//------------------------------//
// More questions than answers: 4 
// Story: They're home. 
// by Nameless Narrator 
//------------------------------//

With darkness now blanketing White Tail Woods as much as the snow, a small group of ponies accompanied by one changeling are slowly fighting nature on their way along the train tracks and the stopped Las Pegasus express. Snow is covering the bank of the raised tracks and filling the ditch underneath while the wind is bringing freezing drizzle and making flying not worth the effort. Despite the cover of the train from one side and the treeline from the other protecting the group from the worst of the current weather, the group are drenched before even reaching the front of the locomotive. There’s only one creature enjoying the situation, and that’s 99999 riding on the back of the earth pony conductor in the front and beaming despite water trickling all over its carapace. Having a protective membrane covering its eyes is definitely doing wonders, because the others keep wiping their faces every other step. While this arrangement might seem unfair to the ponies, 99999 has a burning oil lamp gooped to its head, serving as the practical equivalent of the horn of a unicorn staff member walking in the back. It just has to be careful, keep itself straight, and do no twitchy movements whenever something catches its eye.

So maybe it’s not that easy, but 99999 heroically perseveres all the way to the three entire trees plus a mess of tangled branches they must have swept from other canopies while falling.

“Alright, everypony, you know the drill!” calls out the conductor, “Grab the saws, cut the trunks into pieces, clean the debris, check the tracks, and head back for a hot cup of tea.”

“Ooh ooh ooh!” 99999 starts vibrating on the earth pony’s back, and the second member of the group walking through the ditch behind the conductor helps the drone get down, “Take the shiny off too. I gots digging to do!”

The second earth pony stumbles when it applies a little too much strength with its mouth, thinking he’d need to free the lamp from the equivalent of a small amount of glue, and the lamp gives in without any resistance. 99999 immediately bolts forward, quickly sinking into the snow up to its neck, frantically dragging itself up the bank to the tracks, and repeating the process while the rest of the group get their tools.

“GOT THE FIRST ONE!” it calls out, accompanied by cracking of wood as the dug off trunk slides down the bank.

“What?” the conductor points at the unicorn in the back and then towards the blockage. In turn, the unicorn shifts the light of his horn into a beam and shines it at the drone, who is now hacking off chunks from the second tree with ease.

“Celestia’s holy booty, the changeling wasn’t kidding,” says the steward who originally let 99999 join the group, “This’ll be quick.” 

“Change of plans then,” the conductor raises his voice again, “Let the changeling cut the wood, the rest of you get the mess off of the tracks.”

As the others start moving the first canopy, he rushes over to 99999 sunk in snow and pawing upwards at a tree trunk.

“Hey, little guy, let’s work smarter, not harder.”

99999 stops and turns its head.

“I’m a drone, Mister. I’m not sure if we’re made for that.”

“Then let me care about the smart and you deal with the hard. Get up here,” he grabs the drone with one foreleg and extends it. 99999 catches on, grabs the foreleg with its hind legs and one foreleg of its own, extends its free foreleg, and in just a few frantic, vertical swings finishes cutting off trunk two. The conductor shuffles backwards with the drone as the log slides off like the first one, and together they make quick work of the final obstacle, upon which 99999 crawls back onto the pony’s comfortable back.

“Heh, who needs a griffon chainsaw when you have a hoof-held changeling,” the conductor chuckles and 99999 joins in with a ‘Squee!’. As he looks around, the others are close to finishing cleaning up and the unicorn is busy checking the tracks, “Good job, everypony! It looks like we'll be shortening the expected half an hour to an hour of work to approximately ten minutes thanks to this little guy,” the earth pony bucks up a little, making 99999 bounce and giggle.

“Tracks are a bit out of shape but nothing that would cause trouble any time soon. It’ll be fine if we report it in Las Pegasus,” reports the unicorn, “What’s weird, though, is that I got a good look at the trees as we were cleaning up, and the canopies didn’t look stripped. As if-”

“Oh, buck!” the conductor growls, “Wind Sprint, grab the lamp and find the stumps. Everyone else, stick together! We might need the tools yet.”

Despite the weather, the only pegasus of the group does so and quickly flies to the treeline.

“What’s going on?” peeps 99999, sensing the quick mood shift.

“That depends,” the conductor keeps looking around, “If Sprint finds some unusually smooth break points on the stumps, we might be in for an ambush.”


***


Smiley isn’t aware of the occasional stares of other passengers caused by her reading the newspaper while soundlessly moving her lips and keeping her progress using a hoof still without lighting the window lamp. Even if they wanted something, though, they’d have to compete for Smiley’s attention with a picture of a smiling pony holding a weird device which promises “a full set of quality slashies for half of the usual amount of shinies it would be traded for”. While Smiley can read the majority of the sentence, making sense of all of its parts is what she’s stuck on. Why is the pony in the picture smiling if they’re getting fewer shinies? Are they the ones getting the slashies in a good trade? The newspaper is one fascinating mystery after another, and Smiley can’t tear her eyes off of the pages.

That is, until the door connecting the next carriage slams open and four burly ponies, all with covered cutie marks, whom Smiley hasn’t seen on the train before rush inside, the one in the front yelling:

“HOOVES UP AND NOPONY GETS HURT!”

Smiley, of course not wanting anyone to get hurt, follows the lead of a passenger nearby and raises her forelegs. How and why anyone would get hurt is still unclear to her, but it’s better to lean on the safe side. The answer reveals itself shortly after, when a stallion hesitates while holding a bag and an intruding pony punches him in the face before taking the bag and emptying it on the table. Smiley finally catches a clear view of what’s going on - specifically the part where the “probably bad” ponies steal various forms of shinies from other ponies. A fleeting memory of old rules flashes through Smiley’s mind, bringing with it the need for a stash to hide interesting finds in. She briefly hides behind the partition, finds her and 99999’s tickets, and stashes those under her carapace along with several coins she can quickly grab. Finally, she shoves 99999’s oversized backpack under the chair while keeping her own in sight. Losing the blanket inside would be sad, but the shinies needed for the final set of tickets are more important. After all, the trains Smiley has taken so far have been warm inside. 

With the most important thing taken care of, Smiley just waits. After all, this can still be some kind of pretense like 36658 used to organize. Smiley didn’t understand the words at the time, but there was a lot of playing around and one drone usually pretended to be “best number”, and Smiley liked remembering “best number”.

A female pegasus, the only one of the group, remains standing on guard by the door through which the group entered while a male earthpony rushes through the aisle to the door leading forward towards the locomotive and hides by it, ready to punch out anyone going through. The other two progress slowly through the carriage - a female unicorn levitating a shortsword and a loot bag, and an earth pony shooting threatening looks to anyone even trying to look like resisting.

“Down with the emerald earrings, old hag,” the earth pony laughs and nods towards the filling-up bag floating in front of the currently threatened mare, “You can either cooperate or my associate here-” he nods to the grinning unicorn mare whose sword draws closer to the old mare’s throat, “can take her time with you. It should take your crew at least twenty more minutes to return. Your choice,” he laughs when the victim quickly takes both earrings off, and gives her a mocking court bow, “Nice doing business with you, Miss.”

It quickly becomes clear that there won’t be any heroic rescue of passenger property, and everyone grows to understand that compliance will make the bandits move quicker and possibly only check the most visible luggage, leaving a good amount of gold put away for Las Pegasus untouched. A confrontation with the most physically capable of the crew would be too risky if even only a couple of passengers gathered the courage to join the fray or create a distraction.

This “understanding”, unfortunately, ends when the unicorn mare finally finds one mute changeling mare, who has very little clue what’s going on, just sitting patiently in her seat and waiting, a ragged backpack in front of her ready for inspection.

Smiley doesn’t resist when the unicorn puts her loot bag on the floor and floats up the presented pack.

“The buck is this supposed to be?” the mare shakes the backpack, shooting Smiley an annoyed glare when only a torn blanket and a couple of one-bit coins, which immediately roll out of easy reach in a random act of defiance, fall out. Her eye twitches when Smiley, visibly more puzzled than scared, scribbles something on her tablet despite the floating sword aimed at her, and presents it for reading:

[Blanket. Shinies left for ticket.]

The unicorn exchanges looks with the earth pony following her, and he nods towards the much bigger bag ineffectively hidden under Smiley’s seat.

“Get that thing over here,” the unicorn points her swords towards it and briefly freezes when Smiley just shakes her head and fiddles with her tablet again.

[No. Important. Queen said so.]

The unicorn mare scowls and hacks Smiley’s tablet halfway through, grinning to herself again when Smiley finally shows fear for the first time. Only… the damn changeling isn’t scared of her, but worried… about the stupid tablet? The realization wipes the grin off of her face again and she aims the sword directly at Smiley’s face. 

Smiley gives her tablet a final look before raising her hoof to touch the sword, and simply pushing against it from the tip forward. With just the tiniest flash of green light, the entire blade of the shortsword gets dug off, disintegrated into nothing.

As the unicorn’s jaw drops and eyes bulge, the front door of the carriage violently slam open. The earth pony bandit ready to pounce lunges at the first unfortunate rescuer coming through, which is the unconscious body of a male unicorn with the same covered cutie mark being thrown through. A small black blur flies over the tangled mess of limbs just as the earth pony conductor barges through the open door next, mercilessly kicking the bandit in the head and immediately stopping him from moving. Judging by the crack, maybe even from breathing. The rest of the outside crew follow through the aisle, charging towards the bandits first stunned by Smiley’s stunt and then by the reverse ambush.

The earth pony recovers first, raising his foreleg towards the ceiling. A strange contraption, which looks like a bracelet with six perpendicular tubes aimed forward around its circumference, is locked around his fetlock. He flicks the fetlock and a cripplingly loud blast of noise followed by a gust of cold air paralyzes everyone.

Everyone with the exception of 99999 worrying its heart out both for Smiley and its backpack. The drone remains flying directly forward, forelegs outstretched and gaining speed.

Smiley and I are on a mission from the Queen. We saw bat ponies, we figured out what to do in a way a proper infiltrator would. Now that Smiley is in trouble, I can’t be scared of some random noisemaker. 

In its tunnel vision, however, 99999 entirely misses the hole in the ceiling left after the noisemaker blast, and doesn’t react when the earth pony aims his hoof straight at the drone, the noisemaker deafens it again, and everything goes dark.

As for Smiley, a now familiar set of memories marking the deaths of her companions gains a new, gruesome one when the slug fired from the earth pony’s hoof cannon shatters 99999’s head into a cloud of green blood and black, chitinous shrapnel.