Light Despondent Remixed
Chapter 3:
I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire

Shouts out to Jed R, Sledge115, and Vox for all their help.

Aegis walks back in the room, carrying a tablet with a rubbery plastic shell in his mouth. Something bulges from his saddlebag.

There’s a woman and a pony onscreen. A tall, thin woman with light brown skin, black hair, and deep green eyes. A purplish-pink pegasus with a turquoise-and-pink mane, and aquamarine eyes.

“So what’s this about, Kraber?” the woman asks. It’s hard not to recognize that deep, authoritative voice. You can’t tell if it’s inherently angry or just that commanding.

“I’m telling the story of how I defected,” Viktor says. “The whole fokkin’ thing. And it’s naw complete without the both of you. I’ve been recording the whole thing, so I’m thinking we could maybe make the story into a book.”

“Sounds like a huge book,” says the pegasus. Heliotrope. Who, going by the story she tells, was named after her birth color by her parents.

“Yeah, it’ll probably need some rewrites,” Viktor admits. “I’ve tried this before, but this time I have a plan. So this time, I’m going to have your stories from the start. Everything gets some foundations – none of this telling-it-as-I-go-along kak.”

“You,” Yael says, a smile creeping across her face, “asking us. For help.”

“Well, why not?” Kraber asks. “Isn’t that the kind of big fokkin’ lesson we learned at the end of this?”

“Iff’s mrnn mrmrstian mrmdition,” Aegis says, mouth still around the tablet.

“...What?” Heliotrope asks, as Aegis gingerly places the tablet on a nearby table.

“I said,” Aegis says, before reaching into his saddlebag. He comes out with what looks like a lump of rose quartz with an audio cable attached, then plugs it in to the iPad.

Before your eyes, pinkish-tinted holograms of Yael and Heliotrope appear, projected from the crystal at almost-but-not-quite lifesize.

“Lorne and Eva took time off to visit their families, and Oscar and QS are playing videogames,” Heliotrope explains. “Wasn’t in the mood to interrupt them.”

“Ja,” Kraber says. “Didn’t spend too much time, though – they’re still a bit mad at me. But hey, Dad’s trying, so are Tania and Lauw. It really hurt being around Lauw’s kid, though – he can barely look at me even for a second…”

Kraber stares down at the floor. “Would’ve left if Aegis hadn’t begged me to go.”

“You had to,” Aegis says. “I couldn’t just let you be alone the whole time.”

“You can’t push yourself away from them forever,” Aegis says. “Your dad loves you. Tania, Lauw… I mean, they watched you nearly kill yourself to s–”

Aegis shrugs. “That doesn’t really matter. The point is… look, family can be distant. Family can be the worst bastards possible when you finally see ‘em again. But yours… they’re trying, Viktor. Even Lauw’s son.”

“Really?” Kraber asks, skeptically. “I mean, I’m pretty sure he didn’t really trip…”

“Okay,” Aegis admits, “Lauw’s son isn’t trying very hard, but… he is trying. They all are.”

“What’s to know?” Yael says. “I killed a lot of people. I got sent to a punishment that turned into a nightmare.”

“And,” Heliotrope adds, “We got stuck working for a remorseless sociopath who was such a terrible person in general that no sane person would ever think that he was a good officer, to the point that he made me actually wonder if the mantra ‘better no officer than a bad one’ was for the best. Moving on.”

“Major Ze’ev,” Kraber says. “Please. I know, even after it all, we’re not kwaai." A smile creeps across his face. "But it all turned out lekker, ja? At the end of it all, you got Gardner in the–”

“I’m not apologizing, that felt-” Yael says, and what comes out is a surprise because Yael doesn’t swear nearly as much as most other PHL that Dancing Day knows. “Fucking awesome!! It’s just… it’s not exactly easy to talk about.”

“I can’t fault you for thinking that way, but …” Yael looks downcast. “No. That’s not it.”

“God,” Yael says, that sad expression vanishing for a few seconds, “You have just changed so much, Viktor. I’d just… rather not talk about it for a bit. Heliotrope, can you take over? I’ll pick it up soon, but… not now.”

“Alright,” Heliotrope says. “It all started in New York. After Nipville.”

They were already ~~killing~~ – no, calling – them the Butchers of Nipville. That was what Yael’s iPhone said, anyway.

Heliotrope was on the waiting room’s floor, laying on her stomach, looking at an iPad. Watching an old animation from five years ago. The animation echoed over the room. Someone in it started swearing. It could not have possibly clashed more with their moods.

Thought about the time Viktor Kraber had once shot her in the stomach. Thought about the chaos in the Middle East as the Bearers of Harmony and their personal vanguard filtered across the region. The remnants of ISIS and the newer terrorist groups of not-quite-united HLF, finding a seemingly inexhaustible supply of goons emboldened by apocalyptic fears, that found themselves with an excuse to fight in the open, co-opting military materiel which had failed to be evacuated in the mad rush from the Barrier.

Champagne Grape – known as Jinxie to virtually everyone in the PHL – had the worst fucking luck of anyone in the PHL, Heliotrope thought, in some distant part of her mind that was not screaming out “BURN IT ALL! BURN EVERY LAST BIT OF THIS TO THE GROUND!”

There was the time the purple and green mare accidentally discovered a load of ponification grenades in France when she was lightly touching everything in the room with her magic, managed to evacuate everyone from the old house before they detonated, somehow was set on fire, spent four hours straight in a decontamination chamber, and was left paranoid about other people touching her for the next month. Or, depending on who you asked, for the rest of her life.

And there was the time she’d been captured by PER during Operation Chrysoberyl, when they were working to capture Catseye. Then there was the time the Reavers rescued her and she’d been stuck wondering when these HLF would decide they didn’t want to kill her. Then the time that one of their members had been caught alone with her. Then the time Viktor Kraber had rescued her and taken a .45 to said member’s, ahem, member.

And then, finally, there was the time Champagne Grape immediately signed up for a quiet life in the Quebec countryside in a farming town, and found her town overtaken by HLF, and ended up being chained to the wall. With a shock collar originally made for dogs around her neck. A shock collar that could activate if the HLF man guarding her felt like it, or if she pulled against the wall too hard.

Champagne Grape was shaking, her big green eyes full of fear. Currently, Heliotrope was undoing the clasps on her collar. Or at least, trying to. Jinxie, no, Champagne Grape wasn’t making it easy, what with shaking so much.

“What in the fuck,” Heliotrope breathed, as she looked up into Champagne Grape’s eyes, taking her mouth off the shock collar, “did they do to you?!”

Oscar Mikkelsen stood next to Heliotrope, a big, stocky presence that looked like he barely fit into his armor. As always, Heliotrope couldn’t see anything behind the face-concealing, multi-eyed helmet the big man always wore, but she assumed he was absolutely livid. Oscar was the kind of person who found other ways to communicate despite not having any visible expressions.

Case in point, the HLF man with a receding blond hairline that was currently nailed to the basement wall by his testicles, courtesy of a 14mm spike from Oscar’s Armacham Hammerhead rifle.

Next to him were about five men and women. Three had been cut apart by Heliotrope’s wing blades and foreleg talons, and the other two had been blasted apart by the SMGs in her assault yoke.

“Are We Going To Do Anything About That Guy?” asked Quiette Shy, her artificial voice visibly causing a stir in Champagne Grape. Like Oscar, Shy was another person – or in this case, pony – who found other ways to communicate despite having a huge handicap. Namely, her muteness. “We Did Kind Of Destroy His Testicles With A Nailgun.”

She was a white unicorn mare with yellow eyes under tinted goggles, and a dirty blond mane streaked through with brownish-black. The red bandanna over her mouth – and most of her throat – concealed a wound from Imperial troopers that had beaten her to keep her quiet when they were kidnapping her.

“No, Oscar’s right,” she decided. “If we did that, we’d have to guard him. We’d need medical training none of us have–”

“I have medical training,” Champagne Grape said, “I just really don’t feel like using it on this jackass. You want to know what he did?”

Heliotrope had an idea, but she figured it was best to get it from – as Harlan would say before bursting into unavoidable laughter – the horse’s mouth.

“I don’t know how they got here when they did, how they got all this military surplus,” Champagne Grape said, “But they did. These HLF were all over the town before we knew it. Keeping a bunch of ponies in tow, too, refugees that must’ve been right out the Resistance’s teleport zones. And they were pretty well-armed, too. Lots of surplus assault rifles and SMGs.”

“They… took over the town,” Champagne Grape said. “Had armed guards at every entrance, and they… put us to work. Earthponies would be paid in lodging and meals - no money. The payment would be not getting shot like Acacia. Pegasi were put under the Siphon, and us… the unicorns…”

“They put this fucking thing around my neck and gave me a Kalashnikov. Unloaded, of course. Told me to enchant it. Give it more power, make it hold more rounds…”

“I tried to weasel out of it, but they’d turn on the collar whenever they thought I was skimping on it. Finally, they just...”

She wheezed something under her breath, impossible to understand. Though Heliotrope assumed from the relative number of syllables that it was something like “friggin voicebox.” Except she didn’t say “friggin.”

“Loud and clear,” Yael said. “I mean, I’ve heard about HLF using pony magic, but that’s just Romero and Ex Astris Victoria, and…”

Heliotrope imagined Yael pinching the bridge of her nose, as she usually did when she was deep in thought.

“Mike…” Heliotrope sighed, before she caught a look at the (expired) driver’s license in there.

Quiette Shy made a wheezing noise. The syllables were oddly distorted by her electronic voicebox. “Gunderson The Gunslinger. High Bounty On This One.”

“Owned a bakery in New Hampshire with his wife,” Heliotrope explained. “And the heroin epidemic around there back before the war left his daughter a shell of her former self, so she took the potion with his blessing. So they…”

“And, hope I’m not interrupting your detective work,” Champagne Grape said, “But he’s also a Menschabwehrfraktion member.”

The same HLF unit, originally formed in Germany, that boasted people like Leonid Lovikov, Jomi da Costa, and Viktor Marius Kraber.

“Okay,” Yael said, after a brief pause. “People like the Menschabwehrfraktion having magic? That’s a new one to me. I thought it was just Romero’s people who did that.”

Heliotrope and Quiette Shy exchanged a Look. It was hard to tell what QS was thinking behind her goggles and bandana. Heliotrope, personally, was more confused by it than anything. ‘How does someone do that? You’re a damn sheep among wolves. Surrounded by genocidal assholes who see you as moderately helpful at best, on the same side as the Carters. The fuckdamn Carters?!’

Meanwhile, QS looked… depressed? Disappointed? It was hard to guess behind the bandanna and goggles. She muttered something - in her hoarse, somehow overstretched real voice, not the automatic voicebox. Heliotrope could make out the sounds ‘uck,’ ‘I,’ and something that could’ve been ‘deal’ or ‘feel.’

Despite the fact that Heliotrope often heard (or thought she heard) emotions in QS’ electronic voice, it was hard to understand if that was a threat or a plea.

Heliotrope didn’t know very much about QS’ sister. She was with some HLF unit, impossible as that sounded - probably Romero, on the basis that Heliotrope had no idea who else that would be. Tartarus, Heliotrope didn’t even know her friend’s sister’s name. All she could guess was that it had the sounds ‘uck’ and ‘i’ in it. And most of what she knew of QS’ relationship with her sister was that it was incredibly strained at best.

“One question,” Oscar said. “Champagne Grape mentioned a siphon. Thought only the PER and Solar Empire used those?”

By which he meant a Thaumic Siphon – a Crystal Realm device repurposed by the Solar Empire after the Crystal War, made to keep prisoners docile by harvesting magic for bigger and badder war machines. Heliotrope had been under one before - it felt like something had just taken massive bites out of her senses. She’d felt dizzy, her mind sluggish, every feeling either cranked up so intensely it overwhelmed her entire body or so subdued it was barely even there. When she’d been on the Crystal Realm prison ship Roustabout back during the War, Heliotrope had been so desperate to feel something, anything, that she’d gnawed on her forelegs. She hadn’t felt anything, until she knocked her deadened limb against the floor and her muscles burst into life with such intensity that it felt like all her muscles were the strings of a giant musical instrument and she’d just been plucked. There’d been no rhyme or reason to what had feeling and what didn’t.

“I don’t know,” Champagne Grape said. “They managed to get it out of town before you got here, so we have some HLF running around with a treasure trove of harvested thaumic energy.” She paused. “I really want to say they thought they were just using it to keep us quiet, but…”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Yael said. “Far as I know, the HLF usually just shoot things they don’t like.”

“You would’ve thought so,” Champagne Grape said. “But… they were using us. To get that energy. Making an assembly line out of us. And whatever they have planned, it can’t be good.”

“Shit,” Champagne Grape said, and listed to one side. Her right foreleg wobbled.

“Are you okay?!” Heliotrope asked, rushing to Champagne Grape’s side to prop her up. QS stood nearby, her face hard to read thanks to the mask and goggles. But Heliotrope could tell she wasn't as stonefaced as she liked to pretend. She moved ever so slightly closer to Champagne Grape.

“No,” Quiette Shy said. “You. You’re Not. Those Things Can Cause Severe Damage.”

Heliotrope thought she could hear sincerity in her voice. But then, sometimes she projected what she thought QS would be thinking. It was hard to say.

“Trust me, I know,” Heliotrope said, standing just by QS, one foreleg over the white unicorn’s back. “Had to go for checkups with Sutra Cross to see if I had any lingering damage.”

“It’ll be fine,” Champagne Grape said, between gritted teeth. “Just… promise me. Find whoever did this to all of us, and make. Them. Pay.”

“Calling medevac,” Oscar said, his tone moving to that odd, clipped tone he’d use sometimes. “Stand by.” He paused. “You’re going to be fine, trooper– uh, CG.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Champagne Grape sighed. Heliotrope could hear she was saying it over what must’ve been incredible pain.

“Medevac’s gonna be a while,” Oscar said after a moment. “Don’t worry, J– uh, CG. You’ll be fine.”

“You were gonna call me ‘Jinxie’, weren’t you,” Champagne Grape said, giving him a wry smirk.

“It’s fine, anyway,” Champagne Grape said, and the pain seemed to be dying down for a few seconds. “This is exactly why I got the name anyway.”

If it was any consolation to Heliotrope, it was that the HLF didn’t have anyone to use magic. Nobody to channel it, though if they used volatile magic energy in bombs, they’d waste most of it. Unless they had someone else in the HLF with equipment that could use magic, someone like…

“Who else would be?” Heliotrope asked. “I can only think of one person in the HLF who’d know how to do this…”

“I mean, the doctors say Champagne Grape will be fine, and we seem to have uncovered a conspiracy,” Heliotrope said. She seemed a little too… eager.

‘Like the brass will believe anything about it.’Yael sighed. ’We screwed up, and so they’ll brush it under the rug.’

“We don’t know it’s a conspiracy,” Yael said. “Isn’t this… jumping the gun? And Romero, I’m not sure he...”

“Yael, why are you…” Heliotrope sighed. “The thought of taking these people down usually gets you excited! Remember when we took down Catseye?! Or the Oathbrothers? And here you are, just… destroyed.”

“Because we went against orders,” Yael said. “I mean, we had to. It was that or let those HLF keep torturing ponies like Champagne Grape. But we’re going to get dragged through the muck for this one.”

Everyone had said, “Don’t attack. Don’t do it. We’ll send in a strike team first. You’ll be there to corral them, take prisoners, and provide reinforcements.”

Heliotrope, however, had been requisitioned by the PHL-UNAC task force to serve as a scout. There were only so many pegasi with invisibility flightsuits like Heliotrope’s, so they were invaluable.
Yael had been around to hear the story Heliotrope told. And it made Yael absolutely livid.

This was, after all, exactly what she couldn’t stand. It was the apocalypse, after all. It was the end of the world, and people had the stones not to be willing to work together? People gave in to hate in fear, and were so afraid of ponies, of letting a little kindness into their heart, that they sold out to monsters.

Heliotrope had taken recon photos too. She’d told a grisly story to go with all of them. That was some kind of machine they’d put ponies under, and they’d walk out…

Well, they’d barely be able to walk out. Sometimes they’d be dragged. Sometimes they wouldn’t be able to walk at all. Any ponies that they hadn’t put through that would be forced into backbreaking labor along with them. Ponies forced into workshops. Going by Heliotrope’s recon, the town was ruled under an iron fist, the way some of the cities and towns they found on the way through Northern Africa had turned into repressive popup regimes that seemed to disappear – or, more likely, become ponified – as soon as they appeared.

“How could they,” Yael had said. She wasn’t gasping or asking. She was snarling out the words.

“Let’s make sure they know they can’t pull this again,” she said. “What do you think about not taking prisoners here?”

A rare, if not unheard of order - and it was something coming from Heliotrope. To Yael, who outranked her.

“I think,” Yael had said, “that’s an excellent idea. These bastards need to know…”

“...that you can’t pull this shit at the end of the world and get away with it,” Yael had said. “No prisoners.”

“Heliotrope says that these buildings are full of ponies. Aim away from them,” she told the tank commanders. They’d brought flamethrower tanks, the kind they’d used to smoke out Newfoals. “Burn everything you can find. We’re bringing these bastards down.”

Yael was on her knees, behind a car, firing her Galil in semiauto. Next to her was Oscar Mikkelsen, firing his S-HV Penetrator, its slow THUMP-PWANG contrasting oddly with the heavy bark of the Galil.

She stared through the reflex sight. Just down the street, in one window, she could see the faintest hint of a rifle with a wooden stock. She considered aiming for that, shrugged, and aimed an inch from the windowsill. He was in a wooden building, so…
She pulled the trigger twice. The bullets punched through the wood like it wasn’t even there, and she saw something behind the glass stumble. A glimpse of what could’ve been a rifle.

A red unicorn mare with a blue mane trotted towards her, sliding into cover behind the same truck as Yael.

“Bennett and Twist Tie are down,” the unicorn mare said. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost miss the desert, sir!”

“Urban combat is a damn nightmare,” Yael agreed. She clicked her earpiece.

“Taking heavy fire, but the Twins have us covered!“ Rossiter said, his voice warbling over the radio.

‘The Twins’ referred to Pestle and Sour Mash, respectively. Pestle was a reddish-brown massive earthpony, big enough to carry his own minigun – meanwhile Pestle was a powder-blue Canterlot unicorn mare with a draft horse’s build and an autogrenade launcher.

A flamethrower tank rolled by, and Yael heard bullets pocking its armor with metallic pings.

“Move up!” she yelled at Xiphos, and the nearby soldiers. “Get into the buildings! We’re smoking them out now!”

They ran to the sides of the tank, and filtered in through doorways holes in the woodwork and stonework that were big enough that they could’ve served as doorways.

Yael slid into cover just behind what had once been a bar. There were bits and pieces of old bottles lying about – including some brands which, thanks to the Barrier, were virtually extinct.

There was a boom of a shotgun, and a one of the soldiers next to her – a Quebecois man by the name of Boisvert – screamed, crumpling to the floor.

Yael didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to react. She was just painfully aware that, as she raised herself up from behind the old wooden bar, there were three men and a woman there.

Xiphos’s horn glowed, and a red-tinted thaumic shield appeared in front of both of them. And, for no discernible reason, the HLF in front of them unraveled.

Limbs flew everywhere. One man’s head simply flew off for no discernible reason, another’s arm flew across the room trailing blood, another fell to his knees… then just fell on his side when it became clear everything below his knee was missing.

Yael knew from experience what that meant. She shot off a quick two-round burst at another man, and he crumpled onto his back, bleeding from his throat.

Heliotrope materialized a foot away from Yael, panting heavily and resting on her hindlegs. Her leg and wing blades were bloody with the viscera of HLF.

“No,” Heliotrope said. “We heard this was a Suncrusher ambush. But a lot of the people I’ve found… they’re Menschabwehrfraktion. Or Sons of Macha. I think they’re using the Suncrushers as cannon fodder.”

“I’ve seen a lot of Menschabwehrfraktion and Sons of Macha faces here. This isn’t a Suncrusher operation. Didn’t seem like something they’d do, either.”

“To be fair,” Yael said, “This doesn’t sound like Sons of Macha or Menschabwehrfraktion, either. Usually, they just kill everything in sight.”
“By the way,” Heliotrope said, “There’s a warehouse of some kind ahead. Looks like a lot of them have holed up there. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Yael nodded. “Oh… Yeah.” She looked over to Oscar. “You and QS up to your usual tricks?”

“So,” Quiette Shy said, “They’re Expecting Us to Go Through the Door.”

A beam of blinding yellow-orange shot forth, punching through the wall. And, judging by the noises Yael was hearing–

–it’d probably hit someone too. There was a brief second when everyone was staring through the whole Quiette Shy had made, before the HLF were met with a hurricane of PHL-funded murder.

“TARGET SPOTTED!” Oscar bellowed as he flung himself through the new hole in the wall. “ENGAGING!”

It never ceased to amaze Yael just how fast Oscar was. It was like everything around him was moving in slow-motion and he was just on a different timeframe, easily outpacing and reacting to everything.

Oscar sprinted towards a table, and took a flying leap over it. For a second, he was floating through midair, on his side, his Penetrator spitting out massive spikes that punched through armor, leaving smoking, glowing-bluish bubs poking out from the HLF.

That was to say, if they were wearing armor. Oscar’s Penetrator punched through anywhere from two to three at a time, dragging them back several feet.

As Oscar did this, Yael rushed forward, Quiette Shy projecting a shield in front of her. Yael could see the edge of the forcefield – which looked almost like yellow-tinted glass, but less solid somehow – scraping against the concrete floor.

Yael was firing a flurry of rounds through the HLF, her Galil punching through skulls left and right.

“Ze’ev! It’s fucking Y–” one HLF man with a red bandanna started yelling.

“A Warehouse of Fuckdamn Trash.” Quiette Shy said from behind Yael. “Come On. Can’t You Even Pretend To Live Up To Your Own Hype.”

“We killed a lotof HLF, we saved people,” Yael said. “I’m having trouble calling that anything but a win. But…”

A brown-haired woman only a few years older than Yael and much shorter (not as thought that was hard) walked out, barely-restrained contempt on her face.

It was amazing how she could somehow manage to say “You bitch, you ruined it all, I hope they crucify you” in so few words.

Yael and Heliotrope followed her, down a hallway and through a doorway to the left. They entered into a wood-paneled room decorated in earthy tones, which might have looked contemporary, relaxing, or almost like an oasis of pre-war life.

If not for the PHL magitech cobbled together from crystals, wires, and computer equipment, kept from spilling out over the floor by laminates and plastic, that stood on the floor in place of seats. The projector screens that scrolled from ceiling to floor.

Or the PHL personnel, the highest-up of the high, sitting in the seats or remote-projected into the room.

On the left side of the room, she saw Time Turner – the loamy earthstallion who, rather confusingly, preferred to go by the appellation of ‘Doctor Whooves’ – in a high-backed chair, with Colonel Harrison Munro and Lieutenant Colonel Sabine Northwoods in two chairs to his left, and a Texai viewscreen of Colonel Ambrose Hex to the right. In other words, the Head of PHL R&D, flanked by two senior representatives, none of whom looked pleased.

‘Probably something to do with the experimental weaponry I used,’Yael thought, looking to Northwoods. She was a smaller woman, but then, most women qualified as “smaller women” to Yael, who stood at nearly six feet.

Northwoods was blond, and Swiss-American. Apparently, she’d had dual citizenship before the war broke out. For all that meant now.

And right now, she was staring daggers at Yael. If looks could kill, Yael would be an ashy spot on the floor.

‘Wouldn’t have guessed that taking energy weapons would leave her that angry,’Yael thought. Then, ‘No. There’s something else. Considering the way Hex is looking at me from the viewscreen, it has to be.’

Hex – a man with a potbelly, thinning hair that had once been dark, a man who exemplified everything Yael thought of when people described someone as “not aging well,” and then some – didn’t have even half the level of hatred that Northwoods was projecting straight through her and Heliotrope.

Plenty more of the higher-ups Yael was used to hearing about had joined. Well, as much as they could join, with half of them using projectors and the like to attend the meeting. Ralph Hill and Anthony Merrick were sitting in their seats on the right side of the room. Gladmane, the PHL-Equestrian Resistance liaison, was also there, projected on a viewscreen of his own. Predictably, he hadn’t been able to make it in person. The same had to be said about Francis Reynardine, that enigmatic Frenchman (or was it Englishman?) acting as the intelligence liaison.

And at the end of the room were four seats. One for Commandant Cheerilee, another for General Nathaniel Roberts, and another for Captain Alexander Reiner, the UN-PHL liaison.

And of course, an empty seat, right in the middle where an occupant could have easily presided over the whole room. A room for a commanding, moderating influence, sitting directly between the military, public relations, research, and a few other departments.

Yael knew the story behind that, of course. Knew the story behind the mare who should have held that seat.

‘I miss Ambassador Heartstrings every day,’Yael thought, and she could tell that Heliotrope was thinking the same. ‘If we had her, we wouldn’t have even needed a fighting chance against the HLF. She could at least talk to them, dammit.’

Reiner held some papers in one hand, gently batting them against the table into a more orderly stack. He pushed them towards Cheerilee, whose hooves simply adhered to the paper. As always, he cut an imposing figure. He seemed barely contained by his fatigues and the body armor he always wore, and his blond hair was cropped close to his skull. His blue eyes seemed to bore into Yael.

It could’ve been a moment where everyone in the room was silent. Or it could’ve been an hour. Ten minutes. Yael wasn’t certain.

And all the while, she watched Cheerilee reading over the stack of papers from Reiner – who was currently glowering at her with an odd mix of disappointment and anger. The mounting horror on her face was obvious as her huge eyes scanned the papers.

“Captain Ze’ev,” Cheerilee said. “Heliotrope. I’m tempted to ask. What the helldid you think you were doing?!”

“When we found out about what they were doing, we couldn’t stand by!” Heliotrope said. “They were torturing ponies!”

“Admittedly,” Roberts said, clearing his throat, “Our reports were somewhat vague.”

“Our report… is not. We found evidence that they were draining magic from ponies, slowly and painfully,” Yael said. “Working earth ponies to the brink of death. Even forcing them to enchant weapons at gunpoint, sir.”

“HLF doing that?” Cheerilee asked. “That’s… never heard of anything like that. Usually, they just kill any ponies in their way. Or leave them with us.”

“Exactly,” Yael said. “They were using ponies for something. I don’t know what. And they were perpetrating some of the worst crimes against ponies and refugees that I’d seen since the Mediterranean Evacuation.”

“Did you know this before you decided to besiege the town?” Reiner asked.
Yael and Heliotrope looked at each other. Confused.

“Did you know this. Before. You decided. To besiege the town,” Reiner repeated, his voice full of tightly-controlled anger.

“Yes sir?” Yael said, still hesitant. Reynardine shifted slightly on his viewscreen.

“Then if you made such an informed decision,” Reiner said, “you would have known that the plan was to send in a small strikeforce that Cheerilee and I selected with Lieutenant Colonel Northwoods. The plan was for you to blockade the town as our team rescued the hostages.”

“There were too many people for us to evacuate using a team of specialists,” Yael said. “Casualties would’ve been unacceptable if I didn’t do something!”

“I’d say they still were!” Northwoods yelled. “You destroyed half the town, Major Ze’ev!”

“Collateral damage can be an unavoidable circumstance,” Cheerilee said. Her tone was kept steady, but it felt strained, “even when we’re careful. But we need something for people to come back to. There’s the damage to the town, of course, but then there’s the…” She stopped, her expression turning into one somewhere between disgust and horror. “I don’t know if you realize that the manifest for missing citizens of Nipville includes seven children, including three infants younger than three.”

“You didn’t think those houses you were burning just had HLF in them, did you? Or did you even think?” Reiner asked. His jaw muscles were clenched tight, and he was a little too deliberate with each syllable. His volume was slightly higher than was necessary. “Did. You. Goddamn. Think.”

Reiner’s temper was infamous among the PHL. And here, now, Heliotrope was left absolutely certain he was about to let loose on them.

‘Foals,’ Heliotrope thought, dazed. ‘We killed foals. Sweet Luna, what have we done?!’

“I…” Yael started, uncertain. “I made my decision based on what I thought was right. I couldn’t let them keep destroying Nipville!”

“And that’s the fucking point of following orders,” Reiner said. “You can’t possibly know everything to do in a split second. It’s the job of Command to know.” He took a deep breath. “If you had waited, we had people on standby. We had a press release, a plan. Hell, we even had Romero on standby!”

“You do realize that there are still HLF contributing vaguely important things to this war?” Cheerilee said with a scowl. “Half the HLF is still nominally operating with the tacit approval of the UN, and since they’re using their manpower to tie up PER and protect towns, that’s saving us the troops to put to work where we need them. Now, though–”

“Now you’ve jeopardised that,” Reiner put in. “You’ve jeopardised it because they weren’t kept in the loop while you were killing their mutineers, so they won’t trust us as much–”

“Are you going to keep interrupting, Ze’ev?” Reiner said coldly. “Or am I allowed to continue?”

“I don’t particularly care what you think of the Spader-loyalists,” Reiner said calmly. “They are keeping a lid on a lot of people who, let’s get real here, don’t like ponies very much. People like Verity Carter.”

“And so’s my adjutant,” Cheerilee said. “So are more of the PHL’s personnel than I’m comfortable admitting.”

“And none of them,” Whooves scowled, “are children of a homegrown terrorist.”

“You going off half-cocked,” Cheerilee continued, “not to mention burning civilians, will not help those people do their jobs. That means they won’t be as able to help us. All you’ve done is give the Carter-loyalists, the people who don’t want to work with us, ammunition!”

“And worse still,” Reiner added, running a hand over his forehead, “you’ve managed to turn this into something that makes the HLF look fractured.”

“Yes, we know that,” Reiner retorted, giving her an impatient glare. “The rest of the world didn’t need to, but now, unfortunately, we can’t avoid it. Best case scenario, we can make this look like a bunch of rogues, but it’s a big bunch of rogues. And that, whilst being shit, is still better than this somehow looking like the entire HLF has gone mad, because then that risks the entire swath of this country being guarded by Spader-loyalists in lieu of our own forces going into a panic.”

“Yes,” Reiner said. “That bad. And that’s leaving out the fact that you just handed the mutineers ammunition. We had Romero and Yarrow both on the horn telling us that it was key to the fracture not worsening that the PHL let the HLF sort its own mutineers out. The more it looks like we’re persecuting them, the more the smaller, neutral units start drifting to the wrong side of the damn split.”

Heliotrope’s head was swimming. How was all this happening? How was all this even… relevant?

‘We saved people,’ she thought. ‘We saved ponies. It… was worth it… right? It can’t be nearly as bad as he says, right?’

“So,” Reiner summed up, “as a result of your actions, we have a burned out ruin nobody will want to inhabit or rebuild because of the fear it will be gone in two years, dead civilians, a potential political shitstorm, the carefully built alliance we have with a powerful paramilitary group that up until now we’ve managed to be cordial with potentially going ass over tits…”

‘What?’ Heliotrope thought. ‘We’re the PHL, what could we possibly…’

Yael stared at Cheerilee, confused. And Heliotrope knew she was thinking the same thing.

“You realize your order for there to be no prisoners was on record,” Reiner said irritably. “That was an illegal order according to the Geneva Convention.”

“And so you decided ‘to hell with the laws of war’, burnt a town, screwed over our political situation and murdered seven children?!” Reiner yelled.

“Consider the optics, Major,” Roberts said, speaking more gently than Reiner. “I may not like it, but we do depend on some public opinion for our funding. Cheerilee. Captain Reiner. How often have the four of us had to keep the public from practically treating us as an invading army?”

“It’s not to say you’ve put us in danger of being downsized into oblivion,” Cheerilee continued. “But you’ve put us close.”

“And so, from here on,” Roberts said, “We are stripping you of your rank within the PHL.”

‘After all we’ve done for the PHL, this is our reward?!’ Heliotrope thought. ‘We gave our blood and sweat for them, and–’

“You disobeyed direct orders, jeopardised the political situation, and got innocent people killed,” Cheerilee said with finality. “I’m… profoundly disappointed. In both of you.” She sighed. “That being said, I talked with Captain Reiner, and he came up with something… appropriate.”

“I have a... friend in the USMC who needs a UN-PHL liaison,” Reiner said. “Colonel Robert Gardner. He’s on the Barrierfall project at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, working to create strategies for the safe evacuation of the East Coast. You will be working with him for the foreseeable future.”

‘But virtually nothing happens that far out! Except Nipville, anyway. Any major HLF action is further west! We’ll be sitting there on our flanks for years!’

As the train rolled in to Portsmouth, Yael was left with the thought that it wasn’t exactly what she thought of when someone used the word “City.” It was barely the size of a neighborhood in most other cities she’d been through, and the architecture in most cases made her think more of an overgrown village with its wooden tenements and brick warehouses.

‘Isn’t this a naval base?’ Yael wondered, as they headed towards the city nearby.

She hadn’t been able to relax the whole time. Every minute when she tried to sit back, to relax, to play video games, she’d found herself looking at suspicious passengers. Wondering if any of them would open fire on them. Wondering if the train was safe.

“Don’t I know it,” Yael said. “The both of us, defending it from those bastards…”

‘Those bastards’ had been an assortment of HLF and not-quite-HLF, terrorist groups that had refused to work with the UN forces, and had…

Well. It was hard for Yael to say. There’d been a train full of refugees and artifacts. The terrorists had tried to derail it, and it’d only been a miracle that Yael, Heliotrope, and their compatriots in the IDF and PHL-UNAC taskforce were able to stop disaster.

“Why would I?” Yael asked, sighing. “Far as I’m concerned, we both made mistakes.”

“We’re heading to the middle of nowhere to serve with a marine colonel I’ve never heard of,” Yeal said, a twinge of anger creeping into her voice. “I’d assume that means we did something wrong.”

“As for why I made it look like my idea…” Yael said. “We stick together, Heliotrope. A world where we can’t work together is too horrible to imagine. If I told them, you’d be who-knows-where. And it’d be my fault.”

“So it had nothing to do with your career?” Heliotrope asked, a surprised look on her face.

“I guess it did?” Yael asked, surprised, before the scenario of just what could happen if it looked like she’d up and let a lower-ranked soldier just bypass the chain of command rushed through her mind. “Huh. I guess that would’ve been bad.”

“It’s still pretty bad. I can’t believe that they’d do this to us!” Heliotrope said, not quite fuming but getting there all the same. “After all we–”

“I know we thought we were doing the right thing,” Yael said. “But even so. We went against orders. We hurt innocents, Heliotrope. We deserve this.”

“I…” Heliotrope sighed. “I know, I know. But I have to be mad at something! We…”

“Funny,” Heliotrope said, a slight smile on her face. “Last time I disobeyed orders, it saved my life. Also probably my dad’s life.”

Yael stared at Heliotrope, and despite herself, burst out laughing. “You know that…” she choked out in between guffaws. “Oh. Oh, damn.”

Heliotrope, as it happened, had been Solar Empire military. And – nobody had known this until Cadance defected to the PHL – she had, impossibly, proven willful enough to break the Geas. At least, that was the working theory… The conversation had gone something like this:

“I don’t know. I guess Captain Cactus or Celestia’s presence didn’t affect me like it used to. Towards the end of the Crystal War, the Changeling Purges, he was like this… this loving presence. This commanding presence. Impossible to resist. He’d been telling us, ‘you see anyone, you ponify them!’”

“Then, well, I… I just couldn’t. I dunno when. He tried to recall me and get me to ponify someone, I told him to go fuck himself.”

Further examination revealed that Heliotrope had apparently broken the Geas completely on accident.

“Don’t tell that to the therapist,” Yael said. “Able Mind will have you wondering if you’ve got a pathological need to break orders.”

“I do know how you feel, though.” Yael said. “I want to be mad too. I just want to hit something, to burn something down, but…”

“Are we sure we believe that?” Yael asked. She looked out the window of the train. At the ocean, the sidings, the industrial buildings the train was passing.

“I thought you were the one who said it was what we deserve,” Heliotrope said.

“I am. But I know we’re both going to have a hard time dealing with it,” Yael said. “I’m as much telling you as me.”

“Well… I’m not,” Heliotrope admitted. “I’m not dealing with it. We’ve done so much for the PHL, dammit. And the HLF, we know they’re getting crazy. We know the Menschabwehrfraktion has Viktor Kraber in their ranks, and that Lovikov has… plans. We know the Sons of Macha are with him. We know that Carter’s side of the HLF are going crazy, and let’s face it, nothing’s stopping the ‘loyalists’ from going the same way.”

“But it’s not our place to investigate it,” Yael said. “Not anymore, Heliotrope.”

I really wish I believed that, Yael thought. I’ll have to believe it, though.

“Who knows, maybe we’ll be back in two,” Yael said. “We’ll have time to think.”

God help me, Yael thought. Being stuck. Alone with my thoughts. Knowing that goddammit, they were right, I killed a child, and I’ll never be able to make up for it by being stuck in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve screwed up more than I thought possible, and people are dead because of me.

“Of course,” Heliotrope says, “It wasn’t even two weeks. Barely even two days.”

“Probably about how that was the first of many times they watched you die,” Aegis says. “Say, how many times have we watched Kraber un-die at this point? Three?”

“Five,” Heliotrope said. “There was that time with the collapsing mill, and the MP20 Obregon…”

“Nah. If you can forgive me for all this, I can forgive that,” Kraber says.

For a moment, you think he’s being sarcastic, but no - he’s being genuine. He has changed a lot, you think.

“Right,” Heliotrope says. “Anyway. We were pulling into the station…”

She trotted off the train, and then, all of a sudden, there was Oscar Mikkelsen standing in front of her. Wearing his characteristic face-concealing helmet, carrying the HV Penetrator and a Vollmer shotgun.

“How did you…” Heliotrope breathed, flapping her wings and fluttering up to eye level with Oscar. “I thought we’d never see you two again!”

“We Had A Nice Chat With Munro,” Quiette Shy said, and Heliotrope was left with the impression that the mute white mare was smirking under her bandanna. “A VERY–” her speech device deepened into an unsettling mechanical bass, one that made a random passenger cast worried looks over the station. “Nice. Chat. Oh. Yes.”

“You Blackmail Someone Once. And Nobody Ever Lets You Live It Down,” Quiette Shy said, making a sound that could have been a sigh.

“It wasn’t like that,” Oscar said. “We just met him for coffee after your talk, and I told him about that deal we made with him. And how I might get… ahem, repossessed.”

“Wait, do you mean possessed by ghosts again, or having representatives from-” Heliotrope started.

“Yes. So he decided to protectively demote me and keep me under your command,” Oscar said. “Bad decisions or not, there’s nobody I’d rather serve under.”

Heliotrope smiled at that. “That’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever heard about us.”

Yael shivered. And then, spur of the moment, she hugged Oscar. “Thank you. It’s been a difficult day, and I think I needed that.”

And, after some uncertainty, Heliotrope hugged him too, wings flapping as her forelegs enclosed Oscar’s chest.

“I Asked. Politely,” Quiette Shy said. “I Stay With You Three. No Question.”

“Well damn,” Heliotrope said. “So. Who’s looking forward to two years of sitting on our asses, far away from any combat?”

“That might not be so bad,” Oscar said. “I will fuckin’ smoke you in Smash Bros, Heliotrope.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said a man with a calm, authoritative voice. They could see someone striding toward them, with a large dog on a leash. “I am Colonel Robert Gardner. I was told to expect two of you? Who are the others?”

‘So this is who we’ll be working with?’ Heliotrope asked. Gardner looked like the very picture of a USMC officer. Tall, with close-cropped dark hair that was steadily graying, broad-shouldered, and well-muscled. A square jaw, and a scar on his chin. Everything suggested that this was a man who got his hands dirty - or, when he wasn’t getting them dirty, he was almost certainly putting them to work in the gym.

Heliotrope would later think that in retrospect, that should have been a warning sign. But at the time, he looked impressive. He looked rock solid. He looked like, as Heliotrope put it, ‘he’d make sure this wasn’t nearly as boring as I thought it would be’.

“Oscar Mikkelsen and Quiette Shy, SIR!” Oscar said, snapping off a crisp salute.

Gardner looked pleasantly surprised. “Well. I won’t turn down cheerful recruits. I’d have liked to know you were coming sooner. I’d have made more coffee.”

“They asked politely,” Yael said. “And, well, neither of us could turn each other away.”

“I see,” Gardner said, narrowing his eyes. “Well, as I said, it’s nice to receive more manpower. What are some of your skills?”

“The gear I make would be nothing without her, sir,” Heliotrope added. “I provide designs, duct tape, spit and polish... and QS can make it work.”

It was just then that Gardner’s dog walked up to him, and started sniffing him.

“That,” Gardner said, “Is a military trained german shepherd, trained for sniffing out potion and attacking–”

“Oscar knows about as much about dogs as you can be without being a world-class breeder or biologist,” Yael said. “I’d trust him.”

‘What?’ Heliotrope thought. ‘There’s no need for him to be that condescending…’

‘Then again, Oscar did just ignore him for the sake of petting a dog. Clear breach of military discipline…’

‘Oh, God, I’m a monster.’ Heliotrope thought. ‘I killed them. I broke orders, and because of us, the conspiracy we discovered is going to go unnoticed! And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the thrill of combat. I lost myself in the bloodshed, I loved seeing the looks on people’s faces when they couldn’t see what was cutting them to bits...’

“We’ll be heading for the shipyard,” Gardner said. “I’m working in concert with the National Guard and Navy.”

“Afternoon,” said the man in the driver’s seat. “I’m Souther. You’re our new recruits, I presume?”

“That they are,” Gardner said. “And two came extra. I can hardly wait for what we’re going to do.”

The words could have been coming from a world away as Heliotrope stared out the truck’s window, confused.

Their transport trundled down through the streets of Portsmouth, eventually finding its way onto a road that shared some space with a set of railroad tracks.

As they drove down, a train full of empty freight cars passed them by. The strange sight – a train passing them like another car on a highway – still didn’t deter Heliotrope.

‘We’ll still have people fighting on both sides if we win. Still have hatred lasting for generations to come. We’ll still have normal civilian life for both worlds being nigh-impossible. And I’m never going to be able to forget that thrill I get from combat. Shit, I couldn’t even forget about it back when I was in Poland, trying to relax.’

“...I don’t know what that was, but I assume I shouldn’t believe you,” Yael said. “You’re hurting like crazy.”

“I just…” Heliotrope said, as their transport drove through the shipyard. “It’s all hitting me at once. I’m just thinking of everything that could go wrong, and… it’s… Stupid of me.”

“How in Luna’s name can you be so calm about it?” Heliotrope asked, trying and clearly failing not to yell. “How do we-”

“I’m not calm,” Yael said. “I’m pretty far from okay. But I have to be. Dad would tell me ‘Treat it like an adventure, Yael!’”

“Your dad did that too, huh?” Heliotrope asked, cracking a smile. “Always hated that.”

“Oh, you and me both,” Yael said, nodding and seeming to imperceptibly sink into her seat. “Then he said that if I didn’t, I’d just get really depressed. So it couldn’t hurt. It was the same way when I joined the IDF.”

“But… the conspiracy we found. The HLF. Everything we discovered in Nipville,” Heliotrope said. “We can’t just give up!”

“For The Love Of God, It Can’t Be All For Nothing,” Quiette Shy said. Beside her, Oscar sat silently, reading a comic book.

“If we push, they will push back,” Yael said. “This is the best we can do, unfortunately. I don’t like it more than you, Heliotrope, but I can’t do anything else.”

The truck pulled in to a building on the shipyard - a set of barracks, it looked like.

“I assume you’re talking about Nipville,” Gardner said, “and if I could offer some advice?”

“Quit your bitching,” Gardner said, not quite unkindly. “You did it. And there’s no way to change that.”

With that, he strolled past the barracks, leaving the five of them with no choice but to follow him.

Souther sighed. “He is. But he does mean well. If there’s anyone for refreshingly blunt advice, it’s Gardner.”

With that, Souther followed Gardner through a doorway, then down a hallway, then a flight of stairs...

And Yael found herself in what looked like a command center of some kind. One that would have resembled an HLF or PER base in the middle of nowhere, but for the ponies milling about, some of which sat in chairs in front of computers.

Occupying one end of the room was a large conference table, and a projector screen - next to a wall lined with photos and information on various HLF.

‘Aaron O’Donnell, leader of the Sons of Macha. Suspected IRA connections. Aeron Grant, going by assumed name ‘Atlas Galt’, Leader of the Thenardier Guard. Maximilian Yarrow, Leader of the ‘Spader-Loyalist’ faction: personal unit, ‘The Reavers’, sighted with ATC equipment. ‘Captain’ Daniel Romero, Commanding Officer of the commandeered Thunderchild-class warship Columbia and head of Ex Astris Victoria…

Viktor Kraber. Menschabwehrfraktion member. Wanted for multiple counts of murder, mass murder, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of firearms, assault and battery, theft of a motorcycle, manslaughter, assault with intent to rob, terrorism, breaking and entering, torture, impersonating a police officer, illegally crossing borders between countries, impersonating a child protective services officer, smuggling firearms, practicing medicine without a license, arson, forgery, vandalism, kidnapping, robbery, theft of military property, impersonating PHL personnel, and public drunkenness...’

At which point someone had scrawled in red pen “And a really crappy attitude” at the bottom of the poster.

It was all the big hitters, she realised. The commanders of some of the major factions. And some of their most trusted soldiers.

Gardner sidled up to the table and plopped himself into a chair, both feet up on the table.

‘No wonder Reiner got along with him so well,’ Heliotrope thought, scrunching up her nose, as Gardner reached for a remote.

“Now, Mikkelsen,” Gardner said, fiddling with the remote. “Take your helmet off. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

“Are… are you certain that’s a good idea?” Oscar asked. “I’d really prefer not to.”

“I’d listen to Oscar,” Heliotrope said. “He’s very uncomfortable without it.”

‘Uncomfortable’ was a vast understatement. Oscar only took his helmet off when he was sleeping, and would open it partway when he was eating. Because, putting it lightly, Oscar wasn’t exactly handsome enough to serve as a model.

Gardner was silent as he fiddled with the buttons, finally bringing up a picture on the screen at the other end of the room.

“This is the military, not a college full of Beltway pansies,” Gardner said. “Now, take it–”

“Sir,” Yael said. “Oscar has a number of reasons for keeping it on. I’ve never denied him the–”

“First,” Gardner interrupted, “I wasn’t talking to you. Secondly, I told Oscar to take the fucking helmet off.”

“It’s alright, Maj - ah, First Lieutenant,” Oscar said. “Orders from a superior are orders. It’s only fair to obey.”

Damn, Oscar, she thought. Why the shit did you have to say it like that?! I wouldn’t… okay, maybe I would change what we did. But why would you say that after my best friend got demoted? After I got demoted?!

I don’t know if I wish we’d done things differently. HLF died, but… so did a lot of the wrong people. Innocents. I wish we never fucked up, I wish I never told Yael it was my idea, and I wish we didn’t have to end up here. If there’s any consolation here, she thought, watching Oscar undo the seals on his helmet, it’s that I get to see how they react when Oscar takes off his faceplate.

And then a thought occurred to Heliotrope, as soon as Oscar yanked off half of his helmet.

Yep. He was being sarcastic when he said that. Well, that almost makes this worth it.

Immediately, Gardner’s second-in-command staggered back against the wall. Gardner flattened himself against his chair. The entire room went dead silent.

Oscar’s face was far broader than the average human’s, with a thick squarish jaw. His nose was flatter on one side and skin seemed to stretch over it slightly, and his mouth seemed to curl on one side. The left side of his jaw was a mass of nodules and scar tissue. One ear was just a series of lumps that barely poked out from the side of his skull. About the only thing you could say that was normal about his face that his eyes lined up.

“I take it back, that’s even worse!” Gardner exclaimed. “Can you, ah…”

Oscar seemed to take a little too long redoing the seals on his helmet, placing the faceplate back in position. And he seemed to enjoy it a little too much, as well.

“I… right,” Gardner said. “I’ll find some time to complain about that later. Now, what do you know about your official duties here?” he asked, pointing to the picture – a blurry satellite photo of what was probably Defiance.

“General Roberts assigned us to serve as PHL-USMC liaisons,” Yael said. “At the behest of Commandant Cherry and Captain Reiner. I’m assuming that means coordinating with East Coast PHL allies like Blossomforth, or Rachel Womack?”

“That’s correct,” Gardner said. “However, my other goal is to use you four to protect the East Coast from the HLF.”

He clicked a button on the slide. It flicked through, and then there was a photo of a group of HLF in ragged fatigues and body armor, carrying Armacham Technology Corporation weapons. Some of which, Heliotrope noted, were almost certainly energy weapons.

“Where did they get those?” Oscar asked. “There. That’s a type-12 energy weapon. And an MP20 Obregon. Not standard issue anywhere but Armacham.”

“I couldn’t begin to guess,” Gardner said. He clicked the slide again. Forensic photos of the Carter Massacre, the bulletholes and chalk outlines still there. The official story was that Michael Carter, leader of a more radical, kill-em-all HLF faction, had taken a submachinegun to the ponies and humans that had been hiding out in the basement, chewing them to pieces with a hail of 9mm.

Another photo. A family of (dead) ponies sitting in the basement of an abandoned factory, brutalized beyond recognition, riddled with bullets.

“That,” Gardner said, “is from just yesterday. The Menschabwehrfraktion attempted to save a town from a PER attack, and it resulted in multiple civilian casualties, the HLF getting in a pissing match with the local authorities and nearly shooting them, not to mention innocent ponies being killed.”

An apartment block in Boston, a smoking ruin. A neighborhood that’d played host to many ponies immigrating to America, many of whom had stayed, full of broken windows.

“This,” Gardner continued, “Is a Sons of Macha attack. Building suspected to be home to PER potion lab was destroyed.”

“Here, in Pennsylvania,” Gardner said, “An attempted PER Vanishing. The town’s full of HLF, now. They haven’t taken the job from the police force, they are the police force.”

The four of them were quiet. The entire room had stopped, as they all stared at Gardner’s ghoulish slideshow.

“What these all have in common?” Gardner asked. He looked to the rest of the room.

“Certainly, Nilsdottir,” Gardner said. “But the real answer is: PER. Operating with uncommon boldness. And the HLF responding in kind, regardless of casualties.”

Another slide. Featuring two massive, burly men trying to drag a giant pony near the size of an earth horse out of a shipping container.

“That is Aegis,” Gardner said. “Earthpony farmer from around Littleton. The HLF dragged him out of his own home, in front of his own foals.”

“I Recognize Him,” Quiette Shy said. “Everyone Kept Asking If I Was Related To Him.”

Gardner cracked a smile. “Aegis later beat them black and blue. But the problem is: The HLF are growing bolder, in response to a growing PER threat spearheaded by Shieldwall.”

Heliotrope shivered at the mention of Shieldwalll. By all accounts, he’d been a rather unassuming sort during the Crystal War, with a talent for guerrilla warfare. But now? He was perhaps the most infamous of the PER, a psychopath that saw potion the way most people saw hammers.

“I don’t know what either of them are planning,” Gardner said. “I know that Yarrow and Lovikov have their own designs, and I’ve heard whispers of Shieldwall’s master plan. ‘Project Fillydelphia,’ it is called. It aims to reshape the Eastern seaboard completely. I aim to stop it, and, most importantly, to stop the HLF. We can’t afford division at a time like this, and the only option is to obliterate them.”

It was like fireworks went off in Heliotrope’s head. It’d been Yael and Heliotrope, along with everyone in the PHL and IDF that they could muster against the HLF.

These were people that’d gone from being a support group to an army of lunatics. They’d brought terrorists into the fold. A lot of them had tried to kill humans they didn’t think were “worthy” to escape the Barrier. And, of course, some HLF had personally threatened to gut her and make leather jackets out of her. There’d been HLF that did unacceptable things to ponies back during the Purple Spring, too.

Sure, they might have been been trustworthy for a time, but with Spader’s death, they’d been going off the deep end. Even the supposedly ‘sane’ ones.

‘So I’m being punished, by being sent to a person who asks me to do the same thing… but under orders,’ Yael thought. ‘I’m feeling some mixed messages here.’

Part of Yael wanted to ignore this and just make it more of a punishment. The other part of her thought that was silly.

‘I need to make up for it,’ Yael thought, ‘and I won’t be able to do that if I don’t tell Gardner what we know.

“And while we’re on the subject, sir,” Yael said. “We found that the HLF knew enough to drain magic from ponies, and that they were… they were using ponies for something, sir.”

“I will investigate that in due time,” Gardner said. “For now… we wait. For the right moment.”

“If we don’t, it’ll raise too much suspicion from command,” Gardner said. “One step out of line, and we end this quickly and efficiently.”

‘Still. This doesn’t feel right. I screwed up, and I’m being rewarded for it? What kind of sense does that make?’ Yael thought. ‘I was supposed to be getting comeuppance for doing the wrong thing. I don’t get it.

“What about Romero and the other HLF, sir?” Heliotrope asked. “They’re officially UN-affiliated, if only in name–”

“Romero’s a damn pirate,” Gardner snapped. He looked at Yael. “Didn’t you once describe him as such, Lieutenant?”

“We’ll do what you suggested, Lieutenant,” Gardner said with a grin. “Kill them all.”

“And then,” Gardner continued, “anyone left sane enough we’ll bring in and make use of. Under our auspices, not the command of a glorified Jack Sparrow wannabe with delusions of grandeur and a senile, over-the-hill lunatic Englishman who thinks he’s still a competent commander even though his men run around with hammers and Norse makeup.”

The four of them - Heliotrope, Yael, Oscar, QS - had made their way to a rec room by the end of the day, after was pretty sparsely populated. Though the naval base swarmed with activity, there were barely eight people there. Yael, Heliotrope, Quiette Shy, and Oscar all sat there, engaged in various activities in the period between dinner and lights out.

There were four more in there, too. A massively built black man who looked like he spent most of his spare time in the gym, a pale blonde woman with a big doorstopper of a Brandon Sanderson novel, sitting in a corner with her back on the floor and her legs up against the wall. And, off on another couch, Heliotrope could see one human and one gray-black earthpony stallion watching a movie.

Heliotrope lay outstretched on a cheap couch, reading a novel that described itself as a “Superhero murder mystery.” So the setup was, a reporter who was in the book’s words “totally not Lois Lane” (that was a character from Superman, right?) investigated a mysterious death in the wake of a supervillain attack.

“Now There’s A Man Who Likes Grand Gestures,” Quiette Shy said, her Xbox controller floating in front of her as she lay in an armchair in the barracks’ rec room.

“This is fuckin’ great!” Heliotrope said. “More anti-HLF work, and we can uncover what Lovikov’s up to. I’m looking forward to it.”

It was going to be great. If anything, this was not Erebus. And, Luna willing, she’d get revenge on Viktor Kraber for shooting her. Grounding her for weeks.

“You and me both,” said a massively built black (possibly biracial?) man with tattoos on his bald pate, who was lounging in a chair next to her, playing multiplayer with QS. “Eva and I… well, both of us get tired of watching people going crazy out there.”

“The blond woman reading a book,” the man said. Then– “AW, SONOVABITCH!”

“Fuckin Win,” Quiette Shy said, and Heliotrope could almost imagine that there was smugness in her voice. Despite the fact that Quiette Shy technically didn’t have a voice anymore.

“Damn,” the man said. “She is good.” He held out a hand to Heliotrope. “I’m Lorne, by the way. Lorne Hebert.”

Except, to Heliotrope, Yael, and everyone else he’d ever meet, including Kraber, it sounded like “a bear.”

‘Which,’ Heliotrope reflected, ‘probably worked. Tall, stocky, massive build...’

“That’s not what they said at the gay bar last night,” Lorne said, returning with a smile.

Quiette Shy immediately started making wheezing noises that could’ve been laughter, and Heliotrope started laughing so hard she fell out of the air straight onto the carpet. Meanwhile, the earthpony on the couch broke into a suspicious coughing fit.

Lorne’s accent was hard to pin down. It sounded Southern, but a little smoother somehow.

“Always thought it might be nice to visit,” Yael said. “Unfortunately, Cousin Nny never had the money.”

Yael looked for a second like she was about to ask a question, then promptly the energy dissipated. She looked weirdly unsure for a few seconds.

‘It’s probably best not to ask,’ Heliotrope thought. “How’d you and Eva end up on this?” she asked.

“Top brass disapproved of making moonshine on my off time,” Lorne said. “Can’t a man have a hobby? Eva, though…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Eva said, then immediately went back to reading a book on her eReader.

‘Friendly, isn’t she?’ Heliotrope thought, but she bit it back. ‘Then again, Lorne did nearly reveal what got her sent to a punishment detail, so… can’t blame her there.’

“Yeah, well, I tried,” Lorne grumbled. “As for Smoky and Summers, well…”

Heliotrope assumed that was the large built coal-gray earthpony and the man mohawked sitting next to him.

“Let’s just say Yael’s a woman after my own heart,” the man said. He had a brown fauxhawk and a set of dark sunglasses, and a stubbly 2-day beard. He held out a hand. "Shawn Summers. Pleased to meet someone like you, Major Ze'ev. And Sergeant Major Heliotrope."

"You ate a demotion?" Summers asked, surprise on his face. "Damn, I wouldn't have guessed. I saw what you did in Nipvile, that was amazing!"

"I wouldn't have thought so," Summers said. "I grew up around here, y'know? And I saw people just... lose their damn minds over fighting the PER, or any pony unfortunate enough to get stuck in the crossfire."

"Lost my little brother that way," Smoky added. "And... along come those assholes who turn a farm town into a slaughterhouse?! Far as we're concerned, you did the right thing."

The right thing. Yael felt like she should be happy. Felt like that should be welcoming. She wasn't. I screwed up, let me get treated like it! some part of her was screaming.

“I…” Yael said. “Heliotrope? I need a moment. We need to head into the hall. Right now.”

Yael stared at Heliotrope, and she felt herself shrinking back, almost unconsciously. The Ze’ev Look – or, technically, Ben Ze’ev Look, but Yael felt annoyed at her surname making her sound like someone’s son – had been been passed through down through Yael’s family for generations. And, according to Yael’s mother, Yael had perhaps the strongest concentration of it.

Of course, Yael’s mother had promptly started laughing and fell onto the floor after Heliotrope had, with complete sincerity, asked if that was true. But, all seriousness, Yael did have a commanding stare.

And so, ignoring the confused looks they were getting from the four (definitely four) humans and two ponies in the room, the two of them stepped out into the hall.

“What the hell was that?!” Heliotrope hissed. “Far as I’m concerned, we’ve gotten a great deal!”

Well, that was the thing. Whatever it was that suffused Yael, it was gone and for a second she was unrecognizable. Yael usually looked lithe and graceful, but this time, here, she just looked skinny and exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” Yael said. “Really, I am. But… this isn’t right, Heliotrope.”

“What do you mean, it’s not right?” Heliotrope asked. “We finally got to strike back at the HLF. They did something bad, like we always knew they would, and we were finally able to put a stop to it.”

“And we also went against orders,” Yael said. “We hurt people, Heliotrope.”

‘You’re talking a lot about duty for someone who went against orders,’ Heliotrope thought, before realizing that was just too horrible to say to one of her best friends. ‘Besides, it’s not like I’m blameless there. I was cheering her on as she did it.’

“Heliotrope,” Yael said, “I know what you just thought. I know you’re still mad at…”

“I guess we did,” Heliotrope said. “But as far as I know, we’re lucky. It’s best we see this as an opportunity, Yael. We’re not being put in the ass end of nowhere, we’re with a man we can help. We’re somewhere we can do good!”

Yael sighed. “You’re right. I just feel… almost cheated, somehow. Because this was almost certainly planned as a punishment. If Reiner didn’t know that, I just have a bad feeling. Logically speaking, we shouldn’t be around here.”

“But it’s the best opportunity we could possibly get!” Heliotrope protested.

“I know,” Yael said. “And that’s what unnerves me. Gardner hid these tendencies from the PHL, and I have to wonder-”

“Hey!” Lorne yelled from inside the room. “You lovebirds coming back soon?”

“It’s Pronounced… Look, Oscar Would Explain It Better,” Quiette Shy said. “Fuckdamn Machines.”

“That,” Summers said, “Would be a cool name for a rock band. ‘Fuckdamn Machines...’”

“Anyway,” Smoky said. Or at least, Heliotrope assumed it was Smoky, because he was the only one she hadn’t heard talking. “We’re going to be playing some Smash Bros. Figured it’d be a great way to get to know the four of you.”

“Look... I do get what you mean. I've got some lingering guilt over it too, but I think this could really turn out well!" Heliotrope said. "So... Agree to disagree on how good we’ll have it? I feel like it’s a bit early to call it.”

“You’re probably right. So for now,” Yael said, “Let’s get to know them.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Yael said, as the two of them strode in, “How do you use a controller without hands? QS I understand, but...”

Heliotrope grinned as she walked through the door. “Well, it’s very simple. All I have to do is…”

Light Despondent Remixed

by Doctor Fluffy

03: I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire (wait yes I do)