Light Despondent

Chapter 6

Under Pressure

At literally that exact moment, apparently, Kraber was getting kisses from a puppy that resembled a cloud shaped vaguely like a small wolf.

“AWWWW… Look at you! It’s so cute and fluffy!” Kraber laughed, petting the fluffy white samoyed dog that was currently trying to lick his face off. “Look at youuuu, braver hondije, oh, I just want to keep hugging you, awww...”

“Who ist good bwoy,” Kraber cooed, clearly mixing up a number of languages. “Good hondije, yes jou are!”

"...nah," Kraber said, verbally flipping off the commander of the Thenardier Guards with a shrug, before going back to petting the dog, who was panting, its tongue hanging out. “What a good bwoy! You’re like a giant cotton ball!”
It barked.

“What a good puppy… Who’s a good bwoy! It’s you! You are the good bwoy and it is you!”

‘That’s supposed to be a hero of the HLF?’ Dayoung thought. By all accounts Kraber was a hero, an intimidating, unstoppable presence…

And yet, here he was cooing over a white dog so fluffy his hands seemed to disappear into the fluff.

“I guess he’s not so scary after all,” Megan said. “I feel… almost let down.”

Dayoung could agree with a lot of the sentiment in that. She’d been expecting glamor, underworld contacts, and heading into a strange city. Instead, she’d-

“Hold on,” Dancing Day says. “Why did you start with that instead of leaving the camp?”

“Well, I thought it would be funny. There’s Smoky clearly thinking ‘oh, aweh, this man is so evil, here he is clearly doing something evil at this very moment,’ and then suddenly, there’s me holding a little hondije,” Kraber said.

“I… think I get it,” Dancing Day says. “Hey, wait a minute! How’d you know about the parts you weren’t there for?”

“You bring one of Quiette Shy’s tiny flamethrowers, use it as a conversation piece, and nobody ever lets you live it down,” Kraber grumbles.

“Wait,” Vinyl Scratch asks, trotting into the room. A unicorn stallion by the name of Neon Lights (perhaps one of Vinyl’s closest still-living friends) and a Wonderbolt by the name of Echo is in tow, curious looks on their faces. Dancing Day knows from experience that Echo is blind. “QS makes tiny flamethrowers?”

“You’ve created a monster,” Neon Lights sighs. “I hope you’re proud of yourself, Kraber.”

“Seriously, again?!” Kraber asks, not quite yelling but close. “Is… is this a fokkin’ running gag at this point?!”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Vinyl says, casting a look over to Kraber. “So, Viktor. What’s this I hear about you telling your life story?”

“It’s… pretty simple,” Kraber says. “I’m telling the story of how I got here. We already got through… well, the worst parts.”

“I… later,” Kraber says. “We already get sidetracked enough here! I’ll tell you just now.”

“Did you at least get to the part with Reaper yet?” Vinyl asks. “That’s one of my favorite parts!”

“We’re getting to that,” Kraber says. “Not much is gonna change from the last time I told you.”

Vinyl nods. “Well, I was talking it over with my friends here, and we’d like to join in and listen all the same.”

Dayoung barely recognized Portland anymore. She’d been there fairly regularly, but now…

Well, the population had swelled like an overfilled balloon thanks to the Europe Exodus. Some people had been moved to other cities, other towns in America, but others… hadn’t. The populations of entire cities had been shored up against the East Coast. And those were just the human inhabitants. Ponies, zebras, griffons, other races - many of them called the east coast their home. Portland wasn’t unique in that regard.

They’d brought a lot to the city. Which, Dayoung admitted, wasn’t much of a city, but it was Maine.

Lanterns with no obvious power supply dotted the streets, and zebras and griffons alike milled about. Some even looked to be running their own businesses. A griffon was nearby, hawking - or perhaps eagling, though Dayoung groaned internally at that pun - various cuts of meat, cooked with strange spices. A human and a pony sat behind a stall, with numerous odds and ends that the stall’s banner claimed to be from countries that were eaten by the Barrier.

Dayoung turned toward her friend with a start. The tall blonde had been quite silent for awhile, barely speaking a word on the drive to Portland.

“I mean that… there’s no way to tell if it’s actually from Europe, you know?” Megan asked. “And there’s one of those ponies selling it. Our memories, our homes, our histories…”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Dayoung said. “There’s plenty of people who said back home that they liked Champagne Grape and Caramel, but… well, every time I look at them, it’s hard not to just think ‘If they weren’t here, we’d be a hell of a lot happier.’

“I felt that too,” Megan admitted. “Just… it was at the back of my mind every time I saw them.”

Dayoung looked to her friend, surprised. “Really?! But you… you were there helping them move in! You even said I was doing a good thing working to teach Caramel Swirl in school.”

“I… well, I thought it was the right thing to do,” Megan said. “Even with that little voice in the back of my head telling me it wasn’t.”

In truth, Dayoung was… well, if you could ask her, she’d say she was okay. The truth was, it hurt having Grapevine say it to her:

“You just weren’t looking at her and you made something up, weren’t you,” Yael says.

“Yes,” Kraber sighs. “That, and it worked really well when Jeff Vandermeer got trapped in his own novel-”

“Wait, he got trapped in the movie by Alex Garland?” asks a nearby filly who’s barely into her teens.

Did I actually mean any of that stuff I said? Dayoung thought. I mean, did I? I sounded like I was reading from a fucking textbook.

Specifically, her own textbook. Dayoung had, after all, seen the HLF as heroes back at the dawn of the war, right around the time she started high school. And she’d been writing the stories she heard about for awhile.

Oh, the memories she had of the Purple Winter - watching illegal livestreams and blurry cell phone videos of HLF attacks on Bureaus, being up till 4 AM on forums. The way she and her friends from high school had watched Carter refuse PHL aid, yelling in Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings’ face:

“IT IS TOO LATE FOR YOU TO MAKE AMENDS! After what your species has done, after you stood back and made excuses, how am I supposed to believe you could ever make up for the Bureaus? You! ARE! COMPLICIT!”

Oh, how she cheered at that. She even had a tattoo of that quote on her back, and ‘YOU ARE COMPLICIT’ was spelled out on her forearm.

“You’re not,” Kraber said, walking over to them both with a small pouch in one hand. “I can tell, Dayoung.”

Kraber jerked his thumb towards a stall, manned by a zebra hawking what Dayoung assumed to be lucky charms, an assortment of small thumb-sized bags, and leather, and feathers, and…

“Ja,” Kraber said, “Pretty common good luck charms for gamblers back home. Didn’t want to buy one, though.”

Dayoung’s gaze snapped to her friend. Neither of them had met a zebra native to Equus before (or even seen a zebra in person) so this display of anger felt… well, it was something of a surprise.

“Well, I…” Kraber started. “I was going to, but then I realized I couldn’t make myself do it. It’s only a zebra, it’s not part of the Solar Empire. I just couldn’t make myself care.”

“I’m just…” Dayoung started. “I’m just not… I feel insecure. About being here.”

“You can fokkin’ guess,” Kraber snarled, surging with anger. “I’m fokkin’ famous, just like I wanted when I was a kid. All it took was the deaths of my family, and SOME FOKKIN’ KONTGESIG-”

He kicked a trash can. A pony walking nearby looked at him, concern written on his face.

Fokkin’ Shieldwall, fokkin Pinkie, where in the fok do they fokkin’ get off telling me it’s my fault, gonna fokkin’ kill em! Kraber thought.

“Your friend doesn’t look too good,” said the nearby pony, still concerned.

‘Of course I fokkin’ don’t, but I’ll feel much better when I CRUSH YOUR FOKKIN’ BRAINS BETWEEN MY FINGERS LIKE I’M MAKING FOKKIN’ BOEREWORS-’

“Leave him alone!” Megan snapped at the pony. “He’s going through some pain, and the last thing he needs right now is for someone like you to”

‘If you do this,’ that voice continued, ‘There’s no way this can end well.’

It was exactly the way Kraber remembered Kate talking to him. The exact same tone of voice she’d used when Kraber had said he’d been on the verge of assaulting some SHRIMP-PIEL FOKMAGGOT that thought they knew more about his children’s health than an ACTUAL FOKKIN’ DOCTOR did, to make sure he didn’t dropkick someone in the face. Again.

‘That was funny, wasn’t it? I said “If you decide to lock Peter in the closet again, my husband will come next time and he will dropkick you in the face,” and then she did it again, saying ‘Oh, he won’t,’ and you... ’

‘You were all ‘SUP, FOKSUCKERS!’ Damn, we were all laughing about it for weeks!’

That had been a fokkin’ lekker day. And the more Kraber thought about it, the more he had to admit to himself that gunning down the pony then and there couldn’t end well.

I really don’t want to do this, Kraber realized. I don’t want to hurt them. He could almost see those two ponies he shot in the basement of that old mill, and… and too many more. Everywhere.

‘Why?’ asked one of them a pony he remembered shooting in Innsbruck. One of his first kills. He’d done it in with his old pump-action shotgun.

It was a strange thought. After all, if he did that, if he shot this pony in the middle of the street, he’d…

”So,” Heliotrope says, “Did you… did you decide it because you thought it’d be immoral, or because you figured it’d destroy whatever Lovikov had planned?”

“Fok weet,” Kraber says. “I’ve… look, I don’t know which I was thinking. Maybe I had an actual fokkin’ conscience at the moment. Maybe I didn’t. It’s really hard to say. But…”

“Who am I kidding,” Kraber says, looking down at the floor. “I was probably thinking about how it’d have ruined Lovikov there, and being a fokkin’ selfish kontgesig as usual.”

“You can’t know that,” Aegis says. “I know you, Viktor. And I know you’re a lot less selfish than you’d think.”

“Well, most other times I thought I was being a kontgesig, I wasn’t wrong,” Kraber says. “It’s like what Nny says. Someone asks him ‘why do you assume you’ve got enemies behind every tree’ and he says, he says ‘The better question is why I keep being right.’”

“Maybe I should’ve done that,” Kraber says. “Saved us a lot of trouble, and I’d have died as I fokkin’ lived.”

“But you wouldn’t be here,” Aegis says. “I wouldn’t know you, Amber and Rivet wouldn’t have met you…”

Dancing Day does a double-take. Had he always been there? She’d been very absorbed in Kraber’s story, watching him weave this tale. Apparently, a lot of ponies had come in without her noticing.

Rivet places a hoof behind his head, confused. “...Awhile?” he asks. “I mean, it’s not like I’m hard to notice.”

Which is certainly true. Rivet is a few inches shorter than the average pony, despite being only a couple years older than Dancing Day. He’s easy to mistake for a small adult. He has his dad’s white-gray fur and red mane, which should make him instantly noticeable, except it doesn’t.

A smaller earth pony with orange fur and that same red mane pokes out from behind Rivet. “HEY!”

“I’m as surprised as you,” Yael says, gritting her teeth. “But can we get on with this story?”

“...Sorry, but, I’m just… not feeling too good,” Kraber forced the words out. “I was just reminded of some shitty fokkin’ times.”

“It was back during the Purple Winter,” Kraber said. And then, the words he spoke next came out like pulling teeth. His own teeth. Through his nose. Without anesthetic. “I’m. Sorry. I went through some… real bad shit. I was wrong… to take that out on. You.”

“Yeah,” Kraber said. “Let’s just head our separate ways for now. I’m sorry for how I acted,” he said, the words flowing much more naturally.

“I…” the pony looked concerned. “Well buck. I’m not used to getting actual apologies. Thanks for that.”

And, strangely enough, that actually made Kraber feel better. Lighter, almost. “You’re welcome,” he found himself saying. “Dayoung, there’s a gaming lounge with Overwatch over thataway,” Kraber said. “At least, I think there is. Wanna head over while we wait?”

“We’re supposed to wait here while… our friends meet with…” Dayoung started, tripping over the names.

And I thought I’d reveal it all, Kraber thought, bemused. And he was already walking away, heading in the direction of the gaming lounge.

“I’ll even buy you some time there,” Kraber said. “Consider it an apology.”

It was a surreal experience. Kraber hadn’t had a genuinely positive conversation with a pony since before the Purple Winter, unless he counted that time he met Champagne Grape. Which was…

“Come on, wait, Vik!” Dayoung yelled, running behind him. “You’re supposed to wait with us, for-”

“Why?” Kraber asked, as he and the pony came to the crosswalk. “Not like Leonid trusts me anyway.”

Kraber was across the street, just in front of a retrocade bar by the time Megan and Dayoung could process that.

Kraber was already sitting in a beanbag chair, playing Overwatch on a flatscreen TV by the time they got there. The pony next to him sat in his own beanbag chair, a controller under his hooves.

He was playing McCree. The team he was on was pretty shitty, to be fair, but it could have been worse. At least someone had bothered to play Mercy this time.

“Apparently, the owner cribbed some sort of magic router from the Reavers,” Kraber said with a shrug.

“We don’t think so?” Kraber said, shrugging again. “Said some kinda doctor built it. I don’t fokkin’ know, and as long as it lets me do Overwatch and Warframe, I don’t fokkin’ care.”

“I haven’t been able to play it in so long, but it looks fokkin’ tits!” Kraber said. “God, I miss just being able to sit gat, rus bene, and play Frost with Soma Prime or the Prisma Gorgon. I just felt so… needed, y’know? Like, nobody just boots up Warframe and thinks ‘oh, lekker, a Frost main. Hooray,’ it’s ‘Fok yes! It’s a Frost main! We’re gonna make fokkin’ KAKSPUL on this Kuva!”

Dayoung nodded, shrugging as well. “I guess that’s fair.” She sat on the floor near the beanbag chair. “How’s the team?”

“Well,” Kraber said, sucking a breath in, “for starters, I’m on the same team as a Genji. Then there’s the Mercy – she’s too aggressive and she hasn’t used her ult yet. Buuut… Mercy did get nerfed to fok for like eight straight years, so I don’t exactly blame them.”

“Nooit, back when she was released, she had a rez, so so…” He paused, before swearing. “Ah, fok!”

Sure enough, his McCree had been frozen by a Mei. And then shot in the head with icicles.

“Maybe you need to git gud, Little Vicky,” Megan snorted.
“Fok jou, and don’t fokkin’ call me that,” Kraber said, and flipped her off. “Anyway, it’s not a matter of gittin’ gud.”

“I’m fokkin’ serious!” Kraber insisted. “It’s Mei, only sadistic kontgesigs play h-”

“Didn’t you specifically say you were doing that just so that if someone said you were doing something evil, you could cut to that?” Amber asks.

“I’m curious,” Echo says. “How did you feel, getting to play Overwatch with that pony? You’re sounding like you were getting pretty friendly with him.”

“Well, I…” Kraber says. “I would’ve said back then I was acting, and maybe I believe that. But now? It feels fokkin’ lekker when I think back to it. I got to just relax, I was playing videogames, I was in a bar, and things just… made sense. I think I liked it a lot.”

“Anyone up for that sort of thing sometime? Dibs on Frost if we play Warframe,” Kraber says.

“You can’t call dibs on Frost!” Aegis says. “We can play whatever Frame we want!”

“Yeah, but… should we?” Kraber asks. “I mean, from a strategic point of view, it makes sense to have multiple roles on the team. With the right comp, you can fight in the Kuva Fortress for about an hour. You could have a Saryn to debuff, Mesa to do damage from the bubble shield, Octavia for general support, Excalibur to do…” Kraber scratches his beard.

“Has my time spent being basically your second dad taught you nothing?!” Kraber asks, mock-aghast. “What isn’t Excalibur good for?!”

“My secret mind powers are telling me you will play as…” Aegis starts, a rare smile on his face.

Kraber shudders back into the chair, a look of pure ‘what’ on his face, one eyebrow raised. Aegis looks up at him, sharing that look.

“Oh, what the shit?!” Dayoung gasped, watching as the Mercy suddenly rezzed him and the pony… and three other people in the area, complete with a heroic sounding ‘heroes never die!’.

Kraber frowned. “The fok?” He looked at Dayoung. “Can you get a look at their gamertag?”

Dayoung scowled. “Fine. Fucking hell.” She got close to the TV as the Mercy player ran past. “DRomero1031.”

Kraber jumped out of his seat and threw the controller. “Fokkin’ hell, naw.”

Megan picked up the controller, grinning, and landed herself in the beanbag chair. “Move, you lose, buster.”

“‘DRomero1031’,” Kraber said, growling the words out. “That’s Daniel Romero’s fokkin’ gamertag. No wonder he’s got a custom fokkin’ Mercy, he probably hacked the fokkin’ game.”

“Daniel who now?” Megan asked, not really paying attention as she switched from McCree to Widowmaker.

“Daniel Romero, Captain of the fokkin’ HLS Columbia,” Kraber clarified, still scowling. “Fokker’s part of the other side of the split. They say he uses magic, works with ponies, makes deals with PHL…”

“Because him and Yarrow were cosy with Spader in the early days, and Yarrow kept him around,” Kraber explained. “Now he’s supposedly ‘HLF R&D’.”

Kraber gave her a death glare. “You don’t wanna ask questions like that, kid.”

“Because,” Kraber said. “He’s the Enemy. He uses their gear, their ponies, their methods. He might as well be fokkin’ PHL.”

Kraber’s scowl only deepened. “There’s working with enemy shit to gain the advantage, and then there’s the stuff they say Romero does. There’s a fokkin’ line you cross where you stop having the right to call yourself HLF. Me and Lovikov don’t agree on much, but we agree on that.”

Dayoung snorted. “Begs the question why he’s got time to be playing Overwatch.”

“Well, why the fok are we playing fokkin’ Overwatch, in that case?” Kraber asked, shrugging. “Even Hitler had fokkin’ hobbies.”

“By the way,” Dayoung asked. “I have to ask. What’d you mean when you said Lovikov doesn’t trust you?”

"Leonid had... some big Plan," Kraber started. “Hold on, a mo. Barkeep, you have any tequila?”

"Eh, that's not important,” Kraber said. “Anyway. He had some big Plan that required him to send some of his best men and women to Canada. Which I thought included me, but he said 'you're not trustworthy enough to do it, Viktor. You need someone like me to rein you in.' His words, not mine.”

As best Dayoung could guess, he was referring to whatever had happened in Nipville. A bit of a stretch, but what other major HLF actions in Canada had she heard of recently?

"But he told you. To your face. That you weren't trustworthy enough." Dayoung said.

"Ja,” Kraber said. “I mean, my wife would try and keep me under control, because… well, I’ve a bit of a temper.”

“But did she trust you?” Dayoung asked. “Did she know you were a responsible adult?”

“That’s…” Dayoung shook her head. “That’s beside the point. Did she trust you.”

Kraber thought on that. “Ja,” he said. “I suppose she did. Why are you asking me all this, anyway? I thought you were all fokkin’ gung-ho about joining the HLF.”

“I was,” Dayoung said. Then backpedaled. “I mean, I thought I was, but…”

“Look, I just miss… I miss home,” Dayoung said. “The creature comforts, the school, the job, and… Do you know the plan here?”

“Not really,” Kraber said. “Like I said, Lovikov doesn’t exactly trust me enough.”

Dayoung could almost swear that she heard anger, regret, or… or something other than pride in his voice there.

“And Lovikov’s the leader,” Kraber said. “What he says goes. It has to. I couldn’t lead the Menschabwehrfraktion if I wanted to - and I don’t. I disagreed with Lovikov once in the past few days, and he retaliated by beating me to the ground and trying to steal my stuff.”

“I guess it is,” Kraber said, taking another swig of tequila. “But he’s our leader. We have to be kept in check, or-”

Dayoung hadn’t seen much of him, had barely seen him more than four times a few days ago in her hometown, but she was struck by just how solid Sully was. He looked like he could easily run circles around half the camp, and had thick graying brown hair. He looked to be chiseled from granite.

“You know,” Sully said, striding through the retrocade. “I heard what he said about you.”

He looked out of place, like a rock in the middle of a river, or the ocean. As he strode towards Kraber and Dayoung, the various Portlanders seemed to flow around him - the humans, ponies, zebras, and others perched on barstools would lean ever so slightly closer to their drinks. Others who sat at tables would lean in, and the hangers-on standing around, playing games on phones or antique handhelds, slid back.

A pink pegasus mare with a red mane was standing in front of him. Not aggressively, but not gently, Sully placed his foot against the mare’s barrel. Just above her cutie mark.

The meaning was clear. She ran to the edge of the restaurant, hiding near a black unmarked arcade cabinet.

“What you did,” Sully continued. “And I thought. This is Viktor, he wouldn’t possibly help the enemy. But here you are. Deserting.”

“I’m not fokkin’ deserting!” Kraber yelled. “What the ass-cock-dicking-fok is wrong with you people?! A man makes one fokkin’ mistake and you act like he dug up your dog and arsefokked it in front of you?! Jou all a bunch of varknaaiers. Fok jou up die gat.”

“Oh. Several mistakes,” Sully said. “One of them being that you were stupid enough to say that.”

“Look,” Kraber said, “I’ll go, alright?! I’ve had a rough few days, and it’s not helped by jou fokkin’ kontgesigs hammering in every little mistake.”

“Has it occurred to you that some of the people of Defiance are worried for you?” Sully snapped. “God only knows why, Kraber, but some of the idiots in this town actually think you’re alright. You pulling a stunt like this scares them, for a lot of reasons. I care about you! Leonid cares about you!”

“Which he decided to show by beating me by pistol-whipping me with his nine, browbeating me, ransacking my house, and threatening me at gunpoint the day after Emil was PIA,” Kraber said. “All because I make a mistake once. Pardon me... if I’ve some fokdamn doubts.”

Sully sighed. He looked almost deflated. “It’s useless arguing with you when you’re like this, isn’t it.”

Kraber looked like he was trying to smirk, but gave up halfway through. “Ja. Pretty much,” he said, frowning. He took another swig of tequila.

“The two of us weren’t doing too good,” Dayoung said, flashing a quick glance at. “There was a pony asking me if I was okay, so I decided that the sanest thing to do was to head to an arcade and calm down. Kraber volunteered to keep guard while we did.”

Sully’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?! That sounds… unexpectedly reasonable.”

Kraber’s eyebrows shot up. He clearly hadn’t expected that - he almost couldn’t understand it. Wasn’t able to understand.

“What’s there for you to understand?” says an unfamiliar voice. A brown earth pony mare, wearing a militaristic cap. An adult, too. And, impossibly… Blank-flanked. “You can’t, and we all know it.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” the unfamiliar arrival says. “I’m not a newfoal, you all know it.”

“You,” Yael says, her face a tightly-controlled mask. Her voice has a lot more noticeable emotion in it - it’s as if she’s compressing every swearword she knows in every language she speaks into a single syllable. Which is a lot.

“What the fuck are you doing here,” Heliotrope says, somehow making it not even sound like a question. Dancing Day can practically hear what Heliotrope wants to add: ‘Here to try and kill another one of us?’

Dancing Day knows her. Of course she does. The PHL is full of oddities. Humans who seem to be developing magic or psionic power, minotaurs, races of Equus that nobody has ever heard of, hackers, child soldiers and bystanders hired on the spur of the moment, Kraber, the New Researcher (as everyone calls aer) who is a one or technically-many pony think tank, and Verity Carter.

The newfoal-who-is-not-a-newfoal, a former HLF fighter who attempted to assassinate Alexander Reiner in his bed, failed, attempted to escape through Zecora’s private greenhouse, and came out a pony.

“Aren’t you supposed to be…” Dancing Day starts to ask. She quails as Verity Carter stares her down, her eyes pinpricks.

“Leave her alone,” Vinyl Scratch says, “Leave her alone, right now, or you go back in the hospital bed.”

“Oh, come on,” Verity says to the white unicorn mare, “What else can you even do to me at this point?”

Dancing Day can’t see what Vinyl Scratch is doing behind her massive purple sunglasses, but somehow she has the sense that the DJ is narrowing her eyes. “A lot.”

Verity just snorts, like she doesn’t care anymore. Maybe she really doesn’t.

“They let me out of observation,” Verity says. “Besides, where would I go?”

“Nowhere,” Kraber says. He’s not angry, he’s simply… stating a fact. Like rain falls, grass grows, and Verity is not leaving.

“That’s right,” Neon Lights says. “And, you know, I was wondering where you’d get to. And then I realized: You’re pretty much stuck.”

Verity rocks back as if she’s been punched. Vinyl looks up to Neon Lights, a look of… surprise? Shock? Whatever look it is on her face, it’s definitely not anger.

Aegis is beside Kraber and Vinyl now, a hoof on Kraber’s shoulder, and his bulk overshadowing Vinyl. Which is good, because Kraber is ready to… well, it’s not like he’s ready to leap out and stab her, but it’s more that despite sitting, something about him reminds Dancing Day of a predator. A wolf, or one of the funny-looking big-eared, spidery-legged “dogs” that Kraber loves so much, that happens to be loping low to the ground, waiting to see if it’s the right time to attack. Without Aegis, there’s about a fifty-fifty chance Kraber would decide it was the right time.

“I just wanted to know what you have to say here,” Verity says. “I mean, we were talking about it for months! You practically destroyed our side of the Split. And I just had to ask… you?! Really?”

“You didn’t,” Kraber says, “But I know you, Verity. I know you hated me back when you were human. And I know it’s worse now.”

Kraber looks to the side. Dancing Day can’t see the expression on his face, though she really wants to believe he regrets it.

“Can… can we move on with the story?” Astral Nectar asks. “Please? You said you were here for Kraber, Verity, so… let’s just keep going.”

“Anyway,” Kraber says, “That’s how we got to me holding a samoyed, deliberately trying to screw with Galt.”

“It’s called dramatic irony, bru!” Kraber explains. “I’ve got this whole running gag laid out. Heliotrope, Vinyl, how many times did you and Yael immediately assume I was doing something evil when you were talking about me?”

Yael and Heliotrope look at each other, then Vinyl Scratch. All of them look somewhat embarrassed.

Kraber had been in many a strange meeting spot. Abandoned mines. A boat in the middle of the atlantic. A plane. A boxcar in the middle of the woods. An oil rig. An abandoned town. A moving train. But “Abandoned underground bowling alley in the middle of a city” ranked near the top.

“Do you work for a Bond villain or some kak?” Kraber found himself asking a Thenardier Guard with prematurely (or dyed?) white hair. He could have been anywhere from his early thirties to early forties.

“Your boss,” Kraber said. “Lofty name, love of codes, finds underground bases all the time…”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it,” the man said. “Besides. He’s got important stuff to say here.”

“The boss” was, in this case, Atlas Dagney fokking Galt. Despite all of his prattle about ‘equal opportunity for each man to prove his worth’, he was probably blanching at Defiance not having sent classier soldiers. But people like Sully, Mariesa, Blanchett, the other handpicked elites, and possibly Kraber? They were the absolute best Lovikov could pick.

Still. That was Galt for you. The picture of the average HLF ‘code-head’, a commanding officer obsessed with phrases and codewords, obsessed with his own philosophy. Obsessed with making things by his own hands, be they tables, weapons, maps, plans, or units.

If Galt had his way, his best options, they’d likely be in a hotel with some even more pompous codeword attached to it in official HLF communications, even if the so-called ‘communications’ were just children that were probably too young to remember things before the War, and almost certainly too young hold anything larger than barroom .32 pistols. He would’ve even taken a farm run by a sympathetic survivalist with a lot of guns, but all those contacts had dried up. The money, or at least what little of it was left nowadays, was in employing Earth Ponies as work to squeeze even larger yields out of the fields and orchards. That, and the fat government subsidy for employing earth ponies was too much for all but the most radically anti-government and anti-pony HLF to ignore.

“I see Birch isn’t here?” Kraber observed, taking a brief break to look up at the Thenardier Guards that had come to visit.

“Why, you miss him?” asked one woman, a redhead in clothing that looked like it was made of more patches than original fabric.

The Samoyed, belonging to the HLF sympathizer who maintained the underground base, let out a short whine.

“No, no,” Kraber said, looking down at the dog, reassuring it. “I’m fine, I’m fine…”

“...Lorne. See, I’m fine, it’s just that Birch is batshit crazy,” he continued, still addressing the samoyed.

“Well,” Kraber explanation. “Our boy Birch talks about seeing ponies kidnap people before the war, zionists, chemtrails, reptilians…and he desperately wants the sane people to share in his madness, so he preaches this shit all the time.”

Chuckling, he scratched the dog behind the ears. “God help us all if that man ever becomes a officer. You wouldn’t want to serve under Lieutenant Birch, would you?”

“Awwww… stop it, stop it!” he laughed, unmindful of everyone staring at him. “That’s what I thought, though. You know, you know a lot about this stuff, little hondije! And for that I salute you! Where’s a dog biscuit?”

“You’re one to talk,” muttered the youngest of the group, a twenty-something standing just behind Galt, dressed in civvies, augmented with a pair of under-arm holsters. Her hair was tied back with a bandanna, and her entire body had a youthful roughness to it that was simultaneously offputting and beguiling. Her bearing however was professional, and her twin pistols bright and polished.

“Verity Carter…” Kraber stared at her, wondering where he had last seen her. Had he run into her recently? Damn silly name she had. Wasn’t it latin for ‘truth’?

The youth shook her head in revulsion, eyes glinting. “You’re disgusting.”

Dismissing his wandering thoughts, Kraber smiled, showing his yellow teeth and wild eyes. “I didn’t even say anything this time! But yeah. I am, bakvissie. Doesn’t that at least give me some right to judge? Can’t I’ve somee fokkin’ standards?”

Shaking her head in disgust, Verity pulled on a short jacket that neatly hid her weapons and tugged on her ponytail, revealing it to be a clip-on. With it removed and a scruffy baseball cap (turned backwards) replacing it, she suddenly looked five or six years younger. A denim skirt pulled on over her jeans completed the image of a disaffected teen. Yay for counter-culture.

“Redd, you’re with me,” she beckoned to a young man dressed similarly to herself, before saluting Galt smartly.

“Colonel, requesting permission to proceed to the waterfront and finalise preparations for the mission with ensign Flamel,” Verity continued.

“Granted, Captain Carter,” Galt said blithely, not even looking in her direction. The girl and her one-man escort left with another lip-sneering glance in Viktor’s direction.

“Well, at least Viktor doesn’t talk about zionist conspiracies,” Lovikov said when the quiet became too much to bear. “That’s one up on Birch.”

“-Or any conspiracies that don’t involve the PHL or that bitch Yael,” Martineau finished. “That means our madman is better than yours. Besides, Viktor here does surgery.”

“Don’t remind me about that bull-dyke kike Yael,” Andrei Rianofski sighed, drawing the ‘evil eye’ from Kraber. “Our allies have lost over a hundred to her raids alone!”

For any members of the Front near to the Canadian border, Yael Ze’ev had become a sort of local boogeywoman. She’d apparently been demoted just yesterday for burning one Canadian redoubt to ashes with a squad of flamethrower tanks, but that was unlikely to stop her.

“We have far more important things to discuss,” Galt said, leading them into another room. “Myself, Rianofski, Captain Carter and several others have come up with a plan that might just cripple the PHL locally…if only for a moment, but a moment is all we need.”

And that was why Galt was where he was, and why he had even Kraber’s attention, if not his respect. He’d built the Thenardiers around himself on the results he could produce on demand. Which to Viktor was why it was so delightful to be here on their own terms, as the shock troops Galt needed to pull of his plan.

Not even trying to hide his displeasure, the Colonel placed a chess piece, a black King, on the map, sitting it about thirty miles out to sea from Portland.

“Tell me”, he asked, voice as treacherous as water flowing over rocks. “Have any of you ever heard of the Sorghum?”

‘I feel a reference coming,’ Kraber thought, still running his hands through Lorne’s fur.

‘As if I was some kind of fokking retard, like Sheja, that kontgesig,’ Kraber thought, struggling not to pull out a revolver and splatter Galt. But that’d bring people running, so that was out.

“The Exile is a mobile drilling platform, bigger than anything else of it’s kind. The PHL contracted Armacham and Crowe to build it last year, and thanks to their ‘magic’, it’s now capable of also extracting and distributing oil brought up from any wells it’s tapped,” Galt explained.

“The platform is due to be relocated from its current position on Usherfall Bank in one week’s time”, Galt continued. “There’s consequently increased activity to and from it in preparation for the tow. It’ll be within spitting distance of Portland, and a small town’s worth of boats will surround it. They’ll sell to the rig workers, give them rides to shore… security will be at an all-time low.”

“Through my contacts I have commissioned an ‘amenable’ shipwright down south. He has modified a ocean-going tugboat for our purposes. It’ll have a submerged basement of sorts for you to keep additional personnel, as well as concealed weapon lockers to arm yourselves… anything you could need.”

Everyone was now intrigued, as Galt slid the Knight across the table towards the King.

“Captain Carter has obtained us the passcodes and documentation necessary to get aboard the Sorghum, and then... ” Galt sighed. “Where possible, don’t kill people. Your primary goal is to take hostages. Then, as soon as you’ve secured the platform, place those hostages under guard in a location where you are unlikely to be visible to snipers. The Sorghum is also equipped with several missile launchers and cannons-”

“The kind of people that are paranoid about getting attacked by Imperials out at sea,” Galt said. “For good reason, too. You are to take control of the station’s armaments, for extra leverage. We will make a situation so untenable for the PHL that sending a squad to neutralize us would be impossible to consider. We’ll have the entire city and the population of the rig, the boats surrounding it in the palm of our hands, and we’ll give it all up in exchange for…”

“I’m sure we’ll get him back,” Lovikov said, and flashed a glance at Kraber that anyone else might have considered friendly. “Especially. With. Kraber. On. Our. Side. In the chaos of a situation like this, anything can happen, but so long as Kraber’s here...”

It was a threat, pure and simple. Kraber wasn’t sure of what, but the malice was unmistakable.

“Kraber,” Galt said, in that oh-so FOKKIN’ PATRONIZING tone, “Are you quite alright?”

Kraber forced himself to breathe. Ontspanne, he told himself. Fokkin’ ontspan. Come on, what would Kate say at a time like this to calm me down?

‘Viktor! People actually think that the Kraken is a good weapon in Warframe!’

“Fokkin’ lekker,” Kraber interrupted. “I was just thinking of an idea…”

For the rest of his life, he’d wish he hadn’t been the one that came up with it. Would want to tell others that Lovikov thought of it (it wouldn’t exactly be out of character for him). Would want to distance himself from the atrocity that came next.

“Fok with them,” he found himself saying. “You want them to hand over Carter to us? Let’s make them scared. Say something like ‘if our demands aren’t met, either we send a missile to Portland or kill a hostage. How many lives is it worth for you?’”

The smile that Lovikov made was so wide that it looked like it could’ve split his face in two.

“Is that… is that really wise?” Rianofski asked. “Enough collateral damage, and they might decide to just destroy us.”

“It’s risky,” Galt said, “But I see the logic. We don’t exactly need to do that. We only need to make them think we can. Lovikov, would you be willing to fire on Portland?”

The hint of sarcasm was subtle, but so obvious to Kraber that he had to look around to see if anyone else heard that. Something deep in Kraber - not the newfoal he kept hearing, but some long-dormant part of him that’d been supressed and malnourished since before the War - stirred in him.

Kraber played up the part of the remorseless Afrikaner psychopath all the time. It was a good role, it was one everyone expected. A classic. Murdering PER, going for horsefuckers was one thing.

He can’t go that far, Kraber thought to himself. Killing that many innocents would just be…

Later, he’d reflect on that. He hadn’t thought ‘innocent humans’ while leaving ponies out of the equation. He’d only thought ‘innocents.’

Before the Barrier, Portland hadn’t been what it was today. There were so many languages spoken here now, with signs in the languages of so many atomized countries dotting the streets. The pedestrians - the human pedestrians, anyway - were dressed downright weird, in whatever clothes they could find, which weren’t many. There were weapons carried openly, either professionally manufactured or hammered together in caves or someone’s basement. Kraber thought it reminded him of Blade Runner, Sunset Overdrive, or that one… that one Mexican flash animation he loved as a kid, the one with the smileyfaces and the giant robot clown.

Of course, that didn’t mean he liked how the city now looked. He would have loved a melting-pot like this back before the war, but it was another thing to live it. All the rich people, virtually anyone with enough money had left to go east, buying themselves a few more months to live in comfort on the west coast, in deserts, in America’s heartland, or in the mountains. Anywhere that’d buy a few more hours of (comparative) luxury before it was destroyed.

And filling the gaps were… Kraber made his lips curl into a sneer, when he didn’t truly feel the emotion behind it. Ponies. Zebras, even a few griffons. None of whom wore any clothes.

Foods from other countries were combined with poor amounts of ingredients, substitutes and replacements, to form strange new culinary combinations. Kraber had happily visited a restaurant selling Nigerian ice cream alongside more American flavors like Moose Tracks and Husky’s Lover, which was vanilla malt ice cream with pretzels, peanut butter and chocolate swirls. The same fusion was tangible, visible, and even audible wherever you went, what with mongrel pidgin slang, mingling with dialects and languages from all over the world.

Improbably enough, there were a few places selling stolen Equestrian goods and ‘Equestrian-prepared baked goods’, which nobody in the HLF would touch. There was graffiti over the signage for these stores, and signs of broken windows, and yet, business seemed brisk.

The city’s primary industry had always been shipping, but the routes that outbound and inbound vessels now followed changed by the day, with cargos of wood, ammunition, food, and other necessities departing for southernmost Africa and America. Imports consisted for raw materials, scrap metal, neglected Soviet or American military hardware, all commodities that would be reused in the war effort. A cargo of steel ore might end up smithed into guns, or forged into rails for more locomotives, or any other possible permutation of human skill and technology. Who could say? There was even a huge ship, emblazoned with the Crowe Labs logo, armed with strange blocky guns and offloading multicolored containers.

They found the tugboat, as promised, near the Maine Street Pier. It stood out next to all the other vessels nearby for being utterly normal in appearance. Compared to the junkers around it made of half-sunken cars and scrap, the ancient tubs that looked like they’d barely survived the Europe Evacuation (probably because that was exactly what happened) held together with cable and ropes, the meaty ocean-going tug looked trim and ready to put to sea. As they approached, a pair of diesels could be heard turning over, and fumes belched from the twin exhaust stacks aft of the orange wheelhouse.

That was another difference from the other boats, many of which appeared to run on strange, magical engines pioneered by pony expatriates - Kraber noticed one outbound fishing boat, helmed by a mixed crew of humans and ponies, all clad in oilskins, that appeared to run on clockwork wound steadily by a hefty earth pony and a small, slight woman. He had to admit, it was fascinating.

“Alright, this is our tub,” said Lovikov warily, “the Arctic Warrior. Megan, Dayoung, Jones? You’re going to be keeping an eye on things from the docks, taking orders from Benning and Galt.”

“Things will be fine,” Galt said, standing behind the three of them. “Don’t even worry about it.”

“Just take care of us shoreside, and we’ll make sure it all works out,” Lovikov said, heading onto the boat.

“Of course,” Lovikov said. A wolfish grin spread across his face. “I wouldn’t want to miss this.”

If Kraber knew what would happen in the next 78 minutes and 33 seconds, his response would have been to kick Lovikov in the face and yell “NO JOU FOKKIN’ DON’T!” But then, he was close to making that decision anyway.

It wasn’t as if Kraber had much keeping him from agreeing with that sentiment. He wasn’t exactly that different, anyway. But…

Lately, he was feeling wrong. Killing those ponies? That felt wrong. Not killing those ponies? That felt… well, it also felt wrong. But it felt less wrong than killing those ponies in Maine.

The thought of people like him or Lovikov holding an entire city hostage? That was one thing he could absolutely say, without a doubt, was wrong to him. Maybe Lovikov was his friend, but... something didn't feel right between them. Not anymore.

“Ain’t she a beaut?” called out the young corporal Kraber had seen leave the briefing with Verity Carter. Redd Flamel was his name if memory served, and right now he was coiling ropes on-deck. “Welcome aboard!”

“Yessir. Raised on my family’s fishing boat, Antonia Graza. I’m your deckhand and engineer for this voyage.”

He seemed squirrelly, excitable, and yet utterly in command of his environment. Kraber liked that.

“Up in the wheelhouse, readying us for departure. Both herself and me were trained by the builder to operate the boat, but the fake Master’s Certificate is in her name.”

Kraber shook his head. A twenty-something slip of a girl as the captain of a vessel. Well, that wouldn’t do.

A quick inspection of the Warrior showed everything to be in order. It was almost immaculate in comparison to the other floating wrecks in the harbor. It wasn't pristine, but on the other hand, it was full of the concealed weapon lockers Galt had promised.

Even better was a hatch apparently leading to the bilge, which in truth opened up onto a secret compartment outfitted with bench-seats sufficient to seat twenty. It would be… perfect.

Over the course of the next hour the troops arrived in groups of two or three, keeping their numbers discrete. Thenardier Guards, and Menschabwehrfraktion alike, they came aboard. Most headed for the submerged compartment, cramped, smelly, dirty, and more than a little leaky, but the best place to conceal such a force.

At last, with everything ready and all supplies loaded, and the light of day dwindling into evening, Verity gave the order to cast off all lines, and turned the Arctic Warrior’s prow towards the harbor mouth. Down below, Kraber watched with approval as Redd busied himself with the twin diesel motors. The young man was clearly born to the sea.

Leaving him to it, Kraber himself went up to the immaculate wheelhouse, where Verity Carter was manning the helm, looking deceptively small as she stared forward through the reinforced viewports out towards the dark eastern horizon. Although she still wore her turned-back baseball cap, she’d swapped her civvies for body armour concealed under a heavy seaman’s jacket. To his delight, Viktor had earlier found a matching garment that fitted him hung in the captain’s cabin, along with the requisite peaked cap.

“Avast!” he cried as he entered the wheelhouse, a smile on his face and one hand on his revolver. The other hand was clenched around the snapped-off hook from the coathanger, completing the appropriate pirate-y image. “I be Kapitan Kraber!”

“... Shut up,” Verity muttered, pointedly tapping the framed Masters Certificate made out in her own name. Mariesa on the other hand, was smiling.

“Fok jou, I always wanted to say that,” Kraber laughed, stepping outside onto the bridge wing. The tug was ploughing steadily through the swells, heading for the rig. They could see it off in the distance, just over the horizon.

I didn’t know you could park one of those that close to shore, Kraber thought.

The three of them - and, of course, the Thenardier Guard members that Galt had dispatched with them - all stood in another boat. Off in the distance, Dayoung saw a narrow-gauge railroad, hugging the coast.

“Menschabwehrfraktion and Thenardiers,” Galt said, “While you’re not part of Sorghum Team, you have an important duty nonetheless. This city may not react well to finding that we have them in our crosshairs.”

“It’s especially dangerous what with being in Portland,” Galt continued. “Portland… well, ponies and other aliens are more popular here than you’d think. You’ve got griffons, and Romero lives along the coast, distributing magic stuff where he can. And, when Equestria tried to build a bureau here, the whole city rose up against it. The leader was a man named John Caveney.”

Dayoung listened, rapt at attention. She’d heard of Caveney - of course she’d heard of him, the man who led Portland to destroy its Conversion Bureau.

“Our job is to make sure that whatever happens, the city doesn’t get… ideas about what they should do,” Galt said. “We only step in when things go wrong. You’ll have full use of my bunker, arsenal, and the tunnels underneath Portland I have connections to. I’ll need some of you to keep an eye on the Bureau construction site.”

“Yeah,” Benning put in. “I… well, you know I was raised around here. I was running the family business around the same time they started laying ground for the Bureau. The Purple Winter ended up stopping the construction, but there’s a big empty lot and a bunch of concrete where it could’ve been. The first floor is done, but they didn’t get any further above that. They got quite a bit below that, though - there’s a bunch of sublevels nobody’s quite been able to get to.”

“Why should we keep an eye on it?” Megan asked, and everyone - Dayoung included - stared at the willowy teenager girl who’d dared to speak up.

“Well,” Galt said, “Why not? There have been rumblings about PER activity. Shieldwall and Fairbairn have been weird ever since Fairbairn got half his face gnawed off.”

“And there was… something that got Shieldwall unsettled back in the Pacific Northwest,” Galt continued. “But I’d be the first to admit I don’t know much about it. Be prepared for anything, men. We’re heading into dangerous waters.”

“Platform ahoy!” Mariessa announced at last, sighting forward through a pair of binoculars. She seemed to have somehow become Verity’s first-mate during the few hours it had taken to head out to sea. Following her gaze, everyone sighted a cluster of lights on the horizon.

“Big bliksem,” Kraber muttered. And as the tug grew closer, the structure grew even larger - a massive leviathan kept afloat on two submerged hulls, like a giant catamaran. Four cylindrical columns supported the superstructure, shimmering softly as something rippled around them.

“Platform Sorghum, this is commercial tugboat Arctic Warrior. I am her skipper, V Carter. We are approaching on a bearing of 100 south-easterly and are under instruction to moor up beside your north-western column. Over…” Verity said into her radio handset, having yielded the helm to a scowling Lovikov with the whispered orders to “keep her straight and point her where I tell you.”

Lovikov was clearly blanching at the thought of taking orders from someone less than half his age, but he did it.

‘How does Lovikov know enough to pilot a boat, anyway?’ Kraber thought. ‘Wouldn’t have thought a kontgesig like that would-’

Kraber had barely a nanosecond to wonder where that thought had been going before he realized what he’d just thought: ‘Lovikov is a kontgesig.’ Part of him wanted to doubt that. But part of him really didn’t. It almost felt like a relief to admit it. ‘Lovikov is a kontgesig.’

An island passed them by. It was a jagged, rocky little nub of land with a lighthouse, warning boats away. Not that it seemed to have done too much - a lot of boats, a regular small navy, hung around the Sorghum. They were of all sizes - the same kinds of junkers he’d seen in the harbor in Portland, and much larger vessels that looked like they’d barely survived the Europe Evacuation - example being, the container ship piled high with improvised houses made from shipping containers. Rather like his from back home, come to think of it.

“Why would they let all these boats sit nearby?” Mariesa asked, confused. “Seems kind of unsafe.”

Sully shrugged. “Who knows? Some people just need a community, no matter what.”

“Ja,” Kraber said. “When I lost my family, it was like… like the ground fell out from under me. I had to be with someone, and Lovikov and Kagan were there for me.”

Kraber stifled a laugh at the sight of the young girl strutting around the wheelhouse as she continued to banter with the platform, switching between coded frequencies on demand. Annoying and bitchy she may have been, but damn if she didn’t have guts. He could see how she survived in a unit like the Thenardiers.

“Please confirm security passcode?” the platform’s radio officer demanded at last.

“Break a fucking broomhandle off in Celestia’s flank,” the youth said. “Over.”

“Thank you Arctic Warrior, your documentation has been filed and you have permission to approach. Please turn to heading 154 and reduce speed to six knots, then proceed to final. Over.”

And like that, a pall had lifted over them. Verity twirled the radio handset on its cord with all the cocksure confidence of a gunslinger, and hung it on its hook with a satisfied smirk.

“We’re in,” Lovikov said, a smile on his face. “The hard part is over.”

And here’s where he breaks into laughter. He laughs hysterically, a bellowing guffaw that switches in pitch near-constantly, like you haven’t heard him laugh since the… incident… with Verity. Dancing Day finds it hard to say she doesn’t deserve it though.

Kraber shakes his head no, doubled over laughing. “Oh, no. It only got harder after that,” he manages to get out, eyes moist from tears of laughter.

Light Despondent Remixed

by Doctor Fluffy

06: Under Pressure