Light Despondent Chapter 21: Kill The Cooks / Lone Digger
Editors/Co-Authors:
Jed R (Special thanks for more things than I can count. Like damn son)
TB3
Redskin122004

“DO NOT OFFEND THE BASEBAW BAT AY TRUTH, FOR IT IS WISE AND TERRIBLE!” Francis Strang yelled, and smashed it against an HLF man’s stomach.

Even including that, it’d been a fairly normal night. Nny and Fiddlesticks were up for some beer, Francis’ new friend Falyn had come up to say hi. Aegis and his foals were waiting on some hayburgers cooked in the kitchen as the Cardsharp worked to serve the usual clientele: Europe expats with big guns, farmers, lumberjacks and workers from all over town, store employees, even a local DJ, artists, musicians...

It’d been peaceful until the HLF from up in the hills had decided to harrass the clientele. They had some tall, skinny man employed. Someone shaky. Jittery. Someone that’d killed a bunch of PER before their friends - the same ones who’d been stopping PER attacks alongside could. It’d be fun to put the fear of God in him, right?

It had, in fact, been fun right up to the moment that Francis punched one man in the throat. At the sight of it, Aegis had held his foals close to his barrel at the table, and Nny and Fiddlesticks seemed to be perfectly fine just spectating.

Popover and Falyn had joined in after an HLF man had landed a retaliatory strike to Francis. Falyn had a barstool, but Popover - a purplish-pink Earth pony mare with an electric-blue mane - didn’t have a weapon. Instead, she had an HLF man named Holtz in a headlock, scowling as he bled from a head wound.

Francis Strang stood, blood running down one side of his skull. He held a baseball bat in hand as he faced off two HLF, a woman with a prosthetic arm and a scar, and a man with two awkward prosthetic legs. Both were potion amputees, almost certainly. Falyn was facing off another one with intricate tattoos covering his face. There’d been five, but one was unconscious, the other - whose name was Holtz - in Popover’s headlock. All four were wearing ragged, studded HLF armor, not quite potionproof, not quite bulletproof, but nowhere near Basebaw-Bat-Ay-Truth-proof.

“Thanks!” Popover yelled back, blushing… then screaming in pain as an HLF man slammed a barstool over her skull. Holtz - the man in her forelegs - squirmed out, and kicked Popover to the side.

Popover staggered, grunted, and bucked Holtz in the gut. He careened through the air, heading towards Francis.

Who was trading blows with two other HLF, the man with prosthetic legs, and the woman with a prosthetic arm.

The man kicked upwards. Francis bent back, arms up in a semi-crouch, and drove his right fist downwards into the man’s balls.

“What?” Kraber asks. “That’s as close as I can get to the sound he made.”

With the man making such a fokkin’ bizarre sound, Francis kicked him in the face.

“You got Jones, you fucking species-traitor-” the woman with the prosthetic arm hissed, driving the patchwork of metal piping that had replaced her arm towards Francis’ face. Francis bent to the side, in a boxing move his father had called a slip, and readied a left hook to the woman’s throat...

Only for Holtz to careen just through the edges of Francis’ field of vision and knock the woman off guard.

There was nothing, Francis thought, that quite showed the chaos of a battle like watching a body careen through the air next to you.

Francis just shrugged, drew his foot back like he was playing football again, pumped it forward, and rammed it into Prosthetic Leg Man’s - Jones’ - lower jaw.

“I KICK YUIR FACE!” he yelled, dodging a wide, arcing haymaker towards his stomach, and slamming his elbow into Jones’ neck. Then kicking Jones’ face again.

Beside him, Popover - barstool held between both forelegs - had flung herself up into the air. She smashed the heavy wooden stool down on Prosthetic Arm Woman’s shoulder, and Francis watched the woman crumple down to the carpet.

“Out like a light!” Popover crowed, and the two of them bumped fist and hoof. Behind them, Falyn had grabbed a pool cue, and was trying to block the tattooed HLF man’s fists.

“You’re Miller’s girl, aren’t you?” asked the tattooed man she was fighting.

Falyn just grunted and jammed one end of the pool cue into the man’s sternum. “Don’t talk about my dad, Willy.”

“Well, I don’t miss you!” Falyn yelled, and brought the cue down on the man she was fighting. He hissed in pain and slumped slightly.

Francis flashed her a thumbs up, before Jones slammed a fist into his jaw, just below his eye. For a second, Francis couldn’t see. His eye had gone dark for a second, and he scrambled to ready another punch!

Only for Popover to buck him in the back of the knees. That staggered him, a bit.

Francis grinned, bent down and to the side, then kicked out to Jones’ face. He spat out blood and fell, landing awkwardly against a chair.

Fok. If Francis drew his own pistol, Jones would outdo him. Then he’d get a bullet to the stomach. Which was bad.

So, only one thing to do: rush forwards, baseball bat held at his side, and swi-

“Listen to the chair leg of truth! It does not lie! What does it say? It says, ‘Shut up, Fred!’ Can you hear it?!” Falyn yelled, and brought a barstool down on Jones’ collarbone. Apparently he was named Fred. He crouched, teeth gritted in pain.

Then, lightning-fast, one of Falyn’s feet lashed out, the sole of her boot flattening the man’s face for a second. The HLF man’s pistol, halfway raised, fell to the ground. The man just collapsed.

Another one - the one Popover had in a headlock, the one named Holtz - rushed at Francis.

This is fokkin’ great! Francis thought, his face in a wide smile from the adrenaline rush, and he drove a heavy right hook into Holtz’s stomach. Taking the opportunity, Francis kneed Holtz in the gut.

Holtz wheezed, right up till the moment Francis headbutted him, then smashed the baseball bat against his shoulder. Good, he was down…

Which left Prosthetic Arm Woman, who was unslinging a shotgun. Francis actually wouldn’t have minded standing on the fucker’s face, pulping it with a basebaw bat till the bawbag stopped twitching, but you just couldnae do that sortae thing in a pub. Not in frontae the wee bairns-

“Behind you!” Amber Maple yelled, gesturing towards the first man with one foreleg.

Aegis, almost halfheartedly, placed his two forelegs in the general area of Amber’s frightened, expressive ears, before realizing it didn’t really matter. Rivet was wolfing down a bucket of popcorn nearby.

Turned out, Jones had been falling suspiciously close to the pistol. The rush of adrenaline! The sound of something in a bad ~~kontgesig~~ fokkin’ radge cracking under a blunt instrument.

“NO YA FOKKIN’ DON’T!” Francis yelled, drawing back one leg, and booting him in the face, right in the nose. Like eh wis playin football again, real fokkin’ football.

It wasn’t with his old stompin’ boots. Those were also prohibited by workplace regulations, on account of his propensity for kicking bawbags in the face.

The man tumbled backwards and awkwardly collapsed around the doorframe. Meanwhile, Popover had gotten Willy in a headlock, discoloring his intricate tattoos with one pink hoof every second.

Francis turned to see Nny sitting in a chair, Arm Woman levelling a shotgun sawn down to pistol size at Nny’s head. Francis had never liked the things. Not enough capacity for power. Too hard to reload.

But held up to a man’s head, or woman if that was what Nny identified as at the moment? It'd reduce him to a fine paste.

“You give us the money, give us the fokkin’ gluesticks for your protection,” the HLF woman snarled. “Or this bitch and his stupid hair-”

In the space of a second, Nny twisted backwards, spoon in hand, as he elbowed her in the stomach. She staggered, and Nny, in a boxer’s stance, drove repeated fists into her stomach. He moved almost balletically, practically pirouetting, well-muscled legs showing under the tights.

The woman drew out a knife, grazing the side of his face just beside his eye, grazing the top of his ear. He didn’t seem to notice, and elbowed her in the throat. In that second, the HLF man Popover was holding threw her off, and she tumbled against one of the booths, thankfully landing on a set of pillows. She picked herself up, panting, only to see the man she’d formerly been holding jumping at her.

Popover yelped, and pushed away the pillows on the couches lining the side of the restaurant. The man landed against the wooden furniture, and screamed in agony. Popover drew back a foreleg, and bucked him in the face.

Fokkin kwaai braw mare, Francis thought, and punched a man in the gut. He doubled over, wheezing, and FRANCIS brought both elbows down on the man’s back. The HLF man doubled over in pain, and Francis delivered a swift kick to his face.

The HLF woman brought back her arm for another swing, and something in Nny just seemed to collapse as he fell back, the blade of the knife against his throat.

“Fuckin’ faggot,” the woman said. “We’re killing him. Killing all of th-”

And all of a sudden, Fiddlesticks was behind the woman, both powerful hindlegs ramming into her left hip.

He staggered back, and elbowed the woman in the ribs. She was knocked backwards, and before their eyes, they could see her pulling out a gun.

“ You. Insulted my hair,” Nny said, spoon to the woman’s eye, cut-down rifle of a pistol aimed at the other HLF. “Hurt my friends. It was fun at first watching Frank smack the bitch out of you, but now, you've pissed me off. I hope you're fuckmothering proud of yourself, motherfucker.”

He motioned towards one HLF man. Cocked the hammer, then the secondary one for the shotgun.

Noticing that the fight was over, Francis picked up his own revolver. “Now, go. Before I do something you’ll regret.”

“No,” Fiddlesticks said, rearing up in a boxer’s stance, “I don't think it is.”

“Walk away,” Popover said. “We’ll let you keep your weapons. Just walk away.”

“How do you know I won’t shoot you all for that?” the man with the broken collarbone asked.

“Because otherwise, I will kill you,” Francis said. He said it matter-of-factly as he drew the Ruger.

“Like hell you wi-” one man said, then the words died in his throat. Something about Francis made it abundantly clear he was not kidding. It wasn’t the slightly oversized black revolver.

“Oh, I will,” Francis said. “And it will, in fact, be like hell. Good call. Now-”

Everyone aimed their weapons at the HLF assembled in front of them. Simo with his big rifle, Quint with an M4, even Linda from behind the bar, with what looked like Francis’ old ‘Remington 1740’. As he’d called it. Really, ‘Remington 1740’ was just a catchall term for two shotguns welded together.

“Well said, mate,” Francis said. “Now-” he drew his own pistol. “Out.”

“This won’t be over,” the woman said. “We’re your doom, you fucking gluesticks and horsefuckers. You kill the world, and you think we can just sit by and watch? The end’s coming, for all you merry-go-round toys. Soon, you won’t be-”

“OUT!” Francis roared, as he cocked the hammer. “IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO BLIKSEM YOU FULL OF HOLES, YA DOF FOKKIN’ WANKTOASTERS!”

And they were. The HLF scurried out of the pub, a little faster than they’d be happy to admit to those others back at base.

Far above them, perched on a hill, a man with a bolt-action rifle scoped with an incongruously ultramodern device, watched them intently. But that was not important here and now.

Here - and now - Francis was holstering his own revolver, and heading back to the kitchen. For the past few days, he’d been working in the kitchen of The Cardsharp Pub, a restaurant in Littleton that had been made from shipping containers. He’d once been an utterly ~~irredeemable kontgesig (Really? Was he really irredeemable?) named Viktor Marius Kraber~~ unimportant person. But that was the past, and nobody, least of all Francis, deserved to know about it.

That, and a lot of the people of Bethlehem and Littleton loved him. As it happened, Aegis hadn't been kidding about the bounty for Tia McCreary. It had been huge, enough that Francis could have comfortably gone awhile with a job... If he hadn't given the money away to keep the town afloat.

Honestly, that was kind of a spur of the moment thing, he admitted to himself.

It wasn't.... It wasn't a bad place. He'd seen places on the news, wandered a ways up the coast after his evac ship had left him in the Deep South, towns that were little more than crumbling fiefdoms barely held together, falling to HLF or PER. Or worse, they'd been abandoned thanks to potion-bombing, or some peculiarity of wartime rationing that made supporting them an untenable prospect. Or they'd been paranoid and jumpy enough that Francis himself had called it unnerving, as they built emplacements to defend against Barrierfall.

So many memories from back then. Of desperate supply runs, fencing abandoned things. And other things best not remembered.

Got a fokking lot to make up for, he told himself as he dropped a pile of peppers, and honey-ginger-barbecued shrimp and sausage into a steaming pot of cheese grits. Oh, that smelled befok! This was Kate's old family recipe, passed down through the family for years.

“Hey, Francis! Hey Gazpacho!” called out Linda Branwen, the restaurant’s proprietor. She’d been ex-HLF, kicked off the police force in Boston during the Three Weeks of Blood for brutality that apparently stood out even by the standards of those three horrible weeks.

“Hey!” called out Gazpacho, a red-orange stallion with a red mane and white spots along his nose and fetlocks, who was busy slicing potatoes with his horn TK.

“Agreed,” Linda said. “I don’t think I could open this place with a clean conscience knowing my best shrimp and grits cook wasn’t in his right mind. Or my bouncer.”

“It was after you changed your manecut, don’t worry, Popover. Do I get paid extra for this?” Francis asked.

“Fok,” Francis sighed, but he was smiling under it all. There wasn’t much to complain about at the moment.

Aegis, Amber Maple, and Rivet were off at one table, the one with the couches made specially for ponies, all enjoying a dinner from him. Branwen had let them get free food, cause Francis was a boarder in their house, and visiting for dinner had become something of a tradition for them. Just about nobody could pass up free food.

As Francis poked his head back from the counter, Rivet waved at him. And so was Amber, who was busy directing her attention to a mare and her filly walking into the restaurant.

Littleton could have been worse. But with the barrier coming, with ponies trotting down the street, working the grist mills and logging trains and farms, all in plain view of HLF militiamen, with barely any plumbing extending to Aegis’ neighborhood (Oh fok he just got that, neighborhood) and police just ignoring crimes against ponies in the area, it could have been better. Which was where he’d hoped to step in and do what he could to keep the town safe. Which would be easy, considering that Yael had pulled a few strings and-

Yeah, that’d happened. Yael had inducted Francis into the PHL, somehow. He’d been tempted to bring his own weaponry, but the PHL equipment was too much of a risk. So it stayed buried.

He'd kept Sylvia's rifle. It was early PHL newtech. Not as good as Johnny C's Leshiy, but it was an ACR - you could rechamber it for 7.62x39 easily, so that meant good saving on ammo. Plus, nobody had a good argument as to why he couldn't have shield disruptor grenades.

“What’s so unbelievable?” Gazpacho asked, pushing his salt-and-pepper pompadoured mane out of his eyes with some minor telekinesis, and slicing through a potato.

“What, the fact that you’re wearing a Ruger and an assault rifle in a kitchen?” Gazpacho asked.

It was true, Francis did have a revolver and Sylvia’s ACR on his back in case of PER, HLF, or bandits. But that wasn’t important.

“No, I mean I’m cooking shrimp and grits in new hampshire, on the other side of the earth from my home next to a mythical creature,” Francis said. “And here I am, in the apocalypse, not even questioning how fokkin radgie the world’s goat.”

“Really!” Gazpacho gasped. “I’m also making potato chips next to one!”

“It’s a horrible time,” Francis said, chuckling a little, “But it’s a fokmothering bizarre one as well.”

“Amen to that,” Gazpacho said. “Say… you’re a friend of Sixstring. He told you about how he knew Cheese Sandwich?”

“That’s Sixstring for you,” Gazpacho sighed. “Anyway. I met him in Appleoosa before something called him back to Baltimare-”

“Wait a minute,” says Babs. “I wonder if he saw the Great Equestrian falling…”

“-And he would’ve said to smile no matter what,” Gazpacho said. “Just like Pinkie.”

“I’ve a hard time believing in her ivir making anyone smile,” Francis said.

“I worked in a restaurant, making soup,” Gazpacho explained, telekinetically lifting the potato slices onto a tray. “Figured ‘why not stick with what you’re good at?”

“Why not go back?” Gazpacho asked. “You’ve been good whenever someone gets an injury in the workplace.”

Actually, there were a lot of reasons. “I want tae stay on the front and help. That, and I don’t have the money.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” Gazpacho said, probably being polite, as very few people actually had the money nowadays. Going to college in the apocalypse was…. putting it lightly… complicated.

“Wait,” Francis said. “Hold on a sec. Did you say Humans were mythical?”

“Huh,” Francis said. Years ago, he’d nearly been able to appear on his mother’s vlogs. He’d been a frequent guest, but he’d had to work that day. It had been bad, yet another office conflict between fledgling PER about whether to potion someone in a fokking awful ski accident that had left someone really dondered. He’d been mentioned, and Lyra had managed to spin that into a talk about potion and how maybe it wasn’t for the best, but-

‘Why the fok can’t I think of good possibilities?’ Francis thought. ‘It’s always me as a fokkin zombie horse, or a chaos space marine, or a lonely shell of a man that’s more bosbefok than usual and thinks he’s dead…’ He would have fokkin’ loved to see a possibility where he was on that vlog, talking to Lyra.

“Well, there were legends that a human had visited Equestria and managed to vanquish a great evil,” Gazpacho explained.

“Here’s hoping that human comes back,” Francis said. “Or at least someone related to them. Not sure they’d be satisfied with what happened to whatever place they saved…”

“No, not really,” Gazpacho said. “But Lyra managed to find the ship and prove they’d visited, and she managed to turn anthropology into more than a fringe science!”

‘And that was wrong, wasn’t it?’ Francis told himself. ‘The stuff she’d done…’

“You stupid plot-head, you’re not helping anyone,” Victory whispered in his ear. She’d been getting… indistinct lately. A shadow behind a table.

'Do you think this is somehow better than what you were? Do you think this is a better way? It is not.'

... yeah, he wasn't gone either, though he was less like a hallucination and more like a flash of thought in his mind, a flash that was recurring but easily ignored.

Francis took this as a good thing. His hallucinations had been getting better, and he’d barely even needed recreational drugs and alcohol to dull them. This time. Which was good, considering he’d developed an immunity to antidepressants in college.

“Well, I just… I wish none of you had come,” Francis said, recalling pages from the journal. “I don’t personally hate you. Lyra did wonderful things, but I’d trade all of that if Celestia had never decided we were a problem to be solved.”

“I…” Francis sighed. “Alright, there’s nae way tae say that withoot bein a bastard, is there?”

“Not really,” Gazpacho said. “Still, I think I understand. I wish I’d never had to meet you, too. Just so we’re on the same page.” She hoofshook Francis. “Still… Least we’re friends, I guess.”

“And even so, it’s for the best that Lyra came,” Gazpacho said. “Can’t imagine a world without the PHL.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you did,” Gazpacho said, passing a plate full of homemade potato chips to him.

“Could have done it forever,” Kraber agrees. “Then things got complicated...”

You’d still been in Littleton. Of course you had. You’d heard Mr. Francis Strang before on the radio, doing that strange ad for the restaurant he worked at, drugged out of his mind:

“Ladies and gentlemen, stallions and mares, did you ever want to light newfoals on fire just to see how beautiful it looked? Do you ever look up at the uncaring blue vastness up above your head, and scream: WHY?! WHYYYYY?! Did you ever look at someone that annoyed you, and wonder how they’d taste? As if eating them would make them stop annoying you?

...Are you sexually aroused by wondering how they would taste? That would be weird. Not to judge, but that would be weird. Okay, we’re being totally judgmental. If you need to stave off these horrible food cravings, then you’re probably hungry for a meal at The Cardsharp Pub. Or you’re HLF. And we’ll find you. Oh, yessssss…. Stop by! We have good shrimp and cheese grits now!”

It had simply been too bizarre not to indulge. Its surrealism had drawn in customers from all over, and it was nearly your birthday, so you and mommy had figured, ‘why not go?’ Unfortunately, the first ad had been interrupted by that weird broadcast from Equestria. At least, you thought it was Equestria.

To your surprise, there were a bunch of people you knew sitting back there. Big Aegis (Sweet Luna, he was massive enough that Johnny C could ride him like a horse!) and his foals, Amber Maple and Rivet were there… and so was Johnny C and Fiddlesticks. Johnny was, oddly enough, back in his Trickster Jane cosplay again - big, poofy yellow and orange dress, pink and blue tights, pink wig, blue makeup. Nobody seemed to question it, and he did like alright in there. Even feminine.

Fiddlesticks definitely seemed like a happy mare with her friend dressed like that, smiling and waving as you caught her eye. She was off playing the fiddle in one corner again, that priceless fiddle made of bloodoak wood from the Everfree strumming out a nice little rhythm.

“Bowman!” Fiddlesticks laughed, waving over to him. “It’s been too long. How’s it hanging?”

You could also see Johnny’s friends Quint and Simo, a French-Canadian and a Finn. Simo had a big gun, that sniper rifle with the name you can’t pronounce or spell (Alfbert? Ulfbright?) next to him, leaning against the wall next to a huge wolfish-looking female husky with orange-brown, black, and gray fur, with a white face. You realize that something like the huge gun in a restaurant next to an equally huge dog would have been weird before the war. Especially in Britain, where guns weren’t all that common. But now, nobody batted an eye.

“I think it’s a psychological weapon,” said Quint, one of the many U.S military assigned to what the news had called an anti-HLF taskforce. Which was pretty weird, right? The PHL was a taskforce, officially, so they were a taskforce… of a taskforce? You wished you knew how militaries worked.

“Nah,” says a woman with green and pink hair. You know her name is Falyn - you’ve seen her around. “It’s not cruel enough for what we see them do.”

“I’m with the horsehair woman - I do not feel all that disturbed, and neither do Tuuri, Onni, Lalli and Nietzsche,” said Simo.

“Tuuri’s my sister, Onni and Lalli are my brothers. Nietzsche is this wolfdog here,” Simo explained, ruffling his husky’s neck, to which she panted and rolled on the floor, her tongue lolling out. “...Not sure I could guess what the Broadcast is for, though. It’s… it’s definitely trying to tell us something.”

“But what?” Quint asked. “It’s damn near incomprehensible every time. Mare that shouldn’t exist, a sound like a stallion getting crushed by a murderous animatronic, and then… something new, every time. I don’t even know who this could be directed at. I mean, who would the ‘killer of reaper’ be?”

“I heard someone else say that the HLF might have tapped into the broadcast,” said one pegasus mare lounging on a couch. She was kind of an offwhite color, and had a green and pink mane - actually, she reminded you a lot of Falyn. Wasn’t her name Blossomforth?

Quint, Falyn, Simo, Johnny C, Fiddlesticks, Aegis and his foals, they all laughed hysterically.

“HLF… using pony stuff to their advantage?!” Fiddlesticks guffawed, somehow keeping the fiddle steady as she laughed.

“Some of dad’s crowd,” Falyn said, offhandedly. “We… don’t talk too much anymore.”

“Wait,” Fiddlesticks said. “Miller, as in… Hiel Miller? One of Lovikov’s-”

“Like I said,” Falyn said, walking up to the bar. “We don’t talk too much anymore.”

You could hear people in the kitchen, laughing at something unrelated. One of them was a mare, one was a heavily Scottish-accented man.

“No, seriously!” Blossomforth protested, her hooves up. “I was with Yael-”

“The attack on the synagogue had me curious,” Yael says. “So, Heliotrope and I did some digging.”

“Ah yes, ‘the archangel,’” Verity sighs. “I do not miss Lovikov. At least he got ponif-”

“Yeah, uh, Kraber left him…” Aegis said, one hoof behind his head, voice trailing off.

“Let’s not talk about that sorta thing in front of little colts and fillies,” Kraber says.

“And yet you talked about brutally murdering a woman earlier and giving her brain damage,” Verity says.

“Exactly,” Aegis says. “Now think about just how bad it must have been that even Viktor doesn’t want to-” he catches sight of the looks on your face, on Scootaloo’s face, and on the other foals in the room. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the HLF man before us said. He was covered in blood.

“I think you’ve got a good idea of what I mean,” I said, staring down at him, but the man looked more focused on Yael at the moment. It’s easy for Yael to look intimidating. First, she’s taller than a lot of people. Second, she doesn’t sleep too often, which makes her look really pissed someti-

--It was the only way I could think of to get you to want to sleep more. I’ve tried begging. I’ve tried pleading. I even tried hiding your meds! Seriously… you’ve been overworked.

--There’s always something, Heliotrope. No matter what we do here, no matter how many HLF or PER get shot, no matter what gets rebuilt, the world’s ending. Something’s always gonna be breaking down.

--I always have so much kak to work on, and skipping out on some rest is always so fokkin’ temptin. There’s always more to be done, and it can be easy to forget to just care about yourself a little. But, uh, here’s the thing. I did that once, could barely function. Lots of stuff breaks down, now, Yael, so don’t be one of them.

--Don’t mention it - one day of feeling like kak and being damn near paralyzed was enough. We’re in this together.

--Can I finish? Anyway, I’m with Yael here - who the hell expects fighting in New Hampshire? But, Yael had gotten curious. So we headed up Groveton. Not much important is in Groveton. I mean, there’s trains, and it’s not too far away from some farms that employ earth ponies. There’d been PER that came by, trying to derail a train and use the chaos to mass-ponify the small population of the town. Another little hamlet goes dark, a transportation artery is clogged, the local government goes reeling. Business as usual.

But the HLF had gotten there before us. It was weird as fuck. They were lining PER against the walls and shooting them, stripping them for gear. Which sounds good, and I’m sure that some of what they did there counts as thrilling heroics.

But unfortunately, they’d been trying to find the earth ponies hired by local farmers, assuming they were PER too. So, we stepped in, and things ended… predictably. So, when me and Yael had cleared them out, I found someone official-looking. Did the only sane thing and planted both hooves on his ribcage.

It’s… it’s kind of sad what Celestia’s made us into that we terrify and anger people. I used to have someone say I looked like an old… ‘My Pretty Pony,’ I think. And I’m assuming that means I looked like a life-sized stuffed plush stuffed animal to them?

Thanks, Kraber. I still can’t believe you’re the one saying that, but that… means a lot. Don’t know what, but it means a lot of it. But now? Now I scare small children cause they think I’ll turn them into zombies. Bastards.

“You’ve been around awhile,” I said, one wing blade down at his throat. I would have liked the mouth dagger, but, well… that doesn’t quite work for interrogating. “From what the people here say, you knew the PER were coming.”

“Awww, sorry,” I said, doing that eyelash-batting thing that would piss off so many airponies back on the zeps. “Ain’t my type.”

“Now,” Yael said, “I’ve got plenty of distaste for torture. Officially, we don’t do that. Officially.”

--Fuck... you, Verity. It was an act! Once tried that on some PER man for what he did to my family. Didn’t help. Didn’t bring my friends back. Didn’t bring my home back. I don’t torture people. Unlike some people here…

--I… Honestly? It felt more like a prank at the time. And I liked the puppies.

“But,” she said, her voice grim and somber, “For once, it’s people like you that have something we need.”

“Which is crazy,” I said. “We have better guns and armor, and here we are, politely asking someone like you for help.”

“So,” Yael said, unholstering the Jericho 941 at her hip, “I’ll ask again. What is the Hotline?”

“So you don’t know how you got here,” Yael stated. “You don’t know how you were waiting for the PER - in spite of this being a rather out of the way target. And, I might add, you were searching for… Heliotrope, hold him steady?” she pulled out a phone, the Jericho unwavering. “Three PER members in particular. Jacqueline Jophish, Merciful Light, and Rio Deneter,” she read. “Seems that someone-”

Ivan Bliss, Viktor Kraber, Killer of Reaper, I thought. Why did Gestalt seem to bring him up so often? How’d she know?

“-Killed a friend, and they ended up in the area. From what I hear, they’re heading east. But there’s no way you could have known that.”

“Maybe for once, we had better intelligence than you… gaaaaaa... goddamn horsefuckers,” the HLF man said, wheezing through a gutshot. I don’t know who did it. Maybe me, maybe Yael. It had been there awhile. It wasn’t important.

“I don’t believe that,” Yael said. “No HLF man lowers themselves enough to assume PER membership. Now. If we ask politely, and you tell me, we can get you medical attention for that leg: What is the Hotline?”

“You’d use me as a test subject,” the man gurgled. “I’ve heard of the experiments you perform.”

“No, or you die of exsanguination,” I added. “Saw good friends of mine bleed out in the wreck of the Relentless Dawn. Back during the Crystal War. Unpleasant death.”

“Alright,” the man said. “I don’t… I honestly don’t know what the Hotline is. I’m not lying. But what I know is that we get phone calls from Defiance. They… it’s a Russian-accented man sometimes, I think it’s Lovikov. And he tells us where. We listen - it’s proven correct.”

“It’s like your murdering bitch of a lieutenant said,” the HLF man told me. “We don’t deal with PER. Anyone that tries, they’re shot on sight. Besides, who’d want to ponify?”

“I don’t like them anymore than you,” I said. “You think I like the bucking zombies? Plus, bad as ponification is… being the one to ponify? Bucking awful. But, I’m sure Yael has her questions.”

“First, though…” the HLF man said, “I almost wish it was PER. Then it’d make sense.”

“I’m a woman of God,” Yael said, “But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell when I’m being bullshitted.”

“Some of them believe,” the man said. “But… if the future lies only in the imagination of God, why would he reveal it to such a-”

“That is weird,” Johnny C said thoughtfully, scratching his clean-shaven chin, to go with his new, ahem, fashion choices.

“...Well, now I’m more confused than anything,” Falyn said. “I’ll… see if I can ask around. Find out what the hell any of that means.”

You’d heard of Mr. Francis. Instead of taking a bounty for himself, he’d just given it away! It had made a lot of people happy - especially cause the communities of Bethlehem and Littleton could buy new PHL and Crowe tech.

And then he’d gone and volunteered himself as a cook at a restaurant well-known for donating meals.

“I’ll have the cheese grits,” you said. You remember how good those were, don’t you? They were delicious.

You nodded, and caught a glimpse of the TV up overhead, the one that Amber Maple, Aegis, and Rivet were studiously trying to ignore. Rivet was reading some book, as Aegis talked to them about evac plans. It was on closed captions, but you could hear a radio off somewhere.

“-Kagan Burakgazi’s trail has gone cold, though many believe he is hot on the trail of Viktor Kraber, last spotted in Portland, Maine. A question remains. Where are they? Where are they going? It is a terrible time for us, listeners. But, remain calm. We can agree to hate the Empire. We can agree to hate the PER. If nothing else, focus on your hatred of PER and Imperial forces...”

“...Because we don’t have much time left. I hate to admit it. I hate to tell this to all of you, but America has been fortunate. Barrierfall is coming, and these are the last days of comparative peace that we have left.”

It was something you were all too aware of. Being PHL, carrying a PHL registry card in your saddlebags certifying yourself as a legal pony, and being at the background of meetings as you eat huge chocolate chip cookies or decide to dance for a laugh, you know a lot more than any filly in your age group ever should. It’s weird, with topics at lunchtime with other foals and human children being classified by the government.

It keeps you up at night, and sometimes you cannot sleep. You hug a stuffed animal, under a fortress of blankets that will be gone if the barrier comes through and destroys the little room you and mom call home, the knowledge that each day it’s getting worse and worse, that each day someone could decide you didn’t have your membership card like that empty bastard Viktor Kraber, that Barrierfall will come and you, shut up, Shut up SHUT UP

Aegis feels much the same way. You could always see why he didn’t want to talk.

There was scary news all the time that day. Unrest close to the Barrier, minor civil wars, strikes, anti-government outrage, anti-PHL (And thankfully, anti-HLF!) rioting. It felt like there was a new wanted poster every day, though that day, you could see that one in particular had been edited:

Viktor Kraber (Alias: Ivan Bliss) Reward: $200,000 dead, $350,000 alive Murder, mass murder, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of firearms, multiple assault charges, impersonating a police officer, illegally crossing borders between countries, terrorism, impersonating a child protective services officer, torture, smuggling firearms, practicing medicine without a license, arson, forgery, vandalism, kidnapping, robbery, theft of military property, impersonating PHL personnel, public drunkenness, and a really crappy attitude.

It was weird - the price for capturing him alive had gone up. Of course, you being a smart little filly, one privy to top secret PHL investigations, you knew why. The entire PHL had wanted to know just what the hell he’d done as Ivan Bliss, and why.

But then, since you were just eating cheese grits with an egg, mushrooms, and peppers, you didn’t actually think of that. You were just hungry back then, scarfing it down, and then you said a couple words that you’re sure will never make it into the history books.

“I think he’ll be happy too, lil’ filly,” said the waitress. She sounded like an American. “Hey! Francis! A little filly loves your cheese grits!”

“And I’d wanted to say hi,” Kraber says, “Cause, you know, I was trying to be a correct ou. So I said hello to this little filly…”

As he walked out, and as he waved to all the people that had come by (The Finnish sniper that had taken Johnny C’s old Ulfberht, Johnny C, Fiddlesticks, but especially Aegis and his adorable little foals) the bottom dropped out of Francis’ stomach, and suddenly, unpleasantly, he was lurched back into being Kraber.

“Hey, Francis,” Aegis said, smiling, same with his two foals. A real smile, not that rictus on a newfoal’s face. Used to be that’d get Kraber through the day, a smile that made him know he’d helped.

That filly. That filly! THAT FOKKIN’ FILLY AND HER MA! The ones from the car trunk, the one he hadn’t shot! The one that had gotten to Colebrook, the one that Johnny C and Fiddlesticks and Kiki Palmer and Aegis knew…

‘I can’t have a hand on the fokkin’ Ruger,’ Kraber told himself. What had he remembered from when he’d been acting as Begbie?! What had he learned about acting?! What?! Okay, he had to keep calm-

...He had not long for this earth. It was as if everyone was staring at him. Judging him. Aegis, Amber Maple, Rivet, Johnny C, Fiddlesticks... that Finn and that Quebecois man.

“I understand that,” her mother said. “I mean, it is on the pony menu…”

At this point, if Kraber was catholic, or christian in general, he would have crossed himself or counted the rosary. Please, God… no…

He could hear something laughing, and assumed it was Victory laughing at his misfortune.

“Where did you learn to make these?” the filly asked. “I mean, the menu says Columbia SC shrimp and grits, you sound Scottish…”

“Hud an American wife,” Kraber explained. “Her family wis from there, an’ we met over the internet by screaming quotes from Happy Noodle Boy at each other. She moved tae Scotland with me eftir uni, but...”

“Okay, you’ve been really out of focus lately,” Aegis adds. “Kraber does love the spotlight a bit too much…”

You could see he didn’t look happy as he mentioned that. He sounded really nervous, in fact. Back then, you’d realized he must have been part of the evacuation of Britain… a sad time, indeed. You remembered a panic, Rainbow Dash and Lightning Dust and their ‘angels of Mercy’ ponifying people up north, cities being destroyed. There was this one woman you remembered from one of the ships, a woman clutching an iPad like it was a bible, barely blinking. She’d had some terrible trauma happen, something that had broken her to the point that she couldn’t even cry. You had wanted to hug her. Wanted to talk to her, tell her it would be all right, but mommy had told you no.

Francis, however, seemed like a man with whom you could empathize. And he would be. Just not for the reasons you’d think. He had a nervous smile, a thick mustache curled at the edges, and a gray Stetson hat.

“Ponified, along wi the bairns,” said Francis, the man that had cooked the most delicious thing you’d ever eaten, those wonderful cheese grits. “I dinnae want tae talk aboot it. That recipe I’m making, it’s one of the only things I have left to remember her with.”

“Kids,” Francis said. “Or well, foals-” and at that moment, he just stopped. It was like some machine had slipped a belt. At this very moment, as you are telling Kraber this analogy, he will confirm that to be exactly what happened. The thought of his children being foals, and not just that, but someone else’s foals, everything about them taken from him.

And so, this being a natural instinct for the average filly of Equestria, you step out of your chair and hug him. He jumps a little.

“I’m so sorry,” you said, holding onto his leg. And, unsure of what to say, he kneeled down and hugs you too, fingers in your fur.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling weakly. He still looked torn up about something, though… “I needed that.”

“You look kind of familiar,” your mother said, on hoof under her chin. “Have we met?”

“Ah, okay,” Francis said. “I….” his voice stumbled here, and you saw something in his eye. Fear? He was terrified of something, definitely you. It looked like just looking at you was ripping into him. “...Might’ve been on a different ship…” Something about his thick Scots brogue slipped and stumbled there. “We could have met at the docks.”

“Could be it,” your mother said, clearly having noticed his shaky reaction. She was definitely suspicious, but he did seem genuinely nice.

“They were delicious!” you say, rubbing your tummy with your forehooves. “I wish I could get some dessert…”

“Tell you what,” Francis said, smiling, (Though there was still that look in his eyes - it was fading, fading…) “I can get you some dessert, for free… just as thanks for that.”

Desserts are the favorite food of the average pony, so you reacted exactly as expected when he passed out a chocolate cake.

The radio in front of the odd human squealed. “56. 89. 90. 212222224xe10. 800. 59. 87. 24. 42. 55.

“Just ignore it, guys,” Francis called over. “It’ll be over soon. It always is…”

This is Gestalt again. Crystal Empire command. Anyone? I’ve…. I’ve escaped them, somehow. Everything’s changed so much since I last left the Empire’s boundaries, and everything is so advanced. I don’t know who’s out there. I don’t know who can hear me, but Equestria kept in this cell, these horrible cells, all those cells, me and not me, in these, alll of me, in these cells, don’t I remember?”

“My eyes,” another one screamed. “They took my eyes they’ll take my eyes again!”

“She’s always talking about how she doesn’t know what happened to her husband,” Falyn said.

“Oh,” Fiddlesticks said, and her eyes went wide. “Can’t imagine the agony she must be going through, hearing this…”

“YoU lOsE feElInG,” another one said, their voice overlaid with Gestalt. “YoUr LeGs ArE hArDeR tO mOvE. No MaTtEr HoW yOu TrY, yOuR lEgS aRe NuMb. ThEn, one DAY, ONE HOUR when you…. you…. y-y-you touch your legs together they are joined. ThErE iS cRyStAl sPrEaDiNg, KnOtTiNg iTs WaY tHrOuGh YoU. You smash your hoof against the place where your legs are twain, and it hurts as if you are hitting your own body. Maybe it shatters, and there is blood. It is pouring from THE CRYSTALLINE TUMORS that have become your own flesh, and you scream, no, no, no. The purple mare in the white coat and surgical mask, her cutie mark a purple starburst, places her horn to your leg, and suddenly, there is feeling OnCe MoRe. YoUr lEg BuRnS, and you can see muscle bursting, overflowing through , and there are spikes of crystal poking their way through as your legs knot together again. There is a noise like laughter from the purple mare, and you think you recognize her…”

“There is a glow around you, a purplish-red, and you cannot move. The only feeling in your appendages is burning. Barely aware of feedback in that leg, you struggle, the mare is surprised by your strength as you break whatever field she’s holding you in as you bring your forehoof forward, to smash it again.”

‘What are you even trying to accomplish here?’ the purple mare asks. ‘It’ll be better for the good of Equestria if you sit still…’

Your hoof comes down, and you try to raise it again. You wouldn't have known this if you hadn’t been able to see it, but your foreleg does not come up. It is stuck to that knot.

The purple mare looks down at your three legs stuck together, and she levitates a notepad towards herself. ‘Interesting reaction,’ she says, and scribbles on it with a pen.

You do not know how long you are left there on that table, the strange instruments pointed at you, but each day is pain for all of you. You are as hard as crystal and yet pliable as clay, each day a bone cracks. You arch your back and screech in pain as a vertebra seems to shatter, There are strange thoughts, and you can’t hear anything at all over the growing babble. You cannot.

Whose head is it? Your identity is fuzzy. You move your one foreleg experimentally.

You can hear your bones cracking all the while. Can feel it too. Crack. Crack CRRRRACK. It is like there is wood splintering.

One day, the purple unicorn places wires of glass into your skull, stabbing them through your eyes. You feel as if that should be important. Information flows through your head. Things you simply could not have known. Another soldier… an aviatrix pony, slave number p-404.

You strain against your bonds, against the lack of feelings to strain against.

“Subject is responding favorably to the information feed,” the purple unicorn said, scrawling on her page.

“Subject’s vocal cords may need removal,” the unicorn said, and you are aware that something appears to be creeping up your body. “Experiments with the anomalous earth pony’s interconnection have proven promising, and so proposals to use baseline earth ponies are unlikely to prove successful. We do not need to create new connections, as they practically have the ports already.

“I don’t know who’s listening,” another voice interrupted. But when you see me, shoot me. Aim for the head, and don’t stop firing, I can’t take this anymore. The war, the-” A pause. A scream. No, I’ll be a good pony, I swear I will, just don’t-!”

For a moment, you saw Francis seething in rage. He looked like at any minute he could unholster his gun and kill everyone, and you shrank back.

“I don’t need that medicine! I’m not sick! You’re sick, Twilight! We’re all sick, we’re crumbling away!”

“I think you’ll find that I’m perfectly healthy,” Twilight said. “This is perfectly normal, and…"

This bizarre transmission of the Elements arguing abruptly cut into squeals and pops once more, but there were strange sounds underneath. Multilingual screeches of agony.

“Hulle het my my, sal hulle jou my ook gou genoeg neem.... Sie nahmen das Leben nach dem Tod, sie es ihnen gemacht. Es gibt keine Ruhe, gibt es keine mir, gibt es keine, dann gibt es nur die Zahlen und die ohrenbetäubende stummen Schreie, wir sind Greuel, jetzt und für immer! Leyfðu mér að deyja vil ég glaður deyja vil ég glaður deyja skulum deyja, gefa okkur aftur þögn, stöðva tölur! Vi kommer inte att sluta skrika tills vi frigörs.”

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the voices died down - yes, died down, and Aegis was somewhat disturbed he’d used that verb to describe them - becoming a whisper, then a hum…

"That," an odd man said, a slight smile on his face, "was absolutely fascinating."

His voice was a light, chirpy, British-accented one, and he seemed remarkably cheerful, which was... unusual, to say the least. He tapped the radio, which was no longer transmitting.

"Because of what it was," the man said, smiling still. "Unknown party hijacking the transmission signal. Possibly even multiple signals. That's really clever, actually. It’s done this repeatedly."

"It was horrible," Francis said flatly. “I can understand some of what it’s saying… German and Afrikaans, for once.”

“Some of it even said ‘Let me die I die I die, let us die, give us back the silence, stop the numbers!’,” Falyn added.

“Well yes, but…” the man said, cocking his head to the side. “How do you recognise Afrikaans? And how do you-” he pointed at Falyn. “Know icelandic?”

“I learned it because I liked District 9!” Francis said, a little too quickly.

“Thought so too. But this…. it’s… It’s horrible to hear,” Francis said. “Nonsense, of course it is, but… it’s just bizarre.”

"I’m sure, but, well, yes," the man said, "but from a technical standpoint -"

"I don't think he's interested in the technical standpoint," a new voice said. A pale grey Unicorn mare with tired, equally grey eyes and what looked like a labcoat draped over her body trotted up behind the strange man. Her mane was tied up behind her head in a ponytail that looked to be steadily falling apart, strands of thick fur gradually escaping what she’d used to force them backwards.

“Evenin’, Chalcedony,” Aegis said. “Are you… are you doing better? ”

"A little," the mare said, smiling, though it was clear to Francis she was lying through her teeth. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, after all. "Actually, Aegis, there's something I want to ask you about later…"

"Shame," the man said. "Socialising is about the only thing that doesn't make one depressed about this whole business. That and tinkering with technology. Might I suggest finding a hobby?"

The man didn't respond to that, instead turning back to the radio, pulling out a small silver device and tapping it against the radio once, before the thing started buzzing.

The man sighed. It was only now that Francis really took in his appearance, so at odds with the rest of their surroundings. He wore a long, checkered-pattern tweed coat in a rather bright shade of green, with a suede collar, under which was a shirt, some kind of cravat and a waistcoat with a watch chain, set off rather incongruously by a comfortable-looking pair of dark brown corduroy pants. His reddish hair was short, though he had a fringe that came down over his left eyebrow, under which were analytical, nigh-inscrutable brown eyes. He smiled slightly.

"Tell me," he asked, ignoring the question. "Have you heard these transmissions before?"

"Increasing in radius, and in frequency," Chalcedony said flatly. "This is something like the twelfth individual transmission we've found. I think they’re telling a story." She glanced up at the red-head. "Doctor, what do you think?"

"I believe I fall into the 'or something' category," the man replied, smiling slightly, "much as certain others would love to sign me up."

She shrugged. "That would be a question a lot of folks at R&D have about him. Colonel Munro almost trusts him, but I know Colonel Hex is -"

"A blithering idiot out of his depth and barely treading water with no idea about half the things he talks about?" the redheaded Doctor cut in, still examining the radio, running what looked like a small silver penlight over it. "Why yes, he is, and Munro is little better, if less bloodthirsty, and he's in a lot more pockets than I’d like. Still, I don't have to deal with Redmond anymore, so that's almost a plus." He glanced up at Kraber, a slight awkward smile on his face. "Officially, I'm not here: best to stick with that."

“Please tell me I’m not the only one that’s stupidly lost right now,” Falyn sighed.

"No, I just don't want to let myself know that I'm running around," the man replied absently. "I'll get tetchy with myself, and none of me want that. I'm really annoying when I'm tetchy."

“I know the feeling,” Francis said, nodding. “I’ve seen other mes before, and they were pretty thoroughly unlikeable.”

"Oh, it's not that I'm unlikeable per se - I just take a dim view to me meddling in my own business," the man said.

“Amen to that,” Francis said. “They never shut up about it. Oh, you should be a pony like me, you should be a monster...”

"Just ignore him," Chalcedony said tiredly. "He's got a tendency to say confusing things."

"We hadn't noticed," Aegis said. “...Actually, same goes for Francis here sometimes.”

For a moment everyone was silent as they watched the strange man take the radio apart slightly, poke around the insides for a moment, then put it back together. He smiled and patted the small thing.

‘I am a herald of eternity and reckoning is at hand, and the blood of the righteous and the guilty alike is set to spill, staining the land with it’s…’

There was another burst of static, and the man buzzed the radio with his device, frowning.

“You and me both,” Johnny C said. “If any alicorn gets to the east coast… then we’d be really fucked.”

“A glitch,” the strange man said shortly. He smacked the radio. “I’m correcting it.”

“Requesting backup at sector seven - are you seeing this, it's like the fucking blob -!”

“I have never given up before, and I will not be defeated by a radio!” the man snapped in reply.

“…my friends, it is time for that which was prophesied in the good book. Judgement Day has come at last, and it will burn clean the sin of the old world and bring about a new one. Those whose faith is false and impure will burn and their souls will forever reside in hell. Those whose faith is true and strong will live. I have spent my life believing that, and I believe it now. Our country is full of non believers: the secular, those who go against God by their very thoughts. We, the righteous, can stand against it, shielding ourselves with our faith… and purging the unclean…”

“Alright, definitely not that!” the man said. He smacked the radio with the flat of his hand. “Come on, last try -!”

Is there anyone out there?! ANYONE?! Are we the last ones left alive? Are we? Someone, anyone, please? Are we? Is there anybody out there? Are we the last ones left alive?! Someone! ANYONE! We need hel-”

”Got them-” “FASTER-” "Don't fokking die on me, I've let enough kids and foals die already-" “Can’t go any-” “FOK!” ~static~ “Shema yisroel, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad-” “-Lord is my shepherd-” “Get that damn radio before it falls off-” “What the hell was THAT?!” Aegis yelled. “There’s people dying out there!”

"Come on! They’re not dead… Not yet, and they’ll be fine. Probably. Ah, no!" the man said, whacking the machine. "None of that. Contemporaneous only, thank you! There's enough spoilers running around!"

"Good as new," he said, grinning. "Actually… slightly better. If you pick up the BBC World Service from five years ago, that's my fault."

"Possibly," the man admitted sheepishly. "Least it wasn't telling everyone about the coming of Japheth the Firebird this time, let alone that -"

"That was embarrassing," Chalcedony said, cutting him off. "You sure that's not -?"

"Yes, I'm sure, so stop worrying about it," the man snapped. "I've had Munro and Hex nagging me about Japheth and Corona and all the rest of that lot for ages, and if I have to say once more that ‘it's not a problem you need to worry about’ I’ll scream."

The man sighed. "Anyway Chalcedony, take notes - we're dealing with some sort of -"

"Hey!" Francis said, grabbing the man's shoulder and spinning him around. "You can't just fokkin’ start blabbing out the technobabble! What the hell was that? Why did I hear myself there?!-”

“You did?” Fiddlesticks interrupted, only for Francis to make a gesture that signified he’d find a better way to dodge the question later.

The man shared a glance with his Unicorn companion, before looking back at Kraber…. no, no, Francis. Had to be Francis.

"There's something at work," he said simply. "Something - you know, I don't even know how big, but given the fact that these transmissions are being picked up with increasing frequency, I'd say fairly." He sighed. "I'm... just trying to see if I can help."

"Yes, because spies act as ostentatious as him," Chalcedony said with a slight sneer.

"Shut up," Francis said, pointing at her somewhat harshly. "I don't trust either of you."

"As it happens, no," Francis replied, scowling at him for a moment. And in that moment, he was Francis once more. “I’ve been hurt.” He paused. “No, fok that. I’ve done plenty of hurting, too.”

"Alright, my friend," he said, before holding out a hand. "Dr Richard Bowman, loose attaché to Colonel Munro's R&D office and ‘freelance helper-outter’, if that’s a word. This, as your friend pointed out, is Chalcedony - my… assistant?"

“Oh, like you two don’t have your own in-jokes,” the man said. “Like that, uh… that dress.”

“Kiki, Fiddlesticks and I were getting schwifty back in the early days of the war,” Johnny C explained. “It was New Year, we were binge-reading Homestuck, I think I lost a bet…”

“Huh,” Quint said from the corner. “I’d just assumed you were trans the whole time, Nny.”

“Nah,” Johnny C said. “It’s just… y’know, sometimes you need to be anyone but yourself. You know?”

What did that mean? ~~Kraber~~ Francis wondered. He sighed, and then clasped the man’s still-proffered hand, raising an eyebrow at his manner.

"That's a good choice, right there," Bowman said with a wink, and Kraber suddenly felt cold - did this guy know? "I've definitely had worse." He leaned in a whispered in Kraber's ear. "Just remember, being a new man isn't all it's cracked up to be, eh?"

"Let me do you a quick favour," he said. He brought out a small card and handed it to Kraber, who took it mutely. "Call that number and - in theory - you should be connected straight to me, assuming of course you ever actually need help in a tight spot."

"Would you believe I've never rewired a phone before?" Bowman asked. "Besides, there's the time factor - it could reach me, or it could reach me." He threw Kraber a serious look. "Seriously, don't tell me you've seen me, I'll throw a fit."

“But yeah, tight spot, call me,” he said. “I should come - assuming I haven't decided to say ‘sod the lot of you’ and go to Space Bermuda.”

Bowman shrugged. “If Hex asks me to develop a WMD again, I might. I signed on to save lives, not end them en masse for the sake of…expedience.” He spoke it like a swear word. “If he wants a mind like mine willing to aid expedience, then he can ask me.”

“I think I’d know about that,” Francis said, and all of a sudden, he sighed, and he was Kraber. “We’ve… all got sides of ourselves that we don’t want to talk about. And no, Bowman. It’s not what you think.”

“No, really, it isn’t,” Kraber said. “There’s… I’ve been thinking. I don’t know how I know this, but I know: Somewhere… else, other worlds, there’s another me. And he’s a right bastard.”

“Anyway," Bowman added, perhaps overly lightly, clearly trying not to be concerned. "Best be off -”

“Before you go, though,” Johnny C interrupted, and both he and Chalcedony did a double take at him. “Hello again.”

Chalcedony blinked, then blushed. “Oh! Mr C, Fiddlesticks! Almost didn’t recognize you Mr… or Mrs… That dress looks great on you, really, it’s a good look!”

Fiddlesticks nudged Johnny C, who sighed and groaned, but there was an upward curve to his mouth that suggested he was enjoying it on some level.

“Of course,” the Doctor said with a grimace. “Her. Hm. Anyway, how are you? Don't actually answer that, I'm not sure the answer interests me.”

“Actually, I happen to know there’s a Reaver around here,” Fiddlesticks put in. “We asked. He said it was more.”

The Reavers are here?! ~~Francis~~ Kraber thought. Them?! Haven’t seen em in years! He wondered if they were still woedend at him. Ah, probably. He hadn’t exactly left them on good terms. Not that he'd left much with good terms anymore. It was for the best not to worry about the Reaver, though. Whoever it was, they probably wouldn’t touch him.

“Oh,” Bowman said, blinking. “Curious…” he checked his watch. “Oh - yeah, they’re at six ninety nine now. I need to get this checked.” He clucked his tongue. “How’d you find him?”

“We both did,” Fiddlesticks added. “Like you said, Doctor. Giving them a chance.”

Bowman blinked, before a smile graced his features. “Well - there's hope for you both yet. Now all we need to do is get your cousin doing the same, Mr Cynical.”

“Nah. Names are boring,” Bowman grinned. “Why d’you think I don't use my old one?”

“I wasn’t aware they had that comic over in Scotland,” Johnny C said, suspicious.

“Scotland was actually quite civilised,” Bowman said dryly. “They even had kilts. Do you have kilts? No?”

Bowman chuckled. “Well, I doubt the Scots would see it that way. Not nearly tartan enough, and of course if you're wearing underwear it ruins the whole thing.”

“...Ah feel as if there isnae enough ten-foot poles in the world for me to touch this one with,” Francis said.

“Preacher,” Johnny said with a shrug. “Nice guy. Actually, I met him during that thing - y’know, the crystal thing?”

“Still, I tried to help him,” Johnny said. “Even gave him maple syrup from last year.”

“Are you saying that I shouldn’t have maple syrup on me in case of maple syrup emergencies?” Johnny C asked, and once more, Francis, no, no, no fokking hell, FOK! OH FOK NO, it had to be Francis…

Kraber felt a chill. Something about that had reminded him of Pinkie Pie. She’d said that exact phrase before. When talking about pancakes over the phone, when that fokking pink mank genaaide berbok had said she wanted to make other ponies smile…

That varknaaier, that fokkin kontgesig, that fokkin poeslip had known the whole time. She’d killed his family, made him this way!

No. He’d always had this in him. Always could have monster. Always enjoyed a pehrer at a bar. But Francis didn’t. Francis had known, because he hudtae have, he had tae have known. Kraber would be pathetic tae have nowt seen it coming, read all the signs. That wis why Kraber was dead and buried, right? That… f… th… bawbag, he deserved to be fokkin’ glassed an’ thrown six feet under…

Kraber… Francis… tried to reassert himself. Francis was breathing heavily, trying not to remember what Kraber had done. The full enormity of it, all of it, he couldn’t be allowed to comprehend it. Couldn’t be allowed to go back.

“Oddly enough,” Johnny C said, “The Reaver? He said he was looking for Viktor Kraber.”

…Fok me in the keyhole. He can’t, cannae, fokking goed nie toegelaat kan word om te weet dat ek hier is! Kraber thought manically. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

“Francis?” Aegis asked, looking up at ~~Kraber~~ Francis, confused. “Are you okay?”

“K… k… fine,” ~~Francis~~ ~~Kraber~~ ~~Francis~~ Kraber said. “Ju… jist some bad memories is all. Ya nivir know what’ll remind ya of what.”

“Time Lo - well, contractual obligation of birth. Anyway, you wanted something?” Bowman asked.

Bowman sighed. “Sorry. You're probably right. I’ve had to deal with a lot more… human-ness since last time we spoke. You're actually alright.”

Johnny nodded. “Um… sorry, I guess? Anyway, Fiddlesticks and I… have an idea.”

“It’s that this has something to do with totem-proles,” Fiddlesticks interrupted.

“Well, we know how totem-proles are made,” Fiddlesticks added. “It’s just… that sounds sort of similar to the process. And… we heard these broardcasts earlier.”

“Oh, hey, look at me, I’m a sexual deviant who had frostbite, brain damage, and laughs about killing a man with a steam locomotive, and claims to have seen Equus reindeer,” Johnny C said, rolling his eyes. “Clearly, I’m a trustworthy sort.”

“I’ll make sure to look into that,” Bowman said, looking as though he was taking a mental note. "Think it'll be… seventy fifth on the list."

"Yeah - has to be below certain things," Bowman said. "Supply runs, an overhaul of the old girl's primaries, find Shieldwall, look into those Cain murders…"

Bowman was continuing. "…look into Armacham - seriously, something about that company's bugging me - then I need to look into that Amplifier schematic you sent me, then there's my meeting with Mikey…”

“If there's a connection, it might be worth re-prioritising our time,” Chalcedony put in.

Chalcedony frowned. "I dunno - maybe? Possibly? It's been a long while since I got fresh intelligence on the process."

“Actually,” Rivet said. “You never did tell me how it worked, Uncle Nny.”

“Seriously,” Johnny C said. “You’ll be happier not knowing.” He paused. “Seriously, it just made sure Fiddlesticks wasn’t hungry.”

“Best be off,” Bowman said. “Lots to do, and surprisingly little time to do it." He walked off, and with a final look at Kraber, Chalcedony followed. They continued speaking as they went.

“I’ll need to speak with the Reavers again,” Bowman was saying. “It's a long shot, but they might have some notion about this…”

“They won’t hurt you,” Bowman said. “Unlike the HLF you see in those wonderfully biased reports of yours, they’re not raving murderous lunatics. D'you know, I even had a charming game of bridge with Yarrow once…"

After that bizarre interlude with the unicorn and that weird PHL doctor, Kraber was trying to slip back into his Francis persona. Well, not quite ‘slipping in,’ more like ‘bouldering his way up’. And it was barely working. It had been hard to restrain himself from a reflexive gasp of fear when he saw that little filly and her mother, the ones he’d nearly killed that night.

What a long week. What a long fokkin’ week. It really said something that paranoia that someone might kill him for the money and panic attacks were still an improvement over Defiance life.

But, Kraber thought, and he was surprised to know it was his own thoughts, not some annoying fokking hallucination, Aegis wouldn’t.

He trusted Aegis, after all, and Aegis trusted him. Amber Maple and Rivet wouldn’t, either. They loved him, and he loved them. Plus, they really liked listening to him reading Un Lun Dun.

Ah, fok, it felt like family again. Like he belonged with the crazy ponies and the horsefuckers like Johnny C, Yael and Philip. They were nicer to him, they didn’t treat him like a time bomb about to go off, and he liked the various meetings. He even liked visiting that one place in White River Junction, the Main Street Museum of Art. Crazy place, but fun nonetheless.

But that sure as fok couldn’t last. Especially not with that filly there, (‘Little Day?’) the one that had almost recognized him. She’d seen him screaming internally at the sight of her and her mother.

Would he have to kill them? He knew how to dispose of a body. It’d be easy to shadow them, and-

‘No,’ he told himself. That’s what Kraber would do. Francis would be generous and-

“Mr. Francis,” Francis explained. “That’s what my housemates call me.”

“Mr. Francis, I love this! It’s so good!” she plunged her muzzle into some ice cream.

“Well…” Kraber said, almost caught off-guard by that filly being so appreciative to him, “Thanks.”

It was about time for the restaurant to close up, and so everyone filtered out of the place.

Falyn hopped on a motorcycle, stashing a lever-action shotgun in one of the bike’s holsters.

“Absolutely, Mr. Francis,” Falyn said with a wink, and sped off into the darkness on her bike.

“Is it just me or does Falyn kind of… fade into the background?” Amber Maple asked.

With that out of the way, Francis, Aegis, and his family - their family, maybe - headed back to the house. It had been nice… A damn close call, but nice. Thankfully, Yael hadn’t been around, hadn’t recognized him. Shame she wasn’t around - it was amazing how easy she could be to get along with, seeing that she just wasn’t a morning person (he could sympathize). Plus, Heliotrope could play a damn good game at overwatch.

“You won’t have to worry about this if you just take the potion~!” Victory chirped, walking alongside him.

“Now you’re just getting fokking desperate,” Francis sighed, walking past a vendor selling Turkish coffee. Or at least, imitation turkish coffee, made from who-knew-what.

“Why do you even sell coffee this late?” Francis asked, looking over his stall.

“The watch, of course,” the coffee vendor said. “I’ve also got tea, and… say, you looking for some drugs?”

Much as Francis might have wanted to get well and truly chwee chweerekeys, (And how did anyone know about that?) now wasn’t the time to come back to his pozzy well and truly gesuip. Heh, he’d said ‘his pozzy’. Like he lived there. Like it was his and he belonged.

“No thanks,” Francis said, “There’s a colt and a filly need me to help.”

“Nah, a friend recommended me to this big stallion’s house, and he lets me live there as long as I pay some of the bills and do work around…” Francis paused. “Hey, don’t you know this? It was in the newspapers.”

That had been a harrowing experience, getting his picture in a couple local papers for helping to kill all those PER in the synagogue. He hadn’t been able to stop it, and he’d practically begged for it not to happen….

“I should go,” Francis said, walking away. He would have liked a car, but the various green regulations and wartime rationing laws made it impossible. That, and he didn’t have the money. It wasn’t much of an issue though, a bit of walking was good for him.

“G’night, Mr. Strang!” called down Blossomforth, one of the pegasi of Littleton. She typically came by when Aegis was called in for a construction job, something involving barrierfall… Francis was a bit sketchy on the details.

“Hey, Strang,” called a woman standing on the other side of the street. “Damn, I am terrible at the whole nocturnal thing.”

“Did you see that coffee peddler?” Francis asked. “Think he could help you out.”

“That’d…” Blossomforth yawned, putting one hoof to her chin, her wings fluttering for a second as she dropped down about two feet. “That’d be great. If only Moonshine worked this beat more...”

“She’s busy making booze for everyone, is what they’re saying,” Aegis said. “And no, Rivet. You can’t have any.”

“Son,” Aegis sighed, “You only get to be a foal so long. Treasure the time you have left.”

Something’s watching me, though Francis Strang, respectable chef in town. And also murder machine.

You’re just being paranoid, would be a normal reassurance. Francis, of course, was not a normal person. Normal people didn’t feed PER to wolves. Or laugh about it for days on end.

And, ever since waking up in North Africa to a tent full of newfoals with vials of potion, some of which had been his comrades, he’d learned to be para.

“You okay, Mr. Francis?” Aegis asked, looking up at him, then looking concerned as Francis’ fingers tap-danced over the wood grip of his Ruger magnum revolver.

“I’m being watched,” Francis said, sliding it out. Seven shots in the Ruger.

It felt like it was all falling apart. The restaurant, someone had half-recognized him.The coffee vendor who simply wasn’t there anymore.

And he was totally correct. On the whole ‘being watched’ thing. Not ‘going to be okay’. This is Kraber. ‘Kraber’ and ‘Fine’ could not be said to exist on even the same planet in most occurrences within the multiverse.

A rugged HLF man with a heavy wooden bolt action rifle, held together with good luck and electrical tape, stared down at him through an incongruously high-tech scope from a little scrabble of forest on one side of Mount Eustis, just above the highway.

“What’ve we here?” the man asked, zooming in on Kraber. The L5 Photonics scope didn’t really belong, not really. First, it’d been a gift, second, on the old Mauser, it fit as well as a modern dashboard with all the glowing lights in a Model T Ford. “Little Vicky Kraber, what’re you doing?”

He’d come here because he’d heard Yael Ze'ev was coming. And where Yael Ze'ev was, HLF had a tendency to die. Not just the mediocre dogs or the ones who forgot what they were supposed to be, no - even the ones like Kraber who were too violent, too cruel, too sadistic, too crazy, and even the ones who knew the true path, like the man thanked his lucky stars he did. All of them. Yael didn’t discriminate. The town in Quebec had proven that: sure, there'd been swine and scum there… but he knew there'd been good men too, buried amongst it. And there'd been others, too. Innocents.

But of all the people he’d expected to see in this town, besides Johnny C and Fiddlesticks, (who lived around here) Kraber was at the bottom of the list.

First, Kraber down there had been reported as dead almost a week ago under mysterious circumstances, and rumors were flying. Second, he was standing around ponies, making friendly conversation. Something more than a little unlikely. Okay, more than unlikely. Impossible.

And, oddly enough, there were other HLF on the outskirts of time that he’d met. Sons of Macha, they were - in league with Aaron O’Donnell. Led by some ex-IRA man whose brother had gone newfoal, the sniper would have had low regard for them, if not for the fact that he’d seen far worse. When you’d seen Lovikov - who O'Donnell was rumored to be in contact with - being led by one of the bloody kitchen Irish wasn’t too bad. They’d called him brother, but he hadn’t returned the gesture. Something seemed wrong about them - the stench of men who'd lost their way, men who should've been strung up.

It had been a decent night, and Francis could almost forget about the little filly that had nearly recognized him.

Almost. He had just been on the cusp of calming himself, playing Overwatch (ah, the joy of playing McCree) curled up in the little nest he’d made, stuffed animals scattered around him. Kate… she’d loved the Borderlands games. Loved games of all kinds.

“...I’m worried about Rivet,” Amber Maple said to him, and Francis looked up.

“Hrmmm?” Francis asked, sliding off his headphones. Ambassador Nikai the Second was arranged on the bedspread, paws held out so it looked like he was reading Johnny C’s book. The little stuffed wolf had just gotten to the part where he and the ragtag PHL had followed the trail into the woods...

“Guess he’s a voracious reader,” she said, pointing to the stuffed wolf with her right foreleg.

“Just screwing with you,” she said, smiling. The two of them hoofbumped, or fistbumped, or whatever you call it when a man bumps a fist with a tiny horse’s hoof.

“Holy fok no!” Francis gasped, earning a Look from Aegis, who was on the phone in the kitchen. Phones for ponies were a tricky business, so usually they involved a dial and a crank, possibly also a headset. Aegis, similarly tired from his own job on nearby farms, seemed almost lethargic as he received a call from some pony in the PHL. “Oh GOD NO! NO! OH NO! OH FOK! OH FOK NO! FOK NO! Nooo… fokkin… fokker-fokkin… FOK! FOK! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO! NO! FOK!”

“FOK NO!” Francis yelled. “That’s the worst fokkin thing he could… how’d the fokkin… how the fok’d he fokkin… fok...FOK!”

“...ya done illustrating the diversity of the word?” Amber said, head cocked quizzically.

“Nah, I still have a bit left in me. FOK! Okay, I’m done. Tell him to get be…. tae stoap thinking ay me like that,” Francis said. “You dinnae know what I did before I came here, and if you dinnae want your ni-” Francis stopped, abruptly, and reconsidered what he was about to say.

“I can say with utter certainty,” Francis said, unnerved by the calm in his voice, “that wanting tae be me is the worst thing eh can dae right now, an the worst decision eh’ll make in ehs laff.”

--It’s hard to maintain an accent while you’re that woedend, Kraber says. --And gesuip.

“It’s just… he’s been trying to get into the booze. He wants an assault saddle,” Amber said. “Dad’s busy enough he can barely deal with it.”

“Just… make sure he doesn’t forget to be a colt sometimes,” Amber said. “He hasn’t for awhile.”

The conversation did not merely derail, but careened off into the forest and exploded.

“How long have you been here?!” Amber yelped at the yellow-furred earth pony mare.

By most standards, Francis could be considered insane. There were the voices in his head. There was the fact that his disguise was paper-thin at best and he was seriously lucky that nobody with basic facial-recognition software had found him yet. There was the fact that he thought bloodshed and violence were enjoyable, even funny. There was the insomnia. The night terrors.

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it,” Nny called over, walking down the stairs. “Fiddlesticks and I couldn’t sleep, once, so we broke into a friend’s house. We were out like lights! It’s worked ever since!”

Amber fell on her side, motionless. Like an immobile plastic doll someone had pushed to the side. Her legs were perfectly inert.

“It’s Nny and Fiddlesticks, do you even care at this point?” Aegis asked, turning his attention away from the phone.

“Yes, because they’ve never broken into our house!” Francis replied. “Who even-”

“Hey, did Nny and Fiddlesticks break in again?!” Rivet called from the upstairs.

“Really? You seriously haven’t seen this happen?” Fiddlesticks asked. “We did this all the time before you came here. Say, Aegis, is that truck with the beds still out back?”

“Thanks,” Nny said. “Damnedest thing, someone actually put a grave a little bit near it.”

Amber just groaned and buried her face in her hooves. “The stuff I deal with.”

It was probably for the best that whoever was on the other end of the phone picked up at that moment.

"Hello then," Aegis said in the background. "Weird how much of this involves Boston, huh. The Carters were from Boston, Kraber went to college there... The PHL set up shop there..."

Francis paused his game, and he and Amber turned their heads to Aegis, confused.

Sutra Cross' photo - a yellow mare with a bobcut, and a blue health kit with a green cross in the center as her cutie Mark - was all over the TV.

"Sutra Cross' body has been found in Boston Harbor by one of the fishing crews. It's suspected that this is a symbolic gesture by the HLF...

"No..." Francis heard Aegis whisper. "Oh Luna, no.... Sweet Zacherle, oh Faust, oh no… God no..."

"Her body shows signs of abuse and severe trauma," the newscaster continued. "the medicine from her caravan has not resurfaced, so-"

"Those fokkin kontgesigs," Francis whispered, now halfway back to being Kraber, and Aegis was taken aback to see the raw, burning hatred in his friend's eyes. "Those bastards..."

What made her so different?" Verity asks. "You'd killed plenty before then.”

“...Maybe I was acting,” Kraber suggests. “Maybe I wasn’t. But I’d just realized. From one doctor to another, that was fokkin’ pointless.”

“I miss her,” Scootaloo says, and you look at her, curious. “I mean… she was the one that got Wildfire to leave. She campaigned against the potion, she… she was like a second mother to me.”

“Empire loyalists that weren’t too happy with what their fragile little filly had to say about the war,” Scootaloo says.

“I’m so sorry,” you say. “I could talk to mommy, she could help, and… and…”

“I like it, but Wildfire’s been a good mom herself,” Scootaloo explains. “Her and Sutra Cross worked together for it…”

"Wouldnae surprise me if they got high off the medication," Francis said, shaking like a leaf.

“That’s crazy!” Nny said. “They… they wouldn’t, they’re just…”

“Been spending too much time around Reavers, haven’t you?” Amber muttered.

“We know HLF, Nny,” Fiddlesticks said, nuzzling Nny just above the wasteline. “They would.”

“I’d hope yuir wrong, Fiddlesticks, but it’s something they’d dae,” Francis said. “Thae meds nivir surfaced, so the fokkin radges are keepin them. An I doubt they’d be paragons ay responsibility in nowt dippin intae the keg. Those bastards those bastards those grassin cunt bastards. They... And fir what? For fokkin what?! That isnae what ah joined the HTF fo! They tortured her, brutalized her, butchered her, stole medical supplies FIR FOKKIN WHAT?! They-"

The TV dissolved into squeals and pops as the newscaster looked taken aback, shouting at someone else, and then-

The screen was replaced with that of a person of indeterminate gender, wearing a rubber mask with fake blond hair, and big thick sunglasses you'd be surprised anyone could see out of. But then, that was the point.

"Let this be a lesson to all of you," they said, their voice so distorted it was nigh on unrecognizable. "We are the HLF, and we do not forgive. We do not forget."

"The geldo scum that has infested our society is but Celestia's advance force," the person in the mask said. "They expect us to follow them. When Barrierfall comes, they will revoke the magic and tech that keeps us going. Your guns will fall to pieces. Your evac networks will crumble, the rails will shatter, and you'll be sitting ducks, ready to be ponified. We have received documents from PHL informants that say this is the case. The Archangel has told us so. And even if we didn't, I'd say it was rather obvious. Look at them, the horsefuckers and merry go round toys. We've seen enough of that, we've seen the pony capability for brainwashing. Do they seem TRUSTWORTHY?! THEYRE PONIES AND HORSEFUCKERS! THE ENEMY!"

"They just..." Aegis stared. It was almost unreal. "They declared war on the PHL. And they think, they fucking think that... Francis, you were HLF, why would they... How... You wouldn't do this, right?!”

“They have invaded us, as they have anyone else,” the masked man said. “And so, we took that bitch and we dumped her in Boston Harbor. I think any American should realize the symbolism…”

“The boston tea party,” the masked man said. “Our leader, Michael Carter - who you have refused to release - would appreciate the irony. We took the poison you would peddle, and dumped it in the sea.”

"...I might have done it," Francis said. "But I sure as fok wouldnae now. You and the foals, and Ze'ev and Heliotrope and everyone else have been good enough to me I wouldn't dream of it now."

Aegis had one hoof to his face, as he nervously shifted the red bandanna that covered his head. "They declared war on the PHL…Oh, shit. I’m getting Rivet,” he said, and rushed for the stairs.

Someone ran up to the door. It was a beggar - a man with a patch of hairy, scabby skin over one of his eye sockets, on equal level to his nose at some points. The hair was black and bristly, like part of a brush. He had part of a thin, ancient red-and-white ski serving as the foot of his prosthetic leg.

“It’s HLF,” he said. He had a look of panic on the remaining ¾ of his face, and he was carrying an ancient-looking gun made of a patchwork of M16 and AR-15 parts, with a wooden stock.

“I have a home, you know,” said Paul the one-eyed man. “There’s HLF vehicles heading up here.”

“The paint, the rust, the skulls, the symbols,” Paul snapped. “Does it matter? Just keep your damn heads down.”

They could hear cars on the highway nearby, birds, the weathervanes creaking in the wind. But they could hear something else. Something that sounded suspiciously like charging handles being cocked, boots clomping against grass and dirt.

“Oh, shit,” Francis said, looking out the window. There were pickup trucks, battered-looking cars with awkward modifications, with a few awkwardly placed gun turrets here and there. The people they were carrying were absolutely not military. They slouched too much. Their armor and their clothes were studded with almost tribal sigils: teeth, numbers, bits and pieces from long-atomized Europe.

Francis was practically plastered against the wall, his Remington ACR held close to his chest, barrel uncomfortably close to his lower jaw. Aegis was standing by the top of the stairs, in front of his son. Rivet was almost imperceptibly falling back behind his massive father. Amber was just barely out of view, behind the wall separating the staircase from the rest of the living room that Francis had turned into his bedspace.

Rivet, peering from behind his father, was watching Francis with rapt attention. He was flattened against the wall, screwing what looked like a soda can to the end of his rifle.

FOK! Francis screamed internally. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him: leave.

‘Oh fok no. They can’t be here. They can’t… they’ll find me. And they’ll fokkin’ hurt me.’ That train of thought abruptly stopped. ‘Actually, why don’t I just kill them? That would be fokkin’ kwaai! ~~Kraber~~ Francis thought.

And then, as he stared at Amber, Aegis, Rivet, and Fiddlesticks trembling, at Nny… doing…

He looked like he’d gone too far in the opposite direction. Like the HLF’s appearance had drained him of energy.

“I have some body armor,” Nny said, his quavering voice completely at odds with the statue-like posture he had adopted. “F-f-fiddlesticks. C-c-can you-”

Right. Nny gets all whimpery, Kraber remembered. Shit. If I kill them all… a lot of people die. These five do. And I think they’re fokkin’ lekker. My damn chommies. It’s too big a risk, and… dammit. I like these people.

“I need tae hide,” Francis hissed. “I think I pissed off these people. If they know who I am, what I’ve done… then I’m gauntae have to hide in the woods.”

The Light Despondent

by Doctor Fluffy

Kill The Cooks