I sat on the edge of the old subway platform, my hooves hanging over the edge. I felt a little naked without the Exodus armor, even with the tracksuit on. My mind was just spinning. I couldn’t stop thinking but I couldn’t get myself to really think about anything in particular, either. I’d start thinking about one thing and I’d get interrupted by an intrusive thought pointing in another direction, and the only constant was that I felt bad about everything.
“Do you want to talk?” Grey Gloom asked. I hadn’t even heard her sitting down next to me. The dust-colored mare didn’t feel threatening, though. It was more like she was respecting my quiet and silence.
“I donno,” I mumbled eloquently.
“I heard about what happened in your mission,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You knew him better than I did. I should be apologizing to you for not saving him. I should have…” I stomped on the concrete hard enough to crack it, and that was with my normal hoof. “I should have dragged him back with me or something! I shouldn’t have just… let him do that.”
“I did know him better than you,” Grey Gloom agreed. “That’s why I’m not upset. It must have been a shock to you but… It wasn’t something sudden, to me. You’re shocked by it but it isn’t something you could change. He wanted this.”
“I didn’t like being stuck helping him die,” I grumbled.
“You did something for him none of us could,” Gloom said. “You lifted the burden of his past from his shoulders. It was crushing him.”
“He could have found something else to live for! I mean, everypony has to pick themselves up sometimes, right?”
Grey Gloom was quiet for a few moments. “All of us had to pick ourselves up after we were exiled. If it wasn’t for Unsung bringing us together, I think we’d all be dead already. Before I was branded, my cutie mark was for psychiatry. I was a counselor.”
I gave her a look, and she laughed lightly.
“I know what you’re thinking. How did I end up here? Almost every military recruit has to do a short tour on the surface. It’s so they can see how bad the wasteland is for themselves. They usually come down, shoot a few raiders, and never want to set hoof on dirt ever again. A lot of them are so traumatized by it that they need to talk to somepony.”
“Somepony like you,” I said. It wasn’t a guess.
She nodded sadly. “There were a lot of horror stories. Raiders… play with their prey. But sometimes it was a different kind of nightmare. Ponies would go down to the surface and they’d find perfectly normal farmers and merchants and ponies struggling to survive. And they’d start questioning what they were told.”
“I guess those little trips didn’t go like the officers wanted,” I chuckled.
“They’d talk to me, and I was ordered to tell them to forget it all,” Grey Gloom said. “I had to tell ponies to stop having empathy. I had to lie and make them believe those ponies weren’t worth saving. That was my job. To keep them from becoming Dashites. It just didn’t work for me, because I knew the truth behind the truth.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t regret it,” she said. “I think it’s more important to be authentic to yourself, or you might as well already be dead. Most of the ghosts here wish they’d been true to themselves in life. It’s the greatest regret. Spending decades working at a job they hate, then dying before they can enjoy what they were working for.”
She looked back over her shoulder at the Grandus.
“The spirits hovering around that thing worry me,” she whispered. “They’re angry. Wrathful. Powerful. They’re shackled to this world by something outside their control. It carries death with it in an inescapable spiral.”
“...Okay?” I said.
She nodded to where Destiny was floating, helping Klein Bottle with something. “Your ghost is different. She has regrets, but she doesn’t wallow in them. She’s trying to fix everything she did wrong. I like her.”
“Want me to set you two up on a date?” I joked.
Grey Gloom smiled and patted me on the back. “She’s not my type, but thank you for asking.”
“Chamomile, do you have a moment?” Opening asked. I turned to look at him. He and Four were standing next to the Grandus. The stallion waved me over with a wing, and I excused myself and got up from my very busy schedule of moping to go see what he wanted.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I’ve been thinking about the next part of the plan,” Opening said. “We’ve taken out the local military commander thanks to you, but that’s not enough to really drag things down into enough chaos for the Grand Admiral to show his face.”
“Have you tried asking nicely?” I asked sourly.
Opening frowned. "Come on, I know you're upset, but there's a lot at stake!"
"You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," Unsung said. We all looked up. She was standing on top of the Grandus, and if I had to guess she'd been there waiting for the right moment to make a dramatic entrance.
"Is that a joke about the Balefire Egg?" I asked. "It's not a good joke."
Unsung frowned. “I’m not going to apologize for what happened during your mission. Big Barrel had been looking for a place to die for a long time. If I didn’t give him a purpose he would have found his way to the grave by way of vodka.”
“So I’m supposed to be happy he’s dead?!” I snapped.
“No. None of us are happy about it. You didn’t know him like we did. Like I did. You can’t save everypony. All you can do is give some ponies peace, and be there for them in the end so they’re not alone.”
I huffed and kicked at the ground.
“If you aren’t feeling up to going out, it’s okay,” Opening said quietly. “I’ll still help you get back to the Enclave no matter what you decide. We can have Four deploy early and do your part.”
Now that was just playing dirty. I looked up at Four. The rail-thin unicorn was wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen her in before, a black flight suit with a metal panel over one shoulder and wires running through the fabric. She gave me a small smile, but I could tell she was terrified.
“You’re going to send Four out?” I asked.
“The Grandus Assault Armor is fully operational,” Four said. “Destiny and Klein Bottle were able to get everything working, thanks to those parts you brought!”
“Operational or not, have you ever been in a battle?” I asked.
“No,” Four said quietly. “But I know this will protect me.” She reached up to touch it with her hoof. The Grandus looked like one of the huge, black-iron steam trains I’d seen in pictures, but with an oversized helmet in front. It practically radiated invincibility and weight.
“I’m not worried about that,” I said. “Well, I mean, I am, but what I’m really scared of is… it’s easy to lose it up here.” I tapped my head. “I got lucky because I had some experience before lives were on the line. Throwing ponies out of the bar, getting stabbed a little, it sort of…” I struggled for words because I wasn’t good at words. “It gave me context. If I didn’t have that, the first time I got shot at I would have had a panic attack and hidden behind something until it was all over.”
“I have some experience too,” Four said. “It’s about all I have. How to pilot this thing. How to cast a few spells on command. Simulator drill after simulator drill.” She swallowed. “And I’ve seen ponies die. Badly.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that this time,” Unsung said, a little more loudly and cheerfully than was needed. “This isn’t an assassination mission. We’re not even going to go after the Enclave directly.”
“Is that so?” I raised my eyebrows.
“The one thing I dislike more than the Enclave is collaborators.” Unsung shrugged. “A lot of Enclave soldiers are decent ponies. They can be reasoned with. A lot of them would even join us if it wasn’t for the propaganda! But ponies that sell each other out for trinkets? I can’t stand that. We’ve hit the head of the local military, now we’re going to target the leader of the civilian government, the pony that sold his city to the devil and is living like a little king on the scraps the Enclave give him from their plunder.”
“I could swear you just said this wasn’t an assassination mission.”
“That’s because we’re not going to kill him. We’re going to kidnap him.” Unsung smiled. “Opening has been working on a way to get us on the air.”
“Like when the Commander was broadcasting his speech?” I asked.
"We've got some access codes that might let us get into a military transmitter," Opening said. "It'll override civilian signals."
Unsung nodded. “We’re going to get the Mayor to confess to what he did, and apologize to the whole city. Then we’ll just leave him somewhere where the crowds can find him and let them decide what to do with him.”
“You mean you want them to tear him apart for you,” I corrected.
“It’s not up to me,” Unsung said. “Maybe they’ll forgive him! All I want is for them to know the truth. You can’t deny that it’s a good cause.”
I sighed. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what Unsung was hoping would happen. I could just imagine how quickly the Enclave would work to stomp down on the ponies in Dark Harbor if they started rioting. And then they’d push back, and she’d get her chaos.
But if I didn’t do it, Four would have to.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
I could just see the street from here. It was peaceful. Foals playing in the streets, ponies carrying their shopping home without worrying about being robbed. If you squinted hard and didn’t notice that they were all behind barricades and cordons, that normal life only existed in a tiny space enforced by the Enclave soldiers ringing it, you could imagine nothing was wrong.
“The convoy is passing point alpha,” Opening whispered over our encrypted channel. “Grey Gloom estimates three minutes until they reach point beta. Please confirm ready op.”
“Ready op,” I said, then shut off my microphone so I could talk to Destiny in private. “Destiny, you’re smarter than me. Any chance this plan is going to work?”
Rubble and a carefully positioned tarp gave me a hunter’s blind looking over the city’s main street. I could hear the VertiBucks getting closer, the overburdened engines echoing through the concrete canyon.
“You’re the one who agreed to fly in front of a convoy taking the Mayor on his weekly tour through the city,” she reminded me. “Do you remember what happened last time you had to take one of these things down?”
“To be fair, I did eventually take it down,” I pointed out. “Besides, I don’t actually have to destroy them, I just have to spook them a little.”
“There’s a word for ponies that spook flying tanks armed with repeating bolt cannons,” Destiny said. “Do you know what that word is?”
“It’s not genius,” I sighed.
“No, it is not.”
The sound was getting louder. The VertiBucks were almost on top of me.
“You are cleared to engage,” Opening said. “Remember, you want to split the convoy. Block their passage and do not pursue the VIP when they break off.”
“I know, I know,” I said. You know what the dumbest thing was? Right at that moment, I got a surge of stage fright, of all things. I suddenly realized I didn’t even have a plan. Just… cause a distraction. I hadn’t thought for even one minute about how I was going to do that, and the critics were heavily armed and armored.
Worse, I had no time to think and my brain needed a long time to come up with good ideas.
I grabbed the tarp and jumped off the edge, spreading my wings and tearing the tarp free from its anchors so it would fly out behind me like a flag. The VertiBucks were flying low and slow, doing the most dangerous kind of flying possible and navigating the streets between the buildings, fighting turbulence and prop wash the whole time. All just to make sure the Mayor could see and be seen from street level.
The VertiBucks slowed when I flew out in front of them.
“Hey there!” I yelled, waving to the VertiBucks. They did the aerial equivalent of skidding to a halt, just managing to avoid crashing into each other.
“Clear the area! This is official state business!” the lead VertiBuck blared. The gatling beam gun moved in its mount, aiming towards me. In the narrow space, the one behind it couldn’t do anything except watch.
I smiled and slowly approached them. They didn’t want to just open fire right away. Not with all the civilians in the area. If we were outside the city they wouldn’t have even tried ordering me to stand down first.
“We are authorized to use lethal force if you do not--” The gatling gun started spinning, and I didn’t let them finish the sentence. I charged right at them, dragging the tarp behind me. Bolts snapped through it, but the sudden motion and close quarters gave me the advantage.
I drew my blade and stabbed it into the VertiBuck’s roof just as I was passing over it, jerking myself to a sudden halt and leaving the tarp draped over the canopy to blind them.
“I hope you know what you’re doing!” Destiny yelled. The VertiBuck twisted, the blinded pilot having trouble flying without visual cues.
“Neither one of them can shoot while I’m here!” I yelled back, the engine drone almost deafening. “So far so good!”
The VertiBuck tilted under me, banking to a sharp angle. My blade twisted, cutting through the metal and slipping a hoof-length sideways through the hull. A spray of murky hydraulic fluid and sparks erupted from the wound like I’d severed an artery.
“Oops,” I said. “Wait, no! This is good, right?”
The VertiBuck’s left engine sputtered and started to smoke, squealing as it started tilting on its own. I almost fell off when the pilot pitched up, the tarp falling away as he struggled to control the feisty VTOL.
“The convoy is breaking off,” Opening said. “Good work, Chamomile! Team two, intercept on Prospekt Road. Chamomile, try to keep hostile elements busy until the Grandus deploys. You’re clear to lead them out of the engagement area if needed. Overwatch out.”
“I think we’ve still got their attention,” I said, just sort of hanging on with my knife.
“We’ve got a bigger problem, Chamomile! There are a lot of civilians below us, and we severed a main hydraulic line on this thing! It’s going down!”
“Uh… um…” I needed a really brilliant idea. “Try hacking it and taking over the controls!”
Destiny sputtered in pure spiritual confusion. “What? That’s not even a thing!”
“Okay… plan C!” The engine was smoking, and that meant it was overheating, so all I had to do was cool it down! That seemed like a good idea. I pulled myself into position and sprayed it down with the cryolator. Liquid nitrogen hit the overheated engine and for almost a whole second I thought it was going to be okay.
Then the thermal shock cracked some very important and very fast-moving parts of the engine and there was what Destiny might call a ‘rapid unplanned disassembly'. The rotor seized up, the VertiBuck pitched over to that side, and the ponies below us started screaming and running for cover.
“This wasn’t a good plan!” I shouted.
Destiny didn’t even have time to yell at me and call me stupid before the Vertibuck did what it had been inevitably destined to do from the moment I cut one of the hydraulic lines. It slammed into the facade of the building we’d been drifting towards. I didn’t even try to hang on. I yanked my blade free and kicked off, just barely getting away before the VertiBuck flipped over and fell along with the brick and concrete it had broken off of the old office building. It crashed into the street and exploded into flame, broken fuel lines turning the street into a sea of flame.
“I guess that’s one way to do it,” Destiny said. “But the other VertiBuck looks upset, and so do they.”
“They?” A beam lanced past my head, and I looked down to see the soldiers starting to organize themselves. Most of the civilians had already fled for cover from the destruction and chaos. “Oh. Them.”
“This is team two,” Unsung radioed in. “We can’t secure the mayor! We need some fire support! Both of us are pinned down!”
“I’ve got more heat than expected too!” I yelled. The second VertiBuck had taken the time to gain some altitude and opened fire, the gatling beam gun raining down shots in my general direction. I flew for my life, trying to find cover. “I’ve got a VertiBuck on my tail and a bunch of angry soldiers!”
“Launching!” Four shouted, her transmission filled with static.
“Chamomile, start flying west,” Opening ordered.
“But that’s going to bring my trouble down right on top of your trouble like a big trouble sandwich!” I banked right and a beam went right through one of my back legs like the armor wasn’t even there. The pain knocked the wind right out of my wings, and the ground reached out to catch me.
"Don't worry! Grey Gloom can get the both of us out of here! Trust the plan!"
I hit a wire, then another. Sparks exploded around me as I took out the local power grid. The VertiBuck tried to follow me down with its cannon, the shots going wide and into the high buildings around us. I slammed into an awning, bounced off, and then landed very firmly on the concrete sidewalk.
I groaned and flipped over onto my back, blood pooling under my leg. The shot had gone through the meat of my thigh, back to front. I was lucky it hadn’t gone a little to the side and hit organs. For a certain value of lucky, anyway.
Above me, the Enclave soldiers were circling in like vultures and the VertiBuck was already swooping in to finish the job.
A huge spray of light cut through the sky, ripping through the Enclave soldiers like a huge beam shotgun. The VertiBuck reeled, armor buckling under the onslaught.
“I’ve got you!” Four’s voice was like thunder. A huge black shape hovered overhead, just about the same size as the Vertibuck and surrounded by a harsh purple-blue aura of magic. Another spray erupted from the front of the Grandus, as bright as a bolt of lightning. The VertiBuck exploded, raining down on the street in pieces.
The huge form of the Grandus lowered to the streets and slammed down the last few inches, hard enough to crack the asphalt.
“Are you okay?” Four asked. The blocky shape unfolded and stood up. Armor plates as thick as my hoof shifted and briefly exposed armored hydraulics and gears until it resembled something between a Steel Ranger and a tank, painted black with only a few touches of red and gold.
“I’ll live,” I said. I could feel a healing potion start to knit my thigh back together. “How can that thing even move?”
“The thaumobooster increases the strength of my magic, so I can levitate the whole suit as long as it’s active,” Four said. The remaining soldiers were shooting at the Grandus, but they might as well have been throwing pebbles. Beam rifles just bounced off the armor. I don’t think Four even noticed most of it. “I’m glad you’re okay. I got scared when I saw you get hurt.”
I forced myself to get up. The shot had been pretty bad, but I didn’t want to let her know that. “It’s not even in my top ten,” I lied. “I just got surprised. What can I do to--”
A rocket hit the armor’s oversized helmet, exploding and nearly forcing Four to recoil. She growled in frustration and her magic aura seized a cart full of limp-looking cabbages, flinging it through the air and knocking a soldier out of the sky.
“--Help,” I finished, blinking.
“They’re so annoying!” Four snapped. “Mmph…”
The aura around the Grandus flared, and the beam shots hitting her deflected instead of being absorbed, bouncing back on the ponies firing. Four followed it up with another spray of deadly cannonfire. The cone of energy hit the edge of a building along with the soldiers. Several stories started collapsing on top of each other, furniture falling out onto the street.
“Careful!” I warned. “We can’t damage the city!”
“I know that!” Four yelled back. “I’m sorry! It’s just hard to think with all this noise! All these ponies talking to me at once…!”
“What is she talking about?” Destiny whispered.
“Chamomile, this is Overwatch,” the radio hissed. “Have you made contact with the Grandus?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got everything under control here. Thanks for the tip about heading west.”
"All part of the job," Opening said.
“Chamomile, stay with Four and cover her back,” Unsung said. “We’re still dealing with a few annoying guards trying to tail us. We can’t afford to be followed.”
“No problem,” I said. “Do we have a plan for when we need to leave?”
Four started walking, the massive, flat hooves of the Grandus sinking inches deep into the ground every time she shifted her weight, the asphalt and concrete totally unable to cope with the heavy load. I took to the air to get the weight off my still-sore leg and followed behind.
“Same way we deployed the Grandus," Opening said. "There’s a subway tunnel running under the bay. The rubble was already cleared, so you just need to keep your armor sealed until you get into a dry tunnel.”
“Under the bay?” I groaned. “The last time I went into the bay I had to fight a bunch of mutant crabs…”
“Mirelurks are dangerous, but tasty. Grab a few on the way back and we’ll have a crab boil to celebrate.”
“What? You’re not serious, are you?” I couldn’t imagine eating a monster. Actually, no, I could imagine it. Bears were probably a type of monster and they were delicious. What would a giant enemy crab even taste like? Now I kinda wanted to find out, and my stomach rumbled agreement.
A wing of armored soldiers flew over the top of one of the buildings around us, coming at the Grandus from above and firing into it, the shots doing precisely nothing. Four snatched two of them out of the air and tossed them down, stomping on one and leaving a bloody past behind. The last two were just a little smarter, smart enough to be a little behind their friends, and one of them landed on Four’s back.
The last one jumped me, because he’d gotten a degree somewhere and could tell his odds looked better if he wasn’t fighting the giant pony made out of tank parts and death. That probably meant he was destined to become an officer. He grabbed me and started trying to stab with the stinger on his armored tail. It wasn’t very effective, but the stallion probably assumed he wouldn’t be blown out of the sky with a giant beam cannon if he was hugging me.
“I’m not going to let you destroy the city!” he yelled.
Oh no. He thought he was being a hero. That made things awkward.
“Get off me!” Four yelled. I maneuvered the hero into a headlock while he kept poking me with his stinger and that’s not a euphemism, it’s attempted murder and it’s a crime. I ignored him trying to kill me and looked over to where the stallion’s friend was clinging to the Grandus’ back. He was doing absolutely nothing useful, but it was freaking Four out.
“Calm down!” I shouted. “It’s okay, Four! Give me a second and I’ll--”
She roared and slammed the Grandus into an office building, trapping the pony on her back between a rock and a hard place and squeezing hard until he was power armor wrapped around jelly. The Grandus broke something structurally important, and the building started to come down, collapsing down on top of her.
“Oh no. Four!” The pony in my hooves had gone limp. I looked down at him. He was probably alive and just unconscious. I didn’t have time to make sure. I dropped him and bolted for the rubble and the debris exploded in my face, the Grandus rising out of it enveloped in blazing ultraviolet.
“You’re all so noisy!” Four screamed. She fired, the beam cannon in the Grandus’ chest blasting through the streets. She wasn’t even aiming at anything. Buildings caught on fire and concrete exploded, tearing a wave of destruction through the city.
“I think this means things have officially gone sideways,” I groaned.
“The spirits within the Grandus are swirling around her,” Grey Gloom whispered over the radio. This was good. I needed somepony to make things creepy while all the rest of this was going on. “They’re angry. They want to destroy everything!”
“Do you have any useful suggestions?!” I yelled.
"Chamomile, this is Opening," he said. "Grey Gloom isn't doing well."
"Take care of her, I'll figure things out here."
"Sorry," Opening said. "I'll make it up to you later." The radio shut off with a snap and hiss.
“Great, so I’m on my own,” I groaned.
“You’ve still got me,” Destiny said. “And since I’m a genius, that means you can start listening to good advice.”
Another burst of beam fire cut through the city, slicing through an apartment building. My heart jumped in my chest. The city was being torn apart piece by piece. The main street was already a sea of flames.
“I have to stop her!” I flew out in front of the Grandus, waving my hooves. “Four! You need to--”
She shrieked and batted me aside with one of the assault armor’s massive legs. I went flying into and through a brick wall and came to a stop in the soft embrace of an ancient water heater. Rusty water poured down around me and I questioned my life choices while my bones decided if they were broken or not. Nothing major seemed to be actually shattered, so I had to start getting myself up instead of taking a nap.
“That didn’t work as well as I thought,” I groaned. Even if I wasn’t completely shattered my body wasn’t happy with the blunt force trauma. “This must be what it’s like for most ponies when they have to fight me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Her magical output is on par with an active megaspell, and that’s all coming from one unicorn,” Destiny said.
I yanked myself free, one of my wings tearing out pipes and sending even more water spraying into the air. “So all I have to do is wrestle down a megaspell. No problem. Please tell me you have a better plan than mine.”
“Maybe. We need to shut down her thaumatic booster.” Destiny sounded pensive. “Do you remember the resonance we were feeling around the Grandus?”
“Yeah. It tickled, like when you cast a spell.”
“Right! I got a good look at the technology while I was helping Klein Bottle repair it. It’s broadly similar to the thaumoframe in this barding, and that was causing the resonance effect because both systems are designed to amplify weak thaumatic fields and strengthen them.”
I groaned. “Destiny, please pretend I don’t know unicorn stuff.”
“I need you to grab her and hang on. I’ll try to cause enough feedback to shut down the Grandus.”
“Didn’t you just tell me you couldn’t hack things?”
“It’s not hacking! It’s more like… putting out a fire. Now get out there and wrestle that megaspell down!”
I stumbled over to the hole I’d made in the brick wall and looked outside. Conveniently, everything was on fire and ponies were screaming and running away. If nothing else, the Grandus was big enough that ponies knew where not to go.
“I really hope she doesn’t squash me like a bug,” I whispered. I took off and hovered above the Grandus. The cannon was in the chest, so I was pretty sure she couldn’t accidentally shoot me as long as I wasn’t in front of her. Of course I’d also seen her levitate the whole brick of a thing, so maybe she could do a backflip if she needed to.
I just had to play it cool.
“Four!” I yelled, ruining my surprise attack, but the last thing I needed was to surprise her. I hit the collar of her armor and grabbed the huge helmet, the thing easily large enough for an average-sized pony to curl up inside it. “Please! Look at me! You have to stop!”
The helmet’s eyes flashed and the whole thing tilted towards me, hydraulics humming.
“Chamomile?” Four asked.
I felt a surge of magic, and the world fell away.
I was floating. It’s not, despite what some ponies will tell you, anything at all like free-fall. It didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like anything I knew at all. It was like every sense I had was blurred together. I could see stars around me and the light blurred into sound and I could hear them singing. Starlight rained down around me, and the pressure had a flavor that tasted like the color mint, but not the plant.
“What is this?” I asked, and it echoed around me.
“Chamomile?” Four asked. I knew it was her. I didn’t have to ask. I wasn’t sure if I turned or she moved in front of me or if we just became aware of each other at the same time or if there was a difference between any of those things.
“Are you okay?” I couldn’t look away from her. It wasn’t that I couldn’t move, it was like the world was wrapped around her. It contained only me and Four. And that was enough. I could feel her confusion, her rage, her sorrow. All the things that made her… Four.
“What happened?” She asked. I knew she could feel me. The real me. All the parts of me, even the ones that I wasn’t proud of. Self-doubt. Ugly rage. The ponies I’d hurt. I felt ashamed, but… I knew she wasn’t judging me. She understood my why. I understood her why.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I was stupid. I knew that. She didn’t care. She thought it was cute. “I was trying to stop you. You were hurting ponies.”
“I… I wasn’t in control,” she said. “The others…”
“What others?”
“The ponies trapped inside the machine. I can still feel them…”
A cold wind blew between us, and I caught the edge of the whispers in it. It was a haunting, something reaching out from beyond the grave. A dead thing that wouldn’t let go.
“You have to block them out,” I said. “Just shut everything down, and I’ll get you out of here. I promise I won’t let you get hurt.”
“Get out of here?” Four whispered. “I can’t! I have to pilot the Grandus!”
“No, you can--” I didn’t even get to finish the thought. She smothered it utterly. Power washed over me. Four’s mind crashed into mind, trying to force it away.
“Get out of my mind!” Four yelled. “You don’t know me!”
I snapped back to the world. I was still clinging to the Grandus.
“Four?” I asked.
She screamed. Telekinesis as strong as the hoof of Celestia herself flung me to the ground. The Grandus folded in on itself, turning back into a compact block. It rose up into the air, the aura around it shining brighter than the flames around us.
The metal colossus shot off like it had been launched from a catapult, vanishing into the smoke and chaos. The hoof pressing me down into the earth faded.
“That didn’t go well,” I groaned.
Around me, the city burned.