About a month ago…

I was abruptly released and forcibly shoved at Warboss Gork. A small pile of rubble and steel that I tripped over caused me to lose my balance and I collided with his armored ass. I stumbled backward and ended up sitting down right on the spot. The more scary part was, the bucking ground shook when he started turning around. “Oi, wha’z dis git doin’ ’ere?”

“You’re the leader here?” I asked, looking around for somepony less menacing.

“Dat’s me, and I call’z da shots.”

I was also expecting somepony more intelligent, for some reason. Oh well, it wouldn’t matter in a second. “And you are the leader, right?” I asked one more time, just making sure.

“Wot’s you not understandin’? I’s the boss.”

“Excellent.” I lunged forward and swung my claw at the Warboss as hard as I could. When the hit connected, the shotgun built into my metal leg went off, blasting bits of his head all over the far wall. Everypony in the room stared in shocked horror as I cooly strolled away from the headless corpse and ejected the spent shell from my ballistic claw. “Okay, now take me to your second in command.”

Several song-filled weeks later…

“Oi. Squeaky Fart to Mini Boss. We’s gots the uh—whatsit. Yeah, the whatsit’s comin’ to the front gate.”

“I hear you. And your callsign cannot be ‘Squeaky Fart’. We have standards.”

“Eeeuh… uhhh… Exploding Rectum copies.”

“You can’t—whatever. Whatever! Fine. Keep it up, Exploding Rectum.”

For all the grief that these idiots had caused me, it gave me a sense of pride that I, Selfie Stick, had finally left my goddamn mark on this shithole of a wasteland. In retrospect it hadn’t really been all worth it—my friends, my youth, an eye—but there was still a gram of accomplishment that shone underneath all that weight. With Warboss Gork dead and Warboss ’Urt’oof off having her own adventure, I’d taken it upon myself to rebuild the ’Ard ’Eads into the trained force it was now. I'd gotten out of the habit of calling them boys. This was my warband now, so I ended up calling them dudes instead. Maybe it was some subliminally symbolic meaning involving a sort of maturing of the leadership. It actually rolled off the tongue better in my opinion and didn’t sound moronic.

The last second-in-command had suggested the new handle “Hard Corps”, a testament to our past and our bright future. I sighed at the memory. I really missed that old bastard. My new second—I turned my eye to the firing range—she just really hated all the dudes. That probably came with being a scrawny pegasus needing something to prove with her fancy-dandy advanced Enclave military training. At least she wasn’t all talk like some other pegasi I knew. We’d come a long way from blowing up sleeping Rangers in the middle of the night.

I’ve done it. This is my shitty legacy in all its heavily fortified glory.

And right on cue, today’s shipment strolled right through the front gates. For the sake of my convenience—and not because I didn’t know their names—the ones I called Fat Bastard and Horny Bastard had finally returned from their most recent abduction run. This week we were the “Collaborative Relocation Association for Pegasi” and we needed “eager, important community leaders” to “survey” the “lodgings”. Technically I wasn’t lying, but that came with “learning” how to “speak” with air quotes. How? “Practice”.

I surveyed them from where I was. If everything had gone to plan we’d be sitting on a pretty pile of caps in a few hours.

The more portly grimy one—Fat Bastard—he was the charismatic one of the two. Something about his rotund figure made ponies assume that he was the jolly type. He was in the middle of telling the pegasus following them about the so-called settlement we were allegedly building. “Calm ya tits, love. Allllmost there,” he gently convinced her.

Today’s catch looked like a lemon wearing a dust mop on her head. From here, I couldn’t exactly tell why they’d chosen her specifically, considering both sides of her butt had a chalkboard. Huh. Maybe it was an Enclave thing.

“I don’t want to sound inconsiderate,” she commented delicately, “but there is a distinct lack of pegasi in this so-called collective. Maybe I’ll just head back and tell the others that we’ll look somewhere else. It’s not that I don’t want to take your word for it, but we desperately need more living space for our refugees.”

Fat Bastard stopped in his steps, which led to the pegasus walking right into his rear end. He ponderously maneuvered himself around to face the little birdie. As the pegasus shook herself out of her stupor, Fatty gently smooshed her face between his hooves. “Oi. We lied. Catch on, wouldja?” The expression on the poor pegasus’s face gradually shifted from confused to worried and finally into panic.

“W-wait, what?” The frenzied pegasus attempted to flap away, only to be taken down by a flying tackle by the other bastard. Oof. That was probably going to hurt in the morning. “No! Let me go!” she cried onto deaf ears.

The other bastard—Horny Bastard—didn’t get his name from being friendly. “It’s okay, birdie. You’re with us now! We’s gonna take goooood care of you.”

“Please! I’m just a teacher—I don’t know anything!”

A faint thought of irony slid through my brain. I mentally replayed those words. “I’m just a teacher, I don’t know anything.” That could clearly be worded a lot better.

“Oh no, she’s getting away!” Horny Bastard playfully cried out. He had already grabbed the unfortunate pegasus by the wings and was mock-flapping them for her. Clearly, the pegasus under him didn’t find it as funny.

Knowing what these guys were like now, I had to step in right now. If I left those two idiots to their own devices I’d have a dress-up doll instead of a hostage. Enough was enough. They’d had enough fun for today. “Oi! Leave Chicken Nuggets alone,” I shouted.

Both bastards stopped what they were doing at once. Horny Bastard climbed off the pegasus—who attempted to squirm away to relative safety—and complained at me, “Ey, cut us a bit of slack! You’re givin’ me blue balls, boss. Just, eh, five minutes! Promise!”

I remained annoyed and unamused by his antics. “You’re about to have no balls if you touch the bird one more time.”

Horny Bastard snarled at me. He wasn’t bold enough to directly threaten me, but he went as far as rearing up at me. “You’d better oil up ’cuz these balls are—”

Suddenly out of the clear blue sky a bolt of teal lightning arced from over the horizon and crashed into the nearby parade ground with a tumultuous rolling boom! Dust and trash flew in a whirl, obstructing our vision. A ruckus burst from the dudes trying to collectively manage the prisoner. I, on the other hoof, was balanced on the edge of enraged and terrified. Why hadn’t the Stealf’boyz pulled the alarm? They were supposed to be watching the perimeter, damn it. “If they’re having another bucking orgy again, I swear I’m going to mix wonderglue into their grease,” I growled to myself.

Pointing to the first dude that had my attention, I ordered, “You! Get the bird into my office and tie her down.” At my command, he shook himself out of his stupor and galloped to the chucklenuts losing their goddesses-damned minds around the prisoner. A few bashed heads later and some harsh words got them moving again.

Now I had to figure out exactly what the hell was going on out there. A dense cloud of dust still clung to the air. Several dudes crept out of their hiding places, guns at the ready. The nearest dude—a Big Boy, the dudes still insisted on calling them—gave me a questioning glance.

“Whoever this is, it’s fast. Get Fat Fryer up on the roof with the heatseeker. Find the Trapboys—I want net guns in case whoever this is happens to be worth money,” I quietly ordered. “Circle up and tell the rest of your boys to watch their fire.” Whoever—or whatever this was, my eye-hole was itching up a storm. I frowned. Not good.

“Wotcher that, boss.” The Big Boy smartly nodded. The nearest dude to him was immediately assaulted by a slew of profanity and shouted orders. “Oi, move ya fat fat sausage asses! You! Oi, oi, git back here!”

The dust finally settled. Striding confidently out came a teal pegasus mare with deadly eyes and too many weapons strapped to her body. I recognized her as the pony who had given me this position to begin with. Warboss ’Urt’oof, the dudes called her. As I was told, she called herself Frosty Winds.

The last time I’d seen the Warboss, she’d been more of a meek soft little thing hiding a wickedly sharp dagger in her wings. This was decidedly not the same pony, as much as it seemed. This mare had the look of a plan in mind for the world, hidden behind a thin facade. No hero, for sure. Hero-types only wanted to ruin plans anyway.

Warboss ’Urt’oof was coming in my direction and I had absolutely zero idea about what she wanted. I hastily dismissed the loitering dudes and adjusted the kepi on my head. My missing eye was starting to itch, too. The Itch hadn’t been wrong about danger so far.

Danger and Itch aside, I erred on the side of caution by making a diplomacy check. I bowed, being sure to doff my hat on the way down. When I stood up straight again, she was right up in my face. “Welcome back, Warboss. Did you miss us?” I greeted her after taking a cautionary step back.

The Warboss—Frosty looked around us. She surveyed my works, the incredible advances I’d made since she’d left me in charge. After an extended pause, she demanded, “What the buck happened to you guys? You’re supposed to be killing machines. The meanest assholes in the Wasteland. What’s going on?” As if she hadn’t looked disappointed in me before, a cluster of the newer recruits stampeded past carrying various grooming supplies—yes, for the prisoner. I cringed on the inside. Every day I regretted making those compromises.

As to appear unfazed by my subordinates, I shrugged. “Eh. Money’s a big motivator, really. Sex too.” It was more like they were the only motivators now, since I’d made it abundantly clear that an attitude adjustment was in order for the new ’Ard Corps. “I’m just the new management. Didn’t think you’d ever come back for us, to be honest.”

“What about the pillaging? The brutal murder?” Screaming that was gradually getting louder came from the far side of the base. The pegasus from earlier suddenly darted past, soaked and trailing suds. Several of the same dudes from earlier were giving chase with rope and soap. The Warboss gestured at the ad-hoc mob and demanded, “Regular murder, even?”

“See, we—we bein’ I—figured that turnover was too high. Cuts into productivity, see? Gotta find new blood when dudes get wiped, train ‘em, get ‘em fighting. Takes too long, so I got us moving along into the modern age. Run racketeering and kidnapping, then get the violent dudes to run protection.”

Frosty seemed to have been formulating a proper indignant response, then had that whole train of thought derail and cause a global thermonuclear war. “What.”

My gut asked me why I was spilling the inner workings of my organization to the mare who’d bailed on me in the first place. I reminded myself that it was full of shit and carried on anyway. “Yeah, it works great—when Bishy and Bashy wanna do some bishy bashy, we extort the guys we’re protecting so the dudes don’t break the merch, y’follow?”

By now Frosty was sitting on her haunches, clearly mystified and disgusted by what she was hearing. “I am clearly not following. Continue, please.” She gestured with her talons in a general go-ahead motion.

From what I recalled of the pegasus, this was at least what I expected. “It’s fine. All you need to know is that ’Ard Corps are among the forefront of current-day mercenary companies. We’re an enterprise, I think. Limited liability, for sure. I dunno.”

“This is a problem.”

I tapped my chin in thought, only partially listening to what the Warboss was saying. “I think the problem is not that I'm not getting value out of our operation—the problem is that I don't know how to read.”

Frosty groaned, “I can’t believe this what I have to work with.” Both her hoov—eh, forelimbs?—went straight to her face. “Why can’t any of my plans ever go smoothly?”

“I have one eyeball and two hundred horny buckers at my beck and call. I’m illiterate, not useless. And hey, I turned this slop-fest into a proper organization.” I spread my forelegs apart and made a sweeping motion to my compound. “Give me some credit.”

Warboss Crybaby snarled. “The ‘slop-fest’ was more my style.”

Once again I gestured at everything around us—the firing range, the slovenly merchandise bunker, the barracks, everything. All of this was my life’s work and she didn’t even seem to care at all. What a bitch. “It’s a whole new world, Warboss. Today’s a beautiful day. The birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like these—”

“Idiots like you should be burning in the pits of Tartarus,” she snarled, not quite looking in my direction. The ground cracked under her metal limb as her talons contracted.

Ponies didn’t usually interrupt me in mid-speech. In an exponentially offended manner I asked, “Excuse me?”

The increasingly rude mare before me jabbed my nose with her claw-hoof. “You heard me. You’ve gone soft. I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

Up until now, I’d been giving uppity miss bitchface the benefit of the doubt and the respect she deserved. That was the last straw. No more mister nice eyeball. “Time’s a-changin. You up and vanished for over a month!” I roared in my scary voice that was reserved for only the douchiest of bags. Every single dude in earshot scuttled away to a safe distance to cower from my impending wrath. “You left me in charge, of all ponies in the world. Didn’t you find it weird that me, of all the ponies in the warband, actually used his goddesses-damned brain? I’ve been waiting for this moment for years and I’m not about to have some two-bit slut take all of my work away from me!”

With the sound of my voice still reverberating off nearby walls, Frosty began to laugh. It was one of those low, creepy, definitely evil laughs that built up into a roar. “Heh. It’s nothing I can’t fix.” Cold steel constricted around my neck faster than I could blink. Little by little, I found myself being lifted up by the throat. At first I wasn’t concerned for my safety—there were dozens of guns, bladed implements, and two net guns pointed at us. I tried to hold onto that thought as I was forced to stand on my hindlegs. In that same low evil voice, she intoned, “Tell me. Are you afraid of the dark?”

The wind began to howl like no tomorrow, then as suddenly as it had begun it abruptly stopped. Nothing happened. I stared into her eyes just long enough for it to become awkward. I was the first to break eye contact with a hesitant choking cough.

I found myself thrown onto my back in the next moment. As I gasped for breath, the Warboss seemed out of focus. She paced back and forth, muttering to herself. “What the… Hang on, let me try this again. First time doing it from this side, so give me a moment to figure this out.”

The Big Boy from earlier grabbed my attention with an urgent wave. He clearly motioned “Should I shoot her?” in which I responded by mouthing back, “Hang on I think she might actually be really stupid.”

Again I was hoisted into the air within a split second. Pawing at the steely claws around my throat had no effect. She drew in closer, actually pressing her nose against mine. “Are you afraid of the dark?” This time, beyond the murky depths of those emerald eyes lay an endless void of black demise, terror beyond comprehension.

I don’t remember much after that.

Footnote: Personal army acquired.