“Tell me…Shadow…why should we trust you?”

“Taking cover sucks with my wings broken like this! Was it absolutely necessary to break them to stop me!?” Stardust asked as he took cover behind the entrance to the room that held the memory machine.

“I do but it’s all a little bit fuzzy. I’m still a bit woozy from the machine. By the way, this would be a lot easier if I had my rifle instead of this stupid pistol. Where’s my rifle?” he responded.

Oh shit… this is gonna be awkward and probably piss him off, “Your rifle that you had when you were Pride or the one from before that?”

“Is this really what’s happening right now?” Solstice asked, “Can’t you just worry about what’s happening right now instead of some stupid gun?”

Stardust took a few shots at some security ponies across the next room, “I’m talking about any rifle right now.”

“Well your rifle you had as Pride is probably back at The Kingdom and your other one. Uh…your other one sorta got vaporized when I destroyed mill city tower because I accidentally left it behind when I left,” I replied sheepishly.

“Thanks…got anything else I could use for now?” he asked as he reloaded his pistol.

I took out my plasma rifle and tossed it to him before he could say anything and continued to try shooting at the three security ponies at the entrance to medical, “You said you wanted to end this place once and for all, what did you mean by that? I don’t feel like getting radiation sickness from another exploding stable.”

He landed a shot on one of the security ponies, “I don’t wanna destroy the place, just that stupid machine. I want to convince the inhabitants here that their entire lives have been a lie.”

“We gotta get to The General, her office and quarters are across the hall from medical. If we can kill her or take her hostage, we’ll either have a bargaining chip or at least have stricken a large blow to the hierarchy of the stable,” he responded as he killed the other two security ponies.

“You guys go, Doorstop and I will stay with Dr. Limbis to protect her. We’ll get her out of here and clear a path for you two,” Solstice said.

“What about him?” I asked pointing at the pony we took with us on the way up to the top floor.

“I’ll carry him like I did with Stardust on the way in here. I can still handle myself with somepony on my back,” Wind Thrasher answered.

“No, and by the way, why are you helping us? Aren’t you supposed to be one of the bad guys?” Stardust replied.

“Let’s just say The Enclave screwed me over one too many times and didn’t give me the respect I deserved of my title,” Solstice explained.

Doorstop stomped his hoof on the ground to get our attention, “Enough of this. We need to do something instead of sitting here making regular conversation.”

We all came out of the room where the memory machine was and went over to the injured security pony. I kicked his gun away before he could grab it again and asked, “The General, where is she? If you don’t tell me I’m going to enjoy torturing you.”

“I don’t know, she pretty much disappeared when shit hit the fan,” he replied.

“She must be hiding in the emergency escape tunnel,” I said, assuming she’d hide in the most obvious place possible.

“I can see why you’d think that, but the tunnel here was sealed to prevent ponies from somehow opening it and getting into the office in case of a break-in,” Stardust said.

“That’s so stupid, Stable-Tec wouldn’t make something like that easy to access from the exit end,” I said in disbelief.

“She’s a bit paranoid,” Doorstop said from behind us, “Anyway, we’re gonna go ahead while you two find The General. Most likely she’s in her quarters, she has a gun in there she keeps for situations like this.”

“Alright we’ll check there, but if she’s not there I’m sure she’ll find her way out of the woodwork after we deplete the population in here a bit,” I responded.

“Shadow, I hope you don’t plan on killing any of the inhabitants,” Stardust interrupted, “They’re victims of this fucked up place like I am. The only reason they’re going to attack you is either because they were ordered to, or if they’re scared. We were trained not to fear things, but realistically nopony is afraid of nothing.”

Right, I forgot about the inhabitants of the stable. Why does there always have to be some sort of extra challenge with situations like this? “No, I won’t kill any of the cadets here unless it’s by accident.”

“Just don’t do it accidentally on purpose,” Doorstop said as he walked away with the others, “We’ll be waiting for you just outside the Stable, try to keep yourselves safe.”

After they were gone Stardust and I entered the corridor to what would normally be The Overmare’s office. There was a small stairway of three steps going up after turning the corner to the door. For some strange reason there weren’t any guards around like I expected, either she’s not in there, or she’s deadlier than I’m expecting, “Hey Stardust, what’s The General like? Is she gonna be hard to deal with?”

“Ppfftt, she shouldn’t be that tough. She’s a bit of a hardass when it comes to the inhabitants, but because of her eye she’s a klutz. There was this one time during a proctored exam she was overseeing, she tripped on something one of us threw on the floor just out of her line of sight. She wasn’t too happy about it but was impressed with my ability to take advantage of my enemy’s tactical disadvantages,” he explained.

“She’s missing her right eye,” he replied while taking aim with the plasma rifle.

I looked at him confused, “But in that memory of her when you escaped she had two eyes.”

He chuckled, “She had a glass eye, when I shot her during my escape it was destroyed and I guess she never replaced it. But as long as I’ve known her she’s always been blind on one side. Now let’s hurry this up.”

“I’m gonna go check under the desk, that’s a great place to hide in an Overmare’s office. Believe me, I know from experience,” I said unholstering my revolver, I opened the door and when I didn’t see her I walked over to the desk.

She wasn’t under there as I expected, so I turned my attention to the terminal on her desk and started to browse through the various files. Luckily the terminal wasn’t locked. There were quite a few files on the terminal, but not many of them proved useful to me, but one caught my eye. It was a list of all the stats of each cadet in the stable. I scrolled down to Stardust’s name and saw that it said deceased next to his name and his stats were blank. Then I noticed he was staring at me from across the room, “What are you doing? This is no time to be snooping into her business.”

“But I always snoop in situations like this. It’s not like we’re in any immediate danger at the moment, plus this could help us out,” I replied.

“Aright fine, when we find her you can ask how she explained your sudden death to the other cadets,” I said.

“What? I guess she had to make some sort of excuse for my absence in the stable but now I’m curious at what she said the cause of death was,” he said scratching his chin.

We proceeded to the next door at the other end of the room, above the door it read ‘General’s Quarters’, “She lives in the same area as her office?”

I tried opening the door and of course it was locked, “You know what the door being locked means right? She’s gotta be in there.”

“Shows what you know about tactics, she could’ve locked it from the outside y’know,” he said with a bit of a scoff.

I started to pick the lock as I replied, “Yeah but there’s still a chance she’s in there. Think about it, she knows that you think like that and could use it to her advantage to throw you off of her trail.”

With a pop and a click the door was unlocked and opened to a small barrage of gunshots coming from behind an overturned sofa, “Shadow one, Stardust zero!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you told me so. Let’s just get this over with,” he waited until she stopped shooting and said, “Hey cyclops, nice aim you got there. Also, didn’t your mother teach you to be polite? You should at least hear your enemy out before resorting to violence.”

“I don’t listen to terrorists! Security is on their way here as we speak, I suggest you surrender now or let your friend be slaughtered like the last time you crossed me Stardust!” The General exclaimed.

“Security here sucks, I already killed three of them across the hall,” he retorted.

“Let me rephrase, Enclave reinforcements will arrive here shortly and make quick work of you and your friends. I can’t believe your friends were stupid enough to break in here and think they could just walk back out with you,” she said before taking a couple more shots. I heard a click, “Fuck!”

“Fuck you!” she shouted as she jumped out from behind the sofa and charged at us with a baton.

Stardust and I avoided every swing she threw our way, then out of nowhere Stardust grabbed the end of the baton and twisted it out of her grip. Before she had a chance to notice that she’d been disarmed, she was struck in the back of the head by the baton and knocked out, “Don’t you think that was a bit too easy? This whole time everything has been pretty simple except for going into the memory machine,” I asked.

“If you think about it, no. This place isn’t equipped to handle an attack from the outside world, only rebellious inhabitants, or inhabitants that’ve learned the truth about this place. Come to think of it, I don’t even think they trained us on how to deal with an outside attack,” Stardust said.

“Really, they didn’t train you on anything like this? That’s surprising considering the reason they have all of you here,” I responded, “So, what do we do with her?”

“I have no idea. We could kill her but she’s all knocked out and stuff, seems kinda unfair. Bringing her to a cell is a bad idea because there’s probably security there,” he replied.

“Y’know, if you were still a bad guy, you would’ve come up with something by now,” I said trying to urge him to think harder.

Stardust had a look on his face, the kind of face you would see when a stroke of genius hit, “We’ll just take her hostage, no one in this place has the balls to shoot through her to kill us. The only one I could think of that would do that is Doorstop and he’s on our side. Just hold her in your magic with your gun pointed at her and I’ll lead the way.”

“At least we sort of have a plan now, but what else are we gonna do besides take her hostage so we aren’t killed?” I asked.

“Well, first thing’s first, we gotta destroy that Goddesses damned machine. Then after that, we need to figure out a way to convince the inhabitants here to fight for us, or evacuate somehow,” he replied.

This is so stupid, we’re literally running around a hostile stable with no plan, a barely unconscious hostage, and no friends to back us up, “This was a bad idea, we should’ve just gone with the others and come up with a plan to come back in here to end things.”

“Calm down, we’ll be fine, just pick her up with your magic and follow my lead,” Stardust said trying and somewhat failing to reassure me.

I did what he said and followed him back through the corridor and back to the main hallway of the upper level. There wasn’t any security for some reason but then I heard a click from the stable PA system, “Attention stable inhabitants! This is Captain Plank of The Grand Pegasus Enclave! The moment you’ve all been training for has arrived, hostiles have invaded the stable. Find any weapons you can to protect yourselves and gather in the atrium to await further instruction, The Enclave is here to help.”

Stardust looked surprised, “I’ll be amazed if even half of the population actually goes to the atrium.”

“All our lives they told us that the world outside was instant death and that the only way to step hoof out there was with a lot of safety measures like taking a ton of Radsafe, and wearing a radiation suit or power armor. The reason no pony has ever gone outside is because this stable has no radiation suits, no anti-radiation drugs, and the power armor stored here doesn’t have any kind of lead plating. I’ve never heard of Captain whatever his name was and I know none of the others know who he is just by the way he announced himself. To all the inhabitants of the stable except for the staff, he’s an outsider. If anything, the inhabitants won’t trust him unless their total morons that don’t listen during training or unless the Instructors tell them to. When I was still living here, I was trained to never trust the unknown, no matter who they say they’re affiliated with. When I escaped this place, I wondered how they got in and out without opening the stable door and attracting attention. Then I thought about it, they must have a separate door somewhere on the upper levels that leads to the outside. I mean think about it, we’re under an outside theater, not in a mountain or somewhere that’s super enclosed by hard rock like most stables. It would be no sweat for The Enclave to build a separate access tunnel into the stable after taking over,” Stardust explained as we slowly proceeded down the hallway toward security.

“I can see why you would think that, but if there was another entrance don’t you think Dr. Limbis would’ve let us in that way instead of the front door? Also, shouldn’t we be going the other way?” I asked.

He sighed, “It would be faster to just head straight for the stairs down, but I need to destroy the memory machine. We have a hostage so we shouldn’t have any issues from security unless one of them wants to be a hero and try saving The General. Just passed security and the holding cells is the armory, we can get more weapons there like I said before and possibly something to blow up the reeducation machine.”

“Out of all the time you were in here did you ever stop to think where they would’ve been getting bullets the past two hundred years?”

“Tsk, you can make bullets from old ones Shadow. All you need is something to melt and reshape the metal,” he replied.

“STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!!!” a security pony shouted from in front of us after jumping out from behind a doorway.

“Nope,” I said as I pointed Dream Walker at the security pony and fired directly at his head. Blood splattered all over the wall a split second before his body was thrown against it by the force of the bullet cascading through his skull.

“You didn’t need to kill him so quickly. Make sure it’s not one of the programs victims before shooting next time,” Stardust said.

I rolled my eyes, “You realize that we’re on the top level of the stable where the vault inhabitants aren’t allowed right? None of them are going to be up here.”

“Yes, I realize that, it’s just you’re so quick to kill that I’m afraid you might accidentally kill somepony you shouldn’t when we get downstairs,” he argued.

“Fine, I’ll be more careful,” I replied as I checked to see if there was anypony else in the security office, “Shouldn’t there be more than just one pony in here?”

He shook his head, “Not in a situation like this. They probably sent most of the security downstairs to help the Enclave reinforcements take control of the situation. I hope the others made it out before The Enclave got here.”

“Doorstop and Solstice are both excellent fighters, I’m sure they got out before The Enclave got here. What I think is going on right now is that they think they’re still in here so they’re looking for them and us if they somehow found out we split up,” I said hoping the same thing he was, just on the inside.

He led me down the hall and around a corner to where a door similar to the one I saw in Stardust’s memories for the room that stored the power armor. Unlike the one for the Power Armor Storage, this one had a terminal in front of it, “This shouldn’t be too bad for me to get into.”

“I figured as much, that’s one reason I wanted you with me. I don’t have time to be hacking into terminals.”

I moved up to the terminal and hooked in the Mark II. Just like the terminal in the lobby at Mill City Tower, it bypassed the need to hack the terminal at all and unlocked it right away, “That was easy.”

Stardust laughed as he opened the door, “I’m not surprised, this level is off limits so they don’t need to worry too much about keeping this room locked. It’s mostly just in case there’s a rebellion of some kind. This keeps the Cadets from getting to the more powerful weapons, they wouldn’t have the time to sit here and hack a terminal while they’re trying not to be captured by stable security err whatever.”

Inside the room were racks and racks of high-end weapons, from sniper rifles to pistols, magical energy rifles to plasma, plastic explosives and grenades. Shelves filled with ammo for just about every kind of weapon in the room and some for things I couldn’t see in the room, “Now this is what I call a haul, we could make a killing if we took everything here and sold it back in The Kingdom!”

Stardust just rolled his eyes, “We aren’t here to enrich ourselves, we’re here to save the ponies who’ve been brainwashed by this place. Actually, that’s why I’m here. You’re here to save me, but in all reality by saving me, you’ve caused this chain reaction of potentially unfortunate and somewhat fortunate events.”

“I know…I think, but what’s wrong with getting a little something for it? We could use the caps and the ammo,” I said walking over to the ammo shelves, “C’mon they have a shit ton of .50 cal for Dream Walker! Do you know how hard it is to find ammo for this fucking gun!?”

“Dammit Shadow, keep it down. Fine, get what we need but that’s all. After this we should seal this room so nopony else can’t get in.”

I giggled, “Alright, but don’t complain to me later if we suddenly run out of caps and we could’ve sold all these weapons,” I moved around the room and started collecting as much ammo as I could for Dream Walker, the revolver from Mill City Tower, The Plasma Rifle, and whatever else I thought I could use or my friends.

As I worked, Stardust moved over to the Sniper Rifles and pulled one down, “Shadow make sure to grab me some ammo for this, and when you’re finished with that, grab as much of the C-4 as you can and a detonator.”

I looked over at a rack of Shotguns laid out on the far wall and one caught my eye. It had a drum feed mag, glow sights, and a beautiful black and red finish on it. Running over to it I took hold of it with my magic bringing it closer, “I don’t care what you say, I’m taking this too!”

“Trust me, it’ll be useful, we’ll be in close quarters more often than not and this baby will be able to take out more enemies than Dream Walker can with one shot. Also, it’s fucking gorgeous!” I said hugging it close to me.

He walked over looking it over, “Hmmm, a 10 gage with a drum feed mag and it has extra padding to take some of the recoil off your shoulder. It’s a good gun for a pegasus or earth pony, but it may have more of a kick than your used to since you always use your magic to fire weapons. Though you handle Dream Walker well, so it might not be as bad as it would for most unicorns.”

I grinned, “I’ll be fine, but I’m not sure that you should only be using a sniper rifle. I know it’s your favorite weapon but it’s not ideal for this kind of situation.”

He cocked his head toward me, “That’s true, I was going to get an automatic rifle too even though they’re total bullet wasters most of the time. When did you start thinking tactically?”

He had a point, “I’m not sure, maybe I’m finally learning from my mistakes.”

He smirked, “Maybe, or you’re just smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

“Now don’t stroke my ego that much, I’m an idiot,” I said walking past him to look over a few of the automatic rifles.

Stardust joined me, taking interest in one, “No I’m being serious, you’re not stupid, not even close. You’re impulsive, there’s no question there, but when you take a minute to stop and think, you come up with some good ideas.”

“No, I got it from your actions over the last few days. I might’ve been out of my mind, but I still knew you had a knack for making a good plan, even if that plan was destructive and murderous,” he said as he pulled a mid-sized rifle off the wall.

“You mean when I went to Mill City Tower? I don’t see how I did anything smart with that. It was all luck.”

He gave me a look, “It wasn’t all luck Shadow. You were able to worm your way past the guards at the street level, you broke into a well-guarded tower, found a way up to the upper floors, killed a head scientist and disguised yourself as her, fooled the guards, and you were able to kill the High Council. You did that on your own, you might’ve come up with your plan on the fly, but you still made the best out of a half-assed plan. If Nightshade didn’t know it was you, you might’ve been able to kill him and me too.”

“That’s where your impulsive nature and your anger took over. It’s a weakness and a bad one. However, it’s one that you can overcome if you work hard enough at it. My point is that even as Pride, I noticed how quickly you can adapt to a new situation, it makes you a force to be reckoned with,” he said with another wide grin.

I smiled back about to say something when the door to the room opened and a mare yelled, “FREEZE!”

Stardust and I both turned at the same time, his new rifle coming up as my shotgun and Dream Walker did the same, both pointing right at the power armored Mare. I grinned wildly, “Only one of you?”

Stardust didn’t grin, he moved over to put himself behind The General who was still knocked out laying on the ground. He moved his rifle down and pointed it at her head, “Make any sudden moves and I’ll repaint the walls red!”

The mare in the power armor froze looking between myself and Stardust, “Let her go, if you do we’ll only take you into custody.”

I couldn’t help but laugh a little, “You think we’re scared of you? You’re one mare, how are you gonna stop us?”

“She’s one of the instructors here, she’s as good of a fighter as Doorstop. Don’t underestimate her,” Stardust said, his rifle still pressed against The General’s head.

The mare snickered a bit, “Clever one aren’t you? It’ll take more than you and this puny unicorn to stop me.”

“That may be true, but you can’t restrain both of us before one of us kills The General. Also, you shouldn’t underestimate this unicorn. She’s scarier than I am on a good day. You have no idea who you’re messing with,” he retorted.

She stared to laugh, “What, you think I’m scared of a pony like her? What is she called again, The Courier? Even down here we’ve gotten reports from the Pegasi up top about her. If you ask me it’s just a bunch of hearsay. Now let The General go and come with me peacefully.”

“Nope still not gonna happen,” he said looking over at me, “Shadow how about you show her what you can do.”

The Instructor laughed, “I’m in Power Armor, what can a unicorn do to a pony like me?”

I grinned wildly and teleported. I reappeared just to her left lifting my new shotgun. She reacted quicker than I would’ve thought, she jumped out of the way as I fired. The Shotgun was powerful, it was almost too much for me to keep hold of with my magic. The Instructor flipped around in mid-air and dove for me, the magical energy rifles on her battle saddle glowing as she started to fire down at me. I dodged to one side then let both my guns fall to the floor as I shot a focused blast of energy at her. She wasn’t able to dodge and it caught her in the side throwing her back into a rack of pistols.

She jumped back to her hooves quickly yelling, “You’re a fucking fool, you can’t hurt me with your magic when I’m in this Power Armor!”

She stopped yelling when she saw I was an inch away from her, Dream Walker pressed against her visor, “Maybe not, but I’m sure this’ll work a lot better than a spell.”

She didn’t move, “I’m not scared of you or any of your friends. We are The Enclave; no pony is stronger than us!”

She turned her head toward Stardust, “You’re nothing more than a failed experiment Cadet, you were so close to being the best, but you just had to go and run away!”

“Your wrong about him, the best thing he ever did was escape. You’re the fool here not him,” I said pulling back on the hammer, “Now tell me where the rest of your friends are and how many Enclave pegasi are in the stable.”

I moved Dream Walker down and shot her in her right foreleg. She crumpled and screamed. I pulled back on the hammer again, “Wanna try that again? I can do this all day, or at least until you eventually bleed out from all the bullet wounds you could potentially get.”

“Easy, that gun is a .50 caliber, it packs a huge punch. At a distance it may not work against power armor, but at close range like this, it’ll rip right through it like it was nothing more than tinfoil,” Stardust said, “Now answer her question and we’ll let you live.”

She took a long moment looking between the two of us as her hoof shook violently from the trauma it just took, “Thirty pegasi flew in to help, they’re trying to round up The Cadets in the atrium, the enclave is preparing them for an assult on the rest of you intruders. We know that more of you made it in here.”

“Yep, now what should we do with you?” I said lowering Dream Walker and looking toward Stardust, “Should we tie her up or do something creative?”

As I looked over at him I saw his eyes go wide right as I heard the mare start to move. I jumped back avoiding the kick she was aiming at my head, her hoof missed by only an inch or so. She lunged at me again ignoring the pain in her right foreleg as she tried one more desperate and pathetic attack. I didn’t give her the chance; Dream Walker came up again and I fired a round into her chest. The bullet blew past the armor and buried itself deep. She fell again gasping in pain, “How’d you know…” she started to say then she started to scream.

I saw why as seconds later, black light poured out of the hole Dream Walker made in her chest and gave a purplish look to her blood as it flowed. I jumped back just in time as her chest exploded outward, ripping her armor apart and blasting blood, bone, bits of shrapnel, and most of her insides all over the place. The worst part was she didn’t die right away. She laid there for a few seconds with her jaw open in a silent scream, one hoof reaching for me as she did. Then the hoof fell as she finally died.

“That thing is scary sometimes you know,” Stardust said as he holstered his rifle.

“True, but It’s very effective,” I said holstering Dream Walker and my new shotgun as I made my way back to Stardust, “Well since that’s over with, how about we go take care of that memory machine so we can get the fuck out of here.”

I gave him the C-4 and detonator then moved over and picked The General up in my magic again as we made our way out of the room. Once we were out I looked at the terminal, “Guess we should seal the door then.”

“Yeah, cutting off their access to the weapons in here will help us out a lot.”

I hooked the Mark II into the terminal and after shutting the door, I used it to seal the door for good. Making it so that only my Pip-Buck could unseal it again, “Done.”

“Good, now let’s hurry, I don’t know how long we have until The Enclave comes up here to find us.”

Since everypony was all pretty much downstairs, getting back to the reeducation chamber was pretty easy. I was guarding the door as Stardust attached the C-4 to the machine, “You almost done in there?” I asked starting to get a little bored and paranoid at the same time.

“Yeah, just give me another minute. I’m trying to calibrate this detonator to the trigger for the explosives, otherwise it won’t blow up,” he replied.

“Well hurry up, standing here waiting for somepony to attack is making me really anxious. Sneaking around is easy and so is open battle, but when a pony could show up at any moment and try to kill me, that actually kinda freaks me out.”

“Annnnd…done!” he said ignoring my comment, “Now all we gotta do is press this button from a safe distance and we can check this off our to-do list.”

Only he can make a comment like that at a time like this, even worse is that in the middle of a stable invasion slash insurrection or rebellion err whatever it’s called, I have to go to the bathroom. Why can’t this be like a book where the characters don’t take any time-wasting breaks to save the day? Come to think of it, why doesn’t anypony in books ever have to use the bathroom? Kinda takes away from realism, “Okay cool, let’s get the fuck out of here and get this shit over with.”

We proceeded to the opposite direction, out the door from medical, and walked toward the stairway. On the way I remembered that there were staff restrooms down the hallway and took a bit of a hero’s detour as Stardust stood outside the doorway awkwardly holding The General with a pistol pressed to her head. I guess him waiting for me was a bit of payback for earlier in medical when I had to wait for him to place the bomb.

As we got closer to the stairwell I could hear the sound of gunfire from behind the security door at the top of the stairs. When I got to the door and opened it, what I saw brought me back to Stable 28 when I came out into the hallway of gore. Stardust looked a little sickened by all the blood sprayed on the walls, floor, and ceiling, “Who the fuck did this? The Enclave can’t really be killing the inhabitants, it’s a waste of resources.”

Stardust shook his head, “No, you fixed my head, you didn’t split me into two different ponies.”

“Not you, Oricalcos,” I said before he could keep arguing the point, “Let’s just say that since I quote unquote ‘killed him,’ he’s been living in my shadow. Turns out he’s my mother’s brother and the one who almost killed me by accident when I was a foal.”

“He was what!?” Stardust exclaimed, ignoring the delicate situation, “Why didn’t you do something to get rid of him?”

“I don’t know, maybe because he realized who I was and helped me when Aura was shot by quickly getting me back to The Kingdom with her. He was also there when I was liberating my own stable from Wild Fire my old Overmare and sort of did the same thing here. For some reason or another he’s decided to help me even after I told him I didn’t want his help,” I explained.

“Sure he might be helping you, but I hope that help extends to friends. Think about it, if it’s just you he’s helping, we might be in danger. Me, Doorstop, Wind Thrasher, Dr. Limbis, the other Cadets,” he said in a bit of a panic.

I sighed, “That’s a chance we’re gonna have to take, and what about Solstice?”

“Yeah, her too I guess. I don’t trust her by the way, she could be plotting against us as an undercover operative, or worse she could be Envy in disguise,” Stardust said.

I took a second to think about it. She was being sort of weird but that could just be the way she is, but she was being a little hostile toward me the whole way here. If she was really Envy wouldn’t she have attacked me and my friends by now? Now that I think about it, she’s with the others and if she really IS Envy, she could do something to them, “If she was Envy in disguise I would’ve known by now. Envy wouldn’t take the form of somepony I don’t like and try to get close to me that way, he’d pick somepony I love. Ugh, I can’t think about stuff like this right now, we need to get down there and make sure Oricalcos is tearing up the right ponies. We still don’t know if he’s actually helping us or not, he could be killing our friends down there while we’re up here chattering away like high school fillies with too much time on their hooves.”

I proceeded down the stairs and peeked around the bloody corner to see a shadow whizz by on the wall. I continued down the second set of stairs and as I got closer to the bottom, the air started to smell like metal from all the blood. It reminded me of when we were in Stable 9 and discovered the horrible display of pony heads and hanging foals. Before I could make sure everything was clear Stardust rushed passed me around the corner, “Come on Shadow, hurry up.”

“No wait, we don’t know if it’s safe,” I said as he disappeared into the hallway.

I quickly followed him only to stop at the sight of him stopped in the middle of the hallway. Then I saw the shadows curl up around his legs and Oricalcos materialize in front of him, looking like a pony made of darkess, “Well…well…well, if it isn’t the imposter. I’ve been looking for you for a long time, no one deserves to be me until I’m dead and gone. Those idiots up in the clouds shouldn’t have assumed I’d be killed so easily by Shadow and replaced me with a wretch like you.”

“Oricalcos! He’s not brainwashed anymore!” I shouted from behind Stardust.

They both came to notice me standing there, “Shadow, wouldn’t he know you did that since he’s been playing stowaway in your shadow?” Stardust asked.

“I know he’s not on their side anymore, I just don’t care. He now holds my title and I don’t want him to, so I need to kill him and finish what was started when you and your friends came into this place,” Oricalcos said as he wrapped a shadow around Stardust’s throat.

Before I could say anything Stardust managed to speak, “I renounced that title when I came out of that machine, and took The General hostage.”

“Yeah, The Enclave won’t want anything to do with him once they know it was him who freed this place and destroyed that stupid machine. Actually, they’ll most likely want to kill him for something like this even though he’s part of this stupid program I keep hearing about non-stop,” I said moving closer to the shadowy form of my uncle.

His glowing purple eyes fell on me, “You know this pegasus is a danger to you and anypony he runs into. What’s stopping The Enclave from recapturing him and making him into a mockery of my title and the team I created?”

“I won’t let it happen. Last time it took an attack from what was left of The Sins to capture him, with you no longer Pride and your team disbanded, what else could they do to capture him again?”

“The Enclave has more tricks up their sleeves, my team isn’t the only team who are strong enough to capture him. He almost killed you and your friends, I vowed to protect you, and I’m doing that right now!” he said as he started to tighten his hold on Stardust.

For a long moment Oricalcos just looked me in the eye then finally he sighed and dropped Stardust, “Fine, but I hope you don’t end up regretting your decision.”

The shadowy form looked over at him, “I’m not a dick, I’m protective of my family. I don’t trust you Stardust and neither should she.”

“No, you had your memories removed and false ones implanted. With lies like those your hatred was justified. The problem I have, is when you didn’t remember who you were, small bits of memory came through and you ignored them, trusting what you thought you knew about her was a lie even when evidence proved otherwise. The things you did to try to kill her, the ways you threatened her and her friends, the way you tried to kill the griffon. All of that was because you let your hatred control your actions. Deep down you are just as dark as I am or she is.

Stardust cocked his head to one side looking at Oricalcos like he was a strange looking bug, “Dude that’s harsh. At least I’m not a creepy evil shadow thing like you.”

“Now you’re just being a dick again,” Stardust said with that goofy grin I’ll never want to see vanish again.

I couldn’t help but laugh a little, “Oricalcos, I don’t care if you trust him or not, I do and that should be enough for you. Now do you mind explaining to me why you decided to leave my shadow and kill all those ponies especially after I told you to go away?”

“I…uh, didn’t think you meant that,” he said sounding sheepish. Oricalcos sounding sheepish had to be the strangest thing I’ve heard or seen.

I sighed, “At the time I did, but I’ve gotten over it. Though if you have to tag along then I don’t want you doing things like this without telling me. It’s messy.”

“I’m your uncle, listening to you is disrespectable to my role as an uncle. I should be the one telling you what to do!”

“And how do you plan on keeping me from following you or staying in your shadow?”

“Oh I’m sure I can find a way to rid myself of you. I know a couple of hunters that probably know a way to stop a shadow creature like you from tagging along. Also I’m sure you’re still not up to full strength yet, so I’m not sure you can do much to stop me from getting rid of you. You also owe me for the bullshit you put me through with that dark curse and for trying to kill me. So, either you do as I say or you go away, it’s your choice,” I said with a cocky grin.

He chuckled a little, “You make a fair point, it’s not a good point, but it is enough to convince me. Fine, I’ll do as you ask for now, but I won’t be stopped from saving you. Your safety comes first.”

Stardust shook his head, “She’s not a child, she can take care of herself.”

“She is a child, no matter what she thinks. She doesn’t know as much as I do about how things work in The Wasteland.”

I rolled my eyes, “Yeah, I’m young, big deal. We don’t have time for this. Stardust I think we’re far enough away from the memory machine, so blow the damn thing up. Oricalcos get back into my shadow. If I need your help, I’ll ask.”

Stardust pulled out the detonator, “I guess you’re right,” he pushed the button and a rumble filled the stable for a moment followed by a distant boom, “Well that takes care of that.”

Oricalcos sighed and melted back into shadows again moving toward me, “I can’t hold onto my form for much longer anyway. Just remember Star, I’m here if you need me. Still taking orders from my niece leaves a bad taste in my mouth,”

Stardust looked over at me and grinned, “At least he’s not trying to kill you.”

“Yea I guess that’s true. Now that we have that settled, we should try finishing this.”

“Yeah good idea, though I hope your uncle didn’t kill any of the stable inhabitants. It’s hard to tell with how mutilated the bodies are.”

I looked around at the torn apart bodies and some of them had stable barding, “It looks like at least two lived here.”

Oricalcos’s voice echoed out from my Shadow, “Most of them were stable guards who were making their way up to the upper level to kill you both, two were older Cadets who joined up with them.”

Stardust looked down at my shadow, “Keep quiet, you still killed ponies I’m trying to save.”

“Enough bickering you two, you’re like an old married couple I swear. Anyways, what I want to know is why The Enclave is here at all. I thought Nightshade wanted to shut this place down. If he’s really the new High Council pony, why would he let his soldiers come in here and try to kill us?” I asked as we started walking down the hall slowly, doing our best to avoid the gore around us.

“Who knows, maybe he hasn’t taken full control yet,” Stardust said, “I remember him saying that even with the others gone, he’d still have to take control from the other Council ponies who wouldn’t want to see him in power.”

“Or this is another pony who’s trying to go against Nightshade and keep this place going,” I said as we came closer to one of the windows that overlooked the atrium. I gasped as I looked down. The Cadets were all lined up along one side of the atrium standing at attention, four older ponies standing next to them who must’ve been the instructors. Lined up on the other side were thirty pegasi, most of them in Power Armor and one Stallion who was in what looked like an officer’s uniform. That Stallion was walking up and down the lines of Cadets saying something to them.

“We shouldn’t have made the others leave, we could use their help,” Stardust said, “Unless you can think of a way to stop thirty power armored pegasi from attacking us.”

I looked through my inventory on my Pip-Buck trying to think of something I could use that could help us. Then I noticed something, I had ten spark grenades. I remembered the fight back at Frosty Summit when Wingnut used a spark grenade to stop Solstice in her tracks. He said something about the spark grenade shutting down the Power Armor’s spell matrix. Without it running the Armor wouldn’t be able to run and the pony inside was stuck.

“Hey Stardust, do you think we’d be able to get close enough to them to use these spark grenades?” I asked as I pulled them out of my saddle bags.

“I wouldn’t say a genius, I just thought to myself what would Wingnut do.”

He looked down at the enclave’s soldiers, “That’s a lot of soldiers, we’d have to be very careful about dealing with them. The problem with the Atrium is there’s only one way in and out so we wouldn’t’ be able to just sneak in without getting noticed. There is no way we’d be able to get close enough to them to use the spark grenades.”

“Well it depends on how fast of a flyer you are in this stable.” I said with a maniacal grin.

He looked at me quizzically, “What’s rolling around in that head of yours crazy pants?”

Ten minutes later the plan was set, Stardust was working his way down the stairs that lead down to the Atrium as I waited at the top. It was all about the timing, thankfully Stardust and I have worked together enough that I understood him and how he worked. This shouldn’t be too hard to pull off…right?

Finally, I heard Stardust yell from the bottom of the steps, “Yo Enclave fuck tards, I thought you were looking for me. If so then why are you all sitting around here talking to each other like mares on a girl’s night out!”

“Hahaha, what do you think I’m going to just go with you quietly!? You got to work for it! Catch me if you can losers!” Stardust yelled as he started to run back up the stairs.

“You Ten go after him the rest stay back here with me and watch the Stable Dwellers.” The stallion said.

Stardust flew past me saying, “Better hurry, they’ll be right on my tail.”

I could already hear the pegasi working their way up the stairs. I worked my way back down the hall, opening the door to the female locker rooms. I just got through the door when the Pegasi made it up the stairs. I ducked behind the wall on the other side of the door as I heard Stardust yell from down the hall, “Come on don’t tell me he sent the slowest ponies in the unit. I’m a little bit insulted.”

Shots rang out from the pegasi who were pursuing Stardust, I heard them all yelling insults at him as they passed by the open door where I was hiding. I grinned as the last one ran by. Stepping back into the hall I pulled the pin for three of the Spark Grenades yelling, “First rule of Solider school always keep an eye out for the quiet one.”

The grenades tinged off the metallic floor a moment before the rear most pegasi turned to see my smug grin. One of them saw what I just threw and managed to get out “Ah Fuck!” right before they went off. A blast of magical electricity went off around all ten pegasi, a moment later they all stood there in dead Power Armor.

Stardust came flying back toward me smiling down at them as he flew over, “No such thing as a dirty trick in battle, you’re just lucky she didn’t use something worse.”

He shrugged, “There’s only twenty left down in the Atrium, if we could get the Cadets to fight back, we’d have no problem finishing them off.”

I rolled my eyes as I walked closer to them all, “Yeah I know, all of us Wastelanders are nothing but stupid dirt ponies. You think that only ponies born in the Enclave are worth anything, the rest of the ponies in Equestria can die. Am I right?”

“Damn right, the Enclave is perfect, we are the ones who will bring Equestria back to the right path.” He said.

“Uh huh, right, you keep on believing those lies” I looked around at the other nine ponies, “Anypony here from the Crystal Empire?”

The stallion who spoke before tried to spit on me, but missed, “That’s none of your business.”

A mare in the back spoke up after a moment, “I am, why do you care? How do you even know about it, I thought almost no pony in the Wasteland knew the Crystal Empire was still around.”

I moved closer to her, “I asked because I’m from The Crystal Empire, my father was an Enclave Solider, my mother worked as a medic and researcher in Nimbus, My uncle is the pony that used to be Pride. Stardust here was stolen from his parents as a new born from Stratus, we were both born into the Enclave just like all of you.”

The problem with Power Armor is you can’t see a pony’s face when you surprise them, but at least you can hear it in their voice. The mare stammered for a moment then said, “You mean you’re one of us? Why are you attacking this Stable then?”

“Easy, I came here to save my friend, this place is an abomination that shouldn’t have ever been created. I may have been born into the Enclave but I’m nothing like the rest of you sheep. I do what I think is right, I don’t just take orders from a higher up who thinks they know better than me. Let me ask you, do you really want to be down here?”

All of them were silent for a long time, finally the mare spoke up, “No, but we don’t have a choice. The Captain said we had to come down here to stop The Courier from destroying a friendly Stable, just like you did in New Pegasus.”

“I came here to save my friend, I also plan on helping those ponies in the Atrium get free. They’ve been lied to their entire lives about who they are and the world outside. All of that for a stupid program started by a few scientists so they could make Super Soldiers. It’s sick and wrong and I’m not going to let ponies like you stop me.” I said turning to head back toward the stairs.

“So, I take it we aren’t going to kill them, right?” Stardust said as I walked past.

“There are still a lot of ponies down there. What do you plan on doing about them?”

I smiled as a thought came to my head, “Hey Stardust, does this Stables PA system work on a wireless broadcast?”

“I think so, I know the General could use it from her Pip-Buck whenever she wanted too.”

I moved over to the General who was still knocked out and pulled her forehoof up and started to mess with her Pip-Buck until I found the Broadcast for the Stable, “Stardust I want you to do whatever you can to get the Cadets on our side.”

“Make a distraction.” I said as I started down the Stairs toward the Atrium.

I heard Stardust chuckle a little to himself catching him say “My pleasure,” as I continued on.

When I got to the door I pulled out three more of the Spark Grenades, took a deep breath, the opened the door. I was met with twenty Power Armored Pegasi turning and pointing their energy rifles at me, the tall Stallion who I saw earlier taking to all the other cadets was glaring at me, the inhabitants of Stable 97, however, were looking at me like I was the strangest thing they’d ever seen.

The Stallion said, “Hold your fire, I think we are in the company of the infamous Courier.”

I still hated that name when ponies said it the way he did, oh well if you can’t do anything to fix it, then roll with it. I grinned and smugly took a little bow, “You’d be correct Enclave pig.”

He looked down his nose at me like I was a stain, “I have a name you backwater mare. I’m Captain Plank, now how about you tell us where the runaway is.”

I started to laugh, “Captain Plank! Really your parents named you Plank! What’s your mother’s name Fallen Tree, I bet your dads called Buzzsaw! I mean come on who names their foal Plank!”

“Really!? You chose that name! Hah hah all of a sudden I’m picturing you looking in the mirror saying ‘you know what would be a real kickass name? Plank!’ Why would you chose something like Captain Plank! I think the only name more stupid than that would be something like Peg-leg or Tazerface!”

I was watching the other ponies as he yelled, waiting for the right moment. Most of them turned their faces toward their captain and that’s when I decided to strike. I threw the Spark Grenades in the middle of the group of pegasi then teleported to the other side of the Atrium pulling out Dream Walker and my plasma rifle. The blast took out thirteen of the Pegasi’s power armor the rest were still trying to figure out where I went.

The moron turned toward me right as a blast of Plasma slammed into his face, melting it and the rest of him. Right as I started my attack Stardust’s voice echoed through the Atrium, “Hello ponies of Stable 97, this is your old pal Stardust Night. Yes, I’m sure you’ve all been told that I either died when Hailstorm died or that I was escalated to the upper level. Well I’m here to tell you all that it’s all a lie, this whole place is a lie my friends.”

The rest of the Enclave soldiers started to fire at me, but I teleported again reappearing behind them, “Come on, you can do better than that.” The Plasma rifle and Dream Walker fired simultaneously taking down two pegasi at once. I ducked and rolled to the side as another took a shot at me.

As I continued to fight Stardust continued to give his speech, “Cadets your entire life in the stable has been a lie. The outside world isn’t death like they told us! I’ve lived out there for seven months now, I’ve seen what Equestria has become, I’ve met the ponies that do their best to get by every day and survive. I’ve met good ponies and bad, the world outside isn’t perfect, but it’s better than living in a place where all they do is LIE to us. The Enclave is trying to turn you all into mindless Soldiers to use in a war they want to start against other Pegasi cities. They took us away from our parents when we were foals, they told our parents that we died so they could take us away and make us into tools. Cadets of Stable 97, stop listening to their lies and rise up. Use the skills they taught you here to put an end to The Enclaves program and this Stable of misery. Our friend Hailstorm died so that I could escape and find help so you could all be free. Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain!”

I switched Dream Walker out for the Revolver, let my barding take a hit from one of the stallions who was charging me, and pressed the barrel of the revolver into his muzzle. I grinned and pulled the trigger, as blood flew over me I let his body fall against my own, using it to shield myself as two more pegasi blasted multiple shots of crimson death toward me. I took that moment to catch my breath then wrapped the dead stallion’s body in my magic and threw him at the two firing at me. At this point Stardust stopped talking over the PA, I looked over at the Cadets who were watching the fight in awe. The instructors on the other hoof looked pissed. Two of them were trying to yell something at the Cadets as the other two looked ready to jump in to help the last four remaining soldiers.

Two of them were trying to get out from under the dead Stallion, the other two were slowly circling around myself and the rest of the Pegasi who were frozen in their armor. I made sure to keep my eye on them as I spoke to the two that were stuck, “I’d stay down if I were you.”

One of the trapped stallions responded, “Fuck you, we don’t listen to dirt ponies!”

I pulled out one of my last spark grenades and held it in my magical grip, “No I mean you should stay down or I’ll make you stay down.”

A mare who was circling around me slowly said, “Try anything and we’ll turn you into dust.”

“Really now, and what makes you think you’ll have any better luck than your friends did? Because so far to me it looks like none of you has been able to land a solid hit on me. Now stand down before things get worse, ten of your pals are locked in their armor upstairs, more are trapped down here, I’ve killed three of you already and your commander.” I said as I slowly started to pull out the pin.

“We have orders to bring you in alive, that’s the only reason you’re still standing Courier.” The mare responded.

“Oh really? Well that makes this ten times easier then.” I twisted around throwing the grenade at the two who were above me and the cadets. They both tried to jump back, but the attack was a faint. Still holding onto the spark grenade with my magic, it looped around them, flew back toward me and passed my head landing right at the hooves of the two power armored instructors who were trying to sneak up on me from behind. Both swore as the grenade went off.

I grinned at the four enclave Soldiers as the mare yelled, “Fuck this, I don’t care what our orders were, I’m fucking killing her…”

A loud shot rang out from the other side of the Atrium as a bullet flew through the mare’s visor, her body dropped from the air and made a loud thud onto the atrium’s floor and started convulsing. The stallion who had also been above me and the cadets watched her drop, “What the hell?”

Another shot rang out and he dropped, most of his muzzle was torn off by the bullet. I turned and looked back at Stardust who was standing in the doorway to the stairs, his rifle held at the ready, The General still passed out laying on his back, “What took you so long Dusty?”

“The General started to wake up, needed to knock her out again.” He said as he slowly walked in looking at what was left. The two stallions were able to get free from under the dead stallion, but they didn’t move an inch. The other instructors were left glaring over at him not being able to move. The Cadets looked shocked as they saw my friend slowly walking in.

“If I were you two, I’d stand down, you’re not going to win this fight.” I said to the last two Enclave Soldiers.

They both looked at each other, then at the dead ponies around them and the ones who were trapped in their power armor. Finally, one said, “Fuck this I don’t feel like dying today.”

Stardust lowered his rifle and slowly walked toward the Instructors, “You’re the only ones left, The guards here are either dead or fled, The General is beat and nothing’s left in here that can save you. I think it’s about time you told the Cadets what this place is really for!”

“Don’t listen to him Cadet, he’s nothing more than a run away. He betrayed you all.” One of them said, she was a short mare and the only one not in power armor.

One of the mares standing in line walked forward and said in a stern tone, “You told us that Stardust was killed by the stable door when he was trying to leave. You said he killed Hailstorm and tried to run. If that’s true then why is he here now!”

I took a moment to look over the mare, I could see why Stardust had a crush on her. She had a very light magenta coat, a mixed White yellow and red mane that swirled together like frosting, with red freckles on her nose and striking blue eyes. She looked close to my age, but was taller than me (Not hard to do) and her cutie mark was a Shortcake with whip cream on top. As I looked her over Shortcake took another step out of line, “No, I want answers, we all do!”

The only other instructor who wasn’t frozen in his power armor spoke, “Sandalwood I think we should tell them. We can’t keep this up anymore, we lost, it’s over.”

“I really don’t want to kill any more of the Ponies I grew up with here Instructor Sandalwood. Instructor Tome is right, this is over. Either you tell them the truth or I’ll blow your head off and I’ll tell them myself.” Stardust said.

The Instructor looked around the room, then at Stardust and sighed, “Stardust, I’ll admit I’m amazed you were able to do all this. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, this is what we get for making you into such a good soldier.”

“It has nothing to do with how I was trained. If I only used what I learned in here, I wouldn’t have made it this far. You see there’s one big flaw to the way you trained me and the rest of us here. We never learned what it means to work with a team, to take what strength they have and add it to your own. You never taught us to work with friends. You always taught us that we had to be the strongest. I learned in the Wasteland that nopony is the strongest. I’m a great sniper and decent at hoof to hoof. One of the friends I made out there, Shadow, she’s small but she can think on her hooves when the time calls for it, she’s also a natural with close range weapons which is helpful for a pony like me. Our friend Aura who’s a griffon is one of the best fighters with melee weapons I’ve ever seen and she’s fast. We have a colt that travels with us that is so smart that he can find ways around things that no other pony would even think of. Together we make a good team, it’s because of my friends that we were able to do this.” Stardust said as he walked closer to the Cadets and Instructors.

Instructor Sandalwood looked around again then sighed, “I can see you’re right,” Then she looked over at Shortcake and the other Cadets, “Stable 97 is one big lie just like Stardust said. Over twenty years ago a mare by the name of Dr. Stormy came up with what’s called The Devil’s Children Program. The original idea was for two Cloud cities called Stratus and Nimbus to send young foals to be raised in a military environment and be trained to be Super Soldiers. Once the best of these children were ready and fully trained, we’d clone them so we could make an army and take over the entire Enclave. The first generation was the start to the program and from all the foals we took, Stardust and four others stood out as the perfect trainees. The program was expanded and we brought in your group as foals and worked from there. This Stable was a perfect location for the program to work. So, the Enclave invaded this Stable, killed most of the ponies that lived here, and remodeled the Stable to fit our needs.”

They all looked shocked as the Instructor spoke. Stardust however lowered his rifle and said, “It gets worse, they never planned on keeping us alive once they started the cloning process. They needed soldiers who would take orders no questions asked.”

Shortcake looked over at Stardust and asked, “But what if one of us found out what was going on?”

“They had a plan for that as well, on the upper level in medical there was a machine that can wipe away your memories and even replace them. That machine was used on me a few weeks back to turn me into a monster they could control and send me after my friend Shadow as a test run. She stopped me and brought me here to fix it.” He said.

One of the female cadets fell to ground saying quietly, “But what about our parents, they said we’d get to see them once we finished training.”

Instructor Tome said, “Your parents aren’t in the Stable, they don’t even know your alive.”

A couple of them started to tear up when he said this, so I stepped in, “There’s a town south of the Stable called The Kingdom, the Empress there wanted me to try and get you to go there when you were free from this place. She wants to help you find your families again.”

Shortcake looked over at me like I was something disgusting, “No pony asked you outsider.”

I glared over at her, my jaw dropped. I thought to myself are you kidding me? Did she not see what I had just done to the enclave soldiers around us? I was about to say something but Stardust spoke before I could, “Shortcake, Shadow is my friend and the leader of our group. You should show her some respect.”

Shortcake looked over at Stardust, “Dusty, you mean that you, the top fighter in our Stable, follow around a short unicorn?”

Shortcake rolled her eyes, “And why should we trust her that this Empress pony…”

All the Cadets looked at me now like I was something nasty, Shortcake saying, “You want us to go get help from a…Zebra!? Are you fucking insane?”

“A little, but I’m working on it and yes I do. She’s a good mare and she wants to help ponies like you, that’s what she does.”

“Dusty you can’t be serious, why would anypony work with a Zebra?” one of the Cadets said.

“Well I don’t know her myself, but if Shadow says she’s a good mare then she is. I’ve learned that not every zebra or griffon out there is evil, they just wanted us to believe it.”

I chuckled a little, “Yeah, even Doorstop doesn’t mind her. He’s the one who first agreed with Sheena’s plan.”

The instructors looked a little ashamed, but Sandalwood said, “He didn’t die like reported. He helped Stardust escape, when The Enclave found out they banished him.”

I was starting to worry that this wasn’t going to go well. The Cadets didn’t look happy, I mean they just had their entire lives turned around but still why did they looks so angry…at me. Shortcake walked closer to me and got right in my face, “Tell me…Shadow…why should we trust you?”

“Because I’m telling you the truth, Sheena’s a good mare and she wants to help, so do I.”

I sighed, “I literally just told you that’s just who she is. Are your ears fill with hay or something? She had a hard childhood and doesn’t like to see any pony, griffon, or zebra suffer. She wants to help anyone she can.”

“He’s RIGHT,” The booming voice of Doorstop said from the door, “The little runt’s telling you all the truth!”

Everypony turned to look over at the big stallion. I face hoofed, “Doorstop I thought you were going to stay outside.”

“Ya’ll were taking too damn long, figured you needed my help, also ten more pegasi from Nimbus just showed up.”

Another stallion showed up behind Doorstop. He was an older stallion with a faded green coat and a light grey mane. He was wearing some kind of uniform with lots of metals on the jacket. As soon as we saw him Stardust and I both had our weapons up and ready to fire, “Fuck, you mean we have more ass holes to fight?” I said.

“Put that away before you hurt more ponies Runt!” Doorstop said, “This is Major Vas, he’s not here to fight.”

The older pony cleared his throat then said, “Yes I am Courier, but this Dashite is right, pardon I mean Doorstop. I’m here on behalf of High Council Pony Nightshade. He declared yesterday that The Devil’s Children Program was to be stopped at once and the inhabitants freed.”

This time I did lower my guns, “Wait a sec…What now? I thought Nightshade sent the others here to stop me?”

Major Vas shook his head, “Not at all Courier, the ponies here were just following orders from Captain Plank, which from the look of it you already took care of him. We are here to help the ponies here reintegrate back into the Enclave. Nightshade also said that you are no longer an enemy of The Grand Pegasus Enclave. At least for Stratus and Nimbus. Any crime that the former High Council Ponies charged you with have been dropped as long as you don’t interfere with our business again in the future.”

The General woke up and jumped to her hooves looking around, “What’s going on?”

“She’s a General not just an Overmare.” Shortcake said still looking shocked at everything that was going on.

The Stallion laughed, “General? She’s not even in the military. She’s a scary mare that we knew could keep the ponies in here in line.”

“Shut your muzzle Stardust!” The General yelled, but she was quickly cut off by Major Vas.

“Thunder Clap, you will be coming with me to report to Nightshade about everything that’s been happening with this Stable. Failure to do so will lead to banishment or death.”

The mare looked like he just kicked her, she looked down at her hooves and said quietly, “Understood.”

“Now that we have all this settled, I think you can leave, we will take it from here.” Major Vas said.

“No can-do Major Vas,” Doorstop said walking over to the Cadets, “The Cadets are coming with us, at least for now. I need to make sure they get used to the Wasteland. If they want to leave later to join the Enclave that will be on them.”

Major Vas looked at the old Drill Sargent for a long moment, then chuckled, “Doorstop, the reports we’ve gotten about you are true. You’re a stubborn stallion.”

“Damn right and so are the Cadets I’ve trained. I’m thankful to Nightshade for doing this, but I ain’t giving ya’ll the Cadet’s.”

Major Vas just laughed again, “No worries Doorstop, I’ll explain to Nightshade, as long as you tell me where they’ll be going.”

Doorstop glared at her until she backed away, “Ya’ll don’t have a say in this, you can’t stay here anymore, and I ain’t letting you go with The Enclave, not until Ya’ll learn more about your new lives.”

Not Shortcake, she looked up again then looked over at me, “I’m not going anywhere until she proves herself.”

“Huh?” I said looking at her confused, “Why do I need to prove anything? I just saved your asses!”

“Shut up Dusty, I’m very pissed off to deal with you too. If Shadow thinks she’s good enough to lead you and Doorstop here and if she wants us to go to this Kingdom ran by some Zebra, then she needs to pass our test. If she can win in a fight against me, then we’ll go, if not we’ll find our own way just like Stardust did when he left.”

“You can’t be serious,” Stardust said, “All of us are highly trained fighters, Shadow may be able to hold her own, but it’s not a fair fight.”

Shortcake just smiled, “If Doorstop thinks a good idea then she must be able to hold her own.”

“Shut your yap Stardust,” Doorstop said, “Put some trust into your friend.”

“No but’s,” Doorstop said coming closer to me and whispering, “Shortcake is the best fighter in her class, you can’t hold your own if you fight fair. But you should know that this stable never taught the Cadets on how to deal with Unicorns. That is a big mistake on their part, from what I’ve seen, Unicorns don’t fight fair.”

I smiled then looked over at Shortcake and sighed visibly cursing at myself, “Fine if you want me to prove to you that I’m worth it then whatever. What’s the rules?”

“Good, we’ll let Major Vas help his ponies, you two can fight it out on the other end of the Atrium.” Doorstop said.

A few minutes later I was standing a few feet away from Shortcake both of us staring down the other. She stood in what I guess is a proper fighting stance, I mostly did my best to look tough. My armored barding and duster were sitting next to Stardust with my saddle bags. Shortcake’s was with Doorstop, the rest of the Cadets stood in a ring around us. I already had a plan on how I was going to take her down. A blast from my concentrated Expulsion spell should work nicely, she wouldn’t be expecting it. If I could finish this quickly it would show them all that I wasn’t just some weak unicorn from the outside.

I started to draw on my magic, but I wasn’t fast enough. Shortcake flapped her wings and shot toward me like a rocket, (Holy fuck she’s fast) and slammed a hoof into my face before I could even think about defending myself. I flew back from the force of the blow rolling across the ground until I slammed up against one of the Cadet’s hooves. Shortcake wasn’t going to give me the time I needed to cast a spell. She was on me so fast I barely had time to register how I went from standing in the middle of the circle to being on the ground. Three quick jabs slammed into my chest, side and face. Each one more painful than the last, I threw a hoof up and blocked the fourth then took hold of her hoof and tried to flip her around and off of me.

Shortcake used the flip to her own advantage, she flipped around in midair, took hold of my hoof and used the momentum to flip me around and back onto the ground. She twisted around my foreleg pinning me to the ground with my hoof in some kind of lock. She put more pressure on it slowly forcing me to scream in pain, it felt like she was ripping my leg off. Blinking away tears and doing my best to ignore the pain, I rolled in the same direction she was pulling forcing her to let my leg go so she wasn’t thrown off. She used her rear legs to hold on to me and brought her forelegs down to slam into the back of my head.

“Pitiful, how does a weak thing like you end up leading a pony like Dusty!?”

Ignoring her taunting, I bucked my hips and threw my head back at the same time. The motion threw her off balance again and she pitched forward, right into the back of my head. I felt something crunch behind me and blood flow over my mane and back. I heard her curse as she jumped off me. I rolled back to my hooves, doing my best to keep as much weight off my right foreleg. It was still screaming in pain from the abuse and my head felt like I just headbutted a brick wall. I jumped back then looked at Shortcake who was glaring at me again blood pouring down her muzzle and chin from her nose. The crunching sound I heard must have been from that.

Expecting her to do the same as before, I brought my good foreleg up to defend myself, but Shortcake changed direction quickly, she jumped into the air and flipped over me and brought her rear hooves down onto my back. I screamed as I was slammed into the ground again, my back now feeling like someone just shot me. She wasn’t finished though, as soon as I hit the ground she kicked me into the air then doing another flip she bucked me to the other side of the circle.

I screamed again as I landed on my back, pain blotting out my vision for a second. Then I felt a hoof on my neck slowly pushing down chocking me, “You should yield before I crush your wind pipe!”

(You stupid bitch, don’t you know who I am? I’m the Fucking Courier, this pain is nothing, I never give up.) I smiled the best I could and was able to say, “No way!”

I saw a flash of anger for a second, then I teleported out from under her and reappeared on the other side again, coughing and hacking as I tried to breathe right. Shortcake looked confused for a moment then she saw me, “That’s cheating!”

I laughed and said in a raspy voice, “Your rules didn’t say anything about magic, just no weapons. Using my magic is no different than you using your wings.”

This time I reappeared to her left, I spun around and landed a kick at her face. She was slammed to the ground by the force of my kick, her head rebounding off the floor. I followed that up by doing the same to her as she did to me, I bucked her back toward the center of the circle. She screamed as her face slammed into the ground again, “You should know something Shortcake, I’m not going to give up. You may be a better fighter than me, but you aren’t smarter. I can take the pain from your blows, I can handle your insults, you have no idea the shit I’ve gone through in my life. You can’t win!”

“I’ll show you!” she yelled jumping back to her hooves then into the air so she could rush me again.

I just smiled and wrapped her in my telekinesis. She looked confused again as she tried to flap her wings so she could keep rushing toward me, but nothing happened. My smiled grew as I used my spell to slam her back into the ground…hard, “Don’t get up!”

She didn’t listen, “And you have no idea what we have to go through every day here. We are trained never to give up, never to back down. You’ll have to kill me if you want to win!”

“You say that now, but can you really follow through?” I asked as my horn started to glow again.

“You can bet on it!” she said. She dashed to one side trying for a rush again. She changed direction and dashed the other way, working her way closer to me but making it hard for me to predict where she’d end up. In a fight against an opponent who wasn’t a unicorn, it may have worked. But what good is having a few spells up your sleeve if you can’t cheat a little?

I waited until she went in for the strike, then ducked under her. For a second she was flying over me as she missed the strike, her hoof and body changing direction in midair to try for a second attack. That is until I blasted her with my Expulsion Spell. She let out a louder scream than before as she was blasted up, followed by another scream as her body slammed into the ceiling of the Atrium. She started to fall, I grabbed hold of her with my magic and threw her into the far wall then lifting her once more I pulled her close to me. As she came flying toward me I slammed a hoof into her gut. Her head inched close to me from the impact and as a ‘fuck you’ I softly kissed her nose in such a smug way. The wind from her breath was blasted out of her lungs in a sad exhalation of air. Her body slumped over my shoulder, I brought my good foreleg up and twisted her around and put her into a head lock. The same one Wrath used on me during our last fight.

It took a moment for her to answer, she was doing her best to gasp in air, then she said, “N…o.”

I tightened my grip, “You’re done, now yield, I don’t want to kill you.”

“No I’m a mare who’s trying to save your sorry ass. I won, you know it, now act like an adult and admit defeat.”

For a long moment we stood there, Shortcake gasping in small bits of air, me holding on to her in a chock hold. Finally, she said quietly, “If I do, my friends will think I’m weak, if I’m weak how can I become a good leader.”

Just as quietly I responded, “Winning isn’t the only thing that makes you a good leader. Trust me I know. A good leader has to admit when she’s defeated, or when she’s wrong. You have to show them that, if you really want to be a leader of the rest of the Cadets show them that you are willing to listen to those who know better than you so you can show your friends how to do better. The mark of a good leader is a leader who learns so she can set a good example for those she leads.”

I saw her looking at some of the Cadets, I wonder if she saw the same look on their faces as I did. They were scared, their lives had changed drastically in the past couple of hours. Some wanted Shortcake to win so they could follow her into this new life because they were scared of what was outside. Others wanted to go to a place they knew would be safe, but they were too scared to say something to Shortcake. All of them looked up to her, either because she was the best pony from their class or because she really was the kind of pony who could lead. Shortcake was the kind of pony who had confidence in herself and that confidence is what helped all of the ponies here get through the tough times in life.

Finally Shortcake whispered, “I’m scared, the world outside is an unknown to us, what if this Empress turns out to be evil? What if I bring them right into a trap, one where they’ll either be killed or put back into a place like this?”

“That’s the risk every leader has to face. You never know what will happen next, sometimes both paths you can take will suck, the difference is are you strong enough to face it? If you’re still not sure then look at it this way. I trust Empress Sheena, Stardust trusts me to make the right call with this. You don’t know me or Sheena, but you do know Stardust. Would he put all of you at risk for no reason?”

“No, he’s a good stallion, loyal to a tee. It’s what made him a good friend.”

“Then trust Stardust’s choice. Yield and we can put this foolishness behind us and move forward toward a better life.”

I felt her body go slack and she said, “Fine, I yield, but I pray that I’m making the right choice.”

For a long moment the Cadets all looked at the two of us then finally they started to stomp their hooves on the floor in applause. Stardust flew over to me, a healing potion in hoof, “Damn Shadow that was bad ass.”

I drank the healing potion then responded, “No it wasn’t, it was stupid, but I’m glad it worked.”

Stardust offered a potion to Shortcake who took it and drank it as well, “Thanks Dusty, sorry I was being such a bitch before. It’s really good to see you again.”

He blushed, “It’s okay, I know how you get when you’re angry. A lot’s happened today it’s all a little hard to take in.”

To my utter surprise, Shortcake started to giggle, “Dusty you still blush like a colt who just got to kiss the mare he likes. It’s cute.”

That just made him blush more, “I don’t blush, Stallions like me don’t ever…Blush!”

I looked over at Shortcake who was also looking at me. Then at the same time we burst into laughter as Stardust tried his best to get us to stop…

An hour later Major Vas was able to get the last of the Pegasi’s power armor rebooted. They were now leading the last of the ponies that lead Stable 97 out through the now open door. Stardust, Shortcake and I used that time to load up as many of the weapons and ammo as we could from the storage rooms and whatever else the Cadets could carry to their new home at The Kingdom. Solstice went through the cadet’s power armor and removed the tracking device on them so they could bring them with if they so wanted. Turns out she was an expert on power armor…who knew?

Stardust and I also went back to medical, mostly to stalk up on meds we could use, but also to make sure the memory machine was destroyed by the C-4. Luckily all that was left was mostly scrap metal and broken glass. Though I was worried somepony from the Enclave would be able to fix it somehow, or Wolfsbane if he found his way into this Stable. From what Major Vas told me, Nightshade wasn’t going to let the Enclave use this stable ever again, but he was still new to power. Pegasi like Captain Plank were still up there and they wouldn’t just do whatever they were told by this new High Council pony. I was going to have to figure something out for this thing before we left for good.

So, I spent the rest of the time helping the Cadets get ready for the trip we were about to take. I had to calm down a few when they first met Wind Thrasher though. Once the Cadets saw that she was just as scared of them as they were of her, they warmed up to her quickly. Though Wind Thrasher kept hanging out as close as she could to Stardust. It was like she was scared to leave his side around the other highly trained soldiers. It’s odd how one minute she can be a bad ass killer and the next she’s the shy mare in a room. Definitely a strange mare, but that’s why we love her.

Getting the Cadets to leave the Stable was harder than I thought it would be at first. Most of them stood near the open stable door looking out at the mostly empty storage room like it was going to explode when they left. It took a lot of coaxing from Stardust, Solstice, Doorstop and Shortcake to get them to take the first step out. Finally, one by one, the young pegasi left the Stable. I waited next to the terminal for the door controls with Wind Thrasher sitting next to me.

“It’s going to be hard for them for a while.” She said as we watched them file out.

“Yeah, but they’ll manage. Look at you, you managed to do just fine outside.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to leave my stable for years. I lost my fear of the outside world after having to live with Dr. Cell and his monsters for so long. I figured that if I ever got free of his control, the outside world would be better than Stable 9.”

“Wish I was like that, even though I knew I wasn’t from Stable 28 when I left it, it still scared me to go into the Wasteland.”

She smiled, “You’re just a filly, I’m sure going out on your own no matter what is scary. I’m a little older than you are, things like that get easier with age.”

“By my Stable’s standards you’re a couple years shy of being an adult. Though now days I wouldn’t say you’re a filly, you did have to grow up a lot to survive out there,” She looked over at me, “What are we going to do about this place?”

I looked down at the Mark II, “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m worried that some pony will find their way in here and figure out how to fix that memory machine or use it as a blue print on how to build their own.”

I nodded, “There’s something about him that I don’t trust, same goes for Nightshade. They’re both hiding something and I don’t like it. I don’t know what it is yet, but I do know that I don’t want either of them to get into this Stable.”

“You could always try and talk to The Survivors and see if they want their home back?” Wind Thrasher suggested.

“No, after what we did there I don’t want to go anywhere near those nut jobs. I think the best thing I can do, is seal the Stable just like Stable 9.”

Wind Thrasher thought about that for a moment then said, “I Disagree with you if the kind of sealing you mean is blowing the stable up like you did with 9.”

I laughed pretty hard at that “You’re funny Wind Thrasher, you’re a funny mare.” I teased “No nothing like that.”

She laughed with me “Good, it’s better to keep this place sealed away from the world. That way nopony can ever use what’s in here ever again.”

The last of the Cadets finally made it past the threshold for the stable door. Stardust poked his head in and said, “You two coming or what?”

“Okay, hurry it up though, I’d like to get as far away from this place as I can.” He said as he walked back out of the Stable.

I looked down at the terminal then at my Pip-Buck, “This shouldn’t be too hard.”

Wind Thrasher smiled her toothy smile, “I’ll go keep Stardust distracted for a minute while you finish up.”

“Thanks Wind Thrasher,” I hugged her quickly then waited for her to walk out of the Stable. When she was gone I hooked the Mark II into the terminal for the door. As I thought, it only took a minute for me to place the seal on the door. It would activate as soon as the door was closed. I also made sure that only my Mark II could reopen the stable via the broadcaster. When that was finished I pulled the lever to shut the door. As the drill moved into place and started to shut the large gear shaped door I made my way down to it and walked out.

Once I was past the threshold I turned and watched as the door rolled into place and was pushed into its final position. Then I felt a hoof on my shoulder as Stardust said, “Feels good to be saying good bye to this place once and for all.”

I turned and hugged my best friend, “I don’t know, I think it feels better to have you back.”

We all walked back out to the Wasteland where The Enclave Soldiers were loading the ponies that lead the stable into a sky carriage. I noticed that Dr. Limbis wasn’t with them, in fact I hadn’t seen her since she left with the rest of my friends before the attack. I looked at Doorstop who was standing next to me, “Where’d Dr…”

“I didn’t want her to get captured by the Enclave. I told her where the Kingdom is and put a marker on her Pip-Buck, as far as the Enclave knows, she was one of the ponies who died during the fighting.”

I smiled, “She’s a nice mare, I’m glad she’ll finally be able to be free from the job she hated so much.”

“Same here, I think I’m going to have her come back to Frosty Summit with me when we head back home. Violet could use a good Doctor like her.”

He glared at me then shook his head, “Not at all, at least not like you’re thinking. She’s always been a nice mare even to a grunt hard assed pony like me. She was also my Sister’s best friend, I couldn’t let something bad happen to her. Besides it wasn’t her fault she was forced to do what she did.”

“I guess that make sense…wait you have a sister!” I almost yelled, but Doorstop covered my muzzle with a hoof.

Doorstop looked back at Stardust and Solstice who were talking with a few of the Cadets not far away from us, “Yes I do, but keep that to yourself. I haven’t seen my family in over twenty years and I don’t need the Cadets or Solstice asking me all kinds of silly questions.”

He moved his hoof away from my muzzle, “Does your sister know you’re even alive?”

He looked around again then said, “She’s the one who put me here, she heard about the program and wanted me to keep an eye on things. I think she really wanted me to make sure Limbis was okay. She knows I was branded as well.”

He smiled at me, “Nah, but she is a smart mare that puts her nose where it doesn’t belong. But let’s drop it, maybe one day I’ll tell you more about my family.”

“I dunno how I feel about knowing two pegasi with secrets of their past. At least Laser Light was a little bit open about herself before she left.”

Doorstop smirked “Sometimes secrets keep us safe. Laser Light knows this very well.”

“Maybe you will also tell me about how you know so much about other things a pony like you shouldn’t when you were trapped in a Stable for over twenty years.” I said.

“Maybe even that too,” he said with a hearty laugh, “I’ve got to make sure the Cadets are ready to head out.”

I nodded and made my way over to the Major who was checking with his troops to make sure everything was ready to go, “Major Vas, can I bother for a moment?”

He turned and looked down at me, “I have to be off soon so make it quick Courier.”

“I have to know, is what you said in the Stable true, did Nightshade really say I’m free of The Enclave’s wrath?”

He nodded, “That’s what he told me, I’m not sure why but he seems hell bent on trying to fix a lot of what the last council has broken. He’s working on a new negotiation with New Pegasus for one, he’s also trying to find some kind of peace with some of the Cloud Cities to the east. Personally Courier, I think it’s a mistake.”

“No, letting you go. I’ve seen the damage you can do. It both frightens me and makes me want you dead. If he didn’t tell me to leave you be, I would have killed you as soon as I saw you Courier.” He said, his voice never growing angry.

I took a step back, “Just like that, even though you’re scared of what I’ll do?”

“I’m a soldier not a politician, I take orders and I follow them Courier. My personal feelings don’t get in the way of orders. Maybe one day I’ll change my mind about you, but for now I’d rather not see you ever again.”

“I guess that’s better than sending The Sins after me again or killing me out right.”

He turned his back to me and started to walk away, “The Seven Sins of Equinity are scum Courier. They no longer represent The Enclave, I’d like to see them all die just as much as you.” He stopped then looked back at me pulling a small box out of a pocket, “That’s right I almost forgot, Nightshade wanted me to give this to you. He said to watch it when you had free time.”

He set the box down and walked away, a moment later they all took off and headed for the cloud layer. Once they were gone, I walked over and picked up the box in my hooves. When I opened it I saw what was inside. It was a memory orb, on top of that were two notes. One said it was from Nightshade, but the other didn’t say who it was from. It looked a lot older than the first and all that was written on it was ‘To Star’

I wanted so badly to read both those notes and maybe even dive into the memory orb. Instead I put them into my saddle bags, right now I had more important things to do. First thing’s first, it’s time to go back to The Kingdom and see Aura.

Turning toward my friends I smiled, feeling somehow better than I have in days, “You know it, let’s go…”

[FOOTNOTE: LEVEL UP!]

NEW PERK ADDED!

Interrogator: If you have an active imagination, you can get anything out of anypony. If an enemy is captured alive, you can interrogate them for information and depending on what you do, you might get more information. However, this perk does not work with young children of any race.

Fallout Equestria: Falling Shadows

by Drako Moon

Chapter 39: Liberate