Light Despondent Remixed

by Doctor Fluffy

10: Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Heliotrope
August 8, 2022

They stood, dazed, looking at the space where the mystery vehicle had been. Staring at the plume of smoke from Samson.

“Are they…” Heliotrope asked.

Yael wasted no time in turning on her radio. “Colonel Gardner, this is First Lieutenant Ze’ev! Are you there? Please respond!”

Static.

“Who the hell were those ass-clowns?” Chinook asked.

For a moment, Heliotrope almost thought one of the humans said it.

He acts just like one of them, she thought. Somehow, that worried her.

“Those… those bastards,” Heliotrope breathed. “How could they, how bucking could they...”

She shook with rage.

It was the biggest HLF attack since the Purple Winter. Thousands dead, in all likelihood. And the a - the human that’d done it - was free. Because some jackasses swooped out of the sky and saved him.

Who were they?! Heliotrope thought. Who has that kind of power and rescues Lovikov?!

And now he was free. What would he do next? Open fire on a school that had ponies in it? Bomb a small town? Poison a reservoir?

All bets were off. That…

Part of Heliotrope wanted to say ‘typical human.‘

But then, even by her standards for humans (of which Yael formed the top rung) she knew. This could not be, absolutely was not typical.

“I… I don’t know,” John said. “Far as I know, only militaries or the PHL have those ships.”

“So,” Walker said. “Not HLF.”

“Well,” Yael said. “Maybe the Reavers. But.. no. Not too likely.”

“Why not?” Summers asked. “It’s HLF with bigger weapons than even we get.”

“They hate Lovikov,” Yael said. “And besides. We’d know if they had that.”

“Who else would, though?” Smoky asked, as Summers followed that up with a nod.

Heliotrope thought that over. Another military attacking them? No. Couldn’t be. That would… Well, Summers raised a good point.

They really hate us, Heliotrope thought. People like them, those who tried to fight rather than band together… they were the worst of humanity. Not like the ones she was working with here and now.

Truly.

Yael sighed. “Alright. Who else would think it’s the Reavers?”

Heliotrope raised a hoof. As did Smoky, Summers, and John. Quiette Shy, Yael, and Williams - or ‘Bro,’ as he insisted on being called - were the only ones who weren’t in agreement.

Summers nodded at her, looking satisfied.

“Like Smoky said,” Heliotrope said. “Who else would?”

Yael

In the future, on December 24 of 2022, Yael will correct Heliotrope with how she saw the look on Summers’ face.

Self-satisfied.

Not for the first time since she’d been reassigned to work with Gardner, Yael had a sense of… dread. No, not dread. Wrongness.

Those two, Yael thought, looking towards Summers and Smoky, are going to be trouble.

She glanced over at Heliotrope. You, though… I wouldn’t have expected.

Why?

“We don’t know it was them,” Yael said. “We have no evidence they have that, or that they would want to save Lovikov.”

“They’re HLF,” Summers said. “It’s all the same to me, first li-”

“Quiet,” Yael said, deathly serious. “You’re coming close to insubordination, Summers. I don’t like them either, but I can’t prove it’s them. I don’t have evidence it’s them.”

Of course, it was more than that.

Seven children. I don’t… Yael thought. Good God. I don’t even know their names, how screwed up… how meshuggeh... is that? A town gone. Wiped off the map. And I did it.

If I say that the Reavers did this, I’ll do that again. And it’ll have been my fault. Not…

Not…

Was she seriously about to blame Heliotrope? No, that was ridiculous. Heliotrope was Yael’s best f-

Yael’s radio crackled.

“...nant Ze’ev, do you copy! We came down in a baseball field in South Portland. No injuries, thank God.”

“Thank God,” Yael said. “Sir. What do I-”

“First order of business, you are to pick up the other soldiers I assigned - the National Guard have agreed to take the prisoners off our hands until we know what to do with them. Secondly, you are to rendezvous with us in Portland and help us restore order,” Gardner said.

Yael nodded. “Yes sir.”

Kraber

At roughly the same time, Kraber was walking away, dazed. Trudging along the beach. He didn’t know where he was going.

I think I may be in shock, he thought.

Someone with that kind of backing, Kraber thought, willing to save Lovikov? And here I was thinking that Galt was the best ou - no, their side of the split got.

His mind was buzzing.

“You don’t seem happy,” said a strange batwinged mare, fluttering up behind him.  She had a blue-black coat, orange eyes, and a dull purple mane with streaks of lighter pink. It reminded him of… of stars, weird as it sounded.

On a normal day, Kraber would have pulled out his revolver and exploded the fokking vampire gluestick coming up to him. But this wasn’t a normal day. Oh, he couldn’t look at her or damn near any pony, any of those foals, without seeing Pinkie Pie turning his family, Kate, Peter, Anka, Cousin Richard, into those fokking zombies.

Do I feel like a fokkin’ hero yet? He wondered. I shot fokkin’ foals.

They’re only ponies, another part of him pointed out.

They’re still children! Wee yins! he heard himself think, the last two words taking on that Robert Carlyle imitation he’d used during that production of Trainspotting in Boston. This isn’t right. None of what I’ve fokkin’ done is right.

“Those who talk to themselves keep poor company,” Anka said, in that odd accent caught somewhere between Germany, Roxbury in Boston, and Cape Town.

Kraber paused and facepalmed. Fok, she was right, wasn’t she? He briefly debated telling this batwinged pony to go away, to just fokking take his pistol and shoot himself so he didn’t have to feel like this anymore…

“Hey,” the batwinged pony said. “You did good, Mr… Bliss, was it?”

Kraber made a noise that could’ve been a yes or no.

“You don’t sound too good,” the batwinged pegasus said.

“I just feel like this wis my fault,” Kraber said.

“You were just a guard, weren’t you?” the bat-pegasus said.

“I have a… a close friend in the HLF,” Kraber said. “Was HLF, for a time. And I…”

Aweh, Kraber thought. Like hell I’m telling them the whole story.

“He was with Lovikov,” Kraber said. “And whatever happened out there, I feel like… I could have stopped him. Should have stopped him.”

“You couldn’t have known he’d be part of this,” the bat-pegasus said.

“But I fokkin’ should have,” Kraber said. “I knew he was getting radger and radger. I knew he was getting angrier. But I just… let it be part of the background. And now, here I am. Friend dead or dying, or complicit in this fokkin’ atrocity of a hostage situation.”

The pegasus looked at him, sympathetic.

“I do know what you mean, y’know,” the bat-pegasus said. “I had a friend back in Luna’s night guard. He was Solar, I was Lunar, and no matter how bad things got, we were friends. Then, well, things got… bad.”

“This bad?” Kraber asked.

“Funnily enough, yes,” the bat pegasus said. “I can tell you about it if you like.”

Kraber looked at the burning city just across the bay. Then at the island full of humans, ponies, and other aliens from that world. All of whom would likely rip him to pieces if they knew who he really was. What he’d really done.

I’m fokked anyway. My friends are dead or gone, they won’t take me, and I’ll be captured by morning. And I’ll deserve it.

There’s nothing for me.

Nothing.

It was a sobering thought.

“You know what? Fok it. I’ve nothing better to do,” he said, shrugging, looking over the batwinged, fanged (fanged?!) pony. “Mind if I ask a question though?”

“That was one,” the batpony said.

“…What the fok are you, anyway?” Kraber asked.

“Seriously?” the batpony asked.

“Well, Ah’ve bare ever seen yuir like,” Kraber explained.

“We have a lot of names,” the strange batpony e said. “Nightkin, the Nocturne, Thestrals… batponies…”

“Oh yeah, Ah haird o’ that,” Kraber said. “Thought it was just a story people told back at the refugee camp.”

The pony sighed. “Not surprised. There aren’t exactly many of us left. I’m Nebula, by the way.”

In retrospect, Kraber shouldn’t have been surprised by her appearance. There’d been a lot of odd species of Equus that had come to earth in the chaos around the Purple Winter. There were some HLF from down south that swore they’d seen a pony made of crystals, and he’d laughed it off right until the moment he saw one himself.

“What happened?” Kraber asked.

“Lots of things,” Nebula said. “They helped Princess Luna escape, a long while back…

Dancing Day

“Here’s the bit of the story I remember,” Kraber says, and clears his throat. “Back from when I met her awhile later.”

“What happened to her?” Dancing Day asks.

“Oh, she’s fine. Still over in Portland, still watching for Imperials or some ship that manages to make its way across the ocean.” Aegis says. “Wonderful mare. Bit irritable nowadays, but who isn’t?”

“Good point,” Vinyl agrees. “It gets hard sometimes.”

“Which is why I’m happy for the friends I still have. Like all of you,” Kraber says. “She’s not…” And Kraber looks downcast here, his shoulders slumping. “…another friend I’ve lost.” He takes a drink of the bourbon hidden under his chair. “I’ve lost more fokkin’ chommies than some of you kids’ve ever made…” he sighs.

“I remember,” Heliotrope said. “That time we were in Kentucky, stopping by that town where you said Zoe lived, Oscar asked ‘Is that a friend of yours?’ and you said…”

“Must be,” Kraber said. Kraber, from what Dancing Day can tell, does not often get teary-eyed or choke up outside of screenings of Wolf Children Ame and Yuki. “She’s ponified.”

Aegis pulls himself up onto a large chair, andd puts a hoof behind Kraber’s head, over his shoulder.

“Ah, thanks for that,” Kraber says, and he smiles over at Aegis. “You’re a real china, Aegis.”

“You too, Viktor,” Aegis agrees.

“Ah, fok it. All of you - I’m glad I met you,” Kraber says. “Yael, Heliotrope, Aegis, Vinyl, Amber and Rivet… you’re the fokkin’ best!”

“Even though I tried to blow you up?” Yael asks.

Kraber shrugs. “Dom nool. Most of you have tried to fokkin’ kill me by now. Eish, I even blew myself up once. It’s lost a lot of emotional impact.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask how you survived that,” Yael says.

“Why do I feel like ‘Dom nool’ doesn’t actually mean ‘No problem’?” Aegis asks.

“Because jou know me, and I lived with you for almost a month,” Kraber says bluntly. “As for how I lived, well, I was jumping off when the Obregon shell hit the boat. The seawater put out the flames.”

“Alright,” Heliotrope says. “So you didn’t get hit by any shrapnel? And how about that time you blew yourself up?”

“Okay,” Kraber says, “That part is weird.”

“You threw a belt of grenades, in the middle of a house, that fell into a river!” Vinyl Scratch adds.

“Well,” Kraber says, “That’s a long, interesting story, full of twists, and turns, and it also has pirates, and time travel, and-”

“You have no idea, do you,” Vinyl interrupts. It is not a question.

Kraber smiles. “Fok weet! But some of that was true, anyway.”

“Even the part with the pirates?” Rivet asks.

“Surprisingly, yes,” Heliotrope says.

“Wait,” Dancing Day says, “So does that mean that Aegis tried, or…”

Aegis and Kraber look at each other uncomfortably.

“We’ll get to that,” Aegis says.

Nebula

We were revered by a lot of ponies back in the day. Feared too, for obvious reasons that we have wings and canine teeth. There were some ponies that came up with stories as to where we came from; that we were created through magic as Nightmare Moon’s loyal soldiers, we were the victims of curses…

There’s bad stories about what thestrals faced.

But anyway, without Princess Luna’s magic, we got rarer and rarer. Then, one day, when she came back, we found out that she was hiring new Thestrals. I joined in, my sister said she’d love to come, and she was so resigned to not getting to try join when…. Well, we learned something interesting. You can be born a thestral, yes, but Luna favors the use of enchantments and some illusions to temporarily transform us to look the part.

“How… extensive are these changes?” Kraber had asked as she told the story. “Is it like ponification, or…”

Well, she wasn’t born a thestral like me, so she doesn’t have the omnivorous digestive structure.  Wasn’t even born a mare. See, she asked Luna to make her thestral disguise look like a mare. Always seemed happier on duty that way...

“So your sister was…” Kraber said.

Nebula nodded.

“Huh,” Kraber said. “She was trans? All that time? And nobody thought to take that into account when making the ponification potion?”

I guess the Queen just didn’t care.

Luna, though… whatever it was that killed a part of Celestia’s heart, it never hit Luna. For all her anger about the Wedding Invasion, Princess Luna was never all that intent on the orders to exterminate the Changelings. Yes, Mr. Bliss - genocide. Queen Celestia had us exterminate all Changeling hives in Equestria, and it had been scary how easy she’d whipped everypony into a frenzy. As I remember, that was when we first heard about the mare they call ‘Celestia’s Sword’...

“Who’s she?” Kraber asked.

“We… don’t know. A mare that obeys the queen bitch without question, wears a flesh-colored mask like half a human face… and the nightmare of many a Changeling. And mine. I saw her in action, and she was surgical in the field. Like a scalpel to someone’s throat...”

Luna, well, she’d wanted to capture Queen Chrysalis, punish her, impose sanctions, but not…. not kill her. Eventually, Celestia managed to convince her…. and we did so. I know we didn’t burn the majority of them, anyway, but the things we did during that campaign…

We didn’t kill them all. But what we did wasn’t much better. Any Changeling that survived lives under 24-hour surveillance in these little walled communities with barely a pot to piss in, outside the ruins of their Hives in scorching desert where nothing can grow in these cheap little shacks long past their expiration date. It’s better than life under Chrysalis, almost anything would be, but that… that… well, changelings don’t have much in the way of childhood, but… part of me just felt sick when I saw how we ripped larva away from their hives.

We caught a lot of flak, so you humans say, for lagging behind on the campaign to protect the home and hearth of Equestria… once, it was more literal, though we could never prove that the fireworks launched by the Celestian Guards weren’t an accident.

From there, well, it went downhill. After the Great Equestrian exploded on Declaration Day - and that’s a long story, please ask somepony else, I’m trying to make a point - Luna begged her sister not to ‘spread harmony’, to do what she planned, based on what she’d witness on that ship. For a year or two, Luna sat by, afraid to act against Celestia again, desperately hoping that something could be salvaged from the war. Why? Well, she’d been Nightmare Moon - ancient enemy of the ponies, mad alicorn with great and terrible power, gone mad with jealousy for Celestia - earlier. It’d take too long to explain. She’d only just recently been reintegrated into Equestria, and she was.... well, afraid. She would tell us she had confidence issues, and feared that even the slightest inkling of arguing with her sister meant that she could be on the way to becoming Nightmare Moon again. And I can’t prove anything, but I know in my heart of hearts, like up is up and bullets come from guns, that Celestia played on those fears-”

Kraber

“She did what.” Kraber said, angered beyond inflecting even a question mark in his voice.

“You heard me,” Nebula said.

“It’s just… Look. I have three siblings,” Kraber explained. “Maybe we hit each other a bit, but that shit is too fokking far!” he paused. “She disnae care. She disnae care, so I don’t know if she can be hurt. Not that it really compares to what Celestia’s done in the past three years, but… her sister, man.”

“Yeah. She played on it to keep Luna from acting.  Oh, she tried to reassure Luna, but there was always the veiled threat at the back of those words - “are you feeling quite yourself, Luna?” - “do you wish to speak to a doctor about these outbursts, ‘dear sister’?”...urgh! Before long, we had ponies saying Nightmare Moon had never really been ‘purified’ or what have you, that Luna was just biding her time… whispers and rumors among the Canterlot nobility, the practical dissolution of the Night Court for ‘reasons of national security’. Because Luna just… kept… asking…. questions.

There was only so long it could work, though. Luna was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but she knew something was wrong. She knew it in her bones.  When her mane began losing its luster, fading back to the colour it had been at her birth, she became convinced something was rotten in Equestria. And do you know what the greatest, saddest honor was? It was she confided her fears in us, dammit. Not to her sister, nor her so-called friends, but in us...her guards, her forsworn defenders.

...most of those guys are dead now, I think. I’ve lost a lot of good friends. What? My sister? Well, she’s over in New York right now. Spends as much time as possible as a mare. If you’re ever there and you see her, tell her that Nebula says hello. And I think there are some of the old Nightguards back in the home country, leading resistance cells-

“Wait, resistance cells? In Equestria?” Kraber interrupted.

“Yeah,” Nebula said, surprised. “Course there’s an Equestrian resisty. Why wouldn’t there be? Even if you don’t like humans-”

“Gee, I wonder why…” the nameless newfoal sitting next to Kraber muttered.

“Then you probably don’t like all the things Celestia’s done,” Nebula explained. “Ever hear of totem-proles?”

“Vaguely. Not until about last December,” Kraber said. What a great day that had been...

“Anyway, they’re kinda like human computers, except the government has complete control. And they will catch you if you say anything there,” Nebula said. “It’s left a lot of ponies not really trusting the internet.”

And Kraber found himself… curious. There were some things he remembered from First Contact about Equestrian culture, but he’d never really bothered to learn much more. He’d learned about biology, sure, but not much else.

Not counting the checkpoint, the most positive interaction with a pony Kraber had before this very night had been with the Reavers, in a room with Thomas Yorke. It played out in his head like a film script whenever he thought of it, every detail of that room in stark detail.

A panning shot of the room, a fairly large warehouse that nobody has seen fit to refit for the war. It makes YORKE, KRABER, and the pony between them (CHAMPAGNE GRAPE) look small. Isolated. It is dark and shadowed, though the characters stand in a pool of flickering orange light.

YORKE: “Come on, Viktor. You know you want this. Hurt em like they hurt us! Make them fucking pay!”

YORKE reaches down. He is unzipping his pants. This action is out of focus, so not to glamorize what he clearly wants to do. But it is absolutely clear from the PREDATORY LOOK on his face.

(A wide shot of KRABER, standing silently over CHAMPAGNE GRAPE. She is looking at YORKE, who is half-undressed.)

(The camera zooms in on CHAMPAGNE GRAPE’S face. She is terrified. Another shot where Kraber is close up to the camera but out of focus, but Yorke is in sharp relief. It moves towards Yorke, inch by inch, with Yorke eclipsing everything.)

YORKE: “I had you pegged the moment you got here. You’re just like me, Kraber. I know you’ll like th-”

BANG

A red stain spreads across Yorke’s pants. He falls to the ground, screaming in agony.

YORKE: “YOU BASTARD! I… you… YOU…!”

We cut to KRABER, who holds his SMOKING .45 steady. His face is in shadow under his NICE OLIVE GREEN STETSON HAT, leaving the viewer to guess what he is feeling. Perhaps KRABER does not even know himself.

KRABER: “Ja, well.”

(A pause. Kraber sighs.)

KRABER: “I don’t like myself very much.”

(He sounds TIRED. Beaten down.)

There are shouts from outside the room. The REAVERS have heard the gunshot.

KRABER: Someday, God willing, I’ll be able to use that whole speech.

The footsteps outside grow closer and closer.

So, with that in mind, he found himself asking a question:

“...Was it always like that, though? That kind of surveillance, the hatred of Luna, the…” Kraber gestured all around himself in a wide sweeping motion. “This?”

“No,” Nebula sighed. “There were problems, sure, but…. They sure as Tartarus didn’t start with humanity. There was racism, ponies could be jerks, but… we were once people. Just like humans.”

“...Once?” Kraber asked. “Wait, so does that mean you’re a…”

“No, that’s just silly!” Nebula laughed.

“Wait,” Kraber said. “Can the Potion make batponies? I mean, I’ve never heard of that…”

Nebula’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt at the water tower.

“Uh….” she said, eyes wide. “You know, I haven’t either. Either the Potion isn’t designed for that, or they’re put to death.”

“That’s disturbing,” Kraber said, nodding slightly.

“But… that’s not important. I mean, we weren’t so different. We weren’t always some kind of apocalyptic menace, y’know? We had lives. We had cutie marks and followed them. We were just… normal ponies.”

Kraber looked at her. The mask kept him from staring sarcastically, so he settled for a simple “Really.”

“Okay, not all of us were normal ponies,” Nebula admitted. “But… but now, with the War…. I don’t know what we are. What we’ll be.”

She sighed.

“If anything, the War’s hurt Equestria than humanity ever has.”

Rage surged in Kraber. “And what the FOK are you fokkin’ insinu-”

Nebula fluttered up, holding both forelegs out in a placating gesture. “Not that! I mean… I mean, the War hurts home too.”

And that was something Kraber had never really considered. So, that in mind, he did something he’d never considered doing to a pony:

“Sorry,” he said. “Continue. I… that was wrong of me.”

“They wouldn’t admit it, but it does,” Nebula said. “Foals informing on their parents, on their brothers, surveillance everywhere, everyone’s afraid, you can get disappeared at any moment for not being ‘harmonious’...”

She looked at the ocean.

“And pollution, too. They had to build up quick for the war,” Nebula said. “There’s a lot of runoff, too. A lot of places that won’t be inhabitable for awhile. Shouldn’t be. They keep it out of view, hiding it in faraway places that they don’t want us to look at.”

“Like Love Canal?” Kraber asked.

Nebula looked at him, confused. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Neighborhood too close to some runoff,” Kraber said. “People kept getting sick, they sued for damages, won, got relocated. I had to take a class and learn it once. I think I saw some Solar Empire rag saying it’s why we shouldn’t be...”

“But the Solar Empire lets that same thing happen! They just keep it out of view.” Nebula said, not quite yelling but coming close. “But they won’t let us protest, won’t let us ask for better working conditions. They support the war, though, so we’re not allowed to protest against them. We’re… really not too different, good or bad. No matter what they say.”

Dancing Day

“Hey Kraber!” calls out a Night Guard mare walking by. “Heard you talking horseapples about my sister!”

“Ah, don’t worry about it, Lunar Phase, I’m fine,” Kraber said. “Just telling these folks here a story.”

“Looks like all those writing classes you take on leave are paying off,” Aegis says.

“What’s the story about what?” ‘Lunar Phase’ asks, gracefully flicking a full mane of gunmetal-silver locks behind one ear. Despite the sleek muscle visible beneath her gleaming coat and the tempered steel in her eyes, she’s almost the perfect definition of pony femininity.

Dancing Day marvels at her beauty.

“Oh, just how I got into the PHL,” Kraber explains. “Just got to the part with your sister.”

“Really!” Lunar Phase says. “I miss her so much…”

“That’s…” Kraber looked down at the beach under him. “Wow. That’s… that’s quite a story.”

Kraber had never met Queen Celestia. Never had a sense of… of her, really. Absurd as it sounded. He’d just project some generic concept of her or Pinkie Pie upon every pony he met.

It was becoming increasingly clear that was fokkin’ dof.

These last few days had been… odd. To say the least. Letting that mother and foal live, and getting to talk to Nebula.

It was a shock just after the thought crossed his mind, that there could be good ponies. But… their foals could suffer just like him, just like his own children. Just like him. And, most importantly, the war had cost her a prominent position too. She’d gone from a royal guard to a watchmare on an island in Portland, and she couldn’t go home again.

Yeah, for a gluestick, Nebula seemed alright. Not as if she’d be a friend of his, but more like they could be civil.

This just… makes sense, Kraber thought as he looked her over.

“You know,” Kraber said, “I’ve been thinking. About that HLF friend.”

“Yeah?” Nebula asked.

“He’s an asshole,” Kraber said. “Anyone that looks at you, then looks at the rig and says all of this is justified would have to be. So would anyone that listened to Lovikov.”

“You were in there too,” Nebula said. “Weren’t you?”

For a moment, Kraber’s mind rebelled against that. Of course he was still HLF, he was still old Front, he was someone that’d been there from the begi-

Nah.

Fok it. He’d left, and it wasn’t like he could go back or anything. While it’d seemed horrifying to be so cut off from his (former) friends, to be among ponies and not HLF that propped him up every step of the way, something felt different. He thought about Sully automatically assuming he was deserting. He thought about the near-feral kids in the camp that walked around with feathers braided in their hair, carrying little Kalashnikovs only slightly longer than a pistol, break-actions, barroom .32s, and borzes. He thought about Lovikov, and just how many things the HLF had taken from him. He thought about all the stuff the HLF had him do, about Lovikov throwing out Emil’s stuff onto the ground, torturing him with grief and guilt.

Last time I let someone talk to me like that, I broke his nose, and his jaw. In two places, Kraber thought. What the hell happened to me?! This means I’m tough? This means I’m a hero? Letting Lovikov walk over me? Killing children? Killing ponies that are…

He prepared himself to feel sick. Surprised himself when he didn’t.

Some of them aren’t so different. There’s definitely good ones, like Nebula.

Then he thought back to his current position:

I have nowhere to go. Nobody knows me. Nobody needs me for anything. There’s nobody commanding me. No direction.

Kraber smiled.

Sounds kwaai.

“I was,” Kraber said. For a moment, he almost relaxed, looking out at the sea…

...The moment passed as Kraber saw the glaring problem that, oh ja, Portland was on fokking fire.

“The Rig stopped firing,” Nebula said, “But… there’s still HLF there. There’s still lots of rioting. Seems Lovikov kicked off something big.”

It was at that moment that Kraber’s instincts betrayed him.

“I’m going into the city,” Kraber said. “Things are looking bad out there. The National Guard and PHL are going to need all the help they can get.”

Dayoung

Ten of them were ponified.

I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home

The few HLF that’d been in Benning’s APC were rushing through the streets, chased by the PER impersonating PHL. Dayoung watched as a man by the name of Harrison took a 5.56 to the knee, just through an opening in his bulletproof armor, and fall to the ground screaming.

“WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!” one PER-as-PHL man was yelling. “SURRENDER, AND WE WILL BE LENIENT!”

As in, ‘We’ll ponify you as painlessly as possible.’ Which… wasn’t reassuring.

Evidently, the poor bastard that’d taken a bullet to the kneecap agreed. As the not-PHL approached, Harrison whipped out two homemade grenades.

“SEE YOU IN HELL!” he yelled, and pulled the pins.

THRAAWM

The not-PHL surrounding Harrison exploded in a plume of fire, shattering windows all around.

“Jimmy! NO!” someone screamed.

There was a man running next to Dayoung. What happened next would be sadly obvious in hindsight to Dayoung. She hadn’t noticed him until now, had been so focused on running that it barely registed that he was near her.

Or what would happen in the next three minutes.

A burst of automatic weapons fire shot over her head, shattering a miraculously untouched window.

“Oh, thank God!” the man running next to Dayoung yelled.  “We need help! We’re being chased by-”

He really should have known better. That same weapons fire - from a Kalashnikov, Dayoung realized - ripped through his head, and his corpse flopped bonelessly to the ground. The remaining half of his skull oozed onto the payment, a look of dumb amazement on that remaining hemisphere.

“Oh thank God!” someone yelled. “PHL! It’s PHL, we’re safe!”

Dayoung looked in their direction, and saw a man pointing a Kalashnikov at her.

“Get the bitch with the FAL!” they yelled.

Dayoung yelped, and leapt into cover behind an overturned truck next to a crater in the pavement. 7.62x39mm rounds clanged and skidded across the truck, and Dayoung hoped to God that none of them had a grenade.

Megan slid into cover next to her. Along with a slightly older, balding HLF man with a confederate flag cap.

“This,” she said. “Is…”

“Please do not tell me you’re enjoying this, too,” Dayoung said.

“...At this point, no,” Megan admitted.

“This is FUCKED!” the older man yelled. “Those are disguised PER, and they’re going to take them over us?”

...We shot up their city, Dayoung thought in a daze. And you expect them to trust us?

Dayoung stared through an opening in her cover - and jerked her head away as the bullets flew.

“Oh thank God!” someone said. “Thank you, thanks so much…”

“Just doing my part,” said the same pony that’d said nobody would miss them. Tinderbox, Dayoung thought. His name is Tinderbox. “We have a shelter set over by the waterfront.”

“This seems… odd,” someone else said. “Where’s… the Coast Guard? The National Guard?”

“They’re working on the outskirts of the city,” said another one of the not-PHL. “Getting people into temporary shelters. They’re in the south of the city, we’re workin in the north.”

Dayoung couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Don’t go with them!” the older man yelled. “They’re PER! You can’t trust them!”

“Yeah!” Dayoung yelled. “We saw them ponify people just five minutes ago!”

The moment she said it, she knew nobody would possibly believe it.

“Soooo…” said another one of the not-PHL. “Who are you going to believe here?”

There was no question. The civilians followed the fake PHL without a question, letting them secure imprison them. Heading to their doom.

“Don’t!” Dayoung yelled. “It’s a-”

Almost offhandedly, one of the fake PHL turned towards them, holding a big single-shot grenade launcher.

He almost had to aim it down to get it to hit them.

THOOP

“GRENADE!” the older man yelled, and the three of them ran. Upon hitting the ground, there was a hiss - and a slight misting above the street, just behind the truck.

Megan and Dayoung made it to the edge of the street, next to some kind of clothes store.

The older man was a little too slow.

“So,” Megan said, looking over to him. “What… what do we do?”

The older man’s eyes were a little unfocused.

“We head north,” he said, with complete certainty in his voice. “There’s HLF in rural maine we can group up with. Lovikov’s heading that way, too. God knows if we’ll get back in with hi-”

He coughed.

“With hi-”

Another cough. This one sounded like it might very well drag a lung up his throat and throw it onto the pavement, and maybe a few more organs with it.

“Are you okay?” Dayoung asked. “You don’t sound too…”

“I don’t…”

The man’s eyes bugged out so far Dayoung thought they’d fall down to the same level as his mouth.

“RUN!” Megan screamed, one arm over Dayoung’s neck.

His voice sounded squeezed. Like his throat was in a vise. And then he began to…

It was hard to describe. Bits of skin sloughed off like peeling paint, or seemed to become waxy. Indistinct.

“No,” the man said, far too calm and certain. As if he was discussing the weather. “Oh God, no.”

His eyes grew bigger and bigger. His spine twisted, and he let out an unearthly scream as his face began to lengthen, and fur sprouted all over his body.

Dayoung and Megan stared at what had once been a man, shocked and horrified. Before they knew it, there was a somewhat rotund green pegasus newfoal in front of them.

Before they could shoulder their weapons and fire, the newfoal sprang up into the air and flew away. Towards the seafront.

“We need to follow it,” Dayoung said, surprising herself with her own calm. “We can stop them, we c-”

“No. Screw all of this!” Megan yelled.

“Bu-”

“We’re screwed, Dayoung,” Megan said. “No matter what we plan on, everyone in the city has an axe to grind against HLF at this moment.  And whatever we did wrong, they won’t believe us. We need. To get out. Now.”

It was like a voice speaking in her ear. Like those videos she’d watched, which had someone saying “It was at this moment Nathan knew: He fucked up.”

That was absolutely, a hundred percent true for Dayoung.

We’re being played.

Kraber

Kraber had expected resistance. Or requests for some sort of ID.

But no. They just gave him a lorry, some battered old faded blue thing with a roof and a bunch of tubes feeding in and out of the gas tank, along with a bunch of supplies he could use. Kraber had absolutely no idea how he’d refuel it. Or even if it needed refueling.

Fokkin’ fok, Kraber thought. That’s not swiss cheese security, that’s grated parmesan. I could do anything with this lorry. Idiots. I can take this lorry out of the city, maybe even out of the country,

He drove the lorry along the causeway, heading towards the city - and, hopefully, the mainland. Telephone poles flickered by, and the lorry bumped and juddered along the road. Either nobody had touched the lorry’s shocks, or the road hadn’t been serviced since before the War.

It’s close, Kraber thought, though he didn’t know what was.

The newfoal was currently watching him from the back seats. It became indistinct if he looked at it too closely, but it was definitely there.

“You could have stopped the shells!” the older new foal pleaded from the passenger seat, only visible in the flickering light cast by a passing streetlights, disappearing whenever their orange light segued into shadow. “This won’t-”

“If you’re my guilt, I expect you to make fokking sense,” Kraber said. “I’m not facing down that many people with guns. I’d get filled with more lead than Terry’s plumbing.”

The lorry rumbled along the causeway, and Kraber gazed out the window towards Portland. Saw the fires, the lights shining, helicopters flying overhead.

And this is where I’m going? Kraber thought, raising an eyebrow. No no no. Fok that noise. I’m going to leave. I can make some great money from this. I can leave if I w-

Something screamed.

Well, scientifically speaking, the noise that came from the radio wasn’t a scream. Various audiologists, researchers hired by or contracting with the PHL, would say that it was created by human vocal cords, pony vocal cords, and electronic distortions that could not have been created by any organic being, layered over each other all at once. That it came from multiple sources. Roughly a three hour drive away, the foals of an abnormally large stallion by the name of Aegis were hearing the sound for the first time, and would hear it in their sleep for the next few weeks.

But Kraber’s first instinct as to what it was: Scream.

Before his eyes, he watched every light in the city flicker.

Holy shit.

“...Ji… hu…. A… a ba de gi ko…” a voice spoke over the radio. A meaningless babble of syllables. “A za ka ba ha ya zo mao lo ye…”

And then, inexplicably, a voice arose from that. The same voice speaking the syllables. Overlaid with itself, impossibly enough.

“A ke ka ka ka za za za za...”
“Jag kan inte sova… gdje mi je. Moji su me odveli.”

Was that Croatian? Kraber wondered.

“A ua go he sho kol a…”
“HJALP MIG nemate puno vremena HJALP MIG jany zbirajucca ponify vam usio HELP DEAR GOD HELP odblokujú zbraň, odomknú dvere a uvoľnia sa LIEWE GOD, LAAT ME STERF!”

Well. “Help me” seemed pretty understandable. And: “Dear God, let me die” in Afrikaans. Huh.

What the fok was this?!

“A ya ha za wa na ga ta ba ja la ma ha na...”
“Nǐ xīnzhōng de jiānfēng UKONCETE TO, SHEOL, THIS IS SHEOL.”

Kraber’s Czech wasn’t very good - he’d be the first to admit it - but he was reasonably sure he heard “End this” in there. And… well, the first part sounded like Chinese, but he’d never truly grasped Chinese. Japanese had been slightly easier.

“Ya xa gi ap lo ip kin yo ar gra or die…”
“והם יהרסו אותנו. הלב והמוחות שלנו. שניהם בבת אחת.”

‘...and they'll destroy us. Our hearts and minds. Both at once,’ Kraber translated mentally. This was probably something any halfway decent linguist could figure out. He knew for a fact that he’d probably heard something and missed it. It wasn’t that the broadcasts, whatever they were, were hard to understand, linguistically speaking. It was just that there was so much to sift through.

Kraber had played videogames before, had managed to accidentally create glitches that had two voicelines from the same character playing over each other. It was so much worse in real life.

It drawled into a strange, almost meditative chant. It sounded like a chorus to Kraber, though he couldn’t possibly say why.“As  it was, it may be,” the horrible conjoined voice said. “As it should have been, it was not. As it as not, it must. Not. Be. AGAIN!””

Static crept into it.

“Do you know what happened to all of you?” The voice asked. “As Celestia took your dreams, something took the stolen dream she had been given and cast her into an endless nightmare, with you following.”

“You dove in headfirst. Viktor,” the radio said. “Do you know that someone changed? Once, a long time ago, there was a man named Marcus. And then. Then there never was.”

Can’t be talking to me.

“And then there’s the interloper,” the radio said. “They changed things. A group of HLF that stood against the madness. They went from you rescuing your friend in a burning building to you here. But not now. And look how they were rewarded, Viktor.”

It. Is not. Fokkin. Talking. To me.

“You know who I am…” and the voice shifted. Pitched down. Became deeper. Took on a Boston accent. “Vik. “

The voice sounded like it was coming from the passenger seat. It could’ve been whispered in his ear.

“...no,” Kraber breathed, not sure what it was aimed at, or what exactly he was refusing. “No, no, no, FOKKIN’ NO-“

Kate.

His blood ran cold.

“No,” the voice that was not, couldn’t be, absolutely was impossible to be Kate’s. “No. I know who I mean, Vik.”

Some people have the urge to run away from their problems. Some kick their problems in the face. Still others wait until their problems aren’t looking, and then hook their feet around their ankles while they’re descending a set of stairs, and wait for them to trip down the stairs while trying to maintain plausible deniability.

Kraber was trying to figure out how to apply those. Especially the last one. Granted, he’d only tried it once, but it was one of his happiest memories from sophomore year.

Smash the radio? No. Leave the lorry? No. He needed the fokkin lorry.

So how am I supposed to push a radio down a flight of stairs?  That one doesn’t really work here...

“I know what’s going to happen. I know how many times they’ve tried this and you died. I remember that this has been tried and failed, twice. I remember Lyndonville. I remember that-”

“FOK!” Kraber screamed, pounding against the radio. “FOK FOK, JOU… FOK THIS… THE FOK YOU… I DON’T… FOK THIS FOK!”

He twisted a knob on the lorry’s radio so hard he wondered if he was going to rip it off the dashboard.

There was another one of those horrible electronic screaming choruses as Kraber twisted the knob.

And then, blessedly, static.

I must never speak of this again, Kraber thought, as the lorry drew to a stop at an intersection. As it drew to a stop, Kraber tried to slow down the jackhammering pressure in his chest.

Calm, Kraber thought, trying and failing to let this go. Fokkin ontspanne. Okay, it knew.... it KNEW me, goddammit! It talked in Kate's voice! WHAT IN THE F-

There was a noise like an emergency weather system broadcast, and suddenly there was a song playing over his radio.

“Should I stay or should I go?
If you say that you are mine
I'll be here 'til the end of time
So you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?”

“This song? Now? Seriously?” Kraber asked himself. “What is this kak? Is it going to start with that song that goes Don't go back to the restaurant Princess Carolyn, Just keep driving away next? Am I getting someone else’s symbolic music?"

He stopped when he got there. That was just car safety, after all. And he looked both ways. Right, then left.

I go right, I head north. Away from all of this. I go left, head south, I go into the city.

North, I’m free.

South…

He thought back to stepping in the lorry.

They really trusted me, didn’t they.

Fokkin’ moegoes.

Heliotrope

Heliotrope fluttered a few feet above the rig’s deck, at what was about eye level for most humans. This was fairly normal for her. In her experience, she had an easier time talking to humans when neither of them had to strain their necks.

At the same moment that Kraber sat at the intersection, that song was also playing as they loaded the prisoners into the Coast Guard helicopter. Zhang and Carson were waving the prisoners on, Zhang jabbing at one HLF woman with the barrel of her little Sumak RPL SMG.

Heliotrope bobbed her head to it. It was… genuinely catchy. One of the things she loved about being on Earth was all the new things - every day, she was exposed to a new bit of pop culture for the first time. Just days ago, she’d never heard of the movie Metropolis by Fritz Lang. And now she had something new to enjoy. And she’d never heard thi-

Oh, right. She had. While watching Stranger Things.

It was also funny how often she’d think she was discovering something new, and it would’ve been around her all along. It was one of the fun little surprises that made Earth feel like an adventure, more than exile.

“You don’t think this is symbolic, right?” Walker called over.

“Not at all, Walker!” Heliotrope yelled back, fluttering along at about walking speed, behind one prisoner.

He looked pained. “Please. Just call me Bro. Everyone does.”

“I’m not calling you bro,” Heliotrope said. “You’re not my brother, I barely know you, so-”

“It’s short for my real name,” Walker said. “Ambrose.”

“I’m Very Sorry,” Quiette Shy said.

“Old family name, ah… Quiette Shy,” ‘Bro’ said. “And please. Walker is my dad.”

“If You Are Bro, Then Call Me QS,” Quiette Shy said. “Its Only Fair.”

“...Okay,” Heliotrope said, as Yael stared at them both. “Bro it is.”

“Definitely,” Yael said. “...Bro.”

“That’s the spirit!” ‘Bro’ said. “Especially with you, ah… QS. Now, let’s get this over with.”

“We’ll be happy to take them off your hands,” said one Coast Guard with a thick Boston accent, and a nametag reading REZNIK. He was manning an M60 turret.  “Or…” he looked over at Heliotrope and Quiette Shy. “You know. Hooves. Or horns, I guess!”

He smirked a little.

Heliotrope found herself chuckling a little too. It wasn’t a good joke, but… after all she’d been through, it helped. Just a little. Quiette Shy made a weak, hoarse little laugh. Chinook, though, stifled a smile.

Smoky was unmoved.

“Makes me sick,” one prisoner mumbled.

Heliotrope stared at the woman that said so, and fluttered towards her, staying at eye level.

What struck Heliotrope was how… dead that one looked. The woman hadn’t been shot, and as far as Heliotrope knew there wasn’t a wound on her body.

But there was a hollow look to her. Something that reminded her of the refugees she’d seen who had been forced out of their homes with only a suitcase to their name and seemed to be so blasted out of emotion that they were unable to feel anything. The particularly deadened people from refugee camps that never truly returned to speaking terms with reality, who would either end up in the high-sec areas of the camps or escape somehow and walk, trancelike, towards the Barrier. Someone had called them “moths,” and the name stuck. And Heliotrope…

Well, she’d had that look too once. Only the flightsuit, a stuffed animal, and a few knicknacks to her name once she deserted and was stranded on Earth. Ponies, humans, and others alike that had lost everything had that look.

It made Heliotrope livid to see that look on the HLF.

“You don’t have any right to look like that,” she heard herself say. “You’re a murderer. A monster. You fired on a city for fucking what?!”

She spat on the ground near them.

“You’re not the victim here,” she said. “You fucking sicken me.”

There was a look of tightly controlled fear on Yael’s face as she said so. Yael moved forward, hand within an inch of her Jericho 941. Imperceptibly, John moved his very tactical M4’s barrel ever so slightly in the woman’s direction.

“It’s not that,” the woman said. “I did something fucking terrible today. I shot at innocents. In no universe does that make me the hero.”

Yael was stonefaced.

The prisoner looked down to Heliotrope, the look turned to raw anger.

“But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” she said, staring down Yael, QS, and Heliotrope. “Come on, I-”

“You-” Heliotrope started, flying towards her.

Yael stared at the HLF woman.

Heliotrope would always remember that glare - some people relied on weapons to back up a glare like that. Yael’s was different. It somehow managed to convey the idea that not having a weapon, having her hands out in plain view was even scarier.

“Get her out of my sight,” Yael said, emotion gone from her voice. “Now.”

“Damn,” John said, whistling. “Stone-cold.”

Zhang looked Yael approvingly. As did Chinook, who looked strangely… satisfied. Not, as Yael would later describe Smoky or Summers, self-satisfied, but-

Dancing Day
December 24, 2022

“I’ll say it here,” Yael says. “He said he felt like he belonged.”

Heliotrope

She watched, nodding. Satisfied.

Good.

Zhang, Carson, John, and ‘Bro’ stared at her.

“Thats Our First Lieutenant,” Quiette Shy said, nodding.

“I certainly am,” Yael said. “Now let’s get back to work.”

“You heard the lady,” Reznik said to a coast guard next to him. “Move them out.”

“Since when do we take orders from a Marine,” said another Coast Guard with a nametag reading CLEMENT, as they shepherded the HLF into the chopper. Clement looked very young, like he was barely out of human high school. Scratch that, he looked like he’d lied to get out before high school was finished. “To help the PHL? That’s like, two chains of command that get skipped over.”

To Heliotrope, there was something weird about considering that young.

Yael shrugged. “I’m IDF but I’m also here, taking orders from that same marine,” she said. “So’s Heliotrope.”

“How’s a pony get to be IDF?” Clement said, laughing.

Anger surged in Heliotrope, but she made the best effort not to show it. He’s not being a jerk. He’s not like them. He’s just curious and thinks it’s weird. Probably wonders if I’m Jewish. Which would be weird for a pony.

“I volunteered,” she said, forcing calm into her voice. “Yael let me in.”

“Heliotrope?” Yael asked, looking at her friend, concerned again. “Are you…”

“Sorry,” the second Coast Guard said. “It’s just… a bit weird, is all. Some days, I barely know who I’m working for.”

“I can relate,” Yael said, nodding.

“Really?” Reznik asked.

“Under a new commanding officer,” Yael said. “And I... I barely know him. It’s unsettling.”

Much to Heliotrope’s surprise, the two Coast Guard talking with her nodded sympathetically.  Relating to her. There was an easy sort of charisma that Yael had, something that made people look at her and decide she was trustworthy. Something that had kept Oscar, QS, and Heliotrope herself close by.

“You’re sure about that?” Heliotrope asked. “He feels… understanding. Like he’s exactly what we wanted.”

“Amen to that,” Smoky said.

“I don’t know who he is,” Yael said. “I don’t know. There’s something… off with him.”

Heliotrope fluttered up to eye level with the two Coast Guard and shrugged, with both forelegs. “I haven’t seen it so far.”

Yael nodded. “Alright. It’s only that... something feels wrong. I don’t know what.”

She doesn’t believe me, Heliotrope thought.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing against you,” Yael thought. “I just have a bad feeling. I could be wrong.”

She paused, looking at Heliotrope.

“We’ll see.”

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” Reznik said. “It’s pretty bad in the city. There’s still firefights going on. Between HLF, and… maybe PHL.”

“What do you mean, maybe?” Zhang asked.

“I mean I have no idea what’s going on,” Reznik said. “I’m hearing that there’s PER out there.”

Kraber

About 10 seconds later, Kraber was still listening to the song.

How do I know that merry-go-round toy didn’t fok with my head? He asked himself. How do I know that any of this is my own choice? How do I know that the radio message wasn't in my head? Jou know who has radios talking to them? Crazy people, that's who!

He thought on it for a moment.

He’d hurt people. He’d done what Kate would call-

(And for a second, her voice was as clear as if she was sitting next to him)

“Fuckin’ shitty things,” Kate would’ve said. “I’d… I don’t know where the man I married is, but this jackass? I’d never love someone like that.”

And there were innocents in Portland, too. Kids. He’d… fok, he’d hurt so many humans in this single night that it probably overshadowed anything he’d ever done to the Solar Empire. He’d hurt so many ponies, too.

They’re people just like us. They’ve always been. They’re not…

What the fok have I been doing?

He buried his face in his hands, still sitting at the intersection.

“Dammit,” he said, under his breath. “Dammit. Dammit. Fokdammit! FOK! FOKKIN’ FOK!”

He pounded the wheel, the car sitting there. Engine still running. Using… far too much gas. Huh.

What would…

He thought for a moment.

Then what wouldn’t Kate loathe?

She wouldn’t hate a man that gave everything to do the right thing.

Or, another part of him whispered, you can leave. Put all of this behind.

Kraber tapped on the gas pedal, the car moving ever so slightly. “Jou know what? Fok that. I’m doing the right thing, FOR ONCE IN THE PAST FOUR FOKKING YEARS!”

Okay, that was… that felt invigorating. Making a decision, for himself. Part of him had a fleeting desire to come back to the HLF, to drive the Bin pişman. back out to the rig and… okay, fok it, that wouldn’t work. No. Fok that noise. He knew what he was getting into when he did this stupid fokking thing.

“I know what I’m doing,” Kraber said, nodding to himself. “Ja.”

“...Sounds like a riveting conversation,” someone said, knocking on the window. A dark blue-black pony with orange eyes, and a purple mane streaked with pink. “What’s up, Mr. Bliss?”

Kraber stared at them for a moment. “...Nebula?”

“You weren’t planning on leaving, were you?” she asked. “Because that would be-”

“It would be immoral, cowardly, fokkin’ gutless, it’d make me a fokkin’ moegoe,” Kraber said. “So no. I’m not doing that.”

“I don’t know what that last word means,” Nebula said. “But I’m assuming it’s bad.”

“It means coward,” Kraber said. “Fl-” he caught himself. He’d been about to say ‘flou.’ I really need to work on my accent… he thought. “Weak.”

“In what language?” Nebula said.

“Dutch,” Kraber said, before immediately regretting it.

...Okay, that’s technically true. I do technically speak Dutch. Why did I decide to be a Scotsman instead of a Dutchman?

“Any reason why a Scotsman knows so much Dutch?” Nebula asked, almost playfully. She squeezed her way into the passenger side seat of the lorry.

She’s probably on to me.

“Spent a lot of time in Amsterdam,” Kraber said, and against all odds, that seemed believable. He actually had spent some time in Amsterdam during his secondary school years, and after graduation.  And some time there during the Bad Old Times during the Purple Winter and the Europe Exodus.

...I miss the koffiehuises there, Kraber thought. And of course the coffeeshops.

“You alright?” Nebula asked.

“Just… thinking,” Kraber said. “About Amsterdam. So many lekker things I miss, ya ken? The first place I ever had weed. The the place I first kicked a neo-nazi in the face and broke his jaw and nose. The second place I did it, too! That coffeeshop Walter had to drag me out of cause I was so bawed. The time I went to the Anne Frank museum. That club where I met Sophie and...“

He sighed.

“And that bar. That bar was fokkin’ horrible! Just the fokkin’ worst. Ever. Of all ay fokkin’ time. But, somehow, it was lekker. I was there with friends, so it made things less horrible,” he said. “All these moments will be lost in time. Like… tears, in the rain.”

For all the times that Kraber had lied already tonight, and would lie in the next month or so, he was quite surprised to find himself not lying.

“Were you just leading up to a blade runner reference this whole time?” Nebula asked.

“I could’ve been, but you’ll never know!” Kraber said. “Now, were you…”

“I was going to come with you,” Nebula said. “Help you out. I just need you to, uh….” she gestured at the door.

“Right,” Kraber said, opening it. “Let’s get vying then.”

Yael

She ordered them all into the boat back to Portland. They needed to get into the city as soon as possible, and couldn’t wait for a helicopter.

Restore order in the city.

“Alright,” Yael said. “We’re heading towards the Old Port of the city. It’ll be very tight quarters. You know how it is in old parts of cities - streets seemingly plotted by people that hated you beyond all reason.”

Chinook and Walker chuckled, ever so slightly. Nobody else seemed to laugh.

It wasn’t much of a joke, anyway, Yael thought.

She tapped her earpiece.

“Colonel Gardner,” she said. “We’re approaching the Old Port. What are our orders?”

“I have four colleagues in the PHL here,” Gardner said. “Garrett Haddon, Giddy Gallop, Peter Whitten, and Honeysuckle. You - along with Mikkelsen Hebert and Nilsdottir - are to rendezvous with them and help direct their efforts to the hospital. On orders from Northwoods-”

Yael could just hear him grimacing.

“-I will be leading the effort to cut the fleeing HLF off at the edge of the city, with direction from PHL command,” Gardner said. “Good luck, First Lieutenant. You’ll need it.”

With that, he told her and Heliotrope the frequency for the four PHL he mentioned. And, before Yael could ask who that was for, specifically, he was gone.

Yael felt almost dazed.

I was supposed to be reassigned to Antarctica, she thought. Wouldn’t the PHL have sent me to Rothera or something? This isn’t where I should be.

Doubt crept in.

And Gardner’s not in the city with us. Meaning a lot of this is up to me. Shit. What if I lose my temper again and I kill civilians again? What if I screw up? What if I’m not the right woman for the job?

What if Heliotrope convinces me to burn everything again, li-

What?

Did… did Heliotrope make me do it? It has to be her fault, it-

She considered that. No. She didn’t make me do it. But she… she suggested it. And I wanted to. I did it with a smile on my face.

She had additional questions. Of course she did. But…

That doesn’t matter. I can’t let it matter.

The boat drew closer to a dock. Carson threw a coil of rope over the edge

It doesn’t matter that I might not be the right woman for the job. Whoever the right person is, they’re not here. And I am.

The boat roared towards the shorefront of the city, towards what looked like a ferry platform of some kind.

Yael let herself slump into a chair, trying to steal away one moment of peace.

A map of Portland sat next to her. Almost absentmindedly, she found herself poring over it...

Dayoung

They ran. They weren’t thinking about finding a car (Neither of them knew how to hotwire one). No, the only thing they had to focus on was getting out. No PHL. No PER. No HLF. Just… out.

“We find the nearest HLF,” Megan said, panting heavily. “We regroup. We make our way back to Lovikov.”

Dayoung stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Megan asked.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Dayoung said. “Look, we did this and got in a huge mess. We can find somewhere else, and l-”

“No,” Megan said.

“Excuse me?”

“They know we joined Lovikov,” Megan said. “Or at least, they will find out. Government agents are like bloodhounds that way. There’s footage they’ll find of us, on Congress Street in that square with the Civil War statue, with Viktor Fucking Kraber, and Leonid Lovikov. If we leave, if we try and go on our own, someone will find us.”

“I…” Dayoung started.

“We hide out with the HLF,” Megan said. “The tide’s turned against us.”

“...Alright,” Dayoung said. What she really meant was: It’s too late to leave.

What in God’s name have I gotten us into? This is my fault. I talked our way into this, I was thinking all about heroes… and here I am. No heroes in sight.

“We’re probably going to need something to trade for when we get back,”  Megan said, coming to a stop in front of a store with broken windows. “Camp’s not going to be in a good way, so how about…”

She looked inside.

“...Those are nice shoes,” she said, nodding.

“Are you….” Dayoung sighed. “Are you. Are you seriously.”

“They’re nice shoes,” Megan said, shrugging. “And nobody’s going to stop us.”

With that, she walked through the hole in the window, surveying her bounty.

“Where was all that talk about leaving as soon as possible?!” Dayoung yelled into the shop.

Megan didn’t answer. Dayoung heard Megan rummaging around, exclaiming how this pair looked good, and how if only she could find the other half of the pair...

Looting a shoe store, Dayoung thought. After we bombed a city. What is thi-

It was at that moment that fate conspired against Dayoung and Megan.

First, there was the screaming. High-pitched. Panicked. Angry. The hoofbeats on pavement. Then… well, we’ll get to that. Dayoung stared down the street at the sky-blue unicorn pony rushing up the street, his mane matted with sweat.

Kill him. Do it.

Dayoung would debate with herself whether or not she was getting ready to shoot the pony. She thought she remembered her FAL moving upwards, but then she didn’t remember having a clear shot or sighting it. She’d always ask herself: Would I have shot him? How would things have ended up differently?

Megan interrupted these questions with the sharp report of her Glock pistol.

It hit the unicorn in the right hindleg, and he fell to the ground screaming.

“Megan, what did you just-?!” Dayoung yelled, as Megan stared at her victim.

“He was coming at us!” Megan protested, her voice oddly shrill. “He was a unicorn, he-"

But her excuses were soon drowned out by the sound of a pickup truck drawing to a stop. Dayoung stared over at it, seeing a tall, thin man in body armor and an odd, seven-eyed gas mask in the driver’s seat, a strange batwinged pony in the passenger’s seat.

It would’ve looked bizarre if not for the fact that Dayoung hadn’t seen the stock of a rifle or shotgun in there, just behind the passenger and driver seats.

Oh, shit.

Kraber

The lorry rolled into Portland, and they saw youngish bakvissies in ragged clothes and kevlar, along with HLF jackets covered in patches - standing by the smashed-open a window of a shoe store.

“What,” Nebula said, “The hell.”

Practically giggling, one of them grabbed what few shoes she could, even holding a pair of high heels in her teeth. A dazed, fearful sky-blue unicorn pony with a slicked-back gray mane and blue aviator sunglasses ran by, and pulling out a cheap nine-mil, one of the bakvissies shot it in the legs. Twice, crippling it on one side.

Before Kraber’s eyes, they rushed at the pony, stopping only briefly to pick up their loot, and kicked him in the gut. She was cheeri-

Wait a minute.

He recognized them.

The darker-skinned one was Dayoung. The other one was Megan.

“Rime Ice!” Nebula gasped. “They got Rime Ice!”

Evidently he wasn’t the only one who knew someone.

Oh God,  Kraber thought. Save my new friend - wait, she’s a friend? That’s lekker - when - how - IS THIS THE FOKKIN’ MIND SPELL?! IS IT MAKING ME SEE HER AS A FRIE-

Calm. Fokkin’ ontspanne, he thought. Alright.

On the one hand:

He hadn’t known them long, but… they were kids. He wouldn’t….  Well, he had done it before, but it wouldn’t be right to hurt kids.

And the damn gluestick had to be in the wrong here. He and his kind had certainly brought nothing but suffering to earth. But that was kak and Kraber knew it. Who was the one that had helped fire on a city? Who had taken advantage of a crisis to loot a goddamn shoe-store?! Who would Kate fokkin’ hate? Who would she…

Huh. Would she threaten to divorce me and take the kids if I joined the HLF?

I mean, Anka liked ponies, Peter was sort of ambivalent, though, but… I’m killing kids, I literally murder people.

Yeah.

Kate would fokkin’ take the kids and leave in a heartbeat.

So, tempting as it was to let that pony die - Kraber had no ability to guess if he was one of the good merry-go-round-toys like Nebula - Kraber couldn’t do it. Firstly,  it wouldn’t be right he had to preserve his cover.

And secondly-

“ORA!” he roared, and punched Dayoung across the face. Megan got a wild shot off, and it skidded harmlessly across his armor before he landed another blow on her too, the sole of his boot in her face. The crunch of impact might have been her nose breaking.

She fell to the ground bonelessly.

“Get,” Kraber said, revolver in hand, “The fok. Out. Now.”

“You don’t understand!” Dayoung yelled at him. “There’s PER in the city, whoever you are! They’re… they’re impersonating PHL! They nearly ponified us!”

Nebula rolled her eyes. “Right. PER.”

“How well do you know her, huh?!” Dayoung yelled. “She could be PER t-!”

Nebula…

Well. It was silly when Kraber thought on it. This was, after all, a pony. A batwinged pony, sure, but still a pony. An ungulate.

Nebula growled like an animal (do I not think they’re animals?) and showed her teeth. Kraber could see sharp fangs in her mouth, a maw full of teeth that could probably take off a person’s arm if Nebula so desired.

“Call me PER again,” Nebula said. “I fucking dare you. I double motherfucking dare you, motherfucker. Say I’m PER one more goddamn time!”

Alright, Kraber thought, so then what would Kate want?

Okay. Okay. She met me after Strychnine got hurt, I helped him out on the pavement, made a tourniquet, walked around without a shirt and an unzipped hoodie…

So should I take off my shirt or…

No. Kate would want him to help. Anka and Peter would want him to help the pony. Nebula would…

Well, she probably wouldn’t mind either option. And Dayoung and Megan were human children, he couldn’t exactly just shoot them in cold fokkin’ blood like every other foal he’d probably shot now-

FOK FOK FOKKIN’ STOP

Guess I’m outvoted.  Most efficient thing I’d do would be shoot them both and help the pony. But-

“Alright, you fokmaggots,” Kraber said, voice distorted by the mask. “It’s your lucky day. Walk away and we’ll let you keep your weapons. Just walk away.”

It’s not what I should do, is it then?

“But-” Dayoung started.

“What?!” Nebula yelled.

“Rime Ice, or whoever he is, needs treatment more than he needs a gunfight,” Kraber said. “And I…” he sighed. “I don’t… I don’t feel like killing kids.”

“I don’t like it,” Nebula said, “But I respect it. Besides, we have you dead to rights. We’ve got one of you on the ground and Bliss here could gun you down at any time.”

She fluttered up to eye level with Dayoung.

“If we kill you here,” Nebula said, staring daggers at Dayoung, “We’re no better.”

Damn, Kraber thought, this mare has stones!

Dayoung rocked back like Kraber had punched her again.

They fired on a city, Kraber thought, they did all this. And we’re still…

Damn.

He wasn’t really sure what he wanted, but there was something that stuck with him about that. Something almost… inspirational. It didn’t make sense to him, but it felt right somehow.

Am I gonna be Vash the Stampede now? Kraber though, watching as Dayoung dragged Megan out of the way. I couldn't make that work. I'm not that good a shot. I... I could've shot them. Maybe I should have.

He didn't.

Bakgat, he thought, sighing internally.

“Child soldiers, huh?” he said, almost conversationally.

Nebula nodded.

“Those two psychos gone?” Rime Ice said, his voice ragged.  

“Yeah,” Nebula said. “Any suggestions for where we can take you?!”

“Maine Medical might work!” the pony said. “There’s PHL there. But… it might be dangerous.”

He sucked in a breath between clenched teeth.

“If I die, tell Sylvia Bray at Maine Medical that I love her,” he said.

Nebula nodded again.

“Hold on!” Kraber said as he knelt beside the wounded stallion, momentarily deepening his voice. People looked for a person, not a persona. Kagan had always said that. “I’m gonna help you out, boykie.”

“Please… no…” the pony whispered.

“Don’t worry! I’m a doctor. Vasbyt china, this kak will be over soon.”

“What?” the pony asked.

“Never mind that!” Kraber said.

A quick check established no spinal or lumbar damage, so at least he could safely move the pony, so long as he didn’t handle or move the area around the gunshot wounds.

I can’t remove the bullet here. Too much debris, too much that could go wrong. Don’t have much anesthetic, just some morphine.

He applied pressure to the wound, wrapping bandages from his old medical kit around both Rime Ice’s legs. With that operation finished, he took out a large needle, injecting a heavy dose of morphine into a vein just above the hoof.

“Better?” Kraber asked, surprised to find himself concerned.

“No, not really,” Rime Ice gasped.

“Ja, I couldn’t do that much,” Kraber said. “I don’t have the tools or the room to remove the bullets. But I can stop the bleeding. It’ll be paining, but it’ll help until you actually get to an operating room.”

He didn’t like it. He… he couldn’t stand ponies, he admitted it. But this was a patient in pain, shot and kicked by two greedy bitches.  Even if he was from a race of imperialistic, mass-murdering and mass-zombifying xenophobes, it was hard to say humanity was in the right here.

It was about then that he saw the PHL. A group of humans and ponies walking towards him,

“Are they okay?!” one pegasus pony standing among the PHL asked.

OH SHIT

They’ll find me out. They’ll know, no question. Nebula, well… I seem like I’ve convinced her? But these people, they’ll find me out in a heartbeat.

“Do you have medical help,” Kraber said, “For this pony?”

“Certainly!” said one human at the head of the unit. “We’re setting up a base in Maine Medical. Treatment for everyone.”

Now, in a bad situation, everyone likes to say: I saw it coming. They like the satisfaction of feeling smarter, or they don’t want to admit not seeing it coming. So they assume that the bad feeling in their gut meant they were just that prescient, or they just lie to themselves.

Kraber will never be truly certain which category he fell into on that night in Portland. But he will be certain he had a bad feeling.

Treatment for everyone.

Something about the way they said that rubbed him wrong.

No, no, Kraber thought. Gotta stop being such an impulsive fokkin’ kontgesig. That can’t be it.

“Hey,” Nebula said. “Ah…. Giddy Gallop? Is that you?! Good to see you! It’s Rime Ice, he…. Some HLF bitches shot him up pretty bad!”

“Oh no!” that same pegasus gasped. “Rhymey, what’d they do to you?”

“Shot me in the legs,” Rime Ice said through gritted teeth. “What the buck does it look like?”

I’m glad he’s oka-

Kraber’s train of thought came to a screeching halt. Wait. Surrounded by PHL. They will kill me if they find out who I am, Kraber thought with complete certainty. I… I fokkin’ need a way out.

He couldn’t run away either. He’d get filled with bullets and… the unicorn would die? Hm. He supposed that’d be bad.

A masked, heavyset PHL man in heavy armor tapped something on the ear area of his helmet.

“This is Major Garrett Haddon, yes,” he said. “Are you the reinforcements that Gardner promised?”

A pause.

“Good,” Haddon said. “Very good, S…. ah, first lieutenant.”

Yet another pause.

“At the moment, I am evacuating a pony from Congress Street,” Haddon said. “We’ve set up a base at the hospital. You are to rendezvous with us there.”

Another pause.

“No, the hospital,” Haddon said. “Maine Medical.”

As he heard Haddon talking on and on, Kraber’s mind raced.

Think, damn you, Viktor! Kagan always called you a slippery bastard! I managed to survive the HLF this long, keep my gun from getting stolen! I can think my fokking way out of this! Okay. I could sell this pony out, and join the H-

Something exploded in the distance.

-ell no.

That would… that’d be betraying humanity. Betraying himself. Betraying Kate. Peter. Anka.

So, Kraber thought. Mind spell or not, I guess I’m stuck with this.

December 24, 2022
Dancing Day

It’s then that Verity reenters the story, trotting back into the room like she owns it.

“And that’s the first time I felt like I hit rock bottom,” Kraber says.

“Wait, are you considering what happened the day after this as rock bottom?” Aegis asks.

“Well, yes,” Kraber says. “I didn’t have friends, family, or money. All I had was my word and my balls.” He pauses. “And my guns… and a stuffed animal or three-“

“Which reminds me,” Verity says. “I actually talked to Lovikov. How did you manage to get away with carrying a stuffed horse around while in the HLF?”

“Wait,” Lunar Phase asks, looking over at Kraber. “You have a stuffed horse?!”

“Her name is Joanna,” Kraber says, holding up a stuffed mare proportioned like an earth horse with a strangely long face, because it would be weird if it looked like a pony native to Equus.

“It was my daughter’s,” Kraber explains, and Lunar Phase draws in a little gasp, a little ‘oh’.

“Whose blood is that?” you ask.

“Mine,” Kraber says. “Mostly. Anyway, I threatened to shoot off their balls and rearrange their organs when doing surgery. I… I don’t fokking know, I was gesuip when I told them what I’d do. And none of them bothered me afterwards, though even women kept putting their hands over their crotches when I came by...”

There’s an uncomfortable pause.

“Look, sometimes, violence really is the answer,” Kraber explains. “And I was drunk! I wouldn’t have done that…”

Heliotrope, Aegis, and Yael look at him.

“At least, I hope I wouldn’t…”

Aegis looks up at Kraber, then to his foals, to you, to Scootaloo, then to Babs Seed and Featherweight.

“I’m not sure to be conflicted about the fact that you’re right, or wonder whether or not that’s a good thing to say in front of foals,” Aegis says.

“Ah, don’t worry, I have some restraint,” Kraber says. “Who the fok do you think I am, Francis Begbie? It’s not like my idea of kind paternal advice is to say ‘beat the fok out of your brother with a baseball… bat…’”

His voice trails off as he remembers that he has, in fact, told foals how to beat up Newfoals with baseball bats. And, of course, that he had once played Begbie in a production of Trainspotting.

“I’m a terrible fokking person,” he groans, and his shoulders slump.

“Wow, he finally gets it…” murmurs Verity.

“The fok’s that make you?!” Kraber asks.

“Consistent.”

“Hey, fok jou, haven’t you ever heard of character development?!” Kraber yells. “I may have tried to kill myself four times by now, Verity, but I’d rather succeed than end up like you!”

This comment was not aimed at Dancing Day’s mommy, Astral Nectar, but she staggers back like Kraber has kicked her in the face. This is to say nothing of Verity, who is stunned silent by this outburst.

"Daaaaaaaaaaamn," Lunar Phase whispers. Vinyl Scratch nods.

Surprisingly, it's Aegis and Yael that look at Kraber with something approving disapproval. Kraber looks at them, on the edge of an apology, but turns back with a shrug. Clearly thinking something like 'I meant every word, I'm not taking it back.'

“That is the most savage thing I have ever heard,” Grayson breathes.

“Spend some quality time with Lorne then,” Kraber advises. “Cause what I just said ain’t shit compared to his roasts.”

“He’s right,” Vinyl Scratch adds, “Lorne is crazy.”

“Where do you get off acting like this?!” Verity yells. “You do not just grow this side overnight-”

“I’d been killing, murdering, and otherwise making mayhem three years,” Kraber says. “I just… One day, I just couldn’t take it. I was fokkin’ siek en sat of it!”

“You practically lived for that!” Verity yells.

“No, I didn’t have any other fokking thing to live for!” Kraber yells back. “It’s really hard to have faith in the HLF when they’ve promised to kill you and then maybe your friend, fired on a city, abused innocents at every turn, kidnapped you, and put a shock collar on your neck LIKE A FOKKIN’ HOND, AND PLANNED TO DO SOMETHING SO FOKKIN’ AWFUL I FEEL SICK JUST THI- !”

“What was that thing with the collar?” Soarin asks.

“Yeah, some guy kidnapped me and fixed me with a shock collar,” Kraber says, suddenly calm. “It was his first mistake. He should have known he was only making me harder for....” He looks around. “Scheisse.”

“Wait, do you mean harder for them, or that you, uh…” Soarin’ asks.

“We’ll leave that for later,” Kraber says a little too quickly.

Yael

Earlier

As the soldiers behind her docked the boat in what looked to be a commercial pier,  surrounded by speedboats, yachts, and Coffin Ships, Yael stepped onto the dock.

She watched the PHL on the boat maneuvering it towards the dock. Heliotrope and Chinook had ropes held in their respective mouths, bringing them around the large wooden pillars that served as mooring posts. Zhang held another rope in her hands, and Yael watched it become more and more taut as Chinook wound it around the post.

How exactly ponies managed to tie knots using only their mouths was a question Yael had never fully understood, so she watched, curious, as Chinook and Heliotrope did exactly that.

Summers and Smoky looked down at the dock, watching intently as the boat pulled towards it. Somewhere, in the wheelhouse, Carson was keeping the motor tightly controlled. Meanwhile, Bro and John - no, Bowie - scanned the skyline with their M4s.

There was a feeling of… pride?

I barely know these people, and already I like them, she thought, nodding approvingly.

Once it was done, and they began disembarking, Yael looked at them.

“All of you,” Yael said, “I don’t think this is what we believed we’d be doing here and now. I thought I’d be languishing in some Godforsaken post until Barrierfall.”

She stared at them as they walked onto the dock. They were standing at attention.

“I bet you did too. But as of now, we’ve been forced past that. We’re in a nightmare I couldn’t have dreamed of,” Yael said. “I mean. Never once would I have imagined anyone, even Lovikov, would do this.”

She paused.

“We might not be the ones saving the city. The ones stopping the HLF. But we’re going to do our best,” she said.

They saluted her.

With that, Yael turned on her heel and walked along the dock, towards land.

“Wouldn’t have thought you were one for speeches,” Heliotrope said, nodding approvingly.

“I’m not,” Yael said, her boots tapping against the wood. “But…”

She shrugged.

“It felt right,” she said, finally.

She turned the radio to the frequency she’d been given.

“Is this…”

“This is Major Garrett Haddon, yes,” a voice said. “Are you the reinforcements that Gardner promised?”

“I am,” Yael said, nodding almost reflexively.

“Good,” Haddon said. “Very good, S…. ah, first lieutenant.”

“What are our orders?” Heliotrope asked.

“At the moment, I am evacuating a pony from Congress Street,” Haddon said. “We’ve set up a base at the hospital. You are to rendezvous with us there.”

“Not the stadium?” Yael asked, remembering what she’d read from the map. There was one very close by, too.

“No, the hospital,” Haddon said.  “Maine Medical.”

“Copy that,” Yael said, before turning off the coms.

“Does something seem weird about that to you?” Heliotrope asked.

Yael looked over at Heliotrope, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re right,” Heliotrope said. “A stadium does make more sense. More ways in and out, more space…”

“That Is A Good Point,” Quiette Shy added.

And indeed, some tiny shred of Yael’s mind agreed that it was. Because… Well, there was what Heliotrope said. But the longer she thought about it, the more baseless it seemed. It was a hospital, for God’s sake. It had more resources to treat injuries. And from what she’d seen on the map in the boat, and from what her cousin (who lived two hours away) had said, it was huge. As in, had-seen-factories-smaller-than-it huge.

“I agree with those two,” Summers said. “Something ain’t right. I say we-”

“Enough,” Yael said, her voice cutting through the beginning of that conversation like a whipcrack. “We’re not. Our orders are to help the PHL in the city. There are no alternatives.”

She looked at Heliotrope. It wasn’t quite a glare, but it wasn’t exactly not a glare.

At that moment, Yael was thinking:

Last time I took that kind of initiative, people died. We got sent here. We are not doing that.

Heliotrope turned away. Yael could see the ghost of a sulk on her friend.

Dammit.

Yael was thinking of that as she walked through the streets. They were…

Well, quiet wasn’t the word. Yael could hear someone firing a 9mm somewhere. But at the same time it was the only thing that felt like it fit.

I didn’t do anything wrong there, Yael thought. I didn’t…

So why do I feel wrong?

Yael tried to push it out of her mind. Kept walking.

“Yael,” Heliotrope said.

Yael resisted the urge to pull rank. That’s not going to help.

“I’m telling you,” Heliotrope said. “Something isn’t right here. Why aren’t we working with Coast Guard in here? Or National Guard?”

Yael didn’t respond. Just keep walking. Don’t make this any worse than it needs to be, Ze’ev.

“As far as I know, we don’t have those kinds of powers unless it’s Barrierfall,” Heliotrope said.

That gave Yael some pause.

She stared at her friend for a second. “Are you… are you disappointed?” Yael asked. “It would be nice if we had that kind of power. But…”

Her voice trailed off. She’d been about to say something along the lines of ‘The law is the law’ or something, but knowing how and why she was here? It just didn’t work for her.

“...but we don’t,” she finished lamely.

“But,” Summers pointed out, “You were pretty comfortable taking control of lots of towns during the Egypt Evacuation.”

Actually, the Egypt Evacuation hadn’t just been Egypt, it’d been Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and a large number of other countries.  It had just been termed the Egypt Evacuation by some Irish reporter with a talent for alliteration, and it stuck.

Yael and Heliotrope had fought there. Against Solar Empire troops, sure, but there’d been other humans. Proto-HLF, terrorist remnants, and what her old commanding officer had called Lame-Os.

It took her awhile to really get the reference.

“It’s Different,” Quiette Shy said. “Precedent Hadn’t Been Established Yet.”

“Besides, we were still IDF, not PHL,” Yael said. “When ISIS remnants attacked, the PHL didn’t have…” she considered for a moment. “Jurisdiction?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” John said. “How does that work? You seem like you’re pulled b-”

“It’s Very Complicated,” Quiette Shy said.

“And no,” Heliotrope said, “I... I’m not disappointed. It feels like back during Nipville.”

Oh no.

Yael inclined her head slightly, cocking it almost like a dog’s. A frown formed on her face.

“Not like…”

Yael continued to stare at her.

“...Okay,” Heliotrope sighed, head hanging down low. “It is like that. But not just that. There’s… there’s another feeling I had there. With the Siphon. With Champagne Grape, with all those HLF knew about the town.”

“It Wasn’t Anything They Couldn’t Have Gotten From Publicly Accessible Records,” Quiette Shy pointed out.

“I guess that’s true,” Heliotrope admitted. “But… Yael. QS. I’m telling you, I felt like there was something we didn’t know back then, and I feel the same right now.”

“You’re probably not wrong,” Yael said. “But I don’t know enough to investigate whatever that was. And I…”

She looked at Heliotrope.

“Alright, Heliotrope,” Yael said. “Yes. There was something weird there. But I don’t know what. We’ll find out soon, but for now… we have a job to d-”

Her voice died in her throat.

Well. Not really. In actuality, there was more of this back-and-forth, more barely-arguing. But the most important thing here is, just after Yael, Heliotrope, QS’ and other’s back and forth, this happened:

Picture it. They come to an intersection. Yael looking the corner to see who’s there, and seeing an assortment of National Guard walking down the streets toward them. They looked…

What?

Okay, there was nothing weird about wearing anti-potion armor. Most militaries did it. But here? Now? Something didn’t make sense.

In the future, Yael will blame herself for not seeing it coming. But Quiette Shy will say nobody could have. And then she will point out that Yael has something of a guilt complex. Which Yael will then admit is probably true.

“We’re PHL,” Yael said, a sinking feeling in her gut. “We’re here to-”

“Yeah, we know,” said a man that appeared to be squad leader. “You’re under arrest, all of you. For assisting PER.”

What?!

Kraber

The streets felt eerily quiet.

Not that they were, of course. There was gunfire in the distance, but there was nothing on the streets save for Kraber, the moaning Rime Ice, (who sat on a stretcher, carried by Kraber and a PHL man) Nebula, and the PHL unit of ten.

It was more because there was nothing on the streets around them. There were battle scars on the street from the Sorghum’s weaponry, broken windows, burned out hulks of cars, HLF posters that’d already been defaced, the corpses of HLF and protesters alike…

But the storefronts were mostly intact. There was nobody around them, barring the hospital.

“Something’s not right,” Kraber whispered to Nebula. “We’re being evacuated to the hospital, and... nobody?”

Nebula nodded.

“What’re you whispering about?!” the PHL man carrying the stretcher with Kraber asked.

“Nothing,” Kraber said.

“No,” said one earth pony with a facemask. “You were both saying something. By definition you were not saying nothing.”

They sounded oddly robotic. There was a deep, crawling fear at the pit of Kraber’s gut, something screaming at him that this was wrong.

“Who… Who’s that?” Nebula asked. “Never met him before.”

“That’s Running Wind,” said Haddon. “He’s new.”

Nebula stared at him, skeptical.

“So,” said a light tan and orange pegasus, in a set of characteristic light armor common to pegasus soldiers on any side of the War. “What, exactly were you saying to this man?”

“It was a private little in-joke, Giddy Gallop” Nebula said. “It’d… it’d take too long to explain.”

“We have a ways to the hospital,” the stretcher-bearer across from Kraber said. “Go on. You were saying?”

Kraber’s mother Erika, who would always just be Ma to him, had a saying she’d picked up from her American relatives: “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.” And these people? Definitely bullshititng him. Treating him like the one that was lying - okay, he was totally lying, but they didn’t know that - and jumping at the slightest provoc-

“Hmmm?” Giddy Gallop asked, as their earpiece crackled. “No. No Code C Assets recovered yet.”

Another crackle. Kraber couldn’t hear the response.

“And stop using this channel! It’s insecure. Anyone-”

(Giddy Gallop glared at Kraber)

“-could be listening!”

Aaaaaaand, clearly coded speak. It was like someone was screaming at the top of their lungs, roaring, wearing a t-shirt and covered in tattoos in front of Kraber. All of which said something to the effect of ‘WE ARE HIDING NOTHING AT ALL.’

They’re not telling us something. It’s plain as day.

He looked at Nebula, who had a worried look on her face.

“Giddy Gallop,” she said. “I didn’t know you worked under Haddon.”

“Promotion,” Haddon answered.

“Really?” Nebula asked. “Because as far as I know, Giddy Gallop outranks you.”

“It was a field promotion,” Haddon said.

The back of Kraber’s neck prickled. It felt like being stalked by wolves again.

They were close to an outbuilding near the hospital. Big, brick structure, about eight stories tall. Squat. PHL were forming survivors into orderly lines leading into the building, with ponies, adult humans, and human children in separate lines.

The more Kraber thought about it, the less evidence he had that something was wrong. But somehow, that made him even more suspicious. There was an oddly… confused atmosphere to it. He’d evacuated refugees before, and… okay. Separating ponies was normal. Had always been normal. But separating children from parents? That didn’t make sense. That and the way some of the PHL guarding the operation moved… uncertainly.

It wasn’t easy to spot. But there was something about the posture, the way some PHL looked over towards superior officers who looked to their superior officers made Kraber wonder just how coordinated it all was.

And how, Kraber wondered, Does a ‘Code C Asset’ fit into this? What’s the C stand for?

“Where’s the national guard?” Kraber asked, suddenly.

“We assumed control,” said the PHL man sharing the stretcher with Kraber. Their nametag read ‘BARNES’. “The National Guard are helping to corrall survivors to us.”

Taking direct control of a situation. Clearly bullshitting us. Assuming we’re lying too. And-

Kraber saw something in a window out of the corner of his eye. There was a neon sign on one building, casting a pink glow over the street, the light spreading to one window. Through which he could see a glint of white, of-

Gun.

A scoped rifle of some kind, with a wooden frame. Probably bolt-action, somewhere in the neighborhood of .30 caliber, maybe larger. He was imagining the trajectories in his head, seeing them as clearly as if the rifle had a laser sight. It was. Aimed…

He couldn’t be certain it was aimed at him, but it was certainly possible.

Now why would that be aimed towards - I only have so much time! Fok, fok, FOKKIN FOK I don’t want to die! Not this time, anyway?! And what?! WHAT IN GOD’S NAME DOES C STAND FO-

Cold certainty crept through his brain, suffusing his body with a chill he didn’t expect to feel until winter.  His mind raced. And then, suddenly… it clicked. It all clicked.

Think. FOKKIN’ THINK JOU FOKKIN’ CHILDKILLING KONTGESIG, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. FOKKIN’ THINK. What’s the most rational course of action at a time like this?! Kraber thought.

A plan began to form.

“Jou know,” Kraber said. “Rime Ice. Nebula. Remember what that woman that shot you said?”

Nebula nodded, her gaze steely. She was nodding. She understood.

“I’ve been shot before, too. And it was fokkin’ awful! Hurt more than the time I cracked some ribs by jumping off a bridge, and that stung like a woman with teeth in her beef portal! Bitch I’m okay.”

In the future, Kraber will not really be able to remember if he said “But I’m okay” or “Bitch I’m okay.”

“Could you not?” asked Barnes. He scowled at Kraber through his gas mask’s faceplate.

That is the ugliest fokkin’ dick tickler I have ever seen, Kraber marveled, staring through Barnes’ mask. It was less facial hair and more facial wisps.

“I could, but I don’t care,” Kraber said, shrugging. “And, well, the operations to deal with getting shot, they were… pretty terrible too. They needed about twice the dose to get me under. Not as lekker as it sounds with my pain threshold.”

NOT TODAY, OLD FRIEND! Kraber thought, looking up at the window where he saw the bolt-action.

“Wait,” Nebula said. “Really?!”

“Ja, my drug tolerance is fokkin’ radge. Same for my pain threshold,” Kraber shrugged with one arm, holding the stretcher in the other - which was reaching for an itchy spot under his armor. “Really. Anyway, what I’m saying is-”

I hope I’m right about this, Kraber thought, as he resorted to the most rational option he could’ve imagined at that particular time.

“-there may be some momentary discomfort,” Kraber said, and fired the .44 revolver into Barnes’ crotch.

BANG