I had been running a long, scared, silent marathon. I’d been alone, quiet, and wounded. I’d changed on a deep level who I was inside and out, and then I’d been brought to the lowest point in my life I’d ever been.
But I had the strength to run, and the strength to stand up just a little taller as some of the ponies following us looked to me, as though I was important, as though I mattered. It was a little scary. It made me want to run a little faster to grab onto Apple Jack, and not let go. But most of all it made me want to make sure I survived this. We all should survive this, and it made me so angry that we might not.
“Erishy,” AJ said as I got a little closer. “Some of our herd are having trouble, see if you can give ‘em a hoof.”
I nodded quickly, of course, and ducked back into the herd with new purpose driving me, making my hooves ache a little less. Whispers of “Quiet, quiet” echoed around me through the ponies as I hunted for the injured. The worst of them all was a unicorn mare that was unconcious. From exhaustion or injury, I couldn’t tell. Her eyelids would flutter, and her coat was dirty, but I couldn’t see clear bruises or cuts to give me a clue as to how badly hurt she was. Everypony else was huddled tight together in a herd and shuffling along as quickly as they could. The one that was having the most trouble was a stallion who looked to have a sprain in one hoof. I had him lean on me so that he could hobble along a little faster, and I felt just a little more useful. At least he would be in a little less pain.
The whole group shuffled to a stop as RJ turned to face us, a short flight away from an imposing door. I quickly slipped back to the head of the group, biting my lip a little as I got within earshot of RJ talking.
“-About to get extra strength hairy here. How’re we holding up?”
She was looking to me, since I’d been looking for the injured, and I felt a swell of pride that I could reply to her question without stage fright. A bit of confidence still existed under all my yellow fur, despite the journey.
“I’m okay,” I whispered, though I was whispering loudly, when it came to the scale of volume for my whispers. “Most of our ponies here seem okay too. Only one needs medical attention urgently, and she’s being carried.”
I felt brave. I felt ready for whatever we would face next, but some small voice in the back of my head kept whispering that I wasn’t as strong as I felt, and that sooner or later, my bravery would crack. I just needed to hold it off.
Then Rarity walked - no, strode up next to me. I looked to her like she was a moonrise over a dark forest. It didn’t matter that the world had fallen apart around her. It didn’t matter than some of her mane was in her face like stray reminders that her style had been altered by a golden streak through the purple. It didn’t matter that each of her eyes was a different color. It didn’t matter that she had been shot at, she had poise and grace. Nopony could take that from her, and it inspired a bit of awe in me.
“Well,” she started with a casual smile as she eyed the door beyond, her stance shifting side to side in the only betrayal of her true nerves that I could see. “I could go for a snack, dear. Or a full spa day. Are there more government agents outside?”
I was a little surprised, I had forgotten that we were probably in the middle of a rescue plan. For some reason I’d been thinking we would run out of the door, out into the forest, and I’d need to show everypony how to boil water from streams for a few days until we found civilization. Government agents sounded reassuring yet somehow at the same time terrifying.
“We got a guy out there,” AJ affirmed, though I caught notice of it being ‘a guy’ not ‘a freaking army’ like I’d hoped. “He’s, um, he’s keepin’ an eye on your sister while waitin’ for the the cavalry. We only gotta get past three more guards if we’re gonna get out of here.”
She looked back at the door before slowly smiling. It was rare for AJ to be mischievous, but when she was… Oh boy was she ever. She could be crafty, and subtle in her plans, when she needed to be. Though usually it was just surprising because it wasn’t normal for her. Rainbow plays a prank on somepony, we all shrug. AJ does something like that? Bewilderment.
“And I got an idea how to get past the first door.”
She gathered Rarity, Nate, and me around her conspiratorially.
“This is gonna be a trick, and we’ll have to be ready. Nate, we’re gonna need your jacket…”
We huddled together as we watched AJ walk up to and through the door, Nate following at a distance before hiding behind the doorframe, his coat clutched in his hands tight, ready to be used as a head cover.
I smiled just a little at the fact that we were literally about to black-bag someone. We were freaking ponies. It’s just not how things should be, really.
I could hear someone mutter something in the other room as they spotted AJ, and then AJ did something I didn’t expect at all.
“Moo.”
To be honest, it was a bad impression, but she probably had never had to speak to a cow in their native language before, so it was excusable, and frankly quite funny.
More mumbling, and another moo, and a hand reached down to grab hold of AJ’s element. It pulled her along and I could just barely see from around the corner, a kid with greasy black hair and a general air of “I want to be a sidekick to a villain” permeating his entire self.
He got another few feet before AJ leaned hard and pulled him to the side, while at the same moment Nate threw his coat over the kid’s head and pulled it tight, making it impossible for him to see or move much.
I was incredibly relieved to see that his pistol was jammed with the slide open, which meant either it had no ammunition or that something else was wrong with it. Aj came back into view as she smacked her head against the jacket-covered head of the sidekick, and he slimped.
I mentally ran the statistics for brain injury and internal bleeding, and how often knocking someone out was fatal, and decided that for once I was going to have to not care. Not even a little bit.
I was surprised to find that my element didn’t grow hot to the touch. It remained cool. Apathy, it turned out, wasn’t as bad as hatred in the eyes of Kindness.
“Sorry, kid. Can’t have you raisin’ an alarm,” she said as we all approached, the herd following us closely. “Rarity, can you pull his belt? I gotta tie him up before he wakes.”
I watched as Rarity pulled the belt loose and AJ tied him up, but there was something about the color of Rarity’s magic that gave me pause. I couldn’t place it, but I could have sworn it was a different color before. The problem was, I couldn’t really remember what color, due to not paying too much attention to magic colors. But blue-green didn’t seem normal. Much darker, maybe.
Also, I was a little jealous, Erica had all sorts of ideas of what to do with magic, and all I had were wings. Though I immediately mentally objected to the thought of giving up flying, no matter how rarely I did it. So I suppose I just had to be happy with the way it worked out.
A sudden burst of static came from a radio on the sidekick’s hip, interrupting my thoughts.
“Jimmy? You there? I heard a noise,” some man asked.
AJ looked towards Nate, then me, then Rares, before grimacing and grabbing the radio.
“Uh… everything’s fine,” she said with a twist to her voice, clearly trying to sound like the sidekick. “I just, uh, fell over.”
She looked as cringy as everyone else clearly felt, as we waited for a reply.
“Fell? Jimmy, are you high or something?”
“Nope!” AJ quickly replied, “No, I’m fine, I’m… All fine here now.”
She looked at me. I shrugged. She shrugged. She added a “Motherfucker” to her broadcast, and I had to fight really hard not to laugh as I heard AJ say “motherfucker.”
I covered my mouth to not laugh as the reply came. A clearly concerned older guy, confused.
“Kid, I’m coming over there.”
The walkie talkie went tap-tap-tap against AJ’s head, frustration clearly visible. “No! No need to do that! Seriously, I’m fine. Fucking fine. Just took a tumble is all.”
And as she closed her eyes tight, I realised that she’d ended her last word with a bit more accent, and a bit of upward inflection, and I grimaced as the response came back how I thought it would.
“Wait. Who’s this? You ain’t Jimmy!”
She turned off the walkie talkie and tossed it to me.
“Dammit. Boring conversation anyway. Hang onto that for me, Shy. We gotta stow Jimmy.”
As we gathered into the small hallway-room AJ paused, looking at something on the floor. I paused as well, following her gaze.
It was the kid’s gun. Honestly, I didn’t even want to say anything. I didn’t want to touch it, because touching it would be acknowledging the unspoken truth that it really was us or them. It was a matter of life or death, and having a gun could save ponies lives. No matter how much my self image would be tainted for providing the weapon that killed. But I had a skill. A skill that could help.
I stepped over to the gun and sat down.
Remove the magazine, make sure the breech is clear, safety is on, then comes the fixing of the gun itself. It’s methodical, a machine designed to do one thing and one thing only. Then I saw the problem. The locking pin that held the slide onto the body of the weapon had been pushed halfway out, jamming the slide in place. With the tip of one hoof I pressed it back in before pulling the slide back a little further so that the pin would clear the slide, then tapped the pin the rest of the way in and allowed the slide to rack back into place, looking for all intents and purposes like it was loaded, to an untrained eye.
I held it up to AJ with a nervous smile. “There we go,” I said as I held out the handle, the muzzle pointed up towards the ceiling in the safest way I could manage surrounded by ponies. “It was just jammed.”
AJ looked at me as though I’d said that I was quitting helping animals in order to build bombs or something, complete bewilderment and confusion. Rarity, standing next to her, smiled a little.
"Fluttershy fixing guns, I do believe I’ve seen it all,” she said with a little shake of her head, though she didn’t seem upset.
“I… used to work with guns,” I mumbled as I looked away. “Or, I mean, my human half did.”
“Uh. Yeah,” AJ said as everyone else murmured their shock, still looking at me like I was a crazy pony. “Thanks, ‘Shy. You read my mind. Just… unload it, too? We don’t want any accidents.”
I nodded quickly, and I used the top of my hoof to push each of the .38 rounds out of the magazine to fall with a soft clink on the floor, before putting the empty magazine back into the gun. I hesitated, looking at the bullets, and I took one. I held onto it. I don’t know why, but it seemed like it might help, tucked behind one ear.
Meanwhile, AJ and Rares were pushing the kid into a closet down the hall, and securing the door so he couldn’t escape. Then, they passed back by me to open the next door with the sidekick’s keys and keer through. I stepped up closer to whisper to them.
“It’s empty,” I said as I held out the pistol and Rarity took hold of it in her magic and floated it closer to her.
“Well, it looks good,” she said with a smirk.
“That’s all it has to do,” AJ said in almost a warning tone. “Look good.”
It was clear I wasn’t alone in not wanting to hurt anyone. AJ took another look out the cracked door before looking back at the rest of us.
“Alright y’all. We’re almost clear, but it looks like we’re gonna have company,” she said. “Shy, I need you to keep an ear on that radio. You hear folk comin, you let us know.”
I nodded very quickly as I grabbed the radio and clutched it close, flipping it back on so we could hear if anything was said.
“Nate, I need you to hold up the back of the herd, make sure we don’t lose anypony. Y’all mind the doc here. He’s tryin’ to help,” she continued as Nate headed for the back of the group. “Rares, you’re my gunmare. Anyone gives us the stink eye, you give ‘em a reason to step back.”
And when Rarity held up the pistol in her magic and grinned, I swear I heard camera shutters and cheering in the background. She definitely looked like a secret agent about to take down the bad guys. Of course, I knew the gun wasn’t loaded, the bad guys were twice our size, and Rarity wouldn’t know hoof to hoof combat if it socked her in the cheek, but it still looked awesome.
“Okay everypony, we just got two more yahoos to get by, and then we’re a five minute walk to help. Rares and I will be up front, but you mind Nate and ‘Shy, here. They’re gonna get you to safety if this goes south. And safety is outside,” AJ stressed. “Outside, then straight to the road, turn right. Outside, to the road, right. Get me?”
Everypony nodded, and I committed the directions to memory. We had to get out, this had to end. I felt like my heart could give out any minute. AJ met my gaze, and she seemed to know. She stood a little taller, looked a little stronger, and I knew. She’d keep me safe.
“Alright then,” she said as she gave us all the most wonderful smile. “We’re gonna get you out of here. That’s an Applejack Promise.”
She turned back to the door and pushed it open, as I looked back to the herd, and I tried to be brave, to nod to them, showing them they could follow me. In amazement, I saw several nod back, and we faced forward to start our journey to freedom.