11: Golden Light

Editors/Co-Authors
TB3
Jed R
Kizuna-Tallis
VoxAdam
Sledge115 (Special thanks for working on Lyra’s journals. You know what parts he did.)

“Equestria has fallen tonight
And I'm going to take it back
This golden light..”
Golden Light, a song by Vylet Pony. By the way, he was kind enough to let me title this chapter after this song after I asked. Listen to Golden Light because Vylet is awesome. And also because I linked to him later in here.

Blossomforth: (B) “Not my expertise. I’m not a totem-prole engineer. And Heliotrope won’t be much help, she’s better with defenses and human electronics. Not those damned things.”

I “I need the opinion of a pony that isn’t technical. Where’d they come from?”

B “I know. She wasn’t always like this, though… At this point, I’d think that she’s more interested in dissecting things to see how they tick. But she used to be kind, you know? The village librarian, squeeing at the thought of learning something new… she just bounced around at the thought of learning anything new. I miss that. Heh, we even had the same manestyle, with a stripe in the same place! Had a good laugh about that when we had to get all that water to Cloudsdale...”

B “I understand. This… the murder, the dissection, the experiments, the unbearable shit that Gestalt transmitted over the radio, that’s all you know of her. I remember when she used to be more, when she wasn’t whittled into a caricature of herself.”

I “We can agree to disagree. I know her as Dr. Mengele, you knew her as the town librarian, we could spend days debating it. It’s not important at the moment.“

B: “And a lot of ponies cheerfully have… You’re decently important here, I’m assuming that’s you didn’t come to talk about her.”

I: “You assume correctly. What was your first impression of the totem-proles?”

B “I thought they were convenient. I liked the music, the information you could get from them. We were so proud of Twilight for making them, especially during the war, and Pinkie threw a ‘You’re-good-at-making-things!’ party for her! Maud even-”

B “The very same. I remember, though, Pinkie said she had a weird feeling about them at the time, but she liked being so connected. And Maud said she had a weird feeling from the rock, then she told Pinkie there was something with it, and she agreed. I could see them off to one corner. Well, Pinkie told Twilight, and Twilight apparently told Celestia, and then…” (sigh) “Celly was picking them off. One by one. Funny thing, though, apparently Maud got a letter-”

B (Subject is clearly reading from paper, judging by intonation) “Better Now. Everything Better. Everypony Better, yes!.... Yeah, that’s the one. How did you get this?

I “We had the Blue Spy check some books out from the Canterlot archives. Continue on about the totem proles, though.”

B I didn’t quite trust em. They kind of remind me of your internet, but they were surveillance measures from the beginning. Made me a bit uneasy, though - I mean, we’d won the war, hadn’t we? And we never quite stopped producing military materiel.”

I “Now, here’s a question. There was Richard, that one new foal kept by Beatrice Hatch…”

B: “By the Golden Lyre… why. That… that monstrous, broken, abominable thing… some newfoals can maybe be called sentient. Like Stalwart Heart. Colonel Renee's said as much. But that thing was a level below the average Newfoal!"

Kraber bursts into laughter. “How the fok did I get away with that?!” he guffaws.

Aegis gives him a sour glare. “You do realize that you’re laughing about being a notorious criminal in the same house as my foals, right?”

Kraber stops laughing and looks sickened for a second. “Oh, fok,” he whispers, and even though he says that just about every sentence, this time he actually means it. “I… I’m so sorry. I promise, I wouldn’t have then, and… Ah, shit.”

“Bru,” says Aegis comfortingly. “you’re fine. Don’t worry about it,”

“Is it at least kind of funny how far a Leith brogue and a mustache got me, though?”

“Now that you mention it.... It is kinda funny that you did so much with so little,” Aegis agrees. “You could be a damn actor…”

“Don’t worry about it. Even if it slipped, you can do a damn good Robert Carlyle imitation. And Sha-”

A flat stare from Kraber. “Who chooses the fokkin’ hair on these things!”

“Sure,” says Kraber. “But... Can I cut in when it seems like a good time? I fokking promise this won’t be like that interview I showed up for drunk.”

“Don’t worry about that, you apologized,” says Aegis. “Seriously, bru. Trust me… we’re… we’re ‘chommies’, right? I said we’d be friends.”

“Sorry,” Kraber admits, looking a little downcast. “It’s just… I’ve been in the PHL awhile, and I still feel out of place. I trust all of you a lot more than the HLF, now, but it’s… it’s hard to get used to, having so many good ponies be my friends.”

“Seriously, don’t worry!” Aegis says, giving Kraber a quick hug. “Till the end of the line, bru.”

“Right. Till the end of the line, bru,” Kraber agrees, hugging back. Aegis coughs, then wheezes – Kraber is known for having huge, bonecrushing hugs. “Go ahead.”

“It had been a long time since the evacuation of England,” Aegis starts, “watching those two planes crash…”

… And it'd be nice to tell you about walking into an airport in Portland, but this is a terrible time for life stories. I’m surprised I didn’t get shot or end up resisting arrest. A bunch of my friends, like Aspis did. She got better, though. Aspis could survive just about anything.

I think the looks I got in Portland will stick with me till the day I die. Faust knows how long that’ll be. Maybe a year, if I’m lucky. Don’t want to be around for things to get really bad.

I had a lot of people that wanted me dead right then and there. Humans just staring at me with such hate in their eyes, as if I’d directly caused the Barrier. Someone actually tried to beat one of us up, but a police officer stopped him. Others welcomed us - we’d come on a PHL flight. It had been small back then, enough that it hadn’t grown into its own. But the worst were the people that looked dead, numbed by the catastrophe and never truly recovering. They’d seen a country and thousands of years of civilization get wiped off the earth with no sign of stopping.

That was about when I met Johnny C and Fiddlesticks. They let me stay at their house in Berlin for awhile, then I got a job down in Littleton helping keep all the farms together. Earth ponies - we’re in high demand, for once. The war brought out far too much anti-Earth Pony sentiment. Got shot more than once, saw friends die in pointless skirmishes, cut down, disappearing in the middle of the night, or worse.

Still, I think that life was good back then. Pocked by loss, poor, but most importantly, free. Most people and ponies pre-war would call it horrible, but it’s the best I could have found. Sure, I’m not among ponies. Sure, there’s HLF. Sure, there’s PER, bandits, the hazards of Earth’s modern life, which I never truly understood cos’ I came into it at what might well be its end. But… there’s no totem-proles, I can speak my mind, I can live without having the government encourage me to just wipe away my guilt with some bucking mind healer without taking any damn responsibility. Or I could just get dragged there in the middle of the night. If I'm lucky.

Anyhoo, there’s ponies nowadays, so young they barely remember Equestria as it once was. Born within a few years of the return of Nightmare Moon, too young to comprehend anything other than what Laconic and Shriek refer to as the Shift. Stuck at a time where all they can remember about their home is being the bad guys, growing up in the war...

Now, I've no race loyalty... Verity. No Equestrian consciousness, and they'd have to make a Newfoal of me to have any loyalty to Celestia. But ain't that sad? Foals that can't remember home as anything other than a hellhole to be cursed and feared...

And because I could live better on Earth. Sure, Equestria and Earth are both overpopulated in their own ways, but Earth is much better at supporting its overpopulation. Equestria, if the reports I hear from those Equestrian Resistance members I hear are right, is drowning under exactly what they asked for. And on Earth, we had TV! The Internet! Destiny! Borderlands 4! Cars! Planes that could outdo a pegasus or a zep by orders of magnitude! Microwave popcorn, instant food, and– stop laughing, Kraber.

“You have food that can be prepared within a minute, and that’s awesome.”

Equestria simply wasn’t what it used to be. When I braved Equestria to get my foals back and make my way to North America, that was driven home. See, one of our spies, Trade Secret, was on the Great Equestrian when the statue Kith and Kin exploded.

He had tried to talk to Celestia before, to tell her to slow down. She brushed him off and made veiled threats. So… he did what he could, helping anyone to stop her madness.

And I wasn’t actually making instant food – actually, I was making my lunch, a mushroom sandwich with peppers, cheese, and this delicious sauce. And haybacon. I’ve eaten meat before, but… I’d just rather not. My stomach’s not evolved for it. Ain't no Thestral–

“Ah, I remember going out for burgers around here,” says Kraber. “There was this one fokkin’ kwaai place Zo loved, The Restaurant.”

“The Restaurant?” Kraber answers. “Yeah, that’s what it was called.”

“Oh for the love of all that’s holy,” Verity sighs. “It was just called The Restaurant.”

Kraber nods. “They had these huge onion rings the size of one of Aegis’ hooves, and this burger with candied bacon…”

“Wish I’d been around for that,” Lunar Phase says, wistful for something she can only imagine.

So yeah, the kids were in the living room, playing Destiny on a plasma TV someone had sold on the cheap from one of the Last Ships. I know, I know, we need the circuit components, but come on, we need some way to enjoy ourselves in what little we have left. It isn’t like they’ve even been able to regularly update the damn game for years now...

And then I heard Cousin Sixstring knocking on the door. Last I’d heard, he was up in North Conway, near Johnny C. Good friend of mine. Said he had a guest.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. What is it?” I sighed, pushing open the door. Then I saw the man standing next to Sixstring. “... Who’s he?” I asked.

“Name’s Francis Strang,” the man said, with a thick Scottish brogue. He sounded kind of like he was from Leith. He looked… well, he looked beaten more than anything. I think that’s why I didn’t think he was Kraber. I mean, when I saw a picture of Kraber, I expected someone kill-crazy, ready to smear me against the floor.

Francis, though? Broken. Like nobody had hugged him for awhile, and like the only things he had left to lose in the war were the clothes on his back and that huge guitar case, and his mind. He was stooped over, practically a hunchback.

“He’s homeless,” Cousin Sixstring said. “Said he wanted to go to synagogue tomorrow, and I figured you could help him out for the night.”

“Long as you promise me one thing,” I’d said. “You make sure my foals are safe, alright? They’ve been through a lot, and I can’t be everywhere.”

“Aye, I’ll gie ye my word,” Francis said. “Muh word and muh balls are all Ah have left in this wairld.”

“You still have eyes and your spectacles aren’t yet broken,” Sixstring said. Old saying he’d picked up somewhere.

“Okay, fine. Ah have a couplae stuffed animals, a couple China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, and Irvine Welsh novels, a laptop, a phone, a flash drive fir my Xbox Live account, a lot ay guns, and the clothes oan my back. And guns in this duffel bag. But that’s it,” Francis said. He sighed, and scratched his head. “I cannae think ay anything else. All my spare clathes’ve probably been stolen by now.”

“... Damn,” I said, my ears lying flat. “Alright. You can stay here for the night, on one condition.”

“If you plan to be here awhile, make sure to go out and get a job,” I said. It probably sounded a little callous, but every bit… or, well, cent counted then, same as nowadays. “Life’s expensive.”

Francis nodded sagely. “Ah ken that. For now, though… I’m fokkin beat. Ken ah go tae a bookstore till dinner time?”

“How far away is it?” Francis - or at least, the man I would know as Francis - asked.

“You kidding? I live right above him,” Sixstring said. “Aegis helped build this prefab stack, so he gets the pick of a room.”

“Nah,” I said. “I’ll make up a bed near the couch. We got a spare mattress-”

What I didn’t tell him was that if Aspis was coming by, especially to stay at my house, we were fucked.

Really fucked. Even by the standards of a world that was about two thirds of the way dead.

“Friend from the PHL,” I explained, keeping myself neutral. A friend of Cousin Sixstring was probably a friend of mine. Say what you would about him - the stallion knew a real friend almost instinctively.

He wouldn’t want me to say it, but he’d gotten me in with the Equestrian Resistance. With Cheese Sandwich, Bittersweet Harshwhinny, Coco Pommel, and their lot. There were plenty of bad ‘honeypots’, or so ponies like me called the opportunist pigfuckers that’d sell you to a gulag and throw your children out into the grinder of the Solar Empire as laborers, if they were lucky.

Now that I think about it, about all the experiments, about all the ways - how’d Heliotrope say it? Yeah. Using flesh as building blocks. Now that I think about all the ways Equestria’s done that, I’m happy that cousin Sixstring helped me get them out. He could spot them a mile away.

Still. I didn’t want to tell this odd, melancholy Scotsman about Aspis, or Yael, or Heliotrope. There’s honest, and there’s not being a buckmothering moron.

“Be back by then,” Francis said. “Maybe I’ll find something good to read.”

”But before I got there, though…” Kraber says. “I was halfway down Elm street, when I heard somepony galloping after me. Nearly shot him, but, well, figured it was just somepony form the neighborhood. And honestly, I was just tired. So I did nothing. What would the point be? At the time, it sure as fok felt like rock bottom. It wasn’t accepting help from ponies, no - it was that I was at their mercy. That I had nowhere to go, and the only reason I wasn’t in a shithole refugee camp was because a pony had been kind. I was happy, I guess, but… it was like I’d cut off a lot of myself.”

Kraber heard the galloping behind him as he staggered down the street to the bookstore. It wouldn’t be long until he got there. Tomorrow was the synagogue, when he’d be around for the incomprehensibility of a seemingly jewish pony (Well, two seemingly Jewish ponies) and whoever this probably PHL friend was.

‘Why the fok is this my life?’ he sighed, walking down an old paved road between prefabs just a few steps above the average umkhuku and various trees. ‘Not a fokking thing makes sense anymore. But remember, this is just temporary. I stay the night. Then… I work up the money for a train ticket. I get to White River Junction, and I get as far from the Barrier as I can. I forget the name Kraber, I buy myself time… Maybe get to the Last Resort.

The Last Resort was a rumored paradise to most of the refugees of the world. Since New Zealand was the last place the Barrier would hit, the richest in the world had made their homes there. Thus, the Last Resort - the last place the Barrier would destroy, a paradisiacal enclave where you could live as if the War was still just in mainland Europe. People would - and had - killed for spots there. Never mind that they were more likely to be cleaning up after the parties there rather than participating.

He didn’t believe it. ‘I’ll still have to stay and fight,’ he told himself. ‘I couldn’t do that. I… I have to fight. I have to do something.’

He almost would have wished for the voices in his head that had pissed him off so much lately. Victory, Kate, that other newfoal, that other version of him - for fok’s sake, couldn’t he just hallucinate a vision of his conscience?

But there was nothing. Just the peaceful silence in his own head, the sounds of children and foals alike playing in the street with whatever they could find, and that galloping behind him. He idly wondered if it was real.

There’s just no limit to how pathetic I can get at this point, he thought. Fok.I need some benou.

”Fair enough,” Sixstring said, tossing an old bag down to Kraber. “You might need this tonight.”

“What’s this?” Kraber asked, giving it a quick once-over. It looked to be filled with small flowers.

“Luna’s Boon,” Sixstring said. “You’re meant to chew the petals. One of Luna’s Night Guard I know-”

’And just how the fok does he know a Night Guard?’ Kraber wondered. But then, he was beginning to get the feeling that it was hard for ponies not to have contacts of some kind. Otherwise, you fell victim to kontgesigs like him.

‘Come on, Viktor,’ he thought, ‘No fokkin’ need to hate yourself for everything.’ He thought on that for a second. ‘Okay. Just some things - probably no need to be specific.’

“See, Luna’s Boon can grant good dreams when you go to sleep,” Sixstring said. “I just use it in small doses so I can keep myself apathetic enough from totally freaking the fuck out. But you? You’re…” he paused. “Something else.”

“Long story short, you’re hurting like crazy on the inside,” Sixstring said.

“You’re telling me,” Kraber said. “I’m literally afraid to go to sleep nowadays. The nightmares are fokkin’ horrifying. Like ‘Fok sleep, I’m gonna stay up all night just so I don’t have to deal with this.’”

“I figured as much,” Sixstring said. “Look. Don’t worry about the thaumic-”

“I don’t believe in that,” Kraber said. “I know, I know, I’m a fokkin’ radge-”

“Ya cannae imagine how much that means tae me,” Kraber said. “I mean, seriously! We don’t actually know what lethal amounts are, I’ve been exposed to more magic than most people, and I haven’t started melting. Ah think ay it scientifically, and all the stuff aboot thaum contamination makes nae. Fokking. Sense.”

“The PHL and a lot of militaries use magic equipment now,” Sixstring said. “Anyone that works with the PHL, really. But from what I’ve heard, research has been slow cause everyone’s scared of melting humans…”

“Celestia could be just trying to hobble us. She could be making sure the most kwaai projects get cancelled, just to make us more desperate and give up and drink the fokkin potion and turn ourselves into fokkin’ zombies because the radge, the fokkin bawbag, that shit...” Kraber realized, suddenly conscious of just how fucked they all were. And-

-A snowy city. Montreal, Quebec. It had been awhile since some of these HLF had fought anything but mild PHL security details for infrastructure, PER cells, or newfoal infestations. Some of them hadn’t fought anything but that, or anything at all.

They knew nothing of Imperial forces, or the PHL when they got serious, or the new tech unveiled just in time for Barrierfall.

The PHL of this city were armed with enchanted assault rifles, energy weapons, and there were unicorns at their sides

Ja, I fokkin well know the HLF would be obsolete, I had this nightmare before! It was of Defiance burning! Eish… but the energy weapons are a nice touch. Always liked Moxxi’s Vibra-Pulse, wonder if I can get something like that…

There were bizarre newfoals rushing at the PHL, along with Royal Guards, even goddamn potioneer ships bombarding the city. Zeno’s Paradox had never accounted for what happened to what was caught between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. The HLF were, at that point, an annoyance caught between two juggernauts of force.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a scared woman… no, barely more than a woman, a twentysomething that’d lost everything, eyes wide at the destruction around her.

‘I want out,’ her every expression was practically screaming. ‘I’m outgunned, outclassed, out-everything…’

-Eish. He’d been way too on the money when he’d said the HLF would be obsolete. If that hallucination was anything to go by, and his MG2019 was a good enough barometer of quality, he’d be keeping the gun for a loooong time. “Fok. Weren’t you trying to help me sleep well?”

“Yyyyyyeahh, that got a bit dark,” Sixstring realized, one hoof running along his mane in what should have been an anatomically impossible gesture. “Anyway. You’re gonna need those Boons. Otherwise, well… can’t imagine you getting a good night’s sleep.”

“Usually three petals works,” Sixstring said, “But four… might help you a bit more.”

“I think I just needed some time away, honestly,” Kraber says. “Time to think. But when I got back to dinner with Aegis’ family, the-” he paused. “Wait. How do I say your surname? Ponies are kinda vague about that.”

“Course I do! I’m from a pretty old family,” Aegis says proudly. “…That, and great-great-grandaddy Tercio got tired of naming schemes mixing it up, so he shelled out money for a crest. So now, according to his crest, I’m Aegis Hammer.”

Kraber says “Kwaai,” at the same time that Scootaloo says “Awesome,” and the two of them find themselves taken aback at agreeing like this.

“Anyway, Francis was a bit odd at – wait. do we go with Francis or Viktor?”

…And he hadn’t seemed to react well to being in my presence. Sixstring had told me he was ex-HLF, and he looked pretty familiar.

“Maybe Ah jist look like Abe fae Evolve?” Francis had suggested. He was thumbing through that book Johnny C had written about his adventure in Alaska, ‘Snowbound’.

It was true. Francis did have the hat, he did look familiar, but I was pretty sure there was something I was missing. I’m not dumb, I admit that. I studied forestry at the same college as my friend Verdant Tract, dammit. I did think he looked like Kraber well through the next day or so, but we’ll go into that later.

I did not, however, know that Kraber had been an experienced cosplayer before the war. Shows what I know…

Dinner… well, it wasn’t all that abnormal. “Who’s he?” my son Rivet had said, drinking down a huge bowl of soup.

“His name’s Francis Strang,” I said. “Cousin Sixstring said he was homeless, and he’ll be staying with us awhile.”

“According to him,” Francis said, “it was either this or Miller Pond. Is it really that ba-”

Cuz would never admit it, the stallion prided himself on being able to work out a situation on his own, but Miller Pond was the reason he lived above my house. There’s fucked up people out there, and you can find most of them in the refugee camps. I actually helped build their housing, even made a suite for Sixstring, used some of that zebra magic I learned to make it comfortable.

And what do the bastards do as thanks? Run my cousin out, and have some dodgy fucking hack doctor take over the suite I made.

"'Til Ah git ae joab,” Francis said. “Or till ah find a new place. Really appreciate you daein this though.”

“Why thank you,” I said. “It’s just… Sixstring’s always had a talent for finding strays.”

“Really? Can I see?” Francis interrupted. He sounded pretty enthusiastic at that.

“Well, that’s another thing I’ll have to see later,” said Francis, smiling a little.

“Oh, it’s adorable!” Amber giggled. “He’s so fluffy! Back home they teach us that wolves are boogeymonsters, but I never expected they were so cute! I bet they didn’t have anything like him where you were from.”

There was an odd look in his eyes. At the time, I figured he just didn’t want to talk about it - something really terrible had happened back wherever, so he just refused to mention it. I was pretty sure he was being deliberately vague.

“Ah’m Scottish,” Francis had said. “Ah’m from fokkin’ Leith, in a housing scheme, but mah family…” he sighed. “It wisnae a family so much ay a genetic disaster.”

“You don’t sound all that Scottish,” Amber Maple said, suspicious in that know-it-all way that only foals, and children, can be.

“Ah, will ah spent some ay muh childhood in other places,” was what he said to that.

“Like that HLF guy they warned us about? What was his name… Viktor Kraber? He moved around a lot...”

”And at that point, my jaw fokking dropped. I was trying to work out something to come up with, something to do, hoping I didn’t have to shoot you. I’d been afraid I’d have to turn myself in, get beaten up by police–”

“Anyway,” I said, “We were also planning to watch a movie later. Wolf Children Ame and Yuki.”

“I love that movie!” Francis said, a huge smile on his face. “I used to cry at that so much…”

“You? Cry?” Amber asked. “You look like a pretty strong human, I’m sure you can handle it-”

“Yes! YES!” Kraber cheered. “You love those little kids with all your heart, Hana!” Without warning, he buried his face in his hands, almost on the verge of tears. “IT’S JUST LIKE MY LIFE!”

Seeing that the three ponies he was in the room with were all staring at him, he added sheepishly: “In a way…”

“You cried at wolf children Ame and Yuki?” Verity asks, smirking a little.

“Besides, uh, at the time it reminded me of Peter and Anka,” Kraber says. “I’d been through a lot, so…” he sighed. “It’s fokkin’ hard to raise a kid, y’know? Dealing with college, a second job, having to leave them with your friends, trusting a high schooler to look after them, wondering if your own kids spend enough time with you or your mother when they’re so busy, trying to cram in lots of work…”

“But that’s the great thing about the movie,” Kraber says. “It’s maybe the hardest thing in the world… but the most wonderful thing in the world to do.”

So, long after the movie was over, I’d gotten to making Francis a bed. The couch wasn’t quite big enough, and we had a mattress and some blankets lying around. It was only what seemed fair. It was sandwiched between the couch, a window, and a bookcase. I’d put down the shades, and made a makeshift tent.

“Here’s a mattress,” I said. “My friend Popover had it lying around, so he gave it to me. A couple other friends, like the Svec Brothers, left some blankets just in case, so you can have that. And I have a spare pillow too…”

“That was months ago,” Aegis says, not quite protesting, but still flattered by the praise.

“It was the greatest fokkin’ kindness any pony had shown me,” Kraber says. “So…” and he hugs Aegis ‘round the neck, “Thank you so much.”

… had set about to making the area next to the wall, near the old radiator, into a sort of nest.

He unzipped his duffel bag, leaning a black, decently high-quality military assault rifle with a grenade launcher against the wall, then three pistols, one of which was this huge revolver. There was a lot in that bag that he didn’t want me to see. I could tell.

This was not the average homeless man. And it really is a shame that we can’t play this up for mystery, reveal anything like that…

“I think we all would’ve guessed it was Kraber if you told it that way,” you say.

You, Elena, Lunar Phase, Amber and Rivet, Vinyl, even Verity all look at each other and nod.

“You’d have to work really hard for me not to figure it out,” says Lunar Phase.

“I would have. That was the same accent and mustache he used when he played Francis Begbie,” Bly says. “His wife actually went right into labor right after Begbie was supposed to say he wasn’t gay.”

“I know, right, Vic?” Bly laughs. “You kept trying to sound Scottish while you were helping her deliver, and she was trying to sound Scottish too, so she’d put on a brave face while she gave birth...”

“That’s just the way Kate was,” Kraber says, a smile on his face. “Nobody fokkin’ knew if it was part of the play or not! Even the guy playing Renton! And then he throws a fokkin’ mattress at us!”

The two of them laugh together, while Aegis stands there mystified at first as he tries to imagine the confusion of that night, then begins to laugh along with them.

“So there I am, right, trying to keep my girlfriend calm, everyone’s all confused, and I’m just so weirded out but I’m still playing Begbie, I yell ‘It isnae part ay the play, ya doss kontgesigs!’ which just makes them all more confused, specially cos’ nobody in there knows what ‘kontgesig’ means…”

“Then, when I rushed over to help, the guy playing Rent Boy finally got it through everyone’s heads it wasn’t part of the play, and suddenly the theater was chaos! But then… then everyone came to help,” Bly says. “Wasn’t an old prof there? Ter Voorde?”

“Yeah, he gave us both a free A and a day off in his class for how we handled that…” Kraber sighs, smiling wistfully. “Heh, remember how I bliksemed Ed’s head into that desk?”

“The man was a…” Bly starts, and looks down at you. “Right. He was a jerk. Said that Vik was a rapist.”

“And Ter Voorde, he just goes ‘Ed fell down the stairs,’ completely deadpan, and everyone goes along with it!” Kraber laughs.

“Wish I’d been around to see it,” Lunar Phase says, again wishing for a past that she could never have possibly seen.

“What, the thing with Ed?” Kraber asked. “Really, it’s nothing special, I give people head injuries all the time.”

“No, I wish I was around to see you on stage,” Lunar Phase giggles. “It just… something about that seems funny.”

“It’d be fun to have seen you there,” Kraber says, and everyone’s surprised at that – for Viktor Kraber to genuinely wish for the presence of anypony save for Vinyl, Heliotrope, or Aegis and his foals. “You would have loved it, and Boston at its height. Before the HLF, before the war, before the evacuations, before the refugees, before everyone in there carried weapons, when we could just sit back and have fun. And the smells of good seafood. Clam chowder, salmon, lobster… and Irish pubs, even this one Scottish place called the Port Moonrise. It’d be nice if Aegis and those foals...” He ruffles the manes of Rivet and Amber. “Could have been there. Oh, what a wonderful world Celestia fokked over…”

“Ja, they would’ve liked you and the foals. Peter and Anka loved ponies before all this…”

What with all the guns Francis had, and his unopened, rattling duffel bag, I was suspicious. And… I didn’t know much about guns back then. I don’t have Johnny C’s eye for a prototype, and I can’t for the life of me tell which AK is which. But they didn’t look like things the average Dispossessed homeless man could afford. Not to mention, homeless people usually buy just one gun and save the rest of the money on necessities, or if not, booze or drugs. If they can afford a gun. Or the ammo. Usually it’s a cheap pistol as liable to fall apart as fire a round.

… Not that he didn’t seem like the guy that would, given how much of my whiskey he drank. I’ve known sea serpents that drank less than this man.

Case in point, he’d been drinking some stolen booze from a relabeled bottle as he organized the guns against the wall.

“Ah didnae,” he explained, pulling something out of his bag and placing it next to his bed. “Ah stole all ay it after the Europe Exodus. ‘Cept the .45. That wis a gift.”

“Nah. They’re all dead,” Francis said, reaching back into his bag. “Or ponified…. or I killed them eftir.” He paused. “Besides, Ah’m probably gaun sell the rifle an the ten-mil. Keeping the grenade launcher, though.”

“Alright. I just want you to know one thing,” I said. “Keep those away from my foals… and if you use them on the two of them, I will fucking paint the road with you.. and is that a stuffed horse?”

“Yeah,” Francis said, placing it next to his pillow. “Wis mah wee bairns horse Joanna.”

“My little daughter,” Francis explained. “This one here...” He held up a stuffed wolf pup that looked just like the one Erika owned. “... wis my son Peter’s. And this one, Spitz…” he held up another wolf pup. “Actually, it’s mine. Helps with the nightmares. I would take something for them, but I dinnae have the cash.... and I’ve been immune to antidepressants since college.”

“Kids,” Francis corrected me. “And… they got ponified on their birthday.”

“I promise,” Francis said. “I’ll never hurt a foal in this house, and I fokkin’ well know by now that naebody deserves that. This stuff here? That’s how you know.”

He lay back against the bed and started reading some book by China Mieville. I was convinced, right then and there, that he was not a bad man.

“Huh,” Francis said, sitting up and picking something out of the bookcase. “You have a book from Lyra? Can I... can I take a look?”

“More ‘n that, it’s an original,” I explained. “She made a copy of it for me, and gave it to me right before the Thunderchild. I remember what she said then… ‘I may reach the mountaintop, but I fear I shall never visit the valley below.’ I sighed. “Course, we know how that went.”

It had been a terrible night. I had been helping evacuate Iceland… look, you don’t want tok now about that. It was a terrible time.

“That’s not how the Martin Luther King quote went,” Francis said distractedly, already thumbing through the pages.

“Eh, well she paraphrased it. Hope you like it,” I said. I could see he was in one of the earliest parts – the one mentioning the Changeling invasions.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Scootaloo says, “You have a journal.. from Lyra Heartstrings… and you never told anyone?”

“Well, it’s locked in a safe in my room, and it’d take awhile,” Aegis explains. “Not exactly something you like to keep around.”

You all wait for a moment, as Aegis trots out of the improvised hospital room, and comes back with a thick, dog-eared, messy volume in his mouth.

“What’d you expect?” he asks, before anyone can question how it looks so beaten-up. “It’s just a copy. And I’ve had to move it a lot..”

It was about 3 AM and for whatever reason, Daddy hadn’t been woken up. And, oddly enough, the stranger downstairs, sprawled on a mattress under an old blanket with stuffed animals, a .45 under the pillow, and weapons lined up against the wall in a little nest, hadn’t been able to sleep.

A couple hours ago, I’d peeked a little while after daddy had gone to bed. Mr. Francis had a lot of guns! But that wasn’t the most interesting thing. His eyes had been wide open, and I could see dark bags under his eyes in the moonlight filtering down. He looked like he couldn’t put down that diary of Lyra’s. He was on the verge of some great discovery, I could tell! He looked like he was gonna have some profound realization–

(“Does ‘the fokkin fok was I doing?! Oh dear Lord, I’ve wasted four years of my life!’ count as a profound realization?”

He’d arranged those stuffed animals nearby so it looked like they were reading it along with him. Even the stuffed horse. That thing looks so weird! It was just brown and white, and its nose was so long, and it didn’t even have a cutie mark!

And honestly, it was just bizarre watching Mr. Francis down below, sometimes moving stuffed animals. What kind of grown man played with stuffed horses? Sometimes, he’d even put words in its mouth–

–and make it seem like it was reading the book along with him. Guess it was a good book, then.

He was definitely interested in it, even that late into the night. There was even a fragment of poetry in there, but judging by some musical notes above… it looked to be an unfinished song?

(”Golden Light,” Kraber says, opening the book and flipping to the relevant page. “It’s Golden Light.”

I'm the king of the world that you never saw
And the love you had given me guided me before
This golden light..

Equestria has fallen tonight
And I'm going to take it back
This golden light…

“Unfinished?” Kraber had asked back then, looking towards the bottom. “Note from Vinyl - Lyra never finished this, being captured and sent back to Equestria before it could be done… So I did what I could.”

She’d been put in front of ponies that were once her friends, turned into public enemy number one, he realized. Maybe there were ponies that were once her friends in that crowd… she always said she knew the elements before all this kak…

It was hard for Kraber not to feel sorry for someone like that. So, invigorated, he kept reading-

“I know the feeling,” you say. “It’s so hard for me to get to bed sometimes…”

“Well, fok,” Kraber says, and his hand runs through your mane. “No kid, pony or human, deserves to see some of the kak you have.”

“Considering the dreams you said you had, I can’t blame you,” Vinyl says. “Didn’t you once explode a Newfoal that way?”

I’d been having a real terror of a nightmare. Rivet was deep, deep asleep, lying on his bed, and I.. I was dreaming of Mom.

Horrible, horrible bitch of a mare– but Daaaaaaaad, you and uncle Kraber swear all the time! In front of me, Day, and Rivet!

- - - - -

It was back in Britain. I was talking to my friends, human and pony. It was early morning, right before sunrise, and we were all laughing together. You know how dreams are, right? You can’t really tell where you are, the buildings just sorta get mashed together?

So, the sun rose, and the sky turned purple… but the purple just kept advancing, and I tried to scream. But I couldn’t! The Barrier was coming, and I felt myself smiling, and playing, even though I was trying, practically begging myself to flee. I wanted to make my forelegs move, but I couldn’t!

And my friends, the ponies, the humans, they were just laughing, but their movements were too jerky to feel real, their voices just sounded hollow, like recordings on gramophones, crackling and breaking up.

And suddenly, the fur, the skin on them…. it sloughed off. I saw the humans get ponified – Oh Luna, you never get used to that! Their hands fused into hooves, and slick blood-covered fur grew from under their skin. I could see them trying to scream, trying to move, but they couldn’t. The ponies, the ones I’d been friends with, were holding them back.

“Come on, we’re still the same ponies,” said... Sam Williams, this poor kid that I saw get ponified in Whitechapel. Except he wasn’t Sam, he was this… this horrible green copy with a grin so wide it was splitting his face in half, blood dripping from his chin and all. His face was literally breaking apart, cos’ being a pony was just destroying him.

“That sounds horrible,” Sam said. “That’s a stupid, ugly human name. I think I like Gleaming Shield more.”

“You’ll be happier with us!” a Newfoal that had been my friend Tom yelled.

“No, she’ll be happier if she’s one of us!” said Cobbler, an earthpony I’d liked.

“Yes, but they’re better ponies than you or me! Celestia loves having zombies, after all...”

“I don’t think Celestia will like you running away like that,” Sam said, blood dripping from his chin. “You’ll probably be better as one of them…”

“NO!” I screamed, galloping away. There were buildings collapsing, turning to dust as the Barrier vaporized them. I could see two planes smashing together and falling out of the sky, crashing into the buildings below and exploding. There were people screaming as they walked out onto the water that was not water, it was a sea of that goddamned purple potion. Their skin sloughed off into the hungry water, as they collapsed onto their knees, crawling, screaming in agony. “I’m… NO! PLEASE NO!”

“Heh,” said a human with a bullpup rifle that I bumped into. “It’s one of them little zombifyin’ invaders. Want to have some fun with her, friends?”

“NO!” I screamed, as they held me down. “For the love of Luna, please, no!”

And then Mommy punched them, her hooves shattering their jaws. She broke their legs, headbutted one and smashed open his skull. I could see brains leaking out of one’s skull, and he was screaming, his mouth so open it looked like his lower jaw would fall off. I could even see Mr. Francis off in the distance, screaming as the potion made blue fur sprout from under his skin...

“Mommy!” I laughed in relief. Oh, thank Luna, she was back! But then I stopped. I knew how this would go. Mommy would simply turn to me, and I would go cold, my fur standing on end. And the men would become ponified, of course, one trying to saw off his arm with a hacksaw before accidentally getting some on his hacksaw hand, and screaming, trying to beat his hands against the cobblestone so they’d break and, I don’t know, fall off just so he wouldn’t get potioned.

“Now now, I made them better,” Mommy said, her horn glowing as she lifted me in her TK. “Don’t worry, Amber Maple, the scary part is over, we’re going back to Equestria…”

“I don’t want to be there! I want to be with Daddy!” I screamed. “Take me back to him! TAKE ME BACK!”

“Oh, you won’t be scared when we get back,” Mommy laughed, an ugly high-pitched titter that made me think of a corpse. “You’ll have a new brother and sister to love–”

“I don’t want to be happy!” I screamed. “I don’t want to be with Newfoals! I don’t want to go back home! I want my Daddy! I want my Daddy!”

“But if you come home with me,” Mommy said. “You’ll be a happy, pretty filly, and we’ll be safe,” she said, her voice emphasizing that word like it was some kind of talisman. “From humans, from everything else!”

“They didn’t do anything to us!” I cried. “I talked to Lyra with Daddy! We’re attacking them!”

“We’re not attacking them, we’re liberating them,” Mommy said, and she looked back at me to reveal the sightless eyes and rictus of a Newfoal. “Sure, they can’t go through the portal, so they can never hurt you, little Amber, but they’re too much of a danger to themselves to carry on.”

I looked around. And I saw her… she was a pale silhouette, shaped like a mare’s figure, but there was something odd about her face. She was looking away from me, yet somehow, I felt like she could see me all the same.

“They will burn,” said the mare. “Such is their fate. Our minds are not our own, little one. From cradle to grave, you are, each of you, merely the result of an endless series of electrochemical reactions, to which you do nought but bear impotent witness. The universes, vast interlocking machines, set in motion long ago by some uncaring force, where what you see is just a comforting illusion, assumed by your mind’s eye to keep you from going insane… though it is a flawed, inefficient system, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Her voice… I… still don’t know how I feel about her voice. Listening to her, I just thought she sounded sad. Oh, that gave me the chills... Don’t ask me why, but I felt it would have been better, somehow, if she hated me.

“Phantasms, spectres, boogeymen… you’ve all created so many monsters upon which to put a name for the terrors that haunt you in the night,” she sighed. “All this, when you fail to see a simple truth. That the true darkness, is in your hearts.”

“What burns in the fires of the Sun is that last, little part of you that won't let go of your memories. It burns them all away. But this is no punishment. It’s the release of your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and you are... holding on, you'll see demons tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, raising you from the Earth.”

From behind her, he emerged. I’m sure my heart froze, the first time I dreamt of it.

“Hi, sis!” Rivet said, giggling, his voice too high pitched, as he turned to me, and he just looked through me. His eyes, they were wrong! They weren’t my brother’s, someone had just scooped him out, and replaced them with something horrible. They were… I could see what Newfoals were looking at. There was something behind his eyes, something staring through him into me, almost hungrily. Something tall, with black-scleraed eyes with yellow pupils…

“It’s great being a Newfoal!” Rivet laughed, as that thing behind his eyes stared into me. “Come on!” and Mommy forced a vial down my throat. Oh, Luna, I just kept screaming, as my cutie mark vanished, as I just turned dull and I could feel that thing staring into me, talking to me, and I could hear so many people screaming

Aegis and Rivet simply hug her right then and there. Neither of them look like they’re set to let go of her for a long time. And in the end, Kraber joins in hugging her.

“I hadn’t realized I’d been asleep till she started crying. I’d been on a good entry too…”

“Verity? Let me ask you something. What do you hate about Lyra? Besides her being a pony.”

First off! I’m alive! Yay! Second… that poor huge stallion that took the brunt of the blast. The doctors say he has cast-iron in the head. He could even have brain damage.

I shouldn’t be alive right now. It’s got me and Bonnie scared, and she’s fretting over every little thing. Well, I’m not scared for the same reason as Bonnie… that’s just how she is. I’m scared cause I don’t think anywhere is safe. Sure, I’ve been attacked today, and I’m somehow unharmed. I survived a bucking car-bomb and what should’ve been the epicenter. I should be running back to Equestria. I should be panicking.

What scares me is that I am not scared by the bombing. I can barely make myself feel anything in reference to the bombing. I wonder if I’m in shock. I bucking well should be. There’s probably ponies that would say I am. I never wanted to deal with a bombing again, not since I saw Crystal Golems and captured zeps bombarding Manehatten while I was home on vacation.

But here I am, and I’m not scared. I feel like I would any day that I got breakfast. I am just… I’m just in my luxurious hotel room, provided by a British official who’s been kind enough to answer some questions and help me with some… concerns about the bureaus. He has a keen eye for any plan, makes the best observations, and Faust help anyone who tries to match wits with him. Bon-Bon says he’s a bad influence, and maybe she’s right. Well, he does carry an umbrella everywhere.

He has privately told me that his brother - some sort of private investigator, I guess - is investigating a series of kidnappings dating back to 2016, and he suspects a connection between all of them. This puts said brother in the same league as John Birch, but rest assured, his brother is smart enough to keep his distance. The man is smart; from what the official told me, he’s just like a real life Sherclop Pones! Though the official called him an idiot compared to himself. Smug, but who can we trust these days? Beggars can’t be choosers… and right now, I’ll take any ally I can get.

The official said we’ll be seeing each other very soon; I guess he’s interested in my ‘PHL’ project. Bonnie says that we shouldn’t keep this under wraps, but it’s a bit halfhearted. We’ve both seen news of the various strikes in Equestria, and we know that it probably wouldn’t respond well. I’m glad to know we still have allies. I’m going to need a lot of help, I feel it in my hooves.

I’d even work with a Changeling if need be, because much as I hate to admit it, for all the ambassadorial duties, all the pay I get, all the ponies and humans that I know, I’m putting myself in a bad position. Queen (Why isn’t she a Princess anymore? I’m worried about that) Celestia supports ponification, turning humans to ponies, but I don’t. So does Twilight. So do a lot of old friends…

Even Bon-Bon had to admit he had a point when this official said that wasn’t a good sign that I hold a minority opinion in a government that authorized genocide. There’s not much I can do to contradict his opinion; the man pretty much guessed my entire day before the bombing with a single look.

He may be smug, but William told me later that this man is our best shot at making this ‘PHL’ an honestly effective thing. I hope he’s right.

I do still want it to be peaceful, to encourage cooperation between human and pony! But somehow… I know it’s unlikely. Home doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Bon-Bon keeps saying we should go home. But I don’t feel welcome there anymore. I know I said nowhere feels safe, I just keep making up excuses, and she seems to believe them, so I’m not sure she really means what she says. I don’t know why, but I just feel like some of my neighbors, especially Twilight - I keep hearing that failing to nip King Sombra in the bud must have damaged her somehow. Fine… a lot happened cause of that. I knew Twilight in school, and she was neurotic enough for that. But it’s like she’s a different pony now, her, Rarity, all the Elements. Whatever it is, Pinkie doesn’t seem very affected, but you can never tell with her. Oh, right, terrible syntax. The thing is that a lot of my neighbors and friends don’t feel like the same ponies they were before the Great War. From what I’ve heard in some of the letters I’ve been sending, Berry Punch is going through what looks like the worst detox ever.

And… weirdest of all, we haven’t stopped making military materiel. There’s some places in Equestria that haven’t rebuilt from the War yet, and there we are, still making mil-spec skyliners. We don’t have a military economy anymore, right?

I heard that there was a lot of striking and rioting back home in the past four days. Somepony, or someone from those weird PER (Giving me the creeps) managed to get photos into Equestria of the May Day Riots, of all the humans fighting. I actually thought one was that guy from District 9 and Powers, but I’m informed he’s a new HLF (Not HTF, oh, the poor Reverend!) man named Viktor Kraber-

“It is disturbing as hell seeing yourself mentioned like that in someone’s diary,” Kraber says, seeing you point at it with one hoof.

-and I should be worried about him. Yes, that Viktor Kraber, son of Dr. Erika Kraber, who I’d been in contact with about the potion. Oh, she must be so torn up, not just cause of what happened to her grandchildren and daughter-in-law, but cause she doesn’t know what he’s going to do, and his temper gets pretty bad. Something about eating a college roommate, but that can’t be right...

Kraber smiles at the memory. That had been a good day. He’d rampaged through the city leaving the city red with PER blood. And pony blood, fokkin kwaai… but not really. No.

“I hurt people that didn’t deserve it,” Kraber said, looking down at the stuffed horse. Kerels, civvies, and I’m betting most of those ponies I bliksemed weren’t PER. Is it too late to change? Can I even do that?

“No,” the Dark Kraber said. “You’ll just fall into the same trap, do the same fokkin’ thing. Do you really think that killing PER and Imperials with people that can barely tolerate you will be anything different?”

I’m not just a killer! Kraber thought. I’m a fokkin’ doctor. I can write, I can make shrimp and grits, I can…. I can do something other than this, can’t I?

“Do you believe that?” Victory asked. “If you really want to change, I’m your only option. You’re broken beyond repair, Vicky. You’re beyond redemption! Maybe some humans can be good, but there’s no way that going pony wouldn’t be an improvement!”

Kraber tried to concentrate on the book once more, trying to drown out the annoying fokkin kontgesigs in his head.

Anyway, the riots back home are getting worse. So’s the strikebreaking. Bonnie read the papers from there (The newsman on the corner called it the horseyland times) and she was horrified about it! The prohuman ponies were called violent agitators, there was massive violence, the ponies sympathetic to humans and critical of Celestia were painted as the worst criminals, and the pro-Celestia ones were called violent agitators.

But the weird thing is, I heard from this one pegasus named Blizzard Flurry, she was speaking from Riga on a podcast about the pony experience, and what she said is that the Battleship Strike ponies were underpaid, that a number of grievances since the Great Equestrian Disaster were unsolved and unaddressed, and they just wanted answers on the Great Equestrian Disaster and a reason why they were still building military skyliners.

So, in response, the Royal Guard in Cloudsdale beat the strikebreakers. I’ve also checked the PHL website that I founded (I think some filly got her cutie mark setting it up?) and another mare said that she nearly lost a wing in the Hand-In-Hoof riots, and that there was no escalation… that some ponies saw the photos… which were made from paper in Equestria, oddly enough, which just doesn’t feel right. Especially considering how many look like they were taken by the HLF themselves.

Anyway, all the angry ponies just started smashing storefronts! Then, since this mare pointed out that humans were scared and she couldn’t understand why there were so many bureaus, a gaggle of Newfoal immigrants had dogpiled her and stomped on her spine to the point that they nearly paralyzed her so badly even magic couldn’t fix it.

Princess Luna had sent in the Night Guard to dispel the riots (And only Luna had, oddly enough, Celestia’s guards were curiously absent. Like she wanted this?) and this mare had been rescued by somepony named Nebula, who’d flown her out of harm’s way. No charges are being pressed against newfoals, or anyone anti-human. It’s like Celestia favors newfoals after us. Or rather, what they represent… unquestioning, obedient, loyal to a fault.

All around, I keep getting the strangest stories. And while Earth may not be safe, I feel like the new HLF are the lesser of two evils. Still… I think I can do better.

You realize that, fundamentally, this story is about Kraber. That on some level he needs to explain this. You realize that on some level he needs to tell this for some kind of self-actualization, that he needs to reassure both himself and the people of this room that he is a good person. He… does need to worry. Still, he’ll probably do right. The man’s trying to be better, and Aegis is good for him.

“-remember before falling asleep,” Kraber continues as you look up from a particularly interesting entry about the radio silence with Equestria. “I sound like a kontgesig for saying it, but I was kinda happy when she woke me up. Cause, again, my dreams are fokking siff. I… Back then, I could’ve done plenty of fokking terrible things. Hell, I’d shot…” Kraber looks downcast here, “I’d shot foals. Already told you that. It’s one thing to turn ponies into objects, de… deequinize?” he stumbles over the words, and sighs the words ‘Fokkin’ anthropocentrism.’ “But,” he continues, “I couldn’t fokking well let a child upstairs cry.”

Kraber pauses. “That, and she said that ‘they’ were coming to get her. I assumed the worst, so I picked up the revolver and rushed up there.”

“Why did you have the stuffed animal when you went up there?” Amber Maple asks.

“Ssssshhhh…” Francis said, walking into my room. I noticed the.45 at his hip. “What happened?”

“There’s nobody here trying tae get you? PER trying to ‘rescue’ you or HLF trying to–”

”Honestly, I was just… not sure how to react. It had been a long time since I’d done anything fatherly, and I fokkin hate myself for that. I hate being out of practice at stuff. Except torture. I’m really happy that I forgot what to do with needlenose pliers.”

“Too much information,” Aegis sighs, as if they’ve been through this time and time again.

“How could you possibly forget?!” Verity asks. “It’s pretty simple, really–”

“You’re ruining his character development!” you protest, and Kraber stifles a laugh at the wording. “Just… just let him be.”

“Well, what did happen?” Francis said, carefully placing the gun on a table far away from where I could get it. Not that I could – I’m an earthpony – but it was a good idea.

“I had a nightmare!” I said. “It was… mom was coming after us, my friends were getting ponified… I even saw you get ponified!”

“That’s a relief. I’ll explain later,” he said, with the tone that implied he was just thinking of a better way to dodge the question.

“No!” I said. “I saw someone get ponified! It was horrible, and I… I…”

So Francis, looking confused, like one of those potion-amputees not sure what to do with their prosthetic arms or how to reform the combat models into weaponry, bent down and gave me a hug.

“Yes!” I sobbed. “We were in England… during the Three Weeks of Blood, and I saw someone get ponified! It was horrible!”

Francis still looked confused, and kept hugging me. “There, there. It’s gonna be okay, nobody will be ponifying you–”

“It’s not about getting ponified, it’s about seeing it happening to other people! They’re… they just turned into zombies!” I said. “I was… I saw a kid get ponified by PER in the street, and he went along with this mare like she was his mommy! And then, and then our mother said that… that she wished she could have children like that, and she thought it was harmless, and–”

It was hard not to laugh at how dry his voice was. “Oh, Daddy always goes on and on about it…”

“Trust me, as long as he’s aroond, you’ll be fine,” Francis said. “Yuir dad’s fokkin massive! And Ah’ll shoot anyone with vials. Ah promise ya thit. I’ll make sure you or ya bru nivir see anyone git ponified, I promise!”

“Yes,” Francis said, absolutely certain. “Look, ah, I’ll give you something to help.”

“F…. God no!” Francis said. “Even if you can’t fire it, I’m not doing that.”

(“I was actually trying not to swear. Didn’t last long, or at all, but I thought it was a good effort.”

“No,” he said, holding out a stuffed animal. “This… this is a stuffed wolf. His name is Ambassador Nikai the Second. If you feel sad, or terrified, anything – just hold him, it’ll be fine.”

“Wuzz going on?” Daddy muttered sleepily, walking up to us. Rivet was next to him, looking incredibly tired.

“Your daughter was having a nightmare,” Francis said. “Ah told her tae hold oantae this stuffed wolf pup if things goat bad.”

“That’s bullshit,” Daddy said, and we both looked up at him. “By Luna, at least have some pride in yourself. You could not have been bad enough that getting turned into a lobotomized zombie was for the best!”

“You don’t know what I’ve been doing for the past four years,” Francis said.

“You’re right. But I do know that when my daughter woke up screaming, you came right up. Anyone that does that can’t be that bad a father,” Daddy said.

(“I was. It… it’d been a long time since I’d genuinely felt like I’d done the right thing. Well, I felt that way back in Portland, but I was so fokkin woedend that I wasn’t really… I wasn’t sure how to feel there.”)

“Come on, there’s no need for that,” Francis said. “You managed to keep your kids safe. You’ve gotta be a good father too.”

“Sorry, Amber,” Daddy said. “I just… I just wonder sometimes. About Iceland. I nearly-”

Daddy did not look like he truly believed it was. I don’t know if he’d ever believe it would.

“You probably don’t want to,” Rivet said. It had been nightmarish, then. There’d been plans for an attack on Celestia over in Iceland, using Luna as bait. It had failed, and there’d been chaos as we had to evacuate, knowing that she could have turned our friends into smiling zombies en masse, that we could have been ‘rescued’ at any moment… Daddy had been around, and we’d gotten lost. For just a few seconds…

Thank Faust nothing bad happened. That Celestia had some shred of compassion left in her soul, enough that petrifying her sister had some bucking impact.

Not anymore, though. There wasn't a shred of mercy besides that left in the necrotic knot of flesh that Queen Celestia called a heart.

“I have a good bedtime story I can try,” Francis said. He popped open his cell phone. “It’s on kindle, hold on a sec…”

“In an unremarkable room, in a nondescript building, a man sat working on very non-nondescript theories.

The man was surrounded by bright chemicals in bottles and flasks, charts and gauges, and piles of books like battlements around him…”

When he’d finished reading from that book, with my little filly finally tired enough, we both pulled the blanket up – me with my mouth, Francis with his hands. Finally, Amber was sleeping, her forehooves clamped tightly around the stuffed wolf pup. It was the kind of thing that David Elliot would compare to pulling excalibur out of a stone, though I don’t know why he’d use that word. Elliot’s a cool guy, but he can have these odd moments sometimes. Rivet was lying on Amber’s bed, and Francis draped a blanket over him too.

“It’s just more mud in the eye to my old wife,” I said. “Bitch said there weren’t any good humans, just killers. But I know plenty of good people - Kiki, that couple downstairs, Rachel, Burt, Jack, John Peters… you know, the brewer?”

“And Johnny C, of course… Hell, I love this town. I love a lot of the people that I get to meet. But a lot of the time it feels like they’re all a minority. Most times a new person comes into town, they always want to lynch me. How dare those assholes not forgive me for my race destroying the world,” I said bitterly.

“I’m just saying, I can understand them,” I said. “Back during the Crystal War, I was a right bastard to crystal ponies that wanted out of the Empire.”

“No, no! Not like that. I mean, it was the worst thing she could have done for her civilian population,” I explained. “She pissed off a lot of ponies. Left a bunch of ponies with guerrilla skills just waiting in civilian population that never quite acclimatized to the postwar or totem-proles. It was a test run for the Conversion War, I’m sure of it. But Celestia didn’t really think about what it’d do to the public. The bitch hadn’t exactly been good at empathizing with them,” I explained. “She laid the groundwork for so much infighting during the War. Sombra’s forces took over my hometown and part of Hoofington. Me and my wife helped fight them off… and I’ll admit, we were bastards to the crystal ponies that came by. We told them to go back, I helped spraypaint the windows of a house belonging to one of them… it was a dark time. I’m just saying, Mr. Strang. It’s not who we are, it’s what we represent.”

My heart skipped a beat, and even though Sixstring had told me, it was hard to hear. I couldn’t repress a bit of anger at that. HLF had gave me six inches of cast-iron steel in the conk. Still there. Hurt a bit now and then.

… How in the hell had I survived that, anyway? That bomb should have splattered me on the floor, and Lyra got out without any injuries. That mare… she led a charmed life. Up to a point, anyway.

“Course Ah am,” Francis said. “Who dae ya think ah stole the guns from?”

”I… sorta wasn’t lying. I did steal the guns, and they would have taken Sylvia’s rifle anyway. Where is that old thing?”

“Thinking like that disnae help anyone. Especially you. Do what you just told me and have some fokkin’ pride in yaself, bru,” Francis said.

(“Yeah, I know. I really haven’t that much pride in myself. But it’s easy to build others up when you’re that far fokkin’ down.”)

“I mean, you’re a father, you’ve got two kids,” Francis continued. “All you need to know is HLF are kontgesigs. Any of them try to convince people around here otherwise, I’ll walk over and bliksem them one.”

“I’ll punch them,” Francis explained. “Or kick them in the face. Trust me, you’re a better human than most humans.”

“... what.” Okay, I admit it. That pissed me off. Okay, maybe Francis had good intentions, but that was pretty offensive. I reared up a bit, looking down on him.

“You’re pretty intimidating when you rear up,” Kraber says. “Hey, Verity, ever watch the Venture Bros?”

Verity raises up one hoof, then realizes that she can’t flip people off anymore.

“Oh wait, wait, I know where you’re going with this,” you say. “Good God, they’re making them big nowadays! Don’t they know there’s a gas crunch on! Look at the size of you!”

“Please tell me that Nny and Fiddly don’t have you watching The Venture Brothers,” Aegis sighs.

“In which case I hope you don’t know what a Rusty Venture is…” Aegis sighs. “And for the love of God, Viktor, don’t tell her!”

“Maybe it is, but at least I’m fokking well trying to change!” Kraber yells.

“I’m still interested in the story,” you say, trying to steer this back on track. Technically, they’re right. You don’t actually know what a Rusty Venture is. I mean, which definition is it? They gave like seven on the show!

“Sorry. But anyway, I have to admit,” Kraber says. “It was weird in that moment. It had been one of the first times I’d actually apologized to a pony.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I didn’t mean it like that! Look. Back in the HLF, people said they were the pinnacle of humanity. But they just wanted to kill shit. They just hid in camps, clutching guns… and actually didn’t try to help with rebuilding the railroads up there. Or anything that could help with evac. I mean, hell, I once wanted to go working on the railroad and they said ‘No, there’s ponies there!’ and escorted me back to my tent at gunpoint.”

I choked, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be appalled. “By Luna’s Mane, you’re serious, aren’t you.”

“Ah’m noat turnin yuir kak,” Francis said. “I’m actually not kidding. They said they were gonna liberate, but… they didn’t do a Goddamned thing.”

“Mother of Luna,” I groaned. I could hear the capitalization in his voice - he was, in the religious sense, practically begging God to damn his former companions. “So… by that standard of humanity, I’m a better human than them.”

“Just, uh… please tell me. Are there people that genuinely want to help?” Francis asked. “Ah’ve spent years among the worst examples of humanity… and probably a lot ay that time being one of said examples. I just need to know there’s still good people out there.”

“I do know plenty of good humans and ponies around that fit that standard,” I said.

“Maybe,” I said. “All of them know Sixstring, so if he turns up tomorrow, he’ll probably be able to vouch for you.”

“Awright. Thae, one question. I dae wonder how an Equestrian patriot like yourself got here.”

“I had contacts,” I explained. “Back during the war, you had to Know Ponies.” I stressed the inflection on those latter two words. Francis was impassive.

“...Huh,” I said. “Anyway. I was in contact with ponies that didn’t like what happened during the war. Students, intellectuals, reformists–”

“Yes,” I said. “They didn’t like all the measures Celestia took. But, on the other hoof, my wife did. She liked the security of the totem-proles, everything to get rid of agitators, even. The war had made her paranoid, broken something in her. Every dissident was a potential spy, and every argument we had made her more stupidly, fanatically pro-Celestia. Earth, though, she got overprotective. So…”

I couldn’t tell him all of it. How Woven Sugar had welcomed the first totem-prole, felt safe under its surveillance, confident that Empire loyalists or crystal golems wouldn’t come out from the slightest shadow to kill her. How she’d looked at every alley in London as if a murderer or bandit was in there. How Earth was too big and different not to terrify her. How something about the Manifestation in Equestria had broken something in her mind.

“She foalnapped my foals and took them back to Equestria. Would’ve probably brainwashed them into Newfoals with cutie marks, just to keep them safe.”

“Oh my God,” Francis breathed, looking like the world had dropped out from under him. “I’m so sorry.”

“Now… you came up to my daughter’s room and gave her your daughter’s fluffy stuffed wolf,” I said. “That’s a good thing for you, you’re a hell of a lot nicer than Woven Sugar became. It was cos’ of them that I got my foals out of Equestria – nearly landed in a re-education camp with my friend Verdant – but my contacts, who are still fighting the good fight in Equestria to this day, got me to earth. They wanted me to help, but I wanted my foals safe,” I explained. “And… the Resistance were a bit too focused on saving Equestria. I couldn’t just let this planet slide off, so I came here. To help anyone out, pave the way for evac, and kill off Newfoals. Wouldn’t be good with science, or anything barrier-breaking, so this is what I do.”

“They seemed a hell of a lot more trustworthy than people that bombarded a fokking city!"

“Enough!” Aegis yells. “Both of you. Verity, I realize that my friend kind of forced his storytime on you. Viktor, I realize that Verity beat you up for you having good intentions. But you know… I finally worked out why neither of you can stand each other.”

“If you're going to ever work together, or at least act like people that know each other,” Aegis continues. “So, here it is. I ain’t no psychologist, but it seems easy to guess: You're the same.”

“Yeah, me neither!” Vinyl says, her voice raised. It’s nothing personal, she’s always like that.

“You both lost family. To the Solar Empire, and most specifically, Pinkie Pie. And it’s eaten you both,” Aegis says. “And you just can’t stand that in each other, can you? That someone that seems so terrible, somebody that changed too much for you...” Aegis looks up at Kraber, “... or just hadn’t changed at all...” he looks over at Verity. “Is just like you.”

“...She’s right,” Kraber says, and you and everyone else in the room look at him. “Look. Verity… There’s not much I can do at this point for you. And I’ve well and truly pissed you off. But if you need help, if you need anything, please, just ask.”

“Take him up on this,” Aegis says. “Trust me, my friend goes all out when he-”

“Why wasn’t he like that in the HLF?” Verity moans softly. At first, you think it’s moaning, but you realize that it can’t be. “Maybe your batpony friend is right, Viktor. But you know what else? I can’t believe I’m saying it. I hate myself for it. I think I’m–”

“Oh fok no!” Kraber says incredulously. “I… what the hell is there to be jealous of here? The only reason I don’t wake up screaming anymore is Aegis, I’ve lost track of how many pills I’m on, I’m immune to antidepressants again, and people keep assuming I’m a pedophile or a rapist! I’m a horrible fokking waste of space that should’ve just–”

“Don’t,” Aegis says, looking over at Kraber, who relents and lies back against his barrel.

“He makes sweet love to them,” Vinyl continues, and Kraber slaps one hand over his mouth and laughs hysterically, with Aegis joining in a few seconds afterwards.

“Not my fault you have a great set of flanks,” Kraber says to Vinyl, and the two of them laugh.

“My God,” Verity says, burying her hooves in her hands. “I mean, look at you, Kraber! You betray the HLF! Twice! Maybe even three times, over the course of about a month! And what do you get?! Promotions in the bundeswehr! You got off easy!”

In a sense, this man is always angry. He’s always got some lurking desire to scout out real estate for his boot inside someone’s skull, but it’s tempered, ever so slightly, by his bad jokes, a certain self-awareness and desire make friends. And unlike a lot of other ex-HLF, he’s really not that anti-social. It’s weird how likeable he can be in spite of his constant, barely-suppressed rage.

Oh, he is so pissed off right now. “You’ve had a terrible week,” he says, and you are almost wishing to hear him raise his voice, as the fear of an outburst is almost worse than seeing anyone be on the receiving end. “One of the worst of your life, I get that. But there’s some fokking things you just don’t fokkin’ say to me. Don’t say I’m a rapist, don’t talk about my kids. But here’s another.” He paused, and then yelled: “Don’t you. Ever. Fokking. Say that. AGAIN!”

“I thought we fokkin’ well had something earlier. But you have the balls to say I got off easy. You want to know how fokkin’ easy I had it? Just a recap, I was suffering hallucinations that hated me, I think I have brain damage, and I nearly got ponified after losing the use of everything but my right arm. I nearly went insane again! But…” his eyes narrow. “I’ve been shot, beaten, tortured, stabbed, all cause I decided I didn’t like the HLF. I was nearly ponified by a PER serial rapist that wanted to have some… revenge. ”

“Something very, very predictable,” Aegis says, before Kraber can say anything.

“Eh, I blew him up when he decided I couldn’t c4 myself how my family was doing,” Kraber shrugs. “Nothing special. You can call me a kontgesig that should have been potioned. Fine! I have literally no idea how or why I’ve lived this long! But don’t you ever say that I had it easy,” Kraber finishes. “I literally thought the PHL would execute me. But then… We’ll get to that later. Not like it’s a spoiler or anything that they didn’t go through with it...”

“Alright, I get it,” Verity says. “You’ve had a hard fucking life. You think I haven’t?!”

“I was there when we videochatted you,” Kraber says. “I’m not that fokkin insensitive.”

The Light Despondent

by Doctor Fluffy

Golden Light