The most important rule for the bar shone in neon right where everypony could see it.
No drugs or megaspells allowed inside.
It’s a pretty reasonable thing to ask but you’d be amazed how often I have to throw ponies out of the bar for ignoring the sign. The drugs part, I mean. I haven’t met anypony trying to sneak a balefire bomb inside yet, but if I did, I’d ask them politely but firmly to leave.
So I work, or worked, at a place called the Dirty Nimbus, in the bad part of the Cirrus Valley. The town had been a pre-war city and mostly gotten eaten up by the clouds when the Sustainable Pegasus Project had come online. It hung just a little below the new 'natural' cloud level, and so when the sky closed up to protect us, it ended up as a sort of rift valley between two solid walls of cloud. It was a little bit of a ghost town these days, because it wasn't really in a convenient place to trade.
The bar was a fun place to hang out even if you were on the clock -- the boss didn’t mind me getting a few drinks as long as I tipped the bartender for their trouble, sometimes I'd get to punch a pony out without getting in trouble, and I got paid to spend time away from home. If I didn’t have the job I’d probably end up there anyway just to stay out of Dad’s mane.
That’s not to say I was complacent. I had hopes and dreams. And I was willing to fight for them.
“Come on, Sloe,” I begged. “I can totally mix drinks.”
The owner and sometimes-bartender sighed. He was an older stallion, the kind who ponies opened up to. He was also the kind who suddenly became deaf when somepony with a warrant came around asking questions.
“I’m not going to put you behind the bar,” he said. “You’re a bouncer, Chamomile. You’re good at bouncing. You can bounce ponies so hard they practically fall through the floor.”
“That only happened once and I apologized,” I reminded him.
“Did you fix the floor?” he asked.
I looked at the wispy-edged hole that was pony-sized and would still be pony-shaped if Sloe Gin had spent enough to make his floors a little more solid. He’d spent that money on a jukebox instead. I thought it was worth it. Right now it was playing a song by Fire Bomber. It was one of those rock/pop songs that was just catchy and annoying enough that somepony might be willing to pay just to change it to something else.
“I put a sign next to it so ponies wouldn’t fall in,” I offered. The sign hadn’t helped much. Sloe’s bathtub gin was famous for making ponies feel like they might fall off the world in literally any direction. Providing an actual hole for them to tumble into hadn’t done anypony any help.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Fill it in good enough that ponies won’t fall into the basement where I have to drag them out by hoof and I’ll think about letting you mix a few drinks tonight.”
I perked up at that and nodded. “I can totally do that!” It wouldn’t be a problem at all. I bolted out the door before he changed his mind, and stumbled into the wall a little bit. Lightly. Part of it broke off and started floating away. I grabbed it and shoved it back into place, spitting on the break because that was supposed to help it stay, right?
“Patch that up too!” Sloe yelled at my back.
One of the good things about the bar being in sort of a slum was how everything was falling apart. That sounds like a bad thing and is probably why stuff broke when I ran into it but there were some good sides to it, too.
Like one good thing, I could just go across the street, make sure nopony was looking, and pry a cloud panel off the wall of a building in slightly better condition. Cumulonimbulated cloud panels were great for a shed, patching a hole when you didn’t have money for real repairs, or you lived in a slum with no real building codes and used them for literally everything.
I ran away with it, pretended I didn’t hear things sliding and starting to crash down behind me, and got back to the bar, tossing the panel over the hole and stomping it into place.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“You just stole that from somewhere,” Sloe said.
“You don’t know that.”
“You trotted out and came back two minutes later with it. Unless somepony opened up a home improvement shop down the bucking block and they’re gonna gentrify this into one of them nice neighborhoods where cloud coffee costs half a day’s pay and they shoot you for graffiti, you just grabbed that and ran.”
“Okay so I found it. So what?”
“You found it.”
“If you keep asking questions I’m gonna have to lie at some point,” I warned him. “How about you agree it covers the hole, and I agree not to tell you where I got it from?”
“Cammy, if somepony comes in here looking for you…”
“Then I’ll talk to them gently and explain the situation,” I said. I even meant it. “If they’re real angry I’ll buy them a drink to calm them down. That always works, right?”
He gave me a look. “Can you afford to buy them a drink?”
“I’d be able to if you paid me more.”
“Alright, you get that point.” He sighed. “You can mix drinks until it’s busy. I won’t have time to foalsit you after that and I’ll need you working the floor.”
I hopped behind the bar, knocked over a bottle, and caught it before it spilled.
“So what’s first?” I asked.
The front door burst open, the patch I’d put on the doorframe breaking off again. I really wasn’t good at cloudshaping. My special talent was more one of those metaphorical ones where the flowers on my flank weren’t literally about me being good at growing plants.
“Where’s the bucking mule that stole my bucking wall?!” the stallion in the doorway demanded. He was almost as big as I was, so he probably thought he was scary. I sized up the pale lavender stallion and decided I wasn't impressed. He didn't look like a fighter.
Dad said my special talent was getting into hot water. The stallion glaring at me like I’d stolen part of his building was already looking pretty heated.
Sloe looked at me.
I had to think quickly. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
“What happened to talking to them and explaining the situation?” Sloe asked.
“I didn’t think I’d actually have to do it!”
The angry stallion snorted and stormed up to the bar. “I want my bucking wall back!”
“How about a drink?” I offered. “On the house.”
“It’s a start,” he growled.
I winked at him. “Watch this. You’ll be impressed.”
I pulled out a bottle of rye and dropped a few ice cubes into a glass. A shot of rye went in, a splash of lemon juice and bitters, then I topped it off with ginger soda. A quick stir, and I pushed the drink towards him.
“What do you think?”
He took a sip and grimaced.
“This is a bucking terrible drink,” he said. “What did you do, water the booze down with your bathwater?”
“Hey! Our booze ain’t watered down!” Sloe snapped.
“Then the pony who mixed it must be the worst bartender in town!”
“Say that to my face!” I yelled.
“I did!” the lavender stallion shouted back.
“Cammy, be smart,” Sloe warned. “We don’t need a fight in here. Use your head.”
He was right. I needed to use my head.
I grabbed the purple stallion and pulled him closer, then slammed my forehead into his. Headbutts hurt, but they hurt a lot less when you’re ready for it. He dropped onto the bar, smacking his chin on the way to the floor.
“I used my head,” I said.
Sloe groaned. I took the glass and sipped the drink I’d mixed for the stallion. There was no way it was--
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Sloe asked.
“It’s fine!” I claimed.
“I saw the face you made.”
“Okay, yeah, it’s not great,” I admitted. “I thought it would be better.”
There was slow clapping from the entrance. A short yellow pegasus was there, grinning at me. I couldn’t see her eyes through the black visor sunglasses she was wearing, so I wasn’t quite sure if she was laughing at me or just with me. She walked in wagging her hips in the way a pony does when they're incredibly self-satisfied, so I got a good look at her cutie mark. It was something like a crimson fireball streaking through the sky.
“Hope he wasn’t a repeat customer,” she said. “I don’t think you’re gonna get a tip when he wakes up, though.”
“He’ll remember not to mess with me,” I said.
“Not unless he wants a headache, anyway,” the mare said. “So is this a bad time to get a drink?”
“Awful,” Sloe grumbled. “Cammy, drag him out of here and--”
“Nah, I think I want to see what she can come up with,” the mare said. “If she mixes drinks as strong as she is, I came to the right place.”
“Fine, then I’ll drag him out of here,” Sloe said. “Don’t get into any more bucking fights while I’m gone!”
“Who am I gonna fight?” I asked.
He pointed at the yellow mare.
“Oh. I promise I won’t fight her.”
“Good enough,” Sloe grumbled, stomping out the door and dragging the unconscious stallion along behind him. The mare picked up his fallen stool and sat down on it, grinning at me like she knew something I didn’t, which was a look I saw too often. I’m smart enough to know that ponies who think they’re clever will try and take advantage of me, so I had to act professional and pay attention.
“What can I get you?” I asked.
“I could go for something refreshing,” she said. “I had a long flight into town. Surprise me, but, uh, make it better than whatever drink started a fight?”
I rolled my eyes and got to work, deciding to get creative. I found a bottle of tonic water and some smooth gin that mostly just tasted like citrus.
“So you’re not from around here?” I asked. I grabbed some ice and tossed it in the glass along with a pour of the gin and some lemon juice. I crushed a sugar cube into it and stirred.
“I’m in town on business,” she said. “Recruiting, actually.”
“Are you with the military?” I asked, suddenly worried I was about to have to offer the military discount of ‘of course it’s on the house’. I topped the drink off with tonic water and slid it over to her. She took a long sip.
“That’s an okay drink,” she said. “Don’t worry, though. I’m not with the military.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
“Really? You looked a little worried. Maybe I guessed wrong. This whole part of town looked like the kind of place where ponies go when they don’t want anypony in uniform looking over their shoulder.”
I frowned. “Oh. I get it.”
“Do you?” She tilted her head.
“You’re a criminal,” I said. I shrugged. “I don’t really care. As long as you’re paying and you do the actual crime stuff somewhere else it’s not my business.”
“Crime stuff?” she asked, giggling.
I felt my cheeks burn red. I mean that’s what criminals do, right? Crime stuff? I was at a loss for words while I tried to figure out my next plan, and defaulted to standing in silence and trying to look disapproving like my dad always did when I was around.
Thankfully, the door opened before I could say anything stupid, and the pony I’d headbutted stormed in, both of his eyes starting to turn black already. And he brought two friends with him. One of them was a tub of flying lard, the other was so skinny I could just tell he was staying upright mostly because of whatever drugs he enjoyed.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you politely, but firmly, to leave,” I said.
“You wanna take this outside?” he asked. “Because I’m fine taking it outside.”
“I can’t leave until my boss gets back,” I said.
“Well he ain’t comin’ back for a while,” the lavender stallion said. “He’s busy taking a nap.” The three walked up to the bar, the skinny one hopping over it to stand behind me. He was probably delusional enough to think he was cool.
“You realize they’re threatening you, right?” the mare said.
“Yeah, but I promised I wouldn’t fight anypony,” I said.
“No, you promised specifically you wouldn’t get into a fight with me,” she reminded me.
“Oh!” I smiled. The one behind me hit me in the back and I winced at the sudden pain, kicking straight back and catching him in the chin. Teeth exploded all over the floor and he crumpled down in a heap. Before his friends could react, I jumped over the bar and into the fat stallion. Something I’d learned in a fight was to go after the one who looked the most dangerous first while you were still fresh, just in case they were as tough as they looked.
He had a cloudball bat tucked under a wing and swung it at me. I took it on the shoulder, leaning into it instead of away. He didn’t expect that, and the vibration made him lose his grip. I grabbed it from him and slammed it into his neck, because I was feeling nice and didn’t want to mess up his face too badly. He fell down clutching his throat like something was broken, and for a second I thought I’d hit him too hard, but then a barstool broke over my head and I stopped caring. My forehead busted open, blood running into my eyes.
The lavender stallion was shouting something, but the blood in my eyes stung really badly, and I wasn’t listening because he was using too many words, so I blindly grabbed for him and caught his wrist. He struggled, so I flicked my hooves and swung him like he was a wet rag, cracking him into the floor. I heard something break, and finally had a second to clear the blood from my eyes.
“Buck,” I swore. I’d put him through the exact patch of floor I’d just fixed, and now he was in the basement, groaning and nursing a clearly snapped forehoof.
“Hold still,” the mare said. “You’ve been stabbed.”
“Huh?” I asked. I didn’t even notice her come up behind me until she pulled the knife from my back and the soreness went down a few notches. “Oh.”
“You didn’t notice?” she asked.
“I thought he just punched me,” I shrugged.
“Let me find a first-aid kit,” she sighed, looking around behind the bar like we’d have something fancy like healing potions or clean bandages.
“Nah, I’ll be fine,” I said, shrugging and flexing my shoulder and wing. It didn’t feel like anything was really damaged. “I’ll just sleep it off.”
“You just got stabbed. With a knife.”
“Who hasn’t been stabbed before?” I asked.
“Most ponies haven’t been stabbed.”
“They’re not missing much,” I said. The door opened again, and my boss walked in, looking at the mess. “Uh. I can explain!”
“Chamomile,” he sighed. “You’re fired. Go home.”
“Aw…”
I kicked the door open, but carefully since this was my house and I was responsible for it.
“Dad, I’m home early!” I yelled. I looked around and didn’t immediately see him. Actually, I wasn’t sure what he did all day. I knew it was some kind of science stuff - he brought in most of his money keeping the computers around town running. He’d tried to teach me once and I found out that I was awful with computers and should never be allowed near them again.
I wandered into the back of our small home, trying not to trip over the stacks of books and stuff that Dad kept around. He loved reading, and I wasn’t all that surprised when I found him at his desk with two books open in front of him like one book at a time wasn’t good enough. He was reading one book intently and scribbling in the other.
“Dad? What are you doing?” I asked. He didn’t reply, so I trotted up and poked his shoulder. He jumped, his pen scratching against the paper.
“What--?!” he yelled, before turning to me, scowling. “What’s wrong with you?! Can’t you see I’m in the middle of some very important work?”
“You’re just reading a book,” I said.
“I’m translating a book that’s ten times older than the Enclave itself and--” He took a deep breath. “Go stand in the corner.”
“What? You can’t put me in time out! I’m not a foal!”
“The corner, Chamomile!” He pointed.
I grumbled and stepped into the corner, facing the wall and mumbling to myself and started counting quietly.
“You can tell me why you’re here after you get to a hundred,” he said.
“A hundred?! But that’s like… that’s a lot!” I protested.
“And you just earned yourself a big tall glass of starting over again at zero,” he retorted.
I groaned and started over again. It’s not as easy as it sounds to stand there like a big idiot and have to count. You can lose your place really easily just because you’re embarrassed about ponies listening to you count.
It took a few minutes, but eventually I got to a hundred.
“Now, tell me what was so important you had to interrupt me in the middle of translating a priceless manuscript,” Dad said, when he was satisfied.
I opened my mouth to tell him, and he held up a hoof.
“No, wait, don’t tell me. Let me guess - you decided to cause some kind of trouble. Not that it takes a genius to figure that out. It would be my first guess even without any evidence, but here you are with bruises and blood all over you. I bet you got into a fight in that awful little dive bar.”
“Hey, it’s not that bad!” I protested.
“I don’t want you going back there,” he said, waggling his hoof at me.
“That… probably won’t be a problem,” I mumbled.
“Why, did you set it on fire on the way out?” he asked. “I swear, you’re too much like your mother. Not in a good way, either. That mare was always looking for trouble, and she’d go out of her way to dig it up.”
Mom was sort of a touchy subject. I was surprised he was bringing it up himself, but maybe doing the translation work brought her to mind. They’d been partners. And I mean that in more than one way. They didn’t just get married, they worked together for years before that. And then Mom had ditched him to go off on some big important job or something. I wasn’t really clear on the details because Dad didn’t want to talk about it and Mom hadn’t even tried to get in touch with us since she’d left.
“I did get into a little bit of a fight,” I admitted. “But it’s not that big of a deal. I won.”
“Just because you won doesn’t mean…” Dad took a deep breath. “I swear some days I think I should have sent you with your mother. Not that I think she’d keep you under control, but at least I’d have some peace and quiet.”
I swallowed, feeling terribly guilty. I didn’t know why they’d split up, but I know they’d fought over me. I was a burden that they had to juggle, and Dad had ended up with me.
There was a knock on the door before I could figure out a way to appropriately apologize for being alive. It was the fast, hard, angry knock of authority. I knew what that meant.
“Somepony’s in trouble,” Dad said. “I wonder who it could be? Maybe it’s the pony who just got into a brawl and came running back home?”
“Tell them I’m not here!” I whispered.
“If it comes down to that or having to pay your bail, I’ll gladly lie to the authorities,” Dad said.
He sighed and walked to the front door, opening it up and revealing two ponies in armor. I tried to conceal myself behind a wall that felt too small and too thin, like they’d see right through it.
“Can I help you gentlestallions?” Dad asked.
“Are you Red Zinger?” the pony in front asked.
“I am, unfortunately,” Dad said. “Let me guess - my daughter did something stupid and you’re looking for her? I don’t want to know the details. Whatever she did, I’m sure we can find a way to make it all go away, hm? Some kind of public apology, she’ll promise not to do it again… you know how kids are. She’s barely even old enough to drink.”
The armored ponies looked at each other. They seemed more confused about what Dad was saying than anything else. I was peeking around the corner to watch but since I was remaining perfectly still, there was no way they could have seen me.
“We’re going to need you to come with us,” the armored pony said.
“Woah, woah, hold on,” Dad said, taking a step back. The soldiers took the chance to step inside, not letting him close the door on them. “Let’s just talk about this for a moment. I have no idea where my daughter is! What is it going to take, here? A hundred bits? Two hundred?”
“We’re not here for a bribe, we’re here under orders.” The lead pony nodded back to his partner, who produced a bundle of paperwork. He gave it to Dad, who started looking over it and looking increasingly nervous.
“This is… a warrant for my arrest?” he whispered. “But I haven’t done anything! I’m just an archaeologist! I fix some computers once in a while! I even pay my taxes - do you know how many ponies actually pay taxes around here? Because it’s not many! I’m a model citizen!”
“Please calm down, sir,” the soldier said. “You’re not accused of any crimes, as far as I know. We’re here because you’re…” he hesitated before he kept speaking, and I knew what that meant. He was lying. Or confused and trying to remember what somepony else had told him. It depended on if he was clever and coming up with something new or just trying to recall something old.
“You’ve been asked to assist with an inquiry that requires your expertise,” the other pony said, pointing to where it probably said exactly that on the paperwork Dad was holding. “If you cooperate, Mister Zinger, we can make this a fast and painless experience and you’ll be back here in short order.”
“And if I don’t cooperate I end up with a bullet in my head?” Dad asked. He threw the paperwork back at them, snorting with anger. “I don’t work for the military. If you want somepony who only cares about a paycheck, find my wife! She knows almost as much as I do.”
“Sir, this is an order, not a request.” The lead soldier picked up the paperwork. “It’s in your best interest to come along quietly.”
“You can either come with us on your own or we can drag you out,” the other one growled.
That first soldier, the slightly more polite one, looked up, and I gasped and ducked behind the wall. I was sure he’d seen me, but it should have been impossible - I was hiding behind a wall, and I’d only been peeking a little bit! These were clearly very highly-trained ponies. Probably some kind of special operations commandos who were used to hunting down rogue Dashites.
Dad wasn’t a Dashite, was he? I wasn’t, and he’d called them stupid idealistic idiots before, but he insulted a lot of things. It would have been the perfect cover. He loved me and called me an idiot, after all. If Dad was a Dashite it would have explained so many little things over the years. Mom had always encouraged me to go into the military and make something of myself, and Dad had hated the idea. It was why I was making ends meet by working in a bar instead of living the good life with three square meals a day and a cool uniform.
Not that I wanted to be like the jerks in the other room. I’d have been the cool kind of soldier like on the recruiting posters. There wasn’t really time to think about that right now, though. My family was in danger and I had to act.
I had to make sure Dad didn’t get banished, even if he was a Dashite or something. I steeled myself and stepped out into the doorway, taking them so totally by surprise that neither of them reacted, their helmets hiding their shock.
“Hey, leave my Dad alone!” I ordered. I held my chin high to try and maintain an aura of dominance, and hoped they didn’t notice I was sort of bruised and a little stabbed. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, so you two can just buzz off and find somepony else to bother!”
“Chamomile, this isn’t a good time to get into another fight,” Dad hissed through his teeth. He turned to the soldiers and laughed. “Ignore her, she’s doesn’t know what she’s saying. All your paperwork seems to be in order, and I don’t want to start any kind of trouble.”
I stormed up to them, glaring. Maybe if I just spooked them a little, they’d leave. “I don’t like bullies,” I said.
“Back down!” the lead pony snapped. I probably should have noticed before that moment that both of them were armed. There was a scary little high-pitched whine as energy weapons charged, and his friend pulled out an extending baton and snapped it open.
“Don’t cause trouble!” Dad snapped at me. “I’ll just go with them. Since they bothered to bring documentation, I’m sure everything will be fine. Maybe I can even convince whoever is in charge to pay me for my time.”
“I’m not just going to let them--” I started, just before I made a little mistake. I was sort of puffing myself up and trying to look bigger than usual to scare the ponies in powered armor, and that didn’t really mesh well with how much stuff was in loose piles around me. I bumped a tower of books, and it collapsed into more stuff.
The soldiers were already very intimidated by me, and the sudden motion pushed them over the edge all the way into a panic. A bolt of green plasma went right past my head and into a shelf full of old garbage, blasting it apart.
“No!” Dad gasped. “That was my collection of Sparkle-Cola bottles! Do you know how hard it is to find them in mint condition?!”
I would have sort of liked it if he was more worried about me than the bottles but it would be wrong to say I was disappointed or expected anything else. I was pretty angry at this point, and when Dad stepped in front of them to try and keep them from breaking anything else, and the soldier with the baton reacted by raising up his club, I did something a little stupid.
I shoved the pony with a plasma rifle on his battle saddle into his friend, hard enough that both of them crashed into the wall. The cloud wall broke, along with some bookshelves. And books. And some of the stuff my Dad had been collecting.
“...Oops,” I said.
“You little…” one of the guards growled as he stood up. “I tried to do this the nice way!”
I took a step back. “Oh buck.”
I don’t have the fastest reaction time -- I admit, I sort of freeze up sometimes when really crazy stuff pops up because I need a minute to figure out what’s going on. Usually it didn’t matter because I’d just shrug off whatever happened in those few seconds I needed to gather my thoughts, but that wasn’t really the case when the ‘whatever happened’ was a pony with a baton - which I now noticed was sparking - was charging at me.
So, pop quiz! A pony in powered armor is charging at you. What do you do? I figured I had three choices. First, I could dodge to the left, avoiding the attack and knocking over a few books, then strike at his back as he moved past me. Second, I could grab his fetlock and break his grip on the baton, using it against him in a total reversal. Third, I could take the hit, get hit by more volts than I could count, and roll around on the ground unable to control my body while he and his friend beat me into a pulp.
In retrospect, the third option was not the right one to take.
The baton came down on my shoulder, and the impact wasn’t so bad. I’d been clubbed by ponies who really knew what they were doing, and this stallion might have been military-trained and wearing powered armor, but I think he was used to intimidation doing all the work for him, because he didn’t get a lot of muscle into that blow.
The actual bludgeoning didn’t need to be done expertly, though. He could have tapped me on the shoulder like he was trying to get my attention and it would have still worked the same. The electric shock hit me, very literally, like a bolt of lightning. My legs turned to jelly and I collapsed in a twitching heap.
Was I having a heart attack? I honestly wasn’t sure. My chest hurt, but that might have been because the soldier had moved on from the shock baton to just kicking me while I was down. They lacked technique, but more than made up for it in enthusiasm and having big, metal boots over their hooves.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough!” Dad said, a few kicks too late for me to really feel good about him trying to save me. “She’s an idiot, and she’s had more than enough, alright?”
I tried to defend myself verbally, but it just kind of came out as slurred mumbling. I probably sounded really pathetic. That might have been good, because if I’d been strong enough to stand up or say something about the soldiers and their mothers, I’d have gotten shot.
“Get moving,” one of them grumbled, shoving Dad towards the door.
“What do we do with her?” the other one asked, pointing at me.
“Throw her in the skywagon,” the leader said. “She assaulted a military officer. We’ll let somepony else figure out what to do with her.”
“Sounds good,” the pony with the baton said. “Nighty night, you bucking mule.”
The shock baton came down, and the lightning put me to sleep.