//------------------------------//
// Chapter 14: Rough Landing 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Renewal 
// by ElbowDeepInAHorse 
//------------------------------//

July 29th, 1075

	Dad called and asked if he could come visit me sometime. He’s still living at his apartment in Ponyville but he says he wants to try making it up to Canterlot at least every month so we can hang out. I want him to try, but I don’t think mom does. Maybe it’s not a good idea. Ms. Tureen says I should give them time and that love is complicated. She’s one of the lunch mares at school and she’s always complimenting my mane. She’s super jealous of the stripes. Anyway, she says that I should give dad a chance and that mom just needs time to heal. I just want us to be a family again.
	
August 3rd, 1075

	Yesterday was… weird? I share a table in Contemporary Arts with a pegasus named Violet Meadows and she’s such a nerd, but like in a cool way. Like, she’s super smart. I think she’s the only pony I’ve met that gets that excited to learn. Even in the most boring class on the face of Equestria. Bleh. To each their own? I only took it because I thought we’d be making stuff like pottery or paintings, but it was a trap! It’s a second history class but worse. But hey, at least I know why kinda maybe Ponet painted blue squares instead of yellow squares. Awesome. Great. For Luna’s sake, the guy is dead!
	Anyway, Violet keeps us all awake by asking really good questions. I’d be failing if it weren’t for her. Yesterday we were learning about the sculptor who designed the statues in Celestia’s garden - I still think it was Celestia - and Violet asked how he knew when he’d carved deep enough. I’m not great at templating, but I know enough to explain how it works, and I answered her question before Mr. Tillshare could. Now I know what it must feel like to be one of her books. She completely derailed the class by asking ME questions and Mr. Tillshare made us move to the hallway so he could finish teaching.
I’ve been working on a scarab carving that I’ve been keeping in my locker. The woodshop teacher lets me come in during my study hall to work on it. Since we were already in the hallway, I took Violet to my locker and showed it to her. Most ponies usually just say my carvings look good and that’s it. Violet looked at it like it was a Reinbrandt. She asked if she could have it when I finish it and gave me this huge hug when I said sure.
So, I guess Violet and I are friends now?







Fiona worked her fingers across the switchboard with a deft skill that few of the ponies living below her fire tower rarely had the opportunity to see. Working down the sliders on the right side of the board, she queued up a fresh record with her left. She’d been working the boards so long that she didn’t have to look at what she was doing - just muscle memory and instinct for the right blend of sound. Careful not to touch the recorded surface, she lifted the played out vinyl between two taloned digits and settled the new record down with a practiced movement of the same hand, all as she monitored the needles of two volume meters as they bobbed and swayed with her voice.
She stole a glance through her cab’s line of west-facing windows and squinted, letting her lilac eyes adjust to the hazy bubble of light that grew on the overcast horizon. Time to wrap up.
“Well, ladies and gentlecolts, it’s a new day and that means your dearest friend Flipswitch needs to sign off to catch a few winks before all the good ones are taken.” She smiled at her double entendre as much as the pliable skin behind her sand colored beak would allow. “Thank you all for tuning in, and if you’re a new listener just passing through, keep your dial on Hightower Radio 99.5 FM with your very own Mare On The Air. Bringing you good news and good company during these long and lonely nights.”
She added a sultry sway into the final words as she signed off, knowing the ponies below would be eating it up like candy. It was crucial that she knew what the residents of Blinder’s Bluff wanted to hear, especially the Rangers who allowed her to tap into the juice provided by the Stable below. Without that, there would be no Hightower Radio or the free, albeit cramped, lodging that came with it.
A quick series of button presses and the new record spun up with the first twanging lyrics of If I Had a Great Long Pistol. Fiona snorted as she imagined the raised eyebrows and bawdy laughter coming from the homes and bars below. She slipped out of her headphones and pushed away from the desk, stretching her heavy wings until her feathers bent against the surrounding windows. Ponies always built things two sizes too small for her, but that was a complaint she had grown out of years ago. As far as she was concerned, it beat breathing poison in Griffonstone.
Picking up a bottle of something falsely advertised as rum that she’d been taking pulls off of for the last hour or so, she stepped over a plastic crate of records she hadn’t gotten around to cleaning and walked out onto the narrow catwalk that rimmed her tower. She finished off the bottle and set it down on the railing, trying to enjoy the meager heat of Lime’s weak alcohol. 
A steady breeze lifted the long, striped feathers that hung down the back of her neck. The ponies below had come to call the unruly sprig of “mane” zebra feathers, though they meant no harm by it. The old hatreds of their war had cooled over the centuries, aided sadly in part by growing evidence that most zebras had been wiped out during the tumultuous years that trailed the bombs. Occasionally the odd conversation about the war would crop up at one bar or another and sometimes spread from table to table like a virus. Debates about who pushed the button first and which side, if either, had the right to do it. Two hundred years later some ponies still got well and truly heated over it, especially the ghouls. Most ponies had the decency not to bring up the war around them, but some did it just to antagonize the decrepit creatures. Some of that was the liquor. A lot of it ran deeper than the drink.
Fiona avoided those discussions.
She dipped a talon into the neck of the bottle and tilted it to one side, admiring the hand-drawn label. Hoof-drawn, in the case of Lime Royale. Every one of his bottles featured a charcoal sketched label depicting aspects of the wasteland he thought reflected the drink. His rum always featured two radscorpions, their pincers locked together and barbed tails intertwined. A rough sketch of the southern desert wrapped the bottle. It cost 2 caps for a shot and 100 caps for a bottle. Most of the patrons of his bar, aptly named Someplace Else, came for the cheap drinks and not the overpriced artwork. However, given Fiona’s isolated circumstances atop the bluff, he offered her a deal. She paid fifty for the bottle, close enough to what he’d make on shots, and got some caps back if she returned the empty. Since his was the only bar in Blinder’s Bluff with a ceiling high enough where she didn’t have to duck, she was happy to make the trip back.
She pinched Lime’s bottle between her fingers and set it down next to the doorway where it wouldn’t break.
The thought crossed her mind to make a quick flight downhill and exchange the bottle for a late dinner, and her stomach seconded the idea with a rumble. She squinted at the horizon and judged the long shadow cast by the western hills. It was getting close to the end of shift for Lime’s night bartender. She got along especially well with him. A tingle ruffled her fur and she smiled. If she played her cards right there was a good chance she could walk out of Someplace Else with dinner and a show.
Fiona cracked her shoulders and readied herself to take off from the railing. As she spread her wings, her ears quirked to her right. The southern wind was being rowdy this morning, and it was carrying voices.
“Pull up!”
“I’m trying!”
She turned to witness the strangest thing she’d seen all week. Two ponies, grey and brown, flapping toward her tower like a pair of birds fighting over the last bit of fermented fruit. As she narrowed her eyes, she realized only one pair of wings was flailing in the crosswind. The other was clinging to the pegasi’s back like a wet cat on a raft. 
It was the mare from two days prior. The one who said she killed Cider. If that was the case, then the mare clinging to her back was the unicorn being blamed for the crime on all the city’s bounty boards. 
And if they didn’t slow their descent, they were going to fly head first into the side of Blinder’s Bluff.
“Shiiit,” she groaned.
She kicked off the railing hard enough to shake the tower, giving her wings a single, billowing flap. Not enough speed to keep her airborne, not by a long shot, but enough for her claws to build onto as they sank into the hard soil. She lunged forward and burst into a sprint. 
The two ponies lurched in the swirling winds that whipped the rim of the bluff. Fiona’s thick tail swung out like a rigid whip to adjust her own trajectory, aiming for the piece of cliff they were sailing toward.
She met Aurora’s eyes just long enough to see recognition bleed through the fear. The pegasus swung her rear hooves forward and threw the last of her strength into braking her speed with a weak pulse of her little wings. It gave Fiona enough time to slide her hind legs in front of her, slide over the ledge and cling to the jagged rocks with her wings spread wide.
Even though they were relatively small, they slammed into her chest like a pair of bowling balls. She grunted and quickly clapped her wings around them, saving them from what promised to be a long and messy fall.
Aurora stared up at Fiona through a tangle of grey and brown feathers, half her face painted dark with dry blood. All the winged pony could manage between pants was a single, meager syllable.
“Hey.”







Aurora collapsed onto the dirt as soon as their gryphon savior had carried them well away from the cliff’s edge. She sprawled onto her back and sucked in the cool air with her eyes pressed firmly shut. She wanted nothing more than to feel the hard ground beneath her aching bones and relish the first bit of rest she’d had in nearly forty-eight hours.
“I’ll see if I have any water,” Fiona said once they were free of her feathers. Their response came as a pair of shallow nods, too exhausted to speak. She hesitated before walking back to the old watchtower. 
Ginger stood near Aurora, stretching her legs until the joints in her knees let out several dull cricks. Satisfied, she sat down and blew out a sigh of relief. Aurora agreed with a sigh of her own. What an absolute mess. 
With neither of them quite sure what to say, silence quickly settled in, disturbed only by the sound of their heavy breathing and the gryphon’s rummaging. Aurora felt the apology dancing on her lip like an obligation, but she knew Ginger would reassure her that their nearly disastrous landing wasn’t her fault. The crosswind had caught them both off-guard. But Aurora could feel the sharp burning in her wings while they loitered above the clouds, soaking in the view as the pure dawn sky lit around them like a torch. She knew she was pushing herself too far. The three hour flight stretched into four. Then five. Ginger had asked if she wanted a break and her idiot pride answered in the negative. She didn’t want to go back below the clouds. Not ever.
She kept herself in the air for nearly six hours. Guilt pressed her into the packed dirt like it intended to bury her.
You need to apologize, she told herself.
She looked at Ginger and knew she would try to reassure her. Try to tell her that she had been witness to something that no sane-minded pony would want to fly away from. Aurora had begun to understand that Ginger was forgiving by nature. Not of herself - not easily, anyway - but certainly for those she cared about. If Aurora wasn’t going to allow her to wallow in self-pity, Ginger had no intention of letting Aurora beat herself up either.
Aurora exhaled and watched the clouds tumble overhead. Despite the deep ache in her wings and her searing lungs, she still felt drawn toward what she knew was beyond that blanket of mist. Until now, stars had always been white dots on the dark pages of her foalhood story books. Having seen the real things filled a part of her that she never knew was empty. It was like knowing a secret that nobody else knew, except that she shared it with someone else.
She turned her head and looked back at Ginger, whose ocean blue eyes had lifted toward the sky as well. Her shoulders seemed trapped in a half-slump, bowing but not quite resigned to the weight of everything that had happened to her. Aurora felt compelled to put a wing around her and pull her close, but stopped short of acting on it. Ginger didn’t have the look of a mare that wanted to be coddled.
The tower’s frame rattled and Fiona landed on the packed dirt with a soft pair of thumps. She held a foggy bottle by the neck in one hand, her thumb acting as a cork. Amber liquid sloshed inside. 
“Didn’t have any water, but I had this.” She sniffed the mouth of the bottle. “It’s brandy, I think. Maybe. Either of you interested?”
Ginger looked at the bottle’s dubious contents and shook her head with a polite smile. “No, thank you.”
Aurora declined tool, even though she hadn’t had anything to drink since being ambushed by a deathclaw named Mac. “I’m going to need a clear head to negotiate with Ironshod. Thanks anyway.”
Ginger frowned. “Who?”
“The stallion who has my Pip-Buck.”
“Why would…” she paused, and seemed to realize for the first time Aurora’s foreleg was bare. “Why in Celestia’s name would you give away your Pip-Buck?”
The maybe-brandy sloshed as Fiona took a swig. “You talking about Paladin Ironshod? Big unicorn, grey coat? Kind of an asshole?”
Aurora rubbed a hoof against her foreleg and nodded. It occurred to her that neither of them knew what had happened, or why. So she told them. The interrogation, Ironshod’s realization that she lied about being part of the Enclave and his insistence that she not be allowed to leave until she could offer him something of equal value. 
She told Ginger about the state of Stable 6 and how it was only a power surge away from being rendered inhabitable. The Enclave had stripped it bare generations ago, leaving the Steel Rangers and the ponies who built their sprawling town around it without a safety net should the worst happen. In exchange for her freedom, Aurora had offered to locate schematics for the one piece of equipment that the Rangers had never been able to get their hooves on: a fabricator.
“It makes sense that he’d want collateral,” she said. 
She dug her hoof into the dirt until a crescent shaped mound grew around its edge. Ironshod had taken her Pip-Buck with such casual confidence that she didn’t know what he was doing until it was levitating away from her. She tried to take it back and he had pinned her to the air like a butterfly. In that moment, she knew she’d lost. 
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “It has everything on it. And now he has it.”
Ginger’s leg settled over her shoulders and squeezed, pinning a wing between them. “We’ll get it back.”
Aurora allowed herself to be pulled into Ginger’s shoulder and nodded at her hooves. She couldn’t shake the feeling that for the last five days she’d done little except dig herself deeper and deeper into a hole that she didn’t know how to get out of. Ginger had nearly been killed. Roach was a prisoner, hostage or both. She wasn’t sure if the Rangers knew the distinction. Her traveling companions wanted to help for reasons that were their own, but a part of Aurora wanted it to be over. She wanted to go home, fix her generator and seal herself off from this beautiful nightmare of a world even if it meant Ginger and Roach would be on the other side of that door.
It was too simple of a solution, and she knew it. Ever since Junction City, the journey had gotten more complicated than she ever planned for.
“Hey.”
She looked up and realized she’d gone quiet. Ginger watched her with growing concern. “Are you okay?”
Aurora smiled. It was almost believable. “Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m fine.”
Glass clinked against the pebbles, interrupting the moment as gently as the gryphon knew how. She twisted the neck of the bottle left and right until the bottom sat flat on a disc of somewhat level soil. “If you need help with Ironshod, I could always talk to him.”
The offer hung in the air for a beat before curiosity pushed Aurora to ask, “You know him?”
Fiona’s beak cracked into an immodest grin. “In a sense. He and I used to meet more often a couple years back, before he made officer. Biggest feature on that stallion is his mouth.”
“Oh,” Aurora nodded, not quite catching her meaning. She stole a glance at Ginger who was sitting stock-still, lips pursed and eyes firmly fixed on the ground. It clicked. “Oh.”
Her reaction drew a bubbling laugh from the gryphon. She picked at her talons, her wide smile softening into something more genuine. “Sorry,” she chuckled, “too much?”
A miniscule smirk tugging at the facade of polite disinterest Ginger had been putting on. “Possibly a little.”
“Not to say any help you can offer isn’t welcome,” Aurora amended, giving Ginger a subtle flick of her tail. Whatever Fiona knew, and however she learned it, was her business. “Though we are in between caps right now.”
“Who said anything about paying?” Fiona said. “Ironshod’s always been an opportunistic prick, but extorting a Stable pony and sending her out into the Wasteland without even a gun is borderline raider behavior. Knocking that out of him would be a service to more ponies than just the two of you.”
Aurora frowned, forming her words carefully. “Who said anything about me being a Stable pony?”
“Just about everyone, now that the Rangers from the wall have had time to gossip.” Fiona gestured a wing toward the north side of the bluff and the sprawling shantytown that clung to its side. “Ever since you three arrived, I haven’t been able to get a bead on a good story because all anyone wants to talk about is the mysterious pegasus from a numberless Stable. You’re a minor celebrity here.”
Aurora licked her lips and blinked at the dirt. This had to be a bad joke. She could only remember bits and pieces of the night they arrived at the wall, and the clearest of them were of her hastily trying to convince the guards that she was with the Enclave. She vaguely recalled saying something about her home, but she couldn’t be sure if that had been fatigue or radiation sickness talking.
She felt dizzy and squeezed her eyes shut. “Great. How much credit for that do you get?”
Fiona paused. “When you left, you told me that you killed Cider and that Ginger got stuck with the blame. I assumed that was for the broadcast so I’ve been airing the correction since you flew off.” 
Aurora groaned, and Fiona took on a defensive edge. “Listen, my reputation depends on me telling the truth. You can’t blame me for telling your story when you drop it in my lap without telling me what you want me to do with it.”
Aurora massaged the bridge of her muzzle. “No, I guess I can’t,” she sighed and looked up at Fiona. “Sorry. It’s just been a long couple of days. I just want to find Roach, get my Pip-Buck and pass out for a few months..”
The gryphon’s expression softened. “Well, after you’re, do me a favor and track me down. There are a lot of ponies down there who are going to want to know how you both got back here alive and I’d be willing to trade some caps if either of you are up for an interview.”
Aurora looked to Ginger. “Up to you,” she said.
“I’ll think about it,” Ginger said, and pushed herself to her hooves. “For now, I think it would be best if we found Roach. He has to be beyond worried by now.”
Aurora stood as well, turning slightly so she could stretch some of the soreness out of her wings. She offered Ginger an uncomfortable smile. “Is it alright if we walk?”
Ginger chuckled. “I think our chances of survival are better if we do.”
“My ribs thank you in advance for not forcing me to catch you a second time,” Fiona added. “Come on. I can get you some water on the way down.”








The walk down the bluff was leisurely compared to the exhausting hike to the summit. Aurora’s cheeks burned when they passed the shack whose alleyway she had unscrupulously watered on the way up. It wasn’t the proudest moment of her life, but at the time she’d been suffering with the side effects of RadAway and she gave herself a pass. To her relief, nobody burst onto the cobblestones to gnaw her ear off. Most of the ponies that were outside this early were busying themselves with their own morning rituals, and as Fiona had predicted, most of the eyes that did find her were accompanied by curious whispers.
They passed a pair of older mares working a makeshift clothesline across two posts mounted atop their opposing shacks, clipping damp blankets into the early morning breeze. A few drops of wash water sprinkled their backs as they passed underneath. “Good morning, Fiona!” the elder of the two mares called down.
“Morning, Rosehip!” the gryphon answered, then to the younger, “Morning, Miz Marble! Need a water bucket run down today?”
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid,” Marble smiled. “Rose?”
“Mmm-mm,” the other mare hummed around a mouthful of makeshift wire clothespins.
As they descended, it seemed like Fiona knew half the ponies living on the Bluff. Aurora lost track of how many stopped to say hello, compliment her on the broadcast or suggest a topic for a future show. More than a few spoke to Fiona with their eyes plainly on Aurora, the sight of so much blood in her mane curbing the curious questions they clearly wanted to ask. 
Aurora exchanged a weary smile with Ginger. Even being on the periphery of the swell of attention was exhausting. Fiona, for her part, took it in stride.
Neither of them were complaining. Fiona had saved both their lives after Aurora’s humiliating mishap at the cliff. The crosswind couldn’t have come at a worse possible time. 
The two of them had spent the better part of an hour coasting over the clouds, marvelling at rising disc of pure sunlight that warmed their skin. The sky around them morphed from deep blue to gentle pink as night gave way to day, and for the first time Aurora understood why ponies at the peak of their civilization could understand so much about the world and still believe that the sunrise was a thing of magic. 
When they reluctantly agreed that it was time to head down, Aurora had looked at the golden carpet of clouds below and remembered the old stories of pegasi walking atop them as if they were solid ground. Unbeknownst to Ginger, who thought Aurora was giving them one last look at the real sky before their descent, she had let the tips of her hooves slip into the feathery edge of the clouds just to be sure. It was silly and indulgent, but she had to know.
For a moment she thought she could feel something there. A little resistance. A whisper of support. But to her disappointment, her hooves slid through the mist and the illusion vanished. 
She hadn’t realized how tired she was until they were back inside the wilder winds trapped beneath the clouds. The stimpack Ginger had administered had done its job to heal her body, but the high that had pushed away the ragged edges of exhaustion was flaking away like old paint on rust. The familiar drag of sleep deprivation, a dreary heaviness behind her eyes that she learned to ignore during her many thousands of hours on the clock down in Mechanical, sank into her body like an anchor. She knew that she needed to land soon, but the long black shadows that stretched across the terrain below made her think about the monsters that might be looking up at her with hungry mouths, and she kept flying.
When they sighted the bluff, Aurora was struggling just to keep her wings open. Closer to the ground, the winds had eased off and she’d been confident that the last leg of their return could be done in a shallow glide. She’d stopped paying attention to her speed, her eyes locked on the rim of the approaching bluff, when the violent crosswinds that wrapped the granite walls threw her left wing skyward and nearly hurled them both into a roll. The sudden pitch was like a bucket of ice across her back and in her panic she overcorrected. The last one hundred feet toward the cliff had been a mad dance of flapping wings and yelling that ended with the two of them hanging off the ledge wrapped tight in a pair of massive wings.
Her cheeks heated at the memory of it.
“Ten caps,” the gryphon said.
Aurora blinked and looked up from the cobbles. Fiona trailed a few paces behind them, taking a dented metal pail and a small fistful of caps from a unicorn standing on his side of the gutter. They nodded amicably to one another and she loped toward the two mares, the empty pail clattering between her feathers as she slipped between them and resumed parting the thickening hoof traffic a few paces ahead of them.
Aurora was more than a little impressed at how easily the gryphon navigated the crowd. Fiona was, at her most conservative guess, twice the size of most the ponies they passed on the narrow street. By all rights she should have been tripping over them, but her body slid through them like a languid stream. Aurora realized she was staring and looked over to Ginger, only to see that she was making similar observations. 
Midway down the bluff, Fiona stopped a young stallion on his way up the hill with four sloshing wooden buckets bending the long yoke around his neck. A quick exchange of words and the ten caps from earlier trickled from her hand to his saddlebag, and her let her pour four equal splashes of water into her own bucket. The entire exchange took less than a minute. 
Fiona held the water out to Ginger who didn’t hesitate to accept it.
Aurora felt a layer of worry lift off her shoulders as she watched the unicorn drink. When Ginger was done, she offered Aurora the pail. The water was cold enough to hurt her teeth and had more than a few suspect bits of debris floating on its surface, but Aurora drank eagerly, each deep pull from the old bucket soothing her parched throat.
“Woah, woah, woah,” Fiona laughed, pulling the pail away. “I didn’t pull you off my cliff just so you could drown yourself.”
Aurora wiped the sides of her face where water had splashed around the wide rim, soaking her speckled coat to a dark gray sheen. “Thanks,” she gasped.
She looked to Ginger, who was smirking while she used the wet flat of her hoof to work the dull brown stains out of her foreleg. Flying through the mist had loosened their respective crusts of blood that had dried into long smears once they were below the clouds. Ginger’s wounds had been concentrated along her limbs where bone had ruptured skin. Aurora could feel the tacky pull of the mess that clung to her face and desperately wished for a shower.
Fiona finished the last of swirl of water and hooked the pail through the tip of her wing, the metal clattering rhythmically against her hip as they resumed their descent.
The sun hung a little higher over the horizon when they arrived at Redheart’s clinic. Aurora had expected to see Steel Rangers still posted around the door, blocking entry to everyone except their own while Roach waited inside. Instead, the street outside the clinic was bare except for a single earth pony loitering near the door, the stump of a cigarette glowing between his lips. He watched Aurora and Ginger as they pushed through the narrow doors, but when Fiona parked herself outside he stamped out the cigarette and walked on.
Aurora and Ginger found Nurse Redheart at the plain table and chair that served as her reception desk. The old ghoul looked up from some hoof-written notes on yellowed paper as they stepped inside, her sunken eyes lighting up with recognition. “Aurora! Ginger! You’re back! Oh, and you’re both a mess! What happened to you?”
Redheart’s chair scraped against the uneven floorboards and she hurried over to Aurora, her cataracted blue eyes worrying over the dry blood clinging to her coat. Ginger took the opportunity to push open the door to the recovery room where all three of them had been held, but after a beat she closed it and shook her head at Aurora.
“Is this your blood?” Redheart fretted, squinting at the swaths of bare pink skin on either side of her shoulder. “Honey, you really need…”
“Nurse Redheart,” Aurora interrupted, her eyes matching the concern on Ginger’s face. “Where’s Roach?”
Redheart paused for a moment and frowned, as if in deep thought. Her eyelids fluttered before finally coming back to Aurora. “I told them, I said that if they were going to occupy my hospital then I was going to bill each and every one. Once for fouling up my clean beds and another for scaring off my other patients. And they know I could do it! I knew Elder Coldbrook when he was just a colt and that still means something to...”
Ginger put a hoof on Redheart’s shoulder to slow her down. “Nurse Redheart, please. We need to know where Roach is.”
She wrinkled her nose at Ginger. “I just told you. I kicked ‘em all out. They’re all in that hole in the ground they love so much.”
Aurora gently pulled free of Redheart’s grip and nodded for Ginger to follow. “Thank you,” she said, holding the door open for Ginger. Redheart pressed her lips together and shook her head as the door clapped shut behind them.
Fiona trailed behind the two as they crossed back onto the cobblestones. “No luck?”
Aurora shook her head, heading for the same narrow crossroads that Ironshod took the first time around. “Sounds like they took him down to the Stable.”
“Huh,” Fiona said. “They probably stuck him in one of the interrogation rooms.”
“Why would they interrogate him?” Ginger balked.
“You’ve been there?” Aurora added.
A smile creased the corner of Fiona’s beak. “I doubt they’d bother, and it’s a long story. The short version is that a few years back I might have gotten caught trying to splice into more of the Stable’s power than the Rangers technically agreed to share. Ended up spending half a week answering questions about what I was really trying to do.”
A cart jangled up the cobbles and they stepped across the gutter to let it pass. Aurora bit the inside of her lip at the sight of the F&F Mercantile logo as it trundled by. She wondered how long it would be until word spread that the company was effectively dead and its merchants on their own. When the cart was well behind them, she crossed back onto the street. 
“And what were you really trying to do?” Ginger asked.
Fiona laughed. “Trying not to get caught. On a good day, I get maybe a few hundred miles of range off my power allowance. A little more juice and I could double that, and quadruple my audience. Might even be able to do some good.” Her smile tightened self-consciously. “I don’t know. Something.”
“Why not broadcast during the day when ponies are awake?” Aurora suggested.
“I can’t,” she said. “The cloud cover’s hard enough to broadcast through. Throw in the sun and all the weird stuff it does with the atmospherics and I may as well just use a bullhorn.”
It was an exaggeration, but Aurora decided not to pry at it. 
She led them out of the narrow street and into the wide cobblestone boulevard that rolled out of the base of the bluff. It was the same scene from two days before. Merchant carts lined the hoof-made street, many proudly wearing the dead F&F brand around their frames, while ponies gathered in milling lines around the ones that were open for business. The shacks that lined the boulevard were larger than the ones uphill and doubled as small businesses for the ponies who occupied them. Aurora noticed Ginger’s eyes pouring over some of the more decorated doorways and felt a familiar twinge of guilt. Ginger’s shop dwarfed the little storefronts of Blinder’s Bluff, but they had the advantage of still being in business.
They followed the cobbles to the mouth of the tunnel, careful to avoid stepping into the gap that was left between the stones and the prewar rails that snaked out from the entrance.
Passing into the tunnel, their hooves picked up a hint of an echo. Here ponies mingled with Steel Rangers around the pillars that held the stone ceiling aloft. Most of the Rangers wore the same ubiquitous brown uniforms as the rest, but here and there some boasted a different shade or stood sentry in battle-worn suits of power armor that rose to eye level with Fiona. 
Aurora looked squarely ahead as she heard nearby conversations trail off and felt the sudden pressure of dozens of eyes on her back. It took an effort of will not to spin on her hooves and walk back out of the tunnel.
“Luna’s grace,” Ginger whispered beside her.
Aurora’s ear turned.
If Ginger was concerned by the attention the three of them were drawing, she didn’t show it. Her eyes were glued to the yawning maw of Stable 6. It occurred to Aurora that in the same way that she had never seen the outside world until several days ago, Ginger might not have ever seen the inside of a Stable.
Fiona strode next to Ginger. “First time?”
Ginger nodded, never taking her eyes off the looming gear-shaped opening at the opposite end of the tunnel. “I’ve never been beyond Junction City,” she said. “I knew it was here, I just never thought to see it for myself. It’s massive.”
Despite it not being her Stable, Aurora couldn’t keep from feeling just a little pride at Ginger’s reaction. 
Fiona looked over her to Aurora, tipping her beak toward the doorway. “Is it anything like yours?”
In truth, it was eerily identical to hers. The tunnel, the Atrium, even the halls seemed to be laid out the same. It managed to comfort and unsettle her in equal portions. It was a taste of home. A home whose gardens had been made sterile by the ponies who created it, giving its first generation of residents the choice to starve or flee into the freshly irradiated wasteland. It only reinforced Aurora’s theory that her Stable had been built to fail.
“I hope not,” she said.
Fiona flicked her tail with bemusement but didn’t ask for an explanation. Aurora pushed away the thoughts of what might be happening back home and focused on the task in front of her.
Standing at the threshold with a battered clipboard in his hoof and a nub of pencil between his teeth, a familiar cobalt blue stallion scribbled notes as the pair of traders in front of him waited with their open saddlebags. Had he not stepped out of his power armor when Aurora left, she would have walked right past him without recognizing him. Aurora led Ginger and Fiona past the short line of waiting merchants on the semicircular platform, drawing several irritated stares, and stopped next to the earth pony that had stuck his neck out to help her.
“Hi, Latch,” she said.
He shot a quick glance at her as he inspected the contents of the saddlebags set in front of him. Then he frowned and turned squarely to face her, his one remaining eye rimmed white with surprise. “Holy shit,” he said, the pencil dropping from his scarred mouth. “You made it back!”
For a moment Aurora thought she was at risk of being at the receiving end of a hug, but Latch quickly bent down to recover his pencil and finished writing his notes. “Go on through,” he said to the waiting ponies. As the next trader stepped forward with a set of saddlebags suspended in silver magic, he looked between Aurora and Ginger as if he wasn’t convinced they were real. “How’d you convince Autumn to let your friend go?”
Aurora opened her mouth to answer but Ginger placed a hoof on her shoulder, stopping her.
“This may not be the best place,” Ginger said, glancing at a pair of traders in blue and white pinstripes near the rear of the line. She looked at Latch with a deliberate intensity, patting her hoof against Aurora’s recently healed shoulder wound. “Suffice to say everything turned out better than I expected it to. Our priority now is to see Roach and ensure he’s safe.”
Latch looked at Aurora’s shoulder, then at the dark stains that discolored her face. He stiffened with sudden understanding and nodded, turning back to the unicorn who was waiting impatiently for him to check her bags. They waited as he took her name and scribbled a few notes on the pad, his face a neutral mask. When he was finished he looked past the line to a Ranger standing guard on the other side of the platform. “Hey Alder, take over for fifteen. I’m gonna use the head.”
The Ranger looked at the four of them and sighed. “Sure.”
Latch traded off the pencil and clipboard and indicated to the rest of them to follow. “Your changeling friend is fine,” he said as they crossed the threshold. “He didn’t like being brought into the Stable, though. Kind of freaked out on us, if I’m being honest.”
Ginger shared a worried look with Aurora. “How is he now?”
“Like I said, he’s fine. Calmed down as soon as we got him into the Atrium,” Latch said.
They filed past the empty cells of the security office, making way for a trio of stallions on their way out of the Stable. One of them looked up at Fiona with recognition and quickly averted his eyes. “You still owe me twenty caps, quickshot,” she called after him. The stallion hurried ahead of his friends.
Latch held the switch to the Atrium door as the three passed through. He scrutinized Fiona as her wings brushed the sides of the door frame. “Client of yours?” There was an air of judgement in his tone.
Fiona lifted an eyebrow at him in mild defiance. “Not anymore. Why? Are you interested?”
Latch’s jaw tightened. “I have a wife, Flipswitch.”
“I prefer couples,” the gryphon countered.
Aurora swatted her wing at Fiona’s side and shot Latch a look she reserved for Sledge. “Whatever this is, knock it off. Please.”
Latch held up a placating hoof and nodded. Meanwhile, Fiona stared down at Aurora with a curious intensity that made the blood rush into her cheeks.
Ginger cleared her throat. “Latch, you said you know where Roach is?”
He nodded again, tactically choosing to browse the thin crowd of ponies milling about down on the Atrium floor.
Aurora noticed a few ponies were looking back up at him, their eyes lingering on the burns that scarred the right half of Latch’s face before turning back to the wide variety of shops and makeshift stalls that ringed the Stable’s main public gathering space. She couldn’t picture herself getting used to something like that.
“Yeah, sorry,” he said, pulling his gaze from the ponies below and settling his good eye on Aurora. He looked meaningfully at her shoulder. “You can tell me about the other thing on the way, then I have to get back to my post.”
“Wonderful,” Ginger said. “Fiona, this may be an ideal time for you to speak with Ironshod.”
Latch risked a glance at Fiona. “Can I ask why?”
Fiona answered him with a diplomatic smile and said nothing.
“Alright then,” he said. “Ladies, follow me.”
Aurora nudged Fiona’s wing as she walked past. “Thanks for helping,” she said.
The sandy furred gryphon looked down at Aurora, her expression softening by a few degrees. She watched as Latch led the two mares down to the Atrium floor and through the crowd. They approached the mouth of a corridor flanked by Rangers and disappeared inside, continuing whatever strange adventure they’d gotten themselves into.







Fiona took the scenic route.
She didn’t know the layout of Stable 6 well enough to ignore the faded guidelines on the floor, but there were a good handful of corridors she knew by heart. The residential areas on the first and second level were one of those places she knew very well. As she padded down one of those hallways, converted to barracks decades ago if not longer than that, she watched as Rangers coming the opposite way either looked at her with hopeful interest or sheepishly avoided eye contact altogether. 
Steel Rangers had an annoying habit of taking a girl to bed and conveniently forgetting their caps back home. Fiona’s policy was to give them until the next morning to pay up. Most did, but every week or so she would stroll into the Stable and pay the real deadbeats a personal and very public visit. It wasn’t often that she needed to make a repeat visit.
She nudged up against the right side of the corridor to make room for two scribes on their way to their duty stations. The taller of the two met her eye as they passed and she nodded in greeting. He nodded back and then they were behind her. She let her tail swing lazily from one side to the other, knowing there would be at least one set of eyes trailing her. She smiled to herself as she pushed open the stairway door.
After descending the steps to the second level, she encountered much of the same. Ponies milling out of their barracks, some watching and some not. A slender, caramel colored mare stopped her and asked if she knew any traders that carried records. A Knight warned her to keep her recreational activities out of the Stable. Fiona wore the same polite smile for each of them. It never paid to burn bridges she might want to explore in the future.
Down on the third level, the tone was much different. Save for a single scribe pushing an old broom the corridor was empty. Bright rectangles of scrap steel bearing the ranks and names of officers hung next to each door like a badge of honor. These were the ponies who had proven themselves to be worthy of a soft chair and a desk. It seemed like a demotion to Fiona, but then again, her entire occupation centered around a DJ’s desk. Stones and glass houses, she reminded herself.
Most of the converted offices were closed, but every third or fourth door stood open. It wasn’t an invitation for anyone to enter. They were the hallmarks of claustrophobia. Not every pony liked living under several million tons of rock, and an open door provided the illusion of escape. The stallions inside - because of course they were stallions - hunched over folders splayed open on metal desks or clutched nibs of pencil between their teeth as they wrapped up morning paperwork. Several of them glanced up from their work and watched her pass their offices with eyebrows raised. 
Visiting enlisted ponies was one thing, but she never came down here. Not to these corridors. Higher rank came with the reality that those who held it had more to lose should they step out of line, and Fiona’s primary form of income was very certainly out of line for ponies with access to sensitive information. Squeamish little things, but she didn’t make the rules. Elder Coldbrook did. It was amazing how a higher pay grade mandated a sudden dose of morality.
Near the middle of the corridor, she found herself at a closed door with a dull plate marked PDN. IRONSHOD. She raised a knuckle to the steel and gave it a sharp set of knocks. Through the thick door she could hear a familiar rumble of profanity from the other side.
“Ma’am,” a voice came from down the hall. “He’s in a meeting.”
An orange head had poked out of the nearest open door. She gave him a winning smile. “Not the meeting he needs to be in, honey.”
As if on cue, the door slid open and Fiona turned to see the irritated grey face of Paladin Ironshod. For a split second he didn’t seem to realize he was staring at her neck. When he looked up, she saw the briefest glint of recognition in his eyes followed by the subtle slackening of his jaw. She smiled at his oh shit face and looked past him to the stallion sitting across from his desk. 
A senior knight she didn’t recognize, gaunt and barely able to fill in his uniform, looked between her and his ranking officer with confusion. Then something clicked in his head that told him he didn’t need to be a part of whatever this was and he dutifully found somewhere else to stare.
“Flipswitch,” Ironshod said, his voice hard as granite. “What brings you down here. To my office. Where I work.”
Fiona smiled. “I need a few minutes of your time, Paladin. It’s important.”
“I told her you were in a meeting,” Orange added.
Ironshod ignored the intrusion and glared up at her. “You know better than to come down here. You need to leave.”
She moved forward and leaned against the door frame, forcing him to take a step back. “Sure. Once we talk.”
It occurred to her that Ironshod had the option to press the door switch and send a quarter ton of steel square into her back, but she was willing to bet his mind was miles away from that possibility. He was fairly high up the proverbial Ranger totem pole. Not at the top, but near enough that a fall to the bottom would be painful. He wouldn’t risk assaulting her. Not where there were witnesses who had their own careers to protect, anyway.
She settled in and waited for him to decide whether to let her in or try to pressure her to leave.
His tail snapped at the air, resolving to stand in her way. “Make it quick.”
She quirked her head. “I’m not sure that’s a topic you want me to discuss in the hallway.”
Ironshod stood stock still, affronted by the insinuation. Fiona gave him a pleasant smile and looked over at the senior knight desperately trying to ignore the exchange behind him. She was breaking one of her own rules by disclosing details of Ironshod’s... limitations, but she wasn’t going to get him to hand over a Pip-Buck through an open door.
His eyes bore into hers with barely contained anger. “Knight, get out.”
The stallion didn’t waste any time. His chair squeaked against the floor and he muttered a quick, “Excuse me,” as he squeezed past Fiona.
“Inside. Now,” he growled and made his way around the desk. Two old bookshelves, one wider than the other, stood against the back wall on either side. Trinkets and bits of scrap that held stories known only to him were organized across the shelves in an attempt to give the bare office a personal touch. He even had books - real books in their original bindings - leaning along the top shelves of each. 
Fiona eyed the decorations as she entered, closing the door behind her. She waited as he lit his horn and neatly stacked a spread of papers into a worn folder on his desk. He opened the top drawer, dropped the folder inside and slammed it shut. 
“What do you want, Fiona?”
She considered the empty chair the Knight had left behind and decided it was too small for her. She hooked it with her tail and slid it to the far wall, choosing to sit on her haunches in the space it had occupied. “It’s not what I want. It’s what my friend wants.”
Ironshod pulled his chair back, sat down and steepled his hooves against the desk. “I pray you’re not referring to your…”
He trailed off, shaking his head. 
She fixed him with a cocked eyebrow. “My what?”
He scowled at her. “Nevermind. What does your friend want?”
Fiona watched him in silence for a good stretch. Let him wonder, she thought. And sure enough, she could see the idea forming in his mind. The temptation of possibility. The quiet hope that she’d come here only for him. It had been, what, two years since he last asked for her company? Ironshod didn’t make it out of the Stable most days anymore. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“You took something from the pegasus that came here a couple days ago. I’m here to take it back.”
Ironshod leaned back. “That item was freely given. And either way, the pegasus is gone.” He swiped the air dismissively. “Dead, most likely.”
“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” she said.
He shrugged and spread his hooves. “Free shelter, plentiful water, untainted food? She lived more comfortably than any other pony in the Wasteland. No, I can’t say I’m beside myself over a Stable pony’s first experience with hardship.”
Fiona nodded slowly at the floor, feeling a tickle of anger pressing behind her mask of calm. She blew out a calming breath and regarded him with the same predatory stare that she used on stallions who were especially stubborn about parting with their caps. “Have you ever listened to my broadcast?”
The question made him hesitate. “Once or twice,” he admitted.
“Been to any bars this week?”
He frowned impatiently. “Get to the point.”
She stood and ruffled her wings, subtly advertising her size without being too overt about it. Ironshod watched her in silence as she stepped around his desk and lifted one of the books off the shelves behind him. Centuries of neglect had worn the title off the cover, and the pages had fused together into a brittle brick of paper. Ironshod visibly relaxed when she set it back on the shelf.
“Don’t take this as a threat,” she said, and turned to face him. Sitting as he was, she towered over him. “It’s more of a warning. You and I both know that I have a certain amount of influence on the Bluff, and that’s because the ponies here know they can trust me. For the last several days my show’s gone on a bit of a tangent. Cider’s death was the first real bit of good news I’ve gotten to report on in months. It’s no secret that he victimized the ponies here. A lot of them. Ponies that your Rangers were supposed to be protecting.”
Ironshod stiffened. “The Steel Rangers are not responsible for-”
Fiona snapped her fingers at pointed squarely at his nose. “Shut up. I’m not done.”
He eyed the razor sharp talon hovering inches from his muzzle and raised his hooves, surrendering the argument. She dropped her hand to the floor and collected herself.
“My point is, the Bluff hated Cider even more than they hate the Enclave. Once word gets out that Aurora Pinfeathers was the pony who killed him - and it will get out - she’s going to have half the town fighting the other just for the chance to thank her.”
Ironshod stared up at her, unimpressed. “And you think they’re going to be angry at me for taking her Pip-Buck. Fiona, if I had a cap for every pony in the Bluff that didn’t care for my decisions, I could retire right now.”
She smiled at him the same way she smiled at a plate of iguana bits. “I’m surprised, Ironshod. I always had you pegged for a big picture kind of stallion.”
He blinked confusion.
“Here’s how I see this playing out.” She stepped toward him, her shadow sliding over his lap until she saw the flash of discomfort in his eyes. It was exactly the reaction she wanted. “I’m going to fly back to my cramped little tower and host a special daylight broadcast. I’m going to tell the Bluff that the pegasus you had detained was the one who killed Cider, and that she was forced to fly alone to his bitch sister’s base of operations to save the life of an innocent unicorn. A unicorn whose bounty was a lie that your Rangers allowed to be advertised without so much as questioning its motives.
“And once her heroic story wraps itself nice and tight around my dear listeners’ hearts, I’m going to tell them how Paladin Ironshod stripped that naive Stable pony of her Pip-Buck, confiscated her weapons and supplies, and sent her to face Cider’s sister in her place of power. Naked, afraid and alone. Because the best outcome for you was for Aurora Pinfeathers to die.”
Ironshod didn’t move. “That’s not... entirely true.”
“It’s true enough.” She leaned down and nudged her cheek against his until her beak was nestled against his ear. She had been here before. Judging by the sharp uptick in his breathing, he remembered too. “You have a choice. Give me the Pip-Buck and this story goes away. Your reputation will be safe. You’ll probably even keep your job.”
She slid back just enough to look Ironshod in the eye, her voice dripping with threat. “Or you do nothing, and I burn your house down around you.”
It took a beat for him to yank himself back to reality where Fiona’s threat lay bare for him to see. His face contorted with disgust as he shoved the chair out from under him and took a wide step away from her. “You manipulative bitch.”
Fiona chuckled. “I’m honest about who I am. What’s your excuse?”
She watched him as he stood in place, his face a battlefield of rage and embarrassment. His horn lit and for a brief moment Fiona worried he was about to make her kill him. Unicorn magic was potent stuff and it could hurt like a son of a bitch, but growing up in Griffinstone she knew how to use her claws with deadly efficiency. She didn’t want to kill him, but she would if she had to.
Ironshod was too wrapped in his own anger to notice her hind legs widen in preparation to lunge. He pulled a set of keys out of his uniform’s pocket and jabbed a tarnished nub into the bottom drawer of his desk. He yanked the drawer open hard enough to send the contents tumbling against the front end, including a bulky device adorned with black knobs, chipped brown paint and a filthy monitor. He snatched it up in his magic and tossed it hard at Fiona.
She caught it and promptly turned it over in her hands until she found the words PIP-BUCK 2000 MK II stamped on the cuff. If it was a fake, she really couldn’t be blamed for not knowing the difference.
“Take the damn thing,” he spat. “I already have what I need from it.”
 “Sounds like we’re both happy, then. You have a good day, Ironshod.” Her task complete, she pressed the Pip-Buck under her wing where it would stay safe and walked back to the door.
As it slid open, Ironshod spoke. “Do you know why it is you’re always alone up there?”
She stopped halfway through the doorway. Several ponies were loitering outside their offices now, their eyes bearing down on her.
“It’s the same reason you charge for your friendship,” he said loudly enough for his venom to carry out into the hall. “Nobody wants to be seen with a whore they’re not paying for.”
She closed her eyes and took a slow breath. It wasn’t the first time she’d suffered insults on her way out someone’s door. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a knowing smile. “You were always my favorite customer, Ironshod. No one else has the courtesy to pay for an hour and stick to the five minutes they need quite like you.”
Somewhere in the hallway, someone broke into laughter.
Fiona thumped the end of her tail against the door switch and adjusted the Pip-Buck under her wing. “See you around, quickshot.”
The door slid shut with a firm clunk, silencing Ironshod before the profanities could spill into the corridor.









“Holy goddesses,” Aurora groaned as another powerful yawn rolled through her. She hadn’t realized how badly worn down she was until they stepped into the elevator and waited for it to descend.
Ginger muttered her own curse as she caught the same bug. The yawn shrank her mild groan into a high squeak that drew a snort from Latch. She shot him an indignant look and he carefully stared forward, but not before allowing a smirk to crease his lip.
“How long have you two been up?” he asked.
Aurora looked at Ginger and tried to do the mental math. “I got a couple hours in a day and a half ago. I think.”
Ginger nodded with weary agreement.
The elevator ground to a stop seven levels down. The gentle shift in gravity tugged at the compass still dangling around Aurora’s neck. “Oh, shit,” she muttered, and lifted the strap over her head with a wing. “I forgot about this.”
She held it out and Latch picked it out of the air with a hoof. He slipped it over his head and flipped the casing open to watch the needle spin. “I was wondering if you were going to notice,” he said.
“Thanks for lending it to me. I owe you one.”
“I’m glad somebody thinks so,” he said. “Ironshod has me on door duty for the next month because of it.”
“Same pay?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Less work?”
He smiled. “Yep.”
“I take it back. We’re even.”
Latch chuckled dully and held the door for them. They piled out, drawing curious looks from a pair of scribes loitering in the empty corridor. When they caught sight of him, they trotted away, trying their best to look busy.
He led them down the hall toward a door flanked by a pair of Rangers. Aurora eyed them as they approached. The last guarded door she walked through ended with her having her Pip-Buck stolen. This looked a lot like that door, except for the yellowed placard on the wall that read PERMACULTURE 14. She blinked and looked at the door across the hall. It bore an identical sign, numbered one higher. She knew where she was.
“You’re keeping him in the gardens?” she asked.
Latch frowned. “No,” he said, indicating the sign. “We’re keeping him here in Permaculture. He requested it.”
She shook her head, trying to ignore her sudden homesickness. “We call it the gardens. My dad works here. There. Sorry.”
Latch nodded as if he understood and quietly dismissed the Rangers at the door. As the stallions departed, he pressed the switch on the wall and the door lifted away.
She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see. Back home, the gardens were vibrant green oases that ponies often visited just to get a scent of what they all imagined clean are to smell like. Freshly turned soil, rich with the robust odor of compost was the clearest memory she kept of them. She had watched her father’s gardens grow through every stage of life, from sprout to harvest, and was guilty as any pony of eating directly from the vine. There was nothing like it in the world.
The door thumped open and her breath caught in her throat.
The gardens of Stable 6 were dead.
“Aurora, are you alright?”
Ginger’s words didn’t register. She took a hesitant step forward, and then another. Where rows and rows of healthy crops should have been hanging from trellises, empty strips of desiccated soil lay barren in their troughs. Flecks of grey rubber hose lay in some of the plots where suspended irrigation lines had been left to crack and rot. The air smelled like dust. Like nothing.
She had known told the gardens wouldn’t be here. That the seeds given to the first residents had been sterilized, the reason lost to time, dooming their first harvest to be their last. The reality of it - seeing the source of a Stable’s collapse for herself - weighed more than she was prepared to carry.
Aurora sat down in front of the first row and gently pressed her hoof into the topsoil. It was so dense it may as well have been stone. A chip popped loose and her hoof ground the rest into powder. Nothing could grow here. Nothing was ever supposed to. Her vision blurred.
“You know, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
A charred, perforated hoof appeared in front of her. In it, a damp strip of deep pink litmus paper. Too acidic, her father’s voice chided. She blinked at the paper and looked up at the pony holding it. Roach sat next to her, his craggy face bent with a sympathetic smile. “Good to have you back, kiddo.”
Days of exhaustion, worry and guilt burst in her chest like a dam. Aurora threw her hooves around Roach and squeezed him hard enough to make him cough. She buried her face in his cracked shoulder and rambled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“Hey, woah, you’re alright!” he chuckled, wrapping his legs under her wings. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
She shook her head, her ears flat. “If I hadn’t flown down that fucking hill we wouldn’t have gotten shot at and you wouldn’t have had to raise that wall. I fucked up and made you poison us and now we’re stuck here and…” Her words hitched into a racking sob that shook her chest like a physical blow. She was too tired to fight back the tears. Roach held her, rubbing her back as she let the torrent run through her. 
It was some time until she could speak clearly. She swallowed the muck that had gathered in her throat and let go of Roach so she could wipe her face. A soft glow pulled her ragged mane away from her eyes and she realized Ginger had joined them. There was mist in Ginger’s eyes, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
Aurora felt the emotion rising in her chest again but managed to beat it down. She didn’t deserve the sympathy. Least of all Ginger’s. “I nearly got you killed,” she whispered. She looked at Roach and swallowed. “I almost got both of you killed.”
Ginger set a hoof on her knee. “We’ve been over this, Aurora. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
She tried to accept the truth of it, but her heart wouldn’t let her off the hook just yet. She looked back at the dead gardens and shuddered. “This is different. If I get us killed, it’s not just you and Roach and me. My Stable…” she hesitated, afraid to say the words.
“Aurora, no.” Ginger gathered Aurora’s hoof into hers and fixed her with a stare. “You can’t keep putting the world on your shoulders like this. That’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to the ponies who are depending on us. You’re going to make mistakes. I’m going to make mistakes. Roach is definitely going to make a lot of mistakes.”
Roach snorted, and Aurora felt a smile bending her lips to spite her misery.
Ginger gave her hoof a gentle squeeze. “Everyone in the Wasteland screws up, but the best of us get back up and keep trying. You saved my life with a deathclaw. You went out of your way to help a pegasus that nobody would have faulted you for leaving behind. You’re good, Aurora. I can’t think of better hooves for your Stable to be in than yours.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and offered Ginger a thin smile. Roach gave her room to wipe her face with the joint of her wing. “Sorry,” she said, wincing at yet another apology. “It’s a lot. You know?”
“It is,” Ginger nodded. “Just don’t forget that you’re not alone, alright?”
Aurora let herself smile a little more. “Thanks for the kick in the ass. Goddesses, I’m a mess today.”
She sniffed and wriggled her nose until she could breathe clear again. She shook her head and looked at the dirt, spotting the thin strip of pink paper lying in the soil. She pinched it between two primaries and offered it to Roach. “How long have they had you down here?”
Roach took the nib of litmus and helped Aurora to her hooves. “Couldn’t say, without a clock to tell the time. They needed someplace to put me so I suggested bringing me somewhere I could be useful.” He glanced at the dirt patches and shrugged. “Not that I got very far.”
Aurora followed his gaze to a recessed nook at the back of the room. It was strange being able to see the utility sink this far away, but there it was. The same square basin her father used to wash his testing equipment in. To the right of it was a black storage cabinet with one door ajar. The soil nearest the alcove was mounded onto the walkway from where Roach had been working.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Ginger asked.
Roach laughed. “I’ll have you know that I was a certified master gardener before the bombs dropped. It’s how I got selected for residency in the first place. I might not have gotten in, but I haven’t forgotten much either.”
Aurora glanced at Ginger, who exchanged bewildered expressions with her. She didn’t know what separated a gardener from a certified master gardener, but there was a note of pride in Roach’s voice that she wasn’t about to spoil.
“I told the guards all they really need is some lime and nitrogen fertilizer to get things going again. It’s been a couple hundred years but I wrote down the ratios for them. Best case scenario, they might be able to get some wild vegetables growing down here. Worst case, they have to flush out the soil and try again.”
Aurora glanced at the rotted irrigation lines. “They’ll need to replace all of that,” she said. “The filters might still be good if the Stable only got one crop in. Odds are any of the water in the cisterns would be septic by now unless the Rangers have been running the taps. I don’t know why they wouldn’t.”
It was all hypothetical, but it felt good to drag herself free of her doubts with something she knew she was good at. It felt even better to share it with a pony who knew what she was talking about. She had a feeling that Roach had steered her down this tract on purpose, and she was surprised at how much she appreciated it. Ever since leaving Stable 10, self doubt had plagued her every step of the way. Ginger was right. She needed to stop worrying about what she might break and start focusing on what she could fix.
“So, I have to ask,” Latch interrupted. Now that the room was safe to enter, he’d ventured back inside, his curiosity piqued. “All this stuff about crops and fixing the water. Are you two being serious, or is this all just wishful thinking?”
Aurora looked over her shoulder and then back to Roach. 
He shrugged, then nodded. “The infrastructure’s here. Given enough time and resources, there’s really no reason why someone couldn’t make some of these plots viable again.”
Latch approached the nearest trough and lifted a flake of dry soil in his hoof. “Then why hasn’t anyone done it yet?”
“Well,” Roach said as gently as he could, “a lot of knowledge was lost when the bombs dropped, and those of us who remember the old world aren’t exactly held in the highest regard.”
Latch let the dirt trickle out of his hoof and watched the dust spread. He offered a noncommittal, “Hm.”
Aurora stiffened her shoulders as a yawn sifted through her, then shouldered Ginger as it snuck up her jaw too. She had been meaning to ask about the shacks that lined the slope of Blinder’s Bluff, and how the majority of them were clearly built from the remains of larger structures. She felt like she had her answer now.
The infrastructure was all there. Broken, scattered and in some cases destroyed… but there. The ponies who knew how to repair it were either dead or unwilling to try. She couldn’t blame them. In a world where one deathclaw or the wrong group of raiders could tear down a year’s work in less than a day, why bother when it was safer to make do with what was lying around?
“I’ll make you a deal,” Roach said. “If I can trust that your people won’t throw me in another cage, when we’re done helping Aurora I’ll stop back here and see if I can’t help you get something growing.”
Latch looked at Roach. “I think you’ll find more ponies here willing to help than hinder if it means they’ll have a supply of fresh ruffage. My wife would kill for fresh potatoes.”
“It’s a start,” he agreed. “If you can get me some more paper and something to write with, I can make some notes on what you’ll need to repair. Aurora might be able to help with the mechanical side if… ah. Maybe you two should get some sleep first.”
Aurora realized she was being spoken to and opened her eyes. She blinked at Ginger who was in the midst of another squeaking yawn. Roach’s words slowly pieced themselves together in her head until she understood the suggestion. She nodded slowly and swung her head at Latch. “Got a place we could lie down?”
The Ranger dithered for a spell, considering the options. “The barracks on one and two are full up. You might be able to rent a couple rooms further up the bluff?”
Ginger lifted an eyebrow. “You took our bags at the gate, including our caps.”
Latch winced. “There’s a residential section on level eighteen, but nobody’s ever used them.”
“The Mechanical compartments?” Aurora asked.
He nodded. “If that’s what you call them, sure.”
“Perfect,” Aurora muttered, and trudged to the door. Ginger followed without second thought.
Latch frowned after them. “Do you need help finding it?”
Aurora shook her head as the door slid open. “I’m pretty sure I know the way.”









When the elevator doors chimed open, it felt eerily like she was walking into an abandoned version of Stable 10. The murals were identical copies of the ones back home, down to the little painting of a purple barn surrounded by apple trees. The colors were washed out from the constant glare of fluorescent lights, few of which managed to light when they tripped the dormant motion sensors in the corridor. She could remember being woken up in the middle of the night by maintenance ponies removing the thin wall panels once the first signs of discoloration showed, only to replace them with bright replicas printed up in Fabrication. It was strange yet deeply familiar to see them here, so far away from home.
Aurora led Ginger down the half-lit corridor past what she could only assume were identical compartments. She didn’t care. If she was going to sleep in a failed Stable in the middle of the Wasteland, she was at least going to convince herself she was in her own bed.
Five doors from the end of the hall, Aurora pressed a switch and listened to the door grind open on old bearings. She glanced at the nameplate on the wall and hoped S. SOCKETS didn’t mind the intrusion. To her amusement, the lights flickered on to reveal a compartment that was the spitting image of her own. Not a perfect copy, but close enough to make her feel comfortable. As she led Ginger inside, her eyes fell on the dusty wooden desk in the center of the far wall. A terminal waited in front of a small chair, its monitor dark and the power cable dangling behind the desk legs cracked with age.
Shoved into the left corner of the compartment was a narrow mattress on the same economy bed frame she’d grown to hate. The things had enough play in the connections that the bolts wore out faster than the mattress springs, and she resisted the urge to check them over. A white sheet and a slightly thicker Stable-Tec blue and yellow comforter lay in a heap on the floor from where the previous occupant had kicked them off. The pillows were presumably buried somewhere underneath.
She glanced at Ginger who was still taking in the utilitarian space and let her attention wander to the nook at the right side of the room. Her hopes weren’t high, but it was worth checking.
“It’s a bit small,” Ginger commented.
“One second,” Aurora said. She peeked into the small bathroom, looked dubiously at the stainless steel toilet and turned her eyes up to the showerhead on the far wall. The plastic curtain lay crumpled on the ground, succumbing to gravity and decay after two centuries of neglect. Aurora sympathised with it. She smelled as if she hadn’t showered in just as long.
“Aurora, what are you doing?” Ginger was halfway onto the tiles, standing next to a bowed shelf stacked with flat towels. She watched as Aurora fiddled with the showerhead until it faced the wall.
“I just want to test something,” she said, and turned the shower handle with her wing.
She trotted back to where Ginger was standing as the pipes started to bang. Air whined as it was forced out of the plumbing. Aurora braced herself for the unpleasant task of having to rush in and turn the water off before, or while, something ruptured.
Brackish orange water belched against the white tile wall and Ginger turned away with a noise of disgust. Aurora didn’t stop watching. The Stable had water pressure. She waited as the flow sputtered and spat a few more times before resolving into a steady stream of rust-stained water. It rushed down the tiles and into the drain at the center of the shower, the discoloration swirling in clearer and clearer arcs.
“Holy shit!” Aurora laughed.
Ginger turned around, her face twisted with apprehension. But instead of seeing a nightmare fountain of tainted water, they both watched as a steady stream of cold, clean water rushed out of the pipes.
“That’s not possible,” Ginger said cautiously. She stepped forward and tipped her hoof into the shallow whirlpool and watched as a thin trail of grime swirled off of it.
“I mean, of course it is,” Aurora said. “The Stable’s potable water gets pushed through a whole mess of filters, and this place barely had enough time to go through the originals. Even if the cisterns have gone scummy, all of that junk isn’t making it to this end of the plumbing.”
Ginger lifted a globe of water in her magic and held it to her muzzle. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”
Aurora chuckled. “It’s not supposed to. Here, let me try something.”
She nudged the crumpled curtain aside and approached a yellowed bubble of flexible plastic built into the tile. Behind it, a white push-button marked HEAT stared back at her. She pressed it, cracking the ancient protective layer in the process. Then she waited.
The pipe thudded again and the water flow slowed briefly before gradually building back up again. A thin fog of steam began to climb the tiles.
“Yes.” She stepped onto the wet tiles and twisted the showerhead with her feathers. Warm water - clean water - soaked into her mane and ran down her neck. She dipped her head low and groaned as the heat sank into the sore muscles of her wings.
“Budge over,” Ginger said, prodding her ribs until she relented and made room. “Luna’s grace, that’s good.”
“Mmhm.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder as days worth of grime fell away one layer at a time. Aurora checked the recessed shelf for soap and sighed when it came up empty, doubtlessly pilfered by the first Rangers to discover the abandoned Stable generations ago. She had to scrub at her shoulder with the flat of her hoof to loosen the flakes of blood that stubbornly clung to her coat. They flowed down her foreleg little by little until all that remained was a roughly star-shaped patch of fresh, pink skin.
Next to her, Ginger’s horn took on a gentle glow as she picked up spheres of water and slid them through her mane like a comb. The painstakingly blended makeup that masked her cutie marks swirled off her hind legs like mud until there was nothing left.
As Aurora worked her hoof against the old grease stain in her mane, she eyed the water trapped in Ginger’s magic and smirked. “That’s cheating.”
“Nonsense. I don’t have wings, you don’t have a horn. That’s as fair as it gets.” She smiled and saw the dark streak Aurora was trying to work out. “Hold still.”
Copper light lifted the mop of her mane, and Aurora watched with nervous fascination as Ginger threaded warm water over the stripe of machine grease. She held it there for several seconds, her eyes narrowed, and soon bits of grease were floating freely inside the globe. It slid down the length of her mane with a single motion, taking the weeks-old blemish with it.
Aurora watched the flecks splash against the tile floor and migrate toward the drain while Ginger tucked her mane behind her ear. “How did you do that?”
Ginger shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. I don’t doubt it has something to do with the injections.” She held a sphere of water between them and fixed it in her gaze. A ribbon of liquid, nearly as thin as a soap bubble, peeled out of the globule and silently weaved through the air. Aurora’s mouth hung open in a wide smile as she watched the display. The translucent ribbon slipped through the air like something alive, weaving between their hooves and up through the spray. It was a taste of old magic, something unseen since the war. 
She looked at Ginger, the unicorn’s eyes awash with joy and new confidence as she formed and weaved the water into beautiful designs around them. The liquid ribbon slid between them, glowing in Ginger’s magic as she urged it along. Aurora felt her heart beating in her throat. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking. She didn’t try to understand it. She only knew, in that moment, what she wanted.
She leaned into Ginger and kissed her.
The ribbon broke apart and rained down around them.
When she pulled away, a flush of embarrassment crept up her neck. Ginger stood motionless, her eyes staring, her horn darkened. Aurora realized with growing dread that this was a mistake. They barely knew each other. Why did she just do that? Why in Celestia’s name were they sharing…
“Why did you stop?” Ginger asked.
Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but the words evaporated as Ginger smiled and brought their lips firmly back together. Bliss, confusion and a different warmth exploded within Aurora. She drew her feathers around the back of Ginger’s neck and found herself being pressed backward with the same eagerness. In the back of her mind, she remembered that neither of them had closed the door.
It can wait, she thought.
She braced her wings against the wall for balance, not wanting to break contact. Barely caring about breathing. Her feathers, being what they were, held onto the slick surface like oil on water. Ginger broke for air first, her eyes hungry, and wrapped a leg around her neck. The shift in weight sent her wings skidding out across the tile wall and physics took over. Her hooves promptly squeaked out from under her and suddenly the two mares found themselves in a graceless tangle of legs and feathers on the wet tile floor.
Ginger, her face draped in a sopping veil of feathers, began to laugh. It was a high, uncontained laughter that left her pressing her forehead into Aurora’s chest as she shook with it. Aurora covered her eyes with her foreleg and chuckled in spite of herself while warm water pooled lazily around them.








October 13th, 1075

On a windy afternoon, perched at the edge of the grand platform leaning over the dizzying cliffside view behind Canterlot Castle, Zecora’s main concern was keeping Twilight Sparkle’s mane out of her mouth.
	The two stood beside one another in front of the same chariot that had ferried Twilight into Ponyville some twenty years prior. There was an unspoken symbolism in having Zecora ride the same chariot on her first trip to the Vhannan homeland since accepting the role of ambassador between the two bitter enemies. Fluttershy had insisted it be made available so as to reinforce Zecora’s diplomatic intentions. She wasn’t going to Vhanna as a spy or to make threats. With any luck, she was going there to begin healing a long-festering wound.
A gust of wind swept across the terrace and slapped Twilight’s mane across Zecora’s face. Flashbulbs and shutters worked vigorously to capture the faux pas. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a slow breath, letting the irritation settle back to placid calmness. It took a physical effort to keep the pleasant smile on her muzzle, but it was important that she didn’t let the press see her frustration.
Twilight, for her part, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. It had been years since she underwent the awkward growth spurt that came with accepting Celestia’s gift to become an alicorn. Even Zecora didn’t know how that elixer worked, though she understood the expectation it came with. Twilight had too, but it didn’t stop her from becoming the first and only alicorn to reject the title of princess. It hadn’t gone over well with the population at large, but she believed her deeds as the Element of Magic had given her some leeway in deciding her own destiny. Whatever she pictured her destiny as being, the eruption of war with Vhanna had twisted it into something much different.
Zecora had learned enough about the ministry mares in the last couple of months to know that this was one of Twilight’s migraine days. The Ministry of Image had done a masterful job of hiding the deep bags under her eyes and giving her something for the nausea, but Twilight wore her weariness in her shoulders. She was enduring this photo op not because she wanted to be here, but because her absence would become an even bigger headache down the road.
“Ambassador! What do you expect to accomplish in Vhanna that the princesses couldn’t?”
Zecora’s smile tightened as she heard Twilight exhale hard through her nose. The press pool had been given a specific list of questions to ask, and this was not one of them. Twilight squinted through the blinding wall of flashes, searching for the source of the unwanted question so she could shut it down. Zecora caught the eye of a diminutive reporter pinned between two camera wielding stallions. The mare could have been mistaken for a lost filly if it weren’t for the press badge clipped to her lapel. Twilight would eat her for dinner when she found her.
Zecora nodded acknowledgement toward the opposite side of the press pool and stifled a chuckle when Twilight’s attention bent away from the mare with the notepad.
“I do not plan to end the war in a single visit with ponies I have never met before,” she said, chastising herself a little for the lackluster rhyme. Still, a few mirthful murmurs rose from the pool. “Building peace between our peoples will take…”
She hesitated and smiled at the ground, the track of the rhyme disappearing before she could pin it down. Cameras flashed with renewed fervor, eager to capture the slip-up. Her smile widened and she looked up, her jade eyes finding the nearest camera and fixing on her reflection in the black lens. “The road to peace takes time. Tomorrow’s visit between myself and Ambassador Abyssian will focus solely on how our two nations choose to build that road.”
“What does that mean?” a second reported prodded, emboldened by Zecora’s break in her traditional cadance.
“We’re off message, Zecora,” Twilight muttered between her teeth.
“It means,” she said, ignoring the alicorn next to her, “that before we’re able to resolve the very real conflict between our two countries, we first have to establish a better understanding of one another’s needs.”
“And by that you mean ending the oil shortage.”
Zecora shook her head. “I mean the end of the war. The Vhannan ambassador and I agree that the war is forcing us to deplete all of the mapped oil deposits faster than we would have had Equestria been willing to purchase it.”
Twilight went rigid and a low murmur rolled through the press pool. Zecora lifted her chin, sensing the change in mood and wanting to fight it. She had told the truth. She knew it. Twilight knew it. The ponies clutching their cameras and notepads knew it.
Except nobody wanted to hear it.
“Ambassador Zecora, are you saying Equestria is to blame for the war?”
“What about the families who have lost loved ones on the front?”
“Are you suggesting we surrender?”
	The press pool was a ravenous beast that had scented blood. Questions and accusations blended into a whirlwind of voices. Twilight glanced to the head of her security detail and subtly shrugged her right wing. Without hesitating, a phalanx of royal guards casually approached the buzzing reporters.
	“Thank you all so much, but it looks like we’re out of time,” Twilight said, not that anyone was listening to her. “The Ministry of Morale will be providing a light lunch inside the castle where we will be issuing press badges for Rarity’s press conference next week. We hope to see all of you there.”
	Zecora watched as the press pool was herded away toward the castle, unanswered questions all but being shouted over the gentle pressure of the royal guards. She knew that little if any of what she’d said would make the papers. Not if they didn’t want to be blacklisted from future ministry press events. 
When they were alone, Twilight turned on her. “What the fuck was that?”
Zecora’s heart skipped a beat. She’d known Twilight for a long time, but staring down the barrel of an angry alicorn wasn’t something she thought she’d ever get used to. “It was the truth, Twilight. It helps to speak it once in a while.”
“Don’t…” Twilight said, shaking her head at the picturesque sky above. “Just don’t. You are an ambassador. Not one of Pinkie’s self-help books.”
Zecora’s expression hardened. “That’s unfair.”
“Unfair?” Twilight jabbed a wing over the edge of the balcony, toward the west. “What’s unfair is what they’re doing to us on the battlefield! What’s unfair are zebras forcing our brothers and sisters into trenches so they can throw grenades packed with blindweed in after them! They don’t need any more help killing us, so stop giving it to them by telling the fucking press that it’s our fault!”
Twilight’s feathers fluttered in the wind as silence fell onto the terrace. After a moment she realized she was still pointing and self-consciously folded it back to her side. Zecora clenched her jaw. She could feel her heart beating in her throat and willed herself to calm down, even when every fiber of her body wanted to reach out and slap Twilight across the mouth.
She swallowed, trying to work some of the dryness out of her throat before she spoke. “I was not saying you were being unfair to me. I was referring to you making light of Pinkie Pie struggling with the deaths of her closest friends. You know better, Twilight.”
Twilight stared at her for a long time with her jaw set, but her eyes had taken on a thin sheen. Then she turned away, walked to the railing and sat behind it. The fire in her had been doused. “Pinkie can take care of herself,” she said.
Zecora sighed and sat down next to her. “Pinkie is taking care of herself with mentats and seclusion. I worry about her. You should be too.”
“I do worry,” she said. She sniffed and scrubbed her foreleg against her eyes before a tear had a chance to fall. She cleared her throat and said, “But this war is bigger than her or me. It’s bigger than you, Zecora. If we fall behind, we’ll be defenseless. We can’t afford that.”
Zecora shook her head. She thought she’d been getting through to her. “That’s what they’re saying right now, too,” she said quietly. “We can’t keep doing this. I don’t want Teak to inherit this war.”
“Who’s Teak?”
“My daughter, Twilight. You met her a month ago.”
The alicorn half-shrugged. It wasn’t meant to sting, but it did. Zecora stood up and turned toward the castle. “I’m going to get my bags. Are you going to be okay on your own out here?”
Twilight stared toward the horizon. “I’ll be fine.”