//------------------------------//
// Chapter 113 
// Story: Unshaken 
// by The 24th Pegasus 
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Kestrel watched from the shade of her lean-to as Starlight Glimmer and the rest of her band of revolutionaries gathered up their things and slowly made their way toward the treeline, Tumbleweed accompanying them at least partway to send them off. She had an ill feeling in her gut as she watched them go, because she knew she couldn’t do anything for them if the Law or the Pinks happened to catch up to them. Starlight and her companions were likely on the same wanted list as the Gang, though hopefully the Gang’s notoriety eclipsed theirs. Hoofston wasn’t exactly a safe place for any of them anymore—not that it really had been in the first place, at any rate. But with the Pinks enraged, the Conglomerates humiliated, and the police force about to call in reinforcements through bounty hunters, there were very few places in Equestria more dangerous for the Gang than the city of Hoofston.

Hopefully they could set up their ransom and collect their payday before the Law collected their heads. They needed the money and they needed to leave the city, and the ransom was likely their best way to get money fast enough to escape before the Law clamped down on them. And after all the trouble they caused, and in a major city to boot, Kestrel was doubtful that hopping to the next town over was going to do all that much to shake the Law off their tails.

But, at the very least, those concerns were in the future, for the Kestrel of tomorrow to worry about. As things stood, the Gang would be safe by the lake for the time being. Maybe not indefinitely, but long enough to get the ransom done. So long as Starlight and her companions weren’t caught and didn’t squeal, at least. Kestrel doubted very much that Starlight would surrender them to the Pinks, but the rest of her companions? She never got the chance to get a good take on them. Would they be as resilient to interrogation if they got caught as their leader? She could only hope so.

And that thought sent her mind wandering back to the conversation she’d held with those two Pinks before the Conference, Bon Bon and Lyra. They’d tried to convince her to sell out the Gang in exchange for a pardon for her crimes and the promise that she’d be allowed to live out a quiet life somewhere in Equestria. Kestrel was far too loyal to the Gang to consider taking up such an offer like that, but would the others be the same? Would they refuse to sell out the Gang if they’d been backed into a corner and the only way to escape the gallows was to betray everypony they knew? Tumbleweed, Wanderer, and Miss Irons, Kestrel knew certainly wouldn’t. Snapshot hardly had anything to say, and Kestrel doubted the Pinks could get more out of him than the Gang ever could. Roughshod was too stubborn to surrender to the Law—he hated the Law more than anypony else in the Gang—and Silver Wings was Silver Wings. The young pegasus saw Kestrel as a sister, as had been made obviously and painfully clear from their past interactions, and she generally enjoyed the company of the rest of the Gang, thinking that the life of an outlaw was a fun escape from the life of being the daughter of plantation aristocracy. But would she crack if the Pinks got ahold of her? Would she blurt out what she knew if Bon Bon and Lyra locked her in a room and made her intimately acquainted with a baseball bat?

That thought made Kestrel deeply uncomfortable, not just because of imagining a pony she cared so deeply for subjected to that kind of cruelty, but because she wasn’t sure if Silver was tough enough to take what she knew to the grave if she was caught. And she had no doubt that Trixie would buckle over like a two-legged table if the Pinks got their hooves on her. The magician may have been baptized by fire with the distraction job in Hoofston, taking her first gunshot (even if it was a harmless graze), but one or two jobs did not make a hardened outlaw. Kestrel doubted that Trixie had the right background to become one, as she’d been reluctant since day one, but she didn’t sell out the Gang in Hoofston, and she hadn’t left them yet. Those were points in her favor at least, few as they were. Kestrel just hoped that they got through these next few months before Trixie hit her breaking point.

Sighing, Kestrel forced herself out of the shade of her lean-to and stood up, stretching out her legs and her wings. She hated the quiet that came after a big job, when all the shooting and shouting stopped and the only thing that was left was an uncomfortable quiet. At least when she was in the middle of a job, fighting for her life, the only thing she had to worry about was the here and now, who was on the other end of her sights and who had her in theirs. But once all that stopped, the dreadful weight of what the future held for her and everypony she held dear to her loomed over her and pressed down on her shoulders. She hated it more than anything else.

Pulling out a cigarette, Kestrel lit it with a match struck off of her horseshoe and placed it between her lips. Nicotine and conversation would do her wonders, she supposed. And with everypony slowly recovering from last night’s drinking and the excitement of the job, she figured there’d be plenty of ponies around who she could share some time and words with. Everypony probably had their own thoughts about what had happened yesterday. It might be worth talking to somepony to see what they had to say before the Gang got ready to spring back into action again.

With that in mind, Kestrel took a few quick drags on her cigarette, looked around camp, and found somepony to go share some words with.

1.     Tumbleweed

2.     Roughshod

3.     Silver Wings

4.     Snapshot

5.     Wanderer

6.     Miss Irons

7.     Trixie