//------------------------------//
// End of Ponies - Petra Arc - HHH Edition pt 4 
// Story: Short Scraps and Explosions 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
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The End of Ponies – by short skirts and explosions


Chapter Twenty-Eight – Dead Worlds




        “What are they?” Warden asked, blinking up at her.

        Scootaloo yanked the black article of clothing out of her saddlebag and slapped them down onto the floor of the Harmony's upper cabin where the teenage goblin was squatting with a pen and several sheets of paper.

        “They're pants,” the last pony said.

        “Pants?”

        “Yes.  Y'know,” she murmured, trotting across the cabin of the moored vessel toward her locker.  “Things you bipedal creatures wear over your abdomens and... dance around in.  I dunno.  I never took much stock in trunks myself, to be perfectly honest.”

        “I know what they are.  It's just...”  Warden dropped his pen and reached over to awkwardly hold the black leggings in eight fingers.  “...why'd you bother to get them?”

        “H'jem.”  Scootaloo opened the locker and glanced back over her flank.  “Why do you think?”

        Warden blinked.  He glanced down at his left thigh and the permanent horseshoe burned into the green flesh.  The teenager bit his lip and muttered.  “Oh.”

        “Yeesh.  You're welcome,” Scootaloo muttered, sliding off her leather saddlebag and armor before slipping them onto their respective shelves.  “I figure you won't look too out of place, even if only half of the goblins I've seen in Petra bother to wear shorts themselves.  Seriously, what's up with that?  It's just like with monkeys and diamond dogs.  Some bipeds wear clothes; others don't.  I can't tell which precedes which anymore: modesty or sentience?”

        “Whatever,” Warden droned, pivoting about on the floor to awkwardly slide the black bottoms up his good and bad legs.  “I can't even pretend to be as philosophical as you.”

        “Heh.”  Scootaloo smirked, backing up to the stool beside her workbench and reaching for the leather cowl on her head.  “When it comes to clothing, ponies rarely ever got philosophical.”  She sat down and yanked the cowl off her skull, freeing her ears and pink mane.  “We got fabulous.  Heeheehee... Well, the fairest of us did, at least.”

        “If you say so.”  Warden finished with his task and stood, holding himself up with a pair of hands gripping the edge of the last pony's sealed bookcase.  “So... uhm...”  He pensively straightened his lower half as best as he could.  “How do I look?”

        Scootaloo barely glanced at him.  “You're... uh... suave.  Whatever.  I can't see the burn mark, for what it's worth.”

        “A lot.”  Warden shuddered.  “It's worth a lot.  Erm... th-thank you, pony...”

        “Yeah, don't mention it,” she was murmuring, her voice as distant as her eyes.  She was turning the leather cowl over in her hooves.  Her vision swam over the fresh hole that the late Darper's steambolt had made in the article.  No matter how many times she played with the damaged fabric, she couldn't shake the fact that she was indescribably lucky to have her skull in one piece.  “Having something nice done for you isn't the end of the world, cuz we already had that happen twenty-five years ago.  Heh...”  She exhaled long and hard, her ears twitching with a brief series of strong heartbeats.  “The best blessings come from the most unpredictable of places, from those whom you can't return the sentiment to... even if it's what you desire the most in life.”

        Warden narrowed his aquamarine eyes on the pony, on the perforated cowel in her grasp.  His vision tilted aside and gazed with equal interest at her copper rifle that was presently leaning against the center of the open locker.  The magazine was full of glowing moonstones: all except for one spent cartridge that was conspicuously missing.

        “Did you... run into trouble out there?” he nervously asked.

        Scootaloo's nostrils flared.  “If I ran into real trouble, kid, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, would I?”  There was a space of silence.  She glanced over to witness his unenthused expression.  “Heheh...” she chuckled.  “What do you take me for?  I know how to look after myself.”

        “I wasn't suggesting you couldn't.”  He gulped and leaned forward.  “I just... hope that you didn't risk your neck only to get me some pants.”

        “If you count the awkwardness of getting a mother goblin to tell me the measurements for a teenage imp's hindquarters, then sure.”  Scootaloo stood up from the stool, marched over, and slapped the last of her things into the locker.  “H'jnor.”  She turned from the cabinet to face him.  “I'm only sorry that I was gone for so long.”

        “It's... uhm... it's okay,” he said softly, settling back down onto the floor and grabbing the pen once more.  He scribbled a few more numbers and letters across his assortment of paper sheets.  “To be honest, I was kind of expecting you to be gone longer.”

        “Pffft!  Well!”  Scootaloo tried her best to toss him a playful smile.  “I'm sorry to disappoint, Wart.”  She marched to the rear of the cabin to check on the pressure level of the steam pipes beside the dimmed boiler.  “You goblins have built yourself a pretty snazzy city full of grandfather clock intestines and all, but—quite frankly—the longer I spend my time out there the closer I'll come to having a gasket of my own blown.  And I'm not talking about the Harmony.”

        “Did you find what you were looking?” he asked.  It wasn't until half a minute had passed when he realized the gravity of his own question, and still it remained unanswered.  Curiously, he glanced up from what he was writing.

        Scootaloo was staring deep into the interior of the boiler, at the few ashes dwindling within.  The heart of the Harmony was almost always alive with constant, roaring flames.  Right now, it was as dead as her spirit... as all of Equestria around the cancerous imp city in the middle of the Wasteland.

        “It's... It's going to be a while before I get what I want,” she murmured.  “What I need.”  The interior of the boiler was covered with deep soot, resembling the inside of a cave bathed with Cloudsdalian steam.  A few embers cracked, hissing into nothingness, like a bleeding foal's dwindling sobs under the shadow of a passing stormfront.  With a deep breath, Scootaloo turned from the ashes and trotted past Warden.  “Let's just say that I ran into... an old acquaintance, and it's made my task a lot, lot more complicated than I thought it'd be.”

        Warden's gaze turned to follow her.  “You mean that nobody's willing to lend you a hand?”

        “What did I expect?”  She shrugged, sat down at her workbench, and pulled a hoof-brace out of a drawer.  “This whole place, Warden—this whole valley was once Pegasus Central, including the sky above it.”  She slipped the brace over her left forelimb, fitted a metal tool to it, and began tightening the bothersome horseshoe on her right hoof.  “That's hardly the case today.  Whether I agree with it or not, everything in this place belongs to impkind.  And if impkind is not willing to part with it—silver or no silver—then I'm at a loss.”  She sighed as she squinted at her annoying task.  Nevertheless, she reveled in the fact that she could somehow approach a problem for once that day.  “At this point, Wart, the only thing I can do is go door to door and hope that some goblin in this city is crazy enough to bend so low as to help a 'glue stick' for money.  In the Wastelands, I've fought monsters, looted corpses, and scavenged from cesspools.  If there's one thing in life I hate...”  She frowned and sweated as she fiddled harder and harder with the horseshoe.  “...it's being a charity case.”

        Warden silently contemplated that.  After a soft breath, he sat up straight and asked, “What is so special that you have to go through all this trouble just to scrounge it up?”

        “Dang it!” Scootaloo was already shouting, for she had stabbed her hoof at an awkward angle and the metal horseshoe was falling free to the floor.  It rattled loudly, filling the bulkheads of the cabin with annoying reverberations.  The last pony took a deep breath.  “It's not what I'm looking for, Wart.  It's who.”

        The teenager's pointed ears tilted upwards at that.  “'Who?'”

        Scootaloo was halfway through bending over to scoop up the horseshoe.  She paused, hesitated, then muttered, “Yes.”

        “It's... someone you know?”

        “Mmmmhmmm.”

        “A goblin?”

        Scootaloo said nothing.  She planted the horseshoe back on her right hoof.

        Warden blinked.  “A pony?” he uttered.

        “She's dead,” Scootaloo finally said, her exhalation as cold as the metal that was kissing the end of he right forelimb.  She tightened it with remarkable precision this time.  “I came all this way because... I need her remains, and I left them here a long, long time ago.”

        “I... I had no idea...”

        “It wasn't your job to know, kid.”  Scootaloo finished fastening the metal article.  She waved the hoof around to make sure it stayed on.  “I don't expect any of the imp families in Petra to know either, though it hardly matters.”

        “So...”  Warden stirred where he sat, his face scrunched in thought.  “You've flown clear across the Wasteland, risked your airship, and then stuck your neck into a dangerous place for ponies... all just to get the body of someone you used to know?”

        “Pretty much, yeah,” she muttered.  With bored eyes, she watched herself slide the hoof brace off her left limb and slip it back into a drawer of the workbench.  “After I drop you off with your parents, I'll still be at it.  Life isn't boring so long as you don't know when to quit.”

        “Jee...”  Warden scratched his neck above his vest with four clawed fingers.  “That sounds really...”

        “Heh... What?”  Scootaloo smirked, chuckling towards the metal bulkheads around them.  “Pathetic?  Desperate?  Lame?”

        “Loyal,” he said.

        Scootaloo flashed him a deadpan look.

        He bit his lip.  “That is to say... it... it sounds really, really loyal of you to do that for some pony who's been... gone all this time.”

        She took a deep breath, exhaling twenty-five years and then inhaling the haunting memory of warm Ponyville afternoons.  She talked to the rainbow and the rainbow talked back.  There was laughter, hope, and joy.  But more than anything else, there was awesomeness.  Scootaloo always knew she was lucky to have been a witness to such.  For the first time in so many years, she realized she was also lucky—instead of cursed—to have the capacity to remember it as well.

        “Not all creatures can afford to be loyal, Wart,” the last pony nevertheless muttered.  “Some creatures are just alone, and nothing more.”  She took a deep breath, but somehow managed a soft smile.  She gazed off beyond the windshields of the Harmony, as if a sunny sky was blossoming beyond the glass instead of Kevin's grimy hangar.  “No, there is something far... far more valuable than loyalty, something that can survive the Wasteland and outlast the twilight.  I wouldn't be alive today if I didn't have it.  It's not just enough to be alive.  It's important to still be able to feel, even if only for a few frightful situations.  And I have that something to thank for it as well.”

        “What?” Warden murmured curiously, his soft voice bearing a hint of warmth for the first time since Scootaloo rescued him from a cave.  “Just what is that 'something,' pony?”

        She opened her lips, paused, and decided to say, “You'll find out, kid.”  She smiled.  It was a genuine thing, like quietly crying her way through one of Princess Celestia's journal entries.  “In your own way, the goblin way, with your parents or others that you care about... you'll know what it is when you have it.”  She took a deep, shuddering breath as her scarlet eyes fell to the floor.  “It's a heck of a lot better than realizing you've spent your entire friggin' life forgetting about it.”

        Warden was about to respond to that, when his eyes took notice of something bright and colorful.  He glanced up and focused on the fluttering, sapphiric feather strung to Scootaloo's ear.  Something about it calmed him, but his face registered little to no understanding.

        Scootaloo pierced the silence of the moment by gesturing towards the many sheets in front of the goblin teenager and exclaiming, “So when are you going to tell me just what the heck you're doing down there anyways?”

        “Oh!  Uhm...”  He bit his lip.  “I'm sorry, pony.  Really... I should have asked before borrowing your pen and stealing some sheets of paper.”

        “Heh, don't sweat it, Wart.”  Scootaloo paced over towards him and squinted down at the sheets.  “I was gone for a long time.  If that stuff was supposed to be off-limits to you, I would have planted a glowy purple forcefield over it just like the cockpit.”

        “Uh... okay...” He smiled nervously.

        “So... just what are you—?”

        “Ahem.”  He cleared his throat and gestured with the pen towards the numerous figures he had sketched over the past few hours.  “While you were gone, I briefly walked around the lower level of your airship and I noticed that you have several samples of lunar rock.”

        “Yes.  Yes I do.”  Scootaloo raised an eyebrow.  “What of it?”

        “I... uhm... I imagine that you collect so many of the rocks from the Wasteland in order to salvage the consummable materials within and convert them to fuel for your aircraft's engines?”

        “Well, yes,” Scootaloo said with a nod.  “Among other things.  I happen to collect multi-colored gemstones and flamestones and—”

        “But I'm guessing that, after all of the extraction of precious samples, you're left with a lot of excess, inert moon dust?”

        Scootaloo blinked, suddenly witness to a very talkative, very analytical young goblin in her midst.  “Er... yes.  Though a lot of that stuff I incorporate into runeforging.  I'm sure I don't need to explain to you where I get all of my nifty, glowy stones that you see all over the ship.”

        “But I notice that you've still got a lot of surplus dust just lying around,” Warden said.

        “Yeah, so?”  Scootaloo made a face.

        “Isn't it weighing down your airship by just lying in the bottom level of your gondola and doing nothing?”

        “Hey!  I'm going to get to making runestones out of them sooner than later!”  Scootaloo said with a brief frown.  “I'm not wasteful, Wart.  I'm just busy.  I assure you, nothing I grab from the Wasteland is taken for granted.  I use every part of the buffalo.”

        Warden made a face.  “What's a 'buffalo'?”

        Scootaloo replied, “A race of nomadic, hoofed creatures who are thankfully extinct, which is precisely why I can use that expression.”  She took a deep breath and squatted down beside the imp and his sheets of scribbles.  “Tell it to me straight, Wart.  Where're you going with all of this?”

        He gestured towards his multiple figures.  “Well, I made a visual count of all the stuff you have.  I'm guessing you've got over two hundred kilos of the dust.”

        “Mmmm... Sounds about right.”

        “Well, if you were to extract a terrestrial mineral like Blight Ash from a barren part of the landscape—take for instance the Eastern Fringe of the Briar—and mix the material with the lunar dust at a ratio of—say—three to one, I think you could produce a far more combustible material that could minimize your reliance on current fuel reserves by about thirty-three percent.”

        “You... It... H-Huh?!” Scootaloo shook her head, her eyes blinking painfully.

        Warden didn't stop.  “I wouldn't suggest this personally, but you seem to be a brave pony.  If you were to fly far east to the slopes of Mt Ogreton—avoiding the airspace over the Valley of Jewels, of course—you could even grab yourself some Ogre Fire Granite and mix that with the lunar sediment and make a far more potent fuel.  I made a prediction: based on your current reserves, and assuming you acquire at least forty kilos of the Ogreton minerals, you could upgrade to a more efficient fuel source and save yourself approximately five hundred silver strips every ten stormfronts.”

        “Uhm... Wart?”

        “That is, of course, assuming that the political climate doesn't undergo a major shift anytime soon—which would only happen if either the Fire Ogres or Mountain Ogres win their war—and a dramatic shift in silver exchange takes place to off-set my predictions...”

        “Wart...”

        “Or if you didn't want to use the fuel personally, you could sell it to some of the monkeys in the Northern Heights.  They seem willing to buy just about anything that won't blow up in their face, from what I can tell.  Now gremlins, on the other hand—”

        “Yoohoo!  Hey, kid!”  Scootaloo planted a hoof on his shoulder, stopping him.  She leaned down and absorbed his eyes with her own.  “Before you finish your college lecture on burnable lunar powder, just tell me one thing.  Why are you doing all of this anyways?”

        “B-Because...” He gulped.  A fascimile of a smile graced his humble face.  “Because it's what I'm good at.  I do figures and numbers.  That's why my parents gave me so many jobs to do.  It's also why they sent me on an airship trip to the east to do trade.  That was, of course, before harpies came and ruined everything—”

        “No, I know all that.  I haven't got the right to even question it.”  She narrowed her eyes.  “What I mean is, why're you doing all of this...”  She gestured at all of the sheets.  “...for me?”

        “Because it could really save you on silver strips and—”

        “I'm doing fine on strips, kid.”  She helplessly smiled.  “You're right about one thing.  Monkeys can and will buy just about everything.”  She rested her hoof over the back of his hand, forcing him to release his grip of the pen.  “Wart, thank you for all of the consideration, but right now fuel consumption and experiments in lunar compounds is the least of my concerns.  I didn't bring you here to be my... my... my little clerk, okay?”

        Warden suddenly inhaled with a sharp breath.  He dragged his hand out from her contact and folded his arms tightly over his chest.  It wasn't a pouting expression necessarily, for the drooping of his ears broadcasted more melancholy than anger.

        Scootaloo raised an eyebrow.  “Was it something I said?”

        He hesitated, squirming where he sat.  Finally, without looking directly at her, Warden murmured, “You're not the only one who hates being a charity case, pony.”

        Scootaloo was about to retort, but she had nothing.  She merely bit her lip.

        Thankfully, he spoke on, “You've done so much for me.  You dragged me out of a cave that could very well have been my grave.”  His voice was cold, somber, like many pale beams of sky marble that had once buried Scootaloo in the wounded earth.  “You've fed me, warmed me...”  He bit his lip and his lower body shuffled as he added, “...and clothed me.”

        “You were an imp in need,” Scootaloo said.  “It's as simple as that.”

        “No it's not!” his voice sharply exclaimed, forcing her to blink.  He calmed his breath and returned once more to a pensive tone.  “I'm a goblin, pony.  My blood is worth the extent of my talents, of the silver I can earn, of the strength I have to manifest Petra.  I've...”  He gulped hard and dragged a hand through his green hair as a cold shudder ran through his tiny frame.  “I've failed on all of those fronts, ever since I took that stupid trip east.  I've let myself down...”  He gnashed his teeth and stared down past the sea of scribbled figures on white sheets, all of which were suddenly useless, like everything else.  “I've let my parents down.  If I return to them as a no-bleeder... I wouldn't be able to live with myself.”

        “'No-bleeder?'”  Scootaloo blinked, her mind attempting to process the term that she had heard sporadically during her trek through Petra, though it was hard to remember through the ugly filter of steam, suffering, and impish cruelty.  “I... I don't understand.”

        “I told you who I was when we first met,” he murmured.  “I am Warden of Stock Blood.  That name means nothing if the blood has no worth.”

        Scootaloo's eyes scanned invisible clouds through the ceiling as she thought aloud, “And... if you're compensated for your talents, then your blood—”

        “Stock Blood will have no value,” Warden explained.  “With no value, I might as well have no blood.”

        Scootaloo stared knowingly at him.  “You're afraid that your circumstances have stripped you of value.  So you think that suddenly makes you a 'no-bleeder?'”

        He sighed long and hard.  He hugged himself and leaned back against the nearest bulkhead.  “I know it.”

        “Wart...”  Scootaloo sighed and smiled gently.  “I know only so little about the way goblins tick, but if you ask me: they're way too dang hard on each other.  You're just a kid, but a very smart and resourceful kid.  I can't imagine your parents giving you so many responsibilities if they didn't have great respect and trust in you.”  She grasped all of the paper sheets and shuffled them neatly on top of one another so that the floor was no longer cluttered.  All the while, she spoke, “You've had a run-in with bad circumstances.  So what?  You're alive, and—believe me—that's what counts the most in this pathetic Wasteland.  Returning to your parents with or without profit isn't half as awesome as returning to them, period.”

        “Still, it's not right that you should do all of this stuff for me without getting something in return,” Warden exclaimed.

        “Who says I haven't got anything in return?”  She smirked at him.  “It's taken a stormfront, a run-in with gremlins, and a pair of pants—but I've finally got you to join me in witty repartee!”

        “I'm not joking!” Warden suddenly hissed at her.  His sharp teeth showed, as if an animalistic side of goblin nature was bubbling up from the evolutionary surface of his being.  “Without equivalent exchange, I'm nothing more than your pet... your servant... your... y-your slave!”

        “You are not a slave!” Scootaloo suddenly shouted back at him, her eyes flaring a hot red.  She was even surprised by her own angry reflection in his widening eyes, but that didn't stop the next words from pouring out of her mouth, tempered by fresh memories of steam and blood and pain.  “Get that friggin' idea out of your head this very second!  You're a living being, not an object!”  She fumed briefly, but gradually lowered the volume of her voice.  “I don't know where goblins get off thinking that blood is something that can be measured.  Wart, either you're alive or you're not.  Whatever the case, you're you.  And what you are is significant.  It's meaningful.  It's... it's...”

        She took a deep breath and glanced up suddenly at the collage of dangling souvenirs hanging above her workbench.  In the center of past relics, Suntrot's crayon drawing hung, filling the last pony's mind with golden hues, like tears of jaundice, or a long lock of yellow-streaked hair.

        “It's precious,” she added, her voice wavering like one of Octavia's sad violin chords.

        Warden glanced at her in curious silence.

        Scootaloo took a deep breath.  Clearing her throat, she stood up.  “You ain't my slave, kiddo.  Not now, not ever.  You're just someone I happened to run into, someone who deserved a break in life.  We all deserve breaks, and no matter how ugly the world wants to be, we're fated to help each other at some point or another.  I didn't always believe in that, but things in my life have... have seen brighter shades as of late.  I can't expect you to understand, kid.  You were born after the Cataclysm—or the Dimming, whatever imps like to call it.  I wish you could understand what it means to lose so much color, and...”  She took a deep breath, but her next smile was blissfully painful.  “...and to have so much of it come back.  It just... It only hammers it all in all the harder.  We're all worth something, kid.  I may not be able to make a difference in the lives of everyone, but I could make a difference in your life.  And I did, or at least I've tried to.  So sue me.”

        Warden slowly shook his head.  “I-I wouldn't sue you even if I could afford it.”

        “Hah!  Best compliment I heard all day, and believe me: that's not grabbing at straws.”  She managed a wink.  “Good to know you're not that kind of a goblin.”

        “Uhhh... What?”

        “Never mind.”  Scootaloo turned around.  “I'm taking you to your parents.”

        His ears perked up.  “Right n-now?”

        “Nah.  I need to rest up a bit, collect my head, plan out what I'm going to do next to get to my friend's remains.”  She started trotting towards the cockpit.  “Tomorrow, kid.  Get a good sleep.  Epona knows I need some rest myself.  Then, soon as you and I wake up, you'll be homeward bound—”

        “Uhhhh...”  Warden nervously hobbled up to a standing position and waved a hand dramatically towards the last pony.  “I-I wouldn't do that—”

        “Sleep is good for the soul, Wart.  You can have the hammock again tonight.”

        “No!  Not that!”  He pointed. “The cockpit—”

        “What about it?”  She looked back in mid-trot.  “You can try sleeping in that, but it'll give you a sore back—”  Scootaloo ran full-force into a glowing, purple forcefield.  She had forgotten to disenchant the moonrocks.  “Dah!  Sonuva—”  Scootaloo stumbled into the record player's shelf, her front coat smoking in a few areas as she rode down a wave of brief, shuddering pain.  “Nnnngh... I... uh...”  She smiled nervously.  “I meant to do that.”

        Warden blinked.  “Snkkkt...”  He held a hand over his face.  His eyes thinned, beginning to tear.  Then a sound came out of him that Scootaloo could never have expected to hear from a young goblin in a million stormfronts.  “Hee-hee-hee-hee!”

        Scootaloo stared at him, but slowly smiled herself.  “Heh... heheheh...”  She ran a hoof through her mane, straightening the singed ends of her pink hair.  “I suppose if I was a goblin, that'd make me a 'Dunce-Bleeder', huh?”

        “Heeheehee... You don't have the ears for it.”
        
        “Go to bed, Wart.”

        “Yes, pony.”






        Thirteen hours later, in the lofty mesh of metallic crossbeams that formed the barrier between the Beta and Alpha Levels of Strut Fifteen, four goblin figures were gathered in a shadowy alcove high above the clamoring hustle and bustle of impcity life.

        “Alright, y'all,” Bard muttered, adjusting his black hat before holding up a tattered “Desperadoes” wanted poster that he had snatched off a wall several blocks away.  “I just want to get this off my chest.  There is no way in heck that I'm this short!”  He pointed at a dark outline that was meant to represent his figure beside the other three.  “Will you take a gander at that?  Total bunk if you ask me.”

        Murk glanced over, his dark visor glinting from a dim red lantern hanging beyond a metal grate above them.  He paused in polishing his sword, tilted his head sideways for a better look at the poster in Bard's grasp, then silently shook his head with a smirk.

        “Oh, you would be a smug sonuvagun about it!”  Bard frowned at his companion.  “At least they got your hair right.”  He sighed, crumpled the sheet up, and tossed it into a dark corner littered with soot and refuse.  “You'd reckon that infamy would come with a lick of decency.  We need another Dimming to kill off this generation's worth of lazy artists, I swear to Petra.”

        “Will you shut your trap about the stupid posters already?!” Rai hissed across the claustrophobic, lofty alcove.  She was in the middle of hammering together an elaborate smoke grenade with a multi-purpose wrench held in her expert hands.  “It's nothing to be friggin' proud of.  With all the stupid mistakes we've made in the streets of Strut Twenty-Five, we're lucky we don't have detailed portraits made of us by now.  Those posters could very well be our undoing someday.”

        “Yeesh! I normally don't say this to a lady, but would ya fancy taking the stick out?”  Bard smirked and raised one of his two steam pistols.  He opened the steambolt chamber and spun it before his squinting eyes.  “Have you been keepin' track of our numbers as of late?  Cuz I have.”  He slapped the chambers shut, twirled the revolvers on his fingers, and holstered them.  “One hundred and fifty slaves freed in three stormfronts, and that's just from Geist Blood alone!  I dunno about you, missy, but I call that a victory.”

        “A victory isn't worth celebrating when so much blood has been spilled,” Rai muttered.  She sighed and resumed tinkering with the weapon in her grasp.  “I couldn't sleep last night.  I kept hearing that poor little girl's crying.  We shouldn't have losses like that.  We should be better.  We can be better.”

        “I ain't all too proud myself of letting a few goblins slip back into Lady Ryst's shackles, Rai,” Bard remarked softly.  “But expectin' all of our raids to go perfectly is like expectin' this world to be perfect as well, and if that was the case than we wouldn't have to be doin' what we do to begin with.”

        Murk nodded.  He planted his sword down just long enough to make a few hand-gestures with flesh and metal fingers.

        Bard looked at him and nodded.  “Yeah, I know that Twilight Hollow's gonna be mighty prettier than this stinkin' city, but we can't expect it to stay paradise forever, no matter how many goblins we send there.”  He smiled back in Rai's direction.  “It'll be up to all of them to work together to keep life all equal-like, or else something like Geist Blood's legacy will happen there all the same.”

        “We can't expect them to do everything we hope for them to!” Rai retorted.  “What?  Are we going to go there ourselves and form a council or something?”

        “Well, shoot!  Why the heck not?”  Bard leaned back against a bulkhead, resting his arms behind the back of his head.  “I've enjoyed the ride, but I reckon we can't be 'Desperadoes' forever.  Twilight Hollow sounds pretty nifty, and I wouldn't mind bein' a member of a new city's council.”

        Murk smiled and gestured something.

        Bard laughed at him.  “Hah!  You?  A mayor?  Wouldn't that kick some major troll hide!  Well, shucks, sign me up for that!  Not like you don't have a big enough fan club as it is, Murk.  Even Geist-Blood is sketchin' more muscles on you than me.”

        “Oh will you two get out of bed together already?!” Rai snapped.  “By Dimming's blight, I swear...”

        “You're just angry cuz it looks like you dipped your head in an outhouse.”

        Rai frowned.  “It's not like I asked for deep blue hair!”

        “Yeah, yeah.  Just blame your father like you do with everything else,” Bard said, elbowing Murk.  Murk snickered breathily.

        Rai sighed and glanced tiredly across the tiny alcove towards the fourth figure.  “Please tell me you've got something important to say for this meeting, V.”

        “Bard pretty much said it for me, child,” Vaughan murmured, perpetually gazing down at the brightly-lit street below.  Beyond several whirring pistons and twirling gears, the entrance to a hangar could be seen.  Several goblin miners, sales-imps, and families wandered to-and-fro in the busy district of Strut Fifteen.  “We've done our task for the time being.  Over one hundred and fifty slaves have been safely escorted to Undersmoke.  So long as they're under your father's gaze, Rai, they'll remain undiscovered until the Encore flies into station.”

        “You sure we can trust Bel?” Rai said, her pale brow furrowed.  “That pilot seems a little... too cheritable to me.”

        “I've been with him on several trips,” Vaughan spoke.  “I've known him for over a decade.  He's a good imp; I trust him with my life.”  She gazed calmly over at her three companions.  “Just like I trust each and every one of you with my life.  What we're doing here is miraculous.  I know it's hard to believe, but Twilight Hollow has become something very real, a true blessing in the middle of the blight.  It wouldn't be possible without fine blood like Bel and the rest of you.”

        “Aww shucks...”  Bard smirked and tilted his black fedora lazily over his brow.  “You're makin' me blush.  When do we get to bust heads again?”

        “We'd better lay low for several hours.  Maybe even a day or two,” Vaughan said.

        “Then what are we doing here, V?”  Rai made a face.  She clapped the grenade shut, her work finished.  “And in Strut Fifteen of all places?  I mean, I think it's a wonderful idea to have our meetings so far away from Geist Blood territory, but you've never had us rendezvous here before.”

        Vaughan glanced back down at the distant street.  “Tell me, Rai.  How is it that I came to work with your father?”

        Rai slid the grenade into the compartment of a metallic backpack and snapped the thing shut.  “What, is this some sort of weird test or something?” the young goblinette asked.

        “I'm not hearing an answer.”

        Rai sat up straight like an obedient soldier.  “You both met over a decade ago, when he still had his property on Strut Eighteen.  When the Slave Initiative began, and the majority of the Family Council allowed Geist Blood to begin its purges, you and him agreed to smuggle several no-bleeders to the fringes of Undersmoke—”

        “Dear child, I wasn't asking for a history lesson,” Vaughan remarked, looking back at the youngster.  “Think with your heart while you can still feel the difference between it and your mind.”

        Rai bit her lip, fidgeting.  “Well... I-I suppose it's all on account of the fact that you've both been around since before the Dimming.”  She ran a hand over her hair, straightening the purple braids.  “You both saw the yellow light, the green life, the bright oceans...”

        “...the extensive, poetic soliloquys,” Bard uttered.  Murk whacked him with the dull edge of his sword.  “Ow!”  He tilted his hat up and frowned at his companion.

        “Hmmm...” Vaughan's lips were ever so slightly curved.  She glanced back at Rai.  “We saw more than that, Rai.  We saw a world where the only creatures who enslaved others were ogres.  They made property and garbage out of impkind, and goblins suffered for it.  Today, manifesters of Petra have forgotten that.  Out of fear and intimidation from the shadow of powerful families like Geist Blood, the industrial souls of this city have surrendered decency for survival.  Give it a decade or two, but this entire imp city will be as ugly and destitute as the Wasteland that so many foolishly believe has been sealed off on the outside.”

        “I still don't see what this has to do with us being here in Strut Fifteen of all places...”

        “Bard had a good point earlier,” Vaughan said.  “It'll be up to the goblins we've freed to maintain a proper lifestyle of equality in their new township of Twilight's Hollow.  There, they can manifest Petra without the horrible blemish of slavery.  Perhaps they can even build a city that rivals this place.  But none of that will be possible without hope.  Hope is an edge that your father has, Rai...”

        The young goblinette's ears drooped as she gazed lethargically towards the side.  “Yeah, well...”

        “Whether you believe in it or not, it's there.  It's what has helped him maintain so much integrity throughout the years.”  Vaughan took a deep breath.  “And it's what helped me keep my sanity.  The Wasteland is a horrible place.  You don't need me to tell you that anymore than I already have over the past few months.  But surviving in a place like that has meant clinging onto something that so few imps believe in, but even fewer—like myself and your father—have seen for ourselves before the Dimming.  It's what gives us our edge.”  She slowly turned and stared once more down at the street.  “But we are not the only ones...”

        “What do you mean?”  Rai leaned over.  “You have another ally that we don't know about?  Someone besides Bel's crew on the Encore?”

        “Rai, child, you are like a sister to me,” Vaughan said, reaching a hand out and gently clasping the youth's shoulder.  “And it's not just because you're such a reliable imp.  We were destined to meet long before our paths crossed, before you were even born.”  She smiled gently.  “For I believe that there is an essence that defines us, that makes us the same, that makes us virtuous souls... so that we are righteous in what we do, however we do it.”  She tilted her neck, her lips pursing at the sight of something below.  She gestured down at the street.  “And I do believe I have found another such soul...”

        The other three glanced at each other.  Curiously, they shuffled over and stared down through a metal grate.  At the exit of the hangar, a pair of figures came out.  One was a petite goblin teenager with a limp.  The other was...

        “A pony?”  Bard scratched his brown head of hair beneath his hat.

        “The pony,” Rai uttered bluntly.  “Lady Ryst is short one annoying-as-balls Darper on account of that walking leather tank with hooves.”

        “You mean she's the one who saved those three stragglers yesterday?” Bard exclaimed.

        Murk whistled shrilly in awe.

        “It figures she'd be hanging around here,” Rai remarked.  She pointed at the hangar.  “That's the out-bleeder garage.  Y'know, the one owned by the vulture gang.”

        “Oh yeah!  Those birds!” Bard nodded.  “What's their ringleader's name again?  Jeff?  Rick?”

        “Kevin.”

        “Ah.  Well, I was close.”

        “No you weren't.”

        “Shhhh!” Vaughan hissed, instantly making the two as silent as Murk.  They watched as Scootaloo virtually passed underneath them with Warden hobbling beside her.  “She's old, a lot older than any of you may think.  What's more, she's obviously quite experienced in lunar crafting and—I dare say—magic.”

        “Magic?!” Bard made a face.  “I admit, I never thought I'd be seein' a live pony with my naked eyes, but that's a little too much to chew on.”

        “You weren't there, Bard,” Rai muttered in a low breath as she squatted beside her red-headed mentor.  “She spoke a single word and her gun fired a bullet on command.”

        “Well maybe she's got tiny flutter ponies livin' inside the rifle and cranking on tiny valves or something!”

        Murk gave Bard a crazy look and gestured briskly.

        Bard hissed back at him, “Well, I wanna hear you come up with a better explanation!”

        “Magic is as real as ponies, and was once in as much abundance,” Vaughan calmly said.  “This world was theirs.  Decades of prosperity—ugly or not—cannot excuse goblins in denying the truth.”  She looked steadily at the other three.  “Our kind is here because her kind no longer is.  If ponies had that much of an impact, imagine what one equine—old enough to harbor the gifts of her own species—could have on this city, right now, when the “Desperadoes” are so infamous that we can hardly afford to begin a new, daring campaign on our lonesome?”

        “Boss...?”  Bard squinted at their leader.  “Just what do you reckon you're gettin' at?”

        Vaughan turned and looked at Rai.  “Not all of us can afford the edge that I and your father have, child.  But where we lack...”  She gazed once more at the trotting figure below.  “...she can help.”

        Murk squinted curiously from behind his visor.

        Rai cleared her throat.  “And... uhm... just how do we know that she'd be willing to help us out?”

        “Simple.”  Vaughan nodded.  “We ask her.”

        “Heh...”  Bard folded his arms.  “Really, now?  I wouldn't even know how to ride a horse, much less open discourse with one.”

        “Seriously, V,” Rai gazed at her with mixed confusion and worry.  “Even if... Even if she could help us with all of her skills and lunar glowy stuff... Why would she?  What would she owe us?  She's a pony.  We're goblins.  You can't buy loyalty from the likes of glue sticks.”

        “She's a living soul, child, and no more deserving of ignorant insults than you or me,” Vaughan said with a frown.

        Rai folded her arms and blew a dangling braid out from her face.  “Hmph.  Now you're just sounding like my father.”

        “Duly noted.”  Vaughan nodded, then glanced down at Scootaloo as her and Warden's figures grew distant.  “No, we can't buy loyalty from a pony.  But if she's as old and experienced a soul as I believe her to be, then she has hope.  And hope has a loyalty of its own.”  She thought aloud, murmuring in a meditative breath, “It's something that's worth a hundred Twilight Hollows, or else she wouldn't be alive for us to witness now.”

        Bard and Murk exchanged thoughtful glances.  Rai gulped and leaned closer towards her mentor.  “So... what do we do?”

        Vaughan stood up, stretched her limbs, and said, “We follow.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “See anybody you know, Wart?”  Scootaloo asked.  She heard a grand response of nothing.  The sounds of the whurring, clattering imp city filled her ears, along with the distant murmurs of several goblins staring at her slow march through Strut Fifteen.  With a lethargic breath, she gazed aside.  “Warden?”

        He was limping alongside her, wincing with the effort.  His aquamarine eyes darted left and right with twitching paranoia, as if he was being cornered by timberwolves.  Warden gazed pensively at the multiple imp figures watching him, watching her, watching him and her—as if they were a paradoxical pair of grotesque souls vomited out of the Wasteland to defile the sanctity of goblin decency.

        Scootaloo looked at him, then back at the many random imps standing at streetside who were staring at them both.  She was used to creatures of the Wasteland treating her like a bizarre spectacle.  She realized Warden couldn't relate to her infamy, but walking alongside her—constantly having to lean on her armored weight to remain upright—he suddenly had no choice but to share in it.

        “Just pretend you're a celebrity or something,” she muttered.  “For we all know, this is your prophetical return.”

        “H-Huh?” he finally managed to vocalize.

        “Yeah.”  She smirked as she slowly trotted forward, allowing him to shuffle at an even pace.  “Think of yourself as a goblin messiah or something.”

        “I'm... I'm hardly a goblin anything,” he said.  His voice had a wavering pitch to it as he adjusted his vest and hid his expression from the bystanders by turning to face the last pony's armored flank.  “I j-just want to get home and see Mom and Dad, then my body doesn't have to see the lantern-light of the streets anymore.”

        “You say that as if you have something to be ashamed of, Wart.”

        “Mmmm...” He merely muttered.  Though his black leggings opaquely covered the flesh of his thighs, he constantly kept to the right of the pony so that his limp, left thigh was being dragged obscurely between their bodies.

        Scootaloo bit her lip.  She was used to awkward situations in the Wasteland.  It occurred to her that Warden wasn't.  “So... Uh... Strut Twenty?”

        “Huh?”

        “That's where you said your parents lived—”

        “Y-Yes.  Strut Twenty,” he exclaimed, nodding earnestly.  “We'll know when we're there because most of the lanterns have a green tint to them.”

        “Or, y'know...” Scootaloo smiled his way.  “We could just take the elevators.”

        Warden didn't return the expression.  He merely nodded.  “Yes.  Yes, we c-can—Augh!”  He suddenly tripped, his limp leg finally failing him.  He stumbled to his knees, wincing, struggling to get up.

        Scootaloo shifted nervously where she stood above him.  As she stretched a brown wing out to give him something to pull himself up with, she glanced back and saw twice as many goblins watching as before.  She was starting to feel a twinge of what made Warden nervous, though she was hardly thinking about herself.

        “Look... uhm... Wart...”  She looked back as he stood—wobbling—back on two legs.  “I know of a way to make this whole trip faster.”

        “I'm... I-I'm all ears,” he uttered dizzily, leaning against her.

        “You may not like it,” she said.

        He gulped.  “Anything's gotta be better than staying around here and being stared at.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “I-I don't think I like this, pony,” Warden murmured.

        “Oh hush.”  She managed a slight smirk and trotted briskly along.  “Just enjoy the ride.”

        Warden did his best, for what it was worth.  He gripped her neck and leaned forward from where he was “saddled” on her armored spine.  His limp leg dangled past her wing as the last pony carried him effortlessly towards the elevator shafts that led up to the higher platforms.  “I think more goblins are staring at the two of us now than there were before.”

        Scootaloo's goggles reflected dozens of imp faces gawking at the pair.  She ignored them and marched forward.  “If they are, it's cuz they're jealous.  I mean...” She smiled.  “Who doesn't want a pony ride in this day and age?”

        “Please.  Don't try to sound silly.  It makes me nauseous.”

        “When I was younger than you, Wart, I knew a highly intelligent pony named Twilight Sparkle.  She had this cute little dragon assistant who was a biped like you, however he could hardly make any ground on his two stubby feet.  So, Twilight would constantly be seen trotting around town while giving the dragon a ride on her back.  I swear, he became addicted to horse-back riding.  He wouldn't have it any other way, which is probably why he ended up looking so plump and out-of-shape before the Cataclysm happened.”

        “Uhm...”  Warden squirmed nervously atop her back.  “What's a dragon?”

        Scootaloo merely sighed.  “It's alright.  That was the start of a boring conversation anyways.”  Her ears pricked upon seeing a row of elevator doors stretched ahead.  She aimed them towards the one marked with “20 – 21.”  “Here we are.  See, that didn't take so long, did it?”

        Warden was silent.  He gripped onto Scootaloo harder, all but burying his face into her neck.  Gazing past him, Scootaloo could still see many goblins staring.  No matter how quickly she made for their destination, she couldn't outrun the suspicious gazes of impkind.  She figured Warden realized this truth long before she even bothered to contemplate it, and he trembled from the uncomfortable reality of it all.

        The last pony bit her lip.  She was constantly helpless to settle the branded imp's spirit.  So, with all the vestiges of knowledge that a bleak life in the Wasteland had given her, she settled for something that was more to her taste.  She attempted appealing to his mind.

        “So, tell me about Petra.”

        “Uhm...”  Warden blinked, peering up from her neck.  “We're in Petra.”

        “I can use my eyes, thank you very much,” she muttered, walking up and planting her hoof over a lever.  There was a dull ringing sound, and a dim yellow lantern above the elevator doors flickered to life.  The sounds of metal chains and hydraulics hissed loudly as a car rattled slowly towards them from some distant location within the vertical shaft.  “My ears, however, could use some exercise.  Care to humor me?”

        “I-I don't do comedy...”

        “It's an expression, silly,” Scootaloo muttered.  “If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that I can only pretend to know so much about a culture of Wasteland crea—erm... beings.”

        “What... uhm...”  Warden breathed a little easier as the two waited in isolation before the elevator doors.  “What do you wish to know?”

        “How did Petra get so big?”  Scootaloo murmured as she looked behind them, quietly relieved to see less goblins paying them any mind.  “Can other goblin townships compare?  Is Petra really the biggest of them all?”

        “They're... uh... they're all Petra.”

        Scootaloo blinked from under her goggles.  “I beg your pardon?”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “Petra isn't just this one city, or any city... really,” Warden explained in a surprisingly calm voice.  The two were alone in the elevator car as the metal platform slowly lifted them up the height of the megastructure and past several golden platforms.  The dismal gray Wasteland stretched from horizon to horizon beyond the metal webbing of the elevator frame's shell.  “Petra is what burns in every imp's soul.  It's what separates us from the lowly creatures of the world that we eat or turn into pets.  It's what inspires us to become bigger than what we actually are, to put our eight fingers to good use and turn the dead world into a complex and gorgeous thing.”

        “I can certainly admire the 'complex' part,” Scootaloo remarked, staring out the elevator frame at the multiple glowing platforms sparkling with life.  Her head then tilted up to gaze at the smog-filled sky and billowing steam beyond.  “As for 'gorgeous', well, to each their own... I suppose...”

        Warden went on.  “If it weren't for Petra, we'd be defenseless little creatures with nothing to show four ourselves,” he said.  “It's tough enough as it is to avoid becoming troll food or servants to ogre soldiers.  Harpies treat us like tiny vermin to snatch in their talons, and diamond dogs would have us all buried back in the ground if they had their way.”

        “What do you mean back in the ground?” Scootaloo exclaimed.

        “It's part of imp legend,” Warden explained.  “All half-lings—goblins, gremlins, and hobs—dwelled underground, long before we were intelligent enough to recognize the fires of Petra burning deep inside us.  It's hard to believe that we once lived like moles beyond the ivory gates of Deep Ash.”

        “'Deep Ash?'” Scootaloo's face briefly scrunched in thought.  She then brightened.  “Oh!  You mean 'Tartarus!'”

        “Huh?”

        “Tartarus: it's where the chaotic legions of Discord had long dwelled in perpetual imprisonment.  The place became home for abominable hermuculi that Discord gave sentience to after tearing apart the minds of past pony species during the Second Age—” She abruptly stopped in the middle of the lecture, biting her tongue.  “Ahem... N-Never mind any of that, Wart.  'Tartarus' is just a pony name for a place, that's all.  I kind of like 'Deep Ash' better, come to think of it.”

        “Yeah, okay...” Warden remarked, his voice sounding distant again.

        Scootaloo was desperate to salvage the conversation.  “So... uhm... there are three kinds of imps?”

        “Hmm?”

        “You mentioned that, beside goblins, there are 'gremlins' and 'hobs',” she said, smiling softly as the platforms of Petra blurred past them in their ascent.  “Tell me about 'em.”

        “You seem to know enough about us,” Warden muttered.  “What's to tell?”

        “I know as much as I can afford to know,” she replied in a droning voice.  “Some of you walk around with guns, others of you fly around with guns.”

        “It's... It's hardly that simple,” Warden said.  “For instance, goblins and gremlins are like water and steam.”

        “Do tell.”

        “Gremlins make up barely a twentieth of the imps who live in this city,” he explained.  “They don't belong to clans like goblins do.  They have families, of course, but they're all engineers first and sons and daughters second.  They gang together in city-wide corporations that the bigger, far more powerful goblin organizations hire for their security and flight skills.”

        “What's with the helmets they wear?”

        “Helmets?”

        “Yeah,” Scootaloo nodded.  “The ones I saw were wearing breathing apparati and visors.  Do they have a problem inhaling the Wasteland air or something?”

        “It's more of a religious thing.”

        “Religious?”

        “Yeah, they believe that Petra is an actual imp, and not a spirit inside all of us.”  Warden managed a slight smile.  “I used to have a gremlin buddy in Strut Twenty.  I asked him how come he never showed his eyes.  He said that it had to do with Petra being an all-seeing entity, and that gremlins weren't worthy of exposing their mouths or eyes nakedly to Petra's glory, or else their souls might fall apart and they'd no longer be vessels for manifesting their engineering skills and stuff.”

        “Heh.  Trippy.”  Scootaloo shifted where she stood.  “And what about hobs?”

        “Hobs just smell bad.”

        “Oh.”  Scootaloo blinked.  “Really?”

        “Yeah,” Warden said, shivering briefly.

        Scootaloo stared blankly into space for a prolonged period of time, then shrugged.  “Well, okay then.”

        “Was there... Was there anything else you wanted to know?”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “What's with the white strips?”

        “Uhmmm...”  Warden was distracted.  He sat upright as Scootaloo carried him down the metallic blocks of Strut Twenty.  His aquamarine eyes blinked and finally glanced down at her.  “What white strips?”

        “Those white strips,” Scootaloo said, pausing in mid-trot to point at a random clan's main household.  The entrance to the family's headquarters was framed by a pair of ivory bars, both blemished by splashes of yellow—unlike Geist Blood's black discoloration.  “I've seen them all over the place, even hanging from the necks of—what do you call them?—'prime-bleeders.'”

        “Oh, those.”  Warden took a deep breath, momentarily snapping out of his daze.  “Those are blood bars.”

        “Blood bars?”

        “They're tiny shavings taken from the ivory gates to Deep Ash,” Warden explained.  “Every goblin family has them.”

        “What for?  Cultural heirlooms?”

        “More than that.  They serve a purpose,” he muttered.  “They help determine the different bleeders of imp kind.”

        “Uhm... how?”

        “When a goblin's red blood is applied to the white material, the stain shows up as different color.  Every family's imprint is significant.  For instance, those yellow marks on the house we just passed indicate the family is 'Bright Blood.'  On the other side of the district, there's 'Luck Blood', and their strips are colored blue.  'Wind Blood' is platinum and 'Star Blood' is violet...”

        “And the leaders of the family wear the strips to show their authority, I imagine.”  Scootaloo nodded and smiled.  “It all makes sense.”  She flashed a glance behind her.  “What about 'Stock Blood,' Wart?  What's your family's color?”

        “We... uhm...”  He bit his lip.  “We leave a green imprint, but... but it doesn't matter much...”

        “What do you mean it doesn't matter?  It sounds like goblins are all pretty obsessive about keeping track of whose juices belong to who.”

        “Mmm.  We are, but...”  He sighed.  His next utterance limped out of his lips.  “Nobody in my family is a prime-bleeder.”

        “Meaning...?”

        “We don't have a reason to show off our blood bars.  We serve another family.  We've done so for generations.”

        “Oh.”  Scootaloo blinked under her goggles.  She thought about the lowly miners and laborers she saw in the Geist Blood District of Strut Twenty-Five, such as the seamstress who made her the trunks for Warden.  “I guess that makes a lot of sense.  Not every imp can be in a position of power.”

        “M-Most aren't,” he remarked.  “It's best that way.  Authority belongs to a seldom few who are instilled with the righteous blood to wield it.”  He sighed and leaned forward on her back.  “I certainly could never hold onto that kind of power...”

        Scootaloo made a face upon hearing that.  She suddenly had so many questions, but they were no longer aimed at distracting Warden as they were purposed towards placating some unbeknownst flame of curiosity billowing deep within her.  As she glanced down at the metal street passing beneath her hooves, she realized that her canter had slowed down to a sluggish trot.  Sooner than she had imagined, her conversation with Warden was going to end.  More than that, anything and everything with Warden was going to end, for she was soon to have him delivered to his own household.  They were going to part ways, and something that would never have been possible before... would soon no longer be.

        “Do you see it, Warden?  Do you see your family's home yet?” the last pony asked.  Companionship in the Wasteland was an accidental thing, and this was destined to end just as abruptly.  “We've walked all over the Ceti and Beta Levels and you haven't said a thing.  Should I take us up to the top district or what?”

        “No.  No, only the lead clan of the platform lives on Alpha Level,” Warden said.  He breathed evenly and pointed ahead.  “Go around two more blocks.  My place is up ahead.”

        Scootaloo wasn't sure why these next few words came out of her mouth, but she didn't stop them.  “You sure about that, kid?”

        “Yes.”  He nodded slowly.  “I may have been through some tough times, but I still know my hometown when I see it.”  His voice was nonetheless dry and stale as he added, “I'm more than capable of taking care of myself in this place.”

        “And...”  Scootaloo tilted her head up.  “And your parents as well, right?”

        “Right...” Warden said.  A long breath escaped his lungs.  Scootaloo felt as though his grip on her armored backside was tightening as he spoke, “I-I just hope they're not mad at me.”

        “For what?”

        “For losing track of the business deal on account of the harpies.”

        “Kid...”  Scootaloo suppressed a chuckle.  “You're alive.  A pair of imp parents should be outright ecstatic to know that their very own kid has returned from the depths of the Wasteland in one piece.”  After a bit of silence, she gulped and not-so-smoothely added, “Shouldn't they be?”

        “Yes.  Yes, of course they will be.  I just hope to make it up to them, somehow.”

        “One thing at a time, Wart,” Scootaloo said as she rounded the street corner he had pointed at earlier.  “You've got an injured leg to look at.  I doubt you can 'manifest Petra' much until you and your parents get that checked out first.”

        “Yeah...”

        Scootaloo glanced at the many buildings surrounding them.  Every metal face and aluminum lean-to looked as alien to her as in the rest of Strut Twenty.  “So... uhm... where's your stop?”

        “Right here is just fine, pony.”

        “Well, okay.”  She squatted down so that he could dismount.

        Warden stepped over and leaned against a wall of rusted panels.  He did a double-take at a hoof that was thrusting a pair of silver bars towards him.  “T-Two hundred strips?”  His lips quivered as he gazed up at her.  “You... You can't be serious!”

        “Take them before I think twice about it,” the last pony droned.  Her goggles reflected his gawking face as she all but shoved the bars into his vest.  “Seems to me like you've lost enough as it is.  I know this isn't nearly capable of covering whatever shortage your family's endured since the harpies busted in on you and your shipment.  Still, it was hardly your fault that your leg got busted up the way it did.”

        Warden finally clasped onto the bars.  They weighed heavily in his clawed fingers as he clutched them to his chest and murmured up at her, “It was hardly your fault either, pony.”

        Scootaloo stared at him... beyond him.  She once again smelled the ash of the Wasteland beyond all of the fumes and metal alloys of Petra, as if the dead detritus of Equestria was calling her name.  She remembered how alone she had always been, and how alone she was about to be again.  “That remains to be seen, kid,” Scootaloo spoke.  “I'm here for a reason.  It'll be a long time before I determine for sure just what is or isn't the fault of ponydom.”

        “Where will you go?” he asked, his aquamarine eyes imploring.

        “Mmmm...”  She tightened the leather cowl on her head.  “I figure I'd head up to Strut Thirty-Five and work my way down, looking for a family besides Geist Blood who's willing to help me into the pits for a right price.  It won't be the first time in my life that I've gone door to door.  Heh.”  She smirked.  “How about you, kid?”  Scootaloo glanced at the enrtance to the small, metal building where she just placed him down.  “Gonna go drop the jaws of your parents now or what?”

        “I'm...”  He bit his lip and smiled sweetly.  “I just need a moment first.”

        “Want me to stay with you for when they—?”

        “No!” he exclaimed, then calmed down.  “No, pony.  I... I'm forever grateful for what you've done for me, but my parents...”  He winced.  “They're imps through and through.  If they saw you here... Uhm... that is, if they knew that a 'glue stick' had carried me all the way home...”

        Scootaloo waved a hoof.  “Say no more.  I understand, Warden.”  She smiled gently nevertheless.  “Just tell them that a flock of chickens carried you halfway across the Wasteland.”

        “A flock of what?”  Warden's face twisted grotesquely.  “I don't get it.”

        “That officially makes this the best day ever.”  Scootaloo briefly chuckled.  After a breath, she murmured, “Well, so long, ya little Wart.”

        “Good bye, pony,” he waved with one hand while he clasped the bars to himself with the other.

        Scootaloo very swiftly, very determinedly spun away from him.  Her march towards the far end of the district was brisk.  The darkly-lit buildings of Strut Twenty's Beta Level blurred by her.  When she was halfway to the location of the elevator entrances, the movement stopped.  Scootaloo was standing in place, biting her lower lip.  Against her better nature, she turned and looked back from where she came.

        The distant, green speck of a goblin teenager was still standing in front of his family's house, clutching the silver like it was a piece of something that was lost to both him and Scootaloo.  The commonality between the two souls ended then and there.  With one blink, Scootaloo lost track of him, and the shadowy memory of Warden blended in with the rest of the imp city's noise and commotion.  Imp bodies drifted by.  Gears and pistons clattered ceaselessly.  Smog and steam filled all of the gaps in between, and Scootaloo was once again a lonely pariah piloting her way through the lifeless clouds of it all.

        It was an easier way to live; Scootaloo only had to remember it.  With a blank face, she turned back towards the elevators and marched forward, undaunted.






        “Ta-daaaaa!”  A young Scootaloo held her engineering feat up in two orange hooves.  “What do you think?”

        Rainbow Dash squinted.  She hovered down to the little filly, joining her atop a bridge that crossed a babbling brook just outside Ponyville.  Gently, with a curious gaze, she grasped the item in her forelimbs.  “They're... They're goggles...”

        “No, they're your goggles!”  Scootaloo grinned wide.  “You fly around so fast up there in the sky, I figured you might want something to protect those awesome, hawk-like eyes of yours!”  The filly bit her lip and dug her hooves into the ground.  “Do you like them?”

        “H-Hey!  Not too bad!”  Rainbow Dash held the article up to her blinking eyes, magnifying them.  “I sure as heck could have used these two days ago when the stampede of bunnies rampaged their way across downtown Ponyville!”

        Scootaloo blinked.  “There was a stampede of bunnies?”

        “Oh, you didn't know?!”  Rainbow Dash chanted, “Your flank better calllllllll someponyyyy!  Hahahahah—Ahem.  No, seriously... These are really frickin' sweet.  I... uh... I don't owe your parents a bunch of bits for them or something, do I?”

        “Nope!”  Scootaloo bounced.  “I made 'em!”

        “You made these?”  Rainbow Dash did a double-take.  “No friggin' way!”

        “What's so crazy about that?”  Scootaloo stuck a tongue out.  “I may not have a cutie mark yet, but that doesn't mean I can't have hobbies.”

        “Heh, well if making sweet flying goggles is your 'hobby,' I'm kind of scared to find out what your special talent is.”

        “Maybe it's singing!”

        “Yeah, uh, no.  Ahem.  Let's check these things out, shall we?”  Rainbow Dash straightened her prismatic mane and slid the article over her face.  She grinned with refracted red orbs aimed down at the foal.  “How do I look?”

        “You...”  Scootaloo braved a smile, but then it turned into a slight grimace.  “....y-you look a little bit like a bookworm.”

        “Oh dear Celestia, no!”  Rainbow Dash gave a mock gasp.  “Soon I'm going to start smelling like a newspaper stand and begin lecturing ponies!”

        Scootaloo giggled insanely.

        Rainbow Dash wasn't done.  “Come along, my little dragon assistant! I must wave Galloping Gala tickets in front of my friends' faces and then act all shocked when they nearly fight each other over them!”

        The little filly was practically rolling in the dirt by this point.

        Rainbow Dash smirked.  She slid the goggles up to her forehead, then paused to sniff their canvas straps.  “Say... any reason why they smell like a month-old can of kitchen junk?”

        Scootaloo blushed.  “Uhm...”  She gazed down and played with a few loose pebblestones atop the bridge.  Just two days ago, she had snuck her way into a landfill outside of Ponyville.  It took her several hours of rummaging through piles of filth and junk, but she had found two bottles to slice into convex lenses and a leather belt that could be fashioned into a headstrap.  The actual process of making the goggles took her the better part of a sweating, aching afternoon, especially since she hadn't anticipated how hard it would end up being to find copper rings malleable enough to shape into the frames of the lenses.  “I-I guess I must have walked south of Strawhead's outhouse along the way here,” she managed with a crooked attempt at smiling.

        “Kid, I'm the chief weather flier of Ponyville.  Only I can afford to call Applejack 'Strawhead.'”

        “S-Sorry.”

        “Don't be sorry.  I just don't want to see your face turning inside out from Kicks McGee.”

        “Who?”

        “Never mind,” Rainbow Dash briefly groaned, then smiled again as she tightened the strap on the goggles and proudly posed in mid-air with them.  “I totally dig these.  Thanks again, kiddo.”

        “You're always trying to do the impossible, Rainbow Dash.”  Scootaloo's tail flicked happily as she sat on her haunches and murmured, “I just thought you deserved to wear something that might make it easier to do.”

        “Lemme level with ya, pipsqueak.”  Rainbow Dash touched down beside her and rested a hoof on Scootaloo's shoulder.  “Nothing can make doing the impossible easy.”

        “No?”  Scootaloo asked, her violet eyes blinking sadly.

        “More than anything, it's a windy path you gotta fly by your lonesome.”  Rainbow Dash's ruby eyes glinted in the sunlight as she smirked.  “But even though you can't make impossible stuff any easier, you sure as heck can make it cooler.”  She winked and tapped the front of the goggles.  “Looks like I owe that to you, squirt.”

        Scootaloo beamed.  “I-I'm glad that I could help!”

        “Eh, enough talk,” Rainbow Dash yawned, stretched her back, and grinned.  “Wanna watch me nearly kill myself doing the Buccaneer Blitz?”

        “Do I?!” Scootaloo gasped wide.

        “Heheh...”  Rainbow Dash's ruby eyes lit up as she flew like a reverse lightning bolt into the air.  “Follow me, kid, and you'll be going places.”

        “Heeheehee... Sure thing!” the tiny foal scampered after the blue blur.  In a single instant, Scootaloo's entire week had been made.




        “You're going places, pony.”

        Scootaloo paused in her steps, blinking.  She gazed up from the metal floor of Strut Thirty-Five, Level Beta of Petra.  The last pony was only residually aware of the time and distance that had gone by.  Now she was nearly at the doorstep to the “Wind Blood” clan, and all she knew was that a young goblinette with blue braids was standing directly in her path.

        “I beg your pardon?” Scootaloo grunted.  She had left her gentle voice back in Strut Twenty with Warden.

        “I said that you're going places,” Rai remarked.  She had a heavy utility belt strapped around her waist and several glittering tools filling the multiplicitous pockets of her vest.  A large wrench hung from her side, jointed in many places as if it could change shape with the flick of a wrist.  It somehow looked familiar to Scootaloo, but the female imp's voice snapped her out of staring at the device.  “But you don't know how to get there, pony.”  Rai took a few quiet steps towards her, darting several looks over her shoulder in a noticeably paranoid fashion.  “The right kind of goblins can help you.  But you're not about to go see them.  The prime-bleeder of Wind Blood is as self-centered as the Geist-Bleeders' leader.  He will hardly lend you a hand, much less the generous warmth of Petra to do anything else for that matter.”

        “Fascinating words of advice,” Scootaloo droned.  “You must be an expert on inter-imp relations.”

        “Something like that.  Look...” Rai groaned and shuffled forward.  “Come.  Follow me.  My boss would like to speak with you, but she's got this thing about hanging out in the shadows.  You see, we've been following you for a while now—”

        “Have you?” Scootaloo's eyebrow raised above her goggles in a bored fashion.

        “Yes.  And we can tell you're determined to get somewhere.  But the determination of a glue sti—of a pony can only come across as threatening to the manifesters of Petra.  However, if you had some help...”

        “For how much silver?  Hmm?”

        Rai frowned.  “It's not about that!”

        “I'm sure it isn't.”  The last pony could easily stare down this goblin teenager.  She was only a few years older and a few more centimeters taller than Warden.  “Perhaps it's about finding newer pockets of sky marble that a 'sky stealer' such as myself would know about.  Or maybe your clan is in desperate need of someone with an airship who can deliver resources for you.”

        “Nnngh...” Rai sneered, her razor sharp teeth showing.  “For crying out loud, I only want to make a business proposition!  Seriously, were all ponies so friggin' temperamental?!”

        “Only the awesome ones,” Scootaloo muttered.  She glanced suddenly at a “Desperadoes” poster hanging on a street corner beyond them both.  It amazed her that even ten levels above where Geist Blood was situated, the rogues' notoriety had spread.  Among the four shadowy shapes, there was the illustration of a thin and petite goblin.  Scootaloo's gaze then returned to Rai's thin and petite figure.  With a sigh, she said, “Look, whatever it is that you're asking me to do, I think it's best in our mutual interest that we part ways.”

        “You really suck at embracing opportunities when they're given to you, huh?”

        “About as much as you do at taking a hint.”  Scootaloo shoved a gasping Rai up against the nearest lamppost, pressing into her with a metal hoof.  “Back off,” she sneered into her face, “Or I'll foricbly test your juices on the blood bars of this district and find out just which platform I should toss you at.”  Her nostrils flared in Rai's eyes.  “That 'temperamental' enough for you?”

        “You... Y-You...”  Rai's youth and inexperience was showing.  In spite of her fitfulness, she gulped hard and summoned a brave frown.  “You're full of crap, pony.  I'm not trying to shoot you in the back like one of Lady Ryst's thugs.  If you gutted me here in the middle of Wind Blood's district, someone would see and every goblin would be happy to have an excuse to rip the flanks off your bones.”

        “So you're a smart imp!  Good.”  Scootaloo released her hoof and Rai slumped down to the metal street beneath her.  “Then be one, and stop following me.  Or else.”  Scootaloo trotted towards the ramp leading to Strut Thirty-Five's Alpha Level.

        “Hckkt...” Rai rubbed her neck and stood up, her brow furrowed.  “Or else what?”

        “I've got wings, and you don't.”  Scootaloo muttered without looking back.  “Think about that, then think about how friggin' high we are right now.”

        “Hrmmph...” Rai's eight fingers formed into fists as she stormed off in the opposite direction.  “Friggin' waste of time,” she muttered to herself as she disappeared into the shadows of the bustling district.  “Bard totally owes me ten strips.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        Scootaloo entered the dark alcove of the ramp.  Before she could begin her ascent, a voice gently rolled her way.

        “I must apologize for the actions of my apprentice.”

        Scootaloo's horseshoes scraped to a stop.  Her heart was beating, for the voice was no less than a meter behind her.  In the space of a blink, a figure had snuck up on the last pony.  She spun and reached back for her copper rifle.

        She stopped entirely upon seeing a pair of ruby eyes peering at her from the darkness.

        “She's young, wreckless, and enthusiastic, as I'm sure you and I once were,” the figure murmured.  The words were tempered by as much icy seriousness as Scootaloo's own voice throughout the years, so that the twitching pegasus briefly wondered whether she had heard the utterance or had thought it.  “However, she doesn't know suffering.  Not like we do.”  The ruby eyes narrowed, hardened, like they were reflecting the fall of Cloudsdale.  “I won't tolerate anyone treating her roughly, two legs or four.  She is... precious to me.  You should know that it's hard to afford precious things in the Wasteland.”

        “What...?”  Scootaloo's goggles struggled to stay atop a contorted face.  She cleared her throat and lowered her hoof from the rifle-holster in her saddlebag.  With a calm breath, she asked, “Who are you?”

        Vaughan gently walked out of the shadows, her hair as red as a sky exploding with moon shards.  In the dim light of distant lanterns, her ruby eyes were no longer striking.  She was one with the metallic debris of the place. She only exposed herself to Scootaloo because she chose to.

        “I think I've made it clear,” Vaughan said.  “I'm the mentor to Rai, the goblin who just rudely interrupted you a moment ago.  Though, to make things clearer, it was my idea that we run into you.  Rai, unfortunately, took the idea quite literally.  I do hope you forgive me for that.  I take full responsibility.”

        Scootaloo stared curiously at her.  “Alright...” She murmured in a stretched voice.  “You're forgiven.”

        Vaughan paced slowly around the last pony.  “Something bothering you?”

        “Yeah.  I'm not used to a goblin apologizing to me—or any other being for that matter.”  Scootaloo's face tightened into a suspicious frown.  “It's rarely unaccompanied by bullcrap.”

        “Hmmph...”  Vaughan smiled, reintroducing light into the shadows of the alcove.  “I like the way you talk.  I even heard you with Rai.  Your words are equally full of eloquence and brutishness.  I suppose it's fitting, what with you being a repository of your kind's legacy and such.”

        “I don't know what you've heard or what you think you've heard,” Scootaloo muttered, eying the pacing goblinette wearily.  “I'm just here to conduct business with the leading clans of this place.  I'm not here to assist the terrorists of Petra.”

        “Terrorists?”

        Scootaloo sighed.  “Look.  I'm really sick to death of pretense.  Yesterday, I did something that was a bit too gracious for my own good, and now I have Sergeant Redhead talking to me from the shadows.  You think I'm stupid?  Whatever it is you 'Desperadoes' want, I can't and won't provide you with it.  I'm a pony.  There's only so little I can get away with in a city full of goblins.  So... just quit while you're ahead, okay?  I have enough in my trough as it is.”

        Scootaloo turned around and trotted firmly up the the ramp.

        “You must have loved her very dearly.”

        “Mmmf... Who?” Scootaloo grunted.

        “The blue pegasus you're looking for, of course.”

        Scootaloo once more came to an abrupt stop.  This time, she didn't say anything.  She stood in the shadows, her face quivering upon the precipice of a grimace.  Finally, she turned around and raised her goggles to squint incredulously at the goblin.

        Vaughan calmly drank those eyes in.  She spoke, “Surely it wasn't your feather I saw tied around your ear yesterday after Ryst's goon nearly shot your skull off.”

        Scootaloo raised a hoof to her cowled head.  Her scarlet eyes darted from side to side in a sudden nervousness.  Then her jaw tightened as she squinted at the stranger.  “It was you who gave me the warning yesterday.  It was your voice that shouted.”

        “I could very well have taken the shot for you, but somehow I knew that you were more than capable of punishing Darper for his transgressions on your own,” Vaughan said.  “Besides, I've been trying to set an example for Rai about maintaining tactical invisibility.  If anything, the event proved that you're as resourceful as I am, if not more so than myself.”

        “How did you know...?”

        Vaughan took a breath and pushed some red bangs out from her forehead.  “It's my business to make judgement calls about other creatures.  As you can suspect, it only works some of the time—”

        “No.  I...”  Scootaloo winced, wrestled with the words, then tossed them out, “How did you know that the feather belonged to a pegasus?”  She gulped.  “And a female one at that?”

        “You have a look that I've seen before,” Vaughan said, her brown features calm and meditative.  “Because I've worn it before.  You look like you've lost a sister.”

        Scootaloo stared at her.  Slowly, like a thawing glacier, she formed another frown, stronger this time.  “You're right.  Your judgment only works some of the time.”

        “So does your honesty,” Vaughan returned.  “Out-bleeders come here every stormfront for silver, for steam, and for blood.  All of them have the same face, and none of them look like yours.”

        “Perhaps because none of them were friggin' ponies.”

        “Or perhaps because none of them were looking for something that was truly special, something that the families running this place have long forgotten about.”  Vaughan took a few bold steps towards Scootaloo, her ruby eyes haunting and steady, as if she was riding a cloud.  “Imps live high above the ruptured Earth of this world, pony.  They've distanced themselves from the wounds that the Dimming has caused.  When their loved ones die, they either get cremated, tossed over the side, or fed to the vultures of the lower platforms.  There's not been a soul in Petra over the last two decades who understands what it means to bury a loved one... or to have to dig her back up.”  She shuffled to a stop.  “But you're here, aren't you?  What else would a pegasus be on the edge of her kind's pilfered grave for?”

        Scootaloo's nostrils flared.  She avoided Vaughan's gaze and glared towards the shadows, where the colors assaulting her mind could easily escape.  “I already told you.  I don't need any of your Desperadoes' help.”

        “But we need yours.”

        Scootaloo practically growled at her.  “Why?”

        “We're here to salvage lives from the city before it makes a grave for them too,” Vaughan said.  “This city is heartless, cold, and unforgiving.  It is not so much a monument to industrious souls as it is a machine that consumes them, makes them do more and more despicable things to each other for the sake of burning steam and earning silver.  Twenty years ago, no goblins would ever enslave one another.  Such was a hideous practice that only ogres—the oppressors of half-lings—forced upon all impkind.  Here we are now, after so many shackled souls have watched their dreams join the ashes of the Wasteland, and what true profit is there?”

        “You don't sound like a goblin.”

        “Would you rather I sound like a pony?”  Vaughan raised an eyebrow.  “I was friends with some, you know, back when there was sunlight.  Unicorns, earth ponies, pegasi... even the lesser known species of the ocean.  They were delightful creatures.  Most goblins think they dominated this world.  I happen to know that ponies only saw to the glorification of it.  When the Dimming destroyed everything, it could only mean that Equestrian souls no longer had the capacity to protect it anymore.  That's a tragedy, no matter how creatures of today try to look at it.  We live in a tragic world, pony, and I am trying to save that which is most precious in it, that which is left to be worth saving.  I get the feeling that you are too.  Now...”  She narrowed her eyes, and her voice was briefly sharp.  “Tell me that I'm wrong.”

        “I don't need to prove anything to you,” Scootaloo muttered.

        “But you do have to prove something, don't you?” Vaughan paced back so that she stood once more upon the edge of the shadows.  “It's awfully risky for a pegasus like yourself to have trekked so deep into the territory of creatures that predominantly despise you.”

        “And you're the exception, huh?”  Scootaloo gave her a bitter smirk.  “You're supposed to be my knight in shining armor.”

        “As hyperbolic as that sounds, I wouldn't deny it.”  Vaughan returned a far more genuine smile, then said, “You're courageous, pony.  But if you poke too far into imp business, you'll have them poking back... with knives.  On the other hand, my team and I may be able to offer you a chance that none of those insufferable prime-bleeders can bother giving you.”

        “I know a thing or two about goblin daggers,” Scootaloo said with an icy chill.  Her blank flank stirred from underneath the leather armor as she turned away from Vaughan.  “If I wasn't aware of the risk, I wouldn't have come all this way.  But it doesn't matter.  I know what I'm doing, and I really can't afford to let myself get distracted when I'm so close to... to getting whom I flew here for.”

        “And I can't force you to take the chance.  I understand completely,” Vaughan said, nodding.  “I just wonder...”  She stepped back into the shadows, glancing up at where Scootaloo's cap obscured a tiny blue feather underneath.  “Would she have wanted you to go through all the trouble of risking your neck when someone gave you a real opportunity?  I imagined that she cared for you just as much...”

        “Nnnngh...” Scootaloo hissed and spun with her teeth gnashing.  “Don't pretend that you know anything about—!”  She stopped, blinking.

        Vaughan was gone.

        Alone once more with the shadows, Scootaloo sighed and sluggishly resumed her trot uphill.  “For once... I friggin' swear...”  She muttered to herself.  “I want to have a conversation that's short and to the point.”






        “No way in dimming's blight, you pathetic glue stick!”  An imp stood in front of a building's entrance marked with platinum-colored strips.  He yelled and shook a rusted canteen in the last pony's face.  “You're not having an audience with the prime-bleeder!  I'm telling you now and for good—Wind Blood doesn't want to do any business with sky stealing Wasteland filth like you!”

        “But if you would just let me explain—” Scootaloo began, but was swiftly finished when the imp doused the contents of his canteen into her face.  Soaked, her goggles dripping with dirty water, she let out a long and painful sigh.

        “You will explain nothing!”  The imp spat and shouted under the noise of dozens of smokestacks churning steam into the Wasteland sky above Strut Thirty-Five.  “You will leave!  Now!  Geist Blood warned us about you!  You're not stealing anything from the pits!  Not if us Wind-Bleeders have anything to do with it!”

        “I have silver and I am willing to trade—”

        “Leave!”

        Several hissing shouts and angry yells filled the air.  Turning around, Scootaloo marched through a frowning sea of goblins in white vests.  The many gang members gestured angrily and threatened her with a mighty show of their steam rifles and sharp knives.  She eventually made for the elevator shafts, knowing they would take her down to the next strut below...


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “No!” A goblin raised his goggles from over his pale eyes and frowned at her inside a hangar of Strut Thirty-Four.  “Out of the question!  Those pits don't belong to you!  The steam that comes out of the western mines is the very backbone of Petra!”

        “I'm not after the steam,” Scootaloo groaned, feeling crowded by two goblin thugs armed with rifle pistols on either side of her.  “There's just one inconsequential thing that I need to grab from underground.  I promise that I won't friggin' touch your precious mines—”

        “It's enough to have to be reminded that the priceless marble ever once was hoarded by ponies!”  The prime-bleeder snarled and aimed a wrench at her from where he squatted besides a half-constructed hovercraft.  “I won't give into your deceit!  I won't let you anywhere near that stuff!  It's goblin property now!  Finders-keepers!”

        “Have you heard a single word that I just said—?!”

        “Matthais of Geist Blood told me enough.”  He pivoted his gaze towards the two guards.  “Drag her out of here already!”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “I was barely twelve winters old when the Dimming happened.”  A scarred goblin frowned across a metal table at Scootaloo.  His gnarled fingers were folded together as his voice lisped across the dim, smoky interior of a building in Strut Thirty-Three.  “All my life, pegasi like you kept all the world's resources to themselves.  They kept their world pretty and clean while they tossed ugly cyclones our way.  My forefathers encountered so many devastating tornadoes and storms that I'm lucky that I was even born.  Then the world turned to ash from underneath me—the world that your kind was dominating.  And now you come here, asking for us to do you favors?”

        Scootaloo leaned forward and waved one forelimb.  “Look, we can discuss the philosophy and politics of the Cataclysm another time.  I can tell that you don't care much about ponydom.  But do you care about silver?  I'm willing to pay handsomely for a single trip to the pits.  Nothing else—”

        “Unless you're willing to pay with enough pony blood to account for all of my dead and impoverished ancestors, the answer is 'no'.”

        “Nnngh...” Scootaloo rolled her scarlet eyes.  “Oh for the love of Celestia—”

        “No!”  The scarred imp frowned and pointed.  “Do not invoke the name of your merciless gods here, glue stick.  Matthais warned me about you.  You should praise Petra I didn't follow my first impulse and ordered

        Scootaloo sighed and loosened her muscles to allow the angry thugs to drag her out of the office.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~



        “I'll throw in several moonrocks,” Scootaloo said.  “Plus several iron rivets, and—of course—the silver payment I promised as soon as I came here.”

        An elder imp with wrinkled skin and a gray mat of hair leaned forward in his metal chair.  His body shook and his lips quivered as he stared at the last pony with a scrunched face of confusion.  “Eh?  What was that?”

        Scootaloo raised her voice.  “I said, I'll throw in several moonrocks and—”

        “Shuttlecocks?!  What?!” the elder trembled, his pointed ears perpetually drooped.

        A bodyguard cleared his voice and leaned over, whispering into the elder's ear.

        “Huh?!  Moonrocks?!”  The elder made a face, frowning up at his young subordinate.  “What, are we battling harpies again?  Arm the catapults!”

        “No, it's part of the payment!” Scootaloo practically shouted.  “Along with the silver!  Remember?!”  She raised her goggles from her eyes and used her entire face to accentuate the words coming out of her mouth.  “So that I could get to visit the mining pits?!”

        “Mining pits?!  Yes, we have those!  What do you want with them?!”

        “I need to get inside to excavate something that I left—”

        “Left?!  Lady, if you want to find the lavatories, take a right!”

        The bodyguard leaned in and muttered once more in the elder's trembling ear.

        “What?!”  The gray imp's eyes widened in shock.  “A pony?!  Where?”

        “Right here,” Scootaloo snarled.

        The elder spat.  “Bah!”  He waved a wrinkly hand of claws.  “Be gone, Glue Stick!  We don't cater to your kind in... in... Mud Blood?”

        The bodyguard whispered again.

        “Moth Blood!  Us Moth-Bleeders don't want no sky stealers!  Now leave my platform before I have you thrown out in pieces!”

        Scootaloo was already trotting away, groaning to herself.  “I should have just told him I was a griffon...”

        “Confound it!  It's too dark!  When's the sun coming back up already?!”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “Let me get this straight...” An old, muscular goblin with long blonde threads was leaning forward against his desk.  He wore a blood bar splashed with a violet color that matched his purple eyes.  “You want to be allowed into the pits—but you don't want to touch any of the sky marble?  You must understand how hard that it is for me to swallow something like that—”

        Scootaloo took one long breath and emotionlessly droned, “Because I'm a good-for-nothing sky-stealing glue stick whose dead ancestors robbed from your forefathers century after century and you've heard enough rampant gossip from Matthais of Geist Blood to believe that I'm not to be trusted and there's no way in 'the Dimming's blight' that I should be given the right to go prancing about and tossing magical pony dust all over your precious mines.  Is that what you were about to say?”

        The goblin prime-bleeder blinked.  “I... uhm...”

        “Just give it to me straight.”  Scootaloo leaned forward with a chiseled frown.  “Do you want the silver or not?  Cuz that's what this all should be about and nothing else.  So what if I'm a pony?  So what if Matthais and I have bad blood?  The way I see it, all of that is neither here nor there.  I just want to make a short visit into the pits.  It's not the steam that I'm after.  If you must know, I'm trying to excavate the remains of a very dear friend of mine.  She and I are perfectly harmless to you, dead or alive or both.  I don't even have to spend more than an hour inside the pits.  Heck, I know where to go and what to do.  I may not even be in there for more than fifteen minutes.  I'm not trying to throw my weight around goblin business.  I'm in... I'm out... Boom.  I'm gone from your hair.  So, do you want the silver or not?”

        The goblin's violet eyes narrowed.  “All my life, I've never met a pony.  All this time, I assumed your kind to be a haughty, selfish, arrogant race.  But right now, you're casting me a different picture.  If I was to make a guess, I'd say that you were desperate, because this is coming very close to begging.”

        “Heh...”  Scootaloo smirked bitterly, her eyes flaring.  “Like a slave, right?”

        The goblin's eyes narrowed.

        “Yeah.  Thanks but no thanks.”  Scootaloo stood up straight and made for the door to the office.  “Save your breath.  I've got thirty more struts to juggle before I give up on this Celestia-forsaken quest of mine.”

        “Pony, wait,” the voice behind Scootaloo entreated her, the first utterance of such a kind since she began her door-to-door trek.  She turned around to see him holding his arm out in a sincere gesture.  He stared back at her, and then glanced at his four guards lining the exit of the room.  “Leave us.”

        The thugs in matching violet armbands gawked at him.  They exchanged confused looks, shifting nervously.

        “What, are you half-lings deaf?!” The prime-bleeder rose out of his seat and shook a fist.  “I gave you a command, didn't I?!  Now leave us!  I'll call if I need something!”

        Reluctantly, the four armed imps left the room, closing the door to the office behind them.  The last pony was soon alone with the prime-bleeder and the unnerving hiss of steam pipes beyond the office's metal bulkheads.

        She turned to squint at him from underneath her raised goggles.  “Hadron of... Star Blood, was it?  Have I struck a nerve?  A good nerve?”

        “You've struck something, alright,” Hadron muttered, shuffling towards her with a suspicious glare.  “Now that we're alone, I want you to tell me who it is.”

        Scootaloo blinked awkwardly.  “Who what is?”

        “The Mountain Ogres?  The Fire Ogres?”  Hadron frowned, standing eye-to-eye with her.  “The Harpy Pirates?  The Dirigible Dogs?  The Golden Gang?!  Who?!”

        “I think I made myself clear...”  Scootaloo eyed him warily, pacing at a cautious distance.  “I came to request safe passage into the mines in exchange for silver.  I can't venture there alone without being threatened by hovering gremlins, angry goblins, smelly hobs, or Epona-knows-what.”  She paused in her shuffling to give him a piercing gaze.  “What?  Are you expecting someone from the outside to be stirring up some nasty business?”

        “I've been manifesting Petra for a long time, pony,” Hadron said.  “During that time, Matthais has been a long time business partner.”  He sighed suddenly, then muttered, “For better or for worse.”

        Scootaloo raised an eyebrow at that.

        Hadron paced away from her, standing before a glass-encased balcony overlooking a busy warehouse full of giant containers of molten metal.  Below, goblins were operating hydraulic limbs that dipped columns of pilfered sky marble into the artificial lava, where several pipes filtered the breakdown of steam into storage tanks.

        “He wasn't always as powerful as he is today,” Hadron muttered.  “Matthais' blood wasn't always his own.  He worked in patronage to another prime-bleeder.  Only in the last decade and a half has he come out on his own.  It was a remarkably rapid ascension, if you ask me.  I'm not the only goblin who thinks so.”

        “None of that surprises me.”

        Hadron glanced curiously back at her.

        “What I mean to say is, I ran into him a long, long time ago.  Right after... the Dimming, as a matter of fact.”  She trotted up to Hadron's side, overlooking Star Blood's extraction of steam from sky marble.  “He was nothing more than an angry servant at the time.”

        “Well, that might possibly explain it,” Hadron said.  He was exhaling sharply, as if relieving a great deal of tension.

        “Explain what?”

        “If there's anything about Matthais that impresses me, it's how calm he is while under pressure.”  Hadron murmured, staring down at his clan's operations.  “Barely ten hours ago, Lady Ryst's goon squad comes marching by my platform, delivering a letter signed in the juices of the prime Geist-Bleeder.  Matthais had the same communication sent to all of the upper and lower platforms.  He told us to be on the look-out for a rogue sky stealer attempting to deceive her way into the mines.  He told us that your plans were 'nefarious' and that you 'weren't to be trusted.'”

        “Boy, does that sound familiar,” Scootaloo muttered.  “I spent the last hour and a half being told the same thing by several prime-bleeders and their representatives above this platform...”  She glanced aside at him.  “Though they hardly used same polite words you're using.”

        Hadron turned to look at her.  “I've never known Matthais to have a personal grudge.”

        “Believe it.”  Scootaloo muttered.  “The Wasteland is a huge, festering butthole... and that imp is its mascot.”  She shifted a bit where she stood.  “Mmm... no offense to your business relations.”

        “Hmmph...” Hadron's eyes looked tired.  “None taken.”  He strolled slowly towards his desk, all the while murmuring, “I still find it hard to believe that all you want from the pits is something of a personal effect.  It's been a long time since I've had an out-bleeder march up to my manor and demand for something other than silver or steam.”

        “Well, I hope that I'm a pleasant surprise,” the last pony replied.

        “You're certainly confusing, if nothing else.”  He leaned back against his desk, folded his arms, and stared fixedly at her.  “The most realistic picture I can make is that you're lying, and Matthais has seen underneath it.”

        “I'm not nearly as insulted as I am intrigued,” Scootaloo droned, pacing back towards him.  “Please, do continue.”

        “To have angered Matthais so much, it seems more appropriate for you to be a threat from an outside source.”  His purple eyes narrowed on her.  “If that was the case—and if you indeed worked for a competing interest in goblin profit, such as the ogre factions from the Valley of Jewels—then it would explain why you are here in Petra causing such a stir, especially now when the... balance of power is in such flux.”

        Scootaloo blinked in surprise from that.  “It's been in flux?  Since when?”

        “Hmmph... Since the fall of the House of Amber, of course.”

        “House of who?”

        Hadron took a deep breath.  “Now I know you're either playing stupid, or you've been living all your days inside a zeppelin.”

        “Would you feel threatened if I told you it was a combination of both?” Scootaloo said.

        Hadron actually smiled at that.  He shifted his weight against the desk and said, “My longest and most trusted business partner, Allon of Amber Blood, died suddenly... about five and a half months ago.  He and I were close allies. We manifested Petra together, back in a day when this landscape was flat and devoid of minerals.  With the additional help of Wind Blood and Moth Blood, we dragged sky marble from the pits and built steam forges out of barren rock.  We didn't need slavery or intimidation or guns to get the job done.  We simply trusted in each other.  We were blood brothers.”

        “I'm sorry to hear of his loss,” Scootaloo said in a neutral tone.  “It sounds like he was quite special to you.”

        “Not just to me, pony,” Hadron said.  “Allon was the most important goblin in Petra, for his family was the wealthiest.  Amber Blood was reverred among all the platforms, and my clan—the Star-Bleeders—served in patronage to him.  We garnered enough profit and processed enough steam to be seen as a separate power, but our families had always been joined at the hip.  Because of that, Star Blood had long enjoyed a high seat in the ranks of Petra... but that all changed.”

        “Allon of Amber Blood died,” Scootaloo remarked with a nod.

        “Not just him.”

        “Oh?”

        “It was a tragedy of unprecedented magnitude,” Hadron explained, his voice suddenly cold and distant as his eyes fell to the decrepit floor of the office.  “Not only did he die, but so did his wife, his children, his adopted offspring, his best servants and most trusted advisors.  In one single, horrible stormfront, all of them perished at once.  The mightiest family in all of Petra was suddenly no more.”

        “That's... kind of hard to believe,” Scootaloo remarked.  “I've been all over this city in the past thirty-six hours.  I imagined I would have seen signs of such a tragedy.  Just what platform did they live on?”

        Hadron calmly uttered, “Strut Thirty-Six.”

        “But...”  Scootaloo made a face.  “There are only thirty-five platforms.”

        The prime-bleeder merely gazed at her.

        Scootaloo blinked, her scarlet eyes widening.  “It fell?”

        “More like shattered... and then fell,” Hadron said coldly.  “And all goblins who were on it were whisked away by the winds of the stormfront that claimed it, their broken bodies scattered across the desolate Wasteland around Petra.”

        “I hate to sound unfeeling, but I'm rather surprised that such a thing hadn't happened before.”

        “And why is that?”  Hadron muttered.  He leaned away from his desk and paced towards her.  “Goblin engineering is the best exercise of architectural prowess in the whole ravaged world.  I dare say it rivals the legend of 'mountain sheep' that I've long been told about...”

        “Mountain rams.  But I get it,” Scootaloo nodded, thinking aloud.  “For a platform of Petra to just fall down overnight...it sounds totally kaizo—er... crazy.”  She blinked knowingly, then glanced up at him.  “I'm guessing that you think it wasn't an accident.”

        “Amber Blood perished in a virtual blink,” Hadron exclaimed, gesturing with a clawed hand for emphasis.  “The economic gouge made in the infrastructure of this city was incalculably huge.  Dozens of families that served Allon's clan for decades were suddenly robbed of resources.  Entire organizations collapsed.  Poverty struck more than two-thirds of the remaining platforms.  In desperation and in panic, several of the larger families that still retained power went to extreme lengths to preserve their status.  That is when the slave gangs came into being.  The family council enacted a new measure—one that I voted strongly against, if you must know.  Regardless, the result of this measure was a new and pathetic reliance on forced labor.  The joint edict defined broke and silver-less families as no-bleeders, and any family who got to them first could lay claim to their bodies.  The technicality of the measure claimed that the no-bleeders are bound into indentured servitude, but reality paints a different tale.  Petra is now a machine fueled by slavery, and in the midst of this despicable turn of events, one family has come out on top.”

        Scootaloo stared at him.  Suddenly, the ears under her cow drooped in realization.  “Geist Blood,” she uttered.

        Hadron nodded.  “Geist Blood now controls two-thirds of the pits.  In a matter of years, Matthais will be running this entire city, and the bitter irony is that it won't be by the majority's choice.  One by one, the platforms are falling out from the control of their respective prime-bleeders.  Just ten stormfronts ago, Jax of Snow Blood could no longer afford the resources to run his factories.  He had to sell out most if not all of his property, and all of the families that worked for him fell into poverty.  Would you like to know how many of those honorable, defenseless goblins became fodder for the slave-grabbing families still in power alongside Geist Blood?”

        Scootaloo could only frown at the thought of that.

        Hadron continued, “And it's not like they had any choice.  If they fled to the Wasteland, they'd become victims to harpies, trolls, or ogres.  If they fought against the upper families' slave gangs, they'd be executed in the street and have their children stolen from them.”

        Scootaloo had no way to hide it.  She shuddered at that last utterance.  The last pony briefly turned away from him and ran a hoof over her cowled head.  “I... I imagine some of them fight the likes of Geist Blood, regardless.”

        “Oh, they do.  But they don't last very long.”  Hadron said.  “The ones who are lucky make it to the townships below Petra, where the likes of Matthais have very little jurisdiction.  The rest either fall into slavery, starvation, or worse.  And then there are few—very, seldom few—who evade the powers that be.  Those goblins, pony, are imps of legend and infamy.”

        “The Desperadoes...”

        “So you have been around,” Hadron remarked with a slight smirk.  “Still, I doubt that such outstanding rogues will exist for long.  Sooner than later, Geist Blood and the other families will track them down, and the power of the enslavers shall be absolute once again.”  His nostrils flared as he turned to the far wall, folding his arms.  “It's a reality I have to consider very dearly.”



        “Star Blood... my family...” He sighed, then continued in a melancholic voice, “We can barely hold onto our places in the pits.  With each passing stormfront, we lose more and more silver.  None of the other families are supporting us, no matter what our position used to be... or how strong our alliance was to Amber Blood.”  He glanced forlornly over his shoulder.  “I told you that I voted against the measure of the grand family council.  I opposed the slavery edict.  It... was not a popular decision on my clan’s part.  There are even those on my own platform that would want to see me hanged for it.  In a state of financial desperation, goblin morality has a bitter flavor as soon as it's tested against the sweet taste of opportunity.”

        “Do you regret making that decision?”

        “Not one bit, pony.”  Hadron frowned, turning once more to face her.  “I know that it's what Allon would have done.  Amber Blood stood for more than the manifestation of Petra.  His family upheld the idea of common decency in a land where the Wasteland and all of its ugliness constantly threatened to encroach upon our brilliant township.”

        “But your family's suffering now.  You're losing money.”

        “And soon enough—sooner than I think—I will be losing far more than silver,” Hadron muttered in a defeated voice.  “Do not think that I cherish the fate that's in store for Star Blood.  It may be fifty stormfronts.  It may be five.  But soon, all that I have will belong to Geist Blood and those like him.”

        “Why not get out while you can?”  Scootaloo remarked.  “Make an exodus.  Head for higher ground—I dunno, just get away from it all!”

        “It's far too late for salvaging anything.  If I made the entire platform's population relocate now, the result would be several helpless imps falling into poverty and disarray.  I would only have forced the inevitable to happen early.”  Hadron's clawed fingers clenched into angry fists.  “Still... I almost would rather have us all suffer in the Wasteland than fall prey here.”

        “What's the difference, if you don't mind me asking?”

        “Out there...” He pointed beyond the metal walls of the office, frowning.  “We'd likely be consumed by trolls, maybe even thrown back into the same shackles that ogres had our ancestors in.  Still, it would be a much better fate than what awaits us here.  At least in the Wasteland, we'd know who our enemy was—who was the indeed out-bleeder filth.  Here, in Petra, in the glory of our burning hearts, there is no longer trust.  Our own kind has turned on itself.  There's no blood left in the city that's clean anymore.”  He sighed long and hard.  “When Amber Blood perished, so did Petra's hope.  Maybe... Maybe now you understand why I was so insistent that my initial presumption of your motivations was true...”

        Scootaloo stared at him for a space in time.  With a knowing breath, she replied, “I'm sorry, Hadron.  I'm sorry that I'm not affiliated with some outside source that could explain how this all began.  I must also apologize... because I am what I am.  I'm just a pony coming here to find something she left in the pits ages ago.  I'm not here to bring the promise of outside help.”

        “I was silly to think that you were a hint of any special truth,” Hadron muttered, glancing down briefly at his own feet.  “Especially since I know enough on my own as it is.”

        Scootaloo squinted at him.  “How do you mean?”

        “Tell me, pony, did you see the ruins of Strut Thirty-Six when you first arrived here?”

        “I saw nothing out of the ordinary,” Scootaloo said, shaking her head.  “Then again, I haven't seen this place in years, and everything's changed so drastically.  I really don't have a proper lay of the land.”

        “Well, the collapse of Amber Blood's strut was once more than obvious,” Hadron stated.  “Down below, on the fringes of Undersmoke, there was once massive wreckage... that is—of course—until a unified group of families volunteered to salvage the metals and resources from the debris and reintigrate it all back into the megastructure.”  He leaned forward with an emphatic expression.  “Would you like to know who led that very same salvage effort?”

        Scootaloo's scarlet eyes widened.  “You've gotta be friggin' kidding me...”

        Hadron shook his head.  He said, “Geist-Bleeders have since donned the image of progressive reconstructionists.  Matthais has maintained the face of an economic savior, and his use of slavery—however radical—is but a means to an end of stabilizing his vision of a newer, stronger, far more powerful city.  It's a very enticing idea, but it has cost the liberty of countless families... just as I suspect it has cost the lives of Amber Blood.”

        “You... You think Matthais murdered Allon and his clan?”

        “I wouldn't hold it against him.  His power has risen out of nowhere.”  He stared at her.  “If you were indeed an agent from the Wasteland, sent to threaten Matthais, I would almost be tempted to assist you.”

        “That... is not why I'm here, Hadron.”

        “I believe you, pony.”  He sighed and shuffled over to his desk, taking a seat.  “And even if you were, I wouldn't expect you to deliver.  Alas, as you are helpless to assist me, I am helpless to assist you.”

        She took a deep breath, her eyes falling coldly to the floor.  “So, in other words, you spent all of this time and talk just to say 'no' to my request to get into the pits.”

        “I apologize, but I just can't afford to.”  Hadron gazed up at her with sincerity.  “There's a reason why so many other families have so viciously rejected you.  Like me, they're in no position to conflict with Matthais' wishes.  They can only resist his power to the bitter end, and then Geist Blood will consume us all slowly, until this city has become one giant slave pen.  I am truly, truly sorry, but you cannot find any assistance from Star Blood.”

        “You don't have to repeat yourself,” Scootaloo said, though she was smiling.  It was a painful expression.  She tilted her head up to gaze once more at him.  “I know when I'm humbled.  You're the first goblin in this city to... have apologized to me...”  She lingered on those last words, envisioning a pair of ruby eyes in the shadows somewhere, for she realized that what she was saying wasn't true.

        “Let me be humble as well, and warn you, pony...”  Hadron leaned on the edge of his seat and gazed up at her.  “You will have no greater luck with any other family in this city, on any platform, or in any district.  The reach of Matthais' metal hand is all-encompassing in Petra.  There isn't a prime-bleeder at this point who hasn't been forewarned of your presence, and most of them are more apt to take his intimidation to heart than I am.”

        “Still...”  Scootaloo's nostrils flared as she gazed beyond the glass windows, her eyes engulfed in the distant steam, billowing like her gray past.  “I have to try.  Goblins aren't the only creatures of the Wasteland who are desperate.”

        “Ponies, too, are desperate.  At least I would imagine.”  Hadron said.  “Don't fool yourself.  The more you question the households of the lower struts, the more you test Matthais' patience.  And as if you didn't already suspect such, pony, the prime Geist-Bleeder's patience has its limits.  You may discover, as I suspect, that he is willing to assassinate as quickly as he is willing to enslave.”

        Scootaloo exhaled long and hard, her breath fogging the glass.  She raised a hoof up against the codensation and wiped a broad, colorless arch before her jaded scarlets.  “I guess I will just have to do the impossible...”

        “I beg your pardon?”

        Scootaloo turned around and faced him.  “Hadron of Star Blood, I thank you very much for your time.  And I also thank you for reminding me that your kind is still capable of honor.”

        Hadron blinked at her, then slowly smiled.  “Funny.  I was about to say the same about yours.”






        Scootaloo trotted—more like limped—through the streets of a random platform between Strut Thirty and Kevin's Nest.  She had taken a sporadic trip to get there, utilizing multiple different elevators and ramps in her gradual descent back towards where the Harmony was moored.  Along the way, she passed several homes belonging to countless families and prime-bleeders.  However, she no longer bothered  with visiting any single one of them.

        The words of Hadron rang through her leather-armored ears.  There was suddenly more than sky marble that was steaming beneath the surface of Petra, and none of it carried a pleasant scent.  She wondered why she even bothered with being surprised.  She never had a positive picture of imp kind painted for her.  The fact that they turned so viciously against each other only matched the ugliness of the Wasteland as a whole.  This was hardly Scootaloo's world.  She wasn't about to let the gentle demeanor of Warden or the eloquent words of Hadron convince her otherwise.  The Wasteland was still a blighted shadow of the Cataclysm's life-consuming flames.  All warmth and brightness would remain missing... at least until the day that she and Spike were capable of changing it.

        Scootaloo saw a bright rectangle in her peripheral vision.  Glancing up in mid-trot, she realized that it was yet another “Desperadoes” poster.  As she passed by it, she narrowed her vision on the tallest of the four shadowy figures.  She envisioned a pair of ruby eyes peering towards her from the dark frame.

        The last pony shuddered.  She didn't want to think about it—not after coming so far and sacrificing so much—but there had to be another way.  Hadron had suggested Scootaloo stop parading around the platforms for her safety's sake.  The redheaded goblinette had warned her as an expression of good will.  Why did she not think about leaving Petra until now?

        The city was in the first throes of collapsing.  If Hadron was an imp to be believed, then Matthais was a prime element in Petra's self-destruction.  One lesson that Scootaloo had learned in her torturous life was that distancing herself from goblins was a very healthy idea.  After all, it had worked for her once before when she had previously crossed paths with Matthais... when he had reduced her to a helpless, bleeding—

        “Sold!  To the Wind-Bleeder representatives for one hundred and fifty strips!”

        Scootaloo stopped in her tracks.  She gazed across the district, and instantly realized where she was.  This was Strut Twenty-Five.  She knew this because there was a familiar slave pen just a block away from Matthais' manor.  Erected directly in front of the gated prison was a rusted scaffold, and an auction was underway...

        “You can meet with Otto of Geist Blood to discuss transport,” Fredden remarked.  The goblin executive grinned and  adjusted his trademark shades while two other clan members led a miserable quartet of shackled half-lings down a series of wooden steps and into the company of multiple Wind-Bleeders.  At the same time, Lady Ryst was ushering six more goblins up onto the metal pedestal.  A crowd of murmuring imps stood below the display, eying the living “product” as Fredden once more raised his voice to the potential buyers.  “Here we have a young but physically-fit group of able-bodied workers.  They hail from Strut Twenty-Two.  The wind blows less smog on that side of Petra, so they're guaranteed to have stronger lungs than most bodies...”

        As Fredden's voice rang across the district, Scootaloo lost track of his words.  Her brow furrowed and she reached a hoof up to adjust a dial on her goggles.  She hoped she was only imagining things, but as soon as the image of the slaves atop the scaffold came into focus, her fears were realized.  Two were young adults, three were teenagers, and the sixth—the youngest—was a familiar child with yellow-streaked hair.  Her face was red and her eyes were heavy, as if the helpless orphan had spent the last sixteen hours sobbing nonstop.  Standing before her new potential owners, she was as dead-still as a pillar of salt, and her eyes were just as dry and lifeless.

        Scootaloo wanted to march away.  She had every impulse in her limbs to do so.  But every time her muscles started to move, the ruby eyes in the shadow of an imp city ramp peered out at her, piercing her.  Even if Scootaloo was to fly away from Petra, hire an entire army of griffons to follow her flank, and then lead a violent charge into the depths of Cloudsdale to retrieve Rainbow Dash's ashes by force, she knew she couldn't shake that ruby gaze, soaring above her, aloft in the clouds, magnified by a pair of goggles that she herself had built as a gift to frame them... to treasure them... to preserve them along with the warmth and joy of a single Ponyville day.  Scootaloo winced through each memory burning through her, and with each convulsive second that the ruby crucible of her past mistakes and victories spilled ashes onto her present, they all simply coalesced into the yellow, jaundice-colored streaks of the imp child's hairs, like a tiny foal that had once clung to her in a forlorn place called “Stonehaven.”  That was a soul that Scootaloo had once saved, and yet hadn't, for time had once again been the merciless gravekeeper of all the tiny victories of the past that Scootaloo could barely afford to believe in.  A crayon drawing above her workbench in the Harmony was a poor excuse for a gravestone, so was any slab of moonrock she could ever hammer into the wounded lengths of the earth.  And now...?

        Now she cradled silver in her hoof, more than enough to match the paltry amounts that Fredden was barking forth to the stingy crowd.  Clawed hands raised into the air, lifting the amount higher and higher, and still Scootaloo knew that she had it covered, or else possessed enough ridiculous banana plants somewhere in the universe to instantly barter and dwarf it.

        She still didn't move a single centimeter.  Petra was worse off than Dredgemane.  The creatures who festered there lived off of machines and steam.  Hope was as real to them as mercy to trolls.  The Cataclysm rid the world of more than oceans and forests.  If Scootaloo dropped a tree in the middle of Strut Twenty-Five, none of the imps would know what to do with it.  It'd be the same if she raised the Sun above the smoke-billowing summit of that city.  What more would the goblins know to do with hope?

        Hadron was right to be so despondent.  Scootaloo almost pitied him, but suddenly she realized that he was resigned to his fate, and that was the most peace any creature—half-ling or not—could afford to have in the Wasteland.  It bothered her very little to understand that she was counted in that same, bleak lot.  She only regretted that a part of her had briefly forgotten that beings other than herself had even less to go on, for they didn't have the same gift that the avatar of Entropa did, a chance to glimpse at hope beyond the otherwise impermeable green walls of time.

        Warden was just such a being.  Scootaloo had brought him to his home, had brought him to his parents, and had left him with enough silver for his family to live off of for over a dozen stormfronts.  But, without hope, had she truly helped him?  She shuddered, dreading the very real, very horrifying possibility of repeating herself, of repeating mistakes that not even those ruby eyes could catch.  So when she saw Fredden's arm starting to fall, and she allowed her forelimb to fall too.  The silver returned to her saddlebag, as did the colors to the past, disappearing into the shadows along with a pair of piercing, ruby eyes.

        “Sold!”  Fredden shouted.  He pointed towards a group of Moth-Bleeders and grinned wide, his glinting teeth just as artificial as his shades.  “For one hundred strips!”

        Otto marched onto the scaffold and yanked at the six shackled imps.  They shuddered and stumbled down the steps after him.  The last to move was the tiny goblinette, her eyes brightening in sudden fright as she was dragged off like a yellow-streaked comet.  Soon, she was swallowed into the perpetual smog and noise of Petra.

        A figure took up the foreground of Scootaloo's sight.  She glanced up, and realized that it was Lady Ryst.  What was more, the female thug was gazing in the pony's direction, her eyes thin and emotionless.  Ryst was a merciless creature, a trafficker of her own kind, a peddler of souls.  However, in one single gaze, she regarded the last pony with neither hatred nor admiration.  The neutrality of the mutual glance had the bitter taste of familiarity to it.

        It was enough to finally make Scootaloo move.  She marched firmly towards the distant elevators, already smelling the insides of the Harmony's cabin.  She wasn't sure where she would fly next, or how she would go about entering the ruins of Cloudsdale.  All she wanted was to pierce the clouds again, in hope that she could also pierce the shades of yellow-streaked hair bathing the insides of her haunted eyelids.  The Wasteland was too bleak a world to dwell on regret.  Unlike the simple problems of the past, so much was incurable.  More than that, so much more of it was unforgettable...







        The blood rushed to her head, and her face suddenly slammed against a rocky floor littered with cold ash.  Scootaloo winced and opened her eyes, seeing the ruins of Cloudsdale spinning above her.  For the first time in days, she had been cut free from the wooden stake, but she could hardly feel the difference.  Her back was till raw down the spine.  Her wings ached and twitched with the rhythm of her malnourished body's heartbeats.  What was more, her right flank was numb.

        And then Matthais' frowning face appeared above, followed by a clawed kick to her rear leg.  Scootaloo's right flank came back to life, as did the merciless dagger that had been left hilt-deep in the filly's flesh.

        “Unngh!” Scootaloo shrieked, curling into a fetal position as fresh tears leaked out of her bruised eyesockets.  She barely had a chance to sob, for Matthais' pale hand was yanking her by the shaved strip of flesh that remained of her tail, almost snapping it loose from the rest of her spine.

        “Come with me, glue stick,” he muttered, as if this entire thing was an invitation.  “You're not a corpse yet.  A slave's work has got to begin sometime.”

        She could barely hold her breath, much less fight his cruel grip.  Her body jolted with each slab of rock and uneven granite that he dragged her over.  She heard her hooves scraping against the sky marble.  Whimpering, Scootaloo tried opening her eyes, but every splash of gray light she caught merely stabbed her, sending painful shots surging through her nervous system so that her skewered right limb answered every time with an agonized throb.

        There was a loud clamor echoing around Scootaloo.  At first she thought it was another moon meteor falling from above.  However, the noise started splitting into multiple breaths, multiple voices, and multiple hisses.  She realized she was being surrounded by the bulk of Matthais' cohorts.  Gray twilight burned against her eyelids brighter and brighter as a cold wind brushed her blood-stained coat.  She felt like her right flank was on fire.  By the time that the noise and brightness became unbearble, she felt her body shift as Matthais reached down, grabbed her by the forelimb, and gave her one last toss.

        Scootaloo tumbled painfully to the edge of something.  Wincing, she bravely opened her eyes, only to see something blacker than what her eyelids could provide.  She was staring straight down into an impenetrable abyss.  With a gasp, she shuffled back, discovering herself on the edge of a windy ravine in the heart of sunken Cloudsdale.  A cold wind was billowing down into the crevice, pelting her with snow and ash from the dead Wasteland above.

        As soon as she got her tiny weight situated back on even ground, she felt Matthais' weight pressing down into her raw spine with a clawed foot.  Several sneering, murmuring goblins formed a half-circle around the two as Matthais leaned down and spoke with an icy tone.

        “If I know a thing or two about sky stealers,” he said, “It's that they grow a magical tattoo of some sort on their body that tells them what their purpose in life is.”

        Scootaloo bit her lip.  She stared into the abyss below.  Never before did utter blackness look so appealing to her.

        “It's a good thing that I found you when I did, glue stick,” Matthais said.  He ushered a pained gasp from Scootaloo's body as his hand re-gripped the hilt to the metal shiv stuck in her flank.  “Because I've branded you, haven't I?”

        In spite of Scootaloo's shivers, she struggled to remain perfectly still.  Any slight movement would only summon a screaming pain from her right leg.

        Matthais knew it.  He gave the dagger's handle the slightest of twists.  “Haven't I?!”

        Scootaloo gasped, shuddering.  “You...”  Her voice squeaked.  No matter how much she sobbed or cried, she suddenly realized that the blackness of the abyss would swallow it all up.  “You h-have...”

        “And do you know why I have?”  His voice droned.  He leaned over, shifting his weight towards her neck as he practically stood on her, one hand anchored to the dagger.  “Because you still have a purpose, slave.”  He clasped her chin in four clawed fingers and yanked her head up to look across the deep, black ravine.  “Do you see across the way?”

        Scootaloo could barely see past ten meters.  Her vision was blurry from pain and tears.  Nevertheless, she fixated on a gray cloud of granite platforms across the way and said, “Y-Yes.  Yes I see...”

        “When my companions and I came down to this Petra-forsaken city, a chunk of the moon landed right on top of us.  We were separated into two groups.  Half of us were crushed into pulp.  The other half—the goblins whom I am in charge with—survived, but we were separated from all of the valuable tools that brought us here, the same priceless works of engineering that can get us out of this festering hole of dead ponies.”

        He stepped off of Scootaloo and paced along the edge of the dark ravine beside her.  The longer he stared at the platform littered with metal tools across the way, the harder he fumed and the more his fists clenched.  Scootaloo panted, suddenly afraid of what would come out of him next.

        “It never fails,” he eventually murmured. “My father took days to die, all from a horrible storm that the sky stealers had flung our way.  And here I am, stuck in the shadow of a civilization too pathetic to even clean up after itself, and I too risk dying slowly and miserably.  I am as good as a fossil down here, so long as my goblin brothers and I don't have those tools, for there is nothing in the arsenals of this crumbled city that can possibly give us the ingredients to match them.  This place may very well be my grave.”

        Slowly, icily, Matthais turned to stare at her.  His pale eyes reflected the twilight of the Wasteland, as if it was always meant for him.

        “But I could be worse off.  I could be a slave.”  He marched back towards her.  He knelt down low and all but sneered in her face.  “I stabbed you where I did for a reason, glue stick.”  His hand once again grasped the blade in question.  “In a place without shackles, I wanted your legs to be useless.”

        His words were followed by a scream, but it wasn't his.  Scootaloo wailed, her body spasming as if a giant explosion had blasted a hole in her rear leg.  Rivulets of blood ran down her flank from the meaty wound that was no longer sealed.  Matthais stood above her, palming the stained blade that was in his possession once more.  As her screams calmed down, she could only hear the cloud of snickering goblins watching the scene in grim satisfaction.

        “Your legs may be useless, pony.”  Matthais glared down at her.  “But your wings aren't.  This is your first task as my slave.  This is how you earn food and another day to live.”  He pointed the bloodied dagger across the ravine.  “Fly over there, glue stick.  Fly over and fetch our tools.”  His eyes narrowed.  “And don't even think of flying elsewhere.  You can't fool anyone, pony.  You're wounded, bleeding, and hungry.  You need me... you need the one who's branded you.  On your own, you're good as dead.”

        Scootaloo hyperventilated, coming out of the pain of her twitching leg only to plunge into the agony of this sudden situation.  She could barely move her legs, much less stand.  Her eyes could barely see straight.  And her wings...

        “Well, what are you waiting for?!” Matthais barked, silencing the chuckling voices of his cohorts in the distance.

        Scootaloo bit her lip.  Her lungs felt like collapsing.  The muscles along her raw backside rippled and buckled, but her wings couldn't so much as flutter.  She thought of Ponyville, of warm afternoons, of blue skies and fluffy clouds.  All of those sights were memories of color that had only ever hovered above her, just as the blackness of the abyss was yawning deeply beneath her.

        “I gave you a job to do, slave!”  Matthais shouted, pointing the dagger once again at her body.  “Fly!”






        “What do you mean the lemurs can't open up the airship in Dock Nine?!” Kevin squawked, his bloodied beak framing a vicious frown.  He spun in the chair in the middle of his alcove and glared over a bag of meaty edibles in his grasp.  Two smaller vultures stood before him as he roared, “It's their friggin' zeppelin!”

        Scootaloo stood at the doorframe to the lofty room of the hangar.  She gazed emotionlessly into the nearest bulkhead.  Her brown wings were coiled tightly against her leather armor as she waited for the exchange before her to fonish.

        “They keep making up excuses!” one of the birds replied to Kevin.  “At first, they claimed that they lost their keys.  Then they said that the door to the airship runs on hydraulics and now it's malfunctioning.”

        “Nnnngh...”  Kevin dug his beak into the bag, yanked out a morsel of ragged flesh, and gulped it down before growling, “You tell those furry, ring-tailed sacks of stupid to get their act together and pay up for the days they've spent occupyin' Dock Nine within the next twelve hours, or else I'll have them pay with their lymph nodes!  If they care so little about findin' a way into their zeppelin, then we might as well slice a fresh door in the hull for them... usin' their teeth!”

        The two vultures exchanged glances then chuckled.  “Alright, boss.  We'll tell them.  But I don't think we can be as poetic as you.”

        “Yeah?!  How's this for poetry?!”  Kevin clasped a clipboard in his wing feathers.  “'Roses are red.  Violets are blue.  You've got a big honkin' bruise on your beak.'”

        One of the vultures blinked awkwardly at him.  “Huh?”  Just then, the clipboard was slammed mercilessly across his face.  “Ow!”

        “Now get movin'!”  Kevin sneered.

        “Hahahaha... Yes, Boss,” the other vulture smirked and hurriedly ushered his dizzy companion out the lofty office past Scootaloo.  “What have I told you about opening that stupid beak of yours?”

        “Mmmf... Ah dunh thingh Ah ken openh eht agunn.”

        “Heheheh...”

        “Tch...”  Kevin tossed the battered clipboard behind him and rotated in his chair to face his instrument panel once more.  “Stupid lemurs.  Everytime, I swear.  I think it's on account of them samplin' their own product that they're such idiots.  'We have this brilliant idea to make a hallucinogen out of infernite!'  Tch... 'Good luck with that, you beady-eyed yahoos', I said.  If I had a strip of silver for every species I've met who deserves to be extinct...”

        “Kevin, I'm disembarking,” Scootaloo said in a dry tone.

        “Hmmph...”  Kevin munched on another piece of raw meat from his bag.  “Well.. hmmph... That's a big, friggin' surprise, isn't it?”  He swiveled to face her again.  His pith helmet balanced precariously atop his bald head.  “I could have told you that dealin' with the goblins was pointless from the start.  Not that I'm complainin', princess.  Your strips are clean and untainted.  That's kind of rare in the Wasteland, not to mention a little creepy.”

        “Well, I'll be creeping you out no longer,” Scootaloo muttered.  She gazed out the window of the alcove at the Harmony down below, aglow with purple shielding.  “There's nothing here that can help me.  I was foolish to think that I could negotiate with the imps for passage into the pits.  Even the one goblin that is reasonable is powerless.”

        “Hmmm...”  Kevin squinted at her.  “Which half-ling might that be?”

        Scootaloo briefly frowned at him.  “What's the point in telling you?”

        “Cuz some of us are stuck here, princess!”  Kevin smirked, bit into another chewy morsel, and said, “If I can find one single imp willin' to talk silver, then maybe I can expand my business for once!  You think I like workin' stormfront after stormfront in some grimey hole-in-the-wall?”

        She squinted at him, then at the bloody bag of food he was cradling.  “You call this 'working?'”

        “Tchh.  An old vulture is entitled to some respect, princess.  Especially after he's spent years scrapin' a livin' under the gun of goblins' itchy-trigger fingers.  At least I'm smart enough to know the value of risk.  All of my feather-brained little buddies down below: they would be nowhere without me!”

        Scootaloo sighed long and hard.  “Why do I get the feeling that you were meant to be born with a red nose and long, hairy arms?”

        “Ah-Ha!”  Kevin dropped a strip of meat from his beak as he grinned her way.  “So have met Pitt!  I suspected that you had crossed winds with that monkey!”

        The last pony blinked, bug-eyed.  “Dear Epona, please tell me that the world really isn't that friggin' small...”

        “Oh, I know him alright.” Kevin nodded, adjusting the weight of his helmet.  “I've stuck my head into plenty of rottin' carrions over the years, and still I can't shake the smell of that monkey and his company of hare-brained chimps.”

        “What?”  Scootaloo nervously stirred, not truly wanting to engage in this conversation, but unable to avoid a train wreck when it was already rolling.  “Were you both business partners or—?”

        “Silver is stronger than blood, princess.  Or, at least, it has a better smell to it.”  Kevin gestured with a wing full of mottled feathers.  “Last time I met him was several years ago.  My buddies and I were paid to help him build that godawful drinkin' hole of his on the top of the mountain.  Why he thought of buildin' it up so high is beyond me.  I think it was the idea of one of his brothers, a screwy orangutan that thought he was an architect.  The orange primate may not have been too smart, but—heck—he was certainly tasty.” He stifled a burp and once more reached into the bag.  “At least he was after we pulled him out of the cesspool at the bottom of the mountain and washed all the gunk off.”

        Scootaloo murmured, “Somehow I knew that anecdote was missing another punchline.”

        “Tchh.  Doesn't everythin' in life?”  Kevin winked.  “Like your venture here, for instance.”

        She squinted suspiciously at him.  “How do you mean?”

        “I'm tryin' to figure out what the gag is.”  Kevin said, eying her thoughtfully.  “Whatever it was that dragged you all this way to consort with goblins must be crazy important.  Cuz you had to have known that it was a stupid idea from the start.  I mean, we're both out-bleeders, princess.  There's nothin' to hide here in my hangar.  We both know that goblins are lousy, back-stabbin' freaks at best.  What's to reason with things that have no souls?”

        Scootaloo sighed and shook her head.  “Look, can I just drop off my last payment and get out of here—?!”

        “Seriously, though!”  Kevin persisted with a smirk.  “You of all creatures, princess, should know the truth.  Ponies had everything written down and crap, right?  Then you should know that there was once a war, a struggle over 'chaos' or whatnot.  Some crazy jigsaw puzzle of a dragon-thing lost the battle, and while he was turned to stone, all of his minions were tossed into some gapin' hole in the ground.”

        “His name was 'Discord,'” Scootaloo droned, her eyes as distant as she wanted to be away from this vulture at the moment.  Nevertheless, she spoke, “And the place where his minions were imprisoned by the Six Alicorn Sisters was named 'Tartarus.'”

        Kevin leaned forward.  “And just what part did the half-lings play in all that?”

        Scootaloo's nostrils flared.  Her eyes were absorbed into the rust of the bulkhead.  A moldy strand of amber lingered on the wall before her, like a lock of yellow-streaked hair.  She allowed it to dissolve from her mind as her words continued to take its place, “Imps were the product of Discord having dissected the remains of flutter ponies—a race of petite equines that he had hunted to extinction.  With chaos magic, he combined their intelligence and dexterity with the essence of ogres and formed a new creature, a bipedal homunculus of small stature with fingers that could put together Discord's infernal weapons of war.”  She sighed and ran a hoof over her face.  “After Discord's fall, imps were charged with maintaining the ivory gates to Tartarus—Deep Ash—which were then fused together by the enchanted bones of Consus to keep the monsters inside from invading Equestria.  When the Lunar Civil War took place, the gates were damaged, and creatures like ogres and imps broke loose to the upper world, where they soon evolved into what they are today.”

        Kevin whistled.  “It's helpful for an out-bleeder to know a lick of history, isn't it?”

        “History is as dead as the world,” Scootaloo stared up at him with a frown.  “Now what's the point in making me recite all of this?”

        “To prove to the both of us that you ain't stupid,” he remarked.  “I've seen your airship.  It's just like your armor.  It's strong, sturdy, and built out of amazin' stuff.  I can't imagine a single pony got all of that over the years by beggin' from other creatures.”

        Scootaloo fumed.  She took a deep breath to calm herself.  “No.  I most certainly did not.”

        “Then why are you frolickin' all over this place hopin' for the goblins to toss you a bone now?”  Kevin chuckled.  “You're resourceful, ain't you?  If there's something from the pits, just go on and take it already!  I won't tell a single imp soul!”

        “I'm not about to do something like that...”

        “Why not?”

        “Because nothing is that simple!”  She barked at him, then sighed.  “Not anymore.”

        “Why shouldn't it be?”  Kevin shrugged.  “You're a pony.  They're all silly descendants of a nasty 'Discount' or whoever it was that the ponies had a war with.”  He bit once more into his bag, swallowed a morsel down, and muttered, “The way I see it, the goblins and all they've built should be of no concern for you.  It just ain't your world.”

        Scootaloo blinked at him.  She tried to retort, but no breath came from her lungs.

        Kevin continued, “Us vultures—we don't have the sharpest of beaks, believe it or not.  Before the world blew up, we didn't have the luxury of buying scraps of meat from traders or merchants.  We had to find meat the hard way, and that was only days after the dang thing died.”  He smirked at her.  “Do you know what the softest part of carrion is?  The hind-quarters.  Heheheh...”  He swiveled in his chair slightly.  “And you think you have it bad when you're starving.”

        “And look at you now...” Scootaloo eventually droned.

        “Darn tootin'!  I'm livin' it up real good.  Life is still full of crap, but it's a lot better than it could be.  And you know why that's the case?”  He pointed at her.  “It took a long time.  It took many miserable years in this sun-forsaken world, but I got to this profitable place through strong work, and relyin' on myself.  Just like you, pony!  There's no reason for you to be standin' around with a long face—well, other than the fact that you're a horse.  Ahem... But you gotta remember that these goblins are lower than you.  They always have been, and so long as they're turnin' on each other like rabid animals, they always will be.  I'm no idiot, princess.  I know this city is slowly fallin' apart all around us.  But that's good for you and me, cuz what Petra tosses loose, my buddies and I get to enjoy the spoils of.”   At the end of this, he pulled half of a furry face out from the bag.  “Raccoon?”

        With a look of disdain, Scootaloo gently pushed his wing away and squinted at him.  “How do you mean, exactly?  What is Petra tossing loose?”

        “Tchh.  Their former brothers and sisters, of course!  A slave's life doesn't last long in these platforms, princess.  Once they're worked to the bone—and they have no labor left in their limbs—their siblings usually just toss them off the sides of the struts like the dead junk that they are.  Slaves may not have much meat left on them, but it doesn't mean my buddies and I can't find something scrumptious.  Circle of life and all that jazz, you savvy?”  Kevin chuckled.  “Why, just today, we had ourselves a change of menu—what, with Geist Blood purging the upper platforms with a sudden raid.”

        Scootaloo suddenly twitched.  Her scarlet eyes flared.  “What raid?  What's Geist Blood been up to?”

        “You mean you haven't heard?”

        “I was in the upper struts most of this time.  Tell me.”

        “Tchh... It's nothin' too crazy surprisin'.  Geist Blood does this sort of stuff all the time, and with help from the other families.  They go through random streets and search for 'no-bleeder' imps... as they like to call them.  When they find goblins who aren't workin' for legitimate prime-bleeders, then it's off to the slave pens with them!  Heh heh... it's all rather efficient, in some really cold way.  Makes sense to hear that they all once lived in the ponies' prison of 'Tartar Sauce' or what-have-you.”

        Scootaloo blinked towards the floor.  Her heart was suddenly racing.  Everywhere her eyes darted, she saw more and more shadows, like she was staring deep into a black abyss.  But it wasn't a little orange foal that was bleeding beneath Matthais' feet.  Instead it was—

        “What strut?”

        “Hmm?”

        Scootaloo all but snarled at him.  “Tell me what strut that Geist Blood's slave squad went purging!”

        “Yeesh, keep your cool, princess!”  Kevin swiveled slightly away from her.  “If you want to get a fresh hoof up on the market, you'd have to at least wait another stormfront before they get all the shackles on 'em—”

        “I'm not looking to buy anyone or anything!”  She leered into his beak.  “Just friggin' tell me what struts!”

        He blinked at her, adjusted the brim of his metal helmet, and said, “According to rumor, Struts Nineteen through Twenty-Two got the third degree.  Geist Blood snatched themselves up nearly one hundred slaves.  They're already talkin' with Ice Blood about settlin' real estate in the abandoned districts—”  He flinched as four silver bars flew his way, only to land in his bag of meat.  “Hey!  What gives?!”

        “Change of plans!” Scootaloo breathlessly uttered as she spun and galloped out of the alcove.  “I need my ship to stay here a little bit longer!”

        “Like how long?!”  Kevin squawked.  When she didn't answer, he flapped his wings and called after her, “Just where in the Dimming are you off to in such a hurry, princess?!”

        She was already halfway down the metal catwalk, scurrying towards the elevator.  “Some of us scavenge more than corpses in this world!”






        Bard and Murk touched down onto a metal rooftop.  Upon seeing Rai and Vaughan crouched along the building's edge, they stealthily shuffled over under the cover of shadow.

        “What's the ruckus all about, Rai?”  Bard whispered, adjusting the brim of his black fedora as he squatted next to the young goblinette.  “Word on the street hereabouts is that Lady Ryst nabbed a bunch of goblins and dragged them up to Geist Blood territory.  Whey are we all hangin' around Strut Twenty when there're imps above us needin' to be freed?”

        Rai merely shrugged.  “You asking me?  I'm not the boss!”  She turned towards Vaughan.  “V?  What gives?  Shouldn't we be scoping Strut Twenty-Five right about now?”

        “We'll get to the slaves in time, Rai,” Vaughan murmured, staring down at the district of Beta Level.  “If we poked our heads around Fredden's grounds this very second, we'd be as good as dead.”

        “You reckon he's expectin' us?” Bard remarked.

        “Absolutely.  Though he and Ryst aren't expecting all that they should be.”

        “What's that?”

        “Not what.  Who.”  Vaughan pointed down at a galloping figure who was bursting her way through the crowd and making towards the far, desolate end of the district.

        “Ugh...”  Rai sighed and slumped down atop the roof, cradling her large wrench.  “Not the stupid pony again.”

        “The timing is rather striking, to say the least,” Vaughan remarked.  “After all, she was here several hours ago.  And after Ryst combed through this very area, she's returned with a vengance.  Now, what are the odds?”

        Murk sheathed his steamsword and hand-signed something with his flesh and metal wrists.

        Bard looked at him, then glanced at the others.  “'Do you think she left something here?'”

        “And how,” Vaughan murmured, standing up.  She flashed her apprentice a look.  “Rai, keep track of her.  Bard, Murk—if the pony starts to ascend the platforms, stay one strut below her at all times.”

        “But V!”  Rai squeaked, reaching out towards her.  “What's the point?!”

        “I suspect you're all about to find out,” Vaughan said with a knowing glance.  “I'm going to go and scout ahead for Geist Blood patrols.  Stay silent, Desperadoes.”  She then jumped into the nearest alleyway and disappeared in the depths of Petra.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        Scootaloo's hooves came to a scraping stop in front of the rusted, metal building.  Panting from the non-stop sprint, she glanced all around the decrepit district.  The signs of numerous scuffles had blanketed the street since she had been there last.  There was tossed refuse on the curb, spent steambolt cartridges in the gutters, and pieces of tattered furniture beneath pale lampposts.

        “Warden?!” she called out.

        Her voice echoed against the walls of abandoned buildings.  The lengths of Strut Twenty, Level Beta were deathly still.  The hustle and bustle of a few hours ago was virtually gone.  Not a single goblin could be seen.  She wondered if all of them had been shackled, or else if the majority had locked themselves away in their homes, too afraid to come out of and suffer a fate like their no-bleeder neighbors.

        “Wart?!”

        She stared left and right.  Finally, she squinted at the dark doorframe of the building ahead of her.  She felt the tiniest of flutters; Rainbow Dash's feather was tickling her ear.  She jolted ahead, trotting firmly through the frame of Warden's household.

        Once inside, she saw no sign of his family.  She saw no sign of anything whatsoever.  The entire place had been ransacked.  Overturned furniture and shredded metal contraptions filled the tight spaces between the walls.  Everything else was dust and mold.  That was when Scootaloo realized that no self-respecting creature—imp or otherwise—could possibly have lived in that home for years.  When Scootaloo dropped Warden off at the side of the building, she could very well have been tossing him off the nearest edge of Strut Twenty.

        The image of a bag of raw meat flickered before her eyes.  “Wart!” she bellowed into the shadows.  The echo of her desperate voice rang back at her.  Dust flew like ash against mounds of sky marble, and there weren't any stones lying around to bury the pile of Scootaloo's endless regret.

        Seething, she paced around the dark interior, her mind spinning faster than her wings could carry her.  Before she could draw any horrible conclusions in her mind, her hoof stepped into something.  There was a cracking sound, forcing her to look below.  With a quiet breath, she squatted down and cradled two halves of a slab of stone in her grasp.

        She was holding the remains of a concrete mold of sorts.  Fashioned into the aged material were six imprints—each with four fingers.  There were two large ones and four small prints.  The smallest of the impressions stood out to her, and she imagined those same fingers clasping a metal can of mushroom brew inside the lantern-lit warmth of the Harmony.

        Scootaloo's nostrils flared.  She stood up slowly and tilted her head upwards, as if her gaze could burn through five platforms at once.






        “It's an invitation,” Lady Ryst muttered, polishing a steam pistol in her grasp as she leaned against a metal column of Strut Twenty-Five, Level Alpha.  “Day in and day out, your boss asks me to round up these filthy no-bleeders.  Yet I wonder if he knows just how much garbage he's heaping on my plate, because it's only a matter of days before I have to stretch my resources in chasing after those damnable Desperadoes once again.”

        “Let them come,” Fredden said with a smug smirk.  He stood proudly before the gates to the Geist Blood slave pens, scribbling numerical figures onto a clipboard while dozens of freshly-shackled imps beyond the gates were corraled noisily into a series of metal-barred prisons.  “We'll be making enough profit from this raid to tackle fifty Desperadoes combined.  Heh... they think they're accomplishing something.”  He flipped a sheet of his clipboard, adjusted his black shades, and continued scribbling.  “Once Ice Blood compensates us for cleaning their streets of no-bleeders, they'll realize what an uphill climb they're making.”

        “It still won't stop them from climbing,” Ryst muttered, twirling the chamber to her steam pistol and squinting at it.  “Imps who have stopped working for silver and started working for glory instead are insane.  You can't argue with the mindless.  You'd have better luck singing to trolls.”

        “At least trolls would give your thugs an easier hunt, I bet,” Fredden mused.

        “Hmmph...” Ryst's nostrils flared as she wiped clean a lasting splash of red from the gun.  “Still smells of Darper...”

        “Huh?” Fredden glanced over his shoulder.

        “I'm leaving,” Ryst sighed, slapping the chamber to the pistol shut before twirling the weapon into one of her holsters.  “Where goblins are in shackles, my work has ended.  I assume you can hold the fort from here.”

        “And how...”  Fredden grinned with glistening white teeth as he scribbled away.  “I've summoned the boss here to personally see our bounty.  I can't wait to see the look on Matthais' face.”

        “Hmmph... 'our bounty.'” Ryst scratched her nose as she walked away, her thin arms swinging.  “The day you break a sweat wrangling up your neighbors, I want to be there to unmask you for the ogre you are underneath.”

        “Heh... You're one to talk,” Fredden muttered over his shoulder.  Even moments after Ryst had gone, he was murmuring out loud.  “Though, to be honest, we're better off than the ogres.  It's a far more respectable business to swing handcuffs at each other instead of fire bombs anyday.  So long as that separates us from them, I can sleep at night.”  He finished one last figure with a stroke of his pen and chuckled.  “That's the least I can say about these despicable morons.”  Fredden barked through the porous metal gates of the building in front of him.  “It's what you get for losing grip of your silver, you miserable failures at imphood!  Heheheh...”

        Four brown legs touched down in a conjoined thud behind him, followed by a brief gust of wind.

        Fredden made a face and waved a hand beside his head.  “Shhh!  How am I gonna get these numbers done if there's so much racket?!  It's enough trying to concentrate over the squabbling sounds of those worthless no-bleeders.”

        “Let me inside the pens.”

        “Snkkt—Too late for an inspection!”  Fredden smirked and turned around.  “Rosen, if that's you, then you'd better explain why you're so friggin' late—Holy blight!” He jumped back and hid half of his face behind his clipboard.

        Scootaloo was frowning at him, her goggles reflecting his jittery frame.  She took one trot forward and repeated herself.  “Let me inside them.”

        “Wh-What for?!” Fredden blinked from under his shades.  “Something in one of those cages that belongs to you?”

        “Something like that,” she droned, her voice as tight as her limbs as she bravely stood in the middle of Strut Twenty-Five, Level Alpha.  Several nearby goblins with black wristbands gasped, as if suddenly noticing her presence.  With a pounding of feet, over a dozen Geist-Bleeders rushed in to surround the last pony, their blades and steam rifles aimed at the ready.  She glanced briefly at them, but remained coolly facing Fredden the entire time.  “I have silver if you want to talk trade—”

        “Nnngh—Screw your silver, pony!” Fredden spout, rediscovering his anger along with his strength as even more goblins closed in on the location.  “I know what Matthais said to you!  Rosen filled me in on the whole thing!  He doesn't want to do business with you!  Not now, not ever!”

        “Listen—”

        “No, you listen!”  Fredden pointed with the clipboard as though it was his royal sceptor.  “This gated building behind me and everything inside belongs to Geist Blood!  And if the prime-bleeder of Geist Blood doesn't want you dealing with him, that includes the product he's most recently acquired!  I know you can't seem to take a hint, glue stick, so lemme tell it to your face!”  He leaned forward and all but spat on her goggles.  “Get lost!  And if you even think about going to any of the other families and trying to talk them into lending you a—”

        “I am going inside one way or another,” Scootaloo said in an icy tone that made the goblins behind her stir in brief uncertanity.  “We can still make this a whole lot easier for you.”

        “The easiest thing you can do right now, sky stealer,” Fredden sneered, “is roll over and die along with all of your pretty, prancing friends in the ground.”  His lips curved liquidly.  “I'm sure there's a very special place in Deep Ash for all of you to cuddle with each other's bones forever.”

        Several of the imps behind Scootaloo chuckled and snickered.  They relaxed, propping their weapons over their shoulders and waiting for the pony's reply.

        Silent as stone, Scootaloo glanced over her flank at them.  She then stared straight at Fredden once more.

        Fredden stared back, his grin wide and brimming with fragile teeth.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        The doors to the slave pen's outer gate slammed open with an enormous clang as Fredden's body flew straight through them.  Several guards and overseers spun from the barred cells full of shackled imps.  Every armed goblin inside the place gasped in horror.

        The last pony was charging in.  She jumped, bucked one guard in the chest, came back down, and tripped another to the ground with a sweep of her forelimbs.  A third pulled out his steam rifle and aimed at her, only to have handcuffs from one of the grounded thugs tossed down the barrel of his gun so that the swinging end spun and slapped him in the face.  Jolting from the blow to his eyes, he was helpless to guard Scootaloo's charging head-butt to his chest.  His body flew into a fourth guard while half-a-dozen more ran from the far end of the pens and fired all at once.

        Scootaloo dove to her left and dodged the sea of burning projectiles.  She galloped up the wall, kicked off, spread her wings, flew over a second volley, and sailed her body down into the midst of the group.  The resounding thud of her armored landing forced the legs of every goblin to buckle underneath him.  Twisting her front forelimbs, she extended the blades from her horseshoes and spun in the center of the group, snarling.  Flakes of metal and spurts of blood alighted the air.  In the space of five seconds, all the imps were lying on the ground and clutching their bleeding wrists instead of their guns.

        Fredden was barely standing back up when an entire swarm of frenzied Geist-Bleeders finally rushed in from the district outside the gate.  Scootaloo saw them.  Before the phalanx of thugs could take aim, she grabbed one of the squirming guards' legs in her teeth.  He shrieked as the last pony flung him with all her strength, tossing him like a comet into the unwitting line of victims.  As more of the Geist Blood mob collapsed, she galloped down two rows of cells, dodged more steambolts, and barreled her way into a panicked pair of slave keepers.  She lifted one off his feet, ensnared the length of her pink tail hair around the other's leg, and slammed them both together in mid-air like pendulums.

        Half of the witless goblins whom Scootaloo had grounded by this point were getting up.  Scootaloo saw the thickening crowd, and she was already reaching into her saddlebag and pulling out a trio of rune-capped flash grenades.  Tossing them before the feet of the nearly two dozen thugs, she shouted “Y'lynwyn!” just as she stretched a hoof up to her goggles and tinted them both black.

        A brilliant strobe of light exploded across the chamber.  All of the thugs were instantly blinded.  The slaves shrieked and writhed from the sudden illumination.  Even Fredden, with his shades barely balanced on his face, was having a hard time seeing.  As all of his cohorts groaned behind him, he stumbled forward... that is, until he was stopped by the barrel of a copper rifle clack-a-clacking to a stop against the bridge of his shivering nose.

        The last pony was frowning at him, her scarlet eyes exposed and glittering in the aura of her enchanted runestones.  “Start opening cages before I open a hole in your head.”

        Fredden gulped and raised his hands.  His voice squeaked at first, but he soon managed to shout forth, “At ease, boys!  Lower your weapons...”

        The many thugs, their eyes slowly starting to regain sight, merely grunted and murmured in shock.

        He snarled over his shoulder, a pair of pale eyes briefly flaring from beneath his crooked shades.  “I mean it!  Holster those friggin' boomsticks now!  Don't forget who your families belong to!”

        The crowd of bruised and battered Geist-Bleeders frowned, sneered in protest, but ultimately did what they were told.  However, not for one second did they take their glaring eyes off of the last pony.

        Scootaloo knew it, and she returned the glare.  Keeping her rifle trained on Fredden the whole time, she motioned him towards the general area of the multiple slave cages.  “Move.  The first second you disobey me will be your last.”

        Fredden shuddered, reaching into his pockets and pulling out a metal loop fitted with multiple keys.  “Matthais doesn't pay me enough, I swear to Petra—”

        “Wait!”

        Fredden flinched, nearly dropping the keys as he expected his skull to explode at any second.

        Scootaloo was still riding down a steep series of panting breaths.  Swallowing, she tilted her head towards the rows upon rows of metal bars and shouted, “Warden?!  Warden, tell me where you are?!  I need this moron to open your cage!”

        Silence filled the exhaustive gap that followed Scootaloo's exclamation.  During the seconds that limped by, the menacing thickness of the gathered crowd of rifle-toting Geist-Bleeders made itself more than evident to the last pony.  She felt her heart beating twice as fast as she snarled once more to the air.

        “Wart!  I swear to Epona!  If you don't friggin' speak up after all this, I'm going to turn your ears inside out—”

        “Right... R-Right here, pony,” the tiniest of voices murmured from the crowded sea of suffering behind her.

        The breath that escaped Scootaloo's lungs nearly burst her trachea.  Keeping her composure, she briefly tilted her head towards where the sound had come from.  Beyond the forest of metal bars, in the thick of so many emaciated faces and limbs, a single pair of aquamarine eyes glinted in the cold lanternlight.

        “That cell!” Scootaloo barked at Fredden, poking him towards the enclosure in question.  “Open it.  Right now.”

        Fredden performed with quivering dutifulness.  The cold rattling of his keys was deafening in the tense air of the pens and the many silent riflers standing around.  Finally, after much panicked effort, he swung the creaking door open.

        “Warden...”  Scootaloo backtrotted, her gun propped on one hoof as she sashayed towards the entrance.  “Come out, Warden.”

        The many slaves inside the cell parted ways, their eyes bright with confusion and awe.  Starving adults clung to the metal bars and watched with tired expressions.  Mothers clung to their children and gazed with apprehension.  The green teenager slowly strolled through this thinning group, and when Warden finally came to the light, his green body had been blemished from head to tow with fresh scrapes and bruises.  What remained of his vest and black trunks were torn in several places.

        Scootaloo took a deep breath, darting her scarlet eyes between him and the threatening crowed.  She swallowed and uttered as soon as Warden was outside of the cage.  “Okay.  Now close it up.”

        Warden glanced up at the last pony, his brow furrowed.  Fredden blinked awkwardly from behind his shades.  “H-Huh...?”

        “Are you deaf, or do you want a manabullet in your ear?!” Scootaloo hissed.  “Close the friggin' cell already.  I got what I came for...”

        Warden blinked and stared at the floor beneath him and the pony's shadow.  Behind them both, the metal door creaked as Fredden sealed the large cage once more.  The slaves inside were as quiet as stone.  They shuffled away from the entrance and huddled once more in misery.

        “Now undo his bindings,” Scootaloo said, poking Fredden with the rifle.  As the Geist-Bleeder obeyed, she flashed the antsy mob a look and muttered aside, “Are you hurt, Wart?”

        “I'm fine...”

        “I didn't ask you if you were fine or not!” She grunted, her scarlet eyes covering every moving centimeter of the crowd surrounding them.  She leaned back on her haunches and supported the rifle with two hooves.  “Tell me if they hurt you anywhere.  Yes or no?”

        “No.  I mean... I-I got bruised up a little...”  Warden said, his voice like a trickle of raindrops in the middle of the standoff.  “But that's because I kept bumping into all the others.”

        “Warden,” Scootaloo spoke hoarsely, her breath darting over the body of Fredden as he undid the last of the teenager's shackles.  “I thought I had dropped you off at your family's place.  I thought your parents lived there...”

        “They're...”  Warden gulped and leaned on his good leg.  “Th-They're gone.”

        “Yeah, no crap!” she retorted, frowning.  “From the looks of it, they've been gone for a long time!”

        Warden bit his lip.

        Scootaloo's eyes instantly rounded.  Sweating, she glanced down and said, “Warden... are they in one of these cages?”

        “I... I-I dunno...” He shuddered.  “Geist Blood could have taken them months ago for all I know.”

        “But are they in one of these cages?  Did you see them—?!”

        “I don't know!  I just don't know!” He shrieked, starting to hyperventilate.

        “Shhh...”  Scootaloo hissed, shuffling over towards him so that his trembling body could lean against hers.  Warden hid his face in two trembling hands as Scootaloo watched Fredden stumble back from the two, the empty shackles dangling from his eight fingers as he gazed steadily at the last pony's glowing gun.  “Entropa, give me strength.”  She took a deep breath.  “We'll find them, Wart.  We'll find where they took your parents.”

        “I just don't know anything anymore...” He choked on a sob, suddenly clutching at the folds in her leather armor.  “These goblins came out of nowhere.  They took your silver away and told me I was a no-bleeder...”

        “Shhh... We'll talk about it later, Wart.  Right now, I need to get us out of here.”  She gulped and stared at the thick crowd.  “Somehow...”  Her eyes twitched that very moment.

        The wall of angry thugs parted ways at the busted gates to the slave pen, for Matthais himself was marching straight towards the scene.  He wasn't alone.  Rosen, Lady Ryst, and Otto had also joined the impermeable crowd of Geist-Blooders with their weapons at the ready.  At the sight of the last pony and her gun trained on Fredden, Rosen managed a shrill whistle.

        “Tenacious, isn't she?” the elder managed a slight smirk.

        “She never did know when to roll over and die,” Matthais muttered, his pale glare affixed on the last pony.

        “Is that a fact?”

        “Please, Rosen,” Matthais raised a metal hand and brushed his golden-haired advisor aside.  “Save your taciturn dialogue for when I'm negotiating with the other families.  I'm the only one here who has experience with talking sense into sky stealers.”

        Rosen, Ryst, and the others watched as Matthais took a few brave steps towards the intruder of Strut Twenty-Five.  Once he was within five meters of the pony, he came to a stop.  “How are you doing, Fredden?”

        “Oh... Fine!  I'm f-fine, sir!” the goblin exhaled with a nervous smile.  He adjusted his shades and resumed raising his hands over his head as the gun barrel lingered before his skull.  “Couldn't be any better!”

        Matthais took a deep breath and tossed a bored expression Scootaloo's way.  “He's valuable, you know... but only so much as he capably manages these no-bleeders here.  You've come into my district, kicked down my doors, and tried to make a grab at my product.  Tell me, what's the point in using him as a bargaining chip if you're only going to make me lose profit either way.”

        “I-I think it's worked in her f-favor so far, s-sir!” Fredden exclaimed.

        “Be quiet, Fredden,” Matthais groaned, then stared once more at Scootaloo.  “Well, glue stick?  We both well know that your blatant stubbornness has a touch of intellect to it.  Care to explain yourself while your lungs aren't full of steambolts?”

        “You told me, not that long ago,” Scootaloo spoke, “that you and I were on even terms.”

        Matthais raised an eyebrow and gestured his gauntlet towards the crowded mess around him.  “You call this even?”

        “I came here for him,” Scootaloo gestured towards Warden, not once lowering her rifle.  “He was taken by your goons in Strut Twenty, Level Beta unjustly.”

        “Heh...”  Matthais smirked.  He briefly glanced back at Lady Ryst, then smirked back at the last pony.  “And what makes you so entitled to make that determination, pony?”

        “Because... Because his blood had worth.”

        “Is that so?”

        Warden glanced nervously up at Scootaloo.

        “Yes,” she said firmly.  “He was in possession of two bars.”

        “Two hundred strips?”  Matthais' pale face contorted.  “And just how would a tiny, lame waif like that have stumbled upon two hundred strips?”

        “I gave them to him.”

        “Is that so?”  Matthais paced a little bit, his pale eyes bouncing between Scootaloo and Warden's cowering form.  “Was he running an errand for you?  I can't imagine that another family would have lent him to you for a service.  After all, he wasn't bearing any colors when Lady Ryst acquired him.  Besides, the district he was in had been officially cleared of any true-bleeders.  The Ice Blood clan confirmed it for us before we even went in there.  Geist Blood only enslaves no-bleeders.  Otherwise, we would be blemishing the power of Petra.”

        “Haven't you blemished it enough?”

        “You're not in a position to preach to me, pony.”

        “I easily fought back three dozen goblins to get here.”

        “And you'll have to not-so-easily fight back three hundred thousand just to get out.”  Matthais' pacing stopped as he stood and frowned menacingly at her.  “If you insult the hand of Geist Blood...”  He clenched his iron gauntlets and practically seethed, “You threaten the backbone of Petra itself.  Every family of this city is united with me in this new future of impkind.  It's a future that relies on a system of resolute progress, and all I see you doing is trying to throw a blighted wrench in the works.  So tell me while my patience still stands: why should I let you leave with that pathetic little child in one piece?”

        Scootaloo bit her lip like a little foal.  Sweat was running down the insides of her cowl.  She glanced at the thick crowd swallowing her.  Several of the goblins were already cocking their rifles, just waiting for Matthais to give the command.  Fredden could just as well have not been there from the start.  This was all Matthais' game; it always was.  If she didn't find a way to swing by his rules, her body would be swinging somewhere else by the next stormfront... and Warden's too.

        Princess Entropa's invulnerable skin wasn't about to save her this time.  Spike's flame wasn't close enough to whisk her away to safety.  Somewhere in the pits of Cloudsdale, Rainbow Dash's body was buried because Scootaloo had placed her there twenty-five years ago.  In a world without a sun and moon, that grave suddenly felt like the only treasure the last pony would ever donate to the Wasteland.

        “Sir...”  Rosen spoke up out of nowhere, stepping boldly out of the crowd behind Matthais.  The elder gestured with his wrinkled hands.  “If I may interject, it would appear as if none of the other slaves appeal to the pony.”  He cleared his throat and stood beside the prime-bleeder.  “If I was to make an experienced guess, she's telling the truth.  She came here only for him.  But there may be more to it than that.”

        Matthais raised an eyebrow in confusion.  Then his face washed over with understanding.  With immense curiosity, he returned his gaze to hers.  “Glue stick?  Care to shed some light while my brash servant's given you a last opportunity?”

        Scootaloo blinked.  She stared over at Rosen, and Rosen's green eyes stared calmly back.  There was only one living way out of this predicament, and suddenly both souls knew it at once.  Why Rosen was willing to toss it the last pony's way, Scootaloo could never guess.  She was too busy wincing from what she knew she was about to say.

        “This child...”  She hesitated, trembled even more because of it, and then steeled her nerves to utter, “This imp belongs to me.  He's been my property long before Geist Blood got their hands on him.”

        Matthais blinked, leaning his head aside.  “You mean... he's your slave?”

        Scootaloo's scarlet eyes hardened.  “Yes.”

        Warden gazed up at her with a silent gasp.  She didn't look back, so she was only residually aware of the slow drooping of his pointed ears.

        Matthais squinted.  He grunted, “Prove it.”

        Rosen quietly watched what Scootaloo would do next.



        Warden took a deep breath.  He closed his eyes and defeatedly reached for his black trunks.  He lowered the hem of the article around his left thigh, exposing the shameful burn to nearly a hundred murmuring Geist-Bleeders.

        Fredden gawked at the “horseshoe” image.  Rosen merely scratched his chin in thought.  Ryst and Otto exchanged blank glances while the rest of the thugs behind them stirred in commotion.

        All the while, Matthais was grinning... grinning at Scootaloo.  “Well.. how far we have come.”  He fought to suppress a chuckle and lost.  “I almost wonder if I should be proud of you.”

        “Stuff it,” Scootaloo venomously spat, frowning his way.  “He belongs to me.  He's not your property.  Not a single imp in this entire friggin' district was willing to listen to reason, so I made them listen to my hooves.  Now you know, and I would very much like to leave this festering place with what's mine.  Are we even again or not?”

        “Tell me, did he whimper as much as you did when you stuck the branding in—?”

        “Are we friggin' even?”

        Matthais tilted his nose up, gazing at her with an unbreakable smile.  “I daresay you and I are more than that, sky-stealer.”  He took a breath, then glanced back at Ryst.  He motioned with one metal gauntlet.

        Ryst nodded and immediately gestured towards Otto.  Together, the two of them pushed the crowd of gawking goblins aside, forming a clean path for the pony to trot.

        Scootaloo took a breath and finally retracted her rifle.  She eyed the crowd for any movement.  When there was none, she reached over and nudged the teenage goblin beside her.  “Okay, Warden.  Let's get out of here.”

        He didn't budge one bit.  He stared silently into the floor.

        “Wart.  Come on.  Move.”

        Shuffling, the blank-faced warden reached a hand over and clung to her saddlebag.  He limped along with her as the two took the long walk down the line of imps, all of which were staring nonstop.  It took forever just to clear the pens.  Just as they passed beyond the gates, Matthais spoke up behind Scootaloo's back.

        “I am a manifester of Petra, Pony.  But I am also a keeper of relics.”  He folded his arms and grinned.  “Rest assured, pony, when you are long dead, I'll make sure all of impkind knows what happened here... the day you became one of us.”

        Scootaloo paused in her tracks.  She took a deep breath, pulled her goggles over her eyes, and resumed the long march towards the far edge of the district.  Warden sluggishly tagged along, and soon they were both distant specks.

        “Now we are even,” Matthais uttered coldly.

        “Oh praise Petra, boss...”  Fredden stumbled over, bowing dramatically before him.  “If you hadn't intervened—”

        “Take a shower, Fredden,” Matthais grumbled.

        Fredden merely gawked in confusion.  “H-Huh?”

        “We can smell your piss from here,” Ryst droned.  In the meantime, she marched up to the prime-bleeder while the thick crowd of Geist-Bleeders returned to their posts all around them.  “Sir, I only came back to this... intriguing scene because Otto had gotten word from the upper platforms.”

        “Word of what?  You sure this can't wait after all that's just happened?”

        “I'm afraid not, sir,” Otto said, bowing respectfully.  “You instructed us to have our goblins on the street tailing the pony, yes?”

        Matthais glanced briefly at Rosen, then looked back at the bald subordinate.  “Yes.  I do believe I sent that command down the chain.”

        “Well, she didn't take your words to heart from yesterday,” Otto said.  “She went to nearly ten different families, asking for help.”

        “Hmmph... And a fat lot of good that has done her.”  Matthais glanced after where the last pony had disappeared.  “If anything, it's proven my point to her... in more ways than one.”  He turned and shuffled towards the thickly-filled cells.  “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a great deal of new product to inspect—is that right, Lady Ryst?”

        “Sir...”  Otto leaned forward emphatically.  “Of all the families visited, she spent nearly forty minutes in deep conversation with one of the prime-bleeders.”

        “Yeah?  Of which clan?”

        “Star Blood.”

        Rosen flashed Otto a look.

        Matthais had frozen in his tracks.  Slowly, he turned around and gazed blankly at his subordinate.  “She had a discourse with Hadron of Star Blood?”

        “For an extended period of time, sir,” Otto said.  “Some of our agents even say that she was alone with him—in his office—without guards.”

        Matthais took a deep breath, his face tense for the first time since he stepped through the gates of that place.  He began pacing, a lot faster this time, while clicking the metal knuckles of his gauntlets one after another.

        “Good sir,” Rosen spoke calmly.  “What are you thinking?”

        “Me, Rosen?”  Matthais took a deep breath.  “I'm thinking suddenly that my office is missing a final memento... one that's stuffed.”

        Rosen glanced at the others.  He cleared his throat and leaned towards Matthais.  “Sir, she only came here to claim her property.  In consideration of the family council's edicts, she's operated within the safeguards of her ownership of that boy.  If any of us so much as harms her—out-bleeder or not—it could easily be misconstrued as a violtion of the very law that has supported your rise to power.”

        “Did you practice law in the time of the sky stealers, Rosen?  Because it's starting to sound like it.”

        “I'm only concerned with the integrity of your image, sir,” Rosen explained.  “That's why you hired me, was it not?”

        “You're right, it was.”

        “You said it yourself.  You and the pony are even.”  Rosen gestured with his hand and said, “I suggest you let her go.”

        “Hmmm... Yes.  I did say we were both even.”  Matthais nodded, his face awash in thought.  After a brief pause, he looked over and planted a metal hand on Fredden's shoulder.  “However... she did assault one of my finest, most loyal of executives.  Hmmm... And I can think of... oh... about a dozen laws that spits into the face of.”  He smirked at his own reflection in the jittery imp's shades and glanced back at Rosen.  “I'm sure even Hadron himself is familiar with those statutes.”

        Rosen said nothing.

        Matthais glanced over at his subordinates and uttered in a melodic voice, “Oh Lady Ryst?”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        The doors to an elevator shaft rattled shut.  Scootaloo reached past Warden and slapped her hoof against a lever.  The platform descended with a loud hum, lowering the two of them away from Strut Twenty.

        She leaned back and took a deep breath, adjusting the leather cowl over her ears.  “I've been ambushed by packs of trolls, bands of harpies, and an entire hulking battleship full of dirigible dogs.  I can only praise Epona's celestia mane that we somehow got out of that.”  Her nostrils flared.  She briefly sat on her haunches, only to hear an annoying ringing sound.  Glancing towards her right forelimb, she realized that her horseshoe was loosening again.  With a groan, she fumbled with her other hoof, produced a metal pick, and worked on tightening the article.  “I dunno, Warden.  This city is too hot for the two of us to afford hanging around anymore.  I'm thinking we should take off in the Harmony and go stock up on supplies elsewhere so that I can come back alone and scavenge the pits on my lonesome.”

        Warden said nothing.  He stood in the corner of the rattling car and stared down past his folded arms.

        “I can afford to think on my hooves for only so long,” she muttered aloud, struggling with the metal shoe in her grasp.  “Someday, I'm going to run out of luck.  But I promise you, Wart, that the day won't come until after I've found your parents.  If they indeed were rounded up by Geist Blood within the last few months, then they couldn't have gotten far.  You of all goblins might be able to shed some light on where they went.  I mean, you worked for the family business!  Surely you'd know if there was any competing clan that would have bought them the moment that the bleeders they worked for became broke, right?”

        “I'm a living being...” he suddenly muttered in a cold voice.  “I'm not an object.”

        “Huh?”  Scootaloo raised her goggles over her sweating face and tossed him a confused look.  “What was that?”

        “Something you had once said to me,” he murmured, staring away from her.  The green lines in his face hardened.  “But it was all a lie, wasn't it?”

        Scootaloo rolled her scarlet eyes.  Sighing, she rubbed her left hoof over her face and muttered.  “Warden, look.  I'm sorry.  What I did back there, I know it was really... really...”  She gnashed her teeth and lowered her limb, gazing solidly at him.  “You must understand.  It's what I had to do.”

        “Was it?!”  He turned and frowned at her.  “And what about when you need to pay the hangar-keeper to let us undock from his Nest?  Will you offer me up as trade?  Have me show off my branding to him too?”

        “Kid, we could very well be dead meat right now!” Scootaloo frowned.  “Wasn't it enough that I performed the berserk dance-of-the-million-horseshoes just to friggin' get to you?!”

        He fumed and turned away from her once more.  “I almost wish you hadn't...”

        “Oh-ho really?!” Scootaloo smiled incredulously.  She pointed out at the blurring platforms beyond the elevator car.  “Well, if you like being a pile of steambolt-riddled meat so much, how about I just toss you out right now?!  Or how does forced labor inside a steam extraction foundry for the next twenty-odd decades of your ungrateful life sound?!”

        “You just don't get it, do you?!” Warden flashed her an angry look, his sharp teeth showing in the passing glow of lit platforms.  “I had become a no-bleeder!  They turned me into a slave!  My fate was sealed!”

        “A good enough reason for my stupid flank to have marched up there and pulled you out!”

        “To what end?!” Warden barked, his tiny hands clenched into fists as he leaned on his good leg to shout at her.  “At least as a slave, I might have been able to bump into my parents!  What am I now, pony?”

        “Wart, you're—”

        “What am I now?!” His aquamarine eyes glossed over as he fought the tears.  “It really is a darn good thing that I have the branding of glue sticks on me forever and ever!  Cuz that's all I'm ever gonna be!  Your slave!”

        “That's not true—”

        “You mean you're somehow going to restore my family's blood, plant silver back in our hands, and get us a respectable spot in Petra?!”  Warden sniffled, frowned his way past a tear streaming down his green cheek, and growled, “No matter where I go now, I'm forever going to be a no-bleeder piece of slave filth, branded in public by a glue stick!  And so will my whole family when I'm once again with them!  Imps will never, ever respect the name of Stock Blood after what you did just now!  Did you ever stop to think about what you were doing?”

        “I...”  Scootaloo shuddered and cradled her own aching head with two hooves.  “I-I...”

        “You didn't, did you?!” Warden shouted.  “Not for one second do you stop to think about what this means—about what this really means for me, my future, or any of my family's for that matter!”  He choked back another sob just in time to angrily hiss, “All you care about is getting to your dead friend!”

        “Warden...”  Scootaloo took a deep breath and gestured towards him.  “I... I can get you someplace safe.  I have... I have a friend.  More than one friend, actually.  We can get you a place to live, a meal on your plate every evening.  Do you realize how tough that is to get in the Wasteland?”  She looked at him sincerely.  “I can provide you with safety, Wart.  You wouldn't have to worry about dying or being enslaved or—”

        “Only it will not be my world!” he yelled, then slumped back against the wall of the elevator, hugging himself and hyperventilating.  “Nor would it ever be yours, pony, no matter how much you keep digging stuff up and pretending like things can be bright again.”  He sniffled and glanced towards the floor as his face broke under more tears.  “You can add me to that wall of weird stuff you have in your airship, and that wouldn't change a thing.  I'm from a far darker place than you're used to, and you never should have scooped me up from that mountain and you know it.”

        Scootaloo swallowed dryly and said, “You... Y-You can't give up on hope, Warden.”  Her voice was wavering, as if she was staring once more into a black abyss.  She tried to remember the bonfires of Dredgemane, but they dwindled in the darkness like distant pinpricks.  “You're... Y-You're alive.  You should try your hardest while you still can to—”

        “I'm as good as dead,” Warden coldly blurted.  “Why can't you just accept that and move on?  Just save yourself...”

        “Wart—”

        He suddenly shrieked, “Why can't you just let the dead stay dead?!”

        The last pony stared at him, her mouth agape.  Her eyes suddenly watered as she said, “Because I can't.”

        Warden blinked at that, shivering.

        “I... I have seen things, Warden,” she said, gulped, and managed in a deepening voice.  “I have touched things.  Places that were once impossible to revisit, I have galloped across.  It is so warm, and so real and...”  She tilted her head up towards the ceiling of the car, hoping that gravity would help her hide the tears.  After a clearing of her throat, she faced him once more and said in a dry tone, “There is more than this, Warden.  There is more than all of this.  I can't expect you to see the colors, not like I did... like I still do.  But...”  She shuddered and braved a painful smile in his direction.  “If you just give me the time, Wart, I promise you... I will show them to you.  I just need time.”

        He said nothing.  Regardless, the fury in his eyes had left completely as he hugged his knees to his chest and tilted his crying face towards them.

        “And don't tell me...” She trotted over towards him and tilted his face up to gaze at her once more.  “...that a no-bleeder can't at least afford time.”

        Warden sniffled.  His lips quivered as he gazed hoplessly up at her.  “Pr-Promise me that you won't make me show the branding again.”

        Scootaloo smiled dearly.  “I promise, Wart.”  She smoothed his green bangs back and added, “The secret is safe with me from now on.  Not even your parents will have to know.”

        At that, he took a deep breath.  He closed his moist eyes and leaned his cheek into her hoof.  “I want to see them again so badly...”

        Scootaloo's face grew still, like the settling foundation of an abandoned barn.  “I know you do, kid.  Trust me, I know.”

        The elevator car came to a rattling stop.  The metal doors creaked open to a bright platform.

        “Perfect timing.”  Scootaloo stood up straight and leaned her flank towards him.  “Listen, let's get back to the Harmony.  Once we're airborne, we'll think up a plan together.  We'll find your parents, but we'll do it using your input.  Got it?”

        “Uhm...”  Warden gazed blankly over Scootaloo's spine as he climbed up to his feet from gripping her saddlebag.

        “You deserve nothing less than to have a say in how I—”

        “This isn't Strut Fifteen,” he muttered.

        “Huh?”  Scootaloo made a face.  She turned to look out the elevator's entrance.  “But I set the controls to take us down to Kevin's Nest—”  Her scarlet eyes bulged.

        No less than six goblins with black bracelets were lined up in the street outside.  With a hiss of steam, they aimed a phalanx of hot rifles straight at the two occupants of the elevator.

        Warden gasped.  Before he could scream, he was being flung to the ground.  A leathery weight pressed down on him from above as the air filled with the ricocheting noise of steabolts against metal.  “Wh-What's going on—?!”

        “Stay beneath me!” Scootaloo was howling, shoving her goggles over her face and extending a copper rifle against a second volley of bullets.  “H'rhnum!  H'rhnum!  H'rhnum!”

        Warden shrieked and grabbed his pointed ears as a cacophonous thunder filled the claustrophobic chamber.  Sparks flew as the air filled with purple mana smoke.  As soon as the shots stopped exploding, a loud ringing filled the resulting gap.  Warden felt something wet.  He glanced up and realized that a river of warm, red liquid was trickling out from underneath Scootaloo's armor.

        “P-Pony...?!”

        “Stay still, Wart.”  Scootaloo winced and reached a hoof up towards the lever of the elevator car above them.  Everytime she tugged at the device, the gears of the rigging above the cage let loose a disagreeable buzz.  “Friggin' figures.”  She hobbled up to her hooves.  “Get up.  We're moving.”

        “We are?”  Warden barely had time to obey.  A pink loop of tail-hairs had yanked him forcibly up onto her back-side.  He gasped, his hands jolting away from three impressions that were suddenly steaming from her armor.  “P-Pony!  You're hit!”

        “Not bad as they are,” she grunted hoarsely, trotting boldly out of the elevator car.

        While she checked either side of the street, Warden gasped down at a pile of bleeding, moaning corpses beneath them.  “Oh blessed Petra...”

        “That can't be all of them,” Scootaloo panted.  Her breath was alarmingly ragged.  Warden could feel it through her perforated armor.  “Matthais had a friggin' Hearth's Warming pageant surrounding us earlier, they must still have—”  A lamppost above them exploded from a long-range steambolt, raining glass down on Warden's flinching head.  Scootaloo bolted forward in a brisk gallop, aiming them both towards the edge of the platform.  “That's it!  Hold on!”

        “Where are you—?!”

        “I said hold on!”

        Warden had no choice.  He gripped her rifle holster tightly, his lower half flailing as she sped the two of them past a showering fireworks display of impacting steambolts.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “By the blight, look at her!” Otto grunted, squinting down the sight of his copper rifle.  He, Lady Ryst, and several more Geist-Bleeders stood on the edge of a hovercraft looming above the bullet-riddled street.  “She moves like a troll thirsting for blood!”

        “Undoubtedly something she learned from experience,” Ryst grunted, scratching her ears as she gazed lethargically at the pile of bodies left before the elevator.  “Dear Otto... would you care to lend us some of yours?”

        “If only we can keep up with her,” the balding goblin returned, firing more random shots.  “Dang it all!”

        Ryst whistled shrilly to the pair of gremlin pilots in front of them.  “Take us in.”

        The masked imps replied with a metallic ringing noise.  With tiny hands flurrying across the controls, they veered the hovercraft around so that it flew laterally to the golden, glowing platform high above the steaming Wastes.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        Scootaloo panted and heaved, forcing her muscles into a steady sprint as she barreled through gasping crowds of half-lings on her way towards the platform's north edge.  She felt blood leaking out of her left side from where one of the Geist-Bleeder's bullets had dug far enough through her armor.  Fighting the throbbing pain, she carried Warden's gasping body with her down busy alleyways full of billowing steam and cluttered storefronts.

        “I-I don't get it!” Warden shrieked, clinging tightly to Scootaloo's leathered neck.  “I thought the prime-bleeder let you go!  I thought we were safe!”

        “Nothing's safe in this damned city!” Scootaloo shouted, leaping over a gasping goblin and his children.  She passed underneath a line of metallic wares and galloped breathlessly down a thin bazaar of neon-lit merchants, hoping to lose the goblins that were firing at them from Epona-knows-where.  “Now are you so sure you want me to leave you here on your lonesome?!”

        “I-I just want to know where we're going!” Warden exclaimed, trembling against her.

        “I just need to get us to the edge of this place!” Scootaloo shouted above the rising noise around her.  She felt Rainbow Dash's ear fluttering against her sweat-stained head.  “I just need to fly!”  Her cowled ears pricked to the rising sound of thunder.  She glanced up in mid-gallop to see the unmistakable outline of a hovercraft roaring straight above the metal-caged ceiling of the bazaar.  “Ahhhh Luna poop.”

        “Wh-What?!” Warden gasped.  “What does Luna poop?”  He was answered by a series of exploding shrapnel around him as several steambolts pierced the ceiling overhead.  Warden let out a shrill cry as Scootaloo darted back and forth, forcing the two of them into a serpentine path to avoid the random bullets splashing down from above.  Storefronts on either side of the two shattered as countless imps dove for cover.

        A lamp turned over and burst into flame.  Scootaloo grit her teeth and bravely jumped over for the billowing fire, making straightway for a gray splash of light at the far end of the district that marked the open air of the Wasteland.

        “Quick!  Wart!  Take a look around!” Scootaloo shouted above the splash of bullets at her tail.  “What platform are we on?!”

        “I...”  Warden gasped and looked feverishly at their surroundings.  “I see the brown armbands of Bread Blood!  We must be on Strut Seventeen!”

        “Good!”  Scootaloo ducked under one last obstacle and made a break for the twilight.  “Then that gives us just two levels!”

        “Just two levels?!”  He gulped and shouted past her cowled ear.  “What are you planning to do?!”

        “What do you think?!” She snarled and flexed both brown wings out, her feathers kissing the cold steam of Petra.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “A little less collateral damage would be lovely, Otto,” Ryst grumbled.

        “What do you want me to do?!”  Otto shouted back, reloading the steam rifle and aiming it back over the edge of the throttling hovercraft.  “She's like the wind!  If I don't score a lucky shot any second now, she's going to take off!  I swear—”

        The goblinette snatched the rifle angrily from him.  “It's not about luck.  That's something Darper never learned, so let me teach you.”  Ryst cocked the rifle, squatted with one knee braced against the starboard side of the vehicle, and aimed down with a vicious squint.  “She's the last pony in the whole Wasteland, Otto.”  Her bony finger tightened around the trigger.  “Aim for the only thing that has color.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~


        “I don't get it!” Warden panted, weathering each jolting hoofstep Scootaloo made.  “Wh-Why'd they stop firing at us?!”

        “Don't know; don't care.”  Scootaloo ran straight for the edge of the platform.  “Hold on tight!”  Her wings spread wide.

        “But Pony—!”

        “I mean it!”

        The cold Wasteland winds flew into Warden's face, pelting him with ash and bitter flakes of snow as he felt the two of them lift off.  His lungs emptied as soon as Scootaloo banked to the left.

        Scootaloo spun westward around the cylindrical body of Petra, spiraling around so that she'd descend the two of them swiftly towards Strut Fifteen below.  She made incredible distance, speeding faster than any gremlin vehicle could at such a tight angle.  But just as she passed through the shadow of a distant hovercraft above...

        Her left wing exploded.

        “Aaaaugh!” Scootaloo shrieked.  The Cataclysm flashed before her eyes.  Pegasus bodies exploded into dust, and suddenly she was plunging with them, spinning, flailing before endless flame.  She sobbed into the darkness of the abyss, reaching her hooves forward and scratching the pain loose until she formed the black bars beyond which a rainbow was shrinking away forevermore.

        As soon as her scream ended, she heard his.

        Her goggled eyes flashed open.  The air was splashed with red.  She glanced to her side and saw her wing billowing like a loose kite-tail.  Then two things flew past her.  One was the glinting sight of her copper rifle.  The other was—

        “Warden!”

        He plunged towards the burning oil sludge of the Wasteland below.  Petra was surging past them both, one streaking platform every three seconds.

        Scootaloo gnashed her teeth.  Her goggles fogged from the tears.  She gave her tattered wing one last look, summoned a monstrous growl from deep within, and pivoted her weight to the left.  Her muscles tore immediately, setting her entire ribcage on fire.  Howling past the agony, she clung her right wing to her other side and plummeted straight for the teenager's green missile of a body.

        The winds fought her and she fought back.  The leather cowl flew off her skull in a flash, becoming one with the gray miasma whistling around her.  Rainbow Dash's feather, however, stayed tethered to her ear.  It was an impossible thing.  She was about to add to the list.

        Warden's body rolled and plummeted towards the steaming ring of blackness bordering the stalk of Petra.  The last pony kept him in her sights, as if he was the only living thing left in existence.  He approached the last five struts of Petra, his body being engulfed in a plume of steam as he skimmed the edge of a golden platform.  Scootaloo gritted her teeth and soared straight into the smog, flying blindly into the madness.  She reached her hooves out and gave a silent prayer.  When she emerged from the other side of the smoke, she wasn't alone.

        “Nnngh—Pony!” Warden sputtered and clung to her chest, his eyes wide as saucers.  “Blessed Petra!  We're—”

        “Gghhhh—” Scootaloo was already squealing. She flexed the muscles on her left side and screamed as she flung her last frail wing against the thick air billowing all around them.  “Haaaaugh!”  She succeeded.  Her feathers shot out at a sharp angle, spinning them in an insane curve that flung the two towards the golden haze of the megastructure blurring past them.  Scootaloo barely squinted her tearing eyes open to find where they were plummeting.  She spotted a barren stretch of abandoned buildings straight ahead of her.  Cradling Warden tightly to herself, she spun her body up in a reverse-somersault, caught air in her aching wings, and slowed their descent just enough to touch down.

        When she hit the street, it didn't feel like she had made any difference.  She slammed so hard into the metal floor that it made a dent.  Her body rolled with Warden's—smashing through the front of a ruined blacksmith's.  Dust and cobwebs splattered all around them as she came to a scraping stop, rediscovering the pain of her shattered, left wing in one momentous rush of blood.

        “Nnngh-Gaaaaaaah!” Her eyes rolled back in her head as the last pony writhed, finally letting go of the shivering imp and curling her heaving body towards her wound like a little foal.  “Ahhh—Hauckkkt—Eponaaaaaaa!”

        Warden's hyperventilating voice shrunk into the spinning, blurring world as Scootaloo tore her goggles off and ran two quivering hooves over her face.  Her clenched eyelids danced with color, like a rainbow signal torn apart and vomiting the spectrum in a million directions at once across the blackness.  Scootaloo tried chasing them, but no matter how she tried, she could not keep up.  She kept trying to move Rainbow’s body, to get her to wake up, but the colors kept spreading and spreading.  She reached out through the ashes of everypony, and the only thing that kissed her in return was a tiny blue fiber against her ear.

        That was what brought her back, and not Warden's eight fingers desperately clasping her forelimb and shaking it.


        “Come on!” Warden sobbed, looking worriedly over his shoulder as the sounds of footsteps came closer and closer.  “Get up!  Get up, pony!”  He tried pulling and yanking at her as hard as he could, but it was no use.  She was only spreading apart too, leaking blood and mud-brown feathers all around him.  “We g-gotta move!  Someone's coming!  Geist Blood!  They’re—”

        “Leave... Leave me...”  Scootaloo muttered.  She was only half-surprised to hear how distant her own voice sounded.  She wondered if when Spike had first promised to give her healing, if this tranquility was what he had in mind.  “G-Get... out of here, Wart.”  She gulped and started to close her eyes.  “Save yourself... Leave...”

        “N-Not without you!” he squeaked, his eyes brimming with tears.  “Pl-Please!  You gotta get up...”

        “Mmmngh...”

        “P-Pony...?”

        “Nnngh-Not... N-Not my world...”  She said.  It took several painful muscles, but she smiled.  It was a last gift from the last pony.  It might as well have been received by an imp.

        Warden had very little time to savor it.  A pair of arms hoisted him away.  He struggled and kicked, but was soon swallowed by dust and shadow as more figures closed in on Scootaloo  For the briefest of moments she thought she saw Rainbow Dash’s eyes once more from beyond the arcane vault.  The last pony would never admit it, especially not to Spike, but she had always hoped that Rainbow’s face would be Scootaloo's final memory.  The last twenty-five years of absurdity could just as well have been a foalish blink.  She surrendered to the blackness, embracing the abyss with a calm breath... until she was assaulted with one last, haunting feeling.

        She had been here before.






        “I gave you a job to do, slave!”  Matthais' bitter voice shouted.  “Fly!”

        Scootaloo exhaled softly.  For once, it all made sense to her.  The reason the abyss was so black was because all the colors were absorbed there.  The little foal suddenly knew where she belonged.

        “I can't...”

        Matthais and his fellow cohorts stood in dead silence.  “What?”

        “I... I can't fly...”  Scootaloo brushed the edge of the ravine like she was caressing a pillow.  The mists of Cloudsdale's ruins briefly stopped billowing to give volume to her murmurs.  “I never could.  I'm too young...”  She didn't need to be lying there in a bloody heap.  Gravity was always her enemy.  Her only talent was falling.  After all, she couldn't feel her right flank anymore.  Matthais had given her a cutie mark.  “I can't get your tools for you.  I'm... I'm sorry...”

        “You hear that, Matthais?!” one of the goblin voices shouted from across the mounds of sky marble behind her.  “It's just like I told you!  She's useless!  The one friggin' pegasus we find alive in this damnable city, and she can't even use her wings!”  Several rounds of laughter lifted through the ashen air.

        “Nnnnngh!”  Matthais spun and growled.  “Enough, Braxx!  I get your point!”

        “Then how're we going to get out of here, huh?!  We've been wandering in circles ever since we got split off from—”

        “Not another word!  Dang it, I'll think of something!  Am I or am I not your prime-bleeder now that Devo's dead?!”

        The voices merely murmured anxiously.

        Matthais took several, fuming breaths.  Eventually, he knelt down beside the pony.  “So be it, pony.  I relieve you of being my slave.”  Scootaloo was barely registering him... at least until he yanked her up by her ear and hissed into her face.  “But I'm afraid the meat on your bones is something my brothers and I can no longer afford to waste.”

        As the last pony felt the cold taste of sharp steel against her skin, she couldn't help it.  She sniffled and began to whimper.  “Mmmm... D-Dashie...”

        “Shhh...”  Matthais breathed against her.  “Save your moans for the fires of Deep Ash.”  And Scootaloo felt the knife being raised to the nape of her neck.

        Then she closed her eyes, and felt nothing.