//------------------------------//
// 11. When All Hope Bleeds Out 
// Story: Pony Gear Solid 
// by Posh 
//------------------------------//


"Don't touch that dial now, we're just getting started."






Twilight never got back to sleep.

She took to counting cacti as the verdant hills melted into the rugged red terrain of the frontier. Cacti were like sheep – prickly green sheep full of hallucinogenic water – so she reasoned that counting them might help her doze off again. It didn't. So she settled for just pressing her face against the glass of the window and staring at the blurry scenery zipping by.

The train made impeccable time. A scant few hours had passed since Twilight and Snake boarded, and they were almost at their destination. No stops, no taking on additional passengers, and traffic on the rail itself was nonexistent. The engineer had the entire line to herself, and availed herself of the opportunity to push the train's speed to its limits, which made for a swift trip. And yet, as Twilight thought back to the grisly package that Snake had brought before her early that morning – the bloody cyan feather, the cryptic note summoning them to the frontier – she couldn't help wondering if the train could maybe go just a teensy bit faster. 
        
Snake didn't seem to be feeling the same sense of anxiety. He drifted off not long after Twilight woke from her own nap, and had been out for the last two hours of the trip. Unable to fit on one of the undersized benches, he lay lengthwise down the middle of the train car with his hands folded behind his head for a pillow. That meant he took up quite a bit of space, too, but Twilight thought it courteous not to make a fuss. It was the least she could do for someone who wasn't coming on this trip willingly. 
        
The inherent contradiction in Snake's manner bemused Twilight. Here was a person whose line of work had him constantly on edge by necessity, someone who hadn't been able to catch a full night's sleep when given a roof over his head and what few creature comforts she could provide. Yet, somehow, he was able to catch not a mere wink, but two whole hours' worth of winks, on a turbulent train ride that hurtled them toward what he felt was certain doom. 

"Wish I were that relaxed," she muttered to herself. 

She knew she didn't mean it, though. She was as worked up as she was out of worry for Rainbow Dash, somepony whom Snake refused to accept may have been alive, and somepony with whom he had never gotten along. Being relaxed would have meant accepting that Dash was dead – or worse, not caring about her in the first place. 
        
That isn't fair. I can't assume apathy on his part. He's here, after all. Under protest, and only because I twisted his elbow into it, but he is here.

Manipulating Snake made her feel dirty – like she was betraying every lesson she'd learned about friendship since moving to Ponyville. It made her feel like a bad student. Worse, it made her feel like a bad friend. Cynicism and necessity helped her rationalize it, though. Snake was a decent person, but a self-serving one; she needed him more than he needed her, and if keeping him around meant tugging on his heartstrings and threatening to walk into a meat grinder, then damn it all, she'd do it. For Rainbow Dash. For her friends. 

Noble ends don't justify ignoble means, a voice in her head whispered.

Some days, Twilight wished that she was much more cynical than she was. 
        
A sudden series of whistles from the front of the train – one, two, three short bursts, followed by a very long, protracted screech of steam – sent her own train of thought flying off the rails. Twilight felt the car losing momentum, lurching to a halt. "That can't be right," she said to herself as she glanced out the window. The station wasn't yet in sight. The whistle shrieked again. Something was wrong. 
        
Minutes passed without the whistle sounding again, so she trotted to her human companion and poked his head with her hoof. "Snake, wake up." 

He batted her hoof away, sound asleep, and smacked his lips. Twilight poked him harder. "Snake, wake up."
        
That got him. He stretched arms to his sides, growling as his muscles grew taut, and rose, cracking his neck from side to side and rotating his shoulders to shake loose the kinks. He rubbed his fingers along the length of his spine, wincing slightly with discomfort, and looked over his shoulder at Twilight. "We've stopped moving?"
        
Twilight nodded. "Certainly seems that way." 
        
Snake pursed his lips tightly. Unable to stand at full height, he settled for kneeling, and crawled toward one of the window. His eyes took in the surrounding scenery, the hills and red mountains of southern Equestria, and the barren earth stretching to the horizon. "This is Dodge Junction? I don't see any station." 
        
Twilight placed her hooves on the window she'd sat beside during the ride and rose onto her hind legs to peek outside. "We're in the right place, but... yeah, no station. What could be the hold-up?"
        
Snake grunted. Twilight had gotten used to grunts from him, but she hadn't been able to assign any consistent meaning to them as yet. They seemed to vary situationally. He could have been grunting in acknowledgement to her, or in thought to himself, or perhaps he just did it compulsively because of some weird trick of human psychology. She might have asked, but the door at the front of the car slid open abruptly, and the engineer stepped through it, looking sweaty, disheveled, and cross. She wore a set of blue coveralls, frayed and faded from years of wear, over her rosy pink coat, and tied her yellow mane behind her head beneath a matching denim hat. "Ms. Twilight," she said. There was a hint of Applejack's country twang in her voice. "Sorry for the delay, but we got us a conundrum."
        
Twilight pushed away from the window. "What's wrong?" She abruptly realized that she didn't know the engineer's name. "And, I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your—"
        
"Stovetop," said the engineer, curtly. "Pleasure's mine, I'm sure." She pointed behind herself, toward the engine at the far end of the train. "I've got a fully loaded passenger train sitting in front of us on the track, pulled right up to the station. Ain't movin', ain't doin' nothing. I blow the whistle; it doesn't do nothin'. I get out to yell at whoever's drivin' the thing, and there ain't nopony in the engine! Doors are open; bags are strewn about all which-ways; I holler up at the cars, but nopony's home – in there, or in the station."
        
Snake disengaged himself from the window and crawled, constrained as he was by the low height of the car's roof, closer to Twilight and Stovetop. "Bags strewn about? What do you mean?"
        
Stovetop's eyes met Snake's; she looked him up and down before answering. "Uh... I mean what I said, Mr. Tight Pants. 'Bags strewn about' is self-explanatory. That suit cut off circulation to yer brain, or somethin'?"
        
Snake turned away and muttered something to himself about country bumpkins. 

"So," said Twilight, drawing Stovetop's attention back to herself, "there's nopony in the train, nopony in the station, and there's luggage lying around as if it's been abandoned?"
        
Stovetop nodded. "That's the long and short of it. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it were a damn sloppy train robbery." She clicked her tongue. "Don't think there's anypony home in town, neither, come t'think of it. Figure with all my whistlin', somepony woulda come lookin' t'see what the fuss was about. Pardon the fancy talk, but it's rather conspicuous in its absence." As if to counterbalance the "fancy talk" with something earthy and crass, she spat a chunk of tobacco into the corner and grinned. "Always wanted t'do that."
        
Twilight looked back at Snake. "You may have been right after all," she said quietly. 
        
If Snake derived any satisfaction from the admission, he hid it well. "Might have been. Except..." He frowned and rested his chin on his knuckles. 
        
"What's on your mind?" asked Twilight.
        
"Assume for the moment that I was right, and that this was a trap." His eyes met hers for a second, narrowed slightly, before he looked back down at the carpet. "They would have known which direction we were coming from, would have known that we couldn't have deviated from it even if we wanted to. They wouldn't even need us to stop at the station to spring the trap; they could have picked any spot along the line and waited until we crossed them. Shot the train up, stopped it, pulled us out and executed us..." 
        
"Uh, what's all this now? Who's executin' who?" asked Stovetop, her voice rising. "I sure as heck weren't warned about—"
        
"Shut up," Snake snapped. To Twilight, he said, "You see where I'm going with this? But despite all that, we arrived here without incident."
        
Another inconsistency occurred to Twilight. "Not to mention the train in front of us. We'd be stopping at the station anyway, right? Using another train to block our path and force us to stop is just redundant."
        
Snake grunted to himself again. Twilight deemed it a thoughtful grunt. "This doesn't add up." He stared out the window, his thoughts a mystery, before meeting Twilight's gaze again. "I want a look at the station." 
        
Twilight nodded in agreement and made her way to the train car's door. She swept it open with a flash of her horn and immediately was hit in the face with a blast of hot afternoon air. Maybe I should have brought sunscreen, she quipped to herself before hopping out of the train. 
        
Snake followed behind her and stretched to his full height with a satisfied groan. Stovetop lingered in the doorway, glaring at them. "An' what am I supposed to do? This train' ain't gonna turn itself around, y'know. Certainly not with no passenger train blockin' the way all inconsiderate-like." 
        
In response, Snake walked back to the car and hooked his fingers around the door's handle. "You're an engineer," he said. "Engineer something." Before Stovetop could say anything in response, he slammed the door shut. Twilight swore she saw a momentary smirk of satisfaction cross his face. 
        



        
The door to the station was left ajar, and a layer of sand had blown into the building – several days' worth, at least. Twilight was braced against the wall on one side of the door; Snake was opposite her, with his tranquilizer gun in his hands. From her vantage point, she could see through the crack in the door, just inside the building, facing toward the counter behind the station's service window. Snake's eyes met Twilight's; she cast a quick glance into the building, then back to Snake, and gave a little shake of her head – no, she didn't see anything. 
        
Snake nodded, took his left hand away from his gun, and raised three fingers. He silently counted them off. Three... two... Twilight spared the train and the trail of abandoned luggage behind her an anxious glance, before swallowing her worries and returning to the task at hoof. 
        
At one, Snake shoved the door the rest of the way open, and Twilight leaped into the room, her horn alight. Snake followed after, pivoting to train his gun on the end of the room Twilight had her back to. The room was bathed in the glow of her aura, and by its light she saw more of the same scene that had greeted her and Snake when they disembarked from the train. 
        
The station was a modest structure. Two parallel benches, covered in scattered personal belongings and luggage, ran the along the center of the room. At one end of the room – the end she was facing – were timetables, arrivals and departures for the trains in and out of Dodge, as well as two ticket windows facing the outside. Opposite that was a little office that may have started life as a closet, with rusty chicken-wire meshes for windows. Somepony had been painting the office door, but left the job unfinished. The bottom was baby blue, while the top remained a sallow shade of yellow. It must have been a pretty recent job, too – Twilight noted a roller and tray of blue paint sitting on the floor. 

It's like the painter quit halfway through.
        
"Clear," Snake said from behind her. A red dot danced across the wall as he swept his gun from one end of the room to the other. "Empty, full of abandoned luggage. Consistent with what we found outside." 
        
Twilight nodded her agreement. "And you see that door?" she said, gesturing toward the office. "The blue paint looks pretty fresh, but the job is unfinished. As if whoever was in charge of doing it—"
        
"Stopped halfway through?" 
        
"Exactly," Twilight said in a testy tone. She didn't enjoy being interrupted.
        
Snake chewed his bottom lip, an unhealthy habit that Twilight noticed slipping out whenever he went a while without a smoke. "How's it look on the inside?" 
        
"Haven't checked. But if you want to have a look—"
        
Snake advanced toward the office before she could finish her sentence. Be my guest, she thought sourly. She watched him peer through the office's wire mesh. "Nothing back here," said Snake, casting a glance her way. "Alive or dead. And yet..."
        
"What is it?" asked Twilight. 
        
"A hunch." Snake stepped in front of the half-painted door. With one hand he held his pistol, while in his other he gripped the knob, turning. "Locked. Doesn't feel very solid, though." He drew back a step. 
        
"Hang on," said Twilight, trotting to stand beside him. "I happen to be a pretty good horn at lock-picking. We'll have that open—" 
        
Snake planted his back foot on the ground, spun in place, and lashed out with a kick that knocked the door off its top hinge and splintered the frame where it met the lock. He leaned his weight against the bottom half of the door and shoved, and the door toppled backward into the office.

"...In a jiffy." Twilight heaved an exasperated sigh. "I'd very much appreciate it if you'd let me finish a sentence from time to time." 
        
"Noted." Snake lifted the door and tossed it back into the waiting room, then made an 'after you' gesture with his arms. Shooting him a look of irritation, Twilight stepped inside, her horn illuminating the dark, confined space. The room looked not at all out of the ordinary – a half-melted wicker candle on a tiny writing desk, a stamp and an ink pad beside it, stacks of unsold tickets underneath. There was a safe braced against the near wall, its door carelessly left half-open. The light from her aura glinted off the pile of gold bits in the safe.
        
"You said you had a hunch?" Maybe he just wanted to vent – he did seem to enjoy kicking that door down.
        
A calendar was pinned against the wall of the office. Snake ripped it free, inspected it for a moment, then tossed it to Twilight. She caught it mid-air with her magic. "I'm not too sure that my calendar and yours align perfectly," he said. "What day is it today? " 
        
"The 30th," Twilight answered automatically. "Wednesday."
        
"And what's the last day marked on that calendar?"
        
Twilight read it – most of the days on the calendar were marked off with thick red crosses, but they stopped with three days left in the month. "Sunday. This past Sunday, three days ago." She placed the calendar down on the desk as she considered the implications. 
        
Snake holstered his gun and leaned his weight against the wall. "The balloon came in early this morning," he said. "I didn't show up in Equestria until two days ago. Whatever happened here happened before we encountered Pegasus Wings for the first time. Before I even arrived here." He stared at the vacant waiting room through the wire mesh. "It occurred to me that Trenton might have gotten here overnight somehow – set all this up as a trap for us. But now, that doesn't even seem possible."
        
"That doesn't necessarily mean that Pegasus Wings was never here," Twilight pointed out. "Or that they weren't responsible for the state of the town. It just means that they didn't do it to lay a trap for us." 

But even as she said the words, she found herself unable to answer the all-important question of why. She saw no strategic significance to Dodge; it was a backwater frontier town. The only things that made it worth putting on the map were the junction and the ranch. From what the mayor had told them about what happened in the mountain junction, it sounded like they already had a handle on the rails, and she doubted that cherries were vital to Macbeth's endgame. It's not unlike Ponyville, come to think of it, she realized. But Ponyville has greater strategic value, assuming Macbeth really does have an interest in keeping myself and the girls under hoof. And it's much closer to their area of operations. Trekking out to Dodge and taking over the town would be a strategic blunder. 

"What's here that would be worth anything to a revolutionary army?" Snake asked. "The rail, maybe, but if they were after that, Ponyville would have made a more opportune target. More convenient, too, since it's right on their castle's doorstep. And burning the mountain junction only closed the rails running north from Ponyville. That indicates an interest in regulating the flow of traffic running in that direction. But southbound trains? Off their radar. Besides..." He opened his arms for emphasis. "If they were going to take over the town – for whatever reason – this isn't how they'd go about it." 
        
He wasn't wrong at all. They'd seen the same strategic flaws in that hypothetical scenario, a fact which annoyed Twilight on an irrational level. But a part of her – a very stubborn part – wasn't ready to accept that their time had indeed been wasted. "The letter named Dodge specifically. There had to be a reason why we were told to come here – here, out of all the places we could possibly have been lured to."
        
"Maybe not," said Snake. "It's far enough away from Ponyville that a round trip would keep us occupied for a while. That's time we could be investing in something more productive. Something that could check their next move. Could be this was all a wild goose chase. Could be that was the plan all along – nothing more to it than keeping us out of the picture for an extended period of time." 
        
        "I don't accept that," said Twilight, as the cynic in her accepted Snake's idea as a very real possibility. "Look, we're here now; we're not likely to be going anywhere for the time being. And something is very wrong here that merits investigation. Let's make the most of the situation. We'll just do a sweep of the town, alright? And if we don't like what we see, then I'll..." 

Admit that my friend is probably dead? 

"...Concede the point." 
        
Snake's frown deepened. She could sense his frustration at his arguments being dismissed out of hoof like that, and felt a stab of guilt. She'd find a way to make it up to him later, she promised herself. 

"Where do we start?" Snake's voice was a cold monotone. 
        
"There's a door on the other side of the room – opposite from the one we came in. That leads out into the town square," said Twilight. "A plaza, some buildings. There's a general store, the town sheriff, the post office, a clinic, what passes for a town hall, and an Appleloosa Apple Pies franchise."
        
Snake's eye twitched – perhaps a sign that his patience was finally hitting its limit. "Lots of ground to cover. We're burning daylight as it is." 
        
Twilight looked past him, out toward the derelict train. "What else are we gonna do to pass the time? Pull on each other's ears?"
        
Snake emitted a barely audible huff of breath that might have been a laugh. His jaw worked for a long moment before he nodded his acquiescence. Without another word, he left the claustrophobic office and crossed the room toward the exit into town. He nudged the door open, braced his back against the wall beside it, and peered out into the street. "It's pretty exposed," he muttered. "Wide open, no cover." He knelt and glanced at Twilight. "You first. I'll hang back and cover you, move up when it's clear." He tapped his index finger against the grip of his tranquilizer gun. 
        
"Sounds good." She tried to project a calm, collected demeanor, but the situation ratcheted her sense of anxiety upward, and her hope at finding Rainbow Dash alive was starting to diminish. Having something to focus on helped, but only so much. She felt like a wreck that lurched forward on pure inertia, and worse, she was pretty sure that Snake could tell. Either she was transparent, or he'd become an expert at reading pony body language during his short stay in Equestria. 

Perhaps both.
        
"That's a sport where I come from, by the way."
        
Twilight, jarred out of her self-reflection, shook her head. "Come again?"
        
"Competitive ear-pulling. It's a sport where I'm from." 
        
Twilight searched Snake's face for any hint that he was pulling something of hers, but it remained set in that stony, all-business scowl. I guess that's just what a species with fully articulated digits does for fun. "Your home sounds weird."
        
Snake snorted, raised his pistol to eye level, and waved it insistently. "Get going." 
        




They closed the apple pie shop. I guess it's cherries or nothing out here.

The green building that stood in front of her had once borne a swinging sign with a shiny red apple, advertising the Appleloosa-style apple treats sold therein – fritters, pies, brown betties, and a plethora of others that Applejack would no doubt have enjoyed expounding upon were she present. In place of that sign was one displaying a frothing tankard of... something. A pair of swinging doors marked the entrance.

Correction: cherries or booze or nothing.
        
Dodge proper looked and felt more desolate than the station. There were no scattered belongings or personal possessions left abandoned in the plaza the way there had been at the station. Food carts stood unattended and forgotten, and the air was thick with the gag-inducing reek of rotten fruit. Twilight saw a wheelbarrow of cherries leaning against the general store, bearing a sign that advertised them at twelve bits a pound. The juicy-looking cherry on the placard contrasted with the brown, green-furred mass in the barrow. 

What's more, there wasn't any sign that anything violent had taken place, no traces of activity from Pegasus Wings. Sunday the 27th was more likely than not just another day of business as usual, it seemed. 

Until it wasn't.
        
The saloon in front of her looked homey and inviting, with its broad windows, bright green paint job, and swinging doors painted with colorful images of hearts, cherries, and cherries in the shape of hearts. But the room behind the doors was dark – the windows were shuttered, and though she could discern the shapes of furniture beyond the doors, she couldn't see anything in greater detail. 

Twilight circled around to the saloon's side entrance, a small door with a dirt-smudged square window. She tried peering through the window, but a blind was pulled down from the inside. She turned the knob and tried pushing the door open, but it was bolted shut. Twilight scowled. The town seemed intent on stymieing her at every turn. 

Something caught her eye on the wall beside the door. Twilight leaned closer, squinting, to examine it. There were markings, holes poked into the wooden paneling, two sets of four that ran parallel to one another, ascending up the wall toward the open second storey window above the door. They looked like claw marks, like a cat had climbed up the side of the wall to get inside the saloon from the upstairs. 

A very big cat, by the look of it. The marks were spread far apart; whatever made them had to have paws the size of frying pans. That rules Opalescence out, at least.

It wasn't just claw marks, though. Interspaced with them were thin lines with a gentle upward curve, shallow grooves cut into the wall. Twilight ran a hoof over one of the lines, frowning. Now, what could have made this, I wonder? Some kind of climbing tool? A pickaxe, maybe, but the shape was all wrong for that. Could be from something else re-purposed as a climbing tool. Like a spade, or something. Twilight edged the tip of her hoof against one of them, surprised at how well it fit into the groove. 

Or maybe they're from... hooves?

She stepped away from the wall, staring at it incredulously. Something with claws and hooves? Her face scrunched up with concentration. A draconequus's anatomy might fit the bill. Discord couldn't have broken free again, but maybe there were more of his kind in the world. Including here, in Dodge? That seems unlikely. And yet... something had to have made those marks. Something went to the trouble of climbing in through the upstairs window, bypassing the front entrance altogether. Something mysterious and potentially anatomically unfamiliar.

Something about it niggled at Twilight, something queerly familiar, like a half-remembered fragment of a fever dream. Not a draconequus, no, but something else... something... 

Twilight let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed her forehead. Deja vu. Nothing more.

Whatever climbed in through that window might still be in the saloon. The idea of coming face-to-face with such a creature set her nerves on edge, but a lead was a lead. Twilight circled around the rest of the saloon in search of another entrance. There was none – no back door, no door at the opposite wall leading in from the alley. Front door or nothing, I suppose.

Twilight returned to the front of the saloon and warily eyed the cheerful, inviting swinging doors. She breathed deeply to maintain her composure and glanced back at the train station for reassurance. It wasn't so far away that she couldn't see Snake kneeling in the doorway, his tranquilizer gun held at the ready. Confident as she was in her ability to defend herself, it still put her a little more at ease to know that someone was watching her back. Even if that someone had a grudge. 
        
Twilight inhaled and exhaled deeply, and planted a hoof on the saloon's front step, her hoof making a hollow clopping sound as it came into contact with the wood.
        
As if in response, she heard something move inside the saloon. 

Twilight froze.
        
Hooves and legs came into sight, visible beneath the swinging doors. The doors creaked open. Somepony staggered onto the porch, pushing the doors open with his face. The sight of him made Twilight draw in a sharp, hissing breath through her clenched teeth in shock. It was an earth pony, a stallion, his coat as faded white as his mane, yet tinted with a hint of blue. He was panting, his pale tongue hanging limply from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes – pinprick pupils stark black against colorless irises and sclera – rolled left and right, unfocused. 
        
"Sweet Celestia," Twilight swore, her urge to help overriding her fear of the unknown. She stepped higher onto the saloon's stairs to come closer to him. "What happened to you?" 
       
The stallion's ears twitched and turned toward Twilight at the sound of her voice. His eyes swiveled together to focus on her, and his mouth opened, emitting a choked rattle. 

Twilight drew closer to the stallion, taking another step onto the stairs. "It's okay; I'm not going to hurt you. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I'm here to help." 
        
The stallion's lips pulled back into a snarl, and he staggered forward, inelegantly but swiftly. Twilight, caught off guard, scrambled hurriedly away from the porch, avoiding the stallion but tripping on the stairs and falling onto her back. The stallion's teeth snapped as another rattle clawed its way from his throat, and he shambled with growing strength down the stairs. 
        
A tuft of red feather suddenly appeared in the stallion's neck. He jerked from the impact of the tranquilizer dart, but didn't slow his gait. He lumbered toward Twilight, jaws open, but when he was finally upon her, she raised her hind legs and used his momentum to buck him up and over her head. He sailed through the air and struck the ground behind Twilight, a tangled pile of limbs and hooves. Twilight clambered back to all fours and turned to face him, bracing herself for another attack.
        
He rose, but didn't lunge at her with the shocking swiftness of his initial lunge. If anything, his movements were slower, clumsier. He swayed from side-to-side as he walked, his legs wobbly, his eyes drooping. A low growl gurgled in his throat as he came closer to Twilight, but each step was less certain than the last, and he was losing speed besides. Then his jaw went slack, his eyes shut and did not reopen, and he collapsed forward with his rump stuck in the air. 

Twilight held her ground, waiting to see if he'd rise again. He didn't. She edged closer to him and lowered her head to his, tilting her ear toward his nose. 

A gust of breath, hot and dry, shot into her ear. Twilight scampered backward, half from surprise and half in disgust, rubbing her ear as if to scrape the germs off of it. The stallion stayed where he was, in his disarming, butt-up pose. A faint trickle of blood ran from the spot where the tranquilizer dart had pricked him, and its red feathers ruffled gently in the afternoon breeze. 

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. He's alive. He's alive, he's unconscious but alive, everything's fine, and... and eww, he breathed into my ear!

Gravel crunched beneath rubber soles as Snake sidled up to her, his tranquilizer gun still trained on the stallion. "You hurt?" he asked.

Twilight rubbed her ear one more time and shook her head. "Thanks."

"I doubt Stovetop would have left me back on the train without you," Snake grunted. He holstered his tranquilizer gun and squatted beside the fallen stallion, looking it over from nose to tail. "Tranquilizers took their time kicking in. It should have dropped right away." He cupped his chin. "You ever see anything like this before?"

"This, specifically? No." Twilight knelt next to Snake. "But the color thing is familiar, if nothing else." She thought back to her encounter with Discord, to the way her friends' coats and manes had drained of color, desaturated until they all but turned slate-grey. 

"How so?" Snake asked. 

"His coat should be much brighter than it is. I've seen something that could have that effect on a pony before. A certain kind of magic. But the only one who could use it is... safely under lock and key, let's say." The draconequus connection again. It couldn't be, could it? 

Twilight examined the stallion more closely. "I think I recognize him. Blue coat, white mane... yeah, he was here the last time I came to Dodge. I saw him here in the square, pulling a hay cart. Never got his name." Do they have the same cutie mark? Twilight glanced at his flank; it was blank, nothing but more bare, blue-tinted fur. 

Oh. "He doesn't have a cutie mark."
        
"A... cutie mark?" Snake repeated. The phrase sounded awkward and unnatural in his voice. "Pinkie was saying something about that this morning. Some kind of tattoo you get when you find your life's calling?"
        
"That's an awfully mundane and reductive way of putting it," said Twilight. "See, everypony has a certain talent, something they're destined to spend their life doing. Something they love. They spend foalhood searching for that talent, and when it finally comes to them, their cutie mark appears on their flank – a symbolic representation of that talent."
        
"So it's... biological? Like a pony puberty thing? What, this pony was a slacker?"
        
"Not necessarily... it's not unheard of for a pony to reach adulthood without getting their cutie mark, but it is exceedingly rare. He might have had it removed, but I don't understand why anypony would do such a thing." Macbeth's flank had been red and raw where his cutie mark had been, she recalled, but he was hardly a typical case.

Snake hummed thoughtfully in response to that. "Not the only thing that was off about him, though. Or even the most unusual thing." His brow crinkled, and his bandanna with it. "He came at you like he was gonna take a bite out of you."

"Or several," said Twilight. "He was acting feral. Mindless, just attacking without thinking. I don't know what to make of that." Another memory drifted into her mind – Spike, perched on her back, nervously postulating the possibility of zombies in an empty Ponyville. 

Impossible. Equestria may have been full of fantastic fauna, but zombies were strictly relegated to the realm of urban legend and fantasy. "What about you?" Twilight asked. "Have you ever see anything like it before?"

        Snake shook his head. "But then again, I fell asleep during Night of the Living Dead."
        
That sounds like a difficult night to sleep through.
        
"I'll tell you what, though; it'd be stupid of us to assume that there weren't more of them out there. Hell, for all we know, this is what happened to the whole town. Something happened to turn them all into... that." Snake rose to his feet, giving a last, pensive look at the stallion. He hesitated for only a moment before he continued speaking. "We shouldn't stay here any longer. I say we go back to the train, grab that engineer, and book it out of here. If taking the train is out of the question, then we'll find some other way back to town. There's gotta be something – a handcar somewhere on the rails, even." 

He was right. He made sense. Whatever was going on in Dodge, it wasn't their problem just now. They'd resolve the crisis on their plates and come back to this one when there was time for it. Move from one emergency to the next, maybe even get used to it after a fashion. 

"And Dash?" Forcing the question out felt like sticking a knife in her belly. She knew what Snake's answer would be; she didn't want to hear it. All the same, she asked.

To her surprise, Snake said nothing. So she supplied the answer for him, and the knife twisted hard. "She's not out here, is she?"
        
This time, Snake did reply. "I'm sorry." The words were spoken not unkindly. 
        
A gentle wind rustled Twilight's mane. Her bangs caught in the breeze and waved at the top of her vision. She should have been crying – that's what good friends did in situations like this – but she didn't even have the urge to. She felt hollow. She felt like she had no more tears to shed. "You didn't even like her." 

"No," Snake admitted. "But I know you did."

Twilight shut her eyes. The wind washed over her, warm and comforting. 

The shrill shriek of a steam whistle pierced the silence of the town, and Twilight's eyes snapped open. She instinctively whirled about in the direction of the noise and flared her legs, her aura shimmering to life around her horn. Snake, likewise, fell into a fighting posture and swiveled to aim his gun in the direction of the station. The whistle cut off for a long, tense moment before blaring again in quick bursts. "Stovetop," she said, steel creeping into her voice. We left her alone. But there hadn't been any sign of life out there, no feral ponies in the station, or out by the track. The only places they could possibly have come from were the town itself and—
        
        Twilight cursed her short-sightedness. Stovetop checked the engine, but only hollered at the passenger cars. She must have taken it at face value when nopony hollered back. We didn't check them ourselves – we should have checked them ourselves!

The whistle cut off abruptly, and Twilight felt a sickening sensation of worry for the brassy old engineer. Dodge was still as a graveyard, and the only sounds Twilight could hear were the steady breathing of her companion and her pulse thudding in her ears. 

Then something struck her from the left side, bowling her over. The glow around her horn vanished from the shock of the sudden attack. She heard snarls, frantic and vicious, and teeth snapping for purchase against her neck, her face, her ear. Twilight warded the attack off with an outstretched hoof, batting at the feral stallion's face as she refocused her magic to counterattack. 

With a flash of pink and a sound like a thunderclap, the stallion flew backward, skidding through the sand. Twilight's horn flashed again and a beam struck him in the chest, blasting him back across the plaza and throwing him against the wheelbarrow. It smashed to pieces when his body impacted it, and a pile of rotted cherries rained down upon him.
        
Twilight, panting, kept her horn trained on the pile. Stay down, she pleaded.

Please be okay, another part of her whispered. Please, please be okay.
        
The cherries that hadn't been pulverized into mush by the impact shifted and rolled down the stallion's body as he rose again, covered in pulpy fruit mold. Slivers of wood and bent nails stuck from his coat, and a gash running from shoulder to elbow split the skin on his left side. But, untroubled by any of his injuries, he shook off the cherry gunk and fixed his feral, furious gaze on Twilight again, and took a wide, ponderous step toward her

Twilight's heart sank. Motes of light danced around her horn.

From beside her came a sound so loud and sudden that it made her jump, and a hot piece of metal bounced against her flank. A hole appeared in the middle of the stallion's forehead, and his neck jerked back as though he'd been struck. The stallion crumpled, and did not move again.
        
Twilight's hind legs gave out, and she fell to her haunches. Memories, sensations, drifted back to her: the sulfury smell of cordite, the stinging chill of the dungeon, and the gun... The gun had been so light – taking it from its owner, holding it against him, so simple. The trigger, so slender and delicate.
        
"Sugarcube, are you alright?" Applejack's voice rang clear as day in her mind
        
He was laughing when he died.
        
"Twilight." She felt a sudden shove, and the tight grip of a human hand on her shoulder. "Twilight!" 
        
The sensations passed back into memory as her mind centered on the present. The frigid dungeon was a million miles away, the human now entombed in a cairn of ancient stone. In front of her lay the stallion, unmoving, amidst a reeking mass of rotten fruit. "You didn't have to kill him," Twilight whispered hoarsely. 
        
"'He' shrugged off a tranquilizer. 'He' was covered in wounds, and didn't even seem to notice." Snake's lethal pistol, the one he picked up in the castle, was trained on the stallion, as though he expected it to get up and attack them again. "That thing is completely brain-dead; you said so yourself."
        
I wasn't talking to you.

Silence reigned again for a few precious seconds before a muffled cacophony broke it – a chorus of guttural moans and wooden thudding, growing in volume and intensity. Fear lanced through Twilight as she realized that the sounds were coming from all around them, from inside the other buildings. 

Snake swept his pistol from one building to the next. "We need to make a break for it. Take our chances in the desert and follow the rails. Maybe we get lucky."

"And Stovetop?" asked Twilight.

Snake only shook his head. 

We shouldn't have left her alone. We should have checked the other train. I should have... She cut the thought off. Time enough for that later. 

"They're quick, but I think we can outrun them," said Snake. "We move fast enough, and we should be able to—"

The door to the general store burst open, aborting Snake's sentence, and a tidal wave of blank-flanked ponies swept forth, their manes and coats likewise drained of color. Then the post office's door likewise broke, and the windows at the front of the town hall shattered; more and more of the feral ponies stormed from the buildings, forming a stampede that barreled toward them from all sides. They came in twos, in tens, in dozens, maybe hundreds, in a line of ravenous grey death that encircled the saloon and closed upon them rapidly. 

Snake and Twilight looked at one another; an unspoken thought passed between them, and together, they ran inside the only redoubt they had. 
        
They pushed through the saloon doors together and were immediately met with a pair of snarling mares. Snake shot one down and trained his gun on the other, but the second closed the gap too quickly; his next shot went wild as the mare's teeth clamped down hard on his left forearm, clenching tightly enough to break his suit and the skin beneath. Snake growled, a mixture of pain and anger in his voice. 

Without thinking, Twilight leaped, caught the pony by the neck with her forelegs, shoved her hooves into its mouth, and pried its jaws open. The two tumbled to the ground, and before the mare could lunge at her, Snake dispatched it with a point-blank shot to the back of its head that left Twilight's ears ringing.

Snake, his forearm bloody where he was bitten, immediately turned to the doorway as the first ponies in the stampede, three in all, started pushing through the doors. One shot to each left them sprawling in the doorway. 
        
The door was a natural chokepoint; no doubt Snake intended to fend them off until he expended his ammunition. But Twilight had a different idea, and she stretched out with her senses. The furniture filling the room was of varying ages and quality; some pieces were more solid than others, but they didn't all need to be perfect for her plan to work . She wrapped her magic aura around every single one that she could find – stools and tables and benches alike – and flung them all toward the door. Snake fired another shot through the door and turned his head in time to duck before he could be struck in the head by a piano bench. 

Twilight piled everything against the doorway in a disheveled heap, blocking the saloon's entrance completely. She focused hard; a white light built at the tip of her horn, and the aura around the furniture grew brighter and more intense. The light winked out, but the aura remained, and Twilight fell to the floor, gasping from the exertion, but smiled weakly. 
        
Snake took her by the knee and helped her back to her hooves. "What did you do?" he asked.
        
Twilight smiled wider, showing teeth. "Adhesive spell," she said between pants. She heard the muffled sound of hooves beating vainly against wood. "They can pound that thing 'til Winter Wrap-Up and it won't give way." 
        
"No kidding?" Snake held still, listening to the groans and rattles and beating hooves, then shrugged. "Good thinking. So how do we get back out?"
        
"Well..." She breathed deeply to steady herself as reality started to set in. All she did was ensure the ponies couldn't get in. It didn't solve the problem of how they were going to get back out.

"You have no idea, do you?" said Snake, frowning.

Twilight returned the look. "Excuse me; I was a little preoccupied with the immediate concern of not getting eaten alive. You're welcome, by the way."

Snake's scowled. He opened his mouth, prepared to retort, but stopped and turned back to the front of the saloon instead. 

And here she'd been bracing for another exchange of fire with him. She was almost disappointed. "Sorry for snapping. Just... give me a minute to think." 

Her breathing had more or less returned to normal, and her heart no longer pounded in her chest the way it had when the horde first appeared. Now calmer, she looked around the room, stopping to note how spacious the saloon looked with the furniture piled away. There was a bar, naturally, fully stocked with a generous variety of spirituous beverages. A staircase at the back led up to the saloon's second floor; beside those stairs, against the far wall, was a small stage with a dusty old piano propped up in one corner. She'd noticed the piano when stretching out with her senses, but chose to leave it where it sat – there was a music teacher or two from her schoolfilly days that would never forgive her if she defiled such an instrument. 

She tried to think of an alternate exit. The only other way out was the side door she'd inspected from the outside. Twilight considered whether or not she and Snake could use it to slip past the crowd, but decided against trying. It was too close to the crowd – all it took was one noticing them, and that was it. She was sure Snake had come to the same conclusion.

Snake unlatched one the shutters at the nearby front window and peered out at the town, and the steadily growing crowd pounding against Twilight's barricade. "Dozens of them out there. Maybe as many as a hundred, maybe more. How did so many of them fit in those buildings?"
        
There was a sudden crack as a pony smashed its head against the now partially unshuttered window. A fracture spiderwebbed across the glass from the point of impact, but the window held. The pony's skull split from the force of his swing, and a glob of dark red matter remained stuck to the glass like an unfortunate bug. Snake slammed the shutter and threw the latch back into place, then backpedaled with his gun raised.

Despite herself, Twilight couldn't help a little chuckle at Snake's reaction. "Yeah... maybe let's keep those shut for now."

Snake glowered at her, lowering his gun. "Thought you were thinking of a way out. Got anything yet?"

"Not unless you count liquor and dust bunnies." Twilight gestured around the vacant saloon. "No feasible way to escape that I can see. We could try waiting them out – maybe they'll lose interest after a while."

Snake folded his arms. "That's not plan A, is it?"

"It's not my preference," Twilight admitted, "but I'm not seeing any other alternatives. Unless you want to try fighting your way out." They seem to die when you shoot them. She would prefer not to fight their way out. 

Snake shook his head. "Speaking conservatively, there's probably at least a hundred of them out there. I don't have enough ammo for all of them. We try shooting our way out, it won't end well for us. We try sneaking our way out—"

"And we'll probably get mobbed, left with the same problem as if we tried fighting our way out." Twilight nodded in the direction of the side door. "Yeah, I thought of that too." 

Snake canted his head to one side.

"For the time being, we're stuck here." Twilight waved a hoof in the air. "May as well get comfy. I'd tell you to pull up a chair, but that would just be ironic." 

A wry smile played across Snake's mouth. He sighed, and eyed the bar. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a shot glass sitting on its polished surface, its label facing away from her, next to a dishrag stained cruddy brown from years of use.

What, is he thirsty? She wondered if humans could even get drunk off of pony spirits.

"Tell me something," said Snake. He walked over to the bar as he spoke and picked up the bottle of whiskey, turning it to examine more closely. "You've got manticores and timberwolves and God only knows what else here in Equestria. Are bloodthirsty zombie ponies outside the realm of possibility?"

"One hundred percent," said Twilight. "I mean, there are stories, sure. Campfire fodder, or schlocky thrillers sold in pulp magazines, but no credible accounts of the dead reanimating anywhere. None that I'm aware of, anyway. And these don't really fit the kind of descriptions you'd find in those, either." Apart from their mindlessness and their apparent appetite for pony flesh, little about them resembled the shambling, rotted corpses from zombie lore. The graying, the loss of their cutie marks, their speed, were all completely unfamiliar to her. 

"Pretty much the same where I'm from. Then again, it's hard to argue against the evidence." He ran his right hand over the wound on his forearm and squeezed it gently. "You got your hooves in one of their mouths. Were you bitten at all?"

"Bitten? Uh..." Twilight glanced down at her hooves and inspected them from front to back. "Not that I can see. Why?" 

"What do you mean 'why'?" Snake asked, shooting her a look. He lifted his bloody forearm. "You see this, right? I doubt I'll turn from it, different physiology and all that, but you're at risk if you get bitten." 

"At risk of...?" 

"Of... turning? Into a zombie?" He spoke slowly, as though to a child. "Because you contracted the zombie virus from the bite?"

Twilight stared at him in bemusement. "That's absolutely ridiculous. Everypony knows that zombies are created by voodoo witch doctors channeling fell spirits into the corpses of the recently deceased via mystic song and dance." She scoffed. "'Zombie virus.' Who in the hay cooked that up?"

"Don't give me shit for it; I didn't make the rules," Snake muttered.

"Point is, I'm in no danger of turning into a zombie from being bitten. And even if I was?" Twilight held her hooves up, one after the other, for Snake's inspection. "Look. No bites."

"Right. Okay." Snake turned back to the bar, picked up the dishrag in one hand, sniffed it, and made a disgusted noise. "So does that mean Zecora has a horde of zombies stashed away somewhere? Because she had 'voodoo witch doctor' written all over—"

"Zecora. Is not. A voodoo witch doctor!" Twilight snapped. "And zombies aren't real! These are not zombies! Try to wrap your brain around it!"

"Fine." Snake leaned his back against the bar. "You're the expert. If they're not zombies, then what are they?"

Twilight fumbled for an answer, came up with nothing, and sighed with annoyance. 

The answer came from a deep voice that thundered down the stairs behind them. "Neither truly alive, nor truly dead. Yet more familiar than perhaps you're comfortable with." 

Twilight and Snake whirled to face the intruder, braced for combat.

A thing descended the stairs – no pony, no human, but a hodgepodge of distinct animal parts. It was quadrupedal, its thick coat of fur midnight blue, its body and hind legs pony-shaped, but its forelegs more feline than equine – stocky, muscular, and ending in paws – and its head and face more canine than anything else, with pointed ears standing on end and a long, tapering muzzle tipped by a round black nose. Its eyes were slate-grey, its pupils black pinpricks against them, and a pair of canine teeth – one of them chipped – poked from its top lip. A gray mane ran down its neck, with tufts of hair poking up behind and around its ears. A cat's tail snaked from its hind end where the wispy tail of a pony ought to have been. 

Paws and hooves. So that's what climbed the wall. 

It was so familiar, yet so unlike anything Twilight had ever seen. Deja vu tugged again at the edges of her mind – that same feeling of recollection. 

"Anypony that walks on this good earth carries that which which gives us thought and motion and a sense of self and purpose," said the blue hodgepodge on the stairs. "The soul, if you will. But what is a pony without that soul? When its very essence is cut to the quick and all that makes a pony bled away, what remains is but a golem – a husk, with no sense of self or reason. A soulless shell driven by pure instinct. It walks, it breathes. But it's capable of no more than that. And there, but for the grace of all that is good and holy in this world, go you." 

The thing raised a paw at them and waved amicably. "Hello. You must be the ones who stirred the hornet's nest outside. I wish you hadn't, but what's done is done." 

"Stay where you are," Snake said, cautiously advancing a step with his gun aimed at the thing on the stairs. "Are you responsible for what happened here?" 

The thing's mouth curled into a rancid grin.

Twilight stepped in front of Snake, placing a hoof on his stomach as if holding him back. "Snake, wait." She looked at the grotesque thing on the stairs. "You. You work for the Princess." She sensed the truth in her words as she spoke them, even as she wondered how she could possibly know that. 

Snake's gaze darted to Twilight, then back at his target. "You know this thing?"

She ignored him, and took another step toward the stairs. "You work for the Princess," she repeated. "Don't you?"

The thing on the stairs gazed down at her for a long time before responding. "I haven't met with her majesty face-to-face in years." He padded softly down the rest of the stairs, his steps almost completely silent – even the hooves on his hind legs were muffled. "For some reason, she doesn't like having me around. We have other lines of communication these days." He arrived at the bottom of the stairs, eyes fixed on Twilight's. 

"But you still work for the Princess?" asked Twilight. 

"In a manner of speaking. I serve the realm. Princess Celestia happens to speak for the realm, so I serve at her pleasure. As do you." He bowed his head slightly. "The Element of Magic herself, as I live and breathe. It's an honor." He eyed Snake. "You, on the other hoof, I'm having trouble placing."

"Don't strain yourself thinking about it," said Snake. His grip on his pistol was still tight, his finger laid across the trigger guard, but he lowered it away from the newcomer. "What, exactly, are you? And what are you doing here?" 

"I could ask the same of you," it purred. "On both counts." It turned away from Twilight and hopped lightly onto the stage in a catlike bound. It made a grand show of examining the piano in the corner.

"I suppose I could tell you what brings me out here... but I didn't get this far in life by divulging state secrets." One paw pad danced gently along a yellowed, faux-ivory piano key. "But I can tell you that I'm not your enemy. Like I said, I serve the realm, as does your pony friend there. As long as your actions benefit the realm, we'll be on the same side." 

He pressed down on the key, and its tuneless song echoed in the empty saloon. "To put it in simple terms, I solve problems for the Princess. Messy, untidy, oft embarrassing problems. When something comes up that she either cannot, or will not, face through official channels, she sends for me. She gives me a mission, and the latitude to work, and I solve the problem. Cleanly, elegantly... and, above all, discreetly." 

"Cute euphemism for wetwork." Snake's gravelly voice was thick with contempt. "You're a spy. An operator."

The thing's eyes widened. "An... 'operator?' Hmm." His brows knit together as he repeated the word, turning it over in his mouth, tasting its sound on his lips. "Operator... operator... yes, I quite like that. In times long past, my office was known as the Penumbra, but Princess Celestia doesn't particularly care for that title, and so it's fallen into disuse. 'Operator,' though... so much more modern and enigmatic... and lacking in the pompous pretension characteristic of antiquity." He smiled. "Operator, then. It will serve as a title. And as a name, if you wish."

"Glad I could give you something to pad the old ego," said Snake. 

"The old ego doesn't need much padding." The Operator's mood seemed to improve with each remark Snake made against him. 

Once, Twilight may have been naive enough to believe that a pacifistic, disarmed Equestria could remain prosperous without some sort of intelligence network intercepting and dealing with potential threats. With age came a certain measured cynicism, though – needless to say, she hadn't believed that for a very long time. Indeed, it was a topic she learned years ago not to broach to the Princess. But the Operator's slick, oily disposition and apparent pride in his work made it seem so much more unsavory than she would have imagined. Her mind went back to the castle dungeon, and the instruments of torture she and Applejack had found, to the ancient tome sitting in her library with its worshipful praise for a conquering deity. Equestria's veneer of friendship and harmony seemed a little less convincing.

"As discourteous as it is to demand an explanation of you without providing one of my own, I'm curious," said the Operator. "What brings the Element of Magic all the way out to the fringes of Equestrian territory? And without the other Elements, even. I thought you were all joined at the hip, but you seemed to have replaced them with..." He cocked his head at Snake. "I'm sorry, but who are you, exactly?" 

"Her plus one," Snake replied dryly.

Twilight felt the knife dig back into her gut. "We're looking for a friend of ours – somepony who we believe was kidnapped and brought here." A thought struck her. "Maybe you've seen her – a pegasus pony, with a cyan coat and a rainbow mane?"

The Operator scoffed. "Oh, it's hard to say. There are so many rainbow-maned pegasi in Equestria that I just can't tell them apart. Who knows if we'd even be thinking of the same one? Maybe it would help if you gave me a name." 

"Just answer the question, please," she said, testily.

The Operator chuckled at his own wit. "I haven't seen that particular pony around town, no. In fact, I haven't seen many ponies around town that weren't gray blank-flanks"        

She hadn't been expecting an affirmative answer anyway, but the extra stab hurt all the same.

"You have my sympathy. That and two bits will buy you a cherry at market, but it's all I can give you just now, I'm afraid." The Operator hopped from the stage and stalked past Twilight, to one of the golems that Snake had shot earlier. He reached out with a paw and turned its head over slowly, examining the entry and exit wounds and murmuring thoughtfully. "Though, if it's any consolation, I'd say this mare's having a worse time of it than you are." He smirked at Twilight. "Having your soul cut out tends to ruin your day."

His motions stirred the blood pooling beneath the golem's head. Twilight averted her eyes and suppressed a shudder. "What could have created something like this?" she asked. "I've been studying magic for what feels like my whole life. I know the principles and intricacies of spell-casting inside and out, but what you're talking about – this stuff about bleeding souls and creating golems – is a whole different league from everything I've ever learned about magic."

"Just so," said the Operator. "It's an old art – a dark art – and one that requires reservoirs of magical energy far beyond what any normal unicorn could ever hope to project. There aren't many ponies alive who could hope to tap into that kind of power." 

"It's a short list," Twilight agreed. "Princess Celestia could, I'm sure. Princess Luna." I could, maybe. The thought chilled her; she pushed it out of her mind.

"Luna could, perhaps. Certain mages who sit on the Academy's board might have the potential. Celestia? Beyond a doubt, if she cared to." He stood and backed away from the golem, brushing off his paw on his chest. Streaks of red clung to him, barely visible against his dark blue coat. "But having the power to do so means little without the knowledge. And said knowledge has been lost for eons."

Snake voiced the thought before she could. "Then how do you know about it?"

The Operator's grin was ghastly.

Twilight dared to look back at the golem, keeping her gaze below its neck. "Is there anything that can be done to put them back together?" she asked. "The soul and the body, I mean. Could they... could they somehow be cured of this?" 

"Reunite a soul bled from the body with the body from whence it bled?" The Operator tapped his paw against his chin as he considered that, then shrugged. "The kind of wound needed to do such a thing to a pony runs deep. You could stuff something back into the sack that's left over from the bleeding – maybe its old soul, maybe something else entirely – but in all likelihood, it'd just slide right back out the way it came. No, they're beyond your help. Your friend is holding the best medicine for them. I'd worry more about where its soul went, were I you." 

Twilight thought about an iron maiden and a drafty dungeon and the broken leg of a— Stop it. Stop it now. Focus. "Why would anypony want to do such a thing in the first place?" she whispered. "Stealing somepony's soul, leaving them like this..." The grotesqueness of it, the idea that anypony could be reduced to such a state, sickened her. This truly is a fate worse than death.

"Consider what one would stand to gain." The Operator slinked to her side and cleared his throat. "Nowadays, nopony besides the Princess herself would remember this, but what we call the soul is – in the most basic sense – nothing more than energy. Powerful energy, but subject to the same laws and restrictions that govern the rest of reality. It can be drawn, transferred, stored and unleashed – never destroyed. But it can also be shaped, molded – forged and synthesized into something new. Even transmuted into flesh, and imbued with a soul of its own." 

Magic is something transcendental, her mentor whispered in her mind. 

Magic was never meant to be used for horrors like this, she whispered back. But there was no conviction behind the thought. 

"In ages past," the Operator continued, "the black arts were used to do just that: to create new life beyond the banality of the equine form. The golem itself is incidental, the leftovers from that process, a shell driven by instinct and a half-remembered shadow of self. They might drift back to their homes, or their old haunts, or to anything remotely familiar, or they might just wander aimlessly, but eventually, they'll drop where they stand and lie dormant unless something catches their attention."

Something seemed to jolt Snake; his expression suddenly lit up. "'Catches their attention'? What do you mean by that?"

"Well," said the Operator, "they might be mindless parodies of life, but they still have senses. Sight, smell, sound, taste. It takes them a while to gather enough steam to so much as stand, much less stagger about, and they don't all do so at the same rate, but if you make enough of a racket – say, from a train's whistle, or a gunshot..." He looked pointedly at Snake. "Eventually, even the heaviest sleeper among them will rise to investigate."

Those golems that Snake had shot came to only after the rest of the ones in town burst out to swarm them. The first one to attack her had been in the saloon with the other two, but he'd gotten up before any of the others. Could that have been why? Could it just have taken notice of her before the others? 

Maybe. But there's something else that's off about this.

The gears in Snake's head creaked almost audibly as he processed the Operator's words. His gaze returned to the bar, to the shelves of liquor stored behind it.

"Snake?" asked Twilight with a tentative waver in her voice. "What are you thinking?"

"Give me a second." Snake vaulted over the bar, and began raiding the shelves, gathering bottles of liquor in his arms. 

Twilight blinked. All the metaphysical conversation of the past several minutes, and none of it confused her quite as much as her companion just then. 

"Well," said the Operator with a sigh, "we can only hope he'll get the help he needs one day."

Something the Operator said stood out to her, too, come to think of it – something that sounded especially out of place. "'Driven by instinct,'" she murmured. Inwardly, she cringed. Shoot, he's got me repeating things now. "One of those things tried to kill me."

"I as well," said the Operator, inclining his head toward the stairs. "There were two up there. They won't trouble anypony anymore."

"Why, though? Try to kill, I mean. Ponies aren't natural predators; we have no killer instinct." 

"Who knows? There's quite a bit about these golems that's off. Golems have never been so fleet of hoof as these. They're stronger, too, and hardier, maybe even a bit smarter." He glanced down at the dead golem again. "Someone has tinkered with the recipe. Waste of time and effort. So why...?" 

Twilight cocked her head quizzically, waiting for him to finish the thought, but the Operator just looked back up at her with his oily grin. "As for why they're so combative, I believe it has to do with whoever created them in the first place. Perhaps the bleeding of the soul is a two-way process. Perhaps, just as the spellcaster pulls something out of the pony, something of them finds its way into the rudimentary minds of the golems. In this case, a lust for violence that parasitizes their natural instincts." He smiled knowingly at Twilight. "Or perhaps ponies aren't as innocent at heart as you'd like to believe." 

He was laughing when he died.

Twilight scowled at the Operator. "Probably the first one."

His grin was rancid, ghastly, and unabating. "Probably."

I may as well have killed him myself.

Twilight heard someone spitting something out of his mouth. A cork with toothy indentations landed at her hooves, accompanied by a tiny splatter of saliva. "What in the..." She looked up, to the bar, and saw an array of bottles set up on the bar. Behind the bar was Snake, walking backward and pouring a bottle of liquor onto the floor. 

That answered the question of what he was doing back there. Why remained a complete mystery.

"Alright, I'm just gonna ask," she said after staring failed to tell her anything. "Snake, what are you doing?" 

Snake shook the last few drops from the bottle, set it down, grabbed another, and uncorked it, spitting the cork out the corner of his mouth where it, yet again, managed to land at Twilight's hooves. He's got some distance, she thought. It'd be impressive if it weren't so gross.

"Improvising," said Snake. He resumed pouring and walking backward. This bottle lasted until he got to the end of the bar; he quickly pulled another from his cache and went right back at it. "I think I know how we're gonna solve our little siege dilemma."

"How?" Twilight asked in a flat, skeptical tone. "By sterilizing the floor?"

"In a manner of speaking." By now, he'd emerged from behind the bar and was circling toward the center of the room. When he finished dumping out that bottle, he set it aside and turned to Twilight. "We're going to burn this place down."

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of hoofbeats on wood and glass outside.

The Operator was the one to break it. "Setting ourselves on fire. A novel solution, though it hardly seems elegant." 

Snake glared at him. "We're not going to be in the building when it happens," he said, speaking to the Operator as though to a child. He pointed out the window. "But they will be."

That brought his actions into focus for her. "We're going to lure them in?"

Snake nodded. "Lure them in, as many as we can, then block the exits and light the fire. They get trapped inside and burn. Any left outside get distracted by the fire, giving us the chance to slip away."

The Operator coughed. "And how, dare I ask, do you plan to make your cunning escape? The saloon is a deathtrap. They'll be pouring en masse from the front door, and the side exit—"

"Is too close to the front door to be an effective means of escape. Yeah, thanks."

Twilight hid a smirk behind a hoof at the flicker of annoyance that played across the Operator's face. High time somepony else got interrupted.

"Additionally," the Operator continued, his voice straining with annoyance, "how do you plan to set this fire of yours without being in the building to set it? One of us would have to stay behind in order to make this work." 

"On the contrary," Snake said. "I intend to be out of the building before starting the fire. As for how to set it off..." Snake reached into a pouch on his harness and drew out a tiny cylindrical object. Twilight edged closer to him to get a better look – there was a cap on one side of it, like a pen, attached to the rest of the cylinder by a hinge. Snake thumbed the cap off to reveal a small, shiny red button. Twilight felt an irrational urge to press it.

"This," said Snake, "will allow me to remotely detonate a small explosive placed behind the bar once we're safely outside, which will ignite the alcohol. Once we're out, Twilight can barricade the front door again, leaving them trapped with no way out. We make our getaway." 

Twilight's mind quickly rifled through the potential complications. "Is there really enough alcohol in here to ensure that the whole building burns? Because what you're talking about would require copious amounts."

"This is a bar," said Snake.

"Enough combustible alcohol?" Twilight prodded. "I'm not trying to discourage you, Snake, but think about it. You wouldn't just need alcohol; you'd need liquor with a high enough percentage of alcohol by volume to burn. At least a hundred proof."

"This is a country bar." Snake jerked his thumb at the shelves of unopened liquor, at the cache he'd amassed. "Do you have any idea how much rye whiskey is back there? Grain vodka? A hundred proof isn't even close to the average alcohol-by-volume content of the liquor stored in this place. We could burn a dozen bars with it." 

Waste of good whiskey. A shame – Twilight really could have used that drink, although schnapps were really more her thing. "That still doesn't explain what you plan on using for our escape route."

"Easy," said Snake. "The second story isn't all that high up. We'll throw open the barricade, block off the stairs with that piano over there, move upstairs when the place fills to capacity, and jump out the window. With them packed in here like sardines, the ground outside should be relatively clear." A genuine smile spread across Snake's face. 

Twilight hadn't seen Snake smile like that since meeting him. It suited him, which made Twilight feel guilty about having to burst his bubble. "Uh, maybe that's a safe jump by your standards, but I'm not sure a fall from that height would be quite as good for my health."

"I could do it," said the Operator, casually. 

Twilight flushed with consternation. "Nopony likes a contrarian." 

The Operator shrugged, sauntered behind the bar, and disappeared below to inspect the beverages that Snake hadn't gathered for his plan. 

Just as she'd anticipated, the smile on Snake's face melted back into his familiar scowl. "Well, our options for an escape strategy are limited. If you've got a better idea, I'm open to it." 

Twilight's gaze settled on the glowing mass of wooden furniture blocking the main entrance to the saloon. A smile of her own spread across her face.

"Y'know, I think that I just might..."





Snake and Twilight spent the next half hour splashing and dumping bottles of liquor all over the saloon's interior, saturating the floor, the walls, and every other splashable surface, excluding the stairs, where the Operator had decided to perch. He watched them work while draped over the banister, lazily dangling his tail over the rail and sipping from a bottle of Nägermeister he'd found under the bar. When prompted to help, he shrugged, took a pull from the bottle, and belched loudly. 

Twilight was tempted to coat him in eighty year old scotch whiskey too, but didn't on the grounds that the Princess might be cross with her for immolating her spy. 

As they worked, Twilight explained her modifications to Snake's exit strategy. "So, the plan calls for me to pull down the barricade, letting them in, obviously," she said as Snake poured out a bottle of Stalliongrad vodka on the drapery. "But instead of camping on the stairs and hiding behind that piano, we'll stand up on the stage at the back, out of their reach, and I'll use my magic to create a wall between us and them, a barrier spanning one end of the room to the other." 

"You gonna be able to manage one of that scale?" Snake asked, tossing the empty vodka bottle aside. "I've seen you use smaller shields and barriers before. They don't always seem to work." 

"When casting a magical barrier, its strength should be directly proportional to the amount of force you expect to be exerted upon it," she said, her voice briefly taking on the cadence and tone of a certain Professor Inkwell. "It's true that, in the past, I've underestimated the amount of force my shields would need to withstand. That won't be a problem this time." These golems were weaker than either of the behemoths who had bested her in the Everfree the day before, and she didn't expect them to overpower her shield the same way the timberwolf alpha or IRVING had. 

Still, so many striking against it at once, so rapidly, would present a different set of complications.

"That said, I'm gonna need your help," Twilight continued. "Individually, these golems are nothing, but there's gonna be a lot of them hitting the shield simultaneously. I'll need to constantly reinforce the shield in order to keep it from collapsing from sheer attrition. That'll put a serious strain on my stamina, so I'll need you to hold them off with your gun to keep the strain from becoming overwhelming. Alright?" 

"I'll need a higher vantage if I'm gonna lay down cover fire." Snake nodded at the stairs. "That'll do. Although..." He pointed at the Operator. "You are going to have to move." 

The Operator sipped from his bottle and swished his tail contentedly. "You will have to move me."

"Just give me an excuse," Snake muttered. He grabbed another bottle and resumed soaking the drapes. "What's your exit strategy, Twilight?"

Twilight levitated another six bottles from the bar and poured them out in the center of the room in a deluge of clear, yellow, and amber liquids. "We let the place fill to capacity, or as near to capacity as we can. Once that's done, I'll rotate the wall counterclockwise to create a lane for us – a clear path to that side door. The more there are in here, the fewer there are out there. So that way out should be safer than it is now." 

In theory. 

"It'll be a tight squeeze for them," said Snake. "I doubt you'll be able to give us much room if you're pushing against so many."

"All we need is an opening," Twilight assured him. "It doesn't have to be very wide – just enough for the three of us to pass through single file." 

Snake grunted and examined the stage's proximity to the staircase. "You realize," he said, "that turning that wall will create an opening for them to rush the stage and flank you on the left. Not to mention the stairs. You know, where I'll be." 

"I've thought of that," said Twilight. "So, look – the right side of the wall will need to lengthen as I turn it if it's going to reach the door from all the way back here. Conversely, the left side's going to have to shrink to accommodate the stage. That will, as you say, compromise me on the left. So, first off, I'll do what you suggested and block off the landing with that piano. Second, when I shorten the left side of the barrier, I'll cast another one on stage, aligned with the one down on the floor, and move them both together in time. Now, that also means I'll be losing ground up here to the motion of the wall, meaning I'll have to keep moving right to stay ahead of it." She paused. "You'll also have to hop down from there and join me on the stage. Otherwise, you'll be stuck on the wrong side of the wall after I turn it."

"Short enough drop. No problem, but you'll be losing the benefit of my cover fire," said Snake. He looked up at the Operator, who was still enjoying his beer, and said "You want to get in on this? One way or another, you'll have to move eventually." 

"No need," said the Operator. "I doubt they'll be interested in me. Besides which, I'll be safe behind that piano. Provided I sit here quietly and behave myself, I should be fine." The Operator took a long pull from the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his paw, and smirked. "Once they've sufficiently filled the room, I'll make my escape from the upstairs window. You'll be alright without me, I'm sure."

"Uh-huh." Snake, unperturbed, picked up a bottle of absinthe and returned to his work. "You think you'll be able to handle it?" he asked Twilight. 

"Not easily," said Twilight. "But it's doable. Just exhausting, that's all." 

"Good to know, but not what I meant." Snake was quiet for a moment. "I saw how you reacted when I shot that one outside. You gonna be okay with killing dozens of them at once?"

Twilight wasn't sure what to say. Watching the stallion drop dead outside was hard enough. Not her finest moment of emotional fortitude. But that was before she knew that he wasn't even alive by any traditional definition, that there was no way to bring him back. 

"I'm not thrilled with the prospect," she said softly. "But it's like you said... you can't kill something that isn't alive in the first place." 

They didn't exchange another word until they were finished. By then, the floor was one gigantic cocktail, an amalgam of liquor whose scent was sharp and overpowering, and made Twilight's nose wrinkle. Snake fared better. Perhaps he was tall enough that the worst of the fumes had dissipated by the time they reached his nose. That, or he was far more tolerant of the smell of alcohol than she was. 

Snake climbed onto the stairs, gun in hand, ascending to the spot where the Operator rested. He cleared his throat, rested his elbows on the bannister, and angled his pistol down toward the saloon floor. He looked sidelong at the Operator and motioned to the left with the barrel of his gun.

The Operator twitched one of his ears. With a sigh, he hopped off the banister, down to the step below Snake's sniper perch, and stretched out, yawning. He poked his nose between two of the staircase's uprights and looked down curiously at Twilight as she mounted the stage. 

"You ready for this?" Snake called down.

"'Ready' is a relative term," Twilight said with a humorless laugh. The amount of variables she had to contend with staggered her. She was confident in her abilities, and in the plan, but being set upon by a crowd of feral, soulless ponies... 

That's not the sort of thing one is ever really "ready" for. She took hold of the piano in the corner with her magic, hefted it into the air, and levitated it over to the staircase, setting it down in front of the first landing.

"Relax," said Snake. "It'll work. And if it doesn't, it's not like we'll be able to complain about it for long." He drew in a breath, exhaled slowly, and gazed down the sights of his gun. "Alright, you're up."

Twilight mirrored his breathing, shut her eyes, and focused, letting the outside world fall away. She stretched out with her senses until she found it – the swirling, shimmering pink vortex, a point of light brighter than any star. The piece of herself with which she'd infused the pile of saloon furniture. It burned hot, tendrils of light lashing out to lap at the darkness of the ether. 

Twilight pictured the vortex of light vanishing, her canvas returning to zero. But instead of voiding the spell altogether, she channeled its energy back into herself, welcoming the sudden surge of warmth and strength it brought. When she opened her eyes, and felt her senses return, the barricade had fallen away. She swept the furniture aside, and watched as the golems shoved and jostled their way into the saloon. 

Just as quickly as she drew it back inside of herself, she channeled that energy outward. A wall of pink light appeared at the front of the stage and expanded rapidly until it spanned the width of the saloon, sealing the stage and the staircase behind it. There was a tiny buffer of clear space between the stage and the wall. Beyond that, the vast emptiness of the saloon floor waited to be filled by the ravenous horde of golems outside.

They poured inside, in a column that formed a wedge at its head. The tip of the spear struck the center of the barrier like a ram and mushroomed out to the sides. The shield glowed at the site of impact, a bruise that spread outward radially. Snake fired into the crowd from above, methodically picking off golems at the front of the pile, the greatest threats to its stability. Twilight shot a narrow beam into the wall, against the spot the wedge had struck, and the bruise dissipated; the wall shone brighter where the beam made contact. 

Then the attack stopped. The column withdrew several steps, long enough to reform the wedge at its head. A tendril of golems uncoiled from the column and swung toward Twilight's left, slamming against it at the same time that the center column thrust against the barrier again. Two bruises formed at the sites of impact; Twilight fired into both of them to repair the structural damage before a third column slammed the barrier at the right side. Twilight refocused some of her energy into shoring up that spot, but the strain of maintaining the wall in three separate places was beginning to make her sweat. The column had collapsed into three distinct waves concentrating their attacks at different points – the left, the right, the center. No doubt they were hoping that three separate pushes would wear her down faster than a single, concentrated effort. 

Celestia save us, she thought as her heart thudded in her chest. The wedge formation, the coordinated thrusts... they're thinking strategically!

A hail of bullets from the stairs cut down the attackers at the right column's head in seconds. It retreated back into the center, alleviating the strain somewhat, until the left and center wedges slammed against the barrier again. The flow of magic into the barrier slackened briefly before Twilight redoubled her efforts, feeling as though a knife was stabbing through her skull at the base of her horn.

Snake's gunshots cut off suddenly. Twilight heard a distant click and the sound of metal scraping on metal before the steady cadence of death resumed, and the left wedge withered under fire. Then the column collapsed altogether, unfolding into a tide that smashed against the whole length of the wall. Golems rushed into the room from the outside, filling every inch, every niche, until they pressed tightly against one another in a manner not dissimilar to sardines in a can, all pushing their combined strength, their combined weight, against the shining wall between them and the stage.

Twilight locked her knees, dug a hoof into floorboards, and pushed right back. The narrow beams of light became a fan of shimmering pink that pressed against the wall from one side to the other, and the wall yet withstood the tide. 

"I think that's as many as we're gonna get," Snake called over the sounds of the ravening horde. The flow from the door was gone; golems at the door still pushed and shoved trying to get inside, but the saloon was packed with as many as it could take. Snake was right; there was simply no room for more. 

        Twilight shrunk the barrier at its left end, and the protection afforded to the stairs vanished. She collapsed the fan of energy into a thick column that she pressed against the barrier's right side, a ram of pure energy. She shoved against the mass of golems there, and the wall turned sluggishly. Twilight grunted with each push, sweated with each shove, fighting desperately for every inch of ground she gained, helped somewhat by the fact that more and more room was opening up to the left for the golems to fill. 

        But she found herself facing the same problem as she had when fighting IRVING: The barrier was strong, but there were too many of them throwing too much weight and muscle against it. She gained ground, in fits and starts, but not enough, not quickly enough. 

        Just as Snake had predicted, the counterclockwise motion of the wall's left end created a gap for the golems to plunge into. They rushed for the stage, dead hooves scrambling for purchase on the worn floorboards. Another wall materialized on the stage, accompanied by a flash from Twilight's horn, and the golems slammed and pounded and beat vainly against it. There simply weren't enough of them to seriously threaten the smaller barrier. 

At least, for now. Attrition's gonna wear that thing down eventually if I don't hurry this along. 

Twilight shoved harder against the wall on the floor, and gained a few more feet, helped by the group of golems that detached from the throng and moved onto the stage. The golems on the saloon floor were packed tighter, crushed closer together, against the bar, against the wall, against one another... 

And still the path that Twilight envisioned had not materialized.
 
        She heard a thud as Snake jumped from the stairs and landed behind her. "You wanna move that thing a little faster?" he said. He faced the barrier guarding their flank, moving backward slowly to keep ahead of it. 

        "Do you want to take over?" Twilight growled through tightly clenched teeth. 

        "Do you think I could do a better job?!"

        Twilight filled her lungs filled with air and bellowed to the ceiling. She was at her limit, and she forced herself to strain harder, poured every ounce of herself into the effort as she could. Her horn glowed brighter and her aura gathered around her body, whipping and tossing her mane and tail wildly in the air. The beam from her horn expanded, glowed brighter, arcs of lightning and tongues of white and amethyst flame running its length. Golems were pressed harder against one another until their bodies started to buckle and red blood sprayed from tears in their skin. The room was filled with the sickening crunch of bones cracking and breaking. 

        The wall turned, and kept turning steadily, lengthening as needed, stretching wider, in order to reach door at the opposite side of the room. 

Twilight moved to the right behind Snake, paying no mind to the golems that continued throwing themselves against her barrier. And when she looked up, she saw a narrow corridor of space running diagonally from the edge of the stage to the side door.

        She cut off the flow of magic and her legs buckled with relief for just a second before she regained her balance and looked at Snake with an expression she couldn't begin to picture. "Go. Hurry." Her voice sounded ragged; her throat felt worse. 

        Snake wasted no time. He hopped off the stage and swiftly moved toward the door, gun thrust ahead of him. Twilight was close behind, dropping the barrier on the stage and recasting it behind her to cover their retreat. The muscles in her legs ached and burned, and putting one hoof in front of the other was in its own way as difficult as maintaining the barrier. But she moved forward nevertheless. The golems continued to come, and Twilight continued to ignore them, as well as the worryingly large bruises forming along the wall. 

        They reached the door. A small smile crossed Snake's worn features as he unbolted the door, turned the knob, and pulled. 

        And immediately, a golem shoved its way inside. Its muzzle was bright red, stained with fresh blood, and hanks of blonde hair were caught between its teeth. 

Stupid, careless, irresponsible. We should have checked the other train. We should never have left her alone.

Snake's smile vanished. He whipped his pistol over the golem's head and split its skull open, kicked its body back out the door, and tried to slam the door shut, but another pushed its muzzle into the frame. Snake dispatched it with a point-blank shot through the eye, shoved it back to clear the door, and finally managed to close it securely. 

        Twilight forced her self-reproach from her mind and turned to face the saloon again, retreating until she and Snake were back-to-back. She collapsed the barrier to form a small pocket of a safe zone, sealing herself and Snake off from the horde in the saloon. It would hold for a little while, but drained as she was from her earlier efforts, she doubted she could reinforce it effectively.

        Swapped out a bad situation for an impossible one, she thought bitterly. Good on you, Twilight.

She turned back to the saloon. The stage was clear now; the golems that had charged up to flank her had rejoined the throng. Above it was the Operator, still draped over the safety rail, quite ignored by the besieging golems. He dangled his empty beer bottle between two paw pads and eyed the deteriorating situation below with detached, almost bored, curiosity.

His inaction, his apathy, infuriated Twilight. 

"If we die here, what are the odds that you'll make it out alive?!" Twilight's voice sounded weak, threatening to break. She had no idea if he could even hear her. "Help us, and help yourself!" 

The Operator's gaze met hers, and he gave her a long, thoughtful look. She saw him sigh and roll his eyes before hopping onto the stage. He raised his head, nose pointing straight up at the ceiling, and howled.

Twilight crushed her ears against her skull, covering them with her hooves, but the Operator's shrill keening still pierced her eardrums like white-hot needles. It was several seconds before the howl cut off, leaving Twilight's ears ringing. But the weight pressing against the barrier was lighter than it had been, and when she opened her eyes, she saw why. 

A sizable portion of the crowd was trying to swarm onto the stage. Two quickly managed to hook their hooves over its edge and drag themselves up. The Operator whirled and dispatched one with a kick to the nose that flattened its face and dropped it back into the roiling tide below; the other got half its body up before canine jaws closed around its neck and its head was ripped free from its body, blood fountaining from its neck and spraying him across the face. 

Twilight retched at the sight.

More were coming from all sides, closing off his avenues of escape. The Operator turned around, coiled his legs, and leaped straight up, catching the safety rail in his paws and quickly scrambling up. He looked at Twilight over his shoulder and winked before hopping onto the stairs and bounding up, out of sight. 

He'd succeeded in drawing their attention. There were still golems pressing and pounding against her barricade, but compared to before, their efforts of those meager few amounted to little. The majority of them were trying to follow the Operator up the stairs. Any semblance of order and coordination was gone; they jostled and pushed and shoved at one another to get after him. They crowded against the piano obstructing the landing, eventually forming a ramp of bodies that allowed the golems at the back to scamper up and over the piano, and onto the stairs. 

Twilight allowed herself to drop to her haunches, grateful for the tiny respite, and turned to look at Snake. "You doing okay?" She kept her voice low to avoid drawing undue attention back to herself.

Snake sat with his back braced against the door, and his body shook with every blow the golems outside landed against it. His left hand was pressed against his ear, and his right still clutched his pistol. "That guy's a dick," he growled.

"No argument there, but he helped. A little." Twilight upgraded the situation from "impossible" to "darn near impossible." A minor upgrade, but a welcome one. "Where do we stand now?" 

"In point of fact, neither of us is standing."

"Har har." 

Snake smiled wryly, but another sharp blow to the door wiped the look off his face. The door thudded again, and he took his left hand from his ear and braced it against the wall. "I think we'll have to fight our way out after all."

Twilight tried to think of other options and came up short. Given enough time, she might have been able to put together a new plan, but time wasn't a luxury they could afford. Fighting their was the only recourse. 

"How many are out there?" Twilight asked. "If you had to guess?" 

"At a glance, I'd say a couple dozen. Take that with a grain of salt, though; I didn't exactly have time to count."

She was hoping for fewer, but given the way things had gone so far, Twilight counted herself as lucky that there were only a couple dozen. 

Why not round it up to an even googleplex? We don't want it to be TOO easy, after all.

Still, not as bad as it could have been, though it would still be problematic. Twilight guessed that she could at least clear enough space for them to get outside, but there'd still be too many of them to fight through easily. And if their behavior is consistent with what we've seen so far, they'll work quickly to close any potential avenues of escape.

"Alright," she said with a nod. "First rule though: no guns."

Snake looked at her like she was mad, stupid, or both.

"Guns attract their attention. Remember?" She indicated the barrier with her head. "I'm gonna have to drop this when we start moving, and I don't want them remembering that we're here and chasing after us en masse while we're trying to get out. No guns, at least until we're clear of the building." She rose and trotted to stand in front of the door. 

"I can probably give us a little bit of breathing room to start with," Twilight said, looking down at Snake. "A quick shockwave to push back the ones right up against the door should do." But after that, it'd be a melee, one she wouldn't immediately be able to participate in if she was going to cover their backs. "Once we're out, I'll gonna cast the adhesive spell on this door to keep the ones in here from following us out. I'll be vulnerable during the casting, so I'll need you to keep them off of me for a few seconds." 

Snake rose to his feet, pressing his shoulder against the door again to keep it secure. He glanced at his gun, and reluctantly holstered it with a sigh. "Havin' deja-vu here, Twilight." 

"I know. But trust me." 

Not that Twilight was entirely sure she trusted herself. Pulling it off meant dropping the barrier and refocusing the energy from it into an explosive shockwave within the same second; her timing would need to be precise. The adhesive spell would just be the cherry on the exhaustion sundae. That wasn't even factoring in the possibility that the sound from the shockwave would draw the attention of the golem horde in the saloon, which would mean that forfeiting the advantages provided by Snake's gun would ultimately be pointless. It may not be quite as loud as a gunshot, but it's not exactly gonna be silent either.

There were a lot of ifs. There was a lot that could go wrong. And there weren't any other options that she could see. 

"Open on three," she said. "One... two..."

Snake gripped the doorknob in his left hand. His right balled tightly into a fist. 

"Three." 

The door swung inward. Twilight dropped the barrier and refocused its energy into a singularity at the tip of her horn. She released it in a conical wave, blasting back the golems closest to the door

In all, it took slightly longer than anticipated: 1.3 seconds. 

Twilight rushed into the newly cleared space, horn ablaze. The fallen golems were already rising again, while the ones who hadn't been hit by the shockwave charged. A gleaming shield of pink light materialized in front of her and pummeled the golems aside as they came. Snake was out by then; she heard him slam the door shut, and she turned, dropping the shield and refocusing its energy on the door. Snake was at her side in the same instant, picking up the slack with a flurry of kicks and punches and knees and elbows that killed or crippled any golem that got too close. He spun in place and delivered a kick to a charging golem that shattered its jaw and snapped its neck; another leaped toward him, but he caught it in midair and swung it bodily into the saloon's wall before dropping it and driving his elbow backward into the face of a third. 

Armed or no, Snake was a wind of destruction. Twilight felt grateful that they were on the same side. 

The golems on the other side of the door pounded to break it down. Twilight hurriedly focused on casting the adhesive spell. It was harder this time, drained as she was by her earlier efforts, but she dug deep into her reserves and once more found that shining point of light in the ether. She cried out as her horn sparked, and opened her eyes to see the door, shining pink and holding in place. 

Snake's growls and curses reminded her that there was no time to admire her work. Wind of destruction or no, they were surrounded, and the ground they'd gained was quickly fading. She lashed out blindly with her hind legs, landing a kick that shattered the ribs of a golem, and backed against Snake until they were almost touching. Her horn shimmered; a thin beam of light lanced from its tip and expanded into a dome that descended over what few inches of clear space the two had left. Drained as she was, the shield was weaker than it should have been, and it was already flickering and weakening as golems outside battered against it. She maintained the beam of energy, reinforcing it continually instead of letting it hold on its own

"Alright," Snake panted. "So where do we go from here?"

Detonate the barrier; let the shockwave push them back; make a break for the town square before they can regroup. But she wasn't sure she had the strength left to do that with sufficient force to give them any kind of advantage. Think quick. Got a half a minute of juice left, tops.

"Draw your gun," she said. "Focus on clearing a path toward the town square." 

She heard the sound of Snake reloading again. "I think you should know that I'm down to my last full magazine. Thirty rounds left in all."

"Make 'em count. Ready?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Once more, on three. One—"

A blurry blue shape sailed overhead and landed behind the golems; Twilight heard jaws snapping, flesh ripping and bones crunching and vicious, angry baying, and suddenly the assault was gone. The golems wheeled away from Twilight's shield, chasing the Operator back into the town square.

"Or, you know, that works too." 

Twilight dropped the magic barrier and allowed herself a few gulps of breath before scrambling back into the town square, where the Operator had led his pursuers. Theirs was a chaotic, disorderly mob, no wedge or tactical formation to speak of. 

So unlike how they were before.

The Operator skidded to a halt, turned, and sprinted headlong into their charge. At the last second before they met, he leaped and streaked through the air, landing on a lone golem the rear of the mob. His claws sank into the desiccated pony's skin and his teeth found its jugular, and with a jerk of his head, the golem's throat ripped free. It flopped and writhed on the ground like a dying fish as it slowly bled out.

Twilight retched again.

Immediately, the Operator lashed out with a hind leg and pummeled the closest attacker behind him before pivoting and leaping into another to his right. His teeth sought its jugular, wound up tangled in its mane instead, and ripped most of its scalp free.

Twilight heard gunshots as Snake fired to keep the golems at the Operator's rear from overwhelming him. That drew their attention, and they lumbered toward him, trampling the golem with the torn throat as they went. A careless stomp from one of his passing brethren or sistren crushed his head to pulp. 

Snake braced to meet them. Twilight chanced to look at the saloon, and her ears sank against her head with despair two golems filed out, with more no doubt behind them. 

For Celestia's sake! We're right back where we started! 

Twilight gathered what energy she hadn't yet spent and focused it at the tip of her horn. The crowd that the Operator had led away was almost upon them, and she blasted back the ones closest to them.

Snake pivoted toward the saloon and moved his left hand away from his gun. "That adhesive thing – you got enough juice left for it?"

The broken wheelbarrow and its cherries still lay in a heap by the general store. They'd do as materials for such a spell in a pinch, but casting the last one had been an effort after the day she'd been having. She truly wasn't sure if she could do it a third time. 

Snake took her silence as a negative, muttered a curse and raised his gun. Twilight saw the little cylinder in his left hand, the shiny red button glinting in the sunlight. 

"Can't seal 'em in then. Hope for the best." 

Snake fired twice, and the golems emerging from the saloon fell dead. Twilight continued firing at the ones who had broken off from the Operator, but each blast was weaker than the next. It wouldn't be long before she was down to fighting with her bare hooves.

Then she heard a muffled pop and saw a flash of orange in her peripheral vision. 

A bonfire burned where the saloon had been. Tongues of flame lashed out from the doorway, lapping at and swallowing the bodies of the golems Snake shot. Their bodies caught fire, and shriveled and blackened in moments. The Operator leaped from the back of a golem whose neck was missing a chunk and landed lightly a safe distance away. The golems he'd been distracting were transfixed by the fire; Twilight could see its glow reflected in their dead eyes. 

Slowly, with their mouths slack and their dead tongues lolling out, they shuffled into the bonfire of the dead and vanished in the conflagration. Not one made a sound, even as the fire took them. Twilight shut her eyes and turned her head away, but there was no escaping the acrid stench of scorched, dead flesh; it filled her nose, made her cough and gag and her eyes tear up. She staggered backward, and stuck her back hoof in something squishy. It took a moment for her to register what it was.

Of course. We're in front of the general store. Right back where we started. 

Her hind hoof was sunk to the pastern in rotten cherry goop. If she chanced to open her eyes, to look behind herself, she'd see the body of the first golem. Instead, Twilight stepped forward to distance herself from the carcass, eyes shut all the while. She scraped the gunk off her hoof with her magic, and gently settled on her hindquarters.

Then she leaned forward and vomited.

When her stomach stopped heaving, Twilight swept the flecks of vomit and saliva from her mouth with a shimmer of magic. She kept her eyes shut. The Operator settled beside Twilight; she heard the gentle swish of his catlike tail moving back and forth upon the sand. "They don't feel pain, you know," he remarked. "In fact, they feel nothing. Nopony home upstairs to feel it, and no nervous system to speak of besides."

Twilight opened her eyes, and she looked at the Operator as his own bored into her. "There's nothing left inside them, see," he said quietly. "Their names, their identities. Past, present, future. Their very destinies, all irrevocably stripped from them. To a creature like that..." 

The Operator turned his face back to the saloon. The glow of the flames washed over his face. 

"What is death but a kindness?" 

They were dead, worse than dead; they were beings who were neither alive nor dead, bereft of thought, of reason, of soul. 

Twilight felt sick anyway.

She heard the click of Snake's lighter. "Aren't you just a big old ray of sunshine?" he mumbled around a cigarette. 

Twilight lifted her head to stare at him, her face blank. The cigarette wasn't yet lit. Inches away from its tip, the tiny orange flame from the lighter flickered.

Snake met her gaze, held it for a second, before he sighed, clicked off the lighter, and tucked the cigarette behind his ear.

Twilight turned to the Operator. "Thank you for your help." Her throat scratched and burned, and her words came out in a sandpapery rasp. "I don't think we would have gotten out of there without you."

"It was like you said: helping you helped me. Besides, I think Equestria's better off with you in it." He winked at her again, then rose, stretching out like a cat waking from a nap. "Well, it's been a pleasure meeting you both, but I must be on my way now. Plenty to do yet." He nodded to Snake, bowed a little more respectfully to Twilight. "My gratitude to you as well. Granted, you were responsible for causing the problem in the first place, but..." 

"Your gratitude sounds an awful lot like bitching and moaning," said Snake.

"Well," said the Operator with a smirk. "Aren't you just a big old ray of sunshine?" 

Twilight rose before Snake could retort. "Wait. Before you go." It struck her that Ponyville had no means of contacting Canterlot and warning the Princess about the human presence and invasion. But this Operator... "You said you had lines of communication to the Princess. If you had to, could you get a message to her?" 

The Operator shrugged. "Perhaps."

Not very reassuring. "An army from another world with a weapon of unfathomable destruction is planning an invasion of Equestria. They're working for some wanna-be revolutionary named Macbeth, who tried to launch a coup against the crown years ago. We haven't been able to get a message to Canterlot, but if you have any way of contacting Princess Celestia, then please – she needs to be warned about this." 

The Operator smiled in response to that – an ugly, sour smile that looked more smug than amused. "Is that so?" His gaze flickered to Snake for a fraction of a second.

His response perplexed her. He looked and sounded not in the least concerned. An existential threat to Equestria probably called for a more interested reaction from the Princess's personal "problem solver" than that.

"It's true," said the Operator. "I could contact the Princess. But I'd have to go out of my way to do so, far enough to compromise my own mission. In short, I don't have the time. Or, frankly, the inclination." 

Snake stepped up beside Twilight. "You don't understand. There's an army on your doorstep with a weapon that can level a city in the blink of an eye. We're trying to stop it, and you're in a position to help us. So cut the bullshit." 

Across the street, the saloon's second floor, weakened by the flames, began to collapse. Embers from the burning wreckage geysered into the air.

The Operator regarded Snake with a cool, steely stare. "You're not from around here," he said in a calm, deathly quiet voice. "And you have no business dictating to me what is and is not worthy of my attention. Let Macbeth have his fun; let him play with his toys. Stop him, if it pleases you. But don't assume that your messes are my responsibility, human." He turned his head to the side and spat. 

Snake's face betrayed not a hint of surprise. Twilight couldn't say the same for her own.

He turned back to Twilight. "You helped me today, and I won't forget it. But that doesn't mean that I owe you any more than what I've already given you. I serve the realm, and the Princess speaks for the realm, and you, my dear, are no princess. You have your priorities, and I have mine. Leave it at that, and leave me to my work." He started to leave, froze suddenly, and turned back to Twilight.

"I'll tell you what, though," he said, his voice congenial again. "You did me a good turn, so, as a gesture of goodwill, why don't I give you a bit of advice?" The Operator raised a paw and pointed down the main road. "Down that way, on the outskirts of town, is a cherry orchard. A ranch, nestled in a fertile little valley. You're familiar with it?" 

        "Cherry Hill Ranch," said Twilight in a faint, airy voice. It occurred to her that she hadn't noticed Cherry Jubilee among the golems in the saloon. Although that doesn't mean she wasn't there, per se...

        "I passed through the orchard on my way into town. Didn't linger; no reason to. The ranch itself is deserted – the farmhouse empty, not even golems inside. The barn is... closed." He drew the word out longer than he should have, in a way that unsettled Twilight. "What's especially curious, though, is what's behind the barn." His gaze turned to Snake. "A vehicle of some sort. Not owned by the farm, I don't think – not a carriage or a tractor. A metal wagon encased in a metal shell. Looked to me like an automobile."

        Snake and Twilight exchanged a look of uncertainty. She wasn't sure to what extent she trusted the Operator; she was reasonably sure that Snake didn't trust him at all. "Did you see any distinctive markings?" Snake asked.

        "There was something painted on one of the doors," he said. "An alicorn, and a rather somber one, at that. Bore a striking resemblance to the younger princess." 

The Pegasus Wings sigil. Twilight's heart skipped.

"Maybe it has something to do with your lost friend. Maybe it doesn't. You might want to look into it all the same." The Operator inclined his head to Snake, then to Twilight. "This is farewell. I doubt we'll meet again." He turned and bounded away, rounding the corner of the general store and passing out of sight. 

"Might have mentioned this before," Snake grumbled. "But I really don't like that guy." 

"He knew what you were." Twilight looked up at Snake. "He called you 'human'."

"Caught that, did you? And the way he talked made it sound like he knew Macbeth, too." He snorted. "Spies. Doesn't matter what world; they always get off on their own enigma." 

The fragile blossom of hope that the Operator's news had given Twilight now had to contend with a cold dread gnawing at her insides. The Princess gave him a mission, and that mission led him here – to a ghost town filled with bloodthirsty monsters created by black magic. Something is terribly wrong in Equestria. Something besides the human invasion.

"We shouldn't stay here any longer," said Snake. "I don't know how long the fire's gonna stay confined to that one building." He looked at Twilight. "This ranch he mentioned. Do you know the way?" 

Twilight nodded. 

"Can you make it?" Snake asked.

"Yeah." Twilight licked her lips. "Not a problem."





Drained and exhausted as they were, the two made decent time into the cherry orchard. When they passed beneath the cool shade of the leaves overhead, Snake came to a halt and braced one arm against a thick, gnarly tree trunk. "Nothing following us?" 

Twilight glanced behind herself and saw no sign of pursuit. She said as much to Snake, who nodded. "Alright. Take five." He pressed his back against the tree and slid to his bottom, sighing. Twilight trotted to his side and fell to her haunches with an equally weighty sigh. 

Snake rubbed the bite on his forearm. It had partially closed already, but blood still trickled from it. "That bite was pretty nasty," Twilight remarked.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." He glanced at his wound, then back at Twilight. "Not the worst I've ever had. Nanomachines should have patched it up by now though."

Twilight blinked. "Whose machines?"

"Never mind." Snake sighed. "Minor injuries like that typically heal pretty quick on me. Cuts, scrapes, bruises."

"But not bites."

Snake muttered a curse and a word she didn't recognize, and shook his head. "Probably ought to clean and dress this." He reached into a pouch on his belt and produced the half-empty whiskey bottle and the old dishrag he'd found on the bar. "FLIM-FLAM BROTHERS' FINE PREMIUM SPIRITS," read the label on the bottle, accompanied by two smiling unicorns posing back-to-back. 

Twilight raised an eyebrow. 

"Don't give me that look," said Snake. "I was going to make an incendiary device with these. Left my grenades at the library this morning before we went to the hospital."

"But you remembered to bring that bomb with you?"

"Forgot to take it out of my pocket," Snake muttered. He sounded almost bashful. "Hey, you really gonna complain?" 

"No, no. Just funny, that's all." Really, she was more upset at the injustice of something with the Flim-Flam brothers' names on it surviving a fire that eliminated an entire saloon full of far better liquor. 

Snake pulled the cork free, set it aside, and raised the bottle over his left arm. He hesitated long enough to clench his jaw, and poured a generous amount of whiskey over his bite, letting out a muted groan as the liquor ran into and over his wound. His grip around the bottle tightened. When he'd emptied the bottle down to a quarter, he set it down, sighing heavily, and reached for the rag again. 

Twilight caught it with her magic and held it up before he could take it. She gently pressed the rag against the bite on his arm and wound it tightly, tying its ends together into a perfectly cinched knot. 

Snake seemed taken by surprise, but he muttered his gratitude all the same. Twilight smiled back at him joylessly and lay on her belly, curling her legs beneath her body. 

The grass, kept out of the heat by the shade, felt cool and comforting against her coat. Sunlight peeked through the leaves and branches overhead, dappling the orchard in yellow light. It was still the afternoon – the sun hadn't even started to descend yet. The pink cherry blossoms overhead drifted in the air, caught by the breeze, and the sweet smell of fruit tickled her nose. It struck her – and not for the first time – how beautiful Cherry Jubilee's land was, how peaceful and picturesque. The only thing marring the beauty of her surroundings was the thick column of black smoke on the hill in the distance. Were it not for that, and for the stress of the situation, she might have nodded off then and there. 

All that beauty meant nothing to her, though. Half the day was gone, and it felt like she hadn't made any headway toward solving any of the myriad problems that had come up. But the news about the vehicle – the first sign of any human presence – had given her some cause to hope. She didn't see it as particularly likely that the Operator would mislead them; he may have been a callous jerk, but they were all on the same side, and he didn't stand to gain from sending them on another wild goose chase. Even if he were the type, his description of the vehicle was too specific, too close to Pegasus Wings' heraldry and aesthetic. The odds of it being coincidental were nil. Maybe Trenton had brought Rainbow Dash to Dodge. Maybe she was alive. Maybe the trip hadn't been a colossal waste of her time. 

Or maybe she was setting herself up for yet another disappointment – another trap, and another tragedy. Maybe she was a great big fool after all. 

"Fool's hope," Rarity's voice whispered. "The best that we can do." 

You deserved better, Rarity. You all did.

The bottle of liquor was suddenly thrust in front of her face. She blinked, startled, refocused her vision on it and the leering faces of Flim and Flam on its label, and looked up at Snake. The corner of one of his lips was turned upward, so slightly as to be almost imperceptible. 

A smile gradually spread across Twilight's face. A chuckle built in her chest, and exploded into peals of laughter. She placed a hoof on the bottle, over his hand, and pushed it gently away. Not the time, and not the place. But damned if it wasn't tempting. 

Even Flim and Flam's bathtub moonshine sounds appealing after a day like this. 

And that thought just made her laugh even harder.

Yesterday had ground her to a nub; today had worn that nub down to a quark. The town was a graveyard, the train a mausoleum, the saloon a crematorium, and they'd barely escaped from Dodge proper with their lives. 

Yet faced with impossible odds and and an ever-rising pile of failures, Twilight Sparkle found that all she could do was laugh.