terminal to meet her halfway down the row. A shot of worry ran through him when he realized she was alone. “Where’s Ginger and Julip? Are they alright?”
“They’re fine. Just… fell behind. They’ll be up in a few minutes.” She pinched her eyes shut as she sat, her knees popping as she bent her legs. She continued to recline until her wings and the back of her head pressed into the cage of the server behind her, causing it to rattle. “Congratulations, Briar. You were right. No talisman.”
Roach watched Briar turn from the terminal with a solemn shake of his head. “I’m not celebrating.”
Aurora looked like she was on the verge of tears, but they didn’t make an appearance. She swallowed, nodded, then turned down to the saddlebags still cinched around her hips and already spilling some of their contents onto the yellowed linoleum.
“I know,” she said. It was as close to an apology as he would get.
Roach followed her exhausted gaze to the little objects sliding from her upturned bags. A gentle smile tugged at the corner of his lip. “You found apples down here?”
She picked one up in her wing and held it up so he could better see. “And pecans. Someone jury-rigged the gardens to keep running. I’m going to save some for Latch when we get back to the Bluff. See if he has any luck planting them.”
“And our impeller?” 
Aurora spared Briar a brief glance as Roach bent to sit down beside her. “Got that too. I’ll help you install it once we’re back up.” She lifted an eyebrow at their terminal. “What have you two been doing?”
She blinked, her frown deepening as Roach thumped her bent knee with the back of his hoof. “What?”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
She looked at him for a moment before offering a mild shrug of her wings in answer. “I told you, I got my hopes up. The talisman wasn’t down there.”
He pulled up his own knees, mimicking her posture while letting her know he wasn’t going anywhere. “What else?”
Her ears tipped down and she looked away. “I’ve been walking stairs all night. I’m just tired.”
He waited.
Several long seconds passed before she finally relented. Quietly, she said, “Pretty sure Ginger and I are over.”
That caught him off guard. “What happened?”
Another little shrug. “I got in a fight with Julip. Twice.” She glanced pointedly toward Briar, who had an ear turned toward them but had since resumed pecking at the terminal. “I can’t get into why, but Ginger wasn’t happy the first time. The second time… she just looked at me like that was it. I blew it.”
He took a breath and nodded understanding. Ginger had what most ponies in the wasteland would call an outdated sense of justice. One that she’d already begun forming well before he intervened in the raider attack that nearly ended her journey out of New Canterlot over a decade ago. While he would never say it aloud, he always felt that Ginger had been born to the wrong generation. It was part of the reason the wasteland had been so unkind to her from the start, and why she rarely ventured outside Junction City.
And then came Aurora.
Unstrapping the shotgun from his foreleg, he wrapped it around Aurora’s shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. “You want some advice?”
He smiled as her head dropped against his shoulder.
“Sure.”
“As far as I remember, Ginger has never been this… attached to another pony like she is to you. I don’t have to be a changeling to tell the two of you are strongly attracted to one another, and I don’t have to be a father to know both of you have very distinct personalities. You’re going to bump heads with her from time to time. It sounds like you already did.”
He felt Aurora’s despondent chuckle in her shoulders. “Thanks for the pep-talk, dad.”
“I’m not done,” he said. “You’ve known Ginger for a week. In the Stable, you two would be a nice long honeymoon phase and a little hiccup like this would be easy to sweep under the rug. But you’re not in your Stable. The wasteland has a tendency to cut that phase short for everyone and you two aren’t the exception. Once you’ve both calmed down, talk to her.”
Aurora took a breath and sighed. For a moment her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.
“It’s not that easy,” she muttered.
“I never said it would be.” He gave his shoulder a gentle shrug, nudging her until she sat up. The emotions wafted off of her like a complex bouquet of sadness, worry, hope and comfort, but the most overpowering of them all was fear. She reminded him of Violet in that moment and he couldn’t help but offer her the same reassuring grin that his daughter searched for when she was afraid. “Look. You had a fight. Maybe not the typical lover’s quarrel but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say this is your first. That doesn’t mean the world is going to end a second time. Talk to her. Tell her why you did what you did. It’s going to stink, but it’ll be worth it.”
The scent of hope rose off of her just a bit stronger. “Alright.”
He gave her another squeeze. “You’ll be okay. Just give it some time to settle and let me know. I’ll find something to occupy Julip and I while you two talk.”
Slowly, the edge of a smile took shape along her muzzle. “Thanks, Roach.”
He waved her off with a smile of his own and started the noisy process of getting to his hooves. “Any time. Now come on, let’s get you up and fix your bags. I want to show you what we found while you were away.”







June 27th, 1076

Primrose rested her cheek against her hoof while the tip of her pen, held loosely between two pink feathers, slowly clattered back and forth between the keys of her desk terminal.
The day following Applejack’s unannounced and frankly unanticipated outburst in Spitfire’s office was business as usual, but a part of her was still on edge. If she was being honest with herself, she was exhausted. Normally she slept like a filly, but last night was an endless drag of fitful sleeps and starts. It had gotten so bad that she worried Princess Luna might take notice and try to ease her worries.
The last thing she needed was an alicorn snooping around her head. The odds of it happening were slim enough to be negligible, but she wasn’t about to risk it. She’d thrown open her duvet, made a pot of coffee and spent the remainder of the night working to fix the problem that had plagued her.
Someone should have alerted her that Applejack was on the warpath, but that didn’t happen. Several pegasi had watched her storm by without considering the possibility that Primrose and Spitfire might be attacked. Applejack might be a dirt pony, but she was a strong dirt pony. Freakishly so, and the pegasi Primrose was tasked with managing knew that.
They needed a better structure than what this ministry currently offered.
Her eyes scanned the list of names glowing on her terminal’s screen. Spitfire’s was naturally at the top. A narrow line descended from it, touched Primrose’s name, then split into an organized network of brackets that widened with each subsequent pegasus. Those who she felt certain she could trust the most hovered near the top. A higher echelon of natural leaders, communicators and what Primrose was gradually beginning to think of as loyalists. Names who, if pushed, might be willing to prioritize their fellow pegasi over less desirable connections.
It was dangerous thinking, but Equestria was full of dangerous thinkers these days. She smiled to herself.
“Just like old times,” she murmured.
“What’s like old times?”
She jerked in her chair, sending the pen in her feathers flying to the carpet. A familiar black stallion stood at the corner of her desk with one eyebrow cocked toward a sky blue mane. She flicked her feathers over the keyboard, closing the document before snapping at him.
“You’re supposed to knock, Thunderlane!”
“Have someone install a door, then.” 
She refused to acknowledge the open frame out to the carpeted hall and bent down to pick up her pen, but he plucked it off the ground before she could reach it. Ever the chivalrous male, he held his feathers open for her to take it. She snatched it away and slapped it on her desk.
Undeterred, his eyes went to Spitfire’s door behind her. “Any appointments for her this morning?”
“Do I look like her secretary?”
His eyebrow began to lift again.
Primrose bit back the urge to jab her pen into his finely sculpted neck. Calming herself, she settled into her chair and crossed her legs in her best attempt at looking bored. “She has a two o’clock with Rainbow Dash, then she’s out for the day. We’re taking a trip to Las Pegasus to check on the progress over at JSI.”
Thunderlane nodded, his smile spreading to the corners of his eyes. “Good. That means she’s free. Thanks.”
“I didn’t say--”
But he was already pushing open the door, and it hissed closed behind him with a punctuating click. Friendly muffles permeated the wall almost immediately.
“Fucker,” she muttered.
Reopening the document, she skimmed it over and decided it wasn’t going to get any better without Spitfire’s input. She attached it to a message, pecked a quick “Potential Reorganization” in the header and sent it off to her inbox. With that done, she decided to cool her nerves with a quick walk.
The halls were busy this time of day. Ponies dodged one another, folders tucked under wings or a steaming mug levitating ahead of them. Most everyone within the ministry kept to themselves, stopping only to chat with colleagues working on the same projects or making minimal small talk if they found themselves pulled through traffic alongside another pony for too long. 
Primrose ignored them, and they ignored her. She stopped in the ministry cafeteria, filled a styrofoam cup with molten hot coffee, and nursed it with little sips as she slipped back into the main hall. She wandered until the cup was empty and her tongue just a little burned before making her way past potted ferns, around a stallion whose ass lingered in the hallway as he leaned into someone’s door, and back to the administrative wing.
As she passed Rainbow Dash’s door, she gave it a sharp thump with her wing. The cloying flow of hoof traffic whisked her back to her own corner of the world before the mare had a chance to open the door. Petty, sure, but it made her smile.
The reception area of Spitfire’s office was, unsurprisingly, still empty. Dropping the empty cup in the trash, she rounded her desk and plopped herself down at her terminal. She opened her inbox and sighed when no new messages appeared.
Glancing over her shoulder, Spitfire’s door was still closed. She listened, trying to hear if she was still in her impromptu meeting, but all she heard was the low patter of hooves in the hallway and silence. She closed her terminal, got up from her chair and knocked on the door.
She hated playing the polite receptionist role, but Rarity’s people tended to show up exactly when they weren’t wanted. “Ma’am? It’s Primrose. Do you have a minute?”
Spitfire’s unmistakable chuckle rolled through the polished wood. “Come in.”
Primrose stepped in and relaxed a little when she confirmed Spitfire was the only one in the office. She shut the door behind her and approached her desk, a feather indicating the terminal Spitfire had seemingly pushed aside. “I sent a document that I wanted to discuss with you. I’ve been thinking about what happened yesterday and…”
She paused. Spitfire was listening but her gaze was drifting, eyes half-lidded. And her breathing was off, too. Erratic.
“Are you okay?”
Spitfire tried to offer a reassuring smile, but it turned into a sloppy grin. “I’m fine.”
Primrose frowned as a not-quite-silence settled in the office. Her ears perked toward Spitfire’s desk, where the mare reclined just a little too far in her chair. Her hips, obscured by the edge of her desk, rocking slightly in her seat. And the quiet, unmistakable sound of someone hard at work just out of view.
Her eyes dipped to the plush carpet where a stray wisp of sky blue tail hair curled from underneath her desk.
“Huh,” she said, understanding exactly what she was interrupting. She looked at Spitfire who stared back, unashamed. Primrose’s smile grew brittle. “Hello, Thunderlane.”
The noise stopped. Spitfire glanced down into her lap, nodded just a bit lower, and the noise promptly resumed.
She sighed as Spitfire sagged a little in her seat. Normally she wouldn’t so much as bat an eye. Celestia knows Spitfire’s reputation had a certain... gravity to it that even she had a passing interest in exploring. Prudishness wasn’t a word that registered in her personal vocabulary, and a little morning breakfast between old friends was pedestrian compared to what Primrose had dabbled in.
Yet Thunderlane couldn’t have picked a worse time. She wanted Spitfire to be clear-headed about this. Not distracted by some overeager stallion tucked between her legs. 
“I can come later.”
Spitfire half-laughed. “Now is fine. What do you have for me?”
It took her a moment to decipher whether she was being invited to stay or join. She closed her eyes, forced herself to ignore what was happening just beyond her line of sight, and gestured to Spitfire’s terminal with a feather. “I’ve drafted a list of the pegasi you’ve enlisted to help… guide the ministries. It’s in your inbox.”
Somehow, Spitfire managed to scoot forward without suffocating the stallion tending to her. As she opened her terminal, Primrose arched a brow at the splay of blue hair being pushed out under the front of the desk. She lifted her hoof, settled it atop the short arc of sensitive vertebrate where the blue strands met, and rested her weight on that single point.
Thunderlane’s head cracked the underside of the desk like a gunshot. A string of profanity followed him up and out of his unoriginal hiding place, pushing Spitfire away from the terminal and out from her own desk. For a brief moment, Primrose caught a glimpse of the absolute state of disaster her chair’s upholstery was in. She made a mental note to have someone bring in a replacement.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he bellowed. His muzzle was slicker than greased owl shit, but he didn’t seem to notice or care as he stabbed a prodigious black hoof toward the door. “Go back to your fucking desk. Whatever you’re barging in here for can wait until we’re done.”
The outburst was more than enough to kill Spitfire’s mood. Primrose eyed the pent up stallion but said nothing, knowing order was about to establish itself.
Spitfire took a breath and composed herself, rolling her chair back to her desk. Her eyes flicked irritation at Primrose but there was no heat in them. Not anymore, at least. “Stand down, Thunderlane. You’re talking to one of your superiors.”
True as that may be, Thunderlane’s loyalty lay firmly in Spitfire’s camp. They had years of history together. Decades, even. Primrose might stand an inch higher than him on paper, but she doubted she’d ever wake up to that muzzle between her thighs.
“Minus the benefits,” Primrose chirped. “Speaking of which, you have a little something…”
She indicated her lip with a feather. He narrowed his eyes at her, turned and scrubbed at his mouth. While he cleaned himself up, she turned to Spitfire who was tactically ignoring their exchange. Primrose rounded the desk, placing herself between Thunderlane and his paramour while the latter scanned the document she’d sent.
She had to respect how quickly Spitfire could turn off one half of her brain and pour herself into the other. Her eyes darted down the brackets, brows knit with consideration as she recognized what Primrose was proposing.
“This is almost identical to the Wonderbolts’ rank structure.” She looked at Primrose beside her. “I assume this has to do with what happened yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?” Thunderlane asked.
Primrose waved him off and nodded to Spitfire. “Yesterday proved there will be ponies willing to fight us if we push too hard. If one of us is attacked, we need to be able to respond to it internally. Right now we’re organized to run a bureaucracy, but we need to be able to function like a branch of the military if we expect to protect ourselves without risking exposure.”
Spitfire pulled a face. “What we’re doing has been working so far. It’s inconspicuous.”
“It’s messy.” She reached out and tapped the terminal screen. “A hierarchy framed like this offers greater protection.”
“Insulation, you mean,” Spitfire murmured. She leaned back in her chair, but this time there was nothing overtly sexual about it. She was thinking. “I don’t doubt that this would work, but this feels like we’re building a landmine without instructions. This war is going to end and I don’t want to spend the last years of my life in one of Luna’s prisons because the princesses thought I was organizing some kind of coup. This could blow up in both of our faces.”
“To be fair, you did organize a coup against Rainbow Dash.”
Thunderlane’s voice emerged uncomfortably close to Primrose’s ear, enough so that the hairs buzzed with his low basso. For a stallion nearly twice her size he barely made a sound as he stepped in to peer at the monitor. 
Slowly, she leaned away from his mouth and fixed him with a flat glare. He backed away.
“Rainbow Dash was a different situation, but you do have a point.” Spitfire shrugged, her decision made. “In for a bit, in for a barrel. I’ll have to move some of these pegasi around to make it work.”
“It should have a name,” Thunderlane offered.
Primrose snorted. “Oh yeah? Any suggestions there, Cumgums?”
Spitfire coughed out a laugh, but to his credit the stallion ignored the dig. “You could call it the Council. The Council of--”
“Okay, no.” Spitfire cut him off with a wide slash of her wing, still chuckling despite herself. “If anything’s going to blow up in our faces, it’s a Power Ponies comic book villain name like that. Let’s just keep it simple and call it what it is.”
Primrose liked the sound of that. “Well, if we’re being honest, we’re like those zebra city states the Vhannans never fully took control of. We’re doing the same thing here inside the ministries.”
Spitfire smiled. “You’re saying we’re an enclave nation?”
She shrugged. “It does have a ring to it.”
Several moments passed, but Primrose could always sense that the decision had been made. The word had a simple weight to it. Approachable, mysterious, and maybe just a little bit powerful. 
“Enclave,” Spitfire murmured. “I like it.”







The last turn to Level 34 was arduous, but Ginger and Julip shoved themselves up onto the bridgeway with audible relief. They staggered over the landing and into the comparatively glaring light of IT’s decayed lobby. Releasing the spell that had lit their way from the bottom felt like a cramped muscle finally letting go. She tried not to think about the thirty-four levels they still needed to scale. Right now, she was barely able to hold herself upright.
Her strange conversation with Julip had melted into the back of her mind for the remainder of the ascent. As much as she hated to admit it, the condensation that rained down the lower half of this strange silo had provided more relief from the heat than she realized. As soon as the stairs dried and the mist retreated, all they were left with was smothering humidity that plagued the climb. The coffee Meridian had served them felt like a lifetime ago. Ginger could feel herself dozing again even as she followed the sway of Julip’s tail down the hallway.
“Woah, woah, woah! Ginger!”
The Enclave mare’s panicked voice shook her out of her daze and she looked ahead to see the reason for her panic.
Down the hall and past the threshold of the server room, Aurora had spotted them and was barreling toward them at a full gallop. In the confusion, Ginger only vaguely recognized the Pip-Buck hanging from Aurora’s teeth as the pegasus hopped through the doorway and shoved past Julip.
“Gingeryouneedtoputthison!”
She was frantic, but thankfully not interested in another brawl with Julip. Bewildered, she watched Aurora lift her foreleg and clamp her Pip-Buck around it. Roach and Briar were only just crossing the threshold by the time the device recognized its secondary user and booted Ginger’s backdoor account.
“Okay okay,” Aurora sputtered, her feathers clicking through the menus faster than Ginger could process. In her panic, she skipped past the inbox and cursed aloud as she backtracked. 
“Aurora, slow down,” she insisted, but her words fell on deaf ears. She looked past her to Roach for some kind of explanation, but even he seemed hesitant to intervene. He gave Ginger an apologetic shrug as the Pip-Buck emitted a rapid tik-tik-tik-tik under Aurora’s onslaught of button presses.
Ginger could feel her wings trembling as she zeroed in on a message floating at the top of her queue and commanded it to open. Aurora’s eyes fixed on something near the top of the little screen, then to the bottom corner. She blinked several times, comparing the two against each other, then let Ginger’s leg go with a heavy sigh.
“Oh, thank Celestia,” she whispered. Squeezing her eyes shut, she dragged her feathers over her head and down the white mop of her mane. “Luna’s grace I thought they were all gone.”
Ginger opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but Aurora only just then seemed to realize she was there and threw herself into a crushing hug that nearly caused Ginger to fall over. Wide-eyed and unsure how to respond, she returned Aurora’s silent embrace while her eyes toggled between the two onlooking stallions for an answer.
Roach broke the silence with an awkward explanation. “We were telling her what we learned about the servers while you were gone and didn’t realize that might have been premature, given you weren’t here to wear the Pip-Buck.”
Aurora’s voice faltered mid-sentence. “The tenth server is dark. I thought we were too late.”
Despite the exhaustion, lack of sleep and deep aches that tortured muscles Ginger didn’t know she had, the unfiltered terror that cut through Aurora’s words lifted that weariness like a veil. She took a sharp breath and exhaled a quiet curse.
“The servers are some kind of data backup for Stable-Tec,” Briar supplied. He paused to glance at Julip and her black eye, frowning slightly before continuing on. “Their numbers correspond to the Stables. She went to look at the tenth server and found out it was dark, and… yeah. Gave her something of a scare.”
“I’m sorry,” Aurora mumbled into her shoulder. “I was acting crazy and I let things get to me and I’m so sorry that I ruined everything…”
Ginger craned her neck back until she could see Aurora’s face. “Hey. Breathe. One thing at a time.”
Aurora nodded and tried to blink away the tears. Ginger lit her horn and gently plied them away with her magic.
“They’re okay.” She took another breath and exhaled, trying to think past the adrenaline. “Um... Sledge sent a message about an hour ago. I think Carbide’s done with the talisman’s containment chamber, or close to it. I didn’t really read it, I mostly just looked at the timestamp. Sorry for almost tackling you.”
She managed to smile at that and, reluctantly, Aurora let her step back from their embrace. “Forgiven. We can talk about the other things later. Now, if we could, let’s go back to the part where Briar said this is some kind of database for the Stables?”
Briar stepped forward. “Actually, it’s a little better than just that.”







“All of them?”
Briar sat down in front of the half-broken roll cart and settled his feathers across the keyboard of one of the terminals. He shrugged as the screen came to life. “Only the ones with a stable connection.”
“Zing.”
Aurora closed her eyes and took another breath. She hadn’t been looking forward to seeing Julip again, or her misplaced sense of humor. Her only consolation was that the mare had a proper shiner from where she’d cracked her across the face. Combined with the brackish stains coating her legs and the slash of knots holding the lower half of her tail together, she looked better fit to live in a belltower than wear an Enclave uniform. She smirked at that.
Ginger was too busy watching the screen to give either of them much notice, though she did occasionally look back at Aurora with an even mixture of worry and relief. She looked exhausted. Worse than when she’d nearly fallen asleep mid stride back on the railway. Still, maybe Roach was right. If anything, it gave her something to cling to while Briar explained how he thought the servers worked.
“There’s a lot of things about this I don’t understand yet, but what we do know is that the Stables are linked to this hub by a hardened connection.” He lifted a caramel wing and motioned to the far side of the server room where they’d all seen the massive bundle of buried lines vanishing into the bedrock beyond the wall. “If I had to guess, I’d say that Stable-Tec expected to be able to retrieve the data whenever they decided it was safe for the Stables to open. Maybe to check up on how their old experiments panned out. I’m not sure.”
Ginger frowned at the terminal. “You said you were able to speak with one of them.”
“That’s the exciting part.” Briar flicked through several directories before landing on what looked to Aurora like one of the residential message windows from back home.
She stepped over to better read the messages glowing on the terminal. Just as quickly, she noticed the dates they were sent stretched back years. Then she remembered Briar had been connected to one of his so-named zombie servers and lost interest in reading the log.
“This Stable isn’t active, but you can see how the connection to its server is still present.”
He punched in a few keys and the word “hello” appeared below the most recent message, addressed from sysadmin_s01. The server chattered briefly before falling silent again.
“Sent and received. Stable 21 might be dead, but its servers aren’t.”
Julip crossed her foreleg and leaned against the server marked 22. “But that would mean they still have power.”
Briar nodded. “Just the server, if I had to guess. But yes.”
Julip’s confusion seemed genuine, which was a rare occurrence in Aurora’s limited experience. She looked to Roach, frowning as she spoke. “Roach, you told us the Enclave strips down the Stables that fail. I’m pretty sure they would have noticed a server running in the dark.”
Roach did a decent job concealing his bewilderment, unprepared to be roped into Julip’s somewhat necessary misdirection. He feigned ignorance which, given the fact that he couldn’t know where Julip was going with the question, came easily. “Well. Maybe they’re aware that the Stables are connected and chose not to do anything about it.”
“I doubt that.” Briar chuckled, half-turning to Julip. “If the Enclave knew about this, there would be patrols flying over this Stable twenty-four seven. Or, knowing them, they would have packed this level with enough explosives to send it pancaking all the way to the bottom. All it would take is for one Ranger to wander in, figure out what we just did, and you can bet your feathers there would be Steel Rangers outside every failed Stable looking for tech the Enclave might have missed.”
“I imagine that would be a bad thing for the Enclave,” Julip said.
“Losing the only technological advantage that keeps them alive?” Briar snorted. “Yeah. They wouldn’t like that too much. My guess is whatever mop up protocol they have for dead Stables has a blind spot in it.”
Aurora hummed. “Last one out, turn off the lights.”
Julip frowned. “What?”
She shrugged, repeating herself. “It’s a sign we have next to the break room door in Mechanical. A lot of departments have versions of it posted all around the Stable, but it becomes such a habit to shut off the lights that nobody really notices the signs. Maybe that’s what the Enclave does after they’re done breaking down whatever tech they want. Last pony takes out the ignition talisman.”
“Maybe,” Julip said. “Assuming that the pony is blind and doesn’t notice the one level in the Stable which didn’t get the memo that the plug just got pulled.”
She gestured at the lights buzzing overhead. “Kind of hard not to notice that.”
They were all quiet for a moment as they absorbed the reality that they didn’t have all the answers. Briar made a sucking noise between his teeth and gave his shoulders a nonchalant bob. “Well, whatever’s going on is definitely above my pay grade. All I know is that we’re sitting on a direct line to every surviving Stable in Equestria. We have a genuine opportunity here to change thousands of lives.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
Briar looked up at her and stretched his wing to encompass all the servers surrounding them. “They’re all waiting for a message that Stable-Tec isn’t around to send. They’re never going to get the all clear, and I don’t want to think about how many of them are alive just to fulfill some dead pony’s experiment. We can tell them it’s safe to come out.”
Beside her, Ginger blinked. “You’re right…”
“Assuming you could convince them it’s not a trick,” Roach murmured, but the hope rising in his voice was unmistakable. “But still, it would be worse not to try.”
A chill ran down Aurora’s spine at how quickly the conversation was building momentum. A week ago she would have been fully on board, but after seeing what the wasteland was able to inflict upon them in such a short amount of time, she wasn’t so sure this was a good idea.
“Hold on a second,” she said, but Briar was still talking.
“We’d want to work from the outside in. Open the Stables nearest the coasts and furthest from Enclave territory so that the Rangers could get to the residents first.”
“But we don’t have a map of where they all are,” Roach interjected. “Maybe there’s one here?”
Aurora held up a wing. “Guys.”
“Hey,” Julip added. “Slow down a second.”
“Doubt it,” Briar said, turning back to the terminal. “But the original residents would have had instructions for where to go if the bombs ever fall. I wager they kept copies in their archives.”
Aurora planted her wing firmly on his shoulder. “Would you slow down?”
He chuckled up at her. “Yep, just a minute. This is making--”
A sharp snap of breaking plastic cut him off and the terminal sputtered dark. As quickly as it began, the snowballing brainstorm session came to an abrupt end. Aurora and Briar looked up to see Julip holding the broken ends of the terminal connections in her wing, the contacts sheared clean off the wires.
“Listen up, fucker!” she barked, catching everyone by surprise including Julip. She hesitated, dropped the wires to the floor and gestured vaguely at Aurora. “She’s trying to say something.”
 All eyes turned to Aurora. If ever there was a more uncomfortable spotlight to be standing under, this was it.
Obviously Julip had her own reasons for not wanting a hundred or more Stables popping open like so many soap bubbles, but it had nothing to do with Aurora’s apprehension. This wasn’t about the Rangers or the Enclave. Far from it. But Julip had given her a platform and as much as she disliked the little green goblin, she had to appreciate her ability to suck the air out of a room. She wasn’t about to squander that.
“Okay. Listen,” she said. “None of you are considering the very real possibility that telling these Stables they can unseal the doors will lead to their immediate deaths. If it weren’t for Roach and…”
She paused before she could mention Blue. Julip hadn’t earned the right to know about her. 
“If it weren’t for Roach, I would be dead inside the tunnel outside my Stable. With Cider… he was sloppy and I got lucky. And then there were those raiders, and that mess at the solar array, not to mention Gallow and those monsters in the foothills.” She sighed, hating that she was taking this away from them. “None of them are prepared for what’s out here. I’m still not prepared for what’s out here. You’ve all got to slow down and think this through, because once you tell them it’s safe to live on the surface again it isn’t going to matter if you tell them about the monsters and the murderers. They’re either going to make a run for the door or never open it again.”
Beside her, Ginger blew out a sigh. “She is right.”
Aurora looked at her, glad for the support. “Even if we do this perfectly and everyone walked out armed and trained, you’re talking about thousands of Stable ponies spreading into every town and encampment in Equestria at the same time. Thanks to Ginger and I, the trade routes are more or less a shooting gallery now. Sending a horde of new ponies out to compete for the same resources would be like dumping gas onto a fire.”
When she was finished, Roach hummed thoughtfully to himself. “You’re saying we should let the Stables continue undisturbed.”
She winced. There was a quiet judgment in his voice. One that only a changeling who had spent the last two centuries waiting outside the resting place of his only family could cast.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” She stared out at the servers, picturing the countless lives each one represented. “I’m saying that this might not be a decision we’re qualified to make. Not on our own.”
She watched Roach look over to Briar, and something like resignation passed between them. They must have been stewing on this for hours, now, getting themselves more and more worked up for the very real chance at saving innocent lives only to have heartless logic pull the rug out from under them.
Aurora knew that feeling all too well.
“Okay.” Briar stepped away from the darkened terminal and nodded. “We’ll put this one on the back burner for now until we have a better idea how to do this.”
“If at all,” Julip added.
“If at all,” he agreed. A weary smile graced his lips as he turned to regard Aurora. “In the meantime, I recall you promised to help fix my family’s water pump. How’s about we get going on that and leave the Stable-cracking for someone with more capable hooves?”
Aurora let out a relieved sigh. “Elder Coldbrook’s ears are probably burning right now.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “Nobody. Let’s get out of here before we sweat to death. I really need to see the sky again.”







Grey rocks crunched and clattered against iron rails as Aurora and Briar released their passengers, the two of them settling onto the ballast stones a few paces away from where Julip had landed. The clouds were already starting to take on the sharper shades of early morning grey. In another hour or two, it would be dawn.
The five of them walked the last few yards toward the cave with a sort of communal exhaustion. Aurora tried to appease the little beast urging her to sleep by squeezing her eyes shut for a few seconds, but she felt just as tired when she opened them. She was just glad that Briar had been okay with them flying to the railway’s ledge. She’d had plenty of climbing for one lifetime.
The cave was pitch dark and just as quiet. Ginger swayed on uneasy hooves beside her, her expression a mixture of pure fatigue and an amused little smile that let Aurora know she was aware of how she must look. As Briar motioned for them to stop short of the woven netting while he proceeded ahead, Ginger leaned against her shoulder with that self-aware smirk. The small gesture went a long way to reassuring her that the damage she’d inflicted on both of them would heal with time.
The four of them waited while Briar pressed his chin against the receiver woven into his lapel and murmured a few quiet words. The response was nearly lost in the crackle of static, but Meridian’s groggy voice was unmistakably relieved. They filed into the cave behind him, filling the cozy space with the soft scraping of hooves on haphazardly assembled floorboards.
There was barely enough light to see Meridian rising from the bed in the corner, her movements gentle and slow despite her size. She bent over Beans who lay cuddled under several layers of old blankets and lightly kissed her cheek. The filly stirred, peered up with half-lidded eyes, and burrowed herself a little deeper beneath the covers.
As she watched Briar and his wife whisper into one another’s ears as they embraced, Aurora couldn’t help but feel sad for the fact that this family had to live like this. In hiding, constantly vigilant of whatever might fall from the sky and always afraid that one mistake might lead the Enclave to their doorstep. The irony of that last thought didn’t escape her. She looked toward Julip who, despite her swollen eye, seemed content to lay herself down against the stone wall as if nothing was wrong. As if her presence here didn’t represent an existential threat to Briar and Beans’ safety. 
With her focus spiraling toward Julip yet again, it took Aurora a moment to realize Meridian had whispered something to her.
“What?” she hissed back.
For an earth pony capable of carrying a weapon as big as Aurora, Meridian had an uncanny reserve of patience. Smiling, she said, “I asked if you found what you were looking for.”
Ah. She shook her head. “No such luck. Found an impeller for your pump, though.”
Dipping a wing into her saddlebag, she lifted out the heavy disc of cast steel that had been threatening to wear a permanent limp into her step. Meridian regarded the part with a relieved smile, then looked to Briar. Her husband plucked the impeller from Aurora’s feathers and set it gently on the floorboards in front of the reclaimed stove.
“Sleep first,” Meridian said, keeping her voice low yet hospitable. “Before your friend falls over.”
Aurora followed her gaze to Ginger whose eyes were barely open and her head was gradually inching its way toward the floor. She nudged her, pulling her just barely above her listing slumber to offer a knowing smile. Ginger grunted, blinked around the darkened cave to see that Roach was bedding down on an empty patch of floor a tail’s length from Julip, and blinked back toward the entrance. 
Ginger dropped off the floorboards and onto the stones. Aurora followed her outside without asking why. She already knew. After the incident shortly after their arrival at the cave, she didn’t blame Ginger for wanting to sleep well away from anyone else.
When they were a dozen or so yards from the cave, Ginger stopped and lit her horn. Aurora watched from a distance as the bleary-eyed mare formed a dim hemisphere of magic over a patch of stones beside the mountain. Several seconds passed as nothing happened. Ginger swayed slightly as she frowned in concentration, and for a moment Aurora thought she had finally tapped into the last of the magic she’d been forced to take. Simple spells would be a struggle from here on out, and the shield Ginger had been perfecting over the last several days would cease to be a part of their arsenal.
The little dome flashed. Like a soap bubble, it peeled apart and blinked out of existence, as did the sharp bed of stones that it surrounded. Aurora’s ears twitched at the distant clattering of rocks beyond the cliff’s edge. Where Ginger’s dome had settled now sat a flat slab of dark, cool gravel a good six inches lower than the surrounding stones.
Ginger dropped into the shallow foxhole. Impressed, but too tired to bother her with questions, Aurora logged teleportation as one of Ginger’s budding skills and followed her into a divot barely wide enough for one of them, but they made it work.
Curled up like cats, her mother used to say. They didn’t have cats down in Stable 10, but that never stopped her.
With her cheek warming against the shackle and chain emblazoned over Ginger’s hip, Aurora shut her eyes and welcomed the deep relief of sleep.







Hours Earlier

Primrose opened her eyes and sighed. She knew those pills looked suspect, but it was too late now.
She was back in Canterlot. Not the broken, dilapidated mosaic of cobbled-together slums and boroughs the wasteland ponies insisted on calling New Canterlot. The real Canterlot, perched high atop the snow capped mountain from which it had taken its name. The one that she and so many others saw as a single bomb sliced through the ancient bedrock that anchored it, sending the city and its remaining inhabitants sliding down the burning slopes in an avalanche of glowing rubble.
Primrose found herself seated alone at a sidewalk table outside a coffee shop bemoaned for its absurd prices and occasionally eccentric staff. Nine bits for a cup of coffee was exorbitant no matter what flavor they added, but Primrose never came here for that. It was the lithe, tangerine-colored stallion beneath the storefront awning who she was here for.
How a pegasus with his talents wound up here, serving cups to unicorns too stingy to leave a tip when he could be slicing open the skies with those broad wings of his was a mystery. As tinny music blared from a little coffee-spattered radio, the stallion sashayed from table to table, swinging a brown plastic tray of hot beverages in one wing while the other twisted and curled to the beat of the song. Despite the quick rhythm of his hooves, the bump of his hips and the occasional strange lift to his hind legs as he danced between tables, he rarely ever spilled a drop. And when he did, Primrose found it was completely eclipsed by his sheer personality.
He shot her a smile of recognition as he swirled toward her table, deftly sliding a pristine cup of espresso off the tray and down the curl of his wing. She grinned as the cup glided across the smooth table and came to a gentle stop in front of her. The barista winked, turned and danced his way to his other patrons.
She absently touched the place on her hip where she used to keep her pouch of bits before remembering that this was just a dream. Counting out a tip would only serve to confuse the delicate illusion.
She sipped the coffee and thought she could remember what it tasted like. The old spook must be in a good mood tonight if she was letting her have this dream. She glanced up, hoping to see the piercing blue sky Canterlot was known for, and frowned a little at the unnaturally dense blanket of clouds that obscured the mountain’s peak. It stretched from one horizon to another as it had for the last two hundred and twenty years.
Her lip twitched toward her jaw. 
She knew this memory well enough that she didn’t need that flat-assed ghost to dredge it up for her. The events played out in her head like so many others over the decades, and lingering on what was lost was not how she would move Equestria forward. She would ask for his name. He would say it was Butterscotch. After some small-talk he would find a pen and jot down an address in the margin of her receipt.
Setting the cup on the table, Primrose stood and left the café.
Before the end of the world, before balefire rained from the skies and burned through Equestrian magic like embers in gasoline vapors, breaking a dream was exceedingly difficult bordering on impossible. Layers upon layers of illusion kept each dream contained to a little pocket of reality. Even Twilight Sparkle had never worked out how to break a dream.
Now it was just a matter of opening a door.
Primrose crossed the street and pushed open the door of an antique store she had never been inside of. A tiny brass bell tinkled overhead and the door closed behind her, sealing her inside.
The acrid, smokey scent of burning invaded her nose with her first breath, making her grimace. Two and a half centuries old and she still couldn’t put a hoof on what balefire actually smelled like. Cordite, or burning plastic. A combination of both, maybe, laced with a chemical sting like sipping the foam off rootbeer. She didn’t think she’d ever pin it down. It was a foreign odor that had no comparison. Balefire smelled like balefire.
Doors burned around her, above her, and most dizzyingly, below her. What amounted to a “floor” here wasn’t so much a tangible surface as it was the absence of falling. Green flames licked the air in every conceivable direction, devouring millions of shattered doors like a holotape of Equestria’s demise stuck on a permanent loop. At one time each door had belonged to someone. Someone who lived and breathed and dreamed about the happy little world they once occupied. 
And then they didn’t.
It was impossible to look at them all without feeling nauseous. Here, there was no horizon. No merciful haze in the distance to spare her the view of infinity. Her first time standing here hadn’t been pretty. She hadn’t known to focus her eyes on the passing doors rather than the space between them. At the time she hadn’t known what it was she was experiencing. She’d awoken, screaming as she fell out of bed, nearly toppling a rack of shelves stacked high with the means of her survival. It took weeks before she understood it. Longer before she realized she had nothing to fear from it.
She walked the endless hall of doors for what felt like ages. They slid by one after another, like the ticking of an untrustworthy clock. She knew better than to trust her perception of time here. There were few things more irritating than convincing one’s self that minutes had gone by only to wake up and discover the night was over. She walked, watching every variety of door drift by like some twisted floor show. Burning remnants of a wood panel, an aluminum screen shriveling under green flames, melting glass dripping into bright orange lines and even the blasted, glowing shards of a cell door caught her eye as she trotted along. Eventually, the mare who acted as this realm’s guardian would sense her presence and come to send her away. All it took was a little patience and…
There. Primrose picked up her pace with a victorious little smirk as the alicorn’s dark shape came into view. Cheap quality sleeping pills be damned. As much as she hated being subjected to the same old dreams every time a chem failed to do its job, it was a rare treat to be able to turn the screws on one of Equestria’s dearly departed princesses again.
“Hello, Lu-u-una,” she called in the tilting sing-song tone she knew she hated. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to forego the pleasantries and skip straight to the part where you wake...”
She stopped and narrowed her eyes at the unfamiliar pony parked in front of the otherworldly silhouette of night. A unicorn mare with a coat the color of Butterscotch’s overpriced lattes, and a short, fiery mane that curved along her jawline. The mare stared down at her, startled.
Primrose stuck a feather out at the newcomer. 
“Who is she?”
> Chapter 28: Loyalty
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The earth erupted at her hooves and belched out another deformed rodent.
“Get AWAY!”
Her father’s revolver, a prewar heirloom bought at auction to be displayed and forgotten among the other relics in his study, cracked fire and sent the molerat whip-sawing backward over the rim of its burrow. The revolver spiraled out from the tenuous grip of her magic, thrown by the sheer force of its own kickback.
Ginger spun on her hind legs, following the sloppy arc of her only weapon as it clattered onto the broken pavement behind her. The slab beneath her hooves rumbled as another molerat raked its claws against the soil, giving barely enough warning for her to stumble away before the asphalt ruptured. She tumbled, scraping her shoulder against the unforgiving road, and stretched her magic toward the revolver.
The mottled abomination turned its pink eyes toward her and squealed just in time for another precious bullet to turn its ribcage into pulp.
She raked the back of her hoof across her eyes to clear her vision. The molerat’s yellowed teeth yawned apart as it gasped and twitched beside its hole. Her legs shook as she tried to focus on her magic, urging the switch that locked the cylinder to move so she could see how many shots she had left. Her eyes swam when it finally clicked, allowing her to confirm she had only two rounds remaining. 
The three molerats lying dead on the road around her accounted for the rest.
Several long seconds ticked by as she waited for the next rodent to surface, but none did. The revolver hung heavy in her magic. Carefully, she depressed the hammer and set the weapon back into the holster high on her foreleg.
Five days ago she was enjoying the safety and security that came with being born a Dressage. Then her father had discovered the slaves’ foal and her part in hiding its existence from him. Before then, she had never taken a life. Never even seen death, not with her own eyes. The sight of that foal, wriggling beneath her father’s red handkerchief, going still as he lifted away the syringe… he thought he was teaching her something. Some perverted lesson about honesty and standing and the greater hierarchy from which came order and law. Something.
As she gathered up her nerves and tried to weather the storm of adrenaline still thundering in her veins, she turned east and wondered what her father might have said when he realized she’d left. Whether he’d be more devastated by the loss of a daughter or by her theft of an invaluable antique.
One of her mother’s jewelry boxes jangled beneath the flap of her saddlebag, packed with as many caps as she could pilfer from the basement strongbox. The other bag sloshed with two half-empty skins of clean water and a small amount of dried fish that she’d been able to barter off the traders who she’d paid to smuggle her into Steel Ranger territory. She parted ways with the traders early in the morning. Watching their caravan of wagons turn south and shrink into the distance was the loneliest feeling she’d ever felt.
She should have brought more bullets, but she remembered that she wouldn’t learn until much later how rare and ultimately worthless 8 millimeter rounds were. She frowned, trying to make sense of the displaced clarity of that knowledge. For a moment she felt as if she were floating, her mind and body falling out of synchrony.
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them.
The revolver was out again. Her vision swam, tinted molerat pink from the blood running into her eye. A stallion clad in mismatched leather armor lay dead on the road beside her, the wooden bat he’d clubbed her with still rolling away from them toward the curb. The charred studs of a desolated suburb stuck into the air like the black ribs of some dead and forgotten beast. She swayed and caught herself, the blow to her head throwing her vision into a nauseating spin. 
The first shot caught the bat-wielding raider in the crux of his hind leg, but the wound wasn’t immediately fatal. Nor was the gash he’d opened across her brow, but it would be if left untreated. She squeezed off another shot as he staggered around for another attack, but the bullet spat off the broken sidewalk and lodged itself into the decaying walls of the house behind him. For a brief moment they met eyes. Then the stallion’s lost focus, and he fell while his racing heart pumped the last of the life onto the concrete.
A stone came arcing out from one of the burned out houses and caught her across the shoulder. She gasped and spun toward her assailant, squeezing the trigger at the window she thought it had come from. The revolver emitted a sharp click.
A mare’s voice called from behind her. “She’s empty!”
“Won’t be for long!” another answered, and Ginger remembered the chill that raced down her back upon hearing the baudy laughter in his voice. 
She bolted, but didn’t get far. A unicorn colt half her age bolted out of cover and skidded to a halt in front of her, the barrel of some sort of homemade rifle leveled at her in a haze of his magic. Ginger turned to run away but there was suddenly a raider behind her, an older stallion with a blade clenched between his teeth. They appeared in the windows of the dilapidated houses, weapons coming into view one by one as their prey searched for and failed to find an escape.
One of the raiders stepped forward and threw something onto the broken road in front of her. A ring.
“Put that on yer horn, little miss.” His lips split into a gap toothed grin. “Or I do it for yeh and a little bit extra fer the trouble, yeh?”
She tried to close her eyes, but she found she couldn’t. They stayed open as they had when the ambush happened and when it had come to its terrible end. She found herself remembering the details out of order now, her mind trying to skip past the death that spread around her like some kind of plague. The strange, muffled screams as raider after raider found themselves entombed in guided pockets of deadly radiation. The sight of their coats shriveling and burning as the air trapped around them heated up like an oven. The sting of a Rad-Away needle being clumsily pricked into her neck by the teeth of the strangest pony she’d ever seen.
The bubble of sickly green light that formed around the stallion’s head startled all of them. The frenzied chatter of the geiger counters he and his fellow raiders carried only added to the confusion. The stallion collapsed within a matter of seconds and the light faded only to reappear around the head of another. And another. Looking back, Ginger remembered that it was the sound of Roach’s shotgun that helped the raiders understand they were being attacked, but by then it was too late for them.
Looking back to the crumpled house from which the youngest raider had first bounded out from, she noticed a door on the front hinges where no door had been earlier. She blinked, and it was gone. Except it wasn’t. Even as she felt herself pulled back to the events replaying in front of her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was still there. Hiding somehow.
Ginger stepped toward the house and it appeared again. A familiar panel door with a prominent glass pane held together along the seam of an old crack by layers of yellowed tape. There was something comforting about that door, and the closer she came the more real it felt.
She smiled when she recognized the painstakingly painted letters of Gussets & Garments gracing the center of the glass. What was her shop door doing out here? You’re dreaming, dear, she told herself, and that made sense. Her fears forgotten, she wrapped her magic around the well-worn brass handle and pushed through to the other side.
Somewhere, among the endless expanse of burning doors and strange, ghostly stars, a tiny bell tinkled and the door clicked shut.
“Hello?”
They stretched for as far as she could see. Which was far. Too far. Infinite.
She crushed her eyes shut against the wave of nausea that overtook her. Was it possible to throw up in a dream? A groan rose out of her throat. She didn’t want to find out.
“It helps to focus on the doors, little shade.”
Her eyes shot up to the mare looming over her, and she froze. She was the same mare as before, except this time Ginger wasn’t cowering beneath a thick haze of her own shield while she looked on. She was here. Right in front of her. A tall, razor crisp field of stars in the unmistakable shape of…
“Princess Luna?”
It had to be. In all of known history, only one mare carried the stars in her mane. It only made sense that this one, who carried constellations across her entire form, would be her.
The mare’s eyes, pale and white and the only part of her that felt solid, narrowed into the gentle curve of a smile. “I’m afraid not, little shade.”
That wasn’t the answer she was expecting. She almost didn’t believe it, but something told her this creature had no real reason to lie to her. She frowned. 
“Then… are you real?”
“That is a complicated question,” the creature said. “The simplest answer I can offer is yes, but that is not entirely accurate.”
Ginger tried not to let her eyes wander to the infinity that surrounded her. “So this is still a dream.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she sighed. Knowing this place was all in her head was comforting, in a way. Easier to absorb. Still, something bothered her. “You resemble her, though. I’ve seen pictures.”
“She is the one who created me,” it admitted.
Ginger risked a glance at the starry expanse where the creature’s face was. “I don’t… where are we?”
The creature’s head turned to survey the thousands of smoldering doors around them. Ginger tried to do the same and even managed to skip from wreckage to wreckage without overwhelming herself, but quickly the distances grew too vast and her mind revolted. She shut her eyes again and refocused them on the door she’d stepped out of, and the stripes of tape holding the old glass together.
Luna’s creation hummed thoughtfully at the expanse. “I have heard it called many things, however the most common name has always been ‘The Dream Realm.’ It isn’t a particularly descriptive name but I have found ponies particularly enjoy being mysterious when the mood suits them. Luna was the architect of this place as well. As you have likely discovered, each of these doors leads to a dream.”
Ginger hadn’t put those two points together, but decided it was best not to interrupt.
“Or, they used to prior to the Cataclysm.” A momentary pause. “I was not intended to travel beyond Luna’s dream. She created me as a form of atonement for the pain she caused under the banner of Nightmare Moon.”
“Do you… have a name?”
“Luna called me her Tantabus.”
“I’ve never heard of…”
“Hello, Lu-u-una.”
Ginger and the Tantabus blinked and turned their attention toward what could arguably be described as the most sickeningly adorable filly she’d ever seen. She trotted towards them on tiny pink hooves, her baby blue curls bouncing against each pudgy cheek with every precious step. For a brief moment Ginger thought she recognized her, but she couldn’t place where.
Just as quickly as she appeared, the pint-sized filly turned her beaming little eyes to Ginger and her expression flattened into a startling glare. “Who is she?”
If she was a figment of Ginger’s imagination, she was a disturbingly good one. The filly’s eyes drilled into Ginger’s like carbide bores. The Tantabus’s voice rose up from behind her like a wave.
“Return to your dream.”
A flash of light, and the filly was gone. Ginger’s mouth worked to form the words, but the question was jostled by a dozen others.
“Who was that?”
“A pest.”
She quirked her lip. “Why did she call you Luna?”
A pause. “I have told her what I am as I have told you. She has convinced herself that I am a liar.”
Interesting. “Why would she think that?”
“Because she is a pest.” The Tantabus shook its head. “Though I suppose it would be fairer to say it is because she is remarkably stubborn in her chosen philosophies. She believes since I share some of Luna’s memories while having no significant memories of my own, I am indistinguishable from my creator.”
Ginger felt her brow creasing under the weight to too many bizarre, contextless revelations. Not only could she dream, but she could apparently dream of the space between dreams where Luna’s seemingly sentient creation was acting as some sort of guardian of this dream realm. Or, more accurately, a vagrant of some kind. One who now claimed to have a dead princess’s memories? 
Even in this dream, her head was starting to hurt.
“Before you ask,” the Tantabus added, “I do not know the access code to the Equestrian Strategic Gold Reserve.”
Ginger blinked.
“It is a joke. The Reserve was destroyed in the Cataclysm.”
A joke. Of course it tells jokes. She risked a look around, nervously browsing the nearest doors and trying to place them. So many were in states of decay that made them impossible to identify. Smoldering bits of wood drew charred lines where some had been, but there was no debris. No broken frames to suggest where they originated.
“You should return to your dream as well, little shade.”
She looked to the Tantabus, expecting it to light its horn and send her back, but it only watched her with those piercing eyes. Waiting, as if pausing to hear her opinion. Ginger glanced back to the quaint little shop door, her door, just a few steps behind her and grimaced.
“I haven’t had particularly good luck with this… dreaming business.”
She was surprised when the creature turned toward her door, sounding almost apologetic as she spoke. “I am sorry. I have no control over the shape your dreams choose to take. If you do not wish to return to your dream, I can wake you instead.”
“Oh! Please don’t do that!” The words coughed themselves out before she could temper them, causing the creature’s featureless eyes to widen. Ginger stiffened and closed her eyes for a moment before adding, “I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in days. I really need this.”
Even without lips to complete the act, the Tantabus seemed to smile. “Then perhaps you would like to keep me company while you rest. It has been some time since I’ve met a pony who wasn’t the little minister.”
Ginger glanced to the place the strange filly had recently stood. Growing up in New Canterlot, she knew of only one pony who called herself minister. Judging by the disdain the Tantabus showed for the filly, she thought it was best not to suggest any association with Minister Primrose.
“I wouldn’t mind a little company,” she admitted. Her gaze once again wandered the infinity of doors with renewed trepidation. “However, is there a different place we could go? Someplace less…”
“Challenging?” The Tantabus hummed sympathetically and the burning door beside her puffed out of existence, instantly replaced by an arched pair of ornately stitched curtains. “Certainly. Come with me.”
The curtains wafted on a gentle breeze, parting and rejoining as pale, silver light streamed through the gaps. For a moment, Ginger hesitated, unsure of where she was being taken or whether it was even safe. This centuries-old being could be taking her anywhere. Possibly even tricking her into stepping into another day of her life she’d rather forget. 
Faced with the choice of the unknown beyond the curtains and the impossible that currently surrounded her, she took a step forward and pushed deeper into this strange existence.







Sledge could count on one hoof all the times he’d been afraid for his life. This, right now, was that one time.
It was his first time since having the mantle of overstallion thrown onto his shoulders that he’d been back inside of Stable 10’s generator room. It felt ridiculous that it had taken him this long to come back, but every time he thought about paying the old girl a visit he knew it was the wrong time to make the trip. Mechanical was in good feathers with Flux leading the department, and there were already enough things to stress about without the old boss lurking around. There was nothing he could do here that wasn’t already being done.
And yet, standing here barely a wing’s breadth from the beating heart of his home, he felt the useless panic rising in his chest all the same. The floorplates bucked so violently beneath his hooves that many of them had to be tack welded to keep them from jumping loose. If he locked his knees, his vision would immediately blur from the deafening vibrations emanating from the generator. Every bone in his body hummed with the furious noise bellowing out of a machine bent on tearing itself apart from the inside. It was electrical chaos contained inside a fragile mechanical system. If it went - when it went - his entire Stable would come apart at the roots.
The placid expression he wore was a mask. He was terrified. Of the generator, of his new job, of the ramifications of bringing a living Element of Harmony into his Stable… of everything. What he wouldn’t give to turn back the clock to when he was young and just learning how to turn a wrench, when outside was limited to the corridors beyond his work station and not the deadly, living world that existed beyond his home. Delphi could have picked anyone to captain this sinking ship, so why did it have to be him?
He blinked, coming to attention as Carbide’s jet black rear end backed up out of the gap in the floor next to the rioting generator. His wings grappled the edges of the access hatch and he used them to shove his front half up and out, seating himself on the edge of the floor.
Carbide’s mouth moved, forming words easily drowned out by the generator and the plugs he and Sledge had crammed into their ears before entering the workspace. Sledge waited until Carbide stopped, groaned, and began pecking his thoughts into his Pip-Buck. Seconds later, Sledge had a new message from the stallion waiting in his queue.
Hooked it up. Not going to know if it works til we try, he wrote.
Sledge nodded and typed in his response.
How sure? %?
Carbide offered a shrug of his own. Dont know. Nvr been done.
He grimaced. Carbide’s team had spent the better part of the week perfecting what they hoped would amount to a containment chamber for their failing ignition talisman once Aurora arrived with a replacement. It had looked similar to the one nestled beneath the heaving generator, assuming one ignored the bright patchwork of welds that kept the chamber intact. Nobody knew what would happen once the talisman was removed. It could go inert or it could dump its charge into every inch of metal surrounding it. Carbide’s containment chamber was designed in preparation for the latter event.
Hows talisman look?
Carbide read the message and grimaced. Wobbling. ETA on unicorn?
Everything hinged on the unicorn friend Aurora had made out there. A mare named Ginger. He didn’t need to see the warnings posted around the talisman chamber to know what would happen to a pony who came into direct physical contact with that much energy. Aurora could come back with a hundred ignition talismans. Without a unicorn to make the switch, it wouldn’t matter one bit.
Week. Maybe two, he wrote.
Dont have 2 weeks, Carbide replied.
I know.
He watched the barrel of Carbide’s chest expand as the stallion took a slow, deep breath, then nodded.
Tell her hurry.







She pulled the curtains apart and a grand vista of night erupted around her. She gasped.
They stood upon a wide balcony fitted with a finely carved ornamental stone railing that showed no sign of damage. Her hooves clicked against the polished floor, but her attention wasn’t aimed toward the balcony’s luxurious masonry. Her gaze bent upward toward the unbroken dome of the midnight sky.
“The clouds are gone,” she whispered.
Stars glittered along the mysterious magenta band that dimly glowed overhead just as it all had been when Aurora took her for the first time into the air. The moon was wide and bright, hanging above it all like a pearl illuminated by some inner light. The dark pattern of craters that many believed represented Nightmare Moon’s imprisonment colored its distant surface with the darker grey dimples of a vaguely equine profile. It was magnificent and dizzying, and she nearly toppled onto her hind end trying to see it all at once.
“There were many clear nights like this back then,” the Tantabus agreed. “She was particularly fond of this one.”
“Who…”
Tearing her gaze from the beauty above, that was when she spotted the dark mare curled atop a deep blue cushion at the edge of the balcony. It was unmistakably her. Ginger held her breath as she found herself standing hardly ten steps away from the Princess of the Night.
“This is only a memory. She is not aware we are here.”
She watched as the Tantabus walked beside Princess Luna, who was humming a happy little melody to herself as her eyes scanned the sky, and draped her forelegs over the edge of the balcony to stare up at the stars.
Ginger risked taking a breath and followed. True to the creature’s word, Luna never stirred as she approached the stone railing on the opposite side of the cushion. The thought occurred to her that, if she wanted, she could reach out and touch that ethereal mane with her own hoof. It flowed, following a wafting breeze of its own, as if tempting her to do just that.
“Tonight was the peak of the Cerberid meteor shower. It was the first she’d seen since being released from her banishment.”
Pushing away temptation, she looked to the same patch of sky Luna’s attention was so calmly fixed on. It was dark, save for a thin cluster of stars, but every few seconds a filament of light would skirt between them. Ginger’s ears perked when she understood what she was seeing. Meteors. Genuine debris from some distant corner of space reaching the end of an eons-long journey. Here and there, little blips of light appeared and vanished. Some brighter, some not. It was breathtaking.
Beside her, Luna continued to hum her little tune, her eyes never leaving that wide patch of sky.
“How often do you visit this memory?”
The Tantabus regarded her for a moment. “Often.”
She nodded, then reached out and touched the trailing swirl of Luna’s mane. It coiled around her hoof, engulfing it with the strange constellations that dwelled within it, but she could feel nothing. Embarrassed, she pulled her foreleg away and turned her attention back to the view.
“This is the castle, isn’t it?”
The Tantabus continued to watch her. “Canterlot Castle, yes. We are on Luna’s private balcony on the northern spire.”
“I wish Aurora could see this,” she murmured.
A pause. “Who?”
Watching the meteors flit across the sky, she told the Tantabus about Aurora. About how they first met when she walked into her shop. About where she came from, where she was going and how the two of them had realized a mutual attraction early on that became something deeper after the events at the solar array. The words spilled out of her like a torrent, and she realized she hadn’t actually told anyone about them before. Not like this, anyway. The Tantabus listened, interrupting only to ask clarifying questions before allowing her to proceed. It was therapeutic. When she was finished, she felt… organized.
“Does she dream like you?” it asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t think anyone dreams like me.”
A melodic chuckle rippled up from the creature. “Some ponies still do, but few.”
“Like Primrose.”
If it had a brow to arch, it might have done so. Could be doing so right now for all Ginger could tell. Silhouettes didn’t offer up clues from body language, but the questioning pitch of its voice certainly hinted at a new curiosity. “You know her name?”
Ginger shrugged. “I was born in New Canterlot. Everyone there knows who she is. That’s who that filly was, right?”
After a moment, the Tantabus nodded. “Yes. She frequents Luna’s realm more often than I would prefer, but I cannot stop her from entering it. Only discourage her. Many of her nightmares originate during her foalhood, so I force her to appear as such whenever she enters the space between the doors.”
“It didn’t look like it bothered her.”
The Tantabus slouched against the rail a little. “She adapts quickly. It is a trait that I believe enabled her to survive the cataclysm, and how she continues to survive even now.”
That managed to surprise her. For as long as there was a New Canterlot, the Enclave claimed that Primrose had always been at its helm. Most ponies quietly believed that to mean when the old one died, a new one was installed to take her place. A transition of title, not of literal immortality.
She chewed her lip thoughtfully, then asked, “Do you know how she does it?”
“Sustain life beyond her years?” The creature looked back to Luna, sighed, and turned her attention to the Cerberids overhead. “Dangerously. You experienced the magic found in Twilight Sparkle’s failed experiment yourself. It restored your magic just as it restores the little minister’s youth, though I choose to believe it is only a matter of time before such a crude method of immortality fails her.”
She turned away from the stars and stared past Luna, regarding the Tantabus directly. “You’re saying the stimpacks Autumn Song used on me are what Primrose uses to stay alive.”
“Yes."
She leaned over the balcony and tried not to let herself get frustrated. Ever since they arrived at the wall outside Blinder’s Bluff, she had been trying to keep Aurora from getting anywhere near the Enclave. Ginger had risked everything to escape New Canterlot and the brutal, superficial society Primrose had built there, but at every turn it seemed like something happened that inevitably dragged all of them back toward it. 
“You look disturbed.”
She shrugged and looked away, turning her eyes to the twinkling lights in the deep green fields far below Canterlot Mountain. This had all taken place well before the war with the zebras began. Before the oil boom and the frenzied growth of modern industry. The ponies in the little twinkling hamlets down below didn’t know what luxury they had.
“It’s different,” she murmured. “Growing up, being told about all the things we lost. It always felt so far away, like it didn’t really matter. Seeing it all, though? It hurts.”
She tried to smile in spite of herself, but she couldn’t manage it. “How broken was Equestria that ponies saw all of this and decided it was all worth destroying? They killed themselves and left us with nothing.”
The words hung in the air as meteors dripped from the sky. The Tantabus said nothing in return. Ginger didn’t expect it to.
“If we can’t find an ignition talisman in Fillydelphia,” she continued, “we’re going to have to ask the Enclave for help.”
“The ones who hold power in the bastardized remains of my creator’s home.”
“The one and only,” she agreed. “They’ve been picking apart Equestria for prewar tech since the bombs fell and they have a reputation for gutting Stables as soon as they go dark. We tried working with the Rangers but they put Aurora on a leash for the trouble. The Enclave is the only other power that I know would have a stockpile of talismans.”
The Tantabus stared at her from her side of the railing. “You keep very few secrets.”
It came so matter-of-factly that Ginger wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or just an idle observation. “Thank you?”
It tipped its horn toward her as if it approved of her response. “You are welcome. The little minister tells me very little of what has happened to the world since the cataclysm. I only see glimpses from the dreams of those few who still have the ability, and fewer from those who pass on.”
She frowned. “Pass on? Is that why you’ve been calling me ‘little shade?’”
Luna’s creation hesitated. “I am aware now that you are not dying.”
“But when we first met, you thought I was.”
For a brief moment, a patch of stars around the creature’s cheeks glowed a little brighter. Ginger held back a smile. It was embarrassed.
“The answer to that question is also complicated.”







“Hmm… imagine it is...”
Aurora looked up from the Pip-Buck on Ginger’s foreleg and cocked a confused brow. She waited, glancing between the unicorn’s fluttering eyelids and her darkened horn, to hear if the sleeping mare would say anything else. When she settled into the rhythmic breathing of deep sleep, Aurora carefully resumed tapping the rest of her response out to Sledge.
Typing with one wing wasn’t ideal. Doing so with the little screen facing upside-down was even less so, but the little pothole Ginger had carved into the stones offered little room for one of them to move without waking the other. She had gradually twisted the device around along its cuff, careful not to disturb Ginger’s mumbling sleep, and made do as best she could. Occasionally she would look over to her companion’s sleeping face and just watch her lips move in silent conversation before turning back to her messages.
It was well into the midday hours now and Aurora wasn’t looking forward to adjusting to a normal sleep cycle once she was back home. Though, the way Sledge was describing the situation, that window was falling rapidly shut. They needed a talisman. More than that, they needed time.
I know this isn’t the news you were hoping to hear, she wrote, but the Stable we spent last night exploring turned up empty. There’s a group out here that calls themselves the Enclave who strip down defunct Stables for tech. Nobody out here trusts them. I’m not sure I do, either. My original plan was to go to Stable-Tec Headquarters and look for clues, but now it’s starting to look like the Enclave might be our best option. Keeping that in the back pocket for now. Ginger and Roach wouldn’t approve. I’m afraid if I ask, whatever happens after will be out of my hooves. For now, I’m sticking to the plan. Get to Fillydelphia, find Stable-Tec HQ and find… something.
In the meantime, we might have discovered something in Stable 1 that could help take some of the load off the generator. Maybe it can buy us time. You’re going to have to butter up Opal for this, but if you can convince her to…
She pecked away letter by letter until the message was ready to send.
“What’re you writing?” a bleary Ginger mumbled.
Looking up, she saw that Ginger’s eyes were slitted open and a restful smirk from having caught her off-guard had crawled along her lip. Aurora smiled, tapped a button to send the message, and let her take back her foreleg.
“A letter to Sledge,” she said, resting her head more fully against Ginger’s flank. She watched the slow rise and fall of her belly and felt a happy warmth fill her own chest.
Ginger lit her horn and twisted the Pip-Buck to the outside of her foreleg. “Can I read it?”
She hesitated, not wanting Ginger to know she was considering the Enclave as a last resort, but something told her that wasn’t a great long-term strategy for the two of them. “Sure, go ahead.”
She watched as Ginger navigated the Pip-Buck’s interface and started scanning the lines Aurora had just sent. It wasn’t a particularly long letter, and she could tell when Ginger reached the line concerning hers and Roach’s disapproval when she pressed her lips together and sighed. The puff of breath ruffled the hairs that made up Aurora’s mark, the outstretched metal wing whose bands of reflected light so eerily matched her birth name.
“Sounds like we’re both thinking about the same thing lately,” Ginger said. When Aurora gave her a confused look, she added, “Asking them for help.”
She nodded once and shrugged her free wing. “I would have a home field advantage. Pureblood and all that.”
Ginger thumped her in the belly with the back of her hoof, making her jump. “Don’t joke like that. Our hosts might hear you.”
She winced and lifted her head, glancing up the tracks toward the narrow edge of Briar and Meridian’s cave. Luckily, everyone was still tucked behind their home knit camouflage. 
“Sorry,” she said, and began pushing up from the warm divot.
Ginger stood as well and soon they were stretching out muscles that had gone tight from their spiralling trip down and back up Stable 1’s immense stairwell.
“And hey,” she continued. “I’m sorry for blowing a fuse down there. It wasn’t fair of me to storm off and leave you alone with Julip.”
To her relief, Ginger paused her stretches to pull her into a quick but firm embrace. Aurora wobbled a little on her hooves when Ginger let her go, wishing it would last a bit longer.
“I shouldn’t have let you walk off like that, either. We were all on edge, and to be fair she did earn herself that black eye with the remark she made.” Ginger took a deep breath and blew it out, shaking her head as she did. “I will admit, the trip up with Julip was certainly interesting.”
Aurora listened as Ginger elaborated, explaining the stilted conversation she’d had with Julip midway up the stairs. About how Julip had pushed her hard for the details of her dream, and how the Enclave mare had made it very clear that if she deliberately failed to report Briar and Beans during her next debriefing, she would be taking a short trip to the firing squad for the deception.
“You’re making it sound like she doesn’t want to inform on them.”
“The impression I got from her was that she’s worried more about what will happen to herself than them.” Ginger quirked her lip, second-guessing herself. “But she doesn’t seem to enjoy this aspect of her job, either. I don’t think she’s ever been forced to give it this much thought until now.”
Aurora snorted. “That’s a nice way of saying you pestered her.”
She dodged another chastising swat.
“Regardless of my conversational technique,” Ginger stated, brow arched at her, “I think Roach’s initial approach to Julip might have been the correct one. Under all the rank, regulation and decorum the Enclave sank into her head, there’s a mare under there. And I think telling her about my dream shook something loose in her. Goddess knows they haven’t been peaches and cream for me either.”
Something about the way her tone shifted stirred up a cloud of worry within Aurora. As if sensing this, Ginger’s expression quickly softened and she gently shook her head as if to dismiss it.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. I’ll tell you about it once I’ve had some time to get it all straight in my own head.” Her eyes grew momentarily distant before refocusing on her with a renewed smile. “And I forgive you, by the way.”
And just like that, the weight of all the guilt she had carried up the treads lifted away. They were going to be okay, after all. The relief of it all swamped her.
“Are you crying?”
She wiped at her face with a wobbling grin, feeling the heat rising into her cheeks as Ginger stared at her with that beautiful smile. “No. Shut up.”
“Okay, tough girl.” She held her cheek in a cup of magic and pecked her against the other, coaxing a weepy little laugh out of her in the process. “I can wait.”
She turned her eyes up to the clouds, letting the mountain air dry them as she cleared her throat and brought herself under control. What an absolute mess the last twenty-four hours has been. Between Julip’s needling, being taken in by gunpoint and then with hospitality by Beans’ family, exploring the dead Stable in the valley and nearly letting the excursion push her into doing something she couldn’t take back, she was happy to just be a little misty-eyed and not strapped to a gurney up in the Infirmary back home.
 Holding her wings out to Ginger, she pulled the unicorn into another hug and held her for several long seconds. A proper one this time, she decided. Long enough to communicate the fact of how much she adored this strange, complicated mare and her capacity to tolerate the nonsense Aurora was putting her through.
“We should really get back to the others,” Ginger chuckled.
“In a minute,” she murmured.
“In a minute there might not be any leftover soup left for us to barter for.”
She wasn’t going to be baited so easily, but her stomach betrayed her with a long, twisting groan. Her ears flattened, and Ginger pulled out from the drape of her feathers. The moment ended.
Ginger turned and nodded toward the cave. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”
Aurora sighed, smiled, then followed.







“Like a beehive?”
Roach squinted at Beans, wondering where in the world she ever heard of bees when the bombs supposedly wiped them out centuries ago, but decided it was best not to mention it and risk embarrassing her over what was a surprisingly good comparison.
He popped a bit of crushed pecan into his mouth and chewed as he considered his answer. Beans watched him from a chair near the family stove, her chin against the backrest as she waited. Roach sat where he always preferred to sit: on the floor where the cool surface always seemed to sooth the little aches deep beneath his chitin. Julip, for her part, was still dead asleep barely a step away from Beans’ chair, her back against the cave’s chiseled wall and the bulk of her face tucked beneath a drape of green feathers. While she didn’t show any signs of addiction, Julip was definitely sleeping off the lingering effects of Rebound.
He swallowed, enjoying the faint taste of their unexpected harvest. “Sort of like a beehive, yes. Changelings are a little closer to hornets, though.”
Beans frowned over the back of the chair, deep in thought. “But hornets are mean. You’re not mean.”
She really did know her insects. Maybe some hives did survive the radiation. Certainly enough of Equestria’s larger fauna did, albeit with some dangerous mutations.
“Not all hornets sting,” he said.
Meridian glanced up at him and gave him a subtle, approving nod before turning back to her work. She sat on the floor on the opposite side of the cold stove with a wide strip of leather unrolled in front of her. On it lay Aurora’s rifle, Desperate Times, stripped down to the screws. Roach had bitten his tongue when he awoke to the sight of her disassembling Aurora’s weapon, but despite her lack of wings or magic, Meridian was surprisingly delicate with her work. She reassured him that she was only repaying them for retrieving the impeller for their pump. The longer she worked, the more the front of her muzzle blackened with the spent gunpowder and metal residue coating its inner workings, and the more convinced Roach became that she wasn’t trying to scrap the priceless heirloom.
“So you’re a good hornet. Like mom and dad are.”
His eyes widened at the comparison. From the workshop behind the curtain, Briar barked a well-meaning laugh that only encouraged Bean’s analogy.
“Mom and dad are raiders, but they don’t do the bad stuff like real raiders do. So… you’re kinda the same.”
She had a better handle on the world than he thought. He smiled and chuckled when she reflected his expression. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
From the corner of his eye he noticed Meridian’s left ear turn toward the front of the cave. She moved casually, as if she were leaning to stretch her legs, but the barrel of the cannon mounted to her shoulder followed the new angle of her body toward the netting. He blinked and realized he could hear the crunching of stones from outside.
The stiff brush in Meridian’s mouth dipped to the corner of her lip like an old stallion’s pipe. “Aurora and Ginger, stop walking and let me know it’s you please.”
The crunching stopped, replaced by Aurora’s hesitant voice. “Um, it’s us?”
Meridian nodded to herself and turned back to brushing the dirt out of the trigger assembly held between her hooves. “Thank you, ladies. Come on in.”
Roach blew out an uneasy breath and reminded himself never to sneak up on mares with cannons. As Aurora and Ginger filed into the cave, Beans stood on the wooden chair and held open one of her little wings. He watched as Aurora opened hers and lightly slapped her feathers against Beans, earning herself a beaming grin from the little filly as she asked her mother where Briar was. Pointed toward the workshop, she nodded a quick greeting back to Roach and disappeared into the workshop.
Color him impressed, but Aurora didn’t so much as flinch when she passed the broken down pieces of her rifle. Then he remembered that she had likely never seen a weapon taken apart like Meridian had done and suspected the passing glance hadn’t been enough for her to recognize it. Probably for the best, he decided. She did have something of a short temper.
The conversation shifted and for a while Roach found himself back in his usual position as the quiet observer. Ginger leaned into the workshop for a while, chatting with Briar and Aurora as they went to work finishing the repairs on the pump, then turned and noticed the disassembled weapon in front of Meridian and asked the obvious question of what she was doing. Meridian told her, and after a worried peek by Aurora through the curtain, it was apparent that they could either trust her enough to let her finish her work unbothered or get in the way and risk having to put the weapon together themselves.
With the matter quickly decided, Meridian changed course and asked if they were hungry. It wasn’t difficult to tell that they both were and after some discussion, Aurora offered up a pistol she’d taken from the Stable in the valley in payment for what was left of Meridian’s vegetable soup. It was cold and there wasn’t much left, but neither of them seemed to mind as they divvied up the last spoonfuls at the workshop curtain and savored their late breakfast.
Roach decided at that moment that he and Meridian could stand to be friends if they wouldn’t be departing soon. She had a rare talent at cooling tensions by sheer force of will rather than the usual wastelander tactic of inflaming them until bullets took flight. A good hornet indeed.
Beans, however, was a bee with boundless curiosity.
“Can you do magic like Ginger?”
He nodded, glancing at the unicorn as she sat down beside him. “Not as well as she can, and not without hurting other ponies, but yes. If I’m forced to.”
She wrinkled her nose, her eyes on his cracked horn. “Mom says changelings can turn into other ponies. Could you turn into me if you wanted to?”
A grin pulled hard at his cheeks, but he shook his head. “I haven’t been able to hold a disguise for a very long time. Sorry.”
Beans deflated a little, but her relentless spirit already pushed her to begin asking her next question just as a ripping snore sawed out from under Julip’s wing.
“Woah,” she laughed.
After a pause, a second more aggressive growler of a snore snarled between her feathers.
Meridian looked up from the rifle with an impressed smirk. “She’s worse than Briar.”
“Way worse,” Beans giggled.
Deaf to her audience, and much to Beans’ amusement, Julip continued to emit a racket that drew quiet laughter from the workshop and which made all other conversation virtually impossible.
“Beans,” Meridian said, “I think you should wake up our guest before she brings the mountain down on our heads.”
Roach watched the filly spring off her chair with an eager little grin, rear up beside Julip and plant her hooves on the sleeping mare’s side. With all the strength her little body could muster, shoved Julip back and forth along the floor accompanied by a persistent, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
Groaning, Julip lifted her wing a few inches away from her face and glowered with uneven blinks at the ponies in the room before finally settling on the happy pegasus in the midst of accosting her. Her red-rimmed eyes narrowed and she lifted her wing over Beans’ head.
Before she could get out of the way, the drape of feathers dropped over the filly’s tiny frame, startling a whinny from Beans and causing her mother to rise abruptly to her hooves. Julip’s wing scooped her off the boards and pulled her tight into the crux of the green mare’s front leg which pinned her even further. Julip grunted, turned her head toward the cave wall and promptly fell back asleep.
Beans, now lying upside-down in Julip’s slowly relaxing grip, gaped past the stove at her staring mother as if she’d just won first prize at a carnival game. Only in this case, she was the prize.
Beside him, Ginger covered her mouth with the back of her hoof. Roach was dumbstruck.
“Mom!” Beans hissed, one of her wings popping free of Julip’s feathers. “I’m the teddy bear!”
The four of them laughed and Julip, disturbed yet again, lifted her head and stared unsteadily at the three adults in the room with one eye still pinched shut. Then she noticed the bundle she was holding onto and the other eye popped open. She flinched, stumbling to her hooves while Beans rolled out of her grip in a fit of snorting laughter.
“Woah, what is…”
She blinked with heavy eyelids, trying to make sense of things as she looked at Beans and then the imposing form of Meridian standing just a few feet away.
“I didn’t…” she paused, squeezed her eyes shut and then looked back to Beans when she finally opened them again. “What were you doing?”
“Being your teddy bear!” the filly blurted.
A question formed on Julip’s lips, but it was clear she could tell the answer would just confuse her more. She scrubbed her face with her good wing and plopped her backside onto the boards as she fought to stay awake. The question forgotten and her wings falling limp to her sides, Beans immediately scurried back under Julip’s feathers to continue this new game of theirs.
Roach chuckled at Beans as she pulled the drape of feathers over her muzzle with her own little wings, their feathers rustling against one another like autumn leaves. 
Julip swayed a little under Beans’ manipulation, but she didn’t try to shoo her away.
“What time is it?” she muttered.
“Noontime,” Meridian answered, though by the way she spoke it sounded more like a rough estimate. With the potential threat to her daughter seemingly dispelled, she sat back down and began the process of reassembling Aurora’s rifle.
“Grab something to eat,” Roach said. “Once they’re done with the pump, we’re hitting the road again.”
“We may need to travel overnight again,” Ginger added. When he gave her a questioning look, she added, “Her Stable may not have as long as we thought.”
Julip made a convincing show of concern, though she stopped short of asking Ginger what she meant. Instead, she looked back to Meridian. “I’d kill for some more of last night’s soup.”
The corner of Meridian’s lip bent into a smirk and she lifted an eyebrow at Ginger. Roach wisely chose to keep quiet while Ginger shifted uneasily beside him.
“Funny you should say that.”







With a final shove, the last bolt of the salvaged water pump turned into place. Aurora wiggled the rusted wrench free and dropped it into Briar’s waiting feathers. She puffed out a satisfied breath as she regarded her work.
“There. Good as new.”
Briar chuckled. They were both well aware that the antique pump’s impeller was only the first part to break down. Given a few months, something else would eventually need replacing. And something else after that. But for now, it would do its job just as it had centuries ago. Even as she brushed the dark wet granules of mineral deposits off her feathers, she knew this pump would last longer than it needed to. Long enough for Briar and his family to pack up their humble home and begin making plans to travel west, toward the safety of Stable 10.
At least she hoped.
She made room for Briar as he stepped in to reconnect the power. It impressed her what he and his wife had been capable of accomplishing so far away from anything Aurora might consider civilization. Hunted and alone, they made do with what they could scavenge from the dead Stable in the valley. She wondered what they might do once they got settled inside her home. 
Briar would be a shoe-in for Mechanical. Meridian would be more of a challenge. There weren’t many jobs in a Stable for cannon wielding earth ponies. Security, maybe? Or possibly she could find a place in the Brass Bit up in the Atrium. With the scant ingredients she had to choose from in the wasteland, Aurora could only imagine what sort of dish Meridian could whip up with a full pantry of fresh ingredients.
She hardly noticed Briar flip the startup switch, giving her a startle when the bulky pump shook to life. Soon she could hear the gentle burble of water splashing into the blue plastic tank beside them. Just as promptly, Meridian’s voice called out from the other room.
“Is it working again?”
Briar lifted his muzzle toward the curtain. “Better than before!”
The relief in her voice was palpable. “Good, just don’t jinx it before I can get some water on the boil. Beans, it’s your turn. Let Julip finish her apple and go fill up the kettle.”
Aurora smiled at the sound of the filly’s drawn out groan of protest. A minute later she was pushing through the curtain with a dented, floral decorated kettle swinging from the handle held in her mouth. The young mare plopped down on the boards beside them, positioned the open kettle under the tank’s plastic spigot and let out a dramatic sigh as she opened the tap.
As rust-tinted water trickled into the kettle, Beans looked at the whirring pump with curiosity. “It’s quieter.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll make up for it,” Briar said, chuckling as his daughter poked out her tongue at him. “Our friends are going to be leaving soon. Did you ask Aurora your question?”
Beans’ eyes went wide with embarrassment and, just like that, she was staring intently at the kettle with her lips pressed firmly shut. Aurora glanced at Briar, noted the unapologetic expression of oops on his face that only a father could get away with, and then looked down at Beans who simply stared intently at the trickling water as it approached the kettle’s rim.
She didn’t have to be particularly good with foals to recognize the mortified look of a young mare unprepared to be shoved into the spotlight. Whatever Beans had wanted to ask, she’d wanted to do it on her own. Only now, as Aurora and the others were getting close to leaving, was it obvious to her father that the opportunity was going to pass faster than Beans would be able to muster her courage.
Remembering something her mother used to do when she was little, Aurora got down on her belly beside Beans and twisted the tap shut before it could overflow. Beans glanced at her wing and swallowed. 
“You can whisper it in my ear. I promise I won’t tell anyone. Okay?”
After some hesitation, Beans nodded. Aurora waited as the filly pushed herself up from the floor and pressed her tiny muzzle into the cup of Aurora’s ear, the raspy whisper of her voice sending pins and needles running down Aurora’s spine. It took a minor feat of strength for her not to wince.
“Can I have, um, one of your feathers?”
Her question asked, Beans took a step back and stared at her, waiting.
Aurora had expected the little pirate queen to ask something strange, but not quite so odd as for a piece of her anatomy. She quickly stifled a laugh that would undoubtedly mortify the sheltered filly and, awkwardly, spread her left wing for Beans to inspect. “Take your pick, kiddo.”
A bright grin spread across Beans’ face as she turned her attention to the curtain of grey feathers opened before her. Her chest puffed out a little as she dragged the tip of her comparably smaller wing across them like chimes, inspecting each one as if she were one of the quality assurance ponies working in Fabrication. Aurora wasn’t sure what it was she was looking for, exactly, but she kept an even face as her feathers were shifted this way and that by a filly clearly on a mission for something specific.
She glanced over at Briar who offered a mild shrug and not much else. As he did, Aurora felt a sharp pop and a flicker of pain shoot down her wing as Beans identified and jerked free the feather of her choice. Even through watering eyes, she could see the half-sympathetic, half-laughing smile bubbling along Briar’s muzzle. She blinked away the tears and took a slow breath to dispel the urge to curse before turning back to Beans with as much of a smile as she could manage. 
Gently pinched between Beans’ teeth was one of Aurora’s primaries. One of the few grey and white striped feathers that accented the speckles along her shoulders and hips. She must have wanted it for the coloration. Before Aurora could ask, Beans garbled a polite “phenkew” around the gifted feather and scurried out of the workshop and into the other room.
Briar reacted to her confusion with a small shrug. “Aside from me, you two are the first pegasi she’s known that she hasn’t needed to hide from.”
Aurora hummed understanding while she pressed the edge of her wing against her hip, wiping away the dot of blood that had formed where Beans had extracted the feather. “What does she keep from the other ponies she meets? Locks of mane?”
Briar laughed, caught himself and shook his head. Still grinning, he stepped around her and retrieved the kettle Beans left behind. From the other room, the sharp clap of the filly’s costume box closing gave them a decent idea of where her memento had been stored. “Thank you for your help.”
As he turned toward the curtain, she stopped him. “Hey, um, real quick?”
The kettle sloshed as he looked at her. She touched the edge of her neck, where Briar’s barding folded into a collar.
“Can I get the frequency on that radio?”
He paused. Then, understanding, smiled.







“Are you sure?”
“Just take it before I change my mind.”
Content to observe, Julip watched Meridian practically push a roughly treated first aid kit into Roach’s hooves. She didn’t understand why he was so hesitant to take it, but she didn’t ask either. The little fabric bags usually held little more than some basic stitching supplies, a few low dose stimpacks and a tube of antibiotic if they were lucky. They were good for taking care of scrapes, but the wasteland was usually harsher than that.
Still, it was a meaningful gesture. Julip watched her turn back across the room to the open cupboards while Roach was left staring at the little medkit. After a beat, he slid it over the floorboards for Julip to add to her mailbag. It jangled with a few other new supplies, all courtesy of the earth pony who just a day earlier had hinged seemingly everything on a transactional basis. Roach appeared torn about the sudden bout of generosity, but Julip suspected it had something to do with Aurora’s promise of shelter as well as the repair of their pump. When she did the math, Meridian’s family had reaped the majority of the reward from their excursion into Stable 1. This was likely her way of balancing the books.
In addition to the medkit, half a box of 12 gauge shells jostled against a scuffed and faded thermos filled to the brim with Meridian’s tarlike brew of instant coffee. Julip could just make out the silhouettes of six prewar comic book characters on one side of the thermos. On the other, a tentacle-maned villain whose name escaped her.
With her nose deep inside the cupboards, Meridian asked, “Aurora’s rifle wouldn’t happen to fire fifty caliber cartridges? I have maybe twenty rounds of that.”
As if on cue, Briar led Aurora into the room. The stallion stepped between the conversation toward the stove and set about preparing a kettle. Aurora continued down to the edge of the planked floor where Ginger reclined next to Roach. 
Julip tried not to think too hard about all the potential ramifications of a pureblood sitting down beside a dreamer, and focused more on the twinge of jealousy she felt instead. She’d been injected with the same, invaluable prewar stimpack Ginger had and she hadn’t had so much as a whisper of vision when she slept. 
“Pretty sure she uses .308s,” Julip said, earning a frustrated huff from Meridian as she shut the cabinets.
“Well, I think we’re just going to have to owe you.” Meridian sighed, glancing around the room yet another turn. “Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need? Fillydelphia is a big place and there’s a lot of mountains between here and there.”
“Honey,” Briar murmured. “They’ll be fine.”
Meridian pinched her lips together, unconvinced. Then her gaze went to the family mattress and she stepped toward it, nudging up the edge of it with her nose and using a wide hoof to fish out something black and familiar.
“Here,” she said, picking up the pistol Aurora brought up from the Stable.
Julip froze as the towering mare approached her, holding the weapon between her teeth for her to take. Her eyes flicked toward where Roach, Ginger and Aurora sat. The three of them looked understandably on edge. Their first real action after spotting her spying on them outside of Kiln was to disarm her, and there was likely a reason why none of them had since suggested returning to their centaur-trampled campsite to retrieve the submachine gun.
Meridian dropped the empty pistol into her feathers, oblivious to the quiet tension forming around her. 
“I’ll bet my feathers that’s a forty-five.”
“Safe bet,” Briar snorted.
Meridian swatted a hoof against his backside as she hurried back to the cupboards. Meanwhile, Julip stared at the pistol in her wings. She knew this model and its caliber from her studies in the archives. Standard issue for Stable Security, which quickly explained why it was where it had been when Aurora picked it up.
She glanced at Beans. The filly was preoccupied with the contents of her costume box, rummaging through scraps of old fabric and home made props in search of her next outfit. A knot formed in her gut, and she stood. She crossed the small room, held the pistol out to Aurora and slid it into her wing.
Behind her, Briar spoke up. “Not your preferred weapon?”
“Wouldn’t know how to shoot it even if it was,” she lied. “Odds are I’d just wind up with legs like Roach.”
A rough chuckle rumbled from the changeling while Aurora quietly slid the pistol into her saddlebag. The floorboards thudded, heralding Meridian’s approach. Seeing that the pistol had made its way back to the mare she got it from, Meridian held out a faded cardboard box with her teeth while Aurora’s rifle swung loosely from its strap around the earth pony’s neck. Bullets clinked as Aurora packed the little box into the same bag as the pistol, then opened her wings to accept Desperate Times.
“I think that’s everything.”
There was something final in Meridian’s tone, and Julip wasn’t the only one to sense it. She stepped back as Aurora and her strange medley of companions got to their hooves. Saddlebags shuffled, joints popped, hooves scraped over the dry boards as it became evident that there were no more trades to be made. No offers to fulfill. To Julip’s surprise, a faint sadness fell over her as eyes turned to the netting that led out to the rails. She frowned a little, unsure where that was coming from.
“Keep your radio on,” Aurora said, nodding to Briar as she spoke. “If we find what we’re looking for, you’ll know.”
Briar dipped his chin toward his collar. “Roger that.”
From the edge of the boards, Roach scuffed his hoof against the loose stones beyond them and bowed his head. “Well, that’s us. Thank you for the hospitality, Meridian. And Briar, for the computer lessons. I think it goes without saying that we should all keep what we learned down there close to the chest.”
A murmur of agreement made its way around the cave. The revelation of the hardwired network that bridged the Stables was not something to be carelessly traded away to the Rangers or the Enclave. Even Julip found herself nodding.
“You’re going already?”
All eyes turned to Beans, the strange little filly who brought them together. A roughly stitched blue and yellow cowl resembling the old garb of the Wonderbolts adorned her face at a slant. More bits of blue and yellow cloth hung over the lip of her costume box, costumes ready to be assigned their wearers.
“I thought we had time to play Wonderbolts and Shadowbolts,” she whimpered. 
Briar turned from the warming stove and knelt beside her. “Honey, they have to leave.”
“But…”
“Jellybean.” His voice was firm, but gentle. “Remember what we talked about?”
Beans sniffed, then nodded. “We’re gonna go live with Aurora after they find the thingy.”
“And they can’t find it if they stay to play with you. Right?”
“Right,” she mumbled.
“Now be good and say goodbye.”
Julip watched the little filly hurry over to Aurora, hug her foreleg with her tiny hickory feathers, then to Ginger to do the same, and then Roach who she practically tackled. Most ponies would be afraid to touch a changeling, much less a changeling ghoul, but from the moment Roach broke out his ragged pirate voice he’d become her very favorite among them.
When she was finished, she turned to Julip and squeezed her leg in a tiny version of a hug. Julip sighed and, a little grudgingly, ruffled the kid’s mane with her good wing.
“I hope your tail grows back,” Beans said.
She smirked, flicking the line of tiny braids Ginger and Beans had woven into what was left of it. “Me too.”
Her smile faded as Beans lingered, her big eyes staring up at her as she worked up the pluck to ask what she wanted to ask. Finally, Beans scrunched her nose and reached up with her hooves, pulling Julip’s head down so she could whisper in her ear.
Julip winced a little as she listened, and she noticed that Aurora had turned away to shield the beginning of a laugh. Then she frowned.
“You want my what?”







They exchanged goodbyes and, with a lingering discomfort none of them knew how to dispel, resumed their journey. 
On Meridian’s request, they took the first few miles at a leisurely trot. The quicker they put distance between them and the cave, the less likely they were to draw attention to the area. Gradually the rails began to bend downhill. The persisting aches in Aurora’s legs eased a little, but not by much. Her joints had taken a beating on Stable 1’s impossibly deep stairwell. More than what a good night’s sleep could heal.
The silence that accompanied them away from the cave gradually broke down once the four of them agreed it was alright to slow down to a more comfortable walk. Ginger had drifted to the rear of their makeshift column to engage their Enclave escort in quiet conversation. Aurora caught bits and pieces, enough to glean that Ginger was explaining the details of her most recent dream.
She glanced at Roach who kept pace beside her. His pale eyes turned to her in return, and he shrugged as if to say he didn’t know any more than she did. She returned the gesture and settled on bending an ear to listen. Between the steady thud of hooves on dry rail ties and the occasional skitter of rocks being kicked ahead, it was hard to parse together anything that made clear sense. Ginger talked about a world of burning doors. A creature that either guarded them or simply existed among them.
A glance back at Julip let her know that the shorter mare was enthralled by the details, especially of the creature she met. From what Aurora could put together, Ginger had mistaken the creature for Princess Luna. Learning that it had been something else was apparently blowing Julip’s mind.
She chuckled, faced forward again and let the two of them gossip in peace.
The rails bent around the slope of the mountain and snaked through a narrow valley formed by the rise of the next. As they slipped into the shadow of the twin peaks they came upon the second derailed train in the same amount of days, though it had been swept well clear of the tracks by a poorly timed rockslide. Steel shipping containers mingled with the splintered remains of wooden box cars. Further evidence that when the bombs fell, much of Equestria had yet to reap the benefits of modernity.
As they drew close to the wreckage, they could hear the scrapes and shuffling of hooves within one of the intact metal containers. Another one of Briar’s deterrents for wayward travelers. They gave the overturned train a wide berth as they climbed the rubble left by the slide and rejoined the rails a half mile beyond.
She shuffled her wings against her sides to scare up some warmth in the brisk valley air. Roach had drifted ahead of the group, put on alert now that the rails were showing little sign of turning away from an intercept with the road that the centaurs had scared them off of. She hated the fact that they would all need to bring up their guards again. The last couple of days with Meridian and her family had been a welcome break from the constant tension.
Gradually, a set of hooves began crunching toward her over the ballast stones. For a hopeful moment she thought they would be Ginger’s, but then their owner spoke up.
“Hey.”
She pursed her lips as Julip drew up beside her, but she forced herself to be polite. “Hey.”
Several seconds ticked by as the attempted conversation faltered. Evidently Julip hadn’t thought of what she would say beyond the initial hello. Given just a short couple of days earlier she’d been breaking the ice faster than it could form, creating an awkward silence she couldn’t dispel was obviously uncharted territory for her.
Aurora wasn’t sure if it was pity or charity, but she decided to throw Julip a bone.
“So,” she began. “How’s that wing of yours?”
Julip’s relief was unmissable. “I feel like a plucked chicken. She yanked out two of my best primaries at the same time.”
That was worth a smirk, even if that wasn’t what she was asking about.
“I still don’t get why she wanted feathers from us.”
Aurora glanced at her to be sure she was serious. Then she remembered Briar hadn’t been in a position to explain when she started rifling through Julip’s wing.
“She wanted something to remember us by,” she said. Then, smiling a little more, she added, “And she obviously took two from you because she liked you a lot more.”
She watched Julip’s gaze grow distant. “That kid was lonely.”
Truer words, she thought to herself. In a lot of ways, Beans was lucky to have the opportunity to grow up in a place where the Enclave wasn’t likely to discover her. Her parents were resourceful enough to ensure that she remained protected, but the cost of being shielded from the world was already coming due. On some level Beans understood there was a chance she’d never see them again. Parting with a few feathers to help her remember them was a small price to pay compared to the one she was paying now.
Sensing the conversation was stalling again, Julip changed the subject. “You throw a nasty right hook, by the way.”
She cocked a brow at her. “Yeah?”
Julip smirked despite herself. “Yeah. Back when I was still in training, I took a few good hits. Still, I can’t remember the last time anyone gave me a nap.”
“You were asking for it.”
She watched Julip stare down at the passing rail, thoughtfully chewing the inside of her lip as their hooves beat out a slow rhythm. 
“My mom always used to say that my mouth would get me into trouble,” she chuckled, looking up at Aurora to gauge her reaction. 
Her right eye was still a swollen mess but the worst of it had begun to subside. Still, the deep purple bruise was visible even beneath her coat. It would be days before the shadow of that wound started to fade. Despite her feelings toward what Julip represented, she couldn’t help but feel a touch of guilt upon seeing the damage she’d inflicted up close.
“Force of habit, I guess.” Julip shrugged and stared ahead. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for the shit I’ve been putting you through.”
Not an eloquent apology, but it was something.
Aurora blew out a sigh. “Ginger told me what you told her on the stairs. About how you don’t have a choice except to do what they say. I’m guessing it’s not much of a stretch to assume that can get stressful.”
Julip blinked, then nodded. “We have high standards for loyalty.”
“The Enclave sounds a lot like how Roach described living in a changeling hive. Do exactly as you're ordered, question nothing…” She shook her head, watching Roach as he trotted back to them after scouting out the next bend in the tracks. “Did you know it would be like that before you joined?”
“Everyone does,” she answered, not without a bit of defensiveness in her tone. Before her temper could flare again, Julip stopped herself and started over. “It’s part of the reason why so many pegasi join in the first place. It’s why I joined.”
“You wanted to take orders for the rest of your life?”
Julip winced. “It’s not that. It’s…”
“Hard to explain?”
“To a Stable dweller? Very.” She chuckled, then grew subdued. “Look at it like this. Up here in the wasteland, a pony needs to sleep with one eye open or risk waking up with their throat slit. Food, water, weapons, shelter… if you have it, you’re a target, and I’m probably not shocking you by saying there’s not enough to go around for everyone. It’s been like that ever since the bombs fell and until someone takes the reins, it’s not going to change.
“Even in New Canterlot a pony is lucky to make it to thirty before someone finds a reason to put them down. For pegasi, at least, the Enclave is an oasis. There’s a routine, and order, security… it’s how the world used to be way back when. I can sit down in any bar in New Canterlot and know that every pony in a black uniform has my back, no questions asked. Every one of us has sweat and bled for the Enclave. You can’t find that anywhere else in Equestria.”
Aurora wanted to point out that the Steel Rangers likely told themselves the same story, but she thought better about drawing that comparison aloud. 
“They’re my family.”
She chewed on that for a bit. “Can I ask you a question that might piss you off?”
“Let me guess,” Julip said, hopping up onto the rusted rail and holding her balance as she walked. “Why can my family lie to me, but I can’t lie to them?”
Aurora closed her mouth and shrugged.
“Been thinking about that one myself, lately.” She wobbled and pitched her left wing skyward to correct her balance. “Part of me has to believe there’s a reason. Like when you’re at the market with your mom and you see a pony pushing a needle into his eyeball. Sometimes it’s better to tell that filly he’s taking medicine so he’ll see better instead of saying he’s a fucking degenerate junkie who can’t find a good vein or the brains to do that shit in whatever gutter he--”
Julip stopped, shut her eyes, and pressed her lips into a hard line. A moment later she opened them again and hopped off the rail, her ears flat with embarrassment. “Sorry. Old baggage.”
They rejoined Roach just in time for him to catch the tail end of their chat. He pulled in behind them without missing a beat. 
“Who’re you calling old?” he rumbled at Julip.
It was an opportunity to break away from a topic that had become uncomfortable, and Julip practically lunged for it. “Never thought I’d be asked that by a certified antique,” she jabbed.
Aurora coughed out a laugh and risked a look back at Roach, who was doing his best to appear wounded.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
Julip snorted at him. “My mother drank enough bourbon in a day to give me alcohol poisoning through osmosis alone.”
The casual observation hit them like a wet blanket, threatening to kill the repartee before it grew legs. As if on cue, Ginger drew up from behind Roach and threw a little gas on the sputtering fire.
“Darling,” she began, earning a quiet groan from the group, “having a lush for a mother is nothing. Mine bought and sold ponies so she could afford to buy silver wall sconces, and she added their foals to the house staff so she had someone around to polish them.”
Aurora let out a low whistle.
Roach simply laughed, drawing eyebrows from the two mares. 
“Where do I even begin?” he rasped. “My mother filled a hive with thousands of her nameless children, sent us out to abduct and replace ponies to harvest the emotional magic of their loved ones, and deliver that magic back home where most of us were forced to breed her so she could lay more drones. And when that wasn’t enough to satisfy her ambition, she personally abducted a betrothed alicorn princess in a half-baked gambit to marry herself into Equestrian royalty… because somehow she thought doing so would allow her to take control of Equestria.”
Then, as if an afterthought he added, “Oh, and thanks to her failed coup, Equestria saved one balefire bomb for the hive. Because if dear old mom was going to be good at anything, it was being her own pest control.”
The three of them stared at him in collective silence, baffled by the easy grin he shot them in return. 
“Do I win?”
Slowly, Julip nodded. “Yeah. Holy shit, Roach. You win. I don’t think Freckles is going to be able to top that.”
Several seconds passed before Aurora realized Julip was referring to her. When it clicked, she had to forcibly stop herself from cracking the mare across the shoulder with her wing.
“They’re called dapples,” she asserted, and her frown deepened when Julip stifled a giggle. “And anyway, my mom was awesome. She’s the whole reason I got into fixing things in the first place.”
She smiled at her hooves at the welcome memories. “Mom was always there to help. I think you guys would have liked her.”
A moment passed. Then another.
“So,” Julip said, “that makes you the Beans of the group.”
“The what.”
Julip counted each item off on her feathers. “For one, you were both technically raised inside of a mountain. You both had plenty of water, food, neither of you have seen much of Equestria and you both had tinkerers for parents, so… you’re the Beans.”
The similarities were a little unsettling, but as Roach and Ginger chuckled at the comparison and she gave it some thought, it occurred to her that as far as jokes went it certainly struck at the root of their similarities. Maybe that was why she got along so well with the filly where other foals made her feel like bolting away to save her sanity. Beans did, in a way, reflect a lot of her own upbringing. 
She smiled.
“Okay. Fine then,” she chuckled, embracing the absurdity of this day so far. “I’m the Beans.”







Sunset, or what amounted to a sunset in a world where the clouds never parted, came faster than felt entirely fair. Knowing she had slept the first half of the day away with Ginger didn’t do much to ease her disappointment at seeing the overcast sink into deeper shades of grey. Her body was awake and despite the miles she knew she could put it through before calling it a night, the hazy beacon of the sun descended behind the western slopes anyway.
They’d made good time. The mountain Meridian, Briar and Beans called home was little more than a hazy notch in the clouds among many more peaks like it. The tracks continued to lead them north until, inevitably, they met up with the broken highway they’d left behind and bent parallel with it, separated only by a deep drainage ditch covered in a thin layer of weeds. Wherever the road was going, the rails were evidently going to follow it for the foreseeable future. They crossed the ditch one by one, leaving the rails to meander on to its next stop while a comparably comfortable strip of shattered asphalt promised a straight shot to Fillydelphia.
But that would have to wait until tomorrow.
The first wagon to pass them on the old road did so without making any explicit threats, but the heavily armed guards trotting on either edge of its lantern light made it clear they were prepared to defend themselves if necessary. The wagon’s canvas cover had been whitewashed just as the ones back in Blinder’s Bluff had been, until only the faintest shadow of Flim & Flam Mercantile pinstriping could be seen beneath. It bounced and swayed over the cracked roadway without incident, though a few splintered bullet holes dotted across the back flap hinted that hadn’t been the case with all their encounters.
“We should look for a place to make camp,” Ginger murmured.
Roach grunted his agreement, his eyes lifting to the rocky escarpments that overlooked the roadway. “Might be an idea to set up on one of those ledges. Aurora and Julip could fly us up.”
Aurora peered up at the quickly darkening sky, then at the jagged ledges that build up the mountainsides like gargantuan steps. Decades of unchecked erosion and smaller rockslides had built up no small amount of debris along the edges of the roadway that in turn created more than a few loose pathways up the slope that a determined pony could use to climb up to the lower ledges, but there would be no way of climbing it quietly.
The thought of sleeping beyond the reach of an unwelcome ambush did have a certain ring to it.
She glanced back at Julip. “Think your wing can handle a short flight?”
Julip nodded. “I’ll tough it out.”
The decision was made unanimous when Ginger volunteered herself to be ferried up the slope by Julip, leaving the heavier load to be carried by Aurora. Once they were assured that no travellers were within sight, two sets of wings dislodged a wide plume of wasteland dust from the asphalt and lifted toward the craggy southern slope.
They settled on a wide table of granite a good hundred feet up the mountainside. A narrower ledge - small for several thousand tons of exposed bedrock, that is - hung just a few feet higher upslope creating something akin to a roof over a portion of their stone campsite. Roach determined with a stallionesque stamp of his hoof that nothing short of another apocalypse would dislodge the slab, let alone the weight of four ponies, and after some tenuous steps near the precipice the other three were forced to agree. Despite the height and the steady westerly breeze that cut between the stones, it beat camping anywhere near what Aurora considered “grabbing” range of the freakishly mutated centaurs that descended on them two nights prior.
Of course, their proximity to the road below also meant there would be no fire tonight.
Aurora shuffled off her saddlebags beneath the shelter of the overhang and set her rifle beside them. With the unofficial center of their camp declared, Julip slid her mailbag against the pile and blew out a tired breath as she flopped onto her side to use it as a makeshift pillow.
Aurora sat on the other side of the bag pile and was quickly joined by Ginger, who noted Julip’s audible exhaustion with a questioning smirk. 
“No Rebound tonight?”
Julip draped a foreleg over her eyes, winced when it touched her softening bruise, and grunted. “Still coming off what I took the night before last. Hate that stuff.”
Aurora leaned back against the cool granite wall, allowing the chill to sooth her aching shoulders. “We’ll save some coffee for you in the morning.”
“‘Preciate it. Tell the ghost pony I said hi.”
She glanced at Ginger, that last bit intended for her. “Ghost pony?”
Ginger rolled her eyes. “The Tantabus. It’s a long story. Give me a wing?”
They adjusted themselves so Aurora could slide her feathers behind Ginger’s back, leaving the last half of her wingspan to be used as a blanket. She cast a quick glance to Roach who had parked himself just close enough to the ledge to keep an eye on the road. The answer was obvious, but it felt impolite not to at least ask the question. 
“You taking the watch tonight?”
He nodded. “Gonna keep an eye on the road, yeah. I’ll give you the traffic report in the morning.”
She frowned. “The what?”
Roach just waved her off with a touch of a smile and turned his attention back to the road.
Settling back against the stone, Aurora wrapped Ginger a little tighter in her feathers before relaxing to see if sleep might come with the quiet. She closed her eyes. The mountain air was cool and crisp, softening her tired muscles and filling her lungs with the complicated but not unpleasant scent of unfiltered air. She felt Ginger tuck in against her, another sign that she hadn’t done damage to their strengthening relationship that time couldn’t heal, and yet despite the deep comfort she felt in that moment she remained awake.
She opened her eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. “Worth a shot,” she muttered.
Ginger hummed a laugh against her shoulder, then lit her horn. An identical glow formed beneath the drape of Aurora’s feathers, and for a brief moment her eyes went wide.
A click, followed by her unclasped Pip-Buck floating out from under her wing gave her a welcome burst of relief. Ginger pecked Aurora on the neck and dropped the device around her foreleg. “Mind out of the gutter,” she murmured. “Let’s occupy it by planning the next leg of our journey.”
A scant few feet away, Roach gently cleared his throat to remind them he was very much within earshot.
Aurora flushed and secured the clasp around her foreleg, ignoring the little shake of Ginger’s silent giggling. With her free wing, she ticked the screen’s brightness down until Stable-Tec’s neon green mascot was reduced to something below blinding. Then a thought occurred to her, and she immediately felt dizzy.
“Oh no.”
She started punching keys on her Pip-Buck, trying to force it through its slow boot process.
“No, no, no…”
Ginger tensed. “What’s wrong?”
When was the last time she’d responded to him? A day ago? No, longer than that. Two days at least. She’d been putting it off, not wanting to acknowledge their ridiculous agreement. Not after his underling Ironshod went out of his way to make a copy of her Pip-Buck.
She spat a frustrated curse as the Stable-Tec mascot disappeared from the screen, leaving the device to chitter as it gradually spun up its software.
Julip groaned. “And I’m awake. What’s going on?”
Roach sat down at her hooves with equal concern. “Aurora.”
She cursed again, giving Julip a run for her money and nearly breathless as she spoke. “I forgot to check in with Coldbrook.”
Feathers mashed against the device’s clunky inputs the moment her menus glowed to life. The screen shuddered as it dove toward her inbox. Four messages shimmered at the top of the list. All of them from Coldbrook.
“Fuck.”
She opened the newest message. It was not cordial in tone or nature.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 6
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Elder Coldbrook
Subject: Final Warning
04/12/1297

Good evening, Aurora.

My expectations were simple: a daily report on your progress as assurance that you are continuing to cooperate per the terms of our initial agreement. As of the time which I write this message, it has been two consecutive days since your last contact. My technicians assure me that your Pip-Buck has been activated on a multiple of instances during that time which leads me to believe you are either unwilling or incapable of making contact.

Whatever the case may be, your inaction leaves me to assume you have broken our arrangement or have been claimed by the wastes. On the slim chance that you do read this message, be aware that I have sent instructions for my Rangers to begin excavation of your Stable. If what you’ve said regarding the decline of your generator is true, then I think you would agree this is for the best. Your continued silence has only served to demonstrate that the dwellers you’ve abandoned are better off in the care of the Steel Rangers.

Sincerely,
Elder Coldbrook







Her heart was pulsing in her throat so hard that she felt like gagging. She clamored to her hooves, kicking pebbles across the ledge as her shaking limbs worked to keep up with her spiralling thoughts.
Excavating.
They were digging toward her home.
“I… I gotta go back,” she stammered as she scooped up her saddlebags.
Roach appeared beside her and placed a cracked hoof on her wing, staying it before she could shoulder her rifle. “You need to slow down and think.”
“What’s there to think about?” The words came out harsher than she intended, but right now wasn’t the time for debate. She lifted her Pip-Buck so that Roach could see the words still glowing on its screen. “Coldbrook sent this hours ago!”
Julip rolled onto her hooves and stood. “Wait, Coldbrook? You mean eastern division commander of the Steel Rangers Coldbrook?”
Aurora hesitated, then nodded before trying to sidestep Roach. 
He blocked her way and put a hoof firmly against her chest. “Aurora, it’s a twelve hour straight flight back to Stable 10. You don’t have that kind of endurance, and even if you did what would you do once you got there?”
She swiped his hoof away. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You’ll get yourself killed!”
The stinging bolt of anger in his voice didn’t stop her so much as the brief but dim crackle of green energy from his fissured horn. Her Pip-Buck chattered in response. After a moment of shocked hesitation, she checked the device. The dose had been low, but not negligible. They would need to start looking for Rad-Away again.
Behind her, Ginger spoke with a mercifully calmer voice. “Come here and sit down. Let’s figure this out together.”
Reluctantly, almost grudgingly, she turned away from Roach and returned to the back of the overhang. She felt like an overcharged capacitor with nowhere to send the excess current. Too much… stuff kept happening since the day she followed Roach out into the wasteland. 
She dropped her bags besides Julip’s and let her butt drag against the stone wall until it hit the ground.
“Alright,” she said, leaning forward against her bent knees. “I’m not thinking straight, so someone help me out. What are our options?”
One after another they sat down around her. Ginger on her left, Roach in front and Julip, surprisingly, on her right. She offered a miserable smile to their collective gazes despite still wanting to push her way through them and chase the sun west until she was nose to nose with the stallion bent on gutting her home and leaving the remains for the scavengers.
“You can contact Coldbrook,” Ginger suggested. “Tell him what happened, and that you still plan to abide by the agreement.”
Aurora glanced at her Pip-Buck. His words glowed back at her with a finality that felt irreversible.
“Or,” Julip piped up, “you could build a time machine and stop yourselves from making a deal with the Steel Rangers in the first place. Why didn’t any of you tell me you were working for a fucking megalomaniac like Elder Coldbrook?”
She shot Julip a cold glare. “Same reason I’m not telling him we’re being helped by the Enclave. It’s complicated.”
Julip pursed her lips and exhaled from her nose. “Alright, fair. Can you… tell me what’s going on? Maybe I can help.”
Aurora glanced between Ginger and Roach. Neither offered an objection, though their discomfort was visible.
“Look, I’ve already put together enough pieces to know your Stable’s generator is on the fritz and that someone, I’m guessing Coldbrook, tried to convince you he had the ignition talisman you need to fix it by sending you a photo of a shield talisman. Obviously he’s not playing straight with you, so what’s the harm in telling me how else he’s trying to screw you over?”
Aurora watched her for several seconds before coming to the conclusion that she was probably right. The Enclave as an organization definitely seemed like a pack of self-aggrandizing sycophants, but Julip had already shown enough cracks in her armor for Aurora to suspect she might not be completely awful. 
Hesitantly, she told her.
At first she only gave basic details. How they had received a chilly welcome at the gates of Blinder’s Bluff, followed by Ginger’s abduction by a stallion whose name they never got. How Ironshod had resisted letting Aurora leave to pursue her at first only to have a burst of inspiration that resulted in her surrendering her belongings, including her Pip-Buck which was quickly used to program a functional clone within Stable 6’s limited systems. She set the framework so that Julip would understand the leverage Coldbrook ultimately had over her when she returned to the Bluff with Ginger safely in tow.
And despite her intentions to keep key details from Julip, she realized the holes in her story were glaring without them. She relented and explained the deal they had struck with Coldbrook. That in exchange for information leading to SOLUS, the shadowy project that Autumn Song had imprisoned Julip for the sole purpose of discovering, Coldbrook would refrain from unearthing her Stable and forcing his way inside.
Julip lifted her eyebrows and puffed out a long breath. “And he anticipated that I would make contact with you? How?”
“Not you specifically, but someone from the Enclave, yes.” Aurora turned up her wings in a vague shrug. “I told him about the spritebot I used to ask the Enclave for help. It wasn’t a stretch to assume your people would come looking for me.”
“And now he thinks he has fucking salvage rights to an operable Stable.” Julip licked her lips and mouthed a choice bit of additional profanity too quiet to hear. “That’s not…”
She watched as Julip pressed mouth shut and paused to gather herself. The Enclave mare wasn’t just angry. She was indignant, like Coldbrook had violated some unspoken code.
“That’s not how it works. We don’t open Stables before they reach their mode of failure.” She gestured sharply with one wing, as if she were lecturing Coldbrook in person. “We’re supposed to wait.”
Aurora had more than a few questions about what Julip was telling them, but now wasn’t the time to resume dissecting the Enclave’s various rules and justifications. Coldbrook had already pulled the trigger and Stable 10 had no idea the bullet had begun to move.
“Well, he’s doing it anyway.” She touched Ginger’s leg. “And I don’t think a strongly worded letter is going to convince him to stop.”
“He’s been looking for an excuse since the beginning,” Roach agreed. “He’s not the type of stallion to turn down the Rangers’ first chance at beating the Enclave to an intact Stable on honor alone.”
Aurora’s eyes slid toward her rifle. “We could shoot him.”
“Aurora.”
She winced at the warning in Ginger’s voice. “I know, I know. Just feels good to say.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She bumped Aurora’s shoulder with her own, stirring a weak smile out of her. “Hypothetically speaking, I wouldn’t mind relieving him of those big black nuts of his.”
She snorted. “What is it with you and gelding stallions?”
Ginger shrugged. “Family tradition.”
She caught Roach’s shudder in the edge of her vision and let herself grin a little more freely. It didn’t last, but it helped her think a little more sanely to let off a little steam. “Alright. I’ll still send him a message, but he’s already shown us with that talisman gambit that he’s not a stallion of his word. Sledge is in no position to mount a defense. Not if Coldbrook knows a way to get past the door. So what do we do?”
A long silence slid between them with the late evening breeze. Aurora didn’t want to say it, but Coldbrook had all the cards and owned the machinery that printed them. They were so little a threat to him, she was surprised he’d gone through the formality of telling them he was breaking faith in the first place.
Roach cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably on his haunches as all eyes turned to him. “What about…”
He tilted his head toward Julip who suddenly looked as guilty as a foal caught with their wing in the cookie jar.
“...her people?”
Aurora shook her head, hard. “No. I mean, no offense Julip, but I’m not about to trade a debt with the Rangers in for a debt with the Enclave.”
A beat passed before Julip responded. “Technically, there wouldn’t be a debt.”
She wrinkled her nose with suspicion. 
Julip shrugged at the floor, the gears already spinning in her head. “We’ve been at war with the Steel Rangers since there were Steel Rangers. Plus… Stable 10 is clearly special to Minister Primrose.”
Aurora frowned. “I thought you were helping me because I’m a ‘pureblood.’”
“Yes,” Julip said, then winced a little. “And no. She also asked me to find out why you’d left the Stable in the first place.”
“Well that was considerate of her. Not surprising, I guess. They’re all pegasi down there.” She thumped her head against the cool stone. “The Enclave loves their pegasi. I assume she had to send you because your people couldn’t monitor my Stable remotely.”
It was Julip’s turn to frown. “I never said that.”
She eyed the Enclave mare and took her discomfort as enough confirmation for the time being. They needed to make a decision. “What happens if I say I do want their help? What are they going to do?”
“Do I look like I work in Ops?” Seeing that wasn’t a welcome answer, she rephrased it. “Okay… well, if I had to guess, the first step would be to disrupt whatever it is Elder Coldbrook is doing to have the Stable ‘excavated.’ They’re not sitting on a fleet of prewar construction equipment so I’d assume they’re doing it manually. Probably with power armor.”
“He did say a few days earlier that he was positioning a company of Rangers at the mountain,” Roach rumbled. “Could be he already has armor on site.”
“Given the Stable’s potential value, he’ll want to protect it.” They watched Julip lean over and fish an apple out of her bag. “Might explain why the Rangers haven’t responded to that mess you three caused back in Kiln. If I were Coldbrook, I’d recall every pony with a mobile suit to Foal Mountain. Fortify the place before anyone else gets wind of what they’re doing, which is ironic because a big fucking troop movement is exactly the kind of thing that the Enclave will notice.”
Julip looked at the apple, hesitated, then set it back into her bag. She scratched at the corner of her muzzle, her gaze distant as she pondered. “I don’t think it matters if you ask for our help or not. That much activity? Scouts are going to report that if they haven’t already.”
She looked humbled by the scope of the mess she found herself in. “Primrose might actually have to fight for that territory just to keep the Rangers out of your Stable.”
Aurora knit her brow. “You’re saying there’s going to be killing.”
“Obviously. The Rangers won’t back off if we throw water balloons.”
Something about that bothered her. Coldbrook was the enemy here, not the soldiers who took his orders. One of those soldiers, Knight Latch, had been responsible for lending her the compass that allowed her to navigate her way to the array. She imagined there were ponies just like him within the Enclave. Like Julip, who signed on for the three square meals and a safe place to sleep.
She wanted to help her Stable survive, not force ponies to kill each other over it.
“Let me see your Pip-Buck.”
Aurora looked at the device, then Julip, confused. “Why?”
“It’s a Model 3000, right? It’ll have an emergency transponder built into it. I can use it to contact the Enclave.”
That didn’t track at all. “This only receives signals. It doesn’t transmit them.”
“I didn’t say transmitter. I said transponder.” Julip waited for her to understand, but when she continued to stare blankly at the mare she let out a groan and moved their bags out of the way and held out an open wing. “Look, you can let me show you or we can wait for whenever the Enclave figures out what Coldbrook is up to on their own time. Either way, we’re getting involved and I think you’d prefer to be able to set the guidelines before Pri--”
She hesitated. “Before someone else does.”
Aurora looked to Ginger, then Roach. “Objections?”
“I’ll support whatever you think is best,” Ginger murmured.
Roach simply nodded. “The enemy of my enemy, and all that. I don’t see another option.”
Swallowing, she turned to Julip. “Alright. What do I have to do?”
Julip shuffled closer to her and cupped the Pip-Buck in her wing. Turning Aurora’s leg this way and that, she seemed to confirm to herself that this was the correct device.
“Technically speaking? We need your Pip-Buck to think you’re dead.”







“Don’t bend that rail,” Roach warned.
Julip rolled her eyes and kept twisting. “I’m not going to bend the rail.”
She spared a glance at the partially disassembled assault shotgun lying on the granite between them and quietly hoped the steel mechanism he used to extend and retract the weapon from his foreleg could withstand a little torque. It was hard to tell if it was starting to deform in the dim green light of Aurora’s Pip-Buck, but what was he expecting from what by all accounts looked like a slider taken off a dresser drawer?
“Okay,” Aurora grunted. “Any more and my freaking leg is going to come off. When’s this transponder supposed to go off?”
Julip gave the tourniquet another twist, earning a hiss of discomfort from Aurora, and kept the rail from unwinding itself with her free wing. She used the other to tip her Pip-Buck up so she could read what its health diagnostic was reporting. The results were encouraging.
“It thinks you’re having a stroke.”
Aurora groaned. “Yippee.”
She ignored the complaint, her attention focused solely on the Pip-Buck as it detected the sharp spike in blood pressure and the precipitous weakening of her pulse. Not too surprising given her circulation was being pinched off, but the Pip-Buck didn’t know that. As far as it was concerned, Aurora had just flatlined.
It immediately belted a piercing shriek that sent hooves flying toward ears.
Julip pinned hers back and struggled to get Aurora’s hoof away from her head, wrapping the warbling device into the crux of her leg in an attempt to muffle the high pitched wailing. She only managed to dampen it to the level of a grievously wounded radrat.
“So much for camping undetected!” Roach shouted. “Half the highway’s going to hear that!”
“Shut it off!” Ginger agreed.
“I don’t know how to change the volume, I’ve never used these things before! I’ve only ever recovered them!”
A confusing shoving sensation dug into her shoulder and she realized Aurora was pushing her off the device in an attempt to get at the controls. She let go, blasting the four of them with another unfiltered electric keening until its owner flicked through the menus and dropped the volume to zero.
The last echoes bounced back and forth across the chasm like a struck bell.
“Well, everybody in Equestria knows I’m dead now,” the Stable mare complained in a lingering half-shout. “What good was that supposed to do?”
Julip winced at the onset of a fresh earache and flipped a disgusted wing at the Pip-Buck. “It’s supposed to broadcast a distress signal, not deafen us.”
“Well it’s doing something,” Aurora muttered. “I’ve never seen that icon before.”
Grabbing Aurora’s leg again, she turned the screen to where she could see. A tiny depiction of a domed ambulance light flashed on and off in the corner of the screen.
“Nothing to do now except wait and hope our hearing comes back.” She let go of Aurora’s leg and left her to unwind the partially dislodged tourniquet. “The rail’s not bent, by the way.”
Roach hummed, taking the strip of steel back from Aurora to inspect it for himself before passing it off to Ginger. Julip didn’t want to know how long it took him to assemble the contraption without the aid of a unicorn or pegasus’s finer manipulation skills.
No raiders came rushing to climb the hillside, nor did any wasteland mutants come sniffing around for the source of the piercing noise. Anything that had been close enough to hear it, and given the volume it was probably a lot of anythings, hadn’t been close enough to pinpoint their particular ledge. Nearly an hour passed with nothing to show for the commotion beyond four headaches and a whole lot of quiet.
Then, finally, the sound of wings.
The others went on alert when the retrieval team made its first pass. They streaked past the ledge like pale ghosts passing through the dim light of Aurora’s Pip-Buck, and the mare’s wings slowly parted with the unfiltered instinct of trepidation. Julip glanced at them to make sure Aurora and Roach weren’t going for their weapons. They weren’t, not technically, but Aurora had shuffled within easy reach of her rifle and the muzzle of Roach’s shotgun touched flat against the granite, its rail unlocked.
“Hey,” she hissed. “Relax.”
Easier said than done. Even Ginger’s horn had taken on the faint glow of magic. As the shapes of pegasi slid past the ledge again, this time slowly enough for them to plainly see them staring back at them, Julip just hoped the unicorn was conjuring a shield and not some sort of magical beam cannon.
About the same time that she expected the third pass, two sets of hooves clicked quietly onto the rock overhang above their heads and a thin mist of dust slid down into their light.
“Ident.”
She grimaced. “Can we skip--”
The stallion’s voice cut her off. “Ident.”
“Corporal Mint Julip, one-nine-three-six-four.”
She puffed her chest out a little and flicked her eyes at the others with a touch of embarrassment. She hated using her full name. Understandably, they were too preoccupied with the Enclave patrol standing six feet above their heads to care about anything else.
They waited while the stallion radioed her details back to New Canterlot for confirmation.
“You’re green, corporal.”
She rolled her eyes. "No shit." 
A pause. Then, "Good to hear going bookworm hasn't made you soft, Barrack Bitch."
She blinked, realizing she could place his voice. Her heart swelled. "Gryphonshit. Dancer, is that you?" 
The stallion dropped from the overhang, pumped his wings and planted his lavender hooves on the ledge in front of her. His wingmate, a midnight black stallion she didn't recognize dropped to the granite beside him. Both wore the Enclave's standard issue field uniform amounting to a dusty brown top that doubled as lightweight body armor. Identical automatic rifles hung from straps over their shoulders, tactically positioned to remain within easy reach of their feathers. 
She nearly knocked him off the ledge with the force of her tackling hug, but he was ready for her and squeezed back just as hard. 
"I haven't seen you in years! They said you were assigned duty out west!" 
Dancer gently nudged her back a step. "I was, but that was before I put in for a tour on coastal recon." His eyes drifted past her to the others. "Hate to be rude, but that's her isn't it?" 
She let him go and followed his gaze. Aurora was regarding Dancer with a healthy amount of suspicion. 
"You know me?" she asked. 
He see-sawed a wing. "Of you. All the patrols out here were briefed about a pureblood pegasus traveling under guard. Would have never guessed BB was your escort." He glanced at Ginger and Roach with markedly less enthusiasm, but he kept his tone mostly neutral. "Hello."
Ginger said nothing. Roach grunted. 
Sensing the tension, Julip turned to the unfamiliar black stallion and extended a wing. "Just the two of you, then?" 
The stallion shook her wing and nodded, his eyes on her muzzle. 
"That's Corporal Chops. He doesn't talk, but he can read lips just fine."
Chops nodded again, then lifted a quick feather to Dancer and began using both wings to form a complicated series of strange gestures. Julip looked to Dancer for clarification but his attention was on Chops' feathers. 
"He wants to know if you're free for a smoke and a poke tomorr--" 
Chops smacked him on the shoulder with the back of his wing and stared daggers at him. 
"Okay, okay," he laughed. "He asked if you're in trouble."
Julip quirked her lip. "Lot of flapping just to ask that."
He showed her the back of his wing and lifted a single feather in reply. 
"Well that I understood."
Aurora stepped forward from the wall. "We need to send a message to your superiors."
Dancer looked at her and smiled. "I have a lot of superiors."
"She means Minister Primrose," Julip clarified
That startled bewildered looks from both stallions. Dancer frowned at the others as if suddenly grasping the gravity of the mission she'd been assigned. 
"Julip," he chuckled, "we came prepared to recover a Pip-Buck, not patch you through to the minister's secure line. You'd need a--" 
"--Spritebot, I know. Can you recall one here? It's important."
Dancer looked dubious but didn't argue. He made a brief gesture with his wing, and Chops tugged a standard issue transceiver out of his uniform. "Like you said, it's above my pay grade. It'll be a hot minute before it gets here though. Traders have been getting feisty lately and we've had to pull the bots away from the roads to keep them out of the crossfire."
At the mention of traders, Chops glanced down at the road below and frowned. He set his feathers on Dancer’s shoulder and gave him a subtle shake, tipping his nose west. Dance followed his indication and hummed.
“Speaking of which,” he chuckled, “would your… assets object to sleeping under a real roof, tonight? It’s promising to be a busy night tonight.”
Julip stepped past Dancer and peered over the ledge. Barely visible in the late evening light, a pair of wagons had encountered one another barely a mile away. Aurora joined her and the others followed suit as they watched what appeared to be an argument unfolding between the drivers of the wagon approaching and the one departing. The latter had pulled into the middle of the road, blocking the pass. They were too far away to hear the argument, but as two ponies appeared to bolt to the back of the blocked wagon it was clear what was about to happen.
A yellow flash stuttered from the blocked wagon, the delayed reports of the gunshots crackling in like popcorn. The sound of gunshots continued to spill over the ledge for several seconds until, as quickly as it had begun, the shooting stopped. They watched as the ponies who had been trying to pull their cargo west were unceremoniously dumped along the side of the road and the survivors from the attacking wagon began to hitch pullers to the front of their prize.
Dancer just shook his head and smiled. “Like I said. Feisty.”
A part of her almost chuckled at yet more evidence that the Steel Rangers, for all the territory they boasted about taking from the Enclave, couldn’t effectively prevent skirmishes along their own trade routes. A blatant gunfight like that would never go unpunished within the Enclave’s borders.
But something stopped her. Beside her, Aurora looked deeply disturbed by what she’d seen. The question of why was plastered across her face so thickly that she might as well be screaming it. Ginger and Roach looked more disappointed than surprised. A benefit, maybe, of prior exposure.
She tapped Aurora on the leg. “Turn off your Pip-Buck before they see it.”
Aurora swallowed, nodded and doused the screen. With nothing left to light the ledge, the six of them were little more than silhouettes. She lowered her voice to a whisper as one of the survivors below went to work looting bodies. “Where are you operating out of?”
She wasn’t surprised when Dancer looked down the line at Aurora and the others, but the unfiltered mistrust in his voice touched a nerve she didn’t realize she had. “That’s off-limits for present company. We’re not headed there, anyway. Chops and I have a temporary camp set up about sixty miles east.”
Ginger spoke up with suspicion of her own. “And this camp is safe?”
“Safe enough.”
Julip bristled as Dancer’s tone shifted further.
“You should be thankful I’m offering and not ordering. If you want to take your chances on a rock, that’s your business, but I can tell you now a spritebot is going to have some trouble travelling that road without being shot for scrap.” He turned his attention back to Julip. “We’ve got an old hunting shack to ourselves far enough off the road for a bot to rendezvous more quickly, anyway. It’s your mission, BB, but the offer’s open.”
She tapped the edge of her hoof against the granite, not at all comfortable with the irritated stares she could feel radiating off the others. “It’s just Julip, actually. And it’s not my decision, it’s hers.”
Dancer’s frown grew more complex as he watched her gesture to Aurora but he didn’t object. Still, Julip could sense his unsubtle disappointment. Not because she was putting Aurora on the spot - a position that she clearly would have rather had time to discuss in private - but because she’d asked her at all.
“It’s worth mentioning we have medical supplies,” he added, giving Julip’s ribs a thump with his wing. “You know you’re supposed to land on your hooves, not your face, right?” 
She feigned a smile, suddenly conscious of her black eye. She was relieved when Aurora saved her from having to explain herself.
“Do you have Rad-Away?”
Dancer looked up at her and nodded. “One dose for Chops and I, sure.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Fine. On the condition that you give us both doses and treat Julip’s injuries. No cost.”
His smile grew lopsided. “There’s always a cost.”
“Not tonight there isn’t.”
Julip watched her. In the near black of night, all the nervous little quirks that gave her away were invisible to Dancer. She was pulling the pureblood card on him and if Julip had to guess, she was probably pissing herself while doing it.
Dancer invited the silence that followed with some of his own, waiting for her to say something more that he could exploit. He’d always been a clever stallion ever since she first met him on their first day of training, and he had an ear for loopholes. Probably why he got partnered with a mute. More time for him to play a conversation to his advantage.
For her part, Aurora said nothing more. Julip couldn’t help but approve.
Dancer caved, offering a shrug as his answer. “Okay. On the house. But the unicorns sleep outside.”
Roach was quick to take offense. “I’m not--”
“Deal.” Julip looked at him and hoped he could see the apology on her face as she cut him off. If there was one thing she could bet on from any Enclave soldier, it was that they wouldn’t tolerate a whiff of challenge from a ghoul, let alone a changeling ghoul. “Meds, shelter and access to a spritebot. That’s all we need.”
Dancer looked between the four of them and chuckled as if the tension he’d been dredging up had all been a friendly gag between pals. He clapped Julip on the wing, sending a shock of dull pain shooting through her bruised joint. 
“It’s really good to see you again, Julip.” He smiled, then turned to face the ledge. “Let’s see if you can keep up.”







After the first ten miles streaked beneath her in an indistinguishable blur of scrub brush and boulders, Julip gave up trying to keep track of where they were going. Dancer and Chops sliced through the air ahead of them like feathered blades, flying so close to the uneven ground that she could smell the dust kicked up in their wake. She had to squint to keep the wind out of her eyes as she looked to her left where Aurora pumped her wings to keep up. Roach clung to her back like a wet cat, practically putting her in a chokehold. The sight might have been funny if it weren’t for the clear discomfort in the changeling’s eyes. Aside from the brief trip to and from Stable 1, it had been more than two centuries since he’d last flown.
She grimaced as Ginger’s grip tightened around her shoulders, irritating the inflamed muscles of her injured wing as her weight pressed harder against the joint. More and more, this felt like a stunt. Like Dancer was forcing her and Aurora to keep pace just for the sake of scaring the shit out of the non-pegasi in their company. She scoffed. Who was she kidding? That was exactly what he was doing.
Leaning forward, Ginger had to shout into the wind for Julip to hear her. “How is your wing?”
“Hurts like… a bitch!” she panted back. Then, looking back and seeing Ginger’s concern, she added, “I’ll manage!”
Ginger pursed her lips, no doubt able to feel the discomforting twitches and jerks spurred by Julip’s compounded injuries over the last several days. “I have questions about your friends before we land.”
With the wind whipping by so harshly, there was no chance of the stallions overhearing. Still, Julip took a moment before replying. “I only know Dancer. Never met the mute before.”
“Do you trust him?”
She tilted her head in a sort of shrug. “We spent our first three years in the same unit before splitting up. Yeah, I trust him.”
“Do you trust him not to hurt us?” she clarified.
The question gave her pause. Dancer had given her a cool reception as soon as he confirmed the company she was keeping. It wasn’t as if she’d had a choice, but it hadn’t surprised her either. If their roles were switched, she probably would have reacted the same way. She had, in fact, but that was before she’d gotten to know them a little. 
Sure they weren’t pegasi, but Ginger and Roach weren’t that bad to be around.
“I don’t think he’d go that far. If he’s heard about Aurora, then he probably knows enough about my assignment to realize doing anything to you or Roach could spoil the mission.” She pumped her wings several times, drawing even with and gradually sliding just ahead of Aurora. “But he’s not letting that stop him from being a dick. Just keep your guard up and try not to piss him off.”
She felt rather than heard Ginger’s noncommittal grunt, but it was the only advice she could think to give.
They’d been airborne for hardly half an hour when the two stallions pulled up without warning and flared their wings, braking so abruptly that Julip and Aurora barely had time to bank away as they shot by inches above their heads. She fumed, letting out a quiet groan as her wing trembled against the hard bank she was forced to inflict on it, and backtracked toward a dilapidated shack settled amongst a tangle of overturned trees.
Like so much of Equestria in the old days, a forest had once grown here. The ground was uneven and pitted where stumps had been torn free from the soil by some titanic force, leaving fallen timber to settle and dessicate like spilled matchsticks. Julip didn’t need to imagine too hard what had killed the forest. Somewhere not too far away would be a crater, likely forgotten shortly after the target in the mountains was reduced to plasma. If the uprooted trees were any indication, the valleys had spent a brief moment of their ancient existence funnelling the most tornadic winds in Equestria.
She touched down just outside the shack with Aurora not far behind, the pair of them crouching to allow their respective passengers down. Ginger took care not to touch Julip’s throbbing wing as she dropped to the ground, and the unicorn lit her horn to better see the structure Dancer claimed to be his camp.
It wasn’t much to look at. Four walls, one of which had been blown into the wooden structure and later cleared out to make space inside its single room. A potbelly stove, more rust than metal at this point, leaned against one corner while a loose pile of corded wood had been shoved against the other. Neither looked to have seen any use for the better part of a generation.
Chops patted Dancer on the flank, his eyes on the same transceiver from before, and formed a short series of signs with the empty feathers. Then he pointed past Julip and down the valley, see-sawed his wings as if making an estimate, and held up five feathers.
“Spritebot will be here in five minutes or so,” Dancer translated. He stepped up into the shack and gestured at the barren floorboards. He smiled at Aurora, but it faded as his eyes flicked toward Roach. “Welcome to our humble abode. No pets, I’m afraid.”
Julip opened her mouth to shut him up, but she was surprised when Chops thumped his hoof against the metronome depicted on Dancer’s hip. The disapproval on the mute stallion’s face was impossible to mistake in the dim glow of Ginger’s horn, and Dancer held up his wings in mock surrender. He offered no apology and went about prying up a set of loose floorboards as if nothing at all had happened.
Chops dipped his head toward Aurora by way of apology, though the gesture didn’t quite extend to Roach.
“We’ll wait for the spritebot out here,” Aurora said, nodding back. 
The subtlety of the gesture was unexpected, especially coming from a mare who had been dead set on pummeling her not very long ago. He wasn’t acknowledging Roach, so she wasn’t accepting the invitation to enter. Julip watched Chops for any sign that he’d taken offense, but the stallion only nodded and motioned toward a fallen log next to the missing wall of the shack.
She changed her mind about the stallions. If Dancer had been paired up with Chops, it was because someone had to have enough sense to keep Dancer from throwing gas on anything that flickered.
Julip kept a close eye on Dancer from outside the shack as he hauled an Enclave issued canvas duffel out of the gap in the floorboards. From inside he withdrew two IV bags of Rad-Away and lobbed them through the open wall to Aurora. She caught them, thankfully, but his carelessness was clearly unappreciated as she gently set them into her saddlebags. Dancer wouldn’t give Aurora the satisfaction of an apology, not unless his career was at stake, and instead he shot Julip a knowing smirk as he lifted a stimpack from the bag.
“Don’t throw that,” she warned.
He snorted, carrying the syringe to her. “What do I look like, a colt? Here.”
She snatched the syringe from his feathers, angry that someone from her first assigned unit could be souring on her so quickly. Turning the needle over, she read the label and confirmed it was a standard issue stimpack and not something that would have her rocking back and forth in the corner while the walls melted. 
Satisfied, she clenched her jaw and jabbed the needle into the meat of her thigh. The plunger discharged with a chilly hiss of compressed air. It wasn’t one of the luminescent stimpacks that Aurora had given her when they first met, but it would eventually do the same job. It would just take a few hours.
Chops stepped over to the fallen log where the others had gathered and waved to get Aurora’s attention. He pointed down the valley and her ears perked up. “It’s here.”
Sure enough, the blinking red beacon from the approaching spritebot was dimly visible as it glided toward them across the valley floor. The tire-sized ball of alloy and circuits clicked and whirred along its final approach, a nest of antennae bristling behind it. Julip took a breath and stepped next to Aurora as the other mare stood. 
“You wanna do the talking or should I?” she asked.
Aurora watched the bot approach. Something about it seemed to unsettle her. “They’re your people. You know how to talk to them better than I do.”
She nodded and took a step forward. The bot’s sensors immediately targeted her above the others and slid to a stop in front of her. 
“IDENTIFY YOURSELF.”
Julip cringed, hating the heavily modulated voice the bots always used. “Corporal Mint Julip, one-nine-three-six-four.”
For several seconds it bobbed and sloshed in the air as it awaited confirmation from New Canterlot.
“VERIFIED,” it buzzed. “CORPORAL MINT JULIP, SERVICE NUM--”
Pop.
An irritated and very real stallion’s voice piped through the bot’s speaker. “This is Technical Sergeant Loft, corporal. About time you checked in. What’s your status?”
She glanced back at Aurora. “The target is healthy and cooperative, sir.”
Behind the bot’s concave grille, a series of lenses twitched and adjusted. “Ma’am.”
Aurora blinked, then nodded.
“We detected a Pip-Buck transponder not far from these coordinates. I assume that came from yours.”
She nodded again.
The lenses twitched again and the bot swayed toward Julip. “This unit received a separate distress signal from the pegasi behind you. Perhaps I misunderstood your assessment, corporal, but if the situation is as happy and healthy as you report then I fail to see the reason for you to be activating this much radio traffic this deep into enemy territory.”
Julip tensed, but stood her ground. “I need to speak with Minister Primrose, sir.”
A pause. “That’s a long line to wait in, corporal. If you have something to report, you can leave it with me and we’ll decide on our end if it needs to be run up the flagpole.”
“Sir, this isn’t something I can leave with you. I need--”
“You need to check your attitude, corporal. Make your report.”
Her blood boiled. Fucking rank-pulling desk duty dumb motherf…
Aurora’s wing swung past the corner of her eye and she watched as the mare’s grey feathers wrapped through the spritebot’s grille, yanking the machine to within inches of her nose. “The Steel Rangers are trying to break into Stable 10. Get off your ass and get Primrose.”
A longer pause.
“One moment.”
Pop.
Aurora gave the bot a little shove and glowered at the idle unit as its servos gently countered the momentum, leaving it to hover in silence several feet away. Julip stared at the bot, running the mental calculations to determine if she was going to be spending the next year scrubbing outhouses when she reported back home.
“Sorry,” Aurora murmured.
She shook her head. “It’s fine. I mean, that was probably information way higher than that tech sergeant’s clearance allows, but it’s fine.”
Aurora pursed her lips and shrugged. “I’m surprised you didn’t go full Julip on him.”
“Full…?” She laughed at that. “I can usually keep a lid on full Julip when the other choice is latrine duty. Usually. Sprite pilots aren’t generally that fucking stubborn, though.”
“You think he’s getting your boss?”
She lifted an eyebrow at her. “Chain of command. He’s getting someone to get someone to get someone to get my boss.”
Aurora blew out a breath and shook her head. “Not even the apocalypse can kill bureaucracy.”
Several minutes ticked by, and while they waited Dancer and Chops parked themselves at the edge of the shack while Ginger and Roach kept a close eye on them from the fallen log. There was no small amount of strained silence between the four of them, though Julip didn’t blame them for giving the stallions the side-eye. On any other day their rifles would be trained squarely on Roach’s head, a reflex that she was beginning to have reservations about.
Ginger was his ace in the hole. To any pony who didn’t know her, that horn was a minor threat. After seeing the unicorn poof a slaver and reappear him several storeys above the dirt on pure instincts alone, Julip didn’t want to think of what might happen to Dancer or Chops if they did try something stupid.
Pop.
The groggy but alert voice of a very familiar mare filtered out from the bot. “Corporal, this connection is being relayed to my office over a secure encryption so you may speak freely. I’m told you have something to report.”
She straightened at the sound of Primrose’s voice. “Yes, ma’am. The Steel Rangers have indicated to Aurora that they intend to breach Stable 10.”
“Ah. I suppose General Huckster wasn’t exaggerating after all.” The distant sound of tapping came from the bot’s speaker. The eraser of a pencil against a desk. It pivoted slightly, swayed, then came to bear on Aurora. “I apologize, it’s been decades since the last time I’ve had to navigate one of these things. Aurora Pinfeathers, correct?”
The Stable mare swallowed and nodded. “First try.”
Despite the bot’s limited audio quality, the minister’s chuckle retained a musical quality. “I’m certain the corporal has already explained to you who I am and that there may be certain expectations of decorum for this conversation.”
Julip blinked. She hadn’t thought to mention that at all.
“Feel welcome to be yourself, Miss Pinfeathers. You answer to your overmare, not to me. Call me Primrose.”
To her credit, Aurora didn’t correct the minister’s use of overmare and simply nodded. “I appreciate knowing that, Primrose, but my Stable is--”
“Under the protection of the Enclave, Miss Pinfeathers.”
Aurora regarded the spritebot with mild suspicion.
“You look disappointed,” Primrose observed.
She shook her head. “Just surprised. I expected to have to negotiate terms before you agreed to help me.”
Primrose chuckled. “Dear, you rescued a valuable asset from a mare who we were in no position to aid ourselves.”
Julip felt her cheeks warm.
“Most ponies in the wastes would have left Corporal Julip to die without a second thought. You risked your own safety and offered an invaluable artifact to heal her injuries and ensure her safe return. We’re indebted to you for that generosity.”
“Thank you. Or, you’re welcome, I guess?” Aurora closed her eyes and gave her head a quick shake. “About my Stable. Can I ask how you’re planning to stop the dig?”
If the bot had the capacity to shrug, it would have. “Remove the diggers.”
“Remove them how?”
Primrose chuckled again, tapping the unseen pencil as she spoke. “An armor piercing round fired during a steep dive has always been sufficient for puncturing the Rangers’ power armor.”
“I don’t want them killed,” Aurora stated.
Julip cleared her throat. “She mentioned to me earlier that she didn’t want the Stable to turn into a warzone, ma’am.”
The bot turned toward her, said nothing, then pivoted to Aurora. “I don’t want to seem rude, but I don’t see much of an alternative if the goal is to stop the Rangers from digging.”
Aurora was silent, waiting for the minister to offer an alternative. Julip nibbled on the inside of her lip as she hoped Aurora would come to realize what she’d been aware of from the beginning. But she stayed quiet, attempting to play the same game of chicken that had worked on Dancer.
Unsurprisingly, Primrose deflected.
“Fluttershy would have loved to meet you,” she laughed. “She always wanted the fight to go her way but didn’t want any of the mess.”
Aurora hesitated. “You knew her?”
“I worked with her. Or, I suppose I worked adjacent to her. It was a long time ago, but she had an admirable reputation for wanting to prevent suffering wherever she could no matter how unrealistic that desire was.” Primrose sighed, and her voice grew distant as a chair creaked over the speaker. “She made some poor decisions as a result.”
Aurora glanced at Julip, but she had no idea what Primrose was referring to. The minister never reminisced about her prewar years. If anything she tried to actively obscure them whenever she spoke publicly about it. This was a moment of uncanny clarity from a mare who excelled in obfuscation.
“But…” she continued, “I suppose this situation isn’t as impossible as the one the zebras forced us to face back then. If I recall correctly, Foal Mountain has always been in a geologically tenuous position even before Vhanna lost its mind. It might not be exactly comfortable for any Rangers caught in the way, but I imagine they couldn’t stop someone from dropping impact charges above the worksite.”
Aurora wrinkled her nose. “You want to trigger another landslide.”
“It would be a tactical first for the Enclave, but yes.” She chuckled. “Yes, I think that might be very effective.”
From his seat on the fallen log, Roach spoke up. “And what does Aurora do when she wants to go back home and finds the tunnel buried?”
Primrose turned the bot toward him and was quiet for several seconds. “I imagine that’s a bridge we can cross when we come to it, changeling.”
Aurora stiffened. “His name is Roach.”
Another pause. “So it is. My apologies, Roach, I wasn’t aware that changelings had names.”
“I have a question for you,” he rumbled.
Somewhere in New Canterlot, a pencil clicked flat against a desk. “Well, let’s hear it.”
“Do the Steel Rangers have the capacity to breach the Stable door with brute force?”
Julip glanced back at him and noticed that Dancer and Chops were regarding him with the same questioning frown. Ginger, for her part, was doing her best not to draw attention to herself. This was probably the largest gathering of New Canterlot residents she’d been a part of since she left home.
“Obviously they don’t,” Primrose said flatly. “Stable-Tec designed the shelters to withstand balefire.”
“Then what’s the harm in letting them dig if they’re just going to end up hitting a dead end? The worst Coldbrook could do is occupy the tunnel outside the door, and if the Rangers do that they’ll be fish in a barrel for any pegasi capable of handling a rifle.”
That piqued Primrose’s curiosity. “You’ve been inside the tunnel?”
The corner of his eye twitched ever so slightly. “Aurora told me about it, yes.”
“Interesting.” The bot turned back to Aurora. “Your friend makes a surprisingly good point, assuming you’re certain there’s absolutely no vulnerabilities the Rangers could exploit within the door’s operation.”
Aurora stared into the distance, weighing the options. “I can send a message to my overstallion and have Mechanical cut power to the antechamber. Take the door offline completely.”
Julip looked between the gathered ponies and watched as the proposal, crazy as she thought it sounded, was met with quiet approval.
“I believe I can work with that.” Primrose turned the bot toward Roach and it bobbed once, as if nodding her acknowledgement before diverting back to Aurora. “I’ll hold my pegasi in reserve and have them continue to monitor the Rangers’ progress. Once they clear the debris, I’ll have a squadron of snipers take position outside their reach and see if we can’t make ponies in power armor dance.”
To Julip’s surprise, Aurora actually chuckled at what she assumed had been a nonsense metaphor. “Is that from a western movie?”
The bot crackled with her laugh. “A book, actually. Savannah Sky.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
Primrose hummed. “Westerns are a guilty pleasure of mine, though the ponies around here tend to think they’re a little gauche these days. I’d be happy to give you a copy if you ever find yourself in New Canterlot.”
It was a polite offer, and not one she let linger for very long. With the matter of Stable 10’s protection decided for the moment, the spritebot turned back to Julip. “I have a few more minutes before General Huckster breaks down my door looking for marching orders, and I believe your friends may benefit from some time to themselves. Let’s give them some privacy. In the meantime, I’ll take your field report personally.”
A stone dropped into the pit of her stomach.
“Field report, ma’am?”
One of the lenses twitched. “Yes.”
Her eyes slid to where Aurora had been standing, but the mare was already returning to her friends. If she could convince the minister to let one of them come along, maybe glaze over the…
“Now, corporal.”
She stiffened to attention. 
“Y-yes ma’am. Lead the way.”







Just tell the truth.
Her heart was beating in her throat as she followed the bot into a thicket of overturned trees.
It’s Minister Primrose, she thought. She’ll leave them alone once she knows how important they are to Aurora.
She wanted to believe that was true, but the seeds of doubt that Ginger’s dreams had sown had already sprouted. If Primrose was wrong… if the goddesses hadn’t solely given her their blessing like Julip had believed with conviction since her youngest years… what else was she lying about? The Chapel of the Two Princesses had grown around the stories that Julip accredited to her immortality. If none of that was true…
She closed her eyes and tried to push the thought from her head. Ginger could just as easily be the one lying.
Her tail flicked the air behind her and the braids Ginger had woven to repair it pattered against her buttock. She could still feel the rail, superheated by the sleeping unicorn’s magic, roasting the skin along her belly.
Try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself that Ginger was lying.
She followed the spritebot.
It slowed amongst the upturned branches and turned to face her. “You’ve had quite the month, corporal.”
She nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I have.”
The speaker scratched with the sound of a sheet of paper being flipped over. Julip’s ear twitched at that. Paper was a luxury most ponies couldn’t afford, but the minister was notoriously old fashioned. “So far our interrogation of Autumn Song corroborates the debriefing you gave following your return to New Canterlot. The fact that you didn’t provide her with any of the information she was seeking is commendable.”
“I was told Autumn killed herself.”
Primrose could be heard scratching a few notes. “According to statements she made, that was Aurora’s intention but she was unable to load the revolver they left for her to use. By the time we located her, she was attempting to reattach her horn.”
“Ma’am?”
“It was removed. Apparently, if she is to be believed, with a spell cast by the Dressage mare.” A lens within the bot whirred as it adjusted focus. “I would appreciate it if you could direct some of your effort toward finding out how much of that is true.”
She nodded, painfully aware of the potency of Ginger’s magic. “Yes, ma’am.”
More scribbling came over the speaker. Paper scuffed over paper as sheets were lifted, set down, and jotted over. For a moment Julip was hopeful that her field report had been forgotten.
“I see you met the survivors of Stable 2.”
Julip opened her mouth to correct her, but instinct made her stop. She frowned and looked at the bot. “I’m not sure I follow, ma’am.”
“The centaurs,” she stated. “Our reconnaissance fliers discovered your campsite in the western foothills and found some light supplies along with your service weapon, which was crushed. Tracks around the camp were heavily deformed.”
“Oh,” she said. “We had an encounter with them, yes ma’am. Thankfully I was the only one to sustain injury.”
If Primrose heard or cared about the last part, it wasn’t enough for her to remark on. “That herd of monstrosities has always been territorial around the mountain passes, but I suppose it’s hard to complain when they’re so effective at flushing dustwings from their nests. Speaking of which…”
No, she pleaded. No, no, no.
“...Lieutenant Dancer and Corporal Chops have been following up on some recent sightings in this region over the past few weeks. They’re looking for a dustwing stallion with a tannish coat and chocolate highlights. You wouldn’t have happened to see someone matching that description lately, would you?”
Her mouth worked to form words, but her heart was beating so hard that they tangled on the way to her tongue. She had to be honest. That was her oath to the Enclave. Only the truth. Only ever the truth.
The edges of her vision began to red out. She felt dizzy.
“I…” Her brain jammed. She forced herself to concentrate on the words she needed to say. She had an obligation. “That’s… a vague description, ma’am.”
Primrose was quiet for several, long seconds. “I’m aware. Have you seen him?”
She stared beyond the hovering ball of circuits and bent her mind to putting the sentence together. Yes, ma’am. He lives in the mountains between two derailed trains. He’s hiding there with his wife and dustwing foal. His name is Briar and his daughter is…
“Corporal?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You look ill.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to steady her jangling nerves. “Radiation exposure, ma’am.”
Another pause. “I see. You still haven’t answered my question.”
She took a breath and exhaled.
Calm down. She’ll understand.
“No, ma’am. I haven’t seen any dustwings.”
Her heart plunged through the floor of her stomach. A voice in the back of her head screamed for her to say something to take it back, to undo the lie before Primrose imprinted it onto her priceless paper. She shuddered a slow breath as she heard the pencil scratched over the connection, logging her first deliberate deception to the organization that had given her so much.
The deathly silence that followed was nauseating, but she couldn’t speak. They would execute her for this. The suite of sensors ticking away within that hovering ball of death would know the truth, and it was only a matter of time before someone reviewed the data and discovered that Corporal Mint Julip had attempted to shield a dustwing from the Minister of the Enclave. Her heart rate, her breathing, every dishonest twitch in her face observed, transmitted and irrevocable.
“Alright.” Primrose spoke with a tone that suggested a window had been held open for Julip, and it had just slammed shut. “Let’s move onto Miss Pinfeathers.”
Shaking, Julip nodded.
The pencil tapped against paper.
“What exactly is she looking for?”







Aurora leaned sideways on the log, bumping into Ginger’s shoulder as she tried to get a better view of Julip’s conversation.
“We can switch places if you want,” she chuckled, nudging her back.
She shook her head and sat up straight. Julip and her boss had gone into one of the thicker tangles of fallen trees, far enough that their voices didn’t carry. All moving around would accomplish was changing the shapes of the narrow windows she could see through between the screen of sticks and limbs.
A frown creased her lip as she realized, yet again, Dancer was staring at her.
“What?”
He didn’t answer, and merely shrugged and found something else to occupy his attention. The stallion seated at the edge of the shack beside him looked between them, signed something Aurora couldn’t understand and that Dancer wasn’t paying attention to translate, and went back to fiddling with the slender black rifle held in his feathers.
The silence was deafening. There was no love lost between the two Enclave stallions and Aurora’s companions, and the occasional glare Dancer kept shooting toward her friends left no question that normal circumstances would have resulted in bullets flying. She avoided Dancer’s occasional staring and watched Chops checking the lines of his weapon.
“Why did they name you Chops?”
He looked up at her, then leaned away from Dancer so she could see his mark. The silver rectangle of a meat cleaver adorned his flank. She found his mannerisms interesting as he began to gesture in the air with his feathers, his mouth working almost on autopilot to form the words he was communicating through signs. When he realized Dancer wasn’t watching, he swatted the violet stallion with a hoof and started from the beginning.
Dancer barely turned his head as he translated. “His folks run a butcher shop back home that he worked at before joining up. He got his mark after he figured out a safe way to cut… the fuck’s a floater?”
Chops held his wings in the air and bobbed them around, pantomiming the creature in question. He looked around at them to see if anyone understood, and when they didn’t he waved them off and began signing again.
“He says they’re mutated worms. Toxic.” Dancer shrugged. “Parents changed his name to Chops after he got his mark. Before that he was named Mouse because he didn’t talk.”
Chops moved his feathers in a smooth crescent cutting motion to emphasize his skill, then frowned a question at her while Dancer watched his feathers.
“He wants to know why you were named Aurora.”
She paused, lifted her wing away from her flank to show him her mark. “My parents decided on it before I was born. I’ve only ever worked with machines, so when my mark showed up during my apprenticeship I figured it made sense.” She glanced down at the steel wing reflecting an aurora across its silver feathers. “Wing, metal, aurora. A little on the nose, but it’s not like we get to choose.”
Chops was confused and his wings worked faster.
“He wants to know if everyone in your Stable gets a mark that matches their name.”
She shrugged, seeing just a touch of jealousy in his eyes. 
“I always assumed so, but maybe not? My Stable has this stupid thing about residents wearing pants that...”
A glint of silver flashed in the corner of her eye and she turned to see the spritebot departing. As it shrank away into the murky, moonlit valley she looked back to the thicket and watched Julip as she walked stiffly toward the shack. When she drew close enough to make out her face, Aurora felt the hairs along her neck stand up. 
Julip looked like she was barely holding it together. Her hooves slapped through sticks and scrub grass as her unblinking eyes stared through the ground, unwilling to meet the collection of curious faces that were watching her approach.
When she stepped into camp she swallowed and leveled a feather toward Dancer. “You two have new orders from the minister, effective immediately. You’re to fly west to Foal Mountain and monitor the situation there. You’ll receive a detailed assignment once command sets up operations in the area.”
Dancer bristled. “Are you… right now? We just finished a twelve hour patrol!”
“Well what a fucking shame,” Julip shouted, hiking up her hind leg with all the subtlety of a grenade. “You won’t get to suck my dick goodbye! Now get off your asses, get your shit and fuck off before the minister sends someone down here to help you!”
The stallion got up from the edge of the shack prepared to argue, but Chops stopped him with an open wing. He stared a silent warning at Dancer who, after a beat, rolled his eyes and turned back to the meager shelter to retrieve their duffel bag. 
Aurora watched with bewilderment as Dancer shouldered the bag over his rifle and followed Chops away from the shack toward the clearing where they’d first landed.
“I’ll be sure to tell command you’ve been on your best behavior, BB.”
Julip’s ears pinned flat as Dancer threw down his wings and took to the air. Chops paused, looking back at Aurora and snapped off a crisp salute before taking off and blending into the black overcast above. She stared after him for several seconds before looking to Julip. She was watching the sky, too, her chest rising and falling with shaky breaths as she squinted toward the slow moving clouds. 
When she appeared satisfied that they were gone, Julip’s face twisted with discomfort. She staggered over to the corner of the shack, propping herself against the torn siding with one wing, and vomited.
The three of them were up and off the log at the same time. Aurora winced as the mare tucked her tail and heaved again. She was what Sledge referred to as a vocal puker. Without thinking, she stepped behind Julip and began gathering her stringy black mane into the cup of one wing while simultaneously trying to blindly navigate the contents of her saddlebags with the other.
Finding her canteen, she held it up to Ginger who quickly unscrewed the cap with her magic. She lowered it to where Julip could see it. “Drink some water.”
Julip made a disgusted noise and pushed it away. 
“Don’t bother. I’m already dead.”







July 3rd, 1077

“This proposal of yours certainly is ambitious, Miss…?”
“Primrose, your majesty.” She beamed up at the alicorn seated on the dais, giving her a good view of her dimples while being careful not to notice the vacant midnight blue seat beside her. Rainbow Dash had assured her both princesses would be present to hear her proposal, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Spitfire had warned her that the multicolored minister had been finding little ways to act out after Applejack barged into the office to, as the dirt ponies liked to say, “drop her plows back in her own field.”
Something to touch base with Spitfire on when she finished up here. Half an audience or not, she smiled for Celestia.
“I know this is more of a Ministry of Morale type of project, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Reviving the Junior Wonderbolts program with a nationwide talent search would go a long way towards encouraging the next generation of Equestrian pegasi to actively engage with the idea of civic service without the negative baggage of a recruitment drive.”
She widened her smile by a hair as she waited for Celestia’s answer.
The alicorn flipped the top sheet of Primrose’s proposal, skimming the index she’d provided. “You’re correct that this would be more appropriate for the Ministry of Morale’s consideration.”
“And I still want Minister Pinkie Pie to be involved in this, but I can’t seem to get in contact with her at all. Plus, I thought an endorsement from you might help with turnout. If you approve, that is.”
She waited, eyes bright and cheeks rosy, well aware that Pinkie Pie had developed a reputation among the other ministries for being a black hole for anything that came across her desk. The minister’s continued spiral of self-destruction was no secret to the princesses either, but removing her from office would cause more damage to Equestria’s tenuous collective morale than leaving her at her post while Rarity’s office quietly absorbed her responsibilities behind the scenes.
And the Wonderbolts needed this program if they were to survive after the war. Spitfire didn’t mince words when she said pegasi were dying in Vhanna faster than new recruits were signing up. They needed a way to pull young pegasi into the program, and the adage of serving your country was barely effective against the constant stream of bad news from the front. 
The doors flung open behind her, slamming against the walls of the throne room like twin gunshots. Primrose belted a startled yelp and spun around to see another alicorn marching up the magenta carpet, her purple eyes narrowed with fury.
“You cut my contract with Maiden Pharmaceutical?!”
Twilight’s accusation reverberated across the throne room. She shouldered Primrose aside as she passed and stared daggers over her shoulder when she opened her mouth to protest.
“You’re meeting’s cancelled,” Twilight growled. “Leave.”
Primrose leveled her gaze at the Element of Magic and lowered her head in a grudging bow before turning around. Behind her, the two alicorns didn’t wait for her to depart. She pivoted one ear to the side to listen.
“Next time I would prefer if you’d send a message ahead of time, Twilight.”
“Well I don’t have a dragon to do that for me anymore, and next time I’d prefer if you talked to me before cutting my ministry’s department in half.”
Celestia’s voice grew low. “Do not use that tone with me again.”
Primrose’s eyes went wide as her shadow stretched ahead of her toward the door, her spine tingling at the unmistakable sensation of raw magic being summoned by the Princess of the Sun. It was all she could do not to run the rest of the way out.
She didn’t dare look back at Celestia’s display of power. The deep hum that came from the throne was enough, and it evidently fulfilled its purpose of bullying Twilight into obedience.
“I’m sorry, princess.” There was still a grating anger deep in the alicorn’s voice, but the heat behind it had been sapped. “But the Maiden Contract was a critical step toward ending this war. I don’t understand how you could set us back so far without even consulting me.”
The sharp lines of Primrose’s shadow shrank as the power radiating from the throne dissipated. Glancing at the stone-faced royal guards positioned on either side of the doors, she wrapped her feathers around the door’s golden handles and pulled them open. As she stepped out of the room and into the hallway beyond, Celestia’s answer slipped through the closing doors.
“I cancelled your contract because yesterday the stimpack formula you sold to Maiden Pharma eradicated a small battalion of Equestrian soldiers.”
Primrose stopped, shot a frown over her shoulder and stepped back toward the doors before they could shut completely. The weight of one settled gently against her wing and she tipped her ear toward the narrow sliver she held open. This was idiotic, she told herself. If the guards standing barely three feet away noticed, she could kiss her job with Spitfire goodbye and any ambitions they had for their fledgling Enclave.
She glanced back at the empty hallway behind her to make sure no one was there to see her. The corridor was empty save for the stained glass windows and the warm midday sunlight streaming through them. The doors on the opposite side of the corridor were sealed for now, but anyone could step through them at any moment.
“What do you mean, ‘eradicated?’”
Primrose’s ears perked at the strange tone in Twilight’s voice. A barely detectable defensiveness that Primrose had used to load the deck whenever the cards were starting to tip out of her favor. Twilight was giving herself a free opportunity to feign ignorance when, in reality, she was anything but.
Pulled in by curiosity, she leaned forward and listened.
“Eradicated, as in eliminated. Wiped out. Half the battalion was given stimpacks to test their healing effects on balefire radiation while the other half took a placebo. When the test bomb was detonated, the first half suffered rapid, uncontrollable mutations and began killing the ponies in the control group before scattering into the Badlands. We’re still tracking several of the… things they became.” Celestia’s voice hardened. “Our representatives from Maiden determined that the magical framework at the core of their stimpacks suffered some kind of cascade degradation. They’re still trying to understand how, but it’s clear to me that the spells you constructed were deeply flawed.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Twilight objected.
“Perhaps and perhaps not. Whichever the case may be, you’ll be relieved to know that you enjoy a certain level of immunity as a ministry mare as well as an alicorn.” Celestia dismissed Twilight’s apparent involvement with a casualness that made Primrose balk. 
“Maiden Pharmaceutical has agreed to voluntarily halt all production of magically assisted medication in exchange for certain leniencies as they begin researching a chemically based replacement.” Celestia sighed, as if already exhausted by the topic. “Consider yourself lucky that they made back the bits they paid your ministry, Twilight. If I hadn’t been able to convince them to walk away without demanding reimbursement, I wouldn’t have been able to sweep this under the rug for you.”
Twilight sounded subdued. “Thank you, princess. I’m sorry for my outburst.”
The throne room was quiet for a beat. “It’s a start. I want you to oversee the recall and disposal process for the stimpacks Maiden already delivered to the open market. Start working on this today.”
“Celestia, that could take months. I have duties within my ministry to--”
“Delegate them. This is your new priority.”
Punishment was more like it. A slap on the hoof.
Carefully, Primrose lifted her wing off the door and let it drift the rest of the way shut. She hurried away, the gears in her head spinning as she left the hall of windows behind and trotted through the ornate corridors of the castle.
Twilight Sparkle was about to be buried under a mountain of work. 
Luckily for her, the Enclave might just be in a position to help.
> Chapter 29: Links
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The door opened with the tinkle of a tiny brass bell, and Ginger looked up from her sewing machine. The bland nonexpression she wore when she was concentrating on her work dissolved into a wide, happy grin at the sight of the stallion stepping into her shop.
“Roach!” she squealed, dousing her horn as she hurried around the counter. He grunted as she threw her hooves around him, practically squeezing him to a second death. “You wonderful thing, it’s been too long! How are you?”
He smiled, quiet as always, and gave her a squeeze around the neck before letting her step back to look at him. “Same as before, same as tomorrow,” he rumbled, adjusting the satchel around his neck. “I brought you some new books to read.”
“Darling, you know I can afford to purchase my own…”
Roach waved her off and she followed him to the counter where he upturned his satchel. No less than five paperbacks flopped out across the wooden surface, some of them remarkably well preserved. He separated one in particular from the others, using his hooves to clumsily flip it over so she could see the cover. “I don’t think you would have wanted me to wait to bring you this one.”
Her eyes widened at the raised letters of the author’s name, then she flushed at the implication of the practically explicit cover art above.
“I had no idea A.K. Yearling dabbled in erotica.”
Roach chuckled. “You’ll have to let me know if it’s any good. How’s business been?”
She gave him a noncommittal smile and tried to think of a way to avoid admitting Gussets & Garments was barely treading water in this market. The memory of the excuse she’d given trickled into the front of her mind and she blinked, confused for a brief moment before the details around her shifted into sharper focus. 
Ah, she thought. This again.
As Roach’s unanswered question echoed from his throat a second time, she stepped around the counter toward the closed door leading to her storage room and the stairwell to her apartment overhead. Something told her when she opened it there wouldn’t be a pile of crates or the old desk she used to keep track of sales. As dream-Roach rumbled on with his end of the conversation stuck on repeat, she turned the knob and pushed it open.
The Tantabus waiting on the other side startled, her own magic pulling the door from the other side. “Oh!”
Ginger felt the very strange sensation of her actual limbs spasming in shock somewhere distant from where she stood now. The disconnect disoriented her for a brief moment before she regained focus on the creature in front of her.
The Tantabus made an echoing noise that sounded like embarrassed laughter. “You scared me, little shade!”
Taking a step back, Ginger murmured, “I apologize.”
“Oh, there’s no need. I welcome the rare opportunity to be surprised.” Even without a proper face to express it, she could vaguely see by the shape of the creature’s pale eyes that it was smiling, and broadly too. Something had it excited. With no small amount of trepidation, Ginger realized that something was her.
“Have you come to visit again?” the creature asked.
After a quick peek at the dizzying infinity of burning doors behind the creature, she pursed her lips and nodded. “I suppose I have.”
Then she paused as a worrying thought snaked into her mind.
“Will this happen every time I fall asleep? Reliving my old memories until my magic runs out?”
The Tantabus frowned. Or at least, Ginger thought it was frowning. Without a mouth, it was hard to tell, but it looked into the frozen scene of her old shop with something like disappointment in its eyes. “Is this a bad memory?”
She winced at the misunderstanding. “No, not really. It’s just… difficult.”
Rather than step out of her way so that she could leave the dream, the Tantabus stepped fully through the doorway and closed it behind her. It didn’t dawn on Ginger until then how tall the creature was. The tip of its spearlike horn nearly scraped the vintage tiles of her tin ceiling. Thankfully it was all an illusion. 
The same horn began to glow and for a moment, Ginger felt a wave of vertigo wash over her. It was as if she had fallen out of herself only to be pulled back in. She squeezed her eyes shut. When the confused sensation ebbed, she opened them to a singularly white void.
She blinked. Her shop, the displays, its tinned ceiling, Roach… everything had been replaced by nothing. 
“Think of a good memory,” the creature urged, and suddenly Ginger felt the cool weight of feathers on her shoulder. “I will bring it to you.”
A moment of pause. A good memory. There weren’t many to choose from. All the happy moments of her foalhood had been tainted by that single moment in her father’s study. The struggle that came after, the scraping she had to do just to afford her little shop on the corner. The wastelanders who trickled in, saw thousands of hours of her labor displayed on the floor only to haggle her down to a pittance. 
And yet a small smile crossed her lip.
The Tantabus’s horn once again took on a ghostly glow, and the four walls of her store reformed around them. The pale midday light streaming through dust-streaked windows. The smell of old leather, musty fabrics and beaten metal wafting out from the storage room behind her. Salvaged mannequins bearing her latest attempts at crossbreeding reliable armor with style, none of which sold particularly well but which she kept creating all the same. 
The antique door squeaked out of its frame and jingled the bell above. She remembered how she grinned with surprise at the sight of Roach once again coming to visit. And then, tense and uncertain yet following close behind him, a familiar dapple grey pegasus stepped across the threshold. A deep warmth filled her chest as she met Aurora’s green eyes for the first time all over again. 
“A good memory?” the Tantabus inquired.
Ginger nodded. “One of the best I have.”







Opal stared at her terminal, rereading Aurora’s forwarded message for the third time and still unsure whether the mare was being serious or if all those days on the surface had finally driven her past the limits of sanity.
“We should probably start looking into it,” Sledge nudged.
Leaning back in her chair, she spun around from her desk to face him. “She’s suggestin’ that we rip up the floor in my server room. Our situation is already precarious, Sledge. You can’t blame me fer bein’ a little worried that pokin’ around for mystery cables might only make things worse.”
She watched the brick red stallion shrug his powerful shoulders, evidently undeterred. She didn’t blame him for being desperate for a solution, even a temporary one, but this Stable that Aurora found out there was a completely different complex. She could have been comparing an apple to a pear for all the similarities the two shared.
The Stables were supposed to be isolated. Islands of refuge intended to survive a calamity that rivaled the centuries-long winter fabled to have been delivered by the Wendigos. There wasn’t a network bridging them together with great, forgotten filaments of wire. Perhaps a connection to Stable-Tec Headquarters, but from Stable to Stable? Allowing the potential of one overmare to contact another? 
“What if she misunderstood what she was lookin’ at?” Opal posited, ignoring the growing impatience on Sledge’s face. He made her office feel smaller than it was, but she knew Delphi wouldn’t have installed him as overstallion if she thought he couldn’t handle some pushback. So she pushed. “Aurora was one of yers, not mine. She coulda been readin’ old messages from the Stable she was inside of.”
Sledge sighed. “She didn’t, two of her allies did. And they got a response back.”
“How do they know they weren’t speaking to the Stable’s Millie system?”
He pressed his lip into a firm line and stared at her. She held up a placating wing and let the issue drop. “Sledge, I’m an old mare. I’ve had plenty of time t’see the pegasi in my department swear up n’ down that they were right about somethin’ they clearly weren’t, and I’ve never once seen so much of a byte of data come into our servers from the outside. So yes, I’m gonna pester ya a bit before your demolition crew comes. Doesn’t mean I’m not with yeh.”
His features softened by a few degrees. Good to know that some stallions could still take a little prodding without letting their egos take over.
“So you’ll let Mechanical take a look?”
She snorted. “Heck, I already got a genuine Element of Harmony rootin’ around my files lookin’ fer ghosts. Can’t get any stranger ‘n that.”
It was all he needed to hear. When Sledge left, Opal chased him with a well-meaning harumph and went about the business of telling her pegasi to make room for company. Once that was done, she decided to double-check that she wasn’t so old that she was doing the same blind swearing up and down she’d just blamed her staff for.
Her desk terminal connected to the server network and she spent the next hour digging. Old logs, backups of recent data, supply manifests, work orders, the whole lot of it spilled across her terminal. She poked around inside the messaging system, making a note of her access per Stable protocol, and saw nothing unusual. No ponies whispering sweet nothings across the dead air outside. No overmares or stallions demanding to know who dared access their isolated networks. Nothing. Not a whiff of inbound communication for the past two hundred or so years. 
Whatever Aurora and her friends thought they found, they were going to be sorely disappointed to find out none of it was happening here.
Her back made noises she chose to ignore as she got up from her desk and made her rounds through the IT Wing. If she was being honest with herself, it wasn’t much of a wing as it was a trio of unusually secured corridors in the shape of a U. She giggled to herself at the thought of renaming it the IT Shoe. She could do it, at least for a few hours it would take until Sledge convinced her to undo it, but it would absolutely be worth the laugh.
There wasn’t terribly much to do in the Stable’s smallest department. She had a team of techs tasked with answering house calls, tuning up stubborn terminals and fixing the odd Pip-Buck, but beyond that repairs were often within the purview of Mechanical and Fabrication. Sometimes an IT pony would be needed to replace a bad logic board or troubleshoot a software update that wasn’t taking, but most of her staff tended not to leave the wing at all.
She took the lift up to the Atrium and treated herself to breakfast. The Brass Bit was well within her budget but she never wanted to be seen as a department head that was too fussy to use the cafeteria. Today she needed a pick-me-up. Her coffee and bagel - an everything bagel and consequences be damned for what it would do to her gut later - were delivered by a lovely young mare who recognized her as one of the few ponies who were in communication with the outside. She asked after Aurora and Opal told her she was doing well, which cheered the waitress up a bit, and then she mentioned Aurora may have even met another mare out there, which significantly dampened the poor thing's enthusiasm. She billed Opal’s account and left her to eat, avoiding her table for the remainder of breakfast.
Opal used her Pip-Buck to send a tip to the poor mare anyway. 
She took a detour to the residential level just above Mechanical and smiled at the young stallion tasked with watching Aurora’s door this shift. He recognized her and stepped away from the auspicious card reader and she swiped herself in. She found Rainbow Dash curled up on top of her bed sheets like one of her ancestor’s scruffy little lap dogs. Rainbow watched her enter but said nothing, and she understood that this was the Blue phase that her time trapped in the tunnel had inflicted on her.
Opal smiled at Blue and the much older mare set her head back down, watching her with those eerily vacant eyes while Opal checked the compartment’s terminal to see how she had been getting along. Several screens were active, all pertaining to Delta Vee and her family. She skimmed a few of them and nodded to herself. There was something important going on with Opal's predecessor.
From the corridor, she heard the muffled warbling of Sledge’s voice over the Stable’s PA system. Seconds later, the stallion outside gave the door a gentle knock, not having access to enter himself. Opal turned around, picked up the empty gold necklace from the floor and held it out to Blue in her open wing. The mare’s eyes focused intently on her Element and picked it out of her feathers by the teeth, tucking the necklace between her hooves as Opal departed.
The door slid shut behind her.
“The overstallion paged you to IT, ma’am,” the young guard stated.
She smiled, nodded, and made her way back to the lifts to see what it was Sledge needed. 
Her smile lasted right until she reached the keyed door to her server room, and disappointment set in quickly as she found it propped open by a black plastic wedge. As she stepped over the threshold and into what was supposed to be a carefully climate-controlled space, she caught a whiff of something acrid like hot metal.
Sledge spotted her stalking through the servers and waved her over toward the source of the stink. Right as rain, the odor was coming from a large hole his grease bandits had sawed through the floor. A broad square of bright white linoleum had been peeled aside like a scab to reveal the steel substructure below. To her dismay, she realized this wasn’t the only place they’d uprooted perfectly good linoleum. Several sheets had been peeled away along the wall, culminating in the larger patch they’d settled on in front of her.
A bright square of steel had been removed, revealing a cavity below.
“Overstallion Sledge.” Her voice was brittle as she tried not to think of how much unfiltered ferrous particulate the servers behind her had been forced to suck in. “Explain this fer the less astute among us.”
Sledge walked her to the side of the hole where the missing panel of steel lay tipped against the wall. A bright silver line had been cut through an older trail of dull, bubbled metal. A weld line. 
“It’s a hatch,” he stated, and she could see the excitement on the faces of the Mechanical ponies gathered nearby. “Somebody flipped it over and welded it closed.”
She frowned and leaned over the hole, observing the mass of cables underneath. They snaked in from every direction, using the gap between the floors to reach their ultimate destination. A cable port, wide as her torso, burrowed straight through the concrete wall. 
“This is the outermost wall of our Stable,” she stated. It wasn’t a question. She knew what it was. They all did. “Why is there a hole.”
Sledge sounded breathless. “I think we just found what Aurora was looking for.”
She wrinkled her nose and aimed her feathers at the point where the cables had been carefully joined together into one massive bundle. Where a myriad of lines were roughly severed just short of the joint, and pulled well away from the root to ensure no chance of a shorted connection. Only a few errant cables had been left intact, the reason why known only to those who sealed the hatch behind them. 
“Looks to me yer not the first ponies to come down here with a saw.”
Her overstallion nodded. “I think this explains why we’re not seeing this network of hers.”
Opal bent down, lifted one of the severed cables and frowned at the rat’s nest of broken optical fibers. Someone, and she had a pretty good idea of who, had cut their umbilical to the outside world. 
“I don’t like this,” she murmured. “I don’t like this one bit.”







Rainbow Dash awoke from her fugue in the same way she was becoming accustomed to: tired, disoriented and with a foggy anxiety that lingered until she was sure Blue was truly trading off the reins to her. 
When she was young, back before the bombs or the ministries or the war across the sea, she would have given every bit she had to be able to zonk out into catatonia just to get a break from Twilight’s lecturing. Or Rarity’s neverending opining on fashion. Or Pinkie Pie’s… Pinkie-ness. Just long enough to check out and recharge her batteries between the strange adventures that managed to always rope them together. 
Something like that would come in handy, especially right now. 
She turned the little orange bottle side to side between her ragged feathers, frowning at the white pellets inside. Sledge silently watched her from the sealed compartment door. He was doing a poor job of hiding his discomfort. He swallowed, waiting for a response. 
She wrinkled her nose at the dosing instructions printed across the label. “You want me to take antipsychotics.”
Sledge didn’t answer at first, and it took a force of will for her to refrain from pushing him for one. Surprising an Element of Harmony with a prescription for crazy pills probably wasn’t something he’d signed up for when he took the job as overstallion, and browbeating him for wanting to help her wouldn’t be fair. She swallowed her indignity, set the bottle beside her on the mattress and looked up at him.
“Do you think they’ll help?”
After another pause, he shrugged his brick red wings, causing a few long feathers to pop out of the same protective leather sheaves she’d seen pegasi out in the hall wearing. “Best I can say is maybe. I tried to explain your… episodes to the doctors up in the infirmary. They weren’t thrilled by the fact that they couldn’t come down to speak to you directly, but they agreed this might be a good place to start.”
Rainbow slid off the bed, considered the pill bottle, then scooped it into her wing and took it with her to the compartment’s cramped bathroom. She unscrewed the cap and tipped one of the tiny oval pills onto the edge of the sink. “I wouldn’t have said no to a check-up, Sledge.”
She could hear the grimace in his voice. “I know.”
Capping the bottle, she set it aside and picked up the pill. Losing a wing made everything a chore now, but she wasn’t going to start complaining. Applejack would have never let her live it down if she heard her whining about surviving the end of Equestria. She stopped for a moment, letting herself feel the shallow wave of sadness that came with the memory of what had been lost, then put it away as she popped the pill into her cheek.
She opened the tap and bent down until the clear water burbled across her lips, slurping up enough to swallow her medicine. When she straightened, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and frowned. Water clung to her bare skin like raindrops on a leather jacket - she had a leather jacket once. Nicer than the hide that clung to her now, too. The decades had taken most of her coat with them, leaving a few patches of blue hair to cling to her grey skin. She looked like a corpse that didn’t have the decency to stay buried. No amount of medicine would fix that. It didn’t surprise her at all that Sledge might be hesitant to let anyone else in the Stable see her.
She shut off the tap, looked down at the pill bottle and tried not to think about what might happen if Blue decided to grab the controls while she was in the midst of dozens of curious residents. Nothing good, that's for sure. Putting that part of her to bed might not be the worst idea ever. 
“So,” she said, stepping out of the bathroom, “Opal filled me in on what you two found under the servers.”
She let herself relax as Sledge’s discomfort shifted away from her and toward their situation at large. He crossed the room and sat at the foot of the bed while Rainbow took the chair at the desk. Creases formed at the corners of his eyes as he squinted to skim the top of the document that she had left open on the terminal. 
“Something tells me we’re getting close to the bottom of this whole mess. Whoever sliced those cables was in a hurry, but they still decided to leave two data lines intact.” He grunted, tipping his nose toward the terminal where one of Delta Vee’s personal logs dominated the screen. “Those cuts were too precise to be done by just any pony. The cables, the encrypted first decade of this Stable, everything we’re finding keeps pointing to that mare.”
Rainbow leaned back in her chair and nodded. Spitfire might have been the one to slam the door shut, but Delta was involved in this somehow too. Opal had been convinced that Delta would have had the knowhow to effectively erase the first ten years of Stable records if Spitfire had ordered it, but instead she chose to coil them up in encryptions and bury them deep within their own hidden nook within the archives. Doing so would have been a blatant act of disobedience. Defiance, even. Rainbow had a good feeling the two of them might have gotten along.
She tapped the keyboard, idly scrolling down the document as she reaffirmed her suspicion. Something had happened during the first ten years of the Stable’s history that Spitfire had wanted erased and Delta Vee didn’t, and the apparent fact that she might have severed the umbilical that had connected Stable 10 to a larger network that bridged all the other Stables only fueled her motivation to keep chipping down toward the root of Delta's motivation.
The terminal chimed. Rainbow pecked a key and her message queue flickered onto the screen.
“Good news, hopefully,” Sledge murmured.
Rather than get his hopes up, she shrugged. “Just the next batch of decrypted files. I should get back to it before these start piling up. I’ll let you know how the meds work out.”
It was the politest way she could think of to say, let's get back to work.
Sledge rose to his hooves and nodded once. “Docs say to take one pill a day and keep a journal to track when Blue comes and goes. I told them you’ve been timing it since you arrived, so you’ll be able to tell whether there’s improvement.”
Blue’s appearances were already getting shorter, but there had been no denying that progress had begun to slow. Maybe medication was the last push she needed before she could regain some semblance of normalcy. One way or the other, she would find out.
“Thanks, Sledge.”
“Anytime. I’ll swing back in a few hours with lunch.”
She waved goodbye and turned more fully to the screen. She opened IT’s latest dump and was encouraged to see they had taken her advice and begun prioritizing outgoing messages from Delta’s personal terminal. Now that she had turned her focus solely toward anything authored by the Stable’s first head of IT, Rainbow had begun sending the ponies upstairs decryption requests en masse. She likely wasn't going to win points with them by doing so, but one of the benefits of being locked in her own compartment meant no one could come knocking on her door to complain.
She half-listened to Sledge rummaging through his pockets for his keycard as she skimmed the new entries. Something about seeing so many neutral, whitebread subject lines gave her a touch of nostalgia for her time at the Ministries. As much as she hated having to type messages with one wing while using the other to constantly cover her ass, she liked to think she’d gotten pretty good at weaponizing it when she needed something done. A tiny smile touched her lip as she ran through the list.

--- Network Traffic Report - Week 43
--- REMINDER: Fabrication terminal update 1AM Friday
--- Week 43 Dept. Head Meeting Agenda
--- Thoughts from Tuesday call…
--- Re: Dinner?
--- Shift Plan for 11/31/87 Anniversary
--- Need Serial # ASAP
--- Department Report
--- Re: re: Dinner?
--- Applicant background check approved
--- To my beloved husband, Jet
--- October 1087 Productivity Summary
--- Server Integrity Check Results
--- Re: re: re: Dinner?

Rainbow paused, scrolled back up and narrowed her eyes at one subject line in particular. 
To my beloved husband, Jet. 
That didn’t track. Not a bit. Jet Stream and Delta Vee were famously divorced. Even outside of the casual tabloid, most ponies had once been painfully aware of the controversy that swirled around the rise of Jet’s multibillion bit corporation and his ex-wife’s comparatively impoverished existence running a junkyard on the outskirts of Las Pegasus. Husband, he was not. Beloved, even less so.
The compartment door let out a chirp and hissed open. She spun in her chair. “Sledge, hang on a sec.”
He stopped halfway over the threshold and glanced back at her. Ponies in identical blue and yellow jumpsuits milled through the corridor, several of them taking the rare opportunity to steal a glimpse inside as they passed. Sledge shot them warning glares as he backed into the compartment and swiped his badge to reseal the door.
She waved him over and opened the message.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Delta Vee
Bcc: Jet Stream (CEO)
From: Delta Vee
Subject: To my beloved husband, Jet
11/01/1087
[1 file(s) attached.]

The seed is at perigee.







A riddle. Rainbow deflated a little. She was getting tired of trying to figure out where all these pieces fit. She wasn’t even sure if this was part of the same puzzle.
“She sent it to herself and Jet Stream?”
The stub of her ear flicked toward Sledge, catching his confused tone. It was strange, but that wasn’t saying much. Everything about this was strange.
Sledge tapped a feather against the screen. “Opal said she was the only one of her family to make it here before the Stable was shut. If this was sent ten years after, why would she bother copying Jet at all? He wouldn't be here to read it.”
Rainbow shrugged. “I don’t know. Symbolism, maybe? Like a message in a bottle?”
“No. The sappy long lost lover angle doesn’t cover cryptic, riddle-me-this…” he trailed off. “There’s an attachment.”
He was right. She’d almost missed it. Her feathers ticked over the keyboard and opened it. The terminal briefly chattered as a new window appeared, bearing a strange line of text.

STECSYSTEMS > Stable10 > Directory Archive > Partition List > Partition 40 > 10/01/1087 - 10/31/1087 > Video Archive > 10/31/1087 Logs > Security > OverseerDoor01.cam
7:19pm. 

Rainbow stared at the terminal. Her hoof took on a nervous bounce against the floor. Beside her, Sledge’s jumpsuit rustled as he sat. Partition 40. That was where Delta had sealed away the first decade of Stable 10’s history. The one that had to be chiseled away at file by file, each uniquely obscured by encryptions of a long dead mare’s design. And here, tucked away in a strange message sent by that same mare, was a map.
Her throat went dry. She swallowed to loosen it.
“I think this is it.”
Sledge took a breath and nodded. “I'll call Opal.”







“How’re you holding up, short stuff?”
Julip’s feather-muffled snort was encouraging. She’d spent the better half of the night alternating between worrying herself sick and crying herself back to sleep. Roach had never seen this side of her before. Any question that she might be putting on an act for Aurora’s benefit had been rendered moot by the Enclave mare’s…
...former Enclave mare’s first panic attack. Some things were not faked easily and in order to keep her from waking Aurora and Ginger over and over again, Roach quietly took her away from the shack where she could ride out the worst of the shaking and sweats in relative privacy. He remembered how Ginger had reacted once she finally had time to slow down and dwell on her bold decision to leave her family and expose herself to the dangers of the untamed wastes. He knew there would be moments when he could help and moments when his presence, if it was wanted at all, was all he could offer. 
Amongst the thicket of dead branches, he had sat beside her in silence, only encouraging her to keep talking when it seemed like she was locking down. Ginger once told him that letting her babble on about her fears was what helped her push through the darker moments. It seemed to be working for Julip, too. Just a little bit.
“Don’t call me short,” she muttered back. After it had become clear she was going to be up and down throughout the night, she’d resigned herself to sleep out on the dirt within sight of the shack. Her head was tucked under her wing like a strange bird, and he smirked a little as she kept it there, hidden from view. “I’m doing better, thanks.”
He sat down and watched her. “How’s your stomach? Think you can handle some breakfast?”
She pulled her head back, pausing to sniff before rubbing the gunk from her eyes. They were rimmed red from tears and exhaustion. With dawn, or what amount to dawn when there was nothing to see but overcast, about to break it would be time for them to refuel and resume their journey. “A little, maybe.”
“A little’s better than nothing.” He stood and helped her up off the dirt, noticing her confusion as she looked back to the empty shack. “Ginger took Aurora out hunting. They should be back soon.”
Julip nodded and followed him back to the abandoned structure where their gear lay neatly in the corner. “I thought Aurora was a lousy shot.”
He smiled. “Hence why she’s out getting practice. And don’t let her fool you, she’s better than she lets on.” Lifting the flap of Aurora’s saddlebag, he pulled out the thermos that Meridian had gifted them with her tarry instant coffee, holding between his teeth. “Good idea or no?”
Julip plopped down in the corner next to the broken wall and shook her head. “Just water.”
He obliged, bringing her Aurora’s canteen instead and one of the apples from Stable 1.
She unscrewed the cap with her feathers and sipped from it, letting him keep the fruit for now. “I probably sound like a broken record but I’m really sorry I fucked things up for all of you.”
Setting the apple on the dusty boards, he settled down beside her. “I haven’t seen a single pegasus in the sky since you chased off Chops and Dancer. No spritebots, either. Could be Primrose doesn’t know you lied.”
He watched her, waiting to see if the wave of anxiety would come roaring in again. She looked miserable as she nursed the canteen, staring off at the boiling clouds above. Wiping her eyes again, she shook her head. “She knows. Our spritebots aren’t just glorified eyeballs, they’re flying lie detectors, and my vitals were all over the place when she asked. I’m a dead mare if I go back home.”
Roach hummed, then held out a hoof for the canteen. She traded it to him and he rolled the apple toward her in exchange. “Eat.”
She scrubbed her nose and started eating.
“I don’t think any of us ever asked,” he said, taking a swig. “What’s… what was waiting for you back in New Canterlot?”
Julip pulled off a chunk of fruit and shrugged as she chewed. “The archives. My bunk. Food, shelter. My fucking purpose.”
“Any friends?”
Another shrug, but no answer this time. 
“Family?”
She shook her head. “That old grey mare ain’t much to talk about. I already gave you the highlights worth talking about. Drunk, drugged and undependable.”
Roach capped the canteen and set it down next to Julip’s wing. Their ears twitched at the dull crack of Aurora’s rifle as it echoed across the slowly brightening valley, and he was heartened to hear no follow-up shots. For a mare who understood precision machinery, it made sense that she’d adapt to a quality rifle so naturally.
He cleared his throat and Julip glanced at him. “Want to know what I think? I think last night you made out like a bandit.”
Julip puffed a breath through her teeth, but he was undeterred.
“From what you’ve said, you lost three square meals, a bed, your job and not much else. In exchange you’ve got what I would argue are three pretty decent friends, a happy family of dustwings who don’t even know what you’ve done for them yet and maybe even a better purpose than the one the Enclave assigned you.”
He waited for her to absorb that, hoping this time around some of it might stick now that she wasn’t swamped by panic. She continued to work on her apple, eyes glued to the floorboards as she ate the core, and then finally heaved a long sigh. “Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing. Far as I’m concerned, Enclave or not, you’re with us now.”
She swallowed and turned so he couldn’t see her face. Her hoof tapped gently against the floor as she choked.
“Thanks.”







The molerat stopped its waddling, stood up on its hind legs and snapped its beady little eyes toward her. In the same moment she squeezed the trigger. Desperate Times bucked against her shoulder with a sharp crack of fire and the oversized rodent spun several yards over the valley floor.
Aurora let out a victorious little hiss. “Gotcha!”
She grinned as Ginger gave her a congratulatory pat on the shoulder and pushed herself off the dirt to flip the smoking rifle’s safety on, still mindful of the next round that had popped up into the chamber. More and more she found herself appreciating the rifle’s simplicity, and the thought of carrying one of the pipe rifles the slavers favored baffled her.
“When we get back to camp I’ll show you how to field dress it,” Ginger promised.
Shouldering the rifle, Aurora started down the slope. “Hooray, I can’t wait to count the tumors.”
“I prefer to cut around them, but you can do whatever you like when it’s your turn.” Ginger shot her a wink. “Joking, of course.”
“Of course, darling,” Aurora jibbed, earning herself an eye roll.
As they approached their soon-to-be breakfast, Ginger encompassed the dead molerat in a bubble of magic that popped with an audible rush of displaced air. Without so much as a warning the rodent flashed into existence mere feet from Aurora’s nose, startling a yelp from her as she instinctively ducked to keep from trotting into the disgusting thing face first. 
Ginger trilled with an apologetic laugh, swinging the creature away from her and off to the other side. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it that close!”
Aurora pursed her lips and swatted Ginger across the flank several times with her feather, shuddering at the mere thought of how much shampoo it would take to clean her mane had she actually headbutted the overgrown critter. “Gross, gross, gross! How does that even work?”
Turning toward the distant shack, Ginger shrugged. “I’m not sure I even understand it. Ever since I did it the first time, it just seems to work. Mostly, that is. I really wasn’t trying to give you a molerat facial.”
Aurora stuck her tongue out and shivered. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
Ginger blinked, frowned and then recoiled. “Oh, Aurora, that is heinous!”
She grinned and chalked a line in her column, but with the shack slowly growing larger amongst the toppled trees the mood began to shift. Aurora pressed her lips together, taking a breath. “Think she’s going to be okay?”
Ginger followed close behind, zigzagging through the fallen stumps like tiny two ball bearings enclosed inside a novelty maze. “In general, or as an Enclave target?”
“Both, I guess. She was up and down all last night.”
“I wasn’t surprised,” Ginger murmured. “She and I spoke about it while we were on the stairs. When I started asking questions she couldn’t answer she started reciting Enclave regulations like she was trying to tell me why she couldn’t answer, but without saying so explicitly. I knew the Enclave drilled that sort of thing into their members but I didn’t know it got that bad.”
Aurora frowned. “She really believes they’re going to come after her.”
“Their leader has a reputation for responding to disloyalty with a fair bit of theater. My parents took my sister and I to one of the executions when we were old enough.” She winced as if reliving the memory. “They aren’t merciful deaths. If Primrose knows she’s been lied to, Julip has every right to be afraid.”
When they reached the shack, they could both see that Roach and Julip were in the middle of a discussion. They nodded their good mornings and Ginger held up Aurora’s kill for them to see, then went about clearing out enough of the surrounding wood behind the shack to build a small fire. Even though they could still hear the low tones of the conversation, neither of them put any effort into prying. Julip needed privacy. She wasn’t going to get it with two curious mares pressing their ears to the wall.
Aurora discovered, to her dismay, that she did not have the iron stomach for field dressing that she thought she did. Her gut did flips as Ginger instructed her on where to cut, what to remove and which organs to avoid puncturing lest she ruin the meat. She was actually glad that the centaurs had forced them to abandon half of their supplies because that half they had lost contained Ginger’s knife. Utilizing the same spell she’d harnessed to dehorn Autumn, she slid her magic through the carcass for the purpose of the demonstration.
She managed to get through the lesson without losing her composure, but when the gut pile hit the dirt her appetite dried up like a strip of jerky. How one molerat could contain that much blood and viscera was a magic trick in itself. Mercifully, Ginger bubbled the mess in her magic and poofed it out of sight. Aurora shook her head, both disgusted and impressed, and pecked Ginger on the crease of her muzzle to thank her for taking the time.
The small fire had burned itself to crackling coals by the time the demonstration was over, and the flat stone Ginger affectionately referred to as a “hot rock” waited to be put to use at the center of the embers. She sliced thick strips from the carcass and, after checking them for lesions, laid them across the stone. They sizzled and popped, browning on one side and then the other. Lost appetite be damned, the smell of cooking meat had Aurora’s stomach perking up like a starved animal.
“Shame we don’t have salt or pepper,” Ginger mused. “Something Roach taught me when we first met. You can have all the seasoning in the world, but ninety-nine percent of the time all you need for a good meal is a pinch of salt and pepper.”
With nothing to sit on that might catch the entire valley on fire, she sat down on the hard pack with Ginger on her hip. “I’ll try to remember that. You think Roach needs a break?”
Ginger shook her head. “I don’t think he’d want one if he did.”
The embers shifted while the strips of meat cooked crackling puddles of fat. Tiny geysers of fire puffed out from the coals as it dripped off the edges of the hot rock.
“He’s really gone all-in with her,” she murmured.
“It’s just something he does. Once he sees the potential for good in someone, he doesn’t stop.”
A smile creased her lip. “Even you, huh?”
Ginger chuckled. “Absolutely not. I’m a lost cause. As soon as you’re not looking, I’ll be pulling a Nightmare Moon and taking over Equestria.”
They laughed together, taking care not to let it carry so far that it might distract from any progress Roach was making. When the first strips of meat were cooked, Ginger lifted them out of the embers and sliced them into bite-sized cubes. She popped one into her mouth and nodded her approval as she chewed, hovering a morsel off the tip of Aurora’s nose for her to nip out of the air. She dropped two more cuts onto the hot rock for Julip and Roach, and for several wonderful minutes they ate the softly smoked meat in happy silence.
Aurora plucked another bit of molerat from Ginger’s magic and leaned against her shoulder. “Have any interesting dreams last night?”
Ginger nodded, keeping her voice to a whisper. “A few, actually. Once those two are finished, I’ll fill you all in. It wasn’t an easy night.”
She murmured in agreement. “I think I woke up at least--”
Aurora stopped at the sound of a stick snapping on the other side of the shack. Roach’s subtle way to let them know they were heading over. The two of them glanced back as he and Julip made their way around the corner, the latter of which was red-eyed yet managing something of a reassuring smile.
As they reached the fire ring, Aurora pushed herself up and wrapped Julip in a quick hug. She half expected the smaller mare to give her a black eye to match the dark shadow around her own, but she returned it instead, saying nothing. When Aurora let her go, Julip allowed herself to be squeezed by Ginger as well. In that moment, without a word spoken between them, there was no longer any question that Julip was part of the team.
One by one, they sat down together and ate.







“Huh. Weird name.” Julip hummed, testing it out for herself. “Tantabus. Does it mean something?”
Aurora tightened the strap of her rifle as she listened and double-checked the safety. With their bellies full and cantines passed around for the last time, there was little left to do besides pack up their gear and prepare for the last flight east.
“I thought it might be rude to ask,” Ginger admitted, using her magic to scoop dirt over their cookfire. “It is a mouthful, though. And I’m not entirely certain she is a she.”
Beside her, Roach chuckled. “There’s an easy way to check.”
Ginger balked, swatting him in the ribs with the back of her foreleg. He snorted a pained laugh and turned his attention back to the task of burying the emptied bags of Rad-Away. Thankfully, with the aid of Aurora’s Pip-Buck, they had learned their exposure to his brief burst of radiation hadn’t been enough to cause significant harm. Still, the faster they purged the extra rads from their systems the better off they would be. 
“You could call her Tandy,” Julip suggested.
Aurora offered a considerate hum as she double-checked the contents of her saddlebags. Her nose wrinkled when she spotted fresh bruising on the remaining haul of apples. Too much jostling. Her father would just tell her the blemishes make them sweeter. She nudged them to one side of the bag and propped them into a loose pile with the narrow journal Ginger had taken from the cabin a week earlier, leaving the remainder of her supplies to their own little pocket. 
“Is that even a word?” she asked.
Julip shrugged, busying herself by stretching and retracting her freshly healed wing. “Does it have to be? Tantabus sounds just as made up as Tandy.”
“Well,” Ginger supplied, “I imagine if Princess Luna gave it to her, it’s likely to be an ancient one. It may have fallen out of use a millennium ago for all we’ll ever know.”
Aurora wasn’t convinced. Tandy sounded like a nonsense word to her ears, but then again so did Tantabus. She frowned, realizing the longer she focused on any name she knew, it started to sound like gibberish. “This is making my head hurt.”
“You poor thing.” Ginger shot her a wink and finished tamping dirt over the coals, her gaze drifting to Aurora’s saddlebag. “Something wrong?”
The question made her ears perk up. She’d been staring at the contents of her bag without realizing it. Her cheeks went warm as she dipped a wing inside and drew out three worn holotapes, their paper labels sunbleached into illegibility. “I forgot all about these.”
Ginger tapped the ash from her hoof and came over to see. “Quincy’s holotapes?”
She nodded, sliding them against each other in her wing. With everything that had happened lately, the little diskettes had fallen off her radar and shuffled their way to the bottom of her bags. Now, as they prepared to undertake what felt like the final leg of their journey, she wondered if they were worth bothering with.
“Quincy, as in Autumn’s runt secretary Quincy?” Julip had stopped stretching at the sound of his name, crossing their modest campsite to better see the holotapes in Aurora’s feathers. “My caps were on that kid winding up as deathclaw food. What’s on them?”
She cupped two of the tapes and separated the third, pinching it between the tips of her feathers and turning it side to side. “No idea. He told me he swiped them from Autumn’s office before he escaped.”
Julip held out a wing and Aurora obliged, tipping the first two into her feathers for her to examine while keeping the third. Tilting her Pip-Buck to the side, she unlocked the tape deck beneath the screen, slid the holotape inside and pressed the door shut. Unseen mechanisms buried inside her Pip-Buck chattered to life and the screen went blank as data spooled off the tape. In the span of a breath, fresh lines of text appeared in bright green letters.


== Flim & Flam Trading Co. ==
[Incoming/Outgoing]
[Contract Renewals]
[Birthday Ideas for Cider]
[Personal Logs]
[Julip Progress]


Aurora paused at the last subject line, then turned to see the green mare’s gaze fixed on the screen. 
Julip swallowed. “Open it.”
She did. The Pip-Buck flickered, then began to flow with fresh text.





03-11-1297
Let it be known to whoever gives a shit that Corporal Mint Julip is an incorrigible bitch. This is why I hate working with the Enclave. It doesn’t matter if they have a mountain full of old world tech if they cling to every clean nut and bolt in the wasteland like it’s their birthright to own. They’re physically incapable of showing appreciation for the work it took me to open up one fucking trade route between the two most stubborn powers of this shithole we all share. One straight answer. That’s all I want from them. Just one straight answer.
SOLUS exists. I don’t care what Minister Primrose’s envoys say, there’s too much data here that says otherwise. The Steel Rangers know it exists, too. Coldbrook practically dropped out of his sheath as soon as he realized I’d found breadcrumbs out here. Newspapers don’t lie. The film reels Cider found in Manehattan don’t lie. SOLUS is up there, somewhere, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let either of those power hungry fucks get to it first.
I’m taking a risk keeping the corporal under lock and key, but it’ll be worth the risk if she can pull her head out of her ass and help me crack these servers.

03-13-1297
Lot of sprite-bots in the area now. They’re looking for the corporal.
She decided to quit her hunger strike and start eating again. Far as I can tell, she hasn’t touched the terminal we put in the cage with her. She has a nose for bullshit.

03-15-1297
Quincy refuses to take the corporal up for any more bathroom breaks after she pissed on him this morning. Can’t say I didn’t laugh when I heard about it, but Julip clearly isn’t taking her situation seriously.

03-18-1297
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I gave the corporal an ultimatum, today. Help us find SOLUS or my security team helps themselves to her. The corporal has since begun using her terminal. Hopefully that keeps her motivated long enough to find it, but if she digs in her hooves again I think I’m prepared to deliver on my threat. SOLUS is too important. This company can only keep the raiders cowed for so long before they figure out a way to push back into their old territories, and Equestria is never going to rebuild itself if every little faction is too busy killing each other over the next pile of scrap.
If Blinder’s Bluff can flourish off the power of one Stable, then I have every reason to believe Equestria can be resurrected by SOLUS.

03-21-1297
	Progress, finally! The logs from the corporal’s terminal confirmed that she’s cracked open a cache of messages penned by the late great Jet Stream himself! I knew when we relocated here that there would be a chance we might find credible evidence, but this could be the entire motherlode. She’s finding technical data on SOLUS. Real, legitimate schematics of the satellite modules. All we need now are the orbital coordinates and we’re in business!

03-22-1297
Julip discovered the virtual network that we restricted her terminal to and bypassed it. She attempted to wipe the servers but didn’t get far. Still, we lost mountains of data in the breach. Before she can be trusted to access the archives again we need to create a backup. I’ve tasked Quincy with the project.
Cider will be back tomorrow. He’s good at… leaving an impression. We could have lost SOLUS because of her. I need her to understand what happened today can’t happen again.

03-23-1297
	I’m going to give Julip a couple days to herself. Cider was rougher on her than he needed to be.

03-25-1297
Spoke to her this morning. Hard to get much out of her besides insults and death threats. I can’t say I blame her. I tried to get her to understand the potential good that could come from harnessing SOLUS, but she refuses to listen. When I showed her the news clippings she told me they were all lies and claimed that I was trying to manipulate her into betraying the Enclave.
I sent Cider out on the western route. There’s a few towns down that way he needs to check in on, and I don’t like the way he keeps asking me whether the corporal has been cooperative. Best to send him out to blow off steam at one of the brothels up at the Bluff.

03-28-1297
	She found SOLUS. It's still up there.
Launch times, docking schedules, everything down to its orbital period (1436mins) and semi-major axis (42,164km). I can’t stop laughing. Quincy thinks I’m losing it. Jet Stream put it on a 63.2° inclination. I don’t even have to draw it out on a map, it’s right above our heads. All this fucking time, SOLUS has been loitering in geostationary orbit and all we had to do was look up to see it. No wonder the Enclave won’t stop pumping the sky full of clouds. If every wingless yokel like me could unlock a new golden age with a little stargazing, the Enclave would have been out of business a century ago.
I’m leaving Quincy in charge of processing out the caravans for the next few days. I don’t need to fly to be able to make contact with SOLUS. I just need altitude and a decent transmitter, and I know exactly where to find both.

04-02-1297
Home sweet home. I couldn’t find it. It might be gone.
The DJ in charge of Hightower Radio was out for the day, and her gryphon caretaker was completely unhelpful. All brawn and no brains. Legs for days, though. She let me use Flipswitch’s broadcast equipment when I told her I wanted to check the skies for satellites, but the idiot bird wouldn’t leave me alone for a moment. I had to figure out how to use the transmitter with her breathing down my mane. I swear on Celestia’s crown that thing was in heat.
I tried broadcasting a selection of diagnostic queries toward the coordinates SOLUS should have been at, but nothing came back. The gryphon suggested amplifying the signal, which of course I had already done, but it was as if the satellite wasn’t there at all. Maybe the cloud cover obscured the signal, or maybe I’m using outdated coordinates. Maybe SOLUS reentered the atmosphere. 
Try to stay positive, Autumn. It’s still up there. You just have to find it.

04-09-1297
	Cider is dead. 
SOLUS can wait.
I’m going to find Ginger Dressage and I am going to make her HURT.





Aurora looked up from her Pip-Buck to see Julip’s eyes glazed with angry tears. They were wide, focused intensely on some distant point far, far away from where she was now. A little over a week before Aurora left her Stable, before the generator began showing signs of slowing down, before she had any concept that her world was as fragile and impermanent as the one that had come and gone before it, Julip had been suffering alone in a tiny cage, forced to endure the brunt of what Cider chose to inflict upon her.
She realized to her own frustration that she didn’t know what to say to her. For Aurora, she’d only been made to endure the attempt. She’d been in a position to fight back, and she had. Judging by Julip’s brittle frown, that hadn’t been a luxury she’d enjoyed.
Roach stood and sat himself beside her, settling a leg over her shoulder for comfort. Somehow, he always knew the right thing to do. Julip squeezed her eyes shut and took a long, pained breath as she buried the worst of the pain. A few stray tears dropped off her cheeks and nothing more. She leaned, letting her shoulder briefly touch Roach’s chest as an acknowledgement, then cleared her throat.
When she spoke her voice was thick, but under control. “I don’t want to be pitied, and if any of you starts treating me like a fucking porcelain doll I’ll put my hoof up your ass. Okay?”
Aurora felt the tension in her face begin to soften. “Deal.”
“If you ever want to talk, d-”
She cut off Ginger with a rough shake of her head. “I don’t. Thanks for the offer, really, but I’ve had worse days. Trust me.”
Aurora looked to Ginger and could tell the unicorn had some serious doubts about that. Still, she let the issue retire with a simple nod. Then, as the threat of an uncomfortable silence loomed, she leaned past Aurora and lifted a brow at Roach. “I thought you said SOLUS was some kind of a spy satellite.”
A look of abject confusion began to form on the changeling’s face before recognition dawned on him and he let out a little snort. “During our meeting with Elder Coldbrook.”
Julip blinked and looked up at him. “You've met him?”
Roach nodded, taking his hoof back from her shoulder and using it to gesture vaguely at the air in front of him. “Maybe meeting isn’t the right word.”
“Hostage negotiation is more like it,” Aurora growled. 
He nodded grimly. “Coldbrook took the opportunity to squeeze us for information at the end of our stay at Blinder’s Bluff. He tried to feign ignorance of what SOLUS was to see if we would offer him anything he didn’t already know. I fed him a line about SOLUS being an observation platform, but either he didn’t know I was lying or he was smart enough not to call me out. Judging by Autumn’s journal, Coldbrook apparently has a better idea of what it might be than he was letting on. If he knows SOLUS was designed to supply solar power to the surface, it would explain why he’s so eager to threaten a Stable just to get his hooves on it.”
Julip shook her head.
Roach frowned. “No?”
She hesitated for a beat, then said, “SOLUS isn’t an energy source. It’s a weapon.







Hours Earlier…

Primrose awoke to the soft tapping of a hoof on her door, cracked the one eye not buried into her pillow open and groaned. What time was it? No, scratch that, what day was it?
She buried her nose into her plush linens, briefly blocking out the morning glare beyond her curtained window, and tried to wish him away. He knocked again, a little more firmly. She sighed. Almost three centuries old and she still wasn’t allowed to sleep in.
Flopping onto her back, she kicked off her silken sheets and lay there like a butterfly pinned inside a picture frame. He knocked again. 
She groaned, again. “Come in.”
Her personal advisor, a prissy little yellow stallion with the death stare of a grizzled librarian, pushed open her door and gently shut it behind him. As always, he kept a clipboard nestled under his left wing that held a thin sheaf of papers containing his morning report. Primrose watched him glance at her, adjust his glasses with a free feather, and promptly pulled open her curtains more fully. He was as much a nanny as he was an advisor, but he was also the only assistant she’d had in two hundred years who committed the duties of his job to memory. Obnoxious as he could be, she secretly appreciated his punctuality.
“It’s 7am, Miss,” he said. “Time to greet the day.”
Not ma’am. Not Minister Primrose. Miss. A subtle affectation that she suspected meant he saw her not as a ranking superior or herald of the late princesses, but simply as an employer. The mare of the house. Grudgingly, she sat up and slid off her mattress before he started pestering her again. He waited, shifting through his papers while her mind fought to catch up with her waking body. As it did, she squinted at the unfiltered shafts of sunlight that opened and closed beyond her bedroom window.
Her advisor also had a bad habit of starting into work before she was ready. “You have an urgent notice from--”
She waved a wing to shut him up, ignoring his flat stare as he pressed his muzzle closed. Dropping onto the carpet, she dragged a few clutching feathers across his face partly to indicate he should follow but mostly to irritate him as they rumpled his otherwise flawless mane. He knew the drill and fixed his mane in silence as he followed.
The simulated sunlight beaming into her bedroom flickered dark as soon as the door shut behind her. Their hooves clicked off polished concrete, passing through another set of highly secured pneumatic doors before they entered the primary corridors of the underground complex. In the early days after the bombs fell, the Enclave had struggled to find the resources to construct the first few hallways. But as the decades wore on and it became clear there were other elements gathering power in Equestria, a need for a hardened structure to base their operations became more pressing. 
Primrose let her wing slide across the metal bulkhead, guiding her down the next turn to the elevators at the end of the hall. It was no Stable, something many initiates first assumed when entering the almost prewar structure, but it was sufficient. Primrose had been the highest value target for the Steel Rangers for the last two hundred years. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d stockpiled enough of Twilight’s stimpacks to last her a millennium when all it took was a single bullet to yank her from the picture. Distasteful as it was, she’d learned to tolerate spending most of her time in her horizonless home sweet home.
They stepped into the elevator and she flicked the topmost button. It heaved beneath their hooves, ferrying them past the bustling core of the Enclave’s operations toward the surface. Safer or not, she refused to live this “blessed” life of hers shuttered away from the sky.
The elevator ground to a stop and split open into a round, spacious hall. Fluted pillars spaced along its circumference bore finely woven banners depicting scenes plucked from the heights of Equestrian history. Golden braids of fine silk framed a beautiful depiction of Canterlot Castle, the sky behind it split down the center by day and night. The defeat of Nightmare Moon, Chrysalis, Discord and Tirek carved another into quarters. Primrose stepped into the busy rotunda, mindful of the many eyes being drawn to her, and sent her best mournful smile toward the tapestry which bore the fallen city of Cloudsdale across its stitches. Bent along the tapered bottom stood a single word: REMEMBER.
Her public obligation fulfilled, she continued across the grand hall and pushed open the finely carved doors into the plaza and New Canterlot beyond.
Spreading her wings, she propelled herself into the air. Her assistant dutifully followed.
Up, up, up she went without sparing so much as a glance to the sprawling city shrinking below her. Equestria these days wasn’t much to look at. Drab, dreary and desolate even on the best of days, it was a necessary sacrifice to ensure the Enclave could traverse the skies undetected. Sparing a look toward the scarred slope of Canterlot Mountain, she could just make out the grey concrete slabs embedded below its peak. The snow there, or what was left of it, had long since been stained grey by the chemical mix that her aptly named Weather Factory pumped into the sky. She squinted as she passed through the pillowy layers of cloud-seeding smog, trusting her wings to guide her through. 
The eruption of light behind her eyelids let her know they were through, and she opened them toward the rising sun. A few moments later her advisor popped through the brown layer of haze and quickly tracked toward her just as Primrose’s hooves settled into the manufactured mist. Like always, he said nothing about her ability to cloudwalk, but he did as usual take a quick peek at the polluted pockets of condensation that toughened beneath her hooves. Another perk of Twilight’s enchanted ampules that only added to the mythology Primrose had spent so much time building around herself.
“The day has been greeted,” she murmured as he tread air beside her. “What do you have for me today?”
He cleared his throat and resumed where he had left off. “Foremost, Miss, there is an urgent notice from Comms regarding Corporal Mint Julip.”
Primrose tucked her wings against her hips and slipped into a casual trot, enjoying the gentle give of the clouds despite their sickly appearance. “Is she dead?”
She smiled as her advisor kept the exasperation out of his voice. “No. The report only states that the sensor logs taken from the corporal’s debriefing show a high likelihood of deliberate deception over the course of your conversation.”
Her smile grew dim. “She lied to me?”
“It seems so, Miss. Her vitals peaked immediately after you made mention of the dustwing sightings in that vicinity. We’ve also received word that Lieutenant Dancer and Corporal Chops were dismissed from their assignment and told by Corporal Julip to assist with reconnaissance operations at Foal Mountain.”
Primrose’s expression hardened. “Dancer outranks her.”
“He acknowledged that when he reported in to one of the spritebots on fixed patrol near Kiln. They claim Corporal Julip told them their orders came directly from you, Miss.”
She stopped walking and pinched the bridge of her muzzle between two pink feathers. “Conniving little runt.”
Her advisor stayed safely quiet. Primrose took a breath of untainted morning air and cleared her mind.
“I need to speed this up,” she muttered, then looked up at the stallion flapping his wings beside her. “I assume the lieutenant and corporal have been returned to their original assignment?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Issue a commendation to Dancer and Chops for reporting in. Give their egos a massage on their minister’s behalf.” She needed to be careful with her next step. Members of the Enclave didn’t lie to their minister for no small reason. Not when there were so many painful ways to punish them for the offense. 
Her jaw tightened slightly. Julip had dropped off the radar the moment she crossed into the Pleasant Hills and reappeared more than halfway across the mountains over a day later. Something had happened during that blackout that she was hiding, that much was clear. But if she answered that silence with fire and brimstone, there was a good chance Aurora would bolt. 
And she couldn’t afford to let that happen.
“Have the following reassignment sent to Dancer and Chops. They are to monitor the corporal for the remainder of her mission and are to relay anything that might explain her…” Primrose paused, choosing her words carefully. “...unintentional misinterpretation of her debriefing. They are to avoid direct contact with the corporal or the assets of her assignment. Their mission for the time being is to observe and report back with their findings. Repeat what I just said, please.”
The stallion recited her orders verbatim.
“Good. Now what else do you have?”
“Photos, Miss. Sent to your terminal this morning.”
She lifted a brow at her advisor. “Photos of?”
“The Steel Rangers’ presence at Foal Mountain. It appears Miss Pinfeathers’ suspicions were correct. They’ve mounted a significant excavation project that explains the troop movements we detected several days ago.”
Primrose took a deep breath and blew it back out. Stable 10. Ever since the world came tumbling down, all her problems seemed to stem from Stable 10.
“Why don’t you head back down and relay my orders to high command. I’ll take a look at the photos within the hour.”
“Yes, Miss. Enjoy your walk.”
No questions, no insistence she do something else. Just a prompt collapsing of his wings that dropped him into the mist. It was one of the many things she appreciated about the stallions selected to grace her inner circle. They knew exactly what needed to be done, when and who to pester about it. But most importantly, they knew how to obey. 
It never ceased to amaze her how much improvement a simple gelding could accomplish.
As she resumed her trot, her thoughts inevitably turned back to the pureblood and Stable 10. Spitfire’s Stable. She chewed her lip, giving a billowing tuft of cloud a hard flick of her hoof. It broke apart without resistance, swirling away to reform elsewhere. 
Trouble, trouble, trouble.







The second holotape contained little of value beyond records of expired merchant contracts with F&F Mercantile and several very private musings of Autumn’s in regards to her brother. Aurora was compelled to read several of the latter before Ginger, with some visible discomfort, pressed the eject button for her.
“Perhaps you could read those in your spare time,” she murmured.
Aurora flushed as Ginger dropped the holotape into her saddlebag. As she moved to load the third and final tape into her Pip-Buck, a spread of green feathers blocked the tape deck. Aurora looked up to see that Julip wasn’t as eager to hear what else her former captor had to say. 
Dropping the tape back into her saddlebag, she cleared her throat and winced a silent apology to the mare. “Maybe later.”
She mentally kicked herself as her companions gradually went back to packing their things and double-checking their equipment. Daylight, or what amounted to daylight out here, was burning. With the worst of the Pleasant Hills and Equestria at large behind them, the coast was barely a day’s walk ahead.
Then a thought occurred to her. A few pecks on her Pip-Buck brought up the now familiar map. The icon marked HOME still glowed on the margin of the screen accompanied by a pulsing green arrow to indicate just how far away Stable 10 was. She turned away from it, focusing instead on what lay ahead. The squiggly terrain lines of the mountains began to spread apart the further east she looked until other features stood out between the gaps. Bright bends of highways and roads that pulled together as they neared a dense cluster of streets and boulevards, like strands of a frayed rope joining together in a tight braid.
She eyeballed the remaining distance to Fillydelphia and hummed.
“We could make it there in a few hours if we took the air.”
Roach and Ginger both perked up at the suggestion. The prospect of skipping another day of trudging across broken roads in exchange for being carried the rest of the way to Fillydelphia wasn’t a hard sell. It seemed like the more ground they covered, the more the wasteland tried to slow them down. Coasting the rest of the way had a certain appeal.
“I wouldn’t.”
Julip wrinkled her nose uneasily to the low hills in the east. “The Rangers don’t like seeing wings over their cities, and not just Fillydelphia. They’ll shoot us down as soon as they see us coming.”
“What, with guns?” Aurora looked down at her own rifle, then back to Julip with one brow cocked. “We’ll just fly over the cloud layer like the Enclave does.”
“The same Enclave that probably wrote me off as a defector before breakfast,” she countered. Aurora pressed her lips shut, suddenly unsure whether she should agree, apologize or somehow pull a way to do both out from behind her ear. Julip saved her from having to do either, though her explanation came coupled with some visual discomfort. “We… they’ve marked the majority of the Rangers’ larger coastal holdings as red zones. No Enclave assets are permitted to fly over those cities, not even for high-altitude recon. The Rangers don’t need wings to control their skies. They’ve got the Steel Curtain for that.”
Ginger’s ear twitched. “Steel Curtain. I remember hearing about that when I was little. The pegasi were always on edge that the Rangers would find a way to smuggle one of those turret systems in range of New Canterlot and switch it on.”
“Wait,” Aurora said. “Turrets?”
“Zebra tech.” Julip nodded to Ginger. “And they still worry about it. The only reason the Rangers haven’t made the attempt is because they don’t have the equipment to repair the ones they would lose, and it’s hard enough to find dustwings willing to admit they’re pegasi let alone ones willing to locate and carry back a weapons emplacement one piece at a time. Either way, I can think of better ways to kill myself than flying over Fillydelphia.”
Aurora frowned for a beat. Then, despite herself, she blew out a sigh and shook her head. “Well you’re no fun.”
Julip shrugged, but there was a touch of relief in her eyes as well. Aurora had plenty of experience in life being the odd mare out and knew how tenuous those first steps toward being a part of a larger group could be. How easy it could be for Julip to feel too far on the outside and start rethinking her chances with the Enclave.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ginger sent Aurora an approving smile. If she’d known someone like her was waiting out here, she would have broken out of Stable 10 a long time ago. 
She smiled back just as Roach gently cleared his throat.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t fly most of the way there,” he murmured. “There’s still a lot of ground left to cover, and cutting down even some of it would be nice. If Julip’s wing is up to it, that is.”
Julip lifted the wing in question and rolled it back and forth in its socket. The swollen lump of flesh that had hindered it thus far had receded almost entirely, thanks to the stimpack Aurora had bartered off of Dancer and Chops. Julip looked to her as if she was weighing the options. “It feels alright… but if I say we need to land, we land. And we fly low. No cloud-surfing. Deal?”
Aurora looked to Ginger, who shrugged, then Roach whose eyes were already tilted toward the low rolling clouds above. How long had it been since he saw the sun? It felt unfair that, out of the four of them, he was the only one to have gone this long without breathing the crisp, clean air of the open sky.
He looked at her with a knowing smile. “Maybe on the way back home.”
While the obvious intention was to ease some of the guilt she was feeling, his assurance only made her feel that much worse. It was the sort of cliche a pony said in a dimestore novel right before they died. Just enough sympathy to remember for a moment before the author spent an entire chapter reminding the reader of how tragic it was that the pony didn’t get to go to the place, see the relative or eat at the restaurant they always meant to. Aurora could almost see the figurative axe hovering over Roach’s neck in that moment. That axe could fuck right off.
She adjusted her rifle under her wing, walked to where Roach stood and half-crouched beside him.
“Alright, detour. Hop on.”
If ghouls could blush, the flesh between Roach’s chitin would have glowed bright pink. “Um.”
“We’ve got most of the day ahead of us,” she pointed out, ignoring Ginger’s look of utter amusement as she waited on Roach. “An hour isn’t going to kill us.”
“Knock on wood.”
She arched a brow at Julip. “You stay here where Ginger can protect you.”
“Be easier if I had a gun,” she pointed out.
A pause. Aurora considered the weight of the pistol she’d picked up inside the silo of Stable 1, but only for a moment.
“One thing at a time,” she hedged, then looked impatiently toward Roach. “C’mon, big guy. While we’re young.”
He snorted. Then, after some hesitation, he hooked his forelegs over her shoulders and seated himself across her back. “You have a way with words, Aurora.”
“I’ve been accused of worse.” She chuckled as she pushed herself upright and turned her attention to Ginger. “Make sure she behaves.”
The unicorn quirked a lip. Julip smirked behind a single, upturned feather.
Aurora grinned back at them as she lifted her grey wings skyward.







July 10th, 1076
Las Pegasus

“T minus one five minutes. We are still a go for liftoff.”
Delta Vee looked up at the monitors suspended from one of the ballroom’s ivory pillars and scowled. In the corner of her eye, a young stallion bearing a tray of fluted glasses drew within wing’s reach and she snatched one away, still glowering at her ex-husband’s overfunded homage to himself. The new heavy launch vehicle was just one of six completed thanks to the ministry contract Jet had managed to magic out of his ass. Condensation drifted into the evening air as crews began disconnecting the liquid oxygen lines from the lower stage, causing the slickly designed rocket to appear and disappear in the golden rays of sunset. Typical. If ever he needed to be convinced he had the biggest cock in Equestria, here he was hosting a party for himself as he launched one into space.
“Ma’am,” the waiter murmured with a hint of disapproval, “perhaps I could interest you in a glass of water, instead?”
She turned away from the screen - the ballroom was littered with the fucking things - and stared at the younger stallion, saying nothing in return. She watched with a touch of satisfaction as he cleared his throat and continued along his way. As he departed, she brought the glass to her lips and tipped back her third glass of champagne. Someone would be around eventually to cut her off, for all the good it would do them. Just because the dress Jet had delivered to her last week didn’t have pockets didn’t mean she didn’t have her own ways to hide an emergency flask. Besides, if he didn’t want her getting shitfaced he shouldn’t have begged her to come here where the open bar was on the company tab.
“Bwuh,” she muttered, pressing a hoof to her chest as a foamy belch rolled out of her throat. A nearby clutch of ponies worth more than a thousand of her grungy junkyards recoiled and quickly found somewhere else to be. 
She waggled her empty glass after them. As she did, she spotted Jet watching her from across the crowd, the quiet disappointment as clear as the empty crystal she held between her feathers. She rolled her eyes, spotted the stretch of open doors leading out to the balcony and decided if she was going to piss off Jet tonight she might as well do it proper. As she slipped between the brown-nosers and ass-kissers of the Equestrian elite, she dipped a wing under the fringe of her midnight blue slip and dug out a soft pack of smokes and a gas station lighter from under her garter. To the ponies around her, she must have looked like a chem fiend picking at some unspeakable lesion by the way they cleared a path for her. She grinned, happy to give them a nugget of culture to take home for the night.
Stepping out into the dusk, she found an empty spot along the stone railing and unceremoniously flicked her glass over the edge. With both wings free to go about their duties, she nipped the first stick of the night out of the pack and lit the tip with a habitually singed feather.
She sighed as the first drag of nicotine filled her lungs, gradually smoothing away the raw edges of her nerves. Pale smoke curled through her two-toned mane as she stared out at the sprawling launch complex in the distance. Just two years earlier, Jet Stream Aerospace had been another west coast fantasy company held together by heat tape and a few million bit investments made by a wingful of minor broadcast stations who had bought his bullshit pitch about the future of satellite television.
Now he was actually making good on those promises. A tiny fleet of JSA branded satellites arced over the horizon every day. A telescope bearing his name peered out into the inky abyss of space, logging new discoveries that the princesses could refute less and less. He was making waves. Now he was ready to make a splash.
“Hey, mom.”
Delta chewed on the edge of the filter for a breath before pulling the cigarette from her lips and directing a stream of smoke away from her daughter. “Hey, kiddo.”
Apogee had been a stubborn kid, and now she was a stubborn adult. Already a stone’s throw away from thirty, she made no qualms about dropping a yellow wing over her mother’s shoulders and pulling them together for a quick squeeze. Delta allowed it only because she knew resisting would only make her daughter that much more determined.
She met Apogee’s freckled smile and felt a little less sour about being dragged out of her junkyard to come here. “You’re dad’s pulling out all the stops for this one,” she commented. As her daughter’s smile began to widen at the mention of Jet, the same old defenses came crashing into place. She added, “Are you buying into his sales pitch too?”
And just like that, Apogee’s smile waned. But rather than walking away - she would never walk away - she hooked her forelegs over the railing and stared out to the rocket waiting on the pad. “SOLUS is going to change the world, mom. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe that on some level.”
Delta dragged on the last of her cigarette and flicked it into the warm July air. “I’ve got a lot of levels.”
“Very deep, mom.”
She snorted, shrugged, and blew a cloud of nicotine toward a pair of mares snapping photos of the brightly lit complex. They wrinkled their noses at her, but a little smoke wasn’t going to stop them from committing this moment in history to their photo album.
Delta hiked up her dress to put her smokes back where she’d found them. “I just don’t want him getting your hopes up. He’s promising everyone here the moon. Don’t be surprised when he starts giving out I.O.U.s.”
She sighed as Apogee wrinkled her nose, an affectation that stuck with her through her foalhood years. “There’s going to be risks no matter what we do. We’re at war because we built faster than Vhannan oil could keep up with.”
Worry touched her brow. “Apogee, don’t say-”
“It’s their land, mom. Not ours.” Her daughter tipped her nose to the ballroom behind them. “They know it too. That’s why they’re here. They’re betting that SOLUS is going to do what dad says it will.”
Delta fought the urge to roll her eyes again, but she couldn’t keep the judgment out of her voice. “Free, unlimited energy for every pony in Equestria. I remember hearing the same promise when they built the refineries up north.”
Apogee made an irritated noise and fell quiet. Delta stole a quick glance at her and winced at the sight of her staring off toward the distant rocket. Sometimes she forgot how sensitive Apogee was when it came to her father. She’d wrongly assumed her daughter would grow thicker skin over time, but that didn’t seem likely to ever happen. It was moments like this that reminded her that despite the state of their fucked up little family, Apogee had love enough for both of them.
What’s more, she could tell when Delta was being a pessimist for the sake of punching her daily asshole card. Normally that didn’t bother the kid, but rocketry was one of the few things in life that gave Delta purpose. The fact that she would piss on that in the hopes that a few drops might hit her ex-husband caused Apogee more distress than she deserved to endure.
She took a deep breath and leaned just enough to bump her shoulder into the young mare beside her. “Sorry, kiddo.”
“It’s okay,” Apogee lied. “We can talk about something else if you want.”
Yet another olive branch from a daughter who had no shortage of them to give. Delta pressed her lips together and tried to smile, but it was a tall order when she didn’t know what to say. 
“One of your dad’s prototype engine nozzles went up for auction this week. An XR-25 from back when we were throwing our mortgage money into mock-ups. I’ve got the top bid so far.”
Apogee sighed. “You know he’ll give you one for free if you just ask him.”
“I know,” she said, trying not to sound as defensive as she felt. “I’m just a stubborn old mule. Feels better to do it on my own.”
“You’re not old,” Apogee said.
“Tell that to my knees.”
She watched as Apogee fidgeted her feathers together, uncomfortable with the topic of her mother growing old. Unsure what to say, Delta glanced over her shoulder to see the waiter from earlier giving her a wide berth as he made his way among the guests on the balcony. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he promptly returned the expression. Little shit.
Inside the ballroom, someone turned on the volume to the array of monitors and a dry stallion’s voice droned over the broadcast. Ponies turned to the screens, the low hum of conversation dimming as all eyes became glued to a close-up shot of the rocket.
When she turned back to Apogee, the freckled mare was still playing with her feathers. Delta frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Dad asked me to command a crewed mission to SOLUS.”
“Abso…” she clamped her mouth down on the objection and forced herself to think first. Not one of her strong suits, but neither was the maternal instinct suddenly kicking around inside her head.
Absolutely not. The words pressed against her lips, begging to be spoken. Jet was insane if he thought he was going to send their only daughter up there! Trusting a few billion bits’ worth of technology to the uncharted vacuum of orbit was one thing. That made sense. But sending Apogee out there? Entrusting the life of their daughter to a million unknowns? 
Her heart thundered in her chest. She wouldn’t allow it. Jet might have run off with their dream but he wasn’t about to send their daughter out on some daredevil mission without at the very least asking for her input. She was still her mother for Celestia’s sake! 
Seeing the worry in Apogee’s eyes stopped her in her tracks. She wasn’t a filly anymore, and Delta’s window to play the protective mother had slammed shut years ago. And yet something told her that if she put her hoof down, told Apogee not to do this, her daughter would listen. She would stay grounded just as Delta had done. Her dream slowly withering because, despite all the shitty things Delta had said and done to the kid, Apogee would still rather give up on her dreams if it meant earning just a sliver of approval from her mother.
She took a deep breath and pushed her fears aside. Her gaze shifted toward the rocket, and the tinny launch updates that filtered out from the ballroom behind her. Everywhere she went, she left a little whiff of poison. But not for Apogee. Never for Apogee.
Her voice came out barely a whisper. “When?”
“Next year,” Apogee answered. “Sometime in the fall, after the last SOLUS module is docked. The M.A.S.T. talismans have to be sent up in a separate payload, and someone is going to need to go up to install them manually. Dad thinks I can do it.”
“And he’s sure you’ll be safe?”
A pause. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Dad’s going to ask you to help work out some of the kinks with the EVA suit’s interface. I was kinda hoping you’d say yes.”
She frowned. “Work with your father.”
As if sensing her resistance, Apogee touched her mother’s shoulder. “Working with me.”
In the distance, a cascade of sparks flowed beneath the nozzles. Behind her, the stallion announcer began counting down.
She didn’t know where the impulse came from, but she wrapped a wing behind her daughter’s ears and kissed her on the forehead. Apogee tensed, but only briefly. Then, just as quickly, she felt Apogee’s forelegs wrap up around her neck and yank her into a crushing hug. Delta grunted but didn’t pull away like all the other times.
“Hey,” she murmured. “We’re going to miss the launch.”
“Don’t care,” Apogee said, squeezing her tighter. “This means yes, right?”
Delta relented. “If it means keeping you safe, then I guess so.”
In the periphery, a bloom of piercing light signaled the launch of the first of six SOLUS modules. A happy applause of hooves thumping against the ballroom floor was soon joined by the ear-rattling thunder from the distant launch pad.
“I love you, mom.”
Her lip quirked into an awkward smile as she watched the rocket push through the wispy golden clouds overhead. “I know.”
> Chapter 30: Fillydelphia
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The blinding sun dangled just over Aurora’s left shoulder, making it hard to tell what Roach was thinking when all she could see was the silhouette of her passenger’s face. She expected more of a reaction when they broke through the dense carpet of clouds. It certainly had stirred one in her. 
No longer filtered by overcast, Celestia’s sun flared to full brightness radiance like the tip of a welding torch. Its rays warmed her skin while the brownish haze sank low beneath her hooves, providing her with an unusual sense of… something. Something she wasn’t sure she could define. Of peace, maybe. Or rightness. It took her a beat to settle on the latter. Coasting through the sky while clean, untainted air filled her lungs felt right to a part of her she hadn’t felt since taking Ginger up into the night sky several days before. A primal instinct buried in the back of her brain that recognized this as the way things were meant to be. Not smothered in perpetual twilight. Clear. Free.
And yet, as far as she could tell, Roach hadn’t so much as batted an eye.
“You’re quiet,” she nudged.
With the wind fluttering in her ears, she felt him grunt his answer more than she heard it. He spoke up, seemingly unaffected by the dome of sky that surrounded them. “Sorry,” he said, his muzzle buzzing in her ear. “Just enjoying the view. Haven’t been up here for a while.”
She acknowledged him with a nod, opting not to tack a bad joke to the end of his understatement. “Everything alright?”
His chest bounced against her spine as he chuckled. “I didn’t expect it to be this quiet, that's all. I’ll be fine.”
The beginnings of a frown creased her lip. He waved her off, or as much as he could without letting go of her shoulders. “Saffron and I used to make trips out to the cities before the war, and the ministries, and…”
His belly tensed as he cleared his throat. She waited.
“He had family out here,” he finished. “Back then, the whole east-west corridor was clogged with pegasi. During rush hour you couldn’t take your eyes off of where you were flying or you’d wind up crashing into someone. Wings as far as you could see, especially around the cloudborne communities.” 
He paused, his neck pivoting this way and that. “There’s nothing up here, not even a house. Suppose it must’ve all come down like Cloudsdale did.”
Aurora tried to imagine it. Cities in the sky, buildings created from the very clouds that held them aloft with the aid of invisible, intangible pegasus magic. She had seen countless photos of Cloudsdale in the history books, seen the aging footage of pegasi in blue-yellow uniform performing aerial shows for hundreds of cheering spectators. And yet somehow, up here where the clouds tumbled and rolled along their uninterrupted journey east, she found herself having trouble believing it had all been real. That this empty blue sky had once been a home for ponies like her.
But it had. Deep down, she knew that. 
Only now, it was home to the Enclave.
“I can take us back down if...”
“Not yet.” His answer came quickly, and just a little more abruptly than he probably intended. Aurora forgave his tone.
She tipped into a gentle bank as she waited, glancing at the Pip-Buck at the end of her outstretched foreleg to be sure they were headed back toward Ginger and Julip and not further away. The screen refreshed and the blip representing their waiting party drew a pixel nearer. As she turned her attention forward again, one of Roach’s cryptically perforated hooves pointed past her cheek and toward a slowly churning blister in the otherwise calm cloud cover.
His ragged voice buzzed in her ear. “Thunderhead.”
She blinked. “Whater-what?”
The tension built up by old memories eased, and she could feel him physically relax as he traced a rough circle with the tip of his hoof. “That bump breaking through the clouds. Give it fifty miles or so and it might turn into a thunderhead.”
Seeing her confusion, he smiled. “They’re big clouds that stir up the best storms. You might be the first pegasus in Equestria that doesn’t know what those are.”
She shot him a look, but it was all bluster. He chuckled as the hill in the clouds bent off along her right wing, and she shook her head as the thought of an entire Stable of pegasi who might beg to differ. Then she remembered something. Something that in the midst of all the chaos and confusion of their journey she’d nearly forgotten. 
Roach must have been watching her face, because when her expression shifted he leaned forward until one of his opaque eyes was fully even with hers. “Share with the class?”
“I saw you.”
She winced a little when she watched his eyebrow twitch with a touch of worry. She shook her head and leveled out a little, kicking herself for blurting out the first thing that came to mind. He waited as she tried again.
“The night before we arrived at Blinder’s Bluff, when those raiders started shooting at me. You saved me and Ginger by pulling that wall out of the ground.”
Roach opened his mouth with a silent, “Ah.”
She continued. “I saw you, I think. Or at least the ‘you’ that you’re always telling us about. It came and went while you were casting, like a terminal screen with a short circuit. Kind of… there, but not there, all at the same time.”
A smile touched his cheek. “Green mane? Wheat colored coat?”
A pause, then she nodded.
“That was Sunny Meadows. Last pony to see him was Rainbow Dash back in the tunnel, right before my disguise fell for good.” He sighed, but his smile didn’t budge. She felt his chest bounce between her wings in a quiet laugh. “So? How did I look?”
Some part of her had been prepared for him to grow all quiet and stoic at her admission. His nonchalance was a welcome relief, if not a greater sign that taking Roach up here had been a good idea after all. In answer to his question, she shrugged and offered a middling judgment by way of tipping one of her hooves side to side. 
His reaction spurred a giggle out of her as he found himself caught both grinning and gawking indignantly at her. It was the first time she could remember seeing him this expressive and she couldn’t help but grin back. “That’s what you get for fishing for compliments.”
He snorted. “Fair. I appreciate you telling me. It feels good to be seen again, even if it’s only in bits and pieces.”
She pulsed her wings around the warm rush of an updraft, lifting them higher. Roach’s hooves tightened around her shoulders as they ascended.
“While we’re on the subject,” he continued, “I was hoping to ask you a favor.”
Squinting one eye against the wind, she turned to watch him with the other. 
“Once we find an ignition talisman, I want to stop back at the cabin.” 
She gave him a curious look. With all the trials they’d gone through starting with their reception at Blinder’s Bluff, she’d barely given the half-collapsed vacation home any thought at all. “Tying up loose ends, eh?”
He blinked. “How did you…”
“Good idea. There’s a whole refrigerator full of condiments that know what we did. No witnesses.”
He stared at her. She grinned back.
Slowly, he shook his head. “The pickle jar.”
“The evidence is still there, Roach. If one of them squeals, it’s straight to the slammer for the both of us.”
She grinned even wider as he mouthed something to himself that he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear, but his tolerant smirk reassured her that he could still take a bad joke.
“You’re a strange egg,” he said. “No, I don’t want to raid the fridge again. I wanted to bring back the journal Ginger took from the cabin when we left.”
Her smile dimmed.
“I should have asked her not to take it in the first place, but I didn’t want to bog you two down by having to explain why. It’ll be a quick in and out, if that’s alright.”
Pursing her lips, she nodded. “It’s fine, yeah.”
After hesitating, she added, “Ginger told me that it mentioned your daughter.”
She felt him sigh, but instead of clamming up he did something that surprised her. He talked.
“Teak was one of Violet’s best friends. A quiet filly, from what I remember, but back then most zebras had learned it was safer to keep their heads down. Saffron and I had some opportunities to meet her parents, which is a whole story in itself.”
Considering what Ginger had filled her in on thus far, that was an understatement.
“The cabin we stayed at used to be their family vacation home. Teak’s father got it in the divorce and let our family use it in the winter. Violet loved that cabin. With how much we used it we should have been paying rent, but looking back I think Teak’s father just wanted an excuse to have company. He always struck me as a lonely stallion.”
Aurora must not have been doing as good a job at looking interested as she thought, because when she caught his eye Roach winced apologetically. 
“Anyway,” he said, “if Violet were still around, she’d chew my ear off if she knew we were wandering around the wasteland reading her friend’s journal.”
Ouch. Unintended or not, she felt that gentle rebuke in the pit of her stomach. Two days or two centuries, it didn’t seem to matter. Once a dad, always a dad. She nodded.
“We’ll make time, I promise.”
The worry that rimmed his eyes began to ease and as he turned to gaze ahead at the crisp blue expanse of sky ahead, something caught his attention and he let out a quiet chuckle. He tipped his nose off to their left where a green-brown speck had just broken through the cloud layer.
“I was wondering when they were going to get tired of waiting,” he murmured.
Aurora blew out a breath of relief as the speck hovered in the air for several seconds before a fuzzy pair of green wings began to beat away from the clouds and up toward where the two of them had been coasting for the better half of an hour. Even with Julip’s change of circumstance, Aurora hadn’t been able to completely dispel the worry that came with leaving Ginger alone in her company. All of that lingering tension finally let go as she watched the two of them ascending toward them one lazy gyre after another.
“Fun’s over,” she chuckled. “Back to work.”







“If you start feeling foggy…”
“I’ll tell you. I know, now let’s go.”
Sledge swiped his badge and the compartment door hissed up and into the ceiling. He stepped into the corridor and Rainbow followed close behind, the wrinkled lines of Aurora’s jumpsuit hanging loose on her bones like shed skin. She wasn’t totally sure if Sledge had insisted on her donning the uniform because he was afraid the residents would react to who she was or because of his clear and ever present discomfort with her nudity. Or maybe it was a little of both.
Despite the gravity of the moment, she couldn’t help but wear a tiny smirk as they left the stuffy little compartment behind and trotted through the open corridors. An entire Stable filled with ponies who felt a moral duty to cover themselves would have been Rarity’s dream come true. A year or two under her tutelage and the entire population would be wearing their own plumage in overwrought headwear and enough lace to strangle a dragon.
She couldn’t stop a giggle from bouncing out of her throat, drawing a worried look from Sledge. She decided it would be easier not to explain and waved him off.
The brief distraction was worth the indulgence. It distracted her from the murals that adorned the wall panels beside them, memories of a distant time that still felt too close. They boarded the elevator at the end of the hall with a wingful of other pegasi whose idle conversation came to a screeching halt the moment they spotted the ragged stump of a wing poking through the hole in her jumpsuit. 
As the doors shut in front of her and in their reflection she could see their eyes roaming her body, frowning at the patchy coat clinging to her gaunt cheeks, the ragged veil of her once vibrant mane now dimmed by a fog of gray hairs. She became vividly aware of the whiplike shape of her tail as it tucked uncomfortably toward her legs.
“Eyes forward, all of you,” Sledge rumbled. “That includes you, Coaldust.”
A black stallion behind Sledge snapped to attention, suddenly very interested in the elevator’s architecture. By the time the elevator chimed and the doors opened to the top floor of the Stable, every pegasus that joined them had found one reason or another to pile off early.
“Thanks,” she murmured, following him into the residential corridors surrounding the Atrium.
He murmured the sheepish stallion equivalent of you’re welcome and guided her past a group of loitering pegasi, one notably not wearing a jumpsuit. The young stallion stiffened slightly as the overstallion swept by without comment, but the growing edge of frustration on Sledge’s face was impossible to miss. He turned Rainbow down an adjacent hall leading away from the Atrium, following a narrow white line painted on the wall just overhead. 
“Trouble in paradise?” she asked.
“Nudists,” he growled. “Long story.”
Rainbow cocked a brow as they passed a wide mural depicting Princess Celestia and Luna posing on a grassy hillock, the white towers of Canterlot Castle visible on the distant mountain between them. Both alicorns wore their respective crowns and crests, and nothing else. Rainbow met Sledge’s eye and indicated the passing mural with an upturned wing.
“That’s different,” he insisted. “It’s history.”
She shrugged, catching the curious eye of a passing mare. “If you say so.”
Sledge waited until the mare was out of earshot. “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but at the rate things are going I’ll be happy to see this Stable survive the end of this week. One thing at a time.”
“Yes, my liege.” She dipped her head into an exaggerated bow without breaking pace, grinning at the strange expression on his face. “Too much?”
“You’re fine,” he said, his lips tilting into a smile. “I’m just glad to see you come out of your shell, Rainbow.”
She paused, started to answer, then realized she didn’t know how to respond to that. The moment came and went, and she decided there wasn’t much for her to say. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this playful. Until now, she had assumed her years managing a war from her desk at the Ministry had smothered that spark.
It felt good to have it back.
“Any word from your escapee?”
Sledge snorted. “If her last message is any indication, she’s found her stride. Making more friends by the sound of it. I told her at the rate she’s going she’s going to be the one responsible for fitting half of Equestria down here, not me.”
Rainbow let out a ragged chuckle, startling a wide-eyed frown from a passing technician. She cleared her throat but her smile stayed right where it was. “You never did tell me where she was headed.”
He slowed, squinting to better read the plaques fixed to the passing doors. “The one and only Stable-Tec Headquarters.”
She paused, opened her mouth to say something and quickly decided against it. As dark memories rose to the forefront of her mind, she shoved them down and kept her tone neutral. “That’s a long flight.”
“And a longer walk.” One of the overhead fluorescents flickered, emitted a light tink and went dark. “Don’t ever tell her I said this, but she’s about the closest thing to family as I got down here. I’m glad she’s finally making friends out there, but I still wish she’d saved all that until after she brought back a fresh talisman. She could’ve been there and back days ago.”
Rainbow glanced back at the dead bulb. “You sound like Twilight, way back when.”
Sledge looked at her, dubious. “Can I ask you an honest question?”
Pursing her lips for a moment, she supposed there wasn’t much he could ask that she couldn’t answer. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to blackmail her for giving away state secrets a second time. “Shoot.”
“All of us here grew up reading the Friendship Journal. How much of it is actually true?”
“Ah.” She thought about it for a moment, then offered up a shrug. “All of it? As far as I remember, anyway. If anything we probably left a few things out. Those letters were going to Celestia, after all.”
Watching Sledge’s expression change was interesting, and it made her wonder just how many of their adventures had slipped out of the realm of fact and firmly into question. To be fair, it wasn’t like she could blame him. Even before the skies turned green with balefire, Equestria had been quickly becoming a place with fewer and fewer mysteries. The pegasi of Stable 10 would have never seen a magic spell before outside of whatever historical footage they had available. The adventures she and her friends had gone on, voluntarily or not, must’ve sounded like fairy tales to them.
Sensing Sledge’s discomfort, she turned her attention to the passing doors and said, “Heading to the Stable-Tec building isn’t a bad idea. Scoots had all the offices mocked up to look and feel like a Stable. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t have a few ignition talismans on display for investors.”
Beside her, Sledge let out a pent up sigh of relief. “Good. That’s really good to hear.”
She thumped his foreleg with her own. “Perks of being well traveled.”
“I take it you’ve been there.”
She paused, her smile fading as her gaze grew distant. “Just once.”
Sledge said something that she didn’t quite hear. A comment about Aurora, maybe. She wasn’t sure. For a brief moment she was there again, seated across from Scootaloo, the two of them enjoying a laugh over the inexplicable scheduling glitch that brought her all the way there a full day before their meeting. Neither of them knowing that the next time she saw the sky it would be ablaze with emerald fire.
A brick red foreleg slipped around her chest, slowing her to a gentle stop.
“Hey,” Sledge murmured, his voice a low whisper. “Are you still here?”
She blinked. “Yeah, I’m still here.” The look of worry in his eyes made it clear he thought Blue was making an early appearance. She put a hoof over his foreleg, lightly pushing it away. “I’m still me, I promise. I just… zoned out. Bad memories.”
He didn’t look convinced. “We can always come back later.”
“No.” She shook her head and looked up at the plaque screwed into the wall beside the door ahead. The name DEPT. HEAD OPALESCENT stood emblazoned across it. Stepping forward, she set her hoof on the door’s switch and pressed down. “We have to do this now.”
The door lifted open and she stepped inside.







October 31st, 1077
Stable-Tec HQ, Fillydelphia

“Wood paneling, huh?”
Her feathers whispered over the cherry veneer, the fall of their hooves dampened by the commercial grade carpet that lined the hallway with a complimentary golden shade of grain. 
“That is definitely a decision that you made.”
Scootaloo jabbed Rainbow’s flight jacket with the joint of her wing. “Don’t knock it, I think it looks classy.”
“Hey,” she chuckled as she absently adjusted her collar, “my parents would totally be on your side! Yaknow… forty years ago.”
The tangerine mare jabbed her again hard enough to make her cough out a good hearted laugh at her own expense. She raised her own wings in mock-surrender before settling them back to her sides, her eyes wandering the almost homey decor of a facility that boasted some of the pinnacle defenses against unwanted intrusion. She didn’t have to admit it, Scootaloo likely already knew, but she still couldn’t help but appreciate how over-engineered this place was. Every square inch had been built with deliberate intent. The lift that took them down here made it feel like she was floating, the brakes so gentle that she hadn’t realized it had stopped until the doors whispered open.
Even the ceiling lights had been perfectly recessed, gently glowing with a full spectrum that made the enclosed corridors feel like they were being bathed in natural sunlight. Every color popped. Had she not been personally invited to the grand opening of several Stables across Equestria already, she might have convinced herself that Scootaloo had spent her ministry’s wealth on this single place alone.
Scootaloo’s office waited at the end of a short hall decorated with magenta aubrieta flowers that spilled out of their pots and wove their way down the legs of their stands on a healthy network of vines. Photos taken from important places in the successful mare’s life - Ponyville, Cloudsdale, even a shot of Zecora’s hut nestled among the tangled branches of the Everfree - hung from the walls in unique frames that complimented the settings they were assigned to. A young stallion wearing an intern’s badge tutted a polite good morning to them both as they passed before tipping the spout of a copper watering can into the rich soil of one of the flowerpots. 
As Scootaloo let the little black bulb above the office door verify her identity, Rainbow chuckled.
“What?”
She tipped a feather to the nearest vine of vibrant flowers. “Matches your mane.”
The office door released an audible click and she nudged it open, rolling her eyes as she went. “Keen observation from the mare with a box of crayons shooting out her butt.”
The intern behind them sputtered and hurried down the hall and around the corner, only just managing to conceal his laughter.
Rainbow pulled the door shut behind them, shrugging off her jacket and dropping it on one of the brass hooks beside it. Scootaloo’s office was the perfect temperature, just warm enough to be comfortable without being stifling, and bore the faint scent of cinnamon in the air. Back at the Pillar, Rainbow was just happy when she couldn’t smell whatever Spitfire decided to heat up in her office next door. 
“You’d better be nice or I’m gonna tell Applejack.”
Scootaloo smiled at her as she rounded her desk. Her office was unsurprisingly humble, considering her position as Stable-Tec’s CEO. A simple wooden desk, drawers on either side, and a smallish terminal seated slightly to the right of her chair so she could make eye contact with the ponies who came to see her. The wall to Rainbow’s left had been dedicated to objects from Scootaloo’s past. A scuffed purple helmet sat atop the board of a blue scooter, the space shared by a neatly folded and slightly discolored cape from her cutie mark seeking years. An old microphone with a blob of white paint resembling a skull sat alone on a shelf, a memento from a talent show. There was no small amount of memorabilia featuring Rainbow Dash, items she’d collected en masse before they became close friends.
The rest of her office was almost charming. Framed photos hung in creative little clusters on the opposite wall, taking some attention away from the wood paneling Scootaloo refused to stop enjoying. Even her desk looked like it would fit better in a schoolhouse rather than the personal office of a CEO of a multibillion bit company. There was nothing here that didn’t feel entirely Scootaloo. Rainbow couldn’t help but feel a little jealous that her own office wasn’t this inviting.
Scootaloo blew out a guilty breath as she sat down. “I feel like I haven’t seen Applejack in so long.”
“You just visited her ministry last month.” Rainbow settled in the seat across from her, her necklace clinking as it settled against her breastbone. “I thought you two took some time to visit, after.”
“Eh.” Scootaloo pulled a face. “We were, but she got called away right as the meeting was wrapping up and I had work piling up here… easier to reschedule once the shit hits the fan like that. You know how it is.”
She did, but that didn’t mean she accepted it.
“How have you two been?”
She smiled a little. “Good. Real good, actually. Applejack’s trying to talk me into getting a dog.”
Scootaloo gasped. “What kind?”
Rainbow lifted a pair of feathers to her chest, absently fiddling with the edge of her necklace. The ruby lightning bolt rattled gently in its socket. “She wants another collie, like Winona. I’m… still on the fence.”
“About what? You always loved that dog.”
She offered a meek shrug. “Winona was alright, but she was always such a wingful. I swear Applebloom was sneaking zapapples into her bowl when no one was looking.”
Scootaloo leaned back in her chair and smiled. “I’ll have to ask her about that next time we hang out.”
That got Rainbow’s attention. “Since when do you have time to hang out?”
The younger mare gestured her stubby wings around them. “Rainbow, what do you think we’re doing right now? Don’t tell me you’ve been spending every day cooped up in that Pillar I built you.”
She winced. “I mean, I spend plenty of time at home with AJ.” 
Scootaloo’s eyes drifted to the element hanging around Rainbow’s neck. “What about the others?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek, sensing a well-earned grilling headed her way. “We still talk.”
“Well that’s a half-assed excuse if I’ve ever heard one.” Scootaloo slouched forward in her chair, eliciting another creak as she splayed both forelegs over her desk, hooves turned upward in the universal sign of you gotta give me something. “I mean, I know Rarity isn’t easy to open up to these days. What about Twilight?”
Rainbow’s feather touched the gem’s cool surface. “She’s too busy trying to fight the war by herself.”
“All the more reason to make sure she’s doing okay. We both know how she gets when there’s not someone around to drag her away from her research.”
That was true. Why hadn’t she thought about that?
“How about Pinkie?”
She grimaced. At the same moment, her feather slipped into the gap beneath her element and the gem popped free of its mount, dropping into her lap.
“Shit.” She tried to hide the guilt in her eyes as she scooped up the gemstone and pressed it back into its socket. At this point she didn’t even have to look to know which of the prongs had wiggled loose again. She found it with a feather and pressed it back against the stone.
Her ear twitched at the brittle sound of metal cracking, and the errant prong tumbled free of the necklace and onto the carpet.
“Oh for Celestia’s…” 
She bit off the end of the sentence and bent down to pick up the gold nib. With her other wing, she let her element tip back into the safety of her feathers.
“Can I help?” Scootaloo offered.
She straightened, stood and shook her head. “I got it. This thing’s just getting old. There’s a jeweller in Canterlot I’ve been meaning to drop by to get it fixed.” 
Stepping toward the coat hook, she dropped her element and the broken tine into her jacket pocket. “Guess I know what I’m doing on the way home.”
“Guess so.” There was a touch of worry in Scootaloo’s eyes as she watched her return to her seat, but she knew better than to lecture an Element of Harmony about the care and maintenance of their bestowed gems. “Well, who knows. Maybe your terminal mixing up your calendar was a good thing? You definitely need a break.”
“Yeah.” She let out a sardonic chuckle, tracing the edges of the now empty socket. “Yeah, we all do. But this war just keeps going and going. I actually miss the days when we’d have to drop everything because Celestia forgot to set an egg timer for some ancient evil. Life was a lot easier when we could just…”
She gestured vaguely to her necklace. “You know. Rainbow laser our problems away.”
Scootaloo was painfully aware that the Elements of Harmony had refused to activate during the first battle on the shores of Vhanna, and the implication that came with it. It was a large part of why she and so many other ponies had chosen to begin proactively working toward protecting themselves should the zebras ever get the upper hoof. 
Rainbow flicked her empty necklace, dropped her wing in her lap and sighed. “Maybe we should get the dog.”
“That might not be the worst idea.” Scootaloo smiled encouragement from across the desk, very much in Applejack’s camp on this one. As the chuckles ebbed and the office grew quiet, she cleared her throat. “Speaking of bad ideas.”
“Already beat you to it.” Rainbow made a grand gesture with her feathers. “Cloud Stables.”
She laughed, shaking her head as she leaned over to open a drawer. “That is a bad idea. But, seriously, I was hoping I could get you to look at something for me. I kind of need a second opinion.”
Rainbow cocked a brow. “I’m sure your gynecologist has a phone number you can call.”
“Har-dee-har.” She produced a manila folder from the drawer and slid it across the desk. “Seriously, though. Take a look at this and tell me if you notice anything.”
Her smile lost its playful edge as she eyed the folder and she scooped it up in her feathers. Scootaloo waited in silence as she flipped it open.
“A job resume?”
Scootaloo nodded. “Just a sanity check.”
She sat up a little, her necklace thumping against her coat as she began reading the application. At first glance it was all standard fare. The cover letter listed the applicant’s name as Cloudchaser, a pegasus stallion currently residing in Manehattan. He included the usual paragraphs detailing what he was looking for, namely a job within Stable-Tec’s network security division, and listed several certifications below. She flipped to the second page and found nothing out of place there either. Job history, graduate’s degree, all the careful phrasing meant to emphasize his value while tactfully dismissing his weaknesses.
Turning to the last page, she skimmed his references. The usual parade of employers already pre-coached to give him glowing reviews. Rarely ever worth calling unless something seemed fishy during the interview process. Rainbow was about to close the folder and send it back when the final reference made her stop.
She frowned. “How does an unenlisted pony from Manehattan know Spitfire?”
“Oh, good, I’m not losing my mind.”
She flipped back to his job history. “So, what? You think he’s lying to get hired?”
“Him and about ten other pegasi.” Scootaloo pulled a small stack of papers from the same drawer, all resumes. “Except these are the ones we’ve already hired.”
Growing more confused, she leaned forward and flipped open the first resume. As expected, Spitfire’s name was listed among several other references. “Well, far be it from me to spare her a reason to be pissed off. These ponies will be lucky if she doesn’t draft them into the Wonderbolts out of spite.”
Scootaloo shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what she’ll do. When my hiring team finally brought this to my attention, I double-checked their onboarding checklists. They called Spitfire for every one of these candidates and she apparently recommended them on the spot. Most of them list some kind of service record with the Wonderbolts which is how they got through in the first place, but now we’ve started seeing resumes like these come through with barely any affiliation at all.”
Rainbow’s breathing began to slow, her shoulders stiffening.
“She’s been putting her people in my company deliberately,” Scootaloo continued. “I called the ministry last week to set up a meeting so I could tear her hide in person, but she’s got a pain in the ass secretary down there who’s been stonewalling me any time I try to get through.”
“You called her?” Rainbow put her head in her hooves and groaned. “Scoots, you should have told me first.”
“I know, I know. But you can already tell how this looks, and I handle stuff like this all the time. I thought if I could talk to her, I could hold her hooves to the fire until she backed off.” She picked up the stack of resumes and dropped them back into her drawer. “I’ve already fired the pegasi she vouched for, anyway. Probably staring down the barrel of a dozen lawsuits once they inevitably lawyer up, but I can handle that too. I just didn’t want to put more problems on your plate than you already--”
A piercing tone blared overhead, cutting her off. It was joined by a light that pulsed urgently from its fixture in the corner of the office. As quickly as it came, the alarm tone went silent and a stallion’s recorded voice began repeating a chilling warning.
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER.
Rainbow pressed her hooves to her ears as the spoken alarm traded off to the peeling tone. “WHAT IS THAT?”
Scootaloo had already rolled over to her terminal, her small feathers stuttering across the keyboard. When she didn’t immediately answer, Rainbow felt the cold weight of fear begin forming in her gut. The look of singular determination in her eyes made her look like a different mare.
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. ALL EVACUATE PERSONNEL TO SHELTER.
The tone returned, pummelling their ears.
“SCOOTS!”
She held up a feather as her eyes scanned the screen, the young mare taking deeper and deeper breaths the more she read. She blinked, her lavender eyes welling. She said something too quiet for Rainbow to hear, but the word “Cloudsdale” was clear on her lips.
Impatience getting the better of her, Rainbow got to her hooves and hurried around the desk to see what it was that had Scootaloo frozen in her chair. She read for several seconds. Then she stopped, her legs feeling suddenly too heavy for her body.






:: EMERGENCY ALERT ::
This is a national emergency bulletin which applies to all citizens of Equestria and all subjects of the Crystal Empire living within fifty (50) miles of the Equestria-Crystal Empire border. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound over the Lunar Ocean. Seek immediate shelter. Stay clear of exterior windows and doors. Missiles are expected to impact the following cities: Las Pegasus, Van Hoover, Cloudsdale...






ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER.
Rainbow stumbled away from the terminal, her legs lagging behind the instructions pouring from her screaming brain. “I need to leave,” she mumbled.
Scootaloo stared after her, wide-eyed. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”
“I HAVE TO LEAVE!”
The klaxon buzzed so persistently that her eardrums ached. She went for the door, her wing lifted toward her flight jacket.
“DASH, YOU NEED TO STAY HERE!”
She stopped and turned. “I HAVE TO GET APPLEJACK!”
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER.
Scootaloo shoved her chair aside, shaking her head. “YOU WON’T GET THERE IN TIME! SHE’LL BE SAFE IN THE PILLAR! STAY HERE!”
She felt the thumping of hooves against the other side of the door. Scootaloo made a frustrated noise neither of them could hope to hear and reached past her to unlock it. “WE NEED TO GET TO THE LOWER LEVELS.”
The door swung open, thumping Rainbow in the shoulder as Scootaloo’s security detail swarmed inside. “MA’AM, WITH US PLEASE.”
Alarms blared from both sides of the door now. Rainbow squeezed around, startling the gathered security ponies, and shoved her way out into the hall. 
“RAINBOW!”
She forced herself not to answer. Every fiber in her body was moving by instinct alone, taking her down wonderfully decorated hallways and toward the elevator. Her heart was hammering in her throat when she reached the silver doors and punched the recall button. She hit it again, holding her hoof against it in a fruitless effort to make the lift move quicker. 
She felt the thump of hooves against the carpet just as a pair of diminutive tangerine wings wrapped themselves tightly around her neck. 
Scootaloo clung to her. Not to drag her back into the reinforced bowels of her shelter, she realized. Just to say goodbye. Taking a breath, Rainbow settled her feathers around her friend and squeezed. They remained there, neither letting go, until the elevator doors chimed open.
Standing on the tips of her hooves, Scootaloo pressed her muzzle against Rainbow’s ear. “Fly fast.”
She squeezed Scootaloo one last time, knowing in her heart of hearts that this would be the last time they would see each other. Letting her go, she stepped onto the elevator and pressed the button that would carry her up to the lobby, both of them knowing she would never make it to Canterlot. That she stood little chance of reaching her assigned Stable before the bombs began to fall. That for all intents and purposes, she was resolved to go to her death doing the only thing she could.
Trying.
The elevator doors rolled closed, silencing the noise and sparing her from having to watch Scootaloo be pulled away. The floor pressed gently against her hooves, ferrying her up to the surface of a nation bracing for the imminent coming of death.







Safely beneath the dense canopy of clouds, with the four of them cruising eastward on the final leg of a long journey, Aurora felt an almost giddy excitement swell her chest. The last of the Pleasant Hills slowly shrank away far beneath her dangling hooves, the terrain resolving into a lumpy, rolling curtain of low hills and shallow gulches that bore a striking resemblance to the comforter on a half-made bed. 
The highway that had taken them this far zigged and zagged through the rumpled foothills, occasionally crossing paths with nearly identical ribbons of asphalt running north and south. She couldn’t help but stare down at the complicated geometry that branched each of these crossroads together; filaments of concrete climbing artificial hills to connect the lanes of one artery to the lanes of the other which hung precariously above its dance partner on gargantuan concrete pillars.
This was it, she realized. They were really here. The tiny villages and quaint farming communities that dotted the empty landscape were quickly being replaced by larger pockets of prewar sprawl. The little roads that branched off the main highway no longer stretched out to nowhere. They were buttressed by larger and larger networks of narrow streets, forming dozens and then hundreds of neatly organized squares along which she could just make out the remains of centuries-old neighborhoods. An organized, thought out version of what Blinder’s Bluff had grown into.
They were too high, nearly high enough to graze the lower edges of the clouds, to make out any signs of survivors living amongst the ruins. But something told her that come nightfall there would be pockets of firelight blooming here and there among the suburbs. Just enough to tell the skies: We’re still here. We’re the ones who survived.
Something brushed against her ear. She gave it a flick and glanced back at Roach, who looked entirely preoccupied with something else. As much as a ghoul could, he wrinkled his nose at the dirty clouds overhead. She sympathised. They all would have preferred the endless blue vista and crisp air of the open sky above, but they had agreed to let Julip take the lead from here on out. She was the only one who knew exactly where they needed to land to avoid being shredded by the Steel Ranger’s mysterious Vhannan cannons, and none of them wanted to risk overshooting their target only to dip below the clouds and into the sensor range of those weapons.
Far ahead, tracing out a hazy bump on an otherwise flat horizon, stood the city center itself. Aurora stole a glance at her Pip-Buck and fought the urge to celebrate with an excited whoop. The little device chugged as it struggled to process the myriad of highways, roads, avenues and side streets that mercilessly converged in finer and finer detail toward the little green icon labeled FILLYDELPHIA. They were here. She’d lost count of the days, but it didn’t matter. They were-
Her ear snapped again, causing her to bank slightly and shoot an accusing look over her shoulder. The slight change in pitch seemed to jostle him out of whatever thoughts were consuming him, and he looked genuinely surprised to see her expression.
Another flick. This time, she caught the faintest glimpse of bronze light in the corner of her eye. The pinched smile forming on Roach’s face confirmed her suspicion and she looked across the narrow gap off her right wing, where Ginger rode atop Julip’s shoulders with an expectant grin.
“Took you long enough,” she teased.
Julip glanced back at her precious cargo, then Aurora, then rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the highway below. 
Aurora gave her wings a quick pump and rejoined their rough formation. Eyeing the dimming wisp of magic around Ginger’s horn, she said, “The universe gives you the power to manipulate reality and you’re using it to mess with my head.”
Ginger chuckled. “You looked ready to pop, dearheart. And besides, picking on you is my responsibility. Nay, my duty.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Oh, keep it up. I’m not keeping track or anything.”
The unicorn shrugged and lit her horn. A pulse of magic flickered directly in Aurora’s path, replacing the empty air with a near perfect sphere of cloud that hadn’t been there before. The dusty brown vapor swept harmlessly over her and Roach, eliciting an irritated snort from the latter. As Ginger giggled from her perch atop Julip, Aurora glanced back to see Roach scrubbing his nose against the inside of his foreleg. Further behind them, she spotted an unmissable void in the cloud cover where Ginger had plucked the boulder-sized blob from.
Her practice was paying off since she fired off her first teleportation spell on the outskirts of Kiln. Aurora couldn’t help but add a playful edge to her warning, if for no other reason than to give Ginger a reason to show off. 
“Keep it up, you,” she chuckled. “You’re just going to make it harder on yourself later on.”
Ginger answered with a smirk, and her horn swirled with renewed magic.
“Actually, if you could hold off throwing more clouds at us,” Roach rumbled, his voice showing the first touches of real irritation. “There’s something in them that I’m not liking.”
Aurora frowned, and Ginger’s horn went dark as the mood among them shifted from a lively back and forth to subdued concern. Before either of them could ask what was wrong, Julip took the initiative to start a shallow descent.
“Come on,” she called back. “We’re going to need to land soon anyway. Let’s get some distance from the clouds.”
Pitching forward, Aurora followed.
As she drew level with Julip’s wingtip, the freshly former corporal of the Enclave looked over to Roach and watched him. Aurora realized that there was a faint touch of worry in her eyes, something she didn’t seem to want any of them to see. When she caught Aurora looking, Julip pinched her lips into a line and faced forward.
To Roach, she said, “You’re having a reaction to the fallout. It usually clears up after a minute.”
He squeezed an eye shut, clearing his throat harshly enough to shudder down his hooves and into Aurora’s shoulders. She grimaced as a pang of guilt bloomed in her chest.
“I assume you’re going to explain how you know that,” Ginger pressed.
“There can’t be any fallout up here,” Roach grumbled. “It settled out of the atmosphere months after the bombs landed.”
Julip avoided eye contact as she led their descent, aiming toward the same highway that the centaurs had forced them to flee from days earlier.
“It did, but that hasn’t stopped us…” Julip paused to correct herself. “...stopped the Enclave from pumping it back into the sky. We… they seed the clouds with it.”
Aurora looked to Ginger to see if she understood what Julip was saying. Judging by her expression, she did.
“Ginger?”
The unicorn pulled a face as if she’d bitten into something bitter. She looked to Aurora, then to Roach, almost apologetically. “My father used to call it New Canterlot’s ‘Return to Sender’ initiative. Some of the ponies we owned would be sold off to work the quarries under what’s left of Canterlot Mountain, usually the ones that fell below quota in our fields. Unicorns typically mine the minerals irradiated by the bombs that collapsed the mountain while teams of earth ponies haul it up to the processing plants further up slope. It gets pulverized, fed to the weather factories at the peak and injected into the sky.” 
Aurora could feel Roach shift with growing irritation. “They’re irradiating the clouds on purpose.”
Ginger said nothing, but Julip answered for her. “There’s a popular theory within the Enclave that Equestria fired the first missile, and Vhanna was forced to retaliate. Nobody believes the Elements of Harmony would sanction a first strike, so the blame usually goes to someone in the Equestrian military with an itchy trigger-feather. The Steel Rangers were born from what remained of that military, so sending up all the irradiated soil from Enclave territory to blot out the sky over the Rangers has some popular appeal among the citizenry.”
“That’s asinine,” Roach growled. “Poisoning the sky doesn’t just hurt the Rangers, and it’s half the reason so many ponies are dead-set against the Enclave in the first place.”
Julip continued to watch the ruins below. “I never said it made sense. It’s just something they do.”
A thought occurred to Aurora, another piece of the puzzle clicking into place. “That’s where the radstorms come from, isn’t it.”
Julip nodded again. “It’s deliberate. Just enough particulate to keep the clouds from breaking up, but not enough to let any of the trapped moisture rain out of the sky. The Enclave has enough salvaged data from the prewar weather factories to ride that razor’s edge for centuries, uninterrupted. If ever there is an atmospheric disturbance, the radstorms balance it out before a drop hits the ground.”
“Which is why Equestria is still a barren dust bowl,” Aurora muttered.
Julip clucked her cheek and pointed a feather at her. “Bingo.”
“That’s…”
It dawned on her that she didn’t know how to finish her sentence. Nothing Julip was saying sounded exaggerated. If anything, it was more likely she was leaving details out. Not to protect any Enclave secrets, but to keep it simple enough for Aurora to grasp. It wasn’t just the pegasi who bore Enclave insignia who supported poisoning the sky. The general population, civilian families like Ginger’s seemed to be going along with it. Even going so far as to provide material support to keep the quarries filled and the machines running, bent toward something as mindless as smearing the very soil of Old Canterlot over an otherwise beautiful dome of blue and gold.
And for what? Pure spite. An entire industry that existed for the sole purpose of saying fuck you to the other side.
Minutes passed in destitute silence. Once again, the wasteland had found a way to kill what little joy tried to sprout in it. As Julip led them toward the sprawling ruins below, the silhouette of Fillydelphia began to resolve out of the haze. A foggy blotch grew into a cluster of straight, vertical edges that reached toward but never managed to touch the dirty overcast sky. There were some buildings that seemed to be half-finished. Spikes of steel jutted out from stone facades, like the boards of a broken picket fence, shards of what had been monolithic towers snapped in half by some impossible wind. 
Before she could make out more detail, Julip’s wings flared as she slowed to land. Aurora mimicked her form, turning her feathers against the current of air as they bent their trajectory toward a cluster of short buildings just a few blocks west of what had been the main highway but had become something closer to a boulevard.
They touched down on a roof of an abandoned convenience store framed on all sides by a crumbling brick half-wall. As Roach and Ginger dismounted, Julip motioned toward them with a hoof while simultaneously pressing a single feather to her lips. They followed her, silently, toward the rusting remains of a bulky air conditioning unit near the center of the roof. The flaking tar paper crunched like leaves beneath their hooves as they retreated from view of the nearby street, gathering in the shadow of the dead machine.
Almost immediately, Julip slid off her mailbag and began rummaging through the contents. From it she retrieved a battered leather jacket nearly identical to the one Ginger had lost to the grubby-hooved wall guards at Blinder’s Bluff. They watched as the mare folded her wings behind her back far enough that they criss crossed over her spine. Aurora winced, but Julip didn’t bat an eye as she picked up the collar with her teeth and flung it across her back, obscuring her feathers.
“We need to find you something to cover up your wings,” she said, nodding at Aurora while she fished her forelegs through the jacket’s sleeves.
She wasn’t so sure that was necessary. “Elder Coldbrook already knows we’re headed this way. The Rangers will probably be expecting me.”
“Probably,” Julip agreed. “That’s the problem. Rangers aren’t stupid. They know how to count, and if they’re expecting three ponies to show up and see four of us, they’re going to start wondering who I am. You might be able to wear your feathers through the checkpoints without getting shot, but I can’t. Best that we pose as travellers until we’re inside the city, then we can start working our way to Stable-Tec Headquarters.”
Aurora hummed thoughtfully as Julip slung her mailbag back over her neck with her teeth. “You make it sound like you’ve been here before.”
Julip shrugged. “I haven’t, but I had to memorize a lot of maps before I qualified for field duty. The Rangers fortify their strongholds the same way for the larger cities. Multiple checkpoints at the outskirts, anti-air batteries covering the interior, lots of ponies in power armor watching the roads in between. Stable-Tec HQ should be near the metro area, but I don’t remember exactly where. You’ll have to guide us there with your Pip-Buck.”
She nodded, checking her own map to get a better idea of the city’s layout. The densest chunk of Fillydelphia, the metro area as Julip called it, was unmistakably highlighted by the convergence of dozens of roads and railway lines centered along a wide ribbon of water aptly named the Fillydelphia River. It traveled a few miles south of the city before emptying out into the Celestial Sea, a vast body of water simply represented by the absence of data on the map.
On the far side of the city, tucked away on the strip of land bordered by river and sea waited the waypoint she had set more than a week ago while making preparations to leave Stable 10. A simple green square simply marked STHQ.
Less than twenty miles from the rooftop they currently stood on.
She swallowed. The urge to bolt into the sky and make a bee-line straight to her destination was immense, cannons be damned.
“Ginger, it’ll draw less suspicion if you’re carrying Aurora’s rifle.”
Aurora blinked. “Wait, a minute.”
“No bite trigger,” Julip stated, nodding to the weapon in question. “Once we get you covered up, you’re an earth pony. Doesn’t make sense for earth ponies to carry a rifle like that, especially without a bite trigger. Besides, if we get into trouble, Ginger won’t have to tear off a disguise to use it.”
“You’ve given this some thought,” Roach murmured.
Julip nodded. “Have been since you told me where we’re going. Try to bear with me for a while. This won’t be comfortable, but it’ll get us through.”
Aurora sighed, then lifted Desperate Times over her shoulder and held the strap out for Ginger. Her counterpart surrounded it in her magic, taking care to settle the weapon along her left side where the hooks she’d added for Aurora’s wings would be somewhat obscured from view.
“What else?” she asked.
Julip paused. “How many caps do we have?”
The three of them pulled a variety of faces.
“Maybe a hundred,” Aurora offered. “Not many. Most of what we had left from selling that spritebot were in Roach’s bags when the centaurs attacked.”
“What about the map you took off of Quincy?”
She frowned, shed her saddlebags and shifted some of the contents until she found the item in question. “I doubt it’s worth anything,” she said, giving it to Julip whose brow furrowed at the highlighted network of roads. “No x marks the spot that I could see, anyway.”
Julip grunted. “Looks like an early snapshot of F&F Mercantile’s supply lines.”
“So about as valuable as any other roadmap out here. That explains why Quincy didn’t try to stop me from taking it.”
“Quincy wasn’t looking to start a competing trade company,” Julip said. “But a lot of ponies are now that a certain two mares blew up the local monopoly. We might not need to bribe anyone with this.”
Aurora looked to Ginger, who shrugged. Roach was the only one who seemed to follow where Julip was headed, but he only tipped his nose back to the short green mare when they looked to him for explanation.
“Okay,” Julip said, gears spinning. “First we get you a disguise. Then we sneak onto the main road and slow roll until we find a mark.”
Aurora hesitated. “Repeat that last part again?”
A wry smile crossed Julip’s muzzle as she rolled up the map and slipped it in her satchel. “In the words of the late great Twilight Sparkle, it’s high time we went out and made some new friends,” she said. Grinning, she added, “We’re going to buy our way into a caravan.”







When Rainbow Dash envisioned visiting Opal’s department, she imagined a white, open office space lined wall-to-wall with ponies seated at cubicles doing the diligent work of maintaining the Stable’s digital systems. When the door hissed open, she was greeted with a room not much larger than the compartment she’d just left. 
A rectangular conference room table butted up against the far wall and still managed to dominate the workspace. A well-used whiteboard hung from the same wall, different shades of marker scribbled in different wingwriting to form a densely cluttered, yet strangely organized framework of tasks. Colorful plastic magnets kept additional notes and even a few doodles pinned to the board. 
Spread across the conference table was what Rainbow could only describe as madness. Desk toys shared space with disassembled terminals. Cables snaked from soldering irons, work terminals and test equipment toward holes cut through the surface of the table. Aluminum trays of half-eaten food sat nestled beside more than one of the work stations, pushing aside electrical components for devices she couldn’t identify.
Six pegasi looked up from their terminals, including a stallion seated in the corner with a Wonderbolts branded thermos pressed to his lips. All eyes went to Sledge. Then, as if on cue, they shifted down to Rainbow Dash.
The stallion in the corner took one look at her mane and choked.
Sledge didn’t give them time to gush. “Opal in her office?”
A mare seated nearest them nodded, her eyes wide as saucers as she lifted a helpful wing toward a door on the right side of the cluttered whiteboard. He had to squeeze his frame between their chairs and the wall, and somehow he managed not to break anything on his way to Opal’s door. Rainbow followed, stealing a glance at the stallion in the corner and shooting him a quick smile that left him gaping.
When the door dropped shut behind them, she let out a bright peel of laughter. Or as bright as it could be with her throat feeling like two sheets of wet sandpaper all the time. Sledge rolled his eyes at the mare seated behind a simple desk barely a few steps from the door. If the workspace behind them was small, Opal’s office was a shoebox.
The elderly mare tore a bite off the half-eaten bagel in her wing and hurried to finish chewing as she pushed her lunch to the side of her desk. She dusted the crumbs out of her wings and sat up. “Got here quicker ‘n I thought. I’ve got that surveillance tape decrypted like yeh wanted.” She waggled a feather at Rainbow. “Glad yer in good spirits. Don’t suppose I can convince yeh to skip the viewin’ so’s not to ruin yer mood?”
Rainbow’s smile faltered. “How bad is it?”
Opal’s gaze drifted to the screen on her desk. “It ain’t pretty, but… I s’pose you’ve seen uglier things. Come on around. I got it queued up.”
She stepped one way and Sledge went the other, rounding the desk for a clear view of Opal’s terminal. The overstallion’s hind leg thumped a metal bookcase along the wall as he turned, causing a row of labeled binders to tilt but not quite far enough to fall.
“Mix those up and you’ll be the one reorganizin’ em,” Opal warned without any heat in her voice. Sledge lifted his wing from its leather guard and pressed the binders flush with the shelf before he got himself in any more trouble.
Rainbow offered him a conspiring smile before peering down at the terminal. A single frame of video stood frozen on the screen, displaying every color of the rainbow as long as that color was green. Applebloom had been a smart filly, but Rainbow never understood why Robronco couldn’t find a way to display more color than Applejack’s crappy tube television. 
Even without color, she recognized Spitfire’s swept back mane in a heartbeat. The camera peered down from the rear corner of the overmare’s office, slightly fisheyed to provide a clear view of all four walls and a single door in the farthest corner. The slats to the medallion shaped window had been pulled shut and the room was in shambles. A potted fern near the door had been shattered, leaving dark soil sprayed across the carpet. The remains of a phone lay beneath the shuttered window, wires pointing back to the desk from which it had been thrown from. The only items in the office that escaped damage were two weapons mounted on the wall behind Spitfire’s desk. A rifle and a pistol. The service weapons issued to each Wonderbolt during the war. Having never been deployed herself, Spitfire’s had been ceremonial. Rainbow remembered the day she came to her office to complain that ministry security refused to let her display them in her office because of her insistence on keeping them loaded. Battle ready, she called it. Looking back, it should have been a red flag that the mare believed the ministries should bend to her ideals. Too late, now.
Spitfire sat alone behind an ornate wooden desk, her forehead bent against her joined hooves as if in prayer. It took a moment for Rainbow to recognize her strange posture. She was crying.
Opal licked her lips and lifted a feather to the keyboard. “Like I said, it ain’t pretty.”
She hit play.







“Watch the ruts.”
“I see ‘em.”
“Then get away from ‘em.”
A beleaguered sigh, a groaning of wooden beams, and the lead wagon slowly lurched away from the fissure snaking its way toward them from the left half of the boulevard. The two trailing wagons followed, rolling past yet another easily avoided expense. The earth pony pulling the lead wagon, a cross between a workhorse and a small building, muttered something impolite beneath his breath that only the caravan leader was able to hear.
It quickly led to a heated exchange of whispers between the two. Judging by the comparable bulk of the caravan leader, the two stallions were obviously related.
Following behind the lead wagon, Aurora only half-listened to the two stallions arguing. She was still trying to comprehend just how easy it was for Julip to buy protection from this little caravan. 
“This isn’t fair,” she muttered.
To her right, just beyond Ginger’s pinched but dutifully neutral smile, Julip only offered a smug little grin in response.
Ahead, the wagon crunched over the scaling concrete, a form of decay Roach attributed to the seawater that the eastern breeze brought in from the other side of the looming towers. A part of her wanted to ask whether that had anything to do with the aggressively orange smears of fresh rust along all the doorframes, hinges, and myriad of other poles, boxes and signs bolted along the sidewalks. 
Sidewalks. She wanted to ask about those too. And the hundreds of rusting carriages shoved over their curbs, piled against the single-storey storefronts like so much detritus. 
But she was too irritated by Julip’s easy victory to broach the question.
“Absolute…” she pinched her mouth shut, leaving herself to finish the bullshit in her head. 
With her first step out of Stable 10, literally her very first step, things had found a way to go wrong immediately. The feral ghouls that attacked her in the tunnel. Her first encounter with Cider. Her last encounter with Cider. Teaching herself to use her wings only to nearly fall for a trap set by an Epicurean convoy. Trying to fly again and getting shot out of the sky by a sniper’s bullet. The fiasco at Blinder’s Bluff. The fiasco at the JetStream Array.
Coldbrook.
Gallow.
Julip.
Beans. 
Dancer and Chops.
It had to be some kind of cosmic prank. There were days when it felt like she couldn’t sneeze without setting some disaster into motion. And now, with Julip guiding them, they’d found enough discarded clothing to fashion functional disguises and managed to interrupt a trader caravan without being shot at, mugged or kidnapped. Aurora half expected the caravan leader, a middle aged stallion who introduced himself simply as Tad, to try to slap chains and collars on them in some ill-gotten callback to their encounter with the slavers of Kiln.
But he hadn’t. The caravan stopped, its guards made a show of drawing their weapons, and their leader just… talked to Julip. She explained that they were new to Fillydelphia and wanted help getting in safely, and in exchange she offered him F&F Mercantile’s map. 
And Tad accepted.
And nobody shot at them.
Aurora was almost offended by how easy Julip made it look. No, scratch that. She was offended. 
What the shit.
It took them the better part of an hour to reach the first checkpoint, but as they approached it became obvious that the contingent of armor-clad Rangers that occupied the makeshift ramparts had been monitoring their approach for several miles. A collection of iron beams and steel panels formed a wall not much different than the one that surrounded Blinder’s Bluff, with the single exception that they had constructed it in the natural choke point of a large intersection. As they approached, a rolling gate mounted on a simple cog-and-socket track slid open to allow a small wagon and its entourage of armed guards to leave. 
Without sharing so much as a word, Tad’s doppleganger maneuvered the lead wagon into the right lane. The single wagon approaching them eased into the left. The two groups passed one another with simple greetings and a few polite nods between opposing guards, and then they were behind them.
Aurora fumed.
Julip shrugged.
Clearing the checkpoint didn’t take long. Two ponies stomped out of the gate in full power armor, one stopping to ask Tad a series of boilerplate questions while the other made his way down the caravan, stopping to peer into the canvas covers that shaded their contents. Aurora thought she met the eye of the pony performing the inspection, but she could hardly be sure when all she could see was her own reflection in his visor. 
To her relief, he didn’t ask about the ragged coat she wore over her wings. He probably couldn’t even smell the stink that wafted off the rotting fabric, a byproduct of the semi-damp muck Julip found it in. For all intents and purposes, Aurora looked and smelled like a vagrant. Ginger, donning a stained and faded purple ball cap bearing the stitched logo of a cereal brand called Fizzy Berry Pops!, drew slightly more attention with the few sprigs of fiery mane poking out from under the hat but still garnered no suspicion beyond her strange fashion statement. 
Roach, however, gave the stallion in armor pause as he made his way back up the caravan.
“What happened to you?” came the modulated voice from within the suit. 
He cocked a brow, then made a show of looking down at himself. “Too much radiation in my diet,” he rumbled.
The Ranger persisted. “Funny. I’m asking about your skin.”
Aurora felt herself tensing. Here it was. The other shoe finally dropped. Fate finally tracked down that string and gave it a hard yank. Nothing could ever be this easy.
Roach let out a sigh touched with exasperation. “I helped a young mare escape a raider ambush a ways west of here. Raiders didn’t like that and put a rope around my neck. Took me to their camp and forced me to stand in their cookfire hoping I’d burn to death. Turns out ghouls don’t burn to death so easy.”
The Ranger paused, his helmet turning slightly to the blackened chitin of Roach’s hide as he absorbed the blatant lie. There was a hint of apology in his voice when he spoke. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No hard feelings. Are we good?”
The helmet tipped up and down with a single, uncomfortable nod. As he stomped up the road to rejoin his partner, the four of them could hear the latter stallion utter a quiet, “dumbass,” as he motioned for the contingent on the wall to open the gate. The wall of steel rolled aside and they passed into Ranger territory without so much as a challenge. 
A second checkpoint waited for them a mile up the road, the blockade clearly visible in the distance from the first. Getting clearance to go through was even easier than the first. Another duo of Rangers greeted them at the gate, and this time they simply verified over radio what the stallions at the first checkpoint had observed. A head count was taken, verified, and the gate rolled open without a word exchanged between Tad or the Rangers. 
The boulevard that stretched beyond the gate was nothing like the highway they’d followed for the last several days. Aurora’s eyes went wide. Bombs or no bombs, it was clear that the ruins of Fillydelphia were still very much alive.
The skyscrapers of the city center dominated the skyline ahead, but leading up to it was a long road of smaller buildings in varying states of dilapidation, decay or deconstruction. A short queue of chuck wagons and carts waited their turn to be let through the gates. Traders, Ginger explained, headed out west in search for more of their preferred wares. Much like the caravan Tad led, most of the wagons they passed bore fresh coats of paint over what had once been F&F Mercantile logos. Some of those traders were still in the process of conducting last-minute business while they waited, serving those ponies who saw the opportunity to make a deal with traders eager to make a few extra caps on their way out the gate.
As they passed the queue, Aurora could better see the patchwork of mangled storefronts lining the sidewalk that had been repurposed again and again over the decades. Shattered display windows had been closed up with a seemingly random assortment of lumber, scrap metal and whatever else these ponies had been able to get their hooves on. Wide slashes of paint, salvaged marquees, even some cobbled together letters taken from a slew of what appeared to be road signs advertised a few small businesses along the boulevard. Others simply informed passers-by to stay out or risk eating a bullet.
Those that weren’t occupied were actively being torn down for scrap materials, and most of them had already been ripped down to the studs. The discolored gaps between what had once been an unbroken row of buildings reminded her a little of Gallow’s picket-fence smile. She pushed the memory away, annoyed that her mind always seemed to find a reason to dredge the young ghoul up.
“S’pose you’ll be wanting the guided tour?”
Aurora’s ears perked up. Tad had sidled alongside Roach, though he was looking to Julip for her answer. 
“Whatever will help us get to where we’re going. We don’t plan to stay long.”
Tad collected his thoughts, his black-tipped ears lowering a little as he worked out how to pare down what must have been a mountain of information. Aurora let herself smile a little. She had the exact same problem when new pegasi were assigned to Mechanical. Anyone unfortunate enough to ask her where the brass fittings were would undoubtedly get the life story of why the brass fittings were there. 
The caravan leader puffed out a sigh and gestured a hoof in a wide sweep, indicating the makeshift storefronts lining the street. “Well, right now we’re in what the locals like to keep calling the Suburbs. Majority of your low value trade’s gonna take place around here. Components, common scrap, junk, just about anything you might need in a pinch but would be wasting your own time to steal. Joys of living close to the wall. Ain’t technically a suburb, though. Those’re back the way we came. Funny thing about that. After the bombs hit…”
“What about the towers?” Ginger prompted. 
Aurora stifled a smirk.
“Hm.” Tad stared out at the concrete pillars and shrugged. “There’s going to be where you find most’ve what you need. Weapons, armor, plenty of ponies what know how to turn a wrench if you’re looking for repairs. What else… oh! See those buildings with all the glass on them?”
Aurora budged over so Ginger could see past the wagon. It took a moment for any of them to see which tower he was pointing at. At first glance, none of Fillydelphia’s remaining structures had many if any windows to speak off. Here and there a shard might reflect some of the midday gloom, but it was only until Ginger directed Aurora’s attention to a pair of identical spires that she noticed a few rust streaked sheets of what had once been a resplendent greenish-blue glass facade. 
The more Aurora paid attention, the more she noticed. The city skyline had not suffered the end of the modern world unscathed. Many of the structures tall enough to be seen from here bore signs of massive damage. Large swaths of stonework had been flayed from their steel girders, the bulk of it beginning from the left side of each structure and peeling away toward the relatively shielded surfaces on the right. Many of the towers were frozen in a state of partial collapse, some even tilted so far off their foundations that their rooftops had come crashing against their neighbors before settling.
The towers that Tad was indicating stood on the far right extremity of the metro area and, with the exception of the superficial damage to their facades, looked to have been completely shielded from the blast that tortured its windward counterparts. Aurora stole a glance at her Pip-Buck, the gently bouncing needle on its display confirming elevated radiation. A balefire bomb had landed nearby.
“That’s Magnus Plaza. Steel Rangers run the show in Fillydelphia from there. If you’re in the market for some freelance work, that’s the place to go.”
He nodded to Aurora. “Might wanna stow that Pip-Buck of yours if you end up heading that way. Just a suggestion.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she murmured.
Tad shrugged, shifting his attention back to Julip. “Headed anywhere in particular?”
Julip glanced her way, and she offered a single nod in answer. 
“Stable-Tec HQ.”
The stallion frowned. “Huh. Alright. I’m guessing there was another Stable collapse.”
Aurora shook her foreleg until the ragged sleeve of her jacket obscured her Pip-Buck. “We’re just here to sight-see.”
Tad hummed, his eyes drifting to the lump at the end of her sleeve, and just as quickly his interest in her evaporated. “Well, I’ll give you some free advice since you’re headed that way. Stop in the city first and pick up some lead-shielded armor. Those rags aren’t going to stop the radiation on their own.”
She shot him an wary frown. “Care to elaborate?”
He just chuckled. “You really are tourists, aren’t you?”
She waited. Eventually he relented and tipped his muzzle just beyond the northern skyline.
“Look, I’m not sure what you’re hoping to find over there, but take some precautions. That side of town has been glowing since the world came to an end.” Seeing her confusion, he took a breath and sighed.
“Stable-Tec Headquarters got flattened,” he said. “Where do you think the bomb dropped?”







Aurora stared at the winding cracks in the concrete as they slid beneath her hooves. That edge of panic was back, clawing at her chest in search of a way out. She felt sick. Tears pricked at her eyes as she alternated between trying not to think about what Tad had told them, and not being able to take her mind off of it.
Stable-Tec Headquarters was gone. Flattened was the word he used. The target of one of the world ending weapons that forced one lucky sliver of the population underground while the rest was left to fend for themselves on the surface. A weapon destructive enough to mandate the use of a blast door so over engineered that the mere sight of it had humbled her, a pony who had come to be familiar with prewar tech as if it were a second skin.
If Stable-Tec’s only known operational hub was gone, what chance did Stable 10 even have anymore? What did it matter whether Coldbrook wanted to pry it open if it had been doomed to collapse from the start? What was the point of coming all this way to the ruins of a city a thousand miles from home?
The great towers of Fillydelphia loomed directly overhead now. Earth ponies and unicorns wandered the shaded sidewalks while others pulled ramshackle wagons behind them. Hundreds of darkened windows hung above them, some of them covered with colorful sheets and bits of wood while the majority just stood empty. Dark, black voids where a bomb that would continue to punish the world centuries later had shattered every shard of hope it could reach.
The one thing that gave her comfort was the welcome warmth of Ginger’s shoulder against hers. She could feel it through her tattered, reeking coat and knew without speaking a word that Ginger was letting her know she wasn’t alone in this. 
It helped.
Not much. But it helped.
Tad and his wagons departed with a sincere good luck and just a touch of apology for being the bearer of unwelcome news. He left them among the vast stone behemoths of central Fillydelphia, surrounded by the sights and sounds of a city in the midst of rebuilding itself. It would take many more generations before Fillydelphia would ever boast a population like the one it had before the war, but it was well on its way. 
She assumed they had to be close to Magnus Plaza given how many Steel Rangers she was seeing. They walked the sidewalks, monitored the crowds gathering around temporary trade stalls, and she even caught sight of a uniformed mare seated at what appeared to be a genuine restaurant of sorts, enjoying a bowl of something steamy that was being served in front of a partially collapsed bank. Unlike the Rangers of Blinder’s Bluff who felt like an occupying force, the Rangers here felt less intrusive. Present, unmistakably so, but almost as if they were an ingredient in a recipe rather than the spoon that stirred it.
At an arbitrary intersection, one piled on each corner with more abandoned carriages, Aurora reluctantly took a left turn north. The others followed. No one seemed up for small talk anymore. They knew where she was going.
She ignored the traders that shouted after them, boasting their wares. Dressed as they were, they hardly stood out. Ponies made way for them and they did the same in turn. They passed by several vendors who hung painted signs along their wagons advertising armor, vestments, and fresh clothing. Aurora didn’t stop at any of them. She overheard Julip ask Roach whether they should take Tad’s advice and pick up some lead shielding, and he quietly asked her what they expected to trade to pay for it. They barely had twenty-five caps for each of them. As far as buying new gear was concerned, they were broke.
An hour later, the city center was behind them and their collective mood darkened even further as the short buildings along Fillydelphia’s northeast side began to show clear signs of catastrophic damage. No junk shops were open for business here. No ponies enjoying lunch on the sidewalk. No Rangers patrolling the road. The asphalt itself buckled and heaved up from the roadway as if a giant’s hoof had shoved it away from the blast site. Before they went further, Julip stopped them long enough to tap out double doses of Rad-X from a little glass bottle tucked within her bag. 
“We should have enough time to take a look depending on how bad the radiation is.”
As it turned out, the radiation wasn’t bad at all. Aurora’s Pip-Buck chittered and spat with a little more energy than it had before, but even as the shattered buildings around them devolved into charred timbers, empty foundations and finally no foundations at all, the gauge’s needle barely grazed the bottom edge of yellow.
As they stepped onto the edge of ground zero, she understood why.
The charred soil surrounding the bomb crater had consumed the better part of ten city blocks from end to end. Within that radius, nothing had survived. Not even the pavement of the street they followed to get here. In the span of a nanosecond, all of it - every building, every carriage, every pony caught in the epicenter - had been converted into a sphere of superheated plasma. Erased from existence as if they had never been there in the first place. The ground itself had been carved away leaving behind flecks of glass and hardpack soil that sloped gently toward the pit at its center.
A pool of stagnant water the color of vomit had seeped in to fill the crater. Dust and debris collected on its surface forming a frothy skin around the outer edge. They approached the crater, coming a stone’s throw away before Aurora’s Pip-Buck finally started chattering with enough emphasis to halt their progress.
Looking down at her map confirmed her fear. Her little waypoint marked STHQ lay dead in the middle of the crater. This had been where Stable-Tec’s headquarters once stood. This was the place she’d fought day after day to reach, hoping that her salvation would be waiting inside the same building that gave birth to so many places of refuge. Hoping that somewhere inside, she would find what she needed to rescue the one she called home.
But there was nothing left. Only glass.
She sat down, staring into the crater, too numb for words.







Delta pressed a feather against the headset hooked to her ear. “Okay, good. Now try applying a little more lateral rotation until your right hind leg can reach the… you got it. Good job, kiddo.”
Apogee was breathing hard as she came over the radio. “Thanks. Give me a second to catch my breath, okay?”
She watched Apogee thump her helmet against the one-to-one mockup of SOLUS’s cylindrical core module, a factory perfect replica of the one currently holding formation in geostationary orbit over Equestria. The wafer-thin display mounted to her foreleg gave her an unobstructed feed to the camera mounted to the helmet of the safety diver behind her. 
“I’ll give you sixty, then back on mission. I want you to get a feel for how the suit moves with the reaction control surfaces disabled.”
She smirked at the sound of Apogee’s groan and tapped the mute button on her headset. “Well, she hasn’t fired me yet.”
“Might have something to do with you being her mother.”
She arched a brow at Jet, who had taken to following her on her slow laps around the behemoth swimming pool. Of course, he wouldn’t be satisfied with just calling it a pool. As always, anything owned by JetStream Industries had to be branded by JetStream Industries. His cumbersomely titled Neutral Buoyancy Workshop was a simple and, admittedly, clever solution to training the reflexes of his potential astronauts to work in microgravity. Today, as with every foreseeable Wednesday going forward, was Apogee’s scheduled day for eight luxurious hours of extravehicular practice. It was also Delta’s best chance to expose any unforeseen problems in the operation of her vacuum suit.
“Might have something to do with not wanting to be the first mare to suffocate in space,” she countered, spurring a discomfited frown from Jet.
Let him fidget, she decided. He was the one who wanted to pack her into a bulky marshmallow of a suit which would have ballooned in size the moment it hit vacuum. No amount of funding was going to help him see past his blind spots. Apogee was right to ask her for help.
“Alright, kiddo, break’s over. Let’s see you reach the next hoofhold up and get into position to install Talisman Number Five.”
Apogee puffed out a little grunt. “Affirmative.”
They continued around the corner of the pool, eyes shifting between the tech on their forelegs and the rippling surface of the water. Six SOLUS modules as well as a waterproofed model of the return capsule rested below the waves like a strange flock waiting to be known by their shepherds.
“Just so you know, she doesn’t like being called kiddo,” Jet observed.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It can’t be any worse than what I’ve heard you call her. How’d your night go yesterday? Any regular guests, or have you moved past pegging your-”
He made a noise of disgust and wrapped his feathers around her muzzle while using the other wing to tap the screen fixed to his foreleg. Delta grinned beneath his carefully firm grip as a familiar, and visibly irritated grey-coated mare appeared on the screen.
“Diamond, make sure the audio records from the NBW get scrubbed for today.”
The bespectacled mare mouthed something under her breath. “I’m your lawyer, Jet, not your secretary.”
He smiled silently at the screen with a face that said, “I’m sorry, I was too busy being handsome to hear you.” 
“Fine.” Diamond reached to hang up the call, but then she narrowed her eyes at the screen and her brow flattened. “Jet, I feel the need to ask what you’re doing to your wife.”
“You’re the best,” he said, and before she could protest he cut the connection and took his feathers from Delta’s muzzle. “Please don’t bring up my private life where I have cameras installed.”
She snorted. “Embarrassed?”
He shot her a look of challenge. “If you want to have this conversation, Delta, we can. Or we can focus on ensuring our daughter survives long enough to go on more than one mission.”
His abruptness startled her silent. Jet was rarely this direct about anything, happy to rely on vague promises of financial ruin or social humiliation to get what he wanted rather than stating the facts so plainly. Delta looked back to her screen where Apogee was busy aligning one of the dummy talismans into its containment chamber.
“Sorry,” she murmured, her eyes trailing across the water to the other side of the pool. She blinked as she recognized an unmistakable flash of color standing among a small group of pegasi on the opposite end. “Should I ask why Rainbow Dash is visiting, or are you going to make me guess?”
Jet only shrugged. “She’s the entire reason SOLUS is getting off the ground. She can visit whenever she likes.”
“So you are going to make me guess.”
He rolled his eyes. “She asked if she could come out to give her old captain a tour of the facilities. Nothing formal.”
She muttered dubiously. “A tour.”
“Forget your tinfoil hat at home?”
She lifted her favorite feather at him in response. “Laugh now, but you know the government’s only helping you now so they can figure out how to fuck you later. I don’t trust them.”
It was Jet’s turn to scoff. “One of them’s an Element of Harmony.”
“I meant the ministries. Some of the things they get up to is...”
“Careful,” he warned. Lifting a wing, he waved the minister and her plus one over as if they were two of his best friends in the world. Delta watched as the commander of the Wonderbolts immediately broke off from Rainbow Dash, leaving the latter to practically trot around the pool after her. In the same motion, Jet touched a feather to his earpiece. “How’s the suit feeling, Apogee?”
Apogee’s voice puffed from beneath the ripples. “Best exercise I’ve gotten since college!”
Delta tilted a brow, her eyes fixed on the oncoming mares. “You were never in athletics.”
“Yeah, well…” she trailed off, leaving Delta to put the pieces together on her own. “The suit’s working better than expected, but it would be easier to handle these crummy little talismans if I could use my wings.”
“Those crummy talismans are the key to ending a global war, sweetheart,” Jet chided. “And until we can design a tactile interface that won’t fold your wings like a lawn chair, we’ll need to do it the earth pony way for this mission.”
“Gross visual, dad.”
“Very real failure mode, kiddo.”
Delta ignored him as he shot her a knowing look. She was here to help her daughter, not get chummy with her ex-husband.
“Let’s have you swing over to Chamber Six without guidance and compare performance once we have you out of the water. Spades is right behind you if you need an assist.”
“That’s an affirmative.” After a pause, she added, “You know, after debriefing you, me and mom should fly over to the city for something to eat. There’s this new Yakistanian place near the strip that…”
“Gonna have to stick a pin in it for now,” he said, nodding in greeting to Rainbow Dash as she and Spitfire crossed the last few yards between them.
“We could order in?” Apogee offered.
Jet smiled at his daughter’s persistence. Delta felt a touch of one graze her lip as well, but less readily.
“Next time, okay? Focus on the mission.”
A reluctant sigh. “Sir, yes sir.”
He cut the connection and dipped his head, acknowledging but not apologizing for the delay. “Minister Dash. Commander Spitfire. How goes the tour?”
Rainbow opened her mouth to speak, but Spitfire’s voice was quicker to answer. “It’s been very enlightening thus far. I wasn’t aware the Ministry of Technology’s partnership with your company allowed you access to talisman technology to this degree.”
If there was a note of disapproval in Spitfire’s voice, Delta couldn’t find it. As the mare with the orange mane glanced into the pool beside them, her eyes focused on the submerged modules and the two white-clad ponies making their way around the centermost piece of SOLUS. As Spitfire watched, Delta noticed the faintest edge of an earpiece in her ear.
“The MoT has been extremely helpful.” Jet offered her a polite smile before pointedly turning to regard Rainbow Dash. “Actually, I was hoping-”
“Have you given any additional thought to our offer?”
Delta blinked, and so did Jet as Spitfire took a half-step toward them. For a mare who some claimed was responsible for sending hundreds of Wonderbolts to be shredded apart in the Vhannan skies thanks to her lack of imagination, Spitfire had some brass clackers to shove herself back to the head of a conversation she wasn’t a part of.
Rather than shouting her down like Delta was want to do, Jet’s smile simply grew a little less polite. “I haven’t, because I have no interest in taking you up on it.”
“That really is a shame,” Spitfire persisted. “A Stable could really benefit from a mind like yours. From an investment perspective-”
“It would be a waste of my time and resources.” His patience was wearing thin, but he was miles away from losing his temper. “I have all the respect in the world for ponies like Scootaloo, but I’m not interested in putting my name on Stable-Tec’s roster. Our future lies in the stars, not below ground.”
A beat passed where nobody spoke. Even Rainbow Dash looked like a bird on the razor’s edge of leaping away to find the safety of another branch. And yet Spitfire was unfazed. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled at Jet even more broadly, then abruptly turned to regard Delta with the same potent intensity. “Then it looks like we have an open slot.”
Ten minutes later, Delta found herself seated in one of JetStream Aerospace’s lavish conference rooms. 
The sweet scent of exotic orchids meshed with the lingering stink of cigars that cost more bits than she would be lucky to make in a month. Soft, thick carpet grazed the bottoms of her hind hooves. Even the view through the wide, west-facing windows offered a picturesque scene of the grassy dunes and the crystal blue sea just beyond.
Delta paid none of it any attention. Just more ways for Jet to polish his ego in front of his guests. She shuffled through the documents on the table before her, reading and re-reading the fine print for the inevitable trap. “I don’t follow. I thought Stable-Tec was a private company. Why are the ministries choosing residents?”
Spitfire smiled at her from across the table. Beside her, Rainbow Dash said nothing. If anything, the ministry mare looked almost irritated. Probably rightfully pissed that her tour had been subverted for an unscheduled meeting.
“This Stable won’t be like the other Stables, Ms. Vee. Our ministry’s goal, should the worst ever come to pass, is to ensure the survival of the best potential Equestria’s pegasi have to offer.”
“Then you should be talking to my kid, not me.”
Spitfire idly peeled back one of her documents, skimming the signature at the bottom. “We have and she’s already accepted a leadership role within our IT staff.”
Delta blinked. Apogee had mentioned nothing about securing a spot in a Stable. When had that happened? When was she planning to tell her or Jet?
“First time hearing about it?” Spitfire posited.
A haze of shame filled her chest. She’d assumed things had been getting better between her and her daughter.
“Don’t feel bad, some ponies favor keeping the news to themselves. Registering for a Stable has something of a stigma attached to it.” Spitfire tugged the form out of her thin stack of papers and pushed it across the table. Delta took it, recognizing Apogee’s looping signature on the bottom. “I don’t blame someone with her potential celebrity wanting to keep it private. The tabloids can be merciless, as I’m sure you already know.”
Delta grit her teeth at that last bit but chose to leave it be. She drew a feather over Apogee’s Stable registration form, shaking her head. “I’m her mother.”
“You are,” Spitfire said, “which is why we’re offering you a place as well. Having a family member at wing’s reach may ease the worst of the adjustment period.”
She passed the form back across the table. “Adjustment period. You keep talking like you’re taking this end-of-the-world shit seriously. Last I heard on the news, the talismans the zebras make aren’t powerful enough to compete with my hangover pills. Did that suddenly change?”
For the first time since her arrival, Rainbow Dash spoke. “No. Vhanna doesn’t have the manufacturing capabilities.”
“Yet,” Spitfire added with a touch of force. There was clearly some kind of schism between them, but what it was was anyone’s guess. “History tells us that nothing stays a secret for very long in this world. The zebras have been following in our hoofsteps since the day Vhanna was discovered. This is strictly my opinion, but I believe there is a non-zero chance that they’ll have some form of balefire technology at their disposal within the decade. If that happens, I imagine those of us registered to a Stable will look a lot less foolish.”
A non-zero chance. Up until now, no member of Equestria’s government was even willing to entertain the idea of zebras getting a hold of balefire. Admitting such a disaster was even possible was grounds for investigation by the Ministry of Image followed by an unceremonious change in career. The fact that Rainbow Dash wasn’t moving to correct her spoke volumes.
By now, every pony in Equestria had seen the heavily redacted footage released to the press by the ministries. Shots of a towering fireball the color of emeralds boiling into the atmosphere had dominated the front of every newspaper for weeks now. Balefire: Equestria’s new superweapon that spelled inevitable defeat for the zebras. Some ponies had already begun advocating for its immediate use overseas. “Scorch the Stripes” was becoming a common phrase among the war-weary population, even while a smaller group of voices in Equestria called for laws banning the use of balefire altogether. They were widely ignored.
Delta chewed at her lip. Jet made it clear he wasn’t attaching his name to Stable-Tec. Did he know Apogee had signed up? If he had, at least she knew she wasn’t the only shitty parent in this family. 
Apogee wasn’t the type of mare to lose sleep over nothing. Signing that form meant she was spooked over this whole balefire business just like all the other ponies selling their livelihoods for a ticket in.
Spitfire was offering them that ticket for free.
She picked up the pen.
“Which one do I sign?”







Fiona hoisted her tail and the Steel Ranger behind her tripped over their hooves a second later.
“If you don’t stop that, the deal’s off.”
The gryphon whistled the first notes of If I Had a Great Long Pistol to herself and did as she was ordered, though not quickly and certainly not to any great effect. Unlike the ponies escorting her up the last winding turns of Blinder’s Bluff, her tail was all lithe muscle and peach fuzz. There were days when she would love to have the feather dusters the natural inhabitants of Equestria boasted but this was absolutely not one of those days.
The mare behind her, a cherry pink little thing whose name she hadn’t bothered to ask, was full of empty threats and not much else. She could no more rescind Coldbrook’s deal than she could stop the stallion behind her from ogling the pert little cleft she felt no guilt about putting on display. A little bit of torture for the mighty Rangers who saw fit to turn her life on its head.
They were lucky she didn’t throw them down the fucking cliff.
Padding her way along the last stretch of trail, she dug her talons just a little deeper into the soil. There were hoofprints everywhere now that they were off the cobbles. Of course Coldbrook had sent ponies up here to sniff around. She ambled into what they liked to call a trot, her larger body forcing her guard to gallop just to keep up. Let them get some exercise. Forcing her to walk was unnecessary so why shouldn’t they be forced to push out a little sweat?
Sure enough, there were signs of tampering. The fencing she had wrapped around her fire tower’s pylons had been snipped open and her little mound of scrap spritebot parts was all but picked clean. The corners of her beak tilted unhappily at the sight of so many repair projects wiped out without her being consulted. For every bot she was able to bring back and turn into a zombie, there were often up to ten Enclave sprites she could infect with her custom code before someone shot it down. Now she was going to have to start collecting all over again, and in the meantime her swarm of snoops in the wasteland would continue to dwindle.
“If any of you touched my nest,” she warned.
“If someone did, it wasn’t us,” the mare snapped back. “And put. Your. Tail. Down.”
“No.” With that, she leaped up to the railing atop the tower and dropped down onto the catwalk. The Rangers below could only watch as she walked the perimeter, looking for damage.
To her annoyance, the locked hatch she kept over the stairs had been cut open. Taking a breath, she leaned into the open door of her broadcast station and tried not to lose it at the sight of so many of her things so obviously out of place. Her chair had been pushed aside, footlockers filled with spare vacuum tubes, lengths and gauges of wire, tools and boards lay open but had thankfully gone unpilfered. Whoever had been sent up here at least knew if they wanted to ever use this station again, they would be wise not to raid her stashes. She completed the circuit and leaned against the wood railing, drooping her arms over the edge. 
“So when am I expecting scripts?”
The mare shrugged, leaving the lovestricken stallion behind her to speak up. “P-paladin Ironshod said he would have a draft up to you before your first broadcast.”
She scoffed. “A draft. And what about my bits?”
“Saw enough of those on the way up,” the mare growled.
“Yeah and I didn’t charge, so lucky you. You know what I’m talking about. My livelihood. When do I find out how much my allowance is?”
The stallion stepped in front of his counterpart. “We don’t have a timeline on that yet.”
Her tufted ears flattened. “You do realize I’m broke, right? How am I going to eat?”
“Ma’am,” he said, his tone beginning to firm up just enough to match the rest of his anatomy, “those are questions you can ask Paladin Ironshod once he returns to the Bluff. All we need to hear from you is whether your equipment is in operable condition and we’ll be on our way.”
Fiona rolled her eyes and dropped to all fours on the catwalk and returned to her overengineered broadcast booth. She leaned against the frame and scanned her little home a second time, spying a few of Lime Royale’s hoof-drawn bottles still on the floor beside her console. She made a mental note to take a few of those down to Someplace Else to redeem the deposits. It would be enough to cover a few meals and maybe even a full bottle if she could sweet talk the old goat, but if Coldbrook decided to be an asshole about her allowance she was going to need to start tapping into brothel hours again.
She blew out a sigh and pushed off the old frame. Trading sex for caps rarely bothered her unless someone got a little too clingy, or if she made the mistake of taking caps from one of the cryers. God, she hated dealing with cryers. But beside that it was lucrative, she excelled at it, and it was just fun. That is, until Coldbrook stuck his soiled little nose into it and turned it into work.
Even if he agreed to pay her his most generous estimate, which he wouldn’t, it would barely cover half of what the Rangers wanted her to pay for the electricity required to broadcast. Like it or not, she was going to have to come up with her share of the caps by the end of every month and recreational romps with the locals weren't going to cut it. That meant no more freebies, no more discounts for her favorites and definitely no more buying rounds for Lime’s regulars. 
She slumped against the railing and gave the ponies below an irritated thumbs-up. “Everything looks fine.”
The stallion nodded and started to turn away. “We’ll let Elder Coldbrook know.”
“Hey,” she said, stopping them. She lifted a finger toward the stallion. “You gotta be anywhere soon?”
He blinked. 
The mare lit her horn, the universal sign of pony mad. “We’re on duty,” she reminded him.
And with that they turned to leave. Fiona watched them, cheek in palm, then spent some time taking in the familiar vista of distant bluffs once they were gone. When that got boring she pushed off the rail and slinked back in amongst her equipment, checking to be doubly sure nothing had been tampered with.
She threw the switch on a rusty junction box she’d scribbled NO TOUCHY on and smiled as her equipment lit up. Her headphones were still where she left them by the console, the needles perched above her mix board settling into their presets where she liked them. Her transmitter showed all green, broadcast strength peaking at 20 kilowatts. She walked the cramped circle around the main console, checking outputs and settings for any signs of meddling. A little, she realized to her annoyance, but not much.
Plopping down into her modified chair, she picked up a pad and pen and scribbled herself a reminder to thank Misty Manes for being such a cantankerous bitch. When Coldbrook got the bright idea to shack her up at the one inn in the Bluff with room for a gryphon, he hadn’t bargained for the owner throwing her right back out onto the cobbles. If it weren’t for her all but nailing the doors shut to keep Fiona and what she unaffectionately referred to as her private business out of her building, Coldbrook might not have been forced to strike a deal at all.
It probably also helped that a few hundred ponies had started a letter writing campaign to get her back on the air, but she couldn’t be expected to thank them all. At least not at the same time.
Rolling her chair to the other side of her console, she flicked on the three terminals and the encoder beside them. While they warmed up she fished a bit of prewar tech she’d scavenged out of an abandoned school years ago and untangled the wire attached to the back. It had taken some creative wiring to get the JoyBoy controller to interface with the stolen encoder, but it was time well spent.
The screens flicked to life and she began flipping through them one at a time. Terminals weren’t ideal for displaying live video but they did a decent enough job as long as one wasn’t bothered by having neon green light burned into their retinas. Fiona solved this problem by reaching between the terminals and fishing out a pair of too-small, pink framed sunglasses intended for a pony of questionable taste. She dropped them onto the bridge of her beak and scanned the screens for anything interesting.
The feeds flipped from spritebot to spritebot and she quickly began to settle into her old routine. If she was going to go live tonight she needed something to talk about other than whatever pro-Ranger garbage Ironshod had left for her before he bolted out into the wasteland for who knew what reason. She was five days behind on anything worth reporting and while the ponies of Blinder’s Bluff tried to keep her in the loop, nobody would tune in for long if all she had to offer were the rumors everyone already knew.
Her thumbs tapped the controller this way and that through the network of spritebots she’d been able to spread her software into. It had taken her years to build up her little army of mechanical eyes and while they still regularly went offline due to scavengers, wildlife, and some very annoyed Enclave technicians, it was rare for her to get caught peeping. Whenever that happened, she could kiss that spritebot bye-bye. 
She started flicking through them at random, looking for patterns in what she was seeing that might indicate some interesting activity. Unsurprisingly there were several vantage points of the JetStream Solar Array down south. The Enclave always liked to watch the Rangers whenever they were doing something abnormal. All there was to see this morning were a few dozen patrols and a couple ponies stomping around in power armor. If the deathclaw was still there, the Rangers seemed not to care. Probably it had just moved on back to its old territory.
One drifted on its own around the perimeter of an old settlement up north, watching regular ponies doing regular pony things. Another hovered through a patch of woods that she recognized as the forest not too far west of here. She wasn’t sure what that one was up to and gave it a few minutes before moving on. A few empty roads, a caravan unaware it was being monitored, more roads, a trio of raiders snoring the morning away under a strip of canvas, more roads.
Lots of roads. Equestria had too many roads.
She frowned when she came across a pocket of activity further west. Two different angles of the same old mountain, the foot of which was covered in a relatively young forest for the area. Foal Mountain, she remembered. There was always this unexplained patch of trees at the foot of it too young to have been there when the bombs fell. The two spritebots were milling around those trees, one of them using part of a prewar traffic jam as cover as it monitored a squad of Rangers on patrol. Her beak parted in recognition, remembering that this was where Coldbrook said Aurora Pinfeathers’ Stable was buried. 
From the other bot’s perspective she could see a faint haze of dust filtering between the trees, but not much else. Coldbrook had hinted that they were going to dig the Stable out but it looked like they were blasting it out instead. She kept watching the feed but nothing else happened except a brief sighting of another patrol. 
She found herself wondering about that mare and whether she was smart enough to know Coldbrook was an opportunistic dick. She probably did, or she wouldn’t have let Fiona help her get her Pip-Buck back. A pulse of anger rose in her chest at that, knowing it was her own fault for helping them. She could have said no and that would have been the end of it. No punishment, no payments due, no scripts to parrot over what was always intended to be an honest broadcast. And yet she was still pissed at Aurora. 
Grimacing, she turned off the terminals and shut off the encoder. She needed sleep or her debut broadcast was going to be worse than Ironshod planned to make it, and she wasn’t going to sleep if she didn’t get something to eat.
Gathering up three of Lime’s bottles, she stepped out into the morning and hopped off the railing. The news could wait. Aurora could wait. She could do the broadcast ad-lib and fill the empty air with good music. Bring some cheer back into the lives of these horny little horses, even if she had to do a little work to make it happen.
Come sunset, Hightower Radio would be back on the air.







“Dearheart, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded. It was all she could bear to do without giving into the wall of grief that felt determined to crush her. She swallowed, her eyes fixed on the charred soil beneath her hooves, letting Ginger do whatever she felt might help her cling to whatever little hope that had yet to abandon her. She swayed gently as the mare seated in the dirt beside her rubbed the muscles between her wings. It wouldn’t fix this. It wouldn’t undo all the time she’d wasted. But it felt good. If her dad were here, Aurora knew exactly what he would be thinking.
Ginger’s a keeper.
For all the trouble she dragged her into, for all the pain and suffering she’d endured all for the thin chance that she might be able to help ponies she never met but knew were important to Aurora, Ginger had stayed by her side since the start. No one would have blamed her if she’d asked to part ways after what happened at the array. None of this had been a guarantee. Choosing to come here had been a shot in the dark, but it was the shot that made the most sense from the narrow view of the world outside that Stable life afforded her. 
But she tried.
A cool breeze had started to sweep into the crater, carrying with it the smell of saltwater and the sound of waves washing the nearby beach. She had never seen the ocean before. Seen pictures, sure. Even some footage once when she was a yearling. But, as with everything in this world, never with her own eyes. 
She didn’t have time to look now. None of the pegasi she’d left behind did. 
She needed a new plan. She just didn’t know where to start.
Looking up, she was comforted to see Julip and Roach walking slow circles around the rim of the brackish pond that had risen to fill most of the crater. Roach’s hooves splatted through the sucking mud along its nearest edge while Julip kept her distance, mindful of the lingering haze of strong radiation that the water still contained. He carried on a quiet conversation with her while keeping his head low, looking for anything in the muck that might point them in a new direction. They wouldn’t find anything, but it felt good that they were taking the time to look. It probably beat sitting here with her while she felt sorry for herself.
Maybe this was it, the shoe she’d been waiting to drop. Probably not.
She set her cheek against Ginger’s shoulder and blew out a long, tired breath.
“I don’t know what to do, Ginger.”
Her companion kissed the top of her mane. “That’s okay. Let us think of the next step forward. You just focus on resting.”
She wasn’t so sure she could do that. As Roach made his third lap around the pond, she gave her head the faintest shake. “He’s not going to find anything.”
“Probably not,” Ginger agreed, watching with some amusement as the black-clad changeling gradually turned brown from speckles of mud. “But you know him as well as I do by now. He hates a puzzle he can’t solve.”
“Not much of a puzzle left,” she muttered. “Bomb vaporized all the pieces before we were born.”
Her comment gave Ginger pause, but after some thought she pressed her point. “We’re right to assume the buried lines linking the Stables have to come together somewhere. It only makes sense that they would lead to the one place Stable-Tec could monitor them.”
“Equestria’s a big place.”
“You’re right, dear, it is. But we’re here now. We may as well upend any stones we can before we leave.”
Sploosh!
Aurora’s eyes flew wide at the sight of Roach, suddenly knee-deep in the filthy water, dunking his head below the irradiated surface. Before she could think of something to shout, Ginger was already scrambling to her hooves with some choice words tumbling out of her mouth.
“Roach, get your head out of there right now!” Her attention snapped to the little green mare standing several yards away. “Julip! What does he think he’s doing?”
“Hey, fuck you! He didn’t tell me he was going for a swim!”
Aurora pushed herself up with mounting concern as Roach sloshed deeper into the pond, head still submerged. Ripples went out in every direction and even more followed as he ventured further.
“Roach!” Aurora called, placing a wing around Ginger’s shoulder and easing her back from the water’s edge. “For Celestia’s sake, he can’t hear us.”
Ginger stiffened. “Worse! He’s ignoring us.”
“Can he even swim?”
“It doesn’t matter, he’s a ghoul. He’ll die of old age before he drowns.”
Julip trotted along the circumference of the pond, stopping once she met up with them. “Why don’t you magic him out?”
Ginger shook her head, climbed a few yards up the slope of the crater, and sat back down to wait. “Because he’ll just run back in. Once he’s decided he’s finished, we’re taking him straight to the nearest decontamination shower. I’m not spending another day peeing Rad-Away because he decided to get himself irradiated.”
With nothing else to do, Aurora and Julip sat down on either side of the annoyed unicorn and turned their attention to the pond. 
Seconds passed. Then minutes. Here and there a stray bubble bounced to the surface, but Roach didn’t appear. After fifteen minutes Julip had taken to digging shallow trenches in the charred dirt, then filling them back to start again. Aurora watched plumes of tan silt rise to the surface, evidence that Roach was doing something down there to entertain himself while providing no inkling as to what that might be. 
A half hour after his swim began, it ended. A familiar black horn broke through the muck at the center of the pond, followed by the changeling attached to it. He seemed confused for a moment before finally realizing he’d come up facing the wrong way, then paddled until he spotted them along the crater’s rim.
“I found something!” he rasped.
“Did it happen to be your mind, or have you still lost that?” Ginger called back.
He was just far enough away for her to believe he hadn’t understood, but the mischievous chuckle that rode the ripples back to shore indicated otherwise.
“There’s metal at the bottom!”
Aurora wrinkled her nose with confusion. “And?”
“Metal plates!” he shouted. “A bulkhead, still intact! It looks like blast shielding!”
Her expression changed. She sat up straighter.
“Aurora, I think it’s a Stable!” He let out a wild laugh and began making his way back to shore. “There’s a Stable under Stable-Tec!”
> Chapter 31: Dive
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 31st, 1077

Delta scrunched her eye, picking at a stray nugget of gunk left over from a long night of fitful sleep. A DJ who sounded like she took her caffeine via injection kept yapping over the radio about some up and coming artist whose name Delta would probably only retain for five minutes, maybe ten if she cared even a little about the latest pony to make a million bits from singing someone else’s song.
The crust came free and she flicked it at a crumpled paper bag on the passenger seat containing the greasy crumbs of this morning’s breakfast. Red Delicious didn’t serve what most ponies would exactly call food, but it was quick and it was on Jet’s tab anyway. Besides, she might as well indulge while she still has this gig. Now that the last module of SOLUS was in orbit and her daughter with it, she had a feeling her ex-husband would find a way to “reassign” her to a certain familiar junkyard on the outskirts of town.
“...nine-thirty and it’s TIME for the TOWER OF POWER TOP TEN TUNES selected by listeners like YOU!”
Delta glowered at the radio and did some mental math. Not counting the nap she’d taken in Steepleton… eleven hours, she’d been driving. According to the ache in her back, it felt like double that. Keeping one wing hooked around the bottom of the steering wheel, she did what little she could to stretch out her confined muscles. Back in the day, she would have just flown the cross-country journey from Las Pegasus to Manehattan and worn the week’s worth of muscle strain as a badge of honor. Now they had gas powered carriages, and at Delta’s age she was pretty sure she didn’t have that kind of endurance. The last thing she wanted was to subject herself to the embarrassment of having to beg Jet to send someone out to pick her up.
In the rear mirror the boxy frame of a hay hauler drew steadily closer. Bits of loose straw blew off the ridiculous stack of bales strapped behind the cab, most likely on its way to one of the beef farms tucked away in the area. She ignored it. Gryphons had to eat, too, she supposed. Better the cows than her.
A bee popped against the windshield. She sighed and toggled the wipers. 
A little help from Jet was nothing compared to the humiliation that was waiting for her in today’s papers. Grimacing at the fresh memory, she’d felt a steady pressure building inside her as the countdown to launch ticked away on the monitors. JetStream Aerospace project leaders and their staff had crowded the same hotel ballroom Apogee had invited Delta to make an idiot of herself in a year earlier. And of course the press junket was there, snapping pictures of gathered onlookers or toting bulky cameras through the finely decorated tables as they hunted for candid reactions to tack above their articles. 
Delta had found herself on the same balcony, except this time she wasn’t looking at an unpiloted rocket in the distance. Her daughter and three other ponies were inside the capsule mounted at the top of the stack. Worry had crept into her heart like a parasite, plaguing her with visions of the rocket exploding on the launch pad. Of the capsule being engulfed in flame. Of disaster after disaster parading through her mind even though she knew the ponies who designed the technology had given her only child the best chance of survival any pony could have in this endeavor.
So when the engines lit and the rocket lifted safely above a column of smoke into the midday sky, the immense relief Delta felt had dissolved her “proud mother” pose into an ugly mess of tears.
She cleared her throat, shoving the embarrassing memory back to the dusty corners of her brain where it could sit and think about what it did. Of course the press had descended upon her like vultures, burning every second of it onto film like a tattoo she didn’t want. It was part of the reason she was slow-rolling her way across Equestria. Jet thought it would be a good idea for her to be there on board the boat he’d outfitted to retrieve Apogee’s capsule from the Celestial Sea. More emotional TV goodness for the viewers at home, was more like it.
The hay hauler was practically crawling up her ass. She glared at its grille in the rear view mirror as it waited for a break in traffic to overtake her.
“Dick,” she muttered.
Another hour and she’d be in the bluffs. Until then, she’d have to deal with lead-hoofed assholes like the one behind her. As she waited, it occurred to her that she wasn’t that far from Foal Mountain. She smirked. With well over a hundred Stables completed, Stable-Tec had taken the initiative to start scheduling mandatory monthly evacuation drills which were already getting old fast. All residents designated for leadership roles were required to attend bi-weekly job training exercises on top of that, or risk forfeiting their spot. Sure, Stable-Tec was paying them for their time, but the paychecks were a pittance compared to the price some ponies paid to get reservations in the first place.
Naturally, Spitfire had seen fit to schedule one of those drills today. Delta and Apogee had been given assurances they wouldn’t receive a strike for missing today, what with the family making history and all. She squinted through the smear of bug guts and road grit until she could spy the hazy lump of Foal Mountain off to the right of the highway, grinning like a fiend. Somewhere over there, a whole lot of pegasi were about to be bored to death.
She turned back to the road, paused, then glanced up at the crisp blue sky. Apogee’s crewmates would be preparing her for the world’s first EVA in orbit right now. She knew it would only take one twist of the knob to switch the radio to a station carrying her daughter’s voice. Delta already knew the prep list by heart. The suit they’d designed together would do just fine in vacuum. Everything depended on what Apogee did once she was outside the airlock. That was something Delta couldn’t bring herself to listen to. The stress of the day was already eating at her. For now, she just wanted to pretend that everything was fine. That she was just a shitty mother with a shitty junkyard to deal with, and Apogee was just another bump in a long road of mistakes she and Jet had made together.
The radio sputtered and the overcaffeinated DJ’s voice was replaced by the hollow hiss of static. Delta grimaced, turning the volume down. That wasn’t fair. Apogee was one of the few good things to come out of her life. Knowing she was up there, doing things no pony had ever done before, terrified her. And she was terrified because she loved the stupid kid.
A flicker of lightning blinked out of the corner of her side mirror, but when she looked to see if there were clouds in the west all she could see was the headlight of the truck behind her. Another couple of feet and the driver of the swaying rig would need to buy her dinner. Glaring ahead, traffic in the other lane was spotty but steady enough for her to tell he wouldn’t be getting around soon, which meant there was no point in tailgating her.
So he was an asshole, then. Lightning flickered again as she rolled down her window, filling the carriage with the roar of wind and the faint scent of manure from the passing cornfields. She held a hoof out in the universal gesture of, “Back off.”
Another flash, but every mirror just gave her different angles of the hauler’s bug-encrusted grille. Further up the road, a family-sized carriage sent up a skirt of gravel as it pulled over and skidded into a frantic U-turn.
“What the fuck?” she muttered.
More carriages started pulling off the road. Behind her, the hauler blared its horn. Thunder shuddered above it. Instinctively, Delta pulled in her hoof and extended her wing out the window to flip the asshole off. As she did, lightning flashed again.
Oily vapor lifted off the highway. Smoke boiled away from carriages that had pulled over. Delta jerked her wing inside as if she’d touched a hot stove only to find that several of her feathers had curled and blackened all the way down to the flesh. Confused and hurting, she looked in her rear-view mirror. The hay hauler was engulfed in flames.
Before she could process what she was seeing, the truck accelerated and rammed into her. She shouted a curse, grabbing the wheel with both wings. Through the open window she could hear the roar of its engine as its driver poured on the gas. She could feel the tires lose traction, watched the nose of her carriage slide sideways as if to gawk at the burning cornfield. Too many things were happening. She tried to steer out of the slide even though the physics were against her.
Lightning flashed as the hauler shunted her onto the shoulder. Gravel and dirt battered the undercarriage like hail as she slid. She was too disoriented to remember which wheel dropped into the cornfield, stuck, and wrenched the carriage around just in time for her to see the blast wave sweep toward her. Then it hit.
For several long seconds, she was weightless. Up became down, and down blended into the chaos of bellowing wind and her own terrified screams.
Darkness. Silence.
She became aware of herself again and murmured a wet groan. Blood was in her mouth. Gluing her throat shut. Opening her eyes, she found herself laying on the cool soil of the field she vaguely remembered crashing into. Her thoughts plodded along agonizingly slow, like hooves through the sucking mud. She pushed herself halfway up, her stomach nearly emptying itself in revolt. She spotted the carriage nearby, smoke coiling up from its crumpled frame, engine revving, its shredded tires flapping violently toward a burning sky like some rabid, dying animal.
Dark shapes caught her attention overhead. Her head bobbled as if weighted by lead, but she could make out the forms of pegasi overhead. She blinked. One of them passed above her close enough for her to spot a large brown suitcase clutched against his belly. How long had she been out? Weren’t there supposed to be sirens when-
Twin shocks of emerald light lit the west and north skies.
Bombs, she thought. Celestia’s Light those are-
Thump.
Delta shoved herself to her hooves just as a pink suitcase exploded against the dirt beside her, retching its hastily packed contents back into the air like a laundry landmine. 
Thump. Thump-thump.
A panicked wave of screams came from the pegasi flying above as the shocks from both bombs clapped their ears like thunder. Distantly, she knew they were dumping their belongings. Shedding weight so they could fly faster. Get somewhere safe.
She swayed on her hooves. Somewhere safe. 
The Stable.
She flapped her way into the air like a fledgling bird and followed the evacuees to Stable 10.
Panic and pain scoured much of the long flight to the mountain from her memory, but not all. Later, when she would think back to the day the bombs fell, she would recall the agony that shot up her right foreleg as it dangled uselessly in the wind, the tendons sliced during the rollover. She remembered waiting for the next flash to be too close. For her feathers to burst into flames just like the hay hauler whose tailgating likely shaded her from being burned to death inside her rented carriage. 
She remembered the dust and ash thrown out by the explosions making it next to impossible for her to see, and the reassuring grip of the stallion who found her circling in a tearful panic near the slope of the mountain. She remembered that he looked like Rainbow Dash and would later discover that his name was Bow Hothoof, and he had died ferrying several other lost pegasi toward the tunnel before the landslide prevented his return.
She remembered stumbling toward the open door of Stable 10 with dozens of others as the bombs thundered and unnatural winds bellowed behind her. The gentle touch of a Wonderbolt’s wing on her aching shoulders as she passed some kind of defensive line along the wide steps, Spitfire herself among them with a long rifle slung around her neck. The momentary panic as she found herself crammed into a crowded antechamber among a hundred other screaming pegasi, their faces unrecognizable behind layers of ash, blood and tears.
And she remembered the sound of the door as its great mechanisms groaned to life. 
Pegasi turned with fearful eyes to watch the massive cog roll tooth by tooth toward the breach. Some watched as Spitfire and a clutch of Wonderbolts shouted warnings through the gap, weapons aimed at some unseen threat. The gear needed no help moving into place but Delta found herself willing it to hurry anyway.
With a song of steel biting steel, the door sank into the skin of the Stable. Heavy bolts sank into place with a sound like cannonfire, sealing the great vault as the world outside turned to ash.








“Test, test.”
Fingertips delicately danced across the knobs of her handmade equipment, adjusting the gain on the signal that had taken her weeks to pin down the first time around. One of Coldbrook’s people had touched her stuff after all, screwing things up just enough for her to spend her afternoon recalibrating the tunneling signal when she should be sleeping. 
Fiona rubbed a hand over her face, letting it come to rest over the bridge of her beak. She could see the feeds coming in from the Enclave’s fleet of spritebots just fine. It was the broadcasting portion that was giving her trouble. As a self-proclaimed professional in, and probably the only member of the broadcast industry on this side of Equestria, she took this little hiccup personally.
Staring back at her from a high-end terminal screen that had taken her over a year to track down, a single feral ghoul watched the spritebot with only passing interest. Their unblinking eyes never stopped creeping her out. Touching another knob with one hand, she brought the other back to her mic stand and depressed the transmit key.
“Test, test. One two, one two. Blink once if you receive me. Blink nonce if you’ve eaten anyone this week.”
The ghoul didn’t react.
Fiona reached out with a broad, desert colored wing and gave the transmitter’s chassis a frustrated smack. The image jumped, settling back to the husk’s uninterested gaze.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and-”
The feral ghoul snapped to attention, lunged at the screen with a howl and the signal cut out. Fiona blinked, then laughed. “And we’re in business.”
She leaned back as far as she dared on the chair’s old rollers and stretched her arms behind her neck until she could feel their muscles sing. As she let out a breath of self-satisfaction she stole a peek out the dusty windows of her firetower and gauged the angle of the fuzzy blob of light that was Equestria’s sun.
Three, maybe two and a half hours until the ponies of Blinder’s Bluff would begin turning on their radios to listen in on her triumphant return to the airwaves. Or at least that’s what some of them were calling it. As far as Fiona was concerned, it didn’t feel like she’d won anything. This equipment belonged to her. She was the one who collected it, memorized the connections, and assembled it all into a working, reliable radio station. She’d known that operating out of the firetower on the bluff put her under Coldbrook’s jurisdiction but she’d always understood him to be a reasonable stallion. But now that he had a Stable dangling in front of his nose he’d become someone completely different. Or maybe he was just showing his true stripes for the very first time.
Picking up the discolored JoyBoy from the console, she flipped to the next signal in the sequence and waited for it to connect. When it did, she found herself looking at a small farmhouse from atop a shallow ridge somewhere in the wasteland. She frowned as she noticed the single figure that caught the bot’s attention. A blue stallion, by the looks of it, working the handle of a water pump behind the house. He thought he was alone and hadn’t bothered to wrap his wings before coming outside. A dustwing. If the Enclave hadn’t already sent a strike team to wherever he was, they would be shortly. 
Fiona tapped the transmit key and leaned toward the mic. “Hey, you.”
The stallion froze, looking for the source of her voice.
“Up here,” she said. When he finally spotted the spritebot, she could see the dread in his eyes. “You need to skedaddle. If you’re anywhere near Blinder’s Bluff, get there now. Tell the Rangers that--”
The connection dropped and the terminal flipped automatically to the next feed. The Enclave must’ve had someone watching the same bot when she broke in. She sighed, hoping the dustwing was smart enough to put two and two together on his own. Leaning over, she picked up the little notebook she used to jot down airworthy stories and used a nib of charcoal to scratch BLUE DUSTWING at the top. If he did somehow make it to the Bluff, it wouldn’t hurt for the ponies living here to know he was one of the good pegasi.
Tapping a button beneath her talon, she started scrolling through the feeds hoping to get lucky a second time. Finding dustwings before the Enclave had time to drop a bullet on them was like winning the spritebot lottery. And yet, as usual, a golden win was naturally followed by an equivalent stretch of losses. It never deterred her from looking, though. There was always something out there worth talking about, and the spritebots were little monocular experts and sniffing them out.
Still lots of activity around the old JetStream Array. Rangers patrolled the outer fence in pairs, now, and there were several angles affording her a view of the gun emplacements positioned on the central building’s roof. The only thing unusual about that was where the heavy weapons were pointed, aimed down at what looked like a mostly collapsed warehouse with a very distinct burrow built out of the twisted wreckage of a rusted garage door. Aurora’s deathclaw friend, she guessed. Judging by the precautions taken to monitor the burrow, it was still in there.
Tapping the JoyBoy, she cycled through the angles until new locations popped up. Most were just bots heading from one point to another, showing her nothing except barren wastes and the odd half-living forests that still found a way to grow among the bluffs. One bot busily navigated a muddy riverbed. She caught another slowly hovering across the buckling remains of a stunning trestle bridge, the pilot that was currently navigating it manually clearly interested in a line of boxcars that had somehow gotten stuck on the bridge’s sagging rails.
Fiona couldn’t help but admire the pilot’s skill at managing the bot’s single, twitchy thruster. Leaning forward in her seat, she watched the view inch its way toward the boxcars by the feathers of a skilled Enclave pilot. 
“Almost there, little guy,” she rooted. “Little further.”
As the side of the first car gradually bent into view, Fiona touched the left arrow on the controller’s directional pad and the spritebot obediently puttered over the edge of the bridge. She cackled as the Enclave pilot could only watch as fifty pounds of expertly navigated tech pancaked into the hardpan below.
“So close,” she giggled, and flipped to the next bot.
An hour later, she’d begun cycling into the sequence of spritebots with weaker and, in her mind, more valuable signals when it came to her broadcasts. This was where she raked in her listeners, with news and stories from the far reaches of eastern Equestria. She rubbed a knuckle against her eyelid to keep her from zonking out. The views toggled around the mountains and she smiled a little at the familiar vistas. One day, she hoped Griffinstone would start to rebuild like Equestria was. As much as she liked to test their patience, these ponies were trying their damndest to create something from their ruins. Gryphons, on the other hand…
She tried not to dwell on it. She’d done what she could to try to be a voice of reason, and her people had shown their gratitude by trying to burn down her home with her still inside. Griffinstone would either stop destroying itself or it wouldn’t. She’d resolved not to let it take her down in the process.
She shook her head, focusing. The mountains always made her homesick. She skipped through the feeds until she started seeing the coast, then slowed.
The video tended to get fuzzy when she tapped into signals this far out, but this evening things were unusually clear. The Enclave must’ve been sending more bots out this way, which meant the faint signals had more relays to piggyback off of and suffered less degradation. With her pad of paper at the ready, she started flicking through bots in search of a hook that would wet her listener’s appetites.
Highways and overpasses, suburbs and little encampments became the standard fare of the afternoon. A few bots meandered the empty streets of a once picturesque middle-class neighborhood while a lone sprite navigated a tangle of traffic that had been compacted together when the bombs fell. She spent a few seconds watching ocean waves lapping at the entrance of a concrete spillway before switching to a bot that had somehow gotten itself stuck halfway up a highrise somewhere in what appeared to be Manehattan. At second glance, she realized that it was monitoring a pill-shaped anti-air turret that had been assembled atop a roof several blocks away.
She made a note of its rough position and left it where it was, knowing info like that could cover a hefty slice of her dues to Coldbrook this month.
More streets, viaducts and empty buildings. A trade caravan, a bomb crater, a raider camp in the suburbs. The wasteland had a tendency to look the same after the first hundred cycles. 
Then Fiona paused. 
She cycled back until the crater appeared on screen. The spritebot didn’t seem particularly interested in it, happy to move along its preprogrammed pathing until it spotted something that would trip it's surveillance mode and send a ping back to the Enclave, and the crater was quickly sliding off frame as it meandered north.
She tapped the directional pad, flipping it to manual control, and spun it back to the crater. It didn’t take long for her to recognize the site as the balefire crater in Fillydelphia, and it took even less time for her to pick out the familiar faces gathered along its rim.
Squinting at the picture, her lip quirked at the sight of Aurora’s Pip-Buck poking out from under the sleeve of a coat that looked fresh off a feral ghoul’s back. At least she’d managed to hang onto the device a little longer this time around. If it weren’t for her letting Ironshod manipulate her into leaving it with him, Fiona would have never risked losing her station or her livelihood. She wished she could reach through the screen and slap the Stable dweller for dragging her into something so stupid, but the warm rush of anger toward the mare cooled as she remembered just how dire her situation had been. 
Still.
Fiona licked the corner of her beak and sighed. Aurora was a decent pony. A little dense when it came to trusting authority, but it was hard not to respect a pony that was willing to risk her life to bring someone back to safety that she had put in harm’s way. Most ponies around here would have thrown up their hooves and said oh well, so sad, that’s the wasteland for you, and moved on. Aurora hadn’t done that. 
As angry as Fiona was with her for turning her life upside down, there was a big part of her that still liked the little idiot.
Against her better judgement, she nudged the little bot forward.







More than an hour after discovering the bulkhead, Roach had made little progress in prying it apart.
The sickly green light of his magic flashed beneath the surface of the water like an electric arc. A foam of tiny bubbles had begun to form above the deepest part of the pond, releasing a noxious gas that was the result of the collision between chemistry and magic. Without being able to see it for herself, Aurora was forced to form an image in her head based on Roach’s description. 
A monstrously deformed but intact bed of steel lay just a few feet beneath a layer of pulverized concrete, rebar and mud. A heap of soggy debris piled, glob by glob, along the pond’s furthest edge where the radiation spun off by Roach’s magic would cause them the least harm. Aurora glanced down at her Pip-Buck, making sure the rads stayed below yellow as he excavated. A glimmer of hope began to grow inside her, but this time she made sure to repeatedly remind herself that this could just as easily be nothing. She wasn’t going to get her hopes up a second time.
Yet as another swath of debris lifted out of the water and slapped onto the wet mass at the other side, she couldn’t help but share in their mood of excitement. Unbeknownst to Aurora or Ginger, a little visitor had slipped to within a hair’s breadth between them.
One moment, they were enjoying the silence.
Then:
“Howdy howdy!”
Aurora and Ginger bolted off the ground as if it were electrified, Aurora’s wings striking out from under her coat with enough force to send the spritebot wobbling backwards while Ginger barreled sideways into a profanity-spitting Julip. The three of them struggled to their hooves in a tangle of legs and tattered fabric while the spritebot, still airborne behind them, swayed with the sound of its controller’s manic laughter.
Equally furious and bewildered, Ginger rounded on the little spy and promptly trapped it within a dense bubble of bronze magic. Only when she started trying to crush the spritebot with said magic did the laughter stop and a familiar voice emerge from its tinny speakers.
“Woah, woah! Ginger, easy! I’m messing with you guys!”
Aurora and Ginger exchanged a look of confusion while Julip simply stared at the intruding machine with understandable mistrust. After a moment of hesitation, Ginger released the spell and the spritebot bobbed free.
Aurora narrowed her eyes. “Fiona?”
“Yah-duh. Who else?”
She blinked. “You scared the shit out of us!”
“Payback for almost losing me my radio station,” she retorted, swinging the machine a bit closer. That got a wince out of Aurora, having never had any real chance to apologize after watching Fiona storm out of the bar back at the Bluff. “How have you been? I heard Coldbrook gave the three of you a shitty deal, too.”
“More of an ultimatum,” Ginger corrected. The bot turned toward her. “Hello again, Fiona. I take it you found a new place to run your radio show?”
“Nope, same old place. Coldbrook wound up having to give me the firetower back or risk being buried under a pile of very nasty letters.” Before either of them could ask her to explain it in a way that made sense, Fiona pivoted the bot around to the third mare of the group. “Oh, wow. Since when did Roach grow teats?”
Julip flushed, half-raising her hind leg to threaten a retaliatory kick. “Are either of you going to tell me who the fuck that is?”
Fiona’s laughter trickled out of the bot. “Why I oughta!” It arced around the trio until it finally settled near the crater’s rim in front of them, turning to Aurora. “I like your new friend. You gonna introduce us?”
This was going to tire her out more than the walk to Fillydelphia had. She gestured a wing to the bot. “Julip, this is Fiona. She’s the one that helped me get my Pip-Buck back from Coldbrook.”
Julip eyed the bot. “How is she connecting to Enclave tech?”
Fiona chuckled. “Company secret. Don’t worry about it.”
Behind them, the pond began to hiss with the emergence of more electrolytic fizz as Roach’s magic hauled up another pile of rubble. 
“Woah,” Fiona said, pushing the bot past them. “What are you three up to? Is somebody down there?”
“That would be Roach.”
The bot’s little speakers peaked as Fiona whistled. “Can I ask…?”
Aurora glanced at Ginger, who gave her a hesitant look in response.
“This stays off the air.”
Fiona paused. “All of it?”
“All of it. Please. It involves my Stable.”
This time her response was immediate. “Oh! I didn’t realize this was… yeah. Sorry, this’ll be completely off the books. I promise.”
While Aurora didn’t know Fiona well enough to tell whether she planned to keep that promise, there wasn’t much she could do now if she didn’t. Even if ponies only found out that something vaguely interesting was going on in the crater that destroyed Stable-Tec HQ, it would likely lead to a small flock of scavengers poking at the water anyway.
She decided if she was going to say anything, it would at least be the truth.
“Roach found a bulkhead down there. We’re trying to figure out a way past it,” she said. “We think it could be a Stable.”
Fiona uttered a thoughtful hum, still watching the dim glow emanating from the pool. “Heck of a light show. Is this where that thing you’re looking for is supposed to be?”
“Ignition talisman,” she said. “And… maybe. I hope. We really don’t know what’s down there.”
A pause. “But if there is a talisman down there, you could use it to save your people?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Aurora… do you know what Coldbrook is trying to do right now?”
She took a slow breath, exhaled, then nodded. “He’s trying to dig up my Stable.” She left out the part where he threatened to scrap everything inside if she disappeared on him.
“Yep.” Fiona cleared her throat. “That’s pretty much what I’ve heard, too. Wasn’t sure if you knew.”
She took a seat, motioning for Ginger and Julip to do the same. They weren’t going anywhere soon anyway.
“It’s fine for now,” Aurora said. “Turns out the Enclave really, really don’t want the Rangers getting inside. They’re doing what they can to disrupt the dig.”
“That’s… okay, wow. You’ve been busy. Do I want to know how you even got in contact with that pack of crazies?”
Julip lifted a wing from under her jacket and waved. “Howdy howdy.”
For a moment, Fiona was silent. “Oh-kay… you’ve been really busy.”
“If it makes any difference,” Julip droned, slipping her wing back beneath the leather, “I’m not with the Enclave anymore.”
“Huh…” The bot turned back to face the rippling pond. Fiona, for once, seemed to be at a loss for words when it came to the little green mare she’d just been teasing. “So, what’s the game plan with the whole underwater treasure thingy?”
Aurora smirked at the water. “Wait for Roach to tire himself out, for starters. We haven’t worked out how any of us are going to get down there if he does find a way in.”
“Not without puking up our organs,” Julip added. 
Ginger made a disgusted noise. “Thank you for that, Julip.”
Julip shrugged without apology.
Fiona swung her sprite toward the pond, then up the ridge of the crater toward the noise of crashing waves in the distance. “Well there’s your problem! You’ve got seawater seeping in!”
“Is she being serious?” Julip whispered.
Aurora rolled her eyes. “She’s a little…”
“Flamboyant,” Ginger finished. “But she means well.”
Julip didn’t look convinced, watching the bot as it puttered back toward them. 
“Well, if you can’t pump out the water, you could always try power armor. That’s how the Rangers get through the rad zones, anyway.”
Julip snorted. “You got the bits lying around for three sets of power armor?”
Fiona chuckled. “I’m sure they’d charge half price for you, Tiny.”
The little mare’s chest puffed out with fresh anger but Fiona was already moving on before Julip had time to unleash her tirade. The bot hovered toward Aurora, the lenses behind its grille whirring to bring her into focus. “How many bits you got?”
Aurora tipped her nose back to her saddlebags. “Around a hundred. Probably less.”
“Oof. Okay, yeah, you’re broke. Umm… let me think.” Her voice hummed over the connection, whispering out a little ditty that Aurora didn’t recognize as a song she knew. They waited until, finally, Fiona jumped back on the line. “How about this. I can probably get you one suit. Maybe. But it’s going to piss off Coldbrook. Like, a lot.”
She grimaced, unsure whether she wanted to poke that bear any more than she already had. “Any chance you could go through Ironshod instead?”
“Nah, ol’ Quickshot’s out of town on some kind of business, and this isn’t something I’d want to drop on any of the other Paladins. A lot of them are actually pretty okay ponies. Coldbrook’s the only one I know who can pull rank on the quartermasters out there anyway. I just need to make it worth his while to send the order.”
Aurora pursed her lips, staring down at the opaque pool of water, then hesitantly nodded. “Alright. As long as you’re offering. I don’t want you to burn any more bridges on my behalf.”
“Trust me,” the gryphon murmured. “Coldbrook will be doing himself a favor when he says yes. I’ll head down now and see if I can convince him. In the meantime, don’t go selling this spritebot for scrap. I’ll turn it back on when I’m done. Night-night.”
“Wh…” 
The spritebot dropped to the dirt like a stone and started rolling down the shallow slope straight toward the pond. Aurora had to dive to grab it, whipping her feathers out from beneath her coat and wrapping them around the tumbling ball.
With the spritebot secured and the stinking fabric of her coat flopping over the top of her head, she let out an exasperated sigh.
“Night-night.”







“Where’s the sound?”
“Beats me,” Opal shrugged. “Ask the folks who built this place. Now shush.”
Rainbow looked over to where Sledge stood on the other side of the desk but found no help there. His attention was entirely fixated on the silent security footage playing out on the terminal. With a shake of her head, she resigned herself to watch.
The footage had been taken from a camera mounted in a high corner of the Atrium. Rainbow vaguely recognized the layout from when Sledge quietly ushered her from her cell to Aurora’s compartment, but this angle afforded her a more complete view of the space. A cluster of tiny numbers in the bottom left of the shot displayed a simple timestamp.

10/31/1087
15:09

A little after three in the afternoon. Much earlier than the 7:19pm mentioned in Delta’s message. As she continued to watch, she noticed the decorations hanging from the second level railings. Loosely braided ribbons and streamers provided a festive mood for the residents gathered down below. Balloons wafted gently in the recycled air, tied to the supports of a little stage constructed just below the overmare’s office window. A blue banner hung behind the podium with cheerful yellow letters that read: HAPPY REMEMBRANCE DAY!
Rainbow found herself wrinkling her nose at that. It only took a moment for her to notice the significance of the timestamp. October 31st, 1087. Exactly ten years to the day since the bombs fell. The last day of her old life, and the first of the next. The celebratory atmosphere felt wrong, somehow. Like asking the bereaved to blow out the candles on a birthday cake during the funeral.
Metal chairs were lined up in neat rows in front of the stage, occupying most of the open space the Atrium afforded. Every seat was filled and more pegasi stood wherever they could, some leaning over the railing above while fillies and colts fidgeted impatiently while the mare at the podium spoke.
It was Spitfire. A fresh bolt of anger rushed through her as she watched Spitfire, ten years older and quite a bit grayer, read from a stack of notes behind the microphone. While Rainbow couldn’t hear the words she could tell by Spitfire’s posture that she was just going through the motions. She hardly moved from the spot, stopping only to adjust a narrow pair of glasses set over the bridge of her muzzle. Occasionally she would outstretch a wing, gesturing for some sort of emphasis, before putting it back and continuing on. She must have been nearing the end of her speech because after a few short minutes, she set her glasses on the podium while the gathered pegasi stood to hammer their hooves against the floor in approval.
Rainbow scowled.
The video shuddered, and suddenly there were pegasi in the midst of loading empty chairs onto carts while residents milled around in the periphery. Many had plates of food held in their wings, standing near whatever flat surfaces they could where they could set down their drinks. She checked the timestamp and saw that it had skipped ahead an hour. She was certain Opal hadn’t touched the keyboard, and judging by the older mare’s blinking she was just as bewildered. The footage had cut forward on its own.
“Looks like Delta mighta spliced this together for us,” Opal murmured.
Sledge hummed in agreement.
Rainbow squinted at the screen, scanning the residents for Spitfire. Sure enough, the then-overmare stepped out from the bottom of the screen with a drink in her wing and a familiar black and blue-maned stallion on her shoulder. He was older now, just like his counterpart, but he was unmistakably Thunderlane. Tears pricked at her eyes, caught off guard by the wave of emotions that came from the sight of someone she’d been confident she’d lost. Even though Thunderlane had grown unusually distant toward the end, she still counted him as one of her closest friends from her Wonderbolt days. In spite of the company he kept, it was still good to see he’d made it in.
As the two of them strolled along the Atrium, Rainbow started to worry that Delta had pointed them to the wrong video. Or possibly the timestamp had been wrong. Then she reminded herself that the footage had begun to play at a predetermined time, and she tried to trust that whatever Delta was trying to show them, it was important.
It didn’t take long for Spitfire to prove her right. As if on cue, she began to slow, her eyes briefly turning upward as if listening to some unseen voice. Judging by the brief pause in the many conversations around her, it must have been something over the PA system. Spitfire said something to Thunderlane, downed the rest of her drink in Spitfire fashion, and left him holding the glass.
The angle abruptly switched to a camera at the top of the stairs leading to the walkway. Spitfire climbed into view, nodded curtly to a pair of residents that moved out of her way, and made a bee-line along the catwalk to her office door.
The angle switched again to a lens just above her office door, catching a glimpse of the pensive expression tightening her jaw. Another jarring shift and they were watching her step through the door from the far corner of her office. Automatic lights clicked on for her as she stumped over to her desk. It was a stark difference from her office in the Pillar. No photos of the Academy, hardly any photos at all save for one on her desk that faced away from the camera. A few potted plants occupied the corners of the room, but beyond that Spitfire’s office looked barren. Evidence that she hadn’t been able to take much with her before the bombs fell.
Curiously, a single rifle did hang on a fine wooden mount behind her desk. A bolt-action with a nicely polished wooden stock. One of the ceremonial rifles given to each officer of the Wonderbolts after they transitioned to wartime service. Somehow, Spitfire had managed to bring it with her. Or more likely, she’d had it stored at the Stable ahead of time like so many other residents after their approval. Ponies liked to joke that the Stables were going to wind up being Equestria’s most luxurious storage garage. 
Rainbow found herself wishing she’d been a little firmer about wanting to start that process, but it had already taken so much badgering to get Applejack to sign onto the application that she was afraid of pushing any harder. Curse of hindsight, she supposed.
Spitfire dropped into her chair and sat there, motionless, for several long seconds while the phone on her desk blinked its light signaling a call waiting. She looked as if someone had taken half the air out of her. Finally, she reached out with a wing and pulled the receiver out of its cradle. Resting her head against the flat of her hoof, she started talking.
For some time, nothing happened. The camera was too far away to clearly read the display that indicated who the caller was, and Spitfire wasn’t exactly scribbling captions onto cue cards for them to follow. She nodded, occasionally gesturing in the air with a feather as she spoke. Nodding again. Picking up a pencil from a cup beside the phone and slowly walking it between her feathers as she listened.
She started tapping the smooth surface of the desk with the eraser, as if emphasizing something she was saying. A long pause where she said nothing, then staring up at the ceiling mouthing a truly silent profanity. Flipping the pencil, she started pecking away with the point. Her posture shifted, coming to attention as she began to gesture more vibrantly with her free wing, as if the pony on the other end was here in the room with her.
She shook her head. No. A pause, and another exasperated look skyward. No, again. She started speaking more rapidly but abruptly stopped, pursing her lips as the caller cut her off. She waited, the pencil held still in her grasp until a deep, disturbed look bloomed on her face. She spoke haltingly, trying to say something and clearly having trouble articulating her point. Distress turned to fear as she sat up straight, the pencil falling from her grip as she shook her head again and again.
And then she stopped. She pulled the receiver away from her ear and stared at it. The light of the open line had gone dark.
Second passed.
She set the phone back into its cradle. Feathers press against her mouth as she stares wide-eyed toward the medallion window and the Remembrance Day celebration taking place beyond it.
The footage jumped.
Thirty minutes. Spitfire’s office, from the same vantage. She was still seated at her desk, forehead rested against one hoof, her shoulders shaking. Rainbow could see her mouth hung slack in a wordless sob, tears pattering against the surface of the desk as she cried for no one but herself. She’d never seen Spitfire look so utterly defeated. So bleakly alone. Rainbow shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, wishing the footage would skip forward to something else. Seeing Spitfire without all the bravado and conniving confidence she’d cultivated around herself, watching her suffer some unspeakable pain in the privacy of an office that was barely hers…
It made Spitfire harder to hate.
Mercifully, the image finally stuttered. When it resolved again, Rainbow frowned. The timestamp read the same. The angle was unchanged. Spitfire still sat defeated behind her desk.
And then the office was plunged into darkness.
Emergency lights kicked on instantly, bathing Spitfire and her meager office in a dim half-light tinted the color of urine. Spitfire’s ears perked up, either at the sound of the circuits tripping or the PA system mounted in the ceiling. She lifted her face away from her hoof with stunned silence, her blear eyes blinking up at the newly anemic light. She swallowed, half-turning in her chair as if to convince herself it was actually happening. Understanding dawned in her eyes and, slowly, her face crumpled with fresh tears.
The footage skipped forward several hours. They were back in the Atrium, except this time the celebration was cancelled. A few ponies milled uneasily among the smeared remains of dropped meals and spilled drinks, unsure where to go. The lights were back on, for the most part. Near the bottom of the screen, in the same corner where Spitfire and Thunderlane had emerged earlier, a single pegasus stormed into view. As she did, Aurora looked at the timestamp. 
19:19.
“There’s Delta,” Opal murmured. “On the warpath.”
As the angle switched to the stairs, it was clear she was favoring her right hind leg. She grit her teeth as she pulled herself up the last treads, grease and what looked to be metal shavings smeared across an old white shirt that hung loose on her frame. Her two-toned blue mane was plastered over her face, dark with sweat, and her crimson eyes looked lit by some inner fire.
The angle switched to the office door. Delta flicked her badge through the reader and spat a silent curse when nothing happened. She planted her hooves, stared directly into the camera and shouted Spitfire’s name at it. Banging her hoof against the steel surface she shouted again, this time flavored with some unmistakable profanity, but the door stayed shut. Delta stopped waiting. Jamming the edge of her card under the plate that held the reader down, she bent it up enough to get a few feathers underneath and then pulled on it, hard. The plate bent, allowing her better purchase until the screws that held it down stripped out of their mounts. Furious, she yanked out a braid of wires, bent two free of the bundle and used her teeth to strip the ends. A quick touch together and the door sprang open.
Rainbow was ready when the camera switched. Spitfire still sat at her desk, but now one of the drawers hung open and a mostly empty bottle of something expensive sat in the middle of her desk. Spitfire’s face was matted and damp but she had run out of tears well before Delta barged in. The blue mare stood inside the doorway, trying to piece together what she was looking at, and a fresh rage bloomed in her eyes.
Spitfire was unsettlingly still as Delta began shouting her down, a wing pointing at her in accusation before winding around toward the darkened Atrium outside her window. Spitfire glanced at the window, then at Delta, and reached for the bottle.
Delta slapped it off the desk with the flat of her wing, a gust of wind throwing Spitfire’s tangled mane away from her face. The bottle exploded against the wall, showering a nearby fern with expensive liquor and bits of glass.
Whatever Delta was saying, it rolled off Spitfire like oil on water. The beleaguered overmare was clearly well ahead of her when it came to punishing herself, and she simply stared up at Delta with a tired look on her face that seemed to ask whether she was finished. Slowly, reluctantly, Delta started running out of steam. She paced back and forth in front of the desk, asking questions Spitfire had no answer for. 
She said something to Delta, slowly at first, then with the growing certainty that Rainbow recognized. Her knee bounced under the desk as she mumbled something, nodded, and repeated it for Delta to hear. The gears were spinning again. A collapse had been averted and it was dawning on her that she needed to do damage control. Even with half a bottle of liquor sloshing through her veins, Spitfire was finding her stride. She said something to Delta that drew a startled look of confusion from the mare. Delta responded with a clear and firm no.
Spitfire shook her head and repeated herself, this time leveling a hoof toward her. Delta laughed, paused, and looked at her like she was crazy. She repeated her answer.
That prompted Spitfire to get to her hooves and step around the desk. Rainbow tensed as she watched her former mentor push Delta back against the wall and hold her there, mouth working double-time now that she’d fixated on her new goal. Delta bent her face away from the onslaught, then followed the tip of Spitfire’s wing as she pointed directly at the security camera.
For a brief moment, both mares stared up at Rainbow, Opal, and Sledge as if just noticing they were watching. When Spitfire turned back to resume berating her Head of IT, it felt as if a set of crosshairs had shifted away as well.
Several more times the two mares looked up at the camera, answering the question of what Spitfire was asking. This was the moment when she ordered Delta to erase the archives. To remove all evidence of what had just happened, including the first ten years that led up to it. Rainbow watched Delta pull herself free and move toward the door, answering Spitfire with a tiny nod and an even smaller okay.
She backed out of the office and the screen went dark.
Opal’s chair creaked as she leaned away from the terminal. Rainbow exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Sledge said nothing.
“Ain’t that a pickle.”
Rainbow looked to the old mare and nodded.







Finding Coldbrook during his off hours wasn’t ever easy, but neither was it impossible. It was around dinnertime for most of the Bluff, officers of the Steel Rangers included, and one thing Fiona knew about the stallion was that while he often ate his breakfast with the enlisted ponies at the commissary down in Stable 6, his dinners were usually enjoyed elsewhere.
Elsewhere, in this case, being the Bluff’s most popular and conveniently gryphon-sized bar and grill. She’d been surprised when Dally and Dice, her two best snoops who shared a second floor balcony overlooking the cobbles and rusty rails leading to and from the Stable, pointed her in the direction of Someplace Else. Coldbrook usually frequented the cozier, classy by comparison eateries upslope, favoring his privacy over visibility while he ate. But as usual, Dally and Dice only traded reliable information for their caps and tonight was no exception.
Pushing open the double doors, she nodded at the old stallion behind the bar and smiled when Lime tossed his rag over his shoulder and tipped his nose questioningly back toward a row of bottles behind him. She shook her head no and he promptly turned his attention back to the swarm of thirsty ponies crowding around his bar.
The last time Fiona had been here, Coldbrook had practically thrown her out. Since then she had admittedly felt a little uneasy about coming back, not that Lime wouldn’t have welcomed her if she had. As he had told her many times before in his old-fart-mumble-grumble, her business brought him business and he wasn’t so proud as to turn down good caps. That, and she was one of the few patrons he had who genuinely enjoyed the sketches he decorated his better bottles with. Sure they were all the same rotgut but Lime’s personal touch somehow made it taste a little better. And hey, for a pony who drew with his mouth, he was a pretty talented artist.
She scanned the cherry-cheeked faces that waited on Lime for their next glass, padding across the dusty floorboards as she did, before looking amongst the ponies pulled into tight clusters around the wide variety of scavenged tables and booths. Once again, Dally and Dice proved their worth. She spotted Elder Coldbrook seated in a booth beside an open window, absent of glass, and its wooden shutters latched open to allow some much needed fresh air to flow through the establishment. 
His faded green eyes were already watching her, having spotted her well before she did him. He sat alone on his side of the booth, though the bench across from him was occupied by two ponies she didn’t recognize. As she sidled toward them, her hips sashaying a little as she navigated the cramped spaces between each table, she smiled at the sight of Coldbrook sitting up just a little straighter in his seat. Clearly he hadn’t expected to bump into her here.
“Fiona.” He lifted a glass of amber liquid in a haze of silver magic by way of polite greeting, but the set of his jaw sent a different message. “I would have thought you’d be preparing for your broadcast.”
She smiled, plucked his glass from the air and tipped a puddle into her beak. Part of her curled up in revulsion at the too-sweet taste of Lime’s self-proclaimed “imported Vhannan rum,” while the rest tried not to laugh at the thought of the old codger being naïve enough to pay the inflated price of cheap liquor that Lime had taken the liberty of dissolving a scoop of sugar into. The earth pony usually reserved the harmless scam for ponies he didn’t recognize, and something told Fiona that this was Lime’s way of getting back at the Elder for commandeering the bar several days earlier.
Fiona slid the glass across the table where Coldbrook caught it, waiting with dwindling patience for her response.
“I just wrapped up my prep work, actually. Thought I’d swing down and touch base with a few contacts before I go on air.” Letting her smile touch the corner of her eyes, she looked down at the two ponies seated across from him. “Speaking of, who’re your friends?”
Coldbrook took a slow breath, then nodded to his guests. “This is Knight Feldspar and his wife, Olive. Today is the anniversary of the Knight’s tenth year...”
He trailed off, pressing his lips into a firm line as Fiona planted her hind end into the open seat beside him. The mare and stallion seated across from him kept their expressions carefully neutral. 
“Ten years with the Rangers, huh?” She whistled at Knight Feldspar. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen you around before.”
His wife cleared her throat. “Ten years married,” she clarified, emphasizing the last word for Fiona’s benefit. “We’re monogamous.”
“Monogah… muh-ah-guh…” As the couple looked to Coldbrook with concern, Fiona waved them off with a chuckle. “I’m kidding. Happy anniversary, you two. Ten years is a big one.”
The pair murmured their thanks, clearly uncomfortable.
Coldbrook cleared his throat. “Is there anything I can do for you, Fiona?”
Reaching over, she picked a nib of sliced carrot off his plate and popped it into her mouth. “As a matter of fact, there is. I was hoping to confirm a rumor I’ve heard today.”
He watched her chew, expressionless. “I’m sure it can wait.”
She smiled. “If you say so.”
After a long pause, he apologized to his dinner guests and regarded Fiona with open impatience. “Out with it.”
“Well,” she said, glancing out the open window at the ponies walking the cobbles outside, “my birdies tell me you’ve got Rangers working at a new dig site a day or two west of here. Some say that you’re trying to excavate a Stable.”
Coldbrook sipped from his glass. “And?”
“And,” she continued, “the Stable your people are trying to dig up might be the one that Aurora Pinfeathers originally came from.”
The glass tapped against the surface of the table. Coldbrook licked the corner of his lip and addressed his guests. “Excuse us, please.”
Fiona didn’t need to be asked to get up. She slid out of the booth, making way for the smaller creature beside her, and allowed him to lead her across the bar and out the front doors. Coldbrook was the type who only listened to someone like her after he felt compelled to take control of the conversation. They both knew she wasn’t telling him anything half the Bluff didn’t already know, and now she had his gears spinning as he worried about what it was she was leading up to.
A crowded bar was too risky, and a busy street just as much so. If she was going to drop a bomb, he wasn’t going to hazard every pony within earshot getting wind of whatever it wound up being. He led her down the narrow alley between Someplace Else and the neighboring brothel. With only the upper floor of the latter building boasting any windows to look down on them, there was still enough residual noise in the alley to keep their conversation private.
When they were halfway down, Coldbrook stopped and turned to face her. “Stop jerking me around. If you came down here to ask me for something, ask for it.”
Straight to the point. Okay then. “Power armor,” she said.
He blinked. “You’re a little big for that.”
“Not for me,” she said. “For Aurora. She made it to Fillydelphia and she needs a suit.”
He stared at her.
She shrugged. “You wanted to know. Now you know.”
After a moment, he shook his head with incredulity. “Need I remind you that the last time I spoke with that mare, she assaulted me without provocation? Now she’s asking for favors?”
“She threw a table and called you a motherfucker,” she corrected, earning herself a narrow stare from the stallion. “Considering the reception Ironshod gave her and the leash you tried to put on her after she came back, I’d say you got off easy.”
Coldbrook sucked on his teeth, shaking his head. “Setting that aside, she knew what would happen if she violated the terms of our agreement.”
“Easy to call yourself the winner when you knew you were playing with loaded dice, Elder.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’m taking the broader picture into consideration. Aurora lied her way into this city, paid nothing for the medical services we rendered and lied again when she agreed to provide us with key schematics to the technology that the Enclave harvested from the Bluff’s Stable. And when she left, she did so under a specific set of terms that she violated not three days later.”
He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Miss Pinfeathers and her companions have done nothing to repay the Rangers’ hospitality since the day they arrived. If you are in contact with her, you may tell her that her request for power armor is summarily denied and that going forward she should refrain from burning her bridges before resorting to beggary.”
For some reason, Coldbrook thought the discussion was over. Fiona cocked an eyebrow as he stepped toward her with the intention of getting past, and she couldn’t help but smile at his expression when she spread her wing to stop him.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You are on the thinnest of ice, gryphon. Move.”
“But you haven’t answered my question,” she said. “About the rumors. I can’t go on the air with just speculation.”
Wrapping her wing in a silver aura, he shoved it aside and stepped past. “I imagine that hasn’t stopped you before.”
She turned to call after him. “So I have your permission to talk about the Enclave soldiers that have been harassing your Rangers at Foal Mountain?”
Coldbrook stopped as if he’d run into an invisible brick wall and did an about face. “Who told you that?”
Gotcha. 
She shrugged. “My sources prefer to remain anonymous.”
“They forfeit that right when they started spreading lies. Give me names.”
Despite how much smaller he was than her, he looked so serious that she couldn't help but think of the little fledglings back home who would huff and stomp their tiny feet when they didn’t get what they wanted. Coldbrook’s muzzle even had the same wrinkles that some gryphlets would form above the crests of their beaks. 
She reached out with a single, taloned finger and pressed it into Coldbrook’s nose three separate times. “You. Are. Adorable.”
He backed away, anger blooming into something dangerous. His horn glowed. An open threat.
“Oh, calm down. I couldn’t give you names even if I wanted to. Ponies wouldn’t talk to my spritebots if they knew I was going to blab about them on air.” She smiled, hoping the lie was vague enough to be convincing, and gestured at the busy street at the end of the alley. “Or to you, for that matter. Either way, the rumor mill’s been working overtime. Ponies seem to be of the opinion that the Enclave wouldn’t be leading an incursion into the center of your territory if you hadn’t started poking at that Stable. Some are even saying the Enclave is trying to protect it from you.”
Coldbrook’s expression darkened. “Those are dangerous ideas, Fiona. I recommend you think twice about voicing them again.”
She snorted. “I’m not looking to give you a reason to take my radio show away a second time. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. And… I miiight be willing to help you set the record straight if you happen to have a better understanding of what’s happening at Stable 10.”
The Elder stood silent for several long seconds, his eyes narrowed with consideration as he chewed on her offer. For a moment Fiona was worried she might have injured his pride enough for him to reconsider the agreement that had allowed her back into her firetower. When the stallion spoke, it became clear his thoughts were bent in a different direction. 
Damage control.
“Suppose you used your broadcast to set the record straight,” he murmured. “I’m guessing you want something in return. An increase to your allowance?”
Tempting. More caps would make keeping the firetower a lot less difficult. She had a feeling that she had Coldbrook in a corner she wasn’t apt to push him into a second time. Not without reprisal, that is. Depending on how pliable he was right now, she might have a chance at bartering her way back to something amounting to the life she’d been living up until she got involved with Aurora.
She considered it. Then she let it go. That wasn’t what she was here for.
“I’ll get by on the allowance. Besides, I’m banking on my cooperation being worth some reciprocation.”
The tension on his face began to relax. “Make an offer, then.”
“Power armor,” she said. Coldbrook’s expression chilled. She stifled a grin. Mostly.
“I want you to give Aurora Pinfeathers a suit of power armor.”







Seeing Spitfire behind that desk, walking among ponies whose names she still remembered resurrected an old bitterness within Rainbow’s heart. For a moment all the concerns of this dying Stable and the dead world beyond fell by the wayside, and things felt simpler. More manageable. It was easier to be angry.
It was exactly what Opal and Sledge didn’t need from her right now.
She turned from the monitor and wandered to the front of the small office, trying to find something in Opal’s… eclectic décor that might soothe her frayed nerves. Her eyes settled on a little wooden shelf tucked in the corner, decorated with what looked like porcelain figures of ponies performing almost laughably outdated chores.
“Feelin’ alright over there?”
It was as much a question born of genuine concern as it was an old mare’s way of needling her out of her funk. Rainbow picked up one of the figurines in her remaining wing, an cheerful little earth pony frozen in mid stride with a sloshing pail of water hanging from her jaw, and shrugged. “I’m fine. Blue’s not knocking at the door.”
Opal’s chair creaked. “Ain’t talkin’ about Blue. I’m talkin’ about you. And be careful with my Pommels, they’re heirlooms.”
She set the figurine down. The painted porcelain rasped against her feathers when she let go. “Let’s just say it was a long time coming for someone to put Spitfire in her place, and leave it at that.”
Opal let out a dubious hum. “Ain’t so sure I like seeing anyone gettin’ kicked when they’re down. Poor thing looked troubled.”
“Too bad for her.”
She could feel their eyes on her, probably trying to decipher her mood and decide where it was safe to poke and too dangerous to prod. She was, after all, an Element of Harmony. Best not to anger the pony with the fancy jewelry.
It was difficult not to roll her eyes at the thought, but she managed.
“Bad blood, I take it.”
She glanced at Opal, then pulled up one of her guest chairs and sat down with a nod. “Something like that. Spitfire and I used to be good friends. We both crossed lines, but…”
The two of them waited, giving her room to speak the words Rainbow knew they didn’t have time to hear. Two centuries might have passed but all that time felt like a bad series of lucid dreams for her. One minute she was cowering in a utility room with a stallion who was actually a changeling, the next she was trying to remember who she was, reminded why they weren’t being allowed inside, told stories, sung songs, wanting nothing more than to be inside with her parents and then waking up generations after they were irrevocably gone. Gilda’s death still weighed on her and yet neither Sledge nor Opal would likely know her name. They might not understand why she’d been willing to rope a friend into something so dangerous. Why giving the zebras technology might have relieved the pressure that kept the war moving. 
She swallowed, deciding against it.
“Spitfire took things too far. That’s all she ever did. Take.”
She didn’t feel particularly compelled to elaborate. The silence stretched until the seconds began to strain, then Sledge ended their collective suffering by clearing his throat.
“Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m not sure what we were supposed to gain by watching that footage.”
Opal thoughtfully wrinkled her muzzle at the frozen image on her terminal, her feathers idly scooping up a pen and tapping it tip to clicker against the desk. “By the looks of it, Delta was chewin’ the overmare’s hide over the lights conkin’ out. Seemed pretty clear t’me that she knew something was about to happen, what with the waterworks.”
Rainbow shifted in her seat. “I’ve never seen Spitfire fold like that before. If she knew the power was about to fail, she could have warned someone.”
“Unless it was out of her hooves,” Sledge pointed out, nodding up to the half-powered lights above. “Like it is for us.”
Opal gave the pen a quick double-tap of agreement. “The emergency lights did trip on the video. Might be this ain’t the first time we’ve had generator troubles down here. I imagine it would only make sense if Mechanical called up to her office ahead of time. Let her know trouble’s brewin’.”
“Then why have us watch the footage in the first place?”
They glanced at Rainbow.
“I mean…” she made a face, trying to hold onto the threads of logic before they blew away, “...why go through all that trouble? If all that happened was the generator went down, why would Delta encrypt ten years worth of data and be so cryptic about pointing us to this one video that she had to have compiled herself? It’s like bulldozing a house so nobody finds out you spilled soup on the carpet.”
She could practically see the analogy sail over both their heads. She leaned forward, gesturing at the terminal with both hooves. “Delta Vee wanted someone to find that video, and she went through a lot to make sure it wasn’t Spitfire.”
Sledge pursed his lips and frowned at the terminal. “Okay, so let’s review. Spitfire gets a call from Mechanical, has a breakdown, the generator fails, she has a fight with Delta and the lights turn back on. What am I missing?”
For nearly a minute the office was silent save for the idle hum of the terminal’s fans and the murmur of conversation just outside the door. Finally, Opal spoke.
“The way the cables under my servers were cut, I’d say yer onto somethin’.” She rubbed a sprig of feathers against her mouth, then opened them in question. “From what I’ve seen of Delta, she’s the paranoid type. I doubt she’d let any low level tech start cuttin’ away those lines, so my guess is she did it herself.”
Sledge’s eyes narrowed. “Aurora sounded convinced those cables used to connect us to Stable-Tec’s network. What good would it do to cut us off if the problem was with the generator?”
“Maybe,” Opal pondered aloud, “they were dealing with the same problems we are now. We already got remnants of Equestria’s old army trying to find a way in here. Ten years after the bombs fell ain’t much time at all. Plenty of ponies alive who remembered where they’d seen Stables being built, and it only took Aurora a week to find a way into the network from the outside.”
She tapped the terminal, the crows feet around her eyes deepening as she considered the image. “What if that call didn’t come from Mechanical? What if someone clever on the outside figgered a way onto the network and started making threats hoping to be let inside?”
Compelling as it sounded, Rainbow wasn’t convinced. “Hard to do with a landslide blocking the tunnel.”
Opal made a face. “Well, I suppose so…”
“What about the message she sent?” Sledge pointed a feather at the terminal to indicate the cryptic message Delta sent to her husband after encrypting all of Stable 10’s archives up until that point. “‘Pedigree’ or something like that? Where does that fit in all of this?”
“Perigee,” Opal corrected, her own feathers already working to bring up the message in question. “Wasn’t that her kid’s name? The space cadet?”
“Apogee,” Rainbow supplied, leaning back in the little chair. All this thinking was starting to run her ragged. “They named her Apogee.”
“Funny name,” Sledge murmured.
“They were a funny family,” she agreed. “No strangers to the tabloids, either. I’m guessing you two don’t know what those are, do you?”
They stared at her with blank expressions.
She winced and shook her head. “There was a lot of history in that family that wasn’t strictly… legal. It’s not important. Jet and Delta named her after orbits or something sciencey. They may have gotten along like gryphons and charity work, but those two loved that filly in their own ways. No way on Equus Delta would’ve gotten her name wrong.”
“Could be a nickname,” Sledge offered.
Opal snorted. “Bless your heart.”
He frowned, catching the gentle admonishment.
“Don’t matter if they were eccentric or not,” Opal chuckled, tapping the keys to her terminal with a fresh edge of focus. “Ain’t no parent what loves their only kin uses something as clunky as Perigee as a nickname. May as well start calling you Maul for all the sense it makes.”
Sledge shrugged. “I like Maul.”
He smirked across the desk at Rainbow while Opal made an exasperated noise, ignoring the both of them as she puttered with her terminal. “Suffice to say, children, there’s no record of any pony bein’ named Perigee. Rainbow’s ‘sciency’ theory looks t’be the better chit to play. Got a few hits out’ve the Archive. Historical media, mostly.”
A pause.
“Jet Stream sure liked to talk to the press.”
Rainbow sat up a little straighter. “He mentioned Perigee to the media?”
Opal nodded. “Few times. It’s a thing, not a who. He wasn’t a popular stallion with the princesses, I take it.”
She stood and leaned over the desk so she could see the screen. Opal was tapping down the lines of a slightly blurry, scanned photo of a page taken from the Manehattan Gazette. It comforted her to see something familiar again even if it was just a picture on a screen. Real newspaper, not just shimmering green letters on a black screen. She wondered how many public libraries Scootaloo’s people had to raid to make microfilm backups like this. 
The article Opal skimmed wasn’t one of the personal interest stories Jet preferred to be featured in. It was one of the many rebukes published by the Ministry of Image on the princesses’ behalf. The headline read, Rebel Rocketeer Plunges Hazardous Waste into Celestial Sea. An impressive photo of a spent rocket stage splashing into the waves dominated the bulk of the page, followed by the usual smear campaign beneath. The author, writing under a pen name, lamented her concern for the safety of Equestria’s ocean ecology should Jet Stream Aerospace be allowed to continue testing. There wasn’t much to chew on, there. The article quickly deviated to the usual touchstones, namely the implications of a pony challenging the time-honored truth of the princesses being the sole movers of the sun and moon. Common references were pointed to in ancient tomes, scrolls and folk tales that had been accepted for thousands of years. 
And as usual, the flimsy comparison of JSA’s official figures from a few lackluster test flights. Just enough to flavor the article with something readers who still believed the princesses’ supremacy could laugh at. Theories such as the sun being comparatively stationary in a system or orbiting planets. Statistics of the proposed distance of the moon, it’s mass and a suggestion that ponies would weigh less should they stand on its surface. The latter point was used as a nudge-and-wink compliment to Princess Luna, but not before mentioning JSA’s proposed orbit for the rocky body. A grainy diagram from one of Jet’s own publications detailed the current theory, with two marked points in particular standing out in the sketch.
At the lowest point in the moon’s orbit, a six-digit figure and the word perigee standing above it. At its highest, barely a fifty thousand mile difference, sat apogee.
“No secret codes here that I can see. Not unless Delta fancied usin’ a six-bit encryption key.” Opal picked up her pen, gave it a tap, then paused. “You two searched the archive for this as a keyword before coming up here, yes?”
Rainbow blinked. Sledge opened his mouth, stopped, and closed it.
Opal closed her eyes, took a breath, and said, “If I run this search and find somethin’, I’m hucking this pen at one of you.”
Eyeing the narrow burgundy pen still held between Opal’s feathers, Rainbow took a cautious step back and seated herself. With her free wing, the elderly mare punched in seven letters and tapped Enter.
The terminal chattered happily away with its new task for several seconds until it stuttered and slowed. When it settled, Opal tapped the nib of the pen against her desk before flicking it through the air where it bounced firmly off Rainbow’s forehead.
“Ow!”
“Yer dang right, ow! All that time flapjawin’ and we could’ve been looking at this.”
She spun her terminal around for Rainbow to see. A single entry out of the entirety of Delta’s encrypted partition stood out at the top of the screen.


perigee | Text | 12kb | 10/31/77 | Restricted


Sledge leaned over Opal’s shoulder. “Is that it?”
In less time it would have taken to brew a pot of coffee, the code wranglers on the other side of the office wall sent back their answer. At first Rainbow wasn’t sure what they were all looking at. A single, unbroken block of alphanumeric junk glowed back at them.
“It looks like Delta fell asleep on the keyboard,” she said.
A second pen whizzed past her ear, causing her to flinch.
“This ain’t gibberish,” Opal breathed, feathers darting across the terminal. “This is an encryption key.”
Rainbow and Sledge watched as a prompt appeared which she hastily copied the block of text into. Her terminal let out a quick series of electric clicks followed by a second prompt. A smile crossed the old mare’s lips as she closed out of it and opened Partition 41.
As the endless list of files loaded in their neat little mind-numbing rows, Rainbow noticed something new. With the appearance of each file, an accompanying word had replaced the one which had dogged them for days.
Unrestricted.







Ginger wrinkled her nose at the strange graffiti adoring the stone façade of the tilting tower’s fifth floor. She’d heard from the traders that passed through Junction City that the cities along the coast could tilt toward the strange side, but as the four of them ventured back into the forest of leaning skyscrapers and barking traders she found herself stumped by the inscrutable tag.


TWILIGHT WUZ HERE


None of the ponies who lived here seemed to notice the hastily smeared black letters, nor had any effort been made to remove them or the crudely painted depiction of the alicorn peeking from behind a line drawn across the brickwork. Maybe it was someone’s idea of a joke. A punchline that someone had gone to literal heights to leave behind.
Fiona’s spritebot hovered beside her, not by its own propulsion but with the help of the bronze aura provided by Ginger’s horn. Whether or not the eccentric gryphon would be able to deliver was still up in the air. The little bot had gone dead without much more than the vague promise of power armor on a timeline that only Fiona knew. As the sun dragged a hazy glow toward the west horizon, the four of them turned back toward the city in search of a safe place to spend the night.
Ginger gave the spying eyes of Twilight Sparkle a quick shake of her head before turning her attention to the many venues that lined the street.
Most of the vendors had started the familiar ritual of packing away their unsold wares and counting the day’s caps. Sunset was at least another hour away but already the looming buildings were draping long black shadows into the gridwork of streets and avenues. Lamplight flickered from behind ramshackle curtains hung in the windows above them. Voices murmured from within covered wagons, their new proprietors winding down while the night life crept into the dark. Ginger caught the eye of a single guard standing sentry outside his employer’s wagon, a heavy shotgun floating idly beside him in a haze of pink magic. Sensing no threat from her, the stallion nodded. She returned the gesture and they continued on.
They passed unnoticed by a mare fighting with the pull cord on a rusty generator she’d dragged out to the sidewalk. Each spastic flutter of the motor drew a steady stream of profanity from her until, just as she was about to drift out of earshot, the generator coughed to life. Ginger looked back to see the mare connect it to an electric sign hung above her door. A string of red lights blinked on, framing three rough sketches of ponies engaging in a variety of blushworthy acts. She nudged Aurora, tipping her head back for her to see and delighted at the sight of her companion’s eyes growing large. Brothels weren’t the sort of place Ginger saw herself visiting, but they were most certainly a good place for expert inspiration.
Drifting until her hip bumped Aurora’s, she gave her a little smile while sparing her the embarrassment of a crass comment. Aurora bumped her back.
After a good bit of idle wandering and chatting with the locals, it was obvious to all of them that Fillydelphia wasn’t the sort of place where living came cheap. An accounting of their possessions didn’t help the situation. A small collection of disparate ammunition, Autumn’s holotapes, a few slices of roasted molerat and short stack of seventy-two caps were the only items of value the last week had left them. Excluding their weapons, none of which were for sale. One night, even in the seedier inns, would cost them more than they had. Like it or not, they’d be sleeping under the stars yet again.
Figuratively. Ginger shot the bank of slow marching clouds a sour look. Not that they ever noticed.
Roach passed out the last of the molerat while they started looking for alternatives. A light conversation about city living had sprung up between him and Julip when the spritebot sprang to life, scaring an undignified yelp out of Ginger in the process.
The bot puttered in the air ahead of them, spinning along its poles until its array of cameras spotted them. “Good news! Colonel Crank said yes!”
Fiona waited as if expecting them to jump for joy, but the four of them simply stared back, befuddled.
An exasperated but no less excited gryphon pressed on. “Coldbrook gave a green light on the power armor.”
Aurora’s ears perked at that, and Ginger watched with shared enthusiasm as the mare searched the skyline for the distinctive glass towers the Steel Rangers were said to have fortified. Were the buildings surrounding them any taller, she might not have seen the tilted glazed rooftops peeking up from behind them several blocks to the south.
Ginger chuckled at the eager rustling of Aurora’s feathers beneath her unfortunately necessary disguise. The pegasus was quick to take the lead. Fiona’s spritebot bobbled around them as they turned down a cracked intersection, drawing the confused looks of several ponies passing by.
“How’d you convince him?” Roach asked.
The gryphon’s voice buzzed out of the tinny speaker with a touch of pride. “I didn’t. He decided all on his own.”
A touch of worry wrinkled Ginger’s brow. “You blackmailed him.”
“Let’s just say that I’m a reporter who chose not to report something, and Coldbrook rewarded my discretion with a favor.” 
Roach snorted. “You could’ve been a lawyer.”
The bot paused.
“What’s a lawyer?”







Magnus Plaza was, in a word, imposing.
Unlike the scavenged junk that made up the ramparts around Blinder’s Bluff, the wall encompassing what used to be a business park had been constructed from uniform sheets of inch-thick steel held together by parallel welds. Canvas and wire bags filled with pulverized concrete insulated the wall from anything that might puncture the outer steel. Ponies patrolled both sides in pairs, eyes always moving, their heavily modified weapons worn prominently over armor that looked every bit as impregnable as the wall they guarded.
Ginger admittedly didn’t know much about construction as the mare beside her, but judging by Aurora’s reaction to seeing the wall the Rangers here were doing something right.
The price of admission was Fiona’s spritebot. Ginger surrendered the device at the gates, certain the stallion carrying it off would turn it around for caps the first chance he got. By comparison, the two chocolate colored mares assigned to escort them inside looked positively bored. 
With night arriving in full force, Magnus Plaza practically glowed. A generator whined somewhere unseen, providing power to the lamps that illuminated what felt like a city within a city. They were led by their escort down what must amount to the main street. Rangers looked their way with a variety of expressions, few of them inviting. As they passed what appeared to be a pop-up mess station, a stallion bearing a tray of food paused to look at them, frown, then turn to find an empty bench on which to sit.
Past the barracks, at the foot of one of the glass towers, they found themselves pointed toward a wide row of a half dozen shippings containers knit tightly together side by side. A container near the middle had its doors propped open, the space inside converted into what could best be described as a booth. Where the bottom half of the opening was filled by a steel desk and no small amount of bulletproof reinforcement, the upper half consisted of a mesh of chain link fencing and a narrow slot through which caps and weapons could be exchanged. 
Ginger sighed relief at the sight of the quartermaster’s station. As smoothly as this day had gone, she half expected something awful to happen.
If the mares escorting them looked bored, the pony seated behind the mesh looked practically comatose by comparison. Stocky and about as charming as a brick, the middle-aged mare watched them approach from her stool with a cocked eyebrow and visible irritation for what must have been existence itself. All she needed was a cigarette to hang off her lip and…
The mare lit her horn and lifted a dirty stub from an ashtray beside her and lit the crushed end. Ginger winced.
“Be still my heart,” the quartermaster groaned. “Celebrities.”
She spoke with an accent Ginger couldn’t place. Rough as the quartermaster’s appearance, but with an air of apathetic sarcasm that hinted that she wasn’t worried about landing on anybody’s disciplinary radar. Judging by her uniform’s notable lack of sleeves and the faint discoloration borne by what was left, the mare had already spent several years sitting at this desk. 
The name stitched to her uniform read simply: MUM.
She didn’t have to look to the others to see that they were waiting for her to take the lead. Part of her wished past-Ginger hadn’t been so eager to step in when negotiation was required. A quick glance at their escorts made it clear they were only here to keep them from causing trouble, rather than provide assistance.
Ginger cleared her throat and stepped toward the desk. “We were told Elder Coldbrook radioed ahead about a suit of power armor.”
Mum’s eyes slid toward her like a pair of windworn stones. “How nice of him.”
“Yes, well, if you could point us to it…”
The mare dragged on her cigarette and let the smoke filter lazily to the ceiling. Ignoring Ginger, she pulled the nib from her mouth and pointed the smoldering end between Aurora and Julip. “Which one of you is Aurora?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Aurora lifted her hoof. 
Ginger frowned as Mum slowly looked Aurora up and down, her eyes narrowing only briefly before she stubbed out her cigarette and blew out the last lungful of smoke.
“No dustwings.”
Ginger started to object, but to her surprise Aurora was quicker on the draw.
“Who said anything about dustwings?”
Mum leaned forward, the stool beneath her emitting a creak of protest as she pushed her ashtray aside so she could cross her hooves atop the counter. “You’re either a pegasus or a hunchback. Whichever it is, I don’t care. I’m not assigning you armor just to have you shit yourself inside it.”
Ginger bristled. “Excuse me-”
Mum wrapped her muzzle in a hazy aura, closing her mouth. “Not talking to you.”
Were they not standing at the center of a literal legion of Steel Rangers, she might have entertained the idea of levitating the quartermaster’s ashtray somewhere particularly difficult to retrieve. Things being as they were, they needed her cooperation if Aurora was to stand a chance of getting into the Stable that Roach uncovered. Ginger smothered the urge to dispel the mare’s magic with her own and jerked her mouth free of her grip instead.
Mum’s horn dimmed, her point made. Her eyes weighed on Aurora, or more accurately the admittedly out of place lump beneath her tattered coat. 
“Look, kid, there’s no Enclave here. Lemme see the wings.”
Fear made a good actress out of Julip. Now that the E-word was being floated, Ginger expected her to go conspicuously still. To their collective relief, Julip looked up at Aurora with something bordering on genuine worry. After a couple seconds, she tapped Aurora on the shin and tipped her head toward Mum. 
“She says it’s safe.”
Aurora sucked on the corner of her lip, nodded once, and proceeded to relax her wings enough to lift one out from beneath her disguise. Mum regarded the spread of grey feathers with minimal interest, her eyes taking in the dimensions like a bored tailor. 
The quartermaster gave Aurora a dismissive head shake. “Too wide. Suits I have’ll squeeze you ‘til something breaks. Or leaks. Coldbrook can say what he wants, but he’s not the one who has to hose out whatever you can’t hold in.”
Ginger watched Aurora’s stubbornness surface, knitting the mare’s brow.
“I guarantee you I’ve squeezed into access panels smaller than your power armor. I’ll be fine.”
Mum continued to stare back. Then her gaze dipped to the Pip-Buck on Aurora’s leg. “You won’t.”
Ginger’s hooves scraped against the concrete as she shifted her stance, waiting for the moment that seemed to be coming. Of course coming here had been a mistake. The Steel Rangers had so far caused them nothing but grief. Why should this night, escorted to a pony as friendly as a rusty knife, be any different?
While she moved like she was in no hurry, Mum still noticed Ginger’s defensive posture and frowned. To Ginger’s bewilderment, that was all she did. A moment later, she was staring back at Aurora with what looked like exasperation.
“Look. I’m going...” 
Mum stopped to regard the two escorts still lingering behind them. Ginger glanced back at them and noticed the discomfort on both of their faces. An unspoken threat passed from the quartermaster to the younger soldiers, and the two mares quietly wandered away. When they were out of earshot, Mum spoke again.
“I’m not going to repeat this and neither are you. Coldbrook wants you to hurt yourself and any Rangers with a brain in their head knows why. You and your friends threw a grenade into his house of cards and now he has the High Elder so far up his ass he doesn’t know whether to speak or shit.”
Ginger wrinkled her nose. “Colorful.”
“And accurate,” she groused back. “The Elder’s never been shy about taking credit for the work F&F Mercantile put into making the roads safe again. Now he’s got traders robbing each other in broad daylight and word’s getting around that some of the raider tribes are poking around their old stomping grounds. Normally that’d be enough to get a pony intimately acquainted with a firing squad, but that sob story Flipswitch put on the airwaves ginned up a lot of sympathy for you.”
Aurora spoke with a low voice. “It wasn’t a sob story.”
Mum shrugged. “If you say so. All I know is you’re lucky Cider and his sister were as screwed up as they were. Plenty of Paladins got petitioned to put Cider in a cell. None of them were willing to risk upsetting the apple cart.”
Ginger held up a hoof to forestall her. “Why are you telling us this?”
The quartermaster shrugged again. “Just letting you know the score. Coldbrook can’t touch either of you. Not directly. Too many ponies out there who’re happy to have Cider and Autumn gone. More than a few Rangers, too. But if the Stable mare happens to step into some armor on her own, it’s not his fault when her wings get broken.”
The four of them exchanged looks of uncertainty. Aurora, most of all, looked as if her confidence had fractured. Short of diving into the crater’s irradiated soup completely naked, power armor was the only safe way for her to reach the Stable beneath the surface. No amount of Rad-X would protect her from that amount of toxicity, and even if they had the fortune of finding a prewar hazmat suit that wouldn’t leak, the trapped air would cause her to bob to the surface like a cork.
There was no way around it.
And yet, Aurora was frowning at the ground while the gears in her head spun. 
“Okay,” she murmured, wings shuffling back under her ragged coat. “Okay, fine. What about her?”
Ginger’s heart skipped when Aurora tipped a hoof in her direction. The quartermaster followed the gesture, and Ginger found herself being scrutinized from stem to stern. A beat later, Mum grunted.
“‘Kay.” Her stool creaked again as the mare pivoted, then dropped to the shipping container’s metal floor with a dull clang. Bewildered, Ginger watched the mare approach a narrow door cut into the walls of the adjacent container and shoulder it open. It slammed shut behind her, and for the next minute they could only hear hooves thumping their way to the leftmost vessel. 
“Aurora,” she whispered, eyes flicking between her companion and the unseen noises of the gruff mare. “No. We didn’t come all this way for you to wait on the sidelines.”
Aurora’s expression was unsurprisingly pained, her eyes panning the windows of the tower just beyond the quartermaster’s station. Ginger could tell she was thinking the same thing. That sending her down instead of going herself wasn’t what she wanted, either. 
And yet.
“We can see if she’s wrong once when we get back to the water.”
Ginger pursed her lips. “But you don’t think she’s lying.”
Aurora shook her head. “That’s not where I’d bet my bits, no.”
A heavy clunk shuddered the double-doors of the far container and the lock disengaged. Like something out of a Steel Rangers enlistment poster, Ginger watched as an armor cast helmet pushed its way out and onto the concrete with an accompanying chorus of hissing pistons and whining servos. Several other suits of power armor stood idle nose to tail in the container, each bearing identical Steel Ranger paint schemes on a wide variety of armor. Before they could walk close enough to see the full interior, the pilot’s armor-clad horn took on its glow and the doors swung closed behind her.
The armor went still. A second later, a bright hiss of pressurized air streamed out as heavy panels lifted away from the quartermaster inside like the petals of a strange, mechanical flower. Mum stood in place, her half-lidded eyes suggesting that this was a process she waited for more times in a day than she cared to. Once the armor was fully open, she walked backwards until she was fully out of its shell and motioned for Ginger to come over. 
She did, reluctantly, her discussion with Aurora still unfinished.
“Ever pilot one of these?”
Ginger shook her head. Mum blinked, slowly.
“Fine. Sure. Why not. I’ll give you the crash course.”







The crash course, as Ginger discovered, was more crash than course.
Seeing the Steel Rangers parade around in power armor had given her the false impression that the entire process was intuitive. Lift one leg and the suit lifts one of its own. Turn her head and the helmet turns as well. What she hadn’t accounted for was the absolute ordeal she was going through trying to walk in a straight line without any sort of tactile feedback to tell her which hooves were on the ground and which weren’t.
There was a saying her mother used to have. Something about walking like a dog in boots. She spat a quiet curse as she lifted her left foreleg only to have her right hoof slam the rest of the way down to the pavement. She cursed again when the helmet’s external speaker amplified her first profanity.
“Careful,” Roach rumbled. “Got a wagon coming up.”
“I see it.”
The wagon, one of the new independent traders spun up from the downfall of F&F Mercantile, was being pulled by a team of two mares. Both exchanged worried glances as they approached the stumbling armor, then carefully averted their eyes as they pulled their wagon well out of Ginger’s path until she was able to stomp by.
“This is ridiculous,” she huffed. “There’s clearly something wrong with this suit.”
“They take some time to get used to.” He gestured ahead, trying to reassure her. “By the time we’re through the city, you’ll be wearing it like a second skin.”
Ginger didn’t share his confidence. “A second skin that takes its sweet time to do what I tell it to do.”
“Input latency,” Julip chimed. When Ginger looked down at her, she practically shrunk behind the changeling beside her. “Model P-45 armor rolled out with a 0.25 second lag between the pilot’s movement and the suit’s.”
She narrowed her eyes, hoping they could see her annoyance through the helmet’s visor. “Why are the two of you experts all of a sudden?”
Roach shrugged. “Spend enough time scavenging the wasteland and you’re bound to find some abandoned power armor. Long time back, I had a chance to play around with an exoskeleton someone had left behind. Had to ditch it when it ran out of power, though.”
Ginger smacked the tip of her hoof against a crack in the pavement, causing the armor to scrape hard against its knee. She cringed, preparing for the bolt of pain out of instinct, but then she remembered it wasn’t her knee being ripped up. One heated sigh and a staggering step up to her hoof later, she turned her gaze from Roach to Julip.
Freshly defected, Julip wasn’t about to blow her own cover. “I think you know how I know what I know.”
Ginger groaned. “Duly noted. Where’s Aurora?”
At that, Julip bit down on a grin and shrugged. Roach stared firmly ahead, but the smile curling his cracked lip betrayed him too. A quick look at the road around her came up empty and nearly sent the suit on a swaying trajectory toward a roughly assembled street lamp. Only when she returned to the comparative safety of the center line did a curtain of familiar feathers slide down over the suit’s visor.
“Of course you are.” A gentle shake of her head cleared her vision, and the rasping sound she’d been hearing from the plating behind her neck made more sense. “How long have you been back there?”
The sound of Aurora’s laughter pried a smile out of her. “Five streets.”
“Blocks,” Roach corrected.
“Tomato, potato.”
This time it was Roach’s turn to groan. Though Ginger couldn’t see her, she could guess Aurora was wearing a teasing grin. 
“You took your wings out?”
“Half the Rangers saw them back at the plaza, and Mum made it sound like they all knew who I was anyway. I didn’t see the point. Plus that coat smelled like death in a sewer.”
She mulled that. The entire purpose of her disguise was to minimize unwanted attention, but it would be hard to do that with Ginger stumbling along in a suit of power armor twice their size. Aurora would have to wear a flashing neon sign to draw more eyes than she was.
“Just don’t get us into any trouble that requires me to do more than walk in a straight line,” she warned. “I’m not entirely confident I remember how to get out of this thing.”
The speaker near Ginger’s left ear rustled, Aurora’s voice just a hair closer to the microphone than it had been. “I’d love to help.”
A familiar warmth twitched to life deep in her belly, but she kept her composure. Aurora had spent the better part of her adult life working with heavy machinery. It shouldn’t have surprised her at all that she’d find a little more than strictly professional excitement from seeing her tromp around inside what amounted to a locomotive with legs. 
“Let’s put a pin in it for later,” she chuckled. “There are young ears listening.”
Julip’s ears flattened. “I’m twenty-eight.”
“Innocent, impressionable little ears.”
“Oh my fuck.”
Ginger giggled through her next stumble while Julip trotted ahead, followed close behind by Roach who glanced back with not unpleasant exasperation. Off he went to keep the compact pegasus from murdering someone. She smiled after them and wondered whether Julip really understood why he was so protective of her despite her prickly demeanor. He’d been the same way with Ginger when he found her as a runaway. A stallion who, despite the years, still took it upon himself to be the surrogate father. Giving him an excuse to pair off with Julip was proving to be good for both of them.
It was fully dark by the time they arrived back at the crater. Unsurprisingly, another spritebot had arrived to replace the one given to the Rangers. It rested in a cluster of broken bricks, no doubt parked there by Fiona while she tended to her first broadcast. Ginger suspected the power armor had some form of radio built in but it was anyone’s guess which of the toggles below her chin would bring it up on the HUD. Aurora, as if reading her mind, had hopped down from her back to half-walk, half-putter with her Pip-Buck. The most she could tune into was the ghost of Fiona’s voice among a wash of static. Their guardian gryphon, as Ginger was beginning to see her, was either introducing the next musician in her lineup or advertising a trumpet. The hazy squeal of brass answered that question and Aurora spared her any further torture by turning the radio off.
They found Roach and Julip poking around the rubble just outside the lip of the crater. Ginger hummed quiet approval when Julip barked a genuine laugh, spurred by the punchline to one of Roach’s many colorful stories.
Beside her, Aurora’s attention was on Ginger’s visor. “Time to call Mum’s bluff.”
“I don’t think it was a bluff,” she said, leaning her weight forward onto the switches beneath her front hooves. A harsh hiss of compressed air rushed along her back as the suit bloomed around her. Walking herself out of the armor, she put a hoof against Aurora’s chest before she could take her place. “Go slow.”
Aurora nodded, just a little more dubious of the machine now that she was shuffling her way into it. Padding covered most of the interior exoskeleton, including the armor along the suit’s belly that acted as a bench of sorts to slide forward along. Somewhere along the way back she’d discarded her coat completely. Ginger lit her horn, stopping Aurora so she could lift away her rifle and saddlebags. The dapple grey mare glanced back at her sheepishly for the oversight.
She kept her horn lit in case the armor needed to be wrenched open. Worry pressed into her throat as she watched Aurora tuck her wings as best she could manage then pushed the switches to close the suit. Ginger stood back, craning her neck as the pieces jerkily inched upward and toward one another. Aurora operated the heavy switches in steps, toggling them on and off until the two largest halves around her barrel were just a foot apart. She grunted, and Ginger craned her neck to see as the halves jerked forward another inch.
“Fuck.”
The suit opened slightly, Aurora adjusted herself, and she tried again. The pieces barely moved further than they had the first time before she had to stop. 
“Come on.”
She frowned. “Aurora, don’t force it.”
A defeated sigh filtered out from the gaps. “I know. She was right about my wings.”
“Too tight?”
“Only around the joints.” The suit jerked open enough to relieve the pressure. “Probably doesn’t make it any better, though.”
“Probably not. Let’s get you out of there.”
Aurora didn’t answer. Not at first. 
“It smells like you in here.”
Ginger flushed a little and gave the armor a smack with the flat of her hoof. “Out. We still need to find somewhere to sleep.”
Aurora grumbled a half-hearted complaint as she freed herself from the suit. Dark as it was, the moonlit clouds still gave off enough silvery light for her to spot Ginger’s flustered expression. Like a predator scenting prey, Aurora stepped back onto the scorched soil and traced a line toward her.
“Okay.”
She blinked. “Okay what?”
Aurora’s hoof settled beside hers. Electricity shot down her neck as the mare’s lips brushed past her own, hovering just below the cup of her ear. 
“Let’s find somewhere to sleep.”
She nuzzled closer, kissing her neck as Ginger’s thoughts began to come apart. They should be talking about the crater. There were things they needed to do. Things she wanted to do. Roach hadn’t told them about the thing. The Stable. Something about that. Aurora had buried her muzzle in her mane, inhaling deeply.
The crater could wait. Rest was important. Very, very important.
“What about Roach and-”
“They’re busy.”
“But we-”
“We’re busy.”
She certainly was.
“Luna’s grace,” Ginger whispered, “you’re incorrigible.”
“Mmh,” Aurora hummed back, loosely hooking her feathers around her foreleg. “Come on.”
Aurora led her out of the crater, the night air threatening to rush in and cool the primal heat blossoming in Ginger’s chest if she dared let her get too far away. But as soon as they started moving, Aurora came to a sudden stop. The pegasus looked back at Ginger, whose eyes were very pointedly focused somewhere else, then to the machine parked just below the rim.
A kittenish grin touched her emerald eyes. 
“Bring the armor.”







Opal leaned back in her chair. The terminal glowed back at her, dutifully waiting for its next task. Partition 40 was open. An entire decade of history, some of the most valuable in Stable 10’s two centuries of operation, had been unlocked thanks to a trail of breadcrumbs left behind by the same mare who hid it away.
“So, what now?”
Her ear twitched, dragging her away from her thoughts. They weren’t finished. Not by a long shot. With a heap of secrets waiting to be picked from years of data, the real work was just starting. Turning to Sledge, she bore a weary smile.
“We get some coffee on the boil n’ start digging. G’wan now, you know where it is.”
Sledge put a hoof on the back of her chair and squeezed out from behind her desk, leaving her alone with arguably the most significant discovery in Stable 10’s history. The Element of Loyalty stared back at her as the door shut behind the overstallion, the two of them finding themselves unsure what to say without him to bridge the gap.
“Well,” she started, unsure how else to keep the silence from stretching. “Can you drink coffee with yer, ah, condition?”
Rainbow pursed her lips and shrugged. “I haven’t tried. I probably shouldn’t. Sledge has me trying out some medicine to help me stay… present, I guess?”
Opal nodded, set her feathers on the keyboard and started tapping out some starting instructions for the department. They were going to need more than the three of them working on this. As she pecked at the keys, she offered a sympathetic nod toward the grievously wounded and yet inexplicably healthy former minister. “Give it a day or two. One of the docs upstairs will nail up a name for it.”
She was heartened to hear Rainbow snort agreement. Some things in the world never changed, especially when it came to personal fame. “Don’t s’pose you have any guesses to what Overmare Spitfire was tryin’ to hide? Other’n what we just saw on that video Delta put together.”
Rainbow blew out a breath to signify the sheer breadth of secrets the first overseer might want to sweep under the rug. After some thought, she seemed to settle on a simple answer. “Everyone has a skeleton in their closet.”
“Mm.” She nodded, making sure to include a direct link to the partition in her message. “Truer words.”
Rainbow ran a ragged feather across her thinning mane and shook her head at the ceiling. “Spitfire was dipping her hooves into anything she could toward the end. Didn’t matter if it was MoA work, another ministry’s or civilian territory. She couldn’t sleep unless she felt like she could control all the variables.”
“Ponies back then would do anything for peace,” she murmured. Seeing the slight frown on Rainbow’s face, she winced. “Sorry. That was uncalled fer.”
She barely looked fazed. More curious than anything. “Did you know any of the first residents?”
That scared a good laugh out of Opal, startling Rainbow in the process. “I ain’t that old! But my great-grandmother would sometimes talk about her great-granddad when I was a filly. Always had kind things to say about that stallion if’n she asked him about the things he did before the war. Wouldn’t say a word about what he done after it started, especially during the bombing.”
Rainbow crossed her hooves over her belly and nodded at the carpet. “Can’t say I blame him.”
“Don’t imagine anyone would.” A quick click on the keyboard and her instructions flew off to a dozen different terminals. Her department wasn’t large, but her people were efficient workers. They’d be digging in earnest before Sledge finished brewing the first pot. “Nobody here blames you either. For what happened at the end, I mean.”
That was a step too far. She was saying things she didn’t have much right to say, least of all to one of Equestria’s old guardians. Opal grit her teeth behind closed lips as she watched Rainbow’s eyes mist over, her withered jaw clench against the raw emotion Opal let loose on her. She had a tendency to move too quickly with ponies she didn’t know. Worse with those she respected. A product of her own insecurities, she supposed. Now she sat here in the comfort of a well-worn chair watching a pony from the old days fight back tears.
“I’m sorry,” she offered.
Rainbow waved her off with the only wing she had left and cleared her throat, roughly, several times until she was able to reach something resembling composure. “It’s fine.”
Opal set her chin against her hoof, trying to think of something she could say to roll back the hurt she’d caused.
“Really,” Rainbow insisted. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long time since I’ve been… me, for this long.”
She paused. “Does that mean you’re… should I get Sledge?”
“No.” Rainbow dragged the back of a feather under each eye, clearing the moisture. “No, it’s not Blue. But I could use a quick ten if we’re going to pull an all-nighter. Is there anywhere I can lay down?”
Opal glanced around her office as if expecting to see a cot that hadn’t been there before. She’d known pegasi who sometimes slept in their offices, but she wasn’t one of them.
She shook her head. “Sorry, hon.”
“It’s fine,” she repeated, though this time around it did seem genuinely fine. Opal let herself smile just a touch as Rainbow grasped the chair’s armrests with her hooves and hop-turned, hop-turned until she was facing the near wall. A short stack of boxes she used to store her binders of monthly paperwork served as a makeshift hoofstool, allowing Rainbow to recline comfortably in her seat. She draped her wing across her stomach and tipped her head back, eyes closed. “Don’t let me sleep too long.”
Opal nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rainbow didn’t open her eyes, but she smiled all the same.
“Dash,” she said. “My friends call me Dash.”







Aurora woke where she’d fallen asleep. With her head resting atop Ginger’s chest, her ear pressed to her heart. The early morning air was just chilly enough to cut through her coat and bite into her skin. It was surprisingly pleasant. Their shared body heat warmed her belly and their intertwined legs while the breeze cooled her back. Her pillow stirred, but Ginger’s breathing didn’t change. Long, slow breaths. Aurora closed her eyes, listening to the mare breathing, and dozed off again.
It was a little brighter out when she came around again. Ginger’s magic was gently lifting Aurora’s wing away from her legs so she could get up. Aurora stretched her hind legs as far as they’d go, exerting a quiet squeak as her tired muscles sang. The sea breeze smelled salty, something she’d heard of but never experienced until now. It only took a moment for her to decide she liked it.
“Rise and shine,” Ginger murmured.
As rested as she felt, she was happy to do a little of both. She gulped down a lungful of the cool morning air and sat up just enough to share a kiss with the mare beside her. It lasted only for a moment before both of them pulled back, each wearing the same wincing smile at the less-than-romantic taste in their mouths.
Aurora couldn’t resist asking. “What’d you eat last night?”
She was already giggling as Ginger lifted a brow at her, then at the bright black scrapes in the burned boards they rested on. In their hurry to find someplace private, they had settled on the first standing ruin they could find. With sunrise arriving shortly, Aurora could see their little hideaway hadn’t provided as much privacy as she’d thought. The partial cinder block wall Ginger slept against and the burned floor that served as their bed was all that remained of the building. The power armor loomed nearby, fully open, dutifully facing away from the amorous mares who’d shamelessly involved it in their debauchery.
They got up, and from then the morning went quickly.
She spotted Roach and Julip camped not far from the crater, the pair of them quietly chatting much in the same way they’d been when Aurora and Ginger snuck away. A small fire sent ribbons of ashy smoke skyward. Roach had taken to roasting some of the pecans they’d brought back from their foray into Stable 1, a few of which he passed over to the two of them as soon as they drew up to the fire. Ginger parked her armor near the crater and they ate, passing around roasted nuts, tart apples, and a good amount of banter until their bellies were full. When they were finished, Roach stood and motioned for them to follow him back to the crater. They had work to do.
Ginger was the whole show now. All the planning and preparation would be for nothing if her power armor couldn’t protect her from the toxic soup at the bottom of the crater. It felt strange watching Ginger disappear back into the armor with Roach walking slow circles around her, having her move this way and that as he checked the seals. For the past week and some change, Aurora had been preparing herself for her arrival here. She’d expected to find a dusty old building long forgotten by the ponies who tended it, not a bomb crater and an impassable pond of radiation. Waiting on the sidelines hadn’t been part of the plan, but that seemed to be how it was panning out.
She parked herself on a rock nearby and watched them work, happy at least that Ginger would be the mare going down in her stead. 
It wasn’t until Ginger steered the armor down into the water that the warning bells of anxiety began to creep in. As stagnant water sloshed around the suit’s legs, her heart beat a little quicker. Roach had Ginger stop when she was up to her ribs, the two of them waiting for any sign that water was getting into the suit. As they waited, Aurora swallowed, her throat tacky and dry. She forced herself to take deep breaths to calm herself. Ginger was going to be fine. If anything happened, she could magic her way out of it.
Probably.
“You look like you’re going to puke.”
Julip had pulled up beside her, but Aurora had been too focused on Ginger to notice. She pursed her lips and tried not to look as sour as her stomach was turning. The last thing she wanted was for Ginger to see and think she was having doubts.
She overheard Ginger say something about submerging and grimaced.
“Worried,” she mumbled, expecting something sarcastic to come out of Julip’s mouth in return. What she said instead came as a welcome surprise. 
“Don’t be. If that unicorn can teleport a slaver fifty feet into the air, she can handle a dive into the deep end of the pool.” Julip sat, her gaze shifting to Roach. “Plus she’s in good hooves. If your talisman is down there, they’ll find it for you.”
Aurora considered that and blew out a long breath. “That was uncharacteristically reassuring, coming from you.”
“Yeah.” Julip chuckled to herself. “He’s starting to rub off on me.”
“Heyo.”
“Gross.”
She shrugged.
Julip pressed on. “Anyway, I talked to him last night about your ignition talisman. Drew him some sketches in the dirt so he has an idea of what to look for.”
“Thanks for doing that.”
“It was either that or we try to break open one of the spare power cells for the suit. It runs off the same design, only in miniature. He appreciated the version that didn’t involve our hooves being forcefully removed from our legs.”
She snorted a laugh, shaking her head at the imagery. It was a welcome break from the constant fretting, even if her nerves started jangling all over again as Ginger waded deeper into the pool.
“Still worried?”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the battered armor. “Terrified.”
Julip hummed. “Roach says that’s how you know you love someone.”
Aurora took a moment to consider that. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“I guess he’s right.”
With the seals tested and only minor levels of radiation able to seep through the armor, Ginger brought the suit to the edge of the water and called out to let them know they were taking the dive. Aurora tried hard not to let the worry trickle into her voice, but she was only capable of so much. 
“Be careful!”
“You too,” Ginger called back. “We’ll try to be back in a few hours. Keep her out of trouble, Julip!”
Aurora pressed feathers to her chest with playful indignance despite wanting nothing more than to take Ginger’s place. She held her breath as Ginger turned with Roach by her side, the latter swimming into the crater while the lesser slid beneath the murk as if it weren’t there at all. One step after the other, Ginger sank until finally, inevitably, the water lapped over the last inch of armor and dragged her out of sight.







For as far back as she could remember, Scootaloo had always been a worrier.
If asked about it, her staple response would always revolve around her harried fillyhood attempts to earn her cutie mark. It was the easiest answer. Most ponies who knew her knew at least one story of how she and her fellow crusaders would terrorize Ponyville in pursuit of that one defining trait their confusing and unknowable universe deemed most worthy of a brand. It was an easy sell, but it wasn’t the truth.
Her incurable unease came from something less mystical. It had been a seed planted unknowingly by her mother and father. Something they had noticed and fretted over long before Scootaloo had any desire for a cutie mark, a purpose, or destiny. Something that, spoken of in quiet whispers when they thought she wouldn’t hear, seared itself in her mind for decades to come.
“What kind of pegasus will she be if she can’t even fly?”
She never forgot her father’s shushing, or the metallic click of their bedroom door drawing shut. The cartoon that had captured her attention gradually faded from focus as her little mind tried to decipher what her mother had meant, only to piece it together one year later when their family moved from Cloudsdale down to Ponyville. Up until that point she hadn’t known her wings were stunted. She found that out on her first day of school when a well-meaning teacher’s aide introduced her to the class as a brave filly who wasn’t letting her disability stand in her way. 
For the next several years, Scootaloo’s thoughts would revolve around what she couldn’t do. She agonized over what kind of future a grounded pegasus could hope for, what sort of mark she could expect to appear on her flank when every skybound pony she could think of bore some symbol of flight. With her parents less and less in the picture, their work taking them to all corners of the world for weeks on end, she found herself turning to the town they expected to foalsit her while they were away. Ponyville was small, but it was dense with activity. 
And, she realized, opportunity.
It didn’t take long for Scootaloo to decide to take her future into her own feathers. Worry became fuel. She started to experiment, drawing the attention of two fillies who quickly became her closest friends. They formed a club, wreaking no small amount of havoc in their crusade to earn their marks. When they finally appeared, a set of matching marks that few ponies ever had the luck of sharing, it only emboldened her.
They grew up. The world changed. And changed some more.
Then the war came, and Scootaloo began to worry again. So she went to work.
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER.
The carpet practically slid beneath her hooves as her security detail pulled her toward the stairwell. Ponies had begun to make their way down into the shelter from the office above, crowding the corridor with barely contained fear as they followed. To her staff’s credit, they didn’t break. Even as she was ferried out of the hallway and onto the stairs, she could see nor hear any evidence of panic. The weekly evacuation drills were doing their job. She looked down at the ponies turning down the next flight below and saw unwiped tears, mouths working their way through shameless prayers, but not a single one of them broke rank. If there was anything to be proud of right now, Scootaloo was proud of the ponies she worked with.
And yet a new worry had wriggled its way into her chest. Something she hadn’t had time to plan for. As a muted rumble of thunder vibrated the walls of the shelter, fear for the mare who had gone back out just minutes ago plagued her thoughts.
“Millie, I need...”
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. 
She pinned her ears, lifting her modified Pip-Buck an inch from her muzzle. “Millie, mute this stairwell’s speakers.”
ALL PERSONNEL EVACUA-
Merciful silence, replaced by the orderly stampede of hooves on concrete and the scared murmur of her employees. She could feel the eyes of the nearest ponies turn toward her with something like hope, but there was nothing she could do about what was happening outside. The zebras had finally gone off the deep end. All they could hope for now was to survive the next hour.
For Rainbow Dash, that might only be minutes.
Scootaloo half-walked, half-hobbled along with her security as she kept her Pip-Buck near her mouth. “Millie, I need to know how bad things are topside.”
A pause. “Seismic sensors have detected seventeen individual surface detonations along Equestria’s western seaboard. Media outlets based in Las Pegasus, Van Hoover, Cloudsdale, and Port Withers are no longer broadcasting. Stables 72 and 108 failed to seal and have been compromised. Stable 91 sealed with a suboptimal population.”
Scootaloo muttered a curse for the members of Van Hoover’s city council who forced Stable-Tec to settle on buying land several miles beyond the city limits, despite knowing that one traffic jam could render 91 out of reach. “How many got in?”
“Twenty-one residents, including the department heads of Mechanical and Sanitation,” Millie answered. “Overstallion Hitch is unaccounted for.”
Turning down the next flight of steps, she grit her teeth and tried to keep a level head. “Get the department heads together. Help them select an overseer from the surviving residents. They’re going to be on their own for a little while.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shaking her head, she stared forward. Hopefully there would be time later to give 91 better guidance. She peered over the railing and felt a touch of relief at the sight of ponies filing out the open door several flights below. Already, a part of her was preparing for what she needed to say once everyone had gathered at the bottom. Break the awful truth to many who had convinced themselves this was only another drill.
“Millie, I need a best-case analysis for Minister Dash’s chances of reaching her Stable.”
Her security detail guided her around and down the next flight while dozens of ponies went quiet, waiting for Millie’s answer. Several seconds ticked by.
“Reported detonation patterns suggest Equestrian targets have been selected in sequence, beginning in the west and proceeding east. Accounting for current weather schedules, a ten year sampling of Minister Dash’s median speed records, and assuming optimal conditions, she stands a seventy-one percent chance of surviving a one-way flight to Stable 10.”
Scootaloo frowned. It took another turn of the stairs to decide it wasn’t enough.
“Millie.” She slowed as she approached the congested line of ponies waiting to squeeze out of the open door just below her hooves. Her lips hesitated to form the words, knowing making any changes like the one she was thinking of might send out ripples that could affect ponies generations from now.
But this was Rainbow Dash. Mentor, idol and dearest friend. If Equestria survived, it would have to forgive a little theft on her part.
“Connect to Shelter 0,” she said, ignoring the strange glances from her own security detail. “Copy and send voice override templates for each of the ministers to all Stables. Priority integration.”
As the line inched down the steps, she waited for something to go wrong. For someone from the Pillar to detect the backdoor Applebloom had left for her buried within Robronco’s code. For history to remember her not just as a paranoid defeatist who ended up being right after all, but as a mare who mistrusted the ministries so deeply that she chose to keep one key to herself just in case.
Millie spoke. “Command line ‘Shelter’ unrecognized.”
Frustration pushed her to bite her lip hard enough to hurt. “Then add it back in, Millie.”
A pause. “Warning. Multiple conflicts-”
She finally broke composure, shouting into the open air and causing the ponies around her to flinch. “THEN MAKE IT WORK!”
Another pause. Longer this time, as if she’d somehow managed to offend the AI.
“Integration completed.”
She stared down at her hooves until someone else’s touched her shoulder. Sighing, she glanced a couple steps behind her to see a stallion she didn’t recognize but who wore a trim navy vest emblazoned with a Stable-Tec logo just below the collar. One of the office pages, she realized. The sort of pony that operated behind the scenes to make sure mares like her stayed fed, watered and caffeinated while they did the work of preparing for the apocalypse. 
Pressing her lips into an apologetic line, she wondered how much the world owed ponies like him. Ponies whose names would never make the pages of history.
The world could have used more like him. She nodded, letting him and the many others who stared at her know she was okay, and his hoof returned to the steps.
“Millie,” she said, choosing her words carefully as dozens upon dozens of ears turned toward her voice. “Please verify that all six Elements of Harmony have access to all Stable-Tec resources.”
“Confirmed,” came Millie’s reply.
Some of the weight slid off her shoulders. It was the best she could do. It was something she should have planned for from the start. She knew the ministers. She knew one of them more than anyone else. Even Millie.
Rainbow Dash wasn’t flying to Stable 10.
She was trying to save Applejack.





“Faster. Please, please please...”
A flash bloomed behind the distant horizon, sour and green and full of malice. Another bomb. Another city lost to the insanity of a nation of zebras whose spies had crawled into Equestria like ants scenting something sweet. Somehow, some way they had gotten their hooves on balefire. Righteous anger shoved her thoughts toward revenge. There would be an atonement for whoever gave Vhanna the bomb. Taught them to engineer Equestria’s technology. Pointed their missiles back toward the land that had provoked them.
Another flicker. Another blush of emerald. Closer this time. 
Focus.
Her muscles seared as if every churn of her wings was pressing acid between the fibers. It had been years since she last pushed herself like this. The wind whistled through the gaps of her flattened ears like a siren, but she wouldn’t stop. She climbed as high as she dared, leaving the speckled cotton ball clouds far enough underhoof that they reminded her of the fluffy snowflakes she and Applejack once watched fall in Canterlot one morning.
She crushed her eyes shut. Focus!
The mountains sank away behind her as had the widening disks of chromatic light that gave each of her sonic booms their moniker. Pressure built along the tips of her hooves, a cone of shimmering color that trailed down her forelegs before whipping behind her and clapping shut in an explosion of sound and color she would never hear or see. The core of her attention was fixed on a single point on the horizon where she knew, if she was fast enough, a mountain would appear.
And with it, Applejack. All she had to do is make it there.
Equestria curved beneath her. The vast plains of the east blending into the studded bluffs where ancient glaciers had supposedly carved out the deepest bedrock before receding north. Vast, verdant forests hugged by crystal blue lakes and meandering rivers. A small ridge of low mountains, one of which sheltered Spitfire’s own Stable. A hole in the ground that she’d convinced the two of them to sign on as residents for. A forgettable public relations stunt, Rainbow had assumed.
Out of the southern sky, a flash so vivid it caught her off guard. A distant, blinding star that made her eyes ache through closed lids. An air detonation. Minutes later, thunder rippled through her like a physical thing. She tried to think of anything down south worth the zebras sending a bomb after. Nothing came to mind. Maybe one of Twilight’s projects. Not something she had the luxury of worrying about.
Relief filled her chest as the peak of Canterlot Mountain slowly lifted above the discolored horizon. She pistoned her wings hard, throwing every ounce of strength she had into getting back to the Pillar where Applejack and the others had to be taking shelter. It was the safest place in the capitol for any of them to be. 
She steered into a shallow descent, the tip of each hoof cupping the grand shelf that suspended Canterlot out from the mountain like a saucer taken from a foal’s tea set. She was too far away to make out the white stonework of the castle. The distance still too great for her to see the purple and gold banners that fluttered atop its spires from sunrise to sunset and sunrise again. 
Too hopelessly slow to win a race against the missile that punctured the bedrock below the great city and heaved it all up into the morning sky.





At the bottom of Stable-Tec Headquarters, Scootaloo and more than a hundred members of her company waited.
They huddled together in groups, friends and coworkers finding pockets of space to occupy among the industrial racking where they sat with their eyes glued on one another’s Pip-Bucks while the world above came to a bitter end. Scootaloo slowly walked down the wide aisles of raw material intended to keep this place and the Stables like it capable of renewing its aging infrastructure long after the first generation was gone.
She tried not to think about that. Up in her formal office on the surface, it was easier to think of things that way when she could look out the window at the rolling sea. It would be harder for her to steady her nerves down here. The reality of being the first of many generations of survivors would hit her eventually. She didn’t plan on being in plain view when that happened.
Rods of pristine steel, copper, brass and more alloys than she could name glistened on shelves that would slowly become lighter as the years progressed. Clocks stacked with raw material, all ticking down to the same day when the poison being seeded above their heads would run its course. Scootaloo had personally made sure that this shelter had double the normal complement of supplies. Enough to assure the survival of this facility, come what may. 
She wandered past a group of six ponies gathered beneath a wall of hermetically sealed containers simply labeled COMPLEX PROTEIN RECIPE A-9 and tried not to picture the milky pink slurry that would constitute a measurable percentage of their diet until the gardens bore their first crop. They sat in a loose circle, the six of them murmuring questions to one another as they all flipped their Pip-Bucks from one radio station to the next. Most frequencies were dead, now. Some still spat static, suggesting some relay towers on the west coast hadn’t gone down just yet. One, an FM station local to Fillydelphia, played the same emergency bulletin on loop urging citizens to find shelter. 
It wasn’t like the movies, Scootaloo realized. No broadcasters had heroically remained at their desks to report Equestria’s final moments. They had all gone. 
And so they waited.
Scootaloo was in mid stride when the last bomb dropped on their heads. One moment she was lifting a hoof off the floor, the next she was stumbling face first into one of the shelves. It took her several seconds to orient herself. A high whine rose from deep behind her eardrums as she pushed herself off a floor that felt different than it had before. To her shock, she could feel it vibrating. Reverberating like the surface of a struck bell.
She could taste blood on her tongue and when she started to work her jaw back and forth, hoping to hasten the return of her hearing, a bolt of pain from the split in her lip caused her to flinch. Already ponies were coming to render her aid, ignoring their own problems to tend to her. She let them, not wanting to start this apocalypse by making them question their instincts, and gently touched her tongue to her teeth, sparking another flash of discomfort. Chipped, she realized, from diving into the racks. 
The waiting was over. A stallion pressed a wetted square of gauze to her cut lip, the peroxide setting the superficial wound on fire. She grunted and watched as tens of ponies with something to do hurried into action. Her eyes caught sight of a mare’s Pip-Buck as she hurried past, its screen flashing with an unsilenced warning message.
As the stallion in front of her dropped the bloodied gauze onto the floor and lifted a fresh, dry square from his emergency kit, Scootaloo lifted her hoof into her line of sight so she could read the message.


:: CRITICAL BREACH DETECTED ::
All available maintenance crews
report to Level 1 immediately.


Dread rose into her throat.
“Ma’am, you need stitches.”
The stallion indicated to the patch of gauze held to her lip in his magic. She opened a wing and pressed it in place with a feather, glad to have a reason to mask her expression. Nodding, she allowed him to help her the rest of the way up and steer her back toward the stairs. Something about that struck her as funny. He had the same alert flashing on his Pip-Buck, too. And yet he was following the training she’d spent the last several years drilling into his and a hundred other ponies’ heads.
Help the wounded. Don’t panic. 
As they reentered the stairwell, she coughed to clear the blood from her throat and addressed the machine that always listened.
“Millie,” she grunted, “give me Stable 10’s current status.”
She strained to listen to Millie over the ringing in her ears.
“Stable 10 was sealed twenty-two minutes ago with thirty-one percent of the registered population. Six department heads are present. Overmare Spitfire is present.”
A pause. Millie anticipated the question before Scootaloo could ask it. 
“Minister Rainbow Dash is not present.”
> Chapter 32: Found
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, Initiate. Bet that one goes pinwheel.”
“Probably.”
“Bet it hits the fence.”
Latch grunted. He didn’t care where it landed. Elder Coldbrook hadn't demoted him so he could make wagers in the middle of nowhere. He'd made it abundantly clear that this was the reward he earned for enabling the rescue of Aurora's fiery-maned companion, then later allowing Flipswitch into the Rangers' Stable knowing she would strongarm Paladin Ironshod into returning the Pip-Buck he'd stolen.
Ironshod had tried correcting his misbehavior with door duty. Coldbrook hadn't felt nearly so charitable. 
“Betcha a beer that it does.”
Ignoring the stallion was hard work, but he was getting used to it. There was no beer out here to bet with. No caps, either. Just the half-edible rations Elder Coldbrook greenlit to be hauled out from some dusty cache somewhere, along with barely enough purifiers to treat the groundwater being sucked out of what remained of the local aquifer. As with every project the Elder wanted done quickly, the Rangers “lucky” enough to be assigned the task found the living conditions deliberately minimal. Comfort bred complacency, or so Coldbrook claimed. The faster they finished the work, the faster they would return home to their warm bunks.
“Watch,” Maxus said, either ignorant or unbothered that Latch had tuned him out. “There it goes. It’s gonna roll!”
Latch didn’t respond. What choice did any of them have? It was their job to watch where the rubble fell. Nobody else would be running in to haul it away. He squinted toward the cluster of Rangers far up the hillside and waited for the boulder - a keystone, they called it - to come loose from the bedrock. It had taken an hour for a squad in full power armor to excavate and expose a rusty colored chunk of ancient geology. It was easily larger than Latch’s home on the Bluff. Most of the work had taken place behind temporary panels of inch-thick steel held in a formation resembling something like a turtle shell. Carrying the panels, even with the aid of power armor, was harrowing work. Ridiculous as it looked, it was saving lives. 
Since early morning, the unmistakable shapes of pegasi had begun circling the dig site like vultures drawn to a fresh carcass. Spotting the odd Enclave wings dipping below the clouds wasn’t unheard of. The enemy had no shortage of scouts probing Ranger territory at all hours, but it became clear early on that this wasn't just a few curious scouts. Latch, along with the two hundred odd other Rangers who had set up a base of operations within the isolated forest at the foot of the mountain assumed the Enclave was here to do what they always did: take the Stable for themselves. It felt like a real possibility as they observed more and more pegasi arcing in and out of the overcast until they began to resemble a cloud in and of themselves. 
While the Paladins tasked with supervising the dig debated how to address the growing threat, pale morning sunlight reached the excavation site and with it came the first muted cracks of gunfire. Two Rangers tasked with assessing the best path through the rubble, including the stallion who had loudly claimed to be the first to find the dingy little shack camouflaging the narrow tunnel into the mountain, slumped onto the rocks in a ragged harmony of screams. A chorus of gunfire quickly chased the attacking sniper back into the clouds but not a single shot found its mark. 
From then on, gunfire fell readily onto any pony who climbed onto the exposed slope.  Latch and the other rock breakers were ordered into the trees until countermeasures could be put together. With barely one suit of power armor for every ten Rangers present, priorities quickly shifted to protecting those tasked with bringing down the largest boulders. The work must continue. Latch, along with several dozen fresh initiates half his age, were left to don standard issue combat armor and dome helmets. 
As laughably undergeared as they were, he tried to look on the bright side. Here, at least, he stood a chance to dodge an Enclave bullet. That was more than he could say for the round Paladin Ironshod threatened to put in his head after he found out Latch allowed a muckraking gryphon through the door of Stable 6 where she proceeded to humiliate him in front of his peers. 
Standing at the edge of the treeline safely out of the boulder’s projected path, Latch smiled a little as the Rangers uphill pried the massive stone loose. Flipswitch was a strange creature, but he could appreciate her sense of troublemaking. 
Beside him, Maxus grinned. “There it goes.”
With a final heave, the rocks under the boulder gave way and a significant lump of Foal Mountain began to tumble down the northern slope. The shell of steel panels came down as their bearers stomped toward sturdier ground uphill, and to no one’s surprise the brief opening was rewarded with a spatter of gunfire from high above.
Rock breakers murmured words of encouragement as if to physically will the armored excavators to move faster. A collective sigh moved through the ranks as shields joined together higher up the slope. Bright golden sparks flicked off the bullet-beaten steel, bright enough in the failing evening light to be seen from several hundred yards downhill. Earlier in the day a well-aimed round had sunk into the exposed ankle joint of an excavator’s power armor, locking her limb in place and sending the suit into an unavoidable tumble down to the bottom of the mountain. Latch hadn’t been present when her suit was finally pried open, but he spent enough time in his own to know that the inertial dampeners could only absorb so much. The mare had been pulverized.
The boulder pinwheeled as Initiate Maxus predicted, kicking up a rooster tail of debris as it hurtled toward the steel net strung between the trees below. Latch felt his jaw tense as the stone picked up more and more speed, skipped into the air with a deadly grace before slamming into the dirt at the base of the mountain. Had it remained intact, it would have punched easily through the fence and the backstop of packed soil behind it until a sufficient amount of animate and inanimate obstacles slowed it down. By Celestia’s grace alone the stone shattered, shotgunning comparatively lightweight cannonballs of granite into the fence and up into the trees beyond. Whispered curses rippled through the rockbreakers as they watched several shards arc toward the barracks deep in the treeline. 
Even at a good five minute trot from the dusty grey tents of the encampment, Latch could hear the shouts for medics rise into the night air. He had warned his Knight and been rebuffed. This whole operation was a clusterfuck. If there was any justice left in the world, Elder Coldbrook would pitch his tent right where the rocks had…
Dangerous thoughts, he warned himself. Dangerous thoughts.
A Knight behind their line blew a whistle. Latch sighed and followed his fellow rock breakers toward the settling debris while the screams of the injured sang them along.







“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“All I see are apple trees. Come on, spill it, AJ.”
A thick bed of leaves rasped beneath their hooves as they walked, and as always Applejack was in no hurry to make a race out of these things. Rainbow Dash sighed at her companion’s wry smile as they continued along the western end of the orchard, the Apple Family barn well out of sight behind one of the property’s low hills.
A tickle in the back of her head made her feel like she’d already done this before. She could distantly remember the day prior. It had been her birthday. Per usual, Pinkie had gone to great lengths to organize most of the day down to the letter. Well into her thirties, the mare had yet to show any sign of losing interest in planning parties. If anything, she was becoming more enthusiastic about them. There was even talk of turning it into a personal business. Rainbow, on the other hoof, had begun looking for ways to get away from the limelight that came with what Twilight kept calling their “adventures.”
Rainbow had plenty of examples of adventures in her growing collection of novels. Pirate battles, cave exploring, ancient curses… those were adventures. The last several years of her life had felt more like one harrowing brush with doom after the other. Sure, her younger, invincible self saw them as adventures at first, but their encounter with Nightmare Moon had ended at the behest of the Elements of Harmony. They had just been present. Then Discord arrived and neatly snipped away the seams of reality. Then Chrysalis and her hackneyed attempt to marry herself into Equestrian royalty. Sombra still seemed more like a nuisance than a threat, but when Tirek showed up…
Up til then, she’d been riding the high of fame and their seeming unending winning streak. Wearing an Element almost felt like owning an unbeatable weapon charmed by the most powerful magic on Equus. Then Tirek took that magic away and suddenly the danger felt too real. So real that Twilight, the innocent book loving shut-in, had been forced to make a choice that scarred them all.
There had been no spell to banish Tirek. No incantation to lock him in a stone prison, or send him off to some harmless plane of existence. Rainbow could still hear the wet crack of his skull against the rocks, see the spasmatic jerking of his limbs as his body wrestled with the sudden reality of being independent of a functioning brain. It was the first time they had failed so badly at their roles that the only way to salvage Equestria’s future was to kill for it. 
That corner of her mind tickled again, warning her that in a few short years their lives would take an infinitely darker turn.
“You still with me, sugarcube?”
The world seemed to shudder beneath her hooves. Her balance wavered, but she didn’t fall. Looking up, they were well out of the orchard and somewhere in the surrounding woods. They were on a trail she vaguely recognized, one that Applejack and her brother used to walk when they needed to get away from civilization for a while and relax. Rainbow wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she did. 
Applejack nudged her with her shoulder. Something about the warmth in that touch, or the memory of it, hurt more than it had any right to. She said something reassuring to Applejack, but it was as if the words were being spoken by another mare’s lips. She reached out with a wing, intent on those emerald eyes, and tried to touch her but her feathers only passed through empty air. Applejack was several steps ahead of her now, her hat dangling from a string tied around her neck as she shook out her mane.
“Told you it was still here,” she jeered, and Rainbow could almost remember her doubts that Applejack’s fillyhood hideaway would be standing. 
She blinked, trying to center herself. Trying to hold onto the memory of Applejack gesturing a hoof into the high branches of a mighty chestnut tree in the middle of this forest in which the dark planks of an old treehouse still stood. It looked a lot like the clubhouse she’d built for her sister, minus the ramp. Instead, a series of two-by-fours had been nailed into the bark of the tree to serve as ladder rungs. 
Rainbow smiled at the memory, knowing there would be a small red cooler and a checkered blanket waiting for them among the branches. Applejack would explain that she’d noticed how Pinkie’s party had worn her down the day before and she’d figured Rainbow would like something a little bit calmer to balance things out. No streamers, no elaborate baked goods, no press trying to snap photos through the windows. Just them.
She wanted to hug the mare not because it was exactly what she needed, but because of how desperately she realized she missed her. But when she tried, Applejack was already climbing the boards. 
Opening her wings, she tried to fly up to the platform above but she didn’t leave the ground. She heard Applejack laugh, telling her to hurry up already, but she couldn’t even get started. It was as if the rules had changed. Like her wings weren’t doing something they’d always known to do. 
She put a hoof on one of the rungs, confusion further eroding the memory, and found she couldn’t focus on the next step. Couldn’t climb. Something wasn’t working and she couldn’t make sense of what it was. She couldn’t see Applejack anymore. Wasn’t sure if she was still up there or if she had gone away.
“Hey.”
She tried to skip ahead. Tried to put herself up there with her so she could relive the first day the two of them truly connected as individuals and not just Elements of Harmony. She wanted to drink warm cider and talk about nothing and just enjoy the privacy of a slow autumn day but she couldn’t get off the ground.
“Hey. Coffee time.”
Leave me alone.
Something touched her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. It was the last jostle the dream needed to finally come to pieces around her. In the confusion she saw a door and smelled something burning, but then it was gone. Against her will, the present poured in around her like a flood. The hum of air recyclers, the sour smell of her own sweat, the ache of her back against an unforgiving chair.
Her eyes were stinging before she could bring herself to open them. When she did, the realness of Opal’s cluttered office sank in like a lead weight. A chipped mug steaming with the crisp smell of fresh coffee waited in front of her, pinched along the rim by Sledge’s ruddy worn feathers. This was now. Her time with Applejack was far, far behind her. 
An old grief tore open that she wasn’t ready for. Pulling her hind legs up to the edge of the little chair, she pressed her forehead against her knees and let the tears run down her nose. She was proud of herself, in a way, for not falling completely apart. And still that somehow made her feel worse, as if she wasn’t doing Applejack’s memory justice with her quiet, hitching sobs. There was a distance now. Her years in the tunnel, wandering from day to day with less and less concept of how long she’d been trapped or why she was there at all, had marched by without so much as giving her a single dream to comfort her. Now, just as she finally started to feel herself again, this. Sniffling and enduring the aching loss of the most important thing she’d ever had while a pony she barely knew squeezed her shoulder and left her alone.
As always, the tears eventually ran out and the awkward embarrassment of having cried at all dashed in. Propping her chin on her knees, she stared at the wall until she was sure she was done. Then she dragged her feathers across her face and took a long, beleaguered breath. 
“I’m going to kick Luna in the teats for that,” she muttered.
Across the desk, Opal choked on her coffee. “Beg pardon?”
Rainbow sniffed, cleared her throat, and set her hooves on the carpet. “Bad dream. Never had one like that and it just feels… mean.”
Turning to look at the older mare, she could tell Opal was utterly lost. Rainbow frowned.
Opal did the same. “You had a dream?”
She nodded.
“Huh. Times are changing.” Opal leaned forward, tapping the rim of a second mug with a feather. “Coffee’s gon’ get cold soon. Want to talk about it?”
The chair scuffed clockwise on the carpet, helped along by Rainbow’s tired hopping. She scooped up the mug in her tattered feathers, shaking her head no as she tipped the rim to her lips. The warm liquid pressed against her muzzle, soothing some of her sadness with something comforting and familiar. She didn’t relish the idea of dumping a lifetime of hurt onto a mare who spoke with an accent eerily similar to Applejack’s grandmother. 
“I’ll be okay,” she said, setting the bottom of the mug against her leg to soak in some of its warmth. “Where did Sledge go?”
Opal rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Old fart thinks his coffee made the Element of Loyalty cry.” She turned back to her terminal, feathers settling onto the keyboard. “He’s probably tryin’ to dig his way outta the Stable ‘fore anyone finds out.”
Rainbow tried to read her face, but Opal’s deadpan was scary in its perfection.
“He’s not that old.” It was the best she could think of.
Opal cracked a smile, waving her off with a hoof. “Good, so neither am I. Sledge went to talk with my geeks in the other room. Making sure they know what they’re looking for.”
After a pause, Rainbow could hear the low hum of Sledge’s voice behind the wall. Sipping at her coffee to rekindle an addiction her brain had all but forgotten over the centuries, she stole a glance at Opal’s terminal. “Which is?”
She answered with a snort. “Search me. Wouldn’t mind audio t’go with that surveillance footage Delta left us.”
“Which conveniently doesn’t exist.”
“Not in the overseer’s office, for obvious reasons.”
Rainbow lifted a dubious brow.
Opal shrugged. “Ain’t sayin’ I like it, just sayin’ that’s how it is. I’m guessin’ Spitfire had something to do with that.”
At this point, none of it surprised Rainbow. Spitfire had jumped through more hoops to get what she wanted during her last years than more ponies did during their entire lives. “She’s good at hiding the truth.”
“So then we look into someone who ain’t.” Opal turned her terminal around for Rainbow to see. The screen was filled with the familiar wall of files that had driven Rainbow’s eyes to the brink of exhaustion, except this time every one of them stood ready to be opened at the press of a button. At the top of the screen, behind a blinking cursor in the search field stood the name of the pegasus who had led them to this point:


“DELTA VEE”


Opal tipped her head toward the screen. “Delta Vee’s the only pegasus out’ve an entire Stable who figgered Spitfire wasn’t on the up-and-up, else she wouldn’t been bitin’ her head off the minute the lights came back on.” She tapped the mare’s name with a single feather. “I seen the cables with my own eyes. She knew which ones t’cut. Mighta been prepared to do it a long time fer all we know. That mare had enough ammo to go hoof t’ hoof with Spitfire at the drop of a hat. I’ll bet my bits she’s got plenty more t’ tell.”
Rainbow waited. After a few seconds she wrinkled her nose. “Cliffhangers only work in the movies, Opal.”
“Books, too.” She spun the terminal to face her and settled back into her chair. “I was hopin’ you’d have something to add, being the one to key in on Delta in the first place.”
More dart throwing. Coffee aside, she wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to dig for more nuggets of the past. It was a selfish thought, but she wanted a proper night’s sleep for once in a real bed with a real mattress. One that she could bury herself in when the alarm went off and roll out of only once the sheets were knotted around her legs.
She wanted her life back. Pushing that thought aside took more effort than she expected. 
“I mean,” she began, smothering that part of her that screamed against diving into new mysteries again, “Delta wasn’t on anyone’s radar back then. At least, she wasn’t on mine anyway. Jet Stream brought her on to work out some bugs in the crewed parts of the SOLUS launches, but she was more of a consultant.”
Opal frowned in confusion.
“A paid nitpicker,” she clarified. Opal nodded understanding. “In retrospect it’s probably a good thing Jet didn’t try to run it by me first or I would have argued against hiring his ex-wife so late in the project. Not enough hours in the day to explain all the bad blood between them. The only reason Delta didn’t outright sabotage the SOLUS launches was because it was their kid who was going to pilot the final launch.”
“What’s SOLUS?”
Rainbow hesitated to answer, the ghost of old fears made obsolete by apocalypse still fresh in her mind. She relented. 
“An old project my ministry funded,” she said, then added, “under the table. It was what JetStream Aerospace was working on before… before. It’s hard to explain without getting into the weeds on the technicals. It was going to be a satellite that collected solar energy in orbit for use on the ground. The idea was, with enough of them, we could end the resource shortage that started the war in the first place.”
Opal hummed, nodding at her screen as her feathers worked the keys. “Lofty goals.”
Rainbow sucked at her teeth. “We were so close. If Celestia didn’t have her head so far up her own ass, we might have finished in time to stop all this from happening. I wouldn’t have to sit here looking like this.”
She pressed her lips shut and closed her eyes, embarrassment and anger competing inside her.
“Need a minute?”
She shook her head. “No. Sorry. I just… if I live long enough for therapy to make a comeback, some pony’s gonna retire off of me.”
Glancing up, she was heartened to see a smile crease Opal’s lips.
“Well, Dash, look at it this way.”
She flushed a touch at the sound of her old nickname.
“Everyone born in this Stable wants nothin’ more than t’see that big blue sky up there, but that ain’t fer us. It’s fer our kin, way down the line. A lot of things happened a long time ago that we can’t change. Happens to all of us. Doesn’t matter what cards we get. What matters is how we play ‘em. Whether we make things better for the folks who come after. Now, you got some crummy cards but by my counting you played those damn things like the creators themselves slipped you a few aces on the sly.”
She stifled a grin, but not well. Opal grinned back.
“Yeah yer ugly as sin, so what? You sure ain’t thick in the head, and yer willing to help.” She leveled a feather across the desk at her with an intensity in her eyes. “Two hunnert and twenty years later and yer still helping. You can fall face first into a belt sander fer all I care. This Stable can still count itself lucky to have yer ass on its payroll. Fair to you?”
Rainbow sat a little taller in her chair. “Fair to me.”
“Good.” Opal shot her a look that said she was going to hold her to that, then pivoted back to her terminal. “Now, if I follow what you said before, Delta didn’t care nothin’ about Jet Stream or his satellite until her kid got involved.”
She nodded. “More or less.”
“Good enough fer me.”
As Opal’s feathers resumed their dancing on the keyboard, Rainbow stood up and rounded the desk to look over her shoulder. She watched as the screen refreshed and a considerably shorter list of files appeared below a slightly changed search field:


“DELTA VEE”, “APOGEE”








In every creature there are those primal survival instincts that only make themselves known once an unknowable line has been crossed. Heights, tunnels, insects among countless others trip an ancient alarm that, no matter the logic, screams DANGER.
For Ginger, it was being underwater.
Stepping into the stagnant muck of the crater, she didn’t know such a phobia existed. Wealthy as her family in New Canterlot was, even they had to ration clean water like everybody else. A long shower was a special occasion in their house. Unheard of in most others. Filling an entire bath to soak in just to need more water to rinse off? It was the hallmark of prewar Equestrian waste. It simply wasn’t done. There were no swimming pools in New Canterlot. 
So, as the surface of the irradiated pond rose above the power armor’s visor, she realized several things at once: 
It was too murky to see.
She didn’t know how to swim.
The only thing keeping her from taking a lethal dose of radiation, drowning, or both were a couple inches of armor plating and a network of seals that might only be a few decades younger than Roach was. 
Her breathing grew shallow as her understanding of what she was doing broadened. She could feel her heartbeat quicken. The sweat crawling up the roots of her mane. She made the mistake of slowing to a stop. The armor’s hooves sank into the soft crater bed, stirring clouds of thick silt that obscured her already limited view. Panic clutched at her chest and she tried to turn back, but after a few faltering steps inside the swirling silt she realized she’d lost track of which way the shore was. Which way up was.
“Roach,” she groaned, battling fear and humiliation with every word. “Roach, are you there?”
They should have talked about how they were going to communicate underwater. She didn’t have the first clue how loud the armor projected her voice, whether it worked while submerged, or even if Roach could hear it if it did. For all she knew he was waiting for her at the bottom of the pond, oblivious to her predicament.
“Roach,” she repeated. Silt whirled around her in long curtains, adding a foreboding loneliness to her fear. “I need to get out of-”
She stopped, her ears twitching at the sound of thumps along the ribs of the armor. A few small bubbles churned past her visor, followed by the cracked chitin of Roach’s hoof. A shuddering sigh of relief lifted from her lungs as the changeling crawled into view, his pale eyes searching for hers behind the suit’s shaded visor. 
Pressing his forehead against the visor, he released a boiling curtain of bubbles from his mouth as he said, “Trust me, kiddo.”
His voice was distorted and distant, but the simple statement took her back to being sixteen years old and alone in the wasteland for the first time and knowing the raiders that had ambushed her were the sort to do more than just take her caps and rough her up a little. The changeling that happened upon the confrontation had appeared to her as a monster, something wild that tore down her attackers with a ferocity. Coated in their blood, his horn crackling with latent magic, the changeling had approached her hiding place in the rocks and offered to take her wherever she needed to go. 
She only let go of her fear of him when he held out one of those cracked hooves and asked for that same blind trust. 
Now, dwarfed by her power armor yet clinging to it all the same, he waited for her to understand. Ginger forced herself to take slow, steady breaths just like she had with Aurora. In and out. She’s safe here. In and out. Roach knows what he’s doing. In and out. She could trust him. 
The fear didn’t vanish completely, but it ebbed just enough for her to think straight. 
“Are we close?”
He nodded and a silky green light seeped from his horn. The suit’s radiation counter began crackling as Roach’s magic lit a path through the silt. The motes hung stationary in the water like lanterns strung inside of a mine. The first step was the most difficult. The second less so as she turned down the crater’s slope, her vertigo fading the more she progressed. Roach leaned aside to allow her to see where she was going, but he made sure not to vanish from view entirely. For that she was thankful.
As she followed his markers beyond the worst of the murk and toward the bottom of the crater, she began to recognize signs of Roach’s attempted excavation. Wide swaths of mud had been gouged out of the crater bed as if scooped out by a deathclaw’s hand. Flecks of irradiated glass created by the bomb glittered under the light of Roach’s horn, scattered among the duller remnants of pulverized concrete. With a little hesitance she stepped down into the gash, following the lights toward even deeper cuts. The water down here gave off an eerie green glow of its own, faint but definitely there. A byproduct of the radiation Roach had dumped as he heaved load after load of mud up onto the pond’s edge.
The radiation counter sputtered a few extra clicks, but a quick glance at the meter built into the suit’s HUD showed her exposure to be no worse than what came in on the wind of a passing radstorm.
A moment came and went when it seemed like Roach might have gotten turned around himself. The scarred crater bed ahead looked the same, her hooves sinking several inches with every step only to wrench free of the sucking mud with hardly any effort. Then she set her hoof down and the armor struck something hard.
Roach felt it too, and he pushed off the side of her helmet with a strange sort of grace. She watched him kick out with his hind legs and maneuver until he floated a few yards ahead of her, his hooves flicking this way and that to keep him level as he sank. His horn took on a brighter glow and she caught herself gasping as he pulled down a column of brackish water onto the film of mud beneath their hooves. 
Sand, gravel and mud hissed across the surface of the armor in a great pall as Roach drew down more and more water, scouring the crater floor until the steel beneath shone through the murk. Ginger stepped over the bulkhead while Roach continued to work, eyes widening as she drank in the reality of what she was seeing. 
It wasn’t what she expected.
Stepping toward the center, she could still feel the barely perceptible sensation of walking downhill.
The bulkhead, the impregnable cocoon of riveted steel that formed the first and final barrier separating order from chaos, Stable from wasteland, was dented. The entire section Roach had cleared, several hundred square feet of muddy metal, looked as if it had been kissed by the moon itself. Even now as she followed him toward the bottom, silt started settling along the cleared steel in faint lines where the deformation was most visible.
Ginger had grown up with stories of the bombs that fell generations ago. Everyone had. Nobody alive wasn’t aware that the dying world they’d inherited was this way due solely to the poisonous, destructive force of the balefire bomb. No one questioned it. There was too much evidence to say otherwise. And yet, like so many others, she had never been able to fully wrap her mind around the real power those old weapons brought with them. She had no frame of reference. Just stories and ruins. 
Standing here, atop a structure whose builders designed to shrug off the instant death of those bombs, now she felt like she could grasp the fleeting edge of that power. Here, on the eastern edge of Equestria, an unstoppable force had clashed with an immovable object. And yet this hereto unknown Stable had not gone undamaged.
Swirling in her own awe, she nearly didn’t notice that Roach’s gaze had fixed on a narrow seam halfway down the dent. Approaching, she carefully maneuvered the power armor through the water toward him. Standing at opposite sides of the line, it was clear to both of them what it was. 
A crack.
A brownish mixture of silt and crust had filled the pencil-wide gap, drawing a deformed albeit mostly straight line in both directions. His motions slowed by the water, Roach turned his head left, then right. His eyes narrowed and he kicked out his hind legs, swimming along the seam. Ginger turned in her bulky suit and thumped after him.
Lighting his horn, Roach scooped dense blocks of mud off the seam until he found what he was looking for. A second line of rivets appeared, joining the one he followed at a perfect ninety degree angle. Ginger’s ear twitched against the helmet’s padding at the sound of her radiation meter pecking away, strangely grateful to be able to hear something besides the suit’s hydraulics and her own breathing. She watched Roach ply the pale light of his magic into the junction of the two seams as if feeling for a good grip.
He stood perfectly still for several seconds, eyes closed in concentration. The bulkhead didn’t move any more than he did. Nearly a minute passed but nothing happened. Ginger frowned, her worry growing.
“Roach?”
He lifted one hoof to acknowledge her, but otherwise remained still. 
She wasn’t so easily dissuaded. Stepping closer, she tried to see what he was doing. If he was hoping to peel the steel roof open like a tin can, he was going to wind up with a migraine and nothing to show for it. This wasn’t a cheap layer of scrap sheet metal they stood on. This was Stable-Tec. If a balefire bomb could only hope to scuff the surface, one horn wasn’t going to budge it.
Minutes passed. Occasionally Roach would glance at her or hold up the same hoof, continuing to reassure her that he was still working on… whatever it was he was doing. She imagined Aurora looking down at them from the edge of the water wondering what they were waiting for, but the murk was thick as soup and she knew better than to get too close.
A filament of pea-sized bubbles trickled up from the seam. Ginger blinked and took a step back, but Roach was unfazed. The surface of the steel hadn’t moved but the preserved sheen had noticeably dulled. His shattered black carapace began to shimmer as he concentrated. Ginger’s lips silently parted as she witnessed the brief flickers of his centuries-old disguise blink in and out of existence like a sputtering candle flame. It was the same phenomenon she and Aurora had observed when he pulled an earthen slab of wall out of the ground a week earlier, those wisps of wheat colored coat and pine tinted mane spilling out into view for only a moment before disappearing and reemerging someplace else along his broken body. 
Bits and pieces of the pegasus he’d chosen to become, married to his husband Saffron and father of their adopted daughter Violet, rose to the surface in an unintentional glamour. A second stream of pearls bubbled up near the first. Then a third, a full yard from where they stood, sputtered to life. In what felt like no time at all, there were dozens of tiny bubbles curling around her visor or tracing the visible crags of Roach’s chitin. Pockmarks were forming in the steel, small at first but growing larger by the second.
Now Roach swam back, his eyes open now and focused on the changing steel. The dulled surface looked almost plagued by dim, orange lesions that quickly grew until Ginger realized she was watching the unnaturally accelerated spread of rust. Great flakes of it lifted away, carried up by the screen of bubbles that were now erupting from holes large enough to sink a hoof into. Manipulated by Roach’s corrupted magic, those holes seemed to be alive in some way. They moved, slowly, dragging themselves down brittle metal until they found each other, collecting in front of the changeling. The holes became one, widening, forcing the two visitors to move further away, burrowing into the steel like a cavity carving its way through a rotten tooth. The void heaved and churned with escaping air, a process that Roach appeared to be annoyed by. 
The tunnel of rust undulated and morphed within his pale magic, growing rigid where bracing was needed and crumbling where he wanted space. It had an almost organic quality to it. She stepped around the rim of the entrance to better watch the depths form, wondering where Roach learned to do this and suspecting she already knew the answer.
This had been how the changelings built their hive, once upon a time. 
Without dimming his horn, Roach motioned for her to follow as he swam into the chasm. Carefully, she ducked her head and shimmied in behind him. 
Passing through the bulkhead felt surreal. Raw steel had been dissolved and reformed into crisscrossing bands of hardened rust, giving her the feeling that she was walking through the musculature of something living. The tunnel was barely wide enough for her to fit in with her power armor. Less than ten steps in her shoulder crunched into one of the tendon-like walls, sending up a puff of rusty water and earning her a chastising look back from Roach. Thankfully, the ceiling didn’t crumble to bits around them. He knew what he was doing. 
Several yards down, the grey walls blended with the unmistakable line of the bulkhead’s inner shielding. The half-melted appearance reminded her of a funhouse her parents had brought Ginger and her sister to as fillies. Wrinkling her nose, she ducked under the deformed beams and continued on. She found Roach floating at the end of the tunnel, his magic still weaving away at the material coalescing ahead of him. 
Bands of rust and mud swept over and hardened around the unmarred surface of a Stable-Tec doorway. Not the signature gear-shaped gateway they were known for, however. This was one of the hydraulic sliding doors Ginger saw back in Stable 1 and Stable 6. Roach’s magic had caused patches of rust to bloom over its surface but it was apparent he was trying to preserve it while he sealed the tunnel walls against its frame.
“I never knew you could do this,” she murmured.
Roach offered a sheepish little smile in answer, then turned to look at the tunnel curving upward behind them. His horn glowed and threads of rust began to knit the opening behind them shut. Ginger felt her stomach sink as the last dim rays from the small lake’s surface winked out behind the solidifying cap of repurposed material, leaving them alone in a pocket of water lit only by Roach’s magic. The stallion that once was and the changeling that remained blended and resolved in front of her. When the tunnel was sealed to his satisfaction, he dimmed his horn and the flashes of Sunny Meadows went dark with it. The changeling paddled his perforated legs to face the door and tripped the switch with the back of his cracked hoof. 
The door slid upward and the abrupt rush of water violently wrenched him into the gap.
Ginger screamed.







As far as having his hooves sucked out from under him by a vortex was concerned, Roach had to admit he had limited experience. Truthfully, just the one. Right now. So far, he wasn’t a fan.
Luckily the disorienting ride was a short one. The flume of brackish water dumped him into the adjacent hallway with as much grace as a stunned carp. The sheer volume of moving liquid kept him pinned to the wall until the door had fully opened, aided with no small amount of Ginger’s frantic magic. He’d assumed there would be air pockets left in the forgotten Stable and was thankful he’d had the forethought to seal the tunnel behind them before cracking the door. With a small lake just yards above their heads it didn’t seem wise to risk having it drain uncontrolled into the one place Aurora felt sure her talisman could be found.
Ginger was in such a hurry to chase him through the doorway that she banged the ridge of her helmet against the receding door. He would have laughed if the panicked questions coming through her suit’s speakers didn’t sound so distraught. With the rushing water quickly receding around them, he forced himself to stand so she knew he was okay.
Then again, this was Ginger. Years of emulating the late Rarity had made her somewhat prone to overreaction. 
He tried not to smile as she stumbled into the hallway and went straight to work tapping her hoof into the floor, managing to cut away wide scoops of linoleum tile before finally remembering she had to hold the pedal down. Once she did, the suit hissed open and she clambored out. 
“Are you okay?!”
She was within hoof’s reach but was shouting from pure adrenaline. He winced a little but wisely chose not to utter the suicidal incantation of calm down, opting to take the safer course of bracing himself as she threw her forelegs around his neck in a choking hug. 
“A little banged up,” he grunted. “I’ll be okay.”
“I thought you were gone!”
He didn’t need to ask to know what she meant by gone. Squeezing her back, he tried to reassure her. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Celestia’s sun, Roach…”
“I know. I know.”
It took a moment for her to come down from what must have been an awful sight, but once she was able to pack away that younger, fearful Ginger who looked up to him like a surrogate father, the Ginger that was his friend and close confidant pushed back from him to stare daggers. 
“Why didn’t you warn me that would happen?!”
“If I’d known, I would have.”
Ginger pursed her lips, for a moment looking as if she wasn’t done chastising him, but she quickly relented. Already her attention had begun drifting to the state of the corridor he had washed up in. 
The lights were on. Some of them, anyway. Most of the tubes were dark which, Roach noted, gave the hallway the same sort of half lit dimness as the permanent overcast back on the surface. A long cardboard box filled with spare bulbs lay on its side not far from where the two of them stood, the rush of water having washed it toward the middle of the floor and already bloating the packing material inside. Judging by the condition, it hadn’t been there for very long. He let go of Ginger and stepped around her empty power armor, toggling the switch to the open door. It dutifully slid back down with a thump. If the plug he’d knit together ended up breaking, a layer of hermetically sealed steel would stop the water from pouring in.
Behind him, Ginger asked, “How are there still lights on?”
“Somebody’s been changing them out,” he observed, tipping a hoof toward the now waterlogged box. “Or they had been. Recently, I’d say. Those fluorescents never last more than a few--”
A muffled clack echoed into the vacant corridor. The two of them stood stock still, eyes fixed toward the empty space beyond the cardboard box. He heard it again. It was dim to his ears, coming from an intersection further down the hall, but the sound of a hoof striking steel was unmistakable. He’d heard the same sound every time he returned from one of his excursions beyond the landslide outside Stable 10. Blue never liked being locked inside her room for very long and had learned banging her hoof against the door would eventually end with Roach letting her out. Locking her inside was supposed to be for her protection as much as the residents of the Stable should they ever open the door. As he dragged himself back through the path he’d burrowed, the sound of Blue beating on the door both reassured and guilted him.
“Roach.”
He looked at Ginger and realized she was frowning at the near wall. His eyes flicked to the spot she was squinting at, briefly worried he was the only one hearing the distant thumping, but the slight twist of her right ear as the hoofbeat echoed again assured him he wasn’t. The sound wasn’t getting any louder, or closer. Just the slow, regular clacks of a hoof being lifted and dropped against a far door. One thing at a time, he thought, and allowed himself to look more fully at the wall which had drawn Ginger’s interest.
There was nothing there. Just a smooth, unbroken pattern of parallel horizontal lines that gave the walls a touch of texture. Then he blinked, stepped alongside Ginger and felt his brow rumpling at the realization of what he was actually looking at.
Letters. No, wait. Words. Notes.
“You’re kidding me.” He leaned closer, scanning the wall up and down. It had to be a printing error, or some kind of artistic statement made by the ponies who designed the wall panels. Like the murals that decorated the residential levels back at the Stable in Blinder’s Bluff. 


	...not fooled by biometric counterfeiting which means she patched Millie’s operating system which means she had someone write custom software despite it being a CLEAR violation of our contract not that it matters but it DOES because it means Millie isn’t just tracking biometrics it means she’s verifying users against their own DNA she may as well put maglocks on her cookie jar for Celestia’s sake this is why everyone got locked out guest my golden delicious ass just give me access to one fucking terminal…


Each rambling word was too neat and tidy, the sentences blurring together to make the lower half of both walls in the corridor look tinted grey at a distance. But the letters… he couldn’t deny that each letter had a slight variation. Each glossy layer of pencil lead pressed onto the wall, then wrapped around the wall behind them. A stream of consciousness from a pony with pristine hoofwriting. 
“Normally the ravings of a madmare are a little less tidy,” Ginger observed.
"Or stallion."
"Care to wager?"
He wisely chose not to answer. He pinched his lips together, unsure of what it was they were looking at. The thoughts of someone disturbed, maybe, but mad felt like a stretch. He glanced at the box of bulbs resting in the direction of the steady banging. Insanity drove ponies to do a lot of things. Changing the lightbulbs didn’t feel like one of them.
“Shame we don’t have a working camera. Julip will be livid when she hears how well preserved this place is.” Ginger took a few steps down the wall, her ear flicking at the constant banging. She sighed. “Let’s go see what that is.”
Roach let out an apprehensive rumble and followed her down the corridor. He’d taught her everything he could about scavenging in those early years. They both knew what it was.
The carefully written sentences ran around the corner with them, running straight across a fluorescent-faded mural depicting the six Elements of Harmony. Each mare struck a heroic pose that looked more ridiculously unnatural the longer he stared. A mainstay of prewar Equestria that even balefire couldn’t burn out of the national consciousness.
Ginger sighed as they approached the door. The corridor was lined with them. They always were. Monotonous design was practically a Stable-Tec hallmark. The dull thump from the other side was all that made this one stand out.
No cries for help. Not even a murmur from the other side. Just a steady, repeating thump. Ponies didn’t mindlessly bang on closed doors for minutes on end.
Feral ghouls did.
“Same policy as always, I imagine?” It was less a question in search of an answer and more of a request to proceed as normal. It reminded him of the first time they set out into the wasteland together in search of some textiles Ginger had gotten wind of. Back then, he’d made his policy on feral ghouls crystal clear: killing them was a mercy. When they found their first nest of ferals he’d taken the first few shots to make sure Ginger didn’t hesitate on his behalf. Things went smoothly after that. Of course, back then, she hadn't known about Blue. 
He glanced at the nameplate beside the door.
Snips.
A pair of scissors had been engraved beside the name. Roach frowned. The banging sounded agitated. The feral behind the door was already keying in on the presence of prey.
“Same as always,” he agreed. “I got the door. You think you can handle it with your magic? My shells got soaked.”
She nodded and squared her stance with the sealed door. He couldn’t help but feel a quiet thrill at the sight of her standing there, her lit horn the only weapon she needed. It felt like the old days again when magic meant something. Before the balefire swept through and crippled it in every conceivable form. A whiff of confidence swirled off Ginger, too. He smiled a little, glad that she was growing into her new magic so quickly.
As usual, he couldn’t sense anything from the feral struggling to reach them. After a certain point they ceased to feel anything. Only hunger, stupid and blind.
He positioned himself next to the door switch and held his hoof to the handle. “On three?”
A sheet of magic fell over their side of the door, preemptively blocking the feral’s predictable rush forward. “On three.”
“One.”
“DON’T TOUCH THAT!”
Roach startled like a foal caught hovering over a cooling pie and wheeled away from the door so abruptly that he nearly knocked Ginger on her hindquarters. For a split second he thought the ghoul behind the door had spoken. Then he spotted the ponies standing at the corner they had just come from and his heart leapt. 
Residents! Genuine Stable dwellers who could help them find what they were after. Only, as he and Ginger turned toward them, he saw the cylindrical object clutched between the yellow pony’s teeth. A white mare with grey blotches paced one way then the other beside the first, with what looked like some kind of leash tethering the two together. 
In his excitement, Roach didn’t want to acknowledge what was already clicking in his mind. The pacing mare - he assumed she was a mare - stared vacantly toward them. Her ears, what was left of them, ticked between her counterpart and the two intruders. The grey splotches on her otherwise white coat were naked swaths of withered skin that seemed to actively devour her coat from the flanks up. Her tail had been reduced to a leathery whip of skin coated vertrebrae, as was often the case with most ghouls he’d met.
“Get away from the door! I ain’t afraid to shoot you!”
The canary coated mare spoke with remarkable clarity considering her lips were doing double-duty keeping a spray foam gun pointed at them. The last time he’d seen one of those had been years before the war even began, back when Saffron insisted on the two of them adding a sunroom to their house rather than paying a contractor. He almost smiled at the memory of the two of them picking bits of insulating foam out of their coats.
They obeyed the foam-wielding mare and moved away from the door. The banging from behind it had grown into a frenzy of battering and muffled shrieks.
“Stay there! Don’t… magic anything. I’ll know if you do. I’ll know if you do.”
A quick glance at Ginger let him know they were thinking the same thing. This mare, with her unconvincing bluff and leashed compatriot, had become unhinged.
“I’ll know if…” She paused, blinking rapidly, her gaze focusing on Ginger for some inexplicable reason. “You’re not sick. Why ain’t you sick? Everyone got sick, right sweetie?”
The ghoul wandered to the end of her leash, grunted, and began wandering behind her keeper as if to explore the limits of her range.
“Exactly. So why ain’t she?” The mare regarded Ginger with growing suspicion, her ear twitching toward the ghoul behind her as if listening to her. “She can’t be from Stable-Tec. This is Stable-Tec. She ain’t even wearing the uniform.”
A pause.
“Who are you?”
Roach glanced at the insulating foam gun held in her teeth, resisting the urge to throw the question back at her. “I’m Roach, and this is my friend Ginger.”
The pony hadn’t been expecting him to respond. Her gaze tore away from Ginger toward him with a touch of shock. “You can talk.”
He nodded. “I can talk.”
“Okay. Okay.” The mare began to pace, forgetting to aim her “weapon” and drawing an annoyed grunt from her ghoul when the leash drew taut around its neck. Ginger took the opportunity to tap Roach’s hoof with her own, sharing a worried expression when he looked at her. The subtle interaction jarred the mare from her thoughts and she rounded on them, her attention now fixed to Roach. “Okay, but she didn’t let changelings buy Stable passes so how are y’all here?”
Perplexed, he asked, “‘She?’”
The mare chewed her lip. “Scoot-scoot-Scootaloo. Got to pick all the ponies. Pick which ones lived and which ones died and which ones tried and tried and tried to get out but couldn’t because she had all the keys keys keys.”
She half-sang the last few words as if they were a part of a tune only she knew. Upon seeing the open concern on Roach and Ginger’s faces, she seemed to become a touch more aware of what she was doing and flushed with embarrassment. She was silent for several long seconds, eyes bobbing this way and that across the concrete between her hooves, deep in concentration.
When she spoke, she sounded almost normal. “You came in from the outside, didn’t you?”
Roach nodded slowly. “Yes.”
His answer clearly disturbed her, but she said nothing else. A mop of red mane held to one side of her face as she stared at the floor seemingly out of things to say. Beside him, Ginger broke the silence.
“Do the two of you have names?”
The mare nodded. She lifted her foreleg and gave the leash a tug. The ghoul attached to it turned and wandered toward her. 
“Her’s is Sweetie Belle.”
The ghoul offered little sign of recognition, but her mindless wandering slowed. The summer colored mare watched her settle on a spot beside her and sit. She smiled a little, touching the edge of the ghoul’s hoof with her own. The faintest contact. When she spoke again, it was as if she were speaking directly to the feral ghoul beside her, begging her to understand.
“I’m Applebloom.”







October 30th, 1077
11:27pm

“Left wing, now.”
Apogee lifted her wing into the gryphon’s waiting hands and suppressed the shudder that lifted into her chest. This wasn’t the time nor the place. Besides, she was long past those impulsive, hormone-hazed teenage years and Dr. Arty probably didn’t spend the prime of his life studying pony physiology just to fulfill some interspecies kink. This was important. The culmination of both their careers, and the careers of the three ponies in the room with them. 
They were going to space.
The mere thought of it made her giddy. All her life she’d dreamed of going up there and seeing what until now only her dad’s probes had been able to see. And tomorrow morning she was going to be living that dream. Her hind legs swung happily beneath the exam table, one of four sets in the prep room. After this, she and the rest of the crew would appear to the tightly managed press pool outside the astronaut complex to answer final questions before being ferried to their ride to the stars.
Dr. Arty loosely wrapped his fingers around the tips of her primary feathers. “Make a grip for me.”
She obliged, squeezing his hand. He sorted her eight strongest primaries into four pairs and fed each into a hardened plastic mitten her dad referred to as “the gauntlet.” Neatly bundled wires dangled from open ports along the cuff, each of which would be connected to her suit once her wings were folded into the position they would remain in for the next forty-eight hours. The joys of being a pegasus. Even when they reached a stable orbit she wouldn’t be allowed to remove her suit due to the risk of accidentally damaging the sensitive sensory tech. The cramps were going to be a joy. 
She could feel the narrow, spring loaded metal bars beneath each pair of feathers. Once connected to her flight suit she would be able to use them to manipulate four mechanical “fingers” built into the suit’s hoof caps. It wasn’t exactly state of the art technology - Robronco was rumored to be working on something similar - but it would let her do her job once she had the vacuum of space to contend with. The average pegasus had feather dexterity on par with any gryphon, but all that went right out the window as soon as they were confined to a pressurized suit. 
Dr. Arty hummed his approval and helped fold her wing back. For a gryphon, he always impressed her with how gentle he could be. Ever since she was a filly she’d heard little good about their collective demeanor as a species, but Arty definitely bucked that trend. Probably why her dad hired him in the first place. 
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Thank me once you’re planetside,” he said dryly, but a firm pat of his taloned fingers on her shoulder told her she was welcome. “Spearhead, you’re next.”
Apogee slouched at the edge of her table and watched Arty go about the same steps with her commander’s gauntlet. Well into his forties, Spearhead hadn’t been the first choice to lead Equestria’s first journey into the great unknown. Some joked that his name was too fitting a match to pass up, but Apogee had seen the results of his physical and mental aptitude tests. He was built like a brick shithouse and cut no corners when it came to his health. He was also something of a painter, too. A trait that would likely help him once Equestria was ready to embark on longer term missions.
Past his table, her other two crewmates chatted as more JSA techs assisted them into their suits. One unicorn, one earth pony, both stallions. There was a running joke among the JSA community that for the first time in history a mare would be outnumbered by stallions three to one instead of the other way around. It wasn’t the only insinuation being made about the crew’s makeup, but she chose to ignore the more colorful theories.
Her jaw creaked with a long, groaning yawn. 
Spearhead looked at her. “Need a stimulant?”
She blinked tears from her eyes and shook her head. She didn’t want to go up more jittery than the rocket she would be strapped to. A jab of medical grade caffeine was nothing compared to having five hundred thousand gallons of rocket fuel burning beneath your asscheeks.
“I’m good. Calm before the storm, am I right?”
Spearhead snorted, forcing Arty to hold his wings steady as he fitted his gauntlets. “If you fall asleep, don’t be surprised if you wake up with a mustache drawn on your lip.”
“Do that and I’ll superglue googly eyes to your balls.”
Several of the technicians chuckled to themselves. It was odd how this mission made so many different fields of expertise feel like family.
“Might stick them on myself just to see the censors pull their manes out trying to hide them.” He crossed his legs as if to say, don’t get any ideas. “Speaking of which, have you given any thought to what you’ll say to Rarity’s loyal drones?”
She wrinkled her nose as a pair of technicians hooked her gauntlets to her suit and lifted the forward portion to her shoulders. The press junket outside was no doubt buzzing with anticipation for what she, the daughter of Equestria’s most controversial billionaire stallion, would say just before their unsanctioned launch. As she held her forelegs out and the heavy white sleeves consumed them, she still couldn’t settle on what to say. Everything she tried to script felt too, well… scripted.
“No clue,” she admitted. “Maybe, ‘Hey Celestia, need a lift?’”
Not as many laughs this time around. Apogee kept forgetting that outside her immediate family and some close friends, open irreverence toward the princesses was still very taboo.
With her suit’s collar clamped firmly around her neck and her limbs wrapped in white vacuum-proof material, she quipped that she finally knew what it felt like to be a marshmallow. It was a joke she’d made several times before but it served to lighten the mood for those around her. Arty made his final rounds, checking each crewmember’s vitals and ensuring no one would keel over dead for the cameras. Celestia would love that almost as much as she’d enjoy seeing her family’s legacy burn up in a cloud of its own liquid oxygen. Even after her father sold their rocket designs to the government, Princess Bighorn would lose no sleep if ponykind’s first attempt to touch the sun ended in immolation.
Murmurs past the exam room doors signalled the next step. The four of them took a few minutes to acclimate to the heavy suits, walking and trotting in place to get a feel for the extra bulk. Apogee and Spearhead’s articulating “fingers” would remain disconnected until they reached the command module, but the extra inch the rubberized caps provided made her feel like a stilt walker. Thankfully that would only be an issue for as long as gravity was. According to the countdown clock above the door which they had all been carefully ignoring, they were only a couple hours away from weightlessness.
The doors were pushed open by JSA security and the four of them filed into the hallway just as they had rehearsed yesterday. A couple cameras flashed as they moved up around their commander, the four of them walking shoulder to shoulder so as to appear as equals to the press waiting outside. Apogee cleared her throat. Spearhead blew out a pent up breath as they approached the lobby and the inevitable chaos waiting for them past those doors.
The photos snuck by a wingful of staffers was nothing compared to the next several minutes of supernova bright strobes and the tsunami of questions that crashed over them wave after wave. It felt like walking through the blinding heart of a living star. Their entourage kept them moving, refusing to allow the mission to be delayed by the press or anyone else. She felt herself being guided forward by feathers, magic and hooves alike until they were past the swarm of journalists and heading toward a bus idling beside the sidewalk, waiting to take them across the heavily guarded launch complex toward the culmination of unstoppable Equestrian curiosity.
As they were pushed toward the vehicle, Apogee caught a glimpse of the rocket in the distance and her heart swelled. Perched in the crossroads of four golden spotlights stood the black and white column of raw power which was destined to yank Equestria off the dark path it had fumbled onto and back onto a road toward progress. Miles above their heads, SOLUS waited for them in orbit. 
Tomorrow, as thousands of colts and fillies readied their costumes for the Nightmare Night festivities, Equestria would be well on its way to a brighter future.







Maybe it was just her ego talking, but Applebloom had expected more of a reaction. Any reaction. The two intruders, visitors, guests, stow-aways… whatever they were, they didn’t say anything. The changeling, he straightened a little. But the unicorn with him? Nothing. Not a peep. It had been a long time, she thought. A long time. A long long long…
Stop it.
Having someone to talk to, someone who answered back, was hard enough. Two was sensory overload. Sensory overload. She squeezed her eyes shut and mumbled the little ditty she’d picked up during her foalhood. 
“...apples forever, apples together, we’re family but so much more…”
Sweetie Belle tugged on her leash, drawn to the sound of Snips having another one of his tantrums. She lost her place in the song and, gritting her teeth, started again from the top.
The changeling spoke right through the middle of the song, his voice like wet gravel and impossible to shut out. “Are you the only pony left? Is there someone in charge?”
Yes and yes.
She made a gesture for him to stop talking and started over again. “Applesforeverapplestogetherwe’refamilybutsomuchmore…”
She knew what she looked like right now and she hated that there were actually ponies here to see it. She wasn’t crazy. Exactly the opposite, as far as she was concerned. Scootaloo might have left her in charge because she was the only friend left who she could trust, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t up for the challenge. She was the CEO of Robronco Industries. Stable-Tec wouldn’t have gotten to where it did without her company’s assets. Everything from the Pip-Buck to the common office terminal. That was her. That was Applebloom. There weren’t enough bombs on the planet that could wipe that fact from history. 
And yet here she was, locked underground with nothing but the thoughts in her head and an infuriating artificial intelligence who didn’t know the definition of master.
When she finished her song, she exhaled as something like clarity eased her anxiety. She looked up at the two… visitors, she decided, and swallowed to wet her throat.
“I ain’t crazy,” she murmured.
The changeling was looking at the notes she’d written on the walls so many years ago. For a moment he looked unconvinced, but for someone with so much visible decay, he almost looked sympathetic when he looked toward her again. “Did you write all this?”
She paused, then nodded once.
“Your penmanship is immaculate.”
Slowly, the insulation gun drooped between her teeth until she eventually set it on the ground. They weren’t scared of it anyway. “Thanks. Granny taught me.”
She licked her lips and tried to think of something constructive to ask. Every second wasted was a second she wasn’t solving the problem of decay.
“You came from outside,” she said. Not really a question. Not a question. Nope. 
The changeling, Roach, nodded. “We did. Is that okay?”
Treating her like she was a lit stick of dynamite. Padding the sharp edges of their questions. Don’t hurt the sensitive mare. Don’t set her off.
“They bombed the building. The ground caved into the Stable. Crushed the stairs’n filled in the elevator shaft. The only way out is the front door but Millie wouldn’t open it for anyone. Not even me.”
The unicorn, Ginger, perked up at the mention of Millie but stayed silent.
“We had to burrow in through the bulkhead,” he told her. Seeing her confusion, he added, “Changeling magic. It’s how we build new hives.”
“Terraforming,” she said.
“Sort of. Not really.” Roach shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
Applebloom frowned. “I can handle complicated.”
He glanced at Sweetie Belle and nodded. “I bet you can, but we don’t have the time. We came here hoping to find something.”
She surprised herself by chuckling. When was the last time she’d done that? She couldn’t remember. This was starting to sound like the plot of those old black and white detective shows Sweetie pestered her into watching back when they were teenagers.
I’m lookin’ for someone special, see? Someone real important to me. A dame with a chestnut coat and gams that go for miles. Maybe you know her?
A stuttering laugh trickled past her jaws before she could stop herself. Her two visitors stared at her, suddenly less at ease than they had been a second ago. She clenched her mouth shut to make herself stop.
Idiot. Idiot-idiot-idiot…
She’d been alone for too long. Forgotten how to talk to ponies who could answer back. How to behave. All those years of practice she’d stacked up at the helm of Robronco, partnering with Stable-Tec, being one of the faces of Equestrian progress had gone right out the window. Or whatever amounted to windows in a place with none. Her first interaction with actual ponies and she was already losing her grip on the conversation.
“It’s called an ignition talisman.” 
She blinked. Roach looked no less worried than he had a moment before.
He’s giving you a free pass, Sweetie Belle said. Pretend it didn’t happen and so will he.
She looked at her decayed friend. Sweetie stared vacantly into the distance, her attention wandering as it always did. Still, she wasn’t wrong.
She cleared her throat. That was a thing ponies did back then. “What do you need one’a them for?”
Roach and the coffee-colored mare beside him brightened, the latter looking to the lesser with a hopeful expression. “Aurora was right.”
He nodded, but his pale insectile eyes never left Applebloom. “Our friend comes from a Stable with a damaged talisman. She took us here hoping you might have a replacement. Do you?”
She hesitated. Now they weren’t just visiting. They wanted something from her.
Scootaloo would have said no. Or that’s what she assumed. Even as the decay was chipping away at her mind, Scootaloo’s actions had made it clear nothing was more important to her than the security of this facility. She wouldn’t have ordered so many ponies to seal the breach after the bomb hit if she didn’t think the shelter was expendable. 
It took everyone to close it. It didn’t matter who they were, whether they were meant to be down here or not. Everyone from Stable-Tec staff to the dozens of ponies who had been in the building for conferences, interviews or just visiting family… everyone worked at least one shift in the red zone. Everyone tasted the radiation on their teeth. Felt the creeping sensation of something wrong spread through their bodies. Watched with resigned horror as clumps of coat fell out of withering skin. Listened to the hunting screams of the first to go wild with the decay.
“Applebloom?”
She jerked her head up, pulled from her memories like a fish on a hook. “Um,” she said, trying to think of what came next. They waited for her, too polite to show their impatience. They wanted her answer. No. They wanted one of her ignition talismans.
“I…” 
She frowned. Thinking.







Roach could feel his patience thinning, but he tried to stay sympathetic. This mare had regressed so far. By all accounts, she should have gone feral decades ago.
“I don’t think she’d want me to do that.”
It wasn’t a no, but it was closer to one than he cared for. This was the end of the road. If this place had nothing to offer, Stable 10 would cascade into the last days of its collapse unhindered. There just wouldn’t be time to sniff out another source. His gaze shifted from Applebloom to her collared counterpart. 
“Her?”
The ghoul lifted her hoof and began gnawing on its worn edge.
Applebloom hooked her hoof around the crook of her leg and tugged it away from her teeth. Sweetie Belle blinked slowly, unoffended. 
“Quit bitin’.”
“Ruh.” She turned back toward the wall, staring beyond the tightly written notes scrawled there.
“I meant Scootaloo.” Applebloom’s expression briefly changed. There was grief there and something else. An intense flicker of clarity. Determination, maybe. Roach couldn’t be sure. “This is her Stable.”
“I gathered that much.” He leaned his weight to one hoof to distract himself. The unpleasant sensation of chitin plates compressing against one another gave him something to redirect his frustration toward. This was the home of Stable-Tec. It survived a direct balefire strike and the lights were still on. Obviously, somewhere beneath their hooves, an ignition talisman was spinning in its chamber providing torque to the massive generator seated around it.
A second one couldn’t be far away.
“What about a spare?” he probed.
Applebloom idly lifted a hoof toward the haggard red mop of her mane. “A spare.”
He nodded. “A backup. One you can part with.”
She pressed her cracked lips together in thought, then whispered something to Sweetie Belle. It didn’t seem to matter that the abnormally docile ghoul ignored her. “What if we need it? I know, but what if. Wh… yeah she would. Yeah she would.”
Ginger leaned toward him, voice lowered. “Do we have time for this?”
He sighed. It wasn’t like any other options were making themselves available. He took a risk and moved forward, shrinking the open space between them by a hoofstep. Applebloom frowned at him but her one-mare conversation persisted. Beside her, Sweetie Belle slowly bent her neck toward him.
“Will she try to hurt me?”
Applebloom nodded.
He stopped. “Is there anything here Ginger and I could eat or drink? Medicine, maybe?”
“Are you sick?” She looked at Ginger with a flicker of frustration. “You don’t have it, do you?”
Ginger blinked. “Have what, exactly?”
“The decay,” she spat.
Roach tapped her leg with the side of his hoof, tipping his nose down toward himself as an example. Separated from the world outside, Applebloom didn’t have the vocabulary for what happened to radiation afflicted creatures. Decay was her version of “ghoul.”
“No, dear, I’m not sick. But clean food is hard to come by these days and I imagine there are other ponies here who may appreciate being updated on the state of things outside.”
Applebloom rocked forward a little. “Ain’t anyone else left but me. Just me. Me myself and me myself and me.”
“Rah.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, nodding. “Sorry, Sweetie. You too.”
Roach glanced over at the writing on the wall. This was all hers, then. The work of one mare left alone with only a semifunctioning ghoul as company. He knew that life too well. Only she’d been locked inside her Stable. He’d been sealed out. Until now, he’d never considered himself lucky for his circumstances.
“There’s, um... food down in Supply,” she said, visibly struggling to stay on track. “They’re emergency rations, though. Didn’t hold up like they were supposed to. Might give you the runs. Or plug you up. The tuna does both. You don’t want both.”
Roach tried not to react. “Maybe we could scrounge up something better in the cafeteria. Are your fabricators working?”
Applebloom shrugged. “I dunno. Millie won’t let me use ‘em. Won’t let me use anything even though I’m the one who created her.”
She leveled the end of the sentence toward the ceiling where one of Millie’s innocuous little speaker-microphones sat flush between the fluorescents. He wondered if the AI was listening.
Beside him, Ginger was eyeing the same speaker but instead of showing mistrust, her expression curled with a strange confidence.
“We’re not terribly particular when it comes to food, so long as it’s safe to eat.” She regarded Applebloom with the same pleasant smile she reserved for customers in desperate need of being separated from their caps. Applebloom’s lips tilted to mimic Ginger’s. “Perhaps we could trade stories over an early lunch?”
Applebloom blinked several times in quick succession, then nodded once. Eagerly.
Roach couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt as Applebloom turned one way, then the other before deciding on a direction to travel. In so many ways she was just like a lost foal. Desperate for conversation, unsure of herself and worst of all incredibly lonely. As Applebloom led her feral friend down the corridor, she checked to see whether either of them were following. The flicker of worry on her face when she first looked was painful to see, as if she was afraid the two of them had been figments. Ghosts and nothing more. The relief in her smile when she confirmed they were in tow was even worse.
They followed her through the residential corridor and toward a familiar bank of elevators seated into the far wall. To Roach’s relief, she turned away from them and pushed open a simple door on their left, leading them into a standard stairwell. Cramming into an elevator with a feral ghoul wasn’t his idea of a good time.
Their hooves echoed against the steps. Aside from a thin mat of dust on each stair, they looked practically untouched.
“So,” Ginger continued, causing Sweetie Belle to crane her neck in search of her voice. “May I ask what happened to the other residents?”
Applebloom turned along the railing and started into the next flight down. Roach thought for a moment she hadn’t heard her and nearly repeated the question himself, but then the ghoul started to speak. There wasn’t much to her story. It started as they usually did, with the bombs falling. Ponies being caught unprepared as sirens wailed and order melted into panic.
“Sweetie Belle and I were down in the lobby when it all happened. We’d both gotten invitations from Scoots. Some new venue. Venue, venue… a club, I think. A soft opening with the local hoi polloi in attendance. Scootaloo thought Stable-Tec and Robronco could use it to freshen up our image with the coastal demographic. Connect with Mr. and Mrs. Everypony.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. Her confused speech began to smooth out the more she talked. She’d had plenty of time to think about it.  
“Corporate party crashing, she called it. We were gonna make a whole night of it. Attend the opening, take some pictures - clickity click - Sweetie Belle was going to sing a little then comb the crowd for anyone who might be willin' to distribute her leaflets. After that, who knew? Drinks, knowing Sweetie. Scoots woulda probably spent the night on her Pip-Buck. Didn’t happen, so I guess it don’t matter. Bombs started going off and next thing we knew the entire building was bolting for the stairs. We got swept down with everyone else, then WHAM! Every pony not holding onto something goes ass over teakettle and Millie starts screaming at us about a breach in level one.
“Bomb cracked the ceiling like a rotten nut. It was a mess. Ain’t an inch of the place that didn’t smell like tarnished bits or smoke. Not much we could do other’n patch the leaks and divert as much contaminated groundwater to the pumps as we could. Wasn’t a few days after the all clear came that the decay started to show. Some folks tried to quarantine themselves but it didn’t help. By the time we knew something was wrong, it was too late. Everyone had it, even the doctors. Pegasi started molting. Everyone else started shedding their coats. Losing their manes. I remember seeing hair clumped up in the corridors like dust bunnies.” 
Applebloom paused to examine the door on the seventh level and pushed her way into another cookie-cutter Stable-Tec corridor.
“Not long after that, ponies started attacking each other. At the time nobody knew why it was happenin' or how to stop it. The ponies with the worst decay just up and started killing the ones with the least. The sick killing the healthy. Fuck me. I heard it happening outside my compartment. Millie wouldn’t stop trying to summon security. The attacks lasted for a few weeks. Nobody thought to bring food into their compartment. Ponies who were still well enough to feel hunger got hungry. Ventured out. Got killed. Everyone lost their minds and just like that…”
She clicked her hoof against the floor, startling a rah out of Sweetie Belle.
“It stopped.”
Roach swallowed, his throat just a touch dryer than usual. Her accounting of the Stable’s fall hit a little too close to home for him. It dredged up memories from the tunnel outside Stable 10. The moans of ponies coming to terms with their unwanted fates. The sounds of starvation en masse followed by the regular pop of a pistol as it made its rounds among the survivors. And, inevitably, the mindless, undying existence waiting for those who didn’t have the stomach to face the bullet.
Applebloom had listened to her Stable die from behind the locked door of her compartment. He’d done the same inside a utility closet tucked out of death’s view. The main difference here was that the bodies of the dead didn’t litter the ground. The corridors weren’t choked with bones and abandoned luggage. 
A quick glance at Ginger and he could tell she was noticing too.
“The other residents,” she prompted. “Where are they?”
Applebloom flicked the red rag of her tail. “They’ve been confined to their compartments until I can cure them.”
Roach blinked. “Cure them?”
She glanced back toward him with a defiant smirk. “That’s the goal, anyway. Beats runnin’ around bucking at trees that ain’t fruiting, right?”
The analogy coasted well above his reach, but he nodded anyway. The notes they’d seen seven levels up extended down here as well, coating the walls in an unbroken haze of pencil lead. “Sure.”
She saw him skimming the nearest lines and looked away. “Writing things down helps me keep my head on straight.”
He grunted. “Make any progress?"
"No."
They came to a set of double doors set beneath a simple blue and white placard. SUPPLY. Dull lips of deformed metal tapered the edge of each door where Applebloom had at one point tried to force them open. On the wall beside them, the panel that housed the switch had been bent off its mounts to expose the hydraulics behind it. The high pressure line was blown out, the brown dregs of dry fluid still coating the interior wall around it. Roach smiled, knowing Aurora had used the same method during her own escape.
The doors, marred as they were, had been parted halfway. Just enough room for them to squeeze in behind her.
An overhead motion sensor tripped a breaker somewhere past the shadows and a smattering of narrow tubes buzzed with fresh light. Just like the empty corridors, more bulbs were dead than not. High as they were hung, the few fluorescents that did work could only provide a ghostly glow within the cavernous warehouse. 
Ginger gasped at the sheer volume of space before them. “Luna’s mercy.”
Applebloom glanced back. “Luna’s what?” 
She had made her way toward the nearest row of steel racking and was in the process of tying Sweetie Belle’s leash to its corner support. The expression she wore suggested she’d heard Ginger but didn’t recognize the expression. Or, more likely, took issue with it.
Ginger was too enamored with the raw materials piled onto the dusty shelves to notice. She stepped toward them, her eyes wide like an adventurer stumbling into a dragon’s horde. “There’s so much.”
Applebloom finished tying off her friend, which was no small thing without a horn or feathers to form a good knot, and followed her gaze with only mild interest. “I guess it is a bit more than the old hayloft. More’n I’ll ever need.”
She led them past Sweetie Belle who regarded them both with a territorial mistrust that didn’t help to put them at ease. Once they were sure she wasn’t going to chew through her leash and attack them, they turned forward and found themselves swallowed by the shelves.
Roach allowed his guard to drop just enough that he could gawk in earnest at the trove that engulfed them. Metal trunks, plastic cases and nailed wooden crates stood untouched since the day they were placed here, towering toward a ceiling that had to easily take up a portion of the floor above them. Dusty, transparent envelopes glued to the front of each container held printed manifests detailing their contents, the date they were packaged, the name of the pony who sealed them, everything. 
They passed a double-stacked row of hardened plastic cases, their rubber seals still dark with oil and fully intact. Roach strolled nearer to read the label as they passed. 


AGRICULTURE
CONTAINS: RADISH SEEDS 50lbs, CARROT (APPALOOSAN GOLDEN) SEEDS 50lbs, ONION (YELLOW) BULBS 25lbs, SHALLOT BULBS 25lbs
VACUUM DATE: 10/02/1077
PACKED BY: Daisy Greenhooves


Prewar vegetable seeds, still under seal two hundred years later. One case of these and Knight Latch would stand a fighting chance at restarting the gardens at the Bluff. Scanning the shelves, he quickly realized that the entire row was dedicated to seed storage. Forget Stable 6. With mindful cultivation and some skilled grafting, there was enough crop starter down here to feed a measurable percentage of Equestria!
“Applebloom,” he murmured, his pale eyes struggling to grasp the potential of this much raw material. “All that seed. It’s too much for one Stable.”
She shrugged. “Most’ve it ain’t meant for us. Scoots designed this place to be a safety net for the Stables. I think, anyway.”
“You think?”
Another shrug. "Been wrong before. Wrong wrong wrong."
Midway down the second bank of shelving she bent toward a stack of metal trunks, several of which had been pulled out onto the floor and hung open. Applebloom headed for these, though the unbroken dust on the floor suggested she hadn’t been this way in some time. Two trunks had been pushed across the concrete toward the opposite shelves. The word “TRASH” had been written on the lids in fat, black marker. The other trunks had more detailed information written in neat columns. As Roach slowed to examine the first one he quickly noticed that it was a sort of rating system Applebloom had devised for herself.

Beef stroganoff.
2/10 
Smells like puke when hot.
Gritty texture. Bonemeal? 
Diarrhea, stomach cramps. Beef prob. spoiled.
Orange drink powder good with Berry’s vodka.

He lifted the lid. Inside the crate were six medium sized boxes containing a dozen identical drab green plastic packages. Roach didn’t have much experience with MREs beyond a few that he found while scavenging, and he had heard enough horror stories from ponies who tried cooking them not to sample them. Ghoul or no, his biology wasn’t immune to the unpleasant effects of eating spoiled food.
Applebloom noticed him reading and smiled. “Sorry. Too much information, I guess.”
“Par for the course with these things. Can I ask why you aren’t eating from the gardens? It’s what they’re there for.”
She dipped her head inside one of the open trunks and pulled out a package that she flicked toward them. Ginger caught it with her magic and traded it off to him, her expression dubious as she was given one for herself. 
“Not to interrupt, but what is ‘Chili Macaroni?’”
Applebloom let the lid clap shut and set her own package on top before reaching behind the trunk for a jug of water. “It’s good, is what it is. Instructions are on… Sweetie, no.”
The two of them nearly tripped over one another in their haste to turn themselves toward what they both assumed was a feral attack, but when they saw the ghoul still tethered to the far shelf the adrenaline faded. Sweetie Belle had begun to crawl over a plastic-wrapped pallet of dry goods like a bored dog looking for something to explore. Applebloom’s warning made her stop, her faded eyes staring toward them across the distance. 
She opened her mouth, uttering a faint, “Rah,” before continuing her climb up the shrinkwrap.
Applebloom looked on with irritation as the mare squeezed over the gap, her leash sliding up behind her. “She never listens.”
Roach blew out the breath he’d been holding and turned back to what appeared to be their makeshift picnic spot. In reality, he wasn't interested in the food. Nor was Ginger. They had their fill of the fruit they’d brought up from Stable 1 before their dive, and the lackluster promise of two-century old prepackaged food didn’t whet what little appetite they retained. The incalculable treasure of materials that surrounded them could be addressed later, if at all .They were here for an ignition talisman, and it would be easier to locate if the only somewhat lucid resident left could be convinced that they were her friends. If suffering through food poisoning was the price they had to pay to jump that final hurdle, so be it.
He bit open the top of his bag and followed Applebloom’s lead by tipping the contents onto the floor. Ginger did the same, and they began preparing their meals.
“So,” Roach said, his thoughts still lingering on the vacuum sealed crops they just passed. “The gardens?”
It took several moments for Applebloom to answer. She was mumbling again, something neither of them could quite catch. Another song. Something about razing a barn. He waited until she was finished.
“Um,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut for a second. “Sorry. Sorry, yeah. Millie won’t let me in the gardens, neither.”
“It sounds like you’ve been having a lot of problems with her.”
She glanced up at Ginger, nodded, then looked back down to the steam rising from her MRE. “Just one, actually. Sweetie and I were never supposed to be down here, so we ain't registered with the other residents. Millie thinks she doesn’t need to listen to anything I tell her. Makes it a pain in the flank for me when I break into anything.”
 “How so?”
Applebloom snorted. “Ever hear a carriage alarm? She has that. Lets it run for twenty four hours. Drives me nuts. Wakes up half the Stable too.”
Roach decided not to comment on that last part. “You broke in here. Setting off an alarm for a day sounds like a good trade-off if it means you can grow your own food.”
“Eh. Maybe.” Using her teeth, she carefully lifted the packet of cooked chili mac out of the steaming bag. With her hooves holding the top of the packet steady, she tore open the corner and set it on the ground to cool. “I spent my entire foalhood working the orchards. I’d have to set up my own crop rotations, schedule harvests, worry about soil acidity, nutrient balances… that’s time taken away from my work.”
Roach poked at the package of boiling water in front of him. “Curing the gh-... the decayed.”
“Eeyup. Fat lot of progress I’ve made on that front, too.” She hefted the steaming packet of food with her hooves and squeezed some of the contents into her mouth like toothpaste, still managing to speak around the mouthful. “Sho far, nothin’. None of ‘em shtay shtill long enough…”
Mercifully, she swallowed. “...long enough for me to get a good look at them. Millie loses her mind when I restrain ‘em. Thinks I'm attacking residents, so it gets loud loud loud. All I learned is that meds don’t work and Rad-Away makes ‘em sick. Music gets their attention for a little while, but I had to stop that after one broke the speaker in their compartment and got stuck in the ceiling cavity.
“What I do know is that the decay stops the aging process.” She sucked another mouthful of chili mac from the pouch. “Or slowsh it down, like with the prinsheshes.”
An orange film of masticated tomato sauce leaked from the corner of Applebloom’s mouth. Roach tried not to react.
“Be a lot eashier if shomeone let me use the fabricatorsh!”
She must have expected the chime that echoed from above, as she was already mouthing the response that followed.
“I’m sorry, but you do not have sufficient permission to access these facilities. Please remain where you are. A security team has been dispatched to your location.”
She finished chewing and rolled her eyes. “That’s Millie, my crowning achievement. Capable of processing 100 petaflops per second and about as smart as a can of cranberry sauce. I like to think empty threats are her way of saying hello these days.”
Ginger tore the top off her packet and dipped a plastic fork into the meat-scented pudding inside. “We’ve actually met once before in another Stable. She certainly has a dry personality.”
Applebloom watched her eat. “Which Stable?”
“Six.” She winced a little as she took a small bite. Then her expression brightened and she nipped the rest off her fork. “This is... actually edible."
“Don’t let it cool down or that’ll change. I think I knew someone who was supposed to be in Six. I think. I… sorry. Hold on.” She set down her pouch and pressed a hoof into the space between her eyes, muttering to herself again. “We’ve actually met before we’ve actually met before we’ve actually met before…”
Roach looked to Ginger. She shot him a look that said I didn’t do this all while Applebloom spiraled around Ginger’s sentence like a stuck record. Just as he was considering reaching out to touch her, the ghouled mare snapped to attention.
“You talked to Millie?”
Ginger was caught off guard. “Well, not me per se. But I imagine the bypass that worked for Aurora would work for me as well.”
“So you’re a Stable resident somewhere else?”
She blinked. “No, our friend Aurora is. I grew up in New Canterlot.”
A longer pause. “New Canterlot. There’s a new…” She pinched her eyes shut again, trying to focus. Her hoof leveled at Ginger as she spoke. “You’re not a resident but you can talk to Millie. Can you talk to her now? Can you ask her to help me?”
Roach took a slow breath and hoped Ginger was on the same page.
Thankfully, she was. “I don’t know, dear. It’s possible. If I can, however, perhaps this is an opportunity where the two of us can work out a trade?”
Applebloom blinked several times. “A trade.”
“Yes. If I can speak to Millie, there’s a chance I could convince her to register you as a resident. You could have access to the things you need to conduct your research in earnest.”
Understanding, Applebloom frowned. “You want an ignition talisman in exchange.”
“Yes.”
Roach pushed his untouched meal aside and cleared his throat. “A spare,” he clarified. “Or directions to where we can find one. We’re not here to sacrifice one Stable to save another.”
“A spare. Spare spare...” Applebloom’s frown deepened. When she spoke, she sounded unsure of herself. Like a mare piecing together old memories live in the moment. “A spare a spare a spare. Um… ah, Stable-Tec wasn’t allowed to keep spares. I mean, they were but then they weren’t. Celestia... um, okay. Celestia made a decree recalling all first generation stimpacks. Ministry officials checked all the Stables for compliance. Some did, some didn’t. Scootaloo could’ve gotten put in prison but the new stimpacks sucked. Ministry folk saw we had backup talismans and said no to that, too. Claimed it was dangerous. Ain’t sure where they put ‘em. Probably destroyed ‘em.”
Roach’s shoulders sagged. “Fuck.”
“But…” Applebloom gave her head a jerky shake. “Okay, but I don’t think I need all the generators online. It’s just me down here just me lil’ ol’ me stop it. Um, sorry, just… I’m not sayin’ I can. No promises. I ain’t Pinkie Swearin’ on it or…”
“It’s fine.” He held up a hoof, gently urging her to slow down. “Let’s see what we have to work with first. Ginger, why don’t you give it a try.”
After some hesitation, Ginger inhaled and looked toward the darkened ceiling. “Millie?”
“Welcome, valued guest. Please state the Stable-Tec Identification Number attached to your Pip-Buck to begin your registration.”
Roach blinked. Probably not the response Ginger was banking on. 
“Millie,” she said, this time pausing a moment to think. “I forgot my Pip-Buck outside.”
“I’m sorry. A Stable-Tec Identification Number is required to register. Please contact Overseer Scootaloo for a replacement.”
“Well,” Applebloom murmured, “at least she ain’t blowin’ your eardrums out with the klaxons.”
“There is that,” she agreed. Dropping her fork into the now empty pouch of chili mac, she tipped her head back and forth as she mulled her next attempt. “What about… Millie, would you kindly generate a Stable-Tec Identification Number for me to use within this Shelter?”
A pause. “Zero-seven-two-seven-six-six-zero-one…”
Applebloom sat up straight. “Horseshit!”
Ginger waited for Millie to finish. “Millie, I would like to register for residency within this shelter. Please refer to your previous answer for my Stable-Tec I.D. Number.”
“One moment, please.”
Several seconds passed during which Applebloom looked primed to climb the shelves just to throw hooves at the suddenly cooperative AI.
“Welcome, new resident, to the Stable-Tec Headquarters Preservation Program! A Stable-Tec representative will be with you shortly to complete your onboarding paperwork!”
“No-no-no, that’s not okay, Millie! I tried that!” Applebloom was on her hooves now, jabbing one in the vague direction of one of her speakers. “I tried that trick and you ignored me! I have tried every sunfucked trick in the book and you said NO.”
“I’m sorry, but you do not have sufficient permission to access these facilities. Please remain where you are. A security team has been dispatched to your location.”
“Fuck. YOU.”
Roach stood. “Miss, take a breath.”
“NO!” With a flick of her withered hoof, the contents of her MRE skittered across the dusty concrete. “I'm not MISS I'm APPLEBLOOM. Why was it that easy?! I have been down here fighting with that damn voice that damn Celestia damned DAMN VOICE in my head and she says no no no no no NO. ALWAYS NO. What did she say? Ginger what did you say?!” 
Applebloom made to close the distance to Ginger, but Roach slid between like a wall of bricks.
“Don’t.”
She blinked at him, tears filling her eyes. “I wasn’t gonna… I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I just want to know. She has to tell me has to. Please please…”
“Calm down, Applebloom.”
“I am calm. I am. Breathe. I am.” She closed her eyes and whispered. “There’s no place I’d rather be than travelin’ with my family…”
Her body began to rock back and forth as she sang, tears spilling down her gaunt cheeks as the words grew thick and muddled. He didn’t recognize the song but he could tell what it meant to her. The grounding effect it had in the fracturing madness of so many decades alone. The loved ones they’d lost were the things they clung most tightly to. It was their totem. The calm within their personal storms.
Roach reached out and touched her shoulder and eased her into a quiet hug just like he used to with Violet. Applebloom didn’t reciprocate. She only allowed herself to lean forward, her forehead thumping into his collarbone, and wept.







October 30th, 1077
Launch Day, T-03:00

“Cloudbreaker, Control. How do you read me?”
“Control, loud and clear.”
“Okay, Spearhead. Have a good one.”
Apogee reached up with her right hoof while simultaneously flexing the tips of her selected feathers. A rubber-padded digit folded out of her flight suit’s nonconductive cap and flexed down, hovering over a metal switch on the control board above her.
“Program 2,” she said.
“Alright, Cloudbreaker, on panel 2 DSKY, insert Verb 75 and do not Enter.”
She toggled the switch. “Verb 75. Standing by.”
Reclined in the seat on her right, Commander Spearhead held the moleskin binding of his notepad between his own set of “fingers.” His expression a mask of grim concentration, he looked back and forth between the readouts he was seeing and the cheat sheets he’d written down for the most common codes the control board would throw at him. If there was a stallion in Equestria more determined to put a pony in space than her own dad, it was Spearhead. 
It felt so strange to her to fully trust another pony with her life but here they were, strapped to five hundred thousand gallons of fuel so potent that liquid hydrogen had to be circulated across the combustion chambers to stop them from going molten. Spearhead knew the failure modes of this mission better than any of them and he’d labored over a mountain of checklists and manuals so he would know how to stop them from turning fatal. If any other pony had tried sitting where he sat now, she would have tossed them out of the command module herself before his or her technicolor butt touched the shock absorbing foam. 
“Cloudbreaker, Panel 325, Primary Glycol to Rad valve, Pull to Bypass.”
Spearhead pressed his chin into his helmet’s comm switch. “It’s in Bypass.”
To Spearhead’s right sat the mission’s flight specialist. He was the unicorn who would be managing their ascent and do the heavy lifting when it came to the delicate work of putting them on a direct rendezvous with SOLUS. Seated beneath the trio, or more accurately behind them once they were in orbit and gravity didn’t dictate direction, was the crew’s backup EVA specialist. Apogee’s replacement, if something stopped her from performing her primary mission of installing the six M.A.S.T.s that would power the satellite’s primary systems for decades to come.
She dipped her suit’s mechanical “finger” beneath the Gyro Display Coupler switch. At T-0:50 she tipped it into the on position.
“GDC Align.”
“Confirm.” Spearhead’s breathing was a touch heavier. He was excited to get off the pad and see the stars.
Ground control chimed in. “Twenty-five seconds.”
Apogee could feel the adrenaline dumping into her veins. “GDC is good.”
“We see you, Cloudbreaker.”
The commander thumped her foreleg. “Up we go.”
She shot him a nervous grin, eyes never leaving the control panel. “Up we go.”
Over the comm, flight control checks flooded the channel.
“Fifteen.”
“GRR”
“Confirm, GRR.”
“Guidance is internal.”
“Ignition sequence start.”
“10. 9. 8. 7…”
Apogee took her hoof away from the controls and focused on her breathing.
“...6. 5. 4…”
The earth pony below them murmured a short prayer. He’d secretly adopted the gryphons’ religion.
“...3. 2. 1. Igni--”
Whatever Control had left to say was blasted out of her ears by the titanic kick of Cloudbreaker’s five gargantuan engines.







Shiny plastic crinkled beneath her legs. A cobweb, long abandoned by the spider who wove it, tickled the leathery skin of her ear while unfamiliar voices echoed dimly in the other. The tip of her horn tapped against the sturdy shelving. Nested as she was, among familiar walls and the comforting buzz of fluorescent bulbs, she felt safe. 
These weren’t things that Sweetie Belle knew, intellectually. The time had come and gone when active thought was a choice she could make. She existed solely on instinct, chasing feelings that brought comfort and attacking anything which threatened pain. Deterioration had visited her as it had so many others: quick, cruel and complete. Except it hadn’t been complete. Not quite. Not yet. The cogs within her mind had been stripped of their teeth, but some still spun. Some still understood, clutching to thought like threads of fog, without comprehending.
“Reh.”
She didn’t have any reference for how long she lay there, only that after a time the pony she knew and the ponies she didn’t came back. They smelled like food which made her stomach twitch, but not much. The pony she knew untied her from the shelf support and gave the leash a quick tug. Sweetie Belle voiced her displeasure but didn’t put up a fight. Sometimes the pony she knew needed her to go different places. That was okay.
The ponies she didn’t know stayed away. That was okay, too. She didn’t like them even if she didn’t know why. Every time she looked at the black one, a couple bare wires in her head would spark a thought about something she mistrusted. Something about the way he looked. As if everything that looked the way he did was dangerous. Or had been dangerous a long time ago.
The pony she knew had a wet face again. That happened sometimes, too. She made noises like she had something in her nose and tugged on the leash again, leading her out of the big place and into the long place. As they walked, her ears twitched toward the sound of their voices. Hearing, but not listening.
“I wasted so much time.”
“You had no way of knowing.”
“Scoots should have told me.”
“Dear, if you’re right and this Stable fell as quickly as it did, I imagine she wouldn’t have had the time to tell anyone. Aurora only discovered Millie’s bypass by pure accident, and only because Millie tipped her proverbial cards to us in the first place.”
“Maybe. It just… I would have never programmed such a sloppy backdoor around her verification system. Millie?”
“Yes, Applebloom?”
“Celestia’s ivory teats that’s still weird to hear. Millie, why is the term Shelter able to bypass your primary permission set? That's something you should have caught."
Sweetie’s leash went taut and she followed the pony she knew down another hallway. She tipped her head toward the ceiling to watch the lightbulbs slip in and out of view until it made her dizzy, so she stared at the lines squiggled along the beige wall.
“Command line ‘Shelter’ was submitted for entry on October 31st, 1077 at 09:22 hours by Overseer Scootaloo. I presented Overseer Scootaloo with a spoken notification that the addition of an unrecognized command line would generate multiple conflicts within my operating system and may cause some of my responses to be undesirable and inaccurate.”
“And she went ahead with it anyway?”
“She yelled at me. I was unable to fully articulate the pending notification, however a text copy was sent to and received by her Pip-Buck.”
“Too little too late always too late always stop it, AB.”
They filed into the stairwell and began to climb. Sweetie felt herself feeling calmer as they ascended. The pony she knew was taking her toward the good place. It always felt better to go up than down. She looked over the railing as the ponies she didn’t know climbed the flight below her and curled her lip at the black pony. He watched her too much.
“Let me put Sweetie to bed before we go down to the bottom. She gets agitated when I take her too far from home.”
“Where is home?”
She let the leash guide her out of the stairwell, briefly eyeing a section of wall with a bright grey lightning bolt of mortar filling an old fissure. The feeling of calm bloomed in her so much now that the ponies she didn’t know could walk right next to her and she wouldn’t want to hurt them. Nothing was dangerous up here. Things sometimes even made sense up here.
“I guess Conference Room 1A, if we’re being specific. Just… keep your voices down. Scoot-Scoot-Scootaloo is next door and once she gets riled up she starts pounding the walls and she hates having her hooves fixed and fixing her hooves is like wrestlin’ pajamas onto a porcupine porcupine porcupine.”
“Fixed?”
“Cracks them all the way down to the quick. You already met Snips. He already knocked one hoof clear off his foreleg and the other one’s going to come off sooner or later. They all do that if… well, they all do it if I don’t stop ‘em.”
“Not sure I know any way to stop a feral from attacking once it gets excited.”
Her friend brought them to the conference room door and toggled the switch. Sweetie Belle inhaled deeply the familiar scents of home and trotted inside without needing to be led.
“It’s easy enough. You just hogtie ‘em. Now hush. Hush. She’ll settle in on her own. Let’s head down and I’ll show you the generators.”
Her ear twitched at the sound of the door closing but she wasn’t worried. She was home.
A pleasant clarity soaked into her old bones as she walked past Applebloom’s sofa, glancing at the crocheted blanket she’d watched her make during the first lonely years after the catastrophe. A large decorative rug the color of golden straw lay in the space where the conference room table once resided. She could vaguely remember how soft it had been when Applebloom first dragged it out of the fifth floor commons area, pinned beneath a pool table that had taken the two of them to heave off of it. Now it was hard and compacted. Worn with age, just like everything else down here.
Plastic tubs stood neatly stacked against the far wall, most of them empty but some still containing uneaten MREs that they both liked. They didn’t eat often. She remembered something about it being a side effect of the decay. They could go decades without touching food so long as they didn’t exert themselves. Trapped as they were, there wasn’t much reason to do that either. 
The black pony and his friend had gotten in, though. So they weren’t trapped. They could leave. She tried to commit it to memory. They could leave.
A changeling. That was why she didn’t like him. Maybe they were both changelings. Someone should tell the princesses. She frowned. That wasn’t right. The princesses were dead. Everyone was dead. There was nobody to warn.
She reached the far corner of the room where a single bed had been dragged in. There used to be two, she was sure of that, but now there was just one. She felt less lonely in just the one. As she climbed up onto the smoothed and tucked grey comforter, she tried to remember what she’d wanted to remember. Things sometimes slipped out of her head like that. Like frying eggs on butter.
She missed gathering eggs.
She paused, waiting for the loop around her neck to lift away and drop to the carpet. Then she remembered she couldn’t do that anymore and took it off with her hooves. It hit the floor with a thump and she pressed her muzzle into the pillows stacked at the head of their bed. They smelled like Applebloom.
Sleep came swiftly and she did not dream.







“So I see my sister’s armor held up as advertised.”
Ginger glanced at Applebloom, then Roach. With their feral fourth tucked safely within the confines of her almost domestic accommodations, they were finally able to follow Applebloom from a normal distance without risking being bitten for it. Ginger was also able to see there was some humor still living in this troubled ghoul. The problem was, she seemed to be the only one not in on the joke. She shot Roach a look that begged explanation. He shot one back that asked if she was serious.
Grudgingly, she relented. “Your sister?”
Applebloom blinked before regarding her with the same expression Roach had given her. After a beat, she said, “Yer serious?”
An awkward silence filled the corridor. Roach took mercy on her.
“She’s Applejack’s kid sister.” He stifled a chuckle. “It’s kind of in the name.”
She blinked realization, embarrassed by the sheer scope of her error, and quickly slipped onto the defensive. “W-well, I’ve met plenty of ponies entirely unrelated to her with apple in their name. It isn’t unheard of for parents to name a foal after…”
Applebloom cut her off. “Celestia’s sun, it’s fine. My sis is the one who helped with all the supernatural whatever, not me. Honestly, it’s sorta a relief to meet folks who don’t go on gushin’ about her.”
Ginger wasn’t sure if she was being complimented or placated. Maybe a touch of both. “I didn’t mean to dredge up any bad memories.”
“What? No, big sis and I loved the snot out of each other even when we didn’t see eye to eye on certain stuff. Kinda like that power armor you brought in. I didn’t exactly jump for joy when she told me she’d be directing a war ministry, but I never rubbed her muzzle in it either. At the end of the day we’re still family.” They returned to the same stairwell as before. Applebloom held the door open for them, her speech unusually clear in that moment. “It’s just that there was Applejack, my sister and Applejack, the Savior of Equestria. I can’t speak for the whole family, but for me the excitement of being the little sister of an Element of Harmony wore off fast.”
The old frustration coloring her tone was telling. The stairwell added a touch of echo to their voices as she led the two of them back down.
“Folks who never even met her start thinkin' they knew her better than her own kin. Even after Robronco started takin' off, I couldn’t get away from ponies that felt like they had to tell me they once saw Applejack buying oranges in Canterlot, or where they were when Tirek got killed. Or, Celestia forbid, someone went a day without tryin' to get inside information on that whole will-they-won’t-they between her and Dash. I…”
She stopped herself and glanced back up the steps at Roach. “Sorry. Didn’t think you were openin' a can of worms, did you?”
He shrugged with a forgiving nonchalance. “I was around to see Equestria back before most ponies could point to Vhanna on a map. Family is just one of those subjects that can stay sore no matter how much time passes.”
“Did changelings… have families?”
Ginger was careful not to react as she anticipated his standard it’s a long story for when he wasn’t entirely ready to dole out his life story.
“It’s a long story,” he said, and gave Applebloom the same tensed smile that he always wore to indicate that it also wasn’t a story they should ask about twice. Some ponies had the confidence of knowing they could air their dirty laundry and safely assume they would be understood and even sympathized with. Roach always had to tread a little more carefully. For him, honesty was a precious luxury. Not every pony who realized what he was settled to only call him “bug.”
Applebloom’s expression grew more complicated as a mask of uncertainty fell over her. She fixed her eyes on the stairs, her cracked lips pressed into a hesitant line as silence once again descended between them.
They passed the vast warehouse of Supply on level seven and continued down. As the stairs zigzagged deeper, Ginger briefly flashed back to the endless spiralling stairwell of Stable 1. The aches from that agonizing round trip still hadn’t completely faded and suddenly she feared she might be embarking on yet another dizzying journey into a new abyss. Yet while the shelter did turn out to be larger than the usual Stable, it bottomed out well short of the mark that anomalous silo had reached.
Thirteen floors down, they reached the bottom. Next to the door, a plainly worded sign had been bolted into the wall.


ATTENTION:
EAR AND EYE PROTECTION IS
REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT.


A smooth, humming chorus resonated from behind the sealed door, setting Ginger’s hackles on end. On this side of the wall it was still faint enough to be drowned out by the clicking of their hooves. Now, as they waited on Applebloom to lead them onward, the soft drone carried an unmistakable power behind it. This must be what it was like back at the Stable Aurora called home. A simmering boil of energy muted only by a few inches of concrete and steel, promising a productive day's work to be rewarded with fresh food and a clean bed. Now, here, a thousand miles away, she could clearly imagine being a part of that life.
Applebloom opened a metal box mounted beneath the warning sign and removed three gumdrop shaped pairs of foam attached by a positively meager looking length of string. “Earplugs,” she said.
Ginger plucked a set out from between the ghoul’s teeth and put them in, then helped Roach with his rather than having him waving his shotgun toward his head. Applebloom, surprisingly, managed an impressive amount of dexterity with her hooves alone. As the foam expanded the hum gradually vanished. Then Applebloom opened the door.
She could only describe what flooded into the stairwell as an absence of silence. The tooth-rattling drone of unearthly noise sunk into her body like a physical thing, seizing her ribs and coiling up her throat as if to make her speak against her will. It was like being screamed at by a thousand deranged centaurs, all crying out at the same frequency, each one threatening obliteration.
“It gets loud down here!” Applebloom shouted, tipping her head through the door for them to follow. Her face twitched as she started to walk, her lips stammering out the last couple words on repeat as she stepped over the threshold. 
“Is this normal?!”
She could see Applebloom laugh. “I gave up on normal a hundred and fifty some years ago! But yeah, this is normal! The control room is soundproofed! We can talk easier there!”
 With that Applebloom began to trot. Ginger and Roach loped after her. The sealed doors of old workshops and storage rooms passed on either side of the poorly lit corridor, greeting them with placards all but identical to the ones she’d seen at the bottom of Stable 1. Seeing so many similarities made her worry taking Aurora’s place on this final leg of the journey had been a mistake. No doubt Aurora would know exactly what these rooms were for and have little fear of the omnipresent bellow they were galloping toward. Mechanical was Aurora's world, not Ginger’s.
The corridor ended at a pair of heavy duty steel doors. The words GENERATOR HALL stood painted in stark black letters beneath the ceiling. Applebloom pushed them open and, unbelievably, the thunder doubled. The world beyond the doors gasped wide to greet them with an unbroken view of a space easily twice the volume of Supply. Maybe it was just her imagination, but it even appeared to dwarf the massive generator hall at the bottom of Stable 1.
Her jaw slackened at the sight of five behemoth generators, intricately constructed monoliths of mechanical ingenuity lost centuries ago churning with wild energy atop five equally massive concrete footings. Unlike the dead and dark generator Aurora had fruitlessly crawled into just days before, these machines were alive. Power on a scale Ginger struggled to understand coursed through their silver chassis as if the wendigos themselves were trapped inside, screaming to escape.
Centered in front of those five beastly machines, two smaller but no less imposing generators spun within self-contained hurricanes of electricity like acolytes knelt before the hooves of their pantheon of gods. Were it not for Roach shouldering her in the right direction, she would have run headlong into a scissor lift long since abandoned along the hall’s perimeter. Ginger forced herself to look away from the machines and focus on where she was going. A yellow painted walkway led them up a set of diamond patterned stairs, then to a thick metal door mounted to genuine hinges instead of the expected hydraulics. They rushed inside, greeted by a ring of terminal stations and an unbroken view of the generator hall through a thick sheet of safety glass that dominated the control room’s forward-facing wall. 
Once they were inside Applebloom pushed the door shut, sealing out the worst of the noise. It felt as if she had turned a knob on the world’s volume. The relief was palpable. Ginger lit her horn and popped out the earplugs. 
Applebloom made a slow circuit of the long room, her hazy green eyes narrowed at the nearly unbroken ring of blinking readouts and whirring control panels. Ginger wasn’t a mechanic. The clusters of gauges and dials meant nothing to her. The faded words clamped to dusty clipboards might as well be ancient Vhannan glyphs. It was quickly dawning on her that Aurora’s ignition talisman wouldn’t be found nestled safely inside a discarded crate. It was here, churning out enough energy every second to spin up the great rotors of the machine above, making the little generator farm powering Kiln feel like a static shock by comparison. 
“At the risk of sounding fatalistic,” she tipped a hoof toward the window and the cacophony of machinery just beyond, “I am not crawling into one of those things while it’s still running. How do we turn them off?”
“Millie?” Applebloom frowned as she completed her lap and walked up to the desk-height panels beneath the safety glass. “What happens if we shut down one of our generators?”
Ginger pressed her mouth shut to stop herself from protesting. A defensive tension settled into her features as she reminded herself, grudgingly, that there was more at stake than just Stable 10. She and Roach had seen with their own eyes that each Stable was a part of a vast network. 
Millie’s response was less than helpful. “Removal of one or more primary generators from service is not recommended.”
Roach sat in a swivel chair at the forward control panel, rolling his eyes. “Neither is karaoke.” Ginger smirked and nudged the corner of the chair with her magic, making him spin. 
“Millie,” Applebloom continued, stepping toward the window to better see the vast hall beyond, “can you be more specific?”
A pause. “Removal of one or more primary generators from service during periods of high demand may require the remaining generators to operate outside acceptable safety margins. Excess loads over a sustained period will increase the risk of catastrophic failure. At the current time, one hundred percent of Mechanical staff remain listed on indefinite quarantine and are not available to respond to such a failure.”
Somehow, that was even less helpful.
Applebloom appeared embarrassed by the AI’s subpar performance. “Millie, detail the three most likely failure modes.”
“Structural, electrical, and cascade. First, structural failure of one or more moving parts. Most likely candidate: primary coolant pump. Second, electrical failure of internal components. Most likely candidate: capacitor C100 on interface PCB assembly GC79580.”
Ginger could feel her eyelids sinking as Millie rattled off more useless information. Maybe Aurora would have been able to understand some of this gibberish.
“Third, cascade failure of Stable-Tec External Network. Most likely candidate: uninterrupted voltage spike due to breaker assembly overload.”
Roach stuck out a hoof, stopping his lazy spin. “External network. Huh.”
Applebloom arched a brow at him but said nothing. Ginger, however, was keenly aware she was the only one down here seemingly afflicted with mortality. She didn’t have time to entertain another one of Roach’s plodding revelations.
“While I’m young, please.”
He grunted a quick apology. “Remember Stable 1? How the lights were on on the I.T. level and nowhere else? I'll give you one guess where that mystery electricity comes from.”
Her eyes slowly widened with understanding as the pieces fell into place. This wasn’t just another Stable buried beneath the scorched Equestrian hardpan. It was clearly more than that. Those five behemoth machines were meant for more than lighting the corridors for their single surviving warden. They were the glue that held a webwork of subterranean shelters together. The lifeblood of a mechanical organism that survived the cataclysm. These were the machines whose power kept a dustwing filly and her family alive miles and miles away from here. They preserved the links in a long chain that allowed Aurora to contact home.
If Stable 1 with its gauntlet of servers and seemingly limitless connections to the other remaining Stables was that network’s brain, then this place of thrumming generators was its beating heart.







Roach turned in the chair to better see the living machines beyond the glass. So many thoughts were running through his head they were impossible to keep up with. This wasn’t the dilapidated ruin of a technology no one remembered how to fix. These weren’t weapons to be feared and dismantled. This was what one half of Equestria had been so feverishly working toward even as the other strained to destroy itself. This was clean energy on a massive scale, and that was just a side note on the ledger of what he’d come to understand.
It was all connected. Every Stable that dotted Equestria represented a juncture on a vast, buried network of cables that survived the worst apocalypse in living history. Cables that still flowed, unbroken, with live current. Part of him became furious all over again. This was exactly what ponies said Equestria needed to end the war. A source of energy to sub in for the world's dwindling oil reserves. The answer hadn't just been sitting under their noses all along. It existed. Someone had built it. The infrastructure was already there. 
Of course they couldn’t take the generators offline. Disrupting the carefully measured balancing act between those five machines and the dozens of Stables unaware they depended on them would be risking a resource of incalculable value. He swallowed; old instincts attempting to whet his perpetually dry throat. Generation after generation, ponies born into the wasteland asked the same question and were told the same answer. Even Aurora asked a version of it: why wasn’t anyone fixing anything? Why did ponies still build their homes from the dead bones of a dead world, nailing scrap to scrap or killing one another for claim over a half collapsed farmhouse? Where had all the builders gone? The inventors? Why wasn’t anyone trying?
The answer often wore different disguises but it ultimately boiled down to the same concept: when everyone had nothing, anything was worth everything. It didn’t matter what banner the ponies in power flew. Enclave, Ranger, Traders or Raiders… once you had something worth keeping, there would surely be those willing to kill you for it. In the wasteland, oftentimes the only things keeping the spectre of death at bay were a few swigs of dirty water and half a dozen bullets. It was that constant, merciless hum of fear that kept so many ponies firmly rooted in today and left thinking about tomorrow to those few who had the luxury.
He stared at those generators, listening to the muted roar, and wondered whether he was getting ahead of himself. Frustration often dragged ambition in its wake. He didn’t think he was. The Rangers at Stable 6 had done it. He’d seen it for himself. What was stopping the rest of Equestria?
He half-stood and leaned across the console, tipping his cracked horn toward the window. The five hulking machines couldn't be risked. But they weren't the only generators in the hall. 
“What about those smaller ones? Could one of them be taken offline?”
Ginger and Applebloom approached the window to better see the pair of comparably stubby, cylindrical generators set in front of their monstrous counterparts. Roach remembered seeing pictures of a similar one in the informational pamphlet Stable-Tec sent him and his husband. Saffron had commented that it looked like a stack of bits with wires coming out of it, which was appropriate given how much of their savings had gone into reserving space for the whole family.
Applebloom hummed. “Millie, what about the two little generators? What’re those for?”
“Auxiliaries One and Two produce electricity for Stable 0.”
Roach leaned back and let his legs dangle off the front of his chair. “Millie, is it normal for one Stable to need two generators?”
“I’m sorry, but you do not have sufficient permission to access these facilities. Please remain…”
He rolled his eyes and sighed while Millie rattled off the same threat she’d up until recently reserved for Applebloom. The mare in question did her best not to smile at his irritation. It almost worked, too. When Millie was done informing him of his pending arrest, Roach gestured all yours to his fellow ghoul who promptly repeated his question to the fickle AI.
“All Stables which adhere to the standard design are fitted with one Mk.IV 20MW Stable-Tec generator and one M.A.S.T. ignition talisman rated for 500 years of sustained output. Stable 0 has been tasked with overseeing all administrative functions of the Stable-Tec External Network and its connected Stables, overseers and their resident populations. Due to its elevated role within the program, Stable 0 was classified non-standard and allowed an additional backup generator in the event the primary experiences premature failure.”
Standing beside him, Roach could practically see Ginger bristle at the explanation. “Millie, please explain why all Stables weren’t provided with a backup generator?”
“The expense was ruled unnecessary.”
Ginger looked like she was preparing to sharpen her hooves and tear into Millie for the oversight. Luckily, she caught his eye and saw the expression on his face. What’s done is done. They needed to focus on fixing the problem they had, not the problem they wished they had. Thinking better of her response, Ginger closed her eyes and took a breath. “Millie, will this Stable or the network be in any immediate danger should we take its backup generator offline?”
A pause. “No. Both auxiliaries operate on independent circuits as a safety precaution. The loss of one will have no impact on the other so long as one generator remains online. Their operational status bears no known risk to the external network.”
Ginger sighed in relief. “Well that’s good news at least.”
“Ain’t like I needed a backup yet. Hey Millie, run a quick compatibility check for me please. I need to know whether the talismans in our auxiliary jennies would work in the one Stable… ah, Shelter 10 has running.”
A pause. “That information is restricted.”
Roach blinked. Ginger made a noise of disgust, as if she’d heard that line before. Applebloom looked as if Millie had just spat on the ground in front of her.
The ghoul stared daggers at the ceiling. “Unrestrict it.”
“I’m sorry, you have insufficient permissions for this inquiry.”
“Here we go again,” Ginger muttered. “She stonewalled us, too.”
Applebloom’s gaze flicked toward her for barely a millisecond. “I’m the only reason she knows how to stonewall. Millie, confirm you have access to this room’s security footage.”
“Confirmed.”
Roach watched with growing interest as Applebloom scanned the four corners of the ceiling before spotting the black, apple-sized globe mounted above the door they’d just come through. 
She lifted her left foreleg, tucking it up against her chest. “Identify the pony standing on three legs, please.”
“Applebloom; resident.”
“Good.” She spun around, scanning the consoles until she spotted the item she was looking for. Snatching a yellow nib of pencil off its dusty clipboard, she knelt down and began scribbling something onto the middle of the floor. Ginger and Roach exchanged questioning glances but said nothing as the ghoul mumbled to herself, her teeth and tongue manipulating the lead into carefully controlled letters that seemed to spell out nothing either of them could understand. Roach vaguely recognized it as some kind of computer code, but he wasn’t even going to guess what it was meant to say. 
When she straightened and stood clear of her writing, she held the pencil between her teeth like a celebratory cigar. “Millie, open a new batch file and copy the text on the floor into it. Then run the file.”
A longer pause. This time, it stretched. Just as Roach began to worry that Applebloom had done something to break Millie for good, a soft chime rang from the AI’s overhead speaker.
“Update complete. Welcome, overmare. How may I assist you today?”
“You can stick a honeycrisp up your ass for starters,” she murmured.
“Haha. Good one, overmare. How may I assist you today?”
Applebloom shook her head, then looked at Roach and Ginger with an expression that said it was worth a shot. “Resubmit my last query, please.”
“Query: ‘I need to know whether the talismans in our auxiliary jennies would work in the one Stable… ah, Shelter 10 has running.’ One moment, please.” Millie was silent for the space of a breath. “Match, confirmed. The talisman designated for Shelter 10 is an identical model to the two used by this facility’s auxiliary generators. However, I regret to inform you that Stable 10 is no longer operational.”
A stone dropped into Roach’s gut. “What did she say?”
Applebloom hesitated. “Millie, what do you mean ‘no longer operational?’”
Direct as always, she answered. “Contact was lost with Shelter 10 on October 31st, 1087 following receipt of a purge order.”
Roach dropped from his chair, his expression stiff. “1087 would’ve been ten years after the bombs dropped.”
Ginger touched his hoof to keep him from pacing. “Aurora’s Stable isn’t active on the network, remember? We saw it ourselves back in the mountains.”
He swallowed his anger for the machine, barely. The fact that Millie was a semisentient AI had nearly tricked him into overlooking the fact that the server with the 10 emblazoned on its casing had shown little signs of life. Not because Stable 10 was dead. 
Because someone wanted Stable-Tec to think it was. 
“Right,” he sighed. “Ask her what she meant by purge order.”
Applebloom did. Millie’s response was quick. “A purge is common jargon which refers to the deliberate and intentional destruction of a Stable. The goal of a purge is to sacrifice one Stable-Tec asset in order to insulate all others from an existential threat to the program.”
Through Applebloom, he asked, “And how did Stable 10 pose that kind of a threat?”
“On October 31st, 1087 at 15:52, a distress message was sent from Stable 10 indicating a large Vhannan force had begun to and was succeeding in breaching the exterior blast door.”
Roach furrowed his brow. “Excuse me?”
Millie continued. “In such an event, the assumption must be made that any enemy force attempting to infiltrate Stable-Tec property does so in part due to a desire to acquire knowledge required to access other Stables, often referred to as Looter's Theory. As Stables are assumed to house the last survivors of the war, this scenario is not acceptable.”
“But I was there,” he argued. “Nothing ever came through that landslide except for me and a few radroaches.”
Applebloom spat on the flat of her hoof and began smearing the code she’d written on the floor. “Millie, what does a purge order do exactly?”
“A purge consists of three critical stages. Stage one initiates a remote lockdown of all primary Mechanical, Information Technology and Administrative systems to prevent process interruption. Once complete, stage two reports a false state of maximum electrical demand which in turn prompts the target generator to increase output beyond standard operational limits. The final stage simultaneously disconnects all main systems from the generator, inducing a load dump into the ignition talisman chamber. A purge is considered successful when the electrical flux inflicts moderate to severe structural defects within the ignition talisman, causing an immediate discharge of all stored magical energy. Explosive yields stemming from catastrophic M.A.S.T. failures have been known to fall within the range of fifty to one hundred and fifty pounds of TNT.”
Millie’s words hung in the air for several, long seconds. Roach quietly glared at the floor beneath his hooves, processing in grim silence. Judging by the glimpse he caught of Ginger’s paling face, the prospect of removing a charged ignition talisman had just become much less exciting.
“Millie.” Applebloom paused as if reconsidering the question. Chewing her lip, she made brief eye contact with Roach and sighed. “Millie, did that purge order come from this facility?”
A pause.
“No.”
“Then where did it come from?”
Another pause, longer, as if Millie herself was hesitant to answer.
“The order to purge Stable 10 originated from a secure terminal addressed to the Ministry of Technology.”







“Don’t get too close. It’s not like we’re swimming in Rad-Away right now.”
Aurora watched the bubbles glug up near the center of the pond, her front hoof bouncing anxiously against the crater slope. Years spent butting heads with stubborn shift workers, an ever-changing schedule and most of all Sledge normally left her jaded to the shock of a change in plans, but this wasn’t the usual sand thrown in the gears by Mechanical. This was bigger than that. Everything they’d gone through til now had led up to this point. This place. And just when she was starting to feel like her wings were a real asset out here in the wasteland, Fillydelphia was teaching her that they were equally a problem.
Less than a collective foot of flesh, bones and feathers added up to Ginger walking down there in her place. Now all she could do is wait and worry.
“She’s in a model P-45. She has plenty of air, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Aurora blew out a nervous sigh and turned away from the pond, knowing that was only one of the hundred other little dooms dangling in the front of her mind. At least the climb up the crater’s slope was easier with the deep, steplike hoofprints of Ginger’s power armor carved into it. She hopped from one to the other, hoping the dainty hoof work would force her mood to lighten a little. Julip waited for her at the rim with Aurora’s filthy jacket held in the crook of her foreleg.
“We’re still doing disguises?”
Julip tossed the leathers to her, the sleeve of which slapped across her muzzle like a dead fish. Aurora managed to unceremoniously catch the rest.
“While we’re still within spitting distance of twenty thousand ponies who have every reason to mistrust the first pegasus they meet? You bet.”
Wrinkling her nose at the jacket, then Julip, she relented and began shrugging the stinking material back over her feathers. “Didn’t have any problems before.”
“Then why did Roach tell me you caught a bullet during your first flying lesson?”
She paused, then pressed her lips into a firm line. “Can’t take him anywhere...”
To her relief, Julip caught her subtle humor and smiled. It was still weird to see her doing that without some backdrop of disdain to go with it, but not every unexpected change was all bad. With the limp leathers transforming her into a lazy mare’s version of an earth pony she tipped her nose toward the nearby ruins. This close to the crater they weren’t much more than rough outlines of prewar foundations traced by lines of broken concrete. It wasn’t cover in the strict sense that it would protect them in a gunfight, but the heavy Ranger presence in Fillydelphia no doubt kept the raiders away.
The legitimate ones, anyway.
As she cleared some loose debris away so she could sit, Aurora smiled. “Didn’t Meridian say this was where the Scavs were holed up?”
Julip joined her on the makeshift bench, dropping her satchel next to her saddlebags. “Something tells me we’re the only ones interested in this particular bomb crater. We were probably closer to them where we landed in the suburbs. Why?”
She shrugged. “No reason. I just like the feeling of knowing what’s up ahead even though I’ve never been there before.”
Julip slouched forward, her muzzle knotted with confusion. “Most ponies call that travelling.”
Aurora shrugged again. “I like travelling, then.”
Another beat of silence. Julip hummed, her eyes tilting up toward the hazy shape of the mountains they’d just flown out of. “Most ponies seem to. I guess it’s easy to forget you’ve never done that before.”
“The more I’m out here, the more I think there’s a lot I haven’t done.”
Julip nodded. “Ditto.”
Minutes ticked by as she stared down at the water, the surface placid and slowly giving itself back to the skin of orange muck that had been pushed out by the foam of bubbles. She hadn’t the faintest clue how long it would take Ginger and Roach to find the ignition talisman once inside, and the thought of sitting here saying nothing sounded about as healthy as an ulcer. It occurred to her that she had no shortage of questions yet to ask, but none of them felt like questions she wanted Julip to answer. They were Ginger questions. Roach questions. She couldn’t help but feel a little foolish at how quickly she was able to sort them.
Julip must have been feeling the same pressure. When she spoke, there was a hint of resignation in the green mare’s voice.
“Can I ask you a stupid question?”
“I have stupid answers.” She bent down to pick up an interesting looking lump of rock, her feathers poking briefly out from her jacket so she could peek at its semimelted features. Like everything else here, the little quartz infused stone had been changed by the bombs. She flicked it toward the crater and slipped her feathers out of sight.
Julip watched the rock skitter away. “How did you know anyone would want to help you when you came out here?”
Not the tricky question she was expecting. “I didn’t.”
Apparently it wasn’t the answer Julip was hoping to hear, because the younger mare seemed to deflate where she sat. Aurora had to nudge herself a little before she was willing to clarify.
“When I left, I didn’t think there was anyone out here. Everyone just assumed the world outside was dead.”
Julip looked up at her. “What, like… dead dead? Then how did you know there would be anything here?”
“Same answer as before. I didn’t.”
“But you had a map.” She pointed a hoof at Aurora’s Pip-Buck to emphasize her point. “You had access to the whole of Equestrian knowledge.”
Aurora looked at her Pip-Buck and tapped a key, waking it up. “We have maps of what Equestria used to be, not what it became. I wasn’t even sure Fillydelphia would be here. It didn’t matter. The only choices I had were to stay in my Stable and wait for a solution that wasn’t coming, or come out here and try to find one myself.”
“Out here where there was supposedly nothing.”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“That’s…”
“...insane, I know. I was there when it happened.”
Julip shook her head. “Noble, actually. Like, Twilight-fucking-Sparkle noble.”
She leaned down to pick up another rock but decided to snag the strap of her saddlebags instead. Dragging them in front of her, she picked out an apple and held it out for Julip to take. There was a touch of disapproval in the mare’s eyes at the sight of Aurora still using her feathers for the task, but she picked up the apple between her hooves and took a bite.
Aurora took one out for herself and did the same, her eyes following Julip's gaze toward the dusty mountains. “Twilight Sparkle wasn’t noble.”
Julip cheeked the half-chewed bite. “Oh, this I gotta hear.”
She swallowed, rolling her eyes while gesturing indifferently with her late breakfast. “They made us read the Friendship Journal cover to cover when I was a filly. When she was younger? Sure, she did good things. Heroic things, even. Nightmare Moon, Discord, the changeling swarm, all that stuff would have been bad news if someone hadn’t stopped it.”
Julip nodded. “But?”
“But then the villains and ancient curses just go away, and the world still goes to shit.”
“Okay, fair… but she was in charge of a ministry back then. They all had one.”
“They all had Elements of Harmony,” Aurora countered, the bitterness seeping into her voice. “Twilight was their leader. She could have gotten everyone together and used them to find a way to stop what was happening. But for some reason they didn’t? How is it noble to watch everything good in the world just slide off a cliff like that?”
Julip took a second bite of apple. “But they were trying, though.”
“Trying to make new weapons, maybe.” Aurora flicked a wing toward the hoofsteps left behind by Ginger’s armor. “They put in plenty of hours figuring out how to turn ponies into literal killing machines, even though they had the most powerful magic in Equestria at their wingtips.”
“Not all of them had wings.”
“You know what I meant.” Aurora closed her eyes and took a breath. “Sorry. Raw topic. We usually don’t talk about it back home.”
Julip grunted. “Forbidden topics and prewar conspiracies? Pretty much my job description up until recently. Wanna know a secret?”
Lacking ideas on how to turn the conversation toward something less prickly, she conceded with a simple nod. Julip smirked, tossed her apple a couple feet into the air and caught it expertly between her hooves as it came down. 
“They tried using the Elements once.”
Aurora stared at her, waiting for the punchline. But it wasn’t a joke.
“Benefits of being a certified archivist is you can look behind most of the censors. It was headline news when it happened, and the Ministry of Image didn’t have half the influence it did later in the war.” Julip looked back at her, but there was no pride in her expression for knowing the things she knew. Just disappointment. “Twilight and her friends took the Elements thinking they could use them to dislodge the entire zebra army from their own shore, but nothing happened. Nobody knows for sure why, but something like ten or twelve big newspapers wound up having their editors replaced after claiming it was proof we had no business in Vhanna.”
She didn’t know what to add to that, so she didn’t add anything. For a while neither of them said anything. Aurora tried unsuccessfully to fit what Julip said into the narrative she already knew. Square pegs and round holes. She gave up on making them fit.
Julip watched her. “You don’t buy it, do you?”
She quirked the corner of her lip. “I don’t not buy it.”
If her noncommittal answer bothered Julip, it didn’t show. The mare finished her apple, dropped the core into a sprig of green feathers and lobbed it toward the pond below. It hit the surface with a watery plop.
“Well, it’s not like Primrose Sprinkletits is gonna let me back in the Archive to get you proof. But if it makes you feel any better, you were less wrong about Twilight than most ponies. Plenty of pre roll footage from her press conferences to convince me she survived on pure ego and bitchfuel in her later years.”
True or not, it tugged a laugh out of her all the same. It took work for her to open up to Julip, but recently it felt easier to do. She wasn’t awful. A little rougher than most ponies, sure, but no worse than some of the hoofbiters down in Mechanical. Plus, from time to time, Julip managed to treat them with some choice vocabulary that Aurora fully intended to teach Sledge.
Half grinning, she bit off the last good chunk of her apple.
Later, she would remember seeing Julip’s ear twitch toward the sound of the Steel Rangers encircling them. For now, she was only aware that something was stopping her from chewing.
From moving.
Already on high alert after breaking a cardinal rule of the Enclave and deep in enemy territory, Julip hurled herself away from their concrete seat and managed to get both wings clear of her jacket before a swarm of unicorn magic locked her in her tracks. Aurora watched as several mingling shades of light encased the smaller mare as if to ensure her open wings were on clear display. Irrefutable evidence of what she was hiding and who she might well be. 
Bits of concrete dug into her flank as the magic that kept Aurora from helping bore down on her like a concrete tomb, pinning her down to remove any chance of her reaching for the rifle that lay on the rocks beside her dangling hind hooves. The fully eaten apple hung still between her feathers, the unchewed fruit frozen on her tongue. Their prey caught, the hooves of their attackers crunched across the loose stones toward them with no concern for the noise they made. Aurora and Julip could hear the murmurs of several voices, some strained as they held the two mares in place while others seemed to breathe open sighs of relief. They appeared from the periphery, stepping into view with clear and open purpose. Two stallions and a mare took position off to Aurora’s right, their horns lit, eyes fixed solely on her. Another trio approached Julip to do the same. 
It was a mistake letting Julip see their strange, splotchy grey uniforms because she recognized them immediately. Even amid the panic of being frozen mid-stride, Aurora could see Julip’s eyes go wide at the sight of Steel Rangers circling her. She fought ferociously to free herself, the lithe but powerful muscles in her hind legs hardening like stone to push against their collective grip. And she made progress. Maybe it was luck, or maybe the Enclave trained all their soldiers for a situation like this, but Julip began twisting herself toward the unicorn Rangers until their focus dropped solely to keeping her four hooves firmly planted on the ground. Several motes of magic winked out from around her outstretched wings, and Aurora felt a flicker of hope at the sight of their muscles flexing like cords wrenched taut.
A sweep of silver magic caught Julip’s wings before they could launch her free.
A cold stone dropped into the pit of her stomach when Paladin Ironshod, the gatekeeper of Blinder’s Bluff and the stallion who pried the location of Stable 10 out from her stolen Pip-Buck, stepped into view and approached Julip with his horn aglow. She could only watch as he walked within three paces of the former Enclave mare, drew a pistol from a holster around his foreleg and pressed the muzzle between her ribs.
The trigger flicked back and a sharp pop sent a jerk through Julip's paralyzed body, casting a puff of pink mist against the stones behind her right hoof. With one practiced motion, Ironshod holstered his weapon and doused his horn. One nod and the unicorns around him did the same. Julip collapsed to the stones like a marionette with its strings cut. Aurora could only stare in horror, her mind failing to keep up with what was happening or why. She watched Julip’s hooves scrape uselessly against the stones, gasping from shock, then go still.
Ironshod didn’t bother to watch. He stepped across the debris until he was the only thing she could see. He bent down, forcing their eyes to meet.
A grin twisted his jaw.
“Hello again, Aurora.”







“OH, THAT’S JUST GREAT.”
Ginger spat a curse as she jammed her right shoulder another inch deeper into the humming crawlspace, if she could even call it that. A less generous mare would call it a stillborn hybrid between an engineer’s nightmare and a cavediver’s sycophantic wet dream. Positioned as she was, half curled around a coolant pipe the size of her torso while threading head first through a maze of plumbing and dense black cables, she was not feeling one bit generous at all. For the second time in under a minute she had managed to get her horn hooked on one of the myriad components beneath the uncreatively named Auxiliary Two. 
Lying within literal leg’s reach of the churning machine was bad enough. She could feel the vibrations through her skin as if she were lying atop some massive tuning fork. Touching her horn to anything solid felt akin to biting the blurred tines. How these machines never shook themselves to pieces, she would never know.
Standing just outside the access hatch somewhere behind her, Roach shouted an equally annoying “WHAT?” into the narrow space.
She jerked her head, scraping her horn along the offending pipe until it skidded free like the rough edge of a hoof along a chalkboard… except the chalkboard was her skull.
“NEVERMIND!”
Bracing herself against her rising temper, she took a breath and steadied herself. Just a few feet further, then a dogleg turn to the right. If Aurora could squeeze into the bowels of one of those monstrous machines currently chiseling away at her long-term hearing, then she could manage a short trip down through one of its little cousins.
A little cousin that could convert her into a finely minced paste should it somehow shake loose.
Pushing that thought away, she sucked in her stomach and crawled past the coolant line. Sweat was already soaking through her coat, causing years of dust to form a dark slurry all along her left side. There was nothing to be done for it. Millie had warned her that it would be hot down here. In fact, Millie had spent the twenty or so minutes leading up to this unpleasant excursion sharing quite a lot of helpful information such as which generator to choose, which floor panel to remove, what symptoms might indicate the onset of hypoxia caused by the surrounding metals leeching oxygen from the access tunnel… generally helpful information, overall.
Sure she had gone absolutely silent when it came to who sent the purge order to Stable 10, claiming the data was unavailable, but at least Ginger had a better understanding of how exposed plumbing could kill her by merely existing.
She kicked off the coolant line, gaining several feet in one go. She could feel her sweat-slicked mane clinging to the side of her face, picking up a good ten decades’ worth of settled dust in the process. As her hooves squeaked off ductwork and the baking temperature continued to slowly baste her in her own juices, she gave brief but serious consideration to seeing whether her magic could be used to propel herself the rest of the way. A quick glance at the sheer mass of high voltage cables snaking around her made her reconsider. One mistaken tug on those lines and she’d go from basting to flash frying.
As Millie predicted, the crawlspace opened up to the right. Kicking along, inch by inch, she navigated the tight turn and found herself momentarily staring at a dead end. A flicker of panic jolted in her chest before she realized the panel the space had bent around had hinges. Thick orange and yellow stripes framed the edges. In the center, the words DANGER: TALISMAN CONTAINMENT CHAMBER stood in black letters, crisp as if they’d been painted on the day before.
Several smaller images along the bottom offered creative depictions of pegasi and earth ponies being dismembered and killed. Ginger ignored them and pressed her magic into the hatch.
As soon as the first gaps formed, an intense lavender light spilled out into the crawlspace. She winced and recoiled as if struck by a physical thing, but seconds passed and she realized the assault was solely visual. As her eyes adjusted she pushed the hatch the rest of the way open, squinting into the light like a foal seeing the cloudless sun for the first time.
What waited behind the hatch took Ginger many seconds to absorb. Sealed within a cylinder of glass, a vortex of energy swirled out along a single axis like luminescent water being funneled up toward some unseen turbine. Shapes of light and shadow shimmered over the cables and pipes, bathing her in the presence of its sheer being. It was magic, she realized, wild and untainted by the world above. It was the magic harnessed by the unicorns who lived centuries ago; that unknowable force that imbued Equestria with heroes and villains with terrible potential.
There, spinning at the center of that torrential cyclone, hung a single dark object that flickered with a speed that breathed life into this forgotten Stable. How many hundreds of miles had they walked? How many obstacles had they overcome to reach this place? She found herself grinning, knowing Aurora’s relief and excitement would dwarf anything Ginger could muster. The silent terror of finding this place empty, of coming back to the surface with nothing but an apology and the hope that Aurora wouldn’t dive into the crater herself evaporated at the simple sight of that talisman rotating at the center of that magnificent maelstrom.
Following Millie’s instructions, Ginger forced herself to be calm as she reached out with her magic. There was no “off” button. No switch she could throw. If there was a magical incantation for her to recite, Millie hadn’t known it. She had to do this by feel alone.
“Propulsion can be seized by the steady application of magic directly across the axis of rotation. This process may take several seconds up to a minute to complete.”
Ginger had wrinkled her nose at the stale description. Roach eventually clarified.
“Hold the tips until it stops spinning.”
She blew out a steadying breath and tried not to think about all the warnings Millie had rattled out, detailing various ways the talisman could shred the feathers from a wing or remove a hoof. She couldn’t think of a situation where sticking a limb into that glowing chamber would seem like a good idea. And yet here she lay, the meaty layer of a ductwork sandwich, preparing to do the magical equivalent.
“You can do this,” she whispered. “You got this.”
Illuminating her horn, she tentatively reached toward the tornadic purple light with a filament of her own magic. It bent like a blade of grass pulled along in the arcane current. She closed her eyes, regrouped, and fed more magic into the simple spell. The filament strengthened, straightened enough for her to push further, the force of the maelstrom strong but not impenetrable. Gritting her teeth, the winds coiled around her magic like something electric, sending a noticeable charge back to her horn that tingled her gums and buzzed down her spine. A part of her nearly broke into nervous laughter, wondering if there was enough magic down here for her to crawl back out with a new set of wings and matching tiara.
She kept her composure, allowing just the slightest smirk as she felt for the talisman. Finding it wasn’t as difficult as she expected. Her magic gently swarmed around it. Were her eyes open she would’ve seen the hazy outline of a translucent bronze shell encompass it on all sides. She dared not touch the sides. Millie warned her about that. About throwing the talisman off center and introducing what she simply called a wobble. She didn’t have to be an expert to know that something striking a hard surface while spinning this quickly would be nothing short of catastrophic. She groped for the calmer eddys swirling along each tip until the shape of the talisman formed in her mind. She pressed inward and felt the resistance build.
Deep within the steel and concrete surrounding her, the two generators began to sing in different harmonies. The all-encompassing hum became two distinct pitches, one unchanged while the other descended down the scales. Ginger expected the talisman to attempt to compensate, to redouble its own efforts to correct the balance, but it put up no such fight. It was never intended to. It twirled and twirled in the grip of her own magic, just a physical thing like any ordinary stone, dumb and uncaring of its circumstances. 
Her confidence swelled. She clutched it tighter. A backwash of latent magic streamed up the path of her magic like an ocean wave flowing up a slow river. Dizziness cracked behind her eyes like a whip but her connection to the talisman held like iron. She felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the generator filling her chest, like the first clear breath of air after a long and lingering infection. The dizziness vanished. She felt strangely well.
The generator moaned in protest. Somewhere nearby, a breaker clacked. The machinery overhead spun lower and lower until, finally, all that was left was that singular hum of its nearby twin.
The ignition talisman pirouetted once more, then it stopped.
Ginger opened her eyes. The chamber was dark, save for the soft amber glow of her own magic. At the center of it, an unassuming black object barely the size of Ginger’s hoof. Six obsidian points drew a slightly elongated hexagon that gently, visibly soaked up the fringes of Ginger’s magic, like a battery storing it for later.
Realization dawned on her. 
She had it.
They had an ignition talisman.
> Chapter 33: Apogee
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 31st, 1077
Low Equus Orbit

“Cloudbreaker, Control. Comm check.”
“A-firm, Control. Spearhead on comm. How do you read? 1-2-3-4-5, 5-4-3-2-1.”
“Affirmative. You are about four-by with a slight decrease/increase in volume, sort of a wavy volume to it. Over.”
Apogee glanced at commander Spearhead and pretended not to notice him proceed to mash his suit’s stick mic between his vacuum suit’s rigid collar and the corner of his chin. Half a thousand bits worth of microphone scraped closer to his muzzle before he finally keyed open the channel again.
“Okay, how about now?”
“Hey, that’s beautiful right there. Thank you. We have you five-by.”
She snorted. If her mom wasn’t currently driving literally across the country right now, some poor engineer down at JetStream Aerospace would’ve been getting their ear chewed off. 
“Affirmative, Control, five-by.” Spearhead let his chin off the link. “I see you laughing over there.”
Apogee didn’t bother hiding her grin. Everything about where she was right now made it impossible not to. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir.”
He extended a hoof forward and plucked his moleskin notebook from the air as easily as he might nip a grape from the vine with his teeth. Something told her they were going to miss having articulating fingers once they were back on the ground. “‘Sir,’” he chuckled. “You wait until we’re three hundred miles off the planet before deciding to call me sir.”
She rolled her eyes, her own mechanical digits making the final entries into the computer for their next burn. At its closest approach, SOLUS would still be flying several dozen miles above them. Their experimental command shuttle - well, everything about this mission was experimental - needed a few more hard kicks before the delicate work of rendezvous was needed.
As she keyed in the numbers, she stole a peek out the nacho-shaped window beside her. Up until today, the sweeping curve of the planet was something ponies had only seen in photographs taken from her dad’s first probes. The resolution of those cameras had been the envy of Equestria and caused understandable apprehension among the smaller nations of the world. Yet it was nothing compared to the verdant, blue ball gracefully turning below them. That was all the proof Apogee needed to know for sure the princesses were frauds. 
No alicorn, no living creature on Equestria could ever dream to ply their influence against something so massive. Not the moon and certainly not the sun. If Celestia or Luna had even a fraction of the magic it would take to do something so monumental they wouldn’t need armies. The Wonderbolts wouldn’t have been decimated. This war, the villains Equestria faced, none of it would have been more than a footnote in the pages of history if the princesses could do any of the things they claimed to do. 
She took a deep breath, pushing away old angers and resumed her work. If ponies wanted to believe the universe revolves around a dusty old diarchy, that was their delusion to cling to. She knew the truth. 
Plus she got to feel microgravity and they didn’t. So there.
“How’s it going back there, Keys?”
The straps that kept her from floating out of her chair also kept her from looking around the headrest at the stallion behind her, but boy she could hear him. Underwater training could only do so much to prepare them for real zero G. Just like the lab coats back on Equus had warned them, space was going to be nothing like neutral buoyancy pools. Weightlessness meant everything - their manes, their bodies, their organs and everything inside those organs was going to be on the float.
Sticky Keys, as they discovered, had a stomach that objected strongly to having his dinner bouncing around inside it. Unfortunately for all of them, he was a noisy puker.
“Gonna use up all the v-bags if the damn Nauzine doesn’t start working.”
He’d better not, she thought grimly. If the air recyclers didn’t scrub the smell of sick out of the shuttle soon, she was going to need one too. “Sandy, give Keys another 10mg tablet.”
Seated next to the opposite window, Sandy lit his horn and tore a pill from a blister pack he’d stuck to the wall with a square of velcro. “Chew it before you swallow this time.”
Keys let out a weary groan. “That’s what she said.”
“I…” Apogee closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her snout with her mechanical fingers. She would have marveled at how second nature that reaction had been if Keys wasn’t such a bucking idiot at times. “That isn’t how that joke works.”
“It could.”
“That’s disgusting and it isn’t.”
“Celestia’s sake, Keys, take the Nauzine and shut up.” Spearhead wore the face of an exasperated parent, but Apogee could see the laugh lines threatening to deepen along his muzzle. Historical Equestrian events be damned, at the end of the day they were all just normal ponies. Regular, immature ponies stupid enough to let themselves be strapped to an overengineered bomb and be shot into an environment utterly hostile to life.
Normal stuff.
Spearhead stole a look in her direction and smirked. Back to work.
“Control, Cloudbreaker.” There was still a hint of levity in his voice as he spoke to the team down in Las Pegasus. “Confirm ETA to ascent burn.”
The comms crackled in the capsule. “Cloudbreaker, Control. I see you at -07:14.”
“A-firm, synced.”
She settled back in her chair while the ship’s computer ran through the math. Tuning out the stallions, she made a few mental calculations until she was sure the burn times it spat out felt right. At their current velocity they were in a perpetual fall around Equus that outpaced every known object they as a species had ever hurled through the air. A sixteen second burn was all they needed to close the gulf between their low orbit and the trajectory SOLUS had been placed in.
Seven minutes went by in a blink.
Her eyes never left the readouts. A gentle pressure pulled her into the foam of her seat, barely a shove compared to the kick in the ribs they’d taken during liftoff. As the seconds ticked along, she imagined the highest point of their orbit lofting itself deeper into the abyss, creeping along until it just grazed their target orbit by a few scant miles. The engines died back and puffed out. 
It didn’t feel any different but they were on a rollercoaster now, climbing toward SOLUS at the very top. Then they would drop away, plummeting back toward the planet only to swing back and do it all over again. Three orbits stretched into a precise ellipse. By the third pass they would be able to see it like a dark star, sliding along the viewfinders as they made chase.
Apogee touched her hind leg to the secured cargo drawer beneath her seat where the M.A.S.T. talismans, the final and most sensitive components of SOLUS, waited in white cocoons of foam. In a few short hours she would be floating at the back of the capsule with the six hearts of Equestria’s future beating alongside her own.
“Command, Cloudbreaker. Maneuver was successful.”
“Cloudbreaker, we see you. We’re expecting some nice pictures down here.”
“A-firm that.” Spearhead tapped the cuff of her suit. “Home’s on your side. Make sure the lens cap is off.”
“Yep,” she said. “Got it.”
Reaching up, she pulled down the portside photography rail and loaded one of several cameras they brought with onto the gimbal. Safely behind the viewfinder, every square mile any pony had ever trod on hung before her like some impossible Hearth's Warming ornament. She swallowed, waiting for her frayed nerves to steady, and snapped the first picture.
The mountains of Griffinstone slid under the lens.
She could do this.







“Oh.”
Ginger blinked, eyes wide. “Oh. Roach? ROACH I HAVE IT!”
In her excitement she tried to stand. The roof of the maintenance shaft stopped her with a metallic bang that was barely audible in the midst of seven generators’ bone-rattling drones. Six generators, now. The one above her, a monstrous machine in its own right, had groaned to a stop. Its ignition talisman, the singular force behind its operation, floated harmlessly in a delicate haze of her own magic.
Pain bloomed where her head bounced off rolled steel. She ignored it. In her hurry to squeeze through this cramped maze of plumbing and wires, she hadn’t thought how she would turn around. She realized she wasn’t going to. For several frustrating minutes she wriggled backward, pushing off whatever she could to recover the inches she’d kicked her way across just moments earlier. 
No. Wasteland or not, there was something to be said about dignity. She was not about to climb out of this crawlspace ass first when she was carrying the one thing the three of them had been seeking since Aurora first stepped into her shop. She’d already practiced on enough rocks to get a feel for this. It couldn’t be that hard.
The glow around her horn brightened, her magic expanding to envelop her and the talisman both. A picture of where she wanted to go formed in her mind and a touch of intention completed the spell. Air rushed up the fringes of her mane and the maintenance tunnel vanished. A wave of dizziness washed over her as the control room that overlooked the generator hall flooded into existence around her.
Gravity kicked in just as quickly. Crouched as she had been, she’d teleported an easy foot off the linoleum. Before she could so much as yelp, she hit the ground with a graceless whoof as the air was knocked out of her lungs. Several wheezing seconds passed as she recovered her breath. She rolled over, splayed out on her back with the talisman floating above her, and began to laugh.







Roach stared helplessly into the open floor hatch. Everything about this was insane, but they had no choice but to do it anyway. Ginger was the only one among them with a horn that wasn’t going to pump the place full of rads, so down she went. Minutes passed and suddenly the hulking cylinder of humming metal had begun to slow. Then Ginger had shouted something neither he or Applebloom could make out despite it being fractionally less deafening. 
There had been a flash of light, and the thought occurred to him that she’d dislodged some kind of cable or touched something… electrical. He wasn’t an engineer. He didn’t know the words. All his brain could put together was building-sized generators plus sudden flash equals bad.
A firm hoof against his shoulder jarred him to reality. Applebloom was shouting something, using the same hoof to point back the way they came. Run? Evacuate? Was that it?
“WHAT?”
She practically shoved her muzzle into the ragged cup of his ear. “I SAID, YOU DIDN’T SAY SHE WAS A TELEPORTER!”
He looked toward where Applebloom pointed. By the time he realized what she meant, his fellow ghoul was already making her way back across the generator hall to the stairs. Bewildered, he followed, his eyes locked on the tiny black stone bobbed behind the window on a cloud of Ginger’s magic.







“We can’t be more than a day’s flight away, right?”
“I don’t…”
“I mean we’d need to make sure they eat and drink first, plus rest in between. Aurora said it took something like three hours to fly down to the solar array. That’s, what, three or four times faster than it took that bounty hunter on hoof?”
“Maybe. I wasn’t…”
“We’ll need supplies so we don’t have to stop on the way back. Food, water, first aid. The Big Three. It’ll weigh more but it'll save us time in the long run. Right?”
“Ginger, slow down.”
Roach looked to Applebloom in silent apology as she shouldered open the stairwell door for them, the mare visibly overwhelmed by Ginger’s bubbling excitement. Ginger all but pranced up the stairs alongside him with the ignition talisman turning lazily in her magic. 
He couldn’t blame her for being giddy. He felt a bit of it himself. Looking at the obsidian glint of the talisman’s perfectly fabricated angles, he felt a relief deep in his heart that had been building for days now. He knew if he described it, Ginger and Aurora would know exactly what he was referring to. Every mile that they pushed behind them was another mile further from a Stable on the brink of collapse. Another mile they would have to retrace. Worst of all, there was an unspoken worry that asked whether they were even going the right direction or if Aurora’s hunch would wind up being a dead end. Out this far, straddling the lapping waves of Equestria’s eastern coastline, there was no doubt in Roach’s mind that coming up empty would have meant the death of Stable 10. 
Ginger had known too. It was why she’d been willing to take Aurora’s place without so much as being asked, and why she’d wriggled beneath a humming generator despite the danger it posed. After ten days of struggling through a wasteland that did nothing but push back against them day and night, they were here. They’d found together what Aurora had set out thinking she would have to find alone. 
Ginger managed to tamp down her excitement, but only just. Grinning, she gave him a lighthearted shoulder bump. Despite himself, he smiled a little more broadly and thumped hers in return. Aurora’s hunch had been right.
“Luna’s grace, I can’t wait to tell her.”
He chuckled. “I had no idea.”
They followed Applebloom back to the seventh floor where the canyonlike shelves of Supply continued gathering dust. Without Sweetie Belle to contend with, Roach was able to give the orderly pencil scratches passing them on the walls a closer look. Skimming the neat lines he saw that they acted as much as a diary as they did notes. They walked by too quickly for him to read any one sentence to completion, but the fragments he did skim were easy to piece together.


...won’t let me take a sample without…
...broke her hoof on the door today…
...fucking Millie needs to learn who…
...decay could correlate with depth…
...failed just like the infirmary trials…


As they stepped back into Supply’s yawning warehouse, Roach couldn’t help but finally ask. “Did you ever make any progress researching the decay?”
Applebloom silently mouthed something to herself, regarding the vast sprawl of shelves before her like a book whose index she only vaguely remembered. A second later she was moving again, passing the endless aisles one after the other.
“No,” she answered. “Not really. Not… maybe. I dunno.”
Roach tried not to let her see his confusion. She noticed anyway, wincing a little as she looked back at her strange new guests.
“All I know is what didn’t work-work-work.” Her tail snapped the air as if to dispel her stammer. “None of the ponies that were left responded to medication. I tried-tried-tried… I tried everything I could find in the infirmary. None of the pills helped with the decay. Didn’t even slow it down.”
He hummed, remembering the rumors he’d heard when he first ventured out of the tunnel beyond Stable 10. In those early years, ghouls were pitied more than anything else. Some still had living relatives who hoped to see them get better. Others were freshly turned, having unwittingly stumbled through radiation hotspots without realizing it. Fragmented as Equestria was, the survivors had shown a real determination to solve the mysteries of what made ponies turn ghoul. Then, as all things do, the momentum slowed. As more ghouls went feral, attacked and killed, sympathy quickly waned and was replaced by mistrust and disdain.
By then, ponies had more things to worry about than mysterious afflictions. From the ashes had sprung two competing factions, one which flew the banners of the fallen Equestrian Army and a second which seemed to appear from nowhere, claiming the old princesses had ascended while leaving them to safeguard their thrones. With Equestria sliding back into the meat grinder of a new conflict, ghouls were regarded as a problem to be solved by a different generation. So far that generation had yet to appear and what some ponies called the ghoul problem grew through the decades.
“Maybe with Millie cooperatin’, I’ll figure it out.” Applebloom paused, then turned down a long stretch of shelving stacked with hardened plastic tubs. “Food, water n’ first aid, right?”
“The Big Three,” he parroted.
Ginger flushed a little but wasn’t about to let a little ribbing dampen her mood. “Just enough for the trip home. Nothing extravagant.”
Applebloom snorted as she slowed to squint at the manifest adhered to a passing container like one might read a road sign. She kept walking. “Trust me, Stable-Tec never did extravagant.”
“Says the mare living in the world’s safest air-conditioned bunker,” Ginger countered.
“Hmph.” Applebloom wisely chose not to argue the point. She eventually stopped at a bay of yellow containers which appeared to be to her satisfaction and hauled two off their bowing pallet by her teeth. She gave each a gentle kick, spinning the latches toward Roach and Ginger.  “Imagine things topside ain’t all sunshine and butterflies just yet.”
Roach smirked. “Not quite.”
The latches made a satisfying set of clacks as they released. The rubber seals crackled apart when they pulled apart to reveal a simple set of leather saddlebags embossed on either flap with Stable-Tec’s iconic nine-toothed cog. Simple block font stood centered within each gear.


STABLE-TEC
FIELD SUPPORT


Applebloom saw their curious expressions and offered a shrug in response. “Like I said, the whole point of this place was to be a life raft to the other Stables. I guess if Vhanna hadn’t gone and dropped a bomb on top of our heads, we mighta actually put some of those kits to use. Coulda come to help your friend instead of the other way around.”
Roach tried not to imagine what could have happened if anyone else were tipped off to the survival of a Stable like this. In retrospect, he supposed the zebras might have done them all a favor by burying this place. It only took one ant to lead a pony back to the anthill. It wouldn’t have taken the Enclave or the Rangers much time at all to track a field support pony back here to discover the goldmine waiting inside.
The contents of each set of saddlebags were identical. Two MREs and two metal water flasks rested snugly in one pack while a first aid kit, field dressings, disinfectant and two sleeves of pristinely minted gold bits wrapped in banker’s rolls weighed down the other. He smiled at the sight of old currency and wondered whether anyone working for Stable-Tec had ever considered bottlecaps trouncing gold as the new postwar currency. He breathed in, enjoying the scent of new leather. He debated asking Applebloom for two more kits, one each for Aurora and Julip, but decided against it. They’d taken plenty.
“This is perfect.” He paused to nip his new saddlebags by the strap and swing them onto his back. Compared to how lightly they were packed, the bags had a reassuring weight to them. “Thank you.”
“Ain’t nothin’.” Roach tried not to smile at her casual, unironic countryism. “You’re the ones that got Millie talkin’ to me again.”
“About that.”
Ginger sat on the cool concrete, gaze stuck on the now open first aid kit floating in front of her. She was considering one of the contents, a little tin box of band-aids. Half of the papered strips slid up and out of the box, making room for the ignition talisman. The black stone was a near perfect fit. The tin and its excess bandages settled back into the metal container, which latched firmly shut with a click.
“This shelter loophole we’ve been exploiting in her programming.” She murmured the words with uncertainty, as if she were afraid to ruin something that had helped them come this far. “It’s only a matter of time before someone else finds out about it, and I worry the next pony who does might not be as... delicate as we’ve been.”
Applebloom nodded understanding. “Millie?”
“Yes, overmare?”
“Delete the command line ‘Shelter’ from all systems.”
A pause. “Command line deleted.”
She tipped her head to Ginger with a cracked smile, who nodded back in thanks. Then her eyes drifted to their identical saddlebags and the smile faded. “I guess you two need to get going soon-soon-soon.”
Roach cleared his throat and glanced at Ginger. “It is getting to be about that time. Anything else we need?”
She shook her head, eyes craning up to the storehouse surrounding them. “Nothing we need, no. Just an endless list of wants. Thank you for having us, Applebloom. Today has been a welcome change of pace.”
“Makes me wish y’all had more time to tell me what a normal day is like for you.” Applebloom slid the empty cases back under the shelves and tipped her head for them to follow. “Guess it can’t be much worse than gettin’ rahed at by Sweetie Belle all day long.”
Roach chuckled at that, but when Applebloom lifted a brow toward him he realized she hadn’t meant it to be a joke. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Looking at Ginger, he was surprised by the bare look of are you serious in her eyes. He grimaced, wondering what part of him had thought Applebloom would see her friend’s condition as anything to laugh at. She thought Sweetie Belle was like any other feral ghoul locked up in this Stable. Maybe it was due to Millie’s indifference that she hadn’t learned she was wrong.
As they crossed the threshold out of Supply, he decided to speak.
“Applebloom, can I ask you a question?”
After a pause, she looked over her shoulder at him. “Sure. What about?”
“Sweetie Belle.” 
He winced as Applebloom’s expression grew more guarded, but he persisted anyway.
“This is going to sound strange, but… has she ever spoken to you?”







July 21st, 1077
Canterlot

Primrose shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, taking in the faint scent of agriculture that drifted up to the promenade railing. The weather ponies had rain scheduled over the next two days and she could already smell the moisture building on the morning updrafts. She’d never been much of a flyer, preferring to stretch her legs within easy earshot of the local gossip whenever the chance arose, but she was experienced enough on her wings to understand how much time and labor went into seeding the weather patterns as they rolled in from the west. The weather factories dotting the countryside had made that work much easier in recent years, but the fine details of directing those fronts to where they were needed would always require a pegasi’s guidance. She smiled to herself. Maybe she could have been a weather pony in a different life.
The balconies were quiet this morning, save for a group of young colts who loitered on one of the stone benches, huddled around the screen of the year’s new electronic toy. A JoyBoy, they were calling it. Some new game... thing. They were easy to ignore. Her attention was taken up by the rolling vista of Equestria sprawled before her.
“So you’re Primrose.”
Her body jerked as if touched by a live wire. One moment, she was seemingly alone with her thoughts. The next, she was sharing the railing with the dangerously potent Element of Magic. 
Twilight Sparkle stared over the promenade with a bored expression that hinted at a mare who had seen and done things most ponies would describe in fiction or comic books. Here was an alicorn who had been at the center of Princess Luna’s return to rule, Discord’s banishment and Tirek’s violent death. A mare who had briefly wielded the combined magic of Equestria’s three rulers and who had the confidence in her own abilities to give it back.
She’d read the Friendship Journal for herself and lost track of how many times the fate of Equestria had hinged on the choices of one privileged purple mare and her little clique of friends. It disgusted her to think that the whole world was content to hang on the success or failure of six unremarkable ponies rather than risk scuffing their own hooves by taking some initiative. The magic of the Elements had done nothing but make Equestrians complacent and there was no better evidence than the absolute mess being made of the war with Vhanna. Thinking about it made her blood boil, even now. 
She packed away that anger and nodded with a cozy smile. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Minister Sparkle.”
Twilight openly glowered at her. It felt like she was being stared down by a fucking lighthouse. “You have five minutes, Primrose.”
Straight to the point, then. “I have a proposal that involves Stable-Tec.”
“Then you should talk to Stable-Tec.”
“I would if I expected Scootaloo to listen. I thought it would be wiser to speak to you, since you lead one of the ministries that subsidized their nationwide shelter initiative. That, and I believe this proposal might interest you personally, given your generous life expectancy.”
Twilight narrowed her gaze at Primrose. Fresh suspicion brewed behind those lavender eyes. “Get to the point.”
She could feel her mouth going cottony, but the ball was rolling now. There wasn’t much left to do but chase after it and hope she wouldn’t get crushed in the process.
She cleared her throat. “I assume you’re familiar with Stable-Tec’s true modus operandi by now. Stir up the nation’s anxiety, sell the wealthy idiots of Equestria tickets to their local Shelter, cash out when the war ends… it’s a good get rich quick scheme, right?”
“I’ve known Scootaloo since she was a filly, Ms. Primrose. She doesn’t scheme and her company is under contract to repay their debt to the Equestrian taxpayers when Vhanna surrenders. She is entirely aware Stable-Tec will be lucky to break even when that happens.”
“And what if we lose the war?”
Twilight paused, only to regard her with a dismissive smirk. “That won’t happen.”
She could sense the warning in Twilight’s tone, but she pressed on. “Stable-Tec seems to think it’s possible, or they wouldn’t have dropped every bit they had into construction. Why do you think they’ve been retrofitting their blast doors to withstand a balefire bomb?”
She watched Twilight shake her head and stare down at the sprawl of Equestrian farmland. A little ways to the southwest, a faint patch of civilization seemed to catch her eye. Ponyville. The backwater town that brought her and the other Elements together for the first time. The eye of Equestria’s proverbial storm and the totem that allowed Twilight to brush off Primrose’s borderline imprisonable line of inquiry. She considered the possibility that Twilight would choose to ignore her until her time was up and decided to push harder.
“How long until the zebras get the bomb?”
Twilight regarded Primrose as if she’d been slapped. “We’re done here.”
Fuck. Already she could see the violet haze of magic emanating from the minister’s horn, charging with that arcane force that would allow her to simply teleport away. There was nothing she could do to stop Twilight once that spell took form. That’s why she’d come here with another card to play. The words chattered across her tongue just as the bubble of magic shimmered into view.
“I know you’ve been diverting stimpacks to the Ministry of Technology.”
The spell evaporated. Twilight’s horn went as dark as the expression that blanketed her face. When she spoke, her voice was like cracked glass. “Reconsider what you think you know, then.”
Primrose swallowed. When she’d pulled the strings to schedule this meeting, she knew she’d be playing with fire. She hadn’t expected the fire to play back. In for a bit, in for a bushel. No turning back.
“There’s nothing to reconsider, Twilight. Your ministry contracted a large medical supplier operating out of Manehattan to transport recalled stimpacks to Hay Lakes Hospital. A pegasus working the loading dock has instructions to doctor the manifests so the stimpacks are brought to the Ministry of Technology while a shipment of placebo syringes are sent west for disposal. I know this because the pegasus at Hay Lakes Hospital is one of mine.”
Towering beside her, Twilight’s nostrils flared as she inhaled a slow, contemplative breath. “One of yours.”
She nodded, working hard not to let Twilight see the howling fear behind her eyes.
“Assuming any of this is true, which none of it is, how would you have known to put one of your people at Hay Lakes? That recall was issued less than a month ago.”
She did her best to appear as unassuming as she could. A minor threat, just an amateur manipulator trying to squeeze her way into the big leagues. A sheepish smile crossed her muzzle. “I don’t think it would be good for anybody if I told you how my organization works.”
“Your organization.” Twilight rolled her eyes, sparing a quick glance at the colts still gathered on their bench behind them. They were oblivious to the conversation taking place just a short trot away from them, enamored with the blips and bloops of their plastic toy. “And what does your organization want?”
She looked up at the alicorn. “Another five minutes of your time, for starters?”
Twilight answered by sitting down on the stone promenade. “You had a proposal regarding Stable-Tec.”
And there it was. The first tug on the line. One quick jerk and she could reel her in at her leisure.
“I do. And please, hear me out on this. If the worst does happen like Stable-Tec is preparing for, I don’t think it’s in Equestria’s best interest for life in these Stables to be so… unchallenging.”
Twilight watched her, saying nothing.
She continued. “On the timescale Stable-Tec is projecting, our society wouldn’t be preserved as it stands now. It would stagnate without the unexpected mishaps of everyday life. I suggest that in addition to funding Stable-Tec’s current project, your ministry devises a selection of difficulties for these Stables to overcome.”
“Difficulties.”
She nodded. “A scheduled crop failure, for example, or an introduction of residents to a Stable with a history of resisting authority. Small puzzles of life that might realistically occur outside the otherwise controlled setting of a Stable which a population would be forced to solve. That way subsequent generations are encouraged not to depend solely on the Stable for their survival and are better prepared for the trials of a world that may not be in a condition to accommodate their needs.”
After a pause, she added, “A muscle only grows stronger with use, Minister.”
Twilight watched her. “You’ve given this some thought. What would happen if I were to agree to help you?”
“Nothing the public would notice. I already have several contacts inside Stable-Tec who are prepared to move on this and you have my word that Scootaloo would be insulated from any knowledge of the adjustments we would make. Your contribution would be more… logistical in nature. Several of these changes need to happen quickly and I can’t think of many contractors who would question Twilight Sparkle when she tells them to jump.”
The alicorn hummed, the gears in her head turning as she thought. Primrose didn’t need her to think or she risked poking holes in the already tenuous smokescreen she needed to maintain.
She turned to face Twilight, meeting her eyes with a modest bow. “I apologize if I crossed a line with you earlier, but it’s worth considering how lucky you are for me to have been the pony to discover your cache under the MoT. I honestly don’t know what you need those stimpacks for and I don’t want to know. That’s your business, but… I may be able to help keep your hooves clean if someone else were to open one of those crates by mistake. In return, I’d like the honor of working with you.”
Some of that was true. She didn’t know why several thousand doses of recalled medicine had been stockpiled in the bowels of the Pillar, but oh boy did she want to know. More than that, she wanted this purple giraffe to understand that if she tried to get rid of her there were others loyal to her who were poised to throw the so-called Element of Magic straight under the nearest bus.
Twilight stared for several long seconds before nodding, once. “Alright. You have my attention, Primrose. For your sake, you’d better not waste it.”


	




Ping.
Primrose’s ear twitched. Something important. Secure line. She buried her face into her pillow’s silken cover, her thoughts a frenetic blur of carnal bliss. A sturdy hoof pressed firmly but not indelicately into the small of her back, pinning her to the sheets as its owner went about his rhythmic work. He’d introduced himself, a middle-ranking officer of the Enclave, but she’d forgotten his name as soon as he climbed onto her. 
Ping.
He wasn’t here to be her lover or to earn some accolade to brag about in the New Canterlot saloons. He was here because she was pent up again and needed release, and because she wasn’t going to hang an ice pack under her tail to avoid the problem like some superstitious mares were wont to do. If heat were a matter of hot and cold, ponies would have died out as a species back when the freezer was invented.
Ping.
Ugh. They weren’t going to stop until she answered. Primrose hissed a breath through grit teeth when it pinged again. The stallion’s cadence had broken down, not because he was close to finishing but because his curiosity was distracting him from the task. They knew not to send calls up to her private quarters unless it was critical, which meant whatever it was needed her attention now. 
“Get off,” she growled.
The stallion chuckled. “Kind of what I’m… ngh, here for.”
Pleasure was quickly burned away by raw annoyance at the informality in his tone. She made to push herself up and for the barest flicker of a moment, the officer pinned her down on her even harder.
Ping.
No. With one firm shove, she bent up from the mattress and shot the stallion a withering glare. His libido shrank with it. Realizing his mistake he stumbled back, his once impressive and now thoroughly unwanted cock slapping him in the stomach as it sprang free from under her tail, the stallion stuttering off several inadequate apologies as he slithered off her sheets. She said nothing as she rolled over, only indicating the door out of her quarters with one firmly leveled feather. 
He left. The door hissed shut behind him. She’d figure out his punishment later, if at all. Sometimes paranoia could be worse than anything her happy little head could conjure up.
Ping.
“Yes, I heard you already. Fuck.” She flopped back onto her pillow, eyes on the ceiling as her wing hooked around the device on her nightstand. Her Pip-Buck was one of a long line of improved models that, quite frankly, would have made the R&D geeks from Robronco stain their precious cleanrooms. She dangled the slim, beveled screen above her nose and stared with fresh annoyance at the notification. 
Wrinkling her lip, she tapped it with her hoof. “Yes?”
A familiar mare’s voice answered. “Minister, we have a problem.”
Primrose spared a glance down the line of her belly and the matted mess drying between her legs. “Add it to the list, Clover. What happened?”
“We’ve been shut out of Stable-Tec’s network, ma’am.”
She sat up. “When?”
“A little over ten minutes ago.”
“Rangers?”
“No ma’am, they’re still working to excavate Spitfire’s Stable. No indication that they’ve made any attempts to connect to its local network or are even aware it exists.” He paused. “It’s still early, but so far this looks like the network shut us out on its own. It’s possible the Millie A.I. acted on its own to patch the backdoor, but we think it’s unlikely.”
Primrose pinched her eyes shut and sighed. “So, what then.”
“We’re blind, ma’am. It could be some time before we find another way in, and there’s no guarantee the next method will have anywhere near the efficacy as the Shelter flaw did.”
In other words, the next Stable to collapse might end up doing so on their own without the traditional Enclave welcoming party stationed outside. That wasn’t a problem. It was an existential threat. It meant the Steel Rangers had as good if not better odds of finding the next failed Stable as the Enclave did unless they could find a way back into Stable-Tec’s densely encrypted network. That could take months.
Realistically, years.
“Clover, why don’t you ever bring me good news?”
“I’m afraid that isn’t my job, ma’am.”
She chuckled grimly at the touch of levity in his voice. Her Director of Security was one of those rare few pegasi who had earned her respect. He didn’t fear her like most ponies did, and she had suspicions that he didn’t truly believe the dogma she’d surrounded herself with once the balefire burned itself out. What he did do was understand his role within the Enclave and performed it effectively. Director Clover wasn’t a stallion who minced words. He said what he believed needed to be said whether or not it was what Primrose wanted to hear. 
And because he did it so well, he’d gradually become her official bearer of bad news. She liked him for that. 
She set her Pip-Buck in her sweat-slickened lap and sighed. “Have a team look over the most recent data from the remaining Stables and prioritize the three most likely candidates for collapse. Figure out whether we can adjust some of the existing patrol routes to give our scouts a clear view on those doors, if at all possible. I want eyes on them until we can reconnect with the network.”
“Yes ma’am.” A pause, then a quiet thank you to someone in the room with Clover. “Our records show Stable 48 being next in line to open. They’re due about two years from now.”
“Which one was that?”
“One second. That was the Eternal Youth Experiment designed by one Aria Blaze, ma’am.”
It took her a moment to remember the name, but when she did she made a disdainful noise. “I thought that project failed decades ago.”
“It doesn’t appear so, although 48 did have struggles early on.”
“Sturdy little things.” She shook her head, wondering why she’d signed off on that disaster. Then again, Aria had been a well spoken mare. Even now, she remembered her argument for the project being strangely hypnotic, as if giving Millie control of a small fleet of experimental robots to watch over a Stable packed with foals wasn’t crazy. As if instructing the A.I. to fatally poison each filly and colt to reach the age of sixteen wasn’t monstrous. A Stable run by children. 
Dark, dark thoughts. She tried not to dwell on it. 
“Any word from our runaway out east?”
She could picture Clover shaking his head. “Dancer and Chops have yet to reestablish contact with former lieutenant Julip, however during their last check-in they suggested Aurora may be headed to Fillydelphia to contact the local Ranger group stationed there for aid.”
“Hm.” With a quiet grunt, she swung her hind legs over the side of her bed and used the satin bed sheet to wipe herself off, her Pip-Buck cupped in her empty wing. “I could have sworn we were helping her.”
“She wouldn’t be the first pony who tried spending both sides of the same cap.”
Fair. She frowned at the translucent smear now darkening her sheet and tossed it aside. “Can’t blame her for trying, if that’s really what she’s there for.”
“It holds more water than the broken chip Lieutenant Julip almost sold you on.”
“Har-har.” She rolled her eyes. “That mare spent how many years down in the archives and the best lie she could glue together was that Aurora came out here looking for a water chip. What is a water chip supposed to be?”
“Lazy writing, ma’am.” Judging by his tone, Clover was already moving to check the next box on his list. “While I have you, ma’am, I wanted to ask whether you still want Julip involved in this op. Dancer has expressed an interest in taking her place, and from a security standpoint I feel it would be best to make the transition sooner rather than later.”
She had to resist the urge to cut him off. They’d been over this already.
“No.” She stared at the folded black and white flag in its little display box on her dresser as if speaking directly to it. “At this point we know Aurora has little reason to trust the Rangers courtesy of Elder Coldbrook and his ilk. The fact that she was willing to make contact with us at all speaks volumes. It means whatever drove Aurora out of that Stable is important enough for her to forego the local propaganda and give us a chance at cooperation. Tearing Julip away from her now could spoil that charitable spirit. For now, the goal is to reestablish contact and observe from a distance.”
Clover was silent for a beat, but his disagreement was deafening. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Clover?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
She slid her Pip-Buck onto her foreleg and smiled at its flawless design. “Trust me. I’ve been at this for a long time.”







Sweetie Belle lay curled on her bed, head sunken into pillows, her tired eyes slitted just enough to see the three of them gathered at the open door. She looked exhausted, Roach thought, as if being led around the Stable among unfamiliar faces had taken a physical toll on her. When the door slid open, she hadn’t gotten up. She simply rolled over, brow tucked into an irritated furrow, and watched.
“Is her condition common for, um... “
“Ghouls,” he said, shaking his head as he spoke. “No, not to my knowledge. I’ve only seen it once.”
“Your friend,” Applebloom recalled from their discussion on the way back up. “Blue.”
He nodded, torn between wanting to protect Rainbow Dash and the gnawing obligation he felt to tell Applebloom the truth. In those early months after the landslide the two of them had opened up to one another about the more private aspects of their lives. He’d told her about his husband and daughter and the life they had together, and she’d confided in him her regret for pursuing Applejack’s affection sooner than she had. 
Telling Applebloom that her sister’s closest companion was alive was tempting, and a large part of him wanted to be responsible for the romanticized, tearful reunion he pictured in his head. That, unfortunately, was not a risk he had the right to take. There was a reason he’d forced himself to start calling her Blue. One slip-up would be all it took to ignite the rumor mill. Whispers of an Element of Harmony who survived the bombs would spread like a fire, and it wouldn’t be long until someone got up the nerve to start digging and put together enough fragments from the old world to find out Rainbow Dash had been registered to Stable 10. A Stable buried by a long forgotten landslide in a quiet pocket of Equestria frequented by a changeling ghoul who somehow survived the bombs but whose home was a closely guarded secret.
The Enclave and Rangers were already prepared to kill one another over old tech. He didn’t want to think what they might resort to if they learned one of the six Bearers was still alive.
“She’s a lot like Blue,” he agreed, resting a shoulder against the open door frame. Sweetie Belle’s eyes turned toward him, blinking slowly as she drifted closer to sleep.
“She’s never talked to me since the decay took over,” Applebloom sighed. “Not even a little. What makes you think she can?”
Roach glanced back to where Ginger waited in the hallway, pursing his lips into an apologetic smile for making her wait. He knew she wanted to get topside to break the good news to Aurora. So did he. She smiled back, understanding, though she wasn’t able to completely hide the impatience in her eyes.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, turning back to Applebloom. “Not for sure. What I do know is that Sweetie Belle doesn’t behave like feral ghouls should. She lets you put her on a leash. She only gets agitated when Ginger and I get too close. I don’t think I’m too far off in thinking she’s guarding you.”
Applebloom stared across the room at Sweetie and sighed. “I guess you’re right. I didn’t know that was abnormal.”
“If it’s anything, it’s a good sign. You said she was your friend so there could be a part of her in there that remembers you. Try talking to her more. Tell her stories that might resonate with her. You use singing to cope, don’t you? Maybe there’s a song she likes. Try anything that she could use to pull herself back to the surface with.” 
He lifted a hoof, gesturing at the almost cozy transformation of the conference room. “You made a home for the two of you, and that’s something I wasn’t able to do for Blue. Maybe this is what keeps her from going completely feral. Maybe it’s not. What I do know is that talking worked for us.”
She wrinkled her nose at the floor. “Yeah. Okay.”
Something about her tone caught his attention. He frowned. “Something bothering you?”
It was probably the most obvious question he could ask, but he decided it needed to be asked. Stuck in a Stable for two hundred years with no one to talk to except the vacant husk of a friend and the feral residents locked within their compartments would leave anyone with enough problems to make a therapist’s head explode. This wasn’t that. Up until now, Applebloom had been a jittery, nervous, yet otherwise supportive pony. Even as they spoke during their walk back to the first level, she seemed genuinely excited at the possibility of “fixing” Sweetie Belle, as she put it. This was different.
“Applebloom?”
She blinked. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Just thinking… about whether talking might work for Scoots.”
Applebloom had spoken only sparingly about Scootaloo until now. He glanced at Ginger to see if maybe she’d picked up on something he hadn’t. She only shrugged in return.
“You said earlier that she attacks the walls sometimes. Do you think it could become an issue when you start working with Sweetie Belle?”
“Scoots only does that if she hears something she doesn’t recognize… which is a lot. I think. I don’t know for sure. She’s… hard to explain. Easier if I just show you.”
Ginger piped up. “I’m not so sure agitating your friend is a good idea, dear.”
But Applebloom was already backing out of the door, her mind set. “It’s okay, she’s slow-slow-sl-… fuckin’ stop it, she’s slower than she used to be. A lot of ‘em are.”
Roach stepped out of the doorway, allowing her to toggle the switch that sealed Sweetie Belle inside. As they followed her down a short length of corridor and around a corner that seemed to follow the walls of the now closed conference room, Ginger gave him a look that appeared to be asking him to offer some polite objection which might let them bow out of the unexpected detour. He couldn’t think of anything, nor did he particularly want to. 
The short hall stopped at a dead end, but it was as if there was a gentle gravity pulling him along. He could feel the long dulled edges of his senses wake up as soon as his first hoof settled into the hall’s worn carpet. The walls here, veneered in cracked wood panels and yellowed framed photos of old Equestrian landmarks, were devoid of Applebloom’s ever present graffiti. He thought maybe he was tricking himself. That his sudden awareness of the air filling his lungs, the tickle of fibers against the soles of his hooves, and the bright scent of something floral in the recycled air had always been there and he was only just now paying attention. 
It felt… strange. Like the unsettled feeling that follows vertigo.
At the end of the short hall waited a genuine wooden door. No heavy duty hydraulic switch, no miniaturized blast door. Just a dark slab of knotty alder and a single brass handle. A tarnished brass plate rested on the grain at eye level.


Scootaloo
CEO Stable-Tec


As Applebloom turned the handle, Roach picked up on two small details. First, the nameplate had been fastened with rivets, which meant the door had a metallic core. Second, a small black hemisphere mounted above the door had been marred with deep, white toolmarks. A piece of the plastic dome had broken off and he could see the glint of a lens through the gap. In spite of Millie’s security, Applebloom showed an unbending drive to open the doors which were closed to her.
Applebloom pushed the door open, the wood veneer grinding against the frame. Ginger lit her horn, the two of them staying in the hall while Applebloom ventured in. The fluorescents were dead, making it seem as if the office was swallowing her whole. That sensation of clarity grew stronger when Roach poked his head inside to get a better look. The half-light from the hall behind them only stretched so far making it difficult to make out any details, a problem Ginger quickly remedied by casting a mote of amber light inside. It filled the space with arcane torchlight, revealing an office in shambles and the ghoul who made it that way.
Roach breathed a disappointed sigh when he spotted the withered husk of what had once been Scootaloo. Curled in the far corner, she was already in the process of getting to her hooves. Her atrophied limbs cracked and popped as they gradually straightened, skin like cracked leather stretching apart as she pivoted her gaunt frame toward them. A filthy strip of pink ribbon clung to her skull in a rough blindfold. Roach didn’t have to ask why. He knew. He’d seen what happened to ghouls when they reached the last years of their unnaturally extended lives. The way their bodies gave up moisture a thimble at a time, thinning until they resembled living skeletons dressed in their own desiccated skin. And yet it was the eyes that were the worst affected. Like grapes on their way to becoming raisins. The blindfold had been a small mercy on Applebloom’s part.
Scootaloo attempted to navigate the mess, her hooves shuffling across carpet so disheveled that it had been worn through to the padding beneath in some places. Her shoulder struck the corner of her desk, eliciting a frustrated noise from her throat that sounded nothing like language. When they got this far along, it never did. He’d seen it happen in the tunnel and he’d come across ferals in the wasteland who fared even worse.
She was gone. Had been for a long, long time.
“Hey, Scoots.” Applebloom stepped toward her, placing a hoof at the center of her withered chest. She stopped, her head drawn to the sound of Applebloom’s voice, and reached for the mare with the small, molting stalks that had once been her wings. 
Applebloom tilted her neck away to stay out of range of the probing appendages. “I brought visitors that wuh-wuh-want to meet you. Isn’t that nice?”
Roach stepped inside while keeping one eye on the feeble ghoul, ready to step in should it try to strike out with one of its heavily bandaged hooves. A discolored path drew a line from the far corner of the office, around the overturned desk, and toward the opposite corner where several shelves had been snapped off the wall, making way for the deep gouges and dark smears where Scootaloo had beaten her hooves bloody in an attempt to reach the strange noises coming from the conference room beyond. 
A fine layer of dust had settled on every surface he saw, telling him it had been some time since Scootaloo had moved around. Several framed photos lay broken on the floor, the shards of glass crushed and kicked to the edges of that single path. Roach swept his hoof over one such photo, clearing the dust away to reveal the grinning faces of three young mares spattered with paint. They stood together on a ramp leading up to a low built treehouse, something they no doubt had some help building. He glanced at Applebloom and her far gone friend and quickly saw the resemblance.
“His name is Roach,” Applebloom continued. “And she’s Ginger. They came from the outside. I’m helping them fix their friend’s Stable.”
He glanced to the doorway where Ginger stood, then made his way to a section of wall that had been spared the worst of Scootaloo’s early violence. A simple, inornate bookcase with hinged glass windows protecting each shelf stood alone, filled with mementos of an accomplished mare’s life. A purple and white striped helmet rested alongside a family photo of Scootaloo with her aging parents. On the shelf below that, a well worn square of fabric knotted into a cape lay patched with a faded blue emblem, matching the capes worn by the three fillies in the broken picture frame.
The rest of the display was dominated by Wonderbolt memorabilia. Plastic figurines of Equestria’s prominent flyers struck powerful poses inside their unopened boxes. Neatly folded programs collected from over a dozen individual shows promised the expert acrobatics and flying the Wonderbolts had been known for before the war. Past those, Scootaloo’s collection took on a more singular focus. A fabric patch in the shape of a cloud and rainbow lightning bolt sat beside an autographed photo of a young Rainbow Dash. A pair of flight goggles and a suspiciously blue feather lay together as well. Photos of the two of them together, initially with a starry-eyed Scootaloo staring up at her idol which slowly transitioned to the calmer grins of two close friends, clustered along the lower shelves.
There wasn’t much else to see except the remnants of a dead mare’s life. Slowly, he made his way back to the door. 
“She’s not dead.”
Roach paused and looked at Applebloom as if she’d somehow read his thoughts. Her eyes were still on her feral friend, her gentle pressure keeping Scootaloo from closing the last few inches. 
“I know it looks… bad. But she ain’t gone yet.” She leaned away, unfazed by the snap of the ghoul’s teeth. “Whatever it is that causes the decay, it’s like when fall comes. All the leaves turn color and fall off. Ain’t pretty, and not all the trees make it through the winter, but most of ‘em do. They’re just waiting, you know? Waiting for the thaw, so they can turn green again.”
There was hardly any emotion when she spoke. She recited the words as simple facts that every pony should know. An unwavering belief that whatever afflicted ghouls was something that could be cured. Roach chewed the inside of his cracked lips. It was a pretty comparison, but it failed to resonate. Ghouling wasn’t a form of natural dormancy. It wasn’t something that could be cured by medicine or magic. Applebloom had been right the first time. It was decay. 
He nudged the door all the way open, signalling that it was time for them to head out. A lump of moss colored leather got caught in the jamb before the knob could touch the wall. “For what it’s worth, Applebloom, I hope you’re right.”
“I know I’m right,” she affirmed. “Once Millie compiles all my notes, I’m going to find a way to prove it, too.”
He nodded as he peeked at the back side of the door where an old jacket hung from one of the hooks. One of the sleeves was caught in the pinch. He gave it a quick tug, pulling it loose. The rest of the jacket swung out like a pendulum and landed against the wood with a peculiar thud. His scavenger’s instincts kicking in, he started poking around the pockets.
“If you do make progress, you’ll want to be careful contacting the surface.” He opened the old jacket, inspecting the lining. “Between the Enclave and the Steel Rangers you could draw a lot of dangerous attention.”
“I built Robronco Industries from my studio apartment in full view of two extremely old fashioned princesses. I know all about dangerous attention.”
Spare nothing for the feral ghoul who currently wanted nothing more than to feed itself with the softer parts of her face. Roach shook his head and turned his attention to the conspicuous sag in the jacket’s left breast pocket. Lacking feathers or nontoxic magic, he hooked the tip of his horn under the pocket’s bottom seam and tipped out the contents.
It slid out onto his waiting hoof with barely a sound. The corner of his lip quirked in confusion. A moment passed, then recognition struck like a hammer. His eyes flicked up to the old flight jacket that bore the faded but unmistakable emblem of the Wonderbolts on the shoulder. Four block style letters spelled the name DASH across the right flap.
His heart jumped into his throat. Resting in his trembling hooves lay a ruby cut into a perfect bolt of lightning: The Element of Loyalty.
He didn’t think. His hooves moved on instinct alone. Chest pounding, he swiftly slipped the gemstone under the flap of his saddlebag. It barely made a sound, but he held his breath anyway as he stole a look toward Applebloom. The ghoul’s attention was still on her friend, unaware of the theft.
It wasn’t stealing, he convinced himself. This was different. He’d spent most of his life caring for the mare the gem belonged to. Her Element, presumed lost during her final flight to the shelter of Stable 10, had been here the whole time. Waiting, he decided. 
He cleared his throat. “We should get going before Aurora thinks about swimming down after us.”
“Huh?” Applebloom turned in time to see him stepping out into the hallway. “Oh. Okay then. Let me just put Scootaloo to bed and I… guess I’ll show you out?”
Roach looked back through the door with measured caution. “Put her to bed?”
“Mmhm. Back up, Scoots. That’s it.”
They watched Applebloom press more firmly into Scootaloo’s chest, forcing the mare to take a step backward. Then another. When she finally corralled the frail ghoul into the corner she quickly pivoted, replacing her foreleg with her hind to keep her from advancing. Scootaloo jabbered out a frustrated growl, searching with her teeth for the offending limb. Applebloom had opened a drawer in the former overmare’s desk and now held a narrow autoinjector between her teeth. Another quick pivot and she was facing her friend, front hoof gently pressing her muzzle away while she sank the needle into her neck.
If Scootaloo felt the injection, she made no indication. Over a span of a few seconds the noises she made slowed, her vascular system betraying her as it ferried the chemical cocktail toward her brain. Roach said nothing as he watched Applebloom wrap a leg around the ghoul’s ribs, catching her modest weight as the muscles in her legs relaxed and settling her to the ground where she lay when they first arrived.
“What was that?”
Syringe still between her teeth, she spoke around it as if it weren’t there at all. 
“Catatone.” She opened another drawer and dropped the used syringe in with several others, then closed both. “It’s the only thing that puts her down long enough to forget what bothered her in the first place.”
“And she’ll be okay?”
She regarded him with a deprecating smirk. “She’ll be sleeping it off for an hour or two. You’ll be heading back to Stable 10 by then, right?”
He nodded. “Right.”
“Take her jacket with you.”
His mouth opened, but the question he was going to ask evaporated under the glare of her level gaze. He nodded, hesitantly, and retrieved Rainbow’s flight jacket from its hook. Ginger shot him a strange look as he held it out for her to take, bewildered by the silent exchange. Then her eyes widened as she read the name under the lapel, and she quickly went about carefully folding it into a shape that would fit neatly within her own bag.
He licked his lips. “I wasn’t…”
“Ten was Dash’s Stable. I’m guessing there’s a few descendants of hers in there who’d appreciate having an heirloom or two to remember her by.” Her eyes followed the jacket as it slid into Ginger’s saddlebag. With it tucked away, she pulled the door shut and stepped past them. “C’mon. Let’s get you back to your friends.”
Before he could think of anything to say, the two mares were already walking down the hall. The moment was gone, so he followed.
He took his usual position of waiting off to the side while Ginger stepped into her power armor, listening to the light conversation that passed between her and Applebloom as they made sure the internal padding wouldn’t crush her saddlebags as the panels closed. He said nothing, quietly noting that the floor was still generously puddled with crater water from his unpleasant arrival. They couldn’t have been down here for more than a few hours and yet somehow it felt like they’d spent most of the day. Or maybe he was just tired.
With thank yous and goodbyes shared between them, Roach toggled open the door to the surface and followed Ginger inside. Applebloom waved as the door slid back down. Once it sealed, Roach set his jaw and lit his horn.
“So are you going to tell me what happened between you two back there?”
Lit by the sickly glow of his magic, the plug of metamorphosed mud and rubble began to flow clockwise like tree pitch. “Later. Once I have time to think about it.”
He could feel her helmet’s unflinching gaze boring into him and did his best to shrug it off. Ginger hadn’t endured those first years when Rainbow would emerge from Blue’s fog and go into the same panic, over and over again, when she saw the empty socket of her necklace. The gibbering disbelief as he worked to remind her day after day that there was no point in searching the tunnel ruins for her Element because he knew it wasn’t there. He’d noticed its absence well before the collapse, when she’d gone into a panic at the sight of the blast door sealed with hundreds of others screaming to be let in. Others had noticed too. The Element of Loyalty, here, without her elemental stone.
He nor Rainbow ever said it aloud, but both of them knew her arrival at the Stable in the state she was in was a large part of why so many stranded ponies gave up hope so quickly.
Water began to spill into the hivelike tubule, pooling around their hooves and rising steadily. Ginger’s attention turned away from him to focus instead on the rapid dissolution of the plug above. This stage of their journey was over, he decided. He would have time to reckon with his decisions later. Maybe, when he was able to place Rainbow’s gemstone into her wing, he would find a way to send a message back to Applebloom. Maybe.
As trapped air and inrushing water churned around them in a fizzing deluge, he followed the swarm of bubbles upwards. Ginger stayed close behind.







“Apogee, Control. O2 flow check.”
“Control, I see O2 flow showing nominal.”
“Affirmative, Apogee. We see you nominal down here, too. Flight Surgeon is giving you authorization for EVA. Whenever you’re ready.”
Apogee held herself steady in the cramped airlock by placing her hooves onto the slightly magnetized strips marked in black on the “floor.” She owned screwdriver sets with stronger magnets than the ones keeping her oriented, but the point wasn’t to lock her in place. It was to keep her from flailing her hooves for purchase in a confined space whose only notable features were manual switches that controlled the pressurization and depressurization of the module. Similar black markings ringed the otherwise white cylinder in regular intervals, but the ones she stood on now bore small white pips in their centers. Zero gravity or not, this was what JSA had decided to call the bottom of the airlock. Standing here, all the warnings and control labels stood right side up.
“Affirmative, Control.” She took a slow, deep breath and stared at the hatch in front of her. Three inches of precision engineered titanium were all that separated her from the vacuum of space, a hostile void that contained nothing and everything at the same time. Secured in a suit perfected by her mother, flown up on a craft designed by her father, a part of her was keenly aware she was about to cement her broken family into the ledgers of not just Equestrian history, but world history. Ponies, zebras, gryphons… even the changelings would come to know her name in the coming days. It was terrifying to think about, so she stopped thinking about it. History could wait. She had a job to do.
“Affirmative,” she repeated. “Depressurizing now.”
She reached over and gave a marked valve on the wall a quarter turn. Somewhere on the hull, atmosphere hissed into the black sky. A gauge mounted over the valve tracked the drop in airlock pressure while the rest of the crew, safe inside their module, watched for any signs that the inner hatch was leaking.
“Seals look good,” Cloudbreaker chirped over comms. “I have you down to eight point one psi, Apogee.”
“Seven point seven,” she answered back as the needle continued down. After a few seconds she said, “two point zero psi. Suit pressure is holding at four point three. No leaks. Kinda feel like a balloon animal.”
“Apogee, Control. Verify good mobility.”
With her chin off the comm toggle, she groaned. “Me and my fat mouth.”
She dutifully went about the required steps that had been drilled into her head back when she was still swimming in the neutral buoyancy lab in Las Pegasus. Lift one leg, then the others. Extend one hoof, then the others. Twist, turn, bend and flex. She could hear the muffled swish of fabric when one leg swiped past the other, but the sound was coming from the suit itself and not from outside her helmet. She’d been told that sound wouldn’t travel in a vacuum but to actually experience it was eerie. As the last ounces of pressure were vacated from the airlock, she couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer silence that greeted her.
“Control,” she said, startled by the dominating volume of her own voice, “ah, Control, mobility is nominal. Pressure reads zero point zero psi. Confirm go to disengage outside airlock.”
“Apogee, Control. You are go for EVA.”
She blew out a long sigh. “Here goes.”
Taking a step forward, she reached out to the controls and set her hoof over a red painted handle a few inches away from the pressure valve. A flex from her right wing sent a signal to the suit’s mechanical digits which wrapped around the textured bar. She swallowed, held her breath, and pulled it all the way down.
Down on Equus, the simulated hatch had always emitted a chunky, metallic sound that signalled a clean and successful unlocking sequence. Here in the vacuum, she heard nothing. For a split second she worried the sequence failed, but the background chatter coming in from mission control reassured her otherwise. Stepping forward with her hind hooves, she grasped the bars mounted to the hatch and pushed.
The titanium lid swung toward the stars and she stepped out into the void.







Julip’s torso bucked with discomfort, wrenching her back to consciousness just in time for her to retch up the clot tickling her chest. Agony radiated out from her ribs as she vomited a vile mash of apple skins and jellied blood, milking a low groan from her as she flopped back onto the rocks.
When she came around again she barely had the strength to lift her head this time. She gagged, uselessly, until a foam of bloody bile trickled into the dirt. She swallowed, coughed, and groaned again as fresh throbs of pain twisted her into a fetal ball. Some vestigial corner of her brain knew this is what dying felt like. This wasn’t a busted leg or some wasteland disease that would knock her down for a few weeks. This was life ending.
Her chest burned for air, so she breathed. Her mouth cracked open with a pitious cry at the sensation of fire cradling the left side of her chest. The helpless feeling of her lung being squeezed together no matter how hard she tried to get more air. The feeling of drowning. The pain forced a hard cough from a body struggling to try anything that might dislodge the hurt, and a stupid thought crossed her mind: she didn’t want to die in discomfort.
She split her lips in a silent laugh. Screw discomfort. She didn’t want to die, period.
Not that she had much choice. That grey maned asshole signed her death warrant when he pulled the trigger. What she’d give for the chance to jam the muzzle of that pistol up his shitpipe and fire off a few rounds herself. Fucking Rangers for killing her. Fucking Primrose for forcing her to come out here in the first place. Fucking herself for letting her guard down.
Sluggish as her thoughts were, she opened her eyes and began to realize something. She was still alive. Alive enough to puke and breathe, anyway. With a grimace she lifted her head a few inches off the stones and slowly absorbed the reality that she’d been left to die. No one else was here. No Rangers, no Aurora, no…
“Fuck,” she hissed.
Aurora.
She dropped her head back to the dirt, coughed again and gasped for more air. Her heart was pounding in her head now, clawing at her skull for oxygen. Pushing down the pain she gasped again, doing her best to fill her lungs. The others didn’t know what happened and the Rangers had been careful to cover their tracks. Giving up wasn’t an option. Not until Roach and Ginger knew who’d taken Aurora. She needed to buy herself time.
She lifted her head again, this time to assess her condition. The first thing she noticed was that she’d fallen on her left side. The bomb blasted soil beneath her torso was dark with drying blood, as was the leather jacket she used to cover her wings. Precious little of it was fresh. Playing back the ambush in her head, she realized she’d been allowed to lay on the same side she’d been shot on. Lifting her free wing, the bloodsoaked jacket slid away from a ragged exit wound just behind the crux of her right foreleg. Pink froth bubbled out of it with each breath.
She would have laughed if she didn’t think the pain would make her black out. He’d aimed for her heart at point blank range and missed. Got her lung though. Needed to fix that before she blacked out and didn’t wake up. 
Plug the hole. She looked to the ridge she and Aurora had sat on and mumbled profanity at the glaring absence of their saddlebags. Fuckers. No options there. She sure as shit didn’t have anything tucked away in her jacket pockets. But she did have the jacket. And her jacket did have a fabric lining.
Okay. Okay, that was something.
She couldn’t do this lying down, but she didn’t relish the idea of getting up from where she lay either. Or dying. Especially not dying. And right now, not dying involved getting up.
Before she had time to think about hesitating, she rolled herself onto her belly and screamed through clenched teeth. Every damaged nerve and bruised muscle sang as if being dragged up by a cluster of rusty hooks. As soon as the pain started to subside she moved again, dragging herself up onto one hoof and then the other. Standing on wobbling legs, she took an unsure step toward the ridge. Then another. It was agony.
She managed to stumble close enough to the concrete ridge to catch it when she finally fell. Her butt hit the dirt hard enough to knock what little wind she had left out of her lung. Whimpering through the hurt, she scooted back until she thumped against it. She’d traveled all of maybe twenty feet. There was no doubt in her mind she wouldn’t be able to muster that strength again.
She bent forward and used her wings to flip the jacket over her head, pulling her forelegs out of the sleeves as quickly as her body would tolerate. When it came off she went to work, using her teeth to tear strips out of the lining. Once she had a few good rags of fabric in her lap, she tossed the jacket aside and began rolling several scraps into a ball with her feathers.
Julip hesitated, but only briefly. Then she shoved the lining deep into the sucking wound.
She wasn’t proud of the sound she made. 
When the tears stopped and the world slowed its spinning, she risked a glance down at her work. The knot of brownish cloth stared back up at her from its new home like an unwelcome lesion, forming an imperfect seal. It would have to do. She barely had enough energy for the next part.
Turning her head to her other side, she saw what she feared had happened. Getting up from the ground had broken open the clot which kept the entry wound closed. A bright, thick river of fresh blood oozed out onto the rocks. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea after all. Maybe she should have stayed put until help arrived. If help arrived.
Her chin lolled across her sternum and she frowned at the remaining rags in her lap, confusion making it difficult to remember their purpose. Everything hurt too much. She blinked, slowly. Alarm bells started sounding in her head, screaming at her not to go to sleep. Her half-lidded eyes guided her feathers toward the scraps. Watched as she muddled them into something resembling a loose ball. Winced at the distant sensation of pain when it contacted the seeping wound.
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed down on the knotted scraps. They sank into her. If she screamed, she didn’t remember. She was out before her head touched the ground.







Climbing up the silty embankment was frustrating work, but Ginger only needed to look up toward the water’s surface to reassure herself that she was making progress. A few yards ahead of her Roach dog-paddled through the daylit murk, pausing to watch her as she slogged uphill until she drew close enough for him to swim further away to mark her next waypoint toward shore. Algae-coated mud, gravel and glassy shards of once molten stone broke apart with every step, stirring up a dirty cloud that seemed to chase her forward. A younger Ginger might have compared the mesmerizing scene beyond her helmet to the pictures drawn in one of her mother’s fairy tale books, but the noises her power armor made dispelled any feelings of whimsy.
When Roach broke the surface she expected he would wait in the shallows for her, but when the silt he kicked up thinned he was nowhere to be seen. Disappointed and, admittedly, a little irritated with him she stomped up the last few yards alone. As her armor finally breached the water she could see he’d led her up to roughly the same piece of shoreline where they’d first entered the crater pond. Within the space of the same breath she spotted Roach a good fifty or so yards up the shallow slope, water still flowing off his chitin as he frantically worked to undo his saddlebags. At his hooves, motionless, in a dark pool of what had to be her own blood lay Julip.
Her stomach dropped. She looked left, then right for any sign of Aurora but there wasn’t one. Julip was here, but Aurora wasn’t. She was gone. 
“Ginger, get over here! She’s been shot!” 
There was pain in his voice that was uncharacteristic for him. She tried to gallop but the suit was sluggish, then as if to add insult to injury it slipped on the wet rocks along the shoreline. Roach was yelling for her to hurry up even as he upended his bags to get at the first aid kit inside. A bolt of anger struck as she stumbled in the armor. Furious, she lit her horn and cast magic on herself. The helmet’s visor promptly vanished, replaced by a rush of air and a very startled changeling just a few feet away. 
She hardly noticed his reaction or the metallic crunch of the now empty power armor toppling to the ground. Her attention was torn between the bloodied green mare collapsed in front of her and the crushing absence of the pegasus she couldn’t find. 
Julip was hurt. Badly. A lump of cloth, glossy with blood, stuck out of a bullet wound in her chest like someone’s twisted idea of a rose. Already, Roach had his ear pressed to her muzzle, eyes wide with fear as he listened for life. After what felt like minutes but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, he regained a sliver or two of composure as he retrieved a stimpack from the kit.
Ginger’s eyes darted across the blasted ruins as the autoinjector triggered, hissing as it pumped Julip full of healing compounds. They were the only ones here. Whoever did this had left Julip for dead.
“I don’t see Aurora,” she murmured. When Roach didn’t respond, she repeated herself. “Roach, I don’t see her.”
“We’ll find her. One thing at a time.”
Between them, Julip’s abdomen bucked weakly as she coughed out a froth of blood.
Ginger felt the weight of this new reality start settling over her like dark soil atop a casket. Her thoughts started racing. Stepping back from where Julip lay, her first assumption was that the two mares had gotten into a fight with one another. Her throat went dry. Julip had already shown she could be abrasive enough to prompt Aurora to attack her. Aurora wasn’t a large mare, but she was larger than Julip. Left alone with no one to stop her, she could have easily overpowered her. Shot her.
“Ginger, stimpacks won’t fix this. She needs a doctor.”
She ignored him, spinning again in another frantic circle as she absorbed the scene around her. The rocky soil had been heavily disturbed in several places, most notably where another dark, rusty stain had soaked into the dirt several yards away. Julip had fallen there first only to drag her way here where more crescent prints had packed the ground. Some, she realized, were much larger and pressed much more deeply than the others.
“Ginger!”
“Rangers were here,” she whispered. Her eyes widened, tears stinging them as realization dawned on her. “They were right here.”
“Damn the sun, Ginger, I have eyes too but I need you with me right now or Julip is going to die!”
His patience with her was gone. She could hear it in his voice and see it in the way he was glaring up at her. He needed her help, right now, but she was at odds between knowing what she should be doing to help and the anguish she felt at Aurora’s unexplained absence. She wanted to race around the rim of the pond screaming her name in hopes that she might come out from wherever she was hiding. Worse, she wanted to leave Julip here to do it. But Roach wouldn’t forgive her if she did. Something told her Aurora wouldn’t, either.
Slowly, she exhaled, and looked down where Julip lay. 
“What do I do?”
Whether Roach understood the question beneath the question, he didn’t say. “She’s lungshot and she’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get her back to the city. I saw a doctor’s office on the strip when we first passed through, but she needed to be there an hour ago.”
Comprehending, she nodded. “You lead, I carry.”
“Good.” In a gesture that seemed more befitting of a father and his sleeping child, Roach used the ridge of his hoof to clear the black mat of mane from Julip’s face. “Don’t move her too much. We could lose her if she starts bleeding again.”
Trying to instill calm among her whirling thoughts felt like keeping a candle lit inside a hurricane. Still, she tried. Magic swirled around her horn and encompassed Julip’s crumpled form. The unconscious mare lifted from the stained soil without so much as a muttered groan, gently pinned into position by a weak version of Ginger’s shield spell.
As soon as she was off the ground, Roach threw on his saddlebags and loped into a steady gallop. Ginger followed with their casualty in tow, heading east toward the tilting towers of Fillydelphia. As she drew close to him, she asked the only question on her mind.
“What about Aurora?”
The expression that flickered across Roach’s face wasn’t reassuring. Then again, there was nothing reassuring about what the two of them had just walked into. Julip and Aurora had very recently been paid a visit by Rangers, leaving one of them nearly shot to death and the latter missing completely. Ginger’s gut wrenched at this feeling of utter helplessness. That whatever happened had done so right above their heads while they strolled the corridors of Stable-Tec HQ. In truth, nothing Roach could say would reassure her because in their absence something had gone horribly wrong. All they could do now was salvage the pieces they could, however they could.
“We can ask Julip exactly what happened when she wakes up.” Roach arced around the rusted frame of a burned out carriage, his eyes set on the city ahead. “For the time being, we assume the Steel Rangers are hostile and plan accordingly. Agreed?”
Jumping a wide crevice in the charred asphalt, she looked to Julip and the wadded rags that she’d stuffed into her wounds. If anyone knew where Aurora had gone, it would be Julip. Everything hinged on keeping this former soldier of the Enclave alive.
Furious tears stung at her eyes. She hated this. Hated that she couldn’t be indulged in a single moment of screaming panic. That they didn’t have the luxury of time. She picked up the pace, despising every step of it. 
“We’ll find her, Ginger.”
She grit her teeth and nodded. 
“We’d better.”







“Put it down in there.”
Aurora’s world lurched as the trunk she’d been shoved into dropped to the ground. Her first thought upon seeing the old steamer was that they were going to bury her in it like the masked villains in her Appleoosan westerns, and it took everything she had in her to keep it together. She had screamed and fought against Ironshod’s magic and even managed to land a faltering kick across the cheek of one of his stallions, but it only worked against her in the short term. More unicorns stepped forward to press her into the trunk, forcing her mouth open as they did so another could stuff a ball of filthy rags between her jaws to stop her making noise. With her wings belted to her sides and a gag knotted painfully tight behind her head, she was shoved into the trunk and forced to watch the heavy lid come down on top of her. 
The panic attack that gripped her when she first felt the trunk moving was something she wouldn’t forget. For what felt like hours she lost all control, screaming through her gag until her throat burned while convinced she was going to slowly suffocate in this musty container. At one point she’d attempted to kick through the panel closest to her hind legs, prompting her bearers to stop and unlock the lid just enough to press the muzzle of her own rifle through the opening. Ironshod warned her to stop, his silver magic gripping her trigger as he spoke. She stopped.
From then on she didn’t make a sound, resolving to listen instead. At first there wasn’t much to overhear. Ironshod and his soldiers kept quiet company for the majority of the journey leaving her to listen to the muffled crunch of rubble resolve into the firm click-clack of hooves on a cleanly paved surface. Soon she could hear murmured voices and the sound of a radio playing music she didn’t recognize. They were in the city, she realized, and the temptation to start kicking the lid of the trunk was immense. Ironshod wouldn’t shoot her with so many witnesses around, would he? 
The image of Julip’s body jerking at the crack of his pistol made her reconsider. This was Ranger territory. She doubted it would be hard for him to claim he had put down an Enclave pegasus. He might even earn a medal.
The trunk tipped and she felt herself being carried down a flight of stairs. Doors creaked open and closed behind them and it seemed as if her bearers were allowing themselves to relax a little. Hoofsteps spread away from her, throats were cleared and a low hum of quiet conversation echoed against the walls of her cramped container. Distantly, she could hear the rapid putter of a small engine that sounded a lot like the generators back in Kiln. It seemed strange to her that Ironshod would need a little misfiring generator when the Rangers had access to better tech, but the thought fled from her mind as soon as she heard him order her to be set down.
The trunk struck metal, startling a muffled yelp from her. Hooves clicked around her until finally an aura lit around the lid and lifted it open. Her eyes shut against the sudden rush of light as she was unceremoniously hoisted out of the trunk and dropped into a metal chair.
Rangers went to work around her as she forced one eye open against the glare. A single lightbulb burned at the end of a silver conduit, the glass cage surrounding it puddled with fetid yellow condensation. Empty wire racks stood against both walls on either side of her, sagging and caked in decades of rust. The room was long and narrow, enough so that the stallions zip strapping her to the chair had to be careful not to run into the racking as they maneuvered around her. It took several seconds before she recognized the room for what it was. She’d worked on her share of walk-in freezers back home and the faint scent of refrigerant was hard to misplace.
Directly in front of her stood Ironshod, his salted grey coat conspicuously unburdened by the uniform her first appeared to her in back at Blinder’s Bluff. He stared back at her, Desperate Times slung over his shoulder as if her rifle belonged to him. Behind his dispassionate glare, through the freezer’s only door, lay hers and Julip’s saddlebags in a heap.
“Comfortable?”
She winced as the straps around her hind legs were zipped tight against the chair. The gag in her mouth prevented her from saying anything, which for once was a good thing. She knew the trouble she was in and the answers she had for Ironshod would have earned her an early beating, so she glared instead.
The corner of his muzzle ticked upward into a smile. He was enjoying this because of course he was. With a gesture, the Rangers finished securing her and filed out of the freezer. Only Ironshod stayed behind.
“You broke your agreement, Aurora.” Light swirled around his horn, attaching itself to her chin and forcing her to look up at him. She jerked her head out of his grip, something Ironshod could never hope to do if Ginger ever got a hold of him. He looked unfazed by her defiance, his eyes sliding over her as he paced leisurely around her chair. She grimaced as she felt the warmth of his frame curling against her as he reappeared beside her. “That Pip-Buck you still wear was returned to you with conditions attached.”
Even in her current predicament it was hard not to scoff. He hadn’t given back her Pip-Buck so much as Fiona had blackmailed it straight out of his hooves.
He finished his lap in front of her, giving her a profile view of the middle-aged stallion and the glowing crucible marking his hip. “If I recall correctly, you were directed by Elder Coldbrook to make contact with the Enclave and… what was it again? That’s right, bring back the coordinates to SOLUS. Arguably not an easy task but a simple one. Two steps, Aurora, that was it, and you chose to betray us before taking the first.”
He glared down at her with nearly believable disappointment. “Siding with the Enclave? I knew Stable ponies were ignorant of the world but for you to stoop so low as to actually bargain with that fanatical cult is beyond reckoning. That mare you’ve been so eager to please? The so-called Minister Primrose? She’s just another silver-tongued ghoul who managed to tell the right lies to the right ponies. We know who she was before the war. She was a secretary. A glorified coffee pourer, not some deigned-from-the-great-beyond princess in waiting like she so cheerfully claims to be.”
At least she’s not threatening to pillage my fucking home, or at least that’s what she would have said were there not a lump of rags in the way. 
He lifted a brow in response to her muffled retort. “The sooner you accept your mistake, Aurora, the sooner we can move past what comes next.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and mumbled her unintelligible answer. You’re going to die.
A part of Ironshod appeared to understand her meaning, and he smiled. “I’ll give you some time to think about it.”
With that, he turned and strode across the threshold and out of sight. Seconds later the silver door swung shut in front of her, its inner latch broken off, sealing her inside. 
For what felt like minutes she could only hear the muffled tones of a conversation outside. Hoofsteps milled near the door and Aurora found herself squinting against the glare of the caged bulb overhead. Like they had when Sledge locked her in a cell back home, her thoughts turned to escape. If she could do it once, she could do it again.
A hard mechanical clunk from behind startled her, and she craned her neck around to see that the blades of three cooling fans had begun to spin. The noise brought a hard, stale wind that swirled against the cramped silver walls with a faint scent of refrigerant. It didn’t take long for the air to cool around her and dread sank in as the temperature steadily dropped. 
The light blinked off and the freezer plummeted into darkness.
The chill poured over her shoulders. She began to shiver.







“Apogee, Control. Check in. Your BPM just spiked.”
She laughed, careful to avoid keying her mic as she did. A careful twitch of her feathers under her suit sent a quick puff of compressed nitrogen through hardened vents in her suit. She couldn’t believe she was here! A trespasser in the infinite void, daring to step hoof off her planet to experience something no pony or creature had ever experienced before. The only thing connecting her to the culmination of equine invention that brought her here was an insulated tether hanging stiffly behind her, nearly blindingly white against the black backdrop of stars.
“Of course it spiked, I’m in actual space!” She flinched at how quickly she’d forgotten radio protocol, sheepishly adding, “Um, over?”
She pictured a few polite grins down at Ground Control. They had to allow her a little levity. If they didn’t, she might pop!
“Apogee, Control.”
A tickle of electricity lit up her spine when her dad’s voice came over the radio, followed quickly by a touch of trepidation at the lecture her younger self often anticipated.
“How’s it look up there?”
A smile brightened her face and she maneuvered herself around until the planet fell into view. “You tell me, dad.” 
Every mile of Equus hung beneath her hooves like some ridiculously detailed sculpture. From up here she could see every sunlit mountain, every beach and even the golden clusters of Vhannan city lights as they waited for dawn to cross an ocean that looked like a puddle. 
Before launch, she had always assumed being here would give her some understanding of the largeness of the universe but the opposite turned out to be true. Looking down at the home of everything she ever knew made their world seem that much smaller.







“It looks beautiful, kiddo. We’re proud of you.”
 Rainbow Dash sipped on a fresh mug of coffee as video from Apogee’s camera played in shades of green on Opal’s desk terminal. Her office was starting to pick up a distinct scent of funk from the three of them being packed in here for so long, and Rainbow was struggling to keep her eyes open.
According to Sledge, rumors were starting to make their way around the Stable about the pony pulled in from the outside. Apparently trotting her up here hadn’t gone unseen, and there was a chance one of Opal’s techs had sent a few private messages of his own. Whispers of a ragged pegasus with a telltale cloud and lightning bolt on her hips somewhat limited the guesses on who their new resident could be. She was going to have to face that at some point, and for a while her fantasy of being just another pony in the crowd would be impossible, but she would cross that bridge when she got there.
For now she was content in knowing the medicine Sledge had given her was working. Blue never seemed to visit on a schedule but she was definitely running late. If the tradeoff meant she had to actually endure physical exhaustion again, she’d take it in a heartbeat.
Apogee’s father could be heard clearing his throat over the comms. “Okay, back to work before I get a call from your mother.”
“Haha, okay. Watch out for traffic down there, mom.”
Rainbow was impressed by how quickly the young mare switched back to her mission, using some kind of thrust mechanism in her suit to pivot on two simultaneous axes until a familiar object drifted into view of her hemispheric visor. 
“There it is,” she murmured.
It hung in the black like a Hearth's Warming ornament. Six vast retractable arms spread an array of glittering solar panels like a fisher’s net, each one pivoted toward the sun. Four distinct modules stacked into a squat cylinder, culminating in a pronged tip pointed planetside, had been delivered into orbit in previous uncrewed launches. Rainbow remembered the debates that sprang up around whether it was wise to send ponies up for the final launch, but Jet Stream had been adamant it was necessary due to the delicate nature of the payload. Rainbow had a feeling deep down that it was more about proving a point to the princesses.
Besides, the ponies who still believed they could manipulate the solar system were long overdue for a reality check.
“Apogee, Command. Please copy, HUD is disabled.”
A quiet sigh, followed by the click of her radio toggling open. “Copy. Bringing HUD online.”
The feed lost some resolution as a webwork of numbers, tick marks and floating labels projected themselves onto the glass of her visor. The camera moved with Apogee’s head, fixed somewhere in front of her right ear, and the mare groaned to herself. “Yessir, training wheels on, sir.”
Rainbow snorted and took another sip of coffee. It was bitter and good, but her brain was not used to pulling all-nighters anymore. She blinked, verging on dozing, before taking in a fresh breath of air and sitting up straighter in her seat. Standing beside her, Sledge chuckled. She wasn’t sure if it was at the terminal or at her. Opal sat cross-legged in her swivel chair on the other side, oblivious to anything beyond Apogee’s feed.
It hadn’t been a difficult video to find. Delta Vee’s trail of breadcrumbs turned into road flares once her partition was decrypted. A search of Apogee’s name had led them straight into Delta’s own search history which was dominated by references to her daughter, Jet Stream Industries and several broadcast companies that Rainbow recalled had paid JSI substantial sums for broadcast rights to the mission. As early as the first day following the bombs, Delta had been hard at work attempting to make connections to networks beyond the one Stable-Tec designed. Sifting through a mother’s search for her daughter had been… painful. Delta’s obsession with harvesting as much raw data from the outside as she could didn’t wane.
Nine and a half years of searching later, she found what she had been looking for.
Apogee’s heads up display tracked SOLUS in her visor, flickering notations into her field of view that identified key parts of the satellite. Rainbow sympathised with the young mare’s frustration. Whoever designed the HUD’s layout had done a criminally poor job of prioritizing data.
Little puffs hissed through the speaker as Apogee approached. She spent a moment looking down at the black and white craft that had taken her this far, an aptly named shuttle stage dubbed Cloudbreaker perched to the third module in the stack by a set of docking clamps as if it were a bird clutching a tree by the bark. It allowed Apogee, and by proxy Rainbow Dash, Opal and Sledge, an idea of just how large this satellite truly was.
Apogee ignored the flurry of data and live markers that cluttered her visor and feathered her way back down her umbilical toward SOLUS. The second module, one below the six winglike solar panels, resembled a giant hex nut. Apogee’s HUD denoted it as TRIAXIS OUTPUT MULTIPLIER Mk. VI. Mercifully, once Apogee drew close enough to the module for it to dominate her field of view, most of the unnecessary labels blinked out.
“Securing to module two,” she said, and the camera’s view turned to one of her suited forelegs. A pinpoint sized LED blinked on just above her pastern and her hoof thumped down onto the satellite’s chassis. Three more thuds echoed from the speaker and Apogee’s frame of view converted SOLUS from a wall of modules to a floor. “Secured. MAGs all green.”
“Apogee, Control. Green on fours. Hold for blackout.” A long pause. The footage jumped. “Comms blackout. You are clear to proceed with installation at Containment Chamber 1.”
“Affirmative.”
She moved slowly along the skin of the module until she arrived at a square panel denoted with a narrow, painted white border. A tiny green label popped to life as if to assure her she was in the right place. A frustrated sigh buffeted the microphone and Apogee went to work using a mechanical digit to loosen the four marked screws.
“What kinda gadget is that s’posed to be?” Opal marveled. 
“A finger,” Rainbow said.
“Well I finger it looks more like a screwdriver t’me but have it yer way.”
Sledge shushed them, his eyes glued to the screen. Opal shrugged her frail wings and continued to watch as Apogee lifted the panel away on her magnetized boot, then tipped her helmet down until she was looking down the line of her belly. 
Six distinctly marked pouches bulged around her waist. Using the fingers of her free hoof, she opened the velcroed flap of the first pouch and lifted out an angular black object. Rainbow recognized the shape and hummed as one of Applejack’s Mass Arcane Storage Talismans, better known as M.A.S.T., reflected Apogee’s helmet across its obsidian surface.
Briefly, the talisman caught the unfiltered light of the sun and the shadow of a dense structure glinted beneath the surface. A frown crossed Rainbow’s muzzle as she sipped from her mug.
Apogee held the talisman toward the open chamber until the stone lept from her grip and snapped into orientation between six equidistant contacts. It settled like a plucked bowstring, blurring along the edges for several seconds before growing still. Seemingly satisfied, Apogee reseated the panel and tightened it down.
“Unit 1 in place. Making my way to Containment Chamber 2.”
“Copy. We see Unit 1.”
Progress grew quicker with the first talisman in place. Rainbow set her empty cup on Opal’s desk and waved off Sledge’s offer for a refill as she watched Apogee pace herself along the satellite’s hull, stopping to repeat the process with the second and third talisman. There was just enough play in her umbilical to peer over SOLUS’s far side where the stubby wing of Cloudbreaker was just barely visible. Then she turned around, retracing her steps so she could repeat the process at the chambers embedded in the opposite side.
“Don’t drop anything out there,” a voice quipped. 
“I’ll try not to, commander.”
Apogee paused to wave toward the shuttle’s windows as she passed it, and a crew of ponies whose names Rainbow was ashamed to have forgotten waved back.
“Unit 4 in place.”
“Copy. We see Unit 4.”
“Unit 5 in place. Heading to Chamber 6.”
“Copy. We see Unit 5. Good work.”
Her tether began to draw taut as she reached the last containment chamber. By now her mechanically aided digit passed over the screws like clockwork and she swept the panel aside. Dipping into the sixth pouch, she retrieved the final talisman and lifted it into the sunlight. There, a dark starlike pattern sat clearly transcribed within the obsidian hexagon.
“Huh,” she murmured. “Here’s one for the history books, I guess. Do us proud, little star.”
SOLUS soundlessly snatched the talisman out of her fingers. She sighed and mumbled something about wishing she’d thought of something cooler to say. “Unit 6 in place. How’s it looking?”
A pause. “All units are online and nominal. Return to the shuttle and standby.”
“Copy. Making my way back now.”
She turned and began retracing the white line of her umbilical, careful not to walk over the containment chambers on her way back. Cloudbreaker appeared to rise up below her hooves as she walked. The airlock door, outlined in black, waited for her above the shuttle’s right wing. Rainbow heard her sigh again and it didn’t take a psychologist to understand why. She didn’t want the spacewalk to end. 
Her movement forward stopped, and in defiance of her instructions, she paused long enough to turn her visor to follow the pronged tip of SOLUS toward the planet below. Hundreds of miles below where she stood, a vast array of mirrors in the Equestrian southeast stood ready to receive its first delivery of concentrated sunlight. A source of plentiful, inexpensive energy would finally become a reality in full spite of the monarch that so stubbornly opposed it. The resource shortage that prompted Equestria to declare war would be over.
Rainbow felt a knot forming in her chest, her eyes on the timestamp burned into the footage. Pieces of a puzzle she didn’t know existed were coming together. At the same moment Apogee stood in awe of the planet turning in front of her, Rainbow had been sitting in Scootaloo’s office at the bottom of Stable-Tec HQ for a meeting neither of them remembered rescheduling. Fascination and dread mingled freely as she anticipated what was coming. 
She squirmed in her chair. Was this what Delta wanted them to see? The bombs fell. Seeing them from space, as morbidly interesting as that was, didn’t change what happened. What was the point?







Chinning her comm switch, she grinned like a filly down at the dark ocean sliding out of the east horizon. Night had fallen over the Griffinstone coastline and pockets of dim lamplight glittered up from their mountain homes. “We’re coming over the Celestial Sea, commander. Didn’t you say you have gryphons in your family?”
Spearhead’s tinny voice popped into her earpiece. “My brother-in-law, yeah. My sister moved to the North Aeries to live with him. Good bird, but he could always call more. Hint hint, Tawny.”
Apogee snorted over the open channel, joining Spearhead’s well meaning rumble of a laugh. She imagined hundreds of miles below there was a skygazing gryphon whose ears were burning right about now. But as she opened her mouth to continue the international ribbing, Keys hopped onto the channel.
“Sorry, Apogee, Flight Control says they want you back in the airlock ASAP and need to borrow the commander for a minute. Thanks.”
Disappointment dimmed her smile, but not as much as Keys’ curt tone. Sure, he was just following orders, but he didn’t need to get snippy. With a resigned sigh she turned away from the lazily turning globe and toward the descent shuttle.
She picked up her hoof and set it down. Then she blinked, turning her attention to the spot she had stepped. She could feel vibrations as if she’d dropped a hoof on the surface of a gong. Had she done that? Her HUD wasn’t warning her of anything she couldn’t step on. The skin wasn’t marked either. But the more she concentrated, the more she could feel it. A steady, growing drone travelling through SOLUS’s skin and resonating in her vacuum suit. 
“Control, Apogee,” she said. “I’m feeling a vibration.”
A pause. Her frown deepened as it dragged on.
“Control, Apogee. Please copy.”
Silence stretched. Then, “Apogee, Control. We have a situation.”
She could hear raised voices coming over the comm. Among them was her dad’s pleading for calm. Her heartbeat ticked up.
“Apogee, Control. We need…” Hesitation. She could hear him swallow. “Can you see Cloudsdale from your position?”
Confused, she peered across the void toward the magnificent ornament that was their planet. Equestria’s west coast was just beginning to curve beyond the horizon, but despite the shallow angle and the whorls of clouds that would have otherwise made finding Cloudsdale like finding a needle in a haystack… she saw it. 
Or, she saw where it usually was, marked by a pinprick of pale green light that pushed away the clouds like a drop of soap in oil. It took several seconds for her to realize what she was seeing. When it finally clicked, the breath lodged in her throat. “Oh no.”
“Apogee, Contr… not have vis... ou copy?”
“D-do, um…” The words tangled in her mouth. “Cop-copy, Control. I copy. I’m seeing an explosion northwest of Canterlot.”
A piercing light winked into silent existence on the east coast. Manehattan.
“Control, what’s going-”
Spearhead’s harried voice broke over the comm. “Control we have - ah! - an emergency on the shuttle! Keys loaded a holotape into the flight computer and I’m locked out! Apogee, I need you in the airlock now!”
“...ntrol… firmed bale… det… ati… loudsdale, Mane… an, Tro… dam…”
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as another emerald mushroom sprouted from the Equestrian countryside, then another. Spearhead barked over the comm for her to move but she was too paralyzed to even think let alone walk. This was it. The headlines in the papers accusing Vhanna of stealing balefire technology had been true after all. Every day of the last several years had grown worse and worse just to culminate in this.
Her throat hitched. They’d crossed the finish line. SOLUS was meant to promise a new future to not only Equestria, but to every creature who wanted it. This machine that her mom and dad had been willing to work on together after decades of hating one another was supposed to fix everything. 
Fire bloomed on Equestria’s west horizon and the popping static from Ground Control went silent. A deep permeating numbness swallowed her as she watched the tiny mushroom expanding over Las Pegasus. Jet Stream Aerospace had been hit and she knew, deep down, that her dad had just died.
Spearhead yelled over the comm. She only distantly understood what was happening inside the shuttle. A fight had broken out. Keys had done something to the flight computer. It all felt so unimportant now. Distant. She was just one pony, alone, orbiting a dying world. Her mission was over. A failure.
Apogee didn’t register when her ears popped or when the umbilical disconnect warning flashed on her HUD. Glancing at the ship, she saw the connection point drifting away from its port beside the airlock. It had been ejected. The outer airlock had been sealed. Through the forward cockpit windows she could see Spearhead at the controls, blood clinging to his face, yelling at the computer and through the comm at the same time. She tipped her chin toward the toggle switch in her helmet, vaguely aware her suit had switched over to the six or so hours of recyclable oxygen stored in the tanks on her back, and turned off her HUD. A flick of her ear dislodge her earpiece, and Spearhead's voice grew distant as it floated free on its wire. A shuddering sigh passed her lips as the distractions faded.
The steady hum coming from SOLUS was a strange comfort. She didn’t know what it was doing. Maybe it would blow up. Probably not.
A deep thud rippled through its superstructure and a strange motion caught the corner of her eye. Cloudbreaker was on the float. The docking clamps had released it back into space. She watched as it drifted, pushed away by gentle white puffs of nitrogen. Spearhead's beaten face pressed against the cockpit window, his eyes wide with fear as he watched the distance growing between them. The shuttle was flying itself. There was nothing any of them could do, so she didn’t try.
Great jets of gas wrenched the shuttle around like a filly’s toy until the engines pointed retrograde. For several long seconds, Cloudbreaker hung there as if to give her one last chance to cross the chasm between them. Time ran out. The engines fired at max burn and she watched the shuttle streak away, the engine bells glowing orange, yellow, then white hot.
She stood there, watching them fade against a backdrop of uncaring stars. Watching Equestria gently bend over the horizon as balefire boiled away the clouds, charred its cities and poisoned the soil. Her parents were dead. No one was coming to save her. 
No one was alive who could.
So she waited.
The minutes passed. Equestria drifted out of sight, replaced by the vast Celestial Sea and the moonlit continent on the other side. The lights of Vhanna lifted out of the east and she felt a jealous anger rise within her. How much had they stolen? How long had it taken for them to catch up with Equestrian science? Who helped them? How did nobody know what they were building? Why did no one try to stop them?
She watched the streetlights of their cities slide triumphantly below. Glittering grids of roads, highways and untouched infrastructure crossed the sprawling savannah as if nothing were wrong. As if ponies weren’t dead and dying by the millions just an ocean away.
On a whim, she toggled her radio back on. A grim curiosity gripped her in that moment and she scanned through the frequencies, wanting to know exactly why they did it. What finally pushed Vhanna over the edge? She wanted to hear them say it. She wanted to hear them celebrate so she could give herself permission to hate them. More than that, she wanted there to be a record of what they had done so that no matter how hard they worked to make their genocide palatable, a facet of truth would be forever beyond their reach.
Dead air hissed from her floating earpiece. She twitched her feather, searching for whichever frequencies the zebras used for public broadcasts. Without Cloudbreaker she wouldn’t be able to transmit, but she could still listen.
Her earpiece buzzed through an active frequency. She backtracked, finessing her way until she could decipher the speaker’s grainy words. A heavily accented male voice, practically shouting into the microphone. Apogee scoffed, thinking at first he was boasting his people’s victory over Equestria. But the more she listened, the more her expression changed. The more panic she could hear in the zebra’s voice.
“...vernment is not responsible for the attacks in Equestria! If you can hear this, I beg you think before seeking vengeance! Vhanna was not capable of this attack nor would I ever authorize such a thing! The lives lost today in Equestria are a tragedy that we mourn with you and we are dedicated to providing as much aid to the Equestrian people as they require! If there are any of you able to reach our shores to assist in the rescue effort, Port Sahadi and Port Berberi are being made available to all Equestrian civilian and military personnel with logistical experience. Please understand that Vhanna does not condone the atrocities committed against Equestria today and that we stand ready to render…”
SOLUS twitched.
Blinking, she frowned at the dim puffs of gas fluttering from the maneuvering ports ringing its pointed tip. The low hum rose to a deep, teeth-shaking groan and she stepped back on reflex, unsure what was happening. Emerald light reflected off the polished surface of the prongs as they tilted toward the first city passing below.
“Wh…”
A blinding column of roiling fire speared through the void and plummeted into the city below. Apogee screamed as the radiative heat from the beam cooked the front of her suit, staining it char grey. Then, as soon as it began, the blazing spire winked out. The roaring mechanisms within SOLUS quieted.
On the surface below where a nightlit city once stood, a gargantuan dome of sickly green fire boiled away the dark. She watched in silent horror as the shockwave rippled through farmland and across highways leaving behind a sea of emerald fire. The broadcast spat static, then died.
SOLUS maneuvered, stabilized, and fired again. Less than a second and the beam vanished, and another city went with it. Apogee felt herself start to shake as the second shockwave met the first hurling a widening sheet of earth and debris into the air. And again, tiny puffs of gas leveled the killing tip of SOLUS toward the third city. And the fourth. And the fifth.
She watched Vhanna drown in fire, too terrified to move. Too stunned to back away from the heat that cooked her suit and left the sour taste of tarnished bits in her mouth because she understood with devastating clarity what she was seeing. What she’d been tricked into doing.
SOLUS had been fed balefire.







The feed from Apogee’s helmet stopped.
Rainbow leaned forward, her muzzle held in her feathers, as the images of Vhanna turning to ash replayed in her mind. She knew the stallion’s voice she and Sledge heard pleading over the radio for peace. It’d been Ambassador Abyssian. Fluttershy had met him once upon a time, and she’d sworn to his decency more times than anyone wanted to hear back then. He’d begged Equestria not to retaliate because he knew the score. He’d seen the same propaganda Rarity’s ministry cooked up in the loyalist papers. He knew the story she was trying to sell Equestria and how readily its terrified populace would cling to it as gospel. 
She’d known it too. In her heart of hearts she knew Equestria was the only government in possession of balefire technology. She just hadn’t slowed down enough to consider what it meant.
“Vhanna didn’t do it,” Rainbow murmured.
Sledge looked at her with furrows in his brow. “What?”
She shook her head, hating the words but speaking them anyway because they were true.
“The zebras didn’t drop the bombs,” she said, eyes fixed on the darkened terminal. “Equestria did.”
> Chapter 34: Turning Stones
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Keep breathing, no matter how much it hurts.
The fans pushed the bitter chill into her lungs for what felt like hours. It sifted through her mane, traced her shoulders and sank into her chest like a living thing. Her body shook, a little at first and then uncontrollably. It didn’t take long for her ears to lose sensation. The soft soles of her hooves followed. Then her wings, bound down to her body by a strap of leather. At first she thought Ironshod meant to spook her. Make her squirm a little before coming back with some more tangible form of coercion. But as time ticked by and the tears froze on her eyelashes, a different reality set in. He wasn’t coming back. He was going to let her die here, alone, in the freezing dark.
Her thoughts grew sluggish. Foggy. She needed to escape. Needed to break out of the zip strips that kept her bound to the steel chair’s frosted frame and get through that door. Just like she did back home. She spent what felt like hours struggling against her bindings only to realize through the throbbing in her joints that she’d just managed to tighten them. The chair held solid beneath her. This wasn’t something she could fix. Slowly, the thought occurred to her that this may not be something she could survive.
Maybe it was better this way. The longer she sat, the less discomfort she felt. One by one the nerves in her skin succumbed to the freeze. Maybe dying hurt less this way. Something about that comforted her. She could wait. No rush. If an opening presented itself she’d figure it out. If not, well… right now, she wanted to close her eyes. Nap.
Her head dipped against her chest.
The door uttered a heavy clunk and light flooded the freezer like an exploding star. Slumped forward, Aurora squeezed her eyes tighter and made her discomfort known with a feeble croak. The overhead bulb clicked on and she watched through slitted eyes as two sets of hooves rounded her chair. The knot of her gag loosened and the fetid cloth peeled out of her jaw, tearing flakes of ice from her lips and sprinkling frost into her lap. Something heavy dropped onto her shoulders that stank like drainpipe scum. A blanket, she realized. Then she frowned at the vague sensation of her tail being hiked up beneath it, and she practically jumped out of her bindings at the unwelcome sensation of something narrow being pressed inside of her.
“The f-f-fuck?!”
Something kept her head from turning back to look. As her vision adjusted she distantly recognized the haze of Ironshod’s silver magic. His grey hooves stood at the threshold while his Rangers worked.
“Eighty-four point eight,” a voice behind her stated, and the intruding presence was abruptly removed. Thermometer, she told herself.
“Turn them off.” Ironshod’s tone was carefully neutral. A switch clicked. Behind her, the fans began spinning down. “Here, let me get that.”
The blanket shifted and wrapped around her hind legs, tucking them together with an almost paternal care. She glowered at the floor as he swaddled her in the stinking fabric. With no choice but to endure his attention, she pointedly avoided his gaze as he lifted her chin and secured the blanket around her neck. From outside, a second chair was brought in. Wooden. Less prone to absorb the ambient cold he’d chosen to inflict upon her. He sat down across from her, his hooves nearly touching hers. It didn’t matter where she looked, now. He’d made it impossible not to see him.
“I think we’re ready to begin.” He adjusted his posture, watching her with hawkish gold eyes for many long seconds until he seemed satisfied. Then, “Did you ever meet a young stallion by the name of Gallow?”
She blinked at his fetlocks and looked up. “W-what?”
He watched her as if her reaction surprised him. “We found his corpse on old route eleven. Somebody shot him up not far from his home. Made a real mess of it. I’m curious to know whether you had anything to do with that.”
Sensation was slowly returning to her limbs, but her mind was struggling to keep up. “Gallow... w-was a can-cannibal.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Before she could respond, he spoke again. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what might have happened back in Kiln?”
What was this, a trial? “Y-you had a slaver... ngh. Pr-problem.”
Ironshod hummed. “Debatable. You’ve been a busy mare, Aurora. The Enclave must count themselves lucky to have you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut to solidify her concentration. “I’m not with anyone.”
Ironshod’s chair creaked. His breath wafted over her, warm and unwanted. “Please don’t lie to me. You told us yourself that you asked for their help, and something tells me that the little green pegasus you were with wasn’t a stray dustwing you picked up along the way here. Now they’re spilling Ranger blood outside of your Stable. Part of me would like to believe that you’re the innocent, wide-eyed mare you say you are but I think we both know how played out that fiction is. Trouble is, you tell a convincing lie. You even have the gryphon convinced. That makes you very dangerous, Aurora. Very, very dangerous.”
Her skin started to sting as blood returned to rouse her dormant nerves. She trembled, her muscles stuttering with a deep ache that only grew worse the more she moved. She leaned down, foregoing Ironshod’s stare to better insulate herself in the growing warmth of her blanket. Sitting as he was, she’d only need to free one leg to punch him in the balls. Juvenile, maybe, and probably not helpful in the long run. But it made her smile a little despite being nowhere near a position to escape.
“S-so I’m da-angerous,” she chattered. “Yippee for m-me.”
“You know who they are. What they represent. Tell me why you’re helping them.”
She sneered as her body shook harder the more she thawed. “M-maybe they’re n-not c-cunts on the cob like yuh-you.”
His lip twitched. “That other pegasus was quick to abandon you. Doesn’t inspire much confidence in their loyalty, don’t you think?”
She said nothing.
He waited.
After a solid minute of unbearable silence, she took a slow breath and met his gaze. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
He offered a dispassionate shrug in response. “You didn’t have to kill Gallow.”
“That isn’t the-”
“We do what we do to survive, Aurora. Gallow was as much a killer as your so-called friend. At least I showed her the decency of a quick death.”
Her jaw went slack at the insinuation but when she tried to answer him in her own defense she realized she couldn’t. Not without lying to him and to herself. She stared at him, hating him for plucking that kernel of truth out of her, fixing her jaw to keep the flood of guilt from reaching her eyes. She could still hear him, making noises no living creature should ever make.
Her vision swam as Ironshod took that neatly packed box in the back of her head and upturned it until it was empty.
He watched her struggling to stay composed with the satisfaction of a starving predator spotting wounded prey, as if it was all he ever wanted to see. Then, just as she was managing to pack away all the ugly facts of the last week and a half, he lit his horn to seemingly adjust the corners of the blanket beneath her chin.
“Are you warming up?”
Humiliated, she only nodded a little. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“Alright then.” He stood, pushing the chair back until it was pulled out by a Ranger posted at the door. “Let’s take a break. I’ll check back in an hour or so.”
A firm tug of his magic wrenched the blanket off her shoulders and splayed pale strands of mane across her face. She gasped at the abrupt resurgence of cold. Wide-eyed, she stared after him as he bundled the cloth and took it with him through the door.
“W-wait what?”
The door pivoted shut with a crackle of brittle gaskets and the light overhead winked out like a fragile ember. Her heart began to pound as the electric drone of the fans above her began turning. Once again, the temperature plunged. “No! Ironshod, wait!”
She bent against her restraints until they bit into her skin.
“IRONSHOD!”







Rainbow Dash followed Sledge out of the I.T. wing, pausing only to thank Opal for her help and wish her some well-earned sleep. The old mare returned the sentiment. They’d all been drowning their exhaustion with caffeine in that little office for far longer than anyone expected to, but the end result had been uncovering a large shard of the very truth Delta Vee had sought to preserve.
Vhanna hadn’t dropped the bombs. They hadn’t even acquired the technology to try. Equestria had turned its most destructive armaments upon both Vhanna and itself. What none of them understood was why.
Neither she or Sledge spoke as he brought her back to Aurora’s compartment. Seeing what had happened through Apogee’s own eyes, watching Equestria commit the most expansive murder-suicide in recorded history… it was too much for her to wrap her head around. What had the princesses been thinking? They had the bomb. What more leverage did they need for Vhanna’s surrender? What was the benefit if everyone including the princesses died?
As they stepped into the lift, she could still hear the Vhannan ambassador pleading over the radio for mercy. Abyssian was an exceedingly intelligent stallion. He’d known what the world would think when they heard news of the bombs falling in Equestria. Who they would blame. The thought of seeing those missiles appearing on the horizon must have been paralyzing. Only, the missiles never did come. Equestria had a different solution for the zebras. A weapon that was capable of piercing their iron dome of air defenses with no warning whatsoever. 
She wasn’t sure whether to seethe, scream, curse, or cry. Maybe all four. Maybe none. Had she really been so stupid as to let herself be duped again? It was Jet Stream who initially approached her ministry for funding. He’d been the one to design SOLUS. But he wouldn’t have had launch authorization. Nobody did except for the princesses, and even then the missiles required both of them to launch. Maybe Jet had found some way to trick them too? No, she thought. Jet loved his kid too much to make her watch something like that play out. He might have made some questionable choices with the way he raised Apogee, but he wasn’t a monster. If he’d had an inkling of what was to come he would have spent every bit he owned to get her into a Stable. 
The lift jerked to a stop on Mechanical’s residential floor. Being the middle of the day, the corridors were busier than they had been when she left. She was keenly aware of the attention she drew just by walking alongside Sledge, say nothing for the bewildered stares that followed her as residents saw the faded stripes of her mane. Despite her missing wing, her noon-blue coat having shed itself bare in several places and the ghostly features of her once youthful figure, she still heard more than a few pegasi whispering. She felt a pang of sympathy for Sledge, who was likely to be the one stuck explaining how an Element of Harmony had been allowed to wither on their doorstep.
Who was she kidding? Sledge would be lucky to get a word in edgewise. Rainbow just hoped that when the time came, her shoddy public speaking skills wouldn’t end up digging her the grave she’d spent the last couple hundred years dodging.
The compartment door chirped at the swipe of Sledge’s badge and slid open. Rainbow stepped inside with the stallion in tow, slowing as she noticed the changes that had been made since she left. 
Her bed, technically still Aurora’s bed, had been tidied up with a new comforter and fresh pillows. A fabricated end table now stood beside it, complete with a small reading lamp and alarm clock. In the empty corner between the desk and the foot of the bed, once relegated to dust bunnies and a suspicious quantity of grey horse hair stood a banged up yet sturdy wooden wardrobe. One of the doors had been propped open for her benefit so she could see the fresh towels and linens folded inside. 
There wasn’t exactly a running theme for decor in Aurora’s compartment - the mystery mare liked to keep things spartan, by all accounts - but whoever brought in the additions had gone through some effort to make the space feel a little less like a hollow cube and more like a proper bedroom. That said, an embarrassed smirk touched her cheek when she spotted the battered black tool cart parked on the right side of the desk. Across the lip of the dented lid, a scuffed black sticker read A. PINFEATHERS in stamped white letters. A coffee pot sat on top, the carafe irreparably caked with brown stains but otherwise empty. One of the tool drawers had been pulled open to house a squat can of grounds and a dozen or so wrinkled sugar packets. A chipped red mug sat beside them.
She stood there at the center of her room, smiling at the generous offering.
“Some of the guys wanted the coffee pot turned on for when you came back down, but I figured you might want to try getting some sleep before we risked finding out what Blue might get up to with caffeine in her system.”
She snorted. “When did you find time for this?”
“I might have made a few calls when you took your nap. I did say I was going to get coffee.”
She sighed and hooked her wing around Sledge’s neck, hugging him. “Thank you.”
“Likewise.” 
He squeezed back, practically popping her like a balloon with the strength of his own wings. What did they feed the pegasi down here? She swore she heard some of her bones realign when he let go.
A quick gesture from his hoof pointed her attention to the bathroom. “Carbide brought a few folks up to give everything a good scrub. There’s new soap and, ah, mare… stuff, for you.”
She lifted a brow at him.
For a stallion with a red coat, he blushed easily. “Anyway, your belongings are in your nightstand drawer. Carbide’s a steel trap when it comes to privacy, but I can’t speak for everyone that helped out. I’m sure some of them recognized your necklace.”
“Yeah,” She shrugged and pulled the drawer open. The empty socket of her necklace stared back up at her. “It doesn’t really leave much room for wrong guesses, does it? Something tells me living down here as a regular pony wasn’t in the cards for me anyway. I should probably assume word’s gonna travel fast, huh?”
He shrugged. “On the bright side, it’ll be the best news they’ll hear since all this started. We can figure it out tomorrow. Get some sleep in the meantime, okay?”
Her freshly made bed did look inviting. The trick was going to be getting her mind to stop spinning. “I’ll try. Thanks again, Sledge.”
“Goodnight, Dash.”
She watched him swipe out and sighed to herself when the door slid shut behind him. Equestria could’ve used a stallion like him. She snorted, flopping onto her bed with a satisfied groan. Who was she trying to kid? Her own ministry could have used a stallion like Sledge. With someone like him around, she doubted she would have made the mistakes she did. He sure as heck would’ve put Spitfire in her place before she got it in her head to hijack her life.
What was left of her chromatic mane rasped against the plush pillows cradling her head. So much had gone on in the last twenty-four hours that she didn’t know where to start. Extending her wing, she reached past her new nightstand and hit the lightswitch. The dark was a relief to her strained eyes and she rolled onto her side in hopes of finding sleep.
She listened to the quiet crackle of her pillow as it compressed beneath her cheek. Her slow, steady breathing as she grew more comfortable. The hum of the generator reverberated through the bedframe. The sound of Apogee sobbing as the satellite she helped assemble poured death over a defenseless Vhanna.
She pressed her face into her pillow and muttered a muffled, “Fuck.”
Sleep wasn’t coming anywhere near her if she couldn’t reckon with the circling vultures of today’s discoveries. Rolling over to face the darkened room, she fumbled for the wall switch with her hoof until she managed to smack it back on. She needed to think, not stew. Sitting up, she slipped off her bed and poked her head into the compartment’s partitioned bathroom. True to his word, Sledge’s people had scrubbed every inch right down to the grouted tile. Even the toilet and sink had gotten a deep clean. Stepping out of the baggy Stable-Tec jumpsuit he’d had her wear, she kicked it to the foot of her bed and stepped into the shower.
Hot water sputtered from the showerhead. With an indulgent groan she turned her face into the stream, her tired joints finally loosening after so many hours of sitting in Opal’s office. Turning to let the water soak into her shoulders and tail, she glanced at the collection of shampoos, conditioners and what appeared to be homemade soap resting on the shower shelf. There was even a tiny glass vial of some kind of amber perfume. The dreaded mare stuff. She laughed, picked up a bar of soap that looked suspiciously like one of Granny Smith’s fruitcakes and gave it a sniff. It smelled a little like pine needles and vanilla. Weird combination. That, or ghoulification really had killed off her sense of smell. Regardless, it was a gift, and one of Applejack’s personal rules was never to snub a well meaning gift. She tipped the bar into the stream and managed to work up a lather between her feathers. Her mind went to work as she showered.
“Okay, Dash. Think like Twilight and make a list of what you know.”
She knew Equestria had dropped the balefire bombs on itself. She knew SOLUS hadn’t been the solar powered technology of tomorrow that Jet Stream had promised the world it would be. She remembered how the Ministry of Image had begun pumping out disinformation claiming Vhanna had stolen plans for the bomb, but wasn’t convinced Rarity would actually publish something so blatantly false if she’d known what would lead to. Had she been involved somehow?
She didn’t think so. The war had changed all of them in ways they couldn’t have predicted, Rarity more than most, but she wasn’t evil. Rainbow couldn’t picture her knowingly setting up Vhanna as a scapegoat as a cover for global genocide. None of the breadcrumbs left behind by Delta Vee pointed close to that direction.
Water trickled off her chin and toward the concave cavity of what remained of her belly. The soap skidded along the lines of her protruding ribs, reminding her of the Nightmare Night cartoons her mom would put on with the dancing pony skeletons that played each other like xylophones. Centuries of isolation - Luna’s sake that was going to take time to get used to - had not been kind to her athletic figure. She made a mental note. When this generator crisis was over, she was getting back to the gym. Or whatever this place had that was closest to one. She’d been okay with looking her age in her forties but she had not agreed to looking like a haunted house decoration in her two-hundred-and-sixties.
A self-deprecating chuckle drew a smile across her tired face. She wondered what Spitfire would say if she saw her as she was now. Would she feel guilty? She rolled her eyes, knowing it was long past time when it would matter how that scheming bitch felt. Any bridges the two of them had were burned well before the bombs set the world on fire, and anyway Spitfire would probably be too pissed off that she’d finally gotten inside her precious Stable to do anything other than sputter. If Spitfire had her way, she’d still be outside in that dusty tunnel lost in her own head. 
Old anger bloomed afresh as she lathered one hind leg, realizing as she did that she didn’t have the wing to do the other. She sufficed to rub her unwashed leg against the other, happy no one was here to watch.
She paused, frowning. “Huh.”
Spitfire.
Her frown deepened. The only reason Delta wound up having to leave a trail of clues for them was because Spitfire had ordered her to erase the first decade of Stable 10’s history. And then there was the footage from her office. The phone call that reduced her to a puddle of tears just hours before the generator first teetered over the edge of failure, only for the lights to eventually come back on in time for a furious Delta to barge in and nearly come to blows with her overseer. She’d been filthy and out of breath, as if she’d just gotten back from Mechanical herself. That part still wasn’t clicking for her. What would the Head of I.T. been doing down in Mechanical? There were still pieces missing. She wrinkled her nose at the tiles and decided to set that aside. 
Spitfire had to have known something was about to happen. Her expression when the emergency lights kicked in had been devoid of any surprise. There had only been resignation there, as if the heated call she’d taken just prior had been some sort of warning she hadn’t wanted to hear or believe. There was also the issue of her sealing the Stable early, but then again Spitfire kept few secrets about her interest in leading a population composed exclusively of pegasi.
The soap slowed in her wing, coming to a stop against her breastbone. Water rinsed the suds through her feathers until it ran clean.
“But…” She stared at the tile, thoughts racing. She recalled the video of the afterparty following Spitfire’s Remembrance Day speech, right before the phone call. She’d been chatting with Thunderlane. But Thunderlane lived in Cloudsdale. Most of the Wonderbolts did… but the first public evacuation warnings were broadcast after the first bomb destroyed Cloudsdale, so how did so many Wonderbolts survive the explosion unless…
“They knew it was coming.”
She tightened her grip around the bar with a trembling wing. It hadn’t just been Thunderlane. There had been an entire contingent of pegasi guarding the Stable door until the moment it rolled shut. Spitfire had been there too, watching as they drew rifles on a growing crowd of scared and confused non-pegasi. Each one of them wore crisp, clean flight suits without so much as a flake of ash on them. They’d known.
Spitfire, Thunderlane, the Wonderbolts.
Every single one of them had known.







“Hold her still!”
“I’m trying! She won't stop thrashing!”
Julip tried to tell them she wasn’t moving on purpose but every time she tried the words only muddled into a wheezing squeak of agony. Every breath felt like a jagged knife scraping the inside of her ribs but her body refused to let her stop. She writhed in Ginger’s magic, the sensation of suffocating ripping her out of unconsciousness in time to feel the worst pain her screaming nerves could bear to deliver. 
She was losing the fight to stay calm and Ginger’s efforts to keep her stationary were only making things worse. She wanted to say she was sorry. She didn’t mean to make this so hard on them. She should have listened to Aurora the first time and left them alone. Not force herself into their lives just to have them drop everything to save hers.
“Woah, lady, is she okay?”
The nameless stallion’s voice came and went faster than she could process. Through bloodshot eyes Julip could make out the fuzzy lines of a straight road and tall buildings. They were back in Fillydelphia proper. The metro area. She could feel the wind tugging her open wing and groaned in weak protest. Everybody could see her. They’d know she was from the Enclave. They would assume Roach and Ginger were involved. Everything was falling apart thanks to her. 
She clenched the muscles in her stomach to distract her from the agony in her chest just long enough to gurgle the word, “Wing.”
“You don’t have time, Julip.”
She groaned. It wasn’t about her.
“Roach and I will cover for you. Don’t worry. Stay still.”
Her abdominal muscles gave out and wilting sob trickled from her throat. Why did she try to run? Why hadn’t she done the right thing and stayed by Aurora like she was supposed to do?
“Roach, where is this doctor of yours?”
“We should be close! I saw it after we… there! On the right!”
Julip squeezed her eyes shut as she lurched up onto the curb in Ginger’s magic. Voices she didn’t recognize reacted with a mixture of shock and confusion as they pushed through a clutch of pedestrians and down a cracked and roughly patched sidewalk. Pain flared again as she jerked to a stop, the momentum abruptly bleeding off as Roach and Ginger pushed through a door that clapped shut behind them like a gunshot because nobody in Fillydelphia apparently knew what a fucking doorstop was.
She clung to her own anger like a raft. It gave her something to focus on while her body did its best to shut down. Voices erupted as soon as they were inside. Julip managed to force her eyes open enough to see a unicorn stallion in a tacky corduroy suit standing rigid behind a long display case bisecting the front room of a store. Dozens of iconic bottles, boxes and tins stood behind the glass: Mentats, Daytripper, Big Buck… she crushed her eyes shut in frustration. A fucking chem salespony. His attention immediately darted to her dangling feathers.
“Excuse me! She cannot be in here! You need to...”
Roach shouted him down. “She’s a dustwing and she’s dying! Help her.”
“Roach, lower your voice.”
“No.”
“I-I sell medicinal a-and herbal remedies. I don’t…”
A hoof slammed against wood, causing Julip to tense and double against herself as fresh agony burned her chest.
“I was a doctor but I-I-I haven’t performed a surgery in years due to the difficulty acquiring supplies and… is… that's a chest wound. How is she still…?” A brief pause. His eyes widened at the curious faces gathering outside his window. Julip instinctively tried to curl up her loose wing but couldn’t muster the strength to hide what the lookiloos had already seen. “Oh for goddess’s sake ponies are staring. Just take her in the back before the Rangers come sniffing around.”
The maybe-doctor hadn’t finished his sentence before Julip felt herself lurched behind the counter on Ginger’s magic. She squeezed her eyes shut against the bright, fresh pain brought by the sudden motion and endured it with only the smallest whimper. Hinges squealed and hooves scuffed across dry floorboards, dampened by the muffling effect of clutter. She opened her eyes enough to see hundreds of dusty bottles in a dimly lit storeroom, many easily as old as Roach, lined in orderly rows above tiny labels held to bowing wooden shelves with brass tacks. An incandescent bulb burned with yellow light from a fixture overhead, evidently selected for utility rather than aesthetics. 
For a moment she just hovered there, held still by Ginger while glassware clattered and boxes thumped to the floor. Furniture scraped beneath her and she hissed through gritted teeth as she was laid onto a table cobbled together with bent nails and scrap wood. Her cheek briefly settled against a plank embossed with the logo of a prewar shipping company, but no sooner had she begun to settle than Roach hurried into view, one of his saddlebags (where did he get saddlebags?) flung open and a bundle of folded leather held in the crook of his foreleg. Gently as he could manage, he eased her head off the uneven table and slid the bundle beneath it. At first she worried he’d found Aurora’s dumpster disguise and braced herself for the odor, but when he set her head down and the plush - albeit a little musty - leather conformed against her cheek. Hoping to reassure him, she managed a pained and unconvincing smile.
The storeroom door clattered open and from its direction came the harried muttering of the maybe-doctor. He gave Julip an unconcealed look of suspicion as he passed behind Roach, his eyes darting into the changeling’s open saddlebag and spotting the first aid kit inside. A cloud of lavender magic yanked the kit free, flipping open the latch to briefly examine the contents. The unicorn grunted with something approaching a grudging satisfaction before plucking two corked brown bottles from his shelves.
Bottles of dubious liquid plunked down in a neat row in front of Julip’s nose. A short stack of cotton rags followed suit, as well as a stimpack and a yellowed length of plastic tubing. She frowned at the word scrawled across the first bottle. Growing up in the less affluent corners of New Canterlot, a mare got to know her chems pretty quick. The street names varied but the basic chemistry was usually the same. The only ponies who avoided the sexy terminology of chem dealers were the rare few ponies who still studied medicine professionally. 
Squinting at the bottle, it took her several tries to pronounce iodopovidone in her head. Reading it allowed her to calm down slightly, even as the stallion pushed past Roach to better inspect her wounds. She stiffened as he used his rougher magic to lift her feathers away from her ribs while settling the cup of a rust-speckled stethoscope beneath the wing’s joint.
“Breathe in, deep as you can,” he said.
She obeyed, but the sensation of knives sinking into every inch of her chest stopped her short of anything approaching deep. The stethoscope moved down to her ribs, practically pinned beneath her skin and the table. “One more.”
She felt her heart drop as his brow furrowed at her second, meager breath. Behind him, Ginger and Roach stood together, watching. She swallowed and looked away, wishing they would too.
Maybe-Doctor poked, prodded and appeared to walk himself down a mental checklist as he confirmed what she already knew. Her left lung had completely collapsed. It wouldn't be long until the other went too.
“You've got a collapsed lung and the other has fluid building inside,” he said, staring down at her ribs as if he were looking through her. “I can’t say whether the bullet ricocheted while it passed through but my guess would be it did. Managed to miss any vital arteries, somehow, or we wouldn't be talking. I’m assuming by the amount of new tissue around the entry and exit wounds that one of you administered a stimpack.”
“Around thirty minutes ago,” Roach murmured.
Maybe-Doctor regarded her like an unwanted chore. “If the round punctured her lung she'll have pushed air into the chest cavity. She'll need a chest tube put in. I can’t do that while she’s awake.”
Her eyes went to the folded rags and the brown bottle beside them, connecting the dots. Shaking her head, her hooves scraped against the table as she tried to push herself away but amber light stopped her short of falling off the other side. Maybe-Doctor was quick to grab his supplies before her weakened flailing could knock anything over. Her ineffective effort to get away was rewarded with pain, dizziness and a smothering fatigue like she’d never felt before. Ginger didn’t have to push her back down. She collapsed on her own, dropping her head back to the makeshift pillow despite her mind still railing against the prospect of being put under by some stranger while the enemy patrolled the streets outside.
She might not be loyal to the Enclave, but that didn’t mean the Rangers wouldn’t put another bullet in her just to be sure. Her eyes clawed at the unicorn stallion to eliminate any question of who she was addressing. The taste of scabs filled her mouth as she coughed out the word, “No.” 
Behind the stallion, Ginger spoke up. “Julip, let him help you.”
Undeterred, she continued glaring at Maybe-Doctor, determined to give him a fight if he tried anything.
“Julip.”
The sound of Roach’s voice pulled her gaze away until she reluctantly turned toward the changeling. He nudged past the other stallion and linked a hoof around one of hers, squeezing for emphasis. Whether it was reflex or something else, she did her best to squeeze back as he brought his muzzle to her ear.
In a whispered voice, he asked, “What are you afraid of?”
She swallowed, grateful that he was blocking the other two ponies in the room from seeing her face. Her lip twitched with the same uncertainty she’d shown when he first started chatting with her during their first patrol together back on the rails. Weird how four days could feel like such a long time ago. In that time, Roach had done little else but show her kindness where Ginger and Aurora - especially Aurora - openly wore their suspicion toward her. As the events of the past few days softened those edges, Julip expected Roach’s attention to gradually wane as normalcy within their group reestablished itself. But he didn’t. He still found quiet moments to pull her aside so they could talk, swap stories and afford Julip the perspective that the Enclave denied her.
“Hurting me,” she breathed.
Roach gave her hoof a gentle shake. “He won’t hurt you. I’ll be here the whole time to make sure of it.”
Part of her needed to hear that. Another dreaded it, pouring more guilt onto her already festering wounds. “I’m sorry.”
A pause betrayed the pain in his voice. “Nothing to be sorry about.”
She tried to shake her head, but the muscles in her neck only twitched. “Aurora.”
He pulled away from her ear until their eyes met. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the expressiveness his opaque, pupil-less eyes were capable of. “Who took her?”
“Rangers,” she breathed. Roach’s expression went slack for only a split second, but it was more than enough time for her to see the suspicion bloom in his eyes. 
Her thoughts pulled her back to when she’d been frozen mid stride by the armored unicorns. The leader of that stealthy fireteam had taken his time. A smug fucker, probably some high-ranking desk jockey who spent all day practicing his monologues. The crack of his gun had sent a visceral spasm through her body and she’d been convinced she would die. Only she hadn’t yet. It only made sense. Her whole family tree budded with angry, stubborn assholes. Even as her brain tried to reckon with the pure wrongness blooming inside her chest, she’d heard that stallion speak clear as crystal, his voice smooth and low.
Hello, Aurora.
Her eyes dipped as she made the connection. “He knew her,” she said, grimacing at the ache that came with speaking. “The leader. Grey stallion. Silver magic with a crucible mark. Knew Aurora’s name.”
Ginger hissed. “Ironshod.” 
Roach’s ear twitched toward her, nodding grimly.
Seconds passed and Julip could feel the room darken a little. She wanted to ask who this Ironshod was and what he meant to them, but all she could muster was another tired, “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, green bean.”
She blinked, her preloaded answer of yes it was overridden by the unexpected nickname. Her lips moved soundlessly, struggling to process the obnoxiously out of place moniker. The forced grin on his face told her he knew exactly what he’d done and that she wasn’t invited to backpedal toward the topic of Rangers or Aurora. That was for them to worry about, not her.
“You can chew my hide as much as you like once you’re better,” he rumbled, his voice rising to normal volume. “Deal?”
Just like that, the time for talking was over. Things needed to start happening that Julip didn’t want to happen, but the fear that lingered wasn’t the uncontrollable animal that it had been. She could keep a lid on what remained. Still, she struggled to pack away the discomfort that came with knowing she was pulling them both away from finding Aurora.
“Deal.”
Stifling a reflexive cough, she flicked her eyes toward the other stallion in the room. Her gaze lingered on the curiously specific mark on his flank, unsure whether the object depicted boded well or poorly for what came next. The stallion’s ear was turned toward them even as he soaked one of the folded rags with clear liquid.
Noticing her attention, he glanced at her and then Roach. “Are we ready to proceed?”
She nodded.
He gave the bottle of chloroform another tip into the rag before pressing the cork into the neck and levitating the saturated cloth for Roach to take. “Hold this under her nose and try not to breathe the vapor yourself. If you want to stay, then you help.”
Julip tried not to think as Roach took the cloth into the flat of his hoof, eyed it for a moment, then brought it toward her muzzle. She flinched, expecting the first whiff to knock her out like ponies did in the old movies. Instead, she found herself treated to a not unpleasant scent of citrus and acetone. It reminded her of the perfume stores that speckled New Canterlot’s commercial district, not that she’d even been the type of mare to wear it. Still, it smelled kind of nice.
Minutes passed and, slowly, her body began to feel heavy. Swimming in a bouquet of fumes, she occasionally gave Roach’s hoof a squeeze to let him know she was still awake. Gradually, those squeezes grew weaker. She watched the doctor through half-lidded eyes as he dabbed her entry wound with a cold, yellow-brown liquid. The iodopinkadinkadone. She snorted with a loopy giggle. Iodoopidoo. 
Eyes drifting to the stupid mark on his hip. Thoughts bouncing off the nickname Roach had dubbed her with.
Green bean.
Drunk on fumes, the pain fading away, she giggled again. Another winged Bean. Could be worse. Maybe Meridian would like her if she was a bean? 
As she drifted out of consciousness a final, semi coherent thought passed through her mind like fog. What kind of doctor had a pepper shaker for a cutie mark?







“You should know that I charge extra for fugitives.” The stallion smiled for a millisecond before realizing his audience wasn’t in the mood for his bedside manner. “Just a joke.”
Ginger sat with her back against the shelves, eyes on the dusty floorboards. The ill-wanted humor floated out of the doctor’s mouth as easily as if he were commenting on the weather, but they were enough to jar her from the paralysis induced by Julip’s last waking words.
Ironshod. He was here. He’d followed them all the way out here, across hundreds of miles of wasteland and mountains and Luna knew what else just to find Aurora and… do what, exactly? Bring her back to the Bluff? Punish her? Kill her? Elder Coldbrook wasn’t particularly happy with the way Aurora burned down her own Pip-Buck account just to keep him from getting into Stable 10, but he hadn’t written them off. Not yet, anyway, or else he wouldn’t have pulled the strings to convince the local chapter of Rangers to loan out one of their coveted suits of power armor. What sense was there in armoring the very pegasus he intended to abduct? 
There wasn’t. Pushing herself off the floor, she went to the edge of the table next to Roach and touched his shoulder. “I need to find her.”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “She could be anywhere, Ginger. She msy not even be in Fillydelphia anymore.”
“I don’t care. I owe it to her.” 
She looked at Julip, the mare sleeping away the precious seconds on a bed of sickly sweet chloroform fumes, and knew there was nothing she could say that would move Roach from this spot. Whether Julip knew it or not, he’d taken her on as his newest charge. She was his to teach and protect, much in the same way Ginger had been years ago. He would sooner peel off his own chitin than leave Julip alone. It was hard not to be angry with him, even though Ginger knew the position he was in had to be awful.
Roach pressed his lips together, thinking. His pale eyes flicked to the doctor who was making no attempt to hide he was listening. They'd barged into his world, she supposed. Let him eavesdrop. 
"Well," he said, eyes returning to Julip, "what's your plan?" 
She sighed relief, half expecting him to argue against splitting up. The last time one of them disappeared on him, he'd been held at the pleasure of the Rangers at the Bluff. At least this time he wasn't alone. 
"We need help," she said, as if that weren't obvious enough. "I'm going to talk to whoever is in charge of the Fillydelphia chapter and see if we can't… undo this mess."
Roach looked dubious. "She said Rangers took Aurora. The ones here could be involved."
"I'll let myself out if they are."
The doctor hummed as he prepared his tools. "Magnus Plaza isn't a revolving door, miss. If Elder Coronado has a reason to detain you, he will."
She frowned at him, watching as he positioned a disturbingly thick needle between Julip's ribs. With a look of concentration he sank it into her until a sputter of bloody bubbles rose into the syringe. Satisfied, he disconnected the glass cylinder with a practiced twist and gas hissed through the unobstructed needle like a deflating tire.
"If anything feels wrong," Roach warned, "get out. Get back here as quickly as you can. No haggling, no bargaining, none of it. Promise me you’ll come straight back if anything goes wrong.”
She struggled for words, nodding silently at his hooves.
“Ginger,” he repeated, “promise me.”
“I promise. I’ll come back.”
 When she looked up, he was staring at her. His face was a dam that held back the emotion welling up inside him. He was struggling. They both were. Every instinct they had screamed at them to stay together. That splitting up now, when it already felt like things were coming apart at the seams, would have ramifications that would doom themselves and an entire Stable waiting for them back home. And yet they both knew their other choice was unthinkable. To stay here and protect Julip while Aurora vanished into the wasteland, another victim of its unforgiving cruelty. 
“I will.” Her assurance felt hollow. Like she was making promises that the Rangers could slap away should they see fit.
Roach nodded, hooked her around the neck with his leg and dragged her into a crushing hug. He smelled of dust and damp and stress. She grimaced to keep the tears at bay, squeezing him back as her gaze dipped toward Julip. Were it not for that small, profanity-spouting mare hanging on for this long, Aurora would have been beyond finding. Now there was a chance.
She let him go. “Tell her I said thank you.”
“Tell her yourself once you’re back.”
She forgave the cliche and allowed a flimsy smile to crack through her gloom. A touch of intention lit her horn, lifting her saddlebags off her hips and setting them at his hooves with the unspoken expectation that he protect the precious talisman inside. He slipped a hoof through the straps and pulled the bags beneath his chest. 
After a pause, Ginger took a steadying breath and turned to the doctor. "Is there another way out of here?" 
He glanced up from his preparations, looked to the door leading to his salesfloor, then to the opposite side of the storeroom where the shelves bent around a corner. "Rear door's around back. Lock it behind you."
Shaking his head, he added, "Goddesses know I need more of you barging in."




 


The storeroom emptied out into an alley strewn with rubble, discarded refuse and the rusted front half of an old transport carriage. Ginger hurried over the first few yards of debris before slowing down just enough to remember her horn. Impatience drew the spell into a shallow wall of light that bulldozed the obstructions out of her way, slopping mounds of broken concrete and garbage up against the neighboring buildings hard enough to elicit startled shouts from windows overhead. She didn’t care. 
Breaking into a sprint, she left the alley behind for the city’s wider boulevards. A quick turn and a short run brought her back to the streetfront the now unretired doctor’s pharmacy looked out on. A small group of ponies still loitered on the sidewalk Ginger and Roach come in from, their irritation at being locked away from good gossip shown clearly on their faces. Turning left would take her toward them. Beyond that, the city’s bomb-blasted northern half, the crater and its camouflage of irradiated seawater. She felt herself being pulled in that direction, back toward the submerged Stable and its wealth of resources within. Maybe Applebloom would have something that could detect Pip-Bucks? Maybe, but probably not.
She turned right and leaned into a hard gallop down the center of the road, weaving between carriages and pedestrians while the towers of Magnus Plaza loomed large. The city’s center rose up to engulf her. Someone shouted a passing where’s the fire at her as she streaked by, but they were lost to the city’s anemic street traffic by the time the words registered. 
The fortified walls of stacked steel and wire-reinforced cubes of rubble rose up to greet her, along with the Rangers tasked with guarding it. A short line of ponies waited at the main gate, some in Ranger uniform while others were evidently civilians like her. A silver suit of power armor quietly observed the line while a tired-looking mare in uniform stood at the gate with a clipboard strapped to her foreleg. A length of pencil hung from her lip like a cigarette as she spoke with a collared stallion at the front of the line, idly scratching notes as he answered her questions.
Ginger didn’t have time to wait. Aurora even less so. She pushed to the front of the line, earning an arched brow from the mare with the clipboard and the steady gaze of her armored counterpart.
Clipboard Mare stepped in front of her. “Back of the line, ma’am.”
She stopped. “I need to speak with your Elder.”
“Back of the line.”
The momentum she had was quickly piling up behind her, tempting her to shove past and damn the consequences. She could do it, too. Only by the thinnest margin was she able to wrestle that temptation under control and summon the polite, businesslike demeanor she’d learned to wear behind the counter at Gussets & Garments. “Darling, Elder Coronado is expecting me. I was just here yesterday and…”
“I don’t care.” The mare stared her down, unimpressed and out of patience. “This is an active military installation, not whatever red light nightclub you think it is. Now turn around and take the highborn nobility act of yours to the back before I have you arrested.”
The armored Ranger turned to face her more fully as if to emphasize the threat.
She didn’t have time to wait in lines, fill out paperwork or take a number and wait. She certainly wasn’t going to waste precious minutes spilling her guts to every Ranger with a clipboard, either. Her gaze flicked away from the gatekeepers to a clear spot just beyond the gate. One easy teleport and she’d be within sprinting distance of the orderly gridwork of barracks buildings ringing the plaza walls. If she got lucky, maybe she could…
“For the love of Celestia, Rivers, just let her through.”
 Ginger blinked, following Clipboard Mare’s glare as it pivoted to the dull, chocolate colored earth pony she’d cut in front of.
“Knight Rivers,” she corrected, eyeing the ring of iron locked around his neck. “And I don’t recall asking for your input.”
The stallion shrugged, unfazed. If anything he looked annoyed, as if the back and forth between the gatekeepers and Ginger were getting in the way of his own personal schedule of… whatever work slaves did on an active Ranger base. She wondered about that, but only for a moment until the stallion spoke again.
“I’m just saying, she’s obviously in a bigger hurry than the rest of us.”
Knight Rivers narrowed her eyes at him, urging him to shut up. “Your propensity for avoiding work notwithstanding, we have a process…”
“...that’ll let her through eventually.” He paused, holding up a hoof to yawn. Rivers flicked an irritated look to her armored counterpart, but found no help there. When he finished, he tipped a hoof toward Ginger. “I mean, just look at her. You’re actually going to fill out the intake paperwork over some harmless Rarity impersonator because she cut the line? Come on, Rivers. You can’t be that bored.”
Were she not in uniform, Ginger imagined she might have seen the Knight’s hackles go up. Whoever this stallion was, he knew her well enough to push the right buttons. After a tense stretch of silence, Knight Rivers whispered something colorful between her teeth and stepped aside.
“If she starts anything, Ganache, you’ll share the punishment.”
“You should eat something, Rivers.” He smiled at her as he passed by. “You get paranoid when you’re hungry.”
Ginger followed the stallion through the gate while avoiding the mare’s withering glare. When she caught up she expected him to be wearing a conspiratorial grin. Anything other than the cool indifference he showed her once he bothered to look up.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded, leading her along a narrow path following the curve of the plaza wall. “Uh huh. You’re that Dressage mare, yeah?”
“Um.” She glanced toward the barracks where more than a few ponies in uniform loitered outside the doors, watching them as they passed. “Yes. How did…?”
“Cutie mark,” he said, tipping his head toward the collar and chain adorning her hips. “That, and the tail. Slaver’s Guild hasn’t allowed the short cuts for a few years now, especially the one you’ve got. From behind you kind of resemble the deer folk from Thorny Thicket, but with less coverage.”
She cleared her throat to cut off any more of his unfiltered observations. “Thank you for your help, Ganache, but I’m in something of a hurry.”
“I can tell. You’re looking for Coronado, yeah?”
She picked up the pace, loping into a trot. Ganache matched her. She tried not to grimace. “Yes,” she said.
“Huh. Your Rarity act sucks, by the by. Do you know where he is?”
She stifled a retort and looked instead toward the glass towers at the plaza’s center, gnawing at her lip with growing consternation. “Up there?”
Ganache hummed. “If you say so.”
Okay. Helpful or not, he was quickly wearing out his welcome. “Is there something you want?”
He trotted faster until they were practically shoulder to shoulder. She veered away, creating some distance. At this rate he was going to follow her all the way up to the towers.
“I thought mares like you were all about random acts of generosity."
She opened her mouth to shoot back, but he beat her to the punch. 
"There’s a rumor going around that you and your friends shut down the slaver depot in Kiln,” he murmured, going quiet as they made room for a pair of Rangers in scarred power armor. Ginger tried to appear neutral, but the mention of their massacre at Kiln dried her throat. Once they were out of earshot he continued. “That, on top of your people tearing down F&F Mercantile… well, you’ve made being a Ranger a lot less cushy than it was a week ago.”
She blew out an impatient breath and turned onto a crushed gravel path between the barracks, leading her on a direct path toward the towers. “What do you want?”
Ganache avoided the watchful eyes of the passing Rangers. Apparently she wasn’t the only one sensing he was up to something.
“Unlock my collar and I’ll take you to Coronado. Straight shot, no checkpoints or guards.”
She tilted a brow at him. “I can get through checkpoints on my own.”
He snorted. “Clearly, darling.”
She ignored him, but he was undeterred.
“Listen, I don’t know what you have going on, but nobody here is going to let you waltz in for a quick chat with the Elder unannounced. It doesn’t work that way. He’s protected.”
“Excuse me,” she said, stepping around a mare on the side of the walkway in the middle of oiling a rifle nearly large enough to rival Meridian’s railway gun. The Ranger barely acknowledged them.
“What’s so important that you need to talk to him and not one of the ponies down here?”
She shot him a look.
“Okay, okay. Hear me out. The Rangers bought me from the Guild because I can cook, right? I’m good at it, too. Good enough that they’ve got me assigned to the chief cook’s mess. You follow me?”
“Feels more like you’re still following me.”
The jab glanced off Ganache like he hadn’t heard it at all. “I can get you into the kitchen through the slave quarters. Coronado always takes his lunch late to chat up the non-coms, so he’s liable to be in the mess hall right about now. I can get you to him. All I want in return is for you to…”
Her horn pulsed with a flicker of light and the collar around Ganache’s neck sprang open. The stallion stifled a surprised curse, quickly pinning the open ring between his chin and shoulder before it fell to the gravel. She watched him hurry off the path, suddenly alert, making a bee-line between the barracks buildings and vanishing from sight. She didn’t wait to see where he’d gone. His unconvincing gambit had gotten him what he wanted, for whatever good it did him. Once he was known to be missing, the Slaver’s Guild would be made aware and they’d add him to their list of runaways. Maybe life would be good to him, maybe not. She didn’t have the luxury to think about it.
A brisk pace left the barracks behind and the gravel path opened up into the wider, semi formal spaces surrounding the towers. More Rangers seemed to gather here than anywhere else, crowding around large tents and cobbled-together structures advertising food, entertainment and a wide selection of resale armor and weaponry. There was almost a carnival-like atmosphere to it all, making Ginger wonder about what Ganache had said earlier. That the collapse of Autumn Song’s trade routes and decimation of the Kiln slaver hub were the first real traces of excitement these Rangers were being forced to contend with. Out here, so far from the reach of the Enclave, joining up with the Rangers must have seemed like easy work and easier caps. Enough so that the local constabulary had dedicated a sizable portion of their base to keeping their soldiers occupied and out of trouble.
As she slipped past a clutch of Rangers in a heated debate over weapon modifications, Ganache reappeared beside her, his collar conspicuously absent from his neck. “You’re going the wrong way.”
He surprised her. Were she in his hooves, she would’ve been putting as many miles between her and Fillydelphia as she could while her window for escape was still open. Yet here he was.
“I didn’t think you’d come back.”
He shrugged. “A deal’s a deal. Had to get rid of the ornament. Thanks for warning me, by the way. Now follow me. And if anyone asks, you’re taking me to get a new collar fitted.”
She trotted after him as he pulled ahead. “You seem confident that anyone here would believe me.”
The uncollared slave smirked, eyeing her hip. “You’d be surprised.”







The glass towers engulfed the overcast sky as if leaning over her, tricking Ginger’s brain into feeling a sensation of being pushed backward by some invisible force. She forced her eyes down and followed Ganache down the side of the western tower where a small cluster of collared ponies loitered outside a single service door propped open by half a cinder block. Some smoked, some chatted. All of them looked exhausted. Their eyes tracked Ginger and Ganache’s approach in silence until they were turning toward the open door. An auburn mare with a wicker basket adorning her hip eyed Ganache as he passed by.
“Forget something?”
For his part, Ganache wasn’t half-bad at feigning embarrassment. He tipped his nose toward Ginger as she followed him in as if she were to blame. The mare glanced at Ginger, spotted the chains on her hip and was suddenly very interested with the cracked cement beneath her hooves.
The world around her shrank as she stepped inside as she found herself following Ganache through a series of beige hallways studded with what had once been ground floor offices. A few original doors remained on their hinges, but most of the converted slave quarters were hidden behind old bedsheets and the odd shower curtain. Some of the frames stood empty, their occupants on full display as the two of them walked by. Many of the offices housed four or more slaves to a single space - practically a luxury compared to the sardine cans her father turned his own slaves’ quarters into. He operated on the principle that a slave should dread their time off work rather than look forward to it, believing a slave who enjoyed their rest would seek to do it more often. Any other ordinary guild member would have had a revolt on their hooves, but her father was anything but ordinary.
He took her to an elevator bank that was unsurprisingly out of service, turning instead to an open stairwell with the words LEAVE OPEN painted black across the propped door. The combined odors of stale sweat, old food and damp air assaulted her senses as they climbed through the unventilated air. She shut her eyes against the churn of her stomach, embarrassed that she should even be bothered by something that the slaves hurrying past them on the steps had to live with day in and day out. It was one of the things she’d been awful at when she lived under her father’s roof: pretending not to notice.
If there was one thing she was proud of from her time in New Canterlot, it was that she did notice.
The doors leading to the second and third floor had been bricked shut but the fourth was intact. Ganache pushed through, leading her into a carpeted hallway. A dark arc of worn, green flooring bent away from another bricked wall on their right as if to herd them in the correct direction. With the flattened carpet indicating the only way forward, they turned left down the hall and walked until the stale odor of the stairwell gave way to a far more pleasant scent of something savory. Confused by the sudden change, her stomach flipped again out of sheer protest.
“What’s that smell?”
Ganache lifted a hoof without missing a step, indicating a decorative sign suspended from the ceiling on rusted wires. The cursive letters of Whippletree Taphouse still stood out behind someone’s hasty attempt to whitewash the plastic, now bearing the words Enlisted’s Mess.
“Sauteed mutfruit,” he sighed. “We’ve been using them to make the hedgehogs go down easier.”
“Hedgehogs?”
Ganache shook his head. “Not real hedgehogs, unless the Rangers figured out how to bring them back. It’s hard to explain. They’re not my idea.”
Ginger decided not to ask and followed him to a single door near the end of the hall, beside which stood a single Ranger. The stallion glanced their way, recognition flashing in his eyes when he saw Ganache followed quickly by open irritation.
“You’re late, Ganache.” He met Ginger’s gaze, his eyes narrowing. “Who’s she?”
Ganache said nothing, ears pinned back as he looked away. He was nearly as good an actor as Julip. Possibly better. Taking that to be her cue, she answered, but not before a flash of inspiration struck her.
“Rosemary Dressage, how do you do,” she greeted, using her sister’s name in place of her own. If Ganache had been telling the truth and rumors were already swirling into Fillydelphia, announcing herself here could be a potential landmine she needed to avoid. “I caught this stallion wearing a broken collar in the plaza and thought it would be wise to escort him to his work, personally.”
The Ranger’s frown dropped to Ganache. “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Thank you for bringing him back.”
“You should be thanking me for more than that, and you should count yourself lucky that I came here on business in the first place. One shoddy collar is all that stands between reliable work and a cascade of escapes.”
“Yes ma’am,” the Ranger murmured, suddenly aware that he was the one in the hot seat. “I’ll have him collared before he leaves.”
Ginger shook her head. “Thank you, but I’ve already seen to that. In the meantime I’d like to inspect the state of this kitchen he’s so eager to flee from.”
“Yes ma’am,” he repeated, no doubt wondering if he should bother explaining that he’s just the door guard and not the pony responsible for any of this. “If you have any questions, Elder Coronado should be in the chow hall.”
Translation: Don’t look at me, I’m not the boss.
Ginger thanked him on her way through the door and pushed it shut behind her, cutting off any chance he might feel bold enough to ask probing questions. A large kitchen greeted her on the other side, staffed by collared ponies in varying states of surprise. Whisks slowed and spoons swirled in the contents of their pots as several slaves stared at Ginger with quiet recognition. Word spreads fast among the subjugated.
They squeezed past a pony scooping rice from a metal drum spotted with rust, spreading the kernels across a slab of heated steel coated in crackling fat. Others pressed cubes of marbled meat, likely from the area’s plentiful supply of molerats, into a cast iron grinder. She could smell spices in the air, the hiss of sauteing vegetables. Scents and sounds she recognized from home as her family waited to be served at the dining room table. Her only consolation was that these slaves looked better tended to than the ones back home. These ponies lacked the scars of harsh discipline. They didn’t flinch when she drew close. Yet they were still enslaved. Gilded chains were still chains at the end of the day.
A mare pushed through a set of doors ahead of them, hooves hooked around the handle of a service cart stacked high with metal trays glued together with food scraps. The doors paddled back and forth giving Ginger a glimpse of the mess hall beyond. Dozens of Rangers in varying states of dress gathered in tight clusters around a sprinkling of circular tables like a mealtime archipelago. Some ate in full uniform while many more were either fully undressed or simply wore their drab green bottoms. Ginger stopped short of the doors as they settled shut, then looked to Ganache.
“Which one is Coronado?”
Ganache took a peek. Thankfully the ponies working the kitchen knew to mind their own business. Whatever these two were up to, they wanted no part of it. 
“Middle of the room, orange mane, red horn. Hard to miss.”
She leaned in to see. It didn’t take long to spot him.
Elder Coronado sat at a table near the center of the mess hall with several comparably lower ranking Rangers. His sandy brown uniform was only a few shades darker than his coat, the top three buttons undone to accommodate the neatly-kempt gold curls of a mane that wrapped around both sides of his lower neck before joining just above his breastbone. His horn - a crooked, rootlike growth of red striations - glowed with an inner light that kept a metal fork loaded with greens floating a few inches above his tray. He was listening intently to the Ranger seated beside him, another stallion evidently coming to the end of a good joke. When he reached the punchline the table erupted with laughter including the Elder kirin seated among them.
As the laughter subsided, Elder Coronado nipped the greens off his fork and let his eyes wander the room. They eventually settled on the cracked door and his scaled brow twitched, drawing the attention of the soldiers seated with him who quickly followed his gaze. By the time Ganache had pulled the door shut, several Rangers had noticed Ginger and were in the process of getting up from their chairs to investigate the unfamiliar face.
“Whelp,” Ganache said, “that’s my cue to leave. Good luck with whatever your thing is.”
Before she had a chance to reply the collarless stallion had already scrambled back the way they came and was shoving through the rear door into the hallway. The mare guarding the other side of the door let out a startled shout as Ganache bolted away, leaving her to chase after him while shouting for him to stop. Several of the kitchen staff shook their heads at his sudden departure as if it were just another part of their day.
As she stared incredulously after him, the doors to the mess hall swung open and a trio of Rangers greeted her with variations of the same unimpressed expression. Behind them, many of the Rangers had turned to see what all the fuss was about. Elder Coronado watched as well, frowning as he murmured something to a mare in the seat beside him. She stood and hurried out of the mess, likely to raise an alarm or summon base security. Ginger could feel her chance at speaking to Coronado slipping away as the din of conversations grew quiet and more eyes turned toward her.
“Ma’am, you’ll need to…”
First impressions be damned. Drawing on her magic, she focused on an empty patch of floor across from Coronado’s table and dropped the spell on herself. A displacement of air and flicker of magic deposited her into the mess hall barely ten feet from where the Elder sat. Startled shouts drowned in profanity filled the room as Rangers leapt out of their seats sending chairs clattering to the floor as many fumbled for weapons. She’d not so much kicked the hornet’s nest as she had doused it in gasoline and set it alight. Before a shot could be fired she poured her reservoir of magic into a familiar amber dome which dropped over Ginger and Coronado, sealing the two of them inside.
Dizziness threatened her balance as the abrupt expenditure caught up with her, but the dome held. Catching herself on the backrest of a nearby chair, she squeezed her eyes shut and willed the spinning to pass.
“Hello,” the kirin said. His voice was calm and low as if being rushed and subsequently trapped by a stranger was no more concerning than spilled brahmin milk.
Ginger let out a nauseated groan. Apparently her magic was limited by her ability not to puke. Great to find that out now, she thought.
“Take your time.” She cracked an eyelid to see him sitting back in his chair. His eyes were startlingly blue, glued to her as he picked up his fork, unafraid yet very wary of his current circumstances. 
She’d thrown him, but he was recovering quickly. A quick glance outside the bubble gave her plenty of reason to worry. Rangers converged on the mess hall with weapons drawn while those without were forced out, exiting through the adjacent hallway and the kitchen where slaves were being ushered to their quarters. She knew the instant her shield came down, maybe even before, those triggers would be squeezed.
“I’m not a threat to you or them,” she said, the spinning subsiding, “They can put away their weapons.”
The Elder’s brow twitched ever so slightly with surprise. 
“Tell them. Please.”
He studied her for several silent seconds before turning his attention back to his tray, pecking at what was left of something resembling limp asparagus and pointing the loaded fork loosely toward his Rangers. “Tall order, given the circumstances. Even from me.”
Ginger swallowed, trying to ignore the barrels pointed at her. “I need your help. I didn’t have time to make an appointment.”
Coronado chuckled at that. Popping the greens into his mouth, he chewed for a bit before swallowing. “How many did you hurt on your way here?”
She blinked. “None.”
“Including the indentured staff,” he added.
“Indentured…?” She stopped, knowing now wasn’t the time to spark an argument over semantics. “None. I didn’t hurt anyone.”
A voice piped up from outside the dome. “Elder, the plaza has been placed on lockdown.”
Coronado nodded toward the speaker without answering, his attention fixed on the matter standing across from him. The silence stretched. Ginger’s hind hoof began bouncing nervously against the floor. 
“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re being truthful. What kind of help do you want from me?”
She cleared her throat. “A mare very close to me was kidnapped. I need your help to find her.”
He speared more greens with his fork. “That sounds like something you could have reported to any one of the Rangers I have on patrol outside. Why come to me?”
Ginger opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. She wasn’t sure how to answer him without severing what little patience he had on offer. It didn’t take a shrink for her to know she wasn’t acting rationally. Standing here, trapping an Elder of the Steel Rangers with magic few if any unicorns still possessed - it wasn’t her best moment.
“I came here…” She paused, collecting herself. “I came to you because she was taken by Rangers.”
Coronado frowned. “You’re saying she was arrested.”
She shook her head, distress leaching into her voice. “Not arrested. Taken by Rangers from Blinder’s Bluff under the command of Paladin Ironshod. It’s a long story… one that I can explain, but right now I need you to ask your Rangers to start searching the city before he kills her. Please.”
He set down the fork. “Blinder’s Bluff. That’s Elder… Coldbrook’s chapter if I’m not mistaken?”
“Yes."
“Huh. Funny thing, this morning I found out Elder Coldbrook cleared a payment to one of my quartermasters to put a suit of power armor on reserve to a group of civilians. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too thrilled about that. You wouldn’t be part of that group by any chance, would you?”
Her eyes dropped to the trays scattered around the table. “Yes.”
He nodded. “So an Elder of the Steel Rangers went out of his way to loan out top-of-the-line tech, and the very next day you’re here saying his people kidnapped one of you.”
“I know what it looks like, sir.” Putting together the words without giving away what they were doing or where they’d been with his armor was like threading a needle with her eyes shut. It didn’t come easy, and there was no doubt between the two of them that she had plenty she didn’t want to say. “I do. I… we’re assuming Paladin Ironshod is acting on his own. He and Aurora have some bad blood. He stole something from us. We took it back before we left the Bluff.”
Coronado watched her as she spoke as if he might detect the kernel of deception hidden at the center of her testimony. It was clear on his face that he wasn’t impressed by her omission of certain details, but at the same time he didn’t stop her in order to pry them out. He listened, ears occasionally twitching toward the subtle movements of his Rangers outside the dome, and considered her words carefully.
“You’re claiming that this Paladin is operating without his Elder’s knowledge?”
She paused, then nodded.
He hummed and pushed his tray away to cross his hooves on the table. “You didn’t think to contact Elder Coldbrook yourself? He seems willing enough to help.”
She shook her head. “That would have taken more time than we have, and… Coldbrook doesn’t have our best interests at heart. He’d use Aurora as leverage if he did find out.”
“Leverage for what?"
She stayed silent, watching his expression shift.
"You’re not giving me a lot to work with.”
“I know.”
He frowned at the table and sighed. “But as far as I can tell, you haven’t lied to me yet.”
Progress. Her jaw clenched to stave away the wave of emotion. “I wish I were.”
His cloven hoof idly tapped at the table as he considered what he’d heard. Ginger’s heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest while she waited. Every second that ticked by was a second Aurora was out there on her own at Ironshod’s mercy. Finally, Coronado straightened in his chair and regarded her with a singularly arched brow. 
“You’re not a threat?”
It was a test as much as it was a question. “Not to you, sir.”
He snorted, and a smile broke out across his muzzle. “I’ll have to remember that one. How about you stick a pin in this bubble you’ve made and we take a walk. Can you do that for me?”
Her lip twitched with lingering suspicion. “What about them?”
The two of them looked toward the proverbial wall of armed Rangers standing between them and the door leading to the rest of the compound. They stared back from behind their sights, unphased by anything they may have overheard. 
Coronado pushed back his chair, stood and walked to the edge of the dome. With a firmness in his voice, he said, “Good work, all of you. Excellent response time. You may stand down and return to your regular duties.”
Several of the Rangers hesitated, eventually obeying only when many more of their counterparts relaxed enough to lower their weapons. Safeties clicked and metal slid against hardened holsters. Horns dimmed and they watched the soldiers file out of the mess hall, some casting wary glances over their shoulders as they departed. Within a minute the room had emptied. Seconds later, the first off-duty Rangers began to trickle back in partly to finish eating, mostly to eavesdrop.
“Your magic,” Coronado nudged.
She held her breath and doused the spell. The shield came down around them like hot water poured over ice. Fresh air breezed into the stale space they only recently occupied and to her relief none of the Rangers lunged for her, despite several sitting down making no attempt to hide their mistrust. She’d captured their king inside his own proverbial castle. Odds were they were going to be sore about that for some time to come.
Making friends at every turn, she thought.
As for Coronado, the Elder seemed privately amused by the last several minutes. “Follow me,” he said as he weaved between overturned chairs, “I have a senior paladin down in Comms who’ll want to know about this contingent operating in our jurisdiction. Might be he can get Coldbrook on the horn and I can suss out what he knows, minus the leveraging you're worried about.”
He pulled the hallway door open and held it for her.
“On the way you can tell me more about what this Aurora of yours did to get herself chased halfway across Equestria.”







The bolt slammed back and the freezer door cracked open. Once again hooves stamped around her. She tried looking up at the new noises but found her eyelids were frozen shut. Black went red as the light snapped on. The fans slowed. Something touched her neck and a distant voice said she was still alive. Good to hear. She hadn’t been so sure herself. Not since the shivering stopped.
A hoof lifted her chin off her chest. A rattling groan rose from her throat. All but one set of hooves left the freezer, leaving her alone with the only stallion who had any reason to stay at all. Her chin slid off the edge of his hoof and bobbed back down to her frosted coat. Her thoughts moved with tectonic speed, foggy and disorganized. 
“Pegasi,” Ironshod murmured. “You’re all so fragile.”
A moan, barely a sigh, winnowed past her frigid lips. Her muscles ached. She couldn’t feel the blanket being wrapped around her shoulders yet again nor smell the freezer’s thick reek of mildew. The cold had stripped her senses away one after the other until all she had left was the low buzz of a hastily repaired condenser.
The sharp clack of a metal chair being folded open made her jump, cracking the frost that held her left eye open. She watched him set the chair in front of her, douse his horn and sit down.
“Aurora Pinfeathers.” His tone was thoughtful, as if trying her name out for the first time. “Now there’s a confusing name. Pinfeathers, I get that part. It’s the Aurora bit that sounds funny to me. Had a scribe look it up for me and she said auroras used to be something that happened up north. Lights in the sky, something to do with Princess Celestia or Cadance or space, I don’t know. I lost track. Sky-stuff, though. Weird thing for Stable ponies to still be thinking about this long after the war.”
She forced her other eye open, wincing at the sound of frost and skin crackling apart. Ironshod waited for her to say something, but she was nowhere near recovered enough to form words. She could only just now begin to feel the deep burn of frostbite spreading across her slowly thawing body.
Undaunted, he continued. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Our scribes went over every byte of the data we pulled off your Pip-Buck and would you know it, there’s a ringing similarity between you and all the other ponies down there in Stable 10. You’re all pegasi.”
Behind him, a younger uniformed stallion slipped into the freezer with a cloth pouch slung under his jaw. He set it onto the vacant shelving just behind Ironshod, its contents settling with a sturdy clank.
“Why would that be, I wonder? Why would Stable-Tec populate this single Stable with pegasi, and pegasi only?” He paused for effect as a narrow smile crossed his lips. “But maybe that’s not the right question. Maybe the right question has nothing to do with Stable-Tec. Maybe it has everything to do with your Enclave.”
The muscles in her face creaked as she mustered up a confused frown. At this, his smile broadened. He leaned forward and thumped one of his wide, black hooves onto her knee. A wave of dull pain rippled from the contact.
“Remember what you told me that night outside the wall? You said you knew things about the Enclave that could end our stalemate and deliver us victory. Do you recall saying that?”
She did. It was the lie that granted them entry into Blinder’s Bluff and access to the medicine that saved their lives.
“Of course, we both know now that wasn’t entirely true. No self-respecting Enclave agent would allow themselves to be carried on the back of a ghoul into our custody, nor would one ever allow us access to a Pip-Buck. So maybe you aren't an Enclave mare, Aurora Pinfeathers.” He gave her knee a pat and sat back. “But you’re no innocent mare, either.”
“Is th-there,” she stammered, licking her lips. “A puh-point?”
He chuckled at her. “She speaks. Yes, there is a point, and I think by now you know what that is. In one hoof I have a mare fresh out of a Stable, seemingly delirious with radiation sickness and willing to say anything to get her feathers on a common medicine she could find anywhere. A mare whose companion just so happens to be snatched up by bounty hunters on the same night and taken to the operational hub of this region’s single most successful trading company. She bumbles after her and against all odds manages to lure a deathclaw into those headquarters, tearing it apart from the inside, and the two of them show up the next morning without a scratch on either of them. Autumn Song is nowhere to be found and suddenly this Stable pony seems to know details about a piece of prewar weaponry that had been lost since the bombs first fell.”
Ironshod pushed back in his chair and stood, his face growing more contemplative as he stepped toward the shelf and the cloth sack. “Your friend, the bug, told Elder Coldbrook that SOLUS was a spy satellite. I think we both know that was a lie.”
Silver magic hooked the bottom of the bag and he upended it. Two U-shaped pieces of spiked iron clattered out of the bag and onto the shelf.
“My point, Aurora, is that I don’t think you’re as stupid as you pretend to be. I don’t think it was dumb luck that allowed you to rescue your friend without so much as a bruise to show for what you claimed happened. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your Stable happens to be populated by pegasi or that the Enclave chose to make contact with you instead of culling you like they do with any other dustwing they find.”
Side by side, he set the spiked shoes on the floor, their iron tines pointing up like tiny stalagmites. He lifted his foreleg and set his hoof onto the first, bearing his weight onto the spikes until they sank into the dark keratin. Aurora watched, bewildered.
When the first shoe was secure, he adjusted his stance and pressed the next hoof onto the pointed iron. “An entire Stable descended from Equestria’s most influential pegasi. Wonderbolts, ministry staff, even Rainbow Dash herself. Oh, and of course your Stable’s first overmare just happens to be Commander Spitfire, one of the earliest known progenitors of the early Enclave. And I’ve kept up with our progress back home. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Enclave just happened to show up in force the minute we start excavating.”
He lifted his hoof to examine the iron’s fit, then dropped it back to the floor with a hard clank. “What’s the real purpose of your Stable?”
So that’s what this is. Ironshod hadn’t stalked her across the wasteland for petty payback. He’d deluded himself into believing a homebrew conspiracy built from his own paranoia, and the lies Aurora sowed to get herself in and out of Blinder’s Bluff intact had thrown down deep roots inside Ironshod’s mind. She closed her eyes against the stinging cold, struggling to keep up with his tangled knots of logic. He believed Stable 10 belonged to the Enclave, and she had done nothing in the last several days but convince him he was right.
“Aurora.” Smooth, chilled iron touched her chin and she opened her eyes. He took his hoof away, his expression shifting. He looked tired. Like someone who had spent his entire life pushing against a boulder that refused to move, and after so many years he finally saw a chance to gain an inch. “Tell me.”
She swallowed. Her throat felt like she'd swallowed glass. “My home has nothing to do with the Enclave.”
Ironshod’s eyes darkened. “Lie to me again.”
Tremors shuddered down her body as fear drenched her thawing nerves with adrenaline. “I’m not lying.”
She watched the cloud of fog trail the disappointed sigh across his lips with quiet dread.
“You are. But that’s alright. Lying comes naturally to your kind, and I’ll gladly spend as much time as you need to teach you to tell the truth.” Slowly, he stepped toward her chair until the gap between them had dwindled to nothing. She instinctively bent away but he pressed his hoof against her cheek, stopping her, the metal shoe hovering at the bottom of her field of view. 
He chuckled. “All that talk about your name. Seems only fair for you to learn something about mine.”
His hoof slid off her cheek and clicked against the floor. Her eyes widened with understanding. “Don’t.”
“Then tell the truth.”
She did her best to match the intensity of his gaze. “I did.”
The words reverberated off the freezer walls and Ironshod stood above her unfazed. Seconds ticked by as he waited but Aurora couldn’t think of anything else to say except what she’d already told him. Her heart slammed against her ribs as rising panic urged her to pull against her straps. Nothing. 
Ironshod watched her struggle, his eyes devoid of sympathy. Only once she stopped did he speak again. “Are you ready to learn?”
She shook her head hard enough to disturb the tears gathering in her vision. “Ironshod, don’t...”
The words trailed away as she helplessly tracked the slow rise of his hoof, its iron rim catching the light as it stopped just behind his shoulder. The strike caught her across the cheek. The freezer lurched. Her head cracked against shelves on her way down. Everything felt dull as she settled on the floor, only to be wrenched upright just as the leading wave of white-hot pain roared through her skull. 
Blood, wet and warm, streamed into her mouth. Ironshod stared down at her, waiting for the answer she couldn't give him. 
He sighed. "Let's try again."
His bloodied hoof rose. 
And fell. 







Traffic in the corridors of Stable 6 parted for Elder Coldbrook like waves off the bow of a ship, allowing him and the wiry scribe trailing behind him an unobstructed path down to the radio room. He skimmed the first paragraphs of the report hovering in its open folder as they walked, his vision surreptitiously aided by a pair of spectacles floating just above the printed lines.
They were making good progress with the dig despite the Enclave’s persistent harassment. His knights had found rubble among the boulders. Concrete, pieces of rebar. Clear evidence of prewar construction though nothing resembling the outer skin of a Stable. An access tunnel, they surmised. Stable-Tec did love digging tunnels. He tucked his readers into his uniform and floated the folder back to his scribe. 
“The second we break through, I want to know. Dismissed.” He didn’t wait for the young stallion to answer nor did he look back to see if he’d turned back into the flow of corridor traffic. 
Life had gotten busier over the last several days. Much busier. Every day brought at least a dozen new entrepreneuring faces claiming to be related to, business partners with or sworn rivals of Autumn Song in the hopes of filling the vacuum left by her family’s shattered trade syndicate. He knew he’d need to make that decision soon before the wasteland found a way of making it for him. Between the influx of independent traders and the constant comings and goings of Rangers assigned to either assist with the dig or join the braidwork of armed patrols on the local roads, the whole of Blinder’s Bluff was a hive of activity. 
He tracked a gap in traffic and swung left through it, crossing the corridor and slipping through a steel door simply marked COMMS. A wine-coated mare greeted him on the other side, clipboard strapped to her foreleg. She’d been waiting on him and tipped her head for him to follow. He did, trailing her through what had at one time been the Stable’s I.T. space. They passed by two scribes with their faces buried in their terminals in an attempt to look busier than they were. 
The mare led him through an unlocked door and into a back office. A single desk sat pushed up against the far wall. On it rested a terminal and a single headset. As he approached the desk the mare turned and left the room, closing the door behind her. He sat down and put the headset on. The faint sound of another stallion’s breathing hissed in his ear.
He squinted at the terminal and pressed the key that activated his microphone.
“Elder Coronado,” he said, summoning his best smile as he spoke despite the terminal’s lack of a camera. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Did you use back channels in my chapter to commandeer a full suit of power armor?”
His eyes glazed at the tinny noise of his colleague’s voice. “Well, I do recall a chapter in the Friendship Journal touching heavily on the concept of sharing.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” An annoyed sigh bristled out of the headphones but he stopped short of speaking his mind, which meant he had bigger fish to fry. “I have another question that I suspect you already know I’m going to ask. I would appreciate your honesty in the matter.”
Coldbrook reclined as far as the rigid chair would allow, staring at the empty wall behind the terminal. The rumor mill must have been working overtime. He’d expected it to take another few days or even another week before one of the other elders caught wind of his little dig, let alone scrape up the courage to ask him about it directly.
He smiled. “Congratulations, you’re the first to hear about it.”
A moment’s hesitation. Barely a blink, but noticeable. “Yes or no. Are you conducting an op in my city?”
He opened his mouth, then stopped as his smile dimmed. “We’re a thousand miles apart, Elder, and I already have plenty on my plate. No offense, but if I were looking to take on another chapter’s workload I’d ask Elder Nests for a crack at the west coast. See if she’s not pulling my hocks over that quote-unquote synthetic advisor she’s always going on about.”
He could hear Coronado murmur something to someone but the words were too muddied by distance and a muffled microphone to make out anything concrete. So there was another pair of ears in the audience. Risky not to tell him beforehand. Rude not to introduce them.
Coronado’s hoof came away from the microphone with a scratch that made Coldbrook jerk slightly in his seat. “I’m sitting across my desk from a mare claiming one of your paladins abducted one of her companions and shot another. A stallion by the name Ironshod.”
The chair creaked as Coldbrook straightened. “I’m sorry, no, that’s not accurate. Paladin Ironshod was given orders to take a logistics team to Junction City. He’s overseeing construction of a supply depot there.”
“How long ago since he left?”
He paused. “Three days ago.”
Coronado’s voice dimmed as he addressed his guest. “How long for you?”
A mare’s voice, distant but vaguely familiar, answered. “Four days. But we hit some… snags. On the way.”
Coldbrook leaned forward in his seat. “Elder, who is that with you?”
The question flickered across the impossible distance between them at the speed of light and still the root-horned Elder at the other end managed to dodge it. “You need to be more concerned with the whereabouts of your Paladin.”
Another pause. Another private discourse between the kirin and the mare with him. “A gray stallion, above average height, silver magic and bearing a crucible for a mark. Would you call that an accurate description?”
His expression flickered and he allowed his gaze to shift past the radio, straying to some distant point beyond the wall behind it. He imagined if he had proper magic the riveted plates might release a satisfying groan under the force of anger warming the core of his chest, but as things were he would have to settle with quiet fuming as he wondered what in the celestial fuck Ironshod thought he was doing.
“Yes.” The words rolled out of his mouth like stones. “That would be him.”
“Well alright then. Any thoughts on what might motivate him to travel all this way against orders? Little unusual for a paladin to turn wanderer, even for your command.”
Mouthy fucking kirin. “I couldn’t say. Paladin Ironshod has a reputation for obsessing on his work from time to time, most definitely, but the reasons that appear to have taken him east are his alone. Naturally I take this matter very seriously, Elder Coronado, but there’s not much I can do for you beyond offer my assurance that he will be strongly reprimanded upon--”
Jumbled noise from the other end interrupted him until the mare’s voice practically burrowed into his ears. 
“TELL ME WHERE HE TOOK AURORA YOU SADISTIC FUCKING SNAKE!”
Ah, he thought, listening to the commotion of the microphone being wrestled away. So that’s where the three of you went.


	




Coronado and the Rangers tending the radio room weren’t impressed by her outburst. Moreso, the ponies currently pinning her to the floor with overlapping fields of magic and more than a few heavy hooves didn’t seem keen on letting her back up. She heard one of them ask about shackles and a suppression ring and a small part of her dared them to try. It hadn’t worked out well the last time she wore one.
This wasn’t the first time one of them had been abducted, either. It was as if they were stuck on some kind of cruel merry-go-round, always bending toward the same roadblocks. Always forced to turn to the powers that be to dig them out of their pit only to stumble into a deeper one somewhere down the line. And the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the only way to win the game was not to play. It was no wonder nobody bothered trying to fix their broken little world. Why fix anything if the next pony can just kick it over.
Ginger grimaced at the peeling linoleum as the Rangers’ weight shifted off of her enough so that she didn’t have to strain for her breath. The pressure of magic dissipated from around her legs and a gentle clatter of hooves moved away from her. Confused, she looked up to see a cloven hoof extended toward her.
“Come on,” he said. “Stand up.”
She did, hooking her hoof into his and allowing herself to be pulled off the floor. Were it not for the Rangers that had tackled her in the first place, she might have considered the gesture chivalrous. If she had to guess by the intensity of stares aimed her way by radio room personnel and more than a few armed Rangers gathering in the doorway, no one here was thinking about offering her their coats.
Coronado waved them away and she watched as they warily returned to their posts. 
“I hope it felt good getting that out of your system,” he said, gesturing toward the bank of outdated radio equipment behind him. “Because you just chased him off frequency.”
She listened to the dull hiss of empty airwaves flow from the radio. The absence of Coldbrook’s verbal bile was evidence enough that he had walked away from the conversation.
“He would have anyway, once you got close to the things he’s involved in.”
Coronado frowned at that. “Am I to assume you’re being vague for a reason?”
She looked up at him, meeting the strange pony’s gaze. “Yes.”
Her hind leg resumed its slow, nervous bouncing. Distrust flowed over her like wet mortar. There was a good chance Coronado didn’t know about his colleague’s obsession with SOLUS, and unless he was an expert actor he hadn’t given her any indication that would suggest he knew what was happening at Stable 10. The less he knew about that, the better. They couldn’t afford another Coldbrook, least of all Aurora.
Coronado pursed his lips and closed his eyes, the exact likeness of a parent quickly running out of patience with their unruly foal. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
Her ear twitched. “What does that mean?”
“It means what it means. There’s evidently a paladin conducting an unsanctioned operation in my city and who you’ve accused of violating the Charter.” He spoke with finality, hinting that she wouldn’t like what he was about to say while expecting her to accept it. “I’ll pass all the information including your description of Paladin Ironshod to city security. If he turns up, we’ll do everything to help your friend.”
She stared at him. “If he turns up.”
Coronado’s brow dropped at the insinuation. “I’m sorry, I thought this was what you wanted me to do for you.”
“It’s…” She bit down on the words before they could make things worse. He was right. This was exactly what she’d asked for and, despite giving him every reason to throw her out, the Elder was cooperating. “I’m sorry. Thank you for your help.”
He nodded, his expression softening. “If you think of anything else that might help, don't hesitate to come back. Ideally not through the servant’s quarters, next time.”
The little joke glanced off her like a poorly aimed bullet. She wasn’t in the mood. Coronado waited a moment for her to respond before nodding toward one of the stallions still lurking in the doorway.
“I’ll let Knight Fletcher show you the way out.”
There was nothing left to say. She’d gotten what she wanted. Yet as she followed the stallion she couldn’t help but worry it wasn’t enough.







Chops leaned against the remains of a streetlight converted into a makeshift community signpost. Bits of weathered paper, most of it either scavenged or made from scratch, fluttered in the afternoon breeze that wound its way through Fillydelphia's bustling main drag. He watched Dancer make light conversation with a pretty mare posted at the rear of a trade wagon, the latter blushing while the lesser casually plied his charm in the hopes of learning the whereabouts of the Pinfeathers mare and her entourage.
He shifted his wings to keep the muscles from tightening up, careful not to move them in a way that might attract the attention of a clutch of Rangers chatting across the street. An unremarkable jacket featuring the faded logo of a long forgotten buckball team on his back hadn’t been his ideal choice of disguise, forcing him to link feathers under his belly to keep them hidden. It served its purpose, however. Ponies passed him without so much as a second glance. He might as well have been invisible, not that he wasn’t already used to the feeling.
Dancer, as usual, went with a little more flash to match his gratingly extroverted personality. Had the younger stallion not joined up with the Enclave he would have probably wound up scraping together bits at one of New Canterlot’s stagnant theaters, or anywhere else that had use for a loudmouth with an ego. He hadn’t been willing to settle for just a simple brown duster to cover his wings. Nope. Needed to throw a black ammo bandolier over his shoulder to go with it. The brass rims of several shotgun cartridges poked out from the leather loops. He’d even gone through the effort to leave a few empty to suggest he’d fired a few rounds off. Chops hadn’t bothered trying to argue. It didn’t matter that neither of them were presently armed, let alone with a weapon that would arguably crack an earth pony’s teeth were someone stupid enough to modify it with a bite trigger. Dancer was always going to be Dancer whether it made sense or not. It wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of morons already walking the wasteland pulling dumber stunts than wearing ammo for looks. 
At least Dancer did a convincing job of blending in.
The trader mare giggled at something Dancer said. At the rate things were going, Chops figured he’d be standing guard outside a rented bedroom before they found Aurora. It didn’t help that they were already on thin ice with Minister Primrose, but at least they weren’t in former Lieutenant Julip’s position. Emphasis on the former, that mare was well past thin ice and neck deep in freezing water. As far as Chops was concerned, his number one priority was to avoid getting dragged down with her. Outside of the Enclave, the options for a mute quickly dwindled. There weren’t any jobs for a stallion who had to write everything he wanted to say. Fewer when they found out why he’d been born without a voice.
He chewed the inside of his cheek and watched Dancer charm the young mare. The only reason he’d even been considered by the recruiters was thanks to that preening idiot. The two of them had grown up together in the same backwater neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, not far from the sloping ruins of Old Canterlot and all the poisons that leached out from the rubble. They weren’t friends. Not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway, but close enough that he didn’t argue the point whenever Dancer recounted their early years together. Even then Dancer had been boisterous and outgoing, and the opportunity to glom onto a colt whom he didn’t have to worry about talking over had probably seemed like a golden opportunity. As they grew older, Chops had found an old book in a discount store on something called sign language. Convincing Dancer to sit down and learn it with him hadn’t been so much a request as it had been a threat. If Dancer wanted to yammer on until he was blue in the face, Chops wasn’t going to keep spending caps on pencils and paper just to get a word in edgewise. It was either that or he’d refuse to listen. 
Dancer chose to learn, as he called it, “wingspeak” and eventually would use their mutual skill to convince the recruiters to give Chops a chance. As far as they were concerned, taking on two eager stallions capable of communicating in a forgotten language could only reap dividends. 
He sighed and turned his attention back to the road where ponies of every stripe trotted along with their carts down the decently maintained pavement. Not much wingspeaking he could do when the first sight of a stray feather would probably send the local population into a frenzy. Granted the risk of being pegged as Enclave at first sight was slim, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Plus Dancer hated being called a dustwing with a capital H. Even the suggestion would make him foul to be around for days. Bad enough, even, that Chops would sometimes consider whether this whole arrangement was worth the trouble. 
His jacket scraped against the old posters as he glanced up the main drag. His stomach growled, irritated that he hadn’t replenished all the calories he’d burned making the flights to and promptly from New Canterlot. Neither of them wanted to stop for a break on the way to Fillydelphia, not after the ass-chewing they’d gotten thanks to Julip. Were he not starving for a decent meal and a nap, he might have recognized the mare galloping across the pavement the first time.
Ginger Dressage raced by without seeing him. Chops straightened, looking up and down the road for signs of Aurora or their ghoul but saw nothing. Already, the sound of the lone mare’s hooves were quickly fading into the crowd. He darted up the sidewalk, stopping directly in Dancer’s line of sight and stomped a hoof onto the concrete. 
Grudgingly, Dancer tore his attention away from the mare and glowered up at him. “What?”
He stabbed a hoof in the direction Ginger had run. Dancer frowned and looked up the road, but by now the unicorn was well out of sight. He looked back to Chops and shook his head. “What?”
He pressed his lips into a thin line and stared daggers at the stallion, wings fidgeting under cover of his disguise. Dancer was thinking with his dick, and his dick was terrible at pantomime. Chops pointed again, eyes wider. The trader mare cleared her throat as if to provide a counterpoint. It was all the convincing Dancer needed.
“If you need to take a leak, just find an alley. I’m busy.”
Chops sighed a soundless scream and tore off in the direction Ginger had run, leaving his partner behind.







The bar of soap rocketed across the bathroom and exploded against the tile floor, peppering the little bathroom nook with lily scented shards.
“Spitfire you bitch! You fucking BITCH!”
Tears mixed into the water still drizzling from the showerhead as Rainbow coughed out a furious sob. Had she really been that blind to what was happening around her? Had Jet Stream been in on it, too? How many ponies had known? How many traitors did it take to hijack a project as big as SOLUS? Just Spitfire, Thunderlane and a few loyal Wonderbolts? All of the Wonderbolts? More?
Her head was spinning. Her legs shuddered as she staggered out of the bathroom and dripped her way across the main compartment, the implications swirling around her like debris around the core of a hurricane. The missiles had been timed. Synchronized to launch somehow. She felt dizzy but didn’t want to sit on the bed. She didn’t want someone to have to replace the sheets if she threw up. Her bony flanks hit the floor with a wet splat.
Her voice dropped to a shuddering whisper. “Everything you put me through. All the things you made me do. Just so you could live in this hole in the ground while the rest of the world burns.”
She wiped her feathers across her eyes, accidentally smearing her face with a film of soap. She didn’t care. She didn’t deserve to care. Spitfire duped her and now everything she’d even known was dead and dust. Her gaze turned to the little amenities Sledge and the others had scrounged up to make her feel more at home and felt the tears welling back into her eyes. She didn’t deserve any of this. Not the food or the coffee or the hot showers or the rescue that brought her here in the first place. It was her fault that any of these ponies had to live here. The truth of it burned itself into her chest like a brand, and she buckled under the force of her own loathful sobs. 
Every resource that Spitfire had gained access to, every channel of communication she used, every ounce of influence she exploited had been dropped into her lap when Rainbow relinquished control of the Ministry of Awesome just to save her own reputation. Equestria was dead because she’d been too afraid to be seen as anything but the daring guardian of Loyalty that everyone imagined her to be. There was no spell that could undo what she’d done. No magical mcguffin that would turn back the clock and let her try again. She rolled onto her side and let the cold floor sap the warmth from her. Everything, all of this, was her fault.
Laying there, her knees curled toward her chin, she worried about what came next. 
It didn’t take long. 
The lights shuddered and blinked off. A low, descending groan rumbled through the Stable’s skeleton like a gargantuan bell hurled into a pit followed by an impossibly deep silence. 
In the absolute darkness that followed, Rainbow sniffed and slowly sat up. She held up her wing but saw nothing. The tiny light on Sledge’s card reader was gone. The glow from the desk terminal was a fading shadow left behind by cooling vacuum tubes. Voices began to murmur from the neighboring compartment, rising to shouts as it became apparent that the doors weren’t responding. More cries erupted from the corridors outside as realization dawned on the residents of Stable 10.
The generator had failed.
> Chapter 35: Unlikely Allies
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Catching up to Ginger was a losing prospect from the beginning. For Celestia's sake, the mare could run.
Chasing her down was attracting the attention of more than a few curious ponies, including glances from the Rangers mingling among the afternoon hoof traffic. Chops bristled as he squeezed between two stallions in full power armor in a bid to keep the red-gold flicker of Ginger’s short tail in view. Something didn’t bode well about the way she was running, as if he weren’t the only one on her heels.
He caught a glimpse of her ducking left down a narrow side street and nearly bowled over a young colt who meandered in front of him in hopes of selling some home-made trinkets. Several ponies shouted after him to watch where he’s going and were even less happy when he galloped away without an apology. He checked to make sure the incident hadn’t spurred any Rangers into pursuing him. Satisfied he wasn’t being followed, he turned off the main drag and onto the comparably empty side street.
His hoofsteps dropped into a cautious canter as he searched the thin smatter of ponies walking along the curbs. Nothing. Breathing hard from the chase and almost certain Ginger hadn’t been more than half a block ahead of him before she turned, he instinctively swung his attention to the open alley just a stone’s throw away. As he approached the shaded cut through the block of buildings he quickly saw that his instincts had been right. The loose rubble, dirt and filth that normally made these narrow paths treacherous to navigate - oftentimes clogging them to the point of making them impassable - had been shoved to one side of the alley in an almost ruler-straight line. Recently, too. Not all of the debris had gotten a chance to settle and some had spilled back into the now conspicuously clear path.
Chops paused at the entrance, noting that only the first twenty or so yards had been cleared. Beyond that, more rubbish, none of it appearing disturbed. A lone grey painted door sat at the far end of the cleared space. The only way it could have stood out more was if a neon sign had been hanging off the bricks above it. He gave the shoulder joint of each wing a tiny, reassuring roll. If this was where Aurora and her friends were hiding out and someone decided now would be an opportune moment to shake him down for caps, he needed to be ready to lead them away. Unarmed and lacking his partner’s aggravating charisma, flight would be the only weapon in his arsenal. The pureblood’s safety was the mission. Everything else was secondary.
He peered up toward the strip of overcast outlined by the rooftops. Though he couldn’t see them he knew the vintage, automated zebra cannonry perched atop the towers nearby could easily turn an escape flight fatal. All the major coastal cities had those striped, pill-shaped turrets. Being this close to the guns of the old war made him uneasy. He hurried down the alley, stopping at the unmarked door.
It was open. Just a crack. Just enough to make out the bright blue eyes peering back at him, lit by the dim amber glow of a unicorn’s horn. His hooves reacted faster than his brain and he hurled himself away from the opening. At that instance the alley shimmered. Sucking wind and a terrible sense of vertigo obliterated his senses as he found himself diving away from the ambush in one moment and surrounded by wooden walls and dusty shelves in the next. 
Physics didn’t care where he’d ended up. The laws of inertia held fast, sending his substantial frame barreling through shelves along the wall. Boxes and bottles and medical supplies crashed to the floor splashing a variety of liquids, pills and shattered glass around his hooves. He would have sailed headfirst into the wall were it not for the inexplicably strong, probing force that redirected his momentum upward, pinning his chin against the uninsulated boards while the shelving unit came to rest heavily against his back.
He struggled and failed to effectively process the last few seconds, and his stomach nearly came up in bodily revolt. He gagged, squeezing his eyes shut against the visceral noise of shattered medicine bottles still glugging their contents out around his hooves. 
“What in the goddesses’ names is… who is he? What happened to my tinctures?!”
Hoofsteps scraped behind him followed by a familiar, ragged voice. “Did you find… oh.”
Turning his head felt like he was pushing it through setting cement, the absolute smothering force of magic keeping him in place smearing across his face until he could see the ponies gathering on the other side of the shelves behind him. Ginger stood inches away, her horn ablaze like a torch. The ghoul and another unicorn he didn’t recognize stood just behind her with evidently differing focuses of concern. The stranger, evidently the proprietor of whatever establishment this was judging by the vest he wore, gawked with dismay at the valuable liquids soaking into the floorboards. The ghoul, however, had locked eyes with him.
“Chops?” A flurry of confusion crossed its face as it looked at Ginger, who in turn regarded Chops with dawning recognition. “What is he doing here?”
Ginger shook her head as if she’d expected to be crushing some other pony in her magic, which in turn begged the question: how was she this strong?
“I… he followed me here. I thought he was one of Ironshod’s.” The confusion on her face quickly solidified into fresh suspicion. “What are you doing here?”
She waited several seconds for him to answer, during which he stared back with baffled incredulity. His wings were pinned. What did she expect him to say?
The ghoul cleared its throat. “He’s mute.”
He could practically see the color rise to her cheeks. His nostrils flared a little as he blew out an aggravated breath. If Dancer hadn’t been so fixated on getting his dick squeezed, he’d have some backup to help calm this lunatic mare down before whatever chems giving her Saddle Rager strength convinced her to smear him against the wall like a rotten tato.
Embarrassed or not, she narrowed her gaze at him. “Where’s your friend? The talkative one. Is he with you?”
“Ginger, he can’t talk.”
The stifling shimmer around his head dissipated. “He can shake his head and nod.”
Chops shook his head as best a stallion could with his face pushed against a wooden wall. Ginger appeared unmoved. She tipped her horn toward his jacket. 
“Weapons?”
He’d barely begun shaking his head a second time when her magic swept up under the folds of his disguise, feeling for whatever guns or grenades she thought he was hiding. He endured it, blinking irritatedly as she combed under his interlocked wings only to come up with nothing. Her frown deepened while Chops stared at her horn and the faint but visible ring of char that stained the living bone like a tattoo.
The stranger had apparently taken the time to grow some confidence. “I’d like to know how he plans to pay for all of this damage. That’s hundreds of caps worth of-”
“You’ll be reimbursed,” Ginger snapped, unconsciously pressing harder against Chops as she galled the stranger into silence. It was a lie, and not a convincing one. “Just… one thing at a time. Please.”
She turned back to him and her eyes hardened. “Did you or your people have anything to do with Aurora?”
He blinked, confused, and bent his head back toward the rest of the dimly lit room. At the edge of his vision he could spy the corner of a wooden table peeking out behind Roach’s shoulder. A single hind leg, green as grass, lay motionless atop it. Julip, he realized. But no one else. Where was the pureblood?
His visible confusion seemed to satisfy Ginger enough that her attention shifted to the broken shelving pressed against his back. For one fleeting moment it seemed like she was deciding how best to pull it away from him. Then she sighed, turned her attention to an empty patch of floor between them and narrowed her eyes in concentration.
Chops had less than the space of a breath to decipher what was happening before the entirety of reality wrenched away only for the same dusty room to clamp down around him in a completely different orientation. The shelving thumped against the wall to his left, sending a fresh deluge of jars and bottles crashing to the floor. Ginger stood directly in front of him, Roach just beyond her with a startled expression on his craggy face. The stranger looked like he was about to void his bowels.
Wide-eyed, heart pounding, his mind screaming at him to find some reasonable way to explain away what this unicorn had but was in no way supposed to be able to do and yet here he stood staring at the exact fucking wall he’d been hugging less than a second ago… Chops did the only thing a reasonable pegasus could do.
He bent over and retched on his own hooves.







Roach watched Peppercorn provide the Enclave stallion with a damp rag to clean himself up, wondering how much more the doctor could take before deciding the better option would be to bolt out the door screaming for the nearest Ranger rather. The stallion looked primed to tuck tail and do just that any second now. He needed a distraction.
“Get him something he can write with,” he murmured, tilting his head toward the recently teleported and nauseated Chops.
Peppercorn hesitated, only now seeming to realize how far out of his depth he was. “First, tell me how she can do that.”
“Magic,” Ginger stated. “Pencil and paper, please.”
The doctor took a step back, nodded and went to fetch the items. Roach kept an eye on him, wary of Peppercorn’s proximity to the door leading out into the storefront. Thankfully the stallion didn’t wander far. He hurried to the other side of the store room, pausing briefly to tip an ear toward an unconscious Julip’s muzzle and assess her breathing before tugging open a cabinet drawer and rifling through its contents. Rather than producing a gun or an ominously tinted syringe, he lifted out a nearly exhausted pad of paper and the yellow nib of a dulled pencil. As he returned with the items Roach noted the spiral notepad’s bright pink cover and the cartoonishly happy grin of the ministry mare featured across it, hooves thrown wide in mid-cheer. Balloon letters suspended above her head confidently declared, “BE A PAL! SHARE GOOD MORALE!”
Chops looked particularly bewildered by the offering as it floated toward him in Ginger’s magic. As he sidestepped his sick and moved forward to take them, she promptly flipped open the notepad and pressed it into the flat of his hoof. The pencil hovered in front of his nose. No wings, she was telling him. One so-called dustwing, they could explain. Two? The poor doctor would be on the streets screaming “Invasion!” before they could stop him.
Chops grudgingly took the pencil between his teeth and started to write. When he turned the pad back for them to read, it contained a single word.
Pureblood?
“Don’t call her that. Her name is Aurora. She was taken.” Ginger bit off the final word as she spoke it, turning to Roach. “Coldbrook’s feigning innocence to save face, but Coronado agreed to help us look for her. So there’s that.”
Roach knew better than to console her with empty promises. They would only add to the helplessness she was feeling. They were both feeling.
He grunted. "We could try the bounty boards. Someone's bound to see Ironshod for the right price."
Chops was already scribbling another note. Ginger only looked more frazzled for having to juggle the two of them. "I can just imagine how successful we'll be putting a bounty on a Steel Ranger. And with whose caps as collateral? We aren't exactly swimming in riches."
Her words stung him, but Chops had her attention before she could notice. He practically shoved the notepad at her. Her expression darkened as she read. 
Where did you lose her?
But above the question was another, hastily aborted sentence. 
You were supposed to
Her breath slowed. Roach took a half-step toward Ginger as she roughly snatched the notepad from Chops’ hoof to glare at the redacted accusation. Chops silently floundered, his eyes chasing after his only means of communication. 
Roach could see the heat rising in her and tried to get ahead of it, setting a hoof on her back in hopes of holding back the dam that Chops had just kicked a hole into. “Ginger,” he said.
“I was supposed to do… what?” Her ears pinned back, eyes locked onto the Enclave stallion as barely contained fury seethed in her voice. She spun the notepad around in her magic for him to see, giving it a single hard shake for emphasis. “Please explain it to me because I clearly need it spelled out how badly I dropped the BALL.”
Chops held out a hoof for the notepad, the pencil still ready between his teeth. Ginger whipped the pad out of his reach, sending a trail of torn papers arcing through the air to come to a slapping stop against the far wall.
“No, no, no. YOU of all ponies don’t get to lecture me because Prim-… that bitch back home ordered you to. You can take that bullshit of hers straight to Tartarus or Hell or whatever the fuck cult garbage she’s sold you on!” Her voice rose to a frantic pitch, furious tears welling in her eyes. “You’re nothing but vultures! This stalking shit you do, these mind games? I’m done with it. Aurora isn’t some fucking mascot or totem for you to chase after. She’s worth more than you’ll ever fucking know. Do you understand me?”
Roach tugged on her shoulder. “Hey, I think he gets…”
She wrenched herself away, whirling on him. 
“Don’t. Just let me…” For a flicker of a second the mask of anger slipped just enough for him to see the raw, helpless despair she was hiding underneath. She worked her jaw back and forth, eyes brimming, fighting to control herself just a little longer. Her voice was thick when she spoke again. “She’s the first pony besides you who ever thought I was worth anything! I don’t have to pretend around her, Roach, and I’m so sick and tired of pretending! When she’s with me it’s like… like I finally have something worth waking up for. She loves me and she saved my life and now she’s in the same boat I was in and I can’t muster so much as a fucking clue to where she even is!”
She shook her head, the words shaking as her anger lost steam. “I’m just… I need her back. I was supposed to keep her safe. What if he hurts her? If he… I can’t lose her.”
Her voice split. “I can’t.”
A hard, hitching shudder sent the first tears tracking down her face. He pulled her into a crushing hug all while staring daggers at the bewildered stallion who tipped her into this spiral. Being around Aurora, a pony who saw everything and everyone with fresh eyes, had allowed Ginger to examine herself honestly without having to think about what other ponies expected her to be. It had been a taste of freedom that she wasn’t ready to lose. 
“I don’t want to be alone,” she babbled. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He tightened his grip around her as if she might shake herself apart if he let go. A chair quietly scraped the floor as the doctor seated himself beside Julip’s unconscious form, tactfully turning his attention to the ailing mare to give Ginger and Roach some semblance of privacy. Chops, on the other hoof, stood frozen in the same spot like a stallion who only just realized he’d stepped on a landmine.
Roach pressed his muzzle behind Ginger’s ear and gently shushed, a paternal habit he hadn’t used since he had Violet to care for. Somewhere between then and now, the grown mare clutching him had joined the long list of ponies he’d met over the decades who filled the void his daughter left behind. 
In the beginning, the bombs had made the world a simpler place to exist in. Food, water and shelter became the trinity of life and many survivors found they could thrive more comfortably in the absence of ethics, morality and social expectations. For them the apocalypse had been liberating. They gleefully rode the descent of Equestria like a twisted carnival ride. The rules of the old world withered in the choking anarchy that followed. But over time new generations came of age, grew up and took the places of those first survivors. They looked out onto the broken world they’d inherited and decided they wanted more from life than sickness and ruins. Some looked back toward the old world and attempted to puzzle out the steps needed to rebuild. Some formed communities. Villages and towns, places that could be defended and expanded. Others sought to consolidate power by conquest, manipulation or both. 
During his infrequent excursions from the tunnel to the greater wasteland, Roach witnessed the maps warp and change almost as if being shuffled like a deck of cards. At one point Junction City had been called Junktown, led by a pack of raiders with an affinity for barbed wire and beheading. Then it had become an outpost for the early Rangers, cleared out and walled in by ponies determined to expand their influence all the way from the coasts to Equestria’s old seat of power. The Rangers moved on and settlers moved in, building the little trading post that existed today. Factions of every stripe would appear and disappear over the years, absorbed or devoured by some bigger fish. He lost track of how many there had been, every one of them trying to build something resembling a world they understood less and less as time wore on.
It was like watching a pony trying to solve a puzzle who didn’t know half the pieces were missing. They looked back at the decaying billboards, remnants of books and movies, retelling legends that grew less and less accurate in the hopes of understanding what made the old world work. Meanwhile the Enclave and the Rangers secreted away the old knowledge and destroyed the rest to keep it from the scavengers. It was painful to witness. It was why Roach chose to spend most of his time in the tunnel with Blue. 
Now, far from home and with Ginger going to pieces in his arms, he knew how much of a mistake that had been. How many ponies were out there just like Ginger, going to great lengths to imitate some prominent figure from the old world because they believed it would bring them happiness? How many ponies spent their lives squinting into the rapidly shrinking past while sacrificing their own futures?
He rubbed Ginger’s back to soothe the worst of her grief, bitterly aware there was little else he could do to help. Her normally kempt mane had become frizzled and smelled sour with the odor of sweat and stress. Roach glanced past her to where Chops still stood, the dull brown stallion looking less like an Enclave soldier and more like a fidgety teenager unsure if he should apologize or run away. And yet, Chops met Roach’s stony gaze head-on, the pencil still bobbing between his lips as he tipped his nose toward where the discarded notepad lay against the wall then looked pointedly back to Roach.
It was a question, he realized. Can I pick that up?
Careful not to disturb Ginger, he nodded. 
Chops quietly crossed the room, his hooves remarkably silent. He tucked the pencil to the corner of his mouth like a cigar, allowing him room to pick up the pad between pursed lips. As he set the pad onto the flat of his hoof, he looked briefly to where Julip lay and frowned at the cleaned and stitched wounds. The doctor connected an empty syringe to a makeshift port he’d cut between Julip’s ribs, pulling back the plunger until frothy pink bubbles sputtered into the chamber. 
Roach watched Julip’s hind leg shift with discomfort out of the corner of his eye. It was all the protest she could muster in the midst of her drugged sleep. Peppercorn said he’d learned the procedure some time ago but didn’t go into detail, insisting only that it was important to keep removing the excess air in Julip’s chest cavity so that her lung could inflate. It appeared to be working so far.
Chops glanced from Julip back to Roach, then flipped the notepad to a fresh sheet and began writing. Roach rocked Ginger as she grew quiet, rubbing her back while Chops held the pad out for him to read.
Does Aurora still have her Pip-Buck?
Roach squinted at the words, thought for a moment, then nodded. Chops sighed as if it were the answer he was expecting but not the one he necessarily wanted to hear. Roach didn’t blame him. The thought of the Steel Rangers finally getting their hooves on a working Pip-Buck probably gave the Enclave night terrors.
He waited as Chops scribbled out another sentence and held it up.
I might be able to help.
Roach gave him a look of warning. Chops already had pencil pressed to paper.
No trick. Need to report home.
He didn’t trust it. Chops was the Enclave in the flesh, without any reservations for who he served or the orders he was tasked with. He wasn’t Julip. There would be a hook waiting for them at the end of this rope and no doubt Chops was well trained in obscuring where it would be once they grabbed on.
He also knew they didn’t have any other options. Wherever Aurora was, she was on the clock. Their only saving grace was that they’d only found one mare shot at the crater instead of two. If Ironshod had gone through the trouble of taking her somewhere, it meant he had something planned.
Chops apparently sensed his hesitation because he’d begun writing again unprompted. This time he was more direct.
Not asking permission. Direct orders to protect Aurora. Can’t fail. Be ready to move when I get back.
Bewildered, Roach had begun rereading the note when Chops pulled back the pad and jotted down a shorter line.
Tell the unicorn I’m sorry. 
With that, Chops set the notepad and pencil on a nearby stock shelf and made a beeline for the back door. Roach watched him shoulder the door open and trot off into the alley, his hoofsteps picking up speed as they irrevocably faded away.







“Get her up.”
Aurora could barely muster the strength to tense up at the sensation of hooves wrenching her off the floor. Her bloodied cheek ripped away from the frosted metal like a scabbed bandage, pulling open the angry flesh of her torn lip in the process. The freezer lurched right-side up with a firm clack of chair legs striking metal. Ironshod stared down at her like he might regard a pet caught soiling the rug, lacking sympathy or shame.
He lifted his bloodied right hoof and idly regarded the iron nailed to it.
“What is Stable 10’s purpose?”
She swallowed, fighting back the urge to gag on the slimy texture of so much clotted blood sliding down her throat. How long had they been doing this? She’d lost track of time. Freeze and thaw. Freeze and thaw. Sometimes a beating in between. Sometimes just an empty, open door that slammed shut again. Sometimes nothing. Just a break long enough to keep her alive a little while longer. 
Whenever Ironshod stepped into her little prison, she knew she’d have more time to warm up. More precious minutes to convince him to let her go. That this conspiracy about her home was just empty dreaming. That he’d assembled the puzzle the wrong way.
Ironshod grew impatient. His horn lit, bathing the freezer in cold silver light, and a bright bolt of pain sprang from her torn lip as his aura clamped down around it. She let out an exhausted cry as he pulled it away from her teeth.
“If you can whine, you can answer. Don’t waste my time.”
“Home,” she slurred, tasting the hot blood coating her gums. “It’s my home.”
He doused his horn and sighed at the soldier standing behind her. “Does it sound like she’s avoiding the question to you?”
A stilted mare’s voice responded. “Yes, sir.”
Meeting Aurora’s widening gaze, he said, “Hold her head up. I don’t want her flinching this time.”
Magic coiled through her dirty mane, pulling her pale blonde locks into a clutch that wrenched her head upward. She began to cry again as Ironshod positioned himself a few degrees to Aurora’s left as he chose the spot he wanted to ruin next. 
“Wait!” she sputtered, her taut mane preventing her from turning her head. “Wait wait wait…”
He stopped, brow arched expectantly.
“Stable-Tec d-did experiments, right? They, um, maybe might have done one on us too!”
His posture relaxed, ears pointing more fully toward her.
“Our generator-”
He cut her off. “Elder Coldbrook already informed me about your generator troubles. Try again.”
The admission took her by surprise. Ironshod was Coldbrook’s subordinate. Why would he take the time to fill him in at all? She forced herself to set it aside. Ironshod was radiating impatience.
“But did he tell you about the ignition talisman?” When that failed to garner a reaction, she added, “Someone designed it to fail early. S-sabotage, I think. Why would the Enclave sabotage their own Stable?”
Ironshod watched her for several long seconds before giving the soldier behind her a subtle head shake. The tension in Aurora’s mane relaxed and she breathed a grateful, shuddering breath at the relief that followed.
He paced across her field of view, his attention seemingly absorbed with the empty shelving along the frosted walls. “Perhaps you did something that angered them.”
A deep throbbing in her hind legs signaled the return of feeling to them. She latched onto the hypothetical like passing flotsam. “Or-or maybe someone in the Enclave found out about us… maybe Primrose found out and didn’t want a Stable of dustwings getting loose! Maybe they transmitted some kind of… code or told Millie to wind the generator down for them?”
Ironshod frowned at her, unconvinced.
She forced herself to keep talking, afraid that once she had nothing left to say the interrogation would end and the next part would begin again. “Or maybe, maybe I’m wrong. Ironshod, I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to say. Back at the Bluff you showed me a… um, a pin with RC engraved in it. Remember Cloudsdale. You said it was important enough that if I were with the Enclave I wouldn’t have given it back. That it was sacred somehow. You believed me back then because of that, so why not now?”
She watched him suck in a breath and slowly exhale, fogging the air like a kettle on the boil. For a fleeting moment he smirked at her. Then he lifted his hoof and let it swing back toward the ground like a pendulum, the edge of the iron shoe spitting sparks as it clicked across the stainless floor.
“Back then, I didn’t have your Pip-Buck. I didn’t know your Stable was a haven for pegasi or that its first overseer was a founding member of the Enclave.” He turned, sauntering toward her and settling a hoof onto the knee of her hind leg. She instinctively tried to pull away but her bindings only sawed deeper into her skin. He ignored her struggling and continued on. “Back then I didn’t know who I was dealing with. But I do now, Aurora. I know you’re an excellent liar.”
He leaned his weight onto her knee until she could smell the stink on his breath. “Your story about your generator? We know that’s dragonshit. You confirmed our suspicions when you accepted the Elder’s offer. That talisman he sent a photo of wasn’t the type you claimed to need. Not even close. The fact that you didn’t question it made it crystal clear to us that you were lying, yet again.”
She stared at him wide-eyed. Coldbrook had sent her a picture of a shield talisman as a test? What about the crate? The spec sheets?
“You had one all along. You made me come all this way… go through all of that shit all because I didn’t know what one looked like?”
Ironshod didn’t indicate a yes or no, but there was a sick glimmer of pride in his eye all the same. He was enjoying this. Whether he believed her or not wasn’t even a factor. It pleased him enough just to see her hurt. The burning ache his weight was drilling through her knee was just icing on the cake.
“We’re well past that. Let’s think back a little further to the first chat we had at the wall. Do you remember what I told you I’d do if I found out you lied to me?”
Her heart clamored against her ribs as his first threat sifted out of what felt like an ancient memory. She swallowed, her stomach twisting in revolt as cold blood pooled into it. Her eyes went to Ironshod’s hoof and her knee below it. He bent down in response, forcing her to look at him.
“Tell me what I said, Aurora.”
If I find out you’re lying, I’ll put you in crutches.
She pressed her lips into a white line, shaking her head until strands of mane clung to her bloodied mouth. She didn’t want to say it.
She didn’t have to. He knew she’d remembered.
He stood up fully and took a step back, releasing his hoof from her knee. When he spoke, his voice was as placid as the murky pond back in the crater. It grudgingly reminded her of the judicious tone her dad used to use when she was little and couldn’t decide on what she wanted, and she hated Ironshod in that moment for dragging that thought into this place.
“I’ll let you choose,” he cooed. “Left leg or right? Pick one or I’ll do both.”
Her chest heaved with despairing sobs, willing herself to be somewhere else. For anyone to walk into the freezer and tell him to stop. That by some miracle the Rangers had discovered something that proved Aurora wasn’t the enemy and that all she wanted was to go home and forget she ever stepped hoof into this forsaken wasteland.
Through grit teeth and with a crackling voice, she whimpered, “Left.”
She was grateful that the soldier behind her didn’t force her to watch. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of Ironshod’s metallic steps, jumping at the almost gentle touch of his hoof against her knee as he prepared her punishment. Her breathing ratcheted out of control and she began to hyperventilate. She embraced it, hoping to black out before Ironshod struck, but he was quicker.
The crippling force of impact blended with the sound of splintering bone. A miasma of competing signals flooded her body in a howling chorus of red hot agony. The chair snapped at the bolts, sending her tumbling back to the frigid floor in a writhing heap. Her voice jammed in her throat, the air stolen from her chest as her brain tried to find order among chaos. With tears in her eyes she looked down at her shattered leg and screamed.







This was bad.
This was very bad.
By the time Chops returned to the block where he last saw Dancer he was out of breath. To make matters worse his counterpart wasn’t here. Neither was the mare he’d been busily making eyes at. Her cart was still parked along the gutter, however. Its unimpressive contents of scrap mechanical parts and broken down pipe weapons were guarded by a lone earth pony stallion who looked as put out by his partner’s absence as Chops felt.
The stallion eyed him from behind the lit end of a hoof-rolled cigarette - something of a feat for ponies of his stock - his rear end parked squarely over the wagon’s forward beam. Judging by his build he did as much pulling as he did guard work. With no other option Chops hurried up the sidewalk to the loitering earth pony who in return drew a foreleg under the bastardized stock of a stubby automatic slung across his shoulder. It wasn’t a threat so much as a tacit warning that he didn’t trust Chops to get much closer. 
The stallion didn’t know how lucky he was that Dancer wasn’t around to see. Being born mute had given Chops a well of patience for unintentional slights. Dancer or any other member of the Enclave for that matter wouldn’t tolerate being warded off by an earth pony. Just the suggestion of violence toward a pegasus was insubordination of the natural order itself, and it was no secret how creative some pegasi were in meting out reciprocity.
Chops was more interested in avoiding Minister Primrose’s justice than enacting his own. The two of them were already neck deep in shit because Julip fooled them into flying home. Now they’d lost a genuine pureblood to some fanatical offshoot of Rangers. If Primrose found out - who was he kidding, of course she would find out - they’d be lucky to see the inside of a prison cell. 
He kept to the sidewalk, gesturing frantically at the rear of the wagon where Dancer had last been. The guard cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t handle trades. Come back when Sandy’s done getting her afternoon poke.”
Chops shook his head, wishing for the third time today he’d brought something to write with. He hated charades. No one he met was ever any good at it. He wasn’t even good at it. He swallowed his pride anyway and prompted the earth pony with two sharp strikes of his hoof against the sidewalk, staring at him expectantly.
The guard frowned. After a beat he said, “Two?”
He stuck his hoof out and nodded, tapping his chest.
“We don’t sell armor.”
Celestia’s dawn, he hated this. He stamped his hoof, touched it to his chest, stamped it again and gestured at the empty space beside him. When the meaning started to dawn on the guard, Chops gestured questioningly toward the surrounding buildings. 
“If you’re looking for your brother…”
He bit down on the urge to throttle the stallion.
“...he and Sandy rented a room over there.” He hitched his hoof toward a disheveled four story building across the street. An illuminated sign hung below the second row of curtained windows bearing the name CRYSTAL CADENCE in an amalgamation of salvaged neon lettering. Chops had stared at the building while on his own guard duty earlier and hadn’t been able to make out what it was trying to advertise. Still couldn’t. 
It looked less like a brothel and more like an aborted ransom note. Maybe that was the point. There were still ponies who preferred discretion, after all.
“Wanna bet a few caps on how long… hey! Where are you going?”
Chops stepped around the cart onto the street. He wove his way between clots of hoof traffic until he reached the opposite curb, his attention fixed on the gilded brass revolving door beneath the gaudy sign. He half expected to find a casino on the other side as he pushed his way inside but was instead greeted by an unassuming lobby decorated with peeling floral green wallpaper and faded white wainscoting. The battered carpet, a shade of pea soup, felt crisp beneath his hooves. He tried not to think too much about it as he strode across the small lobby, passing a cluster of once-plush sofas framed by fake potted ferns on his way to the front desk. Several bored looking ponies lingered in the lobby, some flipping through prewar magazines while others made idle conversation. Every one of them looked at him as he entered. More than a few eyebrows went up at his strange choice in apparel. 
A chipper pink mare seated behind a working terminal watched him approach. “Hello there! Will you be booking on your own or can I interest you in our friends and family package?”
Chops stiffened slightly at the last part. A wide, schoolhouse chalkboard hung on the wall behind the mare, advertising the rooms, services and more than a few ponies currently on offer. He could only assume most of the mares and stallions waiting around the lobby were named on the board, available for those who didn’t arrive with a partner in mind.
The young mare waited for his answer with a porcelain smile. Chances were he wasn’t the first weirdo to wander in, but he could already tell that his silence was unsettling her. She didn’t seem the type for pantomime so on a whim he decided to try something else. Taking a page from Dancer’s book, he gave the lobby ponies a theatrically suspicious glance before turning back to the desk attendant with his best deadpan, touching the tip of his hoof to his lips. Her smile slipped as he nodded at a stack of old hotel letterhead behind the counter and mimed writing with his muzzle pointed toward the discolored veneer.
“Uh…” She lit her horn and a sheet wafted onto the countertop. He nodded his encouragement and she soon provided him with a pen.
He touched pen to paper and scribbled out a quick note. He could’ve gone with something simple and direct but something told him a place like this would have policies in place preventing strangers from interrupting paying guests. More than likely there would be security on the premises as well which would make knocking on doors a short-lived excursion. The pink unicorn was one of the low ponies on the totem pole which meant she was replaceable. Might even be on indenture depending on who owned the business. 
He turned the sheet around and pushed it toward her. At first she frowned. Then her eyes grew wide.
Stay quiet. You’re not in trouble. Have reason to believe a counterfeiter rented a room here. Caps he paid you with are fake. Earth pony, leather duster, wearing a bandolier. Brought a mare with him named Sandy. 
The mare sank in her chair and reread the note. “My boss is going to kill me.”
He pulled back the sheet and added, I need his room number.
“I gave them Room 401. Top floor.” She looked at him apologetically. “What am I supposed to do? He paid for the Empire Suite. I can’t afford to cover two hundred and fifty caps. How do I even tell which ones are fake?”
He held up a placating hoof and scratched out an answer. Steel Rangers will reimburse you after I take him into custody. I’ll need a key.
Relief settled over her and she nodded, dipping beneath the desk briefly before reappearing with a ring crowded with a thicket of brass keys hanging from her jaw. He waited as she used her magic to sort out the right key and disconnected it from the ring. He had to stop himself from shying away from the pale pink glow as she held it out for him. He still hadn’t been able to reconcile what exactly Ginger had done to him, or how. Magic beyond simple manipulation was effectively dead in Equestria, or at least it was supposed to be. And yet he could still feel the remnants of nausea from being… moved. Like the space between where he’d been and where he’d ended up hadn't been there at all.
He snapped out of it and took the key. Their mission was getting complicated, fast. Dancer needed to know what was going on.
Three flights of stairs later he stepped into the fourth floor hallway. The decor was much the same as the lobby save for the pink, diamond patterned wallpaper and assortment of quartz crystals suspended from the ceiling on what appeared to be fishing line. Yellowed photos of the long dead Crystal Empire hung on the walls, most featuring scenic views of grand crystalline vistas. Fakes, probably, though a photo of the royal family seemed real enough. Plenty of pictures of those old traitors still fluttering around the wasteland. 
The door to Room 401 stood at the end of the hall. He was barely halfway to it when he started to hear the unmistakable noises of the room in use. His lip wrinkled at the sound of Dancer’s exaggerated grunting. He always grunted whether his mare or stallion of choice liked it or not. Chops had seen more than a few leave camp tails down and visibly annoyed. The lucky ones were usually able to convincingly fake their finish and be done with it, but some were left to endure Dancer’s “performance” until he ran out of steam or got bored.
Judging by the solo act permeating the thin walls, Dancer’s partner was probably being subjected to the latter. Chops uttered a silent groan and sank the key into the lock.
When the door swung open he saw pretty much what he’d expected. A somewhat elegant room decorated with pastel crystals, fake marble pillars and more framed artwork fitting for the Empire Suite. The walls had been given a fresh coat of white paint making the room feel almost sterile were it not for the soft shades of pink and lavender cast by candlelight reflecting off the rose quartz decor. And, of course, a four poster bed dominated most of the room because an oversized bed with its own dusty curtains had been the height of luxury in some lonely decorator's mind.
Chops was less concerned with the furniture and more with the ponies occupying it. Dancer, ever the gentlecolt, had the trader mare bent over the edge of the bed and had mounted her from behind. He winced at the jarring sight of Dancer’s ballsack flinging back and forth under his pitched tail, his pale purple wings clutching the ornate bedposts for…  leverage.
Chops kicked the door closed, startling a yelp from the mare and causing Dancer to sputter a startled curse as he pivoted to face their intruder. For a moment the two of them stared at him, one spread over the old mattress and the other at full mast. The mare clearly recognized him from his intrusion back on the street and glared at Dancer for an explanation. Dancer simply rolled his eyes, turned back and unceremoniously jammed his cock back into her.
“You know there’s usually a charge - unf - for watching.”
Chops huffed his disapproval and crossed the suite, picking up Dancer’s discarded duster while diligently trying not to notice the thick scent of sweat and sex. He didn’t like being included in Dancer’s imaginary audience any more than that mare was enjoying his attempts to use his dick as a battering ram. He threw the duster at Dancer and it tangled noisily around his hind legs. 
“Little late - ah - for that now.” He gripped the bedposts more tightly. “Go be pissy outside.”
Empty offer. Dancer wouldn’t care whether he left or pulled up a chair for a closer look. Chops stole a glance at the mare, and noted the twitches of discomfort in the corners of her eyes. He sighed and looked around for something to write with but of course there was nothing to be found. Ponies didn’t rent these rooms to write in their journals. Screw it, then. He unbound his feathers and the rasping of his jacket hiking up above his opening wings caught Dancer's attention.
There was some concern in Sandy’s eyes as Chops began motioning a series of simple signs that Dancer grudgingly observed. His pumping slowed to an almost resigned pace.
I contacted Aurora’s group. They were attacked. Julip injured, Aurora abducted. Steel Rangers have her.
“Fuck.” Dancer nearly stopped, paused, then resumed his frenetic thrusting. “Fine, but let me finish, first.”
“Someone ought to,” Sandy muttered.
Chops balked at him and gestured a hurried we need to go at him, but his attention was zeroed in on his work. Deliberately so. Chops stepped closer, practically standing beside the mare he was intent on fucking into a wheelchair and gnawed his lip in anger as Dancer looked up at the ceiling to avoid his pestering signs. He stamped the floor but Dancer ignored him, his thrusting becoming frustrated from the now thoroughly unwanted distraction. He stamped again. Last chance. But Dancer kept at it, bent on crossing the finish line. 
That’s it. 
He rounded the bed, ducking under Dancer’s wing and stood close enough to the lieutenant to make him recoiled a little, thrown off by the invasion. Chops glared up at him.
“Celestia’s sake, Chops…”
He held up a feather and set his jaw when Dancer diverted his gaze. Okay then. Plan D it is. He extended a single long primary and lifted his wing until the tip of it stood prominently in Dancer’s line of sight. An old family trick. Well, less of a trick and more unvarnished abuse. His grandmother used it whenever the stallions of the house got a little too relaxed and became “indecent,” as she politely put it. Only there was nothing polite about it. It hurt like everliving fuck.
Without apology, he tracked Dancer’s thrusts. The slick appearance and submergence of his mottled shaft was easy to time. Out, in. Out, in. Out…
His wing and its single extended feather struck across exposed skin and continued toward the floor with an ear splitting CRACK. Dancer’s grip on the bedposts dissolved as he stumbled out of the startled mare with an audible pop, crumpling onto the rug floor while making a shrieking noise better suited to a filly a fifth his size. He rolled on the floor like a mortally wounded mole rat, wings clutching fruitlessly at his groin as a furious red welt surfaced along the circumference of his quickly retreating cock. Sandy took the easy out and slid off the bed with a look that said she didn’t want to get mixed up in whatever this was. Chops watched her go not without a little satisfaction.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Dancer howled, rocking himself back and forth on the tacky rugs. There were tears in the stallion’s eyes, his face caved in like he’d just bitten a lemon. At least now he was looking at him. His feathers cut through the air as he signed his rebuttal.
Steel Rangers kidnapped Aurora. If they kill her, we die too. What the fuck is wrong with YOU?
“I was almost done you fucking asshole!”
You're done now.
Dancer craned his neck back and closed his eyes, uttering a bitter, “Fuck you.”
He kicked his leg, forcing the stallion to look at him. Pack your dick away and stand up. We need to talk strategy.
“Strategy my blue balls,” he groaned, grudgingly forcing his hooves under him. “Fuck... she’s still got that Pip-Buck, right? We can go find a spritebot and tell the geeks back home to start pinging for it, same as always.”
Except for the part where Primrose finds out we lost her.
Dancer winced as he stood up, his hind leg hitched slightly to deny Chops another opportunity to featherwhip his delicates. “The way I see it, Julip’s the one who lost her.”
She took a bullet for her. I’m not throwing her under the bus.
“The fuck is a bus?”
He ignored the question with a dismissive wave. Rangers take the low road, not us. 
“Julip took the low road when she betrayed the Enclave.” For a brief second Dancer looked conflicted about his own response, but not enough to backtrack on it. Chops was well aware the two had been friends as they came up through the Enclave and no doubt it weighed on him to cast that all aside. Regulation was regulation. He glanced at Chops and flinched away from his poised feathers. “Should I be worried about you getting wingsy or can I put my leg back down?”
He signed a choice bit of profanity in response, his eyes trailing back to the door. How much did you tell her?
“Oh, you know, that I’m an agent of the Enclave sent here on a mission to recover the escaped pureblood pegasus of Commander Spitfire’s lost Stable. Gave her my serial number too in case she finds a spritebot and wants to call me.” Dancer let out a derisive snorted and relaxed his stance, following his partner’s exacerbated gaze. “I told her the usual. Lonely dustwing seeking adventure, treasure and companionship. We were having a good time until you kicked down the door.”
He shook his head. Whatever you say. If you’re up for a walk, I’ll show you where Aurora’s friends are hiding out. Then we call home. We can work out what to do on the way.
Dancer picked up his duster by his teeth and threw it across his back. “You say that like we have more than the once choice to pick from.”
Because they didn’t. Not really. If they were going to find Aurora, they were going to have to ask for help. On any other mission one of them might have been able to pull some strings to ensure things were handled quietly, but not this one. This mission was radioactive. Everyone who touched it would wind up under a microscope if something went wrong, and something had already gone very wrong. Primrose was going to find out. There wasn’t any other way to cut it.
Chops let Dancer steady himself against him as he worked his forelegs into the duster’s ungainly sleeves. He stepped aside once Dancer was finished, his partner’s wings once again obscured. Just two earth ponies wandering the wasteland together, same as every mission.
He began to sign. The unicorn has magic.
Dancer started making his way to the door. “The sky is blue.”
Real magic. Old world stuff.
He waited as Dancer wrapped the knob in his lavender feathers, holding short of opening the door. “No shit, another one? Think it’ll have any play with Primrose?”
Can’t hurt to mention it.
Dancer grunted. “Yeah. Why do I get the feeling I’ll be doing all the talking?”







“I’m not being unreasonable. In fact, I’ve been more than generous.”
“All we’re asking is for one more day. Two, tops. Enough time for her to recover and find our missing friend.”
“You have until tomorrow morning. After that, I want the three of you gone.”
Julip listened to the discussion take place within a thick fog of lethargy. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t move. She was in that comfortable middle ground between the end of sleep and wakefulness, under no obligation to do anything except lie still and sink.
Only the wooden table pushed back. Her head throbbed. The light overhead made her distantly aware that even her eyes hurt. But she tried to keep still. She clung onto the fibers of sleep hoping she might slip away for a bit longer.
“You don’t think I know what she is?” A pause. Something grabbed one of her wings and lifted it. She grunted. “I’ve examined dustwings before and not a single one of them had this degree of muscle development. She’s flown on these wings and she does it often. The only pegasi who fly enough to see this kind of definition come from the Enclave.”
A gravelly voice drew close to her. Her wing was set back down. “She isn’t a threat. She defected.”
“It doesn’t matter and frankly I don’t care. I operated on her. She’s going to recover because of me. If the Rangers find her here they’ll lock me up for aiding and abetting an enemy. I want her out before I open the pharmacy tomorrow. Period.”
Sleep pulled her away from the voices. When she resurfaced, the room was quiet. The air smelled cooler than she remembered, but a gentle weight was keeping her torso warm. She could feel herself waking up more fully this time, bringing with it all the aches and pains that the drugs temporarily kept at bay. Her brow wrinkled as she shifted on the table in search of a less uncomfortable position to lay in. She eventually settled onto her left shoulder and risked cracking open an eye. 
For a long moment she saw nothing but inky darkness. Then, slowly, a crackled pattern of pale green fissures glowing with that strange inner light resolved into view, close enough that she could make out the smaller plates of chitin that floated like little continents on a mantle of luminescent skin. 
The longer she waited, the more details she could make out against the black. He’d propped his head up on the table against his hoof, the ridge of his muzzle tilted at just slight enough an angle that his lower lip drooped open as he snored. His mouth, gums, even his teeth gave off a gentle jade glow. She wondered if the radiation was what kept ghouls living for so long, then she remembered most ghouls didn’t luminesce at all. Not the friendly ones, anyway. She set the thought aside and watched him sleep.
Time passed. Roach eventually stirred, his eyes opening the slightest bit before turning to focus on her. A smile crossed his lip. “How’re you feeling?”
She pulled her knees up under the old blanket, spurring a dull ache in the core of her chest. “Not dead.”
“It’s a start.” He took a deeper breath, coming awake himself. “Do you need any painkillers?”
She hesitated, then nodded. Roach sat up, stretched and pushed himself out of his creaky wooden chair. His hooves scuffed across the floor, the pale lines of his body dimming a little in the darkened room as he walked to the far shelves and retrieved a bottle of pills. He picked something up on his way back. A set of saddlebags. 
She looked at the bags as he sat down. “Those are new.”
Roach sat the bottle down in front of her and produced a metal flask from the saddlebags that sloshed between his teeth. She sat up a little and plucked the stopper from the bottle, tipping out a pair of little white pills. After eyeing them for a moment she popped them into her mouth and chased them with a swig from the flask. The water was warm and clean, and in that instant it reminded her just how thirsty she was. She tipped the rim to her lips and drank deeply, nearly forgetting to come up for air until the flask ran dry. When she sheepishly offered it back, he pressed a second one into her wing with a knowing smile. She’d almost downed the entire thing before she finally felt satiated.
Settling back onto her side, her belly satisfied for the time being, she watched him pack away the empty flasks and quietly hoped he might offer one of the apples they’d picked in Stable 1. Then she remembered those had been in her bags. She took an uneasy breath and asked, “Did you find Aurora?”
Roach lifted a hoof to his lips and turned to the darkened room where Ginger lay sleeping on the floor in the far corner, curled around new saddlebags of her own with her back pressed to the wall. He turned back to Julip and shook his head.
She let that sink in. “What time is it?”
“It’s late,” he whispered. “Close to midnight.”
“What’s the plan?”
Again, Roach shook his head. Reluctantly this time. “We’re still working on it.”
She frowned at him but he didn’t offer anything else. Because there was no plan. The Rangers had gotten away with Aurora. They hadn’t left any clues behind. No cryptic note, no ransom, nothing. That crucible-marked ballbag who put a bullet in her didn’t want to be found.
Aurora could be anywhere.
The last few days had been one hit after the other. Julip glanced over Roach’s shoulder to where Ginger slept. She looked broken.
“So we’re stuck.” She set her head back down on the table with a heavy thump. “Goddesses, I fucked everything up.”
“I already told you, green bean. None of this is your fault.”
“Saying that doesn’t make it true.” A lump threatened to bog up her throat. She took a moment to collect herself. Roach waited. “What’s with the nickname?”
He tilted his head and shrugged. “Old habit. I’ll stop.”
Her tail flicked. “Didn’t say you had to.”
A tiny, barely perceptible smile perked the corner of his lip. It proved contagious. Emboldened, she took an experimental breath and scrunched her face at the dull pinch of stitches. “Feels good to breathe again.”
She lifted the old blanket with her wing to look at the square of clean gauze taped between her ribs. Her coat around the wound was stained dark, a mixture of blood and the disinfectant the doctor treated it with. No dirty rags, no infection, no needle scars from administering stimpack after stimpack. It was genuine, professional work. She knew medics in New Canterlot who would be impressed.
She glanced at Roach and saw the relief in his eyes, as if he still needed reassurance that she was going to be okay. She knew more than anyone how close she’d come to giving up. It was thanks to Roach and Ginger that she was here at all.
Propping herself up with her foreleg she scooted to the edge of the table, swallowed her pride and dropped a wing around Roach’s shoulder. To say she caught him by surprise was an understatement. With her injuries limiting most of her movement, she practically had to climb up the changeling in order to properly hug him. It was awkward. She felt like an idiot, half-hanging off the table while clinging to the bewildered stallion with both wings, but she also needed this. She needed him to know she was grateful. That she didn’t regret staying with them.
“Thanks for not giving up on me,” she whispered. 
Roach squeezed her back. For the first time that she could remember, she felt sure she’d made the right choice.







Two things went through Ginger’s mind when she opened her eyes. The first being that it was too bright out. The ground itself shone with painful white light and reflex crushed her eyelids into tense slits. Seconds passed as she tried to orient herself. Hooves scuffed the pavement around her. Someone laughed. The rev of an engine caught her ear, but there was something wrong about the way it sounded. No clunk or screech of rusting metal, no banging of moving parts worn centuries past their intended lifespan. She forced her eyes to open a little more and watched a powder blue carriage putter away on a sheet of blinding cobblestone. And so the second thing occurred to her.
She was dreaming again.
A trio of pastel mares giggled as they stepped around her, glossy shopping bags swinging from the jaw of one while the other two trotted along with their own suspended effortlessly in vivid shades of magic. She blinked. Suddenly she was standing off to one side of the busy sidewalk, a pristine display window cool against her shoulder. It felt like her subconscious was trying to fill in the gaps, and she vaguely remembered walking here… but after the fact? Something must be wrong with the dream, she assumed. Disoriented, she winced against the dizziness and tried to get her bearings. 
She was certainly in a city somewhere. Not Fillydelphia judging by the architecture. The street was neatly framed by buildings hardly more than a couple stories tall, many of them intricately decorated with finely crafted wood details that made the pinks, whites and lavender facades stand out as if she’d been dropped into a bowl of dinner mints. No scavenged signs here. These were originals. Antiques made new again. 
This was Equestria before the war.
How? She stared, bewildered, into the storefront next to her. A pair of ponies seated at a window table stared back, brows curiously tilted at the mare interrupting an impossibly detailed, colorful meal Ginger had never seen before. She flushed with embarrassment and turned away while still entirely too conscious of the fact that none of this was real. Unsure of where she should be going or what to do, she nervously merged in among the stream of pedestrians.
Everything shuddered again and she walked knee-first into a wrought iron patio chair. It toppled along with her but the experience of falling ass over teakettle went muddy. A blink later she was standing, completely unharmed, the decorative chair standing a few feet behind her where it had originally been.
“Ruh roh,” a diminutive voice piped up behind her. “Someone’s running out of horn juice.”
Now she was entirely bewildered. She spun around to see a lone filly, hardly old enough for the porcelain cup of coffee held in her bubblegum pink wing, watching her with open amusement. Tight blue curls that went out of style centuries ago bobbed above cold, intelligent eyes. Ginger didn’t need to see the brick colored rook on her hip to know who she was. 
“Primrose,” she said. It was as much of a hello as she was willing to offer. “I’m guessing this is your dream, then.”
“Mine and the dozen or so other wastelanders running around in here.” Primrose sipped and set the cup onto a matching saucer waiting on the small round table in front of her. She gestured toward the chair Ginger had only recently tackled. “Pull up a seat and try not to gawk so much. You’d be amazed how good these nutjobs can be at picking out dreamers.”
She did as she was told and sat down, unsure whether Primrose was lying, delusional or both. Despite the filly seated across from her, sitting down gave her some relief from the strange jitters that plagued her. She took the opportunity to look around a little.
There were more identical patio tables and chairs dotting the streetside cafe. Some were occupied by other ponies who ate, drank and mingled as if all of this was entirely normal. A winged stallion nearby slouched over a brand new hardcover book while chewing on some kind of hoop-shaped pastry. The blue and yellow bottom half of a form-fitting flight suit clung to, well... everything. A few tables away, two mares eyed the lone stallion with hooves tactfully hiding their muzzles. Judging by their excited whispering they were trying to goad the other into talking to him. Celestia have mercy, some things never change.
The roar of another engine caught her attention and she watched, jaw dangling, as a genuine prewar Sparkle-Cola truck hauled its way to the corner. It slowed on squeaking brakes and idled just off the curb, brake lights glowing, and heaved around the bend on its way to wherever it was going. Everyone in the wasteland knew what motorized carriages were. Once in a while someone even managed to get one of the old engines to turn over. But to see one working? Rolling on tires that hadn’t collapsed, dried out and broken apart like rotten wood? It was no wonder these things were everywhere!
It rolled away as quickly as it had appeared, leaving her to resist wondering how much work it took to keep that one vehicle running. She knew better than to dive down that rabbit hole. Equestrian infrastructure was well, well beyond her understanding. 
Her attention was quickly drawn across the busy intersection to the imposing structure just a few blocks away. She blinked, once, her eyes widening with vague recognition. There, embedded into a towering wall of granite, stood six dense white pillars. A large, colorful banner hung from the top of each supporting stone with the unmistakable shape of an Element emblazoned on them. They dwarfed the ponies filing up and down the marble stairs beneath them, the architecture itself radiating power and security. 
Until now she’d only seen the Pillar’s famous facade in yellowed prewar propaganda and the odd film reel her father liked to collect. This was something different entirely.
“This is Old Canterlot,” she murmured, turning back to Primrose. “We’re on the mountain right now.”
“Give the unicorn a prize,” she droned. “Stop rubbernecking like some tourist. This isn’t even real.”
Ginger settled back into her chair, but there was no force in Equestria capable of keeping her from staring at the spires of Canterlot Castle just over Primrose’s shoulder. “There are others here, too? How?”
She fiddled with the cup’s handle. “How else? Luna’s pet ghost got lonely again. Just keep your head down and they won’t bother you.”
“Who…?”
Primrose rested her chin atop her wing and pointed a tiny pink feather up the street. Ginger cautiously followed her feather. She didn’t have to bother scanning the crowd for the pony Primrose had spotted. The lone zebra stallion stood out like a sore hoof. He strode down the middle of the street with no concern for the vehicles rolling past him, teeth flashing behind a black muzzle as he shouted up into the endless blue sky.
“Don’t stare,” Primrose murmured. “He’s a fucking cornball.”
“He’s a zebra,” she whispered back. “I thought zebras were all dead.”
He stopped at the middle of the intersection and shouted what sounded like gibberish at a passing carriage whose driver didn’t appear to notice him at all. The lack of reaction only made him more furious and his eyes quickly fixed on the distant shape of Canterlot Castle. He stormed past the corner cafe, oblivious to Ginger or Primrose as he turned his outrage toward the lofty spires.
“Maxaad halkan noo keenta?! U qaado jinniyadaada Vhanna! Tus waxa aad ku samaysay dalkii hooyo!!”
She didn’t understand the words but the challenge in them was unmistakable. Yet no one seemed to pay him any mind. It was as if he wasn’t there at all. They watched him go, occasionally stopping to accost passing drivers.
“Eshe’s the only one who hates these… communal dreams more than I do,” she chuckled. Now that he was well past noticing them, Ginger could see the unfiltered joy it brought Primrose to see the stallion so infuriated. “Don’t let the stripes fool you. He’s fluent in ponish and he will remember your face.”
She shook her head and turned her gaze to the tabletop.
“Sorry, it can be a bit much the first time around. If it’s any consolation, he can’t hurt you in here.” She picked up her cup and took another sip. “Mm. Or out there, for that matter. He’s still stuck in that Auto-Doc at the bottom of Mariponi. Poor bastard.”
Ginger frowned. “Mariponi?”
She glanced away, ignoring the question. “I forgot to ask, how is the mission going?”
And just like that, the illusion shattered and reality came crashing through. Here she sat experiencing a fantasy most ponies believed impossible while Aurora languished… where? Ultimately it didn’t matter where. It only mattered that she was out there, alone, and it killed Ginger to know there wasn't a thing she could do to change that. 
Tears stung at her eyes but she would be damned if she'd let them fall. Still her vision blurred. She lit her horn and swept them away while pegasi crisscrossed the sky above. 
"That good, huh?" Primrose sat up a little higher in her chair. She was practically small enough to need a booster seat. "I only ask because I received a report this evening that has me concerned. Did you lose her?"
She scrubbed a hoof against her nose. "Rangers took her."
"The supposed 'rogue squadron' led by Paladin Ironshod, I take it?"
Her eyes hardened. "Chops told you."
Primrose giggled. The sound of it coming from a filly's mouth was profoundly disturbing. "Chops just flaps his wings around like a headless chicken. His flouncy counterpart does enough talking for the two of them."
She shook her head. "You're cruel."
"Says the mare indulging Aurora in the wasteland’s least plausible scavenger hunt." She brought the cup to her lips, enjoying the scent of the seemingly endless substance it contained. "If it weren't for me, Coldbrook's Rangers would already be banging at Stable 10's door. Now he has a full company of our finest flyers to keep him occupied."
Ginger looked away. She reminded herself she was playing with fire just by speaking to this mare. Filly. Whatever she was. As much as she hated it, she needed to set her own baggage aside. At least for a little while. 
"Do you like cappuccino?" 
She hesitated. "What?" 
Primrose set the cup on its saucer and pushed it toward her. "Try some."
A list of possibilities went through her mind. Poison, chems, truth serum… none of any made sense in the context of a dream, but past experience told her not to drink any liquid she couldn't see through. Especially when they were brown. 
"Or don't." A second cup appeared in the filly's wing. "You'll be missing out, though. I thought it might pair well with a little good news."
She watched the filly sip and wince as if she'd singed her lip. Either it was a good act or she was actually being sincere. When describing the immortal leader of the Enclave, very few ponies thought the latter. 
Ginger floated the cup from its saucer and eyed the contents. "You're going to help us," she predicted. 
"Even better, I already am." Primrose grinned in her seat, giving her the uneasy appearance of a child preparing to yank out a rusty carving knife. "Or more accurately, my field agents have been. So far we can confidently say Aurora is still in Fillydelphia."
The cup dropped, flickered and reset itself onto the saucer. Ginger stopped just short of leaping from her chair.
"You found her? Where is she? Is she okay?" 
The little filly held her wings out, miming for her to calm down. "I think you misunderstand me. We've narrowed her down to the city. A big city. It's going to take time to pinpoint exactly where she is."
Her mind was racing. "How do you know? How long until you find her?" 
She tapped her foreleg. "I have some assets in the area working on getting a ping from Aurora's Pip-Buck. They've only just started but they were able to briefly pick up a faint response. It'll take more pegasi to cover enough ground in order to refine the accuracy."
She swallowed the stone in her throat and nodded rapidly, not trusting herself to speak. 
Primrose smiled with that too-cheery smile. "She's still alive, Ginger."
Even coming from the demented little nightmare seated in front of her, the words hit Ginger like a hammer. She nearly lost it and it was a battle to cling to the shreds of her composure. She looked up at the puffy clouds being herded by weather ponies overhead and allowed herself to wipe her eyes, coughing a sobbing little laugh. Aurora was alive, and she was still here. It wasn't much, but for now it was just enough to keep her head above water. 
"Good. That’s good," she whispered. "I want to help."
"We won’t need it. It’ll be easier for everyone if you and your friends stay put and wait." She steepled her hooves, her expression growing serious. "You've already muddied things by involving the local chapter of Rangers. They'll be paying attention to you. The fact that you have them looking for their own people has created an opportunity for my pegasi to slip into the city, but I can’t afford to have you seen asking for updates from anyone not on Coronado’s salary."
Ginger filled in the rest. "Because he’ll want to hunt down your people instead of Ironshod."
Primrose nodded. "Nobody will have time to find Aurora when we’re busy killing each other, and my assets won’t have the option to fly away with the city’s guns monitoring the skies. That’s why this operation will… ah. Welcome to the party."
Following Primrose’s unwelcoming gaze, Ginger twisted in her seat and managed a halfhearted smile. The Tantabus was politely weaving her way through the tables toward them, pushing in the odd chair with the flat of her wing as she passed. That caught Ginger’s attention. She had wings. Feathers, even. She wasn’t appearing as an intangible starscape cut out of the world she occupied. She was as defined as any other pony in this dream. Maybe even a little more.
Primrose’s tone was touched with mockery. “What, no tiara?”
The Tantabus came to a stop to the left of Ginger, staring down at the impetuous filly with open disdain. Between the creature’s midnight blue coat and flowing mane - not to mention wings and horn - the list of ponies she was attempting to embody shrank considerably. And yet it was her vertical pupils that refined those options down to one.
Even lacking the silver plate armor, the helmet, and the deranged grin from the collection of colorful foal’s books she absorbed herself in when she was little, it was easy for Ginger to recognize the body of Nightmare Moon.
“Are you behaving yourself tonight, Cozy Glow?”
The filly’s mocking smile went brittle. “That isn’t my name.”
“Strange. I must have heard it in another pony’s dream. Let us consult your father to be sure.”
Primrose sat bolt upright, jarring the table and sending her cup clattering across its surface and off the edge. It stuttered midair as Ginger struggled to keep up with the sudden motion before flickering out of existence. She felt a pang of guilt at the sound of Primrose pleading. It didn’t last long. The Tantabus’s horn flashed and a stallion’s voice cut the air.
“COZY! Get your ass over here, NOW.”
Ginger startled at the sight of a pale blue unicorn easily twice Roach’s size shoving his way through the chairs toward them. He was carrying something in his magic. A length of copper tubing, folded in half and gripped by the ends like a club. She looked back to Primrose and saw the filly’s eyes swimming at the stallion’s approach. It pulled at her too hard to ignore. She lit her horn, fighting through disorientation and brought her shield down between Primrose and the memory of her father. The stallion stopped in the same manner Ginger’s father had in her first dream on the mountain, incapable of doing anything outside the bounds of Primrose’s own memories.
Primrose stared at Ginger with a mixture of grudging relief and deep humiliation. The shadow of her father tapped the folded pipe against the shield hard enough for Ginger to feel it rattling her horn. Three times he knocked before turning his ear to the barrier with barely contained fury creasing his muzzle. “You have until the count of three to tell me where my Jet is or I will TEAR this FUCKING DOOR DOWN. ONE!”
He never reached two. Something about the memory snapped something in the filly. She broke into frightened tears and in a wild panic began pounding her own hoof into her temple. Ginger sat, stunned, as Primrose finally recoiled with a genuine gasp of pain from the fourth strike and vanished. Her father disappeared with her.
Ginger looked up at the Tantabus, shaking her head. “That was unnecessary.”
She watched the creature’s lithe figure round the table and push Primrose’s empty chair in. “Do not pity her. She is a tyrant and a manipulator.”
“She wasn’t…” She doused her horn, finally releasing the unneeded shield. The simple effort made her lose track of what she wanted to say. Maybe she’d overdone it when contending with Chops. “I’m not arguing that she deserves to be punished, but… that felt wrong. Even for her.”
The Tantabus watched her thoughtfully. “I believe you misunderstand. I would not terrorize a child. Primrose is a grown mare of many years, even beyond my own.”
Her patience was waning. “That doesn’t matter.”
“I do not understand why.” She frowned down at herself. “Is it due to my appearance? Luna was very fond of this form and I would not-”
“You look fine, Tandy.” The words came out a little sharper than intended, but the Tantabus didn’t seem fazed by it. Everything about her posture - her puzzled frown, the tilt of her head, the forward facing ears - hinted at the fact that she truly didn’t understand what she had done wrong. Even stranger, she seemed keen to learn. 
She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “If all you wanted to do was punish her, you could have woken her up. You don’t rip open trauma like that.”
The Tantabus wrinkled her nose at the little table and it seemed as if she might be on the verge of understanding. Then she spoke. “What is a Tandy?”
She deflated. This was going nowhere. “It’s a nickname Julip made for you.”
“Tandy,” she murmured, testing it out. “I like it. May I use it?”
“Knock yourself out,” Ginger shrugged. She watched a smile widen across Tandy’s blue-black muzzle. The de facto ruler of dreams looked around to the ponies on the sidewalk, the tables around them, the sharp canines of Nightmare Moon’s teeth showing as an undeniable happiness washed over her.
Tandy adopted her new name with an undeniably innocent charm. Ginger wanted to say as much, but she still couldn’t get over what had just happened to Primrose. How could Princess Luna create something of near omnipotence and neglect to instill it with a sense of compassion? Was she even aware of the ramifications, or was this just an example of the sort of laissez-faire thinking that led prewar ponies to blindly invent the tools of their own destruction? It felt akin to giving a grenade to a foal. The explosion was inevitable.
She pursed her lips and pushed out of her chair. Maybe words she’d chosen weren’t the right approach. Maybe in Tandy’s case, it was a lack of experience.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
Tandy turned to her and nodded.
“Do you ever think about the memories you share with Luna?”
She paused for a moment. “Not often, no.”
Curious. “Why not?”
“Many of them I do not like.”
There we go. Ginger stepped around the table, hoping to lead Tandy to the sidewalk. She wanted to see more of Old Canterlot before she woke up. “That’s normal. We all have our share of memories we’d like to forget. Are there any you can remember that stand out? Ones you would prefer to avoid?”
Tandy didn’t follow as Ginger had hoped. Her smile was gone, replaced by a look of deep contemplation. “There is one.”
“Okay then. Think about how it would feel if-”
She stopped abruptly as Tandy turned toward her and lowered her horn to touch the tip of her own. A shock of something almost electric passed between them and for a split second Ginger felt paralyzed, unable to move as the edges of her vision began to tunnel into hazy pinpoints. Then, just as soon as it began, Tandy lifted her horn away and broke the connection. It left Ginger gasping.
“What was that?!”
“A gift. It would be difficult to experience the memory of another with your magic so depleted. What I shared should be enough.”
She stiffened. “You’re saying…”
Tandy smiled, anticipating her words. “I can only share what magic you are already able to contain. As another unicorn I knew once put it, I cannot make your cup larger but I can make it full again. Though I do not fault you for hoping otherwise. Now please, prepare yourself.”
Her horn flared with light causing Ginger to step back. The illusion around them rushed away in every direction until nothing was left but infinite void. Tandy was gone. Old Canterlot was gone. It was as if existence itself ceased to be and for a long moment Ginger was afraid that she would be stuck here, trapped in this suffocating nothingness until she became part of it.
And then, everything.
Light, sound, the deafening rush of air and the clattering of hooves erupted into a cacophony of chaos. She was running. No, flying through the ornate marble corridors of a building. Ponies in full armor ducked out of her way as they shouted after other occupants to evacuate. Ginger realized she wasn’t in control, here. She was merely a passenger being hauled along in some other mare’s body. She approached a junction to another grand hallway and pitched sideways with wings flared wide, braking just enough to catch her gilded hooves against a tapestry and kick off in the new direction. 
She could feel the panic pounding in this mare’s chest, the existential dread convincing her that all of this was futile. It hadn’t worked against the changeling army. It wouldn’t work now. Too late to argue. It was happening.
She landed hard, driving furrows into the corridor’s opulent carpet as she skidded to a stop at the open door. The haunting howl of sirens filled her ears, beckoning the whole of Canterlot to seek shelter. Beyond the door, standing on the sunlit balcony on the other side of her bedroom, Celestia stared back at her with terror in her eyes.
“Hurry, Luna!”







The pale burn of emergency lights gave each foot of Stable 10 an unsettling yellow glow. 
Sledge could already feel the low hum of panic beginning to rise. First Delphi’s suicide, then Aurora’s escape, the scheduled brown-outs that had gradually devolved into black-outs, and now this. The one event everyone had been hoping Aurora would be back in time to prevent had happened right when evacuating the Stable had been pulled off the table. Aurora hadn’t minced words when she told him about the faceless army gathering outside. If he opened that door they would pour in and strip their home down to the bare concrete. They would find themselves left to fend off the creatures of the wasteland, enslaved or worse. 
And if he didn’t, and they couldn’t solve this problem without Aurora, they would die together in the corpse of their home. They were stuck. Worse, they were all looking to him for a solution.
Sledge passed his Pip-Buck’s light over the stilled heart of Stable 10. Once a chamber filled with the roaring hum of raw electricity, now the generator hall drowned in its own silence. The only sound came from the milling hooves of Mechanical’s technicians, the stifled clank of floor panels being lifted away and the occasional deep pings of cooling metal within the darkened machine itself. He clicked the flashlight off and stepped over to where Carbide and two other pegasi were working to remove the dead talisman.
“Any progress?”
The weak emergency lighting made it difficult to tell what anyone was doing, let alone Carbide’s team. “I’m getting ready to call it. The only way I see us getting in that chamber is with cutters.”
Which they couldn’t risk. None of them knew whether the chamber surrounding the ignition talisman played a part in its operation and despite over a week of searching none of them had been able to turn up a blueprint that shed light on it. Just another item on the list of things Stable-Tec decided wasn’t important for them to know. This wasn’t something they could afford to fly blind on and Carbide knew it, too.
“Where are we on power consumption?”
Carbide sat up from the hole in the floor and dimmed his Pip-Buck with a touch of exasperation. “I don’t know, Sledge. We’re running lights for the whole Stable off a two-hundred year old battery bank. With the way things are going, I’ll be surprised if they last a full day.”
He bristled. “Keep your voice down.”
Carbide was on his hooves in the space of a breath. He leveled a black feather at Sledge’s nose. “Keep my… we wasted days working on a containment system we don’t need anymore when we should have been optimizing the fucking jenny like I told you.”
“Get that feather out of my face before I pluck it.”
He could feel the eyes watching them now. Carbide too. After a tense moment the stallion dropped his wing. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Sledge chewed his lip and clapped a hoof against his shoulder. “You need a break. Do me a favor. Why don’t you go upstairs and get something to eat from the chow hall. Grab something for our guest, too.”
Carbide looked unsure. “You want me…”
“Volume,” he murmured.
He dropped to a whisper. “That’s a little over my pay grade, isn’t it? What if she’s… bitey?”
“You and Aurora handled each other just fine.” He smiled, ignoring the stallion’s faltering protest. “I’d do it if I didn’t already have my wings full, and besides Deputy Chaser has door duty tonight. That hasn’t changed. At the very least, just grab a meal and ask him to take it to her. Please.”
Carbide groaned at him. “Fine, alright. Gimme a few to close up the floor, first.”
“Try to wrap up in fifteen. If anyone gives you trouble about the second meal, have them ping my Pip-Buck. I need to swing by Sanitation in the meantime and get a read on the storage situation.”
“Water’s not going to be an issue this soon, is it?”
“Not as long as everyone sticks to their rations.” He chuckled darkly, trying to find a scrap of humor in their situation. “Shit still travels downhill, generator or not. With the recyclers down we may need to get creative on how to store it.”
“Better figure it out quietly or everyone’s going to hit the head at the same time. It’s enough work just keeping people’s wings away from their Pip-Bucks.” Carbide looked out at the denizens of Mechanical, many of their attentions split between pulling up floor panels and the green glows of the devices. “I’m thinking about confiscating them.”
He smirked at that. Word would get around, Pip-Bucks or no. “Food. Guest. Remember. I’ll check back later.”
He wished he could have departed Mechanical without ticking another box on the long list of emergencies they would soon be facing, but they were all past the point of being sheltered from their new reality. The more the residents knew, he decided, the more minds were turned toward finding solutions. He just needed to be careful with what he shared and how quickly. He needed to drip feed the bad news, prioritizing the critical issues. Get these ponies focused on the important problems. 
He tapped the call button for the service elevator and waited, frowning when nothing happened only to remember it was down. He mumbled an embarrassed curse and pushed open the door to the stairwell. Sanitation was on the opposite side of the Stable just one floor above Mechanical. While some residents often wished their home were larger, especially the compartment levels, Sledge was just grateful it was the size it was. At a touch younger than fifty, he wasn’t getting any younger and these stairs weren’t getting any easier. 
He couldn’t imagine living in a Stable like the one Aurora described in her most recent messages; a massive silo layed with dozens upon dozens of levels, with nothing but a single spiral staircase to travel from one to the other. How had the elderly gotten anywhere in a place like that? It sounded like each level was segregated to some degree as if travel on the stairs had been a deliberate design choice. And to have it collapse like it did. The thought of that happening here made him shudder. He wasn’t going to let that happen.
As he exited the stairwell and strode down the long corridor toward Sanitation, his thoughts wandered. Did the department head there have data on… intake? Maybe there was a way to moderate how often residents relieved themselves and stave off the inevitable hour when they ran out of places to store their waste. He grimaced at the thought of what would happen then while simultaneously accepting the fact that he only had passing knowledge of how Sanitation operated. With the exception of the pegasi who worked there, much of what happened down here was a mystery to most. He wasn’t looking forward to being shown what lay behind the big, brown curtain.
“Sledge! There you are!”
His ears perked at the familiar sound of Opal’s voice sprinting up the corridor behind him. Several other pegasi meandering through the dimly lit hall squinted in his direction, none of them aware that their overseer had been so close. He slowed enough to let Opal catch up, but he didn’t stop. If by some miracle he managed to live long enough to still be hustling around in his seventies, he’d be a happy stallion.
Opal looked ready to crawl out of her own skin when she reached him. Her eyes were wide, which wasn’t exactly uncommon given the state of fear among the residents, but not in the way he expected. It was the same look she’d worn when they’d broken through Delta’s encryption. 
“I need to show you somethin’,” she said between winded breaths. “It’s important.”
He tried not to let his irritation show. “What I’m doing now is important.”
“Not compared to this it ain’t. We got power in I.T.”
The stress had gotten to her. “Those are just the terminals, Opal. They’ve all got internal power sources.”
She stepped in front of him, forcing him to a halt. “It ain’t that, you big idiot! The whole server room’s gone lit itself up like a Hearth's Warming tree. Lights, climate control, all the servers, everything in that room just… rose from the dead. Just like that Stable Aurora was at.”
Hope and dread whipped themselves into a tempest in his chest. He had no intention of letting his friends and neighbors wind up like the residents of Stable 1, and yet the things happening here were uncomfortably similar to the events that unfolded in that other place. And the more insights and revelations they uncovered from the past, the less he felt he had any control over any of this.
He looked down the corridor to the doors of Sanitation, then to the elderly mare barring his path. He sighed.
“Show me.”







“--orders have been rescinded. Failure to comply will be treated as an act of willful insubordination and result in loss of rank, expulsion from service and imprisonment. This message will repeat.”
Ironshod sucked at his teeth with his cold gaze turned toward the old ham radio set. The young radio operator, a Squire barred from further promotion thanks to a series of indiscretions he’d been complicit in regarding the collection of “tolls” from passing trade caravans and whose silence in this mission would earn him a clean record, carefully avoided eye contact with the stallion looming behind him.
“This message is intended for Paladin Ironshod and any Rangers or civilians under his command. You are engaged in unlawful action. By order of Elder Coronado, cease all operations immediately and remand yourselves and your captive to the custody of the Steel Rangers of Magnus Plaza. Your orders have been rescinded. Failure to comply…”
He lit his horn and pressed a switch on the radio. The speaker let out a hollow pop and the equipment went dark. The Squire couldn’t quite keep his ears from pinning back with worry. “What do we do, sir?”
“Nothing,” he said, his eyes lifting from the radio set on the faded counter to the Rangers gathered in the ransacked remains of what had once been a dining room. 
A dozen armed mares and stallions reclined in ragged booths or standing in the space cleared at the center of the room to accommodate the four empty suits of P-65 power armor watched him with thinly veiled concern. They had all heard the broadcast well before Ironshod had been summoned up from the abandoned restaurant’s basement. An order like that, sent unencrypted over military and civilian frequencies, was no small thing. By now the entire city of Fillydelphia would know they were here, and the Rangers he’d brought on this mission hadn’t signed up to be arrested.
“We do nothing,” he repeated more firmly. “Coronado wants us out of his territory, which we will be once we’re finished. He doesn’t know where we are, and there are no laws in the Charter that forbid this interrogation.”
One of the recruits seated in a corner booth looked up from the disassembled rifle laid out on the table in front of her. Former Knight Rivers, he recalled. She’d already been stripped of her rank and discharged a year earlier after she and her friends had gotten drunk and stolen a crate of tracer rounds from the Bluff’s armory. They’d climbed to the top of the Bluff and managed to shoot off half the crate into the sky by the time Rangers in power armor reached them. It was one of the few times Hightower Radio had gone off the air in the middle of the broadcast due to its DJ having to hit the deck until Rivers and her fellow revelers could be detained.
Rivers had a reputation for being a shit starter, sober or not. “Hard to swallow when you’ve got an Elder saying otherwise,” she said. “You told us this operation was on the level.”
He fixed her with his gaze, willing her to close her mouth. “We are interrogating an asset of the Enclave. The only crime here would be to let her free.”
She wasn’t swayed. “Coronado didn’t say let her go. He said to bring her with us.”
He could see them all turning to look at her, ears up, listening.
“Six months in a cell was plenty enough for me,” she continued, pausing to shake her head and chuckle. “I’m not so eager to go back, you know? Especially not for that pegasus you got holed up down there.”
He approached the counter and set a hoof on its surface with an iron clack. “That pegasus is our key into an Enclave Stable.”
The mare narrowed her eyes at the bloodied ridge of his shodden hoof. “If you say so, sir. I only bring it up because it’s obvious now that someone recognized you and decided to rat us out to the local constabulary.” She tipped a hoof toward a wiry stallion seated in one of the restaurant chairs. “Hopper was in charge of recon and he’s one-hundred percent sure the pegasi were the only ones in the area. Do the math, hammerhooves. You didn’t kill the other mare.”
His eye twitched at the accusation. He stiffened and stepped away from the counter, lighting his horn as he did. Silver magic swarmed into the radio and grasped at the cluster of vacuum tubes inside, wrenching them out of their sockets with an abrupt series of glass pops that caused several of the gathered Rangers to jump in their seats. With the radio ruined, he shoved it off the counter. It hit the green and red tiles with a satisfying crunch.
“I will say this only once,” he rumbled. “None of us heard that broadcast. This conversation did not happen. Your orders are to stand watch and be ready to defend this building from all intruders including the local Rangers. My orders are to extract information from our prisoner for the purpose of accessing the Enclave’s Stable and taking away their technological advantage over us. If anyone here attempts to prevent you or me from performing our duties, life in a cell will be the least of their worries. Do I make myself clear?”
A low murmur of yes sirs rippled through the dining room with the exception of one. Rivers stared at him with calm defiance. He didn’t look away.
“Rivers, I advise that you think long and hard about how you want to be remembered when this is done. Either as one of the heroes who helped steal the first Stable away from the enemy, or as a disgraced Knight whose cowardice preserved the Enclave for generations to come. I’ll leave the decision and its consequences up to you.”
With that he turned and walked away, feeling the heat of Rivers’ gaze against the back of his head as he stepped past cold fryer stations, stacks of apple-themed sandwich boxes and a cold table of grease-slick steel that had once been the restaurant’s grill. Rivers had a dangerous mouth, but she didn’t have the clout to spur her comrades into action. Not when they were all complicit and not when they were this far from home. Coronado could bluster all he liked. Once they were done and back in Elder Coldbrook’s territory, there would be nothing that cloven-hoofed diversity hire could do.
The rest of them would keep Rivers in line. He followed the sandwich assembly line to a larger space in the kitchen stocked high with rusting metal containers, plastic tubs and an assortment of lids for every one of them. Spray nozzles hung limp over a row of steel sinks, the last of which was partially filled by a jumble of bones from the front half of a unicorn who had died at their station. The back half were scattered across the floor, kicked around by scavengers who had come some time before. Ironshod was careful not to disturb the bones as he walked to the corner of the space where the floor hatch to the basement stood propped open with an old pipe rifle. The stairs were steep enough to make navigating them a chore, but he didn’t let his discomfort show as he descended.
The steps bottomed out into a dry storage room lit by the same generator that powered the ancient freezer. Calling it a storage room was charitable. It was more of a storage hallway, and the low ceiling gave Ironshod the slightest twinge of claustrophobia as he made his way to the silver door at the center of the far wall. Two of his Rangers waited on either side of the door, weapons ready and blissfully unaware of the wrench Coronado was trying to throw into Ironshod’s work. Even so, Aurora’s guards looked slightly pale, especially the stallion who accompanied him to Aurora’s last session. 
Ironshod gestured for them to step aside and they did without a word, only watching as he flipped the lightswitch beside the door and turned the thermostat until a deep thud shook the cooling units outside.
Taking the heavy blanket held up by one of the guards, he wrapped his magic around the handle and pulled apart the icy gaskets. Chilled air fogged into the storeroom bringing with it the sour odor of blood and urine. 
“Alright, Aurora,” he murmured. “Let’s try this again.”







The sky was a piercing shade of blue speckled with puffs of cloud. The sun warmed her face, the air crisp and cool as it cascaded down the mountain toward the green and golden quiltwork of farmland and forest sprawling out in every direction. It was a paradise compared to the yellowed and torn photographs the ponies of Old Canterlot collected and bartered for. A place bubbling over with prosperity, magic and mystery. It was so real. And it was all coming to an end.
Sirens howled up to the parapet Ginger stood upon, stirring an entire capital into visceral panic. Pegasi fled from the mountain city in great flocks, many of them carrying foals too young to fly while others clung to luggage barely light enough to carry. Those restricted to the ground washed through those beautiful cobble streets like a dark, living river that split in two directions. One crashed headlong into the stairs of the Pillar, clogging the narrow entrances with a crush of ponies desperate to evacuate inside. Others, seeing the danger in being trapped among this crowd had begun to split off in droves, pouring south toward the railroad where she watched them flee down the lines, desperate to get as far from the city as they could. 
Everyone down there knew what was coming, but when the moment came raw terror whittled their well-meaning evacuation plans down to basic survival. Find shelter or find a way out. Distant gunfire crackled up from the Pillar, muted little pops like corn kernels on a skillet. Ginger wanted to look away but Princess Luna’s eyes were glued in horror at what was happening to her people. Memories of old wars Ginger didn’t recognize flashed through her mind, torturing her with the undeniable realization that it was happening here of all places. All of their conquests, all of the pain they had inflicted in order to secure this land now called Equestria was now being inflicted upon their people. Here, at the height of their reign, she was watching the civilization she had helped build tumble into primal chaos.
A force Ginger struggled to recon with clamped around her muzzle, vibrating the very teeth in their sockets as it wrenched her gaze away from the disarray below and toward the alicorn standing beside her. Her sister. Luna’s sister. The boundaries between memory and reality were becoming too blurred. Ginger struggled to cling to her sense of self. This was nothing like passively watching a prewar film reel. This was present, visceral, indiscernible. As if she were the one staring into Princess Celestia’s red-rimmed eyes and feeling the deep, tearing shame of knowing what her sister wanted to do was doomed to fail.
“Focus, please!” Celestia begged. “We have to protect Canterlot!”
She was going to die here. They both were. Celestia knew it too and even now she was determined to keep up the facade that what they did here stood any chance of saving anyone. The fiction they had spent thousands of years creating demanded they did. They were the Princesses of the Sun and Moon. Immortal and all-powerful. Careful lies that had kept them in power and struck doubt into those who might challenge it. A shield of words and illusion that comforted the weak and lulled the strong into allowing centuries upon centuries of relative peace.
Now that was coming to an end. Their borders were burning. Cities were falling from the sky. Even now, Luna could see the brief flickers of green light on the horizon. 
“I love you, Tia,” she whispered.
Her sister’s composure slipped. “I love you too. I’m sorry I didn’t do better.”
Tears stung her eyes, but before she could reach out to embrace her Celestia stepped away and turned her gaze toward the sky above them. Golden light swarmed off the tip of her horn and spiraled into the blue on a tenuous filament of magic. Luna blinked away the tears and steadied her nerves as best she could as she concentrated on the spell.
Ginger gasped at the sensation of tapping into a reservoir of power so deep she couldn’t imagine where the bottom might be. As Luna assembled the framework of the spell Ginger couldn’t help but revel in the feeling of accessing magic free of restriction for the first time in her life. The thrumming energy that so easily bent to her will made the magic she’d taught herself with the added charge of Autumn Song’s stimpacks feel as if she’d been throwing magic into the gale winds of a tornado. This was magic in its purest form, harnessed in perfect calm and unobstructed. This was alicorn magic.
She recognized the basic components of the shield spell forming in Luna’s mind much like an amateur cook might recognize a strong spice. It was there, but a part of something much greater. The spell arced into the air alongside Celestia’s magic, the two filaments coming together at the apex of their flight. From the convergence poured a lavender dome many orders of magnitude larger than anything Ginger had ever created. She could feel the layers of protection stretch, fold and mesh into one another, strengthening the barrier even as it fell to encompass the entirety of Canterlot. She could sense the leading edge as it curved beneath the great promenades at the city’s edge, sweeping under the enchanted stone the city was perched upon. Once the spell sealed itself against the mountainside, Luna breathed a resigned sigh. This wouldn’t hold. Not against balefire.
“Don’t stop,” Celestia murmured. “It needs to be stronger than this.”
Luna could already feel the strange prickling of needles assaulting the dome, radiation from the balefire already unleashed eating away at their magic ahead of the missiles that were tracking toward the city. No sense in arguing. She redoubled her efforts.
Layer upon layer folded and interlocked within the structure of the magic already made physical, thickening like ceramic. Concrete. Iron. Steel. Layer by layer the shield grew denser. The sky turned deep lavender, sunlight stained as it streamed through casting Canterlot in shades of twilight. Pegasi who hadn’t been able to leave the city before the shield dropped turned back to the ground while unicorns and earth ponies slowed or stopped completely, gathering in the streets or approaching their windows to watch their saviors defy the inevitable.
Ginger felt Luna’s frustration at glimpsing the onlookers below. They needed to find shelter or they would not survive. They were dooming themselves, surrendering their chances at survival just to ogle the spectacle outside. It sparked a deep, old anger in her heart. These powerless fools throwing themselves to the slaughter at the first sight of something shiny. In their ignorance they had invented a power capable of destroying everything they loved, and they still couldn’t help but stare slack-jawed at the sky while their rulers strove to buy them a few precious seconds to flee.
Rather than scream at them, she channeled that anger into her magic. Knit and fold, stitch and weave. Balefire would burn through their magic like a lit match dropped into dry kindling, but with enough fuel it would still take time for that cannibalistic magic to eat its way through. Perhaps they could deaden the worst of the detonation, or deflect it entirely…
Too late. She spotted the narrow white exhaust trail of the missile as it lifted up from the horizon like a length of string held aloft. Celestia saw it too. Her sister began pouring raw magic into the shield haphazardly now, emptying her reserves into the spell that caused the focal point of the dome to glow nearly white. Luna tried to control her breathing as she did the same, eyes fixed on that pinprick of light as its arc slowed without deviating left or right. This one was meant for them. For Canterlot.
It slashed across the sky like a mighty osprey sighting a hapless fish. Celestia and Luna braced the shield with every ounce of strength they could muster, only to watch in helpless horror as the missile streaked beneath the lip of the city and out of view. In the fleeting moments between sight and understanding, Luna opened her mouth with the beginning of a scream. 
Time turned to tar. The Pillar hadn’t been Vhanna’s target. Nor had the castle or the city proper. The zebras had known. Somehow the zebras had known these would be defended, and so they focused on the one place that wouldn’t be. Survivors of the evacuation would recount seeing the missile’s final dive toward Canterlot before burying itself into the magically hardened stone of Canterlot Mountain itself.
Luna witnessed it differently. She watched as the landscape beyond their shield bloomed with pale green light, smoke spooling away from houses and farmland as the thermal shockwave reduced the vibrant quiltwork to carbon. The deafening clap of the explosion rupturing her eardrums and the delicate structures beyond, muting her scream even as the strange sensation of falling overtook her. Because that was what was happening. Canterlot was sliding. Tumbling into the pool of fire that spewed up over the drunkenly tilting promenades and sizzled against their worthless shield like acid through tissue paper. The city broke apart beneath them. Great fissures ripped open beneath streets and houses and ponies allowing curtains of balefire to rush in through the voids. 
She could taste the flames well before they clawed their way to where she stood, flooding her senses with the taste of blood, ash and metal. It latched onto her magic and burned black in her mind, promising to burrow its way down to the very font of her power, boiling away her great reservoirs of magic until even the residue was scoured from existence. 
Her concentration gave way and her magic failed. She saw her sister bow under the immense weight, heard her cry in shock as the balcony cracked beneath their hooves. The shield fell. The balcony fell.
Canterlot fell. And as it did, the full brunt of the explosion beneath the great Equestrian capital raged through the barricades, engulfing the city and its inhabitants as they plummeted down into the inescapable inferno.







“Up and at ‘em,” a low voice echoed. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
Consciousness came slowly. Sleep clung to her frozen bones like a reluctant lover, coaxing Aurora back down into herself with the promise of comforting dark. Something hard clubbed her across the jaw, painting the walls of her mouth with fresh blood and throbbing pain. It dragged her awake against her own will, forcing the slow awareness of now to take shape in her aching head despite her desperate wishing for it to stop. It didn’t stop. None of this was going to stop.
She didn’t have the energy to fight this anymore. Defiance hadn’t done a thing to help her and she was too tired to worry about embarrassing herself in front of him. Her chin stayed pressed against the frost coating her chest and she wept with ugly, heaving sobs at the sight of her own frozen urine puddled between her legs. Blood and spittle dribbled off her chin as she became aware of the black hooves just in front of her and the promise of violence they brought. 
Through the wash of tears she could still see the terrible wrongness of her left leg, crushed and shattered under Ironshod’s brute punishment. She could see the dark discoloration of purple flesh through the gashes his iron shoes left behind, the swollen skin frozen stiff in a plaster of solid blood. He hadn’t just broken her leg. He’d pulverized it. Even now as warm air flowed in from the open door and her body gradually thawed for what felt like the hundredth time, the deep throb of damaged nerves coming alive only extended as far as the furious wound Ironshod created. Everything below her upper thigh was numb.
Dead.
“Stop crying,” he said.
A different voice spoke up behind her. “Sir, she needs a break.”
“What she needs is a bullet.” The barely contained fury in his voice only made her more inconsolable. “And you’ll get one too if you suggest that again. Now go get a stimpack before she goes back into shock.”
She didn’t know how long the other Ranger was gone for. It felt like he hadn’t left at all before a deep, stabbing pain erupted from her hip. For a fleeting moment she felt hope as she tried to calm herself enough to look at the syringe being pulled out of her, but that hope crumbled as she recognized the unremarkable shape of a modern stimpack. She felt like an idiot expecting it to be anything else. Even if Ironshod had access to prewar medicines like Autumn had, he wouldn’t waste a dose on her.
He grabbed her by the chin, his horn bright with anger. He shook her head with each word. “Stop. Crying.”
As he held her there, she realized something. She wasn’t leaving. He had no reason to let her go. She could give him everything he wanted right now, her Pip-Buck, fabricator schematics, the tightbeam coordinates to SOLUS, even open the door to Stable 10 itself… and he would let her die here all the same. Somewhere along the line Ironshod’s anger had overridden logic. Coldbrook was cruel, but something told her he wouldn’t sign off on something like this. Ironshod was doing things that were making his fellow accomplices squeamish. How many more times could she endure the cold before it finally took her? How long would it take him to run out of limbs to destroy before he gave her that promised bullet? He was far from finished with her, and the deeper he dug this hole the more certain Aurora was that he would be forced to bury her in it.
She wasn’t going home. Ginger and Roach weren’t coming. She was going to die here, alone, just another corpse to feed the wasteland. What happened between then and now wasn’t up to her. It never had been. From Cider, Autumn Song, the raiders and the slavers, the cannibals and the warped monstrosities lumbering in the shadows, she’d found one way or another to ignore the warnings. All the stories she’d been told as a foal about the world outside had been true after all. The Wasteland was a place meant for the dead.
Coming out here had been a mistake.
Her tears stopped running, her sobs slowing into silence. Ironshod released his grip and her chin dropped back to her chest.
“Tell me the purpose of Stable 10,” he said.
She stared down at her ruined leg, saying nothing. Some of the exposed skin around the wound had turned black with frostbite.
He waited. Then, in the hopes of coaxing out her voice, he set a hoof against her ruined leg and pressed his weight into it. She watched the flesh deform under the pressure but felt nothing. It was bizarre. Gradually, the stallion put together why she wasn’t showing a response and lifted his hoof away in disgust. 
“Don’t think I won’t take your other leg, Aurora,” he warned. “Answer my question.”
She offered the mildest shrug and continued to ignore him. Take the leg. Take the wings. She didn’t care. It would hurt for a while and then it wouldn’t. All the roads he had to offer led to the same dead end.
Time ticked by, marked by the slow drip of thawing urine against the floor. It stank. She took comfort in the knowledge that he had to smell it, too. Ironshod waited for her to speak for several long minutes but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. Not for her, at least. A part of her hoped he would be goaded into fulfilling his promise and take his anger out on her surviving hind leg. She didn’t think she had the strength to survive the trauma and it would be nice to have this over with.
Ironshod sighed. “No. You don’t get to give up that easily. Not until you tell me the truth.”
She watched his hooves turn toward the door. The stallion behind her began to follow. 
“You stay. Put her in a clean chair. I’ll send someone down with a field kit to treat her leg.” He paused as he crossed the threshold, and Aurora could sense the overt notes of challenge rippling through his voice. “We’ll try this again after you’re finished.”







Stepping into the server room was eerie. He expected the reverse to be true.
Compared to the dim yellow light of the corridors, the deafening silence of air recyclers, and the worried whispers of residents he passed on the way here, Sledge had hoped seeing the bright, blinking, chattering servers to be something of a relief. A return to normalcy. Instead, he couldn’t help but feel as if the white fluorescents that bathed the room in sterile light acted as a condemnation. Proof that this place and these computers were insulated from the rest of the Stable’s decline because, somehow, they were a part of it.
“Before the power went on the fritz, I took some time to review the security footage taken here on the day Delta Vee had her row with ol’ Spitfire.” Opal spoke over her shoulder as he followed, navigating the rows of blinking servers by habit and memory. “Sure enough, she’s on camera runnin’ in here like a royal with her mane on fire shoutin’ all kinds of colorful language that I’m sure you’re already familiar with.”
Sledge smiled a little, but he wished she would get to the point. Ahead of them at the end of the servers lay the open hatch Opal had shown to him before. A team of four pegasi who he quickly recognized from his time in Mechanical glanced toward them as they approached, one of which grinned sheepishly at the sight of Sledge.
Flux lifted a wing in greeting, her chestnut mane bundled with a dirty rubber band behind her neck. “Hey there, boss.”
She was supposed to be sleeping. Her shift started in a few hours. He forced himself not to lay into her over it, knowing there wasn’t going to be much work waiting for her down below anyway. He grunted with a curt nod, neither approving nor disapproving of her presence or the tradies she’d brought with her. “What’s the story here?”
The teal mare and her counterparts made room for them around the hatch. He peered down into the cavity where the cleaved ends of several cables had been carefully bent away from what remained of the intact core. Hooves could be heard scraping and scuffing somewhere below the floor, the ongoing work of some unfortunate volunteer who’d been voluntold to blaze a trail through the untouched dust and cobwebs. 
“Well,” Opal started, gesturing to the severed cables with a wing, “judgin’ by how much of a hurry Delta was in when she cut these, I thought she’d gone in all willy-nilly just hopin’ to get lucky. Th’more Flux’s team looks at things, though, it’s lookin’ more like surgery. Means that old fart knew what she was doin’.”
Sledge frowned at the heavy duty cables. They were thicker than anything he’d been taught to replace.
Flux slid her top half into the hole and tapped a feather against the largest cable. It was cased in steel conduit large enough to drop his hind leg into with room to spare, and bolted to the exterior skin of the Stable with what he assumed were pressure-rated seals. He’d read some old books about large scale infrastructure before the war and how the modernized cities on the west coast submerged high capacity lines in non conductive oil to prevent arcing. This looked a lot like those diagrams, though a little smaller than he expected.
“That line is keeping servers online,” Flux said, moving her feather to a smaller intact bundle tucked in the larger’s shadow. “We’re still working on this one. Best guess, it links up to an antenna somewhere on the surface. It’d be easier to troubleshoot if whoever laid these bothered to mark them.”
It wasn’t an unremarkable observation. All of the cables were devoid of any of the standard manufacturer’s markings. If Delta had known which ones to cut through she’d either gone off of some very lucky guesses or had gotten access to schematics. Considering the lengths she’d gone to encrypt and preserve Partition 40 without Spitfire’s knowledge, he suspected she’d done her research. 
“So she cut everything except the incoming power and a radio.” He frowned at the cleanly sliced lines. “What were those meant for?”
“Data and communications,” Opal said. “Whole mess o’ fiber optic, standard copper, you name it. Whoever conjured up this umbilical to the outside didn’t spare a bit doing it, neither. Heck, there’s genuine telephone wire down there. Beats me who you’d call, but it’s there. Guess whenever Stable-Tec figured they’d sound the all clear, no one wanted to risk us not gettin’ the message.”
“So Delta cut us off from Stable-Tec’s network… but then how are we sending and receiving messages from Aurora?”
Flux glanced at him and shrugged. “That’s why I’m guessing that the smaller line runs to a surface antenna. It has the shielding I would pick if I wanted to extend the network range that our Pip-Bucks connect to.”
He stared at the innocuous cable for several long seconds before shifting to the sliced sections that had been pulled away. Something wasn’t sitting right with him about that.
Opal nudged him. “What’re you thinkin’?”
He glanced at Flux and her chosen team before offering Opal a subtle shake of his head. “What are the chances we could divert the power we’re getting from that line to the rest of the Stable?”
If Flux noticed what had passed between Sledge and Opal, she made no indication. “The whole Stable? Zero. Our generator outputs power on an order of magnitude greater than what we’re seeing coming in from this line. It’s beefier than anything we have here but we’re on a trickle feed. Probably why it’s lasted this long without needing to be replaced.”
“Okay, so we’re dealing with percentages. But if we wanted to, could we still redirect power somewhere other than the servers?”
Flux pulled herself up from the hole and sat up, pulling a few stray strands of mane through the elastic band. “I mean, sure, but it’s not a lot to play with. Where are you wanting to send it?”
“Sanitation,” he said. “For starters. They need power to get the recyclers back online. The air recyclers too.”
He sighed, adding, “We’ll want to top off the cisterns at the top of the Stable, too.”
Flux puffed out a long breath and mulled the numbers in her head. One of the reasons she’d gotten the job leading Mechanical’s first shift was thanks to her expertise as an electrician. She wasn’t perfect - that’s why they had the computers - but she was damn near.
“You’re not making this easy,” she said, but her expression was touched with humor and seeing anyone else smiling down here was a welcome break from the norm. “There’s not enough juice to check everything off your honey-do list at once, but if we set up a rotation and decide on some hard limits on demand… I mean, yeah. There’s enough to get the toilets flushing again.”
She looked at Opal, adding, “It means we’re going to have to shut off the servers, though.”
Sledge waited for the old mare to protest and was surprised when she looked back at the vast array of chittering machines and shrugged. 
“Let me set a restore point and I’ll have my folks take ‘em offline. I ain’t spendin’ my golden years shittin’ in no bucket.”
They all chuckled while gradually becoming aware that there wasn’t anything else to discuss. Flux and her team had their job, Opal had hers and Sledge… he was just trying to hold everything together long enough for Aurora to get back and pull them all away from the abyss. He turned to leave and Opal followed beside him, the two of them quiet as they followed the way back through the servers.
“Something’s eatin’ you, Sledge. Spit it out.”
He could see his own gloomy reflection in her eyes. “I’m not liking what all of this is pointing at.”
She frowned. “And what’s that?”
He went down the list. “Ten years after the Stable closes, Overmare Spitfire gets a phone call that turns her into a blubbering mess. Shortly after that the generator shits the bed and she isn’t even surprised by it. Now you’re telling me Delta Vee was here when the lights went out and hacked apart our connection to Stable-Tec’s network, after which she went straight upstairs to tear into the overmare.”
The lines on Opal’s brow deepened. “Can’t say that paints a pretty picture, now that you mention it.”
It didn’t. None of this did.
“It tells me that our generator didn’t fail because the ignition talisman went bad. Two hundred years ago someone tried to shut it down from the outside.”
The pieces were clicking into place. Worse, they dispelled dozens of lingering questions Sledge had about what was going on in his Stable. In a fog of nothing he was beginning to see the shape of actual events that occurred so many generations ago.
“And somehow Delta Vee knew exactly how to stop it.”







The last dying moments of a city blinked away as if she’d never been there at all, and Ginger found herself seated once again at the curbside cafe. Tandy occupied the patio chair beside her, watching Ginger with her creator’s eyes. She waited patiently for Ginger to collect herself like a student in no hurry for her teacher to begin the lecture.
She needed a moment to assure herself that the ground below her wasn’t primed to tear apart into a yawning, boiling chasm. Her brain did the best it could to reconcile what she was feeling just then. An incompatible mixture of dread for the fate of the city around her, relief to find Canterlot intact and unhurt, and bewildered as to how she could feel either of those things when she knew the ruins of this old city lay in a tragic heap at the bottom of the fire-scarred mountain. It was a form of mental hopscotch ponies more adept at dabbling with illicit chems played to entertain themselves, and Ginger was well out of her depths in that regard.
“You are quiet.”
Her eyes briefly followed a mare on the sidewalk who looked remarkably like Aurora would if she’d been born with a horn. “I’m not sure what I should say. Did all of that really… happen?”
Tandy turned to look at the same mare with innocent curiosity. “What you experienced was a pure memory unadulterated by time or introspection.”
She blinked at Tandy.
“Yes, it did really happen.” When she saw Ginger slump in her seat, she added, “Before, you inferred that there was a lesson I might learn from that memory.”
She had? It came to her slowly and, yes, she had been trying to teach Tandy something about digging around in another pony’s old wounds. She closed her eyes and tried to cobble something meaningful together but Luna’s memory... Ginger’s memory of Canterlot’s demise was too fresh in her mind. She could still see the balefire bursting through the streets, consuming those who had stopped to watch, churning up the castle ramparts until she could feel flames flooding into her mouth, her nose, her eyes until the pain of it flickered into nothing.
She’d experienced death, she came to realize. Luna’s death, yes, but she’d been there to see, hear and feel everything Luna had without the benefit of forgetting after. She steepled her hooves above the table and propped her forehead against them, unsure what to do with that knowledge.
“I will not conjure Primrose’s father again.”
Ginger lifted her lips to her hooves and frowned up at Tandy. As a filly she’d read the legend of Nightmare Moon, the cackling midnight mare who tried and failed to overthrow her sister with the Elements of Harmony and earned banishment as her reward. Never in those books did she appear unarmored, calm, or seated at an outdoor cafe wrapped in deep thought.
Even the way Tandy wore Nightmare Moon’s mane had changed. The ever flowing curtain of constellations settled around her shoulder, still and unmoving as any other pony Ginger knew. There was a vulnerable beauty in it.
“I cannot pretend to understand which nightmares cause the harm you described because Luna did not teach me. She created me so that I might plague her while she slept. She told me it was penance and so I did as she asked.” She stopped, eyes lifting from the little table to meet Ginger’s. “May I share a secret with you?”
That made her hesitate more than anything else. What answer other than yes could she give an apparently sentient creature capable of manipulating the fabric of the subconscious with as little as a thought? She braced herself in anticipation of being swept into another one of the dead princess’s too-vivid nightmares, and nodded.
“Go ahead.”
Tandy smiled a little, and for a brief second she looked more nervous than Ginger was the day she left home. “Luna did not intend to relinquish control of her dream realm to me. When she died, the connection which tied us together - the connection that permitted me to share her experiences and craft her nightmares - ceased to be. The cage she built to contain me was gone as well. It is how I know she did not survive. It is also the reason why I treat little Cozy Glow so harshly. Because of the lies she tells about Luna and her sister.”
Ginger found herself trying to keep pace with Luna’s torturer, realizing that this was a confession in Tandy’s fashion of sharing it. She waited until the creature finally continued.
“I worry that I am not doing the things Luna would do if she were still alive. The creatures who appear in this realm have so few happy that are not already tainted with grief. Those few who dream often mistake me for her and beg me to return. They believe the lie that the princesses are in hiding, or ascended, and I fear this hope for their return stops many from rebuilding their world.” Tandy’s horn glowed briefly, and a purple stoneware mug of something hot appeared near her lip. She took a sip and lowered the mug into her waiting hooves, something Ginger rarely ever saw unicorns do. “Serving this role was not my decision. Had I the choice, I would not continue in it.”
Ginger was quiet for a while. “And… do you have that choice? To quit?”
Tandy shook her head and set the steaming mug beside Ginger’s foreleg. “I have been told cocoa is in precious little supply in the waking world. Try it.”
She blinked down at the mug of dark brown liquid, her mind drawing unappetizing connections in the process. “Co-co?”
Tandy smiled and the stars in her mane shined just a touch brighter. A second mug appeared before her, vibrant pink and sporting three familiar balloons which faced Ginger. She drank with eyes closed, savoring the liquid. 
“It is a chocolate beverage. You will like it.”
Ah. She knew what chocolate was. There were plenty of the vaguely sweet but ultimately inedible grey bars still floating around Equestria, their expiration date having come and gone centuries ago along with most of their color. She supposed the drink beside her couldn’t be much worse than the “sugared brahmin milk” that enjoyed brief popularity in New Canterlot before word leaked that the mare selling it was also the source of the milk.
Shuddering at the thought, she lifted the mug to her muzzle and drank. 
Liquid bliss. Rich, creamy and thick, it filled her with a pleasurable warmth as it inundated her senses with the incomparable aroma and flavor of a long forgotten sweetness. She drank greedily, each mouthful just as wonderful as the last, until eventually the cup ran dry and the dream ended.







She woke with the taste of the chocolate elixir fading on her tongue, replaced by the sour dryness earned from a night spent sleeping with her mouth open. Swallowing, she cracked her eyes to see the dusty bottom shelves of Peppercorn’s storeroom. A wooden crate repurposed to hold neatly folded clean rags looked back at her as if she were the unwelcome sight and not the other way around. 
She rolled over to face the room and saw something not entirely unexpected. Roach had fallen asleep at what amounted to Julip’s operating table, his head resting against one of his bent forelegs. In the weak morning light that filtered in through the boarded walls, she watched Julip’s barrel rise and fall with fuller breaths. She was recovering. And of course she would. She had Roach to make sure of it.
Jealous tears stung at her eyes quicker than she could will them away. None of this was their fault and no matter how much she wanted to blame Julip for not standing against Ironshod, she couldn’t. It was by the barest glimmer of luck that Julip survived long enough to tell her and Roach what had happened. Without her their chances of finding Aurora dropped to zero. Yet even now with Elder Coronado bending his considerable resources to the search, her odds were painfully slim. It occurred to Ginger that the time may come when she learns there was truly nothing she could do. Despite everything, Aurora could already be dead.
A flood of defiant anger washed through her. Her horn glowed, bathing the storeroom in amber. She quickly doused it, startled by how readily her magic had come rushing to her in response. Lighting it more dimly she tried to detect the fatigue or disorientation that dogged her when she put Chops through his paces, but it came to her beckon eagerly. As she let the room go dark again she thought back to her dream and the moment Tandy touched her horn. Had she given her magic? That was ridiculous. It couldn’t be that easy. Unicorns weren’t motorized carriages who could just… pull up to the pump. 
Could they?
One more mystery she wasn’t in the mood to solve right now. Tandy had topped her off. Fine. When they found Aurora, maybe she’d practice a new spell involving the forced relocation of Ironshod’s head to his colon. Any other day the thought would have spurred a laugh out of her, but thinking about it now only stoked her anger. She didn’t know what she would do when or if she ever crossed paths with him. Nothing good, she decided. Nothing he didn’t already deserve.
She pushed herself off the floor, stopping to watch Roach and Julip dozing at the table. The hazy light of dawn was already creeping in through the gaps in the walls and it wouldn’t be long before the doctor came in with a broom to shoo them all out. Before they found themselves out on the curb, she wanted to speak to Coronado again. See if he’d heard anything and ask if there wasn’t something she could do to help. 
Roach and Julip would be alright by themselves for a few hours. She stretched her legs, gathered her resolve and crept her way to the back exit. Her magic wrapped gently around the knob and pulled open the door.
Chops stood on the other side, his hoof hovering in the air ready to knock. Ginger frowned down at the stallion before shifting to the taller pony beside him. Dancer regarded her with equal disdain.
“Oh good, you’re still here,” he stated in a wholly disingenuous grumble. One of his wings slipped out of his duster just enough for her to see the object held between his feathers. A single Pip-Buck. Her stomach dropped. 
“The Minister would like a word with you.”







Dancer didn’t wait to be invited inside and pushed past her. Chops offered an apologetic shrug to the bewildered mare and followed, leaving her to lock the door behind them. Hooves thumped across the boards of the dimly lit storeroom, stirring the other two members of Ginger’s remaining party awake. Julip and the ghoul startled at the sudden noise, the latter dropping from his chair and snapping out the tarnished shotgun strapped to his foreleg. The ghoul only relaxed once he spotted Ginger behind them.
“It’s getting crowded in here, Ginger,” he murmured.
Chops uncoupled his wings and lifted a feather toward Dancer, but the lavender stallion had drifted out of reach and was examining the mess of broken bottles and chems that had soaked into the floorboards since his first harrowing visit. Dancer had the attention span of a fly at times. He held up a feather toward the ghoul instead and pantomimed writing.
“This is where you’ve been hiding out?” Dancer nudged a hoof at one of the broken shelves laying on the floor.
Roach stood rooted where he was, positioned between their visitors and Julip who was working her way off the table and into one of the unoccupied chairs. Ginger crossed the room without taking her eyes off him or Dancer and retrieved the same festive notepad and pencil from earlier, floating them to Chops.
“Keep your voices down,” she said, dousing her horn. “We’re not the only ones here.”
Dancer followed her gaze toward the ceiling and frowned. “How many?”
“Just the owner.”
Chops held up the notepad with the words Any luck? scrawled across a fresh page. Ginger briefly squinted at it and shook her head, turning her attention back to Dancer who was now rifling through the shelves with his hooves. He rolled his eyes and resumed writing.
“Here we go.” Dancer unfurled his wings and plucked a small white bottle from one of the boxes. He cupped it and used the other wing to hold out the Pip-Buck to Ginger. “Put this on. I’ll be back down in a minute.”
Ginger looked at the offered device with open distrust, then stared down at Dancer’s other wing. “Show me.”
Dancer stared back at her for several long seconds before finally relenting and lifting up the white bottle for her to see. Chops paused writing to read the label too. It was one of the little RestWell sprayers that the junkies back home would smuggle in to snort in between uppers. The stuff was forbidden within the Enclave for its addictive qualities alone, though that only forced the trade underground like all the other chems. He frowned his disapproval at Dancer, but the stallion carefully avoided his gaze.
“Just take it,” he said, tossing the Pip-Buck at Ginger. She caught it and glared after him as he sashayed his way past Julip and the ghoul. “I’ll be right back.”
He found the stairs at the far side of the storeroom and slinked upstairs. Chops let out an exasperated sigh and finished his note, holding it up for them to read.
Minister wants to talk to Ginger. Spritebots draw too much attention. Pip-Buck will let you talk to her but if you put on don’t take off.
Julip hissed as she tried to find a comfortable position in her seat. Chops watched her tap Roach on the flank with her wing and beckon him to her. She whispered something in his ear while staring daggers at Chops. When Roach murmured his answer, the hostility in her eyes shifted to pensive fear. She looked away and mouthed a silent fuck.
A hard thump shook the ceiling, followed by the brief sound of a struggle. Chops grew tense for a moment but soon the scuffling quieted. Knowing Dancer, there was an equal chance that the proprietor was knocked out or dead. Best to keep that to himself. Dancer appeared from the stairs moments later and flicked the empty RestWell bottle onto the floor, glancing only briefly at Julip as he passed by. 
“He’s out,” he said, turning to the Pip-Buck still held in Ginger’s magic. “Put it on. Minister Primrose will be…”
Ginger cut him off. “Chops explained what it’s for. What does she want?”
Dancer sidled over to the table and pulled up a chair for himself opposite the ghoul and Julip. “We wouldn’t know. Thanks to Julip, we weren’t exactly in a position to ask questions. I’d go so far to say we’re lucky she allowed us to leave New Canterlot at all.”
Julip avoided his gaze. “Not my fault you’re so fucking gullable.”
His lip curled away from his teeth. “Far be it from me to assume my friend would turn out to be a traitor.”
Chops stamped a hoof into the floorboards, ending the argument before it got out of control. He tucked the notepad into the crux of his leg and began signing. Dancer slouched against the table and followed along with no small amount of chagrin.
“Chops says he agrees whole-heartedly,” he droned.
A second, harder stamp earned a meager gesture of surrender from Dancer. The three others regarded the lavender stallion dubiously. Dancer could be unbearable when he was pissy. 
“He says that the Minister wants to help us put our house in order.” He waited on Chops for a moment before adding, “The Pip-Buck will help us find Aurora.”
Ginger frowned at the device, then to Dancer. “He said I shouldn’t take it off once I put it on. Why?”
Chops closed his eyes and tried not to smile too much. Dancer snorted as he gestured.
“Chops says he’s mute, not deaf.”
Ginger immediately grew uncomfortable. Chops shook his head, waving her off to let her know it was fine. 
“Happens all the time,” Dancer said, speaking on his own now. “That Pip-Buck’s been modified and cleared for field operation. Once it detects a wearer, it creates a biometric signature that it monitors until someone with clearance shuts it off or the pegasus… or unicorn takes it off.”
Ginger looked to the ghoul for some kind of reassurance, and the ghoul looked in turn to Julip. He half expected Julip to torpedo them out of spite, but the mare held out a wing with visible discomfort.
“Let me see it,” she said. Ginger obliged, and she turned the device this way and that, examining it for anything suspicious. After a minute she tossed it back to Ginger. “It's disposable, like they said. When you take it off you’ll have a few seconds to toss it before it destroys itself. It’s the only way the Enclave can be sure the Rangers won’t get their hooves on one.”
Ginger looked incredulous. “They want me to wear a bomb?”
Chops tapped his hoof to get her attention and began quickly signing. 
“Not a bomb,” Dancer said. “Thermite charge. Turns all the hardware the Rangers want into slag.”
“It creates a lot of heat and smoke,” Julip clarified. “Doesn’t explode though. We… fuck. They wouldn’t put them on their field commanders if they were dangerous.”

“There you go,” Dancer said. “From the mouth of shortstack herself.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Dancer sat up. “I’ve always called you-”
“Don’t.”
Chops started signing for Dancer to knock it off but he wasn’t watching. He’d turned to face Julip more fully, doing little to disguise his anger toward the mare they had both spent their share of time running drills and training alongside. Dancer jabbed an accusing feather at Julip in advance of his righteous anger, but a sudden shimmer of green light grabbed his wing and flattened it against the table.
The ghoul’s hoof, the one bearing its shotgun, stood inches from Dancer’s nose.
“Shut your mouth and go wait outside.”
Dancer rose from his seat. “I am a lieutenant of the Encl-”
“Now.”
Their standoff lasted for several tense seconds before Dancer rolled his eyes and relented. Chops watched with mixed feelings as his partner strode past him without a word. When the back door opened and slammed shut, he expected the ghoul to turn the weapon on him and make the same demand. He wasn’t sure how relieved he should be when it collapsed the weapon back onto its rail and glowered at Chops before pulling up a chair next to Julip, blocking her from view. 
With his interpreter in time-out, Chops exhaled and picked the pencil and notepad off the floor and began writing. He held it up to Ginger, who appeared bewildered by Dancer’s dismissal.
I’m sorry. Dancer angry about defection.
Ginger frowned and looked toward Julip while he scribbled another note.
Minister wants to talk to you, not her. Please put on Pip-Buck.
She took a calming breath and sighed. Her horn glowed a little brighter as she hefted the device. “Any objections, Roach?”
The ghoul looked up at the Pip-Buck and shook his head. “Julip says it’s safe.”
Chops wanted to ask how a ghoul could trust someone like Julip, defected or not, but chose to keep the question to himself. What he should be asking is what made Julip switch sides in the first place. What was it about these ponies that could make her doubt herself so much to abandon everything in less than a week?
It wasn’t his place to know, let alone even ask. Some ponies just… lost faith.
He watched her pull the Pip-Buck over her hoof and secure the clamp. It chirped as she doused her magic and began clicking away as it ran through the automated boot sequence. Ginger sat down as she waited. The cartoon image of the Stable-Tec mascot flickered onto the screen with a cheery wink before disappearing, replaced by a black screen bearing a single word.


CONNECTING…


Seconds ticked by and the Pip-Buck chittered again. The waiting prompt disappeared, the screen suddenly filled with Minister Primrose’s regal smile.
“Well hello, Miss Dressage,” the mare on the screen cooed. “You look well-rested.”







Ginger stiffened at the sight of Minister Primrose staring up from her leg. 
When Dancer first showed her the Pip-Buck she thought it was Aurora’s, but after seeing it more closely the differences had become apparent enough that she’d managed to keep herself from coming apart at the seams. It didn’t even look like it was the same model Aurora used. The casing was slimmer, less of a brick and more streamlined around her foreleg. Lighter, too. But most notably was the color, or in this case colors. With the exception of a few visual artifacts caused by what she assumed was a weak connection, Primrose waited patiently within the screen in full vibrant shades of pink and baby blue.
It occurred to Ginger that she hadn’t seen the Minister since well before she ran away from home. There had been a ceremony when she was little that she barely remembered. A commemoration or a grand opening for some new institution near the Chapel building. Primrose looked the same now as she had back then, slender and beautiful with pulled curls that spun into a bundle over one shoulder. 
And even now she recognized the quiet confidence behind those adobe eyes that reminded her to be careful. This mare wasn’t just dangerous. She was deadly.
Ginger composed herself, unsure whether the tiny black pinhole just above the screen was a microphone or camera or both. “Chops said you wanted to talk.”
Primrose smiled, the angle shifting as she sat down on what looked to be a very well tended bed. The room behind her was resplendent, almost as well decorated as the short glimpse Ginger had seen of Princess Celestia’s bedchamber. “I do. Do you remember any of the things we discussed earlier?”
She blinked and looked over to Roach and Julip who were listening and more than a little confused. When she glanced at Chops, the stallion regarded her with a light shrug. He must already know. 
“From… the dream?”
She nodded. “Before we were interrupted by discount Nightmare Moon, we were discussing what you could do to best help the search for Aurora.”
She remembered. “By doing nothing, if I recall.”
Primrose chided her. “Staying put is not nothing. It takes immense strength not to act, especially now. A critical element of strategy is knowing when to act and when to wait, right now I need you and your companions to wait.”
She almost laughed from the frustration alone. This was insane. All this covert cloak and dagger nonsense just to test her memory? Luna’s grace, it was all she could do not to rip the Pip-Buck off and throw it into the alley to burn. 
“You didn’t have this gadget flown out here just so you could repeat what you already told me, did you?”
“That ‘gadget’ is what we’re using to pinpoint Aurora’s location. And no, it wasn’t flown out exclusively for you. I had it requisitioned from one of my field majors in the region who is not the type of officer easily separated from her tech.” The Minister leaned against one of the bedposts and stared across the vast distance between them, her unsettling smile hardening. “The purpose of this conversation is to accomplish two things, the first of which we’ve discussed to exhaustion. The second item will be a little less simple. To put it plainly, if we are to work together to find Aurora then we will need to maintain a direct line of communication, which we’ve now established. The obvious problem is that you are not in my territory and I have doubts that the locals in Fillydelphia would be excited to see you and I speaking to one another. Can we both agree on that?”
Ginger looked over to Julip who met her gaze with quiet apprehension. Be careful, her eyes warned. 
She turned back to the Pip-Buck. “I can see how that could create problems.”
Primrose laughed. “If I know Coronado, it’ll be more than just a problem if he finds out you’re double-dipping.”
“Double…?”
“It’s an old expression.” Primrose shook her head, the lines in her eyes softening. “You don’t want him knowing I’m helping you. Elders like him only see the world in black and white, especially when it comes to my Enclave. And yes, I’m aware you’ve reached out to him. And no, I’m not mad. Coronado’s recording is going to stir up the hive in a good way.”
She frowned. “Explain that.”
The angle pitched as Primrose shrugged. “Misdirection. If Coronado has everyone looking for a rogue group of Rangers…”
“Then they won’t be looking for your pegasi. Got it. What does that have to do with us?”
Primrose dipped a pink feather toward the screen, practically blotting it out as she pressed a key on her own device. Her face disappeared and was promptly replaced by a map of Fillydelphia. A triangular icon indicated their location on the city’s main drag. Before Ginger could work out whether they’d been disconnected, Primrose’s voice filtered out through the speaker.
“The lieutenant and corporal will escort the three of you to one of our safehouses on the coast.” The map moved, crossing over Fillydelphia’s dense city center toward an even tighter cluster of roads on the eastern shoreline. A new indicator suddenly appeared with a caption beneath it. Harbor House. “You will be out of the way and somewhat safe there.”
She lifted an eyebrow at Chops. “Somewhat safe. And once we’re there, then what?”
The map blinked out and Primrose’s crooked smile reappeared. “You, the changeling and my misguided ward make yourselves comfortable.”
Julip wrapped her wings around herself. “I’m not your ward.”
“I was wondering if you were still with us, Corporal Julip,” Primrose said, her eyes searching as if trying to peer around the edge of the screen itself. Ginger bristled and tilted her leg away from the others. Noticing this, Primrose’s smile grew wider, almost predatory for just a moment. Then it stopped, she leaned back and appeared almost serene by comparison. “Corporal Chops informed me that she had been grievously injured recently. She must have the goddesses’ blessing to have survived.”
Julip dropped to her hooves and limped toward the door to the vacant storefront, using her wing to bang it shut behind her. Ginger closed her eyes and sighed as Roach slid from his chair and quietly followed. 
“Touched a nerve,” she murmured.
She shook her head, praying her patience would last just a little longer. “Minister-”
“Call me Prim.”
“Prim,” she amended. “I understand that you might feel Julip deserves punishment for parting with the Enclave…”
Primrose laughed. “‘Parting?’ Oh, I’ll have to remember that for the next pony who turns traitor.”
Her temper flared. “Just because she doesn’t buy into your cult doesn’t mean she’s a traitor. Julip is finding her own path, same as I did. And… as far as you need to be concerned, she’s under our protection now.”
The logical side of her brain screamed at her to stop talking. She could already picture the hole she was digging them all into. Several uneasy seconds ticked by while Primrose absorbed what Ginger had just said to her, the confident smile on her lips sliding away to form a dangerously neutral stare. 
“I assume by the absence of the lieutenant’s yammering that you’re alone?”
She glanced toward the bloodstained table and its empty chairs, consciously avoiding eye contact with Chops as she scanned the room. “Yes,” she said.
“Good. Then let me clarify our relationship. You and I are not friends, nor are you in any position to negotiate how I discipline deserters. I am willing to work with you until such time that Aurora is located and returned to her Stable. When that is finished, this partnership ends along with my obligation to look the other way when you disparage what I created. Am I understood?”
Just nod and say yes. 
She set her jaw. “No. You owe me.”
Primrose’s open mouth turned into a disbelieving frown. “Excuse me?”
“I said you owe me.” Her heart was trying to beat its way through her ribs. This must be what it felt like to stomp on a landmine. “I spoke to the Tantabus after she… woke you, and I convinced her to stop conjuring that memory of your father. You won’t see him anymore.”
Primrose’s defiance faltered and for just a moment Ginger saw the terrified filly who bludgeoned herself awake. Her eyes dropped away from the screen, staring thoughtfully at the bed beneath her. Her voice shed all of its menacing overtones. 
“Thanks,” she murmured.
Ginger swallowed, nodding once. Before she could think of anything to add Primrose cleared her throat and spoke again, albeit a little softer than before.
“Go to the Harbor House and leave the Pip-Buck on,” she said. “I’ll contact you when I know more about Aurora.”
She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “What about Julip?”
Prim’s feather stopped short of the screen. She chewed her lip. “I’ll allow her time to reflect on where her loyalties lie.”
With that she tapped her screen and the connection dropped, leaving Ginger to stare disbelievingly at the map of the city. Unbeknownst to Elder Coronado and his Steel Rangers, Minister Primrose had just joined the search for Aurora. She dropped her Pip-Buck into her lap and blew out a long, tired breath. Two of the most powerful competing factions had just signed on to locate one mare. 
She knew on some level she should be relieved. That the anxiety of being able to do nothing should give way to hope. Aurora stood a chance now, and Ironshod would be facing comeuppance of a truly immeasurable scale. She should be happy. 
But something told her she’d done something wrong.
She stood up and began walking to the door to the storefront. Roach and Julip needed to wrap up so they could get moving. It would take a few hours to reach the Harbor House and she didn’t want to be out on the streets when the city finally woke up. 
The Enclave was coming, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that Fillydelphia wouldn’t be safe once they arrived.
> Chapter 36: Lost & Found
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dawn broke over the ocean in a muddled smear of rose gold. The endless overcast spread past the beach like a vast migration, a carpet of sickly gray clouds marring what might have otherwise been a stunning sunrise. Ginger sat alone on the rocky dune overlooking the shoreline watching seawater churn between the ruins of a once luxurious beachside neighborhood, now sunken with the tide.
Waves popped and splashed against the rows of degrading walls, little vortexes forming where the foam ebbed and flowed through broken windows. The sea had moved and the houses didn’t. They hadn’t even put up a fight. The ruins never complain about what happened to them. She rested her chin on her knees and wondered if the same thing was happening to her.
She chewed her lip. Stop thinking like that. 
A slammed door caught her ear and she looked left toward the salt washed two-story home Minister Primrose told them to hide in until things blew over. She watched Julip walking stiffly away from a side entrance, pacing back and forth between two windows before directing her attention to a pair of rusting trash cans half buried in the sand collecting against the foundation. She kicked one of the cans with a hind leg and shouted something. A beat later, the delayed sound of crunching metal and a muted “Fuck!” reached her ears. 
Julip was in a mood, which probably meant she was recovering. Good for her.
Ginger watched her pace some more before disappearing behind a detached garage. They hadn’t been here more than an hour and the prospect of doing nothing while they trusted two decidedly untrustworthy rivals to run the show was wearing down everyone’s nerves. The Steel Rangers hoped to flush Ironshod out by combing the streets and flooding the radio while the Enclave had pulled who knew how many pegasi off their missions to quietly sneak them into the city. It wasn’t a matter of if they would find Aurora, but when.
And yet here they sat, waiting, because Primrose didn’t trust one of them not to do or say something that might expose her people to Coronado. If that happened, finding Aurora would be the last thing either side had to worry about.
She hugged her knees and glanced at the slim Pip-Buck Primrose had given her. Maybe someone in Fillydelphia knew a way to modify it so she could help with the search. She fiddled with the map, half-looking at the tiny location indicators and half staring through the device to the waves beyond. There were more points of interest detailed here than Aurora’s offered by a wide margin. A few minutes of scrolling around, zooming in and reading the names of some of the buildings showed her it was operating on prewar map data. Nothing that reflected the state of Fillydelphia as it currently was, charred and half-destroyed by the bomb that decimated its northern bouroughs. She wondered if Primrose would take issue with her poking around on it. Knowing her, probably not. Ginger couldn’t think of a time Primrose didn’t seem two steps ahead in a game nobody else knew they were playing. 
If there had ever been anything sensitive on this Pip-Buck, Primrose no doubt had it scrubbed. Any potential value it had was in the tech itself, and the thermite charges built into the device would ensure it turned to glowing slag before anyone had a chance to study it.
She flicked through the menus and turned on the radio.
Not much to pick from, she thought. A few named stations peppered a short list of nondescript frequencies. Most of them were broadcasting the same message recorded by Elder Coronado. A couple were nothing but empty static. She tried looking for Flipswitch’s station at the Bluff but either Fiona was already sleeping the day away or they were too far out to pick up her music. As she prepared to give up the Pip-Buck caught the faint edge of a stallion’s voice. It was an old song. A really old song. Most stallions nowadays wouldn’t be caught dead crooning a hokey song like the one that floated to her ears. He claimed that he didn’t want to set the world on fire. Ginger thumped her chin onto her knees and exhaled. What a stupid song.
“Whatcha listening to?”
Her ears perked up and she glanced toward the voice. Julip was carefully picking her way along the rocky ridge, her gait slow and cautious of her still-healing injuries. Ginger turned back to the waves.
“Nothing.” She clicked the radio off. “How’re you feeling?”
Julip sat slowly, grimacing all the way down. “Better than yesterday, worse than tomorrow. Dancer helped me take the port out, so I guess I’m done blowing blood bubbles.”
“That’s good.” She watched a wide ocean wave break in the middle, spreading wash in either direction like rolling ribbons. “He and you used to be…?”
“Friends,” she said. Whatever anger she’d directed into the trash cans just a few moments earlier must have emptied her reserves. She looked exhausted. “Just friends. He and Chops joined up before I did and I got assigned to their flight for basic training. We still hung out in our off hours after getting our EOS, though.”
Ginger arched a brow for clarification.
“Enclave Occupational Specialty. Our jobs, I guess you could say. Dancer and Chops got assigned to field reconnaissance together and I put in for a gig in the archives.”
Ginger looked back toward the safehouse and wondered whether it was wise to leave Roach alone with those two. Chops seemed much more docile compared to Dancer, but that wasn’t saying much when the common denominator between them was a shared disdain toward ghouls. Then she reminded herself that Roach wasn’t helpless, nor was he complacent when it came to the ponies around him. If either of them did try to take advantage, Roach would ruin their day.
“I saw Chops signing to you earlier. How much wingspeak do you know?”
Julip smiled a little, embarrassed. “Just the basics. Chops taught me letters and numbers. Some words, too.” She lifted a jade wing and made a slow series of gestures. “I can read signs better than I can make them. Dancer’s really good at doing the back and forth with him, but they’ve known each other since they were colts.”
She frowned. “Hm.”
“What?”
“Oh. Nothing.” She shrugged and scooped up a ball of sand with her magic, making shapes as she spoke. “It just feels strange to think of them like that.”
Julip watched the sand with open interest. “Like what?”
“Friends.” The word came out sounding more ignorant than she intended. She quickly corrected herself. “Outside of their… service, I mean. I always assumed the Enclave discouraged that sort of thing.”
Julip quirked her lip at Ginger. “You lived in New Canterlot. Didn’t you ever go to a bar?”
“I left when I was thirteen.”
“So?” When Ginger arched a brow at her, she nodded understanding. “Oh, yeah. It’s... really hard to picture you as one of those rich ponies up on Snob Hill.”
She snorted a laugh, the sandball briefly losing its symmetry. “Is that what people used to call it?”
“Still do,” Julip grinned. “When I was younger, I used to cut school with my friends and steal pears from those stuffy fuckers who own the north orchards.”
Her ears perked up. “You stole from the Butter Family?”
She laughed. “Come on, everyone stole from the Butters. It’s practically a rite of passage in my neighborhood. Besides, if they couldn’t afford a couple bushels every summer they would have hired more watchponies to stop us.”
Ginger smiled at that and let the sand plop onto the beach. “They could have, but I don’t think it was ever a money problem. Their whole family had that old-fashioned air about them.  I’m pretty sure if you knocked on their door and asked, Ms. Nilly would’ve sent you home with one of her scratch baked pies and an invitation to supper.”
She watched Julip scoff at the rolling waves, doing the math on how many times she must have snuck out into the orchards thinking she and her friends were getting away with some grand heist. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Ginger chuckled. “They’re good folk. I haven’t thought about them in forever.”
Julip continued to shake her head and smile, her attention pulled out by the waves crashing across the sunken neighborhood past the beach. Ginger did the same, grateful for the distraction. She could see what Roach saw in the feisty mare. Beneath her past affiliations, her quick anger and nearly constant cursing, there was a real person in there. Much of who she was remained to be seen as far as Ginger was concerned, but maybe she wasn’t completely beyond saving. 
She turned her head and glanced past Julip toward the safehouse.
Harbor House, Primrose had called it. Fitting, given how close it sat to the water even if the sea hadn’t been gentle to it. Once upon a time it must have been an impressive little place despite being as wide as it was tall. Two brick chimneys still stood at opposite corners of the old home. Its pale brown wooden siding was still speckled with chips of sungold leaded paint, hinting at a warm seaside palette. A second floor balcony faced the water, the rails individually turned on a lathe and painted red for a bit of accent. As she watched, Roach stepped out onto the empty balcony with a chair in tow. She watched him sit down beside the railing and begin undoing the straps of his shotgun with his afflicted magic, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to clean out the antique weapon without fear of irradiating anyone he cared about.
She shook her head and turned back to the water. “So, is that trash can going to be giving you any more trouble or do you want me to teach it another lesson?”
Julip blinked before pulling a strand of black mane away from her face and looking toward the house. Her ears dipped as she understood. “Oh. Um, no. That’s okay.”
There was some resistance there that went deeper than Ginger’s bad joke. “Want to talk about it?”
“No,” she said with fresh irritation. “But if I don’t, he won’t let me hear the end of it.”
“Who, Roach?”
Julip shrugged, avoiding her gaze. 
“Did I do something?” Her brow dropped as she waited for an answer, but Julip’s discomforted silence offered enough of a clue for her to connect the dots. “It’s about taking help from the Enclave, isn’t it.”
The young mare shifted uneasily, her wings sweeping around her own tucked legs in a mirror of Ginger’s posture. “I mean, yeah… but it’s not just that I’m pissed off about it, or even about just that. I’m not mad at you. Or... maybe I am? I shouldn’t be. I don’t know, it’s all weird. I mean, fuck… I’m not sure I’m even allowed to be mad anymore!”
Ginger set her cheek against her knees, watching. “Julip, you’re allowed to be angry.”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” she groaned. “I know you’re doing everything you can. I mean, I get it. Okay maybe not the whole relationship part, but… look, Roach told me that Chops came to you and not the other way around, so I can’t be pissed at you for that. And I already knew Primrose had a hardon for Aurora because, hello, here we are talking instead of me being parked behind a terminal back in the archives. It’s just that… fuck, I don’t know.”
She quirked her lip and waited.
Julip sank into a frustrated slouch. She stared out to sea for several long minutes until finally sorting out what she wanted to say. “I feel like none of this would be happening if I hadn’t fucking panicked.”
Ginger hummed. “Back at the crater, you mean.”
She nodded, her eyes shining. “When the Rangers showed up, I just bolted. Like a reflex, you know? They just… were there, all around us and all I could think was that they were there for me. I keep playing it back in my head and I know there was nothing I could’ve done and it’s because I let my guard down. The one fucking time…  and even if I hadn’t…”
Julip screwed up her face and looked away, the hard ridge of her right wing coming up to scrub at her eyes. Waves crashed into the beach below.
Ginger waited quietly beside her, watching the younger mare hide her mouth behind her feathers as she stared blearily toward the water. A touch of impatience wormed its way into her chest. It was a selfish impulse. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to be here right now, burdened with listening to Julip confess herself to tears. She was barely holding it together as it was and she had plenty more to cry about. 
She grit her teeth and threw a few more rocks on top of the rumbling geyser of anger growing in her heart. They all had their own problems to deal with. Right now, Julip needed help dealing with hers.
“Hey,” she said, placing a hoof on Julip’s shoulder. “It’s o–”
Julip’s wings jerked open as if touched by a live wire, throwing Ginger’s foreleg aside and striking her across the face. The two of them let out equally startled curses as Ginger toppled backward on the sandy stones and Julip sputtered profanity like a rifle stuck on automatic, her wings pinning hard to her sides just as quickly as they’d sprang away.
“Shit-shit-shit,” she babbled, hooves pressed to her mouth in open shock. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to… fuck, Ginger, let me help you…”
She grimaced at the deep throb under her left eye and tried to wave her off, but a cluster of feathers practically hoisted her off the ground before she could get her hooves under herself. Ginger stumbled a little from the sudden handling, managing to open one eye while the other throbbed angrily, remaining closed. Julip was on her hooves too, her hardened demeanor all but erased for the moment. She waited, all nerves, eyes wide like a foal who’d just been caught doing something bad.
Gently, Ginger nudged Julip’s bracing wings aside. She shook her head and forced herself to smile. “Celestia’s sake, you hit like a truck.”
Julip’s worry deepened. “A what? Seriously, Ginger are you okay?”
She nodded, despite being unsure where she’d heard the phrase or how she knew to use it. “I’m fine. Really.”
Julip looked unconvinced. Less so when Ginger touched her left cheekbone and jerked her hoof away. “Whelp,” she muttered. “That’s going to be a shiner.”
“Aurora’s going to kill me,” Julip moaned. “Goddesses, Roach is going to kill me!”
“It was an accident,” she said, her throbbing eye allowing itself to open a tiny bit as she offered Julip a reassuring smirk. “And nobody is going to kill you, especially not Roach.”
Julip tore her eyes away from Ginger long enough to look to the balcony where Roach had been joined by one of the shelter’s littler residents. A small yellow colt not much younger than Beans trotted from one railing to the other, chatting breathlessly at the bemused changeling. Julip’s worried gaze lingered before reluctantly turning back.
“He’s going to be pissed at me. I was supposed to… open up to you about what was eating me, not deck you in the face.” She stared at Ginger’s squinted eye and grimaced. “I guess it’s too late to tell you that I don’t really like to be touched.”
Seeing her expression change, Julip added, “It’s nothing like that. Nothing bad. It’s more… I don’t know. We never did the whole talk-about-your-feelings stuff in the Enclave. We definitely didn’t get all touchy feely, either.”
“Oh,” she said. “I can talk to Roach about that if you want. I know he’s been trying to make you feel welcome and probably doesn’t mean to make–”
“No, no, no, that’s fine. Roach is fine. I mean, he’s okay. Just… don’t tell him I said anything?”
Ginger blinked and did her best not to smirk. “Okay.”
Julip watched her for several seconds before clearing her throat to compose herself. “Anyway, we should get back to the house before a mirelurk tries making us its breakfast… or something.” 
Julip was on her hooves before Ginger could argue. Bemused, she got up and followed. The sand formed around their hooves as they followed the weathered stones back to Harbor House. As they approached the side door, Roach glanced their way and lifted a hoof. They waved back with Julip trying a little too hard to appear casual. Ginger allowed herself a tiny smirk as they passed the dented trash can and filed inside.
Once upon a time, Harbor House had gone by a different name or no name at all. The once richly appointed home had endured innumerable changes since the bombs fell. Lavish wallpaper and rich wainscoting had deteriorated in the typical fashion, peeling away and cracking apart as the weather wore away the interior and the foundation shifted out of kilter. Somewhere along the line several walls on the first floor had been pulled down and the ceiling in the resulting open space had taken on a drunken sag that had been hastily shored up by a thick wooden pylon dragged up out from the submerged piers. Someone had gone through great effort to prevent the house from caving in on itself. Thus far those efforts still bore fruit.
It was that care put into making it habitable again that made Harbor House stand out from the abandoned and withering homes surrounding it. Broken windows were now neatly boarded shut and in some cases even replaced with clean panes. There were no holes in the floor, no detritus hanging from the ceiling. Even the garbage that almost always collected into a petrified mass in the corners of most abandoned structures had been scraped up and thrown outside. While its original owners would have screamed bloody murder to see what their house looked like now, compared to most of the wasteland it was downright welcoming on the inside. 
That is, save for the pegasi who occupied it.
Ginger passed over the threshold and into a kitchen that still retained some of its charm. Painted cupboards hung above an off-level but otherwise intact granite countertop, the original gas stove swapped out for a fat cast iron replacement whose chimney pipe bent out through one of the boarded windows. A pink mare looked up from her work of slicing up a bowl of lumpy beets, her gaze only briefly leaving the kitchen island to acknowledge Julip following Ginger inside. The mare grumbled something under her breath and turned back to the knife in her feathers.
“She’s back,” she droned for the rest of the house to hear. 
Ginger closed her eyes and ignored the pegasus, knowing full well that her and the others’ “hospitality” was contingent on none of them starting any trouble that might cast suspicion on Harbor House’s legitimacy. And what a laugh that was.
Adjacent to the kitchen was the large gathering space that had doubled as a staging and assignment area for newcomers. A stained pool table dominated the near side of the room, surrounded by a few wooden chairs and cluttered with the remnants of the residents’ most recent meal. An empty beer bottle sat in one of the side pockets where a red stallion idly scratched a feather over the white stubble of his close-shaved mane. He was reading a book he’d taken from what amounted to Harbor House’s library: four mismatched bookcases forming a rough square around the salvaged pylon that kept the ceiling upright. 
Ginger hadn’t the first clue which title had engrossed the stallion, but he hardly paid either of them any attention as they walked by. Two more pegasi glanced up at them from a cozy arrangement of couches at the far side of the room, a pair of pipe pistols sitting in plain sight on the coffee table between them to pull attention away from the dim glow of plasma rifles tucked under each sofa. One of them, a pot bellied stallion with an axe to grind, made a show of picking up one of the pistols and checking the magazine as they passed by. Ginger watched him as they turned toward the stairs even though she was confident he was all ego and no action.
Before following Julip up the steps, she paused to scoff at the chalkboard propped up on its tripod against the bannister.


HOUSE RULES:
1. Dustwings help dustwings.
2. Food and water is shared.
3. Dinner is served between 6:30pm and 7:30pm.
4. Wings must be fully covered before going outside.
5. Flying in sight of the house is grounds for eviction.
6. For our safety, visitors are not permitted.
7. All residents must follow the chore schedule.
8. Residents with addiction must abide
by the chem cessation program.
9. Residents with addiction must be accompanied
by a sponsor when leaving the house.
10. Residents who choose to rehome elsewhere
are entitled to keep their equal share of supplies.
11. Dustwings help dustwings.


The welcome board would have been a ray of sunshine in the wasteland if it weren’t all bullshit. Primrose had sent them here so they could be safe, and she appreciated that. But now that they were here, Ginger didn’t need to dig up many clues to understand what Harbor House really was. None of the pegasi here were dustwings. They’d come out from the west on the Enclave’s orders; actors meant to give the illusion of safety for wayward pegasi. 
Harbor House was an open trap posing as a safe shelter.
They reached the carpeted second floor and followed the sound of excited chatter to the rear balcony. Roach sat in his chair, wearing a tired smile as the young colt peered over the railing on his hind legs without skipping a beat of his long and breathless story. Ginger reminded herself that the little pegasus wasn’t at fault for his role in being here. Likely he didn’t understand the true purpose of this house, or why he’d been flown so far from New Canterlot to live here. She steeled herself and stepped out through the sliding door.
Roach looked up from his disassembled weapon and regarded her with a sad smile. “Hey.”
She crossed the planks and leaned against the railing beside him. “Hey. Any news?”
The little colt perked up at their arrival then frowned when he saw Roach’s attention shifting toward grown-up talk. He watched a few seconds before trotting off to bother one of the other adults in the house. Ginger watched him hop past Julip as the mare dragged two more chairs out onto the porch.
“Dancer left to check in with his people.” Roach gestured toward the water. “Flew out over the water. I think Chops is still asleep in one of the bedrooms. Want to bet on whether the Enclave’s forming a navy out there on top of everything else?”
Ginger set the offered chair aside and let Julip park herself between the two of them. If she spent any more time literally sitting around, she’d go crazy. She slouched against the railing where the little colt had been and peeked at Julip. “Who knows what’s out there.”
“Sharks,” Julip said.
Roach smirked. “Radsharks.”
“The raddest.”
Ginger watched them chuckle at the awful pun and tried to smile with them. She didn’t get very far. Her muscles revolted against the attempt. She’d burned up what little empathy she had with Julip. Now the worry was settling back in, strong as ever.
A hoof touched her shoulder. Roach. He’d gotten up and stood beside her now, levity replaced by a complex mixture of shame and concern. Julip was watching her too, the parts of Roach’s shotgun held safely in her lap.
“We’re going to get her back,” he murmured.
She shook her head, feeling the worry slide away and make room for something even worse. Grief. It had been a full day now since Aurora was taken. Twenty four hours and hardly a crumb to tell them where in all of Fillydelphia she was being held. Ironshod might not even be holding her anymore. He could have whatever it was he wanted and discarded her to rot somewhere. Already she was beginning to grieve what felt more and more like the probable end to this disaster. She steadied herself and asked the question she’d been dreading to give a voice.
“What if we’re too late?”
She hated how the words cracked in her throat. Hated how the simple act of speaking pushed her to the verge of tears. But she refused to give them permission to flow. She glared up at the rolling overcast and tempered her emotions, letting the heat of her anger rise in her chest and give herself something to latch onto. She looked at Roach with one eye trying to force itself shut, something she could tell he’d noticed when she stepped out onto the balcony and was giving her room to vent by not asking. 
“What happens if she’s already gone?”
Not dead. Gone. She couldn’t bring herself to say the other thing.
Roach took a long moment to look at her, his pale gaze thoughtful and patient as he considered the question. When he spoke, his tone was subdued. He’d been trying to avoid thinking about it too.
“If that happens,” he said, speaking slowly. “Then we do what she would want us to do. We take the talisman back to Stable 10. Save her people.”
Julip let out an affirmative breath. “What he said. We finish the mission.”
They were both heartfelt answers. She chose not to ruin the moment by correcting them. She didn’t want to know what the plan was after they left Fillydelphia. What she wanted to know was what they would do to Ironshod. To his Rangers. To Elder Coldbrook if their actions resulted in Aurora… being gone. 
Ginger knew exactly what she wanted to do. The question was whether Roach or Julip would condone it, or worse, try to stop her.
Roach nudged her. “Right?”
She took a deep breath of the briny air and nodded.
“Right.”







“I’m telling you, this is some bullshit. I didn’t sign up for any of this.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t ‘uh-huh’ me like your hooves ain’t dirty.” Rivers brought the stub of her cigarette to her lips, inhaled, and imagined she could actually taste the tobacco buried within the ashy smoke. 
In reality these scavenged cigarettes tasted like dried shit but it was all she could scrape together after being kicked from the Rangers. No more Knight’s credentials meant no more pulling strings with the quartermasters which meant no more first dibs on the fresh tobacco imported out of Maretime Bay. She’d spent the better part of the last two years trying to forge new connections with some of the regular traders from F&F Mercantile, but with the whole organization going teats up in the space of a week she’d been forced to start from scratch. It was hard enough learning which of the newly independent trading groups could be trusted to sell decent smokes, let alone at a price she could swing.
When Ironshod knocked on her door he’d come offering a spot on what he insisted was just a recovery team. High-reward, low-risk. He claimed the biggest hurdle was the travel time. As a Knight she had worked as a field medic under his command, and the fact that he’d climbed half the Bluff to find her instead of someone in good standing tipped her off that this probably wasn’t going to be on the up-and-up. That was fine, she figured. He was offering each of them enough caps for even the most morally firm of them to let a few discretions slide. Maybe their quarry would arrive home with them a little more bumped and bruised than when they found her, and that was okay too. Nobody ever walked out of an interrogation with a smile on their face.
She stared at the crumbling nub of the cigarette and tightened her magic around the ember, snuffing it out. Whatever Ironshod was doing down there had stopped being an interrogation a long time ago. He was practically getting off on it. She flicked the stub at the stallion reclined in the booth beside her.
It bounced off his nose and he shot her a foul look in return.
“If word gets out that we were part of this - and it will - you fuckers’ll probably just get stripped of rank. I’m going to be the one sitting in a cell.”
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed. After a pause he shifted in his seat and added, “If you’re so worried, why are you still here?”
Rivers rolled her eyes and lit her horn, hoisting her saddlebags off the tacky restaurant floor in a haze of aquamarine magic. She needed something to drink to wash the film of smoke out of her mouth. “And risk King Krazy coming after me next? No thanks. I’d rather eat…”
Her voice trailed off at the unmistakable clanks of Ironshod’s hooves climbing the cellar stairs. She and the other Rangers dispersed among the dining room sat up a little straighter or turned their attention to gaps in the boarded windows to look busy. As his hooves approached from within the kitchen and stopped short of the cash counter, she glanced up at him. An electric chill ran down her spine at the sight of Ironshod staring directly at her.
“Take a medkit downstairs and patch up our guest,” he rumbled, rounding the counter toward the lobby doors. A loose loop of rusted chain held them shut. He unwrapped it and dropped it onto the tiles. “I’ll be back in ten. Be finished by then.”
Without another word he pulled the doors shut behind him and was gone. The rest of them exchanged glances in pensive silence, none of them quite sure what to make of Ironshod’s abrupt departure. He’d been adamant that none of them went outside for any reason, even to shit. The restaurant’s tiny bathrooms were more than proof of that.
Several of them turned from the door to Rivers. No one was going to offer to take her spot, so she dragged herself out of the booth and yanked her medkit from her saddlebags. Hopefully this meant Ironshod had gotten what he wanted and they were finally going to head back home.
Steeling herself for whatever twisted shit he’d gotten up to, she walked to the back of the restaurant with her heart in her throat. She knew what she was heading toward would be ugly. The blood tracked on the dirty tiles, staining Ironshod’s shoes, taking her to the hatch tucked away in the darkened kitchen was all evidence enough to the stallion’s brutality. As she descended the stairs she caught the eye of Scribe Cotton, the bookish mare Ironshod had dragged down with him to “assist.” Cotton sat slouched on a stool just outside the freezer door, her gaze distant, stripped of the optimism she’d exuded over the course of the trek here. 
Rivers contemplated checking on how she was holding up, but Ironshod only gave her ten minutes. She gave the mare a thump on the shoulder with her magic and passed wordlessly into the freezer.
She stopped midstep and took in the sickening scene a breath at a time. The Stable mare Ironshod was convinced was connected to the Enclave sat slumped in an old metal chair, her hind legs and half-thawed tail stained with her own frozen piss. Her gray coat from her chin to her crotch was smeared dark red as if she’d been made to wear a bib made from her own coagulated blood. Her left leg was swollen up to her hip, gashed deep just above the knee and not cleanly either. Rivers closed her eyes in brief revulsion. Ironshod had caved in her hind leg so badly that the ripped edges of skin and fat had buried themselves into the wound. Worse, it wasn’t bleeding; not like an injury like that should be. Either it had miraculously clotted over before the mare could bleed out or Ironshod had done so much blunt damage that he’d managed to collapse her femoral artery beyond the point of reopening.
The Stable mare was looking up now, her bloodied and misshapen face regarding her with miserable indifference. Rivers knew that expression. Ironshod had beaten the fight out of her.
She blew out a short breath and got to work, starting with the ruined leg. Setting her medkit on the wire rack beside her, she popped the lid and uncapped a square brown bottle. If shit for brains wanted his prize to survive the walk back to the Bluff it wouldn’t pay to have her going septic on the way. She splashed the ragged wound with antiseptic, startling a gasp followed by a low, dragging moan from the beaten mare. Rivers tried her best to ignore her. She emptied half the bottle into the wound and wrinkled her nose against the rising odor of alcohol and denaturing blood. She didn’t miss that smell.
It didn’t get any better as she moved down to treat the cuts sawed open by the plastic ties keeping her attached to the chair. What kind of information had Ironshod expected to get out of her with tactics this brutal that could be remotely trusted? Interrogations were never meant to be enjoyable but this was well past that. She set her jaw as she drizzled more alcohol and dabbed clean cotton into the wounds. Even through the grazing touch of her magic she could feel how hot the mare’s skin was, her revolting against round after round of freeze, thaw and infection. 
The mare remained silent save for protesting groans in response to Rivers’ pokes and prods. There wouldn’t be time for decent stitchwork if Ironshod stuck to his time limit. She wondered if they might be able to commandeer a wagon on their way out of the city. Even a simple sledge to drag her on would be better than having her walk on that leg, assuming she could walk at all at this point. Reluctantly she moved up to the mare’s swollen face. Tipping the last of the antiseptic into a clump of sterile cotton, she tried pressing the wad to her sliced lip but the mare jerked away before it could touch her. Rivers sighed, her frustration growing.
“Hold still.”
She tried again only to get the same result. Normally this would be when a prisoner felt cornered and lashed out, telling Rivers to insert a variety of instruments into an equal variety of holes. Some ponies resorted to taunting. Egging their captors on in an attempt to take control of their fate in some twisted way. Others would stare at them in silence, stoic and defiant. A show of resolve. This mare did none of those things.
As Rivers tried to think of a different tact, she noticed the muscles along the mare’s forelegs trembling against their bindings like a plucked guitar string. It shook her shoulders, her chest. That kind of shaking couldn’t be faked. She was terrified of her. What kind of Enclave soldier breaks down like this after only one day? 
A shitty one. Or someone who was never enlisted in the first place.
Still, that didn’t answer the question of why she’d been caught hanging around with that green pegasus. According to the intel they had when they left, she hadn’t been a part of their group when Ironshod first encountered them back at the Bluff. He’d been sparse on details when it came to the second pegasus, but then Ironshod was always the type to keep his cards close to his chest. Operational security, he sometimes called it. She’d heard others call it paranoia. Something for the shrinks to diagnose. All she knew was that the Enclave captives she’d seen as a Knight never showed fear like this. They had a whole culture built around it. Something about “shaming the goddesses” or some other nonsense. 
She lifted away the prisoner’s mane and tried to focus on getting her cleaned up, tending to the few cuts and bruises she’d let her near without flinching. There were a lot of them. When she finished disinfecting what she could, she went back to her medkit and lifted out a narrow syringe.
“I’m going to give you a shot.” She spoke less for the prisoner and more for herself. It helped her get past the feeling that she was talking to a kicked dog. “It’ll help with some of the pain.”
The mare said nothing. Rivers positioned the needle below the peculiar silver wing depicted on her hip and slid it into the dense muscle below. A quiet hissing breath was all the complaint the mare offered in return. She capped the needle and packed it away, withdrawing a wider syringe that most wastelanders could recognize blindfolded. “Your name’s Aurora, right?”
The mare looked away, refusing to engage.
Rivers thumped the stimpack against Aurora’s hip, triggering the pressurized mechanism which deposited the medicinal cocktail into the underlying tissue. It was a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of medicine her hind leg would need just to be salvageable, but this wasn’t a hospital and she wasn’t a surgeon. A stimpack was the best she could offer.
“I’m Rivers,” she offered. 
“Good for you.”
She speaks, she thought to herself. Painkillers were probably starting to work. Celestia bless the conversational lubricant of Class A barbiturates. Rivers packed up the little medkit and paused just long enough to confirm she couldn’t hear hoofsteps upstairs. None. Good. Ironshod was still out doing whatever it was he’d felt the need to do. 
“Sorry.” She smiled, feigning innocent curiosity. “I know our meds probably don’t hold a candle to what the Enclave has, but they do help.”
Aurora shook her head, saying nothing. She pressed on.
“You know, I’ve heard bits and pieces about your religion.” She dropped the medkit into her saddlebag and stood. “It’s sort of interesting, you know. The whole idea of the princesses ascending when the bombs fell, watching over us as we find our way forward… it’s a pretty hopeful message. Can’t say it’s surprising you people are so dedicated to keeping the story alive.”
She waited, watching Aurora’s face for anything that might give her away.
Nothing. Not even a twitch of an ear to show she was listening.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I was hoping you could set the record straight on something I can’t make heads or tails on. Why did the princesses choose your Minister Primrose to watch over their thrones? Like, if it were me, I’d have picked the Elements of Harmony. You’d think they would have earned it, you know?”
Aurora grew flustered as Rivers waited for her answer, eventually giving her head a meager shake with an even weaker shrug. “I don’t know, you apparently know more about their cult than me.”
A cult. That was far from the response she’d been expecting. It wasn’t a secret that some ponies living under the Enclave didn’t buy into the weird religion touted by their leader, but the strictures drilled into their enlisted pegasi were as uncompromising as they were black and white. To an Enclave soldier, denying the story of the ascension was akin to spitting on the twin thrones themselves. It didn’t matter whether or not a soldier partook in the faith. Certain things simply weren’t said, even under duress. Aurora hadn’t even tried to dodge Rivers’ question with some precooked response, she’d gone several steps further by degrading its very authenticity. 
Rivers’ silence eventually caught Aurora's attention. “What?”
The lobby door upstairs slammed shut. Heavy, metallic clunks tracked their way across the freezer’s ceiling toward the cellar stairs. Their time was up.
“Nothing,” she said. On her way toward the insulated door, she paused and looked back at the sad sight strapped to the chair, adding, “Hang in there.”
Aurora stared after her with exhausted bewilderment but she was out the door before she could say anything else. Rivers passed Cotton on the way and could tell by the scribe’s baffled expression that she’d been eavesdropping. Cotton looked at her for an explanation but she only stared back with a quick shake of her head, lips pressed into a thin line.
Ironshod’s hooves thumped down the cellar steps. Rivers took a breath and placed herself at the bottom tread before he could reach it.
“Sir,” she said, “I need to speak with you.”







“Ma’am, I need to speak with you.”
Primrose held up a feather to Clover, her attention held firm by the latest update from her east wing commander. Colonel Hawker was a dry-spoken stallion in his fifties who knew how to get to the point and get there quickly. He knew the cities of eastern Equestria better than any other pegasus in the room, including Primrose, and he didn’t mince words when he expressed reservation about the scope of the orders she’d just dropped in his lap last night. She needed to hear what he had to say. Clover could fidget for a few minutes.
She nodded for Hawker to continue. Satisfied, the desert hued stallion lifted a wing to indicate the projection behind him and resumed speaking.
“With respect, ma’am, I cannot in good confidence tell you to expect this mission to progress undetected by the enemy. The collapse of F&F Mercantile has emboldened the local raiders to start coming out of their holes and we’ve heard chatter suggesting the Rangers are responding by placing wagon convoys under stricter scrutiny at the coastal checkpoints. While I understand you feel Elder Coronado may be distracted by his search for Coldbrook’s rogue Rangers, his people working the checkpoints won’t be. At the pace we’re pushing our pegasi through their checkpoints, I’ll be surprised if we evade detection for much longer.”
Primrose leaned back in her chair and considered the still image projected onto her office wall. She didn’t disagree with Colonel Hawker. The map of Fillydelphia behind him supported his concerns. Half a dozen black markers surrounded the city’s populated southern half, showing her the rendezvous points of the six squadrons still scheduled to make their way through the checkpoints. Twenty-four pegasi in each squadron. It didn’t make for much of an invasion force, but then the goal wasn’t to invade anything. Far away as Fillydelphia was, the Enclave as it was now couldn’t even if she wanted to. 
That didn’t mean they were out of options, however. Retrieving Aurora was their first objective, to which alpha squadron had been assigned. Simple, minimal risk to her soldiers, immensely popular with the masses.
The second objective had been borne out of the opportunity created by the first and was what had Hawker’s balls in a twist. His five remaining squadrons had more difficult orders to execute. Atop the five skyscrapers marked red on the colonel’s map lurked the air defense system that passively patrolled Fillydelphia’s skies. Five Vhanna-made turrets capable of eviscerating the most agile flier within the fraction of a second it took the guns to detect, target and fire. The Steel Rangers had poured decades into scouting the Vhannan ruins to bring the feared technology back across the sea one floundering barge at a time. The same technology that crippled the legendary Wonderbolts now prevented the Enclave from flying within line of sight of some of the Rangers’ most vital strongholds. 
Neatly overlapping circles delineated the effective area of denial of each turret, creating a vacuum in which the Rangers had been allowed to thrive. She wanted them gone. More critically, she wanted the Rangers to know the Enclave could take them away at a moment’s notice.
She wanted them to panic.
Primrose regarded Hawker with respectful neutrality. “You’re worried that we may be leading our soldiers into a trap.”
Colonel Hawker nodded. “Yes, ma’am. It worries me greatly.”
He stopped to give her room to respond, but she waved him on to continue.
“When the Rangers do catch on, our forces won’t be in a position to retreat. If they’re forced to fight their way out of the city, Coldbrook and the other Elders will have every reason to use the resulting deaths as justification for a retaliatory strike. Given the delicate state of affairs surrounding Stable 10, this is not an ideal time for the Enclave to provoke them.”
Coming from anyone else, those were dangerous words. That didn’t make them any less true. She was more than painfully aware of the stalemate they and the Rangers were in. The Enclave had become trapped within a pocket of territory containing Canterlot Mountain and its surrounding towns and villages, compressed around the core of its manufacturing and defensive power. The Steel Rangers monitored those borders on all sides like gravity searching for a weakness before crushing a star into its final collapse. If the Rangers had their way, the Enclave would simply cease to be. Erased from history like so many of the losers in Equestria’s most ancient conquests.
She’d worked too hard to allow some fringe element of the old military ground everything she worked to create into dust. This was a chance to knock the Rangers on their heels. To strip away a piece of their invulnerability and make them afraid.
“Colonel,” she said, turning her attention wholly toward him, “I agree with your sentiment that this mission does not meet the Enclave’s usual standards for preparation. If I’m being completely honest, we’re absolutely rushing this thing, and you can rest assured that any mistakes that come of it will fall squarely on my shoulders. Not yours.”
“Ma’am-”
She held up a feather. “Let me finish. While I hear your concerns regarding possible failure, I ask that you consider what may happen in the wake of our success. For nearly a century now, the Steel Rangers have felt entitled to move about Equestria with impunity because they believe their centers of power are untouchable. For all we know they might very well be. This operation is taking place a thousand miles away well beyond the reach of our supply lines. It could be a failure waiting to happen, but I’m willing to eat that crow on the chance that we finally put a crack in their armor.”
Hawker’s lips formed a thin line, but he knew better than to interrupt.
“Paladin Ironshod overstepped the very instance his people trotted off with Aurora, and Coldbrook hasn’t done himself any favors by turning Foal Mountain into the east wasteland’s largest mining operation. Those two things alone have given us a blank check to control the narrative.” She swept a hoof across the air, smiling as she did. “‘Steel Rangers kidnap innocent Stable dweller; seek to ransack her home and sell the survivors to the slavers.’ A little embellished at the end, yes, but that never stopped the Ministry of Image back in their heyday. That alone will sow mistrust between the wastelanders and their Elders. What happens if suddenly the great guns of Fillydelphia come falling down? I’ll tell you. The Rangers will shit in their power armor. They’ll have to shift their focus to protecting the coasts just to keep their populations from panicking, and the cage they put us in just might finally weaken enough for us to try something more decisive.”
She leaned forward, the projector on her desk blowing warm air against her hooves. “I imagine you more than anyone would hope to see the day when the Enclave can finally stretch its legs.”
Hawker breathed deep, his frustration plain on his face even as he worked to cobble together a diplomatic answer. He’d come here hoping to convince her that this was a misstep. Now it was dawning on him that his loyalty to the Enclave may come into question should he leave with the wrong words on his lips.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, staring forward. “I see how this could be a moment of significance.”
She watched him for several long seconds. He was beaten down. Time to pick him back up. “Hawker, I don’t expect you to blow smoke up my ass just to make me happy, but I am asking you to tow the line for a little while. Not forever. When this is done and over with, I expect you to continue speaking your mind. Someone around here needs to keep me honest.”
The slightest smile touched the corner of the old stallion’s lips. He nodded, though the tension hadn’t fully left his shoulders. “I understand. That’s all I have, ma’am. Unless you need anything else…?”
“I’m sure you’ve got a full plate, colonel. Dismissed.”
She and Clover waited with patient smiles as Hawker snapped a crisp salute and packed up the projector. The door clicked softly behind him.
“I thought I was the one who kept you honest,” Clover murmured.
“You are,” she said. “I want a detail put on the colonel. Keep it quiet. Nothing intrusive.”
Clover traced along the edge of her desk. “Thinking he’ll flip?”
She shook her head. “Him? No. He’s a good egg, but I’d like some assurance that he’s not going to get cold feathers. There’s too much at stake.”
Her security director hummed, likely already deciding on what form Colonel Hawker’s shadows should take. “I’ll see to it. In the meantime, there’s a matter of some urgency that needs your attention.”
Primrose frowned, bracing herself for whatever bad news Clover had for her.
He cleared his throat. “There is a possibility that the unfortunate events which took place at the Jet Stream Solar Array last week have borne fruit after all. Our guest in New Harmonies has offered to cooperate.”







It was warming up now that the sun had risen a little higher behind the clouds. Cobalt Bristles stopped on the sidewalk to look up at the overcast rolling past the gaps in the charred rooftops and noted the scent of moisture in the air. He pulled the rags away from his muzzle and breathed deeply, tasting the weather coming in from the west. The gentle coastal breeze was flexing its muscle now, whistling through the ruins. A storm was coming. A proper one by the smell of it. Someone at the weather factories back home must’ve gotten too generous on the dew pumps for rain to make it all the way to the coast. Kiln must be a mudhole right about now.
His wings shifted uneasily beneath his scavenger’s vestments, the right gently clutching the stock of his stubby rifle while the other kept a feather on his tracking beacon. Just a quick press, less than a second, was enough to send a strong ping with a unique signature encoded within the pulse. Little by little he and the dozens of pegasi streaming into Fillydelphia were refining the pureblood’s position. Her Pip-Buck was still intermittently active, answering for several minutes straight before going silent again for an hour or more. There were any number of explanations for it disappearing off and on like that. Could be damaged. The Rangers could be screwing around with it. For all they knew someone had it in a box and couldn’t leave it alone. He had yet to think of a reason that sounded good.
He gave his beacon a press and let go. It made no audible sound to tell him anything had happened, and he didn’t bother checking if it had. He trusted his equipment. 
The Steel Rangers would key into a sudden uptick in unexplained beeps in their city, so they’d been kitted with basic, silent transponders. Less than that, really. They were pretty much battery packs with an antenna. Old fashioned batteries, too. Not the mini-MAST cells that kept half the terminals, Pip-Bucks and myriad other machines clicking away after the bombs fell. There wasn’t even a chassis built on to protect the board that coded the signal. It was practically glued on. Anything more than that and none of them would have made it past the city checkpoints.
And yet it worked. Enclave tech always worked. The closest thing to real modern tech they’d been given were the earpieces they all wore. The wire was thin enough to tuck into the fluff around their ears. High collars hid the rest. The rudimentary comms equipment shared the same antenna as the transponder, making for some truly awful audio quality.
An electric crackle assaulted his eardrum. “Good copy. Signal is strong. Proceed one block east and one block north.”
Other soldiers would be receiving similar transmissions. Short and simple. Ping, update, new directions. Ping, update, new directions. Like anchor points on some vast spider’s web, they were closing in on the missing pureblood. 
He advanced toward an intersection walled high with the rusted hulks of old carriages. Faded paint had been splashed across them in wide arcs, territorial graffiti from a gang or group no one remembered anymore. A lot of Ranger territory was like that. After a few years in the field a soldier learned to identify which markers were current and which ones weren’t. He could tell this one was old. A sloppy depiction of an alicorn peeking over a crude horizon line stared back at him with big cartoon eyes, the words Twilight Wuz Here scrawled along the bottom carriage. Someone’s idea of a joke. It’d be funny if Cobalt didn’t see it on nearly every field mission he’d been assigned to. Even now, nobody was quite sure who was drawing it or why. Just another thing they found out here alongside the mutants and the bullet casings.
He turned east as instructed and picked his way through the remnants of an old encampment, its wooden walls pulled apart by scavengers ages ago. The tripod of a suspended grill stood over a black smear on the pavement where cook fires once burned. A couple crates, most likely empty, lay stacked against a shattered storefront window. Someone had taken the time to pose a pair of mannequins in the center of the street, one bent so that its snout could be pressed firmly between the hindquarters of the other. Cobalt snorted. Now that was funny. Wasteland ponies got up to some weird stuff when no one was looking.
Leaving the forgotten camp, he turned north and pinged the transponder a block later.
“Good copy. Signal is strong. Proceed north two blocks.”
He wondered how many pegasi back home were operating the comms today. It had to be a headache coordinating this many of them at once. Better yet, a migraine. This whole mission had dropped out of the sky with no warning and right from the start it felt like the only thing holding it together was duct tape and wishful thinking. Normally an operation like this would take weeks to prepare. Even now, he had the sense that their objectives were being written on the fly. First it was “find the pureblood.” Then it was “escort the secondaries to the safehouse.” Now it was “please slow down while we try to blow up some prewar auto-turrets with absolutely no patience for aerial fuckery.”
He decided to give the folks back home a break. It’s not like there were any pegasi who wouldn’t love to see the zebra guns dumped in a scrapheap somewhere. The things were pure overkill. If they saw you, that was it. You’d go from one whole pegasus to many, smaller pieces of pegasus before you knew you were being targeted. It was by the grace of the goddesses that the Rangers hadn’t reverse-engineered the targeting software. Even so, that would change given enough time and who knew how long the Enclave had left once that happened. 
They’d been reporting strong signals for the past hour and so far he’d seen nothing out here except a pair of chem fiends and half a feral ghoul. The road north was clear as far as he could tell. A few wrecked carriages and some rubble from a partially collapsed office building, but no signs of life. The northern ruins of Fillydelphia were eerily quiet even compared to the old ghost cities further inland. Normally areas like these, especially the ones standing around a bomb crater, were swarming with all sorts of irradiated boogaboos. Half the fun was kicking open a locked door to see if some new variant might pop out to say hello. Something about their absence gave him the creeps.
Out of habit he glanced at the burned-out buildings for any more creatively placed doodles. He didn’t see any. Pursing his lips, he noticed just about all of the windows staring down at him were vacant too. Nothing was boarded, no sheets to cover any openings. The bomb fell, everything that could burn did, the survivors left and that was it. No squatters, no camped out scavengers, nothing. If anything good could be said about the tinheads protecting this city, they’d done a lot more to keep their ruins clean than most chapters. Anywhere else, this place would be crawling with bandits and black market trade. Maybe they’d cleaned it out ahead of some kind of expansion initiative, or a natural buffer against some local threat. Who knew? Steel Rangers could always be depended upon to claim more territory than they needed.
Something caught his ear up ahead. Running water? No. It clicked as he was ducked to the right, only pausing long enough to listen once his shoulder touched the bricks of the neighboring building. Someone was taking a leak.
He slid his wing under his rifle and hit the transponder while he scanned the road ahead.
“Good copy. Signal is strong. Continue north.”
Yeah, well someone was using his path forward as a latrine. He stayed still until he was certain the sound of piss wasn’t coming from one of the buildings where someone might have eyes on him. A hoof scraped the asphalt around the corner ahead. Weighing his options, Cobalt lifted the wing with his compact automatic out from under his ragged disguise and gave the weapon a quick visual check. Everything looked good. He pressed a feather against the safety switch and slowly crept forward.
As he drew closer to the cross street ahead, the trickle tapered off. The intersection was framed on each corner by two blackened businesses on the near side and a densely settled mound of rubble across the street. It was the parking lot wrapping the fourth building that someone had chosen to use as a toilet: a dilapidated but otherwise structurally preserved Red Delicious restaurant.
He frowned. At first he didn’t see anyone. Trucks and carriages littered the L-shaped lot, some of them sagging together in orderly lines along the sidewalk while others formed a jumbled crush of vehicles that extended around the drive through wrapping the rear of the building, all owned by ponies who’d been caught in the blast while waiting for their dinner. Wait, no, breakfast? Someone told him the bombs fell in the morning. Not important. He inched toward the corner and stopped, eyes scanning the rusting hulks.
There. The faint silver glow of magic from behind one of the rusting hulks. A stallion matching the description of Ironshod loitered in the parking lot, horn lit and giving the end of his dick a dignified shake. He was facing away from Cobalt, his eyes on the boarded restaurant. That building was definitely not abandoned. He was unarmed and unprotected. It would be easy to shoulder his weapon and gun down the unsuspecting Ranger from where Cobalt stood, but the report they’d all been given said there were more. If they were using the restaurant as their hideout then they would have the advantage of cover if he pulled the trigger now. That and they wouldn’t be squeamish about using the pureblood as a hostage.
His nerves jangled, eagerly telling him to pull the trigger anyway. That was Paladin Ironshod literally standing there with his dick out. How many chances did anyone ever get to put down an actual paladin? He grit his teeth and forced himself to relax his grip. His weapon dipped. All the glory in the world wouldn’t be worth the minister’s wrath. He backed away from the corner, careful not to put any loose debris underhoof that might alert Ironshod to his presence. Halfway down the block was an alley. He ducked toward it and took cover behind the buckled panels of a dumpster.
With an eye on the open street just a few yards away he pressed a feather to his transponder and let go. He pressed it again, held his breath, and released. One second on, one second off, over and over. It was a simple pattern. Deliberate, conveying the agreed upon message.
Come to my location, it said. I’ve located the target. 








New Harmonies Correctional Institute
Custody - Control - Contrition


Primrose read the bold letters bolted into the prison’s stone archway as she waited for the guards to clear the narrow grounds penned between lofty outer walls. She’d had it built to resemble the old Equestrian castles her father had been obsessed with when she was little, and the end result for New Canterlot’s sole working prison had come out better than she’d hoped. It boasted a disquieting strength while shielding the public from the unfortunate savagery that sometimes erupted within. She breathed in and sighed. Just like dear old dad.
A harsh electric buzz signaled all clear and she was escorted past the open gate and through the chain link corridor toward the central building. She spared a glance at the strip of bare dirt that amounted to an exercise yard, the morning light casting the wall’s shadow over its entirety and making the air between the two structures noticeably cooler. Clover trotted beside her, his eyes always a step ahead of her own. Her director of security was good at his job. Better than many of the directors who held the title before him, and one of the few who had the balls to admit his complete disillusionment with her carefully crafted fiction of the goddesses. 
She glanced at his broad features, the subtle density of toned muscles gliding beneath his uniquely brindled coat. He noticed her looking but said nothing, only meeting her gaze for a moment before politely smiling and resuming his task of monitoring for threats. There weren’t any. They’d all been locked up well before their arrival. 
He was a strange stallion, she thought. Always calm and precise when he spoke. Never one to show heightened emotions or hold a grudge. She’d offered her bed to him only once, an offer he’d declined with no malice or ill intent while drawing a clear line between his personal life and his duty to her. Clover was old-fashioned in every sense of the phrase. Were he to stumble into a time machine and find himself thrust back two hundred and twenty years, he would fit in with the ponies of Old Equestria like a squirrel in a forest.
Prison staff guided them inside, leading the two of them through a series of heavily guarded double gates and down a maze of wide linoleum corridors. Every so often they would pass a bright scar along the spinach green walls, a mark left by a security baton or some other blunt object. Signatures left behind by the brawls that would often erupt within the prison between inmates and their wards. When she had this place built she had expressed no interest in modeling it after the prisons of the old world. No sprawling cell blocks, no open bars through which the inmates could socialize and form their own little colony away from the greater world.
Four walls and a soundproof door, a box for every pony whose crimes against the Enclave warranted total isolation. These weren’t the murderers or rapists of New Canterlot. Those issues could easily be resolved with a length of rope or a bullet. New Harmonies was a merciless march of unceasing monotony earned by those who stood in direct defiance to the Enclave’s mission. They were the traitors, the heretics and those who had sought to spread the dangerous ideals of a world rendered obsolete. These walls were a warning to the rest of her finely crafted society, and they worked very well.
Their escorts stopped on either side of an unremarkable cell door bearing an unremarkable placard beneath its shuttered viewport. 


04111297SONG


A third guard stepped in front of them and approached the door. He nosed open the viewport and pressed a wing against the intercom on the wall.
“Stand against the wall.”
Primrose and Clover waited off to the side. After a moment the guard signaled to his counterparts with a nod, and the door’s locks were released. Two of them swept in like rapids sucked into a narrow canyon while the third stood watch outside. Primrose followed them inside and watched a familiar mare in a dirty white jumpsuit have her hind legs placed into narrow, rigid hobbles. 
“I’m on a tight schedule, Miss Song. You can wait for him to fix your shackles or you can say whatever it is you have to say.”
Autumn Song sneered at Primrose through the matted tangles of her once neatly candy-striped mane, her forelegs splayed over painted circles on the wall in a humiliating position that a mare of her former stature never thought she’d end up in.
Recovering the leader of the now-defunct F&F Mercantile had been a close thing. Jet Stream’s once prized array had been under aerial observation for several weeks by the time Aurora made her harried debut on their radar, but the situation had devolved into a frenzy of confusion as the Enclave tried to confirm the intel stating she’d come from Stable 10 and her sudden decision to aggravate the region’s alpha deathclaw into rampaging through the facility. Without clear orders on what to do, recon teams could only monitor the situation until an opportunity presented itself. Only when Mac’s carnage subsided and the gunfire below went dark did they risk investigating the aftermath.
They discovered Autumn in one of the old holding tanks with a revolver held between her hooves, her cleanly severed horn spluttering with uncontrolled sparks as she struggled in vain to work the trigger. The gun was taken away before she could use it and the appearance of the Enclave around her had provoked a surge of unfiltered honesty from the mare. Primrose had listened to the open comms as she tearfully rattled away apology after apology, confessing like a cornered foal to her betrayal. In retrospect she had probably been hoping one of them might end her suffering in the way she hadn’t been able. She’d been a miserable thing when she finally arrived in New Canterlot.
Primrose stared back at Autumn unflinchingly. She wasn’t a threat to anyone now, least of all the Enclave. After several more seconds of unproductive silence, she turned to leave.
“Wait!”
She held back the urge to roll her eyes and stopped, leveling impatience back into the bare white cell.
Autumn’s hooves slid off the wall and she awkwardly shuffled in her hobbles to face her betters. She was visibly disoriented, her pupils wide as she rode a wave of endorphins triggered by the mere presence of something other than silence. Primrose might have been inclined to pity her if she hadn’t orchestrated the ambush that plucked Corporal Julip from the wasteland. 
Former corporal, she supposed.
“I-I want to make a deal,” she stammered, her eyes darting between Primrose and the guard standing just beyond her reach. She swallowed, waiting, her hind leg bouncing with nervous energy that made her hobble jingle like Hearth's Warming bells. 
Primrose glanced at Clover, shook her head and turned back around to face Autumn. “Miss Song, your company is in ruins, your caches have been ransacked, a deathclaw has turned your home into its den and your family is dead. You have nothing of value to offer.”
Autumn blinked rapidly at the floor, impotent fury twitching across her face like a stutter at the mention of her brother. “Then why keep me here this long? I’ve been stuck here for three weeks and nobody will tell me why. There has to be a reason why.”
The guard beside her adjusted his stance, preparing to intervene. Autumn didn’t notice.
Primrose leaned her shoulder against the doorframe. “One week.”
Autumn lifted her gaze from the floor. “What?”
“You’ve only been here for one week. Technically six and a half days.”
For all the many traits she bore of her infamous ancestors, her time here had whittled away her confidence to the barest nerve. Neither Flim or Flam would recognize their descendant as one of their own if they were the only three ponies in the room. Faced with a little alone time and she bore none of the endless tenacity those two stallions once wielded.
She floundered as she tried to count the days in her head and inevitably failed. It didn’t take long for the prisoners of New Harmonies to lose track of time. The lights in their cells were only turned off when they reached the bleeding edge of exhaustion, and even then it was up to the guards to decide when to turn them back on again. Someone had decided it would be fun to put Autumn on an accelerated cycle.
Yet just when it appeared the reality of her situation had chipped away at the last of her fortitude, she surprised Primrose by collecting herself just enough to look momentarily composed. She’d latched onto something in her mind like a lifeline.
“I found SOLUS,” she blurted. 
Primrose straightened and looked at Clover. His standard placid expression had bent with suspicion. She took a slow breath as he backed away from the cell, glancing either way down the corridor to see who might be within earshot. She waited until he indicated to her that there was no one else. Just these three guards whose faces he was already in the process of memorizing. She hoped their retirements wouldn’t cause too much trouble for the warden.
She cleared her throat. “And where is SOLUS, exactly?”
“Space.”
Primrose sighed as the imprisoned mare let out a sharp bark of laughter before giggling herself into quick silence. She’d come unglued.
“Deep space,” she added, grinning at Primrose while she spoke. “It’s in a high eccentricity orbit. Like… like Luna tried to kick it out of orbit and whiffed it. That’s why nobody can find it anymore. Not without a dish to track it with. It’s not even on its original inclination.”
If she thought what she was saying was profound, she was deeply mistaken. SOLUS would have been easy to locate if it had stayed on a fixed orbit like Jet had intended, but it clearly hadn’t hence why it had been lost. And yet every few years their listening systems would detect its degraded carrier signal pinging away, reaching out to land based networks rendered silent by the bombs.
“I don’t imagine you have more than just vagueisms to show for your discovery?” She could feel her impatience rising, unsure if she was being strung along and unwilling to risk deciding incorrectly.
“Not mine,” Autumn muttered. “Your colonel found it.”
“Corporal.”
She shrugged. “That’s what I said. She found it locked up in a custom partition on JSI’s old network. Whole list of vectoring instructions that got sent up a few years after the big boom.”
“After the bombs fell.”
She nodded, pausing to scratch her chin against her shoulder. “Yeah. Not sure how anyone got a signal out but they tried covering their tracks after they did it. Your mare cracked those files like a rotten egg. Recompiled the commands that got sent up and used the servers to do math that would’ve made Quincy’s head spin.”
Primrose didn’t ask who Quincy was. Autumn answered anyway.
“He was my receptionist,” she said. “Good kid. Don’t know where he is now. Dead, probably.”
“Focus. You’re saying Julip knows where SOLUS is?”
Autumn lingered before finally shaking her head. “Maybe. Doubt it. Cider set up the servers she was working on so that we could watch what she was doing. Had everything recorded and she barely had its current orbit worked out before she started purging all the files she could get at. Could be she memorized it.”
She was going to have a talk with that mare as soon as this problem with Aurora was resolved. “Where did you record her work?”
Another shrug. “Holotapes that I locked up before that Stable bitch came and ruined my life.”
Her stomach dropped. “You saved it on holotapes? Where did you put them?”
Autumn tried to put on a defiant little smile but it was cut short when Primrose strode across the gap between them and wrapped her feathers around the mare’s neck, shoving her back against the wall hard enough to daze her. She choked for air in her grip, eyes bulging toward the guard who had wisely found something else to occupy his attention. Primrose set her jaw and squeezed until the chains between Autumn’s legs began thrashing as she tried and failed to find air. Only when true panic floated into the mare’s face did she relax her grip enough for her to suck in a long, wheezing lungful of air.
“If you want to make a deal,” Primrose hissed, “this is your only chance.”
She could feel Autumn’s muscles flex as she swallowed against her grip. “Sell me,” she rasped. “Sell me to the slavers. Any of them. I’ll work. I don’t care where, just don’t leave me here. Please.”
“Four walls and a roof are more than most ponies have,” she countered. “But if you want to give this up, you need to tell me where those holotapes are.”
If she was planning to stall, the prospect of spending her life staring at these featureless white walls was enough to loosen her tongue. “In my office desk. Bottom drawer. I keep it locked but the key is attached to a magnet…”
She dropped her and made a disgusted noise as she turned to leave. In her fucking desk, she thought. These days they were teaching foals to crack safes with bobby pins and a screwdriver and yet that facility has been crawling with Rangers for an entire week. This had gotten out of control. The odds that someone hadn’t already emptied Autumn’s desk was… Celestia’s sun, they could already have it. She shot Clover a worried look as she stepped into the corridor, one that she saw reflected in his own eyes. 
“We need to move on this now.”
Clover hummed. “We’re behind the eight ball, ma’am. I’m open to suggestions if you have any.”
Behind them, Autumn’s frustrated yelling echoed through the corridor as she began to realize there was to be no deal. She’d been milked for the information she’d kept secret for so long and found herself discarded just as quickly. She hadn’t lost enough of her sanity not to know when she’d been played.
Primrose ignored her furious screams. “We need to get eyes back on that array and put someone inside. Dredge the servers. Maybe what the corporal found is still there.”
“And if it isn’t?”
She took a breath. “Luna’s tits, don’t jinx us, Clover. We’re already up to our necks.”







“You’re out of line.”
“Oh, stuff it already, I am not in your chain of command anymore. Have you bothered to stop and look at what you did to her down there?” Rivers grit her teeth, forcing herself to lower her volume. The narrow alley choked with vehicles that amounted to the restaurant’s drive through provided enough cover to shield themselves from prying eyes, but out here raised voices carried far. She looked both ways before hissing, “You shattered her leg and let her freeze in her own piss! I looked into her eyes and there’s nobody home. Are you so dense that you really think you can trust anything she’s told you after all that?”
Ironshod glowered down at her, but something told Rivers she’d driven some of her point through his thick skull. She watched him turn toward the six locked suits of power armor parked in the alcove formed between the drive through windows, silently inspecting one of them as he digested what she’d said.
“Listen,” she continued, “even if you’re right about her, even if she does come from some ‘Enclave sleeper cell’ disguised as a Stable, at this point she’s damaged goods. Anything you get out of her now is gonna be unreliable because as far as I can tell, she’s just sitting down there waiting to die.”
He looked at her with the expression someone might reserve to placate a talkative foal who had shared something they believed to be profound. Rivers deflated.
“If you don’t have the fortitude to see this mission through,” he murmured, “just say so and I’ll cut you loose.”
“That isn’t…” She closed her eyes. He was trying to bait her off topic. “Open your eyes for once, sir. We’ve got Elder Coronado breathing down our necks to turn ourselves in and so far you haven’t gotten anything valuable from that mare besides some tacky hoofwear. Celestia’s sake, Ironshod, you’re beating the shit out of a Stable pony. Not an Enclave spy. What’ll people say when we get back home?”
The paladin wrinkled his lip at her with a stubborn, mocking smirk. “The first overmare of her Stable was Spitfire. The Spitfire who founded the Enclave.”
“And the mare in that freezer isn’t.” She shook her head. Trying to reason with Ironshod was like pushing mud uphill. “If she’s with the Enclave, why did she come all the way out here scraping around for tech? Why didn’t she take the obvious trip west to New Canterlot and ask them for help?”
Ironshod said nothing.
“None of her decisions benefit the Enclave,” she added. “If anything, she’s put them at risk. She’s a civilian, Ironshod. The best thing you can do right now is let me patch her up as best I can and release her to Coronado. We might get leniency.”
“And do the others feel the same way as you?”
A pause. Reluctantly, she nodded. “You're their commander. They’re worried about you.”
He sighed. His demeanor softened as he did, his features relaxing as he took on the appearance of a defeated stallion. She hadn’t expected to get through to him.
“Alright, Rivers,” he murmured. “Let’s head down. You can give me the full pitch there.”







The thawing air that flowed in through the open door left Aurora shivering uncontrollably in her chair. Hard, jarring shudders raked over her in bursts that she could feel building up along frost-damaged muscles over time, her body struggling to reconcile with the warm air coming in after being subjected to so many cycles of penetrating cold. She tried to move, her locked joints screaming at her to get out of her bindings if nothing else than to walk around. The narrow zips holding her down just sawed deeper into her legs for the effort. She hissed a stuttering curse, forcing herself to remain still. 
 If there was a bright side to her situation it was that she was warming up enough to think clearly again. The mare who had tended to her wounds had seemed unusually sympathetic, at least for someone working for Ironshod. She looked around the empty freezer with a flicker of optimism, hoping maybe there would be something she could get to that might help her escape. Empty wire racks and dingy steel walls. This wasn’t like the films she watched back home where the sheriff left a key hanging on a nail next to the cell door. 
She grit her teeth and considered straining against her bindings until one of them snapped. Probably she could keep herself from screaming long enough to break one limb free, but then what? Do it three more times? Hope the Ranger posted outside wouldn’t hear the plastic break and ignore a crippled mare hobbling over the threshold? She looked down at her broken leg and tried not to think about why everything below the ragged gash was going from purple to black. Even if she knew exactly where she needed to go once she was outside the freezer, she was in no condition to walk let alone run. 
The intractable reality of her situation smothered that flicker of hope like a guttering flame. She wasn’t leaving. Maybe someone would find her and know where she came from, maybe not. All she could do was wait. When the urge to sleep finally came, she’d take it and wish for something better on the other side.
Her mind wandered. She thought about Ginger and wondered whether she and Roach had ever found the talisman they’d gone looking for. She hoped they did. It helped her to know that even if she died, Stable 10 had allies who could carry the torch. She’d left home thinking the world was empty and to some degree she’d made her peace over the possibility she’d never see it again. She’d had no idea how quickly that simple plan would branch out into so much more. Befriending Roach, falling in love with Ginger, experiencing a vibrant and living world that so many ponies dismissed as a wasteland but was so much richer than that. Tears stung at her eyes, eating away the frost. She could fly now, and nobody looked at her twice for not wearing a stuffy old jumpsuit. She’d met a gryphon and defeated a colony of slavers! What would her dad think when he found out? 
And there it was. At the core of it, she knew what she’d miss the most. Her dad, working by himself in the gardens, not knowing where Aurora had gone or where she’d fallen. Not knowing whether to mourn or wait. That childish urge rose in her like a fountain. She wanted to go home. She wanted her dad.
Somewhere above her head a door slammed shut. She bit back on her emotions and wiped her eyes against her shoulders to hide the tears. Her body tensed at the clank of metal shoes making their way across the floor, accompanied by a second set of hooves that led the first down a set of stairs she couldn’t see. The mare from earlier appeared in the doorway, the features on her face relaxed with a touch of self-satisfaction. They made eye contact only briefly, but in that short time it seemed to Aurora that the mare was trying to convey a sense of reassurance to her. Any comfort she might have gleaned from the Ranger was quickly overshadowed by the looming presence of Ironshod at the door. Aurora swallowed. Something about the way he eyed her from across the gap felt wrong.
“Rivers is very worried about your health, Aurora.”
Aurora frowned at him, then to Rivers. If his mocking tone bothered her, she wasn’t showing it. Her attention was focused on Aurora’s injuries, particularly her damaged hind leg. 
“She’s going to need antibiotics. Strong ones. Stimpacks aren’t going to help now that the tissue’s begun to necrotize.”
Ironshod leaned against the doorframe. “Naturally.”
Rivers breathed out a little sigh before assessing the rest of Aurora. “I can stitch up these gashes but her straps are filthy and they’ve cut deep. Blood poisoning is like-”
“Disinfectant and stitches.”
The Ranger turned to look at Ironshod who stared impassively back. “We don’t have enough disinfectant with us to guarantee she’ll survive more than a few days. She’ll crash in less than that if she goes septic.”
Aurora frowned between the two of them, trying not to get her hopes up. Was this over? Were they really moving onto treating her injuries?
Ironshod sniffed and cleared his throat, his horn glowing softly as he apparently scratched himself. “Say what’s on your mind, Rivers.”
For several seconds the mare was quiet, her gaze returning to Aurora’s ruined leg. She made a face and, reluctantly, shook her head.
“She needs a surgeon, not a field medic.” Rivers met her eyes for a flicker before turning toward Ironshod, firm in her decision. “We should give her over to Coronado. He’ll have the facilities for this kind of treatment.”
Aurora held her breath to keep herself calm. This was it. The nightmare was over.
Ironshod’s face darkened. “Can she walk on that?”
Rivers turned to look at Aurora’s injured leg.
In the same instant, Aurora caught sight of a black object floating out of a holster strapped to Ironshod’s leg. Her eyes widened with recognition. 
“Gun,” she mumbled, her voice cracked and dry from disuse. Rivers glanced at her, the weapon behind her leveling. “Gun!”
Light and sound pierced the stale air and Rivers jerked forward, her chin bouncing off the chair’s armrest on the way to the floor. Aurora could feel an unwelcome warmth tracing wet lines down her chest, a dark bead of something that wasn’t hers clinging to the tip of her eyelash. She watched in silent horror as Ironshod looked away, his attention on the Ranger posted at the door just a hoof’s reach away, leveled the gun again, and squeezed the trigger. Another deafening crash of sound. Hooves splayed out onto the floor outside, clicking against one another as the last signals jostled mindlessly through the Ranger’s dying body.
With ears ringing and burnt gunpowder stinging her eyes, she couldn’t hold back. She screamed for anyone to help her, apologizing to anyone who might need to hear it so long as they let her out of here. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to disappear. For a moment Ironshod stared at her, his eyes lightless, and she tensed against the bullet that she knew was coming. Knowing that no matter what she did there was nothing she could do except wait for it.
Instead, he peered up at the ceiling like a predator making a terrible decision. He turned, pistol aloft, and walked away.







Primrose heard Clover clearing his throat over the wind and sighed. Her eyes glossed over the primary details of the report open on her Pip-Buck while her wings cut through the open air above New Canterlot. She was more than familiar with the city below and could navigate with her periphery vision just fine. Clover, as well as her usual entourage of armed pegasi flying in tight formation around her, were less willing to trust the torchbearer of the old world not to glide blindly into some poor family’s stovepipe. He cleared his throat again, more insistently.
She glanced at him, already exasperated from their chat with Autumn. “Some days I wonder if you’re my director of security or my nanny.”
He shrugged. “You don’t pay me to let my guard down, ma’am.”
“No I do not.” She shook her head and used her chin to toggle off the screen. Clover relaxed as she turned her attention back to where she was going, her mood growing pensive as she took in the sprawling vista of her capital. Autumn had chosen the worst possible time to drop this wild card in their lap. The possibility of the Steel Rangers being in possession of SOLUS was enough to make her whole body flash hot with dread, but she did her best not to fall down that rabbit hole. For all anyone knew, the Rangers hadn’t the foggiest idea of what they had. If they had it at all. 
Maybe she was trying to fuck with her. Probably not. Faking conviction like that was no easy skill to master, and despite being wastelander dross that mare had looked every bit convinced that what she was saying was true. The real question was, what would happen if she wound up being right?
She pressed her lips into a line. “Do you think she was telling the truth?”
Clover perked up and looked at her. Neatly shingled rooftops slid below them as they arced toward the golden figures perched atop the Chapel’s iconic steeple. He was quick on the uptake and banked a fraction of a degree until their wingtips practically overlapped.
“I think she believed she was,” he said, hedging as he always did. “I might also hazard a guess that she may be trying to spur us into rash action as punishment for her incarceration. Possibly she might have offered to take us to the holotapes she claimed to have recorded if we stayed longer. Earn our trust and win her freedom, like in the movies.”
Primrose let herself chuckle at the thought of her and Clover wearing old Appleoosan sheriff’s badges, being led through the dusty southern desert by an infamous bandito on their way toward stolen loot. She missed the anticipation of waiting for a promising new western to release. They made so few before the bombs fell and the lack of attention the genre received in that time was criminal. Discovering that Aurora had similar tastes in film days earlier had been utterly refreshing.
Thinking about the old days helped take her mind off the stress of what Autumn had shared. The formation descended, escorting her closer toward the pleasing bends and curves of the cobblestone roads that decorated the city center. She inhaled deeply as she always did when she flew close to the market square, the scents of fresh ruffage and cooking meat filling her nose and motivating a fresh appetite. For all of its faults, she was proud of what her Enclave had accomplished here more than anyplace else. New Canterlot might not boast the lavish grandeur that the capital it was modeled after once put on display, but it was getting there a little bit at a time like an ugly scar that grew beautiful with age. Even the mountain from which the ruins had fallen showed signs of healing.
She stole a peek at the singular peak that had once been the root of Equestria’s far-reaching influence. It stood above her city as an ancient guardian, its charred western face gradually lightening to match the surrounding geology. A single, broken lip of old Canterlot’s shattered foundation still clung to the scoured rockface. A reminder to those who lived below of what had been lost and what they were building toward. Higher still, shrouded in the dense mists that veiled the mountain’s snow capped peak stood the factory complex she had salvaged from the fallen remnants of Cloudsdale. Were it not for her Enclave, Equestria’s weather technology may have very well been lost. Now its vast gears turned with unmatched efficiency, belching out an endless parade of perfectly seeded clouds. The Steel Rangers and their myriad of elders may claim vast swaths of Equestrian soil, but as long as the Enclave stood firm in its defiance they would never have the skies.
The Chapel of the Two Sisters rose above them as her escorts dropped the last few yards onto the cobbles in front of the grand structure. Without aid of the construction equipment that made building so simple in the old days, the chapel and its grand spire had been assembled stone by stone from the ruins of Old Equestria. The concept of god worship had once been something alien to Equestria, a practice relegated to ancient history ever since the princesses took power. Now it paved the way toward the future Equestria deserved.
After the bombs, the knee-jerk reaction many had within the Enclave was to press Primrose to take up a new throne in her own name. But she’d known better than to give into the temptation. The dust hadn’t yet settled and Equestria wasn’t ready for a new ruler. She knew that the first thing the survivors needed was hope that they would be okay. More than that they wanted to know that it wasn’t just them against this desolate new world. That somewhere, the princesses were still alive and watching over them as they always had. And, somewhat conveniently, able to shoulder the blame when anything went wrong.
With the help of her advisors, the Enclave adopted many key tenets of popular gryphon sun worship and molded them to something palatable to those climbing out of the ruins. The princesses had not died. No, they ascended to godhood. Magic was not gone, it was merely being safeguarded by those very goddesses who once wielded it without equal. Harmony would return when they deemed Equestria fit for their presence. Until then they would guide ponykind with gentle nudges, listening to their prayers and answering them in subtle ways.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 
It was an excellent primer in those early years. The idea of ascension had been initially laughed down, widely seen as the ludicrous attempt to sucker ponies into just another one of the cults beginning to form at the time. Yet as the decades wore on and the story of the goddesses spread, more than a few ponies began to notice something peculiar about the mare at the head of the Enclave. Something was happening. She wasn’t aging like the rest of them.
Like the princesses, she remained young. 
Primrose spent several years quietly waving these concerns off, crediting her appearance to good genes. It was one of the easiest acts she’d ever had to put on. All she had to do was wait for someone to finally connect the pieces and inevitably float the hypothesis that she was blessed. The Enclave embarked in a so-called investigation into her longevity, predictably announcing finding nothing medical to explain the phenomenon and feeding that narrative to the populace to fuel their fervor. They did the rest, feeding water to the seed of a religion whose growth the Enclave carefully cultivated into what it was now. Even the Steel Rangers hesitated to denounce the belief that the princesses were now goddesses, instead accusing Primrose of tricking the hopeful into blind belief. To this, Primrose never gave an official response. No sense in muddying the water when the believers were eager to explain away the doubters themselves.
“Ma’am?”
She blinked. Clover was watching her with a touch of concern. They’d come to the stairs at the foot of the chapel where the head priest stood waiting to greet her, a formality that the caretakers of this ornate building had created on their own volition. Primrose composed herself and smiled apologetically to the aging stallion.
She dipped her head in a respectful bow. “Ah. Peace to you, Reverend Father.”
He smiled at her as her entourage led her up the steps, ignoring the weapons bristling beneath their wings. “And peace unto you, Minister. A busy day, I take it?”
Father Belfry, an uninspired yet appropriate name he’d chosen for himself when he joined the priesthood, held open one of the carved wooden doors for them as they entered. He was a kind stallion and often prone to oversharing when it came to how he envisioned the church’s future after he was gone. Not often, but sometimes Primrose would give him an ear just in case he happened across an idea that might be worth pursuing. Those long listening sessions often left her feeling guilty, however, and she did her best not to indulge him too much.
“Very busy,” she agreed as she stepped onto the white flagstones of the chapel’s outer vestibule. As with the open square outside, the public area of the chapel had been cleared out by security ahead of her arrival. After nearly avoiding having her head taken off by a bullet back in ‘32, her private strolls through the city had abruptly ended. “I wish I had time to talk…”
“...but the world spins on, I understand.” He let the door shut behind them, following her through the vestibule for a few steps as she was led to a locked side door. “I’ll save you a seat at tonight’s service.”
He always did. She smiled at him again to let him know it was appreciated without needing to tell him she wouldn’t be in attendance. Too many things were in motion now for her to waste an hour for the sake of making an appearance. Father Belfry nodded and watched as Clover stepped forward to peer into the retina scanner mounted in the door’s frame. “Grace go with you, minister. And don’t forget to eat something while you’re downstairs.”
“Thank you, I won’t. Take care.” 
He bore his kindly smile as the secure door slid shut and locked behind her. The armed elements of her entourage took position near the door while Primrose and Clover continued on down the narrow, wood paneled hall. She could feel his eyes on her as they passed through another locked door on the far end, the blast proof steel dropping behind them as they stepped onto the elevator it protected.
“What?” she asked.
Clover feigned ignorance as he pressed his hoof against the reader on the wall and the car descended. “Nothing. I just think it’s nice that you let your mane down around him.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s the high priest.”
“That isn’t why you do it, though.”
Sometimes she hated Clover for being so flippant with her, especially when he was right. She swatted him across the shoulder with the back of her wing to let him know his honesty was grudgingly appreciated. “Belfry’s led the church for forty-odd years now. He’s practically family. Sue me for being polite.”
He smirked. “You know one day I’m going to look up what that means.”
“I’m sure I’ll have egg on my face when you do.” One of the perks of rebuilding a decimated society had been allowing lawyers to die off with all the other pests. As the elevator slowed to a stop, she took a breath and composed herself. “Back to work.”
The doors split open. They stepped off and into the reinforced concrete antechamber. Two soldiers stood at the bunker door on the other side and, recognizing her, one of them dipped their chin to their radio and murmured, “The Minister is here.”
Primrose frowned.
The second stallion’s voice was grave as he addressed them. “Ma’am. Sir. There’s been a situation.”







They all came pouring down in a single deluge, weapons drawn as they streamed by, none of them noticing him pressed against the wall at the foot of the stairs. Every one of them blindly assuming their prisoner had gotten loose and stolen a weapon. It was the same tunnel vision that kept them locked in the middle ranks. The same limitation that prevented them from thinking too hard about the opportunity for advancement he offered. It was why they’d never amount to more than just bog standard grunts. 
He reached out with his magic as they stormed past. Click by click he switched their safeties on. The first Ranger to reach the freezer door began shouting nonsense at Aurora. Get down. Drop the weapon. Reflexive demands that fit the picture he expected to see, not the one in front of him. The others lined up along the wall next to the door as if they were preparing for a raid. They were the first to finally notice Ironshod waiting against the other wall.
No time to do anything fancy. He’d seen plenty of good soldiers get themselves killed trying to show off. He leveled his pistol at the stallion at the rear of the line and put him down with a shot to the neck. The others recoiled with shocked disbelief, more than a few having the sense to lift their weapons in defense. He dropped his pistol in favor of the subcompact that clattered to the floor beside the freshly dead Ranger. Someone’s magic groped at him in an attempt to put him on the ground, none of them seeing the dead Ranger’s assault rifle floating back into the air in time to react. They were too confused by their own weapons, realizing too late that their safeties had been engaged to put up a fight.
Ironshod readied the rifle, pointed it roughly down the tidy line of traitors and held down the trigger. Thirty-two rounds roared down the row like a scythe through wheat, the first few dropping like wet sacks while four survivors rolled over the floor in confused agony. He let the rifle fall to the floor and took up his pistol again. He counted the shots.
Bang. One. Specialist Fields.
Bang. Two. Sergeant Perique.
Bang. Three. Specialist Clayhoof.
Bang. Four. Corporal Melody.
He winced. His eardrums throbbed. A thin wisp of gray smoke curled up over the barrel of his weapon, iron sights aimed down the ragged hole above Melody’s left eye. A small voice in the back of his mind howled at him for what he had just done and for a moment his vision misted. These had been his allies. A team he’d chosen. Maybe even friends had their lives been different and they had met as civilians and not soldiers. He grit his teeth and squelched it.
No, he’d seen through what Rivers had done. The outbursts, the open challenges to his authority, this misplaced sympathy for the enemy that had quickly evolved into her attempting to commandeer his mission. Recruiting her had been a mistake. He’d invited a virus into the fold and she’d wasted no time in infecting the resolve of her fellow Rangers. That childlike pity for an enemy in chains had nearly undone everything. But he stopped it just in time. 
It was just him now. Him and the Enclave spy. 
He stepped to the freezer and gazed toward Aurora, his lips curling away from his teeth into a bitter sneer. She stared back at him, eyes wide with terror as she struggled against her bindings, the metal feet of the chair drawing smears on the floor in the widening pool of Rivers’ blood.
He watched her struggle. It was all an act. Even now she was playing at his sympathy, probing the weaknesses of his character for a thread to pull. Anything that would let her walk away from this, back to her handlers. Too late for that. Far too late.
The frosted wall behind her glowed green. Her Pip-Buck toggling on again. Something it had been doing since she arrived. Something it hadn’t done while it was briefly in his custody back home. A homing beacon or a distress signal, he assumed. Something she’d been able to trigger during the ambush.  
He inhaled one last breath of the sour, frigid air and closed the door. The lock dropped into place with a solid click and the ancient cooling system hummed into service. For the first time, Aurora’s screams didn’t pierce the insulated wall. 
Rivers was right. She’d finally given in to the inevitable. As a source of information Aurora had been spent. Yet she wasn’t completely worthless. He looked up the darkened stairs and smiled.
Let her be bait.







Primrose paced one way, then the other, her feathers pinching the bridge of her muzzle as she tried to keep herself from picking up one of these fucking chairs and hurling it at the bank of monitors mounted to the command center’s far wall. Second Lieutenant Brightstroke was still rattling off the long list of shit that had hit the fan during her short visit to Autumn’s cell, the young lieutenant defying the first syllable of her name while simultaneously trying to induce the second on everyone else within earshot.
She reached the end of the long row of connected desks, the officers seated at each terminal doing their best not to make eye contact as she passed. Meanwhile, Clover walked the carpeted aisles rimming the shallow amphitheater, ready to step with a cooler head if she needed him to.
Brightstroke hardly paused to take a breath between sentences. “Scouts are confirming the presence of a small running generator on the roof however they have not seen any active defensive systems in place that it might be powering. The Rangers have not set up exterior defenses either and have no scouts of their own that we’ve identified, which lines up with the theory that they’re operating without sanction and may be unlikely to reveal themse…”
She cut the lieutenant off with a flick of her wing. “Stop, please. Go back to the gunshots. How many were there?”
Brightstroke didn’t skip a beat. “We don’t have a confirmed count, but most of our assets in the vicinity agree there was sustained automatic fire followed by four distinct shots shortly after. Executions, likely, though we are unable to confirm the presence of additional hostages.”
She turned back and followed the narrow aisle’s gentle curve, ambling her way behind the seated officers and glancing only briefly at the lieutenant standing at the front of the room. A thin, wooden dowel floated in pink haze beside her, ready for use should something on the monitors behind her need a good pointing at.
She didn’t bother to ask who lost the laser pen this time.
“No one was seen entering the building other than Paladin Ironshod and the mare with him?”
“No, ma’am. Not since our first scout identified their location.”
Which meant either someone had turned traitor, or Aurora had somehow gotten her feathers on a weapon and tried to shoot her way out. Primrose shut her eyes for a moment and blew out a frustrated breath. When she didn’t speak immediately after, the fidgety lieutenant filled the silence.
“Alpha and delta flights have the structure surrounded and are ready to attempt an extraction, ma’am.”
Extraction isn’t the damn priority. She cleared her throat to bite back the retort before she could give it a voice. She could see them peeking at her from the corners of their eyes, ears turned unsubtly toward her as they awaited the answer they were all clearly expecting. It was the same murmur she heard in the bunker’s common areas, the prickling whispers that reached her ears when no one thought she was around to overhear. Ever since Aurora Pinfeathers made contact with the Enclave in her desperation to rescue her companion, it was all anyone in New Canterlot could talk about. 
A pureblood pegasus, alive and in the wasteland. Free of the disease, contamination, decay and who hailed from not just a Stable but Spitfire’s Stable. A place long thought to have been buried and forgotten but which had now spat out a descendant of the greatest generation of pegasi to have ever lived. And of fucking course the news had spread like a grease fire, burning its way through the city with no hope of containment. It had taken every ounce of willpower she had not to have the comms officer who answered that call thrown into a very, very deep hole in the ground. After all, this was something to be celebrated. 
Yippee. Woohoo.
Getting ahead of it had been… well, non-negotiable. Seeing as Aurora had shown an uncanny sense of compassion by freeing then-corporal Mint Julip, the logical choice was to send the cantankerous mare back into the field to find her liberator and figure out why she had left Stable 10. On top of all that, it was imperative Primrose know exactly what sort of knowledge that dapple gray bundle of problems had taken along for the trip. She had the answer to her first question, something which aggravated her greatly, but she had nothing to show for the second. She had to assume that with Julip now disowning the Enclave, getting anything of value out of Aurora willingly was no longer on the table. Worse still, now that the Steel Rangers were all but literally knocking at Stable 10’s door, she couldn’t afford to allow Aurora to think she couldn’t trust the Enclave to act in her interest.
She took a breath. Her ability to leverage ponies into action had gotten her where she was now, but suddenly all of those familiar tools had been taken off the table. Aurora’s friends had already made contact with Elder Coronado, and that silver-tongued kirin had the influence and raw resources to force Coldbrook to reverse his assault on Stable 10 on his own. One mistake on her part could easily send Aurora running off to Coronado for help while simultaneously cutting Primrose off from any chance of containing this mess.
Aurora needed to be managed and more importantly, most of New Canterlot expected Primrose to leave no stone unturned in the effort to secure her safety.
At least on the bright side, the Stable dweller’s foray into Fillydelphia had presented an opportunity too tempting to ignore. Never before had the Rangers of a coastal stronghold grown so assured of their security that they would be willing to devote so many resources toward what most chapters would call “civilian matters.” And of all cities, Fillydelphia, where the ancient guns of Vhanna sat perched upon their lofty towers.
Primrose paused her stride and turned to face the array of monitors behind the chatty lieutenant. Markers denoting the dozens of pegasi successful in entering the city were converging toward a mass already growing in the city’s northern ruins. However five small pockets still remained where they had gathered throughout the populated city center, each forming a point of a pentagon in the middle of which stood Magnus Plaza.
“We don’t move for extraction until all assets are in place. If our pureblood is still alive, I want to give her every possible chance to stay that way. No half-measures.” Her chest tensed as she awaited pushback. While unease could be seen in some of the less patient officers in the room, none spoke up. Good. “In the meantime, what’s the status of those turrets?”
The lieutenant glanced at the screen on her foreleg. “Teams one, two and four are in place and awaiting orders. Team three got hung up by a patrol midway up The Evergreen but removed them without detection and are making their way up. Team five reported good progress at the Drake Building but are handling a ghoul problem in the upper levels. Apparently the Rangers use an old window washer’s crane to bypass…”
“Lieutenant.”
Brightstroke clamped her mouth shut and nodded.
Glancing at Clover, she could tell he knew she was trying to finesse an unfinessable situation. The more unfamiliar ponies seen gathering in the shadows surrounding a picked-over restaurant up in the ruins meant greater and greater odds that someone would notice, but she wasn’t willing to pull the trigger on that extraction until she knew her teams were in position to hijack those turrets. If one mission was discovered, the other risked immediate exposure and subsequent failure. Their timing had to be perfect.
She paused for a moment before speaking. “Have anyone who hasn’t already made it into the city fall back and disperse. We have too many chips on the table already. And relay a message to beta, charlie, and echo’s flight leaders to move their hooves north before Aurora dies of old age out there.”
An officer seated behind one of the glowing terminals sat up a little straighter, his feathers settling onto the keyboard in front of him as he pecked out the relevant encoded message.
Primrose met the lieutenant’s eye, nodded her appreciation, and turned to leave. There wasn’t anything left for her to do here except loom, something Princess Luna had once been known for. Spending a millennia sealed away at the bottom of Canterlot Castle tended to breed some social insecurities in a pony, or so she heard. Primrose walked past the seated officers and was joined by Clover as she ascended the shallow steps toward the door leading out. She had an excess of energy to burn and there were several miles worth of bunker for her to walk it off in. 
 Clover stepped ahead of her and pulled open the door. In the heavily guarded corridor beyond, he leaned toward her and murmured, “You’re juggling quite a bit, ma’am.”
She grit her teeth at the insinuation. “You think we’re overreaching?”
He nodded, mindful of the light traffic in the adjoining corridors ahead. “I do.”
“So why be coy about it?” She smiled at a mare who slowed to make way for them. “You have a voice in this, Clover. Tell me we should wait for another day to attack those turrets and I’ll send the order.”
She watched his expression as they walked, but Clover said nothing. He was rarely a conflicted stallion, but this wasn’t a situation any of them had a clear answer for. This was risk rearing its ugly head in its ugliest form.
He shrugged his wings, a gesture of futility. “Were we living in a perfect world, I would ask for a few weeks or months to plan this operation thoroughly. As things stand now this may be our only realistic opening to make a move. The situation with Aurora is moving quickly and I’m not confident our forces will be able to balance this many plates without dropping one. You need to be prepared for this to go sideways on you, ma’am. I’d be surprised if it didn’t.”
Primrose chewed on that as they passed a common area where one of the off-duty shifts reclined in plush sofas. A television playing reruns of a popular Manehattan sitcom while a clutch of pegasi faced off against a team of unicorns in a raucous game of ping-pong. She ignored the stack of caps pushed against the center net, a violation of her regulation forbidding gambling outside of licensed - and taxable - establishments, and they continued on.
“If one or both of these missions fail, we’ll all pay the price for it,” she agreed. “But.”
She lifted a single brow at him as she spoke. “If we succeed, we stand a chance to shatter the Rangers’ confidence in their Elders. Coronado’s chapter has been a bulwark for more than a century all thanks to those guns of his. Imagine instead of turrets guarding their skies the Rangers look up to see wreckage falling into the streets. Coronado’s neighbors will have no choice but to respond as if we’re preparing a greater assault on his city. Not even Coldbrook would be able to talk his way out of sending his Rangers east in support.”
She couldn’t help but grin as she spoke, knowing full well she was lauding in a victory she had yet to achieve. “Of course most reasonable minds would know we can’t afford a fight on two fronts, but according to their own propaganda we’re desperate enough to try anything. Public opinion will force Coldbrook to act, and if he’s forced to divert enough able bodies toward the coast it could create an opening for us to break out of this fucking bubble they’ve penned us into. We could take back our territory, possibly even as far east as Foal Mountain. We could have room to breathe again.”
Clover waited for her to finish before taking a slow, deliberate breath. She felt her lip twitch with the slightest bit of defensive anger at his hesitance. He wasn’t the least bit optimistic. He didn’t trust her foresight. She could tell.
“Prim, I want everything you just described. I do. But I’m worried that you’re not considering what might happen if this fails, and maybe badly. We may be looking at a full wing of pegasi grounded and forced to fight their way out of that city while having to worry about the wellbeing of a pegasus known to catalyze new problems wherever she goes. If this goes south, we stand to lose all of them. What then?”
She tried not to glare at him just then. She really did. 
Grudgingly she muttered, “Then we’ll lick out wounds and move forward. But we’re not going to botch this. Trust me, Clover. I have all of this under control.”







Thunder rattled the old beams of Harbor House.
The winged residents of the shelter had grouped into the kitchen with the notable exception of Julip who, to distract herself from the unwanted stares, occupied her feathers by dealing cards onto the weathered coffee table. She and Roach sat together on the moldy couch, both of their attentions divided between the game Julip was trying to teach them and the heated conversation coming from the other room. Now that Chops was up and about, he and Dancer had gathered the other Enclave members and broken the unpopular news that Harbor House was to be abandoned.
Being assigned to what amounted to paid vacation with the perk of disposing of the occasional wayward dustwing was a cushy gig, and suddenly the arrival of a traitor and two wastelanders who understood the purpose of this place had thrown their comfortable posts down the toilet. None of them were happy with the prospect of returning home for reassignment, least of all the somewhat pot bellied stallion who was now arguing they would be better off killing their guests to preserve the House. One of his compatriots slapped him across the chest with their wing and ordered him to quit bitching, and when the chastened pegasus turned to eyeball the three outsiders through the doorway he’d been dismayed to see those same guests seating themselves on his couch where the faint green glow of several plasma weapons illuminated the floor behind their hooves. 
The argument had devolved into complaining grumbles as Dancer laid out their updated orders from New Canterlot, namely the routes they would be taking to return there safely. Ginger half-listened as she sank into the broken recliner, her attention pulled to the warped window behind Roach and Julip where the points of an old picket fence still managed to poke out from under a ridge of blowing sand and scrub. The storm’s approach was steadily darkening the midday sky rather than bringing the usual eerie green glow that accompanied the radstorms Ginger was used to. Half a day gone with no news. Every second ticking by wasted sitting here doing nothing. 
“Your turn, Ginger.”
She reluctantly tore her gaze from the approaching weather and looked down at the cards still laying face-down on the table in front of her. The recliner sighed as she straightened and picked them up, keeping an ear on the conversation in the other room. The deck belonged to one of them and despite the mutual dislike between Ginger’s group and the one currently being evicted, she couldn’t help but appreciate the care and attention which had been put into each card. Each one had been individually drawn with a ballpoint pen with an artist’s skill down to the numbers and suits.
She selected two and placed them at the center of the table, one face-down. Julip had tried her best to explain the rules but Ginger hadn’t gone out of her way to listen. Something about the face-down card being a multiplier for the face-up. Julip called it Hoof n’ Claw. Ginger looked dimly at the table as Julip took her turn, her thoughts elsewhere.
Her ear twitched at the sound of many hooves shuffling in the kitchen. The meeting had wrapped up and she watched through the open door as the residents of Haven House filed out through the back door of the kitchen, most of which shot ugly looks back at her as they walked out. Ginger pursed her lips and glanced at the dim glow of the weapons still stowed beneath the furniture. She didn’t pretend to know the rules Primrose held her soldiers to, but abandoning equipment this potent couldn’t be normal. Granted, nothing about the last several days came close to normal, but it still struck her as needlessly wasteful even for the Enclave. 
“Finally.” Julip flicked the tip of her wings toward the kitchen in a shooing motion, then grumbled as she took a fresh card off the deck. “Bad enough I have to take shit from those two.”
She looked back to the kitchen where Dancer and Chops still stood at the rear door, watching the others depart. Dancer glanced over his shoulder and noticed the three of them staring. An unsettling prickle ran up Ginger’s spine as Dancer murmured something inaudible to Chops, pretending not to have seen them watching, and the two stallions casually stepped outside.
The door slid shut. 
Something was up. With the card game promptly forgotten, she got to her hooves and started toward the kitchen. Then she reconsidered and diverted toward the front of the common area and the staircase at the front of the house. Sensing trouble, Roach and Julip had risen as well and followed close behind her. She turned to them and touched a hoof to her lips before mounting the steps. They crept to the second floor as quietly as the creaky building would allow.
The kitchen’s back door hung below the boarded-up window of one of the upstairs bedrooms. A few slivers of dimming daylight filtered in between gaps just wide enough to peer through. The departing Enclave members were on the beach now, following the shoreline north on hoof. She spotted Dancer and Chops huddled on the windward side of a low dune that had built itself up along the old fence line, but they weren’t speaking. Ginger grimaced as she watched Dancer sign something to Chops, his lips pressed closed. Chops haltingly responded with a series of gestures but stopped midway when Dancer talked over him. More than once Dancer looked back to the house, his eyes scanning the windows. She didn’t have the faintest idea of what either of them were saying.
Which was why Julip startled her when she began whispering, eyes slitted against the gaps between boards. “Until see… um, signal… us group stay.”
Ginger looked at Julip for a better translation, but the younger mare’s eyes were still glued to the gesturing outside. She uttered a frustrated grunt when Chops began signing again, his back partially to the house and his feathers moving much faster than Dancer’s. 
“Building… tall? Slow the fuhh… guns, safe. Er, not safe.” She shook her head. “I think he’s talking about the city’s turrets?”
Dancer’s heated voice carried across the distance. “What do you expect me to–” He stopped himself, glaring toward the house, and made a series of hard gestures as if he were hammering the words into the air.
“What do you expect me to do about it?” Julip supplied, adding, “I not… orders writer. I not plan maker.”
Chops jabbed a hoof toward the city, his expression incredulous.
“Plan bad. Guns signal… the gun signal will be too late. Danger big. Unicorn… punish? Unicorn punish us.”
A low rumble rose from Roach. Ginger’s expression darkened as well, her ears burning.
Dancer flicked a wing toward the house.
“What think…” Julip went quiet for several seconds, her mouth working silently as she deciphered Dancer’s frustrated movements. “What do you think Primrose will do to us if we fuck up again? You heard the radio. They identified…”
Julip stiffened, her brow lowering as she read the conversation with pensive silence. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, visibly regretting asserting herself as translator. The words dropped from her lips with a deep reluctance. “They identified the rogue Paladin and he’s cornered. All she needs us to do is keep our mouths shut until they extract the pureblood. Our orders couldn’t be any…”
Ginger lost focus on the dictation, the words jumbling into nonsense as her world narrowed to a pinpoint around Dancer and Chops, wings waggling, the two of them discussing the risks and merits of keeping her in the dark as if it were no more important than deciding who got to sleep and who took first watch. They knew where Ironshod was hiding which meant they knew where Aurora was, and they’d kept that from her.
Her magic pulsed and the boarded window, dusty walls, Julip and Roach blinked away with a rush of displaced air. For a split second she was weightless, suspended above the sand as the dune and Dancer and Chops materialized with a startling violence of wind and sound that made her eardrums pop. Dancer was the only one capable of shouting his surprise but both stallions reared away from her abrupt materialization with equal measures of shock.
Dancer’s feathers reflexively dropped toward the holster strapped high on his hip, but incensed as she was Ginger reacted swiftly. She wrapped her magic around their sidearms, wrenched them from their holsters and planted each weapon into the sand with sufficient force to render them irretrievable without the aid of a shovel and a strong back. Chops already had his wings in the air, not wanting to go through the miserable experience of being shuffled a second time.
Time was something the two of them had wasted too much of already. She fixed Dancer with a dangerous stare as distant lightning silhouetted the city skyline behind him. “Where’s Aurora?”
His eyes lingered on the divot in the sand where his gun had vanished. Even now, the stallion was recovering from what he’d seen her do. “I… look, Ginger, we don’t know yet but we’re getting close. Once they find her you’ll be the first…”
Her magic slid under his belly until it found what she was looking for and latched on with a vice grip, cutting him off with a startled yelp before he could finish. Her voice shook as she took a step toward him. “I will put your balls in your mouth if you lie to me again. So don’t.”
Dancer staggered uncomfortably in her grip but wisely kept himself from lashing out. Back when she was just another unicorn in Junction City he might’ve been able to yank himself away, but not anymore. Not without losing something precious in the process. He looked to Chops for help but his partner kept his distance, head shaking quickly in the universal gesture of don’t give her any ideas.
“I, er, we don’t– ah!” Her grip tightened with a glare that dared him to lie again. “We can’t tell you yet!”
The back door of the house flung open with Roach and Julip sprinting out onto the sand. She glanced their way and knew the first thing Roach would do is try to de-escalate this. She grimaced and looked back to Dancer. “Tell me, or I swear I’ll geld–”
“Ginger, stop!”
Roach’s voice grated in her ears. She didn’t break her gaze with Dancer. “Take Julip back inside. I’m handling this.”
Neither of them listened and soon they were sliding down the dune’s loose slope, both of them breathing hard from a cocktail of adrenaline and exertion. She wanted to put her hooves over her head and scream into the wind as Dancer looked furtively over his shoulder as they passed behind him, both of whom quickly saw exactly how Ginger was trying to squeeze him for answers.
“Ginger,” Roach said, speaking her name like it was an exposed wire on a landmine. “Slow down and think.”
“I don’t need to think. He knows where Aurora is.” Her gaze shot to Chops. “They both do.”
Chops took a step back, his wings dropping into a frantic blur of signs. Dancer grit his teeth as he read them from the corner of his eye, then quickly shook his head no. “Don’t be fucking stupi-ah!”
Ginger relaxed her grip just slightly enough to secure Dancer’s silence, but Chops was still signing away at his partner with hard, slashing motions. She took a deep breath as Roach stopped beside her, close enough that he knew she’d have to work to ignore him. Her hoof bounced angrily against the sand, the silent argument between the two stallions continuing despite her. She met Roach’s cool gaze for only a fraction of a moment but it was plenty of time for her to know she’d already lost control of this… whatever this was.
She gestured weakly at Dancer and hated how she sounded as she repeated the obvious. “He knows.”
Before she could cobble together a stronger argument, Roach’s leg settled around her shoulder and lowered his head to her level. She could see the glow of her horn reflected in his eye. “He does, but he’s also here on Primrose’s order. Ignore him for now and think about what could happen if she finds out we mutilated one of her people.”
She swayed forward a little, her body compelling her to get away from him so she could pry what she needed out of Dancer. “I don’t care what she thinks.”
Roach’s grip around her shoulders tightened. “Hey. You do because Aurora does. The Enclave is the only thing keeping Coldbrook out of the Stable you two plan to live in when this is all over. Right? That’s the plan?”
She swallowed the little ball of hate in her throat. “That’s the plan.”
“Good,” he murmured. “Then let Dancer go and let’s think of a better way to go about finding her. Okay?”
She narrowed her eyes at Dancer who nodded frantic agreement with Roach’s suggestion. Pinching the corner of her lip between her teeth, she looked away and doused the spell. Dancer’s back end sagged with visceral relief. 
Roach gave her shoulder an approving squeeze. “Don’t think for a minute we’re giving up on her. We just need to apply pressure that these two will respond to.”
She glowered at Dancer who promptly slunk away with a bow-legged gait. “He was responding to my pressure just fine.”
Roach’s chuckle only sounded a little forced as he released her shoulder. “You might consider exploring a tactic that doesn’t rely on castration.”
“I’ll consider it when we stop taking turns being kidnapped,” she seethed, flicking a disgusted hoof at the two stallions. “The Enclave doesn’t exactly have a regulation requiring these idiots to talk when wastelanders ask nicely.”
Yet as she finished speaking, she realized another conversation was still taking place well after her horn went dark. While Dancer had hobbled away to nurse his bruised balls, Chops’ signing had grown slower and more deliberate. He was speaking with Julip who, to her credit, was doing her best to piece together what he was saying. Her responses lacked confidence, she seemed to be signing questions that he could interpret and answer. Ginger and Roach watched the two former allies until, finally, Julip nodded and turned to them.
“Okay, so two things,” she said. “Chops doesn’t want anything to do with us anymore. Or, more specifically, Ginger. You scare the shit out of him and he wants off this mission.”
Ginger frowned. Chops watched her without blinking as if she were some wild animal who might lunge at him at the drop of a pin. She grimaced a little, surprised by the slight twinge of guilt in her chest. “Duly noted,” she said. “What else?”
Julip glanced at Chops and signed something that he observed in his periphery, unwilling to let Ginger out of his sight. When she finished, he nodded. 
“He’ll tell us where Ironshod is holed up, but there’s a condition.”
“Fine, okay, what condition?”
To Ginger’s surprise, Chops directed a series of gestures to her. His expression was grave as he executed each motion.
Beside him, Julip translated. “He says he wants our guarantee that we can keep our stories straight when Primrose asks why we didn’t stay at Harbor House. If she believes Chops or Dancer were the ones to tell us, she’ll assume they let me override her orders a second time and accuse them of disloyalty.”
Which meant they would wind up strapped to a wooden post on the dangerous end of a firing range. The Enclave had never been one to shy away from a public execution, especially when dealing with accused traitors. The same abrupt end awaited Julip if ever Primrose managed to lure her back home. Ginger looked at Chops and felt the raw edges of her anger soften. Julip was proof positive that not all ponies bearing the Enclave’s uniform were beyond redemption, and as much as she hated to admit it, Chops at the very least didn’t strike her as… terrible.
More crucially, he was offering to point them toward Ironshod. And wherever Ironshod was hiding, Aurora was sure to be nearby. Enclave be damned, she’d make a deal with the Lord of Chaos himself if he were making the same offer.
“Deal.” She turned to Chops. “Tell us what we need to do.”


	




“Tell her to stop!”
Roach’s voice grew simultaneously distant and near as the streets of Fillydelphia shrank and rushed back in around them. “Ginger, hit pause on the teleports for a secauugh!”
She ignored them as she bore down on her magic, the three of them stuttering north along Fillydelphia’s maze of streets as she cycled through the process of casting, reorienting herself, focusing on the farthest patch of empty avenue she could make out in the distance and casting again. She was really getting the hang of this. A real spell, not the common levitation every unicorn with an intact horn could pull off. This was magic and this was exactly how they were going to beat Dancer’s report to the Enclave soldiers gathering around Ironshod’s literal hole in the ground.
Startled cries from ponies flickered in and out of her ears as she ferried the three of them north toward the ruins where Aurora was being kept. Block by block she kept track of how far each jump stretched, the map of the city Chops had fetched from inside Harbor House hanging open in her mind as they progressed. Julip and Roach were not enjoying her novel form of transport in the least bit if their yelling was any measure, but it was no picnic for her either. Each jump felt like layers of vertigo being stacked on top of one another in one big nausea sandwich, but she kept up the momentum. They were covering ground in minutes that would have taken hours. Hours Aurora didn’t have.
Streets filled with ponies hurrying to escape the sudden downpour tapered into lightly patrolled roads. Emptying roads became cluttered with fallen masonry. Broken wagons. The burned relics of steel carriages dating back centuries now sinking into churning puddles of rusty rainwater forming around them. Each short jump was like another frame in a long slideshow highlighting Fillydelphia’s decay as the building surrounding them grew shorter, the streets narrower, and the damage from the balefire that gutted the city’s northern half unignorable. 
He had her in a restaurant, Chops told them. A Red Delicious building tucked on the corner of an intersection in a suburban business district. It was the same restaurant chain Aurora had once found a deathclaw making its den, and something about that connection gave Ginger the confidence to keep going. If Aurora could escape a deathclaw unscathed, she could survive Ironshod.
“Oh goddess...” A croaking retch rattled up Julip’s throat as her stomach emptied itself. One jump through the ruins later and the contents were splashing against the wet pavement several blocks behind them.
“Let her catch–” Another lurch, another jump across the ruins, “–her breath!”
Not a chance. Ginger dragged her waterlogged mane out of her eyes and fixed her next jump. If it weren’t for the storm she could see more clearly what lay ahead and really give these jumps some legs, but something nagged at her that this spell wouldn’t take her somewhere she couldn’t see. Or if it did she might end up like the traveling magician Gallow had admired so much. 
“We’re nearly there! You’ll have to hold it in!”
Julip could handle it. She could feel the heat from Roach’s eyes burrowing into the back of her head but she ignored him. This was a few short minutes of temporary discomfort compared to the over twenty-four hours of terror Aurora must have felt since she was taken. 
Her body ran hot with anxiety at the thought of it. What had Ironshod wanted from her in the first place to come all the way out here? It couldn’t have been to kill her or she and Roach would have found her lying on the crater rim alongside Julip. Information, then. She could feel the sweat wicking up the roots of her mane. Aurora was as bad a liar as she was impulsive. A bad combination for someone staring down the barrel of an interrogation. 
No, she thought. Aurora was a clever mare. She wouldn’t give him a reason to hurt her. Probably she was suffering from boredom and little else, waiting for Ironshod to agree to some kind of bargain that would see her walk free and allow him to brush this off as a simple mix-up. Probably.
Maybe.
She spotted the second lone “wastelanders'' galloping through the rain in the same direction but Ginger didn’t stop to say hello. Throwing each spell forward felt natural, like stepping through a door bridging vast distances. See the destination, form the spell and step into that new place. A rush of wind, a burst of light, again and again. Dancer’s report would be bouncing its way back from New Canterlot by now. She recited their constructed lie in her head. The pot-bellied stallion from Harbor House had switched on a receiver in the house just long enough for the three of them to catch the updates being broadcast to echo squad over the Enclave’s encrypted frequency. They’d waited for the House residents to depart before overpowering Chops and Dancer, both of whom now wore matching shiners courtesy of Julip, and escaped before either stallion stood a chance at stopping them.
Wind and light. Wind and light. Her stomach churned with sympathy for Julip but there wouldn’t be any sense in stopping now. A team of four ponies hurried along the sidewalk in single file, wings visible and hefting plasma weapons of similar design to the ones Roach and Julip had snatched up before they left Harbor House. A few blocks up the street the unmistakable shape of an apple leaned drunkenly atop its marquee. The Red Delicious. She charged her horn and released the spell. 
The rust-caked sign, its dented post and the intersection that the restaurant stood on roared into existence around them. She held her breath in anticipation of the chaos she’d already built up in her mind’s eye: Enclave soldiers huddled behind hastily made barricades, their myriad of rarified weaponry prepared for engagement, shouts of surprise and disbelief at the sudden appearance of three ponies who Primrose had specifically sequestered away from the volatile showdown between enemies forged from the same emerald fires of war. 
And yet save for a few shallow strips of windblown debris piled against the curb, the four corners appeared to be empty. No Enclave, no Rangers. Just a boarded up restaurant penned in by the skeletal remains of long vacant offices. 
She hardly had a moment to catch her breath before a deep pain bloomed between her eyes like thunder, flaring as if her body were punishing her for the sudden magical exertion. Her eyes clenched hard and for several exhausting seconds she bore the worst of it, feeling her own heartbeat pounding in her head like a sharpened pickaxe until the torment began to subside into a more manageable ache. Maybe the unicorns before the war had a better word for that bolting pain but all Ginger could compare it to were the awful headaches she and her sister used to get when they ate too many ice chips at once. 
When she opened her eyes again, Julip had wandered off to her right where she had her forehead propped against the edge of a broken newsrack shimmering with rain and stringy bile. Roach stood guard beside her but even he looked miserable. He stood with legs splayed, balance ruined, his face a mask of discomfort as he squinted at the surrounding buildings with open suspicion. Fresh guilt washed over her as it dawned on her that the rapid teleports must have been an awful, nonstop carnival ride for their equilibriums. As the ride’s operator, Ginger had felt none of it.
There would be time for apologies later. Tightening the cinch on her saddlebags, she turned her attention toward the lonely restaurant and the rusted carriages forming the loose ring around it. Something didn’t feel right. With the amount of Enclave that Chops claimed to already be in place coupled with the pegasi they’d passed on the way, there should be someone here.
The sky above flickered like a tripped breaker followed quickly by a deep crack of thunder. She could actually feel the weight of the downpour grow heavier against her back as if the city itself were trying to drown her. Pushing toward Roach, she indicated the rainwashed buildings overlooking the restaurant. “Do you see anyone?”
He shook his head, his words cut with lingering discomfort. “Give me a second.”
She grimaced and stepped toward Julip who spat a gob of muck into the running gutter. “Hey. I’m going to assume your old friends have scouts watching the restaurant. What happens when they see us?”
Julip scowled up at her. “They throw us a party. I don’t fucking know, right now they’re probably hoping someone else gets their rank stripped for using illicit chems during assignme–” Her back arched with a heave that brought up nothing. Her wings hung loose at her sides as she spat to clear her mouth, every word colored with exhaustion. “I don’t know. They probably won’t shoot if that’s what you’re asking, but if you go in there and fuck up Little Miss Majesty’s plan to disable the city’s air defenses I can guarantee her friendly act will dry up faster than a cyst in a salt mine.”
She chose not to picture that as she glanced back the way they came, toward the towers of the city center now shrouded in rain. She didn’t know exactly which skyscraper each of Fillydelphia’s turrets stood perched on, but she knew they were there. Powerful weapons known best for their role in decimating that first wave of Wonderbolts sent to initiate the shooting war with Vhanna, now one of the crown jewels of the Steel Rangers’ formidable defense systems. She tried to imagine caring about those guns tumbling to the streets below and decided she didn’t. Her priority was Aurora.
But if avoiding conflict with Primrose meant the Enclave would continue to slow Coldbrook’s advance into Aurora’s home, she wasn’t about to upset the applecart. If the Enclave wanted to use them, no harm in using the Enclave right back.
“We’ll go in quiet and keep this contained.” She squinted up at the relentless deluge. “The storm should help with that.”
“Yeah, count me out.” Julip didn’t so much shake her head for emphasis as she did rock it miserably against the ridge of the newsrack. “I can’t walk straight right now let alone shoot, so here.”
Julip shrugged her right wing, bringing the strap of the plasma rifle she’d taken from Harbor House over her ears and off her shoulder. Ginger frowned at the ungainly weapon, lit her horn and pushed it back toward the young mare. “You’ll be less of a target if you keep it. Roach, keep her safe.”
Taking a breath, she turned toward the darkened restaurant and stepped into Roach’s outstretched foreleg. He swayed uneasily beside her, his expression grim.
“No. You don’t go in there alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “I have my magic.”
The changeling was unmoved. If anything her reassurance only worried him more. “You know exactly two spells, and who knows how long that’ll last. If you keep betting all your chips on magic, eventually you’re going to lose.”
He didn’t know about her dreams. He didn’t know what Tandy had gifted her.
“Ginger,” he pressed, “think about how much you just used to get us here. What happens if you go in there spells blazing and your tank runs empty? What would it do to Aurora if you get yourself killed?”
That wasn’t fair and she could see he knew it too. The rain flowed like tiny rivers through the cracks formed by his desperate expression, his eyes pleading for her to wait.
She was long past waiting.
“Get Julip out of the rain and keep her safe. End of discussion.”
Before he could argue she turned her attention to the restaurant, lit her horn and was gone.







Amber light, a rush of wind and a twinge of pain behind her eyes. Her hooves dropped onto the raised sidewalk wrapping the dilapidated Red Delicious, the shattered and boarded front door standing motionless in front of her. Above her head, rain hammered against the building’s rusted awning and splashed behind her in broken curtains of dirty water. It was anyone’s guess how long it had been since Fillydelphia last saw a storm like this. Ginger wondered if it was possible for a city to drown. 
Her ear twitched at the mechanical sputter of a generator somewhere above her. She frowned through the cracks between the boards. No lights on. The sliver of the dining room she could see looked empty except for the silver sheen of puddles forming beneath drips in the ceiling. Already she could hear the voice in the back of her head worry that she was too late and Aurora’s captors had moved on. Her heart went to her throat at the thought of it but she pushed it down as hard as she could. She focused on the rattle of the struggling generator to reassure herself. They were here. 
A quick glance over her shoulder into the pouring rain. She could make out Roach, still standing across the street where she’d left him with Julip now using him as a crutch. She could imagine any Enclave scouts were still struggling to report her sudden appearance, but they wouldn’t stay quiet forever. If any of them felt there was a chance to salvage their carefully constructed mission without making a mess of things, they’d take it. She steadied her nerves, turned back to the restaurant door, and carefully hooked her dimmest magic around the handle.
Gaskets crackled and hinges whined as the door opened, and she slipped inside.
Sounds from the storm outside became distant as she pulled the door shut. The generator’s rattle morphed into a muted, droning buzz that resonated through what remained of the skeletal drop-down ceiling. Forming her magic into a dense semicircular shield ahead of her, broken glass crackled under her hooves as she stepped out of the vestibule and into the dining area.
No Rangers. No Aurora. Just a scrambled jigsaw puzzle of overturned chairs, tables and a few errant bits of equipment that signaled the brief occupation of a heavily armed force. Parts of a heavy rifle lay disassembled on the table of one of the booths, the rest haphazardly scattered across the floor. A canvas rucksack lay nearby, looking trampled. Through the damp she could taste cigarette smoke still in the air. She waited for several seconds, listening, feeling the steady patter of water glancing off her saddlebag. She rolled her hip, aware of the precious cargo inside. A single, onyx talisman crafted by lost technology. Something Aurora had risked everything she had just to search for and which now rested safely within a bandaid box in Ginger’s bag. She didn’t even know they’d found it. That once they found her, they would be able to go home.
She relaxed her magic and the shield evaporated, darkening the empty building even further. Something had happened here. Tables and chairs had fallen like dominos pointing toward the front of the restaurant. Scuffing on the dirty tiles traced converging lines through a narrow gap in the counter behind which stood the black shadows of the kitchen area. Yet no one had jumped out to confront her. That many Rangers would generate some kind of noise. Shifting hooves, the rasp of flicked tails, the dull hiss of breathing. Nothing. Just the deep rumble of thunder outside and the rain percolating through holes in the ceiling.
A light spell would have been nice to learn, she thought. She felt foolish as she approached the front counter, hoping to spot a decorative crystal she could illuminate with a bit of magic. Nothing of the sort availed itself. Ponies before the war had the luxury of reliable electricity. Her eyes settled instead on a faded stack of plastic cups poking out of a dispenser beside a gaudy, apple-themed beverage dispenser below the menu board. She plucked one out with her magic, its natural glow providing a small amount of light on its own, and floated the cup into the kitchen along its long wall of stovetops and fryers. No one appeared in the dark. No power armor lurked in the shadows. It looped around stations filled with rotten condiments and back toward her, passing a behemoth ice machine before she set the cup down onto the counter. 
It occurred to her it was possible the Rangers had either gone or they were somewhere outside, chasing down the source of their sudden evacuation. Perhaps they’d left Aurora behind in the meantime? Emboldened by her imagination, she doused her horn completely and stepped into the kitchen. The click of her hooves bounced off the kitchen’s easy-clean plastic paneled walls, her eyes refusing to dispel the ghost of amber light lingering in her vision. But as she passed a rusting grill top nearly the size of a dinner table and stepped into the restaurant’s dishwashing space, she realized she wasn’t seeing a remnant of her magic’s light at all. Dim electric light spilled up from a hole in the floor tucked away in the corner, barely illuminating a set of stairs below its wide frame. The restaurant had a basement.
The tracks left on the filthy floor led directly to the hatch. She approached it, slowly, her heart crashing in her chest. As she drew closer she caught a whiff of something pungent and sour, like copper that had pickled in some pony’s toilet. She held her breath as she took the last few steps toward the hatch and, hesitantly, looked down the dimly lit stairs.
She was startled to see someone grinning up at her, the stubby barrel of an automatic weapon floating on his silver magic. Ginger hardly had time to throw herself away from the hatch before an explosion of bullets sprayed inches from her nose and buried themselves into the rotted ceiling. Her hasty retreat planted one of her hooves onto a fallen broomhandle and she stumbled backward against the basin of a wash sink. 
“I was wondering where you’d gone!” 
Ironshod’s voice. The same paranoid stallion from the wall when they first arrived at Blinder’s Bluff. She heard the dull clatter of a weapon striking the basement floor, followed by the metallic clack of another being made ready to fire.
“I’d of thought Feathers would’ve cut you loose miles ago,” he shouted up to her. “Makes a person wonder whether you really did cut ties with folks back home or if you’re just another set of eyes for the Enclave.”
She ignored him as she rose to her hooves. He’d heard her coming and she’d given him ample time to be ready. Wary that he may rush the stairs, she scanned the kitchen for anything she might use as a weapon and grimaced at the empty racks lining the walls. Of course scrappers would have picked this place apart. She needed time to think of a strategy. Ironshod seemed like the type who liked to hear his own voice.
“I’m only here for Aurora,” she called, looking into each of the sink basins for anything she could use. A few rusted pans. A soup pot. A metal spatula. A cluster of dead radroaches. “Is she here?”
A low chuckle. “It won’t matter to you if I say she is or isn’t. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think she was.”
The heavy pot let out a wet crackle as she pried it loose from the rust that bonded it to the sink. It wouldn’t stop a bullet and she hoped she wouldn’t need it to. She sure as the sun didn’t have time to reassemble that rifle back in the dining room. Beggars can’t be choosers. “If you have her, then do the right thing and let her leave. We don’t have to fight.”
“That’s where we differ.” She could hear him moving down there. “Unlike you, I’m not afraid to get my hooves dirty. Your comrade down here found that out when she lied to me. She didn’t think I’d be willing to do what’s necessary to protect my people. To protect families from the Enclave incubator you all tried and failed miserably at keeping us from finding.”
She gave the pot a test swing to feel its weight, hating how awkward and unbalanced it felt in her magic. “Is she alive?”
The smile in his voice sent a chill down her spine. “Definitionally, yes.”
“She’d better be, for your sake.”
A rumbling laugh. “A good Ranger fears failure before death.”
“Cute.”
Approaching the open stairwell, she plied her magic until a dense shield took form over the hatch. She needed a clear view to the bottom if she stood a chance. Almost immediately a short burst of fire pummeled the shield’s underside, sending bright ripples through its structure while driving fresh agony through Ginger’s head. She bared down as Ironshod fired a second volley, then a third. The sensation of the last two bullets piercing through her shield felt like she’d been struck across the brain with a lead pipe, briefly causing the spell to falter before she could redouble her focus.
“That’s some impressive magic. We heard rumors about something similar from the slaves coming to the Bluff out of F&F Mercantile’s base of operations. Guess it wasn’t complete bullshit after all.”
The sharpest corners of the pain were quickly subsiding into something comparable to a terrible headache. Manageable, but still distracting. She crept toward the edge of her shield.
“So what’s the game, Ginger? Am I your prisoner or is this just another threat?”
She didn’t answer. As quick as she could without throwing herself off balance, she poked her head over the stairwell and jerked herself away. It was enough to put together a rough picture. Ironshod was using a wall at the bottom of the steps as cover, the side of his head and full body of an imposing looking rifle exposed. The floor was pitch dark and smeared with something yellow. It took her a second peek to realize she had it reversed. The yellow streaks were the floor, and it was drenched with blood. Too much blood to have come from one pony. 
Her thoughts briefly flashed back to the shed behind Gallow’s home and the sheer depth of blood caked across the wooden floorboards. Her leg took on a nervous bounce as she realized the only voices she could hear were Ironshod’s and her own. The absence of Aurora calling up to her was akin to a physical hole bored into the world around them. Her thoughts began to spiral. Her breath grew fast and deep.
She tightened her grip around the pot handle and summoned her magic. Ironshod’s taunting laughter didn’t register as she formed the spell.
“Gone are the days of magic duels. If you have a grudge to settle why not be a real mare and come talk to me face to–”
A flash of light and rush of wind. The dark kitchen dissolved. Her hooves dropped into the semicoagulated blood pooled with a sickening splat. She faced the ascending steps. Ironshod’s gun hovered a few inches in front of her, the stallion himself standing against the wall to her left with barely two feet of empty air between them. He had just enough time to form an expression of genuine shock as the soup pot in her grip swung forward and collided with his open mouth.
The pot rang like a struck bell. The force of the blow sent Ironshod skidding across the blood pooled floor.
Breathing hard, Ginger took a moment to absorb her surroundings. The small space was lit by a single, struggling bulb in the center of the room. A few empty shelves stood along the far wall against which Ironshod lay crumpled and disoriented. Piled in the furthest corner were the myriad sources of the blood slowly covering the floor like liquid rust. Her stomach threatened to crawl out of her throat at the sight of the conspicuously absent Rangers. More than one had been shot neatly through the forehead.
She turned back to Ironshod with accusation on her lips only to realize he’d half-rolled over, one eye buried against the bloodied floor while the other pale green marble fixed wide on her. His horn was lit. Instinct kicked in and she wrapped her magic around his hind leg. She yanked him toward her and the rifle he’d been levitating behind her fell harmlessly through his suddenly unfocused magic. Ironshod sneered through broken teeth as she dragged him to her. He’d only be safe if he was unconscious. She fumbled her magic for the soup pot and brought it to bear only to catch a glancing blow from his hind hoof across the chin. The pot fell and she staggered sideways barely managing to stay upright as the room spun around her.
She’s barely steadied herself before he was on her. The full weight of his considerable frame barreled into her like a freight train, knocking her off hooves and sending the two of them tumbling past a steel door caked in frost. She hardly had time to process what it was before two steel shoes slammed hard against her sternum pinning her back against the floor. Her saddlebags flopped out like vestigial wings, the well-tailored leather from Scootaloo’s Stable sinking into the blood. Ironshod stood above her like a wolf pinning its prey. 
He moved quicker than she thought he was capable. He clubbed her across the jaw with a free hoof, filling her vision with bloody red spots. She tried grasping at her magic but he had an eye on her horn and struck her harder, and harder again until she released the tenuous fibers of the shield spell she’d been feeling for. Her mouth began filling with blood which she spat up, too disoriented to direct it anywhere but straight up where it rained down on her in a pathetic mist. 
Satisfied with his work, Ironshod directed his attention to the bodies piled in the corner and pawed his magic at one of their holsters. He grinned a bloodied smile of his own as he wrenched the weapon from the dead. Ginger followed his gaze and felt a bolt of fear at the sight of a heavily engraved sawed-off shotgun crossing the gap between them. Adrenaline shoved aside enough of her shock to allow her brain room to think.
Magic swirled up her horn and Ironshod twisted back to strike her. His hoof speared down at her face with sufficient speed for its iron rim to spark off the square surface of the shield that bloomed ahead of it. He grunted an unintelligible curse and dropped his hind hoof across her knee. The bone held but her lungs pushed a scream past her throat as the pain shot through her body. She clawed at her magic in the thin hope of teleporting away but she couldn’t focus. The raw agony refused to allow her the slightest picture of a place that wasn’t this tomb he’d goaded her into. Her horn flickered and flashed as she opened her eyes, tears streaming as he kept her pinned, the shotgun he wielded pressing hard against her forehead.
“I should blow your fucking brains out.” His lips peeled away from shattered teeth as the shotgun’s yawning barrel drifted down the bridge of her muzzle, brushed along her neck before settling into the space between them. He pressed the barrel against her intestines and smiled coldly at her terrified expression. “But you ruined my mood.”
She shook her head and whispered, “Don’t.”
“I think I will.”
Her heart dropped as his expression hardened. There wasn’t time for a clever spell and words wouldn’t dissuade him now. She did the only thing she could think of and rolled hard toward the wall. Ironshod’s hooves slipped out from under him and the shotgun discharged with a roaring BOOM that punched into the floor with the sound of rent metal. Pain bloomed across Ginger’s hip and for one terrible moment she knew she’d been shot.
But she hadn’t. Neither of them had. Ironshod’s fall had turned the muzzle just enough for her to dodge death and directed the dense cloud of lead shot through the space occupied by her saddlebag. Bits of metal and leather and shattered concrete crunched under her as Ironshod grasped at her with hoof and magic, wasting no time trying to get back atop her. She let him. Her focus was entirely on the gun tumbling in the space between them, its smoking barrel lurching this way and that like a top ready to fall. Setting her jaw, she focused what magic she could gather and pushed the barrel against Ironshod’s belly.
She squeezed the trigger but it didn’t budge. Silver magic had wrapped around the shotgun’s safety switch like a vice and when she met Ironshod’s gaze it was wild and triumphant. His hoof came down across her muzzle like a hammer. Her vision blurred. Laying on the other side of the room was the dented soup pot. She reached out for it. A weak amber haze wrapped the handle, enough to pull it closer. Ironshod’s ear twitched at the sound of the dragging metal and he turned toward it.
She seized the moment, wrapped as much magic as she could muster around the shotgun between them and tore it free from his control. His head spun forward in time for his forehead to make firm contact with the butt of the gun, staggering him. She drove the heavy stock into his temple and he stumbled off of her. She didn’t stop. Again and again she rammed the weapon into his skull until the stallion tumbled, falling against the heap of corpses he’d stacked in the far corner.
Blow after blow, Ironshod’s strength diminished. His endurance drained. He held up his forelegs to protect his face only to have those assaulted with the same desperation. It took what felt like minutes but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds for her to realize he wasn’t fighting back. His limbs had fallen limp, his jaw grit into a softening sneer as he either slipped into unconsciousness or died. She didn’t know which. 
She didn’t care which.
Breathing hard, she stopped. A part of her wanted to keep going. To beat him until there was nothing left but a stain on the floor. It took great effort to push that temptation down, but somehow she managed. With a shuddering breath she gathered herself. She kept the mangled shotgun trained on him in case he decided to start moving again, her lips curled into a grimace as she tugged a jacket away from the lifeless body of a mare at the top of the pile. She paused to read the bloodied patch stitched on the chest. Rivers. 
She tore off the sleeves and bound Ironshod’s  hooves with good, sturdy knots before using the rest of the jacket as a makeshift hood. The paladin mumbled something in slurred gibberish. Alive, then. Hopefully by the time Coronado’s people took him into custody he’d be cognizant enough to understand whatever punishment the Elder deemed fitting. 
She turned to assess the room. 
Her eyes stopped at the freezer door. During their struggle, blood from the floor had splashed against the smooth metal surface and was already beginning to form a soft crust of frost. Her heart pounded with realization. She rushed to the door and fumbled with the handle. It snapped back with an icy crunch and she pulled, hooves wrapped around the latch until the brittle gaskets crackled apart and the door lurched open. 
The cold air thickened into a dense, pooling mist as it poured from its frigid confines. She stepped inside, gaze fixed on the terribly misshapen figure seated inside. A rock formed in her throat when she recognized the mare’s dapple gray coat, soaked in her own blood. Frost rimmed her closed eyes. Her chest was still.
“No,” she whispered. Her second breath propelled her forward. “No no no, Aurora!”







Warmth.
She curled into it, her body seeking the source for nothing else but the comfort it gave her. Survival was secondary. It would happen or it wouldn’t. All Aurora could think about was not wanting to die in pain.
There was plenty of pain. Consciousness came and went with it. Ginger was crying. She wanted to tell her not to cry but her throat wouldn’t work. Then came the jostling. The nauseating sensation of gravity swinging around her like a foal’s toy on a string. She focused on the warmth and nothing else. It felt nice.
Someone was pouring water on her. It started as a trickle then slowly she could feel it against her back. Her body must not be working right because it felt like tiny jolts of electricity on her skin. Her nerves jangled with fresh agony at the overwhelming sensation and she became vaguely aware that she was screaming. The movement stopped and she heard Ginger’s voice in her ear, piqued with frantic reassurance. 
“It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s just the rain. I love you. You’re okay.”
She didn’t understand what rain was and it didn’t stop hurting. Her skin felt like it was on fire. Each hair of her coat was a sharp needle. It hurt to be moved. It hurt to be. Her body swarmed with signals telling her so many things were wrong that she couldn’t pick them apart. 
“Roach! Julip! We need help!”
She tried to open her eyes and managed only one. Wet concrete. Like in Stable 1. She lifted her head off Ginger’s neck and tried to understand where she was. The ground shuddered like a mirror with fat, heavy droplets. Dirt, dust and rust gyred in puddles big enough to swim in. A black creature and green pony dropped from a broken window across the street, their faces stricken.
Her cheek thumped against Ginger and she used her working eye to stare skyward. Several figures watched from the rooftops. 
More jostling. They laid her out on the wet pavement. Questions of what happened, is she alive, and where’s Ironshod bounced between them. Too much to follow. Questions she didn’t have answers for. The ground felt warm, too. Comfortable. She closed her eye and focused on it. 
Hooves dropped in around them. Unfamiliar voices spoke with intensity. 
Somewhere close, five mighty explosions shattered the sky.
> Chapter 37: Remembrance Day
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 25th, 1087
Thursday

“Knock-knock.”
Delta silenced a groan as she closed out the program on her terminal. Nearly ten years stuck in this luxury tomb they called a Stable and they were all still bumping into phrases and habits that didn’t work anymore. Of all the things she missed about her old life, she hadn’t expected wooden doors to make the list. Every door in this place opened with the press of a button or flip of a switch. Mammoth hydraulics embedded between the walls hauled hermetically sealed steel doors up and down with the same mechanical hiss, and yet some habits never truly died. Spitfire stood in the open door of her tiny office, hoof tapping the steel frame as if to apologize for the unannounced visit.
Like everyone else, she thought she had a good idea of what it felt like to be a tinned sardine. She slid a feather over her keyboard and toggled open an old diagnostic report while Spitfire invited herself in.
“Can I help you with something, overmare?”
Spitfire shrugged, eyes drifting over the cramped little space her Head of I.T. kept herself cooped up in. Delta waited.
“Nothing really, no. I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.” 
The graying mare, former commander of the Wonderbolts, walked over to the orderly row of filing cabinets on the far side of the office and browsed the framed photos perched on top. She picked up a picture of a tiny Apogee grinning at the front door of Jet’s apartment in her first homemade Nightmare Night costume. Cardboard boxes, tinfoil, heat tape and marker had turned her into one of Jet’s satellites, complete with a pair of baking sheets tied to her wings as solar panels. 
Spitfire smiled. “I haven’t seen this one before. Is it new?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. I found it in storage.”
Her shoulders relaxed when Spitfire set it down and turned toward her desk, her gaze still wandering over the room’s spartan décor. “So how are you holding up?”
She settled into her seat. “Doing fine.”
“Good. That’s good.” Spitfire’s feathers ruffled against her jumpsuit as she shrugged each wing as if to remind Delta she wasn’t wearing hers. She resisted the urge to remind Spitfire that she wasn’t a Wonderbolt and that she didn’t do uniforms. Thank goodness it wasn’t mandatory. Spitfire appeared to notice the stubborn expression settling on Delta’s face and stilled her wings. “Can I expect to see you in the atrium for Remembrance Day tomorrow?”
She averted her eyes to her terminal and pretended to skim the spreadsheet on the screen. “Pretty sure I’ll have my wings full down here. Sorry.”
“But it’s a holiday.”
Her jaw tightened. “I know.”
Spitfire looked at her just like her college friends did when she used to flake out on their plans in favor of study sessions with Jet. Except she and Spitfire weren’t friends. They would never be that. And still, Spitfire stood there in front of her desk waiting for her to bow under the pressure of social obligation. She might have cracked if she hadn’t spent the majority of her life living in her junkyard, alone, or as alone as she could manage when Jet wasn’t dumping Apogee in her lap.
She closed her eyes and sighed. Even now, with streaks of gray in her mane, she kept falling back onto that dusty old grudge. 
“Look, I get that it’s going to be a big day and you want all the department heads to be there, but I’m not going to risk my ten year bit on a block party upstairs.”
Spitfire actually puffed up a little at the insinuation her Stable wasn’t completely dry. Delta lifted an eyebrow as she rattled off the usual promise. “No one will be serving alcohol during the festivities. The foals will be there.”
Not officially, no. That never stopped the pegasi downstairs from coming up with home brewed beverages of their own. There was an unwritten rule that Security would turn a blind eye to the bathtub moonshine as long as the adults kept things to a dull roar and nobody got sick or hurt. They also quietly escorted anyone back to their compartments if they had a little too much. In exchange for the accommodation, those wingful of pegasi running stills agreed to pay an additional fee for any materials or produce purchased to keep the moonshine flowing. As long as everyone behaved, everyone was happy. So far, unbelievably, the arrangement worked.
Spitfire chose not to elaborate on what mysterious methods she would deploy to keep Remembrance Day dry, because there weren’t any. Booze would be in attendance as sure as the pegasi who came to drink it. She wasn’t about to heave herself off the wagon just to make Spitfire feel better about the turnout.
Tactfully, she gave up trying to pressure her and changed the subject. “Anything new come in from outside?”
She cleared her throat and frowned at her terminal to make sure the old diagnostics were still up. 
“Nothing worth writing home about.” She winced, but Spitfire didn’t chastise her for the slip. Stable 10 was their home now. “I mean, nothing significant. The distress message from last month went quiet today. We caught some chatter on the low band frequencies, too.”
Spitfire crossed the room, her attention captured by a framed blueprint of Delta’s first fully functional thrust vectoring control system. She watched the overmare as she squinted at the fine lines detailing the complex internal plumbing, wondering if she understood what it was she was seeing. 
“What kind of chatter?”
“Nothing encouraging. A couple ponies on different sides of the continent got some ham radios working and found each other over the airwaves. They’ve been swapping stories with each other for the last few nights. One of them has some kind of new necrotic disease that’s been going around and the other’s a conspiracy wonk who thinks the Equestrian Army is behind the monsters he keeps seeing. Millie has it all recorded if you ever get bored.”
Spitfire declined with a polite headshake, her eyes still on the blueprint. “It’s gotten a lot quieter out there, hasn’t it?”
It had. In the months following the detonations all of the common frequencies were jammed with competing transmissions. Everyone with a radio and a set of batteries clamored for their voice to be heard, for someone to help. At the beginning, the cacophony had mainly been filled with the voices of public officials, law enforcement, first responders and members of Equestria’s shattered military. Ponies trying to throw authority, clout and medical expertise out for anyone willing to listen in the hopes that their collective orders, demands for cooperation and advice would prevent the remnants of Equestria from collapsing onto itself. 
Then came the individual voices. The survivors who stumbled across a working radio and begged whoever could hear them to send water and food, then shelter, then guns. Civilians shouted over one another in one attempt after the other to organize, to defend themselves against the violent groups beginning to clot together in Equestria’s ruined cities. Ponies reported sightings of creatures lurking near the bomb craters that they couldn’t explain, claimed their magic was failing, and regularly panicked that Vhannan soldiers had been seen landing on the coasts. Keeping track of what was real and what wasn’t proved impossible. Listening for too long sent several members of I.T. into spirals of anxiety, proving that there was some merit to Stable-Tec’s decision not to equip the Stables with transmitters of their own. With Equestria coming apart at the seams, the safest option was for each Stable to remain silent and disappear. 
Yet as the years marched on, the voices thinned. The survivors succumbed to sickness, starvation and, more recently, predation. The frequencies grew calmer. Those who did broadcast only did so briefly, their voices ghostly whispers. Nowadays, Delta had Millie set to listen for and compile any errant broadcasts for her to review later. It had taken some time, but Equestria was finally succumbing to the bombs.
Delta glanced up at Spitfire and offered a half-shrug in answer. “Yeah, it has. But at least we saved everyone we could. Right?”
Spitfire looked down at the floor and nodded thoughtfully, her chest swelling with a long breath that she exhaled like a burden. Delta watched her half-turn away, her body drifting toward the door even before she spoke. “Well, if you’re doing alright, I’ll get out of your mane. Think about making time for Remembrance Day, though. Ten years is a big milestone.”
She watched her toggle the door open. “Sure is. Thanks for visiting, overmare.”
“Anytime, Delta.”
The door slid down between them with a gentle thump. As soon as she could hear the door to the corridor slide open and shut, she sank her head into her hooves and blew out the breath she’d been holding. That was close. Way too close. She’d been anticipating Spitfire’s invitation to Remembrance Day for the better part of a week and on top of everything else she was dealing with it had worn her down. She could barely look at her. For seven long months Delta had been sitting on what she’d found, too afraid to share it with anyone and not nearly suicidal enough to levy accusations at the overmare directly. Not until she knew the reason why.
She lifted her head and stared at the terminal’s tiny pixels. The security footage played fresh in her mind as if it were spooling out on the screen for her. Spitfire had just… stood there at the Stable’s entrance, Wonderbolts behind her, watching dozens of noteworthy pegasi flocking into the tunnel like frightened birds. The feed from the outside wasn’t meant for her eyes, but Spitfire’s amateur attempt to put a lock on the footage made it stand out like a sore hoof. Delta knew how to cover her tracks better than most. 
The footage from that day had been hard to watch. Friends, neighbors, they’d poured into the tunnel with little to their names beyond singed feathers and a lifetime of trauma. It had been surreal seeing herself, ten years younger, delirious and bleeding as Windy’s late husband all but dropped her onto the steps in front of Spitfire before turning around and kicking off against the tide of terrified evacuees. Even today she found herself flinching when the bombs made the camera shudder, her memory cruelly supplying the devastating thunderclaps of each explosion as they chased them all into the Stable.
But then others had shown up. Unicorns and earth ponies. They gathered around the outside platform in a growing tide, their faces pulled taut with terror and outrage as Spitfire and the Wonderbolts around her shouted at them to stay back while the last pegasi retreated to safety. Delta watched the door roll shut on one side of the screen while survivors continued to crush toward the stairs on the other. shouting with terror and outrage as Spitfire and her entourage retreated to safety and rolled the door shut behind them. By the time she stopped the playback, there had been pegasi pounding at the door. She played it back a second time, then a third. She’d read the Operational Protocol Briefs the same as all the other department heads, and Stable-Tec hadn’t minced words when they said theirs had been selected to function as a time capsule for Equestria’s strongest pegasi bloodlines. The original resident list said nothing about inviting non-pegasi to register. 
She scratched her eyebrow with the edge of a feather. It didn’t make sense. Hundreds of unicorns and earth ponies had arrived, most of them carrying the same recommended amount of luggage as Delta herself had been told to keep prepared. The next nearest Stable was a good hour’s drive away out in the bluffs. They hadn’t gotten lost. They couldn’t have all just followed someone else’s carriage to the wrong Stable. Every last one of them had come here expecting to be allowed inside and the betrayal on their faces when the door rolled shut had been difficult to witness. Never in her life had Delta seen such simultaneous, concentrated horror before. She saw their faces whenever she closed her eyes. Families coming to the realization at the same time that all their preparation had been in vain. That death had cornered them. 
Delta leaned back in her chair, the weight of questions she didn’t have answers for pressing her into the padding. The Stable’s population had finally begun to tick upwards. If things went well this year, they were looking at crossing the 300 mark. Three hundred pegasi in a Stable designed for one thousand. What harm could have come from letting those families join them? She couldn’t make the question go away. It kept her up at night, her thoughts spiraling around it like debris in a storm. Spitfire tried to bury it. Now Delta wished she’d never dug it up. This wasn’t a question she could just toss out over a cup of instant coffee. The fact that she’d opened the footage without seeking her overmare’s permission at all was enough to earn her a thirty day stay in a cell upstairs. 
She glanced at the glossy calendar pinned to the wall beside her desk. Remembrance Day was tomorrow. Illicit sources of homebrew aside, Delta knew it was going to be a hard day for everyone. A few of the other department heads had prepared speeches of their own before the overmare took the podium to read the names of those they had lost. 
A sigh pushed past her lips. She could spend a few more sleepless nights staring at her pillowcase. Let the Stable grieve first. Once things got back to normal she would think of a way to ask Spitfire about the footage. There was plenty of busywork she could do to distract herself until then.
She pulled a clump of fading blue mane behind her ear so her deeply bagged eyes could focus on the terminal screen. Feathers tacked across the keys, closing her diagnostic camouflage and bringing up the project she’d been working on when Spitfire came knock-knocking.
A few keystrokes and the innocuous little program she’d coded chattered to life. It wasn’t sophisticated software, especially by Stable-Tec standards, but it did what she intended it to do. Best of all, it was secure. The pegasi working under her, Spitfire, and even Millie’s watchful eyes were blind to the little mapping program’s slow but steady progress. It had been difficult work in the beginning. She’d spent several nights underneath the server room floor, careful to reschedule her team to ensure uninterrupted access while she cut dense bundles of fiber optics away from the high voltage braid feeding into the Stable from the outside. Hours of shuffling through the dust on her back, her wings kicking up clouds as she taped label after label onto the conspicuously unmarked wires. Each one had to be tracked up to its individual server, each port identified, each of a hundred or more outgoing lines ruled out before she finally confirmed the suspicions she had when she first uncovered Stable-Tec’s hardened connection from the outside world. Old habits die hard, and ever since Delta was a filly she’d traded boredom for curiosity.
Once she had a functional understanding of which ports handled incoming and outgoing data, it didn’t take long for her to decide what to do next.
She threw a few test pings aimed at their neighbors at Stable 6, but it was akin to flinging a bit down a wishing well. No one answered. Checking the event log confirmed the request had been intercepted by Millie and smothered. Stable-Tec didn’t want anyone turning their network into an inter-Stable chatroom. Fair enough. She wasn’t trying to check in with the neighbors, though. Like so many others, she was deeply curious about the world she’d left behind. There were survivors out there, fewer and fewer each week. It bore considering that if pockets of Equestria’s radio infrastructure had survived the bombs, maybe there were terminals out there that made it too. Maybe even a network! Or, at least, a terminal connected to a working router.
How hard would it be to find out?
So she decided to break a couple policies and code her first worm.
It wasn’t sophisticated, and the script was prone to jamming up if she so much as looked at it funny, but it did what she wanted it to and that was good enough. The software boiled down to a few basic functions once it was running: scan its current network for Robronco’s ubiquitous interoffice mailing software, compile a list of messages sent outside its current network, ping those networks for activity, and relay the results back to Delta’s personal terminal. Whenever possible, the worm would attempt to send copies of itself to any network that answered its ping but it was a coin flip whether or not it could run itself once it arrived. 
The question became where to send it for its first test run. A few names came to mind, Spitfire chief among them. She debated sending it to one of her colleagues in I.T. to see if they were quick enough on their hooves to contain it but then she remembered she still had to work with them after. It didn’t take long for her to make the obvious choice. She sent it to herself.
Seconds later, Millie all but had a stroke trying to contain the worm Delta dubbed “Pioneer.” It flew across the server, diving through the mail system at lightning speed while Delta’s terminal vomited up pages upon pages of data confirming a successful connection to hundreds of resident accounts. As it dredged through the Stable’s old traffic it began finding references to outside networks and dutifully reached out to make contact. 
Delta felt a pang of regret when she realized her software had discovered their collective attempts to reach friends and family in the days and weeks after the door sealed shut. She’d set her feathers on the keys and began clicking out the command to temporarily stop all network traffic so that Millie could catch up to Pioneer, but no sooner had she begun to type than her little worm pinged one of those outside networks and received a response. A fraction of a second later it had compressed itself into an innocuous file and jumped the gap.
She blinked as a small block of text appeared on her screen.

Pinged 991.08.7.47 [FortHopeGuestnet].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 3 successful, 1 failed. [25% loss].
- - - - - - [FortHopeGuestnet] logged as active node.
- - - - - - [FortHopeGuestnet] added.
- - - - - - pioneer.zip delivered to [FortHopeGuestnet].

So much for a test run. It didn’t take long for data to begin arriving as Pioneer found additional working nodes and began to spread. It worked. And more importantly to her, it showed her just how many fragmented networks managed to survive the balefire. The vast webwork of communication that promised to modernize Equestria was still there. Shredded, scrambled, and often amputated… but it was there, hanging together by the gristle. 
Since then, she would spend an hour each day watching the screen populate with the worm’s findings. It was the most worthwhile waste of time she could indulge in.
Now, just a day before Remembrance Day, Delta watched the data roll in to distract herself from the mountain of dead decaying just outside her shiny new home.

Pinged 13.92.183.169 [britehorn].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 0 successful, 4 failed. [100% loss].
- - - - - - All [britehorn] connections have timed out.
Pinged 104.21.22.18 [derpidatadotcom].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 0 successful, 4 failed. [100% loss].
- - - - - - All [derpidatadotcom] connections have timed out.
Pinged 199.232.296.193 [GreenArrowLogistics].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 1 successful, 3 failed. [75% loss].
- - - - - - [GreenArrowLogistics] logged as active node.
- - - - - - [GreenArrowLogistics] added.
- - - - - - pioneer.zip delivered to [GreenArrowLogistics].
Pinged 104.23.134.9 [coolco].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 0 successful, 4 failed. [100% loss].
- - - - - - All [coolco] connections have timed out.

She smirked with recognition at CoolCo and leaned back in her chair, her back starting to feel sore already. Now that the novelty was wearing off, she began to wonder whether this was just another waste of time. What good did it do the Stable to map Equestria’s surviving networks if the world they inhabited was beyond saving? It would make for an interesting cluster diagram, sure. A snapshot proving the resiliency of technology in comparison to the fragility of life. The remnants of Equestria’s nervous system after the grand mal seizure that of its apocalypse. 
Maybe, but it was the maybe not that kept dragging her back to her chair. The warm tickle of nostalgia when a network piped up that she recognized the name of. She’d lost track of how many hayburger chains kept showing up in the list, dragged into the light thanks to what Delta imagined were patrons messaging their favorite cheap eats supplier to express disappointment at the cheapness of said eats. As if on cue, another Red Delicious franchise popped up. No response, as always. R-Dubs had been in the business of hardening arteries, not its mailing network.
She blinked. 
New lines spilled across her terminal, threatening to carry away what she’d just seen. Familiarity of a different kind sent her heart racing as she slapped the keyboard, stopping the data midstream. 

Pinged 23.22.39.120 [JSITermNet0319].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 4 successful, 0 failed. [0% loss].
- - - - - - [JSITermNet0319] logged as active node.
- - - - - - [JSITermNet0319] added.
- - - - - - pioneer.zip delivered to [JSITermNet0319].

Her voice shook as a sad smile touched her lips. “Jet, you paranoid asshole.”
In spite of the last decade, directly defying the bomb rumored to have impacted the launch facility in Las Pegasus, some stubborn facet of his multibillion bit conglomerate managed to survive the balefire.
A little voice in her head told her it was probably nothing. A pleasant coincidence of simpler times, yes, and she could practically see Jet’s smug face as she scanned the network title for the second time. JSI. JetStream Industries. The “family” business.
Leave it alone, she warned herself. Knowing what happened to her won’t fix the past.
Too late. 
She’d already picked up the first breadcrumb. 







Rainbow swung her hind hooves back and forth beneath her chair, embarrassed that something so mundane could make her so nervous. She quietly observed Deputy Chaser as he squinted at the tangle of wires drooping out of the hole in the wall where their badge readers had been installed. One of the readers lay on the floor, its cables snipped several minutes ago. The poor stallion kept picking up a pad of hastily scribbled notes, setting it down, then picking it back up again. 
“Need help?”
He glanced over to her as if considering it, then shook his head. “I’m good, thanks.”
Doubtful. Ever since the Stable went dark, everything and anything that could be done to minimize distractions to the pegasi of Mechanical was being done. For the past several days that mostly meant picking up depleted batteries and dropping off charged ones where light was needed. 
She frowned up at the pale yellow bulb glowing behind its plastic dome above her door. Nobody knew how long the emergency lights would last without the generator to recharge them. One entrepreneuring young filly who had only just begun apprenticing in the Gardens was being lauded for her quick thinking by repurposing her mother’s exercise bike into a sort of pedal-powered mini generator that put out enough current to revive the darkened grow lights in her unit to something approaching twilight. More bikes had been dragged down to the Gardens by the end of the first day, though the almost frenzied work had been temporarily stalled after Sledge got wind of it and assigned a team from Mechanical to ensure the gardeners didn’t start blindly yanking wires out of the walls. It didn’t help the overstallion’s image when his deputies commandeered some of these “power cycles” to be hooked into the Stable’s cold storage units where precious food had already begun creeping up to the thaw line. 
It hadn’t been a matter of debate. The freezers couldn’t be allowed to spoil. 
Yet none of it would matter if they didn’t resolve the water situation. No electricity meant no pumps meant no water pressure. The Stable’s cisterns might last for a week, maybe two with strictly monitored distribution. There weren’t enough materials in the whole Stable to build a power cycle large enough to restore the wastewater treatment level, and he’d all but forbidden anyone from experimenting with purely chemical processes. The last thing the Stable needed was a cloud of toxic gas to contend with. 
Still, his efforts to keep them from cannibalizing their delicately structured ecosystem was making him a target for criticism. Rainbow had seen it happen before. It was as if ponies were hard wired to bite the hoof that fed them. Sledge’s popularity was dropping faster than the water level.
Chaser fished a wire nut from the simple toolbox he’d been given and began rejoining the loose connections. If the power ever came back on, Rainbow would be able to open and close her own door without needing permission first. 
“Congratulations, by the way.” The words tripped their way past the flashlight still held in his mouth. “Think you’re in the clear?”
Rainbow stole a glance at the bright pink scar embedded into the back of Chaser’s hind leg, a permanent mark she’d chewed into him with her own teeth. “Probably not,” she admitted. While Blue hadn’t made an appearance for some time, Rainbow could still feel her down there, waiting like a safety net should she need it. “It’s progress though. Three unbroken days without Blue feels like a vacation. And thanks.”
Chaser grunted as he moved onto the next wire. “Don’t mention it. What a vacation?”
“Oh. Just an expression. Don’t forget to connect the ground.”
Chaser noticed the lone wire and bent the exposed copper around the nib of his pliers. As he tightened the wire under a grounding screw inside the wallspace, he looked over to where Rainbow sat and noticed her hind legs swinging beneath her chair. “Nervous?”
She snorted. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“Not if I were an Element of Harmony.”
“Former Element.” She gave the corner of her mattress a little kick, spinning the chair in a slow circle and allowing her to reach the intricately scrolled necklace on her desk with her only wing. The empty socket glinted in the dim emergency light. “Besides, there’s a difference between banishing a Chaos god and…”
Chaser arched a brow at her. “Pouring soup?”
She scoffed back. “No. I mean, yes. Kind of.”
“Thank Celestia you’re not the Element of Decisiveness.”
After a few seconds of silence, the two of them laughed.
“Ass,” she chuckled. “You know what I mean.”
He shrugged and nodded. “So you don’t look exactly like the murals. Who gives a shit, right? You’re Rainbow Dash. Any one of us would kill to find your hair in our vegetable water.”
“Tsk. I don’t shed.”
Chaser turned his flashlight on her, panning the beam over her gray-blue bald patches with a touch of theatricality. “Riiight. Well, if you’re worried about how you look you can always throw on one of Aurora’s jumpsuits.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Swing and a miss. Sledge already tried that. Besides, indulging your insecurity doesn’t take away from the fact that I look like a chewed up jerky strip.”
“Figured you wouldn’t want the whole Stable looking under your tail, is all.”
“So we agree it’s a self-control problem.” 
She didn’t try to stifle a smirk when he flickered his light across her teats, gave his feathers a spooky wiggle, and went back to his work. When he didn’t take up his end of the conversation, she rolled her eyes.
“What's the point of it, then? Efficiency? Solidarity?”
Chaser leaned forward a little as he tucked the loose wires back into the wall. “It just makes things easier.”
Her feathers for someone around here with the balls to talk straight with her without the squeamish vaguisms. A dull clunk of metal thudded from the other side of the compartment door followed by the muffled click of the door’s inner workings being forced back into service. Another downside of losing power had meant the hydraulic doors no longer functioned. Thankfully someone in Stable-Tec foresaw the potential problem of an entire Stable being trapped in their rooms should the generator have a hiccup and they had designed a manual override into each one. A removable panel like the one Chaser was currently working in allowed access to what Rainbow credited as an over engineered floor jack. It was slow, but it worked.
Chaser leaned over enough to recognize overstallion’s brick red hooves in the narrow gap.
“Hey Sledge,” she called.
“Hey.” His jumpsuit wrinkled a little with each pump on the door’s extension rod. “Did Opal come by yet?”
Was she supposed to? “Not yet. Just me and the deputy talking about his impure thoughts.”
“Quit having impure thoughts, Chaser.”
The deputy shook his head. “Can’t help it, sir. Always had a weakness for vintage leather.”
Sledge let go of the jack handle when the door lifted to chest height and ducked his head through the opening. He choked down a bawdy chuckle when he saw her face. “We’re due upstairs in thirty minutes, Dash. You coming?”
Her jaw tightened with open discomfort. The mood shifted, and she noticed Chaser glance at her momentarily out of something like real concern before pretending to be focused on his completed work.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It feels…”
“Weird. Believe me, I know. It’s kind of why I was hoping to have company.”
Of course he understood. Okay, maybe not all of it, but some. He knew what it was like to be so far out of your depth that it felt like you’d be there forever. From what he’d shared over the past couple of weeks, his transition to overstallion had been rocky. Like stepping onto another planet with zero preparation, surrounded by hostile alien life, and a hole in his spacesuit rocky. Rainbow knew that feeling too well. There wasn’t an instruction book on how to be a ministry mare. The princesses had told them it wouldn’t be much different than being an Element. It would be a little more organized, in fact. Rainbow had been so convinced her life was about to get easier that she’d dubbed her ministry after a catchphrase she’d stopped using in her twenties. 
What a wake-up call the war had been.
She pursed her lips. “It’s just soup, right? No autographs or anything like that?”
Sledge smiled. “It’s just soup. Plus, if you’re there to help, we might finally get some ponies into the Atrium who haven’t been eating since the generator shut down. Seeing you might give them hope.”
“What’s left of me,” she corrected. 
He pretended not to hear. “It’s clothing optional, if that helps.”
“Gee thanks, Sledge, I really wasn’t sure it’d be worth meeting the Stable if they couldn’t stare at my bare ass the whole time.” She managed to maintain her deadpan stare for a decent three seconds before cracking. The chair creaked as she dropped to her hooves. “That was a joke, dingus. Let me grab my necklace.”
Relief and a touch of confusion mingled in Sledge’s voice. “You sure?”
“It might help convince some of them I am who I am and not a mare someone left inside a microwave for too long.” The gold plates resonated with a comforting jingle as she pushed her muzzle through the loop. Something tightened in her chest as the cool metal settled as it always had across her now prominent collarbone. Old memories of what putting on her Element used to mean, before she began wearing it as a daily reminder of what she was supposed to represent. 
She touched an old feather to the vacant socket at its center. “I’ve given it some thought. I want them to see that it’s empty.”
“Why?”
“Because if they think I can save them, they’ll stop trying to help themselves.” She crossed the room toward Sledge, pausing briefly to flick her tail up at Chaser who promptly knocked over his toolbox trying to back away. She shot Sledge a knowing grin as he helped her under the door. Her back crackled as she stood up in the dimly lit corridor on the other side.
“I’ve seen it happen before,” she said, gracefully ignoring Chaser’s sputtering dig about having seen better. “I don’t want to be the reason it happens again.”
Sledge puzzled at her as he led her down the hall.
“What?”
“You just did two things in the same breath that aren’t…”
A grin crossed her lips as she waited for him to finish.
He sighed. “Nevermind. Soup?”
She nodded. “Soup.”







July 19th, 1077
Canterlot Castle

The guard standing beside Primrose coyly lifted his tail and coughed into his calico fetlock. Moments later the cloud of hot stench hit her like a bulldozer. She couldn’t move away, nor could she allow her revulsion to show on her face. Long gone were the days when the princesses tolerated little slips with kindly chuckles and knowing smiles. With a potential end to the war on the horizon, Celestia in particular had earned herself a reputation for having razor thin patience. She was trapped by decorum and, just like the other ministers’ aides in the castle’s lavish throne room, she had no choice but to endure it. The alternative would have her escorted out to the grand hall, and she hadn’t orchestrated this meeting just to have Rainbow Dash flounder through it unmonitored.
As usual, five out of six ministers stood in a tidy row just a few paces ahead on the throne room’s lush, lavender carpet. Primrose and Rainbow Dash had been relegated to the leftmost side as usual, the result of which placed her within bombing range of the palace guard beside her. The sudden odor hadn’t wafted past Rainbow unnoticed either, evidenced by the slightest irritated glance over her shoulder. Benefits of rank, even if Rainbow held it in name only.
Rarity was next in line, her magic quietly clicking away at her ivory Pip-Buck as she penned a quick message to someone within her ministry. At the far right end stood Applejack, quietly disapproving of the topic of discussion as always without doing anything so bold as speaking up. Element of Honesty? Maybe. She’d become much more careful with her words over the past year, not surprising after she kicked Spitfire's door down and spilled the beans on what she’d learned about the little agreement she’d come to with her paramour. So far little more had come from that outburst. Primrose’s little birdies within the Ministry of Technology confirmed she was keeping the secret for the sake of Rainbow’s reputation and the problem seemed reliably contained. Still, contingencies were in place should the situation change. 
Fluttershy stood to Applejack’s left. She had little to offer and quite a lot to say. Of the five of them she had the easy job. With balefire technology firmly within Equestrian control and Maiden Pharmaceutical dragging their hooves with the recall of Twilight’s first-generation StimPacks, Vhanna was bleeding resources faster than they could replenish them. The zebras were fighting on borrowed time. All Fluttershy had to do now was wait for the princesses to get bored of grinding stripes into meat and give her their blessing to sue for peace. Of all of them, the dainty coward had sacrificed the least to gain the most. 
Her gaze shifted to Twilight. The arguably grape-flavored alicorn hadn’t stopped talking for what felt like hours, clipboard floating in front of her on a bed of magic, several pages already flipped back with many more to go. She stood at the middle of the gathered ministers, a position she’d gotten used to claiming for decades now. More than ever, she seemed to believe herself the de facto leader of her peers while still managing to justify rejecting the higher mantle expected of her. She even spoke with a measured, unchallenged authority that the elder princesses were known for.
“...reassure me that the last trailers of first generation StimPacks have been loaded and are en route to be disposed…”
Primrose feigned boredom, eyes shifting slowly between Twilight and her sibling rulers. There weren’t many ponies in Equestria who could bullshit the princesses as easily as Twilight Sparkle. While StimPack doses were very truly being shuttled to incinerators across the nation as they spoke, a measurable percentage had quietly been diverted. Twilight desired to see the pinnacle of her magical abilities thrown away no more than Primrose could afford to.
The clock ticked and topics shifted. She half-listened to Fluttershy object to the continued construction of new missile silos across Equestria’s less populated locales. It was the same boring argument as all the other times. Unnecessary escalation this, destruction of natural habitat that. Celestia gave her the usual two to three minutes before delivering the same disaffected promise that she would certainly weigh the merits of her concerns, but at a later time. Whether she’d grown a stubborn streak or was just that dense, the Minister of Peace never seemed to catch on that “a later time” translated into “never.” To add insult to injury, Twilight pounced on the trailing hem of the topic and, as she was wont to do in the face of a challenge, tore it apart.
“If I could have a quick minute,” she said, her magic flitting forward and back through her papers, “I think it’s important for us to cover some facts that Fluttershy understandably may not be fully aware of. Namely the… ah, here. The forty-two percent decrease in aggressive rhetoric from the Vhannan palace since we went public with the missile silo program. On top of that, Rarity, I think I remember seeing some numbers come out of your ministry that mention some significant hesitancy from the zebras when it came to using chemical weapons. Is that right?”
Beside her, Rarity offered a curt nod in response. “We’ve decrypted several communications out of Adenia calling for restraint regarding their use of aeresolized blindweed. Publicly they’ve stated their concerns of friendly fire incidents, but the timing suggests that they’re spooked. News of our silos are driving the point home that balefire missiles aren’t just an Equestrian scare tactic, and that we’re prepared to deploy them if they push too hard.”
Twilight scratched her nose with a long feather, carefully avoiding Fluttershy’s withering glare. “Thank you. Now, princesses, it bears saying that I absolutely sympathize with Fluttershy’s concerns and I plan to see to it personally that a panel is formed to review the environmental damage caused thus far, and in the long-term I think Equestria will thank Fluttershy for championing an issue the rest of us have let fall through the cracks. In the short-term, however, I think it’s important for all of us to stay focused on why we’re here in the first place.”
If Fluttershy clenched her jaw any harder she’d chip a tooth, yet she didn’t speak up. Primrose had seen this fight play out between the two of them over and over again to the point that it was practically expected to flare up for every one of these Friday briefings. Just another box to check before they were finally dismissed back to the Pillar.
“Vhanna is losing the war.” A chuckle touched Twilight’s voice, as if she couldn’t quite believe it herself. “They don’t have an answer for balefire and their people know it. They know we could pull out of Vhanna completely and still decimate their armies at the flip of a switch. They know that we’ve found the door to a new golden age of–”
“PINKIE!!”
A blend of startled, curious and exasperated faces turned back toward the throne room doors, their grand carved scrollwork parted down the center just enough for a single, smirking pink muzzle to poke through the gap. Primrose stole a glance at Twilight and noted that she hadn’t so much as moved a hoof to acknowledge the outburst. She stood in place, lips pressed into a thin line as a heavy silence slowly muffled the echoed name. 
Back at the entrance, Pinkie Pie had pushed her whole head between the doors. Primrose caught herself before she could react, but few of the Elements behind her were as mindful of their composure.
When no response came to the once bubbly mare’s call, her exaggerated smile dropped like a weighted bag. Her big blue eyes, now a little dulled with age, rolled with unfiltered obstinance as she stepped fully into the throne room and began crossing the long empty space toward her peers. It occurred to Primrose that Pinkie hadn’t attended one of these meetings - really, any meetings outside of the odd public appearance or two - for at least a year now. With the war fast approaching an inevitable victory Pinkie’s Ministry of Morale was becoming irrelevant to the war effort and at this point her absence was practically assumed. And now here she was, loping toward them one casual step at a time with her eyes peering up at the passing stained glass murals as if she were seeing them for the first time and not the hundredth.
A willowy parade tune whistled from her lips as she wandered from one edge of the narrow carpet to the other, pausing briefly in front of one of the armored guards with a mock-serious expression as she pretended to inspect him before moving on. She’d lost weight again, a worrying trend that Rarity’s ministry had been struggling to reverse ever since the bombing in Ponyville. Pinkie was still some ways away from gaunt but she was steadily working her way there, having shed her eminent full figure for a much more angular frame. It was evidence of a life run off the rails, something Rarity ensured was never spoken above a whisper in public and not at all within the press. It wasn’t uncommon for a pony to shed a few pounds with age, after all, and what mare would say no to being just a little slimmer in this day and age?
“To see the light that shines from a true, true friend…” she murmured, glancing only briefly at Primrose and the other aides as she trotted past them. “Bum. Bum-bum-ba-bum.”
She sidled in between Rainbow Dash and Rarity, giving her butt a little shake as her strange tune ended. Standing just behind her now, Primrose was close enough to see the dark bags under Pinkie’s eyes. Rainbow moved a little to seemingly give her room to stand, but the sour odor of sweat wafting off the bubblegum mare likely had something more to do with it. 
A deep silence permeated the throne room as many eyes lingered in Pinkie’s direction, none more notably than those of the princesses. For several long seconds, Primrose waited for something to happen. It was like watching a timebomb tick down to zero, and now they all stood in that terrible silence between the countdown and the explosion.
She jumped when Twilight cleared her throat and lifted her clipboard an inch higher.
“Anyway,” she said crisply, “The last item we have for today regards an update from the power armor division of the Ministry of Technology. Applejack?”
Much like the rest of the ponies in the room, Applejack’s eyes were still turned toward Pinkie. Of the five of them, she appeared the most unsettled by her friend’s sudden attendance. It took her a breath before she was able to put aside her clear worry and shift her attention toward the princesses. “Uh… yeah. So, we’re about ready to finalize our contract with Blackhoof Dynamics for large scale production of our type P-60 power armor. We’ll have ink on paper by month’s end as long as their board votes in favor, which they will if they don’t want the contract going back to Robronco.”
Primrose tuned her out. Robronco wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to manufacture P-60s now that they’d turned their attention squarely toward developing a watered down version of the M.I.L.L.I.E. artificial intelligence software for the public sector. The amount of smoke their marketing team had to blow up the board’s ass to manage that big of a pivot was as massive as it was unimportant. As Applejack began rattling off projections and figures, Primrose silently slid her gaze to the hushed conversation developing right in front of her.
Unlike Rainbow Dash, Rarity had chosen not to move from where she had been standing since the meeting began. As a result, she was taking Pinkie’s impromptu appearance as an opportunity to speak her mind.
“You look like you just rolled out of bed,” she hissed.
Rather than the sickeningly sweet banter she was known for in her public appearances, Pinkie only shook her head while staring forward. “Gee, happy to see you too, Rares.”
Rarity ignored the jab. “You could have at least bathed before coming here. You’re not going to get better if you keep neglecting yourself like this.”
Pinkie laughed under her breath. “Oh, fuck you.”
“I’m serious.”
“Neato. I’m allowed to be here.”
The two mares stared daggers at one another out of the corners of their eyes, their barbs drowned out by Applejack’s long-winded ramble. Finally, Rarity broke the stalemate.
“Why are you here, exactly?”
The question had a serrated edge to it that cut deep. Pinkie mouthed something to herself.
“What was that?” Rarity prodded.
“I said you’d know if you ever came down to talk to me.”
Rarity scoffed. “Not this again. Pinkie, we would all be happy to visit you more often if you stopped guilting us into it.”
Pinkie’s lip squeaked as she sucked on her teeth. “Yeah, okay.”
“And you know full well where to find us if you need to talk. That road’s always gone two ways.”
“Good to know.”
“Pinkie, you need to lis–”
“Ministers.” Princess Celestia’s clarion voice cut off the whispered argument with a single word, though only one of the two mares she was speaking to flinched at the reprimand. When neither spoke, Celestia shuffled her wings against her sides and let out an exasperated sigh. “Pinkie Pie, are you here for a reason?”
Even Primrose winced at that. During what few interactions she’d seen Pinkie have with her so-called friends and mentors it felt like they’d mostly defaulted to handling her like some wayward foal. Smile, nod, encourage, walk away, let her be someone else’s problem. Now with the conflict coming to an end, it was as if a switch had been flipped and the years of frustration from having to hoofhold Pinkie through the war was finally breaking through the facade. Nobody in the room wanted the dysfunctional minister here, least of all the ivory unicorn tasked with handling all the damage control caused by her whenever she roamed outside. 
And now Celestia herself was speaking down to her like some unruly filly.
If it phased Pinkie at all, she didn’t show it. In response, she narrowed her eyes with a brittle smile and said, “Yeah, I did. Am. I have a reason, I mean.”
A pause. Celestia cleared her throat. “You have the floor, Miss Pie.”
Pinkie licked her lips and took a step forward. “I want to visit Maud.”
Behind her, Rarity closed her eyes and swore under her breath. Primrose felt her ears perk at the unicorn’s reaction and straightened a little, keenly aware that there were layers beneath Pinkie’s innocuous request. Before Celestia could respond, however, Princess Luna lifted her voice to the question.
“Pinkie Pie, you do not need our permission to see your family.”
Pinkie’s eyes rolled. “I do if I want to visit her on my own,” she said, tipping her chin toward Rarity. “I can’t go anywhere without her goons watching.”
“Dear, your security detail is there for your protection.”
“I’m not a deer,” Pinkie snapped. “And they’re not my security! They work for you, because you don’t trust me to go anywhere alone!” 
“Pinkie, this is not the time to discuss–”
The earth pony rounded on Rarity, her audience with the princesses forgotten. “Oh, I’m sooo sorry! When’s the right time? Do you think you can squeeze me in between debriefings or should I wait until something opens up?” Her eyes, red-rimmed and defiant, spun toward the petite stallion behind Rarity. “Or do I need to schedule an appointment with your assistant so you have someone to blame this time when… what’s your name?”
Primrose watched the unphased aide standing beside her. “Inkspot, ma’am.”
“When Stinkpot forgets to pencil me in.” Pinkie’s gaze flicked toward Primrose for a split second, the intensity of her stare sending a bolt down her back. A second later she was back to Rarity, barely skipping a beat. “Maud barely talks to me anymore because your people are there listening in!”
Rarity scoffed. “She would speak more if you didn’t dominate every conversation you’ve ever been a part of.”
The throne room went silent. Pinkie’s expression shrank and for a moment Primrose was certain she was gearing up to throw hooves right in front of the princesses, but if the temptation was there it wasn’t as alluring to the once joyful mare as the option she eventually went with. 
“Okie-dokie. Whatever you say,” she mumbled, lifting her foreleg and the chunky pink Pip-Buck attached to it. Stickers in varying states of wear and tear adorned the casing around its square screen, some of them peeled and dirty while others had been worn down to a fluffy white silhouette of old paper. Pinkie shook her head and nosed through menus Primrose couldn’t see from where she was standing, the hollow clicks of the device the only sound in the room. Finally something on the device satisfied her and she pressed one of the keys. The quiet hiss from the Pip-Buck’s padded cuff caught several of their ears, and the cauldron of emotions bubbling under Pinkie’s determined expression grew calm with a half-lidded smile of relief. 
Rarity made a disgusted noise. “Really. In here, of all places? This is exactly the reason why I don’t trust you to leave the Pillar unattended.”
“Harumph! Pish-posh!” A euphoric giggle stuttered from her uncontrollable grin. “Relax, fashion horse, I got a prescription.”
She put a hoof on Rarity’s shoulder and leaned toward her, noses practically touching, her voice low. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me how much of a disappointment I am. I already know.” Before she could back away, Pinkie jammed her muzzle into Rarity’s and pulled back with an exuberant, “Mwah! That’s my show, everybody! Help control the pet population! Have your pets spayed or neutered!”
Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Twilight, all of the gathered ponies stared after her with bewildered expressions as she shouldered her way past Rarity and through the row of aides behind her. Primrose watched Pinkie stalk by, noting the complete absence of levity in the mare’s eyes as she bore down the carpet without so much as acknowledging the princesses whose presence she’d just made a fool of herself in. Quiet murmurs rippled through the throne room as Pinkie shoved open the grand doors, alone. No aides met her in the hallway beyond. No guards fell in behind her. The doors swung shut without comment. More than ever, Pinkie Pie was an anomaly. A bubble of oil in an ocean that flowed around her because it didn’t know what to do with her.
“Minister Rarity,” Luna’s voice rang from the dias, “once we’re finished, I’d like to speak with you in private please.”
Rarity rattled off some standard politeness that Primrose didn’t bother hearing. Like the others around her, she was still transfixed by the mare who came and went like a squall on a clear day. In that short time the mood in the room had been irrevocably changed. Twilight had fallen silent, her control of the meeting wrenched away. Celestia stared down at her subjects with open irritation. Luna was setting time aside to speak with Rarity, her tone hinting at the uncomfortable discussion that lay ahead for the unicorn. Pinkie Pie was either insanely lucky, or the last few years of existing apart from her friends allowed her to smarten up enough to pull off the most calculated “fuck you” Primrose had ever seen.
She stared back at the throne room doors and wondered.







October 28th, 1087
Sunday Morning

Ping! Ping! Ping!
Delta groaned into her pillow.
“Good morning, Delta Vee. The time is 5:55am. Would you like to delay your next alarm until 6:05am?” 
She pinned her ears to muffle Millie’s aggressively cheery wake-up call. For a super-advanced artificial intelligence capable of adaptive learning, Millie was easily the worst thing to happen to Equestria short of its destruction.
“Cancel alarm,” she mumbled.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that.”
“CANCEL. ALARM.”
A soft chime. “Your alarm set for tomorrow morning has been canceled.”
She could probably uninstall Millie on her own and nobody would be angry. They’d probably throw her a parade through the Stable. Maybe name a day in her honor. She shot a menacing look up at Millie’s speaker, considering it.
Against her better judgment she sat up and waited for the last hooks of sleep to fall away. She barely remembered crawling into bed. The steady scroll of data streaming down from the outside world and into her work terminal still jittered by like the afterimage of a balefire bomb. 
Part of her was beginning to worry someone might notice a significant percentage of the Stable’s generous bandwidth being encroached on by Pioneer’s deluge of data. Three days since she set it loose, it still followed the shattered networks left behind like it were tracing cracks through glass. The rest of her just felt a warm sense of pride, knowing all across Equestria there would be hundreds of thousands of terminals sheltering her little worm almost as if she’d autographed their hard drives herself. She imagined ponies a millennia from now following the tenacious little packet of code back to her Stable and being told it was Delta Vee, a survivor of the old world, who left the trail of breadcrumbs for them to find.
Or maybe they would all be too busy trying to keep the stupid bug from getting onto whatever amounted to computers in the distant future. She grinned at the thought and decided she’d happily take credit for either.
Swinging her hooves to the floor, she shuffled across her messy compartment toward the bathroom, vaguely aware of what parts of the floor were occupied the wing guards she couldn’t be bothered to use, a pile of old bedding she’d get around to hauling down to the laundry facilities, and the sad remains of her personal terminal which had suffered an unfortunate high-velocity trip to the ground after one of her techs decided it would be easier to flood her inbox with work questions rather than solve them himself. He’d since been reassigned to the glamorous world of alphabetizing books in the grade school library on Level 2. Plenty of foals bursting at the seams with questions over there.
Plastic crackled under her hoof. She kicked the rogue piece of terminal housing away and swung around the partition into her little bathroom. The Stable would get through the next five centuries whether or not she was accessible 24/7. She flipped the lever on her sink and pushed her head into the stream of clean, cool water. It ran down the back of her neck and trickled along the ridge of her back, causing her to shiver. The fog of sleep cleared away in a matter of seconds. She shut the water off and flipped the wet mop of her blue mane out of her eyes, pausing only briefly before deciding not to bother with a shower. Something she’d picked up from her years working alone in her junkyard, ponies were less liable to bother her if she stank a little. Most of her techs were going to be too busy getting the servers ready for the network traffic this year’s Remembrance Day was already starting to stir up. 
She sat down on the toilet and tried not to let thoughts of the upcoming holiday bother her as her bladder emptied. 
How many more years were they going to keep treating October 31st as a reason to fucking celebrate? Remembrance Day was as much about remembering what happened as it was a day to schedule a long weekend around so they could all get shitfaced on bottom-level moonshine. Sure, every year a few unlucky pegasi got voluntold to tell a few stories from the good old days and the names of the lost were read per tradition, but once all boxes were checked off and the podium was taken down the atmosphere turned into a party.
Why even call it Remembrance Day if nobody ever stopped to talk about what they’d all seen? Nobody wanted to mention the way everything just… caught fire. Nobody poured shots to the families who hadn’t flown fast enough or the pegasi who arrived inside so horrifically disfigured by balefire that when death finally came for them it had been a mercy.
She got up and flushed. Water ran through the pipes, swirling in the bowl, spinning and spinning. A frown crossed her lips as the water kept running inside the tank. She sighed and lifted the lid off the tank, balancing the porcelain slab in one wing while she dipped the other into the cold water. 
“Eugh.” How did they get this far as a civilization and still never figure out how to stop everything in these tanks from getting so fucking slimy? She fished around the bottom of the tank, irritated by the steady hiss of water as the broken flush chain evaded her feathers. 
Of course they would probably know exactly how to fix idiot problems just like this if everyone didn’t duck their heads in the sand whenever something difficult came up. She hooked the chain with a feather but slipped away. She grit her teeth, the tank lid getting heavy. Fucking toilet. Fucking algae growing in the toilet. Fucking Elements of Harmony letting a good world go to shit. 
Her eyes stung. She almost dropped the lid. 
Fucking Remembrance Day and this tin can full of pegasi too braindead to realize the painful memories were the ones worth keeping, not the cheap one-liners about a husband who always burned the coffee or how great-grandma used to talk about the days before electricity. 
She got a grip on the chain.
Every single one of them had been through the worst imaginable trauma of their lives, and all anyone wanted to talk about was the one time Aunt Cobbler couldn’t make a cobbler because isn’t it funny her name is Cobbler. Ha-ha isn’t that a fucking riot, isn’t it so fun to pretend they hadn’t all bore witness to violent death, isn’t it a hoot that none of them wanted to talk about their death parents, their dead sisters or brothers or sons or…
The chain slipped and her temper exploded. She heaved the porcelain lid into the air and brought it down on the infernal shitbowl like a mortar, shouting an emphatic “FUCK!!” as water and porcelain shards sprayed across the bathroom floor. 
It took a moment for her to feel the sting from the shallow cut across her foreleg. Rather than think about cleaning up, she just stood there, cold water spraying from the broken pipe sticking out of the wall. 
Gradually her anger subsided. Well, shit. 
“Millie,” she sighed, bending over to pick bits of porcelain off the floor. “Put a ticket in with Mechanical. I broke the toilet. Flag it as urgent.”
Millie chimed. “Your ticket has been received.”
No point in pulling extra bits from her account to expedite it when the neighbors would do it for her once water started seeping into the hall. She bent down and began scooping the larger chunks into her wing, the embarrassing silence following her outburst drawing out the worst of her frustration. She slid a wingful into the cracked toilet bowl and wondered how many mares in their sixties lost their tempers like that. Then she grunted, a chagrined smile on her lip as she realized it was probably better measured in percentage than total. Not too many ponies around these days anymore.
Careful not to drop a hoof onto one of the remaining shards, she opened the mirror above the sink and pulled out a tin of gauze for her leg. She’d gotten sliced worse digging around for wires in wall panels, but this one was in just the right spot to be a bleeder. A splash of antiseptic and a few layers of clean bandages would tide her over until she could swing by the infirmary for a stimpack. 
Water splashed ahead of her as she walked out of the bathroom, picked up a cellophane-wrapped oat bar from her desk, and left her compartment for the plumbers to deal with. She opened the door and braced herself for the inevitable punishment that came with going outside.
“Morning, Ms. Vee!”
Socializing.
She lifted a feather and smiled at the passing filly… Skylark, that’s it.
“Hey Skylark.” The kid slowed to let her catch up. She’d only been three when the bombs fell, and she was one of the lucky foals who wasn’t kept up by nightmares every night. If the Stable counselors were to be believed, half the residents weren’t dreaming at all anymore. “Off to classes?”
The plum coated teenager cocked a brow at her. “Um, duh, there’s no school on Sundays.”
She blinked and shook her head. “Wow, yeah. It’s Sunday, isn’t it? Why are you even up this early?”
Skylark shrugged with the nonchalance of a young mare well versed in choosing which adults to share her secrets with and which ones not to. Delta always felt a touch of pride knowing she’d earned the kid’s trust. Whatever trouble Lark wanted to get up to was her own business. It wasn’t as if there was much to get into down here. 
She examined one of the colorfully printed murals as Lark filled her in. “You know who Cirrus Whistles is, right?”
The young mare was already grinning. Say no more. Except she couldn’t just cut her off at the pass like that. Conversations were like a game. Pass the ball, don’t hog it. 
“Windy’s colt? Pretty sure they’re still finding his hoofprints on some of the ceilings.”
“Well, he got put on as an apprentice at the bakery up in the Atrium.”
The Flour Patch. For a stallion who came from a background in construction, Clayhearth did some amazing things with cornmeal and honey. Turns out when he wasn’t at the jobsite he had been something of a breadmaker in a different sense at home. His husband was one of the shift leaders down in Fabrication, if she remembered right.
“Good for Cirrus.” She stopped at the central lifts and hit the call button. “Don’t you think he’ll be a little busy, though?”
Lark paced around beside her. “So what? A mare can’t be proactive?”
Delta stifled a laugh. She was barely fourteen. “Word to the wise, kid? Life’s not a race. And stalking young stallions where they work might send the wrong signals, if you know what I mean.”
“What? Ew, no! With Cirrus?!” The elevator door pinged. “He’s dumber than a box of hair! I’m going up for lumpers, not… gross, Ms. Vee!”
The doors opened. A severe looking stallion in a jumpsuit stood in the corner and regarded Delta with open disapproval. He didn’t meet her gaze as they piled in, but that never stopped Varnish from opening his fat mouth in the past.
“Like water off a duck, eh Delta?”
Lark frowned up at him, confused.
“Ignore him,” she said and grimaced when she saw their floor already illuminated. “And back up a second. What’s a lumper?”
The filly’s smile returned. “It’s the name we made up for the bagels Cirrus makes. They’re like… deformed or something. Clayhearth is giving them out for free and I’m going to get there early this time!”
“Sounds like he should be charging at least half price if you’re getting up early on the weekend to get one.”
Lark balked at her. “Don’t give him any ideas!”
Behind them, Varnish snorted. “Delta is nothing if not full of ideas.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be busy polishing someone else’s wood?”
Lark coughed out a squeaking laugh that hit a brick wall as soon as she peeked back at Varnish. Delta didn’t bother looking at him. He was genetically incapable of laughter. Something to do with all the fumes he sucked way back when he ran a successful carpentry business in Cloudsdale. There was an easy insult to be made about the state of his company ever since it went up in flames, but there were some lines even Delta didn’t cross. 
Varnish wouldn’t take the bait anyway. He had the composure of a fucking boulder, and a personality to match. Even hearing him inhale before speaking was annoying. “You know, my son has taken a liking to you, Delta.”
“Not interested,” she growled.
“I’m not proposing. I’m informing you that Cedar has developed a concerning infatuation with your…” She could feel him looking her up and down. “Lifestyle.”
“You should talk to his dad about that.”
Not even a chuckle. Beside her, Lark waited impatiently for the doors to open.
“His father believes it would be time well spent for the mare he’s chosen to emulate to set him straight.” His voice softened as much as stone could. “Somehow, you’ve convinced him that basic hygiene is optional. I’d like you to sit down with him and–”
“I’m not having the your-body-is-changing conversation with your sixteen year old, Varnish.” Her hoof tapped the floor as the elevator climbed.
“Either you do or I bring this up with the overmare.”
“Fucking…” She shook her head. Spitfire wouldn’t care any more than she did, but Delta had a long standing aversion to wellness checks. “Fine. Have it your way.”
She lifted her Pip-Buck, thought better of it, and glanced toward the little speaker grille above the elevator keys. “Hey Millie, validate my vocal signature and block all other inputs from anyone without my clearance. I want to send a recorded message to Cedar Varnish.”
Varnish stiffened behind her. “Millie, disregard that–”
“You may record your message now.”
A tinny chime followed. 
“Yo, Cedar. It’s Delta Vee. Your dad’s filled me in on some pretty weird stuff that’s going on. Says you’re not taking care of yourself. Not sure what’s got you skipping showers or whatever, but the old stallion thinks you might have a thing for me and while that’s flattering…”
“I never said he had a thing–”
“And while that’s flattering,” she spoke over him, “it’s worth mentioning…”
She stopped short of saying the honest truth. Varnish would just throw it back in her face and Lark would probably add it to the list of things to feed the classroom gossip tree. Either way, it was a quick road to well-meaning knocks on her door and check-ins from pegasi who hadn’t bothered to talk to her in months. Not that she wanted them to anyway.
“Look, kid. Teenagers are walking, talking tear gas canisters of hormonal stink. Your dad’s an asshole, but I know your mom’s not and she doesn’t deserve to come home from work just to get by your ball-stink. Take a fucking shower. Wash your mane. Wipe your ass. Seriously, kid, you’ll die a virgin if you’re showing the whole Stable your bagel and schmear.”
Lark made a revolted noise. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Varnish remained menacingly silent.
“Send message,” she said. 
“Message sent.”
The elevator slowed to a stop. To Lark’s visible relief the doors parted and she hurried off in a fit of hushed giggles, probably in search of the nearest filly to share what just happened. Delta stepped off as well, wondering if anyone would believe it. Probably not. 
“That was a mistake,” Varnish said.
“Not even in my top fifty.” She stopped and turned, blocking him from getting off. Then she nudged forward and slapped her wet feathers over the buttons, dragging toilet water across them until every one was lit. She stepped clear of the door, daring him to make her move, but Varnish just stared at her as the doors shut between them. “Happy trails to yooouuu…”
Dick. Any clout he used to have, well, he used to have it. He didn’t anymore. Nobody gave a crap if you ran the number one woodworking supplier in the tricloud area any more than they cared if your ex-husband was the stallion who pulled away the curtain on Celestia and Luna’s control over day and night. None of that meant anything down here. Stable 10 was the great equalizer in that respect. Still she doubted it would stop Varnish from filing a complaint. Big whoop. A slap on the hoof and a few hundred bits pulled out of her account to pay a fine. Worst case, Spitfire makes her clean her compartment. 
As she retraced the familiar route to her office, the overhead PA system pinged.
“Delta Vee to the overmare’s office,” Spitfire’s tired voice echoed through the halls. “Delta Vee, to my office. Thank you.”
Huh.
That was quick.







Rainbow could feel Sledge staring at her under the dim emergency lights. Hooves clicked along the walkway above the makeshift cafeteria line built by the owners of the Brass Bit, emphasizing just how packed the Atrium was. He was lucky she only had the one wing or she’d use the other to find something to hit him with. Her soup ladle jutted out from her lips like a ridiculous cigar.
“Shereoushly. I goddit.”
“You sure?” He, along with the colt waiting on the opposite side of the food line, stared at her with equal parts fascination and pity. “Because it kind of looks like you’re…”
The speckled brown teen waiting for his dinner piped up. “Doin’ indoor stuff to that thing. Plus you’re kinda naked?”
Her teeth clicked defiantly around the stainless steel handle. What was with this Stable? “Yeah? Well thish ish how earf ponies ushed to do eht and no one dropped anchor ober it.” She tilted her head, tipping the cooling scoop of watery tomato puree into the bowl cupped by her wing. To be fair she never had asked AJ to explain the range of grips she employed with that jaw of hers. But then again neither did Sledge or Bulgey McColtson over there. She dropped the ladle into the industrial pot in front of her and wiped the saliva off the handle. “Go eat your soup, kid.”
She watched him trot away toward the clutch of friends he’d arrived with, the six of them giggling as they found a quiet corner of the Atrium to eat in. Rainbow took the moment to look at the faces around them, pegasi of every generation either standing in line waiting to be served or finishing up the last spoonfuls of what was intended to be a special meal provided by their overstallion and a genuine Element of Harmony. 
Their reception had been a chilled one. She tried not to hold it against them. As Sledge explained it, none of his fellow residents knew either of them beyond what they remembered from some unflattering stories about Sledge and the rote memorization they’d been required to recite about the dusty and unrelatable faces of the old world. To most of them Sledge was still the caricature of a pegasus he’d presented to Mechanical to ensure the work got done. Many blamed him for their current troubles, and those troubles only seemed to get worse with every assurance he gave. Rainbow knew exactly how it felt to fight that losing battle, and for her the only way to win was to stop playing.
Compared to him, she had it easy. Most of the residents stared at her like she was a history assignment come to life. Maybe it had been her ego talking but she’d expected their reaction to be more… reverent. Or at least relieved to know she was alive. 
Scratch that. It was definitely her ego talking. Who'd thought spending most of her adult life being called a Hero of Equestria would screw with her expectations? She imagined Twilight excitedly digging up some old psychology book to tell her about the detrimental effects of excessive formal titles, and chuckled to herself. 
The next resident stepped up the line and passed an empty bowl to her like all the rest had. She flexed her jaw and bent to take up the ladle again, only to realize Sledge was already dipping it into the pot for her. Fair enough. Her teeth were killing her anyway and even if she had been preserved like some walking, talking strip of jerky, the miracle of her longevity didn’t relieve the discomfort the residents felt watching her try not to choke on a steel handle.
She held the bowl while Sledge filled it. Yeah, okay. There was a significant reduction of spittle involved in his version of the process. She passed the tomato soup back to an elderly, and politely relieved, stallion. “Here you go, sir.”
“Thank you,” he responded, his silver eyes fixing hers with a deeper meaning. “For trying.”
She smiled back, waiting until he’d walked too deep back into the crowd to hear her. “Not sure that’s what I would call it.”
Sledge nudged her with the back of his wing, and she took the next bowl from the line. 
He poured and she served. Residents began moving a little more quickly now, sliding along in a steady procession of hunger and worry. She forced a smile as she served them and some of them even smiled back. Some didn’t notice her at all, or only glanced up at her long enough to catch themselves staring and look away. 
A few directed a wingful of heated questions toward Sledge, demanding to know why he was here serving soup and not downstairs helping fix the generator. He explained to each of them that the generator wasn’t the issue and that the talisman, a piece of arcane tech none of these residents had a working understanding of, was the source of the problem. None of them wanted to hear him say that they couldn’t just fabricate a new talisman, that it needed raw magic to function. All they heard were excuses for why their meals were being rationed and why their families couldn’t expect the lights to be on by tomorrow morning. 
It was painful to watch, but when Rainbow tried to help explain to a particularly loud mare why sending teams of residents out into the wasteland like Aurora had done wasn’t a good idea, he held up a feather to ward her off. Best to distract her with a bowl of soup and be done with her. The only way she’d appreciate the danger waiting outside would be to throw her into the waiting wings of these “Steel Rangers,” and it was safe to assume the issue would be moot by then. 
“I wish I had a better answer for you,” Sledge said, exhausted by the ceaseless nagging from the resident currently holding up the line. “It won’t be comfortable, but we’re going to need to make do with the power we’re bleeding off from the outside.”
The middle-aged stallion snatched his bowl out of Rainbow’s wing, oblivious when half of it sloshed out and onto his pant leg. “Yeah, well, we’d all be better off if you’d stuck to turning screws. Thanks for the soup.”
Rainbow stared daggers at him as he walked away, tracking tomato hoofprints into the Atrium as he went. Sledge shook his head and dipped the ladle back into the pot.
“Maybe you should get rid of the Stable suits,” she suggested. “Be a lot easier to spot the assholes.”
He barked laughter before quickly recomposing himself, though she could tell by the subtle bobbing of his shoulders that he was still chuckling under his breath. “Nice,” he murmured. “I…”
Before he could finish his thought, his Pip-Buck chimed. She waved a silent apology to the next pony in line while he toggled on the screen. The smirk faded from his lips as he read, looking briefly relieved but gradually settling into something closer to unsurity. Clearing his throat, he flagged down one of the Brass Bit employees to take over, pulling Rainbow out of the soup line with him as he dipped away into the restaurant’s empty dining area.
They stopped in the corner where the wall met the cash counter, as far from prying eyes as he could take her without dragging her inside the kitchen. He held up his Pip-Buck for her to see. The stalwart computer looked like someone duct-taped it to a grenade and pulled the pin. Twice. “Take a look at this?”
She wasn’t exactly in a position to say no. Glowing beneath the chipped glass was the update from Aurora they’d been waiting days to receive, but as Rainbow read, her stomach dropped.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Overstallion Sledge
From: Aurora Pinfeathers
Subject: (no subject)
04/18/1297
[1 file(s) attached.]

Hello, Overstallion. We haven’t met yet, but I think Aurora has mentioned me in some of your correspondences. My name is Ginger. I’m part of the reason why she hasn’t been able to contact you over the last several days but you should know that she is alive and okay. For the most part. That’s actually the reason I’m sending this message. Aurora and I have only begun to know one another, but your people have known her for her entire life. I’m hoping someone from home might be able to help me through this with her. I’m sorry. I know I’m being vague, but I don’t know if she would want me to tell you the whole truth. I don’t think she would want me to tell you anything, if I’m being honest. Bear with me.

Bear with her, too, I suppose. Aurora has done everything she possibly could over the past two weeks to find an ignition talisman and early on she made some enemies, namely the Steel Rangers. One of those Rangers followed us and he hurt Aurora. Badly. She’s recovering from what happened right now, and I promise you all I will never leave her side again until she’s home. 

But I need to be able to get her back to you first. I need to know how to help her survive herself. I hope that makes sense? We’ve had some bad days out here and each time she forces herself to put on a brave face. At first she would say she’s fine and shrug things off, but now everything has gotten so much bigger than her. Especially now. I don’t know how she’s going to react when she wakes up. This isn’t her world. Some of the things she’s had to see and do would screw up the toughest wastelanders, but she’s not. And I don’t want her to keep trying to be this hardened, regretless super mare. She’s been at her limit for so many days…

Luna’s grace, she almost didn’t make it today. Whenever the sedatives wear off I’m going to need to know what to say to keep her from trying to bottle this up too. I can’t help her face this alone.

I’ll try to take a picture with this thing so you know what we’re dealing with. Please respond ASAP.

Sincerely,
Ginger Dressage







Sledge looked to Rainbow for the sage advice mares seemed to always keep between themselves. Aurora had always been a complicated one to work with. A rebellious, stubborn, bullheaded pain in the ass if he was being honest. It was part of the reason she fit so well down in Mechanical. She gave as good as she got, and oftentimes she made a point to go just a bit further when she got the feeling someone might be trying to put her in what they decided was her place. Aurora was a scrapper. The fights kept her from spending too much time in her own head.
The two of them looked at the blurry photo of Aurora lying unconscious in the bottom of what looked like a rusted out metal bunk bed. She faced the ribbed panels of a wall with the thin sheet that had covered her gently pulled back to show patches where her coat looked as if it had been torn out by the root. The joints of her wings were swollen. Facing away didn’t fully hide the thick knot of purpling flesh over one eye, either. 
But the worst of it was unignorable. Sledge stared at her ugliest injury, speechless.
The last time Sledge saw her, he’d left her sulking in one of the cells upstairs. The broken mare on his Pip-Buck resembled a corpse more than a living pony. If this was what going outside had done to Aurora, what chance did any of them stand once conditions degraded enough to force them to beg help from the invaders outside their door? 
Rainbow broke the silence with a whisper, “You should forward that to one of her friends.”
He winced. “Aurora wasn’t much of a social butterfly outside of work.”
“She has to have some friends.”
“She does,” he sighed. “And they’re all out there.”
“What about you?”
“I…” He opened his mouth, then closed it when the right words didn’t come to him. 
Their relationship wasn’t exactly friendly or unfriendly. He’d been her mentor, sure. They’d shared drinks together. But before she left they’d never been ones to share feelings or confide in one another. That gulf between them left by her mother’s passing had always allowed him to fall behind the veil of Professional Boundaries when she started getting heartsick. His job was to teach the kid how to do a job, not become her surrogate parent.
Then it clicked. “Actually, I know someone else.”








Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Dusky Pinfeathers
Subject: Advice
04/18/1297

Dear Ginger,

I’ve read your message and I’ve seen the photo you took. From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know that I’ll never be able to repay you for keeping my daughter safe. She’s a tough nut to crack. I’ve tried. A lot of that is my fault, not hers. I’m not clear on the extent of your friendship, but I know my daughter and you seem like the type of mare she needs right now. It’s clear from your description of her behavior that something is and has been wrong for some time now. At the risk of sounding accusatory, I suspect you haven’t painted a complete picture of what has happened to her since she left home. It’s probably for the best that you didn’t, or I’d be seriously considering leaving the Stable and finding her myself. Just be aware that she has people waiting for her to come back, with or without this talisman.

This may not be the advice you were hoping to hear, but I think the best thing you can do for Aurora when she wakes up is to be there for her. I know it isn’t a script, but take it from someone who has already made that mistake, she knows when she’s being spoon fed the “correct” phrases and she’ll stop trusting you the moment you try it. I don’t think you know how significant it is for her to trust you as deeply as she does. Whatever you’ve done to help her get this far, it’s working better than anything I’ve tried. When she wakes up, I’m willing to bet you’re the first one she’s going to be looking for. Be there for her, Ginger. Let her grieve if she needs to. That’ll be enough. I’m looking forward to meeting you after you bring her home. 

- Dusky Pinfeathers

P.S.: Tell her we found a temporary fix for our generator problem. She’ll ease up on herself if she knows we’re at least treading water back home. And, Ginger? Welcome to the family.







Ginger let herself smile a little when she read his postscript. Careful not to disturb Aurora, she wrapped her magic around her and floated her sleeping body over a few inches to make room for herself on the mattress. Ocean spray hissed against the walls of their temporary home, reminding her of the rainstorms that rolled out of the weather factories atop Canterlot Mountain. She tucked Aurora’s tail to avoid squashing it as she nestled in behind her. What little sleep she’d gotten since Aurora’s abduction may well have added up to zero as far as her body was concerned. It took everything she had not to let herself doze off as she waited for the Stable’s answer.
Be there for her. It was embarrassingly obvious, but for some reason she needed to hear someone else say it to make sense. She pressed her muzzle into the nape of Aurora’s neck and held it there, feeling her heartbeat, reassuring herself it was still there. Ironshod had beaten her so close to Death that Aurora could have plucked a feather from its wing. 
They couldn’t keep doing this. Every day brought new dangers that only seemed to get worse each time. And now… 
She closed her eyes and tried not to think about it. She’d need a clear head when Aurora finally came around. What she had to do now was focus on the goal: get Aurora home. 
With the sea outside to ease her nerves, she dozed off quickly.







The tiny brass bell jangled above the door, bouncing on a delicate curl of spring steel she hoped would set her shop apart from the others in the wasteland. A little bit of effort, even some class, in a wild territory she mistakenly believed populated by ponies who exuded neither. She’d been coming to terms with the fact that her efforts to make Gussets & Garments stand out had been wasted. Not because wastelanders didn’t appreciate the clean aesthetic or the attention she paid them. They did. Some even said as much, especially the small pool of regulars whose reliable business floated her from one month’s rent to the next. 
Ginger watched the heavily scarred and equally armed stallion glance back at the door closing behind him, a familiar look in his eye as he left without having spent a single cap. Something on her showroom floor had interested him right up until the moment he’d asked about the price, and out from her mouth came the pithy “dears” and “darlings” she’d convinced herself customers would equate to quality. No, she had just pushed her last real customer away with that patronizing schtick. One day she’d look back on these memories and laugh at how ridiculous she’d been, but for now she’d settle to make this dream an out of body experience so she could wring her own neck.
She smirked anyway as she watched the familiar faces of earth ponies and unicorns milling along the dirt road outside. Neighbors, many of them fellow business owners, walked without any meaningful interaction with one another, occasionally appearing and disappearing as Ginger lost track of them. Another so-called perk of being aware of her own dreams, all the carefully obscured background noise came to the forefront as if she were peering into the guts of a very pretty, albeit hopelessly misassembled machine. She reminded herself to tell that one to Aurora once she was awake. That mare loved talking about her gizmos at night…
The bell tinkled again and she smiled at the crystal clear memory of Aurora walking into her life for the first time. Hard to believe it had only been a couple weeks ago. It felt like months. 
“I’ll be with you in a moment, darlings.”
She heard herself rattle off the same tired greeting without conscious effort. Had that really been her first words to her? Wonderful. She remembered she’d been fighting with a stitch that had refused to keep its spacing from its neighbor, and with the price of raw leather being what it was she’d been willing to turn the strap into mincemeat before letting it win. 
It was a simple pleasure, then, to watch Roach and Aurora meander toward her. Aurora’s eyes were shamelessly wide as she looked around, taking it all in, quietly comparing the life she knew to the hardfought world she found herself in now. It angered her how little time she’d gotten to spend with this side of Aurora. Perfectly innocent with her saddlebags heavy with tools the wasteland would never ask her to use, her thoughts completely at ease now that she knew Equestria wasn’t as dead as her Stable advertised and that Roach would accompany her to Fillydelphia and back. She wanted to reach out over the countertop and pull that Aurora into a crushing hug. To beg her to go back home and rob the wasteland of its chance to chip away at her with each passing day. Before it could pry apart the cracks until parts fell off.
But no. She could feel the dream progressing out of spite. Roach had brought Aurora here so Ginger could modify the weapon she’d brought from the Stable. A Reinlander Model 700, a sharpshooter’s weapon designed by the Wonderbolts to stay balanced in flight, worth almost half the value as the Pip-Buck she wore. 
“I need to have this fitted for my wing.” 
Aurora’s sheepishness was as endearing then as it was now. She’d known by the tiny wince Roach shot her that he hadn’t told Aurora the rifle wasn't designed for pegasi to begin with. Marring the wooden stock’s unblemished grain seemed almost criminal at the time and she’d wondered why he wasn’t having her practice with a pipe rifle instead. Of course she didn’t know the two of them were planning a trip to the coast or that time was a factor. She couldn’t have guessed how little it would take for her to be dragged into it. 
Memories be damned, she lit her horn and slid her magic across Aurora’s cheek. To her surprise Aurora closed her eyes and leaned into it ever so slightly. A hint at things to come. Good things, for both of them.
But not all good.
Her doorbell rang a third time and she felt herself tense. Now came Cider with his colossal ego, his determination to relieve Aurora of her Pip-Buck, and a confrontation between the three of them that would irrevocably link Ginger to his mysterious disappearance and subsequent discovery of his corpse at the bottom of her latrine. She’d assumed the threat of liberating his testicles from his taint would be sufficient to scare him off but no, Cider was a driven stallion who believed himself untouchable courtesy of his equal share of F&F Mercantile. “No” was not in his vocabulary.
His death would be the first of many to haunt Aurora on her journey east. 
She braced herself and looked to the open door where a tiny pink filly with a cotton candy blue mane gazed back at her with a pensive frown.
Primrose strolled into the store, her dull eyes on Aurora. Like the ponies on the street outside, Roach and Aurora quickly lost the spark of memory that made them feel so real. They stood there, expressions frozen, actors waiting for their cue.
“How is she?” Primrose asked. 
Ginger watched her examine a mannequin she’d crafted armor for from scavenged road signs. “She’s alive. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
The fun-sized leader of the Enclave nodded. “Have our personnel given you privacy?”
“They’ve been good about that, yes.”
“They knock first? It’s important that they knock first.”
She sounded like the etiquette teacher Ginger endured when she was little. “Your medical team is demonstrating a remarkable level of restraint. It’s appreciated, Primrose. Thank you.”
A smile flickered on Primrose’s lips before disappearing. She took a moment to give the store a proper look around. A noise indicating something like appreciation sounded in her throat. “Did you build all this yourself?”
She nodded.
“There used to be an antique store in Canterlot with the same ceiling. It’s nice.”
Ginger didn’t know whether she was being sincere or if she was buttering her up. Something told her it was both so she ducked the compliment just to be safe. “I have a few questions, if that’s okay.”
Primrose pulled herself up onto the short pedestal Ginger built to display padding samples and sat down with her hind legs dangling over the side. “It’s your dream.”
And it would stay that way, she hoped. She wasn’t excited that Tandy elected to bring Primrose here, but the fact that the minister still looked like a foal with a god complex told her Luna’s creation was keeping an eye on her. 
“You’ve seen Aurora’s condition?”
Primrose nodded. “Regrettably, yes.”
Even here, her nerves clenched around her chest like a vise. “Does what happened to her affect her pureblood status?”
“Ah.” Filly-Primrose frowned as if this were the first time she’d considered it. Her gaze slid toward the Aurora locked in place across the counter, that curious smile still on her muzzle. “I don’t see why it should. A broken teacup is still a teacup after you glue the pieces together.”
She closed her eyes and sighed in relief. “And the benefits that come with it?”
Primrose cracked a smile. “Careful. Someone might accuse you of wanting the Enclave’s help.”
Down to brass tacks, then. “And what if I do?”
“I’d say you’re talking to the right mare. However…” She lifted a tiny feather and leveled it toward Aurora. “My debts are limited to her. We can talk shop but I won’t commit to anything without Aurora’s say-so.”
“That’s strangely noble of you.”
She snorted. “It has nothing to do with being noble. You’re a former citizen of New Canterlot who very publicly chose to poison yourself with a life in the wasteland, ergo I’m choosing not to bargain with you. I’m being practical.”
“Or petty.”
Tandy’s voice startled Primrose enough to make her slip off Ginger’s display and land ass-first on the floorboards. Had it happened while they were awake, it probably would have hurt. Within the safety of Ginger’s memory, however, the only thing Primrose injured was her pride. She was on her hooves before the shame could properly sink in, her gaze stabbing vaguely in the direction of the ceiling as if to find Tandy peeking between the tin tiles. Luna’s creature had chosen not to take form, however, satisfied with monitoring their discussion with whatever incorporeal method she’d selected instead.
“You said this discussion would be private.”
“You said you would behave.”
A long pause, during which Primrose visibly struggled to keep the rising anger out of her voice before readdressing Ginger. “I apologize. What I meant to say is that I cannot agree to anything without Aurora’s expressed consent.” Then, to the ceiling. “Better?”
“Better.”
She turned to Ginger as if to ask the same question.
Ginger caught herself looking toward the ceiling too before she answered. “At the very least, I want to talk about her options. And maybe a few other things.”
“Okay,” she shrugged, “but don’t take this the wrong way, I can tell you want to build up to whatever it is you really want to ask. Maybe we skip the appetizers this time? Go straight to the main course?”
She hesitated.
“Limited time offer. Going once…”
“I want you to give her a stimpack,” she blurted, then quickly amended, “The powerful ones from the old world, like the ones Autumn Song used on me. The ones that heal everything.”
Primrose’s smile dipped. “No.”
“That’s it? No?”
“No, thank you.” She clarified, earning herself a stony glare from Ginger. “I’m being serious, Ginger. Maiden Pharma’s stimpacks are more trouble than they’re worth, and the fact that Autumn shot you up with so many and you didn’t devolve into some gibbering monster was obscenely lucky for everyone involved.
“To your other point, they are potent and they do repair significant damage so long as your body is already trying to heal it. Even if I had one lying around, Aurora wouldn’t benefit from it. Not in the way you’re expecting her to, at least.”
She smelled bullshit. “There’s absolutely no way–”
“Take no for an answer.” Primrose stared at her, her expression a warning. “Aurora’s a pureblood and I would like it to stay that way.”
She stared thoughtfully at her sewing machine, knowing the harder she pushed the closer Primrose would get to cutting this impromptu parlay short. Maybe this was why Tandy allowed Primrose to breach her dream in the first place. If she had a sense the minister might be in a generous mood, it only made sense to slip Ginger the opportunity to take advantage. 
And she had helped Primrose once before. No matter what the conniving little tyrant said, she owed her.
“If you’re not going to bargain with me, that’s fine. Let’s talk about getting you to talk to Aurora.”
Primrose’s ears perked at that. “She’s already awake?”
She shook her head. “No, but she might be by the time you arrive. In person.”
“Ooh, what a twist.” The little mare chuckled, assessing Ginger more carefully as she did. “Are you going to try to kill me?”
“Not unless you give me a reason.”
Primrose bit her bottom lip, grinning. “Uh huh. I feel like I’ve given you a few already.”
Ginger tipped her horn toward not-Aurora. “You’ve given me a big reason not to.”
Silence reigned for what felt like minutes. Then…
“Okay. I think I can set something up.”







The few ponies working in the Atrium paid Delta little mind as she crossed the vacant communal space. Most of the shops were still closed with the exception of the ones equipped to serve breakfast. She spotted Skylark loitering outside The Flour Patch with several other young pegasi. 
A team from Mechanical was busy at work installing vertical poles along the upper walkway from which blue and yellow were slated to be hung. Some of the smaller shops had signs outside advertising a variety of freshly fabricated Remembrance Day merchandise ranging from pins to leg bands to a limited edition set of tiny statuettes depicting the ministry mares standing on individual faux wood pedestals. Just because the world ended didn’t mean someone wasn’t willing to make a quick bit.
Delta climbed the steps to the upper level and rounded the walkway to the overmare’s office. The door stood open for her. Seated at her finely carved desk, Spitfire looked seconds away from dozing off.
She tapped her hoof against the doorframe. “Knock-knock?”
Oh Celestia, she thought, it’s contagious.
“Shut the door,” Spitfire murmured. “Grab a chair.”
She settled into one of the plush seats facing the desk. “So, yeah, the whole thing with Varnish is actually–”
Spitfire lifted a feather to stop her. Eesh. Even the bags under her eyes had bags. “The two of you can torture each other on your own time. You and I need to talk about something else.”
“Oh. Sure.” She could already guess where this was going. Are you sure you can’t attend the celebration? Such-and-so will be there the entire day, why can’t you spare fifteen minutes for appearances?
Spitfire unlocked a drawer and pulled out a stack of papers from inside. They landed on the desk’s polished surface with a slap. Even from where she sat, Delta recognized the formatting at the top of the stack. Her skin went hot.
“I need you to tell me why you thought this was a good idea,” Spitfire said, pushing the stack across the desk with the edge of her hoof. The traffic report from Pioneer’s first few hours lay bare for both of them to see.
Delta licked her lips, picking up the papers between her still damp feathers. “I… got bored?”
Her overmare leaned back in her chair, face pinched with open frustration. “Delta you are a brilliant mare, but right now you’re holding the trophy for the stupidest thing anyone in this Stable has ever done. I need you to take this seriously and tell me what you thought you were trying to do.”
She set the printouts in her lap as she sat up a little straighter. “There’s enough infrastructure left out there for ponies to broadcast messages to each other. I thought maybe… maybe we’re missing an opportunity. Maybe more of Equestria survived than Stable-Tec thinks there is.”
“I promise you there isn’t.” 
Up went her hackles. “How do you know?”
“Because I worked in the MoA. I was there when the first prototype bomb was detonated.” She let out a tired chuckle. “A fucking prototype, and the explosion could have flattened a small city. You and I both saw the bombs that went off ten years ago and those were no prototypes. Those were ecosystem killers gift-wrapped by Vhannans. Those ponies you’ve been hearing less and less of on the radio aren’t surviving, Delta. They’re dead just like everything else we left behind.”
Delta chewed the inside of her lip. What bombs did Spitfire see from the safety of the Stable door? 
“Well,” she murmured, “agree to disagree.”
Spitfire dropped her hoof onto her desk, hard. “No. This isn’t a debate. This virus you made, this Pioneer? You need to kill that thing before someone out there notices it and puts this entire Stable in danger.”
“Why, so they don't come looking for us and find the corpses piled up outside?”
She swallowed when Spitfire closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, her breath wavering as she exhaled. "You saw?" 
"Sorry." She pinched the bridge of her muzzle. "Shit, Spitfire, I didn't mean to say it like that."
Too late for apologies now. She could feel the air being sucked out of the room. Spitfire just sat there, her expression bordering on anger and disgust but for which one of them Delta couldn't be sure. 
"Go ahead," she said, voice shaking. "Tell me what you think you saw."
Hesitation stopped up her throat. She'd forfeit a year's dessert rations to rewind the last few minutes. Meanwhile, Spitfire waited. 
"I found it by accident," she admitted. "I don't know what I saw."
"But you think it's my fault those ponies died out there regardless."
She stared into her lap to avoid Spitfire's piercing gaze. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "You pointed a gun at them, Spits."
From the corner of her eye she watched Spitfire turn in her chair and gesture a wing toward the rifle she'd always kept mounted on the wall behind her. It rested on a pair of polished brass hooks mounted to a long slab of old driftwood, a permanent fixture in her office since day one. 
"This gun, you mean." 
Spitfire leaned back and lifted the weapon from its display, bringing it forward so she could lay it across her desk. Delta looked up at it with discomfort, never having been this close to a real firearm before. 
"It used to belong to my dad. He and his brother used to run a farm bordering the Everfree, and this is what kept him safe from Timber Wolves." She leaned forward and did something to remove the shallow magazine. Then she showed Delta the end where the bullets presumably came out of. It was empty. 
"Magic never ran very strong on his side of the family, so he carried this instead. My parents didn't have a lot of money so when I graduated from the academy he gifted his rifle to me. Figured even if it was made for a unicorn like him, most stallions wouldn't be able to tell the difference. He was always worried someone bigger and stronger than me might not take no for an answer and wanted to make sure I could protect myself."
Delta pursed her lips as she watched her put the magazine back into the gun. "That doesn't really explain what I saw." 
"What you saw was an ugly but necessary step to keep our Stable safe." 
"We had room for them!"
"And I had to make a FUCKING CHOICE–" Spitfire caught herself, grimacing as she gnawed on her lip to battle back raw emotion.
Delta waited like a soldier noticing her hoof on a landmine. Several long moments passed in pensive silence. Spitfire cleared her throat. 
"You don't understand the decisions I've had to make to keep our Stable safe. If I hadn't closed that door, sh… Stable-Tec would have done it for me. So don't you dare look at me like I haven't screamed myself to sleep every night since, because I have." She blinked away the haze of angry tears. "I can't undo what you saw, Delta. I wish I could, but I can't. The only fucking thing I can do now is keep the powers that be happy so that you can all thrive down here, and right now that means telling you to kill that virus and erase every byte it sent from the servers."
This must be what it'd felt like to be Apogee way back when, getting into a little mischief without knowing how much strain it put on her loner mom. Chasing that rat of hers around the junkyard, squeezing what little pleasure she could find during those every-other weekend visits, only to bump into a busted up engine faring and watch helplessly as it toppled over taking out half of Delta's fence in the process. Then came the shouting, the tears, the shamefaced apologies. 
She couldn't have guessed her quiet side project would whip Spitfire up like this, because she hadn't known how many plates the overmare was balancing. 
Still, her answer for shutting the door on hundreds of refugees didn't cut it. There were corpses at the door, right now, right this moment that Spitfire decided to let die. There was something she was trying to keep her from finding out. 
Fuck her pity party. 
"Okay, Spits," she nodded, trying her damndest to look sympathetic. "I'm sorry. It'll take a few hours to write the kill script, but I'll get rid of it. No one will know."
Spitfire deflated a little, the exhaustion more pronounced on her face than ever. "Thank you, Delta. I really wish I had a friend like you back in Canterlot."
It took every ounce of strength she had not to climb over that desk and slap her across the mouth. “Hah. Better late than never, right?”
She waited, but Spitfire had nothing to add. Her eyes had grown distant and thoughtful, making it occur to Delta that she might really be glimpsing the real Spitfire. Not the stoic, professionally distant overmare who kept everyone down here at leg’s reach. As fucked in the head as she had to be to do what she did, there had been something real there just now. 
Regret.
Her ears perked when Spitfire spoke again. 
“You know what’s really stupid?”
She shook her head, watching her as she lifted the rifle off the desk and hesitated a moment before returning it to its place on the wall.
“I named it.” Her chair hissed as she sat back down, her eyes still held hostage by the weapon. “I actually made sure it got cataloged in the Stable archives so that the next overseer knows why I closed the door on them.”
A pause. The air started to feel thick in her lungs. “What’s it called?”
Spitfire swallowed, her voice barely a whisper.
“Desperate Times.”







Okay.
Okay, keep it together, Delta. Just stay cool. 
“Morning, Delta.”
“GOOD MORN–” The dappled pink mare flinched away with an uneasy laugh. Just keep walking. “I mean, good morning! Sorry, I, uh… I gotta pee.”
“Oh. Good luck?”
Fuuuck.
She came to a stop outside I.T. and turned the door switch hard enough to startle the pegasi working inside. They offered uneasy greetings as she hurried past their desks and into her own cramped little office where she collapsed into her chair and blew out the breath she’d been holding.
She set her hooves on either side of her dormant terminal with a firm clok.
“Okay. She’s a head case. She’s a fucking lunatic and she killed a holy fuckton of ponies and she knows you know and now you’re talking to yourself, Celestia’s tits.”
It might have been funny if she wasn’t so terrified. 
Her thoughts were spinning. If Spitfire could just let ponies die and Stable-Tec was fine with it, what else could she do? What happened if she decided she didn’t like Delta knowing what she knew? Sure there were the cells up in Security, all fucking three of them, but she couldn’t just drop her in one of them and throw away the key. The deputies would want to know when they could get rid of her, sooner than later. Her gaze fell on the heavy pneumatic door sealing her office. 
Her throat went dry as she stood up and approached the door. The switch clicked beneath her hoof and the door, like always, hissed up into the ceiling. She stood there fully aware her techs were watching her from their desks, probably wondering why their boss was just standing there looking like she’d escaped death. 
She swallowed, hit the switch again, and shuddered as the door dropped shut. A few key words to Millie and Spitfire could turn any room Delta walked through into a prison cell. The manual backup could be locked.
“Millie?”
A soft ping. “How may I assist you?”
She returned to her desk flustered, but not enough to start up her terminal and begin typing. “Send a critical priority ticket down to Mechanical. I want the hydraulic door to my office torn out. Get me something on hinges.”
“Your ticket has been entered into the queue. Is there anything else–”
“No.” 
Pioneer’s data stream appeared on the screen, still dutifully scouring the broken networks of a supposedly broken world. But the data coming in was slower now. More manageable, thanks to the filter she’d written. Now she could focus on what was truly important.

Pinged 23.22.51.120 [JSITermNet0409].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 0 successful, 4 failed. [100% loss].
- - - - - - All [JSITermNet0409] connections have timed out.
Pinged 23.22.52.120 [JSITermNet0410].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 3 successful, 1 failed. [25% loss].
- - - - - - [JSITermNet0410] logged as active node.
- - - - - - [JSITermNet0410] added.
- - - - - - pioneer.zip delivered to [JSITermNet0410].
Pinged 23.22.53.120 [JSITermNet0411].
- - - 4 packets sent.
- - - 1 successful, 3 failed. [75% loss].
- - - - - - [JSITermNet0411] logged as active node.
- - - - - - [JSITermNet0411] added.
- - - - - - pioneer.zip delivered to [JSITermNet0411]...

It didn’t surprise her the least bit that Jet would have dumped a few hundred million bits into hardening his network. Once his little postgraduate startup caught the attention of investors, cash flow ceased to be a problem for him. Benefits of “drawing inspiration” from her rocket designs back when he was still interested in pumping mistakes into–
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed the anger away. Apogee had been a good kid. The best kid. The mistake had been letting herself stay angry for all those years. If she’d known what was coming she might have tried harder to be less awful. And maybe she did try, a little, there in the end. 
They all had.
She set her jaw. Spitfire wanted every trace of Pioneer scrubbed from the servers. It could be done in ten, maybe fifteen minutes but she’d bought herself a few hours. Plenty of time to do what she needed to do.
Plenty of time. Her feathers settled over the keys and she went to work. 
Jet’s overengineered terminal network replied nearly immediately to her query with a simple prompt for employee credentials. It would take more than an apocalypse and a decade of steady decay to knock his generators offline. Stable-Tec wasn’t the only company on the market with the guile to plan for an unpleasant future, nor were they the Ministry of Technology’s only customer for talisman-related power supplies. JetStream Industries’ backup generators might hold out for another decade, maybe even two, but nothing approaching the longevity of Delta’s new home. She knew full well how annoyed Jet had been when the MoT denied his request for the new Mark IV talismans, calling his company a “nonessential wartime asset.” She remembered because she’d made every effort to remind him of it before he convinced her to work for him.
She entered her old credentials and smiled a little when a response came welcoming her back. The simple greeting was quickly replaced by a menu screen she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. Granted it was a lot greener than she remembered. Jet had been on cloud nine when he announced the company would be going to full color terminal displays, despite color television being around for how many years already. Robronco could brag all they wanted about their state-of-the-art computational marvels, but the pony in charge of keeping their standard terminals operating on a heady diet of retina-scarring green font should have gotten fired well before the bombs fell.
Her first instinct was a good one. She opened her inbox.
Neatly stacked rows of subject lines and familiar names populated the screen. Ponies who years ago asked for her input on the second generation vacuum suit designs, a press interview request from a reporter whose name she didn’t recognize anymore, invitations to more office parties than any one pony could attend, and that obnoxiously persistent reply-all chain that kept getting revived by half the launch complex. A screenshot of mundanity. A reminder that some things never changed. 
At the very top waited an unread message from Jet. Several, apparently, given the innocuous little “3” nested into a bubble ahead of his name. It had no subject line, something out of character for a stallion who didn’t understand the concept of brevity and was teased mercilessly by Apogee for his obscenely wordy messages. She opened the first of the chain and her brow dropped when nothing beside Jet’s automatic signature appeared in the box. It took her a moment to notice the untitled attachment. 
Against her better judgment, she opened it.
Her terminal went momentarily blank. When it flickered back to life, Jet’s right nostril practically swallowed the frame. She made a noise and let it play anyway.
Feathers hissed and scraped over the camera’s microphone as the angle shifted down, his jaw dropping briefly into view as his panting breath fogged the lens. For a split second Delta thought she knew what she was seeing and had her feather poised over the escape key, but then she noticed the dark crust smeared across his muzzle and stopped herself. Was he bleeding? When did he…?
She glanced at the date the message was sent.
November 3rd, 1087 - 3:12am
Her heart dropped as the rustling and Jet’s heavy breathing filtered from her terminal. She leaned back in her chair, touching the side of her hoof to her mouth as she watched her ex-husband struggling with the camera a full three days after the bombs had fallen. Wherever he was, it was dark. She could hear cables being pulled tight. More grunting. Feathers and fur pressed into the screen as he walked with the camera tucked beneath his wing. Then the screen swung around again. Delta could have sworn she spotted a refrigerator pass through the frame before Jet set the camera onto a table with a vaguely familiar countertop and cabinets in the background.
The line of cabinets had come free from their wall mounts on one side allowing the entire unit to slope down toward the cluttered countertop like a ramp. Jet rounded the table and pulled out a plastic chair, his face haggard but determined as he leaned forward to verify the camera was working. A dim light reflected in his tired eyes, and he smiled.
“Hello, world.”







November 3rd, 1077
Three Days After

“Whatever’s left of it, anyway.”
Jet Stream stared into the security camera’s black lens, feeling ridiculous. No one was going to see this. No one who could make a difference. 
He sighed, folding his hooves over his stomach as he surveyed his mausoleum for the hundredth time. Which break room was this? They all looked the same. Fold-out tables, plastic chairs, the kitchenette. All intended to be easy to clean yet always speckled with spilled coffee and crumbs. By the time Diamond ripped him away from the microphone and dragged him out of Flight Control, the light coming through the windows had already turned green. Those last minutes felt like swimming against a riptide of impossible facts.
A balefire detonation had been detected.
Cloudbreaker was being hijacked by one of its own crew.
SOLUS was maneuvering on its own.
When the bomb dropped into Las Pegasus, Diamond Gavel used those last precious seconds of her life to light her horn and throw Jet through the nearest door. He remembered her mouth forming into a horrified circle when the shockwave rammed through the launch complex and turned the empty air of the hallway into a hurricane of green fire and shredding debris. The last thing he saw was the door being violently ripped from its hinge and flung toward him.
He looked toward the mound of concrete, rebar and carpet that had fallen in from the floor above. Diamond was buried somewhere behind all of that. 
Turning his gaze upward, his smile vanished. Who was he trying to fool.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” He chuckled dryly and set his chin on the table. “I doubt anyone’s going to come looking for me here. Feels like rescuing the CEO might not be a big priority right now.”
He brought his Pip-Buck close to his face where he assumed the camera would see it. 
“Just about everyone made it downstairs before the bomb hit. Network’s still up too.” He looked at the slow trickle of messages still flowing into the device. He sighed. “They think I’m dead. I’m not going out of my way to correct them. Better for emergency services to focus on getting them out without worrying about the PR, right?”
A low, groaning rumble resonated above the deformed ceiling. He could only assume the building had partially collapsed in on itself, the settling rubble making any hope of rescue feel all the more fictional.
He tapped a key on his Pip-Buck, switching to the live feed from the camera he’d just pried off its wall mount. Good. He was still recording.
“You’d be proud of them, Delta. They’re not going down without a fight. It’s not just survival, either. They saw what I saw and they know there’s something off about how everything went down. I don’t think many of them expect to survive much longer. From what I’m reading, they’re just trying to put enough pieces together to give our dear princesses a parting fuck you. Make it a little less easy for them to pop up next week and blame all this shit on our science. Seems like something you’d be a fan of.”
He paused, unsure what to say. His stomach rumbled.
“I’m going to go. More digging to do.” He hesitated and pulled his hoof off the table. “Actual digging, I mean. I’ll, uh, talk more soon.”







She watched Jet hit a key on his Pip-Buck and the video ended. There was something unsettling about seeing him so… unsure. He’d spent the latter half of his life seeking out crowds, looking for opportunities to be seen. To advertise himself to prospective clients, to high society investors, and oftentimes to mares half his age. Even in college she sometimes had to peel him off of her with a spatula. 
Jet hated being alone to a fault. Yet he had gone out of his way to keep himself hidden from the survivors trapped just a few floors beneath him because he didn’t want his presence to eclipse the needs of the many. She swallowed the lump in her throat and opened the next message, quietly wishing it hadn’t taken the end of the world for him to find his decency.







November 4th, 1077
Four Days After

Jet sat down in front of the camera, propped up now by the empty lunchbox of an employee whose name he didn’t know. Big fan of wasting bits on vegetables with the friendly green organic stickers, whoever they were. Not that he was in any position to be picky.
He debated making this recording at all. He was just parroting the work done by the dwindling survivors downstairs. No break room fridges down there to keep them fed and watered. Their own personal journals gave him a grim enough picture of their situation to convince him not to fill the gaps with his own imagination. Half a dozen had died this morning when they mistook an electrical conduit for a water pipe. Luckily the breakers tripped before any damage could be done to the backup generator.
It didn’t matter. The survivors downstairs were discovering the same problem Jet had. Digging through the rubble only caused more to slide down to take its place. Last night he’d gotten close to where he thought the doorway was buried, but the ceiling above just peeled toward the floor even more to backfill hours of painstaking labor while creating a new problem. The shifting rubble was starting to smell faintly of ozone and when he went near it he could taste metal. 
Grimacing, he pressed a feather to his Pip-Buck and turned to the unblinking lens.
“Hey, Delta. Remember the intern who kept asking everyone on our floor if we needed anything to drink? The cream soda guy?”
He reached down the table and showed the camera an empty can, giving it a waggle between his feathers. “I found his stash. He’s got six cases of this stuff sitting in the back of the fridge, and it’s all diet. Who does that?”
He tried to smile, but wasn’t up to making the effort. 
He flicked the can off the table and sighed.
“So, it wasn’t the princesses,” he murmured, shrugging with genuine disbelief for what felt like the millionth time today. He checked the time on his Pip-Buck to be sure. Yeah, it was still today. “Canterlot got hit, too. Don’t ask me how I know.”
His hoof tapped against the table, his vision blurring.
“Who am I kidding? If you’re still out there somewhere you’ll go digging around for it yourself and… I don’t think you deserve that.” He grit his teeth and looked away. His public relations officer would be losing her shit if she saw him right now. Unprofessional. Sloppy. You’re losing the confidence of the stockholders. He cleared his throat, hard enough to hurt. “They pulled the footage from Apogee’s helmet. The, ah… the relay at the solar array carried a clearer signal than what we got here at Flight Control, so I guess that’s a good thing. Plenty of versions for ponies to find if the ones here get corrupted. Trust me, though. Don’t put yourself through watching it. It’s…”
Words failed him. He blew out a breath and pushed his feathers over the top of his mane in a feeble attempt to recenter himself. Out of everything he was capable of saying, his daughter’s obituary was not on that list.
“You were right, Delta. All the bullshit in the papers about Vhanna having our missile tech was exactly that. Fucking bullshit.” He scrubbed his nose, the smell of radiation making his sinuses itch. “It wasn’t them. It was us. Apogee watched it all happen from orbit and you could see the fucking launch plume before Cloudsdale went up. Those were our missiles striking our cities. Canterlot is just gone. Equestria is fucking gone. Maybe Celestia and Luna got to a Stable in time but even if they did, there’s nothing left. Someone pulled the trigger but it wasn’t them. It makes no sense for it to have been them.”
He rested his head between his shaking hooves. 
“I keep thinking to myself… what if it was us?” The last words nearly lodged in his throat, but he forced them out. He curled a wing and gave the flat of the table a weak thump. “It had to have been. I just… someone turned my fucking satellite into a doomsday weapon. Someone modified it right under our noses without us finding out. But they would have had to falsify so many reports. Not one pony. A whole fucking team.
“Delta, I’m terrified. What if I’m the reason? What if I pushed back against the princesses too hard and inspired someone to kill enough ponies that the old traditions would–”
A tickle in his throat grew into an abrupt cough. He grimaced as it sank into his chest, forcing him to abandon his train of thought just to cope. When he finished, he could taste the ozone more strongly.
“Maybe I’m oversimplifying,” he admitted, his voice a touch ragged. “Maybe, but I don’t think I am. Several someones in this company weaponized SOLUS without any of us noticing, and I’ll bet every bit I own that they’re the ones who launched the missiles.”
His cheeks puffed with a smaller cough. Ignoring it, he looked directly into the camera.
“And if you’re watching, whoever you are, be very afraid of that big blue sky. SOLUS was my family’s legacy. If I find out where you’re hiding, and believe me I will, there isn’t a thing on this planet that will save you.”







November 6th, 1077
Six Days After

 “I’m not feeling too great today. I’m no doctor, but something tells me it has something to do with the lack of food plus the radiation.” He chuckled at the camera, unsure who he was even talking to anymore. He scratched at his cheek and frowned when one of his primaries fell out of his wing and into his lap. “Case in point, huh?”
An exhausted sigh slid past his lips. He wasn’t getting out of here. He knew that now. Even if he did, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Most of the survivors in the basement were dead, or had just given up on their last research. He flipped through the menus on his Pip-Buck to see if any of them had said anything in the last several hours, but network traffic had slowed to a halt when the water main they’d been drinking from ran dry.
He scrolled through the last message on the bulletin board they’d created. Apparently one of the building’s custodians, a two year vet who survived the Vhannan trenches, remembered his stash of military issued StimPacks he’d brought home after being discharged. He’d gone to his locker to get them thinking they might cure dehydration like they seemed to cure everything else.
Whatever the results had been, Jet hadn’t a clue. The basement survivors had since gone silent.
He picked up the fallen feather and flicked it onto the hill of empty cream soda cans on the floor. 
“I’ve been thinking.” Pure habit had him lift his hooves in mock surrender, despite him being the only one in the room. “I know, I know. Dangerous words, but hear me out. Someone made SOLUS into a weapon and then they just left it there, in orbit. I checked the telemetry. They parked it after it finished off Vhanna and Griffinstone. Right? So what if they’re not done with it yet? Let’s say I’m the big bad guy–”
Too much talking. His diaphragm rebelled and crumpled in on itself, jarring him into a ratcheting series of coughs. Tears beaded on his eyelids as he nearly retched from the effort, surer now than ever that he was coming apart at the seams. 
“Fuck,” he gasped, his whole body shaking from the expense. “Sorry. Fuck. Sorry. What was I… oh, right.”
He spat a gobbit of blood onto the floor with all the others. “So I’m the bogeyhorse and I decided it’s all gotta go. Bombs away and kill as much as I possibly can. Horns, stripes, wings, beaks, who gives a crap. Blow it all up. Boom.” He spread his hooves apart in front of his face for illustration. “And I succeeded, right? It’s all dead now. The whole fucking planet as far as I can tell. So why would I care about where SOLUS is in orbit? I don’t need it anymore. Right?”
He slammed his hoof against the table, startling a short series of wet coughs from his burning lungs. “Wrong!” he wheezed, wiping the bloodied spittle from his lip. “Fucking wrong! I put my toy back where it belongs because I know I’m going to play with it again. Except the only way to play with it is to talk to it, and the only way to talk to it is to send commands up through the dishes on the roof of the building I just knocked over. So what does that leave? Narrow band communication. And what can’t you use if you don’t know exactly where your personal death ray is orbiting? Narrow band fucking communication.”
Hooves shaking, he lifted his Pip-Buck for the camera to see. 
“Well guess what? I built this company and that is still my satellite.” He turned the screen up to his eyes and began keying in the series of commands he’d authored after realizing the obvious. “Now we get to find out if you had enough brains to build your own transmitter, or if you lazy fucks thought you could piggyback off of mine.”
With a keypress, he issued the command. It took several seconds for the network to pick it up, but once it did he toggled over to the next screen where SOLUS’s positioning data gently ticked along as it progressed through its assigned orbit. The orbit its hijackers had locked it into for safe keeping.
The menu wasn’t interactive. He couldn’t push a button and drag it through the sky on a whim. No button would cause it to self-destruct. Exhausted, sick, and certain he was sitting inside his own tomb, it was tempting to want that. To have a button he could press that would make the last days of his life feel less messy. To place a period at the end of his sentence instead of another comma. Except he couldn’t. 
It wasn’t just a bastardized satellite floating out there in the vacuum of space. Their daughter was up there, too. And so as he ran the calculations, doing his best with what little he had to ensure the correct reaction control thrusters were armed, he did so with a singular principle in mind. 
He would never abandon her again.
With tears in his eyes, he smiled at the camera and said, “Safe journey, kiddo.”







November 6th, 1077
SOLUS

Through the lens of Apogee’s motionless helmet, many things occurred.
First were the stuttering puffs of pressurized nitrogen pluming out from the gas ports in the satellite’s skin. It crystallized in the vacuum of space like January snow.
Second came the slow, graceful roll of the gargantuan machine. It creaked along its new axis with a gentility that would convince the casual observer that the whole universe had chosen to move itself. But there were no observers here anymore. The last conscious breaths on its silver skin had been taken days ago. It moved in solitude, unseen by the soot stained marble it had flown from.
Third in line, the ports fired again. Flecks of ice peppered the side of Apogee’s suit before floating off to chase the others. The magnets keeping her fixed in place hardly noticed the shift in momentum as Equestria and all of its neighbors in misery rolled overhead, a smooth gray pearl suspended among a field of stars.
Only when the last degrees of motion bled away and the planet above hung still in its reluctant passenger’s visor was the weapon prepared to execute its final command. 
With beautiful synchrony, each and every reaction port throughout SOLUS’s superstructure fired. It lurched forward, pulling the starbound mare with it as it skated forward on powdery threads of ice. And as it built up momentum, trading mass for velocity as it curved into the planet’s shadow, Equestria was a little further away. Then further away still as they slid away from one another in the sun’s blinding light. The smoky marble continued to drift away long after the last flakes of nitrogen were gone, the two set upon opposing trajectories that would take Apogee far away from those who disabused her of the one dream which kept her chin tipped toward the sky. 
She would inevitably return, diving back toward her home with the speed of a visitor who didn’t want to stay too long. Only long enough to be near those very few who loved her before escaping again into the endless sky, hunted relentlessly across the centuries by those who wanted her back.







October 29th, 1087
Delta’s Office

Ping. Ping. Ping.
“Good morning, Delta Vee. The time is 5:55am. Would you like to delay your next alarm until 6:05am?”
She didn’t bother to answer. She hadn’t slept. She’d barely eaten. Her mane tangled around her ears in clumps and she only had a passing awareness of the sour odor of sweat and stress that permeated her office. She only took her eyes away from her terminal screen long enough to find the mostly empty bottle on her desk, an expensive brandy Spitfire had given out as gifts on their first Remembrance Day, prompting Delta to confide her history of alcoholism once the festivities were over. She had tried to return the bottle but Spitfire insisted she keep it. If for no other reason, she said, than as a reminder that she was a survivor.
Not wanting to push the issue, she kept the bottle with the intention of dumping it out and keeping the container. She couldn’t remember why she hadn’t, and the bottle wound up buried at the bottom of her desk. Now she was reaching for it again. 
She took a hard pull, winced, and put it back down.
She never listened to Jet before, so why start? She found the footage he told her not to and played it anyway. She watched her daughter carrying the talismans around the circumference of the satellite, installing each one by one. She watched Apogee’s helmet swivel when Jet asked her to look up at the planet and verify Cloudsdale was still there. Heard her breath quicken when more pinpoints of green light bloomed across Equestria like newborn stars, then sat in silent horror as she watched the moment pass when Apogee realized she was being left behind. She heard her baby sob helpless nonsense as everything she knew burned in front of her eyes, then scream as SOLUS slid above Vhanna and poured death over the continent with surgical precision.
And then she watched her daughter’s father stare at his Pip-Buck, tears shining in his red-rimmed eyes as he sent Apogee off on a new course known only to him. He forgot to turn off the camera when he stood and walked out of frame, leaving her there to stare at a crooked row of cabinets. But something he said had stuck with her and she couldn’t shake it no matter how hard she tried. 
His absolute certainty that JetStream Aerospace had an enemy within checked too many boxes to ignore. SOLUS hadn’t only been hijacked, it had to have been fundamentally modified. One pony, no matter how clever, didn’t stand a chance at making those changes unnoticed. There would have needed to be an effort on an interdepartmental scale while still managing to keep the rest of the company in the dark. That level of coordination didn’t just appear out of thin air between a wingful of disgruntled employees. An undertaking like this required meticulous coordination, deep pockets, and…
Her train of thought slid off the rails like jelly across buttered toast. She picked up her favorite pen, the refillable one with the snappy clicker, and used it to jab the notepad beside her terminal and drag it toward her. Unnecessary? Sure. But it made her feel a little better, so fuck it.
Several rows of hash marks filled the top lines of the pad in neat little strings, clusters of five adding up to one hundred and forty-nine. She’d made sure to write the total alongside the letter “L.” Below that began a new tally which, midway through counting, she’d needed to separate into columns. Three in total hastily written in black ink: Equestria, Crystal Empire, Badlands. Beside this new set of marks was the letter “D.” Launches and Detonations.
Her eyes throbbed from the unbroken hours she’d just spent staring at the individual pixels of her terminal screen. At first it had been easy to pick out the explosions. They were impossible to miss. But the longer the bombing stretched on the more often Apogee had looked away from the planet’s surface, its reflection in her visor Delta’s only reference for the detonations taking place in those intervals. But she couldn’t settle for just being sure of it. She needed evidence. Raw numbers she could present to the Stable as proof. They deserved to know who had been responsible for the death of everything. Not Vhanna. An Equestrian.
But not until she had the data to back it up.
So she sat there, watching pixels. Waiting for flashes of white that turned emerald green only seconds after, confirming one detonation after the other. She bent toward the screen so she wouldn’t see the larger afterimage of her daughter’s face, those ruby eyes wide in terror as she watched everything burn beneath her, still unaware that her efforts to bring SOLUS online meant the death of two more nations and countless billions.
One thirty and nine detonations in Equestria.
Four detonations in the Crystal Empire.
One detonation in the Badlands.
Her tallies accounted for all but five missiles. Either their explosions had been obscured by the widening plumes of debris, they had failed to detonate at all, or a mix of both. It hardly mattered. JSA’s launch detection systems had separately agreed on an aggregate total of one hundred and forty-nine individual deployments across Equestria - data that hadn’t been accessed by anyone since those same missiles came back down. It was irrefutable proof that the ministries and Stable-Tec…
Her entire ass nearly left her chair when her office door heaved open with an abrupt hiss. She grabbed for the bottle but missed her target, managing to slap it off her desk only to watch it shatter on the floor beside it.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Spitfire stood in the open doorway with a perplexed frown on her face. Shame wasted no time seeping into every ounce of Delta as she watched her overmare put together what she’d interrupted. Her gaze lingered on the broken glass and the amber liquid speckling the floor around it. There hadn’t been enough booze left to form an actual puddle.
“Oh, Delta…”
She bit back her habitual flavors of “fuck you” and pushed out of her chair, bracing herself against her desk with one wing as she bent down and started picking up glass with the other. “What do you want?”
Spitfire’s hooves ticked toward her to help. She grudgingly watched her pick up her wastebasket and set it down between them. 
“I wanted to check in to see where you were on the thing we talked about yesterday.” The door timed out and slid shut, prompting some clarity. “Were you able to shut down your virus?”
She dropped a chunk of glass into the trash. “Yes.”
Her tone made Spitfire pause before picking up some smaller shards. “And you erased it?”
“Yep.” She didn’t make eye contact. What few brain cells she had that weren’t saturated in liquor right now strongly advised against deploying her poker face. “S’all gone. Pioneer, the data stream, Equestria, Vhanna…”
Slow down. The brandy was making her feathers stick together. She blinked, annoyed by the effort it took to focus on the bits of glass and what she was saying. Then she laughed.
“What did Stable-Tec have against the gryphons, anyway?”
Spitfire chuckled, flicking glass and brandy into the waste bin. “Nothing that I know of.” When she didn’t get a response, she added, “Are you okay?”
“Equestria bombed itself,” she blurted.
“Um.” Spitfire’s feathers slowed. “What?”
“I saw it,” she continued, unable to stop now that she was saying it out loud. “I pulled the footage from Apogee’s EVA suit and we watched the bombs explode like… like fireworks.”
The overmare grew still. “You watched footage…”
“One hundred and forty-nine missiles. I counted them. I can prove they were ours and that Vhanna didn’t launch a fucking one of them because they never had them to begin with.” She sat up on the floor, dragging her brandy-soaked feathers across her mane as the video played again in her mind. “And they turned SOLUS into this… thing. I think it was Stable-Tec. I think they knew the war was going to end on its own and they were going to wind up sitting on all of these Stables burning holes in their coin purses and-and somehow they got into the government and Jet’s company and…”
“Woah, woah, woah!” Delta jerked at the weight of Spitfire’s wings dropping over her shoulders. “Slow down. What footage, Delta? Where exactly did you find it?”
She frowned at Spitfire. Hadn’t she been listening? 
“I pulled it off JSA’s network.”
Spitfire’s grip tightened. Her expression darkened. “You what.”
“I downloaded it.”
“Fucking…”
She flinched as Spitfire lurched to her hooves and walked a fast, tight circle in the middle of the office. When she stopped, her gaze locked on Delta’s terminal as if the machine had personally insulted her. She closed the short distance to her desk and wrapped her feathers around the monitor, wrenching it across the polished surface and through the air barely inches away from Delta’s head. It impacted the wall with a dense crunch.
“FUCK!” she bellowed at the broken terminal, then wheeled on Delta in the same breath. “You FUCKING nosey drunk! I TOLD YOU TO DELETE IT.”
Delta rose to her hooves, backing away from the approaching mare. “I wi– I did!”
“You fucking liar. You went DIGGING and they’re going to know.”
“Stable-Tec can’t…?”
Her backside hit the wall. Before she could react, Spitfire had closed the gap and was nose to nose with her, the relentless heat of unbound anger pouring off her in waves. 
“I. Don’t. Give. A. Shit. About. Stable-Tec.” She grabbed Delta by the jaw, her feathers clamping her muzzle shut. “Stable-Tec is dead, just like your fucking kid!”
Her mind raced. Suddenly the brandy felt like a bad idea. She couldn’t stitch together anything in a way that made sense. All she could focus on was the rising fear breaking through the anger in Spitfire’s eyes. Something was dawning on her as she stood there, trapping Delta against the wall. A mare who had just realized a bigger predator was headed her way.
The overmare’s lip twitched into a contrite smirk. “Since you’re keeping score now, I never had anything against the gryphons. Things are just easier now that they aren’t a part of the equation.”
Spitfire released her grip on her jaw and turned to walk away. Delta stared after her, eyes widening with understanding. But by the time she found her voice, Spitfire was already at the door.
“It was you?”
“Look who’s still sober enough for context clues,” she said.
Her heart clamored against her ribs as the pieces clicked together. She’d never questioned why Spitfire had been at the Stable ready to guide the survivors inside because it was how they all had been trained to expect the evacuation to proceed. The noble overmare waiting to guide her residents to safety. It was a picture the pegasi of Stable 10 had seen on pamphlets, on registration packets, and printed on murals gracing the corridors. No one had the luxury of time to question how faithfully Spitfire and her Wonderbolts recreated that image when they arrived. 
No one stopped to ask why they had been there at all, prepared to guard the door while so many evacuees had been forced to shed their belongings just to stay ahead of the bombs. They were all too grateful to be alive.
Too blinded by their own luck to realize Spitfire had been ready for the death of Equestria in a way only the pegasus squeezing the trigger could be.
“Millie, disable all voice command access to this office.”
The hackles rose on Delta’s neck as Spitfire opened the door and smiled back at her. “You two-faced bitch, it was all you!”
She pulsed her wings, launching herself at the departing overmare, but the door slid shut and she slammed into its immovable bulk with a furious shout of pain and frustration. A deep, metallic thunk resonated from deep within. She slapped her wing over the switch but instead of letting her through, the steel slab emitted an irritated chirrup. 
It was locked.
Panic formed a stone in her throat. “Millie, unlock the door.”
“Voice command access is currently disabled.”
She hit the switch again. Another angry buzz. The door held firm.
“Millie,” she repeated, tears in her eyes now, “unlock the door!”
“Voice command access is currently–” A pause, followed by the cheerful tone of the Stable public announcement system. “Attention: All residents presently in or near the IT wing, please proceed calmly to the Atrium hall. A hazardous spill has been detected. Please proceed calmly to the Atrium hall. A hazardous spill has been detected. Please…”
Delta’s hooves slammed against the door. No one answered. She looked down at her Pip-Buck and frantically began navigating to her messaging tab and groaned with dawning horror when the device suddenly stopped responding to her inputs. The screen went black, replaced with Stable-Tec’s cheery green cartoon mascot frozen in a thoughtful pose over the words: Access Restricted.
“No, no, no!” She spun in a circle, eyes wide, understanding perfectly well what Spitfire was doing. She stared up at the immovable door and screamed, “HELP!! LET ME OUT!!”
Nothing. 
Silence. 
Her office had become her cell.







January 19th, 1077
1:35pm

Primrose keyed the main floor of the Ministry of Morale and the elevator hummed into motion around her.
“Spitfire has some concerns regarding the MoT’s partnership with Blackhood Dynamics when you’re finished here. Afterward, I’d like to sit down over dinner and discuss the new narrative the editors of The Applewood Reporter are pushing.” The lithely built stallion beside her squinted at the metal clip board hovering just off the end of his nose, a genuine quill scratching a diagonal line across a short, encrypted memo that to anyone outside their Enclave would appear to be gibberish. Inkspot had a knack for recognizing and decoding simple ciphers in his head, especially the ones he created himself. It was part of the reason Rarity had selected him as her personal aide, and exactly why Primrose had recruited him into her steadily growing organization. Inkspot was one of many blind spots within the Ministry of Image, but of the many magic users pulled into the Enclave he was easily the most invaluable.
She refrained from showing her discomfort as Inkspot skimmed the last of the sheet, pulled it away from the clipboard and swarmed a black aura of magic around the document. The paper quickly dissolved within the complex spell until nothing remained. The spell faded and he cleared his throat as a mote of lingering magic tugged his neatly tailored vest straight against his chest, the tiny blue diamonds pinned to his lapel signifying his place within the MOI.
“Blackhood Dynamics is one of ours,” she stated, though she knew Spitfire wouldn’t be satisfied unless she heard it from Primrose herself. “What’s going on with the Reporter?”
The elevator pressed into their hooves as it slowed.
“Their senior editor just pushed a story questioning whether the zebras are capable of summoning balefire.”
“Fucking Candy Columns…” She shut her eyes and breathed. “Alright, put a pin in it for tonight but I want eyes on those presses in case she has more investigative bullshit planned for tomorrow’s issue. Get ahead of it.”
The bell chimed.
“I’ll pull some strings.” He stepped away from her as the doors slid apart, feigning an unbroken interest in the boilerplate memo now at the top of his clipboard.
“Well, this is me,” she said as a group of ponies beyond the door waited for her to step off. Inkspot arched a brow toward her but said nothing per usual, and she passed through the waiting ponies with a sheepish chuckle. “Not much of a talker, that one.”
One of the mares in the group offered a sympathetic smile before boarding. Another one of Cadence’s arrows missing its mark, nothing more than that.
The elevator doors rolled shut behind her with a gentle thump and the car descended deeper into the Pillar. She lifted a feather and pulled a long blue curl off her face as she took in a front lobby that never managed to feel… right. The Ministry of Morale was, on paper, Pinkie Pie’s domain. She was a mare renowned for the spring in her step, her unwavering positivity and brief bouts of what could be equally argued as insanity or clairvoyance. She was in every way the wildcard among the Elements prone to unpredictable whimsy, which was why stepping into the understated professional decor tended to throw off most visitors. 
Beige carpet and a standard drop-down ceiling framed the narrow rectangular flagstone tiled walls. The soft music of a leisurely played piano piped out from a Millie speaker in the ceiling and two well-cared for ferns sat in pots on either side of the lobby’s only signage in bold, black letters.


THE MINISTRY OF MORALE


Three balloons, two blue, one yellow, hung behind the block font as if held there by the bars of a cage. The similarities to Pinkie’s role in the ministry wasn’t lost on Primrose. The Element of Laughter was no more in charge of her own ministry than Rainbow Dash had been of hers after Spitfire stole the reins. 
Primrose had been caught up on the ministries’ history by more than a few chatty Enclave associates and it was no secret in the Pillar that there had been early signs that Pinkie wasn’t going to be up to the task of keeping a war weary nation thinking happy thoughts. Following the bombing of Sugarcube Corner that killed the family who had once been her employer and oldest friends, Pinkie had fallen into herself. Some argued that she’d already been struggling after witnessing the violent death of Tirek, but the murder of her surrogate family had been a tipping point. The light had gone out of her, but with the onset of war it fell on her shoulders to carry on and keep smiling. Rarity, tasked with maintaining the facade that everything was fine within Equestria’s strained government, had effectively absorbed the Ministry of Morale’s operations overnight. 
It certainly explained the decor. Two doors sat in black frames on either side of the professionally lit ministry logo. She approached the door on the right and looked up at the glass dome mounted above it. She said nothing as Millie silently scanned her, and the door’s deadbolt released with a thud.
She couldn’t particularly relate to Pinkie’s situation. All her life she’d been alone, save for an absent mother and a father who lived his life trying as hard as he could to rewrite the drunk dad stereotype. Abandonment wasn’t in her vocabulary because she’d always been trying to run away. But Pinkie Pie, she’d spent the last half decade living the word down to the syllable. Of course no one was going to say something like it out loud, but it was clear to anyone with eyes that Pinkie Pie was a friendless old mare.
But not for much longer.
Primrose trotted down one stately corridor, then another, pausing once to ask a passing mailpony whether she was headed the right way. The cockeyed mare parked her mailcart against the flagstone wall and confirmed she was on the right track even as she lifted and promptly dropped a stack of manilla envelopes on the floor. Primrose offered to help but was waved off by the fellow pegasus, assuring her that this was just part of her process. Unsure what that meant, She left the mare to her letters and followed the directions until she found the door she was looking for. It stood midway down the hall, a simple wooden slab that belied the reinforced steel core underneath. One of the upsides of being a ministry mare. Their offices were essentially a bunker within a bunker.
Her name glittered on a simple brass plaque screwed into the flagstone. It wasn’t much, and odds were it was all that Rarity would allow. Primrose lifted her hoof and gave the door three firm raps. A trio of chatting stallions shot her some curious looks as she stood at Pinkie’s door trying to decipher the muffled noise she heard on the other side. She knocked again, this time a little harder.
“I said come in!” came a voice from inside. 
Primrose frowned and wrapped her feathers around the door’s handle. It turned freely in her grip and she pushed it open just in time for something the size of a softball to explode against her nose. Cold water splashed up her nostrils and down her throat startling a coughing yelp out of her as she reared backward, the door turning into a hard wall behind her shoulders as it slammed closed behind her. Another balloon struck her square between the teats sending a torrent of lukewarm water exactly where it wasn’t welcome and causing her hind legs to reflexively hike up until her butt hit the damp commercial carpet. 
“And now you can turn around and get the fuck out!”
She hardly understood Pinkie between racking coughs as her body tried to clear the tickling water from her throat. She opened her eyes in time to shield herself from the third balloon to careen from the forty-something year old mare’s hoof. It smacked her across the foreleg without breaking, flopping uselessly to the floor. 
“Tell Rarity that I don’t need any more of her undercover nannies coming around to make sure I’m being a good little filly!” She stood behind a heavy wooden desk that had seen better days, her hooves poised over more jiggling balloons in a metal tray labeled OUT. An open bag of empty balloons sat opposite them in an identical tray marked IN. “You’ve got ten seconds, lady, and I’m pretty sure there’s pee in one of these!”
To make her point clear, she brought a sloshing balloon up to her nose and sniffed.
“Wait, wait, wait! Just…” Primrose flinched as Pinkie hefted the next liquid mortar. “Hold your fire, alright? I'm not with Rarity, I promise.”
Pinkie rolled the blue balloon between the flats of her hooves, its dubiously darker contents churning. “Cross your heart?”
Internally, she groaned. “Hope to die, stick a cupcake in my eye.”
Confoundingly, Pinkie arched a surprisingly judgmental brow and dropped the balloon back into the tray with a snort. “Okay, wow. Haven’t used that one since I was a filly. Nowadays everyone’s sticking needles in their eyes, which makes no sense unless you’re really jonesing, you know?” 
Primrose didn’t know. She plucked a shred of purple rubber out of her mane and flicked it to the floor, careful not to move too quickly as she got her hooves back under her. Pinkie wasn’t exactly a crazed shooter with her jaw on the bite trigger, but Primrose wasn’t eager to learn what excuse the secluded minister needed to justify lobbing a piss balloon.
As she stood up she realized it wasn’t just Pinkie’s desk that had seen better days, but her entire office appeared to be in varying stages of disrepair. Filing cabinets ringed the office walls in a tight phalanx, the yellowed labels above each handle reading off a category system of organized chaos. Calendar Events, Commemorations, Conception Day, (Surprise) Conception Day, Confetti (Bombs), Confetti (Cannons), Confetti (Tornado)... 
She tried and failed to make sense of the strangest cabinets and turned her attention toward the multitude of cardboard boxes stacked atop them and shoved into sagging piles on the floor. Plastic sleeves of paper party hats snaked out from under the lids of some just behind Pinkie’s desk while a rat’s nest of what appeared to be tinsel had squeezed out through the handle holes of another. From others spilled contents ranging from novelty rubber chickens, stacks of seasoned baking sheets and the metal handles of what appeared to be a random assortment of kitchen utensils. The corners of many boxes were already beginning to deform under the weight of the ones stacked above them, and it didn’t take Primrose long to realize that she wasn’t looking at a backlog of unfinished ministry work but instead the backlog of Pinkie’s entire life. She didn’t just work here. She’d moved here.
As if reading her mind, Pinkie flopped down in her worn out office chair and asked, “Let me guess, you don’t approve of the decor?”
Sore subject. Avoid it. “I was actually hoping you had a few minutes to talk.”
She watched Pinkie give the corner of her desk a kick, sending her chair into a long, squeaking rotation. “Yeah, I bet.” Her hoof thumped one of the boxes on the floor which she used to spin herself back the other way. “I’m actually very, very busy today.”
“Splashing spies with piss projectiles?”
Pinkie pointed both hooves at Primrose and clicked her tongue. “Bingo-bango-bongo. Gold star for the alliteration, by the by.”
Something told her Pinkie might actually have gold stars tucked away in one of her drawers. Mindful of the tray of ammunition on the stained and water damaged desk, Primrose stepped through the sea of dented and dusty moving boxes toward the only guest chair in the office. Pinkie watched her as she rotated in her own seat, her eyes rolling with resigned defiance. She was used to not having a choice.
As Primrose sat down Pinkie stuck out a hind leg and winced when it struck the inside of the desk, bringing her to a stop facing her visitor. “Fine. What does the oh-so-generous Rarity want this time? It better not be an apology unless she plans to give back my terminal privileges. I’m not going downstairs to kiss her ass again. That’s your job, not mine.”
“I came here on my own. Nobody sent me.”
Pinkie laughed, low and venomous. “Yeah, okay. Listen, I know you’re supposed to do the whole lure-me-into-complacency-so-I-tell-you-if-I’m-behaving shit, but can we skip it? She already had my Pip-Buck confiscated,” Pinkie lifted her foreleg and gave it a dramatic waggle, showing Primrose the matted ring of pink fur above her hoof and a tidy row of autoinjector scars. “And sooner or later she’s going to send someone up here to rummage through my shit until they find the naughty-naughty medicine. So just pencil in your fucking bubbles and tell her I’m using again like you’re going to anyways. I don’t care anymore.”
She opened her mouth to dole out the standard assurances… but something stopped her. Something about where she was, the mare cursing at her, and the entire feeling of this place felt different. It felt wrong. She closed her mouth and frowned at the uneven, scuffed surface of Pinkie’s desk. This earth pony, this mare had her life turned inside out because an entitled unicorn from Canterlot happened to bump into her instead of anyone else. She’d allowed herself to be dragged down into a life of heroship by magical artifacts a pony of her breeding had no chance of denying and after two decades of dutifully serving Equestria as an Element of Harmony, Celestia forced a war that threw Pinkie’s world into a wood chipper. 
Instead of the bubbly, upbeat cheerleader of joy that she had been known for, the mare seated across from Primrose had been reduced to a paranoid, bitterly lonely shell of herself. She lifted a wing to scratch at the bridge of her muzzle, suddenly aware of how fucked up this was. What was she doing? Was she so desperate to prevent her fledgling Enclave from plateauing that she was willing to put a mare on strings whose life was already corralled by the puppeteers who she used to call friends? 
Mark the date, Prim, she thought with a begrudged smirk. You’re actually feeling sorry for an earth pony.
She tucked in her wing and let out a tired sigh. “Alright, look. I was in the throne room this morning when you told off Rarity.”
Pinkie crossed her forelegs. “Yeah, I saw you there. So what? You want my autograph?”
Her eyes shifted momentarily to the glossy square on the desk where Pinkie’s terminal once rested before it had been carted away. She wondered what the minister had done to warrant being cut off like that.
“So,” she said, crossing her feathers that the lie wouldn’t sound too hokey, “I know from experience that being lonely sucks, especially in the beginning. You’re obviously not busy, and my schedule’s open. I thought maybe you’d burn a couple hours.”
The mistrust on Pinkie’s face couldn’t have been more evident if it had been spelled out in neon lights. The last five years may have eroded her lighthearted spirit, but she could clearly cut through bullshit like a razor. Luckily there were some nuggets of truth to what Primrose had said that stopped Pinkie from dismissing her entirely. 
Even so, the minister’s gaze began to slide back toward her armory of balloons.
She decided to take a gamble. “Look, I’ll leave if you want me to leave but I can promise you I’m not on Rarity’s side. I’ll prove it if I have to.”
“Jeez, you’re more desperate for company than I am.”
Okay. Ouch.
Pinkie looked up from the OUT tray and watched Primrose for several long seconds as if trying to make heads or tails of who she actually was. Several emotions flickered behind those piercing blue eyes. Paranoia being the foremost, but behind it hid a clear sense of longing. A hopefulness that something better had finally walked through her door, but one that bore the raw bruises of recent betrayals. They were the eyes of a mare who had been hurt in ways few understood, and those who did rarely left the shelter of their own paranoia to meet their peers.
And yet, in some sick twist of fate, here they were.
Then something changed in Pinkie’s expression. A decision had been made. Her chair squeaked as she sat up and opened the top drawer of her desk. She had to use both hooves to grip the drawer, but after a couple hard jerks the entire frame popped loose and she proceeded to dump the contents onto the floor. Primrose felt a tug of curiosity as Pinkie held up the empty drawer for her to see, then flipped it around to display the other side.
 A matchbook bearing a faded blue flower lay on the flap taped to the drawer’s bottom panel. Pinkie nipped the corner and pulled it free. Primrose watched as she set the drawer aside and dropped the matchbook onto the desk.
“What’s that?”
Pinkie eyed her. “It’s what you’re here for.”
She blinked, confused. “What do I need matches for?”
A pause. Then Pinkie chuckled. “Wow, you’re really clinging to the whole woe-are-we schtick, aren’t you?”
Primrose frowned and looked at the tiny matchbook for some kind of hint to what she was getting at. Besides the little blue flower drawn onto it, there were no clues to its significance. She quietly wondered how an earth pony even lit cardboard matches, anyway.
Pinkie didn’t wait for her to figure it out. She leaned forward and flicked open the decorated flap. As expected, several unused matches stood together in a neat little row. But instead of tearing one free, Pinkie licked the edge of her hoof and nudged it behind the firestarters until something Primrose hadn’t seen before came free. A tiny square of paper about the size of a postage stamp stuck to her hoof.
The pieces finally clicked. “I’m guessing you don’t mail any letters with that.”
“Right as rain, little miss stranger.”
She watched Pinkie slide the matchbook aside, then transfer the square of paper to the upturned flat of her other hoof before it could fall off. “My name’s Primrose, by the way.”
“If you say so, Cozy Glow.” A warm shudder of nervous energy shot down Primrose’s spine. Meanwhile, Pinkie kept one hoof aloft as she slid out of her chair. “You want to spend some quality time with Pinkie Pie out of the goodness of your heart. You really want to stick with that line?”
Primrose swallowed as the minister picked her way around the strewn wreckage of her own life, careful not to drop the paper as she approached. How was it that she was the one feeling out of her depth?
Pinkie stopped short of Primrose’s chair, those once dull blue eyes now electric. “Have you ever heard of Poison Joke?”
She didn’t move. “I’m aware of it.”
The older mare smiled. “Well don’t worry, this isn’t that. It’s better. You see, a long time ago the girls and I found out what Poison Joke does to a pony back when the Everfree was still wild. It’s mostly harmless and we laughed about it in the end, hardy-har-har, you know? So when everyone started killing each other and they stuck me with keeping Equestria all happy-honkey-dorey, I thought, wait a minute! I know what’ll make them smile.”
Pinkie’s lips curled as she looked down at the little white square in her hoof. Then the smile faded. “The Ministry of Morale was a lot more fun before all the bad things happened. I didn’t have it for very long, but the folks working in Euphorics still listen to me when I get an idea.”
She hesitated before asking, “Euphorics?”
Pinkie shrugged. “Oops. Secret-secrets. Anyway, this little firecracker is one of my favorite things to come from the Poison Joke trials. There’s a big, long sciencey name for it but I call it Punchline. Because it makes everything hilarious.”
She felt herself becoming keenly aware of the door and how far away from it she was sitting. “Okay.”
It must not have been the response Pinkie was aiming for because something in her feverish intensity faltered. For a moment the bubblegum mare studied her as if waiting for Primrose to produce a punchline of her own, but when none came she appeared to seamlessly resume whatever tack she was on.
“Good thing you don’t have one of these on you,” she said, nodding at the chemically impregnated square. “Government property and all. Rarity would probably throw you in a cell.”
There was a clear threat beneath the observation. Primrose cleared her throat. “If you went through the trouble of looking up my name, then you know I don’t work for her.”
“This is the Pillar, Prim. We both know it’s never that simple.”
In one fluid movement, Pinkie scraped her tongue over her upturned hoof and hooked her foreleg behind Primrose’s chair. The gap between them shrank to nothing as the minister seated herself over the startled mare’s lap, pink tangles of her tightly curled mane sliding between her outstretched hooves as they clutched either side of the backrest. Primrose instinctively leaned away into the padding but Pinkie just leaned closer, straddling her, the cup of her tongue flicking out so Primrose could see the paper melting into her saliva. She grinned.
“You look surprised.”
Her breath rolled across Primrose’s face like a warm fog. “Um. Little bit.”
“Good. Still got it.”
With that, Pinkie shoved her lips against Primrose’s muzzle with enough brazen force to scare a muffled squeak out of her. The minister pressed against her with a determination that left Primrose floundering for an escape. She hadn’t signed up for whatever this was, but as Pinkie’s drug-laced tongue began pushing and probing it occurred to her that this was an earth pony seated in her lap. This mare had grown up moving boulders. Even in her middle-age, if she wanted to force this she easily could.
She was holding a little of that strength back. As awkward and, frankly, sloppy this was becoming, she was giving Primrose more than enough opportunity to decline. Because Pinkie wasn’t the dopey, harmless mare most ponies believed her to be. She was clever. Calculating. 
She was testing her.
Against her better judgment Primrose relaxed her jaw. Her wings, already creeping toward half mast, closed around the minister. Fuck it. It had been a while. She took a breath and steeled herself for the ride as Pinkie’s tongue invaded her mouth, seeking her own. The contact was electric. Pinkie tasted like sweetness and stress. It felt good. It felt so, so good.
The Minister of Morale broke away and gasped, her body shuddering as a new energy dumped fresh warmth into her body. Then she dove back in, frenzied, alive.
It didn’t occur to Primrose that Pinkie Pie might have developed some tolerances. It barely occurred to her that several milligrams of highly dubious chemicals were now shrieking into her bloodstream, but she could feel those tiny little rainbooms exploding behind her eyes now like fireworks of concentrated joy. She laughed into Pinkie’s mouth. She was right. This was funny. 
And when the Punchline finally came, it hit like a truck.







Primrose closed her wings and fell through the narrowing cloud layer like a stone. Her entourage dove after her amid startled shouts and an audible pulsing of feathers, the entire squadron arcing downward like the tail of a falling kite. Two black-clad stallions appeared on either side of her in the rushing mist, jaws squared just enough to convey their annoyance without going so far as to chastise her for the little stunt. They kept pace with her, a trio of missiles in tight formation, while the graying chief master sergeant on her right ordered the soldiers trailing after them to break off into a holding pattern above the clouds.
She rolled her wing in its socket until the knot that had formed there gave way with a satisfying pop. That done, she threw both wings out into the mist and bent her rapid descent into a shallow climb. Her officers followed, their wings beating with an easy synchrony that could have impressed Spitfire’s old Wonderbolts were they still alive. Gradually the mist thinned then fell away completely, replaced by the refreshing chill of a clear blue sky and clean early evening air. Familiar voices chattered from her earpiece and the briefly inconvenienced squadron fell into formation around her yet again as she settled back into level flight. The calm cadence of call and response resumed over their radios as if nothing had happened. It was no wonder Clover had selected this unit for her escort. If seeing their minister drop from the sky didn’t rattle them, Primrose doubted anything would.
Seven hours into this excursion over enemy territory was testing her endurance. It was supposed to take five. Her muscles burned like they were steeping in acid and she had a sneaking suspicion that she was the reason they were so woefully behind schedule. She felt less like the bearer of the princesses’ blessing and more like a butterfly caught in a stiff breeze. 
She settled into a rhythm and let her mind wander.
When had she last flown this far from home? Eighteen, maybe nineteen decades ago? Back when the Enclave was at the cusp of establishing itself as Equestria’s postwar government, burdened with the simple task of reorganizing a continent of disparate survivors in a new world devoid of magic. Back when the biggest issues Equestria faced were food, water and shelter. Before the mutations, the raiders and the fucking Steel Rangers.
Her mood darkened. 
The Steel Rangers. She’d been too distracted to notice them back then. Just another neighborhood watch group who figured out how to get into one of the old Equestrian Army’s armory buildings. Concerned citizens with guns. Hundreds of them had popped up across Equestria as soon as the dust settled, most of them harmless. Except for the Rangers, that is. While Primrose worried about the rebirth of Equestria’s capital city, the Steel Rangers grew steadily from the survivors that had once been stationed for deployment on the west coast. She hadn’t known about the hardened bunkers underneath Fort Heart and Fort Joy, not back then. They didn’t realize that the coded gibberish appearing and disappearing from random radio frequencies were the early stages of the shattered army reconnecting with other pieces of itself, a loose network of units pulling together into something more dangerous. 
The Enclave’s influence spread outward from New Canterlot like a wave expanding in all directions, the organization introducing itself to Equestria one settlement after another. She’d enjoyed those excursions. Meeting with the local leadership, promising material and medical aid, seeing the recognition in their eyes as they realized the Enclave was really there to help, and to have unicorns, actual unicorns, looking up to their pegasi betters as saviors… oh, it had been intoxicating. 
When the Steel Rangers mobilized, it all fell apart. 
“Ma’am, we’ll be crossing the Fillydelphia red zone in twenty.” Her ear twitched at the sound of the chief master sergeant shouting over the buffeting headwind. “I can have some bodies take the lead if you’d prefer to draft off someone during the next climb.”
At least he had the sense of self-preservation to patronize her off comms. The Vhannan guns that made flying over Fillydelphia central a death wish existed now as scrap metal scattered across the streets and rooftops of that once inaccessible city. The demolition charges that had been hastily smuggled up those towers had done their job with lethal efficiency. Even now she could see the hazy gray smoke staining the cloud tops far ahead like an oil slick in the sky. A smile crept onto her lips. She’d seen the reports before she left detailing the uncontrollable fires that were slowly coring out three of the five remaining structures from the top down. 
The events of the last few days couldn’t have gone better if she’d planned them herself. The Steel Rangers and their mewling Elders were drowning in confused chaos over the brazen attack on a city that up until recently was believed to be an impervious fortress, now rendered defenseless. A sustained, albeit superficial attack on Magnus Plaza drove the fiction home that the Enclave was executing an operation to take control of the city. A stampede of transmissions clogged the airwaves with distress calls ranging from analytical assessments to full blown panic. More than a wingful of those transmissions had been authored by a few of her own officers to lend some fuel to the hysteria. Less than a day later, Clover woke Primrose from a pleasantly Tantabus-free dream to the news of power armored units being observed mustering within Manehattan, Baltimare, and most notably Blinder’s Bluff. 
Elder Coldbrook, her least favorite neighbor to the east, was responding. Come midnight tonight, he’d understand the fatality of that error.
“Ma’am?”
She sighed. 
“Yes, fine. A stallion please.”
The officer nodded and murmured something over the comms. Moments later, a young stallion the color of cut wheat drifted into formation a wing’s length ahead of her and the headwind that had plagued her for the last several hours subsided a little as she settled into his draft. Her gaze slid toward the taut package under his windswept tail and her thoughts wandered off to more enticing territory as their formation drifted toward the Fillydelphia coastline and the oil rigs beyond.
She had an appointment to keep.
> Chapter 38: Return to Sender
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 20th, 1077
11:45am

She awoke to a flat pillow, the sour scent of her own sweat, and the shredding agony of Celestia’s sun trying to burrow into her skull through her eyelids. All in all, not her best morning. A miserable groan rolled out of her chest as she twisted over in her bed and stared blearily at the furious red digits of her alarm clock, then groaned even louder when she saw the time. She was going to have some smoothing over to do with Spitfire. Her body ached in silent protest at the very thought of flying up to Canterlot. It felt like someone had tied her wings into a slipknot and yanked.
Her apartment out in the eastern foothills of Canterlot Mountain was, as the leasing company described it, “quaint.” She wasn’t about to help the landlord prettify his marketing and called it what it actually was: cheap. Steepleton wasn’t exactly the up-and-coming town it had promised to be when she was little thanks to the highway that bypassed it on its way to the booming capital city. Now it was just another no-name pocket of civilization withering in Canterlot’s shadow even as the price of living rose out of control. Those able to afford to live in sight of the mountain tended to work on the mountain and those who couldn’t had long since moved away. Every night when she rode the breeze out of Canterlot she debated pulling a few strings to throw a few extra bits onto her salary and renting a nice spot in the city, then ultimately decided against it. On paper, she was Spitfire’s administrative assistant. She had set hours and reasonable pay. She was meant to be invisible. 
And invisible secretaries were meant to live in shitty apartments, especially when they shared the helm of a less than legitimate shadow organization operating clandestinely within Equestria’s first wartime government.
Against reasonable judgment, she forced herself to sit up and take in the first reluctant breaths of consciousness since… 
“Huh.”
When had she gone home last night? She frowned as she struggled to remember much of anything from the day before. Several minutes slid by. Nothing. The cruddy air conditioner jammed into the window rattled on, sending a cluster of plastic panel shades clicking and clacking against one another. 
She’d gone to work. Spitfire had left her a message saying she was flying out to the new Stable out at Foal Mountain for some quick final inspections. She’d be back in the afternoon and needed Primrose to stand in for her to make sure Rainbow Dash stayed on script during the morning meeting with the princesses. She remembered being annoyed that Rainbow hadn’t even gotten a chance to speak thanks to Twilight hijacking everyone’s time, yet again, and then shit had hit the fan when Pinkie Pie barged in and…
She blinked, her head swaying a little, and looked over her shoulder. The other half of her full-sized bed was empty, but it hadn’t been. Her sheets bore… several new stains in evidence of that.
She pressed her face into her feathers and uttered a low, “Oh. Oh, fuck.”
Needles stabbed her eardrums and she flinched. A weirdly familiar rattle of paper resonated from the other side of the apartment. Her stomach churned with reluctant hunger, stuck in that gray space between nauseating hunger and craving the food that would relieve it. She let gravity pull her the rest of the way out of bed, dropping her hooves onto her cheap offwhite carpet. Sparing a glance at her dresser and its opened drawers, she wondered which one of them had gone rummaging through her neatly folded sweaters in the middle of summer. She sighed. That was tomorrow Primrose’s problem.
Outdated linoleum crackled under her hooves as she trudged into her meager kitchenette. Several of the particle board cabinets stood open, the last of which contained a stack of cereal bowls she’d gotten cheap because robin’s egg blue had gone out of style. Beside the sink stood a box of sugary cereal she was fairly sure wasn’t hers. She wrinkled her nose at the artificially flavored chocolate pebbles and left the kitchenette behind.
She found Pinkie Pie seated at the little dining room table Primrose had shoved into the corner next to the front door, the top of which had seen little use beyond acting as a parking spot for her keys and whatever junk mail she’d been too lazy to walk to the trash can. The table was less there for function and more to satisfy an unspoken obligation, as if to say, “Look, I’m doing okay for myself. I have a kitchen table.” Pinkie had shoved her junk mail, keys, and the decorative wooden bowl holding a few loose bits and an old lighter - she was hanging onto it in case she ever picked up smoking again - all the way to the table’s far edge. It didn’t free up a ton of room, but what little it had was now occupied by an open newspaper and a bowl of cereal. A measurable percentage of Pinkie’s muzzle was presently submerged in the milk while her eyes scanned the black and white panels of the funnies page.
Primrose pulled up a chair and dropped into it, her forehead descending to rest against the table. “Ugh,” she groaned. “What dimension is it?”
Chocolate milk dribbled off Pinkie’s chin as she lifted her muzzle to chew. “Yeah,” she chuckled, wiping her hoof across her face. “You’re kind of a featherweight.”
She couldn’t tell if Pinkie was making a dig or an innocent observation. Neither were particularly wrong. She lifted her head enough to look at her. “I feel like it’d be better if I don’t ask what happened last night.”
Pinkie smirked. Not with the mistrust or aggressive confidence that Primrose remembered bits of from Pinkie’s office yesterday, but with something like understanding. Whatever suspicions Pinkie had harbored seemed to have left her now. The mare sat up a little straighter and pushed the half-eaten bowl of cereal in front of Primrose’s nose. 
“Here, finish this up. Sugar helps with the wooziness.”
Primrose hesitated, but her stomach had the final say. She scooted forward in her seat and, lacking a spoon to eat with, picked up the bowl between her feathers and drank. Pinkie occupied herself with one of the comic strips on the table while she waited. By the time she put down the empty bowl, she was surprised to feel just a little less awful. 
Pinkie folded the paper in half to read the strips at the top of the page. “We didn’t fuck, if you’re still wondering.”
She blinked, suddenly grateful she’d finished drinking before having that bomb dropped on her head. Her brain was still playing catch-up and she wasn’t completely convinced there wasn’t a but coming. “That’s… good to know?”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Pinkie snorted.
She shook her head, confused. “No, I mean, that’s not… then what happened to my bed?”
“That was all you. Repeatedly. It was actually kind of hard getting you to stop at times, what with the extra limbs and all.” Her lips curled into a smile as she watched Primrose’s cheeks shift from pink to bright red. “You were super pent up.”
“Stop.”
“I’m surprised you can sit down.”
“For Celestia’s sake.”
“Have you ever put jello in a blend–”
“Pinkie.” She fixed her with her sternest glare. “I get it.”
Point made, Pinkie leaned back looking quite satisfied with herself as her eyes wandered Primrose’s embarrassingly small apartment. They passed several minutes like that, the cheap clock in the kitchen ticking away while Pinkie feigned interest in the stark lack of decor and Primrose attempted to organize her thoughts with pure will. She should have known better. Pinkie Pie was the emotional equivalent of a box of landmines sucked into a tornado. Now she was here, in her apartment, and…
Wait. Her brow furrowed as a question finally surfaced in her mind, labeled IMPORTANT.
“Ma’am,” she began, her work etiquette kicking in as an afterthought, “don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you here?”
Pinkie propped her cheek against her hoof, smiling as if she’d been waiting for the question. “Right now, or at all?”
She shrugged. “Both.”
“Well, I’m the one who gave you the Punchline so getting you home safe is kind of my responsibility, right? It wouldn’t be very nice to let you loose in Canterlot just for you to go jumping off the side of the mountain thinking your wings were made of spiders.”
The thought of that made her feathers itch. “Fair, I guess.”
Pinkie chuckled dryly. “And I stuck around because the only other thing I have going on is wasting my forties watching my former friends convince themselves that war crimes are fine now that we’re winning, so why the fuck not burn a day doing something I’m actually good at like babysitting the mare I drugged?”
“A lot to unpack, there.”
She snorted. “My life in a nutshell. Sorry about yesterday, by the way. The jumping your bones part, I mean. You’ve got so many friends in high places that I thought you had to be one of Rarity’s plants.”
Primrose knew plenty about the eyes and ears Rarity had lurking all around Canterlot. Keeping them looking in the wrong direction ate up a measurable percentage of her Enclave’s resources. “You’ve drugged her people before?”
“Well, no. They always find a reason to be somewhere else before I can slip ‘em the crazy-hornies.”
Glancing at the tips of her feathers, she couldn’t argue that they looked well used. Pinkie wasn’t as grating as she assumed, either. The war had worn down those sharper edges, no doubt, but it was hard to believe an earth pony of her stature got to where she was on giggles and gumdrops alone. She had a feeling she was seeing depths that this mare rarely put on display. Sure she was a little odd, but maybe she could be more than just a patsy?
Just because her fellow Elements of Harmony discounted her as useless didn’t mean it was true.
“So,” she said, wincing at the puddle of milk at the bottom of her bowl, “did I at least have fun last night?”
Pinkie set her cheek against her hoof with a coy little shrug. “You saw the bed.”
She smirked, then chuckled as she settled on a decision. “If you don’t have to be at the Pillar, maybe you and I could ditch Canterlot for the day and hang out? I heard there’s a new walking trail that cuts through the Everfree now. Could be fun.”
Her brow lifted. “What, like a date?”
“No,” she said, surprised by how hesitant she was to say the word. “As friends, maybe?”
Pinkie frowned a little more deeply, but it didn’t seem like she wasn’t at least considering it. Primrose found herself wondering what was going through her head. There was an unmistakable eagerness in Pinkie’s body language, as if she were being physically compelled to throw off the last few years of agonizing loneliness. 
Primrose waited, unsure whether adding anything might spoil her chances. As much as she hated to admit it, a part of her hated the isolation she’d imposed on herself. Spitfire made for decent conversation when she wasn’t salivating over her imagined utopia for pegasi. Whenever she got onto that tangent she was impossible to listen to. Competition between the races wasn’t their enemy. It was magic. If only she could get that through Spitfire’s thick fucking–
“Yeah. I can do friends.”
She blinked. Was that an innuendo or?
“Might want to wait until that chocolate milk comes back up before we leave.” Pinkie picked up the spoon and leveled it at Primrose. “Punchline and chocolate go together like… well, they don’t.”
As if on cue, her guts churned. “Are you serious? Why did you tell me to drink it?!”
Pinkie offered a guilty smile. “Puking kills the hangover?”
“Celestia’s…” She stood from her chair.
“You miiight want to hustle your bustles. Personal experience.”
Primrose bolted for the bathroom, nearly not making it in time before her stomach turned itself inside-out. As she hugged the bowl, her body working to purge the last of the Punchline from her system while Pinkie sat beside her on the edge of the tub trying not to laugh, a singular thought stuck in her mind.
This had better be worth it.







February 3rd, 1262
Friday Morning

“On behalf of Overmare Delphi and the innumerable residents whose lives were touched by Nimbus Pinfeather’s dedication to our Stable, I’d like to extend my deepest condolences for your family’s loss.”
The words draped over Aurora’s young shoulders like a suffocating cloud. Her dad murmured the same, tired thank you that they’d both been saying over and over again since… since it happened. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The words felt hollow now. Cored out by repetition until they were nothing but familiar sounds. Noises they made that made pegasi they’d never known feel repaid for fulfilling an empty social obligation. She hated it. None of them knew her mom like they did. To them she was a coworker, maybe a friend. To Aurora and her dad, she’d been their entire world. 
Papers rustled between the mortician’s feathers. Her father leaned forward and picked a pen out of the plastic cup on the old stallion’s desk. Signatures were needed. Bits needed to be paid. The heartless strictures of a dead world leaking into the one meant to pave the way forward. Nobody works for free.
The mortician gently cleared his throat as he passed another paper across the desk. He spoke with perfect gentleness as his feather settled next to a bullet point he’d marked earlier. “Just an acknowledgment that the plot you selected for Nimbus is subject for seasonal tilling.”
Antiquated squeamishness from the old world carbon copied for two centuries with barely a letter of it changing. The first residents struggled to stomach the thought of their loved ones being stirred around in the dirt for the crops. Like it or not, there was nowhere else to put them. The paperwork was never optional.
Her dad scratched his initials onto the form, his red-rimmed eyes only skimming the last few paragraphs before signing again at the bottom. He was exhausted. They both were. 
The mortician reached forward with a ghostly white wing and took back the signed papers to set them off to the side. The chromed clip of his pen caught the glare of fluorescents above as he guided the tip down his prepared checklist.
“Will the burial be attended by family only, or will there be others?”
“Just Aurora and I,” her dad said, then added, “Her friends will be holding a memorial in Mechanical tonight. More room for everyone down there.”
The mortician nodded. “She was lucky to have been loved by so many.”
Aurora clenched her jaw and looked away. A knife twisted in her chest every time that old goat had something to say, like this entire process was manufactured to wring the tears out of them. Her face was tender from crying. It was all she’d done since Tuesday when her dad showed up at her compartment, alone, barely able to keep himself composed long enough to make it inside. He’d woken up that morning and her mom hadn’t. A stroke, they said. Quick, painless. One minute she’s there, the next she’s not. A gentle death that came without warning, and which upturned their world with unfathomable violence. 
Her dad had always been the family’s rock. Quiet, kind, reliable… he kept his worries private, or at least out of Aurora’s reach. Then, as she’d been cleaning her compartment after a brain-numbing overnight shift sharpening drill bits, her dad appeared at her door like a lost colt seeking the only stability he had left in life. She’d never heard him cry, not until that morning when he sagged into her wings and sobbed without restraint. A stretch of time passed when he could barely form coherent noises let alone words to express his grief. His wife was gone. 
She had never fought so hard to keep herself together. Something in her knew he needed her to be stronger than him, to hold him up so he could finally come to pieces. She gathered up the mournful screams building in her chest and shoved them into a box, pushing them deep as she could until she ached inside. It wasn’t perfect. Little sobs locked up her throat and tears dropped off her chin and slid down her dad’s unkempt mane. But she didn’t break. Even after he ran out of tears and they sat in silence on the edge of her mattress, she kept it together so that he didn’t have to. 
She had Millie order breakfast from the cafeteria despite his protests and she answered the door when it arrived, ignoring the delivery mare’s confused expression as Aurora took the bundle from her wing without bothering to wipe her eyes. They ate from the recyclable containers together in silence. Powdered eggs fried up in artificial butter jokingly referred to as “bomb squat” by those unfortunate enough to have suffered the laxative effects of too much fried Remembrance Day food. Her dad almost finished his toast before putting down his plastic fork and setting the food aside as he devolved into hitching sobs yet again.
“Well, we can be thankful that all the paperwork is in order,” the mortician said, jarring Aurora to the present, “Now both of you can focus on what’s really important.”
Her dad nodded with a polite smile. Aurora started to push out of her chair. The thought of burying her mom was beginning to feel too real. Too permanent. She needed some air.
“But before you go,” he added, interrupting her escape, “I do feel the need to ask whether the two of you would like some time to choose something to wear to the burial.”
Aurora looked at the old goat and saw he was staring very pointedly back at her with the faintest expression of disapproval creasing his eyes. Hot embarrassment crawled up her neck as her father beside her pressed his lips into a hard line, torn between his own concerns about his daughter’s refusal to wear her assigned jumpsuit in public and his instincts as a father to stand up for his child. She stepped in before he risked humiliating both of them.
“I’ll throw something together,” she muttered.
Her dad reached out and touched her shoulder. “Honey, you don’t have to–”
“It’s okay, dad.”
“Your mother wouldn’t mind.”
She dropped out of her chair, gaze fixed on the far wall. “I have a clean suit in my locker at work. Burial’s still at three, right?”
“Aurora…”
Shame balled up in her throat. Her over-packed box of emotion cracked open. “Just stop! Mom’s not here anymore to care what I do so you can stop pretending you’re not embarrassed of me, okay? Please!”
Stupid. That was stupid. She watched her dad close his mouth and look away, but not before seeing the fresh shimmer of water in his eyes. 
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.” He didn't look at her. It wasn’t okay. “I’ll see you in the Gardens. Get some rest, honey.”
“Yeah. I will. Love you, Dad.”
He turned to her as she headed for the door, his smile pained. 
“I love you too, Fixer.”







Ginger paced a slow circle around her foalhood bedroom, her magic occasionally reaching out to pick up miscellaneous objects of her youth she’d all but forgotten about. One of Tandy’s skills was an innate ability to pull details from a dreamer’s subconscious to the surface with admirable clarity. She paused to admire the polished surface of her dresser, which had always been the one place her parents allowed her to leave a mess. Several strips of colorful cloth braided for her by her mother lay in a pile at the base of the dresser mirror along with memories of anxious mornings deciding which ones to tie into her shoulder-length mane and in what style. A thick, hoof-written book titled The Road Forward lay face down, pages spread open against the polished wood when at some point she couldn’t be bothered to or rebelled against the proper notion of the bookmark. 
It was less a book and more a tome - the hoof-written daydreams of some distant relative of her father’s who believed he knew exactly how to raise Equestrian prosperity from the dead through the power of imitation. He believed a full understanding of how Equestria rose to prominence was unnecessary in the pursuit of doing it again. “The key to success isn’t in the performance, but in the belief that the performance is adequate.” The book was required reading as far as her father had been concerned, and at the time she’d been hard pressed to look at the wealth surrounding her and still argue the results.
A mote of green fire began to smolder at the corner of the book. She gathered her magic and snuffed it out. 
“Be careful. Magic is kindling to balefire.”
She looked toward the padded bench fitted into the bay window facing the fields. Tantabus - Tandy, as of late - reclined in the early afternoon light in exactly the same way Ginger had when she daydreamed as a teenager. Back when her future had already been safely determined by her parents, before she sheared off the bulk of her mane and ran away.
“I know,” she murmured, eyeing another little flame as it appeared and grew along the skirt of her bed. After watching it spread, she lit her horn and smothered it. “They’re not that hard to put out.”
Tandy glanced back at her with Nightmare Moon’s feline eyes, though none of the malice Ginger learned to associate with the storybook villain lingered behind them. Just unsurity and a pinch of worry. “I still advise against it. The corruption burns well enough on its own without being fed.”
Touchy, she thought. 
“I am only touchy because I still do not understand why you defended the little tyrant.” 
She pursed her lips and tried to remember how many nights ago it had been when she chastised Tandy for tormenting Primrose with her own father’s memory. Four, five? The last several days bled into each other like watered down ink. She’d initially assumed Tandy would grasp why inflicting such cutting traumas on defenseless ponies, even ones like Primrose, was wrong. Apparently the lesson didn’t stick. 
She lifted a crystal bowl of fresh potpourri off a shelf above her bed and paused to smell it. It baffled her how she could still remember the bright scent of crushed lavender. “You were opening wounds without understanding the pain it caused. We went over this after you showed me Luna’s last memories.”
Or, more accurately, had her experience from the princess’s own eyes as if the world were ending around her in real time. Reading about the apocalypse in books, hearing stories about it… they were nothing compared to the helplessness Luna felt when she realized she was experiencing her final seconds, and that all her plans of making up for lost time with her big sister had amounted to nothing.
Ginger shuddered.
“Primrose has inflicted agony upon billions with stolen years and she hurts more with each passing day. She deserves punishment.”
She set the potpourri down and grudgingly allowed a spark of balefire to take hold in the dried flora. “She does. Just not right now.”
Tandy, the sentient creation of one of Equestria murdered royalty, crossed her hooves across her chest and huffed. “You think she will aid you and your friends if I allow her to rest.”
“I do.”
Tandy shook her head. It felt like each time they met, she became a little more real. “I know that creature, Ginger. She has no loyalty to anyone but herself, nor is she capable of charity. Remember that if nothing else.”
An uneasy silence settled between them in the wake of a crystal clear warning. An unnecessary warning. Ginger knew full well Primrose couldn’t be blindly trusted. How many throats had she cut to get to the top of a faction that even in its confined state - though that was rapidly changing now - posed enough threat to keep the Steel Rangers in a perpetual standoff for over two hundred years? How many groups and individuals had tried and failed to assassinate her over the generations, only to have their own blood shore up the myth that the Minister had been blessed with the late princesses’ longevity? Of course Primrose wouldn’t approach the bargaining table without a counteroffer, nor would she permit anyone to leave with the better half of the deal. Asking a favor of a mare like that was a losing proposition from the start.
Emerald fire crept along the edge of her dresser, threatening to ignite the colored braids she’d left behind. Annoyed at being reminded of the obvious, she spun up her magic and plunged it around the crackling flames. The fire resisted for a moment before dimming, sending a jolt of caustic heat ricocheting like grenade shrapnel inside her skull. Her eyes clenched shut with an embarrassed curse as she forced the flame to die.
Tandy’s hooves crossed the carpet. “I warned you to leave it alone. Your horn, please.”
Chagrined, she tipped her forehead toward Tandy and winced a little when fresh magic sparked across the gap. The acrid touch of balefire vanished from her mind and she felt rejuvenated much like she had the first time, albeit her pride remained freshly injured.
Tandy regarded the burning bedroom with a sigh and released the illusion. Ginger’s room fell apart around them and was quickly replaced with the now familiar endless landscape of burning doors. 
“You are an extraordinarily capable unicorn,” Tandy said, “but I fear your desire to preserve Aurora’s home is blinding you from the danger Primrose poses to you both. Would it be so impossible for the people of her Stable to step outside?”
She frowned. She’d be lying if she said the thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but that had been before Elder Coldbrook decided Stable 10 would better serve the Steel Rangers as a downpayment on their future. “That’s for them to decide. I want what’s best for Aurora and that’s making sure her people don’t wind up victims like in Stable 1 or end up spending the rest of their lives with someone else holding a certificate of ownership over their head.”
Again, silence. These chats used to be easier.
“Luna once told me that dreams are often the easiest time to explore uncomfortable truths.”
She wasn’t sure what the right answer to that was, so she just nodded.
“This mare you fell in love with has a difficult road ahead of her and will need your support. Keep this in mind when Primrose comes bearing miracles.”
She blinked. The doors around her continued to burn.
“I’ll try.”






April 20th, 1297
Present Day

Aurora woke to the smell of stale sweat, the warmth of a familiar body curled against her back, and the grudging surety that the more consciousness gained on her the worse the deep, throbbing pain sloshing up and down her body was going to get. She tried to coax herself back to sleep by ignoring the strange odor, the thump of hooves nearby, the steady cadence of Ginger’s breath sinking through the roots of her mane. In spite of her efforts, consciousness had gotten an unfair head start that it wasn’t going to give up, and she could feel herself being dragged away from dreamless sleep in its wake.
Her chest rose with a deep waking breath, a reflex she regretted immediately. The sour odor of old sweat and musty fabric flooded her sinuses. The rest of her body took her habitual stretching as an opportunity to fill her in on the myriad pain signals that sleep had been blissfully keeping her unaware of. From her hooves to her head, every muscle jerked and trembled in a churning mob of competing aches. A grunt rose out of her throat as she tried to roll onto her back in hopes of finding a better position to lay in, but her spine went rigid at the jolting shock of agony that shot up her hind leg.
“Ow-ow-ow! Fuck… jeez.”
The cutting pain dulled to a warning throb that felt… weird. She frowned and sank back onto her side. Behind her, Ginger took a slow breath and stirred a little before settling. She could hear muffled voices nearby, unfamiliar and unreserved in the way they spoke. She couldn’t make out the words, but she listened anyway. Two ponies, probably mares? Who knew. She barely had enough energy to remember why she hurt so much, let alone sleuth out where in Equestria they were now.
Cracking one eye open, she was greeted with an uninspired beige wall. She touched it with a hoof, the textured panel made of the same easy-clean plastic they used in the communal showers back in Mechanical. Throw in the ambient hum of the air recyclers and she might believe she was back home at Stable 10. Wouldn’t that be nice. She closed her eye and tried to imagine she was back in her compartment, but indulging too much in wishful thinking was risky. She could feel powerful emotions rising to the surface again, the lid on that neatly packed box sliding loose. 
She opened her eyes and pushed them to the back of her mind. Shifting her weight onto her foreleg, she propped herself up enough to take a look around. The first thing she noticed was the browned mattress sagging in the bunk above her. Definitely not Stable 10, then. The second thing she saw was Ginger sleeping beside her, her own foreleg still gently gripping Aurora’s barrel and likely the only thing keeping the unicorn from tumbling butt first off the bed. A row of four gray lockers stood in a neat row past the end of the bunk, the twin of which stood vacant just beyond. Beside the second bunk stood a closed door and nothing else. The rest of the narrow space was barren. Not even a creepy pre-war poster to brighten up their little corner of the sardine can. 
Her shoulder started to ache and she lay back down, puzzled.
Behind her, Ginger stirred. Aurora listened to her take a long relaxed breath, the equally languid exhale spreading across the back of her neck like a warm compress. A moment later the shaded bottom bunk bloomed with amber light. She didn’t need to look to know Ginger was pulling the mess of fiery curls out of her eyes. She let herself smile a little at the groggy sound of the mare’s voice.
“Mm. How long have you been awake?”
“Few minutes.” She grimaced, pushing through the fresh bolt of pain that leaped up her hind leg as she rolled to face her companion. She’d nearly done it herself when Ginger’s magic braced her lower half, helping her along with a touch of worry in her eyes. This cramped little bed made moving around seem ridiculous. “Where are we?”
Ginger’s horn darkened. “We’re safe, but… how are you feeling?”
“I feel,” she said, hesitating for a fraction of a second. 
Sore, scared, exhausted, confused Like the wasteland is a low grit belt sander and every day it finds a new corner of me to shred. 
She set her jaw into a reassuring smile. “Fine. I feel fine.”
She watched suspicion pull at Ginger’s brow and worried she might push for more than just a boilerplate nonanswer. Mercifully, she didn’t, but the look on her face made it clear she wasn’t satisfied. That was okay. Ginger’s entire life had been uprooted when Aurora showed up, and there would be more than a few recently unemployed traders on the roads who would pay good caps to put a bullet in both of them. The less Ginger had to worry about, the better. 
Her smile grew a little tighter. “Really.”
Ginger gave no sign that she believed her. “Do you remember what happened?”
She blinked. “With Ironshod.”
“That and… after.”
She let her cheek settle into the flattened pillow and shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, he ambushed us. Killed Julip. He, um… had a freezer he put me in and…”
Tears stung at the corners of her eyes as the memories resurfaced. The things he did to her had made her wish for death. She’d made peace with that. “I don’t want to talk about that part. All I know is you rescued me and that’s good enough, right?”
Ginger just nodded. “And after? Do you remember anything between then and now?”
She tried to think. Her mask faltered as she remembered how the warm rain stung her frostbitten skin like scraping thorns. The sound of wind buffeting her ears as someone unfamiliar carried her on their back. Pegasi standing over her, putting something around her muzzle. After that, everything got muddy. 
She shook her head. “Only bits and pieces, like a bad dream.”
Ginger glanced down and hooked one of her hooves under Aurora’s, forming new and interesting shapes in the thin sheets covering them. Then she took a long, pensive breath and met her eyes. The body language of bad news. 
“I need you to know that I’m always going to stick with you, and no matter what happens I’m going to keep loving you for who you are inside and out. Okay? No matter what, Aurora.” 
Definitely bad news. As she nodded that she understood, she braced herself as she waited for the other shoe to drop. And waited. Seconds passed and it became obvious Ginger was struggling to form the words. Ginger finally looked away as a palpable, barely contained anger radiated behind the deep waters of her eyes. 
“He hurt you, Aurora. Badly.” Her lip lifted over her teeth as she spoke, each word speaking to the violence she desperately wanted to inflict upon Ironshod. “The Enclave, well, they did their best. I made sure of it.”
She trailed off, the words locking up in her throat. Aurora swallowed. “But?”
“They said whatever he did to break your leg, he crushed a major artery. Normally you would have bled out, but the medics think putting you in a freezer kept your blood pressure low enough for it to clot.”
Frowning, Aurora looked down toward the end of the mattress. Her left leg ached from hip to hoof in time with her heartbeat, but something was wrong about the way the sheets were shaped around it. 
Ginger soldiered on. “They gave you so many stimpacks, Aurora. They really did try, but there was so much damage.”
She sat up in what little space the bunk overhead allowed her to, and even the simple process of getting her back up against the wall spelled out significant clues to what Ginger was working herself up toward saying. As Ginger propped herself up beside her, their eyes settled on the telltale asymmetry below Aurora’s waist. She began pulling away the covers even as Ginger continued to lead up to what Aurora had already worked out for herself. She was trying to soften the blow, and Aurora loved her for that, but fresh memories of sitting in that frigid chair, her own frozen piss clinging to her groin, knowing in no uncertain terms that the ruination Ironshod had inflicted upon her with one calculated downstroke of his hoof told Aurora everything at once what Ginger was trying to ease into.
The covers slid off her hind legs, and she stared. 
It took several seconds for what she was seeing to register as real in her own mind. On her right side, a hind leg that looked little different than it had a week ago. Lithely toned muscle fully coated in her gently matted gray coat, complete with a wingful of small welding scars unnoticeable to anyone who didn’t know where to look.
And beside it, a heavily bandaged stump. For a long while it felt like she was looking at a particularly clever illusion. Where there had been a knee and a hoof, there was nothing. Empty space. The absence of something she assumed was permanent. 
Her shoulders sagged. “They cut it off?”
“It was too far gone to…”
“I know,” she said, too abruptly to stop her voice from catching in her throat. She cleared it. “Yeah. I mean, I get it.” 
Sitting there in that quiet room, gaze trapped by this new unwanted reality she now had no choice but to function within, she felt momentarily paralyzed by… something. Anger, maybe. Fear? Indignation that the Enclave had seen fit to amputate a part of her without so much as asking how she felt? She couldn’t decide. Best to pack it all away. Deal with it later.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, forcing a lopsided smile that trembled only slightly on her lips. “I’m fine. It’s just a leg.”
Silence. She could feel Ginger watching her. Giving her space to digest what she’d just said. It cornered her like an accusation. You’re lying to yourself. You aren’t fine. She puffed out a dismissive chuckle, eyes stinging with embarrassment. “I mean, it’ll take some getting used to but it’s not the end of the world. Fastest twenty pounds I’ve ever lost, that’s for sure.”
“Aurora.”
“What?” Her voice shook. “It’s not even one of my good legs. It’s the one Roach’s ghoul buddies chewed on when I left home. Besides, I can get around just fine on three.”
To prove her point she pushed Ginger’s hoof away and scooted around her to the edge of the bed, grinding her teeth against the bolts of pain shooting into her hip every time her stump bounced against the mattress. She knew she was being stubborn and that Ginger would resent the theatrics, but she couldn’t worry about that now. There was too much riding on her ability to keep moving and she was sure as shit not going to let a psychopath like Ironshod be the one to decide her journey was over.
Her single hind hoof touched the floor and she stopped. Seated on the edge of the mattress with the bandaged stub of her missing leg sticking out of her hip like a useless lesion, it dawned on her that she didn’t know how to get down without falling over. Futile anger welled in her chest as she sat there, paralyzed, unable to muster the courage to take the first step. 
Frustrated tears stung in her eyes.
“Hey.” Ginger’s voice softened. “Why don’t we slow down for a minute?”
“I can’t.” The words shook as she spoke. “I have to figure this out. I need to find that talisman and I can’t do that if I can’t get off this fucking bed.”
“Aurora.” Amber light cupped her cheek, turning her head until she could see the pain in Ginger’s eyes. “I need you to slow down and listen to me for five seconds. While you were resting I was able to touch base with the Stable, and your father told me they found a temporary alternative to the generator. They’re going to be safe, and you can–”
“You talked to my dad?” The world lurched around her. Her heart pounded. “Why would you do that? What did you tell him?”
Startled by her reaction, Ginger hesitated. “I… I asked your overstallion for advice and sent a picture. I didn’t think he’d share it with your…” 
The rest of her words were lost in a haze of Aurora’s abject panic. She stared at her, tears falling freely now. “He saw this? Ginger, no! Why did you…” 
Her breathing ramped up, her lungs fooled by soaring anxiety into thinking she was being cornered. All the neatly packed boxes in the back of her head, all of it came spilling out. Her dad knew she’d been beaten. Tortured. He’d seen her. Ginger had pulled away the veil and showed him everything Aurora wanted to bury, down to her rag-wrapped stump.
“He’s my fucking dad! We’re all we have left of each other! He doesn’t need to know about this! Now all he’s going to do is sit there and worry and think this is his fault!” 
She gestured vaguely with her wings, not knowing what it was she even wanted to say. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rip off these damn bandages and let herself feel the hurt her surgeons tried to save her from. But she couldn’t do that. There was something keeping her from flying off the handle. From doing something she’d immediately regret. 
As pissed as she was at her, Ginger wasn’t throwing it back, and Aurora realized this wasn’t about what Ginger did. It wasn’t about the unfairness of her overstepping a line that neither of them had thought to establish. It ran deeper. The viscous fury in Aurora’s chest began to cool, though her wings trembled like leaves.
She licked her lips, trying to find the words. “I just…” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want him to be afraid for me, you know?”
Ginger’s hoof wrapped around her own, a gentle touch that helped her along.
“Him and mom called me Fixer, so that’s what I do.” She wiped her face, but the tears kept coming. “I fix things. That’s all I’ve ever been good at, except for one time I can’t and I end up out here… doing things I never want him to know about.”
A sob shuddered its way out of her chest but she shoved it back down, hard. Beside her, Ginger lit her horn and lifted her an inch off the mattress, bracing her ruined leg as she scooted away from the bed’s edge until their backs touched the wall shaded by the overhead bunk. She tried not to complain about the deep, radiating pain that flared when Ginger set her down. 
Ginger didn’t explain herself as they sat together, nor did Aurora ask. Sitting as they were, it reminded her of when she would build forts in the family compartment with her mom, turning the living area into a mess of sheets, pillows and furniture. She slipped a wing behind Ginger, staring at the rumpled sheets around their hooves.
“I deserve this,” she murmured.
Ginger tensed in her feathers. “No you don’t.”
“Why not? Doesn’t this… I don’t know, balance the scales for everything I’ve done?”
“Aurora, you haven’t done anything to–”
“I have.” She shrugged, her brain still trying to reconcile with the absence of her leg. “I’m a murderer. I murdered Cider, I murdered all those guards at the solar array, and the slavers…”
“You didn’t have a choice but to defend yourself!” Ginger turned to face her more fully. “And if you don’t remember, you saved my life. I’m alive because of you.”
Her jaw stiffened at the repudiation, but stubbornness pushed her forward. “I could have let him go.”
Ginger shook her head. “Cider would have followed us.”
“Gallow.”
She paused. Her posture softened. “Aurora…”
“I know. Believe me, I know. But I can’t stop thinking about it.” She swallowed, nerves fraying all over again. “He was just a kid listening to the adults. That’s all he knew to do, and we told him to go sit on the road until we were gone… and then we opened that shed and I didn’t see him as a kid anymore. He trusted us to leave him be and I went after him anyway and then I fucked it up and…”
She buried her face in her wing just as the first sob stole her voice. The words were there, everything she wanted to say laid out in her mind now that the gates were finally open. All she could do was whimper unintelligible syllables, her throat choked with tears, her body shaking.
“I fucked up so bad…” Magic pulled her against Ginger’s chest. Guilt, shame, selfish worries flooded her. A maelstrom of carefully ignored emotions set loose all at once. “I can’t stop hearing him screaming. Every. Night.”
Ginger kissed the top of her head, words failing her.
“He was going to kill himself,” she groaned, recalling the note of disgust in Roach’s voice when he first told her. Gallow had wanted them to leave his pistol where he could find it so he could turn it on himself. They’d left him with nothing. Less than nothing. 
“Aurora?”
She shuddered.
“If you could go back and do things over, would you have let Gallow live?”
“Ye–”
“Slow down and think. Be honest with yourself.” She pulled away from her, their eyes briefly meeting before Aurora looked back down at the sheets. “After seeing what that colt did to the family in that shed, knowing how many wagons he dragged into the woods, would you have trusted him to walk back to Blinder’s Bluff alone? Or to follow us?”
She lifted a feather and dragged it under her eyes. “That’s not fair.”
Ginger’s tone remained firm. “Yes or no?”
She chewed her lip. “I guess not. But–”
“But you don’t know what he would have done. Roach doesn’t know. I don’t know. All we know is his mother groomed him to kill and butcher innocent travelers until they had enough caps to buy their way in with the Epicureans. She tried to kill us, and he was helping.” She put a hoof under Aurora’s chin, tipping her eyes up to meet hers. “You have every right to regret what you did, but you had no control over why it had to be done.”
She swallowed and offered up a half-hearted, “Okay.”
“And, hey.” Ginger swept the tears from Aurora’s cheek with her magic, her own eyes misting over as she spoke. “No more shutting us out. Especially me. It hurts too much.”
For a long while they sat together, neither sure what to say. She hadn’t considered what it must have been like to deal with her. Every I’m fine a red flag signaling the opposite while her ironclad stubbornness prevented any of them from getting near enough to help. She couldn’t help but feel humiliated.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “I didn’t mean to make it so hard for you.”
Ginger cleared her eyes and chuckled. “Not touching that with a ten foot pole, Ms. Pinfeathers. From now on, though, it’d be nice to turn down the difficulty in that head of yours. Fair?”
She took a long breath, held it, and let it out slowly. The world had stopped spinning and her panic had eased. Things were going to be okay. And if not okay, at least Ginger would be around to help her along.
“Fair.” Her gaze dropped, however. The hunk of bandaged limb the Enclave chose to leave her with begged the question. “So… what do I do about this?”
Ginger gestured to the empty floor beyond the edge of their bed. “Let’s start with standing, then see where it takes us.”







“This sucks.”
“Mmhm.”
“We should be doing something.”
“We are. We’re behaving until Aurora wakes up.”
Julip scoffed, her black mane lifting in the sea breeze. “I fucking hate behaving. This place gives me the creeps.”
Not much to disagree with, there. Roach only shrugged as the two of them leaned over the rusted pipes that made up the many miles of the derelict oil rig’s railing. Three days had passed since the Enclave plucked the four of them from the Red Delicious parking lot and the chaos unfolding at the center of Fillydelphia. Delirious, beaten, and barely conscious, Aurora had been barely recognizable. The explosions that rocked the city center eliminated any argument for seeking medical attention from the locals, who were probably occupied with their own troubles at that moment. Whether the Enclave was abducting, escorting or aiding them was up to interpretation. For the time being, their goals had briefly aligned: help Aurora. 
Roach glanced over his shoulder as a stallion in black uniform traced his patrol across the catwalk behind them. No disguises out here. Not after the bombs decimated practically every viable watercraft within spitting distance of the Equestrian coast, and the ones that survived had been left to decay or sink on their own. Rumors were the Steel Rangers had salvaged a few prewar ocean haulers that docked in the comparably calmer waters on the western shore, but nothing which posed a threat. While tight-lipped around Roach and Julip, the soldiers assigned to this rusting outpost navigated the mazework of catwalks and gantries like second nature. They’d been stationed here a good long while.
He watched Julip pucker her lips and spit over the rail, the two of them tracking the spittle as it tumbled and broke apart before they could see it hit the plated walkways below. They stood at the top of a stack of glorified shipping containers on the platform’s leeward side, each one retrofitted into worker housing when the rig was in operation centuries ago. Ginger, Roach and Julip had all been assigned a container to sleep in one row down while Aurora recovered from her surgery in the yellow-lit rusty horror show these soldiers called their infirmary. It was only until last night that Aurora was finally moved to the container with the rest of them, and only after the Enclave deemed it safe by their own hazy standards of care. It didn’t take very long for the new living situation to feel indelicate even as Roach and Julip tried their best not to strain Ginger’s already frayed nerves. They’d slipped away as soon as morning arrived.
Roach glanced up to watch a formation of pegasi laden with heavy duffel bags approach from the east and land on what had once been a freight receiving platform suspended on cantilevers off the windward side. Another supply drop, right on time, lending to his theory that this wasn’t a temporary base of operations. The quartet shuffled off their heavy loads and were back in the air before the ground team had climbed the short steps to the platform, off to places unknown.
“You know, you’re the reason I quit working with these assholes,” Julip grumbled. “And now we’re here as their guests of honor.”
He shrugged and turned his gaze toward a clutch of uniformed pegasi passing around a cigarette beneath the platform’s central oil derrick. Lucky for them the salty air had corroded just about every inch of paint on the rig including the no smoking signs. “Ironshod really threw a wrench into things.”
Julip gave her tail an irritated flick, casting off into the sea breeze a knot of black hair that Ginger and Beans had braided in place. “Prick’s going to wish he’d been able to off himself once Primrose gets her hooks into him.”
She paused as a uniformed mare slid past them, ear turned toward the conversation just like everyone else who came up to check on them. Their eyes met briefly and Roach imagined daggers flying in both directions. Her status as a defector wasn’t a secret, it seemed, even out here. Julip shot her a cocky smile as she sidled away.
“At least Ironshod doesn’t have to pretend to be all nicey-nice,” she complained. “You do know she’s going to ask for us to do something for her in return, right? Probably something that’s going to get us all killed.”
“Then we’d better not agree to anything that’ll get us killed.”
She shot him a look. “Easy to say when you’re immortal.”
He laughed. It felt good to laugh. “I’m ugly, not immortal.”
“You’re not ugly.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “Well… thanks. I hear what you’re saying, though. We’re just going to have to be careful if things do boil down to bargaining. And who knows? Maybe they won’t. We did give her a gift wrapped distraction to sucker punch the Steel Rangers on their home turf.”
The reminder of what happened made Julip deflate a little, and she looked past Roach toward the hazy smear of smoke still snaking its way out from the west. Hidden below the horizon, the high reaching towers of Fillydelphia were still burning.
She sighed. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Ponies like Primrose don’t take a morning shit without some hidden agenda tied to it. Heck, a sprinkling of flattery in a chapel was all it took from her to get me to fly out here and spy on you guys. I was one hundred percent aware that one of you might punch my ticket if I got caught, and I never even thought to ask Primrose for a single thing in return. Not even a promotion. She’s slick like that. She lets you think she’s doing you a favor and not the other way around. So… you know. Be careful if she offers you the moon. Chances are she’s planning to drop it on your head.”
For a mare able to pack a shocking amount of profanity into the most mundane observations, these more eloquent moments she had kept catching him off guard. It reminded him that there was more to her than her past. In a different time, he wondered what kind of life someone like Julip might have made for herself.
“You think Ginger’s going to tell her about the talisman?”
“No,” he said, hoping Julip would catch the momentary firmness in his tone. “We don’t tell her. Knowing we were that close and we lost it during the rescue would break her.”
Julip frowned up at him but she didn’t push the issue. He could tell she understood the cold logic in their decision even if she didn’t appreciate being left out of it. Ginger had been beside herself when she first noticed the pulverized black shards spilling out of the hole torn through her saddlebag when Ironshod pulled the trigger on her. And now with Fillydelphia looking more and more like the epicenter of a new war, sneaking back down into Stable-Tec Headquarters for a second talisman risked tipping both factions off to the treasure trove Applebloom guarded. 
Roach looked back at the bags on his own hips, the words STABLE-TEC FIELD SUPPORT emblazoned within a nine-toothed cog only partially obscured by the buckled flap. To the casual observer, it probably meant nothing more than a lucky scavenge. The Enclave was not known for observing casually, however, and wearing his bags openly presented a risk in itself. Yet he had precious cargo of his own to worry about, a gemstone more irreplaceable than any talisman.
So far only one Enclave soldier had attempted to search his bags and he’d repaid the effort by decking the stallion with a bruised apple. On an outpost fed on rations and whatever their scouts could scavenge locally, the assault had been overlooked in exchange for the rest of the fresh fruit the four of them had brought up from Stable 1. While the Enclave still insisted he forfeit his leg mounted shotgun, his bags and the Element of Loyalty remained in his possession.
A small victory given the shitstorm unraveling on shore.
Julip sighed. “I still think this sucks.”
“Sure does.”
They watched the smoke-spoiled clouds drift overhead in silence. Soldiers passed by, stopped to listen, and left once they learned there was nothing to overhear. For a long while Roach could almost believe they were moving, the clouds hanging stationary above them while the oil rig and all its inhabitants slid across the open ocean like the cruise ships that Saffron always threatened to buy tickets for. Better days. 
A metallic thud signaled the opening of a door from the catwalk below and they looked down through the rusted grating at Ginger’s earth and fire palette stepping out of their container. Beside her, with one wing slung over her back for balance, Aurora gradually followed her out into the muted daylight. 
Ginger murmured something encouraging, her attention split between leading Aurora to the railing and making sure she wasn’t moving too fast. Aurora’s voice bore the frayed edges of a mare who had cried her throat raw, her tired nod more perceptible than her spoken answer. Roach couldn’t begin to imagine how that conversation went.
He tapped his hoof against the catwalk to let them know they were overhead. The two mares looked up and met their gaze, Ginger doing her best to reassure Roach and Julip with a worn smile. 
Aurora, however, wore her exhaustion like a second skin. From her red-rimmed eyes to the deep sag of her shoulders it was clear to anyone that she was carrying more than just a physical burden. But then her gaze shifted away from Roach and her eyes widened with disbelief. 
“Julip?”
The little green mare stopped short of delivering her usual snark as the moment’s significance dawned on her. She looked to Roach first, but a split second later her eyes were boring indignant holes through the grating at the unicorn being dragged along below by a suddenly determined Aurora. Ginger was barely able to look up at her in apology before she was carried toward the steps at the end of the catwalk in an undignified scramble of hooves.
Through grit teeth, Julip asked, “She didn’t tell her I’m not dead, did she?”
“You stay put,” he murmured back.
Aurora stumbled up the stairs and toward them, her wings alternating between gripping the railing and wiping her eyes. 
“She’s going to hug me. I don’t like being hugged, Roach.”
“Welcome to the family, green bean.”
“I swear t– oof!”
Julip nearly fell ass over teakettle from the force of Aurora’s wings clamping around her, but somehow she managed to keep them both upright. Neither mare spoke, one frozen with physical discomfort and one refusing to loosen her grip as she reckoned with the realization that Julip had survived too. Aurora shook her head, tears navigating well trodden tracks along her cheeks as she struggled for words. Despite her own protests, Roach caught Julip looking up at the clouds in a subtle attempt at keeping her own eyes dry. Something unspoken passed between the two of them. The relief of a shared guilt being lifted off of them as each came to terms with the other’s survival.
Maybe it was selfish, but Roach felt a bolt of pride when Julip finally spoke.
“He didn’t get us,” she said.
Aurora shook her head, blinded by tears. “He didn’t get us.”
And there it was. A shimmer of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel and the reason why each of them kept putting their lives on the line for the others. Despite their differences and the hardships they’d faced, they were sewing together the lasting bonds of a real family. Even Julip had finally come around. 
Careful not to spoil the moment, Roach cleared his throat and looked beyond the high railing and let the wind dry his eyes. He forgot how badly he missed this. After some time and a good amount of sheepish recomposure between the newly minted friends, Aurora plodded over to him and thumped his hip with the back of her wing.
“Hey,” she said with the slightest smile in her voice. “Thanks.”
He looked at her, perplexed. “For what?”
“Too many things to keep track of. Just, thank you for all of it. Especially with me being, well, me.”
He had a feeling he knew what she was referring to. He glanced at the catwalk and the absence of the hoof that would have helped her stand on it. “So…”
The word hung between them with the weight of all the questions attached to it. Aurora tried to shrug off the seriousness of what he struggled to put into words, but her eyes weren’t bloodshot and tired for nothing. Every ounce of her radiated exhaustion as she propped herself against the railing. 
“Ginger told me she thinks it’s safer for me if we went back home.”
First time he’d heard anyone mention giving up. He managed to mask his surprise as his gaze flicked past Aurora to the unicorn in question. Ginger stared at him with a silent intensity that warned him not to pry. He eyed her back. She expected them all to just pack up and go home without discussing it? Absolutely not. 
He glanced down at Aurora, his tone gentle. “It certainly would be safer. What about the ignition talisman?”
A mote of magic bloomed around his shoulder and gave him a sturdy shake. He flicked his tail hard enough for the old fibers to snap the air, warding her off. Aurora didn’t notice the exchange, her attention briefly held by the black-clad soldiers milling around the platform below. Out here, surrounded by the ocean, the Enclave didn’t have to blend in. Many of them were watching the four of them from their posts, keeping tabs on their guests without going so far as to risk anything amounting to a sociable interaction. Roach imagined Dancer or Chops might have risked a sideways glance by chewing the fat with them had they not been reassigned back to New Canterlot as soon as they’d all been safely evacuated from the burning city.
Aurora clenched her teeth against some invisible discomfort. The medics who removed her dead limb warned that she’d likely experience phantom pain well after she recovered, possibly for the remainder of her life. 
“Ginger says she’s made arrangements to get one.” More news. Now Julip was staring at Ginger with fresh confusion. “Besides… with the exception of meeting you guys, coming out here has just been one clusterfuck after another. I mean, I didn’t get ten steps outside before something tried to kill me. And then the whole thing with Cider and Autumn just… haven’t you gotten the feeling that the further we go, the more danger I put you all in?”
Dammit, Ginger, what did you say to her? He took a breath and nudged the trailing edge of her wing. “Why don’t you hang onto me while we talk. Ginger, Julip, do you mind if we have some privacy?”
He didn’t care that Ginger stiffened or that she seemed ready to argue. She’d been putting things in motion behind his back and now they were all along for the ride. Ginger was lucky he didn’t tear that thermite Pip-Buck off her foreleg and send the thing flying into the sea.
Luckily, she relented and followed Julip down the stairs. As they departed, Roach braced Aurora with his body as she dropped an unsteady wing over his back, her grip staying rigid as she tried to take some of the pressure off her remaining hind leg. He only spoke once he felt sure Ginger was out of earshot.
“Did I ever tell you about the two ghouls that attacked you when you left the Stable?”
Aurora frowned. “No?”
He grunted. “Chalk it up to embarrassment on my part. Their names were Mayberry and Paisley. The only reason I know that is because I matched their faces to the Stable registration forms I found in their luggage. I went through a lot of luggage after… well, after it was just me in there.”
Before Rainbow Dash gave the reins to Blue.
“I’m pretty sure they were the last two to go feral,” he continued, remembering those terrible last days when those who hadn’t mustered the courage to kill themselves succumbed to the decaying effects of the radiation. Trapped in a cavern with dozens of feral ghouls waking around them, those who hadn’t transformed hadn’t stood a chance. “A lot of ponies think ghouls live forever, but they don’t. After a decade or two without eating they shut down and die like anyone else. I didn’t even realize most of the ghouls in the tunnel had died until I saw one just… fall over. They were always so quiet. Mayberry and Paisley especially. They always stood together under one of the old posters on the tunnel wall and just stared into nowhere.”
Aurora had the same blank look. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Bear with me.” If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know either. “Up until then, I’d made some friends on the outside. A couple of stallions that survived the bombs by hiding in a sewer. By then they were getting old. Golden kept getting sick and it was taking him longer to recover. They were my first friends I knew I was going to outlive, and the idea of starting over just made me feel so… tired. Going back home to make sure Blue was okay kept me grounded, and I got it in my head that if I fed Mayberry and Paisley too then we could be a group together. And hey, maybe I wouldn’t feel so lonely. Plus it gave me someone different to talk to.”
“So you kept them alive.” He could see the regret bloom in Aurora’s eyes. “And I made you kill them.”
He grimaced. “That’s not my point. Aurora, they were gone. Completely. At least I hope they were, because I was keeping them alive out of selfishness. I used to bring radroaches into the tunnel to watch them hunt because it was something to do. Entertainment to pass the time while I waited for the door to open. I barely considered what might happen if someone did step out.”
Feathers squeezed around his midsection. Tactile reassurance. He missed the days back when his disguise bore wings.
“Sometimes,” he continued, choosing his words carefully, “when we get attached to another person we forget how hard it is to make good choices. I got so attached to Mayberry and Paisley’s company that I ended up treating them like pets. I convinced myself of so many lies to keep justifying it. They would keep Blue company when I was away, or maybe with time someone might find a cure for what happened to them. For all I know they had family of their own that survived the bombs and who were looking for them, and meanwhile I was playing with their corpses in what should have been their final resting place.”
Aurora was staring at him now with speechless pity. He offered a little smile to forestall her initiative to console him. Saffron liked to reprimand him for rambling, especially when he was working his way toward making a point. Old habits die hard.
He sighed. He would have preferred a less complicated moment to pour his heart out, but right now seemed fitting given the circumstances. “Look. That mare down there adores you more than anything in the world. You’re messy, you’re impulsive, and you’re about as subtle as a jackhammer…”
“Hey!”
He smiled a little broader. “And Ginger loves all of that. I know it because I thought the same thing about my husband, and there was not a force in this world that could pull us apart. I also know if Saffron were standing here in your place and I had the chance to get him back home where I know he’d be safe from all of this… this shit the wasteland keeps throwing at us…”
Aurora’s shoulders sagged with understanding. “You’d do everything in your power to make it happen.”
He nodded. “Even if it’s the wrong decision.”
Time passed and he spent it waiting for her to get angry and come to Ginger’s defense. To berate him for even suggesting she might take the easy way to the finish line by letting her think it was okay to turn around and go home. 
But she didn’t. She looked tired. Her eyes drifted down to the lower deck of the oil rig where Ginger and Julip stood alongside their own railing, the two of them staring out to sea as if expecting to see something rise out from under the waves. Every so often Ginger would lift her hoof to the rail and read something on her gifted Pip-Buck before tilting it to Julip for her to do the same. There was only one person on the other end of that device and she was the reason Roach felt the need to throw water on Ginger’s decision to throw in the towel on Aurora’s behalf. 
As if reading his mind, Aurora broke the silence. “The Enclave gave her that Pip-Buck, didn’t they?”
“She’s been in direct contact with Primrose ever since they offered to help find where Ironshod was holding you,” he nodded, adding, “Ginger even convinced Princess Luna’s dream-creature to stop giving her nightmares.”
Aurora made a face. “She can do that?”
He shrugged. “Apparently so.”
“Why?” A moment later, she answered her own question. “Oh. Me.”
“Hasn’t been easy keeping her expectations grounded.” He glanced behind them as an Enclave soldier walked by, the uniformed mare only briefly registering disgust before turning her attention back to her route. “It doesn’t help that she has some actual pull with Primrose now. I think this is the longest any of these soldiers have spent near a ghoul without filling it with plasma rounds.”
“I don’t know what those are.”
Down below, Ginger had backed off the railing and was leading Julip back the way they came. Time’s up. “I hope to keep it that way. A lot has happened over the past few days, Aurora, but I know you can handle it. You’ll remember what we talked about, right?”
Already her attention was drifting to her companion. She nodded absently, her wing sliding off his back. “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Roach.”
He knew an empty platitude when he heard one, but he didn’t press the issue. Her mind was elsewhere. Of course it was. Off she went, limping toward the top of the stairs while he watched, the warmth along his back cooling where her wing had sat. He never stood a chance.
“Sure,” he murmured. “Don’t mention it.”







“Okay. Shit, hold on.”
Waves lapped at the four rigid pillars keeping the now-vintage oil rig fixed to the sea bed, the bright yellow paint that once coated them having been eaten away long before any of them - well, most of them - were born. Roach’s recollections of how the world used to be helped ease Aurora’s embarrassment by filling what would have been worried silences with anecdotes from the old world. The four of them had made six respectable laps of the rig’s seaward facing catwalks along which they found evidence of recent and not too recent repairs to its superstructure, and Aurora could feel her body slowly getting the hang of walking again. 
At the beginning of their seventh lap, she’d reluctantly conceded that she was running on fumes. Embarrassed to be the only one breaking a sweat, the temptation to hide the radiating pain in her hip as it took up the work of two legs was strong. She could feel herself starting to box up how she actually felt in favor of easing her friends’ worries about her condition, and nearly gave in. It would be easy to pretend she was fine and to push herself through two, maybe three more laps before someone made the decision to stop for her. 
Now they stood at the foot of the diamond-patterned steps to their accommodations several flights up. It might as well have been a hundred. The muscles in her single hind leg screamed from the unbalanced exertion and for all the good her stump was doing just dangling there, it hurt twice as much. They didn’t have a vote as far as she was concerned. The wasteland didn’t care how many legs she had. Ironshod sure hadn’t.
Fucking stairs.
“Be ready to grab me,” she warned.
She could hear Ginger smirk without looking. “Oh, gladly.”
The things Roach and Julip had to deal with. Her brow creased in thought as she approached the first stair. Right hoof. Then– wait, no. Left hoof. Then right. Then… hop. A fresh pang of pain shot down her hind end and her knee nearly buckled, but she saved it by grabbing the rails with both wings. She repeated the process. Left, right, hop. Another stair higher. Step, step, hop. Step, step, hop. Eventually the rickety stairs were ringing with several hoofsteps following behind her.
“You’re doing good.” 
Ginger’s encouragement gave her the determination to muscle through another painful step. Still, Roach’s warning earlier in the day stuck uncomfortably with her like a stubborn popcorn shell between her teeth. Now that she was paying attention, she’d noticed they were all hiding something from her. Something had happened and she wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t tell she’d been at the center of… whatever it was. Roach wasn’t saying anything. Ginger insisted she just wait a little while. And Julip, well, she was barely keeping it together with so many Enclave blackshirts staring daggers at her. 
She winced her way up the first flight wishing someone would tell her what the fuck was going on. 
No sooner had she reached the top of the steps than she had her answer. She stopped, holding the railing for support as they streamed down through the thin overcast. Black shapes held aloft on wings of every color descended from the sky like flakes of falling ash. Dozens of them, each one fixed in a formation of concentric diamonds as if they were single points etched into a sweeping pane of glass. Aurora felt her jaw go slack at their aerial precision, bringing back fillyhood memories of the archival videos their teachers played in school when Wonderbolt Week arrived. It was beautiful. 
“I wonder who that is,” Roach chided. 
She glanced back to see Ginger very pointedly ignoring his tone, her eyes temporarily glued to the slim curve of her own Pip-Buck. A low rumble began to swell across the oil rig as Ginger read the text on her foreleg. Hooves, stamping the rusting catwalks in greeting as the pegasi formation tacked the winds in a wide circle around the platform. Aurora watched as the centermost diamond broke away and descended toward the loading platform hanging over the rig’s far corner where several personnel gathered to meet them.
Expression turning grim, Ginger whispered something under her breath. “We should go meet them.”
She clutched the railing and stared at her. “Ginger, I love you to death, but my hip is killing me and I’m going to tear my mane out if you all keep up this air of mystery shit. Who are those ponies and why do we have to do anything?”
An uncomfortable silence drifted between them like fog, Aurora planting herself as she waited for an honest answer. Her worry grew as Ginger remained silent, lips pressed into a thin line as she wrestled with the secrets she knew it had been a mistake to keep. 
The rest of the diamond formation had broken into smaller elements now, rotating around the platform in a slow moving vortex of wings and rifles. Each one of them scanned the open ocean, eyes peeled for incoming threats. Layers upon layers of protection rotated around them. An unnecessary amount of firepower. Pure overkill.
Except, as Ginger relented and began to speak, she realized it wasn’t.
“The Enclave… technically owes us a favor. Or, they owe you a favor. It seemed like a waste not to call it in.”
Roach stared at her from the steps, eye wide. “Wait, this is the arrangement you–”
“Those are her personal guard,” Julip stammered, her ears flattening as she watched a breakoff formation cross the air above the platform. “Is she here? Ginger, did you seriously ask her to come here?!”
They were filling in blanks faster than Aurora could keep up with. She could see the indignant anger welding Roach’s hooves to the steps while Julip’s delicately reformed confidence formed deep, undercutting cracks. For her part, Ginger stiffened against their rebuke as if silence would help them understand her thoughts. But it was only making things worse. She could feel the fissures widening.
Her body ached but she stepped forward anyway, the railing creaking under her wing. “Ginger? What did you do?”
Ginger swallowed. “I asked for help.”
She waited. Rebuked by Roach and Julip, she’d stood unfazed, but it was the deepening concern in Aurora’s voice that cracked that armor.
“From who?” 
Her companion’s eyes dropped to the grating in shame.
“From Primrose.”







Pots dripped along the drying rack. Water sloshed as dirty ones were plunged into the turbulent wash basin, churned by feathers and hooves as each one was scrubbed clean and made ready for the next meal. With only her left wing at her disposal, Rainbow had been assigned to the rinse sink. Unlike many of the ponies she encountered on the soup line, the pegasi of the Brass Bit welcomed the extra help. There weren’t many of them and the stream of dirty stainless steel was endless. 
Sledge looked up from his Pip-Buck at her and smirked upon seeing Rainbow chumming up with a young buckskin waitress from the restaurant. Caramel, something. She’d been moved to the kitchen within the past two weeks when she, along with a growing sliver of the population, had chosen to leave their jumpsuits at home. He’d been afraid the two of them working together would be a distraction to the rest of the staff, but the three remaining pegasi working the kitchen either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Caramel and Rainbow worked and chatted, none of the three wings between them slowing from their established rhythm while they discussed a book series the two of them learned the other had read. Sledge didn’t know enough about boobytraps or artifacts to dip his hooves into their conversation and instead opted to tuck himself out of everyone’s way where he could catch up on Opal’s generous list of new messages.
He leaned against a barrel of pureed tomatoes and scrolled through them.
Ever since cracking Delta’s heavily obscured Partition 40, Opal and her team were making discovery after discovery. Stacks of damning evidence curated by a mare who Sledge may have never heard had the generator not spooked Aurora out of the Stable. Delta Vee had been a force to be reckoned with, and what initially appeared to be the rebellious disobedience of a stubborn pegasus had grown into something else entirely. 
They’d learned Delta’s arrival at the Stable represented a total loss of everything she’d ever known or loved. She struggled with maintaining her sobriety while adjusting to a cramped, impersonal existence. She excelled at her role in I.T. and found some semblance of happiness in the work while seemingly content with building few if any new personal connections. For almost ten years she existed within her new routine, seemingly resigned to the fact that she would likely die without knowing what happened to her daughter.
Then she’d gotten bored, and everything unraveled.
Opal’s messages came in faster than he could keep up with. Partition 40 was a treasure trove of history previously assumed erased. With the locks cut off the door, everything Delta had preserved which Overmare Spitfire sought to destroy was laid bare. 
Everything.
Sledge’s stomach churned at the unreads.

Subject: Unscheduled Meeting w/ Dept. Heads on 10/31. Hours before bombs. How?
Subject: Second resident registration list?! DO NOT DELETE!
Subject: Listening to call records; Spitfire gave key pegasi EARLY WARNING.
Subject: Delta Tapes, Batch 11: Pioneer virus, early survivor communication logs.
Subject: Disturbing anti-magic sentiment among Spitfire inner circle.
Subject: Ponies locked outside all on second resident list. Respond ASAP.
Subject: Delta Tapes, Batch 12: Delta downloading files off surviving JSA networks.
Subject: READ IMMEDIATELY. TIME SENSITIVE.
Subject: OVERSTALLION - OPEN THIS SURVEILLANCE VIDEO SOUP CAN WAIT.
Subject: SLEDGE THIS IS AN EMERGENCY GET OVER RIGHT NOW YOU NEED TO [...]

He scraped the bridge of his muzzle between his feathers. “Celestia’s perky pissflaps. Hey, Rainbow, we need to go. Opal’s got something.”
Rainbow and her new friend looked his way, their conversation hitting a sudden wall. “Opal’s had something all this week. Can it wait?”
Caramel, either by dint of working for the taskmasters who owned the Bit, caught onto his uncomfortable silence before Rainbow could. “Go ahead. You know where to find me if you feel like geeking out later.”
He didn’t wait for the two of them to put a bow on it. In his limited experience he knew Opal tended to lean out to the dramatic when she wanted a response, but if she was willing to come over and tear her overstallion and an Element of Harmony away by their ears it would just be easier if the two of them brought said ears to Opal. 
Rainbow caught up with him as he ducked out of the Atrium and into the busy corridors, the two of them weaving and juking their way between ponies still hanging onto their empty bowls and those who saw the loitering crowd as an excuse to twiddle their hooves as well. Whatever kept them occupied. He ducked between two stallions who were too lost in each other to be bothered to move for him, though they practically leapt out of the way when Rainbow Dash slipped through the same gap. 
The closer they came to the halls of I.T., the thinner the crowd became. “What’d she find?”
He shook his head. “Dunno. Something big, by the look of it.”
“Any news about Aurora?”
“Not yet.” He glanced down at her. “You did good back there, by the way.”
She smirked at that. “Unintentional perk of Rarity’s intensive public relations seminars. Smile, shake hooves, kiss the foal, don’t pass along national secrets to the enemy via neutral powers. It’s kind of hard to mess that up.”
 Rainbow had begun sharing some of the bits and pieces of her last few years with him in the privacy of her compartment. He didn’t have what he could confidently call a full picture, but she told him enough to know how close she’d come to getting advanced schematics of Equestria’s solar energy systems across the Vhannan border. She’d lost something along the way and her plan had ultimately failed, but whenever she started talking about what happened after she completely locked up on him. 
“I see you made a friend,” he said.
She excused herself as she slipped by a bewildered pegasus. “Caramel? Yeah, she’s pretty cool. I give her points for bringing up the Daring Do series and not asking questions about,” she gestured to herself with her wing, her body, the faded yet unmistakable cutie mark on her hip, “all of this.”
He shot her a little grin. “She single?”
“Gee whiz, in the whole hour we were talking we never got around to deciding whether we should hook up.” Rainbow snorted at him, and damned if it wasn’t just his coat turning his cheeks red. “What kind of fanfiction do you read, anyway?”
“What’s a ‘fanfiction?’”
She chuckled. “Before your time.”
When they reached the I.T. wing, they found Opal standing outside the server room door with her nose buried in her Pip-Buck. She was typing what looked suspiciously like another message to Sledge when she finally heard them coming. Her pale blue feathers dropped from the device as she blew out an exasperated sigh, turning to smack the door switch with the edge of her hoof. Unlike all the other doors in their crippled home, the hydraulics here still had power. The door hissed open as if nothing at all were wrong.
“I was this close to comin’ out to find you myself, Sledge.” The unfinished message still glowing from her foreleg as she hurried inside, grumbling to herself every step of the way.
He followed with Rainbow in tow, the three of them filing into the blindingly white space that housed the Stable’s servers. All of the lights beamed down at full intensity, causing Sledge and Rainbow to reflexively slit their eyes until they could adjust. They followed Opal through the diligently humming machine, their black cages and blinking lights unbothered by the rest of the Stable being on life support.
“Do I want to know?”
Opal impatiently ushered them toward a tech cart near the center of the room where, once he forced his eyes open a bit more, Sledge noticed several cables snaking out from the back of a large terminal atop the cart and into the open cage of an adjacent server. “Ignorance is bliss n’ all that. Here’s another. Misery loves company.”
Rainbow did as she was told and the three of them gathered at the cart. There was a tension in the air that was new and not particularly welcome. The tension coming off Opal was muted by reluctance, confliction, and anger. Sledge began to worry she’d found something out about their generator he wasn’t aware of, or that the power they were leaching from the Stable-Tec HQ ruins all the way across the continent might be in jeopardy. Whatever the crisis was, it felt existential. 
When Opal unlocked the terminal, Sledge wondered whether within the hour he’d be opening the Stable door.
As if reading his mind, Rainbow asked, “Is the Stable going to be alright?”
“Depends,” the old mare muttered, her feathers dropping onto terminal keys a little harder than necessary. “I don’t much feel like telling ‘em. You two do whatever you think’s best. Now hush up and watch.”
Without preamble, she pecked a key and the first of several files excavated from Partition 40 opened up. Tidy green columns began populating the screen. Names appeared in the first column in alphabetical order. Ages in the next. Then gender. Breed. Address…
“Them’s the names of all the pegasi who got registered to Stable 10,” Opal said, her accent getting stronger as scrolling through the list made her more agitated. She tapped the ascending number beside each first resident’s name. “Little over five hunnerd, total. Nothin’ near enough t’fill this tin can even if everyone got inside, which they didn’t. Not enough t’ set off alarm bells with Stable-Tec neither, which it shoulda. Place like this was s’posed to hold a thousand from the get-go, not half. So I got to thinkin’ about all those ponies what got locked out. Hunnerds of ‘em all thinkin’ they were gettin’ in.”
She closed the list and opened another file. 
The same columns dropped down the screen. Names, ages, genders, breeds…
Except they weren’t pegasi. Unicorns populated the list alongside earth ponies, their names alone hinting at their status within the prewar world. Then the list was gone, Opal’s feathers working overtime as she struggled to contain her outrage. A still image taken from the security camera mounted in the tunnel outside appeared on screen, the flagstone floor clogged with panicked evacuees doomed to die mere yards from safety. Several of their faces were framed in green squares, names appearing beneath each box. 
“Had to come here because it’s the only place Millie’s listenin’. She matched sixty-two names from that second registration list to this image, but I’m bettin’ every one of those ponies were s’posed to be residents.”
Sledge had suspected it when he first watched the chaos playing out beyond the door, but he held short of saying as much. Beside him, Rainbow didn’t look all that shocked either, though her expression had taken on an unmissable sourness. He simply nodded, knowing this wasn’t what had Opal out of sorts. She was walking them through her process.
“Obvious answer is Overmare Spitfire didn’t want non-pegasi getting into her shiny new Stable. She trained Wonderbolts in peacetime, commanded ‘em during the first attacks against Vhanna, and used her clout when she got back home to call dibs on Stable 10 and hire Wonderbolts as its first department heads. Sound about right?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “I didn’t think so neither. Delta Vee wasn’t no Wonderbolt. She was the no-name ex-wife of a rocket manufacturer who didn’t know the first thing about leading I.T., and if it weren’t for Bow Hothoof she might’nt never made it to the Stable in the first place.”
Rainbow chewed the corner of her lip at the mention of her dad’s name. 
Opal kept going. “Turns out like all them other ponies, she wasn’t s’posed to.”
Her feathers trotted over the keyboard, closing the list of names of those now dead outside and opening a different file. A still frame from Opal’s office took up the screen, except the mare seated behind the desk wasn’t Opal. She hit play and the picture moved, the scratchy audio of keys being pecked by Delta’s feathers the only sound being picked up. The timestamp in the corner dated the recording back to October 27th, 1087. Almost ten years to the day after the bombs first fell.
They watched Delta startle at the sound of the door opening, knocking a bottle of liquor off her desk in the process. It was clear as the two of them converged on the shattered glass that there was deep tension in the air. Though barely a smudge of pixels on a screen, Sledge could sense the similarities between Delta’s mood and Opal’s. Both had just learned something they wished they could unlearn. To that point, Delta was rambling about having erased something Spitfire wanted gone.
Then the conversation took a left turn. Delta was drunk. Her filters had come apart at the seams. She asked about Spitfire’s problems with gryphons, then announced Equestria had bombed itself. The latter statement sucked all of the air from the room. Just a few days earlier Sledge, Rainbow and Opal had made the same discovery courtesy of the breadcrumbs Delta left behind. Now he was beginning to understand why she’d made it so difficult to stumble across by accident. Spitfire’s mood darkened immediately. The conversation grew heated, both mares talking over one another. A terminal went flying. Suddenly Spitfire was forcing Delta against the wall, belligerent, shouting at her that she should have deleted what she found. 
Something passed between the two of them that Sledge couldn’t make out, but whatever it was it punched through Delta’s boozy fog like a thrown spear. “It was all you!” echoed out of the terminal as Spitfire made a hasty escape. 
“What was all her?” Sledge stared at the screen, bewildered, as he watched Delta being locked inside her own office as if it were one of the cells up in Security. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that such a thing could happen.
Opal stopped the video, freezing Delta in place as she screamed at the locked door. The picture flipped briefly to the list of files and loaded the next one. “What’s the one thing that mare went through pains t’ preserve that Spitfire wanted deleted?”
The answer was obvious. It had been singularly the most prescient discovery in Stable history; that Equestria had been the sole aggressor at the end of the war, and the bombs that ended the world originated from Equestrian missile silos. 
Rainbow held her wing over the keyboard before Opal could rush into whatever came next. “Spitfire might have been a ten ton bitch, but global genocide’s way out of her wheelhouse.”
Sledge waited as Opal bristled at being stopped. There was a note of warning in her old eyes. “So yer vouching for her good character?”
“I’m just saying, she couldn’t have if she wanted to. She would have needed authorization codes from two separate ministers.”
“She had yours, didn’t she?”
Rainbow blinked. Her face fell. “Fuck.”
Opal gently pushed her wing aside. “Took me some diggin’ but I figured out where the audio from Spitfire’s phone calls got put. Can’t say there’s much worth defending on them. Might wanna sit down, Rainbow.”
She pressed play.
A camera high above the Atrium began playing back footage recorded years and years ago. The little business alcoves that he’d always known to surround the broad public area were conspicuously empty. Only a few pegasi loitered on the upper catwalk surrounding the vacant pavilion, each one of them wearing the iconic blue and yellow flight suits of the Wonderbolts. Their cowls hung loose against their shoulders and flight goggles glinted off their chests. 
Two pegasi stood apart from the rest of the group. Spitfire and Thunderlane.
Sledge read the timestamp and immediately recognized the date. 
He held his breath.







October 31st, 1077
Stable 10

Spitfire paced her third long lap around the Atrium and Thunderlane followed alongside her, his attention far more focused on the contents of the clipboard in her wing than she was. 
“Before we head home, we should give Misty another refresher. She still needs practice on the fabricators.” He tapped a feather-wrapped pen against the summary sheet of each department lead’s aptitude scores, where Misty Fly’s results sat well below the curve. “I think I know a trick to help her stop transposing the feed rates between titanium and steel.”
She glanced at the sheet. “She doesn’t need a trick, she needs to slow down and read the laminates. It shouldn’t be this hard for her to learn how to fabricate one of the presets.”
“She’s fine on presets. Her score took a hit again because she tried out a custom blueprint during the test.”
Then tell her not to fuck around with custom blueprints. “Okay. Fine. Do whatever.”
Thunderlane frowned. “Are you okay?”
Fuck. She took a breath and waited for her frayed nerves to calm a little before answering. “I’m fine. I just have a lot on my plate today.”
He hummed thoughtfully and thumped her midsection with the back of his wing. “If you need to decompress, there’s a curry place in Canterlot I’ve been wanting an excuse to try. My treat?”
She knew the place. She also knew it didn’t matter how she answered, so it didn’t cost her anything to cheer him up. “Sure. We’ll see where the evening takes us.”
His ears perked. “Really?”
“Why not.”
With one minor crisis averted, she moved onto the next. The rest of the department heads were getting antsy waiting for their scores when as far as Spitfire was concerned their scores weren’t an issue. If push came to shove, Millie’s AI could always step in to fill any gaps in their performance. Right now, she was more worried they might start wondering whether they could fly home.
“Why don’t you take Misty down to Fabrication now,” she decided. “I’ll grab a few Pip-Bucks from storage and quiz everyone while you’re–”
Millie’s pings interrupted her. “Overmare Spitfire, there is a call from Stable-Tec waiting for you in your office.”
Finally. 
“Scratch that,” she said. “Let me get this call first.”
He blinked after her. “Okay?”
She trotted across the Atrium and mounted the steps, fishing her badge out from the collar of her flight suit as she approached the overseer’s office door. Her gaze flicked up toward the camera mounted behind the unblinking black dome above her door and felt a brief chill as if someone were staring back at her.
The door slid shut behind her and she engaged the lock.
Sat beside the pristine terminal on her otherwise empty desk, a pale green telephone waited. A single orange light blinked at her as if the mare on the other end were impatiently tapping her feathers. Spitfire took a moment to compose herself before sitting down in her high back chair and lifting the receiver.
“Hello?”
A pause. The video-only camera stowed in the rear corner of her office clicked as it panned the room. Then, “Glad to see you’re ready.”
Primrose’s voice dribbled down the back of her neck like chipped ice. Her throat felt cottony as she nodded at the reflection in her terminal. “You should know by now that I don’t shirk my duties. All our department heads are present and accounted for, and the gun locker is stocked. How’s everything on your end? Any problems?”
“None.” The line rustled. A hoof thumping the handset on the other end, followed by a muffled giggle. Spitfire pretended not to hear it. “We’ve already sealed ourselves in. Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy are attending a press junket at Canterlot Castle. Rainbow Dash should be in a meeting at Stable-Tec HQ in Fillydelphia right about now, and Pinkie is…”
“With you,” she finished, trying hard not to let the irritation reach her voice. “Why is that, again?”
“Simple pleasures.”
“Does your ‘simple pleasure’ have any idea–”
A slurred, breathy voice pressed through the line. “Shhhhh! It’s A-a-ahpplejack’s birzday t’day! Shh-shh-shh-shh!”
She pulled the handset away from her ear and looked at the camera with annoyance. Was Primrose insane? She could already hear her asking whether it mattered at this point. It probably didn’t. At least, not to them. When she settled it back against her ear, she said, “Is that how you got her to come down to the Ministry of Tech?”
The grin was audible in her compatriot’s voice. “She’s very motivated by parties and extremely honest after a little datura root tea. Isn’t that right, Pinkie?”
In the distance now, “Thaaaaat’s right! Ooh! We should hide b’vore she gets, um… uhh…”
“Someone get her a chair.” Primrose’s hooves echoed out from the phone, mingling with the quiet murmurs of several other pegasi who had a better sense of what was coming. The split was a necessary step, Primrose insisted. Future generations needed an innocent victim to glom onto. Pegasi whose unscripted reactions would be witnessed and attested to so when they rose from the ashes, they would have deniability. 
Primrose, on the other hoof, insisted on being surrounded by others within their Enclave who were in the know. The next several years would need to be molded while the metal was still malleable, before anyone else could push Equestria in the wrong direction.
Primrose’s tone hardened. “Do you have her codes?” 
Spitfire glanced up at the camera and nodded.
“Alright. Warm up those feathers. We’re going to need to be quick.”
Her heart pumped harder as she sat up and switched on her terminal. Rainbow Dash had forfeited exclusive access to her launch authorization codes when she forfeited her role as minister. Using them hadn’t been a part of her plan back then. She’d only wanted to remove a dangerous mare’s feathers from the nation’s purse strings. But seeing that first green mushroom rolling into the sky just over a year ago had opened her eyes to a future without the burden of magic. A future where influence and power wasn’t determined by whether or not you were born with a horn. An even playing field. 
A societal reboot.
“Hey Pinkie, let me see your Pip-Buck real quick.”
Spitfire’s feathers hovered over the keyboard, her terminal ready to connect into the Pillar’s heavily guarded network. In Rainbow Dash’s vacant office, a prompt would appear on her terminal. The ministries’ Millie would notice the intrusion and attempt to break the connection, but Primrose had Enclave assets ready to run interference from within the bowels of the Ministry of Technology. Spitfire’s window might last a few seconds or a few milliseconds. She took a slow, steadying breath to ease her trembling feathers and waited for her cue.
“How’dju make it do that?” Pinkie asked. “Oh wai… wait, Prim yernot s’posed to see–”
Primrose ignored her. “On my count. Three. Two. One. Now.”
Her feathers dropped to the keyboard. Hundreds of miles away, a remote connection opened between Stable 10 and the Pillar. Rainbow Dash’s terminal was awake and ready for the thirty-two digit string that would give all creatures without magic a fair chance at life. She punched in each character of the Gold Code with deliberate intent. On the other side of the line, Primrose authorized Pinkie’s from the source.
“Prim, no! I said NO!”
Worthwhile change couldn’t happen without a little discomfort, but the world would endure the growing pains. This was the only way to prevent a future where magic dictated free will. This was how two pegasi could smother tyranny before it had a chance to leave the crib.
Pinkie sobered up too slowly. Spitfire typed too quickly.
A breath before Millie severed the connection and the screen went blank, Spitfire saw the briefest glimpse of CONFIRMATION COMPLETE flicker across the monitor. On the phone, Primrose was breathing heavily. She’d had to fight Pinkie for those last terrible seconds. Now the ministry mare was being dragged away, her horrified profanities fading. 
“Good luck, Overmare.”
The harsh gonging of the Pillar's klaxons cut across the line. Their chosen targets - government facilities, manufacturers of war, cities containing archives of Equestria's oldest magic - were being selected by systems put into place over the span of months by only the most trusted pegasi of the Enclave. They'd agreed Cloudsdale had to be first to fall. Primrose would need a symbol, a nexus to rally survivors around. 
Something to throw the dogs off their scent once the dust settled. 
In the Atrium, all stayed silent. No alarm, no sirens. Not yet. Not until the first missile found its target. She savored these last moments of peace. They would be difficult for her to find in the coming days. 
“Good luck, Minister.”
She hung up.







Rainbow wasn’t fully aware of the footage stopping or the concern on Sledge and Opal’s faces when they noticed her staring numbly into the middle distance. It was as if her subconscious decided enough was enough, that she had reached her limit and was no longer accepting new data.
“Rainbow. Hey.” Sledge was practically nose to nose with her, his eyes wide with worry. “Come on back.”
She wasn’t going anywhere. Blue wasn’t coming back. Sledge pulled her into a bear hug as if to squeeze a response from her, but she didn’t have one. Spitfire had used her codes to launch a world-ending catastrophe. That weird little secretary of hers had taken advantage of Pinkie’s mental decline, something Rainbow nor any of the other girls had done a damn thing to help her cope with, and stole the Gold Codes right off her foreleg. 
She leaned her head against Sledge’s powerful neck and let him hold her. It felt nice. He had the same ruddy brick coat that Big Mac had, wherever he had gone. Deep down she wanted to scream. She wanted to punch her hooves through every fucking server in this room until something in her body broke. But she couldn’t get there. She could barely muster enough tears to cry. So she stopped trying.
“You can let go, big guy.” She tapped a hoof against his chest, gently nudging him away. “Thanks.”
Her assurance did little to calm his nerves. “If you want to talk about it…”
She shook her head and looked to Opal. “Is that everything you had to show us?”
The elderly mare glanced up to Sledge, then back to her with clear bewilderment. “I s’pose it was.”
“Is Millie still running in here?”
Opal’s brow furrowed. “Yes.”
“Good. Can I have the room to myself for a minute?”
The two of them hesitated. 
Rainbow winced at how brisque she was being with them. “Sorry. I just need to send a message. To her. I want to set the record straight.”
Sledge was the first to catch on. He nudged Opal with the flat of his wing and tipped his head to indicate they should leave. She went along with him, albeit reluctantly, uncertain of what Rainbow was talking about. That was fine. She could explain it to her later.
“We’ll be outside when you’re done,” he called back. “Give her hell.”
She smiled a little at that, but only briefly.
The door hissed closed leaving her alone among the servers. She grimaced as she sat down on the cool linoleum, propping her back up against the cage of the machine behind her.
“Millie?”
“Yes, minister?”
“I want to dictate a letter to a dead mare. Can I do that?”
A pause. “Please provide the name of the recipient.”
“Spitfire.”
Another pause. Longer, this time. “Please note Overmare Spitfire’s resident account has been flagged ‘unsecure’ due to multiple breaches. Any messages sent to this account may be visible to third parties.”
“As one of those third parties, I say it’s fine.” She wrapped her ragged wing over her knees, resting her chin atop the tattered remains of her feathers. “Tell me when you’re ready.”
“You may begin dictation after the tone.”
Ping.
She swallowed. “Hey, Spitfire. Long time no talk…”







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Overmare Spitfire
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: Your Legacy
04/21/1297

Hey, Spitfire. Long time no talk. You’ve been dead for a long time. For almost two centuries at the time of this dictation. Ten generations of pegasi have grown up inside this Stable believing you were their savior. That you guided the first residents to safety and helped them cope with the loss of everything they ever knew. And I guess part of that is true. You were there. You probably talked a lot of them off the ledge when they thought there wasn’t anything left to do except die. You were always good at that. Back at the Academy you had this way of pushing us until we broke, but then you would pick us back up and make us believe we’d come too far to toss off our flight suits and quit. I wish you were still alive so I could ask you whether you actually believed the things you said back then, or if the Wonderbolts meant just as little to you as the rest of the world when you sentenced them to die.

You died, Spitfire, but I didn’t. I wasn’t allowed to. While you enjoyed the last of your sunset years in comfort, I was forced to wander inside the tomb you filled with corpses when you shut the door on us. While you convinced your Stable’s new residents to keep surviving, I listened to the families of ponies who weren’t good enough for your perfect utopia shoot their own foals so they wouldn’t have to see their parents die. I heard their screams when the radiation turned many of them into mindless, gnashing shells. I almost became one of them. I remember glimpses of what I did when I lost myself and it makes me pray the ghouls who did go feral don’t have the luxury of memory. 

With time, I hope others will come to know what I’ve learned. That you were no hero, Spitfire. You were a monster. A selfish, insecure weasel who saw a future where pegasi weren’t on top and it made you scared. And I want future generations to know that my hooves aren’t clean either. I was too much of a coward to call your bluff. I was afraid of Equestria knowing what I had done to help end the war, because just like you I was obsessed with preserving my legacy.

Well, fuck legacies. To all concerned parties reading this message, I, Rainbow Dash, head of the former Ministry of Awesome, certify the following facts to be fully truthful and verifiable against the records found within Stable 10’s electronic archives. There, that should be official-sounding enough.

First point. Around three years into the war, Minister Fluttershy and Ambassador Zecora were looking for ways to build diplomatic bridges with Vhanna. They had spoken with Ambassador Abyssian and had come to the conclusion that a ceasefire wouldn’t be on the table when Equestria was the only side who stood to benefit. It’s probably not common knowledge how bad things were back then. Vhanna had our armies stuck in trenches since the invasion began and both sides knew Equestria was running out of warm bodies to throw into the meat grinder. They had every right to bargain. Fluttershy and Zecora struck a deal with Abyssian by promising to give his country the schematics for Equestria's most current solar energy research. It wasn’t technically illegal. Celestia had been stonewalling solar for years, and giving Vhanna a light at the end of the tunnel was supposed to be enough to bring them closer to peace talks. 

Fluttershy asked me to deliver the schematics to a contact in Griffinstone who would smuggle them across the Vhannan border. I agreed to do it and delivered them to an old gryphon friend I grew up with named Gilda. I was followed by a fellow Wonderbolt who informed on me to Spitfire, who at the time was in charge of managing the day-to-day of my ministry. Spitfire gave me an ultimatum shortly after: I step aside as minister and allow her to take my place, or she tells the world I’m a traitor to Equestria. I wanted to preserve my reputation and chose the former.

Second point: Spitfire assumed my duties as minister and I became a figurehead. Nobody else knew. We both made sure everything looked normal from the outside. During those last couple of years I let my focus wander away from the war effort and toward the private sector. I gave JetStream Aerospace my endorsement, a company I had already diverted two billion bits into when I was acting minister, and assumed Spitfire was going about the business of running my ministry. At some point during this time she hired an assistant named Primrose. Creepy little pegasus. Unbeknownst to me they formed an organization within the Ministry of Awesome that they named The Enclave. 

Third point: The discovery of the balefire bomb developed into an overnight rush to arm our existing missile tech with balefire warheads. I don’t know exactly how many we had ready to fly by the time Spitfire and Primrose pushed the button, but it was a lot. Oh yeah. Spitfire and Primrose launched the missiles. Sorry, spoilers. Spitfire ended up getting a hold of my gold codes when she took the reins of my ministry. Primrose stole Pinkie Pie’s. I don’t know how and I’m afraid to speculate. But since I’m on the record, it’s worth saying that I was a shitty friend to her toward the end. No one had a harder time coping with the war than Pinkie Pie, and the rest of us avoided her. There’s no good excuse. Not really. I’m sorry, Pinkie.

Fuck. Anyway. Fourth point: Our missiles landed on our own soil. Spitfire and Primrose planned it that way from the start and footage taken from orbit proves Equestria attacked itself. None of our bombs landed in Vhanna. They weren’t supposed to. The Enclave did something to JetStream Aerospace’s satellite that allowed it to pour balefire directly onto targets in Vhanna and Griffinstone. They framed the zebras, plain and simple. 

Last point, I guess: Primrose and the Enclave? Still alive. Something tells me Spitfire got played by that little weirdo. The ponies I’ve gotten to know here in Stable 10 say they’re told as foals their mission in life is to be the seeds of Equestria’s future, namely by retaining the genes of the strongest fliers from before the war. Kind of hard not to take that personally. Call me crazy but if Primrose has been out there playing princess for the last two hundred years, then I guess she had loftier goals than just keeping the bloodlines pure. Either that or she ended up a ghoul like me, in which case I would like to refer her to the yak cultural touchstone of karma and how many have found it to be quite the bitch.

Sorry. I ramble when I’m furious. You didn’t just betray me, Spitfire. You didn’t betray Equestria. You and that little gremlin of yours betrayed every living creature on this planet. You used the princesses’ war to justify genocide and you were too much of a coward to accept the credit so you tried to make Vhanna your scapegoat. And then you murdered the scapegoat. So let that be your legacy, you foul bitch. You were a liar. A thief. A murderer. 

You were a villain.


Signed,
Rainbow Dash







The air conditioning ticked off, cutting the steady and pleasant flow of cool air across Clover’s mane. 
He reached over and plucked his thermos from his desk, an old dented up Coolco branded container he’d found on an early reconnaissance mission he’d been a part of back when Primrose had some interest in quashing a growing raider faction out west in Vanhoover. He’d been impressed to find the glass lining unbroken and rather than selling it for a wingful of caps, opted to keep it instead. It had taken him several days to clean it up to a point where he was willing to drink from it, but once he had the mortar-sized flask had served him dutifully over the following years. 
He unscrewed the cap and poured himself a cup of clear ice water. Clover blamed his earth pony ancestors for his preference for the cold. Left unchecked, his unusually dense brown coat would grow thick enough that flying became a challenge, and right now he was beginning to think he was due for another trim. Lifting the cup to his lips, his long whiskers tickled his feathers. Definitely overdue.
The water went down smooth and chilled his insides for a fantastic few seconds. Wearing the mantle of Minister Primrose’s Director of Security had its perks. For one, he spent most of his time safe within the walls of the painfully uninspired yet accurately titled Bunker. The Bunker had been built in the decades following the fall of the bombs and had drawn direct inspiration from Stable-Tec’s own shelters. Many of the amenities the Enclave’s top brass enjoyed down here had been harvested from those very first failed Stables. Down here they had fresh water, food, refrigeration, air scrubbers, state-of-the-art fabrication facilities, and Clover’s personal favorite, an on-site full-body barber. 
He cheeked an ice cube and made a mental note to get himself a thorough trim before the minister came back from her trip east. She’d be disappointed he wasn’t as fluffy as she preferred, but then again it would make his job much easier without Primrose trying to coax him into bed with her.
His terminal chirped. He took a second sip and glanced at the screen, tapping the arrow keys to locate the tab that had just loaded. Another memo, he assumed, or someone in the Bunker sending him quote-unquote “intel” on a colleague they’d been bickering with. As he cycled through the tabs he hadn’t gotten around to closing he wondered if he should ask the barber to do something different with his jawline this month. He had Rockhoof’s build, after all. Maybe he could pull off the beard, too?
The new tab popped open. For a moment he thought it was just another message sent by someone hoping to put a superior officer under investigation - that rarely ever worked, but still they tried - but something caught his eye that made him hold short of deleting it.
He swallowed his ice and set down his water as his blue eyes narrowed at the bulletin line above the document. 


Device Monitor Triggered


Source: Stable 10; Resident Mail System


Recipient: Overmare Spitfire


 - - CRITICAL ANOMALY - - 


He frowned. Their hard line to Stable 10 was well understood to have been lost ages ago. It was exactly why Primrose had practically laid an egg when their Spritebot identified Aurora Pinfeathers as a current - and currently recovering - resident. How were they just now seeing traffic from a dead overmare? 
He scrolled past the notice. Aurora's Pip-Buck must be serving as a proxy. She and the Stable were known to be bouncing communications back and forth across Stable-Tec's overland network, with Stable 6 being the nearest neighboring–
His musings hit a brick wall when he saw the name Rainbow Dash in the header. Not in the subject line, but as the sender. 
And it'd been sent recently.
Today.
He began to read. As he did, his hackles began to rise. Primrose needed to see this, immediately. She needed to confirm his hopes that this was a hoax. That the author of this letter was some tasteless prankster. 
Because if it wasn't, Clover was going to have some uncomfortable questions for his employer. 







“What a trash heap.” Curled, bile-green linoleum tiles crackled under her hooves as she stepped into the rig’s enclosed processing module. “I thought we put them up in Shearwater, not this dump.”
“Shearwater collapsed some time ago, ma’am.”
Primrose scoffed at her counselor as their armed attachment led them through the short corridor. “When?”
“Eight years ago. Thirteen pegasi died in the accident.”
She grunted. “And this was the best alternative?”
A soldier at the front of their detail paused to lift a drooping wire with the barrel of his rifle. Counselor Aeolian ushered her under, careful as always not to touch her person or display anything that might be interpreted as annoyance with her minister’s tone. There was only one pegasus who got away with that kind of shit and he was currently running the show in her stead a thousand miles away in New Canterlot. Aeolian might be a pretty mare with all the pastel charms of the old days, but she knew better than to lay a feather on her better.
Bits of rotted ceiling trickled behind them as they ducked below the wire. “Yes, ma’am, I assure you Caravel 9 is the safest alternative for our guests now that the Fillydelphia corridor is open to us again.”
“It’s a shithole,” she muttered.
“The closest viable alternative risked transporting our pureblood within range of Manehattan’s guns, ma’am.”
She shook her head. “Let me rephrase myself. It’s embarrassing. I can practically smell the asbestos in here.”
Perhaps smartly, Aeolian pretended she hadn’t heard. “The pureblood and her traveling companions are–”
“Use her name, counselor.”
“Aurora and her friends have been housed in the quarters module since they were evacuated from the city. They’ve been notably more active as of today now that Aurora is awake. They were assisting her on a walk of the platform’s perimeter when we landed, though you should be aware your arrival has spurred some conflict between them.” 
Aeolian directed her through a white door with the letters OPERA IONS still clinging to its rust-speckled surface. Primrose stepped over the T on the way inside. 
“They’re being escorted here as we speak. I would advise against including the changeling Roach or your former corporal in this meeting. Their input could be more of a burden than a benefit.”
She chewed on that as the attached soldiers spread out in the operations room, their trained eyes scanning the four corners for potential threats. Primrose found herself drawn to the far wall where a row of windows provided an unbroken view of the drilling platform below. She spotted a clutch of soldiers leading her guests down the catwalks towards them, then stepped back to peruse the room their meeting was to be held in.
“I don’t anticipate things becoming as contentious as you think they will, counselor.” She strolled across the open floor, ignoring the irritating crunch as each hoof settled atop rotted tiles. 
The ghost of deja vu settled over her as she realized how long it had been since she’d been in a setting like this. Not the rot and decay, that had become a global staple. It was the soulless, uncreative layout of a space that could have only been designed by some stuffed up pony with a business degree and a dragonshit title like Lead Layout Specialist or Efficiency Liaison. The perfectly square room with its cheap fold-out tables shoved against walls that were more whiteboard than drywall would give any managerial drone a hardon. Every board rattled off some mind bleaching detail about shift schedules, monthly targets, and safety checks. A fire extinguisher still stood inside its red wall mounted box and yet some obscure regulation buried in one of the many fat, now-molding binders in the room required someone to slap a placard with a fire extinguisher drawn onto it just inches above the fucking box itself. 
“And they wonder why the world caught fire.” Seeing the perplexed looks from a few of her keen-eared soldiers, she realized she was speaking aloud. “Anyway. We’re here to make a good impression for fucking once. Thanks to that mare on the radio…”
“Flipswitch,” Aeolian provided.
“...thanks to Flipswitch, half the wasteland knows what Elder Coldbrook is trying to do at Foal Mountain and that the Enclave is there to fight them off. Now that geriatric sack of spells can’t even claim to have held his own territory and he’s practically shitting himself trying to find reinforcements. And maybe he’ll get them, and maybe he’ll hit back.”
Her counselor looked momentarily concerned, but the sound of hooves crunching into the hallway gave her the excuse to direct it elsewhere.
Primrose lowered her voice by a degree, smiling as she spoke. “It doesn’t matter what the Steel Rangers do to us, because we’re about to have something they don’t.”
Aeolian quirked her brow in question.
“Hearts and minds, counselor. Hearts and minds.” Before the counselor could speak, Primrose turned to the doorway as the mare whose name was on every wastelander’s lips limped over the threshold. “Aurora! Come in, come in. Your friends, too! Please, make yourselves comfortable. Counselor, some clean chairs would be appreciated.”
Aeolian dipped her head and smiled at their guests as she stepped past them. As they waited for chairs to arrive, Primrose observed the four companions as they gravitated toward the natural light coming through the grimy windows. Enough of it spilled in to nearly be mistaken as full daylight. The weather factories embedded atop Canterlot Mountain could only do so much, and the choking overcast her pegasi used to mask their movement thinned significantly this far from home. She took a moment to look up at the sky herself, marveling at how similar the formless clouds resembled smoke.
“While we wait, I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this opportunity to apologize to you in person, Aurora.” She looked down the windowsill, taking the appropriate amount of time to acknowledge her injury. “When you rather cleverly convinced Chops and Dancer to return to New Canterlot, I let injured pride rule my judgment and gave them exclusive instructions to relocate you themselves.”
She waited a beat, then looked to the mare Aurora braced herself against for support. “You may already know that Ginger and I have been speaking in private through unconventional means. She explained to me how your troubles in Fillydelphia transpired and didn’t pull any punches, I might add. She made it clear to me that I had wasted precious hours sending Chops and Dancer rather than assigning a different unit to the task. One that was already nearby. But I chose Chops and Dancer because, in part, I wanted to shame them. In doing so I stole time that Aurora couldn’t afford and which cost her gravely.”
All four of them watched her with varying degrees of suspicion, not least of all her former corporal. She didn’t blame them the least bit for being wary.
“I’m sorry, Aurora.” Her ear twitched as Counselor Aeolian returned with a uniformed officer in tow, the pair of them carrying five folding chairs between them. “I wish there was something I could say that would make up for what happened to you, but I doubt there is.”
“No, there’s not.” Aurora regarded her with a weary intensity, a mare who understood now that the world was filled with titans and was too exhausted by them to care. When Aeolian presented one of the folding chairs to her, however, she stiffened as if the cheap seating might jump up and bite her. “I prefer to stand.”
Primrose quietly observed Aurora’s fellow companions reject the offered chairs as well, some more rudely than necessary. Her counselor simply nodded and leaned them up beneath the windowsill should any of them change their minds. She flicked a feather toward the door. The counselor took her meaning and departed without a word. The rest of the soldiers posted around the room stayed put for more obvious reasons.
She stepped past the unwanted seating and casually placed herself in front of the pane beside Aurora. Julip and the changeling both stepped away as if physically repulsed by her proximity. All things considered, it was safer for them if they were.
“May I show you something?”
Aurora stared through the glass. “I’m taken.”
“Good one, but not what I had in mind. This might interest you as well, Ginger.” She turned slightly to bring her foreleg and the slim lines of her Pip-Buck up to the sill, her pink feathers coasting across the keys until a detailed map of Equestria shuddered across the screen. Intrigued, Aurora leaned in to see as Primrose selected the updated overlay she’d received during the flight in. 
A series of parallel diagonal lines filled the entirety of the map from Las Pegasus to Fillydelphia, turning it a harsh shade of green. Then, as if an eraser were being pressed into the center, a clearing grew around the pixelated shape of Canterlot Mountain. A satisfied smile pulled at Primrose’s cheeks as the void within the Steel Ranger’s territory then pressed eastward, pouring beyond territorial lines that had been etched into her maps for generations. A new river flowing over the banks of an ancient reservoir, following the winding highway that centuries ago had been lauded for tying Canterlot to Equestria’s east and west coasts. 
“I don’t get it.” Aurora whirled a feather around the tract of land reaching east. “What is that?”
“It’s progress,” Primrose murmured, her eyes flicking over to Ginger. “This is how far we’ve pushed in two days. Just two.”
“That’s Enclave territory now,” Ginger added, sliding a hoof under Aurora’s wing to help point her feather toward a bright green square on the map, positioned a mere ten miles within the Enclave’s new borders. “Right there is Stable 10.”
Silence enveloped the room as Aurora stared at the screen, her brow slowly creasing as she turned on her own Pip-Buck. An old model. Primrose kept quiet as she watched Aurora wobble a little, clutching Ginger for balance as she cycled the knob on the side. Soon her own map appeared. Aurora looked from Primrose’s device to her own, adjusting her map until a single waypoint marker glowed at the center. Above it read the word HOME.
Aurora positioned her Pip-Buck beneath Primrose’s, and swallowed.
Her voice shook as she spoke. “You took it away from him?”
She nodded. “We did.”
Aurora was fighting for composure now. Ginger lit her horn, lifting a loose strand of mane from her companion’s cheek. “Did they…?”
“They didn’t get in, Aurora.”
Maybe she was getting soft, but watching this pegasus she barely knew coughing out a relieved, “Good,” pulled a little too readily at her heartstrings. She looked away to blink a few times, clearing her vision before turning back to the stricken couple. As much as she enjoyed seeing her successes being appreciated, consoling others wasn’t a skill she was particularly adept at. Best to lean into her strengths.
She cleared her throat as she brought her hoof back to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Julip and Roach observing the three of them with grudging interest, neither of them able to ignore Aurora’s relief. Through body language alone she could tell they wanted to get closer, and her proximity was preventing that. Screw it, let them scamper in for a group hug. Her body was screaming for a sit down anyway. With Aurora floundering for words - she wouldn’t say no to a thank you - she hooked her wing around one of the folding chairs and dragged it a few paces away down the glass. On cue, Roach and Julip swept in as Primrose plopped herself into the chair with a satisfied sigh.
It didn’t hurt that some distance between them helped put her soldiers at ease.
“So, here’s the thing.” She crossed her wings across her lap, the tips of her feathers articulating the strangeness of their situation. “Normally this would be the part when I start talking about how you might repay me for placing your home under our protection.”
The mood in the room shifted palpably. Aurora’s head swiveled toward her along with everyone, including Ginger. Point made. These ponies didn’t like theatrics. 
“But,” she added, wary of the fact that should Ginger want to, she could probably make her last seconds alive very unpleasant with that horn of hers well before the surrounding soldiers could put her down. The Tantabus had a nasty habit of donating magic to needy causes. “But, this is not that kind of situation.”
The changeling spoke up before she could elaborate. “Ginger, you remember what happened last time we bargained with someone like her?”
Ginger glared at him. “This is not the same–”
She held up her wings. “No, no. It’s alright. He has a–”
“And here’s the part where she butters us up. I can smell it coming off of her like cheap perfume.” Roach took two steps forward, placing himself firmly between her and Aurora. Fucking changelings. He did his best to stare her down with those strange, milky green eyes as if she wouldn’t be happy to add a few more holes to that deformed body of his. “You said you were sorry for wasting precious hours, but we’ve been stuck on this shipwreck of yours for three days. Why don’t we cut to the chase and you just tell us what you came all the way out here for.”
He glared at her. She stared back. “Are you done?”
“Not sure yet.”
“Then decide.”
And there it was. A twitch along the cracks along his neck. A flinch. It took him just a second to understand he wasn’t just poking a landmine, he was stomping on it. The only reason he was still breathing was because said landmine had the decency not to explode.
She didn’t wait for him to scurry away. Precious hours, and all that. “Aurora? The rest of you, included? I’m not going to sit and pretend we’re all friends here. If the situation were any different, well… certain people in this room would no longer be breathing. That being said, I understand that at this moment I am not in a position to ask, let alone demand, anything.”
Her chair creaked as she lifted a wing and picked out Roach, Ginger and Aurora with the tip of her feather. “The three of you in particular have repeatedly treated my people with something akin to decency. I understand that Ms. Julip is not an easy mare to get along with, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that she’d been left to die at the bottom of the solar array where you found her. Both lieutenant Dancer and corporal Chops reported similar treatment. That’s… notable, given past history with wastelanders.”
Julip leaned over to Roach as he returned to her side and whispered something in his ear. He snorted. Primrose pretended not to notice. It would be so easy.
“Aurora, I truly am sorry we couldn’t save your leg and I promise you Paladin Ironshod is already paying the price for desecrating a pureblood. That being said, I’m not so naive to believe the situation that arose in Fillydelphia came to be because you all felt a sense of duty to the Enclave. When Ironshod dragged you out of that bar, he did so because Julip and you let your guards down.” She paused when Aurora glanced back at Ginger, clearly unaware she had shared that particular detail. Ginger pursed her lips and shook her head, forestalling another interruption. “I can understand why you might have wanted to keep that private. Normally I wouldn’t claim to owe anything for reaping the benefits of someone else’s complacency, but as things stand as they are, I don’t have the luxury. Things are too public now and I have the Enclave’s legacy to consider.”
Julip flicked a chunk of linoleum in Primrose’s direction, eyebrow cocked. “In other words, you don’t want the entire Enclave to think you got lucky. They need to believe you earned this.”
Her expression went stony. “In so many words? Yes.”
Aurora frowned. “So you’re bribing us.”
“I’m offering to repay my debt.”
Roach rolled his eyes. “That’s a first. How long until you decide you want something in return? It took Coldbrook about five seconds.”
That hit a nerve. “I am not Elder Coldbrook, and you are not the reason I flew halfway across the continent.” She leveled a feather at Aurora. “She is. Now may I talk to her?”
She waited while the changeling exchanged a wary look with Aurora. Something unspoken passed between them, a look of warning Primrose had seen time and time again over the centuries. Don’t trust her. She lies. Not terrible advice, despite how hard she was trying to stay fucking civil.
As soon as their little exchange was finished, Aurora turned off her Pip-Buck. “Alright. Floor’s yours.”
Finally.
Primrose leaned forward in her seat and cleared her throat. “Aurora, I want to send you home.”
Silence. With the exception of the tiny crease forming on the injured mare’s brow, no one moved. Even Roach and Julip stopped short of scoffing, the two of them visibly startled by the proposal. Aurora was the first to budge, turning to look at Ginger. Ginger hadn’t the first clue what Primrose had come out here to offer, naturally. She hadn’t lived this long by broadcasting her intentions, good or ill. Ginger only knew she was making the trip and that there was a possibility they may come to a mutually beneficial end to their involvement together. 
Primrose smiled as the two of them whispered to one another. Maybe allowing her to assume there’d be more haggling had been a little mean.
Aurora averted her eyes and chose her words with care. “I… it’s not that easy.”
A chuckle bubbled out of her. “I don’t disagree, considering what you’re looking for isn’t out here.”
Oopsie. It was hard not to gloat as she watched Aurora and her companions go stock-still. Ever since the modern magical world turned to ash and that first annoying generation of savvy survivors died off, Primrose noticed it was becoming easier and easier to surprise the local yokels with what she knew. It was hardly a challenge anymore. Wastelanders had grown used to thinking the world’s networks were irreparably shattered and that information traveled along the broken roads buoyed alongside rumor and hearsay. These days, anyone certain of anything was peddling bullshit. Real information, reliable information traveled slowly and had to be carefully trimmed away from the lies like fat from a choice cut of meat. 
Unless, that is, one had direct access to the genitals of a certain stallion who happened to know certain verifiable truths.
Primrose waved a dismissive feather at their deepening discomfort. “Sorry. I’ve been told I have a bad habit of being unnecessarily cryptic.”
“No shit,” Julip muttered.
“Well you’ll be happy to know that Paladin Ironshod is very motivated to answer our questions now that he’s in our care, and he shared some insight into your dealings with them.” She gestured to Aurora’s foreleg. “He tells us you were once in regular communication with his elder via your Pip-Buck, and that you were offered a talisman in exchange for providing his Rangers the coordinates to SOLUS. Seeing as fire isn’t pouring down from above it’s safe to assume you never did manage to locate SOLUS.”
The confusion radiating from the four of them confirmed they had no idea what it was Coldbrook had sent them to find. To him they had been little more than a set of dice he could throw. Bad odds were better than no odds, and wastelanders did have a history of digging up things that shouldn’t be found. 
“Don’t worry about SOLUS; some weapons are better lost. What I want is to give you what you need to get back home.”
Aurora looked dubious. “And you just happen to have an ignition talisman lying around?”
“Aurora, I represent the Enclave. I have more than a few to spare.” A tiny smirk touched her lip at the sight of the poor mare’s face going slack. Suddenly she looked torn like a foal unsure whether to accept candy from a stranger’s carriage. 
Except this wasn’t some cheap sweets Primrose was offering. This was salvation. The assurance that the worries of Stable 10 and its people were at an end and that after nearly a month of wandering, Aurora’s search was over. A project that Primrose had thought snuffed out would once again thrive. There was a sort of poetic irony that she would be the one to provide that security, but she didn’t dwell on that now. 
All she cared about was the answer she could see teetering on Aurora’s lips. Yes. Yes, please help me. I want to go home.







Aurora took a slow breath to keep her heart from crashing its way out of her chest. She looked back at Ginger and could tell by the shock and pride in her eyes that she hadn’t expected this to be the offer her arranged meeting would conjure. Neither had Aurora. When Primrose first spoke about repaying debts and cementing her legacy, she expected some kind of quid pro quo amounting to material support in exchange for something else. For the Enclave’s hospitality to turn into something darker. After all, the only reason she was still alive was courtesy of their hasty evacuation and medical attention. Why wouldn’t they use that as a negotiating chip for… something?
It was too generous. She glanced over her shoulder to Roach and remembered his warning. Something for nothing was not how this world operated.
“No,” she murmured. When Primrose blinked in confusion, she repeated herself more firmly. “No. At least, not without–”
“Proof?”
She shook her head. “The catch. If all you wanted was to give me what I needed, we could have had this conversation over the Pip-Buck you gave Ginger. But you came all the way here, in person, and you look more exhausted than I am. I’ve already been promised the moon before and it ended up with a battalion of Rangers trying to dig up my home.”
“It was closer to a company.”
“I don’t care.” She winced as another phantom pain shot past her stump as if her missing leg had suddenly gotten a cramp. She grit through it, the discomfort a reminder of where the Rangers’ dirty dealings had gotten her. If Coldbrook had been a lit stick of dynamite, Primrose had the potential to be an even deadlier warhead. “If what you’re offering is real, then yes, I’ll happily accept. But I don’t think it is. I’ve just had too many bad experiences to just… trust like that anymore.”
She waited as Primrose sat back in her seat, her charitable smile fading into something more genuine. The leader of the Enclave, an organization Aurora had come to know for how ruthless it was willing to be in the pursuit of its own interests, one that enslaved and murdered without regard, stared back with a calculating coldness.
“If I understand you correctly,” Primrose said, “you’re not asking me to just show you my cards, but to rifle through my entire deck.”
“Ah…” She was out of her depth, but she suspected Primrose was giving her the opportunity to overstep. Ginger’s slowed breathing let her know she was on extremely thin ice. Her blunt honesty was plenty enough for the folks down in Mechanical, but Primrose wasn’t a nail to be attacked with a hammer. She required something different. Deference.
“No, ma’am.” Her throat was turning to sandpaper with every syllable. Then the familiar, warm pressure of Ginger’s magic gently squeezed her shoulder, bracing her against the storm of unsurety in her own head. She relaxed just a little. Just enough to speak with something nearing confidence. “If my old overmare ever taught me anything it’s that leaders in your position have problems to worry about that make mine look like a vacation.”
Primrose tilted her head with an ever so slightly arched brow. A tiny acknowledgement that she wasn’t wrong. It was something.
“Still. From one pegasus to another,” she pressed, relieved that the nod to their mutual breeding seemed to be landing, “I believe it’s my responsibility to the mares and stallions back home to know all the terms of your offer. Especially any that might come up once I’m home.”
A smirk crossed Primrose’s lips. “Do you really think I would leverage your Stable’s security at the last second?”
She shrugged. “Why not? I would.”
“I can see why you gave the Rangers so much trouble. You’d shit on Celestia's throne if it meant helping your people, wouldn’t you?” Her smile broadened as she stood up from her chair, the effort revealing just how exhausting the flight had been for her. “Okay. I do have a few terms which I thought might be better reserved for later.”
“Condition One,” Primrose continued, walking a wide path that led her around the room’s perimeter and the soldiers posted at each corner. “In exchange for one ignition talisman I would like to be provided with a hard copy of the data on your Stable’s servers.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because up until recently Ten’s preservation initiative was thought to be dead along with the descendants of Equestria’s greatest flyers.” Primrose looked at her from across the room, her gaze thoughtful. “If I can understand how your people survived the disruption that took it off Stable-Tec’s network, the Enclave will be better equipped to provide assistance to other Stables on the verge of collapse.”
Disruption? Little bit of an understatement to describe the landslide that buried them. She shook her head and shrugged. “Alright. We can do that.”
Primrose nodded. “Good. Condition Two is a little more straightforward. Before your Stable reseals itself, your overmare needs to make a public statement to the Wasteland disavowing both the Steel Rangers and the Enclave. Don’t thank us or acknowledge that we helped you in any way. Make it clear you want to be left alone, and lock us out.”
“Wait, why?”
“Because I can’t guarantee the Enclave will control the territory your Stable is sitting on a hundred years from now, and the last thing you can afford is for some junior archivist with something to prove,” Primrose gestured a wing toward Julip, who promptly raised a middle feather at her in return, “deciding to remind their superiors about the one time they nearly broke into an untouched Stable and had it stripped away at the last second. It’ll be a lot harder for Coldbrook’s grandfoals to justify a ‘liberation’ if your Stable tells the entire wasteland to kick rocks and stay off your property.”
Fair point. “I’ll make sure to talk to Sledge about it.”
“It’s entirely up to you,” Primrose said as she made her way back to where she started. “As for the last condition, consider it non-negotiable. Your changeling friend will not be permitted to remain in the Stable when it’s sealed.”
Her stomach dropped and she wheeled around as best she could, stumbling as she held herself against the window sill with her opposite wing. “Yeah, no, you’re right. That’s not fucking negotiable.”
Primrose arched a brow at her as she stepped between the four of them, seemingly unconcerned by Aurora’s abrupt shift in tone.
“Roach has more right than anyone to live with us if he chooses.”
Julip stepped toward Primrose, startling a response from the heavily armed guards silently observing the negotiation. “His fucking kid is in there!”
The spearhead of the Enclave shouldered past her former corporal, a gesture that if it had been any less gentle had every hallmark of devolving into an unrestrained brawl. It was Roach’s perforated hoof across her chest that caused her to back down.
“Frankly, I don’t care if Queen Chrysalis herself lives in that Stable, I will not lift a feather to help you if it means contaminating what may be the last unmolested population of pegasi in Equestria by installing a ghoul as a permanent fixture within its walls.” She stopped a wing’s length from Aurora and Ginger, her attention very suddenly fixated on the latter. “Ginger, this would have been pertinent information to share with me before I agreed to this meeting.”
Ginger spoke through clenched teeth. “It never came up.”
“I’m afraid it just did.” She closed her eyes and scratched at the bridge of her muzzle as if this was all very taxing to her. 
Aurora could feel her legs beginning to tremble. Her skin felt hot as she wrestled with the impossible. She couldn’t decide this. She promised him he’d have a place. He’d waited outside that door for centuries waiting to know whether his family had made it inside. And if they had he deserved to live there in the place they once called home.
Her vision swam. “Come on. You can’t make me choose that.”
Primrose stared at her with some bastardized version of compassion. “If I recall, Aurora, you were the one who asked to know my terms. Now you do.”
She looked to where he stood, his expression conflicted. “Roach, I can’t…”
The words stopped in her throat, bewildered into silence at the abrupt sight of him staring back at her in the same way he had on the road to Junction City. His opaque eyes held back the same deep sadness she’d seen when he first started sharing tidbits about who he was. Why he was. He wanted to reassure her but the sick knot in her gut only wrenched itself tighter.
“It’s fine,” he lied, betrayed by the unmistakable tightness in his jaw. “Say yes.”
She shook her head. “No. She doesn’t know what you went through.”
He crossed the gap between them, his expression pained. As her resolve began to crumble he nudged his shoulder into hers, turning her away from Primrose and toward the windows overlooking the ocean. “Hey,” he whispered, “don’t listen to her. Don’t look at her. Okay? Just breathe.”
She wrapped a wing around his midsection just like she had barely a few hours ago, except now the other covered her muzzle to prevent them from seeing her losing it. He was building himself up to another conversation that she didn’t want to have because she knew exactly what he was about to tell her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“Aurora…”
“Don’t.” 
She felt him kiss the back of her ear. “I stood watch outside our Stable so that I knew it would be safe.”
“No you didn’t.” She squeezed the tears from her eyes but more welled up in their place. Her voice shook. “You need to know if your family made it in. You deserve to be with them.”
“Aurora, she did make it in.”
Blue. She’d all but forgotten about Blue.
“And now I need to know that the rest of my family’s going to be safe there, too. That means you, kiddo. Alright?”
Waves broke against the platform’s pillars, peeling away rust flake by flake, eroding the foundation in an endless fight that could only end one way. Aurora never thought she would ever relate to a fucking oil rig. “She can’t keep you out.”
“She’s not,” he murmured. “I’m choosing not to go. Someone has to stay outside to make sure you’re safe.”
She shook her head, hard.
“Yup. This is a good deal, Aurora. Your job right now is to say yes, go home with Ginger, and be happy together. Take her down to where you work and show her how kickass a screwdriver can be.”
She coughed out a sobbing laugh.
“Besides,” he said, dipping his head down until she met his eye, “do you really think Knight Latch and the other Rangers at Stable 6 have the first clue how to grow their own food? I kind of promised to come back and give him pointers.”
“Fuck Latch,” she muttered.
“Pretty sure he’s married.” 
His body rocked against hers as he chuckled. Under the cover of her dampened feathers, she allowed herself the tiniest smile before resolving to sulk again. 
“Hey.”
She looked up.
“This is how it has to be. I know you don’t like it, but this gets you home.” The humor was gone from his eyes, replaced by a quiet intensity that brooked no argument. “We’ve all been through too much to turn this down and try to find our own way again. Please. Say yes.”
Slowly, even though it hurt, even though every fiber of her heart screamed at her for betraying it, she nodded. Her head hardly moved as she looked behind them where Minister Primrose stood, waiting, her gaze as emotionally devoid as the decision she’d forced upon them.
Uttering the word felt like swallowing glass. “Okay.”
Primrose smiled. “Okay. I’ll start making arrangements to have the ignition talisman delivered to Stable 10. When would you like to leave?”
She turned back to the view outside and the hazy line of smoke drifting out from the invisible coast. She felt used. Violated. A pawn who had done little but allow herself to be kicked down the road by powers greater than she could have ever hoped to stand against. 
“Now,” she said, pressing down the violent anger swarming out of the raw wounds of grief. “I need to get the fuck out of here.”
Primrose’s reflection nodded in the window before turning toward one of her black-clad followers. “Go collect some provisions from the galley and bring up their belongings.”
“You’re not coming with us.”
She smiled at Aurora as if that much were obvious. 
“Safe travels, Ms. Pinfeathers.”
> Chapter 39: Home
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Does this hurt?”
Doctor Able’s feathers prodded and squeezed along the muscles of Primrose’s wings, pausing to ask the same question in the same tone like some kind of robot. Squeeze, twist, move. Squeeze, twist, move. Like the wasteland’s least attractive masseuse. 
“No,” she said, and he moved along another inch down her right wing to repeat the procedure again. She grit her teeth as he came upon the delicate joint of her midwing and the furious bundle of tendons her one-way flight to this garbage patch of an oil rig had managed to irritate. 
He set his own feathers around the joint and applied light pressure. “Does this hurt?”
It felt like he was forcing a railroad spike between her bones. She closed her eyes and nodded. “Little bit.”
She didn’t need a doctor to tell her she strained her wing, but Counsellor Aeolus had insisted she get checked. Well, not so much “insisted” as threatened to have her wing put into a cast and have her carried back home on a stretcher. The scary part was that Primrose wasn’t sure if she was exaggerating or not. Judging by the severe concern expressed by the tactical and logistics officers Clover had sent along with her entourage, nobody was comfortable letting her head skyward without an examination from her accompanying physician. All because Aeolus had noticed her wing hanging just a few inches lower than the other.
A sigh rolled out of her chest as Dr. Able opened and closed, twisted and flexed the problem joint. Two centuries of absolute control of her own fate, give or take a decade, and she was suddenly being tended to like a helpless filly. There was something disconcerting about how immediately the Enclave’s world stopped spinning at the mere suggestion of their minister being in nonperfect health.
“Well, the good news is you’ll survive,” he murmured, walking his feathers down the length of her wing one final time. “You strained a tendon. Nothing you won’t be able to fly on for short bursts.”
She frowned. “Flying from here to New Canterlot isn’t a short burst.”
Dr. Able nodded in the way he always did when his patients pointed out the painfully obvious. “That’s the bad news. We’ll need to make regular landings on the way back home. It’ll add some time to the return trip, but not much. Alternatively, if you’d consider lifting your personal moratorium on wasteland medicine just this once, a half-dosed stim would resolve–”
“I don’t use chems.” She pulled her wing away, wincing against the twinge of pain. Dr. Able didn’t flinch at the snap in her tone, only nodding once again as if she’d rattled off a calm no thank you. The fear of her was visible solely in his slightly widened eyes. 
She resisted the urge to roll hers, trying to remind herself that he was - technically - deeply invested in her safety. While not on record as a believer of her divine provenance, he was a valuable asset back home as a respected member of New Canterlot’s more reputable medical community. He boasted unrestricted access to his dear minister and could not, in his own words, explain away her shocking longevity. Dr. Able never went to far as to credit it directly to a blessing from the late princesses, nor was he so suicidal as to suggest it wasn’t. All in all, he was a smart stallion. She wasn’t going to disappear him for suggesting something as mundane as taking a wasteland stimpack.
Still, she had an image to maintain.
“I’ll keep an eye out for any clouds worth sitting on.” Glancing down at the slim lines of her Pip-Buck, she could see yet another unread message from Clover had dropped into her queue. “I need to take this. Can you go check that Counsellor Aeolus is getting the pureblood ready for her trip home?”
“I can do that, ma’am.” He headed for the door. “Do you need anything else before I go?”
She looked up from her screen, then at their surroundings. The oil rig’s cafeteria smelled like seawater and hoof fungus, and that wasn’t exactly a good thing considering there was a unit of her Enclave stationed here on a regular basis. Tracks in the grime on the floor pointed to the tables being lined up ahead of her arrival, swipe marks across the walls indicating recent unsuccessful attempts at cleaning away flaking paint, all cast in the dirty yellow light of aging bulbs. It was the first room on the rig to offer some privacy for Dr. Able to examine her, and one that she would like to purge from her memory at the nearest convenience.
“Just go help Aeolus,” she said. “The faster they leave, the faster I can leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She waited until the door clicked shut behind him before she pulled up a somewhat clean plastic chair and sat down to navigate through Clover’s recent messages. Progress updates on their forces pushing east, mostly. A couple requests for her to check in with him. Confirmation of life, he called it. Grim, but necessary. 
She skimmed the latest changes from the warfront. Nothing unexpected. The Steel Rangers were finally putting together that her attack on Fillydelphia had been a feint, and that Elder Coldbrook had been forced to overcommit his Rangers to the effort to defend it. With word finally reaching them from home that they’d been fooled, the Rangers had begun backtracking as quickly as their power armor could manage. The goal at this juncture was to take Blinder’s Bluff and hold it in preparation for the Rangers’ arrival. With their stronghold taken, picking the rest of them apart would be a game of attrition. The trick now was getting enough pegasi to the Bluff in order to capture it.
Scrolling down, she couldn’t help but smile a little at Clover’s growing irritation with her nonresponses. He downright became passive-aggressive in a few, noting that he’d confirmed through one officer or another that she was alive and well while still requesting she contact him personally. If middle management still existed, he would be a perfect fit for the job.
Then, at the bottom of the list, his most recent message waited for her. As she read the subject line, her smile faltered. 

Fwd: Your Legacy

She flexed her wing a little as she tried to get comfortable in the hard plastic seat. Had someone threatened Clover? Her hoof rested on the dirty table and she tapped open the communication. At first glance it looked like anything else Clover might fire her way. Short, sweet, none of the fat so many ponies loved to chew when they could boil a conversation down to a few sentences. 







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Ministry Interoffice Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: Minister Primrose
From: Security Director Clover
Subject: Fw: Your Legacy
04/21/1297

Minister Primrose,

I am forwarding on an intercepted message originating from Stable 10 earlier today. Upon personally reviewing its contents, I have verified no other members of the Enclave accessed it and have since restricted access to you and myself. You will understand why once you read it. I would like to discuss this message and its apparent author with you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
Clover Fields 
Security Director

---------- Forwarded message ---------

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Overmare Spitfire
From: Rainbow Dash
Subject: Your Legacy
04/21/1297

Hey, Spitfire. Long time no talk. You’ve been dead for a long time…







The skin on her neck went hot. She whispered under her breath.
“Bullshit.”
It was an obvious hoax. Rainbow Dash was dead. Someone in that Stable had falsified a name to screw with her. Yet she kept reading. The words slid by one line after the other, claiming to know things about Spitfire no one could know. Things from the Wonderbolt Academy that Primrose herself had been denied entry into when she was a teenager. Small wingspan, the recruiter told her. She frowned. She was getting distracted. Whoever the author was, they were weaving a convincing fiction. 
Then the accusations came and a pit began forming in Primrose’s gut. This pony knew Spitfire had instructions to seal the Stable early. They knew about the pocket of tunnel which survived the collapse, sealing in the survivors. She swallowed.
They claimed to be a ghoul. 
A ghoul inside Stable 10. 
She propped her forehead with her other hoof and stared slack-jawed at the screen. This wasn’t happening. It was impossible. Rainbow Dash was dead. Primrose had specifically altered her schedule to place her in fucking Fillydelphia where she stood no chance of making it to Ten. That was the whole fucking point of all of this because if the Elements survived, magic survived. And yet like a merciless parade the accusations piled up, too accurate to be parsed from the archives or stitched into a narrative with hearsay. The author knew exactly how Spitfire had gained power over the MoA. She knew about the bits that had been siphoned off to fund JetStream Aerospace. How Spitfire had hired Primrose as her number two and how both of them had birthed the Enclave within the armored corridors of the Pillar.
Cold sweat wicked up into her mane but it did nothing to chill the anxious heat radiating from her body like a fever. The gears in her head spun hot. If Rainbow Dash had survived, maybe Primrose could use that to her advantage. There were always angles. Always options. If Spitfire had been able to goad an Element into a cage, then there was nothing to say…
The next paragraph stuck between those gears like a steel pipe. Teeth shattered. Her machinations died in the crib. She stared at the lines in silence.
“Fourth point: Our missiles landed on our own soil. Spitfire and Primrose planned it that way from the start and footage taken from orbit proves Equestria attacked itself. None of our bombs landed in Vhanna.”
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
Rainbow Dash was alive. She was in Stable 10. And she knew.
She jammed a feather against the screen and scrolled back up to the header to make sure she was the only recipient of this disaster. For what little relief it provided to know, Clover hadn’t added anyone else. It was clear from his words that this was something he wanted to discuss with her one on one, which meant he couldn’t decide whether or not to believe it.
Her Director of Security was having doubts. She needed to reassure him. She needed to patch this crack before it could spread.
She took several moments to compose herself. It wouldn’t help if he saw her teetering on the edge of panic. Once she had her breathing under control, she pulled a few loose curls out of her face, initiated a new video call over her Pip-Buck, and waited. Seconds passed. A cartoon Scootaloo stood in the center of the screen pretending to hold a telephone receiver to her ear, an unused graphic one of the Enclave’s Pip-Buck technicians had dug up to compliment the new functionality. It took every ounce of patience she had not to put a hoof through the screen.
Before she could, Clover’s face appeared without warning. A nearly spent cigarette hung from his lip as he settled down into his office chair, the angle pitching as he set the foreleg holding his Pip-Buck across his lap, the stallion not bothering to look down at the screen to greet her. Judging by his expression, Clover was closer to coming to his own decision than she thought. 
“Ma’am,” he acknowledged. “Did you read the communique from Ten?”
It occurred to her how far from New Canterlot she was. How, left by himself, a stallion in Clover’s current position could cause irreparable damage well before anyone within the Bunker could stop him. She bristled at the curtness in his voice but managed to keep her frayed pride in check. He only knew what he thought he knew. He could be brought back around, even if it meant forgiving him for the disrespect.
“I’ve had some time to look it over, Clover, yes. It’s a novel approach as far as propaganda goes. It’s good that you contained it.” She frowned as she watched him take a drag on his cigarette. For all that was left of it, he may as well be inhaling the filter. He never smoked before, at least not in front of her. “I’m assuming the Rangers concocted it. Celestia knows Elder Coldbrook is so up to his neck in shit with the High Elder right now that he’ll be willing to throw anything at his problems just to see what stuck.”
Clover ashed the cigarette against his hoof and cut her off. “The message isn’t Ranger propaganda. I checked. It originated within Stable 10.”
His directness caught her flat on her hooves. “Then clearly one of the residents has a colorful imagination. That message is a lie.”
She watched him glance down at his Pip-Buck, but she didn’t see her face reflected in his eyes. He was reading something. She couldn’t make out what.
Without taking his eyes off the screen he asked, “Ma’am, was the message from Stable 10 authored by Rainbow Dash?”
“If you think you have the right to interrogate me, Clover–”
“Answer the question, ma’am.”
He doubted her. That fucking snake. She could already see him planning on the best way to disseminate the news throughout the Enclave, to poison them against her with a dead mare’s confession. She grit her teeth. She needed to get control over this.
“It obviously wasn’t. Rainbow Dash is dead.”
A pause. “Did you at any point have access to Minister Pie’s launch codes?”
Pinkie Pie. There was a name she hadn’t thought of for a long, long time. “Absolutely not.”
Clover’s frown deepened. “Did you help Overmare Spitfire launch Equestria’s arsenal?”
“You already know I didn’t. Celestia’s sake, what would I stand to gain from blowing up my own country?”
Lines of text she couldn’t read were populating in the screen’s reflection in his eyes. He was reading. Worse, he was making a decision.
“Ma’am,” he said, then visibly reconsidered the title. “Primrose, until now I’ve respected your dedication to the Enclave and New Canterlot’s reconstruction. I’ve devoted the past nine years to serving at your side because I believed in the Enclave’s goal to rebuild Equestria under the same sky. I still do.”
He pinched a holotape between two feathers and held it up for her to see. “It’s the reason I prayed this letter would be a hoax.”
“It is a hoax,” she urged.
He shook his head and placed the holotape into his uniform’s breast pocket. “It isn’t. Your biometrics show you’ve been lying to me since you called.”
A cold stone landed in the pit of her stomach. “You monitored me? Are you fucking… Clover, a five minute conversation is not enough time to establish a reliable baseline and you fucking know it!”
He looked genuinely saddened by her response. “Primrose, you’ve barely taken that Pip-Buck in two centuries. The baseline isn’t the problem.” She watched him as he worked at the little black and white pin fixed to the collar of his uniform. Two alicorns circling one another like night and day. The letters RC stamped into the metal. It came apart with some effort, evidence that like her Pip-Buck, Clover rarely ever removed the pin from his uniform. Pegasi had died trying to recover theirs in battle.
Clover set his down on his desk. 
Anger rose in her throat. “I suggest you rethink your chances to seize power, Clover. Letter or no letter, I promise you it won’t end the way you think it will.”
The view from her screen lurched and the speakers let out a harsh rasp of sound that had her believe he was ending the call. But the picture settled. She was watching Clover from his Pip-Buck’s perch atop his desk. His eyes were on his feathers as they massaged matted brown fur where the device had been clamped. 
“This isn’t a coup,” he said. “It’s my resignation.”







His heart was trying to break its way through his ribs, but somehow Clover was managing to keep his composure. The indignation in his former employer’s voice was impossible to miss, and he knew his time was running short. He needed to leave.
“You can’t resign,” her voice rattled from the Pip-Buck on his desk. “It doesn’t work that way.”
He knew. “Can’t hurt to try.”
One last glance at his memorial pin. Remember Cloudsdale. He stood from his seat, hesitated, then picked it back up and dropped it into the same pocket as the holotape. Leverage, if he escaped. Something he knew Primrose was within her means to make very difficult, very quickly.
“Where will you go?”
He took a breath and started walking toward the door. “Somewhere.”
Behind him. “You won’t get far.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s just one letter. You can ignore one letter.”
He settled his wing on the switch. “Goodbye, Primrose.”
He heard her shout something on her end that the tinny speaker couldn’t parse before killing the connection. The fragments of the oftentimes white-hot temper he’d spent years helping to quench with careful logic. Swallowing his fear, he toggled the door and stepped out into the busy hallway. 
Sixty seconds, two minutes tops. That was how long he’d calculated for it to take for her to give an order, have it reach a radio operator, cross the vast expanse between the coast to New Canterlot, then be read by an operator inside the Bunker.
He offered polite nods to the uniformed pegasi in the halls. The enlisted ponies knew not to address him without reason. A group of officers he’d come up the ranks with greeted him as they passed by, and for a split second he thought they might ask him to stop and chat. But they had work of their own to do. The Enclave’s push east had the entire Bunker buzzing. Excitement was in the air. For the first time in their generation, they were fighting the enemy in force and finally taking back the land the Steel Rangers stole. In so many ways, Clover knew the stance he was taking today would be a disruption. The taste of betrayal soured in his throat, but he kept walking.
He turned onto the corridor that would take him to the guarded elevator leading to the surface. He could see the double doors at the end of the hall and felt the sweat beading on his brow. A uniformed mare glanced at him, nodded, then looked again at his empty collar as they passed each other. He tensed, waiting for her to call out to him, but if she said anything it was drowned by the dull murmur of conversations happening between them. Taking off the pin had been a mistake. Leaving his Pip-Buck in his office was beginning to draw eyes, too, but in the heart of New Canterlot it wouldn’t take long for his colleagues to track his position. 
The elevators drew closer. He could make out the bored expressions of the two guards posted on either side of the silver doors. His ears twitched around, homing in on a mare’s voice just behind him. 
“I’m looking for Director Clover.”
Ice washed through his chest. He hurried. Just a few more yards.
“Excuse me,” he murmured. “Excuse me.”
“Director?”
He began to shove.
“Director Clover! Stop!”
A quiet curse slipped his lips as he pushed through traffic, catching the attention of the guards at the elevator. They recognized him immediately. They should. He’d been the one to hire them. Their expressions shifted from confusion to rigid concern as they noticed whoever was behind him. 
Clover didn’t bother to look for himself. He practically toppled a short stallion as he pushed toward the silver doors, all pretense of calm gone from his expression. “Do not let that mare near me!”
The guards stiffened, their attention shifting from their employer to the mare shouting at him to stop. He reached the elevator and jammed his laminate through the reader while the armed stallions advanced toward the parting hallway traffic. Just a few extra seconds. Somewhere above, the car began descending.
“Director Clover, you’re ordered to remand yourself to our custody immediately!”
He risked a glance toward the advancing voice. The elevator guards stood with one wing held out to stop her advance while the other rested on their rifles. Several other officers followed in her wake, their eyes wide and focused solely on the slightly rotund stallion waiting stupidly for the elevator doors to open. 
The dull noise of the approaching car drew closer.
“You idiots, that stallion has been charged with treason against the Enclave!”
The elevator dinged. Clover hurried inside and ran his badge through the waiting reader. From the hall, the two guards were looking back at him with visible confusion as if trying to decide who to believe or whether this was an elaborate test.
The doors began to close. The mare leading the charge shoved past the guards and unholstered a pistol. A combination of shit aim and a retaliatory tackle from his security team sent the three shots she squeezed off ricocheting off the doorframe rather than excavating various pieces of his anatomy. A confusion of shouts ran through the corridor that were gradually muffled by the doors clicking together.
The elevator chimed and he began to ascend.







“A little tighter, dear. I promise you aren’t going to break me.”
Aurora flushed a little as she wrapped her feathers around the leather strap hanging from Ginger’s bags, giving it another good pull before folding the excess into the buckle. Ginger didn’t exactly need help putting on her saddlebags what with her restored horn and, according to Chops, a disturbingly precise ability to manipulate the fabric of reality. 
She wasn’t so sure about that last part, even if the mute corporal hadn’t minced his words. With Ginger’s bags secure, Aurora put a wing against her back and carefully pivoted back toward the bunks the four of them had been assigned. Chops and Dancer sat in chairs against the container’s rear wall, their attention regularly toggling between an ongoing card game and the four ponies whose supervision had since become an exercise of rubbing their noses in their own mess. It wasn’t much of a punishment, apparently. Chops and Dancer didn’t seem to mind the assignment at all and as far as Aurora could tell, Ginger, Roach, and Julip weren’t bothered either. 
She glanced between them one more time, wishing she knew a little more about what she’d missed while locked in Ironshod’s freezer. Chops seemed okay, but Dancer seemed… less okay. When the stallion in question noticed her gaze he lifted a brow. Aurora pretended not to notice and continued her inventory of their meager belongings. 
“These apples are getting soft,” she mentioned, gesturing to the neatly organized pile on their mattress. “Think they’re worth trading?”
Ginger lit her horn and hefted three of them from the heap. “I doubt we’ll need to if we’re flying straight back to your Stable.”
She looked over to the other bunk where Roach and Julip had seated themselves at the end of the mattress, their attention on the pile of parts laid out over Roach’s lap. He was explaining to her the homemade mechanism he’d created for his leg-mounted shotgun - the same weapon the Enclave had chosen to disassemble before delivering back to him. A second pair of soldiers next to the container door, a mare and stallion whose names Aurora hadn’t bothered to ask for, watched Roach with open disapproval as he walked Julip through the construction. With eight bodies warming the small space, they’d been forced to prop the doors open just to keep the shipping container from becoming a hotbox.
“Roach, Julip? Either of you hungry?”
Julip glanced up from her lesson and shrugged. “I could eat.”
Roach politely declined and leaned back a little so Ginger could lob a bruised apple into Julip’s waiting wing. She bit into it and turned her attention back to the intricate spring system he was demonstrating, watching with quiet admiration whenever Roach managed to use a combination of hooves and teeth to rebuild the delicate assemblies. Aurora and Ginger chose their own fruit and resumed their packing as they worked.
“Kind of noticing a lack of ammunition,” she commented, glancing pointedly over to the unnamed soldiers. “Should I assume that’ll be returned when you find my rifle?”
The mare nearest the open door bristled. “Your weapon is not lost, ma’am, and you will have your ammunition returned after you’re delivered to your Stable.”
“Ooh,” Ginger whispered, “she called you ma’am.”
“Don’t I feel special.” She allowed herself the smallest smirk and readdressed their guards. “Thanks for the info.”
The spicy mare averted her gaze. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”
No sense in antagonizing them even if the stallion beside her remained silent, clearly less invested in his own pride. Aurora got the sense that he’d been pulled away from a better assignment to help keep an eye on them. Or, more accurately, keep an eye on Chops and Dancer. It made her wonder whether their loyalty to the Enclave might be in question after Julip’s defection. Maybe the reason Primrose wanted to shove her back into the metal box she came from was to keep whatever infection Aurora already transmitted to her people from spreading.
She was not going to miss the wasteland.
“I’m surprised that’s all we managed to collect,” Ginger mused, sidling beside her as she lifted a roll of pristinely wrapped gold prewar currency. “Treasure hunters, we are not.”
Aurora resisted the temptation to say something mushy about having found each other. She didn’t want to get booed out of the container. With Ginger’s help she fastened her own bags and started divvying supplies among the group. Julip, notably, hadn’t been given her mailbag. One last snub from her former comrades. When asked what he wanted to carry, Roach only offered a tiny shake of his head that seemed to indicate not now. Perplexed, Aurora and Ginger split the rest between themselves.
“Hey. Hey, dipshits,” the mare at the door hissed. “Cards away. Counselor’s coming.”
They watched as Dancer and Chops packed their game away and got up from their seats to stand at attention, though neither appeared to be in much of a hurry to do so as their counterparts. With Ginger to help her maneuver, Aurora winced as she hopped her back end around to face the approaching hoofsteps. As much as she disliked bowing to the graces of the Enclave, she had too much riding on Primrose’s generosity to throw it away with bad decorum. 
A startlingly tall mare appeared on the catwalk outside with an armed entourage in tow, though mercifully as their newest guest ducked through the doorway the ones accompanying her chose to remain outside. Her plain black uniform lay crisply against her willowy frame, her coloration nearly identical to the long-dead Element on Kindness despite her imposing height. Her vibrant pink mane hung to one shoulder in a single thick braid that had begun to frizz in the salty air. The muzzle of a familiar rifle poked out from beneath her wing. 
Pink eyes scanned the cramped space for several seconds before finally settling on Aurora. “Ms. Pinfeathers, our minister would like this to return home with you.”
Aurora read the patch stitched into the counselor’s uniform. Aeolian. She found herself trying to work out the pronunciation even as the mare approached with her rifle held out for her to take. Almost absently, she accepted her rifle nearly without noticing the changes it had undergone. The brass hooks that Ginger had installed were gone, the boreholes filled and sanded flush to the original stock wood. Unvarnished and surrounded by bright scuffing they stood out like blonde hairs in a brown wig. 
She frowned, clutching the weapon awkwardly in her wing as she dropped the leather strap over her head. A strong scent of solvent and fresh gun oil drew her attention away from the de-modification and toward the rest of the weapon. It had been disassembled and cleaned down to the heads of the screws keeping it together. The nickel plated barrel had been polished to a mirror shine and the mud and grime from days in the wasteland had been meticulously removed. Even the narrow scope had been washed and cleaned. It was in better condition than when she stole it from the Security office. 
“We’ve done all we can to ensure Desperate Times is display ready, though the damage to the original wood will need to be repaired by an artisan in your Stable.” She tipped a yellow feather toward the barrel. “Luckily, the original rifling wasn’t worn too badly.”
“Thank you,” she said, biting back her annoyance over Ginger’s work being undone. Curiously, she added, “How do you know its name?”
Counselor Aeolius shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “Commander Spitfire was known to own a named Reinlander Model 700 identical to this, and you just so happen to come from her Stable. That, and Minister Primrose recognized it during her review of your equipment. She owns your rifle’s sister. A knife, made by the same manufacturer.”
She had to do some creative balancing but managed to get one wing gripped around the bottom of the rifle and the other on the bolt. It racked back without sticking or grinding, something it hadn’t done since she first brought it with her into the wasteland. The chamber as well as the magazine beneath it had been conspicuously relieved of their ammunition. “I didn’t know weapons had siblings.”
Aeolius smiled impatiently. “It’s called a turn of phrase. Now, if you and your companions are ready to depart, your escort is waiting for you on the freight platform. I would prefer to have the four of you airborne and on course before nightfall.”
Before Aurora could respond, Roach lifted a hoof. “Before we leave, the four of us need to speak in private.”
His request caused the counselor’s expression to go brittle, but rather than respond she instead regarded Aurora with an inquisitive arc on her brow. Aurora let Desperate Times lay slackly against her side, trying to ignore her brain’s most recent attempt to convince her of a persistent throb where her hind leg used to be. “Just give us ten minutes.”
Satisfied, Aeolius ordered the Enclave personnel out of the container before turning to leave herself. “Please try to keep it brief.”
As the door creaked closed behind her, Roach set aside his disassembled weapon and got up from the mattress to shoved it the rest of the way shut. By the sudden pensiveness on Julip’s face, something was up. As Roach led Julip to where she and Ginger stood beside the bunks at the rear of the container, a familiar dread settled at the bottom of her gut. Roach had noticed something the rest of them hadn’t. She found herself wondering if they were actually hostages here, or whether Primrose was trying to run a con with the promised ignition talisman like Elder Coldbrook had just a week earlier. 
But when Roach broke the news, there was no revelation. No grand conspiracy or imminent danger. Just simple, thoughtful logic.
“So,” he murmured, careful to keep his voice low enough not to carry to the pegasi standing outside, “Julip and I had some time to talk, and we think it might not be the best idea for either of us to join you for the whole flight home.”
Aurora opened her mouth to ask why, but stopped short. She knew on some level this was meant to happen the moment Primrose drew a line in the sand against Roach being allowed into her Stable. A part of her had hoped to delay talking about it until they were closer to home, but Roach was intent on having the conversation now. 
She gnawed the inside of her cheek, eyes dipping toward the floor. “Where will you go?”
Julip chimed in, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “We’re going to make our way to Blinder’s Bluff.”
“Or, barring that, Kiln.” Roach shrugged, knowing full well Kiln’s background radiation made it less of a backup plan and more of a last resort as far as Julip’s internal organs were concerned. “We’ll start with the Bluff first. If Coldbrook blundered as badly as the pegasi here say, I don’t think we’re going to register on his shit list. Plus I promised to help Knight Latch restore Stable 6’s gardens, and who knows? If they’re still hooked up to Stable-Tec’s network with the dummy version of your Pip-Buck, we might find a way to keep in touch.”
Emphasis on might. She liked hearing him talking hypotheticals even less than she did worrying about it in her own head. “I’m sure Knight Latch will be glad to have a gardener’s brain around to pick.”
“Master gardener,” Julip corrected, not without a cheeky grin. “And if we don’t get chased out, I’m going to be his apprentice.”
That caught her off guard. Even Ginger was at a loss. “You’re going to learn how to garden.”
Julip grinned a little wider, leaning into the challenge. “You got a fucking problem with that?”
“Ah, no. I mean… I just can’t picture you pruning tomatoes, is all.” Or, for that matter, the tomatoes surviving the experience. “Are you sure going back to the Bluff right now is the safest idea, though? We didn’t exactly leave behind many friends when we left, and speaking as the last mare they thought was with the Enclave, the reception might not be great if they find out who Julip is.”
Roach glanced at Julip, who exchanged the same look of middling confidence. “As far as anyone at the Bluff needs to know, Julip is just a dustwing we met in the Pleasant Hills who asked for our protection on her way to Fillydelphia. It happens all the time.”
Aurora looked over to Ginger who appeared less than convinced. Still, if it was the story they were going with, weak as it was it still beat telling the truth.
Yet the question lingering between them still remained. 
“When are you planning to leave?”
And just like that the mood darkened. Julip’s smile faded and Roach gradually averted his eyes. The tiny chitin plates at the corner of each lip tightened as he looked up at Aurora and Ginger.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, his voice lowering as he lifted the flap of his saddlebag. 
From it he fetched a neatly folded square of gauze with a noticeable lump in the center. He didn’t unwrap it, and judging by his expression as he held it out to her he didn’t want it to be. He set the bundle in her wing, his expression more serious than she’d ever seen it before. 
“When you get back home, find Blue. Ginger can tell you what it is once you’re somewhere private.”
Aurora frowned as she slipped the wrapped object into her saddlebag.
“It’s a gift from Applebloom,” he said. “She’ll understand when she sees it.”







Thunderlane made his way to the Atrium, concern and confusion competing across his face. His service revolver, a weapon that had gone ten years without use save for the test bullet fired from it when it was manufactured, bounced against his hip as he matched Spitfire's stride. She kept the irritation off her face, knowing he had questions about the so-called chemical leak. Just her luck that today of all days her head of security was actually watching his Pip-Buck.
“I just got the ping from Millie.” His wide hooves stomped alongside her, the glow from his Pip-Buck still open to the localized message Millie was programmed to send in the event of a hazard, real or faked. “I’ve got two security details setting up to block hoof traffic into the main corridor and one cracking open hazmat kits. Any idea what they’re going to be dealing with?”
She stared forward. “I have no idea, Thunder. I’m sure they’ll handle it.”
They wouldn’t find a spill, nor would they be able to disable the lockdown without Spitfire’s credentials. Once they exhausted their options they would radio back to Thunderlane and declare the leak to be in error, and she would sigh sympathetically and apologize, promising to manually override the lockdown herself when she had a moment to step away. But in the meantime she would invite the IT team to use the remainder of their shift to mingle in the Atrium, have some cake, maybe indulge in the certainly-not-spiked cider that was quickly becoming a Remembrance Day tradition. There would be time later to write code, answer work tickets, whatever it was they did all day.
Thunderlane coughed. “That’s why I’m asking, Spits. You just came from IT so I’m kinda hoping you saw what happened.”
That touch of annoyance became a barb. “If I knew I would tell you. Whatever the issue is, Millie has it contained.”
“I know that. I was only asking so I could let my guys know what–”
She stopped mid-stride. He slowed to a halt a few steps ahead and reluctantly turned to look at her.
“Are your people competent enough to handle it?”
He nodded with a hesitance that made a stallion his age look pitiful. “Of course they are.”
“Then why are you nannying them like they’re not?”
She waited. He didn’t have an answer for her that wouldn’t invite another rebuke, so he remained silent. Smart choice.
“Good.” She resumed walking. The sounds of festivities in the Atrium were clear enough to make out individual voices, and the last thing she needed was for someone to walk into the corridor and ask why she was chewing out the Stable’s most popular living Wonderbolt. When she was sure he was following, she added, “Put it out of your head, alright? It’s IT. Someone probably fried a circuit board and tripped Millie’s sniffers.”
He uttered a noncommittal noise that made her want to pull her mane out. She didn’t need to deal with a sullen old stallion today. Delta’s absence was only going to go unnoticed for so long, and eventually someone was going to remember seeing her enter her office and not leaving during the evacuation. She needed to figure out a long term solution to her Delta problem, and soon.
She sighed. For now, at least, she hoped some time in confinement might convince the former drunk that she wasn’t a mare to be fucked with. Not every truth needed to be printed in fat bold letters on the front page. The hard truths, the ones nobody wanted to think about but had no qualms about reaping the rewards from, were better when forgotten.

Thankfully, Thunderlane had enough brains to know when to drop the subject. She glanced down at her Pip-Buck as they walked. 3:09pm. A little late, but then again one of Equestria’s so-called heroes would have said they were fashionably so. 
Heads turned as they stepped into the Atrium, all smiles and humility as a small ripple of stamped applause rolled through the crowded space. She made a point to look up at the bright blue banner hung just behind her podium, the words HAPPY REMEMBRANCE DAY! beaming above her gathered residents in bright yellow font. Delta’s self-righteous little tantrum could wait. Today was a day of celebration. Ten years of survival against odds that no pony or creature had ever faced in written history. Pegasi crowded the railing on the second level. Some had brought their own seating, and had camped out along the periphery where the crush wasn’t so dense. 
To Thunderlane’s credit, crowd control was buttoned up tight. She spotted more than a few security patrols herding pegasi away from the main seating, and another ordering a young couple down from where they were treading air near the overmare’s office window. Spitfire caught herself chuckling at that. The Atrium and the main hall of Mechanical were the two largest spaces in the Stable and it wasn’t unreasonable for a resident to feel the itch to stretch their wings, though more often than not it would be the original adult residents who got caught breaking the rules. These two stallions couldn’t have been more than toddlers when the bombs fell. Rebellious teens. The old drill instructor in her felt a bolt of pride knowing she’d selected such flight-hungry residents for this Stable, even if as its overmare she understood the importance of discouraging it. 
The longer they all clung to their desire to fly, the more they would look at the door and wonder when the day would come when it opened again. Many of them had accepted the hard fact that they would die here and that flight was meant for a generation none of them would live long enough to see. Some weren’t so easy to convince. It hurt her every time they came to her asking whether the atmospheric reports were trending toward recovery yet. Whether they’d have a chance to see the skies again.
She shook off the uncomfortable thought before she reached the stage. She had a speech to give and she’d been delayed long enough. Renewed applause chased her up onto the low stage. As she stood behind the podium she lifted a wing to beckon silence. The applause dwindled until only a few stubborn Wonderbolts at the front were the only ones remaining, their enthusiasm finally silenced by a coy arch of her brow. They grinned back, unashamed. 
She cleared her throat. Her voice resonated off the walls as if rolling from the tongue of Princess Luna herself.
“Today is the day for which we cross a threshold together. Today proves, Stable 10, that we are not just surviving. We are not just living for tomorrow. Each and every pegasi here, whether you hail from Sanitation, Supply, or Security, has demonstrated the inherent tenacity of our breed and the strength that we have to thrive. Today, on this tenth Remembrance Day, we celebrate the lives of every pony here in concert with those who we lost on the way.”
Eyes glistened. Pegasi set their jaws in grim solidarity. Several hid their mouths behind feathers. This was the loyalty she deserved.
“Now please,” she continued, her voice growing soft as it did every year. “Join me in a minute of silence for those we are missing.”
And they did. As a hushed silence fell over the Atrium, Spitfire couldn’t stop from feeling the nervous itch of danger at the base of her neck. All of the pegasi gathered around her had sacrificed everything to be here, but the real tragedy was that they would never know why. Delta’s reaction to the truth was proof enough of that. They would never accept that their collective losses were the cobblestones on a road to a better future. One where pegasi could achieve more than break up the occasional storm, where their greatest contributions to Equestria couldn’t be overshadowed on a whim by anyone with a horn on their head. 
Balefire had brought death to millions and that was a burden Spitfire would struggle with for the rest of her life. But the death of magic was worth the cost. The wholesale conflagration of that arcane crutch Equestria propped itself up with had been so long overdue. Ever since Celestia and Luna took advantage of their unnaturally long lives to install themselves into a ruling class whose membership they dictated, a great correction of the scales had loomed on the horizon. 
It had come and gone, and yes it had been painful. Yes it had taken the innocent with the guilty. But it had come. And she would be damned if she would allow all that work to be spoiled by someone as low-living as Delta fucking Vee.
Several pegasi in the Atrium began to look up, their moment of silence concluded. She took a breath and gathered herself before reciting the remainder of her speech. They listened, occasionally interrupting her with applause before allowing her to proceed, and when she concluded she stepped back from the podium for the next speakers to do their part. 
A short procession of faces familiar to everyone by now climbed up to the microphone and told stories about their lives before the Stable. A middle-aged stallion spoke about a flower garden he could never get to grow in the high altitudes of Cloudsdale and got a knowing laugh from the crowd when he said it was probably a good thing he didn’t work anywhere near the Agricultural level. A former Wonderbolt told them about her frustration over not being deployed to Vhanna during the first waves of Equestria’s assault, but having since accepted that her purpose had never been to kill zebras. It was to survive so a new generation could continue on when she was gone. She lifted a feather to two pegasi seated at the front row and introduced her husband and son to the crowd, earning her fierce applause. 
Spitfire stood patiently behind each of them, listening to their stories and reacting accordingly. She greeted them as they climbed onto the stage and smiled as they departed for the next speaker, a tidy parade of stories selected from a raffle of nearly two hundred submissions, each one curated to elicit a sense of mourning without being overshadowed by the greater message that everyone gathered here was as much a family as the people they shared a compartment with. Stable 10 wasn’t just a shelter. It was their home. One that their hard work, their dedication and tenacity had kept running for a decade now and was poised to last centuries. The pride in their faces was unmistakable. They weren’t just refugees of a great calamity. 
They were survivors.
As with every Remembrance Day, the speeches eventually came to an end and the celebration began in earnest. Music was piped in through Millie’s overhead speakers, this year featuring a selection of uptempo jazz that kept the Atrium lively. Ten years had passed. Those who preferred to mourn their loved ones could do so in the privacy of their compartments. The stage was hastily disassembled and chairs moved against the walls to make room for those who wanted to mingle. 
Food and drinks were provided by the staff of the Brass Bit, rolled out on trays behind a long line of tables set end to end in what several pegasi jokingly compared to their memories of the lunch hour when they were still in school. Gone were the days of gryphon cuisine, much to Spitfire’s constant disappointment, but as she joined the buffet line and filled her plate she discovered that the cooks had managed to create something edible out of the fermented fish rations Stable-Tec had chosen to plague them with. 
She tonged a little of everything onto her plate and plucked a fork from the tray at the end of the line, and soon she was eating, chatting, and laughing with her fellow Stablemates. Pegasi dressed in pressed jumpsuits filtered through the crowd, steel trays held aloft with classic cider alongside a new beverage concocted by some entrepreneuring resident that tasted like molasses and brandy without the bite of alcohol. 
It didn’t take long for Thunderlane to find and follow her, drink in wing, like a lost puppy, but she wasn’t about to kick him aside. He was, like several residents in attendance, one of the founding members of her Enclave. While he and the rest of her surviving Wonderbolts would never know what their efforts within the ministries had ultimately accomplished, they deserved her respect if nothing else. And, as much as she hated to admit it, having Thunderlane around felt nice. In his sweet ignorance he’d been the first to clue into Rainbow Dash’s disloyalty and opened a door for his fellow pegasi that may have otherwise stayed shut. He reminded Spitfire of how it felt to be innocent.
“Look,” he murmured, pointing her back to the buffet tables. “They’re bringing out cake.”
She snorted. The oaf had almost washed out of the Academy thanks to his love of sweets, and now that they were both retired he didn’t even try to hide it. She followed him back to the line for a clean plate and found herself smiling a little more genuinely as they clung to the periphery of the Atrium with sweet crumbs sticking to their lips.
She stole a glance at her Pip-Buck when a waiter offered to replace her empty plate with another glass of sugared brandy. Almost 5pm. She took the offered drink and sipped at it while Thunderlane told her a locker room story she’d heard before, smiling politely as he spoke while keeping her ears open for the interruption that came like clockwork once a year.
On cue, the music cut out, replaced by Millie’s disturbingly realistic voice. “Overmare Spitfire, please report to your office to receive an incoming call. Overmare Spitfire, please report…”
Several heads turned toward her as the music resumed. She sighed, rolling her eyes for added theater, and downed the rest of her drink before handing off her empty glass to Thunderlane. Most residents assumed it was Stable-Tec calling to congratulate her, but anyone who watched the missile arc through the roof of the Stable-Tec Headquarters building would know that was a lie. Stable-Tec was dead and good riddance to every last one of them. Were it not for her they would have turned Stable 10 into another one of their sadistic experiments. 
Weed out the weak to feed the strong, my ass, she thought as she climbed the stairs to the catwalk above. If that deformed little headcase Applebloom had a single bone in her body tuned to leadership she would have seen what her demented board of directors had been doing right under her snout. Directing that bomb into their headquarters ensured their sickness died at the source.
The lights clicked on as she entered her office, illuminating the bare walls of a barren workspace. She hadn’t bothered to decorate. Didn’t think it would bode well for her to be lavishing herself in her personal belongings when so many arrived here with nothing. A few potted plants whose species she didn’t remember the names grew in the corners, their leaves in need of dusting. Behind her chair, her father’s trusty rifle hung from its hooks on the wall. 
She sat down and stared at the telephone beside her terminal. The call waiting light blinked off and on. Primrose waited for her to pick up on the other line, still tucked away in her little shelter at the bottom of the Ministry of Technology. She’d refused to hide away in a Stable. Someone needed to stay behind, she’d insisted. Somebody needed to make sure the balefire did its job. Spitfire never got a clear answer for what that meant. It was evident that when the bombs finally dropped and their collective work was done, the two of them were no long bound to one another. The Enclave’s purpose had been served. What they did after was their own business.
The telephone continued to blink.
And yet she insisted on these calls. An annual reminder that she was still out there, watching.
She settled her head against the flat of her hoof and plucked the receiver off its cradle with her feathers. “Happy Remembrance Day, Primrose.”
“To you as well,” a slightly tinny voice responded. As with every passing year, Spitfire found it unsettling how her voice never seemed to deepen with age. “How goes the party? Still beating the liquor out of everyone’s wings with a stick?”
She smirked at that and reached forward to pick a pencil out of her pen cup. It danced along her feathers as she made small talk. “I’ll keep doing it until I see proof 25 hasn’t imploded.”
Months before the end, the Enclave had managed to pry confidential files out of Stable-Tec’s secure network. In them, several papers detailed the locations and numbers of its full roster, but more importantly were the secret dossiers laying out the twisted experiments slated for each one. Stable 10 had been one of the few on that list marked as a control. Stable 25, however, had been built below the old sewers of a small city in the northwest and earmarked to include a slim majority of residents with a history of unrepentant alcoholism. The details of the experiment had been disturbing, with much of the focus circling Stable-Tec’s expectation that the disease would spread unchecked over time. The expected result was a Stable-wide collapse. The variable Stable-Tec was solving for was time.
Spitfire had never shied away from a drink, but in a confined environment like this all bets were off. Reading those papers had convinced her that nothing short of total sobriety would do. The first generation could grumble, but the second wouldn’t so much. She doubted their grandchildren would know what liquor was, let alone crave it.
“I think you’re being too cautious,” Primrose chirped. “Their overstallion is performing far better than Stable-Tec gave him credit for.”
She tapped the pencil’s eraser against her desk. “You’re still monitoring them?”
“Of course I am. You should be too. They have three hundred unicorns among them and they’re farther from any detonation site than most Stables.” A pause. “Some of them have already relearned how to levitate objects.”
She shifted in her seat. “We knew one-hundred percent eradication wasn’t realistic. We still set them back thousands of years.”
“Which means in a thousand years we’ll be right back where we started.”
She scoffed. “You’re being too paranoid.”
“And you’re not paranoid enough.” Even across hundreds of miles, she could feel the heat coming off Primrose’s voice. “Balefire was supposed to be the death of magic, not a stubbed hoof. I’m not happy with this, Spitfire.”
The more she grew to know her, the less happy with anything Primrose seemed to be. Life, for her, was graded on a pass-fail system. All in or all out. Equestria’s balefire arsenal had been overwhelmingly effective as far as she was concerned. Dreams were a thing of the past and radiation still chattered heavily out of the dosimeters embedded in the tunnel walls outside. 
“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it, Prim. We did what we could. You should move on. I have.” 
After several long seconds of silence from the other end, she could sense they weren’t going to wrap up this call with the usual well-wishes and congratulations. 
“I have to get back to the party,” she added, eyes dropping to the phone’s empty cradle. “Take care of yourself.”
“Who’s Delta Vee?”
She’d nearly missed it. Her wing froze inches above the cradle before returning to her ear. “What?”
“Who is Delta Vee?”
She lifted her chin to the ceiling and mouthed a silent curse. “She’s my head of IT. Why?”
“Your head of IT has been busy this past week.” Paper rustled from the other line. Her heart picked up speed. “Are you aware she released a worm onto Stable-Tec’s network? ‘Pioneer.’ We’ve been watching it spread. Is she looking for something she shouldn’t be?”
Shit.
“Delta has been in charge of monitoring overland radio communications for several years now, mainly to assess the state of decay in Equestria.” She flipped the pencil in her feathers, tapping the tip nervously against the desk. “We’ve been hearing less and less from the outside. I assume she made Pioneer to monitor digital communications.”
“So you know what it does.”
She hesitated. “I didn’t–”
“Our Enclave was formed on a foundation of mutual trust, Spitfire. I’ll give you one more chance to be honest with me. Only one. Do you understand me?” She waited before sighing over the tinny line. “I need you to tell me what she found.”
Her mouth felt cottony. She wanted to hang up and fly away, but she couldn’t. With her heart beating in her throat, she answered.
“She didn’t find anything, Primrose. I promise.”
Silence.
“You promise.”
The sharp sound of feathers typing crackled across the line. She wanted to demand what Primrose was doing but her voice died in her throat. She fucked up. She knew it well before Delta’s distorted voice rose out of Spitfire’s receiver.
“It was you?”
“Look who’s still sober enough for context clues. Millie, disable all voice command access to this office.”
“You two-faced bitch, it was all you!”
A single click and the recording ended. 
“You. Promise.”
Panic rose in her chest. “Primrose, that wasn’t–”
Her former secretary cut her off with a venomous little laugh. “Shut up. You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you? Never satisfied, always trying to climb one rung higher than whoever’s above you. Blackmail was always your tool, wasn’t it. Was that your plan for me?”
“No, I–”
“You didn’t kill her.” More feathers tapping keys. “I’m looking at her right now. Either you’re stupid or you kept her alive for a reason, and we both know you’re not stupid. So that leads me to think you’re hoping you can use her.”
She dragged her wing down her mane, trying desperately to keep up. “Prim, I’m not planning anything! What would I even want from you? There’s nothing but death and balefire between you and me!”
“Golly, I’d be inclined to believe you if you weren’t such a terrible liar.” Keystrokes, harder this time. Angry. “You’ve compromised your Stable, Spitfire.”
She stood up, her chair rolling away to thud against the wall behind her. “No. I did not compromise this Stable!”
“You allowed that mare to operate unchecked,” Primrose continued. 
She shook her head, hard, sensing the inevitable. The pencil falling from her grip.
“You did this to yourself. No one else is to blame but you. I hope you accept that.”
Her voice trembled. “This wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh, save the oxygen. You’re going to need it.”
A single clack of a key being pressed resonated from the phone.
“Only one of us gets to live forever, Spitfire, and it’s not you. I’ll give your Stable thirty minutes. Evacuate, or don’t. I don’t care. Do with it what you like.”
The line went dead in her feathers.
She placed the receiver back in its cradle and sat down.
Half an hour later, Stable 10 plunged into darkness.







A warm breeze rolled over the top of the receiving platform, stirring through Julip’s mane and around the hooves of the Enclave pegasi gathered behind them. Aurora stood beside her, stretching her wings as best she could for a mare with one hind leg. Ginger and Roach waited nearby, the two of them sharing one last whispered conversation as they prepared to leave. She tried not to stare, but it was hard to when Julip felt like she was the one taking him away. 
She averted her eyes when Ginger yanked him into a crushing squeeze. Roach had told her his story of finding her during one of expeditions into the wasteland, and the two had come to regard one another as family long before Aurora poked her head out of the dirt. Julip wondered what Ginger must think of her now. A poignant prewar term came to mind. Homewrecker. She scraped a hoof along the platform’s rusted grating, smearing bright orange lines while the two of them said their goodbyes. 
A curl of feathers tapped her in the ribs. “Hey.” 
She glanced up at Aurora, the mare who freed her from that cage beneath Autumn’s solar farm and the pegasus who came within inches of kicking her teeth in just days later at the bottom of a dead Stable, and offered a tiny acknowledging smile. “What’s up?”
“Thanks for being a friend.”
Aurora knuckled the feathers of her right wing and held them out into the space between them. Julip hesitated for a moment, unsure what she was doing or why, but once it clicked she gave her head a little shake and mimed the gesture, allowing Aurora to give her wing a sturdy bump.
“You are one weird mare,” Julip said, before adding, “It’s good to see you out of your own head.”
Aurora smiled at that. Before she could return the compliment her attention was pulled away when a mote of magic cupped her cheek, turning her head toward the unicorn casting it. Roach and Ginger had found a place to push the final pin into their friendship and were making their way back, much to the visible relief of the soldiers around them. Julip caught a glimpse of a stallion rolling his eyes for the benefit of his uniformed counterpart and had to physically restrain herself from chewing baby’s-first-sergeant a second asshole. 
Her poker face was garbage, encouraging Roach to stand directly in her line of sight. For a changeling with no discernible pupils, it was odd to see him all misty-eyed. “Ignore them. Are you ready?”
She sighed, a little disappointed with how quickly her anger fizzled. A week ago she would have laid into those two idiots until one or both of them dropped plops. With Roach around, it kind of felt okay to just let it go.
“Yeah,” she said, watching Ginger and Aurora having a similar conversation just three feet away. “Just make sure you hang on.”
The dark ocean waves troughed and peaked beneath the platform in an undulating parade of whitecaps that stretched away nearly as far as she could see. Straight ahead, Equestria’s eastern shoreline drew a hazy gray line across the horizon. The smoke that up until recently drew dark smears across the clouds overhead had thinned significantly, but the sky trail leading back to Fillydelphia was still visible to the keen eye.  
With some luck, it would be enough for what they needed to do.
Their formation leader, a stout mare who would be hating her job within the next fifteen minutes, took note that her four charges were ready to go and started barking orders that Julip reminded herself she wasn’t beholden to anymore. Black uniforms gathered into a diamond pattern around them with several of the pegasi checking weapons and rolling the last cracks and pops out of their joints. 
Julip took note of the myriad weapons surrounding her, knowing in her heart of hearts that few if any of the Enclave soldiers standing at the ready intended to deliver a defector and a ghoul to an uncontaminated pegasi Stable. She knew how easy it would be for the two of them to have an “accident.” The boilerplate excuses were simple and many. The traitor’s wing must have cramped. The ghoul went feral. The traitor was seen slipping chems. The ghoul poisoned her with radiation. They rolled off the top of her head with disturbing ease. 
Ponies disappeared in the wasteland. With the wind whistling in their ears, one suppressed gunshot could go unnoticed for miles.
She steadied her breathing. No one here was menacingly fixing an attachment to their weapons, but the question remained of what happened after Aurora and Ginger were safely inside the Stable. She didn’t trust the Enclave not to do what they always did once saner minds were out of sight.
Their field officer, touting a major’s pips, rattled off the details of their ascent profile, the vitality of staying above the cloud layer at all times, and of not falling behind. Their escorts were reminded that there would be no stops or waypoints, that this was a long haul flight which regardless of their success or failure would appear in their personnel records as a career highlight. She advised they take measures to ensure its notation would reflect honorably on them, insinuating heavily that failure would have detrimental results on their future with the Enclave.
As always with these high stakes missions, the pegasi on the receiving end of their commander’s lecture masked their nerves with eagerness. She shook her head at the low murmur of a nearby soldier joking about his partner tripping off the platform during takeoff. It felt different being on the outside while they egged each other on. They weren’t fooling anyone.
“You two,” the major said, gesturing a mottled purple feather toward Ginger and, less enthusiastically, Roach. “Get on whoever you’re getting on, and don’t make a scene of it.”
That job, apparently, was already taken by several members of their escort. A jeering whistle went up as Roach climbed onto Julip’s back, forcing her to take several slow breaths to stop herself from finding its source and sealing it with the owner’s teeth. Ginger was able to climb aboard Aurora with little fanfare, making it clear what the chuckles were insinuating. She focused all of her attention on the hazy peaks of Fillydelphia’s distant towers, knowing she would only have to endure this for a little while longer.
“FORM UP!” Julip winced. The major had the kind of voice that got shrill with volume, and boy she had volume. “Spades! Cobble! Quit giggling and form the fuck up! On my mark!”
Major Shriek’s “mark” amounted to holding her wings open at the front of the formation and a firm stamp of her hoof against the platform. A moment later she was sprinting forward and flinging herself off the edge.
Hooves thundered over the rusted platform as row after row, Enclave soldiers dropped over the edge and scooped themselves into the sky with pulsing wings. As she ran, a bolt of concern shot through her and she looked to her left to see if Aurora was keeping up. To her surprise, Aurora wasn’t running at all. She was gliding, three legs and a stump pulled up while Ginger’s magic propelled her along with the rest of the formation.
“That’s cheating!” she shouted.
“You made great practice, dear!” Ginger called back, and with an exhilarated whoop she pushed Aurora off the platform’s edge and into the wing-whipped air beyond. 
Julip and Roach could do little besides laugh as she leaped into the wind after them.
Just as he had during their hillside descent toward Stable 1, Roach locked his hooves just below her neck and kept her whipping mane to one side of his face. Unlike Ginger, he couldn’t use his magic to aid her unless she was okay with glowing in the dark for the rest of her life. As she scooped wind and threw it behind them she decided that was alright by her. Sure she was smaller than the average mare her age, but she could kick cloud with the best of them. More than that, she wanted Roach to see her strength. She wanted to impress him. 
She stuck her tongue into her lip and laughed at herself as they ascended. Fuck, it only took her almost dying from a gunshot to the lung to give a crap about what anyone thought of her. Scratch that, she thought, Aurora and Ginger could bite her ass if they had a problem. They didn’t, as far as she could tell, but the ass-biting was still on the table if they did. 
Roach’s throat buzzed warmly against her shoulder as he said something to himself. She glanced at him to see if it was meant for her but he smiled and shook his head, his attention captured by the vast ocean flattening out beneath them.
No, something had changed between them. He actually cared about her. Even more, he kept putting in the effort to build her up to be a better mare than she’d been when he’d found her. Waking up from her surgery on that dusty table and seeing Roach asleep in the chair beside her confirmed in her beyond all doubt that she wanted that friendship to continue.
Her wings cut through the turbulence of the pegasi ahead of her, but as they began to approach the bottom of the cloud layer she started to even off her ascent. It didn’t take the rest of the formation to notice she was lagging behind and she resisted the urge to smile as she watched their diamond pattern begin to deform. Fillydelphia had resolved into a proper cityscape just a few miles ahead of them, appearing clearly enough for her to pick out the now charred towers surrounding Magnus Plaza. The plan was to be well above the protection of the clouds by the time the city was beneath them, but those plans were rapidly changing as their formation leader shouted down at them to pick up their ascent.
If she was good at anything, it was weaving convincing lies.
She put on a show of struggling to comply, flapping her wings more aggressively while quietly allowing extra air to slide uselessly between limp feathers. On either side of her now, pegasi were shouting at her to tighten up her form. Telling her she was flying sloppy, to get her shit together. A helpful stallion let his frustration get the best of him and he started loudly asking her why she’d taken the bug on as cargo if she couldn’t carry the fucking thing. Julip rewarded him with a seemingly accidental but nonetheless jarring slap across his jaw with the end of the wing, prompting him to keep his distance.
Several yards ahead, Aurora and Ginger watched the act with knowing eyes. Julip grunted and cursed, actually whipping herself into a sweat just to keep her fiction as an overwhelmed flier from falling apart. By now the formation had begun to reform around her, none of its members particularly happy about the immediate deviation and several of them worrying whether they would need to turn back to put Roach on one of their backs instead. 
By the time they reached the first wispy fringes of the clouds, Fillydelphia was directly below their hooves. Julip didn’t have to feign much of her relief as the cool mist enveloped them. She’d just spent the last few miles flapping around like a chicken with a bowling ball strapped to his back and, act or no act, she’d burned a few calories making the sluggish climb.
Visibility shrank from miles to yards in the span of a few labored breaths. Aurora slowed until she and Ginger were at Julip’s wingtip, the two of them wearing the same sad smile. The formation around them were just shadows in the fog. Around her chest, Roach’s hooves drew in a little more tightly as the moment they’d discussed back on the oil rig finally came.
“Fly safe,” Aurora murmured.
She didn’t know what to say. The words, if they were words, jammed in her throat. She cleared it and looked back at Roach. His belly swelled into her back as he took a deep breath and nodded once.
Julip closed her wings, pinning his hind legs behind her ribs, and they fell away from Aurora and Ginger like stones.
For a brief moment they were alone together in the mist. Then the clouds gave way and the ground spread out beneath them like a vast welcome mat of towers. Julip held her hooves out ahead of her as they nosed down, the wind transforming from a torrent to a deafening flood of noise that pinning her ears back did little to shut out. They dove toward the city, eyes watering, wind buffeting against them as gravity lent them more and more speed. Neither of them could risk looking back. Not for the fear of being chased by a furious swarm of Enclave soldiers but because doing so risked bending their set trajectory off course. They couldn’t risk being seen flying level over the city, not for anything. Not with Coronado’s Rangers primed to kill anything they might see traveling the skies above.
It needed to be a straight shot, which meant it was going to hurt like hell.
Fillydelphia’s north side grew larger and larger, the bomb-flattened buildings surrounding the murky green speck at its center, all of it rushing up to meet them. She had a split second to confirm the lack of Rangers on the ground. Nothing. No bullets dropped down from the sky behind them, no power armor stomping around the familiar crater directly ahead. They were clear.
Roach braced against her. She threw her wings open and hurled them toward the ground as hard as she could, sending bolts of brief agony through her shoulders as an unforgiving combination of weight and inertia carved at her muscles. Vertical velocity violently bent laterally as the tips of her hooves slapped off the placid surface of the crater pond and dug hard into the glassed gravel along the shoreline. 
“Fuck-fuckity-fucking…!” she stammered as she slid, stumbled, and eventually skid to a stop in a cloud of irradiated dirt and dust. Against all odds, Roach hadn’t gotten dumped into the pond and was still clinging to her neck, albeit tightly enough to make it a struggle to breathe. 
She scanned the clouds above for any sign of pursuing Enclave. Nothing. Good. They were probably only now realizing they’d come through the top of the clouds minus two and they would likely waste even more time canvassing the mist for them before anyone was brave enough to kill their career and suggest Julip had made a break for it. Even longer before Major Shriek admitted she’d been duped by a traitor and a changeling, and fell back on her primary objective of getting the Enclave’s chosen pureblood home.
“I think we’re clear,” she choked out, thumping Roach’s interlocked hooves with one of her own. “Everyone off the ride.”
Chagrined, Roach let go and dropped sideways off her back. “That was… terrifying.”
She pivoted to get her bearings, wincing at the sensation of an entire quarry’s worth of gravel lodged in the soles of her hooves. They weren’t far from the side of the pond where she and Aurora had sat and eaten while they waited for Roach and Ginger to return from the intact Stable-Tec complex below the water. 
The front half of Ginger’s power armor still lay on its side on the shoreline, frozen midstep where she’d discarded it. 
“Can you drag that out of the water by yourself?”
Roach was already on her way toward the abandoned P-45, his cracked horn glowing with its malignant energy. “I’ll manage. Go find something to cover yourself up with. The faster we’re out of here, the better.”
Just like the last time they were here, the ruins surrounding the crater weren’t particularly fruitful when it came to supplies. She hurried around the perimeter, staying low and keeping behind cover as she snuck in and out of what little standing structures remained. They couldn’t risk venturing near the larger and more commonly utilized ruins south, not after the Enclave had shown themselves not too far from where they were now during Aurora’s impromptu rescue. She’d bet every green hair on her ass that the Steel Rangers were patrolling those ruins with a vengeance now. If Ginger had managed to scrape together any goodwill with the local Elder, it was gone. 
Julip didn’t know much about Coronado other than he was a crookhorn. She grimaced. Kirin. They looked enough like ponies to avoid the worst of the deep, social suspicion bred into the Enclave and Steel Rangers, but they rarely found themselves accomplishing much more than the common earth pony. Kirin, like gryphons, couldn’t expect to be trusted with the rebuilding of Equestria. It wasn’t their country, after all. It wasn’t their mess to clean up.
She spotted the remains of an old campsite dug into a mound of blackened, compacted rubble not far from the pond’s north end. As she snuck toward it, she found herself feeling bad for Elder Coronado. Kirin or not, he tried to help them find Aurora without asking for anything in exchange. They hadn’t known Primrose would use his generosity as a wedge to pry open a larger tactical opportunity for the Enclave. For all the trouble he must be in now, Coronado couldn’t have predicted that helping one mare would result in his city’s fangs being torn out at the root. She felt a frown burrow into her muzzle as she lifted the tattered flap hanging over the shallow dugout. 
Nothing waited for her inside. Whoever camped here had taken everything they’d brought, save for the ratty square of burlap they’d used to cover the hole. Screw it, she thought. They didn’t have time for her to be picky. She hooked her feathers around the scratchy textile and yanked it loose, sending a small slide of pulverized concrete dust into the little shelter, and threw it over her shoulders. It would cover her wings and help camouflage the green of her coat from any scouts Primrose might decide to send to recover her. And she would. That much Julip was dead certain of. Defecting from the Enclave was one thing. Defecting during a mission assigned by the minister herself was entirely another. That cotton candy psycho was disturbingly adept at multitasking and nothing so small as the Enclave’s first breakthrough into enemy territory in a century would distract her from a grudge.
As she made her way back to the pond she looked up at the distant, smoldering towers that once housed Fillydelphia’s guns. She wondered how long the assault on the city would stick in the mind of someone like Coronado, and how far he might push himself to enact revenge. And despite now being able to see through the lies that the Enclave raised her on, Julip found herself worrying about what all this meant for the people she left behind in New Canterlot.
Dark thoughts. She pushed them away and hurried back to where she left Roach.
He’d gotten the power armor onto its hooves and was in the process of pulling apart the heavily armored panels by the time she caught up to him. When he saw her coming with her burlap adornment, his lip quirked into a smile that he couldn’t quite stop from evolving into a chuckle. “You look like a bag of potatoes.”
“Tatos,” she corrected, mimicking his grin while shaking her head with well-meaning annoyance. “It’s the best I could find. How’re you getting on with that tub o’ heavy?”
He forestalled her from getting too close, gesturing instead toward the saddlebags laying on the dirt a few yards up slope. “There should be Rad-X in the first aid kit. The ministry apparently didn’t plan for someone like Ginger to poof herself out of the suit without cycling the locks, so I’m trying to do that manually.”
She went over to where his bags lay and started rooting through them for the first aid kit. “It still works though, right?”
He nodded, his black horn lit like the balestone jewelry the ghouls in Kiln liked to sell. “Yeah, it’ll be fine as long as all the seals held up. You can walk most of these things through a lake without an issue even though they weren’t designed for it. It’s when they get wet on the inside when the problems start popping up.”
“Sounds like you speak from experience.” She found the first aid kit and cracked it open. The neatly organized and remarkably pristine contents caught her off guard, but then she remembered where he’d gotten them from. Everything, from the individually packed squares of alcohol wipes to the band aid tin, featured a tiny Stable-Tec logo with FIELD SUPPORT emblazoned in the center. 
“I had a friend sixty, seventy years ago who tried to start a business salvaging abandoned power armor for caps.” The suit let out a sharp clunk as another panel jerked open. “It never got off the ground, and I wasn’t much help, but we screwed around enough with the suits he did have for me to pick up a few things.”
Julip found a genuine, unbroken blister pack of original formula Rad-X in a box beneath the band aid tin. Her years as an Enclave archivist made breaking two of the pills from the foil feel like she was committing a small crime. The alternative, however, likely meant multiple doses of RadAway and several days trying to drink more water than she pissed. She took the pills and trotted closer to the exosuit.
She dropped her wing around the suit’s ammo feed line, tracing it to the port of the shoulder mounted minigun. “Maybe once we’re out of Coronado’s territory we can track down some ammo for these bad boys.”
Roach snorted, bracing the suit with his hooves as he wrenched open the last plate. “With whose caps? We’re broke.”
She shrugged, happy to have a moment to themselves where she could muse aloud. “I dunno. Didn’t you say Aurora said she could make herself a millionaire by fixing up a bottling plant somewhere?”
Roach smiled at that, shaking his head just a little as he stepped behind the power armor as the plates bloomed open. He stepped into the suit a little hesitantly. It wasn’t a perfect fit to his lanky frame, leaving plenty of unused space that the internal padding couldn’t quite fill. “Ah well,” he muttered. “It was just a hypothetical she suggested. Pretty sure she was just making fun of the currency.”
The suit emitted a sharp hiss as the panels closed around him. Heavy lugs dropped into place as the halves of each pair drew together, sealing him inside. When the cycle finished, the armor’s forward facing lamps kicked on and the hulking machine shuddered into motion.
His voice rumbled out from the internal speaker. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah.” She hurried over to Roach’s saddlebags and slung them over her hips, working the buckle under her belly as they fell into stride beside one another. “Where to now?”
“Back to Blinder’s Bluff, hopefully… but I was thinking we could take the scenic route there. There’s a highway up north near the Crystal Empire’s border that I wanted to visit again.” The suit’s helmet swiveled toward her. “Plus I doubt the Enclave will look for us there.”
They climbed the north embankment and into the rubble beyond. “Only because they’re too busy starting a war.”
“Which they’ll lose.” She must have looked at him funny, because he followed up with a quick, “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” She shrugged, trying not to think too hard about the friends she’d made in the archives. Her eyes tilted toward the rolling clouds above. “Do you think Aurora’s going to be okay?”
“Who, the mare who ventured into the wasteland and lived to come home with the key to her people’s survival? This may come to a shock to you, Julip, but folk heroes tend to live pretty comfortably.” Servos in Roach’s helmet whirred as he followed her gaze. “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll do just–”
A lump of broken concrete snagged the rim of Roach’s armored hoof mid-sentence, sending him and his power armor lurching forward in an unceremonious display of mass and momentum. He toppled onto his chin like a felled tree, throwing rocks and gravel ahead of him in a dirty brown curtain. Julip covered her mouth behind her feathers, partly to avoid breathing in the settling dust and partly to stop him from seeing her stifled laughter. 
Hydraulics groaned as he dragged an armored hoof underneath himself, the suit’s microphone picking up and happily transmitting what he’d tried to mutter under his breath. “Fuck me sideways.”
“Nice offer, but I’ll pass.” If Roach was listening, she had no way of knowing. Rather than stand and watch him flounder for better footing she took pity on him and stepped over to throw her shoulder into the approximation of the suit’s ‘ribs.’ Her small contribution probably didn’t amount to much, but it was better to try to help a little rather than do a lot of nothing. He’d taught her that and, weirdly enough, he was right about it feeling good. 
She caught herself grinning a little wider as they pushed him upright. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to drag your hooves?”
He snorted. The suit’s speaker translated it into electronic flatulence. “My mother was too busy trying to overthrow Equestria to find the time.”
“Excuses, excuses.” She hopped a piece of jutting rebar and trotted ahead of him, then stopped for a moment to look back. “Hit the gas on that thing, slow poke! I want to see Manehattan road signs before sunset!”
He groaned in response, but not without some levity. She grinned as he thundered after her in his monstrous suit.
No caps, no weapons, barely enough food or water for two day’s travel… something about setting out with close to nothing excited her. Maybe that was why the head archivist couldn’t wait to get rid of her and her field commander thought she was nuts. And maybe some of it came from surviving a near death experience. Probably a mix of all three. 
She didn’t care.
This time, for the first time, she wouldn’t be doing it alone.







Aurora stretched her wings as far as her joints would allow to loosen muscles that, after several unbroken hours of flight, had begun to ache. She let out a small, satisfied groan as warm air from a powerful thermal below soothed her discomfort. Ginger shifted slightly against her back, and Aurora could feel her occasionally look this way and that as the clouds slid below their hooves. And as if to remind her of its absence, the leg Aurora gave to the wasteland regularly twinged with fresh phantom pains. 
It came to her as a relief, then, that she’d reflexively used the quiet moments of their flight to contemplate how she might fix the problem of her missing leg. She smiled at the prospect of sitting down with the designers in Fabrication and banging out a few prototype designs. Doubtless the medical staff already had plenty of templates to choose from, but she didn’t want default. Sure it was selfish, but maybe she’d earned the right to be a little demanding. It wasn’t as if she was going to ask them to build a gatling gun into the thing. Just some shielded bearings and a nice set of hydraulic shock absorbers. 
And maybe a tiny gatling gun…
“Oh no,” Ginger spoke into her ear. “I know that smile. What’re you up to?”
She grinned more broadly while ignoring the disquieted looks coming from the pegasi in formation around her. Losing Julip and Roach had left them just the slightest bit on edge for any more unplanned deviations. It was why the formation leader had dragged them so high above the cloud tops, where any shenanigans Aurora might pull could be aborted well before she had a chance to leave their sight. 
“Just contemplating my future as a cyborg,” she joked. 
Ginger shook her head, then used her magic to activate the slim Pip-Buck clamped around her foreleg. Reading the screen required her to practically put Aurora in a headlock. Aurora kept her eyes forward, the suspense building as she waited.
“We just passed Blinder’s Bluff,” Ginger reported, her grip around Aurora’s neck loosening a little as her attention shifted to the gray clouds below. “I imagine that explains them.”
Aurora glanced down and nodded her agreement. Over the past half hour the skies had gone from one unbroken blue expanse to being spotted with other wings flying in small V formations. Of the entourage Primrose had assigned to escort them home, Aurora noticed one stallion ahead of her standing out from the rest. As he scanned the skies around them she caught glimpses of a boxy muzzle made of some sort of composite strapped over his mouth. A pigtailed wire ran out of the covering and into an impressively shallow radio mounted onto the back of his uniform. She imagined he was the reason the airspace around them remained unimpeded by any of the armed pegasi flying just a few hundred feet below. Somewhere beneath the Enclave’s manufactured clouds, a battle was being waged. 
She sighed. “Everything that’s happened… it’s hard to get my head around it all.”
Ginger set her chin in the crook of her shoulder. “Dear, the Wasteland was a shitshow well before you stepped onto the stage.”
“Language,” she chided, earning a chuckle from the mare. She shook her head, glad for once that she could see things clearly again. “Trust me, I’m not blaming myself for what the Ranger and Enclave are doing to each other. It just doesn’t feel like I’ve been out here for two weeks, is all.”
“You’ve been busy.”
She snorted. “It’s like we never stopped running from one crisis to the next. I wasn’t outside the Stable for one minute before I got bitten up by one of Roach’s ferals. And then there was Cider.”
“Mm,” Ginger hummed. “And his sister.”
“Those raiders after we left that cabin.”
“Gallow and his mother.”
Hearing his name still gave her pause, but she moved past it. “Kiln was kind of nice, minus the slavers.”
“What I wouldn’t give to hear Roach sing karaoke again.”
They laughed at the memory together, Aurora surprising herself by wondering whether the bar they’d sat down in at the Bluff had a corner set aside for butchered music. Then she frowned.
At her proximity, Ginger keyed into it immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“We never let Fiona know we were okay.”
She could tell by Ginger’s expression that she hadn’t given all that much thought about the gryphon DJ. Since practically being evicted from Blinder’s Bluff by Coldbrook’s disingenuous bargain, the topic of Fiona rarely came up. The last they heard from her, she’d cooked up a plan to procure a suit of power armor from the local Rangers on their behalf. Whatever she told Coldbrook had worked, but the price of admission into Magnus Plaza had been the hacked spritebot Fiona used to communicate with them in the first place. 
Since then, they’d heard nothing from her.
Sensing her tension, Ginger looked down at the passing clouds. “We’re in the neighborhood.”
“And in the wrong company.” Her brain was already dishing up convincing justifications for a detour. Her wings felt ready to fall off. She could do a quick fly by of Fiona’s firetower, that’s it. The gryphon had gone out of her way several times already to help them no matter how hard it got her hooves… hands slapped. 
But she knew better, now. Swinging by the Bluff would unnecessarily elevate Fiona on everyone’s radar, especially Coldbrook’s. She didn’t want to think about how many more Ironshods the Elder might have under his command, but for a stallion in his position the number had to be higher than zero. Having Aurora appear in the skies over Blinder’s Bluff with an Enclave escort in tow would be more than enough to prompt an investigation of their resident avian. 
As if to settle the issue, a cool tailwind slipped into her airstream and lofted them forward. Ginger pecked her on the cheek for good measure. “She’s a tough bird, just like you.”
She thought about it and decided Ginger was right. Fiona had been their ally in one form or another from the beginning, not because she’d been forced to be but because she’d chosen to. Her radio show gave her a power that even Coldbrook couldn’t take away for long. The Wasteland stayed up late listening to the voice of Flipswitch, the ‘mare’ of Hightower Radio, because she was a staple of the airwaves that even the Steel Rangers knew better than to mess with for long.
Still she made a mental note to ask Sledge about getting access to the Stable’s radio receiver. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to broadcast anything herself, but the prospect of tuning in every so often eased her worries.
“I’m going to miss flying.”
Ginger squeezed her around the neck. “Me too. The view up here is unbeatable.”
Aurora paused, realized Ginger was staring deliberately at her, and snorted. “You’re a whole bag of corny.”
She grinned back. “I will apologize for nothing.”
A pleasant stretch of silence settled in as time passed, the two of them occasionally pointing out strange formations in the clouds below. They looked like rivers from this altitude, each running parallel with its neighbor as they flowed and curled around the air currents below. To the north, just off her right wingtip, green lightning flickered within a dark anvil on the horizon. The clouds around it were swollen, forming smaller pillars around the storm’s center. It was too far to present any danger to them, although the ponies in the radstorm’s path couldn’t say the same. Aurora watched the storm as it drifted away behind them and felt a pang of guilt at being grateful she wouldn’t have to worry about such bizarre hazards anymore.
It was late afternoon by the time Aurora noticed the shallow dome in the clouds several miles ahead. The sky behind them had taken on the saturated tones of royal blue while the opposite horizon glowed with purple gold fire. Ginger audibly gasped as the setting sun pushed long shadows over the cloud tops. The contrasting light and dark was stunning to behold, reminding Aurora of their first flight together. 
She stifled an embarrassed laugh as Ginger scooted up along Aurora’s back and held out her foreleg. The tiny lens built into her loaned Pip-Buck projected the sunset onto the screen in full color. A click of a button preserved the image, and Ginger wriggled a few inches back to examine the photo.
“Do you think Sledge will let me keep this?” she asked.
Aurora glanced at the device. “With or without the thermite charge?”
“Oh, ha-ha.” She turned the black chassis this way and that before toggling the screen back to the map. “Hey, guess what?”
“Hm?”
She pointed down. “We’re here.”
Aurora followed the tip of her hoof toward the low hill of clouds she’d spotted earlier. A long crescent of shadow trailed the far side making it all but impossible to miss. Her heart climbed into her throat as she turned on her own Pip-Buck and used her hoof to mash her way through the tabs. The greenlit map shuddered onto the screen, and with it appeared a marker she’d created weeks ago on the road to Junction City. Back when she was afraid she’d lose it for a much simpler reason.
It read simply, Home.
She swallowed. She made it back. 
Without waiting for the formation leader’s instructions, Aurora pitched wings forward and began descending toward the clouds. Ginger let out a nervous whoop as the wind poured against them, her magic clutching around Aurora’s belly as they accelerated. She felt a touch of annoyance as their Enclave escort reformed on either side of her, their tidy diamond spreading into a broad V off her fluttering wingtips, but as the clouds engulfed them she found she didn’t care whether they followed her. Grudgingly or not, armed or not, they’d brought her home. They were lucky she didn’t kiss them.
They punched through the bottom of the clouds like a missile and for a split second Aurora didn’t recognize what she was looking at.
Immediately below her waited the craggy slopes of Foal Mountain. She spotted the old highway which had taken her and Roach to Junction City, and the half-dead forest of trees Roach had planted a century earlier still shading the access road packed with rusting carriages leading to the base of the landslide. But that was where the similarities ended.
She felt the air stop in her throat when she spotted the black gash cut into the hillside. Where boulders and desiccated soil had filled the tunnel entrance now stood an empty void. Trees had been felled to create a clearing around the opening where dozens of dark shapes walked the perimeter. The tiny shack Roach had built to hide the exit of the tunnel he’d dug was gone, swept in with the scree discarded further along the foot of the mountain. Elder Coldbrook had made good on his threat, or at least begun to before the Enclave swarmed over the digsite. 
Her wings pulsed, slowing their dive into a more cautious descent just a mile above the ground. The Enclave pegasi coagulated around them like a scab.
Several suits of power armor had been discarded onto the rockpile a few hundred feet away from the tunnel entrance. Not much farther away, an ominously dark plot of soil showed the signs of being recently tilled. It took her a moment to understand she was looking at a massive grave. Craters speckled the ground near the tunnel entrance and several of the nearby trees were blackened by fire. She’d known the Enclave had taken the territory surrounding Stable 10, but she hadn’t considered the cost.
As the treetops rose around her it dawned on Aurora that she had never truly understood what war was. She only knew what she’d read in books. To her, war was a thing that happened in distant places to ponies who died generations ago, where soldiers waited in ochre trenches while bullets whizzed overhead. It involved mushroom clouds boiling up over tiny cities that in her naivety she assumed were simply gone, just like the rest of Equestria. War, to Aurora, had just been another word. As her hooves touched down on the broken asphalt at the foot of the Foal Mountain, she began to understand the scope of her ignorance. Dark stains of dubious origin speckled the road’s surface. 
Ponies she’d never know had killed each other here, and recently. Judging by the shattered hulks of power armor that had been dragged against the rockpile, the Steel Rangers had suffered the lion’s share of those casualties. 
Ginger slid off her back with a grunt while the rest of the formation landed. “What a mess,” she murmured.
Aurora could only nod in agreement. Countless uniformed pegasi peered out at them from the freshly excavated entrance. The tunnel beyond was brightly lit and in the process of being fortified. Several soldiers near the opening stopped to stare at their visitors for a moment, sandbags still clutched under their wings. The sounds of construction echoed from inside along with the shouts of those tasked with overseeing the work. Aurora felt the excitement of being home begin to wane. The tunnel had been a burial site for those who had been trapped inside, and the Enclave was disturbing it. Despite its lack of ammunition, her wing started curling around the stock of Desperate Times.
Before she could do anything stupid, the formation leader stepped in front of them. “Don’t be getting antsy hooves. Colonel Weathers is on his way to greet us.”
That took her off guard. “Who?”
“The base commander.” She held back little exasperation as she saw their confusion and clarified, “The mare in charge?”
Aurora glanced at Ginger, who shrugged back. They’d been running into ponies “in charge” on what felt like a daily basis now. Their formation leader promptly gave up, repeated her order for them to stay put, and marched off in the tunnel’s direction. It took a force of will for Aurora not to follow her out of spite alone. She could see the Stable’s massive geared door standing far behind all the new activity, its teeth still locked firmly in place. That was her home, not some pressed-uniform officer from the other side of Equestria. 
Ginger spoke softly into the cup of her ear. “Easy girl, it’s just a formality. Chain of command’s everything to these nutballs.”
“We didn’t agree to let these nutballs set up shop outside my Stable.”
“That’s why we had Sledge pull Blue inside, in case somebody broke through. We’ll make nice, get in, and lock the door behind us. We’re okay.”
She huffed out a sigh. “I guess.”
“I guess,” Ginger grumped back, pecking her on the cheek. “Do I have to remind you that you, Miss Aurora,” she kissed her again, “that you valiantly traversed a deadly wasteland,” and again, “and succeeded in your mission to save,” and again, “your,” and again, “home?”
Aurora practically had to fight her off to get her to stop, and when she did the two of them were laughing like fillies. Several members of their entourage had made a point to look away, evidently not as enamored by Ginger’s affection. She ignored them because despite inflicting some well-meaning embarrassment, Ginger made a good point. 
When she forced the Stable door to cycle open two weeks ago, she’d been pretty certain she wasn’t coming back. As far as any of them knew, Equestria was a dead world. She’d spent every last bit she had saved on fresh produce just so she stood a chance at surviving what she expected to be complete desolation. 
Standing here again with the promise of her Stable’s future safely secured had been a wish, not a plan.
She flicked the tip of her wing against Ginger’s belly, smiling as she did. “Thanks for the pep-talk. I still might need more convincing once we’re inside, though.”
Ginger arched her brow. “Oh? Do tell.”
“I was thinking we’ve earned a little time to ourselves,” she murmured.
“To decompress,” Ginger added.
She nodded in full agreement. “Sure, that too.”
A mote of amber magic tugged Aurora’s chin toward Ginger’s, while a second ventured off on its own. It grazed beneath her tail and she practically forgot balance as a concept let alone as a practice. The remainder of Ginger’s magic was ready to catch her, the unicorn uttering a mischievous giggle as they kissed. Neither of them noticed the visitor approaching them until she stopped and cleared her throat.
“Aurora Pinfeathers?”
Their eyes shot wide as Ginger’s magic vanished and Aurora spat off a familiar curse themed around Princess Luna’s teats. They rounded on the Enclave officer like two students being caught kissing in the corridor by their instructor. The mare standing in front of them practically had the height on them to complete the illusion, though the politely uncomfortable expression on her face made it clear she was happy to feign ignorance. 
Aurora wiped her feathers across her mouth, nodding. “Y… ah, yeah. That’s me.”
After a pause, the unusually tall officer introduced herself. “I’m Colonel Weathers. Minister Primrose radioed ahead to let me know we’d be expecting guests.” She glanced down at Ginger. “She tells me the two of you will be taking up residence in the Stable. It’s a pleasure to meet both of you.” 
It took a beat for Aurora to gather herself enough to speak competently. Colonel Weathers stood a full head above them and had a slim frame that begged a comparison to the alicorns of the old world. She wasn’t exactly princess height but she absolutely breathed thinner air than the pegasi around her. Most notable of all were the ghostly pale stripes in her otherwise unremarkable lavender coat and flat mane. To her credit, Colonel Weathers took her staring in stride.
“Nice to meet you, too,” she managed, averting her gaze from the mare’s strange stripes to the tunnel behind her. A measurable percentage of the work being done between the pillars had ground to a halt. “They’re going to let us inside, right? No tricks or last minute conditions?”
Weathers tipped her head to the side with a cautious smile. “I sense paranoia.”
Ginger coughed. “We’ve been led on before.”
“Ah, well if the uniforms didn’t already give it away, we’re not Steel Rangers.” She stepped back and to the side, extending a broad wing toward the mountain. “I have orders to escort you safely into your Stable. Nothing else.”
Hesitantly, Aurora dropped a wing across Ginger’s back for stability and took a limping step forward. Weathers watched them pass by with open curiosity before falling in alongside Aurora’s opposite wing, making it clear to the cohort staring out at them that they were here under her guidance. 
As they crossed the pulverized threshold between the broken road and the tunnel’s heavy flagstones, Aurora felt an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Her eyes drifted to the utility room Blue and Roach spent decades sheltering inside of before the door finally opened to them. Now two Enclave technicians stood in the same space, a flashlight held between the lips of one, as they examined the maze of conduits feeding out of the walls. The luggage Roach had stacked into neat piles down the center of the tunnel was gone, but their absence left behind light markings on the flagstones where they’d sat for generations. 
Past the machine gun nests and defensive sandbag walls, the encampment beyond resembled something closer to the central street of a small town. Canvas tents large enough to fit four or more pegasi stood in two orderly lines beneath the massive posters fixed to the tunnel walls. Several soldiers gathered around cookstoves in the space ahead of the tentline, chatting amongst one another while others watched their colonel’s guests, their invading eyes vanishing and appearing behind the larger sheets of canvas hung between the tunnel’s pillars. These partitions marked off spaces whose purpose was designated by labels painted onto the pillars themselves. 
Aurora frowned up at the fresh markings. Some of them she understood. Two stallions sat in metal chairs on either side of a makeshift armory, which amounted to several dozen locked crates and containers of varying dimensions, with strange green-glowing rifles laid across their laps. Other areas were too abbreviated to understand. Enclave acronyms, she assumed. One appeared to be nothing less than a storefront where one soldier had stopped mid-barter to watch them pass by while his counterpart behind the table did the same.
The more Aurora looked around, the less comfortable she was with how cozy the Enclave had become with the space outside Stable 10. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“I don’t want any of them going inside my Stable.”
Weathers looked down at her as they walked, showing no sign of offense. “You have my word that they will stay on this side of the doorway.”
“Or you.”
A flicker of disappointment appeared on her face. It was quick, but it had been there just the same. “I was designated by the minister herself to receive your ignition talisman when it arrives. Are you sure?”
She hesitated. “I thought it would be given to me.”
“Ultimately, yes, it’ll be turned over to you after it arrives. Last I heard, that might not be until tomorrow.”
It was Ginger’s turn to be suspicious. “Why the delay?”
Weathers put a hoof on a soldier’s rear to prevent him from backing into her as they passed. The tunnel hadn’t been this crowded when the bombs fell. “Nobody is delaying. If you’d prefer, I can arrange to have cots brought out for the two of you and you can spend the night on base so you’re present when the talisman arrives.”
Aurora watched the colonel closely as she made the offer but couldn’t pick out anything that might hint at deception. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She’d been here before, speaking to the person in charge with the promise of her Stable’s salvation on the line, only to discover Coldbrook had been acting in bad faith from the start. 
As if reading her mind, Weathers looked down at her with something amounting to understanding. “I’m guessing by all the daggers that it doesn't work for you. Alright. What would you propose instead?”
She hadn’t expected that. Her lip quirked into a thoughtful frown, wondering where the line was between this officer’s charity and dignity. Asking for too little could invite more unnecessary dealmaking once the talisman arrived. Asking for too much risked burning a bridge she and her Stable desperately needed to maintain. As far as she could tell in the short time they’d spoken, Weathers seemed more than willing to put her cards on the table. If the talisman was truly on its way as promised, then Aurora decided there wouldn’t be any harm in waiting after all.
She shifted her gaze forward, toward the behemoth cog set into the blast proof wall at the tunnel’s terminus. Just seeing it filled her with a homesickness she’d fought to keep at bay for days. If waiting was the only choice, the Enclave could do it on her terms.
“We’ll wait inside,” she said, nodding at the door. “Me, Ginger, and you.”
Weathers lifted her gaze to the door, her expression hesitantly neutral.
“We will provide a bed for you.” Aurora continued while noting the tiny approving nod from Ginger. “Once, and only once the talisman is delivered and verified to be functional, you’ll be allowed to leave.”
After several seconds, “Some might interpret that as taking an officer of the Enclave hostage.”
“That implies we’re taking you against your will rather than extending an invitation, dear.”
Aurora smiled at her before looking back to Weathers. “You can always say no.”
Weathers could hear the unspoken but. “How much time have you spent out in the wastes, Aurora?”
“Enough to be dangerous.”
She smirked at that. “Apparently so. Something tells me if I decline this invitation, the two of you will find a way to make my job here much less pleasant than it is currently. Is that a fair assessment?”
As she spoke, two uniformed mares noticed their approach and quickly snapped off twin salutes as they made way for the colonel. It hadn’t occurred to Aurora that she had any leverage at all, especially here surrounded by enough fire and horsepower to put the first breath of conflict in the ground. The Enclave controlled the very mountain that sat atop her home and a growing expanse of miles surrounding it. 
And yet as they passed the saluting mares, she noticed one of them steal a glance at her with something in her eyes approaching reverence. She’d already nearly forgotten her supposed status within the Enclave as a “pureblood” pegasus, something that meant immensely more to them than it did to her. It meant, in spite of the company she kept and the weeks of radiation she’d sucked down since leaving home, that they were willing to bend over backwards to keep her safe from the nasty contaminants of the wasteland. 
It was, she realized, her most powerful bargaining chip.
“Colonel, we didn’t fly all the way here to make your life difficult.” That earned her a dubious look from the striped mare, but she pressed on. “Call it an honesty check. You have nothing to lose if everything you’re telling us about the delay is true. If anything, you’ll be getting a free day off and a tour of a functioning Stable.”
That got her attention. “Then I shouldn’t expect to be remanded to a cell for the entire duration?”
“That depends on you.” 
The end of the tunnel approached and the gridwork of tents tapered away behind them, forming a wide clearing around the semicircular platform ahead of the wall. The open space was overwatched by half a dozen pegasi stationed behind sandbag walls along the arcing top step, each of them equipped with high powered rifles that made Aurora’s look like a foal’s popgun in comparison. The nearest stallion stopped daydreaming and lifted his feathers in a crisp salute which Weathers returned without skipping a beat. 
As they climbed the steps, Aurora noticed something she hadn’t the last time she was here. The edges of the steps had been painted with thick yellow paint, except down the centerline where it and the underlying concrete had been worn smooth by what could only be centuries of repeat traffic. She wondered whether these were Roach’s hoofmarks, or someone else’s. 
Beneath the great door of Stable 10, several dark blemishes stained the platform. Those she knew the source of. Aurora’s missing leg throbbed sympathetically at the irony. The Wasteland had a grudge against that leg all the way back then. This time there was nothing left for the ghouls to gnaw on, nor were there any ghouls at all. The bodies Aurora and Roach left behind had been cleaned up by the tunnel’s newest occupants, likely tossed onto the rubble pile outside with the rest of the refuse.
With Ginger’s help she limped to the door and placed her hoof against its cool surface. 
“What do you say, colonel? Want to come inside?”
She could feel the haggle coming. No, she couldn’t step away from her duties. No, that simply isn’t how this relationship will proceed. No, here is a concise list of reasons why stalling you is a better fit for the Enclave and, by the way, we’re going to need you to get something for us in return. 
Colonel Weathers approached the door, studying her own reflection in its pitted surface.
“I’m sure my lieutenant will appreciate taking command for a day.” She glanced down at Aurora. “I accept.”
Her hoof slid off the door. She looked at Ginger and was relieved by her reassuring smile. This was okay. 
“I’ll tell Sledge we’re here.” It felt like she was hearing someone else speak, because part of her wasn’t ready to believe this was happening. “Once you’re back, we’ll open the door.”
Weathers nodded and turned to descend the platform, chased on by more salutes. 
This was happening.
Things were finally going to be okay.







Sledge was dozing at his desk when his Pip-Buck jittered with a priority message’s arrival. His chin jerked up from his chest with a start. He must’ve made a noise when he woke, because he had barely checked the clock before Rainbow Dash let out a raspy groan and stretched in one of his visitor’s chairs, his terminal spun around to face her. Her chipped hind hooves slid from where they’d been propped up on his desk, swinging to the floor one at a time as she came around. Sledge was no worse for wear. With the official word of Rainbow Dash’s survival making its way from one end of the Stable to the other, Aurora’s little compartment had begun drawing significant traffic from curious residents. The door might be thick, but it wasn’t soundproof, and the muffled sounds of pegasi interrogating Sledge’s deputies made their research difficult and sleep all but impossible. 
Rainbow had shrugged off the sudden uptick of onlookers. She’d been through worse back when she was in her prime, and he was inclined to believe as much. If it bothered her, she hid it expertly. Her neighbors, however, weren’t accustomed to the noise. Their admiration of the historical figure next door was showing signs of waning fast as it became apparent on top of their home nearly imploding around them, they were looking at sacrificing their sleep schedule as well. 
There were many situations Sledge could talk his way out of. Explaining to an exasperated mother why her foal might not sleep tonight was not one of them.
His Pip-Buck buzzed again. He sucked a deeper, waking breath through his nose and resigned himself to what was looking like another long night of putting out fires. The generator had gone dark days ago leaving the entire Stable on what could only generously be called life support. He lifted the screen off his ruddy belly and frowned at yet another petition from Sanitation asking for power to be diverted from IT so the waste pumps could be turned back on. The message was a winding litany of consequences that he didn’t have the mental bandwidth to digest, much less respond to. Compared to the energy demands of the entire Stable, the power coming in from Stable-Tec’s hardened network was little more than a trickle. They’d been lucky to siphon off enough to keep the air recyclers going, and even then they weren’t operating at one hundred percent. Pockets of the Stable already smelled stale.
He turned his screen off and sighed, reclining his head against the backrest of his chair as he looked across his desk at Rainbow. He smirked just a little. Tired but still awake, she’d produced a small blue racquetball that a sheepish little filly gifted to her as she and Sledge walked the half-lit corridors together. He held up a wing and she flicked it at him, the ball making a satisfying pok when he caught it.
Rainbow nodded at his Pip-Buck. “Anything worth worrying about?”
He shook his head and tossed the ball. “Our ship’s taking on water and Sanitation is complaining about a shortage of mops.”
“Heh.” 
At this point she was privy to just about everything that came across his Pip-Buck. It was easy to forget she wasn’t just one of the six Elements who took down Nightmare Moon, Discord and Tirek. She once led an entire ministry. Two hundred twenty years later, she still had a solid grasp of the little nuances she’d picked up back then. Despite the harsh gravel that her decay inflicted upon her voice, she didn’t shy away from chatting up residents who seemed the most off put by her appearance. She exuded a sort of inviting confidence that she privately admitted to have resisted learning during her first years as a ministry mare. Whatever it was, it broke down the last vestiges of hesitancy Sledge had with involving her in his unfortunate role as overstallion.
She bounced the ball off his desk and into the cup of his wing. “Guess what I found while you were napping?”
“Hit me.”
She reached forward and spun his terminal around to face him, its screen open to the same partition they and half of Opal’s department had been pouring through over the past week. Seeing it made him feel even more exhausted. In total they’d examined less than a tenth of the data Delta squirreled away. Barely a year out of the decade Spitfire wanted history to forget.
Rainbow sat back in her chair and shrugged. “Nothing. As far as I can tell, nobody questioned IT’s so-called hazardous spill. Spitfire posted a couple folks outside the department to keep people away and gave Delta’s team the day off. Delta paced circles until the power cut out on Remembrance Day.”
“At which point the locks would have disengaged and she would have been able to lift the door manually,” Sledge concluded, recalling the soundless altercation between the two mares which took place in this exact office. “Power comes back on, and a few minutes later Delta’s kicking down the door and going nose-to-nose with the overmare.”
“I mean, unless you think differently I feel like we’re done. Delta figured out what those two did and she preserved it all in Partition 40 for someone else to find.” Rainbow lifted her wing for the ball and Sledge obliged. With it firmly in her grip, she tapped a hoof against a growing sequence of upheld feathers. “Spitfire takes control of the ministry, and she and that secretary of hers use its resources to fund their secret club. That allows them to springboard into Celestia knows how many other ministries, probably all of them, and gain access to Pinkie’s gold codes. They push the button and watch the fucking fireworks…”
He watched her wince, pausing long enough to contain her emotions.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “They kill the world and hope that magic will die with it. Everyone assumes Equestria is the victim of Vhannan bombs, mission complete, until Delta pulled footage from SOLUS and makes the mistake of sharing it with Spitfire.”
Sledge tipped his head to the side until his neck cracked, a nasty habit he doubted he’d ever shake. Remembering the bottle that had tempted him at the beginning of his tenure, he decided there were worse vices to have. “I’d still like to know what that phone call was about. The one right before the generator went down.”
Their eyes drifted to the surface of the desk where the first overmare’s telephone was notably absent. In a Stable with access to direct communication via state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, an analog telephone had stuck out like a sore hoof. It didn’t take a detective to guess who Spitfire might have a private line to.
“If I had to guess, it’s just a lot of Spitfire and her creepy little secretary rubbing each other off over how evil they were.”
He lifted a brow at that. Rainbow shrugged a little defensively. He tried to remind himself that all of this felt significantly more recent to her than it did anyone else. Her decades roaming the tunnel in her semi-feral fugue stuck in her memory as foggy fragments of a singularly horrible nightmare. Her calm facade was just that: a facade. The wound of what she perceived as her greatest failing as an Element of Harmony was still there and a long way away from healing. 
“It didn’t look like she enjoyed much of that call.” He didn’t need to elaborate beyond that. They’d both seen the panic in Spitfire’s eyes when she hung up.
Rainbow pitched the ball into his wing, smirking just a touch. “No she did not.”
He let her have her moment of vindictive pleasure despite not entirely sharing the sentiment. For everything they knew Spitfire and her accomplice to have done, they deserved much worse than having her gilded legacy dragged into the light where future generations could see the deep, rotting tarnish it was truly covered in. But he didn’t feel the deep, cutting hatred toward them that Rainbow did. Not because they didn’t deserve it, but because he hadn’t been there. The end of the war, the bombs falling, all the death those two mares were responsible for were chapters in the history books he’d grown up with. Stable 10 was his entire world, not a prison he’d been forced to settle for. 
He knew better than to say it out loud. She was reluctant to admit it, but he could see the burnout in Rainbow’s tired gaze. She needed a break.
His chair creaked as he leaned forward and turned off his terminal. They both did.
As he held up his feathers to flick the ball back across his desk, his office door emitted a sharp squeak of metal on metal as it began to move. Not with the smooth hiss of powered hydraulics, but with the furtive, repetitive jerks of a slab of metal being hoisted away from the floor by its backup jack handle. With a dead generator at the heart of their Stable, it was the only way to get these multi-ton doors to budge. 
It was also the reason Sledge and Rainbow had been afforded any privacy in the first place. Residents were naturally hesitant to knock on the overseer’s door. Tacking on the additional effort to open the damn thing had a way of filtering out all but the most critical interruptions. If the pointedly southern profanity huffing and puffing from the growing gap beneath the door was any indication, this was likely to be critical.
The ratcheting paused long enough for Opal’s flustered voice to carry through. “Sledge, you best be in here or Celestia help me I will form a search party!”
“I’m here and so is Dash.” He set the ball next to his terminal and sat up. “What’s wrong?”
Winded, but far from beat, Opal’s shadow shifted at the foot of the door. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong! Aurora’s come home! Now get your big red butt up and finish openin’ this door b’fore I keel over!”
He blinked, replaying what she just said to be sure he heard it right. One look toward Rainbow confirmed it. 
She gestured toward the door, smiling. “Go get your friend. I’ll be here.”
Aurora was back.
Like a rubber band flung loose, Sledge shot to his hooves and bolted toward the door.







April 21st, 1297
11:20pm

Fifteen days. Aurora stood on fidgeting hooves, her balance as frayed as her nerves.
It felt like she’d been away for months. But she’d done the math. She’d counted the nights she spent under the wasteland’s endless overcast, or staring at the ever-burning bare bulbs of Nurse Redheart’s clinic, or wondering if the next time the freezer fans clicked on they would finally snuff her out, or waking up to the warmth of Ginger’s face pressed firmly into the nape of her neck.
Fifteen days. Eight more than she naively calculated she would need to walk to Fillydelphia and back. Deep in her heart, she’d known the chances of returning here were slim to none. She’d drained every bit out of her account, which wasn’t much, to fill every empty square inch of her saddlebags with whole apples that a merchant in Junction City would swindle her out of for a sprinkling of dented bottle caps less than twelve hours later. 
A lanky stallion with a short, candy striped mane would proposition her for her Pip-Buck. Her prickly response would cause him to follow her and put Ginger in the precarious position of fending him off, an action that would earn her a bounty once word reached Autumn Song that her brother’s corpse had been found in her latrine. One rotten first day was all it took to set off a chain reaction neither Aurora nor her newfound friends could stop. 
She swallowed, her throat bone dry and her body practically vibrating with nervous energy. After everything they’d gone through, they’d all survived. A little worse for the wear and a fair bit lighter than when they started, but alive just the same.
Her left hip bumped into Ginger’s as she swayed a little unevenly on her three legs. A kindly stallion at the Enclave’s medical tent had taken the time to remove her old stained bandages, disinfected the gnarled mass of inflamed skin and stitches that capped her stump, and wrapped her back up with new ones. As she started to leave, he advised her that she should break herself of using Ginger as a crutch. By his expression he meant well, but Aurora couldn’t help but not appreciate the undertone. As she stood beside Ginger at the great cog of her lifelong home, she kept her wing firmly planted across her back for balance. The last thing she wanted Sledge to see when the door opened was her falling flat on her face.
She uttered a self-deprecating giggle at the thought. He’d never let her live it down. Ginger shot her a bemused look as asking to be filled in on what was so funny, but she chose not to tempt fate by explaining it. She gave her a reassuring squeeze around the ribs and stared back up at the yellow 10 painted on the behemoth gear just a few short steps away.
“I wonder if there’s enough power left to open a door this large,” Weathers mused.
She shot a glare over her shoulder where the colonel waited just outside wing’s reach. The encampment behind her was vacant now, short of a few personnel Weathers insisted were reliable and, more importantly, essential. The majority of the enlisted soldiers had been moved outside where they would be tasked with whatever busywork could be assigned to them. Aurora didn’t care what they did so long as there weren’t hundreds of armed pegasi lurking near the threshold of her home. The few officers who remained loitered in groups on the flagstone walkway, eager to witness the opening of Spitfire’s fabled preservation project. 
Aurora didn’t pretend to understand their excitement.
“Don’t joke about that,” she warned, fixing Weathers with a stern look that glanced off the mare like water against grease. “Just… be patient. Okay?”
Weathers held up the ends of her feathers in mock surrender. “It wasn’t a joke, but you’re right. I apologize.”
She blew out a nervous breath and faced forward without a response. Outwardly, Weathers seemed almost decent in spite of the black she wore. But so had Coldbrook. So had Ironshod. There was a reason the colonel was leaving her weapons behind. Why Ginger insisted upon searching the pockets of her uniform. If the wasteland taught her anything, it was that Aurora no longer trusted any wastelanders cunning enough to command authority.
If Weathers’ expression up until now was any indication, open mistrust was something she was deeply accustomed to.
Ginger nudged her foreleg, her voice low. “It has been a while since Sledge said he spotted us on that camera. Has he sent anything else? Perhaps they’re waiting for a cue from us?”

Aurora glanced back at the tiny, barely visible black lens embedded in the arched stonework above. Apparently Opalescent had been keeping tabs on the Enclave’s growing camp when she caught sight of her and Ginger waiting at the platform for Weathers. Sledge’s borderline panicked message for her to stay put, they were opening the door, don’t move, give him a few minutes had been endearing in just how many spelling errors he’d managed to cram into a couple sentences. She imagined him running around the Stable, trying to type without barreling anyone over. That had been fifteen minutes ago. 
As her mentor and the head of Mechanical, he wore two emotions: stoic and angrily stoic. His tolerances for laziness and poor planning could be measured in microns. It was just how he led and despite all odds, the pegasi working beneath him knew him to be a harsh but fair leader. The thought of him flustered and, Celestia forbit, behind schedule pulled a tiny smile across her lip. 
“He’ll be here,” she assured Ginger while checking her Pip-Buck again. Her brief exchange with Sledge still glowed on the screen, including her hasty explanation that the encamped soldiers outside the Stable weren’t the Steel Rangers she’d warned him about over a week earlier. No new messages. She didn’t go as far as to describe them as friendly, rather choosing to go with Ginger’s description: mostly benign. She made sure to tell Sledge to keep someone close to the control console for the door should the gathered soldiers do anything stupid, just in case.
BOOM.
The door rang like a struck bell. Were it not for her grip on Ginger, the bolt of fear that shot through her would have sent her tumbling backward onto her own ass. She kept her hooves beneath her, barely, as the familiar noise of steel engaging steel rippled through the Stable’s armored hull. In the back of her head, she couldn’t blame the ghouls who once shared this tunnel with Roach for being drawn to the sound. It was unignorable. It beat in her chest harder than her own heart.
For a moment, silence. Then a low, moaning peel of sliding metal. The great gear of Stable 10 sank into the wall as if creating a mold of itself in the void it left behind. Another teeth-rattling thud echoed off the tunnel walls and, slowly, the door rolled clear of the threshold she’d first crossed what felt like a lifetime ago. The blare of klaxons, pulsing warning lights, and a wide and rusty catwalk rolled out from the antechamber to welcome her home. The home she used to think she’d never get to see again.
 A mote of magic crossed the bridge of her nose, pulling a loose strand of mane that lay there back behind her ear. The armature disengaged the door and swung back toward the opening, blocking Aurora’s view of the figures gathered in the unusually darkened antechamber at the top the ramp. 
As it retracted out of the way, her heart climbed up into her throat. Waiting for her at the top of the ramp stood not Sledge, but someone else.
“Dad…” 
Her vision blurred. Before she knew it her hooves were pounding over the threshold, the sobs of a daughter wanting her father rising unbidden in her throat. She could barely make out where she was running when they met at the bottom of the ramp, wings crumpling around one another, one bawling apologies into her father’s mane for going away while the other clung to his only child with a tearful ferocity. 
His voice came out strangled as he murmured into her mane, “Welcome home, Aurora.”







Ginger tried in vain to tuck herself off to the side where she wouldn’t interrupt but the swimming, disbelieving eyes of Dusky Pinfeathers found her as soon as she lifted a hoof to hide her trembling chin. For the briefest moment he stared at her, uncertain of this new wingless stranger standing on the breach of his home. Then, while Aurora struggled to calm herself, he looked up at the horn upon her head and any question he had was gone. He opened a wing, tipping his feathers for her to come over. She did, and as soon as she was close enough he hooked her around the back of the neck and pulled her in. 
“Thank you, Ginger,” he choked. “Thank you for bringing her home.”
She nodded and wondered how her own father would react if she suddenly turned up in New Canterlot. Not likely. She dispelled the thought before it could spoil the moment. 
“She saved me first. I was just repaying the favor.”
He smiled at that before clearing his throat and letting Aurora slip from his wings ever so gently, feigning to scratch at his eyes to clear his own vision. Ginger took a small step away, swallowing thickly while Aurora laughed with an unmistakable combination of relief and embarrassment. Within the span of a few minutes something in Aurora had changed, as if the pent up stress of the past two weeks was finally loosening its grip on her. She was beaming, tears and all, so much so that Ginger hardly recognized the mare she’d committed herself to. 
It was beautiful, and as Aurora put her wing over Ginger’s back and pulled her close again, she knew she would do everything in her power to protect it.
It was only when Aurora’s father looked past them did she remember they’d brought a guest. “I’m sorry… I don’t think I know your name.”
She looked back to where the colonel stood just a few paces inside the Stable, hooves together, her uniform combined with her semi-rigid posture doing her little good to help her if her intentions were to appear approachable. She gave him a quick, clipped nod before answering. “Colonel Weathers, sir. I’m–”
“She’s our insurance policy.”
The jarringly deep interruption came from a ruddy red stallion leaning over a section of rusted railing at the top of the ramp. Until now Ginger had only known Overstallion Sledge as a name in a message header. Aurora’s description of him hardly did the stallion justice. He was built like the earth pony stallions who tended the fields of her youth. A large, imposing figure… or at least he would have been if he didn’t look equally as exhausted as she and Aurora both felt. She could see the quiet reluctance on his gaze as he directed two other stallions, their comically tight jumpsuits adorned with identical belts holstering antique revolvers that looked just as likely to misfire as to work. It was strange to see irons that old without the accompanying wear and tear. The metal was just as pitted as it was pristine. 
The colonel didn’t object to her armed escorts as they took positions just outside her wingspan, though there was no doubt she noticed the worrying state of their weapons too.  
“Colonel Weathers will spend the night under observation. We can discuss a limited tour of the Stable once we’ve all gotten some rest.” Sledge looked toward an elderly mare standing behind a nearby console. “Let’s close it up, Opal.”
Heads turned upward as the heavy armature groaned into motion once again, unlocking from its housing in the Stable’s ceiling and passing over them all as it swung into position. Seeing the door rolling open from the outside had been a humbling experience, but watching the armature hauling the steel cog sideways into the chasm gave Ginger chills. The emergency lights studded around the antechamber visibly dimmed under the strain of power required to physically shove so much mass off its track and into the perfectly machined void waiting to receive it. Her heart fluttered with momentary unsureness as the door sealed them inside.
When it was done, she felt something else. Something foreign. She felt relieved.
No, not just relieved. She took a slow, deep breath and let it out. Nothing could get to her in here. Not the Enclave, not the Steel Rangers, not Autumn Song. This place had shrugged off the worst cataclysm in Equestrian history and kept on living as if nothing at all happened.  
She felt something Aurora had striven to find since embarking on her journey away from this place, a thing that on paper made sense but in practice was widely assumed to be a fantasy reserved for those few ponies at the very top of the Wasteland’s cannibalistic food chain. For the first time since she was a little filly running wild with her sister through the richly adorned halls of her childhood manor, Ginger felt safe.
“Hey, Pinfeathers. Get up here.”
She and Aurora looked back to where Sledge still stood, his eyes flicking down to them even as he watched the colonel being led up the ramp toward a single door at the far corner of the antechamber. Exhausted as he was, the grizzled overstallion managed to pull his lips into a grin.
Aurora required little help navigating the steep incline, but Ginger stayed beside her just in case. Surrounded by the familiar walls of her own foalhood home, it didn’t surprise her that Aurora practically trotted toward her old boss and she only barely dodged Sledge’s wing as he scooped Aurora up into a bone-rearranging hug of his own. Ginger made a point to put just a little extra distance between her and the overstallion, finding herself standing beside the elderly mare from the console who let out a low, mirthful chuckle.
“Don’t let ‘im fool ya,” she whispered. “He’s hurtless as a kitten if’n he likes ya.”
Ginger blinked polite confusion but thought she understood the gist of it. 
If Aurora’s missing hind leg bothered Sledge, he hid it well. She gave him points for having the tact not to draw attention to the painfully obvious. Most stallions built like he was tended not to have much less body mass left for brains, or at least that was her experience. Sledge had the awareness to keep his feathers away from her stump, and when he put her down he did so with a gentleness that allowed her to find her balance before he let go.
“Welcome back,” he rumbled, eyes a touch mistier than they had been yet far too proud to shed actual tears. His grin was an excellent mask. Now she knew where Aurora got it from. “Now go put some clothes on, you deviant.”
“Never,” Aurora countered, hesitating only briefly before allowing herself to look at the half-lit antechamber more properly. It didn’t take long for the happiness of her return home to fade as she began to come to grips with the reality surrounding them. “So. The generator really went dark.”
He nudged them all toward the same narrow door Colonel Weathers had been ferried through, talking as they walked. “You’re lucky you weren’t here when it kicked offline. Felt like Celestia landing on her ass at the bottom of the Stable.”
Ginger snorted, earning an approving smile from the overstallion. 
“Could’ve been a lot worse. If you and your friends hadn’t worked out there was a hardened network between the Stables, the air recyclers wouldn’t be running and we’d all be guests of that colonel of yours instead of the other way around.” He slowed just outside the sealed door and waited. From the other side the muffled hiss of running water caught Ginger’s ear. A small placard above the door read: DECONTAMINATION.
When she glanced back at him, he was staring at her horn. He looked away as soon as she spotted him watching, leaving her with the untimely realization that she was the first non-pegasi to step hoof into Stable 10 since… 
Since ever.
She stiffened slightly as the door to the now empty decontamination chamber slid open. She followed Aurora and Sledge inside, leaving Opal and Aurora’s father to wait their turn. The dripping nozzles pointed at them from their symmetrical arches like gun barrels, the short and narrow enclosure lit with a vague yellow glow from a single fogged emergency light overhead. 
What was it going to be like living here, she wondered? Eyes regularly fixed on the protrusion growing out of her forehead, her days spent fielding questions from pegasi who had never seen a unicorn let alone experienced magic before? Would her breed dictate the work she did? Would they resent her for regaining the ability to dream?
Liquid gurgled up into the arches and unceremoniously purged the swirling concerns from Ginger’s mind in a sputtering torrent of lukewarm water. The lack of warning startled a yelp from her, to which Aurora answered with an apologetic laugh. In seconds the confined space was filled with a thick mist that grew thick with the odor of old sweat that both mares had collected and grown used to since departing Blinder’s Bluff over a week earlier. Ginger felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment, knowing Aurora’s overstallion was being perfumed right now with their stink.
As if reading her mind, Sledge coughed. It was all she could do not to curl up into a ball of shame and pray to disappear as he turned his head back to look at them. Water streamed out of his mane to join the murky puddle swirling under the grating beneath their hooves, the levity gone from his face as he spoke over the spray.
“Once you dry off, I need to catch you two up on some things we uncovered while you were out there.” He paused, then added, “You didn’t tell the colonel about Blue, did you?”
Aurora frowned. “No.”
“Good. I get the feeling you and I know two very different Enclaves.”







Aurora’s brow knit together as she watched the video spool forward on Sledge’s terminal. The face of a young mare with a short aquamarine mane and ruby red eyes reflected off the concave shield of her helmet, her expression locked in abject terror as the screams of her crewmates crackled over the comms, their vehicle hurtling away from a satellite Ironshod and Coldbrook had been racing to find before the Enclave. She watched the bombs explode and witnessed SOLUS make its slow procession over Vhanna where it unleashed death where it had promised peace.
When Sledge reached over to stop the video, she didn’t know what to say. Those things happened two centuries ago, more than that, and seeing the fiery birth of the wasteland she’d barely survived felt simultaneously distant and real.
“Overmare Spitfire did that.” Sledge spoke with an anger that, had she not known him as well as she did, she might have mistaken it as directed at her. But she did know him, and she knew he was boiling inside because those responsible were beyond his reach. So he seethed as openly as his title allowed, knowing it wouldn’t be wise for an overstallion to be seen breaking things just to feel a little better. “Her, Primrose… the Enclave dropped the bombs.”
She folded her hooves across her chest and tried to let the last hour sink in. Somehow none of it surprised her. Why would it? The Steel Rangers had risen from the ashes of what remained of Equestria’s old military and while their stated intention of safeguarding dangerous technology was outwardly pure, in practice the faction gave power to monsters like Ironshod and Coldbrook who had no qualms about cheating, stealing or killing to acquire the last nails they needed to seal the Enclave’s coffin for good. On the other wing, the Enclave was no better. The reason they continued to thrive at all was their perpetuation of a lie that placed Primrose on the altar of power, a crown bestowed upon her by the goddess alicorns who supposedly gifted her with their mythical longevity. Primrose had spun a cult around herself like a cocoon, one that now ironically forced her hoof to help preserve the “pureblood” residents of Stable 10. 
She pursed her lips and wondered if the world had been better before the bombs, or if the history books she used to pour over were just candy coated lies of a different variety. A little of both, she decided. Ponies like Primrose didn’t grow up to be egomaniacal tyrants in a vacuum. Something had pushed her down this path. Benefiting from anything Primrose provided felt like swallowing acid, and clearly it bothered Sledge even more than her, but if keeping her Stable safe meant willfully adding another layer to the Enclave’s fiction of god-given superiority… fine then. It was a small price to pay to be safe again.
“You’re quiet,” he murmured. 
“I’m thinking,” she countered. Over the last hour Sledge had dumped a mountain of new information into her lap. He’d been following breadcrumbs ever since he watched hundreds of residents find themselves fatally trapped outside a prematurely sealed Stable, a thread he would pull until he unearthed a hidden partition and a decade of history Delta Vee had preserved despite the risk to herself. He’d learned that the Enclave had been born inside the great Equestrian ministries and spread through them like an unchecked cancer. 
Were Rainbow Dash herself not sleeping on the floor beneath the office’s medallion window, she might not have believed how something like that could happen. How two ministry mares could have their launch codes compromised, or how something as dangerous as the Enclave could fly under their radar for so long. And yet here they all were, ten generations after the world hurled itself off a cliff, trying to stay awake long enough to decide what to do with what they knew.
Hard as she tried, she couldn’t settle on anything that couldn’t explode in their faces. Stable 10’s fate hinged on the Enclave’s charity. She’d done her job. She’d gone out, faced down the wasteland, and come back home with a solution. Let someone else hold Primrose’s hooves to the fire. It was her turn to be selfish. She’d suffered enough for one lifetime.
“Do we really need to do anything?” she asked.
Sledge looked at her as if expecting her to say she was joking. When she didn’t, his expression darkened. “Are you serious, Pinfeathers?”
She rubbed her eyes, trying to chase away her exhaustion. She wanted to go to bed and sleep away the next week, not sit here and debate strategy. “I’m just saying right now we’re not in a position to bargain, especially not with Primrose. The Enclave is filled with shitbirds who believe she’s the second coming of Celestia, I know, but they’re also the only group out there who might genuinely have the talisman our generator needs to spin.”
Sledge shook his head and looked away from her to hide his disgust.
“She does have a point,” Ginger chimed in. “The Enclave has reason to treat Aurora favorably. We can’t trust the Steel Rangers to regard us with anything except hostility after what they forced us to do.”
She watched him as he regarded Rainbow Dash for several long seconds until she started to worry he might rouse her from her sleep for a second opinion. Of the four of them in the room, the Element of Loyalty had easily suffered the greatest indignities inflicted by the Enclave’s creators.
“Aurora,” he said, “you make me believe in reincarnation because no one can become that stupid in one lifetime.”
Ginger’s eyes flared wide. “Watch your mouth.”
“It’s okay,” she said, putting a hoof on Ginger’s shoulder.
“It’s not okay,” Sledge shot back. “We are not going to sit here with our feathers up our asses doing nothing.”
“And we’re not going to,” she insisted, hoping to keep Ginger from relocating Sledge’s feathers where he’d just indicated he would not stick them. “Sledge, use your head. Primrose wants to fix the Stable because Coldbrook made himself into the villain when he made good on his threat to excavate the tunnel, and now she has a chance to cement herself and the Enclave in history as the ones who saved Stable 10. She has every reason to make good on her promise because anything else makes her look weak. So all we have to do is do nothing for a day, two days tops, and let them bring us what we need to get back to full power.”
He shifted in his seat, watching her. “And then what?”
“We boot them out, lock the door, and send everything we have on the Enclave to my old resident profile the Rangers are monitoring. Let Coldbrook or whoever wound up replacing him take it from there.”
She waited, but he just turned back to the terminal and stared quietly at the screen. When he didn’t speak, she added, “We don’t have to make ourselves a target.”
He shook his head. “You weren’t here to find all of this shit. I can’t just walk away from it.”
“We’re not walking…” she stopped mid-sentence to slap her wing into the center of his chest. “I wasn’t here? Fuck you, you weren’t out there! Ginger and came this fucking close to dying because we both pissed off the wrong psycho, so forgive me if I’m not jumping at the chance to twist the teats of a cult leader and her literal army. You have no idea how hard it is to take two steps out there without stomping on a landmine!”
He genuinely shied away from her, showing something like regret for the first time she could remember that hadn’t been coaxed out of him with bathtub liquor. “I didn’t mean to say–”
“I’m not finished!” He clammed up and looked away again. “I’m a fucking tripod now because a stallion with tiny dick syndrome convinced himself I wasn’t on his team. We are not going to put everyone here in that same boat with someone like Primrose. Not without a plan, and neither of us are running on enough sleep to work out a crap plan let alone a good one. Now I’m finished. Asshole.”
Sledge grunted thoughtfully before glancing past her to where Ginger watched them, visibly bewildered but not unsympathetic to her outburst. “Is she ever like this with you?”
Ginger saw the olive branch and took it. “No, you seem to have a way of bringing out this side of her all on your own, dear.”
“Yeah, he’s a real fucking gem,” Aurora grumbled. “Seriously, Sledge. Let’s just wait on this one until the Stable’s in the clear. I don’t want to find out the hard way that Primrose keeps a garage door opener for Stable doors tucked under her tail just in case. Okay?”
He rolled his shoulder and gave her a nod. “Okay.”
A pause. It dragged into a long silence. Her head dipped.
“Go to bed, Pinfeathers.”
She sucked in a deep breath and reluctantly slid out of the chair. “Mm. You’re not the boss of me.”
“I’ll make a note of… ah. Come back. Take the rifle with you.”
Ginger lit her horn before Aurora could bring herself to turn around. She was beaten and her body was finally driving that home for her. An exhausted smirk touched her lip as the leather strap set itself along her neck, the comforting weight of Desperate Times now just weight. It felt good to know she wouldn’t need it anymore. 
The door heaved open and hissed shut behind them, and Aurora realized Ginger wouldn’t have to waste her magic casting shields anymore either. Somehow that relieved her even more. She could experiment with it. Do things with it that would better the Stable or, if she decided, stop using it altogether and get her hooves dirty. Ginger was finally getting the life she deserved, not the one she had shoveled at her. 
Those happy thoughts carried her through the corridors, into the empty lift, and down to the lower residential levels where she’d grown up. She was grateful no one was out loitering the hallways. They made it all the way to her compartment uninterrupted. Her door lifted out of her way, hydraulics whining against Ginger’s magic, and she didn’t question why the breakroom coffee pot was sitting on a tool chest next to her desk. 
Ginger asked something about a shower but Aurora was already on an intercept course with her mattress. She only vaguely remembered her head hitting the pillow.







The longer she waited for the door to open, the more convinced she became that it never would. 
Delta paced circles around her tiny office, now in shambles. Millie was unresponsive. Her door refused to open. Her terminal lay shattered on the carpet where Spitfire had hurled it, all thanks to her own shit judgment. She should have kept her trap shut until she knew who she could trust. Of course Spitfire knew the truth. Every creature who so much as breathed Ministry air was liable to be involved in something unethical. That was their purpose, after all. To do the terrible, illegal things the princesses wanted to do but couldn’t risk being tied to. 
She kicked the door with impotent frustration as she passed it for the hundredth time. The experiments, the missing ponies, the black sites. Equestria had never been a perfect country but it had been a whole lot better before the ministries came around. Fucking Rarity McPerfect’s goons in their pressed suits sauntering in and out of major publications like they owned the ink. Twilight enriching herself with contracts from Maiden Pharma. Nobody gave a shit about Robronco Industries peddling their A.I. to every company they could. Even Jet caved to them, and not a peep from the ministries because of course the ministries were involved.
The rot was so pervasive that nobody noticed some middle-management snake like Spitfire festering right under their noses. 
Furious tears stung at her eyes but she didn’t let them fall. Jet was dead. Apogee was dead. Everything she had cared about died when that bitch pushed the button. And now that she knew that Delta knew, it was only a matter of time before her candle got snuffed too. 
She felt defeated. For once in her life she had proof. Not a suspicion, vague connection, or a gut feeling. She had tangible, empirical proof. And now that she had it, it didn’t matter. Ten years and a gold bit short. The world was in its death throes. The princesses were dead. There were no judges to convict Spitfire of any crimes. No prisons to throw her into. Whatever this existence they had now, sealed in a box underground for the rest of their lives, was Spitfire’s prize to win. Execution, maybe? She grimaced at the thought. 
Overhead, the lights blinked out. The everpresent breeze that always filtered from the ceiling vent sighed and went silent. In an instant Delta’s office was plunged into darkness.
She stopped pacing and instinctively looked up to ask Millie what was happening, and almost as quickly knew the answer. This was it. This was how Spitfire decided to get rid of her. Soon, she imagined, she would hear the quiet hiss of something being pumped into the room. Or she might hear nothing at all. Maybe the point was to cut off the air recyclers to her office until she smothered herself. 
With her wings held out in front of her, she fumbled her way to the door and sat down on the beaten carpet. She bet it would be the second one. Hoped it would be. In a way, she almost appreciated that Spitfire might go with such a peaceful option. Turning off the lights would help make going to sleep feel natural. She wondered how long it would take. Six hours? Twelve? A day? She decided not to think too much about it. 
Time passed. She didn’t know how much. Minutes. Hours. With her head resting against the door she could almost hear the murmur of voices nearby. She couldn’t tell what they were saying. Maybe they weren’t voices at all. Who knew what noises the Stable made that the background noise covered up? She wondered if Stables could settle over time like the foundation of a new house, gradually sinking a little more each year until cracks started to appear.
What she wouldn’t give now to have this overengineered coffin just sink and take her down with it.
She was jarred from her dark fantasy by a sudden clunk on the other side of the door. On instinct she scrambled to her hooves and spun away from the wall, eyes straining to see anything in the pitch black. A heavy thud of something metal being shoved into the wall left her standing there, suddenly afraid, heart pounding in her throat as the slow chatter of a ratchet pulled the door off its seals. 
Chak-chak-chak. Pause. Chak-chak-chak. Pause. Chak-chak-chak.
Dim yellow light squeezed in through as the gap widened, not the sterile white glow she expected. Whoever was on the other side said nothing save for the occasional grunt as he jacked up the door. The voices she heard earlier slipped through the opening with fresh clarity. In her bewilderment she stood stock still, hooves rooted to the carpet, listening to the humorless voices of three other pegasi somewhere in the main corridor.
“This one’s clear.”
“Okay. Lock’s set. Go help Downburst with the next one, then each of you start taking offices on your own. We need to get faster at this.”
The first stallion sounded out of breath, yet resilient. “Got it.” 
“We’ll rest for five after this hall.” A pause. “Thunderlane, we’re moving ahead. How’s that door?”
Chak-chak. The door stopped just shy of chest height for Delta. On the other side, an exhausted Thunderlane answered, his voice strangely muffled. “Halfway up. I can stop here. Give me a second.”
Before she could react, two black legs appeared in the gap and crackled as they bent low. A masked face tilted sideways under the gap and a flashlight clicked on in Thunderlane’s wing, blinding her. For a split second he didn’t register her, too confused by the state of her office to notice the mare standing just a couple yards in front of him. When he finally looked up enough to meet her squinted eyes, he sputtered a curse and vanished from sight. A beat later he was hauling the door the rest of the way up.
“I’ve got Delta over here!” He grunted against the jack, stopping only when the door was shoulder height. “Might need first aid! She’s not wearing–”
It clicked in her head that he was going to come in and she immediately fumbled back toward her desk for something to defend herself with. Thunderlane was Spitfire’s closest friend and confidant. Her pleasant thoughts of dying in her sleep evaporated in the face of what felt like the beginning of a much more violent end. Her feathers wrapped around her wooden name plaque and she brandished it like a pitiful club.
Thunderlane stopped mid-sentence, his attention locking onto her improvised weapon with equal parts confusion and hesitation. But instead of lunging at her, he held open his empty wings and took a step backward. “Woah, woah. Everything’s okay. I’m here to help.”
Another flashlight clicked on behind him, forcing her to shield her eyes. “Where is your mask?”
She ignored him, her eyes straining to see past them and into the darkened corridor beyond. A single yellow emergency light glowed from its plastic dome just outside the far door. It suddenly occurred to her that the lights hadn’t just gone off in her office. Her grip around her name plaque loosened at the sound of ratcheting echoing in the corridor. Thunderlane wasn’t here to finish her off. He was just as surprised to find her here as she was to see him.
She dropped the plaque onto her desk and tried to steady her nerves.
“Ms. Vee, we need to get a mask on you. There was a spill.”
Her body shuddered with a deep, sustained tremble. She got along with adrenaline about as well as a migraine. “There wasn’t a spill. The over…” 
She stopped herself. The overmare falsified one to trap me in here sounded like a great way to slap away the bone the universe saw fit to throw her. 
“The lockdown was a false alarm. Millie wouldn’t acknowledge my override codes and I wound up stuck here.” Seeing Thunderlane and the stallion behind him look past her at the wreckage of her office, her tone went brittle. “I might have panicked a little.”
After a moment, Thunderlane nodded. “You’re okay now, though?”
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken up.” She stepped forward and they moved aside, allowing her to duck under the open door and step into the technicians’ office on the other side. Two of the terminals were still glowing with interrupted work still on their screens. She resisted the urge to run the rest of the way to the next door, and only barely. Only when she stepped out into the darkened corridor did she finally breathe. “Where’s Spitfire?”
“Last I saw her, she was headed upstairs to take a call from Stable-Tec. Probably figuring out how she’s going to keep the uppers happy once they hear about the blackout.” He followed her, drawing some looks from the two pegasi busy lifting their own doors further down the hall. “I can tell you’re still a little spooked, but I could use an extra set of wings opening doors if you’re… are you sure you’re okay?”
She was frowning at the floor, thoughts whirling in her head. Every year, each overseer of each Stable received a direct call from Stable-Tec HQ. Who exactly was calling, whether it be Director Applebloom or some middle manager they’d never heard of, Spitfire had never been clear on. She’d never questioned it until today, after being shoved against the wall of her own office by her own overmare. Spitfire’s words had crystallized in her mind.
Stable-Tec is dead.
There had been fear in her eyes when she said it. Real, palpable fear. The kind of fear a filly wears when she knows she’s done something to invoke the wrath of a violent adult, and the only thing left to do was wait for the beating. Sealed inside a bunker capable of shrugging off the most malevolent weapon Equestria had ever constructed, what hope could anyone on the outside have to do anything to hurt Spitfire? 
Unless they had a direct line into the Stable.
And if Stable-Tec was gone, then who was calling?
Her gaze lifted to the emergency lights studded down the corridor, and it dawned on her. Spitfire couldn’t have had enough time to cover up everything Delta had uncovered. The blackout couldn’t be a coincidence. This was her punishment.
Someone was trying to kill the Stable.







Sweat was running down her mane by the time she bolted through the wrenched open door and into the darkened security office. Thunderlane was on her heels the entire way and not without complaint. He had no idea what she was doing. 
If Delta was being honest with herself, she barely had any idea either. All she knew was that she didn’t have time to explain it. Thunderlane was too close to Spitfire. He would waste time arguing how nothing Delta said made sense, trying to convince her Spitfire wouldn’t do the things she did. So she let him chase her. 
“Delta…” he huffed, bracing himself against the doorframe with a wing, “...what are… you doing?”
“Bolt cutters,” she said, her eyes wide as she scanned the empty cells, her nervous hooves trampling a packet of papers that had presumably fallen from a desk when the lights went out. Security was known to keep a set of bolt cutters around in the event they needed to get past a lock someone might not want them to. She spotted the lockers lined up next to the decontamination chamber door and started pulling them open one after the other until she found what she was looking for. 
Yanking the tool off its hook, she held it up for Thunderlane to see. “Keep up. I’m going to need your muscles.”
She squeezed past him and back out into the Atrium, sparing the briefest look toward the sealed door of Spitfire’s office. I’ll be back for you later, she thought.
“Would you stop… for a minute and tell me… what’s going on?!”
Her hooves thumped down the steps to the bottom, followed by the unsteady clomping of the winded stallion. Ten years of sedentary work had done nothing for the former Wonderbolt’s physique, and she wasn’t exactly in peak condition either. Her legs were burning from the sudden exertion. She would have apologized to him if she thought they had time. 
To his credit, he did manage to keep pace with her even if he didn’t know why he was doing it. As they ran she went over her logic over and over again, testing her own resolve to be sure she wasn’t acting on impulse or anger. That the conclusion she’d come to was anything but rock solid. Everything held up. Spitfire had been terrified to learn Delta had seen her daughter’s EVA on SOLUS. She’d run the numbers and come to the conclusion that every missile the ministries launched had impacted somewhere in Equestria. That SOLUS had been converted into an impossible weapon. And that Spitfire stood at the center of it all.
Now someone was trying to tie up loose ends by snuffing out every pegasus here. Already she could taste the air growing stale. Without power, they were trapped inside. No lever in Equestria was long enough to lift the behemoth door out of the way for them to escape. Someone out there - someone who even Spitfire feared - wanted the truth to die with Stable 10.
She skidded to a stop outside the one door in IT she knew would still have steady power. Luckily, Thunderlane and his deputies hadn’t reached the server room door by the time they found her. Still sealed on its own hydraulics, she couldn't imagine good things happening when a pair of frustrated deputies with ratchet handles tried to mangle a door that wanted to stay shut. She could feel their growing confusion as she punched her digits into the keypad mounted to the frame.
“It’s a full blackout,” Thunderlane reminded her.
The door chirped and sprang open, flooding the dim corridor with sterile white light. She didn’t wait for them as she stepped inside, her own eyes crushed into slits from the harsh fluorescents. Confused murmurs followed her into the rows of humming black obelisks, LEDs flickering from behind their cages like they hadn’t so much felt a stutter from the power outage. And that was because they hadn’t. Something Delta knew from the first day of her training was that every Stable, regardless of size or purpose, had been strung onto the same hardened network. Stable-Tec hadn’t sugar coated the reality that not every Stable would survive the centuries it would take Equestria to become habitable again, and that data stored by those dead Stables would be invaluable to those tasked with jump starting civilization. Stable-Tec, if there was still a Stable-Tec, had been nothing but obsessed with redundancy. 
“Delta.”
The bolt cutters thumped against her hip as she hurried between the servers. As she did she caught sight of a technician’s cart left alongside an opened cage, cables still connecting its terminal to the server. The cutters weighed heavily in her grip, but she needed to be sure. “What?”
His tone had gotten firmer. Surprise and confusion were quickly giving way to irritation and a need to take control of the situation. “I need you to tell me what you’re doing, and explain why everyone lost power except here.”
She couldn’t blame him. He’d just chased her across half the Stable so she could bring bolt cutters into the only data center that made half the server tick. She changed direction, hoping it would throw him off, and made a bee-line toward the cart and its dormant terminal.
Stable-Tec had rules about who could and couldn’t know about its network. Tell the wrong pony and suddenly everyone knew, and then it would be a matter of time before residents started demanding to speak with other Stables to check up on friends or loved ones. Harmless communications, compounded by centuries, could spark wars. Only the overseer and their head of I.T. were privy to the network’s existence, and if they had any hope of returning to normalcy after this, that status quo needed to be maintained. At least for now.
She leaned the cutters against the cart and woke up the terminal. Rather than answer Thunderlane’s question, she posed one of her own. “What do you know about the blackout?”
He slowed to a stop a few steps away, his eyes on the bolt cutters. She picked them up and moved them to her other side.
“The generator had some kind of malfunction,” he said, watching her as she logged onto the server responsible for handling Mechanical’s data. “From what I’ve been hearing, it overloaded and tried to rip itself apart. They got it shut down before that happened.”
Delta hadn’t been down to Mechanical in at least a year, and longer than that since she last saw the heart of their Stable for herself. She couldn’t imagine what it took to stop a machine the size of a house from spinning when it didn’t want to cooperate. When she was still at Jet Stream Aerospace, the best way to shut down a malfunctioning engine was to blow it up remotely. Down here, she doubted that was an option.
She pecked at the terminal, opening Mechanical’s network log. “Was anyone hurt?”
Thunderlane hesitated. “Two casualties. They got caught by an arc.”
Her feathers paused over the keyboard. “Oh.”
He nodded. “So you understand my concern when I see you running in here, lights still on, with a set of bolt cutters in your wing.”
That was fair, but she resumed typing all the same. “I have a hunch. Give me a few seconds and I’ll tell you if I’m right.”
It wasn’t just a hunch. Every fiber of her being sang with certainty that she knew how to fix this. She flew down the log entries in search of confirmation. She needed armor. Something to keep Spitfire from bringing the entire Stable down on her head once the crisis was over. The overmare couldn’t kill her, not anymore, but she could easily use her as a scapegoat and Delta didn’t want to see what mob justice looked like when led by the mare who ended civilization.
Just as those dark thoughts trickled into her head, a single cluster of entries scrolled up onto the screen. As certain as she’d been, seeing it stole her breath away. She read them twice. Three times. Then she turned the terminal to Thunderlane to read.

10/30/77 16:50 - External Network Login - Server #75
10/30/77 16:50 - M.I.L.L.I.E. safeguards disabled.
10/30/77 16:51 - Mechanical console opened.
10/30/77 16:51 - [WARNING] System permissions disabled.
10/30/77 16:51 - Generator Operations console opened. 
10/30/77 16:51 - [WARNING] Ignition Talisman governor set to: NULL
10/30/77 17:25 - [WARNING] Energy output exceeds safe maximum values.
10/30/77 17:27 - [WARNING] Energy output exceeds safe maximum values.
10/30/77 17:28 - [WARNING] Ignition Taliman overheat.
10/30/77 17:28 - [WARNING] Ignition Taliman overheat.
10/30/77 17:28 - [WARNING] Energy output exceeds safe maximum values.
10/30/77 17:29 - [WARNING] Ignition Taliman overheat.
10/30/77 17:29 - [WARNING] Ignition Taliman fracture.
10/30/77 17:29 - [WARNING] Ignition Taliman fracture.
10/30/77 17:30 - [WARNING] Ignition Taliman fracture.

Thunderlane’s expression darkened with understanding. “This was deliberate.”
Delta hefted the bolt cutters, jaw clenched, and marched toward the back of the server room. She didn’t wait to see if he was coming. Thunderlane’s hooves kept stride with hers, convinced enough not to interfere with what she intended to do. The details could come later. 
The floor hatch waited where it always did, ready in the event one of her poor techs needed to access the crawl space below. The last pony to crack the seal had been whoever installed it over a decade ago. With how strictly Millie monitored the temperature and humidity in this room, it was entirely possible for a century to pass before the cables showed any sign of deterioration. She bent down and gripped the handle, turned it ninety degrees and pulled hard. The oiled gaskets crackled apart and the hatch lifted away. 
Thunderlane held it open as she lowered herself down. The hardened steel cutting head thunked down beside her and she leaned on the handle, her eyes already locked onto the torso-thick cylinder of cables extruding from the Stable’s outer wall.
“There we go.” She shuffled toward a heavy duty cloth cinch strap keeping the disparate bundles together. 
“You’re not planning to electrocute yourself, right?”
He didn’t bother masking his concern, making her wince. Of course he was worried. He still had no idea what she was doing. 
“No,” she said, pressing the cutter around the strap and snapping the handles together. The bundle bulged apart. She set down the cutters and pulled the smaller clusters further apart with her feathers, squinting at the letters printed against the insulation. “Someone out there already tried to kill us. I’m cutting them off so we can survive.”
“Out there? Outside the Stable?”
She grimaced. “So it would seem. Where are your deputies right now?”
A pause. “Guarding the hall.”
“Good.” She dug her hind hooves against a floor support and heaved her weight against a bundle as thick as one of her legs, shoving the electrified bundle away. A thick, multicolored core of fiber optic cables rolled free from underneath. “We need to keep this between you and me.”
“And the overmare,” he added.
She bit her tongue. “Sure,” she said, and sank the fat blades deep into the colorful cables. 
The cutter heads sheared shut with a bright crunch of breaking silica. She pulled the handles apart and repositioned the head, taking a second bite. Nothing exploded. The servers didn’t catch fire. Her hesitation vanished. Another cut. And another. She sawed her way through the umbilical one bite at a time until sweat trickled down the bridge of her nose, fiber optics shredding apart until finally the last few stragglers remained. She dropped the cutters over them and snapped the blades together with a muttered curse, hoping it would make a difference. 
She paused to catch her breath, her feathers still gripping one of the handles. “Got a radio on you?”
Stupid question. She knew he did. Voices had been crackling out of the thing since he freed her from Spitfire’s would-be prison. He didn’t sound any less dubious than before when he answered yes.
“I’m going to need it to coordinate with Mechanical before we try bringing the power back on.” She grunted as she wrapped a wing around one end of the severed data line and pulled it as far from the other stump as it would allow. They’d never work properly even if they did drift back together, but if she was good at anything it was embracing her paranoia. “Help me up.”
He stuck a charcoal wing down and she hooked it with hers, hoisting her out of the crawlspace. “So that’s it then? Crisis averted?”
“Not a fucking chance.” She took his offered radio and turned back to the servers, the plan formulating in her mind as she trotted into the rows. He followed her back to the technician’s cart. “We’re out of the woods, but that doesn’t mean the wolves are gone. Once we have power again, someone upstairs is getting her ass kicked.”







Ping-ping.
Ping-ping.
Ping-ping.
“Mmh. Aurora, turn that off.”
Sheets rustled. Ginger buried her muzzle into the back of Aurora’s neck, her own head sinking back into the warm dent in their pillow. She didn’t open her eyes. Her hooves tucked in around Aurora’s belly and pulled her a little closer, waiting for her to silence her Pip-Buck so they could drift off for another few blissful hours. It was dark in Aurora’s compartment. Ponies slept at night. Night was dark. It was all the convincing Ginger needed to slide off into another one of Tandy’s strange dreams.
Aurora shifted under her legs and grumbled something as she fumbled with her Pip-Buck. Light spilled into the room and Ginger hid from it in Aurora’s shadow, already feeling herself drifting. A long pause and the light went away.
Ping-ping.
Ping-ping.
Ginger frowned. A moment later, Aurora was pulling her leg away from her midsection. She let her fiddle with her hoof, distantly hoping it might lead to something enjoyable. Then the light returned. Another pause. Aurora mumbled a tired shit and thumped her hoof against Ginger’s foreleg.
“It’s Primrose.” 
She grimaced. “What time is it?”
Aurora half groaned, half chuckled. She started to sit up. Ginger had half the mind to light her horn to stop her. They were resting. Primrose could wait. 
“Come on.” Aurora shimmied her hind end onto the pillow. Ginger cracked an eye to look at the strange details of her winged cutie mark up close. “Up and at’em. Early bird and the worm. We gotta take this.”
Ping-ping.
She shuttered her eyes for a moment before opening them again to push herself up onto her butt. She squinted against the glare of her donated Pip-Buck, half wishing she could pull the stupid thing off and toss it in the corner to watch the thermite charge turn it into slag. She grunted as she sat up. “I distinctly remember telling you birds are extinct.”
Aurora smiled. Ginger couldn’t remember who told her that, but she’d believed it until Aurora insisted she’d seen one during their first night together at the ruined cabin. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe they weren’t all gone. Just rare. 
Ping-ping.
“Yes, yes, alright.” She pulled up her hind legs and propped the screen against them, using her magic to peck the buttons until she hit the one that finally answered the call. Her Pip-Buck stuttered, then a moment later Primrose’s mildly annoyed face filled the screen. Between the two of them, Ginger was certain she was the first to hide her irritation. “Minister Primrose. I don’t think we were expecting you to reach out so soon.”
Primrose smiled that fake little smile of hers and waved a wing at them as if to dismiss any potential concerns. “Nor did I! I’m just relieved to see you kept your gift. It’ll make this much easier.”
Aurora shifted on the mattress. “Is something wrong?”
Another dismissive wave. Another porcelain smile. Wherever Primrose was, it wasn’t the oil rig or any place Ginger recognized in New Canterlot. The walls were bare cinder blocks speckled with what appeared to be mold. The camera shifted as she reached for something, giving the two of them a glimpse of several sagging metal shelves bright with rust. Somewhere offscreen, water trickled against bare cement. 
“Nothing’s wrong. I only wanted to be certain that my people delivered the correct ignition talisman. I wasn’t aware there were so many variants.” She pulled her wing into frame. A black object rested in her feathers, its six symmetrical points drawing an elongated hexagon that Ginger recognized immediately. “The box says these are all Mark IV ignition talismans, but I’ll be honest, it’s all gibberish to me.”
Aurora leaned forward, rightfully suspicious after the deception Elder Coldbrook tried to get away with. “That sounds like the one we have here. Can you send a better picture to Ginger’s Pip-Buck? I don’t want to say yes to anything until I can get it confirmed by someone I trust. No offense.”
Primrose shrugged. “None taken. Give me a minute to send some shots. Talk to your people and send me the exact details of the model you need. I’ll be here for a few more hours, but sooner is preferable.”
Maybe it was due to being tired, but Ginger had to ask. “Where’s here?”
“That,” Primrose said, “is what we tend to refer to as a state secret. And speaking of invaluable government assets, I don’t suppose I need to ask about Colonel Weathers’s accommodations but I will anyway under the circumstances. She’s being treated well?”
Ginger looked to Aurora, who answered with confidence. “We assigned her a compartment for the night and agreed to allow her to tour the Stable in the morning.”
The minister’s brow tilted. “It’s past noon.”
“Oh.” Aurora frowned, then shrugged. “Shit, I guess.”
Primrose let slip a knowing smile. “Shit indeed. At the risk of being demanding, I would appreciate it if someone were to check on my colonel while you verify the correct talisman for your generator. Fair?”
They answered at the same time. “Fair.” 
The little tyrant smiled. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”
With that, the screen flickered and went dark. Ginger snorted at the little green depiction of a non-ghouled Applebloom trotting in place above the word disconnected. She put it away and wondered if that lonely mare was holding up alright. 
“Hey,” Aurora said, bumping her shoulder. “We should get up.”
She tipped her head back, stretching her tired muscles, and hummed in the affirmative. “Do you want help?”
To answer her question, Aurora shimmied herself to the side of the mattress and dropped onto her hooves with a little grunt. Her gait still had a pronounced hobble to it that was likely to never fully go away without the help of a prosthetic limb, but that was a conversation they had yet to have. If she had to guess, Aurora would want to build her own. Ginger quietly resolved to overcome her inexperience with machines so she could be a part of that process. 
She slid out of bed and offered her back for Aurora to hold onto, but she declined. “I gotta get used to this, right?”
Ginger pecked her cheek then lit her horn, grasping the bottom lip of the compartment door in one aura while slinging on Aurora’s saddlebags with another. Aurora didn’t need any more weight on her hind leg than she was already putting on it, and Ginger wasn’t about to leave the stone tucked inside sit unattended in a busy Stable. “Just don’t overdo it. I don’t want to have to carry you.”
She lifted the door, catching Aurora’s grin out of the corner of her eye. “I carried you the entire way here, Ms. Ginger.”
“Let me rephrase,” she said, smirking beneath an arched brow. “You don’t want me to have to carry you.” 
The door thumped shut behind them and as they stepped into the light traffic of the corridor, several eyes jumped straight to her horn. She flushed a little, unsure whether she should say hello or just smile and ignore them, and all the while she could tell Aurora was still grinning at her. 
“Dearheart,” she murmured, “keep that up and I’ll find a way to turn your mane orange.”
Aurora limped alongside her, expression unchanged. “Thirteen-year-old Aurora beat you to it.”
It was a fight not to laugh at the image that conjured in her mind, but she was quickly distracted by the sight of an approaching stallion who was trying hard not to be seen staring at her forehead and doing a terrible job of it. She sighed, knowing well in advance that this would be an unavoidable aspect of living in a Stable full of pegasi. It did little to prepare her for the real thing, and it was clear there wasn’t much she could do about it. They would need time to adjust to her and vice versa. 
Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some fun with it.
“Okay,” she said. The gloomy corridor began glowing with amber light as she looked at Aurora. “Up you go.”
Aurora blinked. “Up I wh– waugh!”
She let out a devious little laugh as her magic swept Aurora’s hooves off the floor and into the air. Aurora groaned as she rolled onto her back, legs bent uselessly toward the ceiling, and glowered at Ginger as she floated alongside her. Several pegasi stopped what they were doing to watch the absurd display, some out of concern and the rest out of intense curiosity. It was likely their first time seeing magic. For Aurora, however, it had become old hat.
“Har-har,” she yucked, “The joke’s on you. This is nice.”
To emphasize her claim, Aurora stretched and tucked her forelegs behind her head while letting the white tip of her tail drag along the floor. 
“You’re collecting dust,” Ginger chuckled.
Aurora shrugged her wings. “Didn’t I tell you that I moonlight as a mop?”
“You’re a strange mare, Aurora.”
“You love it.”
She smirked. “Against all odds, I do. While you’re lounging, maybe you could point me in the direction we should be going.”
Aurora bent her neck back until she was looking forward, albeit upside-down. She wore a toothy grin as she earned herself several double-takes from her fellow residents, and Ginger began to realize it wasn’t just her magic that was attracting their attention. Several pegasi visibly flushed at the sight of Aurora with her belly, among other attributes, bared for all to see. It wasn’t until Ginger noticed a visibly annoyed stallion holding his open wing directly across his daughter’s line of sight did she realize they were doing something wrong. Aurora was either oblivious or had thicker skin for the disapproving glares being levied by her neighbors, because she did nothing to hide herself from them.
“We’re going all the way to the end of the hall to where those mesh lift gates are. The stairs are right next to–”
She sputtered when Ginger slowed, turning Aurora back onto her hooves and setting her as gently onto the ground as she could without disturbing her injury. That done, she doused her horn and continued down the corridor, pointedly ignoring the eyes that followed her.
“Woah, hey!” Aurora limped after her. “Are you okay?”
She took a breath and offered a small nod. “I might have thought you were exaggerating when you told me how much the ponies here value their clothing.”
It took several seconds for Aurora’s confusion to resolve into immediate understanding. It wasn’t often Ginger saw her show her embarrassment, but judging by the way she looked at the floor she could tell it had little to do with her neighbors. “Yeah. Sorry. I wasn’t joking about that. Folks around here can be…”
“Prudes?”
“That.”
Ginger flicked her tail with irritation, then grew more irritated that doing so only drew more attention. “You’re okay with it? The staring?”
Aurora shrugged with a resigned smile. She tipped a feather toward the end of the corridor where a tired looking pegasus was giving a doorstop a little kick to secure it beneath the open stairwell door. He glanced at them, stopped, and his muzzle curled into a friendly smile.
“If they stare, they stare.” She gestured at a mural splashed across the end of the corridor depicting a pastoral scene of a city in the clouds. Pegasi hung stationary against a blue sky, some treading air, laughing, socializing, while others held their hooves forward to cut through the open air. The only pegasi wearing anything were a trio of Wonderbolts in the distant background. Everyone else clung to the sky in their bare coats. “It’s not like they don’t know how it used to be.”
They stepped into the stairwell, and Aurora dropped her wing over Ginger’s back and held on as they descented. Ginger noticed her wince a little as her hind hoof dropped onto each step. Her hip was already starting to bother her.
“When I was younger,” she continued, her voice echoing off the walls as she hopped into position to tackle the next flight down, “my mom used to tell me how the first generations never wore their jumpsuits all that much unless they were doing dirty work, like the stuff we do in Mechanical.”
She understood what Aurora meant, but she lifted her eyebrow anyway.
“You’re nasty.” Aurora grinned at her without skipping a beat. “Over time more pegasi started wearing theirs while they were on the job, no matter the job, until the ones trotting around without them were the odd ones out. Folks get embarrassed, so they cover up, which leads to more embarrassment and more covering up until everyone’s doing it and no one remembers how it started.”
They made room for a stallion passing the opposite way. Ginger set her jaw when she caught him looking back at them, gaze wandering.
Aurora noticed, too, and shook her head. “Fast forward to today.”
She processed it in silence for the next few flights. She didn’t doubt there was something to be said about how Stable 10 got to be so insecure about something so insignificant, but a question still lingered.
“Then why do you do it?”
Aurora paused before answering. “Because there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not like I’m pulling myself open for everyone.” She used her free wing to gesture at herself. “If the princesses could sit on their thrones and not care if the world saw their teats, then it’s stupid for me to feel like my life is ruined just because someone snuck a glance under my tail.”
She stopped to take a steadying breath. Ginger could only sympathize. She knew all too well what it felt like to choose a path she knew was right, that harmed no one, and yet still felt like she had to defend herself whenever some stranger walked into her shop and expressed surprise when they saw she was still in business. It tended to be exhausting.
Aurora sighed. “Besides, it’s hot work around the generator. Once those jumpsuits get sweaty they start sticking, and when that happens you might as well be naked for all the good they do.”
“You paint a colorful picture,” she murmured. As they turned with the railing again, a group of workers entered the stairwell behind them, effectively ending the topic. “I get the feeling there are a lot of things here that’ll take time to adjust to.”
Aurora squeezed her around the barrel and smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
As they descended the last of the stairs they came across a slow moving line of pegasi wrapping the outside wall, all of them carrying one or several identical containers. The Stable 10 logo embossed into the metal threw her initially but as they began excusing themselves on their way past the line, she recognized the outdated flat cylinders for what they were. Canteens. Aurora didn’t have to say anything for Ginger to know the sight of the water line deeply bothered her. It only made sense that without power, the Stable wouldn’t have pumps to move water to the upper levels.
The line curled into an open doorway where a sheet of paper hung on the wall in a plastic sleeve. It was a checklist. As they passed, Ginger lit her horn to better read the stout markered letters.


CISTERNS & WATER STORAGE
-NOTICE: HALF-RATIONS ARE IN EFFECT-
THE FOLLOWING RULES ARE
MANDATORY BEYOND THIS POINT:

1. Treated water is limited to 16 cups (4 canteens) per resident.
2. Only Stable-Tec Standard Canteens will be filled.
3. Canteens will only be filled by an on-duty technician or deputy.
4. Residents must present their daily punch card for every visit.
5. Unused punches cannot be carried into the next day.
6. Pushing, shoving, or any form of intimidation will result in the
immediate revocation of the offender’s water allowance for that day.

To preserve water, please limit all unnecessary activity.
Shower facilities are located in Mechanical. Please refer to your
assigned schedule for the date and time of your shower.


A startled murmur rippled back up the line at the sight of Ginger’s horn, causing her to immediately douse the light and avoid their stares. Another reminder that adjusting to this life was going to take some time, for her and for those around her. 
She stole a glance at Aurora and watched her struggle with the descent, her face flickering with discomfort with each step but still pushing forward in spite of it. Her worry eased. It would be worth it. 
She surprised herself by recognizing the smell of Mechanical well before arriving. The same odor of grease and solvent tickled her nose as it did when Applebloom led her and Roach down to the bottom of the bunker beneath the crater of Stable-Tec HQ. A part of her still felt guilt for never telling Aurora the truth about what happened there, but every time she considered it she ended up reaching the same conclusion. Doing so would only inflict unnecessary pain, and even if it didn’t, there was no sense in risking that now. 
They were here now. Home. As little as she trusted the Enclave, Primrose had demonstrated nothing but enthusiasm in her efforts to get Aurora back to where she came from. There were many things Ginger felt guilt over, but exploiting the so-called minister for their own gain wasn’t one of them. 
Let the Enclave and Rangers duke it out like they always have. The fact that there were still pockets of the world like this Stable where she and Aurora could live out a quiet life together was a blessing. She could handle the smell of a little brake cleaner.
Unlike the deafening halls beneath Applebloom’s bunker, however, the steel-clad walls of Stable 10’s Mechanical wing greeted them with ghostly silence. She could feel Aurora’s wing tensing around her as the stairwell door clapped shut behind them, the sound of its latch echoing in the distance like a lonely gunshot. A few voices could be heard beyond the narrow corridor that led to the main workfloor that Aurora once described as a buzzing hive of constant activity. The emergency lights down here did little to help penetrate the wider gulfs, leaving those still down here to navigate by flashlight or the green glare of their Pip-Bucks. 
One such light turned in their direction as she led Aurora onto the workfloor. It held there, masking its owner, for several seconds before it dipped and the pegasus carrying it began making their way toward them. As they approached, Aurora glanced down and activated her Pip-Buck to better illuminate the darkness.
“Luna’s left nut,” the approaching stallion blurted. “I thought Sledge was pulling my tail when he said you made it back!”
Ginger jerked with surprise when she realized the stallion was hardly a few paces away from them, his jet black coat blending so easily with the surroundings that his eyes seemed to float on their own. 
“Hey Carbide.” Aurora took a step forward and let the stallion slap a wing around her back in a friendly, but somewhat distant hug.
“About time you got–” Ginger winced as his gaze inevitably shifted to her injury. “Holy shit, Pinfeathers. What happened?”
He let go and she shrank back a little to be closer to Ginger’s side. “It’s… a long story.”
“Are you okay?”
She lifted a wing and tipped it side to side. “Taking it day by day, but yeah. I’m okay. This is Ginger, by the way.”
Carbide looked to her as if seeing her for the first time, and as expected his eyes went wide at the sight of her horn. “And you’re a unicorn.”
She couldn’t help but smile a little. “So I’m told. And are you the Carbide who was put in charge of containing the damaged talisman?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “For all the good it did. If I would’ve known it only had a week left before it ran out of juice, I wouldn’t have spent all that time designing a container for the thing. Now it’s just a paperweight.”
“I can think of a few ponies who would pay good caps for that paperweight.”
Carbide regarded her with open confusion. “Caps?”
Aurora waved him off before they could get too far into the weeds. “Later. I actually need to talk to you about our talisman. I know the power’s out but I was hoping you might still have the spec sheets I sent you about a week-ish ago.”
Carbide quirked his lip. “The ones that topside hotshot whoever promised you?”
“Those ones, yeah.”
He nodded, just a little perplexed. “The ones you sent here.”
“No shit, Carbide. That’s what I said.”
“The ones you sent from the Pip-Buck on your leg right now.”
She blinked. Carbide smiled.
“Fuck me sideways.” She gripped Ginger with one wing and glowered at her own Pip-Buck as she pecked at the buttons with the other. “Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Been a long coupla weeks, huh?”
She shook her head as she brought up her old sent messages. “You have no idea. Did Sledge mention I learned how to fly?”
“Wow,” he murmured, then again as it sank in. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking flying. What’s that like?”
“Terrifying.” She pulled up the message and opened the attachment she’d sent not long after killing Gallow. It was any wonder she remembered having sent it at all. “Exhilarating. Ginger taught me.”
Ginger’s eyes widened at suddenly being thrust into the spotlight again. Carbide stared at her as if he were unsure if it was true or not. 
“I only helped a little at the beginning,” she clarified, afraid he might ask her to teach him too. “Aurora picked the rest up on her own once she got the hang of it.”
“Wow.” He seemed stuck on the word. “And you two are… together?”
Unseen by Ginger, Aurora glanced up from her Pip-Buck and shot him a look of warning. He cleared his throat and pretended to see something interesting on her screen. 
“So yeah, anyway,” he stumbled, tapping the photo of the spec sheet on Aurora’s foreleg, “that’s a copy of the documents for the mark four talisman our generator uses. Used. If you look down a few pages you’ll hit the technical specs. Height, width, diameter, fractal strength, all that stuff.”
Ginger glanced at the photos of the weathered paper, then keyed on her own Pip-Buck and navigated to her message queue where a single unread message from Primrose waited to be read. “I’m fairly certain Primrose said the one she had was a mark four.”
Aurora leaned against her to better see the photos Primrose had sent. “That’s what I heard. Is it a match?”
The photos were a little fuzzy, but the six sided obsidian gemstone Primrose had positioned atop what looked like a reinforced cooler lid was hard to mistake for anything else. She’d taken several shots of it from multiple angles, each one carving away any doubts they might have had. In the final shot, a slip of paper had been set beneath the stone. Neat, curling letters spooled out across it. 
Mk. IV Ignition Talisman, S/N #43,028.
A black feather reached in and tapped the screen. “Yep, that’s the same one I pulled out of the generator.”
Aurora looked up at Carbide. “How sure are you?”
He shrugged. Ginger kept her mouth shut. 
“Hundred percent. Easy.”
She watched Aurora hesitate. “It looks weird. Is it supposed to be darker in the middle?”
“Aurora,” she said, wishing she had a wing of her own with which to give a reassuring squeeze. “That’s the one. I’m sure of it.”
Aurora chewed her lip for a while longer before eventually nodding. “Okay, um… yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Let her know.”
The half-finished repairs on the surrounding workbenches glinted with the gentle light of her magic as she typed up a confirmation and sent it on its way, ferried along a convoluted system of wires and radio relays that she doubted she would ever fully understand. Still holding onto her, Aurora let go of some of the stress she’d been keeping inside and blew out a breath. 
Carbide shifted on his hooves, evidently not comfortable with silence. “So that’s all it takes? We’re getting a replacement and my containment box goes in the recycler?”
She couldn’t tell whether he was actually whining or just putting on a facade. Aurora apparently knew him well enough not to have that problem, and promptly flicked her free wing against his shin.
“I’m sure it’s a very nice box, Carb.”
He grinned. “Want to see it?”
Aurora hesitated.
“Come on.” He turned, taking a step to somewhere further back in the cavernous space. “My guys did overnights working on the thing. You gotta at least take a look at it before we trash it.”
Aurora opened her mouth to protest but he stared back as if the single most vital strand of their friendship anchored on her seeing what he made. Ginger did her best not to look put out by the detour when Aurora turned to gauge her reaction. She smiled back, offering half a shrug to let her know it was fine. They weren’t under the gun anymore, and this was barely a pebble in the road compared to the craters they kept tumbling into in their efforts to reach Fillydelphia.
Relieved to see she wasn’t bothered, Aurora waved a feather at Carbide. “Alright, alright. Let’s go see your magic box.”
There was a flicker of excitement in the stallion’s eye that, for a moment, belied all the silent gloom around them. She couldn’t help but feel a little encouraged as he turned and led them through rows of workbenches, past battered yet fully stocked tool chests, around plastic carts labeled SCRAPS, TEXTILES, FLAMMABLE and many other things that she only had a passing understanding of. As they walked, Aurora pointed out a lone workbench set next to the aisle that she said used to be hers when she apprenticed. Ginger smiled a little at the unmistakable hoof-shaped dents on the metal surface. They probably weren’t hers, but she knew enough of Aurora by now not to bet against it. 
She tried as best she could to explain the workflow, though Ginger couldn’t bring herself to admit she wasn’t retaining much. It seemed like anything that broke down in the Stable that was small enough to transport down to Mechanical for refurbishment wound up here. Somewhere off to her left, too far in the impenetrable dark to properly see, were sorting tables normally occupied by pegasi old enough to apprentice for work. Some items ended up on workbenches like Aurora’s, usually the things they could fix with the tools they had. Some were diverted to a holding bay while specialist workers could identify more complicated problems, usually mended with the help of the pegasi up in Fabrication. The rest were often sent to the recyclers; a series of room-sized machines attached to Sanitation which were tasked with breaking down the Stable’s refuse into their component materials. 
It startled her how a solitary community with a population that rivaled Blinder’s Bluff could generate so little waste. Even Junction City with all of its two hundred or less permanent residents had a garbage heap not too far from town. And yet here Aurora, her family, and the families of so many others had grown up without need for wealth, expansion, or influence. 
It was any wonder why Roach hadn’t fought to earn his place here when he knew Blinder’s Bluff sat atop a Stable of its own, its potential entirely untapped by the Rangers who controlled it. Maybe someday soon their gardens would bear its first harvest and Roach would finally be recognized for the stallion he once was and not the parasite much of the wasteland treated him as today. 
A pang of deep loneliness shot through her as she realized she would likely never see him again.
Aurora squeezed her ribs, her eyes worried. “You okay?”
She shook off her melancholy and did her best to smile. “I am now.”
The exchange went utterly unnoticed by Carbide who, in his eagerness to show them the fruits of his labor, had gotten a ways ahead of them. They dropped into a trot and caught up just as he reached what appeared to be the entrance to yet another Stable. A single, unbroken wall of steel panels stretched from one abyss to another. Grease, dirt, and metal shavings clung to the bottom panels where work had up until recently been done. Ginger took care not to touch any of it as they followed him through the single open door at the end of the aisle and into another darkened space that smelled strongly of burnt carbon.
“Watch your hooves,” he warned, swinging his flashlight down toward a floor made up of symmetrical square panels. “We haven’t closed anything up yet.”
As promised, many of the panels had been pulled away and stacked into shallow piles nearby. She lit her horn, forming a simple shield in the shape of a sphere that hovered above the ground a few steps ahead of them. Thick bundles of conduit, insulated wire, plumbing and Celestia knew what else snaked around the gaps in the floor. It was nothing like what she had seen at the bottom of Stable 1. No stains, no rust, no decay. Only pristine components whose purpose she could only guess at. To a scrapper, a place like this would be a gold mine. It was no wonder the Enclave went to such efforts to be the first to a Stable when it collapsed. These were the materials that spelled the difference between a town and a prosperous city. They were why the Bluff had become the economic hub of the eastern wastelands. 
She levitated the light higher to illuminate even more. Doing so finally caught Carbide’s attention and, to his credit, he didn’t stop in his tracks to gawk even if he did gawk a little just the same. 
“Woah,” he said, doing his best to keep his eyes on where he was going. 
Normally she would have answered him, but she found her attention dominated by the appearance of the massive machine at the center of the room. Any semblance of polite dignity she had went out the window as the Stable’s generator loomed out of the darkness. Her eyes widened. While it paled in comparison to the vaguely locomotive shaped behemoths that powered Stable-Tec’s network, it was evident that this entire space had been constructed for the sole purpose of housing this house-sized monolith. For a split second she felt as if they had stepped into a shrine and it occurred to her that a single talisman, a black stone she had held in her own magic, was the catalyst that made it possible for all of this to work.
How did ponies before the war not live in constant fear of the things they were creating? And why had seemingly no one stopped long enough to ask whether it was all worth the risk?
She tried not to dwell as Carbide showed them to a conspicuous gray roll cart that had been pushed up against the generator’s striped guardrail. The cart itself looked as if someone had detonated a grenade under it, gathered all the shards, and melted them back together. In Ginger’s experience something so beaten and used had no business still standing upright, and yet there it was, more repair than original. More Stable 10 recycling in action. She had to admire their persistence. 
Resting on the top shelf sat a glass cube reinforced along the seams with heavy steel brackets. It didn’t look like much until she drew her magic closer to better see and noticed the glass panes reflecting her light with an unsettlingly iridescent shimmer that forced her to wrinkle her nose and look briefly away. The patterns forming along its surface were dizzying in their complexity, tricking her into seeing depth that wasn’t possible. She looked to Carbide with some reticence.
“So, ah, yeah. This is the talisman containment system I designed.” Carbide’s eyes flicked up at the glowing sphere floating overhead with a touch of nervousness. “My magic box, if you want to call it that.”
Aurora eyed the device with a chuckle. “Oh, I’m absolutely calling it that. Ginger, bring your light closer. This thing is wild.”
She shook her head. “I can see it just fine.”
Aurora paused, noticed her discomfort, and mercifully chose to divert Carbide’s attention from it. “Explain how this thing works. I don’t see any power connections.”
Carbide slipped his wing beneath the cube and lifted it from the cart. The strange glass rasped against his feathers as they slid against some sort of texturing. “That’s because there aren’t any. We still don’t know for sure if there was anything in the talisman that could have caused it to deplete so early in its lifecycle, so I didn’t want to risk connecting it to anything that might lead back to its eventual replacement.”
Ginger hummed. “You were trying to quarantine it, in other words.”
He nodded. “Flux was the first to suggest it. Being a black crystal and all, she thought the talisman looked an awful lot like the ones the history books show King Sombra growing. We didn’t have magic experts to consult so I thought it’d be best to lean on the side of caution.”
She could appreciate that even if the logic was flawed. She’d lit her apartment above the store with crystals for years and the only problem she ever had with that was when the radstorms rolled through and snuffed the things out. 
Something she didn’t have to worry about anymore. She smiled a little, watching Aurora limp closer to the container. “How did you make the glass do that?”
“I didn’t. Matte Press up in Fabrication figured it out on his own. He calls it ‘fractal printing.’ It’s the same process the ministries used to manufacture M.A.S.T. talismans way back when, but we don’t have the equipment to get anywhere close to the granular detail they were working on.” Carbide unlatched the lid and pointed his flashlight into the box to demonstrate.
She gasped. Aurora cursed. Radiant shards grew from all six sides like shifting, glowing spines. Aurora nearly fell as she backed away, catching herself at the last minute on the railing. Ginger ran to her side immediately, her horn glowing in case she needed to drop a shield between them and the device.
But nothing happened. The tendrils of light continued to shimmer through the glass, shaking a little now with Carbide’s chuckling, but the display was ultimately benign.
“Crap, Aurora, since when were you ever this jumpy?” He clicked off the light and closed the lid. “Need help getting up?”
Ginger answered with a flat note of warning. “She’s quite fine. Are you finished with the demonstration?”
“Ah… yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
She nodded, once, and glanced down at the slim screen of her Pip-Buck. “We should go. It’s already past one and we haven’t eaten anything yet.”
Aurora’s wing settled across her back once more. “Thanks for showing us your thing, but yeah. Doctors would throw a fit if they found out I didn’t eat.”
Carbide nodded rather than call out her white lie. Ginger wasn’t sure she was willing to even give him that much. She didn’t like him. Surprises like the one he just pulled were what got good ponies killed.
He lifted a feather to his forehead in a mock salute. “I’ll see you later, then?”
Ideally not.
“We’ll be back down once the talisman arrives.” Aurora put some weight on her as she turned toward the way they came. “Don’t throw away that box, either. Who knows if we might need it?”
He grunted. “Not like the recyclers are working anyway. See you later, bosslady. It was nice meeting you, Ginger.”
She smiled at him but refrained from responding, leading Aurora back through the door and down the rows of empty workbenches in pensive silence. She didn’t care about Carbide, but she could tell by her silence that she’d embarrassed Aurora. When they reached the stairs, Aurora held onto the doorframe with her wing and stopped them.
“You didn’t have to be rude to him.”
“He nearly made you fall.”
“I can handle a fall, Ginger.”
“I know you can.”
“Then let me.” Aurora stared at her unblinkingly, driving her point home. “We’re not in the wastelands anymore. We’re safe here. You don’t need to protect me down here. Okay?”
She couldn’t agree to that, but she could see that Aurora wouldn’t be satisfied until she knew she’d at least try. She took a deep breath and exhaled.
“Okay,” she affirmed. “I’m sorry.”
Aurora watched her with those vibrant green eyes of hers as if searching for more. Eventually her shoulder relaxed and she let go of the doorframe. “Don’t worry,” she said as she mounted the first step. “We’ll adjust to this. I promise.”
A tiny smile crossed her lips and she nodded, hoping that was true. She did feel safe here. It was the other pegasi who bewildered her. Seeing so many of them in one place and not a single one of them with their guard up was beyond alien. It felt irresponsible, as if they were happy to be so vulnerable. 
Hopefully with time she would learn what it felt like not to worry. She’d gotten her first taste of this this morning when they woke and it had been a tiny piece of bliss. It would be nice to have that again.
Aurora nudged her shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hay is for horses.”
She blinked at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “One of my customers was a gryphon. He… made an impression.”
“Huh.” Aurora grimaced as they reached the landing and seemed to deflate a little as they turned to climb the next. “So, speaking of making impressions, we should salvage the one we have with Weathers and let her stretch her legs.”
“Is that really a good idea?” She lit her horn, forming a cushion under Aurora’s missing leg to ease the worst of the climb. The breath of relief she made felt good to hear. “She’s a colonel. They don’t give those pins out to just anyone.”
Aurora winced a little as she pushed into the cup of her magic. “Primrose expects her to be treated well. I don’t want to burn any bridges with her until we’ve crossed them.”
She wrinkled her nose. “And you’re okay with her gathering intelligence on your Stable?”
“What’s she going to find that the Enclave hasn’t already found in a dozen others?”
There was that. She frowned as she tried to come up with an answer to her question, but nothing came to mind. It occurred to her that Aurora was probably right. The Enclave had cracked open more than enough failed Stables to know what to expect when entering a new one. Even now, Ginger was seeing the similarities between Aurora’s home and the several shelters their journey had taken them to. Unless Stable 10 was hiding Equestria’s lost princesses or the secret to time travel, there likely wasn’t anything to be found here they hadn’t seen already.
But still. They were the Enclave.
“I suppose if she’s kept under guard she won’t be able to do much harm,” she hedged.
Aurora snorted. “That mare is huge, but she’s not piss-off-an-entire-Stable huge.”
On the stairs above them, she could already hear the voices from the water line. “Mm.”
She bore the stares of the pegasi still waiting in line for water, doing her best not to let her discomfort show. They murmured, some averted their eyes, and a few little ones could be forgiven for pointing at her with mouths agape. She smiled a little more genuinely at them. They reminded her of the foals they freed from the slave cages outside Kiln, all squeals and curiosity, oblivious for the moment to the lives they’d escaped thanks to the distraction a little levitation provided. That may not work here, but she decided she would find a way. 
By the time they climbed the final step, she could hear the pain in Aurora’s breathing. Her hind leg clicked with each step now, though whether that added to or relieved her discomfort she was too afraid to ask. So as they stepped back into the Level 1 corridor, she asked the next closest question. 
“Is it too early to start thinking about getting you a prosthetic?”
Aurora’s eyebrows went up. “Um. Yeah, once the power’s back on, that’s going to be pretty high up on the to-do list.”
She paused to think. “Is… there a place here that makes those?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s this little Ma n’ Pa shop in the Atrium that sells replacement hooves, legs, all that good stuff.”
A quick look at Aurora let her know she was joking. She shook her head with a quiet laugh. “You’re terrible.”
“I blame the endorphins.” She gripped her a little more tightly, trying to pull some of the weight off her third step. “But, really, I was thinking I would take a stab at building my own.”
The immediate question in Ginger’s mind was whether or not the Stable had a doctor available who might be more fitted to, well, fit an artificial limb to their patient. She admittedly didn’t know much about them beyond the slapdash variety of limbs she’d seen carrying the odd traveler in and out of Junction City, but she wasn’t so sheltered not to know it was more than a matter of strapping two-by-four to someone’s body. 
The longer she thought about it, the more she realized Aurora probably knew that too. Fixing things had been her life prior to leaving the Stable. Losing a leg to Ironshod was more than likely a personal challenge she needed to overcome. She was trying to prove to herself that she could undo the damage he’d done.
Her doubts subsided. 
“Maybe we could work on building that together?”
Aurora immediately perked up. “Yes! I mean, yeah. Definitely.”
“Easy, girl.”
“Nope. Now I’m excited. I’m excited and it’s all your fault.”
She smiled. “I regret nothing.”
As luck would have it, they hadn’t been the only ones thinking about giving the colonel a break from confinement. Making their way back to the Atrium, they walked into an unexpected scene. Or, more accurately, they heard it from the corridor. 
Shouting. A shrill, ragged voice echoed out from the Atrium and hardly so much as a sound filled the breaths in between. A crowd had formed, encircling the scene with quiet disbelief. Ginger and Aurora had to push their way through, nudging pegasi aside until they could see what was happening. What they saw made Ginger’s hackles rise.
Colonel Weathers stood, flanked by two armed deputies, at the center of the gathering. She stood stock still, shoulders locked, her eyes fixed forward well past where the mare shouting obscenities leveled a single haggard feather at her uniform. A cracked bowl lay discarded on the floor. Some kind of thin soup was already in the process of congealing around it. 
“Luna’s night,” she whispered, the mark on the ghoul’s hip unmistakable even from a distance. She’d known she would be here, but it was something different to see her in person. With every violent gesture of her wing, the gold plates of her necklace swung out and thumped her chest. “That’s–”
“Rainbow Dash,” Aurora finished, just as taken aback as Ginger. “Yeah. Looks like she’s making friends. Where the fuck is Sledge?”
A stallion beside her was fast to answer. “Overstallion went down to Agriculture after letting the military mare out for a walk. Apparently she introduced herself in the food line and Rainbow Dash lost it.”
“Over what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Something about her uniform.”
That didn’t make sense. Ginger turned back to the one-sided dressing-down and watched the deputies trying and failing to get her attention long enough to defuse her. Rainbow just shouted above them, shouting obscenity after obscenity at the colonel about her uniform, her decorations, the Enclave…
“Shit. We need to get them away from each other.”
Aurora let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m open to ideas.”
“Weathers respects you. Take her somewhere else. I’ll keep Rainbow Dash occupied… that feels weird to say.”
“Something else to get used to.” Aurora started limping toward the colonel. “Don’t break her. She’s a national artifact.”
Wonderful. She trotted away from the crowd to the irate Element of Loyalty.
“YOU IDOLIZE A FUCKING PSYCHOPATH!! THE ENCLAVE ARE FUCKING MURDERERS AND YOU’RE WEARING THEIR FUCKING UNIFORM!!”
Ginger braced herself and planted her hooves in front of the same ghoul Roach once described in noncommittal details, sharing little more than the nickname he’d given her and the fact that she tended to be feral with fleeting moments of lucidity in between. For several seconds Rainbow Dash didn’t even acknowledge her, simply jabbing her pointed wing over Ginger’s head as she dispensed her vitriol. 
Then, finally, the once proud heroine paused to level her magenta eyes toward her. “Can you fucking move?!”
Behind her, Aurora was already leading Weathers and her escorts into the crowd. Ginger took a breath and summoned enough courage to respond. “I’d like to speak to you in private.”
“I’m not talking to you.” Rainbow pushed her aside and stepped forward, verging on pursuing the colonel. “HEY! I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU YET!!”
She lit her horn, forming a narrow barrier to block her path. A low murmur went up among the onlookers. 
Rainbow stopped and turned, her eyes smoldering. “Put this Twilight Sparkle magic bullshit away before I snap that horn off your head. I said I’m not done with her.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She hadn’t felt this nervous since she packed up her belongings and left New Canterlot. This wasn’t some wasteland nobody she could overpower and walk away from. This was an icon of the old world wanting to blacken the eye of a representative of the faction whose hooves this Stable’s wellbeing now rested in. There was no room for error. Not with what felt like a hundred eyes watching this unfold.
“You are done with her.” 
Rainbow’s lip curled away from her teeth, readying another insult, when she looked to where Weathers had gone and realized she couldn’t see her. The colonel was gone with only a narrow gap in the crowd to have marked her passage. 
She turned fully on Ginger. “Well fuck you, too. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“I still need to speak with you.”
Rainbow scoffed and walked around her, stopping only to pick the chipped bowl off the ground. “Make an appointment.”
Now that it was clear the fight was over, the crowd had begun to disperse. Several lingered, outnumbering those who had left, and they found pockets of like minded pegasi to gossip with in the hopes that something might flare up again. To her credit, Rainbow ignored them completely as she made her way around what was some kind of hastily assembled food line and retrieved a damp rag. Ginger watched her bend down and start wiping up the spilled soup.
“Do you want some help?”
“No,” she said, her tone brittle. “Thank you.”
At least she was coming down from whatever had set her off. She wondered if Roach had told Rainbow what the Enclave was during her moments of clarity or if she’d found out through some other means. The latter seemed more likely. As much as Ginger hated the Enclave for the pain, death, and suffering they inflicted in the name of restoring the old ways, she’d always been able to control the worst of her emotions. 
This mare in front of her couldn’t, and the more she watched, the more Ginger thought she could see the scars of trauma.
Even Rainbow Dash appeared to understand she’d crossed a line. Sensing Ginger wasn’t going away, she glared up at her. “What?”
No judgment. Keep it simple.
“Can we go somewhere private and talk?”
Rainbow looked up at the ceiling in frustration. “How many times do I have to tell you no? I don’t know you. Go… find a lightbulb to screw in, I don’t care. I have to clean this up.”
She stood and deposited the bowl in a waste bin at the end of the food line. After pausing long enough to calm herself, she tossed the rag onto the line and started setting lids over the open pots.
Ginger stepped up to the opposite side and assessed the mess. “Are you really going to pack this all up by yourself?”
Rainbow glanced up and over to the far corner of the Atrium where three pegasi in matching aprons kept their distance. “Looks that way.”
“Ah. I suppose it does.” 
She looked down the line. Several soup pots still steamed atop chemical burners, probably well on their way to forming skins. Empty bowls sat stacked on a bus cart near the waste bin. Dirty spoons bloomed out from several of them like weeds. More lay in trays on the bottom shelf. 
“These all need to go to the kitchen?” She hoped there was a kitchen. They couldn’t possibly throw everything in a recycler. 
Rainbow pursed her lips and raised her brow as if to say, yes, obviously the dishes went to the kitchen, but she stopped short of saying as much. The worst of the anger had gone out of her. Now she was beginning to realize she would have to deal with its fallout.
“I’ll help.”
She endured the look of incredulity Rainbow shot her as she rounded the service line, summoned her magic, and lifted two of the soup pots off their burners. “My name is Ginger, by the way. Where’s the kitchen?”
Rainbow opened her mouth to protest, stopped, then closed it. She flicked a feather toward a tidy little storefront that sported a row of booths and half a dozen freestanding tables. A lightly tarnished sign mounted to the half wall above the entrance dubbed it the Brass Bit in stylish, cursive script. She suspected the tarnish was a patina, and it certainly worked. 
A section of the serving counter had been left propped open. Before Rainbow could find a reason to object, she hurried off with both pots in tow.
The space behind the restaurant was less of a kitchen and more of a nook. An oven, fryer, a wide flat stovetop and a pair of metal sink basins occupied one tiled wall while the other appeared to be a solid countertop sectioned off for dish storage, vegetable cutting, and other prep work. At the end of the line stood a familiar door that gave Ginger pause. It wasn’t the same freezer, but it was close enough. She set the pots onto the cold stovetop and tried not to think about it.
She returned to the Atrium and picked up the last pot. Rainbow said nothing, but she didn’t stop her either. It went on the stove next to the other two. After squinting at the controls, she figured out how to turn the burners on their lowest settings and arranged the pots so they would stay warm.
They continued like that for several minutes. Rainbow wiped down the surfaces while Ginger pulled the dirty dishes out of her way. Only when the bowls and spoons were in the sink, the chemical burners doused, and the remaining dishware picked up where residents had left them around the Atrium did Rainbow finally acknowledge her.
“You’re the unicorn who helped Aurora.”
It wasn’t a question so much as it was a statement of fact. Ginger didn’t know what to do with that, so she simply nodded.
“I guess the horn gives it away,” she continued, wrapping her feathers over the edge of the waste bin and pushing it toward the kitchen. It trundled along on rollers mounted to the base. Clever design, Ginger thought.
Rainbow’s eyes dipped to her saddlebags as she pushed past her. Ginger braced the motley stack of bowls in her magic and rolled the bus cart after her. “Stable-Tec Field Support. Bet it took some work to get those restored.”
“They’re part of the reason I wanted to speak to you.”
Rainbow nodded, pretending to be interested. The wheels of the trash can stuttered over the kitchen threshold where she parked it, bundled the bag shut in her wing, and carried it to the freezer door. Ginger stopped short of following and watched Rainbow pull the door open and set the bag alongside several others. She wondered where else the residents here had been forced to stow their garbage.
The door pulled shut and slapped against the gaskets, making Ginger jump. 
Rainbow kept her eyes low and turned to leave. Ginger felt herself tensing as Rainbow started tracking toward the narrow gap between her and the door, but in a moment of pure impulse she moved to block her.
“I would really prefer to do this now.”
Rainbow’s necklace swung forward with a soft jingle when she stopped. They stood there, staring at one another in the hopes the other would back down for what seemed like an eternity before, finally, Rainbow grit her teeth and stepped away. She paced back into the kitchen, shaking her head as she bit back something she clearly wanted to say, then turned and leaned her gaunt shoulder against the countertop.
“I’m having a real hard time deciding whether you’re a fan, a history nerd, or just nosy.” She gestured back and forth between them. “We don’t know each other, and I sure don’t know your friend. I get that you two are helping the Stable but what you’re doing right now is seriously weirding me out. And if you’re just here to lecture me about what I said out there, do yourself a favor and save it. Sledge is going to be pissed enough for the both of us, and that toy soldier bitch deserved it.”
Silence reigned. Ginger needed a moment to navigate that minefield. 
“Alright,” she said, hoping there wasn’t an ego attached to the fame. “Lot to unpack there. I’m not a fan, or a stalker, or whatever. I was hoping to speak with you when we arrived yesterday but you weren’t around.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I would have been a distraction. Besides, I see that tunnel enough in my nightmares.”
She frowned. “You dream?”
“It’s a figure of speech. Nobody dreams anymore.” Seeing her discomfort, Rainbow let out a sigh and added, “Look, I’m not going to apologize for what I said to Colonel Whatsherface. I’m sorry that I made a scene, but everything I told that towering bitch was true.”
Hesitantly, she nodded. “I’m not saying I disagree with you, but Colonel Weathers is… grudgingly… a guest here. I don’t have anything kind to say about the Enclave. I lived the first half of my life shielded from knowing the things they did to be where they are and I’ve been marked for the rest of it for having been forced to do something for them that I can never take back.”
Rainbow eyed the dirty bowls on the bus cart and reached out with one of the wings responsible for birthing an aerial phenomenon, hooking a feather over the lip of the cart and pulling it toward the sink. “So you cornered me just to say I should be nicer because she’s a guest.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” She lit her horn and started helping unload the dishes in with the rest sitting at the bottom of the sink. “I’m suggesting that given the stakes, a little diplomacy will go a long way to ensuring the Enclave’s cooperation. They’re not offering this talisman out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re doing it because their little cult has a deep fascination with preserving this Stable. I don’t want anything happening that might make them have second thoughts.”
Rainbow muttered something under her breath, then turned a knob next to the faucet and watched the sink begin to fill. Once the neatly stacked dishes were submerged, she cut the flow and stirred in a capful of chemicals that emitted a strong antiseptic odor. “I can’t believe they’re still around.”
Ginger hummed agreement despite her feeling that they weren’t talking about the same Enclave. She debated probing a little but thought better of it. “A lot of things survived.”
“Like those bags of yours.” She chewed at her lip as she reread the embossment. “Sledge told me Aurora was trying to get to Stable-Tec’s Headquarters over in Filly. Looks like you found it.”
She lit her horn, undoing the strap cinched around her belly. “We did.”
Rainbow turned to stare at the tiled wall. “How much is still there?”
“It was hit by one of the bombs.” Her bags slumped onto the floor between them. One of Rainbow’s hooves started up a nervous bouncing. “Half of the city is gone or ruined, but Roach found a bunker beneath the bomb crater. He’s okay, by the way. It wasn’t safe for him to come here.”
She slouched against the sink and nodded. “Okay.”
“He misses you.”
“Okay.”
She waited to see if she would say more, but Rainbow just continued staring at her own miserable reflection in the tile wall. Maybe she should have mentioned Roach at the start. Too late now. She tried to remind herself that this could have gone a lot worse than it was currently. At the end of the day she might not walk away with an autograph or a story she wanted to tell, but at least she could say she did right by her.
“When we were down there, we found…” she hesitated. We found Applebloom. She couldn’t just say that, could she? It wasn’t just a lone ghoul inside that bunker. An entire cache of untouched resources lay beneath that crater, and with it several power sources tied directly to Stable-Tec’s hidden network. What if Rainbow Dash insisted they organize a rescue? How could they accomplish that without the Steel Rangers or the Enclave noticing? The Rangers had already shown their willingness to kill for the opportunity to exploit the resources of one Stable. What would happen if they used the network to locate all the others hidden in their territory?
Rainbow crossed her hooves over the lip of the sink and looked at her. “You found what?”
She couldn’t tell her. Scootaloo was too far gone and Applebloom had chosen to stay to protect the Stables. She didn’t want to be rescued.
“Ruins,” she lied. “Mostly ruins. But when we were looking around, Roach found your jacket.”
Rainbow frowned. “My jacket?”
She nodded, opening the flap of her saddlebag. “It was hanging inside of an office.”
Recognition dawned on Rainbow’s face. “I completely forgot about that.”
From the bottom of her bag rose a neatly folded lump of gauze. She drifted it to Rainbow who, while bewildered by the gift, turned from the sink and accepted it in her remaining wing. Uncertain of what to do, she searched Ginger for an explanation. 
“It was in your pocket,” she murmured. “I’m pretty sure it still belongs to you.”
Rainbow swallowed. 
She bent her feathers, rolled the bundle over, and nudged the flaps of gauze open. Her eyes grew wide. She sat down, wing trembling, stunned into silence by the gemstone resting inside it. For a long while she tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. She lifted a hoof and touched the empty necklace around her neck, and Ginger watched Rainbow bite back tears as she pressed her lost element into its socket.
It clicked against the metal.
She froze. Her eyes, vibrant and alive just seconds ago, were vacant.
Rainbow Dash was gone.
> Chapter 40: The Death of Magic
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as they were free of the Atrium, Aurora let herself breathe.
“Alright,” she said, doing her absolute best to keep her tone in check. “Care to explain what that was about?”
Colonel Weathers strolled beside her, eyes forward, her ghostly stripes stilled with what could only be described as professional calm. If she was ashamed or embarrassed in any way, it didn’t show. For a mare who easily stood a full head above anyone else in the Stable, it made her feel like she was walking beside a living statue. 
Aurora took her down a side corridor away from the IT wing. She didn’t feel like fielding uncomfortable questions about why the server room still had power.
Weathers cleared her throat. “Frankly, I think it’s more pertinent to discuss why a ghoul is residing within your Stable. How long has it been here?”
It. The word stung like a barb. One of the deputies behind them opened his mouth to answer, but he stopped short when Aurora shot him a look. “That’s not important,” she muttered.
The colonel let out a tiny sigh. Whether it was an expression of disappointment or a hint toward a decision being made was up for debate. “I disagree,” she said. “Stable 10 is meant to be a time capsule for the old world’s strongest gene pool. The presence of a ghoul, no matter how brief, stands good odds of weakening a vital population.”
Aurora set her jaw and braced herself for the Enclave’s laundry list of reasons why the pegasi here had to remain pure, why Ginger had been a gracious exception, and why the mare who just lit into Weathers needed to leave immediately. If the colonel believed a neatly pressed uniform and a rank entitled her to dictate the terms of Aurora’s deal with Primrose, she could think again. Nothing was changing until she had confirmation that their ignition talisman was here, and even then Aurora would make sure Weathers was kept far away from any sources of communication until she had the talisman in her feathers. Let her chastise the far side of a locked door. She was done haggling over the terms of her home’s survival.
She frowned, then, when Weathers offered nothing else beyond her first dissents. Weird. Aurora glanced up at her wondering if she was waiting for a response, but Weathers continued to look straight ahead, her gaze occasionally pulled by the odd door plaque or the maze of conduits overhead. The Enclave never shied away from their open disgust toward ghouls before. She was leaving a lot on the table. 
“That’s it?” she prodded. “You’re not going to tell me I have to kick her out?”
Weathers pursed her lips and glanced away. “I’m trying to decide if I have that authority.”
Aurora blinked. Then it clicked. “You recognized her, didn't you? That’s why you let her talk to you that way.”
Weathers shuffled her wings with clear discomfort, her neutral mask slipping. “You wouldn’t be the first to attempt passing a synthetic reconstruction off as the genuine article.” After a long moment of walking in silence, she added, “But it’s… her reaction to me was too articulate to be encoded. That was her, wasn’t it?”
There were several parts of what the colonel said that Aurora desperately wished to dig deeper into, but she thought better of it. “Yeah, that’s her. Or what’s left of her.”
Weathers grew more troubled. She took a breath and risked a glance down at Aurora, wearing the same expression Julip had adopted when she began to more closely examine the lies she’d been raised on. “The archives all confirmed Rainbow Dash was in Fillydelphia when the bombs fell. If she’s been here this whole time, why didn’t she ever reach out to tell anyone she lived? The hope her survival could have provided in those first months after…”
Behind her, Deputy Chaser piped up. “Well, we only just brought her in a couple of weeks ago.”
If she had both hind legs, Aurora would have thought hard about kicking him in the shin. Weathers looked between the two of them, more perplexed than ever, and it wasn’t hard to tell she wouldn’t let something that significant go ignored. 
“None of us knew she survived,” Aurora explained, leading her to the stalled lifts at the end of the corridor. She wasn’t looking forward to bumbling down more stairs on an already sore leg, but apparently this had become the tour Aurora promised and she wasn’t going to spend it walking laps around the residential corridors. 
Besides, she wanted to touch base with her dad. 
They filed into the stairwell and Aurora braced herself by grabbing the inner railing. “You know about the landslide that buried the tunnel, right?”
Weathers nodded. “Of course.”
“Rainbow Dash was one of a few hundred evacuees who got trapped inside.” She grimaced at the effort it took to do something as simple as walk down a flight of stairs. “Spitfire closed the Stable before any non-pegasi could make it inside. Rainbow didn’t arrive until after the door was sealed along with my friend Roach. The radiation did the rest. Don’t ask me how that works.”
She looked back at Weathers, who had gone silent. The officer stared through her toward the next landing, her plodding gait going tense.
“Yeah.” Aurora grasped the railing’s curve and bounced her backside around until she was facing the next set of steps. “We only knew about Rainbow living in the tunnel after I left home. She’s been on the edge of going feral for two hundred years and Roach spent all that time keeping her from going over. I guess she’s still working through a lot of that trauma. Sledge says ever since he brought her inside, she’s been getting better.”
Weathers shook her head as she rounded the landing. “Assuming your friend told you the truth… that’s a lot to process.”
“There’s footage, if you need proof.”
“I may. It might also help explain some of the things we found when we cleared the Rangers out of the tunnel.”
She tried not to imagine what “clearing them out” meant in practice, but something told her the Enclave hadn’t politely asked the last holdouts to go home. Her thoughts immediately pivoted back to the large mound of fresh rubble that had been deposited near the tunnel entrance, and the shattered suits of power armor thrown on top of it. If the Enclave had moved the bones left in the tunnel when Aurora first crawled into the wasteland, she hoped they did better than throwing them onto the pile.
Weathers hummed. “She’s missing a wing. Bringing her home is going to be difficult if she can’t fly on her own.”
Aurora slowed to a stop. “She is home.”
To her credit Weathers didn’t dismiss her outright, but the intention of overriding her was there all the same. “Did she tell you that herself?”
She started to answer but quickly found herself short on words. Even the deputies trailing them further up the stairs seemed unsure. Weathers had a point. Was life in Stable 10 really what Rainbow Dash needed if her survival carried with it the potential of inspiring the wasteland? Did anyone ask her what she wanted?
“I don’t know if Sledge has had that conversation with her yet.” She pointedly avoided the colonel’s gaze as she reached the next landing and limped toward the open door. “But she’s not going anywhere with you.”
The silence between them grew strained as Weathers ducked through the low doorway and followed her into the Hydroponics wing, and Aurora’s stomach clutched at the sight of so much disarray in what used to be a pristine place. The single wide corridor that bisected the entire level glowed with the same dim lights studded neatly along the ceiling. The normally spotless floors were smeared dark with clods of soil and mud, drawing tracks to and from the many permaculture labs throughout the wing.
Her chest tightened with a twinge of anxiety. It was too familiar to ignore. All the doors stood open allowing the disparate smells of mulch and disturbed soil to freely mingle, creating an odor similar to the decay they discovered in the gardens of Stable 1. She swallowed and focused on her breathing. This was different, she told herself. Everything was going to be okay.
Weathers noticed the change in her demeanor. “We can table this for later, if you like.”
“Appreciate it.” She responded a little more tersely than she intended. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The sharpest edges of her discomfort dulled, allowing her to think more clearly. “Thanks, I mean,” she added, stepping deeper into the corridor. “This is our Hydroponics wing, where we grow our crops.”
As she passed the first pair of open doors, she had to bite back her shock upon seeing what used to be lush rows of spinach cut down to the soil. The next set of doors revealed the same. “At least I think we still do.”
At first blush, the gardens were a wholesale disaster. She’d never been formally trained by anyone but she had spent enough time hanging around her dad in her teenage years to pick up the basics. Everything that had fruited had been harvested and aggressively pruned back. In the gardens that had yet to mature, the emergency lights had been wrapped in black bags to induce early dormancy, or at least she thought that was the purpose. The soil was already cracking around the stalks of several vegetables, the remaining leaves yellowing around the edges. It would be months before the gardens recovered. Longer before the next harvest would be ready. The entire cycle had been disrupted.
The trickle of running water caught her ear, accompanied by a melodic humming she was hard pressed to forget. Her dad loved music as much as her mom had, and when Aurora was small and prone to playing with anything and everything she could get her feathers on, their bedroom record player had been strictly off limits. The cost the Fabrication team charged to build it had not been cheap, or so she’d been told many times over, nor had the records. Aurora smiled at the familiar murmur of Dear Hearts and Gentle People, her dad’s personal favorite. 
She found him scrubbing lichens off the snap pea trellises in the sink basin at the back of PERMACULTURE 40. The vines had already been cut back and the peas plucked, save for a small wingful tucked into a shallow plastic container set beside the sink. She stopped at the doorway for a moment and watched him work, occasionally setting down a muddy scrub brush to pick a pea pod from the container and pop it in his mouth. Leave it to her dad to find the silver lining in the worst circumstances.
She tapped her hoof against the open door frame. “Hey Dad.”
Dusky Pinfeathers spun around like a colt caught with his feathers in the cookie jar, spotted his daughter, and gestured at himself with chagrin as he cheeked his purloined peas. 
“Look who’s awake!” He reached back and turned the knob above the basin until the tap gurgled to a stop. 
As Aurora stepped into the room, she noted the faint smell of bleach in the air. Hydroponics must have decided to take advantage of the situation and do a deep clean on their equipment before what was setting up to be an intense replanting season. She met him halfway down the rows and forgave him for the wet slap of feathers over her back as he yanked her into a hug.
“Sorry,” she chuckled, squeezing him back just to assure herself she was really here again. “I can barely remember what time it was when we got back. I still feel like I could sleep for another day.”
He gave her a firm pat before grabbing her shoulders and stepping back to assess. “How’s your leg? Did you go to the infirmary yet?”
She tried not to let her reluctance show. Doctors and Aurora didn’t exactly get along in the past, namely due to her long standing habit of dealing with work injuries on her own. The few times she’d been badgered into visiting Medical had been at Sledge’s behest when he threatened to give her a vacation if she refused. Somehow it was always the same doctor who saw her, a gray-maned stallion named Fetlock. He never failed to “charm” her with some anecdote aimed at chastising her for the little welding burns or the inevitable bruises along her wings marking the places that the generator had fought back. 
The worst part always came at the end of each visit when he would inevitably chart her reproductive conformation. Every pegasus had to endure the annual embarrassment whether they’d entered into the breeding lottery or not, and Aurora was no exception. Tail up and over, a cold speculum, and the unnecessary “hm’s” and “mmhm’s” as he jotted down his notes. Then the unceremonious wipe to remove the excess lubricant and a not-so-subtle suggestion that if she were to enter the lottery, he had no doubt they would be as healthy as her.
Not even a fucking lollypop.
“Not yet, but it’s on the way,” she said, nodding back to the mare behind her. “I’m giving the colonel the poor mare’s tour of the Stable. Colonel Weathers, this is my dad, Dusky.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Weathers said. 
Her dad nodded with the polite smile he reserved for anyone he privately disapproved of. Aurora tried not to grin at that. Point one for dad.
“Well you missed the big harvest,” he said, gesturing a damp wing toward the yet to be disassembled trellises sticking out of their dirt rows. “It’ll be a while before we’re back to complaining about bruised tomatoes, so until then we’ll be subsisting off what we can preserve. Hopefully by the time we run out we’ll have a new rotation ready. Otherwise we’ll need to start dipping into the dry stores.”
He chuckled to himself. “I wouldn’t want to be near Sanitation if that happens.”
Aurora snorted at that. When she was ten, her teacher took her class down to Supply to sample the freeze dried emergency rations the Stable kept stocked at all times. Artichoke hearts were bad enough on their own, but after being desiccated and stored for over a century, they made chalk look appetizing. They were also an excellent way to cancel a week’s worth of bowel movements, or so the rumors said.
Weathers listened, but her attention shifted to the sink he had been working at. “Is this also where you bury your dead?”
Aurora’s eyes widened. “That’s not–”
Her dad lifted his wing in well mannered reassurance and placed his feathers on Aurora’s shoulder, gently pulling her away from Weathers. “It’s alright. Our guest asked a very astute question.” He slipped into his field-trip voice without skipping a beat, having entertained many curious foals when their classroom came down to see where their food came from. “Yes, we do. It’s been our tradition since the Stable sheltered the first generation. We come from the earth, so it’s only natural we give ourselves back to the earth when our story ends.”
Weathers looked thoughtfully at one of the nearby plots and dipped the rim of her hoof through the dry crust of soil. “It’s very poetic.”
Aurora set her jaw. “It is, isn’t it?”
Weathers blinked at the hostility in her tone, but Aurora wasn’t about to open the floor to a public survey of her feelings. She turned to her dad who regarded her with a tiny smirk she hadn’t seen since the two of them almost burned the family compartment down trying to make dinner for her mom. It was a happy coincidence, Aurora thought, that she was planning something along the same lines for tonight.
“When are you planning to do dinner today?”
He smiled a little more broadly and looked upon the scraggly bits of vine that still clung to over half of the empty trellises. “As soon as I finish up here. Why? Do I finally get to meet the other half?”
Of course he knew. She rolled her eyes as he gave her shoulder a paternal squeeze. “I mean… yeah. I was thinking it’d be nice if the two of you got to know each other a little better.”
He was beaming. “I’d really like that, honey. Just the three of us, right?”
Winters looked away with a chuckle. Aurora ignored her.
“Just us. Any chance we could eat at your compartment? Mine’s kind of a mess, and I’m not sure how long it’ll be until everyone starts asking questions about the wasteland. I’m not sure how I should answer when they do.”
He gave her another squeeze and let her go. “Start with the truth and go from there. As for dinner, stop by the compartment after six and I’ll have something ready for us to eat. Just bring yourselves. You still know where it is, right?”
That cut a little, but she didn’t let him see it. “Six o’clock. We’ll be there.”
With that, he took a breath and looked between her and Weathers. “Well don’t let me keep you from the tour. I’m sure you have a lot more Stable to cover.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. Not far from where they stood was the garden where her mom had been laid to rest. After the crack about their burials, Weathers had just earned herself the abbreviated version. “Depends on how fast I can limp,” she joked.
“You make sure you bring that limp to the infirmary, Aurora. I’m serious.”
She knew he was, even if he was making sure to keep his tone on the lighter side, and she was certain he would ask her again as soon as she and Ginger showed up for dinner. Chances were low there was any treatment the doctors here could offer that would undo an amputation, but her dad was right. At the very least she needed to get these old bandages changed out for new ones and maybe some pain medicine to go with them. If Dr. Fetlock wanted to pull a speculum out of the freezer for her while she was there, it was his funeral.
“I’ll go right now,” she assured him, making her way back to the corridor with Weathers in tow. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
He lifted a feather and waved after her. “Bring an appetite. Love you, honey.”
“Love you too, dad.”
Aurora pointedly ignored the strange look Weathers gave her as they left Hydroponics behind, and the colonel mercifully kept her comments to herself. They paused at the stairwell to allow a trio of pegasi through, their eyes following the two undressed mares as their cheeks reddened. Her fellow residents drew the colonel’s curiosity as they mounted the steps, and when she asked the deputies behind her whether she had done something wrong, the two stallions clammed up with their own mumbled dismissals. Aurora laughed under her breath and pulled herself up with the railing, grateful that the infirmary was only one level up.
On its own, Medical took up roughly two-thirds of the space allotted to level three with the remainder dedicated to the Stable’s daycare. A sign posted next to the stairwell door notified residents that they were about to enter Medical - a gentle but necessary reminder to those new parents who had inadvertently taken the wrong stairwell in the hopes that they wouldn’t use the sterilized corridors as a shortcut. It worked sometimes, and only sometimes, much to the dismay of the fifty or so residents working here.
Dim lights greeted them as they had everywhere else. Aurora led Weathers into the carpeted beige waiting area where a fidgety white stallion regarded the packed seats with unmasked trepidation. For a split second Aurora felt like she was back at Autumn Song’s solar array with her diminutive secretary Quincy eyeing her with guarded interest. She shook off the memory and stepped through two short rows of chairs, one of which was occupied by a mare clutching her stomach in absolute misery, while the rest appeared to be filled by residents who all looked like they were waiting for somebody else. A few pegasi even loitered by the reception desk, murmuring among themselves while the nurse receptionist tried his best to ignore them.
When he looked up to see two more visitors headed toward him, his demeanor momentarily darkened with resignation. Aurora frowned back as she eyed the crowd, trying to decide for herself whether it would be better to just leave and avoid catching whatever bug had started going around since she left.
The nurse receptionist made the decision for her when he rose to meet her. “Oh, good. You got our message.”







“Miss Dressage, would you please sit down, yer makin’ me nervous.”
Ginger bit down on the urge to snap at the old biddy as she reached the end of the long viewing window, turned, and paced the way she came. Sledge and Opal had seated themselves in chairs provided by the medical staff, and a third remained for Ginger that she couldn’t bring herself to sit in. Every last nerve in her body was awash in a torrent of nervous energy. She looked toward the double doors at the end of the hall, her impatience rising alongside her frustration. Where was Aurora? The nurse said she would have someone go get her and that had been almost ten minutes ago. 
She tipped her eyes toward the ceiling and tried to blink away anxious tears. Through the window they could all see Rainbow Dash lying on a gurney while multiple doctors stood around her in deep discussion, not one of them showing an ounce of initiative as they seemed too afraid to do anything. She reached the opposite end of the window and turned around to retrace her steps.
“Ginger,” Sledge urged her. “Come sit down.”
“They’re not doing anything.”
She’d been hammering at that point ever since several pegasi she didn’t know helped carry Rainbow down to the infirmary. Most of them were in the waiting room now, strangers suddenly roped into something they couldn’t disinvest themselves from any more than Ginger could. That had been less than a quarter hour ago. 
“She’s breathin’, ain’t she?”
She shot a look at Opal. “Barely.”
Sledge pressed his lips together and sighed. “Because she’s a ghoul. Staring down the doctors won’t make them figure it out any faster.”
She was tempted to point out the doctors hadn’t so much as spared any of them a second glance since they all piled into the exam room. They had left the curtains open as a courtesy to the overstallion, but Ginger wanted to pull open the door and shout for them to just rip off the necklace. It was plain as day that it was doing something to Rainbow, but when Ginger had tried to pry the gem out of its socket with her magic it had been like touching her brain to a live wire. It had been her startled yelp that attracted the attention of the other residents and the brief disorienting pain had thoroughly deterred Ginger from picking Rainbow up with her magic. 
She stared into the exam room, hating how helpless she felt. Rechargeable lanterns hung at either end of the room gave the illusion that the power was back on, chasing the doctors’ shadows into the corridor where they waited. She grit her teeth as one of them wrapped his feathers under Rainbow’s necklace and pulled, only to stop once he confirmed the jewelry was still locked into its inexplicable stasis as well as its bearer.
The doors at the end of the hall thumped open. She whirled around and breathed relief at the sight of Aurora, only for that feeling to be replaced with a simmering dread at the sight of Weathers following close behind. As she approached, Aurora looked to her, then Opal and Sledge with visible confusion. 
“What’s going on? Did someone get hurt?”
Ginger braced herself for the inevitable as Aurora limped toward the viewing window and frowned at the scene inside. She had trusted her to calm Rainbow down and explicitly told her to be careful with her. At the time it had sounded more like a joke but now she couldn’t help but worry she’d missed the seriousness of such a simple statement. She should have waited before giving the element back to Rainbow. They should have discussed it with Sledge. He knew Rainbow better than anyone and may have spotted a red flag that she didn’t.
One of the first thoughts Aurora had upon learning Coldbrook had given the order to excavate the tunnel was to tell Sledge to get Rainbow Dash inside. She never once asked what Rainbow meant to Aurora or the pegasi who raised her. How angry would she be? How much trust in her was Aurora losing as she stared through that window?
“What happened?”
Ginger wasn’t sure where to begin. Luckily, Sledge stepped in to save her.
“They think she might’ve had something called an absence seizure,” he rumbled from his chair, noting the confused tilt of Aurora’s ear. “Don’t ask me what that means. Far as I can tell, this looks like how she gets right before Blue takes over.”
Colonel Weathers frowned at him. “Blue?”
Sledge pressed his lips shut, unwilling to answer.
Ginger scratched at the back of her foreleg, nervous. “It happened right after she took back her element. One second she’s putting it in its socket and the next thing I know all the lights are out and no one’s home. She just slumped over like…”
She stopped short of finishing. Aurora was looking at her now, face furrowed with deep concern.
“Are you okay?”
She fumbled a little, momentarily unsure if she’d been on tenterhooks waiting for something ridiculous to happen or if Aurora was only keeping her irritation hidden. Only when Aurora turned to face her more directly did she realize she was getting herself worked up over nothing. Aurora wasn’t angry. She was worried. 
“I’m okay,” she murmured. “Just a little shocked by all this.”
She sensed Aurora’s relief and let go of some of the tension she’d been holding onto. Now that she was thinking more clearly, she could see the subtle signs that Aurora was in pain again. She lit her horn and nudged the underside of Aurora’s wing until she dutifully draped it over her back, taking some of the weight of her hind leg. With Sledge and Opal leaning into a private conversation behind them, they faced the window to watch the doctors scratch their heads. 
“They think her element did that to her?”
“We don’t know yet. Sledge tried to go in to talk to one of them and they only had guesses.” She shook her head, watching as they struggled to draw blood from Rainbow’s foreleg. “Maybe something is wrong with the stone. When I tried to pull it off of her it shocked me.”
“Should they be touching it, then?”
One of the doctors had set his hooves against the gurney and wrapped his feathers around the necklace’s delicate scrollwork, pulling a little harder the longer he held on. He nearly kicked the gurney out from under Rainbow before his colleagues yelled at him to stop. It was surreal enough just to watch, as if the Element of Harmony was selectively rooting itself in three dimensions when it sensed it was being interfered with. As soon as the doctor let go, the golden plates resumed their gentle rise and fall in tune with Rainbow’s breathing.
“I think it responded to my magic,” she said, recalling how intensely it had rebuffed her attempt to dislodge it. “It’s doing something to her and I don’t think it wants to be interrupted.”
A deeper voice joined them. “If she’s the Element of Loyalty, that stone shouldn’t be capable of doing anything to her.”
Ginger frowned up at the colonel looming behind them. She’d nearly forgotten she was still here, enjoying her leisure time while the deputies tasked with watching her loitered uselessly halfway down the hall. She made a quiet noise of disgust for their transparent attempt to dump their assignment on them.
Weathers seemed to share the same sentiment, but it clearly bothered her less. “The Tree of Harmony burned with everything else when the bombs fell. Even if the stones were capable of working independently of their bearers, which they’re not, balefire would have burned off any magic it held generations ago.”
Ginger looked to Aurora, who gave the tiniest shake of her head. Weathers didn’t have the full story, and neither of them were looking for an excuse to clue her in.
“Maybe the Tree survived.” Aurora posited.
“The crater where it grew suggests otherwise.” Weathers shuffled her wings in irritation. “I want to speak to her when she wakes up.”
“If she wakes up,” Ginger muttered.
Weathers stepped toward the window, her face grim. “If she’s an Element of Harmony, she will.”
The words fell from her mouth like stones. Ginger couldn’t help but feel a deep, familiar sense of discomfort being this close to someone still tied to the Enclave’s teachings. The fanaticism preached in the Chapel of the Two Sisters didn’t just create followers devoted to the renewal of a golden era; it reinforced a system of knee-jerk hostility toward anyone who might suggest those teachings were imperfect. Rainbow Dash, as she existed now, represented that imperfection to the letter. To devoted followers like Weathers, unicorns were a fallen caste responsible for the very balefire that immolated the Equestrian utopia, and the fact that some of them used the smallest shimmer of magic left after the destruction was widely regarded as a minor sin. It didn’t take a scholar to tell that Weathers blamed what was happening now on Ginger’s supposedly tainted magic. She could talk sense to Weathers until she was blue in the face and the colonel would never listen.
Behind them, Sledge spoke up. “What do you need to speak to her about?”
Unsurprisingly, Weathers was more receptive to an inquiry from a fellow pegasi. 
“It’s a private matter.”
Or not.
Sledge leaned forward. His chair creaked. “Would this private matter have anything to do with Rainbow Dash calling you a traitor?”
The colonel didn’t invoke her status or hide behind her uniform to shut him down. That alone was strange behavior for someone of her status. She stared at Sledge, seemingly prepared for the accusation. Then she turned back to the window, watching the doctors move away from Rainbow’s bed to confer. “It’s not every day you meet your foalhood hero. Less often that they call you their enemy. I still don’t understand what I did to make her so angry.”
Sledge tapped his hoof on the floor and sighed. His expression grew stony as he looked at the three of them. “She has her reasons.”
Ginger traded glances with Aurora and felt a strange comfort knowing she appeared just as confused as she was. 
Weathers half-turned to face Sledge with renewed interest. “I’m listening.”
He shook his head, looking past them for a moment as if to convince himself that Rainbow was still in her trance. “Not here. This isn’t something I want the Stable finding out about. Not until things settle down first.”
Aurora frowned. “Sledge, what’re you talking about?”
He ignored her and turned to Opal who had taken to looking down at the floor, her eyes troubled. “Do you mind staying here in case the doctors have an update?”
She shot him a disquieted look as if she were ready to argue, but then she just shrugged. “Go ahead. But if yer gonna show ‘em, show ‘em everything.”







The overstallion led the three of them back upstairs where the crowded Atrium had since thinned out to a few kitchen staff and the wingful of residents passing the time on the benches surrounding the two large planters at either side of the communal space. The power may be out but their Pip-Bucks glowed without complaint, powered by miniaturized versions of the talismans that the Steel Rangers hoarded for their armored suits. 
Weathers followed behind Aurora and her unicorn mate, idly observing the dim glow of the emergency lights while feeling the relief that Spitfire’s chosen pegasi weren’t making the decision that Stable 85 had. Their Stable had encountered a similar problem as this one, though their generator’s failure had been caused by simple neglect and nothing to do with its talisman. A catastrophic mechanical failure had resulted in their generator tearing a large section of itself to pieces, killing several workers in the process. Repairs couldn’t be done without power, and power couldn’t be restored without repairs. It was a case of a snake eating its own tail, and according to what were now well-studied transcripts from the time, a potential solution was floated by a low level Pip-Buck technician and its popularity gained immediate traction with the rest of the population. 
Not two days after the first mention of harvesting the M.A.S.T. talismans out of the Pip-Bucks were the ponies of Mechanical putting it into practice. Residents reportedly lined up to donate their Pip-Bucks, believing with enough talismans wired together in series they could generate enough electricity to repair their generator and save their Stable. Most Enclave scholars agreed that the makeshift battery they created held five to six hundred talismans in total, though the number was rumored to be higher than that. Unbeknownst to the residents of Stable 85, they hadn’t created a battery. They’d effectively made a bomb. 
When the Enclave got word that 85 had gone offline and teams were sent to recover its tech, they found the lower third of the Stable a charred void. The shockwave of the explosion had momentarily pressurized the sealed shelter, killing its population in a matter of seconds. While the loss of life had been tragic, it was regarded by many as one of the more merciful ends some Stables had experienced. They’d all gone not knowing their Stable had been doomed from the beginning, dying just forty years shy of the date Stable-Tec had planned to gradually pump hallucinogens into the overseer’s office.
Probably not a story she should share as they filed inside Sledge’s office at the top of the Atrium. From what she’d seen so far of Stable 10, which wasn’t much, she could see the obvious signs of a community that had their shit together. Judging by the way Sledge carried himself, he was either very new to leadership in general or just new to his role as overstallion. Still, the corridors remained clear for the most part and the pegasi roaming the halls appeared more inconvenienced than afraid. It remained to be seen how long that would last when word spread about Rainbow Dash’s incapacitation. 
Weathers frowned a little as Sledge turned his terminal to where they had gathered around the side of his desk. A large part of her refused to believe the ghoul in the infirmary could be Rainbow Dash. Cutie marks could be faked. Manes could be dyed. Ghouls were not in short supply in Equestria, despite the Enclave’s best efforts to correct that problem within their own territory. The Rangers’ grumbling tolerance of ghouls within their territory was the root of the problem. And yet no one around Weathers appeared to be acting. Watching the doctors fail to remove the necklace from the ghoul’s neck as if it were locked in place had been unsettling in how convincing their concern was. At least some of them, it appeared, believed she was the genuine article. A ministry mare and folk hero whom everyone assumed died when a zebra missile detonated in Fillydelphia had apparently been trapped in a pocket of tunnel when the bombs triggered a landslide.
The odds of it happening at all were extraordinarily slim. The Enclave had records of Rainbow Dash’s schedule on that last day and all evidence pointed to her arriving at Stable-Tec Headquarters as expected. To cross the distance between there and Stable 10 during the apex of Vhanna’s attack and survive? Weathers doubted she could sell those odds to the gamblers of New Las Pegasus, let alone anyone with half a sense of how impossible that flight would have been. It hardly bore thinking about.
And yet…
“...do I have your word on that?”
Weathers blinked, suddenly aware Sledge was speaking to her. She chastised herself for allowing herself to daydream and tried not to look as annoyed as she suddenly felt. “I’m sorry, say that again?”
For his part, he kept his composure well. “I want your word that you will not share with your people what I’m about to show you. Not until our generator is repaired and our door is locked.”
The terminal was on now. Its screen glowed with a short list of files evidently meant to be opened in order. None of the file names gave her any clue to what might be on them. She didn’t appreciate being asked to agree to blind terms, either.
Sensing her hesitation, Sledge added, “You want to know why Rainbow called you a traitor today. Your answer is here.”
He was right. If the mare who accosted her was the true Element of Loyalty, then her career could rest on knowing why Rainbow accused her of disloyalty. If whatever Sledge planned to show her ended up being a hoax or a collection of loosely interpreted pre-war propaganda, she could safely consider his deal to be made in bad faith and would lose no sleep over informing Minister Primrose of her findings. 
“You have my word.”
Unless he planned on hooking her up to a lie detector he had no way of knowing whether she could be trusted or not, and he certainly knew it too. He’d committed himself by bringing her here. What would be the point if he backed out now?
As expected, he nodded with a grunt and leaned toward the terminal keyboard. Weathers couldn’t help but feel she was looming over them as Ginger helped Aurora into one of the guest chairs, the three of them finding seats while she remained standing. She chose not to comment and watched the terminal screen flicker as a grainy video began to play.
Weathers watched the first moments play out with confusion, then curiosity, and finally with growing concern. It took her several seconds to recognize the tunnel from the camera’s high vantage point. It took her longer to notice the significance of the timestamp in the corner. October 31st, 1077. No matter who you were or which corner of the wasteland you were born in, you knew the date. It was inescapable even now, two hundred and twenty years later.
Unbeknownst to Weathers, Sledge presented her the same footage he’d witnessed alone in this very office just two weeks prior. The same moments in history that Spitfire had sought to erase. The room grew quiet as the soundless panic of evacuees piled up against the closed door. Wings beat against each other as pegasi tread air, their faces white with fear as the video shook with the reverberations of approaching detonations. The slow understanding that this wasn’t a place they would escape. And among them, a middle-aged blue mare with rainbows in her mane battered her hooves against the door in abject despair. 
The video shuddered, dust fell from the ceiling, and the collected heads of those gathered at the door turned to the tunnel entrance with a unified, silent scream. 
Against protocol for an officer in uniform, Weathers found herself sitting down on the scuffed floor. Sledge skipped the video forward in time. A mass suicide of the trapped evacuees hurried through stages of decay until the only movement was that of two survivors. She didn’t need to be told who the blue mare was, but Sledge pointed Rainbow Dash out anyway. She was accompanied by a changeling, undisguised. A friend. No, more than that. A caretaker. She’d barely reconciled the ramifications of something so unheard of when the video ended. 
Sledge asked her something but she held up a striated feather and shook her head. Later.
He answered questions from Aurora and Ginger. The two sounded more affected than Weathers felt, but she knew what this numbness usually meant. Soon Sledge was opening the next file. Another video taken from the interior of a machine she didn’t recognize. It felt out of place, but she watched as the ponies inside chatted to one another with the same familiar eagerness her enlisted soldiers showed before a critical mission. That nervous excitement bubbled out of their professional banter even as the video began to shudder like it had in the tunnel. She began to key into the unfamiliar terminology and realized she was witnessing the launch of one of Equestria’s rockets. The video came from the helmet of one of its flight crew, evidenced as she reached out with a sleeved hoof that somehow sprouted fingers like a gryphon. What was the point of watching this? What did it have to do with Rainbow Dash being trapped in the tunnel?
They reached orbit, then ascended further. They were approaching a satellite, one of them said, and Weathers watched as one of the screens above the spacefarer’s helmet identified their target by its formal name.
SOLUS.
The hairs on her neck stood up. Aurora and Ginger sat up a little straighter as they stole quick glances in her direction, but it was Sledge who appeared ready to be sick. Weathers looked to him occasionally, his discomfort growing more apparent as the ship docked with the lost weapon and the footage followed the mare out into the void of space. Something was about to happen. She could see it in the way the overstallion focused every ounce of his attention on the screen. They watched the mare walk along SOLUS’s skin, pausing to place talismans into chambers around its circumference. Power sources, she realized. Somewhere up there, SOLUS had been given power.
Then, trouble. A fight had broken out on the ship. Flashes. The spacefarer, now abandoned, watched pinpricks of green light blooming across Equestria’s western seaboard. It occurred to Weathers what she was seeing and found herself holding her breath. She’d seen hundreds of craters. Flown through the ruins of countless cities. Walked the solemn trail through the forest which grew around the fallen wreckage of Cloudsdale. She’d seen what the balefire bombs had left in their wake, but never once had she seen footage of them explode.
She took a slow, unsteady breath. Not until now.
They popped like ugly, green blisters in a slow, merciless procession from one shore to the other. Her attention shifted to the east coast and she realized, with sufficient speed, a pegasus could reasonably beat the advancing wall of death to Foal Mountain. Barely, but it was possible. And Rainbow Dash was not known for leisure flights.
As the accented voice of a terrified Vhannan spilled over the radio, begging anyone who could hear him not to retaliate, Weathers realized it was possible she could have made the journey. According to the footage she was seeing now, Rainbow had.
Sledge reached over and stopped the video. On the screen, the entire Equestrian landmass had been reduced to a fresh apocalypse of blackened, green-glowing wreckage with bombs still exploding far north and south. The zebras hadn’t been satisfied to kill Equestria. They’d taken the Crystal Empire and the Badland tribes with them.
“Those weren’t Vhannan bombs,” Sledge murmured. “They were ours.”
Hearing something impossible being said with such conviction caught her completely off guard. If she hadn’t been so humbled by what she’d just witnessed she might have laughed, but as she was now she merely regarded him in the same way she might stare at a soldier trying to chamber a shotgun shell into a pistol.
He seemed unfazed by her disbelief. “Rainbow Dash said as much herself. Vhanna never developed the technology required to manufacture balefire bombs, and even if one had been smuggled to them, it would have been one. Not hundreds. Every single missile Equestria built was programmed to detonate over an Equestrian target.”
She could feel herself behind corralled toward an obvious question. “Then who destroyed the Vhannan continent?”
Her answer came when he resumed the video. She braced herself for what came next. Beneath the abandoned mare’s hooves, SOLUS groaned to life. Puffs of mist pointed the bottom of the satellite toward the glittering, night-lit zebra cities like the barrel of a loaded gun. Prongs not dissimilar from the focal blades of a plasma rifle aligned themselves toward one such city. They glowed a sickly green. 
A torrent of balefire erupted from SOLUS and bore into the center of those lights, extinguishing them and the lives of those near the explosion that surged up from the point of impact. Her back went rigid as nearby cities went dark ahead of the fiery shockwave. The young mare screamed as her suit charred but the machine didn’t hear her as it targeted the next city, and the next.
And Weathers understood the fiction she had been told. Those vast, meandering black canyons that cracked the Vhannan countryside weren’t evidence of the strength of Equestria’s retaliation. They were worse than that. They were evidence of something dishonorable. Something so patently criminal that nothing short of the evisceration of a civilization could hide the truth of what had happened.
Tears welled in her eyes as she began to understand. The ministries controlled the bombs. The ministries pushed to continue the war. 
Her voice shook when she spoke.
“Which one of them ordered the attack.”
But as Sledge pressed his lips into a narrow line and leaned over to play the next video, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t understand it all. Not yet.
The screen blinked to life again. She watched Spitfire, the founder and first commander of the Enclave, enter the office of a bedraggled mare she did not recognize. The nameplate on her desk read simply: Delta Vee.







Time passed.
The last seconds of footage wound out and the terminal screen went dark again. An uncomfortable silence settled between the four of them as it became evident the well-worn tale of Equestria’s violent end was merely a series of lies strung into a comfortable narrative. Tradition, honor, authority. Three pillars the Enclave had been built upon. A powerful fiction woven by just two mares. 
Thoughts rioted in Weathers’ head as she tried to reconcile what she believed with what she just witnessed. The ghoul in the infirmary was what remained of Rainbow Dash. There was little she could do to deny that fact. She’d witnessed Rainbow’s decay. She watched her foalhood champion batter herself senseless against a cold and uncaring barrier, surrounded by corpses of the families who once idolized her. She had survived the ultimate betrayal only to slowly lose herself to the painful progression of ghouling. 
Yet she remembered. She knew who had done this to her. Two hundred and ten years later, in the Atrium of the Stable that locked her out, Rainbow looked up at her and called her a monster.
She closed her eyes and tried to stave off the uncomfortable sense of not being present in her own body. Nothing felt real. If Primrose really had been instrumental in the end of the old world, that meant the entire core the Enclave had been predicated upon was built around a lie.
Her throat had gone tacky. She swallowed. Maybe the footage from Spitfire’s office was faked. It was possible, but something tugged at her heart that said it wasn’t. These were Stable-dwellers, not pre-war propagandists. They wouldn’t have known Primrose’s name up until a week ago, let alone the sound of her voice. No, the phone calls between Primrose and Spitfire were as real as the rest of it. And yet none of it answered the one question plaguing her.
Why?
“Colonel?”
She blinked up at the overstallion and realized, too late, that her mask had fallen away. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I need to go someplace where I can think.”
Sledge gestured a feather toward Ginger and Aurora, then at the office itself. “You have six ears right here you can bend.”
She wasn’t the only one struggling to process what they’d seen, though the two mares seated across the desk at least enjoyed the luxury of not having to review the last several decades of their lives. Of course, they had questions. Questions for her. If ever she didn’t feel up for a debriefing it was right now. She stood up, careful to avoid their expectant gazes. “I’d prefer to be alone.”
As she turned to leave, she silently wished she could turn back the clock to an hour ago when her world made sense. She’d been excited for the opportunity to lead the assault on the Rangers dug into the partially excavated tunnel. A short list of names still sat in the pocket of her uniform; soldiers she’d been looking forward to recommending for commendation, all but one still standing in the aftermath. Now all of that felt tainted. Stained now that the curtain had been pulled away.
She stopped at the door and shut her eyes for a moment, willing herself to keep the rising emotion out of her voice. “Would one of you please open the door?”
A few frustrating seconds ticked by before a chair scraped and a small set of hooves trotted over. She flinched a little when Ginger appeared beside her, the mare’s horn wrapped in a blob of amber light. Magic grasped the bottom of the door and heaved it off the floor, startling the two deputies posted on the other side. 
As she held the steel slab aloft, Ginger spoke softly. “Please don’t say or do anything to jeopardize this Stable.”
It wasn’t an idle request. Weathers met the unicorn’s eyes and saw the very real threat just beneath the surface. With several tons of steel floating on a thin aura above their heads, Ginger was demonstrating the danger Weathers would be in if she said anything to interfere with the upcoming delivery of Stable 10’s ignition talisman. This place was Ginger’s future as much as any other pegasus who lived here. Behind that cordial smile, she was warning Weathers that she would do what was necessary to protect it.
She admitted a grudging respect for the mare’s tenacity. She nodded, once, and stepped through the doorway without a word. As the deputies led her back to the security office and the promise of an empty cell, the door slammed shut behind her like a grenade. It took a force of will to pretend for the deputies that the encounter hadn’t unsettled her. In issuing her warning, Ginger had answered the question Sledge’s footage couldn’t. 
Primrose didn’t end the world so she could live underground and enjoy the first pick of the Enclave’s least mutated carrots. If power had been her sole motivation, a mare with her cunning would have found a way to preserve the best of the old world and rule it in unrivaled luxury. No, the reason was obvious. It had nothing to do with a desire to rule. It was why she hadn’t stopped with Equestria and elected instead to turn SOLUS on the Vhannan continent. The immolation of Equestria wasn’t the finish line. It was a checkpoint. A necessary sacrifice on the path to erase an even greater force, the absence of which was what made a mere pegasi’s unchallenged authority possible.
Her target had been magic.
Clearly, it was making a comeback.







Aurora waited until Ginger had shown Weathers out before releasing the tension that had built up in her chest. She exhaled and shook her head at the ceiling. “Was it really necessary to bring her to show-and-tell?”
Ginger returned to her chair with annoyance on her face. Sledge grunted. “The past is easier to prove if she sees it for herself.”
She scoffed at that. “Who said we owed her an explanation in the first place?”
Sitting behind his desk, he looked at her like one of her foalhood teachers used to when she was too young to know she was asking an obvious question. She turned her hooves up and stared back at him. “What? Weathers is only here as insurance to make sure that standing army of hers behaves. We don’t owe her anything. And this…” She gestured at his terminal. “That was a lot to just give away for free. What happens when it’s time to let her go?”
Ginger nodded. “That’s my concern as well. The Enclave is an established institution with tens of thousands of members prepared to defend it. If we send her out there and she reports back to Primrose what we know, Weathers will be executed and the Enclave will regard this Stable as a threat.”
“Again,” Aurora emphasized. 
Sledge watched them in silence, absorbing everything they said and reacting to none of it. A tremble of annoyance ran up her neck when she recognized the tells in his concrete posture. He was pulling the same stonewalling shit he used when he thought someone less experienced or qualified was telling him how to run Mechanical. He was listening as much as he was waiting for them to be quiet so he could change the subject. As if to confirm her suspicion, his eyes slid toward her as soon as he noticed her jaw tightening.
She took a slow breath, refusing to give him that foothold. “Look. What’s done is done, but as soon as this is over you need to turn this Stable upside down until you’re one hundred percent sure there aren’t any other vulnerabilities lying around that Primrose can exploit.”
“Or create,” Ginger said, looking down at the Pip-Buck the Enclave had given her.
Aurora privately wished they could take the thing off now. If the thermite charge embedded within its slim circuitry triggered early, it had the potential to sever Ginger’s hoof as cleanly as the Enclave’s surgeons had removed Aurora’s leg. Given what they knew Primrose was capable of, keeping the truth of what they knew a secret was all the more critical.
“She won’t flip like Julip did,” Ginger continued. “Weathers is a high ranking officer. She’s been eating, drinking, and teaching the Enclave’s lies for her entire adult life. She won’t throw all that away over some vintage security footage and a recorded phone call.”
Aurora shrugged her wings in agreement. “You should have run this by us first.”
A faint incredulous frown flickered across Sledge’s face and was gone just as quickly. Half a month ago he wouldn’t have hesitated to light into her with his endlessly colorful vocabulary, which was why seeing him holding back now surprised her. He was the speak first apologize later sort of stallion, and about as diplomatic as the maul he was named for.
“Aurora,” he began, his gray eyes settling on her like two pin punches lining themselves up to a piece of iron, “I don’t want you to think anything I’m about to say is meant to lessen the sacrifices you and your friends made for us. I doubt we’ll ever be able to properly repay you. That being said, Overmare Delphi placed the responsibility of this Stable on my shoulders before she died. She chose me for this. Not you.”
She shifted uneasily in her seat, remembering that horrible pop that rang through the Atrium while she had been preparing to leave the Stable. Sledge appeared to be reliving the same moment. He hadn’t been shielded from seeing the immediate aftermath like the rest of the Stable. He was standing in this office, speaking to them while Delphi sat behind her desk and quietly slipped the barrel of Desperate Times into her mouth and pressed the trigger. Aurora wondered whether he’d had anyone to talk to about it, or if he was just as adept as she’d been at packing away the traumas life seemed happy to throw her way.
He composed himself and continued. “I don’t know much more about the Enclave than what you two told me, but anyone with eyes could tell that being called a traitor by Rainbow was eating at her. Weathers was going to keep pulling at that thread until someone gave her an answer, and then she was going to demand proof. Like you say, she has a standing army outside. I don’t want to risk her using it against us if she suspects we’re down here brainwashing the only Element of Harmony they seem to give a shit about.”
She looked to Ginger who returned her expression with a conceding nod. Sledge had been thinking well ahead of either of them.
To his credit, he passed up the opportunity to rub their noses in it. “The way I understand things, you’ve talked to Primrose more than enough times already to assure her that you didn’t know anything you shouldn’t. As far as she can see, her attempt to kill Spitfire put enough fear into her and Delta that they buried everything they found. Her problem solved itself, so the reasonable action to take now is to cast herself as our benevolent savior and quash any lingering suspicions in the process.” He dropped several red feathers over the top of his terminal and shrugged. “Colonel Weathers is going to poke a hole in Primrose’s bubble as soon as she mentions Rainbow Dash is alive, and by the time that happens there will be six feet of tungsten steel alloy standing between us and them. The best move was to tell Weathers everything so when she leaves, her boss can’t be sure which of her soldiers knows the truth and which don’t. Easier to address it publicly and spin it to make her look good than to cull hundreds.
“Once she starts lying,” he said, looking satisfied with himself, “she’s stuck. Her whole reputation will be tied to our continued health and happiness. Anyone caught so much as scuffing the door will throw her narrative into doubt. She’ll have no choice but to protect us.”
It was a lot to take in, but when Aurora looked to Ginger for signs of doubt she could tell the two of them were thinking the same thing. Sledge hit the nail square on the head. It was a little disturbing how sound his logic was considering he only had a passing understanding of how the Enclave worked. Delphi had chosen well when she appointed him overstallion.
Ginger was the first to speak. “I wish I’d thought to consult with you prior to bargaining with her yesterday. We might have negotiated more than one talisman.”
He did his best to wave off her compliment by leveling an accusatory feather at Aurora. “Chalk it up to years of working in the same room as this one. She’s good for a headache if you make the mistake of forgetting anything.”
She couldn’t suppress a smirk from curling her lip. “It’s one of my endearing features.”
He smiled back. “If you say so. To be honest, you’re taking all of this a lot better than I thought you would.”
She didn’t have an immediate answer for that. Compared to what she’d been through - being shot, overpowered, irradiated, nearly torn to pieces by mutants, tortured by a different kind of monster, and waking up with a stump for a leg - learning the truth behind the end of the world barely ranked higher than a footnote. She took a moment to boil that sentiment down into something palatable.
“Mom liked to say one of the worst things we can do is resent what we have when it’s everything we need.” She glanced at Ginger and set a hoof atop hers. “I’m not happy knowing what really happened, but I’m not going to ruin my life dwelling on something I can’t change when I have a future to look forward to.”
Sledge stared at her for a long moment. “Who are you and what have you done with the stubborn mule I taught to swing a hammer?”
She snorted. “Dick.”
“There she is.” He rose from his seat, pausing to roll a kink out of his shoulder. “Now’s as good a time as any to make a circuit of the Stable, I think. People are going to want to know what happened to Rainbow. Any chance I can bribe you two into coming along?”
For once in her life, Aurora had a built-in excuse to get out of work. She lifted her bandaged stump and tried to pretend she was fine with the absence of an entire limb. Maybe someday it might actually feel normal. “We would, but I still need one of the docs to look at this weird growth.”
Sledge did an admirable job at hiding his discomfort as she dropped from her chair. Ginger was beside her before she got a second hoof on the ground, ready to take some of her weight if she needed it. Minor as it felt, Aurora felt a touch of pride at managing it without help. 
“Then do me a favor when you get there and tell Opal she can head back up to IT. I’ll stop by her office on my way through so we can trade notes.”
Ginger hefted the door out of the way and they followed Sledge out to the Atrium where a quartet of young pegasi were taking advantage of the empty space by taking turns racing each other from one wall to the other. The sound of galloping hooves and belted laughter echoed in the dimly lit space and they paused along the railing to watch.
Sledge nudged her and pointed her toward two stallions chatting as they watched from a bench beside a shuttered arcade. One wore a neatly pressed jumpsuit, same as everyone else. The other, a chalk-white pegasus with a smudge of pink painting his snout, wore nothing besides a nervous smile and a pink lily on his hip. She started to smile too as she realized how rare it was to see a fellow resident’s mark. It was beautiful. She looked at Sledge, grinning.
“In case you didn’t know you’re a bad influence.” He surprised her by chuckling as he left to do his rounds, leaving her wondering just how much her Stable had changed.







Rainbow dreamed while the element performed its work.
It seemed like minutes had passed. The distant, locking ache she felt told her differently.
Everything shuttered through her mind like a chattering roll of film through a projector. Flashes and images and scenes and sounds she’d experienced so long ago, lifetimes ago, that she had no business recalling them in such vivid clarity. 
Her foalhood bedroom decorated with toys and sculpted in fine clouds. Her boppy, a stuffed cardinal who gave her comfort when the night came and which would find its way into a cardboard box years later never to be seen again. Groggy breakfasts spent looking at the backs of cereal boxes, lunches in the school cafeteria, dinners with mom and dad. The excitement of being told yes that she could go to Junior Speedsters Flight Camp and the quiet apprehension of being away from home for two whole weeks. Equestria’s first recorded sonic rainboom whose effects seemed to follow her for the rest of her life. 
Her first apartment. Fights with neighbors. A messy eviction she painted over with her friends and family as a proactive decision to move to Ponyville. She remembered the stress of living paycheck to paycheck as a weather pony, perpetually terrified of how far behind bills one bad landing could put her all while putting on the bravest face she could muster. She lived like that for years, breaking up clouds all day and sleeping on a hand-me-down mattress.
No one knew who she was. Not until the millennium anniversary of the Summer Sun Celebration arrived and Nightmare Moon came with it. Before she knew it, she found herself roped in with five mares she barely knew and woke up the next day branded an Element of Harmony. She assumed the title was honorary at first and maybe help put her on the Wonderbolts’ radar, but it quickly became a full-time job of being rounded up by Twilight for one royal assignment or the other, some which took days to complete and left the six of them battered and bruised. But the pay was good, the friends better, and she remembered how the longer she stuck around the more she felt the work she was doing gave her a sense of worth. 
Memories swept her along like a flooded river. Discord, Chrysalis. One entity who appeared to show a willingness to change himself and another who fled to her hive before an offer could be made. She never fully understood who Sombra had been. Twilight ensured they never had the chance to talk sense into Tirek. Every creature they encountered capable of wielding power like theirs chipped away their weaknesses and filled the gaps with inner strengths they didn’t know they had. Except for Twilight. They’d all seen her frustration build, her nerves fray a little more each time, and the pressure of assuming yet another mantle of responsibility after Celestia’s gift of wings only strained her more. 
The wet crunch of Tirek’s skull caving under the might of her magic had branded itself into Rainbow’s mind. A single moment of unrestrained anger and a living, thinking creature was reduced to meat and bone. Without considering their thoughts on what the story of Tirek’s defeat should be, they watched helplessly as Twilight teleported herself and the centaur’s corpse to the steps of Canterlot Castle. Her emotionless pose beside his corpse ran with the next day’s papers along with a warning to any creatures tempted to walk the same road he had.
Discord was sealed once again for his part in helping Tirek, his efforts to reform forgotten. She recalled waking up in her condo the morning after, frying two eggs in the late morning light, and doubting her resolve to keep carrying on as an Element. Weeks passed. The odd assignments from Celestia kept trickling in, sending them to corners of the world that were quickly becoming familiar, and slowly her doubts faded. Tirek’s death had been a blip, she told herself. Weeks turned into years and no new villains appeared. She and the girls reluctantly agreed Twilight’s gambit had worked. 
Equestria thrived. She remembered opening the mailbox and finding an acceptance letter from the Wonderbolts waiting for her. The girls were nothing but supportive, having already begun exploring their own personal and professional endeavors. For a time it felt as if she’d found the next step in her life. Early rises and late nights, the moments between a steady march of drills, training, and ceremony. A moment came when she fell into her bunk, exhausted, and realized none of the pegasi passing out around her expected anything of her but to sleep. No one had dropped from the sky and thrown a uniform and a set of obligations on her. She’d earned this. 
The world changed not long after that. She received a letter sent from her parents, the words printed rather than written. The Wonderbolts started offering training routes for radio repair technicians and electricians. She woke up one morning to find half the new recruits gathered around a television mounted to the corner of the mess hall and practically had to beat them away from the screen with a stick. Suddenly the transistor was everywhere and those who clung to the old ways were seen as lesser. Modernization was branded synonymous with Equestrian. Already barrelling toward her forties, she remembered the first article she read criticizing Vhanna for stealing Equestrian innovations. It felt like an innocuous jab at the time. Zecora still had family in Vhanna, so it made little sense to Rainbow that they should be shunned for improving their own lives. She folded up the paper and left it in a stack by the door for Fluttershy to pick up for her birds.
She witnessed herself do like so many others did and gradually embrace the technological wonders around her. She bought a radio of her own, then a television. A sponsor deal Twilight set up with CoolCo brought Rainbow and the others their first refrigerators. Applejack bought her brother a gasoline-powered carriage for the farm and Rainbow watched as the dusty dirt roads she cheated off when navigating the sky were paved in concrete ribbon. She sat down with the girls for dinner during that long, peaceful decade and admitted things were different, but different was turning out to be okay. They’d toasted to that, unaware of what waited around the corner.
The ministries. The war. The failure of the Elements to activate against the Vhannan home defense and the Wonderbolts being torn to shreds in the space of less than an hour by a weapons system none of them expected from the lowly zebras. Spitfire had been forced into early retirement by Celestia. Rainbow took her in. Gave her a role to play which only made her betrayal cut deeper. She remembered tuning out during ministry meetings. Participating only when necessary, and only to regurgitate the lines Spitfire fed her.
She found Applejack, something they agreed they should have done much sooner. She confided in her. Told her what Spitfire was doing and made her promise not to tell anyone. Applejack confessed to confronting Spitfire in her office a few days later and tried to assure her things would be better from then on. Nothing did. They never realized how deeply Spitfire’s rot extended. How her shadow infiltrated the six ministries, finding loyalty in those exhausted with the long march of endless war. Applejack would never know standing up to Spitfire was the reason she and Rainbow were separated by hundreds of miles when the missiles rode white pillars into a clear blue sky. Now, drowning in memory, Rainbow understood it had been their punishment.
She remembered being trapped in the tunnel, the smell of death and radiation thick with every breath she took. She lived those long decades all over again, feeling a part of herself sliding out of phase as the years and desperation took their toll. But instead of blank stretches where Blue took control, she remembered it all. The wandering, mumbling hours of time wasted wandering from the rockslide to the door and back again, never quite sure why and never willing to stop. She experienced herself beating her hooves against the steel barrier until blood spattered the door and Roach came to distract her with songs and stories. Memories locked away behind Blue’s jibbering mind engulfed her like a tide. She heard Roach sing about love and sadness, and tell her stories of his family and helping fellow refugee changelings find their place in Equestria. He told her about his first experience watching something he planted himself grow in a pot on his kitchen windowsill and feeling something he strongly believed to be akin to what ponies felt when they found a purpose worthy of a mark. She remembered in a rare moment of lucidity waking with her head in his lap as he hummed a lullaby to her, and knowing with perfect clarity that she loved him.
Her heart broke a second time as she heard the Stable door open and close, depositing a single pegasus into the tunnel. Blue couldn’t articulate her outrage beyond screaming it in the terrified mare’s face. Were it not for Roach she would have killed Aurora. 
And then Sledge was there to take his place, doing what he could to keep her calm, to do what he could as he worked out how Blue was wired. She listened to him whisper to her that he didn’t want to be in charge anymore. That he didn’t think he was as strong as everyone thought he was. She felt him shaking as he wept, thinking she wouldn’t remember, and quickly composed himself when the deputies would check in during their rounds. 
It piled into her mind with perfect, terrible clarity.







And then she woke up.
Rainbow gasped like a drowning swimmer pulling herself above the surface, a tumble of flailing legs and sucking breath. Eyes wide and heart pounding, she found herself in an unfamiliar room on an unfamiliar bed with sterile white sheets kicked down around her hind legs from her momentary panic. 
She sat there, motionless for several seconds as she pieced together where she was. Medical equipment, their screens dark, sat unused on a cart beside her bed. A countertop neatly stocked with medical tools still in their sterile wrappers loomed to her right. A clipboard rested on the edge nearest her and when she squinted at it she recognized her name at the top written in wide, looping letters. She grimaced as she sat herself up, not needing to scan the rest of the room to know where she’d been taken. She’d been lucky not to have too many memories of waking up in a hospital bed, but the ones she did have stuck with her. 
She lifted a hoof, then the other before spotting the IV taped over an atrophied vein. When she tried to sit up a bit more she felt a familiar pinch and stopped moving. Using her wing to pull the sheets away uncovered a clear tube secured to the inside of her thigh, the end of which snaked inside her. She looked around for a nurse’s button only to remember that the power was out. The needle she could remove on her own, but there was no way in Tartarus she was extracting a catheter. Absolutely not.
Not that she appeared to have needed it. The tubing was bone dry.
So she waited. It didn’t take long for someone to come by and notice with alarm she was upright and awake. Even less time passed before the room was buzzing with white jackets, each rotating to the next like a gatling gun loaded with questions rather than bullets. They asked if she felt dizzy, nauseated, hungry, thirsty, hot or cold. The catheter was removed and a bedpan was ominously placed on a nearby counter just in case. She didn’t appreciate the insinuation that she might piss the bed, but she managed to keep her mouth shut on that front.  
She did her best to answer their questions even if her responses were less than helpful. No, she didn’t have a history of epilepsy. Yes, she’d eaten and drank since arriving. No, she didn’t feel weak. No, her element wasn’t dangerous. Yes, it had caused her to black out in the past. No, she didn’t think it would happen again. Yes, she was certain. No, she didn’t want to explain how she knew. They took their measurements, drew what little dark, viscous blood her body was willing to relinquish, and then one by one they wandered back to their offices to puzzle over what they were looking at. A single nurse remained long enough to advise her to stay in bed before she herself disappeared to do whatever task was next on her list.
She waited ten minutes before getting bored.
So she got up and went for a walk.







The stainless steel bed of Colonel Weathers’ cell felt cool against her back and in a strange way made her feel a little more grounded in a world bent on making as little sense to her as it could. She rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, tracing the lines of the Stable’s ceiling as she pondered.
Her assigned guard, a comparatively young deputy named Stratus, shuddered audibly at the crackle of her neck. He wasn’t much of a guard. To be fair, this wasn’t much of a cell. The locks were simplistic even by old world standards and the door sat open for her to come and go as she pleased. She wasn’t a prisoner any more than this was a prison. The pegasi here just couldn’t be bothered to put her up in a real room. Fair enough. She didn’t need the subtext spelled out.
She crossed her hind hooves and blinked momentarily toward Stratus, hunched over lamplit paperwork of some kind, then back up at the ceiling. 
The impulsive half of her wanted to be furious. To tear off her uniform, throw her patches across the room, and swear off the oath she’d taken over two decades ago. She wanted to let herself feel betrayed and, more than that, tell the officers and soldiers waiting for her outside what she knew so she could have someone to share that anger with. According to the videos Overstallion Sledge showed her, her minister had played an incriminating role in the death of the world she urged the rest of her Enclave to yearn for. Primrose had not only stolen the launch access of the Element of Laughter, but she’d coordinated with or possibly coerced Spitfire into doing the same. It was no secret among the upper echelon that relocating SOLUS was high on Primrose’s list of goals and if the footage she’d seen was real, then it meant the satellite wasn’t the untouchable power source she espoused it to be. It was death to whomever didn’t control it. Equestria had suffered immensely under the bombardment of its own balefire-tipped missiles, but Vhanna…
She squeezed her eyes shut before the tears could sting them. 
What she watched happen to Vhanna aligned too perfectly with the tormented stories her great grandmother used to regale from her own foalhood. Tales of a restless green sky crackling with lightning, of jagged smoking canyons blocking wanderers from venturing more than an hour inland of the refugee camps surrounding what remained of Old Port Sahadi. Her k’idimi āyati had been barely twelve years old when the Great Dying finally reached Vhanna’s ravaged coasts. Crops already twisted and feeble from an irradiated water table grew limp, withered, and took on an irreversible rot. It spread like a virus just like it had in now abandoned villages in the south, working its way through scraggly fields like an invisible plague. Without the benefit of wings or horns, her ancestors were forced to make a choice: attempt to trek two thousand miles inland in the thin hope that the gryphon lands were still habitable and, less likely, hospitable to their zebra neighbors. Or help the starving survivors of Old Port Sahadi repair and refloat one of the many abandoned ships hurled up onto the beach when the world ended. Her ancestors had chosen the latter and, against all odds, managed to patch up the rotting fiberglass hull of a small yacht barely enough to survive the voyage to the home of their enemy.
Barely. The boat that ran aground north of Las Pegasus did so with more dead than living. Her k’idimi āyati often recalled the indignant hatred that filled her when the boat’s radio picked up the first broadcast from Equestria: music, of all things. Happy music from a time none of them had known. She admitted to wishing for the boat to sink rather than to see their smiling faces, only to change her mind when the endless overcast rolled overhead and she witnessed the terrible wasteland the ponies of Equestria called home.
Weathers lifted a wing above her head and spread her feathers to examine the faint lavender stripes striating their vanes. Her ancestors believed in traditions more than bloodline and her grandfather married a dustwing mare who gave birth to her mother. Seventeen years later, her mother caught the eye of a newly enlisted Enclave stallion on his first long-range reconnaissance mission. Her father would later joke that it was no wonder he washed out with someone like her mother distracting him, but in reality the truth was more complicated. He, like many living in the little towns that dotted the Enclave’s outer territory, disagreed with what happened when dustwings were found but knew better than to put their own heads on the chopping block by voicing their discomfort. Some fights couldn’t be won but her father, ever one to bend any rule he could get his wings around, knew what would happen to her mother and her family if he did nothing. 
Not having the stomach for execution, he did what her mother often said felt like the next best thing. He convinced his commanding officer to take the bewildered, feathered zebras to New Canterlot as Ignorants. While technically it was a clause in Enclave law carved out for dustwings originating from seclusion (see: Stables) who were arguably unaware of their classification or what it meant, somehow her father had managed to convince the adjudicator in New Canterlot that this family of striped pegasi qualified under the same protections. Whether he had a sound argument or, more likely, he had simply exhausted the poor legal experts assigned to the case was up in the air. What mattered was that her father’s stubbornness earned New Canterlot its first zebra citizens since its founding. Unsurprisingly their acceptance made headlines for which Primrose herself had offered vaguely supportive commentary along the lines of the world being one step closer to healing. It was little more than puff, but compared to the alternative her family clung to it like a lifeline. 
They were assigned a home outside Steepleton with a not so subtle reminder that they would be expected to upkeep it. Her father, then still an enlisted stallion tasked with keeping tabs on the family he shoehorned into the Enclave, quickly grew attached to the mare who first caught his eye and nature took things from there. Weathers was something of an accident. Her father’s discharge from armed service was not. 
Ever loyal to the Enclave, despite living in a dilapidated house the neighbors treated as a roadside attraction, her family endured mistrust and mistreatment because the life that came before it had been far worse. Her mother used to say Weathers had kicked her way out of the womb like she had something to prove, which wasn’t far from the truth. A large part of her own enlistment was to put a stop to her schoolmates questioning her loyalty. Privately, a smaller part of that was to get back at the faceless officers who kicked out her dad for mixed breeding. She wanted to show them that a pegasus with stripes could do more than some pureblood behind a desk.
She snorted at the memory and supposed she’d done that much, at least. Her family crossed an ocean so she could be where she was today. Now her meticulously planned future was one big question mark. If Primrose had done what Sledge’s videos suggested, it meant she was the source of the suffering Weathers’ family endured. If that were the case, the easiest thing to do would be putting a bullet in the traitor’s head. Remove the rot before it could spread any further.
A sigh passed her lips as logic complicated the equation.
What if Sledge’s footage had somehow been manufactured? What if it was real, Primrose died, but she already had someone in line to take her place as a contingency? Would the Enclave be strong enough to stop the Steel Rangers from marching in to claim the thrones?
Dozens of unanswerable questions swirled in her head. Ahead of her lay countless options, some less risky than others but none of them safe. The only silver lining was that no matter what happened, the fallout would never reach her parents who had been laid to rest within weeks of one another years ago. The consequences of her decision would fall squarely on her shoulders.
She settled her wing across her belly and tried to pretend like it made her choice any easier. She continued to lay there, restless gears spinning in her head, until her ears perked at the sound of ratcheting beyond her cell. Deputy Stratus looked up from his paperwork to watch the unpowered door inch its way up its frame. She watched his brow tick up with recognition as their visitor ducked through the gap, the drudgery of deskwork forgotten.
“Ma’am,” he greeted.
Weathers pursed her lips as the ghoul stepped into view of the bars. Colorful filaments of Rainbow Dash’s once iconic mane hung against one side of her neck, crumpled and tangled by age or trauma or both. Rainbow stepped toward the deputy and murmured something to him. He nodded, stood, and left the room without a word.
She sat up, partly out of respect and partly so she could defend herself if the need arose. A clear pensive silence trailed Rainbow as she stepped into the open cell door, stopped, and propped her shoulder against the bars. The ghoul… no, she thought. Not the ghoul. She’d suffered the irreversible decay like the other living corpses of the wasteland but she hadn’t committed the crime of consuming resources meant for the living. 
The mare didn’t make eye contact with her. Her gaze rested firmly on the floor. Seconds passed.
 “So. I have some things I need to say to you and I’m going to ask that you don’t interrupt. Just let me talk. Okay?”
She sat up a little straighter and nodded, once. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rainbow visibly tensed at the word. “They didn’t deserve it. Vhanna, Equestria, my friends, my parents… none of them deserved to die the way Spitfire and Primrose made them die. When you came here I assume you saw the bodies in the tunnel. I had to listen to them kill their foals because the only other choice they had was to let them starve or turn feral. And they knew I was there with them, hiding. But I’d given up. So they did too, and I sat there in that tiny room until the crying and screaming stopped and something inside me broke.”
She remained silent as she watched Rainbow bite down on her lip for a moment, struggling for composure.
“My mom had to start her life over from nothing and she kicked ass at it because that’s just what she did. She even adopted a kid. She didn’t know I was right outside, trapped in my own head most of the time. She just did the best she could with the time she had left and now she’s gone like everyone else I ever knew. I’m never going to see her again. I’m never going to tell her I’m sorry or that I love her or how much I miss them now that they’re gone and it kills me because there’s no one who knows what it feels like to know none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been a coward.”
Rainbow paused again, but it was clear this time she was struggling to parse what she wanted to say from what she needed to say. Weathers waited. As she did, something she’d heard her mother say during her grandmother’s funeral rose to the surface. Her pronunciation wouldn’t impress a native speaker, but she’d grown up hearing enough Vhannan to do the little proverb some justice. 
“Inide ch’ira, ts’ets’eti yabek’ali.”
Rainbow blinked at her. “I, ah… don’t know what that means.”
“My elders would probably say the same of me.” She smiled a little and cleared her throat. “It means, ‘Like a tail, regret comes to an end.’”
She coughed. “Thanks. I needed more empty platitudes.”
Weathers lifted her brow and said nothing. She could argue her sincerity until she was blue in the face and it wouldn’t make a difference in the end. Foreign as it was to think about, Rainbow Dash hadn’t come here to mend bridges or make new friends. This wasn’t the bright eyed, wet nosed mare who cut the skies in all the old foal’s tales. She was old, tired, and hurting. A part of Weathers had privately hoped she would be that mare of legend and not so normal.
She was also running out of steam. The molten anger she poured over Weathers when they first spotted each other had ever so slightly cooled in the hours since then, but even now she seemed unready to quench it completely.
“You say regret comes to an end.” Rainbow lifted her head and looked her in the eye. “Know what I regret? I regret letting myself willingly sit on the sidelines while Spitfire hijacked my ministry. I regret that I tricked myself into believing she was still good inside, and not having the good sense to think about what my name gave her access to. I regret waiting to hit rock bottom before I had enough guts to tell my closest friend how I felt about her. We barely had one honest year together before Spitfire pushed the fucking button. Applejack was there for me, and I just sat back and let somebody take that away.”
Weathers hesitated before opening her mouth to speak.
Rainbow leveled a feather at her. “Don’t. Don’t give me the same shit everyone else has about how it’s not my fault and I can’t punish myself for it. It is and I will. I’m the reason she had access to my gold codes. I could have said no. I could have taken control and none of this would have happened, but I didn’t because I couldn’t stand the thought of having this,” she pulled at her necklace, shaking it hard enough for the plates to jangle, “taken away. Now the world is gone and I’m to blame for it. One of the perks of being an Element of Harmony? I don’t have the luxury of forgetting. It won’t let me.”
Silence crept into the room, but then Weathers remembered reading something about the elements back when she was young and full of theories. It could be argued that her instructors thought it was easier to send her to the Archives rather than suffer her runaway curiosity, and it was there she found an article that stuck with her. “You used to call it a Harmonic Restoration, right? It’s what reversed the effects of your battle with Lord Discord.”
Rainbow tucked her wing back with a scoff. “Twilight would’ve loved to know that stupid name of hers ended up sticking. The rest of us just called it what it was: a reset.”
“That’s a little… beige.”
“You sound like Rarity.” She didn’t smile, but her expression softened by a few degrees. “It wasn’t named after the thing with Discord, and we never technically fought him. He just sat there half the time. He was weird like that.”
Her ears perked a little. That was new information. 
Rainbow leaned a little more comfortably against the bars. “Twilight made up the term after getting away with casting a half-finished spell that put our brains in a blender. The five of us spent half a day in what the doctors up in Canterlot called magically induced psychosis. Twilight’s spell shredded our memories and stitched together the fragments until we forgot who we were. The worst of it is deep down we knew we were being manipulated and we couldn’t do anything to stop it. It felt like I was riding shotgun in my own body. It was awful. Twilight ended up fixing it by playing pin-the-Element-on-the-pony and even got a new pair of wings for the trouble.”
Weathers put together the rest on her own. “Being the one to give the phenomenon a name would have muddied the waters for anyone who might have wanted to see her punished.”
Rainbow shrugged. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter now. All I know is I just spent the last…”
Weathers glanced at the clock hanging above the deputy’s desks. “Four hours.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “I spent the last four hours reliving every minute of my life with better clarity than my actual memory. I don’t get to pretend anymore that I didn’t ignore the red flags. I chose not to see them because Spitfire gave me a reason to pretend nothing was my problem anymore. I wanted things to go back to the way they were so badly that I let myself stop caring. That’s how she and Primrose were able to form the Enclave. Not because they were evil. Because I gave up.”
Rainbow paused, and for a long moment Weathers thought she was done speaking. She watched her lift a feather to her eyes and scrub at the small patches of damp where tears had gathered. The Element of Loyalty appeared almost calm now, and Weathers felt the relief that came whenever she was certain the worst of a storm had finally passed.
She flicked the moisture off her feather and regarded her with a startling calm.
“Sooner or later you’re going to be sent back out there to be with your people, and you’re going to be tempted to tell them I’m here and I’m alive. If you’ve already decided that’s what you’re going to do, then that’s that. I won’t risk this Stable by holding you captive. All I want is for you to know who it is you’re really telling, and more importantly I want you to understand who you’re working for. Primrose isn’t divinely chosen. She murdered billions so she could rule survivors like you.”
With that, Rainbow pushed her shoulder away from the bars and turned to leave. She’d nearly gone by the time Weathers mustered the courage to speak again.
“She didn’t do it for power.”
Rainbow stopped and looked back.
Weathers thought about clamming up and letting the awkward moment chase Rainbow the rest of the way out, but she knew she’d regret saying nothing after the chance was gone. She was uncertain about many things in life but for some reason this wasn’t one of them. If Minister Primrose wanted to rule, it would have been nothing for her to smuggle a balefire bomb into Canterlot and kill the princesses and spare a prospering world at the same time. Instead she chose to bathe the planet in a sea of unnatural fire whose solely unique property was the true core of her ambition.
She took a breath and spoke words which were grounds for execution. “She destroyed the old world to make room for a new one where magic wouldn’t be a threat.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to. Sledge showed me the footage.”
Slowly, the last vestiges of Rainbow’s hostility drained away to be replaced with sudden understanding and, on the heels of that, embarrassment. Her shoulders sagged with the exhalation of a long, weary breath. “You’ve seen everything?”
She nodded, her thoughts darkening with the recent memory. “I saw a young mare crying as she watched Equestria burn from orbit, and I watched this Stable nearly collapse after Primrose found out that same mare’s mother knew the truth.”
Rainbow stared at her. “And?”
“And I’m still trying to get my head around it. It’s a lot to take in.”
Silence. Then: 
“You know, Sledge said there’s a mare living a few levels down who makes homemade booze in her compartment. Wanna swing by and get something to drink? Maybe talk more?”
She imagined herself walking outside to resume her responsibilities with everything she knew rattling around in her head and the thought of it made her stomach churn. But she couldn’t stay here. Soon she would have no choice but to go back to her people knowing who their minister was, while one of the original six carved out something amounting to a life in a ghoul’s body. Her very existence represented a landmine to the Enclave’s understanding of what it was.
Life, it seemed, was going to become very complicated very soon.
“Yeah,” she said, and stood. “I could use a drink.”







Paper crinkled under Aurora’s ear, bringing back mixed memories of being taken to the infirmary by her parents whenever she had the sniffles or upset stomach. She’d never been a sickly foal but she knew she’d been here a few times more often than her friends growing up. Sickness of any kind was a serious matter in an insulated population and her mom and dad were no slouches about ferreting out whether their daughter was trying to tough something out. Still there was something nostalgic about being here again even if the bright lights were dark and they only had an electric lantern to see by. It made the normally sterile exam room feel cozy.
Ginger sat in a chair beside the exam table and idly sifted her magic through Aurora’s mane, quietly resurrecting the gentle curls she’d styled the white mess on her head into that night at Stable 6. 
She smiled at the memory. All her adult life she’d refused to bother herself with prettying up her mane or tail when both would wind up caked in oil or metal shavings but most likely both. Standing in front of a mirror for more time than it took to brush her teeth felt like a waste of time. And now here she was, feeling giddy butterflies all over again at something as simple as Ginger humming a melody while she curled her mane.
“I think he forgot we’re here,” she murmured.
Ginger quirked a lip and looked to the closed door where the doctor had disappeared through after saying he’d be back to check on her casting in fifteen minutes. That had been close to a half hour ago and Aurora was beginning to wonder if the silicone mold around her stump would ever come off. 
“Oh, you probably scared him off.” Ginger released the long lock in her magic, approving of the way it twisted around itself before falling against her neck. “He seems very professional.”
She rolled her eyes at the tiny smile on Ginger’s face. “Hey. Quit picking on the cripple.”
“You still have one more limb than I do. If that makes you crippled, then what am I? An invalid?”
A snort darted out of her. “Prettiest invalid I’ve ever met.”
This time it was Ginger’s turn to roll her eyes, but she rewarded the compliment with a small kiss and a look that said she best quit complaining. Aurora knew better by now than to squeeze Ginger for pity. Even without electricity the Stable’s medical facilities outclassed anything the wasteland had left to offer. She’d lost her leg, and no one would argue her recovery wouldn’t be difficult, but the fact that she had prospects of a recovery at all was significant. 
She shifted her shoulder into a better position and glanced at the door. Maybe she had scared him away. She hadn’t exactly minced words with him once she saw him lift the speculum out of his drawer. In reality she probably owed the old stallion an apology once he got back. She’d just come back from an irradiated wilderness twenty pounds lighter and bearing several new scars. Of course he’d want to be thorough.
She shut her eyes and sighed. “Was I an asshole?”
A smirk colored Ginger’s reply. “You weren’t not an asshole, but if it makes you feel a little better you weren’t as bad as Rainbow Dash.”
She groaned at the thought of saying sorry to Doctor Poke n’ Prod of all pegasi. “Can you blame her, though? I mean… Luna’s night. Spitfire didn’t just shut the door on her, she helped end the world. She lost everything and almost went feral waiting for the Stable to open again, only to find out the Enclave is thriving. I’m amazed she didn’t try to kill Weathers.”
Ginger lifted another length of mane and hummed acknowledgment. “I think she was working herself up to it. I can’t say I’m impressed with the other residents who simply stood around doing nothing.”
“She’s an Element of Harmony. I’m surprised we stepped in.”
“Since when has thinking ahead ever been our strong suit?”
She stopped, frowned, then chuckled. “Point made. It makes me wonder, though. Do you think it’s possible some of the others survived?”
She watched as Ginger’s gaze grew distant and a tired sadness crept into her eyes. Then the moment passed. “You know what? I think I’m more interested in any sweaty questions your father plans to spring on me at this dinner you’ve roped me into.”
“Sweaty questions?”
Ginger dropped a freshly curled strand over her muzzle and smiled as she watched Aurora puff it away. “What are your intentions toward my daughter? How were you raised? Will your relationship present any business opportunities between the families?”
She blinked. “Business…?”
Ginger flicked a dismissive hoof. “One of the astoundingly tone deaf questions my father asked a very platonic friend of mine after I invited him to the house when we were… goddesses, we must have been eleven or twelve? His name was Reed, and anyway, he had a genuine obsession with that old pre-war radio series, Sheath and Dagger, and he convinced me to give it a try. Our family’s holotape player was a sought after model that could record duplicate tapes so he brought his collection over. My father isn’t someone I’d call a good stallion, but when it came to my sister and I he was enthusiastically protective and you can imagine what was going through his head when he saw his youngest daughter bringing the neighbor colt home.”
Aurora let out a sympathetic chuckle. “He got both barrels, huh?”
She smiled and gathered the whole of Aurora’s mane in her light, joining the disparate curls into a sheet of long white ripples. “Neither of us were really old enough to grasp what he was concerned about. We just thought he didn’t like S&D.”
“If you think about it, sheath and dagger sounds exactly what he was worried about.”
Ginger paused, then snorted despite herself. “Good grief, Aurora.”
She smiled and the conversation meandered on. It felt nice, and not just the gentle pull of Ginger’s magic on her mane. All of it. Just being home, safe from the dangers lurking outside, not having to strategize where to go next or have her mind constantly tied in knots around a mystery that never seemed to end. Even before she left the Stable she hadn’t had what she had now, and she was beginning to understand what she’d been missing all this time. 
Back when she and Carbide were an item, it always felt to her like their relationship was a dance whose steps had already been laid out for them to follow. Things had begun with physical attraction and for a while that was fine, but as time had gone on and their fellow residents became aware of their relationship the pressure of expectation grew heavy, and quickly. They did their best to follow all the steps without acknowledging that they were just going through the motions, and with both of them pulling the same long shifts in Mechanical it was to use the sex as a relief valve that bolstered their self-deception that what they had was what everyone else had. It came as a relief, then, when she ended things. 
Ginger wasn’t anything like Carbide. They’d fought alongside one another. Saved one another. When Ginger realized she was struggling just to exist with the existential stresses of being in the wasteland she didn’t pass her off to Roach as his problem. She stepped right into the thick of it and talked her through the worst of it. She listened, and more than that, she cared deeply about what Aurora had to say. In the short three weeks they’d spent together, they’d endured trial after trial that bonded them in a way very few could be. 
And they’d made it here. Home, together.
“What’s that look for?”
Aurora blinked. “What look?”
The door clicked open as Ginger started to answer, and she settled for a knowing wink instead as Dr. Fetlock stepped back into the exam room. Paper crackled again as Aurora lifted her head to watch him set a hard case on the counter, his professionally stoic expression masking any hint of lingering discomfort he might have after her not so indirect dismissal earlier. He was all business, cracking open the case while sparing a quick glance at the laminated card fixed to the lid. Aurora squinted at the logo at the top of the card and frowned when she didn’t see the usual Stable-Tec insignia. Instead, Maiden Pharmaceutical was stamped at the top.
She sighed as he removed two syringes from the foam molded interior and set them beside the case. “More shots?”
He pivoted an ear toward her and nodded. “I would have been back sooner but Supply is following the overstallion’s new resource restrictions to the letter. I understand your objections to a physical exam, but I’d be negligent not to offer you treatment for your exposure to the surface.” He gathered both syringes and stepped over to her bedside, holding up one and then the other as if expecting her to understand the medical gibberish printed on each label.
“This is pentetic acid,” he said, indicating the needle loaded with slightly yellowish fluid as she sat herself up on the table. “It will bind to the radioactive particles in your blood so you’re able to pass them in your urine. Supply has cleared you for double water rations for today and tomorrow so you won’t dehydrate.”
Aurora gave the needle a dubious look. “It sounds like Radaway.”
The stallion showed no sign of recognition. “They may be chemically similar, but I can’t speak for the efficacy of what you were treated with before. As for your hind leg, I’m not going to put all my faith in the medical treatment of organized scavengers in a non sterile environment.” He held up the other needle. Its contents appeared innocuous in its lack of color, but the cursive lettering of StimPack tucked beside a trademark symbol in the corner caught her eye. Seeing her expression shift, he added, “That’s not to say they didn’t perform passable work. Whoever treated you was experienced.”
She shrugged him off. “Radaway for the radiation, stimpack for the stump. I get it.”
On the other side of the table, Ginger’s Pip-Buck pinged. Her brow furrowed at the screen as she worked her way through a device she still hadn’t quite gotten the hang off. When she noticed them waiting on her, she shook her head. “Go ahead. I’ll be a minute.”
Fetlock didn’t skip a beat. “Pentetic acid is a strong diuretic, so it’s vital you drink all of your water rations while it’s working. You may also experience some discomfort in your stump for a day or two, and there’s a chance it could disrupt your sleep. Being unable to fall asleep is fairly common and should subside after twenty-four hours but if you experience hallucinations or night terrors, come see me and I can prescribe a temporary sleep aid.”
She pursed her lips as he uncapped the first syringe. “I don’t know why I avoid coming here when you make medicine sound so fun,” she said dryly.
He didn’t offer anything in retort as he wiped an alcohol swab against her shoulder and sank the needle. She winced and stared straight ahead until he had done the same with the other and directed her hoof onto the cotton ball pressed to the wound. She sat there and wondered why she couldn’t help but badger the poor stallion when he was just trying to help, but as he disposed of the syringes and moved toward the silicone cast glued to her stump she could feel the window for an apology slide shut. 
The mold came off without trouble, leaving behind several inches of shaved skin the color of charcoal and a long crescent of thick black stitches the Enclave had sewn for her. Her lip twitched with embarrassment, and she quietly tucked what remained of her leg toward the other.
“This impression should be fine,” he murmured. “I’ll have this sent to Fabrication to have it scanned once the power is back on. Millie will let you know when you can come back to see how the finished socket fits, and after that we’ll set up an appointment to discuss compatible schematics for a permanent prosthesis.”
She nodded. “As long as Ginger and I are allowed to build the final product, that’s fine.”
It didn’t take a keen eye to see the objections forming on his face, but they’d argued about this once already and he didn’t seem willing to dive into that piranha pit a second time. “Of course. Until then, you know you can come to me if anything changes.”
With that he packed up the hard case and left the room. She felt a touch of guilt for refusing full treatment, but not much. She’d been shot, bitten, beaten and dosed with enough radiation to make the toilet bowl glow and survived all of it. Probably being in the wasteland had shaved a few years off her life. No big surprise there. Blood tests and an ice cold duckbill under her tail weren’t going to undo any of it.
She was ready to go. When she turned to ask Ginger for help getting down from the table, she paused. Ginger was smiling down at her Pip-Buck, something that rarely ever seemed to happen whenever the device had something to say. 
“Good news?”
Ginger nodded and turned the screen so she could read. “See for yourself.”







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Ministry Interoffice Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: Ginger Dressage
From: Minister Primrose
Subject: Delivery Scheduled
04/22/1297

Ms. Dressage,

Please inform the current overseer to expect the arrival of the agreed upon ignition talisman tomorrow morning, prior to dawn. I have tasked the delivery to a special unit who have been instructed to complete this mission unarmed. They have been informed in advance that whomever your overseer chooses to receive the talisman may also choose to remain armed. I will not pass judgment on whichever election you make in that regard, and advise only that you do not attempt to lure them into the Stable or prevent Colonel Weathers from departing. 

This unit will be under the command of Lt. Col. Cedar. He will meet you at the Stable door to facilitate the exchange. Do not speak to him. He is mute by choice and will not respond.

And lastly, please give my regards to Aurora for her bravery and perseverance. She exemplified the exact qualities Commander Spitfire sought to preserve. It has been my honor to play a role in the continued conservation of her project, and I truly hope to be present when Stable 10 is ready to open itself to a better Equestria.

Respectfully,
Minister Primrose







The shift in Sledge’s demeanor when they shared the good news was infectious. He sank into the padding of his chair as the tension he’d been holding onto evaporated. Ginger only knew the stallion through Aurora’s stories, but it was clear to her that the past three weeks of holding a sinking Stable together had taken a physical toll on him. Between excavating the dark truth behind the end of Old Equestria, discovering the depths of Spitfire’s complicity, and now having to keep tabs on the last living Element of Harmony who had recently checked herself out of the infirmary to lock horns a second time with their guest, Sledge had more than his fair share of problems to deal with. 
Ginger thought he’d looked like a courier who’d just run the gauntlet from Las Pegasus to Manehattan without a break in between. Now, finally, they had good news. She looked down at the time on her Pip-Buck and felt her own burst of relief that in less than ten hours Aurora’s stricken home would be secure again, and with it their future.
Now all she had left to worry about was making a good impression with Dusky Pinfeathers. That, she decided, she could manage.
Aurora’s wing wrapped her midsection as she helped her with the stairs to the upper residential level. It’d been a long day for both of them and while Aurora wanted to show she was adapting to her injury, two days and a few stimpacks did not make up for the physical toll missing a leg was taking on her. She flinched a little with every third step. Ginger privately wished she knew a spell that could simulate Aurora’s missing limb, but there were some obstacles just better suited for medicine.
Ginger let her lead the way down the corridors to her father’s compartment. On the way they encountered a herd of foals barrelling this way and that down the half-lit hall as they played an exuberant game of tag. A small group of adults, clearly their parents, gossiped with one another around the open door of one of their compartments. One of them spotted the two mares making their way down the hall and nodded with something like deference as they passed while the others politely averted their eyes. Ginger hoped she wouldn’t wind up forced to wear one of the gaudy boiler suits the pegasi here put on every day. She kept her tail low, relieved that at least one of the adults had regarded her with a friendly smile. It was progress, she supposed.
“Here,” Aurora said, slowing to an uneven stop outside a door whose name plaque simply read D. PINFEATHERS. She gripped Ginger more tightly to steady herself as she rapped a hoof against the steel panel. “Knock knock, dad!” 
The door hadn’t been fully closed, allowing the older stallion’s voice to carry through the gap at their hooves. “Come in! Oh shoot, Aurora, give me a minute. I’ll get the door for you!”
“I have it, Mr. Pinfeathers!” 
She had the bottom of the door wrapped in magic before he could trouble himself with working the jack handle. With the slab whisking up into its recess, it took some effort for her not to smile at the sight of Aurora’s father's expression as he watched it rise from where he stood at his little kitchenette. He held a slightly dented but well cared for steel bowl in the crook of his wing while the other clutched a set of tongs buried in its leafy contents. His astonishment didn’t so much fade as much as he managed to set it aside for another time, and his wide eyes creased with a well weathered smile. 
“Thank you, Ginger,” he said, sparing the open doorway one last glance before gesturing toward the small, circular table at the center of the room. “Sit down, you two. I’m almost done.”
She let the door settle back down until it came to rest onto a trio of hardcover books he’d used for a shim. The paper bowed out as she rested its weight onto them, leaving just enough room to see the shadows of hooves passing in the corridor. 
“Showoff,” Aurora whispered in her ear.
“Unapologetically so,” she murmured back with a smile.
The main room of Dusky’s compartment offered a fair bit more space than Aurora’s and it didn’t take long to understand why. The three walls of the little combination dining room/kitchen that weren’t reserved for cooking were adorned with dozens of photographs held in their own unique frames, some clustered together while a few others had been given their own shelves to sit on alongside what she could only guess were family mementos. She helped Aurora into a chair at the table and diverted toward one such shelf set beside a comfortable looking red recliner. 
A younger version of Aurora smiled back at her from behind the glass, all teeth and twinkling green eyes. Ginger pursed her lips to keep herself from laughing at the filly in the photo, her messy, short-trimmed mane an exercise in controlled chaos as she held up in both wings a wooden box adorned in worn brown knobs. A radio, Ginger realized. She barely recognized it with all the parts still attached.
In the photo’s reflection she watched Aurora’s father round the table and give her a firm squeeze with his free wing. “Proud of you, kiddo,” she heard him whisper. She flushed a bit and pretended not to have overheard.
“She won that at the Junior Apprentices raffle when she was nine,” he said, stepping beside her to admire the photo. “First thing she did with it when she got home was take it apart. Probably would have tried disassembling the tubes too if her mother hadn’t caught her.”
Ginger looked over to Aurora and lifted a brow. “That sounds like her.”
Aurora shot her a lovingly exaggerated grin from her seat. 
“Oh, there,” he said, reaching past her to point at a frame hanging in a cluster of other pictures further down the wall. “Second one from the bottom.”
“Dad…”
She audibly gasped at the doe-eyed foal staring out from her little silver frame. Sure she was hamming it up just a little to draw an embarrassed groan from Aurora, but the tiny version sitting in her high chair with easily as much pureed carrots on her face and hooves as there was on the tray in front of her was too precious to go without comment. The cherry on top was the absolutely baffled expression on Aurora’s little face, as if the effort of eating lunch had rocked her infant mind. 
Her father chuckled, making his way back to the table to set the bowl in his wing at the center. “I’ll be nice and leave the albums in storage.”
She stepped closer to the mosaic of family memories, finding herself not quite able to pull away just yet. Her head tilted ever so slightly at a dapple gray mare looking up from a cluttered workbench with an exasperated smile, the crow’s feet around her eyes hinting at a mare unafraid to show her feelings. For a split second Ginger thought she was looking at Aurora caught working away the hours down in her second home in Mechanical, but this mare couldn’t be any younger than fifty. It finally clicked who she was looking at when she realized the mare’s radiant golden mane wasn’t a trick of the light, but her natural shade. This wasn’t Aurora. It was her mother.
Aurora’s father gently cleared his throat. “Her name was Nimbus.”
“She’s very pretty.” Rather than draw out an uncomfortable moment, she stepped back from the photos and retreated to the table. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pinfeathers, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
He waved her off and tipped his nose to the open chair beside Aurora. “Lucky for you, you’re family so you get a free pass. And call me Dusky. Now sit, or I really will dig out the photo albums.”
Aurora practically yanked her into the vacant chair while Dusky went to the cupboards and fished out three bowls. As he dispensed dishes and cutlery, Ginger quietly enjoyed the warmth that bloomed in her at being called family. The unironic sincerity in the way he said it had caught her off guard, and for a moment she had to avert her eyes until the little lump in her throat went away.
By the time Dusky finished setting the table, she’d composed herself well enough to venture a peek at the greens set in the middle of the table. A smile touched her lips at the simple salad he’d prepared. A colorful mishmash of diced cucumber and peaches lay stirred in with quartered tomatoes, what appeared to be tiny corn cobs and a heavy bedding of baby spinach. The little corns had been lightly seared, suggesting a genuine recipe, and even as he seated himself Dusky took the tongs from the bowl and gave the combination a generous turn. As if to offer its own complement, her stomach emitted an unignorable peal. Dusky’s smile widened as he sank the tongs back into the bowl.  
“Dig in,” he urged, and soon the salad tongs had made their way to each of them. 
A pleasant calmness settled between them as forks clinked and they shared the tiny pleasured utterances that never failed to signify a good meal, and although the leaves were a little wilted and the tomatoes overripe it was easily one of the best tasting dishes Ginger had in years. Neither she nor Aurora asked the obvious question of how Dusky had gotten his hooves on so many fresh ingredients when the Stable was on rations. The answer was obvious. He’d broken the rules and done a little personal shopping to do something special for his daughter and her new partner. As she sank her fork through a tiny toasted earlet of corn, she found herself smiling in spite of the little theft. 
Seeing everyone had settled in, Dusky speared a morsel from his bowl and watched her for a moment from across the table. “So, how are you liking it?”
She looked up from her dinner and smiled. “It’s delicious. I haven’t had fresh greens like this since I was young.”
He didn’t seem to need an explanation to understand there were some painful reasons behind her innocuous statement, and she felt an unusual appreciation when he refrained from prying. “Salads aren’t too hard to get right.” He chuckled to himself and regarded her again. “I was thinking more along the lines of our Stable. Is it much different from where you came from?”
Talk about a loaded question. She popped her fork into her mouth to stall long enough for a graceful response to take shape, all the while marveling at Aurora’s ability to practically inhale her dinner. Her portion was doomed the moment it touched her bowl. She resisted the urge to tease her, not knowing how her father might respond. 
“It’s different.” She kicked herself for the brainless answer and elaborated further. “It’s quieter than I pictured.”
Aurora’s ears perked up at that, as did her father’s. She winced at the double dose of concern growing between them.
“I mean that as a good thing,” she hastily added, gesturing vaguely with her hoof as if hoping to summon the right words to properly convey how she felt. “Before I met Aurora, I lived above a small shop that I owned not far from here. Every morning the first thing I would do was go downstairs to make sure nothing got stolen. Sometimes I’d check in the middle of the night, otherwise I wouldn’t sleep. Junction City was one of those no name towns too small to support a Ranger installation, and it’s not uncommon for road bandits and would-be raiders to come through to cut their teeth picking our locks.”
Dusky frowned. “Raiders?”
She hesitated before offering a tiny shrug. “Organized groups of killers and thieves. They tend to fill any spaces that aren’t claimed by other factions like the Steel Rangers or the Enclave.”
“Or Flim & Flam Mercantile,” Aurora added.
“Or them,” she agreed, while pointedly navigating around that fiasco entirely. Dusky looked bewildered enough already. “Anyway, there were always mornings when I’d find the back door broken in or signs that someone had tried and given up. Most days were normal. I’d take ten caps from the safe and see what the market had for food, then go back and open the store. Sometimes I would get a paying customer but most days it was just me and my sewing machine.”
“I assume you had neighbors who visited?”
She smiled to mask her discomfort. “Junction City wasn’t the sort of place where anyone knocked on your door for a cup of sugar. And I’ll admit, I didn’t put much effort into changing that.”
He grunted. “Sounds lonely.”
“It was,” she agreed, “and I did it for seventeen years thinking if I stuck with it long enough, somebody important would walk through my doors and finally put Gussets & Garments on the map. After that my life was guaranteed to take off. I’d be able to buy better locks, build a safe room behind the shop, or even pay somebody to safely escort me somewhere better where I wouldn’t have to worry about being evicted because I’d been robbed too frequently that month. It was remarkably easy to feel comfortable living at a perpetual dead end.”
She looked over to Aurora and her lip twitched upward. “And then your daughter showed up and dragged me into an adventure I didn’t ask for, and that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”
Aurora grinned and brushed the back of her wing against her hip.
Ginger met her eyes. “You taught me how to be myself and not someone I thought I had to be. Now I’m here. This morning I woke up without that creeping fear of not knowing whether I was in danger. All my life I’ve been tense and thought that was normal, and only two days of being in this Stable has me thinking that isn’t normal at all. It’s quiet here, but in the best way possible. I don’t think I’ll ever have the right words to explain it.”
“Life never lends itself to an easy summary.” Dusky stared into his bowl and chewed thoughtfully for a while, allowing a different silence to filter between them. They ate with their thoughts heavy, giving the air time to clear.
The hush lingered.
And lingered.
She almost dropped her fork at the abrupt noise of Aurora’s chair scraping across the floor, propelled by the mare’s single hind leg. Aurora’s face was an exaggeration of great concern as she leaned close and loudly whispered, “Ginger. Ginger, I think you made it awkward.”
Dusky broke into a broad smile and laughed, prompting Ginger to shake her head and do the same. Conversation resumed with a renewed brightness, leading them through the rest of dinner and well after the table had been cleared. She and Aurora shared stories about the wasteland and in exchange Dusky told them tales of his younger years, some of which even Aurora hadn’t heard before, and as the evening wore on Ginger felt less and less like an outsider. They talked about everything and nothing until every anecdote was punctuated with pleasant yawns, and when it was time to finally leave Dusky stopped them at the door and pulled Ginger into a hug and murmured in her ear.
“Keep my little filly out of trouble, will you?”
She assured him she would try her best but made no promises. He chuckled and reminded Aurora he loved her before finally allowing them to go. She couldn’t stop herself from grinning all the way back down to Aurora’s compartment. Their compartment. 
She dropped her saddlebags at the foot of their unmade bed and resisted the urge to flop onto the mattress while Aurora skimmed the messages that had collected on her Pip-Buck. A smile crossed her face as she stopped to let Ginger read the update that came in from Sledge, letting them know with a touch of personal frustration that Rainbow Dash had woken up and marched straight back to Colonel Weathers. She was relieved to read Rainbow and Weathers had, to some extent, made peace with one another and had sussed out one of the Stable’s sources of illicit liquor while they licked their wounds. 
It boded well, then, that Sledge’s primary concern was that Rainbow might put down enough booze to consider taking the colonel to bed. She snorted at that and pushed the Pip-Buck away, letting Aurora know that after all the poor ghoul had been through she was well within her rights to have a good time however she might define it.
They showered, toweled one another off, and as they slipped under the covers to share each other's warmth Ginger realized she wasn’t just safe. Here in this place, filled with pegasi she still had yet to meet, she finally found somewhere she belonged. And as her thoughts began to blend into the pleasant nonsense of sleep, she knew she would do everything in her power to protect the family she’d found at long last.







The ponies of another mare’s memories trotted down the cobbles, and Tandy smiled as they passed. They were figments, fractured recollections pulled and reassembled from the annals of her creator’s mind and set back into motion like lifelike wind-up toys. Luna had been guilty of many things in her lifetime, but few were ever aware that she often spent the minutes prior to her purely ceremonial role in raising the moon watching her subjects live their lives below the castle spires. Being privy to Luna’s memories, Tandy knew the ache the younger princess felt as she imagined herself walking among them with a life of her own, her sins and her crown forgotten. She felt a somber sympathy for Luna as she drifted down busy streets and peeked through windows, knowing the war and its conclusion had stolen away her chance to live that dream for herself.
In the back of her mind she could sense the dreamers arriving. She hoped to herself that they wouldn’t be bothered by a recurrence of their communal dream so soon after the last one, but something about showing Luna’s last moments to Ginger had sparked a sort of melancholy in her. Bringing all the dreamers here, together, made this better world almost real again.
She recognized each of them as they drifted into this abandoned realm. Pickett, an old stallion living with his wife in the Crystal Mountains, was always first to arrive. Looseleaf appeared next and unsurprisingly galloped straight to the capital’s grand balconies to memorize the towns and farms down below to inspire her paintings. A foal too young to tell Tandy her name appeared, and she quickly sent a figment mare to comfort the unfortunately gifted child until she woke from her nap. The dreamers all arrived at Tandy's illusion where they left it and she watched them for a time to ensure they were happy with it. Most were. Some appeared indifferent, having no connection with Old Canterlot or the world it came from.
One did, and his dream always began the same way. She closed her eyes and opened them again, appearing before the desperately infuriated zebra as she had so many nights before. Eshe stood at the intersection of two busy thoroughfares, face twisted with agony as he grasped where he was. As memories of carriages and box trucks droned inches away from him on either side, his lavender eyes fixed on her alone.
“Tafadhali, acha nizungumze nao. Mara moja tu.”
She shook her head. “I will not. You have led too many innocents to their death already.”
“Hawana haja ya kuja! Wacha waotaji watume jeshi kuchoma Mariposa, na mimi nayo!”
“The dreamers are meant to be protected. We have discussed this before, Eshe.”
“Mimi ni mwotaji, wewe pepo!”
“My rules have not changed. Do not become a disturbance to the others, lest I be forced to wake you.”
Eshe’s lip curled from his teeth. “Basi fanya. Haitasafisha dhamiri yako.”
Perhaps not, but she had seen his prison through his own eyes. She would not allow him to lure anyone into that gauntlet a second time. 
“Behave yourself,” she warned, and faded before he could accost her again.
The other dreamers were trickling in steadily now. Her smile returned as she felt Ginger’s arrival at the cafe in the shopping quarter. A touch of concentration pulled her through the illusion like feathers expertly flitting through folders in a filing cabinet. Luna had spent many, many nights walking the city to the point where Tandy felt every brick and cobble imprinted like a tattoo on her very essence. 
And even if she hadn’t, finding her way to Ginger was as simple an act as she could manage. The unicorn was a beacon that drew Tandy like a curious moth, and she went to her willingly. She found Ginger seated at the table she’d shared with Primrose, still with sleep fresh in her eyes. 
Tandy formed herself behind the opposing chair and waited patiently for Ginger to finish staring at the clean buildings and notice she was there. When she did, Tandy could see something different in Ginger’s eyes. A deep, resolute calmness.
“Good evening, Tandy.” 
She placed a hoof on the back of the chair. “Better, now. Would you like to sit or walk tonight?”
Ginger stretched her hooves and pushed away from the table. “It’d be nice to see the city without Primrose spoiling things. Where do you suggest we go first?”
Tandy paused to consider the question. She couldn't remember being asked for her opinion before. The other dreamers dealt with her like they would a book or an oracle. A source of information. A reference guide for a world long gone. Did she have preferences of her own? 
“I know a place.”
She led her to the sidewalk, past shops and picture windows displaying all manner of colorful merchandise for sale to passers by. Ginger paused outside several stores to admire their displays while Tandy brought the figments inside to life, in one case directing a yellow stallion to place a threadlike silver necklace onto a black velvet bust behind the glass. Ghosts of a dead world offered polite nods and simple greetings as they made their way down the bustling sidewalk. All the while, Tandy paid attention to the last trickle of dreamers arriving. Primrose was not among them, which was strange for the little tyrant. Of all the creatures who retained enough residual magic to still access this realm, Primrose had done so like clockwork for two hundred and ten years. What changed?
“Luna’s night,” Ginger gasped.
She nearly corrected her before realizing it was an expression. The narrow road had opened up ahead of them as they approached the southerly edge of Old Canterlot and the grand balconies overlooking the verdant fields far below. Ginger’s hoofsteps hurried across the last intersection and down the stairs to the wide semicircular overlook at the bottom, and Tandy felt a touch of relief upon seeing her excitement. Her idea to bring Ginger here had been borrowed from Looseleaf who stood at the edge of the next platform over, her pale ears standing forward as she gobbled up as much of the vista as she could.
Tandy followed Ginger to a carved stone railing adorned with numerous signs warning visitors to be mindful of their foals. Figments of Wonderbolt sentries flew arcing patterns over the balconies, their presence regretfully required as the pressures of an unending war drove so many to find solace at the bottom of the drop. 
“It’s beautiful,” Ginger remarked, her eyes wide as she drank in the view. Blocks of corn, wheat, soybeans and cranberry bogs followed each side of the ruler-straight line of Equestria’s first paved highway to touch both coasts. Plots of land were framed by narrow bands of lush foliage, and it all stretched from one horizon to the other beneath a clear blue sky. “Was all of it really this green?”
She joined her at the railing and nodded. “Even more so before industry came to Equestria.”
“May I see?”
“Of course you may.” 
It took little effort to nudge the illusion into compliance. The highway vanished along with the gas stations and pit stops clustered between the neat patchwork of farmland. Deep forests spread out from the corners they’d been pushed into, devouring the orderly lines until only a few notable dirt roads could be discerned from the gaps in the foliage. A minor city near the horizon shrank to the size of a sleepy town dwarfed by the wild forest that bordered it. Here and there a few patches of land had been carved out for farmland, marked by a tiny barn or the telltale rows of trees that defied the natural disarray around them. 
“That’s the Everfree Forest,” Ginger murmured.
Tandy winced at the frustrated shouts coming from the balcony where Looseleaf had been posted. “Considered by many at this time to be a place to be avoided, yes. The locals believed it to harbor curses, wild magic, and some professed it to have sentience of its own.”
Ginger gestured toward a patch of trees not far from the base of the mountain. “I know. New Canterlot wound up being built right down there and we grew up with the same stories. They all ended the same way, though. The Everfree stopped being scary once the first bulldozer was built.”
“Very true,” she mused. “You… are happier than usual tonight.”
The little unicorn’s cheeks pinched with a widening grin. “I had a very good day.”
She crossed her hooves over the railing, mimicking Ginger’s relaxed posture. The mare must have taken it to be an invitation to explain because she took a long breath and did just that. She spoke of her feelings of otherness upon arriving at the Stable she helped fight to save, divulging private fears that once the door closed for good she might be locked into a mistake she couldn’t ask to undo. She felt sadness over Roach being barred from coming with them, even if just to visit the place where his daughter and husband had been buried, but took some comfort in her suspicion that his attention toward Julip had begun developing into something deeper than mentorship. These were all the same fears Ginger had shared the night before, but Tandy knew she was working her way toward something and thus remained silent. 
“And then today I met Aurora’s dad and we just hit it off. He didn’t ask about my horn, or dig into my past, or anything like that. He just looked at me like I was any other person he’d met and he was so polite.” She laughed and shook her head at the endless flora below. “He made me a salad! I haven’t had salad since I was little! And he didn’t want anything in return for it. He just… fed us. Because it was something he wanted to do. I know it sounds dumb, but it really meant something.”
“It must have been a good salad.”
Ginger set her forehead against the railing and groaned. “I’m not explaining myself well at all, am I?”
Tandy smiled at her. “You were afraid the Stable would not welcome you because you are different. Aurora’s father demonstrated that is not the case by giving you food and kindness.”
She looked up at her. “Right. Exactly that. How are you so good at this?”
“Time and practice.”
“Hmph. It took me over thirty years of my life to finally feel this happy.”
“A wise mare once told me not to begrudge the past.”
“Princess Luna?”
She shook her head. “No. No one so well known.”
They watched a Wonderbolt coast by just off the balcony, his gaze briefly lingering in their direction as he rode the mountain winds. Ginger lifted a hoof to greet the figment, then she furrowed her brow and sighed.
“Tandy, can I ask you a question?”
She tilted her head. “Always.”
“When you… make dreams for us, you’re building them from our memories. Right?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Ginger appeared to deflate a little. “So you already knew about the things I just told you about.”
“Yes,” she repeated, before adding, “but nonetheless I take great joy in our conversations. It is one thing to know a thing, and another to hear it recited by the one who experienced it.”
Several seconds passed as Ginger stared thoughtfully into the distance. “You like hearing how it made us feel?”
Tandy paused, then nodded. “In a sense, yes.”
Something akin to discomfort radiated from Ginger for a long while before she seemed to adjust to this knowledge. Tandy waited, torn by her own desire to make Ginger forget this conversation and the knowledge that doing so to other dreamers in the past only caused their friendship with her to fray and break. She didn’t want Ginger to mistrust her like the others did. This unicorn was a friend she wanted to keep.
She was thankful, then, when she felt Ginger’s emotions begin to settle. “So you’ve known about Rainbow Dash all along.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. The questions were buried beneath it. Many of them, in fact. Tandy gestured one of Nightmare Moon’s black feathers toward the edge of the balcony, drawing Ginger’s attention to the golden necklace that now slowly rotated between them.
“I have not shared news of her survival with any of the dreamers.”
Ginger exhaled. “Good. Good.”
“And the magic her element still bears is not enough to restore Equestria to what it once was.” Seeing the sudden disappointment in her eyes, Tandy’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. I know it is not what you hoped to hear.”
A family trotted up to the balcony’s edge beside them, memories on memories. Ginger hid the worst of her emotion behind a simple nod, but even then she couldn’t prevent Tandy from sensing her deep frustration. It wasn’t the first time she met a dreamer who had pinned their hopes on a miraculous return of the Elements of Harmony, yet it stung a little deeper each time. They wanted an easy solution. A button to press or a spell to cast. In the early years when the ash still hadn’t finished settling, a stallion desperately accused her of withholding knowledge of a  mythical machine capable of terraforming balefire-scorched soil. She had argued that even if such a device did exist, it would have the power to destroy as easily as rebuild and could not be entrusted to any of the fragmented groups scrambling for power in their new world. It hadn’t been the answer he wanted to hear and the things he said he wished he could do to her still haunted her thoughts.
It would do little good to tell Ginger that, so she didn’t.
“Magic is not a solution,” she said. “It is a tool. A hammer or a sword depending on who wields it, and therein lies the core of what decides whether the wasteland recovers or continues to fester: the people living in it. Magic could return tomorrow but little would change until people learn to trust each other again. That on its own takes time.”
Ginger lit her horn and floated the projection of Rainbow’s necklace closer. Tandy watched her as her gaze drifted across the scrollwork formed into its broad plates, then down to the ruby lightning bolt clasped in its socket. “I wonder whether the ponies of Kiln might teach us that.”
Tandy paused to draw on Ginger’s memories of the town before nodding approvingly. “They live by example. I believe you can too by allowing yourself to be satisfied with what you have accomplished, and make room for the next dreamer to do the same.”
“I suppose my mother would probably slap my hoof for not listening to my elders.” She stared a moment longer at the necklace, then floated it back toward Tandy. “Promise me you won’t share this with Primrose?”
“Hey.”
“The little tyrant has not slept this night or the last.” With a gesture, the necklace dissolved. “But when she inevitably does, I give you my word that none of what we discussed will pass my lips to her. I would not jeopardize your bargain with her.”
“Wake up. I gotta pee.”
“Good. Just so we’re on the same page.”
“Celestia’s tits, you’re on my wing!”
Tandy held back a smile as Ginger registered the other voice. “I suggest you take that call. Quickly.”
Ginger looked over her shoulder, confused, before letting out an indignant yelp as an invisible force appeared to crawl over her. She woke, and her form winked out of existence like a puff of steam, leaving Tandy alone to contemplate Primrose’s absence.







“Aurora!? Are you–”
“Sorry!” Her bladder nearly burst in the process of stumbling across Ginger and over the side of the bed. If a mare could be pregnant with piss then she knew what it felt like. “Go back to sleep!”
She made it to the bathroom with seconds to spare, but for the grace of Celestia remembering at the last moment to yank her tail away from the bowl as she dropped onto it. The doctor hadn’t been mincing words when he said the meds would flush her out. She was just thankful that in the dark compartment Ginger couldn’t see the absolute relief that gripped her.
Sheets rustled in the other room. She winced at the sound of Ginger sitting up. “Are you going to be alright, or should I go ask somebody for a snorkel?”
She tried not to laugh but a tiny snort got past her anyway. After what felt like a biologically impossible quantity of liquid fled her body, she was finally able to clean up and hit the flusher. “Maybe next time I’ll just stay in bed and see how funny you are then.” As she limped back into the main room, it lit up with the bright white glow of Ginger’s Pip-Buck. Her eyes clamped shut. “Gah! I was kidding!”
In response, she felt the almost imperceptible tingle of Ginger’s magic wrap her body and hoist her onto the bed. The wasteland nights had given her ample opportunity to develop a knack for cocooning parts of Aurora in one way or another, many which resulted in pleasantly startled noises that nearly rousted Roach and Julip from their sleep. Aurora was a little disappointed then when the bed’s rumpled covers settled beneath her and Ginger’s magic dissipated. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, she managed to force one open and squint at the upturned screen.
She sat up with her and scooted her back against the headboard. “Are we expecting an update?”
Ginger tipped her head against her shoulder and hummed no. “Tandy told me that Primrose hasn’t slept for a while.” She yawned. “I was worried she was using the time to make a last second change. She hasn’t, yet.”
Aurora kissed the top of her head before nestling her chin into the short curls of her mane. “I thought it was my job to do all the worrying.”
Ginger chuckled to herself.
She smiled a little and closed her eyes, hoping they could fall asleep like this once Ginger turned off the screen. “What kind of dream were you having before I woke you up?”
“Tandy brought everyone back to Old Canterlot again. I got to see Equestria from the balconies.”
“That sounds nice.”
She could feel Ginger’s cheek twitch against her shoulder as she smiled. “It was beautiful.”
Something about the way she trailed off made her suspect something else had happened that didn’t sit as well with Ginger as the sights and sounds of Equestria’s lost capital city. She waited a moment to see if she might open up about it on her own, but when Ginger shifted uncomfortably and stayed silent, she gave her a gentle nudge.
“What happened?”
Ginger sighed. “Nothing bad happened, per se. I’m just bothered by something she kept to herself until tonight.”
She lifted her head and saw the helpless indignation painted across her face. Ginger’s eyes flicked up to meet hers for a moment before ducking back to the still glowing Pip-Buck. 
“She knows everything each dreamer knows once they enter her realm. I didn’t get a chance to ask how it worked, but since she uses our minds to create our dreams I assume it’s instantaneous.”
Aurora tried to find the thread she was pulling at, but it eluded her. “So she can read minds? That’s… creepy.”
“I mean, yes, but that’s not what bothers me. Primrose is a dreamer, too. Tandy knows everything she knows, but she didn’t tell me until today even though she knew it could have helped us.” She shook her head, struggling to make her anger make sense. “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.” She shifted her shoulder to slide her wing behind Ginger’s back, and gave her the same reassuring squeeze her dad was notorious for. “You started having dreams after Autumn overdosed you on stimpacks, so let’s start there. What could we have done differently if we knew everything Primrose knew?”
Ginger chewed the inside of her lip, thinking. “We would have known where the Enclave stockpiles the tech they stole from all those Stables, including the ignition talismans. And we wouldn’t have had to go all the way to Fillydelphia. You wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“Assuming the stockpiles are anywhere we could get access to, and aren’t heavily guarded.”
“But Primrose would know a way to dismiss anyone assigned to it.”
She nodded thoughtfully, trying not to look like she was humoring Ginger as much as she really was. “Okay, so we somehow raid an Enclave stash and escape with the talisman, without a scratch. Then what?”
Ginger shrugged as if it were obvious. “We come here, lock the door behind us, have great sex, and live our lives.”
She arched her brow. “With Roach?”
“Of course. Roach deserves to be here as much as…” She paused, then looked up at Aurora. “As soon as we find a way to talk to him, I’m telling him you said that.”
She laughed, reached over to Ginger’s Pip-Buck, and clicked the screen off. With the compartment dark again she felt a little more comfortable suggesting the possibility that lingered in her mind.
“So we’re all here, the door’s locked, and the generator’s spinning again thanks to a stolen talisman. What stops Primrose from trying to take it back?”
Ginger was quiet as she tried to suss out the point she was getting at. “The door,” she finally answered. “It’s impenetrable.”
“Maybe,” she hedged, knowing full well a conversation like this would be shouted down from anyone else in the Stable. Doubting their home’s security wasn’t a crime, but it was as close to one as a resident could get without crossing that line. She, as well as the other pegasi who worked, lived, and breathed all aspects of Mechanical, had a better grasp of reality than those who had the luxury of not knowing what it took to build a Stable in the first place. “Maybe not. Primrose has resources no one else in the wasteland and a fragile ego to match. If she figured out we used Tandy to root around in her head so that we could rob the Enclave, I don’t think she would let a Stable door stop her from evening the score.”
She listened as Ginger took a long, slow breath and blew it back out. “She did almost kill this Stable once already.”
It was a pill Aurora was still trying to swallow. Seeing the same thing happening now take place two centuries ago had been surreal. Knowing that the damage Primrose caused with her stunt was the reason behind their talisman finally exhausted itself only made bargaining with the mare that much worse. By accepting her “gift,” they were complicit in sealing away the truth of Primrose’s crimes from the rest of the world. 
And yet the alternative meant dropping her family, friends, and neighbors back onto a deadline they couldn’t afford. Even now, Stable 10 was slowly dying. The Gardens had been overharvested and there was barely enough clean water left to ration, let alone resources or energy to process and purify their waste. There was no contest that Primrose stood the most to gain, but Aurora wasn’t about to put pride before the survival of hundreds.
The war was in the past and she was sick of getting dragged down by things that happened generations ago.
“She did.” She hugged Ginger closer, staring through the dark. “I don’t want to give her a reason to try it again.”
Ginger didn’t need much convincing to accept her logic, even if she did it with audible reluctance. It was possible the mysterious Tandy had reasons for not divulging her abilities until now, or more likely the creature didn’t want to involve herself in the petty grievances of the waking world. Could anyone ever be certain how a creature born from a dead princess’s magic experienced existence in the first place?
“Next time I’ll ask her about it,” Ginger murmured. “Not tonight, though.”
“Why not?”
The soft click of Ginger’s hoof against the Pip-Buck’s screen punctuated the silence. “This gadget has a clock. We need to be up in an hour.”
“We could do a lot in an hour.”
Ginger elbowed her in the ribs and she cried out with feigned injury, pawing at her exasperated sweetheart with cloying wings as she sank back down to the mattress. When she was sure she wasn’t coming down to join her, she chuckled and set her head in Ginger’s lap. “You’re no fun.”
There was a smile in Ginger’s voice when she spoke. “Go back to sleep, and leave that alone. I’ll wake you in a little while.”
She shut her eyes, her muscles relaxing. “We can keep talking about stuff.”
Dim light lifted her mane behind her ear. “Sleep.”
There was no arguing with the gentility in her voice. She drifted off to the sensation of magic in her mane, Ginger’s faint heartbeat in her ear, and the endless possibilities of a future on its way to them.







“Is that it?”
Sledge took a swig from his canteen before capping it and putting it back in his desk. On his terminal screen, a single pegasus in black uniform stood on the platform outside the Stable with his gaze fixed on the lone security camera that had witnessed so much already. A wooden crate lay at his hooves on the stained concrete. As promised, he was visibly unarmed.
“Looks like it. Have the deputies wake the colonel and make her ready for the exchange. I want that door open for as little time as possible.”
As Opal left for Security, he let himself breathe again. His heart pounded in his chest, nerves jangling. He couldn’t shake the knowledge that if this Enclave chose to, they could easily rush the Stable door as soon as it rolled open. They didn’t have firepower like the organized soldiers outside did. He did what he could to gather himself but there was nothing he could do to dispel the unspoken terror lurking in his head.
On this side of the door was order, cooperation, and community. Out there stood a wasteland filled with chaos, misery, and violence. And the only thing keeping one from overrunning the other was the word of a mare he never met whose wings were stained with the blood of billions.
He paced the length of his office, pausing only to reaffirm the presence of the lone soldier at the threshold of his home. He hated this. He hated that the survival of everything he knew hinged on the charity of a mass murderer. 
Minutes ticked by as he waited, privately wishing the Enclave would pack up their guns and leave the talisman behind. As if to answer him, the stallion positioned behind the crate looked back into the tunnel and gestured for something to be brought to him. At first Sledge thought the small black object another soldier passed to him was a revolver like the ones his deputies carried, but the pegasus knelt and started passing the object over the concrete in long sweeps with his wing. Dark, black letters appeared on the platform in front of him. Charcoal. He was writing with a charcoal stick.
When the soldier finished, he stepped back to let the camera see the message he’d written:

	WE ARE READY.

He shuddered and kept pacing.
Aurora and Ginger were the first to arrive. He forgave them for looking like they’d just crawled out of bed. They likely had. It was early enough that most of the Stable was still asleep, and yet he knew the bolt-action rifle slung over the tired mare’s shoulder was in better wings than anyone else he could call upon. He paused long enough in his endless walking to pull the canteen from his desk and toss it to Aurora, who drained it without coming up for air. For being medically dehydrated and undoubtedly dealing with her own anxieties, she looked nice. Her mane and tail flowed with loose curls that reminded him of her mother. He kept those observations to himself. Compliments flustered Aurora, and he wasn’t anywhere near the right headspace for idle banter.
They loitered around the open door, forcing Opal to squeeze between them when she returned. “The deputies got the colonel and Rainbow Dash ready t’ go.”
He grimaced. “Are they sober?”
“Found ‘em sleeping in separate cells, so I suspect so. Didn’t occur to me to ask.”
On the terminal screen, the lone soldier stood behind his message like a statue. Sledge grit his teeth and sighed. “Nothing we can do now. Let’s get moving before our courier loses his patience.”
As they filed out of the office and rounded the Atrium catwalk, all he could think about was how this was going to be a disaster. Opal, Aurora, Ginger, Rainbow Dash, and even Colonel Weathers knew the truth of what had happened. He mentally kicked himself for so flippantly divulging the vault of buried history they’d uncovered. Doing so opened up a thousand opportunities for any one of them to complicate the most vital transaction in Stable 10’s existence, and now he could only wait for any one of them to bubble to the surface at the least opportune time. 
Chaser and Stratus greeted them at the security office, ushering them in with the half dozen lightly armed deputies of their shift. For the first time in as far back as he could remember, the mostly ceremonial revolvers in their holsters contained live ammunition. It had been a difficult call to make, as none of them could be reliably called an accurate shot, but without electricity to run the fabricators their options were limited. If things devolved into shooting, he hoped his people would do enough damage to make the Enclave remember them.
Rainbow Dash and Colonel Weathers stood outside the last empty cell tying off what appeared to be a serious discussion. Something Rainbow was saying had Weathers visibly annoyed, and her body language as she interrupted suggested they were far from agreement on whatever it was they were discussing. Alarm bells went off in Sledge’s head and he quickly crossed the gap between them before they could cut him out of the conversation.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Ask her,” Weathers said.
He turned to Rainbow, his expression stern. “I’ve got the Enclave waiting outside. Spill it.”
Without a second’s hesitation, Rainbow squared her shoulders and met his gaze. “I’m going outside.”
He blinked. “No you’re not.”
“I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I consider you to be a friend.” Her milky eyes darted to the others waiting behind him before returning to his. “I want to see what they did to my sky.”
Weathers’ posture shifted with quiet unease as Rainbow spoke, suggesting she had some part in her sudden fixation. He set his jaw and tried to keep his tone level. “Rainbow, this exchange is happening now and I need it to be over and done with as fast as possible. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for you to take in the scenery.”
She didn’t flinch. “Then lock me out if you have to. I’m going out there whether you want me to or not.”
His frustration nearly got the best of him as he instinctively turned toward the lockers beside the decontamination chamber doors and strongly considered putting his hoof through them. This was the complication he’d been dreading, and she wasn’t backing down. Meanwhile, their ignition talisman was sitting on the ground less than a hundred yards away. 
He turned back and stared flatly at Weathers. “Why did you put this in her head?”
The colonel scoffed back. “I’ve been advising her against this since she brought it up last night. Her mind is made up, overstallion. She knows the risks.”
He didn’t accept that. “Rainbow, there’s an army out there. You don’t know how they’ll react to seeing...”
“An Element of Harmony?” She looked past him to where Aurora and Ginger stood in feeble silence. “A ghoul? I don’t care what they think. The last time I saw the sky, it was on fire. My dad died out there. If I’m going to live here, I want to see what’s left.”
“Rainbow, we don’t have time to argue about this.”
“Good, then let’s not.” She turned from him with a harsh flick of her tail and faced the decontamination chamber. “Ginger, would you be so kind as to get the door?”
Ginger hesitated when their eyes met, but instead of helping him convince Rainbow to abandon this compulsion she mouthed a silent apology to him and hefted open the doors on both ends of the chamber. One by one they followed Rainbow under the arches until only Sledge and Opal remained.
“She’s going to get herself killed,” he murmured.
“That’s her choice t’ make,” Opal whispered back. “She knows you gotta do what’s right fer the Stable.”
And he hated that she was right. He could throw Rainbow into a cell until this was done and hope she’d forgive him like Aurora had, but he didn’t think he could face the guilt of watching her roam the Stable knowing her one chance of seeing the world she left behind had been stolen away. It didn’t make his decision any easier. If anything, it made it worse.
“Opal, I need you to go down and wake everyone in Mechanical that you can. Let them know what’s happening and that I want them in the Atrium ten minutes ago. Tell them to be ready for a fight. They’ll know what to bring.”
Opal nodded. “Yer not gonna let it get that bad, but I’ll tell ‘em anyway. Good luck, Sledge.”
She wrapped one of her fragile wings around the bulk of his foreleg, squeezed once, and left. When she was gone he went to the Atrium door and kicked the jack handle out of the wall. The heavy chains buzzed and the door slammed to the floor with a thunderclap that echoed across the Stable.
Then he turned and made his way toward the antechamber, steeling himself for whatever came next.







Aurora jumped at the impact of steel behind them. Down the ramp ahead of her, Rainbow and Weathers glanced behind them but showed little concern. They were too occupied with their irritation with one another to give something so minor their full attention. Aurora looked to Ginger as they descended the slope toward the behemoth geared seal sunk into the antechamber wall, trying to cling to her waning courage as memories of her escape flashed across her mind.
Her heart felt ready to jump out of her throat, but she kept her cool. She wasn’t leaving this time. Not if she could help it.
The four of them lined up behind the gate of the catwalk’s extension. Ginger licked her lips and nodded reassuringly to let Aurora know everything was going to be okay. If the Enclave wanted a fight, she would gladly bring one. Already, golden light swirled over the faint shadow of char ringing Ginger’s horn, a memento from what felt like years ago. She’d gotten a lot of practice between then and now. Aurora too. She suppressed a frustrated curse as she wrapped Desperate Times in her feathers and fumbled her grip. Her rifle was in the best condition it had ever been in, but the Enclave’s decision to uninstall the brass hooks Ginger had crafted made handling it a new challenge. 
She propped the butt beneath her shoulder and flicked the safety.
Ears pivoted at the sound of approaching hoofsteps. They all stole a quick glance at Sledge as he approached the console behind the upper railing, but the bulwark ahead of them needed little help pulling their attention forward again.
“This exchange needs to happen quickly,” he began, his voice echoing without need of amplification. “Keep the chatter as close to zero as possible. Today is not the day to settle any grudges. There are a thousand lives in this Stable we are all responsible for.”
Aurora tried not to react as Rainbow’s expression soured.
“Aurora, you’re receiving the talisman. Verify it’s inside the crate they brought and get it inside. Colonel Weathers, you’re free to leave as soon as she tells you.”
Weathers nodded. “Copy.”
“Ginger, I’m told you have a talent for creating shields?”
She smirked at that, her horn radiating potent energy. “You better believe it.”
“Good. I want you to put one in the breach as soon as the door starts rolling. If anyone tries to fly in before we’re ready, make sure you conjure something sturdy enough to break their noses.”
Aurora watched her break into a grin. 
“Rainbow?”
The Element of Loyalty grit her teeth and stared forward.
“Be careful out there.”
Something in her faltered just then, and she managed something of a nod. Her lips moved but the words were barely a whisper, easily drowned out by the pensive breath drawn and released by Sledge as he plugged his Pip-Buck into the console.
“Here we go.”
The emergency lights visibly dimmed a breath before the abrupt thunder of machinery coming to life flooded the antechamber. She squared her shoulders to chase away a resurgence of unpleasant memories as the dense armature swung from the ceiling toward the complex locking mechanisms recessed within the centerpost of Stable 10’s outer door. Heavy pins cranked inward freeing the gear to move, and it did so with a bellowing groan of protest as the armature heaved it toward them. Beside her, Ginger took an instinctive step back. Aurora could only mouth it’s okay within the cacophony and hope it reassured her. 
The cog seated itself into the deep set tracks behind the Stable’s skin and, slowly, began its plodding roll away from the opening. Aurora gripped her rifle tightly. As a crescent gap opened wider behind the gear the amber shimmer of Ginger’s shield materialized within it like a translucent cork. As the door continued beyond its halfway point, Aurora found herself squinting into the bright lights of a familiar scene.
The Enclave’s encampment had hardly changed since she last saw it two days ago. Tents of varying quality drew tidy lines down the length of the flagstone path, some adorned with simple signage designating a purpose other than sleep or storage. A thin smog of smoke clutched the uppermost arch of the tunnel’s vaulted ceiling, churned up by a few small cookfires near the walls. Yet instead of the walkways buzzing with activity as they had when she and Ginger first arrived with their escorts, only a few uniformed pegasi were visible. They kept together in a few disparate clutches, as if corralled there before the rest of their unit departed. And it was quiet. Deathly so, as it had been the first day Aurora left home. 
Waiting on the platform just a few yards away stood a single soldier dressed in black. His uniform was pressed and pristine, forming to his modestly toned frame as if the fabric were sewn directly to his coat. He wore no nametag, patches, or pins save for one: two black wings stood open at the points of his collar. A crate, its planks dry rotted and caked in dust, rested at his hooves.
The soldier said nothing, watching Ginger’s shield widening between them with placid curiosity before his gaze shifted down to the four of them. He looked at each of them for a moment, one by one, his expression never deviating from the neutral mask he wore. He didn’t appear to recognize Rainbow Dash, nor did he show any visible compassion toward the colonel when their eyes met. His unnatural calm dragged pins and needles up the back of Aurora’s neck. 
Seconds passed with both sides staring across the threshold, waiting for the other to make the first move. 
Aurora swallowed, her throat cottony as she took a step toward the catwalk bridge. “Lieutenant Colonel Cedar?”
He didn’t respond.
“You don’t talk. Got it.” She gestured at the box. “Open the crate. Show it to me.”
The silent stallion turned his dark eyes toward her for a moment before looking down at the crate and sliding his feathers into a slim gap between the lid and the frame. All but two of the original nails had been pulled from the pale wood, and the lid came free with little effort. It clattered to the floor and he lifted the crate with both wings, slightly tipping it toward them. 
Aurora clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering as she limped forward toward the shield, her hoofsteps reverberating against the catwalk as the nameless stallion did the same. As they met at the barrier she looked him over for guns, knives, anything that could conceivably be used as an ambush weapon, but saw nothing.
He held the crate up as if she needed enticement to look inside. Nestled into a bed of deflated straw lay a six sided stone barely larger than Aurora’s hoof and blacker than she felt should be possible. It was like looking down at the absence of something, and yet there it waited. The ignition talisman she, Ginger, Roach, and Julip had risked their lives to find in time.
The urge to reach out and snatch the crate from the soldier’s wings was overpowering, but she managed to resist it. Something about the stallion screamed DANGER in her mind and she couldn’t work out why. Then her attention shifted past the talisman and to the crate itself. She looked up and watched the soldier’s face but his expression hadn’t changed. It was like staring into the eyes of a statue.
“Put the box on the floor and move back.”
He did so with uncanny obedience, leaving the open crate at the edge of Ginger’s shield.
“Ginger, make me a hole.”
A cavity opened in the barrier a little more than a foot in diameter and Aurora wasted no time releasing her rifle and sliding her empty wing through the shield. She reached down and plucked the stone from the desiccated bedding. The soldier remained perfectly still as he watched her pull the talisman through the shield, though for a split second Aurora thought she saw him holding his breath. As Ginger sealed the gap Aurora watched the stallion for several long seconds, but he regarded her with little to no interest. 
She clutched the talisman tightly in her feathers and turned away before he could do anything profoundly disturbing like sprout a second head or unhinge his jaw. Deep down, something told her that stallion was a monster in every way as the centaur herd lurking in the Pleasant Hills. The faster they shut him outside, the better.
She could hear him pick up the empty crate and return to the outer platform. As soon as her hooves reached solid ground inside, Colonel Weathers wasted no time stepping onto the catwalk. Rainbow Dash followed in her wake without a word, shuffling her conspicuously single wing as the stallion stepped aside to let both of them pass. Both of them were in a hurry to leave for reasons that were their own, but Rainbow’s abrupt departure tugged at her.
“Is that our talisman?”
Sledge’s voice pulled Aurora back into the present. She looked down and opened her wing, then closed it again. There was no mistaking it for what it was, but she would run it past Carbide once they got down to Mechanical just to be sure. Primrose had made good on her word. 
Stable 10 had its ignition talisman. By the end of the day, the generator would finally be up and running again.
“Yeah,” she murmured. Then, so he could hear her, “Yeah, this is it.”
She felt a tiny smile perk up the corner of her muzzle at the relief she saw washing over Sledge, but as the walls trembled with the sudden movement of the Stable’s door Aurora couldn’t help but feel as if the culmination of all her friends’ efforts were falling short of the simple happy ending she’d hoped for. The gear rolled down its track, pushing aside Ginger’s shield. She watched as the gap shrank to a sliver, then disappeared entirely as the impenetrable door put a period at the end of too many unfinished stories for her to count. 
As the armature shunted the door into its final position and the locks sank themselves deep into the walls, the elation she assumed she’d feel didn’t come. Instead she found herself gritting her teeth against the lump growing in her throat. She missed them already, and she had a feeling it would be a long time until that feeling went away.
Her thoughts swirled but Ginger was there to make the grief easier to bear. She cleared her throat and swallowed her sadness as Ginger nosed into the gap under her empty wing, drawing it across her back with a bittersweet smile that creased her eyes. “They’ll be okay.”
Aurora nodded, knowing she wasn’t just referring to Rainbow Dash and the colonel. “I know.”
She didn’t know and that was what hurt the most. Yet as they turned away from the door and climbed up the ramp to where Sledge waited, she knew this was the only choice their friends would allow them to make. Roach and Julip had risked more than she could have asked of them to ensure this moment could come to pass. 
The ignition talisman they had fought and nearly died for weighed heavily in her feathers. In these wee hours of the morning, the Stable that spent weeks waiting for salvation lay asleep not knowing it was finally here. She clutched the black stone a little tightly and forced herself to smile. 
“Life’s messy,” she conceded, “but at least we’re here, right?”
Ginger touched her head to Aurora’s neck. “It’s a start.”
It certainly was.  
“Let’s go turn the lights back on.” She nudged forward and Ginger helped her along, with Sledge carrying up the rear. They were done fighting. Now came their time to live.







“Okay, we’re clear. Do it.”
Seconds passed and nothing happened. The only sound in the room came from the busy chattering of servers, Delta’s exhausted lungs, and the rapid pulse of her heart. It had been little less than an hour since their world plunged into darkness. Thanks to the coordination of Firelight’s team in Mechanical, they were ready to crawl out the other side of this nightmare.
She dragged her grease-stained feathers across her brow, her body still recovering from the exertion. After going down to fill Firelight in on what had happened, she couldn’t justify running back upstairs to wait for them to reset the generator. Before her life in the Stable, she’d lived and breathed heavy machinery. The rockets in her junkyard were heaps, but they were heaps she’d been able to refurbish and sell back to Jet’s competitors at a steep markup. 
On her way out of the control room, she’d noticed them throwing their collective weight into a makeshift prybar in an attempt to manually realign the seized rotor. She wasn’t a mare who shied away from doing what needed doing, especially when two of Firelight’s own had died to stop the generator from self-destructing. They would have gotten the job done without her, but she felt compelled to shoulder some of the burden anyway. Mechanical, more than anyone, had grown used to suffering their unenviable work in stoic silence. If what little help her meager frame could offer took some of the burden away, especially now, it would be worth it.
Stable 10 shuddered. A deep, subaudible vibration she could feel in her bones. She turned from the master terminal and listened for Thunderlane’s confirmation.
“It worked!” he shouted from the open door. “Power’s back on!”
Over the radio, Firelight’s voice crackled above raucous cheering. “You should be seeing lights coming on, Delta.”
She gave her wing a single, fierce pump. “We see them. Tell your people they did amazing.”
“Don’t celebrate yet.”
She had begun to get a feel for Firelight and could tell he was a cautious stallion. Considering the disaster they’d just averted, wariness was a desperately needed trait right now. “We’re at seventy-percent power and holding. There’s… moderate oscillation in the superstructure. I’m seeing blown fuses all over the place.” He hissed a sigh. “The hard shutdown caused a lot of damage. We’re not going to be generating full power for several weeks at least.”
“It’s better than nothing,” she said, her attention back on the terminal in front of her.
She’d been watching the server logs for any more rogue commands coming in from the outside, but the entries were clear. No activity. Server 75, where the first breach originated through, chattered away without so much as a hiccup. Not a single line appeared out of order and there were no programs running that showed any interaction with the generator’s software. Whoever orchestrated the attack was completely cut off.
She exhaled the breath she’d been holding and pressed down on the radio. “How’s the talisman looking?”
“Diagnostics show stress fractures from thermal expansion. Not much we can do about that besides hope it doesn’t crack on us.”
“Then be gentle with it.”
He chuckled. “Will do. I think we can take things from here but if we need help I’ll ping your Pip-Buck, okay?”
She nodded before remembering he couldn’t see her. “Okay. If it’s critical, have Millie call me. I’m going to be pretty distracted for the next few… well…”
Days? Years? As she logged off the terminal and started walking toward the hallway door, she reminded herself that there was no precedent for what she was about to do to Spitfire. She deserved violence. She deserved to be put in the ground and have the dirt watered with piss. She deserved to be strung up on a post and held aloft for every refugee of every Stable to see, and listen to them berate her for the blood on her hooves. 
“Still there?”
He jarred her from her thoughts. “Yeah, sorry. I gotta go.”
“Come down when you’re free. My guys want to buy you a drink.”
A smile touched her lips as she nodded to Thunderlane, who was watching her approach with a grin of his own. “Will do. See ya.”
She handed the radio back to Thunderlane as she passed him, leaving the stallion and his security team to tackle the unenviable job of fielding questions that were no doubt already on their way to him. They would be busy dealing with crowd control for a good long while, which meant Delta had a healthy window within which to work. 
At least the lights were back on and fresh air was flowing again from the overhead vents. She inhaled deeply to reassure herself things were going to be okay again. Maybe not for her, but for the rest of Stable 10.
Already, residents were beginning to filter out into the corridors. Some still carried flashlights in their wings while others squinted against the sudden renewed glare. Delta felt a tiny bolt of pride as she passed by clustered neighbors quietly sharing their collective relief, knowing deep down the “electrical hiccup” as it was described by a chuckling stallion had come within the barest breadth of turning their home into a mass grave. Now, for the first time in her life, she was the one keeping secrets. 
By the time she reached the Atrium, work had already begun to clean up the mess created by the blackout. Several pegasi had started picking up dropped plates and sweeping up the wet shards of toppled glasses. The floor around one such glass had been stained pink where someone had either slipped or stepped on a broken shard. Diluted blood tracked into the nearest storefront where Delta assumed first aid had been sought. The hollow slosh of a mop bucket rolled out from the little bread shop she liked to aid in the cleanup. 
Her attention shifted to the pop-up stage where the Remembrance Day banner had already been taken down, leaving two empty posts in its place to frame the medallion window of Spitfire’s office. The shutters were closed, and as she climbed the steps up to the second level catwalk she saw that the door was too. Her hackles went up. If there was ever a time to at least fake she was a decent, compassionate leader, this was absolutely it.
From under her greasy shirt she produced her laminate and swiped it through the door’s card reader, but instead of the cooperative little chirp she expected the reader blinked red and blurted a harsh buzz. She set her jaw and swiped it again, and again it denied her. She cursed at the monolithic door and glared up at the tiny lens embedded directly above it. 
“Open the door, Spitfire!” She got up on her hind legs and slammed her front hoof against the surface. With pressure back in the hydraulic systems, overriding the steel slab with a jack handle wasn’t going to work. She banged again, getting her nose as close to the camera as she could manage. “Open the fucking door!”
Nothing. The eyes of the Atrium were on her now and Spitfire’s door remained firmly locked in place. Delta imagined her calling Thunderlane to come throw her in a cell. Worse, several pegasi in the Atrium looked concerned enough by her outburst to intervene without security’s help. She spat a curse under her breath and jammed her laminate between the card reader and the wall, shoving as much plastic into the gap as she could until she could slip one, two, two and a half feathers under the device. 
Someone on the ground floor shouted that she couldn’t do that but she ignored their warning. She pulled back on the reader hard until the screws stripped out of the concrete. Stable-Tec’s lackluster internal security finally paid off as she tore the braided wires from their housing and shorted them together.
The door sprang open. A final yank ripped the wires out at their roots and she threw them and the useless reader onto the catwalk. She stepped inside, stabbed her wing against the switch drilled into the wood paneled wall and grit her teeth as the door thumped shut behind her, locking her inside.
Seated behind her desk sat Spitfire, her face damp and matted from crying and a half-empty bottle of expensive looking liquor standing open on the polished mahogany. Spitfire didn’t so much as look up at her. Her eyes were miserably fixed on the amber liquid, the yellow feathers of one wing slowly tracing the contours of the label. The broken fragments of a telephone lay forgotten on the floor near where Delta stood. A dent in the paneling marked where it impacted the wall.
Delta hesitated. This wasn’t the mare who berated her hours earlier. That Spitfire had been confident, conniving, and stood proudly upon the pedestal she believed her participation in global genocide earned her. 
The Spitfire slouched over her desk wasn’t that mare. Something important had happened here. Someone else had ground Spitfire into a beaten shell of herself.
“I hope you’re fucking happy.” She stormed across the office until she stood at her desk, dropping a hoof onto it with enough force to make the overmare flinch. “That’s two more corpses down in Mechanical for you to throw onto your pile of millions. Two more fucking innocent souls,” she beat her hoof against the desk to emphasize each word, “who you snuffed out.”
Spitfire ignored her and reached for the bottle. Delta’s temper flared. She slapped it out of her wing with her own, blowing back Spitfire’s bedraggled mane in the process while the bottle detonated against the far wall, sending a hailstorm of glass and rich liquor dribbling into the fronds of a potted fern.
Her voice shook. She dropped to the carpet and began to pace. “I should kill you. I deserve to kill you for what you did to Jet, to our daughter…” she grit her teeth and willed the tears to stop. “You erased everything that made life worth living, and why? Did you get tired of it all? Did you decide that if someone was going to push the button you may as well beat them to the punch? Why the fuck couldn’t you have suck-started a shotgun like a normal mare?!”
Spitfire muttered something she couldn’t make out like some brooding, sullen teenager. 
“What did you say?” She waited, but Spitfire didn’t repeat herself. Delta stared her down, trying to work herself up to do what needed to be done. “If you’re so fucking chatty then tell me why. Why did you murder billions of innocent creatures just to hide underground in this fucking time capsule?”
She swept a wing toward the shuttered window. “And why did you try to kill them?! They had no idea what I found! You had me contained and you still thought, fuck it, might as well kill everyone all over again? How fucking unhinged are you?!”
Spitfire lifted a brow, her eyes still fixed on her smeared desk. “I didn’t do this. Primrose did.”
Her pacing ground to a stop as she eyeballed the graying mare. “Oh, so now you’re innocent! Someone else greenlit global genocide! Fuck you!”
Spitfire snorted, looked up at her with her red-rimmed eyes, and nodded with a tone dripping with sarcasm. “Like I said, I didn’t do any of this.” She flicked a feather up at the lights, making it perfectly clear she wasn’t denying triggering the apocalypse. “You’re as much to blame for what happened here as she is.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with the blackout. That shit’s on you.”
Spitfire’s chair squeaked as she sat up, her eyes narrowing. “I tried to keep this from happening. You’re the one who went digging. You’re the one who set a self-replicating virus loose on the network. You’re the one who couldn’t keep her high and mighty yap shut about things she knows nothing about!”
Her wings shot out from beneath the stains in her shirt. “YOU KILLED MY CHILD!”
Spitfire rose from her chair and stabbed her hoof at the door. “AND YOU NEARLY KILLED ALL OF THEM.”
The sudden force in her voice was a stumbling block to Delta’s indignance. She wanted to hurt Spitfire. Badly. A different version flicked through her head with each passing second. It would feel good. It would be right. It would bring a small shred of right to a horrifying wrong. 
And she couldn’t do it. As she watched Spitfire plant her hoof into her chair and send it skittering away, fear began creeping back into Delta’s chest. A deep, familiar certainty that what she was building herself up to do would backfire not just on her but to those close to her. And although Apogee was gone, and Jet was gone, all of them who had survived the same crippling losses were here. They weren’t family, and she didn’t know all their names, but they were as close as she would ever get in whatever amount of life she had left to live. 
That fire blazing inside her stuttered for just a moment.
It was long enough for Spitfire to round her desk and descend upon her. She attempted to step back but Spitfire closed the distance like a mare on a mission, the ridge of her wing pressing into Delta’s chest like a bar as she shoved her back into the shuttered window. The painted steel slats crackled behind her as Spitfire pinned her there just as she had hours earlier in Delta’s office.
“Prim wouldn’t have done any of this if you hadn’t gone looking for answers.” Sweat and the stink of Spitfire’s liquored breath floored Delta’s nostrils. “I’ve had to work to keep that little psychopath happy for a decade and you ruined it.”
Her lip bent. “I’m not the murderer here.”
Spitfire sneered and put more weight behind her wing. “Tell me how I did it.”
The brazenness of the question took her off guard. 
Spitfire shook her head and smiled more widely. “Remind me why I did it.”
She didn’t know. The realization landed on her like a sack of rocks, and whether it was Spitfire’s weight squeezing the air from her chest of her own total uncertainty of what she actually knew, Delta suddenly felt unsteady on her hooves as she understood where Spitfire’s logic was headed.
“Do you know what they say about you?” Spitfire looked past her as if she could see the entire Stable. “They read the tabloids. They know you spent your life pushing conspiracies about secret Canterlot societies and publishing rumors about the ministries. Sure, you’ve mellowed over the years, but deep down they remember the crackpot you used to be. What do you think they’ll say if you try telling them their overmare was secretly behind the apocalypse? Do you really think they’ll believe you?”
They wouldn’t. Spitfire was right. No one in their right mind would believe her without proof.
Her gaze shifted to the black bulb mounted in the corner of the ceiling behind Spitfire’s right shoulder. Swallowing, she lifted a feather toward it. “There’s footage.”
Spitfire cocked a brow and glanced at the camera. “That? No audio, I’m afraid.” She took her wing away and stepped back, watching Delta like a predator playing with its prey. “And I don’t think you’re short-sighted enough to share our conversation from earlier. Do you?”
Delta stayed rooted where she was, her thoughts spinning as she tried to make sense of what her options were. “What makes you think I won’t?”
“Because I’m the only monster in this room.” She tipped her nose toward the door where, already, they could hear someone on the other side working to get it open. “Use your head. Even if by some miracle some of those ponies trust you enough to believe you, more will think you’ve lost your mind or worse. All you’ll manage to do is sow resentment and doubt among the other residents, and we’ll be a weaker Stable for it. Nothing will change except maybe for the survival odds of the generations who come after us. Five hundred years is a long time for unresolved anger to fester, Delta. Don’t tell me you can’t see that spiraling out of control.”
Her throat went dry. “It just did spiral out of control and we stopped it, no thanks to you. They deserve to know.”
“They deserve to live.” Frustrated, Spitfire rubbed the bridge of her muzzle and sighed. “Just… take a step back and try to look at the whole picture. This is bigger than you and me. You found something you weren’t supposed to and Primrose just tried to kill everyone here to keep it buried. If she’s capable of remotely coffining a Stable because one resident knew the truth, imagine what she’ll do if she finds out we survived and everyone knows.”
Delta looked to the door, wanting nothing more now than to leave before this conversation soiled her more than she already felt. “She can’t do anything to us anymore. I cut us off from the network.”
Something changed in Spitfire’s demeanor upon hearing that. Her brow lowered and her gaze fixed on something in the middle distance. The gears were spinning faster now and Delta felt herself being pulled in.
“Then you bought us time.”
She recoiled. “Don’t say ‘us.’”
Spitfire looked up at her, calculating. “Delta, just put this whole hunt for justice of yours aside for one minute and listen to me. I didn’t do what I did alone. Primrose and I were partners, and if she’s playing the long game like she always talked about, then this isn’t a problem that’s going to go away.”
Wary of the shift in her tone, Delta watched Spitfire with growing concern.
“Primrose is sheltered in place in the Ministry of Technology sublevels which means she and her followers have the resources to survive a trip to the surface if they feel motivated to take a walk. Stable 10 is a threat to every ambition she has. If the Enclave finds out we’re still alive, they’ll use every tool at her disposal to get inside and slaughter every last pegasus here.”
Spitfire paused and looked at her expectantly. “Unless.”
Delta shut her eyes and swallowed the sick that threatened to rise in her gullet. “Unless nobody knows what we know.”
She nodded. “Hate me as much as you need to, Delta, but don’t become me. Don’t subject them or their unborn foals to another apocalypse to satisfy some selfish urge to tell them something they’ll never believe. Let them live their lives believing in a better future. Don’t kill them with the truth.”
A familiar, gnawing chasm opened up in her chest. This was what it felt like to lose no matter how hard she worked. Once again she was either too selfish, too tired, or too late to do any good for herself or those around her. Spitfire won the game ten years ago when she burned the board. She was right. No one would believe a mare known for trying to get others to see the things she saw. Anyone who did would be burdened with the same stigma, mistrusted and seen as something lesser. Armageddon had given her a clean slate but no one truly forgot who she had been. 
And now, armed with tangible proof that the world hadn’t ended the way they thought, a monster named Primrose whom Delta didn’t know existed until today wanted to doom them all to die in the dark to keep that proof buried. 
“The only shield we have left is ignorance,” Spitfire murmured. “You have to erase it. All of it.”
She swallowed. “You’re talking about ten years of our lives, gone.”
“It’s the only way to convince Primrose every shred of evidence against her has been purged. Everything your virus dredged up, every phone conversation I’ve had with her, every byte and millisecond of it. It needs to be gone. It’s the only olive branch we can extend to her after we’re both gone, and believe me the next generation will need it. If she ever finds out Stable 10 is alive and the truth survives with it, she will do everything in her power to wipe this place from the face of Equestria.”
Delta shook her head in abject silence. “Nothing the two of you haven’t done before.”
Spitfire didn’t so much as blink in response. “So, can you have it done by tomorrow?”
She grit her teeth, tears welling as she bit down on the last shred of dignity she’d held onto, and nodded. “Sure,” she choked. “Why not. I hope you’re happy with all the misery you’ve caused.”
“I’m not.” She gestured to the door. “Please, for their sake, do the right thing.”
She swept the damp from under her eyes, flicking it off her feathers as she turned to the door. Ten years of their history, a decade of stories brought here by stallions and mares who had no idea their overseer was responsible for the cataclysm that trapped them here in the first place, gone forever. One last grand casualty. 
Do the right thing. If her gaze could burn, the carpet beneath her hooves would be ablaze. If Spitfire wanted her to sweep their problems under the rug, she would. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be waiting there for someone else to find them. If there was a monster lurking among the ashes of their lives, their descendents deserved to know who they were fighting.
She couldn’t erase the truth. She wouldn’t.
A plan formed in her mind. 
Breadcrumbs.
She would bury their history for someone else to find. Someone clever enough to do the right thing with it when they found it. She only hoped she wouldn’t cause them too much trouble when they did. 
Delta met Spitfire’s eyes, her decision made.
“Don’t worry, overmare. I’ll get it done.”







Rainbow kept her eyes forward as she traversed the tunnel.
The colonel had fallen in beside her, visibly unsettled by the vacant encampment. Neither of them commented on the eeriness of the empty tents they passed, or the disassembled piles of black rifle components heaped behind the flaps. To their left, a pair of stallions lingered like stowaways near one of the cookfires, watching them with uncertain suspicion. Weathers squinted at them as if she were trying to place them from somewhere, but recognition didn’t seem to come to her. A second group of a dozen or more pegasi looked to be a mix of officers and possibly civilians. Rainbow had no way of knowing if the Enclave sent soldiers into the field without some kind of kit, but the way they spoke in hushed voices made it clear they knew one another on some level.
“What are they doing here?” Weathers muttered.
Rainbow hadn’t the first clue who they were, let alone where they belonged. She decided not to ask yet. Weathers had yet to commit to a position against the Enclave, even after a night of brutally hard liquor in the company of the Stable’s bewildered bootleg brewer. All she’d been able to gather from the colonel’s brooding was that she was furious and felt betrayed. And yet she still wore the uniform. She still came back to her people. 
The tunnel was too quiet. Their voices would carry, and the stallion who brought Aurora’s talisman was following behind them.They both had too much on their minds to risk letting what they knew slip here, where something was undeniably wrong. Even now, Rainbow could spot movement at the tunnel’s edge. Their uniforms helped them blend in with the night sky beyond, but as they drew closer she was able to see the soldiers awaiting their commander outside. 
She wouldn’t be safe out here, she was certain of that, but she’d come to accept it as the better option compared to the alternative. Her mother’s adopted son and the brother Rainbow never had a chance to meet had fathered foals of his own. She had family here. Staying in Stable 10, remaining among them while Colonel Weathers left with knowledge of her survival, would endanger all of them.
Sledge wasn’t a natural leader any more than she had been when her Element fell around her neck. But he was smart. He would figure it out, and in time he would understand.
They passed the utility room that Roach used to keep her safe and calm. Small rocks scraped beneath their hooves, marking the edge of the mound formed when the bombs set loose the rockslide that would trap her and so many other evacuees. The debris had been dug up and carted away, marked only by a widening carpet of dirt and deeply scarred flagstones. At the tunnel’s end her breath stuck in her throat.
It was night outside. A cool breeze curled into the opening, though she could hardly tell if it smelled fresh or not in her condition. Even so, it had been centuries since she’d seen the night sky. It was the place she could always retreat to when the drudgery of the war effort was too much to bear. The press could arm pegasi with all the cameras they liked. They were never able to keep up with her let alone snap a photo that Rarity or Twilight might drag her into an office and across the coals over.
They approached the tunnel’s end and her pace slowed. She saw the unnaturally dark, dirty clouds rolling across the distant sky. Weathers hadn’t been lying about the eternal overcast. Her heart sank. Primrose and her Enclave had stolen the stars.
There wasn’t anything she could do about that now.
Four soldiers broke away from the gathering at the end of the tunnel and began making their way toward them. It didn’t take long for Rainbow to notice they were dressed in the same featureless black uniforms with the onyx wings pinned to their collars. No names, no ranks, no insignias to speak of. They made Colonel Weathers, who had stepped ahead of Rainbow to meet them, look overdecorated by comparison. 
An average sized mare from the group of blanks held up a white wing, halting their progress. Unlike the courier following behind them, these soldiers weren’t unarmed. Each of them wore heavy automatics over their shoulders and blocky pistols clipped to holsters strapped to their forelegs. Now three steps ahead of her, Weathers extended the tips of her left wing away from her hip as a subtle gesture for Rainbow not to approach. 
The soldiers slowed to a stop a few yards from the tunnel’s terminus, forming a loose line of firepower they clearly did not want either mare to cross. Weathers stopped, with Rainbow behind her, both of them able to see the colonel’s soldiers milling about in a loose throng just outside.
“I didn’t expect the minister to dispatch her mutes for a delivery mission.” Weathers rolled her shoulder as if unbothered enough by their presence to work out a kinked muscle while they talked. “Anything I should be aware of?”
The stallion walked past them, the empty crate tucked beneath his wings, and took off into the open air. Rainbow watched him depart. Her body ached for the chance to follow.
The mare who had stepped forward stared silently at Weathers, content to simply stand in her path. When the colonel made to side-step her the black clad mare did the same, her eyes narrowing. Behind her, an identically uniformed stallion who couldn’t have been older than twenty was watching Rainbow with growing interest. His brow furrowed slightly as his gaze found its way to her mark, but he made no indication to the others. He only stared.
“My soldiers are waiting for their commander. Step aside.”
Several of those soldiers had already spotted Weathers and were watching now, a low murmur growing through their ranks. The mare stood her ground, her wing still held forward to forestall their progress. Weathers stepped toward her anyway, and in the span of a breath many things happened at once.
The mare sprang forward and slammed the gap between them shut. Her left wing had clamped down around the back of Weathers’ neck, pulling her chin into the barrel of the pistol she’d snatched from her holder with the other. The young stallion eyeing Rainbow swept up his rifle and leveled it at her skull, while the two remaining mutes spun around and raised their weapons toward the gathering soldiers outside who shouted in fearful response. Several who had been trying to inch close scrambled to back away, many of them sparing furtive glances skyward as if unsure of their ability to escape unharmed.
Rainbow froze in place, eyes wide. The mutes calmly watched from behind their gunsights like predators monitoring a pack of lowly scavengers. 
Weathers looked down past the pistol jammed under her chin, all the bravado in her voice stripped away as she kept her towering frame deathly still. “Don’t shoot. Please, ma’am. I apologize. I was out of line.”
The mare stared at her for several agonizing seconds before removing her wing from the colonel’s neck and dropping the pistol back into her holster. The others followed suit without showing so much as an ounce of concern, as if the last fifteen seconds were among the least noteworthy part of their day. Weathers dutifully took several steps back before turning into the tunnel, blinking rapidly as she fought her rattled nerves. 
Rainbow backed away and followed her, trying not to throw up. She’d never had a gun pointed at her until now and her body was already protesting the flood of adrenaline by urging her to dump her stomach onto her hooves.
“I need to get to a radio.” 
She swallowed her gullet, trying hard to resist temptation to look behind her. “Why?”
“Because of the pins on their collars. Those pegasi are members of the Black Wing. They’re mop-up specialists.”
Rainbow frowned back at the loose group of pegasi in mixed attire. “And them?”
The colonel eyed them with something like pity. “If I had to guess, they’re the ones the mutes were sent here to deal with.” She lifted a feather, picking one of them out. “I’m pretty sure the fat one is General Sachet. He’s one of Security Director Clover’s staff. If I had to guess, they all are.” 
It clicked in her head where she’d seen those cold, suspicious looks before. They were the same inscrutable stares that Rarity’s staff would level at her whenever she visited the Ministry of Image. These were pegasi forged in a world of mistrust, subterfuge, and secrets. Only now they were far from their classified documents and secure files. Behind those professionally opaque expressions lurked something more primal and simple: fear. They had been taken here for a reason, and that reason was something they were desperately trying to rack one another’s brains to undermine.
Her throat felt full. The dispassionate way that young stallion had leveled his rifle toward her told her exactly how far plotting would go with them. He’d been close enough to see his own reflection in the element around her neck and hadn’t so much as flinched.
“They didn’t come here with you?”
“No.” She murmured, her attention shifting to the two stallions near the cookfire. The tall one, a lavender pegasus, stared in exasperated silence while the other made strange shapes with his feathers. It took her a moment to recognize it for what it was: sign language.  
“And neither are they.” Her jaw flexed and she diverted into the tents toward them. “Follow me.”
This was already too much to deal with, but it wasn’t like she was spoiled for choices. She hissed after her. “Who are they?”
Weathers glanced back at her and shrugged. “A pair of soldiers up to no good. I can make that work for us.”
 






Ginger’s heart raced.
The talisman felt like the most fragile thing in the universe. She held it against her chest with her magic, equal parts giddy and terrified as the sheer importance of such a small thing began to feel real. This little stone would pave the way forward for the hundreds of pegasi living in this Stable. Within its black facets rested an unfathomably deep well of magic that would ensure the safety of generations to come, and more well after she and Aurora were gone. It was wonder, power, and dread all at the same time, and Aurora had entrusted it to her care as Sledge led the three of them to its ultimate purpose.
Each step down to Mechanical terrified her. Flashes of awful potential appeared in her mind as she agonized over what might happen if she tripped on the stairs or stumbled over a threshold. She never told Aurora about the first talisman she and Roach recovered from the bottom of the bunker beneath Stable-Tec Headquarters, or the awful moment when she realized Ironshod’s errant gunshot had reduced it to useless fragments. Especially now, she wouldn’t dare admit she had briefly possessed the singularly most vital artifact to their Stable’s survival only for its destruction to be the price of Aurora’s rescue. She would never do that to her.
She clutched the talisman a little tighter and shooed off her irrational worries. She wouldn’t trip. It wouldn’t break. And as if sensing the presence of her protective aura, the talisman thrummed a little more eagerly in her grasp. Even it was hungry to be put to work.
The stairwell ended and Sledge held the door to Mechanical open for her and Aurora. She almost caught herself liking the faintly acrid odor of machine grease and solvents lingering in the still air. A tiny smile tugged at her lip as she imagined herself down here with Aurora, learning to break down machines with the goal of repairing them rather than selling their components for caps. Maybe she would like it? It couldn’t be any worse than trying to predict the sparse fashion senses of the wasteland, and with Aurora helping her learn she was guaranteed to love one thing about it.
Carbide met them in the vast cavern that made up Mechanical’s main workhall, carrying a well worn red mug in his wing. In the other dangled a bulging operator’s manual whose pages were festooned with tiny paper tabs. He raised the lighter of his two loads in greeting with an exhausted, but nonetheless amicable grunt before tipping the rim to his mouth with a slurp.
“I made coffee,” he said as Sledge led them into the grid of workbenches. The overstallion chuckled and made room for Carbide to fall in beside him, accepting the manual as they crossed toward the bulwark of the generator hall. “The Jenny should fire up on her own once the ignition talisman’s in place. Flux has the first shift inside going over the calibration sheets. I wasn’t down here when it shut itself down, but she says it stopped hard.”
Ginger glanced at Aurora. She had her ears perked toward the conversation ahead of them, absorbing every detail. 
Sledge nodded. “Warm her up slowly, then. If she runs rough, then she runs rough. We can worry about busted bolts after Sanitation gets a handle on the wastewater situation.”
“Can’t say I blame you. I’ve never seen the cisterns so low.” 
He sipped his cold coffee and stole a glance at the talisman in Ginger’s grip. For a split second he seemed ready to say something to her, but settled on smiling with something like disbelieving appreciation. She realized, as he looked away, he hadn’t expected them to get this far. He was still processing it. As they passed through the open doorway to the generator hall she assumed it would be some time before any of them really came to grips with how close their Stable had come to collapse. 
Just like the first time she’d been brought here, she found herself in awe of the space dedicated to this one machine. Even in the dim yellow glow of the emergency lights she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was looking up at the still heart of some titanic creature. Unlike last time, however, the hall bustled with activity as the pegasi of first shift ran last minute checks on the massive generator and the plumbing that spread out beneath the floor they stood on. Most of the floor panels had been locked in place, save for a few where Ginger spotted a pair of wings and the odd set of hooves half-sticking out from the cramped spaces inside. 
They gathered near the generator and she watched with open curiosity as a stallion, whose jumpsuit was conspicuously missing, pushed up from an open panel to retrieve some sort of brass nozzle attached to a large gauge and disappear back into the void with it. A few seconds later a sharp, punctuating hiss echoed in the open air and the stallion reappeared, nodding to himself as if satisfied with the results of whatever it was he had done. He climbed out and bent down to reach the loose floor panel, then noticed he had an audience behind him and all but clapped his tail down between his buttocks. Ginger did her best not to react, but Aurora wasn’t nearly as charitable. Her unashamed grin carried with it an unmistakable note of pride as she watched the stallion pack up his tools, slide the floor panel into its frame, and scurry off to who knew where. 
“The infection spreads,” Carbide chuckled.
Sledge snorted. “Show’s over. Let’s get to work, people.”
Even as Sledge dropped the manual besides his now purely ornamental talisman containment chamber, Carbide shot a knowing smirk back at her and Aurora. The lights might be dead, the air stale, and their futures hinging on the functionality of a talisman whose inner clockwork none of them understood, but none of it could dampen his jovial mood. While Sledge cracked the manual to review the appropriate pages, Carbide crooked a feather to beckon them to a familiar hole in the floor. Its proximity to the railing around the generator left little guesswork to where it led. Ginger had been inside one of these crawl spaces before.
“It looks worse than it is,” he assured her as she approached the claustrophobic chute. Her gut did a tiny flip at the sight of so many pipes and wires, remembering how narrow the passage had been beneath Stable-Tec HQ. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but according to the Big Book of Fixery the process should be pretty straightforward for a unicorn. You’ll be looking for a removable panel with a bunch of warning symbols on it. The talisman chamber is on the other side of it. All you should have to do is line that thing up with the contact points and… well, give it some juice.”
She blinked at him, hoping there would be more instruction beyond “give it some juice.” Mercifully, he keyed in that she wasn’t following without having to be told and tried again.
“You need to prime it, like an engine, except you’re using magic instead of gasoline. Does that make sense?”
She looked down at the stone. Even in its inert state, she could feel it gently tugging at her magic like smoke being drawn away by a draft. “I think so. How do I know how much it needs to start working?”
Carbide looked past the two mares to where Sledge squinted at the manual. “The book didn’t say. Can’t be much though, can it Sledge?”
“All it says is the unicorn performing the installation must be a certified Stable-Tec Technician. I’m guessing it needs a small kick and not much else.” He arched a brow at her. “Don’t you go voiding the warranty on my generator. This thing needs to last three hundred more years.”
She made a mental note to tell him to comb for any ticking timebombs left lurking by Stable-Tec. It hardly paid to go to the lengths they had to resolve one crisis only for another to spring up years later. “I’ll be careful,” she promised, her gaze turning back to the hole in front of her hooves. She floated the stone toward it, allowing her amber light to penetrate a little deeper into the void. “Just… tell me when you’re ready.”
Sledge scanned the manual one last time before shrugging his ruddy shoulders. “I don’t see the point in waiting. Let’s get you down there and ready to plug us in. Carbide, go make sure Flux’s team is prepared in case the beast wants to buck.”
She wondered if he knew the old world connotation of what he just said and decided to leave it. They watched Carbide trot off to the control panel where several unfamiliar faces chatted behind the observation window before turning her attention to the crawl space waiting for her with a growing sense of dread. This was it. This was what it had all been leading to.
“Hey.” Aurora’s feathers curled beneath her chin, pulling her eyes up and away from the chasm. She was smiling as their lips met, and for a blessed moment her fears evaporated into Aurora’s warmth. She wanted it to last longer, but the mare who stole her heart away before it could progress into something more intimate. They weren’t alone, after all. “You’re going to be okay.”
She flushed at hearing her own advice. How long ago had it been since she watched Aurora bury her head in the dirt, overwhelmed with fear when she heard the gunshot from that Epicurean convoy leader execute one of his own just yards below their hiding spot on the ridge? Outside the protection of Junction City, it had been the moment Ginger realized how unprepared for the wasteland Aurora was and that her survival depended on the support she and Roach gave her. 
They had come a long way since then. 
“We all are, aren’t we?” She looked down at the talisman and smiled. “I should go plug this in, shouldn’t I?”
Aurora grinned and nodded. 
There was no sense in waiting. Drawing the talisman tight to her chest, she steadied herself with a breath and squeezed herself into the narrow passage beneath the floor. The light emanating from her horn and the aura wrapped around the talisman helped guide her forward as she wriggled through what could only be charitably called a maintenance shaft. Barely three yards in, a pipe thicker than her foreleg intruded through the suffocating crush of conduit at a ninety degree elbow, forcing her to roll onto her shoulder and empty her lungs just to drag herself around it. 
Unlike the generator hall below Stable-Tec HQ, Stable 10 was deathly quiet which allowed every scuff and thump of her scrambling hooves to echo like a beaten drum. It unnerved as much as it aggravated her. The sound of every movement was amplified by the lack of any other sound making her progress sound like the mad scramble of a mole rat caught in a trap. On more than one occasion Aurora called down to ask if she was alright, and each time she called back in the affirmative. She felt a powerful temptation to try propelling herself forward with magic alone but having only used magic on herself once before at the bottom of Stable 1, she wasn't going to gamble breaking something vital on a second frivolous attempt. Testing it now, where half of her movements were slowed just to prevent the talisman from scraping against exposed bolt heads, sounded like an awful idea. 
She was out of breath by the time she reached a section of exposed wall paneling fitting Carbide’s vague description. The tubes and wires that harassed her all the way here bent parallel with the panel’s seams as if to frame the myriad of warnings who might otherwise miss them. Only one stood out that she cared to read, because she’d seen it once before:


DANGER: TALISMAN CONTAINMENT CHAMBER


She rolled onto her side, ignoring the cable clamp digging into the dock of her tail as she did, and noticed a slight blueing around the panel’s seams as she pulled it away. She didn’t know much about machinery, but she did know enough what happened to some metals when they were superheated. Evidence, she decided, of Primrose’s attempt to kill Spitfire and the Stable by forcing their ignition talisman into an unstoppable death spiral. Only it hadn’t been unstoppable. Delta Vee, the mare whose daughter’s body still rode SOLUS on its endless elliptical journey, had found a way. 
She slid the panel between her belly and the maintenance shaft’s wall. The view that greeted her on the other side was underwhelming. The glass-lined cylinder of the containment chamber, identical to the chamber she’d plucked the first talisman from in Fillydelphia, stood empty. The dim glow of her magic shimmered off its vaguely iridescent walls reminding her of the strange way Carbide’s makeshift box shuffled the ambient light. Two conical protrusions made from the same fragile material extended toward one another like a stalagmite reaching up toward its twin. Not long ago this empty space contained a vortex of raw magic capable of driving the massive generator seated above it, but all that remained in that talisman’s absence was an empty glass-lined container and the faint smell of ozone. 
She lifted the new ignition talisman up in front of her eyes and tried to imagine living in a world capable of storing so much potential into something so small. The answer to the war that would eventually lead to the world’s destruction was right here, silently sipping away at the magic holding it aloft.
She shouted into the shaft. “I’m at the chamber! Tell me when!”
Sledge’s voice rumbled back. “Waiting on you!”
“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Here goes nothing.”
With a gentle push of will the talisman floated past the opening and into the chamber. Light glittered across the glass, briefly reminding her of the days her mother and father would take her to the Chapel of the Two Sisters for services every Saturday morning. On special occasions the factories burrowed into the cracked slope of Canterlot Mountain would cease production just long enough for clear, natural light to filter through the thinning overcast. She smiled at the bittersweet memory and wondered, for the first time in a long time, whether they had done alright without her.
Focus, she chastened herself.
The stone’s obsidian points drifted into alignment with the chamber’s internal contacts. She waited for a breath before remembering the last step. It needed a little kick to start working. Holding it there, she could already see the subtle bending of the aura around it as it sipped from the faint power surrounding it. The sensation felt familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She would ask Carbide about it when she was done. For a pegasus, he seemed to have a decent handle on ignition talismans.
She dipped into her gifted magic and directed it toward the talisman. A little kick. She braced herself as the aura around the stone momentarily intensified. And then, in the space of a thought, the power concealed within its fractal prison awakened. 
Pain erupted across her body and the scream that clawed its way out of her lungs distorted and reverberated across shuddering air. Something was wrong. She could feel the talisman’s power burning its way across the connection between her and it, dredging through her body like flames licking their way across a puddle of spilled diesel. Dread plunged her heart into her stomach as terrible understanding coalesced at the center of the hurricane ripping her apart from the inside. She knew this feeling. It had been familiar because she’d felt it before. That terrible, acrid burning Tandy had warned her away from when she dreamed.
Her eyes flung wide as emerald light pulsed within the false talisman and a deep, creaking agony clawed at the inside of her skull. It didn’t stop. It didn’t ease. It was building, folding onto itself, amplifying the reactions taking place within it until one of its black facets fractured. 
Balefire boiled from the breach.
Without thinking, driven by instinct alone, she shoved her hooves into the chamber and wrenched out the burning stone. She didn’t hear the noise shredding her throat nor the bewildered shouts from the pegasi just a few feet overhead. She pulled the talisman against her chest and clamped her magic around the crackling stone, forcing its pieces together by sheer power of will. 
It pulsed again, violently.
An involuntary sob shook her chest as she kicked her way forward, curling herself into the containment chamber to turn around and crawl back the way she came. Thick, stinking smoke boiled around her as the erupting stone burned the coat around her belly and seared the flesh underneath. Her hooves slammed into cables and kicked off pipes she’d been so careful about on the way down, knocking connections loose with no thought other than to hold the talisman together until she could get it clear of the Stable. 
Her vision blurred and her magic stuttered, but she clawed it back into place around it. The fire devoured her aura nearly as quickly as she could pile it around its source, a fight she couldn’t put up forever. Primrose had lied to them. She didn’t want Stable 10 to survive. She’d wanted it gone from the very beginning ever since Delta Vee dug up the truth. Two centuries later, the little tyrant had gotten her wish. And she used the desperate dreams of two nobodies to plant the seed of its final destruction.
Suddenly she felt herself being wrenched up from the shaft by strong wings and heard the awful peal of Aurora’s scream. Something was wrong inside of her but she couldn’t tell what it was. Her eyes stung too much for her to open them more than a crack, but it was enough for her to recognize the container resting nearby on Carbide’s cart. The talisman released a powerful thrum of hateful energy as she lifted it toward the chamber, and in that brief moment she nearly slipped. Vomit bubbled up her throat but she held it down with a miserable groan, knowing at this point her life was forfeit. All she could do now was delay the inevitable.
She couldn’t spare a drop of magic to open the box so she used her teeth. She didn’t know if it would work, but if it failed they would never feel a thing. She opened the top of the chamber, sank the boiling stone into its fractal confines, and slammed it shut.
Her connection to the stone broke. 
She took an agonizing breath and wished she knew how much time they had.
“Aurora! I need you!”
Feathers wrapped her shoulders. She was already here. Of course she was already here. “Ginger, what happened? What is that thing?!”
Emerald flame gyred around the floating talisman like a strengthening storm. She wrapped her waning light around the cube and could feel it growing warm. It wouldn’t last. None of this would last if they didn’t act right now.
Blood coated the back of her throat as she answered.
“It’s a balefire…” she groaned, struggling to breathe. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Aurora, she sent us a balefire bomb.”







She was right. Aurora could taste the metal on her tongue as if she were back in Kiln. Primrose never wanted to help them. Somehow she’d found out they knew the truth. It was the only explanation that made sense. She never cared about the preservation of Spitfire’s chosen pegasi. She wanted it carved out of the bedrock entirely.
What better way to accomplish it than to deliver a balefire bomb to those very pegasi and wait for them to activate it themselves?
Sledge and Carbide were already shouting at Flux and her crew to evacuate. She stared after them as they fled the generator hall, eyes wide and full of fear. They wouldn’t be fast enough. Tears stung her eyes as she remembered the crush of corpses pressed against the blast doors of Stable 1. There was no way to alert everyone, not without power. Not when so many doors needed to be lifted manually. This was Primrose’s gift to her home. A violent, instantaneous death.
Carbide’s chamber emitted a bright crackle as one of its six panes started to fail. Ginger’s shield crushed in around the rupture and Aurora watched helplessly as wild balefire went to work devouring that amber light. Slowed, but impossible to stop, emerald flames pressed harder and harder toward the tipping point when the explosion would rip through her magic. 
They had to move. “We need to get it out of here.” 
Ginger let out an agonized gasp as Aurora ducked under her blistered belly and lifted her onto her back. She was hurting her, and it took everything Aurora had to steel herself against those awful noises. Her voice shook as she spoke. “You need to hold onto me and the bomb, okay? Don’t let it go!”
An awful heat bloomed above her ribs as Ginger reached out and clutched unspooling death in her hooves. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Balefire sizzled against Ginger’s waning power like a hot iron. Aurora locked her jaw and swallowed the roaring pain in her throat. There was no time to reassure Ginger. There might not be enough time to make it to the stairs, let alone climb them. But it was the only option left.
So she ran.
She dodged around open floor panels and dove through the generator hall, the dull throb of her only remaining hind leg a distant memory as adrenaline swept her forward. Mechanical’s workfloor was alive with fearful energy as the last stragglers scrambled toward the stairwell door, their eyes widening with dismay as they saw Aurora rushing after them. She shouted for them to get out of the way and they shouted back with wordless fear as she carried Ginger into the jammed stairwell.
There were too many bodies to push past. Her heart sank. “Get off the stairs!!”
Her voice was lost in the cries of confusion above. This was how it happened. This was what killed a Stable. Not a bomb, or poison gas, or bullets. Panic did. Panic was going to kill Stable 10. They had to get ahead of them. 
“Ginger, get your hooves around my neck and don’t let go.”
She pushed herself up enough to straddle Aurora’s throat with one hoof, while she held onto the bomb with the other and the guttering remains of her magic. “Nnngh… okay. Go.”
Her wings flung open in the narrow stairwell and she kicked off the floor, launching herself into the narrow gap between the bottom of the stairs above and the heads of the terrified pegasi below. Shouts and screams erupted behind her as she half-flew, half-trampled her friends and coworkers, kicking off their backs and pushing against the walls to maintain her reckless ascent. Someone beneath her threw a balled wing into her stomach as she clamored over them, nearly causing her to stumble and fall into the crush. Somehow she managed to stay upright and by some miracle Ginger maintained her grip. The crowd thinned as they reached the front where Sledge and Carbide were bolting up the steps, shoulder to shoulder. 
She dropped onto the landing behind them and shoved her way through the gap between them. Out of breath and limping heavily with every third step, she managed to force past them and shout over her shoulder. “GET TO A TERMINAL! OPEN THE BLAST DOOR!”
She prayed he understood. They would find out in short order if he didn’t. 
The last steps were clear except for the concerned pegasi who heard the commotion coming from the lower levels and were now peeking out onto the landings to see what was happening. The confined walls shone with the menacing light emanating from the splintering chamber clutched under Ginger’s hoof, warding the onlookers away before they could slow Aurora down. She could smell copper in her sinuses as she burst through the door at the top of the steps, practically knocking a curious stallion over as she threw her wings wide in the open corridor. She threw them back, desperate for speed, but the stagnant air only allowed her to glide in short bursts. It was something.
The Atrium spread open around them. She threw herself airborne and landed gracelessly on the catwalk outside the security office. Deputy Chaser stood back in startled confusion as they burst through the open door and past the cells. “We’re almost there,” she shouted.
Ginger whimpered back. “Hurry.”
It was all she could do. As they fled through the decontamination arches she stole a quick look back at the bomb. Her vision blurred at the sickening sight of Ginger’s flesh blackening and cracking in contact with the superheating chamber. She could feel the same thing happening to herself just inches below the joint of her wing and knew deep down there was no medicine that could fix what the balefire was doing to them. This was a one-way trip. Their only hope was to limit the death toll to two.
The antechamber greeted them with empty air and a sealed door. For a brief moment it felt as if her heart stopped. Panic seeped into her thoughts as she considered the time it would take to plug into the console and navigate the menus to the test cycle she used to free herself weeks ago. She swallowed her anger at Sledge and started toward the console, but was cut short by the sudden thunder of the armature. Relief powerful enough to induce giddiness soothed her tortured body. She looked back to the security camera watching her from the decontamination chamber door and hoped Sledge was somewhere he could see and hear her. 
She choked back the rock in her throat as she spoke to the unblinking lens.
“Close the door behind us.”
Maybe he heard her. Maybe not. There was nothing she could do for it now. The armature had already engaged the recess at the center of the massive cog. She carried Ginger down the ramp, her heart pounding in her ears. It slid back and began to roll. She widened her trembling stance and opened her wings as far as they would bear, watching the doorway yawn open.
Ginger buried her face into Aurora’s mane, her grip tightening. 
Her feathers clapped down with an audible rush and they shot through the gap. The bright lights of the tunnel streaked toward her as the slight angle of their escape sent them toward one of the columns. With her wings finally free to move she banked around it and once again thrashed both limbs behind her to pour speed into their escape. The Enclave encampment blurred beneath her aching legs and she had just enough time to notice that the tunnel was empty. The soldiers had gathered outside for reasons she didn’t have time to understand. She streaked through the air above their heads and pumped her wings hard into the early morning dark. 
A cacophony of shouts chased the two of them, then a familiar staccato crackle. “They’re shooting!”
Ginger pushed her muzzle against her ear. “Higher. As fast as you can.”
A bullet buzzed by inches from her chin. She could feel the vibrations radiating from the failing chamber amplifying and her bones sang with unnatural resonance. As she pitched toward the distant clouds she looked back to see several dark figures giving chase, their positions marked by their flickering muzzle flash. She almost felt sad watching them try so hard to recover a bomb primed to unleash death the exact moment Ginger’s shield broke. They likely believed dying in the act of salvaging their unraveling mission was better than submitting themselves to the mercy of Primrose. She didn’t blame them, nor did she care. 
She turned her eyes skyward, focused on putting as much distance between their awful payload and her home. The clouds drew near enough for their features to blur. Dark mist enveloped them and bloomed green. Her muscles burned but she flew anyway. Higher, faster, pouring as much of herself into claiming another mile, another yard, another foot between her and the home whose future was now sealed.
Stable 10 would not have its ignition talisman. If it survived the blast Aurora could feel building between them, her family and friends would fall to the mercy of the wasteland. She didn’t want to think about what that looked like but she had seen enough of this broken world for her thoughts to be deterred.
The clouds broke and the two of them rocketed into the crystalline black sky beyond.
Her only regret was that Ginger was here with her. Aurora deserved this death, that much she accepted. Ginger didn’t. All she had done since the day they first met was show her compassion and now… this.
The bomb pulsed hard enough to make her feathers shudder.
“Aurora,” she groaned. “It’s happening.”
She threw her wings shut and didn’t reopen them. Momentum alone carried them toward the stars. Gently, Aurora turned herself in Ginger’s faltering grip and met her eyes one last time. The tears she’d been fighting flowed freely now. The bomb held between them ebbed and swirled as balefire carved deep into the amber shield containing it, its motions growing violent like a wild animal sensing an opportunity to escape its trap. Ginger stared back, tears skimming the blue seas that Aurora fell in love with what felt like a lifetime ago. 
The wind around them slowed, softened, and grew silent. Surrounded by infinite shades of night, their fates and pursuers forgotten, they were weightless.
“I’m sorry,” Aurora whispered.
“Don’t be.” Ginger reached out with her charred hoof and touched her cheek. “You gave me a chance to do something good.”
Her shield guttered. Balefire lanced through the gaps. Distantly, Aurora noticed the amber flow around Ginger’s horn brightening. One last attempt to buy them precious seconds after their clock had run down to zero. Regret, clear and unmistakable, trickled into Ginger’s eyes. She was concentrating on her. 
Amber light crawled around Aurora, and her eyes widened. She gasped. “Please don’t.”
The bomb kicked. The shield began its collapse.
Her lips twisted into a pained smile. “I’m sorry. It’ll follow me through.”
Ginger’s final spell bloomed to life, and as magic pulled Aurora away she lashed out with a wing and clutched across the boiling air between them. Don’t do this. Don’t leave me. For a fleeting moment she reached her. Feathers curled and blackened around Ginger’s foreleg and they were together like they were always meant to be. Then a sob that was not her own reached her ear. A metallic click. Ginger stared across the emerald glow with mute apology as her hoof slipped away, leaving an empty Pip-Buck in her grasp. 
For one terrible second they hung there, their fates decided. Two new stars suspended in a resplendent cacophony of predawn beauty.
Ginger smiled with a simple solemnity. “I love you.”
Aurora opened her mouth to rail against the last remnants of magic swarming around her. The sky jerked away and she tumbled, screaming, the words dying in her throat as the teleportation spell hurtled her clear of death. 
The bomb detonated. She felt it.
Dusty, wooden floorboards rushed up to meet her hooves, and she knew.
Ginger was gone. 
> Chapter 41: Fallout
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last motes of amber light curled through her tangled mane and one by one winked out of existence. She stood behind the counter of Ginger’s shop, the air perfectly still. Mannequins stared sightlessly toward the cracked display window. Reams of cloth and leather rested untouched in their pigeon holes under the desk. It was as they had left it, as if their journey together were ready to begin all over again.
Only it wasn’t.
Her jaw trembled and she ran, bolting out across the showroom floor at a dead sprint. This didn’t have to be the end. There was still time. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she rejected being forced to take this second chance at life alone. Unthinkingly, she threw her weight into the door, throwing wooden splinters and herself out onto the dusty sidewalk of Junction City, scaring a collective shout from a clutch of night workers loitering near the window. She barely noticed them as she stumbled out into the road, somehow managing to stay upright as her eyes rose toward the distant green pinpoint falling through the clouds.
She still had time.
Ginger had time.
And then the sky ripped open with the birth of a second sun.
Heat, raw and terrible, closed around her without mercy. She stumbled and fell to the dirt, screaming wordless agony as the odor of burning hair filled her nose and mouth. Emerald light pierced bone and tissue like they weren’t there, forcing her to see the boiling sphere of death rising beside her. She tried to scream for Ginger but the words seared her throat and burned her teeth, forcing her to curl into a ball as she waited for the death she’d just been saved from.
But she didn’t die. The broiling air cooled as the thermal wave passed, its ugly work finished. Aurora forced her eyes open and groaned as the serrated edges of her pain began to dull and go silent. A bad sign. Nerve damage, or shock. Both. Screams that weren’t hers echoed in the unnatural silence that followed. Dazed, she barely registered that her peripheral vision was going black. Her right wing rustled like dry brush when she moved, prompting her to lift it and stare at the singed remains of her dapple gray coat. She could see ugly patches of her charcoal skin emerging where the stiff hairs had charred and curled to the root. Whether it was luck or instinct, something had compelled her to tuck her wings under her belly when the heat struck. Her flight feathers had survived. 
A small object dropped from their grip. She frowned and picked it up. A Pip-Buck. The one the Enclave had given to Ginger. The screen was dark. Black smears in the shape of Aurora’s feathers covered its chassis. The clasp hung open in her grip. 
Thinking became difficult. Like a sleepy foal stumbling her way out of bed to brush her teeth, Aurora absently slid the device onto her foreleg, locking it down behind the blank screen of her own Pip-Buck. She dragged a leg beneath her, then the other, her mind a fog as she fought through the trauma and stood. Her eyes refused to focus anymore. To the east, a hazy blob of emerald fire sliced a clean hole through the clouds above Foal Mountain. 
Someone ran in front of her, his mouth making concerned noises she couldn’t process into language. Home, she thought. Everything would be okay if she could get back home.
She stumbled forward, pushing past the stranger. One wing lifted, then the other. She swiped at the air, struggling to bring them into synchrony. Her vision faded until she could barely make out the road in front of her. She pushed herself into a sloppy gallop, her feathers slapping against a burning cart as she clawed at the air. Finally, her wings hit a downstroke together and she felt the ground drop away. She pumped harder, building speed, the wind hugging her with a soothing familiarity. 
All she had to do was keep the mountain ahead of her. Sledge would let her in. The doctors would give her medicine, and she wouldn’t have wasted the gift Ginger had given her.
Little over a minute had passed since then. The thermal wave of the explosion had reached Junction City at the speed of light, crossing those twenty miles in the space of a thought. The bomb’s shockwave took considerably longer. By the time it crashed over the burning town it was traveling at subsonic speed. 
It slammed into Aurora like a freight train.
Her wings snapped backward like saplings in a hurricane. Muscles sheared. The immensity of sound burst her eardrums and in an instant the storm around her was silent. Violent eddies of furious wind tossed her through the sky until she lost all sense of up and down, left or right. The world around her blacked out and for a moment she feared she was losing consciousness, but the unrelenting chaos continued. The wasteland wouldn’t give her an easy death, she realized. It wanted her to die falling, her senses ripped away, left wondering when she would slam into the dirt. 
And yet, as if she were the punchline of some unending cosmic joke, she managed to claw enough of the tortured wind under her wings and throw it beneath her. Gasping for breath, blind eyes searching for any kind of landmark to guide her way, she felt the wind once again caress her pummeled body. A frustrated sob jumped in her throat as she grasped for something, anything that might lead her home. 
Tears traced her burned skin. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up in her bed and listen to her dad tell her everything was going to be alright. But the wind kept coming and the pain didn’t stop. Blind, deaf, and utterly useless, she wandered through cruel skies, alone. 







Minutes Earlier…

Rainbow lingered a few steps behind Weathers and listened while the colonel spoke with the two misfit soldiers. The shorter of the two stallions was mute, gesturing to his companion with quick and concise gestures. Through Weathers, Rainbow learned his name was Chops. His colleague and intermediary, Dancer, relayed a confusing story of the two of them being assigned to monitor the progress of a corporal who had been sent to ingratiate herself within Aurora’s group only to lose track of them after the corporal in question appeared to have renounced the Enclave. 
Chops was evidently the more suspicious of the two, judging by Dancer’s reluctance to translate his theories without softening the edges first. He believed they were suspected of leaking classified information to Ginger which ultimately allowed her to cut through an ongoing Enclave mission aimed at rescuing Aurora, but Dancer refused to divulge any specifics. The crux of the soldier’s theory was that their loyalty to the Enclave had been called into question, evidenced by the apparent fact that they had been dumped here by armed escort. After members of the Black Wing arrived with their mysterious crate, and with them came several officers of the Enclave’s Intelligence Wing who appeared visibly shaken by their situation, it became clear to Chops why they were being left inside the tunnel while the rest of the encampment was forced to disarm and wait outside.
“He thinks the Black Wing has a cover story laid out,” Dancer said, his voice low enough to be nearly inaudible. He watched Chops signing and grimaced, shaking his head no. Chops glared back and stamped his hoof, a sound that echoed off the tunnel walls like a gunshot. Dancer shot a furtive glance to the officers nearby, then looked reluctantly toward Weathers. “He thinks they brought us here to make us go away and they’re going to set it up to make it look like we attacked the brass over there.”
Weathers stiffened and glanced back to where Rainbow lurked. “This could be a problem.”
Understatement of the century. “I have ears, kind of. I heard.”
While she spoke, Chops signed something to Dancer while quickly gesturing over to her. Dancer snorted and shook his head before addressing Weathers again. “He wants to know who the ghoul is, and what’s up with the getup.”
“It’s not a getup,” she bit back, but quickly thought better of outing herself given the circumstances. “My name’s… Blue. I’m just…”
Every nerve in her body fired in a wave that started at her hooves and ran up to her ears. She gasped at the sensation of her skin, her organs, her very bones shuddering as if she’d stepped onto a live wire. It was gone just as quickly, but her reaction to it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Weathers and the two soldiers stared at her with a deeply ingrained mistrust as if they were expecting an attack to come from her. She stared back, just as confused as they were.
“Is she still all there?” Dancer asked.
She understood the insinuation without needing it explained. “Yes, I’m still all here. What was that?”
Weathers cautiously shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Her element was beginning to warm against her chest. She wasn’t crazy. Something was wrong. It rolled through her again, stronger this time, and this time she recognized it. She straightened. “That’s balefire.”
Dancer laughed. “I hope not.”
She pinned him with a stare before looking up at the colonel. “I can feel it. I’ve felt it before and I’m telling you it’s here, and it wasn’t before.”
“The Enclave would never bring…” Weathers stopped herself, and Rainbow could tell she was remembering the footage Sledge had let her see. She glanced at Chops and Dancer, who watched her with growing curiosity, before rephrasing. “My Enclave would never transport balefire. That being said, I can’t speak for the Black Wing. They’re… different.”
The chattering energy was getting closer, but from where she couldn’t tell. She turned back toward the open tunnel but saw no one coming. Just a hundred or so disarmed soldiers standing around outside while their strange escorts guarded the entrance. 
“Different how?” she pressed.
Exasperation bloomed on Weathers’ face. “Different like… most guard dogs can be taken off their chains in a camp, except for one that has to be kept in a cage because it’ll maul the first pegasus to fall asleep.”
Dancer snorted. “Or because it’s feral.”
Chops tapped his shoulder and signed. Dancer tipped his head toward his counterpart. “Or rabid.”
Rainbow’s hind hoof adopted a nervous bounce. “So they’re crazy.”
“Loyal to a fault, is how I’ve heard it best described.” Weathers stared down the tunnel and frowned. “However there is a fine line between bending Enclave law and defying our principles. Even the Black Wing wouldn’t be capable of defending their actions if they deliberately brought a corrupting–”
Mechanical thunder echoed from the direction of Stable 10, silencing everyone. The door had begun moving and for a moment Rainbow thought their problems had been solved. Whatever mop-up mission the Black Wing had come here to execute would amount to nothing if their intended victims found shelter within. She had already begun thinking of how she would begin apologizing to Sledge for leaving when the cog lurched to the side and a pair of gray wings rocketed through the gap.
All thoughts of mending bridges evaporated beneath the overwhelming howl of wild balefire as its source streaked over their heads. It resonated within her like a gargantuan tuning fork, causing her to retch while the others watched with momentary confusion as Aurora and Ginger hurtled between the pillars and out into the open air. Held in the unicorn’s grip was a glass box, and inside what appeared to be a living storm.
Pain bloomed behind her eyes. “That. That was balefire.”
Behind them, the door to Stable 10 continued to roll open. Colonel Weathers whispered a curse. “It’s a bomb. They brought a bomb!”
Rainbow didn’t need to be told what that meant. Two centuries of wasting away in a dark tunnel taught her the price of taking too long when an apocalypse was unfolding. She jabbed a feather toward the Stable. “Get inside! Now!”
“Lieutenant, corporal, you have your orders. Take her inside.”
Dancer stepped toward her. “We can’t take a ghoul–”
He didn’t finish before Weathers clamped her feathers around his neck. “You will obey my orders and escort the Element of Loyalty back into that Stable or I will do everything in my power to make sure you find yourself in the custody of the first Steel Ranger I find. Now say yes ma’am.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She released him and turned to face Rainbow. “Go. Tell Sledge to make room for guests.”
Rainbow hesitated as she turned to run. “What do you mean guests?”
But Weathers had already turned away and dropped into a sprint, her shouts echoing off the walls, commanding the attention of officers and enlisted at the tunnel’s entrance. Several tore their eyes away from the Black Wing’s pursuit, ears turning toward the colonel as she shouted for them to get inside. A young stallion was the first to move. More followed. Then, as if compelled by deeper instinct, a tide of pegasi began to flood toward the door.
It was happening again. As Rainbow bolted across the Stable’s threshold, she could feel the slow arc of history circling back onto itself.
The door emitted another boom and began rolling back the way it came.
Enclave hooves thundered toward safety. They rumbled over the flagstones punctuated by panicked shouts and a dull chatter of distant gunfire. Rainbow backed up the ramp, turning to face the closing door as a river of fearful faces sprinted for their lives. And she knew. There wasn’t enough time for all of them. As soldiers clamored over the catwalk and streaked through the narrowing gap on jostling wings, she felt herself pulled further up the ramp by Dancer and Chops, sparing her the worst of the crush as soldiers - no - her fellow pegasi swarmed around them.
The opening narrowed. Frustrated shouts poured from the tunnel as the bottleneck narrowed, slowing the evacuation to a trickle. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, light sliced through the gap and a terrible roar of fear rose from behind the door. Rainbow looked away as pegasi who made it inside clamored to pull their friends through even as the door rolled across their trapped bodies, their cries squeezed silent before they could become screams.
The gap closed, and the armature began pushing the gore-greased door flush with the Stable’s skin. It wouldn’t finish.
The tunnel focused the bomb’s shockwave like a battering ram. It heaved Stable 10’s impenetrable cog backward with a shearing force that tore the armature off its mount, heaving it and the impenetrable cog backwards into the crowded antechamber. In that moment, with death and steel hurtling toward the survivors, the stone around Rainbow’s neck awakened.







Thunder rippled from the south.
Roach stirred and cracked his eyes toward the dark mass of clouds outside their temporary shelter. The skies were calm. No flickers to warn of an approaching radstorm. Only the departing echo of the crackle that woke him and the chilled breeze rustling the dead pine branches of their lean-to. That, and the soft snore of the mare next to him.
With her back warming his belly, he lay there and listened to the sounds of the dead forest around them for what felt like hours. The power armor they’d absconded with days earlier stood sentry within a haystack of brambles Julip hastily gathered after they made camp. They’d traveled an old road that had led them well north of the wasteland’s east-west corridor and far from any population centers worth the Enclave’s attention. In a few hours there would be enough light to see the slopes of the mountain range that defined the line between Equestria and the Crystal Empire. Nothing remained of that place these days besides radiation rumored to be strong enough to make the clouds glow, though Roach hadn’t seen anything like it himself.
Julip’s wings shifted between them and she mumbled something in her sleep before quieting down again. They were deep in raider territory, evidenced by the scouts they’d seen dogging them ever since they left the region the Steel Rangers creatively referred to as Crystal Alley. Raider sightings hadn’t been the most eventful thing to happen to them on their journey back to Blinder’s Bluff, not by a long shot, but even a weak tribe too indecisive to do much more than observe from afar could be deadly if they let their guard down. Julip ended up surprising him with her field experience when she cobbled together their camouflage.
Still, something was bothering him. A subtle pressure behind his eyes, like the beginning of the migraines he would get back when he was still capable of having them. He’d felt the same way when they arrived in Kiln, the Crystal Alley, and so many other sources of fresh radiation. Some days he felt as if his body was tuned to it like an old radio. 
He sighed, tucked his nose into Julip’s mane, and listened uneasily to the gentle disturbances on the wind.







As the swaying needle of one record player slid across the final crooning lyrics of one wasteland staple, Fiona deftly twirled a second vinyl disc between her fingers and dropped it onto the empty platter of a second. She wasn’t a personal fan of The Ink Blots but she knew a mare who bussed tables down at the watering hole who had a soft spot for the group. To each their own, she thought as she pressed a set of headphones to her ear and adjusted the needle to the first opening notes of Maybe.
She hummed-slashed-yawned the last notes of the closing song while pulling the output sliders on her mixing board to zero. Her tired reflection smirked back at her from the old firetower’s window panes. One more hour til sunrise and, more importantly, another shot at rubbing shoulders and a few other things with the newest regiment of Steel Rangers to arrive at the Bluff. 
She tipped her beak toward the boom mic and keyed it on. “That was The Ink Blots, singing about the things we’re all thinking. Up next, a little something for a little someone I know. Be sure to tip your waitress, ladies and gentlecolts. This is Beyond the Sea.”
One finger clicked off the mic while another hit play on the spare record player. As she brought the volume back up, her headset bloomed with the buttery smooth voice of a stallion so beloved he was rumored to have performed for Griffinstone royalty once upon a time. Fiona leaned back in her chair and listened to the wood crackle. Part of her hoped it would finally break so she could pay someone to build one more suited for her size. 
Knots of tension crackled in her neck as she tipped her head from side to side. Maybe something with a high back, like those big padded thrones the old pony princesses were always sitting in. Sure it would be nice, but it would never happen. Records weren’t cheap and her broadcasting equipment represented more than a decade of saving, bartering, and scavenging. At the end of the day music was her passion. There weren’t many people alive these days who could say their job was to make thousands of strangers’ lives a little less shitty. Of all her favorite kinks, the one in her neck was a small price to pay.
She chuckled at her own stupid joke and put the played out record back in its sleeve, then half-stood to slot it into the bowing shelf behind the console. 
Her thoughts wandered as she fingered through her collection for the next song. Now more than ever, the ponies of Blinder’s Bluff and beyond needed something to keep their spirits up. The Enclave’s surprise attack on Fillydelphia scared everyone into watching the skies, but more paralyzing than that were the rumors that Paladin Ironshod had led a small force to the city days before to capture and torture Aurora Pinfeathers. The Enclave claimed they acted to rescue Aurora after they learned of her disappearance and admonished the local chapter of Rangers for dragging their hooves with their own rescue effort. Elder Coldbrook’s auspicious lack of a response or even a denial had done little to buoy his falling star. The reason for his silence on the matter became clear just two days later when the Steel Rangers announced Coldbrook was being reassigned in the west and for the time being his command would be assigned to Elder Coronado. 
Fiona didn’t know much about Coronado aside from being a member of a rare subset of ponies the locals called a “kirin.” Most of the people she’d spoken to since the announcement didn’t care so much about the shape of his horn than they did the fact that they were expected to feel safer in the care of a stallion whose city had just been forcibly declawed by the Enclave. Regardless, the decision was made. Seemingly overnight Blinder’s Bluff had gone from a comfortably populated trade hub to a claustrophobic Ranger stronghold, and more soldiers were flowing through the wall each day in preparation to halt the Enclave’s march eastward. 
 At least without Coldbrook breathing down her neck she didn’t have to worry about adhering to his insanity. Rather than lining his pockets with the caps he demanded she pay for access to Stable 6’s electricity, she was now free to keep putting her hard-earned cash into the hooves of Rangers willing to part ways with information not technically meant for her ears. 
Her fingers stopped at an obscure jazz album she hadn’t played in a while. The cover song was meant to get its audience up and dancing, but it had a manic pacing to it that made her feel like laughing instead. Why not, she thought, and tugged it off the shelf. The folks downhill could use a laugh right about now.
She loaded the empty platter and waited for the old crooner to finish before gently fading him off the air. Her thumb hovered over the play button, ready to inflict I Got Rhythm on her listeners as she keyed back onto her mic. 
“For those of you tuning in late, you’re listening to Hightower Radio with Flipswitch, your Mare on the Air! That was Beyond the Sea. This next tune is one that’s sure to get your hooves moving, so get up off that chair and–”
A sharp, electric screech pulsed from her headphones.
“–fuck you too!” 
She swatted them away from her ears. They clattered to the floor and she stared after them, bewildered. The buzz of arcing electricity yanked her attention away from the offending headset and up to her broadcast equipment where she watched the lights behind the level gauges gutter and die. Wisps of blue smoke curled up past the knobs of the high-range transceiver near the window. The single bulb hanging overhead grew dimmer and dimmer as if the life were being choked from it before emitting a quiet tink and going out.
Her broadcast board went with it. The turntables wound to a stop. A stinging scent of charred circuit boards pooled in the cramped tower. She dragged her talons through her hair and down the nape of her neck, eyes closing with silent anger. A fucking power surge had just cooked her station. Thousands of caps worth of old tech, years of scavenging and bartering, all gone. 
She pushed out of her chair to crack a window before the stink of burnt plastic could soak into the walls. As she did, two things caught her eye.
First, the eclectic mishmash of string lights and lamps that lit the northern slope of Blinder’s Bluff had gone dark too. It was like someone had draped a velvet blanket over the city, erasing it from existence. Yet she could still make out the shapes of ponies stepping out onto the winding cobbles. The colorful roofs of their homes cast long shadows toward the east. It was too early for sunrise, though. The pliable corner of her beak twitched town and she looked west, and her eyes grew wide.
The horizon bloomed with a maleficent green glow; one she immediately recognized from the days of her youth, before she abandoned the dying cliffs of Griffinstone for a life on a different shore. Hightower Radio became an afterthought. She pushed through the door and climbed the tower railing, and jumped with wings snapped wide to catch the unsteady air. She nosed over the edge of the bluff, picking up speed as she bent toward the growing crowd of confused Rangers gathering at the bottom. 







The sun rose.
Aurora didn’t know how far she’d flown. She didn’t know whether she was closer to the clouds or the dirt. At first the rushing wind felt like a salve. It swaddled her, drowning out the dark thoughts soaking into her mind like waste oil seeping through a cracked drum. For an hour, two hours, she didn’t know how long, she focused solely on the sensation of air coursing across her feathers. The gentle lift it provided as she spread her wings into the current was a blessing she didn’t deserve.
And the sun continued to rise. She felt its warmth beat against face. Even through the blindness she could tell it was directly ahead of her, a red glow amidst a lack of everything. Like a moth to a candle she honed in on it, if for no other reason than to assure herself she wasn’t flying in a pitiful circle.
Time passed. She started to hear the muffled drone of the wind. Her eardrums crackled like splinters being pressed into her skull when she attempted to clear them by working her jaw around, so she stopped trying. A while later the burns along her right side started waking up. The rushing air scraped across her raw skin and damaged nerves revolted, causing her body to buck erratically at the sensation of being scoured. A low groan crawled up from her throat as she turned to try to shield her wounds only for them to light up again at the touch of the slightest breeze. The only way to stop it from hurting was to slow down and if she slowed down she would start to fall. A horrible realization rose in her gut. She couldn’t land. Not if she couldn’t see the ground. 
She couldn’t think about that. Not yet. Not until she absolutely had to. All she had to do right now was grit her teeth and beat her wings. The pain wouldn’t last. All of this would end when the time came. For just a while longer she wanted to remember what it felt like that day out on the highway, when Ginger taught her to fly.
The sun followed its arc across the dome of the sky until following it was impossible. The only beacon she had hung overhead as if to taunt her, and she felt her course drifting. Every correction felt like a mistake. Each imaginary line she tried to follow bent in her mind. Her wings started to ache, a little at first and then a constant drone of acidic discomfort that grew worse with every flap. Her throat stuck to itself, clogging with phlegm as she worked harder and harder to catch her breath. She knew she was in trouble when she started to hear her heartbeat pounding behind her eyes, her head feeling weighted with lead as she tried to fight off the inevitable. 
Beaten, burned, and pushed beyond her limits, consciousness slipped, and she fell.







Crack.
The right trace of the clapped out wagon dropped suddenly, wrenching hard against his shoulder harness. The steady crunching of the spoked wheels over dusty stones was joined by the deep, braking scrapes of splintered wood. He grumbled something under his breath that his late mother would surely disapprove of and stopped, brushing away the sweaty mop of black mane to better glower forward at the long strip of hardpack still needing to be traveled. This patch of the wasteland wasn’t the worst place to be stuck in, but it was miles from anywhere he’d consider safe. A vast expanse of flat terrain speckled with rocks and scrub grass would limit his options if the local raiders were out scouting today. No point in giving the Cinders a free meal. 
He gave himself a generous ten seconds to feel sorry for himself before shrugging out of his harnesses and stepping over the left trace. His tail flicked annoyance at the sight of his wagon tilted toward him with its neatly organized crates slopped toward the corner where he stowed a puckered burlap bag filled with assorted dry goods meant to keep his belly full until he could reach the next town. He sighed and reached over the shallow sideboards to shove the wood crates away. Thankfully the burlap hadn’t ripped. The last thing he needed was to spend the night picking oats out from between the boards. Nothing for it if the pouches inside were ruptured. Food was food, no matter how mixed up it got.
After one more hard shove against the crates, he dropped down to the road and stared at the half-moon of his shattered wheel. Pieces of wooden spokes littered the long groove dug behind it, but luckily the wagon ground itself to a halt before the axle hub could get too beaten up. It would take the spare wheel he kept strapped underneath the wagon bed without much argument, as long as he could rebalance his supplies enough to lift the front left corner off the dirt. If not, well, the wasteland had no short supply of rocks to pick.
Easy or not, it didn’t excuse the pea sized hole in the core of one of the busted spokes. Termites. Halfway down the sanded and lacquered surface, a faint speckle belied the point where the tunnel’s emergence had been packed with sawdust and glue to mask the defect. He let it drop from his hoof and did his best to rein in his rising temper.
With his eyes on the horizon, he got to work. Boxes of crap he’d pulled from a wreck site rumored to belong to the fallen city of Cloudsdale jostled and scraped to the wagon’s high corner until the gods of gravity deigned to drop the airborne wheel onto the road. He stacked a couple more crates on top to prevent everything from shifting once he climbed down, then went to work hammering the locking pin out from behind the busted wheel. 
“They don’t make cheap shit like this in Manehattan,” he grumbled as the axle spat out the iron pin. 
He wrapped his good hoof between the spokes and gave the wheel several quick, hard shakes. It sprang off the hub on the last jerk and he let it drop. The dust it kicked off the road had barely settled by the time he’d flopped onto his back and shimmied his way to the spare wheel bolted to the belly of his wagon.
With his teeth, he nipped the rust-speckled cotter pin out of the wood post keeping the spare in place. It dropped onto his three waiting hooves with enough weight to force a squeaking grunt out of his throat as he lowered one end of it onto the hardpack. “Fucking Verdant,” he hissed, kicking the wheel out from the wagon’s shadow. “Selling, agh, this termite food like it’s, unf, goddamn mahogany!”
The spare had a few new gouges in it by the time he got it leaned up against the bare axle. It wasn’t the first time he’d been sold a bill of goods by a rat with a silver tongue, but this was different. There were just certain things a scavenger didn’t pull on a fellow scavenger, especially not the long haul types. Verdant knew better than to pull shit like this. Calling a mutfruit an apple or selling a map to a stash he knew had been picked over was one thing. Fair trade. That was the kind of cap scraping shit that everyone did to survive. Passing off junk wagon wheels off as top quality? 
He hefted it up onto the hub and shouldered it into place with a grunt. Shit like this got earth ponies like him killed. He didn’t have a horn like Verdant did. Everything Mouse did came from the labor of his teeth, three hooves, and the gray matter between his ears. Dragging a cart for days on end just to get to the next town was hard enough without having to stop twice a day to take apart and clean out the joints of his foreleg. He couldn’t reload the pipe pistol strapped to his good leg with a magic fart from his forehead. Everything he did was noisy, deliberate, and slower than everyone else. Some days it felt like all he had was his brawn, and a fat lot of good it would do him if someone caught him out here in the middle of fuck-all nowhere fixing a busted wheel.
Digging an old rag from the jockey box at the front of the cart, he wiped the dirt off the locking pin and smeared a few drops of gun oil on it before hammering it back into the new wheel’s hub and the axle head. He and Verdant were going to have words once he got back to White Tail. The Rangers might end up having to pull them apart, but a week in a cage would be worth knocking a few more gaps in that swindler’s grin.
Mouse smiled at the thought as he climbed in and began reorganizing his wares. It wasn’t much of a haul. Not enough to cement his confidence that the map he’d purchased last month had actually led him to the debris field of Equestria’s most famous floating city. Chances were better that the murky river he’d seen a quarter mile north had flooded enough to wash out a small town, maybe even before the bombs fell, and spat out whatever floated along its engorged banks. Given how firmly buried and packed with dry mud some of the larger furniture was, he had a feeling he was right. Even so, he’d pulled enough good junk from the dirt to cover the cost of the trip, and there was plenty he’d left behind to justify reselling the map to someone else. 
He hopped over the sidewall and landed on the road with a grunt, taking a moment to verify no one had appeared on the road since he last checked. Nothing. Not even a molerat. With his wagon righted, he ducked between the traces and started working back into the harnesses while he reviewed his route. If he pushed himself he could make up the time he wasted fixing the wagon. That would put him at the Grey-V-Boat, a prewar tourist trap full of useless zebra kitsch, just before sundown. 
Squinting up at the hazy bright spot in the clouds, he wondered whether he should make a stop at Old Lear’s after he got underway again tomorrow morning. Probably not a bad idea. He wouldn't be back this way again until fall and for a mutant who preferred to talk about things that made little to no sense, the gravel-faced lizard could be entertaining at times. 
That, and it safely preserved his face on the whitelist for Lear’s auto turrets. 
He shuddered. So many turrets. 
But as he began turning his attention away from the sky he spotted something moving overhead. Wings. Gray against the unbreakable overcast. He instinctively bent his hoof around his pipe pistol’s bar trigger, knowing his chances of landing a shot from this distance were close to zero. That would change in a short few seconds. The Enclave’s lone scout was gliding low and slow, banking toward the open road ahead of him. Whoever they were, they weren’t making an effort to sneak up on him. A bad sign. His heartbeat slid up to a higher tempo as he shook off his harness. The wagon would give him some cover, but not much. He’d need all the time he could get if he wanted to figure out whether this was some idiot private looking to shake him down for food and supplies, or something worse.
The scout cut through the air above the road and continued right on past. Mouse frowned. They were still banking left but not enough to bend them back toward the road in time for a pass behind the wagon. Something wasn’t right. At first he thought the scout was flying above something of interest running across the hardpan, but then he noticed their hooves swaying limply in the wind. Their head hung low beneath their shoulders, as if asleep. Mouse watched, with no small amount of suspicion, as the gap between the pegasus and the dirt rapidly shrank and slammed shut.
Enclave or not, he didn’t know anyone who could watch someone tumble that hard without wincing. His hoof straightened away from his pipe pistol while a curtain of dust rolled away from where the lone flyer impacted. A glance skyward confirmed no one else was coming, at least not from above. It was entirely possible for there to be raiders or Rangers nearby who may have felled the pegasus, in which case they would be on their way here looking for their kill. The smart move would be to harness up and put some distance between himself and the wasteland’s newest corpse. 
He nibbled at his chapped lip, the gears in his head already turning. What little success he’d wrung from a life of scavenging was predicated upon his cardinal, unbending, foundational rule that he did not under any circumstances fuck around with anything to do with the Rangers or the Enclave. As far as he was concerned they were both radioactive, and it didn’t matter to him which one was worse. Too much exposure to either was detrimental to an honest wastelander’s health, and he wasn’t looking for an excuse to wake up in the morning to find a nifty little lump growing on his left nut. The world was fucked up enough without a bunch of warlords arguing over who’s best princess.
Still. The Enclave was known for hoarding good tech. Rare tech.
“Fuck it.”
He slid down the shallow embankment, hustling as quickly as he dared across the cracked scrubland toward where the soldier fell. No one was around to see him but that could change well before he was back on the road and out of sight. The Rangers had a tendency to imprison scavengers caught looting their fallen brethren. The Enclave… well, he’d never met a true blue pegasus who wasn’t a dustwing or a corpse. Something told him they wouldn’t take kindly to catching an earth pony rummaging through the pockets of one of their own. He needed to do this fast.
A long trail of flattened brambles and divots cut into the soil led him to where the flyer’s body had come to rest, curled semi-fetally on one side. He checked the vacant sky one last time before stepping near enough to see one of her hind legs was missing. Amputated just above the knee. The impact had caused the wound to tear open, allowing a slow ooze of fresh blood to track across the staples. As he rounded the body’s tangled limbs it occurred to him “it” was a mare. He frowned. Out of uniform, and a bit older than the twenty-somethings the Enclave supposedly selected for their long range scouting operations. 
His frown deepened as he looked at the body, then the hardpan around her. No weapon, no saddlebags, not even a canteen or a pair of binos? 
“Not Enclave, then,” he muttered. 
He stuck out a hoof, lifted her mane away from her face, and immediately wished he hadn’t. It never mattered how long someone lived out in the wastes, seeing death always left an impression on a pony. It wasn’t serene like the flickershows made it out to be. Like all the others he’d seen, this mare had seen the end coming. Her green eyes stared, half-lidded, at some distant point in space beyond him. He let her mane slide off his hoof and tried not to think about it. Dustwings lived sad enough lives without him trying to guess at where this one came from.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel annoyed. She looked healthy. Toned, even, like those rich assholes in Paradise Springs who spent their mornings prancing up and down their tidy little streets because it was supposedly good for them. He could spend the next ten centuries scavenging and selling smashed typewriters and cracked vacuum tubes and never come close to the level of luxury those self-titled “aristocrats” enjoyed. Jogging. That’s what they called it. 
Wherever she’d come from she’d known comfort alright. Who needed basic survival skills when you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth? He scoffed and started to turn away, but something tugged at his leg. The charred tips of two gray feathers clung weakly around his shaggy fetlocks. 
He wrenched his leg away in alarm. “Shit!”
The mare’s wing fell to the dirt. For a moment he worried she would reach toward him again - something in his head refused to shake off the certainty that she’d been dead just seconds earlier - but her feathers pulled away. A badly broken foreleg slid out from beneath it and clutched her empty wing for comfort.
But what caught his eye was the Pip-Buck… no, two Pip-Bucks clamped above her hoof.
The thought that formed in his mind repulsed him, but he wouldn’t deny the temptation was there. Anything he wasn’t willing to pry off a corpse was fair game for the next scavenger, and he knew that next scavenger wouldn’t shy away from the veritable fortune of tech worn by this dying mare. She didn’t even seem aware of them. Her waning focus was on whatever she thought she was holding in her wing.
He stood over her, shut his eyes, then grimaced. There was a fine line between honest scavenging and… that. Kneeling down, he pushed her mane away from her eyes. Before he could stop himself, the world’s dumbest question came tripping out of his mouth. “You alright, miss?”
If she understood him she made no indication she had. Her expression was rigid with pain and her eyes, those haunted emerald eyes stared through him as if he weren’t there at all. Her pupils, barely two pinpoints, were hard and unresponsive like two tiny black stones. A chill ran down his neck. She’d been up there with no idea what was ahead of her. 
“Miss, you hit the ground pretty hard. I got my wagon up there on the road but you’re going to have to help me get you...” He looked at her other legs and swallowed a curse. An ugly, swollen knot had already begun growing around her hind ankle. The longer he looked her over, the more he realized this wasn’t just a leisure flight gone wrong. “Just stay put. I’ll figure something out.”
Promises, promises.
He could kick himself later. He crossed the distance to the road at a dead sprint and hoisted himself up into the wagon. For as much shit he took from the other vendors back home for sorting his wares across multiple crates, rare was the day his organization didn’t pay off. He knocked the lid off a sunbleached Sparkle-Cola box and pushed his snout past musty rolls of gauze and dubious chem tins until his teeth settled around the glass cylinder of an autoinjector. 
With the diluted stimpack hanging off his lip like a ridiculous cigar he trotted an uneasy circle on the floorboards as he worked out the problem of getting the pegasus up into this heap. There was no way in Tartarus she’d be able to walk, even with help. He’d busted his leg once and knew there weren’t enough stimpacks in the world that could have pushed him beyond that pain. 
But he couldn’t just drag her by her tail, and he hadn’t exactly broken down next to an old hospital with a surplus of stretchers. All he had was a few crates of useless scrap, a medical box more stocked with dubious, unsorted chems than proper medicine, and a weak stimpack he’d cut with saline last winter. He didn’t pack for this trip expecting to become a mobile triage unit, and now he found himself stuck in this situation with less than shit to show for it.
He dropped back down to the road and half-trotted, half-ran back to where the mare lay. This is why I travel alone, he thought as he knelt down and awkwardly sank the needle into her neck. The injector engaged and a weak dose of old stim shot into the tissue between her carotid and jugular. Her numerous injuries would have to learn to share. That was his last dose. If he put his hoof in a rut between here and Crow’s Grove he’d shit out of luck. 
If the stim was doing anything for her, he couldn’t tell. He could barely tell if she was conscious let alone stabilizing, and judging by the shallow rise and fall of her chest she was likely neither. Once upon a time his dad would tell him how deeds were like investments and how the good ones paid better than the bad, but his dad wasn’t out here watching his last stimpack go to waste for a mare whose recklessness he was paying for. 
He swore under his breath and gave her a little shake with the flat of his hoof. “Miss, if you can hear me, I gotta get you up.”
She didn’t answer. He sighed and hoped pegasus wings were designed to bear weight. If not, well, one problem at a time. Maneuvering himself close enough to drape her feathery appendage around his neck was beyond awkward, but then again no part of this was normal. She wouldn’t be able to hold on once he stood up and nature hadn’t left him with many pleasant options to prevent it.
“This is going to hurt.”
He turned away from her, set his teeth across the narrow ridge of her wing, and bit down.
Hard.
An awful noise howled out of the mare as she found herself hauled off the ground when Mouse stood. His immediate instinct was to drop her but he fought it off, focusing instead on the wagon waiting on the empty road a good few hundred paces away. The mare’s wailing devolved into gibbering pleads for him to stop. He could hear her hooves scrape and drag over the rocks, her ribs shifting unevenly against his when one of her legs managed to briefly bear some weight before folding out from under her and eliciting another terrible cry of pain. Mouse tried not to notice the sensation of his teeth breaking her skin or the taste of warm blood puddling across his gums. Those were things that were happening elsewhere which could be dealt with another time. He put them out of his mind.
Like a feral dog carrying a pup, he dragged her up the embankment and over the sideboards of the wagon. Her body flopped into a gap between the crates like a ragdoll and he spat out her mangled wing. 
As she lay there on her back, mouth locked open in wordless agony, he saw what he hadn’t been able to see out on the hardpack. Burns, red and angry and caked with clods of bloody dirt blotched her right side from her neck down to her hoof. More than half of her coat was just gone. 
His brain did the math without being asked. Home was another three days west of here at a brisk walk. Four days, if he was being honest, with a passenger this badly injured. They had a doctor, sure, but the old crone couldn’t cure dead, which was what the mare in his wagon was going to be in short order with those burns. Her body was going to burn through the stim he’d given her just fighting off shock, say nothing about infection. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that if he chose to take her to Crow’s Grove, all anyone could do for her then was to bury her. 
He shook his head and climbed down from the wagon, trying to think of alternatives. There was no shortage of raiders in the area who would take her in, but the question with them was always what they would do with a wayward traveler once they got their hooks into one. He’d done some reluctant business with a few of the smaller tribes in this area, and while they didn’t ascribe to slavery by name they weren’t subtle about their “initiation” processes either. 
He wasn’t about to bet her luck on a chance meeting with a Ranger patrol, either. Not out here, where a suit of power armor was as much a liability as protection. Out here clearing raider nests was left to the locals, and no one Mouse knew was stupid enough to try. Backwards as it seemed, the Cinders were just as much a hostage of their own influence as the towns that dotted their southwest territory. Gone were the days when they could terrorize, murder, steal, and pillage to their heart’s content. They’d gotten too big for that. It still baffled Mouse to think raiders like that had the self-control for any kind of symbiosis with their victims, and yet here he was throwing his schedule into the shitter for a half-dead mare that fell out of the sky.
What a time to be alive.
No raiders. No Rangers. As he stepped over the wagon’s traces and shrugged on the old harness, he knew who it was he needed to take her to. That big blowhard wouldn’t be happy about it, not one bit, but Mouse couldn’t rightly recall a time when Old Lear was happy about anything. 







Voices of soldiers and civilians buzzed off the tunnel walls. In the span of a few hours, everyone who owned a weapon was carrying it. Fresh recruits from Fillydelphia loitered around the pillars, wide-eyed and worried that their march to Blinder’s Bluff had taken them out of the fire and into the frying pan. Fiona watched a pair of unicorns in fresh brown uniforms struggle to assemble an old, battery powered work light whose tripod was more rust than anything else. Ponies clad in power armor stomped by, nearly flattening her tail. The cannons mounted to their shoulders clicked and whirred on freshly oiled gimbals, ammo belts strung and loaded. 
She paced outside Stable 6’s entrance as closely as the Rangers would allow, which wasn’t close at all. Coldbrook might not be in charge anymore but the soldiers who served under him were still here and they knew better than to let her inside without their new commander’s authorization. She swore under her breath for what felt like the hundredth time this morning and glanced out at the crowd still milling around the cobbles outside the tunnel. Word of a balefire detonation had spread fast. Suddenly, everyone in the Bluff was watching the skies for the next bomb. It wouldn’t be long until general fear morphed into paranoia.
Her home was vibrating like a kicked cazador’s nest and all she could do was walk ruts in the tunnel while the Rangers fortified. Having access to a working transmitter had given her a purpose. Without it, she couldn’t shake the weight of uselessness.
“Flipswitch?”
She stopped pacing, turned, and tried not to look disappointed when she recognized the stallion who’d spoken. He was hard not to recognize. Not many ponies wore burn scars like Knight Latch. Judging by the shine of sweat down his neck and the road dust powdering his blue fetlocks, he’d just come in from pounding ground outside the wall. After using him to get into Stable 6 two weeks ago, she doubted he was going to grease those wheels for her again.
“Can we talk for a second?”
She kept her eyes peeled for any others coming into the tunnel who might be susceptible to flattery even as she lifted a paw to greet the approaching stallion. “Hey, Latch. Sorry, I’m a little busy.”
He matched pace beside her. “It’s about our mutual friends.”
“We don’t have ‘mutual friends,’ Knight.” She looked down at him, letting some of the annoyance she felt show. “Last I checked, you weren’t interested in getting to know me.”
“And you took that personally?”
She scoffed. “No.”
They turned, or rather she turned and he followed like a lost puppy. She shuffled her wings. Maybe she’d taken his rebuffing a little personally. Latch crossed the flagstones beside her, careful not to lodge a hoof between the old rails running the tunnel’s length. “Remember those two mares and the ghoul Coldbrook tried shaking down?”
Of course she did. It wasn’t every day an Elder of the Steel Rangers blew up his whole career over a grudge. “What about them?”
“Well, they made it out to Fillydelphia like they said they would.”
She started looking for something hard to bash her head against. He was reporting her own news back to her now. “I heard,” she said through a clenched beak.
“Did you also hear that the balefire bomb detonated directly above the Stable that pegasus claimed to come from, and that both those mares were seen arriving there with an Enclave escort three days ago?”
She stopped pacing.
Latch saw the question in her face and nodded, lowering his voice. “After the Enclave attacked the excavation site at Foal Mountain, those of us who survived regrouped at Junction City expecting them to advance but they never did. Our scouts reported seeing them fortifying the tunnel and redirecting traders, and it stayed like that until we spotted a big group of them come out of the clouds and make a bee-line for the Stable. Someone reported seeing our mutual friends flying with–”
She cut him off. “Stop calling them that. They’re not… why would they be with the Enclave?”
Latch shrugged. “Aurora did claim to be a member.”
“So Ironshod would let them through your junkyard version of a wall and take them to Redheart for meds.” She shook her head, anger seeping into her voice. “Just because I wasn’t there doesn’t mean I don’t have ears. Don’t you dare walk around the Bluff spreading rumors like that.”
“I’m not spreading rumors, I’m telling you what I know.” Sensing her rising aggression, he straightened up at her. “You know, if you spent more of your time investigating your stories and less of it lifting your tail for the first barfly to flash their caps, people might take you more seriously.”
The words tangled in her mouth. She swallowed them and glared down at him.
He shook his head and looked toward the Rangers’ heavily guarded base of operations. “I won’t pretend to know what’s going on, Flipswitch, but I have a duty to report what I heard. Once word gets out, the Bluff is going to look to you for a silver lining. I’m doing you a professional courtesy. There isn’t one."







Someone knocked on the door and the slender mare between her legs slowed her lapping to see if she should stop. Breathless and so frustratingly close to release, Primrose locked her hocks behind the technical sergeant’s head and pulled her muzzle back to its only duty. 
“Ignore it,” she urged, working her own legs to give her current courtier’s tongue more real estate to work with. “Just… goddesses, right there.”
The mare, whose name Primrose had already forgotten, did as she was ordered. And oh was she good at her work. She had a tongue that flowed like quicksilver and an electric kiss, each making for an ecstatic combination when shown where they were needed. And Primrose needed this. 
The knock came again and went ignored. One treat at a time, she thought. Her muscles shuddered and she winked, brushing against the young mare’s lip in a spasmodic kiss of her own. She was close enough to the edge to cut herself on it and the sergeant could taste it. She was teasing her, holding back just enough to keep her minister at the height of ecstasy. A dangerous move, denying her leader, and one that drove an animalistic moan from her lungs with deep appreciation.
She earned this. Days of chewing caffeine tablets just to stay awake had taken a toll on her, and this was her prize at the end of the gauntlet. It was all worth it. The headaches, the fatigue, the constant drumbeat of paranoia that began as soon as those tongueless killers began their flight to Spitfire’s Stable with the balefire talisman in tow. All that waiting, all that agonizing over the hundred things that could go wrong came to an end once word reached her that the Enclave’s favorite little pureblood Aurora had taken the talisman inside herself and shut the door behind her. 
That had been eighteen hours ago and counting, and it had been a constant fight since then to keep a grin off her face. The instant the comms director reported loss of radio contact with more than two dozen scouting units positioned over the eastern wasteland she knew her plan had been a success. Stable 10, Aurora, Spitfire’s secrets, and the last Element of Harmony were nothing more than ashes on the breeze by now. No more worrying. She could finally, finally close the book on that chapter of her life and turn the entirety of her focus on the future of her Enclave.
The sergeant burrowed her muzzle deeper, hungrily, causing Primrose’s breath to hitch in her chest. She reached out to her nightstand with a free wing and opened its drawer, retrieving the syringe from inside. The last time she tried this the sensation had defied description. As the first needy clenches of a powerful orgasm bloomed between her hips she jabbed Twilight’s miracle stimpack into her shoulder and braced herself for the intense collision of two feather-curling euphorias.
Raw ecstasy roared like a storm through her for what felt like minutes. The knocking at the door dissolved, her muscles clenched, and her thoughts narrowed to the singular focus of grinding as much pleasure from the sergeant’s muzzle as she could. Her brain buzzed with uncut bliss. Days, weeks, and months slid off her like warm butter. And as her legs fell back to the bed, rubbery and trembling from the exertion, the sergeant extracted herself with something amounting to dignity and began the gentle work of licking her clean.
Primrose relaxed on the scattered bedsheets and closed her eyes, smiling at the ticklish sensation of the young officer easing her down from her peak. This one - there was no doubt in her mind - was a keeper. 
And again, a hoof thumped against the door. 
She lifted her head to look down at the mare. “Let me up before one of them gets the idea to break the door down.”
The sergeant lifted her snout and settled her chin atop Primrose’s belly. “You sure? Your tail is soaked.”
Her hips jumped with lingering sensitivity as her companion rolled to one side and hooked a sandy wing around Primrose’s, pulling her up into a sitting position. Primrose snorted. “You weren’t kidding.”
The cremello mare crawled up to her and kissed her without so much as asking. “Stay put. I’ll get you a towel.”
Voices muttered beyond the sealed door followed by a more forceful pounding. The sergeant glanced at the door on her way to the master bathroom but refrained from asking questions. It was an unavoidable burden for the Enclave’s minister to be pestered so frequently, though today was the one day it didn’t bother her. She knew the generals would inevitably waste precious hours hemming and hawing over the best way to break the news to their leader. Primrose shook her head and chuckled at the thought of them breaking into a nervous sweat, drawing straws for who had to tell her, probably donning an extra bulletproof vest or two under their uniforms just in case their leader didn’t take the evaporation of a thousand pureblood pegasi particularly well.
The sergeant cocked a brow at her crooked smile as she held out a fresh white towel. She sat on the bedside and watched Primrose wipe herself off, showing no signs of trying to hide her own satisfaction in her work. 
Smug little shit. With her tail at least somewhat decent, she flicked the towel at the sergeant and scooted off the bed. “I need to see what they want, but I doubt it’ll take long. You’re welcome to wait here, sergeant…” She stole a glance at the wrinkled uniform near the edge of the bed. “...Hayride? Interesting name. Maybe when I get back you can tell me more about it.”
She smiled at that and watched her leave with a glint in her eye that promised an encore when she returned. Primrose wasn’t usually one to concern herself with returning the favor, but this mare lit a fire under her tail that practically made her feel obligated to reciprocate. She hit the door switch and let herself grin despite herself. There was nothing like a bonafide original stimpack to make her feel all warm and charitable inside. 
As expected, the corridor outside her quarters was filled with half a dozen of her top-ranking officers, each of which looked like they had a lit stick of dynamite up their tailpipes. She wiped the smirk off her face and cleared her throat, letting the door slide shut behind her. 
She looked up at the stallion who’d done the knocking with a flat expression. “Something better be on fire, general, because you just interrupted some of the best sex I’ve had this side of a century.”
He took her broadside like a true professional. “Ma’am, you’re needed in the war room. There’s been an incident at Stable 10.” 
Several of the commanders behind him stared at their hooves, faces pinched with fear. She slipped into her mask of concern without skipping a beat. “Explain.”
“Not out here, ma’am.”
Her expression darkened. He was dangerously, dangerously close to disobedience. Word of a balefire bomb going off would be impossible to keep contained, even here in the Bunker. She’d bet her left teat everyone down here and a measurable percentage of New Canterlot already knew Spitfire’s little shithole of traitors had been converted into a glowing crater by now. 
To their credit, none of the gathered personnel broke protocol. They were well and truly deep into damage control by now, and whatever mechanisms they’d put into place to keep the citizenry calm could just as easily be undone if Primrose was seen losing her composure. She gave her wing an impatient flick down the corridor, allowing the general and his subordinates to lead the way. There was a snowball’s chance in Tartarus she’d let any of them walk downwind of her.
As hooves stamped ahead of her she took the time to observe the uniformed soldiers still out in the corridors, hurrying off from one office to another to finish the day’s work. There was certainly an air of fear about them. No one met her gaze. Conversations grew hushed as she drew near, and pegasi found other places to be. It was a chore not to laugh, to shout, or grab any random officer and drag them back to her quarters, but she managed to keep it together. The relief was a balm she didn’t know she needed. She could finally breathe again. 
An hour or two of pretend horror, a tearful speech, and a selfless proposal for ceasefire in the name of rebuilding. No. Better than that, a joint proposal for their two powers to work together to assist the wounded. The local elders would balk at the suggestion. Mistrust of the Enclave was practically bred into them at this point. And meanwhile, their people would needlessly suffer. They would be forced to turn to the Enclave for help.
And all the while they would ask themselves who stood the most to gain by destroying a Stable of innocent pegasi. The Enclave, whose reverence of their pureblood brethren was known to everyone, or the Steel Rangers whose own Paladin had captured and tortured a Stable dweller for having the audacity to tell them no.
Her cheeks burned from the effort it took not to smile. This day couldn’t be more perfect if she tried.
They passed through multiple checkpoints before the general stopped to run his badge through a scanner at the end of the corridor. He made room for the other commanders to file into the war room, only following once Primrose had stepped inside behind them. The other generals were already seated at the conference table that dominated the room, their expressions grim as they observed the procession.
She seated herself at the head of the table, mindful she was being watched as she picked up the brown dossier in front of her. Several uniformed pegasi were already flipping through their own papers, foreheads rested against hooves, some nervously scratching themselves with a feather or two. She was surprised there weren’t photos paperclipped to the pages. For as long as they’d waited to bring her in for this, someone could have flown a camera out there and back with time to spare to develop the film.
She didn’t look up from the pages when she spoke. “For Celestia’s sake, people, someone open their mouth and give me the short version.”
Somewhere down the table, a voice piped up. “A balefire detonation occurred in the vicinity of Stable 10, ma’am.”
Serious face. Serious face.
She dropped the packet. “I’m sorry, what?”
Of course none of the generals volunteered to deliver the news. One of their lieutenants, a stallion somewhere in his late thirties, was reading directly from the page in front of him. His eyelids fluttered almost as badly as the tip of his feather shook beneath the line he was on. Of all the time to have his minister’s full attention. She almost felt bad for him.
He swallowed loud enough for the room to hear. “Initial reports estimate a yield between three to five megatons, comparable with the tactical warheads used by the zebras at the end of the war. Communication with the battalion positioned outside the Stable was lost at the time of detonation. Given the size and altitude of the explosion we assume, at minimum, ninety percent of our forces in the area were killed.”
She paused. “What do you mean, altitude?”
No sooner had she asked did one of the commanders pick a remote from the table and point it at the bank of monitors facing her from the far wall. They blinked on one by one, each depicting a piece of a larger image. 
When the picture finished loading she no longer had to fake her concern. Her eyes widened. Her heart beat harder.
“This is an image taken from one of the spritebots we had monitoring the area for enemy movement.” The frame depicted a green shifted portrait of a section of wasteland that used to be covered in tracts of farmland and open plains. It had been patrolling the empty highway per its programming and was by pure chance heading in the direction of the black notch of Foal Mountain on the horizon.
Almost vertically above the mountain hung a perfect, white sphere.
Primrose sank into her chair.
“We stopped receiving data from the bot after it recorded this frame, which coincides with the electromagnetic pulse we’d expect from an airburst of this size. The communication blackout is extensive. We have scouts arriving from patrols out as far as three hundred miles with damaged radio equipment.” He continued. “We suspect the bomb may have been planted during the retreat of Elder Coldbrook’s forces, and that it was discovered prior to detonation. Current estimates suggest background radiation in the immediate vicinity should drop quickly enough for us to begin relief efforts in one to two days.”
The room was spinning. She lifted a hoof to stop him. “What do you mean relief efforts?”
He looked to his superiors, confused, before clearing his throat. “To the Stable, ma’am. The survivors will need–”
The survivors.
Primrose stood from her chair, wrapped her feathers around the dossier, and pitched it down the table. 
“FUCK!!”
Papers fluttered like snowflakes and the war room fell deathly silent.
She dropped back to her seat and stared up at the screens, her eyes pinched shut between her feathers. 
“Fuck.”







Rainbow woke to the sensation of birds pecking at the skin around her neck and chest. Disoriented and in pain, she made a feeble gesture to swat the carrion off of her with her hoof, only to feel it being pushed back down by someone’s wing. The pecking continued as around her voices became clearer through the whistling in her ears. She opened her eyes and frowned toward at least seven pegasi staring down at her while two others peeled debris loose from her skin. Her first instinct was to sit up but the soldiers quickly redirected her to the grated floor, their syllables still too muddy to decipher. Even so, they way they looked at her like an injured foal filled in enough of the gaps for her to stop trying to move. 
She didn’t know precisely how much time passed after she woke up, but before long a singed but familiar striped face leaned over her and sighed with visible relief. Weathers thumped the shoulder of one of the pegasi trying to peel something off her chest and mumbled something directly into the cup of his ear. The soldier nodded and pulled open a pocket in his uniform where he’d been collecting the bits of golden debris that had embedded itself into her. As Weathers mouthed okay, the soldier looked up at her and asked a question that drew the eyes of the other survivors. She nodded in answer, and the same eyes swiveled down to Rainbow with something like nervous reverence. Before long they were hoisting her up to her hooves and helping her the rest of the way up the ramp. 
The reality of the disaster surrounding them dropped into her stomach like a stone.
Where the antechamber’s rear wall had once stood now loomed a gash carved deep through the bedrock behind it. With nowhere else to go, nameless pegasi guided her through the destruction, carrying her over shattered girders and loose stones while protecting her from the severed cables strewn in their path. It was as if a gargantuan shotgun had been pushed against the wall and fired. No one spoke. They followed the path of the wound, their hooves making the only sound. Someone lifted her front legs over the jagged end of a decontamination arch as they stepped into what had once been the security office. Desks, papers, and bent bars pointed toward the communal space beyond. Rainbow felt tears sting her eyes as she stepped toward the bent lip of the catwalk, her attention pulled down to where the great gear had come to rest on its face in the center of the Atrium. 
The yellow paint of its formidable 10, still legible beneath the debris, stared back up at her like a tombstone.







Bricks cut into her shoulder blades. A collar of pale light tightened around her neck and the sky flashed with unnatural lightning. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. He wouldn’t let her. Cider’s magic pinned her to the wall like an insect on a framed display, his eyes sliding with the line his hoof traced down her belly. She knew what he was thinking. What he had already justified as his touch drifted between–
The wagon jumped over a loose stone and jostled her awake. She gasped, both from the rush of pain and the terror of a face that had already gone foggy in her mind. She’d been somewhere, but it was gone before she could hold onto what it was. Dizziness settled in its place, fraying the edges of that brief clarity. 
Everything hurt. Pain signals shrieked from too many sources to make sense of, like static over an untuned radio. She could taste bile in her mouth and smell blood in her sinuses. The gentle pull of gravity was a firm blanket across her chest that let her know she was lying on her back, her hooves and face slopped unevenly against a backstop of rough wood. Through her one open eye she could see a vague point of light overhead, but watching it hanging motionless with no sense of what was around it made her nauseous and she closed it. 
For a while she drifted in and out of consciousness. She felt a little worse each time she came around. She remembered hearing something falling in the wagon near her and the wheels abruptly stopping, the change in motion more than enough to induce an awful chain of retching that briefly shooed away whoever chose to make her their burden. She remembered being dragged by the wing, or maybe that hadn’t happened at all. Nothing felt real. She fell asleep.
She woke again. Her nose was cold and something scratchy covered her legs. The reddish blob of light was gone, too. It was nighttime and she was under a blanket. Somewhere close somebody was snoring. It sounded like an impact wrench with a shredded gearbox. Someone told her that joke once and it never failed to make her smile. Except tonight.
The next time she opened her eyes she was moving again and the blanket was gone. Her belly churned around something foreign. The foulness in her mouth was gone too. She didn’t remember getting up for a glass of water. Maybe Ginger had gotten it for her.
The bright spot was back. She turned her nose into the crook of her wing to hide from it.
It changed positions and her eye hurt again. As she ducked deeper under her feathers she could sense that the wagon was stationary again. She frowned at the sound of hooves near her hind legs, shimmying closer to her shoulders as something scratchy settled over her head. She was too exhausted to be alarmed, and the blanket almost felt nice. Safe, even. Like when she hid under her covers whenever the air circulators made scary noises. 
Someone was talking to her about keeping her head down. A stallion by the sound of it. Something about turrets not recognizing her. She didn’t catch it all. It sounded important.
She started moving again. Her world lurched for a moment as if everything were falling, then leveled off as the wheels ground over softer terrain. And the air… changed. It sounded different. Smelled different too. Her nose wrinkled. It reminded her of dinner with her dad. Salad? No, leaves. It smelled like the forest Roach planted outside the Stable, and the memory of it gave her pause. Those trees were gone now, and Ginger hadn’t gotten her any water. 
She curled into herself and tried to go back to sleep. 







The wind slipped through the window and lifted the paper ahead of his quill, causing the precise stroke of his lowercase r to invade the margin of the line above it. He calmly lifted the nib off the page and set the quill aside to assess the damage. The word garment was going to look strange to whomever received this book, but of course the entire story would be strange. He chuckled to himself and recovered his quill, dabbing it into the deeply stained inkpot glued to his desk. Too many errant spills over too many years taught him a valuable lesson in prevention. Not much he could do about the wind, though. It would blow when it chose to and he wasn’t about to shutter the windows of his own cottage just to keep one page still. The breeze smelled too nice and denying himself that enjoyment would torment him until he could no longer concentrate on the words. 
One denial of pleasure would beget another. He smirked. It sounded like something mon capitaine would love to lecture him about. Careful not to rest his knuckle on the drying text, he carried on writing, reciting the words from a memory that used to span realities and which he could feel regressing into something much frustratingly finite.
“She tore off one garment and clothed him with it…” he mumbled as his quill scratched away. “With a second garment she clothed herself…? Well, that hardly makes any sense.”
He recorded each word anyway. It didn’t matter whether he understood them or not. That wasn’t the point. Accuracy was. Breadcrumbs were. His formers hated when he left breadcrumbs. 
As he wrote, he would pause on occasion to watch the finches play in the gnarled branches beyond the window. Little flits of yellow and black chased and called to one another. Tiny creatures arguing over tiny bits of territory that meant nothing to anyone who wasn’t them. Strange creatures, finches. He’d witnessed the birth and death of civilizations and these little birds had inhabited them all. Yet no one seemed to notice, or if they did they didn’t care. Not very long ago he’d viewed them as pests. Feathery parasites whose existence was as much a universal constant as gravity. Not even the Continuum knew how they had spread so thoroughly throughout the universe, and they were supposed to know everything. After coming here, being exposed to the creatures here, he’d grown to enjoy hearing their songs.
One such finch landed on the windowsill above his desk and hopped along its edge, tiny eyes observing the strange creature within while piping little calls to its mate somewhere in the overgrowth. He slowly lifted a finger toward it, hopeful it might perch itself there, but it had a little too much spunk to allow itself to be handled. It nipped at one of the little gray stones embedded in his paw and retreated back to the trees.
Discord smiled after it and turned back to his unfinished draft of Gilgamesh.
He didn’t get very far. 
A flurry of tiny wings rushed deeper into his forest at the approach of wagon wheels. He watched them until he could only see leaves shuddering along his walking path, then turned to the handmade calendar he kept pinned beside his bookcase. Still April. Mouse was never one to keep a rigid schedule, but all the same he was early for his summer visit. Pushing back from his chair, he scanned his bookcase for something to trade. His eagle’s talon came to rest atop the leatherbound spine of Hamlet. A classic, or so an old friend insisted a lifetime ago. Mouse claimed to know an old biddy who paid good caps for “rare” literature. He palmed the poem and carried it with him out of his tiny study and through the main room which Rarity would have insisted upon calling his parlor, Twilight his living room, and Fluttershy his den. 
He tapped the book across the hardwood mantle of his fireplace as he passed, his yellow eyes drifting toward the little momentos he kept there for himself. As far as he was concerned, this was his den.
The front door squeaked when he pulled it open. He made a mental note to grease the pins and watched, not without a little bemusement, as a stallion in dire need of a good shearing dragged his wagon through the overgrowth. Several dozen turrets hidden amongst the trees actively tracked his progress before ducking beneath their armored housing once he was out of range. 
Curiously, he waited as Mouse passed the flat spot in the grass where he usually left his wagon and proceeded to drag his cargo straight to the porch steps.
Also, he was out of breath.
“I’d have trimmed the grass if I’d known you were coming to visit.” Standing at the top of the steps, he had a clear view into the wagon. The vaguely equine shaped lump in the burlap sheet caught his eye. His fingers tightened around the book. “You brought a guest.”
His suspicion grew as Mouse wriggled out of his sweat slick harness and hurried to the back of the wagon. There was something off about his silence. Mouse was a mutterer. This was a different side of him.
He watched the stallion clamber into the cart, his arms slowly crossing as it became clear what was happening. This wasn’t an ambush, and something told him the conspicuously motionless figure beneath the sheet wasn’t waiting to sit up and ask for an autograph. He shut his eyes and sighed as Mouse pulled away the burlap. 
“You’re the closest creature who can help.”
Discord stared at the pegasus pinned between the crates for several long seconds before finally responding. “No.”
The stallion balked at him. “What do you–”
“I mean,” he interrupted, his tone hardening, “no. I am not a wetnurse and this is not an inn. Take him somewhere else.”
“Her.”
“Fine. Her. Take her to a hospital and pick a needle to stick her with.”
To his growing annoyance, Mouse had begun maneuvering the mare’s wing around his neck. “You know we don’t have places like that anymore. Is your couch empty this time?”
“You will not bring her into my home.” He bristled as the stallion bit down on the mare’s wing, eliciting a wheezing groan from her. “What are you doing.”
“M’ringing ‘er inzide yer home.”
He stepped down the porch. “Just use one of your easy-fix needles on her and leave her somewhere to heal.”
“Can’t. M’all out.”
“You’re out.” He scoffed. “Isn’t that convenient.”
Mouse ignored him and began eyeing up the drop to the ground. He bristled. 
“Mouse.”
“Lear.”
Even through a mouthful of feathers he managed to spit out his pseudonym with a good measure of heat. It was clear to both of them this unfortunate he’d brought was teetering on the edge of death, but as Discord stared Mouse down it was even clearer that the raggedy mop of a stallion hadn’t made this detour for a polite debate. Something in his eyes warned this would be his last visit if he was barred from taking her inside.
An old habit drew his thumb and third finger together. Even now, he missed the days when transmuting a troublemaker into a singing tube of chapstick was an option. Altruism had never been his strong suit.
“Fine.” He left the porch, refusing to look the closest thing he’d had to a friend in centuries in the eyes as he rounded the wagon. “Spit her out, for god’s sake, before you tear her wing off. I’ll bring her inside.”
The barest smirk touched the corner of Mouse’s eye as set the limp mare near the edge of the cart for him to take. Discord hefted his little friend over his shoulder like a cask of wine, eyed the stallion to make clear his objection to having his solitude hijacked, then turned back to the porch steps.
Then he stopped and looked back at him. “I want you to know that there was a time when I changed the gravitational constant of the universe for fun, and you’ve got me putting Band-Aids on boo-boos.”
Mouse answered with a blank stare. “That’s nice, Lear.”
“That’s–” he tightened his jaw into a smile. “I escaped mortality once, so try not to look too surprised when I do it again. Now go practice whatever passes as humor for you on whatever you have worth trading while I take this one inside.”
As he climbed the porch and reached out to open the front door, the mare emitted a retching gurgle accompanied by the wet patter of something vile coating his back. 
“Charming,” he groused. “You, madam, are not going near my couch.”
> Chapter 42: Paths Crossed
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gallow wobbled in her crosshairs, facing her, his sad eyes watching as she struggled to keep her rifle still. He didn’t run because he was already dead. He knew it and so did she. And still here she lay, her belly scraping against the road as her untrained wings fumbled with a weapon she had no business using. She pulled the trigger and the butt kicked her shoulder. The gunshot echoed in the trees, there and not there both at the same time, and she was looking through the sights at Gallow once again. Helpless to stop herself, she shifted her grip and took aim again, his willowy shrieks reaching toward her from down the road. Familiar voices yelled for her somewhere in the distance while between her shaking crosshairs, Gallow’s terrified eyes met hers.







Aurora woke with a start, her eyelashes warm with fresh tears. Her heart raced as reality settled and solidified through the confusion like the silt of a waterlogged crater. She lay there in the dark, afraid if she moved she would fall back onto that lonely road and squeeze the trigger all over again. Her jaw worked this way and that until she could swallow the little sobs rising in her throat. The little mantra that she told herself when the guilt started to rise came back fresh as ever. Gallows had lost the right to mercy after what he and his mother did. Killing him had ended their quiet predation. He deserved it.
Time passed, and the vision faded enough for her to begin shifting her focus to a different problem: she didn’t know where she was. Frowning, she tried to piece together what she could. She remembered flying, aimlessly, with the wind scraping her bare skin like a grinding wheel without an off switch. Her hearing had come back somewhere during that flight and with that recollection came the realization that her sight hadn’t. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes. Her heart fell as she felt her eyelids move but only saw the faintest hint of red surrounding the edges of a void. Her fragile composure slipped and as if taunted by fate, she could feel the salty sting of tears across her eyes.
It didn’t occur to her that she wasn’t alone until a strange set of hoofsteps approached where she was laying, followed by the sudden presence of two digits gently pressed against her neck. Her body went rigid at their touch which quickly outwore its welcome, but as soon as she thought about jerking away the offending presence was gone from her neck. 
“You’re safe,” an unfamiliar voice assured her.
She didn’t believe him, and winced at the bright sensation of discomfort when she tried to pull her hind legs closer to her chest. Only one leg responded, something that took her a beat to understand. Adding to her confusion, she found her wing wouldn’t work when she tried to drape it around herself. Unlike her missing leg, it was still firmly attached. Something was pinning it against her back. She jerked at whatever it was with mounting distress.
The same digits settled over said wing, along with the same gentle voice. “As confident as I am in your ability to tear your bandages, I’d prefer you refrain from leaking any more fluids on the upholstery than you already have.”
He gave the ridge of her wing a pat when she stopped struggling. “How are you feeling?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk to this stranger whose walk sounded wrong or feel the guilt that had clung to the relief from knowing she somehow managed not to fall to her death. What she wanted she knew she’d never have again. The image pulsed across her mind, of Ginger pushing her away in that final moment, like a tattoo she hadn’t asked for. She would never forget the flash of fire. The soundless motion of bedrock slabs peeling away from Foal Mountain like tissue paper. The absolute certainty that she had just watched something too important for words simply evaporate. Ginger, their Stable, everything she’d ever known had just… gone.
Something inside her broke at that moment. She didn’t know what it was or if it even had a name, but she felt it deep in her chest. The tears welling in her eyes stopped. The lump in her throat softened and disappeared. She swallowed, waiting for something else to happen, but nothing did. She didn’t feel sad, or angry, or guilty. It was as if someone had climbed up into her head, found the switch to whatever little engine powered her emotions, and flipped it. Distantly, she knew that wasn’t a good sign. Presently, she didn’t care.
Whoever was taking care of her didn’t seem put off by her silence. She listened to him move about the room on what sounded like two hooves, the second of which she pictured wearing a sock or slipper to account for its softer fall. Occasionally he would pause on his way past where she lay and she would feel his gaze on her, checking on her like her mom used to when Aurora spent the school day sick at home. Other times she would hear him open a squeaky door, mutter to himself, or disappear into what she imagined must be an adjacent room.
She drifted off into a fitful sleep only to wake again to the sound of steam whistling from a kettle. Her face crumpled and her ears pinned back to seal out the shrill squeal while her caretaker crossed the room, mumbling something that sounded like I hope you like peppermint. If he was making candy, he was doing a lousy job of it. All she could smell was woodsmoke. She did her best to ignore the clatter of glassware from the other room and sank a little deeper into the lumpy cushions of her bed.
A moment later. “Here.”
She frowned and tried to steal a look over her shoulder toward him, only to be reminded she couldn’t see at all. Maybe he would go away once he realized he wouldn’t get an answer. It worked before. 
The silence that lingered made it clear he hadn’t moved. “You need to drink something.”
She shrugged.
He sighed, and the cushion next to her hind hoof deformed under his weight. It finally clicked in her head that she was on a couch, and it was like having a lit match held over a dark map giving her the tiniest bit of confidence of knowing where she was. She was laying toward the back of it. The edge was behind her. Tiny steps.
He set something on a wooden surface behind her, then sat back and sipped. “Mm. Good tea. You should try yours before it gets cold.”
It would have to get cold, then. She wasn’t thirsty, she was exhausted. Her body ached with the dull, all-encompassing hum of discomfort. Even if she did want to try it, she couldn't. Her wings were bound and she didn’t know where the cup was. The fact that moving from her spot would hurt even more enticed her even less. All she wanted was to go back to sleep.
Plus she hated tea. No one from Mechanical drank tea.
Her caretaker chuckled. “Now there’s a face that could turn me back to stone. Would you like help sitting up?”
“Don’t touch me.”
The ragged edge of her voice surprised her, and for a split second she felt embarrassed for the harshness in it. She swallowed again, staring into nowhere, unsure whether to apologize. She knew what Ginger would do.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just…”
“Hands off,” he confirmed with the slightest smile in his voice. “Oh, I’m certain I’ll find a way to restrain myself. That being said, your tea is going to get cold.”
“I don’t drink tea.”
He let out a self-pitying laugh. “My apologies. I hadn’t realized Mouse knew ponies of such discriminating standards. Shall I check the pantry for a glass of sparkling water, or will a bejeweled horn of bloodwine suffice?”
She pursed her lips, saying nothing. Then, “Who’s Mouse?”
The voice beside her grunted. “A curmudgeonly breed of shaggy moose, by some accounts. A begrudged friend, by mine. He’s the reason you’re here gluing scabs to my couch instead of feeding whatever passes for buzzards out there.”
“I don’t remember him.”
A quiet sip. “He bit you.”
Her expression changed. “That I remember.”
He chuckled again, his weight shifting. His cup clicked against what she guessed was a coffee table. “For a brute, he means well. And for what it’s worth, whoever did this to you doesn't know you’re here. When I said you’re safe, I was being sincere.”
She chewed on that, wondering just how long she’d been flying before blacking out. “I can’t see,” she murmured.
A pause. “Ah. That would explain your unhealthy interest in that particular patch of cushion. I assume it happened recently, given your current situation, well….”
She nodded to keep him from spelling it out.
He shifted somewhat, causing her hind leg to sag a little. “I may have something for that.”
“For blindness,” she stated dryly. “Why not.”
The couch shifted again and she could feel him standing. “Wonderful. Now naturally this will be easier to administer if you were sitting up, if you’ll allow me to assist that is.”
The offer was as unnecessary as it was unwelcome. He could take his delicate lamb treatment and cork himself with it. She wasn’t useless. Not when she first left home, not when she lost her leg, and not now. She rolled forward and propped her hoof against the cushion, ignoring the concerned noise her host made, and pressed down to hoist herself up. No sooner had her muscles flexed than did a shot of white hot pain erupt from the joint immediately above her hoof. The sound she made when she fell back to the couch was embarrassing enough that she quickly blocked it out, focusing entirely on piecing together what was wrong with her leg. 
“Fuck,” she hissed, her shoulders tense as she waited for the pain to subside. But it lingered, making it clear her injury wasn’t minor. She thumped her head against the couch’s armrest and cursed again. “Fuck. Fine. Help me up.”
He must have been waiting for her to relent, because as soon as she gave him the word two mismatched appendages carefully hooked under her forelegs and lifted her up in her seat. Without sight it felt as if the world itself was lurching around her instead of the other way around. Her stomach lurched for a few awful seconds until her equilibrium settled. 
“You broke your leg in the fall,” he told her, close enough that she could smell some sort of smoky, perfumed odor coming from his coat. Whatever he was, he was tall. Unnaturally tall, if she trusted her hearing enough to believe what it was telling her. Not a stallion, then. A gryphon, she assumed, though for all she knew Fiona might have been an outlier. 
A thought popped into her head that made her snort. She could be sitting in a deathclaw’s den and would have no way of knowing. Wouldn’t that be something?
It occurred to her that her host was still talking.
“...splint will do most of the work, so don’t go meddling with it until he brings them. In the meantime, you’ll have to suffice with the loathfully slow process of healing naturally.” Two fat fingers touched her face, pulling her left eye open. She tried not to flinch back but only partially succeeded. “That’s a promising sign.”
He moved to her other eye. “Flash blindness. You watched it explode, didn’t you?”
She jerked her head away from him and glared roughly toward where she assumed his face was. “Who told you that?”
“You did, just now.” The coffee table creaked with the unmissable sound of him sitting across from her. “Oh, don’t give me that look, I’m entitled to a cliche or two. Nobody had to tell me anything. I’ve seen enough raw Entropy to know what it feels like when it’s been unleashed again, but then I have no reason to be surprised. Your species has been fetishizing your own self-destruction since the day I first–”
He went silent, and for a moment Aurora wasn’t sure whether he’d left or not. A tired sigh answered her question. 
“It’s natural to look toward the light,” he said, his tone oddly subdued. “Here. Drink this first. Small sips.”
Steam wafted across her muzzle and, reluctantly, she found the offered cup with her one good hoof and guided it to her lips with the help of her strange caretaker. Despite her earlier complaints the tea went down with a pleasant warmth that awakened a deeper thirst she didn’t know she’d been ignoring. Warm water spiced with something she only absently recognized as peppermint slicked her throat and left a thin debris of something course across her lip when it ran out. She wiped the dregs away and struggled to think of how to ask for more without opening herself up to his derision. As it turned out, she didn’t have to.
“I’ll pour you another cup.” His pad-thump, pad-thump of a walk led him away to where she’d heard the kettle squeal. “But after that it’s plain water for you. I can’t have you using up all my tea leaves before Bullwinkle comes back.”
Her wing twitched reflexively at the hazy memory of someone biting down on it hard enough for her to feel their teeth break skin. “You said you had something for my eyes.”
He pad-thumped back into the room. “Time may be eternal, but your patience is not. I’ll have to gather a few ingredients from the garden first, and only after you drink until I’m sure I won’t come back to a vaguely equine-shaped raisin in my den. Fair?”
She hated knowing he could see through her just as easily as everyone else, enough to know there was enough going wrong inside her head that something as simple as hydration might not outrank the deep desire she had to lay back down and let the world spin without her. This person she didn’t know, who she couldn’t even see, had effortlessly slipped into the same soft bargaining that she’d forced Roach to do. 
Forced Ginger to do.
Steam tickled her nose again. “Go slow this time, it’s still hot.”
She drank with his help, carefully this time, but something about the flavor had dulled in her mind. Hot water and leaves. 
He took back the cup and stood after she finished. “Well I suppose nothing is as good as the first time around. Let me see if I have a canteen with a strap you can hold onto. In the meantime, perhaps you could tell me what your name is?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but then she hesitated. This was how it started, she realized. A name, a few kind words, a little help from a stranger who couldn’t predict she would be throwing herself in the middle of their lives. Whoever and whatever her caretaker was, he seemed nice. He wasn’t someone who deserved to be punished because he’d chosen to do a good deed. 
So she swallowed her name. “I don’t know.”
She couldn’t tell if he believed her and his silence gave no clues. It felt as if he were taking a minute to reassess how much of a burden he’d taken on by allowing her into his home, even if his uniquely jovial tone was unchanged. 
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this obscenely colorful world of yours it’s that despite your tendencies toward self-annihilation, you’re all irritatingly resilient. Which, I suppose, is a compliment.” One of his claws gave her shoulder a reassuring pat before he turned to leave. “Give it time. It’ll come to you.”
Her ears followed him out of the room and she sank a little more into his couch, answering his kindness with silence.







Primrose’s hooves clicked alone through the Bunker’s empty corridors, both mentally and physically exhausted from endless meetings insisted upon by hungry generals eager to pry some advantage from the disaster at Foal Mountain. She glanced down at her Pip-Buck without breaking her gait and could only shut her eyes for a moment upon seeing the time. 04:14. In less than an hour the early birds would be filing down the elevator in orderly groups, professional smiles and courteous morning greetings as they presented their badges to base security. They would be lining up to burrow into her asshole with a hundred different questions before her next caffeine pill had time to kick in. 
Her shoulder smacked into the corner as she turned into the hall that led to her quarters, sending her into an unseemly stumble almost fully toward the opposite wall. She hadn’t slept since… she shook her head, too exhausted to count the days. The Black Wing unit she’d assigned to eliminate Stable 10 still hadn’t reported in. They wouldn’t. She was confident of it. They would have attempted to recover the bomb at all costs, which meant they were less than charred molecules floating east along the jetstream. 
It didn’t make sense, and the more she tried to figure out what went wrong the more it felt like assembling a jigsaw with fucking vaseline in her feathers. The balefire talisman should have gone off instantly the second Aurora’s unicorn friend sparked her magic. It was the entire reason why the exchange had to take place at the Stable’s doorstep, in case someone with a horn decided to grab it. Balefire didn’t burn slowly and yet every report the Enclave had taken thus far described some kind of rising star ascending over Foal Mountain before it detonated. No pegasi could will balefire not to explode, which meant that the unicorn had to have been involved somehow. 
She squeezed her eyes shut again, forcing herself to focus. The Dressage mare was the only unicorn near the Stable for miles, and her sudden, wide-eyed appearance in the dream realm confirmed Autumn Song’s story of using her stash of prewar stims to prolong the unicorn’s suffering weeks earlier. It had to have been Ginger. There was no other explanation.
And still, it didn’t make sense. To be seen from so far away, the reaction would have had to be occurring right next to her. Canterlot had been shielded by two alicorns at the height of their power and even they failed to save themselves in the end. What made Ginger Dressage so fucking special?
The guards posted outside her quarters stood at attention as she approached. She barely lifted a feather in greeting, too tired for formalities and too frustrated with the shit she was already fetlock deep in. They opened the door for her and she retreated inside, knowing things would only snowball if she kept denying herself sleep. She stopped and turned around before the door could close, leaning against the doorframe as the guards glanced down at her.
“Which one of you wants to piss off everyone left in the war room?”
They stared at her in silence. Surprisingly, the mare to her right lifted a wing.
Primrose mustered enough energy to smirk. Nobody liked the shit-starters until they actually needed one. She made a mental note of this one. “Tell them I won’t be available for the next ten hours. I’m going to bed. Anyone who wakes me up for anything short of a second apocalypse will have… fuck, I don’t know, you look creative. Threaten them with something.”
The mare’s smirk widened. “You want me to threaten a superior officer on your behalf?”
“Multiple superior officers, yes. You’re not likely to get a freebie like this again, captain, so make it count.”
“Yes ma’am!” 
Primrose rested her temple against the doorframe, blinking slowly while she watched the mare all but prance away. It occurred to her she hadn’t formally dismissed her. She shook her head and lifted a brow at the stallion to her left. “You. You’re my bullshit filter. Any bullshit comes down this corridor, you filter it. That’s your job. Filter the bullshit.”
Hesitantly, he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your job?”
“Bullshit filter, ma’am.”
“Good. Your partner’s got a sadistic streak. Keep that in mind, because if you fuck up, whatever blackbrain nonsense she makes up is happening to you first.”
He swallowed. “Understood, ma’am.”
With that done, she turned away from the doorway and let it slide shut behind her. She stood there for a moment and stared at her well-appointed quarters. Her bed, the centerpiece of the generous space, had been made for her. Not by her personal staff, that much was clear, but an attempt had been made by someone with good intentions. It took a beat for her to remember she’d left a very giving mare in here when she left. Hayride, that was her name. 
She grunted, smiling a little as she stumped toward her mattress’s welcome embrace. None of her nightly consorts had ever taken the time to clean up after. Strange mare. She’d need to make sure someone performed the usual security sweep to ensure she hadn’t left anything behind or, more likely than not, took something she shouldn’t have. Something to be done after she woke up. She climbed up onto her comforter and let out a happy little groan as her pillow puffed around her head, easing her into some deeply-needed sleep.







The dream came easily, even if the stage design for the night’s punishment was an unwelcome one. Once again, she found herself relegated to the awkward proportions of the body she’d suffered through as a filly. Short legs, pudgy in places most fillies had grown out of, and the obnoxious bounce of tight blue curls in her mane and tail. A reminder of the routine her mother forced her to suffer through each morning before school. 
Of course the Tantabus had plucked the tiny yellowed bathroom of her family home from some neglected shelf in the back of her mind. It was better than the decades-long fixation it had with her scourged relationship with her father, but not by much. The stink of cigarettes and hairspray brought back memories she thought she’d forgotten. She sat in place in front of the sink atop a sticky plastic step-stool, watching herself in the mirror as her mother manipulated the old curling iron in her magic. The cord clattered over the countertop, threatening to snag the cup of toothbrushes next to the hot water handle, while hot metal clamped and curled her mane with quick, sharp clicks.
“Don’t slouch, Cozy.”
Her mother’s voice was like sandpaper. She sat up a little straighter, but never enough. Not the first time. Then came the irritated sigh from behind, the fresh cloud of smoke stinging her eyes, and the reflexive jerk as the iron touched the same bare spot behind her right ear. 
“Ow,” she whimpered. She’d learned not to cry out anymore. That always made it worse.
“I told you not to slouch.”
She straightened more fully, and her mother proceeded without so much as asking if she wanted a bandaid. They were long past that point by now. Cozy knew where to find the ointment and how to wear her curls to hide the scar. 
“Don’t forget, I’m picking you up today at lunch for your doctor’s appointment.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know.”
“Don’t get smart with me. You know because I told you.” Pale pink light unwrapped a curl and the iron clapped shut on its end. “How do we behave when we’re at the doctor, Cozy?”
“Don’t be rude, never frown, and don’t tell lies.”
She fixed her with a stony gaze. “Good. You be sure to be on your best behavior. I don’t want to have to tell your daddy you weren’t.”
Her breath stuck in her throat. “Yes, mama.”
The moment passed, and her mother resumed fixing her mane. “We’re going to Red Delicious for dinner tonight, so don’t worry about heating up leftovers after school. Okay?”
“Okay, mama.”
“I love you, kid.”
She glanced up at the mirror. “Love you t–”
Her mother was gone. Where she’d stood, the Tantabus loomed behind her. The illusion wafted from her mind like stale smoke, along with the lie she’d been prepared to utter. 
Primrose cocked an eyebrow at Luna’s lost pet. “Did you miss me so much that you couldn’t let her fuck with my head for a whole two minutes?”
“You have not dreamed for several nights, little tyrant.”
The bathroom dissolved, giving way to a familiar vista of burning doors ad infinitum. Old reflexes caused her to squint, or at least dream she was squinting, as her perception adjusted to the crystal clarity of billions of charred and melted fragments of long defunct portals. The Tantabus rarely shied away from showing her what was left of Luna’s happy little dreamscape, as if a constant reminder of lives cut short in their sleep had the same impact it did the first time she’d been forced to bear witness.
“I’ve been busy,” she muttered, passing her feathers over a burning length of oak trim. Her words seemed to fall flat, because the creature didn’t immediately counter her. Feeling just a little impatient, she added, “So if you’re not making me endure mommy and daddy’s psychological kirin shit, what’s on tonight’s docket? I haven’t relived my first eviction in a while. Or maybe we could do a montage of all the times mommy forgot to pick up pills for my heat? Lots of trauma to choose from, so don’t make up your mind all at once.”
“You were busy.”
She blinked and looked up at the creature. The Tantabus always appeared to her as a sort of nebulous absence of anything, like a mare-shaped hole punched through the fabric of whatever this place was made from. The unfamiliar stars on the other side of that hole never moved when it moved, remaining stationary as if she were looking through a shifting window and out into the night sky of some other world. In many ways it was beautiful, but she knew better than to allow herself to be entranced by a dead alicorn’s magic. 
“Yes,” she said, staring back at the twin galaxies that formed the creature’s eyes, “I was busy. Forgive me if I don’t subject myself to your personal schedule.”
The creature continued to stare.
“Get out of my head,” she warned. “You know the rules.”
“I peer into the minds of all dreamers, little tyrant.” Its head tilted, no doubt mimicking a gesture it had witnessed other dreamers perform. “You were evading me.”
She flinched as the creature’s probing increased in intensity, no longer the cursory skimming of information from which its illusions were inspired. She could feel her digging. Absorbing. Her eyes clenched shut without her permission and she became aware of herself grimacing in bed, her legs curling against a discomfort taking place entirely within her subconscious. Something had changed in the creature. Its search felt intentional. Personal.
Then it clicked what she was searching for, and in that instant the Tantabus knew.
The presence in her mind faded and Primrose opened her eyes.
One by one, the stars drifting within Luna’s creature winked out like guttering candles. The galaxies dimmed and darkened. The nebulas scattered like dust.
“She’s gone.”
Black horizons appeared at the edges of the infinite doors and rushed toward the two of them from all directions. The wreckages of burning dreams sizzled and vanished, swallowed by the rim of a collapsing reality. Primrose spun in place, heart racing as deeper instincts woke within her. She needed to escape. A door. She needed a fucking door!
“You have to believe me that I had no way of knowing,” she chattered, searching the dwindling paths for a dream to escape into. “That Stable, it wasn’t just a threat to me, it was a danger to everyone!” 
Her body froze. The creature wrenched her toward it, forcing her to stare into the void. All the lies, the justifications, the clever paths to talk her way out of whatever was happening tripped and tangled into a gibbering heap of nonsense in her mind. Eyes wide, gasping for breath, she bore witness to the death of that creature’s innocence. 
“She just… got in the–” 
“SHE’S GONE!”
Its voice detonated within her skull like a grenade, echoing and reverberating onto itself in a terrible, screaming chorus. Her mind was little more than an ember cast into a boiling ocean of sorrow and rage, and in it she drowned, her psyche ejected from that creature’s domain with a force unfathomable even to someone who had witnessed the demise of an entire world.







She awoke, screaming, her wings and hooves sprawling in a panicked melee that sent her tumbling to the floor in a tangle of sheets and pillows. Her bedside lamp came down with her with a hollow pop, scattering a glitter of glass across the carpet from the broken bulb. The Tantabus’s voice resonated in her head like a struck tuning fork, its echo fading as consciousness caught up with her. Slowly, she recognized her bed, the walls of her quarters, and the warm sensation of urine flowing out onto the floor between her legs.
Primrose stood on trembling hooves and stumbled around her bed, her body following her eyes as an afterthought on her way to the bathroom. With piss still dribbling behind her she reached above the sink, opened the vanity, and plunged her wing toward the little orange bottle on the top shelf. The cap clattered to the tiles and she shook one of the little white pills into her feathers, then another. She tipped them back and chewed them dry. The shock was already beginning to wind down and she could feel the tendrils of sleep creeping toward her again. 
She couldn’t go back to sleep. Not ever. Not while a monster waited for her on the other side.




 


Something stank.
Aurora had managed to fend off curiosity when she heard a flimsy door slap shut followed by the musical humming of her nameless caretaker. She supposed not knowing his name was a fair turn for keeping hers from him. Probably he knew she was lying about having forgotten it and was just too polite to prod her for it. More likely he didn’t care. She might be blind but her ears worked well enough to hear the forced manners when he spoke. Playing at amnesia had been a relief. One less connection he’d have to make with the burden on his couch. She didn’t have to see him to tell he was as much a loner as she’d once been.
The same door creaked and slapped again, and she briefly wondered if he’d forgotten something before realizing how much time she’d spent silently kicking at the boxes stacked in her own head. It must have been an hour at least. He didn’t announce himself. His only greeting was the return of his humming, the happy little notes trilling from the kitchen as metal clinked and clanked along with him. With a wince she had wormed herself over, bandaged wings locked uselessly against her back while the rest of her injuries ached and stung with each movement. Once she was settled on her left side she probed for the edge of the cushion with her unbound foreleg, hanging her fetlock against the edge for reference as she relaxed to the sounds of cooking.
Or, what she assumed was cooking. The odor that eventually wafted into the room reeked worse than the drawer at her old workbench where she kept all her resins, a combination of something equally rotten and acidic, like a hot fart preceding a slow working case of food poisoning. She shoved her nose under her splinted foreleg and groaned. 
Some time into his terrible chemistry experiment, her caretaker tapped his utensils against something dense and passed through the room, the stonelike grinding he’d brought with him stopping long enough for him to open a window above where she lay. A warm breeze flowed across her back and pushed away some but not all of the stinging odor. She said nothing, nor did he. He returned to the kitchen and his humming resumed. Part of her wanted to know what the song was.
Sinking into the pillow, feeling something like comfort as she listened to the sounds of this place she didn’t know, she loosened her grip on her mind’s leash and let it wander. Only a little, but far enough for it to bump into the question she’d been asking herself ever since confirming the generator was experiencing more than a routine hiccup. 
Why did it have to be me? 
The question rose to the surface without self-pity or anger. It just was. One of countless, bitter curiosities she’d collected over the years. She could feather through them like pages in a book, reading them off one after the other confident in knowing she would never find a satisfying answer, and yet she packed them up and tossed them to the back of her mind with everything else she’d been too scared, too weak, or too overwhelmed to deal with. Now she lay here in a stranger’s house having been wrenched from the abyss, and in front of her lay open the first of those many questions. 
She scratched her nose against the little pillow and stared at nothing, remembering the sinking sensation in her gut when she first understood what the generator’s diagnostics were telling her. The gradual power loss descending one tiny step at a time, having been marching its way down unnoticed while generations of pegasi checked their boxes and followed their protocols unaware something far outside Stable-Tec’s meticulous routines was scraping away at Stable 10’s beating heart. But she’d seen it. She’d recognized the story those numbers were telling her, that centuries of routine had allowed the generator to slip silently over the line marking the end of a steady decline and the beginning of a cascade. She’d seen her Stable’s future in the extra load the generator would begin to take as systems failed more frequently, sucking more and more life from a failing ignition talisman until the brownouts became blackouts and the blackouts became something much, much darker.
Sledge had seen it too. Aurora wondered whether things would be any different if he’d gone instead of her. Would he have befriended Roach? Killed Cider? Fallen in love? The tiniest smile touched her lip and faded just as fast. What would his path across the wasteland have looked like? How far would he have flown if she’d hunkered down and stayed behind?
She thought about Cider and his fast obsession with her Pip-Buck. Things might have been easier if she’d just given it to him. Ginger would still be safe in her shop, they wouldn’t have been forced off the roads by Autumn’s bounty, and Roach wouldn’t have been forced to use his corrupted magic to save her from a raider’s bullet. She wouldn’t have been pressured to lie her way into Blinder’s Bluff. Elder Coldbrook could have been an ally, not an enemy. So many things could have been different. So many lives left alone.
But she’d stuck her nose into it because it was her generator. Her Stable. Her Pip-Buck. Sledge always told her she was shit at delegating work, that she needed to share the burden with the pegasi around her, and she refused to listen no matter how much sense he made. Putting the weight on her shoulders of going outside to find a new ignition talisman came to her as easy as breathing. It was what she did. It was what she always did.
The question was never ‘why me,’ she thought. It was always me, because I refused to give anyone else the chance.
She could still clearly see the regolith lifting off Foal Mountain like tissue paper. Stable 10 was either dead or waiting for death. There was no in between. Even if the door sealed before the explosion, even if another ignition talisman somehow landed at Sledge’s hooves, Primrose and her Enclave would continue to do everything in their power to ensure the truth stayed buried. 
She thought of Gallows and his screams as her bullets arced through him, removing pieces of him, one after the other. 
Then she imagined Primrose making those same sounds.
“Feeling better?”
She blinked at the uneven pad-thump leaving the kitchen. “What?”
He chuckled as he drew near. The coffee table creaked as he sat down across from her. “I thought I saw you smiling. I must have been mistaken, you look as scowly as ever.”
“I’m not scowling,” she snipped.
“Oh, well pardonne-moi, mademoiselle.”
Her irritation climbed. “I don’t know what that means.”
He made a noise. “No one here does. Anyway, you’ll be glad to know that despite your little apocalypse I successfully single-handedly reinvented eye drops. Come. Sit up.”
Somehow she wasn’t sure if he was referring to the end of the old war or the state of her own body. She didn’t ask, nor did she fight off his touch when two asymmetrical appendages hooked under her shoulders to help her sit. The world lurched around her like a bubble level that had been given a hard shake. She felt the blood rushing from her head as the back of the couch bent around her bandaged wings, and she sat there for several long seconds until the worst of the dizziness passed. Her caretaker, for his part, didn’t rush her.
She breathed a tired groan. “Okay.”
A talon, or what she imagined one felt like, tapped the bottom of her chin. She lifted her eyes toward where her equilibrium suggested the ceiling might be and listened to the sound of something being dipped into liquid near her ear. A few droplets pittered into a bowl. 
“This may sting,” he warned.
Her eyelids fluttered in anticipation and she suddenly felt like a yearling too untrusting to cooperate with the doctor. The hot rush of embarrassment had barely enough time to form before the droplet hit her eye. He was right. The sting was immediate and intense, reminding her of a younger day when she’d forgotten to wash her feathers after helping her mom make vegetable soup. She’d been old enough to help measure out all the spices in the tiny aluminum spoons, but too young to be trusted with the stove. She’d wandered off as soon as her part was done and it wasn’t long after that she lifted a feather to scratch her eye, and all the crying that came after.
Despite the burn, she felt her lip twitch at the memory.
The same claw lifted her chin again and she imagined him dripping liquefied onion powder into her other eye. The second burning drop came as less of a shock even though the discomfort was just as bad. Somehow, though, this pain was tolerable. It was something she could control.
Paper crinkled against her closed eyelids, dabbing away the excess. By the time he finished and stood to take the bowl away, Aurora could already feel the burn retreating and a new numbness taking its place. An alien sensation of her eyelids moving across the convex surface of nothing startled her. Was this how the cure worked? 
She opened her eyes and frowned. “I still don’t see anything.”
The sound of fabric tearing came from the direction of the kitchen. A laugh. “Presuming your vision can be saved at all, my dear, the drops aren’t the remedy. Time is. And I suppose whatever magical macguffins Mouse manages to drag back, but even that won’t be for several more days.”
Her frown deepened with worry. “Then what did you give me?”
He pad-thumped back into the room. “A numbing compound to relax the muscles in your eyes. Speaking of which, they’ll need to stay covered up while they heal. If you wouldn’t mind closing them…?”
Exasperated with his half-answers and too tired to argue, she obeyed. A strip of cloth pressed across her eyes and wrapped around the back of her head, the front, and the back again. He tucked something behind her ear, which twitched at the sound of more fabric being ripped, and another strip began wound around her head.
“It’s a waste,” he said as he finished up. “Giving things such uninspired names.”
“What, blindfolds?” Despite not being able to see, she lifted her nose to see if there weren’t any gaps under the cloth.
“Blindweed,” he said with an air of correction. “It’s the same nearly everywhere I’ve gone. Something mundane is called something beautiful, and something potent is remembered with a grunt. It’s ridiculous.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just wanted to hear himself talk. Whichever it was, she didn’t have the energy for it. Everything she had was reserved for someone else. 
“I guess,” she sighed.
He sounded disappointed. “I was expecting more of a reaction to blindweed than I guess.”
Her shoulders bounced with a shrug. She knew what blindweed was and why so many ponies regarded it so warily, but her dad had been as much an educator in her life as the history teachers. Before the zebras learned to concentrate blindweed into a chemical weapon, it had been used for thousands of years for its medicinal properties. Even the name that her caretaker took issue with had preceded the war, owed to the startling effects it could cause to anyone caught downwind at the height of its pollination. Aurora understood the sensation of her eyes dilating from the drops she’d been given, but for someone under the Vhannan sun with working eyesight the temporary effects could understandably be mistaken for blindness.
The name made enough sense, even if she wasn’t about to say so out loud. As she thought of a way to change the subject, or stifle the conversation completely, her hoof absently moved toward the splint around her other foreleg where she remembered wearing her Pip-Buck.
“They’re in there,” he reassured her. Something in his tone softened as if he were setting his levity aside. “Mouse wanted to sell the older of the two to pay for the medicine you’ll need. It took half a bookshelf just to get him to leave the thing alone.”
She felt the bulges beneath the layers of bandages and makeshift rods. One for hers, one for Ginger’s. Her chest swelled with emotion. She pressed it back down. “Thanks.”
“He’s decent as far as people go, but he’s a scavenger at heart. It’s good neither of them worked or I doubt you would have been wearing either when he brought you here.” She could hear the smile fade from his voice. The tone shifted as he realized she wouldn’t reciprocate his rambling observations with ones of her own. “If you don’t need anything else…?”
She shook her head.
“Well,” he breathed, “I have some work I should return to. If you need something just holler.”
A thought occurred to her. “I don’t know your name.”
She thought she heard him chuckle again, but it was too quiet for her to be sure. A long silence filled the room until, finally, he answered. 
“Discord,” he murmured. “My friends called me Discord.”







Three days after leaving Discord’s cottage, Mouse arrived home.
His knees ached as he dragged his wagon under the painted sign welcoming him to Crow’s Grove, something the mayor had insisted be maintained with a fresh layer each spring to encourage travelers. A cartoon crow head, its beak hinged open like a pair of hedge trimmers, waved its greeting to Mouse as it passed behind him. He hated the thing. The messy rectangle of two-by-fours tied on either end to two dead street lamps made the town look more worn down, not less. It practically advertised the fact that no one here knew how to build, not properly anyway. Not the way people did before the bombs fell. Crow’s Grove was a community held together by the trade generated by those of them brave enough to leave long enough to bring back things worth buying. Without scavengers this place would fall apart within a year.
He tried shaking off his annoyance. It wasn’t his call.
“He lives!”
A familiar voice rang out from one of the second story windows overhead. He didn’t have to look up at Tamarind to recognize her voice, but he did anyway so as not to be rude. She beamed down at him from her rocking chair, knitting needles clicking together in a cloud of magic. 
The former mayor waggled one toward his cart as the wheels bumped over the dirt. “Find any good fibers?”
She was always looking for something to turn into yarn, and for good reason. The winters this far northeast had a tendency to be unforgiving. Mouse liked to think he’d grown used to them after so many years, but even with his shaggy coat those first cold snaps never failed to steal his breath away. Just the thought made him break out in goose pimples. 
“Sorry, ma’am. Not this time,” he called up. She waved off the honorific, knowing it had more to do with her decades in office than it did her comparative age. It was a habit few had broken themselves of despite her protests that they tried. The new mayor had been at her desk for over two years now. Still, it was Tamarind’s seal on Mouse’s vending license and he made no secret of disliking change. “Either no one knitted in Cloudsdale or the map I bought was a bust.”
She grinned at that. “Toldja you were wasting caps. Looks like you made some of ‘em back, though.”
“A few,” he agreed, feeling the pads under his straps bite into his shoulders. One of these days he needed to find someone who could carve him a good yoke. “Next time.”
Tamarind nodded her agreement and turned her wrinkled gaze back to her knitting before he’d have to stop walking on her behalf. She was considerate to all her scavengers like that. Never taking more time than she needed or that they could spare, but always managing to greet them in the ways they preferred. Mouse supposed it was what made her a good mayor for all those years, and it was a habit she had carried into retirement.
The wagon let out a dubious groan as he pulled it around a fresh depression in the street, and thanked his lucky stars none of the other three wheels had gone to pieces. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened if they had. There weren’t any trade monopolies to rely on out here like the one that owned the routes out east, which meant there was as good a chance at being robbed by the next wagon on the horizon as there was getting help. Just the mere mention of F&F Mercantile tended to make the scavs out here wrinkle their noses, but after a run like the one he’d just finished he wondered if losing a cut of his profits wasn’t a price worth paying for safe roads. 
He thought about this as he dragged his wagon toward the large plot of asphalt that had once been a used carriage lot and never quite shook off the ghosts of that original purpose. Disused parking lot lights still stood atop rusting poles, their concrete bases clinging to the smallest chips of yellow paint. Where gleaming motorized carriages were once parked waited half a dozen fully built wagons, their wooden sideboards and spoked wheels dark with cheap varnish. More wheels were stacked like books between the guards of a salvaged bicycle rack, their prices advertised on a sandwich board sign propped open at the far end. Mouse eyed the latter of these displays, noting the empty slots where someone had recently been duped into paying top cap for a fresh set. The skin around his neck flushed with fresh anger as he stopped his wagon in front of the pouted lip of concrete across which Verdant had carefully stenciled the words, “NO PARKING.”
He didn’t bother bundling his straps into the jockey box at the front of his wagon. Nobody would be idiot enough to steal his wagon in broad daylight. Mouse might not be inclined to socialize with his customers more than was necessary to make a sale, but he didn’t burn bridges either. The whole reason he dealt with the winters in Crow’s Grove rather than pack up for warmer pastures was for the folks who lived here. It was an old fashioned community, or at least it tried its best to be like the ones the ghouls liked to brag about living in way back when. The locals knew if they sat on their hooves while a neighbor got robbed, that neighbor likely wasn’t going to help them when it was their turn. Mayor Tamarind had made sure that’s how things ran around here, and Mouse suspected he might not have a license to sell had he not intervened a few years back when he happened across a couple of colts who insisted, after being scared to tears, that they’d only been practicing their lockpicking and weren’t really going to steal anything from Pebble’s gun store.
He snorted at the memory as he climbed into his wagon and retrieved the chunk of busted wheel he’d saved. Both of those colts were stallions now. Technically, anyway. He was pretty sure the one who’d pissed himself was shadowing at the old electronic repair shop on the north side of town. He made a mental note to stop by before he left for Old Leer’s.
Road dust and flaking varnish soured his tongue as he carried the quarter wheel between his teeth. One of the benefits of the town being this far from the major population centers was that it had come out the end of the world more or less unscathed, even if its original inhabitants had been forced to leave it behind when the food and water ran out. It had been left to decay on its own terms until it was rediscovered decades later by those who were equipped to settle here. Most of the original structures had survived including, of all things, the squat building that presumably showed off more expensive carriages and which had been converted into Verdant’s bastardized version of a scavenger’s shop.
The door rattled when he shouldered it open, drawing the eyes of an earth pony couple who were perusing the rows of folding tables laid out across the showroom floor. Various junk lay out with paper tags tied with string advertising their deceptively generous prices, few of which had much to do with the wagons for sale outside. A collection of galvanized plumbing scraps here, a neat stack of magazines there. Garbage without a purpose, but which Verdant’s customers always seemed to pick from despite needing none of it. Mouse forgot the word he’d used for it. Some sales tactics he couldn’t bring himself to adopt in his own store. Impulse buying, that was it. The taste in his mouth grew a little more sour. 
Beyond the hodgepodge of junk stood a short receptionist’s desk shaped like a checkmark, its short end blending seamlessly into the rear wall while a square of polished wood formed a decorative little door on the open end. There, Verdant waited behind a brass cash register whose top sign advertised a bar destroyed by the bombs. The thing didn’t work. Just a display. A shiny chunk of metal that told visitors he was the one to give their caps.
Verdant’s silver coat practically gleamed under the buzzing electric lights. The stallion, barely halfway through his twenties, grinned like the ministry mares on their billboards when he recognized Mouse entering his shop. When he caught sight of what Mouse was carrying, that smile flinched.
“Moose!” he called across the showroom floor, not making any motion to leave the security of his desk. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in years!”
He was getting his name wrong on purpose, trying to distance himself from the comeuppance he could see storming its way through the tables. Mouse excused himself as he passed the curious couple and came to a stop on the other side of that desk, the little numerical flags of his register shuddering its last total as he dropped the hunk of termite-rotted wood beside it.
Verdant’s jaw tightened as he feigned nervous ignorance. “Trouble on the road?”
Mouse dropped the steel sole of his prosthetic foreleg beside the wheel with a sharp crack. “Your scam almost got me killed.”
“Scam?” He shook his head, eyes darting to the prospective customers still in his store to the jointed metal leg scratching his desk. “I can assure you I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything I sell is–”
“It’s shit,” he finished, loud enough for the words to echo in the too-large space. He thumped his hoof against the fragment of spoke and wheel. “This ain’t okay, Verdant. This is as bad as selling bad ammo and poisoned water. You know full damned well all the roads east go through raider territory, and I was within spitting distance of the fucking Cinders when this bug-ate shit you sold me folded.”
He could tell by the frown forming on Verdant’s lips that his customers were watching, and one sale had the potential of growing into several lost ones. His tone grew unfamiliar, less friendly. “Sir, everything I sell is guaranteed to perform as intended with proper and regular maintenance.”
Mouse didn’t need a billboard to catch the insinuation. A slow smile crept across his muzzle as he looked down at the holes insects had bored through spokes he’d been assured could bear weight. When he spoke, he did so with a calmness that threatened violence.
“I’m not haggling with you, Verdant. What you’re going to do right now is offer me one of two numbers: the number of caps you think I’m owed for the danger you put me in with your reckless scheistering,” he growled, deploying a word Discord liked to use which Mouse had worked out the definition of through context, “or the number of days you’d prefer to walk with the limp I’m going to give you if you fucking lowball me. So pick.”
It was a bluff. Mouse knew he could get his license pulled for assaulting another business owner unprovoked, but Verdant’s scam had muddied the definition of provoked enough to make the stallion second guess what could and couldn’t happen. It didn’t hurt that Mouse knew his way past a good deadpan glare, something he’d learned from his dad when a younger version of himself tried to get out of trouble. 
Verdant was still learning that skill. He fidgeted behind his counter, fumbling for a third option. “Look, Mouse, this was just a fluke. I’ll replace the set you bought free of charge, alright?”
Mouse slid his prosthetic off the wheel, leaving behind a trail of fresh scrapes in the desk’s smooth wood. He sighed and began walking toward the little hinged door on the far end. 
Verdant visibly bristled. “You can’t come back here.”
He knocked the door open with his knee. 
“Fu-u-uck,” the silver coated shit complained, rolling his head on his neck as if someone above might swoop down from the flourescents to save him. The couple had already seen enough and were politely retreating toward the door, not wanting to be dragged into someone else’s troubles. “I’ll give back what you paid for them, how about that? And a new set! The good stuff! Custom, even!”
Mouse continued to approach. His silence turned Verdant’s panic into anger.
“It’s less than three hundred caps! Your shop pulls that number in a week, for goddess’s sake! You fucking want double? I can do double!”
He grew more desperate when his tail bumped into where the desk met the wall. “You want me to open the damn safe for you? Will that make you fucking happy?!”
Mouse stopped, not because Verdant had spoken the magic word, but because he’d run out of space to stalk. Either way, it communicated some kind of reprieve that Verdant took as assent. With some hesitation the smaller stallion weaseled around him, whispering a stream of profanity as he hurried to the squat safe tucked into the desk beneath the broken register. Mouse waited, saying nothing, knowing how easily a single word could turn a repayment of a grievance into a robbery. 
The rotary lock spun this way and that, guided by a weak fog of smoky magic. The lock clanked and the door swung, revealing contents not dissimilar to what Mouse kept in his. Out came several densely packed cylinders of caps, fifty apiece, bound together by two twists of wire. A revolver lay on the top shelf and for a moment Mouse considered how out of control this could get if Verdant decided to do something supremely stupid, and thankfully he didn’t. When the safe slammed closed, a total of fifteen rolls stood on the counter like tiny soldiers awaiting their orders. 
Verdant stood and flicked a hoof at the caps, eyes darting about the floor instead of meeting Mouse’s gaze. “Happy? Are we good?”
He considered saying no, they weren’t good, and turning to the violence he’d been craving since the faulty wheel first broke in the middle of nowhere, but he resisted the urge and bent his good foreleg to the buckle of the strap keeping his saddlebags secure. It bent back, the pin slipping loose of the leather, and he let the bags drop. Verdant watched in embarrassed silence as Mouse picked up the bags with his teeth and set them on the counter, the flap held open with one hoof while the other herded all but two of the rolls inside.
“Okay,” Verdant mumbled unsurely, noting the ones being left behind.
Mouse considered suggesting some nobler endeavor Verdant might put those caps toward, then thought better of it. If he’d come to put this idiot on the straight and narrow he would’ve gotten the sheriff. Verdant was going to use this lesson to be less overt about the shit he pulled, and who he pulled it on. He wouldn’t try this con on anyone he thought Mouse might know, and that was something. Besides, leaving behind some money would make it hard for Verdant to claim he’d been cleaned out. This was a transaction. A refund. 
He swung the bags around his neck, not wanting to trade embarrassment for embarrassment by making Verdant watch him fumble the buckle back together. He’d probably offer to help, if not to glean some sense that he’d done some charity that balanced the injustice of having given away more profit than Mouse’s place pulled down in a month. He said nothing as he slipped past the stallion, deciding he’d gotten enough of a point across.
Behind him, Verdant whispered under his breath. “Manehattan bitch.”
He stopped, lifted his hind leg, and pistoned the flat of that roadworn hoof into the delicate pouch slung under Verdan'ts tail. The stallion stumbled forward a few steps before his brain caught up to his balls, and he collapsed to the floor in a whimpering heap.







The wagon lurched back into motion and Mouse set his sights on home. 
Home, as luck would have it, was just three blocks north and two more west. Not far from what most folks in Crow’s Grove considered to be the main drag, but far enough for his little store to suffer from the distance. It worked out, he supposed. The rent was cheaper, and business never boomed enough that he couldn’t get away to do his own scavenging. The thought of paying the main street premiums made him shudder. Too much stress. Too much time being locked down to a regular schedule while wondering if the people he hired to do the scavenging weren’t skimming the richest cream for themselves. 
The dusty street that took him to his shop had once been one-way, which meant it only needed one lane. He did what he could to keep two wheels close to the gutters, mindful of the sagging steel sewer grates that were more rust than metal. He imagined one day someone might fix up the old foundry in the hills up north and figure out how the ponies of the old world made the same, perfect castings. It was a silly dream, but everyone dreamed it. The knowledge was there for anyone to find. The problem was always that there were too many links in the chain for one pony to fix. 
The wheels thudded across one of the grates. He grimaced at himself for getting distracted again, then pulled further toward the curb to make room for a larger covered wagon coming his way. He greeted the stallion pulling the outsized load and smiled, a gesture that was returned in kind as the stranger passed, then rolled his smaller cart up the next block toward the engraved wooden sign hung above the old sidewalk.
He regarded the sign with a lopsided smile. It hung from two short lengths of nice chain that he’d blued himself, giving them a sturdy black appearance. The sign was shaped like the shield symbols the old Equestrian highway system once used, and which he thought suited his business nicely as he was regularly away on those same roads. The name Snap-Traps stood out from the weatherproofed slab in thick, charred font. It hadn’t cost him too much to commission, though it had been an uncomfortable sum at the time. It was worth it, he thought. Quality on the outside always suggested quality on the inside.
He’d almost gotten himself unhitched when the bell of the bakery next door jingled and a familiar face leaned against the frame. “Welcome back, stranger. Bring me anything?”
He snorted as he shrugged off the straps. “Why is it that every time I come back, everyone wants to know if I brought them something?”
Peri shrugged coyly. “Everyone else can ask what they like, but they’re not the ones watering your plants when you’re gone. So, spit it out. Whatcha get me?”
Mouse didn’t bring up the fact that he’d paid her with perfectly good caps to keep an eye on his things while he was away. No sense in making a fuss. She knew he’d be looking for the same thing while he was out in the wastes and it wasn’t particularly hard to come by, either. Not the ordinary stuff, anyway. The good stuff, well, he didn’t exactly advertise when or where he found that.
“Keep your shirt on,” he muttered, using yet another one of Discord’s nonsense phrases. Climbing up the back of the wagon, and mindful not to step in the rusty stain left by the pegasus he’d rescued, he stumped to an unmarked crate near the middle. Two nails on either corner kept the lid loosely in place, enough so that he was able to nudge it open with the edge of his hoof. Peri stepped out and met him at the sideboards, smiling with anticipation as he shuffled around inside. Tucked safely beneath the now mostly empty sack of vegetables he’d taken for the trip rested a thick rectangle of cheesecloth half the size of a brick. He nipped the corner, careful not to bite too deep, and lifted it out to her waiting hoof.
“Holy cats,” she marveled, giving it a sniff. “What’s this, half a pound of… cheddar?”
He nodded as he watched her tuck the block into her apron. “So I was told. Fair warning, the guy I got it from didn’t own any cows from what I could tell. Could’ve gotten the milk from anywhere.”
If the caution bothered Peri, he couldn’t tell. “Beggars can’t be choosers. Thanks, Mouse, I’ll remember to point a few customers your way once I decide what to use this in.” 
Beggars could absolutely be choosers, he thought, which was why he’d given her the full block and not half. For as much shit he sometimes took for his appreciation for cheese, he’d come across more than a few wastelanders who were reluctant to divulge the source of their base ingredient. Mouse wasn’t a prude by any means, but there were lines even he wouldn’t cross.
“Actually,” he said, stopping Peri before she could carry away her prize, “I was hoping you could keep an eye on the place for another week or so. I gotta unload and head back out. Some things on the back burner I didn’t have time to wrap up.”
She paused, pursed her lips thoughtfully, then nodded. “You know my price.”
As if there had ever been any question. Here was another reason he preferred living a little bit off the main drag. Folks had time to talk, give each other shit, and cobble together these friendly deals. It didn’t hurt that Peri was the sort who knew when he was getting tired of talking, even if the conversation had its own momentum. She didn’t keep that ball rolling until it sapped his patience dry. And for that, hey, what’s a half pound of probably-pony cheddar between friends?
“I’ll try to make it a quick trip,” he agreed, knowing she wouldn’t mind keeping the garden behind the shop topped off with water. Speaking of which, he made a note to pick some tatos for the trip back to Discord’s. “Thanks, Peri.”
She arched her brow in mock threat of what might happen should he forget, then tipped her chin at him and went back inside. The bell jingled once more and the painted green door of Half Baked clicked shut behind her.
With no one left waiting to be charmed for their favors, Mouse got to work. The deadbolts turned over with reassuring clunks and he pushed inside, savoring the smell of the familiar. Grease, dust, and just a little bit of soot. Home, he thought as he walked past the two sections of display shelving he’d managed to salvage from the ruins of a grocery story years ago. The cream, rust-pocked shelves were mostly empty, indicating his need to make this scavenging run in the first place. He liked how ubiquitous these kinds of shelves were. Parts for them could be found in just about any of the big, blocky stores down the west coast. Some kind of chain, he thought. 
Either way, they all used the same equipment and he’d managed to collect a fair bit of the little plastic sleeves that clipped to the concave edge of each shelf. They made fantastic labels which cut down on the amount of questions his customers asked. The name of the thing, the price of the thing, all the things about the things could be jotted onto a scrap of paper and shoved into the little label holder thingy. It was great. He strolled past the shelf he reserved for medical supplies with its little rolls of gauze, a pile of clean cloth for cheaper bandaging, and some plastic bottles of prewar pain medicine he’d found in a pharmacy whose seals were still intact. Other shelves bore a sparse selection of other goods. Snare kits for small critters, cage traps for larger ones. A shelf of heavy duty knives. One long since emptied of the Equestrian Army MREs he’d found a few months back. For the most part he just stuck to selling the things he himself needed for the long haul trips across the wasteland. Survival gear. Stuff he knew he could find, vouch for, and sell to the travelers who had no choice but to walk several days just to reach the next nowhere town. Anything he didn’t think he could sell in his store he’d take to the Saturday market on the main drag where he knew there would be stalls flush with caps who were willing to take a risk on the stuff he didn’t want. 
The back of his bookended shop featured a low counter and a kitchenette barely wide enough for the woodburning stove tucked in the corner. It was enough for his purposes, even if sometimes his customers would mistake the mixed purpose space as a source of free samples. Mouse was quick to disabuse any of the more entitled visitors of this notion through a variety of means at his disposal, including but not limited to hauling them back out to the street by their own tails.
The side door near the stove took him to what used to be a garage intended for the same carriages once sold at Verdant’s parking lot, and which Mouse had since converted into a hybrid workshop and storage area for anything he didn’t have room for in the store. A bright red tool chest, another painful but necessary investment in his own self-sufficiency, dominated the back wall of the garage alongside two long tables made from heavy timber. Several incomplete projects waited for him there, none of which he’d been able to find the right parts for. Among them, several window-sized solar panels whose functionality he hadn’t been able to suss out. Electronics weren’t his strongest suit but he’d worked out enough to know the blobs of melted plastic mounted behind the cells weren’t meant to be melted. Until he figured out what they’d been and how to replace them, the panels were just another thing taking up space. 
He crossed the roughly wagon-sized patch of empty floor between emptier storage shelves and stood on his hind legs to reach the plastic ball dangling from the overhead cord with his teeth. The door squeaked and shuddered as he dragged it backward on two legs, something Discord would mock him mercilessly for if he knew. The creature had an affinity for bipeds, which led Mouse to believe he’d met the reptiles in the dragonlands before the world’s end put their species firmly beneath the column marked “Extinct.” He thought about asking Discord about them as he hauled his wagon across the sidewalk, deciding as he dropped his straps on the garage floor that he’d do just that when he got back just to see what sort of nonsense the former Lord of Chaos might give in answer. 
He debated unloading the wagon, but his knees convinced him to leave it for when he got back. His inner scavenger grumbled, reminding him of the caps he’d left on the mare’s foreleg. Two Pip-Bucks, and Discord wouldn’t let him take just one. He’d chewed his ear for even checking to see if they turned on, which neither of them had. He shut the garage door and stalked back into the shop where a false tile behind the counter concealed the dial to the floor safe underneath. Muttering to himself, he opened it and deposited the caps he’d gotten from Verdant alongside his own emergency fund. He kept two hundred in his bags, grudgingly accepting the fact that he was going to kiss almost all of that goodbye in one trip to the chemist on the main drag. He sighed. The mare had looked like a steak someone had forgotten to flip on the grill. If Discord hadn’t accidentally killed her by now, she was going to need a lot of stimpacks.
A quick stop to his garden out back to pull up some fresh carrots and tatos, pausing only briefly to shake off the larger clumps of dirt before adding them to his bags. On his way back through the store he scooped up the gauze from the medical shelf, hesitated a moment, and then added one of the bottles of pain meds without thinking too hard about the heavy dent in his profits. He’d make it back some way or another. It wasn’t as if she could go through the entire bottle. At least, he hoped. He put the thought out of his head as he locked up behind himself and ducked into Peri’s place just long enough to toss her the keys.
She looked up from behind her curved glass display case, then to the countertop against the wall behind her where two worn keys on an equally worn ring had skittered across the freshly floured surface. 
“Really?”
He shrugged, smiled, and let the door jingle shut behind him.







The sun hung low in the sky, low enough to be obscured by colorful rooftops along the western slope of the Bluff. Long shadows would cool the air well before night ever arrived and they signaled to those still browsing the thinning market square that bartering hours were close to over. A chill ruffled Fiona’s neck as she blinked away what little sleep she’d allowed herself to steal during the daylight hours. It had been three days since the bomb over Foal Mountain lit up the sky, and now it was looking like she would be greeting the fourth having accomplished nothing. 
She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her wing as she plodded toward the first beverage vendor she saw. Someone she didn’t recognize stood beneath a wooden sign advertising a small menu ranging from purified water to standard liquors, the latter of which was likely thinned by the lesser. No matter what was on tap it all apparently landed in the same paper cups procured from a sagging box loaded with unopened sleeves. One such cup stood near her side of his stall, the word TIPS scrawled over the Belle’s Sweet-Tea logo in thick, black strokes. With so many Rangers arriving to pulverize the cobbles, she doubted anyone would risk so much as giving the cup of caps a wanting gaze.
The wait in line was brief. When it was her turn, she pulled five bottle caps from the satchel slung across her shoulder and dropped them onto the worn countertop, indicating a picture of coffee with a talon. “One, please.”
The stallion whisked her caps out of sight on a cloud of magic and proceeded to pour a cup of something closer to the color of dehydrated urine than coffee. She noted that he gripped the pot’s plastic handle between his teeth instead of his magic. A week ago she might have teased someone like him for his horn’s failure to “get it up,” but now she feigned not having noticed at all. She dropped an extra cap into the tip cup and headed down the cobbles toward the tunnel of Stable 6. One of the knights posted outside the cavern stepped forward to meet her as much as prevent her from going further, and for a moment the two of them regarded one another with a polite hostility until Fiona conceded.
As with the last couple of evenings, the knight followed her toward the spot where the precisely sectioned granite arch bent down to meet the rough hewn cobblestones of the marketplace grounds. She transferred the cup from her feathers to her hand and sat down with her back toward the slope. The knight posted himself between her and the tunnel, symbolically blocking her view of it even as he begrudgingly acted as her conduit to the information it guarded.
“So,” she spoke, the cup warming her palms, “what’re the chances I’ll get to talk to him tonight?”
Latch watched the thinning crowd as citizens wrapped up their errands. “Zero, same as the last time. The Elder barely has time for his paladins let alone an unemployed DJ.”
She sipped her coffee and ignored the barb. She’d begun to think Latch wasn’t being an asshole because he was an asshole. The more time she had to chew on it, the more she thought she understood him. It hadn’t been long since he was just another Ranger assigned to the wall. His duty rotations had been mostly uneventful - Fiona rarely heard news worth reporting come from the gate - and he’d felt comfortable enough to risk having a kid. And then three strangers show up at his wall one night and turn his entire life upside-down. 
Fiona had been a part of that, she knew. Coaxing Latch into allowing her inside, unescorted, had landed him a demotion and reassignment to one of the excavation teams sent to dig up Stable 10. She didn’t have the heart to ask him whether he was the breadwinner of his family or if his wife, someone she’d been quick to dismiss for the sake of a few crude quips at Latch’s expense, worked for someone in the Bluff. At the time Fiona had only been focused on retrieving Aurora’s stolen Pip-Buck and cashing in on an opportunity to shame Paladin Ironshod in front of his subordinates. She didn’t blame Latch’s motivation for keeping her at arm’s, or leg’s, reach.
And still, like it or not, Coronado had assigned him to Stable 6’s security rotation. The other Rangers monitoring traffic into and out of the tunnel were implants from Fillydelphia whose unblinking stares were as familiar as they were disheartening. These were ponies who had never seen a gryphon up close before, and despite their stiff upper lip she could see the fear behind their eyes. Latch was a local. He knew her. Not even the burn scars were enough to hide his annoyance toward her.
Plus, despite being impossible to talk to at times, he at least respected that they were both playing for the same team.
“I passed along your message about the pulse, by the way,” he said, eyeing her watery coffee for a beat. “Paladin Shire said his techs were working on a similar theory to explain the blackout. He told me to ask if you’d be okay letting them crack open some of your radio equipment to see if there’s a pattern in what got fried first.”
She started to shrug, but nodded instead. “Yeah, sure. Tell them I already got a head start on that. All my newer equipment bit the dust. The high tech stuff, with the chips in them, all of it’s scorched. The only kit I have that still takes voltage runs on vacuum tubes which means I’ve got as much a radio station as the next third-rate scavenger.”
Reconsidering, she decided to shrug anyway. “Probably be easier if I went in and told them myself.”
Latch snorted. “Not likely.”
“Worth a shot.” She sipped, savoring the buzz of caffeine more so than the taste of weak coffee. The grit slowing her thoughts was steadily working itself loose. She tapped the cup with a finger and sighed. “If I can’t talk to him, the least you can do is tell me whether or not all of this…” she gestured toward the steadily growing population of armed and armored soldiers loitering around the market stalls, “should worry me.”
She waited for him long enough that she started to wonder if he would answer at all. When he finally did, he didn’t speak with the same conviction he usually dismissed her with. “The Enclave popped a balefire bomb above a Stable. Who’s to say that wasn’t a test run for an attack on this one? We have an obligation to defend ourselves.”
“And how much of this ‘defense’ is earmarked for Stable 10?”
This time he remained silent. 
She closed her eyes. Even if she still had the ability to broadcast, she knew there was nothing she could say that could stop or even slow what was already in motion. What little rumors she’d been able to verify all pointed toward an all-out push to retake Foal Mountain. Even those not wearing Ranger colors knew by now the potential locked away inside Stable 10. Ironshod had known weeks before the war had thawed. He’d pieced together enough to understand that beating the Enclave to the treasure trove of prewar tech inside that Stable could break the stalemate between them overnight, and he had whispered into Coldbrook’s ear how finite this single opportunity could be. Taking Stable 10 wasn’t a stepping stone for the Steel Rangers, it was a springboard. A raging tailwind that would convert their storehouses of confiscated tech into the blueprints of a new war. One they could win.
Fiona recalled the way Aurora appeared to teeter on the edge of rabid panic as she steadied herself for the long flight south to save her friend from Autumn Song’s solar array. She’d initially believed Aurora was only afraid for her companion. She hadn’t known Ironshod had stolen her Pip-Buck shortly before her arrival atop the bluff, nor that it was her only tangible connection to the people she’d left behind. Fiona knew how it felt to turn away from everything she knew, but she couldn't begin to imagine the terror she must have felt at having that connection severed with all those lives weighing down on her.
That mare was dead now, and the people she’d come all this way and farther to save were likely doomed as well.
“I should have helped her,” she breathed. 
Latch cocked a brow at her.
“I just sat up there and made both of them into a headline. Fuck me, I knew what was going on and I didn’t lift a finger.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Latch murmured, “I made the ghoul promise to come back to help with the gardens.”
It didn’t make her feel better. She could feel the coffee shaking her awake and now she wanted nothing more than to fly back to her firetower and sleep the night away. And yet the little ripples inside her cup reminded her of the hours ahead she had reserved for pestering soldiers, shaking them down for nuggets of news or guiding them to the nearest private room within which she might ply their secrets a different way. All in the name of… what? Habit? The sake of knowing something she hadn’t known before? What was she even supposed to do with the information she already had? Her broadcast range was limited to how loud she could shout. 
Suddenly the prospect of sitting in her chair behind a warm microphone felt ridiculous. She downed the last of her coffee and flicked the empty cup onto the cobbles. An idea was beginning to form. Not much of one, but something better than wasting another night deciding who she could fuck a headline out of for a radio station she no longer had. 
At least it was something.
“Hey,” Latch said, tipping a hoof toward the empty cup as she got to her feet. “Are you going to pick that up?”
She flexed her wings, their heavy joints crackling as she did the mental math.
“Flipswitch.” He said. Then, more firmly, “Fiona.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Don’t let anyone touch my records while I’m gone.”
He opened his mouth to ask what she meant by that only to slam it shut against the abrupt torrent of dust kicked off the cobbles, leaving him and his fellow Rangers to stare mutely as the gryphon’s skyward trajectory bent steadily west.







A filly dressed in rags poked her head out from the edge of the treeline, gave one look to the city built upon side slopes of the monolithic bluff, and pouted.
“Beans,” her mother called from the road, “stay where we can see you.”
She stepped back and trotted toward the old pavement on tiny legs, hopping over fallen branches and winding around the bushes with all the pickers waiting to snatch onto her costume. When her mother caught sight of her, she was wearing a face that warned she wasn’t going to ask nicely next time she tried to explore without permission. Beans found it hard not to let her frustration show, but she tried. She thought leaving the mountains meant leaving that scary part of the sky where bad ponies hid above the clouds, and with it might come rules that were easier for her to follow.
Her mother smiled a little as Beans clamored through the scratchy reeds growing in the ditch, the dull cloak her parents insisted she wear at all times lifting momentarily as one of the dry stalks levered the fabric away from one of her wings. If anyone from the caravan noticed, they didn’t say, but she saw the momentary flicker of tension in her mother’s eyes and she felt her neck run hot. The cloak settled back down as soon as she was on the road again, and she was relieved when nobody lectured her about being careful. She trotted along the faded flecks of white paint that traced the edge of the road, her hooves beating three times for every one of her mom’s. Her dad rode in the back of the covered wagon ahead of them, his front leg wrapped tight with bandages made brown from the caravan’s dust. He caught her looking at it and shot her a reassuring wink, but she could only manage half a smile in return.
“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked.
She wrinkled her nose as the caravan cleared the treeline she’d been peeking through. “It’s too little.”
“What’s too little?”
She nearly lifted a feather to point out at the bluff just up ahead but thought better of it, using her nose instead. “Blindy Bluff.”
Her dad half-turned to look through the little hole in the front of the wagon while her mother sidled closer to the edge of the road to see as well. “Well,” he said, “that’s because it got squished by all those houses. See?”
Beans squinted toward the tall hill and saw all the colorful squares that speckled its slope, not quite sure if mountains could be squished. The bluff was nothing like her mountain. It was short and all alone. Her mountain was tall enough to touch the sky and there were many, many more just like it, some that were even taller! She could see everything from her old home, but she imagined even if she stood at the very tip top of the skinny fort at the top of Blindy Bluff she wouldn’t be able to see anything. 
She spotted a pebble ahead and swung her hoof at it, sending it skittering off into the ditch. “Houses don’t squish mountains.”
He chuckled. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
That made her smile, and as her mood lightened she remembered a question she’d been told to stop asking until later. It felt like a long time since then, so it was only fair that she got to ask it again.
“Are we closer to Aurora’s house, yet?”
Her dad made a face to her mother that said it was her turn to answer. She looked up to her expectantly, hoping for better news than before. 
“We’re almost there,” she said, sounding tired. “Remember how I said we’re going to spend the night at Blinder’s Bluff? Tomorrow morning we’re all going to get up early to find someone who can take us the rest of the way. One more road, hon, okay?”
She wanted to complain but she didn’t think the people in charge of all the wagons liked it when she did that. Instead, she sucked on her lip and nodded.
The urge to explore dwindled as they crossed the clearing, its wide rows of low-cut stumps making her picture a pony closing giant scissors through swaths of trees. The empty space made her nervous, but not as much as the imposing steel wall waiting for them at the end of the road. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of ponies stomping together in groups in front of the wall, some of them wearing big suits that made them look just like robots! Her mother reminded her to stay close and this time she did as she was told, unsure of all the stern faces staring down at them from the top of the wall. The wagons stopped to join a line of other ponies who had gotten there before them, the adults talking to each other in serious tones that made Beans wish she were back home. She kept her eyes on the dusty road when one of the ponies in the big metal suits stopped to ask her mother if he could verify the gun mounted to her shoulder wasn’t loaded. Normally she didn’t allow anyone other than dad or herself to touch the big cannon, but for this stranger she obliged without even making sure he knew where the safety switch was or which way it was never meant to point.
Beans wanted to tell them that just because they looked scary didn’t mean they had to act scary. Roach looked scary and he hadn’t been mean to her at all, and when she and her parents first arrived in Kiln she’d been relieved to discover the ghouls living there were just as nice to her. Some of them had been just as surprised to see a filly her age as she was to learn how old they were, even if one of them had whispered something to her mom and dad that made them both angry. Beans smiled at the memory of being given a treat by the mare who owned the inn, a swirly red and white candy that melted on her tongue with an explosion of flavor. She almost wished she could live there in Kiln, but her dad said the air there was bad and that they all had to take medicine while they were there so none of them got sick. She’d wondered if the ghouls had to take medicine too. When they left, the old mare hadn’t been at her desk to give her another candy even though the air was starting to taste what the water pump smelled like when it got hot. 
The ponies in the suits stomped and grumbled anyway, giving her mother directions to a place they called an arm-marry while another quietly noted the exposed tip of her father’s wing and began asking him lots of questions in a real big hurry. More soldiers came over to watch and only when he said he was married to her mom and that Beans was their daughter did someone lift the skirt of Beans’ rags with a mote of magic to confirm. She watched the robot-faced soldier, not sure whether to be afraid, as he let go and nodded to someone else who murmured “dustwings” to another. A mare with a stern expression and a squeaky voice led the three of them away from the caravan and through a big hole in the wall and into the chaotic city it protected.
“Stay close,” her mother whispered to her as the dirt road turned to lumpy stones and the quiet of the outside transformed into a tangle of shouting voices, grinding wagon wheels, and stamping hooves. Beans did as she was told even as she was transfixed by the sheer number of ponies around her. 
Blindy Bluff was like Kiln but a hundred times bigger! Her jaw hung open as their escort led them past colorful covered wagons, brightly painted signs, and vendor stalls from which dozens of voices clamored to boast their best prices to the stream of inbound travelers. More than once she felt her mother’s hoof guiding her back toward her as her own legs led her toward bright colors and porcelain grins. They stopped outside a low building that reminded her of her cave, where a pair of soldiers grunted under the weight of her mother’s gun and a third held up a rectangular box that flashed and spat out gray paper, which he kept. 
Beans wanted to ask what the paper was for but the squeaky soldier had begun leading them away before she had the chance. There was talk between her and her father about a shelter for dustwings and whether or not he wanted someone to come by later to take a look at his injured foreleg. She listened, her stomach rumbling as they passed a stall with something savory sizzling on a slow-turning spit, as her dad declined the latter. He probably didn’t want the soldier mare to know he’d scraped up his whole leg when he walked straight into a pothole when he should have been paying attention like he always told her to. Her lips pursed with a smile as she fought not to blurt out the embarrassing secret.
They passed soldiers grouped outside a stall whose sign tried to make a shiny glass bottle of something bubbly and brown inside look tasty, and Beans wondered if she could have some if she asked. The thought lingered with her all the way to a skinny yellow building nestled in a row of several others, reminding her of her bookshelf back home. Their escort gestured them through a creaky door and left without saying goodbye. Beans frowned after her as the door scraped shut between them.
A single painting of a field of purple flowers hung on the wall inside the front room of the bookend inn. Beans stared at it, wondering if it was real or just a picture like the ones in her books. She hoped it was real as she turned to see if the adults were talking about anything interesting. They weren’t, as usual. Her mom and dad stood at a stub of a desk behind which a young stallion counted their caps while simultaneously offering them a discounted price on Rad-Away. Her dad chuckled and shook his head, mentioning they’d taken more than enough during their trip through Kiln. The stallion frowned and glanced between them, his sales pitch more insistent. He said something about residual radiation still coming in on the wind. The dust would be contaminated for weeks, he said, prompting her mother to ask a question.
The counter pony noticed Beans watching and his voice lowered so she couldn’t hear, but could see the words Stable 10 flash across his lips. She frowned and trotted over to her mom so she could listen in but their conversation only got quieter with proximity. They were keeping secrets. That wasn’t fair at all. She thumped her mom’s leg so she could tell her as much but she looked down and shook her head, saying nothing as she turned back to listen to what the stallion was explaining. 
Whatever he said made something change in her parents. Her dad took a half step back, his gaze distant and full of fear. Her mom shook her head and spoke more earnestly, one of her big thumper hooves coming up to rest on the desk. Her eyes were wet like they sometimes got after a good yawn, but they weren’t good tears. She blinked fast, trying to hide them, but Beans saw that her mom was crying and her dad had broken his own rule by putting a wing across her shoulders. When he looked down and met her gaze, Beans knew something awful had happened.







“This would be easier if you let me pick you up.”
“Don’t,” Aurora warned, her tone prickly but not for her usual reason. At least, not entirely for that reason. Being mollycoddled was humiliating enough on its own, and having strangers going out of their way to aid in her recovery made her feel… she couldn’t decide on the right word. Guilty? Undeserving? Parasitic? 
She tried to push away the dark thoughts but they were strong as they were persuasive. Ginger had gone out of this world knowing her death would save hundreds of lives, one of which being Aurora’s. The one who promised Ginger love and safety and whose ignorance allowed others to steal it away with hardly any effort at all. Aurora Pinfeathers, the mare who survived, being doted on once more because someone had felt sorry for her and hadn’t stopped to consider whether or not she might be a poison.
A mare whose bladder felt like a hot stone between her hips and who knew with confidence that if her caretaker so much as jostled her would shortly find himself in need of a new floor. 
She put some weight on the sling hooked beneath the shoulder of her fractured foreleg and breathed silent relief when it took her weight. Her benefactor was holding the ends of it somewhat level, allowing her just enough stability to hobble forward on her two working hooves. It made her feel like one of the little wind-up toys the engineering team in Mechanical would assemble before Hearth's Warming. Painted aluminum ducks, bunnies, princesses and ministry mares would weeble-wobble forward with the help of an offset cog and some spring steel. No one remembered where the tradition came from. All they knew was it was something the adults had done for them when they were foals and which was their duty to do for this new generation of youngsters. The foals loved the little gadgets. Aurora suppressed a smile at the memory as she weeble-wobbled along with the aid of her seeing-eye nanny.
“Just tell me where to go and don’t lift the sling too much. Lower is better.” She frowned, then added, “Please.”
A low chuckle. “However you like it. Five or six more steps this way and we’ll be at the back door.”
He directed her with a very slight pull on her sling, something they hadn’t discussed before but which made intuitive sense as soon as she felt it happening. One hop forward with her foreleg, dip her weight into the sling, and kick forward with her hind leg. At this rate she was going to run out of limbs by the end of the month. Her mind quickly rejected its own attempt at gallow’s humor. She stumped forward another step. 
“So,” she said, “earlier today you said your name is Discord. Is that something gryphons are okay with, or…?”
His voice rose an octave as if he were just understanding the punchline to a bad joke. “You think I’m a gryphon?” 
He laughed with a haughty inflection that caught her off guard and made her think for a moment he was laughing at her. Her brow furrowed beneath her blindfold as she hopped forward another step, embarrassment rising in her cheeks. She hadn’t been sure what he was, but she’d been sure she’d read something about gryphons being able to alternate between standing on their hind paws as well as all fours as needed. Fiona hadn’t demonstrated anything like that, sure, but she’d read about it, and Discord definitely favored his hind legs.
“I suppose you’re not entirely wrong,” he continued once he got his fill of jollies, “but no, my dear, I’m not a gryphon. I’m, well, me.”
His tone changed when she didn’t react. “Do you not… know who I am?”
If she could have shrugged without toppling over and pissing herself, she would have tried. As things were, she settled with a passive tilt of her head. “I know where your folks got the name from. Discord, Lord of Chaos, Trickster and Betrayer of Equestria. How much further? I really have to pee.”
A doorknob jostled and a door whispered open, answering her question. “Three steps across the porch, then four stairs down to the yard. The outhouse is a ways further. You don’t believe it’s possible that I am who I say I am, do you?”
She made noncommittal noise. “I think if you were actually Discord you wouldn’t be grinding medicine for my eyes or living out of an abandoned house in the middle of the wasteland. You’d snap your fingers and I’d be healed, or dead, or a vanilla milkshake.”
He laughed again, this time with warmth. “You strike me more as a caramel parfait. Stop here, you’re at the stairs. Careful does it.”
Dull pain radiated through her slinged leg as she rested her weight into it enough to probe the empty space ahead of her with her other hoof. Discord lowered her a little, the sensation causing her muscles to tense in preparation for a fall, but her hoof touched the first step instead.
“Chaos gods don’t say careful does it.” 
“This one does,” he countered. “Next step.”
He lowered her to the next step, her body tilting even lower. It took some coaxing for her to risk hopping her back hoof off the porch and onto the step behind her. Each time she did, she had to fight her brain’s internal alarms that insisted her hoof was going to pass through nothing and drag the rest of her into some interminable abyss. If only she could be so lucky.
“Agree to disagree,” she said. He didn’t argue the concession, instead focusing on getting Aurora all the way to the grass. It only occurred to her several aching steps later that she wasn’t hopping across a barren surface, but a living one like the underbrush Roach had led them through on their way to the cabin where she spent her second night away from home. The blades were cool against her hooves, something that might have been refreshing were she not full to bursting. Her tail clamped down and she hobbled faster.
The outhouse took longer than she expected to reach, but she made it in time. Discord made a half-hearted offer at helping her inside but she wasn’t about to risk stumbling the wrong way and pissing all over this stranger and his toilet. As soon as her front hoof found the bench seat she all but pogoed her back end one hundred and eighty degrees to its destination. It was blissful relief. Her shoulder found the outhouse wall and she leaned against it as much for support as to assume some primal posture of Oh Thank Celestia. 
When her tank finally dripped empty, Discord was ready with the crude sling. It occurred to her the outhouse had no door that she was aware of and for all she knew he could have been watching, but something about his demeanor suggested he wouldn’t have. She decided not to ask as he led her back to the house.
“What time is it?” she asked.
A pause. “A little past midnight. Why?”
She didn’t answer because she didn’t know why she’d asked. Did it matter what time it was, or what day? She wasn’t tired. At least, she wasn’t so tired that she felt like going back to sleep. All she’d done for the last several days was sleep and feel miserable, and yet some part of her wanted to keep a running tally as if it made a difference what answer she got back.
She shook her head. “Curious, I guess.”
They reached the steps and after several failed attempts to climb them, she relented and allowed him to pick her up and set her down on the porch. A paw and talon. His lone hoof thumped along beside her, adjacent to the padding of some other clawed appendage. Understanding clicked in her head not with a crash of shocked disbelief, but rather with an unenthused half-shrug. This creature leading her into his house was some breed of chimera who walked, talked, and casually claimed to be Discord. Sure, why not? Another wasteland revelation to chuck onto the pile on top of finding out an Element of Harmony was living outside her Stable, that two mid-level government employees were responsible for killing ninety-nine percent of the planet, that the two superpowers who rose from the ashes were quietly competing to be first to find the coordinates of a leftover orbital superweapon, and that the mare who pushed the button two hundred years ago was more than happy to do it again so her sycophantic subjects wouldn’t find out she wasn’t a Special Substitute Princess.
The door clicked behind them and Aurora let Discord, Lord of Chaos lead her back to his creaky old couch. Because fine, this was the world they all lived in now. She was too exhausted in too many ways to waste any more energy on surprise.
Moving up onto the cushions stirred a jagging cough out of her. She swallowed the little moisture she had in her throat to stifle it from the harder, racking fit she could feel it building toward. Her burns ached as she settled into a dent in the couch that barely had time to shed its warmth, her chest still tickling from an unseen irritant.
“Can I have some water?” 
He obliged by bringing her a glass with a straw, which she could hold in place if she clutched it to her belly with the crook of her hoof. It saved Discord the effort of having to hold it for her and gave Aurora a tiny sense of autonomy. Something in her life she could control, no matter how small it may be. She drank room temperature water in silence and thought dark thoughts.







Discord yawned into the knuckles of his fist as he sank into the creaking springs of his easy chair. He watched his nameless guest sip her drink for a long while, his lips dipped in frustration. Gone were the days when sleep was merely another bit of nonsense mortals seemed happy to spend their limited existences indulging in. Now it was something his body craved, this comical haberdashery of species he’d knit together for his brief visit to a world brimming with species on the cusp of sentience. His eyelids felt like they’d been cast in lead, which wasn’t far off from the truth. 
Blackened flecks of the granite prison Twilight made for him still clung to him like scabs. He could still feel the entropic fire as it boiled away the magic keeping him trapped in that forgotten corner of pristinely trimmed topiaries, peeling back the stone shell with the same violence that always preceded the death of an otherwise prospering world. The masters of this ball of dirt were no different than innumerable other intelligent species whose fear and mistrust drove them to collective suicide because they couldn’t bear witnessing some Other enjoy a sliver of time standing over them with the power to judge. 
And yet this world’s cataclysm was different for him because he knew he’d given them its seed. So when the fire came to disassemble the matrix of will pinning him to this one point in the universe, when the window opened and he’d seen the ungracious exit presented to him which he normally would never give a second thought, he hesitated. He hesitated long enough for the fire to reach inside of him and burn to ash the very core of power his people had lauded over less fortunate civilizations for time immemorial. 
He fell, his screams one among billions, and survived. Discord watched this mare drinking his water and knew she’d survived a cataclysm of her own. 
“Is there a chance,” he began, noting the cautious pivot of her ears, “that someone out there could be looking for you? Your family, or friends?”
Her hoof pulled the plastic cup a little closer, the sudden tension betraying the lie in her reply. “No.”
He hummed in response. Tired eyes looked over her bandages as a matter of course, noting the milky pink stains that bled through the cotton over her shoulder and ribs. Her burns were deepest there and would leave scars no amount of wasteland medicine could erase. He looked down at the back of his forearm, at the ugly whorls of pink flesh beneath the thinned golden fur and imagined hers would heal much in the same way.
“Did you know,” he asked, “that I was in Canterlot the day your princesses launched the missiles?”
The mare’s face wrinkled at his phrasing. He smiled without comment, knowing these ponies had grown a sort of folklore around referring to the collapse of their civilization as “the day the bombs fell.” It was a misnomer. The bombs were never dropped. They’d ridden skyward atop missiles stuffed to bursting with guidance hardware. Primitive by most technologically attuned species' standards, but one didn't always need a vibration dampening hammer to do the work of a stone.
She sipped her water and shook her head. “No.”
He was tempted to get up and fill a glass for himself, but he was too comfortable to bother. “They kept me in the Canterlot Gardens next to the castle, trapped inside a statue. I could see and hear but not much else. The bomb went off underneath the city and it threw everything into the air. I watched it happen from behind the hedge walls. Thousands of ponies thrown so high that I could see them suspended there, not knowing what was happening and yet knowing it was–”
“Stop,” the mare said. Her jaw was trembling, the muscles in her face drawn tight. “Just stop. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he was. He’d wanted to get a gauge of what she’d experienced and her reaction had come more abruptly than he expected. 
Sure, he was being deliberately insensitive but this mare had borne witness to the first balefire bomb to explode in two centuries and she was being cagey about the details. Maybe he was abusing his role as a host just a smidge but if Equestria was gearing up to wipe itself out a second time, Discord thought he deserved a forewarning this time around.
He let the silence settle between them before trying again. “Did you lose anyone?”
The question landed like a physical blow. For a split second the mare regarded his general direction with molten annoyance, but as the seconds ticked by and no rebuke came, she relaxed in her seat and nodded. 
He nodded too, even though she couldn’t see it. “So did I.”
A pause. Her voice was quiet. “Who?”
His thoughts didn’t have to drift to Fluttershy. She was already there, fully present in his mind even now. For a few short years she’d seen through his cryptic quips and bewildering performances and saw not some terrible deity, a timeless creature whose simple existence was a galaxy beside her mote of dust. No, Fluttershy had known him for what he truly was: lonely. Rather than throw it in his face or use its truth to prize some petty boon from him in exchange for silence, she’d sought to fill that void inside him with her company, unasked. 
He sank the dull claw of his thumb against the tip of his index finger until the indentation grew deep enough to hurt, and he stopped to rub the spot as he remembered how quickly he’d thrown that rare compassion away. One selfish mistake of allowing Tirek, an unremarkable centaur gifted with a mildly interesting parasitic ability to steal magic, to tempt him into sowing chaos without considering how quickly out of hand it would get. Because of him, Tirek grew into a threat warranting the intervention of the Elements of Harmony. 
He could still see the silent horror in her eyes when Twilight, exhausted and cornered, caved Tirek’s skull against a slab of bedrock like so much rotten fruit. Those eyes turned to look at him just seconds later, and he knew in that moment that she blamed him. 
The room shimmered. He cleared his throat, blinking away the dampness. “A dear friend. Somebody who cared very deeply for me, whom I loved and was too afraid to admit as much.”
The mare lowered her head, deep in thought as if considering whether to share her loss in kind. Discord watched as something knotted within her before finally relaxing. 
“Telling them doesn’t make it hurt less,” she said to the cup in her hoof. “I told Ginger I loved her. It wasn’t enough. There’s nothing I could have done that would have been enough.”
He waited to see if she would add anything else, and when she didn’t he leaned forward and pushed himself up to his feet. His curving back let out a few errant pops as he straightened and reached forward to pinch the rim of his guest’s cup, pulling it out of her grip.
Confused, she looked up in his general direction and frowned. “I wasn’t finished with that.”
He didn’t trust his voice to answer, so instead he crossed the den and walked into the kitchen in silence. Dirty bowls and cutting boards shared the length of the hardwood countertop with screw top jars filled with ground herbs, reagents, and a few simple spices. He set the plastic cup inside a dented strainer in the sink and fished two stout, heavy glasses from the cupboard. There was a tradition shared by species separated by both millenia and the expanding void between galaxies which was more reliable than senseless war or even finches. Discord was never much of a drinker, but neither had one of his oldest friends and the man still managed to retire in the comfort of his own vineyard. 
He drew a bottle from the back of the cupboard and unscrewed the cap. It had originally contained some awful flavor of mouthwash and now harbored a deep red liquid that came as close to Cabernet Sauvignon as this husk of a planet was ever going to manage. He poured a little into each glass, enough for tradition, dropped a straw in one and tromped back to the den with both in hand. 
The bottle landed on the coffee table with a satisfying thud. He tucked a glass into the nook of his guest’s foreleg and sank into the recliner with one of his own.
“What’s this?” the mare asked.
“Something better than well water,” he answered. Then he lifted his glass above the armrest of his chair. “To those who are gone and to those they left behind. We’re living proof that shattered hearts can still beat.”
He took a sip of too-sweet wine and looked toward the mare on his couch. She hadn’t touched her drink but she swallowed thickly, and Discord said nothing as he watched the bandages across her eyes grow damp.







Their conversation trickled to an uncomfortable end, one which neither of them quite knew how to tie off neatly. Her mouth dry from rough wine and avoiding the pitfalls of sharing too much, she’d allowed Discord to take her empty glass. She rolled onto her side, her aches and stings shifting into familiar posture as she listened to the sounds of dishes being cleaned a room away. When Discord was finished he pad-thumped back into her room and paused for what felt like a long time, apparently trying to discern whether she’d fallen asleep. Eventually he decided she must have. A blowing sound and the scent of candle smoke signaled his departure and the world slid into a deeper, comfortable silence.
Beneath her blindfold, heavy eyelids slid shut and sleep rushed in to steal the night away.







Her eyes cracked open to the impossible.
She was seated at a workbench in Mechanical. Her workbench. The one she’d spent the years of her apprenticeship behind alongside more skilled and seasoned pegasi than herself. A flush of nerves rose in her chest as she tried to remember what it was she was doing, knowing Sledge would be nearby to catch her looking stupid. On the scarred metal surface in front of her sat the remains of a bright red box, its panels clean and freshly painted, its screw heads stripped and unsalvageable. A welding machine, brand new from Fabrication. Her heart sped up. Why had she taken this apart? It was new! She had no business loosening so much as a locknut on this equipment and she could tell the pegasi at the stations around her knew it too. 
She searched her bench for a driver. Nothing. Where were her tools? Feathers weighted with lead hauled open drawers and found nothing except their silhouettes cut into the foam lining where they should have been. Sweat beaded on her neck. Another drawer greeted her with a loose mix of screws, their neatly organized boxes missing. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.
Tears welled in her eyes as familiar hoofsteps thudded up the rows behind her. She could feel her mom’s disappointed gaze from her workstation just three tables over, wondering how her own daughter could have made such a mess. A piece of new equipment, ruined. Tools missing. Hours of work for whichever apprentice got assigned to sort the disaster of mixed fittings once Sledge pulled her out of Mechanical and threw her at the hooves of some other department head with the patience to teach a fuckup like her. 
A voice rang inside Aurora’s head, dull like a cracked bell. She looked up, startled, and saw the hall of a dead Stable spread around her. Chairs empty, tool drawers hanging open like protruding teeth, the lights long since darkened by the cataclysm that swept its thousands of residents screaming into a coffin designed for them. The cavernous rows of Stable 1’s Mechanical level yawned around her, perfectly dark except for what Aurora recalled from her memories of being there herself.
This place, this silo filled to the top with nightmares, wrapped itself around her like a promise. This was what happened to the Stables that didn’t survive. She’d known this, and still she’d entrusted the lives of everyone she ever loved to the mercurial oath of a mass murderer.
The voice came again. Clearer now. Ahead of her, green light flickered through a cracked door. The generator room. She got up and began walking past the empty benches, weaving around tipped buckets of metal scrap and overturned chairs as she drew closer to the crackle of something burning. The door sat ajar, propped open by the handle of a screwdriver on the floor. Her feathers moved without permission, grasping the edge of the door and pulling. Half a ton of insulated steel hinged open without effort and Aurora felt her eyes widen at the pyre burning on the other side.
Her generator was ablaze, consumed by a column of balefire burning high enough to lap at the conduits and cooling lines mounted across the domed ceiling. A scream crawled up her throat as the heat sliced across her like a knife, blackening her coat and bubbling the exposed skin underneath. She wrenched herself backward and slammed the door shut, sending an explosion of sound across an amphitheater of forgotten workstations. Her wing clutched around something hard and when she looked down, the black screen of a sleek white Pip-Buck stared back up at her.
“That belonged to her.”
She startled and looked up toward the voice. Standing in front of her was… nothing. An absence that featured defined borders, curving lines which joined to create the vaguely equine shape of a mare who Aurora realized had been at the center of many of their early dawn conversations. A mare whose name she knew because she’d been there when Julip first suggested it.
“Tandy,” she whispered, the word a logjam in her mind that refused to let any other thoughts pass until she spoke it. As soon as she had, a clearer thought came to her. She glanced around at the dead Stable and realized she could see the inaccuracies in her own recollection. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”
Twin lights of swirling matter glowed where a pony’s eyes might be, and something like pained compassion shaped them. “Yes. She gave you a little of her magic at the end, and now you are here.”
The lights blinked on around them and the signs of a panicked evacuation returned to order. Workbenches became organized. Refuse in the aisles faded away. The nightmare changed to something benign, and Aurora relaxed at the sight of everything sliding back into its place. Only a temporary salve, but one she desperately needed right now.
She found herself sitting down with her back against the generator room’s wall, and she tried to imagine the comforting hum of a perfectly balanced machine emanating from the other side. “This is weird,” she said. “I wasn’t so sure you were real.”
Tandy continued to loom, and Aurora remembered a night when Ginger told her this creature had a bad habit of doing that. “I know. She feared you may come to think she was cognitively unsound.”
“I would never think that about her.” The words came with a heat that embarrassed her. She winced. “Sorry.”
Deep within that unsettling void, a few points of light glowed to life. Aurora thought they looked like stars and remembered how Ginger described her first encounters with Tandy like speaking to a window pointed up toward a cloudless night sky. Something warmed inside her at being able to see for herself what her partner struggled to put into words.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Aurora.”
The creature spoke with a strange familiarity that tugged at some buried part of her.
“You shoulder burdens which are not yours to bear. She would have wanted you to believe that you were blameless in her death.”
Her vision blurred. Somewhere else, a blind mare wept. 
“I am not,” she uttered miserably, like a foal shielding herself from the teasing of older fillies. “I knew what Primrose was capable of. I knew she helped end the world and I took that bomb from her anyway.”
“You did not know.” 
Tandy spoke with unwavering certainty, because she was a creature that could peer into the minds of her dreamers and sort through their memories as if she’d lived them herself. Aurora brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them with her wings, refusing to speak lest she say something she regretted. No, not regret. Something she couldn't take back. Something too honest. Something that might let her off this hook she’d hung herself on.
But Tandy already knew. She’d known the instant Aurora slipped into this place she only half-believed was real.
“You are the victim of lies woven by a tyrant who abused your desire to save your loved ones. She fed you the illusion of salvation and went through great pains to ensure you did not discover her true intentions.” Tandy sat, the motion meant to express empathy despite how unnatural it looked. “And you are not the only one she deceived.”
Aurora remembered something Ginger had mentioned and reached up to scrub at her eyes. “Primrose was keeping herself awake.”
Tandy nodded. “She became aware of the connection I felt toward Ginger and sought to shield herself from me.”
Her attention focused on a single word. She eyed Tandy. “What connection?”
“Friendship,” she answered, evidently unconcerned by the flicker of protective jealousy in Aurora’s tone. “Ginger gave me a nickname. She spoke to me about things other dreamers do not trust me to know, even though I already know. She was kind to me when she did not have a reason to be.”
Aurora’s throat thickened. “Yeah. She did that a lot.”
She didn’t know how long the silence between them lasted. Time felt less fixed here. When Tandy did eventually speak again, there was something lingering at the boundaries of her voice that warned of a deeper, more potent anger.
“It is in Cozy Glow’s nature to deceive. You and I… our Ginger… we are not her first victims, nor are we her most recent. She is aware the war the Enclave fights in her name will fail, and she has prepared contingencies for this which will end to her benefit. She will blame her enemies for the explosion above your home and her people will worship her for it.”
Aurora listened and nodded. With the exception of the strange name Tandy used, these were all things about Primrose she either suspected or knew. She was a mare who wore power like a cloak of armor, whose Enclave clung to ancient weapons capable of reducing their enemies to molecules should they ever come too close to victory. Sledge and Rainbow Dash had crossed that threshold. She shuddered. She could still see the layers of Foal Mountain peeling away under the balefire bomb’s fury.
“I just want… five minutes. Just five fucking minutes alone with her and a rusty fucking screwdriver.”
“No, you do not.”
She looked up at Tandy as if to scorn her, but something about the certainty in which she spoke made her hesitate. “You’re in my head, aren’t you.”
Tandy lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. A mimicking of how Ginger would coyly shrug away questions they both knew the answer to. “You want to hurt her.”
“Yeah,” she sighed, not liking how ugly it sounded coming from someone else. “I don’t want her to just walk away from what she did. What she’s done. Not just Ginger, or you and me. Do you understand? All of it. I want her to feel all the pain she’s ever caused… and more.”
“You want her to suffer.”
For a split second Aurora thought Tandy had repeated herself, but something about the way that last word rumbled from the creature’s throat spoke to something deeply unpleasant. She nodded, feeling the resolve hardening inside her. 
“I want to kill–”
“Suffer,” the creature interrupted, as if urging her to agree. “She deserves to suffer. You agree, yes?”
She nodded, unsure why the admission was beginning to feel so contractual. “I do.”
Tandy stood and bent toward her, leveling the tip of her horn toward her like a spear. A flicker of light and a quick jolt that felt like she’d picked up both leads of her multimeter with the same feather. She flinched, but not from the contact with Tandy, but from the sudden clarity of the dream surrounding them. Details that were muddy before were sharper. She could smell hot metal and grease in the air and swore she could make out bits of conversation drifting from the break room. Electric lights buzzed overhead and in one of the fixtures, a fluorescent tube flickered with uneven pink light as it verged on dying. It was as if a fog had been lifted from her brain and suddenly all of her senses were firing in synchrony.
“Woah,” she whispered. “What did you do?”
“I renewed your magic,” Tandy stated.
She sputtered. “Renewed? I never had magic to begin with. I’m not a unicorn.”
“You are a pegasi who articulates individual feathers as if they were made of tendon and muscle.” She spoke as if she were making a point.
Aurora frowned at her open wing. “That’s not magic, it’s biology.”
Tandy lifted a brow. Or, rather, a constellation of light bloomed above one eye and rose an inch. 
“Isn’t it?”
“Your magic ensures you will continue to dream. I would like to continue our discussion when you do. Primrose is not the untouchable god she has duped others into obeying. She can be made vulnerable.”
She stood, unable to mask the eagerness in her voice. “How?”
The smallest of smiles crept across Tandy’s lips.
“There are many ways, Aurora." Her gaze dipped toward the slim Pip-Buck still clutched between the pegasi’s feathers. "However, I know of one method with much more promise.”
> Chapter 43: Preparations
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 2nd, 1077

“Hello! Please display your identification clearly so–”
“Verify credentials and override.”
The elevator doors sprang apart. “Confirmed. Welcome, Minister.”
Rarity’s hooves thumped hollow against the carpeted square as she entered, turned, and promptly struck the DOOR CLOSE button with the folded corner of the Manehattan Times. Her steely blue eyes tracked a tour group whose unnaturally cheery guide had been leading them in her direction, undoubtedly hoping a chance run-in with a minister might earn him richer tips once the tour was over. Whatever his intentions, the guide caught her glare and hesitated long enough for the silver doors to glide shut between them.
Exhaling some of the tension she’d been holding in, she glanced down at the paper lofted by her magic. It crumpled a little in her grip. Page nine. Who the fuck’s idea was it to bury her headline in page nine?
Millie’s uncanny voice interrupted her thoughts. “Please select a destination.”
Her destination wasn’t available among the buttons arrayed next to the door. “Ministry of Technology, Warehouse Two.”
A pause. Then the elevator lurched into motion, and Rarity began taking her usual slow, steady breaths. She’d been a much younger mare back when she’d spent hours navigating the twisting, claustrophobic caves around Ponyville. Younger, she recalled, and not nearly as aware of her own mortality as she should have been. Secreting away to unmapped caverns just to avoid paying a jeweler for her gemstones had been, well, it had been a decision for sure. Time and experience had taught her less dangerous ways to widen her profit margins, and with age came the clarity of foresight. She hadn’t concerned herself with roof collapses or entrapment back then. These days, she was just happy she was still able to get onto this elevator without kicking someone in the process. 
It wasn’t claustrophobia that bothered her. No, nothing so irrational as that. It was the cold calculus of knowing she was trusting her survival to the Pillar’s builders. As the elevator dropped into the hollowed bedrock of Canterlot Mountain like a shiny bit flicked into an open well, she understood the risk she was taking with each descent. Compared to the billions of tons of rock stacking above her head she was barely a speck. Something could shift in a way the Pillar wasn’t designed to resist and she would die, just like that. Reduced to a gory smear between layers of regolith. 
She breathed out, slowly, feeling the soothing whisper of air leaving her lungs. It was hard to resign herself to something so vastly beyond her control, but she managed. Calm once again took hold. Keenly aware of the electronic eye monitoring her above her head, she regarded her reflection in the doors and spotted a wrinkle in the lapel of her vest. A blue mote pressed it flat, then moved to straighten the tiny blue diamond pinned to it. The floor pressed into her hooves as the elevator finally slowed, her understated outfit perfected well before the doors split apart.
Her ears slapped backward as the dulled noises of a busy warehouse flooded over her. Members of Pillar security, bedecked in bulky black armor and armed with identical long guns, stood at attention beyond the doors. She assumed they checked the camera feed from the elevator as soon as it began its descent from the topside lobby and had stashed away whatever paraphernalia Applejack allowed them to have down here. The security checkpoint, little more than a glorified shipping container with windows pointed out to the warehouse beyond, was choked with the odor of sweat and microwaved noodles. One of the security officers glanced guiltily toward the absolute biohazard that was his desk. Rarity pretended not to see it, mercifully passing between them without comment while Millie’s voice welcomed her from an overhead speaker. 
She pushed through the far door and the full cacophony of the warehouse assaulted her senses. Gone was the stink of cheap greasy food, replaced instead by the pall of engine exhaust and high, staccato tones of safety alarms that blared from the dozen or so heavy forklifts skittering up and down narrow aisles of industrial shelves. Bright yellow paint marking pedestrian paths hugged the aisles and walls, leaving the lion’s share of space for the dense tires that whizzed in and out of sight. Mixed in were the echoing shouts of warehouse staff, their words jumbling into nonsense by the time they reached Rarity’s ears. Somewhere nearby, she heard the harsh clack of a pallet jack being shoved across wooden boards. She should have asked one of the security officers for earplugs. This place wouldn’t let her leave without donating a splitting headache as thanks.
With a sigh, she found the nearest painted hoofpath and followed it into the shelves. Steel crates stamped with ominous designations filled each of them, the shelves themselves bearing magnetic placards to further indicate their contents. When a forklift’s horn announced its emergence from an aisle ahead of her, she stopped while the operator maneuvered the turn and read the black letters painted on the massive crate. 


P-65 Mk. II PWRARMOR
2 EA. BLK KETTLE CANNON
24.1x70mm 1000 RNDS
2 EA. M.A.S.T. PWRCELL
WT. 1850 LBS
DO NOT TIP


The operator thumped his hoof against the horn twice more, pivoted the lift ninety degrees, and rolled away in reverse while blissfully unaware of how close the crate had come to swatting Rarity across the nose. She followed its wake of diesel exhaust, mindful not to trust these ponies to see her should another come roaring toward her, and watched as it rolled to the far wall, turned, and disappeared from view toward the loading docks. It took her a while to fully retrace its path, dodging forklifts laden with crates or scurrying into aisles with empty forks in search of a load while drivers for the most part only gave her a cursory glance. Some recognized her but none slowed down to say hello. They had work to do and she was very clearly in their way. She did her best not to stray from the painted path and somehow managed to reach the loading docks without being squashed.
A voice boomed beyond the opaque plastic strips hanging across the wide threshold. “Pick it back up and shift it over, there’s room for one more!”
The forklift operator who almost clipped her was now juggling between steering wheel and control levers as he maneuvered his load onto the end of a waiting flatcar. A string of identical cars waited atop twin rails running the length of the loading dock from tunnels on either end. A team of ponies worked within the adjacent bays, stacking and binding smaller crates in dense packs that were hoisted up into identical flatcars by a swarm of more compact forklifts. Despite the outcome of the war growing more inevitable with each passing day, the tools of death would still find their way onto the rails and ultimately the ports which would ship them to captured Vhannan ports a world away. 
Supervising the logistical chaos stood Applejack, a mare whose office could easily be repurposed as a broom closet and who would never be the wiser. Going on five years now she had flatly refused to waste her time sitting behind a terminal. No one who knew her had been surprised by that, and Rarity suspected that Applejack got a deep sense of satisfaction from forcing her counterparts to come all the way down when they needed to chat. Buried safely within the mountain’s lower third, the Ministry of Technology’s warehouses and manufacturing facilities were so far below the offices of its sister ministries that they may as well be a separate world. It was arguably more secure than the rest of the Pillar, accessible only by an elevator controlled by Millie and Stable-Tec’s heavily guarded tungsten gates custom built to seal the rail tunnels leading in and out of the mountain’s foothills. 
Applejack spotted her from where she stood near the couplers of two train cars and, as usual, she didn’t smile. Instead she tapped a hoof against the headset clipped to her ear, then looked up to the forklift operator with the crated power armor and shouted, “Okay, load’s clear! Get me one more suit then go on break! We’ll have the train moved up by the time you’re back!”
Rarity kept to the yellow line running between loading bays, her newspaper held to her chest as she dubiously watched the forklift back away from the flatcar and continue that way all the way out to the shelves. Meanwhile, Applejack made no move to leave her post.
“Rarity,” she greeted over the din.
Her dismissive tone stung. “Have you read the papers yet?”
Applejack rolled her eyes without looking at Rarity or the newspaper she held out. Her attention was fully dedicated to the loaders around them. “Pretty sure that’s still your job. Why? Tabloids find something new to write about Dash and me?”
She flinched at the crash of a pallet being dropped onto one of the flatcars. It helped mask her discomfort to Applejack’s flippant disregard for the media spectacle she and Rainbow Dash were at risk of becoming.
“No, not quite.” The paper rustled as she opened it, then folded it backwards so the article that brought her here faced out. She held the paper aloft for Applejack to see. “There, at the very bottom. Look.”
Reluctantly, Applejack tore her eyes away and glanced at the page. She found the column and skimmed it for a few seconds before wrinkling her nose and shrugging. “What about it?”
“What about…?” Flustered, she flipped the paper around and read the first lines of the article aloud. “‘At 5:05am yesterday, the Equestrian government completed a successful balefire detonation at Blackstone Proving Grounds. Military leaders report that the intensity of the blast marks a significant milestone in the superweapon’s continued development, marking the first time in history a manufactured explosion has exceeded five thousand kilotons, or five megatons.’”
She looked up from the page, waiting for a reaction. Applejack just stared back, her attention already drifting back toward the workers on the loading floor. “Not sure what you’re wanting me to say, Rarity. Sounds like the test went fine.”
A scoff hissed out of her throat before she could stop it, earning her an impatient glare in the process. She bit the inside of her lip and scowled at the article wishing she didn’t have to constantly explain these things as if they were unsolvable puzzles. “Yes, the test went wonderfully. So much in fact that the Manehattan Times dumped it on page nine. Page nine! The largest explosion in the planet’s history and it’s buried behind…” She flipped back a page hard enough for the paper to snap the air. “‘...Earth Pony Aeronaut Wows Top Wonderbolt.’”
Applejack held up a hoof. “Hey! Birchbark! Use the straps correctly before you lose your teeth!”
A mare easily twice their size looked at Applejack with chagrin. She set down the crate suspended from her tensed jaw and quickly slung the yellow straps across her shoulder instead. Applejack returned to the conversation once she was satisfied. “So what, you don’t like being upstaged?”
She arched her brow. “This isn’t upstaging, it’s willful ignorance. It's a malaise. The public is getting bored!”
Applejack looked away and sighed. “More like folks are eager for things to get back to normal. We’ve got hooves on the ground in three major Vhannan cities and there’s a good chance they’re gonna surrender before we reach the capital. Probably none of this,” she gestured at the loaded train behind her, “is going to see combat, and that’s not exactly top secret. Call me crazy but if folks want to read a feel-good story about that earth pony’s flying machine, I say let ‘em.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And you’re happy with that? With years of Vhannan aggression petering out like some cheap wind up toy?”
“Can’t say I rightly care how it ends, so long as it does.”
The newspaper crackled in her grip. “It can’t end with a whimper, Applejack. History books will print our names on the same pages as this war and it will look ridiculous that we had a weapon capable of–”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” 
The words rolled out of Applejack like lumps of hot iron. For the first time since she arrived Rarity had her full, undivided attention and the heat that radiated from it was palpable. 
“If you’re gonna suggest we use one of my bombs…”
“They’re not your bombs.”
“...to end a war that’s already decided, I will lay your fancy white ass out on the floor right now in front of everyone.”
Fear bristled the hairs along Rarity’s back. Instinctively, her horn pulsed a little brighter.
“Try it,” Applejack warned. “But I don’t think things will go down the way you hope.”
A part of her wanted to prove her wrong, but she knew better than to let herself be goaded into a narrative she couldn’t control. After a tense moment Rarity composed herself, allowing her horn to dim as she feigned interest in the train stretched behind her. “I didn’t come here for that. I do, however, come to ask for a favor.”
Applejack didn’t budge. “You already know my answer.”
She sighed, regarding the mare with disappointment. “Fine. Call it a requisition. You’re going to move up the next balefire test for me, and with a change of venue. About seven hundred miles south-southwest of the Blackstone Proving Grounds.”
Applejack mapped the rough location in her head, then frowned. “If you think Chrysalis is going to let us use her hive as a test site, you’re out of your gourd.”
She tapped the edge of her hoof against the concrete, neither confirming or denying her assumption. “You said it yourself, the war is ending. Vhanna might capitulate tomorrow for all we know. But they’re not the only ones we’re at war with, are they?”
“We’re not at war with the changelings.” She dropped her voice to a harsh whisper, her Appaloosan twang growing thick with anger. “And I ain’t fixin’ to start one! Fer cryin’ out loud are you thick?”
She touched her chest with feigned shock. “I never said a word about starting a war. I simply think, reasonably so I may add, it would do some good to remind the so-called Queen Chrysalis what she faces should she attempt to interfere with Equestria any more than she already has.”
Applejack stared her down. “That was more than twenty years ago and she ain’t done a thing to us since.”
“Not for a lack of trying,” she countered, thinking of the steady trickle of reports of changeling sightings from all corners of Equestria. It baffled her that Applejack was actually standing in defense of the creature. “And for the record, this wouldn’t constitute an attack. We would be conducting a test on our own soil. Whether the explosion would be visible from the changeling hive or not wouldn’t be a factor, officially.”
“Officially.” Applejack spat the word. “I’m sure you’ll tell the press to print that somewhere between ‘the changeling menace’ and ‘anonymous sources say.’”
Rarity smiled. “You have to admit it would energize the public.”
“Out.”
Her smile faltered.
“Get the fuck out.” Applejack closed on her, planted a hoof against her chest and shoved her hard. Rarity sprawled backwards on the concrete as Applejack’s voice rose to a shout. “Get the fuck out of here!”
Several forklifts slowed to a halt and dozens of eyes turned toward her as if noticing the two ministry mares were there for the first time. Rarity scrambled to her hooves as Applejack approached again, this time backing away before she could reach her. “Applejack, this isn’t how you treat–”
“OUT!!”
She stopped talking and started walking, her heart beating in her throat as she struggled to maintain a veneer of pleasant neutrality over the utter humiliation burning her cheeks. She had come down here as a friend and was being thrown out like an unwelcome intruder. It roiled her. More than that, it infuriated her. There were ponies who deserved to be tossed out on their asses but not her. Not the Minister of Image, whose sole efforts kept the rabid press from making their work impossible and ensured military secrets stayed secret.
Her teeth ground hard enough to hurt. Had she bent a few rules to keep them safe? Absolutely, all of them necessary. She could bear a few blemishes on her record, but she couldn’t shake what happened just seconds ago. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. A friendship had just ended, but she couldn’t understand why. Over what? Putting the fear of Celestia in a few changelings? 
A harsh, electric beep forced her to stop. She composed herself as the laden forklift rolled out from the shelves and resumed her departure after it passed.
Applejack was wrong. This war was an opportunity to accomplish something good for Equestria. It birthed weapons capable of ending a threat with monstrous efficiency. Letting the world treat that accomplishment with less excitement than some toolshed tinkerer’s flying machine was unacceptable. Irresponsible, even. Vhanna may soon be waving the white flag after the punishment they continued to suffer from Equestrian soldiers too juiced up on stimpacks to know they’ve been shot, but Rarity refused to allow the world to quietly forget the weapon that first gave the zebras pause.
As she shoved her way past the security checkpoint and stepped back onto the empty elevator, she considered her options. Applejack would already be drafting a complaint against her proposal and she’d need to counter it. Of the six of them, she could think of only one mare with the clout to swing that argument in her favor.
The elevator chimed and its silver doors rattled shut.
“Please select a destination.”
Millie’s unblinking eye waited overhead. Rarity met its gaze with a dull smile. 
“The Ministry of Arcane Science, please.”







Magic flowed afresh from Twilight’s horn and into the wards that kept the passage below the grand library sealed. A subtle, persistent ache pulsed behind her eyes. The harbinger of a migraine already on its way. With the binding spell to Big Mac’s prison renewed she sighed and wished she could close her eyes and rest her forehead against the false bookcase without spearing one of the empty shelves. Migraines were easier to cope with before the princesses imbued her with a telephone pole for a horn, and the continued presence of the beast beneath her library had turned into one endless headache.
Turning to face what had up until a year ago been her pride and joy, she regarded the rows and rows of barren shelves with disdain. The puff of balefire that fueled Big Mac’s grotesque transformation still lingered beneath the library, weakening her magic after each visit. Of course, the contamination hadn’t stayed contained for very long. Radiation, they were calling it now, clung to everything it touched like a stain. Her researchers were still studying exactly how it worked, but the leading theory revolved around invisible primordial particles emitted by balefire itself. With each visit she had been spreading that contamination through the Pillar, and when her own people developed tools to detect it during balefire tests the reaction to finding it lingering in their labs had not been a positive one.
Radiation levels in the Pillar were minimal, certainly not even a health concern by all estimates, but Twilight’s continued dips into the hot spot beneath the library had driven the numbers to several times higher than background. By the time Twilight was made aware a search for the source was underway there had been no fewer than a dozen of her own researchers waving clunky black boxes around her books. Her harried appearance among them had startled several from their readouts and handed her the opportunity to declare her own library the source of the contamination. The move had been a risk, but the gamble to throw herself under a carriage to avoid the bus had paid off. She blamed herself for breaking protocol and teleporting directly to the Pillar after the last test explosion she’d attended for the purpose of resuming a thread of research she’d been forced to pause. Her reputation for being a bookish recluse did the rest. 
The invaluable tomes of the grand library were promptly stacked into sealed containers and wheeled away to be digitized, and Twilight had been given a formal reprimand signed by Princess Luna. A slap on the hoof, really, but it annoyed her to see Luna’s royal seal at the bottom of the letter instead of Celestia’s. Her last real interaction with the elder princess had been unpleasant, and now it seemed like she was deliberately avoiding her.
The pressure behind her eyes bloomed again and she grimaced. She left the warded passageway behind, reassured that Big Mac’s bestial groaning would be stifled by the carcass she’d dragged in reach of his grasping claws. Her magic sifted through the carpet behind her and scoured away the dark stains left by her hooves. She cleaned the last of the stinking muck off her soles as she pulled a chair out from one of the tables at the library’s center where a copy of Starswirl’s personal journal sat open on the otherwise vacant surface. 
She sat, sighing as she settled into her creaking seat, and rested her cheek against a freshly clean hoof. The journal was a subpar reproduction of the one she’d wrested the first flicker of balefire from. As with all the other copies this one omitted that spell. She flipped through the too-new pages anyway, their crisp edges lacking the fragility of the one shredded during Big Mac’s change. Still, there were variations here that stood out from other copies. A spell or two had been added, likely parsed from some unrelated book to make this print unique. A chapter containing alleged testimonials about Starswirl was added, as well as a lengthy bio of the book’s editor that felt deeply self-serving. She slouched over the book and skimmed the page headers for anything relating to fire or reversals she might have missed, but nothing stood out. 
Eventually she stopped turning pages and just stared past the words. A whole year of digging for something that could undo what she’d done to Big Mac and her shovel just kept coming up empty. By now she was dangerously close to accepting Discord’s warnings as truth. That balefire wasn’t just some clever bit of magical engineering and truly the cannibal twin of magic itself. 
She closed the book and rubbed her temple. At this point Big Mac’s biology resembled a fruit smoothie, say nothing for his mind. If he was still in there somewhere she couldn’t see it. All she saw was a twisted, suffering animal that when it wasn’t clawing butchered carcasses away from her would stare up at her with the open malice of a predator whose prey it couldn’t reach. Someday, and she suspected that day was coming soon, she would have no other choice than to put him out of his misery.
A click from the library’s arched wooden doors sent those darker thoughts scurrying to the back of Twilight’s mind. A frown pinched her face at the sight of the brass handles tilting and the beginnings of a firm chastising formed on her lips as the doors parted. The grand library was restricted to everyone, and while her researchers might question why that didn’t seem to apply to her she felt confident they would value their careers enough not to ask it aloud.
She rose from her chair, ready to intercept the trespasser, only for the righteous lecture to wither at the sight of Rarity stepping inside. The smaller mare spotted her just as quickly and was smiling as the doors swung shut behind her. 
“Good gracious, Twilight,” she tittered, her eyes panning the vacant bookshelves before returning back to her, “you look terrible. Have you really not moved past the empty nest syndrome by now?”
Rarity’s voice echoed off the empty walls better than if they were inside Celestia’s throne room. Twilight winced at the unwelcome sound and held a feather up to her lips, beckoning quiet. “I have a migraine. It’s quiet here.” She eyeballed Rarity as the unicorn descended carpeted steps. “Or it was.”
Rarity maintained a smile as she strolled up to the table, a carefully manicured hoof coming to rest atop the backrest of the chair beside her. To her credit she did try to lower her voice, but the rasping quality of her whisper wasn’t an improvement. “Then I’ll try to be brief. I need a favor. Or, rather, my ministry does. It has to do with the next balefire test.”
Twilight rolled her face along her hoof to regard her friend. “The test was yesterday.”
Patient as ever, Rarity persisted. “Yes, well, that is true but I’m referring to the one scheduled for next month. I’d like your help getting it moved up just a skosh and possibly relocated further east.”
“Rarity, I’ve got a migraine not brain damage.” She lifted a wing, rolling a feather in the air. “Skip the lead-in and tell me what you want.”
Rarity pursed her lips, shrugged, then pulled the chair out and sat down. “I want you to help me move the test site out of Blackstone and onto a bit of Equestrian soil near the changeling hive. Within the week, ideally.”
“That’s a big ask,” she murmured. “Dangerous, too. Did Chrysalis publish something you didn’t like or is the bug up your butt more of the figurative variety?”
As expected, Rarity’s smile softened to something more genuine. She wasn’t getting an immediate no, which was always a guarantee to lighten her mood, and ever since donning her mantle as head of Equestria’s unblinking eye it was scarce for anyone to give her a ribbing. 
“The latter, actually,” she admitted. “I’m concerned Vhanna’s impending surrender will send the wrong message to our neighbors. Namely that we can be relied upon not to deploy balefire during war. For the moment, Equestria is an unparalleled military power but I worry that won’t last forever.”
Twilight nodded, having privately worried about the problem of containing Equestria’s secrets herself. It wasn’t inconceivable to bump into a unicorn or two in Vhanna or Griffinstone, say nothing for Equestria’s cousins in the Crystal Empire. When, not if, balefire technology crossed their borders there would surely be talented magic users on the other side waiting to reverse engineer it. That fear was a large driver behind the push to keep sinking missile silos into Equestrian soil and arm them with warheads capable of increasing magnitudes of destruction. The threat of those balefire-tipped missiles would be a deterrent by dint of their very existence, and one of Rarity’s many hats required her to ensure their enemies and allies were made keenly aware of that arsenal’s growth. 
Which was why Rarity was so worried. If Equestria gave its neighbors the impression it would hesitate to use balefire in its defense, then all they succeeded in doing was turning their own sovereign soil into the world’s most expensive minefield.
“I’m going to assume you’ve already begun drafting official apologies to Queen Chrysalis if radiation happens to drift toward her hive?”
Rarity smirked. “Naturally I don’t expect that to happen or I wouldn’t have suggested the change in venue. But, yes, I have some of my people working on that.”
Seeing some fallout flutter into that wasteland of hers would absolutely scratch an itch more than a few citizens have been waiting decades to scratch. The failed changeling attack on Canterlot and subsequent non-punishment had left a lot of people feeling cheated, but it had been Celestia’s prerogative at the time not to pursue open conflict against Chrysalis. Too many new threats had been cropping up and Equestria’s military at the time amounted to a few hundred Royal Guard and a clubhouse of pegasi with a spandex kink. 
Twilight rolled the idea around in her head, happy to have something up there that wasn’t painful to focus on. “No bullshit, Rarity. Are you hoping this turns into another war?”
Her friend shook her head with no hint of duplicity. “No, certainly not. And even if it did, it wouldn’t be much of one. We would squash them, no pun intended, and while I’d personally love to see those bugs get their comeuppance I don’t believe our allies in Griffinstone would care to see us turn into a global antagonist.”
“I don’t think they would either,” Twilight agreed. “At the very least it’ll look like we’re provoking them.”
“I prefer ‘deterring’ better than ‘provoking.’ We already know she’s been sending her drones out to border towns to feed, and then there was that incident in Appaloosa with that poor colt.”
Twilight knew the one, and she shuddered to think what it had felt like for those parents to bury their son one day and wake up to an inexperienced drone sleeping in his bed the next. Had it happened after the ministries were formed, the story would have been quietly packed away. Instead it spread like a sickness until anyone who had ever picked up a newspaper knew about the tragedy. It had also been one of the few times Queen Chrysalis ever addressed the actions of one of her drones, floating the idea that it was possible not all of her children uniformly obeyed the will of the hive.
That suggestion sank like a lead weight, and Chrysalis wasted no time in retreating to the buzzing depths of her home.
Despite all this, Twilight couldn’t shake some reservations of her own. “Do we have any facilities near that stretch of the border large enough to house personnel and equipment?”
Rarity smiled. “Two, actually, the closest and best suited being the Hackamore Munitions Factory.”
“You’d have to ask Applejack about that one,” she said.
Her friend’s smile tightened slightly. “I tried and she was strongly opposed.”
“To using her factory?”
“To all of it,” Rarity admitted. “Frankly I think Rainbow Dash has rubbed off on her.”
She snorted, earning a cocked brow from Rarity. 
“Yes, well, that too I suppose. But I do worry about Applejack’s disposition as of late. It’s as if she expects the ministries to be mothballed once the war is over.” She shook her head, clearly flustered. “Maybe Dash can talk some sense into her, I don’t know.”
Twilight shook her head, sparking another bloom of pain inside her skull. “No, don’t do that. Rainbow’s almost as checked out as Pinkie, and besides, you said there was a second option for the test. Let’s hear it.”
“It’s one of yours, technically.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Uh huh. On paper and not much else, I’m guessing.”
Rarity let out a breath and composed herself. “Only if you have access to the papers, which I guarantee you don’t.”
It wasn’t a subtle clue. Twilight hummed understanding. “One of your black sites.”
“One of Equestria’s black sites,” she corrected, “yes. We built it after acquiring the deed of a paper mill on Mariposa Lake. The mill itself was closed down for obvious security reasons, so there’s plenty of real estate available for a staging area above ground without disturbing the operations of the facility below.”
“Facility.” Twilight couldn’t help but ask. “Not a prison?”
Rarity glanced away, her smile becoming more businesslike. “They both mean the same thing in this context. Prisoners are brought in through a separate entrance. We don’t see them, they don’t see us. Location aside, the important thing is that the changelings see the bomb with their own eyes. Chrysalis doesn’t get newspapers delivered to her doorstep and if they don’t see the blast they won’t care. I need this location.”
“And the timeframe? Is that critical?”
She nodded. “Applejack’s already liable to loosen my teeth when she hears my people came down and took one of her balefire talismans. Imagine what she’ll do if I try during peacetime.”
Fair point. And in all fairness, Twilight wasn’t too sure she’d be this open to the idea of an accelerated test schedule if they weren’t already at war. “Unofficially, I get what you’re trying to do, but officially I’m going to need more to sign off on than ‘I want to scare the shit out of Chrysalis.’”
Rarity shrugged. “Call it a research project, then.”
She rolled her eyes. “Gee whiz, Rarity, that solves everything. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Oh, don’t be shitty. I’m sure one of your researchers would love to have their pet project vaporized so they can study the ash.”
“Sure, and I’ll spend the next week of my life drowning in proposals.”
“First time I’ve known you to be scared of paperwork.” Rarity drew slow circles in the dust on the table’s glossy finish. “What about Maiden Pharma?”
Inwardly, she groaned. “What about them?”
She watched Rarity drag her foreleg across the dust, clearing away the doodles. “For starters, the billion-bit miracle drug you sold them turned a battalion of Equestria’s finest into shambling monsters two months ago. I imagine they might have some interest in deducing whether Stimpacks were to blame or our balefire.”
Her heart skipped, beating faster as she thought about the shambling monster feasting below their hooves. She knew the combination of the two had triggered the rampant mutations, not some independent defect. 
And she nearly said as much, but something stopped her. She frowned thoughtfully at the patch of wood Rarity had wiped clean and wondered if this might be an opportunity for her to clear away a problem of her own.
“Well,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “if we went that route, I’d need a supply of first generation Stimpacks.”
Rarity shot her a curious look. She could smell an ulterior motive like a shark to blood. “Yes, and it’s such a shame we don’t have a current list of hospitals who have found excuses not to ship out their unused stock. Whatever will we do?”
She ignored the sarcasm. Rarity was right. Less than half of Equestria’s hospitals had complied with Celestia’s edict for all doses to be destroyed, so there was still a ready supply. That left a different problem. “We’d need volunteers as test subjects. That could take months to organize, and Maiden’s lawyers will shit bricks if they get wind of it.”
“Twilight, I’m not suggesting we actually replicate what took place last–”
She silenced her with a feather. “No, this is a good idea. We could set up a blind experiment on Maiden’s behalf. One group takes a Stimpack, the other gets a placebo, both get exposed to the radiation and we observe the results. It makes sense.”
Rarity straightened uncomfortably. “No one would volunteer for that, and like you said, there’s the matter of time.”
The gears were spinning fast, her migraine quelled by the rush of adrenaline. “We don’t need volunteers. That black site of yours… Mariposa. The prisoners there don’t technically even exist anymore. We could use them. The bad ones.”
“The bad ones,” Rarity parroted dubiously. 
It could work. She’d only have a week to figure out a way to get Big Mac to the test site without anyone knowing, but it was possible. Timed appropriately, Big Mac would blend in with the rest of the creatures created by the blast. He’d either be captured or, at the very least, he’d be free for a little while before the end. In her heart she knew she’d never undo what she’d done.
This was better. Yes, she decided. It was the best option for him.
She met Rarity’s gaze. “Set it up. I’ll get you the approvals you need.”
Her friend hesitated, then stood. “I… suppose I’ll go and make some calls. I hope your migraine gets better.”
Twilight pushed aside Starswirl’s journal and smiled. “It’s gone.”


	




The inside of the Chapel of the Two Sisters was standing room only.
High above the rows and rows of sagging pews, mounted under the dull colors streaming through the stained glass medallion depicting Princesses Celestia and Luna in an embrace commonly believed to be their final moments before their ascension, hummed the brass notes of the cathedral organ. Below that it seemed all of New Canterlot was in attendance, their hushed voices blending into a hivelike drone of collective worry. Calamity had struck Stable 10. Balefire, a weapon of the old world, had been unleashed. No one knew the fate of those pureblooded pegasi, whether they’d survived or if the fire had purged all life from inside. Not even Primrose. 
She sat alone in the pew directly across from the pulpit, behind which Reverend Father Belfry stood adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles. On a normal day he would have begun the service by first lighting the ivory and onyx candles behind their respective empty thrones, whispered a short prayer for his flock’s perseverance against adversity, then opened the gilded book set atop the pulpit to the page of the day and begun the service with a story from the old world. However this wasn’t a normal day and the congregation that crowded the aisles and choked the doors could sense it. 
Belfry sniffed once, solemnly dragged a feather across the open book before him, and looked up over his glasses at the gathered crowd. “This is quite the turnout.”
Nervous chuckles flowed down the pews. Primrose smiled, her eyes flicking toward the armed Black Wing soldiers dotted along her periphery view. Their gaze swept the congregation like spotlights, and none of them showed much interest in what the reverend father had to say. 
“I would normally start the hour with a reading from The Pact,” he said, his voice naturally amplified by the stone architecture around them, “but today we will begin with an announcement from the mare to whom the goddesses entrusted their everlasting life, your minister, Primrose. Minister?”
The pew emitted a short squeak as she stood. Somewhere among the silent hundreds, someone giggled. She smiled as she climbed the two short steps of the sanctuary platform, pausing briefly to face the vacant thrones and bow. She had written these ceremonies, the myths, and eventually The Pact itself several lifetimes ago. In those early years after the chapel’s construction was finished, she’d felt like a clown standing here bowing to furniture owned by a couple dead alicorns. Now it was another habit of life, like brushing her teeth or showering. A pegasus who was invited to the pulpit bowed in deference to a higher power, end of story. Not doing it, well, it simply wasn’t done.
Her duty fulfilled, she turned to take the pulpit. “Thank you, reverend father.” 
He stepped aside with a beatific smile, allowing her to step into a space rarely occupied by anyone but himself and his many predecessors. A sturdy wooden stool waited for her under the pulpit’s bottom shelf. She slid it out, allowing the polite sound of chuckles as the congregations watched her step up into view.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” they echoed back.
She closed the open pages of The Pact and slid the book aside, waiting for the tide of voices to subside. “I’m sure that by now all of you have heard the rumor that one week ago, a balefire bomb was detonated outside of a Stable whose purpose was to house the pureblood descendents of Equestria’s strongest pegasi. Unfortunately, the rumor is true.”
Gasps and muffled cries rolled toward the chapel’s rear and rebounded back. Primrose looked down for a beat, her ears tucked back as she feigned grief and shame. Half a minute passed before she took a long, steadying breath and lifted a wing for silence. The faces that looked up from the pews were openly distraught, many of them covering their mouths to muffle quiet sobs.
“For the last several days,” she began, then stopped as a mare near the back row stood from her pew, her daffodil yellow church dress chasing her down the central aisle as she sobbed her way into the crowded vestibule and the doors leading outside. Primrose ticked off a few seconds before starting again, her voice subdued. “For the last several days, your Enclave has been conducting an investigation to uncover exactly how this abhorrent attack took place and who was behind it.”
“It was the Steel Rangers!” someone belted.
Several others quickly chimed in, their rough voices melting together as they shouted in agreement. Primrose had to bite her tongue so as not to smile. They were even more eager to swallow the lie than she could have hoped.
She lifted a feather again and waited for calm. “We don’t know that yet. Not for certain. But… upon reviewing footage captured by spritebots in the area at the time of the explosion, evidence of a covert Ranger operation in the vicinity of Junction City was uncovered.”
A roar of outrage erupted from the pews. Profanities that would normally result in the utterer being hoisted by their mane and tail and deposited onto the cobbles outside bounced freely between the chapel walls. Primrose glanced at where Belfry stood, his expression mollified at his congregation’s conversion into a furious mob, and she winced with an apology that almost felt sincere. 
Outrage quickly boiled over into open fear as those nearest the front began shouting directly at her.
“How did they get the bomb?”
“Who’s defending New Canterlot?”
“My daughter was on the front lines! Is she alive?!”
The Black Wing soldiers strung along either side of the chapel watched the turmoil expressionlessly, though a few of them had let their wings drift forward toward their rifles. Mongrels, she thought. She struck the pulpit’s hardwood surface with the flat of her hoof, startling the congregation into an uneasy silence.
“New Canterlot is safe,” she assured them, “and we will remain so as long as its citizens remain strong. The Enclave will protect you, all of you, just as it has protected you for two centuries.”
She paused, inviting the first frustrated voice to pipe back up. It didn’t take long.
A young stallion barely into his twenties half-stood from his seat. “How do we know they don’t have another bomb?”
The worried murmurs were back. The Rangers never had any balefire bombs to begin with, of course. She and Spitfire had gone through pains to ensure the talisman manufacturing plants tasked with fabricating the technology that would end civilization weren’t left standing for someone else to stumble across before their young Enclave could truly step out and establish a foothold in the ruins. Just as they had in those final hours of the great war, the balefire talisman was a weapon wielded by one side and one side only. The Steel Rangers had as much access as Vhanna so long ago. 
The faintest of smirks touched Primrose’s lips as she recalled her recent stroll through the depot beneath the ruins of Canterlot Mountain, where she’d personally selected the last of so very few destructive gemstones from their home among the dark and forgotten shelves.
“They don’t,” she said flatly. “I’m certain of it. As grim as it is for me to say, the Steel Rangers–”
“I heard that it detonated in the sky.”
Her eyes flashed over the pews in search of whoever had spoken, but the echoes caused too many others to look around at their neighbors for her to pick out its source. Heat crawled up the nape of her neck as she worked to conceal her anger. “There is no–”
“That’s why none of the radios work anymore,” someone else agreed. 
“Traders are saying it was like seeing a second sun!”
Suddenly the chapel was swarming with competing voices, some arguing that they knew someone who heard something about seeing the fireball in the clouds while others tried to shout them down. Her back itched. Her wings felt too heavy. How the fuck had anyone close enough to see the explosion gotten all the way to New Canterlot in so little time? Why hadn’t she anticipated that possibility?
The noise made it hard to think. She needed sleep. More than that, she needed to get this under control before they remembered she was the one with all the answers. 
“Rumors,” she bellowed, her voice carrying above the din, “are exactly what the Rangers want from us!”
Heads turned toward her, but not all of them regarded her with the rapt silence they had before. There was something snaking its way through the congregation that hadn’t been there before. Something as deadly as any poison.
“Their bomb,” she shouted, her voice loud enough to be heard by the crowd packed near the doors, “was meant to make us afraid! To shake our faith! I ask you to look at yourselves now and decide whether they succeeded or failed.”
She snapped a feather toward the thrones behind her. “Are these just empty chairs? Do they not await the goddesses’ return as we do?”
A low murmur of no rippled through the congregation.
She lifted a wing to the ceiling. “Do these walls your ancestors built from the coals of armageddon only serve to shield us from the wind?”
Firmer now. “No.”
They were hers again, gathering momentum. She pushed again. “Do the Steel Rangers sleep under our roofs, plant in our fields, or live in the protective shade of our sacred mountain?”
“No!” they chanted, and she pounded the pulpit to echo their sentiment.
“No they do not. They cannot and they never will. The Rangers had a chance to bring their weapon here, into the very heart of Equestria, and instead they chose to use it to destroy an innocent Stable which they coveted and we sought to protect.”
Angry murmurs softened, making way for the grief that so briefly overtook the chapel. 
“They took advantage of the goddesses’ absence and punished the only pegasi certain to be outside their reach. They inflicted balefire on those who knew nothing of our war because the Rangers wanted us to know they were angry.” She grit her teeth, pretending to briefly lose her composure. It worked. A few fresh sniffles joined the whispered profanities. “They were furious that we, the guardians of Old Equestria, dared protect the innocent from their technological lust. So they killed that Stable because it was the only way they could think to hurt us. Because they knew the wrath of the goddesses would be waiting if they tried to bring that tainted weapon here.”
Stamped applause rumbled from the pews. A few pegasi whooped. Several more, Primrose saw, sat very still. They watched her as impassively as they had since she took the pulpit. 
A flash of anger rose in her as she recalled expelling the vast majority of Clover’s security staff shortly after his escape, and the fact that several members of that team had been adept at identifying and tracking suspected sources of dissent. Now all she had was a stand-in director who couldn’t find his own asshole with a mirror, and the all but feral remnants of the Black Wing. These pegasi and unicorns staring her down were going to walk out without so much as a stern look, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“The Steel Rangers have revealed to the world what we already knew they were,” she said, feeling the momentum of her speech slipping. “Monsters. Degenerates. The thrones behind me sit empty because creatures like them have made this world unworthy of their light, and now it’s only a matter of time before common wastelanders look up and realize who their oppressors are. Soon the very earth beneath the Steel Rangers’ hooves will slip, and there will be no one left to stop their fall.”
Again the applause came, vibrating the floor with hearty approval, only it wasn’t the unified cacophony she’d come to expect. A frown touched her lip as she saw too many congregants, too many pegasi moving their hooves with placid effort or not at all. Something deep within her flinched. The ghost of Clover and the truth he’d fled with haunted the back of her mind, and she began to see it. 
Doubt. 
As Primrose stood there at the helm of this complex machine she built, she felt the vibrations. She heard the groan of something bend out of alignment and she saw, as her subjects stood from her pews and cheered for more lies, the cracks beginning to open.







Hooves shuffled in nervously from the corridor, the low murmurs that had run ahead of these pegasi falling silent as they approached the door. Behind a podium too narrow to completely obscure the energetic bounce of her hind leg, Primrose observed these six individuals with rising impatience. They meandered toward empty chairs, metal feet skittering back as they took their seats behind darkened terminals at a table they all knew were reserved for her generals, tacticians, and makers of war. These pegasi knew that world through their proximity to those who lived it and nothing more. Bespectacled, paunched bellies, some of them gray-maned and closer to their twilight years than middle-age, these pegasi weren’t soldiers. They were the Enclave’s keepers of knowledge. 
Primrose nodded to an armed stallion posted outside the war room. He leaned toward the wall to swipe his laminate, and the blast proof door hissed down with a heavy thump. One of the senior archivists jumped at the sound, his eyes bulging with barely contained fear as thoughts doubtlessly whirled around the many reasons he and his colleagues had been dragged from their stuffy warrens to be seated here before their ruler.
Old habit tempted her to let the silence stretch, but she hadn’t summoned them to make them sweat and she didn’t have the patience for it anyway. Seven days. That’s how long she’d gone without sleep now. One full week since she was jettisoned from that dream, screaming and pissing from the utter certainty that she had been fractions of a moment away from being obliterated. Her body craved sleep worse than the chem fiends who begged for caps on the outskirts of the city craved their next hit. A week in and she could already feel the caffeine pills losing their punch. She’d begun double-dosing, had briefly considered tripling were it not for the thunder of her own pulse between her ears. She didn’t want to think about how bad the come-down was going to be.
The tip of her hind hoof was tap-tappity-tapping again. She dropped it flat against the floor, startling her small audience to attention.
“Good morning,” she started, and tried not to grit her teeth when they returned her greeting as if she were still behind Belfry’s pulpit. “Since we don’t have the luxury of time, I’ll jump right into why you’re here. The dream realm of Princess Luna is under siege.”
Backs straightened, and confusion shifted toward concern. She hadn’t brought enough of them to stir up a proper buzzing murmur, making her words land like bits thrown into an empty well. From the head of the conference table, she turned to level a feather toward the screens in front of them while using another to tap a key below her own. The fuzzy photograph of an old book, its deeply foxed pages bent open to an entry dominated by a smudged charcoal sketch on its upper right page. The smoky silhouette of an alicorn stared up from the page.
“Do any of you recognize this creature?”
The eldest of the group, Head Archivist Nock Fletcher, nodded with a face puckered with consternation. “The Princess’s Tantabus.”
A few others murmured agreement, albeit with a skeptic’s tone. Knowledge of it had been jealously guarded by Luna, herself. One could spend several lifetimes scouring the old tomes for mentions of it and never find one because the creature was, if set against its creator’s own existence, barely an infant. It had been borne from a deep, instinctual need to suffer punishment for crimes that this new world seemed unwilling or incapable of inflicting. The Tantabus had served, then, to dredge through Luna’s darkest regrets in search of kindling for when she finally lay down to sleep. Only one book, a singularly rare arrangement of pages, mentioned that creature at all. A diary quilled by the late younger princess herself.
And that was the crux of Primrose’s problem.
“The Tantabus is alive and well within the Endless Dream.” She watched their faces for any signs of doubt as she shared her slightly bent truths. “Until now, it has kept mostly to itself. For the few of us who still dream, it sometimes crafts new fictions within which it believes we will enjoy ourselves. In Princess Luna’s absence it has come to believe its duty is to rule her realm as its own.”
One of the archivists made a noise of disgust. Four others stared at Primrose, their eyes wide with growing dread. The sixth, the Head Archivist, wrinkled his nose without looking up from his screen. 
She observed him as she continued speaking. “For the past two centuries I believed it was safer not to interfere with the Tantabus or its delusions, and this has been true so far. Unfortunately, very recently, the situation changed. It grew bored. More likely it has been growing more and more so over the decades. A dwindling pool of dreamers to play with is probably the cause. The Tantabus, by dint of its original purpose, has unchallenged access to the memories of those it encounters. This includes myself.”
The quiet within the war room turned deathly as understanding dawned on the elderly pegasi. Finally, Head Archivist Fletcher looked up from the diary entry to regard Primrose with raised brows, but in that surprised expression were deeper undercurrents of disapproval. He was angry, not at the situation she described but because he was only learning about it now. Fletcher was a stallion who didn’t just want to be in the know. He expected information to be given to him, freely and immediately. Now he was turning that sense of self-righteous obligation at her like a pointed feather, and her hackles jumped in response.
“Until recently, I believed the last balefire weapons to have been lost at the conclusion of the great war,” she continued, returning Fletcher’s steady gaze with her own, “but the tragedy at Stable 10 makes it clear I was wrong. Worse than that, it tells me the Tantabus is willing to use what I know for its own entertainment. I believe it coaxed a member of the Steel Rangers to smuggle one of those bombs to Stable 10 and set it off, if only to observe my own reaction once I fell asleep. To that end–”
“Minister, please tell me if I’m speaking out of turn,” Fletcher interrupted, his head slightly bowed in mild deference. She turned toward the rattle of dry vocal chords wearing a brittle mask of patience. “But are you suggesting the Steel Rangers aren’t responsible for the bombing?”
“No. I’m not suggesting that.” She narrowed her gaze at him, then looked away, shaking her head. “Whoever among them committed this atrocity, they were free to reconsider from the first step to the last. They succumbed to temptation, but the Rangers will be held to account. Your purpose here isn’t to absolve them of their crimes, Archivist Fletcher.”
His eye twitched at the incomplete use of his honorific.
“All of you are here,” she continued, sweeping a wing across the table, “to find a way to prevent this from happening again. Any projects or tasks you were working on up to this morning are postponed, and all Archive staff aside from yourselves have been placed on earned leave.”
Fletcher blanched. “What about our research?”
“Postponed indefinitely,” she intoned. She lifted a hoof and tapped it against her terminal’s screen with a firmness that made the image stutter. “Your sole duty to the Enclave from this point forward is to find some way to contain or kill this creature. All of you are cleared for full access to both digital and physical collections.”
“B-but only I am allowed–”
She stopped him with a look. “Any attempt to obstruct this endeavor will be treated as treason. Am I understood?”
“Yes, minister,” they chimed.
“Good,” she said, the exhaustion creeping around her brain like an invisible predator. “I want daily progress reports in my inbox by end of day. Get to it.”
Chairs scraped again as they rose to leave. She didn’t watch them go. Instead her attention was on her Pip-Buck, the first lines of a separate order already pecked in an outgoing letter to her new security director. Head Archivist Fletcher hadn’t spoken much in their brief meeting and yet he’d said plenty. A team would intercept him on the way down to the Archives. His tenure there had run its course.
A tap, and the message was sent. Her gaze returned to Luna’s smudged sketch of the creature she’d created, never knowing it could cause so much trouble so long after her death. The still image of the Tantabus stared up at her until, finally, Primrose reached forward and turned off the screen.







A hoof nudged against her shoulder. “You quittin’ on me already, girl?”
Fiona shot a hand down toward the sidewalk, her exhausted brain momentarily convinced she’d been falling at some indeterminable velocity. Her palm met the charred concrete with a soft pat, and she blinked several times before she was entirely sure where she’d landed. 
Dodge was standing more or less level with her, something he could only manage with her sitting with her back to the makeshift hospital like she was right now. She’d gone out for a quick break, she remembered. She brought two fingers up to rub her eyelids and stopped only when she saw the dirty clots of soot now clumped under her talons. The stallion smiled sympathetically, but there was a touch of impatience there in the creases of his eyes. He was just as exhausted as she was. Probably more than her, actually, since three of his legs and most of his midsection were a patchwork of thickly wrapped gauze. She didn’t think he could do this work while simultaneously recovering from so many burns. If she was being honest with herself, coming to Junction City might not have been the most suitable career change she could have chosen.
“Sorry,” she groaned, forcing aching muscles into painful locomotion as she pushed herself up from the sidewalk. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
Dodge made room for her to stand. He had to. She was twice the size of anyone else here, and he didn’t exactly carry the natural heft of an earth pony. He was a willowy little guy who looked like he’d spent most his life skipping more meals than he ate. A faded scar of pink flesh that had nothing to do with the bomb was still visible beneath a mottled roan coat, a mark worn by those whose value had for a time been measured in terms of age, physicality, sex, and she had to assume Dodge’s case, virility. It’d been some time since he’d last worn a slaver’s collar, but Fiona couldn’t stop herself from trying to assemble his life story from a glance. 
“You’d sleep better if you ever went to bed,” he commented, gesturing with a bandaged leg toward the empty door a few concrete slabs from where she’d sat down. She tipped her head one way, then the other, relieving her stiff neck with a single glorious pok.
He was right, she thought as she padded to the open door with him. Four days earlier she’d arrived in Junction City filled with a determination that she was going to do the work instead of telling people… no, who was she trying to kid? She’d lectured the wasteland about the work other people were doing that she thought they should all be taking part in. For the entirety of her flight from the Bluff she tried to figure out what it was she’d accomplished sitting in her firetower, other than playing two-century old records in the dead of night and telling anyone who would listen about the state of their steadily decaying world. It was shockingly easy for her to beat up on herself like this, and by the time she’d arrived in the metallic-tasting skies above Junction City she’d resolved to turn down the masochism a few notches so she could focus on doing what she’d come here to do.
Which was… well, she hadn’t been sure. “Help” was a devious word in how impossibly broad it liked to be. Her cynical side, borne out of her formative years spent enduring the toxic morass - hah, more ass - of Old Griffinstone told her to expect a town burned to the ground, littered with corpses, a crossroads scorched of all life. What else could there be in the wake of a weapon that once knocked all of civilization into the bottomless ditch they all lived in now? 
As it turned out, quite a lot. According to several survivors she’d spoken to when she landed, Junction City had caught fire like a struck match. Everything had been dark and peaceful one second, and by the next a new sun had risen and anything caught by its sickly light had caught as quickly as kindling. Had that been the end of it, Junction City would have burned. However the shockwave had shot across the rooftops like the wingbeat of an old god, simultaneously snuffing flames and caving in walls with equal ferocity. Not all the fires stayed out. Many had rekindled in the stillness that followed and burned eagerly while others encountered too many inflammable materials strewn out by the explosion to spread with speed. Those slower fires were smothered by a small collection of survivors who’d dug themselves from the ruins of their homes and recognized the danger. Dodge had been one of them, and now gauze marked the many awards he’d earned for his effort.
Over half the town had burned, and thin filaments of gray smoke still curled up from the embers where wooden shanties used to cluster around the edges of the town proper. The sturdier, two-story structures that lined main street had been the only to survive and only just. Most of those second floors had been ripped away by the blast, turning carpets and wood paneling into roofs. Several of those upper floors now sagged drunkenly into the lower, the structural integrity of the walls below all but shattered. From one end of the main road to the other, wrinkled black beams reached toward the overcast sky like broken fingers seeking something to hold as if jealous of the weaker structures that had collapsed completely and jealousy clung to the bodies cooling in the rubble.
Yet despite the destruction wrought by the bomb, there was work here to do. What Fiona hadn’t bargained for when she struck out to lend a hand was how hard it would be for her to stop.
“I’ll rest tonight,” she promised, knowing full well she’d find an excuse to sneak outside after a few hours of corpselike sleep. “Maybe all your horns will start working by then.”
Dodge held open the door for her, his expression uncomfortable. The fires weren’t the only thing the explosion snuffed out. Though the radiation it released was dissipating quickly, its side-effects weren’t. “Hopefully, but I doubt it. Not for a while at least.”
They stepped inside what had a week ago been a successful dry goods store and had since been converted into a hospital. A few more than fifty ponies lay in various states of discomfort on the filthy floor where display shelves knocked over by the blast had once created aisles in the long, narrow store. Those shelves had since been dragged out into the road, added to the piles of debris that had to be pulled into charred heaps along the sidewalks so that wagon traffic could enter the town. It was thanks to the newly independent trading companies formed in the wake of F&F Mercantile’s collapse that Junction City’s few dozen survivors had bundled burlap sacks to rest their injured bodies on instead of the cold floor. They formed two rows on either side of the floor, and some of their heads turned along the walls to see who had arrived only to lose interest at the sight of familiar faces. 
The odor of stale urine and worse was a physical thing she had to make a deliberate effort to walk into. Near the door an open crate sat half-full of empty stimpack injectors waiting to be dumped with the others on the outskirts amidst the burned shacks. Fiona had been dismayed to see stims being used in lieu of real medicine, but the apothecary’s store had burned and the only traders who came out this far tended to carry the wasteland’s staple fix-all and not much else. The stink of infection scratched at her nostrils and she gagged a little whenever she paid attention to it. If the past four days were any indication, at least three of these ponies wouldn’t be alive tomorrow morning. 
She’d sent word to Nurse Redheart with a few traders and even a scavenger who said they were headed back to the Bluff, but she didn’t think the old ghoul would just load up a wagon with several thousand caps worth of high quality medical supplies and set out on her own. Even if she did, her gut told her the Rangers would stop her from coming. They might treat her like shit, but she controlled the only clinic on the Bluff worth trusting. Someone over there was bound to know her absence would leave them all in the care of the grifters and quacks they’d be left with. 
Two mares in little better shape than their patients slowly walked the aisles, each monitoring their own row of patients for signs of distress for which their treatments were severely limited. The taller of the two walked with a slight limp she’d claimed was due to arthritis and not the deep bruise down her foreleg. Ms. Vogel, as she insisted she be called, had spent the last several decades charged with administering and collecting payments on the various properties the town council rented out to its residents. Now she was Junction City’s de facto leader, a position she did not want and planned to offload on the first Ranger she saw. Yet for all her protests, the old mare had the spark of leadership in her that few did. This hospital, spare as it was, wouldn’t exist were it not for the shrill orders she’d shouted at those capable of standing. And it was her take-no-shit method of dealing with incoming traders that ensured many of them would be making a return trip as soon as they replenished their wagons. There were rumors she’d threatened to make note of anyone who reneged on those promises, though what she would do with that list she left deliberately vague.
Dodge indicated Ms. Vogel with the tip of his horn. “She needs someone to water the patients. I’m going to start warming up some broth. I could use your help cutting vegetables when you’re done.”
She nodded, and Dodge left. The butcher shop next door had been commandeered to store the supplies trickling in from the local traders, and a few of them had managed to get the kitchen in the back up and running again. No one was sure what kind of food the injured could stomach without vomiting it back up, but a brief experiment with solids had left several messes. Fiona didn’t think the fetid air of the dry goods store did much good for anyone’s appetite, but leaving them to the mercy of the elements didn’t seem like a better option. Boiling finely chopped carrots and tatos in lightly salted water was as good as they would get until one of the patients kept down something sturdier.
Ms. Vogel glanced up at her as she navigated the boards between pairs of patients, quietly mouthing the word “water” when she had her attention. Fiona nodded, and the elderly mare patted her arm as she slipped to the back of the room where a blue plastic drum held down the floorboards. The store’s owner had used it to store his own water allotment from the town well and now they were doing the same. She released the metal clamp that held the lid secure and pulled it away while using her free hand to fish a glass bottle from a crate on the floor. A quick sniff let her know it had indeed been rinsed out, and she dunked it into the cool liquid. Bubbles formed in the rust colored water as the bottle filled. She repeated the process with three others and, lacking anything to carry them on, she hooked their glass necks between the knuckles of one hand and carried them to the first round of patients. 
She braced against a touch of apprehension as she bent down beside a middle-aged stallion against the north wall, remembering with some embarrassment his startled shout from yesterday when he opened his eyes to, well, her. It was too easy to forget what she looked like to most ponies since the ones she spent most of her time around were well used to her. It was believed that there had been a time before language, cities, or nations when her primordial ancestors killed and devoured creatures less adept at hunting. Prey species, she’d heard them called, thought she knew better to say something so dangerous aloud. She’d heard enough talk like that when she was little and didn’t want to be responsible for importing it to the Equestrian wastelands.
Careful not to loom over the former shopkeep, she sat askance of him and gently shook his shoulder. He cracked his eyes, saw the offered bottle, and allowed himself to be sat up against the wall so he could drink. He didn’t thank her out loud, but she saw the sentiment in his eyes and nodded before moving on to the mare next to him.
Others entered the hospital while they worked, some to drop off useful supplies they’d salvaged from the town’s many fresh ruins while others asked for painkillers, water, a quick stimpack, or something to eat. It hadn’t taken long for Vogel’s hospital to turn into what it was now, a place where the ingredients of life were stored and shared. Fiona had strong feelings about this that she couldn’t quite put into words. 
It felt… right. No one asked for caps in exchange for what they brought, nor did they dicker over prices for what they needed. Several of these ponies had only just recovered enough to leave this hospital, their bandages barely a day old in some cases, and yet their fetlocks were stained black with soot just like the others digging through the rubble for anything that might help them all survive. It could have been the shock forcing them to work together, but Fiona wasn’t sure that was entirely it. They’d experienced trauma together, and the old petty priorities had been evicted to make room for new ones. Something similar happened two centuries ago. Faced with the choice of dying alone or surviving together, those spared by the apocalypse had chosen the latter. She wondered how naturally that decision had come, and what changed afterward for everyone to revert back to infighting and war.
“I saw what you did.”
Fiona blinked. She’d been holding a bottle of water to the lips of a horribly burned mare. She’d been standing outside when the bomb exploded, likely engaging in the same profession Fiona part-timed in to pay her own bills. Her front half was a mass of gauze, save for the end of her muzzle which was glossy with weeping, inflamed skin. She couldn’t see Fiona, and even if she could it wasn’t as if Fiona had done anything but help since she got here. 
The mare had to be senseless from the pain. Fiona pressed the rim of the bottle back to her lips, but she dipped her head away. 
“You’re the one who brought the bomb here,” she hissed. “You hid in the clothing store and didn’t think anyone could see you, but I did.”
Fiona wrinkled her brow and looked back to Ms. Vogel, who only sighed and shook her head. “Olivine believes she saw the Enclave evacuating from Gussets & Garments just before the explosion. I was hoping,” she said, eyeing the bandaged mare, “that we had put that debate to rest so the other patients could rest as well.”
Olivine made a face, which was an accomplishment under all that gauze, and swallowed her pride enough to drink from the bottle. Fiona shifted her wing away from the mare’s hoof, unhappy that she’d pushed herself along on aching legs just to catch a random accusation like that, but she held back the urge to tell the mare who she was. She’d learned early on at the Bluff that no one liked that much ego, and if she was being honest with herself it did feel nice to just be regular Fiona again. 
Still, she couldn’t ignore the clanging of alarm bells in her head. Gussets & Garments. Cider’s body had been discovered in an outhouse behind the same store. 
She cleared her throat. “How many soldiers did you see?”
If Olivine could sneer at her, she would have. Instead, she showed her dislike by remaining silent. Fiona knew the next patient was waiting for his turn, but her inner journalist refused to let this go. It may just be a coincidence, maybe, but she knew better than to let go of the thread of a story with a hook like this. She turned back to Ms. Vogel, who had already stopped what she was doing in anticipation of additional questions.
The elderly mare waited a beat for Fiona to lose interest, then deflated slightly when it became obvious that wouldn’t happen in her lifetime. “There were no soldiers. She saw the pegasus who caused all that trouble with F&F Mercantile. Apparently she had been squatting inside Ms. Dressage’s apartment, or robbing it.”
She spoke this last part softly, as if saying it too loud might inspire those around her to see the growing stockpiles of communal supplies for the liability they were. “Several citizens reported seeing her taking off toward the Enclave’s encampment after being caught in the flash, though Olivine has taken to expanding what she saw into fiction.”
Fiona set the bottles on the floor, her task temporarily forgotten. “Aurora was here?”
Ms. Vogel gave a noncommittal nod. “Supposedly. It could have been a local dustwing for all anyone knows. It certainly was not a secret Enclave platoon.”
One of the other patients let out a thick chuckle that devolved into a coughing fit. Ms. Vogel’s younger helper took one of the bottles from Fiona and brought it to the hacking stallion. Fiona’s frown deepened as she moved onto the patient besides Olivine. He’d sat up under his own strength, paused for several confused seconds, then muttered something about his horn and took the bottle between two awkward hooves.
While he drank, Fiona took the two empties to the back and put them in the crate with the word DIRTY slashed across it in sooty black letters. Four fresh bottles were plucked from the box beside the water barrel and the gears spun freely in her head as she watched liquid burble down the empty neck.
Aurora couldn’t have been here. Knight Latch told her she and Ginger had been spotted arriving at the Stable with an Enclave escort. Would he lie about something like that? The pliable bridge of her beak wrinkled and she decided he hadn’t been. Latch was always a dick to her, but only because she didn’t wear a gilded chastity belt. And, maybe because she wasn’t exactly nice to him either. Still he’d shared the news of their sighting freely without asking for any favors in return. 
The bottle bubbled full, and she dunked the next one into the barrel.
Okay, she thought. I’m Aurora. I live in a Stable and don’t know my eyes from my asshole when it comes to the real world. My sole purpose is to find a magical gewgaw that’ll keep my home from falling off a cliff and I think it’s in Fillydelphia. And I found one there, probably around the same time the Enclave showed up, and came back home under their protection. Which means the Enclave is helping me, just like Latch thinks they are. Fine. Then why, after all that, do I show up in Ginger’s store right when a balefire bomb pops off above my home? Do I have a reason to leave the Stable right after I got back? And hadn’t the Enclave been broadcasting all that shit about pureblooded pegasi a few weeks ago? 
She tapped her talon against the next bottle as it filled. Things weren’t lining up in the nice, orderly fashion she preferred them to. The Enclave had shown all signs of wanting to protect the Stable from the Steel Rangers. They’d been taking pot shots at the excavation teams since the first shovel broke gravel and didn’t stop until they finally overwhelmed the Rangers’ defenses. Stable 10 was some weird bugaboo shrine to pegasus-ness for them, which was why it never made sense to Fiona for them to be the ones to detonate balefire right on top of it. 
What did they stand to gain from contaminating the one place in the wasteland they gave a shit about? If they wanted to prevent the Rangers from carving out all that premium tech, then they should have set the thing off on the inside. Irradiating the mountain didn’t take that option away from their enemy. If anything it put the Enclave at a disadvantage because they were so squeamish about sending their pegasi into high radiation zones. The Rangers could care less about sucking down a few rads. Their power armor would shrug the worst of it off as an afterthought. 
Had the Steel Rangers planted the bomb? She dipped the last bottle into the barrel, not liking how much sense that made in her head. Where did Aurora fit in all this? Even if she’d known there was a bomb, she would have had… what, seconds to react? She’d met this mare and seen just how bullheaded she got when she thought something she cared about was in danger. Hell, she’d blindly flown several hundred miles and sicked a death claw on the Jet Stream Solar Array because a bounty hunter had abducted her traveling companion instead of her. If she knew a balefire bomb was ticking way inside her home, there wasn’t an army in the world strong enough to make her sit quietly inside Ginger’s shop. 
And, apparently, she hadn’t. 
The last bottle stopped gurgling. They clinked between her fingers as she carried them to the thirsty patients. Ms. Vogel watched her approach, and she sagged just a little as she saw the question forming on Fiona’s beak.
“Has anyone… been to the Stable since the explosion?”
The old mare licked her lips and shook her head. “Not to my knowledge, no. The travelers I’ve spoken to are waiting to see if the Enclave or Rangers are going to try retaking the mountain. No one wants to be caught in the middle if the fighting breaks out again.”
If, not when. Ever since the explosion, the flare-up between both powers immediately cooled. She didn’t blame them. If one of the old world’s bombs had been recovered, it likely meant there were others waiting to be used. No doubt both were still trying to figure out which side pushed the button, and why. Fiona had a feeling she already knew why. The bomb had been someone’s way of saying back off, and it worked.
“Should I ask Dodge to finish with the water?”
Fiona looked toward the open door and the blackened ruins of Junction City beyond. Fifteen, maybe a thirty minute flight from here to the Stable? She wouldn’t be gone long, she wanted to say, but the look on Ms. Vogel’s face warned her against the lie. Fiona hadn’t been instrumental in digging out survivors, nor had she been the one to organize them. That had been their own doing as much as it had been Ms. Vogel’s, and Fiona had just been another set of helping hands. Both of them knew the town wouldn’t collapse without her. 
The old mare quirked her lip and nodded toward the door. “Thank you for the help.”







Rainbow Dash walked down the old stairs in deep contemplation, hardly noticing the two teenaged colts who hurried past her with empty cantines clunking beneath their wings. They were likely on their way down to the cisterns with the hopes of double-dipping on their day’s ration of water. She’d heard rumors that one of the techs down in water storage had been caught allowing some pegasi to exceed the half-ration limit and hadn’t taken long for word to spread. Several fights had already broken out in the morning lines and when the daily allowance of a young mare had been revoked, she’d bloodied one of the water techs so badly he had to be carried to the infirmary. 
She touched the spot below her neck where several gold pebbles were still embedded and tried not to meet the gaze of a stallion who passed in the other direction. Like the necklace that once held her element, Stable 10 was beginning to crumble and too many of its people were looking to her for a solution. She didn’t know how to tell them she didn’t have one.
The door to the Agricultural level was held open by an overturned utility cart. Bottles of cleaning solution and clean rags stained brown from dry soil scattered over the floor lay where they’d fallen. Rainbow paused in the dim glow of the corridor’s emergency lights, then sighed as she bent down and righted the cart. The door hissed closed as she dumped its spilled contents back onto its upper shelf and wheeled it against the wall. 
“Someone’s going to turn it back into a doorstep once you leave.”
She closed her eyes, managing not to jump at the husky growl of Weathers’ voice. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop following me?”
She didn’t need to see Weathers to know she was answering with one of her half-shrugs. “As soon as you give me a good reason.”
Rainbow shot a look at the colonel and wondered how a mare so large could move around so silently. Weathers stared back, implacable as ever. A ragged trail of surgical staples ran from her left shoulder all the way back to her tenth rib. She’d been sliced open like a trout by a chunk of tungsten shrapnel when the Stable door’s locking pins shattered like so much glass. Not everyone had been so lucky. Of the hundred or so Enclave soldiers that managed to reach the antechamber, less than thirty were still alive. Some had been caught in the path of the Stable door when it tore loose, while more were killed outright by the cloud of metal rails and floor panels turned into shotgun spray by the shockwave that roared in behind it. The survivors had been brought inside and taken to Medical, where a bewildered infirmary staff set to work cutting away alien uniforms to assess injuries ranging from concussion to exsanguination. A recovery ward had since been converted into a makeshift holding cell until Sledge made up his mind what to do with the Stable’s unexpected guests.
With, Rainbow noted, the exception of one. 
“You shouldn’t be out walking around with your side ripped up like that. I could have Sledge lock you up in Medical so you don’t pop a stitch.”
Weathers nodded affably enough at the half-hearted warning. “You could. It’s just another stripe to me.”
The skin at the back of her neck warmed, though she wasn’t sure whether that was bull-headed anger or just discomfort around not knowing if she was allowed to comment on Weathers’ ghostly markings. Those final years of the war had been awful for any Equestrian zebra, but the Ministry of Image’s propaganda wing had amplified that misery to something worse. Rainbow broke her gaze and looked toward the corridor of gardens, speaking quickly before Weathers pulled her any closer to a topic brimming with landmines.
“I can walk around on my own,” she repeated, emphasizing her point by walking into the soil-strewn corridor. To her irritation, four large hooves followed behind her. “Colonel, please. I stopped being a ministry mare a long time ago.”
“You’re an Element of Harmony,” she countered with an immovable certainty that made Rainbow even more uncomfortable. “Even though you’re… changed, you’re still one of the bearers. And besides–”
“You swore an oath,” Rainbow finished, fighting hard not to roll her eyes. A clod of soil stamped with someone else’s hoofprint slid when she stepped on it and she stumbled a little, sending fragments of it skittering ahead. In the corner of her eye, one of Weathers’ wings was held part way open, ready to catch her if she’d fallen. Rainbow ground her teeth and picked her way around the littered floor more carefully. “You made that oath to Primrose, not me.”
“I swore it to the Enclave,” she corrected. 
“Same difference.”
“No,” Weathers said a touch more gruffly, “it’s not.”
This time she did roll her eyes. “You’ve been saying that for days now and you’ve never once said why. Are you going to tear off the bandaid yourself or do I have to do it for you?”
She waited, eyes flitting to one door’s numbered placard to the next in search of the one she wanted. The gardens had been picked clean even before the bomb exploded, but now she could see the cracks forming in the dirt plots behind doors left open. With barely enough power coming in from Stable-Tec’s hardened network to keep the air circulators running, the idea of getting the water purification plant working again was a pipe dream. Even with rationing in effect, clean water was quickly running out. Already, there were rumblings of what had to come next. Either the residents of Stable 10 could stay here until they died of dehydration, or they could take their chances outside. Rainbow feared many of them would choose the former.
She read the placard of an approaching doorway and stopped to look down at the Pip-Buck she’d been given. In the corner of the display, a persistent notification blinked at her in the hopes she might finally seek medical attention for a list of conditions that could fill a small library. She ignored it and scanned the Obituaries page she’d all but memorized by now. The location matched the narrow plaque marked Permaculture 49. She stepped over a shriveled carrot stalk on her way inside.
Weathers’ silence had gone on long enough, she decided, but when she began to speak she felt the heat that had been building in her chest quickly cool. She sighed. “Look, there’s not some easy, storybook way to draw a line between what you thought you were doing and what happened. I mean, seriously, take it from someone who’s been there. Primrose used you, and even though I don’t know you all that well, I can tell that’s going to hurt you for a long time. Trying to convince yourself that none of the bad parts were your fault is just…”
She paused, picked up a chunk of dirt from an excavated plot, and flicked it down the narrow walkway. It scattered into pieces as it went. 
“You can be the best liar in the world but you’ll never be able to fool yourself completely. There will always be a part of you that knows.” She glanced back at Weathers, meeting her eye. “It’ll torture you, and the worst part is it hurts worse the more everyone else believes the lie.”
Weathers watched her for a moment, then frowned and looked at the passing plots. “This wasn’t my decision. I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
Rainbow nodded as she counted the passing rows. “I didn’t want any of this to happen either, but it did. Be glad you only have one bomb on your conscience.”
It was as close to an admission as Rainbow had ever spoken without beating herself over the head with it. She’d never been great at tempering her words with, well, thoughtful reasoning. Twilight would have been the first to tell her as much. Who knew she would only have to wait two centuries for it to come naturally.
Behind her, Weathers had stopped following and was looking down at one of the rows. Deep gouges had been dug into the cracked dirt where one of the residents had been digging in hopes of finding a vegetable the gardeners had missed.
“You may be right, but that doesn’t change what we saw happen in the antechamber.”
Rainbow grimaced, her pace slowing. Ever since the Enclave survivors dragged her into the Stable, it was all they wanted to talk about. She hadn’t seen any of it. She’d been too busy being knocked unconscious by the blast and she suspected more than a few of the soldiers who claimed to see her feat of magic had been out as well. 
According to them, the gem she’d spent the war wearing for comfort had, for lack of a better word, exploded. Not literally of course, or else she’d have an answer to whether or not a ghoul could survive violent decapitation, but the pulse of magic that burst from the stone had done so with a force that momentarily distracted the fleeing soldiers from the behemoth cog hurtling toward them like an uncorked bottle. That detonation did something to the airborne door that Rainbow still didn’t believe possible. Several thousand tons of tungsten alloy, hurtled into the Stable with unfathomable force, ricocheted. 
She would’ve happily chalked it up to a mass hallucination were it not for the dark ring of burns wrapping her neck. The ornate golden scrollwork of her necklace melted from the sheer volume of magic dumped by her elemental stone, explaining her fuzzy memory of waking up to pegasi plucking bits of gold from her skin.
Weathers had collected those remnants from her soldiers and turned them in, along with her dull and lifeless gemstone, to the Stable’s overstallion. The floor safe beneath Sledge’s desk might not be the Canterlot Castle vault, but it would have to do for now.
 “I think,” Weathers began, her frown deepening as she spoke, “that when pegasi begin to abandon the Stable, word is going to spread about what happened. Who’s to say that might wind up being a good thing for the residents who leave, but once it gets out that Primrose tried to have a balefire bomb smuggled inside…”
She trailed off and Rainbow stopped walking, turning to see if Weathers had pieced together how badly broken the Enclave’s fiction really was.
“...they’re going to find out the truth. The real truth, about everything. Once that happens… I don’t know. I don’t want to think about what Primrose might resort to if the Enclave turns against her, but if that does happen I think it’ll be important for you to be protected.”
Rainbow shuffled her wing and resumed walking. “Pass. Not interested.”
“I wasn’t asking–”
The words leapt from her throat with renewed heat. “Good, then don’t ask. I’m not going to be someone’s mascot again. I’ve done that to death already.”
She could hear the frown in Weathers’ voice. “There’s going to be an exodus when the water runs dry, and most of these pegasi have roots in Cloudsdale. They’re going to go west. Into our territory. It’ll be like putting a lit match to a fuse.”
Rainbow drew up to the fifth to last planting row from the back, listening to the colonel’s voice ring in the empty garden. She paused to check her Pip-Buck again, peered down the featureless dirt, and decided this was as close as she was going to get.
“Are you going to stop them?” she asked.
Weathers snorted. “With what army?”
It’d been meant as a joke, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile. Too many new corpses had just joined the old ones outside the Stable’s shattered door, and she didn’t have the lifetime of combat experience that allowed Weathers to laugh off the trauma.
She stared down at the crust of soil beneath which Spitfire’s obituary recorded her burial. Her ears pinned backward. “Colonel, what do I have to say to get you to stop following me?”
Weathers didn’t immediately respond, which was an answer in itself. “You need protection, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.” She chewed the inside of her lip, already feeling herself resigning to yet another stint of bodyguards and inflated importance. Her bladder twitched, reminding her why she’d made this special trip. “Does your protection involve following me into the bathroom?”
Weathers blinked. “Definitely not.”
“Great,” she sighed, her eyes on Spitfire’s grave, “because I could use some privacy.”







While Rainbow Dash drained her bladder several levels below, Sledge paced uneasily across the Atrium commons. 
His hooves still crunched over bits of pulverized concrete left that seemed to migrate on their own from the piles of debris he and a hundred other residents had swept into the corners. The end of the outer door’s flight through the antechamber had shifted solid bedrock with such violence that the layers of steel and concrete composing the Stable’s skin shattered like an eggshell. It was a small mercy that the Enclave insisted upon making their delivery so early in the morning. An hour later and the entire Stable would have been queued up in the Atrium for the first food ration of the day, and hundreds would have been wiped out by flying debris instead of the single kitchen staffer who’d been standing in the same puddle of onlookers wondering why Aurora and Ginger had just come through like their manes were on fire.
All that kept the Atrium wall from caving in completely had been a dense lattice of rebar that now bulged out from the far corner like an angry tumor. The catwalk bridging Sledge’s office to the rest of the Atrium lay in a tangled heap of collapsed steel in front of several pop-up businesses, none of which he believed would ever be in business again. He didn’t have much in his office that he couldn’t find elsewhere. Terminal access was ubiquitous, and he hadn’t filled Delphi’s desk drawers with much more than a bottle he hadn’t the courage to open and a stack of onboarding documents he’d read and quickly forgotten about. Still, he missed the privacy having his own office afforded. He’d briefly considered trying his luck at flying to the open door, but he’d felt ridiculous the second he began opening his wings. He had no idea what he was doing and was liable to bash his brains out against the wall in the attempt. He’d quickly tucked his wings back into the protective sheaths slung over his back and tried to forget the temptation altogether.
After the survivors had been dragged into the Stable, after being hauled down to the infirmary himself to have a gash across his forehead knit together, after ordering all residents to evacuate to Mechanical until the radiation seeping past the blasted door could be contained, he’d retreated to his old compartment from before he’d been made overstallion and waited on the edge of his bed for the grief to come. He didn’t sleep much that first night. He didn’t think anyone did.
The next few days were a blur. He remembered sitting down with Dusky Pinfeathers to break the news about Aurora. That memory wasn’t going anywhere. At some point he had told his people in the machine shop to get their tools and build a temporary stairwell from the Atrium floor to the stranded security office above. The only reason none of the pegasi who survived the explosion had to be thrown ten feet to the ground below was thanks to the Enclave, whose pegasi had wings skilled in their original purpose. Whether it was him or someone else who suggested the thickly layered plastic sheeting that now sealed the security office, he wasn’t sure. 
A hastily cut steel frame held the seal in place and, hopefully, was keeping most of the bomb’s radiation on the far side. Sledge watched the blurry shape of Deputy Chaser moving behind the plastic barrier and wondered, not for the first time, why he was still in charge. He knew the idea to regularly test the outside air hadn’t been his. That had come from one of the Enclave soldiers he’d sequestered in Medical until something, he didn’t know what, could be done with them. The deputies had been quick to volunteer for this role, and a rotation was established shortly thereafter. 
Three minutes was all the time Sledge had been willing to allow for each test, and Deputy Chaser was nearing the end of minute one. It was funny how this deputy had quickly become his go-to ever since his arbitrary assignment to retrieve Rainbow Dash from the tunnel outside. Not too long ago, Sledge had been trying to put himself to sleep by reading an archival record pertaining to civilian law and order and found himself repeatedly encountering the word sheriff before it clicked that this role stood one run higher than a deputy. He wondered why Stable-Tec hadn’t included sheriffs in the Stable hierarchy and, upon deciding Stable-Tec’s decisionmaking hardly deserved his trust at this point, wondered if Chaser might accept such a promotion. 
At the very least it would take some work off Sledge’s already full plate. He stopped pacing and glanced down at his Pip-Buck, noting the time.
“One minute elapsed.”
The plastic muffled Chaser’s response as he called back. “Copy, one minute. Radiation levels are showing lower than last reading, getting close to normal background. We might be in the clear.”
Sledge sucked his teeth, trying not to get his hopes up. “That’s good. I still want readings from the antechamber and the outer door, then I want you out of that jumpsuit and back down.”
“Copy. Back in two.”
A week ago he would have broken into a nervous sweat ordering anyone to undress, but the archived manuals all agreed about what to do during a radiation emergency. Exposure was cumulative, and radiation was glad as ever to do continual damage as it clung to clothing. The jail cell nearest the plastic seal had been designated for the slowly growing heap of contaminated jumpsuits and Sledge, despite his best efforts, was gradually growing accustomed to seeing his deputies descend the makeshift stairs wearing little more than a smile. 
He resumed pacing, his eyes skirting toward the bloated section of bent wall plates and shattered concrete held above him in its rebar basket. As if to taunt the Stable for its water crisis, a sheen of moisture had slowly spread around the rupture. It leaked in so slowly that most of it evaporated before it could drip onto the rubble on the floor, leaving behind a smeared calcium stain that grew thicker each time the air recyclers kicked on.
Another minute elapsed. 
“Two minutes!” he called, even though Chaser would be out of earshot in the antechamber’s wreckage.
He was impressed, then, when he heard the distant sound of Chaser’s voice calling back. The deputy had good ears, or more likely Sledge’s decades in the din of Mechanical had worn his own hearing down to a nub. Probably more than a few of his people had given their old boss shit without him catching on. He snorted. It felt good to laugh, even if the smile was gone within his next breath. 
Another glance at his Pip-Buck reported that Chaser was burning through his final minute. Sledge looked expectantly at the plastic barrier, waiting for the deputy to appear. A faint pop echoed from somewhere behind it and he imagined Chaser was crunching over concrete gravel as he disrobed. He kept waiting. A few more pops. Then a few more, followed by a distant shout that quickly grew louder with the hard gallop of hooves. 
Sledge’s eyes went wide as a terrified stallion yanked up the heavy zipper at the center of the seal and shoved his way through, revolver held tightly in his free wing, his contaminated jumpsuit still on as he rambled, half-panicked, about the monster outside devouring the Enclave corpses.







Fiona picked up an empty magazine from the flagstones, then pitched it at the open Stable door and the stallion who just fled back through it. His aim had been slightly better than if someone had duct-taped a pipe rifle to the back a horny mole rat, and that was being generous. Still it had been years since the last time someone shot at her with intent to kill and she disliked it now exactly as much as she had back then. With no return fire to keep him pinned, the shooter had gone for help which meant more of his skittish, trigger-happy friends would probably be on their way to try their luck.
She slinked back behind the cover of a beefy concrete pillar and eyed the shattered remnants of the Enclave encampment around her. Tent poles, mounds of charred canvas, and a baffling quantity of unassembled rifle components lay scattered among spilled cook pots and shredded rucksacks. She’d spent the better part of an hour loitering outside the tunnel’s wind blasted maw, calling inside for anyone alive while the blackened stumps of a charred oak grove stood in silent sentry behind her. The bomb’s devastation had peeled Foal Mountain down to its very bedrock. Its northern slope, smoothed by millennia of erosion and faltering plantlife, had been scraped ragged by the unimaginable winds and scars of red-gold bedrock stood bare like the flayed back of a gigantic, lifeless golem. In less time it took to down one of the throat-curdling shots at Someplace Else the bomb had lifted any loose material it could and used it to sandblast half a mountain.
Junction City’s destruction felt inconsequential compared to the total annihilation experienced here. When she landed, her wingbeats lifted snowy currents of ash from stony soil. Anything capable of burning had been burned. It stood to reason, then, that the door at the end of the tunnel hadn’t been left open to welcome new visitors. Stable 10 was likely as dead as the mountain languishing on top of it, or so she’d assumed. She became more convinced of this seeming fact after she worked up the courage to venture inside. Halfway down the tunnel, black-uniformed corpses littered the flagstones in varying degrees of immolation, decomposition, and both. Fiona didn’t have to look hard to recognize the terrible violence they’d been subjected to in the end. Dark smears stained the concrete where whole bodies had been thrown and broken against unmoving pillars. Pieces of flesh and cloth clung to the corners of flagstones where others had skidded. They lay together in heaps, eyes bulging, coats burned down to the roots like the wicks of spent candles, mouths forced as wide as they would open and further by the merciless physics of dying while standing inside the barrel of a pressure vessel.
There was nothing alive here, she’d decided. The only help she could give was to gather what she could from the dead and see to it that Ms. Vogel found a use for it. She’d been rummaging through the pockets of a dead corporal, then, when the Stable dweller spotted her from the open door and started shooting.
“Guess you must have scared it off,” a dubious voice murmured from the Stable door. “Radiation levels are looking better, at least.”
“It was standing right there! Sledge, I’m telling you we need to get rid of those bodies and build a barricade or something. They’re attracting mutants!”
Fiona stifled a dark laugh, careful not to lean too far out beyond the pillar’s protection. “You’re not easy on the eyes either, asshole.”
The voices went silent for a long stretch, neither Stable dweller apparently expecting anything sentient to be skulking around the tunnel. A few slow heartbeats later, the older stallion with the growly voice responded. “Hello?”
“Hi.” A beat later, she added, “Either of you gonna try shooting me again? I really didn’t appreciate it the first time.”
“Don’t trust anything that thing says.” The other stallion had meant it to be a whisper but had forgotten they were essentially standing at the mouth of an amphitheater. “I saw it eating one of the bodies.”
Fiona’s expression flattened. Hell, she could practically hear the little revolver’s nervous clatter in his wing. Shit aim or not, she didn’t feel like giving Ol’ Knocky Knees another chance at punching her ticket. When that inevitably did happen, she preferred not to go out known as the gryphon who allegedly feasted upon the irradiated dead. 
“I only eat ponies who pay me for the pleasure, fucko.”
She could practically hear the quip whistle over their heads.
The elder stallion - the younger of the two had called him Sledge - was quick to cut to the chase. “Are you from the Enclave?”
This time she did laugh. “Sir, there aren’t enough caps in the world that could buy me a ticket into their purity party. I’m here alone.”
A grunt. “Then you can leave alone. This Stable is closed to outsiders.”
She blinked, then frowned. “Yeah, okay, but I can’t really do that. I came here to check up on a friend. She lives here. Name’s Aurora.”
A stony silence answered her. Even with two yards of concrete behind her, she could feel that elder stallion’s gaze bearing down on her. She licked the ridge of her beak, impressed at the record time she’d managed to talk herself into a corner. Of course this Stable’s guardians would know who she was referring to. Anyone east of New Canterlot who owned a radio would have heard something about the Stable mare who killed the bosses of F&F Mercantile, say nothing for being responsible for the shake-up in Blinder’s Bluff and Fillydelphia. The mare had emerged into a wasteland whose competing powers were balanced in a nervous equilibrium and wasted no time chucking a grenade into the middle of it. Few, Fiona suspected, other than a choice selection of wastelanders would name someone like that a friend.
“I helped get her Pip-Buck back a few weeks ago, and I’d heard–”
“Aurora is dead,” Sledge snapped, his tone brittle. “She and Ginger went up with the bomb. They’re dead and we lived. Leave us alone.”
Her brow knit together. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well I’m sorry to inconvenience you,” Sledge growled. Fiona flinched, forgetting how far her own voice would carry. This stupid tunnel had better reception than her low-band receiver back home.
“That’s not what I meant to say.” She gathered herself, knowing she was about to cause these people some pain. “There’s a town not far east of here that got caught by the explosion. I’ve been helping with the recovery and I met some survivors who say they saw her.”
“They’re wrong.”
She grimaced. That had been the younger stallion. He’d sobered quickly on the topic of Aurora and his elder wasn’t stepping in to blunt his denials.
“I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I’ve made a living being able to pick the liars out from the honest ones. At the very least…” she hesitated, then stopped. What good would it do to tell her what they thought they saw, other than to twist the knife? She wasn’t here to prove a theory. She wasn’t even sure she had a theory to prove. All she knew was Aurora had been spotted somewhere after the explosion, and that hinged on the word of survivors who didn’t have much to gain from lying.
She pinched her eyes and fought down the urge to curse. What was she doing here? Even if Aurora had been in Junction City when the bomb popped, everyone who claimed to see her agreed that she’d run straight into the cauldron and burned herself half to death. She’d flown west while the town caught fire and never made it home. And even she could prove that with concrete evidence, what was the point? Aurora had been a decent enough person but calling her a friend was arguably something of a stretch. Chances were good that if the mare were alive she wouldn’t be able to remember who Fiona was beyond big scary radio gryphon.
“Face it,” she breathed. “You're chasing a corpse.”
For once her voice didn’t carry. She let out a sigh, staring absently at the death packed so thoroughly into the tunnel around her, and stepped out from behind the pillar. As expected, two stallions stood in the entrance, one slightly behind the other. Their stern expressions faltered at the sight of her, but only just. Both of them looked physically and emotionally drained, as if the simple act of existing took a significant effort. And here she was needling them because she’d never learned how to stop chasing leads.
“I…” she stopped, gathered her nerve, and tried again. “My name is Fiona. I’m not a monster, I promise. I’m a reporter and I promise I mean you no harm. I was hoping to find Aurora here, but… yeah, um… yeah. I don’t think I’m going to find her here and you guys look like you need help.”
The larger of the two, the aptly named Sledge with his rough bass in his voice, looked her up and down with open distrust. “We took help from the outside once already. It didn’t work out.”
Their gazes drifted to the Enclave corpses heaped against the Stable’s outer hull. Understatement of the century.
“Yeah. I can see that,” she murmured.
Behind Sledge, the stallion who shot at her not fifteen minutes earlier sheepishly stepped forward.
“We’re running out of water,” he said.
“Deputy,” Sledge rumbled.
“Sir,” he pushed back. 
She could see a fight brewing between the two of them. Despite the revolver still held in the deputy’s feathers, she lifted her own in a sign of calm. “Because your generator isn’t working, right?”
The two looked back to her. Sledge more than anything else appeared afraid, as if everything were once again spiraling out of control. She sympathized with him. She’d interviewed too many Rangers who had come back to the Bluff after multiple tours in the field, and suddenly something as simple as letting another person choose what to make for dinner triggered a landslide of paralytic anxiety. She’d bet a pretty cap that Sledge was a lot like them. Control wasn’t an ego thing for him. It was sanity. It allowed him to sleep soundly at night, knowing he only needed to trust himself to keep his people safe. 
Except, through no fault of his own, this time he hadn’t.
“Aurora told me a little about your electricity problems,” she continued, careful to maintain compassion in her voice. “I’m not sure there’s anyone out here who can fix your generator, but the well in Junction City is clean and the survivors there have more than they can ever drink on their own. How many of there are you?”
The deputy began to speak but Sledge snapped a wing open, silencing him. “I won’t repeat myself again. This Stable is closed and you need to leave. Now, please.”
She waited, only for a little bit, long enough to give the deputy time to speak up again. He didn’t, though from behind Sledge’s wing she could see something like hope and regret mingling in his expression. Regret for how he reacted to finding her in their tunnel, hope for the help she said was out there. 
As she turned to leave, a small part of her felt a twist of guilt for inserting herself into these traumatized Stable dwellers’ lives. Yet the gears had already begun spinning and while there might be nothing here to satiate her inner journalist, a new drive had rooted itself in her mind. It would take some time to organize but once the details were hammered out, this Stable’s grizzled leader was going to know just how persistent she was.







“Good evening, Patient First Name Patient Last Name,” a cheery, disembodied voice greeted. “The time is now 21:55. Visiting hours will end in five minutes. Please place yourself in the AutoDoc Medical Bed located in the corner of the recovery room, adjacent to the window. To encourage restful sleep, 10cc of pentobarbital will be administered via jugular port.”
Eshe Obiakolam did not respond. He stared at the ceiling, unable to do much else, like he had since he first accepted the fact that he would die here. Thick, military-grade straps kept him secured to the bed, well outperforming their intended lifespan. The AutoDoc’s once plush, supportive padding beneath him had long since become rock hard from endless sanitations. Beige had turned dark brown from constant contact, his coat worn down to bare skin, sores, and finally thick calluses wherever the bed cradled him. It had been a long time since he could pull at his bindings or twist away from the machine’s articulated limbs that curled out of its carapace like insectile legs. Time had withered his muscles. His head, cupped by pillows that reeked of bleach, could only point forward. Straight toward that same patch of ceiling that the soldiers left him to stare at when the klaxons and the shuddering earth sent them screaming for their princesses.
He closed his eyes and wished he could stop hating them.
A long time ago, the ceiling had been a neat checkerboard of silver tiles. The pattern broke in four places to accommodate recessed overhead lights, of which one still weakly glowed. There had been a number of times when he wanted nothing except to be able to sit up and look through the observation windows he could just make out from the corners of his eyes, but that chance had been snatched away when the machine keeping him alive encountered the first of several timekeeping glitches. 
 Somewhere along the line during the AutoDoc’s development, a software engineer had been tasked with writing a simple block of code meant to track the time a patient spent in the machine. Doctors, the real ones with years of schooling and lifetimes of loan debt, worried about things like bedsores, muscular atrophy, blood pooling, and a host of medical complications they didn’t trust a multibillion bit corporation like Maiden Pharma to worry about. So a rudimentary timer was written into the AutoDoc’s code, dutifully tallying the seconds. And while in the majority of cases, AutoDocs were sold to hospitals who catered to wealthy patients who could afford a rejuvenating six to eight hours a month in the revolutionary new device, Eshe was not a majority case. 
So the clock knit into the brain of the machine kept counting. It ticked off the seconds while army doctors stared down at him, first from within orange hazmat suits and later just white coats. It counted when the building shook like a struck bell, unphased by blaring alarms and panicked shouts from the medical staff. It did so even as the world around him grew deathly quiet, punctuated occasionally by faint scratching against some nearby door and the heavy thump of gunfire. The smooth edges of his bed went gray with undisturbed dust and yet those silver arms burst into view like clockwork, pushing liquefied food through one tube while removing waste from another. Needles pricked him with vitamins, antibiotics, and just enough recalled  solution to keep his immune system alive while his muscles deteriorated and his mind stayed sharp. All the while the neatly patterned ceiling tiles grew crusty orange borders that spread like a rusting disease, the bed kept the time, and Eshe’s waking nightmare continued.
And then, thirty-one and a half years later, the AutoDoc’s clock ticked off its 999,999,999th second and, lacking room for another digit, ticked backwards to zero. 
He’d been asleep when the AutoDoc crashed. While he floated through his medically induced nap, the circuits and processors surrounding him experienced something akin to a small stroke. For approximately seven seconds, Maiden Pharma’s pinnacle of medical technology could not understand when in time it existed. The simple clock written by an underpaid coder over a decade prior had been piggybacked upon over the course of dozens of patches, updates, and upgrades by others who saw no need to waste precious minutes creating a clock of their own. A tool meant to track a patient’s time in bed unwittingly became a critical component that, when it failed, caused everything that relied on it to fail as well. 
The safeguard for such a collapse was simple: full reboot. It did this automatically and without any notable issue beyond the light corruption of Eshe’s patient file. He was immediately deemed a new patient, and as such certain sanitary measures had to be taken before he could be treated. For liability purposes, Maiden Pharma preferred this be done by a living person if at all possible. Fresh from its reboot, the bed’s software alerted a technician with a critical priority work ticket. Of course, that technician was dead so the ticket went ignored. Rude. A backup technician was alerted when the first failed to respond, however that technician was also dead. 
With its admittedly thin legal obligation to alert two living persons to the issue, the AutoDoc proceeded with the reset on its own. Silver appendages snatched out waste lines and disconnected IVs, the lines and tubes drawn away to be sanitized while other arms reached down toward Eshe with fresh needles and an array of sensor pads. His blood was drawn, his vitals taken, and the picture of the AutoDoc’s newest patient was grim at best. 
While Eshe slept, a clear tube snapped to the port installed below his jaw. The slow drip of Stimpack meant to keep his white blood cells fat and happy now came in a singular flood, staving off his decaying death for another day and propelling him through the barrier of dreamless sleep into a realm ruled by a dead princess’s guilt.
The cheery voice crackled from the bed’s speakers. “Sleep duration is estimated to last eight hours. Administering sedative. Good night, Patient First Name Patient Last Name.”
Eshe’s chest rose an inch and fell, pressing a wheezing groan from his lungs as the cold medicine rushed past his jugular port. He stared at the ceiling where pieces of those pretty metal tiles drooped from their frames like rusted, pouting lips and waited to meet his new jailor. The creature whose love for its dreamers ran so violently against his wish to die that it forbade him to speak to them, lest it lose even more to Mariposa’s defenses.
Sleep took him, as it always did, in a dizzying fog. The bed, the lab, its rotting ceiling sank behind heavy eyelids and when he opened them next, the creature was waiting for him. 
He stood in the lobby of the Royal Luxury Suite in Fillydelphia. His black hooves sank into the luxury carpet like they had a lifetime ago, a sensation heightened by his bed’s deprivation. A sculpted webwork of curving silver and gold supports dangled crystals hung on long, stationary threads overhead. Eshe still remembered seeing the artpiece for the first time and being dazzled by its simple complexity. The concierge desk was empty. No friendly young mare to tip him off to the best corner stores and remain painfully silent as heavy hands of gryphon agents guided him to his doom. Even now, it seemed, he resented that mare. Just one word may have prompted someone to stand up and help, and his life might have been different. 
The Tantabus waited for him at one of the little tables organized near the breakfast bar. Dispensers of familiar cereals waited beside a wide, steel warming plate stacked high with fresh waffles. Eshe’s lip twitched at the sight of one of the syrup dispensers standing in a sticky, golden puddle. Luna’s creature never shied away from pulling details from his memories that he couldn’t on his own. It liked to bring him here, to this hotel, whenever it meant to chastise him for his attempts to communicate with the others during their communal dreams of Canterlot because it knew the sobering effect it had on him.
Yet as he crossed the lobby and passed the gilded chalkboard happily reminding guests of the free breakfast their room key afforded them, he noticed the Tantabus wasn’t alone. Beside her sat a pegasus he didn’t recognize. Her unremarkable gray coat was speckled white in a few places, matching the pale shades of a not unpleasantly styled mane and tail. This stranger tracked his approach with dull green eyes, keen but untrusting like a dog who knew a loving stroke was just as likely as a debilitating kick. 
“Eshe,” the creature said, “this is Aurora. I am permitting you to speak to her on the condition that you do nothing to endanger her.”
He understood the creature’s warning. Don’t tell her where you are. Don’t ask her for help. He nodded, eyeing the mare’s proffered wing, and awkwardly stuck out a hoof for her to clasp and shake. Pegasi were always a little too eager to adopt the customs of gryphons, he thought, but he knew better than to say as much.
“Pleasure to meet you,” he murmured and took a seat across from them. It felt so good to speak freely again. “May I ask why I’m here?”
The Tantabus turned its starscape eyes toward their guest, then flicked ever so briefly back to Eshe when he thought to himself that the creature’s form had grown darker since the last time she bothered him. He dipped his nose, acknowledging its warning with a subtle nod, and followed her gaze as it turned back to Aurora.
“Tandy says you know how these work,” Aurora said, and from beneath the table she produced a foreleg. 
Attached to it were two distinctly different looking devices, one slim and glossy white, the other a blockish matte brown. A smile touched his muzzle. Of course he knew how they worked. Pip-Buck hardware had paid a sizeable percent of his mortgage. 
“I’m familiar with them, yes.”
“Repair them.”
He blinked at the Tantabus, startled by the force in her voice. What had his crime been this time, answering a question? 
Aurora looked at the creature as well, but instead of being wary of it the mare fixed it with something close to exasperation. No fear or wariness, not like he felt whenever this ruler of dreams turned its attention toward him, just mild annoyance. And possibly a touch of friendliness to go with it.
“Sorry,” Aurora said, turning back to him. “It’s important to us that you show me how to fix these. They were damaged in an explosion, and I need to get this one working so I can find its owner.”
She held up the slimmer of the two computers, an experimental model Eshe vaguely remembered submitting to quality control among so many other failed touchscreen designs. He regarded the Tantabus for a long moment, trying to glean some kind of insight into what her stake in this mare’s problem was. Aurora seemed friendly toward her in a sort of businesslike fashion, but Luna’s creature rarely made her intentions easy to interpret.
“If I help you,” he began, “I want something in return.”
Aurora nodded as if it were the most reasonable request in the world, but she only did so because she was reasonable. The Tantabus, however, stiffened. It knew what Eshe wanted, and in asking he would violate his own agreement not to put the pegasus in danger. 
He considered his words carefully. “I’d like you to look up everything you can on AutoDoc beds once we’re done. I’m not allowed visitors and it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a research partner.”







A sharp, splattering hiss startled Aurora from her sleep. Fragments of old fears ran through her mind as she tried to diagnose the danger. Burst hydraulics, ruptured seals, the blood of a machine firing through a pinhole too small to see yet capable of fileting anyone who walked through the jet. Her heart hammered her ribs until her brain caught up with reality. 
The smell of something familiar tickled fond memories that felt distant, even though they were barely three weeks old. Meat, fresh and raw, cooking over an open fire. Roach had cooked the four of them a simple meal of roasted molerat the night before their expedition into Fillydelphia and both the memory and the flavor lingered in that special place where her best experiences were stored. Her chest tightened at the bittersweet reminder but she pushed it away before its grip grew stronger.
She stretched her legs out as best she could with one missing and another in a splint, and used her good foreleg to pull herself up from her cocoon of blankets into a sitting position against the armrest. In the week since she woke up in Discord’s cottage she’d begun to feel less like an invalid and more, well… capable. While she hadn’t been about to throw a party, yesterday had been a particularly good day. A milestone, even. 
She glanced down and touched the deep, whorled mass of scars covering her chest like some horrendous breastplate, and grimaced.
Just before sunset she’d patiently sat on the same cushion she was on now while Discord peeled away the layers of her blindfold. He’d done so slowly, dabbing a wet rag in a bowl of water set beside him and letting it soak against the last layers of gauze until they pulled away from the scabby, tender skin along the right side of her face with little fuss. Half of her expected to open her eyes onto black nothingness and confirm her sight was lost forever. The other quietly hoped to see everything as normally as she always had. What she got was something in between. It took several minutes for her eyes to adjust to the dim light of evening, and when she could finally keep them open without squinting she’d been rewarded with a view filled with indistinct, fuzzy blobs. She reported as much to Discord who told her not to worry, assuring her eyes weren’t done healing. She’d nodded, grudgingly burying her disappointment, and forced herself to chalk it up as a win. 
It turned out Discord wasn’t blowing smoke. As she looked around she could quickly tell her clarity had improved. She could make out the shapes of things in the room enough to tell what they were. A blurry table sat a few feet in front of the couch, and beyond that a gray pillar facing her from the opposite wall that she recognized as a fireplace. She smiled a little as she looked down at the blankets puddled around her, a colorful patchwork knit of blacks, yellows, and oranges that when she squinted had the appearance of being handmade. To her left, a small table the same height as the armrest bore an object that gave her pause, but upon closer inspection she realized it was someone’s attempt at a candle. A fat, brown chair sat at an angle toward the coffee table just beyond, marking the place Discord chose to sit and talk nonsense during meals. 
She found herself reflexively blinking in a vain attempt to clear her vision and forced herself to stop. She’d drive herself crazy if she didn’t, and like a newborn filly eager to look at all the new and colorful things she didn’t want anything distracting her from taking it all in. 
As she suspected, there were two doors set into the wall to her left. One she knew led out to the porch, where there would be steps down to the outhouse path. The other stood open, leading to a room Aurora couldn’t sort out the contents of. A desk, maybe, and something green above it. A framed picture, or maybe a window. 
Next to the fireplace was the kitchen, something she didn’t have to see to know was there. She could only wake up to the sound of cooking so many times to know what the room it came from was dedicated to. There was no door, just a void in the wall where one would fit, and a horizontal surface running the limited span of what she could see beyond. A countertop, she assumed. She wasn’t terribly focused on puzzling it out, though. The kitchen was no longer visible. It was obscured by the creature stepping out of it.
It paused in the door frame before continuing into the room. “Oh, good morning.”
She said nothing as it continued past the fireplace, the sound of sizzling meat still emanating from the kitchen as it padded into the other room. 
“Tell me if the smell bothers you,” it said, returning to the living room with something held at its side. A coffee cup. “According to the tin it’s pork but who really knows. Oh, since you’re up, how do you like your…”
It slowed as it recrossed the fireplace. If she’d been trying she would have noticed the growing concern on its elongated face, but she hadn’t. The only thing her mind would focus on was the unnatural shape of the creature standing across from her. 
In some distant corner of her brain she knew what she was looking at. Like all the fillies and colts who had grown up before and after her, Equestrian History was a class they had all been required to endure. Oftentimes it had been a boring barrage of dates, names, and political events Aurora had been too young to appreciate. Like many of her classmates she hadn’t cared about ancient alicorn cults or a lineage of gryphon royalty whose marriages rarely strayed outside their own gene pool. What she and so many of her peers really wanted to hear about were the stories they’d seen painted across the Stable’s walls in great, colorful murals. They wanted to know about the sibling princesses and the amazing world they ruled. They wanted to know about the Elements of Harmony and their famous adventures. And, unanimous among all of the young Stable dwellers, they wanted to know about the evil villains whose defeat proved Equestria’s might. Villains like Nightmare Moon, the changeling queen Chrysalis, and the serpentine chimera standing in front of her with the coffee mug dangling from his scaly finger.
For several, agonizing seconds she could only stare at the blurry patchwork creature in uneasy silence. A flicker of anger bloomed in her chest, aimed at herself for not knowing what to say. When he told her his name she’d assumed he was joking, or possibly trying to intimidate her. He couldn’t actually be Discord, because Discord had been defeated. He’d been imprisoned, or killed. The history books had never been clear on what ultimately became of him, but that didn’t matter anyway. Discord was someone who lived in history books, tucked neatly between the fall of Nightmare Moon and the obliteration of Equestria. 
And yet, there he stood, yellow eyes returning her stare with obvious discomfort. She thought about Blue, withering away in the dark of her Stable’s forgotten tunnel, her life and legacy remembered only by the ghoul who’d been there to watch her mind go. Since her first uneasy step into the outside she’d quickly learned that the bombs hadn’t killed Equestria as much as they changed the ones who survived. 
Inwardly she grimaced, and she forced herself to stop staring. “Sorry. I didn’t expect…”
The apology fizzled on her tongue. She sank into the couch, her gaze dropping to the fuzzy coffee table, and wished she could just be the mare she’d been a month ago. Life had been so much easier to cope with when all she had to worry about was getting a few hours of sleep in between shifts in the generator room. She hadn’t needed to ingratiate herself with anybody, worry about their lives, or rely on them for anything beyond showing up on time and doing their work. Had that made her a shitty boss? She tried not to think about it. Those days were over. Their simplicity had been permanently muddied by everything she’d encountered since leaving home, and all she wanted now was to go back to that orderly, uncomplicated life. 
Caring, she had learned the hard way, hurt too much. 
Discord waited a moment longer for her to finish her thought, and when she didn’t he dipped his chin and resumed walking. “I’m glad you’re seeing better than you were yesterday. Now, as I was saying, how do you like your eggs? They’re powdered, so I’m afraid your choices are limited to scrambled or fried.”
Irritatingly, she found herself fumbling for an answer again. He saved her the embarrassment of another painful silence with a gentle prompt.
“They’re better fried.” 
“Sure, that sounds good.” 
He disappeared back into the kitchen and soon the sounds of cooking resumed in earnest. For a long time Aurora sat still, listening to the domestic sounds that felt gravely at odds with this new reality taking shape around her. She’d lost everything, that much she knew on a strictly logical level, and like it or not the wasteland was the only option she had if she wanted to have some semblance of a future. If. She was still too numb to decide whether that option was as unattractive as it used to be, but even if it wasn’t off the table she definitely wasn’t there yet. It was, however, getting easier and easier to maintain the wall between her and the shattering grief she knew she should really be dealing with. There was a real chance she was all that was left of Stable 10. By all rights she should be curled up on the ground bawling until she choked, but right now wasn’t the time. She’d carve out a day to be a useless pile of mourning later. 
With some of her sight restored, she let her attention wander toward a familiar shape tucked into the far corner of the room. Set on a stack of four wooden crates sat a box from the top of which curved a large brass flower. She had to squint to be sure the slivers of color stacked edgewise in the crates were albums, but as blurry as things were she had no doubt the object above them was a record player. Like many things in the wasteland she recognized it from pictures she’d seen in the Stable. This, however, was her first time seeing a real one and she wanted a better look. 
Glancing down at her splinted foreleg, then back to the record player, she grit her teeth and shimmied herself down the cushion’s sagging edge. Her hind hoof settled on the floorboards and then, slowly, she braced her unbound front hoof against the coffee table and slowly brought the injured leg to the floor. Then she put some weight on it. And a little more.
She expected a bolt of pain to rocket up her leg but as she settled what she felt amounted to a normal burden onto it, all she got in response was a dull throb. Emboldened, she took a step forward. It wasn’t comfortable walking with one leg locked in full extension but this was sure as heck an improvement. Still, she was surprised at how heavy she felt on her own legs. Cautiously she took one wobbly step at a time, navigating the coffee table and the center of the living room until she found herself standing in front of the old record player. 
At this range she could easily see the worn corners of bare wood standing out from its glossy, dark grain. The decoratively cut edges of the base and lid reminded her of the jewelry box her mom kept in her night stand, an heirloom from a bygone era. The antique had been well cared for, that much was obvious from the clean felt pad on the turntable platter and the faint shine of new brass glinted like dusty gold in the morning light. A crank handle jutted out from the right side and her wings wriggled in their wraps with a natural urge to turn it. She bent forward to squint at the tiny black plate tacked to the front and frowned at the unfamiliar provenance.


ROYAL TALKING MACHINE CO.


Chicago, U.S.A.


She wrinkled her nose. “Chicka-go?”
Discord paused in the doorway, spotted her in his periphery, then arched a messy white brow at her. In both his hands were two plates, steam coiling up and away from their breakfasts. He stood close enough that she could make out flecks of gray tracking up and down his body, but it took her brain a second longer to realize they were bits of stone. 
“You’re recovering… quickly.” He looked from her to the gramophone, then smiled apologetically as he took their plates to the coffee table. “It doesn’t work.”
Aurora gave the tiny brass letters a lingering stare before carefully pivoted back to the couch. “Then why keep it?”
“Decoration,” he said, a little too quickly to be believable. She watched him as she used her good leg to hoist herself onto the couch, and to her surprise he didn’t comment on her newfound mobility. He seemed to stare across the room at the old record player as if lost in thought. Then, after an uncomfortable silence, he shrugged and picked up his fork. “Sentimentality too, I suppose. I gave it to a very good friend of mine a long time ago.”
She didn’t have to prod to catch the subtext. Discord had mentioned once before that he’d lost someone close to him. Not wanting to pick at someone else’s wounds, she changed the subject.
“When do you think your friend will be back?”
As with all their meals, Discord sat on the table across from her with a plate in his lap and the other in his hand. With her wings still bound to her sides, the simple task of eating had become a lesson in humility from the get go. He used a fork to cut a piece of what appeared to be a whitish yellow pancake folded in half, the middle of which was speckled with meat matter. He speared the bit he’d separated, popped it into his mouth and chewed as he repeated the process from the plate held in his hand. While she hadn’t explicitly stated as much, Discord had picked up fairly quickly that she preferred not to be fed from a dish positioned a few scant inches above his balls.
He held the fork out to her and she nipped the fried concoction from it. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call us friends. Mouse and I have a strictly transactional relationship.”
She almost didn’t hear him, the food was that good. It was greasy, salty, and best of all savory. Very happy neurons exploded in her brain as she chased the bits of maybe-pork with her teeth. She didn’t care that she didn’t know what pork was, only that it tasted fantastic. Any worries she had about maintaining her dignity vanished as they ate. Anyone who dared to laugh at her would only be doing so to hide their jealousy of her chef quality egg-pork-flaps.
“So you and him just,” she paused to swallow, “trade back and forth?”
Discord lifted his eyebrows thoughtfully. “More or less. He brings me certain things that I need - food, medicine, ink and paper, things like that - and I repay him with the books I write.”
She squinted up at him. “You’re an author?”
A wry smile curled his lips. “No, not quite. You could say I’m more of an unlicensed publisher.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
He held out a morsel of eggflap and chuckled. “Neither did Mouse. Even so, he says he’s been able to make a tidy profit from what I give him so he hasn’t stopped showing up yet. He’ll be back sooner this time, though. You’ll never hear him admit it but dropping you on my doorstep places him in my debt, and that stallion won’t sleep soundly as long as he thinks he owes anyone anything.”
Aurora wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like a loner.”
Discord thumped the empty fork against her nose. “Takes one to know one.”
“Fair.” She wiped her nose against the back of her foreleg. “So if he delivers things to you, does that mean he takes requests? Because if he does there are some things I need.”
The fork scraped against a glassy piece of rock embedded between Discord’s left hand’s distinctly avian knuckles. “He already knows to bring back fresh stimpacks. Though, at the rate you’re recovering, he might be wasting the trip.”
It was a nice thought, but she could still tell she was far from one hundred percent. The joints of her wings still throbbed furiously when she shifted them too much beneath their bindings. 
Her gaze dropped back to the sheet of scars covering her chest and she immediately forced her thoughts elsewhere. She thought about the dream she had last night in which Tandy introduced her to the zebra named Eshe, and an idea sprouted. 
“I may need his help again.”







The old road tilted one way, then the other as Mouse bent the cricks out of his neck. A loud, jerking pop broke the tension that had built up while he slept last night and the relief was such that he let out a low, pleasant groan. The relief was short-lived, however, as he turned his gaze back down to a more prescient problem.
His prosthetic foreleg lay on the roadside in front of him, its shaped steel segments scoured and scratched so thoroughly by his travels that the metal had taken on a dull matte texture. He spent a moment glaring down at the thing, took a breath, then with his multitool clenched between his teeth he got back to work freeing the tiny pebble that had inexplicably gotten itself lodged behind the knee hinge.
In reality, though, the pebble had gotten caught in the joint for a frustratingly simple reason: he had pushed himself too hard last night. Without a wagon pulling against him he’d embarked on the trek back to Discord’s hideaway assuming he had more calories to burn than he truly did. Sure he was saving effort by not hauling a load behind him but he’d forgotten about what that load always contained. Fresh food, water, muscle stimulants, a veritable cornucopia of energy sources that he didn’t have with him now. Among the supplies he’d stowed in his saddlebags for the pegasus he’d dragged off the hardpack was only the bare necessities of food and water to keep himself fed. It startled him how easily he’d been able to assume his wagon’s absence would make this walk easier without considering how limited his diet would be during the trip. So he’d skipped a few of his usual stops and when he did rest he’d done so for less time because he didn’t feel tired. 
He grimaced as he maneuvered the pliers into the joint, pecking at the offending stone. He remembered making camp in the lee of a boulder, building a fire, arranging his saddlebags into something amounting to a headrest, and then he woke up to a hazy gray sunrise. It had taken him a few seconds to work out it was morning and then a few more to realize he’d conked out without taking off his prosthetic. For the entire night he’d been shifting and rolling in his sleep and in the process dragging his leg over the rocks, several of which had found cozy new homes.
The offending stone sprang free and clattered harmlessly over the road. He worked the knee between his hooves and it bent obediently. With a neutral grunt he dropped the old multitool onto the saddlebags beside him and began the tedious process of belting on the limb. As he worked, he caught sight of a familiar shape in the distance. A wagon train, likely on its way to Crow’s Grove. He tracked their approach as he bit the leading end of a strap, flicked it over his shoulder, then deftly caught it after it wrapped behind his neck. Without taking his eyes on the other travelers he slid the strap through a buckle welded onto the prosthetic, set the pin through a well worn grommet, then repeated the process with a second opposing strap.
By the time he was back on his hooves, the wagon train had drawn close enough for Mouse to identify the cultist scrawls along the sideboards of each cart. He suppressed a groan as he moved to the far side of the road, both advertising his deference to their right of way as a caravan and his disinterest with engaging them, yet a sharp whistle still peeled up from the lead wagon and calls to stop rolled down the line.
This time Mouse did groan. He didn’t have anything particularly against ponies who believed in this Year Zero stuff, but they had a persistent nature that made them difficult to be around. That, and they had this rule about smiling with their teeth. He avoided eye contact with the earth ponies harnessed to the front of the lead wagon. Their open grins coupled with a sheen of sweat and heavy breathing from exertion gave them a feral look that sent prickles up his back. He was pretty sure nobody from the Canticle of the Unbound was a cannibal, but seeing the wheezing smiles from their wagon haulers never failed to make him wonder.
“Good morning, brother!” a familiar voice piped as he lumbered past the second wagon. “Have you heard the good news?”
He did his best not to grimace. The Unbound were always full of good news, and boy were they all about spreading it. He tried to guess what it would be this time and came up with a few entertaining options. One of them had seen a cloud change directions. The power supply to an old air raid siren shorted out and started blaring again. A dud grenade defied corrosion and separated someone’s hoof from their leg. Anything was fair game for a cult who believed the bombs hadn’t just ended civilization but were responsible for the cessation of time itself. 
It was kooky, and the scrawled nonsense along their wagons didn’t make it any less so. Phrases like See you next yesterday! and The apocalypse is now! made crossing paths with their members an exercise in balancing interest with exasperation. To the Unbound, time flowed only for the believers and everyone else was trapped in some vague, time locked first moment of a period they called Year Zero. The strangest part, in Mouse’s opinion, was that they were adamant that only a fraction of the bombs which were launched had detonated and that there were thousands upon thousands of balefire missiles hanging motionless somewhere above the clouds. Say nothing for the Enclave pegasi who had yet to report a mysterious volley of civilization-killing weapons parked in the sky, or the fact that the flamboyant nature of their cult made remembering the past visits very, very difficult to forget despite “the past” being impossible for anyone but the Unbound to experience. 
As far as cults went these folks were a little more scrambled in the brains than most. Still, Mouse kept his opinions to himself. What they lacked in sanity they made up for with a skill for scavenging, and he could do business with scavengers all day long. So as he caught sight of the caravan’s middle-aged leader trotting down the line of wagons after him, he dutifully slowed to let her catch up.
“Morning, ma’am,” he said with as much polite neutrality as he could muster. “I don’t have anything to trade today, sorry.”
Tight gray curls bounced in a brown mane that reminded Mouse of the container of miscellaneous springs he kept in his workshop. The mare was weathered and gaunt, more a product of her age than a lack of sustenance, but she had energy enough for both of them. She didn’t even seem bothered that he wasn’t in a position to exchange goods, though her wide eyes did pause to look him over all the same.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so unburdened, Mouse.” She smiled as if this were a good thing, and Mouse’s lips tightened as he realized she was alluding to something vaguely religious that likely only she understood. “There’s good news today, like I said. Would you like to hear it?”
He turned to look at the half dozen wagons now lined up beside them on the road, their frames practically bulging with a startling amount of electronic scrap and more than a few unnaturally cheery congregants. “You know I’m only interested in practical information, Miss Delilah.”
Her grin transformed into a more natural, knowing smile. “And you know the more you’ve listened, the more unbound you’ve become.”
This time he did grimace, namely at the suggestion that their repeat business somehow alluded to him giving into their way of thinking, but she waved off his visible discomfort with a hoof. “The news is both good and practical. Besides, I wouldn’t have stopped the whole caravan just to preach to you.”
He snorted at the lie. “What’ll it cost me?”
Delilah thought about it, then shrugged. “A credit at your shop the next time we visit. Two hundred caps’ worth.”
Mouse’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “For rumors?”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “For verifiable fact.”
Something about her tone said she wasn’t joking. Even her beatific smile had dimmed, just barely, but it was an immense change of expression for a cultist who he suspected could grin through a gunshot. 
“Mouse, you’ve always dealt fairly with me and mine, and you know I’m not the sort to repay kindness with trickery.” After a beat, she added, “If you prefer, I am willing to negotiate the price after you’ve heard what I have to say.”
A twinge of guilt made him look over to the wagon parked beside them. Yeah, they were all nutty, but he respected the Unbound for their restraint. They didn’t kidnap, lure, or cheat anyone into their congregation, nor were they particularly violent except for when they encountered raiders or road bandits. They just believed that time only worked for them because of… reasons? Sure they all had lifetime memberships to fantasy land, but hey, at least they didn’t eat people.
Mouse skimmed a couple choice proverbs scratched into the wagon before noticing a caricature of an alicorn peeking over a line of purple paint. Someone had written twilight wuz here underneath it, and it was all he could do not to roll his eyes.
He looked back to Delilah and nodded. “I’m fine with haggling, sure. Hit me with the good word.”
Her smile restored itself and she spoke eagerly. “The Clock ticked again. One of the balefire missiles fell from the sky and exploded out east, about ten days’ walk or more beyond Steepleton. I’ve spoken with several traders fresh out of New Canterlot who agree there’s some kind of dead zone out there now for electronics. Everything for hundreds of miles in every direction got fried.”
Mouse wasn’t so sure he believed her. Probably Delilah believed every word she said was true, but given the company she kept, that wasn’t exactly a glowing review. It definitely wasn’t convincing him to write her down for a credit worth two hundred caps. “That’s a big blast radius for just one bomb,” he demurred.
She shook her head. “If the fireball were that wide, you and I would be dead too. No, no, everyone I’ve spoken to agrees the explosion sent something out that overloaded a few million exposed circuits like a radio station with a bad transmitter. I haven’t met anyone who understands the exact science, but suffice to say a week ago a large chunk of the eastern wasteland watched everything with a microchip go up in smoke.”
His eyes moved back to the wagons, each of which was laden with crates heaped full of electronic scrap. He straightened a little as he pieced together the puzzle Delilah was laying out for him. Whether a bomb from the old world had exploded, a nasty radstorm had taken shape, or the Steel Rangers had gone on a tech-confiscating bender, something had wiped out a sizeable chunk of the electronics salvage market out east and the damage had been significant enough for the well-to-do trading guilds of New Canterlot to send their own precious traders out into the wasteland looking for electronic scrap. 
Piles of which now glittered in Unbound wagons. Delilah was right. He’d never run scams on them or charged less than a fair price whenever her people rolled into Crow’s Grove. Now she was returning that favor and he could sense she wasn’t, at least knowingly, lying to him. If even some of what she was saying were true, the price of electronics was about to experience a significant spike.
He shrewdly eyed the wagon beside him. “You’re not going to sell all this before the price goes up, are you?”
Delilah offered a shrewd smirk in response. “The Unbound are less interested in getting rich and more interested in remaining a non-target for raiders. As for payment, can we agree on the aforementioned credit?”
He considered haggling her down, but his eyes kept rising to the piles of dented terminals and circuit boards parked beside him. “Two hundred caps,” he said, “and two crates of what you have up there, delivered to my shop.”
She watched him for a spell. “Two hundred and fifty caps and one crate.”
Good news indeed. He considered the counteroffer and decided not to offend her by splitting hairs. “Deal. My neighbor owns a bakery next to my shop. She’ll let you inside.”
Delilah acquiesced with a polite smile, then did something unexpected. She looked up to a young unicorn slouched over the sideboard of the wagon and asked him to get her something from one of the crates. After a few attempts to identify exactly what she was pointing to, his magic gripped the woven strap of a compact radio. Mouse regarded it dubiously as the follower gave the little box to Delilah, who held it out to him on the flat of her hoof.
“A gift,” she reassured him. “We found dozens of them in a shipping container a few years ago and they work especially well. The handle on the side turns a mainspring that drives an internal dynamo, and the on/off switch releases and locks the mainspring.”
Mouse settled his weight on his prosthetic, using his other hoof to take the strap. The radio hung from it like a canteen. Sure enough, folded into the little chassis was a small, folded crank handle.
“A clockwork radio,” he mused. “Thanks?”
“You’re welcome.” She dipped her head in a mock-bow, then pressed her teeth against her lip and belted a whistle that made Mouse jump and nearly drop his new nicknack. Wagons lurched into motion beside them and Delilah turned to leave with them, pausing just briefly enough to smile over her shoulder. “Take a listen when you have a chance. The Clock ticked once so it stands to reason it’ll tick again.”
With that she and her congregation departed, the steady grind of steel-rimmed wheels fading as they shrank away. He eyed the little radio before tossing the carry strap around his neck and resuming his long walk in the opposite direction, his hooves stamping over the broken asphalt while he considered these new ripples coming out of the east.







By noon, Aurora had grown firm in her decision that having limited mobility and a measurable percentage of her vision no longer required her to be a bump on the proverbial log… or in her case, a literal couch potato. 
Discord, and as far as she could tell he was actually Discord, seemed less enthusiastic about her sudden desire to move around. She didn’t particularly care, though, because he hadn’t spent the better part of a week slowly replacing the funky smell of his couch cushions with her own brand of perfume. She needed a shower. No, better yet, she needed a long soak under a decontamination arch. Anything to blast the stink the bandages had collected. A trip into the kitchen - little more than a hallway equipped with cupboards, countertops, a sink, and an icebox - drew her to a narrow door at the far end that led into an absolute closet of a bathroom. There was room enough for a clawfoot tub which, bizarrely, had been sliced in half and messily brazed to a piece of sheet iron to form a seal. Seeing her sudden interest in what Discord had settled for as a shower, he’d begun to suggest a sponge bath as an alternative but promptly aborted the offer when she glared back at him. She hadn’t decided whether she should be surprised at his utter blindness for personal space and had settled instead to simply accept his ignorance as the price of being his guest. At least he’d stopped using her dinnerplate as a nut warmer.
She closed the door, taking care not to slam it, and gave the kludged-together shower a quick once-over before deciding the mismatched hot/cold knobs bolted to the wall would have to do. She wanted her wings back and didn’t trust Discord not to wring his hands over it being too early to undo the bandages. He’d said it himself that she was healing faster than normal, and as far as she cared that was a good thing. If she could already put weight on a fractured bone then her wings should be good as new, and she wasn’t willing to play the part of the helpless Stable mare anymore. Maybe her expedited recovery had something to do with Ginger’s final act of spellcasting?
She pushed the thought away. Still too raw. There was a list of things she needed to do and grieving was somewhere on it, but nowhere near the top. She wouldn’t be able to function if she let that dam break now. Later, she promised herself. After Primrose’s corpse had begun to cool.
Hooves thumped into the half-tub like a drunken wardrum, the slight pitch of the enameled iron pushing her toward the wall. Trying not to think about the slight crunching texture against her teeth, she manipulated the knobs until a sputtering stream of lukewarm water sprang from a showerhead much closer to the ceiling than the tub. Discord was a tall creature. It didn’t make sense if the showerhead only came up to his chest. She frowned. Did he technically even have a chest? He was more serpent than mammal if you didn’t count the paws, claws, hooves, horns… she wrinkled her nose and let that train of thought go sailing right off the cliff she’d aimed it toward. 
With a diffuse sprinkling of warm water over her back, she spent the next few minutes listening to the showerhead cough and hiss as water soaked into her coat. The water beneath her hooves ran brown for a long while with bits of grit and sand leaving a trail toward the drain. Days of odor her nose had learned to selectively ignore came back fresh and pungent like a trash recycler with a bad gasket, but eventually those smells faded as the water ran clearer. With her mane drizzling, she glanced around and failed to see anything that might suggest the presence of soap and assumed it was either stored somewhere out of sight or that Discord simply never found much use for it living out here on his own. Likely the latter, and since Aurora didn’t remember picking up any noticeable funk from him she guessed he probably didn’t need it. 
Eventually the bandages grew saturated and her wings especially started to sag from the weight. She’d counted on this happening and carefully tested the muscles in each joint, gently reaching each wing down toward the tub basin until the waterlogged gauze began to stretch. Discord hadn’t so much as wrapped each wing individually as he had simply spun gauze around her midsection and subsequently immobilized the limbs in the process, and after some effort the bandages grew loose enough for one wing to spring free and then the other. Flecks of something black sprinkled the tub’s wet surface like pepper and she realized belatedly that they were bits of charred feather. She looked to her left wing, found nothing alarming, then to her right where the damage was plainly apparent. 
Rather than a full array of dense feathers in grayscale, her right wing was a haggard mess. Like the mass of scars down her chest, several smaller twists of ugly pinkish skin traced visibly down the forward length of her wing. Where her wing had shielded her body from the heat of the balefire, her coat was unmarred, but the vanes of each feather had burned so deeply that the shafts stood out like the bristles of an old straw broom. New vanes had already begun to grow back but several of the feathers were dead down to the roots. She judged that she would have to pluck out at least a quarter of them and hope they too began to grow back, though even if they did they would likely lack the uniformity they once had.
She lifted the damaged wing and flexed the feathers. Many, but not all, obeyed and only weakly at that. Her left wing unsurprisingly demonstrated a better response but she’d never been left-winged. She was a righty, and it bothered her that her first instinct had been to turn her right side into the bomb’s furnace. Stupid. She turned her damaged wing into the stream and watched the last bits of char rinse away.
It wasn’t long until she’d begun working the bandages around her foreleg loose. The Pip-Bucks underneath were waterproof but she didn’t relish the idea of them basting in whatever soup was forming around them now. The gauze, along with four wood dowels that formed the splint, sloughed off and added to the mess of bandages in the tub. She looked down at the twin devices, one blockish and brown, the other a trim curve of white, and she stared at the latter for what felt like minutes. 
In an instant she was back above the clouds, her feathers grasping past the balefire talisman for Ginger and coming away with her Pip-Buck instead. She’d known with utmost certainty that it was the last time she’d ever touch her and before she could raise her voice in protest–
“Stop it.” 
Her voice shook as she glared down at the reflection in the puddle. It took several slow, controlled breaths to pull herself back from the brink. From becoming that helpless mare again. The one who sank hooks into those who got too close and dragged them down with her before they even knew what was happening.
She exhaled, harshly, and finished washing.
Despite the washroom’s lack of a toilet or sink - it truly was just a washroom she supposed - a set of obscenely pink towels hung from a bar that Discord had nailed to the wall beside a full length mirror. She paused to look at herself, sighed at her ragged reflection, and snatched down one of the towels to pat herself dry. Flipping the damp cloth over her shoulder, she stepped back into the kitchen and quietly limped her way back to the couch. 
“Feeling better?”
An old wooden chair creaked from the adjacent room as Discord leaned back on its back legs, an inked quill held gently between his fingers. He’d gone back to writing one of his books and his yellow eyes briefly fixed on the splints missing from her foreleg. 
“You’re out of hot water,” she quipped, and even managed to smile a little as she flipped the cushion. Climbing up onto the couch, and with her wings finally mobile again, she began working the clasps on her Pip-Bucks. “So, hey, could I get something to write on?”
Her own Pip-Buck sprang open, flicking beads of water across her lap. She wrapped the towel around it to scrub it dry only for the fabric to come up caked in the thick residue of her years in Mechanical. With a grimace she settled with wiping the smears off the screen, then set it on the coffee table to air dry while she used the towel’s clean side to dry the one the Enclave had loaned Ginger. A streak of deep gouges marred the otherwise flawless white plastic where gravel had bitten into it when she fell. The screen had escaped damage, however, despite being as dark and unresponsive as its older twin. Somewhere beneath that shell was an undetonated thermite charge that still threatened to take away the only thing left Aurora had of Ginger’s. She needed–
Something fluttered and harmlessly speared her in the temple before getting caught by the damp in her mane. A folded sheet of paper shaped like a wedge. Tucked at the center was a small nib of pencil. Aurora eyeballed Discord whose blurred features still managed to convey smugness. “You couldn’t just hand this to me like a normal person?”
“One does not simply hand someone a paper airplane.”
She flattened the sheet on the coffee table and took up the pencil, offering an eye roll as her only response. She had learned Discord seemed to enjoy setting out small traps for her to walk into which would result in him talking about things that made absolutely no sense. 
Armed with a writing implement, Aurora began scratching out a bulleted list of equipment laid out by Eshe.







“...funny how something so simple can have so much flavor.”
A bland laugh. “That’s so true, Brulee. Tatos really can bring a nice, hearty texture to any meal when you plan ahead.”
“That’s great, so great.” More colorless chuckling as the program host transitioned away from her guest. “Well we’re coming to the top of the hour which means in a few minutes our new guest Luster Stone will give us a sneak peek into how he finds precious gems in Old Equestrian coal country. Stick around for that, but first let’s take a look at the news.”
A bored yawn pulled at Mouse’s jaw as he walked. The little radio swinging below his neck had worked after he’d paused to crank the dynamo and for his efforts he’d been rewarded with the fuzzy conversations from a talk radio show. After a few hours of listening he’d determined with some confidence that the station was situated somewhere in Enclave territory, which meant it was likely sponsored by the faction. The host maintained too much cheer for a wastelander and there weren’t enough chems on the planet to make a Steel Ranger laugh as much as Brulee. And of course there was the constant use of Old Equestria, which suggested the existence of a new one. The Enclave was especially dogmatic about that.
The dull voice of a stallion with a script droned through the radio now, the contents of the news probably too sensitive to trust to someone whose job was to make commentary. It was the same bite-sized report that had followed up the previous hour, but Mouse lifted his ears to listen anyway. 
“The explosive device,” the nameless stallion muttered, “was confirmed by authorities to have been planted in the Stable by a yet unknown detachment of Rangers whose orders were given by now ex-Elder Coldbrook. Casualties within Stable 10 remain yet unknown as relief efforts have been stalled by unprecedented levels of radiation in the area, however ministry officials fear the balefire contamination has all but spoiled the bloodlines of any survivors.”
The newscaster shuffled his papers and continued. “Yesterday, Minister Primrose attended a candlelight vigil outside the Chapel of the Two Sisters in honor of the only two confirmed deaths in the attack: Ginger Dressage, eldest daughter of the Dressage Family in New Canterlot, and Aurora Pinfeathers, the pureblood pegasus who sought help from the Enclave for her people and whose heroism the Steel Rangers repaid with imprisonment, torture, and death. Both mares were sighted by multiple Spritebots in the area when they evacuated Stable 10 with the balefire device, and this week Minister Primrose called their selfless sacrifice a testament to Enclave values.”
Mouse would have rolled his eyes if he hadn’t already done it for the last two times he heard that line. As the newscaster kept rattling off headlines, drifting into a not unsubtly shrugged off mention of what he called “small riots” in several Enclave villages on the eastern border, Mouse refocused his attention on the last leg of his journey.
Over the last several miles the road and the terrain around it had begun to change. The compacted gravel of the already disused backroad had grown less and less distinct against the surrounding hardpack until only the suggestion of a road could be discerned, and only with diligent scrutiny. Here and there dark grasses had begun to join the sparse patches of scrub brush and hearty weeds. Strands of green pressed up through and widened cracks in the road and far ahead, too far to make out with any real detail, stood the first stands of actual living trees. 
Mouse paused to drink the last swallows from his canteen, scanning the horizons for anyone else as he corked the lid. As expected nobody had followed him, not even the Cinders who sometimes hunted the oversized rodents whose dens lurked nearby. For all his odd quirks and penchant for rattling off what sometimes felt like senile nonsense, Discord had done a convincing job of making such an idyllic patch of wasteland feel utterly foreboding. 
He passed the remains of what looked to be a military checkpoint with all the accouterments of the long dead Equestrian Army. A dilapidated booth stood off to one side of the faint path, clusters of grass hiding the not quite professionally poured concrete pad it stood on. A striped wooden arm lay across the road, having dry rotted enough for gravity to pull it off the hinged post just outside the booth. Mouse had offered to reattach it but Discord insisted it was critical for it to look untouched. If anyone wandered this way he wanted them to think the area was thoroughly uninhabited, a fact that would be reinforced by the official looking signs Discord had repurposed during those early years after the bombs coated the world in radioactive ash. 
And the signs were convincing. For anyone paying attention, they told a story. Inside the booth, a mare’s skeleton sat slumped in a rotting chair, the army uniform hanging from her bones speckled down the front with dark stains as if she’d died choking on blood. That alone was a red flag to any would-be scavengers because it meant she’d been in uniform when they still meant something and she hadn’t died from the bombs. Anyone curious about how the supposed guard had gone out would find clearer answers in the plant life that aggressively sprouted from the skull’s empty sockets and open jaw, though he’d left less ambiguous warnings further down the road in the form of official-looking signage. One such posting stood well ahead of the checkpoint:


	WARNING: BIOLOGICAL QUARANTINE


	LEVEL A HAZMAT EQUIPMENT REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT


A few patches of fresh rust had begun to crawl over the bright black and yellow paint, but the sign was still legible from a distance. Another half-mile up the road, Mouse passed the first of many bodies clad in tattered yellow vinyl. There would be a half dozen more by the time he reached the first stand of trees and each one of them would be pointed away from the dense wall of flora ahead. Because he was taking the eastward approach, he was treated to the rusted hulks of emergency vehicles all clumped together in a mockup of a response to chaos. Mouse’s lip quirked into a grin as he slipped past the ambulances, their doors hanging open to display more bones which the wasteland had no shortage of. Muted sunlight shone into the vehicles through bullet holes which Discord had inexpertly sprayed across each. 
A mysterious biological bugaboo was only as fearsome as the effort made to contain it and the Lord of Chaos had spared no expense in the theatrics. Were anyone to take the long way around the dark forest they would continue to find evidence of a mass evacuation at odds with military containment, and that narrative had remained effective for two centuries and counting. Referred to by locals as The Plagued Trees, anyone with a brain knew it would be easier to sell a case of sheath scabies than anything scavenged from these parts. And, of course, those who didn’t heed the obvious warnings never came home.
Mouse’s ears perked at the unmistakable chirp-chirps of two auto turrets detecting his approach. It didn’t matter how many times he’d walked this trail, his skin prickled each time the twin sentries popped their barrels up out of the grass. They followed him for several steps until the facial scans they had run returned a positive result on Discord’s whitelist, and the guns went back into standby mode. 
The mechanical greetings continued as he crossed into the forest proper, dodging over the black thorny vines that slithered in from the edges of a path barely wide enough for his wagon. The trees grew taller the further he walked, their canopies stretching so wide that the few rays of light that made their way through were swallowed up before they reached the forest floor. The perpetual twilight of what Discord sometimes called his second Everfree provided a strange sort of comfort to Mouse, as if some deeper part of himself was relieved to be surrounded by the steady thrush of overhead leaves and the damp, earthy scent of living soil. Nearby insects went quiet as he navigated the narrow path, resuming their chirps and chitters only after he passed. It was nice, he decided, being able to walk between moss-caked trees without the distraction of steering a load of goods. Hard to believe Discord had planted this forest himself with seeds taken from the original Everfree. Not for the first time, Mouse thought it was a shame he was one of the few able to visit this place. Given enough time here it was possible to forget about the desolation just a dozen miles in any direction.
Slowly, Discord’s cottage emerged from a clearing maintained near the forest’s center. A few narrow shafts of sunlight shrank and grew in the shifting gaps in the canopy, providing enough natural light from which to tell day from night without giving any hints to airborne scouts of what the forest hid. Luckily the Enclave was practically phobic about contracting wasteland diseases and went through pains to keep their fliers well upwind of the seemingly carnivorous plant life. The ruts his wagon had cut into the lawn a week earlier were still visible and he winced a little as he followed them up to the front porch. Again he felt a twinge of unease at not having to unharness himself from his wagon, but he managed to suppress it as he mounted the wooden steps.
He stopped at the front door, thumped his hoof against it a few times, and glanced back at the trees as he listened for a response. Soon enough he heard footsteps. The knob spun and he turned toward the door just as it swung open.
A hard-faced mare stared up at him from the other side. Mouse froze, confused, and his hoof reflexively curled around the trigger bar of the pipe gun strapped to his foreleg. It took another beat before his brain caught up with his eyes and recognition dawned on him. The mare continued to stare at him, her expression growing increasingly uneasy as silence stretched. Green eyes darted down to his pipe pistol before returning to him with an arched brow. 
“You’re the one who brought me here,” she said. 
It wasn’t a question so much as an observation. 
“Uh, yeah,” he said. Unsure what to add, he relaxed his grip and glanced past her into the cottage. “Sorry, Discord usually answers the door.”
“He’s writing one of his books.” She gestured a wing vaguely toward the open door of Discord’s writing room.
In response, an avian looking hand appeared in the doorway holding up a finger in what Discord claimed was the universal sign for hold on a minute. The mare snorted, rolled her eyes, and started making her own way toward the couch. Mouse closed the door behind him while frowning after the mare. Absent one leg, she had a pronounced limp, but more evident to Mouse was the fact that she was walking at all. He distinctly remembered her foreleg being badly broken, so much so that he’d been forced to haul her up by his teeth just to get her moving.
“There,” Discord announced with an exaggerated sigh. The Lord of Chaos emerged from his writing room and regarded Mouse with admonishment. “Good enough for today. I swear you have a supernatural knack for showing up when I’m at the start of a critical paragraph.”
He shrugged, too aware of the second set of eyes watching him from the couch, and stopped beside the fireplace to loosen the straps of his saddlebags. “Next time I’m delivering meds I’ll take the scenic route.”
The bags slid to the floor with a thud. 
“Not sure she needs ‘em, though.” He tried not to appear like he was staring, but were it not for the pink scars swirled across her chest and down one side, Mouse wouldn’t have believed she was the pitiful thing he’d picked up off the hardpack. “You healed up fast.”
To this, Discord grunted wordless agreement and bent to pick up Mouse’s bags. “Must be something in the water.”
Understandably the mare was growing visibly uncomfortable with the color commentary and pointedly shifted her attention as Discord unpacked the contents of the first bag onto the coffee table. Clean gauze, several stimpacks, and a pill bottle were the first items set out and more soon followed. “I don’t have any caps for this.”
“Discord’s paying for it, not you.” The words left his mouth with a little more harshness than Mouse intended, but he didn’t exactly make an effort to soften them afterward. The more time he had to look her over the less certain he felt about the necessity of risking this trip. Had she already taken stimpacks before she fell? He felt himself beginning to glower. 
Sensing this, Discord looked over his shoulder to Mouse and tipped a brow toward the bookcase on the other side of the fireplace. “I believe we settled on two books, but I recommend you take a third.”
He frowned, sensing the task attached to the invitation. “I can’t run another errand right now, Discord, I gotta get back to the shop. Peri’s good about keeping an eye on the place as a favor but she’ll skin me alive if I’m not there to cover my own rent.”
Discord waved him off as he plopped an IV bag of RadAway next to the carrots Mouse had pulled from his garden. Then he reached past the supplies and picked up a sheet of paper near the pegasus. He held it out for Mouse to take, his expression lacking some of his usual joviality. 
“It’s a short list. Here.”
Mouse grabbed the paper between his teeth and walked it over to the bookcase, where he laid it flat on the floor. He skimmed the items before frowning up at the mare. “It’s an extremely specialized list. The heck you need rosin core solder for?”
To answer his question she lifted a slim Pip-Buck from the table. “I need to get this working again.”
Sure enough, toward the middle of the list, a fine-tipped soldering iron had been noted as well as a deceivingly brief request for “electrolytic capacitors, variety, 100pF to 10µF.” He shook his head and wished he had hands so he could hold up the list with the appropriate level of disgust. “Are you trying to build one from scratch? If that Pip-Buck’s not working it’s because you smacked it on the dirt when you fell. You probably knocked a couple connections loose, not fried the electronics.”
He shook his head at the list, anger building that they’d just assumed he was going to do this. “I’m sorry, but this is overkill and those little computers are hardened against everything short of a balefire bomb. I’m not going to spend the next month of my life pulling apart terminals for…”
He trailed off and looked up toward the couch. The mare stared back at him, her shoulders ever so slightly stiffening as his gaze went from her, to the Pip-Buck in her wing, and back to her. Too many things fell into place at one for it to be a lucky guess. The strange burns, the broken Pip-Bucks, and the fact that she’d fallen from the sky without so much as a saddlebag or a sidearm… she was from that Stable on the radio. The one that got hit with a balefire bomb.
He considered saying something, but it was clear on the mare’s face that she very much wanted him to keep his mouth shut. Weird, but not unreasonable. Unsure how to proceed, he made a show of shaking his head in frustration before turning to the bookcase.
“I’ll see what I can do but I’m not making any promises.” He lifted a hoof toward a book titled Ferengi Rules of Acquisition 5th Edition and pulled it off the shelf. “Everything she’s got listed involves electronics and I’ve got it on good authority that the market for that will be booming soon.”
Behind him, Discord acquiesced. “I’d appreciate it if you made an effort, but understand if you can’t find everything.”
The mare was less accommodating. “I need as much as you can find, especially the security drivers and the soldering equipment.”
“Rosin core solder, I got it.” He pulled a second book down and cracked it open, squinting at the vertical rows of nonsensical squiggling dots. He held it up for Discord to see. “Should I even ask?”
The draconequus smiled. “Up to you.”
He decided not to. Trying to decide whether Discord’s stories about species living among the stars were true or not gave him a headache, and cost him time he could otherwise use to scavenge. He selected a third book at random, not bothering to read the title, and tucked the mare’s list between the pages. 
Taking his lightened saddlebags back from Discord, he glanced at the mare as he packed away his payment. “I never got your name.”
She shrugged, using her wings instead of her shoulders. “Can’t remember it.”
He grunted, looked at Discord and could see he didn’t need to point out the obvious lie. If Discord hadn’t called her out on it then he probably had a reason. Probably he was just giving her time to decide whether she could trust them with it. That was fair. Mouse didn’t exactly give out business cards when he was in mixed company either. Faking amnesia, though, was a bold tactic. Maybe she’d even find someone dumb enough to buy it someday. 
“Well,” he said, shrugging his saddlebags back on, “like I said, I’ll see what I can do.”
Discord appeared surprised to see him make his way toward the door so soon and all but said as much. “You’re leaving already?”
“I’ll be back in two weeks with what I can find on this list, but I gotta get back to the shop.”
Discord held his palm toward the mare in a sign for her to wait and turned to follow Mouse onto the front porch. “Give me your canteen, I’ll fill it up.”
The door hadn’t even closed behind them before Mouse felt his canteen whisked up and off his neck by the strap. “I know where the pump is,” he complained.
“Yes, well, as much as I cherish the sound of teeth clicking against the handle I’d rather avoid that particular nightmare, thank you very much.” He strode ahead of Mouse with the canteen raised. “Besides, it gives me an opportunity to talk to you about something in private. I have this rash, you see…”







The pump gave out several fruitless squeals as Discord worked the handle before finally a splash of clear liquid coughed out of the spigot. He bent slightly, holding Mouse’s canteen with one hand while the other operated the handle, and filled it with cold water. 
They were far enough away from the cottage that the trees mostly obscured it from view. Discord noticed Mouse eyeing the new slabs of sandstone he’d added to the dirt path leading down to the wellhead and allowed himself a chagrined smile. In spite of his self-imposed isolation it did feel good to see someone appreciating his work.
Mouse grunted. He’d never been much for idle conversation. “Something tells me you want to talk about your houseguest more than dry scales.”
Water bubbled up from the mouth of the canteen and Discord tipped out just a little to make room for the cork. Leaning against the pump, he held out the strap for Mouse. “You two barely exchanged five sentences with her before having a lightbulb moment. I wanted to hear your thoughts on her.”
He waited as Mouse shrugged the strap across his shoulder, the stallion’s eyes drifting back up to the cottage. “She’s lying about not knowing who she is. Figured you already know that, though.”
A nod. Discord was fairly sure his guest didn’t think she had fooled him either, and to that effect they’d come to an unspoken agreement not to discuss it further. 
“She’s healed up quicker than normal,” Mouse added, not trying to hide that he was hedging.
“Remarkably so,” Discord agreed. “I have a theory for that, but I suspect you do too.”
The stallion seemed to regard the ground with deep interest before finally letting a shoulder rise and fall. He touched the little crank gadget hanging from his neck. “Been listening to the radio and there’s talk that the Rangers tried to set a balefire bomb off in a Stable way out east. Happened around the same time she kissed hardpack and she’s got burns like I never seen before. Not on anything living, anyway.”
Discord took a deep breath through his nose, held onto it, then exhaled it in a resigned sigh. “She’s ghouling.”
Mouse nodded. “That’s my guess, yeah. That scar on her chest is a hundred percent radiation damage, and it’s already healed over.”
He clenched his jaw and looked up the trail. 
“If either of those Pip-Bucks still worked, their radiation detectors would be throwing a fit.” The stallion followed his gaze, his tone softening a little. “Probably right now she’s just happy to be up and walking and isn’t thinking about the how.”
“She’s dead set on fixing those Pip-Bucks,” he murmured.
“Might be all she’s got left of home,” Mouse guessed in response. “If I can find the stuff she needs I’ll bring it back, but you should talk to her about what’s going on before then.”
Discord flicked his tail, the thought of having such a fatalistic discussion simply at the bottom of the list of things he wanted to do. The entire reason he’d come here and taken this ridiculous form was to have a break from nudging, pushing, and oftentimes hurling wayward species from their constant desire to seek self-destruction. This detour had been meant as a temporary vacation from all that seriousness and now here he was, apparently mortal, expected once again to bear the yoke of being the bearer of awful news. 
The urge to snap his fingers just to see if it would work was powerful, but he drummed them against the pump handle instead. As much as he hated to admit it, Mouse was right. His impromptu housemate had slipped into the first subtle stages of ghouling. Whether her mind remained intact when it finished was another matter entirely.
> Chapter 44: Stripes
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 8th, 1077
Fillydelphia

Inside a little store pinned to the corner of Shore Road and 15th Avenue, a stern-faced clerk stared as his only customer set his shopping basket on the clean linoleum and deftly pinch the twisted end of a bag of pumpernickel bread between his teeth. Esheke Obiakolam, or Eshe as he preferred to be called, never returned the clerk’s consternation. Doing so would only invite trouble, namely for himself, and these days a neutral smile was all a first-generation Vhannan immigrant could do to keep himself safe. He tried not to harbor any malice toward the clerk. The scrawny unicorn was young and no doubt impressionable. Likely he had been reading the inflammatory headlines stacked in their display beside the counter, each article reviewed and approved for print by the everpresent Ministry of Image. 
Eshe stole a sideways glance toward those papers and felt a familiar ball of anger rise in his chest. Hate the poison, not the afflicted. He set the bread atop the canned vegetables, butter, and half dozen eggs in his basket, then made his way to the counter. The clerk said nothing as he rang up the groceries, and Eshe noticed the unicorn’s anger had been subsumed by nervous discomfort. The zebra on the other side of his counter wasn’t behaving in the way he was being instructed to believe, and that subconscious knowledge brought with it a faint edge of guilt the clerk didn’t quite understand. Eshe remained pleasant, but quiet, his thoughts already drifting to his next errand. No sense in saying anything for the sake of demonstrating he wasn’t a craze-maned brute. He stacked his bits on the smooth countertop, waited for the clerk to count it, then took his groceries and stepped outside. 
The door jingled shut behind him, but he didn’t hear it. The sound was swallowed by the roar of midday Fillydelphia traffic. A box truck idled noisily at a red light, its winged operator watching opposing traffic fly through the intersection with open annoyance. Behind him, a string of motorized carriages coughed exhaust up toward the windows overlooking the two-laned street. From the corner of his eye, Eshe saw several drivers look toward him as he emerged onto the sidewalk with his paper bag crinkling between his teeth. He wasn’t the only expatriate here from Vhanna, not by a long shot, and yet the reaction was always the same. On a continent dominated by ponies of every combination of coat and mane imaginable, the sight of monochrome drew stares like a magnet. 
He let out a little sigh as another paper-thin layer of his personal armor wore away. The monochrome pulled eyes onto him, sure, but it was the stripes that kept them there. There were days when he hadn’t been able to muster his patience like he had this morning. Those were the days when he wished he could snatch his immigration papers from his office safe in Manehattan, storm out into the middle of the street and waggle them in the faces of anyone who dared gawk at him as if he were a lesion blemishing their perfect utopia. He would scream, “Read it! I am a goddamned citizen! I have as much a right to exist here as you!”
His lip curled away from the paper bag. Hollow words. Worse, expected words to those who would savor the chance to watch a zebra crack under the weight of their own silence. He had no doubt some of the ponies who stared at him from behind their windshields spent as much time imagining what they would do if such a confrontation arose as Eshe practiced what he would say, and that was the problem. He would say. They would do. It had been less than a year ago when he had overheard his first zebra joke. 
“What’s black and white and red all over?”
He shuddered. It probably hadn’t been directed toward him. Likely the mare who told it to her trailing friends was too absorbed with getting to the punchline to notice him standing there, but one of her friends had and the horrified look in her eyes when she caught sight of Eshe had been strangely heartening to see. Not everyone in that clique had laughed. The floor hadn’t fallen out from under the world just yet, even if a few million ponies were happily prying at the boards.
He walked the ten or twelve blocks between the grocery and the spacious, grassy plaza outside the Royal Luxury Suite in the business district on the city’s south end. The concierge had recommended this time of day to explore the city and he hadn’t been wrong. With the warm sun high overhead, the deep shadows cast by the steel and glass towers were barely long enough to reach the manicured lawn. Not wanting to be cooped up in his hotel room earlier than he had to be, he found an empty bench bordering a fragrant birm of late-blooming flowers and cedar wood chips and sat down. 
His irritation quickly waned as he watched the traffic trickle alongside the hoof traffic on the sidewalk. Dangerous as it could be for him some days, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to relax and watch people simply exist. As always a few glances strayed toward where he sat, but he was too far away for them to be sure if he was staring at them or at something behind them. He smiled to himself as he sank against the painted metal, enjoying the gentle warmth of the autumn sun against his coat. 
It was hard to believe that not ten years ago he’d been pulling a bulging suitcase through an excited crowd at Port Ochre, eager like so many others to make a life for himself in one of the great, shining cities across the sea. He’d been a younger stallion back then, one filled with boundless optimism for what lay ahead ever since the ticket from Robronco Industries arrived in the post. After too many years writing outdated lines of code for his bosses at Interswitch Services, Vhanna’s floundering answer to Equestria’s computer juggernaut, he’d taken a calculated risk by sending an “application” of a sort to his competitor’s CEO. The message never made it all the way to Applebloom’s personal terminal, and that had been the plan. The corporation would have people whose job it was to filter messages from outside the company, and the packet of code Eshe had written arrived in this individual’s inbox as innocuously as any other. Only, when his application was opened, the packet of code it carried quickly exploited an unpatched checksum flaw in Robronco’s then-rudimentary artificial assistant program. 
To Applebloom, having the speaker above her desk crackle with Millie’s stilted voice as it dictated the cover letter of a stallion whose name she couldn’t pronounce aggravated as much as it amused her. It was several weeks before the first correspondence from Robronco’s internship department arrived. Two months after pulling his stunt, an envelope arrived with an invitation and a boat ticket.
A carriage on the street blared its horn, and someone else responded in kind. Eshe inhaled deeply as the daydream slipped away and glanced down at the crimped-shut paper bag on the bench beside him. The hotel wouldn’t mind it if he used the toaster he’d spotted in the dining area during breakfast, or if they did he would repay them for the faux pas with the rest of the fresh loaf he’d just purchased. They might even let him fry an egg or two if the lobby wasn’t too busy. He never liked to eat anything heavy before these conferences, and as much as he enjoyed his career at Robronco their speakers were rarely as entertaining as they were during product launches. Too much in his belly would leave him fighting to stay awake, and given his team was to blame for the recent delay in the Pip-Buck’s long awaited public release… well, he didn’t want to give anyone else reason to think he wasn’t giving the company his best.
A quick look at the shadows on the ground told him he should probably get moving. The meeting didn’t start until 2 o’clock but he knew the lead techs he’d chosen to come with him for the trip would be waiting for him outside the conference hall to avoid having to search for him in full view of their employers. He nipped the paper bag between his teeth and rose to his hooves, deciding he would have time to abuse the hotel’s unguarded breakfast line for a quick bite and relieve his coworkers’ anxiety after. 
As he pushed through the hotel’s gilded revolving glass doors, he noticed the young mare behind the concierge desk watching him without a smile. He found himself frowning in response, wondering for a brief moment if she disapproved of him bringing outside food into the hotel and then remembering it had been her who suggested visiting the corner store in the first place. Her expression didn’t match her eyes. They were wide and scared, and they weren’t quite directed toward him.
A large hand settled on his shoulder. He flinched away from the surprise contact only to bump into a large creature standing on his opposite side. Gryphons. Two of them, stone-faced and grim, had slipped in on either side of him like the covers of a book slamming shut. 
“Esheke Obiakolam, please come with us.”
They spoke his full name with shocking fluency. Before he could object, the same hand dug its talons into his shoulder and steered him across the lobby toward a waiting elevator.







The wagons ground across the broken highway, causing water to slosh within their plastic drums. Old ropes, drawn tight across their liquid cargo, creaked under the pressure but held fast to where they’d been painstakingly tied to the wagon frame.
Those traders unfortunate enough to be hauling supplies into Junction City at the time Fiona and Ms. Vogel agreed to the move hadn't hesitated to voice their complaints. Wagons were commandeered as city resources, a claim several travelers insisted was invalid given the utter lack of said city. Ms. Vogel had set them straight in the only language they understood: currency. Their property would be unloaded and placed under guard while the rest of Junction City’s surviving residents worked to load the boards with any container capable of holding liquid.
Within the span of an evening every trader wagon within the ruins of Junction City had been converted into water haulers. Ms. Vogel might be a curmudgeon but she understood the opportunity they had as soon as Fiona spelled it out. Stable 10 couldn’t produce water and there weren’t enough people alive in Junction City to drink what their wells and cisterns held in reserve. On the other hand, Stable 10 was the best shelter the wasteland had to offer in a hundred miles. The Stable dwellers would have medicine better than what the growing supply trains brought in by the traders could deliver, and most importantly it was defensible. Sledge would be pissed once the wagons carrying the sick and injured arrived behind them, but if he wanted his people to have water then he would do the right thing and treat hers.
The wagoneer in the driver’s box had chosen that moment to glance down to her as she loped along the roadside. “Something funny?”
He’d been paid well enough to watch his wagon endure the modifications necessary to carry such a heavy load, and the tone of his question was amicable enough. He’d caught Fiona smiling to herself and she answered with a level waggle of her broad wing.
Seeing the confusion on his face, she remembered he wasn’t from the Bluff and hadn’t learned the gestures she’d brought here from Griffinstone. “A little,” she clarified, still smiling as the blackened face of Foal Mountain grew larger in front of them.
She’d been thinking about how unlikely this migration would have been had it not been for the bomb. It wasn’t strictly funny in the literal sense. Truthfully it was more than a little sad that it took a cataclysm for these ponies to come together for a common cause, but that was just the way of the world. What had her smiling was the realization that the naive optimism Aurora had brought with her to Blinder’s Bluff was catching.
The lead wagon sank into a fissure in the road and lurched, causing something to jostle loose among the cargo.
“Keep going.” Fiona flashed the driver a smile before dropping back to squeeze up into the wagon bed. “I got this.”







 “I thought you were going to wait for Mouse to return with your shopping list.”
Aurora’s nose hovered close enough to the Pip-Buck’s ring of exposed innards that it nearly touched them. Still, she managed to wrinkle it in response to his renewed prodding. Ever since Mouse went off to find supplies Discord had begun nannying her with renewed vigor. It would have almost been endearing if he wasn’t finding new and creative ways to say the same thing. 
You’re going to break it.
The white shell of Ginger’s Pip-Buck lay in two mirrored pieces next to a neat row of thick security screws. Discord sat in the easy chair next to the couch, a genuine wood file held between his fingers as he studiously reshaped the tip of a very avian looking claw. Flecks of that claw were now firmly embedded into the six-pointed driver indent in each screw, confirming Aurora’s hypothesis that the fasteners were more of a visual deterrent against would-be tinkerers and wouldn't stand up to brute stubbornness. After what some might call mild badgering, Discord pressed the tip of his claw into the screw and jerked it counterclockwise. The screws popped free one after the other and at the end of it Discord’s claw looked like it had lost a fight against a lemon zester. 
She squinted her eyes, ignoring his pointed question, and forced her blurry vision to focus on the newly silvered contact points on the exposed board. 
Two such curved boards accounted for two thirds of the Pip-Buck’s inner circumference, with the touch screen taking up the remaining third. Aurora wasn’t much for computer hardware beyond what she’d learned early on in her apprenticeship under Sledge. There was a very narrow intersection of the responsibilities of Mechanical and those of IT, namely the use of certain diagnostic tools and a capability of finding the power source to a faulty system, unplugging it, and waiting ten seconds before cycling it back on. But whereas she was familiar with the basics of a control board for the Stable’s air recycler units and a few models of water heater, the impossibly compact pathways printed onto the Pip-Buck’s circuit board was a whole different level of complexity. She had spent the better part of an hour turning the exposed wiring this way and that, squinting at chips with their tiny silver feet and not understanding any of it. And then she spotted the busted capacitor.
It was tiny, a cylinder barely larger than the threading on the screws Discord removed. A thin X had been punched into the flat spot pointing up at her and she’d been able to make out just the faintest crack where the intentionally weaker surface had failed. As soon as she recognized what it was she’d felt the familiar itch of a problem she knew how to fix. Or, at least, she assumed she knew how. 
Now, with the capacitor freed thanks to a liberal application of back-and-forth wiggling and one of its silver legs pinched delicately between her feathers, she lined up the conductive metal with the capacitor’s original connection points and pressed them down until she was sure she had positive contact.
With her hoof, she reached for the power button below the screen and pressed it down.
Several tiny LEDs blinked on across the board, followed quickly by a brief vibration as the device powered up. Careful not to shift the rudimentary short circuit Aurora craned her neck to confirm the screen was running through some kind of boot session. Plain white text populated the screen, vanished, and repopulated again. The lines were gibberish to her but she tried to keep an eye for any red flashing errors anyway.
The screen went dark. 
Aurora frowned at it, waiting for something to happen, only for the smell of burnt feathers to sting her nose. She looked back to see the feather she’d used to keep the shorted circuit in place was smoking and she yanked it away, cursing as she nearly dropped the exposed Pip-Buck in the process. It tumbled into her opposite wing and she quickly set it back down on the coffee table with a look of betrayal. 
Discord leaned forward in his chair, reached out to her smoldering feather, and snuffed it between his pinched fingers. “Let’s wait for Mouse.”







A notification icon blinked on the margin of Opal’s Pip-Buck screen and the temptation to ignore it was powerful. 
They were in trouble. That fact hadn’t changed since the generator first went offline but things hadn’t improved since then. Her head throbbed, a symptom of worsening dehydration as much as from the blow she’d suffered when she made the mistake of interrupting a fight in the corridor outside IT. Two mares well into their fifties had gotten into an argument over… something, Opal still wasn’t sure. Whatever it had started as, starvation made it worse. A canteen had gotten crushed when it was just a scuffle and that had caused it to devolve into a full on melee. Opal had heard it through three sets of doors and thought, wrongly, that her advanced age would give her the advantage of shaming the two into stopping.
She’d caught a hoof across her left eye for the trouble and was pretty sure neither mare realized she’d even been there. Someone else had come in to break up the fight and now she could smell the odor of bleach wafting through the technician space and into her office. Opal didn’t remember the last time she’d seen so much blood, but it had been everywhere. 
She rubbed the welt over her eye and sighed. The Pip-Buck kept blinking, adding an unwanted pulsation to the dim emergency lights. Combined with the dizziness brought on by quarter rations of water and a blow to the noggin, the silent rhythm threatened to add nausea to her list of discomforts. The Stable was dying. Slowly, yes, but dying all the same. The sick and elderly were succumbing first. There was even talk of an exodus, though fear of the dangers outside still kept residents well clear of taking any real steps to leave. Unsurprisingly, the idea of leaving behind everything they knew as home in favor of a guaranteed death out there wasn’t terribly contagious. And as Opal had tried to make peace with what little future she had left, someone had chosen this time to try calling her.
Ain’t like yer fixing to keel over right this exact minute, she thought to herself. Better to go here, talking to someone, instead of out there with all the monsters.
With a grudging motion she lifted her foreleg onto her desk and rolled the clunky old screen to face her. Her wing felt like lead weights hung from it as she pecked at the buttons, and her frown deepened with disappointment when she opened the notification and realized it wasn’t a call after all. Just one of the system alerts she’d set up back when Aurora was out in the wasteland and half the Stable was breathing down her neck for word of any new messages. She motioned to dismiss it, then stopped as she read the first line and her brain caught up.

17:15:34 External reconnect request received.
17:15:34 User: null
17:15:35 Device ID: PBX-01442.MOT
17:15:36 Network node ST117
17:15:38 External reconnect failed.

Slowly, Opal wiped her feathers over her face and took a deep breath. On top of everything else, someone out there had just connected to her servers for a whopping four seconds. She sighed. Did it really matter? On a scale of zero to doomed, they were so far off the far end that an intrusion from some nameless outsider barely registered. Were there grave robbers in the wasteland like there were in the adventure novels she’d read as a filly? 
She sat at her desk and stared into the perpetual twilight for a long while. Her heart kept ticking away. Her headache kept throbbing. An irritated groan only the elderly could muster passed her lips. On creaking bones she pushed up from her chair, waited for the rush of vertigo to fade, and unenthusiastically started making her way back to the corridor.
Not unexpectedly, a deputy was exclusively patrolling this stretch of walkway while a young pegasus worked to scrub the blood and bits of ripped mane off the floor. Opal turned in the direction of the server room and walked, nodding out of habit to the deputy as she passed and feeling relief that she hadn’t asked about the lump on her head. The last place she wanted to be was down in Medical. Like so many residents her age, she knew the odds of coming back from there grew less and less favorable the older she got and she wasn’t about to let someone a quarter her age dangle her in front of Death like a baited hook.
She scanned her laminate at the door and it slid up and out of her way as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Other doors held open by jack handles stood agape behind her, scandalized by this single continued source of steady electricity. Opal tried not to worry over the splices Mechanical had cut into the main conduit leading in from the outside. Were it not for their ingenuity they’d all have died, evacuated, or worse weeks ago. Unfortunately the Stable was a closed system and the auxiliary power provided by generators at the bottom of a bunker beneath Stable-Tec Headquarters, generators Aurora claimed were large enough to make Stable 10’s output look like a disposable battery, didn’t provide enough juice to run the recyclers at full capacity. 
Slowly but surely, she and her fellow residents were depleting the available water faster than the recyclers could extract it from their waste. Opal was surprised nobody had come to her begging to divert all the power to the recyclers. Likely they knew it wouldn’t solve the problem, and this far down the road there was little benefit in delaying the inevitable. They’d gain a day, maybe less, before pegasi were fighting each other for whatever trickled into the empty cisterns. Nobody wanted to make that last longer than it had to.
The door slid shut behind her and she slowly made her way through the servers to the nearest technician’s terminal. As expected, it blinked with the same notification that had appeared on her Pip-Buck. It provided no new data, of course, and she didn’t relish the idea of fighting fatigue while she investigated the breach. Still, this was her job and she didn’t like the idea of giving up the ghost knowing she’d slacked off at the eleventh hour.
Feathers ticked across the keyboard and the network logs appeared. She scrolled down to the flagged line of text, hit Open, and skimmed the activity log generated by the connection. A grunt rattled her throat. Nothing. Whoever it was had disconnected before doing anything. For a moment she wondered whether it was a probing attack akin to someone cracking the door to see if it would open. If that was the case it was a stupid tactic. Any intruder worth their salt would know a log of their presence would be filed and they would have at least made an attempt to delete it before disconnecting. She rubbed her face again, wishing the world would just leave them alone. 
Still, something about it bothered her. 
User: Null.
Pip-Bucks had hardwired biometric scanners built into the chassis whose sole purpose was to catalog and identify a wearer. It was why when one of the greasers came upstairs with a Pip-Buck covered in hammer dents, one of the technicians could grab a replacement without going through the hassle of transferring files or access settings. They just snapped on a new one, paid the replacement fee, and the Pip-Buck would import everything from the servers’ last restore point. It also reduced the risk of someone getting into another resident’s account.
So why did this device not have a user at all? That, technically, wasn’t possible.
Her curiosity now piqued, she sat down and began to dig.







“Hey. Eat.”
Weathers picked up the cup of what was colloquially becoming known and reviled as mash and stuck it in the young specialist’s face until he grudgingly accepted it. Not even pushing twenty years old, somehow this colt had managed to be one of the thirty-three survivors out of an entire company. Benefit of strong wings and a lithe frame, she guessed. The only reason he’d ranked specialist rather than private likely had to do with good breeding and a few pulled strings. Probably the reason he had the sack to be a picky eater in a Stable filled with the starving.
“Get that down your gullet and don’t let me catch you wasting calories again.”
He didn’t quite answer, but his feathers ended up wrapping around the spoon’s handle and that was enough for her. She left him to eat his ration of overripe vegetable… blend, and carried her own cup with her down the rows of gurneys that had since been converted into her people’s temporary barracks. Weathers had to give Sledge credit. In the face of the unprecedented chaos following the rupture of Stable 10’s great cog, he’d been in a frame of mind to understand her soldiers would need medical treatment and that the safety of his home might hinge on keeping them, for lack of a better word, detained. 
While she disliked the presumption that her people would have anything to do with the bomb, the truth bore out differently. The Enclave, Primrose’s Enclave, had delivered and detonated the weapon that had put them here and as angry as she was for their situation she couldn’t bring herself to blame Sledge or anyone else in the Stable. 
The isolated ward, normally intended to contain outbreaks of disease, made an ideal setting for her soldiers’ detention. The single door leading out, a slab of form-fitted steel Stable-Tec had embraced a little too fully, featured a rectangle cut into its face to make room for a sheet of tempered glass. The observation window was necessary for medical staff making their way through the airlock behind it, complete with a trio of decontamination arches and a second steel barrier on the opposite side. It allowed for Sledge’s people some level of safety as they ratcheted the doors open and shut, and it permitted her people to feel more like patients and less like prisoners.
Even if the meals blurred the distinction.
Gathered in the corner of the ward furthest from the door were the two surviving members of former security director Clover’s staff. It had taken some needling from Colonel Weathers to get them to even speak to her, let alone do so candidly. They’d been herded into the tunnel by their Black Wing escorts and were convinced they’d be executed with a bullet, not a balefire bomb. The lesser they’d been able to accept as a risk of being in the spycraft business, but the latter had well and truly thrown a bucket of wrenches into their mental gears. 
As soon as Weathers got them talking they’d been surprisingly forthcoming about what little they knew about their predicament. Clover had stumbled across something damning, that much they were certain of, and whatever it was prompted him to haul ass. The word “defection” wasn’t explicitly stated though it was heavily implied. Weathers wasn’t sure what she made of all that, especially the bit about the director being fired on inside the bunker, but the two stallions commiserating in the corner weren’t here on vacation either. As she ate spoonfuls of the off-tasting ration, she couldn’t deny that Minister Primrose stood firmly in the eye of the shitstorm devouring the Enclave.
A feather tapped her shoulder as she passed a gurney. Corporal Chops, the mute stallion from the tunnel, held up a patient’s chart on a clipboard. Disregarding the lines and boxes stamped across the paper, he’d written a sentence below a long column of others he’d already crossed out.
“When will we be allowed to leave, ma’am?”
She couldn’t help a tiny smile of approval that he’d taken the time to write down ma’am. Probably he’d come up under a commanding officer who never gave him a pass on it, and it’d been drilled into his head just as deeply as his speaking counterparts. She liked the corporal, unlike his counterpart Lieutenant Dancer. That one had mouthed back to her as a balefire bomb was being carried away above their heads, and no amount of penance was going to undo that damage in her mind. 
Dancer was currently asleep, or at least faking sleep, in the next gurney. She fought down the urge to slap him awake.
“The overstallion is still working on that,” she said, mindful of the dozen or so nearby ears subtly turning her way. “The residents here aren’t convinced that we didn’t have something to do with the bomb, and I can’t say I blame them. I’m making some progress with that, but it’s slow going. Sorry, corporal.”
She shrugged, hoping to emphasize the sentiment rather than appear dismissive. Chops nodded thoughtfully, paused, then picked up the pen chained to the clipboard and began to write again. When he finished he turned the paper her way.
“Please make sure Minister Rainbow Dash understands this wasn’t us.”
When she finished reading he took the pad back and scrawled again, harder.
“Primrose isn’t Enclave.”
It surprised Weathers how visceral her reaction to the words were, despite agreeing with them. She could feel her heart skipping into overdrive, her skin beneath her coat radiating a bloom of uneasy warmth at three words that just a week prior would have earned this corporal a blindfold and a bullet. He’d penned treason and gave it to an officer several rungs above him like it was a reminder for her to buy sugar at the market. 
She found herself nodding. “I’ll keep reminding her, but I’m pretty sure she already knows. And I’ll save you some embarrassment; she doesn’t like being called minister. Stick with Rainbow Dash.”
Chops seemed to mull this over with clear discomfort. Weathers lifted a wing, patted him on the shoulder, and left him to his thoughts.
She made a few more slow laps of the ward before finally retrieving a wheeled cart near the door and pushing it past each of her soldiers. Empty cups and spoons clattered into military-near stacks and the standard last-minute questions were asked, mostly in regards to the potential return of their uniforms and - most importantly - their Remember Cloudsdale pins. When the medical staff hurried them down to the ward they hadn’t been thinking about saving what they’d been forced to assume were irradiated garments and Weathers hadn’t the heart yet to tell them they’d been thrown outside among the dead. That could wait. Until then they would have to trust that she was still looking into it.
As if on cue, albeit early, the ratcheting thuds of the outer airlock being worked caught everyone’s ear. A few turned to watch, lacking much else by way of entertainment in a ward lit by emergency lights, while others barely reacted at all. Conversations went uninterrupted as the outer door closed and the inner one began to rise in jerky stages, though that changed as soon as someone recognized the raspy, muttered sounds of exertion from the visitor.
Weathers suppressed a smile when the first soldier dropped from their gurney and faced the door in full parade rest. The sudden movement caused others to look toward the door where four faded blue legs slid into view, followed by the Element’s unmistakable mark. A burst of noise and hooves made Weathers, and Rainbow Dash, to flinch as every soldier in the room capable of standing promptly did so.
Meanwhile, Rainbow leaned her only wing into the task of lifting the door the last couple of feet, bending down with each push to frown uneasily at the Enclave survivors. Weathers thought she heard her mutter something under her breath as she hauled down on the ratchet handle one last time before ducking inside, eyeing the soldiers warily.
Weathers met her halfway. “For what it’s worth, I asked them not to do that anymore.”
A few chuckles rippled through the group, none quite loud enough for Weathers to identify the culprits. Rainbow rolled her eyes, clearly undecided whether to say something crude and endearing herself to them even more or remaining silent in the hopes that they stopped treating her like the second coming of Celestia. She opted for the silent treatment and turned her attention back to Weathers. 
“Nurses will be down in a few minutes to start rounds, and they’re asking that all patients be wearing at least the bottoms of their jumpsuits before they come in.” She eyed the group for a moment, zeroing in on the gurney where Dancer still snored. “That one, especially, doesn’t know how to keep it in his sheath.”
Weathers followed Rainbow’s gaze and glared. Her people had resisted putting on any articles of clothing that weren’t their uniforms, especially when they still didn’t fully understand this Stable’s bizarre culture around staying covered. Given the circumstance that their patients had recently cheated death, the psychological trauma of which was worryingly absent among the group, the medical staff had elected to be accomodating rather than demanding. That is, apparently, until recently.
She let out a long sigh. “Goddesses give me strength. You all heard her, get dressed! And someone make sure the lieutenant keeps his trousers on or we’ll roll dice to see who gets to staple his dick to the floor.”
Rainbow pursed her lips and nodded, apparently satisfied with the immediate enthusiasm some of the soldiers showed in their task of rousting Dancer from his sleep. Several others were retrieving their gifted jumpsuits from beneath their gurneys and were, at first glance, considering how many sets the bewildered lieutenant could be squeezed into before he popped. Weathers cleared her throat and warded the more exuberant soldiers away from the idea with a look of warning, and soon the room settled into an amicable flurry of pegasi trying to work out exactly how the single-piece jumpsuits worked.
“So,” Rainbow said, her voice lowered as indicated toward her Pip-Buck, “Opal called a meeting. I was on my way up and thought it would be a good idea for you to attend. Any chance these guys will behave if you duck out early?”
Weathers regarded the room full of flapping wings and tangled legs and wasn’t sure if the nurses would end up having to untie half of them from their jumpsuits. “I thought you wanted a break from having a bodyguard. Pissing on graves in privacy and all that.”
Rainbow coughed into her wing. “You looked into that?”
“Didn’t have to. Just put two and two together and figured there’s only one plot of dirt down here you’d want to water, given the chance. Can’t say I didn’t stop by and add my two cents afterward.”
That actually made Rainbow blush, or as much as a ghoul was capable. “Anyway, they’re waiting upstairs. Are you coming?”
Part of her wanted to stay and indulge a little longer in the illusion that they were all still soldiers. But as she watched her people don Stable jumpsuits she knew that time was over. Whatever they were, they weren’t Enclave anymore. At least not the one Primrose ruled.
“Yeah,” she said, turning to the door. “Lead the way.”







Sledge anxiously leaned forward in one of the folding chairs Opal had dragged out of storage, his eyes occasionally darting away from the glare in the linoleum floor to look up at the glare on the wall. She had dimmed the lights in the server room by a few degrees to make the projector screen more visible, and Sledge quietly kicked himself at having not considered turning the lights off entirely. The power savings would’ve been negligible - the benefit to the recyclers even less so. Still, it ate at him like an ulcer. How many little things could he have done differently? 
His hooves shuffled impatiently beneath his chair as another aching pain of hunger cramped his gut. He was tired and he stank of sweat and stress. Privately, he kept thinking about what might be different had he taken Aurora more seriously when she’d attempted to leave all those weeks ago.
“Um, sir?”
A hoof tapped the server room’s open door frame. He looked up and regarded Deputy Stratus without much enthusiasm, then suspected Opal was doing the same from where she stood next to the technician’s cart and he tried looking a little less beaten. It wasn’t like the deputy was interrupting. The presentation wouldn’t start until Rainbow Dash arrived.
“What?” he grunted.
“We have more visitors in the tunnel.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. He was too numbed by the recent days to feel surprised anymore. Their Stable was a treasure trove of well-tended technology and the wasteland hadn’t minced its intentions to take it. Invasion by osmosis. He shook his head.
“Did they say what they wanted?”
“They don’t know we spotted them yet. They look like they’re trying to clean up the Enclave’s encampment, but none of them have come close to the door yet.” The deputy offered a half-shrug. “A gryphon is with them. We think it’s the same one from before.”
Turns out it hadn’t taken the hint. Sledge picked at a nugget of crust in the corner of his eye and tried to muster the energy to get up and shoo the bird away again, but he couldn’t. If anything, gravity around his chair grew even stronger. He was tired, and any fight at this point was a losing one. He didn’t get up.
 “Keep an eye on them,” he sighed, “but don’t talk to them. If they try snooping around the antechamber, let ‘em. You can fall back to the deputy station and drop the decontamination doors behind you.”
It was obvious his answer wasn’t what Deputy Stratus had expected, and for a moment he lingered in the doorway as if expecting Sledge to reveal the punchline. When he didn’t, the deputy lightly gave a gentle cough. “Maybe you should come see for yourself, sir.”
He shook his head, less in answer and more to keep himself from bursting. What did they expect him to do? Just march out of the Stable and scare the wasteland away with some clever profanities? This wasn’t Mechanical, it was the entire Stable and they were barely a speck compared to the vast expanse of the ruins of whatever was left of Equestria. Shout and bluster all he wanted, he wasn’t… 
His eyes stung. Every step he’d taken since the day they found the drain in the generator had been the wrong one. Delphi had chosen the wrong person to lead, and he wasn’t going to take whatever new bait the world was throwing at him now. 
One way or the other, the outside was getting in and he was tired of fighting it.
Maybe Deputy Stratus had seen something in his face he’d failed to keep hidden, or maybe the silence itself was an answer. Whichever it was, the deputy relented. Giving the doorframe a thump, he turned around and left.
Minutes passed, or maybe only seconds. However long it had been, Opal’s voice broke the quiet with a frail question. “How long has it been since you last got some shuteye?”
The pity in her voice made him feel like a little colt again and his throat threatened to lock up on him. He swallowed, forcing back the rush of emotion, and did what he could to make the dabbing of his eyes appear casual. He knew he wasn’t fooling her, but damned if he wasn’t going to try.
“Hard to sleep when no one leaves you alone,” he murmured. Then, seeing the way Opal’s lips drew an uncomfortable line, he hastily added, “I didn’t mean you, I just… everyone knows where my bunk is and they all want to know when things are going to be fixed. I don’t know how to tell them they aren’t.”
He listened to her feathers working the keyboard, the occasional plastic clicks punctuating the silence. 
“Didn’t figure you for a quitter, Sledge.”
The matter-of-fact delivery of that accusation stung, and deeply so. A flicker of anger warmed his chest. “I didn’t quit, Opal. We lost.”
When she didn’t immediately respond he looked up from the floor to see if she might be watching him, but her eyes hadn’t left the terminal. Her expression had changed, though. It had grown brittle, her narrow jaw set firmly as one screen after the other flipped across the reflection in her bifocals. She remained that way for an uneasy stretch, clearly taking the time he hadn’t to compose her words carefully.
There were no traces of levity when she finally did speak.
“I thought about quittin’,” she began, her eyes still on the terminal screen. “If I’m being honest, I gave up a little bit just this afternoon. Thought about how easy it’d be to just sit back and give up. And why not? Delphi did, and it ain’t as if life hasn’t been nothing but hurt n’ worry since. Yet here I am, still at it. Y’know why that is?”
He smiled, shrugged, and turned his waning attention to the open door. What was taking Rainbow Dash so long? 
Opal’s hoof slammed the top of the terminal like a gunshot.
“Dammit, Sledge! I’m talking to you!” 
The outburst had jarred him back to attention and for the first time he could see furious tears in the old mare’s eyes. “I ain’t standing here because I think it’s fun! This ain’t fun. These are the worst days of my life and you’d best believe it’s the same for everybody else. But I still do the work because it means it might help. Yes, might. Don’t you give me that look. Like it or not, Sledge, we’re the ones in charge. We’re the one everybody’s waiting to hear good news from.”
Opal stopped to scrub at her eyes, rubbing the tears away with such ferocity that the vanes of her dusty blue feathers split. She flicked the tears to the floor and leveled a single feather toward the open door, her gaze locked fully on him now. “Maybe we won’t figure this out, but those people don’t deserve to spend their last days thinking we’ve quit on ‘em. I won’t do that to them, and you best not either. Understand me?”
When she finally wound down her voice was shaking, and not from frailty. Shame and self-loathing washed over Sledge in waves. He knew she was right, but that didn’t change how utterly exhausted he was. The respect he felt for Opal’s persistence was greater than it had ever been, but her speech wouldn’t turn on the generator. He knew it, and he suspected the other residents were already in the process of making peace with it too. It didn’t feel right to string them along with kernels of hope when their destination was unchanged.
And yet he couldn’t say that to her. 
“Yeah,” he sighed, forcing the barest smile. “You’re right. Maybe we’ll figure something out.”
The expression Opal gave him was unconvinced. She blinked several times as she tried to process a response, but a voice from the doorway interrupted her before she could.
“Is…” Rainbow said slowly as she entered, “everything alright?”
Sledge glanced over and lifted a wing in greeting, leaving the explanation up to Opal. Colonel Weathers followed close behind, their brows knit into twin frowns as it became clear they’d arrived at an inconvenient time. 
Opal was surprisingly quick on the draw, turning back toward the terminal while using the feather she’d inadvertently left pointed at the doorway to mime picking something out of her eye. “Everything’s fine,” she murmured, then gestured to the two empty chairs next to Sledge. “Take a seat so we can get started.”







“How do you not have grease?”
Discord held up his arms, half-offended, half-bemused by the pegasus currently rooting through his kitchen drawers like some hungry raccoon looking for food. Had he known deterring her from one project would only result in her immediately searching for another, he’d have let her continue burning her feathers off with her Pip-Bucks. “Putting aside the issue of my mortality, I’m nowhere near what I’d consider enough of a midlife crisis to need a fully stocked tool shed. I’m quite happy limiting grease for cooking.”
He watched as the mare yanked open the drawer next to the sink, clearly disbelieving that he could lack something she considered so vital. A touch of embarrassment warmed his face as she eyed yet another one of his disorganized attempts at storage, then plucked out a screwdriver with a clear yellow handle. She squinted at the brand stamped into the plastic, frowned back at him, then set the tool onto the countertop alongside the others she’d found. 
“If I end up finding a soldering kit in one of these drawers, Mouse is going to kill you,” she muttered. “How do you ever find anything in this mess?”
He shrugged, tapping a finger against the side of his head. “I have a system.”
She blew out a breath at that and continued her search. “I mean, I guess. You’re the one who’s been living here for two hundred years. Are you positive you don’t have anything that could be used as grease?”
“If I do, I’m sure you’ll find it.” He spared a glance back into the living room, toward the coffee table where Fluttershy’s gramophone now sat awaiting repair. He’d been just a bit more than hesitant to allow her to look it over, and had carried it to the table himself just to be sure she didn’t drop it. Sentimentality was still a new concept to him, at least insofar as he’d been willing to take it seriously. Yet another one of the many, many ways his time on this world had changed him. “And it’s one hundred and eighty.”
She looked back at him. “What?”
He rolled his eyes, spinning a finger in the air to indicate she could safely keep rooting through his things. “Years. That I’ve lived here. One hundred and eighty laps around your sun. It would have been more but I had some difficulties finding a place to go, what with anyone who saw me immediately assuming I had something to do with the apocalypse.”
He felt a tiny rush of excitement at being able to say that out loud to someone willing to hear it. Granted he took every chance he got to talk Mouse’s ear off during his sporadic visits but the stallion wasn’t much for conversation. This pegasus currently ransacking his cottage had a much more curious nature to her, even when waves of deep depression seemed to pile over her.
As if on cue, the mare’s mood momentarily darkened. She closed the drawer and opened the one below it, blowing out a sigh as she poked around. “Believe it or not, I think I know how that feels.”
Discord folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the kitchen door frame. “You’ve yet to strike me as a mare who has enjoyed an uneventful life. My door remains open should you ever like to discuss it.”
She nodded and changed the subject. “So you built this place on your own?”
He let out an exaggerated sigh. “Is it so hard to believe that I understand the complex relationship between a hammer and nail?”
“This coming from the guy who keeps half a dozen different screwdrivers and zero screws.” She shook her head, and as she did so Discord caught a glimpse of the tiniest smile. “Seriously, though, it’s a nice house. It reminds me of a cabin my friends and I camped in once.”
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. It felt… remarkably good to have his recreation of Fluttershy’s home complimented in any capacity, like an affirmation that the work he’d put into building this cottage had been well spent. He opened his mouth to thank her and was cut short when he noticed she was holding something up in her wing, eyebrow hoisted, and a questioning grin on her lips.
“I’m going to do you a favor and not ask why this jar of petroleum jelly is half empty.”
His eyes went wide. “Okay.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
With a flick of her feathers she gave the jar a little toss and snatched it out of the air. Gathering the various screwdrivers in the other, she grabbed a dish towel from the sink and limped her way past him and into the living room. “This’ll work as a short-term substitute for grease. Hopefully that’s all this little fella needs to get going again.”
She didn’t so much hop onto the couch as flop onto it like a fish in a boat, but despite missing a full leg she managed to get herself seated in front of the record player. Discord followed, pushing the coffee table a little closer to the couch so she didn’t have to lean forward to reach it, then proceeded to seat himself in his easy chair to observe.
“Ah, no,” she said, eyeing him as he bent down to sit. She indicated the cushion beside her with a hoof thump. “Get over here. You’re helping.”
He hesitated, an uneasy smile spreading across his snout. “I’m flattered by your confidence, but that may not be the best idea. My hands are more of a liability than an asset these days.” He snapped his fingers to demonstrate, then gestured at the open living room when nothing happened. 
She only stared at him. “And?”
Discord balked. “Had that worked, your leg would be growing back right now.”
Whether to mock, or more likely just to dismiss him, she snorted. “Then I’m glad there’s no such thing as a cosmic undo button, because I’d probably end up wearing it out. Besides, I got the leg figured out. Now come here and sit down, I’m going to need those liabilities of yours to help me take this thing apart.”
He found himself watching her for a long moment, surprised at how this mare who’d come close to dying on his couch had just doled out orders to him with the complete expectation that he’d do as he was told. A bewildered chuckle jumped from his chest as he surprised himself by walking around the coffee table to scooch in beside her. A dutiful worker was he, apparently. He bit down on his cheek to stop himself from smirking too broadly as he thought about the kick Fluttershy would get out of seeing him now.
At her memory, his smile faded by a few degrees. Not entirely, though. Not all the way.
“Okay,” she prompted, craning her neck to a comical angle just to catch his eye. “I’m going to tell you what to do, and then you’re going to work slowly.”
He tried not to chuckle. Some part of him could sense that this was important for her, and belittling it would be akin to hammering a wedge in the fragile trust she’d begun to develop with him. He glanced down at the screwdrivers, his good dish towel and, uncomfortably, the petroleum jelly she’d unearthed and couldn’t help but feel doubt that this was all the tools they required.
“I’ll leave the confidence to the professional,” he said, leaning uncertainly toward the gramophone to demonstrate as much. “What do we do first?”
She indicated the empty stretch of table to the right of him. “That’s where your tools are going. Keep them together, and make sure to leave room for the parts you’re going to be taking off.”
When he dutifully shifted everything to where she pointed, she shifted forward and pulled the record player to the edge of the table. Her feathers whispered against the wooden horn, something Discord had been extremely careful not to jostle when he’d moved it here for her to examine, then moved down its fluted panels to where it connected to the silver curves of metal that converted the record grooves to amplified sound. “We’ll need to take this apart before anything else. The horn looks like it’s just friction-fitted. I’ll hold the assembly steady while you grab the horn and very carefully twist it.”
Discord frowned, suddenly all nerves. Spare no thought for the gramophone itself, that wooden horn had been Fluttershy’s favorite feature. She’d fawned over it when he first conjured the instrument here for her, marveling in the daffodil pinstriped accents along the cone. He dreaded that meddling with it now might damage it.
He took a steadying breath and retracted the claws in his right paw. He gripped the horn with it, terrified of scratching the wood, then used the palm of his other hand to brace it as he gently applied torque. Aurora’s wings kept the rest of the instrument still as he increased the pressure, and with a quiet rasp of dry wood sliding free from old metal, the delicate horn rested in his hands.
He stared at it for several seconds before collecting himself and setting it onto the empty cushion next to him. His record player was missing its horn now, but in a way that oddly made sense. Disassembly, not destruction. He reminded himself to breathe again.
“Well alright,” he chuckled, a touch giddy from jangling nerves. “What’s next?”
The pegasus rewarded him with an approving smirk, then explained to him the steps he would need to take to take apart the nickel-plated tubes leading down to the hinged armature. Neither of them knew the exact terminology for the machine and, to his relief, that didn’t seem to matter. With some help from his machine-minded counterpart he located the little slotted screws that fastened the narrowing tubes to a cast iron brace which kept the weight of the assembly from tumbling off the back of the instrument. 
She showed him how to organize each piece they removed in the empty section of table, taking care to reassemble each screw, nut, and washer into single units before setting them next to the parts they came from. The more he worked, the less wary he felt about each new step. It was simultaneously a humbling and embarrassing lesson to be taught when his first and only instinct had always been to snap his fingers with an unflinching understanding that whatever he willed would simply be. 
He’d used to consider the physical act of building and destroying to be primitive. He wondered now what he might be missing.
After removing what they’d ruefully agreed to refer to as “the player assembly,” they stopped for a few minutes to review what they had left. Essentially just a polished oak box with a record platter on its lid and a heavy crank sticking from one side, they settled on removing the remaining accessories first. The platter was simple enough, it just lifted away from the central post. A large screw fixed the handle to a slotted shaft, something that startled Discord with how much effort it took before the threads finally snapped free. He was dismayed to see red spots of rust dotting the screw and realized with some worry that it may have been a mistake not to have had someone tend to the record player sooner.
Platter, handle, and lock screw joined a speed control lever and its multitude of small linkages on the table, and they found themselves looking at a rather unremarkable wooden box dotted with several holes. 
“Time to open the lid,” the mare announced, indicating four large screws that the record platter would normally hide from view. As Discord slowly backed them out, she added, “You’re doing really good.”
He stopped to let out a nervous chuckle. He’d almost thought he’d been doing something wrong. “Thank you.” Then, after resuming his work, “Earlier you said something about figuring out your leg?”
Sensing the question in his tone, she nodded. “I asked Mouse to try to find me some materials to build a prosthetic.”
He set the screws on the table and glanced at her. “I don’t remember hearing that come up while he was here.”
She made a noncommittal see-saw gesture with her wing. “Maybe I didn’t technically ask. More like add it to the bottom of the list I gave him.”
Lifting away the lid, Discord spared a moment to furrow his brow at the surprisingly compact block of clockwork screwed to the bottom of the box. “Devious.”
“Me, or that?”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
She laughed, then shooed away his hands as she bent forward to poke her nose around the mechanism. For all intents and purposes it looked like a black cube of modern art inspired by Borg. At the top of the block frame, fitted around the central post responsible for turning the platter, was a metal canister of some kind that was steadily becoming the focus of the mare’s attention. Below that lurked a dense array of gears, sprockets, and something with four metal spheres dangling from metal arms in radial symmetry. Discord quietly hoped that she didn’t expect him to disassemble any of that. 
All of it was uniformly caked in thick, black gunk. He waited as he watched her pick up the smallest of the screwdrivers and press the tip into a nugget of muck clinging to one of the gears. It resisted her probes in a way Discord guessed maybe it shouldn’t, evidenced by the flicker of a frown. She instructed him to take the dishrag and promptly attacked the four heavy screws keeping the gear assembly fixed to the bottom of the box. When it was free, she picked it up with both wings and held it up for him to take. He did so, taking care to keep the towel between it and his hands.
“So,” she said, pointing a feather at the globs of ancient gunk clotting the clockwork, “all of this is old grease that’s picked up a couple centuries of dust and dirt. This block of gears is a spring motor. Friction is its enemy and this old grease is producing plenty of it.”
Discord hummed his understanding. Already the rag was taking on black stains where it came into contact with the layered cogs. “It’s gotten everywhere.”
She nodded. “That’s grease for you. Normally I’d fill an ultrasonic bath with some good degreaser and let it run, but since that’s not possible you’ll have to do your best to wipe off as much of the excess as you can. Anything you can’t get at will get incorporated with the, ah… jelly. It’s not a perfect fix, but it should loosen things up enough for the mainspring to drive the motor again. Sound good?”
It sounded great. “Can’t hurt to try.”
She gestured her wings as if to say all yours and he proceeded to awkwardly work the rag across the little gears with his fingers. He went with his natural inclinations to chase after the biggest gobs first, wiping them off the gears as best he could without snagging the cloth on their teeth. Where he couldn’t get the rag with a finger, he opted to use the tip of a screwdriver to press into the tighter caps. His brow stitched together in concentration as he recalled her lesson about friction being the enemy, and began going after the black smears caked around the shafts each gear turned on and worked to clean out the nuggets of gunk trapped between their teeth. Little by little, patches of bright steel were beginning to stand out from decades of neglect, and his nervous smile softened a little as his confidence grew.
Beside him, the mare used a feather to point out spots she thought were worth hitting, leaving it up to him how he’d go about it. His head tipped left, then right, seeking out better angles of approach as his palms grew black from the work. 
“My name is Aurora.”
He blinked and looked over to her. “It came back to you, did it?”
She rolled her eyes and indicated the motor he was no longer cleaning. “Come on, you never bought into my alleged amnesia.”
He smiled, then resumed trying to tease some old crust from the odd bit with the weighted arms. “No, but I assumed you had your reasons. What changed?”
Aurora seemed to consider the question as if the decision hadn’t been a conscious one. After a while she leaned forward and picked up the lever from the dismantled speed controller. She turned it over in her feathers, likely to give herself something to focus on.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, and to Discord it sounded like a true statement rather than a dodge. She took in a breath, then released it as the evening light glinted off the metal. “Maybe this is reminding me of who I used to be, before… everything else. Before…”
She trailed off and seemed to struggle with finding the right words. Discord waited, his hands going through idle motions as he glanced at her, but she eventually shook her head and tossed the lever back onto the table. They sat in silence for the better half of a minute before he decided to give her a nudge. 
“You were barely alive when Mouse brought you here. What happened to you?”
Another deep breath, and another long exhalation. Aurora sat up a little straighter, her eyes focused somewhere far ahead of them as she worked her way toward an answer. “Well… my home was breaking down, and I put it on myself to be the one to fix it. I had an idea of where I needed to go so I packed up and left. I met some people along the way and one of them… I don’t know. It felt like meeting a part of myself that I didn’t know was missing.”
Discord grunted. “I know that feeling.”
Aurora looked up at him with a sad smile, then returned to staring at that distant point in space. “Yeah. She was always there for me, even when I didn’t deserve it. I feel like I took advantage of that. Like, for all the kindness she gave me, I repaid her by sucking her into the mess I was making. And because of that, she ended up making a deal with the exact same people she’d run away from as a kid. All on my behalf. All because she thought they had the solution to my Stable’s crisis.”
Mouse’s theory was turning out to be right on the mark. She’d been involved somehow with the explosion at the Stable out east, which answered the question of how she’d come to arrive on his doorstep blinded and near death. Saying as much, however, served no purpose other than to rub salt in her wounds so he remained silent. 
Aurora clicked her tongue with a matter-of-fact shrug. “They gave us a bomb instead, and neither of us knew the difference. Even though we’d been lied to about talismans before. I think we were just desperate to be done with the wasteland. We didn’t even question it, we just… plugged it in and barely got it out of the Stable before it went off.”
She paused, appearing to Discord to be gauging her own emotions before shaking her head and continuing as dryly as she’d begun. “The worst part is that in the end, she saved my life. She decided to let herself die so that I would have a chance. So after everything that we went through, after overcoming all the shit this world threw at us, I ended up losing her at the finish line.”
The room was silent for several minutes. Discord had been preparing to have to console her in some way but, bafflingly, she remained eerily dry-eyed and composed. He swallowed and slowly resumed cleaning the spring motor in his hands. She wasn’t allowing herself to feel it yet. He remembered what it had felt like to stare up at that towering wall of grief and guilt, knowing with perfect clarity the terror he’d felt knowing he would have to reconcile what his actions had cost him and the people he loved. 
Fluttershy didn’t sacrifice herself for him. She’d rejected him, and somehow that had been even worse because he understood how powerless he was to change her mind. Even now, there were days when Discord considered whether he’d really moved on or whether he was still living in the shadow of his mistakes.
For a while he considered conjuring up a clever platitude to share with Aurora, but ultimately decided against it. 
“I’m sorry you lost her,” he murmured. 
“So am I.” She leaned forward and picked up the Pip-Buck she’d been working on this morning. A single, singed feather caressed the blank screen. Then she pursed her lips and put the device back on the table beside its outdated twin. Glancing at the spring motor, she feigned an unconvincing smile. “I think that’s clean enough. Let’s get it packed with jelly and mounted. Then after you wash that mess off your hands I’ll walk you through reassembly. Are you up for that?”
He looked down at the motor in his hands and took a moment to admire the pockets of shine that had emerged from beneath the crust. Perhaps Aurora would find a way to slough off similar layers that had built up around her. He smirked at the clunker of an analogy. She’d opened up to him, at least a little. Maybe the comparison would fit better with time.
He eyed the myriad of neatly organized pieces which had once been Fluttershy’s gramophone and decided that this daunting project was as much therapy for Aurora as it was humbling for him. Picking up a screwdriver with his grease-stained fingers, he flourished it like a ceremonial saber.
“I await your instruction.”







 The stallion harnessed to the other side of the wagon’s oaken tongue made a hawking sound and spat the foam from his mouth. “You got business at the Bluff, or is ya plannin’ to go east after that?”
He hadn’t asked the name of his fellow puller yet and Clover hadn’t deigned to offer it, not out of impropriety but rather because his Pip-Buck and shameful attempt at hiding his wings under a stiff coat that still held its long-dead owner’s shape wasn’t fooling the old stallion. The question of whether he’d turn east was as much as a litmus test for Clover’s intentions as it was polite conversation. Behind them the wagon’s owner, a young unicorn barely out of his colt years and flush with caps after his first commission with F&F Mercantile turned into a personal windfall following its collapse, snored into his chest from the driver’s seat. 
“I have some personal affairs there which need addressing,” he answered vaguely, then turned the spotlight away from himself. “How about you?”
The old stallion snorted. “I go where the kid says, for as long as there’s caps waitin’ at the next stop. Other’n that, I don’t make plans. Still surprised you didn’t cut yerself in on my share.”
Clover pursed his lips and shrugged, feigning disinterest in the thin stands of poplar trees growing wild in what used to be acres of open farmland. The deep, parallel plow marks were mostly eroded smooth now but a keen eye could tell how the rocks sticking out from the soil had been disturbed by ancient machines. He was used to seeing the uniform rows of the wealthy orchard owners and New Canterlot’s attempts at creating manicured patches of greenspace within the young city. Wild growth wasn’t an unfamiliar concept to him, but he rarely saw it outside of intelligence reports and after-action photos. The water table out here must be close to the surface for their roots to have found purchase.
“Careful,” the old puller warned. “Might be raiders out there starin’ back atcha.”
Clover smiled and turned his gaze back to the broken road they traveled on, leaving the bait untouched. “If you were listening to my conversation with your employer, I assume you’re aware that we traded my labor for protection.”
The puller rolled his eyes before settling them down toward his foreleg. “Yeah, you and that fancy gatchet’ve yours are too good for our money. Y’got the wings for flying, so why’re you chewing my ear as a puller when you could just flitter the rest of the way north?”
He regarded the stallion more fully. “I can think of more difficult ways to get myself shot.”
A grunted concession, then more verbal maneuvering. “Surprised you’re not beggin’ for a rest. You’ve been pullin’ for most of a full leg.”
Clover couldn’t help but smile a little. Wastelanders were the furthest thing from the rubes many of his compatriots chose to believe them to be, and this old timer was a prime example. Nine hours after hitching his proverbial wagon to this, well, wagon, his temporary coworker had waited until the young boss had dozed off before starting his interrogation. 
“Hard to survive if you’re out of shape,” he said.
The puller spat again. “Hard to stay in shape if’n you look like a mammoth.”
It wasn’t quite an insult aimed at his appearance, but close enough to one that Clover could have been justified in responding to a perceived barb. Instead, he laughed, and pointedly lifted one of his wings to better display the dense tangles of his coat. “My bloodline might have spent a few generations vacationing in the north.”
The stallion eyed his wing as he let the jacket slide back over it, and Clover waited amiably for a reaction. Silence lingered for a quarter mile before he let out an annoyed grunt.
“Y’know, back when I hauled for the slaver guilds I had a chance to spend some time over the border. Lot of folks in Enclave country liked talkin’ about bloodlines. Especially the blue bloods who figured they had somethin’ to brag about.” After a meaningful pause, he added, “You strike me as the type who wouldn’t have any trouble at all blending in with those types.”
“The world can be full of surprises,” he mused.
“Oh, it sure can. Why, you should’ve seen my face when I heard it was a flock of self-important birds who popped a doomsday bomb on a Stable.”
Clover felt his smile grow brittle. He’d spent the first night as a fugitive in a freight container that had spilled off a derailed train, and the explosion had rung the metal walls like a bell. From his vantage point he’d been able to see the pinpoint of green light rising over the horizon, and he was ashamed to admit his first concern had been for his Pip-Buck. It was pure luck that he’d chosen to sleep inside the container and that the steel walls had protected the only evidence he had of Rainbow Dash’s survival from the EMP.
It hadn’t taken him long to work out his distance from the epicenter and the possible targets for a balefire attack. To say he’d been emotionally compromised for several hours after was an understatement on par with comparing morning frost to a glacier. His former employer, minister of the Enclave, and only mare alive able to claim to have deployed the balefire-tipped missiles responsible for Equestria’s violent ejection from a golden age, had just willfully deployed the same destructive force upon a Stable whose only crime was that it somehow harbored the Element of Loyalty. The irony of that fact wasn’t lost on him, but all he could think about in those first hours was whether this outsized attack was somehow meant to be a message for him. A twisted punishment meant to make him reconsider which side he was on.
“Y’sure are quiet all a sudden,” the puller murmured suggestively.
He sure was. Accepting that he’d tipped his cards, he shrugged and let the rest of his smile fall. “They’re responsible for more than just the bombing of Stable 10. Anyone who knows that and still chooses to serve them isn’t a part of an Enclave that I want to be associated with.”
With that, a direct question finally came. “You one of their grunts?”
Clover considered the question. “Until very recently, yes.”
“Hrm. Never cared for you folk, but I s’pose that’s no surprise to hear.” 
“It’s no worse than the things mine have said about you.”
A nod of agreement, the first genuine sentiment the stallion had offered since he let them harness him in. “We’re still about two, three hours out from the Bluff. Figure we’ll take the wagon along the southeast side. You plannin’ on surrenderin’ yourself once we get there, yeah?”
Why lie now? He nodded.
“I don’t feel like spending the day in a locked room with one of Coldbrook’s nasties, so you’ve got a few miles to make up an excuse to stop and unhitch. If you can’t, I’ll tell the boss I need a shit and you can bolt. I don’t care which you do as long as I’m not standing next to you when you tell ‘em who you are.” He shook his head, likely aware that he’d need to convince the young stallion sleeping the day away of the importance of forgetting about the dustwing they’d picked up for this last leg. “Traffic’s usually light on the east end of the wall, if y’prefer less of a crowd.”
“I do,” he agreed. “If it’s any consolation to you, Coldbrook isn’t leading the Bluff anymore. Elder Coronado took charge not too long ago.”
“The kirin?” The stallion barked a laugh. “Not sure if that’s much better.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged, jangling their tack. “They’re known to have a fiery temper.”







Little more than a week into his transfer and Elder Coronado felt a deep, compelling urge to take a vacation. He sat behind the desk previously occupied by a stallion whose perceived competence had rested squarely on the shoulders of others, and when the first card fell his first instinct was to grab at the entire fragile house and squeeze. For a stretch of territory whose only real claim to fame was a medium-sized city and a dysfunctional solar array, Coldbrook had wasted no time making a mess out of both. And of course, on top of that, the High Elder had seen fit to give Coronado temporary command of Coldbrook’s territory on top of his permanent duties in Fillydelphia. A city, which he reminded the High Elder repeatedly, which had been defanged by the Enclave and whose pegasi were now no doubt roosting in the rooftops like so many pigeons. 
The daily briefs coming in from all corners of his nearly doubled territory were stacked high enough that he may as well throw a board across them and stack tomorrow’s reports on that. And to top it all off, the Enclave had decided to violate all pretense of fighting for an uncontaminated Equestria and popped a balefire bomb over the Stable both sides claimed to be saving. 
Elder Coronado needed a break. 
He pushed out of Coldbrook’s chair and crossed the bare office, pausing long enough at the door to run magic over the wrinkles in his tan uniform. Several of them bent back into shape, unfazed the weak aura he could conjure. With a sigh he did his best to ignore it, then pressed the switch on the wall. Out of habit his eyes followed the door as it receded above him. He needed to stop doing that. It reminded him of the way first time visitors to Fillydelphia would stare up at the old skyscrapers. That made him smile a little. Things would be better once he got this region back under control and a new Elder was promoted to take his place. 
Until then, he would take a walk.
The door slid shut behind him and, as always, more than a few curious eyes turned his way as he started down the corridor. He didn’t mind. Being seen was part of the job, and if his presence reminded the soldiers here that the kirin were still alive and kicking all the better. At a glance he could easily tell which Rangers were native to Blinder’s Bluff and which were supplementary from other parts of the eastern wastes. He gave Coldbrook’s former people credit, they at least didn’t scurry away with their tails between their legs. When Coronado first arrived he had made it clear that the crimes of their former Elder did not reflect upon them as Rangers. As far as speeches went he suspected it may have landed flat. Soldiers who likely never worked directly with Coldbrook were still finding reasons to stop him and apologize or reassure him that they weren’t all crazy. 
Coldbrook never struck him personally as unhinged, but he wasn’t about to stick his neck out for the stallion by making excuses for him either. If there was a takeaway from the steady trickle of apologies it was that his skills as an orator needed some work. 
Eventually he chose a corridor he hadn’t been down before and turned into it on a whim. The scenery didn’t change much. Polished concrete floor, paneled steel walls, visible plumbing and conduits snaking overhead to wherever Stable-Tec designed them to go. Still, it was something new and reading the placards on the walls as he passed helped to distract him from the mountain of problems on his desk. Officers, enlisted, and administrative staff trotted around him in both directions like a stone in a river, sometimes pausing long enough to acknowledge him with a brief, “Sir,” or “Afternoon,” before hurrying on to where their duties led. Stable 6 was a busy place at the best of times and after recent events it was a hive of activity. 
He tried not to think about it but found it impossible not to. The Enclave had, for the first time in decades, mounted a successful incursion into Ranger held territory. That much was Coronado’s failing as it was Coldbrook’s for allowing the Vhannan guns above Fillydelphia to be simultaneously destroyed. That feint of theirs had forced Coldbrook to send support eastward, all but removing the armor preventing the Enclave spear from sinking in from the other side. Hundreds of soldiers were sloshing across the wasteland like water in a bath, chasing threats as they appeared rather than anticipating them in advance. 
With the detonation of the balefire weapon, both sides had come to an abrupt standstill. Knowing what he knew about the Enclave, exposing themselves to a fresh radiation hotspot would cost them more than their health. There would be the issue of social status to consider, as well as the purity of their bloodline. As horseshit as that was on paper - radiation didn’t care if it drifted over Enclave territory - willful exposure had real consequences. Radiation was conceptually and physically taboo, and if the mounting intelligence pointing to the Enclave as the faction who delivered the bomb was true, Coronado could only imagine that the pegasus who pushed the button would be sweating bullets right about now.
“Good afternoon, sir,” a female voice chimed behind him.
His ears perked in surprise and he slowed a little to let the mare catch up. He stole a quick glance at the bars on her collar and noted the folder floating ahead of her. Inwardly, he sighed. So much for his break. 
“Captain. What do you have for me?”
“Items of note,” she replied in a standard non-answer. Normal procedure in a place with so many eyes and ears. He lit his own horn and she allowed a crimson haze to swarm over her gold, pulling the folder in front of him. “There is one item I’ve placed at the front that needs your attention. The rest you should be safe to put into a shredder, sir.”
He smiled at that. The office towers of Fillydelphia had no shortage of paper shredders, and every single one had been converted to rust by the sea air. “Thank you, Captain.”
She nodded, but continued to follow him.
“Ah,” he said. “You’re dismissed.”
With that she did a u-turn and joined the flow on the other side of the corridor. Elder Coldbrook had been a true taskmaster, apparently. Officers assigned to Magnus Plaza tended to have enough autonomy to understand when they could go. Tucking the folder near his shoulder, he spied a green and white sign indicating one of the stairwells and dipped out of traffic.
He descended a few levels, paused at the landing, then decided to go down a bit more. There was so much of Stable 6 he hadn’t seen and getting away long enough for these detours was like pulling teeth. Thankfully the stairwell was mostly empty, save for those who didn’t feel like waiting for an elevator. It grew practically barren the lower he went until only his hooves echoed off the concrete walls. He couldn’t help but smile at the familiar giddy feeling he got as a colt whenever he wandered into places the adults didn’t venture. 
Naturally, that was the moment an engineer appeared around the steps below and paused to give him a worried look. Seeing the new Elder trotting downstairs with a toothy grin was probably every enlisted’s personal nightmare. Coronado quickly snapped his lips shut and nodded as he passed the stallion, fighting hard not to let his composure crack in the process.
Stable 6 wasn’t terribly deep and it wasn’t long before he found himself running out of stairs. Somewhere behind the double-doors at the bottom emanate a shuddering drone that seemed to vibrate the ribs in his chest. His hooves tingled with the reverberations, giving him a strange sensation of sliding on ice rather than concrete. A chipped plastic sign screwed into the wall depicted a genderless pony wearing oversized earmuffs, and apparently no one had thought to leave a supply of ear protection nearby for him to doff. He briefly considered rectifying that right now but managed to push the idea aside.
He pushed through the doors marked MECHANICAL and flattened his ears at the assault of raw sound. Ahead of him opened a proverbial cavern of open space buttressed by thick, reinforced pillars. But what impressed him the most was how devoid of equine activity the space was. As far as he could tell the engineer he’d passed on the stairs had been the only one down here and he was utterly alone. Likely that wasn’t the actual case. He knew there was always a skeleton crew on duty inside the generator room beyond the half-lit void sprawling ahead of him. 
Still, he couldn’t help but be impressed with how thoroughly the Enclave had stripped this Stable down. This must have been where the Stable dwellers built and repaired their machines, and he thought he could picture the rows of work stations delineated by the yellow lines painted on the floor. In regular intervals retractable power sockets hung from the ceiling like stalactites, and Coronado suspected if he were to find something to plug in it would still draw power. There was nothing to test the theory with, of course. All the tools, parts, and raw materials were conspicuously absent down to the last hammer and nail. Signs suspended from chains pointed to departments which no longer existed. Only the generator remained, evidence of the Enclave’s early assumption that they could return later for the electricity. 
Gradually, his curiosity began to wane and the folder floating at his side reminded him of his duties. He grunted, turned, and wandered toward the open door of a small room equipped with a kitchenette. He tried not to think too much about going to a break room to do work and kicked the doorstop out from under the door as he passed by. It clicked shut behind him, muffling the worst of the noise. With no chairs to sit down in, he opened the folder onto the empty countertop and began skimming the document at the top.
His eyes moved back and forth across the page. As they did his brows knit closer together until, by the end, they were nearly touching.
“Well,” he murmured. “Alright then.”








CONFIDENTIAL
Department of the Steel Rangers
Staff Communications Office
TO BE COMMUNICATED TO ALL CHAPTER ELDERS
WITHIN ONE (1) WEEK OF FILING


FROM:   East-Central Chapter, Elder Coronado
TO:   High Elder, All Chapter Elders, All Clearance O-3 Admin Staff
INFO:   Defection and Detainment of Enclave Security Director at Blinder’s Bluff

1. (U)  Subject is Clover, Security Director to Minister Primrose of the Enclave. 

2. (C)  Subject crossed into Steel Ranger territories via flight, departing New Canterlot at approximately 1530 hours, 21 April 1297. Proceeded toward Stable 10 via circuitous route east of landing point, location undetermined. Witnessed balefire event over Stable 10 and altered course to avoid airborne contaminants. Stable 10 rejected as potential refuge. Proceeded east to Blinder’s Bluff, where the subject approached and identified himself to Initiate Flick (E-C Chapter) at southeast gate. Subject was taken into custody willingly and has remained cooperative.

3. (C)  Preliminary investigation disclosed following: 
   A. Subject identified as Security Director Clover, most recently assigned to the service of Minister Primrose of the Enclave. Subject obtained access to communications intercepted by software monitoring network traffic generated by hereto unknown Stable-Tec assets. Subject arrived wearing a Pip-Buck inconsistent with known Stable-Tec issued variants, but which operates on standard Robronco operating system known to have been acquired by Stable-Tec. Subject activated Pip-Buck at the request of Paladin Timbers (E Chapter) and displayed a communication sent by registered Stable 10 resident Rainbow Dash, MOA Minister, addressed to registered Stable 10 resident Spitfire, MOA Department Manager. Communication makes detailed claims linking Spitfire to global catastrophe dated 31 October 1077. Communication mentions secondary subject named “Primrose” during these accusations, which defected subject claims to be Minister Primrose of the Enclave.
   B. Subject surrendered Pip-Buck to Paladin Timbers. Subject has been detained at Blinder’s Bluff, Stable 6, Level 4 Secondary Deputy Station, Cell 1. Level 4 Deputy Station has been given General Restricted access.

4. (C)  Contents of intercepted communication designated “Your Legacy” are attached to this document.







“Opal, I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
He endured an impatient sigh from the old mare without bothering to mount a defense. She was going too quick with all these projected screens and while his surly attitude hadn’t scored any points with her today, his own charity was running dry too. She’d spent the last five minutes building up to the point of all this and the more screens she showed the more lost he felt. This latest screen had something to do with Aurora, given her name was scattered across the log entries, but everything she said felt too reserved to be good news. 
More than ever he wanted to get up, walk down to his compartment, and sleep.
“This,” Opal said, speaking slowly as she lifted a primary toward the projected terminal display, “is the network activity for the anonymous Pip-Buck that pinged the servers today. There ain’t much of it, only a few days’ worth, and the device number assigned to this particular Pip-Buck was never issued to our Stable. Normally I’d expect the firewalls to catch that and reject the connection…”
Sledge blinked slowly. “But?”
She glared at him for a moment. “But nothin’, the firewalls would have done their job if the connection attempt hadn’t terminated on the other end. Heck, it wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did were it not trying to reconnect from an old session. Call me crazy but–”
“You’re crazy,” Rainbow wryly obeyed.
Opal waggled her brow at her. “–but an unknown Pip-Buck trying to reconnect to our network from the other side of the continent is something I’d want to investigate. Turns out our mystery device has been poking around the archives as recently as last week, and had been at it for days before that. All of it, every file and record, had to do with Aurora.”
Sledge nodded to avoid saying anything that might betray his exhaustion with all this. The world was filled with spies and liars, and had been since before the bombs fell. What good did it do to beat this latest revelation into their heads when they could be starving without the burden?
“Do you think it was us?” Colonel Weathers asked, clearly finding the presentation much more interesting. “Or, rather, Primrose?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Rainbow chimed.
Opal shook her head. “That was my initial thought as well, but no. I looked into why this device was able to connect in the first place and it boils down to the user’s biometrics matching those of one of our registered residents. I’ll skip the drumroll, it’s Ginger’s signature. She registered with the Stable via Aurora’s Pip-Buck weeks ago after Elder Coldbrook flashed a copy of its operating system and, apparently, Aurora’s credentials. The information she pulled up on Aurora backs it up.”
She gestured to the log entries pointing to notable moments in Aurora’s life inside the Stable. Her birthday, school records, photographs, even the certificate she’d received when she completed her apprenticeship under him. Sledge found his eyes stinging and turned them back to the floor as he listened to Opal explain how they’d locked down Aurora’s account on her request, fearing the Rangers would find a way to use it to force open the Stable door. Evidently all they needed to do was bait the Enclave into doing it for them. He could still hear the explosion that kicked the door in over their heads.
Rainbow leaned forward in her chair. “So Ginger’s alive, then.”
“Possibly,” Opal hedged, “but I wouldn’t bet on it. The Pip-Buck never registered a user, so nobody was wearing it. Could be someone… found it. I don’t think that’s likely to be the case, either. Given the distance it traveled in the past week…” She trailed off, and Sledge could hear the hesitance in her voice. She wasn’t trying to be dramatic. She just didn’t know how to say it without getting their hopes up.
Sledge cleared his throat. “Someone flew it out there.”
She worked her jaw uncomfortably, then offered the barest nod. “I ain’t sayin’ it’s Aurora.”
The hostile conversation with the gryphon earlier this morning came back to him like a sore hoof. He closed his eyes and sighed, recalling how the creature had insisted she’d spoken to survivors who claimed to have seen Aurora at the time of the explosion. 
“But you wouldn’t have asked us to come if you didn’t think it was possible,” Rainbow nudged.
Sledge opened his eyes to watch Opal fidget behind the terminal, visibly discomfited by the obvious being stated so clearly.
“I think…” she grimaced, forcing herself to continue, “I think it’s important for all of us to stay informed. We don’t have anything conclusive right now so sharing this with the rest of the Stable is liable to harm more than help. For the time being, we should– Sledge?”
He’d gotten up and had begun moving toward the open door. “Appreciate the update, Opal.”
“I wasn’t done,” she called back.
“It’s all I have time for,” he said. “Fill me in later on anything important. Right now we’ve got squatters setting up camp in the tunnel and I need to have a chat with their ringleader.”







Crates dropped onto the flagstones one after the other forming low rings around the bases of the four pillars nearest the tunnel’s mouth. Wagons that had struggled to navigate the deep fissures of the access road connecting Foal Mountain to the nearby highway stood parked hub to hub, each of them pulled up to the charred remnants of the same old growth log. Like everything else in reach of the explosion, the forest which once helped to conceal the road had been reduced to so much debris. Hauling the powdery trunks off the concrete had been an ordeal that involved copious amounts of sweat and cursing to accomplish, some of which Fiona contributed herself. 
With the road cleared - or cleared as much as it could be, since no one was volunteering to drag the rusted carriage wrecks away - a steady trickle of wagons had begun to flow in both directions. Some stayed long enough to help unload crates, scavenge wreckage from the tunnel, and play a part in deciding how the camp would be organized. These were the old timers whose collective experience surviving in the wastes could be heard in the way they discussed the local resources, proximity to the highway, and the relatively flat terrain not far from the entrance. As Fiona carefully rolled a sixty gallon water barrel down a wooden ramp dropped off the back of a parked wagon, she overhead two bandaged stallions murmuring the word settlement between them. 
The barrel reached the dirt with a thump and slosh. Breathing hard, she paused to rest her forehead against the cool plastic. Her long tail swung behind her in wide arcs, something she used to do to draw stallions’ attention back at the Bluff and now only did to help the sweat evaporate off the backs of her hind legs. Only after the earth pony behind her cleared her throat did she finally straighten and throw herself into rolling the barrel onto the makeshift drag sled. 
Several complaints rose in her throat as she worked the lashing around the barrel, each amounting to a colorful variant of, “I’m exhausted.” She knew better than to bitch about a little exercise, though. None of them had come all this way expecting a beach chair and a cold lemonade to be waiting, so she swallowed her grousing and slapped a palm against the barrel when she finished tying the last knot. 
“Two more after this,” she gasped. “Let me know if you need help offloading.”
She had barely finished the sentence before the mare harnessed to the sled leaned forward and the ropes went as rigid as steel cable. Wood boards scraped noisily toward the tunnel until the earth pony and her cargo were swallowed by the shade. 
Fiona glanced over to where the elderly stallions were currently debating how much radiation the burned forest might have absorbed from the bomb and whether the deeper heartwood could safely be harvested for lumber. Despite the deep, burning ache of muscles unused to manual labor she couldn’t help but let the corner of her beak twitch with the faintest smile. 
Things were, as far as she could tell, going extremely well. Better than expected, actually. As she hopped up into the lopsided wagon she couldn’t help but guess that some of that had to do with Ms. Vogel. Wastelanders were a mistrustful bunch as a rule and yet somehow this disparate fistful of traders, scavengers, and blast survivors were coming here to essentially reestablish a town with only minimal bitching. Fiona imagined the old mare had thought up some clever ways to threaten most of them into compliance. And why not? It wouldn’t be the first time people needed the promise of a swift kick in the ass to get them to do the right thing.
The last two water barrels came safely down the ramp with significantly more effort than the first pair. Fiona took the opportunity to watch the earth pony drag off the cargo from the shaded side of the wagon, her backside thumping into the dirt as she stole what she hoped would be a long, uninterrupted break. The muscles in her arms, shoulders, and hind legs twitched beneath her short coat like she’d sat down on a live wire, and for several minutes she simply watched them dance while she sucked in cool air and blew out hot. If she thought she’d fit, she might have considered popping the lid of the last barrel and spoiling herself with an impromptu bath. She snorted and let the back of her head rest against the wagon’s sideboard for a few, luxurious seconds.
She woke to a hoof prodding her shoulder and uttered a long groan to make her irritation known. That earned her a firm smack in the same spot that jarred her back to the real world. Opening one eye, she recognized the face of one of the older stallions who had just recently been chatting logistics and who now leveled an impatient, if not sympathetic expression her way. 
“Up n’ at ‘em,” he said as he tipped his horn toward the tunnel. “Got a jumbo-sized pegasus eyeballin’ us from the Stable who says he wants to talk to you.”
The stallion took a step back as she pushed herself off the dirt with a grimace. Every joint in her body felt like it had been cast in lead and left to harden. She hissed with discomfort as she bent her neck to look down at the unicorn. “Did he shoot at anyone?”
“Not yet,” he murmured, “but I wager he’d like to.”
“He’s got all the charm of a grizzly, yeah.” Fiona sucked in a slow breath and exhaled, smiling as she did. “Let’s see how loud he growls this time.”







Sledge paced across the platform just outside the Stable and listened to the gryphon speak.
It – she – stood barely ten paces away from him with one of her dagger-like talons idly scratching grooves into one of the concrete steps. Even though he was standing a good three feet above her atop the platform her eyes remained level with his. This sudden feeling of smallness compared to the gryphon set off alarms in the most primitive corners of his brain that were difficult, if not outright impossible, to ignore. It wasn’t just that she was nearly twice his size, it was the fact that evolution had equipped her with the tools necessary to hunt, kill, and tear the flesh off of her prey. Sledge didn’t exactly remember the first few words of greetings she’d offered, or the awkward introduction that followed. All of that had been lost while he’d fought down a powerful, primal urge to turn around and bolt for a place to hide.
It didn’t occur to him until she was halfway into her spiel that she wasn’t just etching random marks to spook him. She was, in fact, scraping a familiar sequence of numbers and symbols he recognized as longform math. He blinked at that for several seconds, processing the sheer normalcy of something he’d been taught to do as a schoolcolt. It took nearly a minute for him to realize she’d stopped talking and was staring at him, one eyebrow arched.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. She’d asked him something just now and he’d completely missed it.
“Sorry,” he grumbled, “could you say that again?”
She took a patient breath and glanced briefly at her notes. “How many survivors do you have left in the Stable?”
He hesitated to answer once again, but this time not for a lack of understanding. Guilt settled over him like a physical thing as if he were being asked to admit to the exact scale of his failings as overstallion. 
“A little more than nine-hundred,” he said. It was an estimate. He hadn’t the heart to ask someone to keep an exact death toll. 
The gryphon smudged out a figure from the edge of the step and scraped in the one he’d provided. “Okay,” she murmured. “So a few days. Not great, but not bad.”
He blinked. “A few days of what?”
She returned the expression with just a touch of frustration at how slow he was on the uptake. “Of water,” she said. “That’s what your guard said your people needed this morning.”
He nodded, vaguely remembering Deputy Stratus’s outburst during their first and possibly unnecessarily hostile encounter with the gryphon. “That’s right, but…”
The words trailed off as he watched the gryphon grimace and twist her shoulders one way, then the other, until a muffled crunch elicited a faint sigh of relief. Before he could pick up where he’d left off, she’d begun summarizing the notes she’d made. “We’ve got twenty-five barrels here to help fix that problem. That’s fifteen hundred gallons, or roughly three days’ worth if you ration everyone to half a gallon per person.”
Sledge stared past her toward the flurry of activity taking place at the far end of the tunnel. A faint haze of daylight lit the opening and he could make out the long shadows of several barrels lined up alongside one of the pillars. Something forced his throat to constrict and this time he couldn’t blame thirst. Compared to the pitiful rations offered up by practically empty cisterns, half a gallon sounded luxurious. 
Still he kept clawing hope at bay. “How long will your supply last?”
The gryphon frowned at her notes. “Ms. Vogel says Junction City used to have a population pretty close to where your Stable is at right now, so there really won’t be an issue with supply as long as we have people willing to work the pumps and haul barrels back and forth.”
Sledge felt suddenly weak, so he sat down to process what he was hearing.
She continued. “Food is going to be harder to get, at least in the short-term. There’s enough salvageable calories back in town to keep ours and yours from starving but you should tell your people to expect to get used to feeling hungry for a few weeks.”
He felt stupid for having to ask. “Why so long?”
“You try convincing traders to send produce into a radiation zone.” She shrugged and glanced back to the activity holding Sledge’s attention. “We got lucky with some smaller companies who decided to take a risk, but the larger caravans are getting stopped or diverted as they come through Blinder’s Bluff. Right now most of the supplies we need are giving this whole area a wide berth until the Rangers’ scouts report back.”
He stiffened. “I won’t surrender my home to Coldbrook.”
“You couldn’t if you wanted to, that asshole’s been shitcanned. Elder Coronado’s the stallion you’ll be wanting to talk to now, and from what I’ve heard he might actually be the type to listen.” She looked meaningfully toward the broken Stable door. “It’s not like you can shut them out anymore. You’re going to have to figure out a way to work with them because at the end of the day your water and food are coming out of their cupboards.”
Water and food being the two resources his people couldn’t afford to go another day without. He could feel a headache brewing behind his eyes. “And the Enclave?”
The gryphon leveled golden eyes toward him. “Nowhere near here and showing no signs of wanting to come back. Try not to jinx that. Making nice with the Steel Rangers might be a heap of shit for you, but the Enclave’s a heap of shit with razors buried in it.”
“I’d prefer not to ‘make nice’ with either,” he muttered.
She shrugged. “You’ll hate the Rangers less once they reopen trade. At least for now you have water.”
He nodded at that. The more he watched the strangers work on the other end of the tunnel, the more he understood there was nothing he could do to stop them that wouldn’t end with this windfall being snatched away. He felt equal parts fear and relief at no longer being fully in control. “Thank you… miss.”
“Fiona,” she smiled.
For some reason he hadn’t expected her name to sound so feminine, and yet there it was. “Thank you, Fiona. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I don’t think I’m out of line in not assuming you went through the effort of organizing this rescue for free.”
“It wouldn’t be much of a partnership if it were,” she agreed, and while Sledge didn’t recall agreeing to anything of the sort he didn’t object to the idea of cooperation either. “Your people can start bringing water inside as soon as you can muster them, but we have sick and injured who need medical care we don’t have the resources to treat.”
He considered that. The Stable had medicine to spare, but the medical staff were just as dehydrated as anyone else. He decided that they, as well as the frailest residents, would need to be prioritized. “How many patients?”
She frowned, something Sledge didn’t realize was possible with a beak. “Fifty-ish, most of them with deep burns. We’ve been losing a couple each day from infections. They’re good people.”
The fact that she had to lean on convincing him that they were worth saving made him feel ashamed for asking. He agreed to the exchange of goods before his worry-trained brain could spin up a reason to convince him to delay. It would take some time, he explained, knowing it would be as much a challenge to find doctors willing to venture past the Stable door as it would be convincing them to treat outsiders. Sledge suspected he would need to come up with some creative threats to motivate enough of them into action and, barring that, have his deputies drag them out by force. 
For her part, Fiona responded to the caveat more than reasonably. The patients were still somewhere out there wherever Junction City stood, waiting to be brought over once enough basic necessities were in place to continue their care. The wagoneers would need time to recuperate before making the trip back, and she estimated they would begin arriving by late morning tomorrow. In the meantime the Stable could drum up volunteers to clear a path through the wreckage still littering the antechamber and shore up a makeshift ramp from the security office door to the bottom of the Atrium while others went to work bringing water inside.
It was a start. No, more than that, it was upward momentum. Stable 10’s descent into ruin had been forestalled by this stubborn, terrifying creature who had happened to be in the right place at the right time to bump into Aurora nearly a month earlier. 
He shut his eyes and worked hard to maintain his composure. He’d been so close to giving up. 
When he opened them again he could tell Fiona was looking for a reason to cut this short and leave him with his emotions. “There’s one more thing,” he said in a husky voice. “You said you spoke to survivors who claimed they saw Aurora.”
Fiona nodded, clearly hesitant to add more to a topic that had resulted in him shouting her away once before. 
“Did they say if she was with anyone?”
“Um, no,” she murmured. “They said she was alone.”
A tiny bit of hope deflated within him. “Did they hear her say anything, or do something they couldn't explain?”
He watched her gaze return to the math scratched onto the steps, her expression screwed up in concentration as she considered the question. “I spoke to a mare who said she saw Aurora coming out of the garment store Ginger Dressage used to own. Others said she looked scared. Disoriented?” 
She stopped before she could say something else she’d remembered and Sledge could see her reluctance to continue picking at what she rightly believed to be a wound which hadn’t begun to heal. It was all hearsay, he told himself, but that would only be true if it had come from one witness. Fiona claimed to have spoken to several. 
And now, with Opal fretting over an unexplainable ping on the network…
Fiona opened her beak, hesitated, then added, “One of them said they saw her putting on a second Pip-Buck.”
The air went out of him as if he’d been struck in the ribs. He raised his foreleg to look at his own Pip-Buck, saw that it was trembling, and slowly pressed his hoof back to the concrete. 
“Are you okay?”
He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. His mouth felt cottony when he finally responded. “You originally came looking for her because you thought she was alive,” he said, pausing briefly to swallow. “Please. Tell me you still want to find her.”







Aurora didn’t exactly remember when she’d fallen asleep. The last clear thought she’d had was of her telling Discord not to overtighten the screws that mounted the record player’s lid against the spring motor. Old habits died hard. Even though she’d seen enough scrap wood lying around the wasteland, she couldn’t shake her natural tendency to treat the material with the same reverence she had when she was just another resident of her Stable. Wood was one of the few materials that the fabricators couldn’t reproduce, and she’d answered her fair share of work tickets from residents who managed to damage a family heirloom and hoped the fixers down in Mechanical could undo their mistake. 
Frowning up at the glimmering hotel lobby of the Royal Luxury Suite, she hoped Discord wasn’t taking her inopportune nap as an opportunity to try reassembling the instrument on his own. Probably not, she thought. He’d nearly shaken himself to pieces just taking it apart, and that was the easy work. 
Her hooves rasped gently over the carpet as she made her way beneath the hotel’s magnificent chandelier and toward the dining tables tucked away next to the breakfast bar, where Eshe was currently inspecting a tray of baked goods. Tandy watched him from the same seat she’d occupied at their table the night prior, her dark depthless form having taken on a few more shades of detail since then. Aurora sighed relief under her breath. As far as she could tell, Tandy’s physical appearance tended to reflect the mood she was in. The fact that she wouldn’t be talking with an alicorn-shaped hole in reality tonight suggested the creature’s turmoil had calmed somewhat.
She opened her mouth to say hello but the words stuck in her throat when she spotted the banner strung high on the wall above the cereal dispensers and coffee carafes. Green letters in exaggerated computer font stood out from a black background announcing WELCOME TO BRONCO-CON ‘67! 
She stared at the banner, then to all the smaller decorations she only now realized adorned all aspects of the hotel. Several smaller tapestry-style banners hung from folding aluminum stands advertising everything from event schedules, Robronco merchandise booths, and something called company alumni. Weaving between tables decorated with paper placemats advertising a rare, interactive experience with “The Real M.I.L.L.I.E.,” Aurora couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit out of step with what was going on.
Tandy watched her approach and offered what could be mistaken as a sympathetic shrug as she took her seat. “He insists this is necessary.”
Aurora followed her gaze to the zebra who was now carrying a ceramic plate loaded high with all manner of pastry, then glanced down at the placemat in front of her. An uncanny looking mare, clearly artificial, grinned up from the advertisement with an approximation of excitement. Great, she thought. Now she was going to spend the rest of her life worrying there might be a warehouse full of autonomous, hoof-gnashing MILLIEs waiting to run amok.
Eshe’s plate clunked onto the placemat beside her. A blueberry muffin tumbled off Pastry Mountain and rolled toward her, which she snatched up in her feathers.
“This is mine now,” she declared.
He made a dismissive noise, evidently satisfied with his hoard. “Empty calories.” He held up something flat, flaky, and heavily frosted between his teeth. “Tantabus, would you like one?”
Tandy stared at the offering, then to the offeror. “My name is Tandy.”
Eshe’s eyes went wide for a moment before looking away. 
“Noted.” Taking a bite of what by all accounts looked like an unnecessarily fancy cinnamon roll, he turned to Aurora and gestured with an empty hoof toward the unusual decor. He spoke around a mouthful as he said, “Impressive, yes?”
“It’s very festive,” she managed.
He nodded cheerily. “It’s a mild exaggeration of a convention I attended the same year as my capture. Truthfully, Robronco never held one in Fillydelphia. It was always in Manehattan, right next to the theater district.”
She stole a glance to Tandy who simply stared between the two of them with silent impatience. Yeah, she thought. They weren’t here so Eshe could reminisce about his old job. That said, she wasn’t about to dismiss his unsubtle hint that he’d been captured.
“I wish I’d been around to see it for myself,” she lied while making a show of removing Ginger’s Pip-Buck from her foreleg. She half expected Tandy to expedite the process by simply making the device appear on the table sans the manual effort, but apparently she was just as eager to get Eshe’s thoughts back on task. “Anyway, I thought you’d like to know I made some progress while I was awake.”
Eshe swallowed his bite and leaned across the table to get a better look. “Oh?”
With a nod to Tandy, she began to explain her errant attempt at shorting the blown capacitor she’d tracked down. As she walks Eshe through the process, Tandy lit her ridiculously long horn and mimicked the disassembly process as Aurora remembered it. Three sections of the white chassis split apart and became semi transparent as they drifted aside to indicate their non importance. The Pip-Buck then rotated until the board Aurora had tinkered with faced both of them. Eshe needed no help identifying the dead capacitor, but his striped face somehow managed to grow a shade paler when she described what she’d done to short the connection.
“That was,” he murmured, “exceedingly stupid of you.”
Well. So much for happy Eshe.
“I mean,” she said, careful to keep the defensiveness out of her voice, “it worked for a couple seconds. The screen even turned on.”
He gestured toward the curved glass of the screen. “Do you remember what it displayed?”
Before she could answer, Tandy had lifted a wing and made a flicking motion toward the Pip-Buck. Several images cycled against the black background and Aurora was grateful she had been saved the embarrassment of trying to articulate what she’d seen. Of course not all of the images shown came with perfect clarity. Several lines of white text were too vague to read, probably due to Aurora not having had enough time to file them away in her head before they changed. Still, Eshe sat forward, his dark eyes focused intently on the legible bits of text.
“You’re right, it did try to boot up.” He paused, pulled a face of disgust at all the illegible lines he couldn’t read, then seemed to give up. “Best I can tell, it got as far as searching for an open network before something in the RAM timing forced it to shut off. Nothing started smoking before that, did it?”
Aurora resisted the urge to lift the freshly burnt tip of her feather in evidence of just that. “Nothing in the Pip-Buck, no.”
He eyed her for a beat, then shrugged and bit off another chunk of pastry. She eyed her own muffin, tore a piece off the top, and experimentally popped it in her mouth. The flavor was… present, insofar as cardboard could be improved by infusing it with sugar. She chewed, swallowed, and gently nudged the rest of the muffin aside.
Eshe wasn’t nearly as picky. He seemed to relish each bite, going so far as to keep eating even as he spoke so as not to interrupt what must be for him an extraordinarily rare experience.
“Well,” he said, chewing loudly, “either you’ll be able to turn it on again, or you won’t. You didn’t do it any favors trying to bypass a capacitor with tinfoil and bubblegum.”
“I didn’t–” she stopped, took a breath, and started again a little more calmly. “I could do without the lecture, thank you.”
He shrugged. “Stop doing stupid stuff like this and I won’t lecture you.”
Across the table, Tandy visibly darkened. “Enough. Explain to her how to fix it.”
Eshe held up his hooves in a calming gesture. “Sorry. I tend to be more direct than people like,” he glanced at Tandy, “and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a real conversation with anyone.”
As usual, Tandy stared unblinkingly until he broke eye contact. Aurora wondered if that was on purpose or if she had similar social blind spots to Eshe.
“It’s fine,” she said, hoping she sounded sincere. “It’s my fault for getting impatient anyway. I just really need this thing to start working again if I’m going to track down its owner.”
Eshe gave her a curious look as he stuffed the last of the pastry into his mouth, then turned back to face the open circuitry of the Pip-Buck hovering over the table. He leaned toward it, hoof outstretched, and made a vague pulling gesture. Of course the Pip-Buck did nothing until Eshe frowned at Tandy, who made a genuine noise of disgust before moving the device closer to him. Aurora had to stifle a laugh. Sci-fi projection screen, this was not.
What felt like several silent minutes ticked by as Tandy rotated the device this way and that for him, the subtle movements punctuated by meaningful hums and grunts from the stallion as he took inventory of the miniscule pathways of gold circuitry and the odd chips and cylinders they traveled through. Aurora hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of hardly any of it when she’d dedicated a fair chunk of the day to committing the circuit boards to memory, but Eshe apparently had a better understanding of what he was seeing. 
When he was finished he asked Tandy to scoot the device between him and Aurora, something she did without comment. 
“You’ll need to resolder this connection here,” he pointed the edge of his hoof toward one of the tiny gold legs of a chip a few inches from the display screen, then rotated the perspective to point out a cluster of thin wires whose insulation had wrinkled and pulled away from the connection points, “and replace these.”
She stared intently at the damage he pointed to and hoped she’d be able to track it down when Mouse came back with her supplies. Replacing the wires wouldn’t be too hard, but she dreaded soldering such a fragile connection. “Any chance I can get away shorting this?”
Eshe eyed her like a teacher forced to deal with an especially dense pupil. “Do you know how to rebuild an integrated circuit from scratch?”
She frowned. “No.”
“Neither do I, so don’t try to short anything else. These are incredibly sensitive components, not a household plug socket you can rewire with whatever’s lying around.”
“Welcome to the wasteland,” she muttered. “Apparently that’s all we have left to work with.”
He stared at her. “It’s very important to me that I know you’ll do this right.”
That got her attention. It had been obvious to her from the start that Eshe was in some kind of unique situation, one that Tandy had expressly forbidden him from discussing, but as far as she was aware all he expected in return for his guidance was whatever documentation Aurora could find for him on AutoDocs once she got Ginger’s Pip-Buck working again. That innocent request was beginning to sound more and more like a lie, or at the very least a misdirection. Tandy, for her part, didn’t have much of a poker face. She’d tensed at Eshe’s plea for reassurance which could only mean he was treading dangerously close to the aforementioned forbidden territory. 
She looked over to Tandy and was surprised to see the creature staring back at her, the look of warning clear on her nebulous face. Something about that sent a chill up Aurora’s spine, but that bolt of worry was immediately followed by irritation. If Tandy was keeping tabs on what she was thinking, there wasn’t anything Aurora could do to stop it. On the same token, Tandy made no secret of wanting revenge on Primrose any more than Aurora had and both of them knew the only chance they had of hunting her down was with this Pip-Buck. 
Forcing Eshe to trade an old muzzle for a new one just to keep him from telling her what was going on was becoming a distraction. If Tandy thought they would use Eshe to get what they needed and then throw him away once they were done, she could go kick rocks.
On cue, Tandy’s eyes widened ever so slightly. Aurora glared back, glad to know for certain that her thoughts weren’t private. 
Caught between them sat Eshe who had become acutely aware of the tension growing between the two mares. “Is… everything alright?”
A smile formed on Aurora’s lips that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Actually, no. Tandy, could we go somewhere private for a minute?”
Tandy didn’t say yes. She didn’t even answer. One moment Aurora was seated in the hotel lobby and the next she was standing in her compartment in Stable 10. The change in venue was so abrupt that Aurora managed to feel vertigo in her own dream, and she had to brace herself against the wall dividing her sleeping area from the bathroom.
“Do not encourage him,” Tandy warned.
Luna’s creature sat on the edge of Aurora’s bed, a scene that was as bizarrely inviting as it was unsettling. The details of her compartment were perfectly accurate down to the homemade timer she’d installed into the light switch to stop Millie from blinding her awake every morning. Filthy wing guards hung from their hook beside the door, along with a less filthy set of Stable clothes. It only took her a fleeting instant to decide she hated it.
“Take us somewhere else.”
“No.”
She scoffed, but Tandy didn’t so much as budge. Evidently she hadn’t brought her here to make her comfortable. “This is a dick move, Tandy.”
“I do not care. You intend to entice Eshe into topics of discussion he vowed not to divulge. That, Aurora, is also a ‘dick move.’”
Hearing that from the creature in charge of a shattered dream realm might have been funny if it weren’t so fucking frustrating. Aurora had no idea how Ginger tolerated all this high and mighty garbage but it was wearing thin fast. 
“Fine,” she spat. “If you’re not going to let him tell me what’s going on, then you tell me. What did he mean when he said he’d been captured, and what does he want with an AutoDoc owner’s manual?”
Tandy flushed, or as well as a creature speckled with an alien starfield could. The nebulas swirling near her face shifted in hue for a moment before the tangible features of a mare solidified around them. It was disorienting to watch.
“You do not need to understand his situation. You should stay focused on punishing the little tyrant.”
“So there is a situation. Good to know.” She let go of the wall and stepped toward her desk where a duplicate of her terminal sat open on a familiar screen. Her ticket queue, she realized, opened to an old work request she’d been sent by Tally Mane way back when. 
Aurora guessed if she tried to read it all the words would be there in the order she remembered. Whether those memories were accurate was another thing. She pulled out her chair, wooden legs scraping convincingly across concrete, and sat down. “And don’t you dare suggest I don’t care about doing right by Ginger. I’m doing everything in my fucking power to find Primrose.”
Tandy’s eyes narrowed. “She lives in New Canterlot. Perhaps you should start there.”
“That isn’t…” She closed her eyes and grit her teeth. “You’re being difficult on purpose. You know full fucking well I can’t just fly over and hope I get lucky. At least not as a first resort.”
“You need Eshe’s assistance,” she agreed. “Something he is better equipped to offer if you are not distracted.”
“I’m already distracted!” Tandy opened her mouth to argue but she sliced the air with her wing, cutting her off. “I’m distracted by all the red fucking flags that keep popping up around this guy! I mean I’m all on board with him having worked for Robronco, that’s fine, that’s not even in my top ten list of weird shit I’ve had to deal with. But the whole bit with you only letting him speak in Vhannan, his request for documentation on AutoDocs, and him dropping hints that he’s been captured by… somebody and you sitting there looking like you’re about to shit diamonds?”
She lofted open a wing in with an expression that invited her to argue any of it. “Come on, Tandy. I wasn’t born yesterday. And if you’ve spent as much time in my head as I think you have, then you know  I have limits. I’m not going to play dumb and pretend we’re not exploiting this guy. He wants help, and you’re not letting him ask for it.”
When she was finished a long silence filled the space between them. Tandy stared at her, meeting the stubbornness in her eyes with placid calm. Aurora had a feeling she hadn’t exactly stunned Tandy into a loss for words. There was too much intelligence behind those luminous eyes. No, Tandy was thinking.
Then she spoke, and the words fell easily from her lips. “I have allowed Eshe to tell others of his current situation. He listened to all seven of them die from the comfort of his bed, fully aware that he had led them into a labyrinth they stood no chance of surviving. Ginger would not want that fate for you, Aurora.”
Her ears pinned back. Her jaw clenched. “Don’t talk about her.”
“You know I am correct.”
That did it. She stood, forcefully enough to send her chair smacking into the terminal desk. “Would you just shut up? You were never there with her! All you know about her comes from what you pulled out of her head, so don’t sit there and pretend that you–”
Tandy’s expression remained unchanged even as her horn radiated fresh light, but this time the scenery didn’t change. Instead, a third occupant appeared in the empty space next to where Aurora’s old wing guards hung. 
A foal, barely a year old, stared up at her with wide blue eyes. Several nearly combed reddish curls hid a tiny ear the color of toffee. Aurora’s heart leapt into her throat, and she leveled a dangerous glare toward Tandy with a shaking voice. “Don’t.”
Tandy was unmoved by the thinly veiled threat and continued apace. “You knew her for three weeks, but I knew everything about her since the moment she had a name.”
Aurora watched helplessly as Tandy’s horn pulsed, and the toddling foal flickered into a yearling. Long, awkward legs lifted and fell with nervous energy as a version of Ginger she hadn’t met stared between them as if fearing she were in trouble.
“You need to stop.”
“I knew how she grew up feeling self-conscious about the color of her mane. I saw how the older fillies discovered that secret fear and used it against her until one day she ran home from school to beg her mother to let her dye it.”
That horn flashed again, and Ginger grew a little taller and filled in just enough to hint at her emerging beauty. 
“I watched her endure the endless courtship of entitled little colts who believed her rejections were a personal challenge. I listened to her confide her deepest fears with a sister whose loyalty was never guaranteed. I witnessed her kill an infant foal at the behest of her father and heard her grieve so intensely that she became ill.”
Yet another flash, and suddenly Aurora was staring at the Ginger she knew. That calm, confident pose of a mare whose heart had opened to her without question or hesitation looked to Aurora and smiled. Somewhere distant, she could feel warm tears welling up at the cruelty of what was being shown to her. The Ginger that stood so painfully close to her was real in every way except for the one that mattered. It was temptation without fulfillment. 
It was too much.
As Tandy opened her mouth to add more kindling to the list, Aurora stepped toward the creature, cocked back her hoof, and swung at her muzzle. In an imperceptible instant Tandy was standing next to the far side of the bed and Aurora’s hoof arced through empty space. She landed across the edge of the bed with a graceless oof! and had to brace her wings against the headboard to keep her fall from continuing the rest of the way to the floor.
She shoved herself back to her hooves and rounded on Tandy with a ragged voice. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
For the first time since meeting the creature, Aurora saw genuine surprise in Tandy’s eyes. “I only meant to illustrate the difference–”
“BY BRINGING HER BACK?!” She snapped a feather in the direction where Ginger now stood, pointedly keeping her eyes away from that spot for fear the wound tearing open inside her would carve itself even wider. “WERE YOU WAITING FOR A CHANCE TO DO THAT?!”
“No.”
“THEN WHY?”
Tandy’s brow furrowed. Her voice grew quiet. “Because I miss my friend.”
Rage, grief, and now unwanted shame boiled inside her like a storm and though her vision was clear she could feel the tears sticking in her eyes. As violence once again drew the muscles in her body into tight cords, her vision locked to where Tandy stood, she didn’t notice change around them until a familiar voice spoke behind her.
“Aurora?” Eshe murmured. “Is… everything okay?”
She blinked, forcing herself to look away long enough to recognize the absurdly decorated hotel lobby. They were among the breakfast tables and Ginger’s ghost was gone. Aurora snapped her eyes back toward Tandy and saw a mixture of uneasy defiance in the creature’s gaze.
Tandy had panicked. For once her cold, logical approach to disagreement had backfired so thoroughly that she hadn’t known what to do. 
Aurora knew what she wanted to do at that moment. She wanted to throw chairs at the creature. She wanted to scream profanity and vitriol until she puked. She wanted Tandy to feel just a sliver of the pain she’d just caused and she wanted it to stick. And she knew, deep down, that it would only make things so much worse. 
She wished Ginger were here to be the voice of reason. She wanted Roach to step in and say those meaningful things that always brought the temperature down to a simmer. She wanted Julip to kick Tandy square in the donut. 
More than anything, she wanted her fucking friends back.
Ignoring Eshe, she lifted a pointed feather at Tandy. “You crossed a line. Do you understand that?”
Tandy nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you understand why?”
Genuine hesitation. “Not entirely.”
She took a deep breath and blew it through clenched teeth. It would have been so much easier to hate her if she’d said yes a second time. Malice was something Aurora understood because she’d been at the receiving end of it since day one. Ignorance, childish ignorance at that, just made all this too much to deal with right now.
“You’re good at digging around people’s heads. Figure it out yourself, because I’m done for tonight.” She swallowed, wishing she had Roach’s patience for this.
“I am sorry.”
“Yeah, Tandy. You should be,” she agreed. “Now wake me up.”







Aurora opened her eyes, grabbed the first thing she could reach, and hurled it across the living room. The screwdriver cut a notch out of the far wall before it clattered uselessly beside the fireplace. She couldn’t see the damage she’d caused, not with her eyes wet as they were. 
She scrubbed her feathers against her face and uttered a heated, “Fuck.”
From the opposite side of the couch, a tired voice cut into the silence that followed. “Bad dream?”
She shook her head, not an answer to his question but out of a need to give her churning emotions some kind of physical outlet besides the one incessantly twigging at her jaw. She’d gone this long without descending into a blubbering mess and she wasn’t about to give in now. She needed to stay focused. If she could do that, she’d be able to see her business with Primrose to its ultimate conclusion.
Discord, meanwhile, frowned toward the screwdriver laying across the room before checking that his still-disassembled record player hadn’t suffered any collateral damage from her freak outburst. He knew, to the degree Aurora had shared, that she’d been having dreams courtesy of the late princess’s creature and while he’d been diplomatic with his response to that news he hadn’t been particularly warm to it either. Now, with her lashing out in the dead of night at seemingly nothing, his polite filters fell just a little.
“Did Luna’s ward demand another twenty-five cents to continue the call?”
She didn’t have the spare energy to ask for a translation. Everything not tied to her lingering anger felt small by comparison and even though the dream was over now, she felt herself resisting the slow receding of adrenaline as if her own body’s attempt to calm her down was an affront to what she needed to feel. A few angry jerks pulled herself up into a sitting position on the couch. She set her hind hoof, the only one she had, against the edge of the coffee table and found herself immediately fighting the urge to shove the table as hard as she could. The hoof came down before she could lose that fight. It wasn’t Discord’s furniture that had her so flustered.
“Fucking Tandy.” She spat the words like she’d sipped something foul. “I told you she’s helping me fix my Pip-Buck, right?”
“It came up, yes.”
She wrapped herself in her wings. “Yeah well she’s basically just a referee between me and another dreamer who knows all about this stuff. Only tonight I tell her I don’t like how she wants me to pretend there’s not something off about him, and her answer…”
Swallowing thickly, she steadied herself and took a step back. She explained, as best she could, the problems she’d begun to notice around Eshe. His temporary allowance to speak ponish, the terms of his assistance only being that she find some documentation for him on AutoDoc beds, the weird way he stared at the wear and tear visible on the Pip-Buck and herself as if seeing things in less than perfect condition was still a new experience to him. His hints at having been captured by someone and Tandy’s silent warnings for him to be silent. And in spite of all the red flags, her certainty that once Eshe gave her what she needed Tandy would go right back to cutting him off from the rest of the dreamers.
“I thought I was being reasonable telling her to come clean about who Eshe is,” she said, the flimsy shudder in her voice returning. “And she showed me Ginger.”
She hugged herself more tightly beneath her feathers, bowing her head to wipe her eyes against the edges of her wings. “She showed me what she was like when she was little. I had to watch her grow up in snapshots while Tandy went down a fucking list of reasons why she knew her better than me. She just ripped me open and dug her hooves around just to make a fucking point.”
Discord watched as she grit her teeth to maintain composure. Half a minute passed before she trusted herself to speak without crumbling. Shutting her eyes, she let the back of her head thump into the couch cushion. 
“It’s bad enough that I’ve fucked up at every. Single. Turn.” Her voice quavered, barely holding together. “I just want a break. I want it to stop.”
She sniffed loudly, wiping her face against her foreleg in a vain attempt to fool herself into thinking she didn’t look like the utter mess she felt like. Sometime during her recollection, Discord had placed a hand on her shoulder that she only just now noticed. The utterly foreign sensation of a strong grip squeezing took a moment to translate into a gesture of support and not something less wanted.
“You didn’t screw up everything,” he said.
Aurora laughed bitterly. “Every decision I made out here led to the death of my home, my only family, and the one person out here dumb enough to love me. Sounds like a real lucky streak.”
The hand on her shoulder squeezed a bit harder, just enough for the discomfort to stave off any more sarcasm. “This may come as a surprise to you, but despite your species being especially sensitive to the primordial essence of this universe not a single one of you has shown the slightest inclination toward fortune telling. That is to say that you, Aurora, cannot predict the future.”
She swallowed thickly. “Your point?”
“My point,” Discord continued softly, “is that you are punishing yourself as if you can. From the bits and pieces you’ve shared with me over the past several days, you seem like the type of person who tries to make good decisions. Does that sound about right?”
She stared at the empty fireplace and let out a resigned sigh. “Of course I tried, but that’s not the point.”
He took his hand away and leaned forward, propping his elbows against his knees while looking back at her. It startled Aurora to see mist in his yellow eyes. “That is the point. We make the best choices we can out of whatever our circumstances ask of us. We do the best we can in a world which has learned it is easier to prey on optimists rather than make room for them. Trust me, I’ve done my share of both.”
His scraggly brows rose as he chuckled off some personal tension, finally breaking eye contact as he did. She watched him for a moment and could tell he’d come close to sharing something with her he’d realized he wasn’t ready to put to words. Tempting as it was for her to pursue that secret, she pulled back and stared absently across the room.
“If I made the best choices, then why do I feel so fucking miserable?”
“Because,” he said, “somebody you loved is dead, and you’ve forbidden yourself to grieve.”
She frowned. Tears were already drying on her face and her throat was tender from fighting down the sobs. Discord was right. Once again, she’d been successful in beating back the overwhelming tide that kept rising within her. That thing inside her that broke as she stared up at the boiling fireball was still there, untouched, because she knew the second she gave it her attention the dam inside her would break. 
She sniffed, shifted her wings a little to better cover herself, and chose not to argue Discord’s point. He knew he was right and so did she. The grief, she told herself, could come later. After the work was done. After Primrose was lying in the dirt with tears of her own drying on her face. But first, Aurora needed to find her, and to do that she needed to complete her work.
Her gaze shifted to the partly disassembled Pip-Buck on the coffee table. “I don’t think I’m falling back asleep.”
Discord bent his neck to scratch his face, then took a long breath and sighed. “That makes two of us.”
She watched him stand and side-step the coffee table, his tired eyes pausing briefly on the carefully disassembled gramophone. His expression said everything. He wanted to finish the project.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” he said. “And don’t start without me.”







A long, wracking yawn rattled Fiona’s beak open as the first beams of sunlight peeked over the clouds. Fat beads of water rolled across her fur like rain tipped sideways, forming on her face, shoulders, and the leading edges of each wing until they grew large enough for the wind to catch. The combination of constant damp and cool air chilled her more than she liked. Still, she was a big girl. She’d grown up in the dilapidated aeries of Griffinstone. If she could handle the bone-chattering cold of winter in those mountains, she could deal with a little nip in the air.
That, and she didn’t feel like being spotted by some keen-eyed Enclave scout. Dipping in and out of the clouds was an uncomfortable yet effective way to avoid that particular conversation. 
As her expansive, copper-banded wings sped her through the thinnest haze of the upper clouds she stretched her arms forward, interlocked her fingers, and pushed both palms ahead of her with two satisfying pops, one from each shoulder. She sighed relief and rolled her neck back and forth to relieve the tension that had built there as well. Flying was as much a full body workout as it was wingwork, and the last several hours reminded her just how out of practice she was. When she was younger, bending her body through the wind came effortlessly. Now she thought she knew what it felt like to be an earth pony stuck alone at sea on a too-large ship, running frantically from steering wheel to rudder to sails and back again. It was exhausting.
Her face scrunched involuntarily with another yawn. She should have told Sledge she’d leave in the morning instead of blindly saying yes to him, but he’d been desperate and had caught her off guard. How does anyone say, “Let’s stick a pin in that for tomorrow,” when they’re convinced the person they assumed dead is out there, alive, and as recently as that morning? She certainly hadn’t known how, and now she was… well, wherever she was. West, somewhere. After passing north of New Canterlot and out the other side of Enclave territory, Equestrian civilization seemed to just peter out.
She sighed and angled herself down through the clouds. Several seconds later she was spearing through the clear skies below the rolling overcast with her eyes trained on the distant features of the wasteland below.
Sunrise was still a good twenty or thirty minutes away for anyone down there. Luckily for her, she didn’t require much light to be able to make out the shadowed features of the western wastes. A handful of narrow ribbons knit back and forth from horizon to horizon, bending around the gentle contours of unremarkable terrain. A wide, muddy river to the north worked its way between the ruins of a broken dam. Dots of firelight clustered around the former reservoir, some of them burning so brightly that Fiona assumed they were bonfires. Most likely a raider encampment, judging by the lack of any permanent housing. She didn’t bother getting closer to confirm her assumption. Seeing the dam only confirmed she had at least another hour of steady flying to go before she reached the very rough radius from which Stable-Tec’s network picked up the ping.
Pumping her wings, she ascended back into the obfuscating clouds.
Ms. Vogel hadn’t been thrilled when Fiona told her she’d be heading west, but she understood why it needed to be done. With the town’s survivors setting up camp at the Stable it would only be a matter of time before rumors of Aurora’s survival reached the ears of other residents. Once that happened it would only be a matter of time before someone started petitioning for a search. The last thing Sledge needed on his plate was another resident taking it upon themselves to run off into the wasteland without knowing what was out there or what trouble wearing their wings in the open would invite. Fiona was the logical choice and, quite frankly, she wanted to do this. Even if all she might accomplish is stealing a dead mare’s Pip-Buck away from whoever found it, she’d bring it home if it meant giving a devastated population some modicum of peace. 
Meanwhile, Ms. Vogel would enjoy full authority over the effort to move what was left of Junction City into the Stable’s tunnel. Fiona had no doubts that the convoys to and from the ruined city would continue. She only wished she could be there when the old mare finally met Sledge. He’d shown his ability for barking, but it was nothing compared to Ms. Vogel’s bite. 
She grinned at the thought and played out several colorful interactions between the two as she cruised west.
The terrain’s inky darkness resolved into long, crisp shadows by the time she gauged she’d flown far enough. Sledge hadn’t given her all that much to go on beyond a wide swath of area in the northwest wastelands Fiona knew to be relatively barren. Even before the sky came crashing down on civilization there hadn’t been much by way of major cities or even that many notable towns out here. Part of why she hadn’t bothered scouting this pocket of the world out for a place to call home in the first place was because northwest Equestria was widely known to have been undeveloped save for a modest port city that everyone nowadays agreed had been reduced to a new, glowing bay. Her only references for this quarter of desolation was the Stable Aurora’s Pip-Buck had pinged off of, Stable 117, and a general location of where that was located.
Dipping back below the clouds, she eyed the dusty roads and spotted the first needle-like shadows of travelers making their morning treks to who knew where. Farther off to the south she could make out the centipedal shape of a wagon train. The muddy river still snaked its way in graceful arcs to the north, and a few low hills stood split between shade and sunrise further ahead. Nothing out here screamed Stable 117! No Vacancy! as far as she could tell. Probably its entrance was buried by erosion or tucked into some natural alcove she couldn’t make out from the air. Her attention shifted back to the wagon train still making its way along a gray ribbon off her left wingtip. If Sledge was right and Stable-Tec had a dedicated network over radio as well as a backup of buried cables, the odds of Aurora having flown this far to arrive at an open Stable were astronomically high. 
No, if Aurora had survived this long after being exposed to the bomb, it meant she’d probably gotten help. That meant a settlement, town, or possibly even a raider tribe had taken her in. Hoping it wasn’t the latter, she bent her wings and turned into a sharp turn toward the wagon train. 
As she drew close enough to make out the individual ponies guiding the seven wagons she adjusted her course into a wide arc around them. Any spotters worth their salt would have noticed her coming from several miles out and she had no illusions that she could sneak up on them. Easier to make herself known while staying out of range of their weapons. 
The muffled crack of a shotgun echoed from the caravan as it drew to a stop. She watched the guards arrange themselves around the wagons in preparation to defend it should she fail to heed the warning shot. As she passed over the road behind them she flattened her wings against the wind and pulsed them to slow herself, landing on the concrete a good fifty yards from the nearest caravan guard. 
“Hello!” she shouted, her wings held out level with the roadway in case the need to beat a hasty retreat arose. 
She waited a moment until she saw their ears perk toward her. Several other guards swarmed toward the rearmost wagon, weapons held between teeth and in hazy magic. The outsized response made it clear they weren’t used to seeing gryphons. When they didn’t return her greeting, she continued.
“I’d like to speak with whoever is in charge!” On a whim, she added, “My flock got turned around in the night and could use some directions!”
She pointed toward the clouds to emphasize that she was not the only giant, taloned bird in the vicinity. Several eyes followed her finger skyward and she could see mouths begin moving just as quickly.
Finally, a voice rose up from the crowd of guards. “We have nothing of value for you to steal, creature.”
Oh, goodie. These were the fun type of wastelanders. She sighed, careful not to let her annoyance show. Several of them had donned binoculars. 
“We only need directions,” she repeated, pausing for the slightest beat to cobble together a bit more fiction. “Our navigator was shot down when we passed too close to Canterlot last night and we have several who won’t be able to fly for much longer without a doctor.”
There was a pause as a stout stallion pushed his way to the front of the group. Their leader, apparently, or whoever owned the wagons. “Your navigator was an idiot for flying your group through Enclave skies. How many of you are left?”
“Twelve, including me, but I don’t think they’ll like it if I tell you more than that.” She glanced furtively at the rolling clouds, where her imaginary friends supposedly circled.
The caravan leader mimicked the gesture, either believing her or understanding the risks involved with not believing her and being wrong. Ponies tended to have an exaggerated concept of what gryphons could and could not do, something Fiona had been happy to set straight with her clients on the Bluff. Stallions, especially, were prone to leave bigger tips when she allowed them to believe they’d managed to dominate her.
The rough response she was getting from this caravan leader led her to believe he was the same caliber of stallion. Very likely he wanted to walk away from this rare encounter with the inflated ego of someone who had met his natural predator and showed her who’s boss, but the specter of many more gryphons wheeling above the clouds kept him from pushing his luck too far.
“Good to hear Griffinstone still sends their best and brightest,” he mused loudly for her benefit. She allowed the insult to go unchallenged. “And it’s called New Canterlot, by the way. Where’s your flock supposed to be heading?”
A few more kernels for his ego. “Van Hoover?”
Several chuckling groans filtered through the guards. Weapons were beginning to drop. Several had already returned to their holsters as it became clear to them Fiona was as dangerous as she was intelligent. “Van Hoover’s gone. Blown into the ocean when the bombs fell. Nearest thing there is to a city out here is Crow’s Grove.”
“Where is that?” Quickly, she added, “Do they have a doctor?”
The stallion pointed a hoof in her direction, indicating the road behind her. “About forty miles that way. Word to the wise, they don’t take charity cases.”
Crow’s Grove. Forty miles west. She turned to leave, then stopped and looked back to the caravan. “One last thing. Have any of you heard anything about a pegasus mare showing up around here in the past few days?”
Immediate suspicion colored their leader’s response. “I thought you said your people just got done tangling with the Enclave.”
No Aurora sightings, then. She turned, loped down the highway and threw down her wings without offering an answer. They could work out whether they’d been duped or not without her help. 
She had a direction and a destination now. It wasn’t much, but it was more than she had ten minutes ago. She kept the roadway below her as she angled due west, her eyes scouring the horizon for Crow’s Grove.







The lights out in the corridor began brightening by degrees, and Primrose greeted the new day with a half-lidded glare and a groggy groan. 
She leaned forward over the war room’s conference desk and massaged her aching eyes. The room stank of stale coffee and stress sweat. A trash can near the door overflowed with discarded paper cups, and a half-eaten plate of last night’s dinner sat neglected where she’d pushed it away. The terminal screen in front of her glowed patiently with unanswered inquiries regarding the bomb, her implication of the Steel Rangers being behind the attack, and a steady uptick in rumors that had begun swirling through the Enclave’s lower ranks.
Her stomach churned. Whether from hunger or queasiness, she couldn't tell. An orange pill bottle filled a third of the way with tiny white tablets sat beside her terminal, a neat scrawl of dates and times penned over the label for each time she’d taken a pill. When she was a young mare, a teacher had regularly complimented her tidy penmanship. That had been several lifetimes ago. Instead of filling out homework, now her orderly lettering kept track of how much Rebound she was taking to stay awake. 
She cracked an eyelid and squinted at the pill bottle, then hissed a curse under her breath. Three pills yesterday. Triple the recommended dose of a notoriously addictive drug. When it kicked in, it kicked hard, but once she started feeling it beginning to wear off the exhaustion was so much worse. She glanced down at her Pip-Buck, tapped the screen, and stared at the time. Then she wondered why she was checking at all. The corridor lights brightened at 7am every morning and she’d just watched them do that.
She groaned again. She couldn’t keep taking more pills to fend off sleep, and meanwhile the Tantabus had all the time in the universe to sharpen her hooks. Primrose could still feel the absolute, soul-blackening terror she had felt when the infinite nothing hurtled toward her from all directions like some all-consuming swarm. That had been no bluff. The Tantabus meant to inflict such suffering so as to break her mind, and this delay was only going to make that experience that much worse if it came to pass. 
“Fucking Ginger,” she muttered at the desk. 
How was she to know the Dressage’s runaway daughter had befriended the Tantabus? Until a week ago she hadn’t believed something so utterly alien was possible, and yet Ginger had somehow managed to weasel deep enough beneath the creature’s armor to find… what, consciousness? A unique personality? It’s fucking soul? The exact amount of sense that made to her was zero. Primrose had dealt with the Tantabus since the first night after Canterlot got scrubbed from the planet’s surface and the most emotion that creature ever deigned to show her was two centuries of casual disrespect. Then one nobody-unicorn dies and the sentient nightmare flings itself off the deep end. 
Of course her generals had so far shown themselves to be less than useless at the task of devising a permanent solution for the Tantabus problem. Their staff had been given nearly unrestricted access to the archives and not a fucking one of them had so much as a hypothesis to offer. Whether that was incompetence or flat-out reluctance, both were equally plausible. Up until recently she’d had them believe the princesses had graciously allowed their kingdom to suck down a few hundred zebra missiles while they waited for the world to remake itself in a manner worthy of their godly return. That sugary-sweet lie had been immensely useful right up until one of those princess’s psychotic orphans decided Primrose’s brain was an egg they desperately wanted to scramble. 
Hell, her brain was already soft boiled thanks to the fucking pills. Ordering her generals to turn their resources toward removing the Tantabus as a threat had been a mistake, and it was one she couldn’t just undo. She skimmed the top of her inbox and flinched at how openly some of the Enclave’s top brass were questioning that order. Most were asking for clearer mission parameters. A few gently posited that the Tantabus may be the product of a nightmare, and that the goddess may be testing her in some manner. Exactly one general titled his latest message with such flagrant candor that she nearly forwarded it to Clover’s inbox before remembering he’d turned traitor and fled.
She sagged in her chair as she pecked at the keyboard, highlighting each new message and systematically answering each with a harsh key press.
Re: Potential Heretical Implications of Attack on Dream.
Delete.
OPS Report 04.21.1297 – Steel Ranger Mobilization @ B. Bluff
Delete.
ST10 Atmospheric Contamination Survey (ORANGE)
Delete.
Re: Tantabus; Additional Information Requested
Delete.
Last Minute Addendum to Spring Harvest Festival
Delete.
She continued through the wall of unread messages until her inbox was once again a blank slate she could better digest. It was soothing in a way as long as she didn’t think about the growing pile of problems looming behind the unsolved quagmire of the Tantabus.
Hooves clicked through the corridors as the first shift rose to greet the new day. She rolled her head toward the open door and watched deeply loyal pegasi filter past, cups of coffee held in their wings as they cast their own curious gazes through a doorway normally shut to them. Almost all of them immediately averted their stares when they realized who it was they were looking at. Primrose soaked it in. Her generals might be growing weak in the spine, but at least she still commanded the respect of those who did the lion’s share of the heavy lifting.
Her thoughts wandered and her eyes returned to the pill bottle. When was the last time she went out for a Stimpack? She frowned. March 1st, it had been. Nearly two months ago, which meant it would be another month until she was due for her next jab. She closed her eyes and ran the numbers through her sluggish brain. In ideal conditions, Twilight’s little medical marvels would linger in a pegasus’s system for roughly half a year before the magic constructs that made them work ran out of juice. Postwar Equestria was far from ideal conditions. Background radiation would remain elevated for centuries more to come which meant the medicine keeping Primrose youthful was being constantly nibbled at by balefire remnants and reducing its efficacy. That low-level radiation wasn’t nearly the amount needed to trigger the runaway mutations the Ministry of Image had so diligently attempted to bury, however it meant she needed to take four Stimpacks each year instead of two.
That meant her next dose was due in June. If she could hold out until then, it was possible she might enjoy dreamless sleep sometime after. And, of course, she’d begin to age and her security detail would notice her falling through the fucking clouds when she tried to land on them.
She spat a curse. There had to be a way to kill the Tantabus or at least hurt it, but she could barely think with only a bottle of pills keeping her awake. She needed a distraction. Something to take her mind off things for an hour or two before she wound up pacing a rut into her own skull. 
Primrose stared at her empty inbox. Then, resignedly, she tapped down to the trash folder and opened her deleted mail. The same old careful recriminations populated the screen and she considered finding the general who had the balls to preach heresy at her and tying them into a knot. No, that would just heap more problems onto her plate. They had their jobs and she wasn’t going to mollycoddle them because they were uncomfortable doing it. She kept scrolling. 
Eventually she landed on the bland subject line informing her of some change being made to the spring harvest festival. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bothered to attend an event put on by the local yokels, but she definitely knew why. Harvest festivals were almost uniquely an earth pony tradition that utterly refused to die. Like ticks, or cockroaches. For some reason, after rooting around in the dirt and spreading liquefied shit over the fields, the Enclave’s citizenry felt an irresistible need to drag a few barrels of their least mutated foodstuffs into the middle of New Canterlot and hold them up as if they’re miracles from the goddesses. The festivals had such a gravitational suck to them that unicorns and even well-bred pegasi debased themselves by taking part in the festivities. 
Against her better judgment, she opened the message and skimmed the first paragraph. A noise of disgust escaped her throat, drawing a curious look from a passing officer out in the corridor. Several influential pegasi families had petitioned the event organizers to include a thirty-minute memorial in honor of the purebloods lost during the balefire attack on Stable 10. There was no mention of fatalities, nor any apparent concern that no hard numbers existed yet on that front, and the focus was predictably on the loss of the residents’ pureblood status due to their presumed contamination. Spitfire’s name featured prominently on the list of bloodlines lost during the attack, and near the bottom of the addendum there was a passing mention that the Dressage family would be in attendance. Ginger’s name was tastefully absent, leaving the implication of her family’s presence for her to divine on her own. 
The standard invitation for their minister was attached, per usual. The matter of the memorial had already been decided and the organizers were making it clear that a seat would be reserved for her should she make an appearance. She grimaced. The festival wasn’t until the first of May, more than a week away. They were trying to pressure her into attending this year’s fucking potato show by throwing together a last minute black-veil event while leaving it up to her whether she wanted an empty chair with her name on it right between the cornbread stand and the fucking dunk tank. 
Grudgingly, she clicked the message and restored it to her inbox. As she did, her right ear drifted toward the open door. 
It took her several seconds to recognize the distant noise as desperate shouts. She frowned toward the door. The corridors had a way of turning words into muddled gibberish at a distance, but this one was making up for it with sheer volume. 
“You know what we did! You know what we did!!”
Her hackles spiked. She stood so abruptly that her chair toppled backward behind her. Eyes wide, neck flaring with uneasy warmth, she hurried out into the hall.
Several groggy officers were milling toward the commotion ahead of her, coffees gripped between their feathers as if to shield them from becoming tangled in whatever drama was unfolding just out of sight. Primrose shoved past each of them, her mind suddenly sharp and aware. Another shout of protest led her around an intersection. It was cut off by a meaty thud and a pained, “Oof!”
A crowd was gathering halfway down the corridor. Heads poked out of offices. At the center of the scuffle were two security personnel and one frantic stallion whose uniform marked him as a member of Enclave Intelligence. Spittle flecked around the intelligence officer’s mouth as he struggled on the floor, his bulk evenly matched to the leaner frames trying to keep him pinned. Papers from an open folder lay strewn around the scene, and as Primrose pushed herself to the front of the murmuring onlookers her hoof settled atop a white sheet bearing unremarkable letterhead.


EQUESTRIAN CORPS OF ENGINEERS
MUNITIONS STORAGE DEPOT ALPHA-19


Paperclipped to the corner was a square, self-developing photograph of an industrial style shelf containing several uniformly spaced and categorized steel strongboxes. A flashlight’s beam pointed to the space where one such container had been removed. In its place, a folded piece of paper stood propped where the photographer had placed it. The words Mk.1 Balefire Talisman were neatly penned across it to remove any question of what was unaccounted for.
“IT WAS OUR BOMB!” the intelligence officer screamed, tears smearing his eyes as he attempted to sweep more papers toward the silent onlookers. Then he looked up and saw Primrose staring down at him, and his face twisted with open disgust. “SHE’S A LIAR!”
She stepped out from the crowd and strode across the damning evidence. One of the guards tried in vain to press the stallion’s muzzle against the concrete to silence him but he only turned his head and belted vitriol at Primrose's approaching hooves. 
“YOU GAVE THE ORDER! YOU POISONED THE WONDERBOLTS’ CHILDREN!!”
A low murmur rippled through the gathered personnel. Primrose gripped the shoulder of the nearest guard and shoved her away. Her wing then darted to the holster of the second guard as he and the raving stallion shot to their hooves. 
In an instant the rogue officer was on his hooves. He bent, scooped up a wingful of crumpled papers, and flapped them inches from her face. “HOW COULD YOU BETRAY EVERYTHING THE ENCLAVE wait–”
His words came to a sudden halt at the sight of the black pistol held in her wing. She didn’t wait for him to beg or grovel. He was beyond saving. She squeezed the trigger and with a violent flash of fire the pistol bucked upward and several ounces of viscera followed the bullet’s path out through the back of the officer’s skull. She watched him drop as if his legs were made of wet cardboard, his body spasming atop a widening smear of pulverized tissue. Still holding the sidearm, she lowered it toward the dying stallion and pulled the trigger twice more. The traitor’s body finally lay still.
She could feel warm droplets clinging to the fur on her face and chest, and the pungent odor of tarnished copper was already flooding her nose. What hearing she had that wasn’t ruined by the sound of three gunshots in an enclosed space picked up the absolute stunned silence from those surrounding her. They were still trying to process what they had witnessed and the fact that they were conflicted at all was an enormous red flag. There was doubt in many of their eyes. Several regarded her with fear, as if the weapon in her feathers might turn on them next. 
She flicked the pistol to the floor and leveled an accusing feather at the stallion’s cooling body. “This,” she said, her voice rising to be heard by aching ears, “is how we answer disloyalty.”
A few soldiers slowly nodded while the rest stood transfixed by the blood pooling around the dead officer. Primrose tried to think of something to say that would pull the rest of these idiots out of their stupor but her brain fog was returning with a vengeance and the words simply wouldn’t come to her. Let them figure it out on their own, then. 
Sensing there were no more loving words to expect from their minister, the crowd began to disperse while many more security personnel arrived in response to the gunshots. Tired and exhausted, Primrose felt some relief at the sight of a black pin fixed to the lapel of a stoic mare. She reached out with bloodied feathers and gripped the mane of the Black Wing soldier, pulling her ear close. 
“Pick up these documents. Burn them. Then take a team to the Intelligence Wing and find out how he got them.”
The mare regarded her with a thousand yard stare, nodded, and began peeling papers up from the bloody floor. One of the guards who resoundingly failed to keep the frantic officer contained bent down to help, but Primrose stuck out a hoof and lifted his wing away from the spilled folder. 
The stony expression she gave him brooked no argument. “I wouldn’t.”
The guard straightened, snapped off a crisp salute, and stood back.
For several long minutes Primrose watched the mute soldier gather dripping pages into a squelching pile under her wing, all the while doing her best not to show any reaction to the contents of the pages. Had she been any slower in getting here, had she hesitated in removing this young officer as a threat…
She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it. Those who witnessed the execution would return to their work full of the knowledge that treason, spoken or otherwise, would have immediate consequences. They would fall in line. Maybe they would sleep a little less easily and guard their words years to come, but they would fall in line.
Yet as Primrose left to go clean herself up, she was unaware that the cover sheet and its paperclipped photograph had not made its way into the wet stack gathered by the Black Wing mare. Unnoticed by anyone during the spectacle it had been picked up, discreetly folded, and carried away. 







“Thirty caps for that one.” 
The young filly, barely old enough to call herself a mare and not much longer from snout to tail than the bundle of firewood she was leaning against, eyed Mouse with the dispassionate patience of a seasoned haggler. Like her father, Melody Chipper knew when she could push and when it was time to give in. You never left her stall feeling like you’d been swindled but you rarely walked away with a bargain, either. Crow’s Grove was too far north for good firewood to be given away, and the Chipper Family always made sure they were paid for their labor.
“That’s solid hemlock,” she added, tipping her yellow snout toward the wire-tied cylinder of five precisely cut firelogs. “No knots, cracks, or burls.”
Mouse lifted a hoof, brushed the dirt off on his steel prosthesis, then used the clean edge to pick at the gunk pinched in the corner of his eye. There’d been a time when he’d tried it the other way around, but the black eye he’d given himself hadn’t been worth the novelty. He swallowed a yawn. He’d made the trip back from Discord’s place in two twelve-hour stretches of straight walking and he was dying for a nap. Being out in the wastes with nothing but the supplies in his saddlebags made him nervous and so he’d pushed himself. Now his internal clock was all turned around and he was fighting to keep his eyes open while the morning warmed an overcast sky. 
“What do you want for the two straight pieces on top,” he asked tiredly.
The filly frowned at the bundle, then back up to him. They stood in an old theater parking lot adjacent to the bustling street market and several cords of cheaper, cured firewood stood around them on pallets. Flakes of tree bark littered the empty parking stalls where less picky customers had dragged bundles off the piles. The youngest Chipper’s father sat on a stool behind his street-facing stall, with his hind hoof propped on the dial of an expensive looking banker’s safe. By day’s end, the family would be a little more wealthy. 
Mouse couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy. The firewood stall was always open, every day, courtesy of a large family all of whom filled vital functions of the family business. Somewhere further north, a team of brothers, sisters, or cousins were undoubtedly well into a busy day of harvesting deadwood from the less toxic hills of the old Crystal-Equestrian National Park.
“It’s bundled for a reason,” the filly said with an air of annoyance. “Thirty caps for all five logs. Like I said before, it’s excellent quality wood.”
With a resigned sigh, he nodded. “Alright, thirty’s fair.”
Melody gave him a look of pointed agreement, used her horn to tie a loop of rope to the wire, and strode off toward an unattended customer eyeing a cord of twisted walnut limbs. Mouse had to half-walk, half-waddle with the bundle hanging from his jaw by the rope handle but managed to carry it to the roadside stall with his dignity intact. Melody’s father, gregarious stallion that he was, counted Mouse’s caps while sharing some gossip about the Unbound caravan that arrived yesterday. 
“Poor Rake is beside himself. He’s afraid of going into his storage room for fear he’ll be buried in an avalanche of circuit boards and crank radios.” The stallion chuckled. “He must know something the rest of us don’t.”
Odds were he did. Mouse feigned an amicable shrug, picked up his newly purchased firelogs and hefted them up into the shallow rickshaw he’d rented for the day. Several wooden milk crates sat inside it, included in the rental as a convenience to prevent a shopper’s sundries from jostling into a tangled mess, and Mouse did what he could to shove the trimmed logs into the small gap the crates had been unable to fill. What he ended up with was a mess. He paused to rub his eyes again. It would have to do. 
As much as it bugged him to waste money on the peddler’s cart, he wasn’t pulling the thing around for the fun of it. His eyes wandered to one of the milk crates, already half-full with items from Aurora’s lengthy shopping list. He sighed again. He’d gotten absolutely swindled on the tools she needed, especially the tiny star-shaped screwdriver, but at least he’d gotten a fair deal on the wood she wanted for her new leg. He gave the cut end of the straight log a thump with his hoof. Dense, yet lightweight. No way Mouse would ever replace his prosthetic with wood, but then he wasn’t a pegasus. 
The thought of watching one trying to fly with a steel anchor made him snort. Smirking, he stepped into the rickshaw’s one-size-fits-most harness and wheeled around toward the market proper.
He made a few stops, coming up empty on most of them but persisting toward the next all the same. While the socializing that came with trips to the market was something he wished he could avoid, Mouse couldn’t deny that there was something he enjoyed about not having to dig through rubble or put down ferals to find valuable things. He could understand why so many ponies chose not to go out into the wasteland at all, content to wait until a trader arrived with whatever they needed or to make do with a lesser substitute. Comfort was nice, sure, but that was only possible if the traders kept bartering and the scavengers kept digging. Having spent most of his life as the latter, Mouse couldn’t imagine spending what remaining time he had hoping someone else would come through for him. 
A pretty mare whose name he was too sheepish to admit he’d forgotten sold him several leather straps and a decent short knife for an even hundred caps. It was a sweetheart deal at that price but letting go of that much currency at once never didn’t sting. The straps went into the crate where he’d thrown a good selection of brass buckles, leather sewing thread, and a nib of Cazador wax with a foreboding looking sewing needle pressed into it. Dragging the rickshaw toward what he hoped would be his last stop, he tried not to think too much about what this was costing him in terms of time his shop sat closed, time he wasn’t spending out scavenging, and caps out of his own saddlebags. 
Sparing a moment to give Verdant the evil eye when he spotted the little shit out among his ramshackle wagons, he turned his focus back to the list Aurora had given him. Were he gifted with a sparkly new horn he could have just held the sheet in front of him and checked items off while he walked, but the genetic lottery gave him a good memory instead. She’d needed a soldering iron and some pretty specific solder to go with it. Luckily, the town’s largest dealer of scrap electronics had the good fortune of being paid a visit by the wasteland’s most sensible cult. 
Finding Rake’s shack wasn’t difficult, what with a good two dozen customers waiting in front of it. They spilled off the uneven sidewalk and into the road, forcing pedestrian traffic into a bottleneck that earned them more than a few colorful nicknames. Rake was rarely ever stocked up to half his limited capacity at the best of times, and judging by the harried, wide-eyed look the wiry stallion gave the crowd outside his bookended storefront, he was well and truly out of his depth. 
While scrap was generally a reliable source of steady income for anyone willing to work at finding it, electronics had always been a niche market and was becoming more of one with each passing year. The factories which once churned out terminals, televisions, and battery-powered gizmos of the old world had long since decayed into silent, cavernous ruins. Motorized carriages were something you found rusting on the sides of the road, not something anyone drove. Sure, maybe if you lived near a city that garrisoned Steel Rangers or the Enclave you might find customers, but even then the parts they asked for leaned toward the specific. The only real caps to be made by selling electronics were the common components needed to restore radios, and anyone who wanted one of those tended to already have two or three spares socked away already.
The mare leading the Unbound caravan hadn’t been lying. The bomb out east had created an unrivaled demand for some of the most neglected scrap the wasteland had to offer, and the traders of Crow’s Grove were just now piecing together that Rake’s stupendously ruinous purchase of cultist junk may well be the densest concentration of unassessed wealth this side of New Canterlot.
Mouse pulled the rickshaw up onto the curb and smirked. Poor Rake looked ready to shit. 
To keep the crowd from overwhelming his store, Rake had shoved his clerk’s counter flush against the front door. Considering the sheer volume of crates visible behind the store’s narrow window, Mouse couldn’t blame him for it. There were shouts from customers in the growing crowd all clamoring to have their voices heard. Everyone wanted the first pick of whatever they thought would resell for the most profit and they were offering absurd quantities of caps, some hollering for specifics while others demanded a chance to buy his entire stock. Rake’s barricade was just as much there to keep himself safe as it was to manage the chaos outside. 
To his credit he was being smart about things. Over the din, Rake shouted reminders that he was only selling fifty units per customer. He had a ledger on the desk and was writing, in shaky magic, simple promissory notes for each order that he then taped to the inside of the narrow window for other customers to see. They would be filled in the order they were received and when he ran out, he ran out. After waiting for several minutes, Mouse could tell most of the ponies in the crowd were customers who already held promissory notes and who were now haggling between one another for even better exchanges. Pushing through them to reach the open doorway, he eventually reached the barricade and the exhausted unicorn behind it.
Rake looked up from his ledger at Mouse and worry flickered over his narrow face. “Sorry, Mouse. Everything’s already claimed.”
He thought about the two crates the Unbound had quietly delivered to his garage and decided he’d survive. He shrugged. “If I weren’t headed out of town today I’d offer to help sort that inventory for you.”
The haggard stallion closed the ledger and gave him a strange look. “I thought you just got back in.”
“I did, but I have a customer.” 
Rake held up a hoof and leaned over to shout at the small mob to go darken someone else’s doorstep or he’d void their orders and draw a lottery instead. Mouse turned and snorted at how quickly that worked. The crowd dispersed like grease in brahmin milk, breaking apart into smaller groups still in the process of haggling over promissory notes made ahead of their own.
“Animals,” Rake hissed, sliding the ledger aside. Untangling the knot of secondary and tertiary dealings was going to be a nightmare come tomorrow. He sighed relief for the spectacle’s respite and turned back to Mouse with a weary frown. “What does your ‘customer’ need?”
Mouse listed off the items. Mindful of the new faces wandering toward his doorfront yet again, Rake wasted little time and disappeared among the crates. When he returned he carried an electric soldering iron with a badly corroded tip, a plastic spool with a few thick loops of silvery metal bent around it, and a square of wrinkled sandpaper. 
Holding up the iron so Mouse saw the broken stubs of red and white insulation he said, “If you can wait a few days I might be able to find something better in one of those boxes, but this is all I had on the shelf before the kooks came in. I can give you a discount on the iron, obviously, but the sandpaper’s five caps. You’ll need something to take the corrosion off the tip before you give it heat.”
He nodded. “Total?”
“Call it twenty-five with the solder.”
“How about we make it fifteen and pretend you’ll care about the other ten once you’re swimming in caps?”
Rake’s modest chuckle reassured Mouse that he hadn’t caused too much offense, but as he waited for the inevitable counteroffer he noticed the smile on the stallion’s face slip behind a bewildered mask. Mouse started to frown until he realized Rake wasn’t looking at him, but past him. He turned to see whatever it was that had ground their haggling to a stop and found himself, like everyone else in the marketplace, staring in shock at the absolute mountain of a gryphon looming over a nearby stall.







Fiona pulled five dented caps from the pouch slung around her neck and handed them to the beverage vendor. “You’re sure you haven’t heard anything?”
The mare running the stall took the caps and held up a tin cup, her eyes never rising enough to meet Fiona’s. The unicorn was terrified. Fiona took the cup of weak instant coffee she was selling and fought hard not to give into the powerful urge she felt to reassure the vendor that she wasn’t violent. At least, not by nature. 
“No ma’am,” the mare murmured. “We don’t get too many dustwings here. Too remote. Too obvious a place to hide. N-not that there’s anything wrong with dustwings.”
Not too many gryphons either, judging by the unashamed stares that fixed on her as she padded into town. There had been an elderly mare knitting what looked like a scarf on a second storey balcony who paused her work to offer a kindly hello, but she had been the only one to do so. Of the prewar gryphons who survived the cracking of the world, only a few of their living descendants still called Equestria their home. Their resentment from being dragged down by the flames of a war they had played no part in ran deep. So deep that when Fiona had announced she was leaving the poisoned mountains of her home to chase the faint broadcasts she’d picked up on the crystal set she built as a fledgling, her own mother had told her not to expect an open door in their house should she decide to come back.
“Ma’am,” the mare said. “I… need the cup back.”
Fiona blinked and handed the empty cup to her with a forced smile. It was like walking into Blinder’s Bluff for the first time all over again. It never occurred to her how much that city had warmed to her over the course of nearly a decade. Most people knew her by name there, even the ones who didn’t approve of how she made her caps or that she wasn’t ashamed of it. It took three long months of putting herself out there, always looking for ways to help, and sharing her ambitions before anyone called her by her first name. The survivors of Junction City had regarded her arrival with uncertainty, but only because some of them knew about the gryphon who lived at the Bluff. These folk had none of that to brace their reaction, and for a little bit Fiona felt as if all that progress made at the Bluff had somehow never happened.
“Thanks,” she chirped, leaving an extra cap on the mare’s counter before she turned away. “Good coffee, by the way.”
The mare finally met her eye with a bewildered frown, well aware that her coffee was cut too generously with water and lacked any appreciable flavor besides bitterness. Still, eye contact. A step forward.
Pausing to get a sense of who she might get an honest response out of next, she surveyed the loosely bound crowd of ponies scattered along both sides of the street. She almost laughed at how hard her heart was beating. The nerves she had from being stared at from so many people at the same time was almost overwhelming. Eager, or more accurately desperate, to focus on just one gawking onlooker she picked out a trio near her on the broken sidewalk who regarded her with as much curiosity as they did fear. 
With a steadying breath, she headed over. 
“Hey there,” she greeted, making sure to stop a few extra paces away so they wouldn’t have to crane their necks to talk to her. Two of them held yellow slips of carbon paper, one held by magic and the other pinched neatly between surprisingly white teeth. Traders, then, or members of a guild who had access to a steady supply of tooth powder. “Sorry for interrupting, but have any of you heard word of a gray pegasus coming through this way? I’d be happy to pay you for any information you can spare.”
The two unicorns and earth pony exchanged glances before the one with the receipt in his teeth answered, his expression tight with anxiety. “Apologies, but no.”
Yeah. Story of the day. She’d been asking the same question to anyone who didn’t look ready to bolt away since she entered town and no one had a clue what she was talking about. Even the doctor that ran a hospital out of a building that looked suspiciously like a bookstore had given her nothing to go on, though he hadn’t let her inside to see his patients so who knew if he was on the up and up. Maybe there were windows or an unlocked door in the alley behind the building. She’d have to circle back and check.
She turned up a palm. “Any chance you might know someone who has?”
One of the unicorns cleared his throat uncomfortably. Fiona realized her taloned fingertips were drawing the entirety of his attention and she quickly put her hand down.
Three heads shook in unison, and she was feeling more than reluctant to keep interrogating random people in a gawking market. She needed a nap. The roofs around here were mostly flat. Maybe someone here would let her catch a couple hours of sleep up there.
“Alright, well,” she glanced at the store signs up and down the market street, hoping to spot an inn. “If you hear anyone mention a mare named Aurora Pinfeathers, come find me. I can pay–”
A clatter of dropped metal across the road cut her off, and she turned to watch a shaggy brown stallion chasing what looked like a pen across the pavers. He snatched the object off the ground with his teeth and stood bolt upright like a student checking to see if the teacher had caught him passing notes. The earth pony stared directly at her, eyes wide. Wider than anyone else’s in fact. 
He looked downright guilty as he slung a pair of saddlebags onto the desk currently barricading an open doorway, his ears and eyes swiveling to point directly away from her as he nosed open one of the flaps.
Maybe that nap could wait a little longer. 
“Need a hand?” The light morning hoof traffic in the street ground to a halt as she crossed. The stallion didn’t answer as he dropped what looked to be a broken soldering iron into the bag. In the space of a few seconds he’d gone from goggling at her to ignoring her completely. Tiny red flags were springing up all around this furball. 
Sparing a polite smile for the proprietor behind the desk, she reached over the stallion’s head, plucked a spool of solder off the wood surface, and glanced at the faded label before dropping it into his bag. Rosin solder. Huh.
“Sorry,” she smiled. “That stuff’s toxic. Figured you didn’t want it in your mouth.”
She stuck out a hand in an attempt to disarm his aggrieved glare. “My name’s Fiona.”
It didn’t work. The stallion turned back to his bags, fished out twenty dented caps and stacked them neatly on the merchant’s desk. Without a word to Fiona he threw his saddlebags back on and side-stepped her outstretched palm.
Well, no good lead had ever come to her without a chase. She turned and followed him into the street. 
“I have a couple questions for you if you have a second.”
The stallion grunted as he threw a shoulder into the straps of a rickshaw and began pulling. “Don’t have a second. Late for work.”
“I’ll be quick,” she chirped. “I’m looking for a friend of mine. A pegasus mare name Auro–”
“Aurora Pincushion something or other,” he interrupted. “Heard you already. Don’t know any pegasi.”
She watched his ears. They stood upright, pointed forward, well away from where she trailed beside his little cart. Fuzzy little lie detectors, pony ears were. She glanced at the contents of the crates in his cart, then looked back at him. “Do you always do a lot of shopping when you’re late for work?”
“I’m a reseller. This is my work.”
Several narrow screwdrivers lay atop a shallow stack of what for all purposes looked to be random junk circuit boards. A bundle of narrow gauge scrap wires sat in the next, jostling with each bump in the road next to a trio of strange looking books. On a whim she reached in and opened the narrow volume at the top. The stallion jerked to an immediate stop.
“Put that down.”
Fiona glanced at the pipe pistol aimed at her chest, then down at the handwritten words in the open book. She made a face. “Rule #198: Employees are the rungs on your ladder to success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.”
“I said put it down.”
“Rule #222: Knowledge is Latinum.” She snorted, looked at him, then flipped a few pages. Her eyes widened. “Wow.”
The stallion’s discomfort was showing fully now as if she were reading from his foalhood diary. If embarrassing him happened to shake loose some honesty, then she’d give him a jostle. “Rule #268 A) When in doubt, lie. B) When in doubt, buy. C) When in doubt, demand more money. D) When in doubt, shoot them, take their money, run and blame someone else.”
She pinched the book shut, skimmed the title, and dropped it back into his cart. “You buy some weird books.”
After several uneasy seconds he lowered his weapon and turned to resume pulling. “Don’t touch my stuff.”
Ask and you shall receive. She loped forward and slowed beside him. She could practically see his hackles stand on end in response. “About that. You know you’ll make more caps buying in large quantities direct from scavengers and not random shinies from the shops, right? You’re basically forcing yourself to markup someone else’s markup.”
The stallion’s ears flattened in annoyance. With a jerk he pulled the rickshaw a little more quickly, leaving the market behind and likely hoping she’d choose to stay where there were more people to bother. To his dismay she continued to follow him, easily keeping pace with her longer legs.
“So on top of reselling at a loss, you fix terminals?”
That caught him off guard. He regarded her as if her head were screwed on backward. “Do I look like I fix terminals?”
She shrugged. “I only ask because of the solder you picked up back there. That rosin core stuff is pretty specialized.”
He grunted. “Solder is solder. If you don’t mind, gryphon, I have somewhere to be.”
Her smile grew a touch brittle. “Alright, fair enough. If you do happen to hear anything that might help me find my friend, though…”
“Yeah,” he dismissed her. “I’ll be sure to whistle.”
She slowed, allowing him to gradually pull away. “She has people back home who are worried about her. If you see her, tell her that.”
The stallion didn’t answer and soon he was too far up the street to be heard if he did. She waited there, watching as he slowed to turn a corner and disappeared. Counting the seconds, she continued to wait. Ten seconds. Thirty. Sixty.
Then she began to follow.







A second cup of tea warmed Aurora’s feathers as she watched Discord seat the gramophone’s horn into the amplifier pipe. After a bit of hesitation he released his grip on the wood rim, paused to stare at the reassembled instrument, then smiled. “There she is,” he breathed.
She took a sip, enjoying the caffeinated sweetness, and let him enjoy the moment. He’d done a good job. The workspace that had once been filled with individual screws, washers, and fragile components was empty save for a few crumbs of rust from the gramophone’s spring motor. With the minor exception of when Discord had very nearly avoided cross threading one of the screws securing the wooden lid, he had made no mistakes and there had been no moments of panic. Everything was as it had been when she first guided him through disassembly, only now in better working condition than before.
Aurora knew this next part too well and didn’t want to spoil it for him, so she waited for Discord to work it out on his own. 
“I imagine I should get a record,” he chuckled. 
“Pick a good one,” she said, feeling herself mimicking his nervous grin. 
He passed through the dusty shafts of gray light from the windows and paused at the crates he’d used to display a broken instrument that Aurora felt confident wasn’t broken anymore. Stone-flecked fingers flipped through thick cardboard boxes before he stopped, smiled mischievously, and slid one out. He carefully carried it back to the couch, sat down and opened the cardboard flap to extract the black sleeve containing the record. 
“This was a personal favorite of ours.” He tilted the label for her to read.


The NEW Broadway Cast Recording
DAVID MERRICK presents
PEARL BAILEY in
HELLO, DOLLY!


He was already removing the shellac disc before she could make sense of the words, setting it delicately through the nickel plated post in the platter. Aurora reached over and unapologetically stole the empty record sleeve to examine more closely while Discord turned the crank. Names that sounded like gibberish filled the credits and a heart-shaped outline framed a black and white photograph of two creatures she’d never seen in any of the prewar history books back home. Flipping it over to the back, more photos lined the bottom above brief bios for each… singer? Performer? Aliens?
“This record isn’t from here, is it?” she asked.
Discord let go of the crank and smiled at her, shaking his head. “No. No it isn’t.”
She watched him steel himself before flipping the brake switch, then sigh with relief as the record spun. When it came up to speed he lowered the tone arm and gently set the needle into the grooves. Not the first groove, though. Very deliberately, he positioned the needle some ways into the recorded music.
A faint hiss rose from the horn. Then, 
“Out there, there’s a world outside of Yonkers. Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby…”
Discord leaned back into the couch and lifted a finger as if to conduct the swelling orchestra. “...there’s a slick town, Barnaby…”
In the most bizarre yet endearing turn of this mess which was her life, Aurora found herself being serenaded not only by the eager voice coming from the speaker horn but by the grinning, bare-fanged Lord of Chaos sitting beside her. It was ridiculous, a little terrifying, and exactly what she needed. Tandy might know with granular certainty that Ginger would have wanted her to enjoy this, but Aurora knew without having to crack her memories open like some cheap reference book. The clarity of that realization came to her like a desperately needed balm, and some of the tension she’d carried since waking from that dream fell away. 
Sipping her tea, she shut her eyes and listened to the music play.
When the needle slid over the last notes and the orchestra faded, she felt better. Better than she had in days. The pain was still there, deep down in that place she still refused to let her thoughts venture, but it was duller now. Maybe a little smaller, too.
“Can you… make more of these?” The held up the record sleeve, then mimicked a snapping gesture with her other wing. 
His smile waned by a few degrees and a sad chuckle crossed his muzzle. She let him take back the sleeve and watched as he carefully replaced the fragile record inside. “No. No, not anymore.”
She frowned at her empty cup, thinking. “Did I tell you about what happened at the solar array? There were these stimpacks that…”
Discord lifted a hand to stop her. He smiled with an uneasiness that suggested he was trying to think of a way to simplify something well beyond her understanding. “I’m aware of them, but no, they can’t fix me.”
“They fixed Ginger,” she murmured.
“Ginger was never broken to begin with. Neither are you, or any other ponies out there.” He frowned, and she felt a brush of guilt when she saw him reading the confusion in her eyes. Then he looked at the cup in her feathers and reached out to tap the rim with a claw. It let out a feeble tink at his touch. “This is an awful cliche, but each of your species is like this cup. You’re born empty, but over time the power in your system… erm, world, fills you up. Only, your predecessors taught themselves to conjure and weaponize Entropy. Balefire. It burned that power away, like fire consumes gasoline.”
Aurora nodded, recalling the morning after she, Ginger, and Roach had liberated the slaver encampment outside Kiln. Roach had grown worried that Ginger may be rapidly depleting a finite store of magic. Thanks to Tandy that hadn’t ended up being the case, but they had been following the same logic as Discord’s.
“Because of the bombs, there’s not enough magic left to fill our cups,” she said. “But there’s an entire dream realm out there somewhere. If you could dream, Tandy could help you. If you had your powers back you could…”
She lifted her feathers to make the snapping motion again, but stopped when she saw the calm in Discord’s eyes. “You’re just humoring me, aren’t you.”
He smiled, and set the record on the table. “Luna was an incredible wielder, and she was efficient. She had to be, because the power she took to create her dream realm had to come from the same well her subjects drew from. She wasted nothing and took only what she needed.” He laughed, quietly, staring off into space as he spoke. “Were I able to consume all of Luna’s creations, not just her oasis from the waking world, it would hardly rank as a drop in the ocean required to reach the Continuum again.”
Something told Aurora it would be healthier for her mind not to think too hard about what he just said. “You’re a big cup,” she summarized.
He brightened at that and laughed again, without sorrow. “Yes, Aurora. I am a big cup. And besides, I’ve had my fill of semiomnipotence. Trust me when I say having the power to whisk away every mistake is a burden, and a torturous one. Nothing feels earned. You grow pompous. Arrogant. Angry at any and all sentient life for the crime of still needing to make mistakes to learn. There are still parts of me which are still like that, pieces of me which can’t resist the urge to tempt fate.”
He gestured with a knowing look to the bookcase on the far wall with its strange works. “But Fluttershy changed my perspective. Or, rather, she gave me hers. Death is a part of life. You and I, and everyone else trying to survive, we would never know what gifts we have were it not for what we’ve lost. I’ll never be able to snap my fingers and undo the war. That’s a fixed point in time now.”
Aurora chewed her lip and sagged a little in her seat.
“But if I could somehow cheat?” Discord nodded slowly to himself. “I would be selfish. I’d bring back the people we both lost and regret nothing.”
Silence filtered into the room as she digested what he’d said. Ever since the bandages came off and she opened her eyes to see Discord for the first time, the smallest grain of hope formed in her chest that there might be a way to fix everything. But over the days that hope faded as she watched him write his books, wash dishes, cook meals, and tidy up around the cottage. Sometimes he snapped his fingers like a nervous tick and seemed disappointed that nothing had happened. He was a fallen god in many ways. An alicorn whose horn had been lost. A bird without its wings. But rather than raging against it, curling himself into a ball and screaming until his throat bled, Discord accepted it. He tried to move on as best as he could, learning the simplest things that all mortals had the benefit of growing up with. 
Like the rest of them, his time was finite. Rather than allow himself to languish over what he’d lost, he accepted that pain as a part of himself and made the best out of what he had.
Aurora looked down at her missing leg. Coming out here, trying to help her Stable had cost her more than she’d known she could lose. It hadn’t occurred to her that moving forward was possible. 
Setting her empty cup down on the coffee table, she sat up and turned slightly to hug the creature beside her. It was awkward, unannounced, and completely unexpected to him but she couldn’t think of a way to thank him that wouldn’t crack that carefully constructed dam. She squeezed the equivalent of his ribcage until the silence stretched a little too long, and let him go. 
Discord looked down at her, nonplussed. “If I’d had anything to wager, I would have gambled on you hitting me. You don’t strike me as the type of mare to take no for an answer.”
She took a breath, thinking about her answer. “I usually don’t, but you helped me put some things into perspective.”
He leaned forward, propping his elbows against his knees as he watched her. “Are you ready to talk about Ginger?”
The calm invitation had its own gravity and nearly pulled her in. She needed to talk about what happened, but not now. It was still too fresh and her throat all but closed up as she pulled herself back from opening that door. “No,” she said thickly, and took a sharp breath to gather some strength. “Maybe later, though. But, um, I did want to talk to you about something else.”
Discord continued to watch her, showing no signs of impatience as she worked toward addressing the other skeleton in her closet. The one she’d been waiting for him to bring up, but which he seemed reluctant or unwilling to broach. 
She cleared her throat. “I overheard you talking to Mouse before he left. About what’s happening to me.”
“Ah.” Discord looked down at the floor. “I didn’t realize you were listening.”
“It’s pretty quiet around here. It would have been more work to ignore you. I thought I’d take the pressure off and let you know that I know.” She lifted her feathers to the burns healing along the side of her right foreleg, brushing them through the patchy gray tufts of fur that had begun to grow in. “How long does it take?”
She waited for him as he sat up a little straighter, it suddenly seeming inappropriate to him to be slouching given the sensitive topic. “I couldn’t begin to guess, Aurora. I’m not… I haven’t traveled much since the war ended. For obvious reasons,” he gestured to himself, “I try not to go places where I’ll be recognized. Mouse is well-traveled, however. He may have a better understanding of the ghouling process than I do.”
The bare patches of scarred skin rasped under her feathers. The damaged nerves fired unevenly in a muted cascade of pins and needles. “I’ll have to ask him when he gets back. I’m definitely healing faster than I should, but I can still think clearly. Who knows how long that’ll last. I think I’ll be pretty pissed if my mane starts falling out. Ginger liked my mane.”
Discord watched quietly as she looked herself over, absently picking at the new growth of her coat. “You’re taking this better than I thought you would.”
She stopped to think about that and found herself shrugging. “I mean compared to everything else that happened, this is nothing. I should be dead. I feel like I’m living through the bonus round after my life ended.”
“That certainly is one way to look at it.”
“Yeah,” she chuckled. “It hasn’t really hit me yet. I keep thinking it’s probably a good thing I was never the type of mare to spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror, because best case I’m going to live a very long time and I’m probably going to be very ugly doing it.” 
She paused and stared at the empty cup. “Worst case, I’ll be a monster and I won’t even know. What a fucking coinflip that is.”
The cottage grew silent, and it stayed that way for several long minutes. They listened to the leaves rustling in the breeze outside, the life thriving within Discord’s painfully green oasis filling the empty space of their conversation while the morning grew a few shades brighter. A flitter of wings caught their attention and they both looked up to see a pair of finches standing on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Aurora caught herself smiling, remembering her arrival with Ginger and Roach at the cabin east of Junction City, and their winding debates over the origins of cutie marks and Roach’s certainty of the extinction of birds.
The finches chirped as if reproaching the dimness of Discord’s cottage, then turned and flew off toward the trees. 
“You mentioned you had a garden outside,” she said, breaking the silence. “Can I see it?”
He nodded and stood. “Some fresh air would be wonderful.”
 






She half walked, half stumped down the porch steps and out onto a carpet of cool grass that reached her fetlocks. The air smelled clean out here, refreshingly so. She’d been cooped up inside for too long. 
Discord followed alongside her, standing almost vertical like a totem pole with a slight bend. She didn’t understand how he didn’t just fall over but somehow he managed with hardly any effort, his yellow eyes wandering across the scenery as readily and fully as her own. Trees as tall as the ones Roach planted outside her Stable stretched toward overcast clouds, filling the gray sky with dark, rich greenery. Thick vines hung from the oldest of these like mossy ropes that acted as perches for the birds that thrived among the branches. The air was damp, pungent with earthy sweet smells that reminded her of home. Reminded her of her younger years when her mom would take her down to the Gardens to surprise her dad. 
A small brown creature scurried over the loamy soil of the footpath Discord kept clear for walks like these, its tiny form popping up atop a fallen log a few seconds later to watch them pass. It looked like a mouse but it was wrong somehow. It might have even been cute were it not for the unblinking, bulging black eyes.
Discord saw her bewildered expression and followed her gaze. “Chipmunk,” he said. “They’re harmless during the day.”
She had to crane her neck to stare at him. “What do you mean during the day?”
He shrugged, smiled, and didn’t answer. Aurora kept a close eye on the rodent until it was well out of sight. 
“We walked halfway across Equestria and never found a place like this,” she wondered aloud. “Everything was already half-dead or struggling. I can’t believe this is all growing so well.”
“It better grow, I planted it.” He shot her a wry grin and teetered his open palm side to side. “Most of it, anyway. I dug up as many seeds from the Everfree as I could find before the radiation could wither the roots. It was my forest, after all.”
Aurora snorted. “You planted the Everfree Forest.”
He scoffed with feigned offense. “Not on paper, no. I may have dabbled in a little chaos from time to time, but I had plenty of other hobbies.”
“Like horticulture.”
“In a manner of speaking.” He looked away, smiling guiltily as they strolled. “The Everfree was never technically my doing, but I did call it home for a spell back before civilized four-legged society built quaint villages and myths around it. Call me sentimental but I didn’t see the point in leaving Equestria’s most tenacious woodland to wither. So I took a piece of it with me.”
He gestured broadly at the dense piece of forest he’d managed to transplant with a touch of pride in his eyes. Aurora couldn’t help but laugh a little as she remembered all the foalhood stories she’d been told about the terrifying mysteries of the impenetrable Everfree.
“You brought it with you because it was home to the most unpredictable, unruly plant species on the continent, didn’t you?”
He offered a casual shrug in response. “Game recognizes game, Aurora.”
She rolled her eyes and chose to enjoy the scenery without further comment. The path twisted and bent around the trunks of trees wider than the generator’s central shaft, and she couldn’t help but hold out her wing to touch them as they passed by. Every now and then she spotted the four walls of Discord’s cottage, each time from a slightly different angle as the trail guided them around in a winding orbit. Soon they were passing a small patch of dirt Discord had cleared for his vegetable garden, and as far as she could tell he hadn’t done a terrible job at all keeping the narrow rows evenly spaced and irrigated. Not long after that they came to a dark, boggy ring with a dark puddle of water barely six feet wide at its lowest point. 
It had drifted out of sight before Aurora put together that the bog had been a natural spring, and suddenly the thriving forest made a little more sense. Discord hadn’t chosen this spot at random. He’d done so because it sat atop a natural aquifer. As far as somebody with an instantly recognizable face and a reputation to go with it was concerned, this was in every definition of the word a jackpot location to begin a hermit’s life.
By the time they had walked a full circuit of the trail, she could feel the tea’s caffeine wearing off. She was tired. The two or three hours of sleep she’d gotten before she demanded Tandy wake her were woefully inadequate, and while she wanted to make another round of the walking trail her body was already warning her that it would make every step of it miserable if she ignored it. 
She spotted a stone bench not far from the trailhead and turned toward it. A long slab of unfinished green slate stood atop two short boulders with just the slightest slant favoring the far side. She needed a respite from smelling her own funk in the cushions of Discord’s couch. Discord seemed to understand her desire for a break and padded toward the bench to sit down. She hesitated, unsure how to tell him that she fully intended to crash on the bench, but then she noticed the oak tree bordering the grass beside it and changed course for the inviting grass growing at its roots. 
“Would you like me to set an alarm?” Discord joked as she bent her front legs, then her hind to settle onto the cool ground. 
She smirked. It was a decent joke. “I need to talk to Tandy,” she sighed. “Wake me up if it looks like one of those chipmunks is getting any ideas.”
A chuckle. “They know better than to eat the guests.”
“Ass,” she murmured. He said something in reply but she didn’t catch all the words. She’d begun to listen to the gentle sounds of the wind stirring the forest and the soft crinkle of grass against her cheek. She embraced the calm. Exhaustion took over, and once more she slipped under.







“I AM SORRY.”
“LUNA’S TITS!”
Tandy was practically nose to nose with her when the dream took shape and those lidless, ghostly eyes were too much to process this close up. So, being the reasonable and prepared mare she was, Aurora flailed backward into a tangle of hooves and feathers. The crash from the breakfast tables spilling over behind was resounding in the cavernous hotel lobby, and she quickly found herself on the floor staring up at the fluttering tips of the BRONCO-CON ‘67 banners hung overhead.
“Personal space, Tandy! Shit!”
She shoved a toppled chair away from her, paused to look up at the constellations glittering in Tandy’s extended wing, and sighed as she dropped her foreleg into her feathers to be helped off the floor. It was unnecessary. Tandy could have wiggled her nose and the dream, including its occupants, would reset as if nothing had happened. The lobby tilted right-side up as she got to her hooves. Despite how much anger she still felt toward Tandy, the gesture of helping her hadn’t been made thoughtlessly. She was trying to mend bridges, in her way, and something about that took the worst edge off Aurora’s resentment.
“I am sorry,” Tandy continued, still standing a little too close for comfort and completely oblivious to what Aurora had just said. “Truly. Please, believe me, I did not want to hurt you. I would not do that.”
There was a very real possibility that back in the waking world, Aurora had pissed herself a little. She tried not to think about it. Oh, did she ever try not to think about it.
“Tandy, slow down. Seriously, let me get my bearings.” 
The not-quite-alicorn fell silent, her unblinking eyes watching Aurora as she walked a small circle to situate herself better within what was starting to become a familiar hotel. Eshe’s decor still colored the building with tacky green and black terminal-themed colors. A cardboard cutout of The REAL M.I.L.L.I.E. stood near the orange juice dispenser. That was new. No Eshe, though. Huh.
“Eshe is awake.” Tandy supplied.
Aurora sighed. Of course he would be. It was morning. “Gotcha. Yeah, so about Eshe…”
“I want to talk about what I did to you first.” There was no force behind the words, it only seemed that way from the bluntness with which she delivered them. “Please. Eshe says it is important we… ‘hash it out.’”
“You told him what happened. Awesome.”
She stepped over an overturned table and made her way to the same chair she’d been using since they started meeting here. 
“Should I have not spoken to him?”
She sat down and focused on her breathing to keep her temper in check. In. Out. In. Out. 
When she felt calm, she shook her head. “No. I mean, yes? I don’t know. Did he at least help you understand why I didn’t want to be here in the dream with you?”
Tandy took the seat across from her, eyes fixed toward her. “He tried, but he grew angry on your behalf and would not speak to me either.”
Yeah. Sounds reasonable. “I’m guessing you woke him up, too.”
She shook her head. “I cannot wake Eshe. The AutoDoc sends him back here when I try.”
Cryptic. She tabled that for later, alongside the growing mountain of questions filed under What-The-Fuck-Is-Going-On-With-Eshe. 
“Please, do not hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said, though there was a touch of a growl in her voice she couldn’t mask. “I’m pissed off with you. Tandy, you treated what I had with Ginger like it was all worthless. You told me things about her life that I had no business knowing. Stuff that I have no way of knowing is true. I mean… you said she killed a foal.”
Finally, Tandy looked away. “Her father forced her when she was young. He had that power over her, as the family patriarch. I discovered Ginger reliving that moment in a nightmare and freed her from it. It was our first encounter.”
Aurora recalled the day Ginger fell asleep on the railway tracks outside Meridian and Brian’s cave, and the sudden eruption of magic that caused the rail’s steel to superheat and burn a trapped Julip. Ginger hadn’t told her what she’d dreamt about to spur such a violent reaction, only admitting that she’d dreamed for the first time in her life.
Renewed anger shook her voice as she spoke. “You have all of our memories, Tandy. Every last one of them. You of all creatures should have known Ginger wouldn’t have wanted me to know that.”
“Eshe said the same, but he would not allow me to explain that knowing your memories does not allow me to understand your intentions.” She paused. Actually hesitating for several seconds as she searched for the right words. “But she wanted to tell you, Aurora. I am not telling you this to ease my guilt or cause you more harm. I am telling you because she trusted you to understand and love her in spite of it. But she never found the right time.”
Aurora blinked a haze of angry tears away until she could properly glare at the speckled pattern of the table between them. “That doesn’t excuse what you did. How you did it. You treated our relationships with her like it was a contest. You made me feel cheap, Tandy.”
Tandy shrank a little in her chair. “I did it because you shamed me.”
That caught Aurora off guard. She frowned up at Tandy, lost to what she was talking about. “I didn’t shame you.”
“You told me not to talk about Ginger. You said it in a way that made it seem I did not have a right to discuss my friend.” Tandy wouldn’t meet her gaze anymore, but the quiet anger in her voice reflected exactly what Aurora had been wrestling with. “I have never felt that before. I did not know how to respond other than to prove to you that you were wrong. Ginger was my friend. My only friend. I did not love her in the way you loved her, but I knew I did not want her to go away.”
She was right. She’d shut Tandy down without stopping to consider whether she was a real person. Definitionally she might not be, but suddenly that didn’t seem to matter as much as it had just seconds ago. Ginger never spoke ill of Tandy. Not once ever. Somehow Aurora had forgotten and that brief charity Tandy enjoyed had truly died with Ginger. 
Tears welled in her eyes. She nearly lost it. She was always dancing on the razor’s edge of losing it.
“I didn’t want her to go away either,” she muttered miserably. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I am used to being dismissed, Aurora. Dreamers have always regarded me as an echo or an errant spell. I suppose in many ways I am.” She sat up a little straighter, though her discomfort was strangely still plain in the way her eyes looked not quite directly at Aurora. “However I answered your cut with a gash. I… do not know why I behaved so recklessly. Days ago, I considered offering to show you Ginger as a way to aid you in your grief but thought better of it when I considered it may lead you to believe she was alive and dreaming still. Apparently, I do not think clearly when I am angry.”
Aurora leaned forward in her chair and dragged several feathers through her mane. “Well, at least we have that in common.” 
They were both quiet for some time as each of them processed what the other had said. Aurora was painfully aware of how little apologizing she’d done compared to Tandy, but she could feel that the time for that was over. They’d both said what they wanted to say. All there was to do now was to decide on how to move forward.
The answer to that was obvious enough. She might not have a choice in whether she slept or not, but she’d come here willingly. Ginger would never have wanted to be the reason Aurora burned a bridge.
“Tandy, she doesn’t have to be your only friend.”
Luna’s creation finally met her eyes again. She said nothing.
Aurora tried not to make a face. She really did. “Look, it’s going to be really weird if you make me come out and say it.”
“I understand,” she said. One by one, new stars began to shine along her dark expanse. “I do. Thank you so much. Thank you, I… excuse me.”
Without warning Tandy disappeared. Her chair stood empty, and Aurora sat alone in an empty hotel with the sneaking suspicion that the last guarding of Princess Luna’s dream had just stepped away to cry.
Half a moment later a thin stack of papers appeared on the table neatly bound by, of all things, a novelty sized paperclip with Bronco-Con ‘67 branding up and down the wire. Pausing to look around the empty lobby with a hint of concern, she picked up the papers and scanned the text printed at the top. A tiny smile formed as she read.


Robronco Industries™
—
Technical Reference to the Repair and Maintenance
Of Aurora Pinfeather’s Busted Pip-Buck
—
By Eshe Obiakolam


The next page contained detailed diagrams marked with numbers, arrows, and a shocking level of technical jargon even she didn’t recognize. He’d fallen back into his old job like a comfortable pair of wing guards. Good for him. With a tired smile she quietly thanked Tandy for the delivery and began to study.







September 8th, 1077
Royal Luxury Suite Hotel, Fillydelphia

A taloned hand on either shoulder guided him to the hotel elevator. Neither gryphon spoke, but their keen eyes lowered toward him occasionally as they stopped him in front of glossy silver doors. Eshe’s heart was in his throat. He wanted to demand what he had done to attract the attention of hotel security but too many of his colleagues, and people who knew his colleagues, were within earshot and he knew too well the stereotypes Equestrians held for zebras who balked at authority. He grit his teeth and waited for the elevator doors to close on them before finding his voice. 
“Tell me what it is you think I have done.” A Vhannan accent bled into his words as he spoke. “Where are you taking me?”
The gryphon to his left exchanged a meaningful glance to his partner on Eshe’s right. The silver feathered avian to his right turned dull green eyes toward Eshe and said, “The hotel staff reported property missing from your suite, sir. The owners prefer that you gather your belongings and leave on your own rather than involve the police. We’re just here to make sure you find your way out without causing a scene.”
Eshe’s jaw hung open with outrage. He had not stolen so much as a toothbrush since he first came to Equestria! He nearly said as much but forced himself to stop short. If the hotel had assigned security to meet him at the door, especially two gryphons nearly twice his size, then they had already decided his guilt. Cold anger smoldered inside him as he tried fruitlessly to accept the injustice. The thought of having to explain his absence for the remainder of the convention shamed him into further silence. There were those working with him in Robronco who would see things as they were and sympathize as best they could. Perhaps the company may even lodge a complaint with the hotel, but it would be a far cry from making this sting any less and there would be plenty of colleagues back at the home office who would privately revel upon having their assumptions of his character validated. 
The elevator doors parted onto a group of guests wearing Bronco-Con ‘67 lanyards and laminates. They quickly backed away as the gryphons led him out, their whispers burning his ears as they stared. The gryphons stopped him at his suite and one of them bent toward him, taking hold of the laminate hanging down from his own lanyard and swiping it through the card reader. The light winked green and the lock popped, but Eshe found himself frowning now. Why would hotel security need his laminate to unlock the door? Why not use their own?
Had he not been so frustrated by the shame being foisted upon him he might have reacted sooner, realizing something wasn’t right and tried to bolt. Instead, with a perplexed expression on his face, he allowed them to lead him into the room and close the door behind him.
A black suitcase he didn’t recognize rested on the foot of the room’s single princess-sized bed, pressing a deep rectangular dent into the duvet. The silver-feathered gryphon went ahead of them to pull shut the gauzy inner curtains meant to give guests privacy without sacrificing sunlight. The other, a hawkish patterned male, slowed his gait ever so slightly to stay between Eshe and the door. His luggage, he realized, was nowhere to be seen. The only indication he had that he was in the same room he’d woken up in this morning was the fact that one of the hotel security had used his laminate to open the door.
The silver gryphon turned from the window, pointed at the bed, and told him to sit down. Too late it began to dawn on him that they were not security. The gold gryphon held a paper sack in one hand that he discarded onto the credenza next to the big screen TV. His groceries. He’d been so thrown by their accusation that he hadn’t even noticed him taking the bag of groceries from his teeth. For a split second he considered yelling at the gryphon for treating his property so poorly, especially food, before it occurred to him that they had very likely escorted him here to rob him.
“If you have my luggage, then you have all my money already.” He couldn’t help but look again for his own hard cases, bewildered as to why they would steal his belongings and come back to intercept him.
The gryphons herded him toward the bed and his hackles stood up. For one terrible moment he thought he knew what they’d brought him here for and he suddenly wished he’d been lodged in a hotel with thin walls. The silver one snapped his fingers and pointed not to the bed, but to the padded reading chair in the corner beside it. “Sit down, Eshe.”
Unsure whether it was safe to feel any relief at all, he swallowed his fear and sat in the corner between the bed and the window. Gold stood sentry in the short hallway leading to the door while Silver moved to the black suitcase. Eshe’s only path of escape required him to somehow get past Silver and Gold, in that order, in a straight line that would give both ample time to react and give chase. He squirmed in his chair as he tried, and failed, to muster that courage.
Twin clicks drew his attention to the suitcase as Silver popped open the latches. He opened the case, removed a thick manila folder from the top of a foam insert, and took a step toward Eshe while he opened the folder. He removed a sheet of paper from it and handed it to Eshe who, lacking a flat surface to set it on, awkwardly set it onto his lap with his hooves.
His blood went cold. It was a deportation order, or rather a photocopy of one. His name was on it, typed in the neat block-style lettering of a ministry typewriter. 

	“On September 8, 1077, the Court ordered Respondent (Eshe Obiakolam) removed to Vhanna in absentia pursuant to section 120(a)(2)(A) of the Equestrian Nationality Act (ENA or Act). On August 27, 1077, Respondent, through counsel, filed an agreement to conclude the removal proceeding. On August 31, 1077, the Ministry of Image (MOI) filed a timely response in agreement…”

The words blurred together as his eyes lost focus on what he was reading. His neck felt suddenly hot, his head swimming. Was this a sick joke? He couldn’t be deported, could he? He was an Equestrian citizen. He’d spent years filing forms, responding to government check-ins, waiting in endless lines and enduring the baleful stares of clerks who would have refused to submit his paperwork had they a reason that could stick. He’d done everything he was supposed to do and his government-issued ID was proof of that. 
He shook his head, disbelieving. His acceptance form was framed and hanging on his bedroom wall. 
“Am I…” he whispered, blinking at the deportation order with confusion. “Is this real?”
Silver withdrew a second sheet from the folder and carefully slid it over the top of the one in Eshe’s lap. Another photocopy, this one of a search and seizure warrant. And another form appeared atop that. Documentation of an arrest that never happened. An evidence intake sheet listing the seizure of several hard drives from his home containing proprietary schematics of Robronco Industries prototypes. Page by page the fiction grew clearer. The threat more real.
His voice sounded distant when he asked, “Why are you doing this to me?”
The gryphon stared at him with dispassionate eyes. His voice was deep, calm, and entirely detached. “We haven’t done anything to you yet. None of what you’ve read has happened. Right now all of that is hypothetical. Nod if you understand.”
Slowly he nodded, but he didn’t understand. It just felt safer to go along with it.
“You have a choice to make, Eshe Obiakolam.” Silver reached out, pinched the stack of papers in his lap, and returned them to the folder. “One option requires you to complete a small amount of work which will never be traced back to you and which will allow you to continue your life as a free citizen of Equestria.”
“The other only needs for you to tell us no, at which time all of the documents you just read will begin to appear in filing cabinets you do not want them to be in. Your apartment in Manehattan will be crawling first with police, then Ministry of Image officials who will want to know what a Vhannan expatriate is doing with experimental Robronco schematics on multiple hard drives. They will find evidence connecting you to contacts within the Vhannan government. You will lose your job, your citizenship, and more than likely your freedom. You may be deported, but the odds are better that you will spend the next twenty to thirty years inside an Equestrian black site. You’ll disappear, Eshe, and your absence will be exactly as unpleasant as you’re thinking it will.”
He felt unsteady in his chair. He wanted to throw up. “But I didn’t do anything.”
A taloned hand patted him on the shoulder. “We know you didn’t, buddy.”
“Why, then?”
From the hallway, Gold answered. “Because you're nobody. You’re single, you’ve got no family here, you’ve got no loyalty back home. Your most endearing trait to those who know you is that you punch in on time and grind out hotfixes for last year’s Pip-Bucks. You don’t bitch about it and you don’t bury your nose under the boss’s tail asking for more. Other than the stripes, you’re invisible. Right now we need the stripes.”
His brain couldn’t keep up. “I don’t understand…”
Silver’s fingers squeezed his shoulder. “Stop talking and just listen. Your country, the one you’re in right now, is planning to conduct a balefire test tomorrow in full view of the changeling hive. The Ministry of Image has already enacted a media blackout for the detonation, and our intelligence confirmed movement between the test site and a munitions depot linked to prior tests. The war with Vhanna will be over soon and we believe Equestria intends to provoke a response from Queen Chrysalis that will justify the eradication of the hive.”
Eshe closed his eyes, trying to follow. “But… why would we go to war with the changelings? They’re barely a threat to anyone anymore.”
Silver humored him with a shrug. “I don’t know, why would a country who just handily defeated its rival want to kill a weakened hive of shapeshifters who replaced a princess and invaded its capital city? C’mon Eshe, use your big boy brain. When have the ministries ever once shown hesitance to wage war for selfish reasons?”
Eshe didn’t have an answer for that. “I can’t stop a bomb, though.”
Gold laughed and muttered something derisive. Silver just shook his head and smiled. “Yeah, no, we’re not sitting here talking because we think you’re secret agent material. The bomb’s going to pop, that’s a given fact at this point. Our friends in Griffinstone only want footage of it so the ministries can’t pretend the changelings acted unprovoked. All you gotta do is lug a camera.”
He looked past the gryphon to the black case on the bed. Nestled in the foam padding was what appeared to be a very heavy duty video camera with an expensive looking wide angle lens. Several smaller lenses were packed in cutouts in the foam, along with a spare battery pack. He was beginning to understand why they had chosen him, and he wasn’t liking it at all.
“If I get caught,” he said slowly, “it’ll look like I’m spying for Vhanna.”
Gold shrugged. “Don’t get caught and you’ll be fine.”
That cold feeling settled in his gut again. “What does Griffinstone plan to do if I bring back footage.” It wasn’t a question, not really. Questioning would mean he had a choice.
Silver sounded a little less smug when he responded, as if he appreciated Eshe’s ability to see past the limits of his own predicament and recognize the bigger picture. “There are certain parties who have a vested interest in countering what they believe could be the start of unchecked Equestrian aggression, but who are hesitant to take action without proof.”
He was talking about a coalition. Griffinstone and other anonymous countries who no doubt now regretted remaining neutral in the war were watching for red flags that might signal the Equestrian war machine’s sudden interest in other, weaker neighbors. That could be true or complete bullshit as far as he’d ever be able to tell. Neither of these two gryphons were going to let him walk out of this room to verify any of it, and Eshe had a strong feeling that they already had their own plan for removing him from the hotel should he say no.
“All I have to do is record footage?” he asked.
“That and a little hiking,” Silver nodded. “It’s worth mentioning we’re not the only team conducting pre-mission interviews right now. The window on this thing closes when the first candidate accepts. So, you know. Tick-tock.”
His eyes went wide. How many others were being given the same ultimatum, staring down into the same black hole of carefully curated scenarios threatening to destroy their lives? Had they been pulled away at the same time he did or were there gryphons talking to ponies while he was strolling out of the corner grocery? His coat went damp with flop sweat with the understanding of what his yes would mean for those others. The cost of being first to accept was almost unbearable.
Almost.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and in a meek voice he said, “I’ll do it.”
A heavy palm slapped his shoulder and he looked up to see Silver grinning as if the two of them had always been the best of friends. Behind him, Gold had leaned into the suite’s bathroom and produced a black radio, already in the process of speaking to someone on the other end. Silver meanwhile tossed the manila envelope whose contents contained the end of Eshe’s life onto the bed and shut the briefcase filled with recording equipment. 
“Atta boy, Stripes,” he said with congratulatory zeal while his hand sought something tucked between the case and the duvet. A dense rectangle of colorful paper crinkled between his talons as he unfolded it once, twice, and again until a tourist’s map of eastern Equestria spread open on the bed. 
Cautiously, Eshe slid out of the chair and moved toward the map. Gold reappeared in the room as he did so, clicking off the radio and holding a thumb up to Silver. 
“Congrats,” Silver said, making room for Eshe in front of the map. “Now let’s talk transportation.”
> Chapter 45: Old Friends
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 9th, 1077
Badlands

Eshe flopped onto his backside just behind the lip of the final ridge. The arid air stung in his throat as he gasped for breath, his body and lungs not used to the nine-mile hike from the spot Silver and Gold deposited him to the rocky escarpment that ringed the bomb test site like a natural bowl. He dropped the black case of expensive film equipment beside him and let the even more valuable piece of equipment hanging from his neck slide toward the pit of his foreleg. Yet another chunk of granite had lodged itself against the wall of his hoof right where the last one had. Lacking any tools to work it loose, he carefully wiggled the rock between his teeth until it came free. He spat it out and watched as it clattered down the dusty slope, kicking up tiny puffs of dirt as it went. 
He worked up some saliva and spat out the grit. The gryphons had stayed with him in that hotel room the entire night, forbidding him to leave and refusing to discuss anything with him that didn’t strictly deal with the details of his so-called “mission.” When one left the room, the other always stayed between Eshe and the door. When Eshe had to use the toilet, Gold watched from the open bathroom door. Strangely, he had spent a considerable chunk of yesterday worrying about how his boss was reacting to his absence. Eshe was by no means even a senior technician on the Pip-Buck project but he was one of the few zebras on Robronco’s payroll and he was fully aware of how visible that made him, especially with a war on. His failure to attend would be noted and he hadn’t been able to help but worry about how he would explain himself once this whole mess was over. 
The heat had made his coat slick with sweat, and his white stripes had long since taken on a dirty shade of tan. It was a stark change from the chilling cold above the clouds. Eshe had never flown before, lacking wings or any friends with them who were willing to bear the implied intimacy involved with carrying a passenger beneath them, so he hadn’t been surprised by his immediate, instinctual terror when he’d been escorted up to the hotel’s roof and promptly hauled over the edge in Silver’s grip. In the wee hours of the morning few pegasi had been out to hear Eshe’s horrified squawks, and the hand that clamped over his muzzle seconds later silenced him for the remainder of their rapid ascent. When Silver finally let go, Eshe’s ribs ached from where he hung against the gryphon’s other arm. There was no moon out that night. Except for the glittering filaments of Equestria’s brand new network of highways and the occasional cluster of lights to mark the suburbs, towns, and eventually villages further south, the ground below was a featureless blanket of rolling black velvet. The lack of visual information was comforting, in a way, and Eshe endured the three hour flight delicately balanced between mild anxiety and abject panic.
Their landing point ended up being in a stand of juniper trees growing along the bank of a muddy river. There, Silver had retrieved a small bundle wrapped in patterned green cloth from a crook in one of the trees and unrolled it to reveal a blocky device roughly the same size and shape of the old platter-style hard drives he’d used back when he still wrote code for Interswitch Services back in Vhanna. It sat snugly inside a form-fitted leather case that hung from a sturdy nylon strap. Several knobs were visible under the flap, all of which except one Silver instructed him not to touch. The largest knob was a simple on/off toggle which Silver explained would generate what the gryphon called a modulating refraction field around him. The effect would only last a few minutes, ideally within which Eshe would be able to set up the camera equipment in view of the test range and get behind cover.
He lifted the strap around his neck with a sore hoof and stared sullenly at the stealth device. It had worked exactly as advertised, its only charge chewed up thanks to raw nerves. That had been over an hour ago, after he mistook a condor gyring overhead for a patrolling pegasus. It had taken the better part of a mile’s hike for his heart to stop trying to beat itself through his ribs, but by the time it had he knew he’d made a mistake that could end up costing him his career, his livelihood, and very possibly his freedom. The gryphons hadn’t minced words about how many cameras would be pointed right back toward him once he crested that last ridge. The Ministry of Technology would have eyes watching the test platform from every conceivable angle. Whether or not someone caught him today wasn’t an issue anymore. A week from today, a month, or longer yet, someone would eventually notice the zebra skulking along the backdrop behind the bomb. He just had to hope none of those lenses were powerful enough to allow someone to identify him. 
His sole throbbed. He dreaded to think how many more rocks were waiting to jam themselves into that same spot during the long walk back, but that worry was a more welcome thought than that of what remained to be endured in the next half hour.
With clumsy hooves and teeth he managed to get the black case open and attach the wide angle lens to the camera’s shutter mount. Bits of dust and some spittle marred the clean lines when he was finished. Rolling onto his belly, camera pinched securely between choppers, Eshe gathered what few nerves he could scrounge and crawled up the last yards of the ridge. 
The topography was exactly as the map had depicted. That wasn’t a surprise. It was what maps did, after all. A shallow basin large enough to accommodate a medium sized city spread out below him filled with all manner of scrub grass, small bushes, and along its wide perimeter grew the odd juniper tree or two. The low cliffs bracing the depression bore colorful striations where millions of years of geologic history lay exposed in neat, pancaked layers should Equestria ever find the energy to value such a thing. A few puffs of white slid lazily over a crystal blue sky. Were it not for the commotion in the middle of the ancient lakebed, it all might have been picturesque.
His throat went dry. 
The basin was not as large as he’d imagined and he wondered whether the gryphons had hurried him through his slapdash training so he wouldn’t have time to notice the now obvious problems of scale. He’d read enough articles about past bomb tests to understand at a rudimentary level how large those explosions had been, and the Equestrian public never seemed able to satiate their fascination with the factoids scattered throughout each new column. Before and after pictures of mock-up houses built at five, ten, even twenty miles away from ground zero were images not readily forgotten, and they had all spent the past year learning new terms like “shockwave” and “blast damage” and “thermal radiation.” Less than a month ago Eshe had treated himself to a movie which had been preceded with a ten minute ministry newsreel showing him and the other moviegoers footage of mannequins posed to look through several brands of kitchen windows while a bomb was set off ten miles distant. The last pane of glass had shattered into tiny cubes rather than shards, the entire purpose of what became obvious as a sponsored advertisement for Glassecure Windows, but it was the puffs of smoke that rose off the clothes of each mannequin that came to the front of Eshe’s mind now.
At the center of the basin, at best five or six miles away from where he crouched, stood a tiny scaffold tower held upright by four thick guy wires. Eshe knew what the dark pinpoint atop the tower was and felt his hackles jump at the realization of how deadly close he was to it. A hot sweat rose up his neck and for a split second he prepared to turn and run away as fast as his legs would carry him. But he didn’t. Anchored by the knowledge of what the gryphons promised they would do to him if he failed, he turned his attention to the bulky camera and the instructions he’d been given.
He trembled as he scooped out a shallow trench in the dirt and set the camera into it. Peeking through the eyepiece, he centered the bomb tower in the frame and fiddled with the focus knob until it appeared more or less crisp against the fisheyed background. The basin dominated the rest of the frame, allowing Eshe to spot what appeared to be the government’s quick and dirty staging area for the weapon’s deployment on the basin’s edge just a few miles off to his right. Given something less terrifying to focus on, his panic ticked down by the barest amount. The camera’s casing scraped a little as he turned the lens to better see the equipment left to endure the bomb’s wrath.
Two motorized carriages sat parked several yards apart from one another, one facing toward the bomb tower and the other facing away. A yellow excavator, its scarred bucket bent and settled against the ground, slumbered a dozen or so yards away besides two long cuts in the soil. Speckled across the tread-worn dirt hunkered what looked like twenty or so concrete domes with narrow slits cut through their smooth faces as seemingly random angles. It took Eshe a moment to understand he was looking at observation cameras, and after another beat he knew they’d been positioned deliberately. Some monitored the parked vehicles. Others stared unblinkingly at the excavator. The vast majority of them, however, were aimed toward two peculiarly deep channels cut into the soil a hundred yards or so further from the basin wall.
None, he noticed, were pointed toward the box truck parked on the near side of the cuts. The glare of the morning sun rocked back and forth along the brightly painted panels of the rear container as if something inside was trying to tip the vehicle on its side. His eyes narrowed. Sheltered in both trenches were what appeared to be twenty or more still forms laying in the dirt. Mannequins, he assumed. 
He pressed the record button. According to Silver, the holotape inside the camera would store five minutes of footage before looping back to record over itself. The gryphons only cared about a window of thirty seconds before and after detonation, giving Eshe the remaining time to recover the camera and shut it off. Using the flat of each foreleg, he scooped several mounds of loose rock and soil over the case until only a few inches of expensive lens was exposed. 
His ear twitched. Across the wind came a high, distant wail. 
He froze. 
Light flooded the basin and Eshe realized with a start that the stripes down his forelegs were curling away in sheets of ugly, black smoke. Confused, wiped a hoof against his coat and marveled at the exposed, reddening skin. He would later remember thinking he was looking at someone else’s leg because he didn’t feel the burns. Then the blast tore through his eardrums, and he became vaguely aware that he was airborne. He wouldn’t remember his body breaking against the trunk of the juniper tree fifty feet downhill behind him.
Knocked unconscious, Eshe never saw the chaos unfolding in the shadow of that sickly green mushroom cloud, and that was good. He never saw the motionless forms of the anesthetized prisoners laid out in the trenches begin to move, stirred awake not by medicine wearing off but by the unbelievable pain caused by ravaging mutations. Willowy screams rose up out of the basin in a tortured chorus. Muscle and bone grew faster than their fragile bodies could cope with. Skin split, healed over, and split anew. Hooves cracked, fell away, dropping to the freshly excavated dirt as jagged bone ruptured their soles to bend into wicked claws. All the while, lying on its side several yards from where it had been parked, the brightly painted box truck had been torn open from the inside. Its sole occupant, broken by grief and rage, stared up at a boiling sky he hadn’t seen in two years. 
Big Mac spared the briefest moment to stare toward the trenches, at the bloodied, howling things being birthed inside it, then turned his snout up to the rising column of fire and bellowed defiant rage before bounding away into the haze of smoke and dust.
Elsewhere, as the thunder of the distant detonation rumbled above their portable trailer, Ministry of Image staff bristled at a piece of blue-skied footage one of their many mechanical eyes had sent back prior to the countdown. In the center of the frame stood the bomb tower. The camera, meant to test some obscenely expensive composite shielding whose name no one in the trailer could pronounce, stared straight across the test range at the construction. Several ponies crowded the monitor, uncaring of the balefire that had just been unleashed seconds ago. Everyone was talking at once. Someone stepped out of the trailer, a radio pressed to his lips, barking orders with barely contained anger.
Ministry officials squinted curiously at the edge of the screen, up along the edge of the northern ridgeline, where a lone zebra lay crouched in the dirt.







Mechanical arms articulated out from their ports in the AutoDoc and gently clamped over each of his hooves, simulating exercise in their immobile patient.
Eshe barely noticed. His thoughts were, for the first time in ages, elsewhere. He absently watched the twisted, hairless skin of his legs stretch and retract over withered bones as the machine simulated a gallop on his behalf. Somewhere within the bed a pre-recorded voice repeated encouragements for him to participate, cheerily reminding him that patients who exerted themselves during recovery enjoyed a 30% reduction in muscle degeneration on average. The words drifted by unheeded as they had for decades upon decades. Pale, gray walls looked down on him in silent disappointment. Another day wasted by a patient whose life was behind him.
With eyes half-lidded by frailty he silently reviewed his options with Aurora and felt the faintest breath of hope that he didn’t dare yet reach for. Her flare-up with the Tantabus had since cooled, a fleeting tiff that seemed to have left the Tantabus willing to allow Eshe to speak somewhat freely. She’d gone so far as to give Aurora the reference guide he’d compiled for her without making any changes of her own, and for the last three nights they had enjoyed something akin to the study nights Eshe remembered suffering through as a young stallion in university. She’d picked up on the hardware aspects almost immediately, a benefit of her apparent history of repairing machinery, but the software was trickier. Aurora had been spoiled by Stable-Tec’s idiotproof user interfaces and the happy helping voice of Millie’s AI. 
When it came to coding, that knowledge was a square peg to her round hole.
The corner of his lip moved a little at his clever euphemism, then settled. Eventually the exercising arms retracted and returned to attach a slightly yellowed tube to his jugular port. The AutoDoc chirped its goodnight as cold medicine rushed into his veins, and the awful world fell away one more time.







Aurora sat back in her chair, satisfied with herself, and gave Tandy a nod that said she could reset the Pip-Buck once more. Without sound or fanfare, the sleek white device once again lay on the table in a state of disrepair. She picked up her soldering iron and went to work.
“You’re getting good at that.”
She smiled without taking her eyes off her work. Smoke coiled off the tip of the iron where the smallest bead of liquid metal clung. Despite none of this being real, Tandy had cobbled together a good approximation of the discomfort from getting solder smoke in one’s eyes. Aurora constantly had to move her head this way and that to avoid the stinging wisps. 
“Getting better,” she agreed, though she didn’t add that the very real risk of making a mistake during the live run terrified her. Fixing Ginger’s loaned Pip-Buck was her best chance at tracking down and killing Primrose. It was a thought that sounded ridiculous when she thought about it too long, but the idea of skulking around New Canterlot hoping an opportunity might drop out of the sky was even worse. She paused to focus up on her work, adding, “Heck, I could do this in my sleep.”
Eshe snorted as he bent toward the straw poking up from a glass of some kind of red fruit juice. “Booo.”
She smirked and touched the bead of molten solder to the end of a broken pin standing out from the side of a microchip whose serial number had as much meaning to her as the name Eshe had given it. According to him, that tiny square of silicon behaved like a timing belt with a brain, and the pin that had gotten fried by the bomb’s pulse was responsible for data input. She appreciated his attempt to describe it in terms he thought she might understand, but Aurora suspected if she’d let him continue stringing together analogies he’d have begun throwing around plumbing terminology just for seasoning. All she needed to know was that the little chip was important.
Solder jumped from the iron to the broken pin without much fuss. Using capillary action to her advantage she drew the tip toward the broken connection point and smiled as the solder glommed onto it just as eagerly. When she pulled the iron away the less than two millimeter break in the connection was bridged with new, cooling metal. 
It took all of ten more minutes for her to find and fix the rest of the damage, and after a quick inspection of her work she pressed the power button and felt a rush of satisfaction when the display came to life. Sure, the screen showed the same fuzzy jumble of nonsense pulled from her memory by Tandy, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
She moved to ask Tandy for another reset, but Eshe was already holding up a black hoof to forestall her. “Let’s spend some time on code, first.”
Her eyes closed in frustration. “That stuff is techno-gibberish that only you understand. There has to be a program I can run or a setting I can change instead.”
“You asked me to show you how to make your Pip-Buck display Primrose’s location once it reconnects with the Enclave’s network, and I told you there is no big red button you can press that will do that for you. Turning a Pip-Buck into a tracking device from the end-user’s side is going to require techno-gibberish. A lot of it.”
She could already tell he was just as frustrated with the prospect of another teaching session with her as she was with having to wear the dunce cap for one. As the two of them fumed for similar reasons, Tandy vanished Ginger’s Pip-Buck and replaced it with two terminals set in front of each of them. Familiar lines of computer nonsense populated both screens, ending with a blinking cursor that awaited her input.
“We’ll start with a simple penetration test,” Eshe droned.
Aurora felt herself take on a petulant slouch as she watched his careful keystrokes, something she was surprised he could do with just his hooves, appear behind the cursor. What she would generously describe as a creative use of punctuation and abbreviation came together to form a command that meant absolutely nothing to her. He pressed a key and the terminals churned out a short list of placeholder ports for a network that had gone down two hundred years ago, meant to represent whatever the Enclave was using today. Since Eshe had recognized the operating system Aurora had seen when she attempted to short circuit the Pip-Buck, odds were high that the Enclave hadn’t bothered to reinvent the wheel by designing a brand new network to run off of it.
She was more impressed that Eshe could remember what some of these screens were meant to look like after so long than she was with his prowess at hacking. She made sure not to say that last bit aloud. She had committed that sin yesterday and got an earful about the nuances between engineering and hacking. There was a line between the two, though where it was is anyone’s guess.
“Can you tell me which ports are open?”
She pursed her lips at the screen. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“Nope.” The trailing half of the word popped with exasperation. “How about we do a quick run-through on all the steps and circle back afterward.”
Without waiting for her to agree, Eshe launched again into a lecture he’d been fruitlessly trying to drill into her head. Aurora groaned inwardly and settled in for the renewed attempt. She didn’t interrupt. Doing that would only kick him off into a whole other tangent, after which he would lose his place and start over from the top. The terminal screen changed now and then to reflect what he was explaining, but her ability to feign attention waned when he dove into a mind-numbing presentation about packet sniffing. She’d known a stallion who was into that sort of thing. 
When Eshe finished, even Tandy looked ready to doze off. Considering where they all were, that was an accomplishment. He looked across the table at them, sagged a little in his seat, and sighed. “You have no idea what any of that was, don’t you?”
She was tempted to respond with something snarky, but managed to settle for a shrug. What did he expect her to say? Fixing hardware, that she could understand. Learning a second language and using it to trick a bunch of other computers into thinking Ginger’s Pip-Buck was King Shit of all other Pip-Bucks, that was so far out of her wheelhouse that it might as well be on another planet.
Still, she felt a pang of guilt when Eshe looked away and sighed. He had tried approaching this nut from every angle and still it wouldn’t crack, and both of them knew what it meant if Aurora’s shot in the dark idea didn’t pan out. It was a tall order asking him to figure this out for her, and from all appearances he’d done so with ease. The roadblock was getting what he knew into her head. Unfortunately for both of them, Tandy’s ability to conveniently share memories and experiences between ponies didn’t translate into practice or knowledge. Aurora could stare at a screen and watch a computer whiz at work for months and still not have the slightest clue how to do any of it herself. 
“You know,” she began, keeping an eye on Tandy as she spoke to Eshe, “I’ve got these wings. They’re pretty handy. It would be a lot easier if I flew over to wherever you are and let you do all this hacking stuff.”
Tandy shifted uncomfortably in her chair but said nothing. Ever since the two of them hammered out the roughness between them, conversation across the table flowed a little more freely than they had before. Tandy was still clearly protective of Aurora and didn’t want her going anywhere near the place Eshe had strongly hinted at being confined to, but she was also forcing herself not to be less an obstacle and more a concerned friend.
Eshe didn’t have to be beaten over the head to understand the dual meaning of her offer. She’d invited him to finally speak openly about his situation and Tandy hadn’t gotten up and flipped the table to stop him. Sitting up a little straighter, he began to speak.
“I can’t help you out there,” he said, gesturing vaguely to indicate the waking world. “I would if I could, but I can’t. I’ve been stuck in that AutoDoc for too long.”
He was leaving out details, not to be mysterious but because they were deeply personal. He winced as he felt the silence close in around him but it was obvious that this was his first time talking about it to someone other than himself. Discomfort was getting in the way of the things he needed to say, a feeling Aurora knew all too well.
“I can’t… function. I’m trapped. I…” he shook his head, his temper rising as insufficient words tripped over themselves. “Tandy, can you show her?”
Tandy blinked surprise at suddenly being brought into what had been a two-way conversation. 
“If she is willing, yes.” She looked at Aurora. “The experience will be distressing.”
“At this point in my life I call that a Tuesday.”
A tiny smile touched Eshe’s striped muzzle but he didn’t look up from the table’s surface to meet her gaze. Tandy only nodded and lit her horn, something she didn’t need to do but chose to as a visual cue for Aurora to brace herself for the transition. 
The hotel lobby didn’t vanish, shift, or spiral away. It simply wasn’t there anymore, nor was she sitting down. She was lying on her back, catching up to the changes that suddenly were. The switch had occurred so seamlessly that for a moment she wasn’t sure if she’d fallen asleep a second time, a thought that came with a whole host of deeply existential questions. She shifted uneasily and turned her focus on her new, drab surroundings.
Only she didn’t shift at all. With the exception of the slow rise and fall of her chest, nothing moved. Something immense and invisible pressed down on her with so much force that while she could feel her muscles pull taut, she was paralyzed by the weight of it. Except for the breathing. That never stopped, nor did the pace of it change, and Aurora realized she wasn’t the one performing that action. The body she occupied had been so atrophied by immobility and time that she was effectively paralyzed. Somewhere unseen, the soft putter of an air motor drove a mechanical diaphragm. The pliable plastic tube her teeth rested against told her the rest.
The first sparks of animal panic flashed in her mind and she had to force herself to remember that there was no danger here. This was a memory. Eshe’s memory. She was experiencing a sliver of his reality and while she hadn’t been told, she knew he’d been abandoned here. Dull, concrete walls loomed around her, blotched and peeling with the moldy decay of empty years. A grid of drop-down ceiling tiles hung above her, several of them bloated and deformed by moisture that dried up before the foam squares could slip out of the framework. 
The immense weight she’d felt had been nothing more than gravity. Eshe’s body was as much a husk as the room he was in. The AutoDoc didn’t care. It dutifully gave care to its patient as if he had a future beyond his bed. Though she couldn’t look down to see them, she could feel the tubes snaking their way into her abdomen. His abdomen. She felt his catheter, the pressure of another tube pinched beneath his tail. He was little more than an interchange along a highway of nutrients, nothing more. For a terrible moment, Aurora felt the overwhelming smallness of Eshe’s existence. Forgotten and alone in the most literal sense, his life had been reduced to that of a component of a machine that refused to stop running.
She was back in the hotel. She felt her sleeping body jerk from the shock of being yanked from Eshe’s memory. It took some time for her to adjust to being herself again, time which Eshe and Tandy let pass in silence. When she was ready, she met Eshe’s gaze. His sad smile hid behind it a depth of despair she knew she would never understand, nor did she ever want to. People drowned in the ocean in which Eshe swam.
“Dreaming helps me pass the time,” he said, as if to answer the question for her. “The effort that Tandy puts into making them feel real puts Princess Luna’s work to shame.”
Tandy’s eyes widened slightly and the barest flush of color painted her stars. 
Aurora noted that he omitted the part where he’d been forbidden to communicate with other dreamers for a large chunk of his life, but she decided not to spoil the compliment by bringing it up. She was still reeling from what she’d just experienced.
“I don’t know what to say. I… assumed you lived this long because you were a ghoul.” A thought occurred to her embarrassingly late. “Are you a ghoul?”
Eshe slid the juice glass in front of him and sipped at the straw. “I don’t know. Maybe. At this point I don’t think it matters, do you? All I want is for somebody to turn off my AutoDoc.”
She blinked. “That’ll kill you.”
Tandy’s chair creaked as she adjusted herself. Eshe’s sad smile didn’t falter. Aurora’s understanding didn’t faze him. If nothing else, he looked relieved that she finally understood what it was he wanted her to do for him.
He nodded and spoke with a solemn, steady voice. “That’s kind of the idea.”







Fiona held her monocular to her eye and watched her prey from across the dusty hardpan.
With her free hand she noshed on a strip of salted jerky she’d gotten back in Crow’s Grove from one of its wary vendors. The meat had a gamey tang that earned it a cheaper price compared to the other, more marbled options on sale, but she hadn’t had time to haggle. The shaggy brown stallion never stopped moving. His first stop had been at a tiny bookstore tucked into a blind alley at the center of town where he traded the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition and its counterparts for an utterly irresponsible amount of caps. She overheard the store’s proprietor, a mare of around fifty years who looked to have a few screws loose if the disheveled mess of her mane was anything to go by, use his name at least a half dozen times before he departed for his next stop.
She spent a few boring hours perched on a rooftop a block down from Snap-Traps, one of those ubiquitous dual-use buildings whose simple utility had become popular across Equestria. Some kind of all-purpose survivalist supply shop occupied the ground floor and a simpler living arrangement took up the upper. Fiona stayed tucked in the shadow of a disused air conditioning unit as she watched Mouse appear and disappear in the street-facing windows on both floors. A garage door next to the storefront rattled open and she watched the solitary stallion load the crates of mixed supplies from the rickshaw into a larger wagon stored inside the garage. He wore a heavier duty set of saddlebags now as well as what appeared to be a sledgehammer, one face of which had been roughly forged into a mean looking axehead. It hung from thick steel eyelets on a custom harness, its weight balanced in such a way that the weapon would drop head first to the dirt and give him easy access to the leather-wrapped handle if he dipped his shoulder. Judging by the pits and gouges along its length, its earth pony bearer had already gotten a good amount of use out of it. 
Just looking at it made Fiona’s jaw ache sympathetically. Of all the creatures to survive the cataclysm, the stubborn fuck-off tenacity of earth ponies never failed to impress.
It was well past noon when Mouse hitched himself to his wagon and bore east on his way out of Crow’s Grove. She stopped at a few vendors to exchange the last of her caps for a few meals worth of food and water, pausing occasionally to ask about Aurora and only half-listening to their unchanging answers. Mouse was the lead she needed to chase, just not so blatantly that some concerned citizen might catch on and run out ahead to warn him of the tail he’d acquired. Painful as it was to wait, she’d given him a half hour before padding her way back into the town’s narrow side-streets and quietly thrusting herself skyward. She spotted Mouse’s wagon a few minutes later, lazily tracing a line along the eastward trail, and fell into a wide gyre through the bottom most layer of clouds far behind him. 
That had lasted through the end of the first day. By the second her wings had threatened to cramp and she grudgingly landed in the cracked hills a few miles north of the road. Tracking him was easy. Doing so while not being spotted was less so. Mouse was anything but an idle traveler. His head was constantly on a swivel, eyeing the ridges and hills with endless rapidity. More than once he turned to look toward where she’d found cover and every time she feared she’d been spotted. Logically she knew the chances of that were razor thin. She always kept one of the low hills between her and him, climbing up the leeward side just enough to see him pulling away at a distance of miles. From where Mouse stood he would only see the top of her head, and barely enough to distinguish from the rocks and shrubs at that. Still, it unnerved the primitive corners of her brain whenever he scanned the horizon in her direction and they seemed to meet each other’s gaze.
Despite his diligent suspicion of the hills that rose up around the hoof-beaten road, Mouse thankfully hadn’t noticed her. Midway through the second day he pulled his wagon into the dust off the trail and set up the temporary camp where, three miles to the northwest, Fiona watched from the shade of sandstone overhang. The monocular she used to keep tabs on him had, before her departure from the Bluff, been used by her to eyeball the trader wagons back when Flim & Flam Mercantile was still around. Sure, flying out to make trades before the wagons reached the gates was technically cheating, but being nice and waiting for a vendor to get his hooves on good radio equipment first and extort her for the kindness was technically horseshit. Besides, she wouldn’t have had to cheat if Elder Coronado hadn’t banned her from piloting her hacked Enclave spritebots around town. 
Now that monocular was focused on Mouse, and what it showed Fiona was… well, concerning.
After dozing in the back of his wagon for an hour, the lone stallion had emerged with what by all accounts appeared to be a bear trap dangling between his teeth. A quick scan of the terrain around him showed no sign of predators that she could see, and for a dark moment she worried he was preparing to lay the trap out on the road for an unlucky traveler to put their leg into. Astonishingly, he did something else that made her suspect he was a little unhinged. He carried the trap several yards away from the wagon, far too close to lure any worthwhile prey, and wrestled the steel jaws open with a bodily gesture that suggested a grunt. Normally that would make some sense, but to Fiona’s absolute confusion Mouse had opened the trap upside-down. The jaws yawned into the dirt. She began to worry that her choice to follow this pony had been a mistake.
Still, she watched, chewing on jerky she wished she hadn’t wasted caps on. From his saddlebag Mouse produced a chunk of some sort of purplish, near-spoiled meat that he carefully pushed into the shallow gap beneath the trap with a long stick like a cannibal sidelining as a pool shark. With the bait in place, he proceeded to stamp his hooves around the circumference of the trap and then bolt back to the wagon.
For several minutes nothing happened. Even more nothing happened, but Mouse didn’t move. His eyes scanned the nearby horizon and his self-confident smile didn’t so much as flinch. Whatever he was seeing, it was visible only to him. Fiona felt her shoulders sag. This had been a waste of time.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than did the soil beneath the trap rupture and the steel jaws slam together, passing effortlessly through the bone and gristle of the molerat whose head suddenly found itself liberated from its partially emerged body. The trap, launched skyward by its own closure, tumbled in roughly the same direction as the decapitated head. The metallic clack of the jaws reached Fiona’s ears a scant few seconds later. 
“Ho–!” she bit off the exclamation before it could give away her position. 
She watched, her frustration galvanizing into rapt fixation, as Mouse dropped from the wagon and trotted over to the mammal’s twitching body with a small knife held in his mouth. With the speed and efficiency of someone performing a deeply familiar task, Mouse dragged the dead molerat from its hole and went to work gutting the carcass. An hour later, with his brown muzzle dyed with the faintest stain of rust, Mouse tended a modest cookfire within which several strips of seasoned meat sizzled on a collapsable spit. After feeding himself he par-roasted the rest of what he could harvest from the carcass, wrapped the pieces in strips of cloth, and stowed them into a crate on the wagon. A few kicks of soil smothered the fire and he was off again, pulling the wagon back up to the broken road once again.
That clever little hairball had her worried for a minute. She hastened to finish chewing her mystery jerky and downed it with a pull from her canteen. Then she pulled herself to her feet, packed her sparse supplies back into her satchel, and padded along after him.
The next few hours slid back into uneventful monotony. Mouse plodded along far ahead of her, his eyes on a constant swivel for bandits and raiders. Every so often the terrain would smooth out, forcing Fiona to stop behind the last bit of natural cover until her quarry was barely visible on the horizon, then dart across the clearings and play catch-up in new shadows. 
Traffic along the road was thin, but not absent. Fiona noticed whenever Mouse spotted a wagon on the approach, he fastidiously stopped to check the pipe pistol strapped to his foreleg and the harness attaching him to his wagon. She assumed he had a quick release built into the latter but never got confirmation on that. The few travelers who passed did so without causing trouble, though all parties involved continued to watch one another long after they’d drifted beyond firing distance. 
Then, as evening was beginning to darken the eastern horizon, Mouse made an inexplicable deviation. The wagon lurched behind him as he pulled it off the dusty pavement, prompting Fiona to begin looking for a comfortable patch of cover to hunker down in for the night. But the stallion kept on walking, seemingly leaving a perfectly good highway behind in favor of what could only generously be referred to as a side trail. She didn’t know this area any better than she knew the underside of Celestia’s tail but she did have enough wasteland smarts to know he was either heading detouring around some known obstruction further up the pencil-straight highway, or he was nearing his ultimate destination. She hoped it was door number two, because as much as she enjoyed having an excuse to enter Sneaky Bird Mode she was suffering from an ailment she hadn’t dealt with in years: boredom.
With a sigh, she followed. Night came, and with it the nocturnal critters of the Equestrian wastes. Color washed out of the scenery as her vision adapted and she was surprised to see that Mouse was still keeping more or less to the bare whisper of a trail he’d chosen to follow. Once or twice the wagon bucked when a rock snuck beneath one of the wheels, eliciting a hard jerk in the opposite direction as he swung away from the larger detritus, but he always kept clear of the larger boulders and deep, wheel-shattering folds in the terrain. 
Midnight had come and gone by the time she noticed the dark wall on the horizon. After a few more miles she recognized it. Trees. An entire forest of them, she realized, packed so dense with vegetation that her night vision couldn’t make heads or tails of how deep it ran. It stretched north and south for one, maybe two miles before abruptly giving way to barren wasteland once more. Fiona stopped walking for a long time, puzzled by how utterly out of place it looked. It was as if someone had pressed a giant cookie cutter into some undiscovered land untouched by bombs, radiation, and war, pulled it all away and deposited it here in the middle of nowhere. 
Unsurprisingly, Mouse was pulling his wagon straight to it. She wanted to bolt into the air and fly ahead of him, drawn by some primal temptation to beat him to the forest and… what? Explore it? Protect it? Claim it for herself? She shook her head and let the temptation ebb. Red flags, she reminded herself. This wasn’t Griffinstone where the biggest and only threats came from the mutations and poison blowing in from the Vhannan ruins. This was Equestria, a land that had avoided the dying everywhere else by finding dangerous, unpredictable, and oftentimes lethal ways to survive. An inexplicable woodland oasis growing out of the hardpan wasn’t just a red flag, it was a neon sign glowing out of a gas fire. 
Crouching low behind a splash of briars, she watched Mouse approach some sort of prewar checkpoint a quarter mile from the forest’s edge and roll right on by. His wagon crunched along as he led it around a pair of rusting ambulances, avoiding the bodies in tattered hazmat suits strewn nearby. Her hackles rose as images of crumbling Equestrian biological test facilities ran through her head, and yet Mouse didn’t seem worried. He continued forward.
When he reached the tree line she spotted several small objects sprout up from the underbrush and swivel toward him with a cackling echo of chuk-chuk. A moment later the figures vanished as abruptly as they appeared, and Mouse slowly disappeared into the overgrowth.
Fiona blinked. She knew that sound. Those were Robronco-made auto turrets. Dozens of them, built directly into the greenery and painstakingly camouflaged. All of them drawing power, set on alert, and programmed to ignore the earth pony scavenger who just crossed through their firing line.
“Red flags,” she murmured to herself. “Red fucking flags.”







 The thudding of hooves climbing the porch hauled Aurora from her dream of Eshe’s hotel and dumped her firmly in the present. With a bleary groan she opened her eyes to a room half-lit by emberglow left by the fire Discord had lit beneath the mantle just a few hours prior. Discord was already up out of his easy chair and scuffing his way to the front door having woken well before her. Claws scratched idly over the bits of stone fused to his skin, followed by the bracing intake of a long breath before he opened the door.
“G’morning.” The compound rumbled around the lidless crate clenched in Mouse’s jaw as he pushed his way into the cottage, unaware or more likely unconcerned by the disapproving glower Discord shot on his way past. “Where d’you want it?”
Discord shut the door and gestured vaguely toward the floor. The crate landed with a thud that jarred Aurora more firmly into wakefulness than she liked. The couch that had become her bed was warm and the night air was just cool enough to be uncomfortable if she paid attention to it. Her body demanded she curl back up and doze before discomfort grew into annoyance, when she would be forced to get up and throw a log onto the red embers.
Before she could string together the words to effectively communicate her displeasure, Mouse had already pulled the front door back open and disappeared outside. For a moment she and Discord exchanged the same chagrined expression. Mouse reappeared shortly after, hooves tromping noisily over the floorboards with another open crate swinging precariously from his teeth.
Discord sighed and pulled the box away before the contents could spill. “I don’t suppose you have the faintest clue what time it is.”
Mouse shrugged and turned back to the door and the wagon no doubt parked outside. “Late. Dunno, didn’t stop to pitch a tent tonight. Got places to be.”
A short bundle of logs stood up over the rim of the second crate. Aurora sat up to get a better look and felt some of her irritation with Mouse fade at the sight of several pieces of metal hardware piled alongside what looked to be genuine hemlock. The chilly air forgotten, she slid down to the floor and limped around the coffee table toward the crates. Gray feathers dipped down and picked out a long, flat strip of mild steel roughly half the length of her hind leg. Three more lengths leaned against one another inside the crate, partially obscuring a heavily worn but somehow still intact cardboard box. Aurora gently pulled open the lid and felt a pang of nostalgia at the jumble of mismatched wood screws, bolts, nuts and washers. She had a junk drawer just like this back home, and the memory of it turned her smile bittersweet.
Mouse arrived with the third and final crate, dropped it beside Aurora, then turned toward the dim fireplace and threw on a quartered log from the basket beside it. Not one for small talk, the stallion elected himself fire tender by dint of the iron poker now held in his mouth. 
For his part, Discord seemed to briefly debate chiding Mouse more about the early hour,  but he eventually settled down on his knees beside Aurora instead. Only after both of them silently accepted that neither would be going back to sleep any time soon did conversation begin to trickle.
“Did he find everything you need?”
Aurora leaned across one crate to look into another, quietly counting each item against her mental inventory. “Most of it, yes. The tip on this soldering iron isn’t as fine as Eshe said it needs to be, but there’s some sandpaper here. I should be able to grind it down.”
Mouse paused long enough in his task of excavating an air pocket beneath the firelog to add, “Right now’s a bad time to get picky about electronics.”
“Duly noted.” She didn’t know what he meant, nor did he volunteer further explanation. Satisfied at least that Mouse had delivered on the majority of her list - she chose not to point out that the security drivers he’d brought weren’t the right size - she pushed herself to her hooves and glanced toward the dark kitchen. “Everything I need is more or less here. I’m going to warm up some tea and try to knock some of the slush off my brain. I’m not going to be able to sleep until I get started on the Pip-Buck. Either of you want a cup?”
Discord held up a finger to indicate yes. 
Mouse grunted and shook his head. “Coffee.”
Retrieving a candle from the table beside Discord’s easy chair, she dipped the wick into the coals and pulled the guttering flame out before her wingtip could catch as well. “Fresh out,” she called on her way into the kitchen. “Sorry.”
That sparked off some quiet grumbling from Mouse directed at Discord as he asked what had happened to a shipment of grounds he’d delivered the winter prior. Aurora set the candle next to the sink and ran fresh water into a dented kettle, trying not to chuckle as she listened to Discord insist that the grounds in question had been so utterly stale that they were better used as fertilizer for his blueberries. That apparently was where the can had been dumped immediately after the first pot had been brewed, an admission that Mouse seemed to take personally. She held her tongue, choosing to focus on tapping a measured portion of tea leaves from the cupboard into Discord’s rust-spotted infuser rather than add her two bits to the argument. Mouse was, as far as she could tell, the sort of stallion who would die on the hill he stood on and Aurora couldn’t help but feel she would probably fall right alongside him. 
Wasting coffee, real ground coffee, bordered on the criminal and she’d known an entire Mechanical department who would readily string up anyone who so much as joked about throwing away good beans for something as petty as flavor. It wasn’t just a drink. It was a social ritual. A coming together for a pack of filthy, stinking assholes who were quick to violence at the mere suggestion of punching in for another twelver before they could imbibe upon the acrid, bitter piss that trickled from the communal pot. Even terrible coffee was nectar to anyone staring down the barrel of another long shift, and woe betide anyone foolish enough to deny it to those who craved it.
Suffice to say, Discord was wrong. A sad smile curled her lip as she clicked the infuser shut and plunked it into the cold water.
Returning to the living room, she paused to nestle the kettle next to the warming coals and began emptying the contents of each crate in earnest. Soon a gentle fire was rolling beneath the mantle and the coffee table, once again pressed into service as her workbench, lay strewn with the tools she needed to revive Ginger’s Pip-Buck. A squealing kettle was retrieved from the coals, cups were poured, and while the boys seated themselves on the couch to ruminate on Mouse’s latest excursion back home Aurora dragged the coffee table near to the fireplace where she went to work sanding the soldering iron’s rounded tip into a sharp point. 
She grimaced a little as she ground away the iron cladding that coated the dull nib and exposed its copper core. Given sufficient time the molten solder would greedily dissolve the copper, and while her intended project would never last long enough for that to become a problem she still couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that came with wantonly wasting a perfectly good tool. Old habits die hard. After several minutes of steady scraping the needle-like nib gleamed golden in the firelight. Soon it was soaking up the heat of the fat, red ember she’d laid it upon while she turned and turned Ginger’s Pip-Buck between her feathers, studying the pathways she needed to bridge and remaining mindful of the places where she couldn’t afford to let a stray drop of solder short onto neighboring connections. She would get one shot at this, maybe two if whatever mistakes she made weren’t fatal.
When she felt ready, she picked up the iron by its insulated handle and touched the blackened copper to the unspooled solder. Silver metal deformed into a droplet that jiggled beneath the sharpened tip. Satisfied, she flicked the droplet into the fireplace and turned to her work.
For all the practice she’d gotten in her sleep, she’d been right to assume the dream was a pale comparison to the real world. Tandy hadn’t simulated the nervous tremors in Aurora’s feathers, the dulled tactile senses from her bomb-damaged right wing, or the rising tension she felt from the knowledge that this wasn’t a trial run that could be rewound with a thought. She wet the rapidly cooling iron with fresh solder, fully aware her chances of hunting down Primrose and coming out the other end alive would drop to zero if she screwed this up. She took a steadying breath, careful not to exhale on the molten metal jittering over Ginger’s sleeping Pip-Buck, and touched the broken connection.
Solder beaded onto the broken foot of that tiny black chip, elongating just slightly as she drew the tip of the iron across the gap. Liquid silver touched the opposite contact, shivered as she pulled the iron away, and immediately began to harden with the departure of its heat source. A tiny silver peanut barely two millimeters wide closed the connection. No mistakes. No disasters. Aurora let out the breath she’d been holding and propped the iron back onto the glowing coals, readying herself to repeat the process. 
She did so with the quiet alacrity that came with a reassuring success. Despite everything she’d gone though, all the death, killing, and loss, there were still things in this world that she could fix. She’d given Discord back his music. Now the Pip-Buck in front of her, disassembled to expose the electronic guts which had been torn through by Primrose’s bomb, lay clinging to its bright new metal stitches. The last connection jealously held its shiny patch of solder rather than sharing it around with its neighbors like Aurora had feared. The capacitor she had shorted out days earlier lay alone on the coffee table, replaced by a fresh one harvested from the scrap electronics Mouse had dragged in out of the wasteland for her. Another tiny piece of the world put back to rights by her own feathers.
She turned the Pip-Buck’s smooth screen toward her and paused for a moment to look at the deeply damaged reflection staring up from the glass. There had been something in those eyes that Ginger had fallen in love with. What it was, Aurora could only guess at. Maybe she couldn’t see it for herself because it wasn’t there anymore. Or maybe it was and she didn’t know what to look for.
Frowning, she held down the power button and listened to the device chatter to life. Nothing smoked. Sparks didn’t fly. Somewhere beneath one of the curved boards a high capacity holotape spun up and the screen went from black to sky blue. Mouse and Discord went momentarily quiet as both of them turned to see the fruits of her labor. Aurora didn’t notice. She was too captivated by the full color animation of Robronco’s cartoonish pony mascot trotted on screen, posed in the center with an exaggerated grin, then faded away as the company logo filled the blue field. Seconds later a simple graphic of a slim white Pip-Buck hovering a few pixels away from a disembodied foreleg indicated that she should put the device on to continue. A beat later, white text bloomed along the bottom margin to supplement the pictorial instruction.
Aurora pressed the power button again and the successfully repaired Pip-Buck shut itself down. She wasn’t ready for that next step. Not yet. Not when she still had a choice to make. She picked up her cup, took a long sip of warm peppermint tea, and went about reassembling the Pip-Buck’s outer casing.
“I take it the repair was a success?” Discord probed.
She nodded, not wanting to jinx it by saying so aloud. “It booted up and stayed on without overheating.”
Mouse grunted. “I got a TV that does that. Doesn’t get any channels, though.”
Asshole. She tightened each security screw with one of the missized drivers Mouse had brought her, containing her frustration whenever it slipped and slightly rounded one of the heads. “I don’t know what’ll happen if I wear it while it’s on. A long while back I ran into an Enclave spritebot and they knew exactly who I was.” 
She eyed her own Pip-Buck, still nonfunctional where she’d left it on the table. According to Sledge, a mare named Delta Vee saved Stable 10 from disaster by hacking apart the lines connecting their home to Stable-Tec’s greater underground network. Ever since then the Enclave had been blind to the life that continued to flourish below Foal Mountain. Only after Aurora crawled out from under the rockslide was her Pip-Buck able to identify the surviving remnants of Stable-Tec’s primary radio network and, in doing so, giving its current Enclave minders a snapshot into the Stable they long assumed dead. Her first mistake on a long road of many.
“If I can use it to track Primrose, then the Enclave can definitely do the same thing to me. I’m dead as far as they think, and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible.”
Looking down her bare foreleg, she bent her neck and nipped the trailing end of a bandage still covering a patch of skin near her shoulder. The burns she sustained there had gone deeper than most and the new flesh that grew over the old was still tender and prone to splitting when she rolled in her sleep. She undid the gauze one wrap at a time until it lay piled at her hoof. With both wings she went about rewrapping it just above her fetlock. When she was done, she slid Ginger’s Pip-Buck over the wrappings and cinched the latch down until it snapped secure. Now she could turn it on without worrying it might match her biometrics to whatever data the Enclave had snatched out of the air after her conversations with their spritebot. 
“There. Good enough,” she said, eyeing her handiwork. Once Eshe walked her through the code she’d need to enter in a way that didn’t make her head hurt, she could get to work fixing the next problem: a living, breathing Primrose. Then after that ugly work was finally behind her, she would decide whether or not she was the right mare to do the thing Eshe had asked her to do. 
One fix at a time.
“I’m going back to bed,” she announced, standing as she did so. “Clear off or make room.”
Discord made a shooing motion at Mouse who, after much rolling of eyes, dropped down from the couch and resumed his post as self-appointed fire poker. Discord scooted to what had since become “his” side of the couch when the two found themselves sharing it, pausing just long enough to offer Aurora a hand to help her make the jump onto the old cushions. She half-hopped and was half-pulled, but she made it. Joys of missing a leg. 
Seeming to know what she was thinking, Discord snapped his fingers at Mouse. “If you intend to stay here till morning you can do more than make a mess of my fireplace. How much progress can you make on that wooden leg before you go running off again?”
Aurora curled up on the cushion beside Discord and listened to the two talk. She’d made her own progress tonight and felt a touch of pride in that. She hugged the smooth lines of Ginger’s Pip-Buck to her chest and felt, deep down, that she’d brought back a small part of the person she’d lost in the sky above their home. She eased back to sleep with the meaningful knowledge that the world hadn’t ended for her just yet. She’d come to the wasteland bent on fixing something that was broken. Ginger was gone, but a piece of her was still here helping her right a terrible wrong.
Let Primrose think she was safe. That she was the victor. Let her believe all her problems lay dead and dying in her wake so that when Aurora stepped through that mirage with a gun in her wing Primrose would suffer the terror and uncertainty in her last moments that Stable 10 had felt in theirs. By then that slithering bitch’s fate would be decided and no amount of loyal Enclave pegasi would prevent the correction Aurora had come to make. Wings and hooves would descent on her like a rain of stones but Ginger’s death would be made right, no matter–
Automatic gunfire crackled outside, a sudden cacophony that grew louder with each turret that joined the assault. Aurora and Mouse instinctively flattened themselves against the floorboards, eyes wide and ears pinned back. Discord didn’t join them on the ground. Wearing an expression of deep worry, his arm slid behind the couch while yellow eyes stared out past the open window.
THUD.
Aurora stifled a yelp. Discord was on his feet. Hoof. Whatever. Their collective attention jerked toward the ceiling where something or someone had just landed on the roof.
“What was…”
Discord held up a hand to hush her, his eyes tracking the scraping sound still emanating from the roof. His other hand slid out from behind the couch with a heavy caliber pistol in his grip. Aurora was momentarily torn between the sounds of the creature overhead and the weapon she hadn’t known Discord owned. It was a nasty looking thing, all squared angles and raw mass that looked eerily similar to the one carried by the lead slaver back in Kiln. A soft click announced the toggle of its safety, a sound echoed by the pipe pistol strapped to Mouse’s foreleg.
Finger and foreleg had curled around their respective triggers as a distantly familiar voice called out from the night.
“Motherfucker actually hit… you’ve got to be kidding me.” A pause. Mouse and Discord exchanged wary looks, but Aurora’s brow furrowed at the announcer-like inflections of the mare overhead. “Hello-hello? Anyone home? It’s me, Mouse, the very nice gryphon you talked to back in town? You said you would whistle and, well heck, you never did. I might need to borrow your first aid kit if you got one, buddy. You there?”
Aurora rose to her hooves and tilted her head toward the open window. “Is that Flipswitch?”
A pause. “Holy shit. Aurora?”







“Holy shit. Roach?”
Having already been on high alert since joining the quarter-mile long queue to enter the Ranger-held city, Julip hadn’t been prepared for any of the residents of Blinder’s Bluff to recognize them so quickly. It was a risk they both agreed they’d need to take, and Roach had repeatedly promised her that should things become dangerous for them he would do what was necessary to protect her. Still, it caught her off guard when Roach’s power armor thumped between her and the burn-scarred blue stallion trotting toward them.
Her wings dropped flush around her barrel, hiding as much evidence of them as she could beneath the sweltering duster she’d scavenged from the cab of a truck several days and hundreds of long miles north of here. It stank from decades of mildew and decay, was several sizes too big for her, and had come off the corpse of something that had crawled into the truck and died, but it kept her wings out of sight and that was good enough for now. The approaching stallion, dressed from shoulders to shitter in the Steel Ranger’s finest shade of brown, wore a cracked radio on the lapel of his uniform. It didn’t take a mental leap to assume the soldiers who asked him to identify himself at the gate had radioed that info over a channel this stranger was tuned into.
They’d been led into the city only after Roach allowed a prickly mare to verify that the ammo cans slung beneath the suit’s gatling guns were empty. Elder Coronado’s generosity in loaning them the suit had stopped, reasonably, short of equipping them with ammunition. That had made some elements of Roach and Julip’s journey through Crystal Alley a little more eventful than they otherwise would have been, not that either of them had complained afterward. The real danger of that decision came only after the two of them made their way south back into Ranger territory, and with it, the ever present threat of being spotted by Enclave scouts. They’d gotten lucky on that front. No uniformed pegasi took pot shots at them and no bandits along the road thought it would be wise to try relieving them of their possessions when two of those items were shoulder-mounted turrets capable of turning them to ground meat. If they were loaded. Which they weren’t.
Julip was never one to shy away from trying to bluff someone, but sustaining a con for over a week without knowing if any of her former compatriots might have recognized her in the brief moments she took off her disguise had worn her nerves down to bloody nubs. And now she was here, waiting with Roach for the quartermaster for what had once been her sworn enemy to verify their story with the quartermasters in Fillydelphia. They were casually surrounded by a good dozen other Rangers, two of which wore power armor of their own and whose weapons were decidedly not missing their ammunition belts, and she could feel each and every pair of eyes as they slid over her petite frame with clear and unguarded suspicion. 
And now one of them was prancing his way up the cobbles with Roach’s name in his mouth. Maybe it was just the nerves, or maybe it was because they’d become intimately close friends and were verging on something possibly more permanent, but she felt instantly suspicious of this friendly newcomer.
Defying Roach’s attempt to shield her from sight, she stuck her head out from around his armored backside with narrowed eyes. “Who the fuck are you?”
The stallion slowed, suddenly unsure of his own confidence. “Um.”
“Be nice.” Roach’s gravel voice came through the suit’s speakers heavily distorted, and not for the better. Changeling ghouls and modern technology rarely mixed well, with a few notable exceptions. He tipped his armored horn toward the soldiers with a soft whirr of bearings and servos. “That’s the Knight I told you about. He’s a friend.”
Julip eyed the stallion up and down. Half of his blue-furred face was a twisted mass of angry pink flesh that gave him the countenance of a ghoul, except for the way his burns looked as if they were following the paths of running liquid. She’d seen the same kind of injuries back in New Canterlot when casualties were flown home to be treated. Gasoline bombs were a cheap and common weapon used on both sides when a structure needed to be flushed of enemies quickly and its other contents were of little value. This guy looked like he’d taken a molotov cocktail to the face.
Roach turned to address the quartermaster’s security. “Can I leave the armor with you guys?”
Several soldiers looked to the officer in charge, who seemed pacified by the arrival of a higher ranking and apparently friendly counterpart. The unicorn shrugged, indicated a spot on the cobbles he could leave the armor, and murmured something into the radio that floated out of his uniform pocket. Roach didn’t wait to hear the quartermaster’s response. He’d already stepped to where he’d been told and the seal running down the suit’s spine cracked with a hydraulic hiss. Julip half-expected a cloud of steam to come rushing out when the panels bloomed open given how stuffy it had gotten when she’d been inside the armor with him. No such luck, though she caught herself smiling just a little when she heard Roach suck in a lungful of unfiltered mountain air.
“So you’re Latch,” she said, wanting to distract the stallion while Roach shimmied his way backward over the armor’s padded belly. “Roach told me the two of you had plans to fix up your Stable’s gardens.”
The Knight glanced down at her for the briefest moment before his attention turned back toward the changeling emerging from his steel cocoon. “That’s what he said when they all left, but I hadn’t expected him to come back.” 
Latch’s nose wrinkled as the breeze carried the funk contained by the armor past them, and then something like recognition registered in eyes that turned speculatively back toward Julip. She could smell it too. Their trek through the northern wastes hadn’t taken them past any bodies of water that weren’t dangerously stagnant or heavily polluted by radiation, so opportunities to wash their paired odors from the power armor hadn’t arisen. She and Roach had shared several such instances after their first stumbling foray into sharing the power armor and evidently their noses had acclimated as the days passed. Not so for poor Latch. The stallion politely pressed his lips together, moved himself upwind of the venting armor, and cleared his throat.
“It’s good to see he’s found a companion,” he said with as much neutrality as a stallion who had just gotten his sinuses assaulted by said companionship. Julip wasn’t sure if it was possible for a blush to show through mint green fur, and she didn’t want to know. She quickly looked around as if suddenly interested with the colorful shacks that snaked their way up the flat-topped bluff while Latch changed the subject. “The city’s pretty packed. I hope you have plans for lodging.”
Having finished vacating the power armor and seemingly unaware of what just transpired between Latch and her, Roach pursed his lips at the crowded streets they’d been escorted through as he came to stand beside Julip. “If I’m being honest, we were hoping the Rangers might let us use one of the compartments down in the Stable like last time.”
“Something tells me that’s a bust,” Julip said. They’d both observed the ponies camped out in the cramped alleys between several of the buildings on the way here, and then there was the abundance of Rangers loitering around everywhere with nothing to do. Any soldier with half a brain who wasn’t either on duty, drinking, getting in fights, or screwing would be clocking valuable bunk time. This many soldiers standing around with nothing to do meant there were probably less bunks than there were bodies to fill them, and that just as likely meant the Stable’s compartments were full up. 
“Good eye,” Latch grunted, nodding in the same direction they were looking. “I just got off gate duty at the Stable. It’s not like how it was the last time you were here, Roach. With everything that happened, you two might–”
Latch abruptly stopped and his face dropped as if he’d suddenly remembered something. His frown deepened, but not in that classic way a ranking officer might when they realized they were probably getting too familiar with the civvies. No, he looked like someone who had stopped short of saying something deeply insensitive. For a moment Julip worried he’d clocked her wings and had been about to draw attention to them, but his eyes weren’t on her. They were on Roach. 
Her friend noticed the change too, and soon worry lines were creasing the broken bits of chitin down his face. “Everything okay?”
Latch opened his mouth, seemingly undecided on his answer, and then closed it in favor of giving his hoof an uneasy couple of taps against the cobbles. “Yeah, ah… are you two aware of what the Enclave did?”
She and Roach looked at each other to see if one of them knew more than the other. They didn’t. Chances were Latch didn’t know their actions in Fillydelphia had created the opening the Enclave used to destroy the turrets guarding the city’s skies, and neither of them seemed eager to be the one to share that here where seemingly every other person they saw wore a Ranger uniform. 
Roach cleared his throat. “We heard some things out on the road, none of them good.”
Latch grunted as if he understood. “How you holding up?”
“One day at a time,” he said. Latch nodded at the ground, and Roach quickly pivoted the conversation before he could continue a potentially dangerous line of questioning. “Did you end up making any headway on that list I left with you?”
That seemed to pull the Knight back to reality, though he seemed just as disquieted by the abrupt shift. “I… yeah, a little bit. I’m still waiting on a requisition for phosphorus, but we got a pretty decent supply of nitrogen and potassium sources put together before last week. One of the older mares up on the hill got word of what we were doing and gave us some potted flowers, so I’m watering those under the grow lights now.”
That last part seemed to lift some of the pall cast by the earlier questions and Roach was quick to jump on it. “Did she say what kind of flowers they were?”
Latch paused to think. “They’re purple and kind of stringy. I think she called them ‘catch.’”
“Vetch,” Roach corrected, his smile widening a bit. “It’s an old cover crop. Keep it watered, you’ll need it once we can get the soil amended. If your people can’t get a fix on a phosphorus source, gunpowder makes a halfway decent all-around fertilizer. Just, you know, don’t blow up the Stable doing it.”
Latch winced at that. “I’ll ask the quartermasters about it later. Anyway, I’m still on gate duty until 19:00 hours and I’m going to catch shit if I’m not back soon. I just wanted to swing over and make sure you’re still in one piece. Come find me once you find a place to hunker down and we can talk more. And uh, again, I’m sorry about what happened.”
With an awkward nod just to himself, the Knight turned and trotted away. Julip looked up at Roach with the obvious question on her face, but he only shrugged in response. He must have heard about what Ironshod did in Fillydelphia or he wouldn’t have danced around whatever was making him so uncomfortable just then. She wondered whether the guilt had been spreading before their arrival and worried whether they were going to have to assuage any of it by day’s end. Unsure how else to proceed, they started back toward the busy central artery of Blinder’s Bluff in search of a room.
Finding one, however, was more difficult than Latch made it seem. Julip kept up with Roach’s long, loping strides well enough but the crowd was the real problem. The Bluff’s main road, demarcated by a set of twin rails that curved in parallel toward the base of the city’s geographic namesake where, if she could see past all the jostling bodies packed around them, a tunnel contained their terminus and the well-defended Stable 6. Someone passing on her right flicked her tail and she caught a face full of yellow hair. A Ranger stomping out his patrol in a much cleaner set of power armor than the one she’d ridden in on the way here practically stepped on her before adjusting his gait to narrowly avoid her. 
“Watch it!” she hissed. “This place is a fucking clown show.”
A unicorn passing in the opposite direction shouldered Roach hard enough to send him skittering before blending in with the choking hoof traffic. His patience with such obvious slights deeply impressed her, and it was equally difficult not to tear each offender a new hole to shit from in his defense. She glared back to where the unicorn had vanished and hoped he got his horn stuck in a sewer grate.
“Stick close to me.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the din of competing voices. Somewhere to their right a pony was shouting prices for pickled carrots, further confirming her own belief that there really were some parts of the wasteland that could be fixed with a little cleansing fire. She tucked a little closer to Roach as they came upon the rows of tall, narrower shacks advertising rooms for sale. Most, if not all, bore wooden and sheet metal signs across their doors declaring variations of OVER CAPACITY and NO VACANCY, NO INQUIRY. Roach didn’t appear to trust any of those signs, especially the ones trying to ward off those who might pester the owners for an exception. 
Soon they were climbing the steps of one such shack and pushing their way into a lobby that may just as well have been someone’s living room. A couch and chairs occupied one corner of the small space to face a console radio which, given the Bluff’s enthusiastic support of Flipswitch and her Hightower Radio, strongly suggested it was in working order. An unfriendly looking stallion parked in a rolling chair behind a rolltop desk informed them rather roughly that there was no room and that they should get out before they pulled a crowd in. They obliged and moved onto the next shack.
Door after door bore the same result. Irritated landlords expressed a spectrum of reactions for their seeming disregard for their signs, ranging from bewilderment to revulsion to genuine apology and even more genuine anger. Several proprietors without signs hung on their doors sent them back out to the road with the complaint that if everyone else had no vacancies they should assume they had none as well. Another suggested that Roach do the decent thing and waste his caps on a cheap hooker in Kiln rather than the one he’d dragged in off the cobbles. That individual was currently sleeping off a concussion on the floor behind his cheap little concierge desk. Nice of the asshole to have a glass jaw, even if it left Roach’s hoof a little sore for the trouble.
On their way to the next shack, one that prominently displayed no less than two signs deterring new visitors, Roach let a touch of frustration show in his voice. “We might have to head upslope and start knocking on doors. Either that or we could find a spot in the woods beyond the wall until things here calm down.”
“Normally I wouldn’t say no to sleeping outside,” she said, dodging the leg of a mare twice her height, “but there’s too many people out here who probably had the same idea, and I wouldn’t put it past some of these fucks to pull a gun on us while we’re sleeping. I vote trying the shacks uphill if we have no luck here.” 
Roach led her up the steps of the double-signed inn without much hope in his expression. “If push comes to shove, Aurora and Ginger ran into a gryphon that ran the radio station on the summit.”
Julip wrinkled her nose. “What, that Hightower station? We sometimes picked that broadcast up way out in New… uh, back home. Pretty sure the DJ’s just a local mare.”
The sly cut of his grin suggested he knew something she didn’t. She’d heard about gryphons trickling into Equestria from across the ocean but had never met or even seen one with her own eyes before. She wondered why she’d never read about that when she worked as an archivist. Huh. You learn something new every day. 
“Well, if she’s willing to help, I’m willing to hike. I just hope…”
Roach had already pushed through the inn’s door, but she didn’t follow. When he noticed he stuck a hoof out to keep it from clapping shut in her face, curious and a little worried about why she’d stopped in the shade of the narrow porch. His eyes followed hers toward a lone foal seated on a simple plank bench, a colorful storybook with deeply browned pages propped open in her lap. If it weren’t for the red scarf tied around her forehead and the curved, bladeless bar of an ancient schoolhouse paper slicer propped up beside her, Julip might not have noticed her at all.
“Beans?”
At the sound of her name the filly looked up and her big hazel eyes grew wide as saucers. She squealed and the book flopped onto the porch in a flutter of pages, forgotten by its reader as she threw herself across the gap and latched dust-colored wings around Julip’s neck. Mass, momentum, and a bit of genuine happiness sent her tumbling onto her butt as she laughed. “Holy shit, kid! I missed you!”
“That’s a bad word,” Beans gigglingly admonished. “It’s okay, I won’t tell! The people in the wagons said lots of swears and I didn’t tell on them either. Mom and Dad said…”
Hooves tumbled through the inn at the sound of Beans’ shout and Roach came within inches of being sent sprawling when the front door burst open behind him. Meridian filled the door frame ready to inflict murder and worse, only to look down at who her daughter had tackled and have the anxiety drain from her face. 
Julip already had her hooves raised in a pitiful attempt at self defense. Who was she kidding? If a living bulwark of a mare like Meridian chose violence, it would be easier for Julip to roll over and accept her future as a smear. “Don’t shoot?” she peeped.
“Mom, Dad, look! It’s Julip!” 
It was understandably taking Meridian some time to calm herself. “I see that. Roach, too,” she agreed, her eyes moving from Julip to the changeling standing all but directly beneath her chin. Roach looked as if he too were imagining his future as a stain and had the wide, frozen eyes to prove it. “Sorry, I… I didn’t think any of you were still alive.”
Beans giggled as she stayed locked to Julip’s neck even as Julip sat up. The kid was tenacious and would probably refuse to let go unless she decided it was her duty as a sea captain or her mother told her so. He was hard to make out in the scant gap between Meridian and the door frame, but Briar was back there too and likely keeping his own private heart attack at bay. 
Roach gave a familiar chuckle. “Things in Fillydelphia didn’t go exactly as we would have liked, but all made it out more or less intact. I didn’t think you were actually going to take Aurora up on her invitation, though. Did the roads give you any trouble?”
Instead of answering, Meridian only frowned and looked back to where her husband stood. The two shared an exchange that Julip couldn’t make out, but the feeling that something bad had happened was starting to flower in her.
“Hey,” she whispered to Beans, “let’s put our wings away before someone sees, okay? First mate’s orders.”
The auburn filly nodded with a conspiratorial grin and let go of Julip’s neck, allowing her to get to her hooves and tuck her exposed feathers back beneath her duster. Beans did the same, far too late for the brief exposure to go unnoticed by some passers-by, but if asked Julip was more than prepared to deploy a shivering, teary story of her life as a dustwing. In the meantime something was brewing between Beans’ parents. 
The passing silent seconds had grown disconcerting by the time Meridian’s head sank, she nodded to Briar, and then turned to fix Julip with a gaze that warned of things she didn’t want her daughter to hear. “Julip, there’s a sweets vendor on the other side of the road. Do you think you could take our Jellybean over so she can pick something out for herself?”
She tensed. “Sure… is everything alright?”
Meridian’s smile made it clear nothing was alright. “I need to talk to Roach about something. He’ll fill you in when you two get back. Okay?”
Whether sensing trouble or simply already knowing what was about to be discussed, Beans’ excitement for a trip to the candy stall began to change to reluctance. “I don’t want any candy.”
“Oh, but I do,” Roach insisted, crouching down to her level with a grin and a cheesy piratical jounce to his voice to go with it. “Yer first mate Roach has been spyin’ them bags o’ taffy what be on display over thar, and only the captain has the authority to relieve him of his booty.”
Beans smiled at that. “Julip’s my first mate. You’re the second mate.”
“Yar,” he crowed sadly as he eyed Julip. “Demoted already, and by the scullery maid at that.”
“Oh-kay,” Julip groaned. Dipping down beside the filly, offering herself as transportation rather than an argument for free admission to the looney bin, she gave her wing a tiny shrug beneath her jacket. “Hop on, kiddo. Uncle Roach thinks we need to spend all our caps on candy.”
Beans clamored onto her back and cheered when Julip rose to the height of her less than proud statue. Any thoughts of what the grown-ups were about to discuss were gone from the kid’s mind and whether spoken or not, it was her job to keep it that way until they were done. She eyed the gaps in the hoof traffic, braced herself to be jostled, and dove into the current. When they emerged on the other side she had to do a little backtracking, nearly a full block’s worth, to reach the chattering crowd of eager foals and exasperated parents waiting around the busy stall.
An older mare ahead in line glanced back at them, then at the visibly impatient Beans who had just plopped her chin a little painfully onto the top of Julip’s mane, and offered a pained smile to her in sympathy. Unsure what the protocol was, she mimicked the expression and added a what are you going to do shrug to go with it. It seemed to translate well. The mare laughed, rolled her eyes at the world in general, and turned to check that her son hadn’t wandered off. 
“I want a peppermint stick,” Beans whispered into her ear.
Julip said okay and glanced down at her satchel to make sure it was still there. She and Roach had pilfered a decent stash of caps on their circuitous route from Fillydelphia so the extortionate price of thirty caps for one stick wasn’t going to hurt as much as it probably should. Stealing a glance back across the street, she spotted Roach still standing on the porch with Meridian. Briar had managed to squeeze his way out of the inn too and currently had his hoof on Roach’s shoulder. The two stallions were almost nose to nose as they spoke, their expressions deeply pained and their faces animated. 
She frowned at them for a long moment, watching as Roach slowly went from confusion, to horror, and then finally sliding into a deep stillness that seemed to reach across the busy cobblestones to freeze her as well. Briar reached forward and jerked Roach into the kind of hug stallions always seemed to reluctantly, but forcefully throw themselves into. Someone behind Julip cleared her throat and she snapped out of it and moved into the gap that appeared when the line moved in front of them. 
It took every ounce of willpower she had to face forward and try to remember what it was Beans had asked for. Peppermint stick. Beans wanted a peppermint stick and Roach had asked for taffy. When their turn came Julip made their order, fished the caps out of her satchel to pay, and began looking for someplace to take Beans where she could distract her. They couldn’t go back to the inn until the adults got themselves under control.
They found an empty wrought iron bench pressed up against a store window that advertised discount guns and armor. Julip gave Beans her treat as they sat down and noticed that the kid’s eyes were on the scene playing out across the road. She didn’t seem surprised by it, just silently attentive as she absorbed this new thing like all kids did at one age or another. 
Then, with no prompting at all, Beans looked down at her treat and spoke. “A bomb exploded the Stable. Aurora and Ginger died.”
A cold stone dropped into the pit of her stomach. “Oh,” she said. “Oh shit.”
“That’s a bad word.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that. Across the evening traffic Roach stared over Briar’s shoulder and off into the distance, his pale green eyes large and wet. He looked like he’d taken a bullet to the gut. The sight of him caused her vision to go murky and she blinked at the clouds to keep the tears at bay. Beans could be wrong about Aurora and Ginger. She was just a kid after all, but something in the simple certainty which the filly had spoken and the utter brokenness of Roach in Briar’s grip told her she wasn’t wrong at all.







Elder Coronado stood behind the chair of his desk, his thoughts lost in the photograph hung from a loosened bolt sticking out of his office’s wall panel. He’d brought it along for this assignment to help keep himself centered and it had never failed in that purpose yet. A kirin mare and unicorn stallion smiled out from the small wooden frame, and standing between them showing too much teeth in his awkward teenaged grin was a much younger version of himself. It was a copy of the only family photo he had of them all together like that, the original stored safely away in his safe back home. Coronado liked to take one with him whenever he got sent out on an assignment without a defined end date because he found that as the weeks turned into months and these strange surroundings began pressing in around him as if to squeeze him into a new, unfamiliar shape, being able to look up at a piece of where he’d come from helped him resist all that. His parents shared a grave together now, but their memory and the values they’d instilled in him as a colt glimmered just as brightly now as they did when they were alive. 
He stared at that photo for a long while before turning back to the stallion seated across the desk from him, his shaggy coat all but swallowing the heavy straps that kept his wings immobile. Former Director Clover looked back at him with patient curiosity. That surprised him, though he didn’t let it show as he took his seat. Across his career he’d had the opportunity to speak with several captured Enclave officers, all of whom had regarded him with a spectrum of vitriol ranging from silent disdain to open hostility. However Clover was his first defector and while the circumstances of their meeting were unquestionably unique to both of them, Coronado had expected at least some of the haughty superiority to bleed through which he’d come to expect. Clover offered none of that. 
“Hm.” The chair’s wooden frame crackled as he settled into it. He noticed the pegasus look up at his horn with genuine interest as Coronado lit it to sort through his paperwork. He tried not to smile at that. It was something all new recruits did, and a few senior ones too, when he used his magic. Kirin hadn’t been particularly sociable before the breaking of the world, say nothing for after. Something about the way their horns grew left some layers a little more translucent than the rest, making for something of a unique light show when magic was channeled through it. He let Clover stare, opting to focus on the papers arrayed before him. “I’ve had some time to read your intake report and the notes taken from your interview with Paladin Barnes. You tell an interesting story, Director. Why should I believe it?”
Unable to shrug with his wings bound, he did so with his shoulders in the common way. “I doubt we would be speaking to one another if you didn’t already. I could list off the reasons why I might be lying, the foremost being the obvious possibility that I hope to somehow misdirect you into taking action that would harm the Steel Rangers, but you already know by now that your intelligence officers have verified everything I’ve told them thus far. And if after speaking to them you still have reason to disbelieve me, excluding my recent loyalties of course, I would very much like to get it out of the way now.”
The smallest of smiles curled his lip as he glanced down to skim the summary report for the data taken from the confiscated Pip-Buck. “They did warn me you didn’t beat around the bush.”
Clover nodded once. “I prefer to be direct, yes.”
He flipped past the summary and looked over some of the highlighted lines in the detailed report. It was pages long. Long enough that the lone paperclip holding them all together had bent under the burden. The Director’s Pip-Buck had corroborated all of his claims since surrendering himself, nor had he attempted to purge any data prior to his arrival. Encryption codes, confidential internal memos, shift schedules for his security teams, even private conversations between him and Minister Primrose were all there waiting to be scooped up and examined. Coronado had no doubt in his mind that Clover’s replacement had been hard at work making sure every access code in New Canterlot was changed and security rotations shuffled, but there was no denying the contents of that Pip-Buck were an intelligence goldmine. He could see no scenario in which Clover could return home without being greeted with a bullet. Giving the Steel Rangers access to just a fraction of what he’d brought with him was treason written in permanent ink.
And the crux of it all lay within one single message originating from a terminal inside Stable 10. That was the blind spot that bothered Elder Coronado, because whether or not it was real it was evident that Clover sincerely believed that Rainbow Dash, the Element of Loyalty from a time remembered only by books and ghouls, had survived the bombs and had proof that Commander Spitfire and Minister Primrose had been the ones to launch them.
Leaning his chin against his fetlock, Coronado skimmed a highlighted paragraph printed beneath the copy of Rainbow Dash’s message. The techs had tried and failed to detect any discrepancies in the metadata that might suggest a forgery. They’d come up with nothing. Even the line tacked to the bottom, added by a clearly frustrated Ranger, sounded petty by comparison.
Although our examination did not succeed in finding evidence of fabrication, it is the opinion of Head Scribe Dune to regard the content and providence of the message in question with the utmost suspicion. 
In other words, The Enclave made this, the Enclave made this, don’t fall for it you moron, the Enclave made this.
Laying the papers back down on his desk, he regarded Clover with a curious expression. “What do you want to happen here?”
The former director frowned. “That’s a broad question. Are you asking about what I want to happen to me, or the broader world?”
He chose silence as his answer. He wanted the pegasus in front of him to decide.
Sensing the choice, Clover opted to answer both. “If Equestria ever hopes to prosper and stand above the rubble we’re scraping out an existence in today, its people need to know its true history. Not the version we’ve been fed.”
“This version,” he said, tapping a hoof against Rainbow Dash’s message, “argues strongly that the Enclave alone was responsible for dropping the bombs. Some might interpret that to imply premeditation, which further suggests Primrose wrote the legend of the princesses’ ascendency as a means to justify locking herself into a position of unquestioned power as their prodigy.”
“I’m aware.”
“And that doesn’t bother you that this has the potential to topple the Enclave?”
Clover stared down at the documents between them, his expression hard. “I count myself lucky to have been born in New Canterlot. I was raised with the belief that service to the Enclave would bring my people closer to rebuilding the world our ancestors stole. I choose to still believe that day may still come, but I can’t see a future where Primrose guides us there. I don’t like you, Elder, nor do I like how your people do things.”
Coronado felt a rueful brow lift at that.
Clover continued. “Unfortunately for me, I’m too much of a pragmatist to think I’ll ever find a perfect ally for what needs to be done. The Enclave will never fix our world with Primrose at the helm, not when that means eventually giving the citizenry access to knowledge and technology that might lead them to the truth of what she did. I came to you because you’re my safest bet as someone with the resources and willingness to distribute that truth on a large enough scale. And, whereas I’m concerned, most capable of ensuring I remain safe during the Enclave’s inevitable growing pains.”
There it was. He leaned back in his chair. It gave a satisfied creak. “I take that to mean you’re positioning yourself to take over when Primrose is gone.”
To his surprise, Clover shook his head. He appeared genuinely offended by the suggestion. “Absolutely not.”
It begged the question. “Why?”
Clover tipped his nose to the reports. “Because we have someone better qualified to lead.”
The answer was so blazingly obvious that he felt embarrassed for not thinking of himself long before this meeting began. Minister Rainbow Dash, possibly still alive and hiding within the irradiated caverns of Stable 10, out-qualified any other potential usurper in every category that mattered. It would be no contest whether Primrose was still in power or not. Rainbow Dash would only need to be recognized for who she was and the Enclave’s citizenry - especially their citizenry - would find their own way to justify discarding Primrose in favor of a true hero of Equestria.
He regarded Clover with a thoughtful gaze and could see the same gears spinning in the other stallion’s head. If Rainbow Dash had survived and was willing to lead the Enclave, what did that mean for the Steel Rangers? Would there, at that point, even be a distinction between the two? If not, what would that make any of them? Clover had clearly been mulling this myriad of scenarios over in his head much longer than he had, yet he seemed just as discalmed as Coronado felt.
“I think,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “our first step needs to be verifying whether or not Rainbow Dash is alive. We need to get eyes inside of Stable 10, preferably belonging to both our people if we expect to have any credibility when we go public.”
Clover’s stoic expression softened with relief. Evidently they had come to the same conclusion. “It’s my understanding that the bomb I saw explode shortly after I escaped did so over the top of Foal Mountain. I have to assume that some of my people were able to find shelter inside the Stable and may already know what we know.”
He nodded in agreement. “There were survivors, though I can’t say whether any of them were Enclave. Civilians in the area are well underway with organizing a relief effort at the mountain. Tomorrow morning my Rangers will be escorting a merchant caravan out of the Bluff to render aid and security.”
“And reclaim Stable-Tec’s resources,” Clover added.
“No.” It could be argued that the barb was unnecessary given the context of their meeting, but it wasn’t unfair in light of the extremely unpopular actions taken by the former Elder who preceded him. “I am not Coldbrook. We will go there to see whether Rainbow Dash is still alive and then decide whether Stable 10 can be salvaged.”
Clover’s wings shifted uncertainly beneath their bindings. “We?”
“You’d rather stay here?” He gestured widely to indicate Stable 6, its corridors and compartments choked with Rangers, some of which were unlikely to treat him pleasantly should Coronado embark on a diplomatic trip west. “As you say, there are likely to be Enclave survivors sheltering in the Stable, but I can’t predict what their disposition may be when a couple hundred Rangers arrive. I think it might be prudent to bring along a familiar face from whom they can take orders from.”
He gave Clover time to consider that. When he had, the stallion’s eyes went to the photo hanging behind Coronado’s chair. 
“Before I give you my answer, I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Why the Steel Rangers? What makes all this worthwhile for you?”
He didn’t have to give it much thought. He already knew the answer. “Ammunition.”
Clover frowned. “What?”
“Ammunition,” he repeated. “I want to live in a world where I don’t have to think about how much I have, how much I need, whether it’ll penetrate plate armor, or whether the other guy has something that can punch my ticket while I’m taking a shit. I hate waking up each morning looking for my sidearm and going to bed each night knowing I’ll sleep soundly because it’s loaded. Most of all I hate the fact that a million other wastelanders are forced to lug around a hundred rounds of dead weight for the rest of their lives because they can’t be sure if the next person they meet won’t be just as scared as they are and decide it’s easier to pull a trigger than it is to keep walking. Have you ever been to Fillydelphia?”
The sudden question threw Clover off guard. He shook his head.
“My Rangers and I worked our asses off to make that city feel safe, and in a small way we got there. Bandit attacks were so rare near Magnus Plaza that some of our lifelong citizens stopped taking their weapons with them down market row.”
Clover’s brows went up. 
He nodded with a touch of pride. “It’s corny, but I watched people start to exist again like they did before the bombs fell. Nobody told them to do it, they decided on their own. That’s what makes it all worthwhile.”
“I can understand why,” Clover murmured. “What time does your caravan depart?”
“0430 hours, bright and early.”
Satisfied, Clover leaned back in his chair. “You have yourself a diplomat.”







Fiona padded down the cottage’s shake roof and hopped off the side. Paws and claws sank into the soft grass below, a sensation she couldn’t place having felt before. The damp blades were dark and cool to the touch, and the soil beneath compressed ever so slightly beneath her weight. She was used to the unyielding, rocky ground found pretty much everywhere she’d ever been. Even where scrub grass forced its way through the hardpan the dirt would readily crack and crumble. She wondered where the forest got its water from and, more importantly, how it could be so neatly contained within a border barely five miles across at its farthest points. 
The shallow slice across her right hip left by a lucky bullet stung more brightly in the damp breeze. It carried on it the strong odors of fragrant plants and loamy earth, not unlike the smells from her childhood whenever her mom would bring home and prepare the scant handfuls of vegetable matter the poisoned soil of Griffinstone would bear. Their neighbor, a crotchety old bird known for throwing rocks at any fledgling caught flying above his property, owned a rot barrel that he claimed turned his garbage into fertilizer. Every spring he would crack the barrel open unannounced and shovel the putrid contents across the dirt behind his shack, leaving everyone within a hundred yards to slam shut windows to keep out the stink and shout obscenities toward the source. And yet every fall his back property would bear a few more tomatoes, a couple ears of corn, and sometimes enough potatoes to keep him from spending his chits at the downhill markets. The dense forest and its sifting breezes smelled a lot like the mornings when he hacked apart his garden and churned up its soil for roots. 
Fiona smiled at the memory. She hadn’t thought about that old fart in at least a decade.
The creak of the front door and the uneven sound of hoofsteps pulled her back to the present and she watched with increasing puzzlement as Aurora Pinfeathers limped down the board steps and onto the grass. Confusion shifted to shock as Fiona noticed the whorls of pink skin that stood out along the right side of her body. Up until now she hadn’t fully subscribed to the rumors that the mare had withstood the radiant flash of the balefire bomb. And yet there she was, the feathers along her right wing noticeably shorter and disorganized compared to the untouched layers of its counterpart. There must have been enough left for her to have made it all the way out here, but just barely. 
More bewildering was how old the burn scars looked. The several Fiona caught without flat-out staring looked to have healed over almost completely. New skin drew long, threading patterns where tortured flesh had died, split apart, and made way for a patchwork of lighter scars. The survivors she helped treat in the ruins of Junction City still had weeping wounds that required their bandages to be removed, washed, and reapplied at least twice a day. Their skin was still furious red where it showed through burned coats. It would be weeks longer before they healed to the degree she had. 
Aurora tugged her into a quick hug, her head barely reaching the base of Fiona’s neck. “It’s good to see a familiar face.”
She returned the gesture with a brief pat on the mare’s undamaged shoulder. From the top of the stairs, Mouse watched the exchange with open mistrust. The foreleg he kept his pistol strapped to hung not-so-casually crossed in front of the other where it would remain visible. Standing in the doorway behind him glared, of all creatures, a gray-bearded dragon. A silver pistol hung in his palm, evidently even less welcoming of visitors than Mouse. 
“Yeah, it’s been a minute.” Eyeing the two observers up on the porch, she asked, “Friends of yours?”
Aurora offered a sheepish smile back toward the old house. “Something like that. It’s a lot to explain.”
Her tail swept the grass as she looked up at their glowering faces. “I’ll take your word for it, Feathers.”
“This is my home, Aurora, not a bus stop,” the old dragon called.
Fiona pulled a face. “What’s a bus?”
“Nevermind. How did you find me? Better yet, why are you here? The last time we talked was… well, we were all in that bar with Elder Coldbrook. I didn’t think we were on the best of terms after that.”
“Eh, we weren’t, but I don’t really do grudges.” 
That was a bald-faced lie if ever one existed, but she wasn’t about to tell Aurora that. Through bits and pieces she’d worked out at least a little of what had happened after Coldbrook sent her and her friends packing from the Bluff. The ghoul she’d been with hadn’t apparently come with them on their way back to Stable 10, and she didn’t have to dig too deep to work out what fate had befallen the unicorn mare Aurora had rescued from Autumn Song. Like everyone who went looking for trouble in the wasteland, Aurora and her friends had encountered some fashion of it between their last meeting and now. 
Dredging up Fiona’s unresolved anger over Coldbrook’s decision to put her in debt in exchange for keeping her radio station didn’t seem appropriate with Aurora looking like someone had spent a happy afternoon beating her bloody with a flaming baseball bat. “And actually, your overstallion’s the reason I flew out here looking for you. Him, and a bunch of ponies who saw you in Junction City when the bomb popped. Oh, and that dude over there.”
She aimed a talon at Mouse, whose face hardened with the mild accusation.
Aurora had begun turning to regard the overgrown mop of a stallion before she stopped and frowned up at Fiona instead. “Sledge is alive?”
Her tone was edged with hopeful skepticism, and Fiona realized she just casually strung together a series of words that utterly opposed the reality Aurora believed she had left behind. Her body felt unusually weighted as she nodded. “I talked to him a couple days ago. He told me one of their computers got a ping from your Pip-Buck that put you somewhere way out here.”
She watched Aurora slowly look down at the device clamped around a knot of cloth wrapped around her foreleg, a Pip-Buck that looked utterly different than the one she’d humiliated Paladin Ironshod to retrieve for the mare. “How many survived?”
“Oh, ah, well…” 
The list of things that made Fiona uncomfortable was a short one, practically negligible in most circumstances. At the top of that list: bugs. Not the giant, foal-sized roaches or obscenely bloated flies that swarmed near the glowing boglands pooled at the bottom of her clifftop home in Griffinstone. It was the tiny ones that still skittered around in abandoned houses and clouded the air near a fresh body. Just the thought of being able to lose track of them and suddenly feel tiny itching feet under her feathers and in her fur drove her up the fucking walls. 
A bit lower down the list, and only a bit, were stallions who refused to shut up before, during, and worst of all after sex. It wasn’t idle flirting she disliked - that was part of the fun - it was the one-a-week customer whose idea of romance was to explain in vivid detail exactly what parts of her anatomy he liked, what he promised to do to the aforementioned section of her that had caught his interest (there was rarely ever variety), and once started would narrate every tiny thing he was seeing, doing, and feeling. It was like being subjected to a slam poetry session by someone with a captive audience, with the only benefit being that the reading rarely lasted more than ten minutes. The worst part was that they almost universally never tipped.
The worry on Aurora’s face ticked up a degree, telling her she was taking too long to finish her thought. And of course, joining the ranks of that exclusive list of things that made her deeply uncomfortable was, well, this. Personal stuff. Of any kind. A bit ironic given her line of work but when she was in a room with a paying customer she always had the advantage of spread legs or a lilted tail to ever-so-gently guide clients away from regailing her with stories about recent breakups, job stress, and deep personal insecurities. It wasn’t that she disliked the customers who had issues - their caps spent the same and oftentimes Fiona could absolutely relate - it was because if she didn’t tamp down the oversharing it would open doors in the client’s mind that were best left shut. And locked. And bricked over. Once in a while she had to remind some, gently of course, that they weren’t paying for a marefriend or a new best buddy. That they weren’t going to meet up later to talk more over beers. And that little nudge consistently worked. 
Maybe, she was realizing, a little too well. Aurora wasn’t a customer and there were no rules she could enforce out here that wouldn’t come off as, well, bitchy and insensitive. Every synapse in Fiona’s brain twisted uncomfortably. Helping Vogel feed and water her patients was a pretty low-conversation gig, and he encounters with Sledge had been so comfortably combative that it felt like half the shouted conversations she had back at Someplace Else.
Easy stuff.
But Aurora wasn’t asking her to change someone’s bandages or fly out to investigate a lost friend. She had believed, up until thirty seconds ago, that everyone she knew back in Stable 10 was dead and was just now discovering that wasn’t true. There was enough baggage here to flatten a building and Fiona had to make a physical effort not to respond with her typical brand of overt humor.
“Yeah,” she said, avoiding eye contact like the literal plague. “They’re still alive. Most of them, I think.”
Aurora’s eyes widened. “What do you mean ‘most of them?’”
“I…” She held up a hand, more to stop herself than the wet-eyed pegasus. “The ones I talked to looked malnourished and one of Sledge’s security people said they had run out of clean water. They didn’t say if anyone had died and I didn’t ask, you know?”
Aurora sagged where she stood. Her words tumbled out on each exhalation. “They’re back to square one. No generator. Not enough power coming in from the outside to run the recyclers and the pumps at the same time. Oh no. Oh no no no…”
She was verging on tears. Fiona floundered to get ahead of her. “Wait, hold on, they do have water now! They do. I got them–” Don’t take credit, you idiot. “–I mean, it’s coming in from the Junction City ruins. They set up a supply route before I came out to look for you. Don’t freak out, okay? They got water. They’re all good.”
The poor mare looked more confused than ever, and frustration for only being fed things in piecemeal was beginning to show. “Sledge went to Junction City? How did he…”
“No, just slow down a sec.”
Aurora fixed her with a glare. 
Oh, she hated this. She hated all of this. All of this, she hated. “Junction City came to the Stable. The survivors are kind of relocating there for the time being.”
That seemed to spur a flashback in the mare. She stared through Fiona, her face pinched into a thoughtful frown as she processed what she was hearing. Mouse and the weird, patchwork dragon guy continued to observe from their proverbial high ground on the porch. Both weapons were still very visible, and it took all the self control Fiona had not to antagonize them by pointing out their supposedly impenetrable ring of turrets hadn’t been built to track targets through several hundred yards of dense forest. Whichever one of them set them up had been hoping for a killing field shaped like a disc. The killing field they got, thanks to the unchecked overgrowth, looked more like a donut with their quaint cottage stuck smack dab in the hole. Her thoughts were happily skipping through that field of euphemisms when Aurora finally spoke again.
“How bad was it in Junction City.”
She hesitated to answer. Aurora had to know by now it hadn’t been good. After all, she was one of those survivors. “It wasn’t great,” she admitted. When Aurora stared at her with expectant silence, she gave in and added, “Ms. Vogel said that the fires woke up a lot of people and got them moving before the shockwave reached them. Maybe a hundred or so had gotten clear of the buildings by then. The rest… I mean, the city got flattened and it was mostly built from scavenged wood.”
She hoped that painted enough of a picture without it being too gruesome. During the few days she spent helping, she’d seen enough charred bodies trapped under the rubble to know that few of those in Junction City had died quiet deaths. Aurora seemed to understand it too and thankfully didn’t ask for more detail.
“Did Sledge say anything about my dad?”
Fiona shuffled her wings uncomfortably. “No.”
“What about the radiation?”
Without thinking, she quirked her beak. “I didn’t bring a meter with me, sorry.”
Wrong answer. Oh boy, wrong answer. Aurora shot her a look that was sharp enough to cut. “We carried a live balefire bomb past every level of my Stable. Did he look sick. Did they look poisoned.”
“No,” she said, mentally kicking herself as she did. This was why she avoided stuff like this. “They looked hungry and dehydrated, sure, but radiation never came up. I mean they were all wearing Pip-Bucks and those things have radiation alarms built into them, right?”
“Yeah, and they all have volume knobs built into them, too.” She began to pace across the grass, walking toward the porch steps then turning to head roughly back in Fiona’s direction. “Why didn’t I fix my Pip-Buck first? I could send them a message telling them I’m alright.”
She watched her walking away. “Are you alright?”
Aurora’s tail flicked the air as she turned back. “Fuck no, do I look alright to you?”
A quick beat later she hid her face behind her feathers and muttered, “Sorry.”
“Full disclosure, I’m not good at any of this.” She circled a finger through the air between them to indicate the entirety of their rocky conversation. “Your Stable’s pretty beat up, but it’s in good hands. That’s kind of what you came out here to do, right?”
Aurora looked up at Fiona as if trying to decide whether she was serious or not. “I came out here to fix our generator, not to turn my home into something for the Enclave and Steel Rangers to go to war– you’re bleeding.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You’re bleeding.” She was circling around Fiona before she could reply. “Celestia’s tit , you got shot. Why the fuck wouldn’t you lead with that?”
“It’s just a graze,” she dismissed, sidling her back half away before Aurora could get within poking range. She tried not to make it too obvious when she stole a look at the wound to make sure she hadn’t misjudged it. Sure enough, an eight inch gash no deeper than the pad of her thumb peeled apart her tan coat to expose glossy red tissue. A bright sheet of blood covered most of her flank, thinning to individual rivulets further down her leg. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t an emergency either. “Relax, okay? I’m not about to keel over and die.”
Aurora stopped in her tracks and swayed a little as if she’d been slapped. She passed a long moment glowering at the slick of bloody grass beneath Fiona’s hind paw. “Fuck you.” Abruptly, she turned back toward the house and started marching up the porch steps. “And stay there.”
Fiona stood on the grass, gobsmacked as she watched the mare stormed past her two friends and vanished into the house. The glare Mouse reserved for Fiona somehow managed to darken, but the dragon had no time for her. It bent through the door calling after Aurora in a low voice, clearly concerned. 
“What did I say?”
The sounds of rummaging echoed from the open windows along with some spirited conversation she couldn’t make out. From his post at the top of the steps, Mouse leaned against one of the porch posts and simply continued to glare. 
A minute later Aurora marched back out with a fat roll of gauze in one wing and a squarish brown bottle in the other. In a flat tone she said, “Hold out your hoof.”
“Um.” She stopped short of correcting her and held out her open hand. Both the gauze and antiseptic plopped into her palm. “Thanks?”
“Flush that out, wrap it up, and go tell Sledge that I’m fine.”
The bottle sloshed in her hand. “Okay, but I kind of implied I’d bring you back with me.”
Aurora’s eyes darted to the gash on her hip before snapping back to meet her gaze. “I’m not dragging anybody else into my shit, especially not anybody back home.”
“If you need help with–”
“I had help.” She flinched at the heat in her own voice, her tone tempering as she forced it to cool. “It just didn’t work out. I’m good. Tell Sledge I have something I need to fix, then I’ll come home. Okay?”
It was very much not okay. “Tell him yourself. I’m not flying all the way back just to say I found you safe and sound but you mysteriously wanted to stay in the woods with an antisocial junk seller and a crotchety dragon hermit.” 
But Aurora had already turned back to the house. Fiona watched her limp her way back up the stairs and ask the hermit to turn off the turrets. He grumbled something by way of acquiescence and thumped off into the house, leaving Aurora to pause at the open door and look back. “Goodbye, Flipswitch.”
“It’s Fiona,” was all she could think to say.
Aurora nodded and disappeared into the house, leaving her on the grass to tend to her wound while Mouse glared his disdain from the top of the steps. With no other options, Fiona unscrewed the cap from its bottle and went to work splashing stinging liquid across her bloodied hip. She dabbed gauze against torn flesh a bit harder than she strictly needed to as she tried to decide whether she was pissed off or completely disoriented. Somewhere along the way she’d stepped in shit and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out when it had been. One minute Aurora’s happy to see her again, the other she’s tossing gauze in her hand and telling her to beat it. 
She sat in the grass and hefted her leg to wrap her wound. Mouse made a noise and averted his eyes. Normally a reaction like that would make her feel better, but this time she barely noticed. She was too busy replaying the conversation she just had in her head and kept coming to the same bewildered question.
What the hell just happened?







Aurora remained slouched in the couch’s suspiciously mare-shaped dent, staring dully at her reflection in the dark screen of Ginger’s restored Pip-Buck. Oak logs spat and crackled atop the coals of a renewed fire, the thin fog of burning wood worth a fortune in bits back home rolling occasionally into the living room and giving everything inside the cottage a warm odor of smoke.
Discord had all of the windows open to vent what the chimney couldn’t carry away. Another dawn had arrived to help chase away the night chill but Aurora had hardly noticed. Her thoughts were far away as Discord paced uneasily from one room to the next, fretting to himself about yet another visitor he hadn’t wanted and just how long it would be until his cottage would be reduced to some roadside attraction. 
Mouse, who had since busied himself with whittling away the bark from two lengths of the hemlock he’d brought for Aurora’s new leg, grumbled around the chewed hilt of a fat knife that Discord was overreacting. He sounded confident when he said that the gryphon still loitering outside had come here to collect Aurora, not steer a hundred curious gawkers toward a patch of green forest that most people he knew actively avoided for fear of catching some kind of prewar supervirus. Even the Cinder raiders steered well clear of the unnatural forest, few of them interested in testing the perimeter of what rumors led them to believe to be the site of an unmarked bioweapon research facility. Munitions factories and ammo dumps they would attack with crowbars and explosives without second thought, but not even the Enclave or the Steel Rangers were suicidal enough to risk releasing a toxin for which the wasteland likely had no cure.
His dispassionate logic did little to assuage Discord’s growing anxiety, and the worried muttering had only grown more frequent as the first diffuse rays of sunlight slid through the leaves. Hoof and paw pad-thumped across the rugs toward the window facing out onto the front porch, and Discord once again paused there to eye the gryphon sleeping outside.
“She’s still out there.” He gripped the edge of the window, meaning to pull it shut, but that would make the woodsmoke pool more thickly on that side of the cottage. Frustrated, he left it be and leveled a finger at Mouse as he resumed his pacing. “You of all people should be concerned. She’s using your wagon as a motel.”
Mouse grunted as he dragged the blade through another shallow cut. Hemlock bark and curled shavings sprinkled his lap and the floor around him. “Can’t get into my provisions if she’s sleeping. I were you, I’d be more worried about how she figured she could drop in the way she did.”
Discord folded his arms and wandered into the kitchen for what seemed the hundredth time. “Oh forgive me for not factoring idiotic hubris into my home security’s design.”
Another wood strip curled away and dropped into the nest of shavings. Mouse paused to press the log against the upper half of his hind leg, then rolled it over and did it again, idly gnawing the knife’s handle as he did so. A moment later he was back to carving. “Nah. That gryphon’s no dunce. Saw her asking questions about Aurora all over Crow’s Grove before she zeroed in on me. She’s got experience sifting bullshit. I’ll bet she figured you set those turrets not to fire toward the cabin faster than you can take a shit.”
Discord emerged from the kitchen sipping at a glass of tepid water, his eyes returning to the open porch window as soon as it came into view. “I’m choosing to believe that was an abstraction.”
Mouse grunted again.
Discord narrowed his eyes. “I’m hiding the clock next time you visit.”
Aurora only half-listened to their bickering. She had turned on the Pip-Buck again, listening to the near silent whine of a hard disk coming up to speed as it ran through the same boot sequence it had the last few times. The Robronco logo splashed once more in full color, pixels dancing and dissolving into a stream of green text racing up the screen before finally settling on a simple pictorial instruction directing a pony’s foreleg through the cuff of a tiny Pip-Buck. The cloth she’d secured between it and her own foreleg was still stopping the device from recognizing her. Chances were when she finally wore it without that barrier, someone working the computers in New Canterlot would be asking themselves why a dead pureblood pegasus had just logged onto the network with Enclave property assumed to have been destroyed. She decided she was tempting fate fiddling with it and powered it down.
“She’ll go away once she figures out I’m not going with her.” She let the cushion cradle her neck as she closed her eyes, the hours of lost sleep catching up to her. “She barely knows me.”
For a while neither of the boys said anything. Discord paced. Mouse whittled. Aurora settled into a semi-comfortable position on the couch and, for a moment, felt herself nodding off. She hoped by the time someone woke her up Fiona would be well on her way back home. 
“She ain’t gonna leave without you.” 
The simple confidence in Mouse’s voice made her brows knit, and the silence that followed only irritated her that much more. She wanted to stare daggers at the stallion, but kept her eyes shut out of sheer stubbornness. “She will.”
A grunt. “Nah.” 
Motherfucker. He’d gone right back to whittling as if that single syllable was argument enough. She rolled her jaw with new anger, trying to squeeze as much sarcasm into her reply as possible. “Thank you for your profound wisdom. How could I have been so blind?”
She felt shitty as soon as the words left her mouth, but she didn’t apologize. Mouse gave her the impression that he wasn’t the type to take a little backsass personally. Judging by the smooth rasp of his knife through wood, it hadn’t even registered.
“Your people sent the bird,” he said, his voice muddied by the knife between his teeth, “to find you, a mare who dropped out of the sky half cooked and more than half dead. Whoever you have back home, they’re probably not so sure you’re alive right now. Doubt they’ll be satisfied if you send that gryphon off with some flimsy promise that you’re okay.”
Anger welled in her throat, bringing with it a litany of responses each of which were as scathing as they were out of line. She swallowed them, letting her silence speak for her until she could cobble together a believable deflection.
“Both of you know what’s happening to me.” Feathers absently rubbed the burns down her right foreleg, rasping pointedly across unnaturally healed gnarls of skin. “I don’t have time. If I end up losing myself to this… process before I can kill Primrose, then she gets away with it all over again. She wins.”
Mouse had no snappy reply to offer nor a dismissive grunt. For a moment Aurora thought he was ignoring her in favor of whittling, but even the soft scrapes of wood had gone quiet. Opening her eyes she realized the stallion was staring at her with deep furrows carved across his brow. He fixed her with a steady stare she’d seen too many times before during her journey toward the coast. It was recognition. A sudden understanding that the mare he was speaking with was dangerous not to others, but to him.
“You’re going to try killing Primrose,” he stated flatly. “Minister Primrose. Of the Enclave.”
By now Discord had slowed his pacing and was beginning to pay closer attention to the conversation. He already knew what Aurora was after. She’d said as much more than once, and each time he neither argued for or against her admittedly vague plan. It didn’t occur to her until now that Discord had always found some way to gently maneuver the conversation toward other things without contributing to the topic of assassination himself. 
Before Aurora could say yes, she did in fact hope to send a bullet via express delivery to a destination just behind Primrose’s fourth rib, Discord had addressed Mouse with a tone suggesting he wasn’t strictly welcome for the remainder of this conversation. He suggested Mouse take the prosthesis parts out to the porch where he could keep a weather eye on their avian guest. 
Mouse was no dummy. He could make a stink about being shut out or he could do as he was asked. He opted for the latter, knowing the result would be the same either way. Aurora wanted to point out Mouse would be able to hear anything above a whisper from the window facing the porch but opted against being petty. Now that all her cards were on the table, Discord was taking the reins. She let him. She wanted to know what he was thinking.
Once Mouse had taken his crate of supplies outside and left them to their privacy, Discord rounded the coffee table and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. After a moment he said, “You should go home.”
She sat up straight. “Wait, you’re kicking me out?”
He met her indignation with a passive frown. “No, Aurora, I’m stating the obvious. You have family out there looking for you, and a friend outside who found you on their behalf. Why you’re not jumping at the chance is beyond me.”
“I already told you, I don’t have time.”
Discord cocked a brow. “Ghouling is a long process. At the very least you have several weeks before you’ll know which way it’ll go.”
Hearing it described so bluntly startled her more than the uncanny speed with which her burns had scarred over. She wanted to feel angry at him for giving this curse of hers a fixed deadline but settled for merely kicking herself for prompting him in the first place. Something sour grew in her gut as she tried to bolster a weak argument against going with Fiona.
“It’s not just this,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the splotches down her right side. “What if the Enclave spots me? What happens if Primrose finds out I’m still alive and finds some hole in the ground to hide in until someone comes to put me down for good?”
“You can wear a disguise.”
She balked at him. “I can’t just… look, it’s just not that simple.”
“Tell me how it’s not.”
“It just isn’t!” She grabbed the armrest with her wing and pushed herself off the couch. Her hooves led her toward the wood shavings still scattered on the floor where she began scooping them up, squeezing them into little balls, and lobbing them into the fireplace where they burst into a crackling frenzy. She watched them blacken and fall apart, flatting themselves into shrinking mounds over the coals. Then her gaze shifted to Ginger’s Pip-Buck, still clinging dutifully to her foreleg. “I need to do this first.”
Discord watched her for what felt like a full minute before speaking. “Killing, you mean.”
She flicked another ball of shavings into the fire. “Yes.”
“But before you kill Primrose, you have to kill this Eshe fellow.”
Her jaw clenched. “He asked me. He’s suffering alone.”
“Do you want to, though?”
She looked up from the fire and glared at him. “Are you offering to do it for me?”
“No, I’m not.” He leaned forward in his seat, propping his elbows against his knees. “Put the anger aside for a moment and consider the fact that all your enemies have every reason to assume you’re dead. You’re on nobody’s radar. You have a chance to go home, be with your loved ones, and put all of this behind you for however long you have left.”
“Are you actually suggesting I should go home, keep my head down, and wait until the radiation turns me feral? Because that’s a real shitty plan, Discord.”
“It gives your loved ones closure. That’s a fair bit better than leaving them to wonder whether you’re still alive and why you never came home.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Would Ginger have wanted you to spend your final days obsessing over how to kill Primrose, or would she have wanted you to be safe and happy?”
She turned away, retreating to the glow of the fire. “Would Fluttershy have wanted you to become a lonely recluse?” The words slid off her tongue like ice and she regretted them as soon as they were spoken. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Discord cleared his throat, no doubt swallowing some harsh words of his own. “Forgiven. You’re one of the good ones, Aurora. You deserve to be happy.”
“I want to be happy.” She swept the last of the shavings into the fire, stirring up a cloud of embers that swirled up the chimney. “But I have to do this. I promised Eshe I’d help him. And Primrose… she deserves worse than what I can do to her, but I’m going to try my best to make it hurt.”
“Eshe, who is trapped somewhere inside an MOI blacksite with presumably active defenses, and Primrose, who is one of the best protected creatures on this planet.” Discord let his words hang in the air for a moment to be sure she understood. “You’ll have better odds in a group than you would–”
“I said no.”
She turned to see the bewildered frown sink the corners of his lips and knew she was tipping her hand. She couldn’t help it. As much as she didn’t want to talk about it, that tiny piece of her begged to say the words out loud. Rather than torture herself by watching him piece it together, she distracted herself by pacing toward the restored phonograph perched proudly in the corner of the room. Her hoof bounced uneasily on the boards as she gave the crank a few slow, idle turns. Then she let go of it, knowing how absurd it would feel to play music right now.
Her wing slid back to her side and she stared at the old instrument for a long, quiet breath. “Ever since I went outside, I’ve done nothing but get everyone around me hurt or killed.”
The couch let out a little creak as Discord leaned forward. “I’m sure that isn’t true.”
She angled her gaze away from the phonograph she’d fixed just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. In spite of his reputation, his name, he reminded Aurora of her father in so many ways. Somewhere along those many years he’d developed a paternal side that he wore as naturally as that cheshire smile.
“Before Ginger died, a mare named Autumn Song put a bounty on her head and tortured her thinking she was me. Fiona out there? She lost her livelihood for helping me. And after that, we ran into… this kid, barely out of his teens, who was early into his ghouling and was half crazy. His mom shot Roach in the neck. Grazed him, really, but still. Then Julip got shot. Ginger said she came really close to dying. Real close. And then Primrose sent the bomb to my Stable…”
The words trailed off as it grew too hard to keep her voice steady. She paused for a moment to brush the mist out of her eyes, determined not to let herself break. 
“Well, it sounds like your Stable’s okay. You still have that.”
She shook her head, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Yeah, I still have that. Except I’m the reason they almost all died. They’re only breathing because Ginger figured out what the talisman was doing before it could detonate, and now she’s dead. So why would any of them want me to come back home when all I’ve done is make everything worse?”
Discord knit his fingers together, watching her forcing the cracks in her composure back together. “I think you already know why, but if it helps to hear somebody else say it I can do that for you.”
She sniffed, staring at the floor while simultaneously hating and admiring his deft manner of nudging her away from the tempting catharsis of self-loathing. As had been the case since she’d first woken on his couch, bandaged and battered by tremendous pain, he offered a sympathetic ear freely. He would listen up to a point, always stopping short of mindlessly patting her on the back and saying “there, there.” Because at the end of the day he knew it wasn’t what she needed.
Her hooves scuffed over the dry boards and she paused beside the open window facing the front porch. Unsurprisingly, Mouse’s ear was turned toward her as he sent curls of hemlock leaping down the porch steps. Inside the wagon, Fiona slept with her chin rising and falling against her chest. Aurora still didn’t understand how Fiona had come to meet Sledge, let alone talk to him long enough for the grizzled former head of Mechanical to ask for her help. 
She touched the two Pip-Bucks she wore and wondered what kind of homecoming she would receive, if she received one at all. Would she be stopped at the door, deemed too dangerous to return to the Stable she’d exposed to enemies far more deadly than a broken generator? Worse, would she be given a hero’s welcome that she didn’t deserve, forced to smile through warm welcomes and sanitize stories of the wasteland for which none of them were prepared. 
Staring out at the dozing gryphon and recently retired radio DJ, she knew it wouldn’t pay to worry. The decision had been made for her the moment Fiona dropped onto the shingled roof. 
She was going home to finally see the mess she’d left in her wake.







The sound of hooves descending the porch steps gave Fiona a good enough excuse to pretend to be roused from her feigned sleep. She curled her toes and then spread them wide as she stretched, pretending to carelessly shove several of Mouse’s crates into a jumbled crush in the wagon’s corner. She could practically hear the stallion grumbling at the sight of the little mess, though that was wishful thinking. Something told her he was just perpetually grouchy no matter what day it was. Plenty of those back at the Bluff, so why should western Equestria be any different?
She made a show of scratching the invisible crud out of her eyes as she watched Aurora, Mouse, and her dragon friend make their way down the grass toward her. Mouse was muttering off some advice about the two halves of carved wood tucked under Aurora’s wing while the dragon followed, his eyes fixed on Fiona with much less hostility than before. Something about the way it stared made her sit up straight and get to her feet, as if he knew she’d been listening in to the bits of conversation that drifted through the open windows rather than dozing. She stepped over the sideboards and dropped onto the grass in a graceful, feline movement that momentarily distracted both of the approaching ponies. By the time they reached the wagon, however, Mouse was talking again like she wasn’t there at all.
“You can find some decent pneumatic pistons in a lot of old swivel chairs. That’s what I used for my knee joint, anyway. Spent a lot of time modifying it, so it’s not something you can plug in and walk around on. Still, might be worth your time looking into is all I’m saying.”
Aurora glanced up at her before nodding to Mouse. “No, it’s a good idea. Thanks.”
“Sure. Your Stable probably manufactures better stuff than we get out in the wasteland, but yeah. If you stick with a wood core, avoid drilling too many holes in it. You’ll get cracks and it’ll go to shit. Better to clamp some metal hoops around it and add connection points to that. After that you can weld a chassis over the skeleton.” They stopped beside the wagon, and he lifted his own prosthetic foreleg as an example. “Worked for mine, and steel scrap’s cheap.”
Aurora nodded as she turned her attention up to Fiona. “Discord switched off the perimeter guns. How’s your hip?”
She glanced back at the neat wrap of bandages hiked up like a garter on her left thigh. “I’m counting on that graze turning into a cool scar.” The corner of her beak turned up into a smirk. “I’m assuming I’m not flying back alone?”
Her answer came in the form of Aurora holding out in her wing the two carved lengths of what were to become her prosthetic hind leg. Without having to ask, Fiona retrieved her sparingly packed satchel from the wagon and slid both pieces under the flap. The worn leather bulged at odd angles from the rigid load but there was barely room enough to stow them away. 
“I’m going, but I’m not staying long.” Aurora stared off past a wall of oaks she must have mistakenly believed to be west, toward Stable 10. Fiona kept that to herself. “Did Sledge say he was going to pay you?”
She hesitated a moment before eventually shaking her head no. “Funny enough, we weren’t thinking about caps.”
“I’ll figure something out,” she murmured. “Before we go, I need a couple assurances from you. Non-negotiable.”
Fiona eyed the mare.
“First, you don’t tell anybody about this place.” Aurora gestured around at the little oasis among the trees, then to the spindly old dragon behind her. “Or about him. If anyone asks, you found me holed up in that Crow’s Grave town where you met Mouse.”
“Grove,” Mouse rumbled.
Aurora didn’t acknowledge the correction and instead waited for a response from Fiona. 
With no real reason to argue, she shrugged and nodded. “Alright, I was never here. What else?”
She expected Aurora to tack on a caveat that she not speak to her during the flight back, or that she leave her alone as soon as they arrive. From the snippets she’d overheard during her feigned nap, Aurora was convinced she was some sort of death magnet for everyone around her. Even now, Fiona could see the clear difference between the mare she was speaking with now and the wide-eyed Stable mare who nearly flew head first into the side of Blinder’s Bluff. The wasteland did what the wasteland always seemed to do. It had smothered Aurora’s light under a heavy blanket of dust.
“That’s it,” Aurora said, missing the opportunity to isolate herself further. “I need you to carry some other things, too. Food and water. Some hardware for my leg. My saddlebags are back home, and–”
“Got it.” She had a good idea why Aurora’s bags were back at the Stable and didn’t want to force her to explain it. Giving the contents of her satchel a good shuffle, she decided a few more things wouldn’t bust the seams. It would be like lugging a rock halfway across the map, sure, but that’s why they made painkillers for sore muscles. “It’s a long flight. If we don’t take breaks, I’ll bet we’ll arrive before dusk.”
“We’ll see. I haven’t flown since… well, since.” 
Fiona could sense the awkward silence coming before it had a chance to settle in. There wasn’t much in the way of preparation that needed to be done, not for this flight. It was just a matter of taking off and stacking the miles behind them. Only she could tell by the way Aurora kept looking away there were goodbyes to be said.
“I’m going to take a couple minutes to check out those flowers.” She turned toward a patch of orange petals perched atop a thicket of swaying green stalks. “Give a shout when you’re ready to go.”







Green light flashed beyond the mouth of the tunnel and the explosion followed close on its heels.
Someone standing in line ahead of Dusky shouted a reflexive curse while others shifted uncomfortably on their hooves. He glanced up in the direction of the voice, his body tired and his thoughts in a fog of grief. In the end it hadn’t been the death of the generator or fear of the growing number of violent incidents that had driven them outside, but thirst. The great cisterns which the creators of their Stable dug at the height of a forgotten war had finally, inexorably run dry. Reclamation systems meant to run for another three centuries found themselves lacking the power needed to keep up with the demand even at quarter rations. The entire Stable had been reduced to sipping from the same vanishing puddle and, if the defeated whispers in the halls were to be believed, most of Dusky’s friends and neighbors had been prepared to lock themselves in their compartments to die with what little dignity they could manage. 
No one asked what that resolve meant for those with children. The answer to that question was clear in the eyes of parents who had already spent the last several weeks dreading it. And Stable 10 had come close to those nightmares becoming a reality. Close enough that, even now with water arriving by the barrel from strangers from the outside, many residents weren’t just holding their own bits in their feathers but bits belonging to several families at least. They had slid so close to the precipice that it was still visible in their minds, so much so that some were too ashamed of what they had prepared to do to leave their compartments to collect water. 
Thunder, a word Dusky hadn’t until now experienced outside of old books and grainy films, rippled into the mouth of the tunnel to echo across uneven flagstones and smooth concrete pillars. He glanced past the end of the long water line out toward the sickly, flickering sky, then down to the half dozen bits in his wing. He rolled one over, reading the worn Sparkle-Cola logos in the shifting light provided by cookfires and lamps built into the bulky armor suits worn by the recently arrived Steel Rangers, and tried to find the humor in the idea that civilization had carried on after the bombs fell and that the currency of choice had fallen to the lowly bottlecap. The outsiders just called them “caps,” according to Sledge. Out of stubborn principle his fellow residents chose to call them bits, possibly as a way to maintain a firm line between inside and out. 
It didn’t matter to most that the door had been knocked open and the outside air already flowed through the vents of their Stable. Some taboos defied reason. They had all been taught from birth that the outside world was toxic and would remain so until an invisible clock known only to Stable-Tec counted down to zero. Only then could the outside world be resettled. It was true because Stable-Tec said it was true.
The line moved forward. Dusky folded his feathers over the six caps’ pleated edges and stepped into the spot that opened ahead of him, the six empty canteens slung over his neck clattering in a flowing chorus of others rippling behind him. Three belonged to a young family of outsiders that arrived earlier today. They were pegasi except for the mother who made up for her lack of wings with sheer brawn. They arrived on an armed wagon train, more new words for him to learn, along with what seemed like enough soldier folk to fill a whole Stable on their own. This family claimed to have met Aurora during her expedition through the barren lands outside, an assertion that had quickly gotten them escorted inside to speak to Sledge and, once the earth pony named Meridian relinquished her considerable weaponry, to Dusky. Their conversation had been brief as it was intense. Meridian and Briar hadn’t planned on meeting him, hadn’t known he existed until they were introduced. None of them knew exactly what to say and the platitudes they offered felt hollow. He didn’t know these people, but they were here now and they’d known his daughter. Probably they had felt guilty when he’d volunteered to find them some canteens down in Supply, but he’d excused himself before giving them a chance to say otherwise.
The fourth and fifth canteens had been assigned to a pair of new arrivals Sledge wanted him to speak to but for which he hadn’t yet made the effort. He worried if he indulged the overstallion without resistance then the parade of strangers would never end. Aurora had made friends out there in the wider world and for that he would forever be proud of her. For now, that had to be enough.
He lifted a feather to the last canteen, his canteen, and wondered how long it would take for the fog to lift.
He yawned as he stepped forward with the movement of the line. The world beyond the tunnel was stuck in a worsening haze of darkness that refused to divulge any details of what lay beyond except for the occasional flash of lightning. A “radstorm,” he’d heard someone further back in the line call it. Not a thunderstorm. The outsiders called it a radstorm.
A middle-aged mare passing the line with freshly filled and considerably heavier canteens sloshing from their straps met his wandering gaze, pursed her lips into a pensive line, and nodded once to him. He nodded back. She didn’t speak to him, nor did Dusky need her to. The meaning was the same no matter who it came from:
Condolences. 
He cleared his throat and stepped forward with the line. They filed along between columns holding up an arched roof taller than any ceiling he’d seen before. He felt exposed, but more than that he felt like an intruder in a place of power. This was the tunnel through which the first generation of survivors, their ancestors, retreated into the Stable. This was a place built by people who saw the end of their shining civilization on the horizon and who knew their magic, as miraculous and powerful as it was, would not be able to save all of them. 
His gaze went to the broad posters still preserved behind glass frames along the walls. Faces of dead princesses and ministers stared out from yellowed paper toward their descendants. Slogans from a war long ended warned them against forgotten enemies, cowardice, and dissent. They were cracks in the facade of the perfect world the bombs were said to have reduced to ash. Warnings, Dusky thought, not to defy those who would fill a Stable with pegasi and callously leave anyone else to die on their doorstep.
Lightning burst across the sky outside and a shredding whip crack of thunder caused the entire water line to falter. One of the outsiders shouted reassurances above the uneasy murmurs and, when the ponies dressed in all manner of leather and rags near the tunnel’s opening didn’t show much concern for the weather, the line continued to move. Dusky watched a mare tilt her full canteen to her lips as she left the line and sauntered over to a group of unicorns busy stacking crates in front of one of the ancient war posters. The tunnel carried her voice as she asked whether they might see rain before the storm ended. The consensus between the outsiders was that this wasn’t a raining kind of storm. Dusky had to reach deep to remember the illustrations of different types of weather they all learned about as students and vaguely remembered rain being a phenomenon when water fell from the sky rather than misters plumbed across the garden plots. He felt a strange urge to leave the line and join the small clutch of residents huddled together at the end of the tunnel, eyes wide and mouths hung slack as they watched the crashing storm with no fear whatsoever. The canteens around his neck clattered impatiently and he let temptation fade. 
When Dusky’s turn came at the front of the line, a unicorn stallion wearing tightly bound bandages around his midsection filled each of his canteens from a tap fixed at the base of a blue barrel while a wingless, hornless mare took his caps and wrote the names stamped into each canteen into a worn ledgerbook. He flinched a little each time the unicorn let water burble over the lip of each canteen and dribble onto the wet flagstones, but kept quiet. More than a dozen identical barrels stood lined up against the wall nearby, ready to be tapped and poured. He thanked the outsiders, received polite but distracted acknowledgement, and soon he was stepping aside to make room for the pegasus behind him.
There was a moment where he wasn’t sure what to do next. He stared at the flagstones, at the way age had forced their edges to sink beneath layers of dust until the floor was an uneven remnant of its former self. He stood there until someone else left the line, jostling him a little as they passed, and slowly his hooves began to rise and fall as he joined the scattered trail of pegasi back to their Stable.
Lightning flashed again, and so too came the rumble of thunder. A few gasps rippled down the line as he passed by but he paid it no mind. Murmurs followed, and a few shushed whispers. Neighbors, he assumed, who were just now seeing the storm for the first time. But the voices grew louder. He glanced at the line and saw widened eyes fixed on something behind him, then growing wider with recognition and almost at once turning to him. He frowned, suddenly worried he’d dropped a canteen and spilled precious water, and stopped to take a look back.
The creature approaching him towered over the other residents still waiting in line and instantly reminded him of a charcoal tracing of a golden eagle that his brother had once made when they were still young and curious. His hackles rose, but only for a moment. Then his eyes went to the mare limping along beside the creature and he forgot to breathe. 
Before his mind could process what he was seeing, he found himself gripped around the neck by his daughter. Seconds passed as he stood there, mute with shock, unbelieving. The tunnel shimmered behind grateful tears and he realized he was crying. He threw his hooves around Aurora and squeezed her, wanting to be sure this was real, and the uncomfortable oof she made drove home the fact that she wasn't imagined. She was here, truly alive and home once more. Canteens clattered as his knees gave beneath. The tears grew into convulsing sobs, and he felt ashamed that Aurora had to ease him down to the flagstones. Distantly he was aware of all the times he'd held her like this when she was so very little. 
As a disbelieving crowd began to peel off the water line and mill toward them, his only daughter rocked him gently as he wept. 


	




Word spread into the Stable of her survival as soon as her father recognized her in the tunnel. He’d taken it upon himself to bear water not just for Beans and her family, making good on a promise Aurora hadn’t thought possible to keep, but for Roach and Julip too. Her first impulse upon hearing her friends were here in her Stable was to ask where they were staying and renew the bond they’d been forced to break after departing the oil rig with the Enclave. In between her nights with Tandy and days with Discord, she’d worried about what might befall them on their way back to the Bluff. Apparently nothing had, or at least nothing so significant to delay them. 
Thoughts of reuniting with them fizzled at the idea of telling them that Ginger was gone. Roach had, in his way, all but adopted her as a surrogate daughter. The two of them only first met when Aurora was in her last days of schooling, dealing with hormones and worried about embarrassing her mom if she failed her apprenticeship in Mechanical. She’d forced herself to be strong for her dad, but holding him while he sobbed into her shoulder had rattled her. She couldn’t handle that twice in the same day.
Which is why she felt some relief in knowing she wasn’t staying long.
Limping alongside her bleary-eyed father and using Fiona’s bulk to push through the first curious onlookers to trickle out into the tunnel, Aurora heard only pieces of what he was saying as they passed through the shattered mouth of her home. Their shadows chased ahead of them over the threshold and joined the deeper dark of the unlit space beyond. Only the light from the lamps back in the tunnel offered them any clue to where it was safe to step. Her chest clenched at the sight of the great cog slumped in the far corner of the antechamber, a full third of it buried beneath shattered concrete, steel, and the mountain’s exposed bedrock. A thin layer of chalky dust coated the yellow 10 at its center as it did a wingful of other rare surfaces in the antechamber yet undisturbed by so much traffic. Aurora noticed the paths cut through the loose rubble like trails carved through wood by termites. Rusty splashes that weren’t shadows darkened much of the floor around it.
She tried not to stare at the evidence of so much carnage, but how could she avoid it when it was everywhere? She knew what the dark stains on the rubble were. She understood the forces the door was intended to withstand and could piece together herself what had happened to anyone caught standing on the other side when the blast roared through the tunnel like a superheated battering ram. Her Stable survived the bomb, yes, but not without casualties.
To her relief, the emergency lights still glowed dimly behind their plastic domes once they reached the security office. Pale light illuminated deep fractures in the wall where it had buckled from the violence of the outer door’s impact. Plastic sheeting hung in the doorway to the Atrium, the heavy zipper running down its center seam having been lifted open and the flaps held apart by straps some time before her arrival. A safety precaution by someone with their head on straight quickly demoted to a necessary nuisance by the hundreds of survivors whose thirst overrode their fear of breathing contaminated air. Plastic crinkled as they passed through and Aurora’s heart sank at the sight that greeted her on the other side.
Instead of stepping onto the second level promenade, she found herself at the top of a makeshift set of hastily welded stairs. Much of the upper level lay in ruins on the Atrium floor, where the largest pieces of twisted steel rails and catwalk were thrown onto the collapsed section of wall below the overseer’s office door. It didn’t take much time for Aurora to figure out in which direction the outer door’s impact had propagated when it struck the far side of the antechamber. For anyone standing in the Atrium when the bomb went off, seeing that section of wall burst apart must have felt like the end of the world. She swallowed as she remembered how popular the Atrium was with the Stable’s youngest residents, then tried her best to distract herself as they descended on uneven steps. 
She almost tripped on the last one when someone’s hoof slammed a welded step behind her. The sharp bang came again, and again, causing her to look back to see a stallion she didn’t recognize stamping the iron. No sooner had she tried placing him did another hoof start sounding ahead of her, belonging to the waitress she’d spoken to ages ago in the Brass Bit. Then more hooves joined in, and Aurora slowly realized the Atrium was filling and the stomping crowd was looking at her. Applause. It swelled, echoing off the ruined walls of her home as people she knew and many more she didn’t trickled in from the corridors to join in. Someone whistled. Another fired off a peel of their own, and yet more kept spilling through gaps in the crowd. Many were smiling at her, some were not. 
A film of tears blurred the mass of familiar faces. She could feel the floor vibrate beneath her own hooves and the noise soaked into her like something physical. She swallowed harder and blinked to clear her vision, knowing she wasn’t worthy of anything like this. The rings under their eyes were because of her. The great door had been destroyed because of her. Ginger was gone because…
From the heart of the thundering crowd emerged a familiar face that stopped her cold. Pale green eyes, lit with an inner glow, met hers. Pegasi on either side of him flinched away once they noticed who they were standing next to but the calm smile pulling at the shattered black chitin around his muzzle didn’t dim. Roach had lived too long to be bothered by his own appearance. He stepped forward, leaving the thundering applause behind as he crossed the floor of a Stable he’d spent centuries standing as its lone sentry.
She forced herself not to step back, but the urge was powerful. She didn’t want to tell him. Not here. Definitely not now, when he looked so relieved to see her! And then it hit her. Of course he was relieved. They all were, because they knew what happened. Roach already knew what happened.
His smile broke ever so slightly as he wrapped her up and crushed the wind out of her, and for a moment Aurora was lost for words. Her father had politely stepped away to give them room. She could see Julip stepping nervously out from the crowd, unsure whether she should cross the gap or keep her distance. She half expected Sledge to bowl his way through the Atrium shouting all manner of joyful profanity but if he was here he’d chosen to remain in the background. Then it occurred to her that Roach was sniffling. 
“I’m so sorry.”
His apology rumbled softly in her ear, but it roared through the brickworks containing her grief like a cannonshot. Roach knew Ginger was gone and the first thing he thought to do was apologize to her. The last vestige of Aurora’s strength dissolved like sugar in water, and the first sob to roll up her throat was a noisy, ugly thing she couldn’t stop. More followed. Her chest shook with them as all the pain, the guilt, the shame of being given a second chance at life at the cost of someone loved by many bore her down to her knees. 
Quickly the applause fell silent, the crowd shamefaced and uncertain, as Aurora fell fully apart.







Primrose stared at the capsule, then at the paper cup. With a grimace she tossed back the pill and chased it with a swallow of water. The cup made a hollow noise when she set it on the table. Slouching a little, she raised the edge of her hoof to the pulsing ache just behind her right eye and went about massaging it. 
“Ma’am?”
She sighed, then twirled a feather in the air for the young officer to continue. Already the faint buzz of stimulants and something new, something the doctors promised would clear some of her sleep-deprived fog, were beginning to work their magic. Rebound alone wasn’t keeping her awake anymore and if they didn’t figure out a solution to her problem soon, either someone was going to start putting out feelers for a replacement or she’d be leading the Enclave with a Jet inhaler up her ass.
She giggled at that, causing the worried gazes of two loyal generals and a glorified computer geek to turn her way. It took her half a second to compose herself, but the damage was done. She glared back at them, daring them to say anything out of line, and soon everyone’s attention was forced back to the only lit monitor in the war room.
The young officer, one of the stallions charged weeks ago with decrypting the data the Enclave had pulled from Autumn Song’s servers well before the local tinned soldiers arrived at the solar array, aimed the tip of a retractable wand to an object on the monitor. “As I said, ma’am, the telemetry sent from the solar array explains the eccentric orbit we assumed SOLUS had been moved into after the bombs fell. We can only assume what Jet Stream’s intentions were when he sent the command to fire the reaction controls fully lateral, but my best guess is he was hoping to raise its apoapsis high enough for–”
Primrose could feel the fog lifting already. She sucked in a refreshing breath through her nose and savored the temporary clarity. “Kid, I never went to space camp. Put it in words I can understand.”
The captain frowned thoughtfully at the display, and Primrose suspected he’d already been giving her the dumbed down version. “Jet Stream survived at least a week after the bombs fell. So did pieces of the network his company built.” 
She was well acquainted with Jet Stream’s spider web of fiber optics buried beneath the wasteland. They were the prime reason his ex-wife’s homemade computer worm had jumped from StableTec’s network and onto the servers Autumn Song would later guard as jealously as a dragon on its horde. Better yet, it was the entire reason Primrose had been forced to shut down Stable 10 two centuries ago. 
For all the good it did.
The captain continued on trying to tread the line between keeping things simple and insulting her intelligence. “A week after the bombs fell, he sent commands to SOLUS telling it to reorient to face the direction it was traveling and then fire its reaction control thrusters to accelerate. We reviewed our records from the launch of the fuel module and estimated the amount of propellant on board would allow it just over six minutes of continuous thrust before its stores depleted. Since we know where the satellite was when it began accelerating and how long it accelerated for, we got a pretty good idea of what its new orbit looked like. After that, it was just a matter of running the clock forward.”
He tapped the screen, which depicted a slightly pixelated map of the world. The pointer came to rest on a white line that slashed diagonally across the planet’s surface. Primrose couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at it. She’d seen plottings of SOLUS’s orbit more times than she could count, all of them wrong, but every one of them drawing different forms of orderly oscillating waves. This single line had escaped her notice because it looked like the computers had simply misaligned two halves of the map. She had to squint to see the faint curve on either end of the slash, the only evidence she could make out that this was truly meant to represent an object in orbit.
She sat back in her seat, confused. “So where is it?”
“We observed its latest fly-by tonight,” the captain beamed, and moved his wand to a timestamp printed near the leftmost end of the line. “We lost direct contact a little over an hour ago as it ascended beyond the range of our receiving equipment. Our next window to communicate with SOLUS will be on the evening of the first of May.”
Her eyes were wide, and not just from the pill. “We’ve established communication?”
To her dismay, the captain winced. “Not… exactly. It’s still broadcasting telemetry. I don’t think it ever stopped after the last transmitters at JSA went dark. We can hear it, but we can’t talk to it yet.”
She gestured for him to explain.
“Um,” he wavered. “Well, it’s two things, really. Mainly it’s just encryptions. JSA used proprietary code for the SOLUS project so we’re still learning how their systems stored the keys. I’m not sure when we’ll have them for you but I guarantee it won’t be long.”
“And the other problem?”
“The clouds, ma’am.”
Her expression darkened. The captain wasn’t the first pegasus to complain about the clouds her factories pumped into the air, but it was a rare day when anyone thought themselves so important to bring it up to her directly. “Those clouds keep the Enclave safe, captain. Without them, any simpleton with binoculars can radio our movements to their allies like they’re the morning traffic report.”
The captain floundered, clearly too young to understand the last part. “I’d never suggest we clear the air, ma’am. Never.”
She kept him fixed in place with a glare. “Then what’s the problem?”
“Th-they cause interference with long-range signals, ma’am. SOLUS is traveling shy of seven miles a second by the time it drops within signal range and at that speed our window to send commands before it drops below the horizon line is incredibly narrow. Less than twenty minutes.” He cleared his throat. “Under current, ah, conditions it takes nine to transmit a complete command and receive a denial.”
Two shots at cracking the encryption, followed by an eight day wait for it to come around again. Not ideal, but leagues better than where she thought they were just a day ago. She had to remind herself that this was ultimately good news for her. They knew where SOLUS was. Enclave observers had seen it pass overhead with their own eyes. How far along could the Steel Rangers be? They had Autumn’s servers, certainly, but how much of what was on them could they understand when their best computers amounted to whatever consumer-grade terminals they’d been able to dig out of the rubble?
She leaned back in her chair, feeling the tired muscles in her back stretch as she reminded herself that the Rangers in Blinder’s Bluff had gotten hold of Aurora Pinfeathers’ Pip-Buck long enough to flash a copy of its software for themselves. It was a small miracle they’d managed to lose possession of the device but even so, it was more than she wanted them to have. If she sat on this too long it would only allow her enemies to pry that window of opportunity even wider. 
“I want the encryption problem resolved before the next fly-by,” she decided. “Take whoever you think will be useful.”
The captain balked. “I can think of a few names off the top of my head, but this encryption is going to take longer than–”
She cut him off with a swipe of her wing. The pill was working. She felt fantastic, and the gears were finally turning without the slightest hint of rust. SOLUS could fix everything. Not just her problem with the Steel Rangers. That goal had just been demoted to an afterthought. A bonus that came after something greater. 
With a weapon like SOLUS at her disposal she would have leverage. Real bargaining power against the stranglehold the Tantabus had trapped her in. Luna’s creature was sentimental to a fault. Prone to loneliness. It craved company and had already demonstrated its willingness to ruin the minds of those who threatened its playthings. And what good was it to be the master of a dream realm without any dreamers? 
Primrose found herself giggling in her seat yet again, but she ignored the worried looks from the others in the room. Her Enclave had the weapon. Knew where it was. Understood how to talk to it. And now they had the raw data within which lay the key to activate the machine.
SOLUS wasn’t just a bargaining chip. No, it could upturn the whole damn table.
> Chapter 46: Mariposa
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 31st, 1077

The terrified voices of pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies echoed throughout the momentary blackness of the Ministry of Technology. Few understood what was happening. Fewer believed what their Pip-Bucks said was even possible, that the zebras had ever begun developing balefire weapons let alone been able to deploy them from an ocean away.
When the lights stuttered back on, whimpering cries morphed into sobs of relief. Coworkers and colleagues of Applejack’s ministry, now survivors of a catastrophe whose scope and breadth would take days for them to fully comprehend, studied the swaying lamps of the supply warehouse few of them ever recalled entering before. The deep, elemental rumbling that had shaken their subterranean workplace until the lights finally flickered out had seemed as if the entire mountain was collapsing around them. Now able to see once more, with the only sounds to be heard that of the still-wailing emergency alarms and their own bewildered cries, those who had spent the majority of the last five years working together began to notice strangers among the survivors.
These new faces, many of them pegasi and most of them huddled together in shaken, tearful groups of their own, had to have come from the other ministries high up the mountain via the express elevators that connected them all. With trembling steps the Ministry of Technology survivors would slowly mingle with these newcomers and find that though they all came from different ministries of their own, they had been members of an interministerial association called The Enclave. Their Pip-Bucks had instructed them not to shelter in place like all the others working topside, but to evacuate here. 
None of them understood why whoever had sent these separate instructions had not done so for the rest of the ministries, but when word spread that rubble had fallen down and blown out the doors of all four express elevators the mystery was quickly forgotten. A new panic loosed itself throughout the collective survivors as a group rushed out to the railway past the loading docks, the only other way out of the complex from where they had gathered, only to find themselves hemmed in by blast doors that had dropped across the tracks during the chaos. Radiation alarms in their Pip-Bucks chattered wildly when they drew near those impenetrable steel gates, and it was at that point they understood the futility of escaping. For all the weapons, the armaments, and the stockpiles of heavy equipment stacked neatly throughout the warehouses, every one of them knew the death that awaited them if they chose to breach those seals.
Unbeknownst to those lucky survivors, one mare among them was observing the aftermath of their downfall with silent interest. Those who noticed her would never question the spots of blood drying on her pink coat, nor ever come to know how long she had been down there among them before the alarms began to sound. In the coming days they would inventory the supplies they had, but no one would think to open the hermetically sealed crate tucked inconspicuously among the stacks outside the loading docks, its manifest label stating simply, HAZARDOUS WASTE. This would prove lucky for Primrose. For should over the course of the next decade somebody have made the disconcerting decision to open the lid, not only would the survivors of that early Enclave have recognized the broken bodies of two of their own, but they would have all come to understand just why they felt all the Laughter had been stolen from their world.







A soft knock pinged off the compartment door. Aurora leaned over on her mattress and reached a wing toward the switch, only to glance up to see Sledge watching from the other side of the open frame. She folded her feathers and shook her head. “I keep forgetting.”
“Makes two of us,” he murmured, eyeing the interior of her compartment. “Can I come in?”
She waved him in and he stepped over the threshold, eyes sliding over amenities a few well-meaning engineers down in Mechanical assembled back when Rainbow Dash lived here. Apparently they moved her up to a compartment on the uppermost level, just a door down from Sledge’s new digs in fact. A lecherous thought scampered across her brain which she kept to herself. Sledge was a bachelor from stem to stern, and he’d gladly go to his grave that way. Rainbow Dash, well, Aurora could only assume he lacked the parts she was interested in. She filed it in the back of her head for a time when emotions were less raw and times were less fraught. After that, Sledge was in for the teasing of a lifetime.
She watched him cross her cramped little living space toward the tool chest and its makeshift coffee setup. Aurora had taken all of an instant to recognize the old percolator from the break room and had wasted even less time starting a fresh pot. The room still smelled faintly of bitter grounds and it was a lovely thing.
Sledge didn’t bother asking before pouring a cup for himself. The burner had shut off hours ago but he still sipped at the old mug as if it were scalding hot. His eyes fell to the narrow book in her lap and he nodded in its direction. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you read anything that wasn’t a maintenance manual. Is it any good?”
She peered down at the neat, looping cursive and shrugged a noncommittal shoulder. “It’s a diary. We picked it up in an old cabin not long after we set off from Junction City. I’d forgotten Ginger still had it on her.”
The diary, along with all their other possessions from their trek through the wastes, had been tucked away safely inside their two sets of saddlebags. Aurora looked to the worn number ten embossed into the set she'd inherited years ago, then regarded the bright, unmarked leather of one of two identical field support bags Ginger and Roach had acquired during their dive down to the bunker complex beneath the Stable-Tec HQ crater site. Ginger's bags were empty now, their contents reverently transferred into Aurora's old set one piece at a time. She didn’t quite know what had prompted her to open the diary's cover - maybe some vain hope she’d discover something in Teak’s childhood thoughts that would explain why Ginger had done what she did - but what she did find had her flipping through the pages until a mare coming off third shift poked noticed her still awake and gently told her the time. That convinced her to put the diary aside and lay down for a short nap.
Her short nap had lasted the better part of twelve hours. When she finally woke, most of the Stable was winding down for the night. She hadn’t even been that tired, but after taking a personal inventory she recalled the long flight back to the Stable and the rough night of little sleep that preceded it. Finding Ginger’s writing scrawled in the margins of Teak’s diary had been a shot of caffeine, and the moment she looked away her body had forced her to catch up on the sleep she lost. 
Tandy hadn’t minded the company, though, and had taken the opportunity to tour Aurora and Eshe around the corners of Old Canterlot that her creator had gone to pains to keep private. Privately, she worried that she might have disappointed Tandy with how often her attention had wandered during the dream. The confectionary shops, bookstores, and the little theater that played obscure films at a discount had been interesting but what held Aurora’s attention was the infrastructure that made it all work. She’d kept stopping to look at utility meters in the alleys, transformers strung up on wooden posts, and big wooden tanks hidden behind rooftop billboards. She was used to the idea of all these things being efficiently contained within the confines of a deliberately designed Stable, not scattered haphazardly across a living city. And yet, according to Tandy’s recollection of Luna’s memories, this was how the world worked way back when. It was how Blinder’s Bluff worked now. With the great cog blown off its metaphorical hinges, maybe this was the way Stable 10 needed to work too.
When she finally woke, her thoughts had inevitably drifted back to Teak’s diary and the notes Ginger had written. Now, with Sledge here, she realized she hadn’t so much as showered before opening the book again. Not that there was water to bathe with, but that didn’t lessen the embarrassment of knowing she probably smelled like something that dropped out of the back end of a molerat.
If Sledge noticed, he didn’t show it. “You holding up okay?”
She shrugged. “Better than yesterday. I kind of sucked the life out of the party when I showed up.”
“Nothing anyone’s holding against you. We’re all just glad to know you aren’t… erm…”
“Yeah,” she said, saving him some embarrassment. “Me too.”
They were both quiet for a while as they digested their new reality. Aurora stole a glance at one of Ginger’s notes, a quick charcoal scribble. “Snores when she sleeps on her right side.” 
A tiny laugh snuck out of her when she read that, earning her a curious brow from Sledge. 
“She was taking notes.”
He sipped his coffee and walked over for a better look. Aurora held the diary open and tapped the entries on the margins. A moment later, he snorted with a rumbling chuckle. “Says here you like to sing when you’re shitfaced. If I remember, you were always the first to leave soon as anyone said the word karaoke.”
Ginger hadn’t phrased her entry exactly the way Sledge quoted it, but there was a brief mention of her enthusiasm for bad karaoke being proportional to her consumption of cheap beer. Aurora smiled at that, remembering the night the three of them enjoyed in the unfortunately named Glowing Gash and the following evening sleeping on the floorboards of an even cheaper upstairs room. She tried to remember which side she had slept on that night before deciding Ginger’s memory was more reliable than her own.
“Who knows, maybe radioactive beer is special.” She could still taste the Rad-X they’d had to eat to prevent their visit to Kiln from making their hoofprints glow in the dark. Yet in spite of the tremendous bomb crater the town resided in the shadow of, part of her still wanted to go out and visit the ghouls she’d met when they passed through. They all seemed so ordinary compared to the rest of the wasteland. As if the radiation was the only part of their world that changed after the bombs fell. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
Sledge smirked as he watched her press the covers together. “That’s sort of the reason I came down to see if you were awake. The radiation, I mean.”
The bed frame squeaked as she sat up a little straighter. “How bad is it? Roach told me the deputies had already reopened the corridors we took the bomb through. I thought that meant the contamination was minimal.”
His expression made it evident they weren’t on the same wavelength. “It’s not that. There’s radiation, yeah, but the numbers are closer to background than anything we’re picking up in the tunnel. Folks out there are doing okay, so… erm, it’s not that. Your friend, the changeling, he’s up in Medical right now. He asked me to wake you up so you could let the doctors take a look at you. See if there’s anything they can do about your condition.”
She let out a sigh and pivoted her hind leg over the side of her bed. “I already told him there’s nothing they can do about it. He knows it too.”
Sledge took a sip. “I think he wants to give you the best chance of making it through the other end of it. Can’t fault him for that.”
“I’m not.” She dropped to the floor, wobbled a little before getting her balance situated, and turned to drop the diary back into her saddlebag. She didn’t think anyone would walk into her compartment and make off with it, but then again she hadn’t thought someone would trick her into walking a balefire bomb into her home. “I just don’t think our Stable has the magical mystery cure for ghouling, is all.”
“You don’t want him getting his hopes up,” Sledge supplied.
“Him, Julip, my dad, you,” She began to lift her bags, planning on throwing them on before remembering she wasn’t going anywhere they’d be needed or out of reach. Setting them down, she instead settled to shove them under her bed for safekeeping. “You’ve still got my rifle, right?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not,” she lied. She still felt weird without the old bolt-action hanging beneath her wing, especially now that she had her bags again. “You owe me a canteen for the coffee pot, by the way.”
“Pinfeathers.”
“I know.” She rubbed her eyes between her feathers, fully aware of how transparent her stalling was. “I just didn’t expect yesterday to be so intense. My dad kept offering to set up the bed in my old room and Roach kept worrying over all my scars and Julip kept apologizing for not seeing all this coming… I mean, my face is still sore from all the crying.”
Sledge frowned into his coffee. “You never were the weepy sort. Still, Roach is waiting for you upstairs. I’ve already talked to him and he sounds pretty confident that this ‘ghouling’ thing is decided once it starts happening, but he’s never had access to a proper hospital either. More radiation isn’t going to hurt your chances, but who knows if we might have a treatment here that could help them?”
“Be easier if I had my rifle.”
“Be nicer for them if you didn’t.” He downed the last of his coffee and, realizing there was no good place to set it down, hung its handle from the empty wall hook where her wing guards were meant to hang. “You leading the way or am I?”
She answered with a theatrical grumble and graciously swept her wing toward the door for him to lead. After a reluctant look back at her old compartment, she breathed an uneasy sigh and turned to follow.







October 31st, 1097

The Pillar’s survivors gathered along the edge of the loading dock that overlooked the disused railway below. Behind them, their home for the past two decades stood as a silent sentinel over what kind of life they had all endured together. 
Supply shelves reaching from floor to ceiling had been bridged at the ends with sheets of plywood and the long rows encased between them had been further partitioned to create something resembling single-room apartments. It was a design they had agreed upon as a group in that first year and it had worked better than any of them expected. The Ministry of Technology had lacked little in the way of building materials, all of which had been curiously gathered inside the warehouse the Enclave members among them had been directed to evacuate to. Elsewhere in that same warehouse they had discovered a stockpile of the same food rations the Equestrian Army ate on deployment on the Vhannan front. There was medicine, tools, clothing, and folding cots. Most importantly had been the discovery that the plumbing, having been placed on an independent system due to the vertical distance between their location and the rest of the ministry higher up in the mountain, still worked and the cisterns being fed by wells bored deep into the water table showed no radioactive contamination. Few of them had questioned their remarkable luck. Those who did found themselves shunned by the others.
They had built themselves a life here, but the time had come to see what had become of the one the bombs had taken away from them.
An impatient whine from a filly unused to seeing so much tension in her mother’s face was the only sound that broke the silence. The other children gathered among them, seven of them in total, stared down the train tunnel where twin ribbons of iron disappeared into the darkness. They could all hear the crunch of ballast stone beneath the hooves of the stallion who had volunteered to sample the air at the blast door. All was silent except for one filly’s fussing. None of them paid much attention to the pink mare standing in the back, eyes the color of bricks distant and uninterested in the impending discovery of what she already knew.
A shout echoed out from the tunnel. “No radiation!”
His exaltation was echoed by a wave of celebratory cries that ran the length of MoT and Enclave survivors alike. Tears flowed freely as friends, neighbors, and new families turned to clutch one another, leaped into the air, or fell to their knees under the weight of so much relief. For those who once worked inside this concrete tomb, it was time to go out and see what had become of their homes. It was a moment of sorrow. Of knowing there was nothing waiting for them out there except possibly closure. For those who had done their small parts to aid all the ministries under the banner of the Enclave, it was the joy of knowing that they might finally be reunited with family members safe within the Stables. Chief among those Stables were 6, 7, 10, and for some of the highest ranking unicorns and earth ponies, Stable 1. 
Preparations were being made within the first hour. By the end of that day, saddlebags were being unpacked from crates and stuffed with food and supplies. On the morning of the third day ten suits of power armor lay crouched beneath a steel beam they had welded to the face of the southern blast door. Enclave and MoT survivors watched from the rails as the signal went up and forty mechanical legs tensed, servos groaned, and inch by inch the steel barrier that had insulated them from the horrors of an apocalypse lifted out of the dirt. 







The corridors were unusually active this late in the evening, but Aurora supposed that was to be expected now that the survivors of Junction City and - to a much larger extent - the Steel Rangers had begun delivering crucial resources during the week following the bombing. While life inside the Stable had become decidedly less comfortable since the generator finally gave up the ghost, there was a growing sense that the bottom might just be done dropping out from beneath them all. They had water again and rumor was the Steel Rangers were working out temporary contracts with the newly independent trading guilds to secure food deliveries to the Junction City folk. The Stable would continue to live off half-rations of what was left in Supply’s emergency stockpiles, but those would last well past the timeframe Elder Coronado had suggested for their first delivery. 
It would be rough living compared to what they were used to, but most understood they were in a much better position than before. They had water, food, clean air, and security in the form of the Steel Rangers who no doubt relished the fact that they’d taken the Stable back without a fight from the Enclave. The people of Stable 10 could finally relax. As a result, many had turned the residential corridors into communal spaces where neighbors chatted in open doorways, foals ran rampant from one compartment to another, and a palpable sense of relief flowed easily through it all. Their lives were going to be different, but they were going to be okay. 
Sledge grunted as a filly a third his size screamed past and hooked his hind leg with her wing, shamelessly using him to swing herself out of the hall and into the compartment her friends had already darted into. A mare inside greeted them with stern warnings to slow down and start getting ready for bed, but Aurora knew those kids were too energized to hear any of it. 
Some of the adults noticed her following the overstallion and their casual smiles quickly diminished to something more funerary. Aurora grimaced on the inside while doing her best not to let them see her discomfort. A stallion close to her father’s age touched her shoulder as she passed and said he was sorry for her loss. She offered a polite smile and a nod in response, unsure what else if anything she should say to that. 
Ginger would tell her to be patient with them. She’d assure her they were just as unsure of what to say, and Aurora knew she’d be right. It was just one of those things people needed to do to clear the air. It wouldn’t last forever. Besides, she’d survived worse things than well-meaning condolences.
Sledge looked back at her. “Last flight of stairs coming up. Think you can manage one more climb?”
She made an unhappy noise. Spending the past week recovering had meant little if any real exercise, and now her hind leg was paying her back for the neglect. Walking in a straight line was okay, but climbing steps pissed her knee right off. They’d been taking each flight one at a time with walks across each level to give her joint some time to settle. It wasn’t a perfect solution but in the absence of a functioning generator to drive the Stable’s elevators, it was the best she had to work with. 
“I’ll be okay.” She tried not to sigh too loudly when Sledge stepped ahead to hold open the stairwell door. Seeing the stairs reminded her of how she felt during her ascent from the bottom of Stable 1. It was entirely reasonable to think half the reason he knee was giving her grief stemmed from the climb up that endless spiral staircase. “Fair warning, I learned some new profanity while I was outside. Probably going to use all of it.”
He chuckled as he started up. “I’ll cover my ears.”
They arrived on the Medical level without offending too many delicate sensibilities, though Aurora hadn’t exactly considered how far up and down the stairwell her voice could carry. By the time she left the stairs she’d needed to grit her teeth just to keep every third step from startling the nurse at the reception desk. He waved them through and Aurora found herself walking down the same shiny floor she’d been following doctors down since she was a filly. Only now the shine came from the dim emergency lights along the ceiling rather than stark white fluorescent tubes. A right turn took them down a wide corridor away from exam rooms and offices and after passing through an unlocked set of double doors with the bright red letters of NO VISITORS BEYOND THIS POINT centered down the seam, Sledge led her past a procession of surgeries and recovery rooms. 
It wasn’t difficult to guess which one they were heading toward. Julip’s green back half stuck out of the open door whose frame she’d taken to leaning against, and Aurora felt oddly heartened to see that she’d kept the tiny black braids in her tail where Ginger and Beans had worked together to reattach what had been salvaged after Ginger’s nightmare on the rails. Probably Julip had lost track that the intricate little knots were still there, but Aurora chose to believe otherwise.
The sound of their hooves drew the ear of the Enclave’s former soldier and she took a step back to see who was coming. Her lip pulled up into one of her characteristic smirks. “Look who finally woke up.”
Julip balled the end of her wing and lifted it. Aurora did the same, and they bumped feathers as Sledge led her into a surprisingly cramped room. Not for the lack of floor space, either. There had been plenty of that available before Roach, Julip, Fiona, Sledge, and a very uncomfortable looking doctor piled inside.
The doctor, her personal physician, Doc Fetlock, looked thoroughly irritated by the presence of so many visitors while simultaneously helpless to shoo any of them away. It would take some heavy equipment to get Roach or Julip to budge on someone’s request other than Aurora’s, their mutual bond and recent events being what they were, and if Paladin Ironshod hadn’t been able to collar Fiona then the poor doctor stood no chance at all. Aurora wasn’t even sure she’d had the pull necessary to get them to scatter. At best, she thought, they probably would loiter outside the door. 
She scanned the room for anything remotely shaped like a speculum before vaguely moving in the direction of the sterile white bed opposite the open door. Evidently this was either a recovery room, or one of the quarantine wards they assigned residents who were too sick to risk sending back to their compartments. Somehow Fiona had squeezed herself into the corner of the room not occupied by labeled cabinets or expensive medical equipment. Roach sat on the floor at the head of the empty bed, and the doctor stood uneasily at the other end with a clipboard pinched between two feathers. 
“She’s all yours,” Sledge rumbled to the doctor, then made a one-eighty back toward the door. “I’ve got some things I need to take care of yet before I log some hours on a mattress. All of you know where to find me if something comes up.”
Julip shot a sour look after him as he retreated down the hall. Aurora just tried not to laugh. She’d noticed the faintest flush on his face as he turned tail and suspected the nail-spitting, steel-hided Head of Mechanical had been afraid to stick around and risk seeing something he didn’t want to see.
She reminded herself to give him heaps of shit about that every chance she got. 
As if reading her mind, Doc Fetlock cleared his throat and spoke. “You can take a seat on the bed or stand, it’s up to you. For now I only have a few questions I’d like to ask to better understand your condition.”
Aurora gave the bed a glance before opting to climb up to give her hind leg a breather. She noticed Roach’s eyes drift briefly over her deeply scarred stump before shifting up to meet hers with an apologetic shrug. She shook her head to tell him she wasn’t keeping score. She’d have to be blind not to understand how distracting it was.
“Your friends,” Fetlock said with a note of disapproval, “are adamant that they remain present for as long as you’re comfortable.”
She glanced at Roach and then Julip. Neither of them looked the slightest bit disconcerted with being called out, nor did she expect them to. As far as she was concerned, they were both family. Fiona, however, looked slightly less resolved. Up until now Aurora assumed someone of her profession would be immune to social discomfort, but there the gryphon sat looking unsure if she should leave or stay. 
“They stay,” she said, surprised by the firmness in her voice. “All of them.”
The doctor huffed out a tiny sigh, giving up any further argument. With his free wing he plucked a ballpoint pen from the crook of his ear and poised the nib atop a blank line on his chart, just below a block of scribbled notes. “Roach has already given me some basic insights into your condition… this ghouling process. Apparently the symptoms and severity vary from person to person with no reliable indicator for how extensive they will be. He tells me, including himself, you’ve already met several other ghouls during your journey outside the Stable most of whom still retained their faculties. Is that right?”
Aurora settled on the edge of the bed and considered the question. “Mostly, yeah. I ran into a few ghouls that had gone feral out in the tunnel, and a stallion who was starting to go feral a few days after that. But yeah, all the other ghouls we met were more or less all there.”
“We avoided the abandoned towns,” Roach chimed in.
She frowned at Roach. She didn’t remember ever being told they were taking detours and wondered whether that had been for her own protection. 
The doctor didn’t share her concern. “Would you say there are more or less feral ghouls than non-feral?”
She gestured to Roach to answer. He hesitated, sucking on the corner of his lip before responding.
“More,” he said. “Significantly more.”
Fetlock scribbled some notes in his clipboard, pinched the pen beneath the spring-loaded clip, and stepped toward Aurora’s right side with his freed wing held open. “I’d like to look at your foreleg, please.”
She held up her hoof, pressing her lips into a terse line as the doctor squinted over the scars coiled down the outside of her leg. Something about having them examined so closely bothered her, but she managed to endure Fetlock’s curious scrutiny. 
“Second, possibly third degree burns,” he muttered to himself. “Significant regrowth. Aggressive, even. Did all of these scars come from the explosion?”
It took a beat before she realized he was speaking to her again.
“Yeah,” she said, frowning at the splashes of bare skin where her coat hadn’t begun growing back. The doctor turned her leg this way and that, his glasses balanced precariously at the end of his nose. “I was out in the open when the flash got me.”
“Mmhm. Thermal radiation.” He poked a knot of scars below her knee and she jerked her leg away. “I’m sorry. You still have sensation there?”
“It’s sensitive, yeah.”
“Painful?”
She shook her head. “No. Just sensitive. A lot more than it used to be.”
He scribbled that into her chart. “Interesting. How are your other senses? Taste, smell, eyesight…?”
“I went blind for the first couple of days after,” she admitted. Seeing the way Roach and Julip’s expressions grew suddenly concerned, she tried for some levity. “I don’t have x-ray vision just yet.”
His eyes lifted toward hers and fixed there as if trying to judge something from the way she looked back. “But it has recovered since?”
She winced. “Mostly.”
“Define mostly.”
“I can see fine,” she asserted. “It’s just that things are a little fuzzy around the edges now.”
He wrote something down that looked suspiciously like the words prescription glasses. “What about your appetite?”
Julip smiled from the doorway. “Yeah Aurora, have you been keeping regular?”
Doc Fetlock spun around with what was probably a withering glare, which gave Aurora time to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from cracking up. Even Roach and Fiona were politely avoiding eye contact with the doctor, both wearing the tiniest of smiles. It felt good to get some of the awkward tension out of the air.
“All the internals feel okay,” she said, a little relieved when the doctor turned his attention back to her rather than making the mistake of stomping on the living landmine that was Julip.
“What about your mind?” Roach rasped.
The question caught her off-guard, but judging by the doctor’s exasperation it was one he had been building up to. She blew out a deep breath and looked at Roach. “I don’t feel like it’s gotten any better or worse. I mean, I don’t remember much of my flight after the bomb, but I don’t feel all scattered like Gallow was.”
“Gallow?”
She glanced at the doctor. “One of the ghouls I ran into. He was showing signs of going feral.”
He hummed at his clipboard. “I’ll have to ask the overstallion to see if one the outsiders can send for him. He might have some insights into how–”
Roach jumped to interrupt. “She’s healthy, though?”
“Well…” the doctor demurred, turning from Roach to Aurora, “I can only speak to what I’m seeing, and that isn’t saying much at all. Perhaps if the outsiders can restore our power, then we could see about taking some blood and tissue samples from you for a proper analysis. In fact, before you leave today I’d like to take a blood sample regardless to get a baseline cell count.”
Needles. Yay.
“As for the meantime,” he continued, “you’re in much better condition than you ought to be, considering what you survived. Whether or not you’re healthy, I can’t say. If you feel okay, then it’s safe to assume you’re probably okay. But if you notice anything start to feel different, or worse, I want you to tell someone sooner rather than later.”
Because if you keep it to yourself and lose your mind too quickly, you might attack somebody close to you. 
The unspoken reason resonated through the room like a silent drum, felt but not heard. Aurora frowned and nodded into her lap. 
“Worst case,” Julip murmured, “you catch a case of immortality and spend the next century or two convincing young, innocent Enclave soldiers to defect.”
She smiled a little at that. “Nobody would ever accuse you of being innocent.”
“Fuckin’ right they wouldn’t.” She shot a quick smirk at Roach, yet another unsubtle hint that the two were closer than they’d been the last time they were all together. “You want to tell her or should I?”
Roach stiffened. “Uh.”
“About her leg,” she prodded.
It took him a moment to catch up, and another to realize they were waiting on him. “Oh! That’s right, Sledge asked some of the people on your shift to work on your prosthesis. They wrapped up this afternoon while you were asleep.”
At that, Fiona reached behind her back and held out the finished limb with both hands. Aurora couldn’t help it. She grinned like an idiot as she slid down from the bed to take in the sheer craftsmanship evident in the construction. The two lengths of hemlock Mouse had procured and cut to size still retained much of the shape he’d initially carved into them, though the rough strokes of his knife had since been sanded down to gently tapered contours. As she accepted the gift from Fiona, she couldn’t help but notice how much lighter it was than she expected. It had heft, but no more than felt right. 
Her feathers slid over the bright silver of each leg joint. “This is all titanium. How did they even work this without a lathe?”
Fiona made a see-sawing gesture with her hand. “Sledge said they had to get creative.”
She looked closer at the connection points where smooth hemlock gave way seamlessly to titanium coping. In the dim light she could just barely make out the spots where someone hadn’t quite been able to polish out the crescent marks left behind by an understandably frustrated hammer. Someone had been highly motivated to persuade their design to work. It comforted her to know her failure to save the generator hadn’t burned her bridges with her fellow greasers.
She couldn’t be sure, but she suspected the pneumatic pistons built into each joint had been harvested from some of the various machine jacks they used to move heavy equipment. With diligent maintenance those parts were liable to outlast her. Then her attention fell to the prosthetic hoof. At first glance it looked like it was made from solid titanium, but logic quickly overrode that assumption. There was zero chance someone milled a hoof from stock titanium, not without electricity, and she quickly the carefully matched seams where two sheets of metal had been cut to shape and wrapped around a stock medical grade prosthesis part. She held back a smirk, knowing how annoyed her people must have been to be forced to install a premade component on their work of art, and pretended not to have noticed.
“It’s amazing,” she finally said, running her feathers over the soap-smooth rim of the socket. “Really, this is… wow. Can I put it on right now, or…?”
Behind her, the doctor shrugged. “I don’t see why not. If you need some privacy, I’m sure–”
“C’mere Julip, I need your shoulder.”
Julip left her spot at the door to oblige, leaving the doctor to swallow his disapproval as his patient used the smaller mare as a crutch as she sat down. Aurora trusted her remaining hind leg to bear the effort of sitting about as graciously as a hot metal poker, and the last thing she needed was to spoil her first time with the new leg by falling on her ass. When she got seated on the floor, she wasted no time turning the prosthetic around in her wing and pulling the socket over the ugly stump. It seated into place with a soft expulsion of air. It was intuitive, and she felt confident that suction would be sufficient to keep it attached when she stood up.
“Okay,” she said, pushing off Julip’s shoulder with a grunt. “Help me up.”
“Goddess, you’re heavy!” the smaller mare complained.
“Quiet down in the peanut gallery,” she parried, and after a bit of effort she was up once more, but this time standing on all fours. The relief in her aching leg was swift and she lingered a bit against Julip’s shoulder, relishing the difference. “Ohh, that’s so much better.”
The seal around her stump strengthened as she let more of her weight settle on the mechanical leg. She let go of Julip, the younger mare practically fleeing to Roach wearing an embarrassed grin of her own, and tried to get a sense for this new feeling of support without exertion. 
“You’ll want to give yourself breaks every few hours or so,” the doctor said as he stepped beside her, running a probing feather to check for gaps along the socket. “Your friends were wise enough to install a release button inside the thigh. I’ll let you find that on your own time. Pressing it will open a relief valve which will break the vacuum inside the socket and make removing your leg relatively easy.”
Her instinct was to lift her leg to look for the valve but chose not to tempt fate. With her balance so deceptively restored, she imagined the floor was looking for any excuse to come up and smack her in the head. “Do I need to do anything specific to, yaknow, walk?”
“Aside from being careful where you step, no. It’s been calibrated such that when you lift your leg to step forward, the pneumatics will straighten each joint to receive your weight on the next step. Sledge expressed confidence in Mechanical’s design, although not before suggesting you take some time over the next few days to calibrate each of the pneumatics to a setting that feels closer to what your natural leg used to do.”
“That’s a lot of words just to say no,” Roach mused.
If the doctor saw the humor, he didn’t laugh. “It’s a custom prosthetic, not a peg leg.”
Roach rolled his eyes, an accomplishment given their lack of definition beyond two faintly brighter glowing points. Beside him Julip looked as if she were contemplating the good doctor’s demise. 
From her corner, Fiona spoke up again. “Just throwing it out there, but that’s not going to come flying off if she tries kicking someone in the balls, is it?”
Fetlock looked up at the gryphon with measured amounts of unease and amusement. “That’s… a scenario I wouldn’t expect it to come loose during, no.”
She realized Fiona had brought up a good point, and no doubt she’d done so deliberately to bring it to Aurora’s attention. She wasn’t planning on sticking around the Stable for long, and the wasteland never fell short of figurative and literal curveballs to trip her up along the way. If she allowed herself to grow dependent on this new leg, she needed to know she could depend on it through any weird shit she was planning to stroll into.
She made a mental note not to forget to bug Sledge about it in the morning. Maybe he could whip up some straps like the ones Mouse had suggested she use. It wouldn’t do any good to ask him now when he was practically dead on his hooves. And it wasn’t as if he were the only one fighting off sleep. She noticed as the conversation lulled, Julip’s head started to bob toward the floor. Roach, well, sleep was more an indulgence than a necessity for him. And Fiona was practically nocturnal, though even she seemed to be edging toward exhaustion.
“Well, there’ll be time later to work out the kinks.”
Julip snorted. “Kinks.”
She ignored her. “I’m going to have my wings full tonight getting used to this thing, and you guys look beat. How about we regroup in the morning?”
A consensus of nods ran around the room, with the exception of one.
“I have a few more questions to ask regarding your condition,” the doctor pressed, “and I would like to take some blood samples.”
“Okay. We’d better get to it, then.”
Roach tapped his hoof against hers as he led Julip to the door. “We’ll catch up in the morning.”
She smiled and watched him go, then nodded up at Fiona as she rose to leave as well. “Did Sledge get you a compartment in the Stable?”
The gryphon shook her head. “Nah. He offered, but I can’t fall asleep in these things. No offense.”
She shook her head. “None taken. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Fiona fired off something resembling a salute, padded out into the hall, and trotted off in the same direction as Roach and Julip. 
“The world gets bigger every day, it seems.”
Aurora glanced toward the doctor, thought about that, and found herself in agreement. She considered saying something to add to his observation but saw that his clipboard and pen were once again at the ready. He had boxes to check and hypotheses to form. 
“So, uh, before we get into all that, I need to ask you something first.”
Fetlock frowned. “About?”
She chewed the corner of her lip for several seconds before deciding to just ask the question. 
“How much experience do you have with AutoDocs?”







December 2nd, 1137
60 Years Later

Word was spreading throughout New Canterlot about a pegasus immune to age.
The world the survivors of the Pillar had stepped out onto four decades ago was as foreign to them as it was deadly. The capital city of Canterlot had been destroyed. It had slid down the side of the mountain, they had learned, like an avalanche not composed of snow but of buildings, busy streets, and people. Many of the survivors they met in what the locals had begun calling the wasteland seemed to agree the zebra’s first target had been the floating city of Cloudsdale, triggering an understandable and long-lasting fury among the wasteland pegasi and which proved just as infectious to those who had just emerged. That a peaceful city with little to do with the war effort had been Vhanna’s first target was too much an insult to bear, and the mantra Remember Cloudsdale would soon pass the lips of those who believed pegasi were the foremost victims of the bombs.
Magic, they discovered, had been so scattered by the entropic fires of the apocalypse that the unicorns of the wasteland could hardly harness enough of it to lift a tin cup. The clouds above would not bear the weight of the pegasi. The soil did not bend to the will of its tenders. Over those first few years the survivors from the Pillar would notice their own power weaken and fail as the poisons of the new world robbed them too. They quickly realized what remained of Equestria was slowly dying, and if they had any hope of having a life worth suffering through they could not subsist on the scraps rotting in irradiated ruins. Equestria would not continue existing without a city from which to rebuild the wheels of power, and those wheels would not turn without leaders to direct their movement.
A council was decided upon and soon the difficult work of building something out of nothing had begun in earnest. Scouts were dispatched to explore what remained of their world and at the same time teams were organized to retrieve the building materials stowed away in the Ministry of Technology warehouses. Within the year the first real houses had sprung up in view of the freshly scarred mountainside. By the end of the fifth year they had constructed and powered a radio transmitter from which a message to all survivors was broadcast across the continent. All survivors of the war would be welcomed and provided for in New Canterlot provided they were willing to put in the work. The trickle of newcomers that arrived over the course of the next year was disappointing, but that disappointment paled in comparison to the horrendous news the scouts had returned with in those early days. The news of Stable 10’s destruction hit the Enclave population hard, but there was nothing to be done. Life, unfortunately, had a nasty way of going on with or without them.
Yet forty years after stepping into the wasteland, as winter capped the slopes of Canterlot Mountain white with new snow and residents of that growing city warmed themselves in front of roaring fires, there came fresh rumors of a mare named Primrose who should have been well into her twilight years and inexplicably wasn’t. She showed no withering like the corrupted things seen wandering the wasteland, and when council members arrived at the door to her single room inside one of the unadorned shared houses near the fringes of town it had seemed to them that they had been expected.
Primrose answered their questions as best she was able, and from the council’s interview a picture of her began to emerge that no one knew quite what to do with. The mare had served as a secretary for Commander Spitfire and her duties within the Pillar could be summed up in a single word: unremarkable. Her life outside of work had been similarly unnoteworthy, with the exception that she sometimes made time on weekends to sign herself up for the tour groups that frequented Canterlot Castle. Further probing coaxed her into offering up the embarrassing admission that she had felt particularly drawn to the late princesses, though for what reason she could not explain. When asked, she could not recall the last time she’d fallen ill or felt particularly abnormal. She ate two square meals a day, never once missed a day on the compulsory scavenging details which steadily chewed through the rubble of the old capital, and slept no better or worse than she had before the bombs fell.
Her answer to their last question, the one they had intended to wrap up with, had prompted a last second addition by one of the council members. He asked what she meant when she said her sleep was unchanged since before the world burned, and she answered as candidly as she had every other question. She lay down, fell asleep, dreamed, and always woke up with the dawn. 
It was the admission to dreaming which would change her in the eyes of her peers from a medical curiosity to someone with far more ordained potential. Whispers spread like wildfire of the forever young mare who had once felt compelled to see the immortal princess and who to this day closed her eyes on the waking world and opened them onto Luna’s Dream. Neighbors who before now had never paid her much mind were knocking on her door to offer favors, seek advice, and ask direct questions about her condition. 
Primrose received all of them with a grace and patience that some thought better fitting of an alicorn princess and not this lowly former secretary. They did not know about the crates upon crates of recalled Stimpaks she’d discreetly ordered her allies among the Enclave to reroute into the ministry storehouses, each crate forebodingly labeled as medical waste to deter the curious. They did not know every answer to their questions, no matter how rude or probing, was deliberately honed to a surgical edge. None of them believed this kind and quiet mare was the reason their world had burned or that they, the survivors of that culling, were being manipulated into building a throne in their own minds for them which they would eventually place her upon.
The only creature who knew the truth, the entire truth of this world aside from herself, was the lonely creation of a dead princess. And as the rumors coalesced into belief, and that belief grew into a following, Primrose would step out into the ashes of the world she ended and with mock-reluctance accept the council’s resignation. New Canterlot, The Enclave, and her own power would rise atop the bow shock of a religion driven forward by those who craved to be ruled. 
And elsewhere in the wasteland, remnants of Old Equestria’s shattered ground army would take notice and make plans of their own.







It was well past midnight by the time she left Fetlock’s office. He’d been understandably resistant to the notion of discussing how to kill a patient under the care of a medical machine, and after explaining Eshe’s unique circumstances she’d regretted the dawning horror on the old stallion’s face. It was clear he’d never considered what might happen to someone strapped into an AutoDoc if all the medical staff suddenly disappeared. They talked about Eshe’s withered condition, about the tubes Aurora remembered running in and out of him and whether simply turning off the bed would be enough. Fetlock had shaken his head. 
“He’ll suffocate to death without the ventilator breathing for him. It’s a deeply unpleasant way to go.”
Fetlock began to suggest a more immediate method of death but she’d cut him short, making it crystal clear she wasn’t prepared to shoot Eshe while he lay there waiting for the bullet. He didn’t deserve a violent death and she didn’t want to put him in a position where he had to be the one to coax her into pulling the trigger. That was no way to spend one’s last moments. 
Eventually they came around to something that felt like a solution. If this Mariposa place was equipped to operate AutoDocs, Fetlock surmised that they had to be stocked with a supply of drugs for the living breathing doctors on staff to use. If Mariposa was some sort of detention center, it was even more likely that they would keep anesthetics in stock. 
“Propofol,” Fetlock had suggested. “It’s a potent anesthetic. Give him a little and he’ll drift off like he’s going to sleep.”
Aurora hadn’t been able to look the doctor in the eye as he continued.
“Administer enough and… well, his heart will eventually stop beating. He’ll go without feeling anything.”
The uneven echo of clip-clop-clip-thump rebounded through the empty corridors. It had been a few hours since she’d spoken to Doc Fetlock and her thoughts about what she promised to do for Eshe refused to settle. She pictured Gallow dying a terrible death on that stretch of lonely road, reduced to having pieces of his body flung away by bullets his executioner had been too unskilled to place accurately. What if, when the time came, she didn’t have it in her to fulfill her oath? What if she did it wrong and Eshe’s last seconds were some unforgivable agony?
Her prosthetic leg swung into each step when she shifted her stump forward. It was taking some getting used to but a little bit of practice was taking her a long way. It didn’t help that every so often she needed to stop and wait for the world to stop spinning. Fetlock had gotten almost all the samples he’d asked for, blood being the foremost liquid he stole from her. No generator meant no bakery. No bakery meant no cookie. He’d injected her with a tiny amount of glucose to keep the worst of the nausea at bay while she adjusted, but all she could think about was that she’d given him blood and hadn’t seen so much as a chocolate chip in return. It was practically criminal. 
She’d already figured out that she didn’t have to hike her entire hip into the air for the pneumatics to kick in. They were always primed, ready to slide forward as soon as the friction holding the dense elastomer cap of her new hoof to the floor gave way. The trick was to be careful and not let herself think of the prosthesis as a fully functional limb waiting to do what she imagined a normal leg would do. If she took enough pressure off her stump, it would fulfill its simple function of extending each joint as if she were taking a step forward. Great if she was actually walking, inconvenient if she was just shifting her weight while standing still. 
It took some time before she was able to walk with something approaching confidence, but once she crossed that mental threshold her inner stubbornness came out in force. Before leaving his office, Fetlock told her it would be better if she carried her new leg with her when she used the stairs. Using them would require some instruction from one of the nurses and he didn’t want to fall asleep tonight just to be shaken awake because she’d taken a nosedive down a flight of stairs. But after pacing around the halls in Medical for several hours with only… a few spills to account for, she’d taken to eyeing the emergency stairwell door like a personal challenge.
As it turned out, climbing and descending stairs was not something that came naturally to someone wearing a false limb, even one as finely crafted as the one Aurora wore. When it came time for her to lower her prosthesis down to the next step, she found out the hard way that the textured metal cap on the edge of the tread gave just enough resistance to stop her false hoof from sliding off the edge. The only way she could bend the false leg’s knee was to put more weight onto it, which wasn’t how taking the steps generally worked. After spending a good part of fifteen minutes stranded with her ass in the air, she’d been able to bend her stump high enough for the hoof to skitter over the stair’s edge where it promptly extended itself. All the while the occasional echo of hooves came from above and below, teasing her with the possibility of being caught making a fool of herself by someone working the third shift.
By no means did she conquer the stairs by the time they ran out completely, but at the very least she considered herself to have figured out how to get down the damn things without killing herself. There was no getting away from hobbling during the descent but if she remembered descent with her prosthesis first on every third step, she’d do a passable job of it at the price of her dignity.
She’d been surprised to find a few pegasi still at work when she wobbled through the doors of Mechanical, and they’d been just as surprised to see her at all. She counted five of them seated at a cluster of workbenches in the welding cell, though without power none of them were doing any welding. Best she could tell, they were working on completely different projects that could be done without voltage meters or power tools. A mare with a pair of magnifiers balanced across her muzzle was using a narrow wire brush to scrape oxidation off the electrical contacts of an old pump. At the bench beside her, a young apprentice was in the process of emptying the drawers of a battered tool cabinet and cleaning, oiling, and reorganizing a rat’s nest of drill bits. The other three were at work with similar maintenance tasks, helping to knock out whatever projects they could in the absence of their normal work. Likely they were the only ones of their shift willing to come down and endure the eerie silence, knowing they were unlikely to earn a single bit for the work they were putting in. It was admirable, and it took an effort of will for Aurora not to park herself at a bench among them and help.
The five holdouts looked up when she limped out into the main work hall, but none of them stopped what they were doing just to greet her. Here and there a grease-stained wing lifted a few inches or a chin tipped her way and, as far as the folks of Mechanical were concerned, it was the equivalent of a hard slap on the back and a how-the-fuck-are-you. They’d known for more than a day that she’d come back home and she’d gotten her resounding applause then. Tonight there was work to be done, and they weren’t volunteering to take shit for slacking from the next shift on her account.
She lifted a wing in greeting and started on the first wide, looping circuit around the four concrete walls of the main hall. It was trickier to navigate the floor without the overhead lights to point out the patches where old grease slicked the ground and the odd work mat had worked its way a little too far into the walkways. Once, deliberately, she’d slowed at a spot behind one of the mills where coolant had given the concrete around its frame a notable glisten and she wiped her prosthetic hoof through the sheen. To her surprise the elastomer didn’t seem bothered by it one bit. If anything her false leg had a better grip on the floor than her natural hooves did. Points to whoever designed it, but a crucial difference she’d need to stay aware of.
“Thought I’d find you down here.” 
Roach’s rasping voice caught her off guard. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite hide a flush of insecurity that hit her as she emerged from behind the mills. The clutch of pegasi who had moved to work nearer one another were doing just a poor job of not staring at the changeling ghoul passing their benches.
“How’s that leg of yours working out so far?”
She wiped coolant on the bare concrete. “Still on the fence. Why, did something happen?”
Roach shook his head as he closed the distance, then tipped his chin down the line of the wall she’d been following before she’d stopped to muck around behind the mills. “No, no. Julip’s sleeping. I thought I’d pass an hour or two getting acquainted with the Stable. See the sights and all that.”
“Mm.” She leaned into a steady walk. Roach kept pace easily beside her. “Have you been to the, ah…?”
His voice softened and he gave the slightest nod.
“Yesterday,” he said, “while you were resting. Your father was kind enough to show me where they were buried.”
They traded in silence for several seconds. Aurora frowned guiltily at the floor, watching the seams in the concrete slabs pass between them. Dim echoes of their hoofsteps filled the silence and she wondered why she had felt compelled to ask whether he’d gone to the Gardens. Of course he had. They were the reason he chose to remain inside the tunnel even after managing to dig himself out. There was no question that he would take the first opportunity to see the graves of his first family, of the husband and daughter he’d been cut off from two centuries prior. 
She decided to change the subject before the silence strangled them both. “Glad to see the two of you made it home. We were worried you might run into trouble on the way back.”
The unintentional we stung as soon as she said it and she could tell Roach had caught it too. His jaw tightened ever so slightly and then he was nodding as if he hadn’t noticed. “We avoided the roads wherever the terrain would allow it. It’s pretty sparsely populated that far north, even by current standards. Mostly just raiders and radscorpions until you’re west of Crystal Alley.”
She screwed up her face with confusion. “Crystal Alley?”
“A remnant from when the bombs supposedly melted a significant portion of the Crystal Empire and threw the debris across the border,” he said, pausing just long enough to glance back at her false leg. “The radiation levels up north can put Kiln to shame. Julip knows more about it than I do. I’m just glad we managed to get that power armor upright.”
Aurora hummed. “She was able to walk around in one of those tin cans without stilts?”
“Mm. She’s nothing if not resourceful.”
 There was something of a bashful pinch to his smile that hinted at, or rather confirmed Aurora’s private suspicions. “Is it safe for me to assume you two are more than friends?”
He snorted. “That obvious?”
She let her own smile answer him. He lowered his head like a foal caught with his feathers in the cookie jar and who wasn’t quite sure whether he was getting away with it.
“We’re… closer than before, yeah. It just sort of happened.” He looked up at her with a shrug, as if to apologize. “We wanted to wait before we told you.”
She winced inwardly. It was easy to read between the lines. Roach and Julip hadn’t wanted to share the facts of their evolving relationship with Ginger’s death still so fresh in their minds, and here Aurora had pried the admission from him without thinking. Now it was her turn to eyeball the floor while she thought of something to say that wouldn’t make an uncomfortable moment unbearable.
Lifting a wing, she pulled the old ghoul over in a casual hug. “I’m happy if you’re happy. Congrats.”
His smile broadened and he nodded his appreciation. Aurora let him slip out from under her wing and they spent some minutes walking the perimeter of Mechanical in amicable silence.
Despite her protests against returning, she couldn’t deny the peace that came with being home again. In the dim yellow glow of emergency lights, with the missing hum of the generator smothering the empty workbenches, she still felt pulled to the comforting routines of her old job leading the first shift. It was as if a part of her still believed she could walk into the generator room and tell the old, grease-stained terminals to run through the entries left by Flux on the third shift. As if she could still walk the painted catwalk around the great generator and throw a wrench against every nut and bolt the ancient machine insisted on shaking loose. As if her decision to leave the Stable and search the ruins of a dead world for their salvation had all been part of one terrible, lovely fever dream.
A hoof tapped hers, and she looked up from her brooding to see Roach eyeing her. “Cap for your thoughts?”
Her gaze wandered to the passing row of tool lockers and she let the feathers of a wing devoid of machine oil slide over the grated doors. “Same ones as always. Thinking about home. How things were before.”
He nodded. “About the ghouling?”
Her wing slumped away from the lockers. She sighed, suddenly aware of the cool bottom level air against her patches of bare skin. “Little bit.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not a whole lot to talk about.” It was an unsubtle deflection, but she trusted Roach wouldn’t press the issue. Either she would lose her mind and need to be put down or she wouldn’t. She found herself remembering something Discord had said before she left. “Time offers plenty of opportunities, but rarely offers any second chances.”
Roach blinked at her. “That’s… uncharacteristically insightful.”
“Ouch.”
“For you, I mean.”
“Double ouch. Let me know when you need a break from that hole you’re digging.” She bumped into him to make sure he knew she was kidding. “It’s something that the hermit I told you about said while he was patching me up. He has a weird way of looking at the world that makes a scary amount of sense. He’s an old fart like you. You’d like him.”
Roach cocked his brow. “Is that so?”
She nodded, pretending not to notice his arch expression. “Yeah. I mean I appreciate you asking Doc Fetlock to look me over. Who knows, maybe he’ll figure out a treatment? And maybe he won’t. Either way it’s out of my control and it’s not going to do me any good to worry about it. Right?”
She watched as his smile diminished into an uncertain frown. “I suppose not.”
“Right. If I go feral, I go feral. If not, great.” She paused for a beat to slow herself down and carefully consider what she said next. When she was ready, she met Roach’s uneasy gaze. “I shouldn’t be alive right now. When – no, Roach, please just listen. When I flew Ginger out of the Stable with that bomb between us, I wasn’t thinking for ways the two of us might survive. As far as I knew we were both dead the second that balefire came alive. I knew we were both going to die somewhere over the Stable and the only thing I was focused on was getting us there before she lost her grip on that box. I think, on the way up, I made peace with that. I think Ginger did too.”
Roach looked ready to interrupt, but she held up a feather to forestall him. “I should be dead, but I’m not. She gave me a second chance, Roach. Every minute that has passed since she dropped me in that shop is a minute I could be spending making things right. Does that make sense?”
His hooves clicked in lockstep beside her own. After a thoughtful moment, he nodded. “I think I do, yes.”
“I’m going to kill Primrose,” she stated bluntly.
His jagged horn pulsed with a brief, eager glow. “Julip and I are coming with you.”
There’d been no doubt in her mind that they wouldn’t. When the four of them had departed from the oil rig, Julip was still seething over being detained while the architect of all the lies she’d been fed strutted around under the protection of a heavily armed retinue. She wanted revenge for being duped into serving the mare responsible for turning the world into the ruined nightmare it was today. And Roach… he had spent two centuries grieving the loss of his first real family and was now reliving all of it with the death of his surrogate daughter. 
Aurora felt all the confidence in the world that a bullet from her rifle would be a pleasant death compared to the unfettered animal carnage with which Roach would descend upon her.
“Of course you’re coming with,” she agreed. “But before we go after Primrose, we have to do something else first.”
He fixed her with one of his opaque eyes. “And that is?”
“We need to find a place called ‘Mariposa.’ There’s a zebra there who helped me fix up Ginger’s Pip-Buck. He’s going to show me how to use it to track down Primrose.” She chewed her tongue for a moment before sheepishly adding, “After that... it’s complicated.”







Fiona jerked awake to the crashing sound of a metal hoof pounding the tunnel flagstones. Groggy and disoriented, it took several sluggish seconds for her brain to catch up to the rest of her senses. Someone outside the tent was shouting orders in a booming voice amplified by their power armor. The sound of stirring bodies filled her ears, including that of the stallion who had been sleeping in the crook of her arm like an oversized stuffed animal. She opened her eyes just enough to get a read on how much daylight had brightened the side of the simple canvas A-frame and quickly resolved that there was more of it than her tired body cared to acknowledge. 
The Ranger with whom she’d spent the night, a low-ranking enlisted fresh out of Fillydelphia and flush with caps, shrugged on her satchel and rifle with a grunt. Fiona waited for her to decide which post-coital courtesy to say, then frowned when she ducked out of the tent without so much as a thank you. Once the last muster call was done echoing through the tunnel she sat up, or sat up as much as she could without lifting the tent off its posts, and went about the usual business of cleaning herself up. Once she’d made herself decent and recounted the caps she’d earned she slung on her own satchel and slinked out into the busy tunnel. 
The crisp scent of meat cooking filled her nostrils as she endured the usual stares ranging from fearful, disapproving, lustful, and simply curious. She ignored the judging eyes and murmured a few hellos to those friendlier faces. Several of those latter answered with good mornings of their own before letting their attention turn back toward the great cookfires set up by the Rangers out on the scorched soil. Fiona considered following the last trickle of soldiers toward whatever wasteland proteins were on the menu, sighting the black rows of half-barrels filled with the coals of wood collected from the toppled forest which once obscured Stable 10’s access road. Somewhere not far from here she imagined there were several dens missing their resident rodents. 
While she debated rustling up a dish of early morning molerat, she noticed a sprinkling of Stable jumpsuits dotted among the armored and armed Rangers. A couple of youngsters rode atop their parents’ shoulders, their wings and wide eyes gawking up at the looming clouds as if seeing them was some kind of personal miracle. Their parents funneled into the line forming at the open grills, their faces filled with a fear which hunger had forced them to defy. The adults looked half starved to death, their children much less so. Fiona spared one last glance at the grills, at the meat glistening on racks above the coals, before padding off toward the other end of the tunnel.
On her way to the Stable she passed a dozen or so new tents and even a few makeshift stalls that hadn’t been here when she’d left to find Aurora. The traders were making the doorway to Stable 10 as much a home for themselves as the Steel Rangers were refortifying it. In a way it reminded her of Blinder’s Bluff but in reverse, with the populace owning the Stable and the Rangers living outside. Even now it looked as if some of the trading companies Ms. Vogel had badgered into transporting water were setting up the beginnings of another node on their trade network. And why not? The Stable dwellers might not have caps yet but the soldiers coming in from the Bluff would have all manner of currency and little to nothing to spend them on.
Fiona consciously patted the satchel swinging below her neck. The caps she’d earned last night jingled loosely among her belongings, evidence that even she wasn’t above engaging in a little freelance commerce. 
A quick glance back at the little tent city behind her told her all she needed to know. The wasteland was making itself at home. She just hoped Sledge and his Stable wouldn’t hold that against her.
“Sir,” an uncertain voice said. “Or, ah, miss?”
A Stable dweller, one of a pair assigned a post at the broken mouth of their home, was moving to stand in front of her. Fiona recognized him as the deputy who several days prior ran screaming from the sight of her, shouting to anyone who could hear him about the monster he’d seen. He was the same stallion who not much later spoke out of turn to tell her about his people’s desperate need for water. 
“It’s ‘miss,’” she answered, slowing but not quite stopping as she approached the gaping entrance. Was she suddenly unwelcome here, too?
To her surprise, the deputy stuck out a foreleg. The gesture was bewildering and she found herself stopping just to give herself time to decipher it. A pair of hungry Stable dwellers skirted around the odd scene with questioning glances before continuing on their way to collect their morning meal. Unsure what was expected of her, she lifted a clawed hand and clasped the end of the deputy’s hoof and gave it an awkward shake.
The other deputy still at his post cleared his throat to suppress his laughter. 
“Um.” He looked as uncertain as Fiona felt as she let go. “I… okay, well… I’m supposed to tell you Aurora wants your help with something. She’s in the overseer’s office with the others.” 
When she hesitated, he added, “Follow me. I’ll show you the way.”
Diamond-patterned steel panels, hastily pieced together with wing-tightened bolts, clanged underfoot as they crossed what was a makeshift bridge over the broken trackway for the Stable’s rolling door. Fiona could feel the cooler air flow across her body as they passed into the dim shadows of a shelter on life support. Dust stirred up from the rubble of pulverized concrete floated lazily in the daylight streaming in from behind them, forming a horizontal shaft of glittering motes that ended at the spot where the great cog had come to rest. Powdered concrete like gray frost coated the tilted edges of its massive teeth, just as it had settled on every other surface in the antechamber where hooves and wings had yet to disturb it. The deputy led her along a path cleared of rubble, taking her up the long ramp and through the defunct arches of a narrow decontamination chamber. 
When she stepped out into the Atrium, the first thing she noticed was the row upon row of neat and orderly chairs lining the main floor. A small crew of pegasi were working to erect a short stage at the front of the empty seating, tightening bolts manually as the framework slowly came together. The deputy, Deputy Chaser she now remembered, turned left and led her along the second level catwalk from which she watched four Stable dwellers emerge from a corridor carrying a long panel of blackboard. Scribbles of chalk still decorated much of the slate surface in simple arithmetic. As they rounded the Atrium’s perimeter, making their way toward an office cut off from the other side by rubble blown out from the wall, she asked the obvious question.
Chaser glanced down at the stage in mid construction and seemed uncertain. “Better off asking Sledge. All I know is the whole Stable’s invited. Sounds like we’re all getting a crash course on what’s beyond the tunnel.”
As they rounded the last turn toward the overseer’s office, Fiona watched someone fiddling with a battery powered lantern. It blinked on with blinding brightness, earning the poor pegasus a litany of abuses from those around him who hadn’t been ready. The lantern clicked off and she stepped into an admittedly cozy office.
The first person to greet her was the diminutive green pegasus who had loitered in the doorway of the doctor’s office. Now she was standing with the group of ponies gathered around a lone desk near the center of the room and had caught sight of Fiona before the others. “Luna’s left teat, you’re fucking huge.”
“Julip.” The changeling beside her hissed with a quick swat of his hoof. Looking to Fiona, he said, “She meant to say good morning.”
Sledge, Aurora, a ghoul she didn’t recognize and an even taller mare whose black uniform she knew immediately glanced up from their cups and offered a variety of similar greetings with differing levels of warmth. The Enclave stranger seemed least at ease with Fiona’s appearance. Beside her, the sickly blue ghoul simply stared at her with momentarily wide eyes as if she had mistaken her for someone she knew. 
“Morning.” Slowly, she approached the small gathering, looking to Sledge in hopes of an explanation. “Your deputy said Aurora needed to see me.”
Deputy Chaser hadn’t proceeded beyond the doorway. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed he had posted himself on the catwalk just outside, though the angle of his ears told them all he was listening.
Sledge stepped to the side, making room at the desk for her between him and Aurora. Rolled out across its surface was what at first glance looked to be an antique map of the old world. Upon closer inspection however, Fiona noticed the immaculately crisp edges and sharp, black letters of every city, town, and landmark. Her claws pressed a little more firmly against the floor beneath her as if her body was trying to stop her from reaching up to touch the surface of that unblemished paper. She lowered her haunches, seating herself to make her oversized figure less of a visible distraction at the makeshift table.
Beside her, Aurora picked up a dented thermos from where it sat in the sky blue expanse of the Celestial Sea and unscrewed the lid. Steam curled through the air as she tipped the end over an empty mug, cutting the acrid smell of concrete dust with the aroma of coffee. Aurora offered up the mug. 
“Do you remember the first time we talked to each other?”
Fiona took the mug between her palms, inhaling the steam. “You were getting ready to fly off to the old solar array down south, sure.”
She dipped her beak and took an experimental sip, wondering how they had managed to brew a pot of coffee without power. Glancing at the map she noticed several landmarks had been marked with thin discs of polished iron. It took a moment for her to recognize the ancient coins for what they were, old prewar Equestrian bits whose gold cladding had long since been worn away with constant use. One bit marked the mountain beneath which Stable 10 was hidden. Following the thick black line of a numbered highway east, another iron bit rested below the unremarkable crossroads of that highway and an unlabeled road. Blinder’s Bluff, judging by the distance. Another bit marked the solar array. Another New Canterlot. 
Aurora leaned forward, tapping a section of highway between Foal Mountain and the Bluff. “Somewhere around here, you used a Spritebot to warn us about a convoy we were heading toward. Remember?”
The coffee was thick enough to chew. She looked around the table, her gaze slowing as it passed over the striped mare in the black uniform. “Sure, yeah. Why?”
The Enclave mare took that as her cue to speak up. “Those Spritebots are operated over encrypted frequencies. We need you to tell us how you broke through those safeguards.”
Fiona blinked before eyeing Sledge, then Aurora. “I’m not the only one who sees a colonel of the Enclave standing over there, right? Because if not, then I have a few follow-up questions beginning with how the fuck and why the fuck.”
“Former colonel of the Enclave,” the mare stated harshly. “Minister Primrose is a pretender to the thrones which she used balefire to vacate. She does not command me or my soldiers. My name is Weathers.”
Across the table, Julip lifted a wing. “Ex-corporal. Same. Except for the name.”
A quick nod from Sledge confirmed to Fiona that they were telling the truth. Enclave defectors, there was something you didn’t see every day. Her attention then shifted toward the ghoul standing between the disillusioned soldiers at the far end of the map. “And who are you?”
Between the ghoul’s blink of surprise and the sudden, visible shock of those around the desk, Fiona was willing to bet everything in her satchel that she’d unwittingly stepped in shit.
“Uh,” the ghoul rasped uncertainly, “the name’s Rainbow Dash.”
The name rang a grand total of zero bells. Judging by the expectant gazes leveled at her, however, she took a stab in the dark and assumed the one-winged ghoul had been somebody important. She decided to just roll with it for now. “Nice to meet you, I guess?”
“Holy shit,” Julip laughed. 
Roach hushed her. “We were talking about how you hacked the Enclave’s Spritebots.”
All eyes pivoted her way once again, with the notable exception of Julip’s and Rainbow Dash’s. Julip had buried her face behind a wing and was shaking with barely contained laughter. Rainbow Dash just grinned at the smaller mare, enjoying her quiet fit. The rest did their best to ignore the distraction as they waited for Fiona to respond.
“I mean,” she said, “I didn’t exactly hack them, per se.”
Weathers cleared her throat in a vain attempt at dragging Julip back into the conversation. “However you define it, it’s critical that you tell us how you were able to hijack our - their - network undetected.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because I need you to do it again.” At her side, Aurora set a foreleg on the edge of the map. Clamped above her hoof was that strange, white Pip-Buck she’d been tinkering with back at the dragon’s cabin. The beveled screen was dark as before, but Fiona suspected the mare wouldn’t have summoned her to ask after things like hacking Spritebots if she hadn’t gotten it working.
With a metallic click, the Pip-Buck slid free of a cloth bound around Aurora’s foreleg. She set it on the desk in front of Fiona, hesitating ever so briefly before taking her feathers off the smooth cuff. “The Enclave gave this to Ginger. I had… gone missing, and they were grasping at straws trying to find me. Primrose used it to talk to Ginger directly.”
She set down her coffee and picked up the device, turning it this way and that in her hands. “I kind of feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but this isn’t exactly a Spritebot.”
Aurora picked up her own mug and drained the puddle at the bottom. “No, but it’s as close as I’m going to get to tracking Primrose down. They use those things to keep tabs on where their people are. I need you to make it so I can use it to see where Primrose is.”
Fiona frowned at her reflection in the darkened screen. “That’s… not as easy as you make it sound.”
“I know that.” Aurora pulled a stray strand of white mane away from her face. “Trust me, I know.”
“Tell her about Eshe,” Roach nudged.
Aurora held out her wing for the Pip-Buck with a sigh. Fiona dropped it into her feathers, her curiosity piqued by the strange name. “What’s an Eshe?”
“He’s a friend. A ghoul, technically.” Aurora carefully secured the device atop the cloth bindings. “He used to work for Robronco before the war. Knows all there is to know about how these things work.”
She tapped her talons against the mug. “Then why do you need me?”
Aurora paused for a beat. Then she began to explain. Fiona listened as she told her about Eshe, this zebra who had somehow become trapped on the bed of an AutoDoc down in the bowels of a prewar ministry prison for traitors to Equestria. She told all of them about his history with Robronco, how he had been a self-taught coder who helped design the operating language that made Pip-Bucks capable of the computational agility that they quickly became known for. She explained how after the explosion above Stable 10 she had begun to dream just like Ginger had once done, and that she and Eshe had conspired to repair her Pip-Buck while they both slept. And finally, Aurora told them about the complex lines of nonsensical text, numbers, and symbols that Eshe had repeatedly tried and failed to teach her to recite.
“...and I mean none of it sticks. Not a damned bit of it.” She paused only to uncap the thermos and pour herself a fresh cup. After a long pull of tar-black liquid, she added, “I thought I could just bring her Pip-Buck to him and have him type everything in, but then he showed me what his situation really was and… it’s not good. He can’t breathe on his own let alone talk. Even if he could survive without a tube down his throat, which he can’t, I doubt he has any muscles left in his jaw to hold a pencil to write. He basically just exists down there and nothing else. If he wasn’t able to dream…”
Aurora shook her head with a shudder. It was a sympathetic response that ran the length of the table. Nobody wanted to consider how far gone a person might be after two centuries of being able to do nothing but stare up at the same ceiling day after day.
“He can’t help,” Fiona summarized, hoping she didn’t sound calloused as she did so. “At least, not any more than he already has. I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it. Robronco’s coding is a hot mess of gibberish held together with duct tape and ten-penny nails. Not exactly the kind of thing you learn after a couple nightly cram sessions.”
An assenting murmur went around the desk. The former colonel leaned over the map for the thermos. “Which is why she’s asking for your expertise. The Enclave’s overland communication network is, supposedly, impenetrable.”
Fiona snorted at that.
“Emphasis on supposedly,” Julip chimed in, now past her fit of the giggles. “Half the reason the Rangers never cracked our encryptions is because the upper brass always had their dicks in a twist around OPSEC. Those Pip-Bucks are all kitted out with thermite charges in case the enemy got lucky and dropped a field commander. And don’t get me started on the Spritebots. Never any fucking around when we had an urgent report to send because any scrapper with a pistol knew they could trade a few caps in bullets for a few dozen caps in parts.”
Weathers sipped her cup, merely nodding her agreement.
She tried to avoid their expectant gazes by focusing on the point on the map where the worn surface of a prewar bit marked the location of the Bluff. She imagined her firewatch tower perched at its peak, its four walls filled to bursting with all manner of precious equipment she both used to cycle through Spritebot feeds with impunity and broadcast truth and music. Somewhere along the road this gathering of ponies had gotten an inflated sense of what she was capable of doing, and Fiona couldn’t help but feel the overconfident personality she wore for all newcomers to the Bluff had played a large part in that. 
Resting her elbow on the clean edge of the map, she propped her head up between her thumb and forefinger. “Look, I don’t think I can help you.”
“If the problem is compensation,” Sledge rumbled, “we can work out a trade. Aurora said your radio station is toast. We have transmitters in Supply. Good ones. Repeaters, too.”
That was nearly tempting enough to convince her to just fake it. How much better range could she get with radio equipment manufactured inside a Stable? With access to repeaters it wasn’t unreasonable to think she couldn’t reach not just the eastern coastline, but all the way west to the Las Pegasus ruins.
It was tempting, but it wouldn’t be right. She shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her beak. “No, it isn’t an issue of payment. It’s an issue of me not knowing the first thing about hacking anything.”
A silence enveloped the overseer’s office. 
“But you can hijack the Spritebots.” It was Aurora’s voice, and she didn’t sound happy.
“I’m not exactly ‘hijacking’ them,” she admitted. “It’s more like… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
Silence again. This time, however, Aurora wasn’t the one to break it. A ghoul’s voice, too feminine to be Roach’s, spoke into the gloom.
“You stole the keys,” Rainbow Dash murmured. “You tricked someone into giving you access, and you never gave them any reason to look for a breach.”
Fiona looked up at the ghoul, shrugged, then nodded. “Pretty much, yeah. How’d you know?”
Rainbow answered with a shrug of her own. “Same thing happened to me a long time ago.”
Something about the way in which she spoke hinted at an underlying guilt that masked a deeply significant truth. Looking around the desk, Fiona could sense she was the only one present who didn’t know what the old mare referred to or how that undoubtedly tied into the way they all looked to her with both reverence and sadness. In the dying remains of Griffinstone there was little time nor will to teach something as distant and unimportant as Equestrian history. There were faces and names every gryphon recognized. The alicorn princesses, the places on the old maps that pointed to the largest cities to have existed generations before any of them were born, and the collective knowledge that Equestria had birthed the weapons that ultimately ruined their planet. But this mare standing across from her, with her missing wing and thinning veil of colorful mane and tail, was as unremarkable to Fiona as any other stranger who might wander into the Bluff. 
And yet the looks the others gave her said she was important. She considered asking the question aloud and confirming to Aurora, Roach, Julip and the others that she was wholly ignorant. One embarrassment at a time, she decided. It was bad enough she’d gotten their hopes up.
“I’m sorry I led you on, but this isn’t something I can help you with.” 
She nudged the mug away and stood up. Before she could turn to leave, however, Julip held up a wing. “Woah woah, hold up a second.”
Curious glances pivoted toward the feisty young mare. 
“You just said you schmoozed a comms officer into giving you the keys to the fucking kingdom, but you never told any of us how.” She lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, as if to ask if she was the only one who wanted to know. “I mean, who do you have to fuck to do that?”
“Julip,” Roach whispered.
“I’m not saying she fucked anybody!” Julip looked around the desk, half-grinning, before turning back to her. “I mean, did you?”
Fiona couldn’t help but smile the tiniest bit. Abrasive as she was, she was starting to like this little shit-starter. “It wasn’t that complicated.”
Colonel Weathers leaned forward. “It had to have taken some skill, though.”
When Fiona hesitated to answer, Aurora nudged her with a wing. “She’s on our side.”
Easy to say when you’re not the one spilling the beans to someone in an Enclave uniform. “Sure, yeah, it wasn’t simple but it wasn’t exactly rocket science either. I just sort of asked.”
“You asked.” Now it was Weathers’ turn to be suspicious. “And somebody just gave you credentials?”
“Sure, I guess.” Sensing that answer wasn’t going to fly very far, she elaborated. “It was a while ago, back before anyone knew I had a station and everyone tried to charge a fortune for any information they brought in from outside the Bluff. Most of the stories I had to tell were ones I had gone out to dig up myself. When you’re trying to build an audience, one or two nuggets of news a week doesn’t get you anywhere. I couldn’t hire anyone, and I sure couldn’t–”
Weathers was spinning a feather in a steady circle. Get to the point, it was saying.
“I wanted more eyes on the wasteland. The Enclave has thousands of mechanical eyes buzzing around every corner of the continent. Figured I could capture a few for myself, so I did and found out I couldn’t get any of my hardware to talk to it. Like you guys said, encryptions and firewalls.”
“Which you got around by asking nicely,” Sledge said.
She seesawed her open palm. “Eh, I wouldn’t say I was nice about it. I found a Spritebot snooping around the Bluff and busted its cameras.”
Roach reached out for the thermos. Sledge nudged it closer with his wingtip. The ghoul nodded his thanks before turning his attention back to Fiona. “How, exactly?”
A flush of embarrassment ran up her neck. There was no eloquent way of painting what she did. “I… smashed it against a rock.”
Across the table, Weathers let out an approving chuckle. “That’s one way to get Comms to check in.”
“Pretty much,” she agreed. “A few seconds go by and suddenly someone’s voice is coming out of the bot going on about damage to Enclave property, demanding identification, and sounding like I was making a shitty day a lot shittier for breaking his toy. No idea who he was, but the bot was blind so he had no idea who I was either. So I lied. I pretended I was some no-rank private who got separated from her unit, couldn’t rub two sticks together to start a fire, all that stuff.”
Julip scoffed. “And that shit worked?”
She smiled and sat back down. “It did once I got the waterworks going. Soon as I started crying about how I was lost and was afraid the Rangers were going to capture me, the dickhead on the other end changed his tune real quick. Started asking me for a name, serial number, anything to identify myself so the bot could make a connection with a commander back home. I guess he got sick of me after a while, because he ended up giving me his serial number just to shut me up.”
Weathers covered her face behind her wing. “Celestia’s grace.”
“Keys to the kingdom,” Julip chuckled, clearly enjoying the disappointment of her former superior. “Nobody’s gonna bat an eye if they see a comms officer scanning through Spritebots. Shame we can’t use their credentials on the Pip-Buck.”
At that, Aurora looked down at the device on her leg. “Why not?”
“Insufficient clearance,” Weathers supplied. “If the Enclave was lax enough to give any officer with access to a terminal in the comm center visibility on their minister, it wouldn’t have taken this long for someone with a grudge to start working out a way to weaponize it.”
“It’s a little more than a grudge,” Aurora murmured.
Weathers held up a hoof in deference. “I don’t believe the vocabulary yet exists to adequately define your reason for seeking revenge.”
Aurora glowered darkly at the network of lines and curves on the map in front of her, the intensity of which threatened to burn a hole straight through the desk beneath it. They were sorely in need of a change of subject. 
She looked over to the former colonel, quietly noticing how each pin and patch were exactly where they were meant to be. When Weathers met her eyes, she spoke up. “Theoretically, who would be the lowest ranking officer I’d have to convince to hand over their credentials?”
Weathers blew out a thoughtful breath. “Don’t aim low. Aim high. There are easier targets at the top of the chain of command.”
“I doubt I’m good enough of a bullshitter to pretend to be a general. You sure there aren’t any high ranking janitors out in New Canterlot?”
Weathers smiled at that, but shook her head. “No, but when we’re done here, I’m going to introduce you to some people who might. Up until a week ago they served on Security Director Clover’s staff. Their loyalty to Primrose vanished the instant they saw Aurora carrying that bomb above their heads. They’ll have some ideas for who is most likely to have replaced them and, most definitely, what secrets the less reputable of them would prefer to keep private.”
Fiona blinked. “That could work.”
“It’ll have to,” Aurora agreed.
Around the desk heads began to nod. With the plan decided, Fiona watched as all eyes began to turn toward Aurora who was already picking up another worn bit from the edge of the map. The slim coin glinted under the dim emergency lamps as she reached out and set it down in the center of a seemingly unimportant lake near the southeast edge of Old Equestria. The wooden desk clicked beneath it. Written in curving blue letters over the water was the name Lake Mariposa. A small town bearing the same name clustered around the lake’s outlet.
“Next on the agenda,” Aurora said, her expression grim, “we need as much information as we can get on this town. This won’t be the first time a group has come for Eshe. I want to make sure we’re the first one to survive.”







“Deputy Chief Billings.” 
“Chief Billings, now.”
“He can wear any title he likes. It doesn’t change the facts of how he came into his wealth.”
“Allegedly.”
“Allegedly nothing. The only reason Billings has never landed in front of a tribunal is because half the judges on it are guilty of the same crimes he is.”
“It never fails to impress me how many feathers can all fit in the same collection basket.”
“Spoken like a stallion who hasn’t seen the chapel’s ledger. No one I’ve seen in the clergy appears to be suffering from want.”
“But Deputy Chief Billings…”
“Chief Billings…”
“Yes, Chief Billings is shameless. He’s the one who will bend for you.”
“Provided you can contact him.”
“Too busy with his promotion to count his hoard, the poor fellow.”
“Polishing his medals is more likely.”
The chatter of snickers that rippled out of the three stallions set Fiona’s hackles on edge. Beside her, Weathers looked equally uneased. These weren’t soldiers like the thirty-odd other people locked in the same recovery ward, these were officers who had risen to the lofty heights of politicians. They were the three survivors belonging to the security staff of Primrose’s bunker, tasked and trusted with different facets of the same informational gem. Their meandering bitterness over being exiled and nearly murdered had jammed a thorn in their collective craws, and they had no qualms about selling out the least loved stallion slated to replace them.
Fiona tried to follow their wandering thread of muttered insults, accusations, and barbs as best she could. Huddled together in the far corner of the war, the three former security chiefs had formed a sort of in-group among the rank and file survivors among them. Few if any of the soldiers seemed interested in them. If anything, they were entirely too distracted by the gryphon in the room to notice them at all.
“Alright, let’s rewind for a second.” She made a few marks on a loaned notepad below Billings’ name. “You said the new chief has been stealing caps from the church. You’re talking about the Chapel of the Two Sisters?”
The eldest stallion pulled a face. “Is there another?”
Okay, point taken. “And on a scale of one to ten, how much shit could that put him in if he’s found out?”
“Up to his ears,” said the one reclined on his cot.
“The Black Wing would certainly pay him a visit were he simply accused. Given the current state of the minister’s paranoia, I would not be surprised if she levied judgment herself.”
“Worrying, given her new alacrity for deploying balefire. The poisonous bitch.”
His two compatriots showed reflexive discomfort at the outburst, but only for a moment before they relaxed into the comfort of knowing they were no longer accountable to Primrose.
Fiona scratched everything down that she could. “What else do you have on him?”
They looked between themselves with thoughtful expressions. The eldest spoke first.
“He has, from time to time, taken pleasure with the stock that comes in from the slaver’s guilds. Earth ponies, if I recall. Not strictly criminal, but shameful behavior I gamble he would just as soon not want disclosed. Least of all to his wife or their young children.”
A murmur of agreement went up from the other pair. 
Fiona underlined this bit twice. “I’ll need help contacting him.”
The three officers chuckled. When they realized she wasn’t sharing their sense of humor, the eldest once more composed himself with a placating smile. “Our credentials were doubtless revoked well before the Black Wing came to drag us from our offices. As much as I would enjoy disrupting whatever sham of an inner circle the minister has rebuilt around herself, we were taken to this mountain with little more than the clothing on our backs.”
Her pencil scratched across paper. “But you’re sure about this Chief Billings guy? He’ll fold?”
The trio nodded among themselves. “For a short while, yes. I don’t doubt he’ll give you what you want, but he’s no imbecile. He’ll begin destroying any evidence he thinks you may have access to as soon as you’re done speaking. Once he feels safe, don’t doubt for a moment that your Pip-Buck will be turned into a homing beacon for the Black Wing.”
“That will be the first thing Billings does, not the last,” the bedded officer muttered.
“So a short window.” Fiona jotted this worrying fact down and circled it. 
“Exceedingly,” the elder agreed. “Assuming you’re planning to accomplish something permanent, I would advise whoever wears the Pip-Buck to stay well clear of whoever intends to pull the trigger.”
“And whoever pulls the trigger, be prepared to fly quickly.”
A scoff. “It would hardly matter whether they flew, walked, or crawled. In the end the result will be the same.”
Murmured agreement. 
Fiona found herself frowning at her notepad, the pencil fixed uncertainly on the lined paper. “Care to explain what you mean?”
The eldest chuckled. “It should be obvious even to a slow-witted creature such as yourself. Minister Primrose rarely ever leaves the city let alone the Bunker. If your pureblooded friend intends to assassinate her, she will have to do so from within New Canterlot. Within the heart of her power. Once she pulls that trigger, she will be faced with the fury and rage of every loyal pegasi in the capital city.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “Successful or not, they will kill her.”







For the first time she could remember, Aurora listened to the outside air gently murmuring into her Stable.
She sat on the diamond steel flooring of the antechamber with her shoulder leaned against the lowest rung of the railing along the upper platform. Past the rail, the ramp led down to the sheared threshold of her home. With a tin plate of what the Ranger cooks outside had dubbed Molerat Fritters warming her feathers, she speared her fork into a slice of fried meat and stared out at the steady traffic of her friends and neighbors as they milled over panels laid across the gap. She chewed the sinewy molerat as the people she and Ginger risked everything to save took their first steps into the outside world. Some of them met her gaze as they carried their ration of food and water back inside, but none of them said hello. They could see her thoughts were someplace else.
Hoofsteps behind her pulled her back to the present. She glanced back to see Roach and Julip picking their way around the bits of rubble still waiting to be carried away. 
“Keep wandering off like this and I’m liable to put a bell on you.” Roach sat down beside her, knowing by now he needed no invitation. He was always welcome company. Even Julip, with her propensity to put Sledge’s worst tirades to shame, was a comforting sight. “You talk to your father yet?”
She folded a flap of seared rodent with her fork and shoved it into her mouth. “We spoke.”
A green fan of feathers appeared over her shoulder and plucked a bit of meat off her plate. Despite her grim state of mind, she couldn’t help but smile a little. 
“Guessing he didn’t take it very well,” Julip said.
“He’s against it.” Staring at her plate, she felt her appetite fade and held it out for Julip to finish. It was yanked from her feathers before she could think of reconsidering. 
In truth, her conversation with her dad had gone about as well as could be expected. He’d been able to tell she had bad news as soon as she arrived at their old family compartment, and it hadn’t taken him much effort to cut past the small talk to get to the meat of what she had to tell him. When she said she had to leave again, this time with the aim to kill the undying mare responsible for all the pain and loss their world suffered over the last two centuries, the first words out of his mouth were to simply ask why. Why couldn’t she stay home? Why couldn’t the soldiers massing outside the Stable hunt Primrose down? Why did it have to be her?
She didn’t have any good answers for him and she wasn’t going to risk the last conversation she might have with her dad ending with a well-meaning lie. In the end, she could only think to tell him that Primrose was a problem that needed to be fixed, and she needed to be the one to do it. After everything that happened, if she chose to stand aside and do nothing, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with herself.
“Sledge is going to keep an eye on him while I’m gone,” she continued, pausing to swallow her last morsel of molerat. “He’ll be okay.”
Roach hummed sympathetic agreement. Agreement with Aurora, sympathy for her father. “Well, you won’t be alone.”
“Or unarmed,” Julip added around a mouthful of molerat. At that, the polished hickory butt of a familiar weapon thumped against her shoulder. “If you don’t take it, I’m keeping it.”
Her smile widened a tiny bit as she brought her rifle forward and into her lap. It smelled faintly of oil and still wore the high polish the Enclave had restored it to during their time aboard the oil rig. The memory soured in her mind as quickly as it had come and she felt tempted to grind a wingful of concrete dust against the weapon until every inch of it was scoured of their handiwork.
“Got the rest of your stuff back here too, if you’d bother to look.” 
She took the hint and glanced back where Julip sat behind them. Her smile returned at the sight of her saddlebags strapped to the smaller mare’s midsection with the girth cinched so far that the excess strap looked obscene dangling between her legs. She let herself laugh a little as she set the rifle down to relieve Julip of her belongings.
“Your Pip-Buck’s in the left pouch,” Julip said as she finagled the buckle free from her belly. “King Red said to tell you he had it brought up from storage. It’s not the same one you came in with, but–”
“It’ll work,” she finished for her, knowing the replacement would be functionally indistinguishable from the one that got cooked by the bomb. “Thanks for bringing everything up for me.”
Roach gave her prosthetic a thump with his hoof. “Thought we’d save you a trip on the stairwell.”
Taking her bags from Julip, she set them down across her rifle on the floor and considered the more likely reality that Roach had known she was worried that the longer she stayed, the more likely it became she would see the logic in her father’s pleading and convince herself not to leave at all.
“Your safety’s off,” Roach said.
“What? No it’s–” she frowned at the bolt-action half expecting to be wrong, but the switch was exactly where it was when she set it down. The quiet chuckling from her friends told her she’d been had. “You’re a jerk.”
“Part of my youthful charm,” Roach agreed, then uttered a very not youthful grunt as he pushed himself onto his hooves. “If we’re going to get going, then we’d better get going.”
Green feathers landed on her shoulder, causing her to wobble on her butt as Julip used her to stand up. “I stand corrected. You’re both awful.”
“Guilty,” Julip chirped. Her attention shifted toward Aurora’s new leg, and the slightest touch of real guilt colored her grin. “Need help?”
Aurora waved her off. She wanted as much opportunity to get used to the new leg with as little help as possible. If she got the idea in her head that someone would always be around to lend a shoulder, the learning curve would only get steeper. In the case of sitting on her ass, the trick was to lean onto the prosthesis until she could get her good hoof planted and then roll her weight onto the working leg. She had put the theory into practice during the night when she’d gotten too woozy to stand. Joys of letting Fetlock have his pick of the platelets, she supposed.
Once her saddlebags were secure, she shouldered on Desperate Times and found her right wing instinctively brushing across it in search for the brass hooks she’d grown to expect. They were gone, of course. Taken away by the Enclave in their effort to restore the weapon to the way it had been when Spitfire possessed it, leaving behind imperceptibly small dots where screw holes had been filled in and stained to match the surrounding wood. Yet another way in which they had taken Ginger away from her.
She set her sights on the yawning maw of the Stable and considered saying something, but the moment came and went. Without a word she picked her way over the rubble and descended the ramp.







One of the engineers let out a long whistle. “This whole panel is on a four-eighty circuit.”
The stallion crammed in the narrow space beside the first pried a tidy bundle of rotted wires out of the way with a long screwdriver. “Yeah. Breakers buses are all rusted to shit, though.”
“Twenty one decades since they were last serviced. Surprised they’re still on the wall.”
“They built this stuff to withstand a bomb.” He dug his wing deeper into the tangle of wiring while holding a lighter into the new gap with the other. “Insulation’s melted, but I bet it would still work if it hadn’t been left to rust. I think I can see where the main power is coming from.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. Goes straight down. Bet it’s our generator that powered the lights out here. If I can pull the serial off that cable we can track down where it feeds into Mechanical. Maybe Flux will let us try running a line to bypass the busted genny altogether.”
“Good luck with that.”
The engineer snapped the lighter shut and turned his attention up the maintenance panels as if he hadn’t heard the doubt in his colleague’s voice. “Bet you every bit I own that Supply has replacements for everything in here down to the screws. We’d only have to rebuild some of it for it to work as an auxiliary inlet for power, and those soldiers look like the types who know where to find…”
“We should go back inside.”
The subtle discomfort in Sledge’s voice caused Rainbow Dash to turn away from the conversation coming from the claustrophobic utility room she’d called home for the past two hundred years, the same dirty little hovel where right that moment a team of Mechanical’s engineers were peering inside rusted out panels and discussing the potential of what they were uncovering. It was daunting to think she’d spent the majority of her life trapped inside her own head, constantly fighting to tread water in the ocean of feral mindlessness that Blue had been.
Somehow, despite it all, she recognized every inch of that closet-sized room. In many ways she missed the simple comfort of feeling safe inside it. That existence was behind her now, and the Stable she hoped might become her new home stood vulnerable to an enemy she helped create. Her fantasy of shrinking into obscurity and living out her years as another face among hundreds had evaporated the second that door was blown off its locks. She’d done nothing before and the entire planet had paid the price. She wasn’t going to sit on her wings again.
“It’s not like I can fly away,” she replied, her own words taking on the slightest edge. Sledge was standing uneasily beside her, notably between her and the tunnel’s unshielded terminus. She had wanted to come out here an hour earlier but Sledge had asked her to wait on account of Aurora was still out in the tunnel trying to work up the courage to leave again. “I’ll go inside once I’ve seen more. Okay?”
Sledge continued to stare down at her and for a moment she worried he would stay planted between her and the outside. Then, with a heavy sigh, he stepped back and gestured toward the end of the tunnel with a broad red wing. 
“Fine,” he rumbled. “But if there’s any sign of trouble, I’ll haul you back into the Stable myself.”
“I’m sure you will,” she said, and she didn’t doubt he would if push came to shove. Leaving the engineers to puzzle out the wiring in her old utility closet, she stepped past Sledge and resumed making her way toward the tunnel’s balefire-blackened mouth.
So far the outsiders - as Sledge had taken to calling them - had yet to notice or recognize her, but that streak of peace would only last so long. Sooner or later her mark would give her away where her disheveled mane and coat seemed to conceal her. The gryphon she met down in Medical, the one who brought back memories of Gilda as abruptly as a carriage crash, hadn’t the first clue who she was even after being spoon fed her name. She had a feeling that was bound to be the exception and not the rule. Someone from the Stable was bound to say something to an outsider. After that, the snowball would grow on its own terms. 
The threshold for what constituted the “end” of the tunnel were two opposing berms of rubble flanking the transition where the wall’s masonry broke up to give way to the exposed geology of Foal Mountain’s scoured hillside. A path dug through the point where the berms would have met served as a natural choke point where the Steel Rangers, decorated in shades of dusty brown uniforms and mismatched assemblies of power armor, monitored traffic moving to and from the Stable. It felt like only a few years ago when she had ridden the Pillar’s express elevator down to where Applejack had put in so many late nights perfecting her power armor prototype. 
Ancient servos in the neck of one such suit of armor whirred as its pilot watched the two of them pass the checkpoint. Whether he recognized her, she didn’t know. Her attention had been stolen away by the unbroken mass of clouds hanging low in the sky above.
“Wow,” she whispered. “It’s still up there.”
She realized her pace had slowed when she looked down and saw that Sledge had gotten a few steps ahead of her. His gaze occasionally darted skyward as well, but his eyes betrayed a visceral discomfort. Rainbow wondered whether Stable-Tec had equipped their Stables with resources that might help residents prepare themselves for a life beyond the tight confines of their windowless world. Back in the days where there still was a world, all of those lucky enough to secure a spot in a Stable had found themselves bombarded by constant, unsubtle reminders that their lives underground would be a great experiment in the erasure of personal space. Their existence would forever consist of corridors and compartments. Once the door was sealed no amount of kicking or screaming would undo the decision they had all made.
Sledge let out a disconcerted grunt and turned his stern glare toward the rows of military-styled tents radiating out from the shattered ribbon of asphalt that cut the encampment down the middle. What was going through his head and those other Stable residents whose self-contained world now lay open to a million choices they’d never known until now? How long would it be until some residents began to wander out toward the horizon to see what was out there? What would Sledge’s world look like once survivors of the wasteland saw the safety of his Stable and asked to move in?
“Hungry?” he grunted, tipping his nose toward the rows of halved barrels along the roadside atop which some sort of small game sizzled alongside the soupy contents of mess kits belonging to hungry Rangers. 
She wasn’t sure who was getting the better menu, the soldiers or the civilians, and shook her head regardless of which was which. “Later, maybe. I just wanted to see the sky again.”
“The great, gray mess that it is.” He shot another untrusting glance overhead. “All the books said it was blue.”
“I don’t think that’s changed. I’ll ask Deputy Chaser to keep an eye on the weather from the entrance. We can try again when the sun comes out.”
She’d begun to turn back toward the tunnel when an unfamiliar voice chimed in from the food line. A Ranger in a beaten brown uniform rolled a spoon on a faint wisp of magic while the contents of a soot-blackened tin sputtered lazily on the edge of the open grill. “The sun doesn’t come out,” he said with just enough mockery in his tone to turn a few exasperated glances his way. “Just ask the Enclave cannon fodder your overseer has locked up down there. Only time those clouds ever break is when their factories do, and that’s never.”
“Leave ‘em alone, Lampwick. They don’t know.”
Rainbow eyed the soldier and couldn’t make heads or tails of the rank insignia stitched above his pocket. “What don’t we know?”
The soldiers who tried to defend them sighed and turned back to stirring his own meal, leaving them to satisfy Lampwick’s need to hear his own voice. “Sky’s closed, simple as. Has been ever since the Enclave built their big fuckoff weather factories on what’s left of Old Canterlot. Can’t have their scouts flying around up there where we can see ‘em so they pump out all that shit like some big smokescreen.” He offered a flippant mock-bow to them. “Welcome to the wasteland. Hope it’s everything you hoped it to be.”
She felt her brow grow furrows. Weather factories? What were they seeding the clouds with that would carry them this far from Canterlot without at least some dispersion? She frowned skyward, trying to puzzle an answer from what little she could remember during her stint as a cloud wrangler.
“Open your eyes, dumbass. She’s not a Stable-dweller. She knows that stuff already.”
A laugh from the food line. “She’s a ghoul, Lampwick.”
The laughter trickled down the line from others who had been listening to him bluster. The stallion’s face reddened enough to match Sledge’s ruddy coat. Clearly he didn’t enjoy being proven wrong.
If he had shown a little compassion, Rainbow might have considered helping him save some face by pointing out that she hadn’t come from the Stable or the wasteland. But before she could decide, Sledge’s wing was already on her shoulder and guiding her back toward the tunnel. It was his way of saying he’d had enough fresh air for the day, and if she argued with him he was liable to make good on his threat to carry her over his shoulder.
As she started walking, the sharp sound of a spoon bouncing off the asphalt caught her ear. She glanced back to see Lampwick staring at her, his eyes wide and fixated on her flank. His comrades were quick to notice the disturbance and turn to see what it was that had frozen him in place, their brows creasing with understanding as they recognized the faded colors of her mark.
She sighed at the sound of someone breathing her name. Sledge drew to a stop alongside her. 
“Welp,” she smiled tiredly at him, “so much for a quiet day out.”
He frowned over her head at the gathering eyes. “We should get you inside.”
She shook her head and turned to watch the rippling gossip spread in every direction. She knew there was only one good way to handle this. Rarity and Twilight had spent the last years of their lives drilling too much of that crap into her head for her to forget any of it.
Her old friends would shit gold if they were alive to hear the words that tumbled out of her mouth.
“Sledge,” she said to him, “I’m going to give you a crash course in something called public relations.”







“Alright,” Aurora said, all but shouting so that her voice might carry across the headwind, “what do we know about Mariposa?”
Julip swayed alongside her while Roach dangled precariously from her grip. “Shit all!”
“Correct,” she grumbled. Their combined brainstorming session in Sledge’s office had borne little fruit. Stable-Tec, for all of its history books, had not seen fit to print a detailed history of every tiny no-name village in Equestria. If you wanted to read up on prewar cities you were getting the cities. Manehattan, Canterlot, Cloudsdale, and a select listing of other major metropolises were their only glimpse into what city life was like before the bombs fell. 
Rainbow Dash, having been the only mare in the room alive at the time Mariposa warranted its own tiny black dot on the map, hadn’t much to say about the little town either. She didn’t remember having ever traveled there which either meant it was too small to benefit the direct attention of the ministries or it hadn’t been the site of one of the innumerable tiny disasters the Elements of Harmony had been dispatched to resolve. It was, as she put it, just a back country town out in the middle of nowhere. Equestria had thousands of places like that that were almost definitely lively, wonderful places to live and just too small for anyone to remember. 
It had been Colonel Weathers who had the most knowledge to offer. The Enclave posted regular patrols along Equestria’s old borders, not so much to spy on the non-present Steel Rangers as to simply keep track of any incursions from whatever creatures, tribes, or enemy forces might exist in or beyond the southern Badlands. Mariposa was one of many waypoints along that patrol route and she seemed to recall that the town, like its neighbors, had been abandoned and fallen into ruin. Beyond that she could only guess.
“Eshe said all he knew about the place was its name,” she said. “And yet the last group he asked to help managed to find out where he’s being held. Wherever that is, I’m guessing it’ll stand out somehow.”
“A prison will have to have a large footprint, that much we do know,” Roach hollered over the wind. “If the ministries were running a prison in plain sight I think it’s safe to say Rainbow Dash would remember something about it.”
Julip squinted at the sickly looking forest passing beneath them. “Underground, maybe?”
He nodded. “That’s how I’d do it. Stable-Tec popularized the idea that subterranean equaled security. Hard to scale a prison wall if there is no wall.”
Aurora looked down at the blockier, Stable-issued Pip-Buck clamped between her hoof and Ginger’s Enclave-issued device. The green lines of the map ticked over by a pixel’s width, their position relative to the Stable sliding that much farther south-southwest. Where Mariposa appeared on the paper map in Sledge’s office, a tiny green flag stood out on the screen. They were still several hundreds of miles away from where they were going and even now, barely ten minutes into the flight, she could tell Julip wasn’t going to be able to carry Roach in one marathon flight. Not if Roach wanted to avoid becoming a changeling-sized pancake on the ground below, that is.
“Let’s plan on taking breaks,” she said in as charitable a tone as she could muster. “You two know the wasteland better than I do, so you’re in charge of deciding where and when. That okay with you?”
Neither of them objected, but she thought she could see the smallest hint of embarrassment in Julip’s expression. It wasn’t that she was weak, it was just that Roach was nearly one and a half times the size of her petite frame and providing even more drag against an uncooperative wind. If Aurora thought she could hang onto him with just three legs she would have tried, but now wasn’t the time to see what happened if she tore a muscle in the only good hind leg she had left. 
It wasn’t long at all before they’d settled into the same casual banter she had missed during their overland trek to Fillydelphia. It felt good. After nearly an hour of battling a headwind that refused to let up, she could tell Julip was starting to strain. She could feel it in her own wings as well. Muscles still sore from her long flight two nights before were starting to sing a little more stubbornly now. A quick check of her map showed they had made embarrassingly little progress toward Mariposa, crossing off perhaps a tenth of the distance.
“I’m already looking,” Julip said, practically shouting now that she’d begun lagging behind.
Aurora turned her attention to the ground far below as well. There wasn’t much that stood out to her among the sparse stands of dying trees. There had been something resembling the foundation of a home a few miles back that looked tempting, but she’d held her tongue as soon as she saw the similarities between it and the burned foundation of Gallow’s home. She’d hoped to spot a town or village at some point in the last hour but as far as she could tell nobody before the bombs fell or after had thought enough of this stretch of country to bother populating it. Even the old fields of prewar farms, overgrown and barely distinguishable from the nature around them, were few and far between. 
She thought back to the murals decorating the walls of her home and the wide vista of a bright, colorful orchard growing wild around a rustic, lavender barn. Her dad would love to see the ruins of a place like that. Something about that thought brought on a powerful urge to hold out until they flew over one such farm, but a quick look back at Julip was enough to make her drop it.
“There,” Roach said, pointing down almost directly below them. “Box truck on the road. See it?”
Both mares squinted in the direction he’d indicated. Julip was the first to spot it. “Looks kind of obvious, doesn’t it?”
Aurora caught sight of the truck and wondered what was so obvious about it. From her perspective it was barely the size of a pea. She had to narrow her eyes to slits to tell it was laying at a strange angle, almost as if it were preparing to fall onto its side and hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Flashes of yellow paint popped through gaps in the scraggly canopy of leaves above it which must have been what caught Roach’s attention. If it was on a road she couldn’t tell. It looked as if it had been parked in the middle of the woods and abandoned.
“Looks like shelter,” Roach said.
Julip wrinkled her nose but didn’t argue. “Let’s go in a little closer. Keep your eyes open for any movement down there. We’re not exactly near any of F&F Mercantile’s old trade routes so it could be a raider outpost for all we know.”
They began to descend. As they circled closer to the treetops and got a lay of the land, Aurora began to see the faintest trace of what must have been a gravel road buried beneath dense layers of windblown soil and scrub brush. It was faint, but at the right angle she could make out the unnaturally straight line where the forest appeared to not quite be able to knit its branches together. She watched Julip dive low enough for Roach to dangle a hind leg down and swat the highest branches above the rotting truck. A racket of dry leaves and dead sticks tinkled down onto its yellow container, but no one stuck their head through the open door at the back to see what had caused it. No mole rats erupted from the dirt. No shots cracked off at them from somewhere farther away. The truck, as far as they could tell, had been well and truly forgotten.
Following Julip’s lead, she threaded the north-west seam cut by the unremembered road and came to a half-wobbling, half-stumbling landing a few yards ahead of the truck’s rusting bumper. To her relief, her new leg stayed firmly fixed to her stump. Gold star for Doc Fetlock. He hadn’t been lying when he said it could take a beating.
“Shit,” she hissed as she brought cautious feathers under her rifle. Ahead of her, with eyes and weapons of their own trained on the rear corner of the truck, Roach and Julip glanced back at her with bristling concern. She shook her head to calm them. “It’s nothing. We’re good.”
The two shared a curious look before turning their attention back on the listing truck and the open doors at the rear of it. From what Aurora could tell it looked like whoever had driven it here had put both of the wheels into a ditch that had since filled in with soil. The bottom right edge of the vehicle had vanished beneath the new ground level, and as they cautiously rounded the back end, they saw that the open rear door was similarly trapped in the dirt by its trailing corner. 
“Trailer’s empty,” Roach said, lowering his foreleg and the shotgun he always kept belted to it. “Looks like we’re late to the party.”
“I’m not seeing any tracks either,” Julip agreed. With the truck’s frame thoroughly rotted, she only had to manage the slightest hop to climb into the shade of the box trailer. “Wonder what it was hauling.”
Roach was next to climb inside. He turned and extended a hoof, which Aurora gratefully wrapped her feathers around, and helped pull her up. “Your guess is as good as mine. I didn’t see any labels when we landed.”
“Smells like dirt,” she said.
Julip snorted and pointedly thumped her hoof against the layer of compacted soil that had collected over the low edge of the paneled floor. “Think so?”
“Shut up.” She shot her a grin as she sat down, then reclined her back against the tilted wall. “Oh that’s nice.”
Roach grunted as he knelt down on the only level ground inside the trailer. Julip, to her surprise, took the same route as she had and stretched out against the wall like some oversized beach chair. 
“You ain’t kidding,” the smaller mare groaned. “Fuck me sideways, my wings feel like they’re ready to fall off.”
Aurora’s eyes flicked toward Roach who, upon noticing her gaze, caught her meaning and shot back an expression that dared her to say what she was thinking. She quelled a laugh and quickly turned to inspect the view of less than naturally rowed trees stretching beyond the trailer door. 
“So what were you going to say when we landed?” The tip of Julip’s wing swatted her over the shoulder. “You, with the potty mouth.”
“Har har,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s nothing. I forgot to ask Sledge something.”
A pause. “Spill.”
She lifted the hoof of her prosthesis an inch off the dirt and shrugged. “I wanted to see if he could design a harness for this thing.”
Roach lifted a brow. “We shouldn’t have left if it doesn’t fit.”
“It fits fine,” she insisted, seeing the uncertainty in their eyes. “But I’d sleep more soundly if I knew it was strapped on.”
She knew she’d made a mistake as soon as she finished the sentence. Julip barked a sudden laugh that crashed off the paneled walls, causing Roach to simultaneously flinch and suppress a grin. It wasn’t long before her laughter tapered into staccato giggling, and she wore the most shit-eatingest grin Aurora had ever seen on the younger mare. 
Aurora looked to Roach in the hope he might referee what was about to happen, but seeing the what goes around smirk he’d donned, her face flattened with grudging acceptance.
“I mean,” Julip beamed, pausing ever so briefly to wind up her pitch, “Sledge isn’t the last stallion I’d go to if I needed a strap–”
An explosion of deforming steel cut her short as the sloped roof panel buckled inward and shook loose a blinding haze of loose dirt and pulverized rust. The three of them were on their hooves and shouting before whatever had impacted the trailer had slid off and onto the road. Roach was first through the open door, coughing on the grit he’d breathed with the sawed-off shotgun snapping forward along its rail. Julip was right behind him, eyes pinched into watery slits as she hauled Aurora along by their interlocked wings. Hardly ten seconds had passed between the assault and their evacuation, barely enough time for Aurora to get her mind up to speed to start processing where the danger could be.
When she zeroed in on Roach standing just beyond the rear bumper, she realized his shotgun was already dropping toward the dirt. Raw anger battled with relief over his face. Chitin, bunched into a snarl just a moment ago, was beginning to relax.
“I could have fucking shot you!” He shouted as pounding adrenaline forced him to pace in an anxious circle. “What the hell were you thinking?!”
Standing alongside the truck, lavender eyes thrown wide with chagrined amusement, stood a familiar gryphon. Aurora unlinked her wing from Julip’s to take a step forward, unsure whether to tear Fiona a new asshole for scaring them half to death or to ask the more important question of how she had found them in the first place.
“Sledge said you guys flew off for Mariposa,” Fiona hedged, looking between the three of them for something like approval. “I was thinking maybe I could help?”
Roach was quicker on the draw than Aurora and stole the question out of her mouth. “How did you even find us?”
The gryphon shrugged with a flush of embarrassment. “K-i-i-inda wasn’t expecting to, but I knew where you were going and thought worst case I’d meet you there.”
Julip hitched a feather toward the truck. “And you just decided to check out this wreck, out of all the other places we might be resting?”
“Why not? It’s obviously good shelter.”
She smirked at Roach, who rolled his eyes when she said, “Told you so.”
“Well just hold on.” Aurora dipped the barrel of her rifle to the side and reengaged the safety. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she’d unset it. “Fiona, don’t take this the wrong way, but I only asked you to come to the meeting today to see if you could help with Ginger’s Pip-Buck. We’re going straight back to the Stable after we’re done in Mariposa.”
She could only hold back so much of a grimace when a cursory glance confirmed that Fiona wasn’t even carrying a weapon. Not so much as a kitchen knife, let alone what they may need to contend with whatever prevented Eshe from being aided by the first group. “If you talk to Sledge, I’m sure he’ll find you a compartment to stay in until we get back.”
She’d meant to give Fiona an easy out, but the gryphon only seemed to bristle at being offered that opening. Her casual smile faltered for a fleeting moment. Then it returned, harder and much more certain than before.
“If you want,” she began, her tone flat as a professional haggler’s, “I can rehash everything I already told you back at the old dragon’s house.”
Aurora opened her mouth to object, but could only shut it with a sigh as she remembered Fiona’s explanation of how she had lost her radio station when the electromagnetic pulse pushed out by the bomb turned her equipment into expensive paperweights. With her choices reduced to plying her only other profession full time, which would pay the bills and earn her some semblance of comfort, or leaving the Bluff to lend what limited other skills she had to aid the survivors of Junction City she had chosen the latter. Even though it paid close to nothing in caps and the work was despairingly nonstop, she’d chosen to step away from the creature comforts she could have and help those who needed it. Aurora could tell when Fiona had explained all of this that it had been a deeply uncomfortable confession because, like most people with any sense of dignity, she knew it came painfully close to boasting. 
Fiona didn’t want to explain her reasons a second time, and Aurora wasn’t about to make her.
“Or,” the gryphon continued, her tone softening as she understood she was being given that reprieve, “you can say, ‘Yes, Fiona, we are all very sorry we tried to shoot you and would love your help.”
Seeing that Roach and Julip were waiting for her to answer, she took a moment to chew on that. She didn’t like that Fiona was out here without a means to defend herself, but maybe she wasn’t giving the gryphon credit where it was due. She was, compared to the rest of them, huge. Julip could practically trot through Fiona’s legs without having to duck. Heck, she made Sledge look positively normal. Viewed from the right angle, her size alone could be an asset.
“You’re not one to take no for an answer, are you?”
Fiona grinned and shook her head. “Afraid not.”
She glanced between Roach and Julip and received no objections. 
“Alright,” she said, “you’re on guard duty while the rest of us… well, rest.”
Just like that, Fiona became their fourth. As she turned back to the rear of the now thoroughly dented truck, she pushed away the immediate thought that she had somehow just replaced Ginger. It wasn’t that, and she scowled at herself for even thinking it. Ginger would beat her over the head, or more likely use her magic to turn Aurora’s mane into something ridiculous, if she insisted they put their lives at risk on the principle that anyone who might tag along was her substitute. 
First her front hooves, then a strong jump with her hind leg got her up into the back of the tilted trailer. Wrinkling her nose at the tang of freshly rust-dusted air, she shot Roach an unpleasant expression as forewarning. He was up inside next, though he didn’t seem bothered by the metallic odor. Benefits of being a ghoul, she thought. Something she had to look forward to.
Julip had one hoof up inside the trailer before she stopped to look back at Fiona. The gryphon was lingering outside, her head already swiveling to scan the sickly forest for threats. A beat later, Julip was back on the road and thumping Fiona with the back of her wing.
“Want to hear something funny?”
Aurora watched Fiona crane her neck down to see the diminutive mare. “You got jokes?”
“Better.” The grin was audible in Julip’s voice. “So Aurora was telling us how she wanted Sledge to make her a strap-on…”







April 24th, 1297
New Canterlot

“Are you crazy?! You can’t just take–”
A wing shot out to press the staff sergeant’s mouth shut. Still clutching a crumpled paper with a photograph clipped on the corner, the young specialist shook with a hot mixture of fear and adrenaline. Dark speckles where flecks of the intelligence officer’s blood and brain matter had spattered him still stained his uniform. It was an image he hadn’t been able to get out of his head for the last three days and even now as he stood inside the foul trench-style shithouse behind a bar whose finest patronage were a few muds yet to be ruined by cheap chems, he could see the hammer of the pistol Minister Primrose had held descending toward the striker. 
Only after the staff sergeant had calmed himself did the specialist remove his wing from his mouth. “I didn’t have a choice,” he hissed.
His squad leader pressed his lips into a tight line, the anger in his eyes close to boiling. He flicked a feather toward the row of vacant board toilets. “Crumple that up and get rid of it. Burn it. Shove that fucking document down your gullet and swallow it before it gets us both killed.”
“And what about what it says, sergeant?” The paper rattled between his trembling feathers as his eyes skittered over dense paragraphs. “This talks about one of our depots. This photo was taken inside the munitions bunker less than a half hour’s flight north of the capital!”
“Keep your fucking voice down,” the sergeant whispered. “It doesn’t matter who the bomb came from. It happened and it’s done.”
The specialist turned and paced in a tight circle, his nerves fraying past the point of repair. “You don’t believe that.”
“I have a wife and child back home who need me to believe that document isn’t legitimate.”
“But you know it is.” He could hear the whine in his voice, and he hated himself for it. “Sarge. Please. I have family in Stable 10.”
“Ten generations removed and who you didn’t have a clue existed until the pureblood appeared. That’s not a strong enough argument to do… whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”
A tear of laughter rolled out from the bar nearby before being swallowed by the shrill notes of the house music.
“What would that wife and kid say if they knew you could have done something good and pretended the option was never on the table?”
The staff sergeant’s expression grew brittle.
“Look, Sarge,” he pressed, shaking the document at him, “we both know this isn’t what the Enclave stands for. We don’t try to murder entire Stables.”
“We kill all the time, son.”
“Not with balefire. Not me.” He pinched the emblem pinned to his uniform, of the black and white pegasi encircling the letters R.C. “And I think if I went back to the barracks and asked any soldier who believed what this symbolizes, there wouldn’t be a single one who would sign on with what the minister did.”
His sergeant watched him for several agonizing seconds, never reaching out to accept the damning document being offered to him but not quite looking away from it either. “I think you’d change your tune if a couple of Black Wings put you in shackles and dragged you out to New Harmonies.”
“I’d go,” he hissed with all the defiance he could muster. “I’d go because it would just prove that I’m right about this, and that this sheet of paper has nothing but the truth printed on it. Minister Primrose is guilty of using a weapon forbidden on pureblood civilians. And if she doesn't give a shit about them, then shouldn't that make you ask why we cull the dustwings? If blood doesn't matter then what are we even doing? What else has she told us to believe that are outright lies?”
His senior officer and closest friend, a conflict of interest the two of them had kept quiet throughout their induction into the Enclave, said nothing for a long while. Then something passed between them, something unspoken. The staff sergeant reached out and snatched the document from his feathers, his expression grim as he skimmed the text. When he finished he offered back the paper, his jaw tight as if he were straining under a new, terrible weight.
“I have a son,” he hissed.
“You’ll be safe,” he assured him. “I just need to see her schedule.”
“You know I’m not high enough in the chain for that.”
He folded the document and pressed it into the sweaty pit of his wing. “But you know that friend up in Intelligence.”
“And right now she’s shitting bricks that make yours look like pebbles. She barely avoided the purge of Clover's people.”
“But she has access.”
He watched his friend blow a breath through his nose and stare defeatedly up at the single bulb burning between them. Dead flies and living ones clung to the glass in droves, baited into the community outhouse by the stink only to be lured toward a light whose only gift it had to offer was death. He was already stuck. Guilt by association. If the specialist pursued this alone it wouldn’t be long until the wrong set of ears overheard him and the Black Wing came to relieve him of the burden of knowing the truth.
The staff sergeant looked down at the emblem pinned above his left pocket, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Yeah,” he sighed. “She has access.”







“Honey, close your mouth before you swallow a fly.”
Beans did as she was told, though not without the youthful overexuberance that resulted in a sharp click from her teeth. She didn’t notice her mom flinching at the sound, or the sympathetic smile from the elderly stallion who said he was something called a “teacher.” The books stacked atop the shelves that towered over her had her complete and undivided attention. The rest of the room, with its rows of chairs and tables, and all the letters and numbers and beautiful pictures dancing across all the walls, were utterly forgotten the moment she’d been shown the books. They were the most colorful thing she had ever seen in her entire life. Even in the dim half-light of Aurora’s giant home she could tell that every single narrow spine, with their titles that made her imagination run wild with so many adventures she’d never known before, was brand new and had never been glued or sewn back together by anyone ever. 
She felt like she’d found the Pirate Treasure of Cutthroat Cove, and the teacher and her mom had told her she could pick whichever ones she wanted. She wanted to read all of them but she knew it was impolite to be greedy for real. There were rules to stealing her mom and dad said she wasn’t old enough to learn yet, and she didn’t want to steal from the teacher because he was nice. He was letting her take books from his “library,” another new word. And the library belonged to the “classroom.” When the electricity came back, he said she would get to meet lots of other foals the same age as her and he would teach her even more things she didn’t know. And there were the books. She could come back every day, he said, to choose a new book.
At first she worried there were too many to choose from to make up her mind, but a little voice on her shoulder told her that was really a good thing. Having so many good options made it so it didn’t matter which ones she chose first. Soon she was pointing a stubby hazel feather toward the biggest book she could see. Its deep red cover and gold letters made it look like the best one of them all. The teacher’s white feathers tipped the cover backward and it slid away in his wing, which was promptly lowered for her to see.
She knew her letters, but some of the words on the cover were too big for her to spell out in her head. A picture of a gold creature with sharp black stripes prowling the cover made her gasp with excitement. There were other animals too, of strange scaly things and big feathered birds that looked too vivid to actually be real. She didn’t care what the story was about. This was what she wanted. 
“Wild Animals of Equestria and Beyond,” her mom read for her. “I don’t think this one is a storybook, honey. Are you sure?”
She already had the covers pulled apart on the big purple rug. On the left page stood a giant orange with brown splotches all the way from its knobby knees to the fuzzy antenna on its head. She grinned at how its long neck bent around the words on the page, then cocked her head at the strange bird with its weird blue fan of feathers that looked like they were topped with eyeballs.
“That’s a peacock,” the teacher chuckled, tapping the bird with the edge of his hoof. “It’s like a turkey but with better makeup.”
She could tell by the way he talked that the teacher was making a joke, but she didn’t know what turkeys were or why it was bad at making things up. Closing the book with a loud clap of glossy paper coming together again, she looked up at her mom with a sheepish smile. “I like this one.”
Her mom’s own smile was enough of a yes for Beans to scoop the heavy book under her tiny wing. It was hers to borrow, the teacher explained, telling her that the rule was she could keep it for one week before she had to bring it back for somebody else to read. But once she did she would be allowed to take another book, or more than one if her mother said it was alright. It took her a minute to completely understand the rules, but once she did she said so to the teacher and it was soon time to go. 
“Say thank you,” her mom reminded her as they turned to leave.
“Thank you Mister Teacher.”
The old stallion’s smile touched his eyes. “You’re welcome, Beans. And you can call me Mister Ives from now on.”
“Okay,” she said, and before she knew it she was following her mom down the big square tunnels of Stable 10. 
Her new favorite thing, aside from playing pirate and reading and talking to Julip and being with her mom and dad, was her new home. For some reason her mom and dad had been afraid she wouldn’t like it here, but what wasn’t there to like? The Stable was way better than their cave on the railroad! It was huge and had a million rooms and it went so far underground that none of the bad ponies would never find her ever. Plus she didn’t have to wear a stinky coat to hide her wings because everybody here had wings too! Well not everybody, her mom didn’t have wings and neither did Roach or any of the Ranger ponies living outside, but that didn’t matter either because the Rangers were the good guys and would keep them all safe! 
Riding on her mom’s back with her new book safely under wing, she gawked unashamedly at all the new faces they passed by. Her dad said these ponies weren’t dustwings like him and her, but a special kind of pegasi who hadn’t gone outside ever in their whole lives. He didn’t explain why that made them special, and Beans wasn’t sure if she’d feel very happy if she had never gotten to see the sky. Who wouldn’t want to? It was the prettiest thing in the world, especially at night when the clouds got all lit up by the moon. Her dad once said he met a unicorn who tried to tell him the moon wasn’t real, but he knew better than to believe that. He said so himself that he’d seen it before and it had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever looked at. 
Two stallions looked at her mom in the funny way all the Stable ponies did, but they said hello and she and her mom said hello back. Stable ponies were weird like that because none of them had ever seen an earth pony before. Beans wondered if either of the stallions had gone up to see the moon.
“Time to jump down, honey.”
She blinked. “Why?”
“Because mom needs to talk to the doctor alone for a minute. Come on, hop down.”
Sometimes she would start thinking about one thing and it would turn into all kinds of things and before she knew it a whole lot of stuff had happened she hadn’t been paying attention to. She hadn’t really watched where her mom had been walking, all the metal tunnels looked the same to her, but the place they were in now was the same place they’d been to yesterday. She could tell because all the doors had little holders for lots of papers and thin wooden rectangles, and the pegasi who walked around all wore white coats that were different from the same old blue and yellow outfits most the other Stable residents wore. 
“Beans,” her mom prompted a little more firmly.
She’d gotten her head stuck in the clouds again. That happened a lot. It was part of what made the days on the mountain so much fun, even if it did get her in trouble sometimes.
Careful not to drop her book, she slid off her mom’s back and stared up at the doctor - the pegasi in white coats were called doctors, she’d learned - waiting in the open door of his office. He didn’t have the same smile that Mister Ives had shown her.
“Sit here,” her mom said, tapping the edge of a plastic chair next to the door. “I’ll be out in five minutes, okay?”
Beans nodded, plopped her book into the chair, then hoisted herself up beside it. She’d done the same thing yesterday. Once her mom was done it would be her turn to talk to the doctor. They had to visit every day because that was the rule if they didn’t want to go into something called a Quarry Teen. Beans didn’t know what a Quarry Teen was but the way her mom and dad made a face whenever they said it made her think it wasn’t a very fun place to go. 
Talking to the doctor wasn’t much fun either. He really, really wanted to know if she felt sick. Beans didn’t think she felt sick at all. She wasn’t stuffy or goopy or tired, but he asked anyway and she always said no. She was a little afraid if he kept asking she might actually get sick, and then what would he say? But she hadn’t so far, and neither had her mom or dad. 
Behind the wall she could hear her mom and the doctor’s muffled voices. Boring grown-up stuff. She sighed and looked up and down the tunnel. This one wasn’t made out of metal. It had smooth white walls with a pretty metal railing all the way down both sides. Curiously, she leaned away from the wall and reached out with her wing to touch the rail that emerged from behind her chair. She wondered where it went, and that was enough of a question for her to warrant finding out.
Hopping down from the chair, and with her book back under her wing, she trotted off to see where it led.
As always, she never meant to wander away. It always just sort of happened on its own. At least that was how Beans always reasoned her propensity to explore worked. With the tip of her wing lifted high to trace the flat side of the wall railing, she told herself she wasn’t wandering off at all. Sometimes when her mom and dad told her to stay in the main room of the cave back home, she’d still poke her head into her dad’s workshop behind the partition. They never got mad then. Aurora’s Stable was just one big cave. As long as she kept her feathers on the rail, she wasn’t even leaving the metal tunnel. This, she decided, was even less against the rules than walking around their other home.
Some of the grown-up pegasi in their white jackets and weird matching jumpsuits looked at Beans with slightly concerned expressions as they passed her, but none of them stopped to ask where she was going. Beans didn’t know about the dark weeks the Stable had just begun to crawl out of, so she assumed the harried and beleaguered gazes of everyone who lived in it were just how Stable ponies were. Aurora had been a lot like that. Beans remembered her as a super serious mare whose adventures came first and playtime came last. Julip was kind of like that too, but Beans could tell it was all an act. Deep down, First Mate Julip wanted to goof off and pretend. She just needed help remembering how sometimes.
A tired looking doctor stepped out from a door behind her and said something about her not being allowed down here. Beans looked back at him as she feathered her wing through the still air alongside her, the wall rail a distant memory by now. The old stallion didn’t look like he was willing to do more than shake a hoof at her, and she ignored him in the hopes he wouldn’t give chase. He didn’t.
It was only after the first tickles of worry that she might be wandering farther than her mom would be happy with that she turned a corner and saw the walls with the big, long, see-through cut-outs. She gasped, knowing exactly what they were as soon as the emergency lights on the ceiling reflected across their surface.
“Windows!” she breathed. They were just like the ones the little houses in her storybooks had in them, only these ones were big and wide and when she got up close to them she could see teeny criss-crossing wires threaded through the panes. 
Immediately she was up on her hind legs, hooves plastered against the bottom edge of the glass, and staring into the strange rooms inside. Some had weird machines inside with wheels underneath and tubes and wires springing out everywhere. Some had stubby chairs surrounding big, long metal tables. Beans noticed that a lot of the tables had even more glass stuff on them, just like the windows, but shaped like funny cups and canteens and pipes. There were shiny boards on the walls with words she didn’t understand written in lots of colors, and she wondered if maybe this was where the doctors went to have fun. Another window had a room full of empty white beds all along the walls. The last one she stopped at, one whose big metal door was attended by two stallions who had been watching her run up and down the tunnel since she turned the corner, had beds in it too. Only this room and its beds were filled with pegasi in black uniforms.
“Hey kid,” one of the stallions said. “This isn’t a playground. Go find your parents.”
Tiny hooves still planted against the glass, Beans didn’t stop staring at the pegasi. She recognized them. Not as individuals, but for the uniforms they wore. She’d always been told to watch the sky for pegasi in black. 
“Go on,” the stallion said more firmly, and made a shooing gesture with his wing.
“Are they in jail?” she asked.
By now many of the Enclave soldiers had taken notice of the foal staring in at them, and some had begun sitting up on their beds to frown at the change in their routine. Those nearest the glass made faces and ignored her, almost like they were mad at her.
“Kid, you gotta go.” With an exasperated sigh the second guard, a portly stallion with a splotchy white and brown coat, stepped away from the door and began walking toward her. “Come on. Let’s go see if one of the doctors knows where your mom and dad are.”
She didn’t budge as he slowed to a stop near her. Her lips pursed with the youthful and exasperating impetuousness that only foals could muster. She had found something interesting and someone who wasn’t her parent wanted her to go away. She felt a little afraid of the guard, too. What would he do if she said no? Her mom and dad said strangers could be dangerous, but Julip and her friends hadn’t been. Plus the guard was talking to her like her dad sometimes did when he wanted her to help sweep the cave but was too tired from his trips out to the trade roads to make her. 
She stayed put, and to her relief the pudgy stranger muttered something under his breath about having tried before turning back to his post.
“How’d you catch so many?”
One of the ponies nearest where she stood staring who had shot her a mean look suddenly laughed, and to her shock, she heard his muffled voice repeat her question to the other bad pegasi stuck in the room. A few of them chuckled or shook their heads, while the rest seemed to regard her with even more interest than they had before. Beans hadn’t known they could hear her and now her cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment for having just learned the hard way. She caught the eye of a mare who was staring at her and stuck her tongue out at her. The mare’s face, its gentle yellow coat half-covered in bandages, hardened at the insult and she returned it with two quick words that made it clear through the glass. One of those words she wasn’t allowed to say.
The two guards at the door watched, but neither seemed any more willing to answer her questions than they were to tell the pegasi behind the glass not to swear. Suddenly the windows didn’t feel fun anymore, and her hooves slid a little down the pane.
Like the bears in one of her books liked to say, she’d sure stirred up a beehive. Inside the room lots of the bad pegasi were awake and talking to the friends nearest their beds. Beans could tell by the way they looked and gestured at the window that they were talking about her. Among the muddy words she could pick out, the word “dustwing” was spoken the most. It was like they were all just noticing her for the first time.
Among them, a thin stallion with purple feathers and a gold mane stared daggers at her from where he reclined on his bed along the room’s far wall. He was saying something to her and even though she couldn’t make out the words she could tell none of it was nice. Every so often one of his wings would make the same shooing gesture that the stallion guarding the door had made, but with increasingly more force and anger behind it. The stallion on the bed beside him, with a mane, tail, wings and coat so deeply black that he looked to Beans like a living shadow, stared impatiently at his friend with a notepad held between his feathers. The darker pony gave the pad a little shake but the purple one ignored it and kept on talking at Beans. 
Finally, the purple stallion reached across his own bed and flung something at the window. The glass let out a dull bong as the pillow harmlessly bounced off, but the attack had been surprising enough to scare a yelp out of Beans and send her tumbling back onto the cold floor. 
Both guards let out sighs. One opened the door and walked into the tiny self-contained room beyond while the other asked something that sounded like, “You okay?” She didn’t try to understand. Her little heart pounded in her ears as she got back up, and she could feel angry tears stinging at her eyes. She wanted to throw something back but didn’t have anything to throw. 
The other guard thumped the inner door and warned the bad ponies he was going to tell on them once the weather came back. She didn’t know what the weather was going to do to them. Maybe Stable ponies could turn the rain on like they did in her storybooks?
Swallowing her fear, she looked back up at the window and thought about asking the guards to make it so a radstorm would grow inside the room. It sure would show the stallion who threw the pillow to get zapped on the butt by a lightning bolt. She thought about it, but decided not to ask them to do it. It had only been a pillow, after all, and just the thought of surprising them all with a storm was enough to chase off the feeling that she might cry.
When all seemed calm again, she reared back up and thumped her front hooves defiantly against the glass. To her surprise, the purple stallion wasn’t on his bed waiting to throw things anymore. He was lying doubled over on the floor with one of his wings covering his face. The pegasus with the midnight coat and notepad was standing over him, breathing hard, and visibly angry. A lot of the other pegasi were watching them now, and none of them were talking.
The pegasus on the floor lifted his head to say something to the other stallion, but he stopped when the notepad came to a stop in front of his nose. He read the words and his one visible eye seemed to lose the fire within it. Beans desperately wanted to know what the black stallion had written and hoped, as he walked toward the window, he might show her.
The disappointment in her face must have been easy to read when he sat down at the glass and flipped to a blank page. The stallion glanced up at her, saw her expression, and smiled as he dragged a pencil over the paper and held it up.
“Hi. My name is Chops.”







“And they just let you transmit anything?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“No censors?”
“Nope.”
“That’s…” Julip shook her head, the wind tossing her black mane back in streamers. “How does that even work? What’s to stop you from saying something against the Rangers?”
Fiona flexed her wings forward and flung them back in a great sweep. Perched atop her back, Roach watched with thinly concealed worry whenever the turbulence of those wingbeats caused Julip and Aurora to sharply drop in altitude. Aurora especially struggled with the sudden sensation of air simply dropping out from under her, but she had learned she could avoid the problem entirely if she didn’t lag behind. 
That was a tall order, though. For all her bulk, Fiona put on a lot of speed once she got going. Julip was no slouch either - the former Enclave lieutenant had been flying since she was a kid - and now that she had somebody to challenge her it was up to Aurora to pick up the pace. As she gave her own gray wings several hard pulses to keep up, she caught the concern in Roach’s eyes and gave him her best nonchalant shrug. She’d kept pace with Fiona on the way home and all it had cost her was an entire day to recover. This time they were taking breaks. It would be a breeze by comparison.
“Who says I didn’t give the Rangers shit?” Fiona laughed. “That was half the fun! Hell, I like to think Hightower Radio did more to keep those tin cans honest than the Paladins did.” 
Aurora couldn’t help but smile at the way Julip kept looking at Fiona. She was just a little starstruck to be meeting the famous Mare on the Air in the flesh, and the fact that the former DJ was entirely un-equine only captivated her even more. Despite the short time they’d known one another, Aurora had a sneaking suspicion that this was the fastest Julip had warmed to anyone. Were she Roach, she might actually feel a little jealous. But a quick glance past Julip to where he held on for dear life on Fiona’s back, the changeling didn’t seem the least worried. 
Good for them, she thought, and proceeded to tune out their conversation so she could concentrate on the changing scenery around them.
It wasn’t hard to distract herself with what lay below. After several hours of flight the thin carpet of scrub grass, cracked soil, and raggedy forests clinging together in the crevices between hills, the terrain beneath her wings had slowly but inexorably grown more and more inhospitable. A quick glance at her Pip-Buck’s map confirmed that, if she had a pen, she could draw a nearly straight line north from their position to the outdated icon representing Canterlot. They had some distance left to cover but it was dwindling fast. A wide, bending ribbon of murky liquid one might be tempted to call water followed their path as if a carpet had been rolled out to guide them along.
The river, as far as she could tell, was as dead as the land it touched. The ground wasn’t arid like she’d seen all during their slow march to Fillydelphia. It was sterile. Devoid of anything that might suggest the presence of life or living beings. No grass clutched the riverbanks. No trees grew, save for the broken corpses of those that had fallen decades ago. The abandoned remnants of wood-framed houses stood sunken and pitiful at the ends of dirty roads which the blowing soil had worn smooth. Before Julip and Fiona’s conversation had taken over, the obvious question of what had happened to make this place so forbidding had been answered by the appearance of the river out of the west and the ominously circular body of water that briefly interrupted its meandering path. The roads, stripped foundations of buildings, and stone monoliths peeking up from the water that Roach told them had once held a bridge aloft spoke to another small city that Primrose and Spitfire had marked for one of the bombs. Its crater had since been filled to the brim by the river and the deadly contaminates it once held had used every one of the two hundred and ten years since to poison every brook, creek, and tributary downstream. 
She wondered if, nearly due east of them by now, even the deathclaw she’d led into Autumn’s solar array would turn its snout up at the thought of making this true wasteland its home. The memory of that bellowing monster stomping after her after waking to her intrusion into its lair came so abruptly that for a brief moment she could feel its claws reach out for her all over again. It was so vivid that when Fiona’s talon touched the tip of her wing, her entire body bucked with a shock that could make a frayed generator feed blush.
The wind nearly bowled her backwards into an unceremonious flip, so unprepared was she to be yanked to the present. She recovered, barely, by bending her head and wings level into the airstream. By the time she caught up with the others, Julip had mostly gotten her laughter under control. Alternatively, Fiona looked like she was ready for a verbal beating. 
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I was just trying to–”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted, the ache in her wings glowing even hotter from the wasted exertion. “I was distracted.”
She held short of asking why Fiona decided to bank around to her other side and touch her feathers, but only just. Distracted or not, she could feel inexplicable anger rising in her chest. Had she been trying to sneak up on her? Why hadn’t Roach said anything to warn her? Why the fuck had she decided it was fine to go grabbing at her wing? She couldn’t stop herself from leveling an accusing glare at Julip. 
The other mare’s laughter shrank at the sudden attention and was swiftly replaced by a confused frown. “You okay?”
Aurora could hear the deathclaw’s bellow. It had been so long since then, but even now she was convinced there had been as much sorrow as rage resonating through that terrible howl. She nodded in answer as she struggled to calm raw nerves.
“I was trying to get your attention,” Fiona said. “Those are buildings on the horizon.”
They flew several more miles before Aurora could begin to see what Fiona was talking about. 
The structures that rose up from the lifeless distance weren’t what she would call buildings, her mind reserving that word for the impressive constructions still towering over the Fillydelphia skyline, but they were… something, alright. How Fiona had spotted the haggard collection of half-collapsed hovels and from such a distance wasn’t worth guessing at. Gryphons had good eyes, that was all she bothered to tell herself. As they drew ever closer she could feel her temper beginning to cool. It had been a misunderstanding. She would need to apologize for that. But for now she kept her focus on the little town opening up below them. Nobody had to ask. They began to descend to meet it.
It became increasingly clear to them that the houses in the process of falling in on themselves were what was left of Mariposa’s “nice” neighborhood. They hugged the place where the riverbank once flowed, now several dozen yards away from its current track, and a similarly curving road snaked its way along the crumbling house fronts. Where lavish topiaries once grew now stood brambles. Much shorter roads, which Roach called driveways, contained the rusting hulks of motorized carriages. Several others mingled together in a tangled mass of skeletal steel at the intersection of two streets, now partially buried in a low dune of topsoil that had begun reclaiming the area.
Farther from the riverfront properties were smaller, densely crowded homes identifiable only by the uniformly shaped concrete slabs peeking out from the rubble. Aurora couldn’t be sure but she had a strong feeling that these houses hadn’t experienced any more catastrophe than their more ornate peers - only that they had been in poorer condition than them when the bombs finally fell. Time had taken its toll on Mariposa, but some parts of the town had gotten a head start decaying. 
They flew low over a central road that seemed to have been Mariposa’s version of a main street, and it was uncanny how much alike the indiscernible mass of crumbling storefronts looked to how Junction City stood in her memory. Here was where carriages had come en masse, either by panic or providence, and snarled themselves together in an impassable jam that choked the main road. Here and there she could make out flecks of bleach white against the ruddy brown stains of rust. Bones. Thousands of them, scattered among the wrecked vehicles like spilled seeds doomed to die above the soil.
“Not a lot of places to hide a prison,” Roach called out.
Aurora flinched a little as Julip nosed up and tipped into a gentle bank that sent her coasting above her head, settling within wing’s reach of the changeling atop Fiona’s back.
“You’re the one who said they’d probably hide it underground,” Julip intoned.
Roach grumbled something to himself. “I was hoping Mariposa had a little more real estate to work with than this. The plots are all too small.”
“I thought you were into that,” Aurora chimed before she could stop herself. 
Fiona was quick to shoot Roach a wolfish grin, joined by sheepish chuckles from him and the former Enclave mare. Aurora could feel some of the tension she’d created between them lift a little, and she eased into that brief moment of normalcy without hesitation. 
“You know what I meant,” Roach insisted in a woefully inadequate attempt to divert their less savory thoughts. “The ministries were powerful, but even they couldn’t build a facility under an entire town without it noticing.”
“Stable-Tec did it all the time,” Julip countered.
He shook his head at her. “Under a major metropolis where construction was a part of everyday life, sure. But not under a place like this. This is the kind of town people ran off to when the cities got too crowded, all riverfront properties and homeowner’s associations and zero tolerance for anything that might threaten their idyllic, make-believe pastoral backyards.”
Aurora glanced at him as they slipped into a wide, circling pattern over the town. “Sore subject?”
He rolled his eyes. “A little. We thought about buying a house in a place like this way back when, but we could never afford it.”
“Who’s ‘we?’”
He regarded Fiona with some hesitation before answering her. “Some other time, maybe.”
For all of its rigidity, her beak still managed to quirk into something of a disappointed frown. Aurora had to believe Fiona would be able to piece enough of it together from context. He was a ghoul after all and the gryphon had probably forgotten more about how the wasteland worked than Aurora had learned since following him into it. They’d find time to fill her in, she thought. Just not now.
“What about that?” Julip had leveled her hoof down river, well outside the boundaries of the town they circled. The three of them turned to see what she’d spotted.
A narrow road drew a winding line south through the barren banks of the old riverbed. Sections of it had long since been washed away where the water had snaked into and under the asphalt strip while other stretches dipped and settled along the eroding embankments. Rusted electrical pylons crossed the distant landscape, drawing a mangled dotted line from the eastern horizon and into the west. Where the rotted power lines met the run-down road stood a cluster of dull, gray and brick red buildings several storeys tall. Sprouting from the roof of the largest structure, a windowless gray cube so close to the river that it looked at risk of tumbling into the fetid current, stood a single narrow smokestack.
Roach had described what prisons built before the war, a distinction whose necessity made Aurora uneasy, looked like and the complex of buildings they’d begun flying toward didn’t look anything like that. There were no big walls topped with barbed wire or windows shielded behind metal bars. She couldn’t even see a chain link fence, though there were several small storage tanks near the road that she knew were one or two modifications away from becoming holding cells. Still, the interconnected nature of all the buildings gave her the sense that they shared the same, singular purpose.
“I’ll bet my wings that this is the place,” Julip said as they dove along the road skirting the property. “This place is bigger than the solar array!”
Aurora wasn’t so sure about that. Including the miles of panels that ringed the defunct power plant, Autumn’s solar array beat out whatever this complex was by a fair amount. On that  point Julip was probably wrong, but on her guess that this was the place Eshe had ended up… she didn’t disagree with the possibility.
Here the carriages along the road hadn’t rammed into one another in a blind panic, nor were the hulks rotting in an orderly line outside the empty cubicle-style checkpoints the small, manageable models they’d seen in town. These vehicles made the box trucks they’d taken respite in earlier in the day look like a foal’s toy. Their rubber wheels might have rotted off the rims and their long frames had taken on dangerous lists beneath the weight of shipping containers, but the row of tractor trailers had most definitely been a part of some kind of convoy whose purpose came to an abrupt end when the world did.
“Let’s set down there,” Roach said, indicating the empty checkpoints. 
Aurora, Julip, and Fiona touched down on the windworn asphalt between the nose of one sagging truck and the trailer of another. The metal sleeves that held the opposing checkpoint gate arms in place pointed toward the murky sky, but it was anyone’s guess where the wooden arms had gotten off to. Probably blew away on the wind like everything else, Aurora thought.
Fiona jabbed a thumb toward the crooked sign still clinging to the high girders above the gates. “I always wanted to start a newspaper.”
The others had to squint to make out what the sign said. The painted letters had flaked away so thoroughly that it was difficult to tell specks of rust from text. 


MARIPOSA PAPER LTD.


"Zero points for originality," she muttered.	

“It’s a paper mill,” Roach rasped. “Different from a newspaper, but on the same supply chain.”
Aurora walked alongside the cab of the nearest truck and gave the door handle a hard jerk. It lurched open with a low peel of momentum and weight overcoming decades of rust. Aside from a scattering of bones from what must have been the driver, and the tattered gray threads of what looked like a vest puddled around them on the floorboards, there wasn’t much to see. She wrinkled her nose and shoved the door shut. She had to lean into the motion just to get it to latch. The thing was heavy.
When she noticed Julip watching her, she shrugged. “Hoping to find something that might point to Eshe being here.”
Julip nodded and turned her attention to the next truck in the convoy. “That’s not a bad idea. Whoever they were, they were here for a reason.”
“Kind of a stretch to think that reason was anything other than doing their jobs, isn’t it?” Fiona said, following her to the same truck. “It’s a factory. Or a mill, if there’s a difference. Places like these needed trucks to move product.”
Julip tapped the fender. It gave a muted dink in response. “Armored trucks?”
Fiona shrugged. “Maybe it was special paper.”
“Uh huh. Gimme a boost. I wanna check that guy’s pockets. See if he’s got any of that special paper.”
Aurora and Roach shared an amused chuckle at the sight of Fiona hoisting the smaller mare up into the bench-style seat of the cab. Leaving the two of them to plunder their truck, she and Roach paired off to work the next one in the line. The results were the same. Bones left behind by a driver. Scraps of gray cloth. Nothing else. Nothing to explain why the trucks were here or why their drivers died behind the wheel.
“If we had bolt cutters I could open one of these trailers,” Aurora grumbled. Unlike the box truck Fiona had nearly caved in, the steel containers mounted to the bed of each trailer were locked tight by bulky padlocks whose keyholes were discouragingly caked in rust.
The passenger door had similarly been oxidized shut. Roach smirked at her as they rounded the driver’s side. “Sledge told us about the trouble you get into when you have bolt cutters.”
She’d gripped the door handle before she caught onto what he meant. She paused to laugh to herself, remembering the mess she’d made of the Security office door’s hydraulics during her escape from the Stable. “Slander and lies,” she grinned.
“Mmhm.” Roach lit his horn and her eyes went wide.
“Woah-woah!”
The driver’s side door groaned a little before it gave way, but she wasn’t worried about the pulverized rust or bones that tumbled around her. The radiation meter on her Pip-Buck chattered furiously, and Aurora wasn’t that far behind it in giving Roach a piece of her mind.
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” he said, gesturing mildly at the burns that crossed the right half of her body.
She pursed her lips as she listened to her Pip-Buck quiet down. “Yeah, well I don’t feel like tempting fate either.”
Roach grunted, watching as she climbed up to inspect the cab. “Which way the ghouling goes is decided as soon as it starts.”
She grimaced at the bits of mane clinging to the driver’s skull and at the quiet certainty in Roach’s voice. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“Pretty sure I do.”
She peeled the fading edge of a strangely formal vest - why so many vests? - from the seat fabric and tried to ignore him while she prized open its breast pocket. A pack of gum plopped onto the seat, its bright pink wrapper looking deceptively fresh. 
“I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I’ve met ghouls who got so much radiation in their blood that they literally glow in the dark. It’s not pretty, but their minds were intact, Aurora. Dosage isn’t the deciding factor. The victim is.”
Her voice went flat. “So I’m a victim now?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
She was sorely tempted to give into impetuous anger again and ask him what he did mean it to sound like, but she bit her tongue before it could spit venom she couldn’t undo. She turned her focus to her breathing. 
In. Out. In. Out.
After the better half of a minute she felt something like logic and reason return to her. She needed to get a handle on the hair trigger that seemed to have gotten embedded in her head. Roach… probably had a point. He probably even knew what he was talking about. With a sigh, she looked down to where he stood waiting.
“You’re positive?”
He met her gaze without flinching. “One hundred percent.”
At that, she nodded and turned back to the tatters in the cab. The vest was stiff as a rock, but she wanted to see if anything had gotten trapped underneath it. It took several feathers to peel it off the seat, but when it did the stark black fabric unbleached by daylight gave her pause. A piece of vertebra had partially fused to the seat but that wasn’t what caught her eye. A tiny blue jewel twinkled on the vest’s preserved lapel. 
“Any luck?” Roach asked.
It took some fiddling, but eventually the pin dropped free into her waiting wing. “Found some jewelry.”
He nodded, his attention already moving down the line of vehicles. “Sounds like dinner’s on you tonight. Next truck?”
“Let Fiona toss Julip into that one. We’ll take the one after that.” She hopped down, admiring the tiny blue diamond pinched between her feathers. “You know, this kind of looks like one of Rarity’s diamonds.”
Roach stopped and glanced at her. “What?”
“Her cutie mark,” she clarified. “A couple more of these and they’d be a dead ringer.”
“Let me see.”
She snorted. “Get your own.”
But he wasn’t laughing. “Aurora, let me see it.”
After a moment’s hesitation she relented and held out the tiny lapel pin. He didn’t scoop it up in his corrupted magic, nor did she realize she was bracing for him to do just that until she felt her muscles untense upon seeing his upturned hoof. She tipped the gem into it and, careful not to drop it, Roach regarded her find with something bordering on resignation. 
He returned the pin to her wing and breathed a sigh. “Well, we’re in the right place.”
“You don’t sound happy,” she said. She watched him as he turned his opaque eyes up to the block buildings beyond the paper mill’s decorative, yet imposing, wrought iron fence. 
“I just figured out why the earlier groups Eshe sent to help him disappeared,” he muttered. “I don’t know how he did it, but somehow your friend managed to make himself a guest of a Ministry of Image black site.”







The sun began to set before they could search all of the trucks. Faced with the prospect of spending a night in the shadow of a factory they didn’t have time to check for threats, they made camp on the roof of the tallest building in the complex.
In reality, calling their current circumstances “camping” was being generous. The unadorned and poisoned flatlands of the region offered no resistance at all to the wind, which came and went in periods of great sustained gales and disquieting stillness. Where huge air conditioning units and ventilation ducts provided something close to shelter, jagged pebbles of stubborn roof gravel that time and sunlight had fused with the tar paper that everywhere else had been scoured clean by the wind. Aurora had tried sweeping away some of the stones only for her hoof to simply bounce off with a fresh chip in it for her effort. Given the choice between a bed of sharp rocks and the wind, they grudgingly chose the wind.
Aurora tipped her head up and scowled at the lazy movement of the clouds overhead. It wasn’t fair that they were unaffected by the lowland winds. She grumbled under her breath and rightly concluded that atmospheres were stupid.
Sitting to her right, Julip’s prickles were beginning to show. “I’m never going to sleep in this fucking hurricane.”
On her left, Roach grunted. “We’re not sleeping in a building we haven’t cleared.”
On her right, “Then let’s go clear it.”
On her left, “By the time we finish, it’ll be dawn.”
Aurora shut her eyes and tried to keep her tone level. “Guys. Please.”
Roach and Julip exhaled individual sighs and let the matter drop, but she had a feeling it would keep coming up again until Julip finally settled in enough to doze.
Settling in was a tall order, even for Aurora who had spent years honing an uncanny knack for sneaking in the odd five minute nap in the deafening din of her generator. It was the feeling of exposure that was keeping her up. A needling sense that there were no walls within wing’s reach, no roof over her head, and nothing to dampen the foreboding howl of an unchecked tempest that didn’t have the good decency to get it over with and turn into a proper storm. It was all suspense and no payoff. It was driving her nuts.
And to add to their misery, every gust had a reliable way of picking up Fiona’s wing and dropping it unceremoniously across their heads. 
“Sorry,” the gryphon said as she unburied them from her feathers. “There’s not much I can do about it. It beats the alternative, though, right?”
Being the largest among them by far, Fiona had been selected to serve as their windbreak. Given she was the one who would be taking the brunt of nature’s wrath, it had been her choice where to hunker down. With limited options she had decided to lodge herself, quite literally, in the wide gap between two monstrous filtration units nearest the lee side of the building. Laying on her side with her back to the wind provided some relief from the constant pummeling, but there was also the issue of Fiona’s bulk for Aurora, Roach, and Julip to contend with. A pillow she was not. Where Aurora lay, she was all ribs and muscle. Like Roach, she had settled on curling up on the tar paper roof with her saddlebags tucked under her head. It was better than nothing. 
Julip swatted away Fiona’s feather with an irritated growl. It was bad enough for her that she was practically being whipped in the head whenever Fiona’s heavy wing crashed down on them. Having drawn the short straw, though, she found herself sleeping at Fiona’s haunches, which gave her an entirely different cornucopia of gryphon anatomy to worry about. Aurora almost felt bad for her. Almost. She wasn’t blind to the way Julip and Roach were eyeing each other as they prepared to bed down for the night, and happy as she was for them she wasn’t yet willing to risk waking up to an object lesson in how “close” the two of them might already be.
“We could clear an office or something. One room. Five minutes.” 
Aurora lifted her head, eliciting a crinkle from something in her saddlebag. “Julip.”
Even the wind had had enough and promptly swirled Fiona’s wing off her side and back onto the three of them. 
“Leave it,” Aurora grumbled when Fiona started to apologize again. “It deadens the noise, at least.”
Rustling feathers behind her made it clear Julip didn’t agree, but after a solid minute of trying fruitlessly to shove the feathered appendage away she finally gave up with a defeated, “Fuck me.”
“I’ll take a raincheck,” Roach chuckled.
“I’m off the clock,” Fiona added.
Aurora kept her mouth shut and listened to the sounds of bodies settling into comfortable sleep positions. Hooves scraped the rough rooftop. Tails rasped. A yawn. A sniff. Soon Fiona’s chest had taken on the slow, steady expansion and contraction of sleep and the rhythm grew infectious. Even Julip rolled over and began to doze. In the near absolute dark beneath their canopy of tawny feathers, Aurora found herself watching the dim half-glow of the soft tissue between the plates of Roach’s broken carapace. She wondered if he was truly asleep or just waiting for the next sunrise. Before she could decide, however, her eyes were already sliding shut.







“It’s not funny.”
Eshe smiled at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you keep asking, and… yes, Aurora. I’m sure.”
She nodded at the sidewalk, feeling embarrassed for needing to be reassured again. The concrete slabs had a subtle ochre tint she thought was too beautiful to be made for pedestrians to walk all over. Further up the busy street, a blat of compressed air from a motorized carriage chastised the striped driver of a wooden rickshaw who hadn’t obeyed the colored lights strung above the intersection. The hotel in Fillydelphia was gone, replaced tonight by a location closer to Eshe’s youth. It was a memory he brought to Equestria of his hometown in Vhanna, a rapidly modernizing port city along the coast.
“Sadahi?” she asked.
“Sa-ha-di,” he enunciated. 
They made way for a trio of zebra colts who ran by screaming excitedly in a language Aurora couldn’t understand, and didn’t need to. They were playing chase just like she had when she was young. She smiled as they skidded down a narrow alley, their shrieks of pursuit blending with the sounds of a small city on the verge of something greater than what it was.
“It’s all so… blue.”
The words landed with an inadequacy that seemed almost fitting. Port Sahadi was a place of such vibrant color that it seemed as if it had been dipped in liquid sky. Nearly every building, the tallest and fewest standing a mere five floors above the bustling street, was painted in eye-popping indigo. Brick, wood, stucco, it didn’t matter what the outside was built from. Everything that could hold a sapphire coat shone brilliantly blue against a towering backdrop of deep red mountains. Nothing had been dulled by neglect. Even the exposed mortar where paint flakes had inevitably chipped off were so white that it strained her eyes.
Eshe closed his eyes, inhaled a lungful of salt air, and released a homesick sigh. “She was a place of beauty. I’m glad to know you’ve had the chance to see it.”
She caught a glimpse of their reflection in a passing storefront window. The glass was clean, the gold script of the store’s name pristine and unworn. Even the weeds that grew in the cracks along the gutters looked green and healthy. 
“My Stable had doctors,” she began to say.
“No.” He spoke softly, yet firmly. “I’ve had my fill of doctors. I haven’t done much with my life to believe I have any great rewards coming to me, but I do believe that I deserve to rest. If there is something after life, I want to see what it is. If there isn’t, then at least I’ll have peace.”
Tears swam in her vision. She didn’t know why. She barely knew this stallion, and yet she couldn’t do a thing to keep herself from choking on her emotions. 
“I’ll understand if you need to change your mind,” he murmured, and she could tell that he truly meant it. 
She could walk away from this and he wouldn’t think a single bit less of her. He was giving her an out. They knew where he was now. They were sleeping on the roof of a building somewhere above his bed, and it would only cost her half a day’s flight and a wingful of caps to hire someone more qualified to do what Eshe was asking. One less scar on her soul. One less awful memory to bury.
She blinked away the tears, her voice husky as she said, “No. I can do it. I’m going to do this for you.”
“Thank you,” he said, his striped shoulder touching hers as they walked together. She didn’t break from that subtle, intimate contact and nor did he. They walked like that for some time, crossing streets and taking in the sights of a city whose fate neither of them knew or cared to know. 
“Do you know what?” he asked.
She looked at him and saw he was smiling. Turns out it was catching. She couldn’t help but return it. “No. What?”
“I am willing to gamble that you, Aurora, have never once enjoyed authentic Vhannan kitfo.”
She wiped the moisture from her cheek and laughed. “I don’t know what that is, Eshe.”
He grinned. “Do you like spice?”
She paused to think. “Like… salt?”
“Oh, no. No no, we are going to fix this.” He tipped his head down the ochre sidewalk with an eager smile she couldn’t say no to. “Come. Come with me. I know a wonderful mitmita stand not far from here. Their kitfo will redefine everything you thought you knew about good food.”
She began to trot after him. “Do we have time?”
“Aurora, we’re dreaming!” he called back. “We have all the time we’ll ever need!”
> Chapter 47: Free
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“L…” the filly said, curling her feathers around into the correct sign. Chops nodded encouragingly, and she pinched her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated to form the next letter. “M…”
Her third feather wasn’t where it needed to be, so he gave the glass a tap until she looked at him. With one wing he formed the sign for M and with the other he pointed to the feather she had wrong. It took her a second to see the mistake but when she did the misplaced feather descended into place. 
“M,” she repeated, her voice distorted by the glass. Then she simultaneously grinned and let out an exasperated groan. “This is really hard!”
Several of the soldiers in the recovery ward chuckled and a few others, all parents with foals back home, had glommed together to quietly trade stories about their own children. There were the inevitable holdouts among them but they were few and far between at this point. Dancer was among them, refusing to so much as acknowledge Beans’ existence let alone respond to any of her headstrong persistence with anything that might be construed as sympathy. 
He tried to keep the filly’s attention away from them, not because they meant any harm but because he didn’t know how to explain the shame they were grappling with to someone as young as Beans. She’d been taught what the Enclave was, but her readiness to stare through the glass at them as if she’d come across a zoo exhibit made it pretty clear she had never been shown what happened when a dustwing was discovered by one of them. 
Calling it shame didn’t do the feeling justice. Those of them who refused to acknowledge the dustwing standing outside the glass did so because it was too difficult to stare the reality of what they’d done in the eye. Very few Enclave soldiers ever actually chanced upon dustwings. Those who had were usually those assigned to reconnaissance teams, like Dancer had been. 
Like he’d been.
He forced a smile to mask the upwelling of unresolved regret and held his notepad up to the glass for her to read. “You’re picking this up faster than I did!”
It wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t want this kid to get frustrated and give up. Her grin widened as she read his message and she answered it by signing a pretty decent letter N. He doubted she would ever actually use any of the signs she was learning, and he didn’t care all that much either. It felt good. What he was doing right now, this was a good thing.
Beans had begun signing the letter T when her little ears twitched around and she grimaced like all children did when they knew they were about to be in trouble. It hadn’t occurred to Chops that the kid might have wandered to this end of Medical without permission, and he almost smacked his notepad against his forehead when he realized that was very likely the only reason a filly her age would be walking alone in an unfamiliar Stable. He followed her gaze toward the intersecting corridor she’d originally appeared from, and his eyes went wide when the filly’s mother thundered into view.
The mare. Was huge.
“Holy shit,” Dancer hissed from the safety of his bed, and he wasn’t the only one to offer color commentary. Hooves scuffed the linoleum as soldiers either moved toward the glass or further away. He didn’t look back to see which.
Calling the filly’s mother an earth pony would be a disservice. She was a mountain even by the standards of her ungifted breeding, a wide-eyed, protective stack of muscle and bone that looked capable of being the big spoon to a stallion in power armor were she so inclined. When the mare’s eyes found Beans standing beside the window, all the tension she carried in her shoulders instantaneously melted away. But before she could scoop the kid up and embarrass her with all the motherly admonitions she was well within her rights to dole out, the mare’s eyes rose to the glass and the collected soldiers within.
Recognition came immediately, and in the space of a thought the mother’s relief boiled over with protective rage. She locked onto Chops and surged toward him, slamming the flat of a hoof the size of his head into the glass with sufficient force to leave behind a spider web of splinters. The barrier did nothing to soften the fury in her voice.
“GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!”
Beans had scrambled out of the way and was now shouting at her mother to stop, but the mare drove her hoof into the glass a second time, and then a third. She bellowed threats and profanity across the splintering glass with each strike and it occurred to Chops that she wasn’t trying to scare him off. She was trying to beat her way through. 
The two deputies posted at the door were slow to react, but by the fourth blow they finally recognized that they had a problem. Suddenly the mare had three voices shouting at her to stop and none of them appeared to be registering. Chops felt the hackles rise along his back when a puff of pulverized glass jumped off the wire-reinforced pane, and he began to back away.
“She’s gone fucking crazy!” someone yelled.
“That window’s about to go.”
“Chops, get back!”
“Goddesses, they’re going to drop her in front of the kid?!”
The last statement rang louder than all the others, and Chops turned a stunned expression to the two deputies who had begun positioning themselves in the corridor in a manner that screamed crossfire prevention. He saw the stubby, silver revolvers trained on the foal’s mother and felt a stone drop through his gut. Beans had seen the guns, too. Her eyes were awash in tears as she screamed at her mother to stop while on the other side of the big mare both deputies were taking aim. 
The glass flexed under the relentless assault, and Chops understood what he represented to the mare. She’d lived in fear every minute of every day that she might fail to keep her daughter from being discovered. His uniform meant she would always live with the terror of knowing her child could be culled without warning, or mercy, or regret. All because Primrose decreed pegasi like Beans who were born without loyalty to the Enclave were frail, contaminated, and better off being put out of their so-called misery. 
Now she had discovered one of those murderers had been whispering to her only child, and if she succeeded in tearing down the glass between them she would be rewarded by being gunned down in front of her.
Glass peppered his notepad as he scribbled on an empty page, driving the pencil over and over the same two words until they stood out thick and black and unmissable through the splintering window. He could already hear the gunshots in his mind and didn’t want to think about how a short time ago he might have happily pulled the trigger. He tried to tell himself he was a different stallion now. That Primrose’s lie had been revealed to him. That he would never fully bear the weight of his sins.
He reared on his hind legs and slapped the notepad against the glass at what he hoped was eye level for Beans’ rage-blind mother. He jerked back when she struck the window once more, hate and vitriol spewing through the cracks as she poured out every foul promise she’d held back since her daughter’s conception and likely long before that. And then, slowly, the beating stopped. The glass settled. And Chops opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d squeezed shut to see the mare staring at the splayed pages of his notepad with utter confusion.
It was enough. It broke her focus just long enough to finally acknowledge the near panicked deputies and the bawling screaming of her child. The mare’s eyes went wide with fear at the sight of the revolvers aimed at her head, then with horror when she saw the pain she’d caused Beans.
Chops watched her through pulverized glass as she reflexively bent to comfort her daughter before one of the deputies swept between her and Beans, his feather on the trigger and voice ragged as he ordered her to lay on the ground. There was a tense, long moment when it seemed like the mare might not obey. She spared one last, murderous glare toward Chops before biting down her anger. She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the deputies while her young daughter gasped and sobbed over and over again in the way children did when they first realized their parents could do bad things.
Chops exhaled one long shuddering breath and turned away from the mess he’d caused, letting his back slide down the wall as he sat down. This was where blind loyalty had gotten him. Hated. Two little syllables that he’d earned by waiting too long to ask the right questions, and which had just driven a mother to nearly get herself killed in view of her child just for the chance to hurt him. 
He didn’t notice his wings were shaking until the notepad fell to the floor with a gentle slap. He pressed his head between his knees, his body hot with something like sudden sickness as he saw himself for the first time how the rest of the world saw him. He wanted to change. He wanted to undo everything he’d ever done in the service of the Enclave. 
A wordless sob ratcheted from his throat, and he sat there not knowing what else to do but hate himself. 
The notepad he’d held up for the mare to read sat undisturbed beside his hoof with the two words he’d ground into the paper staring up at his fellow soldiers in a silent, shameful admission.
It read simply, “I’m sorry.”







Aurora woke the next morning to slow, steady breaths warming the nape of her neck and for just a moment she let herself believe she was back in her own bed with Ginger nestled beside her. Then Julip muttered something indistinguishably profane in her sleep and the illusion was gone. They were all still on the roof of a factory complex somewhere in the southern wasteland, huddled in the makeshift windbreak of Fiona’s large body while the unceasing gale whistled around them.
She opened her eyes to a strangely comforting scene of gently snoring companions beneath a singularly heavy canopy of tawny feathers. Much like the wind that had dogged them all night, details of the dream she and Eshe shared were already beginning to fade. If she concentrated she could still taste the spiced kitfo and hear strangely beautiful music coming from the cherry red stereo behind the mitmita stand. Blue buildings and salt air. The sadness she’d felt when he thanked her with a chaste kiss on the crest of her forehead. 
She lifted a hoof to wipe her eyes but found her face dry. Some parts of the dream, at least, hadn’t translated into the waking world. A sigh slipped over her lips as she watched the slow rise and fall of Roach’s midsection. Even he’d managed to fall asleep. They’d been so determined to bed down for the night that they’d forgotten to elect somebody to stand watch over the others. Bad form, she tutted to herself. Too many days strung together by one harrowing moment to the next. Wouldn’t it just be their luck if the building beneath them was full of shambling centaur monstrosities or home to a band of raiders. The wasteland had a nasty tendency of punishing her whenever she let her guard down. 
Daylight had already begun seeping in through the gaps around Fiona’s wing. Aurora lay still as she listened to the wind coursing over the rooftop and thought, maybe, it wasn’t as bad as it had been last night. Probably wouldn’t stay that way forever. Her personal collection of aches and pains made only meek protests as she stretched, sat herself up, and then lifted the gryphon’s wing on her back as she stood. Desiccated tarpaper crackled under her hooves as she let the heavy feathers flop back down onto Julip and Roach, prompting the smaller pegasi to sputter something as on-brand as it was muffled. She squinted at the hazy point of light already a few degrees over the horizon, then at the myriad of smaller rooftops branching away from the one she stood on.
“Five more minutes,” Fiona feigned with a groggy chuckle. Aurora glanced back to watch the gryphon pushing herself up onto paws and talons. The dune colored fur on one side of her face was a mess of tufted mats and cowlicks from where she’d slept on it. If she noticed her jumbled coat she didn’t seem bothered enough by it to fix it, choosing instead to use the long feathers of her surprisingly dextrous wing to tousel Julip’s mane into even worse disarray. “Rise and shine, little chicky.”
With their cover removed Roach and Julip had already begun stirring, but Julip was practically spitting fire by the time she managed to get enough hooves under her to stumble out of Fiona’s reach. Aurora couldn’t help but smile the tiniest bit as she listened to the former Enclave mare light into Fiona while the gryphon tended to her own bed head. Roach tossed her a knowing look as he joined her in watching the morning entertainment, he and Aurora both recognizing the first buds of what might become a genuine friendship between the two. 
“This might be the first time she’s met someone who can give as good as she gets,” he murmured.
Currently, Fiona was ducking away from Julip’s attempt to get at the long, striped feathers running down the back of her neck in the gryphon equivalent of a mane. The poor mare’s head was a bird’s nest of tangled black hair by now thanks to Fiona’s superior reach, and yet Julip was still determined to foul up her feathers.
“Not the first,” Aurora smiled. “Ginger threw her off a mountain that one time.”
She could feel Roach’s eyes on her as he tried to assess whether the mention of Ginger might warrant some delicacy on his part. Then a thud ran through the roof as Fiona tackled the tiny mare with a triumphant laugh.
“I miss the days when I could wake up with that much energy,” he lamented.
Julip’s muffled profanity beneath the gryphon’s bulk had locked the two in a stalemate. Green wings slapped at Fiona’s belly, the latter no doubt waiting for the lesser to say uncle, which was a word not found in Julip’s vocabulary.
She shouldered Roach. “Come on, let’s go break up the kids before that one smothers to death.”







They left the windswept roof behind in favor of the calmer air back at the paper mill’s front gates. Satchels and saddlebags were opened and their combined supplies were inventoried as they shared a light breakfast of water and cold molerat from the Steel Rangers’ grills. Aurora feathered through each of her bags, her eyes pausing on the first-aid kit she’d pulled from Julip’s bags the day prior with its crisply painted Stable-Tec logo beneath which read the unassuming words Stable-Tec Field Support. It had some substantial weight to it, forcing her to shift items into the opposite bag for balance, and she suspected Roach had an identical kit in his own saddlebags. 
Between the three of them they had one firearm apiece: Aurora’s rifle, Roach’s shotgun, and a revolver that looked suspiciously similar to the six shooter model issued to the deputies of Stable 10. Ammunition was sparse, too. A dozen or so red cartridges, half a box of bullets for Julip’s purloined pistol, and all of around fifty rifle rounds rolling loosely through Aurora’s saddlebags. 
“Well I feel ready to take on the world,” Julip mumbled.
Roach nodded, his attention drawn once again to the row of armored trucks just a few yards away beyond the dilapidated gate. “Either we’re overprepared or underprepared. Won’t know until we know.”
“When did you climb down from your mountaintop, O wisepony?” Fiona held Aurora’s canteen out to her, a smirk tweaking the corner of her beak. “This place looks like it hasn’t been touched since the world went nips up. Five caps says the most dangerous thing here are the asbestos tiles.”
Aurora wished she shared Fiona’s blind confidence. One look toward the old paper mill and she began thinking about how long it would take just to clear that maze of buildings, warehouses, and storage depots. It didn’t make her feel a single bit better to know she was only guessing what half the squat little structures had been designed for. From their vantage point on the roof she’d seen a genuine rail line running through the longest building perched above the slow moving river. She understood that the old world had functioned on industries orders of magnitude larger than what her Stable could produce, but the sheer scale of this single factory complex dedicated to just one staple product made her feel like a first-day apprentice all over again. If just one of every one thousand dark corners in this place held a threat, the sheer volume of danger that posed made their little pile of ammunition amount to less than a few thrown pebbles.
All this risk to end one life. The momentary hesitation shamed her. She heaved it aside before it could latch on and breed doubt. She’d promised Eshe she would try. 
“Wonder why they didn’t just blow through the gate,” Roach rasped, his nose pointed at the truck convoy.
The three of them said nothing as they followed his gaze. The Ministry of Image’s presence at their own black site wasn’t hard to explain, but Roach appeared to have picked up on something they weren’t seeing. 
“Blast damage,” he added, answering their unspoken question, “along the same side of every truck.”
Armed with new information, Aurora scrutinized the convoy more closely. She tilted her head, trying to zero in on the details Roach was seeing, but could only pick out a few pieces of the full puzzle. A dented side panel on the lead truck, as if it had been kicked in. A pattern of more heavily decayed black paint on the side facing them, though she thought the wind could have done the lion’s share of that on its own. The front fenders of two trucks were buckled up into the grille, giving them a sort of cleft lip appearance.
She wrinkled her nose, unconvinced. “They don’t look any more beat up than anything else we’ve seen.”
“Can’t say I’m seeing it either,” Fiona agreed.
Roach grunted and turned for her input. She didn’t appear any more convinced than they were. Still, she managed to answer with an uncharacteristically diplomatic question. “Should we be worried if you’re right?”
“Hard to say,” he admitted, once again frowning toward the trucks. “I’ve never had a reason to associate the MOI with anything good, and I realize I’m saying that while you all gesture wildly at the old government black site we’re sitting on top of. Those trucks are armored, but some of them look like they drove through a warzone before they arrived here. Makes me think they caught some of the shockwave from that flooded crater we flew over north of here.”
Julip screwed down the cap on her canteen and tucked it into her satchel. “That hole was fucking huge.”
“Most of the Elements of Harmony called it home, back when it was still a town.” He turned away from the trucks and stood. “Wouldn’t surprise me if Primrose and Spitfire assigned more than one bomb there just to make a point.”
Aurora frowned as she brought up her Pip-Buck’s outdated map of the wasteland and scrolled north along the winding green line of the river, slowing only after an innocuous dot slid over the screen. She had to zoom in for a name to blink above the icon. PONYVILLE. The name was distantly familiar. A place that existed to her inside old maps printed in history books and nowhere else.
Soon they were all rising to their respective hooves and paws, bags being slung over flanks, straps secured, weapons made ready. In an unspoken consensus of motion, they began their march into the factory complex via the single, dirt-caked artery leading into it. Yet as they left the silent convoy behind and turned their attention toward the imposing concrete monoliths, some kernel of Roach’s curiosity remained. 
“So riddle me this,” Fiona prompted as she padded along behind them. “The bombs are popping off, boom boom boom, and that ministry convoy gets caught up in the middle of it. The whole world’s going to shit and the drivers get close enough to a detonation to slap them all silly. But they still limp all the way down here to one of their secret prisons for imagined traitors. Why?”
It was a fair question. One that Aurora certainly didn’t have a good answer for, let alone Roach. A pair of low, flat-roofed buildings passed on their left. White paint turned gray from centuries of decay flaked off of expertly constructed cinderblock walls. The front door to each building were knotted shut by a length of chain, their iron padlocks having gone fuzzy with orange rust. To their right lay a flat slab of concrete littered with row after row of rusting carriages. The word “parking lot” wasn’t yet part of her vocabulary, but she understood the concept immediately. This was where mill workers left their vehicles. There were hundreds of them in the lot, and she could see more rusting outside the buildings deeper in the factory complex. Yet another reminder of how big the old world had been.
“Probably on official business,” Julip suggested. “Just because you get shot at doesn’t mean you scrap the mission.”
Fiona made a disbelieving noise. “I wouldn’t call a balefire bomb getting shot at, assuming that’s what happened. Which, if it was, then Roach’s question makes sense. If the world’s ending, why waste time parking all nice and pretty outside the gate?”
“And why didn’t the drivers bother getting out?” Roach added. “That’s what I mean. We’re missing something.”
A pensive silence ran between them. As the looming walls echoed their steps back to them, Aurora climbed up onto a concrete loading dock where more chains barred another side door. She gave them an experimental tug. They rattled, but held firm. “This place was shut down.”
Julip cocked a brow. “Nothing gets past you.”
She feigned a laugh, ignoring the harmless jab. “It was shut down,” she pointed a feather toward a set of chained doors, then tipped the other wing toward the packed parking lot, “but it was still staffed by a lot of people.”
“Jailers,” Roach suggested. “Or whatever the ministry called them.”
“But isn’t the point of having a secret prison keeping it a secret?” Aurora gestured at the complex that slowly swallowed them. “A few hundred workers show up every day to a factory that’s meant to be closed in plain sight of a town just upriver? It’s like they weren’t even trying.”
“It was a different time,” Roach said. “Probably everyone in Mariposa knew something was happening here, but we’re talking about the Ministry of Image. There used to be a fine line between what was true and what was treason, and they were the ones who decided where it got drawn. If they arrested someone, they were a traitor to Equestria. We learned early on not to question it.”
Behind them, Fiona scoffed. “That’s insane.”
Roach shrugged, his pale eyes scanning the old buildings. “Nobody’s arguing that anymore. Those who did back then tended to end up in places like this.”
“Cheery.” Julip trotted to the end of the loading dock, holding up a wing to help Aurora off the ledge. Aurora accepted it and landed beside her with a soft oof. “Fun as solving this Daring Do ‘Mystery of the Lost Convoy’ sounds, we should probably start working out where it is we’re supposed to be going.”
Aurora felt the wind drop out of Roach’s sails at that, especially coming from Julip, but she was right that they were getting distracted. It was anyone’s guess what the MOI was up do when the bombs fell and it was just as easy to correctly assume it amounted to equal parts “up to no good” and “gilded malefaction.” They’d been in the business of sifting out those who didn’t fall in line and depositing them here, wherever “here” was. 
She sighed at that, a forlorn sentiment the others shared. Walking among so many uninspired constructions gave her the strange impression of having been shrunk down and made to wander among a foal’s building blocks. The few intact windows she could spot had been thoroughly sandblasted by an unforgiving wind that they’d opaqued with the same shade of gray as everything else. The only splashes of color came in the form of black painted letters that labeled loading docks, storage cylinders, and the occasional faded yellow safety signage posted at every door. 
Soon they were among the largest structures in the complex. Buildings labeled PULPING and PAPER FINISHING cast deep shadows between them like a city in miniature. Ahead, the factory road branched in either direction at a tee that ended at the foot of the same building they’d made camp on. The words CHEMICAL UNLOADING stood above its chained entrance in fat, black letters. Warning symbols Aurora recognized festooned the door frame advising workers to wear safety equipment and to be wary of caustic substances. It felt strange to think there was a time when a place like this had been just another job to punch in at. Once upon a time there had been people, hundreds of them spanning generations, who knew exactly how to spin the gears that made this place hum.
“Maybe we should split up.”
All eyes turned to Fiona, most notably among them Julip’s. “Oh sure, and while we’re at it we can all take turns walking into the spooky fucking warehouses with dying flashlights while asking if anybody’s there. No thanks. When I die, it’s going to be a lot cooler than ‘ditzy mare trips while running away from the psycho killer.’”
“If I thought there would be psycho killers here, I’d have gone home to grab some Nightmare Night records before we left,” Fiona mused. “‘Sides. My money’s on deathclaws.”
Aurora grimaced. “I’ve had my fill of deathclaws.”
“Kinky.” Before Aurora could object, Fiona had already moved on. “If there was anything here that wanted to eat us, it would have made itself known by now. You guys, this place is huge and I doubt we’re going to stumble across some dead engineer’s personal holotape journal lamenting about how often the visiting ministry officials keep asking him to grease the hinges on the break room vending machine that’s also a secret door down into their even more secret prison.”
Roach blinked at her. “That’s very… specific.”
“Julip’s a fan of bad horror flicks and I used to listen to cheesy detective radio dramas. We’ve all got vices.” She winked at the bewildered mare. “Point being, if we break off into pairs we’ll cover more ground. Maybe we’ll even find that secret door before…”
She looked pointedly at the maze of buildings around them.
“...next month. I can keep an eye on Lil’ Green here,” she held a palm out to Julip’s mane as if to tousle it again, nearly sparking their rooftop brawl all over again.
Aurora could picture just how well that would go over. With Julip constantly distracted by Fiona’s recently ended career as the most recognizable “mare” on the radio, and Fiona looking for any reason she could find to needle at the Enclave’s latest defector, leaving the pair of them to their own devices in an abandoned factory painted colorful pictures in Aurora’s mind of a chain reaction of one upmanship ending in the steady collapse of every damn building at the Mariposa complex. 
“It’d make more sense for Roach to stick with Julip,” she offered with as much diplomacy as she could muster, “and you pair off with me. Roach has more experience with the ministries and I’ll notice anything that’s off with the engineering around here.”
Julip wrinkled her nose. “You’re talking like we’ve already agreed to split up.”
With only one objection among the four of them, that was certainly where the momentum was headed. Eccentric as Fiona was, the suggestion had been well considered. This place had them all on edge not because it was crawling with danger, but because it was vacant of life. All the doors were locked. Their chains undisturbed. Even the convoy of trucks, doubtless a source of valuable scrap to someone like Mouse, hadn’t been touched. Like the glowing expanse Roach and Julip encountered on their trek along Equestria’s northern border, the irradiated crater lake of what had once been Ponyville had thoroughly stripped any temptation wastelanders might have had to explore the widening poisoned regions downriver. Even the mutated wildlife seemed to avoid Mariposa.
With the sole exception of the zebra trapped in an AutoDoc bed somewhere beneath their hooves, they were truly alone here. 
“I think it’s a good idea,” Roach murmured while wincing apologetically to Julip. That was it. The votes were known. They were splitting up. He tipped his nose toward the windowless box of a building they’d slept on, and the intersection its presence made necessary. “If we find something or run into trouble, we’ll meet up at the intersection. Barring that, the roof.”
“And we should stick to neighboring buildings,” Aurora added. “It might force us to do some creative leapfrogging but I don’t want to get beyond shouting distance from anyone else if we can avoid it.”
Julip chipped in her requisite amount of grumbling before giving in. 
“Fine,” she muttered, then lifted her wings to give her feathers a theatrical wiggle. “Come on, Mister Glowstick. Let’s you and me discover the wonders and mysteries of Chemical Unloading.”







“Daffodil. Daisy. Who names their kid Daffodil Daisy?” 
Aurora did her best to feign interest, but Fiona’s latest distraction was already grating on her nerves. She’d found an old lockout station where padlocks hung together on a welded bar, each one bearing a dust-caked laminate with the name and photo of the worker assigned to it. She had a love-hate relationship with lock-out-tag-out policies back in Mechanical. It worked great right up until some overworked, overtired newbie couldn’t figure out how to turn on a piece of critical equipment and decided it was easier to lock out the ignition rather than solve the problem. Those newbies had a nasty habit of disappearing as soon as they slapped a lock on whatever machine piqued their frustration, causing a ripple of delays that only compounded until she or Sledge could figure out where the fuck they went.
“They might as well call them Wheel Tire or fricking… I don’t know. Chocolate Fudge.” Fiona flicked the laminate of a yellow-coated mare with her thumb, causing the entire lock out board to jingle on loose bolts. Her giggle echoed off the dark walls as she said again, “Daffodil Daisy.”
Aurora stepped in something wet, distracted just enough not to notice the stagnant puddle of liquid that spread across several yards of concrete detritus and paint flakes. Too many rusting pipes and sagging gantries crisscrossed the narrow slice of walkway they followed, making a short flight through any of the seemingly open air treacherous at best. She grimaced and told herself it was water as her hooves splashed and squelched through the muck. 
Green light from her Pip-Buck was all she had to go by. Fiona had insisted she could see fine in the near perfect dark of the paper finishing building, and Aurora believed her. In spite of her size, Fiona seemed to flit from one shiny thing to the next without so much as knocking over an errant broom. A tiny amount of natural light streamed in from a point so high above them, likely a skylight or one of the complex’s impossibly rare windows, that its glow was negligible against the pitch black ten floors below. 
The building itself was unsettlingly cavernous and long. To their right, a purposeful tangle of steel beams, catwalks, breaker boxes, break rooms, catwalks and workshops spanned the outer wall. To their left, an unbroken stretch of machinery dull with rust and dust hugged them close. Rows of massive steel rollers, narrow stairwells, ladders, consoles, and equipment made up the behemoth that was the last stop for the gigantic spools once manufactured by Mariposa Paper Ltd. A living blueprint of exposed conduits and pipes ran parallel, perpendicular, and straight down into the concrete floor behind protective sheet metal barriers that wouldn’t withstand even a glancing hit from a preoccupied forklift driver. The factory floor was spacious and claustrophobic all at once. It made her Mechanical level look positively quaint by comparison.
“Fiona, please.” 
Somewhere behind her the gryphon loped away from the lockout board and padded across the damp floor beside her. “Sorry,” she said, and the echo of her voice returned in a ghostly muddle. “None of this stuff has been touched since the world ended. It’s exciting, you know?”
She knew. On any other day she would be running from console to gauge, reading off pressure specs and giddily theorizing what mixture of coolant these machines used and what grade of steel they’d fabricated the massive rollers with. She was literally walking in the hoofprints of her ancestors, seeing a piece of the old world unspoiled by bomb or scavenger. All of the rust, the crumbling concrete, flaking paint and broken machinery was here solely as a product of time. Her light passed over a tool locker whose mesh door had since rotted to red powder and yet was still locked shut as it had been by whoever last turned the key. A wooden door to what might have been an office sagged on its hinges, swollen and cracked by centuries of damp and dry, still stood open where a floor manager or worker had kicked a shim under the gap.
This place had been falling into disrepair well before the bombs ever fell. Probably before the principals for their invention were understood. It was an alien concept to Aurora, a place of manufacturing of this scale being locked up and left to rot. She wanted to know how a decision like that could be made, let alone executed. Did they have to shut down a generator? How big of a generator would it have taken to power a place like this?
She was excited, yes, but they weren’t here to explore. They were here to search. 
“I have no idea what I’m looking for,” she sighed, her eyes casting from one confined nook to its adjacent cranny. “Not one fucking clue.”
“Language,” Fiona chided. 
She sighed again. “Yeah, well… yeah.”
They’d crossed back onto dry concrete when she felt a curled knuckle tap her shoulder. “You okay?”
“Let’s just say I’ve had better days.”
She could feel Fiona’s eyes on her, trying to suss out whatever cryptic meaning Aurora was trying to obfuscate. She shut her eyes for a couple of steps, listening to the crunch of debris beneath her hooves. She was doing it again. Being vague whenever she slipped into another dour mood while leaving it up to those near her to decipher whether they’d done something to nudge her down that slope. It was shitty. She was being shitty.
“Hey,” she said, pushing herself hard just to break that silence before it had a chance to crust over. “Thanks for coming with me. For helping, I mean.”
She breathed relief when Fiona took the olive branch. “Ah, well. Roach barely weighs anything. Happy to be the team taxi.”
“You’re not just transportation.” 
“Hey, don’t sell me short. I know a few stallions back home who’ll tell you I’m a pretty good ride.” 
Aurora stared at her, unsure what to say. Fiona rolled her eyes at her and somehow the grin on her beak widened a little. And yet when the gryphon next spoke, her tone had softened by a few degrees.
“I get it. You got a lot on your mind. Just don’t bury yourself under it.” She shrugged to emphasize her point. “It helps if you try to keep things light. You know?”
She tried to remember when she was able to keep things light. It felt like so much time had passed since they howled song after song together back at Kiln, and even then Aurora had been able to feel herself sinking. Bringing Ginger back to the Bluff safe and alive, that had felt like the first genuine victory of her life. There had been a potent sense of possibility between the two of them. A future, even. Then she butchered Gallow, the two of them sobbing on opposite sides of the same rifle for infinitely different reasons.
“I don’t think I can do light,” she murmured.
“I’m not picky, Feathers. Can you do medium?”
She snorted, and somehow she knew Fiona would latch onto that barest sound of levity and pry it open for all she’s worth. “Fuck. Worth a shot, I guess.”
She startled at the sudden sound of wheels clattering along the concrete. She hadn’t registered that Fiona had ducked toward one of the shoebox offices and retrieved what looked to be a damn near exact twin to the steel bodied office chairs they assigned to Mechanical. It was the type of perfectly uncomfortable chair that waited for your spine to mold to it, not the other way around. They were also infinitely easier to keep clean inside an environment where the air was as much aerosolized grease and welding fumes as it was oxygen. The stupid thing somehow still rolled, albeit with a clockwise torque Fiona kept in check.
“Hop in,” she said.
Aurora lifted a brow at the heap of a chair. “I’m not riding in that thing.”
“Hey. You said you’d do medium. This is medium.”
Those wheels were probably only a few rotations away from disintegrating, she thought. She muttered something out of Julip’s repertoire and climbed into the chair, grateful if not for anything that it would give her hind leg some time to rest. “If you dump me, I will kick your ass.”
Wheels skittered into motion and Aurora reflexively clutched the seat with her wings. 
“If we weren’t on a mission,” she said, prompting Aurora to immediately dislike the M-word, “I’d consider taking you up on that. I haven’t lost a fair fight since I left home.”
The chair bounced over a nugget of spalled cement, but Fiona held it upright. It occurred to Aurora the gryphon was pushing her along on her hind legs. Something about that stole a laugh out of her that she didn’t try to stifle.
“Yeah?” she prompted. “You can fight?”
Fiona was grinning again. “Any time I didn’t spend on the radio or in a bed, I mostly spent at the bar. I don’t shoot, so I learned how to brawl. Gotta defend myself somehow, right?”
“Right,” she said, unsure how deeply she was meant to read into that. “They should’ve paid you to run your radio station.” 
“Eh.” Fiona gave the syllable a dismissive edge. “You know how Coldbrook was. He decided pulling free power off his Stable was payment enough. Besides, I made decent caps.”
“Sure, but…”
“But I made it all on my back.”
She opened her mouth to say yes, of course that’s what she was referring to, but she closed it before the words could embarrass her. If this was medium, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see Fiona’s version of light.
They rolled past the last segment of rollers, slowing a little as they got their bearings within the cavernous open air beyond. Five rusting forklifts equipped not with flat forks but rounded sets of clamping jaws no doubt sized to match the diameter of the spools the rollers spat out sat in silent sentry within thick yellow lines painted on the floor. Suspended halfway up the high walls, mounted flush to a service catwalk, loomed an overhead crane. Four thick cables dangled identical heavy duty hooks like baited lines near the far wall where half a dozen shipping containers waited to be loaded. 
Unlike the service door that tore apart like rusty tissue paper when Fiona had given it a hard shove, the dock doors on this side of the building were held shut by gravity alone. The motors that once lifted them were little more than oxidized bricks.
“There’s a joke people at the Bluff have about Stable dwellers. Wanna hear it?” Fiona wheeled Aurora between painted lines designating the safe path through the open cavern. Overhead, a shattered skylight had allowed all manner of grit and roof debris to trickle into the factory. Bits of tarpaper, gravel, and concrete on top of all the rest of the detritus that had fallen from the upper catwalks impeded the chair’s progress. 
The novelty of being ferried along had already worn into something more awkward by now, and Aurora was eager to get back on her hooves. She hopped off and took a couple uncomfortable steps before her prosthetic fell into rhythm. “Do I have a choice?”
Fiona padded alongside her, eyes casting here and there for anything out of place. “Nah. What’s the difference between a Stable dweller making his camp under the stars, and a wastelander bedding down behind a blast door?”
Aurora shrugged.
“The Stable dweller’s still sheltered.” She reared on her hind legs and mimed a rimshot with her claws. “Eh? Get it?”
“I got it,” she groaned. “Look, I’m not judging you.”
Fiona aimed a talon at her like a pistol, the smile never leaving her beak. “How very open minded of you.”
That stung in a way Aurora wasn’t accustomed to at all. What the fuck was her problem? They had just been talking about where they’d learned to fight and now she felt herself being backed into a corner she didn’t know existed until now.
She felt herself floundering for a way to undo whatever this was, but inexplicably found herself digging in her heels. “Did I say something to piss you off?”
“Do I look pissed?” Seeing her expression, Fiona dropped her cocked eyebrow and made a placating gesture. “I’m really not pissed. Just a little… touchy when it comes to people telling me how I should pay for my dinner. Lime likes to say I’m allergic to honest work.”
She was feeling lost again. “Lime?”
“Owns that bar where Elder Coldbrook tried to highroad you.” 
She didn’t mention it was also the place where Coldbrook briefly succeeded in taking away her radio station. Aurora lifted a wing toward a massive spool of yellowed paper, avoiding the colonies of black mold that had flourished and dessicated on its surface. Several spools sat on steel frames that had sagged and settled around them, more wheel chock than support now, all waiting to be loaded into trucks that would never come. 
“What’s ‘honest work?’”
Fiona looked at her incredulously. “Seriously?”
She hadn’t been aware she’d asked anything unusual. Maybe she really was sheltered. “Back home we work where we’re needed. You can transfer into a new apprenticeship if there’s an opening, but nobody I know has ever called the work dishonest.”
“Well shit. Maybe I should have been born in a Stable.” The subtle edge faded from her smile, something Aurora hadn’t realized was there until it was gone. Fiona had practice hiding her discomfort. “Or maybe not. Sounds like you guys didn’t have much by way of sex work down in Ten.”
She averted her eyes. “Not the last time I checked, no.”
“Your loss.” Fiona tapped her shoulder with the back of her hand. “Look. Cards on the table? I gotta eat, and I eat a lot more than you little hoofers do. That means I gotta earn caps, which means I need to work.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound deprecating, so she settled with a neutral, “Huh.”
Fiona picked up a rusted nut the size of her fist, eyed the yellow lines of the path they followed, and flung it down the lane like a bowling ball. It made an awful racket as it clattered and wobbled along, but she spoke louder to be heard above it. “And I do like the work. I choose my hours, my clients, and my price. Plus I can charge a little extra since I’m the only gryphon in two hundred miles. Never hurts to play up the exotic angle.”
She grinned at Aurora. “How many people can say that about their job?”
It was a surprisingly cogent argument, though Aurora supposed they weren’t actually arguing. Still, she was sure Fiona was smoothing out the rough spots for her benefit. She wasn’t so far beyond her teenage years to have forgotten what it had been like to be young and painfully aware that the heat suppressants she took were as much placebo as remedy. She remembered what it was like for a young stallion to follow too close behind her to scent the air, or for a classmate’s advances to take on a nearly aggressive edge when she declined for the third time. Some people were born assholes. Others couldn’t think past their own hormones once their dick got some blood in it. 
Aurora found herself looking at Fiona more appraisingly than she had before. The glow of her PipBuck wasn’t much, but it was enough to remind her how unappealing the idea of angering someone as large as Fiona was.
“And the work you do,” she said, hoping her hesitancy wouldn’t be taken as further judgment, “it had rules for your…?”
Fiona smirked as she finished her thought. “Clients, and sure I had some guidelines for what I was willing to work with. Some things cost extra. Groups are popular. Cuddling, too. Not my favorite, cuddling. It eats up time. But depending on which spoon they ask to be, sometimes it can lead to add-on sales. Hell, if I were on the clock last night, the three of you would technically owe me fifty each.”
She shot her a knowing look. Aurora quickly found something else to interest her attention, her cheeks already flushed. This was so far beyond her comfort zone it might as well be on another continent, and Fiona seemed to be turning the screws on purpose now. 
Somehow it didn’t surprise her that Fiona might be enjoying it. “Say ‘uncle’ and we can change the subject.”
She breathed relief. “Uncle.”
Fiona snorted a laugh and opened her wings in a grand gesture at the darkened factory around them. “Back to more important things, then. Any idea if any of this screams ‘secret passage?’”
Aurora stared out at the deep shadows and decaying behemoths, and sighed. 
“Not a fucking clue.”
She stepped into one of the shoebox offices - barely a desk, two chairs and a few two-drawer filing cabinets under a light fixture - and wondered how she was going to tell Eshe they’d only just scratched the surface of the factory and had found nothing. Metal scraped as she pulled each filing cabinet away from the wall, not expecting to find a secret passage and still being disappointed when none appeared. She didn’t want to admit it, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how every hour they spent searching Mariposa was an hour they weren’t using to find and kill Primrose.
She let the filing cabinet thump back onto its base and sighed. Even that was beginning to sound hollow in her mind. Find and kill Primrose. It was hard not to feel like she was beneath a goal that… large. Even if by some miracle she got lucky and found the little mass murderer alone and unguarded, two adjectives that she doubted would ever describe the leader of the Enclave, Aurora knew the ramifications of ending her life would be anything but minor. 
Assassination. It hadn’t been done before, not as far as her history lessons back home taught her, and yet Discord had taught her the word for it. The murder of a sitting leader. He had argued it technically had happened, en masse, when Primrose and Spitfire pressed the proverbial button but she didn’t feel like that counted. The devastation had by definition been global. The apocalypse had spared no one. By the time the dust had settled, there had been nothing left for an assassination to throw into chaos. The survivors had climbed out of the rubble to find that work was already done.
Her thoughts drifted to Ginger. Would she want her to do this? To risk her life - one that Ginger died saving - on some vendetta? Aurora thought she already knew the answer and did her best to push it out of her mind. It wasn’t just revenge. Primrose had snuffed out so many lives that the numbers lost meaning as soon as one tried counting them. It wasn’t only revenge, she told herself. It was justice. Comeuppance. Just… not just revenge.
She dragged the back of her wing over her eyes to get rid of the tears. She couldn’t even lie convincingly to herself. She knew none of this was about the greater good or heroism or doing what was right. Primrose hadn’t just sent the bomb to her Stable. She’d made them believe it was the ignition talisman they so desperately needed. She’d sent it knowing Ginger would be the only one capable of installing it. Of activating it. 
They let their guard down and now Ginger was dead. Gone, without even leaving behind a body to bury in the gardens. 
She felt the edge of a sob gathering in her chest and crushed it with a sharp slam of her hoof against the filing cabinet. Cheap sheet metal deformed with a dissatisfying bang and she glared at the bottom drawer of moldy papers as it trundled open in surrender. A startled curse echoed out from the adjacent office. The tinny thunder was still reverberating through the building when Fiona darkened the already deeply shadowed doorway behind her. 
She didn’t have to turn around to know Fiona was assessing the damage caught in her Pip-Buck’s glow. 
“Must’ve been a pretty big radroach,” she murmured.
Aurora answered in a husky voice. “Yeah.”
A pause. “Want to talk about it?”
Anger flared in her like a flame licking gas vapor. She wheeled on Fiona, knowing her eyes were still wet and all the more angry for it. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
Fiona took a half-step back. “That’s kind of what friends do.”
“We’re not friends! We’ve known each other for a day! One day! What is it about the wasteland that makes people think that’s all it takes?”
She couldn’t tell if Fiona had blinked out of offense or some other reason, but it hadn’t been from the dust. 
“Okay, sorry,” the gryphon said. “Forget I asked.”
Great. Wonderful. Just like that she was the bad guy for drawing a line in the dirt. For not wanting to pour her heart out at the drop of a hat just because someone asked. She was sick of everyone wanting to know what she was thinking, wanting to help her work through her shit like she couldn’t do it by herself. And so what if she couldn’t pull some magical cure-all phrase-a-day calendar platitude out of her ass to make everything stop hurting? At least the tears were real. They were proof she had a reason to stay angry.
She said nothing as she pushed past Fiona. There were more offices to check. More breaker panels to look over. More… whatever the fuck this place was to overturn.
The next office was more of the same. Desk, chairs, cabinets. This time she shoved the latter hard enough from the wall for the cabinet to tip and slam face-down on the cement. She grit her teeth against the flush of embarrassment, shoved her wing into the gap behind the next cabinet and this time flung it as hard as she could against the desk. The momentary cacophony was deafening. When she was done inflicting her wrath on the third cabinet, she looked up at Fiona watching from the open door and glared, daring her to speak.
“What?”
Fiona lifted an empty palm. “Didn’t say anything.” 
She gestured beyond the cramped space. “There’s plenty of other offices to check.”
Several long seconds passed between them during which Aurora began to worry Fiona might not move at all, and instead rooted herself in the doorway until she fessed up to what was wrong. Aurora didn’t budge either. Fiona knew what was wrong. She’d seen the bomb explode all the way from her tower atop the Bluff. She knew what it had taken with it. 
To her relief, Fiona acquiesced. Giving the doorframe two soft pats, she turned and went to search the next office. 
She didn’t know how much time had passed by the time her temper began to cool, but it had been enough for them to finish clearing the tiny offices and move on to the less straightforward work of looking for anomalies in the mazework of conduit, plumbing and pipes that threaded every vertical inch of the plant. As Aurora slowly walked the length of the massive rolling machine, woefully aware she was more likely to miss anything out of place than find it, the uncomfortable tightness of guilt had begun binding up in her gut. She’d had a tantrum. A genuine, honest-to-goodness fucking tantrum. What was wrong with her?
Overhead, Fiona picked her way along a maintenance catwalk. Aurora glanced up through the grating to see her inspecting the contents of a bright, cherry red tool chest. She still didn’t want someone she barely knew psychoanalyzing her, but as her dad liked to say she owed somebody an apology. 
“Hey, Fiona…”
“I lost people too.”
The interruption caught Aurora off guard, and something about the flatness of Fiona’s usual jokester tone told her it wasn’t time to talk. She forced herself to close her mouth, the apology on hold. 
“I’m not comparing my experiences to yours,” she continued, clearly having given what she was saying some thought during their protracted silence, “but I know what it feels like to lose everything because I lived it.”
She watched Fiona close the lid, pause, then turn the latch on the front back to the locked position before padding away down the catwalk. She followed, keeping the gryphon in the green glow of her Pip-Buck. 
“I was seventeen when I left,” she continued, one massive wing sliding along a railing too small for her. “Griffinstone was dying. It had been for a long time before I was born. It’s not like Equestria. Stuff’s still alive over here. Yeah, you’ve got the bomb craters and the radiation and the mutations, but you guys didn’t get the pillar of fire.”
She means SOLUS, Aurora thought to herself. 
“That thing left behind scars that didn’t heal. My grandma, my parents, heck a lot of the elders believed the Sun looked down at a world filled with creatures pretending at being godlings and the fire she sent down was our punishment.” She paused, pushed open the cage of a utility space, and disappeared inside while continuing to speak. “My whole family was like that. Religious. They raised me and my brother that way. Taught us to look at how the world used to be, all glistening towers and high technology, and spit on it. A world of unimaginable excess that refused to provide for its millions of poor and starving wasn’t a world worth living in, that’s what my dad would say. Mom just ate up whatever the priestesses said during worship hour and regurgitated it at the dinner table like she’d known what their visions had been all along.”
She reappeared from the cage. “Perry was only nine - too young to question anything the adults told us. I remember hating him for how happy he looked whenever mom and dad came home from worship to share another lesson, as if just believing that the old world is the root of evil makes all the suffering right now somehow worth bearing.”
Aurora wasn’t sure where this was going. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. This all felt too personal. 
“We were starving,” Fiona continued, as if sensing Aurora’s desire to change the subject. “Every one of us, young and old. Even the priestesses couldn’t hide the ribs showing under their wings. We all knew what was happening. Everyone knew the poison killing Vhanna wasn’t just in the air, but the water too. The pillar of fire didn’t just destroy the zebra cities, it carved glass canyons where they stood. The water table doesn’t care which way the wind blows. It just takes what it’s given and spreads it. My grandma was barely a fledgling when the fields down in the valleys started going barren. At first they thought it was something to do with disease but then gryphons started getting sick. 
“Didn’t take long for someone to realize there was radiation coming up from the wells, but by then it was already too late. The soil was ruined. Someone told me there had been talk once of moving Griffinstone south, into the highlands past the mountains, but that it had been shouted down. I don’t know why. All I know is they stayed put, maybe because they thought the wells could be cleansed or because it was too hard to move fifty thousand gryphons to a place that wasn’t Griffinstone. Whatever the reason, they chose to raise their families on dying farms and toxic water. They taught my parents to believe it was better for Perry and I to grow up blaming our empty bellies on a dying civilization than to abandon that dead civilization’s namesake.”
There was something like anger brewing in Fiona’s voice but it was hard to pin down, like she was a kettle warming over a fire that no longer had the heat to send her into a rolling boil.
“Mom said Perry died in his sleep,” she said. “They didn’t say he finally starved to death. They’d never say that because it would mean acknowledging reality. They wouldn’t, so I did. I told them I wanted to leave. They said no. I mean, they said a lot more than no, but it all boiled down to the same thing. We fought. I used all the arguments a seventeen year old had and lost.”
Another pause. Aurora’s hooves crunched over spalled flecks of concrete, unsure what she was meant to say to that. “So you left,” she filled in.
Fiona slowed, came to a stop, and threw an arm over the railing. She looked down at her, the corner of her beak crooked in a sad smile. “That would’ve been the smart thing, but I wasn’t very smart. My kid brother just up and died. I was pissed. I mean, I was absolutely ruined inside, but mostly I was just angry because nobody seemed to care. My parents were actually relieved. One less mouth to feed. A little less starving for the three of us. ‘There’s always a silver lining,’ my dad said after the funeral. Fuck me it would have been better if I just left then and there.”
She was leaving room for Aurora to ask the obvious question. “What happened?”
“What any grieving, pissed off teenager would do,” she chuckled darkly. “I stormed into the worship hall in the middle of prayer, blamed the priestesses for feeding a barrel of bullshit every day so we could all starve with a smile, and proceeded to try to take a shit on their altar.”
Aurora blinked. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Fiona nodded. Then she cleared her throat. “I got tackled before I could, ah, seal the deal. Didn’t matter anyway. They burned our house down.”
“Wait, go back. Who did?”
“My parents,” she muttered. “They locked me in my room while I was asleep, but I woke up. Don’t know why. Just did. Lucky, I guess. Anyway, I got out through a window. Saw my dad still holding the torch. The whole village was out with them and when they saw me crawl out it was like seeing a hundred strangers all caught with their hands in the cookie jar.”
Fiona set her chin onto the railing. “That’s when I left. I knew what would happen to me if I just stood there so I just hauled ass for the sky. I didn’t give a thought to where I was going, just that I needed to get somewhere that wasn’t there. Like I said, I was a fucked up teenager. Only makes sense that I’d fly out over the ocean and never stop.”
Aurora was pretty sure she heard a thin veneer of sarcasm at the end that likely hid beneath it a sea of old regrets. Now that Fiona’s story had wound down to its natural conclusion, it startled her how instinctual the urge to answer with some kind of comforting platitude. The same shoulder-patting meaningless assurances she constantly braced herself against whenever the conversation drifted too close to the topic of her loss of Ginger. 
That knee-jerk avoidance must have been written across her face. That, or Fiona knew more about what she was going through than she gave her credit for. Flakes of rusty paint sank through the light of her Pip-Buck as the gryphon watched from the railing.
“The thing about pretending you have it all together is that the people around you start to believe you,” she said with a softness that belied her bulk. “Make sense?”
She swallowed hard and nodded. Discord had tried drilling the same lesson into her skull, in his way, and she’d retreated toward repair work to avoid confronting it. Now that she was finally listening she knew she’d done him a disservice.
“How are you…?” She paused, unsure whether she had a right to ask. Above her, Fiona waited with an expression that welcomed uncomfortable questions. She hadn’t shied from a single one so far. She tried again. “After all that, how can you be so… happy?”
Fiona tapped a claw against the side of her beak. “It took a few years before a real smile ever graced this old charmer. Everyone heals differently, Feathers. That thing I said about pretending to have it all together? It’s poisonous to you, too. It’s the self-deluding horseshit that lets you convince yourself the cut on your finger isn’t really there right up until the moment you wake up from surgery to find out the surgeons had to take your hand.”
Aurora had to make an effort not to look back at her hind leg. “Little on the nose, isn’t it?”
“Hey, the whole point of getting the point across is getting the point across by making a good point.” She smiled at Aurora’s dizzied expression, then sobered by a few degrees as she continued. “Look, the best advice I can give from experience is to be honest with yourself even when it sucks. Especially when it sucks. That’s the first step. Second one is being honest with the folks you care about. I’m still working out the whole dynamic between you, Lil’ Green and Presto Chango but it’s hard not to notice the three of you are close.”
The gryphon hitched a thumb in the vague direction of the neighboring building. “You can try to hide it, but they know you’re hurting. Believe me, you’ll feel a lot better when you let them in.”







Roach brushed the dust off a tag dangling from a gas cylinder and grunted. “Wouldn’t want to be stuck in a room with a bottle of this.”
Julip dropped a wing onto his shoulder and hoisted herself up until her forelegs were off the ground. Unlike Roach and Fiona with their unique variants of natural night vision or Aurora with her PipBuck, she had to make her way around in the dark the old fashioned way. She held a narrow flashlight in the feathers of her other wing and pointed the beam at the gas cylinder’s valve. Roach didn’t mind her using him as a ladder. There were few enough opportunities for them to be close as they tested the waters of their new and uniquely informal relationship. It was… nice.
“Carbon monoxide,” she murmured, reading the faded tag. “Explosive. Fun. What, was paper not flammable enough for you guys back in prehistoric times?”
He snorted as she let herself back down. She’d never show physical closeness like this if Aurora was around, that much he’d been able to work out without needing to ask. Despite her gruff exterior, Ginger’s death during their separation had affected Julip in ways she was still trying to understand. As they navigated the desolate roads of the far north to avoid the Enclave relocating their defected corporal, Julip had come to wonder if it might be possible to go back to Stable 1 and use its servers to contact Aurora and Ginger at Stable 10. She wanted to tell them they were safe, and to share the news that they’d bonded to one another as well. That plan cracked when they learned from Meridian that Stable 10 had been bombed, and when they learned Ginger had not survived it shattered.
She’d kept him at wing’s length when Aurora was around ever since. He tried not to take it personally, though it stung a little all the same. She was trying to spare Aurora’s feelings by not being a reminder of the thing she’d so recently lost. It was an unusually thoughtful gesture for Julip that showed him another facet of the kind young mare the Enclave had trained her not to be. 
“It must have had its uses,” he guessed, not quite sure he was right or wrong about that. The Chemical Unloading building had turned out to be some kind of holding area for all manner of caustic, flammable, and downright toxic materials created or used by the mill. “Or it’s a waste product. I think that big tank over there is pure nitrogen.”
"Air tools, probably. Sounds like an Aurora mystery to me." 
Iron rails flaked with rust bisected the rear half of the building. Atop the tracks perched three linked flatcars. A heavy crane system roosted in the rafters high above them, its cables reaching down toward the empty train cars like limp fingers. On the right side of the tracks stood a cube of stacked shipping containers three high and three deep. They’d already checked inside the bottom three and found nothing but stagnant air and a tangling screen of cobwebs almost as old as Roach. No secret staircase leading down to the bowels of a ministry blacksite. Just more reasons to sneeze.
On the left side lay a fenced-in area where heavy duty racks held gas bottles like artillery shells waiting to be loaded into a cannon. Even sheltered from the weather outside, the stenciled lettering labeling each shelf had flaked away rendering the text illegible. The valves on several bottles showed signs of heavy corrosion, yellow and green caking that Roach took as a clear sign to steer clear of. The pressure gauges on those bottles had all dropped to zero bars, but he didn’t need Aurora to tell him not to trust the readings. 
“Hydrogen sulfide, chlorine dioxide… wouldn’t make sense for a facility this large to store this stuff in individual bottles. Tags all have dates and times on them.” Julip let the tag of one of the corroded tanks drop. “Bet these were samples for some quality control wonk. Wouldn’t want to have been here when these popped off.”
He grunted his agreement and they left the caged bottles behind to continue their search along the perimeter wall. He watched Julip scout ahead, enjoying the movement of her hips as much as the conversation. “You wouldn’t have wanted to be downwind of the mill at all back when it still ran. These places stank.”
Julip paused at an emergency exit at the end of the long row of dock doors and gave the press-bar at its center a shove. The crunch of well-established rust echoed through the vacant storage building as well as the clatter of chains on the opposite end. There was enough slack in them to let a slim beam of light through the gap and that was it.
“Anything?” he prompted.
She shrugged. “More chemical tanks. More buildings. Would’ve been nice if the last group who came here left a note telling us where to go.”
He caught up and pressed his own eye to the door. Nothing immediately jumped out to him as particularly interesting. The rails bent through the gaps between buildings to join the main line. The rusting frame of a personal carriage sagged into the dusty pavement a few yards away, parked near a dumpster in the shadow of one of the stubbier buildings. So much of the complex was in the process of being reclaimed by the dead, blowing soil that it was hard for him to decide whether this might have been a quiet corner of the factory where employees might have huddled to sneak a cigarette or a nexus of industrial chaos where safety inspectors milled about with clipboards and hardhats. 
He couldn’t imagine working somewhere like this, all noise and danger and industry. Dull buildings standing above dull roads, interlaced with too many overhead pipes and valves and yellow warning signs depicting all the ways an inattentive employee could get killed. Not for the first time, he felt the smallest bit of validation that his decision to become a full time gardener had been the correct one.
“Maybe there’s a secret door underneath those forklifts,” Julip half-joked, half-groused. The frustration in her voice wasn’t easy to miss. They were less than ants compared to the vastness of the factory and it was becoming painfully clear to both of them that they knew too little of what they were surrounded by to know if something was out of place. 
Aurora was probably having a heyday, he thought. 
The soft thunk-tok of Julip pressing buttons echoed down the loading dock. “I bet Rarity kept blueprints of this dump in her office before Lil’ Shitwing dropped a bomb on it.”
“Maybe.” He was still at the cracked door and could feel Julip’s eyes on him now, no doubt wanting to know what was so damned interesting. He motioned her over before she could ask. “This place has me turned around. Is that the building Aurora’s clearing?”
Julip’s ear brushed his chin as she squinted through the gap a second time. “Which one? The big gray one, or the less-big gray one?”
“Straight back. The one with the pickup parked beside it.”
It took her a beat to zero in on it. “Nah. You can make out the river just behind it. Aurora and Fiona are over…” she turned from the door to gesture back the way they came, deeper into the storage building toward a faint haze of daylight coming from where the front door stood propped open with its own picked padlock, “...there, somewhere.”
He followed the tip of her pointed wing, his cracked lips pursed in thought as he regained his bearings. He’d be happy when they left this maze behind.
“Why?” Julip asked, stealing another peek outside. “What’s out there?”
“Nothing,” he admitted, still peering through the gap. “Only… do you see that fire exit?”
It was hard to miss. She nodded, seeing what had caught his attention. The remains of what might have been a small truck sagged on rotting suspension near the rear door of the building straight across from their own, and upon seeing the coil of linked metal laying on the concrete, she understood. “It’s open.”







They looked down at the coil of cut chain as if it were a snake waiting to bite. The door it once barred shut had been propped open with a set of heavy bolt cutters. Aurora nudged the chain with the barrel of her rifle, noting the shadow of discolored concrete that still marked where it originally fell. Whoever cut open the door had done so a long time ago.
That, however, wasn’t the reason they all still stood outside. The reason for that, and why Aurora, Roach, and Julip all had their weapons out, was the sound coming from within.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Yeah,” Fiona murmured, “I don’t fucking like that.”
“Language,” Julip chided.
The gryphon snorted but the strain in her expression stayed right where it was. 
Thump. Thump.
Aurora’s eyes flicked down to her rifle to make sure the safety was off. It was. They returned to the fire exit, an unassuming gray rectangle in a sea of unassuming gray rectangles. Only this one was making noise. This one wasn’t empty.
Signage posted on the door at eye level warned them of high voltage safety protocols. Told them they were required to wear electrical hazard rated boots. She was struck by how out of place a familiar sign pulled straight from her own Stable stood out, as if to underscore how wrong Mariposa felt. 


WING GUARDS REQUIRED
BEYOND THIS POINT


The others probably couldn’t read it. Not with so much of the old paint flaked off, but she recognized it as soon as she might recognize her own face in the mirror. It was everything she could do not to flex her wings to make sure the hard, leather sleeves shielded her feathers from scalding pipes and swinging tools. It didn’t take much to snap a hollow bone.
“Fiona,” Roach rumbled, indicating the narrow sliver of black where the door stood open.
She stepped past them and pressed her eye to the void. The steady, repetitive thud of whatever was inside didn’t stop. They watched Fiona’s uneasy expression change to something more certain but no less uncomfortable. Aurora thought she could see the fur along the gryphon’s shoulders angle away from her flesh.
“Feral,” she confirmed. “Just one, I think.”
Roach tapped her leg, nudging her to the side so he could see. A beat later, he nodded. “It’s alone. Who wants it?”
“Dibs.” Julip was already jockeying over the discarded chain. They made room for her as she put one set of feathers on the door’s inside handle while sliding the muzzle of her revolver into the opening. “Retreat to the rooftops if this goes sideways, right?”
They nodded. For all the visual flare the factory complex didn’t offer, it provided an abundance of easy cover. 
Thump. Thump.
“Alright. Pucker up.”
Julip gave the door a firm yank, sending its bulk swinging on shrieking rusted hinges. It crunched into a stud embedded in the concrete, its own momentum and weight deforming it until it jumped the doorstop and continued on its way until finally banging into the building’s metal siding like a tin gong. Gauzy light poured into the pitch black and the thumping came to an abrupt halt.
They braced themselves for something to lunge out of the darkness. What shambled its way into Julip’s crosshairs was significantly less energetic. A sound of collective disgust ran through the four of them as it stumped its way into the light. At one time it had been a unicorn, a stallion judging by the pendulous rotted thing swinging between its legs, but it was its face - or lack thereof - that sparked their disgust.
It emitted a flabby wheeze from the mashed remains of its muzzle. Barely any of it was left, beaten into a muddy pulp of graying flesh, molars, and exposed sinus cavity. The stump of a tongue flexed weakly on its root and it became clear where the thumping sound had come from. A single eye, dehydrated to the point of resembling the opaque, flaccid tissue of a rotting grape, leered at them from the bowl of its socket. 
“Shoot it,” Fiona half muttered, half retched. “Fucking god.”
Julip leveled the revolver at the ghoul’s ruined face and squeezed the trigger. A sharp explosion ended the poor creature’s suffering as it tumbled lifelessly across the open threshold.
They held their collective breath, waiting not for the mutilated ghoul to start moving but for anything else in range of the shot to come seeking out its source. The first half of a minute passed. Nothing. Then the other half. Nothing still. They looked at one another and came to a silent consensus. The building was empty, at least for now.
Julip let the wing clutching her revolver relax as the other went to her bag for her flashlight. She clicked it on, stepped over the dead ghoul, and followed the beam inside.
Their varied light sources passed through the building’s interior in slow, cautious sweeps as their hooves and paws crept inside. Compared to the quarter-mile long cavern of massive roller machinery and overhead cranes Aurora and Fiona had explored, this place was positively cozy. The ceiling was low, less than thirty feet at the crest of its uniquely vaulted rafters. A pale gray and red banner hung from a crossbeam, its faded letters still declaring, “UNITED MILL WORKERS, LOCAL #3443 - UNION OWNED, UNION STRONG!”
Her eyes widened when Julip’s light passed over the object that dominated the middle of the uniquely checked floor. Mounted a foot off the ground on a raised platform lay a piece of machinery she would recognize with her eyes closed. It didn’t matter that it was tipped on its side like a knocked over tin can or stood, generously, at a tenth the size of the one she’d worked on all her adult life. Aurora knew it was a generator the second she spotted the heavy shaft that ran along its axis. For a moment the rest of the building was forgotten. While the others spread out to explore, she followed a straight line to the mill’s power plant.
She wasn’t more than a few paces away when she saw the spot on the generator’s outer chassis where the lone ghoul, its motivation unknowable, had been pounding its face against the unforgiving metal. The dull blue paint had been cleaved free of the steel in a wide spread a yard across, replaced by dark smears that had also begun to flake away and collect in a broken line around where the thing had stood. She avoided staring at it as she walked to the generator’s opposite side. It was strange for it to be on its side, she thought. Inefficient. Gravity would constantly pull at the rotor assembly, gradually pulling it out of alignment over time. 
“Find anything?” 
She hadn’t realized Roach was beside her until he’d spoken and it had taken an unnatural level of sphincter control to keep from pissing herself. That hadn’t entirely stopped her from vocalizing her momentary fright and swatting her friend along the flank hard enough to elicit a chastised bark from him in turn. Fiona and Julip must have seen his approach, judging by their distant laughter.
She gave Roach one last half-hearted thump in the chest. “Warn me next time you try giving me a heart attack,” she groaned.
“Sorry,” he grinned, and she could tell he was more than a little proud of himself. Tipping his nose toward the generator, he added, “If you ask her nicely, maybe Fiona would consider lugging this thing back home.”
Home being Stable 10. Even in its current condition, he hadn’t lost faith in the place he’d dedicated his second life to standing guard as its silent sentry.
“Dare to dream,” she said and reached toward the machine to wipe dust off a raised square screwed into its cylindrical chassis. Her heart fell as she read the words stamped there. “Maybe next time.”
Roach propped a hoof on the raised platform to read the words.


Steam Turbine Generator Unit
Turbine No. 112571    Rating: 21000KW    3600RPM     15 Stages
Steam Conditions: 575 PSIG    Temperature 825°


The list of specs carried on down neatly stamped lines, listing everything from inlet water temperatures to pressure tolerances all of which pointed toward a power plant totally incompatible with the demands of a self-contained, self-sustaining Stable. Steam required heat. Heat required fuel. Fuel required an open system capable of taking in and consuming resources a Stable couldn’t provide. She knew Roach had only been joking, but his suggestion had unintentionally turned a spotlight on her failure to deliver an ignition talisman to her people. 
It stung, but she was getting better at hiding that pain. “It’s still a beautiful old antique,” she admitted. “I’d kill to see one of these puppies running.”
“Hey guys? I found something.”
Aurora and Roach looked up from the old steam turbine toward the sound of Fiona’s voice. Julip’s flashlight was already making its way toward the windowed control room where, against all odds, the gryphon had managed to squeeze through the unlocked door without getting stuck. Aurora wondered if she would ever get used to just how much larger she was compared to the three of them. It was any wonder Fiona seemed more comfortable inside the confines of a Stable. The ceilings were higher. The doors were wider. Even with a billion tons of rock above her head an underground shelter was a better fit for Fiona than this world with its open skies.
It turned out Fiona had found more than just something. She’d come across several somethings. Rather than wait for the control room to turn into a clown car, the gryphon backed out of the narrow workspace to allow them in.
Aurora felt her heart lift at the sight of the three bedrolls laid out beneath the control panels. A comic book lay between them, its faded cover still pressed down atop a length of red yarn. More yarn issued out from the flap of a small satchel. Aurora felt her right ear tilt in an unconscious expression of confusion as she lifted a pair of dusty knitting needles from the bedroll nearest the pouch. The once soft threads, now stiff with age, left dark lines behind as they came up in her grip. 
“This has to be from the last group he recruited,” Roach murmured, as much an obvious statement as it was meant to convince himself it was true. He nudged the comic book with the edge of his hoof and the paper rasped as it moved to uncover a black and silver plastic rectangle. Blue-green crust coated the seams of the battery cover. “How long ago was it when Eshe said he last asked for help?”
Aurora dropped the knitting needles back onto the bedroll. “He didn’t. All I know is that it was a long time ago.”
Something crackled loud enough to make them both jump. They turned to find Julip holding a wingful of crumbling brown wrappers, her nose wrinkled with equal parts interest and revulsion. “Hell are these,” she mumbled.
Aurora caught one of the brittle flakes before it could hit the floor and turned it over in her Pip-Buck’s light. The lettering was almost too small to read but she managed to catch a few words. “Contains soy. May contain peanut, almond… I’m guessing they’re recipes?”
Roach’s hoof tipped the bottom of her open wing to let him see. “Ingredients, but not a recipe.” He moved to see the plastic flakes Julip still held. “These are granola bar wrappers.”
“What’s a granola?” Fiona asked from the control room’s open door. 
“Prewar food,” he said, turning to shake his head at the strange variety of refuse Eshe’s last rescue party had left behind. “Food that stopped being safe to eat within a decade of the bombs falling. Some things lasted longer, but not these. The oats would have gone rancid. And the batteries in that holotape player, those wouldn’t have lasted more than a few years. This is all too old.”
“Could be this isn’t the rescue party’s stuff,” Julip suggested. “Might just be an old camp left by early survivors.”
Roach shook his head. “No. They would have stayed in the town upriver where they knew they could find supplies. Anyone trying to live here would have left more evidence behind. Weapons, defenses, permanent storage. These people were traveling light.” He gestured at the knitting supplies, eyeing the impractical satchel of yarn. “And they brought their hobbies with them.” 
The long windows rattled as Fiona pushed off the doorframe and began padding off into the dark. “What’s wrong with having hobbies?” her voice echoed back to them.
“Nothing, as long as you already know how to spot danger,” Roach called back, his throat rattling a little from the effort of raising his voice. “These people didn’t. They couldn’t have, not back then. These people were first generation survivors or were born right after the bombs fell. Later than that and they’d have been scraping calories out of tin cans instead of surviving off snack bars. They were probably more worried about breathing radioactive dust than stumbling into a deathclaw nest because they probably had never heard of a deathclaw before.”
He shook his head at the forgotten campsite. “They brought blankets and entertainment. So much wasted weight.”
“Wasted, nothing,” Julip groused. The slight upward pull of her lip betrayed her attempt to subtly lighten the mood, but Aurora pretended to not notice. “If you ask me, these old farts had the right idea packing bedrolls. I’d kill to not have to get up in the middle of the night to fluff my dirt pillow.”
Fiona’s voice echoed back to them. “Call me a dirt pillow again and tonight I’ll make you sleep in the wind.”
Aurora allowed herself a small laugh but her attention didn’t stray far from the spot where the previous group had made camp. “Would’ve been nice if they left us directions.”
“Mm.” Roach lifted the corner of a bedroll, revealing nothing. “We’re a ways in from the main gate and this is the first building I’ve seen broken into by someone other than us. If they thought they had time to knit socks and chat then they probably weren’t worried about having to search at random like we’ve been doing. They knew exactly where they needed to look.”
“Maybe there’s something on that holotape,” Julip suggested.
Roach grunted. “Old Appaloosan country music if the label’s anything to go by. Contrary to popular legend, us folks from the old world didn’t spend the days whispering personal secrets into holotape recorders. Give it a listen if you want.”
“You see a pair of double A’s on me?”
Aurora’s smile widened into a grin. “Come on, they’re not that small.”
Roach’s eyes flew open like twin spotlights and when she risked a peek toward Julip, she saw the mare gaping at her with an expression equal parts dumbfounded and impressed. Out of sight but not earshot, Fiona cackled.
A thorough search of the previous group’s camp turned up no clues to where they’d gone and when Aurora popped the forgotten holotape into her Pip-Buck, a piano-stomping song sung by a long-dead Appaloosan icon filled the power house’s dark walls with the laments of having to work nine to five. Aurora briefly considered leaving the tape where they found it only to reconsider and quietly slip it beneath the flap of her saddlebag. And while the previous rescue party hadn’t left any convenient notes behind to explain where they’d gone, it was clear to all of them that they were in the right place. Less than ten minutes after Aurora’s uncharacteristic joke and Julip’s half-hearted attempt to tackle her in reprisal, all four of them were hard at work searching for anything remotely resembling an entrance to the Ministry of Image’s forgotten black site.
Tool lockers clanged open. Desks and workbenches shrieked in protest as they were hauled away from the walls. Fiona took it upon herself to fiddle with every lever and valve she could find, leaving behind a trail of corroded breadcrumbs where flakes of rust and the occasional broken valve wheel lay discarded on the ground. The gryphon had an innate level of brute strength that made Sledge seem like a yearling by comparison, prompting Aurora to abandon her own search just to make sure Fiona didn’t attack something that could bite back. Given the variety of chemicals Roach described finding during his search with Julip, Aurora didn’t want her ears perking up to the sound of mystery gas hissing out of a still pressurized line.
Luckily, nothing exploded.
“Hey, Aurora? Did you put this screwdriver here?”
She looked toward the center of the room where Julip’s flashlight stood fixed on the steam turbine, and frowned. “I can’t say I did.”
Julip didn’t have to ask them to come look. They had all dropped their own fruitless searches the instant one of them found something interesting. They converged on Julip, their eyes moving to the section of turbine housing against which the ghoul had turned its own skull into pulverized jelly. The clotted blood and flecks of bone were difficult to confront, but they forced themselves to look. There, in the midst of the caked gore, protruded the flat tip of a screwdriver. Barely an inch of it was visible. It had been wedged through a joint where two housing panels met, the seam slightly puckered where the ghoul’s endless abuse had forced the metal to deform around it.
It took her a moment to digest the strangeness of what she was looking at. Before all this, when she was still shadowing Sledge, she had been guilty of using a variety of tools in ways they weren’t meant to be used. Wrenches as hammers. Chisels as hammers. Pliers as hammers. When she was young a lot of things had gotten used as hammers. Screwdrivers, with enough frustration and impatience, could be made into makeshift pry bars, shims, doorstops, anything really. The driver Julip had discovered was no different. It had been shoved between two panels in an apparent attempt to keep one of them open and accessible.
Only she was looking at the tip, not the handle. The handle was on the other side of that panel. The driver, she realized, had been shoved between the panels from inside the turbine.
“That doesn’t make…” she closed her mouth before she could finish stating the obvious. 
Julip gave the panel a knock with her hoof. The hollow echo it emitted erased any question of what they were looking at. This was it. They had found the entrance of Eshe’s prison.







Rusted pins resisted, deformed, and finally released its iron grip with a sudden bang of corroded hinges giving way at the same time. For a fleeting moment Aurora saw the screwdriver suspended over the abyss, a clear line dividing the oxidized tip from clean chrome and a bright yellow handle. Then it fell, bouncing off one concrete step, then the next, before momentum and gravity sent it clattering down into the impenetrable black. For several long seconds they listened to the distant echoes mingle and distort before going utterly silent.
Fiona stood between them, the turbine’s false panel held above their heads like the hood of a motorized carriage whose guts had been hollowed out. Without asking, she heaved her weight against it until the metal began to deform. One of the hinges let out another tiny gunshot as the bolts securing it gave way. The other held, allowing the gryphon to bend the metal backward over the fake turbine until its drunken new shape was sufficient to hold it open. 
Aurora made a mental note not to piss Fiona off. Ever. 
A damp, musty odor wafted up from the concrete steps. In the light of Aurora’s Pip-Buck, a powdery sheen of mineral deposits hung from the cinder block walls in gauzy white sheets, reminding Aurora of archival videos taken of the Stable’s cisterns back during a time when a trio of Mechanical shift leads had failed to visually verify the condition of the filtration system. It hadn’t been pretty, but it was nothing compared to the almost cave-like appearance of the stairwell that yawned up toward them.
But there was another problem. The way down was anything but spacious. Aurora looked up to Fiona who appeared to be running through the same mental calculations. Judging by the drooped corners of her beak, she’d come to the same conclusion.
“I don’t think I’m fitting down that,” she murmured uncertainly. “Not without losing a couple layers of skin.”
Aurora turned her lamp toward the deformed interior side of the false chassis. Most of the rectangular white sign fixed to it had cracked to pieces in the face of Fiona’s brute strength, but enough of the red lettering remained to spell the words EMERGENCY EXIT. It appeared even secret underground prisons had the wrath of safety compliance officers to fear.
“Any guesses where they hid the front door to this place?” she asked.
Fiona dropped her haunches on the concrete, making it clear what she thought about striking out to search for a different way in on her account. “You guys head on down. I can keep an eye peeled for trouble up here.”
She stared down the dark stairwell, feeling its pull. “Are you sure?”
“Pfft.” They watched as Fiona proceeded to recline her back against the hollowed turbine and prop one feline hind leg across the bent knee of the other. In a lofty voice, she declared, “You cannot begin to comprehend how comfortable an ass like mine is to sit upon, young pegasus.”
Aurora blinked.
“Trust me,” she added. “This place is empty. I’ll be fine. Go find your friend.”
A quick look aside to Roach and Julip made it clear where they stood. Eshe was her friend. How they proceeded to him was up to her.
“Be safe,” she said before hesitantly placing a hoof on the first of many dark steps.
The stairs were damp under her hooves and were crammed close together, leading to an uncomfortably steep descent toward whatever waited at the bottom. Aurora felt her heart rate tick up by a degree, just enough to make her aware how different this seemed compared to the spacious flights of illuminated stairs back home. This was an evacuation tunnel. Judging by the unpainted cinder block walls penning them in on either side, it had also been an afterthought. Something an inspector could check a box next to and say it existed, but which they had no power to enforce much else. She couldn’t help but wonder what these stairs would have turned into if they had actually needed to be used for their intended purpose. There was barely room for two ponies to pass one another without jostling shoulders. The absence of corpses choking the passageway was enough proof for Aurora to believe this place had made it all the way to the apocalypse without someone pulling a fire alarm.
White efflorescence clung to the cinder blocks in smooth mineral sheets. Somewhere farther down they could hear a steady, liquid drip. Groundwater from the river had long since bore microscopic channels through foundations laid over two centuries prior, and yet the air was slightly warmer than it had been aboveground. Humid, and thick with a pungent odor of mildew and something rotten.
Most bewildering of all was the utter blackness of the descent. Eshe had shared with her what his existence was like during the hours the machines denied him sleep, and she remembered the glaring fluorescents above his head. Wherever they were keeping him there was electricity flowing through the walls, and that fact alone made it tempting to believe there might be a talisman-fed generator somewhere far below. She knew it was unlikely, but when had logic ever imposed its will on the wasteland?
“How deep does this go?” Julip asked, the worry growing with each hoofstep.
The answer arrived when a flat landing slid out from the pale gloom below. A slab of wet concrete, its matte surface discolored by rusty concentric rings through the center dripped a single, steady trickle of groundwater. The screwdriver that led them here lay at the edge of the puddle, its point aimed meaningfully toward the flat sheet of vertical steel that could only be another door. A single C-shaped bar welded to one side acted as a handle. No knob they could turn or deadbolt Aurora could try her meager lockpicking skills at, just a bit of metal one could give a yank in the hopes that the door wasn’t bolted shut. 
There was barely enough room on the waterlogged landing for Aurora, let alone Julip or Roach who now stood posed uncomfortably on the steps behind her. Where concrete once encased the deadbolt’s sleeve, deep gouges had been chiseled into the poured stone. A good three inches of the cylinder stood visible and mangled by the same tool that had exposed it. Whoever the people were who had been here before them, they had made ample use of a pry bar. She reached for the door and pulled the handle. Scales of rust fell away from the hinges as it groaned open and the steel door swept open through a fetid slick of stagnant water several inches deep. Halfway through its arc, it let out a muted thump as it hit something solid.
Julip bent over and retched. Aurora had her feathers over her nose the instant the odor registered but it still took everything she had to keep her own bile from rising. The stench wafted through the open door like a physical thing, crawling over them with tendrils of heavy air that reeked of spoiled meat and something sweet. The only one among them who seemed unaffected was Roach, and Aurora jealously wished her own ghouling would hurry up and dull her own senses. 
“The fuck is that?!” Somehow, Julip managed to curse while simultaneously heaving, something Aurora hoped she would remember for later fireside teasing. “Oh goddesses it’s worse than barracks shitter when we all caught food poisoning.”
“Stop,” Roach said, his voice uncharacteristically strained. For all his sense of smell had been damaged, his imagination seemed perfectly willing to pick up the slack. The poor changeling looked a shade greener than he had been a moment earlier.
Not trusting herself to open her own mouth, she gestured with a wing for them to follow and stepped through the open door. 
Two suits of power armor lay heaped in the murk on either side of the doorway, their once chromed armor plating now etched with old rust and a thick soup of suspended material clinging around each suit like stains. The rancid smell didn’t get worse but it was clear the lion’s share of it came from what must be the corpses still inside their armor. It hung in the air like a fog, patiently waiting for its visitors to breathe it in and flounder as they tried not to think too deeply on what they were taking into their lungs. 
Here the corridor walls were set further apart, enough so that the unfamiliar tickle of claustrophobia loosened in Aurora’s chest. Once they were past the dead sentries, she played her Pip-Buck over the corridor and judged the dimensions to be similar if not nearly identical to the ones chosen by Stable-Tec. 
There was, however, no mistaking this stinking place for a Stable. Even on the other side of the stairwell the Ministry’s preference for cinder block was entirely on par with a construction project whose budget needed to fly under the radar. Here at the T-junction of two corridors somebody had given the dull blocks a two-toned splash of paint that, in the green hue of Aurora’s light, gave it every bit the appearance of a haunted asylum. Constant seepage from the nearby river had caused much of that paint to slough away in long, slimy ribbons that collected and congealed in gory masses on the floor. The overhead lights, little more than plastic trays snapped in place around generic fluorescent tubes, trapped pools of the brown sludge. 
Aurora took a step forward and felt her hoof squish into something soft. Her ears pinned back with revulsion and, prepared to see her front leg punching through the source of the odor, was relieved to see a waterlogged square of styrofoam ceiling tile instead. Everything about this place had been built on the cheap. Knowing what its intended purpose had been, it bothered her to think the people sent here didn’t warrant anything better.
Water splashed behind her and she turned to watch Roach press the plastic handle of the same screwdriver from before into the jamb of the stairwell door. He didn’t have to say anything for her and Julip to know his thoughts. He didn’t want to risk being trapped down here any more than they did.
Roach nudged her. “Any guesses on which way we should go?”
She shook her head. For all she knew, they had just broken into the janitorial wing where every turn offered a selection of antique mops. His guess was as good as any.
“That way,” she stated, pointing her Pip-Buck toward the corridor directly in front of them. Taking another step through semi-dissolved sludge that ran up to her fetlocks, she began to walk. Squelching hoofsteps from behind reassured her she wasn’t walking alone.
Navigating the corridor was slow going at first. Hooves slipped. Things hidden beneath the water sucked and shifted as they tread a single file line through the murk. The green lamp of Aurora’s Pip-Buck bloomed and dimmed in regular intervals with each step while Julip’s flashlight, held free in her feathers, flitted along the walls like a skittish insect. The doors down here weren’t steel slabs hoisted by hydraulics. They were wooden, unremarkable, and not designed for the floodwater whose high water mark on the walls came up to Aurora’s neck. Many of them sagged on their hinges, the wood grain bloated and curled like wet rags. Others had simply rotted away from the bottom up leaving behind only its upper half, like a mouth whose lower jaw had fallen off. What had been relegated to the water had softened into a soupy mass of pulp that made approaching any of the doorways as unappetizing as the decay in the air. Aurora couldn’t shake the feeling she was trudging through a corpse.
“Mess,” Julip murmured.
She turned. “What?”
The smaller mare gestured at a cinder block still clinging to some of its paint. The M had peeled away, leaving behind a trio of nonsensical letters Aurora had dismissed as indecipherable. Apparently it wasn’t.
Julip pointed her light toward a nearby open doorway, though the door had long since accordioned into wood mush in the water. “That’s the kitchen. This used to be their mess hall.”
Aurora wasn’t sure she wanted to poke her head into a kitchen in a place as foul smelling as this, and made the requisite shift between mess hall and cafeteria in her head. Tables, chairs, a meal line behind sneeze guards. She didn’t need to see the pots of jellied soup to know what was inside.
“Is that important?” she hazarded.
Julip shrugged. “If the Ministry of Image ran things like the Enclave does, it means we’re on a personnel level. Soldiers don’t shit where they eat. Or, at least, they don’t want to.”
“Eshe is probably in a different part of the prison,” Roach translated.
It made sense. She had to lean forward to pull her prosthetic out of the muck, and it came free with an audible sucking sound. Roach and Julip fell in behind her as she resumed walking. “I figured as much. The power is still on wherever they put him. And it’s dry. I’m pretty sure of that.”
The pointed silence that followed in her wake was palpable. Roach was the one to finally break it.
“You’re sure this is the right place?”
It wasn’t an accusation, only a question that very much needed asking. Even so, Aurora could feel her hackles rise to defend herself. Of course this was the right place. Eshe had seen the name. He’d known that there was a prison here and they were standing in it right now. 
But the lights had been on. 
“Place like this so close to the river probably has a sump system,” Julip chimed in. “With all this shit in the water, I’d bet a few caps that it’s not firing on all pistons.”
That made a surprising amount of sense coming from her, and Aurora found herself feeling a little embarrassed that she had never asked what sorts of things the younger mare had picked up during her time as an Enclave archivist. It also brought to mind the possibility that she could be right, and whatever pumps this facility used to keep the water out might be struggling. She tried not to imagine what kind of death Eshe might have endured if the ingress of water began outstripping the prison’s ability to remove it. 
Which once again begged the question of what power source could survive this long without refueling or maintenance. She could only think of one.
She turned to look back at the changeling, her eyes on his cracked horn. “Roach, if we find a talisman can your magic–”
A sharp, wet cough echoed in the distance. 
They all froze.







“Sorry honey. They were all out of crunchy.”
Ward feigned a put-upon grumble and leaned over his wife’s shoulder to kiss her good morning. He was sure she’d done the same for him when she’d risen from their bed to start the day, so he was owing and she was rarely one to deny repayment. Cherry smiled and let him kiss her, pecking the air as she always did. 
A peek at the wall clock confirmed once again the hard truth of their current situation. Five in the morning. Cherry didn’t like it when he referred to their conflicting work schedules as “the situation” so he tried to limit the metaphor to his thoughts. Still, it was hard. With the boys starting preschool this year they had been forced to confront the harsh balancing act of putting their kids in a reputable school and not going bankrupt on the tuition. There were public options, yes, but Ward and Cherry had toured the elementary schools in Appaloosa and Red Rock and they just hadn’t held a candle against the individual attention offered by Willow Primary. Sure, paying for a private education was a little bit beyond the budget provided by his salary as sheriff, but he’d gone to public school. Him and Cherry both. The crowded classrooms, the sense that he wasn’t so much a student as he was a number, and now the realization he and much of Equestria was having that the “science” taught to them was wrong at best and an outright farce at worse was all the push he and his wife needed to make whatever sacrifices they had to so their kids would have a better shot at life.
He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot and nursed his favorite mug while he watched Cherry fold wax paper around his peanut butter and bacon sandwich. So what if he’d turned in his sheriff’s badge for a security gig with the ministry? So what if the commute was a half an hour longer and took the family carriage over enough potholes to give his back a permanent ache? So what if he hadn’t known exactly what the job was until two toughs in matching black vests slid a stack of affidavits and non-disclosure agreements toward him?
The coffee burned his lip. He winced, but didn’t stop drinking as he watched Cherry pack his lunch and dinner.
So what if he had to lie to her about what he did? About the trucks that rolled up to the factory gates every week carrying everyday people whose only crime was that they had a big mouth and no common sense? They were at war. His brother-in-law was over there, stomping across zebra dirt in a suit of armor that would get any self-respecting stallion a little hard. Equestria was fighting for its survival and that meant there was shit you didn’t say until after the fight was won. If that meant the ministries needed to put some of the more dangerous loudmouths in a room and pay a bunch of loyal citizens who knew to keep their lips zipped a small fortune to keep an eye on them, well…
So what? At least when the grocery store eventually did get crunchy peanut butter back on the shelves, his family could afford a jar.
“Don’t forget, you promised Trance and Trick you’d take them around the neighborhood for Nightmare Night.”
He murmured and nodded, letting the caffeine do its work. She didn’t have to get up this early to make his lunch, but she did despite his protests. She came from a traditional Appaloosan family. Old habits, as backwards as they were, died hard. 
“Costumes?” he asked.
“Ghosts.” She said it in a way that carefully avoided the fact that there was little else to choose from. The stores were charging a mint with inflation being what it was. Easier to cut a couple holes in the old bedsheets and not worry if the kids came back covered in dirt and leaves. They were both six. Plenty young enough not to care if they had the best costume on the block. “Sorry, they didn’t have a size big enough for you.”
He snorted. Some of the guards had taken to calling him Shithouse. He’d have much preferred Brick, but you didn’t get to choose your nicknames. He was big for a unicorn, and his coworkers weren’t exactly creative.
“No candy for me, then.” He glanced at the clock. “I gotta get going. Keys?”
“On the hook.” She held his sack lunch up, pinched between two red feathers. 
He lifted it away on a cloud of magic, bending to let her indebt him with another kiss. He turned to meet it, balancing their books. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” she said, a wing grazing his back as he went to the door. “Be safe.”
He masked his wince with a smile as he retrieved the keys. She didn’t like that she didn’t know what he did for a living, but the draft exemption the ministry issued both of them went a long way to sooth her concerns. He was working for the good guys, and as long as he did they wouldn’t receive a letter sending one of them away. It was more solace than most families got.
“Always am,” he reassured her. “Be back tonight.”
With that, he pulled the garage door shut behind him and piled into the family carriage. 
He lost track of how many times he had to crack his neck during the nearly two hour commute to Mariposa. Must have slept on it funny. Felt like when it did let rip that one good pop that he was going to limp past security with a ruptured disc. The radio wasn’t much of a distraction. Not this early in the morning when the only stations on the air were current event talk shows parading on guests who had more opinions than solutions. Sometimes, when the sky was clear, he could dial in some pretty strange stuff coming in from the alphabet soup of nation states south of the border. Lot of jangling music that went too heavy on woodwinds and brass percussion. Shit drove him nuts, and listening to it was almost better than coffee. He spent a few miles fiddling with the dial trying to find it, but it was too cloudy today. 
He settled on a talk station and tried not to think too much about what they were arguing about. Same shit as yesterday. The war was winding down. Rumors that Vhanna might finally be ready to talk surrender. Patriotic citizens barking at one another because they thought the zebras were going to get off the hook easy. Unsatisfied that more stripe blood couldn’t be spilled, just to twist the knife. Just a little.
By the time he was rolling through the town of Mariposa the radio had been snapped off. He’d cracked the window, preferring to listen to the sound of tires on the road. A cereal bar one of the kids hadn’t finished floated a few inches from his muzzle. Waste not, want not. That was what his dad used to say. He polished off the last of the Krazy Krunch bar and tossed the wrapper in the cup holder. Joys of being a parent. Anything you put in the cup holder stayed put because it would always, inevitably, and perpetually remain sticky.
He chuckled to himself about how his single colleagues would react to the state of his carriage. Then his ears perked up. As his headlights angled toward the shuttered paper mill’s front gate, they passed over the line of prisoner transports idling along the curb. 
“Well shit,” he sighed. “They’re early for once.”
He slowed the carriage alongside the lead vehicle, rolling his window down as the driver eyed his parking sticker. “How many today?”
The stallion behind the wheel frowned down at him and said nothing. Ward didn’t recognize him. New hire, maybe. Who knew. He wore the Ministry of Image vest, had the little blue diamond to make him feel extra special. Probably thought if he behaved like a good robot Minister Rarity herself might make an appearance just to fondle his sack. Guess he found the kiss-ass of the bunch. He rolled forward to the next truck in line and attempted conversation again. Once more he got the same, stony glare. 
Fuck you too, he thought as he pulled around the third truck and up to the checkpoint kiosk. At least the mare behind the glass was a familiar face. He lifted the lid of the center console and held his ID up for her to take. Their magic mingled for the briefest moment, just long enough for him to feel like he needed to apologize to Cherry.
“Hey Champ,” he greeted, using her real name and not the nickname everyone else had taken to calling her. Her folks were old fashioned, even more so than his. Everyone called her Champion, or emphasized her name in ways to deliberately allude to the ‘nick. Ward had learned during his first week that she’d gotten the name from an old saying, “champ at the bit.” It was an earth pony affectation. 
“Ward,” Champ said as she swiped his badge through her scanner. “Kids behaving?”
He shrugged. They were six. Behaving wasn’t in their vocabulary yet. “They’re probably going to be up to their necks in sugar by the end of the day, so I’m not going to risk jinxing it.”
She smirked at that. The card reader chirped, and a light went green. She floated it back to him. Then she tipped her horn back to the row of idling trucks. “Know anything about these guys?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing. New drivers?”
She shook her head. “New something. Just watched them unload a bunch of military types who all looked like someone just shit in their cereal. Power armor. The real stuff, and this is the second convoy to show up during my shift. Heard one of them say they’ve got a lot more coming, but fuck if I know where they’re planning to put ‘em all. I almost told them if they were planning on firing you, they’d need more than one army.”
He didn’t exactly laugh at the friendly jab, but he forced a smile to avoid thinking too much about why the military was apparently showing up in force. “Maybe some of the prisoners got riled up,” he suggested.
Champ shot a pointed look at the trucks. “Pretty sure that’s what they pay you to deal with, sheriff. Anyway, I should let you go. Fair warning, you might want to keep things on the straight and narrow today. I don’t think the people they brought in are here to fuck around.”
Something cold settled in his stomach as the gate lifted and he goosed the accelerator onto the old factory grounds. He parked between two carriages with cleaner paint and sportier frames, locked the door, and proceeded to make the short walk to the plant’s old security office. It was unlabeled. Uninteresting to the regular passer-by compared to the much larger buildings deeper in the complex with their stenciled lettering and bursts of eye-catching safety warnings. Not that the MOI allowed trespassers to poke around the abandoned structures in the first place, but the nearby town had its expected amount of bored teenagers whose idea of fun was risking putting a hoof through a rusty nail, so… security patrols. 
Security patrols, security offices, security checkpoints. If ever there was a theme that described the MOI, it was that. He never failed to feel just a little smug every time he approached the chained door, knowing the clever way it had been camouflaged in plain sight. He gripped the door handle and slid it sideways along the track it had been mounted onto. The chains jangled as they drooped. It never failed. He felt like one of the secret agents on TV. If it weren’t for the room full of armed guards on the other side, he might have even hummed the theme song.
“Morning,” he said, trying to match his tone to their collection of stiff gazes. He got a few grunted “mornins” in reply as he once again presented his ID, this time for the reader built into the polished silver frame of the elevator the ministry had installed into the near wall. The security office for the mill had mainly been used as a break room for the plant’s off-duty guards, and so space was at a premium for the ministry toughs stationed there now. Ward wrinkled his nose at the smell of too many microwaved breakfasts and too little ventilation. 
The reader chirped, showed green, and the freight elevator doors parted for him. He got on and, once again, scanned his card on the panel inside the car. Another pause. Another chirp.
“Destination, please.” A disembodied voice toned from a speaker above his head.
“Personnel.” 
A pause as the so-called artificial intelligence installed by the ministry waited for any other passengers to present their IDs. As he was alone, the five second timer elapsed and the doors rolled shut. As the car lurched into motion he considered, and not for the first time, how likely it was that someone with a different role here might give the elevator the exact same answer he had and still end up stepping off on a different floor. Personnel was just vague enough to mean just about anything if he stopped to think about it. And yet the system knew what levels he had clearance to access, and he didn’t need to know how many levels in total there were. For all he knew, the ministers could be hosting mass ritualistic orgies right below the prison and he and his colleagues would never be the wiser. 
Probably not, he decided. They had a whole castle for that.
When the elevator stopped and the doors parted he was greeted by a pair of unfamiliar faces carrying some very familiar hardware. He stiffened at his own reflection staring back at him from the visor of the nearest suit of power armor. The explosion-resistant panels had been polished to a near mirror finish, clearly either fresh out of the crate or having been cleaned prior to being deployed here. The soldier - what else could they be if not soldiers? - held up a treaded hoof larger than his skull.
“ID,” the speaker's amplified voice buzzed. 
It took him a second to notice the card reader, a much newer model, floating in front of him. The corridor beyond them milled with the same pre-shift activity, but with none of the usual banter and bullshitting. A fellow guard nodded at him in silent greeting, then rolled his eyes as if to ask, “What are you gonna do?”
The soldier’s reader didn’t chirp or flash green. Instead, a tiny screen on its face lit up with what looked to be his hiring documents. He stood there awkwardly, unsure if he should say something, until the soldier’s helmet whirred on its servos to regard him once more. A moment later he was having his ID thrust back toward him and the black barrel of a shoulder mounted cannon was gesturing for him to get off the elevator.
To his relief, nobody shot him. They didn’t even bother to follow. The elevator doors trundled shut, the car automatically rose back to the surface, and the walking talking mechanized war horses proceeded to loiter at the doors for the next unsuspecting guard. All the more reason to ask someone what the fuck third shift had done to earn them a visit from the Equestrian Army.
“Welcome to the barracks, private!” 
Ward snorted uneasily at the mare watching him from the doorway of commissary, then rolled his eyes when he noticed someone had already painted “MESS HALL” across the cinder blocks in neat black lettering. Apparently the appearance of armed guests had gone over with the rest of his shift as well as it could have. Cracking jokes and harmless pranks were some of the ways they made spending fifty hours a week a hundred feet below the dirt bearable. Still, he could see the stress in his coworkers’ eyes. They were forcing it, and maybe a little too soon for it to seem natural. They had no idea what was going on either.
He only stopped at the commissary to fill a paper cup from the coffee machine. He was going to need the boost. “Anyone know why they’re here?”
“Dune got caught sitting on her nightstick again,” someone offered. “Tin cans are here to take away all the pointy objects.”
A smattering of chuckles rippled through the tables, followed by the sound of a hoof clocking the presumed speaker over the back of the head. Ward didn’t bother looking away from the coffee machine. The steady trickle of caffeine had most of his attention. When it sputtered to a stop, he snapped a plastic lid over the cup and began making his way back to the door.
On his way out the door, he paused to ask, “The tin cans tell us we got the day off?”
Nobody answered. The fact that nearly all of first shift was sitting around with their horns up each other’s asses was answer enough. He thumped his hoof against the wall.
“Come on. Prisoners ain’t going to feed themselves.”
That was how his last day at Mariposa began. Channeling his inner hardass. Towing the line because nobody else wanted to. He’d never have a chance to think back in retrospect, but if he had, he’d have preferred to have called in sick.
The first few hours of his shift went like any other. He and his colleagues read the logs left by the departing third shift which, to no one’s surprise, contained little of note beyond the arrival of the apparent armed contingent of MOI security an hour earlier. None of them had been told why they had come or why they now stood sentry at the two points of entry into the facility, but the head of third shift had guessed that the prison level wasn’t their focus. The freight elevator had been extremely active during the first half hour of the soldiers arriving, suggesting they were probably moving personnel or equipment down to the restricted levels they all knew existed and knew better than to speculate about. Heads were less liable to roll when they were kept down.
Down two flights of stairs and past several locked checkpoints, the four cell blocks housing the ministry’s unwilling guests radiated from a central hub in a simple cross. Two levels of cells wrapped around each block’s central corridor, the doors and walls built solid save for two locked slit windows through which meal trays could be passed through and guards could view the prisoner contained within. Each prisoner was allowed a bed, sink, toilet, and a small desk and chair. Ward was the newest hire so he shared responsibility of D Block with a younger, more tenured stallion who preferred to delegate as much work as he could to his fellow colleague. Ward chose to endure it rather than make waves by complaining. He had enough foresight to know once the war ended high paying jobs like these would dry up faster than spit on a sand dune. The ministry would cut the slackers first, and Ward intended to be on board this gravy train right up until it reached the end of the line.
He ignored the abuse the prisoners hurled at him as he rolled the stainless steel meal cart down the line of cell doors. Most of the time it was only that. Inmates would hear the tray slot slide open and let loose all the hate and vitriol they’d built up since dinner the day before. They screamed at him to let them out. They proclaimed their innocence. They called him a traitor, a lapdog, a festering cunt, and one creative mare explained in cool detail how she planned to find out his name, where his family lived, and then how she would see to it that a pipe bomb ended up under his children’s pillows.
He dropped her tray on her side of the door and locked the slot. Let her eat off the floor.
The next cell was empty and he rolled past it wondering what sort of things this Eshe Obiakolam would say after he got cleared by the people down on the Infirmary level. A copy of his intake folder sat in a tray on the door and when Ward had read it, he’d been surprised by how little it contained. Apparently the zebra had managed to get himself nationalized right before the war kicked off. He was an Equestrian citizen, papers and everything. A tech geek for Robronco. His file didn’t say anything about what he’d done to land himself here, only that he was being treated for an unspecified ailment on the hospital level somewhere below the prison level. Ward had never spoken to a zebra before. He thought, as he ignored the profanity that spilled from the next cell, it would be interesting to meet him.
When nine o’clock rolled around most of the staff milled back through the Hub and up the stairs to rest their hooves for fifteen minutes. To their collective annoyance the soldiers were still posted at the freight elevator. At the farthest end of the same central corridor, two more stared them down from behind visors at the fire exit. That, more than anything, bothered them. Guarding the elevator meant they were here to prevent someone from getting inside. Guarding the exit… 
Some of them tried to cut the tension by chewing the usual fat. The younger guards tended to keep to their own table, their filters turned off and mouths running at full volume. They were aware of the soldiers but not particularly concerned, opting instead to argue over stupid shit like what the Ministry of Technology’s newest power armor could do. Some of them were adamant that they’d heard there were variants equipped with jet packs. Someone tried to dismiss the rumor and was quickly shouted down. They were too enamored with the shiny machines to wonder why they were here and who they were a threat to. 
Ward sat with a few other guards who he knew to be parents. They opted for calmer banter to ease their nerves. They asked each other what their plans for Nightmare Night looked like and whether the price of candy had broken the others’ budgets as badly as theirs. It was all fluff. All subconsciously meant to distract them from the question of why the guards suddenly needed guarding.
They hadn’t been off their break for more than an hour when the soldiers came for them. The radio clipped to their uniforms warned them far too late. Miller, one of the younger pegasi assigned to the Hub, managed a clipped message to his colleagues.
“Hey, uh,” he said, his voice rising to make the warning a question, “I think we got company?”
The soldiers didn’t spill through the checkpoints like an army on the attack, nor did they drag their armored hooves. They simply appeared, led by a brief procession of bewildered prison guards who had been unceremoniously scooped from their post at the Hub and seemingly ferried into whichever cell block was most convenient for their armed escorts. Radio chatter exploded with voices that stepped on one another and turned their frightened questions for information into chopped gibberish. 
Ward hadn’t been one of those voices. He’d been too embarrassed to be caught sitting in the windowed kiosk beside the cell block doors with the television tuned to a cartoon his kids were bananas about to think about asking the important question of what the fuck was going on. For a moment he pitied himself for giving up a career that issued him a sidearm for one that assigned him a taser. His colleague, who had for once in his life deigned to do a visual check of the prisoners instead of telling Ward to run the lap, nearly drew his before thinking better of it. 
Ward flicked the knob on the television and sat up a little straighter as he watched familiar faces being pushed into D Block. They were nearly shouting questions at the soldiers by now and Ward worried they might cross some invisible threshold that would result in those shoulder mounted cannons being turned on them. So alien were their present circumstances that he glanced at the underside of the desk he was seated at and considered taking cover. 
The soldiers didn’t open fire. They didn’t speak. One turned to seal themselves inside the cell block with the guard staff while the other took up his or her new post on the opposite side. The heavy door swung shut with an iron bang that felt eerily permanent.
Several minutes of tense silence followed as they waited for their soldier, their warden, to say something. To do anything. And that was when the prison shuddered.
At first it was indistinguishable from a gasp of air pushed through the vents. It came as a feeling. A collective sense of wrongness. Then they felt it. A subtle vibration in the floor as if they were microbes living on the surface of a tuning fork. Ward watched one of his colleagues lift a hoof with sudden discomfort. Then he felt it too, translated up through the legs of his chair. He stood, unsure of what was happening, only to feel as if his hooves were making contact with live voltage. 
A breath later, the lights audibly rattled above them. The second level railing uttered a staccato clatter. Then came the thumps. Deep, massive percussive thuds like hooves knocking as if the entire cell block were the surface of a gigantic door. Ward felt his ears pinning back, and he wasn’t alone. Those standing out in the block were wheeling in place, eyes wide, faces pinched with growing fear as something like understanding dawned on them. Ward couldn’t stop thinking about how the muffled pounding sounded like distant fireworks. Not until he saw the word bombs pass the questioning lips of his fellow guards.
The earth surrounding the prison answered them minutes later. The concrete floor bucked against their hooves with enough force to send the majority of them tumbling, screams of shock drowned out by the slap of sound that came with it. Over a dozen fluorescent tubes exploded within their fixtures, showering the cell block with shards of glass and pulverized mercury. Several more lights flickered and fizzled out, and as the noise of the explosion waned it was replaced by something else: the muffled sound of panicked hooves banging against cell doors. 
In the dim light of the surviving fluorescents, Ward noticed the soldier at the door dip their helmet to the side as if speaking. A pause. Then a nod. Ward felt his guts turn to ice from the sudden certainty that this was the moment the guns would be turned on them. They were all witnesses to… something. Something that was still unfolding even now. Bombs, he told himself. Those were bombs.
The power armor twitched as if the soldier had been stung by a bee. Ward flinched too, thinking this was it. And then the soldier collapsed. Armor heavier than his family carriage crumpled at the knees, pitched forward, and struck the concrete hard enough to send chips of it skittering toward his gathered colleagues. They looked at the soldier, bewildered, and then at him as if he were responsible. Unsure how to answer their terrified gazes, he shook his head and shrugged.
A similar metallic thud came from the other side of the cell block door. Followed by others. Before he could make sense of what was happening, someone was already stumbling past the fallen armor for the door. Ward watched as the earth pony retrieved their ID badge from the lanyard around their neck, the laminate trembling between their teeth as they pressed it against the card reader. 
The reader chirped. The light went yellow. 
His colleague waited, her jaw shaking. They all waited. The yellow light was normal. The yellow light meant the card had been recognized. The yellow light meant the lock mechanisms were waiting for confirmation from the Hub.
Only the Hub was empty. 
The light turned red, and winked out. The earth rumbled with passing thunder.
Time passed.
The thunder stopped.
No one came.
By the end of the first day they had exhausted all the ideas they had for how they might get past the door. Some of the younger guards thought they might be able to crack the seal by removing the faceplate of the ID scanner and touching random wires together. It didn’t work, and they were stopped before they could break anything. They discussed scenarios in which the doors might open automatically for safety reasons and could think of none they were willing to risk. One of the pegasi among them nearly trapped herself in a ceiling duct and had to be extracted with help from another.
Someone suggested they pry the door open and had to be reminded of the tempered steel locking pins keeping it shut.
They tried calling for help on their radios. No one answered. The repeater was down.
When the second day came and went, a foul stench began to issue from the power armor laying in front of the door. It drove them deeper into the cell block where the occasional muffled shouts could be heard from the cells. 
They woke on the morning of the third day to the sharp wail of a claxon. Panic reigned for what felt like hours. They ran in every direction searching for anything they could use to hold water. A mop bucket was hauled out of the utility room and rushed up the stairs to the second level where the cell left vacant for the zebra Ward had looked forward to seeing. Bottles of cleaning agents were poured down the floor drain and filled from the cell’s sink. Guards grouped around the soldier’s corpse and dragged them away from the cell block door in preparation to fight a fire. The reek of death mingled with the sharp citrus tang of disinfectant. Armed with buckets and spray bottles, they waited for the flames to come.
None did, nor did the smoke. Yet the claxon never fell silent. It drilled its warning into their ears, into their skulls for so long that Ward felt like he could hear it pulsing at the root of his teeth. The shrill wail of an alarm none of them remembered being trained to recognize continued on for several long hours until finally one of the pegasi had enough and caved the screamer in with their hoof.
Day four came and went. Then the fifth. 
By the sixth day most of them had given up the hope that they would find a way out. They knew the odds. The layers of security between them and the Hub. Between the Hub and the freight elevator. Between the elevator and the outside world. Some of them had begun to float the idea that they’d overreacted at the beginning. That the most likely explanation for the explosions they heard wasn’t the end of the world, but a controlled demolition of the factory above their heads. It quickly proved to be a more palatable theory that eased their tension. It even gave them hope. The old paper mill was in sight of the town it got its name from. People would notice. Their families would already be raising the alarm. It wouldn’t be long until someone pieced together the sudden flush of missing persons with the procession of out-of-town vehicles that came to but never left the plant. 
They might not find a way out, they reasoned, but it wouldn’t take long for the authorities to figure out where they were. Their careers here might be over but they would survive as long as they had water. Someone even suggested they might stand to make a fortune from the book sales. It worked for trapped miners, so why not them?
For a while they stopped thinking about what the alarm had been trying to warn them about. They made a point to finally make rounds and explain to the prisoners the extent of their situation, with reassurances that everything would be alright. The inmates were furious. They didn’t want to hear it. They kept complaining that the water had been tasting like batteries for several days and that they were starving. Ward and the others told them they were all starving, but they were a long way from dying from it. That didn’t fly far with the imprisoned, but then they were easy to tune out once the slats were locked shut.
On the seventh day, the pegasus who had tried to fit into the ceiling vent died. None of them were doctors. They didn’t know why, only that she had gone sometime during the night. A sheet from Eshe’s empty cell was draped over her body, which was laid in the utility room as respectfully as they could manage. By the end of the day, several of them were feeling ill. 
That night, as they slept, Ward awoke to the reedy shriek of a dying animal.
He’d been close. As he flung himself onto his hooves and turned to the source of the terrible noise, he watched in stunned disbelief as a pegasus still half-draped in her death shroud sawed her teeth through the throat of her flailing colleague. Soon everyone was being torn from their sleep, either frantically moving away from the source of the sudden violence or to simply stare with vacant gazes at the abrupt spread of movement.
Ward stood frozen, fixed in place by a miasma of fear and indecision. He watched as one of the retreating guards came to their senses and charged toward the attacking mare, only for one of those he passed who had woken with that unfocused gaze to strike out with a foreleg and trip him. The guard fell, letting out a whoosh of air from his lungs that stifled his own scream when the unicorn that brought him down set upon him like a starved wolf. 
Like a switch being flipped, D Block descended into bloody chaos. 
Ward didn’t remember fleeing for the stairs, eyes locked on the open door of the zebra’s cell. He didn't feel the slash of feathers across his hind leg as the mare who had buried her face into his dead colleague’s throat threw herself after him in skittering bursts of uncoordinated movement. He’d reached his limit to process his reality. He was on autopilot as he kicked his way through open containers of metallic tasting water, turned, and threw his weight into the sliding cell door. Just as steel met steel, a bloodied wing stabbed through the gap. It deformed with a wet snap of bone. The door recoiled a few inches from the wall, and slammed shut.
He held on, both fearing the lock might engage and knowing it couldn’t without his or one of the other guards’ keys. Hooves battered the steel for a few fleeting seconds before the mare was drawn toward easier prey. 
For several minutes he could only listen to the sounds coming from the other side. Senseless gibberish and feral screams chased the shrill cries of the dying. He tried and failed to understand what was happening. A dead mare had been… eating the stallion on the floor beside him. Eating him? Biting? The others, there had been others who joined in. The ones who had gone to sleep feeling sick. He remembered some of them had come to this cell to throw up the water they’d drunk. He could still smell the sour stink of someone’s sick who hadn’t flushed after. 
His head swam. He couldn’t secure the door. Not from inside. He could only hold onto it, first with his hooves, then remembering he had magic, with that. Someone was screaming at the door, begging him to open it. He didn’t. He was too terrified that one of those things might follow them inside. And what if they were one of them? What if their madness was contagious or, worse, coordinated?
He began pacing the cell, never letting his magic release pressure on the door. This had to be a nightmare. Some… Nightmare Night stunt of Princess Luna’s. Only, no, that wasn’t right. Nightmare Night was over. Days over by now. What day was it? He frowned, trying to remember.
He felt dizzy. His frown deepened as he sat down on the floor and considered the toilet. Did he have to puke? He didn’t think so. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to focus his thoughts. 
When he opened them the screaming had gone quiet, but something else was in the air. Coppery. He narrowed his eyes at the severed half of wing laying near the door. Where had that come from? 
He blinked. Someone in the cell next door was yelling to be let out. No, he thought, that wasn’t allowed. Can’t let anyone out. They were here for a reason.
His throat felt dry. He tried to swallow. Had to work at it to work up enough spit. Wondered if Cherry had put the coffee on yet.
His head bobbled. Tried to remember his name.
Ward, a voice told him. You’re Ward.
It’s Nightmare Night.
The kids are dressing up as ghosts.
And he was gone.
Days passed. Weeks.
Something fell down in D Block. A corpse tripping over its own shambling hooves, or a fluorescent tube coming loose from the ceiling, the thing that was once Ward didn’t know. It rose from the floor, eyes unblinking, jaw slack, and stumbled toward the door. The memory of what had been heard was fading quickly, but not so quickly that Ward wasn’t already pressing himself against the door in a feeble effort to move past it. His hoof landed on the chunk of wing and twisted, therefore slightly twisting his posture at a slight angle against the steel. It rolled a little. Then a little more. 
By the time the unlocked door had parted enough for him to fit through, he’d forgotten why he was pushing. 
Instinct went dormant. He stopped. 
Several weeks later, he sat down.
Occasionally, sparks of something like memory flashed in what remained of his mind. The last gasps of dying neurons.
A kind face. Then emptiness. 
A brass star. 
Emptiness.
Twin foals. Boys. Trance and Trick.
Then they were gone. 
When the door to D Block finally groaned open, there wasn’t enough left of Ward to know that his boys would have been in their thirties. He didn’t know the world was gone, ended in the way they had first assumed and later convinced themselves against. He was blissfully ignorant of the radioactive ash, the black poison that slicked every open body of water, of the scattered survivors who were still learning the hard way which foods would feed them and which would kill. 
Ward didn’t know the motivations of the trio that had just breached this mausoleum. Could never understand why they carried a copy of the prisoner intake folder that hung on the door to his cell. The name Eshe Obiakolam meant nothing to him. The fact that these strangers were here to kill him on his behest meant even less.
His ears perked at the sound of their voices. He rose, pushed through the open door, and bolted toward the noisy things that had released the lock on his prison.







Just a hair under two centuries later, Aurora and her companions had no way of anticipating the violence with which Eshe’s first and only group of rescuers met their deaths. They couldn’t have guessed how deep into the prison those early survivors had penetrated. They expected locked doors. Roadblocks. Everything a prison was supposed to place in their way. They had no way of knowing that the groundwater that seeped in had tripped the breakers for multiple levels. That the maglocks sealing the cell blocks and its central Hub had long since snapped open. That the guards, turned prisoners, turned feral ghouls, had slowly but methodically followed dormant instincts in fits and starts, burrowing their way toward the last place their rotted brains remembered wanting to be. 
The cough that had stopped Aurora in her tracks hadn’t been a cough. It had been something else. A choked, guttural noise rattling up from a throat that hadn’t made a sound since it silenced the screams of one of the noisy things that turned the lock open in D Block. 
Aurora’s mouth went dry at the sight of at least fifty ghouls gathered at the doors of a freight elevator at the far end of the corridor. They stood perfectly still, dressed in the rags that had once been identical brown uniforms like mannequins. Their hooves were pale and bloated, ballooned at the walls where the water had worked its way into the keratin. Much of their manes and tails had fallen away, as had their disparate coats, contributing to the festering skin of organic material that was the source of the rancid stink that nearly overpowered them. Several weren’t standing. They lay half-submerged in muck already too saturated with decay to break down their fallen forms. Death had found them despite their supposed immortality, but their surviving counterparts had paid them no attention when they fell. Their singular minds stared at the silver doors as if waiting for them to open. 
Only, one head among them had turned. A tall creature, larger than the rest, seemed to meet Aurora’s wide eyes with his own. She was vaguely aware of Julip’s feathers gently pulling at her front shoulder, trying to silently coax her away. Roach’s ragged breaths were coming faster on her other side. For a split second she was afraid she’d frozen up again, but to her surprise she could feel her legs moving. The ghoul straightened. Its breast rose above the heads of his fellows enough for her to see the name stitched across the patch of its uniform. WARD.
Its brow lowered as if unsure. Then its shoulders began to relax. Its gaze grew foggy and began to turn back toward the silver doors.
Julip exhaled a slow, shuddering breath.
The ghoul named Ward stopped turning away, the focus returning to his eyes, and craned his neck back toward them as he released a long chattering noise from his own throat. It was a horrific imitation of Julip, and it was just enough to send the silently terrified mare into a panicked run back the way they came.
A rising choir of predatory screams answered, and an instant later the horde was boiling down the corridor after her.  
Roach was the first to squeeze off a shot, sending a useless spray of buckshot toward a rushing swarm that was still yards outside his killing range. Eyes wide with sudden adrenaline he shouted, “Julip, stop!” 
Julip slowed barely long enough to scream back, “Run!”
He and Aurora spit their own curses as they turned away from the scrabbling, decaying mass that crushed against itself on its murderous trajectory. She fired off a shot, not wanting to die without taking one of those things down with her, then bolted away down the waterlogged corridor with Roach at her side. The hungry keening of the feral tide made her bones go cold. She couldn’t tell if they were gaining ground or losing it. She wanted to duck through one of the doors they passed and slam it shut behind her, to put something between her and them, but it would be suicide. The doors would disintegrate. And yet the urge to abandon the straight line retreat from encroaching death for a dead end was powerful. 
Two hard thuds from Roach’s shotgun dropped the hearing in her left ear down to a pale whine. His movements were startlingly nimble. In one moment he was running alongside her. In the next, he was using his unarmed foreleg to pivot his backside around and bring the armed leg to bear. A flicker of motion and the stubby assault shotgun belched two more clouds of fragmented lead. Then his hind hooves were digging through the water, turning him back toward their retreat, and pounding through the murk to regain the few yards he’d lost. 
If any of his shots had an effect, Aurora couldn’t tell. Black droplets of water began landing on her flanks and along her back. Water kicked up not by her hooves but by the wall of death closing in behind them. The roar of spray thrown up was deafening. To her left Roach was yelling something to her that she couldn’t hear. His horn was lit. The corrupted green light let her translate the shapes his mouth was making into words. Don’t stop.
She stole a look over her shoulder and her eyes widened like saucers. Barely ten feet away, a boiling stampede of gibbering throats and snapping teeth cut through the shallow water like a piston fired through a cylinder. The pressure between their crowded bodies caused gray skin to split open and slough away. She could see bare, slick muscle working the legs that thundered after them. Hooves, once bloated, soft things had been pulverized. They were running on the crumbling shards of their own pastern bones. And as new ferals shoved their way to the front of the mass, others found themselves pushed to the fringes where their bodies left black smears against the cinder wall until an open doorway devoured them. 
Then she realized Roach was running ahead of her. Outpacing her. Leaving her behind. His four legs against her three and an untested prosthesis. Her heart sank when she realized he was going to sacrifice her to give Julip the better chance.
A curtain of filth peeled up in front of the ghoul as he slid to a stop, turned, and met her gaze. For a split second she knew he saw the conclusion she’d come to and the sadness in his eyes struck her like a physical thing. Then the moment was gone. Roach set his jaw and turned his eyes to the oncoming swarm. His horn flared and Aurora watched his corrupted magic crawl up the corridor walls in the narrowing gap between them. 
She passed him, his muted bellow registered as she watched him harness his changeling magic in anger for the second time since they crawled out into the wasteland together. 
One moment, the horde of feral ghouls was funneling through the corridor toward them. 
In the next, the walls between Roach and the ferals exploded inward. Everything from shattered cinder blocks to rusted plumbing to raw bedrock shotgunned into the leading mass of creatures. A frustrated, quailing scream rose up from the startled things as rubble from the suddenly unsupported ceiling dropped onto their heads.
Aurora trotted to a disbelieving stop and listened to the settling debris seemingly squelch the last of their attackers. She could feel something buzzing in the back of her head like the precursor to a painless migraine and noticed that, as Roach doused his horn, the sensation abruptly vanished. However many rads she’d just taken, her body seemed utterly unphased. 
Wet stones and loose concrete trickled down the slope of the collapse. Roach was breathing heavier than she remembered seeing before. He looked utterly exhausted. His head and neck were bowed from the exertion.
Aurora went to him. Behind her, a terrified voice called out to them. “Is Roach okay?”
He looked up at her as she put a wing over his back. “I can’t… let me catch…”
“I got it.” Her Pip-Buck’s radiation meter was chattering so fast it sounded like radio static. She squeezed him, then turned to holler back to Julip. “He’s okay. Stay over there and keep your eyes peeled.”
Roach sagged against her ever so slightly. A few stones tumbled loose from the rubble, and he let out a ragged sigh. “Rifle. They’re digging.”
She could see. The rubble was settling unevenly as if being disturbed from the inside. “Julip,” she called, “forget what I said and get over here. Our friends know how to dig.”
“Fuck no!” she shouted back. “I’ll get cooked!”
The end of a snapped bone pushed out through the loose debris, stretched close enough to make Aurora reel back with disgust, then sank back into the dirt. She was distantly aware that she was furious with the younger mare for almost getting them killed by bolting away, and it took physical effort not to turn around and tear into her for not wanting to catch ghoul fever. 
“Fine,” she snapped, allowing some of the heat into her words. “Get close enough to put holes in these things when they break through. Cover the left half and watch the doorways behind us in case one of them gets creative. Roach and I have the right half.”
A deformed face pressed out from beneath a buried cinder block and fixed a tiny black eye on them. Aurora flattened her ears as Roach shifted his weight to bring his shotgun to bear and liberated the upper half of the ghoul’s skull from its body. Then a foreleg emerged through a tangle of ceiling tile framework further to their left, followed by the stripped bone she’d spotted a moment earlier. Then a head. Then shoulders.
Aurora turned to see Julip still standing where she had been, her stolen revolver pointed uselessly at the stagnant water. “Any time, Julip.”
The mare didn’t move. Her eyes were wide and glazed with tears. Across the gap, the rapid rise and fall of her chest was impossible not to notice. And yet the ghoul had pulled itself out to its hips and had locked eyes with Aurora. It began dragging itself toward her.
“For fuck’s–” she leveled the barrel of Desperate Times at the creature and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against her sloppy firing posture hard enough to send a bolt of pain through her wing, but the ghoul arguably got the raw end of that transaction. 
Anger bubbled in her throat now. “Julip!”
“Yeah, no,” Julip said, her voice distant and strained. Yet she didn’t move an inch. She barely seemed to register that Aurora was talking to her. “Got it. I got it. I got this.”
Roach’s shotgun wrenched her attention back to the slowly emerging horde. Her eardrums felt like they’d been rammed through with rivets, but she could practically feel her Pip-Buck vibrate against her foreleg when Roach lit his horn to feed five new shells into his weapon. 
“We should fall back.” She all but shouted the words at Roach, trying to hear herself over the ringing in her ears. 
He winced a little, but shook his head. “No. If we walk away, we lose track of the ferals and give them another chance to surprise us.”
“We’ll find another way in,” she argued.
“We just found the other way in.” He racked a shell into the chamber. “They were staring at it.” 
The freight elevator. She grimaced, stealing a look back at a paralyzed Julip. “So we lead them outside and let them chase fucking butterflies.”
He turned the shotgun toward a ghoul who had emerged only to begin emitting a terrible gargling sound, the source of which became apparent when a second more earnest ghoul began tearing its way through the first’s half-exposed midsection. A single shot took care of both. “Too late for that,” he grunted. “They’re already digging and we can’t convince them all up to the surface if they’re popping out of this mess like a string of pearls. These things have the attention span of a toddler. Besides, that elevator is probably the only–”
“I’m here!! Where are– oh god, the hell is this?!”
Aurora let out a quiet sigh of relief at the sound of Fiona’s voice, even if she couldn’t see far enough back down the corridor to make her out. She could only hear the distorted, half-echo of disgust in the gryphon’s voice as she began splashing through the water toward them. Julip had shut her eyes, apparently trying to push through the last of her waning panic before Fiona spotted her. Despite her frustration Aurora couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She was the group’s tiny, unflappable hardass. She took no pleasure in seeing her crack.
“I got this,” she said to Roach, hoping her own voice wasn’t loud enough to carry beyond their ears. “Go take care of Julip.”
Roach’s weary eyes rose to meet her and, after a moment’s pause, left her to the work of picking off the burrowing ferals.
“We’re down here!” she shouted to Fiona. “Come help me take care of the stragglers!”
She leveled her rifle at the gaping jaws of an excavated feral, then considered her limited ammunition and the utter havoc firing their weapons had already done to her hearing. She was already worried that the steady background whistling might stay with her for more than a few inconvenient minutes. With a grimace she flipped on the rifle’s safety, ejected the unexpended round, and reversed the weapon in her grip. The sloshing spray of Fiona’s approach had just reached her as she drove the butt of her rifle into the ghoul’s skull, popping through it like a gore-filled paper mache egg. 
“Down here for less than five minutes and you already kicked a hornet’s nest?” Fiona’s palm slapped her shoulder as she splashed to a stop beside her. “Smells like metal.”
Aurora dropped her rifle into the head of another ghoul. “Radiation. Roach had to drop the ceiling. I need you to help kill these things. Apparently ghouls can dig.”
She could feel Fiona’s eyes on her for the breadth of a few seconds, then turn to assess the collapse. She reached down with taloned fingers, grabbed the top of a feral’s head, and gave it a hard twist until the neck audibly popped. The ghoul’s body went limp, though its head continued to snap uselessly at the air. “Trying to turn me into a ghoul too, Feathers?”
“Trying to avoid going deaf.” A pair of ghouls emerged near the ceiling, their limbs tangling in the twisted lattice that held up all the foam tiles now threatening to squirt out from beneath her hooves. 
Fiona considered the newcomers, picked up a chunk of concrete the size of Aurora’s head, and gave each creature a pulverizing strike. “Bonk. Bonk. How many are on the other side of this?”
Her shock must have been wearing off because she came close to laughing at the gryphon’s absurdity. “Forty or fifty. We didn’t have time to count heads. Your shoulders are a mess, by the way.”
She smirked, bonking the third ghoul. She didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the horror show trying to extrude itself through the rubble. The only indication she’d shown that any of this was remotely notable was her initial complaint about the smell which, Aurora believed, anyone with a functioning olfactory system would find revolting no matter how hardened they were. Then Fiona tossed aside the gore-smeared stone for a cleaner one a few inches above the standing water, wincing just a little as she flexed her bleeding arm. 
“Yeah, I sorta wasn’t kidding when I said I’d lose some skin if I tried that stairwell.” 
Deep, parallel scrapes were carved across her shoulder, reminding Aurora of an incident in Mechanical when one of the people on her shift had lost a half centimeter of skin from a combination of inattentiveness and an unshielded belt sander. Fiona’s injuries weren’t nearly that bad, but Aurora suspected her other arm was covered in an identical blood slick.
“If I couldn’t handle a few bad scrapes” she continued, dropping her new stone on a fresh ghoul, “I’d have been dead a long time before you flew headfirst into my tower.”
Aurora lifted her rifle and positioned herself on the left half of the mound. “Technically we flew into your mountain, not the tower.”
“Well, technically, it’s a bluff, not a mountain.” Fiona was grinning by now, though her tone went momentarily serious. “Any of you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Nah. I think Julip’s going to need a minute, though.”
“Saw that. Any tips?”
A glance over her shoulder confirmed what she assumed was happening. Roach was standing beside her, his ear close to her muzzle as they spoke.
“He’s got it handled.”
They watched the debris for movement, but it appeared to be settling down.
“I thought she was, y’know… Enclave.”
Aurora didn’t have to read far between the lines to get to the crux of what Fiona was actually trying to say. It was the same assumption she had made up until just recently. They both assumed Julip’s enlistment meant she was experienced with stuff like this. She wasn’t. Barely any of them were save for, apparently, Fiona.
She grimaced, wishing she hadn’t shouted at the younger mare. “She used to be one of their archivists before they gave her an assignment that took her,” she gestured vaguely around with a hoof, “out here. It didn’t go well.”
A late bloomer pressed itself through the rocks near the floor. Aurora dropped her rifle into it.
“How not well?” Fiona asked.
“Badly enough that she ended up locked in a cage with Autumn Song holding the key. It feels weird to say it outloud, but I think I’ve seen worse things out here than she has.”
They stole another glance back toward Julip and Roach and Aurora noted they were slowly making their way toward them. Julip nodded at something Roach was saying, looking a little less like a kicked puppy and a bit more like normal.
“Pretty sure this is less than fifty,” Fiona declared with a gesture toward a wall of rubble blooming with the ruined heads of a dozen or so ferals.
“Add the ones we buried and the few I saw get crushed in the stampede, but yeah, we’re missing some.” She sighed, imagining she could see through the rubble. “Roach said they lose interest pretty quick, so they’re probably just standing there looking stupid.”
Behind them, Roach and Julip made their way through the filth, the former swatting the end of Fiona’s tail. “Glad you could join us. How much of yourself did you leave in that stairwell?”
Fiona smiled and shrugged her bloody shoulders. “So sue me if I find the sound of panic fire and screaming irresistible.”
Aurora let herself chuckle at that and turned to see Julip wearing the slightest curl of a smile as well. She wasn’t trying to ignore the humor. That was good. “I think that elevator was important. We should start thinking about a way to get around this mess,” she gestured at the gore-stained rubble, “and clear out the stragglers Roach trapped on the other side.”
“There might be another way down,” Roach offered. “One that doesn’t stir up the ghouls, anyway.”
Julip sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. “No, Aurora’s right.”
She dipped her head ever so slightly to meet Julip’s tense gaze. “Can I get that in writing after we’re done?”
To her relief, the mare cracked a faint smirk. “Never said you knew what you were talking about.”
Ouch. She dipped the butt of her rifle in the filthy water to get rid of the larger chunks of ghoul matter, then wiped the rest off on the side of her leg. She could stand under a scalding hot shower later. “All I heard is that the elevator is important and I’m right for thinking so.”
“Some of us aren’t telepathic,” Fiona said, dropping her bonking rock. “What elevator?”
Julip made an uncomfortable gesture toward the rubble. “The… they were all standing around an elevator on the other side of that. Back when places like this were built, the ministries regularly used elevator systems as a way to employ stratified security. You punch in your ID, or scan it, or state your passphrase to a M.I.L.L.I.E. system and the elevator takes you to whatever level you’re meant to be on.”
“What happens if an intern gets on at the same time as a colonel?”
“The intern probably gets off with an imprint of the colonel’s hoof. That or the system prioritizes lower clearances, which always sounded inefficient. The archives weren’t clear on everything, but everyone knows the ministries got a hard-on for stratified security after the Pillar finished construction.”
A snapping noise from the pile interrupted her. Fiona bent down, retrieved her lump of concrete, and rammed it through the emerging ghoul’s flayed eye socket. “Heh. Bonk.”
Aurora winced at the wet, sucking sound of the rock pulling free. Julip just stared up at the gryphon, eyes wide from the casual violence she was capable of inflicting. 
“Eshe’s probably at the bottom of that elevator, then.” Aurora scanned the corridor, wishing there was a light switch one of them could hit. “Did they archives say anything about how these places are laid out?”
“Search me,” Julip said. “We should start looking for a way around before those things figure out how to flank us.”
Fiona glanced at her, the bloody rock in her fist in stark contrast from the soft tone of her voice. “Are you going to be okay if we see more of them?”
Julip frowned at the darkening water rippling around them. “I’ll try to keep it together.” Her eyes flicked toward Aurora. “Sorry I ran.”
She clapped a wing over her shoulder. “It just means you’re normal. Don’t let it…”
The sound of paws splashing into one of the open doorways behind them pulled her attention away from Julip just in time to see Fiona’s tail slinking out of view. A moment later they heard a sharp thump that sounded suspiciously like knocking. The three of them immediately started sloshing their way toward the room.
“Fiona,” Roach called, “what are you doing?”
“Checking something,” she answered, then added, “by the way, are any of you packing RadAway?”
Aurora stepped through the open door, passing her lamplight over the flooded room. Double bunks stood against opposite walls creating a lane between them, the far end of which had partially caved in on the left side. Fiona was already nearing the far wall with her perked ears focused on the right side. A fissure in where the mortar had opened up drew a diagonal line to the floor like zipper teeth. Aurora glanced at Roach with a silent question on her face. He answered with a shrug.
“A few doses between Aurora and I,” Roach answered, but his attention was more focused on the intact section of wall at the end of the barrack than the state of their supplies. They were passing the third set of moldy mattresses when he realized Aurora was staring at him, confused. “The first aid kit in your bag,” he clarified, then back to Fiona, “Might be better to hold off on that until we’re done here. But, again, what are you doing?”
Fiona pressed her taloned digits flat against the wall and gave it a testing push. “I don’t think this wall is structural.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Aurora shot a worried look at the collapsed section approaching on their left and thought Fiona might not know what she was talking about. 
“Ferals are on the other side of that,” she said, pointing a desert colored wing toward the rubble, then tapped a claw against the cracked section of wall, “so they’re on the other side of this.”
Her hackles went up. “Fiona, wait.”
But Fiona had already gone over to the rock pile, picked up another bowling ball sized hunk of concrete, and returned to the intact section that split the barracks off from whatever space was on the wall’s other side. Then she placed her bloodied right shoulder against a spot along the cracked mortar and the muscles down her hind legs snapped taut.
The bottom half of the wall flopped open like a foal's building blocks. The upper half splashed down around Fiona in a cascade of cinder blocks and dust. Black water splattered up from the floors on both sides in staccato plumes of black filth, and a moment later Fiona was picking her way through to the other side.
Aurora, Roach, and Julip stared after her, dumbfounded. Then a familiar chorus of screams rippled through the hole.
“Shit,” Aurora hissed and threw herself into motion, heading for the gap with her rifle held ready. “Shit!”
From the other side, Fiona whooped with suicidal abandon that only made their hooves pound over the last yards of barracks even quicker. Aurora was the first one through, followed by Roach and Julip. On the other side they found more barracks, more black mold greedily colonizing the surface of every waterlogged mattress, and one gryphon halfway down their line sweeping her concrete-wielding fist from side to side like she were trying to shove her way through a crowd.
Aurora’s hooves slowed as she realized what was happening. Behind her Roach and Julip pressed up on her to keep moving forward to help, not yet understanding what was taking place ahead of them. Her grip on the rifle went slack. It… wouldn’t help.
With every sweep of her makeshift cudgel, Fiona laid waste to the tide of ghouls streaming over the trampled barrack door. These were the ones that had been lucky enough not to remember their pursuit of prey long enough to follow their brethren who attempted to burrow through the collapse. They must have already begun to wander back to the elevator, the only stimulus their rotted brains could still recognize as important, and so when they hurtled back toward the renewed sounds of prey they came through the doorway in pairs and singles. A steady trickle that might have been manageable had any of them thought to bring an automatic weapon, but which came to a bloody stop as they galloped within range of Fiona’s newest, biggest bonking rock.
Aurora physically flinched away when a feral mare not much smaller than Beans’ cannon-toting mother found herself abruptly flung ninety degrees off her trajectory and sent hurtling, along with a fragmented spray of blood and shards of scapula, into the wall between bunks with a meaty slap. The ghoul that had been following close on her tail, its jaws craning open to bite, let out a hungry shriek that cut off like a dead speaker when the same chunk of concrete wheeled back and turned its head into pulp without so much as slowing down on the way through.
The carnage, however, wasn’t what gave Aurora the most pause.
It was the song Fiona was singing as her bludgeoning weapon converted bone and tissue to splinters and spray. It was the fact that she was somehow maintaining her rapid violence to the lazy tune.
“I say I’ll go through fire…”
A corpse’s bellow cut short with a feeble squeak.
“And I’ll go through fire…”
An open muzzle detonated sideways in a spray of shattered teeth.
“As he wants it, so it will be…”
Two ghouls, side-by-side, hurtled through the tired frame of a bunk.
“Crazy, he calls me… sure I’m crazy…”
She stepped over the twitching corpse of a mare, then a stallion, their skull and neck respectively bent at horrible angles. Fiona flicked the stone in the air and caught it in the other palm with a wet slap, whistling the rest of the tune as she reared onto her hind legs, ears grazing the ceiling’s empty drop-down framing, and hurled the rock down the lane between bunks with an audible grunt of effort.
The ghoul at the other end hadn’t even finished making its turn when everything above its lower jaw painted the wall behind it in a wide cone of bone and blood. 
Fiona’s shoulders continued to sway gently from one side to the other with the slow rhythm of an unfamiliar song, waiting for the corridor to regurgitate more ferals. Only after she whistled the last notes of the tune, her ears perked expectantly toward the quiet doorway, did she lower her guard enough to look back and survey the damage.
Over Aurora’s shoulder, Julip breathed a near silent, “Holy fucking shit.”
If Fiona heard, and Aurora had every reason to believe she had, she pretended not to. She scanned the mangled corpses whose various matter now floated on the shallow ripples stirred by her own slow, pivoting steps, either to assess her own performance or to ensure none of the creatures that had so far exempted themselves from death were still moving. They weren’t. 
Then, as an afterthought, Fiona looked down at herself and the thick plaque of gore that painted her front half like a bib. “Aw, gross! Are you kidding me?”
Julip gagged at the sight of Fiona dragging a palm down her chest and the wet plop of gore she flicked into the water. Roach remained utterly quiet. Aurora just stared.
“So, ah, yeah,” Fiona continued, seeming not to notice their reactions, “I’m pretty sure that’s all of them, but if there’s a shower anywhere in this place I’m making an emergency pit stop.”







Fiona nudged the armored leg of a full suit of power armor laying beside the freight elevator, causing the old joints to emit a soft, rusty crunch. “No bullet holes that I can see,” she said. “It’s like they fell asleep.”
She’d cupped a few splashes of stagnant water from an empty office to wash most of the mess out of her fur, but the dark stains and faint odor of dirty copper still clinged to her. The others milled around the sealed lift alongside her, pointedly avoiding making direct eye contact with her or the gelatinous soup of semi dissolved tissue they currently stood in. Whether the gathering of ghouls Aurora described had been here for two hundred years, one hundred, or had just come together to stare at the stainless steel doors within the last few months didn’t change the fact that time and chemistry had conspired to slowly soften any of the feral anatomy unlucky enough to be in contact with the water. 
Fiona did what she could to ignore the vile texture pressing between her fingers. This was one of those rare moments when she wished she lacked digits. Too much sensory detail.
“Might have been gas,” Julip suggested, pointing her flashlight at the flood-stained walls as if they might bear some kind of sulfurous residue that would prove her right. “Ministry of Technology was big into blindweed production during the war.”
“Blindweed wasn’t selective like that,” Roach said, sparing a sad look at the fallen armor. “It wouldn’t have left anyone alive to go feral. Besides…”
He set the edge of his hoof on the breastplate of one of the soldiers where a small, but unmistakable blue diamond had been engraved into the metal. “This isn’t the ceremonial armor the ministries sent out to march behind parade floats. These soldiers were loaded for bear. 
She watched Aurora wipe away a smear of something thick from a card reader built into the wall. Hoof marks stamped the cinder blocks around it as if the ferals had been trying to use it. Or, Fiona thought, maybe they’d been trying back when they were still sane. “Could be they shipped in on those armored trucks we saw outside. Maybe whatever they came here to do was important enough to drive past a balefire explosion without stopping.”
“I’d give a pile of caps to see that,” Julip said.
“I bet.” She bounced a knuckle against the silver doors. “Any ideas on how to crack these?”
Roach cleared his throat beside her. “I’ll go find you a rock.”
That got a chuckle out of all of them, and without saying anything Fiona thanked the changeling with a subtle nod. After her moment in the barrack she hadn’t been sure what the right way was to clear the air. She knew her preferred method for clearing a room wasn’t exactly normal even by the standards of wastelanders who preferred long blades and heavy wrenches over firearms, but her way of doing things had yet to fail her. It was easy to forget that just a short few thousand years ago these ponies had been a food source for her people. Just standing too close to some wastelanders triggered a minor flight response. She probably hadn’t done herself any favors by clubbing a couple dozen ghouls to death with a rock the size of their heads.
She grimaced. It was the singing. She’d bugged them the fuck out with the singing.
“Might not need one,” she said, prying her claws into the seam enough to give the doors a good shake. They have a little give to them. “I can force these open if you guys are up for a little spelunking.”
She was answered by a crunch and mechanical hiss and realized Roach had turned his attention to the suit of power armor to the right of the doors. She wanted to ask him how he knew to open one of those things but knew better than to fire off a stupid question. The answer was experience. It was always experience.
Only the armored panels facing the ceiling hinged open and ground water quickly started gurgling into the low spots in the open suit. Roach’s expression grew pinched with momentary discomfort as he reached past the suit’s occupant for something inside the suit. A grunt escaped him as he fiddled with something near the helmet, held his awkward posture for a moment, and then muttered a soft gotcha just as a panel in the suit’s shoulder sprang open.
Fiona tilted her head and watched a well-preserved pen, pencil, spiral notepad, and laminated badge tumble into the muck. She almost tried to catch the pen, it was one of those hard to find ballpoints with what looked to be an excellently noisy clicker, but let the putrid water keep its new prizes in favor of retrieving the ID badge that floated on its thickened surface.
Roach grimaced as he straightened and upon seeing the badge between her fingers, nodded toward the card reader on the wall. “Give it a shot.”
“I have all kinds of questions for you when we’re done here.” She shook her head, taking a moment to wipe the sludge off on one of the power armor’s opened panels, and fed the ID into the slot. “If this still works–”
The reader emitted a happy chirp and a beat later a pinpoint of green light glowed above the slot. Somewhere up the shaft, the high squeal of neglected bearings descended toward them.
“Son of a…”
The car arrived with a grating sound that burrowed into their ears like claws across slate, and the doors were just as awful if not worse as they stuttered open on stubborn, seized wheels. The standing water cascaded through the open gap between the car and the floor that dispelled any chance of quiet after the doors came to a stop. Some of the muck managed to overflow the narrow slot and puddled into the freight elevator just to spite them. 
Fiona scowled at the slick of brown liquid.
“At least the light in this thing still works,” Aurora commented as she moved to step inside. 
Before she could, though, Fiona held out a hand to stop her. “So, uh, maybe a dumb question but if the water’s up to our ankles up here, how deep is it down where we need to go? I don’t exactly relish the idea of being inside a little metal box if it’s going to drop us into twenty feet of floodwater.”
That gave them all some pause. 
“There isn’t any flooding where Eshe is,” Aurora said. 
“And that just means he’s probably not on the bottom floor. Do we know which one they sent him to?”
She waited as Aurora frowned a little more deeply, her eyes not leaving the open elevator. Then she took a step forward, pressing past Fiona’s open hand to look at the place inside where a panel of buttons might offer up a clue. Her frown only grew darker. “Are you serious?”
Fiona leaned in to see what Aurora was getting bent out of shape about and saw the problem at once. There were no buttons. Just another card slot and a dark indicator light above it. “Yeah, that seems to be about our luck today.” 
The car let out a low groan as Fiona stepped halfway in and fed the dead soldier’s ID into the reader. No harm in giving the wheel a second spin to see if it had any more prizes to give. A beat later the reader let out a grating chirp and flashed green. 
“Destination, please,” coaxed an eerily warm voice from somewhere overhead. 
Fiona backed out of the car and motioned for Aurora to do the same. The last thing they wanted was for the thing to slam the doors shut and turn into a one-way carnival dunk tank. A quick glance at the gray mare made it pretty clear she had no real idea where this Eshe fellow was beyond a vague notion of “somewhere in this facility.” 
Oh well, it didn’t hurt to experiment.
“Third floor?” Fiona prompted after making sure Aurora had fully cleared the doors.
A pause. Then, “Destination, please.”
“Fucking Millie,” Aurora hissed. 
Fiona glanced down at her but didn’t ask who Millie was. Context clues were enough to pin the name on whatever prewar system was asking them where they wanted to go. She’d dealt with enough Enclave spritebots to know what a lobotomized automated interface sounded like. Security in the form of stupidity. Behold the marvels of technology. 
“List available destinations,” she tried.
A beat later, “Destination, please.”
Aurora sighed. “Great. It wants a–”
“Keyword,” Fiona finished, nearly lifting a claw to scratch at the bridge of her beak before remembering everything she’d been splashing through. She dropped her hand back into the muck and addressed the elevator’s AI. “Lobby.”
“Destination, please.”
She rolled her eyes and wondered if there was a limit to the amount of incorrect guesses they could make, but decided it was more likely a place like this would have security nearby to handle someone just standing around feeding Millie nonsense answers. 
“Hospital,” Aurora tried.
“Destination, please.”
“Prison,” Fiona said.
“Destination, please.”
“Oh, this is fun,” Julip said behind them, clearly enjoying watching their guessing game. Fiona and Aurora narrowed their eyes back at the smaller mare but not with any real heat. 
Fiona made a hopeless twirling gesture with her hand. “You said he’s in a hospital though, right?” 
Aurora nodded though she seemed less certain than she had been when they arrived. “Medical?”
Another pause. Then, without warning, the doors shuddered together and the empty elevator descended with a fading squeal.
“Aurora Pinfeathers,” Fiona said with a flourish of grandeur to the words, “Master hacker.”
“Shut up,” she said, shaking her head.
They waited until the distant peel of the freight elevator echoed to a stop before feeding the soldier’s ID into the wall reader again. To their relief they heard the car begin to rise back toward them. Several seconds later the doors scraped apart and other than the same thin puddle of filthy water that invaded earlier, the car showed no sign of having opened its door to a drowning flood. 
Fiona was the first to step inside. She had to bend herself in a less than comfortable shape to make room for the rest of the group who just barely fit in the space left over. “Cozy,” she grinned, and slotted the dead soldier’s ID once more.
The computer’s voice requested a destination, Aurora asked once more to go to Medical, and the doors shuddered together. Fiona felt her stomach jump at the sudden speed they descended, but it was a controlled plummet. Before concern could truly get its grip around any of them she felt the temporary increase in gravity as the car braked to a halt. There was a momentary pause. The doors drew apart, and they found themselves staring at the red and white striped face of a flat steel door.
“Uh,” Julip said.
Before any of them could settle on the next syllable, the door shot up on whisper-quiet hydraulics to reveal a narrow white room studded from floor to ceiling in evenly spaced… well, Fiona decided to think of them as nozzles, though the immediate thought that went through her mind was that they reminded her of one of the booby-trapped chambers described in an adventure novel she’d read as a fledgling. The ones poison tipped darts shot out of after the hero inevitably stepped on the wrong flagstone. Understandably, none of them raced out to be first.
“All Medical personnel,” Millie’s voice boomed from too-loud speakers inside the nozzle-studded room, “are reminded to remain still until the decontamination cycle has ended.”
Aurora was first to step into the long chamber, her nose working to discern the vague antiseptic and mildew smell that permeated the space. Roach and Julip stayed close behind, and Fiona finally stepped out of the elevator with an uneasy frown. She felt like the plunger in a syringe, forcing the unfortunately smaller equines all the way toward the far door. 
There must have been a sensor somewhere in the chamber because the moment her tail cleared the threshold the door shot back down with a subtle hiss of airtight gaskets engaging. Then, without warning, the nozzles assaulted them with a sputtering spray of brackish, rusty liquid that resolved into translucency a moment later.
As they coughed and cursed, Millie’s loud voice continued chattering. “All personnel are reminded they are entering a Biosafety Level 4 area and are required to use all required personal protective equipment.”
Fiona tried lifting a wing to keep the high pressure jets from hitting her face only for her own feathers to deflect the chemical spray right into her eye. “Mother fucking–”
“Failure to comply with mandatory safety procedures will result in immediate termination of contract, detention up to ten years, and a fine of 25,000 bits. Failure to report symptoms to Certified Safety Officers will result in immediate termination of contract, detention up to ten years, and a fine of 25,000 bits. Failure to…”
“How do we open the fucking door?!” Julip hollered.
“...risoners must be immobilized before leaving Processing Zone One. Failure to…”
“Pretty sure that’s not our call anymore!” Roach grated somewhere else in the stinging mist.
“...uable assets to your nation. The Ministry of Image thanks you for your sacrifice and your duty.”
As soon as Millie’s recitation finished, the nozzles sputtered to a stop and the far door slotted up and into the ceiling. They stumbled out into a slightly larger room, but not by much. Fiona had to squeeze her eyes shut hard against the alcohol fumes evaporating out of her rapidly drying coat before she could see past the stinging film of tears. Two banks of narrow yellow lockers flanked them on either side with two long stainless steel benches as compliments. A collection of wet and dry mops hung above a shallow utility sink built up from the floor in one corner, their synthetic fibers petrified with age. The walls were painted the same too-bright shade of white as the decontamination chamber and if she hadn’t been fighting to see clearly, she would have noticed that with the exception of a few fallen chips the paint was remarkably intact. 
“Didn’t plan on coming here to get my asshole bleached,” Julip grumbled, having already zeroed in on a row of lockers and had noisily begun opening and slamming each door shut in search of something. “Fuck me, my fucking hooves sting.”
“And yet still not enough to clean up that mouth of yours,” Aurora chided, earning her a snapping flick of Julip’s wingtip across her ribs.
“Fuck cunt shit,” the smaller mare half-chuckled, half-groaned. “Okay, what the fuck is with all the empty lockers and why the fuck don’t they have something in them I can rinse my fucking eyes with?”
Fiona approached the lockers, pausing behind Julip as she flung another open. Sure enough, it was empty. “Ten caps says this is where the workers were supposed to stow personal belongings. I’ll bet another ten they all knew anything they brought was going to get sterilized to death and probably ruined.” She gave Julip’s shoulder a nudge to guide her toward where Roach and Aurora were skimming some of the warning signs that adorned the wall near the far door. “Feathers’ canteen is probably better than anything you can scavenge down here, yeah?”
Julip grumbled something that sounded like agreement as she stomped over to wash the residual sting from her eyes. Fiona began to follow, then stopped abruptly enough for Roach to look up from unscrewing the cap on his canteen. His eyebrow lifted with the faintest protective edge when he saw what had caught her eye.
“Hey, uh, Julip. Were you wearing… extensions in your tail by any chance?”
Water pattered the tiles as she rinsed her face. “No. I mean, not really. There was an accident a couple weeks ago and most of it got burned off, but Ginger and this goofy kid we ran into braided back on the section I lost.”
“Huh,” Fiona said, her eyes fixed unapologetically on Julip’s backside. “Yeah, that’s all gone now.”
It took a beat for Julip to process that, but when she finally did she whipped around and lifted a hind leg aside to see if she was being played for a fool. She wasn’t. Only one lonely braid dangled from the shorn end of Julip’s tail, doing less to hide her modesty than it was shining a glaring spotlight on what it was woefully incapable of fully covering. And while it wasn’t anything any of them didn’t see on a semi-regular basis, there was a widely agreed upon difference between an innocent ill-timed glance and outright leering. 
Fiona realized she was doing the latter and pointedly found something interesting to read next to Aurora. She didn’t have to look to know the pegasus was wearing the same tight smile she was trying to suppress.
“I catch either of you staring at my ass and I’ll have Roach microwave your eyeballs,” she warned.
Roach bent and kissed her forehead, his opaque eyes fixed on Fiona. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll be on their best behavior.”
Without meeting his gaze, Fiona nudged Aurora. “That Pip-Buck of yours got a camera in it?”
Aurora stifled a snort. “I choose life.”
“Spoilsport,” she murmured, and slotted the ID through a reader labeled Processing Zone One. 
The steel slab whispered along soft silicone gaskets, drawing in a gentle gasp of air past the four of them and through the new opening. A single light on the other side clicked and buzzed to dim life. She gave her tail an uneasy flick at the sudden sensation of standing inside the airlock of a cheesy spaceship like the ones described in prewar sci-fi radio dramas, but that groundless discomfort gave way to something concrete when they spotted the corpse on the other side of the door.
It lay alone on the far end of a square room, one hoof extended toward another sealed door while the other clutched what looked to be saddlebags to its chest in a defensive posture. The body, saddlebag, and the floor around it were riddled with holes. Dark spatters of dried blood drew ugly smears across the door and floor around the body where the unicorn had struggled. Bullet holes drew a ragged path from where they’d fallen to a corner of the room where a perforated reception style desk stood. A terminal sat on top of it, the old screen caved in from the attack.
Two things became clear to Fiona upon seeing the unicorn’s still form. The first being that they didn’t belong here. Not just on the Medical level, but in this facility. The knit stocking cap they still wore made that clear enough. She recognized the yarn. The same shades of fiber they’d discovered in the makeshift camp in the power hall. The body belonged to the first group Eshe had asked for help.
The second thing she nearly understood too late was that even though Aurora had spent enough time outside the comforts of her Stable to numb her to the ever present inevitability of dead bodies, she had yet to develop the good habit of slowing down long enough to understand what might have turned those people into corpses in the first place. Aurora saw the body. She didn’t see how all the bullet holes traced a tight line across the floor.
Aurora crossed the threshold in front of Fiona, ears drawn back at the result of Eshe’s first failed rescue. 
Chuk-chuk.
The hairs down Fiona’s back stood bolt upright at the familiar sound and without a moment’s hesitation she reached for the mare, grabbed her around the waist, and kicked herself backward into Roach and Julip. The four of them bowled back through the locker room doorway just in time for the concrete they’d been walking over to dissolve in a spray of gray powder and deafening thunder. Lead poured across the open doorway, pulverizing the threshold with mindless mechanical fire for several long seconds, the deafening roar nearly sufficient enough to drown out Julip’s furious string of profanity as Fiona and Aurora tumbled backward onto them.
And then, just as abruptly as it started, the assault stopped.
Fresh adrenaline and no small amount of shock had left the four of them breathless. Fiona let out a long, tight exhalation as Julip wriggled out from under the flat of her wing. Roach had been knocked further back and was grinding out his own quiet flavor of curses as he nursed his injured muzzle. Then came the squeak of something from her own chest and Fiona realized she still had Aurora clutched in her vice grip. She let go, and the mare tumbled away to the tiled floor.
“What,” Aurora asked, gasping for breath, “was that.”
“Auto turret,” Julip answered from Roach’s side, her eyes crossing the ceiling with fresh suspicion. “Fucking lucky there isn’t one in here. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m…” Aurora paused to actually look herself over, then sighed a nod. “I’m okay.”
Fiona sat up, the small of her back throbbing where she’d connected with Roach’s muzzle. “Sorry, Roach. I didn’t knock anything loose, did I?”
He pulled his hoof away from a slow dribble of blackish blood from his nose, sniffed hard to clear it, and shook his head. “I’m good. How are we dealing with that turret?”
“Assuming it’s the only one,” Julip added, looking to Fiona for clarity. “How many did you see?”
She hadn’t seen it at all. She’d only heard the subtle click of its gimbals as it snapped into firing position. What was the point of having an all-access ID to a secret Equestrian black site if the damned turrets were programmed to shoot anything that moved?
“There was only the one that I heard,” she said, her eyes never leaving the scorched doorway as if the guns might sprout legs and come clicking in around the walls like angry spiders. “Could be more, and we only woke up the one. We need to figure that out and see how stupid they are.”
Aurora nodded at that, but was too busy looking over her prosthetic leg to contribute more than a grunt in agreement. A puff of air hissed out around Aurora’s stump as she settled herself more firmly into the molded cup. She winced as she stood up straight to test the seal, and Fiona could see the mottled beginnings of a bruise rimming the prosthesis. She felt a stab of guilt for having jerked them all back hard enough to cause harm, but the alternative kept her from dwelling on it.
“That turret seems pretty smart to me,” Roach muttered, ducking his head slightly as if it would allow him to better see the weapon perched out of sight in the next room. “How do we kill it?”
“I vote bullets,” Julip said.
“Might be easier for Roach to use magic,” Aurora countered. “Just haul it down like you did before.”
Roach shook his head. “Need to have eyes on it first, or else I’m just feeling around blind while everyone else starts bleeding out of places they don’t want to be bleeding from. Fiona’s suggestion makes the most sense. These turrets are only as smart as their programming.”
“You’ve run across them before?” Fiona asked, watching him slip off his saddlebags and begin rummaging. 
He lifted out a hardened white case bearing a Stable-Tec logo across its side, nodding as he set it on the tiles. “Seen a few back in the days before the traders set up regular routes and scavengers started stripping them out of the walls for parts and ammo. Here, take this.”
He’d taken a silver syringe out of the kit and held it out to her between his teeth. She accepted it, brow momentarily furrowed with confusion until she read the sticker glued to the opposite side and saw the dosing instructions for RadAway. She quirked a smile at the tiny printed font. She was so used to the brackish yellow fluid Nurse Redheart sold out of her clinic that it felt odd seeing RadAway not labeled by one of her thick black markers. 
“You too,” he continued, giving the kit’s second and last dose to Julip.
Fiona offered Julip a shrug before sticking the tiny needle into the muscle of her shoulder. The auto-injector fired a bolus of compressed medicine with a stinging hiss, followed by the echo of Julip’s dose. When they were finished, Roach took back both injectors and carefully seated one of them back into the first aid kit’s shaped foam insert. 
The other he flung through the open door. A quick chuk-chuk of actuators jerking an overhead turret into position greeted the silver cylinder before a killing spray of metal reduced it to shards. They flinched back as bits of broken concrete bounced harmlessly away from them. A moment later the torrent cut off.
“Yep, it’s dumb alright,” Roach reported with a slightly raised voice. “It’s set to motion sensors and nothing else. Doesn’t even care about the mass of what it’s targeting.”
Aurora looked between him and Fiona with clear uncertainty. “And that’s a good thing?”
“Sure,” he said. “It means we can defeat that thing with a pointy stick.”


	




The pointy sticks in question came in the form of mops procured from the utility sink in the corner. Aurora watched from a safe distance alongside Fiona and Julip as Roach fed the wooden handles out through the threshold inch by inch, baiting the turret into opening fire. The racket of sustained gunfire was more than enough to pound a fresh ache into Aurora’s skull, the reverberations of hundreds of bullets trying to hit the wooden tip as Roach waggled the other end between his teeth to create a moving target making covering her ears an exercise in futility. 
A fresh belch of chain-fed ammunition shattered the steadily vanishing mop handle, causing Roach to flinch before feeding out a little more. The threshold had become a narrow trench of pulverized concrete, the dust of which was thick in the air along with the scent of burnt gunpowder and hot brass. When the mop grew too short he tossed what was left of it into the room and waited as the turret shattered the brittle frame and spat bullets at all the smaller pieces that scattered out from it. Then he pulled a broom into his forelegs and began the slow process over again.
Eventually, when half of the broom handle had been converted to splinters, the furious little turret ran out of death to deal. Through the ringing in her ears, Aurora heard the gunfire abruptly stop to be replaced with an impotent clickclickclickclickclick.
At that, Roach flicked the rest of the broom out past the threshold and worked his jaw from side to side. Concrete pebbles and flecks of lead trickled off of him as he stood, his chitinous skin a better match for flying shrapnel than any of theirs and hence why he’d elected himself for the job. With all the dust he’d picked he looked like someone had thrown a gray shawl over his neck and back. He shook it off, sending clouds of the stuff to join what was already airborne.
As the three of them tentatively approached the bullet-pocked doorway, Aurora glanced down to see she’d set her hoof in one of Fiona’s prints in the fresh dust. It engulfed hers, and once again she felt utterly tiny compared to the gryphon. 
“Safe to assume that thing’s not built to reload,” Fiona said in what sounded to Aurora like a foggy half-yell. Without an inch of hesitation, she dipped her head through the firing line and grinned up in the direction of the still-clicking turret. “How do you do, you sneaky fuckaroo?”
A tense line formed along Aurora’s lips as she watched the gryphon sidle out into what had just been a killing zone. She expected to hear another turret announce itself with a fatal chuk-chuk but no second attack ever came. Approaching the powdery trench in the floor, she slowed to a momentary stop. She tried to remember when exactly she’d become so cautious and whether that was a product of fear or experience. The bombing of her Stable and Ginger’s subsequent death was the easiest answer, but she didn’t think it was quite right. Maybe it had started after Ironshod ambushed them in Fillydelphia, or when the deformed amalgamate creatures Julip called centaurs stampeded into their camp while they slept. 
Around the corner, Fiona dangled from the ceiling with her talons gripping the edges of a domed turret the size of a leather hoofball. The barrels spun with their furious little clickclickclickclicking mere inches from her beak while the mounts keeping the device secured to the ceiling creaked and groaned. Aurora gripped the stock of her rifle, wanting to tell Fiona to let it go so she could shoot the machine and make the room safe but she stayed back and felt like a coward for it.
Julip brushed a wing against her as she stepped over the threshold, the question in her eyes asking what was wrong. Aurora answered with a shrug that had become a reflex by now and watched Julip trot across a field of bullet holes to examine the corpse at the far door. She didn’t have to look to know Roach had sidled up beside her. His shoulder bumped hers, letting her know he was there.
“I almost died,” she said, quietly enough that the words wouldn’t travel beyond the two of them. “I should feel something about that, shouldn’t I?”
He watched her for a moment, then glanced toward Fiona who now had her hind paws back on the ground and a manic glee in her eyes as she wrenched another few inches of turret assembly out of the ceiling. “Maybe. But I think you’ve grown a thicker skin to facing death than you know. The fact that you’re not walking around that room right now until Fiona is done killing that turret means you’re a little saner than the rest of us.”
“Or maybe I just have a lot on my mind and it’s slowing me down.” She followed his gaze to Fiona and sighed. It would be easy to keep being vaguely noncommittal when the conversation turned to her, to push them back to a safe distance. Then she remembered her conversation with Fiona, and she understood how unfair that impulse was. 
She cleared her throat, discovering how hard she had to push to get the words out. “Roach. When we’re done here…”
He looked to her, his expression welcoming. It helped.
“I want… I need to sit down and talk to you guys about… me. I guess.”
For someone whose face was a mural of broken chitin, Roach’s smile softened his craggy complexion like nothing else could. “Julip and I want to be there for you, Aurora. Just let us know when you’re ready and we’ll listen. You’re not alone.”
Something tightened behind her sternum when she tried to thank him and she settled for a quick, emphatic nod instead. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and noticed Julip watching from across the room. The smaller pegasus didn’t call her out or try flinging a joke to cut the tension. Instead she adopted the same expression Roach wore, one free of judgment and full of understanding. 
“You really are rubbing off on her,” she murmured.
“She was taught to believe compassion equated to weakness. You and Ginger helped her see through that lie just as much as I have.” He tapped the back of her hoof with the front of his, nudging it over the threshold. “Ready?”
She pursed her lips and smiled. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Roach stayed with her as they explored the ruined contents of the cryptically named Processing Zone One. To Aurora it just looked like another waiting area, assuming one could ignore the auto turret that now lay in a tangled heap of black metal in the corner of the room. Their hooves kicked through the hundreds of brass casings littering the floor, clinking ahead of them as they made their way first to the reception desk and then, upon finding little more than a destroyed terminal and a scattering of common office supplies, to where Julip stood examining the pages of a spiral notepad pulled from the dead wastelander’s satchel.
“Anything in there about me?” Roach joked when Julip looked up at them.
She smiled and resumed skimming the words penciled onto the pad. “This mare was definitely here for Eshe. She’s got at least twenty separate entries in here talking about him.” She flipped the notepad back to its first page and held it out to them. Aurora took it and began skimming the neat, looping script while Julip talked. “I think she was using it as a dream journal at first, and later she just wrote down everything. Pretty sure she was the leader of the group that came here.”
Aurora held the narrow, wire bound pages out so Roach could see. 







December 19th, 1101,

I met a young stallion in a dream who claimed he was born in Palomino Falls just like me. He couldn’t have been much older than eighteen years, so I didn’t believe him at first, but then he described growing up with other survivors inside the Big 8 Theater and he got most of it right. When he left, I asked Luna to tell me whether or not he was real. She still won’t answer me. Treble says he’s spoken to her once and she seemed wrong to him. I’ve heard a rumor that…







January 3rd, 1102,

There was another mass dream tonight. Nobody knows why Luna keeps bringing us all to Canterlot, but there were less than a thousand of us this time. We don’t know what we’re meant to do. It’s like the princess wants to hold a town hall for the survivors and never shows up to tell us why. The stallion from Palomino Falls was there. His name is Hickory, but his mark is of some kind of gun. I don’t see the connection. It’s an odd choice, especially for a pegasus. I try not to judge, though. He wants to fly out to meet me in person but I just tell him to stay where he’s needed.







January 11th, 1102,

Another Community Dream. I talked to a mare who says she lives in Stable 27. They’re dealing with an epidemic of some kind. Sounds like they’ll be popping the seals if things don’t get better. She lost interest with me as soon as she figured out I haven’t been to any of the towns she remembers. Can’t blame her. Just hope they’re ready for what they find when…







February 18th, 1102,

Lots of faces missing from the Community last night. Everyone heard the thunder yesterday, even the group down in Appaloosa. Nobody’s surprised. We’ve been telling the dreamers out near Baltimare to pick up sticks before that unexploded missile they dug up finally went off. Threw everyone for a loop when the Vhannan started weeping over it.







March 2nd, 1102,

I had another nightmare about Day Zero again, and it’s getting old. There was always a purpose to them when I was younger. Now it’s just an ugly reminder I don’t need. If there’s a pharmacy still standing in the next town, I’m going to give myself the night off with some prescription strength Rebound.







March 3rd, 1102,

Mark the date. Turns out everyone had the same Day Zero nightmare the night before last. All except for that zebra, of course. He kept doing what he always does. Pushing into conversations he’s not a part of, trying to get noticed by telling the same old story. I wish he’d stop. It makes him sound crazy. 







May 30th, 1102,

Turns out Hickory is real after all. He showed up at our camp this morning with his wife, Mayberry. I don’t remember telling him all that much about the truck I got running last year, but he says that’s how he tracked me down so it must be true. Mayberry’s old enough to be his mother, but they’re both nice folk and far be it from me to tell them not to be happy together. Birds of a feather and all that. It’ll be nice to have company for a little while even traveling alone has made me rusty in the small talk department. Hickory can go on about anything until he’s sucked all the air out of the room, so that’s certainly a change. I don’t get the impression they expect to stay very long, so I’ll suffer a little socialization even if it does make knitting impossible.







May 31st, 1102,

Another dream with the rest of the Community last night and Mayberry caught me talking with the zebra. Now it’s all she wants to talk about ever since I came out of the truck. At first I thought she’d been a Vhannan sympathizer during the war, but if I’ve done my math right she would have been ten or eleven years old on Day Zero. Better odds that her parents were soft on zebras and it left an impression. I didn’t ask and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. She was too excited to have found a like-minded person. Hickory kept a straight face when she called me that. A like-minded person. I have no love for the stripes and I’m tired of having to tell this new generation why. They have eyes. They can see the ash devils that blow through dead cities. If they can look at what the zebras did to us and still have love in their hearts for the ones that survived, then they’re too deluded for someone like me to fix. I only talked to him because I thought he’d finally leave me alone once he was done getting his story out of his system. Not my brightest idea. 

Now I’m on his short list of people to bother whenever Luna throws us together, and apparently Mayberry’s on the same list. Now I have to hear the same sob story when I’m awake. 







June 2nd, 1102,

Had that stress dream about getting fired again and it put me in a mood when I woke up. I think I had it because I’ve been trying to think of a way to ask Hickory and his wife to head back to Palomino Falls. It’s been nice having people to talk to and they’ve pulled their weight when it comes to gathering firewood, and Mayberry was the one who found the pallets of Sparkle-Cola in the back room of that video rental store. Even if they could carry their share of it when they go, I’m set for hydration for a good month or two. But Mayberry won’t shut up about wanting to help the zebra.

I’ve told her he wouldn’t be in prison if there wasn’t a good reason, but she refuses to listen. It doesn’t help that she’s got Hickory thinking like her but I’m not surprised. He’s young. Everything they did to us is a step removed. He wants to give this Eshie guy a chance. I keep telling them that they’ll just end up getting themselves killed. All it’ll take is for one of them to take a bad fall, break a bone, and that’s it. There are no more emergency rooms. No more antibiotics. We don’t even know how to tell whether aspirin has gone toxic or not, and they want to fly out to the middle of a hot zone because Eshie thinks he remembers hearing one of the jailkeepers say the word “Mariposa.”

I need to think about this. If I tell them to leave, I know where they’re going to go. We’re losing too many people in the Community over stupid things like this. If we’re all that’s left we can’t afford to keep dying.







June 4th, 1102,

We found one of those camping places off the highway where you used to be able to rent a spot for the weekend and pretend you were roughing it. Hickory and Mayberry found an RV that by some miracle still had keys in the ignition. We used the truck to give it a jump and the stupid thing actually cranked over. It took some convincing to get Hickory to accept the knock in the engine meant it wasn’t worth trying to save. Even if we could find the right tires for it, which maybe we could, I didn’t see that big beast of a thing making fifty miles on the highway before it threw a rod. If I’m being honest, I might have seriously considered wasting a week trying to fix it if the plumbing hadn’t been rusted through. For as long as I live, I’ll never not appreciate the days of flush toilets.

Hickory put a couple cans of peaches on the coals before we called it a night. I’ll give it to him, he’s got a creative mind when it comes to food. I always just ate them out of the can, but he took a cinnamon sugar shaker from his pack and stirred some into the juice until it caramelized. I could have kissed him, it was that good. I think that was part of why I finally told the two I’d come to Mariposa with them.

Mayberry did kiss me then. Not sure what to think about that, so I won’t. I made it clear that I’m not going because I thought the zebra deserved to be set free. I’m going because I’m fifty-five years old and I know what tetanus is. I’m going to force them to slow down long enough for their brains to kick in so they don’t start yanking on levers and electrocute themselves. Celestia knows it’s been known to happen.

My only condition is that I lead, and they follow. It’s the only way I know to keep them safe.







June 24th, 1102,

We’re here, not that I feel any better about it now that we are. Mayberry tells us Luna visited her dreams a few times during the drive down to Mariposa. I don’t know how much of it I believe but she’s given me no reason to think she’d lie. She said Luna wanted us to reconsider. I just about threw up my hooves and asked where the heck was she when I was saying the same damn thing! Better late than never my saggy ass. Mayberry makes it sound like something was wrong with Luna but couldn’t pin down what that was beyond it being “the way she talked.” I told her Luna always had a strange way of stringing words together but Mayberry wasn’t sold on that. I guess I just had to be there. Apparently Luna wasn’t all that forthcoming on why she didn’t want us coming here, which to someone like Mayberry and Hickory is like pouring sugar on an anthill. I think she’s got the same worries I do, just for different reasons. Hard to be the princess of anything if all your loyal subjects keep acting surprised every time a blown up building drops on their heads.

For now, the “mission” is to scope out the town, resupply, see if there aren’t any road signs that say TURN LEFT FOR SECRET PRISON.

Yippee.







June 28th, 1102,

There aren’t enough working vehicles left in the world to carry all the useful stuff in this town. I had to tell Hickory and Mayberry to stop putting stuff in the back of my truck halfway through day one. We’re pretty sure everyone who survived in Mariposa gave up trying to stay here once the river started poisoning everything. The radiation meter in the truck sounds like someone’s microwaving popcorn in there. There’s not much left by way of edible food and water, but otherwise this town looks a lot like it probably did back when it had a population above zero. We’ve got enough of these little ecoheat fuel tins for the camp stove to turn the truck into a second star if any of it catches fire, plus the new radio, knives, fresh off the shelf truck batteries… I might just go back for that RV after all when we’re done here.

We’ve been so distracted with searching the town that I almost forgot about Eshie. Almost. After lunch today Hickory picked the lock on the old police station and found a working terminal in the sheriff’s office, still logged in and ready to go. People were stupid back then and normally I’d say bless them for that, but the sheriff turned out to be one of those good-at-her-job-community-oriented people who paid attention. Hickory found a whole heap of personal logs complaining about unemployed residents with nothing better to do than make trouble for her department after the Ministry of Image bought and shuttered the local mill. Fifteen minutes later he was flying back to the truck looking like he’d just hit the lottery. There are armored trucks parked outside the mill just south of town and a parking lot full of carriages. 

A hundred bits says I know where we’re making camp tonight. 







June 29th, 1102,

More nightmares last night. Bad ones. I dreamed I was in the chemistry lab back in high school. I couldn’t walk straight and ended up knocking something over and hearing glass break. I felt myself… coming apart. I don’t know how else to describe it. I felt pieces of me going soft. Melting? I don’t know if that’s the right word. It was like my body wasn’t just me, but a thousand different things that had come together to make me, and all those thousands of things suddenly decided to be their own things. Like having vertigo from a hundred points of view and being simultaneously aware of all of them. I’m starting to feel sick so I’m going to stop trying to think about it.

Hickory found papers in one of the armored trucks outside the mill. Turns out bright red TOP SECRET stamps aren’t just something you see in movies. I’m assuming the soldier who left it sitting in the passenger seat wasn’t too worried about protocol once the world started exploding around them. Mayberry’s less cynical than me. Perks of youth. She’s got a theory that the corpses we found behind the wheels were poisoned somehow, and I can’t think of a good reason why she isn’t right. Thirty years of decomposition and exposure can hide a lot, but last I checked balefire bombs don’t make their victims vomit blood especially when they’re still sitting up in their seats. Gravity likes to pull fluids down, not up. The mess that makes is just a mite bit different.

These papers are a blessing. They’re not perfect blueprints with a dotted line telling us where we need to go, but there’s enough here to point us in the right direction. We found the elevator they took down into the prison but it requires a keycard we can’t find. Hickory suggested we find something to pry the doors open with but Mayberry put the brakes on that when she pointed out one of the documents had orders on it for an armored team to “position themselves at the North Evacuation Stairwell to maintain containment.” It goes on about all this tactical stuff I don’t pretend to understand. Rear action guard, firing lines, maximum expected outflow in the event of breach. I was an assistant shift lead for a craft store when the world ended, so I start glazing over when the military jargon starts. 

Turns out there’s a stairwell that pops out inside this old generator hall. That’s where we set up camp last night. It’s a little tight where we are right now, but the idea of sleeping out in the truck with all these old buildings doing nothing but collecting shadows gave me the creeps. I’ve got Hickory testing the batteries for our flashlights and making sure we’ve got spares of everything in our bags. Mayberry’s still working out how we might keep the secret door on that fake generator from slamming shut behind us. While they work, I’m going to finish some knitting and think about how I can keep them from sticking their hooves through an upturned nail. They’re already buzzing with excitement. We’re off to save a zebra, hooray and good for us. I just hope they’re not planning to wash their feathers of this when they find out he wasn’t a saint. If we’re freeing him, we’re all owning what that means. 

Hickory’s saying he’s finished. Time to get moving.







Juen June 29th 102 1102

They’re dead. Hickory and Mayberry are dead they were torn apart by those fucking THINGS those monsters or whatever the fuck they were I need to breathe I have to catch

The stairs took us into the Personnel level. That’s what the papers say it’s called. Personnel. Every level has a name. Personnel. Engineering. Medical. Admin. Hickory kept saying Eshie had to be on the Corrections level where the prison is but I told him no that’s not right where else would a hospice bed be other than Medical. MEDICAL. I TOLD HIM AND HE 

Personnel is attached to Corrections so it made sense to him and Mayberry thought so too. I didn’t We didn’t understand why the barracks were empty or why there were dead soldiers in power armor on the ground so we didn’t ask. Hickory found the door to the prison down a side corridor. The security terminals were still working. I don’t know why. There’s no power. But they were working and Hickory knew how to change the computer code to make them think we had clearance. I kept telling him to slow down. I was afraid the doors would lock behind us but he just kept hacking through checkpoints without listening. Then he found this this this central guard station, this hub that had the doors to the cell blocks and he wouldn’t 

He did something to the terminal inside the hub and found out where Eshie’s cell was. D Block, Cell 47. It said there was a lockdown in effect and all personnel were ordered to remain in place. Something like that. I didn’t get to see He turned off the lockdown and told the computer to open D Block. I told them to slow down but they wouldn’t listen. They couldn’t hear the sounds of things getting up. But I heard them and I ran and I heard those things screaming and I kept running.

I heard Hickory and Mayberry dying. I heard them scream for each other oh my god I heard them make noises I 

They chased me here. To the elevator. They’re outside the door and they’re screaming and a voice is asking me where to go but it won’t take me ANYWHERE.

Focus. Focus. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Focus.

Medical. The zebra is somewhere in Medical. That selfish fuck lured us in here and he knew those monsters those things would be waiting for us and he didn’t say a fucking word like the shifty stripe he is. 

The elevator listened. It’s taking me to Medical. I’m going to find him and when I do I’m going to pull a scalpel across his throat so he can’t do this to anyone else. It’s only fair. He deserves it and I can still hear them but I’ll be quick Celestia please forgive me I’ll be quick and then I’ll forget this place just please let this be a nightmare please let this be a nightmare please let this be…







Aurora rubbed at her mouth as she read the final entry, coming to its rambling conclusion at the same time as Roach. Julip watched them flip through the neatly spaced writing all the way until it devolved into jumbled, scribbled chaos. 
“She ran straight into it,” she murmured, not needing to expand on what it was. This mare who survived the end of the world by being careful and thoughtful had, in the end, reached her breaking point and abandoned all caution in an attempt to satisfy… something. Revenge, justice, bigotry, or maybe an equal helping of all three. She’d barreled through decontamination and straight into the firing line of a mechanized turret programmed to put bullets into anything that moved until those things weren’t moving anymore. 
It was such an anonymous way to die for someone who’d experienced an understandable, however misguided, moment of weakness. She considered keeping the notepad to spare this nameless mare the shame of having her beliefs taint what had otherwise probably been a decent person. 
But then she thought better of it and dropped the pad beside her corpse. “Did she have anything on her we can use?”
Julip stirred around the contents of the dead mare’s satchel and shrugged. “Nothing I’d want to take. You want the keys to her truck?” She jingled a keychain between two pinched feathers with a sardonic smile, then dropped them next to the notepad. “These people lived in a different world than us. I say we let this one rest.”
They were unusually solemn words coming from Julip, but they were the right ones. This mare was gone. Eshe continued to suffer an existence he didn’t want. They were here to fix one of those two things, and it did no one any good to keep standing here delaying what had to be done.
“From now on we go slow,” Aurora said, aware that she was echoing the sentiments of the mare at her hooves.
“You can’t exactly put a bullet in Primrose if you catch one right before the finish line.” Fiona stepped around from behind her and clapped a hand on her shoulder, nearly knocking her over inadvertently in the process. She offered a lopsided wince by way of apology before adding, “I’ll take point on setting off turrets, if there are any.” 
“Okay by me,” Roach rasped. “I’ll even bring the broomsticks.”







Fiona was grinning as if she were about to walk in on a surprise birthday party she knew was waiting for her. It was an infectious nervous energy that came part and parcel with the danger on the other side of the hermetically sealed door. If there was a turret perched on the other side, it had the lethal capacity to maim and dismember any one of them if they crept into its mechanical view. If there were more ferals, there was the potential of being overwhelmed and offered an uglier death. But there was also a good chance Eshe was on the other side, and that was enough to make their ridiculous situation bearable.
Aurora waited as the gryphon fished the ID card out from behind her ear, slotted it into the reader, and pressed herself back against the wall. She was barely containing a manic giggle as she tapped the broomstick antagonistically against the door. It was stupid. All of this was so stupid. But in this case stupid had proven to be the valid option, and Aurora was willing to sacrifice the heroic entrance if it meant all of them walking out of here alive.
The door hushed open. Fiona waggled the broomstick across the gap. The rest of them pinned their ears.
She waggled the stick some more. Nothing happened. Then she swiped her hand past the doorway. Nothing. A pause. Aurora could tell she was debating something. Then the gryphon stepped out fully into the threshold.
Nothing.
Fiona practically deflated with a long, pent up sigh. “Don’t tell anyone I did that.”
Roach looked ready to pop a blood vessel. “If you do it again, I’ll pay for my own radio show and broadcast it to anyone with a working headset.” 
“This would be way easier if we had Ginger’s shield,” Julip murmured, poking her head into the doorway before closing her eyes as she realized what she’d just said. “Sorry, Aurora.”
She shook it off as best she was able, offering up a half-hearted smile to show it was okay. “It’s fine, and you’re not wrong. It would be nice if we had something better than sticks and crossed feathers.”
When she looked to see if she’d succeeded in easing Julip’s embarrassment, she noticed the smaller mare was staring at her with something closer to concern. They all were.
She frowned. “What?”
“Uh,” Julip said, pausing just long enough to gauge Roach’s expression. “You kind of checked out there for a few seconds.”
Her frown deepened. “Okay.”
Roach stepped forward and put a reassuring hoof on her shoulder. Too reassuring. Like the way a doctor patted their patient’s knee to calm them before a fatal diagnosis. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?
She tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry. It took her a moment to work up enough spit. “Roach, if I’m–”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he repeated, and she saw the calm lines of his expression tighten a little.
“Okay,” she whispered, and allowed him to guide her toward the open door.
They moved cautiously into the next room. Fiona took point. Julip followed on her heels, revolver held toward the floor. Roach and Aurora followed at the rear, the latter doing her best to shift her focus outward to the possible dangers. It was hard, and when she let her focus slip it rebounded on her with memories of Gallow trotting down a dark highway beside them with his hungry smile and slipping sanity. 
The overhead lights clicked on as they worked their way down the abandoned corridor of what had every appearance of a prewar hospital. Here the walls weren’t painted, but tiled with a glossy seaweed green meant to calm and utterly failing at it. The overhead light and distant impenetrable black gave Mariposa’s medical ward a distinctly haunted feeling that the presence of empty gurneys and moldy foam ceiling tiles only made worse. The groundwater that had flooded the Personnel level didn’t appear to have percolated through any cracks down here, but the faint scent of mildew suggested it was making progress. 
Every door they passed was labeled with identically plain black plastic and unstyled white text. Aurora found herself sinking into deep discomfort as she read them. Corrections Intake. Sterile Services. Infection Screening. Incubation. One of the doors hung open on a rotted hinge like a dislocated jaw. A still form in a deeply stained lab coat lay partly beneath a steel table. The skeletal shape of another rested on the metal.
She barely suppressed a yelp when Fiona smacked her broomstick against the wall, sending an echoing crack of sound through the corridors. They stopped. Weapons turned outward in a tense phalanx as they waited for anything to wake up. Nothing did. The only response they heard was the sound of their own breathing.
The crept forward, pausing once to allow Fiona to clear an intersecting corridor and proceeding when nothing retaliated when she tempted fate. As they walked, they began passing more unwelcome doors. Cold Storage. Chemical Cremation. Protophage Biopsy. 
“Roach,” she said, her voice giving away all the fear she wanted to hide. “There was a body back there.”
He nodded, his pale glowing eyes equally tense. “I saw.”
“I want to get out of here.”
“Me too.” 
They kept moving forward. 
One of the lights blinked on above them and began flickering. Aurora absently diagnosed the problem. Faulty LED driver. Easy fix. Pull out the bad capacitor, clean up the solder, install a good one. She went through the steps without thought while her eyes darted from one distant shadow to the next. Something was wrong with this place. Soldiers were dead in unblemished power armor. More had died in the seats of their armored trucks. There were no signs of panic or evacuation. No evidence of the languishing deaths of people trapped underground. The dead mare behind them had mentioned a lockdown in her notes. 
“They were trying to keep something from getting out,” she murmured.
This time she’d spoken loud enough for Julip to overhear. “What?”
She shook her head, trying to put together a puzzle with only a fraction of the pieces. “I don’t know. This place is wrong. What’s so important about Mariposa that the ministry would have the presence of mind to lock it down while the world was ending?”
Fiona glanced over her shoulder. “You’re kind of freaking me out, Aurora.”
“Intersection up ahead,” Julip added, clearly on the side of wanting to change the subject. 
Aurora swallowed her resentment toward them and sucked down a breath to calm herself. It barely did a thing to help, and she could see by the way Roach looked at her that she wasn’t fooling him either.
They stopped. Fiona held out the broomstick and gave it a furtive wave.
Chuk-chuk. 
Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick.
Everyone looked to everyone else for an explanation. Aurora could feel her hoof taking on an uneasy bounce. When no one spoke, she did.
“Why is that turret already out of ammunition?” 
Nobody answered. After what felt like a solid minute of inaction, Fiona swayed a little before leaning out to look down the hallway with the turret. Aurora couldn’t see it but she heard the double-beat of servos sighting their target and the staccato ticking of an empty magazine. When Fiona pulled herself back from the corner she looked like she was fighting back a shudder.
“Bodies,” she managed in a tight voice. “A lot of them. They look like doctors. They’re, uh, they’re piled pretty high inside a doorway.”
Roach swallowed. “Movement?”
She shook her head. “No, they’re really, really dead.”
Against her better judgment, Aurora pushed past Roach and Julip to stand beside Fiona. Then she took a breath, braced herself, and leaned around the corner to see what awaited them.
A hemispherical black bulb hanging from the ceiling snapped back half of its shell and leveled its stubby barrel at her. She flinched back the moment it resumed its angry clicking and had to force herself to push it to the back of her mind. It greeted her with as much menace the second time as she peered around the corner again. Maybe twenty feet away, two wide double doors pressed hard against the corridor walls, bowing under the pressure of the mangled bodies crushed between them. She felt her gullet rise and swallowed hard to keep from gagging. 
They immediately reminded her of the corpses piled against the airlock door of Stable 1. There had been a mass panic in that strange, too-deep silo. A rush to the surface as thousands of residents, enough to dwarf the population of her home Stable, were chased up the stairwell by a silent suffocating gas. They piled so high and deep at the airlock that the hydraulics couldn’t overcome the pressure, and they died there in one mass of indeterminate flesh and bone. 
This wasn’t that, but it was the closest thing to it since Stable 1. She thought about the nameless mare’s notepad and how the ghouls hadn’t attacked them until Hickory overrode the lockdown in Corrections. They’d passed through the same corridors Aurora had to get there without trouble because nothing had been there when they arrived. The guard staff had been corralled. So had, she was beginning to believe, the staff here in Medical. Only here there had been a panic. An attempted exodus. She could make out the glint of metal armor beneath the stained lab coats and desiccated flesh. The soldiers had, for a moment, been overrun and the turret had meted out its punishment until nothing alive in the mass of corpses was left moving.
The concrete arch above the open doors read in unadorned letters: OBSERVATION UNIT.
“What do you think they were observing?” Fiona murmured.
Aurora shook her head. She didn’t know. Beyond the pulped mound she could make out the glint of glass along one wall. Windows. She wasn’t sure if she’d seen observation windows in Eshe’s room or if her mind was filling in a convenient memory, but at the far end of that corridor was a dim yellow light from behind one of the windows. It tugged at her like a beacon.
“That’s where Eshe is.”
She felt Fiona’s large palm on her shoulder. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” The word came out as a whisper. She knew if she tried to move her legs they would resist. The light from that final window wasn’t what scared her. It was the absence of light from all the others along the way. “Pretty sure. And even if I wasn’t…”
“We have to check,” Roach finished for her, standing beside her now. 
Their presence around her helped sand down the sharpest edge of her fear and she tried her best to hang onto that feeling that came with knowing she wasn’t alone in this. It was that implicit trust that allowed her to momentarily give Roach control of the next part. She listened to him as he spoke with Julip and Fiona, telling them to take her away from the two intersecting corridors a safe distance while he cleared a path through the hill of dead. The stubborn side of her that wanted to insist it was okay for them to climb the bodies, that she had seen and crawled through far worse inside Stable 1, was pressed gently aside. With Julip’s wing tossed over her shoulders and Fiona following close behind, the three of them ducked around the nearest crossroads to put the wall between them and Roach’s tainted magic.
Metal latches snapped as Fiona popped open the lid of the first aid kit Ginger had been given. Aurora tipped the light of her Pip-Buck to the neatly arrayed foam cutouts and tugged free an orange plastic prescription bottle that looked exactly like the ones the people from her version of Medical gave out. A trefoil radiation symbol preceding the words RADIATION METABOLITE were clues enough to what it was meant for. She uncapped the bottle and tipped two pills of the generic Rad-X into Julip’s feathers, thought for a moment, and then tipped four into Fiona’s. 
“Say when,” came Roach’s echoing voice.
“I’m going to be pissing neon for the next month,” Fiona murmured as she dry-chewed her pills. “We’re ready!”
A beat later the walls of the adjacent corridor bloomed with an iridescent green glow and Aurora’s Pip-Buck began a low, growling chatter. She ignored it, knowing now how little a few extra rads amounted set against the contamination she’d endured when she helped Ginger carry the bomb. And then, just like that, the glow blinked off and the lowing of her Pip-Buck trailed down to a slower, irritable ticking.
When they started their way back toward Roach they found him leaning against the tiled wall and breathing hard. He smiled at their visible concern and waved it away. “I’m out of practice. Give me a minute to catch my breath.”
Aurora set a few feathers on his back and kept them there as she peered toward where the berm of bodies had been. They’d been pushed aside in either direction, still propping open the thick double doors but with their desiccated eyes staring toward the walls rather than at her. Two wide, arcing smears of something wet traced out a path where Roach had split the dead down the center and pulled them apart. The way was clear and the ceiling turret, once clicking at their presence in rapid protest, had gone silent. One thin tendril of smoke curled out from its bulbous chassis. 
Turning back to Roach, she saw he was exchanging placating whispers to a visibly worried Julip. 
“I promise I’m alright. I’m just a little out of shape.”
“Your horn isn’t some muscle, Roach. How do you know it isn’t hurting you?”
He bent and kissed the top of Julip’s mane, and Aurora took that as her cue to be elsewhere. She gave Roach a pat with her wing and nodded her thanks when he glanced back with a reassuring smile. He was many things. A free changeling. A father. A husband. A ghoul. But he wasn’t a liar. He knew better than any of them what his magic could and couldn’t do, and that experience had kept him going for well over two centuries. Aurora trusted him, and so she left him to comfort Julip and turned her own focus toward what she came here to do.
The overhead lights blinked and shuddered as they clicked on ahead of her. Their yellow glare threw the letters of the observation unit into stark black relief. Her expression strained as she stepped across the damp, faintly sweet-smelling threshold between mounded bodies. Generations had come and gone in the time since the medical staff’s failed attempt to overwhelm their keepers, and the smell of their collective death would have begun dissipating as soon as the chemical and biological processes that fueled their decomposition reached equilibrium. An entire branch of Aurora’s family tree hadn’t been alive when that happened, and yet the scent of death clung to every surface like wet gauze.
Her hoof settled into something soft. She took a stiff breath and removed it without looking to see what she’d stepped in. Once she was past the bodies, she exhaled. 
The first bank of lights inside the observation unit clicked on and the presence of concrete and not foam tiles above her head confused her for a brief moment. A look back confirmed she’d missed the transition, and also that Fiona had been following her the entire time. Upon seeing her confusion the gryphon glanced at the double doors as if also noticing for the first time that the sickly green tiled wall ended at their hinges only to continue on as bare, unadorned concrete. Were she another six inches taller the tips of her cupped feline ears would be brushing the lights. 
“Can’t say I blame them for wanting to get out,” Fiona murmured. 
Aurora nodded without adding anything. Ten dark windows drummed out an evenly spaced tempo down the right side wall with a heavy, hermetically sealed door standing beside each one. The left side wall mirrored that pattern with the exception of a single lit pane of beveled glass at the end. The corridor’s terminus, a flat concrete wall, loomed a few yards beyond that last door. Swallowing her trepidation, she began to walk.
 Her reflections followed her across obsidian glass that offered no hints to what waited inside those dead rooms. No lights blinked on from within. No knocks echoed from the doors. As she passed them by one after the other, she felt herself gripping her rifle a little more tightly, expecting one of the doors to spring open and release a tide of snapping ghouls. She forced her primary feather to get away from the trigger. Nothing, she told herself, was alive down here.
As she reached the end of the observation unit, she braced herself and stepped up to the glass.
A lump formed in her throat at the sight of the medical bed. In it lay the emaciated, motionless form that could have been anyone in the world had it not been for the faded gray stripes that wrapped him. In a dizzying instant Eshe became real to her. Not just a stallion she spoke to in the perfect, preserved dream of a time long ago, but here, right now, withering alone in a present that the world had been too eager to forget.
Fiona held out the soldier’s ID and she took it between her feathers. It clicked into the door reader without resistance, as if this place was finally ready to let its guard down. The door slid up and away, revealing a short series of three decontamination arches and a second door turned ninety degrees to Eshe’s room. She stepped inside and waited as the door slid shut, stinging antiseptic spray pelted her, and took a steadying breath as the door ahead of her lifted away.
The room was a simple affair. The head of Eshe’s AutoDoc was mounted into the center of the far wall as if it were just another hospital room, and that was where the comparison ended. The rest of the room was utterly bare. No tables. No chairs. No trays to hold patient files nor so much as a flat surface to set a cup of water on. There was the medical bed, four walls, one window, and a faintly buzzing light. Those had been the dominating features of the vast majority of Eshe’s preternaturally long life.
When she approached the bedside two tired, jaundiced eyes made the slow trek toward her and widened ever so slightly with surprise. He looked every day of the two hundred and forty years old that he was. Bones and joints protruded from skin like tissue paper. The neat-cropped black and white mane he’d worn during their dreams had been recently trimmed down to the scalp by the AutoDoc, leaving behind the faint wisp of interchanging gray on white. And yet despite his frailty and the stained tubes that snaked down his throat, he managed the tiniest smile when he saw her.
“Hi, Eshe,” she said, her voice barely a whisper because she knew if she spoke any louder it would betray the sorrow in it. “Fancy meeting you here.”
His eyes crinkled with mirth, but there was a sadness behind them he didn’t have the strength to hide. He knew he’d asked her here to kill him, just like he’d asked Hickory, Mayberry, and the mare in the knit cap ages ago to set him free. There was guilt in his eyes for what he still held himself responsible for, but also relief that this facility hadn’t added Aurora to its death toll.
She found his hoof tucked into the AutoDoc’s discolored padding and slipped hers around it. “Can you squeeze?”
He did. It was weak, barely a twitch of tendon, but he squeezed.
“Squeeze twice if you still want me to do this.”
The joint over his hoof twitched once, then twice. She chewed the inside of her cheek and hated the sting in her eyes, but she didn’t move to wipe them. She looked around for a chair to sit down in and remembered the room was empty save for Eshe. On the other side of the glass she could see Fiona, Roach and Julip. They were trying not to stare, but what else was there for them to do? When she looked back at them a second time, Roach caught her meaning and nodded. He led the others out of sight to give her privacy.
“It’s going to take a little bit for me to get everything ready, but I’m not going to do anything without telling you first. Okay?”
Two squeezes, his smile softening to something a little more serious to show he was comprehending. 
“Would you like it if I talked to you while I work?”
Two squeezes.
She forced her lips into a smile as she set his hoof back into the padding, then shrugged off her rifle and leaned it against the wall. Her saddlebags thumped to the floor beside it and after some rummaging she found the canvas roll Sledge had given to her for this purpose.
Aurora had planned out safe topics she could chat about while she worked. Embarrassing stories about her apprenticeship in Mechanical were at the top of the list, followed at a close second by all the beautiful things she’d encountered in her time traveling the wasteland. Now that she was here, however, those monologues felt forced. As she rolled open Sledge’s tool wrap beside her and started examining the medical bed, she decided to take a different route than the one she’d planned.
“I want to build something,” she began, then wrinkled her nose at the half-hearted admission and started again. “Not just something. I want… I think I could build a place for people to live. I mean, with a lot of help, but… a village, or a town. You know?”
She sat up to peer at Eshe over the side of his bed and saw his eyebrow lift in question. It made the blood run up her neck and she had to fight the urge to backtrack.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” she said, and began searching the seamless panels of Eshe’s bed for the pinhole Doc Fetlock had shown her back when she’d asked him for help on how to do any of this. “I don’t think I told you about Kiln yet. This was back when it was just me, Ginger and Roach. All these ghouls who remembered what things were like before the bombs fell had come together and built a real, proper town. And it was all made from the ground up. No shoring up old ruins with whatever was laying around or living in tin shacks made from rusty sheet metal. It was all new, or as new as it could be. I’m pretty sure they cut the lumber themselves. It was done right.”
She found the pinhole near the foot of the bed and slid a narrow hex wrench through it. After a moment of resistance the access panel popped free. She set it aside and passed her Pip-Buck’s lamp across the void. A tightly organized network of tubes, conduit, and intricate circuit boards peered back at her. She spotted the tabs holding the larger side panel of the bed in place and reached to unclip them.
“I mean,” she continued, fighting a stubborn clip, “everyone in my Stable is an expert at something, and I really don’t think there are that many people in the wasteland who would turn their noses up at a chance to learn. That’s why they made the Stables in the first place. So that we can rebuild all the things we lost.”
Once she’d progressed all the way down the side panel, prying it away from the bed’s internal frame as each clip popped loose, it jumped free and tilted in her grip to tap the floor with a hollow thump. With an entire section of the AutoDoc fully exposed, she dragged the cumbersome shell of plastic against the wall and then went back to Eshe’s bedside.
She wrapped her feathers around his hoof and gave it a squeeze. She’d come dangerously close to asking him to be a part of the better world she pictured in her mind but managed to bite the words back. It wouldn’t be fair to him for her to stand here during his last hour, begging and bribing him to endure a little more discomfort so she could avoid it. She kept her feathers around his hoof as she bent down to work, knowing how much it meant to him to be touched by something other than an uncaring machine.
It was awkward and uncomfortable working with one wing, but she would manage.
Within the dense highways of medical infrastructure that made the AutoDoc a technological miracle ran the network of parallel black tubes Doc Fetlock had shown her to look for. Each of them ran into a control box halfway up the bed. Most were hydraulic lines that split off into the compact, blade-like articulating arms. Some fed sanitizing solution into a self-contained washing unit for the myriad surgical tools each arm would equip itself with from a rotating rack before emerging from the shell. What Aurora wanted was the inch-thick line that spun up the bed’s surgical tools with pressurized gas.
Wedging her free wing toward the line, she worked by feel alone until a sharp puff of cold gas spat from the brass fitting. Once it was disconnected, it was just a matter of tugging the line past anything that might slice into it and out of the machine. Then, once she had enough slack in the line to work with, she located the control board Doc Fetlock had instructed her to find and switched the AutoDoc to maintenance mode. For the first time since Eshe had been dragged down here and strapped down, the bed that had been his prison was no longer interested in responding to the condition of its patient.
She talked to Eshe about the rest of the world she’d seen so far, focusing on the good while tactfully avoiding the bad. She told him about Roach and how he’d once planted a forest just to obscure the road that used to lead to her Stable’s tunnel, and then about Ginger’s boutique and her dedication to quality work whether it sold or not.
As she found the compartment where the bed stowed an emergency oxygen mask, she told him about her first ridiculous attempts at learning how to fly. When she peeked over the bedside to look at him, his smile had broadened at her description of jumping back and forth off the cuts above the old highway after finally getting enough air under her wings to send her sailing into the dirt.
“Roach likes to say I should have practiced landings before takeoffs,” she chuckled.
Eshe gave her feathers two squeezes in agreement.
She smiled at that as she disconnected the oxygen line from the regulator hanging from the mask. A sharp fup of nitrogen escaped when she mated the fittings. She was done, but she kept talking to him like she wasn’t.
Sitting with her back against his bed and the nitrogen mask in her lap, she told him about how Julip had come into their little group and how every day with Roach had made her a little bit of a better person. Eshe already knew how she’d lost Ginger and she skipped that part of their lives, choosing instead to tell him about their night of genuinely embarrassing karaoke in Kiln and their first time seeing the night sky together. 
She burned minutes wondering aloud whether the solar array could be made to generate power again, or if there were other places of prewar industry waiting to be restored. She ventured that all it would take to jump-start a reconstruction was one reliable forge and a team of people to work it. New metal, she asserted, would lead to new tools. New tools for new construction. And with that would come security and a diminishing need for violence. As much as she still hated Autumn Song and Cider, they’d understood a better world would only come on the heels of sustained peace. But they’d taken shortcuts. Aurora believed it was possible to reach that goal without them.
When she began talking about the ocean, she felt Eshe give her feathers another squeeze. Just the one. Their agreed upon sign of negation. She looked down at the mask in her lap and considered pretending she hadn’t felt it, but he squeezed again and she reflexively squeezed back. Standing, she turned to him and saw the determination in his eyes when they dropped to the mask she was holding.
She felt the lump in her throat again, larger this time, and felt a shame she couldn’t make sense of. It was as if she’d been caught with something she shouldn’t have picked up. For a moment she felt like a little foal again and in a distant part of her mind she knew, if the ghouling went the same way Roach’s did, that this would be the first of many deathbeds she would stand beside.
“Um,” she said, her throat constricting around the syllable. She worked her jaw to keep her composure as she brought the mask up for him to see. “So, it’s not going to hurt. I’m going to walk you through it, okay?”
He squeezed her feathers twice. Her chin took on an annoying tremble.
“You’re going to breathe a little nitrogen. Your body… you won’t know you’re not getting air.” Her voice was shaking now. “You’ll just fall asleep and that’ll be it. Is that… is it okay if we do it that way?”
Two squeezes. 
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.” She was rambling now. “I’m sorry this is all I could do and I wish we could have known each other longer than this. You didn’t deserve this, Eshe. You didn’t deserve all the shit they–”
He clenched her feathers again and held on this time, quieting her. She wiped her eyes with her other wing and looked away for a brief moment, nodding in understanding. She pulled herself together enough to ask the only thing of him that was important.
“Are you ready to go?”
He watched her with damp eyes and, in defiance of the atrophy that had stolen away his future, he nodded.
With the mask held between them, she nodded back hard enough to loosen a few tangles of white mane and send them sliding over her shoulder. She ignored them as she gently fixed the mask around Eshe’s nose and mouth, then lifted his head and carefully pulled the elastic strap around. His breath fogged the clear plastic in shallow, slow blooms that he wanted her to stop. She leaned over his bed and pressed her lips to his forehead, then stood back with a set of feathers on the regulator valve.
“Sweet dreams, Eshe.”
With a turn and a gentle hiss, she sent him on his way.
He looked relieved when he nodded off. His eyelids drooped, his grip around her feathers loosened, and the puffs of fog within the mask she’d made for him grew faint, shallow, and finally stopped. 
Eshe Obiakolam was free. 







Tandy felt his passing like a cool breeze through her consciousness. In one moment Eshe had been here, inside the Dream, and she had begun to build the comforting walls of the little bedroom he had when he was very little. His mother’s cooking wafted in through the colorful fabric partition, the sounds of birds singing in the acacia trees, and the intangible comfort of knowing today was not a school day surrounded him like a familiar old blanket. And then, just as the last details of his favorite memory solidified around him, she felt him slip away.
She didn’t know how much time she spent standing perfectly still among the infinite halls of charred and sometimes still burning doors. Luna had never defined her Dream by the passage of minutes or hours and Tandy hadn’t seen much reason in changing it. So she stood there with her grief, tears that were not quite tears spilling quietly down her cheeks, until she trusted herself not to inadvertently hurl the thirty or so dreamers she was currently tending to into howling nightmares.
She attempted to measure Eshe’s death against the deaths of those three dreamers he had gotten killed so long ago, trying to find some sense of justice in the balance. To her dismay she found it did nothing to salve the ache in her being one bit. She did not think she liked Eshe all that much. He had been selfish, and persistent, and unwilling to accept the permanence of his situation. The blame for the deaths of Hickory, Mayberry, and Perl could be equally laid at their hooves as much as his, but Tandy knew they would not have died so early had they not met Eshe in the first place. 
Aurora wanted her to believe she had acted rashly when she chose to quarantine Eshe from communicating with his fellow dreamers, but Tandy did not think her actions to be anything but reasonable given the danger he posed. And yet, even without Aurora present to make the argument, Tandy found herself regretting his loss in a way she had not expected.
She lifted a wing to her face and mimicked the gesture of wiping away tears. She hoped he had liked his last, brief dream, and the knowledge that he would never be able to tell her if he did wrenched something inside her. 
She stood there among her ruined doors, crying because crying eased the worst of that undefinable pain, for what felt to her a very long time.
And then something unexpected happened.
A dreamer arrived. One she knew. One who knew her just as well and had spent many nights avoiding this place.
Her conflicted grief for Eshe’s passing flashed into clear, translucent rage for the mare who just arrived. This feeling she understood. This sensation she had stripped down to its component fibers until she knew each one by name. 
Primrose, the little tyrant, had fallen asleep. 
Balefire and ash roared by as billions of shattered, broken, burning doors lurched into violent motion around her like a galaxy of stars swirling away to expose the ravenous black hole at its center. The door to Primrose’s dream snapped to a halt in front of Tandy with enough force to stir her mane. It was a simple, domestic affair. The cheap sort of door that promised to be just wood veneer glued over an inexpensive honeycomb of cardboard filler. Even the knob was cheap. Just a brass plated thing that rattled at the slightest touch. It had been her bedroom door before Primrose had it and the rest of the world reduced to ash. 
Tandy reached for it with her wing, then stopped and gripped the entire door and its frame in her magic. She was going to make sure for as many more borrowed centuries Primrose stole for herself that she would never forget this night.
The door exploded inward with the sound like one of her precious balefire bombs, but Tandy still relished the scream that lit from Primrose's lungs. She made sure more than a realistic amount of the wooden shards bounced off the mare, slitting open a gash above her eye and another across one of her teats. Then she lit the full fury of her magic into the armoire against the far wall, detonating it as if it contained a live grenade. 
She wanted Primrose to feel terror. To believe in the slithering part of her primal brain that she was in real, mortal danger. Tandy advanced on Primrose with eyes blazing. She had planned for this night. She had built a nightmare for Primrose, murderer of an entire world and the mare who stole Tandy’s first true friend away from her, one that would haunt her waking days until her mind bent and broke beneath the weight of all the things she was about to see. But first Tandy would treat herself. She would drown Primrose in agony so vivid that the simple act of remembering what she endured would bring real, physical discomfort.
But when she bent her gaze down to Primrose she saw the mare was not cowering as she should be. Her scream had been brief and not of fear but of defiance. Of impudent anger for having been interrupted. And now, as the ragged edges of the Nightmare spilled across this foalhood bedroom like migrating blisters, that little tyrant dared open her mouth to give the architect an order.
“READ MY MIND!” she screamed, repeating herself over and over like a sapling trying to resist the hurricane. “READ. MY. MIND.”
Tandy scoffed at being challenged as if she were nothing more than a roadside attraction whose charade would come undone at the first whiff of scrutiny. It was her nature to know the minds of her dreamers. The simple fact of their existence within the Dream was what opened them up to her like so many well-worn books. She could no more ignore those new pages than she could wake up and walk among their world. They arrived and she knew them. It was as it always had been.
And so she knew what it was Primrose wanted her to know. In the fraction of an instant it took her to cross that phantom bedroom, latch her magic around the little mare’s neck, and press her face into the pink comforter of her bed with enough force to turn her words into gurgling nonsense, she knew the reason why Primrose had finally returned to the Dream.
The force pinning Primrose down vanished and Tandy backed away from her, fear and rage throwing her very being into chaos like two galaxies merging in a cacophony of colliding stars. 
“That’s right,” the little tyrant seethed, pushing herself off the bed in bold defiance, “you see what I have now. And you know I’ll use it.”
Tandy saw it. 
SOLUS, the lost pinnacle of Equestria’s short-lived journey into the void, had been found. She saw its slow, laconic descent from the peak of its orbit. The path it would take toward the field of dark satellites making their death march between the planet and its single moon. The Enclave had plucked it from the hundreds of moving points in the sky and were watching it turn back toward them, gathering momentum as it sped down a path that would send it on a fly-by near enough the surface for a brief communication window to exist. 
Tandy saw the freshly printed command sequence laying on the nightstand beside Primrose’s bed. It was the last thing she had looked at before finally putting an end to her chemically crutched insomnia. It was the same command sequence her very first Enclave believers within JetStream Aerospace had uploaded to SOLUS via the shuttle Cloudbreaker docked to the behemoth. The same code that allowed the raw balefire from the talismans a starry-eyed Apogee had unknowingly installed to be funneled toward Vhanna in a column of death.
The wood paneled walls, the single too-small window, the wobbly desk a young Cozy Glow did her homework at, all of it cracked apart into a jagged facade that rotated in deadly synchrony to level their narrow points at a mare whose sole purpose in the universe was to spread misery. It was desperation and it did not work. Primrose took a single, defiant step toward Tandy. 
The Dream crumbled in the space of a thought and they stood among the infinite burning doors.
“You,” Primrose continued as if never noticing the change, “will never lift so much as a feather against me again.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a fact.
“No nightmares. No bad memories.” She pressed her advance, walking Tandy backward among the doors. “If you so much as have me relive a headache, I will see to it that every last Stable on this continent is reduced to a fog of its component molecules. Do you understand me?”
Tandy grew cold. She saw the list. More than one hundred Stables, most dead and dark while a numerous few were alive and ignorant of anything beyond their great cogged doors. Points on a map which, if all were targeted by SOLUS, would reduce the wasteland to a sea of cinders.
It was not entirely a bluff. There was a dark, black corner of Primrose’s mind that yearned to pull that trigger even without provocation. It begged to reset a world that had once again grown complicated, independent, and beyond her control. Were it not for the calm, analytical part of that tyrant which understood the unlikely odds anything would survive an attack of that size, she might have authorized the orders already.
However mad with power she was, Primrose was not insane. She saw no benefit in ruling a dead world, but that would not stop her from meting out minor apocalypses to keep Tandy collared.
The guardian of Luna’s Dream bowed her head. 
“Yes ma’am. I understand.”
> Chapter 48: Desperate Times
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Not just something. I want… I think I could build a place for people to live. I mean, with a lot of help, but… a village, or a town…”
Fiona pretended to inspect her talons as she listened, her ear along with the rest of her body leaned against the cool concrete near the window. She swallowed, her throat thick as she fought the hounding guilt urging her to pass the time doing anything other than eavesdropping. She told herself that it was okay. This was what she did. She reasoned that maybe someday this could be a story she could share with the rest of the wasteland once she rebuilt her radio station. But the longer she listened the more that thin justification fell apart.
Roach and Julip were off murmuring privately to one another somewhere down the corridor. She stole a glance back toward them and watched Roach for a brief moment. His low light vision has been serviceable enough for him to navigate the dim halls of this… whatever this place was, but the fact that he wasn’t interested in the dark windows surrounding him told her he hadn’t seen the things moving behind the glass. 
It was everything she could do to keep her back leg from taking on a nervous bounce as she waited for Aurora to finish what she’d come to do. It was the flavor of selfish impatience that grew out of fear, and Fiona never knew herself to spook easily. Her gaze moved toward the darkened room opposite the one Aurora had gone into, with its black window staring back at her like some monstrous, unblinking eye. The glass had been treated with some kind of filter, she thought, or maybe it was polarized. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that it gave the thing behind it an added layer of wrongness she didn’t have any reference for. 
The word that rose in her mind was spider, and it was wholly inadequate. Dishonest. Forcing herself to admit what it was felt like swallowing hot metal. It lifted the pale white equivalent of a leg, dropped onto the dark smeared floor, and pulled itself forward an inch or two until the next of its legs could repeat the process. It didn’t know Fiona was watching it. It couldn’t. It was only a ribcage. The bones had taken up the role of locomotion as tumescent knots of muscle and sinew twitched and contracted along its spine, no body to worry about keeping alive anymore. It pawed along aimlessly like a caterpillar, showing no signs of awareness beyond the drive to pull itself forward. 
Fiona glanced back at Roach and watched as he bumped his shoulder into Julip’s as if to reassure her. He hadn’t seen the things lurking in the other cells. Hadn’t pieced together why the soldiers in power armor had died at their posts. Why the staff on this level had thrown themselves into the killing field of the auto turret down the hall. Why the sign outside this dead end called it an observation unit and not a cell block.
She jumped when the decontamination cycle kicked on and did her best to compose herself before the door slid open. When it did, Aurora didn’t meet any of their eyes. She just stood there under the last arch, her mane and coat dripping with rapidly evaporating cleanser, her jaw working to spit out the words trapped in her throat.
When she did speak, her voice was soft and unsteady. “I don’t know how to take out the tubes.”
Fiona looked at Roach and Julip and saw the blank confusion in their eyes. Then she leaned toward the lit window and understood. 
“Show me,” she said, stepping into the decontamination chamber with a gentleness in her voice she hadn’t used in… she didn’t know if she ever had. It felt foreign to her own ears, but Aurora didn’t seem to notice. She backed up to give Fiona room, eyes fixed on the wet floor. 
The decontamination cycle was just as unpleasant as it had been at the elevator. When it was over, she followed Aurora into the room. The zebra’s – Eshe’s body lay perfectly still in the old bed’s scooped padding. Aurora made her way back to the side of the bed whose internals stood exposed, a wing reaching out to touch him before stopping inches from his body. She knew how to disconnect him, Fiona realized, but she was afraid of doing it wrong. Of hurting him even though he was so clearly gone.
“I want to bury him,” Aurora said, her throat choked with shame. 
“Sure,” she agreed. “That’s a nice idea.”
Aurora gave a shaky nod, the sudden movement sending a few tears sprinkling onto the bed. She watched her hands move first to the tubes in his mouth, then the needles taped to his forelegs, then looked away when Fiona removed the rest. She scooped him out of the bed with one wing like she remembered her mother doing to her when she was little and was surprised at how little his body weighed. Gently, and careful to make sure Aurora could see what she was doing, Fiona wrapped him in her feathers to hold him at her side. 
Turning back to the door, Fiona opened her other wing and touched Aurora’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go find a place he’d like.”







The sun had just begun its long westward descent when they left Mariposa behind, and it seemed to Aurora that the winds had softened some as they made their ascent. 
Before they’d climbed the narrow stairs back to the surface, Roach had asked them to wait while he and Julip checked the barracks for something to wrap Eshe’s body in. They’d come back with a dull cotton bedsheet taken from the personnel level laundry, and Aurora numbly watched as Fiona carefully swept the old fabric around him. She looked away when the swaddling cloth wrapped his face, reminding her too sharply of the mask she’d fixed over his mouth. 
Now, with the last living survivor of Mariposa bundled safely in Fiona’s arms, they coasted in silence below an overcast sky.
It was well into evening when Julip asked the group to start looking for a place to make camp. The request jarred Aurora back into the present and she was surprised by how different the landscape below them looked now. Land poisoned and wind scarred by the bomb that fell on Ponyville had transitioned back to the familiar patchwork of browns, yellows, and occasional greenery of shrubs and the odd thicket of trees. Flying beside her with Roach weighing her down, Julip’s normally leaf green coat was covered in dark patches of sweat. 
Aurora didn’t need to ask to know Julip had been overextending herself so they could cover more ground. It was written across the mare’s face, and she’d done it so Aurora would have more uninterrupted time with her own thoughts. She met Julip’s straining gaze and nodded her thanks. 
“Let’s set down there.” Fiona pointed her beak toward a silver crescent of still water maybe twenty miles off her left wingtip. “It looks pretty.”
They banked toward the shallow lake and leaned into an easy, gentle glide, its features resolving with more detail as they drew near. Low granite cliffs buttressed the water’s edge, curving into one another around the feeder river’s inlet and outlet. The faded line of what had once been a gravel backroad followed the crescent’s outer bend and along it still stood several dilapidated luxury cabins. 
They slid through the air above the water, and Aurora frowned at the old timber beams poking out from the water’s mirror surface near each cabin. Her curiosity didn’t go unnoticed, and Roach explained that they’d been a sort of walkway above the water where boats were kept. She nodded without absorbing the new knowledge and turned her attention back to the passing scenery.
Rather than land at one of the cabins where they agreed it was likely they might encounter any number of current occupants with the proclivity to bite, slash, or greet them with gunfire, Fiona proposed the make camp at one of the sightseeing outlooks perched along the hiking trails weaving their way through the tree-topped granite cliffs. They agreed and quickly selected a clearing along the ridge’s inner, wooded bend.
Hooves and paws grazed past the old iron rail along the cliff’s edge, barely missing the coin operated viewers still peering down across the water. The dust kicked up by their landing wafted away on a lazy breeze over a pair of bench-style picnic tables, one of which Julip slumped into as soon as Roach had dismounted. 
Aurora found herself looking past the overlook toward the line of tall pines whose roots somehow still managed to pull life up from the rocky soil. A trailhead marker indicated the beginning of one of the gravel hiking paths they’d seen in flight, but a thick bed of gold and brown needles obscured its direction. She wanted to know how so many living trees could survive so close together. Why this forest didn’t seem thin and sickly like all the others. Maybe, she thought, it was just an illusion. Or maybe, like the grove Discord had cultivated to isolate himself, these pines had some of the old Everfree in them.
“What do you think?”
She blinked. Fiona stood beside her now, her burden transferred from her arms to the scoop of one massive wing. Aurora knew what she was really asking, and so she gave herself time to consider. She didn’t take long. This place was alive, uncomplicated, and beautiful. He’d have loved it.
She picked out a natural depression in the forest floor where a trio of healthy, thriving white pines stood in silent sentry. Fiona unwrapped the cloth from Eshe’s body and set him down among the roots as gently as she might a sleeping foal. As the trees murmured overhead, Aurora considered saying a few words before they buried him. Everything that came to mind sounded cheap and contrived. An interruption to the natural sounds of an open world Eshe once dreamed of returning to. 
She bent down, scooped a wingful of pine needles and rich soil up from the forest floor, and tipped them across Eshe’s body. Then she climbed back up the depression for more, and the rest of her friends joined her in the burial.
When they were finished, they made their way back to the overlook and made camp along the treeline. Though she was physically and emotionally exhausted, Aurora helped Julip clear the area of dry needles while Fiona and Roach gathered wood for their fire. As if to spite the overcast, the setting sun managed to color the clouds in shades of pink that steadily deepened to rich lavender. 
It was nearly dark by the time Roach and Fiona emerged from the trees with what seemed half the forest lugged beneath the gryphon’s wings. Julip had dozed off in the meantime and she lay curled on her side next to the ring of stones she and Aurora had built. She woke with a weary groan at the clunking of firewood dropping onto the granite and managed to stay awake just long enough to move a few yards away when she saw Aurora using two sets of pliers to pry the lead bullet out of one of her rifle’s unfired rounds. She tipped the gunpowder out into a nook of tinder at the base of the neatly arranged logs, then retrieved the old spark igniter from Sledge’s tool wrap. She only had to give the little flint two quick scrapes before the gunpowder ignited with a flash of light and smoke, and the pile of sticks and dry needles sheltered by the cone of firewood had no choice but to catch.
“Probably didn’t need the gunpowder,” Roach murmured wryly beside her.
She offered a tired smirk in return, watching the fire crawl along the tinder and up the inside of the logs. “Says you.”
Fiona snorted from across the ring and carefully used a stick to pry open air gaps to keep the fire from smoking too much. 
Aurora smiled up at her, then let the expression fade as she watched the fire grow. Soon it was crackling and putting off enough heat that they each scooted back in turn. She slid her saddlebags a little closer to her hip, unconsciously comforting herself as the firelight flickered.
“I need to talk to you all about something.” She fed a stick into the fire and watched the flames lap around it. “I think my ghouling is headed in the wrong direction.”
A stillness enveloped their camp like an oppressive, physical thing. She didn’t look to gauge their reactions. 
“I started paying attention to it after I flew back home with Fiona. Little things set me off that never did before. One second I’m fine, the next I’m pissed off and I don’t know why. It’s gotten worse since we went to Mariposa, and on top of that I just… blacked out for a few seconds while we were down there.” She waited a beat to gauge whether or not she could trust herself to keep talking and found she could. “If I start turning into one of those things, I want you all to know that I’m going to take care of it myself.”
The uneasy exhalations and shuffles around the fire were expected, and she could tell by the way Roach had begun clearing his throat that he was preparing himself to interrupt. She spoke again before he could.
“Hopefully Doc Fetlock has some new ideas for slowing the worst of it down, but I’m not…”
“Aurora,” Roach murmured.
She spoke over him. “...going to get my hopes up. I’ll talk to my dad afterward. That might take a while, so I’ll…”
“Aurora,” Roach repeated, this time leaning over to place a hoof on her shoulder. 
This time she stopped just long enough to glare at him. “Can I finish?”
He returned her glare with a practiced expression of supreme exasperation. “No, because you need to listen. You’re not going feral.”
Her frown stayed where it was, but it changed. 
Roach took a deep breath, blew it out, and got up to sit down beside her. She watched him reach around her and drag her saddlebags in front of him. As he talked, he began rummaging through the contents.
“You have been temperamental, moody, and short-fused,” he said over the clatter of loose rifle cartridges and caps, “and nobody in their right mind would say otherwise.”
Aurora’s frown softened with growing uncertainty as she watched him shut the flap of one saddlebag and flip open the other. “That’s my whole point. I’ve never been this–”
He stopped rummaging for a moment and cut her off. “Aurora, you’ve just been through the worst three weeks of your life. You lost a limb. You almost lost your home, and Ginger died saving it and you. And then, when you’ve barely begun to recover from all of that, you came all the way to Mariposa to fulfill Eshe’s wish to die.”
He put a hoof around her shoulder and squeezed. “I’ve seen ponies go feral. I would tell you if I thought you were slipping. You’re not. You’re pissed off and distracted because you have been trying to cope with things that no one is meant to cope with.”
“Roach, I know what exhaustion feels like. This isn’t–”
“You’re used to physical exhaustion. Hard manual labor. Double and triple shifts. I’m not so old that I can’t remember how bone tired I felt after a sixty hour week shoveling dirt and digging up plants.” He turned back to her open saddlebag and resumed his search within it. “This isn’t your body saying it’s tired. This is your brain hitting a wall.”
She glanced up at Fiona and saw the not so subtle agreement with Roach’s words in the way she stared back. Turning to Julip, she saw the same small, patient smile curling the mare’s lip. Aurora frowned down at her hooves and tried racking her brain for something that might reinforce her certainty that she’d begun slipping toward the raging, ravenous existence of ferality.
Then she stopped when Roach smiled, dipped his head toward something at the bottom of her saddlebag, and emerged with her canteen hanging from its strap between his teeth. Duly chagrined, she took the container and unscrewed its cap. The water was cool against her tongue and she realized she hadn’t eaten or drank anything since dawn. She hadn’t realized she was starving until her stomach wrapped itself around that sip.
She reached over to pull back her saddlebags, hoping to find something to eat inside that she’d forgotten, but Roach had already pulled out the metal container he’d gotten from his visit to Stable-Tec Headquarters and was nosing the lid open. Beneath a foam layer that held vials of preserved medication and an empty autoinjector to dispense them hid a shallow compartment containing a metal cylinder and a drab green vacuum sealed pouch. The cylinder was labeled Purified Water (32oz) and the pouch read simply, MRE Emergency Ration (Menu D-7).
Roach lifted up the pouch and held it out to her. “You’re in charge of cooking,” he said, his words muddled by clenched teeth. When she took it from him, he added, “Believe me, you’re going to be okay.”
As she tore the pouch open and tipped half a dozen smaller pouches out in front of her, she discovered to her surprise that she believed him. Things weren’t perfect. They weren’t even great. But she felt calmer than she had felt in weeks. Settled. She wasn’t going to devolve into a mindless, howling monster. The dark halls of Mariposa were behind her. Eshe was at peace and her Stable, damaged and carved open by the bomb that ripped Ginger from her life, was having new life breathed into it by their wasteland neighbors. 
Absently, she dragged a feather over the packet, listening to it crinkle softly as she reached inwardly to feel the wound Ginger’s death had left on her heart. It still ached. It would, she thought, for years. But she could touch that spot without breaking, if she was gentle.
It didn’t take long after pouring water over the little chemical heater for the MRE to puff up and issue a steady jet of steam from a little cut-out vent. When Aurora retrieved the meal packet and tried half a spoonful of two-hundred year old beef stroganoff, she found she was able to laugh through the jaw-locking flavor of salt. They all took a turn at the ration, each sharing their own brand of revulsion at what the old world thought might qualify as food in the far future. She watched Roach and Julip laugh at Fiona’s exaggerated gagging, her wings twisting open and freezing in strange poses as she feigned poisoning, and Aurora felt reminded of the morning they’d all shared between the Pleasant Hills and Fillydelphia.
Over a meal of seared mole rat they’d reassured Julip even though she’d broken her oath to the Enclave, she had allies in the wasteland. It had been the day Julip truly joined their little group. Now, sitting here, taking back the meal packet from a grimacing yet still jovial Fiona, Aurora knew this was the same moment for their large friend. The gryphon, her shoulders skinned and peppered with fresh scabs from forcing herself down Mariposa’s narrow stairs, had bled for them. She saved Aurora’s life. She carried Eshe’s body.
She gave Fiona a subtle nod as she took the meal packet from her and tossed it into the fire. For as long as Fiona wanted, she would always have a place among them.
They passed around the rest of their water to rinse out the aftertaste of Menu D-7 and, with the fire painting them in dancing golds and reds, they shared bits of who they were by telling stories and sharing gossip. Aurora’s canteen became a sort of totem to determine whose turn it was. After Roach had taken a swig, he talked about how his late husband’s “proper” Canterlot upbringing had made him hilariously unequipped to pick up on innuendo and, once it was explained, he would blush and sputter until someone showed mercy and changed the subject. Several colorful examples followed, the last of which having taken place in the presence of Saffron’s aging mother which wrung a barking laugh out of Fiona.
Julip drank from the canteen and carried the theme along with a personal story shortly after she’d been recruited by the Enclave. After their first few weeks of being mustered from their bunks at all hours of the night, running around the parade grounds until their legs shook, and shouted down by what could generously be said to be a borderline sadistic drill instructor, she and her fellow cadets had decided payback was in order. Their sergeant, known to rarely go anywhere without his dented yellow thermos of tar black coffee, often slammed his thermos against their barrack wall to announce his presence. A plan was formed, and it succeeded in spectacular form.
“It’s not hard to find boner pills in New Canterlot,” Julip said, grinning over the canteen. “Whoever got them into his coffee should get a fucking medal.”
Aurora noticed Roach was lying on his belly now, hooves tucked into his chest. He caught her gaze and she arched her brow, then stifled a grin as the luminescent green glow beneath his chitin brightened.
“If I ever get back on the air,” Fiona said, eyes wide with shameless glee, “you and I are doing an interview on that.”
“I’m not done. Sarge ended up getting the last laugh. We thought he’d leave us alone for the day while he nursed his aching dick, but the fucker just pretended like nothing was wrong.” She was grinning with embarrassment now. “A bunch of us got pulled out of formation that morning to do push ups, and it is not easy to keep count when you’re eye to eye with the angry beanpole on every upstroke.”







It was closing in on midnight by the time their fireside conversation settled into fireside yawns. There had been a few moments where Fiona thought they’d all avoid discussing anything serious and just settle into the comfortable cadence of embarrassing stories from their pasts punctuated by long gaps of silence as they all stared into the crackling fire. Then Aurora had looked up, fixed Fiona with a meaningful gaze, and asked her if she would tend the fire while she took Roach and Julip on a short walk to somewhere they could speak in private. 
The exclusion stung for a fleeting moment before she reminded herself that she was still new to their small clutch of companions, and the conversation Aurora’s expression signaled she wanted to have was the same one Fiona had suggested during their chat yesterday. She gave them a lazy salute with her fire poker and watched them file down the old walking trail that bent toward Eshe’s grave. 
Whether by accident or ignorance, they hadn’t quite moved out of Fiona’s range of hearing before Aurora started into a faltering, uncomfortable admission that she was barely holding herself together. That Ginger’s final act of saving her from the bomb haunted her. That she felt like she hadn’t deserved that second chance because, in her mind, she was the cause of all the misery and grief that dogged them since leaving Stable 10.
Fiona loaded some deadwood onto the fire, letting the hot sizzle of flames leaping up bone-dry bark drown out the rest. It wasn’t a story she needed to drop eaves on. 
They returned to camp a while later, Aurora leading her friends in a V-pattern like the world’s smallest flock of birds. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, but the sheepish smile she wore when she met Fiona’s gaze showed just how much weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She’d done the terrifying thing and told her two closest friends about the darkness she was wrestling with and had come out the other side intact and unjudged. Fiona returned her smile and went back to pestering the coals.
Julip was the first to nod off. She lay against Roach, her face nestled into the nook behind his shoulder. Aurora’s head took on a low bobbing motion as she fought to stay awake, the gentle comfort of good conversation something she’d desperately needed and didn’t want to let go of just quite yet. Fiona watched her from across the flickering coals and failed to suppress a smile when Aurora set her chin atop her crossed hooves and nodded off.
Fiona lay on her side to allow the dimming fire to warm her underbelly, one arm propping up her head while her free hand stirred the coals with a charred stick. She watched the sparks dance up along invisible thermals, smiling against her palm as they winked out.
“I’ll take watch tonight,” Roach murmured.
She regarded him, seeing the exhaustion written across the sag of his eyelids, and shook her head. “You need rest.”
He grunted. “Perks of being a ghoul. I really don’t.”
Fiona thought about conceding the point, and her gaze shifted to where Aurora snored quietly beside him. There had been real worry in her eyes when she’d seen how weary Roach’s efforts inside Mariposa had made him. 
“You burned out your batteries back there,” she half-guessed, and judging by the way Roach grimaced just then, she’d guessed right. “Sleep will help with that, right?”
He sighed, stared at the fire, then nodded. “It won’t hurt. A trip to Kiln would be better. Get some fresh rads in me.”
When he looked up at her and offered a weak smile, she knew he wasn’t serious about the detour.
“I’ll be back to normal in a couple of days,” he reassured her. “Sooner, maybe, if I let you take watch.”
 She twirled the stick between her fingers, drawing loops in the air with its smoking tip. “Look at you, with all the good ideas.” She shot him a wink and laid the stick over the glowing coals. Tiny flames bloomed along its surface. “I promise I won’t dip your hoof in warm water while you sleep.”
He wrinkled his nose at her. 
She waved away the implied question. “You need hands for it to make sense. Go to sleep.”
Roach murmured something like thanks, and Fiona watched him delicately roll to his side without disturbing the mare using him for a pillow. After a few subtle adjustments Roach and Julip lay back to belly, his head settled against the cool soil and hers warming into the soft chitin along his neck.
Fiona watched as they slipped into their own tempos of deep, rhythmic breathing and wondered how it had come to be that these two ponies from incompatible backgrounds had come to trust one another the way Roach and Julip had. 
She was tempted to reach out and give Aurora’s shoulder a shake so she could ask. It took some effort to shoo that thought away. Collecting stories was an addiction she rarely didn’t feed, and a mare who’d grown up on a steady diet of Enclave rhetoric about blood purity falling in love with a changeling whose body had been permanently altered by balefire couldn’t be anything but a good yarn. She scratched the ridge of her beak, aware that she’d been watching them a little longer than they might appreciate, and let her attention wander back to the dimming embers.
The night was cool, and though there wasn’t much of a breeze up on their clifftop camp, the chilly air was quick to press in as the fire waned. Her ear twitched toward Aurora’s first shuddered breath and, looking toward the dappled pegasus, Fiona pushed herself up and padded over to the loose pile of firewood. She sat down a little closer to where Aurora lay and started laying wood out across the coals. A few minutes later the fire was crackling once more with renewed warmth. 
She absently hummed a tune to herself as she watched the fire, listening to the sounds of small creatures scurrying through the nearby pines. Something avian piped somewhere down in the lake valley, and it called up an old memory of when her mom had come home with a couple of the little rockhoppers that pestered about the seaside cliffs of Griffinstone. She’d grilled them right there on the family hearth, and they’d pretended the sickly little birds were a feast. 
Her stomach grumbled as if trying to compare this one night on an empty belly with those years of slow starvation. She poked the fire and watched the embers twirl up into the dark, but her gut growled again as if discarding the MRE in the fire had somehow offended it. 
She spotted Aurora’s canteen sticking halfway out of the saddlebags she was using as a pillow and, carefully, fished the sloshing container out from under her cheek. She winced when the strap caught on something in the pack and dragged some of the contents out onto the dirt. A few loose rifle cartridges, an old holotape, and an old book. Aurora sucked in a slow breath, shifted a little, and puttered out a soft exhalation. Trying to press everything back into the bags would just wake her, so Fiona gathered the ammunition and unlabeled tape into a neat pile beside it.
The book might have also ended up a part of that pile if she hadn’t swapped the canteen to her opposite hand and picked it up in the other. She gave herself a mental slap on the wrist and cracked the cover. Then she clapped a hand over her beak to stifle a laugh.


This journal is the sole property of TEAK BIRCHBARK
and should not be peeked at by ANYONE!


It was a foal’s diary. And if the yellowed pages and creaky binding weren’t evidence of its age, the neatly printed dates in the margin attested to its prewar provenance. What was Aurora doing carrying around a dead kid’s notebook? 
She skimmed through a few random pages out of curiosity and found herself surprised, and not for the first time, by the naive innocence people showed during those times. Teak had been a teenager or maybe a little younger, but her neat looping letters complaining about bullies and moving to a new city and the unfairness of a mother who wouldn’t let her get her ear pierced weren’t that far removed from the office emails and corporate memos still scattered throughout the wasteland’s plentiful ruins. Ponies, gryphons, zebras… it didn’t really matter who wrote the words. They all looked at the little inconveniences of life, the perceived slights of others, or a minor delay in some seemingly deserved luxury as a great crime committed against them that was worth picking up a pen and committing to history.
Fiona was almost ready to slip the journal back into Aurora’s open pack when she noticed the entry jotted in the margin. Different handwriting in fresh ink. 

She took us above the clouds last night. I think I should have been more afraid than I was. She only just learned how to fly, but she’s strong. Instinctual. There’s an entire universe up there. I’m pretty sure she saw me crying and for some reason that isn’t bothering me.

The entry wasn’t signed, but Fiona had a good enough idea who’d written it. The unicorn Aurora had gone off to save had nearly weighed them down enough to send the pair crashing into the side of the Bluff, and even after their near miss Ginger had looked almost disappointed to be back on the ground. Fiona could still remember how Ginger kept watching Aurora on their walk down from the peak with reverence mixed with a dollop of lust. She read the entry again, feeling strange knowing she was reading something that had been written in the same timeframe in which the three of them briefly crossed paths, then flipped through the pages until another rogue paragraph appeared in the margin.

Roach spotted what was apparently a Sparkle-Cola bottling plant way back when and that got Aurora on a long tangent asking why we use caps for currency when the tools to make new ones are sitting there for anyone to take. I tried to tell her that there isn’t anyone left who could fix up those machines and I swear that mare took it as a personal challenge. I don’t know whether that’s annoying or endearing… but it is Aurora. She wants to fix everything, even if it’s impossible.

Fiona glanced at where Aurora slept and thought about what she’d told Eshe. Several pages further along, tucked away next to an entry where Teak sheepishly admitted to lying to her friend about an exam she hadn’t passed, was another diagonal scrawl.

I think we woke Julip last night. Well, Aurora did with my help. Probably should have warned her but then it wouldn’t have been as fun. I worked out if I clamp down on my magic just right, I can make it vibrate. Aurora practically doused the coals…

She dutifully turned to the next page without reading the rest, though she did crease the corner.
Ginger’s entries were all undated and they ranged from casual observation to the intimate with no real pattern to either. The more she read, the more Fiona wondered if Ginger ever intended for Aurora or anyone else to see what was effectively an evolving series of snapshots into their blooming relationship. Here and there she found short, one-sentence entries. Factoids about Aurora, like how she’d grown up in a place where gardens were also graveyards, or notes on the little nuances Aurora expressed without thinking, like how she used her wings to gesture more often than she did her hooves. 
Longer entries were reserved for more meaningful reflections; her doubts of finding an ignition talisman in time, a nagging insecurity about leaving her cutie mark uncovered, and a deep-seated fear that she wasn’t equipped to help Aurora process the barrage of hardships the wasteland was throwing her way. There was a long, rambling entry that filled the margins of two separate pages where Ginger had spiraled while she waited for word that Aurora had been found. Then, a page later, an orderly but no less strained admission that she didn’t know what she should say when Aurora woke to find her hind leg had to be amputated.

I don’t want her to think this was her fault, Ginger wrote, but I know she’s going to. For a while. I don’t normally agree with anything the Enclave does, but it’s a good thing they took Ironshod out of Fillydelphia. She still gets shaken up thinking about what she had to do to Gallow. I don’t think she’d try to kill Ironshod, but…  best to get her home before this ugly world does any more damage.

Aurora sniffed in her sleep, wrinkled her nose back and forth, and murmured something unintelligible as she settled.

I’m going to ask the Enclave for an ignition talisman. They’ve cleaned out enough failed Stables to have one to spare. I don’t know how Aurora will feel about it but I don’t see another choice. We’re running out of time and I don’t think we can go back to Stable-Tec HQ a second time without Elder Coronado or Primrose noticing. If the Enclave can just give us the talisman, it’ll be over. Done. She’ll be able to put all of this in the past and I can just… take care of her. I think I can swallow my pride for that.

Fiona flipped through the next several pages and found the entries stopped there. Something heavy and complicated settled into her stomach and, with a frown, she closed the journal and carefully slid it back into the saddlebag beneath Aurora’s cheek. 
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been that. She knew how Ginger had died but she had assumed there would be another entry for some reason. Something that more clearly laid out all of Ginger’s hopes and dreams in neat and poetic sentences that felt like a proper ending. Only that wasn’t what had happened. Ginger hadn’t known what was really coming. All she knew was that she’d secured the talisman Aurora had come to the wasteland in search of and thanks to it their future together was secure. They would finally be able to stop and breathe and get to know each other beyond what good sex and mutual trauma had taught them already.
And that had been stripped away by a single betrayal. All the potential Ginger had dreamed of, snuffed out.
Fiona fed another log onto the fire and stared at Aurora as the firelight momentarily brightened. Aurora stretched her legs a little in her sleep, allowing the warmth to bathe the whorls of healed scars down her belly. She felt an irrational urge to reach out and touch the mare. To comfort her somehow. And in the same moment she felt the admonishments rise up in her like a spring. What the hell had she been about to do? Pat the grieving mare on the head and say there there, it’s okay? 
She rubbed the ridge of her beak and turned back to the fire, amazed at how she could handle Aurora’s storm of emotions in Mariposa so well and utterly fumble her own in one short day. 







When Roach woke, it came in that glorious easing back to consciousness he remembered enjoying before the bombs fell and Saturday mornings still actually meant something. He breathed deep, filling his lungs with the chill of fresh morning air and the scent of Julip’s mane. Either she’d spooned into him during the night or he’d come to her. Whichever it had been, it made for a wonderful balance of warmth against his belly and cool along his spine. Who knew sleeping on bare dirt could be so comfortable?
He lay there for a time, listening to Julip’s soft breathing lacing along the steady whisper of rustling pines. They had spent several nights like this not too long ago during their trek up north, using the surviving forests as cover as they picked their way back from Fillydelphia. The solace of the woods and the knowledge that they were probably the only two people within a day’s walk of wherever they camp had afforded them the rare luxury of true privacy. They’d been bored. Pent up. And, as Julip had once so poignantly argued, “Why the fuck not?”
Roach wore the tiniest smile at that. They’d both been monitoring the pulse of their admittedly spontaneous relationship and both of them agreed it wasn’t love in the romantic sense of the word, but they’d grown undeniably close in a way casual friendships didn’t. Julip had taken a liking to the phrase friends with benefits, though they both agreed that fell short too.
He pressed his nose back into Julip’s mane to suppress his own flustered chuckle. It had been a long time since he’d encountered the pony equivalent of a social blind spot. Queen Chrysalis hadn’t exactly set up lesson plans on casual interspecies sex for her drones. He grinned, inhaled her scent, and enjoyed this for what it was. Maybe more would come from it later. Maybe they’d agree to stop. Either would work for him as long as she was happy. He supposed that was really the only thing he needed to worry about.
The thump and hiss of a fresh log being laid over coals expanded the bubble of his attention out from Julip, and he wondered if Fiona might have experience with this style of relationship. 
Cracking one of his pale eyes, he found her seated across the fire ring where she’d been when they’d all gone to sleep. Lazy flames lapped along the bark of the single log she’d set over the coals, the firelight dim and translucent against the usual bank of morning-lit clouds. Fiona had been in the process of nestling Aurora’s canteen into the cool side of the coals, but her eyes had been on the pair of them even before he’d opened his. 
“Good morning,” the gryphon chirped, with an unmistakable emphasis on the first word.
Roach sucked in another breath and relished a bit longer how much better he felt compared to the day before. “Morning,” he rumbled, careful not to talk directly into Julip’s ear.
Fiona’s eyes darted toward something near Julip’s legs, then smirked and returned to whatever she’d been doing to Aurora’s canteen. “Need a minute to take care of that?”
He frowned, suddenly worried something was wrong with Julip, and felt an electric shiver run down his groin when he shifted a little to prop himself up. He grimaced and lay back down, fully aware now of the piece of anatomy pressed past Julip’s hind legs and two centuries too old to care about it.
“It’s more scared of you than you are of it,” he said, trying for humor. “Take a walk if it bothers you. I’ll have everything stowed by the time you’re back.”
Fiona arched a brow at him. “I’m not complaining,” she said, her voice taking on an unvarnished chuckle as her eyes shifted down to Julip’s intertwined legs. “I mean, congratulations.”
He rolled his eyes, glad the morning light was here to camouflage the rush of warmth running up his neck. He pulled his hips back with an involuntary grunt, gracelessly using Julip’s body to hide the spectacle. “What’s in the canteen?”
“Nothing for you, ya spoilsport,” Fiona muttered with feigned disappointment, though her expression brightened a beat later. “Coffee, actually. Assuming this stuff’s any good.”
Roach hummed his approval. “What brand?”
Fiona half-turned to retrieve a torn open foil packet. “From the fine people at Instant Hyphen Dark Roast, so sayeth the foil.”
She held up the nondescript packet as proof, and Roach allowed himself a sad little groan. Fiona responded by balling a fist and making a fussy foal sound while twisting it in front of her eye. The gesture didn’t exactly translate to anything Roach was familiar with, but he could at least tell she was mocking him.
“Sorry,” she prodded, tossing the packet onto the crackling log, “the Steel Rangers were all out of gourmet.”
Roach sighed into Julip’s mane, earning a soft groan and a not too unpleasant shift from Julip. “My kingdom for a can of Blue Yak.”
“I’m going to pretend that’s some expensive brand of pre-apocalypse coffee and not you pining over an extinct species.”
He wrinkled his nose. “They really went extinct?”
Fiona shrugged without answering and before Roach could think of a compelling reason to probe the topic further, Julip had begun her waking ritual of stretching all four of her legs until her hooves trembled and clicked back together. She swallowed a couple of times, her jade eyes blinking open occasionally as she gradually accepted the fact that she was awake, then bent her neck back a little until she felt her head touching his chin. 
He didn’t need to see her expression to know the smile that was there. He just tipped his muzzle down and kissed the spot behind her left ear. A tendency of his that was quickly becoming a morning ritual.
“Morning,” she murmured. Then her tail flicked, ran up against him, and she craned her neck around to look at him more fully. 
She lifted a quizzical brow. It was morning, and so he shrugged as if to ask her whether she’d be surprised to learn water was wet.
Later, when his lizard brain grudgingly accepted that this would not be a carnal sunrise, he and Julip joined Fiona around the fire to pass around the coffee she’d brewed. It was too hot and had an acidic bite to it that tasted like anything but coffee, but for two centuries and change it wasn’t inedible. By the time the coffee made its third lap around the rippling embers Roach felt the caffeine-assisted clarity they wanted. 
They passed around the canteen, sipped and chatted about everything and nothing. Julip told a story of some innocent trouble she’d avoided as a filly, and Fiona wondered aloud whether any other gryphons had migrated across the ocean since she left home. Whether it was true or just something she felt compelled to say to reassure Fiona, Julip claimed to have heard about some small gryphon colonies along Equestria’s western coast. Fiona sipped at the canteen, her expression thoughtful, then simply nodded with a noncommittal smile as she passed the coffee to Roach.
He held the warm canteen between both hooves, its lack of flat sides another subtle indicator that it wasn’t designed for earth ponies or, in his case, wingless changelings, and suspected Fiona might still have an unhealed wound where she once had family and friends who looked like she did. Gryphons were rare to come by in the Equestrian wasteland, at least. Whether that was different in Vhanna or any of the myriad smaller, forgotten nations farther south was anyone’s guess.
He made a mental note to gently dissuade Julip from any ideas she might have of searching out other gryphons on Fiona’s behalf. Probably she hadn’t thought of it at all, but it was good to get ahead of it if she had. Roach had more than once been on the receiving end of an unasked for “reunion” by someone who believed they were doing something kind, and each time it had been exceedingly uncomfortable for him and the other unfortunate changeling. It had felt as if their self-assigned matchmaker expected them to become best of friends right there and then or, in one painfully memorable case, to tumble into the nearest room and get to work rebuilding the species. Each time, Roach had felt obligated to apologize for–
Their conversation died when Aurora sat up and stared at them, eyes wide and glazed with fleeting uncertainty as if she didn’t quite believe she could trust where she was. Roach watched as the doubt evaporated and something harder solidified behind her eyes. He opened his mouth to ask if she was alright, but she spoke first.
“Primrose found SOLUS.”







She’d fallen asleep to the sound of her friends deciding who would take the night’s watch and opened her eyes onto her compartment in Stable 10.
Except that hadn’t been quite right. She frowned and pushed herself up from a bed that was too large, too plush, and centered inside a compartment that was simultaneously too spacious to be hers and too strangely adorned to be a part of her Stable. But it was a compartment. Steel ribs spaced evenly along the bulkhead of each wall held a utilitarian metal ceiling above a flat metal floor. Only the ceiling had been coated with ivory paint and the steel floor had been burnished to give it a softer, matte gray appearance. 
“Tandy?” 
She waited for the mare to appear and was immediately afraid when she didn’t. The bed was large enough to drown in and smelled thickly of old sweat and an unwashed mane that didn’t belong to her. She could feel it cling to her like an invisible stain as she slid down to the floor, turning once to get her bearings. 
A glossy wood armoire stood in one corner of the bedroom, its paneled doors and drawers pressed shut. A matching roll top desk sat against the wall near the bed, a terminal glowing amid the pigeon holes and drawers. A plant grew in a glazed pot near the door, some kind of fern, and above it a photo had been carefully fixed to the painted walls with a magnetic frame. She had to move toward it before the dream would resolve the details enough for her to recognize Canterlot Castle perched on its ancient foundations on the side of the mountain from which it got its name. Blue skies and wisps of white gave an idyllic, almost fairytale sense to it. 
She turned and noticed that the walls were bedecked with artwork, not just photos. Her dread gave way to curiosity as she made her way around the room, trying to make sense of what this dream was meant for. From one frame hung a detailed painting of what appeared to be a small town being constructed, with nondescript equine figures holding tools, carrying lumber, or resting together around a cookfire. In another stood the thin, yellowed front page of a prewar newspaper. Its headline proclaimed JSA Promises Free Energy above a photo of a stallion whose tiny smirk shone through his attempt to appear stoic. He posed in front of a diorama of the solar array Autumn Song would eventually commandeer. The caption said the stallion’s name was Jet Stream, and Aurora blinked as she realized this was her first time putting a face to the name. He was handsome, and he’d known it.
Moving around the room she found more snippets of their owner’s life. A group photo inside what appeared to be an office. A shallow display case containing a curled tourist’s guide to Cloudsdale, its edges charred. Beside it, a short knife, its blade resting at an angle across a matching leather sheath, glinted beneath the glass. Where the blade and sheath crossed, a creased square of paper lay open so the message written on it could be read.


A Desperate Measure for Desperate Times.
See you on the other side of tomorrow.
- Spitfire


Aurora went still. Tucked beside the blade was an old photo of two familiar, severe-looking mares posing in a cluttered office. She recognized the shape of her rifle in Spitfire’s wing almost instantly, its muzzle pointed carefully toward the carpet. Beside her stood a shorter mare, her baby blue mane curled over one pink shoulder just barely short enough not to obscure the sheathed knife strapped to the outside of her foreleg. Primrose stared back at Aurora with the same deep, calculating gaze she would regard her with on a listing oil rig two centuries later when she believed she could solve all her problems with one well-placed explosion.
Desperate Times, the rifle Aurora had come to think of as belonging to her, had once been Primrose’s gift to Spitfire. And in return, Spitfire had given Primrose a knife. Desperate Measures.
Was this the message? She looked around for Tandy and still found herself alone in the room. Primrose’s bedroom. Something about that tickled at the back of her brain. Of all the places Tandy could place her, why here? She felt a mixture of disappointment and anger well up inside her. She’d wanted to tell her Eshe had passed on peacefully and, if Tandy was capable of crying, offer a shoulder to do it on.
Being dumped here felt like a kick to the gut. 
“Tandy,” she called, rounding on the room as she spoke, “we need to talk about Eshe. Can I have a change of scenery so we can do that, please?”
The terminal on the desk gave an electric whine as the screen blinked to life. 
“Dammit,” she muttered, and went to the desk. 
Being a dream, the terminal skipped the usual slow boot process and went straight to displaying the still image of a paused video window. The perspective was unusual, aimed down a long conference room table that looked more expensive than all of her Stable’s old world heirlooms combined. Pegasi in dark uniforms sat on either side, their expressions bright and bodies leaned forward with bald excitement over something important. 
Aurora sighed and pecked the keyboard. She wasn’t in the mood for puzzles and riddles, something Tandy should have known the moment she fell asleep. They needed to talk about Eshe.
“In approximately five days, ma’am,” a uniformed stallion was saying. “Its orbit is highly eccentric, which means its peak velocity as it passes through the comms window will be somewhere in the range of–”
“Just say it’ll be going fast and save the rest of us the headache, general. We’re not attending this meeting to watch you jerk yourself off with whatever buzzwords the science team taught you.”
Aurora snorted and nearly chuckled before it dawned on her whose voice was coming from the terminal. The general, whoever he was, didn’t look the least bit jarred by Primrose’s snap. He simply nodded at Primrose and, because the screen was playing this… recording of a memory, she supposed, Aurora had a disturbing sense that the general was speaking to her as well.
“We’ll have a twenty-two second window to communicate with the satellite, after which it will drop below the horizon and out of range.”
A pink feather rose in front of the screen, and Aurora realized Primrose was scratching her nose. “These are all things I already know, general. Where’s the good news you were itching to tell me?”
Aurora glanced around the bedroom with a touch of impatience. “Tandy, how long is this going to take? You can just tell me whatever it–”
“The good news is we believe SOLUS can be commanded to use its primary weapon as a maneuvering thruster.”
Aurora spun back toward the terminal. The hairs down her neck stood on end at the word SOLUS.
“The science team already has the bulk of the math worked out.” The general leaned over the table, sliding a manila folder toward Primrose. The perspective took a nauseating dip as she flipped open the folder and looked down at the documents. The schematic of a machine dominated one of the pages, and another detailed thrust to weight ratios for each of its modules.
If Aurora hadn’t heard the satellite’s name, she’d have recognized it from the schematics. She still saw in her memory the grainy footage from Apogee’s helmet camera as she walked the behemoth machine’s skin on magboots. 
Primrose paused long enough on one schematic for Aurora to recognize the regularly spaced markers that designated the talisman containment chambers Apogee had unwittingly loaded with balefire. A deep welling of rage rose in her at the unmistakable pattern in Primrose’s thinking. Even during the last minutes of the old world that little monster had been giving her victims bombs wrapped in a red bow. Ginger just happened to be the most recent.
Pages flipped until Primrose found the one the general had wanted her to look at. A painfully dense report written by someone high up in the Enclave detailing values of expected thrust output provided by the satellite’s primary weapon and the resulting equivalent in terms of a deceleration burn. Aurora didn’t understand a word of it, but she continued to watch the terminal nonetheless.
The meeting on the screen ran for another fifteen minutes before it concluded, and in that time Aurora had grasped only some of the basic scientific concepts. The Enclave had plans to fire SOLUS not at the planet, but straight ahead in the direction it wasn't falling to reshape its elliptical orbit down to a circular one. If all went as expected, their window for communicating with SOLUS would shoot open and the weapon itself would once more be a close and looming presence over the skies of their world.
One calculated burn, and Jet Stream’s work to push his bastardized invention out of reach would be undone.







“You’re sure he’ll listen?”
Beside her, Fiona swept her immense wings through the air and Roach, perched between her shoulder blades, squinted against the fresh onslaught of wind as he held onto the gryphon’s neck. 
“I’m not sure of anything!” He had to shout to be heard over the din, something Aurora knew she’d have to apologize to him for later. She’d set the pace as soon as they’d kicked out the fire and left the cliffside camp behind, and she wasn’t about to let up now. “Coronado listened to Ginger when she asked for help, so I just assume he has a solid head on his shoulders!”
It wasn’t the reassurance she’d asked for, but she knew it was all she could really expect. None of them knew Elder Coronado beyond his name and reputation which, considering his predecessor, wasn’t a high bar to step over. She sighed, glad that the wind would mask the sound of her frustration, and threw a few more wingfuls of air behind her. 
Tandy hadn’t appeared during the dream to explain her absence, but the content of that dream had provided a few unmissable clues. Primrose’s bedroom, Primrose’s terminal, Primrose’s meeting with her generals… they were all neon signs pointing at the same mare. Either Tandy had decided to wait until now to share knowledge of what Primrose was planning, or Primrose had slept recently and done something to scare Tandy into silence. It had to be the latter. Tandy was a creature capable of breaking minds who cared deeply about her tiny community of dreamers, and now Primrose was poised to have her feather on the trigger of a device that could kill every last one of them.
Primrose had declared checkmate and her threat level had skyrocketed well above Aurora’s pay grade. 
It was well into the afternoon by the time they reached Blinder’s Bluff and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to make a straight dive into the heart of the mountainside city. Instead, she allowed Fiona to guide them into a gentle landing onto the right lane of the same east-west highway she, Roach, and Ginger had traveled nearly a month earlier. Back then they’d come to beg for a doctor. Now they were here to ask for something much more significant. 
Unlike the last time Aurora had been here, there was actual traffic queued up along the dirt tracks that bent off the cracked concrete and toward the scrap metal wall. Wagons, some still bearing the painted-over logo of F&F Mercantile along their sideboards, made up the majority of the line but there were several groups of travelers standing in impatient clutches among them. Aurora felt a flash of frustration when Fiona began leading them toward the back of the line, only for it to evaporate as the gryphon started cutting past them.
If all the eyes of those who’d seen their skyward approach hadn’t been on them then, they were now. A not insignificant part of her worried they’d reach the gate and be interrogated by the reincarnation of Paladin Ironshod, however the worst of the pushback came from those waiting in line. Most of those who complained shrank back when they found themselves being stared down by a gryphon twice their size, but the leader of a trader caravan halfway up the line noticed what was happening and moved to stand in her way.
A long barreled shotgun hovered in front of him, its barrel casually aimed down and to the side. “Why don’t you turn around and find yourself a place in line? Yeah?”
Fiona stopped a couple yards from him, sat down, then lowered her front half in a smooth, feline motion until she was at eye level with the unicorn. Her smile was pleasant, but it had no warmth behind it.
“I will fuck you to death.”
The stallion blinked. So did his compatriot who was still strapped to the lead wagon. “What?” he asked.
“I will fuck you,” Fiona repeated, her voice smooth as silk, “to death.”
A second passed. Then another. Finally, the caravan leader cleared his throat and shuffled awkwardly back into line.
When they were moving again and far enough away that the confused stallion wouldn’t overhear, Aurora reached out a wing and tapped Fiona’s hind leg. “What was that?”
Fiona looked back at the three of them and snorted. “Intimidation.”
“It didn’t even make sense,” Julip said in a tone that almost sounded like complaining.
“Kinda the point.” Fiona flicked her tail, brushing Julip’s snout with the bronze tuft at the end. “Now hush and let me un-piss off the gate guards.”
For a fleeting moment Julip eyed Fiona’s tail like she might try to bite it, but when they looked past the gryphon toward the wall looming ahead of them she stiffened a little.
Just as they had when Roach had carried a sick and barely conscious Aurora on his back, a row of Steel Rangers stared down at their approach from the narrow walkway atop the rusting barrier. They were close enough now that Aurora could make out individual faces, their eyes fixed on the approaching group with something like exasperation rather than open suspicion. Aurora wondered why that was until she remembered the Bluff had been Fiona’s home for nearly two decades. For those Rangers who knew her, seeing the gryphon making a minor scene as she skipped the line was probably high up on their list titled Shit Fiona Does On Days That End In Y.
“My fucking wings aren’t covered,” Julip hissed through grit teeth.
Aurora paused, then closed her eyes. Fiona cursed. 
Roach, to his credit, just sidled a little closer to her and offered a reassuring smile. “They’ve seen you and me before, remember? It’s not a crime to be a dustwing.”
“Depends on who you ask.”
Aurora watched Julip fixate on the nearby soldiers, her eyes growing wider the second. She could hear the smaller pegasus’s breathing ratchet up like it had when the horde of ghouls had poured after them at Mariposa. Ever so slightly, Julip’s pace began to slow and Aurora could sense the urge to bolt rising in her.
She dropped a wing over Julip’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Hey. Breathe.”
Julip swallowed thickly. “They can see my wings. They’re going to know I’m–”
“You’re from Stable 10,” Aurora said, keeping her voice calm and level, “just like I am.” 
She blinked up at her. “What? They won’t–”
“You were an archivist before all this, right?”
“...yeah.”
“So, if they ask, you’ll tell them you’re a librarian’s assistant back home. You came out here to see the outside world. For research.”
“Research,” she echoed dubiously.
“For the people back home.” Aurora nodded, keeping her grip on Julip firm enough to quash her panic. “Which is where?”
A pause. Then, “Stable 10.”
Aurora looked over to Roach, who nodded. Then she turned toward Fiona and saw the gryphon was smiling with something like approval. 
“Makes sense to me,” Fiona murmured, eyeing Aurora a little more pointedly than was strictly necessary as she added. “Only a Stable dweller would be dense enough to be walking around the wasteland with her wings uncovered.”
Aurora surprised herself by grinning. “Oh, fuck you.”
“To death,” Julip chimed in, her voice still tinged with unease but noticeably less than a moment earlier. She took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, and puffed her cheeks as she blew it out. “This is the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”
Roach grunted. “Top five.”
An armored Ranger on the wall ordered them to stop through his suit-amplified voice.
“Ten, maybe,” Aurora countered, lowering her voice as she added, “Technically we did meet on the same day I told the Enclave my Stable was alive, chucked a brick at a deathclaw, and decapitated the wasteland’s only trade monopoly.”
Julip coughed out a nervous sigh. “Celestia’s tit, okay.”
She breathed a heavier sigh of relief when, despite her fears, the Rangers at the gate directed the majority of their annoyance at Fiona while roundly ignoring the rest of them. To make a point, the soldiers outside the wall who were tasked with screening each arrival pointedly ignored the four of them while their superior on the wall threatened to have Fiona dragged to the back of the long line with an armored escort just to make the point that her status within the Bluff didn’t place her above its laws. 
For a moment Aurora genuinely worried they might be forced to the back of the line, and it nearly went that way until Fiona stepped aside and hitched a clawed thumb toward her. “So, yeah, I get what you’re saying about rules and order and blah-blah-fucking-blah, but my friend here says the Enclave’s not done playing with balefire firecrackers and she kind of needs to talk to your Elder before Primrose finds a fresh box of matches.”
When Fiona stopped talking, the air around them went deathly still. Travelers, traders, and Steel Rangers alike regarded them with a mixture of fear and uncertainty as if Fiona were holding a grenade without a pin. 
Aurora felt their eyes slide off Fiona and settle on her. 
“Name.”
She didn’t realize the word was a question, and directed toward her, until the stallion in power armor repeated it more forcefully. 
“Aurora,” she said, then as an afterthought added, “Pinfea–”
“Stay where you are,” the stallion interrupted, then went silent for a moment while his head dipped slightly to one side. He nodded once, paused, then nodded again. “You’ll be provided an escort into the city. You will not deviate from the road. You will not enter any establishments, public or private. You will follow your escort and refrain from discussing anything that might cause undue panic.”
The Ranger emphasized the last two words. “Is that understood?”
They nodded.
“Good,” he murmured, and this time his armor’s speaker cut off early enough for Aurora to hear the electronic click. His helmet tipped to the side as it had before as he spoke to whoever was on the other end of his radio. A nod, then a pointed look back to the four of them while another group of traders were admitted through the open gate. When his suit’s speaker clicked back on, his voice carried an edge of fresh annoyance. “You’ve been offered an opportunity to clothe yourselves.”
Aurora frowned, the non sequitur sending her back to the days when her biggest worry in life was how much shit Sledge was going to give her for showing up at Mechanical without a jumpsuit to cover her dainty unmentionables. 
“For the dustwing,” the Ranger clarified. 
Were it not for Aurora’s obscuring wing, the officer might have noticed the momentary wave of tension that ran through Julip’s body. 
He didn’t, and Julip mustered enough courage to answer.
“Uh,” the Enclave’s most wanted defector managed. “Yes, please.”







Outside Stable 6 and the heart of the Steel Rangers’ eastern operations, Aurora found herself staring at the same scar-mottled blue stallion who loaned her his compass when she first set out to rescue Ginger. He’d listened to her explain why she was here and who she wanted to speak to, but he hadn’t moved from his posting at the tunnel’s heavily guarded entrance. Their escort, a group of six armed Rangers in power armor, looked uneasily to one another when Knight Latch finally spoke.
“He’s not here,” he said flatly.
Aurora blinked. Behind her it felt like the entirety of the Bluff was watching, and she wasn’t that far off the mark. While the hustle and bustle of the market had continued uninterrupted as she and her companions were led along the cobbles, it had also changed. The chaos of vendors shouting their best prices and citizenry raising their own voices to be heard over the noise had smoothed somewhat as if it had been run through steam. 
Fiona dropped her haunches to the ground beside Aurora, matching the Knight’s unwillingness to move with an identical gesture. “Then where is he?”
Latch matched her gaze. “Classified. Obviously.”
The gryphon snorted derision, but Aurora spoke before she could pick a fight. “Latch, I need to talk to Coronado now. It’s important.”
He pursed his lips. “I told you he isn’t here.”
“Look, I’m not lying to–”
“I never said I thought you were lying. Elder Coronado isn’t here, and I’m not authorized to tell you where he went.” He spared a glance to the soldiers who shared his posting, then looked pointedly at Fiona. “And, off the record, the last time I did you a favor I got booted down to Initiate and almost got my head taken off when the Enclave steamrolled us at Foal Mountain. So forgive me if I’m not overly eager to stick my neck out for whatever shit you’ve gotten yourselves into this time.”
Aurora stepped close enough to jab Latch in the chest with her hoof. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re in the same shit we’re in whether you know it or not. Do you really think the Enclave only had one bomb?”
He jerked back at her touch, but it also caused him to look down at her own chest and the whorl of scars the balefire talisman had left behind when she carried Ginger on her last voyage into the sky. Whether he knew that part of her story or not didn’t seem to factor. The flash of rage in his eyes drained away, replaced by something like skepticism.
“They have more?”
She shook her head. “They’re five days away from having worse than bombs. They’re getting their satellite back.”
He frowned. “What satellite?”
She didn’t have time to explain SOLUS or how the early Enclave orchestrated its modification as an orbital weapon. The amplified sound of a Ranger clearing his throat behind her made the point clear that discussing it further was off the table anyway. 
She grimaced. “You need to listen. The Enclave is close to having a weapon none of us can defend against. This isn’t just you and me. It’s your wife, Latch. It’s everyone who lives here, and in Fillydelphia, and Kiln, and my Stable, and everywhere else. I have to speak with Coronado, so you have to tell me where he went. Please.”
Latch sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where he went.”
She felt the muscles in her legs bunching up. It would only take a second for her to jump him, get a good grip around him, and throw both of them toward the sky before their escort could decide whether to shout or shoot. She could dangle him above the Bluff and threaten to let go if he didn’t tell her, and there wasn’t another flyer in a hundred miles who could stop her. 
“But I did see him leave,” he continued, unaware of the growing danger right in front of him. He looked pointedly at the escorts, giving them time to order his silence. They didn’t. Of course they didn’t. When she’d said everyone was in danger from the Enclave’s newest weapon, it included them and their loved ones as well.
Aurora let the tension ease out of her muscles and listened.
“He left a couple days ago,” Latch said, keeping his voice low and limited to their ears only, “with a guard detail and an Enclave defector.”
She was silent for a moment. It was hard not to look back toward Julip. “Who defected?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know his name, but I heard from the grapevine he was pretty high up in their command structure. Coronado’s been debriefing him personally. He’s a big guy, too. Really long coat, like the ones you see on ponies who were raised up north in the tundra.”
“Holy fuck. That’s Security Director Clover.”
Aurora clapped her mouth shut, then realized she hadn’t been the one to speak. It’d been Julip, and every eye among them was slowly turning to stare at her. 
Latch went perfectly still. “Who’s she?”
“A friend,” Aurora said, as if that was all he needed to know.
“You’ve got friends who know the name and rank of Enclave officers?”
Fiona’s feathers rustled like dead leaves as she rose to her full height, casting a long shadow over the Knight. “Not important. Which way did they go, Latch?”
His lips pressed into a thin, white line.
Fiona took a half-step forward, her body radiating violence. “Did they go east?”
Aurora’s ear twitched and she risked a glance toward their armored escort, one of which had their head tilted slightly away in the body language of someone having a private conversation. 
Latch held his tongue.
The corners of Fiona’s beak curled with an amicable smile. “North?”
Silence. The Rangers around them began to back away into defensive positions. 
“How about… west?”
Latch said nothing, but the ridges of his brow visibly deepened.
Unless Elder Coronado was flying express to New Canterlot, the nearest landmark east of the Bluff was her Stable. Aurora felt an old knot tighten in her chest all over again. In her experience, good things never happened when an Elder of the Steel Rangers showed interest in her home.
Fiona turned her eyes down toward her and nodded once. They’d both come to the same conclusion. Coronado had gone to Stable 10. 
“Well, shit,” Fiona sighed as she half-turned and dropped her open palm over Roach’s back. “I guess we’ll never know.”
Aurora’s heart started beating double time as she turned to see a stream of Rangers pushing their way toward them through the crowded market. Their escorts stood around them like statues, though most statues didn’t come with shoulder-mounted cannons. 
Fiona dropped her butt and her free hand to the uneven cobbles. “Hey, Julip? Aurora?”
Both mares turned to the gryphon.
“Haul ass.”







Fiona tightened one hand around the loose cobblestone and slid the other down around Roach’s belly. The poor ghoul had only a split second to understand what was happening before her shoulder flexed, her body lurched into a bipedal stance, and she hurled him straight vertical with the trailing sound of a shocked whinny chasing him into the open air. 
The Rangers surrounding them shouted a variety of colorful profanity as their attention swiveled up to follow the flailing changeling, which was good, because it meant none of them were registering the fact that Aurora and Julip had thrown themselves skyward, nor were they paying attention when Fiona pitched the heavy stone at the helmet of the nearest Ranger. The brick exploded on contact with a sound like a struck bell, sending the power armor and its pilot tumbling backward.
At first, only a handful of Rangers realized one of their own had been attacked. By the time the rest of them tore their visors away from the sky, Fiona was launching herself toward it, leaving behind a torrent of blinding dust and tawny feathers.







Aurora dumped air behind her as fast as her wings could scoop it, and the wake of Fiona’s meteoric passage still nearly sent her and Julip tumbling. They were both too far away to hear the oof! visible in Roach’s expression when Fiona arrested his undignified descent.
Defining Julip’s clenched jaw and violent flapping as “rage” would be akin to calling a serial murderer a “conflict enthusiast.” 
“YOU SHIT-EATING MOTHER FUCKER!”
Whether deliberate or not, she managed to time the flip and kick to Fiona’s head on the fucker and whiffed it by a full yard. Before she could shed all of her velocity for a second attempt, Aurora clamped her wings around Julip’s, momentarily turning their combined trajectory ballistic.
She pressed her muzzle against Julip’s pinned ear, yelling to be heard over the wind. “Be angry later! We’re in range of big, fucking guns!”
Julip belted out a syllable that could have been a word, but wasn’t, and twisted away to get her wings open again. When she’d flown clear Aurora did the same, pouring on speed to keep up with the smaller mare as they both trailed after Fiona. If the Steel Rangers had opened fire on them, they didn’t know. Aurora chose to believe they hadn’t had time to decide by the time they’d put the Bluff’s rooftops between them and their escorts. 
A tense silence lingered between them as they cleared the tree line and began their slow arc toward the safety of higher altitude. They kept to the cooler air just below the clouds layer where they stood the least chance of being spotted by the Rangers on the ground and the Enclave scouts who traveled the open skies above. They’d flown several miles before the bulk of Julip’s anger cooled to something approaching nonexplosive, and a few more passed beneath them before she sank the last few yards to fly level with the gryphon.
Aurora made a point to position herself off Julip’s opposite wing in case the conversation went poorly.
To Roach, who was awkwardly cradled in Fiona’s arm, Julip asked, “You hurt?”
He shook his head and actually chuckled. “I’m still a little winded and I’m never letting myself get within arm’s reach of Fiona when she starts getting grabby,” he rumbled, “but on the bright side, I no longer have to pee.” 
Fiona risked a perfectly neutral glance toward Julip, gauged the smaller mare’s expression, then turned her own back toward the western horizon.
Julip’s jaw slid forward half an inch. “What the fuck was that back there, Fiona?”
The gryphon rolled one shoulder in a half shrug. “Burned bridges, probably. Hopefully not, but probably.”
“You threw him,” she said, her voice a growl. “I repeat. What the fuck?”
“Would you rather I waited for our friendly entourage to decide whether it was easier to arrest us or shoot us?” She cocked an eyebrow at Julip without quite turning her head to look at her. “I figure I should ask, since you’re the one who had the bright idea to tell everyone and their wetnurse that you used to rub shoulders with the Enclave.”
Julip’s frown deepened. Then she turned her scowl forward and uttered something that the wind swept away.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Fiona said, her tone soft. “It’s nothing Aurora can’t clear up before we land.”
Aurora looked at the gryphon as if she’d grown a second head. “Sorry, what?”
Fiona tipped her beak to indicate her own wrist, jostling Roach a little in the process. “I didn’t let Coldbrook chew my ass over helping you get that Pip-Buck back just so you could forget you were wearing it, did I? Start making some calls, Feathers.”
She eyed the two Pip-Bucks clamped to her outstretched foreleg and made a sound like disgust. “Fine, but I can’t write without my feathers. Either we land somewhere or I’m hitching a ride.”
The gryphon shrugged. “I know my preference.”







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Proxy Connection :: Stable 6
To: Overstallion Sledge
From: Aurora Pinfeathers
Subject: Incident at Blinder’s Bluff
04/26/1297

Hey, Sledge

Don’t get pissed but we sort of caused… I don’t know, an international incident at Blinder’s Bluff. Something like that. Took a detour there on our way home and Julip inadvertently let slip to the local Rangers that she used to be on the other team. Things got a little hostile and I think Fiona hucked a brick at someone’s head. They were in power armor so I don’t think anyone’s hurt, but she is a gryphon so maybe don’t take my word for it. Long story short the Steel Rangers back at the Bluff are probably a seven layer salad of furious and I’d kind of prefer not to get shot at by all the Rangers camped outside the Stable. 
Also, is Elder Coronado there with you? We need to talk to him, preferably yesterday. It’s important. 

See you in a few hours,
Pinfeathers







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Overstallion Sledge
Subject: Re: Incident at Blinder’s Bluff
04/26/1297

Pinfeathers,

An international incident requires more than one nation, but yeah, sounds like you and your wastelander friends jammed all your cocks in a spinning turbine. Prefer you not do that anymore. Yes, Elder Coronado is here. He’s sitting in my office as I type, and he was just in the middle of informing me what happened out east when your message came in. These people have radios, Aurora. If you plan on causing any more kerfuffles I’d prefer to know ahead of time so I’m not forced to pretend I’m not sweating my balls off while I reply to your last minute recaps. 

- Sledge







So is that a yes or no on the whole getting shot during landing thing? Also, I’m telling everyone you used the word “kerfuffle.”

Coming in hot,
Pinfeathers







Elder Coronado is assuring me his people won’t shoot you or your friends. Tell the gryphon to keep a lid on it. 
Tell anyone I said that word and I’ll staple your pissflaps shut.

- Sledge







For someone who gave me a decade of shit for not covering up, you sure like talking about ‘em. If you need to get laid I know a gryphon that’s about your size.
Seriously, I need to talk to Coronado the minute we land. Tell him the Enclave has SOLUS. If he doesn’t know what that means, show him the Apogee footage. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if he knows what SOLUS is. Show him the footage anyway so he understands how deep in shit we’re all about to be. 

Pinfeathers







They’re watching it now. Coronado wants your ETA.







Couple hours. Hour and a half if we push it.


	




I’ve been told to ask you to push it. We’ll wait for you outside.







Coronado inhaled deeply, taking in the clean air and open scenery like it was the salve to a wound he hadn’t known needed healing. Even under the current circumstances it was a nice change of pace being away from the crowds and the noise. For all of Fillydelphia’s size, there were never enough travelers to fill the hundreds of office towers, say nothing for the vast, empty suburbia further inland. Blinder’s Bluff was utterly claustrophobic by comparison, something that was not helped by its narrow, winding roads and unique geography. At some point the city’s protective walls would need to be torn down and rebuilt further out, if for no other reason than to let its populace breathe.
Looking back toward the mass of drab green tents pitched around the Stable’s semi-demolished and freshly excavated tunnel, he imagined a similar city might blossom here in a generation or two. There was a high water table here, and someone had spent no small amount of time and energy working the soil so a forest could take root. Those trees which hadn’t been vaporized by the bomb now lay flattened in the baked topsoil, but his engineers were certain only the first four to six inches had been irradiated to the point of sterility. 
It could all be made whole again. Perhaps not within his lifetime, but soon enough. 
Provided the Enclave wasn’t getting ready to flip the entire game table.
He took another deep breath, let it pass back out his nose, and resumed scanning the clouds. Sledge and Director Clover - former director, he reminded himself - standing to his left, did the same. Coronado had ignored the murmurs from those among the mares and stallions who wore Steel Ranger brown. He wouldn’t scold them over idle gossip. No need to nanny them when they had commanding officers to do that. He knew how strange this quartet of theirs looked and he was trying hard to distance himself from the idea-strangling micromanagement of his predecessor. He wasn’t Coldbrook, and it was important his former command structure saw it.
On his right, the withered mare that had once been and arguably still was Minister Rainbow Dash seemed to hardly breathe at all. 
A radio crackled behind him from one of the power armored soldiers posted in a rough semicircle. Visibility was one thing. Making himself an easy target was another. Their eyes roamed in all directions as they scanned for threats, though one of them had now paused to listen to the fresh communication. A speaker embedded roughly in the armor’s equivalent of a throat toggled on with a subtle tok.
“They’re passing over Junction City now, sir.”
Coronado nodded once. “Where does that put their ETA?”
“Eleven minutes.”
He could have rounded down to an even ten, but Coronado had learned during his debriefing that Paladin Lamplighter was a stickler for details. If he said eleven minutes, they would be here in eleven minutes. 
“Thank you, Paladin.”
Somewhere near the tunnel the sound of an engine coughed and sputtered, followed by a cheer as it grew to a throaty roar. To his right, Sledge’s prodigious shoulders bobbed up and down with a quiet chuckle. The team who had been working on the ancient thing were a combination of Steel Ranger engineers and some of Sledge’s people from the Mechanical department. Someone had found the old engine gathering rust in a pile of scrap half-buried in the Junction City ruins, probably owned by a junk vendor who thought they could flip it for an easy payout. If whoever owned it was still alive, they weren’t among the survivors being tended to inside the Stable. The engine had originally belonged to one of the ancient motorized carriages used before the world ended and one of his engineers had asked permission to bring it along, presumably to see if it could be revived. They’d been playing with the thing for several days now and, apparently, it still had some life to it.
Sledge shifted on his hooves, the big stallion still a little uncertain about standing somewhere there wasn’t steel directly overhead. “They’re never going to leave that thing alone now that it’s running,” he teased.
“If I recall,” Coronado said, “you had a hoof in supplying material to replace its gasket head.”
“It’s called a head gasket,” Sledge corrected, smiling a little as he did. “And yeah, I did. It’s good for them to have projects like that. Keeps them from thinking too much about the razor we’re all dancing on.”
On his left, the Enclave’s newly retired security director made a noise in the back of his throat like agreement.
Coronado waited a moment to see if he might contribute more to the light banter, but Clover remained silent. He wasn’t what Coronado would call a chatty stallion, though that was likely in part due to the strangeness of his personal situation. Even now, Clover was fiercely loyal to the Enclave. Only, he was loyal to his Enclave. The one he and so many others who wore the black believed it had always been, even though it was all a facade meant to protect the malignant tumor feeding on it from within.
He pitied Clover as much as he respected him. Pity, for what he’d been forced to give up. Respect, for having done it at all.
“I think it’s fair to say the edge of that razor has dulled somewhat,” Coronado said, his eyes rising to meet Sledge’s. “You and I have the citizens of the wasteland to thank for that.”
“And a certain gryphon we both know,” Sledge added. “Can’t believe she used to play music on the radio before all this.”
Coronado smiled. “I didn’t believe it myself the first time I was told about her. Fillydelphia was just beyond the edge of her usual broadcast range, so it was rare we’d ever pick up the signal. It was a treat whenever we did. I’d just as well assumed ‘The Mare on the Air’ was, well, a mare.”
“I feel like we owe her a fucking statue,” Sledge rumbled.
Rainbow Dash hummed her agreement.
His smile tightened a little. “If you decide to build one, send me the bill. I’ll file the receipt under ‘R’ for Reparations. Celestia knows we owe your Stable something for our part in all this.”
Sledge didn’t say anything to that, but he watched Coronado for what felt like several minutes. It was as if he were trying to gauge whether the apology was real, and Coronado hoped he would conclude it was. Sledge may only be one resident among the hundreds who called Stable 10 their home, but his opinion carried influence that would sway those of his people who were hesitant to trust the wasteland. As much as he was proud of people like Fiona, Ms. Vogel, and the myriad traders and civilians who had come to the aid of the Stable, he didn’t let that pride outshine the shame of knowing a fellow Elder of the Steel Rangers had ordered the Stable’s excavation.
There had been a time not too long ago when Elder Coldbrook had been a respectable leader and a genuinely good person. Then he learned about the untouched Stable that existed in his territory and he’d allowed personal ambition and greed to justify everything that came after. It might take years to repair the damage he’d caused. Generations, even.
He was about to say something more to assure Sledge they’d make this right, but the radio behind him crackled inside the paladin’s helmet at the same time Coronado spotted the dark shapes approaching from the east. He gave a perfunctory nod when Lamplighter confirmed that the shapes were indeed Aurora and her companions, and found himself taking a steadying breath as if he were getting ready to stand for inspection like when he was a new recruit. He wondered where the tension had suddenly come from, but the figures had begun their descent before he’d gotten a handle on it.
“Fucking screwy,” Sledge muttered under his breath.
Coronado tamped his smile down to a polite smirk, having pieced together himself how strange flight may seem to a community of pegasi raised underground. A quick glance at Sledge confirmed as much. The big stallion was clenching his jaw to suppress a grin, and there was a thin film of mist forming in his eyes as he watched one of his own glide toward them.
A teacher watching a student accomplish feats he’d believed impossible.
Their landing threw a wall of dust at Coronado and the others which was quickly followed by the clicking and thumping of hooves and paws. Whether planned or not, Aurora had landed at the head of the group with a slightly uneven, limping jaunt to her steps as she slowed to a walk. Her left hind leg, he realized, was mostly a prosthetic. That hadn’t been in his notes, nor had Sledge or anyone else mentioned it to him. 
The rest of the party, a changeling ghoul named Roach, the defected Enclave corporal Julip, and Fiona formed a protective semicircle behind Aurora with the corporal at its rear. It was an imposing way to make an entrance and one Coronado didn’t think he had a hoof to stand on if he wanted to find fault in it. They had, after all, attacked an officer during their exodus from the Bluff. The fact that their collective attention swept past Coronado to the myriad of soldiers camped outside the tunnel told him they were well aware there may be a punishment waiting for them here.
There wasn’t, but he let them wonder for half a minute as the breeze carried the dust from the air.
“The knight captain you attacked,” he began, choosing to forego pleasantries in favor of cutting past the most immediate tension, “will be fine.”
He watched Fiona in particular and felt satisfied when the gryphon let out the breath she’d been holding. 
“He’s being treated for a minor case of whiplash courtesy of the fastball you pitched, but the vast majority of the damage was limited to his suit’s sensor suite.” He paused to arch a golden brow at the group at large. “My free advice is that the next time you visit a city garrisoned by Steel Rangers, you declare any smuggled goods to the nearest paladin commander on duty. We’re a military, not a band of thugs. We have protocols meant to handle incoming defectors.”
As he said the words, he could see Julip’s eyes wander from him to the stallion on his left. They widened ever so slightly.
Aurora cleared her throat and took a limping step forward. “We’ll make a note of it next time. My name is Aurora Pinfeathers.”
She held out a wing, and he frowned at it not out of any sort of disdain, but simply because he didn’t know what she expected him to do with it. A moment later, he felt Sledge’s left hoof tap at the back of his right, and he recalled the gesture. 
He held his hoof out and she gripped it in her feathers, shaking it. “Elder Coronado of the Eastern…” he stopped himself, and rephrased. “Elder Coronado. Pleased to finally meet you in the flesh. I briefly met your better half in Fillydelphia, when you were taken. I’m sorry to hear she passed.”
Something in Aurora flinched that translated through her wing and up his foreleg. She released her grip on him and he watched her eyes flick toward Sledge before returning. “I… appreciate that,” she said stiffly. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d feel better if we skipped the tea and crumpets and went somewhere we can talk about the shitstorm that’s coming. Sledge, are we using your office for this?”
“Actually,” Coronado said, saving the overstallion from having to explain that work was already underway removing his Atrium’s damaged section of upper deck walkway, and several tons of loose concrete and granite pulverized by the Stable’s flung door, “I have a tent set up near the new well. It isn’t what I would call palatial, but it’ll suit our purposes.”
When no one objected, he let his paladin lead them to a large canvas tent a few dozen yards beyond the rest of the encampment and still near enough the wellhead his engineers had helped the civilians complete. It had originally been intended to be used as a command center for Lamplighter who, until Coronado arrived, had been the senior officer at the Stable 10 site. When they got word that Aurora and her friends were on their way back from their eventful afternoon at the Bluff, the paladin’s documents and belongings had been packed away and secured elsewhere in the encampment while the tent and folding wooden tables he favored were relocated out of earshot of anyone who didn’t have business overhearing what they planned to discuss. 
The air inside was uncomfortably warm and had taken on a slight odor of must from the canvas. Paladin Lamplighter had his soldiers procure several chairs for their guests, though an open spot in the middle of one of the joined tables had been swept and left vacant for Fiona to seat herself with some dignity. They filed inside, leaving the armored soldiers to dissuade any civilians from lurking where their ears weren’t wanted.
“Well,” he said, nodding approvingly when he noted Sledge and Clover had seated themselves randomly among their guests. He’d been worried they might default to sitting near him, power gravitating toward power until those who had come to ask for it felt like they were staring up a cliff. Even Rainbow Dash had found a chair away from the head of the table, opting to plant herself beside Sledge whom she sincerely viewed as a personal friend. “The floor is yours, Ms. Pinfeathers. Tell us what you know.”
She began at the beginning, giving him and everyone else a rough overview of the events that led up to what they were dealing with now. The majority of it was information many of them already knew but he didn’t interrupt since it seemed important to her that they all approach this new threat on the same level ground. She explained her first contact with the Enclave spritebot and the decision soon after to free Corporal Julip from her cage. Coronado watched the younger mare try to shrink in her seat when Clover regarded her, like a foal who knew she’d broken the rules and wasn’t certain if this was when she would meet the consequences. He sat at a diagonal from Julip and, noticing the discomfort his attention caused, smiled something like approval and turned his gaze back to Aurora.
By then, Aurora had finished glossing over how Julip had come to join their merry band of troublemakers and was pointedly trying to avoid sharing too many details about how they’d discovered that all the Stables were interconnected by a single, hardened network. He wanted to ask where this hub had been located but refrained from doing so, knowing it would make him resemble too much of Elder Coldbrook in her eyes if he did.
He found himself leaning forward as she shared her perspective on the events that took place in Fillydelphia. Aside from his brief and unplanned visitation by Ginger Dressage, he’d been blind to the finer details of what had gone on inside his city. He wasn’t surprised to discover the Enclave had played a part in finding Ironshod’s illicit hole in the ground by tracking Aurora’s Pip-Buck signal. He was, however, surprised to learn that Ginger’s mastery of her own strengthened magic had allowed her to beat even the Enclave to the punch. Aurora took a break from talking to allow her changeling companion to explain how she’d employed teleportation, a spell previously assumed unattainable, to hurtle them halfway through the city.
Aurora picked up the thread a moment later by telling him about the Enclave’s use of the offshore oil rigs as temporary bases of operation, and that during her recovery on one of them Minister Primrose had approached her with a proposition. The ignition talisman her Stable’s survival depended upon in exchange for her return home. It had been too good to be true, but Aurora and her friends had by then become too desperate to see it as anything other than salvation.
The tent grew quiet as Aurora told them how Ginger’s magic had triggered the balefire talisman and it was only due to a combination of her shield magic, a rudimentary containment chamber built by Mechanical, and Aurora’s uncannily strong wings that Stable 10 was currently alive and not a windborne cloud of its component molecules. 
When Aurora regained her composure, she told him why Primrose had wanted Stable 10 dead. He told him about what they’d learned from digging through Delta Vee’s hidden partition on the servers. About Primrose’s conspiracy with Spitfire to hijack Equestria’s balefire arsenal and turn those weapons on itself. Coronado had seen the footage of SOLUS carving irradiated canyons into the Vhannan countryside but he didn’t interrupt her when she repainted that picture. Then she paused again, this time giving Fiona the floor to give them a glimpse of what life was like just a few hundred miles west of that ruined land. 
“The poison is everywhere now,” Fiona said, turning her large palms upward in a gesture that might have equated a shrug. “It’s in the water. It’s in the soil. Things over there are a hundred times worse than they are here, and it’s because SOLUS did something Equestria’s bombs couldn’t. It pushed the radiation deep, like a dragging stab wound, and it didn’t leave behind nearly the amount of intact ruins as you have here. At least in Equestria you can find enough basic building materials to build a bunch of shacks on a hill. Back home…” he paused, making a notable effort to undo the word home, “back in Griffinstone, there’s barely anything.”







Explaining her dream was harder than she thought it would be. Not because Tandy had made uncovering the details such a chore, but because the look Elder Coronado gave her when she said the word dream radiated doubt. It hadn’t occurred to her until just then that he had no reason to believe a word she was saying. 
Despite her own uncertainty that what she was saying was being received with anything amounting to serious consideration, she soldiered on. She detailed what she’d seen in Primrose’s quarters. The photos she had on display. The knife in its display case. It’s name.
Then she shared what she remembered seeing on her terminal. The disorienting, first-person view into what had appeared to be a conference room filled with high ranking officials Primrose had only referred to by rank, not name. The files she’d read. The diagrams.
She could hear the desperation in her voice as she talked into the silence. She was losing Elder Coronado, and worse, she could see she was losing him. His attention softened. The look of a stallion who was waiting for the liar to stop talking so he could politely divert the conversation to its necessary conclusion. Then, just when she was certain she’d buried any chance she had at gaining the Steel Rangers’ support, the shaggy-maned stallion seated at the far corner of the table lifted a wing and aimed a feather in her direction.
“She knows things,” former director Clover said, “that she can’t know.”
The words shook the thinly veiled doubt away from Coronado’s eyes, and he turned to regard the stallion with something like dubious interest. He wasn’t opposed to being proven wrong, but it was clear there was still work to be done to get him to believe it.
Clover continued. “Everything she said about Primrose’s quarters is accurate, and I’m pretty sure she just described pages from a classified technical report I cleared for limited review among the generals. Either she’s secretly Primrose’s new security director, or she’s a dreamer.”
For a moment Coronado sat in his chair wearing an expression like he’d been handed a gift, only to have it yanked away. There had been hope in his eyes that Aurora had seen clear as day. Hope that she would turn out to be an enthusiastic and creative liar. A fraud he could dismiss and, along with her, the fear that came with knowing the Enclave was days away from wielding the weapon they had used to decimate Vhanna two centuries ago.
He heaved a long, disappointed sigh. Then he looked up at Aurora with a sad smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It might be best if you started over from the beginning.”







They took a break when a Ranger leaned halfway into the tent to tell them their dinner was ready. 
Aurora had wanted to say she wasn’t hungry and that she still needed to remind the Elder that Primrose was days away from regaining control of the weapon platform that killed Vhanna, but her stomach all but folded in half to remind her she hadn’t eaten a decent meal in nearly two days. She’d been so focused on getting to Mariposa to grant Eshe’s final wish that food hadn’t entered her mind unless it was pushed in front of her by someone else. She tried to scrape the scowl off her face as soldiers turned wait staff passed plates through the tent flap in a strange version of a bucket brigade, each passing a dish to the next until one clicked onto the table and was slid along by those gathered around it. 
It wasn’t a feast, and Aurora thought she would have strongly objected if it were despite her waking hunger. Each plate held simple portions of grilled vegetables, a small slice of protein she recognized as common molerat, and a few tiny red-skinned baked potatoes that in total might have the same mass as the ones her father had helped grow down in the Gardens. Steam curled off every plate, carrying with it a buttery scent that tripped every saliva gland at once. 
No one waited for permission to tuck in. Around the table those with magic lit their horns, feathers moved, and mouths pawed at the simple meal, the dire conversation of what was coming for them all set aside for the moment. Somewhere in the distant direction of the Steel Rangers’ long open grills, a clanging of metal followed a controlled shout. Someone reminding those nearby that the tin plates and utensils needed to be returned before returning to duty. There was a hint of annoyance in the voice, as if they’d already seen soldiers failing to do so. 
If their tent hadn’t been served their meals last, they were close to the back of the line. She glanced across the table at Coronado, expecting to see him waiting for everyone present to appreciate his seeming magnanimous gesture. He wasn’t. His red horn, gnarled as if it were a root growing from his forehead, glowed with magic that seemed to issue from the bright striations along its length. His attention was on his meal and the appreciative smile he wore as he chewed was refreshingly real. 
A fork wandered into her periphery, and before she could think to question why it was there the hand that held it pecked the tines into one of Aurora's potatoes and popped it into Fiona’s beak. When she shot a look at the gryphon, Fiona mimed innocence while simultaneously moving her fork in for another theft.
Aurora stabbed her remaining potato before Fiona could get at it, ate it with visible triumph, and watched helplessly as the intruding utensils whisked away a carrot instead. Muttering obscenity around a mouthful wasn’t easy, but she managed. Fiona just chuckled as she chewed, elbowing Aurora to assure her it was all in good fun.
As the rest of the table ate, small conversations began to crop up between them. At first, Aurora only listened. Sledge asked Roach what he did before the world ended and managed not to look too surprised when Roach told him he’d been a master gardener. Elder Coronado wondered aloud to Fiona what it might take to get her radio station back on the air, which sent Fiona tumbling down a long list of electronics she’d need that appeared to actually shock the Elder. Sledge started telling Julip an embarrassing story from Aurora’s apprenticing years, and when Aurora leaned back far enough to shoot the big stallion a death glare, he grinned and told it even louder. When Sledge had finished and Aurora was red-faced from embarrassment, the quiet Enclave stallion with the unshorn northern coat joined the conversation by sharing a story from his younger years.
It didn’t take Aurora long to notice that Clover was a surprisingly shy stallion. He wasn’t uncomfortable speaking, she didn’t think, but he didn’t seem to like making eye contact as he told his story. A soft smile pulled at his lips as he talked to his now-empty plate, only occasionally glancing up at Sledge and then Julip to gauge their reactions before looking down again. Slowly, the other conversations around the table quieted as they all listened, subconsciously aware that the former security director didn’t open up like this often. Aurora pieced together enough of the tale to know it had taken place before Clover had reached enlistment age, and had something to do with his school friends playing a prank veiled as a dare.
“The one thing she decided not to tell me,” Clover said, grinning at his plate, “was that they’d hidden all the erasable markers in Ms. Fraymane’s desk and put one of her permanent ones in their place.”
“No fucking way,” Julip murmured, her own grin reflecting his.
“Ahyup,” Clover nodded. “Best and worst part about being a teenager is we were all horny, stupid, and thought drawing dicks on the whiteboard was the height of rebellion. Probably I wouldn’t have gotten in as much trouble if I’d quit while I was ahead, but I got cocky…”
Fiona laughed. “Cocky.”
Clover’s smile broadened as he continued. “I got swept up with all the attention and decided drawing an eight foot penis wasn’t good enough. So, assuming I could just erase it once I got the reaction I was hoping for, I drew a clover on one of the testicles.”
Roach speared a potato. “Damn.”
Clover looked at Roach and nodded ruefully. There was something complex in the way the former director regarded Roach that on the surface appeared to be discomfort. Still, his smile never faded as he spoke, even if his momentary attention toward the ghoul at the table had dimmed it a little. “Ms. Fraymane gave me three months detention and my mom and dad, rest their souls, spent the rest of my adolescence terrified I’d fallen in with a bad crowd. I think they finally let themselves breathe again when I told them I wanted to join up permanently rather than settle for the Fork.”
He placed just enough emphasis on the last word for Aurora to hear the capital letter, though it didn’t stop Fiona from holding her own fork up with the obvious question written over her brow.
“Four-Comp,” Julip said, but when she saw she hadn’t provided the clarity she’d intended, she added, “Four years compulsory service. Joys of growing up in the middle of everywhere. All able-bodied citizens are required to do four years of basic training when they hit eighteen.”
Clover shrugged not with dismissal, but polite disagreement with the disdain in Julip’s tone. “Gone are the days when the Equestrian Army could rely on recruiters.”
Julip managed to bite back her retort, but only barely.
Sensing the uncomfortable shift at the table, Elder Coronado gently cleared his throat and turned to regard them all more fully. “Well. Now that we’re all fat and happy,” he gestured around the table with a hoof, though his expression didn’t invite an interruption, “I think it behooves us to…”
Fiona jostled with a silent chuckle.
“...give the floor to Minister Rainbow Dash.” Coronado nodded to the pale blue mare who, reluctantly, nodded back. He gestured to himself, then Clover. “She’s the reason we’re here, after all. Ma’am?”
The Elder’s deference to Rainbow Dash landed as subtly as a lag bolt flung into an empty toolbox, giving Aurora the sense that Coronado and Clover hadn’t twiddled their feathers once they arrived at the Stable. 
“Just Rainbow is fine,” Rainbow said, trying to shrug off her old honorific like an uncomfortable shawl. “Yeah. So, ah, I’m going to skip the part where I worry about whether anyone believes I am who I say I am because, well, I think we’re all past that by now.” 
She frowned down at her empty plate for a moment as if unsure whether she wanted to say what she was about to say. Then she gave her head the smallest shake and sighed. “The important thing to know is that, thanks to me firing off an angry ‘fuck you’ to Spitfire’s old inbox, a good chunk of the Enclave knows that I’m alive and that I’m here.” She leaned over the table just enough to meet Aurora’s gaze with one of faint apology. “I know you’re here to talk about SOLUS, but I’m going to railroad you for a few minutes first. This, ah, kind of factors into your thing.”
Aurora was too busy trying to process what Rainbow had just told them to say anything reassuring, so she just nodded.
Rainbow winced and continued. “So yeah. I had a tantrum and it got caught in director– former director Clover’s net. He showed my letter to Primrose and when she responded poorly, he defected.”
“Hence why any of my security staff who plausibly may have seen the intercept were transported here where the balefire bomb was intended to solve all of Primrose’s problems at once,” Clover added.
Rainbow lifted a feather, indicating herself. “Me being the primary among those problems.”
There was a momentary silence around the table as Aurora felt several eyes tracking toward her. She frowned at her own plate, the remnants of her meal congealing on the metal as they cooled, and tried to decide how she felt about what she was only now just learning. For over a week now, she’d felt as if she were missing something that explained why Primrose had been so quick to use a forbidden weapon against Stable 10. Yes, Primrose had once before attempted to shut the Stable down after Spitfire failed to keep Delta Vee from discovering the true origins of their shared apocalypse, but Aurora had spent several quiet days in Discord’s cabin scouring her memory for anything she’d done to suggest to Primrose she might know. 
She’d come up with nothing because she hadn’t known the truth. Not yet. Not until she and Ginger arrived at what they’d agreed would become their new home together, confident in the knowledge that the Enclave’s momentary lapse into charity would be the final page in their trek across the wasteland.
Aurora touched the flicker of anger in her chest like a tongue probing a toothache. She waited for it to bloom into something larger, but the rage that smoldered inside her didn’t spread toward Rainbow. Rainbow’s mistake could be forgiven. It had been, Aurora realized, and the anger she felt cooled like the bits of meat and potato on her plate. 
But the rage was still there, white hot and roiling like the inferno of a collapsed star. She held onto it like fragile glass. A precious gift intended solely for Primrose.
“As far as statements go, using a balefire bomb to answer my pissy little note to Spitfire ranks near the top,” Rainbow continued. “And thanks to Ginger and Aurora fouling up her killshot, half of Equestria saw a balefire bomb explode in the sky instead of a geyser of rubble burping up from under the mountain. Any chance Primrose had at discrediting what I wrote went out the window the second that bomb exploded, and it’s already pushing a wedge through the Enclave. Only, if everything Aurora is telling us about SOLUS is true, we don’t have time to work out a clever way to hammer that wedge deeper.”
“Which is a risk,” Clover murmured. He paused just long enough for the first questioning looks to find him. “The Enclave isn’t a log we can split with an axe. It’s water. Liquid. Primrose built the Enclave on a foundation of beliefs based on the assumption that the Princesses chose her to be its leader, the proof of which she demonstrates every day by remaining young.”
Fiona jerked a thumb toward Rainbow and Roach. “These two jokers and a thousand others like them do the same thing without the fancy skin care regime.”
Roach rumbled his disagreement. “Clover’s point is that she’s lived this long without ghouling.”
“So then she has an AutoDoc squirreled away somewhere,” Fiona said. “Or a shitload of stims.”
Clover held up a placating wing. “It’s the latter, but that’s not as important as the fact that she has thousands of citizens and soldiers who believe the Princesses chose her. It’s security on an existential level. Even if I could waltz back into New Canterlot and put all the proof we have on a projector for everyone there to see, most of them are going to instinctively look for a way to slot it into what they already believe until it makes enough sense to be passable. Then they’ll stop thinking about it altogether and the Enclave will continue on like nothing happened.”
There was something in the way Clover spoke that hinted at a solution, and it was Julip who found it first. “It has to come from Rainbow Dash,” she said. “She’s the hammer.”
Both Clover and Elder Coronado nodded. 
Rainbow just looked deeply uncomfortable. “More or less. Yeah. Apparently back in the good old days when Primrose thought she’d killed us all…”
They didn’t have to ask to know that us referred to the Elements of Harmony.
“...she made the mistake of enshrining us in the Enclave’s weird religious hierarchy one rung below Celestia and Luna and, more importantly, one rung above her. Technically, I outrank that little fucker.”
Aurora flexed her wings, feeling the unease growing inside her as a slow tension in her muscles. “And if you suddenly appear to tell the world that Primrose and Spitfire killed the world…”
“Wham,” Fiona said, the levity gone from her voice. “The Enclave cracks all the way through, probably turns on Primrose or she eats a bullet, and Rainbow slots herself in as de facto leader before the winged wackadoos can reform around some other self-proclaimed horse prophet.”
They all looked at the gryphon with varying degrees of grim amusement and agreement. All of them, except Aurora.
“Ideally,” Coronado said, his tone optimistic, “we’ll be able to capture Minister Primrose before she or her people harm her.”
“Capture,” Aurora said, spitting out the word like it was a bug she’d swallowed. When the room turned to look at her, she glared back. “We’re talking about this like it’s already been decided. Primrose killed billions. She’s still killing. She needs to be put in a hole in the ground, not a cell.”
Fiona, Roach, and Julip all nodded in agreement. Half the room, and it felt like they barely added up to a fraction. 
Sledge shifted uneasily in his chair. Rainbow stared at the table. Coronado and Clover glanced at one another, something like patience passing between them before the Ranger regarded Aurora more directly.
It wasn’t a power move, but it felt every bit like one and the resentment welled up in Aurora like water from a cracked pipe. The four of them, the leadership, had been deep in discussion ever since Aurora and her friends left for Mariposa.
“Aurora,” Coronado sighed, “I won’t patronize you by saying I understand what you’ve been through. You deserve justice. Ginger, more than anyone, deserves justice. A bullet isn’t justice. Killing her, or allowing her to kill herself, runs the risk of enshrining Primrose in the minds of her people as a victim of Steel Ranger aggression. We can’t–”
“So what then?” Aurora snapped, cutting him off. “You arrest her? Slide breakfast, lunch, and dinner through the bars of her cell until she dies of old age? How the fuck does that make up for everything she’s done?”
Clover cleared his throat. “There is going to be a process.”
Her laugh had an edge of mockery in it. “What, a trial? Like they used to do before the bombs, with powdered wigs and some robed asshole to tell everyone she’s been a very bad mass murderer? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Aurora…” Coronado warned.
“This is Coldbrook all over again. Couldn’t stomach doing the decent thing unless he got everything he wanted first.”
“Hey,” Roach said, leaning forward so she could meet his eyes. “This isn’t the same as that.”
She knew it wasn’t, but she was angry now and her filters had shaken off their seals. She spat a trembling curse under her breath and forced herself to breathe.
They waited.
“I’m sorry.” She pressed the apology through grit teeth. “But she deserves… everything we can do to her. Everything.”
“I don’t disagree,” Coronado murmured.
Aurora spoke as if she hadn’t heard him. “She’s going to use SOLUS again, and I’m damned sure we’re sitting in the middle of her first choice for ground fucking zero.”
Coronado nodded. “I’m aware.”
“So we don’t have time to sit around and wonder whether the Enclave cracks like an egg or a walnut or whatever the fuck. We don’t have time to work out an elaborate plan to abduct Primrose and time it so Rainbow can take the controls. And even if we did, I’m not going to sit on my wings and pretend throwing that bitch in a box is better than dropping a bullet through her skull at fucking range.” She picked up her fork, wondered why she’d done it at all, then flicked it from her wing and watched it clatter across the table’s wooden planks. “When she gets SOLUS, she’s going to use it to carve her name across the wasteland, and my Stable is going to be the dot on the fucking i. With or without you, I’m going to kill her before she does that.”
Her words faded in the tent’s stale air like smoke from a smoldering fire. Coronado stared at her for what felt like minutes but was probably only seconds. Then he leaned forward with his implacable smile, and she braced herself for the threat she knew was coming.
“Aurora,” he said, once again using her name as if he owned it, “there will be a process. A trial, yes, and one that will end in conviction. This is something that has to happen so future generations have a clear record of the crimes she is guilty of. Yes, it’s for posterity and–” he held up a hoof, stopping her before she could interrupt again. “Let me finish. This is for posterity, and for history. We will condemn her for what she did to the world and we will do it in a way that is clearly documented and irrefutable.”
He gestured to Rainbow Dash. “She will smash that mare’s legacy into so many shards as to make it impossible for the next Primrose to try the same trick.”
Aurora swallowed the furious lump in her throat, trying and failing to find the right words to shut him up and put an end to his needlessly complicated version of justice.
“That being said…” Coronado turned both hooves up in a conciliatory gesture, and he sighed as if admitting a secret he’d wanted to keep a little longer. “She doesn’t need to be present, or alive, for any of it.”
He let the words hang between them until she inevitably took the bait.
“But you said you wanted to take her alive.”
“Ideally,” he said, emphasizing the word to remind her he’d used it earlier, “I would like that to be the case. Realistically, no. She already has the gun against our heads and we don’t have time to figure out how best to get her feather off the trigger.”
She wanted to point out they’d known weeks ago that the Enclave was looking for SOLUS, but she had the good sense to bite the words back. She’d spent the better part of five minutes making accusations and now that she was finally getting a sense of how much of an ass she’d just made of herself, she didn’t feel eager to shovel the hole deeper.
Her chair let out a sharp creak as she sagged into it. She didn’t want to sound as relieved as she felt, but the words tumbled out with a sigh anyway. 
“So we are killing her.” 
Coronado murmured his agreement. “Plan B’s all we got.”
She nodded, then looked down at her foreleg. Two Pip-Bucks were latched firmly above the joint. One hers. One not. 
One that couldn’t find Primrose. One that could.
She felt like the biggest asshole in the room, and probably she was. Apologies could come later.
“Security Director,” she said, shifting her attention to where Clover sat at the far corner of the table. “That’s a… high rank in the Enclave?”
Clover watched her through the screen of his overgrown mane and smiled as if she’d asked whether ice was cold.
“He’s Princess Shithead’s second in command,” Julip blurted, then realizing her error, added, “former second in command. Technically.”
Clover snorted at that and shrugged. “Close enough. I’m guessing you want help with something to do with that Pip-Buck we gave you.”
She nodded, not sure if she should be surprised he’d noticed where her attention had wandered. “A friend told me it was possible to modify it to track Primrose’s location.”
“Could. Not a good idea though.” He pecked his fork at a cold chunk of uneaten carrot, reconsidered, and set it back on his plate. “Network traffic is monitored. Plenty of devices connected to it asking one another where they are or where someone else is, and on paper, yeah, yours wouldn’t look much different. Soon as it starts asking for location data on the minister?” 
He knit the feathers of both wings together in front of him, then spread them apart in a mock explosion. “Boom. You’ve got every pegasus with a gun converging on you. The odds of you flipping on that spotlight while Primrose is out of the Bunker complex is miniscule, and if you get lucky and she’s aboveground, the chances of you closing the distance before the hammer falls is vanishingly so.”
Aurora turned a frown toward the sleek, white Pip-Buck. She wanted to complain about the time she’d spent getting it working again. About the obligation she hadn’t known she’d felt until right now to do this a certain way. The way she and Eshe had planned together.
“Then,” she asked, “what do I do?”
Clover pushed his plate away and leaned over the table. The shyness was gone, and he managed to look almost sad when he spoke.
“I know Primrose. Either she’s got the science team thinking SOLUS is an energy source like it was intended to be, or they suspect it’s a weapon and she’s not telling them what it’ll do when they flip the switch. I’m betting on the latter. They’re thinking space laser or long range broiler. Everything’s a weapon if you’re angry enough. If any of them knew SOLUS had been co-opted to pour a river of balefire through the sky, there’s not a single pegasus in the Bunker that would pull the trigger.”
Julip chimed back in. “So we tell everyone what SOLUS is.”
“I’ll eat my uniform before I believe she hasn’t planned for that. Primrose loves control above all else. She’ll have ten lockouts in place for every technician working to recapture SOLUS.” He twirled a feather at Aurora. “That maneuvering jargon you mentioned? Guarantee that’s locked in and set to run on a timer in case someone makes sweet eyes at the abort button. Primrose is the only one Primrose trusts with the authority to aim that gun, and if history is any indication she’s had practice.”
He shifted in his chair and sighed. “The only silver lining is that Primrose will have made herself the only person with the authority to pull the pin out of this grenade. Neutralize Primrose and we neutralize SOLUS. Which brings us back to that Pip-Buck.”
Aurora frowned. “You just said using it is a bad idea.”
He nodded. “I did, and it is. But a bad idea is better than no ideas, and right now I don’t have one. I can help you get the authorization access you’ll need to track Primrose’s exact location, and as soon as you send that ping you’ll have a very narrow window to act.”
“After which, I’ll probably be killed,” she said.
A pause. Then, again, he nodded. “Very likely, yes. Provided someone here doesn’t come up with something better.”
They looked around the table, and Aurora felt herself hoping one of them might speak up with a thought they’d been holding back. No one did. Even Elder Coronado frowned at his empty plate, his brow furrowed with consternation. 
“Until then,” Clover continued, no happier with the group’s silence than she was, “we should begin discussing the next step.”
Aurora opened her mouth to ask the obvious question, but a twinge of bitterness kept her from speaking. She didn’t like being led along under the best of circumstances, and it felt like former security director Clover had snatched up her idea and clapped it around her neck like a collar. She pressed her lips together and waited. 
He settled his wings against his sides, pressed the edges of both his hooves together, and used them to point across the table at her. “We need to decide how we’re getting you into New Canterlot.”







When the dinner finally ended it was deep enough into evening that the Steel Rangers had already finished scraping the ashes from the bottom of their impressively long community grill, and the Stable dwellers who had ventured outside for their ration of food, water and socialization with wasteland strangers had mostly retreated back to the safety of their home. The smothering clouds rolled with contrasting, darker grays as the day faded and the air had begun to cool. 
Gunfire split the quiet like an axe dropping through a log, and Fiona surprised herself by not flinching this time. It had been nearly an hour since they all piled out of the tent and, sensing that Aurora might want some space, Roach and Julip had allowed Sledge to lead them down into the Stable.
The slope of Foal Mountain rose up in front of them less than two hundred yards away. An assortment of bottles and cans stood perched on the rocks near enough one another that the shrapnel from one could reasonably knock down its neighbors. Aurora hadn’t encountered that problem yet. With the exception of her first two shots, she’d missed all the rest and her aim was getting progressively worse.
A puff of dust rose from the granite slope behind the targets. A second later, Aurora pressed the ridge of her brow against her rifle and hissed another curse.
Dust kicked up by each errant shot settled on the matted fur where Ginger’s Pip-Buck had recently been.
“Why don’t you take a breather?” Fiona suggested. “Y’know, before the quartermaster decides to charge us for the ammo?”
Aurora let out a sharp, angry exhalation. With one fluid motion she racked the bolt and sent the spent cartridge on a short arc through the air. Then she threw the bolt forward like she was trying to punish the rifle, took half a breath as she sighted her target, and squeezed the trigger. 
The rifle emitted a sharp click, and Aurora frowned. Somewhere in the direction of the Ranger encampment, a soldier laughed. Probably it was just bad timing and not meant for Aurora, but Fiona thought she could actually see the flush of embarrassment rise in the mare’s flesh. She was so focused on shooting that she’d forgotten to reload again.
Aurora muttered something and flicked the safety on, then leaned over to rummage fresh brass from the ammo can beside her. 
Fiona frowned, padded a couple steps forward, and sat down beside the stubborn mare. Her palm settled around the rifle’s ejection port like a firm yet caring vice. “Take a break. Let’s talk.”
She knew by now to expect the glare, and it came with all the annoyance Aurora could muster. It took another several seconds for Aurora to accept that Fiona wasn’t moving her hand out of the way, and no amount of bitching was going to change that unless it was about whatever had her feeling bitchy. That, of course, wasn’t a mystery at all. Everyone in the tent had known why Aurora stormed out. It was the same reason Roach and Julip were giving her space.
When Aurora finally gave in she muttered, “It’s bullshit.”
Fiona nodded, then grunted as she shifted off her haunches and onto her belly. She was easily twice as long from stem to stern as Aurora, but when she settled into a position that felt comfortable they lay almost shoulder to shoulder.
“It is bullshit,” she agreed, noting the scuff marks on Aurora’s prosthesis where the rifle barrel rested on it. As a stabilizer, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but Fiona didn’t think it was a great idea for her to pop off her leg whenever she needed a steady shot. “But you get why it makes sense, right?”
Aurora didn’t say anything at first and instead pulled a brass cartridge out of the ammo can. Fiona had taken her hand off the ejection port when she layed down and considered putting it back, but Aurora just flipped the round between her feathers like a nervous person might fiddle with a pen. 
“Yeah,” she said, using the tip of the lead bullet to scratch patterns into the dirt. “I just… the last time we split up we had an actual plan and everything still went wrong. Now I’m being told that we have to split up again, only this time we have barely a plan and…”
She shook her head and flicked the cartridge away. It skittered over the hardpan and came to rest a couple yards away. 
“She has no reason to come out of her bunker,” Aurora said. “None. And as long as she stays there, there’s no way I or anyone else can stop her. We’re fucked, Fiona. Well and truly fucked and nobody in there wanted to say it out loud even though it’s obviously true. And if she gets SOLUS and decides to use it on us, then I don’t want to be out there on my own waiting for it to happen. I want to be here,” she stabbed the round into the dirt for emphasis, “with my family,” another stab, “and with my dad.” 
She choked a little on the last word, then looked angry with herself for having done it. When she breathed, she did so with the slightest shudder.
Aurora was terrified because she wasn’t being given a choice. Clover had taken pains to explain why Roach and Julip couldn’t come with her to New Canterlot. Roach would be killed because he was a ghoul. Julip was a wanted fugitive who, in the last several weeks, had become a minor celebrity for all the wrong reasons. She’d be recognized within minutes of setting hoof in Enclave territory. 
And while Clover hadn’t provided any tangible reasons why Fiona couldn’t cross that contentious border safely, his tone and expression had made it clear he thought it would pose an unnecessary risk to what he’d begun referring to as the mission.
Five days until SOLUS passed through the narrow communication window. Tomorrow morning it would be four. There wasn’t time for the Steel Rangers to organize a massive military push against the Enclave. In five days they might be able to move enough soldiers and materials to the border to provoke the beginnings of a shooting war, but by then SOLUS would be over their heads and humming with energetic death. 
Their goal for the better half of the last century had been to contain the Enclave. Surround and compress their forces in a never-ending stalemate that would give the Steel Rangers freedom to explore Equestria’s vast ruins for tech that could force the enemy’s surrender. It had been a risk. Their military had diffused along the border like an ever present fog of danger that, until Coldbrook’s recent blunder, had successfully deterred open aggression.
They believed the strategy worked because they didn’t know about SOLUS or what it was. Now the Enclave was poised to control that superweapon in less than a week’s time and the Steel Ranger’s policy of containment had left them utterly unprepared.
Right now, Elder Coronado was frantically sending coded transmissions to his many counterparts across the wasteland. A frontal assault wasn’t in the cards, but he could ask for more covert assets to be sent in along with Aurora. He’d made it clear none of them could afford to make contact with one another once they reached the capital, nor would they be likely to recognize their allies if they needed help. If they had any hope that Primrose would leave the Bunker long enough to stick her head through the guillotine, she could never suspect someone might be waiting to drop the blade. 
Her confidence was the only crack in her armor. If she got spooked and went turtle, they were fucked.
“You know what I think?” Fiona asked.
Aurora turned away for a moment, trying to hide her face as she wiped her eyes against the ridge of her wing.
“I think this whole situation is a deep-fried turd freshly pressed out of a feral’s festering asshole.” The corner of her beak quirked into a smile at the sound of Aurora trying and failing to suppress a miserable snort of laughter. “And I think it’s important that somebody tries to fix it before it gets any worse.”
Aurora turned to look at her reticently.
“I don’t think it has to be you, but I think it is important that you don’t sit this one out either.” She rolled off her belly and onto one side, head propped in her hand. “You remember how you felt when you hauled yourself up Blinder’s Bluff with your heart set on rescuing Ginger?”
Aurora turned her gaze toward her rifle and studied it for a moment. Then she nodded, her voice thick. “Yeah.”
“What was going through your head?”
Several seconds passed before she answered. “I was thinking it was the right thing to do.”
Fiona sighed. “C’mon. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
Aurora swallowed, sighed, and slid the rifle’s open bolt closed. It gave a sharp click when she engaged the safety, and another as she let it tip to its side when she let her wings fold back to her sides. “I was thinking it was my fault she got abducted. If I hadn’t left home, we wouldn’t have met and she wouldn’t have gotten blamed for killing Cider. She didn’t deserve that.”
Fiona nodded against her palm. “Plus you liked her,” she added.
Aurora answered with a sad smile. “And I liked her.”
She let the silence linger for a while as she worked out what she wanted to say next. When she did, she curled her free hand into a fist and reached out to thump Aurora gently on the shoulder. “You’re a good egg, Aurora Pinfeathers. Better than that, you’re one of those idealistic weirdos who sees this world for what it could be, not what it is. Maybe that’s a Stable-dweller thing or maybe that’s just you, but I don’t think one bad knock is enough to shake that out of you.”
“Are you… trying to flirt with me?”
Fiona shrugged. “Little bit. Mostly I’m just telling you what I see, and that’s a mare who’s too brave and stupid to sit on her curvy little ass and do nothing while some fuckwit like Primrose subjects the world to a live replay of her last apocalypse.”
She saw the fluster of confusion bloom in Aurora’s eyes. Too forward, she told herself. Back it up.
“Look,” she continued, “this sucks. This is scary as hell, and there’s a big part of me right now that wants to fly right back to Griffinstone and hide until this blows over. Only I can’t do that because in five days it won’t matter where any of us go to ground. We can’t hide from this and, honestly, I don’t think I could live with myself if I tried.”
She reached out and touched Aurora’s leg. “I don’t think you could either, because you’re the type of person who believes in fixing things.”
They were quiet for a long moment while Fiona waited for some kind of reaction. When it became awkward she pulled her hand away, wondering if she’d crossed some invisible line she hadn’t known was there. She was surprised, then, when Aurora shook her head and turned her lip up in a tired smile.
“You’re a corny fucking bird, you know that?” She sniffled, then chuckled to herself as she rolled first onto her side and then, as if making a conscious decision to give up on her target practice, onto her back.
Fiona watched her spread her wings across the dusty stones and stare up at the rolling clouds, her expression a mixture of chagrin and surrender. 
Aurora heaved a long, tired sigh and said, “Don’t think I didn’t notice you sneaking that we in at the end. Pretty sure Coronado said you weren’t allowed to go.”
She let out a derisive snort and twisted her own body until her own back pressed into the dirt. “He strongly inferred that I shouldn't go. He never said I couldn’t. And besides, you and I both know Roach would wheedle me until I went after you anyway. The way I see it, I don’t have a choice.”
“No offense,” Aurora said with a tone that said she was about to say something offensive, “but you’re fucking huge. I don’t think a universe exists where you don’t draw the attention of every living pony in New Canterlot.”
 She looked down the streak of cream fur along her belly. “I’m not that big.”
“You could literally fit two ponies inside you with room to spare.”
She turned her head and regarded Aurora with a raised brow as she waited for her to hear what she’d just said. 
When it clicked, Aurora grimaced. “Please don’t.”
“No idea what you’re on about,” she deadpanned, then gestured grandly at her sprawled body as she shifted back on topic. “But with regards to the hot mess that is Fiona Goldbeak, the Enclave doesn’t have any standing doctrine against gryphons and I’m well used to rubberneckers. And it’s not like I pioneered the idea of running away from home. I won’t be the first tourist with a beak New Canterlot has ever seen.”
Aurora made a thoughtful grunting sound, a good sign she was starting to focus less on her own fear. “The tourist angle feels thin.”
She crossed her arms behind her head, settling into the conversation. “Okay, so then I’m a diplomat from Griffinstone checking in on our technicolor neighbors.”
“Not sure that’s better.”
“Unless it lands us an audience with Primrose, in which case I can teach you how to paint a room with just one bucket of pegasus.”
“Yeesh,” Aurora said.
“Too much?”
Aurora settled her forelegs over the burn scar along her chest and shook her head. “No, just tempting in all the wrong ways. I don’t think either of us would pass as diplomats though. It’d be more convincing if you were just you.”
Fiona frowned at the dark clouds overhead. They were hypnotic at this time of evening. Deep shade and splashes of light played off each other in slow undulations that tricked her brain into thinking she was staring down at the waves of a vast ocean. “Explain your brainthoughts, horse.”
“I just did. Be you. Be… I don’t know, the gryphon that left Griffinstone to find a better place to live. Only instead of Blinder’s Bluff, you’re considering New Canterlot.”
She rolled the idea around in her head to get a sense of whether she liked it or not. It wasn’t actually that bad at all. If anything, it might give the citizens of the Enclave more reason to try to show her their best selves rather than regard her with suspicion. So much for the tourist angle being thin.
“You know, this sounds a lot like I’m coming with you.”
“It does,” Aurora agreed. “Not sure how Coronado’s going to feel about that.”
“Coronado forfeited his right to have an opinion when he tried to fly you out there without backup,” she replied a little more heatedly than she meant to. She took a slow breath, letting the flash of anger subside. “Sorry. I know he’s not Elder Coldbrook levels of bad, but he definitely thinks you’ve got better odds of being bait than putting a bullet in Primrose. That just seems shitty to me.”
Aurora offered a noncommittal shrug that made it clear she’d been stewing over the same issue and didn’t want the conversation to circle back to what drove her to vent her anger with target practice. 
She sucked in a breath of cool air and stifled a yawn brewing behind her jaw. “Were you watching Rainbow Dash during that whole thing?”
Rocks scraped over the dirt as Aurora’s tail whipped across it. Rainbow had barely said a word during the entire conversation, but the stony expression she wore said everything. “She’s being asked to do a shit job she doesn’t want, and knows she’s the only one who can do it. I’d be pissed, too.”
“I thought representing Equestria was her whole schtick. Element of Loyalty, minister of a government branch, that whole chestnut.”
“It used to be, right up until it all backfired on her.” She didn’t explain what she meant by backfired, but the tone she used made Fiona suspect the word encompassed more than just the day the bombs fell. “Sledge said once she got her mind back, one of the first things she made clear was that she didn’t want to be anyone’s leader. She’d been hoping that once the Stable got back to normal she could go back to living a regular life again.”
If Fiona had lips, she’d have screwed them into a bewildered frown. “She’s Rainbow Dash.”
The shrug was audible in Aurora’s answer. “So?”
She hesitated. “Huh. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Damn.”
Aurora yawned. “Yep. Things changed. Now we all have to do things we don’t want to do.”
Fiona stretched her legs, feeling the muscles draw cable tight until they trembled. Somewhere back toward the tunnel, someone laughed. “Hey, Feathers?”
“Mm?”
“Thanks for letting me help.”
“Mm.”
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, knowing if she didn’t force herself to get up now she was going to end up waking up eight hours from now with a sore neck and a few hundred jagged pebbles glued to her backside. With a sigh she cracked one eye open and turned her head to glance at Aurora. 
The gray mare’s eyes were closed and her scarred chest rose and fell with a slow, steady rhythm of sleep. Fiona was surprised she’d held out this long. The poor thing had been exhausted since the minute she woke up. She’d half-walked, half-flown, and been half-dragged through the worst the wasteland could throw at her and yet here she was dozing off under its starless sky.
Fiona gave one last thought to getting up and noticed with dim amusement when the featureless void of sleep brushed the silly idea away.







The Dream formed around Aurora like fog evaporating in sunlight. Only the light wasn’t coming from the wasteland’s overcast sky, but instead the full spectrum lights that glowed from the ceiling of Primrose’s personal quarters.
She looked around, saw she was alone once more, and let out a frustrated sigh.
“Tandy, no. We’re not doing this again. Either talk to me or wake me up.”
Primrose’s terminal blinked on but Tandy didn’t appear. Aurora glared around the room, ignoring the terminal being dangled in front of her like bait. She had too much to deal with already to waste time meant for recuperating on this piecemeal choose-your-own-adventure mystery bullshit. A part of her knew Tandy would sense her thoughts the instant they materialized and so she willed her irritation at the empty room in the hopes they would reach Luna’s creation with plenty of italicized and underlined words. 
But Tandy still didn’t manifest herself. Nor did Aurora wake.
Her own immovable object called stubbornness rooted her hooves to the floor. The terminal could buzz and chime all it liked. Any time she wasted clicking through menus and watching Tandy’s disorienting first-person memory videos was better spent between the two of them talking like regular, sane beings. 
She blinked, and when her eyes opened she was standing in front of the terminal. Had it happened while she was awake she would have puked, no question, but since it was a dream her brain simply backfilled the jarring shift with some vague memory of her having walked the distance. Before she could say anything, a video on the terminal began to play.
Primrose stared up from the screen at such an absurd angle that Aurora felt like she was looking down from a ladder. Her expression was icy with new confidence. 
“You will never lift so much as a feather against me,” Primrose growled. “No nightmares. No bad memories. If you so much as have me relive a headache, I will see to it that every last Stable on this continent is reduced to a fog of its component molecules. Do you understand me?”
There was a pause. Then Tandy quietly assented.
Primrose’s smile had enough teeth in it to give her a distinctly rodentish grin. “Good, because if you do try to fuck with me, I will know and I will slaughter every last dreamer you have left. Remember, Tantabus, I don’t need to have dreams to live a long and happy life. You, however, need us.”
The recording ended, accidentally or deliberately she didn’t know, on a frame that caught Primrose in an awkward half-blink, half-sneer. She looked like she was about to sneeze. If it weren’t for the circumstances, it might have even been a little funny.
Aurora pursed her lips and turned to face the empty bedchamber. “Tandy, it’s a bluff. She’s talking out of her ass so that you don’t turn her brain to pudding the next time she dozes off which, if that’s something you can do, it would really help me out if you did.”
The room didn’t answer, nor did the terminal yank her back around for another video. The silence was unnaturally absolute, and it unnerved her a little. She spoke not just to hear something that wasn’t the yawning absence of sound, but to prod a little harder at Tandy.
“You’re afraid,” she said. “I get that. It feels like she has all the cards and she kind of does, but only in my world. Not in here. You’re the only person here with her wings on the controls and I don’t think you believe she can read your mind. If you did, you wouldn’t be showing me what’s in hers. So why don’t you come down from wherever you are and just talk to me?”
Nothing answered. Aurora felt the sting of salt in her eyes. She could barely keep the tremble out of the words as she spoke them. 
“Tandy, Eshe is dead. I put him down and I…” she swallowed hard and started to pace around the lavish room. “I need to talk to you about that. I need to hear from you that you’re okay and that you’re not ignoring me because you’re angry with me. Because if you are and it’s because I fucked up and missed something…”
She turned to pace the other way, and the nebulous starscape that was Tandy loomed behind her. 
“I am not ignoring you,” she said. “And I am not angry.”
She nodded a little harder than she intended, sending a sweep of white mane cascading across her face. She pulled it back behind her ear, eyes glazed but not quite enough for the tears to fall, and said, “I know it’s what he wanted, but…”
“It was not what you wanted,” Tandy finished. 
“No,” she murmured. “It really wasn’t. I feel like that’s selfish.”
“It is,” she said, motionless as a statue. “But he was your friend and you trusted that he knew when it was time for him to leave. I… didn’t trust him when it could have made a difference.”
Aurora began to say that she’d tried to make Eshe’s passing as comfortable as possible, but she stopped when she noticed Tandy wasn’t looking at her. She was staring at the floor with her brow uncharacteristically furrowed. Usually when Tandy felt a strong emotion, the state of the constellations within her would shift and change hue. This was the first time Aurora could remember seeing Luna’s creation demonstrate something like body language. And she wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d just heard Tandy use a contraction.
She put aside her reassurances and stepped closer to Tandy. As she did, her towering alicorn form seemed to shrink until, without Aurora realizing it, they stood at practically the same height. Tandy still managed to stare at the floor even as Aurora put a comforting wing on the mare’s shoulder. 
Something swam through the starscape of Tandy’s eyes. “I took away his voice so he could not ask for help. I ruined his life.”
“You made a mistake,” Aurora said, squeezing Tandy’s weirdly corporeal shoulder. “And yeah, it was a big one. So let me ask you a question.”
She bent her neck a little until Tandy looked her in the eye. It was like staring through a window  to an alien sky and, in a very literal sense, it was difficult not to get lost in them.
“Did you understand what was happening to him?” 
Tandy’s brow lowered into a considering frown. “Yes. The bed was caring for him. He was waiting to be freed.”
It wasn’t quite the answer she was looking for, so she tried again. “Did you know he’d be too weak to leave the AutoDoc when that happened?”
A pause. “Yes, but… the bed heals. I knew that. It is why I… ignored him.”
Aurora caught the subtle change in tense. Tandy had known. She’d known the bed would keep Eshe alive, so she’d put the idea of his distress on a high shelf for some other day. And then Aurora had come to her asking for a way to fix Ginger’s Pip-Buck, and the Robronco technician Tandy had willingly forgotten had become useful again.
Only then had Tandy paid enough attention to Eshe to realize what two centuries trapped in a withering body had done to his psyche. His body could have been repaired, given enough time and resources, but that wasn’t an option now. Eshe had spent nearly ten times as many years existing alone in Mariposa than he’d lived outside of it. His decision to die had been made decades before Tandy came to him for help. Likely it had been made long before Aurora had been born.
It was easy to hate Tandy for what she’d done. To forget, despite the lifetimes she’d lived and lives she experienced by proxy of her dreamers, she was still learning how to grow up. Luna’s reason for creating Tandy might forever remain a mystery, but her sudden death had left Tandy ill equipped and inexperienced for the task of ruling over the Dream. 
Now she was learning too late that her negligence had caused one of her dreamers to ask for death. 
“Tandy,” Aurora said, her voice compassionate yet firm, “you can never undo what you did.”
Tandy’s eyes widened as if she’d been slapped.
“But,” she continued, “you’re not a bad person.”
Several long seconds passed. “Then what am I?”
Aurora let her wing slide off Tandy’s shoulder, and shrugged. “You’re just another weird, flawed fuck up like all the rest of us.”
For a moment she worried she’d come off as flippant and would need to backpedal to spare Tandy’s feelings, but she’d forgotten Tandy wasn’t limited by things like unspoken intention. The mare-shaped void of constellations and stardust reached for her, and Aurora felt an almost electric buzz at the base of her brain as Tandy crossed the space between them and hugged her. 
“Sometimes I wish I could wake up.” 
The admission was barely a whisper. Aurora didn’t know how to respond, so instead she put a wing around Tandy and squeezed. The two of them had met under the worst of circumstances and their understanding of each other was weighted impossibly in Tandy’s favor, but they were nothing if not friends. 
Tandy was the first to break the embrace. Something deep swam in the creature’s eyes, making it appear as if their dense starscapes were rippling. 
“That little tyrant does not know you survived,” she said, confirming Aurora’s hope that she wouldn’t find her face on wanted posters the moment they crossed into Enclave territory. “But she was never trying to kill you. She knows Rainbow Dash is inside your Stable. She sent a message to–”
Aurora held up a feather. “We figured out she’s after Rainbow Dash.”
Tandy went still for a split second as if she’d gone elsewhere. Then she nodded. “So you have.”
She let herself smile just a little. Tandy wasn’t firing on all cylinders just yet, but she was making a recovery. “I don’t suppose you can scrape Prim’s brain for the codes to blow up SOLUS?”
Tandy stared off into the distance again and spoke as if she were reciting printed instructions. “Control authority is only granted after a full biometric scan. You would need her hooves, head, and approximately ten cubic centimeters of blood.”
Aurora glanced over at the display case that held Primrose’s serrated blade, Desperate Measures, then turned in a slow circle as she took in the rest of the room. “I can think of a few ways I’d like to get those. Doesn’t do me much good if I can’t get inside this place.”
“The Enclave Bunker Complex features one access point.” The bedroom blinked away and was replaced by a corridor that looked remarkably similar to the ones built by Stable-Tec, only the steel paneled walls had some kind of textured inset that softened every surface. A pair of silver doors split apart at the corridor’s nearby terminus, revealing the waiting elevator across the threshold. “The elevator is heavily defended at all times due to the concentration of high ranking staff.”
Aurora frowned. “So… I steal a uniform and a keycard, maybe?” 
“The corridors are passively monitored by a suite of sensors networked to an independent M.I.L.L.I.E. intelligence. Facial scans are conducted automatically including within the elevator itself. The last attempted intrusion into the Bunker occurred seventy-one years ago. The Ranger who made the attempt was detected by the elevator sensor and shot to death when the doors opened.”
“So…” she said, dragging out the word as she leaned into the elevator and identified the unblinking black dome mounted above the doorway, “what’s the best option?”
“Attack Primrose outside the Bunker.”
She turned away from the elevator. “Something tells me you’re about to say she’s not leaving the Bunker until she has SOLUS.”
Tandy’s head dipped a little as she nodded. “No. She has no intention to expose herself, and her security detail has been doubled since the information leak.”
Aurora blinked. “What leak?”
Tandy looked up at her. “You do not know?” Her eyes went distant again, and she took in a shallow breath. “Oh. Well then, this… may be helpful.”







Fiona gradually became aware of hushed voices nearby. She blinked her violet eyes open and stared blearily at the stretch of cracked dirt and blackened bits of wild grass. Some distant part of her brain reminded her to track down some Rad-Away. Even if she’d managed to piss out all the radiation Roach had dumped inside Mariposa, sleeping on a hardpan that wasn’t finished shedding the rads from the Enclave bomb probably wasn’t doing her any favors. 
She threw her tired gaze further distant until the Steel Ranger tents came into focus. If it was safe enough for them, it was good enough for her. 
She was about to stretch and yawn when the voices came again from somewhere behind her. The ear that wasn’t squashed against the dirt craned back by habit to give her a sense of range on the skulking threat. 
“All I’m hearing are reasons why you don’t have to go.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I think it is, honey. I really do.”
Fiona frowned at the dirt, careful not to let the expression translate into movement they might detect. Aurora and the unfamiliar stallion were speaking in hushed tones but their intensity was carrying their voices clear all the way over to where Fiona lay. They were fifteen, maybe twenty yards away judging by how much she still needed to strain to hear. 
“How many soldiers did they tell you they’re sending, not including you?”
Aurora made a noise like a scoff. “I don’t have a number, dad, and that’s not the point.”
“Then what is?” Aurora’s father - what was his name? Dusk. No, Dusky, with a y - asked. “Why do you specifically need to risk your life when there are better trained pegasi being sent to do the exact same thing?”
Dirt crunched under someone’s hooves and Fiona could imagine Aurora shifting uncomfortably. “They’re not all pegasi out here.”
“Duly noted. You still haven’t answered my question.”
A pause. “I’ll be safe, dad.”
Dusky’s voice had the quiet desperation of someone who could sense he wasn’t making the progress he’d hoped. “She tried to kill you, Aurora. In what way is what you’re about to do safe?”
“She tried to kill Rainbow Dash, not me.”
“That isn’t better.”
Another pause. “I have to try.”
“You’ve been trying,” her father groaned. “Honey you have done more for this Stable than anyone. You–”
“I didn’t die for it,” Aurora snapped. 
Fiona winced. In the silence that followed, she had to assume Aurora had too. She’d meant to use Ginger’s sacrifice as a counterargument and instead it had come out like a threat. 
Several long seconds ticked by before either of them spoke.
“Don’t do this for revenge,” her father said. “If there’s nothing I can say that will convince you to stay, then at least promise me you’re not doing this because you believe shooting that mare will make up for Ginger’s death.”
When Aurora didn’t answer, her father sighed. “You’re not a killer, Aurora.”
More silence. Someone shifted, crunching dirt.
“I love you.”
Quietly, “I love you too, dad.”
“Are you taking her with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you trust her?”
A pause. “Yeah.”
Fiona felt her heartbeat ratchet up a couple notches and she became vividly aware of her own breathing. Were they looking at her? Did they know she was listening?
“I don’t think I need to tell you how much this scares me,” he said, then as if he were gesturing at the wasteland around them, “All of this. No walls, no roof, just thousands of strangers with knives and guns and no way to keep them out except with more knives and guns. It terrifies me. It was supposed to be empty.”
“Well, it isn’t,” Aurora said, and there was something like relief behind the words as she said them. He’d said his piece and, while he was deeply unhappy with her persistence, he’d given up his position with grace. Fiona started to wonder what her life might have looked like if her own family had been capable of that, but Aurora’s voice pulled her back to the present. “Sure, some of the people out here do bad things, but they’re not all Primroses. Most of them are just doing what they have to do to stay alive.”
Dusky grunted. “That soldier didn’t have to take your leg to stay alive.”
She was quiet for a moment. “He didn’t. But…” Another, thoughtful pause. “But if Ironshod had been brought up in our Stable, with everything we have? I don’t think he would have turned out the way he did.”
“You think someone like him would have done better in Mechanical?”
Aurora let out a soft chuckle. “After Sledge put a few dents in his ego, yeah, I think so.”
Fiona clenched her jaw so she wouldn’t laugh. The mental image of Paladin Ironshod taking shit from a pack of lowly mechanics was a gem she didn’t know she’d needed, and one which she promptly filed away for later enjoyment. 
“When are you leaving?”
Her grin faded.
Aurora sniffed. “We still have some details to work out with Elder Coronado, but we’ll be heading out once that’s done. He’s not going to be happy to hear Fiona is coming with.”
“If he tries sending you out there alone, you have him come talk to me. I’ll set him straight for you.”
A sad laugh. “I will. Thanks, dad.”
There came the scraping of hooves and the sound of quieter, muffled noises between them. Fiona found herself focusing on a tiny fissure in the dirt a few feet away to distract herself from the tiny, hitching sobs behind her. Salt stung at her eyes by the time he heard them break their embrace. For a while longer Aurora and her father made little coughs and sniffling sounds. Then Dusky formed something like words amidst the thickness in his voice.
“You come say goodbye before you leave.” 
A haggard, “Okay,” was all Aurora could muster.
And then one set of hooves started crunching across the dirt in Fiona’s direction. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take the slow, deep breaths of a gryphon deep in sleep and thought she’d managed a decent job of it in the time she’d had to react.
Dusky’s hoofsteps slowed to a stop beside her. “Promise me you won’t let anything happen to her.”
She hesitated before cracking one eye to look up at the tired stallion. “You have my word.”
He didn’t trust her. He didn’t appear to even particularly like her. But he didn’t press her for more. He simply nodded once and walked away, his eyes cast forward like he was terrified to look back. 







“She can’t go with you.”
Aurora leaned back in her chair and actually managed to cross her prosthetic hind leg over the other. If Elder Coronado was the unstoppable force, she was damn happy to become the immovable object.
“Why?”
Seated on the floor beside her, Fiona kept her expression carefully neutral. They’d decided together that this was already how it was going to be, and unbeknownst to Coronado, this meeting was more about breaking him down so he’d accept it rather than making compromises. 
Aurora had to work to keep herself from checking over her shoulder. She was used to having Roach and Julip nearby to help with these discussions. They knew the wasteland better than her and could make better arguments in favor of their decision than she could. Plus it was nice not to be outnumbered, and with Sledge, former director Clover, and now former colonel Weathers taking up enough seats in the cramped office to force everyone into a rough circle, Aurora and Fiona were most definitely outnumbered.
To his credit, Elder Coronado hadn’t taken the chair behind Sledge’s desk. He sat off to one side of it, close enough still for him to lean against if he wanted to try out the “casual banter” posture but managing to resist the urge. That was an Ironshod move, and whether Coronado knew that or not, it wouldn’t go well if he suddenly attempted to upgrade their working relationship to something uncannily intimate.
“Because it’s an unnecessary risk,” Coronado droned, his attention alternating between Aurora, Fiona, and the thin stack of printouts floating on a bed of magic above his lap. “Fiona, I mean no disrespect, but you out of all of us have to understand how much you’ll stand out to the locals.”
The room turned its eyes to the gryphon who, recognizing it was her turn to speak, offered a mild shrug in response. “I’m a big girl, Elder. I know how to take care of myself.”
“That’s just not good enough,” Coronado said, rolling his documents into a tube and using it to gesture once at Fiona, and then at Aurora. “You will draw attention toward her, and we simply cannot afford that.”
To the right of Sledge’s desk, Weathers had also crossed her legs and was studiously inspecting the edge of one of her faded lavender stripes. In the same wing that probed the lines along her thigh, she held Ginger’s Pip-Buck. “As much as it pains me to say it,” Weathers began, “the Elder is right. Aurora on her own is problematic enough, what with her having become a minor celebrity after Minister Primrose made the issue of retaking Stable 10 all about preserving her pureblood honor.”
Aurora felt herself cringe at the last two words. They made it sound like Primrose had some vested interest in her chastity.
“We might not have had flyposters glued in storefront windows with her photo on them,” Weathers continued, “but there were enough chapel sermons about her for most citizens to have an accurate mental image of what she looks like. If she’s not outright recognized, she’s going to have people telling her she looks like Aurora. It’s only going to get worse if she has a gryphon trotting along beside her like a fucking lighthouse.”
“In which case,” Coronado jumped back in, “one of those someones will eventually be a member of the Enclave’s military wing. You will be one radio call away from Primrose finding out you’re alive and inside her capital city. I don’t need to explain what happens after that.”
Aurora shrugged. “So I’ll dye my mane and tail and cut them both short. Job done.” 
Sledge gave her an appraising look that the others around him didn’t see. He’d never been interested in her before and he certainly wasn’t now, but it was one of the ways he sometimes cut the tension with the crew in Mechanical and it did manage to put a knowing smirk on her face all the same. 
Weathers managed a tiny smile of her own, but when she spoke she was all business. “Right now the goal is to reduce the attention on you, not increase it.”
She frowned at that, not understanding. 
Fiona leaned over, doing her best subtle-but-not-subtle impression. “She says you look like a slob.”
Weathers eyed Fiona with an expression that bore the most polite disdain Aurora ever remembered seeing. “I’m saying, in this case, less may be more.” She gave Aurora an apologetic wince. “Sledge assures me the Stable has the right supplies to temporarily dye the cutie mark out of your coat and reapply something that better suits the alias you’ll be traveling under.”
She watched Coronado with fresh suspicion as he unrolled the documents he’d used as a pointing stick and held them out to her. She accepted them and began skimming the pages. When she found the name, she stopped and stared up at the kirin.
“Greasy. Hooves.”
He nodded.
She shook her head. “Why… no, I’m not… what? Why are my hooves greasy?”
Fiona was trying and failing to stifle a rapidfire giggling fit.
“Your stated occupation,” Coronado said, tipping his nose toward the papers, “is listed under your name.”
Dumbfounded, she read further. “Traveling mechanic. For what? Literally nobody I’ve seen out here fixes anything. What would I be repairing and why are my hooves greasy.” She lifted her right wing and flapped it like a wet rag. “I have wings.”
Weathers leaned forward. “Your coloration closely matches those of a legacy family who aren’t well known for their business acumen beyond maintaining a small delivery service between the capital and several neighboring towns and small cities inside our - their - territory.”
She frowned at the papers. “And what’s a legacy family?”
“They’re the living descendants of a prewar Equestrian citizen. More importantly, they have the papers to prove it.” Weathers began to roll her eyes, but caught herself. “The Hooves are notoriously vocal about it, which should encourage some of the citizenry in the capital to ignore you out of habit.”
Aurora skimmed the rest of the page. The paper was fresh, probably printed sometime this morning. Still, it looked official, assuming she even knew what official was in this context. Neat, orderly details about her name and residence were boxed out away from more basic information about her supposed business, which simply read Freelance Mechanic. To her chagrin, a grainy photo of a flank that wasn’t hers but which she recognized was glued inside the box designated Mark (If Applicable). The welding torch could only be Flux’s cutie mark.
She let the page droop so Sledge could see where her feather was pointing, and she lifted a brow in question.
“Yeah,” he rumbled, “she already made sure everyone on third shift knows you’ll be wearing her mark.”
“Fantastic,” she muttered, only skimming the rest of the papers before looking to Coronado. “How much scrutiny will these hold up under?”
Weathers answered before he had a chance. “Very little. Clover and I put those together by memory, so the formatting is most definitely wrong and we have no way of verifying if the residence listed actually exists. We’re banking on the possibility you’ll only need them to help yourself keep your identity straight, but if somebody asks to see them I would advise not letting them look too closely.”
“And if they do look at them too closely?”
“Either invoke your new family name and hope they decide you’re not worth dealing with, or start running.”
She snorted, folded the thin stack of sheets, and bent around to shove them into her saddlebags. “Wow, I feel so much better now. What more could I ask for than an identity held together with twine and craft glue?”
Coronado lifted a brow. “Forgive us for not wanting you to be shot on sight.”
“Don’t be shitty, Pinfeathers,” Sledge added. 
She bit back the rest of what she wanted to say and flipped her saddlebag shut. “From where I’m sitting, it’s hard not to be. If I’m supposed to be a traveling mechanic, where are my tools? What am I traveling with? Do I have a wagon or am I humping it with whatever I can carry?”
Weathers cleared her throat, pulling the room’s attention back to her. “You will be meeting with a contact in the town of Steepleton.”
Aurora frowned. Where had she heard that name before?
“He’ll provide you with a small cart, a convincing assortment of tools, and a stipend to get you–”
She held up a feather. “What’s a stipend?”
“Money,” Coronado said flatly. “Caps.”
“Oh,” she grunted. “Should’ve just said that.”
Off to the side, former director Clover pinched the bridge of his muzzle between two feathers and muttered to himself, “Goddesses defend us.”
Aurora thought she saw Coronado nod in sympathy and wondered whether it would be considered out of order for her to lean forward and whip-crack a feather against his bulbous nutsack. Probably not an impulse she should act on, she decided, and let them express their collective frustration however they needed.
“I believe it’s worth mentioning,” Coronado said, mercifully unable to read Aurora’s thoughts, “that the caps you’ll be provided are coming out of the pocket of someone I trust, and who is already taking a risk by agreeing to be seen helping you. He’s been an asset to the Steel Rangers for more than twenty years and he isn’t rich.”
She could feel the guilt trip coming and wasn’t sure why it was being laid out for her at all, so she just nodded and said, “Okay.”
Which gave Coronado the perfect opening to once again level a feather at Fiona. “By that, I mean to say I’ve only asked him for enough to feed one pegasus. Not a pegasus and a full-grown gryphon.”
Fiona actually balked. “Full-grown? You’re handsome and an asshole. Fun.”
If Coronado was offended, he didn’t show it. When he spoke, he enunciated each word carefully so as not to be misconstrued. “I’m being practical, Fiona. You are the largest creature in this room by a wide margin. Gryphon diets consist heavily of dense protein, which is abundant enough if you’re willing to hunt it, but which is tightly controlled within the Enclave. Unless you’re willing to eat greens and grains for the next four days, which I strongly assume would not be good for anyone, you are going to need to find a way to feed yourself.”
Aurora looked up at Fiona. “Sounds like he’s saying you can come.”
“Can,” Coronado said, “and should are two very different words.”
It was a decent enough way to say I’ve given up trying to tell you no because it’s a waste of everyone’s time. As much as Aurora disliked being lectured, she thought she could probably get along with Coronado under different circumstances. And, just a little, she felt guilty for making it so difficult for him to help her.
She coughed into her feathers much in the same way and with the same purpose that others had been politely clearing their throats. It even almost felt natural. “Okay, we’ll figure out the food issue when we get there. Where in Steepleton is this stallion we’re supposed to meet?”
At that, Weathers slid out of her chair and stepped forward with Ginger’s Pip-Buck held out in a white and lavender wing. “I’ve marked his location on your map.”
She took the Pip-Buck, briefly caressing its sleek design with her own filthy gray feathers. “It’s safe to turn on?”
“Your head of I.T. seems to think so.” 
Sledge grunted. “If Opal says it’s safe, it’s safe.”
Weathers nodded, making it clear she hadn’t needed the endorsement but would take it anyway. “She scrubbed the biometric software, so direct contact with the sensor suite in the cuff won’t set off alarm bells in the network. Even if it would, Opal assures us it won’t seek a connection with the network until you tell it to.”
Aurora furrowed her brow as she slid the device back on and clamped it over the matted coat she’d kept it on. “Okay. What about tracking Primrose?”
Weathers did a decent job hiding the wince in her eyes as she took Aurora’s foreleg in her wings and began manipulating the Pip-Buck’s buttons. Aurora let her turn it on, and soon a full color display of the Robronco logo and spritely animated mascot danced at the center of the screen. But instead of erroring out like it had the first time Aurora tried to use it, the boot process finished and a familiar interface appeared.
“I’ve been assured the software packet…” Weathers paused, looked back to Sledge for confirmation, and continued after he gave her a close enough shrug, “Opal is confident this file will give you superuser access within the Bunker’s network.”
She pecked at one of the white buttons until the screen cycled to the tab marked DATA. 
A short list of files populated the window in alphabetical order. At the top waited a read-only file titled Access.bat.
“Be very careful with this,” Weathers said, navigating away from the tab. “Running that file will break things that are not meant to be broken, which means a lot of people in charge of those things are going to be very motivated to have you found. There are enough network repeaters in the capital to make that job very easy for them, so it’s important you only run that software when you’ve run out of options.”
Aurora stared at the Pip-Buck, her jaw locked into a deep frown. “Seemed safer to wear before I pulled out the thermite charge.”
“That actually brings us to the next point,” Clover interjected. “Greasy Hooves is not the sort of citizen who would have access to a Pip-Buck, let alone two of them. It’s my advice you leave your personal device with Sledge and keep your modified Pip-Buck hidden out of sight.”
She chewed her lip for a long moment before uttering a quiet, “Huh.”
The rest of them waited.
She wasn’t sure what bothered her more: that Clover’s suggestion made perfect reasonable sense, or just that it was a suggestion at all. He was giving her space to say no which seemed kind of stupid. And then it occurred to her that he very likely knew it was a stupid suggestion and he was trying to gauge whether she had the good sense to know that. Well, just because she was stubborn didn’t mean she was dense.
She worked the old latch on her Pip-Buck and flinched when it sprang open on a too-tight spring. The little computer gave a quiet tritone chirp when it noticed the disconnect and promptly displayed the cheery Robronco shutdown screen before going dark. Weathers made room for her as she dropped from her chair, crossed the center of their rough circle, and held out her Pip-Buck to Sledge.
He accepted it with something like regret in his eyes and quietly stowed it away inside his desk. 
“Well,” she sighed, “that’s one way to lose five pounds. Is that everything?”
She looked around the room, giving each of them an opportunity to share anything they could be holding onto. Each of them looked to one another in turn and, sensing their part of this meeting was over, Coronado made a gesture with his horn that said you’re free to leave.
But Aurora wasn’t ready to leave just yet. As she undid the much gentler latch of Ginger’s modified Pip-Buck, she bent to set it at the bottom of her saddlebag and then turned to retake her seat. Coronado’s gnarled horn tilted along with the curious expression that moved his head a few scant degrees, though it was equally evident he was bracing for whatever new wrinkle Aurora felt like inflicting on their already paper-thin plan to stop Primrose.
“Well,” she began, “I spoke with Tandy last night…”







Aurora stared up at the morning sky and sighed. Her whole body felt drained and they hadn’t even begun their flight yet.
In front of her, the almost forgotten access road that once bridged the wingful of miles beyond her Stable gently transitioned into the old single-lane highway Roach had led her along on that first day outside. Charred logs littered the ground around them like burnt matchsticks. It was all that remained of the old forest Roach planted over a century before she’d been born, and it was a physical reminder of the bomb that took Ginger.
When Fiona’s palm wrapped her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly, she just sighed again and said, “This is a bad idea.”
“Oh yeah,” Fiona agreed. “Everything about this is a double-decker shit sandwich.”
She nodded. Nothing about this felt good. It was all too big. Her search for an ignition talisman seemed like a simple errand compared to the very real prospect that Primrose was completely aware all she had to do in order to win was to run out the clock inside her bunker. Aurora didn’t have an ace up her sleeve. She barely had a deuce. 
In four days, Primrose intended to tell the same orbital weapon that eviscerated a continent to pour death down onto the people who, one by one, built her up into the mare she was today. Its only defense, the multi-thousand ton cog that once shielded it from an apocalypse, lay destroyed. If SOLUS fired on Stable 10, there would be nothing left of it to come home to.
“Should we be doing this?” she asked, the words weak in her throat.
She looked up at Fiona to gauge her expression, and she saw the pliable corner of the gryphon’s beak curve into a soft grimace.
“Do you want to be standing here in four days torturing yourself over whether you should have gone instead?”
She frowned. “Fuck no.”
“There’s your answer,” Fiona said, and gave her shoulder another squeeze before letting her go. “We both know if things start looking bad Sledge and Coronado will evacuate the Stable.”
Neither of them asked where they thought the refugees would go, or how likely it was that Blinder’s Bluff would be SOLUS’s next target after Stable 10 became a smoking crater. It didn’t bear thinking about when the answer was nowhere would be safe once Primrose had her weapon.
Several miles down the highway’s eastern leg, a train of wagons shimmered in the warmth radiating off the ancient concrete. Another round of vital supplies from the Bluff with more spread out between them. Clover had said something along the lines that this might be the most well-coordinated relief effort since the bombs fell, and Aurora had been grateful no one had pointed out the irony in that statement. 
It felt like years had passed since she and Roach walked along that concrete ribbon and encountered Cider for the first time. The thought of it all made her bones ache.
“That tattoo looks good on you,” Fiona remarked.
She lifted her wing and eyed the unfamiliar cutie mark with equal helpings of disdain and mistrust. To her eyes the subtle lightening of her gray coat where the stylists had bleached her hindquarters near white and then recolored the blank patches gray again looked like the least convincing dye job on the planet. Flux’s cutie mark, a copper welding torch with a jet of blue flame pointed out of its nozzle, graced her hips where the green and blue metallic wing had always been.
If she hadn’t felt woefully unprepared to infiltrate the Enclave’s capital city before, the unfamiliar cutie mark and the itchy, bleach-dried skin beneath made failure feel guaranteed.
“Who knows,” she muttered, dropping her feathers back to her side, “maybe I’ll even live long enough to see mine grow back.”
“Might be faster to just shave your ass,” Fiona chuckled, but it was a mirthless noise. She was just as uneasy over what they were setting out to do as Aurora felt. “How’d it go with your dad?”
Aurora turned her gaze to the cracked pavement. She’d gone down to his compartment to say goodbye and though neither of them said it, they both knew the likelihood they would never see each other again. She had held herself together right up until her dad didn’t, and they’d sobbed into each other like they had when he’d sat down on her childhood bed to break the news about her mom.
“It went okay,” she lied. “Roach didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”
Fiona held out a hand and see-sawed it. During their flurry of goodbyes, Roach had pulled Fiona aside for a quiet conversation away from everyone else. Aurora hadn’t been able to hear the words but she’d recognized the way Roach held himself when he was being protective.
“He…” Fiona paused, reconsidered something, then tried again. “He made me promise I would keep you safe.”
She looked at Fiona and could tell she wasn’t going to go into more detail unless she was forced. She decided to leave it be. “I guess that means you’re obligated to dramatically leap in front of oncoming bullets for me, huh?”
There was relief in Fiona’s grin. “I’ll be sure to get right on that, ma’am. You have our radio?”
“Right here.” She patted the left side of her new saddlebags, a worn down traveler’s affair that didn’t bear her Stable’s number across the leather. “Our Pip-Buck’s in there too. I figure if someone starts getting nosey about what I’m carrying, we can buy some time by letting them search the other side first.”
“Solid strategy,” Fiona said approvingly, then hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Chef Whinnyknicker back there is raising a stink.”
Aurora blinked, momentarily thrown by the name and the non sequitur. 
“Whinnyknicker,” Fiona repeated, her grin widening. “Because those are the sounds you make? Good god, if we survive this I’m flying back to Griffinstone and buying you a joke book.”
She continued to frown, and followed with a furtive glance back toward the faint smear of tents at the base of the carbon-blackened mountain. At this distance, Aurora couldn’t hear a thing from the Ranger camp. “Did we forget something?”
Fiona made a noncommittal sound and bent down so Aurora could see inside the open flap of the satchel around her neck. Nearly a dozen brown paper packages lay crowded together within the canvas and a strong scent of grilled, salted meat wafted out of it. 
“Coronado said I had to figure out how to feed myself if I was coming with,” she said, her grin belying any attempt to look innocent. “Sooo… I did.”
Aurora surprised herself by laughing, and she glanced back again at the distant camp where she imagined some poor Ranger cook just now discovering Fiona’s blatant theft. She actually looked forward to the idea of the two of them getting their hides chewed by Coronado, because it would mean there will have been something to come back to at all.
She hadn’t realized she’d lost herself in thought until Fiona thumped a curled knuckle against her. “You ready to fly out there and do something incredibly stupid?”
No, she thought. She wanted to crawl down to the bottom of her Stable and let the Steel Rangers do this part. She wanted to open her work queue and complain about how every single ticket was flagged critical priority and pretend that, somewhere up there in the void, a doomsday weapon was falling toward Primrose’s open wings.
She waited for the panic to come, but it didn’t. She breathed out a long, steady breath and felt the hard edges of Desperate Times slung under her feathers. 
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I am.”







In Mariposa, a ribcage walked.
Had any of the medical wing’s staff still been alive to observe its progress, he or she may have described the sequential ticking of bone over tacky, black concrete as centipedal. It crawled, aided by the haphazard net of mutated ligatures and muscles, without much concern for itself. It inched forward, one set of ribs lifting, extending, and dropping back down with twin ticks, much in the same way it had done for the past ninety-six years. Its slow progress pushed a millimeter or two of the organic sludge that caked its six-sided universe, unaware and uncaring of the fact that the protophage would eventually pull the displaced material back together in time for its next orbit to interrupt whatever experiment it was conducting.
Tick. Slide. Tick. Slide. Tick. Slide.
There had been a time when it had not been a something, but rather a somebody. That its universe had once been a place, and that place had once been called a cell. There had been others, and those others had been called doctors, and those doctors had given something to the somebody who lived in the cell that spread through them like a bubble of gas expanding through sand. The something had pressed against that somebody’s mind and scattered it like dust, and the somebody had become something, and the something had become it.
Ribs twisted in sockets of bone and tissue that had once recessed so deeply into the arch of its spine that the linkage of discs had twice so far broken apart. When that had happened the thing that helped it become an it experimented with the slurry of tissue and pulverized bone it had tracked behind it until something better could be built to repair it. At first a breakdown had taken months to fix, forcing it to wait until iterations of failed growths could be reabsorbed and repurposed into something better. These days, it took only hours.
Where there had once been a mind remained only a diffuse miasma of neurons which, by dint of their evolutionary nature, retained a very loose form of consciousness. It did not think, but it felt motivation. It was aware that the thing that had disassembled the somebody it had been could carry a carrot and a stick. The thing only had one real desire: to play. 
Play with the building blocks it had been broken down to. Piece them together. See what it did. Add or subtract an evolution, replace or expand, experiment and explore.
When the ribcage taught itself to walk, it received the carrot. Though the tissue and membrane that had been its eyes had been broken down for other tasks, it could explore, so that’s what it did. It learned the boundaries of its hard, cubic universe over decades until the diaspora of neurons could anticipate its walls. It knew, in a manner of knowing, that it would reach the rectangle of cold, inorganic metal the protophage had tried and failed to break down on many thousands of occasions and would try again, as always, on the next pass.
It was also vaguely aware of living material behind one of the walls. Over the centuries the noises it made had grown quiet, however, until it no longer interested it. If it could experience happiness, it would have been happy to walk. Walking was progress. Locomotion. Walking was how it would find hidden corners of its small universe, if any remained.
It might have been content to walk indefinitely had it not been for the new somebodies.
Where the universe had once been a vast, silent, and bland finity, suddenly it could sense the presence of many somebodies behind the walls. Its consciousness bloomed with new excitement at the sensation of movement translated into subtle ground vibration. And there had been something else. Sound.
It remembered sound. First the jagged sensation of something artificial and violent, then closer the buzz of something else. Communication. Voices. 
It remembered voices. 
The thing that turned the something into an it worked quickly, aided by two centuries of steady experimentation, to locate and bridge the disparate neurons scattered throughout its universe until the sounds of each voice could be decoded into meaning and intention.
It listened as it walked.
“Shouldn’t we be in there with her?”
“Not until she asks. I don’t want us crowding her right now.”
“Hi Eshe. Fancy meeting you here.”
Voices from two directions. One to its left. One from behind. They played and blended over one another at times, but each source came through the cool concrete floor like an ear pressed to a drinking glass against a thin wall. 
“Squeeze twice if you still want me to do this.”
A memory frothed together. A sound. Screams and screeching tires. An explosion at a historic bakery. A remote tucked under its - his? - feathers.
“Not just something. I want… I think I could build a place for people to live.”
It had wanted to build once, before it - he - had been convinced to destroy.
“No shoring up old ruins with whatever was laying around or living in tin shacks made from rusty sheet metal. It was all new, or as new as it could be. I’m pretty sure they cut the lumber themselves.”
Ribs shuffled along as they had for ninety-six stagnant years of too much carrot and no stick. It wanted to build too. It wanted to build beautiful things from ruins. It was made of ruins. But it didn’t have any more lumber to cut. It only had the body that had once been somebody, and the carrot of beneficial evolution could only grow so large.
It listened, feeling something like direction forming within its mind, but nothing else the voices said helped define where it was meant to go. There were ruins. Lumber. Somewhere that wasn’t here in its little universe.
If it had been able to frown, it might have. Or it might not. So it listened until the voices rose, then fell, then grew faint, and went silent. For hours it waited for them to return and for hours nothing came back.
A set of ribs lifted, extended, and fell into the organic muck. Then another. 
Tick. Slide. Tick. Slide.
Tock.
A rib touched the wall of its universe, and it stopped.
There were new ruins just beyond. New lumber.
The same rib rose, scratching its blunted end up the barrier, and considered the microscopic layer of calcium and protein the dragging movement had sheared away. Already, new material was being transported along its mass to replace what was lost, pulled from muck beneath it. Where the tip of its probing rib had scraped the wall, a barely perceptible layer of that wall had embedded itself into the tip of the rib in the form of concrete dust. 
It consulted its fog of neurons for an explanation, and one came to it a half an hour later.
Erosion.
It had worn away a microns-thin layer of the edge of its universe, leaving less of it behind than had been there before. It lifted the rib once more and repeated the motion, paused several more minutes to consider the results, and did it again.
And again.
Reward chemicals trickled across the caked mass. More than ever before. It had found a new carrot.
It did not know how deep the wall went or how long it would take to break free of its confines, and it did not care. Time was irrelevant. It would scratch, and scrape, and dig until it found the ruins and lumber the voices had promised were there.
And when it did, it would play.
> Chapter 49: New Canterlot
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chops waved his notepad in Weathers’ face, close enough that if he’d wanted to, he’d be able to swat her nose with it. She stared at what he’d written, then angled her neck to look past the singular sentence and down at him. The lines creasing the former colonel turned defector’s eyes marked the weariness she was undoubtedly suffering through. 
“Corporal, you know–”
He frowned at her, and she sighed.
“Chops,” she amended. He was no one’s corporal anymore. “I just spent the better half of last night convincing this Stable’s overseer not to secure that mare under guard in a cell. And, keep in mind, not as a punishment for her but as a protective measure for everyone in this room.” She gestured past him, but he didn’t turn to regard the nearly thirty of his fellow former Enclave colleagues. “Meridian’s husband and daughter are dustwings. She won’t be inclined to turn a new leaf just because you have.”
He crossed out the sentence he’d written and wrote a new one below it. 
“‘Dustwing’ doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
He paused, then scribbled down three more words.
“It never did.”
Weathers scanned the lines, sighed, and looked off into the middle distance rather than meet his gaze. 
They’d all slowly begun coming to terms with the extent of the false bill of goods Primrose sold them. For some, like Chops, the understanding had hit them faster than they’d been ready for. A hard realization that they had been indoctrinated into believing they were heroes of a bygone age rather than pieces of a slow, marching genocide. They were the ones who had been able to break out from the insulating shell of lies and, unprepared for that abrupt shift in perspective, had gone into something like collective shock. There were moments when the murmuring conversations in the room rose in volume just to drown out the occasional, muffled sobs.
Others peeled away that shell layer by paper thin layer, pausing to examine each lie to be sure it held up to their personal scrutiny. Like Dancer. A dozen or so simply weren’t ready to accept that they’d dedicated themselves to participating in something monstrous. So they had gravitated to one corner of the room, each of them engaging in the same moral debate from different angles, feeling out whether the truth they’d been shown weighed on them less heavily than the lies they’d grown so comfortable believing. They philosophized over whether they should consider themselves criminals or victims, and the jury was still out on where they would land. 
Those who didn’t fit either group seemed to ebb and flow between them as if waiting for someone else to choose the course of their futures. It was disheartening watching them stare down at their uniforms, worrying over the Remember Cloudsdale pins they’d each worked so hard to earn, and repeatedly cave to the fear of what might happen to them if they committed to unfastening those buttons. 
Weathers had made her decision. Her allegiance to the Enclave ended the moment she’d seen the balefire pulsing from the bomb as Aurora and Ginger flew above their heads. 
Chops watched her press her lips into a line and stared longingly at one of the vacant beds. Then she glanced at the makeshift airlock behind her and seemed to decide something. 
“Let me ask you this,” she said, and the resignation in her tone hinted that she’d already given up hope of catching a few hours of restless sleep. “What are you going to say to her if I agree?”
He began to sign the words, stopped himself mid gesture, and pressed pencil to paper.
“I want to apologize,” he wrote.
Weathers sighed. “That’s honorable, Chops, but I don’t think that’s going to fly the way you think it will.”
He let out a frustrated exhalation and, like throwing another grain of sand onto a vast beach, wished he could just speak the words in his head. There was a power in having a voice and, thanks to his apraxia, the only voice he had was an idiot sounding jumble of utter nonsense. Letters on paper never conveyed all the things he was thinking the ways emphasis and subtleties of speech magically did, and he’d been born without all of it.
He resisted the urge to crumple the notepad in his wing and give up. Things were easier when Dancer had still been willing to talk for him. 
The paper puckered beneath the nib a little as he scrawled out the words.
“I know she isn’t just angry at me. She’s angry at all of us. Anyone in black. I am not trying to fix that. I don’t think it can be fixed.”
Weathers’ shadow darkened the paper as she read along. He hated it when people started reading before he was finished, but he fended off the urge to wave her away and just bore through the discomfort.
“I traumatize her filly,” he wrote, working his jaw side to side to distract himself from the knot in his chest. “Meridian wouldn’t have reacted the way she had if I hadn’t been trying to convince her kid that I’m not a bad person. I am a bad person,” he scratched a line under am hard enough to chip the end of his pencil, “and I’m the reason Meridian almost got shot in front of her own daughter. I need to talk to…”
A pair of lavender feathers plucked the pencil out of his, stopping his stream of consciousness before it could grow into a flood. He frowned at what he’d been writing, then looked up at Weathers expecting to find disapproval in her eyes.
Instead, she wore the same tired patience she had when he first asked to talk to Meridian. “Be honest with me. Are you doing this because you want them to stop hating us, or are you doing this because you feel bad about making that kid cry?”
He frowned at the dwindling blank space on his notepad. A beat later, he nodded. Yes, on both counts.
Weathers smirked and looked beyond him at the others watching them. “Well, I don’t think you’re getting both so maybe just try making it up to the kid if you can.”
Chops felt his ears perk up in surprise. He couldn’t help it. When he’d cut her off at the door, he hadn’t expected a yes.
“Don’t look so excited,” the former colonel warned, though she still wore some of that smile when she said it. “I still need to clear it by the overseer, and even then Meridian is liable to lay you out cold the minute she thinks she has a shot at you. Are you sure you want to get your ass kicked by a mare twice your size?”
One of the soldiers listening in whistled. Chops ignored it as he took his pencil back, sliding it over unblemished paper. It was crisp and bleached bright white, not like the recycled stuff they had back home. 
It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that he probably wasn’t going back home. It was a possibility that kept knocking against his skull and which, so far, he’d unconsciously held at bay rather than seriously consider. He might never be welcome back in New Canterlot. 
He shook off that dark thought and held up the notepad. Weathers read it.
“Something private, away from the kid,” he’d written. The filly, Beans, didn’t need to experience an encore of her mother’s rage. “Ask Sledge for an interpreter?”
He’d ended the statement with a question mark because, more than likely, the best chance of finding anyone who knew wingspeak would be to poll the Rangers and civilians who had come to the Stable’s aid. Chances were slim there would be anyone who fit that bill, but it was worth asking anyway.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Weathers said, and Chops could sense she was speaking to him as an equal now. Just two pegasi stuck in the same shit sandwich who used to wear the same uniform once upon a time. “Can I see that?”
He blinked, realized she’d nodded toward his notepad, and let her take it between her feathers. The sudden reversal felt both alien and conspiratory as he watched her write something on the pad, then pass it back to him.
“Lt. Dancer can’t interpret for you?”
He grunted, one of the few useful noises he could make that didn’t require fine vocal control, and took the pad back to scratch out his reply.
“Doesn’t say what I mean all the time. Gets me in trouble a lot.” Then he added, “Less motivated after I almost broke his nose.”
Weathers tilted her head in an inquiring gesture, but when he didn’t expand on the details  she nodded and gave the nearby empty bed one last longing look before turning back to the airlock door.
When she paused, Chops thought it was because she’d forgotten to ask him a question or was about to address the room as a whole. Some general reminder to minimize interaction with the Stable dwellers on the other side of the splintered glass window, or a tepid reassurance that progress was being made on powering the Stable’s water treatment facility so they wouldn’t have to hold their breath every time they were escorted out to use the restroom down the corridor. Without a fix, sooner or later the toilets were going to begin backing up.
“Screw it.” She looked down at Chops and tipped her head to the inner door. “It’ll save time if I don’t have to come down and get you after Sledge says yes. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”







“You’re falling behind, Greasy Hooves!”
Aurora was too damned tired to roll her eyes, so she settled for a noise of exertion and gave her wings a few hard pumps. The tuft of Fiona’s tail drifted within reach and, were she not pouring every ounce of energy she had left just to stay airborne, she would have seriously considered giving it a good firm yank. 
Instead, she grit her teeth and angled out of the gryphon’s slipstream as she caught back up. The muscles in her wings and shoulders were on fire. For what felt like the hundredth time she risked increasing her own drag by bringing her foreleg up to her face, only to remember she wasn’t wearing her Pip-Buck anymore. It was back at Stable 10 where it wouldn’t risk blowing her cover, and the smooth model the Enclave had lent to Ginger was buried safely inside her saddlebag along with the Steel Rangers’ radio.
Clouds swirled beneath them like flowing mud, thicker and more mobile than they’d been when they set out. It unsettled her not to know exactly where in the wasteland they were right now. According to Elder Coronado, the same highway that she and Roach had followed to Junction City at the start of their journey also traced a gently curving line west to the ruins of Canterlot Mountain. It was as good as any landmark to aim for, but keeping the old concrete ribbon in sight had proven more difficult than she expected.
“We should check again to see if we’re on course,” Fiona said after Aurora managed to slide into formation off her left wingtip. “You look like hell, Feathers. Are you sure you don’t need a break?”
A rivulet of sweat rolled up Aurora’s snout and into her eye. She tried to ignore the sting but winced anyway. “No, I’ll be fine. Just give me a few seconds to catch my breath.”
Fiona nodded, keeping an eye on her as they cruised over an unbroken field of churning white clouds. They had reasoned the risk of being spotted above the cloud layer was less risky than being seen trying to skirt below them like most wasteland flyers did. Sooner or later they were going to cross paths with a pegasus whose idea of loyalty involved goddess worship and an innate superiority complex, and it would be better if they weren’t caught trying to fly under the figurative radar when that happened.
“Clouds still giving you trouble?” Fiona probed.
Aurora bent her head under her left wing and spat the foam from her mouth. The last time she’d pushed herself this hard had been… she didn’t even remember. Even a double shift in Mechanical felt like a cakewalk compared to this.
“They weren’t like this before,” she said, gasping for breath. “It’s like flying through soup. How are you not feeling that?”
Fiona shrugged, clearly as confused as Aurora felt. “Maybe it’s because I’m bigger? More mass? Are you sure it doesn’t have to do with, you know…?”
Aurora watched as Fiona twirled the tip of her wing at her, indicating the burns visible down her chest and belly. There had been a long debate back at Stable 10 whether or not to try hiding the whorling, pink scars under a layer of makeup or dye, but eventually Clover and the salon mares had come around to her way of thinking and left them untouched. In a decade or two the scars would twist and spread into the recognizable traits all ghouls eventually shared, but right now they looked like a trail of nasty burns. Having spent her whole professional life around glowing hot steel and enough sharp surfaces to make a foalsitter faint, she could think of any dozen of reasons for how a freelance mechanic could get so badly injured.
But still, Aurora didn’t think her ghouling was the reason why each dive and subsequent ascent through the clouds felt like clawing her way through pudding. 
“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s probably because we’re closer to their source. I remember Julip telling me there are whole factories that do nothing but seed these things into existence.”
Fiona didn’t look convinced, but neither did she push. “Alright. But if you want to take a breather, tell me.”
She wanted to say something snarky like Greasy Hooves never takes a break but she was too exhausted to try. Without another word, the two of them bent into a shallow dive toward the river of clouds and once more the wall of vapor slammed across her wings with unnatural resistance. She had to flap hard and when Fiona began to slide deeper into the fog ahead of her she clamped them flush to her sides and just let gravity pull her down. 
When she finally punched through the other side she spotted Fiona treading air a quarter mile away, small enough to hide behind her outstretched hoof. It was agony to brake her descent and arc back up toward the gryphon, but somehow her screaming tendons managed.
The highway they were tracking was little more than a faint line scratched along the northern horizon. They’d strayed south again. She groaned. Another ten or so miles added to a flight that was already chewing into the time they had to figure out… something. Even though SOLUS wouldn’t reach low orbit for another four days, every minute felt like a squandered opportunity to put a bullet in Primrose’s head. For all either of them knew, the minister could be taking her last walk along the streets of New Canterlot right now before deciding to sequester herself away until SOLUS arrived. 
She pushed the unhelpful anxiety aside when she noticed Fiona was pointing at something. She followed the outstretched talon down toward the old highway and, barely appearing as a gray smudge on the western horizon, the faint outline of a town.
“Think that’s it?” Fiona asked.
Aurora tipped her nose back at her saddlebags and slid into a shallow glide alongside the gryphon. Fiona’s digits slipped into the pouch containing Ginger’s Pip-Buck and, once she had it out, helped slide it over Aurora’s outstretched foreleg. A button press toggled it on and, one enviably short boot sequence later, Fiona was carefully navigating the full color menus. 
A modern map of the wasteland filled the screen, centering on the pale blue triangle that represented their position. Two overlapping icons glowed near the northwest edge of the map, a square indicating the distant town and a narrow, diamond obscured behind it. The word Steepleton shimmered beneath them. 
She groaned in relief. “What’s the name of the gods you said your folks worshiped?”
Fiona quirked a smile, then pointed a talon toward the haze of blinding light directly overhead. “Just the one. Everyone who wasn’t a geezer just called it the sun.”
“And the geezers?”
The gryphon heaved her shoulders in one of her oversized shrugs. “They called him Old Cygril.”
“Thank fucking Old Cygril,” she uttered, earning herself a grin and an eyeroll from Fiona. “That’s Steepleton.”
Fiona eyed the distant town for half a second before turning back to her. “Going to be hard to track down Coronado’s contact without flashing that gadget around. How do you want to play this?”
In answer, she banked her glide due north on a trajectory that intersected the highway before it entered the town. “Land. My wings are about to fall off and I don’t think it’s illegal for pegasi in the Enclave to travel on hoof.”
“Little suspicious, though,” Fiona murmured over the wind.
“I’ll fake an injury,” she countered. “Besides, you’re going to be drawing all the attention, remember?”
Fiona rubbed her knuckles against her chest, then held her talons out as if to inspect their quality. “I am the visiting foreigner, after all.”
She allowed herself a tired smile and, after shooting the clouds rolling overhead an unappreciative look, directed her descent toward the old highway.
Steepleton turned out not to be much larger than Junction City had been before the bomb. By all appearances it had grown atop a shallow incline where the two-lane road had crested a natural hill rather than skirting around it. It had taken on a vague elliptical shape due to all the new construction simultaneously vying for position along the road and as near to the strange looking building at roughly the top of the hill. A thin, four-sided spire rose up from it like a weird radio tower. A quick question to Fiona let her know it was a church, and the shingled spire was its steeple. 
Aurora had to force herself not to roll her eyes. Steeple. Steepleton. Har har.
As they drew closer to the surprisingly well-maintained rooftops, Aurora found her gaze pulled down to a pegasus duo who had just begun pulsing their wings to bring themselves to a comfortable landing in town. Both pegasi paused to look right back up at her and Fiona, with one of them taking the added measure of pointing a pale pink wing toward them. And they weren’t the only citizens whose attention their descent had caught. Aurora felt her heart climb a few inches up her throat as she spotted several equine forms stopped on the road and staring up at them. Or, more likely, they were all staring up at Fiona.
She looked at her gryphon counterpart and was surprised to see Fiona was already shooting her a flat stare. 
“If you ask me if I’m sure we should land, I’ll bonk you.”
Aurora pressed her mouth shut and wondered if she was really that easy to read.
“Let’s set down there,” Fiona continued, pointing at a busy stretch of road where a few colorful awnings leaning out onto the central road suggested a probable marketplace. “Remember, Greasy, you belong here. I’m the bumpkin tourist from out of town.”
She grimaced. “If I’m going to use that idiotic name, you should have one to match.”
“Sounds like sour grapes to me,” Fiona grinned as they banked low toward the market. It looked like word was traveling fast. Nearly everyone they could see had stopped to gawk at the oncoming gryphon. “The only people who know me by Fiona are several hundred miles that-away and bat for the wrong team.”
She didn’t have to explain the strange analogy for Aurora to know what she meant. Fiona was probably right and nobody in Steepleton would have heard of her, but they were already tempting fate by crossing the imaginary line into agreed upon Enclave territory and Aurora wasn’t keen on poking the proverbial bear any harder than absolutely necessary. She shelved the discussion, however. With as much interest their arrival was generating, it wouldn’t do them any good to be heard arguing over what their names as they landed.
Slate roofs and decorative wrought iron balconies slid above their heads as they touched down at the near end of the marketplace. Aurora held back a groan of relief at finally being able to let her wings relax, fully aware of the hundred or more faces turned toward her and to a larger part Fiona. For whatever reason she’d been expecting their arrival to be regarded with open suspicion, whispers, and hostile sneers. Things citizens of an Enclave town would do when she pictured them in her mind.
But the first voice to rise above the wind thrown over the awnings by their landing was of a wide-eyed, adolescent colt whose single contribution was a long, unabashed, “Woah!”
Little blue ears pointed straight up and forward toward Fiona who had landed all of a yard in front of him, and he stared with an open intensity that only foals his age could get away with. If the colt had parents with him, they were probably either too startled or stunned to pull him back onto the sidewalk.
Fiona looked down at the colt and smiled. “Hey there, kiddo.”
Just like that, the ice had been broken. A few of the curious onlookers returned to browsing the variety of wares displayed among the stalls, but most found one reason or another to loiter nearby and gawp. As expected, a small crowd composed of the most sociable citizenry formed around Fiona. Aurora clenched her jaw behind a tight smile as she found herself being jostled out of the way by those who wanted a better look.
For all the questions and colorful comments they peppered her with, Fiona handled the well-meaning barrage like a champ. She regarded each curious face with a smile, answering their questions in turn with answers that were just detailed enough to satisfy the questioner while remaining vague enough to avoid committing herself to a single narrative. 
As Aurora waited for Fiona to extract herself from the crowd, she noticed that the vast majority of the ponies she could see were predominantly pegasi and unicorns. She had to make an effort just to spot an earth pony and when she did find one, he was hitched to the front of a small wagon just beyond the farthest market stall. Her false smile sank a little more when she spotted another earth pony following a unicorn mare toward a vegetable stall. The mare didn’t seem to pay her counterpart any mind as she selected a half dozen of something that looked like potatoes and dropped them into the earth pony’s bulging saddlebags. 
“If I end up coming back this way, I’ll make sure to take you up on the offer,” Fiona chuckled as she pulled away from the dissipating crowd. 
Aurora blinked away from the mare and her… attendant?... and looked up at Fiona.
“Free dinner at that guy’s place if we decide to stick around,” she said, hitching a thumb at a departing stallion. “Something about the stink eye you’re giving me says that’s a non-starter, though?”
She winced, not realizing she’d been pulling a face. “Sorry. Got distracted. Are we okay to go find our–”
Fiona cut her off by dropping a palm on her head and made a show of ruffling her mane. “Oh, I’m sure Uncle Hooves will be fine if we take a few minutes to catch our breath,” she said with a jovial yet pointed expression. “No sense in airing the family drama with half the neighborhood listening, right?”
She pulled back the tangled nest of her mane back behind her ear and tried not to let her internal grimace graduate to something Steepleton’s onlookers could see. She’d been a syllable away from saying our contact.
“Yeah,” she played along, following close beside Fiona as she padded along the colorful stalls. Despite the breakup of the first gaggle of curious onlookers, most of the eyes and ears they passed by were following them. “Guess there isn’t.”
Without stating it aloud, both of them knew their first goal had to be to find someplace private where they could consult their Pip-Buck. Coronado’s contact within the Enclave was here somewhere, but the map marker would narrow “here” down to a single door rather than an entire town.
As they walked, Aurora began taking in Steepleton on a more granular level and the differences between it and everywhere else she’d been in the wasteland were stark. The first thing she noticed was that the brickwork of the stout two-story buildings around them were old but well-maintained. Here and there she could see bright streaks of new mortar where a crack had zigged along the bricks and been patched in. Some of the windows overlooking the street had full panes of clear glass still in the frames while the rest seemed to use some kind of uniform, outward-opening storm shutters. 
Her front hoof wobbled on something and she braced for the joint to roll into one of the road’s ever present fissures. But her hoof only tipped so far before stabilizing, and she looked down to see the crack she’d stepped on had been packed with a mixture of sand and gravel. A glance farther ahead showed her half a dozen more cracks filled with the same patch material. It was a painfully simple solution for a problem that had bothered Aurora since she first set out from her Stable, and it probably cost next to nothing to implement. Just whatever time and labor it would take for a crew of workers to source the right materials and bring it to where it’s needed.
By the looks of it, Fiona wasn’t any less impressed though her attention was focused less on the quality of Steepleton’s maintenance and more on the variety of goods on offer at the market stalls. Aurora let her own gaze shift to the cookie-cutter booths and suspected the simple design might be regulated in the same way new schematics had to be approved by Fabrication so nobody caused unintentional damage to the Stable. Each stall was essentially just a simple six-foot wide table with a frame around it to support a sloped fabric awning. Some vendors chose to sacrifice display space for personalized boards advertising special prices or unique products, but the basic design was always the same. Everything that made the stalls pop came from bits of decoration that the owners had attached second-hand, and even then none of the ornamental crates and side tables extended beyond the edge of the sidewalk.
Fiona seemed to notice the same arbitrary limit and whistled under her breath, pointing a long tan and cream feather toward the gutter. “I think those storm drains might actually be intact.”
Aurora didn’t know exactly what a storm drain was, but the heavy iron grate tucked along the curb made it clear there were some underground utilities in play here. As if to demonstrate the fact, she watched as a lanky unicorn led a bucket across the sidewalk by its castors and splashed the sudsy contents over the open grate.
By now, she was essentially just following Fiona and as far as she could tell no one around them seemed to question it. Fiona’s natural curiosity led them out of the designated bounds of the marketplace and up the shallow grade, past what appeared to be several casual eateries replete with outdoor seating. Of course, as soon as Fiona lumbered into view every patron with eyes looked up from their meals and stared at them as they passed by. One timid stallion had even slid halfway out of his chair as if he were preparing to bolt. Fiona smiled without lingering on any one of them, her attention sliding up and away as she feigned interest in the dominant structure they were nearing at the crest of the hill.
The church, or chapel, or whatever the locals called it felt much larger than it had appeared from the air. Its pitched roof easily stood twice the height of its neighbors, say nothing for the pointed pillar erupting from the apex. The steeple - dumb name but nobody asked her - was adorned at the top with a stone sculpture of the old, prewar princesses. They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, in a stance that suggested they were headed somewhere. Then it clicked in her mind that they’d been sculpted to appear to look in the direction of Canterlot Mountain, barely a smudge on the far western horizon, and Aurora had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Subtlety be damned, the Enclave wanted to drive the point home with as few steps possible.
Fiona nudged her leg as they started past the wide courtyard in front of the church. “Make a show of asking me to visit your church.”
If she hadn’t already been maintaining a neutral expression, she would have balked at the request. Ginger never talked much about the Enclave’s home brewed religion beyond the occasional disdainful remark, and Aurora had no interest in walking into one of their places of worship to fill in the blanks. 
“Prefer not,” she murmured decisively.
Fiona deliberately slowed her loping pace as they neared the flagstone path leading into the churchyard. “You and I just blew through this town’s commercial center without stopping. You’re from a legacy family, remember? I doubt the Hooves would skip an opportunity to properly educate the savage gryphon.”
This time she did pull a face. “And you think I know the first thing about,” she gestured at the church, her voice hushed, “this?”
To her dismay, Fiona responded to her gesticulation as if she’d intended to bring her attention to the pretty, pointy building looming over them. Rather than answer Aurora’s concern, she let out an impressed whistle and started up the flagstone path. She could feel the eyes on her as she debated whether or not to hit the release valve on her prosthetic to force a delay, then cursed under her breath as she hurried to catch up.
Despite her long, long list of misgivings about detouring toward a building within which all the lies the Enclave told itself to keep Primrose lording over it like a miniature deity were told… she had to admit, the church was every bit as beautifully built as Ginger once described the one her family had attended in New Canterlot. A lot of care and craft had been put into its construction. The brickwork was a uniform sheet of dark gray accented by bold, white concrete cornices and lines that hugged two ornate forward-facing windows. 
Each window looked as if they had been assembled by individual panes of colored glass and joined together by black metal. As Fiona led her to the tall oaken doors set between the peaked windows, Aurora noted that the rightmost depicted Celestia and Luna in serene repose. Eyes closed, horns crossed, and foreheads nearly touching, they appeared to be in the midst of peaceful sleep. On the opposite side of the doors, blue and pink panes depicted Primrose in an identical pose but with an unmistakably sad expression. A monster pretending to mourn her victims.
As they climbed the six white steps toward the doors, Aurora expected them to pull apart ahead of their arrival to reveal some dark and twisted ritual involving long cloaks and plenty of blood. Too many bad horror movies, maybe, or not enough. What she saw when Fiona wrapped her fingers around the tarnished brass handle and pushed was something else entirely. 
Instead of some flame-lit dungeon, the doors whispered open into a sparsely decorated vestibule replete with printed schedules for the month’s services and a small collection of pamphlets advertising everything from family counseling to something titled, Community Penitence & You. Beyond the carpeted vestibule - Aurora followed Fiona’s lead by wiping her hooves on a large fibrous mat set inside the doorway - two smaller but no less expensive looking doors were propped open to reveal a cavernous space absolutely filled with the day’s diffuse sunlight. 
Aurora couldn’t help it. She whistled and was shocked at how loud it sounded when it echoed back to her. It was enough of a disturbance for the half dozen or so citizens scattered around the cavernous space to glance back at them, and then go utterly wide-eyed at the sight of the gryphon squeezing through the doorway beside her. No one leapt up and screamed in outright panic, but the expression on a nearby stallion’s face definitely had that prey-species-meets-predator-species vibe to it. 
As they slowly made their way between the bench-style seating, Aurora couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d entered a space with very specific rules of conduct. Between the twelve equally colorful and patchwork windows - six on each side of the aisle - with their beatific depictions of ponies in silent repose, the immaculately polished wood seating, and the simple yet imposing altar at the opposite end of the chapel, Aurora had every impression that this was not the kind of building where home brew liquor and karaoke would be welcome in any circumstance. She made a point to remind herself not to crack anything remotely approaching a joke.
Just as she began worrying Fiona might be intending to ham up her traveler’s ignorance by making a beeline for the altar, an equine figure appeared from a door just behind it with a wicker basket held aloft by a wisp of magic. He glanced their way, tilted his head for a moment, then donned a friendly smile as he carried the basket to the altar and set it down. Then, without hesitation, he stepped down the raised floor and made his way down the aisle toward them.
Aurora braced herself, but when the stallion reached them he simply stuck out a hoof toward Fiona. To her surprise, Fiona shook it, and he grinned.
“I’m glad to know I remembered the custom,” the stallion said with just a shade of embarrassment to go with the admission. “I haven’t had the good luck to meet a genuine gryphon since I was hardly a colt!”
Fiona returned his smile. “Gone are the days of easy travel. I’m Lila, and this is Ms. Hooves.”
“Pastor Mica,” he said, taking back his hoof. “Hooves. I’ve heard that name once or twice. Or thrice.”
It took Aurora half a moment to realize he was trying for gentle humor with regards to the Hooves family having a reputation for advertising their status, and doing so loudly. She went with a weak smile and felt a wash of relief when his attention slid back to Fiona. In all her years, she didn’t remember being dismissed so politely before.
When Pastor Mica offered for them to sit down rather than stand awkwardly in the aisle, Fiona politely declined for the both of them with a simple gesture to indicate her size. If the rebuttal offended him it never showed, and he took the opportunity nonetheless to ask Fiona the obvious question of why she’d come to Equestria in the first place. She fed him a carefully sanitized version of her reasons, careful to omit any mention of having been chased out by her own community after their botched attempt to burn the family home down around her while she slept. The version Pastor Mica heard had boiled down to a few vaguisms about life in Griffinstone being increasingly difficult due to the steady march of radioactive toxins leaching in from what remained of Vhanna.
“I could either wait to starve or try for something better,” she said, speaking as much for the pastor’s benefit as the smattering of congregants no doubt listening around them. “That was… two, three months back? The food situation’s a lot better here, I’ll say that much.”
She patted her belly for emphasis, though Aurora knew from having spent a night using that block of muscle for a pillow that there was barely any fat there to speak of. Two days later and her neck still ached.
Pastor Mica nodded, but he managed to keep his gaze from wandering. “You’ve been living in the wastes until recently?”
Fiona made a show of trying to keep her tone respectful. “The, uh, authorities in Fillydelphia made a pretty strong case that conditions in Equestria only got worse the further inland I went. They made it sound like things here were the same way they were back home, with most of the population crowded along the coast. I sort of took them at their word until very recently.”
He frowned at that. Not with suspicion, but with an almost protective degree of disappointment. “It’s a shame to hear they were so circumspect with you. The outer wastes have suffered from a lack of responsible leadership for generations, now. I’m sorry your first interaction came from those who saw fit to prey on your trusting nature…”
Aurora had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Fiona had as much trusting nature as Julip had child-friendly vocabulary. When Fiona smelled something fishy she made it her life’s mission to track down the trout.
Still, Fiona’s decision to play herself off as a victim of the big bad Steel Rangers’ duplicity was paying dividends almost immediately. What better way to ward off suspicion by serving up an origin story where every bias the Enclave espoused was confirmed, and where anyone loyal to Primrose had their beliefs vindicated by default? Lila the Gryphon was the living embodiment of the same poor, ignorant wastelanders story they’d been telling themselves for generations, and Pastor Mica was eating it up by the shovelful. 
He hadn’t stopped talking while Aurora had paused to muse to herself, and by the sound of it she had only missed some of the self-congratulatory garbage.
“...to say I think you’ll be pleased you made the decision to come,” he said with a face creased with a broad smile, then turned to regard Aurora expectantly. “Is there any chance I could look forward to seeing you and your friend at our six o’clock service?”
She blinked, fully unprepared for the offer. “Oh, ah, no? No. We’ll probably be arriving in New Canterlot by then.”
As excuses went it wasn’t her best, but Pastor Mica didn’t appear bothered in the slightest. He smiled, nodded once more, then glanced back toward the altar where his wicker basket of cloth still sat. “Hard to compete with the Chapel,” he said, and she could hear the capital letter in the word, “but consider it a standing invitation regardless.”
And with that the pastor politely excused himself and went back to the task their appearance had interrupted. Aurora was surprised. She’d expected an interrogation of some kind, not to be waved aside almost entirely. She even felt the slightest bit jealous as Fiona paused here and there to inspect the religious iconography carved throughout the church. Perfect tourist behavior. She even picked out a few pamphlets on their way out.
Upon seeing her skimming the literature as they crossed the courtyard, any suspicions the locals had been holding onto vanished. “Lila” had completely stolen the show, and Aurora found herself on the receiving end of a few subtle nods of approval herself. As far as the lookiloos were concerned, she’d just guided Fiona on a potential journey toward becoming another convert.
Whatever made them happy.







A knuckle rapped on the outhouse door. “You know, if you’re blocked up a cup of molerat grease will clear you right out.”
Aurora spared a moment to glower at the door before turning her attention back to her Pip-Buck. As it so happened Fiona’s detour through the church had done little to alleviate the issue of all the locals gawking at them, even if their suspicions had been resolved. Wandering the side streets hadn’t revealed any hidden alleys or alcoves they could duck into without being followed, either, so when they spotted the row of outhouses through the gap between two apparent restaurants Aurora had made a beeline to them. 
Of course there was still the issue of the Pip-Buck’s glowing screen, a feature she still had no idea how to disable, which Fiona solved by parking her substantial bulk square in front of the door. It wasn’t a subtle solution, but it worked. It took several seconds for the Pip-Buck to acquire a network connection, evidently routing through a nearby Stable 75. Once it made the link, Aurora had spent another painful half minute figuring out where the icon representing their contact had disappeared to. Only after zooming out until most of the intersecting roads filled the screen did she confirm they were on the opposite side of town.
And, to add insult to injury, their landing spot when they arrived had been more or less right on top of where they’d needed to go. Joy.
“We need to go back the way we came,” she said, mindful of listening ears. “Our dear old uncle lives on the other side of town.”
Naturally, the walk across town required Fiona to make another pit stop at the church for more literature. Aurora noted that a few of the same onlookers as before were practically beaming now, and she worried if they didn’t put Steepleton behind them soon the locals might ask what her secret was. Easy question for someone who had the first idea how Primrose’s made-up religion worked, and with Fiona having settled on becoming Lila the Friendly Potential Convert, she made a mental note to read up on some of the new leaflets clutched in Fiona’s tawny feathers.
As for “Uncle Hooves,” he turned out to be a she, and the uncle moniker was closer to grandma. They found her tending a clean little store out of which she sold a variety of colorful rugs, blankets, and other woven goods. Aurora had felt a slight pang of deja vu at the soft tinkle of a bell when she pushed through the door, and she was quietly thankful that the elderly mare who was in the middle of completing a transaction with a customer didn’t look anything like Ginger. 
The shop keep had looked over to them at the sound of their arrival, glanced meaningfully at Fiona, and then turned back to the paper receipt she’d been filling out with an ebony quill. Judging by the night black sheen of her own coat, the quill had come from her own wing. Aurora had made a point to meander toward a display table of neatly folded blankets to hide her discomfort. Using one’s own feathers as a writing implement seemed, well… gross.
The bell jangled again as the customer left with his new rug and once the proprietor seemed certain no one else was about to stroll in, she beckoned the two of them toward the counter.
“Caps,” she said gruffly as she produced a small leather pouch from behind the counter. It landed on the smooth wood with a thud. With a sweep of one wing, she leveled a black feather toward a door leading to the back room. “Your cart and tools are behind the store. Take the back way and stick to the alleys for goddess’s sake. No more trotting around like a couple of tourists, especially you.”
The feather that had pointed at the back door now aimed squarely at Aurora. “You’ve got a bad case of bobblehead. Keep it up and people are going to wonder whether those wings of yours have a little too much dust on them. Do you understand?”
The door jangled the little bell as a pair of unicorns walked inside, with both of them doing a terrible job trying not to stare at Fiona. Probably she was their sole reason for coming in.
Their contact pushed the sack of caps toward Aurora until she finally tucked it away in her saddlebags. “Save your caps. In fact, I advise you to find somewhere else to spend them. I don’t make a habit of doing business with people who expect discounts on the basis of their family name, legacy or not. Go on.” She tipped her head toward the door, adding to the bit of theater with a dismissive wave of her quill. “Out.”
They did, and with the back door off the table with patrons once again milling toward the store, they were forced to take a circuitous route around the block where there were less eyes to goggle at them. Fiona broke away and pretended to window shop to take any attention off Aurora as she slipped into a feeder alley that linked up with the main alley that ran behind the contact’s store. Sure enough, a wagon about the same size and heft as Mouse’s rig waited in the shadows. Inside of it were her, well, “tools.”
She hadn’t been expecting much but the lidless crate of rust-pocked tools in the wagon’s rear corner had no semblance of purpose whatsoever. If Aurora had to guess, Coronado’s contact had simply scrounged up whatever spares she’d had available in her shop and expected Aurora to sort through the dregs on her own time. She felt a flicker of real anger at the meager showing and wondered if Coronado had impressed upon “Grandma Hooves” the fact that she wouldn’t be immune to the havoc SOLUS would wreak just because she didn’t happen to be standing directly underneath the beam. 
Nobody would take her cover story seriously like this. With a grunt and a not-so-muffled curse toward the rug shop’s rear door, Aurora hoisted herself up into the mostly vacant wagon and undid the strap to her saddlebags. They slid over her tail with a whump and she set to work packing everything she had into one pouch. In the other went a couple adjustable wrenches, an ancient ball peen hammer, some locking pliers she doubted would ever unlock, and an assortment of mismatched screwdrivers. If she was lucky, no one would ever ask her about her stated profession. If she was unlucky, she’d have to swallow her pride and pretend to be one of the inept do-it-yourself numbskulls whose attempts at improving their compartments had once resulted in easily half her work tickets back when she’d been an apprentice.
It took a little doing getting her bags back on and cinched, but she was slowly getting used to making her stump and - by proxy - her new leg move in a way that made it an asset and not an obstacle. The thought of hauling around tools she’d never use still annoyed her, but she’d bear under some extra gravity for as long as she needed to get this done.
That big-ass wagon, however, could go kick rocks.







Consciousness slithered back to Chops in fits and sputters. 
In a bemused corner of his aching brain, he wasn’t surprised the big mare had suckerkicked him. The deputies Sledge had agreed to dispatch to keep the meeting civil had made the mistake of directing Meridian into the conference room first. Rather than continue straight through the open door, she’d turned and used the wall to shield herself from view just long enough for Chops to step into range. The deputies had been slow to respond and Chops had walked into the conference room just in time to catch a glimpse of Meridian’s massive hind hoof rocket into his shoulder.
There had been a brief sensation of sideways flight before his head connected with the far wall. He must have missed the chaos that had ensued because by the time he pieced together where he was, he spotted Meridian once again in the submissive position on the floor with several revolvers pointed at her. She glared death at him but made no sign of disobeying their repeated commands to stay still. Her expression stated clearly she had accomplished what she’d intended to do when she’d agreed to this meeting, but it masked a deeper worry that Chops could only assume had everything to do with whether the consequences of her actions might affect her daughter. 
As he pushed himself up to sit on his butt, someone wrapped feathers around his head and pointed a light at his eyes. He grunted, the sound wetter than he cared for, but didn’t pull away. Instead he used the one wing visible to the Stable dwellers to pantomime writing. Eventually someone found his notepad and pen and placed them in his wing, and he glanced down at the pad to scratch out a quick message. Then he held it out to whoever had returned it to him - it was hard to see anything with that damn flashlight in his eyes - and waited as they read aloud.
“I deserved that,” came Weathers’ voice. “Still want to talk.”
A rumble of expected push-back came from the general direction of the gathered deputies, but a few minutes of negotiation between them and Weathers resulted in a tenuous agreement that Meridian’s hind legs be placed in hobbles before they proceed with anything. A deputy was sent to retrieve the restraints and for several more painfully awkward minutes the only conversation in the room came in the form of the deputies’ low murmurs to one another and the occasional questions being asked by what Chops had to assume was one of the Stable’s medical staff. 
The shackles arrived and shortly after they were placed on Meridian the doctor decided he was satisfied Chops wasn’t going to drop dead from a brain bleed. Even so, he made it clear to Weathers he expected to see Chops down in Medical as soon as their meeting was over. Meridian’s kick may not have drawn blood, but it would take a miracle of physics for him to have escaped internal injury. As Chops was helped to his hooves, an electric bolt of pain shot down his front left leg as if to confirm how lacking in invincibility he was. Probably a hairline fracture.
He grimaced and accepted Weathers’ help getting to the table. The deputies, keenly aware of the threat Meridian posed to Chops, seated the big mare across the table and very pointedly several chairs further down. If she got it in her head to lunge for him, she’d have to do so at a diagonal. 
Seating herself beside him, Weathers slid Chops’ pad and pen in front of him. He blinked in surprise when he saw her tidy, looping writing below his last message. 
“You write, I speak. Stay honest.”
They had run into some trouble trying to find someone in the ranks of the Steel Rangers to act as an independent interpreter. To no one’s surprise the Rangers were a little light on pegasus recruits and of the maybe two dozen that had shipped in with the hundreds of Rangers now occupying the land outside the Stable, none of them had known wingspeak. Still, Chops had been glad when Coronado made the effort to check. He’d expected stereotypical Steel Ranger belligerence.
He tapped a feather on the notepad and nodded his agreement, then flipped to a fresh sheet of paper as he waited for the meeting to start.
When everyone was seated, one of the deputies, a tired-looking stallion whose name patch on his jumpsuit read simply Chaser cleared his throat. “Alright then. Against my better judgment, we’re going to give this a second chance.” He sighed as he took a seat at the head of the table, his body language making it perfectly clear he wasn’t excited to have been elected by Sledge to mediate. “Miss Meridian, you provided assistance to one of our own and the overseer considers your family friends to our Stable. I would appreciate it as a personal favor if you refrained from any more violence today, please.”
Meridian’s gaze slid down the table toward Deputy Chaser like a dragged boulder. The smile she offered was equally craggy. No promises.
Chaser answered by turning to the other side of the table and gesturing toward Chops. “When you’re ready.”
After a breath, Chops began writing. It was slow going. He stopped several times, frowning at the words, occasionally crossing out a sentence entirely and writing it fresh. It wouldn’t be perfect, and that bothered him more than anything else. He’d always written his thoughts out matter-of-factly and trusting context, or later Dancer, to fill in the gaps. This was different. 
Here in this place that had been forced into providing him and his fellows with shelter and sustenance, he was being asked to compress the complexities of having a lifetime of closely held beliefs yanked out from under him down to a few sentences. He’d thought about asking for time to prepare something but he’d chosen instead to go with his gut. He wasn’t a poet. He knew what he was writing for Meridian would never encompass everything he’d been struggling with since discovering the truth of the Enclave’s origins. How he and those he’d respected had all acted on the basis of lies fed to them by Primrose.
Deep down he knew there would come a time when he would have to sit down with himself and come to real terms with the last thirty years of his life. But not now. Right now he needed to focus on the first step in that long journey.
When he was finished, he passed the notepad over to Weathers and looked across the table toward the wasteland mare.
Weathers read aloud. “I’m sorry for what we’ve done to you. I’m sorry for what we’ve done to this world. You have every reason to hate us and I don’t think it’s realistic or fair for me to hope you will stop hating us after today. I want to talk with you because I’m selfish. I need to know there’s a road forward for people like me.”
He’d been hoping being candid might resonate with her, but he watched as Meridian heaved an impatient sigh and turned her attention toward the far wall. If she was listening anymore, he couldn’t tell.
When it became evident Weathers had reached the end of what he’d written, Meridian shifted in her chair, causing her hobbles to jangle. “If you’re waiting for me to pat you on the back and say I forgive you, we’re going to be here for a long time.”
Chops reached for the notepad and scratched something down. Weathers skimmed the words before speaking. “I’m not asking for that.”
“Then why are we here.”
Weathers slid the notepad back to him. He stared at the paper, suddenly unsure how to answer that. He did want forgiveness and, because Meridian was the mother of the foal he’d briefly befriended, an immature part of him wanted it to come from the mare seated across from him. He frowned, fully aware how one mare’s absolution wasn’t going to have the effect he wished it would, and scratched down the real answer.
Weathers knit her brow as she read what he’d written, meeting his gaze to make sure. He nodded, not sure at all, and hoped this wouldn’t blow up in his face.
“I don’t know,” Weathers read aloud. “I don’t think I’ve had enough time to absorb the reality that I’ve killed many innocent people. I need to make that right, but I don’t know how.”
He could see the inadequacy of his answer flow past Meridian like oil across water. Brevity had not been his ally and he could feel chagrin creeping across his expression as he waited for her response.
Meridian drew herself up a little and crossed one hoof over the other. She sat in place for several long seconds, eyes examining the convincing patterns of wood grain produced by the Stable’s fabricators. When she finally spoke, her tone dripped with disdain.
“Okay,” she breathed before leveling her gaze on Chops. “I’m going to try to make something very clear to you. You, and her,” she tipped her head toward Weathers, “and all the rest of you Enclave comrades down in Medical are murderers. You forced me and my husband to raise our daughter in a cave. We didn’t teach her how to fly because of you. We didn’t let her meet foals her own age because of you.”
Chops reached for his notepad but the terrible force in Meridian’s voice stayed his wing.
“Don’t.” Her voice trembled with ominous rage. “Don’t. Interrupt me. I want you to hear me.”
He found himself looking down at the table and nodding meekly as she continued.
“It would have been bad enough if you killed pegasi where you lived,” Meridian said, “but you came all the way out here to hunt us. To hunt my daughter because she had the misfortune to be born with wings. You didn’t just murder dustwings, corporal. You stole my daughter’s only chance at having anything resembling a childhood. You forced us to teach her to be afraid of her own body,” she stabbed a hoof toward the door and, symbolically, toward New Canterlot, “because Minister fucking Primrose decided my daughter was born wrong.”
Meridian’s voice broke on the last word and she took several, painful moments to bring herself back under control. She paused to rub her eyes, and when she finally spoke again, her voice had lost any hint of its prior tremble.
“And now you want my help figuring out what you need to do to fix what you’ve done.” She regarded him with equal measures pity and venom. “My answer is no, corporal. No.”
A suffocating silence filled the room when she finished. One of the deputies coughed into their wing. Chops regarded the blank space below his last statement with solemn consternation as he considered whether anything he could write would change the way she saw him. With pained reluctance, he surrendered to the realization that there’d never been a combination of words he could string together to make her see him as anything besides a monster. Especially not now. 
On some level he’d known he was walking into a losing fight, but that didn’t help lessen the sting. Staring at the empty paper was akin to reading a list of all the things he’d done to right the wrongs he’d committed. There was nothing there. He’d done absolutely nothing besides seek immediate forgiveness.
He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, and flipped to a fresh page. His brows knit together as he wrote in fits and starts, forcing himself to go slow so nothing would need to be crossed out. Asking for this conversation had been a mistake entirely his own, but at least he would come out the other side understanding why.
When he was finished he didn’t pass the notepad to Weathers. Instead, he stood and pushed the entire pad across the table toward Meridian. When she frowned at him and reached out to take the pad, he nearly snatched it away. It was his voice. It was precious, even if only to him. 
He hadn’t expected her to read what he’d written aloud.
“Nothing I can do will fix the harm I have done, but I’m still committed to doing as much as I can for as long as I’m able. I vow on what little honor I still have that I will dedicate myself to making this world better for the people I’ve hurt. People like you, your husband, and your young daughter.” She paused to consider the next few lines. Her frown deepened. “Out of everyone in this Stable, you have the least reason to show me leniency. That makes you the right person to keep this notepad and use it to hold me accountable to that promise.”
Meridian glanced down the table toward Deputy Chaser and for a split second Chops worried she might be gauging how much damage she could do to Chops before they stopped her. Then her expression appeared to soften. The anger was still there, that would never fade, but when she met his gaze he could see something new there. It wasn’t what he’d hoped to see.
Disgust and pity drew deep lines along her muzzle as she pushed the notepad away. “Chops, I already have one child to raise. I don’t need another.”
And with that Meridian calmly walked toward the door and followed the deputies out of the room. The steel slab didn’t add punctuation by hissing closed behind her. The Stable was still running on reserve. It had been left open for the duration of this brief, humiliating meeting.
Chops stared at the false wood table in abject silence until Weathers leaned forward, retrieved his notepad, and slid it in front of him. After what felt like minutes he picked up the pen. The nib hovered over the paper. More seconds passed.
And he set the pen down and covered his face.







Aurora goggled at the sky around them, incredulous at the presence of so many other wings. 
On a purely academic level she’d known there were other pegasi cutting through Equestria’s skies, but until now she’d never actually seen them, so she gawked left and right, over her shoulders and straight ahead while her brain tried to cram the square peg through a round hole. 
Other pegasi. Dozens of them coasting just beneath the clouds in groups, pairs, or just flying solo for reasons that were entirely unique to all of them. The first of them appeared not long after she and Fiona departed Steepleton, a single stallion crossing southward with some kind of modified saddlebag attached to his back. Hardly three miles later a trio of Enclave soldiers descended out of the clouds off her left wing, flying in regimented formation seemingly on their way to New Canterlot. Aurora’s heart had jumped into her throat when the soldiers spotted them - or, more accurately, spotted Fiona - and bent along a gentle intercept course toward them. 
“Don’t freak out,” Fiona had said, “they're just being curious.”
She’d been right, in the end. The black-clad pegasi had coasted in with expressions that exuded the calm, professional interest of people used to being in charge and they had shown Aurora the minimum courtesy required to avoid being rude before engaging Fiona in conversation. The lead pegasus, a wind-worn mare whose voice carried the ragged edge of a career spent shouting, hit on all the usual conversational bullet points. Are you from Griffinstone? How are you liking Equestria so far? Are you headed to New Canterlot or passing through?
Fiona jumped into the conversation with the exact sort of naive openness a newly arrived visitor from a far flung land was expected to show. She answered their questions with matching ones of her own, giving them every opportunity to preen over the Enclave’s many accomplishments while denouncing the wasteland and its Steel Rangers in the same breath. As they talked, Aurora noticed more skyward travelers resolving over the horizon. 
By the time the soldiers were satisfied Fiona wasn’t a threat and offered Aurora their tacit approval for guiding a gryphon to the jewel city of the Enclave, she could make out the threading patterns of pegasi migrating to and from the area along unspoken yet nonetheless known aerial highways. And all the while the hazy nub of Canterlot Mountain ahead of them kept taking on incremental layers of clarity. 
Beside her, Fiona trilled an impressed whistle. “Holy shit. That is not a postcard mountain.”
Aurora didn’t have to ask what she meant. Even with miles between them and it, the bomb scarred face of Canterlot Mountain was impossible to ignore.
Back home, the walls of Stable 10 were festooned with machine printed murals depicting the world as it had been before Primrose and Spitfire saw fit to eviscerate it. Sprawling farmland with waves of green crops and fertile soil, gleaming cities filled with life and beauty, and national landmarks ranging from the launch pads of the Equestrian Space Agency to the Tree of Harmony were so commonplace to her fellow residents that they were more often used as visual landmarks to describe specific places within the Stable over anything amounting to artistic appreciation. Of course Canterlot Castle had been included in that wide menu and, thanks to her father’s work in the Gardens, Aurora had many vivid memories of the stretch of wall besides a maintenance closet where all of Canterlot had been captured in one wide, high resolution photograph turned mural. 
The shattered mountain that rose up from the horizon looked nothing like the one from Aurora’s memory. The uppermost third of Canterlot Mountain was very simply not there anymore. Where two steep slopes had once merged toward a snow capped peak was now cut away by one jagged slash. The ruined peak, now barely more than a crooked plateau, belched filaments of dark, ashen plumes up into the sky as if fueled by an uncontrolled inferno. It took Aurora several bewildered seconds to remember the weather factories the Enclave had retooled to choke out the sky, but just as with the other pegasi cutting through the air around them, seeing was a very different thing than knowing. 
As they joined what looked to be the dominant westward line of wing traffic, the lone monolith of Canterlot Mountain gradually slid off to their right exposing the bright reddish-brown scar where balefire bombs had triggered the old capital’s cataclysmic landslide. From their new vantage point they could clearly make out the terraced weather factories and their forest of churning smokestacks. It amazed Aurora how the blackened clouds rolling off the mountaintop rose in a single, massive column before the inversion layer forced them to flatten out into their endless, radial march across every horizon like an artificial volcano. Were it not for Fiona’s gentle nudging, she might have stared at it long enough to miss the sprawling city emerging from around the haze.
There, beyond the hump of regolith and ruins of the old collapsed capital, stood Canterlot Castle. 
A beat later she found herself wrinkling her nose. No, that wasn’t right. Canterlot Castle had slid down the mountain with the rest of the old city when the bombs knocked it from its lofty perch. And yet there was what Aurora’s brain screamed castle. She didn’t have any other word for it. It was a truly massive stone building with gabled roofs pointing in all four cardinal directions with the exception of the west where, as they made their slow arcing circuit around the city center, loomed twin spires that looked every bit like the ones seen in every photo of Canterlot since… well, since photos. And paintings. And probably cave art. Canterlot had been an ancient city even before the Elements of Harmony burst onto the scene and the architectural engineers at Stable 10 all regarded the castle with almost religious zealotry. 
And then it clicked into place. The lavishly adorned behemoth in the center of New Canterlot wasn’t a castle. It was another church. There was no doubt in her mind that was the Chapel of the Two Sisters, the birthplace - no, not birthplace, that title was solely reserved for Primrose’s mobius strip of a twisted brain - the hub of the Enclave’s belief system. The twin spires rising up from the two western corners like cylindrical stays had been inspired by, if not entirely rebuilt from, the ruins the nearby mountain had so eagerly sloughed off two hundred years prior. And while the Chapel made Steepleton’s church amount to peanuts in mass and detail, the city that had grown around it might as well ignore the miles of nothing between them and just call Steepleton its suburb. 
There was every reason to believe New Canterlot ate almost as many square miles as Fillydelphia if not an equivalent amount, it was that huge. Density, however, was where the city below definitely came up short. The tallest buildings Aurora could see, excluding the obvious one, were three or possibly four stories tall and all concentrated at the junction of two boulevards that intersected at a spacious square plaza in front of the Chapel. What had to be businesses or maybe the beginnings of hotels like the one Eshe had favored for their dream setting flourished along these boulevards like vegetation crowding toward a source of water. As the city grew outward and further away, the gridwork of feeder roads and back alleys hosted an assortment of less well appointed buildings until finally tapering off into something that looked suspiciously like the slums Julip once described being brought up in. 
The slums didn’t encircle all of New Canterlot, however. The boulevard rolling west from the Chapel plaza seemed to have enough of a repellent effect on the visibly poorer neighborhoods to punch straight through and make the unsubtle transition from commercial to agriculture. If the Enclave had any aspirations to expand New Canterlot westward, they would have to pave over literal miles of orchards and cropland to do it. The fields were by no means lush or verdant, but they were nothing like the hardpan and scrub grass dominating the rest of the wasteland. 
Aurora wanted to make another few passes over the expansive farmland but a nudge from Fiona pulled her attention away and toward the twin wings descending toward them from above. As her body tensed and her right wing jerked instinctively for the rifle slung against her ribs, her trajectory wrenched toward Fiona and nearly threw the gryphon into an unintentional roll. They managed to steady themselves by the time the stranger leveled off beside them, but any chance of keeping it cool had flown far, far out the window.
The stallion, however, acted like it was the funniest thing he’d done all day. “Sorry!” he laughed through an unabashed grin. “Thought y’all woulda seen me coming! Wasn’t tryin’ to scare you!”
He spoke in accented ponish just like Opal preferred to, only his hadn’t been a product of studying old Appaloosan western movies and practice. His was genuine and, to Aurora’s surprise, friendly. 
“I saw the two of you flyin’ in circles and figured you might be from one of border towns.” He chuckled at something and tipped his nose toward Fiona. “Well maybe not you. You a real gryphon?”
Aurora held back a snort and looked to Fiona who, to her credit, was cool as a cucumber. 
“Last I checked,” she said, adding, “The name’s Lila, recently imported.”
That earned a wider grin from the newcomer. If Aurora wasn’t mistaken, she thought the stallion might actually be trying to flirt with Fiona. That would be interesting to watch if it were on the very short list of reasons why they were here. Before she could intervene, though, Fiona took the liberty of introducing her.
“This little bundle of fun here is Greasy Hooves,” she continued, eyeing her a little too directly as she asked, “You said you lived somewhere around Steepleville?”
“Steepleton,” she said, hoping the easy pitch wasn’t obvious. Still, her knowledge of the town amounted to a very brief visit. She wouldn’t stand up to any more scrutiny than the papers Coronado and Weathers had forged for her. “I have a place to myself a few miles away. I met Lila on my way into town. Figured I’d show her the sights.”
The stallion wrapped his two outstretched primaries around the ends of her, giving her wing a little shake that nearly startled a yelp from her. Was that supposed to be a greeting or an attempt at killing her? She assumed the former but would be happy to deck the touchy-feely idiot if he tried it a second time.
“Cattail,” he said, and it took Aurora a beat to realize he’d just said his name and wasn’t having a stroke mid-flight. “Ashamed to say I’ve never been out to Steepleton, but I hear it’s nice enough. Something tells me you ain’t exactly made many trips to New Canterlot either, have ya?”
She wasn’t sure if he was testing her or searching for a common ground. “I’ve been a couple of times, back when I was little.” His smile took on a knowing quality to it, so she assumed she’d hit on something he understood. She made a show of staring down at the city with open bewilderment. “I don’t remember it being this big, though.”
“Badum-tss,” Fiona added.
Cattail laughed at that. “And people say gryphons can’t be funny. Tell you what, if you two ladies need a guide I can certainly fill the role.”
That settled it, he was flirting with both of them. Aurora felt a laundry list of ways she knew how to say fuck off in Mechanicalese, but it was Fiona who once again spoke first and not with the response Aurora expected.
“You know what, that would be really nice of him. Wouldn’t it Ms. Hooves?”
If the urge to groan could be converted into electrical power, Stable 10’s generator woes would be over. Through a clenched smile she said, “Sure would, Lila.”
Without skipping a beat, Fiona’s smile turned to embarrassment. “You wouldn’t know anywhere we could stay a few nights where a girl my size would be comfortable, would you?”
Cattail’s eyebrows shot up a good half inch before he reeled himself back in. “I suppose one of the hotels might do, but they’re not cheap.”
“We’re kind of looking exclusively for cheap,” Aurora stepped in with a flat tone that murdered any idea Cattail might have had at suggesting alternate forms of payment. She could tell Fiona was guiding him in that exact direction and something about it ruffled her feathers in all the wrong ways. 
Something told her that out of all the powers in the wasteland, the Enclave would not approve of a visiting gryphon hoisting her rear for the first stallion to open his coin purse. Or cap purse. Whatever. 
“I’ve got some extra caps,” she continued before Fiona could interject again, “but I’m not rich. I don’t want to spend everything I have on lodging and not have anything left over for sightseeing.”
Rather annoyingly, Cattails looked past Aurora to wait for Fiona’s response. Fiona managed to shrug in a way that said she was surrendering to the will of the third wheel, and Aurora could feel that list of fuck offs once again fizzing on the back of her tongue. Sure they were only here hoping to kill the timeless psychopath that turned the key on the apocalypse but hey, how much harm could fucking the locals for free room and board do?
“Well I do know a few spots around the city that won’t break the cap sack...”
Seriously? she thought, they call them cap sacks?
“...but ain’t none of them as pretty as you two, so if you decide you want to see something with a little more class I’d be happy to chip in whatever you don’t think you can cover.”
And that probably involved just the sort of local hospitality Cattails had been aiming for when he decided to drop in. Or maybe not. Aurora wasn’t sure if she was being fair to him. Probably he hadn’t been thinking about sex until Fiona started giving him the wiggly eyebrows and now his brain had ceded all higher processing power to his dick. Or maybe she was the only one thinking along those lines and everything between Cattail and Fiona was above board and just regular old vanilla friendly.
She finally admitted she hadn’t a clue and forced herself to reserve judgment. If Ginger had taught her anything it was that she got dumber the longer she was stressed, and she’d been building up a fresh stock of raw nerves since leaving her Stable for the third time now. By definition, she probably had the mental dexterity of a brick right now.
“Appreciate it, Cattail,” she said. “Lead on.”







Roach gently held the clear sample container between his hooves and gave the mixture of soil and distilled water a vigorous shake. He shot Julip a coy grin as she watched him from the other side of the stainless steel cart, her brow crooked with an expression that said she was going to allow him to keep making a fool of himself as long as it made him happy. 
And this did make him happy, at least a little bit. Helping the pegasi in Agriculture do some of the less exciting work of logging the slow rise in soil acidity since the clearcut of their staple crops was one of the few ways he knew how to be productive. Growing and caring for plants had been the hallmark of his professional life before the bombs fell and some things, especially the tedious task of data logging, just stuck. Plus it had been a chance to show Julip a side of him she hadn’t seen before, and more than that it was a much needed distraction from worrying now that Aurora and Fiona had struck out to New Canterlot on their own.
That… bothered him more than it should. Aurora had come a long way from the terrified, innocent Stable dweller that came close to a gruesome end three steps out of her home. As the wasteland always did, it had hardened her in many ways and prepared her for innumerable hardships. She’d been tempered by the fires of trauma and loss while still retaining that core essence of good that Ginger had loved. She had graduated, and he couldn’t shake the sense that whatever happened in the next few days would be decided by her and her alone.
“After this, we should find a bar so I can watch you mix a martini.”
Roach grinned and gave the sample container a quick, final shake before clamping his teeth around it so he could stand. Flecks of loose soil inevitably coated his tongue as he did so and he spared one wistful moment to wish he could still taste as well as he’d been able to before the ghouling. He’d had a unicorn supervisor when he worked at the Canterlot Gardens who had given him endless grief after catching him testing the soil on his tongue, and it had been one of the rare moments he’d wished he opted for an earth pony form rather than a pegasi. No amount of explaining that he could reliably discern the quality of soil that way had deterred the ridicule that followed. It didn’t matter whether or not it worked. Visitors to the royal garden didn’t want to watch the help eating dirt.
He set the sample on the cart between them and smiled as Julip cracked the lid. “I think I remember Aurora saying something about the Stable being liquor-free.”
Julip waved a few dismissive feathers. “This from the same mare who almost drank you under the table at that cathouse in Kiln?” She tugged a thin pH strip from a plastic box on the cart and wetted the end of it in the distilled solution, wiping the grit away on the lip of the container like Roach had shown her to. A few seconds later she squinted at the damp strip and shook her head. “Yeah, this just looks black to me. It’d be easier to see if we were outside.”
Roach narrowed his eyes at the strip, compared the shade of pale green to the laminated chart in front of him, and jotted the corresponding pH level on the spreadsheet. There had been no discernible change in acidity from the day before and that was what Agriculture wanted to see. A drop in pH this early might indicate any manner of problems stemming from the mass harvest the Stable had undergone when the generator gave out, and most concerning would be the beginnings of root rot. That would happen naturally on its own if the recyclers were left unpowered much longer - no recyclers meant no production of chemicals needed to amend the soil for growing - but now with the wasteland having begun pouring in relief supplies it wouldn’t spell the disaster it might have without.
A soft rap from the garden’s open door caught his attention and he looked up to see a very familiar face. “Blue! I was wondering when you were planning to come play in the dirt!”
Rainbow Dash dragged her only remaining wing across the door frame as she stepped inside, smiling a little sheepishly as she navigated the textured walkway between empty plots. “Hey, Sunn–” she stopped herself when she saw him wince. “Or, it’s Roach now. Right?”
He nodded, forgiving the innocent mistake. Sunny Meadows had died, as far as he was concerned, when his family did. Roach had been the nickname given to him decades later and it had stuck. “Easy to remember,” he said, “and it makes writing out checks that much quicker.”
Rainbow smiled at that and upon reaching their plot of dirt and noticing Julip’s perplexed expression, explained what checks had been.
Roach was a little surprised Julip didn’t immediately point out that she used to be an archivist for the Enclave and already knew all about the joys of writing and balancing checkbooks instead of carrying a sack of bits around all the time. The response she gave was utterly devoid of her usual snark. 
“Hi,” she said dumbly. 
“Hello,” Rainbow replied with a self-conscious chuckle. “Roach told you about me, right?”
“He did,” Julip murmured. She jerked a little when Roach cleared his throat. “You’re, um… sorry, you’re Rainbow Dash. You’re…”
Rainbow looked to Roach for help but he just shook his head and rounded the cart toward her. They shared a hug while Julip floundered. “It’s good to see you’re doing well.”
“All thanks to you,” she squeezed him a bit tighter with her wing and pressed her muzzle toward his ear. “I remember everything now. Thank you for never giving up on me.”
They were both a little misty-eyed when Rainbow broke the hug, but it was that awkward sort of shared emotion that felt infinitely better to express rather than hold in. He and Rainbow had spent more time in each other’s company than with anyone else and it had been his deep paternal instincts that kept him coming back to the tunnel after every wasteland excursion. She was every bit the daughter to him that Violet had been, and just seeing Rainbow back in control of her own mind was a gift. 
He circled back to Julip and leaned into her until he felt her lean back. It was a gentle, physical contact they’d developed to silently reassure one another that they were okay. To Rainbow, he said, “She’s a big fan of yours. It might be a few weeks before she grasps basic language again.”
“Hardy fucking har,” Julip groused, then playfully shouldered him away so she could extend a wing. Rainbow did the same, taking the formal greeting with some chagrin. “My name’s Julip. I didn’t know an Element of Harmony would be paying us a visit today.”
Rainbow glanced down at herself, namely the faint scorch mark where dozens of miniscule ruby shards were still embedded beneath her skin. “I think it’s safe to say my Element days are behind me. Call me Dash. Or Rainbow. Just not both together… that’s something Twilight used to do and it drove me nuts.”
Before Julip could cobble together a response, Rainbow’s attention toggled back to him. “Hey, so Sledge asked me to touch base with you before we leave. He wants to know–”
Roach frowned. “You’re leaving?”
Rainbow hesitated, then nodded. “Well, yeah. Coronado and Clover think it’s important the three of us get some distance between us and the Stable in case…” She winced, her eyes flicking momentarily skyward. “In case.”
He didn’t need further explanation. It made sense to assume Stable 10 would be SOLUS’s first target, and it would serve no one to keep all their eggs in the same basket while the clock ticked down. 
Sensing his understanding, Rainbow took an uneasy breath and continued. “Sledge wants to know if you’d be willing to help with the evacuation.”
He grunted and moved back to the steel cart, rolling it past Rainbow to the next plot of rich, empty soil. Julip sat down beside him, using the back of her feathers to brush loose dirt off the trowel from the last plot. “I thought he was already coordinating that with Coronado.”
“They are,” Rainbow said, following along and sitting down on the walkway opposite them. “But Coronado isn’t familiar with the area any more than Clover is, and Sledge even less so. And then there’s me. The last time I was outside was a long time ago. You know what’s out there better than most which would make you invaluable as a guide for one of the caravans.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line as he shook excess soil out of the sample container and turned to the cart to add water. Since Aurora shared the news of what Primrose was planning, preparations for evacuation had lurched into high gear and few if any of the Stable residents were arguing after narrowly avoiding the bomb that took Ginger. Come nightfall the first groups would be piled into wagons and taken as far as they could travel in the few remaining days before SOLUS arrived. 
It was crucial, then, that the Enclave didn’t become aware of the mass exodus. Already a horde of relief wagons were being turned around early or sent to the Stable with half or empty loads all in the name of bringing as much equipment to the Stable as possible. Families would be loaded up and turned back toward Blinder’s Bluff, only to break away in every feasible direction along the way. The goal was to spread the residents of Stable 10 so far and wide that even SOLUS would lack the destructive power to reach them all. 
When the evacuations were complete, only a core group of Steel Rangers and residents would be left behind to ensure the Stable remained operational and defended. 
“I think,” Rainbow continued, “that this might be Sledge’s way of asking you not to stay behind.”
“My family is buried here,” he said softly. 
He could tell Rainbow was looking to Julip now, trying to enlist her help in convincing him to go with the first wave of evacuees, and he felt a mix of pride and guilt when Julip took the sample container from his hooves and gave it a vigorous shake. She was with him.
“I don’t want you to be buried here,” Rainbow pleaded.
At that, he nodded but said nothing she could add to. After several long seconds he could feel her give up on trying to convince him. She more than anyone understood what he’d lost and why, now that he’d finally crossed the threshold of this place, why he wouldn’t leave it behind. Roach knew they could force him and, if they tried, he would let them. Probably he would leave on his own volition so that Julip wouldn’t feel anchored by his past. But he wouldn’t walk away from his first family without exercising his right to be stubborn. Saffron and Violet deserved that much from him.
“The soil down here is near perfect,” he idly commented as Julip’s litmus strip came out of the solution a healthy, pale green. “Anything they plant is going to grow like weeds.”
Rainbow reached down and scooped up a clod of dirt, crumbling it between her feathers. When her wing was empty she stood, grimacing slightly at the crackle and pop of worn joints. Natural ghoul healing or no, she’d been well into her fifties when the process had taken over.
He stood as well. “Rainbow, one second.”
She stopped, hope and curiosity plain on her face.
“You should know before you leave, you should know we found a survivor at the bottom of Stable-Tec Headquarters and…” he hesitated for a split second as Rainbow’s haggard ears perked forward while the rest of her body went stock still. “And she’s all alone down there. I’m pretty sure she’s the only one keeping the generators down there maintained but the solitude isn’t doing her any good.”
“Is it Scootaloo?” she whispered.
Roach blinked, then shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I should have… she said her name was Applebloom. She–”
Before he could finish, Rainbow had sat down hard on the floor with a distant expression. For a moment she was silent. Then she heaved a long exhalation before asking with an unsteady voice, “Is she okay?”
“Yes,” he said, understanding by her reaction that clarity was critical right now. “She’s okay, but she’s been down there by herself for a very long time. I think that’s had an effect on her but she did help us when we needed it, so there’s a lot of her left.”
A film of tears coated Rainbow’s eyes as she nodded, silently urging him to continue.
“I think it’s important for someone to go down to get here, but it needs to be handled delicately. She’s protecting the generators responsible for the reserve power being transmitted to the Stables. If they’re damaged, or if the Rangers try to salvage them, the network goes down and Stable 10 will go down with it whether or not Aurora and Fiona take out Primrose.” 
Beside him, Julip asked, “Did you know her?”
Rainbow’s lips cracked into a rueful smile. “Yeah,” she breathed, and in a tone that broadcast the understatement like a pulsar, she said, “Her sister and I were close.”







A wooden sign swung from old, prewar towing chains. A silhouette of a white mare graced the board, her neck bent in a low bow above the inn’s name: The Maidenhead. 
“Sixty for two people for the first night, seventy-five for everything after that.” The mare behind the front desk chewed on something pasty and gray that looked everything like rubber, but in a way that gave the impression it was perfectly normal. She made a point of looking Fiona up and down with disapproval before adding, “Boss’ll want a deposit in case anything gets damaged, though. Call it a hundred up front.”
Aurora found herself wishing she’d had the forethought to land somewhere to count their caps before arriving. Judging by Fiona’s expression, the contents of the cap sack - still a stupid name - their Ranger contact had given them wasn’t going to stretch very far even with Cattail offering to pick up the slack. 
This was the third inn he’d brought them to and now there was pressure to make a decision. It had been bookended between two stores several blocks from the main boulevard, one selling cheap jewelry and the other hawking common wasteland scrap that the front sign called curios. Aurora cast an uncertain look about the lobby, barely half a room in its own right, and noted not for the first time the harsh electric glare of the decorative wall sconces. 
“Well?”
She blinked. “What?”
The young mare scowled at her. “Look, I got beds to turn down. You want the room or not?”
Aurora nodded to Fiona who began counting out the caps. As she did so, Cattail slid between them with two dense, wire bound stacks of his own. “For the deposit.”
The mare reached a wing to a row of hooks behind her and snatched off a key at random. It jangled between her feathers as she held it back. “Yeah, nuh-uh. The lady said the room’s for two, and I’m already being nice not counting the bird as a double.”
Fiona looked up from counting to narrow her eyes at the mare.
She shrugged with a level of apathy only a teenager could muster. “Sorry but I stop being nicey-nice whenever this dildo shows up.” She flicked a feather at Cattail. “Boss says you’re not allowed to bring your ‘dates’ upstairs anymore until you pay off the room you ruined.”
Being a pegasus didn’t seem to stop him from trying to cast a shrinking spell on himself. He cleared his throat and began to say something that sounded like a deflection, but as he reached for the caps he’d set on the counter the younger mare’s feathers slapped down on them first and snatched his money away.
“This doesn’t count, by the way.” Before Cattail could protest, the receptionist looked sweetly to Aurora. “I don’t know what he told you, but I wouldn’t touch his dick for all the stimpacks in New Canterlot. Seriously, he’s a spreader, and not in a sexy way.”
“Oh-kay,” Cattail chuckled, giving the floorboards a too-casual rap of his hoof as he backed away, “you ladies have a wonderful rest of your day.”
The receptionist blew a gray bubble and pressed it into the back of her teeth with a sharp pop. The three of them watched Cattail turn, his smile dropping to a scowl just a fraction of a second too early, and shove his way out onto the narrow feeder road. 
“Uh,” Aurora said after a long pause. “He was our guide.”
The receptionist snorted. “The only guiding Cattail does is the kind that gets his nose under tourists’ tails. Here.” She pushed the hundred caps for the deposit toward the stack Fiona had been counting out. “There’s a place called Lollipops three blocks north with a good reputation and it’s licensed. Plus your horny friend out there is on the blacklist.”
Fiona regarded Aurora with a smirk that said she was happy to spectate this particular train wreck. Aurora closed her eyes for a moment to reel in her annoyance.
“We’re just looking for a room,” she said.
“They got rooms.”
“For sleeping.”
The receptionist popped another gray bubble. “Yeah. I’m not a kid. I know how sex works.”
She was absolutely a kid, and the fact that she was so flippantly aware of innuendo and apparently had recommendations for nearby brothels at the ready just made her all the more uncomfortable with this line of conversation. Fiona, of course, was happy to watch her flounder with no intention of stopping this trainwreck. 
Well, she’d already fallen on her face. It was as good an opportunity as any to see how much water ancestry truly held with these people.
“Listen to me,” she said, summoning the tone she reserved for cocksure Mechanical apprentices who couldn’t absorb basic instructions without humbling first. It took a force of sheer will not to grimace at the sound of her fake name tripping across her tongue. “My name is Greasy Hooves. Lila here is a guest of my family and by extension the Enclave. She crossed an ocean to come here and as much as I’ve tried, I seem to be leading her to citizens who believe her first obligation to us is to provide pleasure.”
The young mare’s face blanched at what very may likely be a serious accusation from a citizen belonging to a legacy family. She sat up a little straighter as she spoke, unsure how to handle the incongruity between Aurora’s severity and Fiona’s entertained grin. “You’re not here to–”
Aurora spoke over her. “No. We’re not. We’re exhausted from flying, miss…?”
“Portia, ma’am.”
She nodded, feigning haughty disinterest. “Of which family?”
The young mare floundered for a half second. “N-none, ma’am. My mom says it’s from a rare play she read. I don’t know which one.”
In the corner of her eye, Fiona twirled her finger in a hurry up motion where Portia couldn’t see. Aurora was fine with that. The self-important caricature was souring on her as fast as she’d tried it on. “I’ll make you a deal, Portia.”
Portia’s ears perked up.
“Waive the room fee for tonight and I’ll forget the indiscretion entirely. I can understand how Cattail colored your impression of us and I was raised to believe people deserve second chances. Fair?”
Evidently the idea of giving up a room key for nothing wasn’t one Portia thought was fair at all, but she looked young enough to still be getting used to the concept of consequences applying to her. Eventually she nodded, albeit sourly, and handed Aurora the key. Stamped on both faces was a tiny 19.
They followed her directions up the stairwell alongside the desk and discovered with some silent amusement that the room numbers started at ten and ran the length of a single, sparsely adorned hall. As with the lobby, the narrow hall was lit with electric lights that glowed from several more floral sconces. They found their room at the far end, and it accepted the key after only a minimal amount of jiggling.
“Mm,” Fiona murmured. “Cozy.”
Aurora hadn’t expected much going in, so she wasn’t disappointed by the single bare mattress on its rust speckled frame. It wasn’t much smaller than her bed back home and she felt a little relief knowing it was far too small to share, even with another pony. She tried not to think too hard about what Cattail thought he’d have been able to accomplish here and decided to be satisfied with “not much” as an answer. Despite her prickly personality, Aurora made a point to thank Portia for shooing the stallion off. She was sure she and Fiona would have been sufficient to the task when it came time to sever ties, but this way his ire was likely focused on the receptionist instead of them.
An old wingback chair sat in a lonely corner near a street-facing window, but beyond that there wasn’t much to speak of. A few drab framed prints tacked to floral wallpaper, a single wall sconce above but not quite centered over the headboard, and a faint odor of heavily spiced food cooking at the little restaurant they’d passed a few doors down. As rooms went, it wasn’t terrible. 
Prompted by the scent of food, Fiona opened her satchel and retrieved two of the wrapped parcels of molerat she’d snatched from the Rangers. When she held one up in offering, Aurora shook her head, tossed Desperate Times onto the bed and down beside it. The springs squeaked, and she watched for a few quiet moments as Fiona made quick work of her dinner. 
“We need to talk strategy,” she said, keeping her voice carefully low in case the walls were thin.
Fiona balled up the paper wrapper of the first filet and pushed it back into her satchel. “I thought your,” she lifted a hand and tapped her wrist, “was the strategy.”
“It’s a one-time coin flip, and it’s worthless if we try it while she’s below ground. Either we need to find a way in or we have to flush her out.”
“Does the Bunker have a fire alarm we can pull?”
She smirked at that, but it faded quickly. “I think any alarms would send people into the Bunker instead of out. It’s probably the safest place in the city.”
The voice of one of the neighboring shopkeepers filtered in through the window as they harangued some poor passerby over the quality of their saddlebags while promising a good price for a replacement. Fiona got up and slid the pane shut. “Well, I can always give the Griffinstone diplomat angle a shot.”
She made an uneasy sound in her throat. “And if they ask for proof?”
Fiona sat down beside the bed and considered the second unwrapped filet. “Yeah. Shit.”
“On the bright side we ended up making a hundred caps.”
“That Portia kid has balls.” Fiona took a bite of cold molerat and chewed. “Think that Cattail guy’s going to be an issue?”
Aurora decided she did have an appetite after all and reached over with an aching wing and snatched the other half of the filet from Fiona’s hand, taking a comparatively smaller bite before allowing the gryphon to steal it back with one of her sly grins. “The last guy who tried ended up at the bottom of a latrine,” she said, chewing around her words. “Probably not, though. I think he just assumed today was his lucky day.”
Fiona chuckled at that as she finished her meal, then paused to rummage a sloshing canteen from her satchel. They traded swigs in thoughtful silence for some time before Aurora blew out a resigned breath.
“For now, I think it’s safer if you keep playing the impressionable, wide-eyed gryphon. It’ll give me some time to figure out how I’m expected to act and, who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and score a tour of the Bunker.”
“I don’t think there’s enough loaded dice on the planet to give us that kind of luck, Feathers. But hey, ten points for optimism.” She balled her fist and gave Aurora a gentle thump across the foreleg. “Speaking of which, how’re you holding up?”
Her brow furrowed as she gave herself time to consider the question. Once again she had the lives of everyone she loved riding on her shoulders, but she also knew there were other Rangers sneaking into New Canterlot at this exact moment who all shared the same objective. Sledge, Coronado, and Clover would be in the midst of final preparations for evacuating the first wave of Stable residents once night fell. And despite not having Roach and Julip at her side right now, she wasn’t alone.
“I’m doing okay.” And it felt true enough, which was even more reassuring than the sentiment. “Honestly, right now I’m trying to decide if it would be weird if I asked Portia where they’re pulling their electricity from.”
“Generators, probably. It might be less weird if I ask.”
“Probably,” she agreed. “It’s gotta be ignition talismans, though, right? Those weather factories alone…”
Fiona rapped a knuckle against her prosthesis, and she realized her volume had begun creeping upward. “It’s the Enclave,” she said, making an all-encompassing gesture with her hands. “They’ve been raiding and stockpiling tech since the first Stable failed. I think it’s safe to assume they’re not relying on scrap generators and moonshine.”
“Makes you wonder where they have it stockpiled,” she mused.
“I think that’s a question we don’t want to be overheard asking.” Fiona wadded up her empty wrapper and dropped it into her satchel alongside the first one. “That said, we’ve probably got a good few hours left before the city starts closing down for the evening. I say we go rub elbows with the locals and see if we learn something. How about it?”
Aurora offered a grumbling protest in response as she dropped off the bedside and turned to scoop up her rifle. “Let’s ask Portia if she can point me toward a sink, first.”
Fiona paused to look her up and down. “You afraid of a little road dust, city slicker?”
“No, but this room is a closet and I haven’t cleaned my peg leg since I put it on.”
“Ah,” Fiona said, her eyes dropping to regard her prosthesis with fresh foreboding. “C’mon, stankleg. Let’s go find you that sink.”


	




“I look stupid.”
“You look classy,” Fiona replied, “which is the kind of stupid people around here like, so just go with it.”
Aurora grumbled at the reflection passing along the display window beside her and tried hard not to undo the low bun Fiona had teased her mane into. The inn hadn’t featured a restroom for patrons, but when she had explained she just needed to give her leg a quick wash Portia had taken them through what was likely the first floor storage room and indicated an employee washroom near the back. It was cramped, offering barely enough space for a toilet and pedestal sink, but the fact there was indoor plumbing at all made it feel like a luxury. 
The water that spluttered through the tap ran clear and Aurora had made short work of taking a clean washcloth to her prosthesis and leg. It was funny to think that a month ago she would have laid into anyone she caught lingering behind her while she tended to herself, but several weeks in the wasteland had all but worn those jumpy nerves down to nubs. She was aware of Fiona leaning in the open doorway and figured if the gryphon wanted to watch her scrub the nasty from her false leg, then that was what she was going to do. She hadn’t expected Fiona to reach out and just grab a knot of her mane.
“What,” she’d asked, bristling at the sudden contact, “are you doing?”
“Let me try something real quick,” Fiona had said in return, and before Aurora could work through all the possible ways to misinterpret that ominous statement, she’d felt Fiona’s hands going to work gathering her dirty mop of a mane and teasing it into a loose braid. 
With her prosthetic laying over the sink basin and Fiona’s less than gentle yanking on her head throwing her balance, Aurora had been forced to focus on not falling while Fiona worked. She grumbled as dirty white strands of hair flipped and flopped behind her reflection’s annoyed expression. Once Fiona had the uneven strands loosely woven into something approaching a cohesive bundle, she twisted the arrangement into a messy bun. 
When she attempted to humor Fiona’s burst of creative styling and asked her to please untie her mane, she flatly refused. It was then that Aurora realized she had positioned the bun in the exact spot above her shoulder blades where her wings couldn’t reach.
Passing the display window now, she pursed her lips into a thin line and tried to swallow the bitter pill that Fiona’s selling points made sense. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like a mare who cared about her appearance. That wasn’t usually true on days that ended in y but when it came to walking the streets of New Canterlot, where wastelanders were openly ostracized and dustwings were liable for much, much worse, anything that improved upon her usual style of Mechanical Chic helped. The burn scars that dominated her chest and belly could be explained away by a grievous work accident - she was supposed to be a traveling mechanic after all - as could her false leg. That probably wouldn’t fly once her hair began falling out and her voice turned to gravel, but those were all Future Aurora problems. For now, she was just another greaser trying to look pretty in spite of her blemishes.
And one final glance at her reflection led her to settle on the outside possibility that maybe, in very limited circumstances, wearing her mane up wasn’t the worst look in the world.
Of course it helped that Fiona was pulling attention away from her by the barrel. While the citizenry of New Canterlot didn’t display their stupefaction nearly as blatantly as people had in Steepleton, there were still plenty of staring and more than a few instances of ponies walking out of stores only to stop dead in their tracks when they saw the gryphon padding down the sidewalk. There were also quite a few unnecessary “hellos” from just about every warm body they passed, none of which were very interested in Aurora beyond her possible role as Fiona’s accessory. Even the Enclave soldiers who patrolled the busy boulevard in singles and pairs were happy to regard Fiona with quiet interest, and evidently some among their uniformed compatriots were just as amused with the civilian response to Fiona as Fiona was.
“You’re putting on a helluva show,” Aurora remarked as a pair of stallions heading in the opposite direction stumbled out of the way. 
“It’d be nice if one of these people would run up and say gee whiz lady follow me we got a re-e-eal nifty minister who wants to meetcha!” 
The ridiculous, squeaking accent she put on was more than enough to make Aurora forget her worries over her mane and she even let herself laugh a little. “I think we’re going to have to put in the leg work ourselves.”
Her attention wandered out onto the open boulevard where a team of earth ponies lurched forward, working together to get a wagon filled with goods rolling. Her expression faltered when she recognized the iron collars around their necks.
Fiona grunted her agreement. “Shouldn’t be too hard to get someone talking. Maybe this… person we’re looking for,” she barely avoided using Primrose’s name as a wide-eyed, paunchy mare trundled past, “makes frequent visits around town? Who knows, she might be in that big church polishing the holy massage wand right this very second.”
Aurora wrinkled her nose at Fiona. “Gross.”
“Depends on what she’s chanting.”
She thumped Fiona in the ribs with the flat of her wing, but her eyes kept tracking the quartet of slaves straining to move the wagon. She couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
They found a cafe style restaurant with an assortment of tables of chairs crowding the sidewalk and Aurora decided it looked quiet enough for them to poke their heads in without being mobbed. It wasn’t much more than a kitchen beneath an awning but the smells wafting from behind the wide counter were intoxicating. When the stallion tending the stove noticed their approach, he turned and did the expected bug-eyed stare before quickly clamping down on the expression. 
Aurora selected something off the menu board at random, something called crispy cheddar bombs, and as the kitchen worker began dipping little lumps of cheese into batter she explained how she’d agreed to take Fiona on a whirlwind tour of New Canterlot despite not exactly being a local herself. 
The stallion offered a sympathetic smile as he used a pair of metal tongs to flick battered cheese one by one into a vat of bubbling oil. “You from one of the border towns, then?”
She feigned a meek nod. “I got a place not far from Steepleton. I prefer the quiet.”
His expression brightened at that. “My brother lives out that way. He thinks the same way you do. Not a fan of crowds.” He used the tongs to keep the battered balls tumbling in the oil, then used them to gesture up at Fiona. “There’s always the Chapel, if you haven’t stopped by there.”
Fiona made a brief show of hemming and hawing as if she were afraid she might offend him. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be a distraction.”
The stallion glanced past them at the patrons and passersby beyond. He smiled, a little chagrined that he had just been doing the same thing they were now, and retrieved a pinstriped cardboard raft from a stack further down the counter. “Ah, well, people tend to be better behaved when they’re there. No rule saying you have to visit, of course, but it’s kind of like going to Las Pegasus and not playing the slots, y’know?”
Aurora had a sudden and vivid recollection of listening to Apogee struggling to speak with her father as the bombs began to fall, only to irrevocably lose the connection when Las Pegasus bloomed beneath a bulb of sickly green fire. She forced herself to maintain a polite smile as the memory came and went.
“Tell you what, though,” the stallion continued, his attention fixed entirely on Fiona, “if you do decide to skip seeing the Chapel, you should swing by the west side of town and scope out Snob Hill.”
Fiona quirked her head to the side with a dubious smirk. “Snob Hill.”
“Name’s not the best selling point, I know,” he said, somehow managing to include the tongs in his bear with me shrug. “Honestly, it’s a pretty reliable spot to go if you’re looking to pick up an inferiority complex.”
Aurora glanced up at Fiona, eyebrow raised.
The stallion didn’t seem to notice as he swapped out the tongs for a shallow metal net. With one swipe he fished half the golden brown morsels up from the boiling oil. “The folks up there are all retired officers and legacy families with more caps than the wasteland has dirt. All huge houses and luxury carriages,” he said, pausing to gesture out to the steady stream of pulled vehicles roaming the boulevard, “that make those look like scav haulers. It’s worth a look.”
She’d tuned him out as soon as he mentioned retired generals. Odds were a quick visit wouldn’t land them an impromptu audience with Primrose, but how would they know without taking a chance? She could think of several justifications for wanting to bring a visiting gryphon to the city’s opulent west end, and if it gave someone with real influence within the Enclave an opportunity to flatter themselves then why not? 
“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” she said, accepting the cardboard raft while Fiona counted out the requisite caps. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get real lucky and bump into the minister herself?”
The stallion’s lip quirked upward as he sidestepped to take Fiona’s caps. “She does show up at church from time to time to make the odd public announcement.”
Aurora tried to sound casual. “Anything on schedule this week?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” he admitted with a touch of embarrassment, “I haven’t been to church since my parents dragged me in as a colt. No offense to you, I mean.”
Apparently he’d come to assume she was one of the Enclave’s many faithful. Probably he was choosing the safe route just in case his comment about having to be dragged might rankle any of the patrons waiting impatiently behind them. It was probably safer for her too if she didn’t try to stand out from the assumption. 
She popped one of the still steaming treats into her mouth - Holy shit these are good, she thought - and offered a reassuring wink as she chewed. “Well, if you ever have a change of heart at least you know where to go.”
The stallion’s smile grew a little strained and Aurora thought she could actually see the moment where they went from an interesting pair of customers to very slightly unwelcome strangers blocking his counter. She took the hint, thanked him for his time, and gestured for Fiona to follow her back to the sidewalk. 
She wanted to make a beeline east and check to be sure Primrose wasn’t dusting herself off right now in preparation for one such announcement, but she knew if she did that it would be nothing short of impossible to pry her away for fear that that window might open the second she left. Doubtless someone would eventually notice the three-legged mare and her gryphon pal skulking around the building for hours on end. She distracted herself with another fried nugget of cheese, a ridiculously delicious discovery she had to actively stop herself from hoarding away from Fiona’s probing fingers, and turned their walk toward the setting sun. 
“Lime is going to shit when he finds out the Enclave has better bar food than he does,” Fiona murmured as she pilfered another cheese curd from Aurora. “These could get addicting.”
Fiona was right, but as Aurora ate another, she had a feeling the proprietor of Fiona’s favorite bar would have to bend over backwards to get anyone in the Bluff to try Enclave food. For six caps it sure didn’t last very long either. By the end of the first block the little cardboard raft had nothing but greasy crumbs and left Aurora searching for a recycler chute. Then she blinked and tried not to smile at how quickly that ingrained Stable habit had come to her. Ever since she began exploring the wasteland she’d gotten used to the idea of burning her trash before dousing a cookfire or just leaving it on the dirt. Now, surrounded once more by something that could arguably be called civilization, the old rules of where to put one’s garbage suddenly applied again.
They found a trash bin at the end of the block. A uniformed soldier that looked strikingly similar to Sledge noticed and thanked her without a trace of sarcasm or threat. It was the most utterly alien interaction she’d had with an Enclave soldier, and she had to work to keep the surprise off her face as she nodded back.
“Lot of walking,” Fiona said some time later.
They’d found themselves passing down a section of the east-west boulevard where the surrounding shops had shrunk and narrowed into colorful, bookended homes of no more than a couple stories tall. The street had thinned enough that some of the sidewalk traffic was blending in among the odd carriage and wagon, like the rules for who was allowed to walk where were loosening with distance from the city center. 
Not for the first time, Aurora glanced up at the empty space directly above them. For all the pegasus traffic high over the city, it seemed either no one was allowed to fly up and down the streets or it was considered unsafe. Given the majority of the citizenry, at least half by her count, were pegasi of one stripe or another she assumed it was a combination of both. Coasting through the narrow space between buildings wouldn’t be much trouble for an experienced flyer on their own, but add in a few hundred sets of wings trying to do the same thing and things would undoubtedly turn into a melee. 
Each of the narrow houses had the same simple concrete stoop, the same quadrant of four skinny street-facing windows, and the same electric lights glowing behind them. Some were painted with inviting shades of yellow, green, or blue but most sported the original color of ruddy brown brick they were originally built from. The ponies who watched them pass by did so with expressions of appraisal or concern. This wasn’t where they went to shop or socialize, this was where they lived and raised their families. Even the occasional soldier paused to observe them in case the appearance of a gryphon might herald some unexpected danger. 
Aurora smiled up at Fiona. If only they knew.







Chops looked around the Atrium uncomfortably, feeling nonexistent glares warming the back of his neck. No one was watching him besides the larger stallion walking alongside him. Normally that would have been Dancer’s role, but thanks to Weathers using what limited good influence she had with the Stable’s overseer he’d been granted permission to range beyond the confines of Medical with some stipulations attached. The first of which being he wasn’t allowed near the residential corridors on the upper level where Meridian and her family resided. 
It surprised him how much that stung him. He understood all the reasons why and didn’t disagree with a single one. The discomfort came from knowing how arrogant he’d been to think he could smooth over all that fear and pain with an apology. He had devoted himself to the Enclave and flown thousands of miles over many long years in the name of scouting the outer reaches of the wasteland to investigate dustwing sightings and execute any of the ones he found. He’d believed it was the will of the risen goddesses. That what he was doing was an act of mercy akin to pulling weeds out of a garden. 
Dustwings were the mutated corruptions of pegasi who abandoned the light of the goddesses to proliferate in the irradiated wastes. They represented an existential threat to the Enclave’s ordained task to return the world back to the paradise it had once been. That was what he had been taught. That was what everyone in the Enclave had been taught. And while many considered the culling of dustwings to be unfortunate and even a tragedy, they understood it was their duty. 
Only his duty had been a lie, and the mantle of black he had worn bore the blood of those innocents he’d helped to slaughter.
“Scowling at it isn’t going to make it taste any better.”
He blinked and looked up at the stallion seated beside him. 
Another stipulation of being allowed to roam around select areas of the Stable was that he only did so when an escort was available. At the moment that escort was Deputy Chaser, a lanky yet not unattractive stallion whose weary expression hadn’t changed much since bearing witness to his humiliating exchange with Meridian earlier in the day. Chaser gestured a fork at Chops’ untouched tray which bore the same thin variety of food scraped together by the collective efforts of local traders, scavengers, and Steel Rangers. 
Chops realized he’d been glowering at his dinner since they’d seated themselves at one of the long, bench-style tables that now packed the Atrium from wall to wall, with the exception of the corner near the overseer’s office where the largest chunks of rubble were still waiting to be broken down and hauled outside. The entire place buzzed with conversation, the clacking of cutlery against aluminum trays, and the occasional laughter. Without his uniform to identify him, he knew it was unlikely anyone knew who he was. 
Still, in those moments when the din of chatter naturally ebbed, he couldn’t shake the irrational feeling that his midnight coat and charcoal feathers were enough for these strangers to make the connection and condemn him anyway.
He picked up his fork, pecked the tines through the skin of a boiled and quartered potato, and popped it into his mouth. It was warm, starchy, and bland. Sustenance food. He washed down the flavorless meal with a swig of water from the canteen he’d been given and tried to push his thoughts elsewhere.
Beyond the makeshift stairwell leading up to the security office and the open antechamber beyond, the dim noise of a motor rumbled to life followed by an echo of whooping cheers. A few tables from where he sat, a group of mechanics perked up and took up the cheer with a raucous stamping of hooves. Chops frowned confusion, craning his neck around as the spontaneous celebration spread through the Atrium. Had something happened or was this just something Stable dwellers did during communal meals?
So as not to stand out, Chops gave the table a few half-hearted thuds before picking up the notepad and pen beside his tray. Chaser must have noticed his confusion because he hadn’t finished writing the question before the deputy answered it.
“Sounds like they finally got that generator running.”
His brow momentarily furrowed before he realized he wasn’t talking about the Stable’s massive, talisman-driven generator. A new question formed in his mind, and he set to writing it down for the deputy.
“What generator?”
Chaser read the question and shrugged. “Something the outsiders dragged in from one of their cities a few days back.” He paused, used his fork to coat a piece of potato in the grease left by his ration of molerat meat, and ate it. He rocked his head from side to side as he chewed, as if deciding whether or not he’d improved the flavor. 
When he swallowed, he pointed the empty fork up the stairs to the grinning mechanics now filing out onto what remained of the upper catwalk to the sound of renewed stomping applause. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the rising din. “Apparently it runs on liquor.”
Chops absently scratched out ethanol on his notepad, but didn’t look to see if Chaser acknowledged the correction. Above the makeshift cafeteria, bathed in the dim yellow glow of emergency lights, the mechanics who were apparently responsible for reviving a scavenged prewar relic basked in the praised offered up by their peers. Some of them grinned while others hammed up the attention with exaggerated heroic poses.
Their blue and yellow uniforms - no, he reminded himself, not uniforms - their jumpsuits clung to their sweaty coats like a dark, greasy second skin. There were visible bags hanging beneath all of their eyes and even as they reveled in their success, there were inaudible conversations making their way up and down the catwalk that gave their appearance a very temporary essence. They were still on the clock and there was still work to be done, even now. 
As the applause died down and the voices faded to a dull roar, one of the mechanics stepped to the warped railing and cleared his throat to address them.
“So, uh,” she said, then flushed as a rumble of laughter rolled through the open space. Public speaking had probably not been on the list of skills she’d been trained in as a mechanic. When the room shushed, she tried again. “Yeah, so some good news and bad. I guess everyone already heard the good news, but if you didn’t, we think we got that old heap running again.”
Fresh stamping shook the tables and rattled the trays. Chops had to pick his up to keep it from vibrating off and into his lap.
“It’s not a permanent fix,” the nameless mechanic continued, cringing at how abruptly the celebration died after she spoke. “And won’t ever put out enough juice to get everything back up and running, not unless we’re okay with burning through whatever life it still has left.”
A low, worried murmur susurrated between the tables. 
“Will the lights come back on?” someone shouted.
The mechanic licked her lips a little uneasily, and judging by the barely contained smiles of the others standing at either side of her, they’d drawn straws for who should speak and she’d wound up with the short one. Chops set his tray back down and wondered whether unscripted announcements were the norm for a Stable.
“No promises… but probably, yeah,” the mare said, and this time she was grinning as she practically had to shout over the excitement. “Nothing is written in stone, but as long as we can keep this relic from shaking itself apart, we think we’ll have the lights working in a day or so. Maybe with some extra capacity left over for other things, but that’s down the road! We’re going to try to…”
It was no use trying to hear her anymore. The Atrium had descended into joyous bedlam. Chops craned his head around to watch Stable dwellers laughing together, hugging, clinking canteens, and altogether heaving one collective sigh of relief. He saw a stallion twice his size bent over his tray, face covered by trembling feathers, his mouth working between sobs as he tried to articulate something to the mare beside him. Several more had gotten up from their benches to make their way into the corridors, spreading the first bit of good news to reach the Stable since all of this began for them.
Chops watched the mechanic at the railing give up trying to shout over the sounds of celebration and retreat back through the security office with several of her fellow workers. The disorganized announcement and the happy chaos it had spawned felt utterly alien to the rigid and well-understood hierarchy he’d known. And yet, more than that, it felt good. Genuine, in so many ways. 
He picked up his pad, scribbled a note, and tapped Chaser on the wing with it until he turned to read what he’d written. The deputy scrunched up his face, then laughed. 
“Why would they get in trouble?” he asked.
Chops hesitated, then wrote, “She lost control of the room and couldn’t finish her announcement.”
Chaser looked at him like he’d written gibberish.
He sighed and quickly added, “Should have told overseer first.”
The deputy laughed and Chops felt his cheeks grow hot with perceived mockery. “And give up a perfectly good opportunity to beat Sledge to the punch on an announcement? Naw, that’s not how Mechanical works. They’ve got their own little society down there and one-upping the boss stallion is just another part of it.”
Chops frowned, not understanding. 
Deputy Chaser apparently shared some traits with Dancer, because he plainly ignored the confusion he’d caused. “Just wait and watch,” he said, clearly wanting to return to the revelry, “Sledge will be around to say more or less exactly what Mechanical just said. That’s his job, now. They just wanted to steal a little thunder.”
Sure to the deputy’s word, a quarter hour later Overseer Sledge emerged from one of the corridors preceded by more whoops and applause. He smiled with the slightest discomfort creasing his eyes, but he did exactly what Chaser said he’d do. Sledge waited for silence, repeated the good news shared by the mechanics, and added his own reminders that everyone temper their expectations. The generator supplied by the scavengers was decades older than the one tailor-made for their Stable and would require extensive replacements before it could be depended upon. For now, he was leaving it to Mechanical and I.T. to decide where and how to splice the old generator into the electrical grid. 
And then his tone sank as he reminded everyone gathered that the first wave of evacuees would be departing one hour after sunset. Wagons would be waiting inside the tunnel and personal belongings must be limited to what could be comfortably carried in their saddlebags. The second wave would depart the next night, and the final throughout the following day. 
Chops could see the celebratory mood evaporate at the mention of the evacuation. Face fell, and quiet settled throughout the Atrium. Their momentary joy of seeing their home restored, even by a fraction, was over, replaced by the knowledge of the very real danger they were all still in. SOLUS was still plummeting back toward the signal range of Enclave transmitters. Any realist knew chances were slim that Aurora or any of the Rangers being smuggled to New Canterlot via overland routes would succeed in killing Primrose.
Stable 10, whose founding and living residents alike had preserved the true record of the world’s collapse, was the obvious first target. It was anyone’s guess whether Primrose would stop there. Chops could see Blinder’s Bluff being an immediate secondary target to add confusion to the mayhem.
As Sledge continued to speak, Chops watched those in the Atrium with families regard one another with grim certainty. They would be among the first to leave. There was no question. Many already had their saddlebags tucked beneath tables, ready to go once they were told the sun had set. Others murmured to one another, nodding, verifying some last minute plan or another. If the lights did turn on tomorrow, most of them wouldn’t be here to see it. They would be following the traders, scavengers, and everyday wastelanders who had come to shepherd them into a vast and dangerous world none of them were the least bit prepared for.
“One of the benefits of beating the overstallion to the punch,” Chaser murmured, gesturing a feather out to Sledge. “They’re not the one who gets stuck having to drag everyone back down to reality.”
Chops nodded, feeling sympathy for Sledge. One way or another he’d have had to come make this speech, but the mechanics had forced him to do it now before things spun out of control. 
He blinked and looked up at the overstallion, regarding him more fully. He stood there, listening to someone ask a question about the evacuation, visibly uncomfortable but bearing under the weight of his responsibility in spite of it. He’d been forced to drop everything to appear here, now, in front of everyone.
His fork slipped from his feathers and clattered to his tray.
If the overseer of a Stable could be forced into making an emergency announcement, he thought, his heart ratcheting to a rapid staccato, so could a minister.


	




Snob Hill had been, as it turned out, built on an actual hill. 
Well, maybe a hill as defined by ponies. Fiona did what she could to keep the smug off her beak. She’d grown up on mountains. She’d lived in a firetower at the cliff’s edge of a bluff. Compared to the smoking peak looming behind them Snob Hill barely registered as a ripple on the terrain. Still she supposed it qualified. The slight incline as the boulevard slid out from the colorful row houses and into New Canterlot’s wealthy district was easier to see when they looked back the way they came, something she was trying to do as little as possible knowing they would have to retrace all those same steps back to the inn.
Blech, she thought. “So, what’s the plan?”
Until now they’d been making it up as they went, but it was clear that strategy would only carry them so far. People seemed content enough to stare at her but so far no one had been compelled to introduce themselves. Was that another Enclave rule or something more culturally ingrained? Don’t talk to large, predatory avians unless you want to end up dinner with the addition of spooky fingers and well-timed lightning. She rolled her eyes. She’d eaten plenty of ponies and hadn’t gotten so much as a complaint.
She lifted a wing and ran her feathertips along the bars of a wrought iron gate running along the sidewalk. Behind it lay a large property that was beautiful by wasteland standards but which would get the owners run out of town were it to exist during the halcyon days before the war. The “mansion” at the center of the acre of fastidious trimmed scrub grass looked like a brick cube someone had added a gabled roof and ornamental white pillars to as an afterthought. Several attempts at sculpted topiaries dotted a crushed granite path running the length of the property, though Fiona couldn’t guess what they were meant to look like. 
A collared mare who was in the middle of trimming one of the patchy shrubs looked up at them, nodded once, then resumed her work. Down the path and nearer the house, an earth pony wearing an identical collar busied himself scrubbing one of the mansion’s wide wooden steps. She’d almost forgotten she’d asked Aurora a question at all until she startled her by answering.
“Talk to anyone who looks like they have something to say,” Aurora said, her attention no less captivated by the slaves toiling away behind a richer set of iron bars. “See if we can’t shake something loose.”
As they walked, the boulevard finally came to an end and branched off in either direction in the form of narrower but no less impressive neighborhood streets. With the crowds behind them and nothing but quiet sidewalk ahead, Fiona wondered whether they’d be forced to start knocking on doors or to just simply turn around.
To make matters worse, finding someone on Snob Hill willing to talk to two random strangers proved difficult. Fiona watched an older couple take notice of them from a distance, slow momentarily, then very deliberately cross to the opposite sidewalk. The couple stared, muttering to one another as they passed the same patch of street. Fiona only caught a few words. None of them were pleasant.
A wagon pulled by a team of collared earth ponies clattered along the quiet road filled with empty wooden barrels and what was clearly a vendor stall that had been broken down for the day. The late afternoon breeze scooped a few bits of loose corn husk from one of the barrels and deposited them across the smooth pavement.
Aurora watched as one of the husked rasped toward them, tumbled onto the sidewalk, and slipped through the bars of the adjacent fence. An old stallion whose collar looked several sizes too large for his neck noticed the little intrusion and briefly scowled at them before stopping his work to chase down the litter.
“So many cheery faces,” Fiona mused under her breath. “How can I pick just one?”
Like the old, broken roads of the far wastelands, trust wasn’t something the people residing on Snob Hill gave away freely. Aurora wondered whether the kitchen worker who’d suggested they come here might have done so knowing the chilly reception they’d receive.
No, she decided. More likely they were simply experiencing the reason why this slice of New Canterlot had been given such an inspired name.
The wagon which was still in the process of dropping husks behind it slowed and turned left down the next intersection. When Aurora and Fiona reached the crossing they watched it roll west toward a distant wall of green. 
“Who builds a ritzy neighborhood next to a cornfield?”
Aurora found herself wondering the same thing. “Someone who still has wagons coming in from the city center.” She tipped her nose after the shrinking wagon. “Maybe someone there will talk to us.”
“As opposed to peeking between the curtains? Can’t hurt.”
As they crossed the street to follow the wagon, another appeared back the way they’d come and overtook them a few moments later. Two collared mares didn’t so much as spare them a glance as they hauled their load up the road’s slight incline, a white lipstick of foam clinging to the corners of their mouths as they struggled against their load. Several more barrels and crates jostled between the sideboards and, as they overtook them, a bored looking stallion sitting with his hind legs swung over the open backboard noticed Aurora and Fiona and nodded in acknowledgment.
“No collar on that one,” Fiona remarked as the wagon creaked toward the far fields. 
“Nope.” Aurora all but spat the word, her thoughts already returning to the slaver camp on the outskirts of Kiln and the ponies they’d freed from cramped rebar cages. Not for the first time she wondered what had become of them and whether they’d exacted punishment on Quincy’s deluded attempt to foil his own rescue. 
“Oh dang,” Fiona said. “Do you smell that? It smells good.”
For a while she didn’t smell anything unusual. Just the same non-odor of road dust caught up in the breeze and the slight, musky tang of Fiona’s body. She lifted her own wing and gave her feathers a cautious sniff. She winced. She racked her memory for the last time she’d showered only to recall Discord’s water closet from several days prior. 
Aurora felt a split second of concern that Fiona might have gotten a whiff of her, but the gryphon’s attention was pointed straight ahead to the nearing fields. As they reached the last block of cookie cutter mini-mansions and approached the wall of sickly yet plentiful crops, a stray current of wind bent the immature stalks toward them and Aurora caught the faint, sweet scent they carried.
The division between Snob Hill’s maze of big, uninspired houses and open farmland was too abrupt not to be planned out. There was no transition, just a two lane road rolled out between them. An image formed in her head of Primrose sketching out maps of what would become New Canterlot as she tried to work out the best way to organize her future citizens in a manner that would somehow, inexplicably fuck with their lives. It certainly seemed like something she would do.
They watched the wagon ahead turn off onto a gravel access road tucked between the fields and disappear among the pale fronds. As they approached the gap they spotted the wagon, now several dozen yards up the access road, stopped for the moment while the stallion who had been lazing about on the open hitch now worked to latch a heavy wooden fence gate back into place. The mares hauling the wagon would have their work cut out for them. The remainder of the short road was all uphill.
Aurora felt guilt eating at her as they continued on by. This wasn’t Kiln. 
Soon the vast cornfield on their right changed to less conspicuous vegetables while the big houses on the left gradually shed their grand, iron fences in favor of the picket and painted variety. Snob Hill was clearly behind them now as they spotted a trio of unicorn foals playing chase across two connected yards, oblivious to the strangers passing nearby. Somewhere, music played through an open window and the sounds of clattering pans hinted at a late dinner being thrown together. 
Fiona let out a low whistle and pointed out into the fields. “Now that’s a mansion.”
Aurora followed her gaze and felt her own expression slacken a bit at the size of the home that rose up like an island of luxury among a low sea of scraggly bean cultivars. Even at half a mile away the mansion looked too big for anyone sane to live in. This had to be one of the houses the kitchen worker had mentioned. For all intents and purposes it looked like a giant had stomped into New Canterlot, gathered up three of the nearby mini-mansions, and slammed them all together into one disjointed mess of a home. It all but screamed look at all the caps I have.
“I made something that looks a lot like that in my old welding class,” she commented. “I had to retake the test.”
Fiona laughed. “Yeah, I don’t know anything about welding but I think if you made that I’d make you retake it too. Someone was indulging in some serious chems when they designed that place.”
She smiled, watching as the scrubby rows of bean plants stopped at a low rock wall on the other side of which began row upon long row of narrow-trunked trees with distinct purple stains to the otherwise green leaves. Aurora found herself musing at the strange orchard, wondering whether the bruised shade was natural or some kind of mutation. A dozen or so collared workers strained with baskets and ladders to sort out the ripened plums hidden among the dense canopies, their muzzles and hooves stained dark from hours of picking. One of the enslaved ponies working near the fence line caught Aurora’s gaze as they adjusted their ladder, the light of the low sun glinting off the ring clamped over their horn. 
Aurora realized she was staring and looked away, trying to focus on the road ahead. 
She noticed the sign as soon as she did. It swung on the lazy breeze from a heavy crossbeam fixed to the top of two poles, forming an archway that bridged the gap in the fence made by the crushed gravel road that snaked through the orchard. Aurora hadn’t been aware she’d stopped until she heard Fiona call to her. Then Fiona was beside her again, a palm on her shoulder, trying briefly to figure out what was wrong until finally looking up and reading the tastefully decorated signboard for herself.


Dressage Family Orchards


Fiona pieced it together quickly and tried to pull her along, away from the sign and the storm of emotions rumbling to life within her. She tried to ply her with reassurances, but Aurora didn’t move. She didn’t hear her. Her attention remained fixed on that sign and the fleeting glimpses of the large plantation style home between the trees. 
“Aurora,” Fiona urged, her beak all but pressed into the cup of her ear, “let’s go back to the inn, okay? Let’s go back.”
Her wing pressed down along the smooth lines of her rifle, feeling it there against her side. One step. A second one. Then, without preamble or warning, Aurora started walking up the path to the home that forced a teenage mare out into the wasteland.







Chops had experienced many strange things over the past few weeks, but sitting across a desk from a Steel Ranger Elder and the former director of security for Minister Primrose was easily the most disorienting one so far. The two stallions had regarded him with silent interest while he scribbled out note after note trying to explain his thinking. His feathers had begun shaking from frustration and sheer nerves, causing Coronado and later Clover to pass back a slip of paper for help understanding his wingwriting. Too much adrenaline and too many rules of his old life being recently overturned had made a mess out of his usually neat, compact lettering and soon one of the deputies was sent out to hunt down a terminal. 
The brief pause had given him just enough time to settle the worst of his nerves before two positively ancient units were hauled in and set to face both sides of the desk. A badly kinked cable was socketed between them and with some fiddling of a tiny switch, the deputy slaved the terminal aimed at the two high ranking officers to the one facing Chops. A generic word processing window was opened between them and Chops went to work recapping the idea he’d been struggling to convey.
For several minutes there was no sound except the harried clicking of an old keyboard and the lazy drone of air recycler fans. His epiphany was too new, still forming a shape in his mind, and so he filled paragraphs where a few sentences would do. Green text bloomed across both screens before, mercifully, the shaggy former security director reached out with one wing and stayed Chops’ own.
“I think what you’re trying to say is if we steal the minister’s thunder and claim the Steel Rangers found SOLUS first, it may force her into making a public appearance to refute that claim,” he summarized.
Chops frowned, then nodded as he typed, “Yes. We divulge everything we know about SOLUS including the communication window that’s coming up.”
“May 1st at around 23:00 hours,” Coronado supplied. “According to Aurora’s dream vision, at least.”
There was the slightest shade of doubt in the Elder’s tone that Chops chose to ignore.
Clover noticed as well. He leaned into the back of his chair and scratched his lip, staring at his terminal thoughtfully. “Since the bomb exploded, all Primrose can reasonably know of the situation here is what her scouts can reconnoiter from the air. They’ll have seen the renewed Ranger presence and the supplies being brought in by the wastelanders and either assume there’s a rescue effort underway or the Elder Coronado is actively competing with scavengers for the Stable’s technology.”
Coronado’s expression soured at the mention of him possibly following the original plans laid out by his predecessor Coldbrook but didn’t comment.
Clover continued. “An announcement like this,” he gestured at Chops’ proposal, “would tip all of our cards at once. We would be not only telling Primrose that we have detailed access to the Enclave’s most closely held secrets, but that we’re actively taking measures to subvert them in real time. If she suspects someone in her circle is feeding information to Stable 10, the renewed attention has every chance of putting the evacuations at risk.”
“Not to mention the danger to Ms. Pinfeathers if she goes the other way and correctly assumes her memories are being served up through the Dream.” Coronado shifted uneasily in his seat, his crooked horn glowing as he picked a pen up from the desk and gave it a few nervous clicks. “If she instructs her soldiers in the capitol to watch for mares fitting Aurora’s description and they find her, she’ll know we’re aiming for assassination and go straight into hiding.”
Chops could sense where this was going and tried not to let them see he was clenching his jaw with frustration. Everything they had said was irrefutably correct. Broadcasting a claim that the Steel Rangers were preparing to take control of SOLUS was a single-use, all-or-nothing gamble. It would spark panic throughout the Enclave and cause no small amount of false hope across the wasteland, and in doing so it would clear the board of all the deception and subterfuge military leaders like Coronado and Clover were used to having in play. 
They would be telling Primrose that they knew, and the only pieces left on the board was her and them. 
But, if they were lucky, she wouldn’t see the hook hidden within the bait. The Steel Rangers would not only claim to own SOLUS but threaten its use on New Canterlot itself if the Enclave didn’t agree to surrender, and the panic caused by that flimsy ultimatum would force Primrose to make a public announcement where her fearful followers could gather en masse. She would appear before the pulpit in the Chapel of the Two Sisters as she had time and time before, radiating the same calm confidence that had propelled the Enclave out from beneath the ash and rubble it had created.
Primrose wouldn’t be able to resist.
And yet Chops could see the two stallions with the power to make that decision hemming and hawing, because experience and training wouldn’t allow them to do anything else. He grimaced, blew out a wordless sigh, and started typing.
“The wasteland will burn if we don’t act,” he wrote, wingtips clicking harshly over the keys. “The Stable wouldn’t be evacuating if we thought Aurora and Fiona were going to succeed on their own. They need our help. What I’m suggesting will put a lot of good people in danger, but the alternative is we cross our feathers and hope Primrose doesn’t get hold of a superweapon we can’t stop.”
He paused to look up and see Coronado and Clover chewing their respective lips as they followed along. Both looked as if they’d swallowed something bitter. Neither of them moved to interrupt.
“New Canterlot is in broadcast range of the radio transmitter on Blinder’s Bluff. It’s a well-known secret throughout the Enclave and radios there will still be tuned to its frequency. Primrose will be forced to take the stage to contain the panic.”
Clover’s chair creaked. “And if she doesn’t?”
Chops was silent for several seconds before he typed out his answer.
“She’s the leader of the Church,” he wrote. “She’ll have no choice.”







From the front, the Dressage family home looked almost reserved despite its open display of wealth. White clapboard siding matched the narrow white pillars framing the front portico, which shielded a small yet elegant porch space. Off to one side of a traditional oaken front door a single wrought iron chair sat by an open window. Tissue-thin curtains wafted in the gentle breeze, unperturbed by the arrival of visitors. Beyond the big house stood several smaller yet no less impressive outbuildings as well as a reserved area for half a dozen identical wagons waiting for the morning when they would bring the day’s harvest into the city.
Clean white gravel crunched noisily underhoof as Aurora walked up the long drive to the stairs leading onto the open porch. One of the boards creaked under her weight, betraying the presence of a rusted nail somewhere. Above the door two bulbs glowed in their fixtures, the leftmost just a little dimmer than its pair. For all Aurora knew this could be the status quo but something told her they were evidence of a wealthy family experiencing a steady decline. 
The porch groaned when Fiona mounted the steps behind her. She barely noticed.
“This is not a good idea,” Fiona warned, her beak brushing the cup of her ear. 
“I know,” she whispered, and knocked three times.
Her hoof had barely lifted from the wood when the door pulled back, revealing a skinny earth pony with what appeared to be a permanently sour expression. He stood in a spacious foyer that extended rearward into a hall that briefly narrowed to accommodate a stairwell and its impressively detailed bannister rail. From where Aurora stood she could make out the ornate frames of several large paintings interspersed with smaller, textureless photographs. Dark wainscoting paneled the bottom third of every wall, making the gold and white patterned wallpaper stand a little brighter.
The servant, because what else was there to call a stallion who had answered the door so promptly in a buttoned suit jacket, paused for the briefest moment to regard Fiona with a spark of surprise. Then, with deftness borne from years of practice, he shifted his startled gaze to the outer surface of the door as if to suggest Aurora’s hoof may have dirtied it. Finding nothing, he returned his half-lidded, disapproving stare to them as if the arrival of an armed pegasus and gryphon were an everyday matter.
“Good afternoon,” he said with a deferential bow. “Pardon me, but I don’t believe we were expecting guests. May I ask the purpose of your visit?”
Flowing scrollwork and a narrow band of gemstones ran the circumference of the servant’s collar, catching the light in interesting ways as he spoke. Aurora hadn’t stopped to consider whether there was a hierarchy among the enslaved ponies, and now she suspected that was at least the case here. Usually her first instinct would be to find a way to make that work for her, but her mind wasn’t anywhere near clear enough to attempt anything conniving. It was everything she could do to keep her heart from beating its way out of her chest.
“We’re here to talk to…” she trailed off, realizing far too late that she didn’t know the names of anyone here. With this stallion eyeing her she couldn’t just throw together a convincing lie, so she went with the only option she had: honesty. “We’re here to deliver a message on behalf of Ginger Dressage.”
The servant’s brow crept up a full inch. He considered them for several seconds before nodding once and pulling the door fully open. “Come inside, please.”
> Chapter 50: SOLUS
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 28th, 1297
11:05 PM

Sledge bent his neck so Opal could wrap him in her wings and give him a bittersweet hug goodbye. He clenched his teeth against the rock in his throat and listened as she assured him he’d done an admirable job as overstallion and, were it not for the decisions he’d made, Stable 10 would have fallen down a much darker path than the one its people would travel tonight.
He watched her go as he had all the others. Families - some with foals, some with elders, and a few with new life on the way - formed an orderly line through the path cleared through the rubble of the antechamber while those at the front were helped into lantern lit wagons by the strangers who had come from the wasteland. He stood there, at the threshold where the Stable door’s lumbering presence once promised safety and protection, and refused to look away from the decision he’d had no choice but to make. Helped by the same Steel Rangers whose deposed Elder promised to harvest their technology by force, Sledge stood in stoic silence as soldiers helped a third of his Stable over sideboards and beneath hooped canvas. 
Each wagon had a different destination. Every one of them carried precious cargo.
He checked his Pip-Buck and felt a chill. Seventy-two hours until SOLUS arrives.








Hours Earlier

Hardwood floor, the genuine kind with narrow planks that interlocked with one another, creaked under Aurora’s hooves as the servant led them through the foyer and into a lavishly appointed parlor room. 
It was empty, save for the furniture and decor. The collared stallion led them across a dense rug awash in deep blues and rich ivory filigree, toward a cozy arrangement of red wingback chairs seated to one side of a well-used fireplace. On the other sat an ivory sofa with two red pillows to match the wingbacks. A small pedestal table occupied the middle space where, of all things, a silver tea set sat on a tray in its center. A thin film of ash dust coated the silver where one of the house servants had neglected to clean.
The collared stallion stopped short of the sitting area and gestured them toward the sofa. Aurora felt a sense of unease creep over her as she leaned her rifle against the armrest nearest the fireplace, then unstrapped her saddlebags and set them beside her rifle. The narrow sofa made a valiant attempt at swallowing her whole when she seated herself but it gave up as soon as Fiona plopped down beside her, choking the infernal furniture into unwilling submission.
Once the servant observed they’d been seated, he tipped a curt smile their way and slipped out of the room. They maintained the mask of politeness until they heard his hooves mounting stairs on the far side of the house.
Fiona leaned close to whisper, “This is a bad idea and we need to leave.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis.
She didn’t look to see Fiona’s expression, but she could hear the frustration in the gryphon’s exhalation. She expected her to push back, or just remind her how reckless and risky it was for her just to be here in this house, but Fiona said nothing else. She just sighed again, a little softer this time, and put a hand over her false leg.
“Say the word and I’ll use this to club our way free.”
Aurora snorted and stifled a laugh, enjoying the utter relief that came with the break in tension. “Just make sure I’m not attached when you start swinging.” 
Hooves thumped down the distant stairs and were promptly joined by a second, lighter set. Aurora looked up and was rewarded with the tail end of one of Fiona’s easy grins before it faded into pensive unease. 
Fiona’s palm came away from her leg to join the other in her own lap. She seemed to consider herself for a moment, then the sofa gave a soft creak as she crossed one hind leg over the other. And set her folded hands atop her thigh. If they had been anywhere else Aurora might have thought the formal posture to be a joke waiting for a salacious punchline, but Fiona’s lavender eyes had gone dull and serious. As the approaching hooves paused outside the parlor door and the servant stallion’s quiet voice murmured something indecipherable, Aurora wondered how often Fiona had been forced to sit at attention in her dealings with Coldbrook. How many times had she worn that carefully neutral mask before she found her home on the Bluff?
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting. We normally don’t take visitors this late in the evening, but I was told…” 
The dulcet feminine voice turned Aurora’s ear, then her eyes. Her breath lodged in her throat like a boulder. For the barest moment, her vision misted. The mare walking toward the wingbacks was a few years older than Ginger had been, but not by much. Her coat was the same rich shade of creamed coffee. Her mane, longer by several inches and pressed into gentle curls, bore the same blaze of reds flecked with gold. Two overlapping sprigs dotted with delicate purple flowers formed the mark on the mare’s hip. She looked exactly how Aurora had imagined Ginger might look after they’d settled into their new life within the safe confines of their Stable, and it was everything she could do to swallow the lump rising in her throat.
“...you have come with a message from my rebellious sister?” The mare kept her gaze low as she seated herself, her attention momentarily tugged away by a tiny stain in the rug. She regarded the blemish with mild disapproval before settling into her chair more comfortably and looking up to regard her guests directly. 
Aurora had to assume Ginger’s sister could sense her immediate discomfort, and yet she glided over it as if it weren’t worthy of mention. “Apologies, again. I have a bad habit of rushing straight to business.”
As she spoke, the servant who had answered the door entered the room with a crystal decanter and three matching tumblers floating along in his magic. There was only the faintest strain in his jaw as he concentrated on performing what was likely a practiced and required show of skill, maneuvering each glass onto the edge of the pedestal table in synchrony while unstopping the decanter still in the air. Aurora heard the tinkle of ice chips as the stallion poured clear water into each glass.
She eyed her glass, noting the flecks of frozen water, and wondered how long it’d been since she’d had something as simple as ice. 
Ginger’s sister softly cleared her through, barely a noise at all, and flicked her eyes toward the dusty silver. The stallion was well trained. He didn’t react at all. He simply lifted the tea tray away and set the crystal decanter in its place as if it made all the sense in the world. After he departed, the mare swept up her glass on a bronze aura and took a delicate sip.
“Rosemary Dressage,” she said, introducing herself with a touch of one hoof to her own chest. After a half pause, she smiled. “I do prefer to know the names of my guests, should we ever have the good fortune to cross paths in the future.”
Aurora’s gaze fell to the carpet. She even sounded like Ginger.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, shaking her head. “This was a mist–”
“Lily Goldbeak,” Fiona interrupted, leaning across the small table with an open hand. Rosemary regarded it with a curious expression before holding out her hoof, allowing the gryphon to give it a vigorous shake. “Sorry about my friend here, she’s nervous. Her name’s Greasy, by the way.”
The sofa rocked as Fiona plopped herself back down, now with a crystal tumbler held between her fingers. Aurora watched Fiona with mounting horror as she plunged the end of her beak into the water and proceeded to lap at it. Was that how she’d always drank? No, she’d seen Fiona knock back her canteen. This was a show meant to distract. She was buying Aurora time.
That coin exhausted itself quickly. Before she knew it, Rosemary had addressed her. “Do you have a last name, Greasy?”
She cringed internally, hating her given alias on new levels she didn’t think possible. “Hooves,” she said, her voice cracking. “But, ah, my friends call me Feathers.”
Rosemary nodded thoughtfully. “Are you by any chance related to the Hooves on Fifth Street?”
She hadn’t bothered to notice the streets were numbered. Likely Rosemary was referring to someone she knew and, very likely, could call upon to shoot down any claim Aurora tried to make on her supposed relatives. 
Coronado could eat her tailhole if he didn’t like it, pretending to be from this legacy family was just borrowing trouble she couldn’t afford. “I couldn’t say. I don’t really get on much with the family.”
“Hmm,” was all the response Rosemary gave as she reached out her magic once more toward her glass. “Well. How has my sister been faring on her adventure? Has she cured the world of all its evils?”
Aurora flinched. She felt Fiona’s hand on her leg again, a bracing gesture meant to convey calm. It didn’t work. 
“Was… was that supposed to be a joke?”
Rosemary frowned, sensing the misstep. “Miss Feathers–”
“Don’t call me that.” The words leapt from her throat with a sudden heat.
“–with the exception of the odd mutual acquaintance on the trade roads, I haven’t heard hair nor hide of my sister since she ran away from home. That was seventeen years ago. I suppose time and distance makes for good humor.” She offered a pinched smile and, seeing she hadn’t eased the tension in the room, took a short breath and added, “If you have a message from my sister, I would be glad to receive it and return one of my own.”
“She’s dead.”
Rosemary blinked. Whatever she had been planning to say visibly evaporated as she sagged into the old wingback, her eyes distant. “Oh.”
Aurora felt her throat going thick. She placed her hoof over Fiona’s hand, seeking something solid to hold onto. “Yeah,” she whispered.
After a long, silent moment. “You’re telling the truth.”
She nodded.
“There is no message, is there?”
She shook her head. “No.”
A pause. “When?”
She sucked in a deep breath, noting how Fiona’s hand and slipped around to grip her hoof. “A week ago.”
Rosemary nodded. “What happened?”
She wanted to tell Ginger’s sister that she’d died saving her life. That she’d been duped by Rosemary’s sacred leader into taking balefire into the heart of her Stable and triggering it. She wanted to say she had been cheated out of the lifetime of peace and quiet Aurora had promised her, and that the bomb which killed her had gifted Aurora with the curse of long life. If she didn’t wind up catching a bullet in the next few days, she might live as long as Roach had. Possibly longer. And she would experience every minute of it without Ginger there to make it worth living.
“She died doing the right thing,” she answered. “She saved lives.”
Rosemary nodded at the floor. "Yes," she said, her voice choked, "that does sound like her. She…" Something in her throat closed up, and she went still for a long while. 
Guilt slowly cooled Aurora's anger. Of all the doors in New Canterlot she had no business knocking on this one. Deep down, she had wanted to hurt the family that resided here. That selfish, idiot impulse had, at its core, been what drove her up that gravel drive. They'd hurt Ginger, so she wanted to hurt them back. 
"I suppose I'm the last of us after all," Rosemary murmured. She closed her eyes, and a tear drew a damp line down her cheek. It was a strangely dignified way to grieve. It had been how Ginger grieved. "Did you know my sister very well?" 
The question threw her off balance. She considered it. Really thought about it. "Not as well as I wanted to," she admitted. "But we were working on it… before."
Rosemary swallowed. "You were close?" 
Aurora whispered, "Yeah."
"And you?" She regarded Fiona. "Were the two of you…?"
"No ma'am," Fiona said. "We weren’t much acquainted, but I've heard from Aurora that she was a wonderful mare.”
Aurora closed her eyes and sighed at the same time Fiona tripped across an unconvincing, “I mean, ah…”
“Greasy,” Rosemary finished for her, one corner of her lip turned up in a small yet refined smile. She regarded Aurora with a mild, half-shrug. “You’re the pureblood from the Stable, then?”
The urge to leave had been replaced by an awareness that she couldn’t, now. Not until they found a way to resolve Fiona’s slip-up. In the space of a breath, Ginger’s only sister had become the single greatest threat to the mission. If Primrose found out she was here she would throw as many walls between her and the surface as possible. Rosemary could doom everyone. 
She felt her wing being pulled toward her rifle but resisted the urge with an internal violence that sparked a flame of panic inside her. Breathe, she reminded herself, consider your options.
“Yes,” she exhaled. “Yeah. That’s me.”
Rosemary sipped her water. “I thought as much.” When Aurora tipped her head in confusion, she added, “You told me yourself you were close to Ginger, and I recall hearing on the radio not long ago that a bounty had been placed on her by F&F Mercantile. And that a certain mare by the name of Aurora Pinfeathers had freed her from imprisonment. You match that mare’s description, more or less.”
Aurora let the back of her head hit the back of the sofa as she whispered an irritated, “Fuck.”
The ice in Rosemary’s glass clicked as she swirled the water, her gaze descending down Aurora’s chest and belly. “The ministry never mentioned those burns in any of their announcements. Or the amputation.”
She made a play at keeping at least one secret hidden. “Work injuries. Happened a long time ago.”
Rosemary frowned at her. “Aurora, I appreciate that you came so far to tell me about my sister, but I don’t appreciate dishonesty. I’ve seen enough slaves pulled in from the wastes to know a normal burn from a radiation burn. Those are radiation burns.”
Aurora could feel the walls closing in around her. She needed to salvage this somehow. “What’s your point?”
“I don’t have one,” she said, taking another sip of water. 
To keep her feathers occupied, and away from her rifle, Aurora leaned forward and picked up the glass that had been poured for her. It was cold to the touch, water beading on the crystal, and she took a deep pull to sweep the cotton from her mouth.
“I’d like to ask you a personal question, if that’s alright.”
What else did she have to hide? Rosemary couldn’t gain much more from her if she knew her compartment number. She nodded, taking another gulp of cold water.
“There was a detonation at your Stable.” Rosemary spoke slowly, picking her words with deliberate care. “Were you there when it happened?”
Her throat went dry and the water did nothing to touch it. Eyes fixed firmly on the rug, she nodded. Just once.
“That’s where your scars came from?”
She nodded again, her jaw set. 
Rosemary simply nodded, and for a moment the house was silent save for the occasional creak of beams settling into the chill of evening. It made the sound of her intake of breath jarring. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a murmur. “Is that how she died?”
Fiona’s grip around her foreleg tightened. It was a small comfort, and yet it was everything she needed just then. Aurora blew out a slow, shuddering breath.
“Yeah.”
“Goddesses preserve…” Rosemary shook her head, staring at the ceiling with eyes rimmed wet. “Rangers truly don’t care who they kill if it means they can control that place.”
“It wasn’t them. The Enclave did it.” 
The words leapt from her mouth before she could stop them. Rosemary looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. Aurora heaved a breath. In for a bit, in for the whole barrel. If Rosemary intended to take what she knew to the local authorities now, it wouldn’t do any more harm to tell her everything. 
Between the two of them, Fiona was the stronger flyer. It might be possible to lure Rosemary out of the house where she could be overpowered, away from the eyes and ears of the family servants and flown out to the corner of nowhere, possibly Crow’s Grove or Kiln. Someplace far enough where it would take days or weeks to make contact with the Enclave again, and by which time SOLUS will have either been flung along its orbit unbothered, or had poured its fire down from the sky.
She looked up at Fiona and could sense she’d come to the same conclusion. Either Ginger’s sister could be bargained with or she would be in for a very abrupt and unpleasant departure from her home.
Aurora swallowed the nausea rising in her gullet, turned to Rosemary, and began to tell her everything.







Night fell as she relayed her story, beginning at the start when she’d first learned of her Stable’s decaying generator and sparing few details along the way. Rosemary listened, and as she did her rigid, formal posture softened with the darkening sky. Aurora had been prepared for interruptions, questions, or even arguments that the Ginger from the wasteland couldn’t have been the same Ginger raised in the Dressage family home.
Rosemary didn’t speak a word. There was recognition in the mare’s gaze when Aurora described the crystals her sister had lit with her own unaided magic, using them as a simple yet beautiful source of light in the apartment above her shop. When Aurora explained the details of Ginger’s imprisonment at the solar array, she surprised herself with how uncomfortable it made her feel to describe the action she’d taken to rescue her. She simplified it as best she could, trying for humble rather than self-indulgent, and it was only after she’d reached the end of that chapter that she realized Rosemary couldn’t have cared less about Aurora’s part in the rescue. She’d only shown interest in the details surrounding her sister and what she’d been made to endure. 
Recognizing that made the rest of the telling easier. The words flowed out of her in a steady, controlled cascade. She watched Rosemary as she told their story, waiting for doubt or disapproval to surface in her expression. They did, but they didn’t linger long. For all the truth in Aurora’s words, it was the first time Rosemary had heard them and it was taking some effort for her to digest all of it. There was only one moment in the telling when Aurora thought Rosemary might step in to object, when she learned of their actions at the slaver encampment in Kiln. Rosemary had looked for a split second as if she might be sick, her eyes moving briefly toward Aurora’s rifle leaning against the loveseat, but she’d regained her composure and held onto it.
The night breeze flowing in through the open windows had chilled enough to be uncomfortable by the time Aurora reached the part she’d been dreading. She paused to work her jaw from side to side, steeling herself for each sentence. Fiona’s gentle grip around her foreleg tightened reassuringly.
“She disguised it to look like an ignition talisman,” she said, voice strained. “It wasn’t. It was balefire and we didn’t know any better. Ginger installed it and…”
Her good knee bounced anxiously. Tears coated her vision. The room was deathly silent.
“...she held onto it. I carried her out. Fuck.” The oath came out as a throaty mumble, and she paused to scrub her nose. A glass appeared in front of her, held between two of Fiona’s fingers. She took it, the simple act of drinking helping to ease her nerves. She wanted the glass to contain something stronger than water. 
She set the empty glass on the table between them and fidgeted the damp tips of her feathers. “The soldiers Primrose sent to deliver the bomb tried to stop us, but… apparently I’m better in a sprint than they are.” Her lips tried to crumple at the memory of Ginger helping her fly for the first time, and she had to work to push the thought aside. “She held on until we got above the clouds. Then she couldn’t anymore and… she died.” Her throat cracked. “And I didn’t. She pushed me away and sent me back to where I first saw her, and then I watched the bomb take her away from me.”
  The silence that stretched might have only lasted minutes, but it felt like hours as Aurora struggled against her welling emotion. Still she allowed herself the tiniest bit of assurance in knowing she was holding it together, if just barely. A week ago she’d have crumbled into jibbering, wailing nonsense. Now she was only blinded by tears and biting back sobs. Progress.
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
Of all the questions Rosemary could have asked, that hadn’t been the one Aurora expected. She blinked several times to clear her eyes and saw a similar shimmer in Rosemary’s. 
She nodded, and whispered a husky, “Yeah.”
Rosemary took a deep breath, pursed her lips, and exhaled with a slow nod of her own. For a long while she said nothing else, only staring out toward one of the open windows and the dark sky beyond. "There's a reason the minister attacked your home, isn't there?" 
"My people uncovered proof that she orchestrated the end of the old world."
Something flickered across Rosemary's face. Surprise tinged with deeply ingrained disbelief. She regarded Aurora and, seeing the truth there, frowned more deeply. "If that's true…" she began, but the words petered off. She sagged in her chair, and Aurora could see the instant the pieces slotted together. "Empty night, you’re not lying." 
"No."
After a pause, Rosemary asked the obvious question. "Why did you come here? To this house, I mean."
A biting pang of shame accompanied her uneasy shrug. She’d known what she wanted to do the instant she saw the Dressage Family Orchards sign hanging above the road. She had hoped Ginger’s father would answer the door, to inflict pain on him that had nothing to do with violence. 
She’d wanted to tell him his daughter was dead and lay the blame, deserved and undeserved, at his hooves where it would devastate him. It was a petty and cruel impulse, she knew that. Knowing it did nothing to lessen it. 
Her eyes wandered the opulent room as she wondered why neither patriarch or matriarch had made an appearance. “I wanted your family to have closure,” she lied.
Rosemary regarded the table between them with pursed lips, making it clear without words how unconvincing an answer that was. “Well. I suppose it’s a blessing that Father and Mother are out on business for the next several days. It will give me some time to think on how to break the news, if at all.”
Aurora wiped at her face as Rosemary spoke, nodding along until the last part. “Why wouldn’t you tell them?”
Ginger’s sister regarded Aurora with a flat expression. “For the same reason I will not be repeating anything of what you said to anyone else. Citizens have been sent to New Harmonies for lesser offenses than the accusations you’ve made against the minister.”
“Even if they’re true.”
Rosemary dabbed her own eyes with a sigh reserved for particularly dense children. “Truth or not, Aurora, there are things in this world that are best left in the past. I’m under no impression that Minister Primrose is a sainted mare and if her actions against your Stable are any indication, dredging up blame for things that happened two centuries before either of us were alive will only cause unnecessary suffering and pain.” 
She shook her head and tossed a weary look toward the dark sky beyond the window. When she spoke again, her tone softened with something like resignation or regret. “I’m glad my sister was able to meet someone who gave her the love and purpose she couldn’t find here. I think she was too pure for a world like this… but it’s the world we all live in. Our mother largely believes Ginger to have died years ago, and our father prefers not to believe he only ever had one daughter. If I tell them, I’ll do so at a time and in a manner that causes the least discomfort.”
Aurora chewed at her lip and looked up at Fiona for guidance. The big gryphon only shrugged in answer. This was a family matter and, as much as Aurora hated to admit it, she wasn’t family. 
The silent interaction went unnoticed by Rosemary. Her gaze never left the window and a beat later she was sliding down from the old wingback. “It’s late,” she said with simple finality. “Thank you for coming, both of you. I know this wasn’t an easy visit to make. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I’d like to ask the two of you not to speak about this visit with anyone. I will be instructing my house staff to show the same discretion. The things you….” she shook her head, her smile strained. “There are inherent dangers in knowing the things we know. I’d appreciate the same discretion from yourselves.”
“Ignorance is bliss,” Aurora muttered, not trying to hide the disapproval in her tone. Fiona held out her arm as Aurora angled herself off the love seat and she took it in her wing, steadying herself onto her prosthesis. “You forget we were here, and we forget we ever spoke to you.”
Rosemary nodded. She couldn’t have known her suggestion was the reason she wouldn’t be taking an express flight to the middle of nowhere tonight, but something in the unease with which she regarded her two guests suggested she’d connected some of the dots. If half of what Aurora had told her turned out to be true, merely speaking to her could be fatal if the wrong person saw them. She was radioactive in every sense but the literal. 
“I think that would be best for everyone, yes,” she agreed, careful not to stare at Aurora’s rifle as she threw the strap over her shoulder.
Aurora grunted something under her breath as she tossed on her saddlebags. She’d wasted her own time on a selfish impulse, but at least it had come with a silver lining. The Enclave wasn’t kicking down the doors, guns blazing. She hadn’t been forced to do something with Rosemary she knew Ginger would never approve of. She hadn’t blown the mission.
“C’mon,” she said, nudging Fiona to follow her out of the stately room. “Let’s get some sleep.”
They followed Rosemary down the hall and into the foyer where the servant who had greeted them stood waiting with the handle already half-turned in his magic. Aurora spared a glance at the photos framed along the wall. She didn’t find one of Ginger. 
The servant bowed and pulled the door open. 
Aurora felt something tug at her wing, slowing her before she could reach the threshold. A haze of amber light, and for a split second she felt an unreasonable flicker of hope jolt her heart. Then she realized it was just Rosemary’s weaker magic, and she paused at the open door to look back at the mare. 
Rosemary doused her horn and swallowed, her gaze not quite meeting Aurora’s. “I want you to know…” she hesitated a moment, her mask of businesslike propriety slipping ever so slightly. “I want you to know that I loved my sister.”
Aurora answered quietly. “So did I.”
Rosemary nodded, the long locks of her fiery mane slipping over her shoulder. After a while it seemed like the conversation had ended, and Aurora considered the open door again.
A choked sob echoed behind her. “Was she happy?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “She was happy.”
“Good.” Rosemary didn’t wipe away the tear that tracked down her cheek even as the mask slid firmly back into place. “Good. Thank you, Aurora. I hope you find someone like her again.”
She smiled bitterly. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Rosemary returned the expression, nodding as she did. “No, I suppose it couldn’t. Good night.”







Chops rubbed the corner of his eye as he navigated the Stable corridors hoping his headache would wind down soon. He’d needed a break from the conference room and its uninterrupted hours of discussion, debate, and high level bickering between Weathers and Clover. 
When he’d excused himself they’d barely noticed through the full head of steam they’d built up arguing whether or not to include an explicit threat against New Canterlot on top of the fictitious claim that the Rangers controlled SOLUS. Weathers wanted the threat included, believing it would push the city’s citizenry into a panic that Primrose would have no choice but to address, but Clover was hard set against it. He kept bringing up “The After,” worrying that innocent deaths a citywide panic could cause would only backlash against them after the Enclave was decapitated. 
Chops had sensed he wasn’t needed for that part of the conversation and had lifted five feathers to Coronado to indicate he was taking a break. Judging by the look Coronado gave in return, the elder stallion wished he could join him.
Thanks to the Stable’s long-dead designers, Chops didn’t need any help deciphering which way he was headed. Neatly stenciled and color-coded markers adorned the corner of every wall, unobtrusive as they were informative. Every door, identical in shape and appearance, bore placards to indicate what was behind each one. He was on Level 3, according to the wall markers, which bore the same purposeful design of an Enclave Admin Wing. Conference rooms, standalone offices for whatever the Stable equivalent of middle management was, and the odd janitor’s closet and unisex restroom. A yellow plastic wet floor sign stood propped in front of the restroom door with a sheet of white paper taped over it. On it, someone had written in block letters: Out of Order. 
It was an utterly boring slice of the Stable and, as a result, unaffected by the evacuations taking place two levels above. Chops followed the hallway, turned down an intersection, and pushed his way into one of the Stable’s emergency stairwells. 
Voices echoed up and down the concrete shaft as he climbed the steps. Sounds of physical effort of those carrying personal belongings melded with those of parents coaxing their little ones to keep up, to behave, and not to be afraid. As he turned onto the first landing, Chops pressed himself to the outer wall to make room for a pair of stallions and the stern-faced elderly mare secured to the wheelchair between them. They barely acknowledged him as they hefted the chair up the next flight of stairs, one pulling, the other pushing. As they disappeared around the next landing, Chops could hear the old mare complaining that her sons should have taken the elevator.
The thready echoes of the stairwell turned into a deep, buzzing hum when he reached Level 1 and the Atrium. He swallowed a little uneasily as he pushed into the staging area for the first wave evacuees, his ears perked high with anxiety as he tried to listen to too many voices at once. Families and individuals moved toward the makeshift stairwell leading to the security office like beads dropping through a funnel. Deputies were everywhere among the crowd and along the catwalk, as were several Steel Rangers who had come to lend assistance. Old habits die hard and Chops felt his wing twitch forward, groping for the subcompact he normally flew with. Of course that was gone now, stripped away and disassembled by the Black Wing when they dragged him and Dancer into the tunnel.
“Sir, you’re allowed one article of luggage to take with you,” a mare’s voice said, too close and directed solely at him. 
He jerked away on instinct and looked over to see one of the Stable deputies eyeing him with open concern, evidently not recognizing him as anyone other than another evacuee. Pursing his lips in chagrin, he fished his notepad from the little satchel he kept around his neck and pulled the pen out of the wire binding. He scribbled down, “Not evacuating today,” and held it up for her to read.
The deputy frowned, nodded, and she gestured back toward the corridor he’d just come from. “The Atrium space is for evacuees only. If you could please move into one of the halls so you’re not in the way, I’d appreciate it.”
She didn’t wait for Chops to acknowledge her and had vanished into the crowd before he could put his notepad away. Somewhere nearby, a foal started up a distressed, red-faced wail. As if in response, another foal further away began bawling too. A stallion shouldered past him with a heavy suitcase perched on his back muttering something uncharitable about the crying children, oblivious to the fact that the mare following behind him was toting one of the fussy culprits.
An electric pop and peel of a speaker momentarily quelled the gathered voices. Chops followed their worried gazes up to a section of catwalk near the security office where Overstallion Sledge fiddled with a battery powered bullhorn supplied by the Rangers. “Ladies and gentlemen, I know you’re tired of hearing my voice by now,” he paused for what he must have expected to be a murmur of chuckles, but the rise of worried conversation had already resumed in spite of him, “but for those of you who have just arrived, please form a line at the stairs and keep moving once you’re through to the outer tunnel. Do not gather inside the antechamber. There will be guides at the tunnel entrance who will determine which wagon you’ll be assigned to and who will ride or walk. If you have not already, please remove your Pip-Bucks and stow them inside luggage or saddlebags where they will not be seen. Rangers outside will be verifying…”
Sledge’s voice faded in among the noise as Chops turned his attention to the other faces peering down from the catwalk. The wastelanders, easily picked out by their makeshift weapon rigs and road worn equipment, were also wearing a notable strip of red cloth tied off around their necks like a kerchief. It didn’t take long for Chops to understand the significance. They were the guides meant to accompany the evacuees once they dispersed, and the kerchiefs would make identifying them easier to identify from any other wastelanders who might come across one of the wagons. A few deputies mingled along the catwalk with the Rangers, differing authorities coalescing for a common cause. 
Where the catwalk cornered around the wall, he spotted two familiar faces that were neither wagon guide or Ranger. They were busy chatting back and forth with one another, their eyes passing over the crowd with regret. Chops joined the line at the stairs and ducked past the deputy posted at the top, ignoring the half-hearted calls of, “Sir? Sir!” as he went to the pair.
Julip noticed his approach, and the irritation he’d caused among the deputies, and grinned. Her ghoul counterpart, Roach, continued to watch the milling crowd with a placid expression. 
“Look who busted out of the brig,” Julip said as she stepped away from the railing, her foreleg extended. 
He knocked the rim of his hoof against hers in the surreptitious manner all Enclave recruits learned to do whenever a comrade got away with a bit of mischief. She tipped her head toward the railing, inviting him to join them, and he realized with discomfort that the next open spot was beside the ghoul.
“Go on. I don’t bite,” Roach murmured. 
It wasn’t very long ago when Chops wouldn’t have given a second thought to putting a bullet through the ghoul’s head, but so much had changed since then and the adjustment hadn’t been smooth. He cleared his throat, a completely ornamental gesture, and unpacked his notepad as he leaned over the rail beside Roach.
“You look exhausted,” he rasped.
Chops shut his eyes and nodded slowly. He clicked his pen and wrote, “In meetings for most of the day. Still not done.”
As always, Julip wasn’t subtle when she craned her neck past Roach to read. She trilled off an impressed whistle. “You? Meetings? Hell, try to remember us little folk when you hit the big time.” Her smile widened when he rolled his eyes. “Glad to hear they let you out of lockdown.”
Roach let out a little grunt. “Are they sending you out with the evacuation?”
He shook his head, pausing a moment to take in the sight of so many Stable dwellers filing toward the stairs. They looked terrified and miserable. As he looked down at them he noticed the blue and yellow piles of clothing around the base of the stairs that he hadn’t seen on his way up. Residents who hadn’t yet stripped off their jumpsuits were being gently pulled aside by deputies and directed toward a row of partitions set up in several of the shuttered storefronts. Until a few seconds ago, he’d regarded Stable 10’s strange cultural aversion to nudity as a silly quirk. Now, watching residents emerging from the partitions with tucked tails and watery eyes fixed firmly on the ground, he got a sense of the utter misery this process was for them.
He scratched out a few words to distract himself from the reality of what was happening below. “Not tonight. Enclave prisoners will be released on the last day.”
Julip put together the simple logic and nodded. There were half a dozen soldiers in Medical who refused to believe they’d been lied to, and no one wanted to risk releasing them with the evacuating residents where they might try to inflict harm. “Roach and I are probably going to stick around until the last wave out.”
Roach swallowed and said nothing. 
Chops looked around the Atrium until he spotted the appropriately gear-shaped clock hung beneath the medallion window of the overstallion’s office. It was well past midnight and creeping steadily into those unpleasant, single-digit hours when sleep changed from a welcome rest to a biologically compelled punishment. He flicked a black hoof toward the clock, then regarded the pair with a questioning look.
“I promised Aurora we’d make sure her dad left with the first evacuation,” Roach rumbled in his gravelly voice. Still seeing the question in Chops’ expression, he added, “His wagon pulled out half an hour ago. Rangers have him and a few other wagons taking the roads north, up one of Flim & Flam Mercantile’s old trade arteries. Julip and I passed through a few towns up that way on our way back from Fillydelphia. They’ll be safe up there.”
It wasn’t hard to sense the discomfort coming from the ghoul or notice that he hadn’t quite answered the question of why they were still watching the evacuation after fulfilling their duty. Being a soldier, or more accurately having been a soldier, he knew how to recognize when it wasn’t his business to know the whole story. He didn’t press the question. 
“Coronado and Clover are working on giving Aurora a clear shot at Primrose,” he wrote while omitting that the idea had been his. “Steel Rangers are going to publicly pretend they discovered and control SOLUS. Cause panic throughout Enclave and force Primrose to address it.”
He watched their expressions change as they read the notepad. Roach turned to stare thoughtfully into the distance while Julip let out another slow whistle.
“Assuming she takes the bait,” she said, bobbing her head as she mulled through the plan, “that could actually work. She’d do one of her formal announcements from the chapel to calm people down… wait, no. She’d scramble her happy ass to the podium just to call the Rangers out on their bullshit.” 
Chops nodded, smiling a little at how fast she’d worked out the bait. “Rangers are looking for equipment to repair Hightower Radio. Coronado expects to broadcast the first transmission sometime tomorrow.”
Roach licked his lips with uncertainty. “Primrose might choose to do nothing. It might actually be the better choice in the long run.”
Chops frowned at the changeling and drew a question mark on the notepad, prompting him to explain.
“Let’s say I’m Primrose,” he posited, turning toward Chops directly. “I’ve got the keys to an orbital weapon barely anyone knows exists, and in three days I’m going to use it to scrape Stable 10 off the map, along with a few Steel Ranger holdings. Best case scenario, everyone recognizes that I’m the one behind the trigger and my loyal followers are cowed enough to convince themselves it's all for the greater good while the Steel Rangers convince their people that compliance is a better alternative to becoming a statistic in a new holocaust.”
“Has anyone ever said you have a way with words?” Julip shouldered him gently, but the concern in her smirk was hard to miss. “I think I see where you’re going with this.”
Roach grunted. “Primrose has spent the last century and some change trying and failing to push back the Steel Rangers. SOLUS can end that stalemate in the Enclave’s favor, but she’ll be risking being known as the mare who pulled the trigger. The next couple of centuries will be messy for her if that happens, but doing nothing means the truth of what she did to the world coming out and collapsing the Enclave out from under her hooves.” He tipped his chitinous muzzle toward Chops’ notepad and shrugged. “That plan of yours might bait her into the open, but I think she’ll keep her head down and let the Steel Rangers take the blame for what she’s planning to do. That broadcast might be the biggest favor we ever did for her.”
Silence, or as much silence was possible in the crowded Atrium, descended between them. Chops stared at the blank space in his notepad, frowning with a flicker of anger. He hadn’t considered this possibility, and now he worried that when he got back to the meeting it would be the only thing Coronado, Clover, and Weathers were talking about.
Keeping his hopes up felt like trying to hold water between his feathers. Then a cracked and perforated hoof tapped his shoulder, pulling him back to the present.
Roach regarded him with a sympathetic half-smile, as if this was the sort of rock and hard place conundrum he thought about on a daily basis. “Look, Chops, just because it’s a flawed plan doesn’t mean it can’t work. For all we know Primrose might screw up and stick her head out. Hell, she might decide to stretch her legs tomorrow and have a piano dropped on her.”
Chops snorted a voiceless laugh, and surprised himself when he didn’t flinch away from the ghoul’s own smile. 
“All I’m saying,” Roach continued, his gaze turning back to the evacuation below, “is to make sure you have a Plan B.”







They chose to fly back to the inn rather than walk the entire way, and in doing so Aurora and Fiona were treated to a spectacular view of New Canterlot in its full night regalia. The street lamps hadn’t just been there for decoration after all and now glowed with soft amber light, splashing pockets of gold up the brick facades along the boulevard. Wisps of smoke rose up from chimneys, filling the night air with a strong scent of woodsmoke. It wasn’t particularly cold out tonight, but Aurora felt enough of the chill penetrate her coat to understand the need for a fireplace. When they passed once again beneath The Maidenhead’s signboard she held back a noise of relief at the comparative warmth of being indoors.
Behind the front desk, Portia reclined in her chair with two hind legs propped up and crossed at the fetlock. She glanced up at them from an old paperback, watched the door swing shut behind them, and decided that was all right by her. Aurora had to resist the habit of glancing at her foreleg to check the time - it had to be well past midnight by now - and wondered whether the young mare ever experienced time that wasn’t spent behind that desk.
Fiona slipped a few paces ahead of her down the hall and held the door to their room open for her. Aurora nodded to her in thanks and made a bee-line for the musty old bed. She was exhausted.
“I’ll sleep on the floor tonight,” she offered, her voice as worn out as she felt. 
Fiona pulled the door shut behind them and pushed in the little button on the knob, locking it. “Seeing as you’re on the bed already, I’ll take the floor.”
Aurora let out a little grunt that was partially muffled by the thin mattress. “So I am.”
“You can owe me tomorrow.” 
She grunted again, then let out an entirely different noise at the sensation of fingers meddling with the buckle around her belly. “Ah, hands?”
Fiona just rolled her eyes and continued unbuckling her saddlebags, then swatted her foreleg until she let her lift away her rifle. “You’ll thank these hands when you wake up tomorrow without a dislocated ass. C’mon. Lift your hip.”
She obliged, too tired to argue. A metallic double click reassured her that Fiona had checked that the rifle’s safety was engaged. She watched from the comfort of the unadorned mattress as Fiona set their gear against the wall beside the headboard, then set herself down with her shoulders slouched against the side of the bed.
They rested there for a long while, allowing the quiet to reign free for what felt like minutes. Then Fiona reached an arm up over her head and knocked a knuckle against Aurora’s jury-rigged prosthesis. “Do you want that off?”
“Leave it on in case we need to bolt,” Aurora murmured. Two flat pillows lay together at the head of the mattress, but she couldn’t be bothered to scoot up the rest of the way. Instead she retrieved one for herself with her free wing and flung the other onto Fiona’s belly. 
The gryphon gave it a few furtive smacks to give it some fluff, then tucked it between the base of her neck and the mattress’s edge. A ropey swish of her tail along the floorboards indicated… well, Aurora wasn’t sure what that indicated. Her experience with gryphons came from a vast sample pool of one.
“Fiona?”
The gryphon tilted her head toward her, eyes closed. “Hm?”
“Thanks for being there.”
“For which part?”
She shrugged. “All of it, I guess.”
Fiona let out a throaty chuckle. “In that case, I’ll happily take credit for the sunrise tomorrow. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“You’re a little big for an alicorn,” she said, grinning a little before sobering. “Seriously, though, thanks for sticking around for that weirdness with Rosemary. I don’t know what I was thinking walking up to that house.”
“It’s pretty obvious what you were thinking.” Aurora heard Fiona shift against the bed and watched her turn enough to look at her. “You’re still working through some heavy stuff, Feathers. You’re allowed to do that. Just, y’know, maybe next time we see the in-laws we table that incredibly volatile discussion for after we’re done averting the next apocalypse.”
Aurora blinked and was quiet for a full second before snorting. As drained as she was, it felt good to laugh. Better, now that Fiona had joined in. When they had settled into sporadic snickers, she rolled onto her back and stretched each leg until the joints crackled under the strain. “That could have gone worse,” she admitted. “At least we didn’t have to kidnap her.”
“Hell, I never considered kidnapping. I was just going to eat her.”
Aurora planted the sole of her hoof against Fiona’s head and pushed. 
The gryphon’s head tilted, and she cocked a brow back at Aurora. “What are you doing?”
She dropped her hoof and waved the question away. “Failing to knock you over, apparently. I thought birds were supposed to be small.”
Fiona regarded her with a mischievous grin. “I thought horses were supposed to be big.”
“Hey. That’s our word.” 
They shared another round of quiet laughter, and when it softened the silence that followed carried that unspoken agreement that they were both too tired to carry on chatting. The bedframe gave a little creak as Fiona settled against it, and Aurora fiddled with the loose bun in her mane until it sprang free and settled more comfortably around her pillow. She felt herself relaxing into that comfortable, mental neutrality that came before sleep and listened as Fiona’s breathing deepened and slowed. 
Somewhere outside the room’s window, hooves clicked over concrete. Elsewhere, a door clapped shut. She could hear the faint susurrations of a conversation made indistinguishable from the soft flow of night air through a gap in the window frame. 
She found herself wondering what Tandy would have to report once she fell asleep. With any luck, nothing will have happened on Primrose’s end to throw their mission into chaos, but the mere thought suddenly left her worried that might be the case. She grimaced and flicked her tail against the mattress, replaying the conversation with Rosemary in her head, trying to remember if she’d said anything that might prompt Ginger’s sister to reach out to the Enclave. She hadn’t. She knew she hadn’t, and yet she kept worrying over whether she had. What bothered her more was that she was utterly aware that there was nothing to be gained by fretting over nothing, and yet she couldn’t convince her own brain to settle the fuck down.
Her tail gave the mattress another hard swat, and she tossed a foreleg over her eyes for good measure. An entirely unhelpful compulsion to turn on her Pip-Buck and check the time slammed into her, solely because placing her foreleg over her face reminded her of its absence. She sighed, wishing she’d been able to bring it along. She didn’t dare activate Ginger’s for fear she might press the wrong button and fire off the single-use ping that would display Primrose’s location. It did have a clock built into it, though, and not knowing the time made it feel all the more crucial for her to know the fucking time.
She slapped her tail again.
Fiona took in a slow breath, muttered something, and half turned. She dropped her palm over Aurora’s tail with a thud, pinning it in place. “Aurora. Please. Stop with the tail.”
She didn’t dare move her foreleg off her face for fear of Fiona seeing how wide her eyes had just gotten. More anatomy than just her tail had just survived a very close encounter with those talons. “Sorry,” she muttered sheepishly. “Can’t sleep. Brain’s being stupid.”
Fiona sighed and took her hand back. “Neither can I with all that wagging. Want to go for a walk?”
She groaned. “If I do, my other legs are going to fall off. I just want to fucking sleep.”
“I can ask Portia if she has something that’ll help you relax.”
“Addendum,” she grumbled. The last thing she needed was to knock back some nameless wasteland party drug and experience a symphony of music with her eyes. “I want to sleep and wake up.”
Fiona made a frustrated noise. “Then go natural and rub one out.”
This time she did drop her leg and stared at the gryphon, half grinning and half in open accusation. “You would.”
“I really, really would,” Fiona muttered, “because it would mean I could go to sleep after you’re done. Seriously, Feathers, I’ve been around shattered perfume bottles less subtle than your happy valley. If you need me to, I can wait outside until you wear yourself out.”
Aurora opened her mouth to deliver a scathing retort, but found she had none to offer. She shut it, frowned, then decided it was safer to sidestep the topic altogether. “Tempting as you make it sound,” her tone dripped sarcasm, “I left my ‘tools’ back home. I’ll meditate or something.”
Fiona snorted and looked up at her. “You’ve got hooves.”
She glowered back. “Yeah, hooves. Ever use a pair of sledgehammers to pick a lock? You wind up breaking off the whole knob.” 
She suppressed a full blown glare when Fiona’s shoulders jounced with a tired laugh. At least she wasn’t suggesting using her wings. Nothing quite spelled discomfort than her memory of her younger, inexperienced self learning the hard way how wet feathers tended to cling together and become a cluster of little spears.
“There’s a visual I didn’t know I needed,” Fiona chuckled. “I don’t know what to tell you, Aurora. When I was packing, I didn’t think there would be much call for a vibrator on this trip.”
Aurora shifted a little, trying to shake off her discomfort. “Yeah, well, maybe next time.”
The bedframe let out another creak as Fiona turned and propped her head up with an elbow on the mattress. She regarded Aurora with a lazy smile that, in the back of her mind she’d known would make an appearance sooner or later. She blamed hormones for the way her body grew a little warmer, a little more open to the question she knew was coming. 
It wasn’t anything close to what she’d shared with Ginger. There was a difference between love and lust beyond just a few key letters. This wasn’t that. It would probably never be that, which was fine by her. This was temporary, she told herself. Transactional. And besides all that, her body ached in a way that had nothing to do with the cheesy serial romance novels Ginger once indulged in. Her muscles hurt. Even her bones had found a way to radiate the weariness of too much weight pulling at her for too long. 
The wasteland had seen fit to inflict more pain on her than she knew existed, and when she thought it was over it ripped out her heart as an afterthought. She needed a break. She deserved a fucking break.
So when Fiona splayed her strong fingers for her to see, Aurora didn’t flinch away from the offer when it came. “Want me to give you a hand?”
A warm shiver ran through her chest, down her belly, and settled comfortably in that pocket of dull heat between her hips. However it had to be, whoever it had to come from, she wanted to feel something good. Just this once.
And she opened her legs in invitation. 







She was breathing hard when the Dream took shape around her, and it took Aurora what felt like minutes to discern the new surroundings. It wasn’t Eshe’s memory of the hotel in Fillydelphia or the shared experience of Old Canterlot. She didn’t recognize it in the slightest, but the plush, midnight velour bed set against its dark marble wall looked exquisitely inviting. 
Something tickled at the edge of her perception, the soft touch of strong fingers against her spent body, but she didn’t wake. She stepped toward the luxurious bed, noting that it was bathed in silvery light she’d seen before. Moonlight cast the opulent bedroom in stark contrasts, letting her only see the outline of shapes elsewhere in the room. She was dimly aware of her flagging tail, the coolness of night brushing over the damp of a night already well spent, and in the same moment she noted the silver-coated stallion reclined to one side of the otherwise empty bed, fully and generously erect, and staring back at her with an expression Aurora knew all too well. The last person to look at her that way had been Ginger, during their last night together at the Stable. 
A voice cleared her throat behind Aurora and she turned her head with the slow drowsiness of a mare enjoying the afterglow of having been ridden hard and put away wet. Fiona had put more than her fingers to use, and as much as she had tried to reciprocate Aurora knew her false leg wouldn’t be the reason only one of them would have a limp tomorrow.
It took her two of three seconds to realize, then, that Tandy had appeared behind her. Or maybe she had always been there. Aurora didn’t know how the rules of Luna’s dream worked, but she did know that the creature the dead princess had created in her image was staring wide-eyed at Aurora’s lifted and cocked tail. The midnight constellations of her preferred form steadily shifted to a bright, rosy pink. 
Aurora blinked. Then, in as dignified a manner as she could muster, she uttered a throaty, “Shit!” and slammed her tail down with an audibly wet smack. She whirled on the Tantabus, one of her hooves squeaking on the damp-speckled marble, and stood there in abject mortification as Tandy rallied her own senses. 
“Do not worry, I am not judging you,” Tandy said, her attention carefully neutral which, for a being who rarely emoted outside the most dire situations, was saying something. “You would not be the first dreamer to resort to physical intimacy as a path toward sleep.”
The way Tandy spoke with deliberate clinical detachment was on par with the memory of her father sitting her down at the family table to have “The Talk.” Every fiber of her being screamed in collective horror and she could practically feel her tail trying to friction weld both of her labia shut. She might have been one of the only residents of Stable 10 to trot around au natural, but she firmly believed the only people who referred to being railed by a gryphon fist as “resorting to physical intimacy” were socially detached gynecologists and pod people.
“You know, I’m just going to change the subject real quick,” she said, and gestured her matted fan of wet feathers around the room. “Where are we exactly? And who’s the dream dick with the unicorn stuck to it?”
“Hey!” 
She ignored him and cast her gaze around the lavishly appointed bedroom. At first glance it had fit the bill for what she imagined one of those sleazy, prewar rentable fuckpads to look like. Like the ones that showed up in certain tasteless videos that weren’t technically a part of Stable-Tec’s visual entertainment library, and which everyone quietly pretended weren’t on the servers. 
But upon closer inspection, there were elements of the room that made Aurora fairly certain this wasn’t the set of some high budget porno. Where the moonlight offered detail she saw evidence that this was someone’s actual bedroom, and someone who just happened to be extremely wealthy at the time. Tandy didn’t answer her question, which made Aurora assume the setting was yet another ominous puzzle waiting to be solved so it could heap a little more stress on her shoulders. Then things began to click. And click. And click.
Moon decor. Everywhere. Half moons, crescent moons, full moons. The center of the room was covered in a resplendently lunar rug. The bed was, of course, circular. 
The stallion rolled onto his side with impatience. His unattended cock thumped over the boundary of light and dark on a waxing moon.
“Good fucking grief,” she muttered under her breath as she turned to Tandy. “Really? This is really how she decorated her bedroom?”
Tandy offered a little shrug in reply. “She had a specific taste.”
“Yeah she did,” the stallion preened. “This di–” 
She lifted a stellar wing and the third wheel vanished along with his prodigious kickstand. 
“This was Luna’s room,” she spoke as if she hadn’t stopped. “And that was the stallion who would become one of her first concubines. This memory is an old one. One of her many early rebellions, actually. This was the first night she invited someone into her bed who wasn’t an alicorn.”
Aurora felt herself go a little pale. “Wait. Oh, that’s… wait. Celestia?” 
Tandy’s lip curled with the slightest touch of frustration. “No, of course not. Those are only rumors.”
Her residually horny brain persisted with trying to paint pictures in her mind regardless, and she made a mental note to dunk her head in a frozen lake as soon as she managed to find one. It made sense there would have been other alicorns buzzing around early Equestria, but even her hornball mind didn’t readily glom onto the very interesting subject of how the royals ruined their box springs. 
“Okay, fine,” she said with exasperation. “Why this memory?”
Tandy gestured the same wing with which she’d dismissed Luna’s concubine, this time at the moonlit bedchambers. “This was… inexperience, on my part. You entered the Dream in a state of excitement while I was casting through Luna’s memories. Without intervention the Dream will construct an experience on its own, and it had begun doing so when I noticed your arrival. There may have been some… crossed wires, so to speak.”
Aurora nodded, trying hard to ignore the little electric sensations still pulsing through her own crossed wires. “I fell asleep horny, you and the Dream tried building stage decorations at the same time, and I ended up with an eyeful of Princess Luna’s first choice at commoner tube steak. Got it. Can we change the venue to something less… moony?”
Before she could register the change, Luna’s moonlit bedroom had vanished and she found herself standing in a familiar, wood-paneled office. She flicked her tail with irritation, was about to mutter something about this being good enough, then flinched when her tail made that same wet whap when it landed again. 
And, of course, it was at that moment she registered Sledge’s brick red coat seated behind his desk terminal. Aurora knew it was a dream. She really did. It didn’t matter. Sledge was still regarding her with wide eyes, frozen in shock, and the dull thud of something hitting the underside of his desk did not fucking help.
She glowered at the acoustic paneled ceiling. “Tandy!”
A disembodied giggle answered her, and Sledge’s office flickered out of existence. The airy streets of Blinder’s Bluff dropped into place around her, followed by the rocky uphill slope, its terraces of shack houses, and the painter’s board of colorful painted roofs. She stood in the middle of the marketplace where the cobblestones branched one way toward the mouth of Stable 6’s tunnel, and the other toward the uphill climb through the makeshift homes. The Bluff was empty besides her and Tandy, who now stood at her side in the unarmored Nightmare Moon form she sometimes took. 
That didn’t stop Aurora from shooting a look behind her to be sure there weren’t any scandalized citizenry eyeballing her backside. She heaved a sigh of relief as she confirmed the dream Bluff was empty, and opted to take the stretch of cobblestones that winded along the tenaciously colorful shacks. Tandy trotted alongside her, and not without the faintest hint of mischief lifting one lip. For a magical construct created by a centuries dead alicorn, she wasn’t nearly as far away from personhood as she liked to pretend.
“Anything new from Primrose’s end of things?”
Tandy shook her head while admiring the ramshackle homes they passed. “No. Her plan is unchanged. She intends to be inside her war room when SOLUS passes through the communication window.”
She frowned at that. “The time on that hasn’t changed at all?”
“If it has, she has not been briefed on it. Current projections place SOLUS entering the window this Thursday between 11:09pm and 11:11pm.”
“I’ll round down to eleven o’clock to play it safe.” She looked around at the cobbles until the pebble she wanted blinked into existence. She kicked it and watched it skitter haphazardly up the road. “And you’re sure there’s no way I could steal a keycard off some officer on their lunch break and get into the Bunker that way?”
Tandy gave her a knowing smile. “The Bunker has an integrated M.I.L.L.I.E. intelligence to prevent such a breach.”
“Bah. Details.”
“Also there are seventy-four members of armed security to contend with, as well as up to three hundred trained soldiers and officers many of whom carry their own sidearms. Few of which would choose to overlook forcible entry into a secure facility.”
She scowled at Tandy. “Did Luna never teach you about optimism?”
“Luna preferred to flavor her optimism with caution, but it goes without saying I am not her.” She lit her horn, and the weight of Desperate Measures suddenly hung from its strap around Aurora’s shoulder. “I enjoy practicality.”
Aurora regarded her rifle with unease. “It took me ten shots just to hit an old pickle jar.”
“It was three shots.”
She hated being corrected, but it was even worse when the person correcting her could flip through her memories like a neatly labeled filing cabinet. She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You know what I’m getting at.”
Tandy nodded, her smile gone. “You are worried you won’t get a chance to kill her.”
She blinked at her. “I was kind of hoping I could lament about how bad a shot I am, but yeah, way to cut to the chase. And don’t think I didn’t notice that contraction.”
“Pobody is nerfect,” she said with an air of alicorn superiority. “Whether or not you are given a chance to eliminate Primrose is not within your control, Aurora. Either it will happen or it will not. All you can do is remain prepared.”
She debated whether or not to tell Tandy how awful she was at giving pep talks, then noted the quirk in the mare’s lip and remembered one of her premier skills was instant awareness of the contents of every dreamer’s mind. She eyed Tandy and offered an unapologetic shrug. Tandy mimed the gesture right back at her. 
“Alright, alright,” she said placatingly. “But still, if I don’t do this… I mean, if I miss…”
“Your Stable will likely be destroyed along with anyone still residing within it. Primrose will have SOLUS.”
The thought of it made her feel a little queasy. “Yeah.”
“And Primrose will continue to be a target for assassination by you, the Steel Rangers, and very likely many of the soldiers she fears have splintered from the Enclave in secret.” Tandy rattled off that last bit as if she were commenting on the weather. “If she succeeds in using SOLUS in the manner she intends, I do not foresee her living very long after. She is very deliberately not thinking about that possibility, either. She has nearly convinced herself that death is simply not possible for her.”
She held up a wing to forestall Tandy. “Wait, hold up. The Enclave is splintering? Why?”
Tandy tilted her head in surprise. “For the same reason Security Director Clover sought asylum with the Steel Rangers. The Enclave intercepted a message sent by Rainbow Dash to Spitfire. She detailed everything your people learned about the true events of the war’s end, including the part Primrose played.”
“And the whole Enclave knows?”
“No,” she said, “A young intelligence officer read Clover’s file on the message and confronted Primrose in a public corridor within the Bunker. She shot him, and the contents of the file were gathered and destroyed, but one of the pages was unaccounted for. Since then, six soldiers assigned to the Bunker have failed to report for duty and cannot be found.”
“And Primrose suspects a schism. Does she know Clover is helping Coronado?”
“No. She suspects he has gone in search of Rainbow Dash to offer his services to her directly.”
“Same difference, really, though it doesn’t expand our options.” She sighed and started looking for another pebble to kick. “I could really go for one of those convenient ‘ah-hah!’ revelations right about now. The actionable kind, not the I-really-hope-this-works-out kind.”
Tandy materialized a stone and swatted it before Aurora could. It rang off her ornate silver shoe with a satisfying ping.
Aurora watched the pebble clatter away and settle onto an upturned cobble. She modified her gait slightly to ensure she’d get to it on the second go around. “Any chance Primrose could be induced to sleepwalk?”
“If that were within my power, Primrose would have already redecorated the wall of her sleeping quarters with her own brain matter.” 
For an instant, Aurora thought she saw the faintest flicker of predatory fangs emerge from behind Tandy’s snarled lip. Then she blinked and they were gone. The little pebble she’d aimed to knock along the path drifted behind her, forgotten, as she realized part of Tandy’s research into Luna’s old memories might have revolved around finding a solution like Aurora had just suggested. 
Tandy made a visible effort to calm herself before adding, “That is to say, no. The spell that created the Dream does not permit any beings on this side to interact with those on the other. Luna and her sister were particularly fearful of that possibility when she built the Dream’s foundation. There were many powerful spellcasters before the bombs fell, and not all were what you would consider benevolent.”
Aurora paused to consider what someone with power and ill intent could accomplish were the Dream to allow them free reign of any unsuspecting dreamer’s mind. It was one of the few times in her life she was grateful not to have a particularly ambitious imagination. 
She winced and looked up to see Tandy was wearing her own grimace. 
“So.”
“So,” she echoed uncomfortably.
They walked for a stretch in uneasy silence. The conversation couldn’t have died with more finality if they’d seen it take a flying leap off the top of the Bluff. At least she was reasonably certain Primrose hadn’t made any last second changes to her plans to sink a balefire spear through her Stable. Really, it was the little victories that made life worth living.
“I think…” Tandy glanced down at her and hesitated. Aurora waited, giving Tandy time to work through whatever had made her stumble, and eventually she tried again. “I believe Ginger would be glad to know you’ve found a confidant in Fiona.”
She waited for a minute longer, sensing there was more Tandy wanted to say but wasn’t saying. The topic of Ginger was still something of a sore spot between them after Tandy had unwisely summoned a construct of her in an attempt to establish the importance of her own first real friendship, and no doubt Tandy knew she was navigating a minefield once more. 
Aurora decided to give her a chance. “I think you’re right. Thanks for saying so.”
Tandy relaxed a little, relief visible in her expression. “You deserve to have someone who cares for you.”
That lifted her eyebrow. “Tandy, Fiona and I aren’t…”
Tandy watched her with patient interest in the same way a student might wait for a particularly interesting teacher to continue their lesson. She had the largest repository of memory and experience tucked away in her head, but Aurora had to remind herself Tandy desperately lacked experience when it came to relationships. 
“We’re not together,” she said, trying to emphasize the last word. “Not romantically. Does that make sense?”
Tandy surprised her by nodding. “You are friends, but you are not committed to an exclusive partnership. I am aware of the phenomenon of friends with benefits. I am also aware that the sky, on occasion, is blue.”
Something about her tone hinted that Tandy was, in fact, giving her shit.
The mare settled a wing over Aurora’s shoulder much in the same way Aurora had developed a habit of doing for Ginger. When she spoke, it was full of uncharacteristic warmth. “I  am glad that you did not let your grief shut you off from the friends around you.”
She didn’t know it was possible to suppress a smile and choke up at the same time, and yet here she was blazing new trails. “Yeah, well, it helps to have a Lord of Chaos there to put things in perspective.”
Tandy gave her shoulder a squeeze. So that’s what that felt like. “Fiona is good for you.”
“Yeah,” she mused, and her smile crept back in earnest. “She really knows how to make me open up.”
Tandy opened her mouth to speak, stopped herself, and regarded Aurora with a level stare. “Gross.”
Aurora responded with a lecherous giggle and spotted a pebble up the cobblestones. She gave it a solid swat and chuckled as it clattered away. “You know, I never asked. If you can make any kind of dream…”
“Please, no.”
“I’m serious, hear me out on this.” She made a show of looking over her shoulder before fixing Tandy with a conspiratorial grin. “Alicorn dicks–”
“How about I take us back to Sledge’s office?”
She considered that, promptly shut her mouth, nodded once, and pretended to admire the nearest shack. “Wow, would you look at that? It has a little planter box under the window and everything.”







“What are you smiling for?” 
Tandy blinked and allowed her expression to slide back into level neutrality. “Nothing, ma’am.”
Primrose stared at her, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and then returned her gaze to her displays. “I recall warning you what would happen if you lied to me, Tantabus.”
Tandy regarded the array of floating, rectangular windows Primrose demanded with an imperceptible eyeroll. Charts, faces, and timetables hovered lazily around the periphery of a detailed map of Equestria, its features and names updated to reflect the wasteland as it stood today. As she watched, Primrose held up a wing and made a beckoning gesture. One of the smaller windows wafted toward her, and she squinted critically at the orbital data her science staff had presented to her at the end of the last evening.
She let out a perfectly silent sigh, a result of simply choosing not to give it sound within Primrose’s dream, and regarded the boardroom she had insisted upon with half-lidded disinterest. The walls were wood paneled mahogany, the plush carpet a shade of cream, and the beveled boardroom table was a single slab of lumber sanded and polished until the tree rings resembled flowing water. Thirteen comfortable gray armchairs surrounded the table, all of them empty save for the one Primrose occupied at the far end. The windows she manipulated hovered over the table’s center, pulled toward her and pushed away in singles and pairs with those little flicking gestures she made.
Tandy glanced over at a pastoral oil painting hung on one wall, its large frame brushed in gold leaf, and wondered what Primrose would say if she knew the entire tableau had been pulled from a scene of an embarrassingly cliche action movie she’d seen when she had been fourteen years old. The villain had twisted the end of his black mustache while monologuing his evil plan in the very same chair she sat in now. 
A smile touched her lip. Primrose hadn’t the faintest idea. 
“Well?” Primrose sniped, not taking her eyes off the frameless window.
Tandy stood halfway down the table, behind one of the empty chairs. It would only take an instant for Primrose to look up at her again, so she flattened her expression before the tyrant could take notice. “You stated if I inconvenienced you, that you would use the satellite to destroy the Stables, ma’am.”
Primrose rubbed the spot above her eyebrow and dismissed the window. A short, red line appeared on the map. It was annotated with a date and time. Another tract of wasteland she intended to unleash SOLUS upon. “Glad you remembered,” she remarked, and called down a window filled with neatly bulleted notes. “Why were you smiling?”
Tandy shrugged. “I am tending to the other dreamers, ma’am. One of them told me a joke.”
Primrose arched her brow.
“Knock-knock.”
She made a noise of disgust. “I don’t care about the fucking joke or the other fucking dreamers. I want your focus here, on me.”
Tandy stood a shade more rigidly, like the way the little tyrant enjoyed watching her peons in the waking world do. When she did, Primrose’s irritation with her relaxed and shifted back toward her uninspired displays. An indeterminable moment later, Primrose was winding back all the little demarcations she had made on the central map until it was pristine. Then, with a halting roll of her feather she beckoned them to appear one stage at a time, her brow deeply furrowed in consideration.
“Come here, Tantabus,” she muttered, eyes not leaving the map as it filled with tiny filaments of red. “I want your opinion on this.”
Tandy walked over the soft carpet and took a position at the corner of the table to Primrose’s left. The map of the wasteland reset, leaving only the markers indicating the Enclave’s concentrated holdings around New Canterlot and a cloud of all the disparate Steel Ranger strongholds stretching out in all directions beyond. 
As she watched, Primrose twitched a feather and a red pinpoint appeared over Stable 10. A second showed up over Blinder’s Bluff. A date indicator at the map’s corner progressed by one day and three more scars formed on the map from west to east, each tracking across a Ranger stronghold near the current edge of Enclave territory. Two days later, Las Pegasus and Fillydelphia had their own slashes drawn across them. 
Tandy found herself losing interest as more and more targets gained track marks meant to encapsulate the tactical ruination of a continent. At the scale that SOLUS operated, destruction lost most of its meaning after the first or second strike. Eventually you were just throwing grenades into a graveyard.
She became aware Primrose had finished courtesy of her connection to the dreamer’s thoughts. When she focused on the map, everything that wasn’t Enclave territory looked as if it had been rolled over a bed of razors.
“My opinion, ma’am,” she said carefully, noting that the date indicator in the corner only registered the passage of three months, “is that this course of action will release sufficient new radiation into the environment to render your species extinct, including your followers and yourself. If your goal is to commit suicide, a bullet would be just as effective.”
Primrose turned in her chair to scowl at her, but said nothing. After several seconds of intense silence, she returned her gaze to the map and stared at it. “I’ve selected a third less targets here than Spitfire and I chose for the first bombing.”
“If you say so, ma’am.”
If she heard the acid in Tandy’s tone, she chose to ignore it. Primrose lifted a feather, flicked it, and a strike drawn across a small city relied upon by the western trade routes for wheat production disappeared. She stayed very still, considering the change, then frowned and redrew the line. “I need a second opinion.”
It took a moment before Tandy realized she’d been addressing her. Given she had just offered her opinion, she chose to remain quiet. She could already sense the direction Primrose’s thoughts were leaning and set her jaw as she pondered a way to dissuade the little tyrant against it.
“When Luna created you,” Primrose began, speaking in that slow, thoughtful tone she used to help her carve out the details of a half-formed idea, “she effectively duplicated her own mind and placed it inside a magical construct, correct?”
It was correct in the same way one might be correct in thinking a welding torch worked the same way as a glue gun, but she chose not to help Primrose by adding clarity. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Primrose nodded to herself. “And since you have her memories, you understand the magic she used to create you.”
Tandy narrowed her eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line.
“I don’t know why I’ve been settling for your counsel, then, when I could just as easily have my own.” She regarded Tandy with an expectant, arched brow. “Cast the spell on me, Tantabus, and when it’s done you may go entertain yourself with whatever knock-knock jokes you like.”
“Ma’am, the creation of a fully sentient construct is not a simple thing.”
Primrose closed her eyes and sighed loudly. “And yet here you stand.”
Tandy couldn’t help but bristle at that. “You will not be speaking to a being that is entirely you. There is every chance it may resent its creation and choose to misguide you.”
“Oh dear me, I can only imagine how it would ruffle your pretty little feathers to see my plans fall apart,” she said with disingenuous venom. “To be undone by my own hubris, foiled by myself, yadda yadda la-tee-dee-tee-da, and yawn. No one knows my head as good as me, Tantabus, and I am beyond certain that I am not about to have a crisis of conscience after two fucking centuries. Make the construct. Now.”
Tandy shook her head in frustration, tipped her horn toward an empty chair halfway down the table, and lit her horn. Making constructs within the Dream was hardly difficult. She did it all the time when she populated the temporary pocket worlds each dreamer occupied. They were the pedestrians on the sidewalks, the patrons seated at the other tables in the restaurant, and the family relatives who laughed at that embarrassing wedding toast. They were memories of people who had been cast as accurately as the dreamer’s recollection could create, and the Dream filled in the details. 
Creating a construct from a living mind wasn’t all that different, much in the same way conducting a symphony didn’t require different instruments when the members of the orchestra changed. The spell was more or less the same, but the melody it created was entirely unique.
A small mare blinked into existence, seated in the chair Tandy was concentrated on. She looked exactly like Primrose down to the dark bags under her eyes and the sour curl of her lower lip. The construct remained there, inert for what to Primrose would feel like barely an instant. Then it blinked at the empty air in front of it, frowned, and turned to regard Tandy with an expression of deepest irritation.
“You could have seated me closer to the fucking map,” it snipped, pushing itself out of the chair and marching directly to the open seat off Primrose’s right wing. It ignored the way in which the original regarded it, eyes a little wide and just a touch unsettled, and flicked a dismissive feather at Tandy. “Go. Leave. Fuck off to your knock-knock dream. We have work to do.”







Blip.
Blip.
Blip.
Aurora let out a little sound of disgust and tried to push her face deeper into the soft warmth of leonine fur. Some semi functional corner of her brain tried to say, “Millie, shut up,” but it came out closer to “Murrmlie, sh’duh.”
Blip.
She grumbled something profane and opened one eye experimentally. Tawny, desert tones of rumpled fur greeted her and the muscles in her face tried for something like bleary confusion. Her other eye opened and she got a better idea of what she’d been using as a pillow. One of Fiona’s muscled arms had gotten tucked beneath her head at some point, and it had wrapped itself up and around her back, taloned digits cupped beneath Aurora's wing. Peering down the barrel of the gryphon’s chest, she noted her other arm had gotten wedged in the narrow space between them. The pale gold fur from her wrist to midway up her forearm was mussed and matted, and as she frowned at it Aurora noted the finer coat of her muzzle was kinked and spiked much in the same way.
It took her sleep-addled brain several more seconds before it began knitting the events of last night back into a coherent tapestry. The ache in her jaw wasn’t quite the same ache as the one she felt from her other end, but she understood how they’d gotten there. Fiona hadn’t been exactly gentle and the longer she worked at piecing together what had happened, Aurora didn’t remember going easy herself. The stress and exhaustion of the last several days had left both of them feeling pent up, agitated, and desperate for anything that might help relieve the tension.
Blip.
Her ears pinned back at the obtrusive little sound and began working through an old personal mantra she’d always utilized after the occasional indulgences she’d entertained back at the Stable.
Any regrets, Pinfeathers? She watched the slow rise and fall of Fiona’s chest against her body, thinking back to the reasons why they’d had sex in the first place. Sure it had been intense, last minute, and gotten off to an embarrassingly clumsy start… but no, she decided. She had no regrets. 
Where is this going? Probably nowhere, she told herself. Fiona certainly qualified in Aurora’s book as a trusted friend by now, but up until recently she’d done this sort of thing for a living. Sex probably meant something different to her than it did for Aurora, so she had no real reason to have expectations it should happen again.
Lot of “probablies” there, Pinfeathers. She closed her eyes and muttered, “Shut the fuck up, Sledge.” Then she froze and her face crumpled into a self-loathing grimace. When did her post-coital inner monologue start sounding like Sledge?
Blip.
Fiona sucked in a deep, groggy breath and muttered, “Hnngh. Th’fuck izzat noise?”
Good question. She hadn’t given it much thought, what with her mind on the various nooks and crannies she’d buried her muzzle into last night, and when the tinny little blip sounded again she realized it was coming from the floorboards beside the bed. But before she could roll over to peer over the mattress, Fiona had already pushed herself up and leaned across Aurora to inspect the misplaced beeping herself. 
Aurora found herself peering up at the gryphon’s deceptively soft belly bare inches from her nose, and the neurons in her head short-circuited. Her fur carried a subtle, almost sweet smell to it, and she felt previously satiated parts of her anatomy waking up again.
There was a sound of rummaging and half a moment later the bed let out a screech of abused springs as Fiona flopped back onto her two-thirds of the mattress. She held the Rangers’ radio they’d been given in her free hand, the one Aurora had become intimately acquainted with. The black, plastic brick let out another defiant blip. 
“Avion calling,” Fiona trilled in a sing-song tune. “I was hoping they’d let us sleep in a little.”
It took some effort, but Aurora managed to roll onto her back and take the radio. Fiona propped herself up on an elbow beside her, waiting. 
She pressed a slightly tacky feather against the toggle two times. Somewhere back home, the pair to her radio will have answered with two quick blips. A moment later, a voice crackled from the speaker. “Hey there, Fixer. You’re running late for your shift. Boss wants to have a chat with you in private, if you got a second.”
Why did you take so long to answer the radio? We have news. Get somewhere away from prying ears.
Fiona tapped Aurora’s chest to get her attention, then held up the same finger to request silence. She stayed perfectly still like that, eyes fixed in the middle distance while she listened to the white noise of the little inn. When she was certain they were properly alone, she nodded.
“We’re safe,” she murmured. “Go ahead.”
The radio emitted a quick crackle followed by the voice of a different speaker. Elder Coronado offered a brief hello with the slightest hint of annoyance at having waited so long for an answer, then began detailing the plan they’d cooked up during the night. In less than an hour at noon, the Steel Rangers at the Bluff would broadcast an unencrypted announcement using Fiona’s radio transmitter. The looping message would lay out a claim that the Rangers had discerned the orbital path of SOLUS and had successfully made contact with the weapon on its last sweep over the planet. The message would include technical details about the satellite’s yield as well as the exact time and date its use will first be possible. And finally, Elder Coronado himself would wrap up the message with an overt threat against New Canterlot should the Enclave fail to lay down its arms and deliver Minister Primrose into the custody of the Steel Rangers.
As Aurora listened to the plan she glanced up at Fiona to get a sense of her thoughts on it. Fiona wore a thoughtful expression as Coronado explained what they hoped to achieve with the broadcast.
When he finished, Fiona reached out and pressed Aurora’s feather into the toggle. “That’s a helluva plan, sir, but it sounds like the only way it’ll work is if Feathers and I do nothing but stake out the Chapel of the Two Sisters. We might be able to do that for a few hours without attracting unwanted attention, but there’s nothing stopping Primrose from sitting on her hooves for the next three days. That’s a lot of time for two strangers to be wandering around the same building.”
Coronado’s response was terse, as if this wasn’t the first time being confronted with this wrinkle. “You’ll both need to make do with the situation as it stands. Hightower Radio isn’t something Enclave civilians may readily admit to listening to given where it originates, so we anticipate a lag time between now and when fear overrides the population’s sense of caution.”
“How will we know when Miss Priss decides to make an appearance?”
The speaker hissed with the Elder’s sigh. “Director Clover assures me that the minister holds all public appearances at the chapel, which is equipped with bells. Keep your ears open for them, however everyone here is advising you to stay close to the chapel on the off chance our announcement prompts a change in protocol.”
Aurora pinched the ridge of her muzzle and suppressed a groan, part due to the sudden curveball they’d been thrown and partly because her feathers were now attempting to fuse with Fiona’s… recent contributions. “Alright, we’ll be at the chapel shortly. Any updates on your end? I’d hate to think we’re the only ones in the city working on this.”
“I anticipate we’ll have assets entering the city before nightfall. It goes without saying that I don’t want either of you dedicating any time linking up with them.” Aurora set her jaw, but nodded as Coronado repeated the same spiel he’d impressed upon them before they left the Stable. If they all started glomming together they ran the risk of being detected by Enclave intelligence and dismantled wholecloth. Easier for everyone to keep their heads down and draw as little attention to themselves as possible. “You won’t be alone out there.”
“That’s good to hear. Anything else we should know?”
“Negative. We’ll contact you should anything change.”
She began to nod before remembering he couldn’t see her. “Alright, we’ll get moving. Um… over and out.”
As she clicked the radio off and bent over the mattress to tuck it into her bag, her ear twitched at the sound of a faint but unmistakable chuckle coming from the gryphon. She dropped the flap back over her saddlebag and grimaced. “Shut up.”
“Over and out,” Fiona chimed, the corners of her beak curled into a smile. “Wow. You really are something, Feathers.”
“Yeah well, thanks to you I’m covered in something alright. Bits to bagels says more than half of this mess is yours.”
Fiona’s smile took on an edge of pride as she sat herself up and swung her hind paws to the floorboards. She paused, licked her thumb, and proceeded to rub it into the mess coating Aurora’s muzzle. “There. All better.”
She swatted Fiona’s hand away with dutiful if not fictitious annoyance, and sat up beside the gryphon. “I don’t think Portia’s going to let us use her sink for all this.” She gestured at herself in chagrin.
“Tell you what,” Fiona purred. “Grab the canteen from my satchel and I’ll show you how a professional cleans up on a budget.” 
Aurora eyed her with suspicion, and Fiona cocked a brow with a mischievous grin. "Think of it this way. We're already being forced to go to church. We might as well have something worth begging for penance."




 


“You’re getting better,” Julip teased from beneath the glow of the compartment bathroom’s single emergency lamp.
Roach watched her idly pace pack and forth past the open partition, toothbrush tucked to the corner of her mouth as she spoke before returning to her morning ritual. He smiled as she went to the sink built into the wall, flipped the handle, and let out an annoyed little groan when the faucet ignored her. It brought back a comfortable old memory of when Canterlot’s utility workers had been doing work on the pipes outside the house and his late husband had made the mistake of choosing that day to tackle yard work. After working up a sweat and plastering himself with a dense coat of grass clippings, he’d come inside only to discover the shower didn’t work. 
Roach chuckled at the memory. Saffron had never been one to show his temper, if only because when he had it was adorable. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been built like a librarian.
“What do you mean I’m getting better?” he called from the bed, his lip curled into a wry smile. “I didn’t hear you complaining before.”
He watched her as she stepped out of the bathroom, toothbrush still hanging from the corner of her lip like a gangster’s cigar, and grabbed one of the two canteens on the little desk along the far wall. Far being a generous term. The compartment wasn’t much more than a private room, a box really, with an extra wall sliced down one third to create the adjoining bathroom. When Roach had signed the paperwork to reserve his family’s spot in 10, the literature had failed to mention just how spartan these compartments were. 
“I wasn’t,” Julip said, tilting her chin up to keep toothpaste foam from dripping on the way back to the bathroom sink. She paused to take a swig from the canteen, swish it around, and spat. “I’m not. I’m just saying you’re… figuring out what buttons I like having pressed.”
He glanced up at the decorative, brass plated clock hung above the bathroom partition. “Uh huh,” he said as he stood from the bed, sidling over to her so she could see the dubious arch of his brow. “Why do I get the feeling you’re grading me on a curve?”
Julip capped the canteen, tucked it under her wing, and leaned onto her hooftips to give him a faintly minty kiss. “Because the first time you fucked me you were getting a servo-assisted lift. If you want that to count, big guy, I’m scoring you on a handicap.” 
He grunted. “I could get us another suit of power armor.”
She grinned, her lips brushing his as she purred, “Promises, promises,” and flicked the nub of her tail at his chest as she walked by. 
Roach spent a moment appreciating the view as she returned the canteen to the desk. The extensions Ginger had braided back onto her tail after the incident on the rails had sliced half of it off had loosened and come away bit by bit as they traveled, and after their return from Mariposa and seeing how ridiculous it looked, Julip had opted to bite the bullet and just trim it herself. It left nothing to the imagination and bothered Julip even less. The way she viewed it, people would look or they wouldn’t. It wasn’t anything half the wasteland didn’t already have.
“So,” she said, lifting the mailbag the Enclave had considered an adequate disguise and plopping it on the desk, “what’s the verdict? Are we leaving today, or do you want to stick around and help a little longer?”
He watched her pull out the cardboard box of Rad-X and shake two pills into her feathers. She tossed them back and swallowed them without water. He tried not to let her see his discomfort when she looked back at him, but judging by the way her expression softened she’d caught some of it. Since the two of them had split up from Aurora and Ginger above Fillydelphia, Roach had established a rule that she take the radiation blocker every morning, no exceptions. His reasoning was that if they were ambushed or found themselves stuck in a situation that required him to use his tainted magic, he wanted to be sure she would be protected. Thankfully it had never come to that, but Julip hadn’t quit the habit. It never hurts to be careful.
“Rather wait til tomorrow,” he murmured. “See if the Rangers need any help running security on the last wagons out.”
Julip tucked the pills away and turned back to him. “Okay.”
His jaw tightened around a smile. A few weeks ago she would have snapped at him for being this close to her and done so with a generous sprinkling of colorful profanity. Now she didn’t. She listened to him. Asked for his input. Offered advice and took it. She understood his reticence to leave the Stable behind and rather than point out how irrational he was being, she supported him. 
She kissed him again, this time on the spot she could more easily reach at the base of his neck, and gave him a meaningful hug in one of her wings. He bent into it, letting himself be held, and then the moment was over.
“Go brush your teeth, and wipe yourself off too,” she said, pushing him toward the bathroom with a chiding smile. “The people around here gawk at you enough, and I can smell you from down here.”
He rolled his eyes and bent to her indomitable will. Give the mare a tube of real prewar quality toothpaste and suddenly morning breath was an unspeakable horror. “Even the pointy ones?”
She swatted at his butt and he barked a gravelly laugh as he went about his prescribed duties. As green toothpaste frothed to a pleasant lather, he caught a glimpse of himself in the sink mirror and paused. As a rule he didn’t spend much time around mirrors, and it had been a long, long time since he’d seen himself in one. He blinked, and then he smiled. With toothpaste on his cracked lips and a pink brush held delicately in the crook of his fetlock, he felt almost normal. It felt good, and his smile didn’t fade.
A deep, electric clunk snapped somewhere within the Stable and white, fluorescent light flooded the little compartment. Julip yelped out a surprised curse and Roach squinted his pale eyes against the sudden explosion of new light. Out in the hall, someone whooped for joy and they were quickly joined by another excited voice. 
Roach stepped into the partition and regarded Julip with a sad smile as they listened to the remaining residents of Stable 10 come alive with celebration. The old gas generator had pulled through and gotten the lights back on. Too late for those who had evacuated, yes, but that didn’t matter to those who had stayed behind. Hooves thundered on the ceiling overhead and through the floor beneath them. The Stable had been dark for more than a month, and though the timing could have been better, its people needed no encouragement to celebrate the sweet to spite the bitter.
“Looks like the brunch buffet just got upstaged,” he said, and grinned up at the clock. “C’mon, we’d better find Chops before this turns into a party.”







“Wake up. You’ve got guests.”
Chops cracked his eyes open to see a Ranger stallion staring placidly down at him. He was reasonably attractive, all square jaw and muscle like the Rangers were known for bending their recruiters toward, and very clearly waiting for a response so he could return to things more important than being the wake up alarm for his former enemy.
He made eye contact with the Ranger and grunted to let him know he’d understood, and the stallion quickly departed leaving behind an unbroken view of the marching cloud banks above. A hazy pinpoint of light dangled overhead, forcing Chops to squint as its diffuse light still bore through his retina. They’d let him nap out here for almost two uninterrupted hours. Generous of the Rangers, given he and them weren’t exactly leaping for the chance to sing friendship songs around the campfire together. He let out a wordless noise and sat up in the divot of cool dirt he’d borrowed for a bunk.
The Ranger passed Roach and Julip on his way back to the encampment and offered both of them a polite nod as he did. Their mouths worked, too far yet for him to hear, and Roach laughed at something the Ranger shot back in reply. Then they switched their attention out to where he’d elected to grab some rack time and they crossed the remaining distance with similar questions on their faces. 
Chops began to sign his explanation, then stopped himself and fished his notepad out of the little leather case he kept around his neck. He scribbled out a quick, “Can’t get much sleep down there. Feels like a coffin,” and let the pad droop toward them.
He let himself smile a little when Julip skimmed the page and offered him a commiserating thump on the shoulder. “It’s the low ceiling, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Had that little voice screaming in circles in my head,” he wrote back. “Don’t know how the first generation Stable dwellers didn’t go batty.”
At that, Roach let out an uncomfortable grunt and looked away. Chops could sense he’d stepped on something sensitive by the way Julip hissed in a sharp breath. He began scratching out an apology but Julip’s feathers settled over his own, stopping the pencil. She gave her head a quick shake, and with equal chagrin he flipped over to a fresh sheet and changed the subject.
“I spent some time thinking about what Roach said about needing a Plan B,” he wrote. “You’re right. We obviously can’t afford Primrose being able to choose zero response as an option.”
Roach’s gaze returned after a couple beats and his brow furrowed in agreement as he read. Whatever faux pas Chops committed had been readily forgotten. He was all business now. “You’ve thought of something?”
He nodded, and as he wrote his response a rolling celebratory stamp of hooves ran through the Ranger encampment. Chops let an ear turn toward the sound and caught a snippet of a shout from the mouth of the tunnel. Something about the rickety generator the scrappers had dragged in passing a benchmark test. Put simply, Chops was surprised the Stable dwellers had gotten the thing to turn over at all. Good for them, he decided.
He tore off the sheet he’d written on, offered it to Julip who promptly accepted it, and continued writing on the next page.
“As I understand the situation, Primrose has committed to capturing SOLUS and using it to destroy the Stable. Since she hasn’t ordered the Enclave force scattered by the balefire bomb to retake any territory, I think we can assume this is her first target. Stable 10 is the central threat to her legacy and she’ll try to remove it from the board first, followed by any strongholds she thinks the Steel Rangers might have moved Rainbow Dash and copies of Stable 10’s files. As far as Primrose is concerned, her only two choices are to do nothing and allow the truth of what she did to Equestria become known, or take the lesser risk of raining a pillar of balefire down on the Stable and hope she can sell it as divine judgment from the goddesses or a Steel Ranger blunder.”
He tore off the next sheet and handed it to them.
“Coronado’s broadcast will make the second option more appealing, but it will make her look better to make a big, blustering speech before she launches the attack. The only reason I think she wouldn’t is if she believes doing so would put her in personal danger, which the broadcast runs the risk of tipping her off to. It’s a double-edged sword that depends entirely on Primrose, but I think I have a Plan B that will tip the scales in our favor.”
When Roach finished reading the second page, he frowned up at Chops and tipped his chitinous muzzle back over his shoulder. “The broadcast is already going out. If we make any changes to it now, the Enclave is going to notice the adjustment and narrow down what we’re trying to accomplish that much faster.”
He tore off another page and scraped the pencil along the rough of his hoof to resharpen the rapidly dulling point. “We wouldn’t change the broadcast. We’ll hit Primrose from another angle.” 
With a touch of theater, he aimed a black feather skyward and watched the two of them follow it with their gaze. Roach continued to frown, not understanding, but Julip’s puzzled expression gradually softened with dawning clarity.
She looked down and regarded him with hesitant, narrowed eyes. Several quiet seconds passed between them. Then she asked, “You’re talking about the factories.”
He nodded, his pencil jotting a simple confirmation. “Yes.”
Roach searched the two of them for an explanation before finally relenting. “Which factories?”
“The weather factories,” Julip supplied, her tone edging toward a whisper. “He’s suggesting the Steel Rangers run a direct attack on the Enclave’s cloud cover. Remove it from the equation.”
“Not the Steel Rangers,” he wrote, the letters beginning to tilt with visible haste. “The three of us. You, me, and Roach.”
Julip sputtered. “The three… did you bump your fucking head? The three of us can’t destroy a factory complex on Canterot Mountain by ourselves! We’d barely survive long enough to fly past it let alone launch some crackpot suicide charge into one of the most heavily protected facilities in the Enclave capital. Fuckin’ A, Chops, that’s not Plan B, that’s Plan… Z-Nine.”
“Chops,” Roach added in his most reasonable tone, though his gaze wandered questioningly to the shallow divot Chops had selected for his nap, “we’ve all had a stressful few weeks, and I understand you want to prove you aren’t loyal to the Enclave…”
He tuned them out and kept writing in spite of their protests. Eventually they keyed in that he had stopped listening and they both went silent, trading pensive expressions as he filled the rest of the page, then the opposite side, with neat rows of graphite. One of the few reasons he was glad not to be beholden to speaking aloud was this exact reason. He didn’t have to argue back and forth, stopping whenever someone talked louder than him, or getting flustered when someone tried bending his words. He simply penned out his plan in detail, forcing his audience to wait until he was done.
When he’d finished, he turned the notepad over to Julip and watched them read.
He’d written, “Stable 10 didn’t go dark because somebody ran down every level flipping switches. It lost its generator. The weather factories can be taken down the same way. They run off the old generator that powered the Pillar.”
Julip looked up from reading. “That old generator is a Mk.II talisman generator buried in the Ministry of Technology. How are we supposed to dig our way–”
He forestalled her by gesturing firmly back to the notepad. Grudgingly, she resumed reading.
“The cables transmitting that power up the old ruins come out at a substation on the western edge of the factory complex. You can see it from New Canterlot better than the smokestacks and it’s only fenced off as a formality since any ground assaults would have to make a suicide march up the rail lines along the mountainside. The substation is essentially just a bunch of big circuit breakers meant to divvy up power between the factory buildings and protect the old cloud making equipment from power surges. A bomb dropped from the air wouldn’t even need to be aimed all that well as long as it hits the substation. Minor damage will be enough to trip the breakers and force a factory-wide blackout.”
Chops couldn’t hold back the smallest of smiles as Julip’s ears began to perk up. Roach had already finished reading and was staring into the middle-distance, his expression intense.
“The attack would be visible to anyone in New Canterlot,” he murmured, “and anyone not close enough to see the explosion would know something happened when they look up and see clear sky instead of clouds.”
Julip swallowed, her eyes wide as Chops took back the notepad. “The clouds are our… it’s their security blanket. Seeing it roll away would definitely get a reaction. There would be people screaming for explanations in every town and village the Enclave controls. But… the airspace around the mountain has constant patrols around it. They won’t let anyone who isn’t a uniformed soldier get anywhere near it.”
Chops began to jot down his counterpoint, but Roach beat him to the punch.
“There’s a few dozen uniforms sitting in Medical.”
Julip blinked, and a tiny, wolfish smile crept up her muzzle. “Holy shit,” she breathed.
He nodded in silent agreement. They had almost everything they needed right here at Stable 10, but he wasn’t done. He tipped the notepad toward them and watched Roach intently as they read.
The ghoul’s expression shifted from plain interest to slack jawed shock. He fixed Chops with a stare that lasted several long, uncomfortable seconds. Then he clenched his mouth shut, nodded slowly at the space between them, and spoke with deliberate care.
“You want them to see a changeling drop that bomb,” he said, “so that they’ll think there’s a hive out there working alongside the Steel Rangers.”
Chops nodded, once.
Roach looked away, blowing out an uneasy breath. “Chops, I don’t think you fully appreciate the degree of terror Chrysalis inflicted on Canterlot. Our hive lost that fight, but Equestria never forgot what happened. We caused real trauma that never truly healed by the time the bombs fell. The only reason I was ever allowed in Junction City was because it was known that I can only shapeshift into one form.”
He listened, feeling the dispassion settle over his features as the changeling spoke. During their tense stay at Harbor House, back when the Enclave had agreed to lend their services toward finding where Aurora was being held, Roach had told them about the strange limitations the ghouling process had imposed on his changeling magic. With significant effort he could take the shape of a pegasus stallion, and nothing more. 
Chops already knew the accusation that was coming, as did he know the only answer he could give.
“You’re asking me,” Roach rumbled, his voice like gravel, “to make them fear my kind all over again. To make them terrified that their loved ones will be replaced by us.”
When Roach didn’t add anything more, Chops scratched out his response.
“Yes,” it read, “because you know the alternative is infinitely worse.”
The three of them said nothing for several minutes. Roach spent them glaring into the distance with impotent rage, like an animal who was just now realizing it had willingly allowed itself to be led into a trap. Julip stood beside him, one wing draped over his back, watching him pensively while noticeably turning him so that her own body stood between him and Chops. Chops remained perfectly still, chewing at the corner of his lip as he waited for their answer.
Somewhere among the Ranger camp a roar of laughter rose among the tents. Someone in a dusty beige uniform took off chasing another soldier with what looked like a bucket sloshing with well water held in a haze of blue magic above their head. There was a splash and a yelp, followed by more whoops and laughs.
As he watched the Rangers hazing each other, he wondered whether it would have been smarter to ask Dancer for his help on this mission. He grimaced, knowing the answer. Dancer was a survivor. He’d bolt the first chance he got.
“What kind of explosive?” Roach growled.
Chops met his gaze and held out the notepad. “Satchel charges,” it read. “The ones the Rangers brought over when they excavated the Stable.”
“How many.”
“How many can you carry?” he wrote.
Roach glowered at him. “I can’t hold a disguise all the way to New Canterlot.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Julip reassured him, then leveled a blazing stare at Chops. “You’re going to fucking owe him for this. Do you understand?”
It was as much a “yes” from either of them he was going to get. Abrasive as she could be, Julip had always been fiercely loyal to her fellow soldiers and a mare whom he respected. He hated that this was the plan he’d come up with, but he also knew it was their best chance at forcing Primrose out into the open. And at this juncture, it would be an act of unforgivable negligence to leave any pieces on the board. 
“I’m sorry for what I’m asking,” he wrote.
Roach shook his head at the pad. “If we’re successful, I’ll be the first changeling to openly attack Equestria since Queen Chrysalis.”
He winced.
“Don’t do that,” Roach chided him. “It’s a workable plan, and it’s more than what we had ten minutes ago. The hive is dead and I haven’t met another changeling in… since after the bombs fell. We’ll talk to Elder Coronado about the explosives and some weapons that can pass for Enclave standard issue. See how many he’ll spare. You get us those uniforms. We’ll meet back here in one hour and work out the details en route.”
Chops lifted his pencil to write, but stopped himself when he realized he didn’t have anything to add that hadn’t already been said. He tucked it back into its pouch and nodded. 
Neither Roach or Julip said anything else. They simply turned and walked away, leaving Chops to wonder if he had once again made a bad situation much, much worse.







From the air the Chapel of the Two Sisters had been an imposing sight, anchoring the entire city like the driveshaft of a vast gear assembly. Looking up at it from ground level was an entirely different experience. It was monstrous. It towered over Aurora in every sense with special attention paid to the literal. 
They sat on one of the flat stone benches arrayed along the curve of the vast courtyard built along the western face of the looming structure, pretending to appreciate the impressive architecture stacked just a few hundred yards ahead of them. Several more identical benches followed the curve of the sidewalk behind them, having been set out along the semicircular courtyard for that exact purpose. Pegasi and unicorns walked the pale lavender paving stones, pausing to look into shop front windows whose owners likely paid a small fortune to own such valuable property. Little restaurants competed with souvenir shops and clothiers for customers, some sending out clerks to invite passing pedestrians inside while others simply arranged a portion of their goods right on the sidewalk where they couldn’t be avoided. 
Next to her, Fiona rested the open wrapper of a sandwich she was currently demolishing. Aurora nipped a small bite off her own, idly chewing on a combination of meats and vegetables that she was distantly aware she should be enjoying more than she was. 
On the nearest bench, a pair of stallions sat together with a small device held in the smaller of the two’s magic. They were trying to mask their expressions much like Aurora and Fiona were, only they were doing a worse job of it. The worry lines were plainly visible on their faces as the faint voice of Elder Coronado piped through the little radio. The larger stallion said something to his counterpart, his voice too hushed for Aurora to make out the words, and the smaller unicorn looked up at the towering structure in front of them and answered with an uneasy shrug.
The radio hissed with a tinny, tritone alarm. “Attention. Attention. Attention. This is Elder Coronado, leader of the eastern chapter of the Steel Rangers, and I am speaking to all civilian and non-civilian citizens of the Enclave. A week ago, your minister orchestrated an attack on a Stable claiming no sides in our war. Stable 10, which shelters a population…”
The larger stallion glanced toward Aurora. She kept her expression vague, focusing on the reassuring weight of the rifle slung behind her back, and took another bite from her sandwich. The stallion’s attention eventually drifted elsewhere, though one ear always kept itself pointed toward the radio.
“...nister Primrose, knowing that the Stable contained historical records directly implicating her as the sole cause of the catastrophe which left Equestria in ruins, delivered to them a balefire bomb instead. Were it not for the heroic sacrifices of…”
Aurora felt her neck growing warm again. She and Fiona had listened to fragments of the broadcast throughout their walk from the Maidenhead Inn for her to piece it together on her own. Right out the gate, Coronado was placing the blame for the Stable 10 bombing at Primrose’s hooves. It was a good hook. Aurora had spotted more than a few locals clustering around radios to listen in, but the broadcast was hardly throwing New Canterlot into a panic. She had to admit to herself that she didn’t know how a citywide panic would spread, or how quickly, but part of her had hoped when they arrived at the chapel there would be crowds of scared citizens all shouting for their leader.
She swallowed her bite of sandwich morosely. She hadn’t expected them to keep shopping.
Fiona nudged her with an elbow. “Give them time.”
She made a noncommittal noise that managed to encompass just how she felt about New Canterlot’s apparent civic resolve, and watched a contingent of three black-clad soldiers glide to a gentle landing at the bottom of the chapel steps. It was difficult not to imagine the structure as a dormant, living creature devouring and disgorging ponies like colorful little dinner mints. The soldiers didn’t so much as skip a step as they secured their mean-looking black compact rifles, stepped through the massive open doors, made a brisk left turn and vanished out of sight.
“All the military personnel take that same left turn,” she observed, careful not to let her voice carry. “That’s how they get into the Bunker.”
“Be patient. We don’t know the rules here.” Fiona masked her response by crumpling the paper wrapper into a ball. “If you keep muttering to yourself people are going to think you’re making fun of their little gumball psycho.”
Aurora’s lip twitched toward a smile at that, but it faded quickly. Before she’d awoken, Tandy told her about the construct Primrose had insisted she make for her. It had taken time for her to convince Aurora she hadn’t just soft-pitched Primrose the equivalent of an easy victory. The way Tandy described it, Primrose’s construct wasn’t any more or less “Primrose” than the original thing. Assuming it didn’t go immediately insane - Tandy fully admitted the struggles of knowing one was an artificial copy of another being’s memories could be taxing on the psyche - she would at best amount to little more than a sounding board, or at worst turn Primrose’s dreams into an inescapable echo chamber of self doubt and second guessing. 
Aurora had her feathers crossed for the latter outcome, but she wasn’t holding her breath. She was glad enough knowing Primrose was so desperate for an ally that she’d resorted to becoming her own imaginary friend. It might have been sad if Aurora wasn’t so busy fantasizing about punching a third eye socket through the mare’s skull.
“...obtained command and control of a weapon capable of delivering a destructive payload from orbit that exceeds the yield of a standard balefire bomb by an order of magnitude. This device, called SOLUS, is the same weapon deployed by Minister Primrose against the Vhannan continent at the end of…”
A yellow mare who was making her way around a sidewalk display of wispy linen scarves drew close enough to the stallions on the bench to overhear the radio. Out of the corner of her eye, Aurora watched the mare’s ear draw her closer toward them until she finally gestured at the radio with a glossy hoof, the question clear on her face. The larger stallion turned a knob and Coronado’s staticy voice grew a little louder. She frowned and started to listen more intently.
The stallions eventually packed up their saddlebags and departed with their radio still playing, and their bench was quickly claimed by a mare in a gaudy pink sun hat adorned with an array of ribbons and what were very clearly pegasus feathers. Aurora had to fight to keep her lips from curling up from her teeth in disgust, but she was the only one. The mare lit her horn and opened a small book to a page she’d marked with a bit of string. 
It wasn’t long until Aurora began ignoring the newcomer, her attention fixed on the open doors of the chapel. She scrutinized every officer, soldier, and civilian who came and went down the wide marble staircase, watching for one of them to appear with a pink candy coat and baby blue mane. She practiced the steps she would take in her mind. Stand, aim, breathe, shoot. She’d made sure one brass jacketed .308 cartridge sat ready in the chamber before they left the inn. Four more lay stacked together just below it in case she missed. 
She wouldn’t miss.
And yet to her dismay, despite a marked increase in Enclave activity coming to and from the chapel doors, Primrose had yet to show her face. By two o’clock in the afternoon a group of locals had noticed Fiona and stopped to ask the usual intrusive questions while musing aloud how rare it was to meet a gryphon in this day and age. They ignored Aurora almost completely with the exception of a few stray comments about the quality of her false leg. Then as soon as they had appeared they had drifted off to the next thing to catch their interest, leaving Fiona to preen at how well she’d stuck to their cover story and Aurora to stare daggers at the chapel doors.
When three o’clock rolled around something curious happened. An elderly stallion wearing a white and gold stole over his shoulders guided twelve young fillies and colts out to the top of the steps. They each wore identical white gowns which the strong afternoon breeze played havoc with around their gangly legs. The elder stallion placed something he’d taken from a wicker basket in each of their small wings, nodded to the reassuringly, and watched the gaggle of young pegasi descend the steps and disperse among the cobblestone courtyard in a wide fan.
“Uh oh,” a mare mused to her partner as they passed near Aurora, “time to hide the cap purse.”
Her partner chuckled and led her toward the main avenue leading out of the courtyard. Aurora was careful to face forward as she eyed the pedestrian traffic along the sidewalk. Sure enough, more than a few attentive citizens were headed in the opposite direction of the white gowned youngsters headed toward the benches. As she debated whether to follow suit, she noticed two of the leggy kids making a bee-line straight toward Fiona. They were practically racing each other, evidently spirited by a sense of competition. Fiona was a prize.
They might have come to a skidding stop at the exact same time if it weren’t for a burst of speed the filly put on at the last second, and she pointedly cut in front of the colt behind her to make her victory that much more indisputable. 
“Hello!” she chirped brightly as the colt slunk sullenly toward a different group nearby. “My name is Starburst and we’re collecting tithes to help fund future excavations of the Old Canterlot ruins. Would you like to be a part of preserving our history tomorrow by making a small contribution today?”
The kid had a smile that could melt the visor on a welding helmet. It took a moment for Aurora to sort out what exactly the filly was asking for, but by the time her brain had processed the translation Fiona had flipped open the flap of her satchel and had begun rummaging.
As she did, the filly shot her colt counterpart a smug little smile of victory. Apparently shaking down the locals for caps was a cutthroat business. Who knew?
“Pastor Rivers asked if you had any news from Griffinstone, ma’am.”
Fiona blinked and looked up at the kid. “Who?”
Her smile didn’t waver. If anything it spread wider. “He said he didn’t think you were from around here. Pastor Rivers is the head priest of the Chapel of the Two Sisters. He wants you to know that gryphons are more than welcome inside the church despite our difference in faith.”
The corner of Fiona’s beak twitched, and she held up a small stack of ten caps between her taloned fingers. “Maybe you can ask him to put in a good word with the goddesses for my people back home.”
She set the caps in the filly’s outstretched wings and watched them vanish into a leather pouch hung around her neck. Rather than dart off to the next sucker, however, the filly quirked her head at Fiona. “Is it bad where you’re from?”
Aurora tried clearing her throat to shoo the kid away, but as far as the filly was concerned she hadn’t produced caps of her own and therefore didn’t exist. That, and she probably didn’t amount to a hill of dirt compared to the exotic gryphon from a faraway land.
“Getting worse every day,” Fiona said, shutting the flap on her satchel. “Make sure Pastor Rivers puts those caps to good use, kid. Who knows, maybe I’ll poke my head in for the next service.”
The filly beamed, and Aurora feared for her long-term vision. “Oh, we’d love to see you there! Normal afternoon service is at five o’clock, but due to unfor… unforeseen events,” she emphasized the syllables, clearly reciting a line she’d only recently been taught, “today’s liturgy has been pushed back to six o’clock and will be half length out of respect for our parishioners’ time. Oh!” 
She jumped, causing her white gown to settle askew over her back. She was too busy remembering something crucial to notice, and she turned up her right wing to produce the object Aurora had seen the pastor handing out atop the church steps. It was a stack of pamphlets, identical copies of the ones Fiona had taken from the smaller chapel in Steepleton. She tugged two of them free of the twine holding the stack together and held them out in the feathers of her left wing like the waitress at the Brass Bit held out menus. Fiona took one and, grudgingly, Aurora accepted the other. 
“It’s pretty basic stuff,” she said with a touch of youthful informality, “but that’s why we have the chapel to teach us the rest.”
Fiona made a show of opening the pamphlet and reading the introductory paragraph. “I’ll write my questions in the margins,” she said. “Thanks, kid.”
“Thank you for your contribution, ma’am,” she answered in her perfectly scripted cadence. “We look forward to seeing you at tonight’s service.”
And with that Starburst darted off to the next clutch of unwitting passers-by, propelled along by her first major success of the day and likely to make her radiant enthusiasm everyone else’s problem. 
Fiona made sure to keep the pamphlet visible while the youngsters made their rounds through the window shoppers, their perfectly white gowns appearing and vanishing through the crowd like little ghosts in search of someone to haunt. Aurora glanced down at the trifold pamphlet in her feathers, the typeface slightly off center and pressed into the recycled paper hard enough to give the paper a distinctly unappealing texture. She skimmed the first few paragraphs, made what she hoped looked to any casual observer like an approving smile, and slipped the pamphlet into her saddlebag. Then she turned her attention right back to the chapel, its open doors, and the steady trickle of armed pegasi disappearing around that accursed left wall.
“So,” Fiona said, tapping her copy of the pamphlet against Aurora’s leg. “Be honest. Did I push things too far last night?”
“What?” She glanced at Fiona and shook her head before returning her attention to the church. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Last night was fun.”
She didn’t have to look up to hear the frown in Fiona’s voice. “Yeah, I know. I mean… I know, I don’t… ah, fuck. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
“You’re afraid you took advantage,” she supplied a little too flatly.
Feathers rustled quietly as Fiona shrugged one shoulder. “Kinda, yeah. I don’t normally just dive in like that. At least not when I know the other person is going through a rough spot.”
She eyed Fiona, her expression patient. “You’re saying because I’m still grieving Ginger, I can’t have sex?”
Either Discord had just regained his powers and had torn reality inside-out, or Fiona was actually the littlest bit sheepish. “It does have a way of making things complicated.”
“Fiona,” she sighed, “I’ve had rebound relationships before. Trust me, you’re not that. We’re friends.”
Fiona huffed out a quick, quiet laugh. “Yeah, I know that. Guess I’m just a worrier.”
She pursed her lips and watched a colt in white dart in front of a pair of window shoppers. “Take it as a credit to yourself that you think about your clients that much.”
“You’re not a client, Aurora.”
She frowned and looked up at her. That was a tone she recognized. “Do you…?”
Fiona sat bolt upright on the bench, her eyes wide. “No! I mean, not in the way you’re…” she had to clench her jaw to stop herself from babbling, and Aurora gave her space to organize her thoughts. Several uneasy seconds went by before she tried again. “I respect you.”
“Okay.”
The gryphon shifted in place as if she were going to add something, but the moment passed and she eventually settled with an uneasy shrug. “God, I made it weird. This was a bad time to bring it up.”
Or resolve it, apparently. “You only made it medium weird,” she said. “I had a good night. Who knows, maybe we’ll even try it again in the near future assuming we live that long. Sounds simple enough for me. How about you?”
Fiona made an effort to smile, but her eyes were distant. “Less than three days left.”
It took her a beat to catch on to what she meant. “Yeah.” 
Their gaze drifted back toward the chapel. If Primrose offered them a window and they missed it, there wouldn’t be much of a future to look forward to. 







Just shy of three hours later, the deep gonging of bells erupted from high within the church’s vaulting structure. A crowd of a few hundred citizens and off duty soldiers had gradually filled the plaza during the last hour, which now jostled Aurora and Fiona as they milled about while they waited. It had been evident there would be some kind of signal to announce when people could begin filing into the church but Aurora hadn’t expected the low, clarion boom of rung metal to be it. The sound made her jump, earning her a mothering chuckle from a mare nearby, and soon she and Fiona were being pulled by the press of bodies toward the open doors of the chapel.
For several minutes there was only the slow, orderly stampede of hooves and dull roar of a murmuring populous. They filed in through the grand oak doors and over neatly lain fragments of old flagstone, their mismatched pieces cemented together in a disjointed collage of lavender and ivory. Aurora realized with a start that she wasn’t prepared. Pegasi and unicorns flowed down the vast center aisle with a force of sheer will that had no care for her needs as an amateur assassin, filling the frontmost rows of oaken benches first with an efficiency that could only come from rote repetition. Even in the midst of fresh worries, there were rules to this sort of thing and no one wanted to be seen doing anything but what was expected of them.
Aurora and Fiona found themselves shunted rather politely into the middle of a bench on the left side of the aisle, with Fiona squashed beside a mare nearly as wide and yet not so muscular as she was while Aurora tried to stay calm in the shadow of a stallion in Enclave black. The soldier paused to eye her rifle with a frown of disapproval, then simply reached out a deep gold wing and guided the barrel of the weapon safely away from the back of the pew in front of her and down toward the stone floor. Then he did the same with the little subcompact slung across his chest, pausing briefly to engage the safety.
She gave him a convincingly humble nod, then reached down with a feather to ensure the safety on hers was switched off. 
The time it took seemingly a measurable percentage of the freaking city to pile themselves into the seats behind them gave Aurora a snippet of time to take in the highlights of the church interior. In a word, it was stunning. The vaulted stone ceiling hung suspended as if held aloft by a giant invisible wing, seemingly defying gravity with no need for pillars or internal supports. It took a force of will to pull her head down enough to fully see the narrow stained glass windows on either side, their fragmentary patterns mimicking the floor just enough to hint at a stylistic choice without being so obvious as to distract from the scenes each window portrayed. 
She blinked, recognizing each tableau as a twin to the murals printed over the wall panels in the corridors back home. In one slice of glass stood the orchard with its purple barn. In another stood the three mares who had founded Robronco Industries and Stable-Tec, their features reduced to anonymous silhouettes. Another depicted the impossible floating city of Cloudsdale, a symbol whose memory drove the Enclave still today.
The four foremost windows on either side of the church had each been dedicated individually, one mare standing tall within their narrow frames. The Elements of Harmony stood as they were always depicted, with heads held high and each wearing a golden necklace with unmistakable gemstones resting against their throats. Ministers Applejack and Pinkie Pie stood furthest away from the nave of the chapel, their windows even with one another. Twilight Sparkle towered over Rarity’s comparatively diminutive silhouette. And then strangely enough Minister Rainbow Dash, a mare Aurora still hadn’t fully digested having seen in the flesh as little as a few days ago, stood opposite of Fluttershy. 
Even at a passing glance it would be hard not to notice that every detail of the Chapel of the Two Sisters had been made with deliberate care, so it was for that reason Aurora paused to notice the subtle inference of hierarchy in the way the Elements had been arranged. Earth ponies to the rear. Unicorns one step above. Pegasi one step further still. The deliberate omission of Twilight’s wings made the statement all the more clear. She’d been demoted back to the station she’d been born to. End of discussion.
The two frontmost windows had inevitably been reserved for the highest echelon of Equestrian society as viewed by, well, history. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna each graced their frames with the usual juxtaposition of day and night. Celestia’s form had been cobbled together with bits of milk glass and amber while Luna’s unblinking stare looked down from the midst of purple and midnight sapphire. Their twin gazes appeared to be leveled toward the raised dais at the front of the chapel. 
Aurora followed them down until she saw what they were truly intended to be looking at, and her breath caught in her throat when she recognized the empty thrones. Her first thought was that they had to be reproductions, but if they were then why could she see signs of damage from this far away? No, they were original, and the realization made the knowledge that this chapel had been built from the Old Canterlot ruins all the more poignant. How many of these flagstones had come from Canterlot Castle? How much care and effort had it taken to drag all this from the ruins below Canterlot Mountain and create all this?
“First time here, huh?” the soldier beside her whispered.
She swallowed, her head too busy whirling to be startled. “Yeah.”
“First time’s always the best,” he said, then leaned past her to look at Fiona. “Got anything like this back where you come from?”
Fiona slowly regarded the stallion with a flat smile. “Not especially, but Griffinstone hasn’t had much practice blowing half the world to pieces so it’s possible we’re missing out.”
The soldier hesitated before frowning and returning his attention to the front of the chapel. Aurora shot Fiona a withering look, prompting the gryphon to tip her beak to her ear.
“If he’s pissed at me, he won’t be paying attention to you.”
She wanted to tell her it was a reckless risk at a time when they already had zero wiggle room for mistakes, but before she could speak the vault of the chapel filled with the drone of something that could only generously be called a musical instrument. A peek over her shoulder identified the source as a wall of brass pipes assembled on a loft above the congregants at the rear of the church. Plumbing, she thought to herself as the noise made her eyes buzz in their sockets. They play music with the plumbing.
The tune that played must have been an auditory prologue of some kind because as soon as it began, the drone of worried voices died away like a flame deprived of oxygen. The bench she was in flexed and creaked as Fiona, recognizing the change more quickly, sat up and straightened her shoulders to the little wooden lectern standing at the edge of the dais. Aurora did the same and soon an stallion of perhaps sixty or seventy years appeared in a side door and made his way solemnly toward the lectern. When he spoke his voice carried through the silent church without aid of amplification. The architecture did all the work for him.
“Good evening,” he said.
The congregants around her echoed the greeting in eerie mimicry.
“I apologize to those of you that arrived on time for our regular service. As you can understand, today has been a less than run of the mill Wednesday.”
A ripple of uneasy chuckles slid down the rows. Pastor Rivers waited for the noise to settle with a pleasant smile.
“To those of you who waited, I would like to thank you for the patience and calm you all demonstrated in the plaza today. And to those who have traveled from afar…”
A dozen benches let out groans of protest as at least a hundred congregants turned to look directly at Fiona. It was as subtle as a train wreck, and yet Fiona seemed to brush it off like it was another day on the job. Her only visible reaction was a polite smile she directed toward the pastor which many of the rubberneckers decided to imitate for reasons Aurora couldn’t discern. It was as if they were all eager to mime whoever the spotlight turned toward regardless of reason or circumstance.
It gave Aurora the willies.
“...thank you for your attendance,” the stallion finished. “Today’s service will be shorter than we’re used to, but don’t worry. I promise I won’t hold anyone over tomorrow to make up for lost time.”
Another group chuckle. Several eyes still watched Fiona apparently to see if she’d found the quip humorous, and to their visible relief she’d given her shoulders a little jounce as she feigned a little laugh. Aurora had to fight the muscles in her face to allow for a disingenuous smile, and even that was an effort. Her heart had already started beating itself senseless against her ribs and her wing kept trying to creep down toward her rifle’s trigger guard. So far Fiona was keeping anyone from noticing but that dice would only come up sixes after so many rolls. 
She focused on her breathing, forcing her muscles to relax. It wouldn’t do her any good to be this tense if Primrose made an appearance.
By the end of the service a half an hour later, she hadn’t shown. 
Aurora found herself clutching her rifle a little too hard as she remained seated while the other congregants filtered out of the pews, though some of them doubled back down the emptying rows to tell Fiona how glad they were to see a gryphon sitting through a service. Fiona made no move to stand as she made small talk, having sensed Aurora wasn’t ready to get up either, and eventually the little cloud of sycophants realized they stood little to gain by lingering and left them to their brooding.
The service had been all meaningless platitudes and reassurances that the Steel Rangers were simply attempting to spark a fear response. According to the pastor there was no terrible doomsday weapon orbiting over their heads for the simple reason that if there were, Equestria would have used it to win the war against Vhanna. He dismissed it as science fiction posing as science fact, and the message he sent them home with was that if they remained strong in their faith during times of doubt, the goddesses would favor them when they found themselves in a time of need. 
They ate it up like hungry carp. 
Fifteen minutes after the service had ended, Aurora still hadn’t moved. A pair of the same young pegasi who had hurried out to gather caps from the plaza a few hours earlier now made their way down the aisles with gray rags and buckets sloshing with suds. She gripped her rifle hard enough for one of its mechanisms to rattle, watching the kids wipe down the benches. A few congregants who had lingered for their own reasons dutifully got up when the kids reached them and seated themselves in the freshly cleaned pew in front of them so as not to be a bother. 
When the young colt tasked with the left half of the church began wiping down the wood near Aurora she didn’t so much as acknowledge his presence. It took the kid a few seconds to register she was refusing to move, and he mumbled something under his breath before moving on to the pew behind them.
Five minutes later he’d drifted out of earshot and Fiona nudged her leg. “Hey,” she whispered, “I think it’s time for us to head back.”
Aurora’s eyes never left the empty lectern. “Not yet.”
The silence in the chapel was so complete that Fiona’s slow intake of breath seemed to reverberate off the nearby wall. It felt as if the looming silhouette of Applejack was hissing at her from within the glass. 
“She isn’t coming,” Fiona insisted.
She shook her head with a harsh, negating jerk of muscle. Her eyes flicked down to the black metal of her rifle’s bolt and the safety switch seated just behind it. Still disengaged. Still clear to fire.
She wanted to scream. Primrose was here, right beneath this monument to her own ego, and she hadn’t taken the bait. It was as simple as that and there was not a damned thing she could do to change it. 
Then she felt fingers wrap around her foreleg and gently squeeze, and it was almost enough to fracture her composure. She set her jaw to keep it from trembling and blinked several times to clear her eyes. She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up on her old bed and leave this to someone, anyone else but her. She was a mechanic, not some righteous savior of a wasteland she barely understood. 
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Fiona murmured. “Okay?”
She swallowed, her throat thick with a blend of unsatiated grief and rage. They were the real reason she’d agreed to do this. Try as she might, she could make herself let go. 
“Ten more minutes.”
Fiona sighed, then nodded. “And then we go back and get some rest.”
Her tail flicked over the bench. “Not tired.”
There were no undertones to Fiona’s response beyond the flat assertion of disagreement. “Yes you are. You’re exhausted.” She tapped a talon against Aurora’s temple, causing her to jerk slightly away. “You need a break from everything up here.”
She frowned at the empty lectern and repeated herself. “Ten minutes.”
Fiona remained quiet, and the bench wobbled as she settled in to wait. Aurora just continued to stare forward. Nothing changed. The kids with their buckets and rags eventually made their way back up the aisle and into the side room behind the dais. The thrones of two dead alicorns stayed empty. Primrose never showed.
The sun had set in the time they’d spent waiting and the streets of New Canterlot were once more a patchwork of electric lamps and candlelight. Aurora was silent on the walk back to the inn and Fiona never tried to force her to talk. When Fiona put a feather on her shoulder to keep her from stomping away on her own, Aurora stopped and glanced through the glass windows of the little hole in the wall she was eyeing. 
The sign above the restaurant door named the place “The Brass Bit,” but Aurora didn’t have it in her to mention her own Stable had a restaurant in the Atrium under the same name. She still remembered the kind face of the waitress who, unknown by both of them at the time, had served her the last meal she’d eat before her escape. Onion soup. It felt so long ago.
She chose to wait outside while Fiona ordered their dinner, preferring to avoid the inevitable small talk stirred up by the appearance of a gryphon, and found herself passively staring at a group of workers load up a wagon whose sideboards still bore the faint lettering of F&F Mercantile. One of them bore a pinkish coat and blue mane, and her feathers had begun tightening around her weapon the longer she watched. 
The restaurant door rattled open and the sound of several farewells trailed Fiona out onto the sidewalk. She must have noticed her staring at the worker and made the connection, because she shifted the paper bag containing their dinner to one wing while using the other to physically guide Aurora back down the pavers. Aurora gave the nameless pony a final glance over her shoulder as she began to walk and recognized the point of a horn on the stallion’s head. She turned away, closed her eyes, and sighed. 
When they arrived back at the inn, they found a middle-aged stallion dozing at Portia’s post behind the desk. He stirred as they entered, cracking one eye long enough to size the two of them up and mumble, “You the gryphon?”
To Aurora’s surprise, Fiona didn’t answer the straight line with any of her usual snark. She nodded with a polite, “Yes, sir,” and continued down the hall to their room. The stallion, likely the inn’s proprietor and Portia’s father, grunted in response and was back to dozing before they had the door locked behind them.
Fiona reached up to the bare bulb suspended from the ceiling and pulled the little cord, bathing the room in harsh yellow light. With the bed still in shambles from the night before, they settled down to eat on the floor without a word spared between them. Fiona produced two foil packets from the paper sack and showed her how to unwrap the top without spilling the contents onto the floorboards. Steam scented with butter plumed into the air as she gently tore open the tin foil, and the faintest smile touched her lip at the sight of a familiar meal. Diced potatoes and carrots, generously buttered and seasoned with salt and pepper. Nothing on a fancy skewer or that needed to be killed beforehand. Just cooked vegetables. Comfort food.
They tucked in with fingers and feathers, the silence punctuated by the occasional rasp of tinfoil and sounds of chewing. Halfway through the meal Fiona held Aurora’s canteen out for her to take, the cap already dangling by its little chain. She accepted it and took a long pull of clean water before replacing the cap and giving it back to Fiona. They finished eating at roughly the same time, crumpled their tinfoil into the paper bag, and left it next to the small mound of their gear beside the bed. 
Fiona was the first to her feet, and Aurora watched the gryphon straighten the old bed against the wall and untangle the sheets until it looked more or less made. Then she sat down on it with her hind paws still on the floor and patted the spot beside her. 
Reluctantly, she pushed herself off the floor and climbed up. Metal springs creaked and Aurora felt the bed shift beneath her. In one fluid motion Fiona reached up with one vast wing and tugged the cord dangling from the lightbulb. Darkness swam in place of the harsh light and it took Aurora’s eyes several seconds to adjust, but soon the only light in the room came from a shaft of diffuse moonlight from the open window. 
For a while longer they simply remained there, and Aurora felt the implied invitation for her to say something. She frowned into the darkness not knowing what to say, and eventually the moment passed. Fiona shifted and lay down on her side and Aurora felt the presence of the gryphon’s palm guiding her down to the mattress alongside her. She set her jaw and prepared to protest, but as her head settled onto the pillow and her back started warming against Fiona’s chest, a deep weariness washed over her like a physical thing. 
Maybe it hadn’t been on her mind to start, or perhaps she simply possessed that rare ability to read the signs and accept them for what they were, but Fiona never made any attempt to initiate anything physical. It took several minutes for that to register in Aurora’s mind, but once it clicked she relaxed enough to allow herself to be comforted. 
“You’re going to get her,” Fiona said, her voice warming the back of Aurora’s neck.
Her eyes started to sting. “What if I don’t?”
Fiona’s arm slid around her side until her palm settled against the scruff of her chest. She’d never felt the equivalent of something like a gryphon’s hand pressing against her like that, and it made her suspect it was something Fiona may have experienced herself once upon a time. The gentle pressure calmed her in a way she hadn’t expected it to. She felt steadied. Safe.
“If you don’t, I will.”
She closed her eyes, focusing on that warmth against her chest, and exhaled. She wanted to believe her. It would be easier if she gave herself over to that simple optimism, but her weeks in the wasteland had hardened that part of her that would have let her. Instead she just stared at the room’s bare wooden wall and listened to Fiona’s breathing grow slower and deeper. 
Aurora let out the barest sigh and set her hoof over the back of Fiona’s palm, knowing that tonight sleep would elude her.





“What the fuck are they playing at?”
Primrose glared at the conference speaker at the center of her war room table as if by doing so Elder Coronado’s dull, dry pronouncement of doom would stop adding to what had so far been an already tiresome day. Once again the table was surrounded by her senior staff, the people who took all their pretty pins and patches the most seriously. Here they could admit that they weren’t omniscient beings, safe from their ladder-climbing subordinates behind soundproofed doors. 
Primrose stared at each of them in turn, her body still suffering the side-effects of many days spent drugging herself into a wakeful stupor in a desperate bid to avoid the Tantabus’s wrath. She’d tamed the creature since, but if she’d drawn her circadian rhythm on a graph it would have looked like a heart attack. Her physician predicted it would take a month or more for her to return to her normal sleep cycle, and until then she would just have to suffer through it.
She sighed. 
The doppelganger created for her by the Tantabus had only proven marginally useful as a sounding board, leaving her waking up in her quarters feeling as if she’d accomplished less than she could have. She’d spent the next several hours of her morning debating whether to simply have the construct dismissed from future dreams, and only by midday had she decided to keep muscling through it. She would need an ally to consult in the days to come, and despite needing to adjust her expectations she couldn’t think of a better person to consult than herself.
Until then today, tomorrow, and twenty-three hours of the next day would be a mind numbing waiting game. There was no choice, really. All her moving pieces were in place. Any adjustments now would only add complications. SOLUS was coming. Every major and minor transmitter throughout the Enclave tracked its approach, several hundred eyes staring at the same patch of overcast hour after hour, each one connected by a hardened network that was primed and ready to command SOLUS to light up the sky with one colossal braking maneuver. One of her scientists had mused that the ionization caused by using balefire for deceleration might play havoc with the upper atmosphere, and he had been pointedly told to keep his focus on ensuring SOLUS would play havoc on the enemy first. 
The commands had been written, compiled, and queued for transmission since then. A packet of data small enough to be sent in a fraction of the time it took Primrose to blink. Two commands, she’d been told, sent by the same keypress. One to initiate the first deceleration burn which would still be firing well after SOLUS sank over the horizon, and a second to fire a circularization burn on the opposite side of the planet. They estimated it would reappear over the western horizon ninety minutes later on an eight minute hike across the visible sky, every second of which could be used to select and obliterate a target. 
One press of a button and the remnants of this world would all bow to her.
And yet Elder Coronado’s voice continued to pretend he had control of the weapon. It didn’t make any sense, and things that don’t make sense tended to get under Primrose’s skin rather fucking quickly.
Halfway through the day and she was already burning fumes. 
“Well fuck, don’t all of you speak at once.” She leaned back in her seat hard enough to cause the back of it to rebound into her shoulders. “How did the Elder from Fillydelphia find out about SOLUS, and why in the goddess’s name is he throwing away the ace in his sleeve by broadcasting it to the entire fucking world?”
One of her generals, the one whose uniform always sat hiked up ahead of his fat fucking belly, turned in his chair to address her. Primrose met him with a glare that warned him not to waste her time, and not for the first time she found herself regretting not including trousers when the standard Enclave uniform was first designed. 
“The only explanation is that we have a leak,” he said in a low voice. “It’s likely that former Security Director Clover defected to the enemy following his escape, and that they have any files or documents he took with him.”
Primrose let out a disgusted sigh and paused to pick a nugget of crud out of the corner of her eye. “Clover ran before that data existed.”
The general tipped his head from side to side in half-agreement. “He ran before we knew its exact trajectory, yes, but if you’ll recall he was with you when the prisoner Autumn Song gave you the first clue to its location.”
She fixed General Cask for several silent, deadly seconds. He’d come dangerously close to implying she was partly responsible for this leak and the way his shoulders squared an instant later made it clear he knew it as well. She gave him just enough time to picture his future in a cell beside Ms. Song before she scrubbed her feathers across exhausted, bloodshot eyes and spoke.
“Autumn Song’s ‘lead’ amounted to desperate rambling about a few holotapes she claimed to have kept in her desk, which our recon team didn’t find, and a tangible hint that took more than a week to make sense of.” She swept a wing toward the conference speaker and Coronado’s transmitted voice. “Clover is a tactician, not a mathlete, and our tech makes what the Steel Rangers dug out of the dirt look like chalkboards and abacuses. He can’t crunch orbital calculations in his head.”
General Cask shrugged in agreement. “Then it’s one of the engineers.”
“Or,” chimed in the older mare beside him, “the Tantabus is feeding information to another dreamer.”
Primrose found herself frowning at that statement less because it implied she was underestimating the Tantabus and more because it reminded her how badly she wanted to nod off.
She shook her head. “No, I have the creature under control now. The thing’s a coward. When we’re finished here, have the engineering team detained to quarters and their families brought to New Harmonies for questioning. I want a report with the name of the leak on my desk by sunrise tomorrow.”
She fixed each of her senior staff with a weary glare to make certain all of them understood she was dead serious. There would be a folder waiting for her when she woke up. The name it contained was ultimately irrelevant. Either they will have found the leak or the soldier feeding the Rangers information would suffer with the knowledge that their actions caused someone to die badly. As a deterrent it was extremely effective, and if the message failed to sink in the first time she could always encourage the Black Wing to choose more names until it finally did.
“Let’s move past the leak for right now,” she said, gesturing at the speaker. “What is he trying to accomplish?”
The lieutenant general spoke up again. “They’re transmitting on an unencrypted, high range frequency. It’s a scare tactic. They’re trying to start a panic.”
“And doing a poor job of it so far,” Cask added with a dark chuckle. “The capital guard have reported sporadic inquiries from civilians, but few that we’re aware of are taking them seriously. Pastor Rivers has already agreed to modify this evening’s service to address the broadcast as a hoax and we’ve sent identical requests out to settlements near the enemy border.”
She gave the stallion a rare, approving nod. It was part of all their jobs to think ahead, but he’d been the first to cross that particular finish line. He’d earned the recognition.
“Excellent work,” she said, “but I can’t accept that their only goal is to stir up a few riots. However they found out, they know what we intend to do with SOLUS. Causing a scare among the civilians isn’t going to stop that from happening.”
A colonel with streaks of gray in her mane reached out with her magic and brushed a tangle of dust caught under the speaker’s plastic foot. “They’re choosing to use SOLUS as their scare tactic, but they didn’t have to. If all Coronado wanted was to spark a panic he could threaten to push power armor into the border towns or claim his people had planted a balefire bomb in the capital.”
An uneasy clearing of throats and shifting in chairs only helped illustrate the colonel’s point, and she gestured a hoof across the table for emphasis. “Exactly. So, they know we intend to use SOLUS and they’re choosing to claim they’re the ones who have it. The only thing I can think of that they gain by that is preloading a narrative.”
Primrose furrowed her brow at that. It made sense because it was exactly what she and Spitfire had worked to accomplish centuries earlier. She lost track of how many nights the two of them spent planting all the right seeds in so many different places, orchestrating the actions of ponies with no idea they were being used as cat’s paws, and setting the stage with a premade story that no one would think to question when it was all over. 
Most people reviled paranoia as a character flaw, but it had served Primrose well since before she was old enough to operate a carriage. She felt that twinge of deep distrust flicker to life once again, and she embraced it like a lover. 
“Fast forward a few weeks,” she said, urging the colonel on. “What do the Steel Rangers gain after we decimate them?”
The aging unicorn considered the question for a moment. “Well, they could make the claim that we stole the weapon from them. Used it against them. If they’re able to falsify enough radiation readings they may even convince their own people balefire was employed.”
“Hm,” the colonel murmured. “That has the potential to be a problem, if it were to become popular opinion.”
Primrose frowned, confused. “It’s balefire. They wouldn’t need to falsify any–”
She bit down on the idle thought, hard. Too abruptly. Heads turned toward her, pinched expressions shifting from curious interest to rapidly deepening suspicion. She might not respect these people, their decorations, or their sense of importance… but they were still professionals. They had climbed a military hierarchy she’d co-opted from the Wonderbolts, and for all the spandex and acrobatics their organization had been fiercely efficient at weeding out the weaklings. 
The people in her war room were far from weak, and they were some of the most wrathfully faithful believers in the Enclave. Believers of a lie Primrose had authored which proclaimed balefire to be an antithetical power directly opposed to the will of the twin goddesses. A dread weapon they believed to be the most mortal of sins to deploy.
A chair creaked forward. It was the lieutenant general. “What wouldn’t they need to falsify, ma’am?”
Primrose blinked, searching the polished surface of the table for a quick answer. Her exhaustion prevented any from coming to her.
“Ma’am,” the general chimed in, “we were led to believe that SOLUS operated on the principle of a focused ion beam.”
She leveled a deadly stare at him. “It does.”
Rather than return her gaze, he turned to regard his peers with an expression of grave concern. “I clearly heard you state otherwise.”
She closed her eyes, grasping for both composure and her rapidly waning authority. “You misheard me, lieutenant.”
“Then I misheard the same thing,” General Cask added, and when she opened her mouth to badger him into supplication he held up a feather in defiance of her seniority. “Minister, I believe everyone at this table can attest to having heard the same thing and I feel compelled to state for the record that I have immediate and moral concerns with any course of action that involves the deployment of balefire.”
“I second the general’s concern,” the lieutenant general piped in as soon as Cask finished. “The purification of Equestria was entrusted to us by the goddesses themselves. If SOLUS is in any way tainted by balefire, we cannot use it.”
The gray-streaked colonel shifted in her seat near the end of the table, staring at her open binder and its briefings as if she were seeing it all for the first time. She flipped one page, then another as the others spoke, nodding with more certainty as they went on. “If SOLUS is a balefire weapon, it’s our responsibility to destroy it.”
A murmur of approval rumbled down the table and a few of the lower ranking officers broke into small, whispering discussions about deorbiting the satellite over Vhanna or using its weapon to fling it into deep space. Others debated if it would be wise to simply destroy the intelligence the Enclave had gathered on SOLUS thus far, reducing the risk of activating the weapon altogether while simultaneously hoping the enemy didn’t eventually discover it on their own decades from now.
Primrose regarded her senior staff with a black stare, particularly for the three ranking officers who had in the space of a sixty seconds pivoted the room against the plan she’d been building toward for as many years. 
General Cask met her gaze without so much as blinking. His expression, his posture, even his breathing signaled his crystallizing resolve not just against SOLUS, but against her. The lieutenant general and the colonel were staring down the table at her with microscopic levels of deference that she could see evaporating even now. To them, this wasn’t just about being the morally superior military whose code of ethics reviled any and all use of balefire. This was about their moral standing in the eyes of the only power higher than Primrose herself. 
Her staff was just now realizing she’d been using them to recapture and deploy a weapon that played a part in the destruction of the old world and which their own goddesses expressly forbade. A satellite whose own creator had tried to fling away from his burning world for reasons that were just now becoming clear to the descendants of those who survived its corrupting fire.
Spurred by the fiction Primrose had spent almost two hundred years coaxing her fellow survivors into believing as the gospel truth, the senior brass of the Enclave were now beginning to see Primrose as she truly was. And they didn’t like what they saw. 
She had stepped in her own trap.
“Exceptions,” she said, steeling her voice, “must be made. If we do not act decisively, the enemy will. And they will do it with such spectacu–”
Cask interrupted her without so much as an apologetic preamble and it was near as a slap to the face as the real thing. “Our enemy is no better equipped now to end the stalemate than they were when my grandfather served, and they have hardly retaken the territory we took from Coldbrook.”
Primrose narrowed her eyes at him. “They attempted to destroy the Preservation Project with a balefire bomb. That alone warrants an equal response.”
General Cask sat back in his chair, evidently unswayed by her parry. Further down the table the colonel spoke.
“Ma’am,” she said, but then she paused as if to reconsider what she’d been about to say. The little conversations around the table had all but fizzled out now that the heaviest brass were talking again, and all of them seemed to pick up on the colonel’s hesitancy. 
She was readying herself to say something dangerous, Primrose realized too late.
“Ma’am,” the colonel said again, more decisively, “until a week ago, we’ve never encountered intelligence that would suggest the Steel Rangers had ever been in possession of balefire weaponry. And as a matter of fact…”
“Colonel,” Primrose warned. “Tread carefully.”
The mare seemed to consider stopping, but then something in her expression hardened like cooling iron. She squared her shoulders and turned to face her minister directly. “Since the detonation above Stable 10, our scouts have confirmed that the enemy has constructed an encampment outside the excavated tunnel from which they have been seen providing food and water to the Stable dwellers. For all intents and purposes, they’ve organized a relief effort.”
No one at the table registered surprise. Their focus was entirely on watching Primrose, as if collectively gauging her reaction. General Cask lifted his chin toward her in the slightest gesture of challenge. This wasn’t the first time the members of her staff had discussed the topic, it seemed, and until now it had been something they’d all been stewing on with no way to safely broach the topic.
It was the sort of whisper-in-the-shadows shit Clover had specialized in rooting out before it could fester. 
The colonel fixed her with that calm, opaque stare. “Stable 10 represented a significant technological gain for the enemy. If their goal was to destroy it, why would they have gone through the effort of digging it out from the rubble without bothering to ransack it? More to the point, why would they choose a balefire bomb as their first resort? None of it makes sense, ma’am.”
“The Steel Rangers,” Primrose seethed, “have made no secret of denying the world technology it deems dangerous. It seeks to destroy the Enclave because we dare suggest the world could one day be better than the utopia it once was. They, by their very nature, do not make sense.”
Five minutes ago the threat of her anger alone would have cowed everyone in the room into supplication. Now the words glanced off them like bits of cotton fired from a foal’s pop gun.
Chairs creaked. The lieutenant looked to General Cask, and something passed between them. Cask leaned forward, resting his weight against the table as he addressed her in the tone he would a delinquent non-com.
“There have been… documents circulating since you shot Staff Sergeant Wool.”
Primrose felt the ground drop out from under her. She hadn’t known the name of the young officer who had waved a copy of Clover’s intelligence report in her face while screaming dangerous truths to anyone who would listen. It hadn’t been worth knowing because he was dead and the documents that had spilled around him were destroyed. Burned.
“I had initially doubted their veracity, seeing as there would be little reason to believe you would be capable of attacking Equestrian soil with balefire tipped missiles,” he said, his voice cold and steady like a locomotive gathering steam over frosted rails, “but at the moment, I find myself in need of reassurance. As the second commanding officer of our armed forces, I need to know you’re not the type of mare described by those documents. So I’ll ask you now, Minister Primrose. Is this the first time you’ve intended to use balefire against your enemies, or are we only your most recent attempt?”
The war room fell ghostly silent. Waiting.
Primrose sucked in a slow, deep breath in a bid to steady her nerves. It barely made a dent. They knew. Already she could see the gears spinning in each officer’s head as they examined their place in the Enclave’s hierarchy, its purpose, and the suddenly incompatible intentions of the centuries-old mare seated before them. Many of them traded deeply uncomfortable expressions as they began to come to similar conclusions. Primrose, the leader of the Enclave, was a deceiver.
She blew out a shuddering breath as she watched them turning against her, one by one. It wouldn’t take more than a minute for them to harden their resolve. Everything would be taken away. Everything would be ruined.
She stood, abruptly, her chair pirouetting away on wheels behind her. “Excuse me for a moment.”
And they watched her turn for the door, too taken aback by her sudden motion away from the table to complain. She forced herself not to run. All of them were predators like her. Predators of a lower order, yes, but they would attack all the same if they sensed fleeing prey.
Her heart thundered in her throat as she hit the door switch. It hissed open and she stepped through, then stood there in the corridor until she heard it drop shut again. Two soldiers stood at attention behind her on either side of the war room door, their hard eyes turning toward her for an instant as she turned to regard the standard issue pistol holstered on one of the soldier’s forelegs. Then she fixed her gaze on the subcompact hanging across the guard’s chest by its black nylon strap.
Her heart pounded in her throat as she said, “Give me your weapon.”
The soldier blinked before complying, dipping his neck to bring the strap over his head. “Is everything alright, ma’am?”
“No it is not,” she said as she took the subcompact in her wing, turning it to one side then the other to get a sense of its heft. It barely weighed anything. Maybe five pounds. She slipped her primary feather into the trigger guard and summoned all the calm she could muster. “Your superiors inside that room just initiated a unanimous vote, soldier. They’ve agreed to surrender New Canterlot to the enemy.”
Both soldiers went rigid. Their attention swiveled toward the war room door like sharks scenting blood. The stallion whose rifle she held withdrew his sidearm from its holster as he asked, “Would you like us to detain them, ma’am?”
The soldier wasn’t finished speaking when the door hissed open again, her senior staff having finally made up their minds to pursue her. The lieutenant general stood at the front, her hardened expression forming into a mask of shock as she saw Primrose standing less than a yard away.
Behind her, General Cask threw himself backward and started fumbling with his Pip-Buck. The older mare took in a breath as if preparing to shout a command, but she never got that far. 
“No,” she said, lifting the rifle to her shoulder. “We don’t put traitors in cells. We put them in the dirt.”
 And with that she squeezed the trigger. Everything that followed after was purely janitorial.







Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Ministry Interoffice Mail :: Crusader Encryption Enabled
To: All Personnel
From: General Cask
Subject: [no subject]
04/29/1297

all personnel detain minister primrose solus is balefire repeat solus is balefeir weponn do not let her activ 

Sincerely,
Caramel Cask
General








Primrose bore down on the medical wing with the momentum of an aging predator whose blood now stained the stone floor of its den. She could feel the encroaching danger of fresh challengers all around her. They stared at her, wide-eyed and frozen in shock as she marched past them without a word or a care. She could see it in their eyes. Their doubts. Their suspicions. Their hesitance to follow.
Her left eye was already beginning to swell thanks to the right hook General Cask had surprised her with when she’d shot her way back into the war room. The overweight fuck. He’d been able to fire off half a rambling message to anyone with a Pip-Buck or a terminal, but there was too much adrenaline sending her mind into overdrive for her to think clearly on how to handle it. He’d named her, that fuck. He’d named her.
The soldier whose rifle still bounced against her chest had chosen to follow her when she’d finished. Now he found himself marching through the Bunker’s corridors at her side, unsure of his own position in all this, and even less sure whether it would be good or bad for him in the long run now that they were surrounded by a sextet of mute Black Wing escorts. The expressionless and ridiculously armed branch of the minister’s private security formed a phalanx around them as soon as they were clear of the war room, their literal wall of flesh radiating malicious heat.
Primrose grit her teeth hard enough to chip the enamel. She wanted to shoulder her way through the doors of the medical ward and knock dents into the wall behind them, but this wasn’t a hospital like in the old days and there were no hinged doors to slam through. The black globe of Millie’s electronic eye registered her approach well before she could inflict violence on the door and slid the bulwark harmlessly out of their way. 
Not for the first time, she found herself wishing for the simplicity of that old life. When the sins of the world rested at someone else’s hooves and it was just a matter of course removing them from the picture. The world she lived in now wasn’t supposed to be this complicated, not at this point so late in the game. She’d rebuilt a civilization for fuck’s sake! Was it so hard to be fucking grateful?
Medical staff retreated into offices where they could or otherwise backed against the walls of the corridor to let their minister’s entourage pass, some of them going so far as to ask if she was alright while having the wits to know not to pursue her when they received no answer. She passed rooms occupied by soldiers in the middle of physical exams, recovery wards where a few unlucky comrades had been injured afield and were resting after surgery. 
Primrose scanned the doors until she found one she judged suitable. She pressed the switch to open it and ordered half her escort to stand guard outside and for the rest to follow. The soldier from the war room was swept into the operating room with them, much to the shock of the surgeons standing around an occupied gurney. 
The head surgeon came deadly close to ordering her out before he quickly reconsidered, the admonishment coming out as a halting sputter. He watched the Black Wing guards take positions around the door, understandably afraid he might be the reason for their visit and not understanding why. When half the medical team looked ready to start begging, Primrose leveled a feather at a mare posted behind a complicated looking cart of gas tanks and valves.
“You,” she said, her voice husky and breathless, “I need to be asleep for ten minutes. Can you do it?”
The nurse gawped at her for several unhealthy seconds. “I, um, I… yes?”
“Good.” She stepped up to the white gurney that had been used to transport the injured soldier to surgery and climbed up onto it, not caring about the lukewarm bloodstains that smeared it. When she was seated with her hind legs swinging over the side, she pulled the strap of the subcompact over her head and held it out to the bewildered stallion whom she’d procured it from. “What’s your name, soldier?”
He took it. “Triplite, ma’am.”
“Weird name.”
“Crystal Empire lineage, ma’am.”
She nodded, not much caring. “I’m going to call you Trip.”
He nodded back.
“Trip,” she said, watching the nurse hurriedly disconnect tubes meant for the soldier undergoing surgery and rolling the assembly of tanks to the side of her gurney, “if I’m not awake in ten minutes, shoot this mare in the head.”
Trip blinked, then nodded a little more shakily. “Yes, ma’am.”
Primrose laid herself down and tuned out the nurse’s panicked little sobs. Eventually a mask was produced and pressed around her muzzle. Cool gas hissed into her nose and mouth, and Primrose mused at how easy it would be for the nurse to tweak the right valve and kill her. She considered telling Trip to keep an eye out for that kind of unlikely treachery but decided not to bother. She could already feel the cracks spidering up the walls of her Enclave. The collapse would come whether or not she was alive. If they thought they could weather it without her guidance, then let the little parasites try.
The first wave of dizziness hit her like a shovel to the head, and the second washed over her like a drowning flood. She felt herself sinking as consciousness slid away.







She was back in the conference room, sitting in the same chair as before, staring up at the same floating windows as before. 
“Oh, I know that look,” she heard herself say. “You broke something.”
Primrose shot a molten glare at the construct seated to the right of her. It watched her with the same utterly disinterested expression she used with her senior staff during her morning debriefings. The same senior staff who were now cooling in pools of their own blood, their bodies scattered down the length of the war room as they tried to find cover behind whatever furniture was nearby. Only General Cask had thought to attack her in the seconds he had left, leaving her a parting gift in the form of her blackening eye.
A short burst of fire through the barrel of his chest had brought him down, and just barely in time. The regular regimen of Stimpaks that kept alive this long wouldn’t have made a physical beating any less unpleasant, and she didn’t want to think how much violence it would take to overcome her healing factor. The swelling around her eye would be mostly gone by the time she was awake, but the bruising would last for days. Twilight Sparkle’s little wondershots could heal all manner of injuries, but they couldn’t unleak blood from burst capillaries. For the first time since her foalhood, Primrose would have herself a real shiner.
“I didn’t break a damned–” 
She caught herself and bit back the anger. Not now, she told herself. There was precious little time to act as it was without her rushing to her own defense.
“Do you have my memories from today?”
Her construct snorted and pointed a feather to an empty corner of the room. “Ask the spook.”
The shadows shimmered in the corner it indicated and an instant later the Tantabus occupied the same space, its expression unconcerned and just the faintest shade of smug. Apparently Luna’s creature was taking some private amusement from the shitstorm Primrose found herself in and was no longer afraid to show it. 
“Your construct is not appraised of your experiences when you enter the dream,” it stated.
Of course it wouldn’t. Far be it for the Tantabus to convenience her in any way. “How helpful. Be somewhere else, creature. This conversation is private.”
The Tantabus didn’t move. “I will not.”
She felt her jaw begin to clench, and it took an active force of will to stop. The creature smelled blood in the water. It could choose to turn this dream into a raving nightmare and there was nothing Primrose could do to escape it until the anesthesia wore off. She chose the safe route and didn’t force the issue.
“Fine,” she said, turning to the construct. “Short version, then. I slipped up during today’s strategy meeting with the senior brass. They became aware SOLUS deploys balefire.”
Her construct’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, is that all?”
She ignored it. “I took care of it in the short term. They’re dead.”
“Celestia’s sweet tits, are you fucking serious?” The construct dragged a hoof down its face in a gesture of absolute frustration. “Okay, let’s think through the next steps. Has anyone publicly denounced you yet?”
“No,” she said. “General Cask got off a message ordering all available personnel to detain me and telling them SOLUS uses balefire, though.”
Her construct leaned back in its chair in a motion so eerily familiar that it gave Primrose goosebumps. It was like watching a reflection of herself acting of its own free will, which as she thought about it wasn’t a reassuring tableau. 
“Anything else?” it asked, blowing the words out in a heavy sigh.
“I’m on a bed in medical having happy gas pumped through my lungs. I’ve got maybe seven minutes before the nurse drags me out of this meeting.”
“Time is subjective in the dream, you know that. Slow down and do what we always do. Think. What are your options?”
She narrowed her eyes at the shade. “You mean our options.”
It let out a derisive snort. “No, I don’t. This is very much a you problem. I’m just a consultant.”
Heat boiled in Primrose’s chest and she turned her seat to face the upstart construct directly, but it spoke a fraction of a second faster before her.
“You’re more than welcome to threaten me if you think that will help, but I’d advise against it.” 
The doppelganger smiled with the same half smile Primrose wore when she had a leg up on an opponent. The muscles in her cheeks twitched sympathetically, as if they didn’t quite understand why the reflection had beaten them to the punch.
“My advice,” it continued, “is that you do nothing.”
Primrose’s lip turned up into a sneer. “So I can watch everything I built fall apart around me? I wouldn’t have bothered having you made had I known the Tantabus conjured defective copies.”
“I’m not you,” it said in a laugh before sobering. “But that only means I’m that much more of an asset to you right now. You aren’t thinking clearly, Primrose. That’s why you had that nurse put you under, so you could talk to someone who is. I’m telling you your best option right now involves the least effort. You have a fire in your house, yes, but–”
She slapped the table with the flat of her hoof. “Do nothing and let the fire burn everything down, is that it? Are you going to waste your existence trying to sell me that heap of shit?”
The construct regarded her with a steady gaze. “You’ve already eliminated your immediate threats. The message sent by that fat fuck Cask can easily be waved off as the ramblings of a dying traitor.”
“Don’t try to downplay this like it’s anywhere near that simple,” she spat. “My people follow me because they believe I’ve been chosen to lead. They believe in the Enclave because it represents a return to a world cleansed of balefire and the monstrosities it creates. We’re the light that stands against the Steel Rangers’ dark and now every fucking one of them knows my weapon is fueled by the corrupting element I’ve told them all to fear.”
The construct listened to her with that infuriatingly implacable expression, then simply shrugged once she finished. “So fucking what? You’ve got half a million loyal idiots who lap up everything you say like it drips directly from Luna’s blue tits. Most of them will still follow you if you tweak the rules.”
A fractured Enclave. Splinter groups scattering into the wastes, amplifying and repeating the little scraps of truth they took with them to the enemies poised against her. Her time spent refuting each of their claims against her power, finding less and less likely ways to slot her reasoning into the fragile narrative she’d already woven. 
No, that wasn’t a future she would allow. 
She felt something deep in her bowels quiver with a fear she hadn’t felt since the hours leading up to launching the missiles. She stood, more than ever before, at a precipice. The Steel Rangers had something deeper planned than she was seeing and they were moving against her even now. Appealing to her people, at the true heart of her power. Somewhere near the center of their actions had to be Clover. Possibly even Rainbow Dash, the one minister to survive the apocalypse meant to erase her from the board. Even in the midst of medically induced sleep she could feel her pulse beginning to race. Her limbs tremble with too much adrenaline. 
“It’s all ruined,” she whispered. Her feathers tightened around the edge of the table, and in a fit of furious rage she stood and hurled it sideways with strength she’d never be able to muster in the waking world. Twenty feet of boardroom table slammed against the wood paneled wall with a deafening crunch of shattering wood. Then she repeated herself in a scream that rattled her throat. “It’s all FUCKING ruined!”
The Tantabus tilted its head with a mocking smile. Her construct hadn’t so much as flinched. It simply observed her outburst with a faintly disappointed frown, eyeing the destroyed remains of the table. “That’s one way of looking at it,” it mused, watching her pace up and down the empty space the table recently occupied. “Should I bother telling you why you’re wrong now, or was there more furniture you wanted to toss?”
Primrose stalked in its direction and seriously considered exploring the ramifications of beating her own construct to death, but managed to veer away from the powerful impulse and did an about face in the opposite direction.
The construct took her silence as consent to speak. “Nothing is ruined, Primrose. Think. What can you do right now with the pieces you have?”
She glowered at the imprints her hooves left behind in the carpet. It was hard to think straight let alone negotiate with a defective copy of herself.
It let out an irritatingly familiar sigh. “You need to slow down and look at this logically. You were forced to execute your senior staff. Their direct subordinates will have the greatest investment in knowing why. So…?”
She huffed out an agitated breath. “So I give them something they can latch onto.”
Her construct flicked the air with a “there you go” gesture of its wing. “Exactly. Label them traitors. Easy bake, crumbs and cake.”
Primrose squinted at the construct. “The slogan from that shitty cake mix commercial?”
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” it said. “You haven’t gotten this far by being the mare who panics. Take a breath and think. How do you maneuver your pieces back into a position of strength?”
She stopped pacing and considered the construct’s question. Ever since the Steel Rangers rose up from Equestria’s ashes, the board had become progressively stacked against her. She was surrounded on all sides and had spent the better part of two centuries trying and failing to push beyond the bars of the cage they’d trapped her in. Each year that passed was another year her plans fell behind. Another twelve months of maintaining a facade of strength while more and more pegasi trickled out into the wasteland, choosing to risk their lives wearing the aegis of dustwings rather than delude themselves any longer.
She thought about General Cask’s dying message, begging the Enclave’s military wing to keep her away from SOLUS. That it was balefire.
A shudder rippled through her body. “I can’t use it,” she hissed. “They won’t tolerate that. Not balefire. If they know I’ve violated that principle, they’ll turn on me. They’re already turning on me.”
“Then don’t use it,” the construct said.
Primrose narrowed her eyes at the creature as if it had grown a second head. Several seconds ticked by as she considered its recent counsel. It was trying to manipulate her. Dissuade her from taking decisive action. No, she decided, the thing sitting in that chair wearing her body was no ally. It had to be the Tantabus attempting to manipulate her indirectly. It had to be.
She stood up straight, confident now in what she must do. “This has gone well beyond the point of maneuvering pieces,” she said, a rattle of anger rising in her voice. “No, this is… it’s over. They’re going to turn against me sooner or later and I can’t unstir the cream from the coffee. I need a new playing board.”
Her chest filled with the intake of a deep, reassuring breath. She could feel the swirl of disorienting nausea in her real body, which only made her smile. The anesthesia was wearing off, and it was only aiding in bringing fresh clarity to the decision she’d made.
“A clean slate. That’s what I need. A reset.” Her smile mutated into a feral grin which she leveled at the Tantabus like a loaded weapon. 
The creature’s expression went deadly dark with understanding. The glittering constellations comprising its form shrank to pinpoints of dim light, the black abyss swallowing its features until only the flickering motes of its eyes speared her in place. 
Its voice slammed into her in a sensory explosion. “DO NOT.”
The sound of it scraped through her skull with a vicious pain that caused her forelegs to buckle and her jaw to stretch open in a silent scream. The dream lurched violently to one side as if gravity had simultaneously shifted direction and doubled in strength, slamming her hard onto a pastoral wall painting that made the frame shatter. Office furniture quickly followed, breaking bones and tearing flesh as they impacted her body like a blacksmith’s hammer against an anvil. 
Gravity righted itself and she dropped to the carpet, her body bloodied and broken, on a heap of shattered chairs. The table she’d thrown earlier had impacted her construct. The doppelganger's form lay twisted amid the wreckage, limbs bent the wrong way, its head caved in like an overripe pumpkin. Primrose didn’t know if a construct could technically die, nor did she rightly care. She felt something shaking her shoulder. Someone’s hoof. 
Blood spilled past her broken teeth as she grinned again. 
“I’m going to carve,” she gasped, “this fucking wasteland into dust. And then it’ll just… be you and me.”
Flames wreathed the Tantabus’s horn and lashed toward her in a whip crack of agony. With wide eyes she watched her lower half trail smoke and gore as it tumbled through the air, and she began to laugh. She howled in sheer joy, while the Tantabus prepared another lance of punishing fire, relieved by the simple knowledge that none of this would matter for much longer.
She hardly noticed the strike that severed her leg. She didn’t care.
If she couldn’t stir the cream out of her coffee, then she would just brew herself a fresh cup from scratch.





Wednesday Morning. 6:40am.
Fifteen Miles East of New Canterlot.

Roach let out an uncomfortable grunt. “These are heavy.”
He watched Chops kick dirt over the embers of the night’s fire, trying to judge whether the stallion felt as constrained by his uniform as Roach did by the one he’d donned. The stiff black fabric practically disappeared against his obsidian chitin except for the bits of white and silver accents where various patches, emblems, and metal adorned the chest and collar. He had his own opinions about the thin plates of armor embedded within the duty garment, namely that he doubted they would stop a firmly thrown rock let alone a bullet fired from a rifle, but he’d kept his grumbling to himself. 
The high banks of the narrow, dried up creek had provided enough cover to allow for a small cookfire, though all they’d ended up using it for was to heat up their water enough for the crystals of their instant coffee to dissolve. Then Chops turned back to where Julip was helping prep Roach beside their bedrolls. He cocked a brow at Roach, an expression that communicated his lack of sympathy perfectly well without having to break out his notepad. They’d barely managed to make the flight into Enclave territory without stopping for breaks, and while Julip had expended a significant effort staying aloft with Roach weighing her down, she hadn’t been the one with three satchels of high explosives swaying around her neck.
Just one of the packs contained enough boom to rapidly disassemble the pony wearing it. If all three went off there wouldn’t be enough of them left to smudge a window.
Roach returned Chops’ look with one of his own. Chops wasn’t the one who would be hauling these things when the bullets started flying. 
“I’d be worried if they weren’t,” Julip said, both of her wings working to make sure the strap of each satchel wouldn’t tangle once they were airborne. 
Coronado hadn’t needed any convincing to sign off on their little solo stunt. They were past the point where anyone had the luxury to argue for or against. If it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, it meant one or more of them had been killed and wouldn’t have to worry anymore. The Elder had cleared them to take whatever they thought they could carry, which turned out to be three charges. The quartermaster, a brick wall of a stallion who made Sledge seem cute and cuddly by comparison, had grudgingly agreed to cut into his rack time by fitting each of the charges with makeshift impact detonators which now protruded from the bottom of each narrow satchel like a swollen steel teat. 
The quartermaster had assured them that bumping the detonator probably wouldn’t trigger the plastic explosives, but they had also noted how absolutely reluctant he’d been to jostle the packs when he’d given them over. To say it hadn’t inspired confidence would be the understatement of the century. 
The satchels were, by the nature of their hurried modifications, permanently armed.
“One of the straps is getting caught in my chitin,” he rumbled.
Julip reached up around his neck and twisted the problem strap straight. It brought her face bare inches from his and he took the opportunity to peck a kiss on her button nose. She smiled at that, but it wasn’t enough to mask the deep anxiety pinching the corners of her eyes. 
“Better?” she asked.
He grunted. “Thank you, yes.”
She nodded, and he felt her wing slide down to cup his cheek. He closed his eyes and focused on the sensation for several long moments. Then he heard her let out a resigned breath.
“Tell me the plan again.”
He managed not to smile at that. She would feel it against her feathers and it would just make her doubt the wisdom of what they were doing even more. Calling this a plan was an act of generosity that would make Rarity blush. It was closer to throwing a dart at a target a full city block away while blindfolded. Plus the dart was crooked. And the target was attached to a molerat with its tail on fire. The only thing this “plan” had going for it was its utter, haphazard simplicity.
The fact that they weren’t bothering to pack up their bedrolls said all that was needed about their chances.
“You drop me and fly away. Chops provides cover. I guide the bombs to the target.”
“In detail,” Julip insisted. 
He grimaced but knew better than to argue. This had been something that her team leader had required them to do before a field operation, and even though her team had been killed and she’d been imprisoned by Autumn Song before their first mission had a chance to succeed, the act of walking through each objective had an air of ritual around it that Julip had been unwilling to let go of. 
It comforted her. That was all he needed to know.
“Follow the clouds to the mountain,” he said, his voice low and calm. “Make visual confirmation with the target. You’ll drop me, take cover in the clouds, and fly due east with Chops. We rendezvous at the cabin and wait there until we know we’re safe.”
He opened his eyes and saw Julip was frowning at him. She wanted him to explain his part, something he had a difficult time visualizing without leveling an angry look at Chops.
“I descend along the west side of the plume and provide as much of a light show as I can manage. Then I pop my wings,” he continued, aware that he was glazing over a transformation he’d given up trying to pull off around the same time Julip’s grandparents were still learning to eat solid food, “and… go for the power station. I drop the satchels, cross my feathers, and fly for my life.”
He carefully omitted the part where he didn’t think his magic would hold out for the several hours it would take him to fly back to Stable 10. Assuming he survived long enough to turn tail and run, he was two centuries out of practice and being steeped in balefire radiation hadn’t done his casting any favors when it came to efficiency. Ghouling had gifted him with unnatural longevity but it had also imposed hard limits on his ability to change. He didn’t think he was at any risk of his magic giving out without warning, but there would be nothing he could do when it began to falter.
“You forgot the last part.”
He lifted a brow to Julip in silent question.
“You come back,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word. “After you’re done, win or lose, you come back to me.”
She stared up at him with an intensity he hadn’t seen from her outside those momentary flashes of brillant, passionate anger that had been the much needed spice to their journey with Ginger and Aurora. Her pale green eyes swam with tears but she would be damned if she’d allow a single one to fall. 
He quirked his lip into a crooked smile. “I thought you and I were trying to keep things casual.”
“Fuck casual,” she spat, and she swiped a grudging wing across her face. “You’re going to make it back home for me. You understand?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
She sniffed and cleared her throat several times, her body language flustered. “Good. Right. Okay, Chops, how are we doing on time?”
Chops had been making a concerted effort not to notice the exchange between the two of them and had occupied himself with a last minute check over his weapon. It was one of the light assault rifles they’d begged off the quartermaster, though the part about it being “light” was a matter of opinion. He and Julip carried one each and they hadn’t helped make the flight any less arduous. Each was tipped with a suppressor the size of a thermos, an attachment that would do little to lessen the noise of their weapons but would hopefully diffuse it enough to prevent half the Enclave from erupting in retaliation the moment one of them pulled the trigger. 
There was also the unspoken problem they would face if they needed to shoot in mid-flight. Neither she or Chops were entirely certain how that bit of aerial stunt work would function. The Steel Rangers had never managed, or more likely bothered, to seek out enough dustwings to mount an aerial attack against the Enclave because the Rangers had no experience flying. As a result the Enclave had never bothered training its soldiers to repel such an attack. The only situation any of them had been trained to shoot while in flight were during dives toward an enemy on the ground.
Roach glanced down at his trusty combat shotgun, still strapped to his foreleg and loaded with Ranger grade buckshot. Once he was far enough away from Julip to use his magic safely, firing and reloading wouldn’t be nearly the problem she and Chops would have.
Then he blinked with the realization that he’d drifted off and turned to catch Chops’ answer. The stallion had just finished spinning one extended feather in a tight circle in front of his chest. His expression was serious. They needed to get moving, and not just because every second they wasted shrank Aurora’s window of opportunity to catch Primrose. 
For this to have the best chance of working, it needed to have maximum visibility. Chops had admitted he’d been in the minority of enlisted soldiers who didn’t regularly attend church services, but Julip did and she knew exactly how bad the roads leading to the chapel tended to snarl during the first mass of the day. 
“C’mon,” Julip said, her eyes on the boiling clouds overhead, “let’s go ruin Primrose’s fucking day.”





A door opened and slammed somewhere in the Maidenhead and Fiona woke. 
She listened to the distant sound of hooves scuffing old floorboards, the mutter of someone only barely more awake than she was as they started their day. Elsewhere in the little bookended inn, Portia could be heard complaining to someone at the front desk. Maybe a friend, or her father, or someone else willing to hear her grievances. Fiona only caught bits of words but there were enough of them for her to piece together that today was supposed to be Portia’s morning off work, and someone hadn’t shown. 
Fiona pressed her cheek deeper into the paper thin pillow and marveled how life’s little inconveniences never seemed to care what side of the border you were on. Enclave, Ranger, or wastelander, it didn’t matter. Someone was always calling in sick. 
She’d begun drifting off again when Aurora shifted beneath her arm and a warm, frustrated sigh blew through the tufted fur down her chest. She hadn’t realized she was still holding onto the little mare, but when she flexed the fingers of her left hand they slid through a rasping curtain of dust-rough feathers. Aurora had rolled over during the night and had commandeered her bicep as a pillow. It was unexpectedly cute.
A flicker of hope began running through her mind, but she carefully plucked it up and set it aside. With the same hand she’d gotten under Aurora’s wings, she gave her a gentle shake. “Hey,” she whispered. “We gotta get up.”
Aurora’s response came so quickly that it caught her off guard. “I’m already awake.”
Fiona blinked several times at the deep, gravelly quality of the mare’s voice. She sounded like she’d caught a cold. Gently, she created space between the two of them until she could see Aurora’s face. She looked like a wreck.
“Are you feeling okay?”
Aurora nodded, slowly, and rubbed at her eyes as she sat up. “Yeah. Just tired. Didn’t sleep.”
That got Fiona staring. “At all?”
Aurora just shook her head and offered a little half shrug, as if to say I can’t do anything about it now. Then she swung her good leg over the edge of the bed and carefully dragged her false one after it with a heavy thump of its rubberized sole. “I’ll be fine,” she croaked, wincing slightly as a feather came up to touch her throat. “Anything from the radio?”
Fiona continued watching her from where she lay on the bed, her own brain struggling to keep pace with a suddenly mobile Aurora. “I didn’t hear it. I just woke up.”
Aurora grunted and dropped onto all fours to rummage through her saddlebags. She tugged one of the nondescript flasks of water from the pack and took a long pull from its uncapped neck, draining half of it before stopping for air. Then she cleared her throat a few times, the sound of it losing its rasp by the end, and tugged out Coronado’s radio. It was silent. No one back home had tried making contact. And judging by the way Aurora didn’t react, she’d already known that was the case.
Fiona scrubbed at her face to chase off the last of her dreamless sleep and sat up, causing the bed to elicit its usual creaking protest. “You sound like you’re sick,” she observed. 
“Ghouling,” Aurora said in answer.
She winced. With everything that had happened, she’d almost forgotten about that. “Anything I can do to–”
Aurora looked up at her from the saddlebags with an expression that begged her to stop. She did. 
“Sorry.”
The tension in her eyes softened. “Don’t be. Still a sore spot, is all.”
She nodded and decided to change the subject. “How are we on caps?”
Aurora turned back to their gear and pulled open the little satchel Fiona kept their currency in. “Should be fine for a few more days.”
Which, depending on how today and tomorrow went, could change drastically.
With a reluctant groan she forced herself off the bed and onto her feet, pointedly ignoring the general complaints of her body as the cool morning air chilled parts of her which had been recently warmed. As they gathered up their gear Fiona stole a few glances at Aurora, noting her half-lidded exhaustion with a touch of worry.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Aurora let out a little noise of frustration before answering with a grudging nod. “Will be. Don’t normally lose a night’s sleep without coffee.”
“Then let’s find you some and get moving.” She took her satchel from Aurora and slung it around her neck before moving toward the door. Then she added with the same overly cheery tone that her mother had been an expert at weaponizing, “We don’t want to miss morning prayers!”
The words would prove more prescient than she expected. With Aurora stumping along after her, they quickly found themselves once more following the clean gray slabs of New Canterlot sidewalk toward the monolithic chapel at the capital’s heart. They joined a thin crowd of people making their way in the same direction, most of them predominantly unicorns with a smattering of earth ponies mixed in for flavor. A procession of all the flightless citizens, Fiona realized, and it took some mental gymnastics to work out why the air above the stonework buildings wasn’t similarly choked. The pegasi of New Canterlot had evidently already made the short flight across town or were waiting until the last minute to depart. 
Likely the former, given how few non-pegasi she had seen in attendance last night. It wasn’t as if the Enclave regarded the benefits of wings with anything approaching subtlety.
After asking a passerby for directions to a good cup of coffee and enduring the subsequent probing questions about her gryphonhood, they procured two scalding hot cups and spent the remainder of the long walk to the chapel sipping in companionable silence. Aurora seemed to perk up the slightest bit the longer she nursed her drink, and by the time they reached the plaza benches they were both actively scanning the crowd for anything that might call itself breakfast.
They found it in the form of a dubious looking push-cart staffed by a jittery skeleton of a mare. Standing beneath a gaudy red and yellow umbrella, she had set herself up right in the middle of the sidewalk much to the visible annoyance of a clothier who was looming behind the window of his shop. They joined the line and Fiona watched happy customers stroll by with what looked like unadorned cubes of meat speared on a wooden stick. Disappointment settled into her features. Good ol’ molerat, the chicken of the wasteland. 
The mare behind the cart worked with the flare of a performer, using a bit of paper tucked into the corner of her mouth to grab a fresh skewer and grinning as she used the sharp tip to flip row after row of roughly cut cubes of meat. Her eyes were ringed with dark mascara, applied thick and smeared just enough to suggest it was intentionally done, and it clashed with her yellow coat and reddish mane just enough to give her grin a crazed quality. 
As Fiona scrounged the ten caps each to cover their portions, she found it interesting that an earth pony was doing work in New Canterlot that didn’t involve an iron collar or standing between the traces of a heavy wagon. More disorientingly, the display board of the cart bore a sloppy oil marker drawing of a yellow lemon with a black smiley face slashed across the rind. The words “LEMON’S IGUANA POKIES” crowded together around the edges.
Lemon made five stabbing motions with the skewer and tipped the sharp end of it toward Fiona until the gryphon took it from her mouth, careful not to touch the glaze of spit she left behind. Five more manic stabs and she had another one leveled at Aurora who hesitantly pinched her feathers over the grease-smeared end.
“Thanks,” she said, trying for a smile but only managing a polite grimace. Lemon said nothing in return. She just whipped that same manic grin to the next customer in line and continued on.
They wandered along the curving sidewalk while they ate. The meat was a little gamey and was so heavily salted it could have been pickled had been practically pickled, but it wasn’t strictly inedible. To no one’s surprise Fiona finished hers first, though she did so with a dubious frown.
“Must be an acquired taste,” she murmured, flicking the empty skewer into a passing receptacle. 
Aurora wrinkled her nose at her own half-eaten “pokies” and opted to drop the uneaten pieces into the same waste bin. “Must be.” 
She eyed Aurora for a moment before her attention was pulled away by a pair of uniformed soldiers making their way purposefully toward one of the nearby benches where a small crowd had gathered. Fiona recognized the tinny sound of a cheap radio being turned up too loud and made a point of nudging Aurora slightly away from the gathering. The soldiers had a look of authoritative annoyance in the way they approached the group, which was something neither of them could afford to get mixed up with.
“...ursday, at twenty-three hundred hours, I will give the command to fire SOLUS into the heart of New Canterlot. I am aware there will inevitably be civilian casualties, but I do not make this decision lightly. Minister Primrose’s attack on Stable…”
Coronado’s recorded voice held the group’s attention, so when the two soldiers shoved their way through the huddled perimeter they were met with a chorus of indignant shouts that abruptly shrank into silence when they realized what was happening. One of the soldiers reached down and plucked the radio out of the lap of the stallion who’d been holding it and clicked it off while the other began loudly lecturing the rapidly dispersing group against aiding the enemy by spreading their propaganda. 
The stallion who owned the radio abruptly stood and began demanding to have his property returned to him, arguing that he’d been listening to Hightower Radio for the past six years and no one had bothered him then. Fiona felt a tiny stab of pride at hearing that despite knowing the stallion likely pictured her as some rugged wasteland mare and not the gryphon who was passing by his confrontation a mere ten yards away. 
But when the soldier held onto his radio, the stallion became insistent. So much so that he lit his horn and tried to take it back from the soldier. Several of the original listeners who hadn’t slinked away into the crowd began yelling, simultaneously for the soldier to let him have the radio and for the stallion to stop and let it go. More black uniforms were descending the chapel steps now and making their way toward the confrontation, but it was slow going through the morning crowd. 
The soldier holding the radio visible snapped. With one wing he lifted it over his head and brought it down onto the flagstones with a heaving effort. Plastic shattered and bits of circuit board skittered in all directions causing the thickening group of onlookers to back away with varying degrees of complaint. 
The stallion didn’t move, and Fiona felt the hairs down her neck stand on end. The eyes of the second soldier were busy scanning the crowd for threats and quickly settled on her, silently warning her off. The stallion’s chest broadened with deep, furious breaths as he steeled himself for the violence he was about to inflict.
Behind the steeples of the church, a stuttering flicker of emerald light drew her eye up toward the looming stump of Canterlot Mountain. She stared at it in confusion, watching it descend down the billowing column of ashen clouds toward the structures below. Her hand went to Aurora’s shoulder, pulling her attention away from the confrontation and pointing toward the falling star. Others followed her gesture, as did the soldier who had been eyeballing her, and a slow silence began to descend through the plaza as a spark of balefire fell toward the mountain.







Rushing wind obliterated all other sounds as Roach plunged toward the mountain. Pale green ichor flowed from the newly made hole in his shoulder in a fine, stinging spray as air peeled across the wound at terminal velocity. It wouldn’t kill him, but the sound Julip had made when the bullet punched through his thin armor of chitin had left scars all on its own. 
Following the outward expanding flood of clouds to its origin had been as easy as tracking the flow of a river up to the headwaters. Had they the stamina and drive it would have been accomplished just as easily if they had started from Fillydelphia. The absolute disruption of the wasteland’s natural weather meant the clouds marched only in one direction, away from the source. They’d seen it before they landed to make camp for the night, a bulbous charcoal tumor on an otherwise gray horizon. Then, as they took flight to cross those last few miles toward their target, that tumor had grown into a boiling mountain that seemed to pile upon itself layer after layer like a magnificent upwelling of unnatural hatred. A lightless storm that never stopped, never tired, and never slowed.
The first soldiers to break patrol formation and arc toward them hadn’t understood what they’d found until it was too late. They slid across that long gap like a group of friends crossing the street to say hello, and then one of them noticed Roach riding atop Julip’s back and their wings pulsed to quicken their approach. They had been concerned. Worried they had come across one of their own, too injured to fly and being aided along by a mare too small to be trusted with his weight. An injured comrade. Roach had felt his stomach lurch when he understood they’d unintentionally baited the soldiers with their own loyalty.
There had been four of them flying in crisp formation, wingtips to hind hooves in a lopsided V. Chops had responded to their approach by wrenching his forward momentum straight vertical, collapsing both wings around the light assault rifle slung from his shoulder, and opening fire on the approaching formation in short, deadly bursts as he reached the apex of his ascent above them.
Two of the soldiers abruptly folded and fell as if they’d been motes of tissue paper suddenly encountering a wingful of pitched gravel. Their bodies tumbled, legs splayed wide as they dropped like ragdolls. The soldier who had led the formation and whose head Roach had seen buck sideways at a sickly angle caught the wind mid-tumble and his wings locked open. Of the two who survived Chops’ surprise assault, one folded his wings and threw himself into a dive toward the one caught in a death spiral. The other banked hard, eyes wide and upcast in predatory rage, and threw her left wing down to rotate her belly and the rifle slung beneath it to bear on Chops.
She unleashed a gout of panic fire across the vertical distance, then rolled again to pile fresh speed into an ascent of her own. Roach watched the mare rocket away on wings well accustomed to the abuse and fatigue of rapid flight, then turned his attention to Julip and the boiling nexus of clouds approaching from below. He’d pressed his muzzle to her ear and urged her forward, coaxing her mind to focus on the mission ahead of her rather than the fight dropping away behind.
“When I drop,” he’d said, “get as far away from me as you can.”
She hadn’t answered, nor had he expected one. Neither of them knew how far the danger zone would extend once he summoned his magic, but he knew he’d come close to killing Aurora the last time he’d used it in earnest. It hadn’t been long after their departure from the Stable when Julip asked what if his power didn’t manifest itself after he dropped, and it had been a difficult time reassuring her that it would. She had never seen him as anything other than a changeling who’d lost his fragile, translucent wings to the decay of ghouling. It was hard for her to wrap her head around dropping what she saw as a unicorn from a fatal height.
Then the distant crackling of gunfire fell silent, and he’d looked back to see a pegasus beginning a lifeless descent toward the cloud tops while the survivor bolted toward them. Only when their shape continued to resolve into more and more black did Roach know Chops had come out the victor. 
Elsewhere across the sky, dark figures had begun bending toward them in response to the gunfire.
Roach thumped a hoof against Julip’s outstretched forelegs, bidding her to descend. They needed speed if they were to evade the literal swarm closing around them. And she needed the cover of clouds if she hoped to disappear after he let go.
He’d felt his stomach rise in his throat as Julip nosed down. For several seconds gravity fell away and he had to hold onto her to keep from drifting apart. Wind began to scream over them with increasing velocity, drowning out the faint pops of pursuing gunfire behind them. They couldn’t see the bullets but they both knew they were there, buzzing past them on all sides, their own trajectories flying wide as the distance between them and their prey stretched toward the abyss.
Roach had begun leaning forward to tell Julip he was going to drop when an explosion of sudden weight and pain tore through his shoulder. His grip around her sprang loose and he heard her let loose a scream of sheer animal panic. He knew deep down she thought he’d died right then, because what else could she think as he tore loose and tumbled through her outstretched wing? He’d done his best to right himself as he fell, giving her a fleeting visual sign that he was still kicking and the plan was still on. And then he’d shot through the first layers of boiling turbulence sent up by factory-tainted clouds, nerves in his shredded shoulder screaming for the wind to cease its assault across newly ruined flesh, diving into the upwelling maelstrom to which he’d come to put an end.
As he shot through the bottom of the churning clouds he risked a glance back and tried to make out Julip and Chops against the slithering overcast, but the irradiated ash they seeded with it made it next to impossible. It was all dark on dark. He had to take it on faith that they would be alright.
He turned his focus forward again, down toward the jagged plateau of Canterlot Mountain and its immense complex of weather factories. Dim shapes of pegasi slid through the space in between, unaware for the moment of the attack they’d launched. Somewhere nearby, he knew, the bodies of three dead soldiers descended with him. He forced his thoughts away from that. He could regret later. 
He spotted the power junction. A fenced square of chain link surrounding an array of indistinct metallic shapes, all the size of a postage stamp. He lifted the hoof unburdened by his strapped shotgun to the satchels jostling in the wind on their straps, reassuring himself that they hadn’t gotten tangled. The gesture nudged his trajectory slightly away from the growing target. He twisted his shoulders and adjusted. He was a javelin fluting its way toward a cluster of old technology whose fragility he knew only from the anecdotes of a disillusioned defector and a mare he’d come to care for deeply. 
Win or lose, he was going to make it back to her.
For as long as Roach had been alive, he’d never fully understood the deep architecture of pony magic. Before the bombs carved lasting craters into the well of their power unicorns, kirin, and especially alicorns all seemed to him to be capable of pulling force from the very air around them as easy as breathing. Magic seeped into their very being as if its entire purpose for existing was to be manipulated and channeled by those few creatures born sensitive to it. It was their nature to bend raw magic to their will, and it had been that power that inspired all the fear and jealousy which drove Primrose to do the things she’d done.
Magic never came so easily to changelings. They were born incapable of drawing from that vast well that even the feeblest earth pony could touch. It was anybody’s guess as to why. Some believed it was a flaw in their biology while others thought changeling minds were too primitive to comprehend the powers of creation. The changelings never needed explanation. Roach knew what he was from the moment Chrysalis had first sent him and his siblings out into the world in search of sustenance. 
He was a parasite. He and his kind fed, as they had always done, off the strong emotions given off by those who could harness magic. Ponies were always the first and most easily accessible option, but the kirin villages dotting the dense forests of Equestria were often targeted in a pinch. For many centuries, stretching well before the fraught decades of modernization and Elements of Harmony, the denizens of Equestria comforted themselves in believing their changeling neighbors fed solely on love. It was a neat, easily sold story that never failed to cast their kind as the worst brand of thieves. But love was only one item on the vast menu of emotions ponies had on offer. 
Emotions, especially those of creatures who touch true magic, contain power. Love, fear, joy, anticipation, lust, hatred, and every shade in between all provide siphons from which changelings tap into magic they otherwise cannot touch. It was how Roach and those who were once like him filled themselves with that true magic.
Since the moment Aurora stumbled out of her Stable, radiating terror and dread, he’d sipped that power. When Ginger returned to Blinder’s Bluff, damaged but alive, he’d lapped at the waves of lust that welled up between them ever after. He’d skimmed what he could take of Aurora’s guilt over Gallow’s slow death and fed off the hope they’d all felt when Fillydelphia first rose into view past the mountains. Within him now were drams upon drams of Beans’ innocent glee. The low, thrumming anxiety of her parents. He’d topped up entire cisterns with Aurora’s grief and rage, so much so that he’d had to stop himself before it rekindled those same emotions he’d felt for the loss of his family. 
And then there was this morning. That simply admission from Julip that she didn’t just view him as a source of physical comfort. He had felt the instant when her conflicted feelings of simple, self-conscious lust galvanized into something more. 
Of all the magic he’d taken, all the myriad emotions he’d tapped to collect that power, Julip’s love for him gilded all of it with radiant fire. He was no savior. He was barely even the hero of his own story. His body was shattered, his magic tainted, and his future uncertain. Yet he was loved, and that was enough.
Deafened by wind, plummeting nose first toward a shattered mountain, Roach’s fissured horn flared like a sickly green beacon and he began to change. 
Curtains of irradiated light swept across his outstretched hooves in a bow shock of corrupted energy, flowing over cracked chitin and sliding into joints as if he were diving through water in slow motion. He set his jaw in grim determination as black carapace gave way to windswept fur the color of autumn wheat. The metallic scent of polluted air flooded his nose and throat as senses dulled by his ghouling rushed back in high definition as his old pegasus form slid past his head, neck, and shoulders. He felt his wings return to him, pressed to his ribs, and he fought down the tiniest of sobs at the sensation they brought back.
More than two hundred years had passed since he’d buried the stallion he’d once been. Two centuries since he’d worn the disguise his husband lovingly named Sunny Meadows and his daughter simply called dad.
He could feel the wind rushing through the unkempt mess of his grass green mane, slipping through the feathers of each closed wing. It felt good. He savored it for as many short seconds as he thought he could afford and then, as he saw the first signs of the patrol formations below beginning to break up with the first sign of his approach, he turned on the light.
The empty space where his cracked horn had been disguised exploded with brilliant, blinding green fire that trailed behind him like a comet. In the same instant he flung both wings open and suppressed a whoop of relief when he felt them begin cutting through the empty air, guiding him straight down the western side of the cloud column in full, undeniable view of Primrose’s crown jewel city. His lips parted in a fierce grin as sallow, green light illuminated the chimney of newly minted clouds streaking by a few yards from his belly like they’d been lit by a dropped torch. They would be seeing him now or else they were all blind.
He shrugged one shoulder to reassure himself the satchel charges were still there and then he turned his attention to the growing buildings of the weather factory complex below. The power junction had grown from the size of a stamp to that of an outstretched book and grew larger by the second. Black clad soldiers flying on patrol now appeared to hang stationary as they rose to meet an undeniable new threat. Flickers of yellow light sputtered from a few of them, the unmistakable flash of directed gunfire, but the distances were still too great to be effective. Still, that would change. 
Roach flicked his hoof to disengage his shotgun from its rail lock and heard the satisfying clack of metal slamming into metal as it extended into firing position. He leaned his descent toward the first source of gunfire he’d seen and likely the obstacle with the least trigger discipline. At the relative speeds they were traveling he wouldn’t need to kill any of them. Just spook the one who’d shown the most fear with a few aimed shots and dive straight through the formation. 
He leveled his shotgun on the growing form of that pegasus and exhaled slowly.
White-hot pain and a crippling force slammed into him from behind at the exact same moment. He screamed in sudden rage and confusion as his concentration faltered and his magic, along with his disguise, evaporated half a second later. The sky around him whirled around him in a disorienting spiral as something clung to him, beat against him with something hard, and screamed what his stunned mind translated into gibberish as he fell.
Something angular and unyielding cracked against the back of his head hard enough to send spots of light in his vision. He tried to light his horn again but whoever had attacked him clubbed him a second time. Then he felt feathers yanking at the straps around his neck. It took him several precious milliseconds to push his thoughts far enough through the pain to realize someone was on him and that they were trying to take the satchels.
He managed to turn his head just enough to see the enraged face of the soldier from the patrol Chops had attacked and who’d plunged through the clouds after his fallen comrade. That other stallion had been well and truly dead, but the one now working furiously to relieve Roach of his satchel charges hadn’t known that. Judging by his red-rimmed eyes and the fresh tear tracks he wore like a blindfold, he knew now.
Roach let out a sound of raw aggression and clamped his teeth around the wingtip that had gotten purchase of a strap. The stallion latched around his back howled in pain and wrenched his wing away, leaving behind several blue primary feathers in Roach’s jaw. He spat them out and hunched his back as far as he could, forcing wind and aerodynamics to take control and violently alter their tumble in the opposite direction. It almost worked. The sudden lurch caused the stallion’s grip around his barrel to slip, but not fail, leaving him clinging tightly to Roach’s right side. 
He could see the soldier’s eyes snap to the trio of satchels bouncing against his chest and the thought forming in his head. Before he could make a play for the bags, though, Roach managed to get his foreleg between them and the barrel of his shotgun firmly wedged against the soldier’s jaw.
“Don’t,” he snarled.
“You murdered Suede!” the soldier, all of twenty years old, bellowed back. “You fucking changeling scum, you murdered–”
The stallion snapped a hoof toward the satchels. Roach jerked the shotgun away from his head and rammed it into the joint of his sapphire blue leg, then flicked the trigger. The explosion of light and sound paled in comparison to the willowy scream of the soldier as shock caused his grip around Roach to break. Roach watched him tumble off into the wind, curling into a ball around his ruined foreleg as he went. 
“Open your wings,” he murmured, watching the soldier drifting at terminal velocity just a few widening yards away, but the stallion only screamed in rising shock.
Roach rumbled with a rising growl as the factory complex grew closer and more distinct. He could see wagons moving between the smokestacks and the earth ponies who hauled them along. He only had seconds as the two of them plummeted through the patrols which had risen to erase him.
He racked a second shell into the chamber and aimed it above the yowling soldier he’d maimed. A crack of thunder split the air and the soldier flinched and reflexively snapped open his wings in panic. Roach grimaced as the kid careened away, stabilized his own descent, and tried not to think about how many precious seconds he’d wasted snapping the soldier out of it. The radiation the kid took by just being in brief contact while his magic was at full output had already made his life expectancy look bleak, but that didn’t mean Roach had to doom him to a horrendous death with a second dose. 
Still, he racked a third shell in case the kid decided to try again.
For the second time, changeling magic swarmed over his body until the sights and smells of the world around him grew sharper. He angled his wings outward and slowly added pitch to his cannonball drop, dragging the end of his trajectory across brutalist factory buildings until he was plummeting directly toward the chain link enclosure surrounding the power junction.
He ignored his aching head and pulsed his wings, piling on the speed he’d lost, and poured even more magic into the flaring torch of his horn. A warbling wail of an alarm rose up from the top of Canterlot Mountain and he could see figures abandoning wagons and darting through open doors, and it would only occur to him afterward why none of them were taking flight to intercept him. He’d heard that alarm before, a long time ago, when his untainted wings had been caked in fresh soil and the only thought that plagued him was whether he’d remembered to pick up spaghetti sauce for dinner. 
It was the same alarm that had wailed from the parapet of Canterlot Castle. The one that had been a prelude to the rain of balefire which came later.
He shuddered. The green light, the radiation. How could they know any better? They thought he was a falling bomb.
He put their terror out of his mind and snaked the hoof unburdened by his weapon around the canvas straps. Satchels jostled and bounced in the wind as he lifted them from his neck. Three rows of soot-caked factories lurched toward him as he drew himself level across their rooftops. Then one was behind him. And a second. And finally the last. A rat’s nest of steel pylons, electrical transformers, and black insulated wire cruised toward him at blistering speed.
He released the breath he’d been holding and dropped the charges.
Straps fluttered like ripped parachutes as each explosive block drifted below and behind him. He watched them shrink, and shrink, and shrink until he began to worry he’d overshot the target. The electrical station slid below him with the angry buzz of massive transformers, then an instant later his chest and belly slammed upward as if he’d been bodily assaulted by a giant. 
He snapped his eyes back to see a dirty, dark ribbon of soil and rubble rocketing into the sky he’d occupied a moment earlier, trailed by twisted beams of metal and discharging electricity. The air hissed and snapped with half a dozen crawling purple-white arcs before vanishing. There was no spectacular column of fire. No mushroom cloud of oily black smoke. Every joule of energy packed into those three explosions had been converted into as much raw, destructive energy as chemically possible. Roach risked a sharp bank to get a better view of the power station but there wasn’t much to see. Lumps of rubble the size of carriages exploded against pavement, punched holes through the roofs of nearby buildings, and shattered against the scarred slope of Canterlot Mountain to form miniature, harmless rockslides. 
Where the power station had been much of the infrastructure was still visible, if not utterly deformed by the explosions. As the dust and smoke began to drift away, Roach caught a glimpse of a bean shaped crater left in its wake. One of the pylons had collapsed and lay in a heap on one end while several yards of chain link fence simply didn’t exist anymore. 
He straightened out of his bank and let his new trajectory take him back the same way he’d come, back over the factory rooftops and into a steep ascent. It was then he realized he couldn’t hear the wailing alarm, nor was his view of the far side of the factory complex obscured by choking columns of ashen cloud. Because there were no clouds.
The factories had all ground to a halt.
And a bullet pierced his ribs. 







The distance between New Canterlot and the cracked peak of its iconic mountain weren’t great, but they were far enough apart for the sight of what transpired to reach its citizens significantly quicker than the sound. 
Aurora felt just as confused as everyone else who stood crowded outside the chapel. They all watched the flickering point of green light fall alongside the rising cloud column, briefly wink out, and then appear again a moment later. Then it leveled out and streaked away to the north and a tiny geyser of rock and soil plumed up from some part of the factory behind him. The light stuttered, then vanished as it blinked off entirely. A moment later the sounds arrived and they were all subjected to the ghostly wail of a distant siren, followed by the muffled crack of thunder.
And then, when it was all over, a suffocating hush descended upon the crowded square.
At the base of the behemoth column of ashen clouds, a break began to appear and a distant forest of smokestacks slowly grew visible beneath the murk. Then the sliver of clarity began to widen as the column kept lifting away. Sleep-deprived and thoroughly unimpressed with the weak coffee they’d procured on the way down, it took Aurora nearly half a minute to process exactly what she was seeing. The cloud factories had just… stopped working, and they were watching the last puffs of their production wafting up toward the blanket of overcast. 
The significance of what she was witnessing didn’t register until the end of that column reached the thick layer of clouds above, lingered for another minute or two as if it too were uncertain what was happening, and then parted along invisible seams.
A cry of shock rippled through the crowd as blue sky emerged and a widening shaft of light sliced through the gloom. A pegasus treading air a few yards above her shouted in outrage, as if cursing the new rent would somehow pull it shut. Someone on the ground nearby began screaming the word no over and over again, his voice shrill with rising panic. Then someone jostled Aurora, apparently not noticing her as they turned to be someplace else, and she began paying attention to the crowd around her.
The pegasi among them were almost uniformly descending into something approaching animal panic, either screaming at whoever had caused the sky to suddenly open or rushing for the sealed chapel door to alert the people they believed could help. Several had already begun taking to the air and were either turning to rush home or were making a beeline for the soot-caked factories now exposed on the mountaintop. Many of those who chose the latter were uniformed soldiers, and Aurora found herself hoping whoever had launched the attack had the sense to already be fleeing the scene.
Their departure made it easier to pick out the unicorns and earth ponies in the crowd, and she noticed as they watched the hole in the clouds widen their reactions were much more subdued. Many of them were covering their mouths. Some had tears in their eyes. Fewer yet were openly marveling at what they were seeing, and it clicked for Aurora. All they’d ever known was a sky pumped full of polluted gloom. For them, this was likely the first time they’d seen it untainted. 
Somewhere in the thickening soup of too-warm bodies a soldier's radio barked with the harried voice of a mare claiming to be in pursuit of a changeling infiltrator and requesting support. Overhead, black clad figures were already peeling toward the ancient mountain like a cloud of carrion birds racing toward prey. 
The word changeling rendered the crowd momentarily silent as heads turned toward the unseen radio, and Aurora saw the moment when it all clicked. 
Eyes widened. Heads turned back to the growing tear in the sky and realization sank in an instant later. The capital city had just been attacked by a changeling, and it had succeeded. 
As the skies tore open above their heads, the shining city of New Canterlot descended into animal panic.








Target coordinates accepted.
Target 011 registered to queue.
Soonest solar discharge window: [Error 43: Eccentric Orbit].


Primrose’s feathers flicked across the keys of her personal terminal, saved the new targeting data, then tapped through a familiar sequence to begin the process again from the start. A dense window appeared strewn with text fields that automatically populated with output and orbital values that were two centuries obsolete. She tabbed through each one and emptied them of the junk data. Then she picked up a thick black marker, half-stood from her chair, and wrote a squeaking 11 on the tactical map she’d taped to the bulkhead wall. Beside the fresh marking read the label MSD Alpha 19.
She’d agonized over whether or not to spare that particular target, albeit briefly. The old Ministry of Technology munitions storage depot was one of only three she and Spitfire had selected to preserve following the wake of their balefire bombardment and its contents had been a major reason why she’d been able to arm and armor her fledgling Enclave when the Steel Rangers first signaled their intentions to take territory beyond the ruined coastal cities within which they’d formed. It was also thanks to the redundant systems stored inside those depots that the Enclave had set so quickly to the task of constructing the rudimentary weather factories atop Canterlot Mountain.
Factories which now stood silent beneath a blue sky.
She set the marker back down on her desk and pulled up to her keyboard. Those depots had lost their value as soon as they’d been stripped of their fabricators. Now they were glorified warehouses for military grade talismans, the continued existence of which were too much of a temptation and far too great a liability in a wasteland devoid of law and order.
Her Enclave had been a noble experiment, she thought as she punched the coordinates of a medium sized village into the system, but in allowing them to believe they had blazed their own path forward she’d given them a power she hadn’t intended: a noble purpose. Righteous purpose. 
They truly believed they were the good guys, and the dry streaks of blood staining Primrose’s coat was clear evidence of what happened when their chosen leader failed to live up to their expectations.


[Error 21: Unregistered Coordinates Selected].
No collection site at selected coordinates.


She bypassed the warning without skipping a beat. Jet’s people had been thorough when programming the user interface for SOLUS, but the modifications made by the pegasi Spitfire planted within the Ministry of Technology had rendered much of those safeguards superficial. A few seconds of tapping through menus brought her back to the targeting prompt, and the software built to package commands to SOLUS now had a shiny new solar array available to target. 
She let out a comfortable little sigh as she entered the village into the targeting queue and hit submit. It still baffled her how at the peak of civilization technology had somehow remained so utterly blind. SOLUS represented the pinnacle of technological progress - an orbiting mechanical eye capable of identifying a target no larger to it than a fleck of pollen was to the average pegasus - and yet it only knew what it was told by its controllers on the planet’s surface. It had no way to know its M.A.S.T. talismans had been replaced by balefire weapons, or that the solar arrays its surface systems would tell it to target tomorrow evening were in truth a mix of civilian populations and military assets.
SOLUS was no more thinking or complex than the short blade she now wore in the leather scabbard around her left foreleg. Desperate Measures was nothing more than wood and metal in the absence of someone to give it purpose. But in the grip of Primrose’s wing it would cut down a life without mercy or regret.


Target coordinates accepted.
Target 012 registered to queue.
Soonest solar discharge window: [Error 43: Eccentric Orbit].


The door to her quarters emitted a tritone chirp. Primrose rubbed at her eyes and let out a hissing sigh.
“Millie, identify the visitor.”
A pause. “Interim Security Director Billings.”
She let out a noise of disgust. “What does he want?”
A longer pause. From the direction of the sealed door, muffled voices could be heard exchanging words.
“Public relations,” the artificial voice intoned. “He has indicated it is a matter of security which requires privacy.”
She took a half second to unfasten the leather strap that kept her combat blade secure in its shallow scabbard. “Is he armed?”
Quicker this time. “No weapons are visible on his person.”
“Yeah, well, he could have a pea shooter crammed up his asshole.”
“Unlikely.”
She blinked and looked up at Millie’s unobtrusive speaker at the center of her ceiling. Had that been humor or a canned response?
“Tell the door guards that one of them is to accompany Billings for the duration of his visit then let him in.”
“Yes, minister.” And Millie went silent.
Primrose minimized the targeting prompt and swiveled her chair to face the blast proof door as it heaved itself up and out of view. 
Interim Director Billings, a slender stallion composed of sharp angles and deep, sunken eyes, slipped through the open doorway alongside a heavily armed member of the Black Wing. The mute guard kept a few paces back and slightly to one side of the newly appointed director while making no attempt to hide the fact that he’d done so to keep Primrose well out of his line of fire. The subtle signs of relief in Billing’s expression made it pretty clear he didn’t understand the reason for the guard’s movements, only that he was glad to have some space between him and one of his minister’s tongueless sycophants.
He stopped walking halfway between her and the swiftly sealing door, his gaze only briefly settling on her terminal screen before returning to meet hers. “Ma’am, we’re beginning to lose control of the situation in the city.”
She lifted a dispassionate brow. “Then get control of it, director.”
“They’re panicking,” he stated, subtly emphasizing the second word. “They need their minister to reassure them they’re not in danger.”
Primrose let out a tiny snort of derision and said nothing. To her disappointment, Billings straightened in response to it and seemed to draw himself up for something he simply didn’t have the spine for.
“Ma’am,” he insisted, his eyes not quite meeting hers, “there is something else you should know. There has been talk among the officers inside the Bunker. They’re becoming uncertain that you are entirely… well.”
Her lip twitched up a fraction of an inch. She stood, and began making her way toward him. “And which officers would those be?”
Billings took a half step back, like a rodent who was only now realizing it had gained the attention of a predator. And yet he managed to keep his composure. “Too many to name, ma’am.”
“Tell me what they’ve said.”
She watched the lump in his throat bob as he cleared his throat and swallowed. “They’re afraid, ma’am. Yesterday you had their senior commanders executed. Today the enemy made good on their threat to attack the capital. You’ve been silent about all of it.”
Her hooves glided over the carpeted floor as she circled him, her eyes flicking toward his throat before making their way down the rest of his body. He wasn’t an attractive stallion by most standards. Too lean. Too gawky. Like a colt who never grew out of that long, leggy body and just aged with it like a too-tight suit. In a different world Billings might have been the inspiration for a tax collector or a particularly strict headmaster.
She flicked out a wing the shade of peonies and slipped them against his seafoam coat, feeling the ridges of his slightly protruding ribs. His skin jumped and quivered at the unwanted contact, but his expression didn’t waver. She’d read his file. He was a fiercely prideful stallion. The sort that would refuse to limp on a shattered leg. 
She watched him stare straight ahead even as her feathers dipped toward his belly, across his sheath, and curled around the warm heft of his balls. His jaw flexed ever so slightly with discomfort, and she suspected had she not invited one of her personal guards to monitor his behavior Billings would not have been able to suppress his reflex to kick.
She gently rolled his testicles in her grip as she asked, “What would you suggest I say to put my people at ease, director?”
“I would, ah…” he sucked in an irritated breath through his nose and started again. “I would consider making an announcement to the officers, and another to the citizens of the Enclave.”
A heavy warmth began to press across the ridge of her wing. She smiled pleasantly at Billings’ growing discomfort. He may be Clover’s replacement, but he had nothing like the self control of his predecessor. “Go on,” she pressed. “What else?”
“I would suggest making both announcements jointly. Address everyone as a whole.”
She tilted her head at that. “Why?”
He twitched against her wing. “Safer,” he said. “Less… ah, security risk. Ma’am.”
“Is it your opinion that my people pose a danger to me?”
Her grip around his testicles didn’t tighten, but he reacted as if it had. “No. No, ma’am. My primary concern is with the unusual enemy action of late.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and considered the likelihood that he’d just lied to her just now. Yes, he absolutely was. His pulse raced against her cupped feathers.
She released her grip and gave her wing a disgusted little flick as if she’d grazed it against something foul. “Fine, then.” She heaved a disappointed sigh. “If empty threats are the only card Coronado has left to play, far be it for me to ruin his fun. I’ll have an announcement ready for tomorrow evening.”
Billings turned his head slightly, his expression dark with exasperation. “Ma’am, no, the people are pan–”
He bit down on that last word as the honed edge of Desperate Measures snicked from its leather sheath and settled gently against the sensitive flesh she’d coaxed from his. When she spoke, her voice was a molten whisper. “If you ever say no to me again, I will remove this from you and have my guards watch you while you eat it. Do you understand me, Director Billings?”
He nodded without uttering another word.
She held her knife against him for another long moment, then flicked it away and sank it into its scabbard. “Good,” she said primly. “What time is it?”
He blinked at the non-sequitur. “It’ll be nineteen hundred hours in a little while, ma’am.”
“Hm. No wonder I’m hungry. Millie?”
The A.I.’s speaker chimed softly. “How may I be of serv–”
“Place the Bunker on full security lockdown at nineteen hundred hours. All personnel excluding myself and my personal guard are to remand themselves to quarters within the hour until further notice. Full communications blackout for the duration.”
Billings’ eyes flicked wide, but he wisely remained silent.
“Yes, minister.”
She turned her attention back to Billings. “That includes you, director. Thank you for the visit.”
He hesitated as the Black Wing guard stepped toward the door and slid it open, the stallion’s eyes flat and impatient as he waited for Billings to follow.
“Ma’am,” he pressed, and she watched with entertainment as he tried to look anywhere but toward the knife still sheathed on her foreleg, “may I ask how long you think this… lockdown will last?”
She considered ignoring his request and having her guard drag him out with his cock bobbling between his legs, but one wasn’t given a straight line like that every day. He knew something was vastly wrong and he was doing what little he could to fish for a clue to what she had planned.
He wanted to be reassured. She smiled at that, and said, “Don’t worry, director. It’s just a temporary precaution. A day or two at most.”
Billings made an effort to feign relief and ended up looking more conflicted than ever. She watched her guard lead him away, and when the door hissed closed behind them she turned back to her terminal and the map hanging on the wall behind it. Eleven black numbers clustered around New Canterlot. A twelfth would be joining them shortly. 
A calm, confident warmth settled over her features as she played the new narrative forward in her mind. Lances of balefire descending down into the heart of her failed experiment, obliterating the Enclave exactly as Coronado pretended he was capable of doing. She pictured what his expression might look like when he learned of what happened, the utter confusion and horror that would consume him as he realized he’d stepped into the same trap as the zebras two centuries before. 
He would have just enough time to understand the part he would play in her new story before she loosed SOLUS on the wider wasteland. 
“Millie,” she said as she seated herself at the terminal, “please verify functionality of the Ministry of Technology auxiliary blast gate. Full systems check while you’re at it.”
“This will take several minutes to complete. One moment.”
The silence that followed lasted for the better part of half an hour. Several miles to the east, in the growing shadow of Canterlot Mountain, the same systems which had kept her and the survivors of her early Enclave alive were now shrugging off over two centuries of dust as they conducted self-checks. Primrose spent the quiet filling in targeting parameters. 
“Blast gate seal integrity is nominal. Locking mechanisms are nominal. Electrical output of Generators 1 through 4 is nominal. Generator 5 is offline pending maintenance. Air recycler sensors report hazardous concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas. An atmospheric purge is recommended.”
She flicked a feather in a dismissive gesture. “Do it. What else?”
By the time Millie finished rattling off bullet points and pausing for instruction, Primrose had marked three more targets. As she listened, a mental map of the shelter she’d weathered her own bombs inside took shape. The doors still worked. The lights were on, though Millie complained that a lumen measurement suggested several bulbs had gone bad. The air had fouled over the years and there was a good chance any wildlife living near the outflow vents camouflage into the cliffs were currently experiencing a mass die-off as Millie pressed the recyclers back into service. Water would taste stale, but she would get used to it, and the uneaten emergency rations had those little flavor packets in them.
She exhaled a calming breath and set back to work.
Tomorrow, she told herself. Everything will be better after tomorrow.







“Where the fuck is she?” Aurora muttered.
Fiona frowned at her and found she didn’t know what to say to that. They sat together with their backs against the brick facade of a shuttered clothing store, staring into a sea of terrified strangers who had resolved to do exactly as they were doing now for vastly different reasons. She leaned forward a little to free one wing and slid it behind Aurora’s back.
Aurora settled her head against Fiona’s arm in response, but her gaze was distant as she did so.
Enclave soldiers milled uneasily through what had quickly become an occupation of the chapel plaza, and those who passed near one another exchanged defeated glances before continuing their surprisingly gentle insistence that the citizens go home. A curfew had gone into effect almost two hours ago, but those few people who had gotten up to leave had been quickly replaced by fearful residents who were determined to wait. Their picture perfect little world had just been turned on its head and they wanted answers. What better place to find them than the same place all the rest had come from? 
Only no one seemed to be home. The church had steadfastly refused to open its doors. Services were canceled and no ready explanation had come from a person of authority. Even the soldiers seemed cut out of the loop. 
Fiona hesitated a moment before slipping her arm out from under Aurora’s cheek, slid it around her beneath the cover of feathers, and pulled her just a little closer. Aurora sighed, but permitted the physical contact.
An older mare seated on the sidewalk nearby noticed them, frowned her disapproval, then turned her eyes back up to the rapidly darkening sky. They were all doing that, even the pegasi among the camped out civilians. It was the first time any of them were able to sit in the streets of their home and stare up at the stars. An hour earlier there had been a clamor of fearful anticipation as they’d jockeyed for position to watch the blazing, unfiltered disc of the sun sink below the horizon and Fiona had recognized some of the primitive fear in them that she’d spent her younger years watching in the faces of her friends and relatives. 
Gryphons hadn’t always been such deeply superstitious people, but after experiencing the collapse of their own civilization along with the rest of the world life had been boiled down to its simplest components. Many in her village believed the sun died when it set and that there was no guarantee it would be reborn the next morning. Too many of the ponies around her had worn that same uneasy expression when the last sliver of golden light vanished beneath the horizon. 
Now the plaza had settled into a collective fugue of whispering silence, and Fiona watched as the foals and yearlings among them stared up in naked awe at the blue-violet bruise of stars emerging overhead. They were too young to be anything except marveled by it all while their elders worked to keep them from shouting, laughing, or fussing. 
“You should try to get some sleep,” she murmured.
Aurora rubbed at her brow as she shook her head. “Can’t risk something happening while I’m up.”
“I’ll wake you up,” she said firmly. 
“And I’ll be groggy,” Aurora shot back, then lowered her voice to add, “I’m a bad enough shot when I’m awake.”
"Aurora…"
"Drop it."
She held up the palm that wasn’t resting on Aurora’s leg in a gesture of surrender. Aurora relaxed a little when she saw that and for a while the two of them were quiet again, neither prepared for the compounding stresses of being forced to wait for so long. 
Fiona pressed the back of her skull against the cool bricks and let out a breath. There was something deeply exhausting about having so little control over something so utterly vital. She’d spent most of her life fighting to keep her head above water and while the effort had been tiring it had also borne fruit one way or the other. Surviving the trip across the sea, convincing the first ponies she’d come across to give a bedraggled, desperate gryphon their water. Finding a home among them and building her own shade of security at the top of the Bluff. Selling her time, her strength, and then her body to pay for the equipment and favors she would need to turn an old, creaky firewatch tower into a beacon of… well, nothing as cornballed as hope, but of something good in the world. 
Her decisions had built the road she walked and she knew more than most how hard it was to cope when the freedom of choice got taken away. Coldbrook had tried taking that away from her, briefly, and it had felt like someone swiping an eraser across the chalkboard upon which she’d written her life’s story. 
Aurora was facing something harder than any of that. Her whole world was being decided by the whims of someone who killed the mare she’d fallen in love with, someone who didn’t even know Aurora was keeping a round chambered in her rifle just for her. Everything this three-legged pegasus cared about hung in the balance and there wasn’t one god damned thing she could do to change it.
It was enough fruitless worry to give an ulcer an ulcer.
“Hey,” she said, giving Aurora’s shoulder a gentle shake. “Wanna hear a story?”
Aurora looked up at her with a tired frown. When Fiona didn’t explain further, she sighed and nodded once. “Sure. Why not?”
She let herself smile a little and scooted half an inch closer to her. “So, my mom used to tell my sister and me this one when we were little. It’s called ‘The Hole in the Fence,’ or something like that. Anyway,” she said, her chest emitting a barely audible rumble with the fond memory, “there once was this little gryphon who had a nasty temper. He would get angry at all sorts of things and throw tantrums, call his friends nasty words, and break things because when he got angry he didn’t know what else to do.”
“Fun kid,” Aurora murmured.
“Well, his father didn’t think so. So one day he gives his son a hammer and a box of nails, and he tells him every time he starts to feel angry he should go out to the front yard and pound one nail into the family fence. Naturally the little gryphon thinks it’s a stupid idea, but he does it anyway. At the end of the day he tells his father that he hammered thirty-seven nails into the fence that day.”
Aurora let out a little snort and let her head settle against Fiona’s chest, her ear tuning into that gentle purr resonating from within. Fiona tried not to flush, but it was dark enough for her not to care about being seen so she continued speaking while her neck grew warm.
“At the end of the next day, the little gryphon only hammered thirty nails. The day after that, only twenty-two. And then, at the end of the week, the little gryphon went to his father and excitedly told him that he hadn’t hammered any nails at all.”
Aurora made a little noise of approval.
“Well, his father congratulated his son and told him that since he hadn’t lost his temper for the entire day he should take the hammer back to the fence and pull out one of the nails. So he does. And on the next day, when he doesn’t get angry, he removes one more nail. And this continues, one day at a time, until all the nails the little gryphon hammered into the fence are gone. The son sees this and runs to his father, full of pride at what he’d accomplished, and brings him out to look at the fence.”
By now several of the ponies camped out around them had turned to listen to the story, some of whom smiled with quiet recognition as they did so. Fiona met some of their eyes in the deepening dark of the clear night sky before continuing on. “The father looked at the fence and told his son he should be glad for having mastered his anger, but then pointed to the rows of holes in the boards. He tells his son, ‘You’ve done a good thing in removing the nails, but look at the scars they left behind. Those holes are like the little hurts you cause the people around you when you lose your temper. You may succeed in pulling some of the nails out, but the damage will always be there.’” 
There were a few appreciative nods from those who’d paused to listen, and Fiona had grown up around enough religion to recognize the subtle hints of self-affirmation in the way they looked at her. She was, after all, the uninitiated foreigner suddenly showing an aptitude for morality. 
By way of explanation she added, “My sister and I would always get into fights over little things. Whose comb was whose, whose turn it was to sweep the house, dumb stuff like that. Mom loved her parables, so we heard that one a lot growing up.” She smiled a little sadly as she said, “I miss those days.”
She puffed out a little sigh. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make it–”
Beneath her arm, Aurora let out a soft, rattling snore. Fiona looked down at her, then up at no one in particular while miming a smug little laugh. An older stallion nearby coughed a quiet chuckle at that before offering her an approving little nod that could only have come from someone who had raised children of his own. Sometimes when the kids refused to sleep you had to play dirty, and Aurora’s lead-brained stubbornness had forced Fiona to break out the big guns. Nothing like a mind-numbing parable and some weapons-grade purring to knock a full grown mare into dreamland.
Fiona grinned with a hint of smugness, rested her head back against the bricks, and kept up that gentle rumble in her chest as her imagination drew shapes in the glittering constellations above.







Aurora opened her eyes and once more found herself standing in the Dream.
She spat a curse and slapped herself across the cheek with her hoof. The pain was dull and barely worth noting, like something her mind chose to register as a mandatory background detail. When she didn’t wake up she slapped herself again, practically clubbing herself in the jaw this time. No joy. She remained blissfully, irritably, and maddeningly asleep.
As the details of scenery took on clarity and shape around her, someone near her let out a derisive chuckle and said, “If your plan is to make me feel sympathetic, you’ll have to try a little harder than spinning up the construct of a mare I never technically killed.”
Her eyes shot toward the familiar collection of green cafe furniture set out along the curb of a busy yet orderly street corner. Motorized carriages of varying size, shape, color, and purpose growled through the intersection while more waited their turn on the opposing road. Somewhere nearby a truck emitted a low blat of its horn while directly overhead puffy white clouds drifted in loose packs on a crisp morning breeze.
Canterlot, the original capital city that had been obliterated when balefire-tipped missiles shattered the bedrock slope it had been built upon, looked exactly as it had the last time Tandy had brought her here. Clean air, the faint scent of coffee wafting from the cafe, pedestrians meandering the sidewalks toting colorful shopping bags rather than weaponry. Almost on reflex Aurora began scanning the faces in the crowd for Eshe, as if he might appear at any moment and start pleading in Vhannan for somebody to please listen to him. He didn’t show, and she felt a touch of relief in knowing Tandy wouldn’t stoop so low as to add him to the steady march of ghosts who now populated this dream. He’d earned his peace.
With some reluctance she tore her eyes away from the procession of long deceased pedestrians and turned her gaze to the voice who just spoke. 
She froze when she realized she was sitting across the table from Primrose, minister of the Enclave, and Ginger’s murderer.
The color drained from Aurora’s face and was replaced with molten fury. Her wings blurred, hurtling her over the top of the table and straight into the meat of Primrose’s chest. The smaller mare let out a startled yelp as the pair of them tumbled backward through two occupied tables sending furniture, drinks, and complaining bodies sprawling in their wake. 
They landed with Primrose briefly on top of her, but while Aurora might not impress anyone with her shooting she’d held her own in more than a few after-hours scraps with her peers in Mechanical. Here, she was in her element because she was a fucking brawler at heart. 
She grabbed Primrose by her shoulders and wrenched her sideways like a torque multiplier fastened to a stubborn bolt, slamming the little bitch onto the patio’s decorative bricks and pinning her there until she could drag herself on top of her. Primrose lifted a hoof to protect her face but Aurora swatted it away and drove her own hard toward the mare’s bubblegum pink head. The blow caught her across the jaw with a satisfying thud, then she reared back and delivered a second strike just as hard as the first. Blood and spittle flew from Primrose’s gawking mouth until she got enough sense in her to duck her head between her forelegs, prompting Aurora to change targets and start in on her exposed belly.
Aurora barely noticed that they were both screaming, one in terrified agony and the other in seething rage. Primrose’s cries cut off the instant Aurora socked her hard in the lungs, stealing the wind from her throat and reducing her quailing to pathetic, reedy wheezes. She kept working on her until tears blurred her vision enough to foul her aim, sending blows into ribs and glancing off legs, missing the soft tissue she was aiming for. She howled with uncontrolled, feral rage as she strived to deliver as much misery, suffering, and raw salted pain to the mare before the trauma jarred her awake. 
Above all else, Aurora needed Primrose to experience the aching desolation she herself had felt when she’d watched the birth of a new star boil away the clouds above her home. 
She wanted her to hurt.
Beneath the cover of her curled legs, Primrose croaked a desperate, “Tantabus!”
Aurora struck the joint below Primrose’s cannon bone, causing the leg to jerk away, and quickly punished her with a hard jab into the base of her throat. Primrose made an ugly, wet gagging noise and her next words came out in a hideous, bloody retch. Aurora was breathing hard now, her own voice ragged under the weight of so much fury she had yet to inflict.
There were other voices somewhere nearby she didn’t recognize. People shouting for someone to intervene, likely the ghosts of Old Canterlot performing the roles of scandalized onlookers. But then Aurora realized something else. Her right foreleg, cocked back like the main rod on a locomotive’s drive wheel, wouldn’t move. 
Furthermore, the paralysis affected her whole body. She sat there frozen, her muscles refusing to acknowledge her commands, straddling a bloodied and mangled mare whose own limbs hung in the air in an eerie stasis. 
“That is enough, Aurora.”
The sound of admonishment in Tandy’s disembodied voice only served to add fuel to the firestorm burning its way through Aurora’s heart. She locked eyes with Primrose, who stared back from behind a swelling eyelid in silent reproach, then cast her gaze left then right. With her head locked in place she couldn’t see much beyond several pieces of overturned cafe furniture and the hooves of nearby onlookers, but Tandy’s weren’t among them. 
Her own voice came out strained with anger. “Why are you defending her?”
Tandy spoke from somewhere behind her. “If I were interested in defending her I would not have permitted you to attack her in the first place.”
“I’m not done with her,” she spat at Primrose.
“No you are not,” Tandy agreed, and in the span of a disorienting instant Aurora was once more seated at the little green table with Primrose in the opposite chair. “Nor is this creature truly Primrose.”
Aurora tried to move and found she was still effectively paralyzed. Judging by the discomfort in Primrose’s expression, she was similarly stuck. At the other tables surrounding them a disconcerting number of unicorns watched them, some openly while others shielded their faces behind laminated menus. Even so, something about the way they were fixating on them didn’t sync with the blatant disinterest of the pedestrians passing along the sidewalk. Their awareness was… unsettling.
And then Tandy’s words finally registered. “What do you mean that isn’t Primrose?”
Not-Primrose rolled her newly unswollen eyes and addressed the empty space around them. “Are all your constructs this slow, or did she just come out defective?”
Tandy didn’t so much appear as she did condense into being in the empty seat to Aurora’s right. A white mug with the words BEST PRINCESS printed across it popped into existence in front of her with what looked like cocoa steaming the rim. Primrose read the mug and let out a derisive snort that made her shoulders jump half an inch, and an instant later the two of them realized their paralysis had been lifted.
Primrose tensed. So did Aurora.
“Do not,” Tandy warned, “start with me.”
Primrose scowled at Tandy but remained seated. 
There was barely contained anger in Tandy’s voice that hadn’t been there the last time Aurora had slept, which she belatedly realized had been two nights ago. She closed her eyes and cursed under her breath. She hadn’t considered until now what missing a night might cost them. Tandy had a direct link into Primrose’s most private thoughts, but Aurora was her only conduit to the waking world. For all she knew Primrose could have decided to go on a midnight stroll while Aurora was stewing in bed. 
Horror seeped into her thoughts as she realized her only window might have slammed shut hours ago.
As if in response to that terrible realization, Tandy pushed the steaming mug across the table toward her and said reassuringly, “You have not missed your window. But things have happened that we must discuss.”
She stared down at the mug, watching the cocoa sloshing gently. She had too many questions and no real concept on how much time she had before she woke up. Dreams had a way of being malleable that way.
She looked up to where Primrose sat and narrowed her eyes. “Is that the construct?”
Tandy glanced at Not-Primrose and nodded. “It is.”
She leveled her gaze at Tandy. “Why is she here?”
What she really wanted to ask was why Primrose’s doppelganger consultant was sitting across from her instead of on the opposite end of the Dream where she wouldn’t be privy to sensitive discussions, like those pertaining to such interesting topics like their coordinated plan to kill the real Primrose the instant she stepped out of her bunker. Topics that, in an ideal world, they wouldn’t want reported back to Primrose the next time she nodded off.
Tandy didn’t need to read the subtext to understand exactly what Aurora was thinking. She just knew. “Primrose is no longer permitted access to the construct. It is safe to speak candidly around it.”
The construct folded her forelegs across her chest and scowled. “The construct would prefer not to be referred to as the construct.”
Tandy didn’t respond to that, and Aurora nearly knocked the steaming mug over in the process of snapping a pointed feather at the creature. “The fuck did she do to get cut off so soon?”
“Nothing,” Tandy muttered, as if admitting such left a foul taste on her tongue. “The construct behaved as a voice of reason, but it was insufficient in deterring Primrose from her new path.”
A chill went down her spine. “What new path.”
Tandy’s features darkened with recollection, and for a fleeting breath Aurora thought she’d seen what looked like feline slit pupils flickering within her flat white eyes. An instant later they were gone, but the seething rage that threatened to consume Tandy was still there. She ceded her response to the construct with a blackening wing, apparently too busy fighting her own emotions to entrust them to a response.
The construct looked between Tandy and Aurora like a mouse caught between two very deadly, very unappealing traps. Not-Primrose swallowed once before saying, “My… original, I suppose, has suffered something akin to a psychological break. She is no longer thinking rationally and has come to the conclusion that her current situation is beyond reconciling.”
Aurora sat up a little straighter. Primrose had already been planning on using an orbital doomsday weapon to obliterate a Stable. If that was what passed for rational thought, something told her she didn’t want to know what irrational looked like.
And yet not knowing would be undoubtedly worse. “Alright,” she said, forcing herself to speak calmly to a mare whose face still begged to be rearranged, “I’ll bite. What has she done now?”
“She’s expanded her kill list,” the construct said simply, “to effectively include everyone currently… well, alive. She’s of the opinion that all is lost, woe is her, and the only way to survive a schism within the Enclave is to turn SOLUS on the entire wasteland. She called it her ‘clean slate.’ Personally, I think she’s lost her fucking sense of perspective.”
Aurora watched the construct with intense distrust as she waited for the other shoe to drop, but it became clear Not-Primrose was finished speaking. She turned to Tandy, keeping a feather aimed at the other mare as she did, and asked, “There’s absolutely zero possibility that thing can communicate with Primrose? None at all?”
Tandy shook her head. “None,” she confirmed. “Nor is there anything left Primrose can threaten to change my mind. Though she has once again resolved not to sleep.”
Not-Primrose scoffed at that. “Yeah, that worked so well for us the first time.”
Tandy regarded her. “You did not exist then.”
The construct just shrugged. “If lawyers weren’t extinct, I’m sure one of them would make a compelling argument to the contrary. And on that cheery note, I’d like to address the elephant in the room. Namely, you.”
She flicked a hoof toward Aurora, eyes slightly narrowed. “You’re not a construct, are you?”
Aurora picked up the mug and stared over the rim at Not-Primrose as she sipped. The cocoa was smooth, silky, and rich. And it did nothing to quench the violence brooding in her.
“Nope.”
The construct nodded slowly. Thoughtfully. “How did you delay it?”
Her grip around the mug turned to iron. She was talking about the balefire bomb. She wanted to know why it failed to detonate inside her home. Slowly, she closed her eyes and drew in a long, calming breath. It was like trying to cool molten steel with a desk fan. Still, she managed to grind out a response.
“I’ll trade you for it,” she growled.
The construct tilted its head with alien curiosity. “Oh?”
“First,” she began, “you tell me how to get Primrose out of that bunker.”
Beside her, Tandy’s void-black form took on a few more shades and swirls of color. Her eyes shifted between Aurora and the construct with cautious interest, saying nothing lest she interrupt the first beats of production conversation.
The construct considered the offer for a moment, then nodded once. “Easy enough, but before we proceed I would like to make a personal request.”
Aurora’s expression flattened, but she waited quietly.
“A name,” the construct said seriously. “I don’t appreciate being referred to as an it.”
“I have a few ideas for what we can call you,” Aurora offered with acid in her tone.
The mare smiled back at her, unaffected by the implied insult. “I believe my birth name would make conversation less confusing, though it’s been some time since anyone has called me Cozy Glow.”
“You’re joking.”
The mare’s smile didn’t falter, though it grew notably more brittle. “I wouldn’t look so smug for a pegasus named for her own feathers.”
Aurora blinked and suppressed a retort about having a name better fitting of a haunted porcelain doll. If the construct needed a name to move things alone, fine.
“Alright, Cozy Glow,” she said, her brain already hating how the name sounded on her tongue, “how do I get Primrose out in the open?”
Cozy shrugged. “You don’t do anything. She’ll do that on her own.”
She stiffened. It was a non-answer. At least an outright lie might point to something useful.
“What, are you going to beat me up again?” Cozy leaned back as much as the rigid chair would allow as if inviting a second attack. “I answered your question, now it’s your turn to answer mine. Unless we’re not trading anymore?”
Tantabus rose a little in her seat. “If you will not cooperate, there is no reason for your existence to continue.”
More than anything else, that shook some sense into the mare. Cozy visibly suppressed a shudder and held up her hooves in very careful supplication. “Don’t. Please.”
“Then cooperate.”
Some idiot corner of Aurora’s brain wanted to tell Tandy to take it down a notch, but the rest of it shoved that part of her into a box and duct taped the lid shut. Cozy Glow wasn’t a real person, she reminded herself, just memories given form. 
And yet, that tiny part of her whispered from within the box, so was Tandy.
Cozy cleared her throat and turned back to Aurora. “Look, neither of us has seen Primrose since she chose to deviate from the plan two nights ago. She was panicking then, but I doubt she is now. Either she’ll calm down enough to accept that the original plan is still salvageable, or she’ll have been busy refining this… less than ideal variant. Whichever it ends up being, she still has the narrative to consider.”
Aurora pieced the rest together. “You’re saying she’ll make an announcement before she presses the button.”
Cozy nodded, pausing to eye the unicorns at the surrounding tables warily. Their expressions ranged from malice to flat out betrayal, but they remained silent as statues.
“She’ll want to set the tone in her favor, yes,” Cozy confirmed. “Were I to guess, I’d say her best option would be to play the card Coronado has given her. Pretend there is no weapon, ask the believers to rely on faith, and then feign shock and outrage during the braking maneuver.”
“When?”
Cozy’s expression flattened. “This isn’t much of a trade.”
Tandy lit her horn.
“Evening!” Cozy blurted, her eyes flicking between Aurora and Tandy’s gathering power. “If she sticks to the original schedule she’ll ring the bells tomorrow night!”
Tandy’s horn dimmed, and Cozy visibly relaxed.
“She is telling what she believes to be the truth,” Tandy affirmed.
The knot in Aurora’s gut loosened the faintest bit. She nodded to herself, then paused to sip some cocoa. It was the perfect temperature. Hot enough to soothe, but not quite enough to scald her throat if she drank too greedily. Something told her if she waited an hour it would still be perfectly toasty.
“We put your bomb in a containment vessel my people made in case our ignition talisman hadn’t completely discharged,” she said. 
Cozy’s ears perked with interest.
Aurora met her gaze, unblinking. She kept her tone flat. Factual. Devoid of the rage she now realized this copy of Primrose wasn’t worth receiving. 
“I don’t know how magic works. I just know that Ginger used hers to keep the vessel intact until I could fly her clear.”
Cozy frowned with apparent dissatisfaction at how little detail she’d been given, but knew better than to complain. She propped her chin on the back of her hoof and stared at Aurora as if seeing something she’d missed during their meeting on the oil rig. 
“That is fascinating,” she murmured.
Aurora pursed her lips. “Sure. That’s one way of describing it.”
The construct nodded in agreement. “How are you alive?”
She shook her head. “It’s not your turn. It’s mine.”
Cozy lifted a wing in invitation.
“You said something about a braking maneuver. What does that entail?”
“A light show,” Cozy chuckled. “SOLUS doesn’t have any fuel on board to provide thrust for maneuvering, so the weapon itself will substitute to ease it into a more convenient orbit. From the ground it will look like… well, we won’t know what it’ll look like until it fires. Suffice to say it will be difficult to miss.”
“How long will it last?”
Cozy let out an exasperated sigh. “Three to four minutes is the science team’s best estimate. Is it my turn?”
Aurora set down the mug. “Ginger teleported me.”
The construct made a disbelieving noise. “Am I expected to believe in science fiction, then?”
“It’s what happened.”
Cozy turned from her and looked at Tandy. “Tantabus, have I not been dealing with you in good faith thus far?”
“You have. Thus far,” she responded warningly.
“Then I think it’s only fair that Ms. Pinfeathers is compelled to do the same with me,” she stated with a touch of annoyance. “I am not so gullible as to believe–”
Cozy Glow froze mid-sentence. Her expression didn’t change, nor did her posture. She simply sat ramrod still, her mouth hanging open on the word it had begun forming. 
Aurora frowned and began to ask Tandy what was happening but was silenced when Tandy simply lifted a feather imploring her to wait. She did, and several long seconds later Cozy lurched into sudden motion with a distressed gasp. The construct’s eyes were suddenly wide and pooled with water as they darted around, her body following each movement in halting jerks as she gained her bearings. A few seconds later she was wiping at her eyes with visible disgust and they lurched reproachfully toward Tandy.
“I did not ask to see that,” she hissed.
“You will be shown what you need to be shown,” Tandy rumbled in response.
Cozy didn’t sound fazed. “I was in her head.”
And Aurora suddenly understood with sickening clarity what had just happened. She’d shown Primrose’s construct the moment of Ginger’s death. Cozy experienced her memory as if it had been happening to her. There was a wash of conflicting emotions still settling out across the construct’s features, the least of which was sympathy. Whatever thimbleful of sorrow Primrose’s grafted mind momentarily experienced had been snuffed out by the unmistakable signs of violation. Tandy had often struggled with understanding boundaries, but this was the first time Aurora had seen someone else on the receiving end of her less than indirect approach to a solution.
It took some effort, but Aurora managed not to snap at Tandy for sharing that memory. It had settled the debate and put Cozy back in her place. She regarded Tandy for half a second, her eyes promising the indiscretion would be the topic of discussion later, then circled back to Cozy while she was still unsteady.
“Was that sufficient proof?” she asked in a mocking rebuttal to her tone thus far.
Cozy’s eyes ground toward her like boulders over gravel. “Yes.”
“Good,” she said, hammering the word into place and thus ending that particular line of inquiry. “My turn again. How does Primrose plan to survive?”
Cozy arched her brow. “Stim-Paks.”
Aurora sighed and tried again. “How does she expect to survive SOLUS if she kills everyone?”
Cozy nodded understanding, then reached across the table toward Aurora’s mug. Aurora let her take it, assuming it was meant for a visual aid, then found herself glowering as she watched Primrose take a long, luxuriating sip.
When she was satisfied, she set the mug down with her feathers still coiled around the handle. “Almost tastes like the real thing,” she remarked.
Tandy bristled, her tone hardening once more. “Answer.”
Cozy met her gaze with an impetuous sneer. “Forgive me, your majesty, for feeling the least bit reluctant to betray everything I’ve ever worked.You know everything that’s in my head. You tell her.”
“Discomfort is not an excuse I will yet allow you the luxury to invoke. You have already made a point to distinguish yourself from Primrose by name. There is no harm in further doing so by deed. Answer her question.”
“Yeah, well, it’s still a mindfuck so go easy on me.” Cozy made a disgusted little noise and took a second sip of cocoa. “Look, you’re asking a question that I don’t have a definitive answer to. Her state of mind at the end of her last visit to dreamland wasn’t what I would call… reliable. The Tantabus can attest to her mental state better than I can, but suffice to say it would be a mark of true ignorance to believe her anger hasn’t tempered over the last day.”
Tandy nodded at that. “Primrose invaded a surgical suite and threatened the lives of her own medical staff should they not chemically induce sleep. Shortly prior to that she personally executed the whole of her advisory staff.”
Aurora blew out a breath. “That would explain why half the soldiers outside the church look like someone shoved a lemon wedge under their tails.”
Tandy made a pained expression and shook her head. 
Across the table, Cozy let out a sour snort. “She had everything under control until she broke her own rule: don’t panic. Maybe you’ll be lucky and she’ll talk herself down, but knowing her - and me, to a lesser extent - she’s going to follow through. The Steel Rangers already served her immunity on a silver platter with Coronado’s broadcast. If I were still in her shoes, I’d start the bombardment with New Canterlot and work my way outward from there. That way, once the dust settles in a hundred years or so, she’ll emerge a savior all over again.”
“If she’s inside the Bunker when SOLUS hits the city, she’ll die with the rest of them,” Aurora observed.
Cozy dipped a feather into the mug and sucked thoughtfully on the wetted tip. “No, she wouldn’t use the Bunker. She’d take cover inside the Pillar.”
She frowned at that. “Where the ministries used to be? That got destroyed when Canterlot fell.”
“Not all of it,” Cozy murmured with a knowing smile. “The three missiles assigned to Canterlot were intended to fracture the natural cantilever of the city’s foundation from below rather than penetrate bedrock. Half the ministries fell with the rest of the mountain, but the ministries of Image and Arcane Science survived nominally intact. The Pillar itself extends down to the root of the mountain with the Ministry of Technology at the bottom. That’s where I… that’s where Primrose sheltered when she fired the missiles the first time. No reason why she shouldn’t use it again.”
Aurora leaned back in her chair for a long moment and looked to Tandy for any sign that Cozy was lying. Tandy met her gaze and offered a single nod of assurance.
“Is it my turn yet?”
Aurora had more questions, but the one she’d been most worried over had been answered. Primrose would appear at the church, not to gloat over a surprise victory against her greatest enemy but instead to frame herself as the victim of a weapon they claimed to possess.
She considered what would happen in the immediate aftermath of Primrose dying before the eyes of her most loyal believers. The ramifications would send ripples into the far future that she had no way to predict let alone influence. There was a very good chance that she would be swarmed the moment she pulled the trigger, and Fiona along with her. She didn’t see a scenario where she survived that. 
And yet the alternative was infinitely worse. 
She cleared those thoughts away as she regarded Cozy with tired, green eyes. “Yeah, it’s your turn. Shoot.”
Cozy leaned over the mug, her eyes taking on a wolfish gleam. “Was all this worth it?”
She narrowed her eyes. 
Cozy took a careless sip, shrugged, and said nothing. 
Aurora felt the muscles in her body tensing in anticipation of another brawl as she pushed herself up from her seat. But as she did, the familiar sense of dissociation sank into her mind as the dream fell to pieces around her. She was waking up and Cozy had sensed it happening.
“I’d do it all over again, except for one bit.”
Cozy tilted her head in question. “Oh?”
Aurora leaned across the rapidly discorporating table. “The oil rig,” she said, her tone flat and harsh. “It wouldn’t have been so peaceful.”
Cozy Glow smiled in the way a predator acknowledges very dangerous prey, and it sent a cold bolt of disquiet down Aurora’s spine. 
“Good hunting,” she said, and the dream flew apart.







Rainbow Dash nudged his leg and whispered. “Did you sleep?”
Sledge met her gaze with his own weary, raw expression. They stood shoulder to shoulder and a pace or two away from the procession of evacuees, watching the last group making its slow progress through the meandering path that the wastelanders had helped dig through the antechamber rubble.
He couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to. This was the last of them. The critical personnel every Stable required to stay afloat. They were the pegasi of Supply. Of Sanitation. Agriculture. I.T.
And Mechanical. 
These were his people, the ones who faced the blackout head on and made sure Stable 10 kept breathing. They’d been the ones behind the scenes, the greasers and wrench-turners and planters and bean counters who didn’t just live in a Stable but had become its beating heart. Together, in defiance of hopelessness, they’d survived. They’d uncovered secrets. They’d changed the trajectory of their own fates.
Sledge watched in silent sentry as those same people now filed out toward the last wagons. They carried bags of tools, personal possessions, food, water, and children. He watched them escort their own families out into the unknown because, in the end, there was a chance they’d done it all for nothing. Their faltering generator had not been a challenge, it had been a death knell for the shelter they called home. 
Something tore a little deep down in his chest as he met the eyes of his former colleagues. They smiled toward him. Carbide shucked his satchel up his shoulder with a trademark grin. Flux guided her two daughters through the rubble, her expression both reassuring and apologetic. Coronado and Clover were gone, already on their way back to Stable 6. Aurora’s friends had run off to accomplish a mission of their own, something to do with factories, and had yet to return. 
He’d done all he could. Now it was time for him to go, too.
When the end of the line came into view, Sledge could feel his hooves rooting to the concrete. Chaser had been one of his deputies assigned to perform final checks through each level of Stable 10 to verify anyone who wanted to leave did. Deputy Chaser had also been with him when they set out to retrieve Blue from the tunnel, and he still wore a clean wrap of bandages over his stitches where she’d taken a chunk out of him. 
Chaser pursed his lips as he made his way over to where they stood, keeping his pained expression leveled at the bits of broken concrete between them. “All clear, sir.”
Their Stable, save for a dozen or so who volunteered to stay behind, stood empty. 
Sledge didn’t trust himself to speak, so he settled for a silent nod. He waited while Chaser traded a few polite words with Rainbow Dash before departing for the wagons. Then it was just the two of them.
He stood there for a long moment, thinking hard. Then Rainbow’s wing gave his shoulder a gentle tug and he began to walk with her, the two of them picking their way past the ruined, dusty hulk of the Stable door and out into the tunnel. They made their way to the staging area where a small fleet of fifteen mismatched wagons already buzzed with the murmuring evacuees. Steel Rangers and the last of Junction City’s survivors worked feverishly to assign supply packs filled with additional food and water to each wagon, some going as far as to tie sacks directly to the sideboards. Sledge found himself and Rainbow being guided to the rearmost wagon, its boards caked in whitewash that didn’t quite obscure the F&F Mercantile that once prominently graced its frame. Wings reached out to help them up onto the bench seating, and he felt a touch of relief that Rainbow sat beside him rather than across. 
It was the difference between being anchored to something and set adrift, and right now more than any other time in his life he needed to be anchored.
At the head of the tunnel, one of the Rangers began calling out instructions with the aid of speakers built into their power armor. Sledge ignored the voice and kept his eyes on the floorboards. Don’t wander off. Listen to the instructions given by your guides. Keep reflective materials covered. Remain quiet at all times. 
He’d heard the drill twice already. After five minutes the tunnel grew hushed. The lights out in the Ranger encampment winked out one by one. Cookfires were extinguished. Power armor headlamps blinked out. Their world became swallowed by darkness, and with a whispered word the first line of wagons lurched into motion. They were followed by the one behind, and so on, until Sledge felt the wheels beneath him start grinding forward. The wagon jounced and groaned over the uneven flagstones. Flux’s young daughters squealed with excitement that balanced restlessly on the edge between fear and fun, and he listened to his old first shift lead gently shushing them while his eyes remained fixed on what was being left behind.
The ride smoothed out as they left the tunnel and rolled through the encampment. Rangers stood beside tents, cookpots, and their other duties in regimental silence while the convoy rolled through. One of them, a mare Sledge didn’t recognize, snapped to attention when her eyes fell on him. He stared at her for a while, wondering what he’d done to deserve her respect, then turned his eyes up with the rest of his wagonmates toward the early morning sky. 
On any other day it might have been a spectacular sight. The deep blue sky loomed overhead, perforated with pinpoints of light he knew to be stars and planets but not how to discern one from the other. Thin wisps of clouds chased the trailing end of a dense bank toward a horizon whose direction he didn’t know without the aid of a map. Luna’s moon was a storybook crescent of silver light, and distantly he wondered if it would set with the rising of the sun like in the stories his mother told him when he was small.
As they looked skyward, his attention sank back toward his home and the responsibilities he’d been unable to fulfill. He thought about all that had happened over the last several weeks. The lonely nights in Delphi’s office. The generator that had quietly begun to die under his watch.
Wheels jumped onto hard pavement and the wagon turned to follow the old highway. He watched Foal Mountain begin sliding away into the night until he could no longer make out the mouth of the tunnel. Something warm pattered against his lap and he distantly noticed he’d stopped fighting to hold back the tears. 
Rainbow placed her thin leg across his shaking shoulders and murmured something to him he didn’t hear, but bore a tone of sympathy he didn’t deserve and which he felt too frail to shrug away. 
Sledge, the craggy, indomitable force who once kept Mechanical humming with the sheer force of his will, sat among the people he’d been charged to protect, watched their home shrinking into the distance, and wept into his hooves like a lost child.







Julip paced the old cabin’s gravel drive and did everything she could think of to keep herself from falling apart.
Roach was late.
Early morning sunlight, no longer made vague and hazy with the march of endless clouds, cast long shadows whose sharply defined edges didn’t make her feel any less uneasy. Gravel crackled underhoof as she made her way past an old fallen tree which had been dragged halfway across the gravel and still bore a few narrow Sparkle-Cola bottles along its scraped edge. She was careful not to let her pacing draw her too close. Wicked looking shards of glass caked in a gluey mat of vegetable slime lurked among the stones. Getting one of those stuck in the soft meat of her hoof was the last thing she wanted.
She grimaced at that as her worried brain corrected her: it was the second to last thing she wanted.
To calm herself, she replayed the directions Roach had given her in her mind. The cabin was small, isolated, and close to a day’s walk east of Junction City. It sat in the crook of a small hill, surrounded by a stand of old growth trees, one of which had fallen over onto the roof facing the hill. She’d never been here before, but Roach had. He’d spent a night resting here with Aurora and Ginger. Ginger had made a furtive effort in disassembling some kitchen appliances for parts despite never having truly scavenged in her life, and Julip had found the mess gathering new dust on the kitchen floor. She had also found the little book case where the family who once owned the log home kept a collection of books, trinkets, and a copy of their young daughter’s journals. 
The cabin was exactly as Roach described it, down to the log he’d used to give Aurora some much needed target practice. This was it. She was in the right place.
Their mission had succeeded. The sky above the half dead trees was a vivid, shocking shade of morning blue. 
And yet Roach was late.
She kept going back to the moment Roach had been picked off her back by a soldier’s bullet. She’d seen his pale green blood aerosolizing into the airstream as he fell, and she had to keep reminding herself that she’d watched him go to work orienting himself into a rapid nose-down descent. Dead people didn’t do that. Neither did they accidentally drop bombs exactly where they were needed. Roach had gotten to the target and made the drop. She’d seen the faint light of his transformation just before that. He’d been alive then. There was no reason that had to change.
And yet.
The gentle knock of a hoof against the porch railing interrupted her worrying and she whirled in a scraping half-circle to stare daggers, sickles, and goddamned broadswords at the stallion who’d come up with the mission.
“Chops,” she snapped, her voice shaking with barely contained anger, “go back inside and leave me the fuck alone.”
He frowned down at her for several dangerous seconds before finally relenting. Before he turned away, he held up the two ceramic bowls he’d brought out for her to see. Steam wafted up from them. Some kind of broth he’d whipped up, she didn’t know or care. 
She watched him push back through the front door until he was out of sight, then resumed her pacing.
She felt her jaw tugging with the first hard jags of a sob and fought it down. One bloodied wing came up to swipe at her face, pulling off the scab that kept trying to form in the shallow cut she’d gotten in the crow’s feet beside her left eye. It was a stupid injury. In her haste to regroup and retreat through the cloud bank with Chops, they’d collided with one another and she’d caught the edge of his hoof before either of them knew they were there. It bled like a motherfucker every time she opened it up, which was often now that she’d begun to truly worry. Her wing had gradually darkened from verdant green to a ruddy brown smear, and the longer she waited the worse it got.
“Quit fucking crying,” she hissed at herself through clenched teeth. The sky remained open, clear, and utterly empty. There was no one up there. Not the goddesses, not the Enclave, and not Roach. 
She mashed her wing over her face again, as if grinding her eyes raw would stem the tide, but when she looked up again the sky offered nothing but beautiful blue desolation in return. He clenched her jaw so hard it ached. She’d been a soldier. She could keep her shit together a little while longer.
Chops had been a soldier too. When the sun rose high enough to clear the little hill behind the cabin, he came back out onto the porch with something glassy between his feathers and ignored her glare as he descended the warped wooden steps. She ordered him to fuck off and he continued to ignore her. He sat down on the gravel next to her - she’d given up pacing by then - and went to work prying the waxed cap off a stout glass bottle he hadn’t taken with him when they left Stable 10. Judging by the way the wax crumbled in his grip, and the cracked and flaking paper label on the bottle which neither of them could read, he’d found the bottle inside the cabin.
She watched with numb disinterest as the cap sheared off, leaving a plug of cork trapped in the neck of the bottle. When Chops proceeded to just stare at what he’d done Julip hissed out a sigh, snatched the bottle from his feathers, and used a spent shell casing on the gravel beside her to shove the cork down into the bottle. It landed in the liquor with a wet plunk, after which she lifted the bottle to her lips and took a long, angry pull.
Prewar spirits tended to come in three varieties: the ones that got better with age, the ones that turn your guts into a firesale and everything must go, and the ones that turned into rocket fuel. The bottle Chops found fell in the third category and Julip had to screw up her face and stamp a hoof as it dropped into her empty stomach like molten steel. When her surrounding organs finally came to the consensus that vomiting would only punish them more, she passed the bottle back to Chops and watched him take a judicious sip.
“Pussy,” she grumbled, not willing to risk a third syllable lest her stomach upend itself. 
When he held the bottle back to her she waved it away, resting her forehead against her bent knees. Maybe it was all in her head, but she thought she could feel the blurry numbness taking shape behind her eyes. 
It distracted her, however little, from her fears.
Something cool and metallic thumped the side of her leg and she lifted her head just enough to see the canteen Chops was offering. She sniffed - her nose was running again - and took it without comment. She didn’t know Chops, not really, and she quietly resented him for trying to… what? Take care of her? The thought just tossed a few more logs on her smoldering anger. She uncapped the canteen, paused to sniff at the contents, then drank as much clean water as her stomach would permit. A few minutes passed and Chops cleared his throat. He was holding out half of a baked potato.
Where he’d gotten the potato, she didn’t know. Frowning at him, she accepted the offering and let out a grudging sigh as she took a bite. It was still warm from the fire he’d started in the cabin’s old fireplace. There was something universally comforting about warm food. She didn’t thank him. She didn’t say a word to him. She ate in silence and tried not to think about how quickly time seemed to be ticking by.
The starch and water did battle with the glug of liquor and won a pyrrhic victory. The alcohol settled behind her eyes in a less than pleasant buzz, taking just enough of the edge off for her to notice and not enough for it to matter. It was annoying, but at least she hadn’t gotten herself shitfaced by mistake. 
She sniffed, both of them soaking up the silence, and turned her idle feathers to the little subcompact still slung across her shoulder. There was a greater than zero chance that she’d killed at least one of her own people yesterday, and she knew she’d pay the price for that in guilt once she got around to feeling it. The second patrol that dogged them during their escape just hadn’t quit. She could still feel the trigger against her feather. Hear the bark of the little weapon when she’d blind fired behind them. The clouds had been too thick for her to know whether she’d hit one of their pursuers or just forced them into an evasive maneuver that resulted in them losing their trail. She’d never know for sure. 
The weapon made soft clicks as she turned the black metal this way and that, as if the gun itself would bear the answer on its frame. Chops at least knew what he’d done. She’d watched him send at least three of their comrades plummeting into the clouds, and he’d done it with the mechanical efficiency of practice. 
She worked her jaw as her vision clouded again. It was too much. They’d never trained her to bear under this much uncertainty, this much pressure, and so much pain. She’d lost her people. Maybe even killed one of them. She would never be allowed to come back home. Her shitty little bunk in the barracks would already be cleaned out for someone else to take. Her old friends in her unit will have been told she’d turned traitor, the years they’d spent together irreparably spoiled. 
And now her new friends, the companions she’d made along the way, were just… dying. She hadn’t known Ginger all too well but that mare had helped save her life, and Julip had never repaid that debt before she’d been taken. Aurora was in the heart of enemy territory on a mission that, win or lose, could only end with her dying for the crime of the attempt. And yet she’d gone off to do it anyway, willingly, and Julip hadn’t been sure she understood the risk.
She swiped at her eyes again. Roach was still late and that dark part of her heart kept whispering the reason why. 
Roach had been the one who argued the hardest against her joining their group. He’d made the case against her on that first night. Then he’d kicked her out. But she hadn’t left. Primrose’s mission made no allowance for that, and so she’d followed them into the Pleasant Hills and bore witness to the herd of twisted, malformed centaurs that stampeded into their exposed camp.
She’d saved them that night. It hadn’t been planned, or even well executed. Hell, she’d almost dropped Roach when they’d made their escape, but she’d proven herself to him in that moment that she wasn’t just some hatchet mare wearing the wrong uniform. She’d proven that to Roach, and that had been the first barrier between them to crumble. He’d made her pair up with him so he could keep an eye on her, to see how she handled being around the walking antithesis of everything the Enclave stood for, and she’d surprised herself by discovering she wasn’t only up for the challenge but willing to entertain the idea that Roach may not be a shambling monster. He’d been a person.
A person she’d befriended, who’d given her as much shit as she gave and more, and a friend who’d found her dying from a bullet through her lung and had dropped everything to get her help.
She remembered waking up the night after her surgery and seeing him sleeping beside the table that served as her bed. He could have left her to search for Aurora, but he hadn’t. He’d stayed with her, and that act had changed something between them she wouldn’t realize until later. 
Her throat thickened as fresh tears drew silent tracks down her jaw. Again, she told herself to stop fucking crying, but it was a near thing. She couldn’t trust herself to say the words aloud without releasing the sob locked between her teeth. If she did, Chops would try to comfort her, and she didn’t want to be fucking comforted by him. She wanted Roach. 
She wanted her fucking friend.
A miserable noise crawled out of her throat in spite of what she wanted, and gravel crunched softly as Chops moved to give her the old, soldierly pat on the back. She cut the unwanted gesture short as she snapped the safety off on the little chatterbox rifle and leveled the barrel at the target practice log. Jaw set, eyes swimming, she squeezed down on the trigger and sent the last unfired quarter of her magazine spraying wildly toward the bottles. The sound was deafening in the cabin’s silence, but it didn’t last nearly as long as Julip wanted.
Less than a dozen fresh cartridges clinked to the ground, and none of the bottles on the log had so much as wobbled when it was over. The sound of the outburst reverberated between the low hills like impotent thunder, and somewhere deep in the trees a skinny branch tumbled halfway toward the ground before getting hung up by other limbs.
Julip didn’t bother ejecting the mag or checking the safety. She heaved the rifle at the glass targets without looking to see if any had fallen. She just set her forehead against her upturned knees and waited for Chops to work up the balls to write something that wouldn’t fix anything.
“Your aim is getting rusty.”
Her head jerked up like a gunshot. 
There, cresting the gravel path’s steep incline stood Roach. For the barest moment she saw him clearly. Morning sunlight glinted off the obsidian chitin along his neck and shoulder, his lip canted in an apologetic smile. Then everything blurred and there wasn’t a damned thing Julip could do to stop it. 
Her heart lurched into her throat as she hurried wordlessly toward him. She couldn’t speak. She barely trusted herself to breathe. And then she had him in her wings, clutching at the ridge of his neck as if letting go might cause him to vanish there and then, and she buried her face into the smooth warmth of his chest and let the last walls she’d built to protect herself crumble.
Sobs ratcheted from her throat in painful, ugly sounds that grew more ragged when she felt him stroke her neck. He kissed the top of her head, making gentle shushing sounds in her flattened ears, and held her until she was spent. She sniffled and coughed, trying to force herself to remember how to breathe again, and watched the tears she’d finally let herself spill trace jagged paths down the shallow fissures of Roach’s chitin. 
They drew wet lines around a hole the size of a bottlecap between his lower ribs, and she gently touched it with the back of her hoof. His belly twitched and he sucked in a painful hiss at the contact, and with bleary eyes she met his with sudden worry.
Her voice edged toward a fresh sob as she asked, “Are you okay?”
His smile was like melted butter on warm bread, but it didn’t hide the visible discomfort that creased the corners of his pale eyes. “Took a bullet through the kidney,” he murmured, and when her eyes began to go wide he made that shushing sound again and kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ve got amazing ghoul powers, remember?”
Headshot, heart, or lungs. The mantra from her field training days came to her unbidden, and she pushed it away just as hard. They’d been wrong about ghouls from the start. She held living proof to that in her wings.
“Hurts like a sonuvabitch,” he continued, “but I’ll be alright.”
She looked down at the bloody mess that had painted his belly and groin translucent green, then saw where the exit wound had punched a hole half the size of her hoof just a few inches away from his spine. For anyone else it would have been fatal. She relinquished her grip around his neck, her eyes raw and red from crying, and lifted a hoof to his chest. She felt his heart beating there, slow and shallow as she knew it did, and had to fight her own logic to be able to believe he wasn’t going to drop dead in front of her. 
Roach smiled patiently down at her, then lifted her hoof with his own and gently kissed the back of it. “I’m right here, Julip. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I was so afraid you…” her voice locked up with a hitching sob and Roach pulled her against him again, his own words a little husky as he reassured her.
“You did order me to come back,” he said quietly. 
Her shoulders shook with a choking laugh. “You’re fucking r-right I did.”
As the tension in her gut slowly unwound itself, the utter exhaustion that followed in its wake felt good. She took in a deep lungful of air, her jangling nerves calming with his comforting scent, and held her breath for a beat before letting it out in a long sigh. He was here. He was a little banged up but he was okay. 
Behind her, the door to the cabin creaked shut. Chops had snuck away and taken cover. She felt Roach’s chest rise and fall against her own with a soft chuckle, and they kissed beneath the warming rays of a late morning sun.
When they parted, they looked to the clear sky in languid silence. Then Julip pecked him under the jaw, bringing him back from his woolgathering.
“You look tired,” she murmured.
He rumbled. “Had to make the flight back in fits and starts. Might sleep for a year if you let me.”
“Let’s get that wound cleaned out and put some food in you first. Then we can both get some sleep.”
“Mm,” he said agreeably. “I like that plan too.”
“Thought you would,” she said, and gingerly helped him toward the cabin.







Primrose’s Pip-Buck chimed and the sound of it echoed through the silent corridors of her Bunker like a coin dropped in an empty church. She paused in her aimless wandering, too aware of the thin veneer of heavy steel and computer code between her and the military she’d built, and read the message from the de facto head of her personal guard. 
Confirm all personnel confined to quarters. Taking Wing into chapel to await further orders.
She didn’t know the stallion’s name, only that after the balefire bomb detonated above Spitfire’s Stable he’d inherited the meaningless mantle of the mouthpiece of her Black Wing. Communication between her and him was tedious, slow, and necessary. It had been one of Clover’s many duties to act as intermediary between them and her, and then Billings’. Billings, for his part, had been remanded behind a sealed door like the rest of her staff. She had expected there to be pushback from what remained of the upper brass, maybe even a little fighting from those who had only just come up from the enlisted ranks. None of them did. Why would they, when they all believed her to be something more than what she was?
She tapped a series of keys and sent the confirmation back to the nameless, voiceless stallion, and wondered how long if ever it would take them to work out that they’d effectively decapitated the Enclave’s armed forces by obeying a command many of them hadn’t heard since they were foals: 
Go to your room.
She resumed her slow ambling through the empty halls, mindful of the hundreds of military mares and stallions locked behind each passing door, and turned her attention to the series of pinhole speakers embedded along the ceiling.
“Millie?”
A pause. “Yes, minister? How may I be of assistance?”
More than two hundred years had passed and Robronco’s so-called artificial intelligence showed no hint of having learned anything at all. Strange to think that a talking calculator was the only thing preventing all those doors from lurching open. 
“Confirm all SOLUS command and control functions are operational at the Ministry of Technology.”
“Confirmed,” Millie replied brightly.
She nodded absently. She’d lost track how many times she’d asked that question today. Dozens, maybe. Time well spent, too. She couldn’t afford to lock the doors behind herself only to fall victim to a bad packet of code.
Her Pip-Buck chimed again. She stopped to read the message with a touch of irritability. 
Situation around chapel requires your immediate attention. Seven arrests made in last hour; two civilians, three members of the Melody, and two enlisted soldiers. Reports of sporadic evacuation but no visual confirmation. Awaiting orders.
She forced herself to smile at that. The Melodies were always looking for opportunities to rise above their station. Wingless, mostly hornless, their only claim to the old world was a musician they hardly resembled and whose talents none of them shared. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied she might have had the presence of mind to place a bet on them being the first legacy family to bluster their way into shackles. 
Primrose tapped out a brief order for her personal guard to remain inside the chapel and only observe.
“Millie,” she prompted, her voice bouncing back to her from empty corridors, “please verify your command inputs are blocked for all users beside myself.”
Again, a pause. “Confirmed. I disabled input permissions for all users excluding those with minister and sysadmin access.”
She puzzled over that for a long moment. “Disable input to sysadmin, too.”
“You do not have sufficient permission for that request.”
She pulled a face, but told herself to stop splitting hairs. “Fine. What’s the ETA on SOLUS?”
“SOLUS will reach communication range in twenty-two minutes, sixteen sec–”
“Understood,” she snapped. It was terrifying to think if Millie hadn’t been programmed to shut up when it was interrupted, it might babble on forever if a question was vague enough. One careless inquiry and it could churn out answers until even Primrose was old and gray, or at least until she figured out where the off switch was. 
“Millie,” she said, her chest heavy with anticipation, “I’d like you to initiate communication with SOLUS as soon as the communication window opens. Once communication is established, move the amended maneuver sequence to the active queue for immediate upload and execution.”
“Yes, minister,” the overhead speakers confirmed. “Authorization will be required for–”
“I hereby preauthorize any queries received from SOLUS. Make it happen, Millie.”
“Yes, minister.”
Her Pip-Buck pinged a third time and it took an effort of will not to unlatch the thing and send it crunching against the nearby wall. She spared the message a passing glance. More civil unrest. Another member of a legacy family had been detained and was on his way to a shiny white cell at New Harmonies. A pegasus matching the description of a lieutenant who failed to report for duty the day prior had been seen among the anxious crowd but had slipped away before he could be apprehended. 
Primrose skimmed the rest of the message with pleasant detachment. A soldier posted at the chapel door was worried about a gryphon seen observing the plaza. Pastor Rivers had been overheard vomiting in the stallion’s restroom, very likely due to stress. An unconfirmed report of a street cobble being thrown at the chapel and missing a soldier’s head by inches. 
She turned off the screen and basked in the knowledge that all that weight would be lifted from her shoulders soon. It was a relief. A blessing, really. Her lips curled into a glad smile as she began navigating the vacant halls toward the lone elevator, listening to the quiet whisper of air recyclers as the vents passed overhead, her thoughts set firmly on what would come next.
Peace, she mused. Quiet. A vacation from the burden of leadership, of maintaining cities and armies, of shaping a sycophantic system of adulation. As the embers of an old war roared anew with purifying fire, she would survive with her personal guard in the safe confines of an even older fortress. Some knowledge and skills would inevitably be lost while the slate was scoured clean, but it was a necessary sacrifice to rebuild a world worth leading. 
The Steel Rangers had boxed her in and tugged at her Enclave’s fraying threads until it finally began unraveling around her. Fine. Let them scratch a line in their column. Let that meaningless little mark console them as their disillusioned people realize it was them who pushed her into a corner. She’d been kind to them until now, permitting them to crawl over the corpse of wider Equestria like so many hungry flies. They had their suits of armor. Their titles. Their cities built from rusting, broken scrap. 
She’d been polite. 
Not anymore.
She strode up to the elevator with concrete resolve. Silver doors split apart and she turned around as she entered, giving her Bunker one last look before the doors drew shut. She would miss her Enclave when it was gone, failure that it had been. Next time, she assured herself as the elevator started its gentle ascent toward the surface.
She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. All the pieces were in place. SOLUS was coming. All that remained was for her to plant the seed of a new story, a short flight to safety, and a long, long wait while the ashes settled.
The next breath came easier. She smiled.
Next time.







The third and final day arrived with a resplendent golden sunrise that left the city in whispering awe, and it closed out in a veil of midnight shadows and the rapid breakdown of societal order.
Aurora had woken that morning with a start. Waking Fiona had been a nearly monumental effort on her part - the gryphon slept like a stone - but when she roused Aurora told her everything the construct had divulged during the dream. Primrose had snapped. Stable 10 was no longer her sole target for obliteration. Everything was, and they were very likely sitting at the center of the first target.
She still didn’t know how many of the citizens dozing around them managed to overhear, but the number hadn’t been zero. She hadn’t cared. Subtlety be damned, this was too important for just the two of them to know. Fiona had barely managed to calm her before she started warning the people around them, but enough worrisome details had reached listening ears to spur fresh unease. They could see it spread throughout the densely packed crowd like stretching tendrils as muzzles tipped toward nearby ears, worried expressions turned vaguely toward where they’d sat, and so on until fear and confusion gradually erased any confidence of where the terrible news had originated. 
By breakfast the entire plaza had begun simmering with fresh worry. Radios began broadcasting Elder Coronado’s warning, further warming the cauldron. Tonight, he told them. SOLUS was coming for them tonight. And for the first time there was real truth to that threat. 
By midday, the city was boiling with activity. Aurora and Fiona watched pegasi rise into the cloudless sky, their flicking wings taking them further and further from the city. Some of the grounded citizens began to flow out of the plaza only to be immediately replaced by those who had been camped out on the nearest streets. Twice, a small caravan of empty wagoneers tried to push into the plaza advertising extortionate prices to those who wished to evacuate. Twice they were repelled by soldiers whose nerves could be seen fraying in real time. 
Aurora didn’t have to be a soldier herself to understand the fear and frustration on their faces. Their leadership had gone silent and they’d been left to manage a rapidly devolving situation without guidance or coordination. Despite her personal disdain for the Enclave, she couldn’t help but feel a little sympathy for them. They were just as afraid as the citizens they were struggling to contain, and their masks of confident authority were being sandblasted away by their own uncertainty. 
The first arrests occurred when the skies had begun to dim. Some pompous fool strode up the chapel steps and got nose to nose with a soldier whose patience was well behind her. The shouting had been headed, shrill, and very brief. The other soldiers barely hesitated once the black clad mare dropped him on his jaw, and soon he and what appeared to be his family were being escorted through a tide of outraged onlookers. 
More than once a stallion standing atop one of the stone benches beckoned loudly for Fiona to use her bulk to force open the chapel doors. Each time she said nothing in return until finally the stallion spat at her with disgust and turned away.
Aurora felt the bile rising in her throat as the final hours ticked by. Eight o’clock came and went, but the chapel didn’t open. Nine o’clock arrived and somebody threw a rock toward the soldiers protecting the steps. Several black uniforms descended toward them and were roundly pushed back by a furious, desperate mob. An electric streetlamp jerked and fell in a splash of protesting metal and breaking glass. It was promptly followed by a louder crash of a shattering window, and they watched some of the unlit crowd funnel into the opening and begin raiding the unfortunate shop.
The sky above had transformed itself into a beautiful spray of radiant starlight when ten o’clock arrived, and somewhere in the city the chatter of gunfire provided a stark contrast. The soldiers guarding the chapel no longer held their own weapons at rest positions, and Aurora had the sinking feeling that each and every one of their safeties were disengaged. Everyone’s eyes, even those in uniform, flicked uneasily toward the yawning maw of the night sky as if they might be able to discern the approaching satellite from the million other twinkling points of light. 
By now the crowd had finally begun to thin. Aurora and Fiona watched as parents gathered their children while doing their utmost to keep the regret from showing in their eyes. They’d waited too long. Even those among them with wings wouldn’t be able to fly fast or far enough to get clear of the blast, and every one of them knew it. Those with someone to protect departed with faces set in grim determination. Those who stayed grew quiet, resigned, and utterly still.
The panic that lurched a city toward the edge of reason steadily suffocated with each stifling minute that ticked by. The hammer was cocked. The barrel of the gun pressed firmly against their heads. All that remained to see was whether or not someone pulled the trigger.
At ten thirty, Aurora opened her saddlebag and pulled on Ginger’s Pip-Buck. With the press of a feather the screen flashed to life in full color and a cartoon rendition of Scootaloo posed confidently with the company logo. A deep frown pulled at Aurora’s jaw as the loading screen was quickly replaced with the default user menu. She clicked through the tabs until she found the one labeled DATA. In it, the file Director Clover had compiled for her sat alone in the directory. 
She stared bitterly at the screen before putting it to sleep. It made no difference being able to track Primrose’s location when she was still inside the Bunker. She tried hard not to dwell on the possibility that there had been a window in the last three days and she’d missed it. 
A hand gripped her shoulder. 
“We should get closer to the front,” Fiona suggested, “just in case.”
Aurora considered launching the file anyway. It might flush Primrose into the open somehow. They wouldn’t know if she didn’t try.
Then she set her jaw and forced herself to think clearly. No. The cards she had to work with were utter garbage but she’d stand no chance at all of bluffing her way to victory if she started throwing them away. She set her hoof down and nodded absently toward Fiona, and the pair of them began slowly pushing their way through the rear of the fearful crowd.
No one made any special effort to move out of the way. Hardly anyone seemed to acknowledge them or care that the gryphon was now inexplicably on the move. Hooves scraped and clattered over the stones as bodies were gently and not so gently pushed aside, Aurora shouldering herself between the gaps while Fiona trailed in the wake she provided. Devoid of patience or sympathy several citizens pushed back against her, refusing to budge and forcing her to find another way through. And then, when they’d hardly progressed a third of the way across the plaza, she realized she was jostling aside a familiar face.
The fiery-maned mare turned to look at her with a miserable expression that suddenly brightened with recognition. Rosemary, Ginger’s elder sister, uttered a surprised “Oh!” before moving half a pace to one side to let her through. “Miss, ah… Hooves. Lila. I hadn’t expected to see you again.”
Aurora forced a little nod by way of greeting but was stopped when a portly stallion wearing a genuine old world waistcoat held his ground ahead of them. She grimaced as she searched for another way past.
“Acquaintances of yours, Rosemary?”
The inquiry came from the older mare standing to the other side of Rosemary, her features a bit fuller than either of her daughters and a rich cream coat to offset their coffee tones. Aurora had been readying herself to make war on the chapel, not this. She returned the older mare’s curious, intelligent frown with an expression of barely contained surprise. Then her gaze shifted to the stallion who’d blocked her way forward and some part of her brain saw the family resemblance. His deep caramel coat stretched over sinewy haunches and his mane, run through with filaments of thinning gray, followed the sharp curve of his neck as he looked back to see who his wife and daughter were addressing. 
Faded blue eyes fixed Aurora with a fleeting glint of recognition, then swiveled up to regard Fiona with the silent calculations of a career slaver. It lasted only an instant, and yet Aurora felt the fury burning its way through her chest. Her feathers began to curl around her rifle.
“The two of you were in my house,” Ginger’s father commented with the faintest note of disapproval. “Why?”
Aurora forced herself to stare past him toward the chapel steps where golden lamplight illuminated the shadowed oaken doors and their attending soldiers. Either Rosemary hadn’t told her parents the reason for their visit two days prior, or the facts of Ginger’s death amounted to so little that it didn’t warrant a mention. She grit her teeth and went back to looking for a way around before she talked herself into pumping a .308 through the family patriarch’s tailpipe. 
“Personal business,” she grunted dismissively.
“Any business that takes place under my roof,” Mr. Dressage said, turning to face her as he spoke, “is my business.”
Her eyes slid toward him like heavy stones. “Is that so?”
He nodded, his silver blue eyes narrowing to the audible challenge in her voice. “It is. Much more so when the chattel begins shirking their duties so they may whisper about strangers arriving in the night.” 
Her smile grew brittle. She took a half step toward him as she remembered the slaver camp outside Kiln, the malnourished bodies stuffed into cages of rebar hammered into concrete pads. The menacing blinking lights in the collars they’d been forced to wear, packed with just enough explosives to kill the wearer with minimal risk to the owner. 
Her wing closed around Desperate Times as she remembered Ginger using the magic forced upon her to distract a clutch of scarred young foals, and her primary feather slid silently through the trigger guard.
Fiona’s strong fingers gripped the ridge of her wing and jerked it away from her rifle. Aurora rounded on her, eyes blazing with trembling rage only to see the pleading desperation in Fiona’s. They told her no. Not here. Not now.
But later, maybe. If they were lucky.
With a shuddering breath she turned back to face Ginger’s father, words meant to lacerate on the tip of her tongue. She couldn’t shoot him, but she could tell him and she knew it would cut him deep. Your youngest daughter died ashamed of who you are, and I watched it happen. 
She unlocked her jaw, her voice dripping with menace. “Your youngest–”
Bells began tolling within the high steeples of the Chapel of the Two Sisters, and Aurora watched with unspent fury as everyone in the plaza including the stallion before her turn toward them. A moment later the tall wooden doors atop the steps groaned inward, pulled by two soldiers whose uniforms were just a sliver darker than the ones outside, devoid of any embellishments or accolades, and worn by pegasi whose expressions were as muted as their severed tongues.
The last time she’d seen a member of Primrose’s Black Wing had been when she and Ginger held a balefire bomb between their chests. Ice water drowned her rage and replaced it with something else.
Fear.
The crowd lurched toward the open doors like a singular mass, the thunder of hooves nearly drowning out the tolling of the bells above. Aurora felt herself being shoved forward with Fiona at her back and the Dressage family ahead. She remembered a scene from an old movie she’d watched on a projector screen suspended from the Atrium when she was younger. She couldn’t recall what it had been about, only that there had been a singular bell tower that counted the hours with each ring.
Her throat went dry as they were pushed up the marble steps, the fear of falling and being trampled beneath the crush warring with the terror of the bells counting their way up to eleven, to the hour she knew SOLUS would arrive. 
As she was pressed toward the chapel doors a muzzle pressed into her ear and Rosemary had to shout to be heard over the din. “I know why you’re here!”
Aurora felt her heart drop into her stomach and she looked at Ginger’s older sister with despair. No. Not here. This couldn’t happen here.
Then Rosemary’s mouth was in her ear again, softer this time as the carpeted foyer muffled the fall of their hooves. “You won’t do her justice in the pews,” she said. “Turn right, down the hall, past the bathrooms, and go up the stairs to the choir loft.”
She did know. And what’s more she was helping her. 
Aurora didn’t waste time. She shoved herself into the gap between two unicorns on her right and forced herself into the narrow, half-lit hallway beyond. Fiona stayed close behind her as they followed a ribbon of rich, crimson carpet, past a pair of labeled restrooms, and kept moving until she spotted the worn wooden steps nestled in a gap in the wall. Wear marks in the carpet indicated that the staircase was usually monitored, but no one stood to guard it now. Aurora struggled up the creaking steps as fast as her false leg would allow and hoped nobody would question them at the top.
Nobody did as they stepped out onto the upper level she’d seen cantilevered above the back seats of the chapel the last time she’d been inside. To her dismay, the carpeted floor wasn’t sloped forward for an ideal line of sight but utterly flat, making the bare bench seating no more suitable for what she needed to do than if she’d been on ground level. The instrument she’d heard before loomed against the rearmost wall, brass pipes sticking up toward a medallion window, the plain wooden bench behind the keys oddly vacant. The entire loft was empty aside from them. They made their way cautiously toward the benches at the loft’s edge, the shallow railing somehow feeling too low to be safe, and she sucked in a breath as the church yawned open below. 
Anyone who chose to look up would see her standing there, utterly exposed. She swallowed, inched back to the second row instead, and hoped no one would take notice of the mare whose supposed pure blood Primrose had made famous throughout the Enclave.
Then she heard hooves coming up the steps they’d just emerged from and, failing a ready excuse, Aurora met Fiona’s eyes and jerked her head toward an empty bench in the rearmost row. They seated themselves on the outside end in time for a trickle of uneasy faces to emerge from the stairwell, all of them looking as guilty for being up here as Aurora and Fiona felt, and over the next few minutes the loft began to fill with those who hadn’t found seats in the pews below. 
She kept her eyes on the floor hoping no one would notice that she’d angled the barrel of her rifle between her knees, both wings casually holding it in what she hoped looked to be relaxed control. Several black uniforms had joined them in the loft, one of which clutched at a stack of papers and who had seated himself on the empty bench in front of her. She wasn’t leaving this place. She might not have come to terms with it, but it didn’t change the fact that she knew it was true. The presence of so many armed soldiers just felt like salt in the wound. It would have been nice to know she at least had a fighting chance.
Beside her, Fiona curled each finger into her fist and squeezed until the joints emitted one dull pop after another, readying herself for a fight. Her lavender eyes were fixed on the soldier seated in the next bench. 
No one else seemed to notice as citizens and soldiers filled in the aisles, choked the side exits, and took up any open square foot they could press into. All eyes were aimed toward the vacant podium and the twin thrones that flanked it.
Suddenly, movement from the plain wooden door set off to one side of the podium. A robed stallion shuffled out and the murmuring voices hushed. He paused to bow his head toward the empty thrones, then proceeded to the podium. The speakers suspended along the vaulted ceiling gave a peel of noise as he nervously adjusted the microphone, the sound of it reverberating louder and louder until a sharp pop cut the sound until the echoes of feedback faded. A second pop and the microphone was back on, and Pastor River’s voice filled the silence.
“This service,” he murmured, his voice subdued, “will be broadcast to the wider wasteland for the benefit of our foes.”
And with that he turned and shuffled back toward the door he’d emerged from. The murmuring returned with a hint of excitement as he departed, and once more the hot mic began to pick up the warbling feedback loop until a soldier in too much black stood up from the front pew and went to switch it off.
Eight of them, she counted. A dozen Black Wing soldiers sat shoulder to shoulder and unnaturally still. Aurora caught sight of Rosemary seated a wing’s breadth behind them flanked on either side by her mother and father, the latter of which sat as still as Primrose’s personal guard. Loyalty or propriety, she wasn’t sure which it was, only that it made them all look vaguely alien against the uneasy movement around them.
Then, row by row, heads started to turn toward the back of the church and as if hearing an unspoken command those who had gathered rose to stand. Those packed into the wide center aisle pressed back into the crowded seating and a clear path down the lavender tiles took shape.
Aurora’s heart hammered against her ribs as everyone seated in the loft went to their hooves as well. She felt suddenly dizzy as she fumbled to shove her stiff prosthetic beneath her. She wanted to puke. She wanted the benefit of an automatic, not the unforgiving precision weapon she’d been too stupid to leave behind. She wanted time to stop moving forward so she could steady her rapid, shallow breathing. 
Like she had on the first day she’d stepped out beneath the clouds of this half-dead wasteland, Aurora wanted to go back home and hide. She wasn’t a hero. She was no assassin. She replaced worn gaskets and rewired burnt up tools. She took things that were broken and made them work again. 
Hoofsteps clicked unseen down the tiles below. The chapel hushed. 
Minister Primrose strode into view, surrounded on all sides by four armed Black Wing soldiers, and Aurora felt the fear and doubt drain out of her as if a plug had been pulled from the burn scars knotting her chest. Her breathing slowed, deepened at the sight of that wavy blue mane curled around the back of her pale pink neck. 
In that quiet moment, Aurora knew she might not be a killer, but she was something. She was a mare of Stable 10. A wrench-turner of Mechanical. She maintained the generator which gave her people air, water, food, and life. 
An assassin she wasn’t, but when she encountered something broken she threw herself to the task without thinking twice about it. 
She fixed things.
And Minister Primrose, the butcher whose hideous work transcended centuries, was a problem she could fix.
Her jangling nerves crystalized. Slowly, careful to keep its barrel pointed toward the floor, she inched the butt of her rifle snug against her shoulder. The Black Wing guards were still too much of an obstruction for her to gamble a shot. She’d only get one. 
Not yet. 
Primrose and her personal guard pushed down the aisle and out onto the raised platform. Aurora’s heart thundered with a ferocity that pulsed in her throat, behind her eyes, and down the stump of her missing limb. She watched the little tyrant give a curt bow toward the empty thrones before her retinue dissolved away while she approached the podium. They formed a line on either side, two grim faced soldiers on each wing staring out toward the gathered crowd with utter indifference. Add in the eight additional guards seated at the front of the chapel and it made for an even dozen.
Aurora watched her step up to the microphone and bend the bulb to her smiling lips. She slid a feather through the trigger guard and readied herself to step clear of the benches to lift the barrel.
“Good evening,” she greeted, her voice like melted chocolate, “to all of you here, and to those of you hearing me from afar. My name is Primrose. I am the last chosen Minister of the Enclave, and I come to you all tonight with a message of peace.”
If a building could sigh, the Chapel of the Two Sisters did just that. Pews creaked as their occupants relaxed. A soft murmur of relieved chuckles echoed off the walls. Their minister was here to tell them everything would be okay. 
The soldier seated ahead of Aurora let out a shuddering breath and the papers he gripped deformed a little. She blinked at that, unsure what to make of it.
“Over the past several days many of you have been unfairly subjected to the ramblings of a madstallion by the name of Coronado. An Elder of the Steel Ranger best known for importing zebra military technology and deploying it in the defense of the ruined, irradiated city he hails from. In recent weeks, the armed forces of the Enclave destroyed these same weapons for the simple fact that they did not discriminate between friend or foe. Enclave and dustwing alike have been needlessly cut down by the guns of Fillydelphia, but the necessary removal of that vicious threat came with unintended consequences.”
The soldier in front of her abruptly stood, his chest heaving. Aurora’s eyes went wide with confusion, as did several of those seated nearby. As if afraid they’d missed a cue, several other citizens rose to their hooves which only encouraged more to do the same. It was mindless social pressure at its finest, and it had just blocked Aurora’s line of sight. 
With her own jaw set with annoyance she stood along with Fiona and quickly noticed the unscheduled motion had drawn the attention of Primrose and her flanking guard. The minister paused for half a beat, her head slightly tilted as if those standing in the loft were of mild amusement, then resumed speaking as if they were of no concern.
The Black Wing soldiers, however, kept their dull gazes on the loft.
“Elder Coronado,” Primrose continued, her amplified voice ringing from the speakers, “took the loss of his Vhannan weapons personally. It’s our belief that the balefire weapon that detonated above Spitfire’s Stable was an attempt by him to terrify the Enclave into submission, and when he witnessed our resolve to stand together against the weapons of the old world…”
She spread her wings with a shrugging shake of her head. “...he panicked and chose to create a fiction, instead. Ladies and gentlecolts, SOLUS is not real. It does not exist. It is a ploy by Elder Coronado to salvage his–”
The agitated soldier sucked in a sharp breath. “YOU LIE!”
The church went utterly silent, save for the groaning of benches as the bodies in them turned at once to seek the source of the outburst. There were no gasps, no shouts of loyal protest, no whispers. There was only quiet, as if everyone had just discovered their hoof had armed a hidden landmine and none of them wanted to be the first to set it off.
Aurora could feel the heat from Primrose’s gaze as her eyes found the soldier seated ahead of her. She pushed the butt of her rifle away from her shoulder as the entire building seemed to turn to look her way, and her iron nerve began to waver.
Hooves were already thundering up the stairs at the back of the loft, and the sound of the soldier’s approaching arrest only emboldened him to shout into the vast silence.
“SOLUS is real and it’s under YOUR control, minister!” With a sweeping gesture of his wing, the soldier flung the stack of papers over the edge of the loft, sending hundreds of fluttering sheets down onto the startled congregation below.
As he continued to speak, Aurora noticed another plume of documents flung from another soldier further forward in the chapel. Then another. Aurora’s eyes widened as soldiers filed onto the loft, eyes casting about for the stallion in front of her. 
“And you are not our last chosen minister! The Element of Loyalty survived and is still alive, and you sent a balefire bomb to the pureblood’s Stable to try and kill her! You sent Security Director Clover and his staff to the Stable to die with her, because they knew the tru–”
Black clad bodies rushed toward the shouting soldier like an inky tide, dragging him to the floor with such force that Aurora felt the reverberations in her hooves. She hissed a curse under her breath as a different voice elsewhere in the church carried on where the first soldier left off.
But by now the momentary stillness had broken and congregants were either shouting down the second soldier or speaking earnestly with one another as they poured over the documents. Aurora tried to pose as unthreatening a form as she could as she watched the dissenting soldier being hauled up to his hooves, his expression dazed and his muzzle slicked with bright blood. All the while Primrose stood at the front of the chaos, her expression black as oil.
Aurora made her way carefully toward the edge of the loft, her rifle sliding back up against her shoulder. Paper crinkled under her hoof and she glanced down at it. A technical document of SOLUS, each module of the satellite neatly drawn and labeled. She recognized the cylinder seen from Apogee’s helmet camera. Then she spotted a sheet beside it and could barely suppress a feral grin. A printout of Rainbow Dash’s message to Spitfire including the metadata from the Enclave’s own servers. Primrose had a leak and her own soldiers had not been happy to learn what they’d found.
Turns out their loyalty isn’t so blind after all, she thought approvingly. 
Primrose’s church was rapidly devolving into chaos as her tenuous web of lies disintegrated under the pressure of so many questions bolstered by so much proof. Aurora couldn’t have asked for a better distraction.
She suppressed a bitter chuckle as she brought the barrel of her rifle up over the railing. Her cheek pressed lovingly against the warm wood of the weapon, her eye lining up with the lens of the scope. Everyone was too busy shouting for answers to notice her. Primrose was too paralyzed by rage to see beyond the collapse of her authority. She steadied her breath and slid her feather through the trigger guard. 
In. Out. In. Out. 
BANG!
Aurora jumped when the gunshot rang out from far below her, and the collective scream that rippled through the church slammed her ears shut like a physical blow. Two more gunshots ripped through the air in rapid succession and Aurora found herself ducking for cover along with everyone else in the church. Obscured by the half-wall railing, it took her half a second to realize none of the shots came from her rifle. 
She risked peeking above the railing in time to see Primrose’s personal guard swinging heavy automatics toward a focal point in the crowd and open fire. The screams redoubled as bullets shredded everything in front and behind a rapidly pulping body still clinging to a Ranger-issued subcompact. People began to stampede for the exit with a singular mind to escape. Aurora felt her gorge rise as some of them fled straight through the steady gunfire and fell like wheat beneath a sickle, and it was only her ability to cling to the most tenuous shred of focus that let her notice the plain wooden door behind the podium slamming closed.
Her heart dropped. Primrose was bolting.
“No, no, NO!” she yelled, but her voice was drowned out by the roaring screams reverberating between the speakers and the abandoned microphone. 
The sound resonated in deafening waves like a generator spinning off its axis. She turned to Fiona for help and knew the gryphon had seen what she had seen. Primrose had run. Gone. Neither of them could hope to chase through the door she’d fled into without facing the withering fire of the Black Wing soldiers still sweeping their weapons toward any target they deemed a threat. If they tried to fight their way to the front of the church they risked getting caught in the crush. Every door was clogged with frightened bodies. Every escape was blocked.
Aurora almost dropped Desperate Times as she hunched down over her Pip-Buck, her feather jagging uncontrollably as she jammed the trembling tip over the buttons. The screen came alive, wasted precious seconds displaying the loading screen, and then she was flying through the menus until she came upon the file Director Clover left for her. 
She highlighted it and launched the tracking program.
The Pip-Buck’s drives chittered as it sent the connection request to the Enclave’s servers. A full second later a false color satellite image of prewar farmland bloomed on the screen. Aurora frowned with impatient confusion until a grainy gridwork of lines scanned down over the map. New Canterlot, she realized, interposed over an outdated image of the land it now stood on. A triangular icon blinked on at the map’s center, at the top of a shallow hill.
A pained scream came up from the loft stairwell. Someone having the air crushed from their lungs.
A second icon appeared well over a mile away and was rapidly receding eastward. Primrose. 
Aurora remembered with sickening dread what the construct had told her. That Primrose had ridden out one apocalypse inside the Ministry of Technology and would do it again, given the choice. She looked despairingly up toward Fiona. “We have to find a way out of here.”
Fiona scanned the death unfolding around them, then her eyes fixed on the nearest stained glass window freezing Pinkie Pie’s silhouette in an exuberant cheer and her expression hardened. “Hold on.”
She didn’t need to hold onto much. In an instant Fiona’s arms wrapped her back in a vise grip, wings pinned to her sides, saddlebags sagging and finally dropping to the floor as she was lifted bodily from her hooves. She barely had time to think before Fiona’s tawny wings arched open and whipped back down in a gout of brute strength. The loft rushed out from beneath them. The stained window grew large.
Fiona’s wings clapped shut around her and they punched through the webwork of little panes in an shattering explosion of pink glass. They tumbled through the open air above the plaza as a roar of startled cries rose up to meet them. Aurora felt her body being wrenched upward as Fiona threw her wings open again and threw as much air behind them as she could. They missed the stone cornices of an onrushing building by bare inches, close enough that Aurora felt the edge slap at the end of her dangling tail, and then they were hurtling over the rooftops and into the eastern sky.
“Point me in the right direction!” Fiona shouted over the din of rushing wind.
“East!” she shouted back, her eyes squinted at her Pip-Buck. Primrose was no slouch when it came to flying. Why would she? She’d been practicing at it for centuries. “We need to go faster! Let me drop, I can fly on my own!”
Fiona’s grip around her vanished and Aurora’s stomach lurched into her throat. She bent her shoulders to right herself and opened her wings once the passing buildings were below her. She worked them hard, throwing air behind her as fast as she could gather it, not daring to give Fiona any reason to slow down on her account. It didn’t matter which of them caught up to Primrose first, only that someone did. Aurora would give that bitch a bullet. Fiona wouldn’t leave anything behind but a red smear.
Either was fine with her.
She began to catch up, gaining ground on Fiona an inch at a time. Primrose’s icon still glowed brightly on the map, her trajectory fixed on the looming hulk of Canterlot Mountain ahead. Her lungs burned from the exertion until it felt as if she were sucking down acid with each inhalation. She hadn’t worked herself this hard before and she tried not to think of what would happen if she came in contact with anything stationary at this speed. Her wings blurred in time with her racing pulse, piling on velocity with every beat. 
She met Fiona’s eyes as she pulled ahead. Neither of them said a word. They didn’t have to. Aurora was the faster of the two. 
Go, the gryphon’s expression urged. Kill her.
Aurora squinted at her outstretched hooves, at the screen clamped around her right fetlock, and thought she could see the space between her and Primrose contract a little. Her muscles burned like kerosine poured over an open flame, but she forced herself to fly harder. New Canterlot slid below and then behind them, shrinking into the distance like a pool of light being carried away on a black river. The stars seemed to glow a little brighter, urging her toward the scarred mountain.
Silvery moonlight illuminated what was left of the ruins of Old Canterot. Dark trails left by salvagers burrowed into the blackened wreckage like termites chewing through dry wood. Meanwhile the mountain grew larger, its shadows starker against the unobstructed glow. Primrose’s trajectory banked around the southern slope and Aurora realized she knew what she was using to guide her.
A railroad. Twin ribbons of steel followed an outcropping winding around the southern slope, far lower to the foot of the mountain than the one she and her friends found Beans and her family hiding beside but still just high enough for the protruding ridge of cut stone to stand out. Aurora blinked her vision clear and squinted down along the rails. Her heart skipped a beat.
She saw her. Primrose’s pink wings flicked back and forth in the moonlight, her features made small by their difference in altitude.
Aurora began to dive. She couldn’t fly and shoot at the same time, but as the rails and her quarry bent toward the mountain’s western slope she realized she may not need to. She just needed to get Primrose on the ground. After that, it wouldn’t even be a fight. Primrose might be a practiced flyer but unless she’d secretly spent a few decades wrestling machines twice her size into working order and getting in brawls with the pegasi she got piss drunk with after a long shift, Aurora was confident she knew of a few ugly ways to make Primrose swallow her own teeth.
Then the sky erupted in wild shades of emerald.







Miles above the planet’s surface, tumbling gently along through the vacuum, SOLUS detected a signal from its builders.
Deep beneath its meteorite-pitted shell, under insulating layers made brittle by the endless thermal cycles caused by its unchecked rotation, and perched a wing’s breadth away from one of six lead-shielded channels which focused the energies of a balefire talisman toward the satellite’s central chamber, an unassuming box chattered to life. The antennae arrayed symmetrically around the satellite’s outermost surface listened intently to the curious message being sent from below.
SOLUS listened. And then it understood.
It compiled a standard security packet and spent a full minute absently broadcasting it back on a predefined loop. After one hundred and twenty seconds without a response it would stop and regard the check failed. It broadcasted for ninety-seven seconds before receiving an answer. 
The packet sent from the surface was encoded in the standard JetStream Aerospace encryption and contained the appropriate response. SOLUS continued its aimless tumble over the dark Equestrian coastline as it sent down a short ready confirmation. The old metropolises slid by in silence. Las Pegasus, Van Hoover, and the baked expanse of the Palomino Gorge looked much the same as the new, comparatively miniscule settlements of the western wasteland. All dark. All quiet. The airwaves silent except for a few lonely wideband stations playing dead music, warning away aggressors, and some just begging for help.
Then the antennae trembled with a focused message from the surface. 
Instructions.
SOLUS parsed these new orders and sent back a litany of cautions and warnings which all amounted to the same thing in the end: it was an old satellite being asked to do something unfamiliar. Every weld, every panel, every lens was over a century beyond their operational lifetime and the partial vacuum of space had been less than kind. 
A response flicked back up through the distant atmosphere: disregard all cautions and proceed.
SOLUS cached the active flags and proceeded as instructed.
The first step: wait. 
It did so for four and a half minutes. The gentle tumble imparted by its unsuccessful ejection from orbit two hundred years prior swept the satellite’s deadly barrel closer to its retrograde axis by slow degrees. In the meantime, calculations were made and sums were checked for errors. None were found.
Arid farmland and a moonlit mountain slid beyond the mirrors arrayed along SOLUS’s shaft. The horizon dropped away, and the weapon stared blindly out toward impossibly distant stars.
Its onboard computer consulted with a myriad of sensors. Error margins dropped like lead sinkers thrown into a pond, descending one after another into the pleasant green range of acceptable thresholds. 
SOLUS opened fire on the black void ahead of it. There was no sound, safe for the subtle vibrations resonating through its own hull. Blinding, woeful light twitched a few calculated degrees into the angle of its slow rotation, directed by ancient gimbals attached to the final mirror. Shallow ripples formed along one side of its thin skin as it first shed the anomalous rotation, then they progressed around its circumference as it began decelerating in earnest.







Aurora turned her head up just enough to see the blinding, thread-thin beam lance across the horizon behind her without a sound. Her eyes went wide and for the barest instant she thought she was witnessing the end. A low, pleading noise rolled up from her throat as SOLUS lit the night sky with a filament of balefire, but the beam was at the wrong angle to reach the ground. 
And then she remembered. The braking maneuver. It had to slow down before its lopsided orbit flung it clear of the planet again. This was a light show. A warning. But not deadly. Not yet. 
Knowing that did nothing to assuage her fear as she watched the sickly beam fan out as it reached the far horizon, pumping who knew how much raw radiation above the atmosphere to cause who knew how much harm later down the road. The power it displayed was magnificent, and it made her feel less than insignificant by comparison. There, where the source of the beam gradually slid across the sky, was a machine that had the power to strip apart the molecules that made her like water sizzling over a hotplate. 
SOLUS was more than death. It was erasure. And Primrose meant to use it to burn the wasteland down to the living stone.
All those thoughts ran through her mind in the space of a few quick breaths, and when Aurora turned back toward Primrose she realized she’d closed more distance than she’d expected. She didn’t like what she saw.
Primrose was staring up at her, wide-eyed with shock. Shock, and something else.
Recognition.
It was all the motivation Primrose needed. With a burst of energy she whipped her head forward and poured on the speed, leaving Aurora to dive through the empty air she’d occupied while shouting a trail of furious curses in her wake. 
Aurora pumped her wings hard enough that a bolt of pain shot through her shoulder, but she managed to pull out of the dive before the blurring rails could rise up to meet her. The effort forced her to lose precious ground while Primrose hurtled away, her shrinking form silhouetted by the light of her own Pip-Buck as she fiddled with the device.
As SOLUS slid ever eastward, the mountain rose up to obscure its passage. They dove into the unnatural shadow cast by the emerald lance, the sickly green rails turning silver once more as bends and curves unnoticeable at low speed made the steel jerk and wobble at their suicidal velocity.
And then Primrose vanished. Utterly and completely, as if the night itself had swallowed her whole. Aurora barely had time to process what she saw before she saw the tunnel entrance yawning toward her and the steel slab of a blast door dropping across the opening. It wasn’t the slow, ponderous roll of a Stable door. It was the massive blade of a guillotine, powered by mass and gravity. 
Instinct was all that kept her from killing herself against the unforgiving metal. With a terrified shout, she committed and clapped her wings shut.
Her trajectory abruptly arced toward the blurring rails and the falling door chased her every inch of the way down. The mountain’s closing jaws slammed shut around her with a sound like nothing she’d ever heard, a bone-rattling boom so close and so loud that it outpaced the thunderclap explosion of the bomb that took Ginger. She screamed. Her body didn’t give her the choice. Primal fear, the fear of a predator too large and too powerful pinning her to the dirt, tore the noise from her throat unbidden. 
Her shoulder slammed into the stones between the rails with enough force to bounce her. She screamed again, her wings snapping open in an attempt to direct her next fall, and she managed to glimpse the rushing crossmembers to aim her legs toward them. Her false leg, locked in full extension, slid against a silver rail and the rapidly heating metal threw up a curtain of orange sparks. Then the prosthesis tore away with a painful, sucking pop and Aurora dropped into a violent tumble.
She clamped her wings over her head as the world beat itself against her, rails and rocks smacking into her from every direction seemingly at once. The assault felt like it lasted for hours but she knew it couldn’t have been for more than a few long seconds. Her battered body rolled to a stop against one of the tunnel’s smooth, curving walls, and she lay there, stunned, in the flickering light of her wrecked Pip-Buck.
Then the screen went out, and she was alone.
Silence reigned for one minute. Two. She could taste the blood trickling down the back of her throat. A deep throb from her stump strongly suggested the sutures had opened up.
She winced as she rolled onto her side. No broken bones, funnily enough. Not that she could feel anyway. She’d caught her head against something in the tumble, likely why her nose was bleeding, but it only felt like her brain was two sizes too big for her skull so she had a feeling she’d gotten off light.
“Fuck me sideways,” she growled as she pushed herself to her hooves. 
The stones were slick with moisture, and not all of it hers judging by the dull drip of water elsewhere in the tunnel. A sheen of light reflected dimly from the tunnel’s outer curve where condensation had wet the concrete slabs. It was barely enough to see by, but she managed to find her rifle laying across the rails a few yards away, the antique wood dirty and scuffed but seemingly no worse for wear. 
She gave Ginger’s Pip-Buck one last poke. A web of cracks ran through the unresponsive screen. With a sigh she undid the clasp and it hit the stones with a dull clatter. She stood there on the tracks for several more seconds, her rifle pressed to her shoulder in throbbing wings, and waited to see if Primrose would come to investigate the sound. Half a minute ticked by. No response. 
She held her breath and limped toward the glow, taking care to set her hooves on the wooden cross ties to minimize sound. The tunnel itself seemed to go on forever, stretching far past the point where she’d expect to emerge from the one she knew back home. Every twenty yards or so she had to spit out the blood pooling in the back of her throat. Nosebleeds weren’t something she was unaccustomed to but this one was revolting with its volume and persistence. She wouldn’t bleed out from it, but she wasn’t about to suck down several cups of her own blood without retching either. 
The bleeding eventually resolved into a stuffy, slow drip she could ignore by the time she reached the source of the light. A section of wall had been sliced away revealing an open concrete space at least a hundred yards wide and only a dozen or so high. Flakes of yellow paint clung to the ledge of the loading platform overlooking the rails, a short rusted ladder the only way to climb up from the tracks. 
Grimacing, she gave her wings two aching pulses and dropped onto one of the loading docks. A few old fluorescents buzzed in fixtures suspended from cables from the gray ceiling, their light shining on an array of familiar and neglected equipment. Forklifts rusted together in their designated area, charging cables still mated with heavy duty sockets mounted on yellow bollards. Their rubber wheels had long since cracked apart on their rims and fallen onto pitted concrete where leaking battery acid etched the stone.
Off to one wall an army of pallet jacks stood handle to handle, their forks pushed beneath heavy duty racking stacked to the ceiling with layer upon layer of flattened cardboard. The material had absorbed enough water that the metal racks had begun to bow under their weight, and several moldy clots of the stuff were close to slopping to the floor. It was hard to imagine using this place for a shelter for any amount of time. If there was moisture and mold in the air recyclers, anyone stuck here for more than a day or two was just asking for pneumonia.
She tread carefully past loading zones, equipment, and approached the wide partition leading into the next dimly lit room. Her eyes rose to the upper frame of that opening and the flaking words which were still legible there.


MOT Warehouse 03


A chill went through her that had nothing to do with the damp. Ever since she was little, the ministries were something she heard about in books or archival footage. The Pillar was just words on paper, like Las Pegasus or the Tree of Harmony or the moon. They weren’t real places she could just walk outside and see. 
And yet here she stood. The Ministry of Technology. The Pillar, or what little of it had survived. She was here, breathing its air, walking the same floors that supported a war machine unlike anything she could comprehend. She passed a slab of wood, rusting nails bent menacingly to poke an unlucky hoof, and it read P-65 Mk.II PWRARMOR followed by weapon designations and calibers she didn’t understand. Heavy weaponry. The old kind that guided a civilization at its peak down into the mud with all the rest of them.
She wondered to herself what kind of fear would drive people to build such overwhelming machines of death, and then had to admit to herself she knew exactly what that fear was. It was descending into orbit a hundred miles over her head right this very minute. And here she was looking for the mare she needed to kill to make it go away.
She sucked in an uneasy breath and stepped into the dim warehouse.
It became immediately apparent just how many people used to live here. Steel racking stretched from one wall to the other in evenly spaced rows, some of the shelf labels still clinging uselessly to the frames, and that was where any resemblance to a warehouse ended. The spaces between each set of shelving were blocked off with sheets of plywood, strips of fabric still clinging to the frames of what looked like decorative awnings. Rough doorways had been cut into the wooden walls, some of which had what appeared to be office doors mounted into the gaps while others had moldy sheets dangling across the open holes for privacy. 
They were… rooms, she realized. Homes. Or had been once upon a time. Names written in thick black ink still stained the plywood barriers, some in block style letters while others had been written neatly and with a few flourishes to add distinction. One read The Cloudchaser Family in faded, swirling script decorated with wispy, flat bottomed clouds. Another read Blackbridge & Honeysuckle. 
The door to their makeshift apartment between the racks had fallen from the warping plywood giving Aurora a clear view of what amounted to home for those who once sheltered here. More sheets hung from the shelves inside, blocking the view of the neighbors as well as one could, and a pair of drab green sleeping bags still lay together on rubber floor mats. A stack of hardcover books stood beside a dynamo lantern. That was it. Nothing else. 
Home sweet home.
Blood tickled at the back of her throat and she began to spit it out, only to hesitate when she saw there was blood there already. Her brows went up. A trail of it dotted the floor, leading through the warehouse ahead. And it was fresh. Her thoughts went back to the first gunshot in the chapel and it dawned on her that the shooter, one of Coronado’s Rangers, had scored a hit. 
Primrose was bleeding.







Her hooves clattered over the worn concrete in a disorganized jangling of muscles ill prepared for the sprint. For the vast majority of her unnaturally prolonged life, every one of her medical charts read like an overachieving pupil’s gilded report card. Perfect marks from top to bottom. Ideal bone density. Impeccable white blood cell counts. The slow and steady drip of Twilight’s recalled Stim-Paks made her the picture of health. 
And holy fuck was she out of shape.
“Millie!” Primrose snarled, her throat raw and ragged from so much exertion. “Active population count!”
Millie’s artificial voice echoed down from the ministry’s high ceilings, a single word that distorted as it bounced through the warehouse.
“One.”
Sullen blue sparks guttered from the hole rent through her Pip-Buck’s display screen as her own blood shorted the delicate electronics. A deep, pulsing ache radiated up from the matching hole in her foreleg. She didn’t know whether it was the stims or shock keeping the worst of it at bay, and she didn’t really care as long as it didn’t get any worse. Primrose had never been shot before and the fact that she wouldn’t be able to personally repay the shooter for that slight burned more than the wound. 
Traitors in her church. Throwing classified materials across her church. Attempting an assassination in her church. 
They could all burn for all she cared. She didn’t need a pack of sycophantic mutes staring at her and scratching out their messages to accomplish that. SOLUS was hers and that was the only victory condition that truly mattered. 
The fading, diagonal slash across her vision left by the weapon’s beam comforted her in a way she didn’t think possible. Over the course of the next few hours, days, and perhaps even weeks, she would summarily erase her mistakes and lay the foundation for the world everyone had been so eager to deny her. All she had to do was wait, and Primrose was very good at that indeed.
She slowed to a hurried canter as she passed into Warehouse 02, and paused to listen. Nothing but the eerie white noise of her own inner ear came to her. She resumed walking, but the unease remained. 
She could still see the predatory fury in the mare’s eyes as she dived at her. That had been too real to have been in her head. 
“Millie,” she called up to the cavernous ceiling, “verify population report and scan for motion around the loading docks and tunnel.”
A pause. Then Millie’s voice piped from a speaker mounted behind her, making Primrose jump.
“Current population is one.” A longer pause. “Error. No motion input is available. Motion sensors are not responding.”
She scowled, turning out of Warehouse 02 through a side door and into the wide corridor beyond. One out of perhaps every twenty lights still worked, casting a sickly glow the color of stale urine down the moldy walls. Her lip turned up in disgust. Were she not so gifted with foresight she would have had her stockpile of Stim-Paks moved out of here a century ago and set her people to the task of demolishing what was left of this place.
Twelve times a year she’d come back to this ministry, walked these decaying halls, and felt the increasing weight of her hatred for the place settle heavier on her shoulders. It was another crumbling monument to a world too eager to suckle at the royal teat, and the fury she felt at having to retreat to it for safety a second time hurt like a physical blow.
Primrose sneered down at her bloody leg. Barely a trickle now, but still bleeding. Still sore. If she didn’t take off the Pip-Buck soon her skin would wind up healing over the embedded pieces of the device, but she had a job to finish first. She passed the old fabrication labs, sparing a glance at the long rooms where a country bumpkin turned government official manufactured prototypes of its war weapons. An adjoining hallway, too narrow for heavy equipment to move through and whose floor was therefore graced with curling squares of linoleum rather than bare concrete, took her closer to her destination.
“Motion detected in Warehouse Zero One. Current population is two.”
Primrose’s skin went clammy and cold. “What?”
“Current population is two.”
“Identify.”
“Unknown.”
She hissed. Stupid question. “Mark them as a hostile intruder and activate all turret defenses.”
A pause. “Insufficient permission.”
“Then override the fucking permissions and shoot them!”
“Override denied. Insufficient permission. I do not have the authority to activate lethal countermeasures without qualified authorization.”
She ground her teeth hard enough to chip a molar. “Explain that.”
Millie obliged with its insufferably helpful tone. “All automated control pertaining to lethal countermeasures have been revoked by Minister Applejack and may not be activated prior to receiving valid voice and retinal verification.”
Primrose couldn’t remember if any of her contacts in the Ministry of Technology mentioned a distrust of Millie, and it was far too late for that to matter now. If she couldn’t kill her pursuer she’d better know where they were.
“Where are they now?” she barked.
“Warehouse Zero Two.”
She had to squint to read the door placards in the dim light. 
“Equipment Corridor Alpha.”
“Fuck,” she breathed, her heart racing as she searched for the right door. 
There’d been windows on either side of the door, but there were no windows anywhere in this stretch of hallway. Had she gotten turned around? She ground out another curse as Millie piped out another update. She was being followed, and she looked down again to scowl at what was leading them to her. Fucking blood. Fucking bullet. Fucking traitors.
She passed a door placard that made her jerk to a stumbling halt. 


ESA Press Annex


Primrose slapped the door switch and shifted impatiently on the edges of each hoof as the steel barrier groaned clear. When there was enough room she ducked through the widening gap and turned to swat the inner switch, eliciting a metallic bang from somewhere inside the thick wall. The door itself emitted a series of deep, grinding thuds and the slab took on a drunken slant that caused it to shriek, vibrate, and finally seize in its frame. 
She ground her teeth against a string of profanity, then darted away from the broken door and through neat rows of dusty folding chairs. Lights triggered by her hurried passage glowed to life until the perfunctory press room became uncomfortably bright. Even before she and Spitfire scraped clean the tar pit of the old social order, the spaces she trod through now saw little use. 
The Equestrian Space Agency had been a sickly, sad little piece of government propaganda that failed from its very inception to debunk the hard science published by JetStream Aerospace. It had been the wheedling mouthpiece of Princess Celestia and accomplished little aside from placing a wingful of budget satellites into low orbit. They generated a pile of grainy black and white pictures, most of which were subtly altered by the MOI per the eldest princess’s instructions, with only middling success. 
The program had never been officially mothballed, but just because the order hadn’t been signed, sealed and delivered didn’t negate the obvious intentions. The Equestrian Space Agency had failed to compete against the crisp, full color images generated by JSA. It had been obvious to everyone with skin in that game that continuing to do so only lent more credence to Jet Stream’s theories.
Why waste money in space when the problem could be solved at the printing press?
Primrose almost slipped in the dust as she strode past the last row of chairs, one of which still sheltered a yellowed press badge, and her heart jumped in her throat as she heard the hard breathing of her pursuer drawing toward the jammed open door. 
She swallowed hard as she reached the far wall and the second slab of steel at its center. Two long viewing windows extended toward the corners of the wall on either side, fine silver wire laced in a diamond pattern within the panes. Once upon a time an interior designer had imagined members of the media oohing and aahing as ministry technicians performed their work in the adjoining room, each reporter writing soaring narratives about the technological magic at work just a few feet from their noses.
Primrose winced at the dull ache in her leg as flesh knitted through the sharp edges of her ruined Pip-Buck. Her pink wing swatted the door switch and the barrier slid away with a peeling complaint. 
Fluorescents clicked on and threw harsh light across a dull gray room made claustrophobic with dusty equipment. Three full sides of the room were dominated with wall-to-wall computers, desks, and consoles that reached halfway to the ceiling and littered with gauges, dials, switches Primrose once had people whose jobs it was to operate. At the center of the room were two broadcast terminals facing one another, black wheeled chairs made ashen by the decades pushed neatly into the desks. Once built to speak to ESA satellites, it had all been covertly modified during the height of the old war to whisper commands to SOLUS.
None of which mattered right this second.
A voice let out a frustrated curse behind her as she darted through the doorway and hit the inside switch. The slab whined in reverse and hit the floor with a shuddering thud. Primrose was half a step away from the door before she let out a gasp and lunged back to the door panel. Her hoof slammed into the locking switch, sending a lightning bolt of pain shooting up her leg.
She barely registered that dull agony. It felt much better to embrace the silky laugh bubbling up her throat. The light on the panel glowed victorious crimson as heavy cylinders of hardened steel sank into place. 
A grin of utter relief spread over her face at the muted sound of hooves banging against the other side. The unmoving door turned her pursuer’s enraged screams into futile, muddied nonsense. The door panel emitted several rapid chimes before abruptly stopping as the mare on the other side likely realized she was doing little else but ringing a doorbell on a locked door, and Primrose couldn’t help but laugh that much harder.
“Millie,” she chuckled, giving the door a few mocking raps of her own, “don’t unseal this door without my authorization.”
“Yes, minister.”
With that out of the way, she stepped toward the window on her left so she could drink in the defeat on her would-be assassin’s face. It may not give her the same satisfaction as her final speech to her congregation had been providing before it was interrupted, but the cherry didn’t lose its sweetness from the loss of the cake.
“Open a connection to the press annex,” she said, peering into the other room. “I’d like to hear this one beg.”
The speakers overhead emitted a soft chirp as the connection was opened, but Primrose didn’t see anyone standing on the other side of the door. She frowned and stepped further down the window, and more chairs slid into view around the corner. And yet, nothing. 
Her frown deepened with a tenuous sense of worry. Had she imagined it? If so, what did that say about her state of mind? Maybe denying herself sleep for so many nights had–
The pane went opaque and the speakers overhead squealed over the muted thunderclap of a gunshot. Pulverized glass peppered into her eyes in a hazy cloud and Primrose reeled away with a surprised scream. Her eyelids involuntarily clenched shut just as a second bullet skipped off the intact glass with a sharp SPAK. All manner of curses poured from her throat as she ducked below the window, chips of glass drizzling off her shoulders and back as she did.
Her heart was back to pounding again and it was getting mighty fucking old. Priorities. She needed to know if the window had held. Using her feathers, she pried the lids of one stinging eye apart and bent back to look at the glass.







Aurora stumbled out from the chairs, the clatter of the one she’d hidden behind dulled by the ringing in her ears, and hurried toward the window.
A pair of cloudy circles, one lower than the other, radiated out from two crumbling points where the bullets had struck. They were maybe a foot in diameter but beyond that the rest of the glass appeared entirely unaffected. No holes. No blood. 
Bulletproof.
Something in her throat tore as she slammed the butt of her rifle against the window and screamed a frustrated, “FUCK!”
The window spat a few loose bits of glass onto her hooves and gave a reverberating thump in answer.
Primrose’s blood trail had led her here, but she’d lost precious time recovering from her catastrophic landing and tiptoeing through an empty warehouse. By the time she’d ducked her head under the jammed door, the second one was already slamming shut. She’d lost her chance before she knew it was gone.
“Open the fucking door,” she demanded.
A speaker mounted above the doorframe uttered its smug response. “No.”
She took several steps back as Primrose reappeared behind the window, the self appointed minister moving sideways into an unbroken stretch of glass and offered a sickly sweet smile to emphasize her position. The speaker crackled to life as her mouth formed words.
“Aurora Pinfeathers,” she said with a note of derision. “I was under the impression–”
She snapped her rifle to her shoulder and squeezed off a shot before she could aim it. The noise hammered her eardrums as an opaque circle dusted the air with glass. One of the chairs behind her let out a clang as a piece of ricochet slapped the metal backrest. 
Half a minute stretched by before Primrose’s voice came from the speaker again.
“I’m aware of the irony in asking, but are you finished?”
Aurora loudly pulled back the bolt so Primrose would hear and watched the spent cartridge spring into the air. Then she slammed the next round into the chamber and took careful aim. 
“Show me your face again and I’ll tell you.”
The speaker emitted a throaty laugh. “Oh, I quiver.”
Aurora kept Desperate Times pointed at the rightmost window, her feather light against the trigger. If this was all she had, she needed to use it wisely. The glass was laminated just like the windows back in the generator hall’s control room. Designed to deflect pieces of steel traveling at bullet speeds in the event of a rotor failure, and meant to be replaced once they showed damage. They weren’t designed for repeat impacts. 
Three shots wasted. Two left in the internal magazine. The rest of her ammunition was sitting in her saddlebags, and she’d dropped those on the choir loft in Primrose’s demented church. 
Stupid, she chastised herself. 
“Out of threats already?” came Primrose’s tinny voice. When Aurora didn’t answer, the speaker hissed with the sound of a disappointed sigh. “Alright. Millie, I’d like a progress report on SOLUS, please.”
Of course this place has a fucking Millie.
The AI’s feminine voice responded. “Three minutes, twenty-seven seconds of deceleration remain. Zero viable collection points will be in range at this time. The next available opportunity for solar transmission will arrive in approximately seventy-seven minutes.”
Aurora frowned as Millie’s report ended. Carefully, limping sideways on three hooves, she edged toward the far wall to get a better angle through the window. The vaguely militaristic equipment inside reminded her of the DJ studio Fiona had in her firetower. Her frown deepened with worry as she remembered the blast door slicing down through the air between them.
“What does that mean?” she prompted, sighting in on the tips of two pink ears just above the window’s glass-peppered frame.
“It means we have time to kill,” Primrose chuckled, and after a pause added, “What, do you think I came down here to push a big red button?”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
She hummed at that. “One more than I would have expected. I was under the impression you were dead.”
“Came close,” she confirmed. “Millie, open the door.”
Millie responded with a clipped, “Insufficient permission.”
Primrose’s self-satisfied smile was audible in her tone. “Doesn’t hurt to try, does it?”
“Nope,” she said agreeably, racking her brain for a way in.
“How did you survive the bomb?”
Aurora ducked her head to peer at the ceiling on Primrose’s side of the glass. No vents. Solid concrete. Nothing. “Are you always this fucking chatty?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve talked openly to anyone about this?” She let out a noise bordering on pleasure. “This is like therapy for me.”
She grit her teeth and went back to the door panel. A light glowed behind a bit of transparent red plastic and the word LOCKED. The entire fucking world, gone, because of a privacy door. She gave the switch a hard, pointless jerk and it emitted another buzzing declination. 
“How much do you know?”
She stepped back from the door in disgust and resumed scanning the window with her rifle. “Enough to land me here while you jerk yourself off.”
That got the exact opposite reaction she was going for. Primrose laughed. “The fact that you’re here at all tells me you know quite a lot. We have plenty of time, Aurora. Talk to me.”
“No point in talking to someone I can’t see.”
To her surprise, the bait worked. Primrose stood up behind the window, her face appearing behind a clean section of the unbroken glass, her smile dripping with expectant smugness. Aurora jerked the rifle toward her head and inched sideways to slide a damaged section of the window between them. Primrose curled her lip and moved to match her, quietly foiling the tactic in the process.
“Go on,” she purred. “Fourth time’s the charm.”
Aurora felt her lip curl away to expose her teeth. She moved closer to the far wall. Primrose did the same, the sclera of her eyes ruddy with irritation from the faceful of glass she’d taken. 
“Strong stuff,” she murmured, though the speaker flattened the subtlety from her voice. She reached up a hoof and gave the window a gentle tap. “Now that I think about it, I don’t think there’s an inch of plate glass in the entirety of the Pillar. I wonder why.”
Aurora stepped up to the glass and the barrel of her rifle gave a little click as it settled against the unbroken pane. She watched as Primrose visibly tensed, but her wry smile didn’t so much as twitch.
“You don’t want to do that,” she warned.
Aurora leaned her weight against the butt of the weapon and whispered, “I really do.”
Primrose rolled her eyes, and blood-pinked tear that had nothing to do with despair traced a line down her cheek. She flicked one of her wings, loosing a few kernels of glass from the feathers, and wiped it away, but otherwise didn’t move from where she stood.  
Despite the overwhelming urge to wrench back the trigger, she felt herself hesitate.
“I know that rifle, Aurora. I’m the one who purchased it for Spitfire in the first place.” She smiled, standing her ground. “You’re an engineer, if I recall. You can probably guess what will happen if you pull that trigger.”
She could. Overpressure in the barrel could give the round a few extra pounds against the glass, or reduce everything ahead of the receiver to flying shrapnel. Say nothing for the round itself or the glass fragments which would rebound toward her with plenty enough force to do more than give her nose a few errant nicks. 
She pursed her lips and bit back a curse. “Deactivate SOLUS.”
Primrose snorted. “No.”
Aurora spun the rifle in her wing and drove the wooden stock into the glass. It barely left a scuff. Then she pushed herself away from the window and scowled around the empty room.
“You’re ruining the finish doing that,” Primrose chided behind her.
“Turn the satellite off,” she repeated.
“Again,” the minister said, chuckling as she spoke. “No.”
The anger in her eroded the last of her fraying nerves and she rounded on the window with a fury. “Why?” she demanded. “Why do all of this again? What’s the point of building your own little pocket kingdom if your goal is just to kill everyone in it and start over from scratch?”
Primrose’s brow lifted with understanding. “Ah. You’ve met my construct.”
“I met a version of you that has the stones to fix what’s broken instead of giving up and flipping the board at the first sign of a little bad luck.” She felt a flicker of satisfaction as Primrose’s expression darkened. “I know about you too, minister. You’re just an idea person.”
She gestured at her with the length of her rifle, not waiting for a response. “You’re that annoying asshole that comes up with a great idea and then sits on her pretty pink ass while everyone else does the real work. I’ll bet there was no one better than you at figuring out where all the dominos needed to go, which way all the branches had to bend, and which people were best suited to make sure nobody barged in to knock them over before they were all stacked up and ready.” 
Primrose smile dropped into a flat line. “I understood the flaws of a–”
Aurora cut her off with a sweep of her wing, then poked the air between them with the gun. “You understood how to manipulate others into doing the heavy lifting for you. That’s what you did with Spitfire, isn’t it? You sold her on the idea that she was an equal, and that worked out just fine right up until Delta Vee sent out that worm without her knowing.”
She paused to give Primrose an opportunity to speak, but the minister only stared back at her through the glass. 
Aurora answered her silence with half a shrug. “Spitfire fucked up and suddenly you had someone who wasn’t in on your plot for world domination,” she waggled the feathers of her free wing for effect, “running loose in her Stable. And you fucking panicked because your big plan hit a speed bump.”
“I would hardly call the discovery of the true nature of SOLUS a speed bump.”
“Yeah,” she conceded, her tone dripping with sarcasm, “trying to turn my Stable’s generator into a bomb just to get rid of one mare is truly the hallmark of the well adjusted. For someone with the brains and tenacity to trigger an apocalypse, you treat every little derailment like it's your own personal armageddon. You’re a fucking joke.”
Primrose cracked the faintest smile as she watched Aurora pace across the annex floor, then glanced thoughtfully at the glass that separated them. “There’s some truth to that, I suppose. Losing the loyalty of my people in the space of a church sermon does sting a little, though I wouldn’t call it an armageddon. After all, I haven’t lost anyone I can’t eventually replace.
And then her dull, ruddy eyes lifted to meet Aurora’s, and her smile took on a vicious edge. “How is Ginger, by the way?”
Aurora’s whole body went still. There were many things she wanted to say. None of them pleasant. None of them polite. Very few of them contained anything qualifying as language. She held herself there, unmoving, because to give into that droplet of molten rage cauterizing her heart would be to throw away everything Ginger’s last saving act afforded her. Her family back home would die. Her friends would die. People she didn’t know, whose lives were worth more than the cheapened summary judgment from a tyrant cowering behind a locked door, would die.
But the anger, the fury, and that yawning chasm of animal madness that howled for hot blood and ripped flesh and the reedy screams of the one who caused centuries of undeserved pain still ached to be satisfied. To be made right by whatever means necessary. 
She chose to feel that molten rage, chose to pick it up and set it gently into the quenching waters of a brittle, temporary calm. She wouldn’t snap at the first bit of bait flung her way. No. She was a mare of Mechanical. She’d come here for many reasons. Revenge. Justice. To balance the scales. Above all else, she was here to fix a problem.
And the only way to do the job right is with careful preparation.
Goading Primrose into focusing on her had been the first step. Stoking the coals of her pride by laying insults at her hooves had accomplished that task. Swinging her rifle around as if she’d forgotten its deadly potential had coaxed Primrose into momentary complacency. She took her eyes off where Aurora was moving. What hovered half a step away from her own head.
Her grip tightened around the old rifle and snapped it against her shoulder. Primrose had barely enough time for her eyes to widen with understanding as Aurora stepped left, placing the damaged circle of glass between them, and pulled the trigger. 
Desperate Times bucked hard and spat flame. 
A flicker of something wet and dark separating from Primrose’s body caught her eye before tumbling out of view. Aurora felt her breath stop in her throat as she saw the neat hole at the center of the opaque disc. She jerked forward, almost forgetting she was missing a leg, and limped for the window. 
“Augh!” came an agonized voice from the speaker, and Aurora’s heart dropped like a stone. “You cunt! You fucking cunt! You fucking– gah!”
Primrose writhed on the control room floor in a widening smear of blood and broken glass. A chunk of meat the size of Aurora’s hoof was missing from the curve of her shoulder leaving a ragged, half formed tunnel of gore behind. Her ruined scapula shined wet pink, shards of the cracked bone grinding against one another with each of Primrose’s wriggling complaints. 
The minister’s teeth showed white with rage as her body spasmed again, her eyes lidless and wide and fixated on Aurora as she peered down through the glass. “You tricky bitch,” she snarled, and there was a trace of a laugh buried somewhere deeper still. “You were maneuvering.”
Aurora stared at her, eyes placid and uncaring. “Open the door and I’ll put the last one in your head,” she offered.
At that, Primrose’s chest bucked with a pained, staccato laugh. “Oh, you’re just the Element of Generosity tonight, aren’t you? Swallow the bullet yourself. I’ll heal.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes at those last words, looked shifted from Primrose’s leering grin to the ruination of her left shoulder, and her expression fell. The pool of blood beneath her had stopped spreading, the flow staunched at the wound. The cracked halves of her scapula moved through the gore as if one bone again, the seams glistening with a loose knitwork of new growth. 
“Burns like a motherfucker,” she hissed, using her functioning foreleg to roll herself over and push herself up. “I hate - agh - to ask stupid questions, but you do understand I’m the only one here with the authority to order SOLUS to stand down. Right?”
She couldn’t think of a response.
“Because,” Primrose continued, delicately limping herself behind the door toward the untouched sheet of glass on the opposite side, “if your aim was actually worth a shit, you would be an order of magnitude angrier with me than you are right now. There’s no off switch in here. SOLUS is going to wipe the world clean whether I’m alive to see it happen or not. Ah.” She dropped into a chair at a terminal where the window met the corner of the wall. A red feather slick with her own blood turned on the nearest screen, and she let out an almost pleasant sigh as she began to work the keyboard. “You can use that last bullet however you care… but, food for thought? I’d prefer if you stuck around for the finale. No one likes watching fireworks alone.”
Aurora licked her lips, her throat suddenly dry.
She’d lost.
Her voice came in a whisper so soft she wasn’t sure if Millie’s intercom would even pick it up. “Why?”
Primrose’s ear twitched. She’d heard, but she didn’t look up from grainy lines of data on the terminal screen. “If you’re going to keep asking that,” she said with unmasked contempt, “you’d be better off putting the barrel of Spitfire’s gun in your mouth and saving us both the misery.”
The wound in her shoulder had turned the color of bruised meat. Dark scabs traced the ragged edges of healing flesh like wildfire burning its way through dry grass. They fell away like clotted sand, seasoning the fur of the minister’s limp foreleg in bits of pepper.
Aurora felt her own shoulder slump into the corner, her body folding into itself as she slid to the floor. What else was there to do? Primrose held all the cards and the box they came from. She wasn’t even sure she knew how to open the blast door to get out and find cover. 
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead into her bent knee. Knee. It only occurred to her now that the Enclave had taken the possibility of the plural from her. 
She felt so, so tired.
“This is where you call me a monster,” Primrose’s voice prodded her from above the door. “It’s okay. You wouldn’t be the first.”
It had been a while since she’d felt this defeated. Words really don’t describe the feeling of absence all too well, so Aurora just settled for numb. Logically she knew she should be up on her hooves, wings slashing this way and that, screaming vitriol and beating herself senseless for the sake of having done something no matter how futile it was. It played nice in the movies. Carried the narrative along. Held out the candle of hope that she might say something to move the immovable villain, goad them into a vulnerable position, something convenient and tidy. Aurora liked those movies. They were fun. Good with popcorn.
She opened her eyes and no epiphany availed itself to her. She stared at the cracked linoleum. Plastic trying to resemble marble, judging by the patterns. She didn’t even know what the chairs were for.
“How much time?” she asked.
To her surprise, Primrose obliged her curiosity. “Millie, how much time until the first target is in range?”
A pause. “Approximately sixty-four minutes.”
She did the math. It made her want to cry. Only eleven minutes had passed.
Despite herself, she spoke again. “What’s the first target?”
“New Canterlot,” Primrose answered. 
She nodded against her knee. It made sense. That was where the construct thought she would start.
“When does it hit my Stable?”
The speaker hissed with an irritated sigh. “I don’t know. Later. Ask Millie.”
She considered asking Primrose again. Insisting she tell her, if not to just make her say the words. She considered, then decided she wasn’t ready to beg. There would be plenty of time for that.
“Millie?”
“How may I help?”
“When will SOLUS hit Stable 10?”
A briefer pause than before. “Approximately three hours and forty-two minutes.”
She wrinkled her nose at that answer. “Why so long?”
“Solar transmission to Stable 10 will not be available until all scheduled transmissions ahead of it in the queue have been completed. Stable 10 is twenty-third in queue, prior to which two orbits of the planet must be made, resulting in a delay.”
When Millie finished her explanation, Primrose chimed in. “No cutting in line. Sorry.”
The speaker picked up the sharp clacking of keys as she resumed typing. Aurora flattened her ears against the sound, trying to tune it out. 
“So,” she muttered, hating the silence even more than the idle conversation, “what happens after you inherit a dead world?”
“It won’t be dead,” Primrose said, audibly more focused on her work now than entertaining her unwanted guest.
“Vhanna is,” she shot back. “Griffinstone is.”
“Gryphons migrate over the ocean from time to time, and up until recently I had a colonel serve under me with zebra blood in her veins. It’s remarkably difficult to sterilize a planet.”
Aurora shrugged. “Then why try.”
“Again with that why,” the minister hissed. “I’m not aiming for anything so grand, Aurora. Life will persist in its many forms when this is done. Right now my enemies are memory and magic. It serves no purpose to allow the truth of what I’ve been forced to do to spread unchecked, and I’ve been less than satisfied with how quickly magic seems to seep back into the world after it burns away.”
Say one thing for answering an admission with silence. Say that it gets results. Within a few uncomfortably long seconds, Primrose was talking again.
“You weren’t there. Back in the old world, I mean.”
Aurora grunted, then figured if she sat through the end of the world on her steadily numbing ass she wouldn’t feel so proud of her petty defiance. With an effort, she got her good leg beneath her and stood up. Primrose was still in her chair, safely clear of any angle that might draw a straight line between her head, the barrel of Desperate Times, and the damaged glass on the far side of the wall. A few of the consoles near where she sat were running now, lights and screens blinking indecipherable readouts Aurora didn’t try to understand.
“I saw some of the old world,” she prompted. “Didn’t see much I didn’t like.”
Primrose snorted, eyes flashing toward her and back down to the terminal. “You saw what the Tantabus chose to show you. Cupcakes and coffee shops. Shiny new carriages and blue skies. Everyone smiling, happy, living their happy little lives.”
Aurora leaned against the window, her rifle thumping her hip. “Sounds awful. Better drop bombs on it until there’s nothing left.”
“You wastelanders do love that phrase. Dropping bombs. I never dropped any bombs.” She shook her head and swiveled her chair to face Aurora. “I launched missiles. And yes, you’re absolutely correct, it was awful and it was getting worse.”
She rolled her eyes, feeling a dull spark of satisfaction at deriding Primrose again. “What, indoor plumbing?”
She watched Primrose’s lip curl away from her teeth. “Unicorns! Alicorns! A third of Equestria’s population and hardly a drop compared to the rest of the world, and yet they wielded more power in an afterthought than a properly aimed bullet from that rifle you carry. Imagine being able to manipulate matter with nothing but intention. Consider the fact that a unicorn born with above average talent could grow up to reverse a disease with a little focus or levitate a carriage simply because they wanted to.”
Aurora lifted a shoulder in an absent shrug, inviting her to get to the point. Primrose glared at her, then down at her mangled shoulder. She made a noise of disgust and turned back to her work as she spoke.
“How long after her encounter with Ms. Song did it take Ginger to master teleportation? A week? Two?” 
If she noticed the sudden tightness in Aurora’s jaw she didn’t show any sign of it.
“Teleportation!” She laughed as she said the world, as if she were the butt of some cosmic joke because of it. “Do you understand how many laws of physics a spell like that breaks? Now imagine a unicorn like that looking down at you and seeing an obstacle. A threat, even! What could you hope to do, Aurora, if a talented unicorn decided your head would be better off in your chest cavity?”
It was a disturbing question, but no less valid for the unsettling imagery. She had to admit to herself that she’d never considered the possibility. 
“Magic,” Primrose continued, her feathers pecking hard against the keyboard, “isn’t normal. It isn’t natural. Worst of all, it isn’t even fair. At best, we pegasi had some talent in the skies. Cloudwalking, some nominal abilities to manipulate the weather, but that was it. Earth ponies had even less. None of us were under any illusion we were at the mercy of any and every pony born with a horn on their head. Make no mistake, we existed because they allowed it.”
Aurora watched her type. She was quick. Didn’t even have to look down at the keys. “So you decided to even the playing field by killing everyone on it.” 
“I did what was necessary to eliminate a threat to our existence,” she snapped back.
“By creating a wasteland of slavers, killers, and ghouls instead of waiting for the big kids to steal your lunch money. Got it.”
Primrose didn’t take the bait. “Tertiary side effects to the collapse,” she said dismissively. “I would happily take my chances with a raider without magic than a raider with it. Like I said, Aurora, you weren’t there. I was. I lived in a world ruled by two sisters whose only claim to power was their exceptional talent. You can’t imagine what it was like to go to bed each night hoping the Princess of the Night didn’t look into your dreams while your inhibitions were lowered and your thoughts flowed freely, or knowing that at some point in your life a mark would appear on your body that was meant to dictate your entire future.”
Aurora found herself frowning through the window, her eyes fixed on the smear of blood where Primrose fell. “I guess I can’t.”
“No,” she agreed. “You can’t. It was a beautiful prison we all lived in, but a cell is a cell no matter how good the food tastes.”
“Been there,” she mused, thinking back to the holding cell Sledge tossed her into after he learned of her intentions to go outside. It felt like all that had happened years ago. So much had changed between then and now. 
Then she blinked and stood up straight. “I’ve been there.”
Primrose didn’t take her eyes off the terminal. Orbital lines shimmered on the small screen. “I heard you. Congratulations. Huzzah. We are the same, and such.”
“Yeah,” she hedged, stepping back from the window and eyeing the slab of immobile steel keeping them separated. “We’re not. Can’t be.”
The abrupt change in her tone caused Primrose’s feathers to slow over the keys.
Aurora felt a savage smile take shape along her muzzle. She’d been here before. She knew how to solve this puzzle. 
“For example,” she said, barely holding back a laugh, “in five minutes I’m going to be alive, and you aren’t.”
Primrose rose from her chair with a wince and stared at her through the glass, her eyes alive with suspicion. “And how do you plan on–”
“Nah,” Aurora said, cutting her off with a dismissive flick of her wing used by imperious royalty and crusty fucking welders. “No time for explanations, and fuck you for asking. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”
Primrose thumped a hoof against the glass as she watched Aurora turn away for the half-shut door. “If you expect to find power armor out there, you’re going to be sorely disappointed!”
Not a bad idea, but also not the one she had in mind. “Stay put for me, will you? I’ll be right back. Just need to find a few tools.”
“Tools for what?” Primrose barked through the tinny speaker.
Aurora crouched toward the gap, letting a touch of giddy mania filter into her voice. “To crack open that door and kill you! You said I had time!”
Primrose just stared after her, dumbfounded by the sudden turn in events. “SOLUS won’t stop if I’m dead,” she muttered dumbly.
Ass in the air, shoulders bent into the jammed door, Aurora looked back across the press annex with a wide, toothy grin. “Sounds fun. See you in a bit.”
And she left.
It wasn’t easy finding her stride with only three working legs but by now Aurora had plenty of practice. She was a far sight better at getting around than she had been when she first regained consciousness in the crew quarters of that oil rig, taking one hobbling, painful step at a time until her coat dripped with sweat and lungs burned from the effort of climbing a few stairs. 
Step, step, hop.
Step, step, hop.
She followed Primrose’s drying blood trail back the way she came, down empty corridors thick with stale air, back into the warehouse where the aisles between heavy racking had been portioned off into makeshift apartments. One thing she was certain of as she peered in beyond desiccated doorways and tattered sheets was that some things in this universe were as constant as gravity and good sex. Mechanics were one of those constants. 
Give any wrench-turner a tool and it’ll end up in one of three places by the end of their shift. On the job site, back in the tool locker it belonged in, or inside said mechanic’s personal toolbag. The tool checkout sheet was as close a thing to a holy script as mechanics had. It kept them honest, at least a little, and it told the next person who found the locker missing what they needed exactly whose workbench said tool was gathering dust in. 
The Ministry of Technology was essentially Mechanical writ large. Resource budgets hadn’t been a thing like it was in a Stable. There were probably components down here made from alloys so precious they would make every tech she knew in Fabrication swoon. Whoever oversaw the tool manifests had to have been a hardass when it came to refilling the lockers, and Aurora didn’t have to survive an apocalypse to know what had happened after all those ancient greasers realized no one was looming over their shoulders waiting for their shiny toys to be returned.
“There you are,” she said into the silence after pulling open one of the apartment’s plywood doors.
Inside the sparse living area was what passed for home once upon a time, though whoever had lived here had put a little more effort into using the space efficiently than the others. Several moldy military blankets hung over the sides of a low stack of pallets, making what passed for a mattress. An office chair faced the foot of the bed, backrest bent low in what could only be a makeshift recliner. A portable television sat on the nearby shelf beside one of those simple yet seemingly immortal electric lanterns with the old dynamo crank sticking out the side. 
Aurora stepped inside, her hooves rustling over a rug whose plush fibers had gone stiff as chaff, and smiled as she approached the tidy row of identical tool boxes lined two deep down one long shelf. 
Here one of the surviving mechanics of the ministry had eked out a life within a forlorn warehouse. Each black box was neatly labeled with strips of blue painter’s tape, the contents written in blocky black ink. The one on the far left was dedicated strictly to pliers. The next three advertised an assortment of wrenches. Files in another. Chisels. Grinding discs. Knives. Clamps. And more still in the heavy boxes in the row behind them.
She snapped open one of the lids and nodded appreciatively at the silver gleam of a rustless socket set. Then she closed the lid and pulled that box out, setting it on the floor beside her. On the bottom shelf, tools too large for a box lay in the open. Extension poles, a few crowbars, a pair of sledgehammers, and just about anything else she’d expect to see hanging off a heavy duty hook or leaned up against a wall. What she needed lay near the end of the shelf near the plywood door. 
The weight of the bolt cutters in her wing felt almost like home. The rattle of the toolbox in the other was like salve in a wound she hadn’t realized was hurting. This was a job she knew how to do. 
She turned to leave the forgotten mechanic’s apartment, confidence curling her lip as she stepped toward the door, and the lights shut off. 
The change was instant. One second she could see, the other she was blind.
“Millie,” she called up to the ceiling, “turn the lights on.”
“Insufficient permission,” it echoed back.
Great. She closed her eyes, not that it made any difference aside from being an old habit that helped her think, and considered her options. Stumbling aimlessly through the dark seemed like an excellent way to get lost, so she stayed put.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Primrose’s voice filtered down from above. “We all have to do our part to conserve resources.”
Aurora set down the toolbox and took two careful steps back so she wouldn’t trip over it, holding her free wing out to feel her way around the apartment. She grinned as her feathers found the office chair, rolled it away, brushed over the edge of the racking behind it and found the plastic lantern on its shelf.
“Forgive and forget,” she called back as she unfolded the handle and gave the dynamo several good cranks. For half a second nothing happened, then a faint orange glow bloomed behind the dusty window. “Besides, I can see in the dark.”
That seemed to give Primrose pause. Either that or she was too busy with her terminal to bother with a prompt reply. “I very much doubt that.”
“Suit yourself.” The dynamo whirred noisily as she gave it a good many more revolutions, the tiny bulb glowing orange, then yellow, then almost white. It slowly began to dim almost as soon as she let go of the handle, but that was fine. “You know, it’s funny. I should be thanking you.”
She hung the lantern from her jaw, black shadows swaying around her as it swung beneath her chin. Then she picked up the toolbox, gripped her rifle and bolt cutters in the other wing, and shouldered out of the apartment.
“You’re kind of the one who trained me for this,” she continued, following the blood trail back toward the corridor.
“Are you eating something?” Primrose asked.
She snorted, ignoring the question as she spoke around the lantern handle. “If you hadn’t lost your shit with Spitfire and gone after our generator, I wouldn’t have had any reason to come out here in the first place.”
“Hm,” was all Primrose had to say to that.
“It gets better,” she continued, pausing outside the equipment corridor to give the lantern a few more cranks. “Our overmare… stepped down, I guess you could say, when she found out the generator was failing. She tapped my old boss for the job, and when he figured out I was planning to find a solution out in the wasteland he threw me in a cell to stop me from leaving.”
Her hooves clicked out a tripled rhythm over the concrete, her attention alternating between the blood trail and the interesting rooms she passed along the way. She felt a bolt of jealousy at the fabrication labs in particular. Back home they just recycled what they had. Down here they’d made whatever they wanted. Weapons and armor mostly - she slowed briefly at the sight of bare power armor exoskeletons hanging on a rack in one of the labs - but they’d had the capacity to mill and finish anything, really. 
She imagined stomping toward Primrose in a suit of bulky power armor and kicking in the window. Might be fun, she thought. Messy, sure, but fun. 
“Eh,” she muttered. “Nah.”
“So you’re just talking to yourself now.”
She smirked up at the overhead speakers, closer now as she turned down the adjoining corridor. “Little bit, yeah. So anyway, I picked the lock to the cell and cut the hydraulics to the security office door so they wouldn’t follow me.”
“Thrilling.” The sarcasm couldn’t have been more evident if it came with stage directions.
Aurora had to squint to make the best use of the dimming light and was about to stop to work the handle a third time when she turned the last corner and saw the glow coming from the jammed door far down the corridor. She chuckled, let the lantern die, and kept walking.
“It’s thanks to you that our generator finally gave out. Power went out all at once. Sledge doesn’t like talking about it and I don’t blame him.” Her smile faded a little, then it was gone. Replaced by something edging toward viciousness. “You did that to my people, Primrose. You made their worst nightmare a reality.”
Even from the tinny speakers, she could hear her contempt. “And how I toss and turn in bed each night from guilt.”
“I doubt that,” she said as she bent down through the jammed door and looked up to see Primrose tapping away at her terminal, oblivious to her arrival. She considered announcing herself, then thought better of it. More fun to let her tools do that for her.
She limped over to the second door and released her grip on the toolbox. It slammed flat against the linoleum with a crash that sent Primrose shooting up from her chair with a shout of surprise. Aurora waited patiently for her to notice her standing on the other side, bolt cutters resting on her shoulder, lips twitched in the faintest curl of a cold smile. 
Primrose stared at her, then at the tools, and her expression grew steadily ashen. 
“Told you I could see in the dark,” she said, setting the lantern on the ground beside the door.
The minister continued to watch her warily as leaned down and opened the tool box. Out came a spotless silver socket wrench, the metal still slightly slick with tool oil. Offering nothing to quell Primrose’s unease aside from a curt nod, Aurora leaned the heavy cutters against the locked door and gave the wrench a casual flip. She absently caught the handle, her attention turning entirely to the work now, and eyeballed the four bolts securing the door panel to the wall. 
Nice to have the right tools for once. The last time she tackled this problem, she’d resorted to using a pry bar.
She returned to the tool box, selected the correct socket, and snapped it on. 
“I learned something new after the generator died.” The threads of the first bolt broke loose with a sharp pop, spinning out in the socket, and she set the fastener on the edge of the window where Primrose could see. “Stable-Tec was all about redundancy.”
The second bolt came loose. She set it beside the first.
“If something breaks, there’s almost always a workaround. Take these doors for example.” The third bolt let out a crack. A trickle of powdered rust dribbled from the threads as she turned it out. “They’re heavy as fuck, but only wide enough to fit maybe three pegasi on either side if you’re lucky. It takes more than six people to lift one of these things. Believe me, I’ve seen people try it. So, that’s a problem. What happens if a door breaks?”
She set the third bolt on the window sill and noticed with some satisfaction that it was just beginning to dawn on Primrose that she wasn’t as safe as she once thought. Their eyes met for half a beat, then Aurora noticed the blade clutched in Primrose’s bloody feathers.
She turned her icy gaze back to the minister. “Desperate times.”
Primrose’s eye twitched at the corner. “Desperate measures.”
Aurora nodded at that, not quite smiling, and tapped the barrel of her rifle against the glass in acknowledgement. Then she went back to work.
The last bolt came away smoothly, joining its three companions on the sill. After a few jerking tugs the panel came away next. Neatly bound wires leading to the circuit board, all of them stiff with age, trailed out behind the panel. She let it hang from them, her interest already shifting to the heavy gauge conduits bracketed in vertical runs within the hole in the wall.
She picked up the bolt cutters.
“These doors run on hydraulics,” she continued. “When I was apprenticing back home, we had a few bad months after one of the piston pumps for the residential level kept throwing rods. A kid almost got crushed when the hydraulics lost pressure. Doors wouldn’t budge and for a long while we were putting temporary pins in the frames to lock the things open.” 
She rocked the cutter jaws back and forth around the hydraulic line until she was confident they had a good bite. With one wing on each handle, she carefully twisted the cutters toward the door until her butt was pressed against it. Then she pulled the far handle toward her chest, winced, and gave the whole thing a hard yank.
The jaws bit into the reinforced line and brackish brown fluid sliced through empty air with a violent release of pressure. A fine, oily mist quickly settled onto the floor.
“The thing is,” she said, propping the cutters on the floor like a cane, “you can’t fill a Stable full of doors like these if something as common as a hydraulic leak ends up turning them into a wall, so they built a workaround into the design.”
She fished the short ratchet handle out from the void in the wall and held it up for Primrose to see, oily fluid oozing down one end. Primrose stared at it with a blank expression, not understanding. Aurora set the rod down on the sill next to the row of bolts without offering an explanation.
“The only problem I’ve got right now is the part where you locked the door.”
Primrose looked as if she’d just bit back a snide remark. She could see what was coming next, and her grip around her blade took on the faintest tremble.
Aurora smiled without warmth and turned the bolt cutters to a second line running beside the one she’d just cut. The hydraulic line had sheared away some of its neighbor’s insulation when it ruptured, leaving behind a good inch of bare copper wire amidst a dripping pulp of cracked rubber and fabric.
What she was about to do was the height of stupidity, and she could almost hear Sledge hollering all manner of vitriol from wherever he was now. She hoped they’d convinced him to evacuate. 
Setting the bite of the jaws around an unbroken section of the power cable, she repeated the process much as she’d done with the first line. She leaned back, pulled the handles together with a hard jerk, and felt a momentary jolt of electricity lance down her wings as the metal blades crunched through live wires. She spat a laughing curse as the cutters dropped from her spasming feathers, grateful at least that the film of hydraulic fluid hadn’t deigned to meet an errant spark in a flaming union. A hydraulic fire wouldn’t have been ideal, but it wouldn’t have bothered her too much to watch the flames lick their way into Primrose’s side of the room.
She didn’t hear the twin clacks of the locking pins retracting, but she knew they had. The design was all the same in her experience. A couple of robust hinged actuators built into the frame pushed the pins in place when given current. When current was removed, the actuators disengaged and simple retention springs pulled the pins back. The worst problem she’d ever had with the design was when a pair of young siblings worked out how to bypass the panel while the door was raised and considered it the height of comedy to watch the heavy pins thrust in and out of the exposed frame.
Kids were weird. 
Aurora meandered back toward the window, picked up the jack handle, and tapped the greased end of it against the window hard enough to make Primrose jump and leave a chip in the glass.
“Door’s unlocked,” she commented dryly. “Tell SOLUS to stand down or I’m coming in.”
Primrose stuck out her chest with admirable defiance. “You’re coming in no matter what I do.”
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. The only difference is if you turn off that satellite, I won’t kill you.”
The minister’s lip curled into a sneer. “You’re no killer, Aurora Pinfeathers.”
Aurora opened her mouth to respond, then stopped. She stared through the glass at Primrose, her expression empty. It was hard to fit all the death and suffering she caused into that slender frame. 
The numbers were too big. Billions dead. Hundreds of cities reduced to craters, knocked over, or burned to blackened husks. Families had died together or were ripped apart and scattered to the wind, their fates the same, their unresolved regrets haunting them as they turned to ash. Primrose had wrought a bloody trail of suffering and betrayal and manipulation over the course of centuries, and yet it was all too large compared to the mare standing just a few feet in front of Aurora.
The urge to break Primrose’s body at the end of a clean set of bolt cutters pulled at her with a gravity of its own. She only needed to open the door, overpower her, and go to work like any other job. 
And yet killing her felt… inadequate. It was a slap on the haunches compared to what she deserved. She wasn’t used to feeling this depth of cold calculation. It was a foreign sensation that made her slightly queasy. Rage made it all easier. It took away the need to think. 
Cider had met that rage. Gallow, too. 
“Second thoughts?” Primrose had steadied herself. Her confidence had returned.
Aurora regarded her with cold fascination. The words tumbled from her mouth as if she were just making small talk. 
“You didn’t leave me a body to bury.”
Primrose arched a brow. “What?”
Aurora nodded to herself. She picked the ratchet handle up from the window sill.
“Ginger,” she said, her voice quiet. Reverent. “Back home, we bury our loved ones in the Gardens. It’s how we honor our dead. I can’t do that for Ginger.”
Primrose bared her teeth. “Shame.”
Aurora swallowed, nodded, then lifted her free wing away from her rifle to dab her eyes. Hydraulic fluid stung them. She didn’t mind. She’d made her decision on what she was going to do.
“For your own sake, I hope you’re good with that knife.” Her feathers tightened around the ratchet handle, cool steel warming in her grip. “Because if you don’t kill me, one of two things is going to happen. Either you deactivate that satellite and we work out a solution where you keep breathing, or you don’t and I take my sweet time beating you to death.”
Primrose opened her mouth to respond, but drew up short as she watched Aurora turn for the door. 
“We’re done talking.”
With that, she mated the handle to the socket inside the door and began working the ratchet up and down.
For several seconds the door showed no signs of motion. Then a gap formed along the floor. A quarter inch. Half an inch. One inch. Two. 
Predictably, Primrose began spitting curses as she realized what was happening. Aurora listened to her hooves moving through the little room, drawers opening and slamming shut as she searched for anything that might protect her better than a six inch knife. 
Aurora focused on nothing but working the handle back and forth, watching the door inch its way open, and wondering to herself whether it was worth the added effort to widen the gap to shoulder height so she wouldn’t need to stoop and put all that uncomfortable pressure on her back leg. Soon the space was wide enough for Primrose to crawl out through if she had a mind to, but she was too busy spitting and cursing for that. 
The gap widened to two feet. Then a yard. 
She stopped, let go of the handle, and took a few steps back to judge the opening. Chest height. Not great on her back leg but Primrose was a fair bit shorter than she was and opening the door further just invited her to come rushing out with that knife of hers. 
“You stay the fuck back!” Primrose was yelling, her throat ragged with more fear than confidence.
“Last chance,” she warned. 
She could see Primrose backing to the rear of the room, getting as much distance from her and the door as she could. “I am ordering you to–”
Aurora stopped listening, planted her hooves, and hurtled herself toward the gap. Primrose let out a miserable, protesting shout as she rushed forward with her blade high above her head. 
Things slowed down for a time.
When it came to shooting, Aurora knew she was a shit shot. She understood the mechanics of her rifle. She respected how delicate they could be, how important it was to keep all the moving parts cleaned and oiled, how the key to carrying the weapon safely was to keep the muzzle away from anything she didn’t want to kill. But none of that translated into her becoming an expert behind the trigger. Time and practice were two things her journey across the wasteland never seemed to afford her. Her rifle scraped along the floor beside her, forgotten, because she knew if bet her life on a lucky shot she would sorely miss both. 
So she didn’t try. 
Aurora knew her strengths. She was a mechanic. An engineer. A few times she’d even convinced First Shift to pull a triple because the work needed doing. She could keep down the bathtub gin that always seemed to find its way into her cup when Mechanical needed to blow off steam after a long shift, and she’d learned more than a few times that she could, when properly motivated, throw a decent punch.
She wasn’t the type to be proud of it, but she knew how to brawl.
And she had a good feeling Primrose didn’t.
As she slid under the hoisted door and into Primrose’s little kingdom she caught sight of the upraised blade and decided that wasn’t something she wanted to be in the way of when it came slashing down. So she planted her hind hoof against the door frame as she slid by and kicked off hard, pushing her away at broad enough of an angle to give her a clear view of the spark thrown off by Primrose’s blade as it bit into the concrete.
Aurora was pushing onto her hooves before she’d finished sliding and the momentum carried her into the office chair Primrose had lounged in not five minutes ago. She latched onto the backrest, bunching the muscles in her back and shoulders, and wrenched the chair through the air behind her with a shout of effort. It was lucky she did. Primrose had been quicker than she gave her credit for, the knife already coming down at her back for a second strike only for wing and weapon to be swatted away by flying furniture. 
The minister’s eyes went wide with despair as they both watched the blade clatter to the far corner of the cramped room. Her eyes narrowed, she heaved two quick shallow breaths, and lunged not for the knife or for Aurora, but for the gap in the door.
“Oh, you fucking–” Aurora threw herself at the fleeing minister, snatching the end of her tail in her right wing, then grabbing her by the dock with her left. 
Primrose let out a shriek as she was hauled back into the room by main force alone. She kicked her hind legs, catching Aurora across the snout hard enough to crack the tip of her nasal bone. Pain rocketed through Aurora’s skull as the injury instantaneously registered but she held on to Primrose, grabbing her kicking legs and piling her own weight on the minister’s back.
She drove her hoof into the small of her back, eliciting an agonized cry. Her stump ached with the effort of keeping Primrose pinned to the concrete, but she managed well enough. She found herself frowning. She’d expected… more.
Aurora pressed the flat of her foreleg into the back of Primrose’s neck, wincing as she continued to struggle against her, and put her bleeding mouth to her ear. “You’re a fucking disappointment, Primrose. All that bravado and you can’t even fight.”
“If you let me go,” she whimpered, “I’ll give you everything. Power, influence. You can be wealthy.”
Aurora made a disgusted noise, sat up, and wrenched Primrose by the shoulder until she was on her back beneath her. “You know what I want.”
Her face hardened with that useless resolve. “No.”
“Tell Millie to shut it down.”
“No,” she repeated, “but I can remove your Stable from the list of targets. You want that, don’t you? That’s what you came out here for!”
Aurora stared down at her, saying nothing.
“And…” Primrose was babbling now, “a-and an ignition talisman! There are spares here in the ministry! I can show you!”
Her expression darkened. “You already gave us a talisman.”
Primrose flinched as she realized the mistake she made. It was a good instinct to recoil. She might not be a fighter but she could at least recognize when she was about to be beaten.
Aurora took a slow, steadying breath, and went to work. 
The noises that flowed from Primrose’s mouth sang off the concrete walls like a machine burning through a bad bearing. There was nothing elegant in the way Aurora pistoned her foreleg back and down, back and down, pounding her hoof into soft flesh, tender muscle, and rigid bone. A rib cracked under the assault. She felt it buckle, fought against Primrose as adrenaline spurred her to find some way to escape her savage assault, and listened to the different noises she made as she worked her way down her belly. 
Soon they were both screaming, one in agony, the other with primal rage. The time for cool calculation was gone. She cold she’d kept inside her for so long had thawed, melted, and was boiling off like steam from white hot steel. All those days waiting in New Canterlot. All those nights where every dream was nothing but planning and tactics and grief. Her painful, humbling recovery from radiation burns and blindness in Discord’s care. 
And the bomb. That flash of searing light that burned away the mare who deserved it least. A mare who had only just started to love herself for who she truly was and nothing more. 
She stood up, tears flooding her vision, and watched Primrose curl into a bloodied ball and make her pitiful sounds. Her legs were shaking as she ducked under the door, yanked the ratchet handle from the wall, and dragged Primrose out by a hunk of her mane. And then the beating resumed, now with the addition of wet, hollow thunks as the steel rod bludgeoned her crumpled body. 
With time her motions grew faster. Primal, guttural noises rose from her throat as she sent blow after blow crashing across Primrose’s chest and belly. A pink foreleg came up in meager defense and she broke its cannon bone without a second’s hesitation. Primrose wasn’t even making noises now. She just curled back up, clutching her broken leg, and sobbed.
And that, more than anything else, enraged her.
She made the decision without having to think. She was going to kill her. She could already see it happening. It already was happening. The stink of urine gradually filled her nose and mouth as the minister’s bladder let go. An animal’s last defense. 
And then.
“Muh… Millie!”
“Yes, minister? How may I assist you?”
Aurora hesitated mid-swing, breathing hard.
“Ord… order SOLUS…” she retched, bloody bile spilling from her jaw, “...stand down. Stand…”
“Yes, minister. One moment, please.”
Primrose stared up at Aurora through one open eye, ruptured blood vessels turning half the sclera red. “Stand down. Pl… please. Please.” Her face crumpled with a miserable, moaning sob. “I don’t want to die. I don’t wanna. Please. Please.”
Aurora stared down at her, the pipe weighing in her upraised wing, and she understood what had just happened. 
“Queue cleared,” Millie chimed. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Primrose stared up at her, at the pipe in her feathers, the lump in her throat working up and down as she swallowed her own blood. “Medicine,” she said. “Please. You said…”
She knew what she said. She knew what it would mean to kill her now.
Her right hoof ached at the joint as she pushed herself up. Something in her had fractured, and it had nothing to do with her body. She stood, careful not to slip in the vile mixture of blood, puke, and piss, and she felt the adrenaline draining out of her like a sieve. An awful clarity rushed in to take its place and she looked down at Primrose, quietly hoping she would spring up to press an attack, and felt a retching nausea climb her throat as she saw the great and meaningful work she’d done.
Her rifle thumped a gentle reminder beneath her wing. Somehow it had managed to stay slung around her neck through everything. One bullet left. It would be so easy. Then she remembered Gallow again, screaming in the distance, his body coming apart, and she knew she couldn’t. 
“Millie,” she said, the words sour in her throat.
“Where can I find the minister a stimpack?”







She expected Millie to direct her to an infirmary. Instead, the disembodied voice led her back to the warehouses.
Primrose found her voice again at the sound of peeling tape.
“What are you doing?”
Aurora held her hind legs down much the same way she’d done earlier, but with considerably less violence. She stuck the tacky end of heat tape to the minister’s fetlock and began winding the silver roll around both legs. 
“Be quiet,” she said, her own voice dull and angry. She wrapped more tape around her knees, layering it thick, careful not to bind her so tight that she cut off the circulation. 
Primrose didn’t have the strength to fight, but the empty syringe laying beside a nearby shelf more or less guaranteed that would change soon. Sealed plastic crates surrounded them in this forgotten corner of the ministry. Orange, sickle-shaped warning symbols advertised their contents as hazardous waste. One of those crates stood open now, its lid set on its neighbor. There were easily a hundred identical syringes packed in layers on form fitted styrofoam beds, and more than half of it had been empty to start. They were the same prewar stimpacks Autumn Song had used to extend Ginger’s torture.
Aurora wondered how many were left. Thousands, probably.
“You gave me–” Primrose spasmed with the audible crunch of bones realigning. 
How did they know when they were back in position? 
Primrose shuddered. Her entire body was feverishly warm. “You promised me you would let me go.”
“I told you I wouldn’t kill you,” she growled. “This isn’t killing you, is it?”
The minister - former minister, for all the title mattered anymore - said nothing, staring sullenly up at Aurora as she bound her forelegs. Bones continued to creak. Something wet made an ugly, slopping sound in her belly. Occasionally it would be too much to bear in silence and Primrose would let out little, discomforted cries. 
“Sit up.” Aurora helped her by taking some of her weight under the shoulders. Once Primrose was seated, Aurora crouched down in front of her with a strip of tape dangling from her feathers. She pulled her lips between her teeth for Primrose to see. “Do that.”
Primrose let out a resigned sigh and did as she was told. Aurora pressed the heat tape over her mouth. She wasn’t going to risk letting her reactivate SOLUS now that her body was dragging itself into its original shape.
She finished binding Primrose’s wings to her sides with two thick loops of tape, then stood back a step and looked her over. The trussed mare looked up at her with a pensive look of worry. Good. Let her wonder. 
“Stay there,” she ordered, stepping around her as if she were making for the shelves behind her. “You’ll probably need another dose before you’re one hundred percent.”
Primrose heaved a sigh of relief at that and made the wise decision not to turn her head to see where she was going. If she had she would have gotten her jaw rebroken and a bad case of whiplash. Instead, the hickory butt of Desperate Times cracked solidly into the back of her skull and she dropped like a sack of apples.







Primrose awoke in a foul-smelling room, on a foul-smelling bed. Her head throbbed. Something jerked hard at her hind leg, pinning it down. The air smelled vaguely familiar in all the worst ways. Like old piss and stallion sweat. 
She cracked open one eye and immediately regretted it. Sharp, fluorescent light buzzed in her peripheral vision. Another hard jerk. She winced as she looked down the line of her belly. She was on her back. Aurora was doing something to her legs. Had she found more tape? How strong did she think she was?
No, something was wrong. She didn’t know this place. And what was that scratching sound?
Old, water stained ceiling tiles hung a few feet away. The kind with hundreds of tiny holes poked through the foam. The kind at the dentist’s office that always gave her the creeps. A stark concrete wall loomed up just behind her head. The bed did the same, just in a different way. The sides of it rose up around her, cradling her at the bottom. Ancient padding, cracked and crumbling at the seams, held her snugly in place while Aurora tucked the end of a thick leather strap under her knee. 
Then she made the mistake of lifting her head up, and she saw the foul looking tubes snaking between her legs. 
“What the fuck?” she gasped, and she found her lips were chapped and raw. The tape was gone from her mouth. It seemed like an excellent time to repeat herself. “What the fuck!”
Aurora paused, looked at her, but didn’t respond. She looked haggard. Her mane clung to her neck, plastered with sweat. The whole front of her body was stained brown with old blood. Her blood, Primrose knew. Only now it had mixed with Aurora’s sweat and left dark smears along the ridge of the bed where she’d leaned over it.
“It’s just a catheter,” Aurora muttered like she was doing something she knew would haunt her later. 
Primrose knew that feeling. It had just been so long since she’d heard it in someone else’s voice. Desolate resignation. The grim work of desperate times. 
“Where am I?” she asked.
Aurora chewed her lip, staring shamelessly at the tubes she’d inserted into her body, and shrugged. “Mariposa.”
The name meant nothing to her. “Where?”
If there was any clarity to be gleaned, Aurora chose to withhold it. Primrose watched her lean back from the bed, press her feather into something she couldn't see, and heard a cheery electric chime jangle from somewhere beneath her. 
“What are you doing?”
Aurora didn’t look up. The light of a screen reflected in her eyes. “I’m fixing you.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. Not one fucking bit.
“I feel fine.”
“Okay.”
“So I don’t need whatever this is.”
A deeply unsettling mechanical voice nothing like Millie’s buzzed up from the bed. “Preliminary calibration will begin. Please keep clear of the AutoDoc during this time.”
Aurora stepped back until Primrose could only see half of her face. Her dull green eyes stared toward her, unblinking, uncaring as a long, metallic, insectile arm rose into view and bent toward her. The air caught in her throat and she choked back a scream as it jerked down under her jaw and pressed the cool, blunted tip against her throat. A moment later it jerked away just as abruptly, metal rasping smoothly against metal, and pressed itself into the flesh above her heart. It continued the process down the length of her body.
When it snaked away, Aurora returned to the unseen panel.
Silence stretched broken only by the quiet chirping of buttons being pressed. Menus being selected. An AutoDoc. She’d never been in one of these. She’d never needed one thanks to the Stim-Paks. 
She licked her lips, trying to bury her nerves. Another silver armature emerged, careful not to touch Aurora, and began pressing sticky paper sensors to her body. A second rose into view and began plugging the ends of the thin wires into a row of ports along the inside edge of the bed. Suddenly she could hear the faint, high beep of her heartbeat. 
“What’s wrong with me?” The question tumbled out of her before she could register the irony, and she frowned away from Aurora as the mare’s lip twitched into the faintest, knowing smile.
“Nothing,” Aurora said.
“Then why all this?”
Again, Aurora didn’t immediately answer. She frowned at the screen in front of her, tapped through some menus, selected something she seemed to like. Primrose had almost forgotten she’d asked the question when the answer finally came.
“This is the only place I trust to keep you from hurting anyone else.” She touched one last key and the bed emitted another jangling chime.
Primrose started to shiver. The bed warmed in response.
“Is there… anyone else here?”
Aurora shook her head.
“It’s a ruin,” she whispered. “No.”
“Yeah,” Aurora murmured. “Sorry about that.”
Primrose nodded. Knowing she’d been utterly outmaneuvered offered a strange kind of relief, despite being aware her punishment was only just beginning. 
It could be worse, she thought. I could be dead.
She knew that wasn’t true, but she tried to convince herself it was while Aurora silently watched. It didn’t stick. Aurora likely didn’t know where any of Equestria’s prisons were, so she’d settled on a hospital. There was a chance someone might find her. Someone who recognized the opportunity afforded by ingratiating themselves with the Minister of the Enclave.
And for some reason, that didn’t stick either.
“How long?” 
She’d meant to ask how long she’d be strapped to this bed, but Aurora looked as if she’d read between the lines.
“Don’t know,” she said. “There’s enough stims in the reservoir to keep you alive and healthy for maybe another century, but I don’t think the bed has that much life left in it.”
Primrose opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Please don’t do this to me.”
Aurora’s expression turned to granite, and she turned those dull green eyes toward her like an onrushing rockslide. “You deserve worse.”
The words hissed past her teeth with renewed defiance. “And here I thought the great heroes of Equestria were merciful and kind.”
Rather than defend herself, Aurora simply shook her head once and looked tiredly away. For the barest moment, her chin trembled with some private memory. Then her jaw hardened again, and the weakness she’d seen was gone. Aurora Pinfeathers was much changed from the hopeful, doe-eyed mare she’d bargained with on the oil rig.
“If there’s anything else you need to say, say it now.”
Primrose narrowed her eyes, then looked away. “Go home, Aurora.”
Aurora nodded once, straightened, and slid out of view. Something clattered to the floor. A rifle. Aurora’s rifle. Then her hooves clicked away, a door hissed open somewhere, and her voice drifted back across the room.
“Good night, Primrose.”
She blinked at that. The door slid shut. And something sharp pressed into the base of her spine. The pain was phenomenal, cold, and brief. She felt dizzy, and then it occurred to her what was happening. She tried to scream but the noise that rolled from her throat was a low, drooling moan. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her thoughts turned to slush.
She fell asleep… 
…and tumbled into the blazing abyss of a vengeful Tantabus.







June 21st, 1267
Two Months Later

“Hey. Stop messing with it.”
“I can barely breathe. Why do these things have to be so tight?”
Aurora looked down at herself with a pinched expression. Her long standing streak of trotting nude through the Stable had finally come to an end. A few hairs of her gray fur had already shed and were clinging to her neckline, and brushing them away with her wing only seemed to produce more. According to Roach her ghouling was progressing more subtly than most, which was something, but the conservative dress she’d been stuffed into made her keenly aware of her body’s recent changes. 
She’d gotten lucky. The ghouling had spared her mane and tail. Flesh wasn’t falling off of her in piles. She’d lost her coat in all the places where there was friction, leaving behind smooth patches of charcoal skin visible on the insides of her legs, under her wings, and of course everything underneath her tail was utterly bald which was… drafty. The upside was her new prosthesis had worn all the fur off her stump which made maintenance in that area a lot easier. It was the little things, really. 
She’d lost a little weight, as expected. Her cheeks were a little more sunken. Her ribs were a bit more visible. Thirty minutes of every night were now spent doing hard, military grade workouts with Julip to ward off muscle atrophy and keep her healthy. It was also the main reason she’d rubbed off so much fur in so little time. That, and the hours she was putting in again down in Mechanical. 
“You look fine, and it’s only for an hour. Besides, this was all your idea.”
“The dress was not my idea.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t mention you were going to show up caked in grease either.” Fiona gave her a knowing look as she helped smooth out the simple black fabric where Aurora’s fidgeting had caused it to bunch around her flanks. “Your dad almost sent me down there after you, by the way.”
Aurora pursed her lips and let herself be tended to. “The generator still has a wobble and I couldn’t leave without showing the second shift where we left off.”
“Mmhm,” Fiona hummed, then glanced up from her work to smile and nod at a passing pair of guests. “How many tenths of a degree was it off today?”
She rolled her eyes and judiciously chose not to answer. It wasn’t off by tenths, it was off by a few hundredths, and she had every intention of packing in a few more zeros after that decimal by the end of summer. As far as she was concerned, she wasn’t going to be satisfied until Stable 10’s restored generator spun just as it had the day it was first assembled. Her people were done living under the shadow of the past.
Aurora let her shoulder bump into Fiona’s arm as they watched all the different faces file past them into the garden. Some, she knew, but most were strangers. They took their seats in folding chairs set between the rows of soil. Signs in each row asked the guests to be mindful of the seedlings, which everyone seemed to be doing. 
“Lot of people here,” she mused.
Fiona hummed another response, the pair of them standing just inside the open door of the garden to greet the guests. “You did make the invitation open.”
She had, and it still surprised her how little resistance she’d gotten when she posed the idea to Sledge. The idea of holding a memorial for only Ginger had felt wrong in a way she struggled to describe, even though traditionally that was how the Stable always handled the death of one of their own.
The fact that Sledge had made that point official by adding Ginger’s name to the permanent roster of residents still made her chest tighten a little whenever she thought about it. Even now. Opal had even conspired with Fabrication to spin up a framed photo of a still image taken by one of Millie’s many watching eyes. It had captured Ginger’s profile, her mouth slightly open in mid-laugh, as the two of them were making their way to have dinner with Aurora’s dad. The entire thing had been a touching gesture, and completely unexpected. 
Sledge had been the one closest to her when they unveiled the surprise, and so he’d been the poor guy stuck holding her while she cried. To be fair, it was getting to be his turn anyway.
They held Ginger’s funeral the day after the generator came back online. They’d kept it small. Maybe a dozen people had been admitted into the Garden, including Sledge, Opal, and Rainbow Dash. As her longest friend, Roach had given the first eulogy. It was beautiful. Aurora spoke a few short words before her throat locked up and she sat down. Then Julip took her place at the front, cracked a smartass joke about Ginger throwing her off the side of a cliff like a toy glider, and that kept them all giggling like idiots through the rest of the service.
“It’s not just her memorial,” Aurora murmured back to Fiona. When she’d asked permission to send an open invitation, she’d meant it. 
She nodded to Ms. Vogel as she stepped into the Garden, followed by a few survivors from Junction City. The elder mare returned the acknowledgement with a polite smile, though her expression lifted appreciably when she spotted Fiona. Aurora stepped out of the way while the two of them hugged, exchanged a few words of mutual appreciation, then parted so the line didn’t back up. 
“True enough,” Fiona said, her voice a little husky as she watched Ms. Vogel find her seat. “You’ve done them a good turn.”
“They helped keep the Stable alive,” she returned. “We owe them. And we’re neighbors now, so it doesn’t hurt to be friendly. That includes you, too.”
Fiona touched a finger to her puffed out chest and let out the slightest gasp. Aurora had to chew on her own cheek to keep a straight face. One of Fiona’s pastimes as of late was working with Opal on designing some new, high-range broadcast equipment for the resurrection of Hightower Radio, and being exposed to that thick Appaloosan accent had been as disastrous as giving a yearling free reign over a bag of sugar.
“Well butter my biscuits,” Fiona twanged in a painfully southern impersonation of the Head of I.T., “I suppose if y’all owe me a favor, I could think of a few thangs you could do.”
One of the passing guests caught the performance and coughed out a snorting laugh.
Aurora just closed her eyes and sighed. “In the name of everything good in the world, please stop. I just got this new leg and don’t want to have to choke you with it.”
Fiona chuckled and gave her a light punch in the slightly withered shoulder. “Yeehaw,” she said, dropping the accent. “But since you owe me a favor, I figure I’d be willing to call us even if you let me… oh, I don’t know, take you out to dinner?”
Aurora fixed her with an arch stare. “Are you asking me on a date?”
Fiona grinned.
“Even though we just had dinner together yesterday? And several nights a week for the past month?”
She shrugged. “So sue me, I like dating you.”
Aurora snorted and absently shrugged the joint of her wing against her dress. “You’re a nut.”
“And you’re still fidgeting,” Fiona intoned, though she didn’t fuss with the fabric this time. “I think this is everyone who’s going to fit.” 
She looked across the crowd, noting that many were now looking for places to stand in the absence of chairs, and winced at the thought of the crop of new tomatoes getting trampled. Looking across the slowing line of faces, Aurora caught Deputy Chaser’s eye and tipped her head toward the open door with a worried frown. He winked back, lifted a wing to call the attention of the newest arrivals, and began redirecting them to the auxiliary seating out in the corridor.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have invited everyone,” she worried.
Fiona gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “They’ll understand. How are you feeling?”
She grimaced at the disappointed faces being pulled back into the hall. “Nervous.”
“If you need a break, give me a sign.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, and she meant it. 
The list of the dead was considerably long and spanned centuries. Ginger was just one of hundreds. There were those who died in the firestorm at Junction City, and the Stable had lost several people during the blackout and the subsequent evacuations. One of the wagons had strayed near a group of raiders scouting the unprotected roads to the south, and the result had been ugly.
There were also those of them who were grieving older deaths, though no less painful for the passage of time. Rainbow Dash had been one of the first to arrive, accompanied by Sledge, the two of them having become fast friends. The names of her losses were also on the list, one of them more famed than the rest. 
And then there were those who had no one left to grieve them, but whose contribution in preserving the truth of their history could not be ignored. Delta Vee stood at the top of that list, right above the name of her ex-husband, Jet Stream. The body of their daughter, Apogee, had been committed to the stars over a month ago after a sustained hacking campaign against the Ministry of Technology’s Millie finally opened control of SOLUS to the Steel Rangers. Elder Coronado had been the one to issue the command to send the satellite back to the void, this time for good. 
A keen eyed observer could see the faint, emerald tail of its steady acceleration on a clear night. The scientists recently freed from captivity inside the former Enclave’s bunker had expressed disappointment that they didn’t have optics powerful enough to witness the gradual redshift SOLUS’s rapid departure.
Aurora didn’t know what redshifting was. She was just glad the weapon was gone.
She chewed her lip as the crowded room sensed the memorial was about to begin and settled. A few furtive glances turned her way. She wondered if any of them would recognize Gallow’s name. 
Fiona’s hand was still on her shoulder, keeping her steady. Aurora bent her neck and pressed her lips against her fingers, exhaled the breath she’d been holding, and walked to the podium at the back of the Garden. Fiona followed close behind as they navigated the center aisle, two empty seats at the very front row reserved for the two of them. Her friends occupied the chairs beside them, and Aurora smiled nervously as Roach and Julip turned to watch them approach.
She felt her smile widen into a small grin as Roach gave the collar of his suit jacket a knowing flick. He cleaned up nicely and wasn’t afraid to show it. Julip wore a dress nearly identical to Aurora’s - the Stable had never been very exploratory when it came to fashion - and she offered up a commiserating roll of her eyes for having been badgered into the same wardrobe. 
She expected Sledge to be seated in the next chair down and blinked with shock at the mare looking back at her. When had Rosemary arrived? 
As Fiona detoured out of the aisle to take her seat, Aurora stole a few seconds to step over to Ginger’s sister and had to bend slightly to give her a proper hug. “It’s good to see you here,” she whispered, not wanting half the room to overhear her now that the crowd had settled. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to make the trip.”
Rosemary gave her an extra squeeze before letting go. “I caught a flight in,” she said, her smile telling her just how harrowing the experience had been for her. “You’re building quite the community out here.”
“Thank you. Talk later?”
Rosemary nodded, and Aurora turned to step toward the podium. A thin stack of recycled paper sat neatly beneath the microphone, each page bearing fifty names. She swallowed, turned to face the dense mix of Stable residents and wastelanders, and listened to the gentle ticking of the air recyclers. A bead of clear, clean water clung to the fanned head of a crop mister above the first row of chairs, and her throat felt dry.
She swallowed again and looked toward her friends. Roach and Julip, their hooves intertwined at the fetlock. Sledge, her crusty, inspiring, asshole of a former boss, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the most unlikely best friend she’d ever pictured him making. Rainbow wore a thin, gold necklace tipped with one of the chips from her shattered elemental gem, her retirement gift to herself. 
Her gaze wandered the crowd, picking out the odd familiar face from the welcome strangers, until finally settling on Fiona. The gryphon offered up the slightest encouraging nod, and Aurora felt her nerves fall away.
“We’ve come here today,” she said, her voice carried through Millie’s speakers to every corner of Stable 10, “to remember the lives of those we have lost.”
She slid her feathers under the first page. Her eyes misted as she spoke the first name.
“Ginger Dressage.”







She made it through the memorial without needing Fiona to tag her out, and positively melted into the chair reserved for her when it was Sledge’s turn to speak. A few other faces cycled past the microphone, people who wanted to take the opportunity to say a few words on behalf of someone they lost, until Ms. Vogel took to the podium and spoke on the importance of not becoming complacent in the face of victory. Her heart was in the right place, but after she’d been allowed to drone on about reestablishing economies of trade and currency Sledge had risen from his chair and graciously saved them with a friendly reminder that a light meal and refreshments were being served in the Atrium. 
The room couldn’t have evacuated faster if someone had set a fire.
Aurora needed a break, and standing in a noisy Atrium while a hundred or more strangers orbited around her felt like a fast track to the looney bin. Fiona provided cover for her escape, though not before reminding her of their promised date, and she ducked toward the lifts at the far end of Agriculture.
She considered retreating back to Mechanical, then thought better of showing up in a black dress. They’d never let her live it down. She’d shaken out of the black gown before the doors chimed on the Atrium level, and she hurried her way past tables of fresh vegetables and thinly sliced molerat (something for everyone) before the guests could catch up.
Fresh air wafted through a security office in the midst of its remodel, the air recyclers greedily sucking in the outside breeze. She waved a wing to a work crew from Mechanical in the middle of tearing out the decontamination arches to make way for the checkpoint she’d proposed, noting with a touch of pride that none of them were bothering with Stable jumpsuits these days, and squeezed out into the antechamber and bustling tunnel beyond.
“Miss Pinfeathers!”
She cursed under her breath at the familiar voice, then turned to see the Paladin cantering after her.
“I’m a little busy, Latch,” she grumbled.
“So am I,” he replied, but she knew that was a lie.
Recently promoted, Paladin Latch had spent the better part of the month lurking around her Stable, always waiting to catch her on her regular excursions outside. He’d been sent her on Elder Coronado’s behest, though rumor was Coronado was on the fast track to replacing the Steel Ranger’s heretofore do-nothing High Elder. She liked Coronado, really she did, but he would just not let this go.
“My statement hasn’t changed since last time.”
“Neither has the question,” Latch persisted, drawing no small amount of annoyed gazes from the work crews who had to suffer his constant presence in their tunnel.
She widened her gait and grunted approvingly as the shock absorbers in her new prosthesis picked up the load without missing a beat. They’d pulled the schematics for it off the Ministry of Technology’s servers and she was still getting used to how natural it felt.
“Miss Pinfeathers–”
“If you call me Miss Pinfeathers again,” she warned, “we’re going to have words.”
“Sorry,” he said, wincing as he said it. “Aurora, I consider you a friend.”
“Likewise,” she said, and she meant it. He’d given her the compass that led her to Ginger. It’d be a long time before she forgot that. “So as a friend, maybe consider giving me a day off from the fly-by interrogations?”
He sighed. “I have orders. And they’re important.”
She said nothing as they passed a section of tunnel under new construction, watching a mixed crew of Rangers, civilians, and her own people from Stable 10 squaring off the tapered sides of the tunnel with cinder block facades that would eventually become residential housing. If the scavengers kept working at the current pace, the uneven flagstones could become a level road in less than two years.
“Ask,” she sighed. He wouldn’t leave her alone until he did, and it was probably a combination of his persistence and her gilded reputation that she wasn’t being asked these questions in a poorly lit room at the bottom of Stable 6.
“Is Minister Primrose medically dead?”
“She’s no longer a threat,” Aurora replied.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It’s as good an answer as you’re going to get. Take it.”
He grimaced. “Is she still inside the Ministry of Technology?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“Below the dirt.”
“So you buried her.”
They emerged from the tunnel and stepped out into the warm, summer air. A few wisps of white clouds feathered an otherwise sapphire blue sky. The old Steel Ranger encampment had been torn up and the ground was now being prepared for the construction by the survivors of Junction City. The decision had been an easy one. It just made more sense for the two communities to pool their resources rather than send everyone back to the charred sticks of their former town, and after witnessing the detonation of one balefire bomb there was ample motivation for everyone involved to live as close to shelter as they could.
“I dealt with her,” Aurora modified.
The truth of Primrose and Spitfire’s parts in turning Equestria into a semi-barren wasteland had proliferated like wildfire, and the evidence was too great a weight for the Enclave to bear. Within a week of Primrose’s disappearance, the Enclave collapsed and the Steel Rangers, with Security Director Clover as their representative, were finally able to claim the capital. Aurora hadn’t been there when the Rangers marched into New Canterlot, but rumor was their reception had been chilly.
She fixed Paladin Latch with an imploring expression. “You don’t need to know where she is.”
“I think we can both agree Coronado isn’t going to accept that.”
“Then tell him I fed her to a deathclaw if that’ll make him happy,” she snapped. “If he needs to know where she is after that, I’ll point him to a pile of dung that resembles her the most.”
Latch relented like he always did, the silence between them marking the end of his questions for the day. He’d be waiting for her tomorrow, though, ready to take down the same non-answers. She didn’t envy him. Whatever he was being paid to deal with her wasn’t nearly enough.
“So,” he said, following her past a small mountain of charred logs waiting to be cut, planed, and trimmed into boards, his tone conversational, “what’s going on up there?”
He tipped his horn up the scarred, bomb-blackened slope of Foal Mountain and toward the construction work taking place on its craggy summit. 
“Fiona’s new transmitter,” she said. “Be a while before it’s up and running, though.”
Latch hummed with evident approval. “Flipswitch is going back on the air, eh?”
“Yep,” she agreed. “No more records, either. Stable’s got a digital archive.”
His expression fell. “Oh. I prefer vinyl.”
“Eugh,” she said, giving him a look, “you’re one of those.”
At that, he laughed, drawing a few curious looks from the team of a passing wagon. “We can’t all have good taste,” he said, leaving the answer of which of them it was deliberately vague. Then he glanced back toward the tunnel and grimaced. “I should get going. Same time tomorrow?”
Aurora followed his uneasy gaze and smirked when she saw Roach and Julip making their way outside. “You know, he isn’t going to bite.”
“Yeah,” Latch muttered, his eyes fixing on Julip, “it isn’t him I’m worried about. I’ll see you later.”
With that, he turned and made his daring escape and doubtless not looking forward to sending another fruitless report to his Elder.
She watched him disappear past the new construction, nearly colliding into an earth pony tasked to turn the drum on an old concrete mixer by hoof. Aurora smiled, shook her head, and lifted her wing to sweep Roach and then Julip into a welcome hug. 
“Sledge is looking for you,” Julip grunted as she accepted the crush.
“Everyone’s looking for me, what else is new?” She grinned as she stepped out of the embrace. “So, how’d I do?”
“You nailed it,” Roach rumbled approvingly, and looked out at the flurry of activity surrounding them. “Don’t blink. I think this place is turning into a town. Are those the oak trees I planted?”
“The ones that didn’t burn up completely, yep,” she confirmed, nodding toward the wide swath of ground being cleared for concrete several yards beyond the lumber pile. “We’re dipping into the Stable’s supply of raw metal to make enough saws to cut it all, but it’s worth doing if it means it isn’t going to waste. We’ll need even more wood than this if we want any of the new buildings to have a floor. Bricks are going to be trickier. The scavengers are going to want more for them if they have to start looking further afield.”
“Makes sense,” Roach murmured thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t want to haul something like that for free, but I’m guessing you have a plan for that.”
She nodded. “We make them locally. The archives have some detailed instructions on how to get it done, we just need the materials.”
Julip slipped Roach a curious look before glancing back to her. “And then what?”
Aurora puffed out a breath, looked around at the beginnings of the young new town around them, and shrugged. “We start inviting people in. Might even pull recruit some folks from Blinder’s Bluff to help if we can sell it to them. We’ve got steady electricity and plenty of water to spare now that the generator’s spun up again. Our biggest challenge right now is food, but even that’ll ease up once we can get a bumper crop growing out here in the soil.”
She realized Roach was staring at her and she didn’t understand why. He smiled when she stopped talking, prompting her to ask, “What?”
“Nothing. I just think this,” he said, his smile broadening at all the work taking place around them, “is what you were meant to do.”
She snorted, blinked at him when his expression didn’t falter, and then followed the track of his gaze. “This? This is easy. We’re just fixing what’s broken.”
Roach chuckled and they fell into step beside her as they retraced the same steps he’d led her along several months ago, their hooves picking over the cracked concrete strip of road with familiar ease. “You should give it a name.”
She laughed only to realize neither of them were laughing with her. “Wait,” she said, her grin turning uneasy, “name the town? I can’t name a town!”
“Why not?” Julip swiped her hoof at a bit of broken road and watched it tumble and jounce before plunking down into one of the cracks ahead, where a passing wagon wheel loaded with building material pressed it into place. “Ain’t no rules against it. You’re kind of the one in charge of it. You should get to name it.”
“I…”
“And,” Roach added, bumping her shoulder with his, “nobody else has stepped up to do the honors, because they’re waiting on you.”
She blinked, suddenly feeling a little sweaty. “Nobody told me that.”
“Can you blame ‘em?” Julip dipped behind them, gave her wings a quick pulse, and landed squarely atop Roach’s back. The changeling let out a cough of surprise while a passing porter nearly stuck his hoof in a crack in the road as he goggled at them. “The last time you thought the weight of the world was on your shoulders, you ran away from home and turned the whole fucking wasteland on its head.”
Aurora cocked a brow at Julip who looked utterly content with herself. Roach just plodded along as if he was well used to her antics. “It doesn’t look like that’s been a problem for you.”
Julip grinned, giving Roach’s neck a squeeze. “I prefer this fella to my old cage. So what’re you going to name it?”
She looked at them and they looked patiently back, neither willing to let her off the hook. She snorted and turned her head this way and that, watching so many different people from different backgrounds band together to accomplish something greater than themselves. A wagon painted primary blue rumbled by, the scrollwork letters of F&F Mercantile finally blotted out on its sideboards as barrels of a fresh water delivery sloshed inside. Along the junction of the Stable’s once forgotten access road and the old highway beyond, dozens more wagons were lined up with cargo of one variety or another, waiting for the Steel Rangers to sort them out and direct them to their staging areas. 
They were building something new here. Something important. Aurora knew, deep down, that what she was doing here would set the precedent going forward and that she would be around for a very long time to make certain it was done right.
All these people had survived their darkest hour together. They’d all come to the brink of death and returned from it changed. Old hatreds were crumbling even now, evidenced by a former soldier of the Enclave resting her cheek against the neck of a changeling ghoul. Roach winked at her, clearly aware of what she was thinking, and she smiled back. 
“Well?” Julip coaxed.
Aurora looked back at her Stable, at the great door that now stood open to anyone in need of a place to belong. She felt her chest grow warm at the sight of Beans chasing after a group of Stable foals in the summer sun, each one of them wielding wooden swords and shouting piratical nonsense only they could understand. Her mother and father watched them play at a distance, their eyes pinched with nervous hope.
Aurora looked after them and smiled.
“How does Renewal sound?”