//------------------------------//
// 14. A Terrible Fury at Being Alive 
// Story: Pony Gear Solid 
// by Posh 
//------------------------------//


"When my time came calling, I didn't die. My family died, my country died, but they didn't take me with them. All Hell took from me was this skin, this outer peel that marked me 'human.'"






Trenton had beaten her out the door, and was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. The gun he'd used to shoot Chrysalis's golem was once again holstered. Fitting – she didn't suppose a little thing like that would be much good against...

Whatever the heck is after us.

Twilight swept through the columns and down the stairs after him. Daring to look back, she saw black fingers coil around two columns, snap them off of their bases like twigs, and toss them aside. Miraculously, the portico held, and a shape emerged from the dome. It was still no more than an indistinct silhouette against the green light behind it, but she could discern bony arms and spindly legs several times larger than herself.

She whipped her head forward, gulped, and pushed herself harder. Finally, she cleared the stairs and stampeded toward the bathhouse, Trenton following.

Twilight heard a buzzing, like the wings of an insect, and an inky shadow passed overhead before her pursuer landed in front of her, cutting off their escape. Gossamer wings folded against a shiny black carapace.

Six pointed legs supported an oversized insect's body: an abdomen and thorax and heart-shaped head on a short, thin neck. The creature had four arms, two of which extended above its head and ended in serrated, scythe-like claws, each as large as the body of a stallion. The other two poked from the underside, and were almost human in appearance, with elbow joints and five-fingered hands curled into fists. Its face was smooth and featureless, but for its cat-slit green eyes and a jagged spire of a horn, like a lightning bolt carved from chitin.

If nothing else, it was a relief that she knew what had hatched from the egg in the barn – its size suggested that it was responsible for digging out the tunnels they'd been traveling. But that raised another question:

"What in the wide world of Equestria is that?"

"Chrysalis," said Trenton bluntly. "Or so I assumed."

Twilight gaped at him. "You thought that tried to marry my brother?!"

"I was under the impression that she could shape-shift."

The monster made a chittering noise – from where, Twilight had no idea; it had no mouth. Fingers clenched, scythe-claws raked against one another, and javelin legs took slow steps toward her.

"Perhaps we can leave aside issues of mistaken identity for the time being," said Trenton coolly. "There is no escape as long as that thing is alive."

Of course, he was right, and Twilight knew it. It didn't stop her from being intimidated by the sheer size of the... whatever it was. Yet the drive to protect Rainbow, to keep her alive by any means necessary, was powerful enough that it chased down her fears and stomped them into submission.

That meant parting with her, at least for now. It was the smart thing to do, yet Twilight did so only reluctantly.

A flash of light sent the pegasus to an isolated corner, and another erected a barrier over her prone form, carrying as much of a charge as Twilight could spare. Little good against any sort of concentrated attack, but it would shield her from stray shots and debris. Twilight let her gaze linger on Rainbow Dash for as long as she dared, her body warming as courage coursed through her.

Then she swung her neck around to glare at the monster, magic rippling around her body. The monster stood its ground, waiting for Twilight to fire the opening salvo.

She did, the blast briefly lighting the chamber in bright pink as it streaked toward her target and struck its polished face.

To no effect whatsoever.

Twilight blinked, fired again, fired a third time just to be sure. The monster clicked after each impact, but otherwise showed no reaction. Then its horn glowed, every bit as bright as Twilight's, and perhaps just a little bit brighter.

Part of Twilight wondered if the monster was telegraphing its attack on purpose, just to mock her.

She teleported away, rematerializing on the monster's left, just as a globby green blast vaporized the spot she'd just vacated. The monster swiveled to face her, only for Trenton to collide with it from the right with an ear-splitting crash not dissimilar from a rockslide. It staggered from the impact, nearly trampling Twilight, and blindly swung one of its scythes to gore Trenton. He ducked, darted close to its face, and struck it with a kick that snapped its head back.

Another scythe narrowly missed his head, but the monster's clenched fist rained down on him from above. He spread his hands above his head and caught it, holding firm for just a moment, before the monster's other hand added its strength to the first. Trenton's knees bent, finally buckled, and he was crushed into the dirt. It lifted its hands, and a beam from its horn washed over Trenton, blasting a deep, smoldering crater in the earth.

Twilight had no way of knowing whether Trenton had survived the attack. Whether or not he did mattered little; the monster's full attention was on her, and she needed to act swiftly. She backed away, peppering it with ineffectual blasts as she tried to think of something, while it crept steadily toward her. Twilight finally ceased her impotent barrage and made a break for the dome, fighting for every inch of distance she could put between herself and the monster.

Upside is that it can't hurt Rainbow if it's focusing on me.

Different options and strategies raced through her mind as she ran. Its body seemed impervious to magic, or at least, concentrated blasts of magical energy. Brute force seemed to have some effect against it, though. Twilight didn't have the physical prowess that Trenton possessed, but there were plenty of heavy objects just waiting to be—

The monster leaped, interrupting Twilight's thoughts, and sank its legs into the chamber's wall, clinging to it like a spider. It fired from its new position, and Twilight just barely wove aside in time to avoid being hit, though she felt the heat and shrapnel from the resulting explosion wash against her flank. She reached the dome's steps and bounded up, two at a time, ahead of another blast that demolished a section of stairs.

At the top, she spotted the fallen columns that the monster had ripped apart during its pursuit. They were still largely intact, with their ends broken into sharp, tapering points. Twilight picked one at random and wrapped it in a telekinetic field, lifting it tentatively. Heavy, but not so heavy that she couldn't wield it. She wrenched it into the air with a grunt and sent it hurtling toward the monster, drawing back and swinging in a downward arc that knocked it free from the wall.

Twilight smashed it again, buckling its legs as it tried to regain its footing. On the third swing, the monster caught the club in its middle with one hand; with a thought, she severed the exposed ends of the column, turning her club into two smaller, individually lighter clubs.

Rapid blows rained down on the monster's body, until it let out an ear-piercing shriek and blasted one club into pebbles. Briefly dismayed, Twilight quickly recovered, and aimed a blow at the monster's horn, but the horn shone green and melted through the club on contact. That glow coalesced into an orb at the horn's tip, and it fired twin blasts that destroyed the remnants of Twilight's weapon, and a third, much larger blast at Twilight.

She formed a barrier over her body and clenched her teeth. The blast struck, green light clashing against pink, the flash forcing Twilight to cover her face with her foreleg, silently and desperately begging the shield to hold.

It held. Opening her eyes, Twilight saw the barrier's light waning – the full fury of the monster's attack had drained it severely, but it nevertheless held. Pride burned in her chest.

Then she saw the monster coming toward her through the air, its arm drawn back and its fist clenched.

Poop.

The energy she poured into the shield at the last second was enough to deflect the monster's punch, though the shield shattered from the force of the blow. The kinetic energy that it failed to absorb sent Twilight tumbling backward until she thudded against the front steps of an exposed building.

Twilight groaned, but struggled back to her hooves as the monster advanced swiftly on her again. Its hand extended toward her, bony fingers uncurling.

Then a two-toned, blue shape appeared at the monster's side. Slender arms wrapped around its wrist, and held it in place before it could take hold of Twilight.

"Get. Away."

Twilight was on her hooves and scrambling away immediately.

Trenton pulled, pivoting his hips, and ripped the arm free from its socket. Green smoke billowed from the wound, accompanied by the hiss of a gas leak, and the monster's own screech of agony. The arm was half-again as long as Trenton was tall, yet he wielded it one-handed, smashing it like a flail across the monster's face in a forehand swing that snapped the makeshift weapon in two at the elbow. He dropped it, ducked underneath a descending scythe, caught the blade in his arms, tore it free, and swung for the nearest leg, slicing it in half.

The monster shrieked and tried to get airborne. With one hand, Trenton caught its damaged leg and pulled it back to the earth. Then he was on its back and shearing through its wings, the scythe slicing through the flimsy membranes like butter. The monster rolled onto its back to dislodge Trenton; he leaped clear before it could bring its weight upon him.

When it righted itself, it listed heavily to the side, its remaining limbs struggling to bear its full weight. It stabbed and stomped and thrust them at Trenton, trying to gore him, but he dodged each blow effortlessly while cutting the legs to pieces with mesmerizing, yet deadly, motions. Smoke from the open wounds pooled beneath the monster's underbelly, enshrouding Trenton.

Finally, legless and groaning, the monster collapsed amid the smoke, Trenton rolling away to avoid being crushed. He emerged in front of its face, where it swung its remaining hand at him in an open-palmed slap.

Twilight caught the hand telekinetically and wrestled it to the ground, struggling against the monster's own considerable strength to pin it. Squeezing her eyes shut to help focus, she cast an adhesive spell that trapped it against the floor.

Desperately, the monster brought its last scythe down on Trenton. He deflected the blade with his own, and used the backswing to sever the monster's sole remaining limb. Then, with a flourish, he drove the scythe into the monster's left eye, straight through the pupil.

A glow enveloped the monster's horn, telegraphing its next attack – probably unintentionally this time. Twilight refocused, nabbed Trenton in a teleportation spell, and yanked him through the ether to her side, just as its last-ditch attack streaked across the chamber, obliterating the facade of a building that Twilight distantly recalled colliding with earlier. Disoriented by the spell, Trenton turned his head this way and that, before focusing on Twilight and settling down.

It resembled Snake's reaction so much that it almost made her laugh, before she noticed the state his body was in.

Trenton's body was a ruin of carbon scores and dents. An occasional arc of electricity sparked across places where his skin had ripped, exposing fibers of pale muscle and circuitry. His limbs were drooping, his shoulders rising and falling with rapid breaths – she didn't even know he needed to breathe. His vest still clung to his body by threadbare straps, but chunks of it were stripped away, revealing the thick material beneath.

"I thought you said you had trouble with her." Twilight forced a smile. "That looked pretty one-sided from where I'm standing."

"We're far from finished here." Trenton straightened his body.

The monster's exoskeleton was lined with cracks from Trenton's and Twilight's combined efforts, and haze leaked from every wound on its body. Yet its horn glowed, and a pinprick of light appeared at its tip. The gas was drawn toward it in swirling filaments, passing down the horn's length in a green sheen that coursed through its body, down to the stumps where its limbs had been.

Legs and arms and scythes and wings shimmered into being, solidifying into perfect duplicates of what had been lost in combat. The glow ran through the fissures in its armor and faded, smoothing away all the battle damage and leaving its carapace good as new. With a casual, almost lazy, swing of its scythe, it severed the arm Twilight had pinned, and a new arm formed to replace it.

The monster rose on reformed legs, stretched and flexed its new fingers, and coiled them into fists. It turned to face Twilight and Trenton, splaying its legs and unfolding its wings.

Twilight's ears drooped. "That's... demoralizing."

"You understand now?" said Trenton. "My abilities mean little when it can regenerate at will."

"You might have mentioned that a little sooner?"

"I assumed that you knew already. As you'll recall, I was under the impression that it was Queen Chrysalis, that this was an innate ability of hers, and that you knew that already."

"Well, today's just been a learning experience all around, now, hasn't it?!"

The monster took to the air, hovering high above them, energy crackling around its horn. It fired, but the pair scattered, Trenton leaping aside and Twilight teleporting to the opposite end of the chamber. The monster landed, whirled to face Twilight, and rapidly advanced. Trenton caught it by a back leg, holding tight as it struggled to shake him off. Twilight levitated more debris to fling at the monster, and blast after blast picked the pieces out of the air.

Trenton gave a final heave and tore the leg free from the monster's body. Tossing it aside and wading through the billow of smoke, he scaled its back, scrabbling to wrap his arms around its horn. He planted his feet and twisted his hips, trying to wrench it free of the monster's head.

Its eyes bulged wide. The monster wailed, showing real fear, genuine pain, for the first time.

It can't regenerate the horn, can it?

Twilight felt like smacking herself. Again. Of course it couldn't – the horn was the source of its regeneration ability, after all. It might have been the only thing it couldn't regenerate. Crippling that would give her and Trenton the decisive advantage.

Of course, if I know that...

A current ran through the horn, lighting it up like a beacon, and Trenton with it. His body convulsed, as though he'd embraced a live wire, and when the the glow cut off, his grip around the horn slackened and his arms dangled limply at his sides.

...Then it probably knows that too.

The monster reached up and pulled Trenton off of its head, flinging him unceremoniously away and gathering the expelled smoke to regenerate its leg. Twilight watched, with sinking hopes, as Trenton rolled to a stop beside the shield encasing Rainbow Dash. With its leg regenerated, it scurried toward Twilight, its scythes raking noisily together.

Twilight struggled to formulate a plan. Lure it into the dome, and collapse it? She could just as easily get caught in the collapse herself – or she could bring the entire chamber down on her head. Take Rainbow, and just make a break for it? They'd be easy targets for the monster in the bathhouse; a few good blasts were all it'd take to demolish it and bury the two of them alive.

Whether or not she could conjure a plan was moot, however – the creature loomed over her, raising its scythes to slice or impale. Twilight sprang forward, ducked under a grabbing hand, and galloped, firing a constant beam of magic at the monster's underbelly as she passed.

Naturally, to no effect.

Looking over her shoulder, Twilight saw the monster take to the air after her again. It fired, forcing Twilight to teleport, but as soon as she rematerialized, it was upon her again, a scythe stabbing into the ground beside her. Twilight leaped, and tried to run again, but it cut her off and advanced from the front. She backpedaled rapidly, ducking and dodging away from the rapid swings and stabs of the monster's scythes, interspaced with pulses of green energy that singed Twilight's hooves when she failed to move fast enough.

It was swifter than its size suggested, easily able to keep pace with Twilight, and it never seemed to tire. Twilight herself was not an athlete by nature, but a steady regimen of adventuring with her friends had kept her in shape of late. Yet she was exhausting herself quickly, and rapidly approaching the point of no return with her magic reserves.

She needed to go on the offensive, and settle matters before attrition defeated her.

As if to prove her own point, her hind hoof caught on something, and she stumbled. Twilight fell, unable to maintain her pattern of ducks and dodges, and instead rolled away from a scythe aimed at her foreleg.

Directly into the monster's waiting palm.

Fingers encircled her tightly, and lifted her into the air. A second hand joined the first, and held her level with the monster's face, tightening its grip. The strain against Twilight's bones grew painful, and she felt shallow, painful pricks all over her body where its nails were sinking into her skin. It pulled her closer, until Twilight was inches away from its eye.

Twilight fired into the pupil, and the whole eyeball popped into jelly.

The monster yelped and recoiled, inadvertently exposing its other eye. Twilight fired again, and the monster screeched, dropping Twilight and covering both eyes with one hand. She landed with an oof and immediately stood, watching the monster stagger and flail blindly. It was an opening to run, but she knew that the creature could easily regenerate its eyes, and she had no idea how big a window she was working with. Probably not long enough to escape, but perhaps long enough to turn the tide.

She scanned the chamber, looking for something that she could use. Her gaze settled on the remaining column sitting at the top of the dome's steps, and its pointed tip, resembling nothing so much as the end of a quill pen.

With enough oomph behind it, that might just be enough to penetrate its skin. Maybe enough to deliver a mortal strike that even a monster like that couldn't recover from.

Twilight felt a sickening turn of her stomach.

The monster dropped its hand from its face, revealing a pair of partially regenerated eyeballs, glowing green spheres stuck into sockets that still oozed eye jelly. It brought both hands down on Twilight, and struck against a pink bubble that warped and expanded and contorted around them. Glowing pink fingers interlaced tightly with the monster's own, locking together as it tried to pull away.

Twilight twisted. This was no different from hoof-wrestling; it was all about leverage. Hoof-to-hoof, she could never hope to win, not against somepony with muscle. But she'd put her own skills with levitation, with telekinesis, over brute strength any day.

Lathered with sweat and screaming her throat raw, Twilight wrenched the creature's arms sideways with force enough to topple it onto its flank. Her field extended, wrapped around its exposed belly, and rolled it until it was flipped onto its back. Its reformed eyes bulged with shock, and its limbs waved as it tried – and failed – to flip itself over.

The column was the linchpin of her plan, and she reached out for it now. She could feel it through her senses, but the levitation field she tried to form around it wouldn't materialize. It was all she could do to keep the monster pinned – she didn't have the energy necessary to manipulate another object of such size and mass.

She despaired until, in the corner of her vision, she saw Trenton bound up the stairs, seize the column, and leap impossibly high into the air. A single point of blue burned above as Trenton, with force whose sheer dynamics were too terrifying for Twilight to ponder or calculate, flung the column straight through the monster's exposed belly.

He was off target – but only slightly. The marble column pierced its thorax left of center. Gore and chitin sprayed from the wound, accompanied by billows of green smoke. Trenton landed and bounded into the air again, arcing downward like an arrow with his leg thrust forward. He struck the exposed tip of the column with a kick that hammered the entire thing through the monster's body, nailing it into the ground beneath.

Its limbs went taut, then limp. Eyes rolled back into its skull, and it emitted a gurgling sound as smoke poured from its body. Twilight backed away and plopped onto her haunches, feeling the sickening feeling return in force. She was absurdly grateful that she'd already expelled the contents of her stomach.

Twilight heard Trenton approach, and looked up in time to see him collapse to one knee. His body looked worse than ever – the lighter parts of his exoskeleton had been cooked enough to be as uniformly dark as the rest of his body, and his vest was charred black. His handgun was gone, and Twilight could see that the holster on the front of his vest had been partially shredded by the explosions from his ammunition cooking off.

Her first instinct was to ask if he was alright, to extend him her sympathy. She caught herself before she could, and immediately castigated herself for even thinking that sympathy was something she'd have to check. Enemy or no, he'd helped her – that entitled him to concern, if nothing else.

"You alright?"

The light in his eye flickered rapidly before darkening completely – its lens was cracked, with a fracture like an asymmetrical, upside-down Y. "Self-diagnostic and repair systems will keep me functional in the long-term. In the short-term... suffice to say, I am grateful for my pain inhibitors."

Lucky you. Twilight felt, and probably looked, like a punching bag on four legs. But she was alive, and so was Rainbow – and that was what really mattered.

She forced herself to look at the monster and shuddered.

Three cheers for teamwork.

"You surprise me," said Trenton, having apparently noticed her discomfort. "Seeing this thing in its final throes disturbs you? After all the death you've seen so far?"

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and breathed slowly, trying to steady herself. "Doesn't make seeing it again any easier."

And I hope it never gets any easier.

Then a blast that neither of them saw coming struck Trenton in the chest, throwing him backward and slamming him into the ground.

It was all Twilight could do not to let out a petulant "Oh come onnnnn!"

One of the monster's limp and lifeless hands suddenly shot up, took hold of the column's exposed base, and pulled it free with a shriek of pain and a sudden gout of smoke. No longer pinned, it rolled onto its side, gathered its legs beneath its body, and rose on quaking, yet not limp or lifeless, legs.

The monster's horn was drawing the haze back into its body and stemming the flow from its gaping wound with what Twilight could only characterize as a glowing green scab. Twilight knew she needed to start moving again, but she couldn't – she was tired, and breathless, and pinned to her spot by a hate-filled gaze.

Those eyes... 

They were so unlike those of the golems. Theirs were, to the last, lifeless, emotionless, glassy, and pale. Even Chrysalis's. These were everything that the golems' weren't. They had pupils, sure, and vivid color, but more than that, they were expressive. Alight. Alive.

This... thing... has a soul. 

The monster delighted in mocking Twilight. It wanted to hurt Twilight. It wanted her to suffer. It wanted to watch her suffer. It wanted, and it acted deliberately, not driven by mere impulse or emotion, but by desire.

It dawned on her, all at once and quite without warning, just what she was fighting.

The monster lunged. Twilight braced herself.

And then the monster exploded.

A light soared through the darkness and bloomed into yellow flame against the still-glowing spot in the monster's exoskeleton. The blast blew its thorax into chunks, and sent the remnants of its head and abdomen and assorted limbs rolling across the cavern floor. Thick green clouds billowed from all its severed pieces, enveloping and hiding them from sight.

Twilight blinked. Rubbed her eyes and blinked again. She looked at Trenton, who had risen to a knee, and now stared past her, at the doorway to the bathhouse. Twilight followed his gaze.

She had never been so simultaneously elated, grateful, and infuriated with another living being as she was just then.

Snake knelt in the doorway with a long metal tube braced upon his shoulder. Smoke curled from its tip like an oversized, green-painted cigar. Some kind of black rectangle with a single lens, like a camera, stuck out from his forehead, and dangling from his left hip, suspended by a harness, was the carbine he'd found.

A hundred thousand conflicting impulses vied with one another inside of Twilight. She wanted to gallop over to him and bop him on the head for leaving her; she wanted to fling her forelegs around him and thank him; she wanted to throw Rainbow Dash over her back and make a break for it before the monster could regenerate, provided it wasn't simply dead this time.

But with Trenton nearby, and unaware of just what the situation above ground was, Twilight's response was, unfortunately, dictated to her.

She trotted toward Snake with a nonplussed expression. "Not to sound ungrateful, but if you're here, then who's looking after Cherry Jubilee?"

Snake raised an eyebrow at that. He stood, tossing the cylinder away, and opened his mouth to respond. The look on Twilight's face – one which she hoped said "I fed the scary cyclops ninja a cover story, and I need you to play along with it" – made him pause and rethink his answer.

"You're kinda being ungrateful just by asking, aren't you?"

The conflicting head bop/hug response resurfaced in full force. Instead, she just flashed him a quick, grateful smile. "How are things topside?"

"Seemed normal before I left. Why?"

Mechanical whirring and the crackle of static silenced Twilight before she could answer. Trenton was limping, and the smell of ozone trailed after him.

"You found what I left for you, I see." The damage was even obvious in his voice, which crackled with white noise even when he wasn't speaking.

Snake grunted. "Suppose you're expecting thanks."

"Not as such. You've met my other expectations, though – met and surpassed them. Well done."

Whatever response Snake had never left his mouth as a glob of hastily gathered and fired energy streaked toward him from one of the clouds. This time, Trenton was prepared. He moved quickly, shoving Snake aside and falling protectively over his body. The blast struck the bathhouse's facade in a burst of light that caved the building's entrance in, sealing off their escape route.

The green cloud was receding, being drawn back into the monster's body. Haze trickled from all its severed parts – its limbs, its abdomen, the larger, intact chunks of its thorax – only to be reabsorbed and sent down through its body, rapidly forming the outlines of replacement parts.

And the whole time, without mustering a follow-up blast, it kept its eyes locked on Twilight.

"Oh, come onnnn!" Twilight whined, flopping petulantly onto the ground.

Trenton stood, tucking one hand against his stomach and offering the other to Snake, who pushed it roughly away and stood on his own.

"We are, unfortunately, out of time to commiserate," said the cyborg. "You need to leave. Now."

"No kidding," Snake growled. "Main route's not an option. There's another exit around here that leads up to the cherry orchard though—"

"Those tunnels are too narrow. Separately, you might navigate them successfully, but the three of you, together, would never make it."

They debated, while Twilight looked to where she left Rainbow Dash. The monster had paid the pegasus no attention during the fight, and the barrier Twilight had cast remained in place, at full strength. With a flash from her horn, the barrier winked out, and Twilight reabsorbed its energy back into herself, sighing slightly at the sensation of strength that it provided. With another flash, she teleported Rainbow to her side and knelt to wriggle the pegasus onto her back.

"Here. Let me get her."

Snake was beside her, crouching, the carbine drawn from his hip. There was a clicking sound as he folded its stock flat against the gun's receiver. Then, keeping the carbine in his right hand, he wrapped his left arm around Rainbow Dash, and tossed her over his shoulder.

"Huh." Snake bounced her once. "Not so heavy as she looks."

"Hey. Focus." Twilight nodded toward the dome. "There should be another tunnel passing underneath this place, and an entrance inside there. She used it to ambush us earlier – it'll take us to where we need to go."

"You sound pretty certain," said Snake. "How—"

"I gave the tunnels a good sonar-whatsit-ing earlier. Trust me, if the orchard exit's not an option, then this one'll do."

Snake muttered something under his breath and shook his head. "I'll take it."

The monster's head rose, the rest of its still-glowing body following after. Trenton turned to face it, falling into a fighting stance, his joints whirring troublingly as he kept one arm cradled close to his belly. 

"Move quickly. I will stay, and cover your retreat."

"Why?" Snake growled.

The ninja was silent for a split second – long enough that Twilight realized he was hesitating. 

"Just think of it as philanthropy."

That took Snake aback. But, with the monster's body now fully reassembled, he had no time or incentive to ask for more. He and Twilight began the long sprint toward the dome.

Behind them came the sounds of battle – screeches and growls, muted echoes of blasts, and the thunderous crash of Trenton's blows against the monster's body. Twilight didn't dare look back as she ascended the stairs, Snake keeping pace admirably despite his burden. They passed into the dome, festooned as it was with the remains of Queen Chrysalis, a carcass that Snake spared only a glance before they skidded to a stop at the edge of a gaping hole.

Twilight winked to the bottom of the pit, and teleported Snake and Rainbow down with her before he could protest. Growling discontentedly, he pulled the device on his head down, covering his eyes, and flipped a switch. The lens glowed green, and Twilight's ears twitched at a faint hum that it emitted.

Then a blast from the monster struck the roof of the dome, and chunks of rock and marble rained upon them. Twilight galloped down the tunnel, shining her light ahead to show the way. Behind, the tunnel's entrance filled with debris.

Beside her was the comforting sound of Snake's heavy footfalls as they sprinted the tunnel's length to safety.





They emerged into familiar ground, onto the spot where Trenton had earlier warned Twilight off. That was when Twilight's body decided that it wasn't going any further without at least a moment's rest, and she collapsed forward with her rump in the air. There were no signs of pursuit, but regardless, she needed to catch her breath.

She rocked back onto her haunches, into a less undignified position, and scooted back to rest against the tunnel's wall.

Snake took a long, careful look down the tunnel, keeping his rifle leveled, until he was apparently satisfied that they weren't being followed. He relaxed, and lowered the gun and the pony to the ground, laying Rainbow on her side with her cheek resting against the dirt and her mane fanned out beneath her head. Then he sat down across from Twilight, pulling his knees close to his body and resting his elbows upon them.

"I saw the bodies back there," he said quietly. "Didn't look like your work. You don't strike me as the hollow point type."

Twilight nodded, shaking droplets of sweat that sparkled in the light from her horn.

"They ambushed me. I fought them off, but I couldn't... do more than that." She shuddered and looked at her hooves. "Trenton intervened."

Snake leaned forward. "Listen... You said so yourself, the golems—"

"I know," she interrupted, sharper than intended. "They're not alive; killing them is a kindness. I don't need platitudes, and I don't need a pep talk."

Snake narrowed his eyes at her, but nodded.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm just... it's been a really long day."

"Right there with you." Then his lips twitched upward just slightly. "Literally. And against my better judgment."

Twilight cracked a smile. "Yeah, how did you find me? I thought you said tracking wasn't your strong suit."

"It isn't. But you left an easy trail to follow." Snake tapped the device over his forehead. "That trick you do with your horn leaves behind some kind of heat or light signature, outside of the visible spectrum. That's more or less what these goggles were made for seeing. Following it led me to you."

"Huh. I learned something new about myself today." Twilight looked at the goggles, trying to mentally piece together the technological principles that made them function. 

I wonder if Snake would let me examine them when all's said and done.

"Wait..." Twilight cocked her head. "I don't remember you having those before."

"They were in the Humvee." Snake rubbed his left shoulder with his other hand and rotated his arm, accompanied by the snapping and popping of cartilage. "In a locked trunk in the back, along with the missile launcher. Bunch of other useful supplies, too."

"Trenton mentioned he left something behind for you, yeah." She eyed Snake curiously. "How'd you manage to open it? You got a lock pick that I don't know about?"

Snake patted the handgun on his holster.

Of course. At this rate, she was never gonna get to pick a lock.

"Plenty more where this came from, too," said Snake, shifting his back against the wall. "Stuff for the carbine, a different handgun, ammo for both. All the better, since I seem to have lost my tranquilizer gun somewhere along the line. Another missile, single-shot, like the one I used just now. A knife, documents that I haven't bothered to go through yet. Change of clothes. Even some field rations. Which, for your own good, I won't be sharing."

Twilight tried to whistle in surprise, but her lips were so parched that she could only manage to blow a puff of dry air. She pulled Killjoy's canteen from her saddlebags and took a long drink.

"Is it enough to tilt the odds a little more in our favor?" she asked after finishing her pull.

"It's enough to win a shootout. Maybe enough to kill a tank. Just don't ask me to fight a battle for you."

The remark made her eyes widen as she remembered Trenton's warning.

Snake sighed. "Something tells me you're about to do exactly that."

"They're going to attack Ponyville." Twilight pawed at the earth, pushing a small pile of dirt against her toe. "Pegasus Wings. Within a day, Trenton said. Now that we know about them, they see us as a threat to their plans, and they're going to come down on us."

Twilight heard a rumbly breath escape Snake's lungs, and his hands clenched tightly. Watching him reminded her of being in the monster's grasp, and a brief dizziness spell overtook her.

She shook her head and offered the canteen to Snake with an unhappy smile. "Guess you spoke too soon?"

He gave a suspicious look to the spout before accepting it and raising it to his lips.

"Maybe you should have thanked Trenton after all," Twilight added.

"Not sure he'd like the kind of thanks I have in mind for him," Snake said into the canteen.

"...Speaking of gratitude..." Twilight lowered her eyes. "Thank you."

Snake returned the canteen to Twilight, who capped it and put it away. "For?"

"Staying. Coming after me." She glanced at him.

"Ah... well." Snake coughed and shifted uncomfortably, turning away from Twilight. "I couldn't, uh, get the car running. So, y'know. Didn't have anything else to do."

Twilight smiled. It wasn't much, but it was probably as close to an affectionate sentiment that she was ever going to get from Snake. Something about him told her that he wasn't the type for bubbly, heartfelt displays of emotion.

I'd reciprocate in kind, but after all the trouble I went through without him around... I think he's earned a little bit of discomfort.

She stood on her tired little legs, trotted up to Snake, reared onto her back hooves, and flopped the front of her body over his shoulder, encircling her forelegs around him in a sloppy hug that made his body stiffen.

"Knock it off!" he snapped, shoving with just enough force to dislodge Twilight and push her onto her back. "Look, you really want to thank me? Never hug me again."

Twilight, supine, chuckled and rolled back onto her belly—

And came nose-to-nose with Rainbow Dash.

It occurred to her that, pressed for time and stressed as she was, she hadn't checked Rainbow's condition beyond confirming that she was still alive. They were still on the clock, of course, and needed to get moving, but without an immediate threat bearing down on them, Twilight felt she could chance a closer inspection.

She didn't like what she saw. Rainbow's body was battered and dirty, her coat smeared with dirt and the dried, crusty remnants of her cocoon. Her right hind leg was in a brace, and there was a bandage binding her right wing against her body. Trenton must have made some effort to patch her up after the castle. All told, she'd been through worse; Twilight knew that for a fact.

But her face... 

Rainbow had always been striking, with sharp, defined features that lent a lean, athletic sort of beauty to her – the kind of face where a daredevil smile was always right at home. Those features were now marred by a purple bruise, spread across the left side of a swollen jaw, and white bandages on either cheek, with faint red stains showing through the material. The cuts that IRVING left on her.

The bruise would fade in time, of course. The swelling, too. And there weren't any outward signs of serious damage to her jaw. Nothing broken, or dislocated.

The cuts'll probably scar. Of course, knowing her, she might not consider that a bad thing.

She heard Snake's body shifting as he rose to his feet, picking up the rifle. "We need to get moving. Trenton's tough, but he looked like a wreck – I don't know how long he'll be able to hold that thing off."

Twilight nodded without looking away from Rainbow Dash. "Just a minute longer. Lemme look her over."

"Twilight."

She shot him a look from over her shoulder. "Sixty seconds. No more."

Snake bit back a cutting remark, lowered the goggles over his eyes, and shouldered his weapon. "I'll have a quick look up ahead. Be ready to move when I get back." Then he was gone, moving down the same tunnel that Trenton had guided Twilight through before.

She was, of course, fully cognizant of the gesture he was making, and she appreciated it. Snake was prickly and cynical, but he had his own ways of showing compassion. She understood that much about him.

So this is the closest I'll ever get to an explicit display of affection. Maybe I should have saved that hug, in hindsight.

When the crunch of his boots against the floor faded away, and she knew he was out of earshot, Twilight leaned closer to Rainbow Dash. 

"You probably can't hear me. Maybe I'm wasting all of our time by doing this. But I need to say it... in case something happens to me before you wake up. Before we can have this talk for real."

Rainbow Dash remained still and silent, yet breathing steadily. Twilight ran her hoof through her mane – it was filthy and dirt-ridden, with pink blossoms stuck between strands here and there. She picked them out where she could, letting them flutter to the ground. Her hoof passed over some sort of bump on the nape of her neck, too. A cyst?

"Somepony needs a dermatologist," she said dryly.

She was half-expecting a smirk in response. But, of course...

I'm not used to you being this quiet, Rainbow.

Her eyes stung.

"I know you said it was alright to leave you behind. That we needed to make it out, even if you didn't. But leaving you there to die, alone... felt like I was killing you myself. I couldn't live with that. I risked everything... my own life, and Snake's, and the others back home... Ponyville, and Equestria itself... to find you."

There was a dam inside of her, strained to the point of bursting, and she was perilously close to letting it break. For a moment, she did, just a little bit. She lowered her head to bury her face in Rainbow's matted fur, and wept silently.

I don't know how I would have gone on if all this was for nothing.

When she heard Snake's footsteps drawing close again, she rose, took a deep breath, wiped her eyes, and stared resolutely at Rainbow Dash.

But the past is the past. Nopony's getting left behind again.





To Twilight's surprise, and mild pleasure, the lighting spell she'd cast in the first chamber was still active – dimmer now, to be sure, but burning brightly enough to illuminate the ruins and the corpses of the golems.

Twilight took great pains to avoid looking at them as she and Snake strode toward the vantage point from which she had first glimpsed the city. She glanced at Snake from the corner of her eye.

"How'd you manage to get down from there, anyway?"

"Climbed. Not the longest I've ever done, nor the most difficult, but having an M72 on my back made it tougher than it should've been. Not sure how I'm gonna do it while carrying this bum." Snake bounced Rainbow Dash once for emphasis.

Twilight arched an eyebrow, smirking.

"You're gonna teleport me, aren't you?"

The smirk became an impish grin. One flash had her at the mouth of the tunnel. Another brought Snake and Rainbow to her side. A third sucked the dimming orb back into her horn, restoring a measure of the energy she'd spent.

Snake grumbled and looked at her, the irritation in his gaze plainly visible by the light that shone from the tip of Twilight's horn. "I didn't consent to that."

"Lighten up. Big ol' baby." Twilight began the ascent up the tunnel's gentle slope. "C'mon, I'll take point. Be ready to leap into action, though – if Trenton was telling the truth, we're about to emerge into a war zone."

Snake's footsteps padded softly in the dirt – starkly different from the crunchy gravel beneath his feet in the tunnels outside the city. "War zone?"

Oh, I missed my growly echo.

"Trenton had some high-tech gizmo in his brain that could track the golems' movements. According to him, the entire swarm went up top not long after I came down below. He didn't know about the Guard, so he thought they were fighting you."

"Built-in sensor package, huh?" Snake grunted. "Wonder if he has Soliton radar."

"I could not begin to tell you. Nor could I tell you what that is, even if I knew whether or not he had it."

"Figures. Still, I wouldn't take him at his word when it comes to things like the disposition of an enemy army. Even a mutual enemy."

Twilight's beam caught one of the footprints left behind by the monster. She took care to step over it, keeping her light on it so that Snake could avoid it as well. "I realize he's not a remotely credible source, but in all the time I've been down here, I've only seen the eight golems that ambushed me initially. If they're committing all their forces to fighting a pitched battle with the Guard, then you gotta figure they wouldn't be able to spare more than what they did to chase after me. Or us, rather."

Snake chewed on that before signaling his agreement with a grunt.

"Besides," Twilight added. "I doubt he's really motivated by philanthropy, but Trenton's helped us both out a lot today. Saving Rainbow, helping me, the supplies... I have no earthly idea why, but he has a genuine interest in making sure the three of us get out of Dodge alive, and that we – and the others – have a fighting chance. I wouldn't trust him, but we all want the same thing, if not for the same reasons."

"Yeah. That much is clear. It's why I don't get. What's their game?"

Twilight looked over her shoulder at him. "You don't mean Pegasus Wings, do you?" she asked suspiciously.

Snake met her eyes but he didn't elaborate.

Twilight looked away with a sigh and a shake of her head.

Guess there's still some stuff he's not opening up on just yet.

"That thing back there," Snake remarked. "I'm gonna assume that's what came out of the egg in the barn, right? You ever see anything like it before?"

Don't think I don't notice you changing the subject back there, mister.

"Can't say that I have." Twilight bit her lip. "But... I do have a theory."

"Care to share?"

Do you?

They were turning a corner now, and coming to the edges of the misty carpet. Far ahead, Twilight could see the tunnel's exit, and a bright light. Brighter than it should have been – even with the damage to the front of the barn, there should still have been enough of a barn left to block most sunlight from filtering in.

"When I asked the Operator about the golems," Twilight began. "He said that they were less important than whatever it was the souls were being used for. Remember?"

"I was a bit distracted with committing arson at the time," said Snake. "But yes, I vaguely recall that."

"He also said that souls could be transmuted, from energy to matter. Made into a body that's given a soul of its own. That thing... I'm pretty sure it was made from the souls of the changelings. Maybe the townsponies, too."

"So... the Queen bled her own kind, rolled their souls together, and left 'em in that barn to bake for a couple of days. Then it hatched, and burrowed its way down here?"

"I assume. Although your assumption is off by one tiny detail."

The fog was growing thicker now, obscuring the ground completely. Twilight tread lightly.

"You saw Chrysalis back in the dome. She'd been bled – strung up like some kind of trophy. Whatever did it to her used her to talk to us, the same way it talked to us through Cherry. It spoke of Chrysalis like she was still alive. Said that she hated me, and wanted revenge. And that thing... it certainly acted like it had a grudge against me. Took a real sadistic pleasure in hurting me."

"So what are you saying?"

"That thing is Queen Chrysalis. Or it's carrying her soul. I don't know what that means, exactly – this is a whole branch of magic and metaphysics that I'm completely unfamiliar with. But it... or she... hates me. And someone, or something, is exploiting that hatred."

Sounds of sudden combat echoed down the tunnel toward them – grunts and shouts, steel clashing. A distant roar, like a small explosion.

Trenton wasn't lying.

Twilight shot Snake a look and tore off, galloping through the remainder of the tunnel until she emerged into warm sunlight and fresh air. The barn had been broken to pieces in the fighting; the walls still stood, but the roof was gone. Splinters of rafters wove between the tops of the walls, but larger pieces of the roof itself were scattered around the inside of the pit, sticking partially out of the carpet of mist. From above the pit came some kind of wet, pounding noise, like grapes being stomped. 

Or perhaps cherries would be a more appropriate association.

Then a spear landed, point-first, an inch away from Twilight's flank, and she leaped away with a startled "wagh!" Snake shouted her name from the tunnel, and she heard his thudding footsteps as he ran to join her.

"Freeze!" A magenta pegasus with tufts of orange mane sticking out from under her helmet fluttered into the pit and retrieved the fallen spear. "You stay right where you are, or I swear, I-I'll put this right through your face!"

Twilight looked skeptically at the pegasus. Her weapon was clean, even glistening, as though it hadn't drawn a drop of blood over the course of the day. The entire length of the spear was shaking in its owner's grasp.

She was almost jealous of her innocence.

A green pegasus darted close to the first and whacked her over the helmet with a ping. "Dodo, you dodo, check your damn targets. Does that look like a bug to you?"

"B-But what if she's in disguise, sir?"

"Have you seen a single bug out here even try to shape-shift, Private?"

"Well, no, b-but that doesn't mean they can't! Sir!" Dodo's spear dipped, and she pulled it closer to herself. "We should test her, just to be sure, right?"

"Oh, for the love of – fine." Dodo's superior shook his head, muttering. He landed and pushed the petite pegasus out of the way to address Twilight personally.

"If you're Twilight Sparkle," he said slowly. "Then you'll remember what the first thing your brother ever said to his wife was."

She surely did. The image of her gangly, disheveled brother, sweating through his collar and shaking under Cadance's patient stare, was one of her favorite memories. That this random officer was using it as a litmus test to determine her identity, however... that made her savor it a little less.

Still, if that's what it takes to keep from getting skewered...

Twilight cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

"hELLo."

The officer snickered and burst into open laughter. "Yes! Yes! Exactly like that! With the squeaky voice and the varying pitch and everything! You nailed it!"

Dodo nervously started to join in, but the officer silenced her with a glare, and she contritely fluttered out of the pit, eep-ing softly. Then he resumed laughing, until Snake emerged with his gun held up, looking quite perplexed and out of sorts.

"It's alright," said Twilight, gesturing for him to lower the gun. "All a misunderstanding."

The green pegasus's laughter finally tapered off, and he sighed, wiping away a tear. "Lieutenant Strudel of J-Team. I assume full responsibility for Dodo's presumption."

Twilight nodded back. "No harm done. Though I'm curious how you know that story. I don't recall you being present that night."

"I worked Princess Cadance's security detail for a little while. We got to talking about Shining once or twice, and she let that story slip. Did a great impression, too." He snickered. "Of course, when it got back to the Captain, he was less amused. I was reassigned after that."

Snake looked between Twilight and Strudel, perplexed. "I'm... clearly missing some context."

"You shouldn't have shown up late, then. But enough reminiscing – we have a war on our hooves, unfortunately." Strudel glanced at the unconscious pony on Snake's shoulder, and turned to call over the edge of the pit.

"I need four pairs of wings down here, ASAP!"

Snake lowered his gun, but watched warily as Strudel's subordinates approached.

"Miss Sparkle," he said, all business. "Captain Killjoy briefed me about your excursion down in that tunnel. We have a triage set up in the farmhouse – if you'll allow my troops to take custody of Rainbow Dash, we can get her examined. Patch her up, if need be."

Twilight hesitated – having just reunited with Rainbow, she was reluctant to part with her so soon, but she did need medical care.

"Agreed."

At a signal, one of the pegasi approached Snake, who shared a look with Twilight before letting the guardspony take hold of Rainbow Dash. Grunting under his burden, the stallion rose in the air and made his way out of the pit, toward Cherry Jubilee's house.

The other three still hovered around Strudel. Twilight looked quizzically at them. "What're they for?"

"You," said Strudel bluntly. "You're welcome to try climbing your way out of this pit, but the walls are pretty steep. Now, if you had a pair of wings—"

Twilight vanished and reappeared on top of the ledge, looking down at Snake and Strudel from outside the pit. Snake's face twisted with anger before he flashed and rematerialized beside Twilight.

"Damn it," he snapped. "No means no, Twilight."

Twilight ignored him, instead watching smugly as Strudel flapped his way over to her. "Right. Okay. That works too."

She turned away from him, and was greeted by a scene of carnage. 

The front of the barn had already been home to a heap of corpses, but there were dozens more now, some still twitching. Ten or so battered-looking guardsponies stood among them, their armor scratched and coated with green smears. They looked at Twilight with worn-out, vacant expressions, while one passed between the twitching bodies and thrust his spear through their heads to finish them.

Watching him go about his work made Twilight dizzy again. She looked away immediately, breathing deeply to stabilize herself.

That was when she noticed Cherry Jubilee, who was standing over the body of a golem and pummeling it over and over again with her shotgun's stock, grunting ferally with every wet-sounding blow of her weapon. Here and there were the red casings of spent shells, an impressive number of them. Glancing at the bodies, Twilight saw a proportionate number with gaping holes blown into them.

"Trespasser!" Cherry shrieked suddenly. She slammed the gun down one last time, splashing her considerably gore-coated self with still more gore, and leaned in close to the golem's mushy face. "Off my land! Off! My! Land!"

Twilight drew closer to the mare, hesitantly reaching a hoof toward her. "Cherry? Are you—"

With a roar, Cherry spun and leveled the shotgun at Twilight.

Twilight froze. The pegasi reacted to Cherry's aggressive posture by drawing their spears and forming a semicircle around her, and she didn't need to look to know that Snake was trying to angle a clear shot from behind her.

He'd take that shot, too, if he had to. She wasn't going to give him a reason.

The bore of the gun, so close that Twilight could see the soot caking the inside of the barrel, shook in Cherry's grip. Twilight found Cherry's gaze and held it, until the traumatized mare slowly lowered her weapon. She averted her eyes shamefully, glancing behind Twilight, at Snake, and then at the ground.

Strudel gave a curt order to the ring of spears, and the pegasi relaxed.

"Sorry about... before," Cherry whispered, glancing quickly at Snake again.

Snake waved off her apology. "You weren't yourself. I'm more annoyed that the tranquilizer wore off so fast. You should be unconscious right now."

"I'm not complaining," said Strudel. He collapsed his spear and replaced it against his flank. "She and that boomstick of hers are half the reason we're still alive. Came charging out of the farmhouse in the middle of a skirmish, screaming like a madmare and blasting away. They never saw her coming."

Cherry stooped to inspect the gooey mess she'd reduced the golem's face to, turning her back to Twilight. Strudel approached, clearing his throat.

"So you'll have to pardon the mess," he continued. "The whole swarm of bugs kicked up not too long after you went down that tunnel, and we haven't really had time to tidy things up between fights."

Snake grunted. "How bad has it been?"

"Could be a lot worse. Captain left us behind to guard the farmhouse and the tunnel – keep 'em from going down there and bracketing the two of you. They threw a sizable force at us at the start of the fight, but the Captain led 'em away on a chase, and they haven't sent more than a few of 'em at a time ever since."

"Led them away?" asked Twilight. "Where?"

Strudel looked off in the distance and nodded. Twilight looked where he indicated.

A roiling, buzzing mass of black specks swarmed over Dodge City, darting and weaving among the column of white smoke that still rolled into the sky. Among that mass were flashes of light – the sun glinting off of Royal Guard armor.

"They've been at it for close to two hours now," Strudel remarked. "We've taken casualties, but no fatalities as yet. That I know of, anyway."

"That's a good sign," said Twilight. "Right?"

Strudel's face was grim. "The Captain's making a good show of it, and we're giving as good as we're getting, but we're badly outnumbered. Not to mention, we're fighting in full armor in a desert. It's only a matter of time before fatigue and attrition turn the tide against her. Then they'll come back here to mop us up, and that'll be that. Ground forces'll arrive in a day's time to find a massacre."

She wanted to dispute that – they were doing just fine, weren't they? But she could see the difference between this battle and the one from earlier. Killjoy had kept her fliers well-organized and disciplined then, but that was with the odds heavily in her favor. Between the impetus of the charge and her numerical advantage, there hadn't been a chance of that fight going against her. Against the full force of the swarm, however, matters seemed to go in a very different direction. There were no complex flight patterns, no stunning tactical maneuvers or formations. Just a swarming, writhing free-for-all, without even the benefit of superior numbers.

Strudel was right. The fight was decided.

No, she thought. No, we can help. Snake and I, we can turn the tide, together.

She looked at Snake. Their eyes met. He nodded, just so slightly.

Twilight smiled.

We can do it.

Then the ground rumbled and shook, a tremor that made the pegasi stumble and knocked Twilight off her hooves altogether. From deep within the orchard, a beam of pale green light shot straight into the sky. Trees uprooted and blew to splinters, their canopies catching aflame and withering instantaneously.

A whirlwind of trees and branches, of earth and stone, swirled about the light. Gradually, it diminished and the detritus caught in the storm dropped back to the earth below, leaving behind only the grotesquely twisted form of the creature which carried Queen Chrysalis's soul.

The pegasi rushed to form a line of spears in front of Twilight. Snake was at her side, gun leveled, and she helped herself to her hooves. Cherry just sat staring at the body she'd been mindlessly pummeling.

The monster spared the barn a glance before it shifted direction in the air. With shocking speed, it flew in the direction of Dodge City.

Oh, there's no way that'll end well for them.

"We have to do something," she said, to nopony in particular.

Snake answered anyway, though he took just a moment longer than she would've liked. "Yeah. No getting out of here with that thing alive. There's one more missile in the Humvee; if you can distract it long enough for me to get a good, clear shot—"

"I don't want to kill it."

Strudel scoffed. "Oh, well, naturally. Let's open a dialogue with the big scary bug monster. Maybe try and find some common—"

"Y'know, I'd be willing to take that kind of lip from Killjoy," Twilight snapped, glaring at him. "I'm less willing to take it from you. So, please, don't speak unless you have something constructive to say."

Strudel smoldered, silent and unhappy.

Snake nudged her shoulder, and she looked at him, disquieted by his worried expression.

"If he didn't say it, then I would have. Look, you've got a compelling theory, I'll admit, and if there were a way to settle this peacefully, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. But even if you're right about what that thing is, how it was made, you can't assume that you'll be able to talk to it. Or that it could understand you enough for you to negotiate with it. Or that it'd even be willing to listen."

Twilight sighed. "Normally, I'd be pooh-poohing this right along with you; I'm not the leap of faith type. But if I'm right, then that's not just some... monster we're dealing with, or a husk without a life or a future, but a living, thinking being. And a victim, every bit as much as the ponies of Dodge Junction. If there's even a chance that I can reason with her, maybe convince her to call this all off..."

"Whatever you're gonna do," Strudel muttered, watching the creature drift rapidly toward Dodge. "Make up your minds about it quick."

Snake sighed defeatedly and pointed at Twilight. "If things go south and I get a clear shot, I'm taking it. No arguing. And no guilt-trip. I'm not letting you martyr yourself for that thing."

Twilight felt a rotten feeling in her gut as she nodded in agreement.

"I'm pulling my troops back to the farmhouse," said Strudel, beckoning to the other pegasi with a wing. "I think you'll agree, there's no strategic sense in guarding this hole in the ground anymore. We'll form a tight perimeter and make our stand there if the fight goes against you."

Twilight stopped him with a hoof against his breastplate before he could leave. "Rainbow Dash..."

Strudel nodded curtly. "We'll look after her. Promise."

Then he dusted off the spot on his armor that Twilight had touched, and led the pegasi away.

"That guy's a prick," Snake muttered. "We keep running into pricks today."

Twilight let herself smile again before resuming her serious demeanor. "Go get your thing."

"Yeah. I'll be right behind you."

They exchanged one last look before parting, while Cherry, having failed to react to anything said or done, remained rooted to her spot.





Adrenaline kept Twilight from obsessing over her impending doom. With Chrysalis – or whatever one called that thing – rapidly approaching the city, there was simply no time left to feel scared.

Twilight retraced her steps, literally following her own hoofprints, until the familiar sight of Dodge City's plaza came into view. The town was in even worse condition than when she'd left it; the buildings and landscape were pockmarked with the signs of recent fighting, and the whole area was littered with corpses. Some were old – Dodge townsponies with gunshots in their heads or throats that'd somehow gone missing – but many more were new. The ground was littered with dead changelings.

Standing amid the carnage on the ground was Brevet Captain Killjoy, recognizable by the red feather crest on her helm. She was reared back on her hind legs, leaning her front half against her spear, its point driven deep into the vitals of a golem. The melee raged overhead.

Twilight called out to her, and she looked up. Their eyes met briefly, before Killjoy's gaze was drawn by the far more intimidating sight of the monster approaching. It fired a thick wad of energy from its brightly glowing horn toward Killjoy, who flipped acrobatically aside, leaving her spear embedded in the golem's carcass. The blast carried on, through the plaza, past the buildings, and struck the still-parked train on the tracks behind the city.

The explosion all but rattled Twilight's teeth in her mouth, and when the smoke cleared, all that remained was a carpet of twisted, melted metal stretching into the distance.

Twilight pushed herself to gallop faster and harder than she thought herself capable.

The monster landed in front of Killjoy, casting its shadow over her. Its head dwarfed the little pegasus as it leaned down to stare directly into her eyes. Killjoy remained rooted to her spot, her wings spread in defiance.

The monster's horn began to glow again.

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut, silently commanded herself not to fail, and teleported between the monster and Killjoy. A barrier enveloped the two ponies' bodies, a shield over which a green beam of energy washed, surrounding the two in blinding light.

The shield held. When the beam cut off, Twilight collapsed her barrier into a singularity and fired a shockwave that knocked Chrysalis backward. She staggered through the sand, shaking her head disorientedly, and struggled to regain her balance.

"Sparkle?" Killjoy's voice was tinny and muffled due to the helmet. "The hell are you doing?"

"It's called reciprocity; you saved me, so I'm saving you." Twilight shot a look at Killjoy over her shoulder. "Now get out of here!"

"A-And leave you alone?!" Killjoy's voice cracked. "This isn't your fight, dammit! I can't let you throw your life away for—"

"There's only one of you, too, Killjoy!"

The monster was advancing on them now, glaring murderously at Twilight. She growled with annoyance – there was no time to argue.

"Fine, whatever," Twilight snapped. "Just stay behind me!"

The golems disengaged from their fight with the Guard and reassembled above the monster, hovering without order or formation. It was then that Twilight realized just how unevenly matched the two armies were. For all their combined efforts, the enemy could still match the Guard, body-for-body, and then some.

Wings shuffled and armor clanked as, behind Twilight, the Guard struggled to reform their battle lines. She could only imagine how bloodied and disheveled they might have been – perhaps even on their last legs. Strudel was right; there was no way they'd survive another round.

That last effort was as much energy as I had left. If this doesn't work...

The monster's horn began to glow again. Twilight gulped, sucked in a lungful of air, and plucked her courage, before stopping the monster's advance with a shout.

"Chrysalis!"

The monster froze mid-step. The light around its horn ceased to build in brightness, but didn't extinguish altogether, and its eyes were still alight with fury.

Okay, well. I guess it can understand me. That's a start.

"I know it's you," Twilight said, iron in her voice. "I know what was done to you. What happened to your brood. How you were all bled, and turned into—"

The monster lunged suddenly, and Twilight stiffened, Killjoy recoiling behind her. But no attack came. It simply drew its face close against Twilight's, just as it had done with Killjoy.

Twilight remained outwardly unintimidated. Inwardly, she was wondering if the only reason she wasn't peeing herself was because she hadn't had enough to drink.

She clenched her jaw and stiffened her spine, staring back. "I'm not trying to mock you. The things that were done to you are unforgivable. I can't begin to imagine the pain you went through, but I'm sorry. For what it did to you. For what it did to your... to your children."

Its eyes narrowed. The glow around its horn remained.

"I know we have no reason to like each other," said Twilight, quieting her voice and keeping it even. "But enemy or no, I wouldn't wish this on you. And somehow, I doubt you'd wish it on me."

The monster made a snorting sound. A shake rippled through its body from front to back.

She's laughing at me, isn't she?

"Okay, so, maybe you would wish it on me. That's... fair." Twilight swallowed and nodded placatingly. "You're angry, and you're out for blood, and you could probably crush me flat right now, so why would you be inclined to sympathize with—"

The monster slammed its hands, palms-down, on either side of Twilight. The ground shook from the force of impact.

Killjoy touched Twilight's withers with a shaking hoof. "I don't think that's helping, Sparkle."

Twilight shushed her before addressing the monster again. 

"Yeah, you could totally kill me right now. Smash me flat and blast me into ashes. But who would that serve, exactly? Who are you really angry at? Because however much you might dislike me, I'm not the one who did this to you. Killing me changes nothing. It won't give you back anything you've lost. The only one you're really helping is the one who made you this way in the first place. How is that a victory?"

Twilight paused to let that sink in. It seemed to help – the monster's eyes narrowed, and its hands slowly lifted away from the ground, arms tucking back against its body. It pulled its head away from Twilight, took a short step backward, then another.

But the light around its horn still did not vanish.

"Do you know what would be a victory?" Twilight asked. "To deny that thing the satisfaction of knowing that it turned you into a revenge-driven monster. To let go of the anger, and find a different purpose. You just need to choose. Choose life. Live for yourself."

Twilight took a tentative step forward, gently shaking Killjoy's hoof loose.

"Right now, I'm going to make a choice. I choose to forgive you. To let go of everything between us. And to offer you my friendship, if you'll have it. Let's start over together."

Twilight could feel the eyes of the Guard watching her. The sunlight reflected by their armor formed blotches of blinding white on the sand. She could only imagine the pegasi's confusion – not just about why she was addressing the big scary monster as "Chrysalis," but about why she was bothering to talk to it in the first place.

On that much, at least, she could relate. All her lessons and everything she believed in demanded that she extend an olive branch. But she could see the fury in the monster's eyes, the hate and resentment. Worse, if she looked hard enough, she knew she'd find something like it deep inside of herself.

Am I doing the right thing, Shiny? Would you forgive her for what she did? To Cadance, to Celestia, to me? To you?

She wasn't sure she could, in his place. She wasn't sure she could now. But she could decide to try. Forgiveness was a choice, one they could make together. So she told herself to forgive Chrysalis, and to extend her hoof in friendship.

The light around the monster's horn faded into a pale shimmer, and finally vanished.

Twilight smiled with relief. For a moment, everything was right.

Until a cold wind blew, carrying the faint scent of ashes.

A tremor ran through Chrysalis, starting at the tips of her legs, rippling up through her thorax, and out to every one of her extremities. Her fingers curled and uncurled madly; her scythes flailed in the air; her wings beat violently out of sequence, and her eyes widened in fear. She wailed – a high, shrieking note that the golems added their voices to, joining in a terrifying harmony.

Helplessly, Chrysalis rose into the air, her wail becoming a primal shriek. Thin lines, like a puppet's strings, materialized from her limbs and her horn, all rising to meet at a point high above her – at a black cloud, cruciform in shape, which gathered in the sky over Dodge. Pale lightning flashed inside the cloud, and a pair of yellow slits, burning brightly, ripped open at its peak – eyes that pierced Twilight with the force of their anger.

The light returned around Chrysalis's horn. It built at the tip in a sphere of green that grew from a pinprick to a boulder to a miniature star, larger even than the monster that generated it – a sun that bloated until it became the sky itself, bathing everything below in its sickly light.

The golems stayed where they were, still adding their voices to Chrysalis's. Twilight could hear Killjoy shouting indistinct orders over the din, but was only able to pick out the word "retreat." Yet she didn't join her command in fleeing. Whether out of obligation to Shining, or to Twilight herself, Killjoy refused to abandon her.

Twilight's horn shone with her own light, and she dug her hooves into the sand.

It wasn't until the missile struck Chrysalis's horn that she remembered – she still had a plan-B.

The body of the monster dangled in the air for just a moment before the strings holding it up snapped, and it fell to the earth like a rock. The sphere did not go with it. That much energy, focused into that large an attack, would not simply go away, but without Chrysalis keeping it focused and localized, it was rapidly destabilizing. The surface of the sphere shifted and bubbled, like water at full boil on a roaring flame.

Then, quite all at once, it burst.

Twilight threw her body against Killjoy's, knocking her onto her side. A shield enveloped them, a candle that was swallowed by Chrysalis's inferno. Twilight the heat engulf it, like a limb dipped in molten lead. Her skin started to crawl with the thought of that sensation consuming her every inch – the sensation of burning alive.

Thoughts of her friends flashed through her mind. The others, back home. Rainbow Dash, unconscious in the farmhouse. Cherry, half-mad victim of some unspeakable evil. Snake, who'd come back for her, twice saved her, only to watch her wither like a match. Killjoy, clinging to Twilight like a life preserver. So many who were counting on her. So many friends who believed in her.

So many she was about to fail by dying.

Deep inside of Twilight, a spark ignited. The barrier she'd tossed up, her last-ditch defense, swelled and glowed ever brighter, expanding against Chrysalis's final attack. Light filled her vision; she saw nothing but white, felt nothing but warmth – comforting, not searing, warmth. The world inside her bastion of safety grew quiet, and slid away, like oil in water.

And, once again, everything was right.





"She's coming to," a voice growled, like hooves crunching in broken glass. "Twilight, are you okay?"

Dream-induced visions of a starry sky and a swath of blue nebula vanished from Twilight's sight. She found herself immersed in darkness, hot sunlight scorching her face.

I don't think that I'm on fire... although this heat is easily comparable.

She tried to open her eyes, and immediately wrenched them shut again as a hot spike of pain thrust into her skull beneath her horn. Her mouth felt numb, and she smacked her lips twice before trying to answer.

"Snuhhhhhhh..."

"She doesn't sound good." The second voice was tired, and soft like butter. The speaker's breath wafted past Twilight's nose. She caught a whiff of something sharp and sterile. Alcohol.

Bourbon.

"I've seen her do this before," the first voice assured the second. "If anything, she'll be better off for it. Might have a hell of a headache, though."

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.

Twilight raised her head off the ground. Grains of sand, embedded in her skin, trickled down her cheek like tiny, hardened teardrops. Fighting back the pain in her skull, she slowly opened her eyes, and the indistinct shapes of the world around her came into focus.

Snake and Killjoy were on either side of her. The human, his face impenetrably stolid, held a canteen in his hand, and he raised it to her lips, tilting it enough to send a stream of water into her mouth. Twilight took hold of the canteen with her hooves and tilted it further, drinking greedily, until some of it went down the wrong pipe and she pulled away with a gasp and a cough, water dripping from her muzzle.

Killjoy had her helm in her hooves and was looking past Twilight. A glint of silver metal poked out from a gap in her breastplate.

Twilight cleared her throat and smacked her lips again to get the feeling back in them. When she spoke, her voice was slightly strangled.

"How long was I out for?"

"Not long," Snake answered. "Couple minutes."

Twilight looked at Killjoy. "The guards?"

Killjoy met her gaze reluctantly. "No fatalities. They got away before the town went up."

"The blast wasn't quite big enough to hit the ranch," Snake added. "And the guards and I were both well outside its radius when it went off. The golems didn't make it, before you ask. But when I saw that shield go up, I had a feeling the two of you'd be okay."

Killjoy crept closer to her. She set her helm down on the sand and pushed her sweat-matted bangs out of her face. "Sparkle, I'm... I don't know what to..."

Twilight watched her expectantly.

Killjoy didn't finish her thought. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut, snapped her wings open, and took to the sky, flying toward Cherry Hill.

She forgot her helmet.

Twilight tried to turn her head to follow her, but tweaked something in her neck, and winced in pain. She sipped again from her canteen, draining the last few droplets of water.

Strange mare.

"What happened to Chrysalis?" she said to Snake, capping the canteen and rising to her hooves.

Snake backed away to give her room to stretch and breathe. "See for yourself."

Lifting her head, Twilight examined her surroundings. The explosion had blown everything away – the buildings, the corpses of the fallen, the charred rubble of the saloon. The trains had vanished completely, both the debris of the one destroyed before, and the express that she and Snake had ridden to Dodge. In the distance, Twilight could see Cherry Hill Ranch – the farmhouse, the remnants of the barn, the Humvee behind it, and a great pit where the orchard had been. Deep inside were the ruins of the old city, and the remnants of the changelings' hive.

But the city above that had simply ceased to be. Save the outlines of the train tracks and the buildings' foundations poking out of the sand, there was no trace of any equine habitation.

Nearby was a thick sea of green smoke, and the sinister cloud hovering above it. Immersed in the smoke, with only her head exposed, Chrysalis lay.

Twilight immediately moved toward her, distantly realizing just how good her body felt. Her muscles thrummed with new energy; she was rejuvenated, alive. Were it not for the headache that still throbbed beneath her horn, she'd swear she felt better than she would after a good night's sleep.

Chrysalis had not fared nearly as well.

Snake's missile had impacted at the base of her horn, shearing it off completely and destroying much of her cranial exoskeleton, revealing the lumps of pale white flesh beneath. One of her eyes was fused shut, while the other was completely exposed, the socket surrounding it blown away. Its suffering showed plainly as it stared at Twilight.

The cloud hovered over the body, eyes wide and blazing.

"I can't hear her quite so clear anymore."

Twilight turned, startled. "Cherry?" She hadn't even heard the mare's approach.

Cherry had her shotgun tucked under her foreleg. Her head was raised back to regard the cloud. "She's fadin' away. The words, they're not as loud as they were. Like an echo down a long hallway. I can still feel the hate, though. Powerful, bitter, like ashes. Hate for the world, for the Queen, for you. For him."

Twilight looked at where Snake stood, staring expressionlessly at the cloud from a respectful distance.

"For Snake?" she asked.

"Most of all. They're alike, the two of them. They both looked into the same darkness, but he walked through it, came out the other side."

"But what is it?" she asked Cherry in a whisper. "Do you know?"

Cherry glanced at Twilight from the corner of her eye before answering.

"The Lord of the Flies."

Twilight watched as the smoke surrounding Chrysalis was drawn into tendrils and absorbed into the cloud, leaving behind the body with its full damage laid bare. Much of her exoskeleton had been liquefied by her own attack, fusing pieces of her body to herself and partially melting her into the ground. Her legs were puddles; her arms, tucked against her body, had merged with her thorax. The fingers that hadn't melted away, or fused into one another, opened and closed feebly. The scythes on her shoulders were simply gone.

Then the cloud dissipated and vanished, blown away in a breeze that Twilight never felt. Its eyes lingered after everything else, hovering and surrounded by nothing, until even they burned out.

Chrysalis's lone eye met Twilight's, and stared plaintively at her, an unspoken plea passing between them.

Snake approached, the revolver in his hand. Twilight looked at its chrome surface, squinting at the way it caught the sunlight. She wondered about the weight of the thing – if she wrapped it in her magic, or cradled it in her hooves, would it be heavier than the one she'd held before?

Twilight approached Chrysalis, knelt in front of her face, and bowed her head.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You didn't deserve this."

Her pupil constricted slightly, and Twilight released a ragged sigh.

Nothing alive deserves this.

She stood and backed away from Chrysalis. Her eyes met Snake's.

He nodded, and raised the revolver.

Twilight was suddenly jostled by Cherry Jubilee shoving her way between her and Snake. She stepped close to Chrysalis, closer than Twilight had gone, raised the shotgun, and pressed it against an exposed patch of flesh.

Twilight swore she saw Chrysalis lean into the barrel before a gunshot carried across the sandswept ruin of Dodge.





Cherry Hill Ranch was an oddly named place. The farmhouse and barn rested on a little knoll outside the orchard, but the ranch itself was nestled in a valley overlooked by the much larger hill that Dodge City had been built on. The contradiction was a curious one. Twilight never quite knew what to make of it.

I suppose it doesn't matter now.

The three of them slowly made their way back into the ranch. Snake carried Cherry's shotgun in his arms – he hadn't liked the way she was looking at it after killing Chrysalis, and she'd surrendered it without a fuss. He'd grumbled at the start of the walk about scolding whoever kept letting her have it back against his recommendation. Perhaps he was trying to start a conversation, to keep Twilight's mind occupied.

It hadn't worked. Twilight was too tired to talk. Too exhausted to think. Something had rejuvenated her enough to ward off the blast that leveled Dodge, yet it was all she could do just to carry her own weight.

Seeing Rainbow Dash at the bottom of the hill, leaning against Jinglebell for support, changed that.

Twilight broke into a gallop and left everything behind, her cares, her fatigue, the pained look in Chrysalis's eye, and the acrid stench of the golems burning alive. Everything but Rainbow Dash was forgotten as she raced down the hill.

At her approach, Rainbow pushed gently away from Jinglebell, who smiled sadly as he watched her limp to meet Twilight. The bandages on her face had been changed, she was clearly keeping her weight off of her wounded leg, and her gait was uneven and shaky. But she was walking, on her own power, eyes open and awake.

Twilight slowed a few paces away from Rainbow, panting and staring, half in disbelief. Jinglebell fluttered closer, chuckling.

"I'd just finished changing her bandages when she came to. When I explained the situation, she ran for the front door and face-planted in the living room rug. Nearly broke her leg all over again."

Rainbow Dash blushed and stepped closer to Twilight. "How do I look?" she rasped.

Twilight sniffed and smiled. "Like crap."

"Tch." Rainbow Dash tossed her mane. "I think you're just jealous that you don't have some sexy new scars on your face. I mean, you've always rocked the bookworm thing pretty good, don't get me wrong, but—"

Twilight flung her hooves around Rainbow Dash and buried her face in her neck. The dam that she'd just barely held together in the tunnel collapsed.

"It's really you," she sobbed. "You're alive, and you're okay."

"Heh. You sound surprised." Rainbow shifted uncomfortably against Twilight. "C'mon, you're embarrassing me. The guards are watching."

Twilight pulled away, glaring at Rainbow through her tears. "You think I care about that, dummy? You think I care who's watching?!"

She saw her face reflected in Rainbow Dash's eyes. Despite her protestations, they were just as waterlogged as Twilight's.

"I thought you were dead, Rainbow. Thought I'd lost you forever. And I moved heaven and earth to get you back, and now that you're here, there is no power in the universe that's going to stop me from holding you!"

"Twi—"

"You are not too cool for me to hug you in public, Rainbow Dash!"

Twilight sagged against her friend again and buried her face in her mane, tears spilling into the dirt-streaked strands of hair. She smelled of sweat and dirt and pine.

Rainbow Dash chuckled, and Twilight felt her lean into the embrace. A warm, soft wing draped over her back.

"Well..." Rainbow Dash sniffed. "How can I say no to that, huh?"





The butcher's bill was lighter than expected. Contrary to Lieutenant Strudel's pessimistic assessment, Killjoy Company had miraculously emerged from the battle without a single fatality. Casualties still ran high, however. Half the troops were wounded, and half that number too wounded to travel. Killjoy reluctantly broke her command a second time, establishing both a field hospital and a garrison at Cherry Hill, until the injured were ready to join the rest of the company in Appleloosa.

The retreat itself was a source of some contention between her and Twilight, who was counting on the pegasi reinforcing Ponyville's defenses once matters in Dodge were settled. Twilight plead her case as Killjoy inspected a new pair of saddlebags on the farmhouse's front porch. Snake sat disinterestedly on the front steps, nibbling on a ration he'd pulled from Trenton's supply cache, and idly inspecting Cherry's shotgun. The rest of the guard, those able to travel, milled about on the front lawn, clustering together in their respective teams.

"Ponyville's not exactly defenseless," she said to Killjoy. The Captain had her back to Twilight as she rooted through her new bags. "If push came to shove, we could probably organize some kind of resistance, but a few hundred unarmed and untrained ponies with no combat experience are not the most effective fighting force one could ask for."

"I realize that," Killjoy muttered, twitching one of her ears. "But my orders from the Princess stand. Whatever's responsible for all of this is still out there, and I'm gonna need everypony in the unit if we're gonna have a chance at beating it."

"Killjoy... We're talking about a threat to all of Equestria—"

Killjoy slammed her hoof into the floorboards, shattering them, and turned on Twilight.

"You've got your problems, and I've got mine, alright?!"

Her sudden change in tone and demeanor silenced the quiet conversations among her troops, and they turned to stare at their captain. Twilight's body was stiff, and her mouth drawn into a tight, thin line.

Snake watched from over his shoulder, chewing slowly.

Killjoy looked out at her bloodied, exhausted command. It seemed to dawn on her that angry, defensive shouting did not project the image of a confident and capable officer. Growling something under her breath, she shouldered her saddlebags, hopped over the porch's railing, and stepped around to the house's backyard.

"Steel," she called back. "Steel Wool, front and center. I want to speak to you alone."

The gray pegasus detached himself from the others and fluttered after her. "Why, Captain, it's not my birthday yet."

The others nervously resumed their conversations. Twilight trotted to Snake's side and leaned close to whisper in his ear. "What was that all about?"

"You can't tell by looking at her?" Snake said through a mouthful of ration. He swallowed the bite and cleared his throat, rising to his feet. "C'mon. You're smarter than that."

"What do you—"

"Is that her?" a mare yelled from inside the house. "Is that her voice I'm hearin' out there?!"

"Ma'am, you really need to lie down; you're still in critical condition—"

"You'll be in critical condition if you don't get your greasy hooves offa me, y'dang buzzard!"

A pink mare with a bandaged head and blood-stained coveralls stampeded from the house, dragging Jinglebell and another guard behind her. The two clung to her haunches in a valiant but vain effort to hold her back.

"Stovetop!" Twilight rushed to the engineer's side, smiling. "You're alive! I can't believe—"

Stovetop shoved Twilight away as soon as she came within reach.

"Don't you touch me, you good-for-nothin'. You wanna act like we're bosom-buddies after you left me t'get my noggin nibbled by them bloodthirsty zombies? All holed up in that oven of a train for Celestia knows how long?! I got half a mind to beat the stupid outta you!"

Goosefeathers rushed forward to help wrangle Stovetop, joining her efforts to the other two pegasi. Gradually, she was wrestled back into the house, roaring promises of vengeance upon Twilight.

"Don't think I won't be talkin' t'the Mayor 'bout this! Heads're gonna roll, Twilight Sparkle! Wait an' see!"

When she was gone, Jinglebell poked his head back out the door and sighed ruefully.

"Sorry about that. One of the squads doing search-and-rescue found her holed up in a train at Dodge station, and brought her back for treatment just before everything went to shit. She was ranting and raving about how you and your homo friend abandoned her and went off to make out, or... something. I dunno; I stopped listening after a while."

Twilight gagged.

"Anyway," Jinglebell added. "She's our problem, not yours. She's elected to stay here, with us, instead of return to Ponyville with you. Says she wants to be where 'the real heroes' are. Lucky me."

"Don't be too hard on her," said Twilight, shaking her head. "She's got a right to be upset, I think."

"Does she though?" Snake muttered. "As I recall, we didn't abandon her because we wanted to."

"We still could have done more for her. Checked the train, gone back for her. Not assumed she was dead." Twilight smiled blandly. "I'm glad she's alright, either way. But leaving her behind in the first place isn't something I'm proud of."

Jinglebell coughed. "To be honest, I wouldn't blame you if you had left her behind on purpose."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Jinglebell?"

"Yes ma'am?"

"Thank you. For everything."

"Thank me by dressing your wounds properly in the future. That goes double for you, mister," he added, shooting a serious look at Snake.

Snake made a gesture with his fingers whose meaning was lost on Twilight.





The two were walking back to the barn when Killjoy caught up to them, beating her wings hard enough to loosen feathers. She landed in front of Twilight, panting from exertion.

"I'm sorry," she said between breaths. "For poppin' off at you that way. That was shitty of me. Uncalled for."

"You don't need to be sorry."

"Yeah, I do. I damn well do. You didn't deserve me yellin' at you, not after the way you saved my life." Killjoy shuffled her wings and dug a hoof bashfully into the dirt. "What I should'a said is that I'm dispatching Steel Wool to Canterlot to report on our situation, and I made sure to include what you told me about Mr. Bad Guy and his homo parade. Not... quite in those exact words, though. Heh."

"Thought you needed everyone in the unit," Snake said.

"Steel Wool is the exception which proves the rule." Killjoy shook her head disgustedly. "It isn't much, but it's all that I can do for you right now. I hope it helps."

Twilight smiled to hide her disappointment. She understood Killjoy's reasons, but her reinforcements could have made a difference in the fight for Ponyville.

"It's... more than enough. Thank you," she said diplomatically. "What's your plan once you get to Appleloosa?"

Killjoy shrugged half-heartedly. "Pick up where we left off. Fortify the city against attack, use it as a base of operations while we evacuate all the outlying areas. I want all those ranchers and settlers under the same umbrella – no more massacres like the one that happened here. The unicorns'll put together some kind of spell to protect against the mind control that hit Dodge. And J-Team will dig in and set up a forward operating base here, sending the wounded on to Appleloosa once they're fit to travel again."

"Sure you want to leave behind your only doctor?" Snake asked.

"Jingles isn't my only doctor – just the only one with wings. The ones with the ground force are far less obnoxious." Killjoy smiled wryly. "We're gonna be moving out in a minute, actually. I just wanted to take some time to say goodbye. And to thank you for, uh... for what'cha did back there. You shouldn'ta had to do it, but you did, and I'm grateful."

Twilight chuckled. "I should be thanking you. It took a lot of guts to stand your ground and stay with me."

Killjoy's smile vanished. She turned away from Twilight, sagging.

Twilight stepped closer to Killjoy. "Hey... what's the matter?"

"It wasn't guts that made me stand there. I wasn't being brave. I was..." She stared at her hooves, trembling visibly in her armor. "It was one thing when we were winning. When it was us against the bugs, all thrustin' and flyin' and punchin'. But when I saw that thing comin' at me, starin' right at me, I just..."

Killjoy took a deep breath and turned away, a wing reaching into her armor for her flask.

Twilight covered Killjoy's wing with her hoof and pushed the flask back into its little hidden pocket, using the same leg to pull her into a hug. Killjoy stiffened, but rested her forehead on Twilight's shoulder.

"I failed so many ponies. Dodge, the others in the frontier, Shining Armor. And my own command, on top of everything."

Twilight squeezed her gently. "I know how that feels. I've felt the same way myself."

I think I still do, even.

"But you didn't let it beat you. You're too strong for that." Tears leaked into Twilight's coat. "I knew we were losing before that thing ever showed up, but seeing it... the way it blasted the train and came right at me... I just froze. I gave up. I'm a failure, Sparkle. I don't deserve..."

Her sentence ended in a sob.

"Let me guess," said Snake. "First time in combat?"

Killjoy looked up from Twilight's shoulder, sniffling. "How'd you know?"

"I knew the minute you took off your helmet. You put up a good front, play it off well, but I could see it in your eyes." He knelt beside her. "There's not a soldier alive who'd judge you for falling apart in your first real battle. Anyone who's been in combat has a story just like that."

Twilight looked at Snake. "Even you?"

"Don't tell a soul."

She winked at him, and pulled away from the hug, holding Killjoy's face between her hooves. The pegasus looked back at the ground, refusing to meet Twilight's gaze, but Twilight cupped her chin with her hoof and tilted her head to look directly at her.

"You're no failure. You're a good pony, and a good leader. And if there's anypony who can protect Appleloosa, it's you."

Killjoy's mouth hung open. She stammered faintly, her eyes red and shimmering.

Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against Twilight's.

Every inch of Twilight's body was alight. Her eyes flew open, and her mane and tail stood on end. She opened her mouth to protest, but Killjoy took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, slipping her tongue into Twilight's mouth.

Killjoy finally pulled away with a sultry, smoky look that abruptly vanished when she saw how blank and red-faced Twilight was. "I-I thought you were trying to..."

"Um..."

Killjoy cringed. "You weren't, were you?"

Twilight, in a daze, shook her head slowly.

Killjoy's face flushed, and she collapsed onto her butt with a groan. "Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shiiiiiit...!"

She tore into the sky, sending up a gust of wind that tossed Twilight's mane and sent the tails of Snake's bandanas whipping around his head to smack him in the face. A flock of pegasi rose up behind her as she went, taking the captain's sudden flight as their cue to leave.

Snake flicked his bandana back into place and looked down at Twilight, not even bothering to hide his smug look. "You know, this is probably your fault for saying that you'd 'take lip from Killjoy' earlier."

It wasn't just lip.

Twilight stuck her tongue out with a bleh and shuddered.





Rainbow Dash was dozing peacefully when Snake and Twilight arrived at the barn. Cherry was curled up beside her, inches apart from Rainbow and staring into space. The napping pegasus stirred at their approach, yawned, and smacked her lips. She looked at the two with an indolent smile.

Snake grunted. "Haven't you slept enough?"

"Uh, 'scuse me, did you spend the last twenty-four hours trapped in the clutches of two different bad guys? No? That's what I thought. So lay off."

"I just don't want to be responsible for carrying your lazy ass all over the place anymore. Gonna be doing a lot more of that if you decide to pass out on us for another day."

"Yeah, you should be so lucky. You know how many ponies there are that'd kill to carry my ass all over the...?" Rainbow paused and tapped her chin with a hoof, frowning. "No, that doesn't work very well. Shoot, lemme think."

Hearing them talk was almost exasperating. Their dynamic hadn't changed in the slightest – they were still just as antagonistic toward one another as ever. Still... There was levity where before there'd just been outright hostility – no malice in the way they spoke to one another, and Rainbow's smile never left her face.

Twilight was thankful they learned to get along before they ever came to blows.

"Twi, help me out here," said Rainbow, grinning. "I can't think of anything clever to say about my ass."

"Ah..." Twilight felt her face burning again.

Rainbow's smile twisted into a concerned frown. "You okay, Twi? You look kinda like the inside of a watermelon right now."

Twilight shot Snake a warning look, one that Snake did not seem to register. But that was alright, because the two of them had bonded over the course of the day. Surely that meant he wouldn't go out of his way to embarrass her.

"Killjoy kissed Twilight."

Twilight blushed and covered her face with her hooves.

Bad friend. Bad, bad, BAD friend.

"No way," Rainbow Dash snorted. "Seriously? ...Seriously?"

Twilight groaned and nodded reluctantly.

Everything tastes like cheap bourbon.

"Well, that's..." Rainbow Dash trailed off and murmured something inaudible before her voice picked up again. "It wasn't your first kiss, was it?"

Twilight peered angrily at her from above her hooves. "I hardly see how that's—"

"Ho-lee crap, it was, wasn't it?!" Rainbow Dash fell onto her back, laughing boisterously and kicking her uninjured leg in the air.

"It's not funny, darn it!" Twilight hissed between her teeth.

Snake shrugged. "It's a little funny."

"You – you need to mind your own – ugh!" Twilight stomped. "Don't you have a thing to do?!"

"Yeah. Probably." Snake wandered off to the back of the barn.

Twilight trotted grumpily over to Rainbow Dash and plopped down beside her, fuming. "S'not funny. S'not."

"Twi, hate to break it to you, but yeah – it's really funny." Rainbow Dash rolled onto her belly and sat up, her laughter dying down.

Twilight glared at her. "Don't make me regret rescuing you."

"Oh, please. You'd do it a hundred times over again if you had to. You missed me, and you know it, egghead." Rainbow leaned her head against Twilight's shoulder.

Twilight mumbled inarticulately, still flushed, but rested her cheek against Rainbow's head.

I did at that.

Then she felt Cherry leaning against her other side, and smiled.

Snuggles all around, I guess.

"Oh, and Twi? I actually am too cool for you to hug me in public like that. If you tell anypony back home that I ever got this affectionate with you, I'll never speak to you again."

Twilight squished her cheek harder against Rainbow's head. "Never ever never?"

"...For a year."

"A month."

"Six months."

"Three."

"Deal. Now shut up. 'S cuddle time."





I left the girls to their fun and made my way back to the Humvee. A cursory, post-battle inspection told me that it had escaped without any significant damage, although one of the guards had elected to smash the head of an unlucky golem against the rear bumper. Flecks of gore and chitin sullied the glossy finish of the motorcycle stuck to the back door. No problem – the gore would wash right out, and the chitin was almost impossible to distinguish from the finish.

Either way, it didn't matter. The car would run. It wasn't especially fuel efficient, meaning I'd probably have to keep the air conditioning off, but there was enough spare gasoline to get us back to Ponyville. But before I could worry about hotwiring the car, and getting us the hell out of Dodge (heh), I had an important matter that demanded I address it.

I needed a cigarette.

I propped Cherry's shotgun and my own carbine in the car's gun rack,  slid a cigarette into my mouth, and reached for my lighter, only to come away empty-handed. I patted myself down, feeling panic of the sort that Killjoy probably felt when the Chrysalis-thing landed in front of her, when I heard a quiet click from behind me.

It was Trenton – or, rather, a battered, broken hunk of scuffed-up exoskeleton, wearing the tattered remnants of a Pegasus Wings-issue combat vest, that had probably once been Trenton. His arm was outstretched; his hand held my lost lighter, and a flickering flame danced in the air, waiting for my cigarette.

I kept my face neutral, and extended my hand palm-up. It took a moment for him to get the hint.

Trenton shut the lighter and dropped it into my outstretched hand; I immediately lit my cigarette and took a drag from it.

"Don't suppose you have my tranquilizer gun, too." I glanced at the Beretta in his vest's holster – the source of all those nine-mil shells I found. "You'd know it if you saw it. Looks an awful lot like that one."

"I do not. Perhaps you ought to take better care of your own weapons."

"Don't push me." Every syllable I spoke sent another puff of smoke into his smeared and dented facemask. "I'm pretty sure I could take one dinged-up cyborg ninja in a straight fight. Especially now that he doesn't have a sword, or a little girl to use as a meat shield."

"Throw the first punch, and we'll see."

I'd gotten used to Trenton's eye flickering in conversation – it was the only way I could measure his response to anything said or done to him. The lens, though, was cracked, split into three roughly symmetrical sections. That was enough to keep it from flashing, I guess. This annoyed me, because I had no way of telling for sure whether his bravado was real, or if he was bluffing.

Because he may have given me a treasure trove of weapons, ammunition, a customizable rifle, and a load of handy add-ons, but I still really wanted to punch him. Still, I'd had my fill of that for a while. So I stuck the cigarette back in my mouth, waved dismissively at him, and turned to the Humvee, scraping off bits of stuck-on changeling skull.

"Good choice," said Trenton. "You pass yet another test with flying colors, son of—"

"Don't finish that sentence," I snapped, briefly pulling out my cigarette to wave it at him. "I don't want any more smug crap from you. I want answers. Back in the castle, you said you'd give 'em to me later. I'm calling you on that right now."

"Believe me, I intended to give them to you when I said it," Trenton replied. "Alas, we've no time for that now. Not if you're going to get to Ponyville before Pegasus Wings. They will be moving quickly, now that they know for certain that their trump card is inoperable."

"Trump card? Then... Metal Gear..."

"Is inoperable. Problems with integrating Cold War-era Soviet missile technology with a modern platform – a challenge to which Pegasus Wings' engineers were, unfortunately, not up to. Between that, the lack of a satellite network to guide the missile, and the inability for anyone to calculate a trajectory manually, plus innate problems with the unit's assembly—"

"Suppose I don't believe you."

"Then you don't believe me. Metal Gear works perfectly. I invented all of those technical issues because they sounded plausible, and you are wise to see through my bluff."

I really, really wanted to punch him.

"Decide for yourself what to believe," Trenton finished. "I am only here to pick up my ride home."

It took me a moment to realize he was referring to the motorcycle. "That's yours?" I said, jerking my thumb at it.

"Cain's, actually. Part of his life-long, Quixotic effort to emulate Big Boss, who rode one like this, a long time ago."

"Saves me the trouble of hauling it." I took one last hit from the cigarette and, satisfied, deposited it in my ashtray, leaning my weight against the Humvee's bumper. "Tell me this much, at least. Why Equestria?"

"'Why Equestria' what?"

I felt my trigger finger itch. "Don't get cute with me. We both know who's pulling the strings here. I just want to know why. What do the Patriots want with this place?"

"The answer to your question is more complicated than we have time for. But, to make a long story short... it suits their purpose. Our purpose. In a way which our own world does not."

Trenton strode to the back of the Humvee and pulled the motorcycle from its place one-handed, holding it easily in the air.

"The Cold War is over. The order and infrastructure that developed around it over the last half-century is obsolete, but through the toil of opportunistic soldiers-for-profit, like our mutual friend, Commander Cain, we have laid the foundation for a new order. And, with it, world peace."

I raised an eyebrow. "Military bodies fighting it out on behalf of other countries in proxy wars. Tearing apart entire regions for profit. Tell me where peace fits into that. And do it without quoting Orwell."

"Impossible," said Trenton. "The latter, anyway. Because the definition of peace, itself, has changed. Imagine an endless cycle of war-for-profit, keeping the wheels and gears of the economy turning, and keeping the human race alive. No destructive, globe-spanning conflicts driven by petty nationalism or ideology. No risk of a sudden nuclear exchange between major powers. That is the future: everlasting war. Routine, and pure, forevermore. Thus has war become peace."

Trenton set the bike down and lowered the kickstand with the end of his foot.

"Or so it will. For now, that new order is in its infancy, and we've a great deal of tinkering to do before it's ready. The experiment surrounding the Manhattan Incident was a rousing success, one we wish to recreate on a macro, rather than micro, scale, but we cannot do so on Earth, lest we inadvertently unravel our grand tapestry. In Equestria lies the answer to our little conundrum: A whole new world, with its own social order. Not quite a duplicate of our own, but close enough that it makes little difference. It will be the perfect crucible for honing the paradigms established by the S3 project."

I was gonna need another cigarette.

"You want a laboratory," I spat. "You want to screw this place up as bad as you did America. Use the whole damn country, and everyone in it, for your twisted 'social experiments.'"

"Of course. What were you expecting? Did you think we truly cared to help Macbeth achieve political change, or avenge his exile? Or that we had a stake in helping Cain to revitalize Pegasus Wings with Equestria's riches? Their partnership is something I arranged as a means to an end. Not unlike your friendship with Twilight Sparkle. Now that I've collected enough data on you to fit you into my mission parameters, that is."

"I ought to blow you the hell away."

"To shoot the messenger is a typical human response, and I will not hold your anger against you." Trenton rested his hand on the bike's seat. "But it is, in this instance, misguided. I quite agree with you; we should not be overthrowing Equestria's social order. For here is a world which works, as America ought to work, one where the inhabitants voluntarily capitulate to a guiding ideal while still freely practicing self-determination. Our ideal world, one where we are not needed. Equestria, as it is, could be the perfect mirror for America. Think of what we could learn simply by staying here and studying this place!"

I glanced at his free hand, the one not resting on the bike. It was balled tightly into a fist and shaking.

"Needless to say, my recommendation was denied." His fingers relaxed, and calm swept over his demeanor again. "And here we are."

"If that's really how you feel, then why help them at all?" I asked. "Come back with us.  You can still undo whatever it is you've set into motion."

Trenton shrugged ponderously.

"I am an instrument of the Patriots' will. I must carry out my mission, without question. It is my one and only purpose. To defy them would be..."

A spark ran through the cracks in his eye.

"...Unwise."

I heard the regret in his words. The acceptance, too. The sincerity. For the first time since meeting the bastard, I actually believed that Trenton was being straight with me.

Although something still wasn't quite right.

"You're jeopardizing your mission by giving me this material support," I said. "The guns, the ammo, the car – all this is stuff I can, and will, put to use taking you down. That'd ruin your little experiment, wouldn't it?"

"You would think so." Trenton drew himself up. "But make no mistake, nothing I have done here today has compromised us in the slightest. If anything, matters are more secure than ever now."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

He was quiet a moment before he answered cryptically.

"It means you are the man I thought you were. It may have taken a while – we've had a detour or two along the way, to be sure. But now, at last, things will finally play out as they should."

Trenton reached into a pocket on his vest and produced a key ring, which he tossed to me.

"You'll find it easier to start the car with those, rather than without."

Then he straddled the motorcycle, and it rumbled to life, a growl that built to a roar as he revved the engine. Trenton gunned it, swerved to the side, and sped off into the distance, a trail of dust and sand kicking up behind him.

I looked down at the car keys, pondering the surreal sight of a cyborg ninja riding a motorcycle, until I heard hoofsteps in the dirt behind me, and I turned to see Twilight Sparkle.

"You been eavesdropping?" I grunted.

Twilight shrugged. "You weren't being entirely forthcoming with some privileged information. It seemed the best way to get it."

Fair enough.

"I had to dislodge myself from some pretty vigorous snuggling to come over here, so we probably don't have long to talk. I'll make this quick." She stepped closer to me, a pensive look on her face.

"I can't blame you, exactly, for not being straight with me. Not after the way I treated you. But you made the choice to stay behind. As grateful as I am, it means we need to be open with one another, now more than ever. We need to know that we can trust each other. Not just as allies. As friends."

There was that damned word again – a loaded word if I ever heard one, especially knowing how much importance her kind put on the whole concept of friendship. This time, though, I believed her when she used it.

"Let's get going." I nodded at her. "I'll tell you what you need to know along the way."





Rainbow Dash managed to get the top half of her body inside the Humvee, but her back legs didn't follow. They stuck out, wiggling in the air helplessly while she tried to pull her crippled ass inside.

I grabbed Dash by the scruff of her neck, ignoring her yelp of protest, and tossed her – gently, mind you – onto the leather upholstery.

She scowled at me. "Little warning next time?"

"There won't be a next time. You're getting your leg fixed up the minute we get back to Ponyville. I'm done carrying you, remember?"

I slammed the door in her face before she could retort.

Twilight, standing beside me, sighed. "And here I was hoping you two would actually start getting along."

"We are getting along." I rapped my knuckles on Dash's window and shouted "Moron!"

"Jerk!" came her muffled reply.

"See?" I said, leaning against the window. "If we were actually mad at each other, there'd be adjectives to go along with those insults."

Twilight pressed a hoof to her forehead, massaging the base of her horn with a sigh. "Progress is progress, I guess."

"That's the spirit." I stepped past Twilight to the driver's door, when the sound of hooves scraping listlessly through the sand made me turn around. Cherry Jubilee stood alone, looking awkward and disheveled, shouldering a pair of stained green saddlebags.

"Cherry?" said Twilight, approaching her. "What's the matter?"

Cherry dipped her head and shied away at Twilight's approach. "Home's not home anymore," she mumbled. "Can't stay here. Up to my neck in blood. Phantoms, every which-way I look."

"Plus, a bunch of soldiers are squatting in your house," I added unhelpfully.

Twilight shot me a silencing look, but the remark actually drew a smile from Cherry.

"Are you asking to come back to Ponyville with us?" said Twilight. At Cherry's nod, she looked at me, smiling encouragingly. "We do have plenty of room in the backseat, right?"

I looked over to Rainbow Dash, who was already stretching languidly across the seats. "Yeah, looks like."

"By all means, then." Twilight guided Cherry to the door, which I opened, gesturing for Rainbow Dash to scoot aside. She looked like she was about to argue, but stopped and made room when Cherry appeared in the doorway.

Good. She had a little common decency tucked away under all the bluster.

I shut the door again and looked down at Twilight. "We done?"

"Indubitably." She beamed at me, hesitated, then patted me on the knee as she went to the passenger's door on the other side of the car.

Well. It wasn't a hug, at least.

Somehow, Twilight had beaten me inside when I took my seat, and she was examining the dashboard and the window buttons with a look of wonderment that made me think of Otacon. If, you know, Otacon were a small, lavender unicorn.

I slid the key into the ignition, and thought briefly of Apollonia's death in The Godfather before turning it. The car gave a deep, throaty growl as the engine came to life, a gentle hum rippling through the seats and the frame.

"Ooh." I could hear the grin in Rainbow Dash's voice. "I like this. I like this a lot."

Twilight's window whirred, again and again, as she raised and lowered it rapidly. Up it went, then back down, and up, and down, and—

She caught me glaring at her and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

I shook my head, tightening my hands around the wheel. Of all the indignities I'd suffered, chaperoning a field trip with a bunch of little ponies who'd never seen a machine with this level of sophistication had to be somewhere at the top of the list.

There was, needless to say, a CD player on the driver's console. I pressed the eject button, hoping to find something to listen to, something to make the trip go faster, or at least more bearable, without really expecting anything. To my surprise, a CD popped out, and I retrieved it. The name "Pequod's Greatest Hits" was written on it in black marker

"What's that?" Twilight asked, leaning over to inspect it. "A tiny record?"

"Close enough. It's music. Probably."

"And... Pequod is a musician in your world?"

"Pequod is a ship in my world. From a book." I turned it over, the light catching along its surface and breaking into rainbows. "Maybe it's some indie band..."

Shrugging, I slid the CD back into the deck and hit "PLAY." Immediately, a familiar piano tune blasted from the speakers, and I groaned.

"No. No, no, no, goddammit no!"

"What?" Twilight shouted, straining to be heard over the music. "What is this?"

"The Cure."

"Cure for what?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Shut up." I slipped two fingers under my bandana, and massaged my temples. "Goddammit, Trenton..."

Twilight, bopping along beside me in the passenger's seat, felt none of my irritation.

"I dunno," she called. "I kinda like it!"

I glowered at her, sat up straighter, and released the brakes, pressing my foot against the accelerator. "Better put your seatbelt on."

"Put my what – wagh!" She lurched to the side, smacking herself against the window with an extremely satisfying cracking noise as I floored it and swerved the car abruptly. She righted herself and rubbed the spot she'd struck, glaring at me.

"You're a butt," she growled. "A big, smelly butt."

I smirked and made a show of tugging on my seatbelt, an act she imitated fumingly.

It all flew by in a blur – Cherry Hill, and the road to Dodge, the barren patch of dirt and sand that had seen so much carnage. It may have been gone, but I knew where the train tracks were. And I could follow them back easily.

The engine roared as we sped west toward Ponyville, leaving the frontier, and all its horrors, behind.