//------------------------------// // Chapter 40 // Story: Friendly Fire // by Starscribe //------------------------------// He fell. Jacob couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. He could feel though, feel his friends close to him in that void, passing through to the same destination. His lungs burned—he hadn’t been able to exhale the way Harley had suggested, and so they burned. He tried to move, struggle, scream, anything. Nothing worked. It was almost as though he didn’t have a body at all. Is this where I die? It should be. How many lives have you stolen already? Jacob stumbled to his feet on the pavement of a familiar street. Air flooded into strained lungs, and for a straight minute all he could do was hack and cough. He felt hands on his shoulders, but he ignored them. Someone set something in one of his hands; a plastic water bottle. He tilted it back, gargling for a few seconds before spitting it onto the pavement and taking another sip. The pain subsided into a dull ache, and the rest of his senses came back. Sound first, to the distant sirens and shouts and many faraway voices. His own friends, concerned for his safety, though he couldn’t make out words yet. He wiped pained tears away from his eyes, glancing around. He was on the surface again, somewhere downtown. The streetlights were dark, the street nearby absent of cars. Most of the lights were out too. After adjusting to the darkness of the Gatecrasher hall, Jacob could see quite clearly in the gloom. A nearby shop window had been shattered, and the inside looked looted. The moon shone in the sky like an old friend, almost bright enough to see on its own. “What the hell happened here?” Danielle hadn’t needed to recover from the jump, and her little voice was furious. “It looks like a warzone.” “Lots of colleges were targets,” Harley said, voice low and eyes downcast. She drew Jacob’s old wand from a pocket, offering it to him before taking a new one from the satchel, along with a menacing bit of black metal. Jacob’s eyes widened as he recognized an MP5, stock retracted and an extended magazine already in place. She slung it over her other shoulder with a frightening level of familiarity. Jackie imitated her, drawing a similar weapon from concealment in her jacket and hanging the strap over her shoulder. “I thought you said guns were silly when we had magic,” Jacob muttered, wrapping his arms around himself. “They are.” Harley drew out something else, a compact black canister, and screwed it onto the end of her weapon with practiced ease. “But these are for people to see.” Jackie attached her own silencer, and the gun made weighty metal clicks as she took it into both hands. “Not all of us have magic, Jacob. But bullets are a spell anyone can cast.” Katie stared, watching her sister with growing concern. Her hood had fallen backward, and her mouth hung open. “How often have you had to use that?” Jackie didn’t answer. “I wasn’t lying when I told the Gatecrashers we would be keeping you ponies alive.” Harley met his eyes. “Let’s go find our pilot. You’re certain she’ll be cooperative?” “Absolutely.” Jacob squeezed the wand, reassured by its familiar weight. He slipped it into his pocket. He would’ve kept a wallet and a phone there, six months ago. He had no more use for either. “Assuming I can convince her of who I am, and we can steal a plane. We'll have to find a video store by the way... that's the easiest way I know to convince Michelle of who I am, given the whole... freakish monstrosity of nature thing I've become.” “You worry about the first part, and I’ll worry about the second.” She scanned up and down the street they were on, looking nervous. There hadn’t been anyone at first, sidewalk deserted. Now, though, tiny eyes watched from windows above them, and voices seemed to be getting closer. “We’re too a big a group. Danielle and Jackie, go with Jacob. Keep him alive. Everypony else with me. Call me on the usual frequency when you get her, Squeak. I’ll give you rendezvous coordinates then. If anything happens, the airfield address is in the notes I gave you.” Jackie nodded. “Be safe.” Harley smiled. “Have been so far. Oh, and Jacob, the plane is a Gulfstream G650. If she can’t fly one…” “She can.” Jacob didn’t actually know that—or the first thing about aircraft, for that matter. They would be well and truly screwed if he was wrong. He gestured to a nearby street, a main road that would take them closer to campus and the nearby dorms where he lived, and the three of them separated. They found a video store first, less than a block away. It had already been broken into, so Jacob was able to move quickly. He tucked a single Blu-Ray into his jacket, then hurried out to join Jackie and Danielle. “Your sister is a pilot?” It was hard to tell with only moonlight, but it looked like Jackie was blushing. “What is she doing in school?” It was a nice distraction. It was horrifying to see how much could change in the city he had known in less than a week. There were no bodies in the streets, but there were broken shops, the corpses of dead cars smoldering, and others left abandoned. Few windows had lights. “Michelle is… the smartest person I know, but she’s always been flighty. First she was positive she wanted to become a pilot… went straight into that, paid her way through with three different jobs… and got there. Then a few years went by, and she decided she’d rather be on the engineering side instead. Dropped everything, came back to school, and…” he trailed off. “You’re not listening to me, are you?” “Into the alley!” Jackie shoved him by the shoulder down a side-street. Danni followed with far more dexterity, even reaching up to brace her body against his legs and stop him from falling. “I don’t need to be shoved around! You could’ve just said something.” Jackie kept tugging, until they were around the corner. “I hear an engine coming towards us! Someone probably heard the implosion when we gated in. We should stay off the road. Nobody else seems to be around.” There was an engine, he could hear it now, getting louder by the moment. Not an ordinary civilian car, with a sound like that. “There’s probably a curfew,” he whispered. “Elise mentioned something like that. The National Guard would enforce martial law anywhere there was contamination. Judging from… whatever that was back there, I’m guessing somewhere in town got attacked.” Something passed the open alley. He caught olive drab in a blur, one of those cloth-covered personnel trucks trundling on past where they had been standing. “Well unless we plan on fighting the whole army, we’re going to have to sneak our way over. Are there any… less obvious paths we could take?” He nodded. “How about the river trail?” It took them over an hour to make it across town to the trail. Jackie seemed to have a sixth sense for when they were being watched and when it was safe to cross, because they were never stopped or forced to use their weapons as they made their way over. The river trail itself was exactly as Jacob remembered it. In this case, that was an enormous advantage, since it was surrounded by tall trees and unlit for most of its length. “It’s a shame we can’t just fly,” Jackie said. “We might be there by now.” “That might not be safer.” Danni wore nothing and carried nothing, though like most ponies she seemed to have gotten over it by now. “We’d be much more visible. Without any streetlights on, everyone is probably more sensitive to noticing something in the sky. Even if they aren’t all bats.” Of course, there was also the matter of the Earthbreaker amor, which Jacob knew she could call upon with a moment’s effort if she needed to. She hadn’t so far. Jackie only grumbled. “You’d be surprised. Fly quiet enough, and most people don’t even bother looking up. They’re just not used to—anything in the sky is always a bird, or an owl, or whatever.” “That’s probably gonna change now.” Jacob had to take two steps to every one of Jackie’s, and there was definitely a struggle to it. “Assuming my town wasn’t the only one where the attack worked, there are going to be ponies all over now, right? That will probably change the way people think of… everything.” Danni didn’t seem to be having that same difficulty, even though she was a full foot shorter than he was. She just trotted along, hooves making a steady sound on the sidewalk. “It’s probably too much to hope for that we’ll find the mirror and be able to change everyone back, huh?” “It’s a question of whether the ponies are willing, I think,” Jackie said. Her hands never left her gun, though she wasn’t holding it at the ready anymore. “If the spell can be done once, it can be done again, maybe without the portal. You could set up stations to get the spell turned back on. But… there’s also the matter of how contagious the bioweapon really is.” “You think… think it could infect us?” Jacob asked, suddenly wishing he had brought better protection. “You’re picking a dumb time to ask that.” Jackie laughed, bitter. “If you have a Cutie Mark, then it won’t infect you. Only humans who haven’t got that far are vulnerable. You can’t be a carrier, either. If what they explained to me isn’t just some pile of lies like the rest of it, then it feeds on the magic of the spell directly. Unless the ‘human’ spell is almost or completely intact, it’ll die right away.” “Freaky,” Danni muttered. “They’ve been on Earth maybe twenty years, and already they’ve appropriated one of our worst ideas ever to use against us.” “Yes.” Jackie’s steps slowed a little, her expression haunted. “Some questions they couldn’t answer for me, and those were the scariest of all. Like… how long does it stick around in your system after you’ve changed? Will exposure to a victim be dangerous weeks or months later?” Jacob shivered. “Ponies are already contagious if you’re just starting out. Maybe not… ‘minutes’ contagious, but they are hard to look at. You probably remember, Jackie, since you only just got your Cutie Mark. Back when they were shocking and unexpected and you wanted to look away without knowing why.” She nodded. “Maybe that’s why the ponies didn’t think much of this whole ‘bioweapon’ thing. It’s basically the same as what they do just by being themselves, only faster.” “Sunset may’ve thought that.” Jacob slowed a little on the path, squinting down at their destination. Someone was waiting on the path, several dark shapes. “I think she made a terrible mistake. People might’ve accepted us as peaceful before, but… if she really sent out that video taking credit… everyone is going to hate us.” He stopped completely, pointing. “Jackie, what do you think that is?” Her eyes narrowed. “That is three ponies and two humans, with bandannas wrapped around their faces and weapons out. Looks like… all earth ponies, no uniforms.” “Guess we know the city was hit,” Danni muttered, her voice distant. “I was hoping all this might be some… unrelated disaster.” “They see us too. Looks like none of them have guns, so that’s good. Also, those ponies are trying to wear clothes. They’re going to be tripping all over themselves.” Jacob drew the wand. He didn’t need it, but it felt better to have something in his hand. He wasn’t even really sure what would happen if he tried to use it instead of a horn. “We have to go that way. Right behind them is the apartment complex. She was still living there as of two weeks ago.” “You’ve been in touch with her this whole time?” Danni asked, indignant. “Sortof. We… buy things at each other. I started by sending her bad movies, but she didn’t have any way of talking back to me. So she opened up a PO-box and had her roommates forward the…” he trailed off. “It sounds really boring when I put it that way.” They were getting close now, close enough that the people blocking the path were within earshot. “Hey punks.” Jackie lifted her weapon with both hands, making some menacing sounds with the action. “Out of the way.” The two humans needed no more encouragement. They dove for the nearby bushes, dropping their weapons as they went. They didn’t go far, though. The ponies didn’t move at all. Up close, Jacob could see that all three were earth ponies, with more than a few minor injuries visible through their comical clothing. The chaos made them give up the law, but it couldn’t take away their modesty. He almost laughed, or he would have if he didn’t feel at least a little bit responsible for what he was seeing. Sunset’s weapon had caused this. “Maybe we aren’t afraid of bullets anymore,” one of them called up at her, a stallion with a deep voice (for a pony) and a few chipped teeth. Though Jacob couldn’t see it, he imagined a Cutie Mark of some brass knuckles, or maybe a dropped bar of soap. “Maybe you should be afraid of us.” Another of the ponies, a spindlier mare with a bandanna covering one of her eyes, called up. “Maybe you drop everything you’re carrying right there, and we let you live. Maybe.” She stepped forward, where a large fallen branch leaned over the edge of the trail. She stepped on it with a single hoof, and the whole thing shattered. It was thicker than her torso, but earth-pony magic made short work of it, exploding it into bits of tinder and fragments of wood. “There’s three of us, and you only have one pony. Think of your kid and give us your shit.” Jackie tensed, her voice furious. “We don’t have time for this.” She turned to face Jacob and Danni. “Do we have to fight them?” Danni stepped forward, facing the group with cool confidence. She was smaller than any of them, probably younger too, but that didn’t seem to weaken her resolve.  “You’re all new at this, from the attack probably. I’m real sorry it happened, none of us wanted it. Get out of our way, or I’ll beat you to a pulp. It’s one or the other.” They lunged. All three went for her, the “human” targets apparently forgotten. Jacob and Jackie retreated out of the way, though Jackie kept her weapon ready, watching the treeline around them. They wouldn’t be taken by surprise by the missing two humans, that was for sure. The three earth ponies might be new at what they did, but they were fast and had the same magic Danni had. It should’ve been a losing battle. It wasn’t. Danni caught one charge with a slide-tackle, lifting the pony off the ground a little and bucking him straight though a nearby tree. The other two moved to surround her, coming in for blows of their own. Danni landed, planted her hooves, and took each without flinching, before responding with another tug. She got under ponies, or lifted, before trying to do any damage of her own. It took less than a minute. Three thugs moaned in various states of injury, buried in piles of half-broken wood. Danni stood over them, glowering. “You shits are lucky we have more important stuff to worry about. Rob us, yeah right? If that was what you wanted, there’s half an empty city to steal from. No, you aren’t after loot. You’re lucky I don’t kill you.” Their human allies didn’t come back. Jacob was fairly certain he had heard them flee at some point during the fight, though Jackie was still alert in case they had been wrong. “But you won’t kill them,” Jacob said over her. “Because we have somewhere to be and you’ve already beaten them. I think our new friends here have learned that magical strength doesn’t guarantee a victory when everyone has it. You’ve done enough.” Danni’s nostrils flared, her tail flicking back and forth in obvious anger, but she nodded. After a few more tense moments, she settled onto her hooves and relaxed. “Alright, let’s go.” They left the wounded thugs on the trail, hurrying up into the apartment complex. Like much of the world, it was dark, though Jacob could make out faint light coming from the inside of many windows. Blankets, sheets, or other coverings had been used to block out as much of the light as possible, but he could still tell. Despite the months, Jacob knew exactly where to go to find Michelle’s apartment. The little sign next to the window still had her name, though some of the other roommates’ names had changed. Jackie slipped her gun halfway back into her jacket, and Danni stepped back around the corner. Jacob would have to face this alone. He knocked.