Fallout: Equestria - Murky Number Seven

by FuzzyVeeVee

The Battle of Fillydelphia: Part 2

    Another growing howl erupted from the Bloodletter Clan, reverberating off the slab-sided walls of the Mall and echoing again and again within Fillydelphia's high streets. Like a wave, the howl travelled around us, as those furious beasts whooped, cheered, and roared their bloodlust to the war-torn city around them.

    In the face of that, I felt myself frozen in fear.

    Fillydelphia had always been sharp and bright. A city of red hot metal. Yet the crimson hue that fell over the Mall was staining and thick, as though liquid light had seeped from the ground and coated everything. I had seen this before. Only this time, it wasn't in an orb. The Bloodletters were here for real.

    I felt exposed and fragile. My stomach turned and I felt bile in my throat at the worry setting in. Sharp blades and rotten teeth clashed and snarled, promising a grim end. I wanted to cry. I'd faced raiders before, even ones from this clan, but this was something else. A new scale, a new ferocity. I watched them dance and stomp and psych themselves up. One began scraping at the ground like the burly canine beside him. Another two headbutted each other furiously until blood was drawn before directing their rage to the Enclave ships above. Coated in bones, tattoos, carved armour, and self-inflicted wounds to leak blood across their chests and faces, they stamped and cried like demons from the darkness of the wastes, ready to reap the ponies before them.

    The slaves broke at the sight of what lay outside. They fled. Weapons were hurled to the ground as their previous owners galloped away from the windows, deeper into the building. Some screamed, others lost their voice in sheer terror and stood gaping.

    “It's just intimidation! Don't run! That's what they want!” Brimstone roared above the din, trying to cut off those fleeing, “Flee and they'll overrun the Mall!”

    He tried to grab a stallion by the shoulder, but the slave turned and spat at him.

“Fuck you, Dragon! We're not your new clan! You put me in here and now you want me to fight your own battles for you? NO!”

    The pony ran, taking three others with him. Glimmer was barged off her hooves by two other stallions who threw their rifles at Protégé and scampered through the passageway to the inner Mall.

    Another collective howl rose up from the outside. Four more flares popped into being, turning the smoke-filled air inside the Mall thick with a red haze, like clouds drifting through the windows that choked and stung. More screams, more cries of panic. They fled around Brimstone, parting ways to not go near him as he reached out to them, bellowing to stop.

    “If you run, then you have done what they want! This is the only place we can hold them!”

    “Screw you, raider!”

    A rock from somewhere hit him on the scarred side of his face, making the big earth pony flinch and look away.

    “He'll be another one of those inside jobs! Those slavers killed three when they escaped!”

    I saw multiple weapons turn on him. Terrified ponies clutched at guns as I felt control being lost amongst the rout. Brimstone's eye showed brief surge of anger, a frustration. His whole body tensed.

    Within seconds, Glimmerlight was there, holding a hoof to his chest and staring up at him for a few worrying seconds...before Protégé swept the weapon muzzles of the slaves down.

    “Stop this bickering! Brimstone is not with them! We have to hold here, we have to-”

    “Too few.” Brimstone cut in, before we saw what he meant. There were perhaps fifteen ponies left in this part of the Mall around us.

    Unity and I shared a look, before inching closer to one another. The raiders outside began to stamp their hooves in unison, creating a pounding drumming that thumped through my chest every two seconds, hearing them bray in between every thundering stomp. I could see them using the buildings to stay out of sight of the Enclave, as a squadron of pegasi flew down to investigate the flares before quickly returning to more pressing matters.

    Protégé looked around us, before stamping in frustration, sweeping his hair out of his eyes with a hoof. His ponytail had come unclasped in the melee.

    “Retreat further inside. We need to tighten the defences up with what we still have, then try to convince others. Brimstone, how long do we have?”

    Brim eyed up the ponies, a bubbling rage still visible. He tore his gaze away and looked down at Protégé.

    “We'd normally keep this up for five minutes, sometimes ten. Either way, we don't have long before that lot come across and kick our arses. They aren't going to be held off by volleys and tricks; when they come, the whole fuckin' lot's gonna crash into us. You understand, aye?”

    “Somehow, I don't think I do.” Protégé admitted, “Back inside, everypony! We need to block off every corridor we can and bottleneck them! We'll use the entrance to the main slave block as the new way in, so get everypony who can't or won't fight to the upper levels or deeper inside if they can't manage stairs! Go, go!”

    “Come on, Murk! Unity! Both of you!” Coral grabbed me by the collar, pushing me in front before pulling Unity along behind her. Her horn was sparking with residual magic, making the air near her feel electric after that unleashing of power she had given.

    My hooves felt leaden. If I turned my back, I just knew they'd charge and get me from behind. The scars on my body felt heated. Across my neck and torso, where I had nightmarish wounds from Wildcard before that came within a hair's breadth of killing me. They were coming again. He was coming again.

    Outside, the stomping began to get faster. I closed my eyes as I was led in further.

    “Maybe less than five minutes.” Brimstone rumbled, pushing us ahead.

    “Heads up!”

    A horrendous whine began to pick up, building in volume and accompanied by sharp detonations and rushing air. I saw Protégé look up through the open roof of the shop plaza and widen his eyes. Screaming a warning, he grabbed me and threw both of us into a shop cell to land harshly on our sides, mere seconds before an Enclave skyship slammed belly first into the top of the Mall at high speed.

    The entire building buckled to the side under the impact with a sound so great that it almost seemed to form an audible void. I saw a main supporting pillar crack down the middle. Metal sheared and ripped, a shrieking noise that cut through my ears like a knife as the enormous vehicle crushed stone and tore roofing off.

    I saw the whole plaza darken as the hole in the roof was covered by the ship, then suddenly light up again as it kept going and tumbled over the roof and off the opposite side of the building. Smoke and fire descended in its wake, with razor sharp slivers of metal pelting down on the cowering ponies. Dangerous creaks gave way to half of the uppermost floor collapsing down into a tirade of rubble in the plaza. Some balconies tumbled and shattered on the floors below as the Mall resettled on its foundations.

    Outside, the sound of rabid cheering could be heard.

    Coughing at the incessant dust clouds being kicked up, I tried to get up and simply fell on the spot as my limbs gave way. My legs felt like rubber, my core muscles felt twisted and painful. Only my wings seemed to move, fluttering stiffly. Stronger hooves wrapped around me and pulled me up; Protégé supporting me on his shoulders.

    “Murky, are you hurt!?” He looked concerned.

    “N-no...feel so sore all over.” I coughed the words out, digging for my canteen and trying to take a shaky sip. The RadAway made me gag, but I had to take every chance I could get right now.

    Protégé helped me limp out of the shop cell, into the now wide open plaza. Any remaining roof cover was gone. After the strafing run and that crash, the two top floors were a devastated ruin that was still falling around us every few seconds.

    “Keep pushing forward, Murky.” He turned his head skywards, following a lethal dogfight between three griffons and one desperate Enclave trooper, “This war isn't anywhere close to being finished.”

    What!? We'd been going for the better part of a day or something, right? How could there be more fighting? My eyes found the lines of wounded against the far wall, covered in blankets to keep dust out of the wounds that hadn't yet been bandaged. I could hear their cries, their pleading to help them first. Just one brave soul was trying to fight Weathervane away from him, telling the stallion to help the one beside him. Stretcher bearers were doing their best, augmented by those whose telekinesis was powerful enough to lift the wounded, but getting them all upstairs to the aid station was proving to be slow.

    Even now, above the din, the stomping got quicker, beginning to lose its cohesion as the bloodlust overcame the raiders. The stomps became a heartbeat, a rising pace. Thump. Thump. Thumpthump. Thumpthump.

    Instinctively, I felt myself grip Protégé a little tighter. He held me up and shouted for more ponies to help the wounded, then his head turned to me.

    “Murky?”

    “I-I don't know, I just...the raiders. I've seen this in orbs and-and...oh-oh-oh...”

    He turned to me and gripped my face with a hoof. “Murky, you're hyperventilating. Take a deep breath, slowly.”

    I tried. I really tried, but my throat constricted and I felt my eyes roll back for a moment. Everything blurred as I fumbled for my canteen and coughed into it, letting the lukewarm thick fluid run down my throat again.

    “Raiders! It's like before only...only bigger, they hurt me and-and the village and torture and a gun to my head and...”

    Gradually, I pulled my breathing under control; and the feeling of somepony else holding onto me kept me upright. Something exploded on the side of the Mall, blowing dust across us all as something far away crumbled and fell, but I found his crimson eyes staring directly at me, not wavering.

    “Murky, I know, and I won't let that happen to us again. I won't.”

    “If-if they...”

    I felt him hold me, pulling me in until I was pressed against his shoulder and chest with a firm grip.

    “I will not let them have us for such a fate once again. No matter what I need to do to ensure it.”

    It took me a second to catch up with what that truly meant. I wasn't sure what felt scarier, that such a thing was even necessary to contemplate or that it actually reassured me a little.

    “Th-thank you.”

    His hoof patted my back, before letting me stand up on my own.

“Now, come, we only have a couple of minutes before they charge and I need you to do what you do best. Scurry around and acquire everything you can that is lying loose or discarded. Lots of slavers died in here, take it all to the main thoroughfare to be hoofed out. If it even has one bullet, we want it.”

    “Y-yes. Okay. Okay! I'll go!”

    “And Murky?”

    I stopped, turning around as he loaded a fresh round into the cylinder of his revolver. He looked tired, his clothing torn and body coated in dirt and dust, but he stood with wide hooves to keep his own battered body going.
   
    “Equestria's waiting for us out there. Remember what comes after this and it'll keep you alive.”

    “I'll...I'll hold you to a free lunch in the treehouse you showed me.”

    He smirked, “That's the spirit. Keep trotting. One hoof then the other. We're too close to lie down now, Murky. Both of us. We're almost there.”

    We both ducked as, from above, I heard raised voices and a burst of gunfire as a curious pegasus got too close to the open roof. Protégé turned toward it as we saw the black-armoured figure spiral and crash into the balcony above our heads at a speed that belied them still being alive. Horrified screams began to emerge from those who dove out of the dead trooper's way.

    “Go, Murky. I'll have to try and rally them together. We're on a knife edge and they could come in any second. Got to get them defending this doorway down here in the plaza. They don't want to listen to Brimstone.”

    Great. Just great, why couldn't they see who he was now? He was different! I knew that he had terrified me before I shared adventures with him, but I just wished they could see what I knew.

    “Good luck.” I muttered, not knowing what else to say.

    Protégé galloped off to the stairwell, shouting over his shoulder.

    “I shall make you another apple stew if you come over to my home after all this. Just look forward to that!”

    I stood a little agape as he pushed the joke out, forced a smile, and then headed out of sight. He was as exhausted as any, but still pushing to keep me safe, to keep others fighting, to try for levity. Succeeding or failing, he took the role to inspire and lead.

    Against the background of an imminent raider onslaught, I found myself fighting to even remember the same stallion who once spoke in rehearsed lines from his master, the one who had once given me an apple stew the very first time we met.

    Protégé had been right. During my tired efforts to find every little bullet, grenade, and abandoned weapon I could, I saw ponies bickering over who got what. Fear was turning to anger as the stomping and the howling went on and on. Two mares half-wrestled over a weapon that still had rounds left before they turned and chased me from the room when they saw me carrying a saddlebag full of weaponry. I saw Sunny have to bodily throw a stallion to the ground to quell his outraged flailing hooves at goodness knew what reason. The word 'Dragon' whipped around a lot.

    Occasionally, I stole a glance outside and saw the far buildings lighting up with fire barrels being hurled from them, creating small pillars of smoke that gave a demonic visage to the painted warriors behind it, who waited for the time to leave their covered roofs, rooms, and scrap-built rain covers to come for us. The Mall was becoming disorganised in its panic, and more than once I overheard Protégé fighting for order and to get ponies into better places, as directed by Brimstone. Protégé had to relay the tactics, for the old raider had become something of a pariah to most of the slaves.

    Raised voices were not uncommon to hear as I made my way around the Mall. However, the raised voices I heard on my return to the armoury were different, as I felt a sinking worry set in when coming around the corner to witness two of my dearest friends in bitter argument.

    “Here? Here of all places, of all times, is when you decide to mess around like some teenage brat?”

    Coral Eve stood amongst a throng of stunned ponies in a circle, just outside the armoury doors. She was striding in a half-circle, looking down at somepony. In the background, I could see the enormous figure of Mister Peace watching the events with a perplexed looking private on his large screen.

    Moving closer, nearer to the robotic bodyguard, I saw more clearly the target of her bile.

    Glimmerlight.

    Coral was  pointing a hoof accusingly at my sister. “We've got raiders about to come and try to murder us, just like before, and all you can think about is trying to hook up somepony? Do you even think before you do things, Glimmerlight?”

    The pink-maned unicorn shrank back, looking hurt, before putting a hoof over a clearly terrified mare.

    “For fuck's sake, Coral!” she barked, “She was terrified! I was just making a joke to-”

    “Oh, sure you were! You think I don't know you? That I don't know every one of your little come-ons? We were living close enough for me to watch you do it, every single time! Every single pony you weaselled your charms into just to use them for your own gratification! Getting one-nighters to avoid any sense of responsibility to anything. You'd rather get off than work on the defences?”

    “Hey, wait a-”

    “Shut up, you-you shameless mare!”

    Coral's voice cracked, bitterness turned to outright anger.

    “We're about to fight for our lives against a raider clan. The same raider clan you brought down on us because you've got no damned self-respect and just had to go after some 'diamond in the rough', because he responded to your little 'jokes' and oh-so-innocent 'just saying' little lines. Yet here you are trying it out on another vulnerable mare, wanting a quick little toss in a cell before the likely end!”

    Coral's face contorted, before looking down at the pink and purple mare, a few years younger than Glimmer.

    “This is what she does. That's all she's ever been and I've still seen it in here! Glimmerlight, your looseness cost lives in the past and now you're still happy to be an easy ride for anypony needing to let off some steam? Five times I've seen you in here with somepony, did she tell you that one, love? How many of them do you still hang around with, huh? How many of them do you even know anything about any more? Or where they are? You're still just that young hormone-driven mare who came out a sterile bunker on a bridge! You don't care!”

    “I do!” Glimmer snapped, but Coral's face came quickly to hers, nose-to-nose.

    “You don't! You never have! You should be trying to hand out ammunition, trying to help the wounded up, or doing anything conductive to helping us live through this! But here you are, telling a mare you've only just met that she's beautiful and would be 'worth anypony who saw her'. You're trying to butter her up!”

    My sister's face looked strained, her eyes scrunching up a little, “Coral. I...I know I-”

    “Oh, I know you! How many times have I had to come drag you back from somewhere after you got a ride and passed out afterwards? How many times did I hear you in that cell? Was it just five? Do you have any shame? Any shame at all? Any semblance of self-respect for your own body!? Do you have any sense of responsibility at all? Haven't you learned anything from all this? Some of us are fighting for our children here and doing every little thing we can! You? You're just searching to get your next lay, nothing more than acting like you always do! Like-”

    Glimmer leaned in and screamed back, “Like what?”

    Coral roared back, “Like some cheap harlot!”

    The sound of Glimmer's hoof impacting on Coral's cheek seemed to overpower all the sounds of war, and leave a horrible, pregnant silence.

    Quickly, most of the crowd, Mister Peace included, started to back off at the mere sight of Coral Eve's horn sparking, her face twisting into utter rage. I could only stare, open-mouthed and frozen.

    “How dare you.” Glimmer ignored the magical buildup, her head down. Small wet drops were forming below her hung head, as tears dripped to the dusty concrete. “How...dare you!”

    Then, suddenly, she looked up with welling eyes and a shaking mouth to look directly at Coral, stepping forward.

    “How dare you speak of me like that! After...after all this. After all the pain and...and the sickness and journeys. All the blood, sweat, and tears we've all come through for this, after how much I've endured and done for you, for your son, and for everypony we know, you still say that? You still let yourself be the angry and bitter mare who refuses to just give up her grudge?”

    Her teeth were bared as she leaned toward Coral. Then, sharply, she stood up tall and held her head high.

    “You know, I'd actually been looking for you. I was looking for you to tell you something. Instead, you call me that in front of everypony else.”

    Her jaw quivered, and I saw her eyes strive to keep more tears from falling.

    “That hurts. ‘Cos, yeah, there's a lot you could say about me. A lot wrong with me. A lot of things I've done I might regret. A lot of times, especially before I came here, that maybe I...I was running away too much. Into orbs. Into pleasure. Looking for any way to escape thinking about the bad things. Being young and stupid in the wastes after being cooped up in a metal box all my life, what do you want from me?”

    Her face hardened, and to my astonishment, a smile formed.

    “You know what, though? I don't need your approval. If I want to find somepony willing and have an hour or two of relief from being a slave in this hell city, I'm going to do that. Excuse me for wanting a brief moment of feeling like I'm actually alive! But here? No, I wasn't trying to get this poor mare in a bed, I was trying to comfort her with a compliment! You think I'm that exploitative?”

    She never gave Coral a chance to answer, jabbing her hoof forward to punctuate her words.

    “Not a single time have I forced anypony into anything. They wanted that respite, and you better believe I've turned down enough of 'em if it wasn't right.”

    She pointed her hoof at Coral directly.

    “So who. The hell. Are you? To dare try to shame me for being a grown mare? It's my life to lead, and I won't ever let you, or anypony else, try to tell me what is right or wrong by your standards because it's none of your fucking business!”

    My sister paused, breathing hard. I could see she was sweating, shivering with worry and emotional exhaustion. Coral Eve stood impassive, yet she never had the chance to speak, for Glimmer continued. Only this time she was quiet; her throat rough.

    “Like I said, I was coming to tell you that I've seen everything that happened back then. I came to tell you that I was sorry. I came to ask for your forgiveness because it was my fault that our village died. I watched the orbs. I always hoped it wasn't really me and that there was some mistake, but no. I had to live up to my failing and see that you were right. I had to watch it happen!” Her voice turned stronger once more, “And I did it because I wanted to make things better between us!”

    She stumbled, making me start to try and move toward her, but a brief sideways look from Glimmer made me pause. She caught her balance, standing up again with wet eyes.

    “But there was more; I saw that Diamond was, in the end, a good pony. He screwed up. Just like I did. He only had mere minutes to be a good pony before that rainbow-haired psycho killed him, but that's what counts. I saw that it doesn't matter what we were before. Look at us all, Coral. Raiders, reckless youngsters, ponies with tragic losses, and born slaves; we all came from somewhere that maybe we're not happy with, or proud of, but he was the first to really show me that we can turn it around.”

    She gestured around.

    “We're all sick, hungry, and wounded. Many of us won't survive the next hour. There's raiders surrounding us, a war above us, slavers trapping us inside, and nightmares beneath us! Against all that, it doesn't matter who we were, because this is where we show how far we've come! So, you know what?”

    She reached out with her magic, ripping something off the ground from below its canvas cover, revealing a weapon I recognised with a sudden shock to my memory.

    Rough Diamond's hunting rifle floated in front of her. It bore modifications; a new set of sights were bolted on, an extra strip of rounds cradled on the side of the stock, and new clasps on the wooden framework to hold the old and heavy rifle's barrel true. On the rack of bullets, I saw one with a glowing azure-blue tip.

    “I'm just the riotous ranger initiate. So I did what I was taught; how to piece a rifle, his rifle, back together. Shoulda' known it'd be here, this is where all the stuff Brim's Clan had was brought, like his armour. He'd want this.”

    Her magic slammed a rack of rounds into the rifle and drew the cover shut, before she turned and marched toward her old friend.

    “I can't promise you anything. But I can say I'm sorry, and then I can try to beat them this time around. I've tried everything I can to earn your respect. I dropped an addiction. I became a big sister who learned to be responsible. I've been beaten, diseased, stabbed, and shot trying to do the right thing all this time, putting my life in front of others and doing most of the planning in an escape that I even factored your son into! I have lived a hell and walked through fire to get us out of this fucking city! So you know what?”

    Glimmer's face stiffened.

    “If after all this, when we're outside that wall, that still isn't enough for you to forgive me? Then to hell with you!”

    The two mares stood inches apart, eyes locked. For a horrible moment, I thought Coral Eve was going to explode, as her horn pulsed and sparked. Nopony, nopony would normally dare cross her so bluntly. Yet she simply stood there, intense and without reaction.

    “You know, Glimmerlight...”

    Coral's voice was quiet and brimmed with restrained emotion, as she took a few steps forward, moving slightly to the side to pass around my sister.

    “You've done some growing up.”

    The older mare didn't smile, yet I could have sworn I saw her mouth twitch a little upwards. Her horn gradually dimmed and the raw magic faded from its tip as she put a hoof to her struck cheek and, without a word more, turned and trotted away. Ahead of her, the entire crowd hastily parted to allow her to pass. She looked rather deep in thought.

    My sister stood and watched her old friend go, before slumping and quickly sitting down, looking emotionally exhausted.

    Only when I knew she felt my hoof resting on her back did I see her mouth slowly turn upward a little, as she reached over to lightly ruffle my mane and pull me against her shoulder.
   

    “Egads, I find these natives are quite the incessant bearers of volume. Surely in excess of Equestrian law, are they not? I wish to deliver a notice of eviction to them. From life!”

    Mister Peace was looking down the corridor outside the armoury toward the outer windows with a dress uniformed officer on his screen. His metal clawed 'hands' flexed and whirred impatiently. Outside, the stomping was persistent and unordered, like rain on a small tent above your head. It pounded into your brain and set every nerve alight.

    Protégé turned one pupil to his eyepiece. “How long has it been? Must be coming up on ten minutes now by my estimate.”

    “Any second. Those ponies getting the wounded up to the aid station better hurry.” Brimstone grunted, “Listen, the big yin's leading them, aye? Kill him and Wildcard. Just like with Barb, kill the leaders and they'll break. Was always the way. We became their focal point, their demons to lead them. Their gods. Kill the god, you kill their will.”

    “I always wanted to destroy a god.” Mister Peace reflected with a wistful tone.

    Glimmerlight tightened a screw on the side of Diamond's rifle. “Give me one chance and I'll be putting that white bastard down. With all he's done to me, it'd be a pleasure. Of course, if anyone happens to blow his brains out first, I'll bake you a cake.”

    A few ponies looked confused, surprised, even. My sister rolled her eyes.

    “Hey, who do you think baked Murky's? I told you all enough times. I know lots of little things. As for the big guy,” Glimmer grinned deviously, “guess you want your own revenge shot at him, eh, Brim?”

    Across the circle of ponies, I saw Brimstone narrow his eyes, then simply look away.

    Glimmer gave me the (surprisingly heavy) rifle to hold as she got up.

    “Brim?”

    The big raider looked out over the internal balcony down toward the fountain area as the sound grew to a savage climax. Protégé was already giving out orders to the others to get everypony ready for a storming any moment now. He spoke to Blunderbuck, hearing about progress on the bomb. More time was needed. Always more time.

    Brimstone's face could have been carved from stone.

    “If he comes, I will do battle with him. He will come, so thus I will go to war.” His low voice rumbled and ground the words out through his twisted jawline. The scarring from the bar mine rippled and shifted in unhealthy ways.

    “And you'll kick his ass. So what?” Glimmer put her hooves on the railing beside him.

    I joined them, standing on the other side of Brimstone from Glimmer. We were a trio; I was going to be here for any soul searching he needed.

    Instead, he just grinned without any semblance of true humour, “You believe that, Glim. You look at me and see a pony you believe a hero. The others around here don't see that. They're just waiting for me to turn to join Brutus. I'm not a hero to them. They're right. I'm not a-”

    “'Scuse me but you frikkin' are.”

    “Uh-huh,” I added.

    Brimstone turned his head to let his single eye glance at us both.

    “Maybe I could have been. Once. Now? I can but try. Aye, I will try. But Brutus is an engine of destruction, Glim. He is the Warlord. I fought him and he put me down in the worst challenge I have ever experienced. I am old, Glim. My body is sick from Fillydelphia. It is barely healed from all we have endured. Yet even if it were not carrying these scars, I am past my peak. I am not the beast I once was. Enough to break any pony who dares come to me, aye. Enough to fight Brutus?”

    His voice turned regretful, “Twenty years ago, maybe. I see everything he does. I think fast enough, react fast enough. He has tells that I see before he strikes and he fights off balance. I feel like I can beat him in my head and in my heart, yet this ageing body lacks the speed, the strength, and the stamina to do it. It is frustrating.”

    I heard the sickening crunch of his teeth grinding. The balcony's guardrail slowly bent beneath his dinner-plate-sized hoof. Below us, I could see ponies still getting the wounded upstairs. Unity was among them, dutiful as ever, unwilling to sit still.

    “Well then...” Glimmer tapped her chin with a hoof, toying with something in her magic. It looked like some sort of power source, glowing blue with a magical sparkle. “...what if I told you I had an idea to get you an edge up on-”

    All sound stopped and was replaced by one call.

    The stomping ended.

    The raiders howled.

    Then, even deep inside the Mall, I heard them charge.

    A hunting call drove through the corridors, winding and twisting down each hallway and echoing off every shopfront in the plaza. That keening and haunting cry for blood struck to my very core and sent a shivering discomfort to every joint and muscle in my body.

    “Everypony, go, GO!” Protégé waved off behind me, as ponies rushed off to their positions, or what positions we could hope to have.

    “The wounded aren't all upstairs yet!” somepony cried out from the balcony.

    “Help them! Help them!”

    “Brim, come with me!” Glimmer pulled at his hoof, tucking that object into her saddlebag.

    Protégé cut in, revolver held ready as the first shots started to break out in the background. “Glimmerlight, we need Brimstone for-”

    “I need him. No time to explain; just hold em off, got a plan. Come on, Brim!”

    She ran off into the armoury with the big earth pony behind her. Her voice picked up as she shouted to Blunderbuck, but then the door closed to protect the armoury again.

    Protégé galloped forward, “Everypony, to the windows, get as many as you can before they hit! Come on!”

    We galloped hard around the plaza, as ponies got back up and wearily took their weapons onto saddles and in magic once more, their haste dulled with a despondent fear. They joined us as we neared the outside windows.

    Clouds had descended on Fillydelphia, bringing cover to the Enclave and making everything feel stuffed under a low roof. The dark smog mixed with it, lighting up with flashing auras of green, purple, and blue of hidden battles within it, as fires sent it whirling nearer the surface. Lightning cracked, making me stand bolt upright with my wings flared, as some enormous weapon flashed from the clouds and cut a chimney stack in two before slagging the side of a factory. Following the melting walls, past the furious shellfire from the rooftops, and the madness of small arms fire to defend the batteries, I found the raiders at the very bottom of the scene, charging from the skeletal remains of flash-fired buildings toward us.

    They came like a wave. Disordered and yet with one purpose. Their line spread to either side, sometimes only one pony deep, but surrounding the whole Mall. Huge brutes lumbered and built their unstoppable momentum, crushing the smaller ones beneath them in their berserk fury. Lithe hunters bounded and raised their long rifles to take pot shots. Snarling hounds flew ahead of all but one raider. At the front, like a battering ram, came the new Warlord. Big Brutus.

    “Open fire! Open fire! Hit them with anything you have!” Protégé screamed, immediately blasting his revolver out the window.

    Resistance drove the hearts of those around, who now saw only the choice to fight or die. Ponies, myself included, rushed to the lips of the windows and searched for any target. I had no idea if Rarity's Grace could even reach that far, but I sighted my little reticle on a gangly purple stallion with half his mane shorn off and pulled the trigger again and again. The sound of my small weapon was drowned out by Protégé's much larger one. To my right, three ponies had found discarded combat rifles and snapped off powerful shots. To my left, Sunny and the old gamekeeper from before traded shots in time. Above us, I heard the tripod machine gun kick up and stutter out its painful retort.

    Raiders collapsed. I saw three snap backward, spinning in the air from their own momentum. The tripod gun bracketed a near-Brim-size hulk of a raider, and tore chunks of flesh from his frame until he skidded to a halt. Beside him, a powerful shot from the left tore the forehead from a Hunter who had been aiming at the tripod’s gun crew.

    They weren't stopping. The soldiers had hesitated when we shot at them. The Bloodletter's weren't. They numbered less than the small army we'd faced before, but they charged us with no care in the world for risk. Brim had been right. They kept coming, kept following the electronic scream of their new leader, who shrugged off bullets that either pinged from his cybernetic implants or sunk into him without visible effect. Numerous ponies fired at him, but so long as he kept running, they kept following.

    “Hit them! Hit them!”

    More Raiders ploughed down into the mud. I saw two of them still crawling, cursing us with rage as they ignored shattered limbs on drug-fuelled manias to keep coming for us. Wildcard's type, they never stopped. A blue explosion of energy marked one of Glimmer's traps scything and melting through three. Protégé shot another hunter. Two hounds whined and fell. A few fell into the ditch of the slave camp.

    They kept coming.

    My heart began to beat faster as I saw Big Brutus speed up. His legs powered like pistons, as his unending roar grew to a horrific pitch, and he braced his shoulder to ram the barred doorway, passing under us into the defenceless entranceway. He was going to crash right into the plaza!

    Then I saw it in my mind.

    Below us, I could see ponies still getting the wounded upstairs. Unity was among them, dutiful as ever, unwilling to sit still.

    I felt a panic I had never known before. A cold and restless worry.

    Then I ran. I galloped so hard my injured body flared in sharp pains as long-battered joints were pushed beyond what they should be. I ran back into the Mall, the short distance to the plaza, and looked down into it.

    They didn't know. They didn't know they had mere seconds! I could see the last of the wounded being moved, but there were still the mass ranks of the slaves who couldn't fight waiting to be moved trapped down there. Ponies were trying to block the door with all the furniture they could find, including our cell’s old sofa, but I knew the power of Big Brutus.

    My eyes caught Unity amongst them, about twenty feet from the door.
   
    “UNITY! GET OUT OF THE PLAZA! GET OUT!”

    My voice turned to a shriek as I hammered the balcony edge and wailed down to her.

    “GET OUT! GET OUT! PLEASE GET OUT!”

    Her head turned, looking for me from down there. I didn't think she saw me, but she heard me. Her hooves grabbed those around her, hastening ponies to the stairs. Very quickly, order began to break down. Ponies started to rush and push. They could hear the same as me, and they fought to be the first up and out of the way of the incoming raiders. The queue was going nowhere, a crush of bodies blocking the single thin door. The guards downstairs began to drop into cover and pointed what seemed like a meagre amount of fire on the door, and readied the trigger for the mines and explosives around it. Exposed near the fountain, I saw Unity crying at them to help get the slaves away, but they were frozen in their own fear. I heard panic in her voice, and that hurt me deeply.

    From below me, I could hear the thud thud thud of cloven hooves.

    From my level, I heard Protégé shout that they were in the entranceway behind their leader.

    I made ready to fly down and grapple her out of there, before I looked to the side and saw the most incredible sight. Dutiful, ever reliable, menacing; Mister Peace stood beside me.

    “You have the look of one who needs rough ponies to stand in their stead. You have need?”

    “YES! Yes!” I waved my hooves, “They're going to get trapped and massacred! Please, help them! Stop Brutus! You can destroy anything!”

    “OH, THAT I CAN, MY BELOVED MINISTRY MARE! YES, MA'AM!”

    Mister Peace saluted with his right arm sharply. Then his left. Then both at the same time. Then finally, he turned and hurled his not inconsiderable bulk over the balcony edge.

    “TALLY HO!”

    He landed with a hard crunch on the flooring, his wheel sinking on its suspension before springing up when he turned and levelled his fearsome arsenal at the doorway.

    Not seconds after, Brutus hit it.

    We had hoped it would last a few seconds at least. Hold them up so we could drop grenades down the hole Unity and I had fallen through. It had been a desperate little plan, yet even reinforced with sheet steel stolen from a mill, the cage door to the plaza that had so often been a barrier to myself or even Brimstone in the past did nothing to stop him.

    The door, the surrounding barricade, and three feet of the wall to either side came crushing inwards, with a sound not unlike that of the Enclave's siege weaponry striking the ground. I saw rock fly and spin in the air, before the fearsome silhouette of an enhanced minotaur came surging through, the wreckage forming a second skin around him as his body became the mould for the collision.

    Then, the roaring began again. Clipped, projected through small audio-outlets on his neck, a digital rasp filled the plaza and drowned the wailing of defenceless ponies. This close, the scale of him made me fight the urge to wet the floor beneath me as he strode through the detonations of mines that only gave him a grand pyrotechnic display to his entrance. To either side of him, raiders poured through and jeered as they saw their prey, before the first group were torn apart by the explosives and their remains trampled by the second.

    “Breaking and entering! A summary execution it shall be, then I shall report this to your parole officer so that he may know this for your next meeting!”

    Mister Peace opened fire. The missiles in his shoulders, his quad-energy blaster, and gatling cannon levelled their devastating volley into the raiders. I saw a half-dozen crumble, evaporate, or explode, holding back the tide. Other ponies joined in and fired from the balconies, or from behind the fountain to level everything they had at the raiders and their leader. A dozen raiders dropped, then twenty, falling over one another as those behind Peace fought to get up the stairs or flee back into the rooms on the ground floor to hide.

    Big Brutus powered through the firestorm, leading Mister Peace to target him. Somepony screamed to put everything on the beast.

    “Begone, machine!” The minotaur roared, his massive claws acting like a riot shield in front of his body. They glowed hot white as Peace's energy weapon slashed onto them, before the canny robot shot low and drove bullets into the minotaur's legs.

    Big Brutus fell. The flesh on his limbs seared, popped, and tore. Peace unleashed two missiles that detonated on the floor either side of Brutus and sent him stumbling and wavering before toppling with a heavy thud. His legs were shredded...

    ...and then immediately started working again.

    Before my eyes, I saw the flesh re-knitting. I saw metallic implants below the surface still functioning and muscles renewing themselves around bones as though from a powerful healing potion. It finally clicked to me. Brutus' back was covered in vials. Glass tubes and pipes implanted across his enormous shoulders and spine, filled with magical healing potions and other fouler substances and then sheathed in metal.

    He wasn't stopping. He was healing perpetually. Like his roaring, he had no end to his motion once he had been unleashed.

    Driving a claw into the ground as leverage, the minotaur launched forward, and I didn't find the time to scream before one of those enormous claws crashed into Mister Peace with enough force to split a brick wall through the middle. The screen that so displayed his personalities shattered, before the second claw slammed down atop his chassis. Brutus stood tall above the robot and drove the machine into the ground. With a grasp in both of his savage cutting implements, he lifted the ton weight machine like a foal, and hurled him across the plaza into the pillar below me.

    The whole balcony I stood on quivered and cracked, making me scream and leap off it before the whole thing dropped away atop Peace, enormous chunks of concrete smashing on his chassis around the buckled and broken front.

    Mister Peace lay still, the display background of his broken screen cycling endlessly through a dozen faces and his limbs moving only in short spurts. My mouth hung open. Was...was he...

    Simply malfunctioning or worse, it didn't matter. Mister Peace was out of the fight before it had even started, and Brutus had a clear path to the slaves.

    The Warlord of the Bloodletters stared at his fallen adversary, threw back his claws, and roared to the open roof, bellowing at the aerial war lighting the interior of the Mall, as his raiders flooded around him into the screaming slaves ahead of them. Those defending them gaped and ran. I lost track of Unity in the madness.

    One raider, wielding a crooked glaive, leaped ahead of the pack. A skeletal looking slave fell and held their hooves up, before being coated in the raider's brains. The sharp 'blam' sound of Protégé's revolver whipped pain through my ears as he took aim and fired shot after shot at those closest to the slaves. Others from the upper levels joined him, picking off raider after raider, but it was never going to be enough. Everypony began focusing on Brutus, but for every staggering step he took under the fire, he was being an enduring distraction, letting the Bloodletters gain ground.

    Our greatest weapon, the monumentally powerful Mister Peace, was gone. There was no-one left to stop them reaching the panicked crowd trying to get away. I felt myself wanting to cry for someone to appear to stop this, to make it not happen, but there were none.

    Slavering, bleeding, and frenzied beasts piled into those slaves too slow or too hurt to flee the plaza. I saw the weapons rise and felt my throat hurt from a scream I'd never even heard myself start when those weapons fell.

    I had to look away, trying to ignore the sounds.

    “Murky! Murky, snap out of it! Snap out of it or we're dead!”

    Protégé struck me with a hoof, then again as I didn't respond. I was shivering, fighting every urge to regress to what I'd once been. I felt the ground shake. I could smell the city on fire. Roaring engines and whip cracks of energy weapons filled my ears in the distance, overlaid by the haunting battle chants of raiders. Fillydelphia was a bloodbath, and I was stuck within it.

    I'd made so much progress. I'd actually felt a little proud of myself. This was making me feel tiny again.
   
    Worst of all were the agonised pleas for help and mercy that were being cut short in horrified squeals from below in the plaza. I could see ponies surging out of the stairwell's door onto our level and fleeing for the aid station, but so many were trapped at the back on the ground floor.

    “MURKY!”

    He bodily pulled me up and threw me behind him, as he raised and fired three shots into the wiry raider raising a sawn-off shotgun in his mouth. Falling against the side of the balcony, the shotgun's buckshot went wild and skittered off the marble flooring in a mad cluster of lethal shards.

    I caught a grim sight of the now-streaked floor on the ground level. Raiders surged into all the cells, as I heard ponies run from them, try to fight back or be dragged out of hiding spots. Brutus eviscerated anypony left on the ground floor, moving amongst them like a colossal god brought to earth. Those claws would flash out, grab, and sickeningly snip a body in two cleanly with such gruesome results that my stomach clenched, and my eyes watered with fear.

    Behind the body of the raider Protégé had put down, I could see down the large expanse of the upper plaza to the outer windows, where grappling hooks now rested behind dead ponies who had been trying to hold that area off. One by one, raiders were climbing it with small pulleys and catches on their hooves. Those pulling themselves into the building sneered at the two of us down the corridor from them, before charging. The upper levels weren't safe anymore, they were coming from everywhere.

    Protégé aimed and shot three more times, emptying his revolver's cylinder before the snarling raiders crashed into him hard enough that they flipped and rolled four feet backward.

    The scholarly unicorn was bowled over, the radio and revolver he carried going skittering across the floor. The latter came to my hooves, where I quickly stuffed it into a pocket on my fleece and went to help him, galloping to leap on their backs. Before I could land, a huge weight barrelled into me instead. I smelled dampness and foul odours as cracked hooves lashed and struck down at me. I screamed, feeling myself skidding over the pebbles lying on the once smooth floor with a sharp welt on my forehead that started to throb immediately.

    Behind my assailant, one of the raiders lifted and slammed into the wall hard enough to snap his neck around a pillar corner. Coral Eve skidded out from the direction of the old slaver offices, her horn lighting the thick smoke around the Mall. I heard her join the battle in a series of crashes and erupting magic.

    Looking up, I saw the raider attacking me. One of Wildcard's drug-addled hunters. Behind him, Coral barrelled into one of the two trying to stave in Protégé's head with a forge hammer. I caught only the briefest sight before the raider dove upon me. My hooves came up in terror, before his weight crushed the wind out of me and made my ribcage buckle with a shot of pain across my body. The edge of a hoof stood on my neck and I felt my throat constrict.

    “Aaah! Get off! Please! You-you're...”

    “AH KNOW!” The thick accent belched forth, dribbling saliva down onto my muzzle as I tried to get the weight off me. Any second I expected a knife to the gut and the piercing hot pain to begin. A hoof shoved my head, and I found myself right at the edge of the balcony I had once been kicked from by Shackles. Squealing, trying to resist, I felt my head pushed right over it, the stone lip of the edge digging into the back of my neck, as I felt the bones strain. With a panic, I realised he was going to snap my neck over the stone edge. My hooves flailed, I cried out, and I only heard him laughing in return as he started to put his weight into it, and my whole neck started to feel ready to give.

    I had to shut my eyes from the pain, that horrible feeling that the snap was coming. My hooves weakly flopped at his face as I swore I heard the bones grind and start to force further.

    With the last of my strength, I stopped resisting and threw myself backwards. So committed, the psychotic came with me as his pushing left him without any traction to pull back. The pair of us tumbled, as I spun and threw my wings out. I felt the painful, stiff stretch in their still newly healed joints as the air caught me, and I tried to kick the raider off with a frantic barrage of little hoof strikes to his head.

    I wasn't going to make it to a balcony, we were too low! The raider was dragging me down in irregular little gliding circles, clawing at my legs and screaming up at me. I tried to get my grapple ready, but the raider was holding onto the saddle! We were falling and-

    A build up of pressure was the briefest warning I got. Crying out, I felt a harsh and sudden impact as an invisible force blasted the smoke around me and propelled me upwards in a juddering shot that hurt every joint in my body and shook my teeth to the gums. The entirely confused raider began falling, thrown free and mouthing the words, 'What the fu-', before his head split on the stone. My dizzied mind caught up with just what had happened.

    Coral Eve's magic had blasted me higher!

    “FLY!” Coral's voice reached my ears.

    Aching, feeling like my ribs had been bruised by Coral's magic, I leaned my head down and aimed for the upper levels again, using the extra height she'd given me to try and make it! Three shots stitched the wall near me, making me squeal and bank away before I dove toward an old information booth where a raider on the ground was atop a slave with a raised piece of rubble in his hooves.

    Adjusting my dive with a raised wing, I cried out as I came in at high speed, feeling the wind rushing by my ears as I collided with the raider and immediately yelped in pain as my skull hit something hard. Our heads had collided on the impact, sending both of us tumbling and rolling back down the plaza, me finding myself wrapped around the legs of a bench to stop my slide.

    Head hurting, seeing double, I fought to get away from the mangy figure, as a pony I didn't know galloped up to point a shotgun into the raider's mouth and pull the trigger.

    The wet splatter on the side of my head was warm as my hearing become a long ringing tone from the blast of the weapon.

    I staggered away as the ponies ran on, forgetting me entirely as raiders emerged from behind racks of musty clothing. I tried to pick up pace, swallowing to try and get my hearing back but simply finding my throat bone dry and hurting when I willed it to do anything. Falling on the bench, I fought to keep my balance as I saw what was happening around me.

    There were no battlelines. On the opposite side of the Mall, over the top of the fallen ground level, I could see Protégé already firing down the plaza into the same outlet we had once been held in by Barb. Raiders were swarming in small packs, as I saw one group slashing a screaming slave beneath them apart with serrated hoof-claws. Coral Eve was sheltering a pony whose legs had been shot out as she sent two raiders hurtling over the balcony edge. I saw Brutus demolish a shop front to reach scurrying ponies hiding within. One was grabbed by those claws and crushed into ruin with a gurgling cry before the remains fell from Brutus' grip. I could hear Protégé's radio screeching with pleas for help. Small groups fought for survival on every level, running or killing or barricading or dragging their wounded friends. A hundred small skirmishes, melding into one another. A great panic, herded by maniacal killers that overran positions through simply not caring if they lived or died.

    Old corridors were gone, roofs were collapsed, and the plaza was becoming gradually more open as the building slowly fell apart from the top downwards. The fountain at the middle stood like the centre of a great arena with how it had all opened up, affording me the view of savagery on an incredible scale.

    The radio in my pocket fizzed.

    “Hello! Hello, Protégé are you still there? PLEASE! Please someone be hearing this!”

    There was no time to listen. I stood where Barb and Brimstone had once shared a brief duel before the final showdown with the shadowy raider, and now three other more brutish types spotted me standing alone after their own prey had fled. One had a hound chained to his neck that fought and strained to get at the pony smaller than it.

    With a sudden grin, the raider popped the lock on the chain.

    Foaming at the mouth, the rabid animal tore toward me and I could do nothing but turn and madly gallop for all I was worth the way the others had gone.

    I ran away from the booth, around the corner to pass by shop cell after shop cell as the barks and calls from behind me grew closer. Striving to keep my eyes open, dreading the feeling of a sudden trip, I let my legs use every bit of strength their little muscles could manage. A series of weaving shops, back rooms, collapsed tunnels, and balcony areas passed by me as I ducked smashed barricades and leapt burning benches from bottles of firefuel the raiders were hurling as they came. I skidded and veered as I nearly ran into a raider who turned toward me. I could see the dribbling blood from a smashed-in mouth, the pony who had done it dead at his hooves. I was already gone before he could gurgle a warcry at me.

    “Please! Help! We're under attack! The guards are dead! Everypony's come in here to hide, all those who can't fight are here! Help! HELP! PLEASE! WE CAN HEAR THE BIG ONE!”

    Ignoring the radio, I spotted a blasted out roof of the next shop along the plaza balcony.    The gnashing teeth felt ready to grab my back legs. I didn't even know how close it was before I fired my grapple through the hole and bit so hard on the trigger I feared I had broken it. Whisking myself up, the hound leapt and I felt teeth scratch at my hindquarters before my front hooves found the lip of the hole and I pulled myself away.

    Rolling to my back to let air into my suffering lungs, I moved away from the hole and looked around me rapidly. I was sweating so hard I feared I'd lose what weight I had left. Below, the hound barked and leapt uselessly, before scurrying off.

    I had a moment to catch my breath  This shop up here was empty, but the radio kept my attention sharp as I realised that even just a few hours of war were desensitising me to the carnage of it all. Around me, everypony I knew fought for their lives, but this was the first time I could sit still since this had started.

    Through the radio I could hear Weathervane screaming all manner of cursing in the background. The horrible sound of the immobile, the wounded, and the defenceless was overwhelming, making the frantic nurse with the radio seem almost inaudible. Just one word was clear. Again and again.

    “Help! I...it's the-there! HELP! This is the aid station! HELP!”

    Oh no.

    It was the aid station. The place all the refugees had gone. The place the wounded, sick, and weak were kept away from the battle was now under attack. Everypony who'd fled the ground floor would have went there.

    Mentally, I saw a glimpse of what was to come. Of wounded ponies being bayoneted and hacked at in their makeshift beds. Of nurses and doctors torn apart as they came in. Of Brutus turning a place of healing into a carnal pit.

    “Oh, Equestria, I don't want to die. Someone be out there! Someone be left! They're laughing outside, I can hear them! Why won't someone help!? HELP!”

    I didn't know what to say. Across the expanse of the plaza, I momentarily saw Big Brutus climb right up the wall to the upper level, his glaive-claws acting like hooks into bare concrete as he reached the level of the aid station, the first floor off the ground. Smashing aside a barricade, he headed right down the corridor I knew led to Weathervane's medical area, pausing only to rip those daring to fire on him apart.

    “HE'S COMING! PLEASE, HE'S COMING! HELP US!”

    A new voice cut onto the radio.

    “You all hearing me out there? Tell me, can you hear me? We can't hear from anyone on our set! C'mon!”

    Glimmerlight.

    “Listen, if you're out there, help's coming! I promise, help is coming!”

    I pressed buttons and held switches and screamed and screamed into the radio, but nothing I could do was getting my voice through it. Frantically, I stared at the device.

    R...e....c...oh come on, what was the next letter? What word was this? Angry at myself, at my inability to properly read, I tried to remember, but with my thumping heart, aching head, and adrenaline coursing through my veins, I doubted I could even repeat my own name.

    Glimmerlight couldn't hear the ponies outside.

    She didn't know where to send the help.

    I heard anguished screams through the radio, breaking into feedback. The pleas and frantic begging. I could hear the nurse crying. My ears could even pick out wounded in the background hollering that they couldn't move, begging not to be left to die. They had nowhere to run anyway.

    I could remember Creaky Hollow. The image of Glimmerlight in the thick red light of the Bloodletters' flares, hearing the village hall being broken into. Looking up, I saw those same kinds of flares hanging in the air above the Mall, casting their glow upon this ruin. From the shop cell I'd climbed up into, I had a momentary relief, but I knew what I had to do.

    Every instinct told me to stay here. Hide where nopony was right now. But every single pony still in my life that I'd ever respected, trusted, or loved was out there. They were all fighting or in some way striving to help.

    Glimmerlight needed a messenger. She had to know where to send this help first, before it was too late.

    If that was the most a little frightened slave like me could offer in the middle of a historic battlefield in the wastes, then that'd be my part to play.

    I could get to the armoury in under a minute in a clean run without any fighting going on. From where I stood, I had a short run along the side of the plaza, past a line of shops. If I got to the end of that, I'd be near to the main stairway that led down to near the security office. From there, it was only a short run through the back to find the armoury.

    Up the plaza, round to the stairwell at the top, and through the back. Simple, right?

    Yet as my shaking hooves stood at the edge of madness, I knew it would never be that simple. Peeking out from the shadows, I could see raiders roaming the corridors, balconies, and shopfronts. I heard the squealing of those they caught amongst the war cries of those resisting. None of my friends were visible. This would have to be a mad dash. I knew I was going to get seen and chased, but there was no other route. Grappling anywhere made me too vulnerable, as did gliding down, and trying to patiently sneak over a long period would take too long.

    I heard the bellow of Brutus, and then a colossal impact.

    “He's smashing the barricades outside! He's coming this way! Close the door! Put all the stretchers against it! Don't let him-sshhhzzzzzzz-”

    Clipping the radio to my battle-saddle, I flicked out the mouthpiece ready, and ran into the storm.

    Leaping through the broken window of the shop I had hid inside, I hit the marble flooring and immediately swerved to the left, aiming to take the shortest route around the open plaza. If I stuck close to the low wall bordering the drop to the ground floor in the middle, I might have some cover.

    Skittering on mounds of loose pebbles and chunks of small rubble, I slid into the cover of a long-dead tree, sticking up from baked soil in a silver metal container, and then rushed onward again when nopony was looking. Somepony shouted beside me, swinging viciously at a raider stalking him with a net. I heard one of them take a hit as I bolted past, not even staying to see who was winning. The wall beside me shattered and crumbled as bullets spun and punched off or into it from the other side. Half-crouching below the holes being made, I kept pulling myself onward with squinted eyes from all the kicked up dust and grit in the air.

    A group of four raiders rushed up behind me, coming past the shop I'd left. I dropped beneath a bench and curled up. They were shooting at the lower level, screaming about a slave they thought they'd seen. Distracted, they didn't see me as their hooves passed by my face. Once they had gone down a side passage, I crept out again before breaking once more into a run.

    “He's just in the next corridor over! Hurry up! Pull that fucking stove over and wedge it you dingleberries!”

    Weathervane's voice stormed over the radio, as static flared. I realised that was the sound feedback of Big Brutus.

    I ran out to cross past the old janitor's route those raiders had gone down. Too late, I realised they hadn't moved on. They were just behind the corner and facing this way.

    “Hey!”

    I drew a sharp breath, and saw their heads whip up.

    “Get 'em!”

    My heart skipped, until the adrenaline running through my veins kicked me into action.

They turned, and started galloping toward me directly. The suddenness of their chase almost causing me to fall over a body so untouched it looked like she was sleeping. 

Stumbling, panicking on my hooves, I tried to keep going, trying to veer and turn as I heard enormous bursts of gunfire around me. A plant pot above me shattered and dropped hardened dollops of soil on my head. A round zinged so close I felt the rushing air whip by me like a whip crack. Crying out, unable to stop myself, I strained and pushed despite hearing hooves getting closer and closer.

    To my right, down the huge internal open plan area, I caught a glimpse of Protégé with a group of six ponies mounting a fierce defence of an abandoned cluster of refugees in a shop, before I whipped my head back, put it down, and ran.

    “Get back here, little colt! Come on!” They whooped behind me, and I felt something slam into my rump with a sharp pain.

    Yelling, I tripped. A throbbing pain shot through my spine from the impact, as my battered body responded to the impact before the hard floor met me. Scraping, feeling my skin burning against the debris below me and tearing little cuts, I tumbled into a discarded metal box and curled up, trying to see what had hit me, and fearing the sight of blood.

    I had no chance to see before they were on me, reaching out with cracked hooves. Grabbing the box, I threw it at them and scampered on the spot, feeling my hooves slip and fail to get traction on the ground! They swore behind me as the box hit one of them, before another harsh thud whacked into my side and made my ribs lance with a sharp, penetrating pain! I saw a brick fly off me this time as my lungs emptied.

    I couldn't run like this! Not much further!

    In pain, gasping for air, I kicked out behind me, getting up and away from them, barely by a tail's length as they dove and grabbed and worried me around the tables outside a shop. The raiders hurled the tables aside as I clambered under them, fighting through the table legs and toppled chairs. Finding myself with no more to hide in, I hopped through the broken window of the cafe just to get some space, but found one already waiting for me inside.

    The tall stallion had a dozen more earrings than I thought were even possible, topped up with red spirals dyed onto his cream coat. A small pile of bricks floated around him from telekinesis.

    “We're hunters, runt! Think we can't cut you off? C'mere!”

    Screaming, I found myself being chased around the cafe, running in circles around a cake display filled with grey paste to evade the hunter, his companion or the numerous bricks slamming into the old glass displays. My hooves crunched through glass, as I ducked a diving pony's hooves.

    “Run little pony!” A screech of laugher heralded the red and cream raider coming around the display and rushing for me. My heart feeling like it was about to explode from panic and exertion, I ran a scant foot away from him and ducked below an old counter-barrier.

    “C'mere, c'm-”

    With a sudden and dull thud, I heard the maniacal laughter coming to an end, as his skull collided with the low barrier. 

The other raider, a mangy hided earth-brown pony, swore at the first’s clumsiness before leaping onto the counter and staring down behind it at me.

    “Cornered, weasel!”

    Or at least, he stared down where I'd been.

    The moment I'd gotten under there, I'd doubled back, sneaking around the opposite side of the counter, where I now hopped up on an old set of stairs for the shelves and dove past the till before galloping for my life.

    I got precisely three feet outside the shop before colliding with another raider. Their hard, wiry frame of muscles and tufts of bone impaled into their skin made me recoil off them. Falling back, I looked up into bloodshot eyes of yellowed pus and twitching drug-induced delirium.

    “Fun, fun, fun!”

    Screaming as filly-like as I had ever been, I charged away from him; as he threw his head back and barked like the hounds. Still calling, he stormed after me.

    It was all about distance now. I could see the end of the plaza ahead! The armoury had to be guarded! There'd be help! Brimstone was there!

    I fled, the three raiders chasing me and hurling bricks, insults, and even a javelin of carved wood! Gunshots whined over my head from the lower floors, before a sudden ripple shot right past me, sending me diving to the side so hard I almost went off the balcony.

    My throat locked up in a coughing fit as I tried to yell for help. I couldn't get air in! I kept running, my lungs burning, but everything was stifling. The shots kept coming, I could hear them behind me. Up ahead, I saw two more raiders leap from a bench onto a fleeing mare, as knives rose and fell in bloody arcs. I curved away from them, struggling to breathe as much as struggling to not hear the sounds of somepony being brutally cut up.

    Everywhere, raiders. Everywhere, brutality and fighting. Every corner I turned, there was more! With horror, I saw my route was blocked by a massive pony in thick armour. I felt surrounded so badly that I stopped. I didn't know where to go! The raiders stormed forward, as I swept out Rarity's Grace. Three shots, three ponies. That's all I had.

    Solid thuds erupted into their chests, one by one. The last, a heavy rifle round, put a thick hole in one's neck and splattered the others. Crying out, wounded, they fell and tugged at the ground, before follow-up shots tore into them again and again until the drug-induced twitching stopped. The massive one fled as the shots started switching to him. The sound of clattering hooves gave way to somepony clapping my back.

    “Murky! You all right, little bud?” Sunny cried out above the noise as she pulled us both down into the cover of the balcony barrier, “Keep going, you can't stay here. We're gonna pull back toward the aid station and-”

    “It's gone! Or going! I don't know!” I wailed at her, looking out around us as two slaves with Sunny took cover and fired blindly to the opposite side of the plaza. It felt like raiders were right beside us, but everypony was just involved in their own little world. The way ahead was littered with chases and brawls and wounded.

    “The radio said Brutus is there! He'll murder you! Glimmer has some kind of help, I need to tell them that-”

    Sunny shook her head, took aim down the way I'd came and, with one loud crack of her trail rifle, sent a raider climbing up a level tumbling from their rope with a howl of anger and pain. The pulley system on their rope caught, leaving the wounded raider dangling upside down at the side of the plaza, unable to pull themselves back up.

    “We'll cover you. Whatever you need to do. Armoury?”

    “Yes!”

    “Then go, now! We'll try to link up with Protégé and get some sort of group together to start taking back the Mall. Murky, whatever help she has, it better be big. This is only going to get worse. Go!”

    Her hoof slapped my backside hard to set me running, making me squeak and push past the lack of oxygen and the resurgent pain in my body. Two raiders looked up from their prey at my approach, before one's head erupted into a spray of gore. The other looked shocked, before another heavy round sent him scurrying away. I sprinted past the corridor he'd gone down, seeing him fleeing into it, passing by their victims on the way, one pony crouched over a corpse.
   
    “Pike! Pike! Come on, bro! Please, get up! Get up!”

    Cosh shook his companion's body and wailed, crying to the air as I had to keep moving. Shots stitched the ground beside me, spraying me with chips of stone and marble, sending me scurrying for the cover of a bench, mere feet from the doorway to the stairwell!

    “Murky! Keep going!” Sunny's voice was distant, before her rifle spoke again at something I couldn't see.

    Tentatively, I cantered toward the stairwell, watching raiders who could see me if they only turned their heads, stopped from coming here only by the crossfire from Protégé’s and Sunny's sections they had held fast in on this floor and the one below. It occurred to me that maybe this wasn't all chaos.  Maybe I just didn't appreciate the madness of such close quarter fighting. I'd simply gotten caught up between the areas that were fighting.

    Could the raiders actually understand all this? Where their groups were? Who handled what?    That small inkling, the realisation that bloodthirst like this could actually be in some small way organised gave a whole deeper terror to the entire concept of what a veteran clan of raiders was capable of. At least now I could-

    “Aaiieee!”

    The scream escaped my throat as an enormous raider barrelled out of the very corridor I was aiming to escape into! Jet black in coat, wearing armour as thick as my legs, he came thundering out and slammed into the ground, driving a pony hard through a bench. Immediately, fire from Sunny and her allies started to spank off the armour or smack in between the plates. The huge figure, having run past my now crouched and curled body, roared, stumbled, and fell beside the pony he had crushed, who lay in a sobbing heap amongst sharp wooden shards that had-

    O-oh no...

    “I-I just wanted to get out...” His tearstained eyes met mine, piercing my heart with the helpless need in them, before he lay still.

    “Murky! Go!” Sunny screamed at me so hard her voice cracked, “We can't hold them off the aid station with Brutus there! Whatever your sister has, she better get it quick! So MOVE!”

    Below me, I heard Protégé calling for whoever had ammunition to make a push on the aid station, but with an electronic scream from the minotaur, those cries immediately turned to hollers to pull back or screams of pain.

    Ponies were trying to defend it, delaying Brutus, paying with their lives to prevent a second massacre of the helpless slaves such as what had happened on the ground floor.

    My hooves felt like lead with fear. Raiders were everywhere. I wanted to run to Sunny, the only one nearby to protect me, but even as I watched, more were bearing down on her and pinning them down as the raiders kept pushing more and more of their numbers through the hole Brutus had made, sensing the kill.

    “Help us! Somepony help us!”

    “Shut your fucking mouth and help hold that door!”

    My legs got moving. I didn't know what did it, but something got me going amongst the unending chaos and hurricane of feelings I couldn't control or comprehend.

    Passing into the back corridors, I smelt death. The raider I had seen had found ponies hiding in here. As I passed out of the vast loudness of war and brutal melee, I entered into a muffled world where the airstrikes and raiders became a background noise. Leaping the pool of liquid seeping from the room where some had sought to hide, I pushed for the stairwell and headed down to the next floor.

    As I turned to pass down the second flight, there was a shriek that set my hooves flying to my ears, before the entire building shook to one side hard enough to hurl me into the wall. Behind me, pieces of concrete collapsed from the roof. Each thick chunk cracked and wobbled at the stairwell. The stairs beneath me began to feel loose and shake with a horrible sense of collapse. I scrambled and pulled myself down the next flight, resorting to rolling down them on my side, yelping as every stone step dug and crunched into my ribs, before leaping out the way from the rubble piling down after me. With an ominous creak, the stairwell broke off and fell away to the floor below mine, then another and another until all that I was left with was a huge hole like a lift-shaft from where I'd come.

    Hacking, staggering, I tried to get my breath back. Ahead of me, vision blurry, I could see the security station, close to the armoury. Ahead of it lay the corpses of half a dozen raiders next to a set of bags filled with dirt acting as a defensive position. One hoof at a time, I stumbled and limped my way past them, speeding up and staggering in diagonal lines. My knees were sharp with biting pain, my ribs felt like they were crunching. Rounding the corner to find the armoury's own defences, I fell against the dirtbags and pulled myself over them. My chest felt tight and my throat hacked and spasmed, dry with dust.

    I immediately began coughing. I didn't know where it had happened, or what I'd run through, but I knew that dust carried radiation. All this being kicked up by the Enclave and firefights must have been taking its toll. I'd been running through smog, smoke, and particles for hours. As I staggered to the doors, I fought for my canteen and found it empty. A bullet had shattered it.

    Brimstone had given me it as a gift. Despite it possibly having saved my life, I felt so guilty.

    Behind me, I heard voices in the maze of corridors that made up the back end of the Mall's staff areas. Panicked voices, slaves trying to figure out where to go. Further off, I heard the sky-shattering blast of an Enclave weapon right above the Mall. The ground rumbled as something in the distance was hit.
   
    Outside the doorway, Blunderbuck's assistants were grouped together with a half-dozen armed ponies, two of them ex-soldiers from Red Eye's army.

    “Hey, it's the little guy!”

    “Grab him! Get him in!”

    I fell into their hooves before I felt a growing pressure inside. A metallic tang in my throat was the first warning before I convulsed in their grip and roughly coughed a small spray of blood onto their leg.

    “Shit! Get him inside! Hurry!”

    The words felt far off as I coughed again, then again. My lungs burned as a disease I had been mistreating after so long with little trouble reminded me why it had its claws deep in my body. I saw black as my eyes rolled back and I felt the pain throb harder and harder inside.

    “Do we have RadAway?”

    “Why would we, we're an armoury! The ghoul took it all!”

    Slowly, I felt my eyes opening again. I hadn't fallen unconscious, but I had been unable to control myself as I'd laid on a sofa somepony had dragged into the armoury during the coughing fit. My throat felt raw and tasted of copper. My chest hurt terribly as my radsores throbbed and stung on my nose and leg.

    I hadn't felt this way in a long time. Even on the mountain I'd been given RadAway quickly afterwards. The battle for Fillydelphia was killing me by merely being near it. Not even the sickness, but I could feel my joints shaken by the impacts of skyship weaponry and my body slowly seizing up from adrenaline overload. My mind reeled. There was so much fighting in here, but outside it was repeated again and again for every street, building, and district of the city, and even of the sky above.

    I couldn't grasp the scale, but being in its presence was sucking the life from me in a way I couldn't have ever imagined. It just never stopped. Even lying here feeling miserable and sick I could feel tremors and hear gunfire again and again and again.

    A clarity came racing back to me.

    Trying to shout for Glimmer, my throat simply produced a raggedy cough as I rolled from the sofa. Immediately, Blunderbuck's assistants grabbed me up and I started pawing at them, resisting their attempts to push me back down.

    “Gli-” I coughed again, “Glimmer! Sis!”

    “She's here, buddy! Calm down, you've got radsickness! She's safe, she's in the ba-”

    Writhing, I pulled myself from their grasp and staggered around to the back, moving around the cages. The first thing I saw was Blunderbuck, sitting amongst a mass of parts and bags of soil looking like the most pressured pony in the world right now. He looked up.

    “Murk! By the great tri-barrelled shotgun of Auntie Flo, what are you here for? Hey, you alright?”

    Glimmerlight turned to me from a workbench, her face smudged with oil and grease, her mane tied back in a tight upward-pointing ponytail. Her eyes betrayed a focused courage and determination. In her magic floated an Enclave power source, no doubt stripped from a fallen soldier's armour.

    “Lil'bro! You're all right? Quick, get in here where I can see you!”

    She grabbed me, pulling me with her behind the great weapon cage in the armoury. Hobbling and wheezing as my swollen windpipe tried to breathe, I felt her hoof rub the back of my neck.

    “Hang in there, okay? I know it hurts when it picks up.”

    “Sis. The aid station,” I retched and stuck the side of a leg into my mouth as I coughed and choked out some of the dust from my throat, “Brutus is going there! It's being attacked!”

    Glimmer's excited eyes suddenly dropped, before she whisked me forward, guiding me past the next set of cages, right to the back of the armoury.

    “Then no time to lose. I'm almost done! Blunderbuck, we're suiting up now, get over here!”

    And then, ahead of me, I finally had a clear view, before a chill of awe shot down my spine.

    “Big Brutus is a monster, Murky. If we need to bring down a beast of the new, we need ourselves a hero of old.”

    I ran in behind my sister to see it more fully. At the back of the armoury lay the great suit of power armour. The Armour of Macintosh. It had stood for hundreds of years, modelled after a great protector, so Blunderbuck had said. Nopony had ever taken it to war. Nopony left in the city could have been big enough.

    Nopony, that was, until Brimstone Blitz.

    The main bulk of the heavy armour hung above him, suspended directly above his body. The stomach and waist section was opened up, like some great spider ready to slam shut around its prey. On Brimstone's clothing, there were small braces tied around his legs and body with what looked like locks for something to snap to.

    Clad in a rough fabric undercoat and standing with his hooves already armoured up in massively thick belts of metal, Brimstone already stood taller than he ever had. He could hear the battle, hear his rival, no doubt. Bolstered by the height of the all-enclosing steel horseshoes, he already seemed a monolith of power.

    Glimmerlight bounded around him, strapping those locking mechanisms to various areas of his body, mostly around limbs and his core muscles, priming small gemstones in each and plugging the wires into each of them in some sort of network.

    “I...woah.” I could only stammer the words as I moved into the workshop and watched her work.

    “Murk, what's brought you here?” Brimstone glowered at me, clearly deep in mental preparation.

    “Fzzzzz-INSIDE! HE'S AT THE DOOR! EVERYPONY BACK, GET THE WOUNDED TO THE BACK! HELP! IF ANYONE'S ALIVE OUT THERE! HELP!”

    The entire armoury stopped. The guards, Glimmer, Blunderbuck, and Brimstone all stared at the radio I held up, eyes quivering. The screaming was followed by the sound of weapons slamming on the metal doors and the rending of enormous metallic claws tearing into them.

    “M-Mister Peace is down.” I whimpered.

    Glimmerlight looked stunned, shocked to the core by the sounds of panicked screaming coming through the radio. Of blow after blow on the thick doors we'd welded to the aid station.

    “We'll save them.”

    My sister's voice was lethally sharp. Then her face hardened, and she turned back to her work with a sharp and serious attention to her movements. Her magic erupted into an azure blue glow, as she lifted a half-dozen tools and rammed the power source home into the armour above Brimstone.

    “Primed! Blunderbuck, help me here!”

    “But the bom-”

    “Bomb can wait! Not much use if we don't have anypony left to save!”

    “Okay, Ma'am!” The young buck leapt up, rushing past me to help Glimmer strap each individual slate of heavy metal to Brim's legs. Above us, I could hear a low hum from the massive torso section that began to grow and grow. It became a bass drone, heightening in pitch even as the sounds of war grew closer and the screaming grew more frantic.
   
    “This is an old model! No E.F.S, no readouts, no self-repair systems! You haven't got any medical injectors in it, or any of the predictive talismans to help movement. These old things could pull joints and yank tendons if you don't keep powering through!”

    “Aye.” Brimstone stared directly ahead, out the door of the armoury.

    Another lock was tightened on his shoulder as the wires were all plugged in. Then on a loop of metal around his waist, where most of the wires from his limbs seemed to connect back to, running through clasps on the undersuit.

    “I mean it! This is a micro-piston driven suit, not a spell talisman-controlled one! This won't be easy on the body, but it will let you be more like you used to be, so long as it holds up.”

    “Afterwards is not an issue.” Brimstone's voice seemed far away.

    The hum rose, before Blunderbuck slapped the last leg section into place and signalled around, “All done! He's set up this side! Just gotta let the battery finish charging!”

    Glimmer yanked a strap with her teeth, tightening the last one on her side down, before she hurled her threadbare robes to the side and dragged across her own set of armour. Lighter, made of rounded plates, and marked with the symbol of a Steel Ranger.

    Segmented plate covered her front and side, before she slung Diamond's rifle over her back. A line of spark-batteries modified into rifle grenades shone on a loop of fabric she wrapped around her shoulders, along with a combat knife.

    “Y'know, I never could choose in the bunker. Scribe or Knight? Build or destroy? My parents kept saying 'be this' or 'do that'. S'why I left. But I've made my choice at last, lil'bro.”
   
    Glimmerlight pressed a line of rounds into Diamond's rifle.

    “I've decided to just be myself, and that's all that I need to be.”

    I smiled at her. I could have sworn Brimstone did too, for all his attempts to stay stoic and tranquil.

    Her magic snapped up ammunition, placing it in small pouches on her flanks, along with one glowing blue bullet I recognised now from a memory of hers. The one with an old talisman in the tip to help it fly straighter, truer than any normal round. The one she had once gifted to Rough Diamond to keep him safe, before Wildcard killed him.

    Briefly, I felt a little confused about that bullet. Hadn't she already put one on her rifle's strap earlier? But now I saw it on her flank too in an ammo holder. What was she doing? I tried to look for her rifle top check, but it was slung away from me.

    Glimmerlight snapped her ammunition bag shut, speaking to Brimstone.

    “I know you. When that armour drops and gets locked in, you're going to be out of here. So let me tell you this. Forget about me, Brim.” She placed a hoof on his jawline, “You don't need to protect me now. I've got my own war to fight against that psycho. If you need to rage, then rage. Piledrive that beast through the floor!”

    “No.”

    “Brim, you-”

    Finally, the big raider looked down.

    “You told me this before, and I lost. I was fighting like an old warlord, and he is the greater warlord. If we had been in the Clan, he would now have led them, as would have been right.”

    The hum intensified and the systems of the suit fired up, sending glittering blue sparks raining down around us. Some of the plates creaked and moved, responding to the power surging through it now, as though itching to be used and sensing the battle outside.

    Brimstone leaned down, eye-to-eye with Glimmer.

    “You were the one who made real what Diamond saw in me. I'm not going to fight like who I was, because you and Coral are both right. I can't try to pretend I'm not the Dragon, just as I can't deny who I am now.”

    Then he stood upright, and slammed a newly armoured hoof so hard, the floor quaked.

    “I will fight to remember and defend you, along with anypony else, be they terrified of me or not. That is what my mark always meant, and if this be my last chance to fulfil that, I will. My judgement is not by those who cower in fear from me, nor to those watching from on high, but my own.”

    I gulped, memories of discussing the afterlife to Brim very clear in my mind before the Pit fights.

    “Regardless of what others think, I know this is right. Now for the first time, I go to war for the right reasons.”
   
    “”Ready to drop!” Blunderbuck cried out.

    “Do it, Glim.” Brimstone leaned down, forehead-to-forehead with the mare who had helped him. His horrific scars and missing eye clashing with my sister's bedraggled and shrunken, but smooth features.

    “They'll see you for what you do, big guy, even if you don't believe it. Let's do it!”

    Galloping around, she took hold of the lever for the pulley holding up the armour. An electronic singe filled the air as I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. Blunderbuck was hoisting the heavy helmet beside Brimstone.

    “Dropping in three! Get lined up!”

    Brimstone stood up straight, snarling with his eyes locked on the doorway.

    “Two!”

    The radio wailed, screeching as the sound of tearing metal came through it, the sound of raiders braying, the sounds of wounded begging with them and a minotaur howling.

    “One!”

    Glimmer shouted, “Dropping!”

    The lever was pulled, and I heard the shrieking of metal chains whining through loops and clattering with released tension. A metallic clatter filled the room as the armour came loose.

    Dropping hard, the main torso section of the armour descended like the open wings of a Goddess, falling upon Brimstone's back with such weight that he almost buckled, before slamming shut with a great clang as it met the locking points. Then came a high-pitched whirring as each scale of armour tightened and locked. Pulled by the in-built magnetic talismans, the sides clamped down like that of a forge-plate closing around his body, and interlocked beneath his belly and around his waist. Like the sound I imagined a Stable door would make when shutting, one ton of armour slammed shut around Brimstone Blitz.

    “It's on! Lock him in!”

    Glimmerlight and Blunderbuck raced around him, slamming shut bolts and twisting levers to tighten the armour about Brimstone's enormous body manually. Blunderbuck drew thick greaves around each already armoured leg-like shields, before winding them to form with a ratchet. Glimmer slotted plate after plate over his neck, and fed the wires through them to keep them protected.

    Brutus' scream echoed through the radio, shorting it out on that one word from his victims.

    Help.

    “Hurry, Glim.” Brimstone seethed, hunching slightly, preparing, before leaning his head down.

    Blunderbuck reached up, joined by Glimmer as they lifted the helmet on. Glimmer connected it to the main armour, as Brimstone slammed down the helmet's full-face mask. With a wrench, Blunderbuck sealed the sides to enclose Brimstone's head beneath it, only his eyes still visible through thin slits covered in thick glass. To the side, Glimmerlight sealed a tube of wires against his torso and struck a flipper switch.

    “He's in!”

    “Igniting hydraulic controls!”

    Every surface and joint shifted, as Brimstone stood fully upright, carrying the weight of the armour, the groaning of thick metal filling the room as the Armour of Macintosh came to life, finding a host at last.

    Brimstone had been big. Within this, he was colossal. That armour looked like it weighed half again as much as he did. His hooves slated in two inch-thick metal bands that turned them into metal hammers of power. His whole frame stood higher, as his legs, shoulders, neck, and body swivelled and activated every hissing piston along the armour. I felt myself shivering before this figure, as imagery hurtled through my brain at the power he could unleash with this.

    Maybe enough that we might just have a chance to live through this.

    “You're online!” Blunderbuck cried, ripping the charge lead from the power source and removing the whole box from the side of the armour. “Ready!”

    “Kick his ass!” Glimmer waved him off.

    She needn't have bothered.

    Her first word hadn't even ended before a creak and a hiss signalled Brimstone launching into movement. I had to leap aside as multiple tonnes of metal and flesh went from a standing start to a full gallop within ten feet. I was sent staggering as cages rattled and the floor shook. Everypony cleared the way for Brimstone as he surged out of the armoury, sending shelves and tools collapsing to the floor in his wake as though under a minor earthquake.

    Behind him, Glimmer and I charged forward, to join our friend in the coming fury.

    Before, the Harmony Mall shook under airstrikes.

    Now, it shook under a galloping juggernaut powering through the corridors. Brimstone went off like a magically guided missile for the battle. Behind him, Glimmer and I struggled to keep up. It was all we could do to keep the huge earth pony in sight as he stampeded through thin corridors, smashing doorways clean off to pass them and taking chunks out of the walls on tight corners. It was especially hard for me as I lagged and coughed, trying to hide the blood I was bringing up from Glimmerlight.

    She had enough things on her mind. I could take care of myself.

    Then, up ahead, Brimstone sent the double doors to the open plaza shattering off their hinges so hard that they hurtled forward and over the balcony behind it. Red light shone out from the open sky above the devastated top of the Mall. After the dark corridors, it made my eyes squint as I saw Brimstone power out across the plaza, his armour taking a dark crimson hue under the bloodied sky. His hooves left indents on the stained marble, making bodies shake and spasm by his passing.

    Careening around the plaza's edge, he thundered over a group of raiders that emerged from a shop to see the noise.

    Not through. Over. Brimstone didn't even attack them, he simply ran them over and crushed them. Two had their ribs caved in by the forward impact, as another was flattened beneath him. The slaves they had been attacking clambered and rushed away from the metal beast, as Brimstone spun on the spot and hurled himself at the raiders. A good dozen of them had formed up in the area, about to charge Sunny's last position.

    Brimstone descended upon them with the wrath of a vengeful titan. He was terrifying. Enormous armoured hooves lashed out, pulverising bone and splitting skin. I was finally seeing Brimstone as he had been in his prime, every sweeping blow that connected solidly sending a raider catapulting into the air or into a wall. Lightning fast. Hooves like industrial power hammers. Reactions of an apex predator.

    A God of Destruction, one that now finally showed the newer Bloodletters why he had once been their Warlord.

    The first two were swept aside in a single strike that clattered into both their heads, throwing two corpses with broken necks a good ten feet. Buckshot ringing from his armour, Brimstone spun on the spot and threw his entire body into the raiders. One was crushed as his whole weight collapsed onto the floor, denting the ground, before his legs grabbed, stamped, and stomped at those near.

    Behind us, Protégé, Sunny, and the slaves they had formed up with emerged. Bloody and bruised, they watched as Brimstone fell upon their assailants. Limbs were torn. Skulls collapsed. Across the open plaza's upper balconies, raiders fled as Brimstone fell upon them and flurried within their ranks. One massive buck hit and destroyed a pillar, with one raider caught between hoof and concrete. A huge earth pony charged and made a diving tackle into the old warlord. Brim spun on the spot fast enough that he actually blurred, before catching the large raider around the waist clean out of the air and lifted him like a foal. Roaring beneath his helmet, Brimstone collapsed the raider's muzzle with a steel headbutt and hurled the limp body from the balcony itself.

    The others ran.

    Around us, slaves were fleeing toward Brimstone. They saw this metal warrior tearing into the raiders and headed for the safety of one who could protect them. I wondered if they even realised who it was inside that armour. Sunny fell in beside Glimmer and I, as the combined weapons fire supported Brimstone in clearing out the entrance side of the plaza on this level. Protégé waved his revolver in the air, trying to attract everypony we could to this new effort led by Brimstone. Below and above, firefights still raged, but we had space now. A chance to organise.

    “The aid station!” Glimmer shouted to them all, before pointing after Brim. The big stallion was already thundering toward it.

    “You heard her, pals!” Sunny waved, as the slaves fell in step, reloading with what they had as we all moved together. Brimstone in one action had given the momentum back to us.

    “You, you! Watch behind us!” Protégé pointed to the two ex-soldiers as he cantered to the advancing group. The uniformed figures nodded and brought up the rear, letting the rest of us rush forward with our flanks covered.

    Not far up, as we rounded the corners, we could see the aid station's door from the opposite side that Brutus had advanced. Or rather, we could see the monster tearing it clean off.

    Claws digging, Brutus lifted the heavy doors and held them above his horns, taking their full weight on his cybernetic arms. Around him, the raiders piled inside.

    “No.” Protégé gasped, before snarling, “Everypony! Forward! Into them! Protect the aid station! Hurry!”

    We'd been late by just seconds.

    It was then I realised that Brimstone hadn't stopped.

    My ears erupted into pain as my friend bellowed, crying out his own oath of war. I saw him accelerate, hurtling down the corridor toward the slowly turning Brutus like a runaway train, travelling faster than I'd seen even the most lithe of ponies gallop without anything weighing them down. The minotaur had been about to go inside, follow into the slaughter.

    Brimstone hit him like a three ton cannonball.

    The sound made me recoil. The metal between them didn't so much clang as it did crash. Like the sound of the great power-hammers driven by pistons in the forges descending, only magnified ten times. Brimstone's frame careened into Brutus, tackling the much larger beast clean off his hooves, powering both of them away from the door and flattening half a dozen raiders that were trying to get inside. Bullets spanked off both of them even as they rolled and thrashed over and over. The doors Brutus had been carrying slammed to the ground, end over end.

    Brimstone rolled over the top of Brutus, both of them moving far faster than things their size had any right to. He came to his hooves, drew back a hoof above his head and stamped directly down onto Brutus' chest. He moved like I'd never seen him do before, as he buckled metallic ribs and bent armour, slamming again and again, before bear-hugging the much larger minotaur and throwing him side to side, breaking holes in the thin corridor's walls with Brutus' head and shoulders. Leaning back, Brimstone roared and threw the minotaur over into the opposite wall. The roof began to collapse, rubble bounding from their backs as the two giants brawled and slammed in an area far too small to accommodate them.

    Shoving Brutus away, Brimstone made a short charge, like a pony would tackle another in some ball game, carrying the two to the far end of the corridor and back out in the plaza. I lost sight of them, but heard their huge blows striking one another over and over.

    Ponies rushed past me. Protégé and Sunny at their lead, as Glimmer took up a firing position atop a collapsed pillar. Firing as they went, they tore into the raiders who were fighting for the aid station. Inside, I could hear screaming. Two, then three slaves fell in the charge to buckshot and thrown blades, but the raiders had been caught unaware. Without cover, they were being slaughtered and brought down. At the door, three of them flashed with a magical aura and fell limp. Behind them, Weathervane could be seen with his horn alight, using a pain killer spell to disable them. From within, wounded ponies were slashing with scalpels in magic, or throwing stretchers in groups to hold the raiders out, sensing help coming.

    In a few more seconds, the raiders were dead. Unable to retreat through the whirlwind of destruction between Brimstone and Brutus, unable to advance against a charging force, they were cut down to a pony. Sunny put a shot into each of the three numbed ponies, a terribly blank expression on her face.

    “Protégé? You took your sweet fucking time, didn't you?” Weathervane rasped.

    “Stay inside the station, Doctor,” Protégé ignored the tease, “I'll leave ten ponies here, but we've got to start pushing out again. There's still dozens trapped outside.”

    “Send them here. We can squash them in.”

    “Understood. Everypony! It's not over yet, let’s go!”

    Turning my head to run, to follow the rush, I scrambled and crawled past other ponies to see how Brimstone was doing. As a group, we filtered out onto the plaza again. Most took cover to snipe at raiders across the massive open air interior, while some started moving cell to cell, calling out for ponies or shooting any raiders who were threatening the trapped ones.

    My attention, along with Glimmer's, was to the right hand side of the plaza though, as we found Brimstone and Brutus in their duel to the death. Nopony could avoid at least glancing at them as they battered and slammed one another. One raider got caught near them and had his head almost liquefied by Brutus' swinging claws. It was like watching Brimstone against Bonecrusher all over again, only without a protective cage to keep us all from being in the way.

    Landing heavily against the wall, Brimstone recoiled from a thundering strike by Brutus. Those claws would clench and punch with a mechanical precision I found terrifying. Crunching into the wall, Brimstone dug his hooves in and bounced right back out to get back into the fight. I saw marble paving shatter and fly up as Brutus took a solid stance, but Brimstone actually leapt as they neared, launching his entire weight in a jump I'd never know him capable right into Brutus! The two slammed down, rolling over and over, stripping the balcony clean of its barrier as they reeled along the length of the edge. Benches splintered below them. I saw those claws nearing Brimstone's face, trying to clench around the helmet before the canny old pony headbutted him instead, threw himself back, spun, and launched an extended front leg and his whole shoulder across Brutus' chestline.

    Brutus' clipped voice brayed, and he rolled backward with the blow. The thin balcony rail disintegrated between them, before they both passed over the edge under the momentum of Brim's charge. Spinning in the air, each landing a single solid blow in mid-fall, the pair plummeted to the lower plaza and landed atop the long suffering fountain with an explosion of fouled water and masonry that sent me and many others staggering.

    The two giants rose from where they'd fallen. There was a brief snarl, before Brutus snapped to his hooves and lashed out. Those two claws clenched together like an enormous metal club, and connected clean onto the still-rising Brimstone's chest hard enough to smash him off the ground entirely; the sound like an industrial hammer shattering metal.

    Our friend tumbled sideways and landed heavily on the other side of the fountain, spinning to his hooves almost immediately to look at the bleeding minotaur he had slammed into. Brutus bled from the nose, dripping like a leak on the floor below him.

    As for Brimstone, though, his breastplate was heavily buckled already. He had to flex a leg again and again to unjam the whining hydraulics that moved the armour.

    Raiders swarmed out of the shops to fill the balconies around the plaza. Slaves picked themselves up from their points of defence. I saw Sunny and Protégé pause amongst their rescue operations, all watching the two titans below them on the ground floor. Around them, there were groups who had been fighting until just now that fled side by side away from being anywhere near to the pair once they properly kicked off.

    Big Brutus raised his arms, snapping those claws in the air as he turned around in a circle to his Clan. There was a lull in the fighting. Not entirely, for I could hear combat in the corridors around the plaza, but all eyes were on them. He was laughing. Flexing his neck, he took up a fighting stance.

    “This is the fury I wanted from you, old warlord! Come for your last fight against the champion of champions, forced to use armour to hold your broken body up!”

    Brimstone snorted. “Least I didn't trade in my balls for a chrome finish.”

    Somepony might have laughed, had the fury in the minotaur's eyes not promised a gruesome end. He leaned back, raising a claw, before slamming it into the ground before him, as though taking up a stance to charge.

    “Heed me, Bloodletters! Let none interrupt us in the challenge! Here you are, Brimstone Blitz, come to reclaim your Clan once and for all?”

    “No.”

    Brimstone lowered his head and scraped a hoof along the floor, drawing sparks with the edge of Mac's armour.

    “I've come to end it.”

    Brutus crashed his arms down into the floor, breaking the paving stones and launching himself forward like an ape, claws raised and snapping with all their hydraulic power.

    Brimstone met him half-way, bellowing as he broke into a charge. I could see the small pistons on his limbs powering that armour, pushing his body beyond its own strength and speed. Pushing him to be like the Brimstone he once was. One last chance to be young again, and fight for something he never had in his own youth.

    Legs thundering, he launched for Brutus' midsection, right as the claws descended like maces on his back. The meeting between them sent a ripple of dust out as my ribcage shook. In a flurry of metal, limbs, and enormous power, the two spun, rolled, fell, threw, and surged again and again as they threw blows that would kill anypony else in a single strike. Eye-to-eye, always forward, cybernetic limb met powered armour as Brimstone warded off those lethal claws and speared a hoof into Brutus' face so hard that the minotaur spun on his own hooves.

    Seeing his foe falling back, Brim surged forward, placed his hoof on a fallen block of masonry, and used it to leap. I saw him leave the ground, his hooves passing the height his head normally did and twist in the air, one front hoof raised. In a frame I could have drawn from memory, I saw Brimstone in mid-air, hanging with that hoof slowly descending, before it came down like a bolt of lightning. It crumpled Brutus' face and drove them both to the ground, his hoof landing atop Brutus in an eruption of stone and dust. Breathless, I choked on a cheer I couldn't quite get out, before a squeal did.

    With his jaw looking curiously slack on his head, Brutus spun and slashed and grasped again and again from the ground. His claws closed around Brimstone's armoured hoof and crushed. The metal bands sprung and bent, snapping below the machinated force before Brimstone could pull it away. With a tear of metal, one of Brim's protective greaves and hoof covers came flying off. Staggering back, a great score in one of his now exposed hooves that had to have been agonising, Brim was now exposed, one limb of his armour disabled.

    “Be torn!” Brutus brought both claws high, dropping them on Brimstone's back and crushing him to the floor. They raised again, slammed again, raised again-

    Brimstone kicked off his rear hooves, somehow pushing himself and the weight of the armour with just two limbs to roll around his opponent. Unceasing, Brimstone rammed him from behind, lifting him and crushing both of them into a pillar at the edge of the plaza, cracking the structure. Straining, lifting, Brimstone clutched around Brutus' stomach and heaved the flailing machine, bending back and spinning to slam Brutus into the ground, rearing up to stamp hard on his foe's face.

    One of those claws lashed out, open and extended. I could see it trying to snap shut around Brim, forcing him to roll away. My heart thudded hard as he rolled and they collided head to head once again, with Brutus picking Brimstone up and charging with him out of sight behind a shop, punching through windows and cages on their tour of destruction. Numerous raiders followed to watch, flowing around the corner. Only the regular thumps of their impacts and attacks continued to let us know of that fight continuing.

    Around the plaza, it all broke loose again. Just as the two largest fought, now the rest did too. Glimmerlight and I rushed around to a part of the balcony still with cover. She took shots down toward the corridor of the aid station, before I-NO!

    The cover between us exploded inward as something heavy shot right through it.

    “This isn't enough, Murky! Come on!”

    “B-but they'll see us!”

    “They already can!” My sister threw me ahead of her with her magic, into the line of fire. I galloped straight ahead, knowing she was right.

    Ahead of me, I could see a shop. Below our hooves, shots pinged and whined. A raider snarled up ahead, before a shot slapped into his back from the level above. With both of us leaping the shop window, we trampled loose glass to hide from whatever was shooting amongst the chaos, rushing past a group of armed slaves. Soon after we entered, they exited, running into a nearby corridor that would lead back toward Protégé's office. I heard screaming the moment they entered and hoped that the screaming was raiders.

    Below us, I heard a harsh bellow and a solid crash. Someone had just been thrown through a wall in the conflict between Brim and Brutus.

    “We're separated.” Glimmer looked back the way we'd come, “Protégé and Sunny can handle themselves. We need to get back to them and...oh shit.”

    “Oh what?” I squeaked and gulped, before seeing my sister looking back the way we'd come at the plaza outside the shop. Her eyes were wide and fearful.

    Trotting up, I then saw what she had.

    Outside the shop, carved into the metal and stone of the plaza's back wall, above where the slavers had once watched us, a message now lay, bold and enormous, a title to the whole Mall amongst the chaos.

    'LET ME HEAR YOU SCREAM'

    And worse, below it a carved arrow, pointed directly at our shop.

    We both knew who had written. 'How' was a question I had long stopped asking, but I felt my gut clench tightly.

    “Dammit.” Glimmer immediately readied Diamond's rifle again. “He's here. We have to kill him, Murky.”

    “Do we really?” I bit my lip, moving closer to her side.

    “They’re the leaders, Murky! We need to kill them to end this! We have to find Wildcard! Before he finds-”

    “Cooee!”

    Both of us stopped, looking at one another. I could see the sweat dripping down her forehead as her eyes went as wide as mine. Slowly, we turned to look behind us, out the far end of the shop.

    Wildcard grinned and waved cheerfully at us from the centre of where everypony was shooting. He would have looked whimsical, as he smiled and cantered at a leisurely pace; that is, if he were not drenched in gore that dripped and ran across his raggedy white coat. His multicoloured, rainbow hair drooped in all directions above those mismatched eyes. He left a trail behind his stained self, both his machetes floating on either side of him like metal wings, the instruments that had reaped their toll and given reason to why he looked like he did. Around him, his metal hook on a wire coiled and spun like a snake.

    I could see the trail leading back to a back corridor entrance, where those slaves had gone just a few seconds before. My teeth began to chatter as I backed off, slowly moving to the counter. My sister stood firm, but I could see her shaking as she met the pony she had said she was trying to find.

    Wildcard caught her eye and lowered his eyebrows.

    “So, figured out why you hate me, yet?”

    His smile turned dark, as his eyes narrowed into a sick glee as he saw Glimmer's face harden.

    “Hahaa. You do know!”

    Wildcard's eyes went wide, the grin becoming a sadistic knowing smirk.

    “Told you I'd see you when you woke up. Took you long enough, pink dream.”

    “Don't even dare call me that, murderer.” Glimmer slowly removed the safety from her rifle.

    Wildcard fell to the floor, rolling on his back, shrieking in laughter, “I just partied with half a dozen little slaves back there, not to mention killed the griffon in front of you, and now you call me a murderer? Well ain't I just the naughty one, haaa!”

    Spinning, he came to rest on his belly, before slowly rising up on all fours at an uncannily even speed, “So what? Gonna do what you normally did and make a punchy line before just shooting me? That's what you did to Sooty, ain't it? I'm right, aren't I? Tell me I'm right? This is our moment see.”

    He began to trot forward, head low. Glimmer kept her barrel pointed slightly away from him, locking eyes with madness. Slowly, I kept backing off.

    “Brimstone, Brutus. They're like the two big ones, and we're the two crazy happy ones! Ain't it right? Little sneaky Murky already got to fight the other sneaky one. Three for three, right? You three are like, the core, am I right? The ones everypony looks at and says, 'hey, those three are the main team! The ones who started your group!' So it's only right we fight! It's like, written in the stars! But only us two. Anypony else gets involved, I'll fucking kill them. Just for you. Because you want to kill me.”

    “You're insane.” Glimmer muttered, starting to circle away to stop Wildcard getting too close. Those machetes began to drag on the ground as he matched her, slowly moving around one another. I could see my sister trying to move outward, get as much distance as she could before it started.

    “Insane? Insane?” Wildcard stopped on the spot, before snarling and bucking a chair in the cafe over. It shattered against a table, as he spun and hurled a second one through the glass door of a cabinet behind the counter, “I'm trying to give you a reason to be! I'm telling you your place in our little world amongst all the others sharing it! I'm being nice to you! And you call me insane? Bitch! Whorebitch! Ungrateful little...FUCK YOU, C'MERE!”

    My sister dove to the side as the hook shot forward in Wildcard's magic. Her magic propelled a table to catch the sharpened point, using the table like a shield before hurling it directly at the raider.

    Skipping into the air, Wildcard shrieked in laughter, sending the table into the roof with his own magic. The moment it cleared his vision, he bent in the air like a feline, falling sideways onto a table to avoid the deafeningly loud shot of Diamond's rifle that ripped past him and punched a two-inch hole in the wall.

    “His rifle? Oh-ho-ho! What would the softy think? What a little thief! Looting the dead of their weapons?” Wildcard looked behind him, before tilting his head to effortlessly dodge the second shot. Grinning, he slowly turned his head back to my astonished sister.

    “Cheeky.” The Raider sneered, then his horn glowed brighter.

    Glimmerlight's eyes hunted around, looking for what he was lifting, before a scything whoosh of air heralded one of his machete's streaking through the air.

    “Shit!” I heard her hiss the word, falling backwards to dodge as the blade scraped over one of her armour's metal plates and arced away. The second one followed, making her roll on the ground, over and over before hopping up and diving through the window as they chopped on the floor after her like a chef preparing a meal with a knife.

    Near to me, Wildcard broke into a gallop for where she'd leapt, making me cry out.

    “Sis! He's coming! Watch out!”

    Her head poked up above the lip of the window, before the burly raider dove through and landed atop her. The pair rolled out onto the plaza, cracking spilled glass and through Wildcard's bloodied path. Powerful, muscular, Wildcard got atop her and slammed a hoof down to the floor near where Glimmer's head once was before jerking as her magic sent the butt of Diamond's rifle crashing into his head.

    Wildcard merely wriggled around it and grinned, his hooves pinning her shoulders.

    “Try, try, hard as you can...”

    He twisted, catching the hoof she twisted free and launched at his head.

    “Can't hurt me. The reapers long ran...”

    Hearing his maniacal laughter, I launched forward. Pulling myself free of the cafe, I launched my grapple at him, not trusting my accuracy with a bullet and my sister so close. The hooked end wobbling through the air before stopping on the spot in his hazy magic field.

    “Hoh! Interrupting us! You already hurt it by having your little red-headed chum attack Barb instead of just you and him! This was supposed to be symmetrical! Don't ruin it more! DON'T!”

    My whole body felt like it was moving. Wait...it was! Surrounded, by his magical grip, I felt myself raised into the air, before suddenly accelerating to the side. Screaming, I barely had time to curl into a protective ball before I hit the nearest wall.

    Half a second before impact, I slowed and was redirected to the side, a second azure blue magic field grabbing me. Torn between them, I felt the telekinesis dissipate enough that I could struggle and flee from it, catching a glimpse of Glimmer, straining beneath Wildcard and looking toward me, before casting her eyes to his laughing face.

    “Like I give a damn for your-ngh-madness!”

    From her side, I saw one of the arcane grenades drawn, before she shoved it directly upwards and behind Wildcard with her magic. Then, she stopped resisting and curled up beneath him before it detonated.

    With a bright glare, the charge exploded. I smelled singed hair and burnt blood as I hid my eyes. Looking back, I could see Wildcard writhing and thrashing on the floor, screaming with maddened laughter. His back was black, streaming thin smoke from the areas that now lacked any sort of coat. Behind him, Glimmer was already staggering up, grabbing her rifle, and moving away from him to get some range.

    “That's it, pretty girl! Thaaaaat's it!”

    He leapt off the ground as Diamond's rifle exploded the seared marble below him, coming to a fighting stance.

    “If only the runt had accepted my drink. Maybe I would go nicer on you!”

    With that, he charged her. There was a change in his movement. He wasn't prancing any more. This time, he was going for her, head down.

    My sister leapt a bench, spinning backwards to fire on her pursuer, only to find him already diving over the bench and slashing at her. Ducking to the side, she evaded the machete, spun, and fired at point blank; or would have done, until her weapon was knocked aside, pulled back by her magic just in time to block a second strike. Caught close, I found myself surprised as Glimmer took a lesson from Brimstone and straight up headbutted Wildcard.

    Even more surprising was that it sent him staggering back.

    “What...what was that!?” He shrieked.

    “You don't spend the time in bars I have, then hang around Brim and not pick it up. What? Not fitting your little script for what I'm able to do?” Glimmer grinned, confidence coming back as she yanked her rifle free, pointed it to his chest, and fired.

    The weapon made a dull click.

    Wildcard merely grinned, his magic holding two bullets from her rifle between them, “What? Am I not fitting yours?”

    His horn flared, before a magical spark arced between the two of them that struck Glimmer like a lightning bolt. My sister fell backward, staggering and wobbling, before one of the machete's crashed down on her back. My heart leapt into my mouth as I saw it land between the armour plates with fiendish accuracy.

    Glimmer screamed. Then more so as the weapon dragged free and Wildcard hurtled into her. Picking Glimmer up, he threw her across the corner of the plaza into a group of slaves who had been trying to fight off raiders coming the other way. Chasing her, Wildcard tore through them in a scything blizzard of blades, sending streaks of blood whipping around him. He took a head off with one and gutted another where he stood, trampling over another mare. Ahead of him, Glimmer crawled along the floor, gasping and struggling to move. I could see her trying to unfasten a healing potion as she moved, before leaning against a shop window and raising her rifle to bring down a second raider charging her after reloading a single, desperate round.

    “That's it! Just us two! That's what I wanna see!” Wildcard stalked her the way he'd stalked me, but his back was now turned to me.

    Biting hard on my saddle's mechanism, I fired all three rounds from Rarity's Grace into him from close range. They landed clean, puckering three red marks into his white coat.

    Wildcard didn't even flinch.

    In fact, he didn't even turn and look at me. I was being ignored.

    Even as he moved, he took a small vial of something from his hunting pouch and popped it into his mouth. I could have sworn it was some form of pink tablet, before he washed it down with a bottle of alcohol he had strapped beside it. It looked like the kind I would see in Weathervane's hospital.

    Ahead of him, Glimmerlight downed her healing potion in much the same way, before staggering to her feet, Diamond's rifle pointed as she backed off, eyes focused on her target.

    Then, below us, a deafening crash signalled the return of another duel.

    Brimstone Blitz came tumbling out of a shop front, demolishing the cage at the front of it and rolling over and over into the centre of the plaza. Coming to his hooves, he immediately grabbed and hurled an enormous piece of wreckage from the Enclave ship that had collided with the Mall earlier back the way he'd come.

    Two massive pincers grabbed the wreckage from mid-air and sliced it into three pieces. Eyes burning red, Big Brutus came storming out of the shop amongst spiralling smoke. He and Brim met directly in the middle of the area, bringing an avalanche of blows to one another. For a time, they didn't even seem to block as they simply battered one another to the end of fortitude. Brimstone's armour was dented and blackened, while Brutus' body looked bruised and deflated in areas.

    A loud gunshot from beside me signalled Glimmerlight firing at Wildcard. The raider was bounding toward her as she ran directly away from him. My sister fired and reloaded as she went, veering around raiders and slaves fighting, a running battle with her foe. Wildcard dodged her rounds with uncanny movements, before suddenly reaching sideways, grabbing somepony around the head and throwing them out of the shadows of a shop and into the balcony side.

    I saw Protégé's head crack against it. He lay very still.

    “No late comers sneaking into my moment to try and shoot me, it's very very rude! And another thing-”

    Glimmer had reloaded. Her five rounds slammed across the gap between her and Wildcard, leading to him making a strange leap and twist in the air, coming around them before charging head on at her. Almost as though expecting it, she strapped a magical energy rifle grenade to her rifle and fired it at the ground below Wildcard.

    Amongst the flare and the explosion, I lost track of them and instead ran to Protégé, hopping up on and balancing atop the plaza's balcony to bypass the fighting raiders around him. The unicorn was stirring with a pained look on his face and blood trickling from his head. As I landed beside him and tried to support him, I had to duck his hoof lashing out at me.

    “It's me! Protégé it's me!”

    He stopped struggling, eyes opening hazily before squinting closed from blood trickling into them. Fighting to control my shaking hooves, I used the sleeve of my fleece to wipe his face and forehead.

    “Murky? Thought I could...get him when he wasn't anticipating it...”

    I tore the same section of my fleece off and began to tie it around his head as I heard Wildcard's laughter and the bark of Glimmer's persistent shooting from down the plaza. Below us, the whole Mall shook as Brutus and Brimstone hurled and slammed one another off the supporting pillars and ground. Their cries were like two feral beasts brawling.

    “We're coming apart at the seams,” he continued, “The force we have is sending more ponies than can fit in the aid station back, but we can't spread out much more or we won't be able to defend it!”

    I gulped, “Wh-what about Unity?”

    Protégé looked up at me, before shaking his head.

    “I haven't seen her since the ground floor was attacked.”

    Every feeling inside me reeled. There were few worse thoughts than the image of horror passing in front of my eyes. Of simply finding a cream-coated body lying somewhere alone.

    Protégé looked up through the hole in the top of the Mall, past the ruins that had become the upper floors into the sky. Laser beams stitched back and forth.

    “What I would give for some of those Enclave to help us out, Murky.”

    “Y-yeah.” I stood beside him, trembling to my very core.

    “Reality comes before wishing. We have to keep fighting. I thought I heard Coral Eve's magic somewhere nearby, she-”

    The floor above us virtually exploded, and four raiders were sent blasting through a wooden wall with enough force to make them hit the other side of the plaza, before tumbling to the floor below.

    Protégé blinked. “...there she is. I'll try and link up with her, maybe she has more ponies to help us expand the rescues. If anypony's left.”

    “MOVE! ALL OF YOU MOVE!”

    Brimstone's voice turned from rage to one of fear, a fear for others. It wasn't shouted at us, he was talking to somepony else.

    We both peered over the edge of the ruined balcony to see the massive figure of Brim waving with one armoured hoof toward a shop cell. Somehow, unbelievably, there were slaves left alive down there! A cluster of them were frozen with fear inside, wounded and filthy. Survivors of the raiders, taken as prisoners for whatever sick intents. Brimstone had torn the door off and was struggling to get them to move.

    “You can't stay here!”

    They looked at him with tears in their eyes and backed away with screams as he came close.

    “YOU HAVE TO-”

    Brutus launched onto him from behind and sent them both tumbling through the cell's bars. The slaves wailed as the titans of war fought right before them. Growling, Brimstone threw his whole body weight to force them both back out of the cell, but in doing so opened up his guard, he had to allow Brutus to land on him.

    “Perish, old pony!”

    Those claws descended. Brimstone slammed one away with a hoof, before the second snapped down and closed around his head.

    With a hiss of machinery, they crushed. The helmet bent and broke, crushing inwards, slowly. Brimstone roared, his hooves trying to push the claws open, but they were unstoppable, powered by enormous pistons much larger than the power armour's own.

    I screamed at Brutus to stop. Protégé's revolver barked and slammed six rounds into Brutus' shoulders and neck, but the minotaur only screamed his digital filth and crushed and crushed.

    Brimstone was waving to the slaves, crying at them to run. To run now. He lifted Brutus, trying to move them both further from the ponies, carting him bit by bit, before falling as Brutus sent a knee crashing into his gut and forced himself above Brimstone, that claw still closing, biting in.

    Then, with a last rage-filled cry, Brutus' claw ripped down and free.

    I saw the helmet spin through the air, arcing over and over to land in the wreckage of the fountain and its bloodied water.

    Brutus watched it go, laughing and raising the claw above his head, before he was lifted clean off the ground.

    Brimstone, his head now exposed and bleeding, a long wound across where he had lacked an eye anyway, dug in beneath his foe and rose. He rose high, on his hind hooves as he lifted Brutus above him, spun, and dropped him upon a great length of rebar. The metal erupted through the minotaur's chest, before Brimstone bent it to stop him coming off again. Excitement surged through me as Brimstone took up one of the shredded pieces of Enclave ship wreckage and speared down again and again upon Brutus' body. The metal tore flesh, stripping Brutus of muscle. A horrendously brutal method of attack that on any non-raider would have left me feeling pity.

    This was no normal raider, however.

    Brutus snapped a claw up, grabbing the wreckage and crumbling it into scrap. The second claw snipped the rebar away before he surged off of it. Blood poured from his body, more than any living thing should be able to and still survive as he cut and lashed at Brimstone, driving the raider back. Those claws were the real advantage, something Brimstone had to constantly avoid. He couldn't get too close for long. They reached for his exposed head again and again, sending Brimstone into a hasty retreat.

    Brutus made a space for himself, looked across his own awful wounds, and raised his arms. On his back, I could see the vials of potions bubbling and injecting their contents into his body directly.

    “Watch in awe, Brimstone Blitz! As I regenerate before your-”

    Brimstone's hoof crashed into his face. He wasn't 'watching' anything.

    Ahead, I saw Glimmerlight spin around a bench and magically hurl it into Wildcard. The raider cut it in two, launching directly at her with a keening howl. Ramming the muzzle of her rifle into his chest, Glimmer pulled the trigger and sent the insane pony flying backwards. Two ambitious ponies rushed to finish him off, before that wicked hook sliced around and grabbed one by the jaw, piercing up through his tongue. Lifting the pony off the ground, his screams carrying around the Mall, Wildcard threw him into the other.

    “Nopony else! NOPONY ELSE!” He was shrieking, almost in frustration as he pouted and stomped like a foal, ignoring his gunshot wound. “ONLY US! IT'S MEANT TO BE ONLY US!”

    “How about everypony that wants to? That's what makes us strong!”

    Glimmerlight fired another rifle grenade at him, before it veered off from Wildcard's magic and hurled end over end into the plaza centre to explode between Brutus and Brimstone, who both charged through the burning energy of its detonation to crash on one another. Brutus' claws were trying to get a hold of Brim's body, while the earth pony slammed again and again onto Brutus' face, tearing a horn clean off with one impact so hard that it flew into the air, embedding into the rock above me. Squealing, falling down from it, I saw above me to where two raiders were blasted in a concussive wave of magical force from the upper level to fall and crush their heads on either side of Protégé, who finished them off. He looked around and frantically ducked as Wildcard stormed through the area, machetes spinning like an auto-axe around him in an aura of bloodied destruction to try and get at the rapidly-moving Glimmerlight.

    She bounded through the shops, before skidding to a halt and aiming over the ledge of the balcony and whipping off two quick shots. Below, I heard a shattering of glass as Brutus' remaining healing potion tubes and vials shattered behind him, sniped off by her aim. The minotaur turned in rage, before hurling an enormous portion of debris up at her, making everypony scatter before it completely collapsed a ten foot section of our level. I felt the floor go out below me, sliding away.

    “Oh no. Oh no, oh no!”

    In a panic, I leapt up and threw my wings out. Suddenly gliding, I passed above Big Brutus to land just outside our old shop cell. Behind me, Glimmer came tumbling down the ramp of wreckage from Brutus' strike, rolling end over end to the lower plaza before Brimstone caught her in a dive. Rolling with the much smaller mare, he had to roughly dump her before spinning and arcing a hoof up to catch Brutus under the chin with such an impact that the cyborg's hooves came clean off the ground, turning end over end before crashing down on his head. Brimstone himself fell from throwing his whole body into the attack, before rushing in to grab one of Brutus' arms in a grapple.

    Sitting on the minotaur's back, he hugged the gnashing claw and pulled. His armour vibrated and struggled, pistons firing again and again as he roared and tugged at the limb, trying clearly to rip Brutus' implants right out of him. Horrifyingly, disgustingly, I saw metal and flesh parting, wires snapped and hydraulic fluid leaked like yellowed blood.

    Wildcard landed upon Brimstone's back, his machete's primed.

    “She attacked him! I've got to attack you! It's fucking symmetry! Why do you keep messing it up? WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY!?”

    Those blades hacked down again and again on every screech of the word, scoring wounds into Brim's neck or more often the collar of the armour until he was forced to release Brutus and roll to throw Wildcard off. The raider spun to land clean on a bench, before Glimmer's magic yanked his landing spot away and left him to collapse in a heap. She was up, firing as she came into the pile of furious raider that came to his hooves, bleeding from the mouth and nose.

    “Fine! Ruin it all! I'll just fucking kill you then instead of making it fun, huh? How'd you like that?”

    He came charging toward her, fury overtaking all 'fun' in his madness. Glimmer used a discarded bin as a shield, lifting it to intercept those blades, trying to fire around it at him, reloading and moving, backing off and dodging. A fast and lethal bout against her insane attacker. Once, they even both lifted up briefly as their magic fought for control of each other's bodies for just a couple of seconds, the bin crumbling between them from the magic duel amongst the very real and physical one.

    They separated as Brimstone and Brutus slammed between them. The minotaur was leaking a small river of fluid behind him from his implants, drug vials, and lifeblood, but his claws still snapped and scythed around him fast enough to blur in the air. Catching Brim on the cheek with one, he stunned the raider, before snapping one shut on Brimstone's back.

    With an explosion of sparks, he tore the armour's power source clean off.

    Shoving Brutus off him, Brim looked back on himself and tested the limbs.

    “Brim! You'll have only a minute or so before it-fuck!” Glimmer dove and rolled from a machete, before screaming as the hook wrapped around and caught her in her back right thigh. With a tug, she was sent spilling over, twisting to get an armour plate between her stomach and the blade of Wildcard's weapons. The impact still looked like it hurt bad.

    Wildcard drew the machete up.

    My grapple gun fired. The hook snapped around the machete, whipping it from the air. I squeaked and jumped as the bloody blade whirred back towards me and skittered beneath where my hooves had just been.

    “You little-” Wildcard actually laughed at me, before sweeping the second one up instead.

    He ended up turning back into the lunchbox mine Glimmer had left for him, one of the many she'd made for the defence of the Mall.

    Covering herself with the bin, Glimmer hit the trigger with her magic and detonated the device. A crater was blown in the centre of the Mall and sent marble skyrocketing to the upper levels. Wildcard was caught head-on by the blast and hurled backwards, denting into the bars of a cell with his second machete flying to the floor above us. I saw him lie still.

    Distracted by the explosion, Brutus turned to look at his second-in-command flying away. That spare second was all Brimstone needed. Propelled by the armour's remaining power, fast enough to catch Brutus out at last, he threw everything he had at the minotaur.

    Bellowing a colourful oath, one I could never have repeated for all my recent foul mouth, Brimstone tackled Brutus to the floor. I had seen Brimstone unload on a pony before. I had seen him crack skulls and crush ribs. I had even seen him against Bonecrusher and a Steel Ranger when his fury carried him to brutal victories.

    But here, he had a target down in front of him. One who wouldn't die from one good hit. To that end, I witnessed Brimstone's pure ferocity unleashed in a way he hadn't for perhaps a good decade. Crushing his weight atop Brutus, his remaining armoured hoof came up behind his head and thundered down onto Brutus' face directly. I heard bone shatter and metal bend, as that hoof rose and fell again, each one lifting half his body up, twisting at the shoulders before bringing the raised hoof or elbow crashing down. Every strike like a blacksmith slamming on an anvil as those pistons in their last gasp of power drove down again and again and again. He didn't stop, his hoof becoming a blur of back-and-forward motion, as machinated as Brutus' own implanted body. Brutus' muzzle was shattered. His eyes crushed. Teeth and jawline were broken and his skull caved in. I saw brain matter explode from the ground and yet still he struck and struck. Brutus' body writhed, snapped, and fought, twitching in his last throes. Still, Brimstone struck until his hoof was sparking off the marble beneath. Until the armoured hoof of Mac's suit was dented, then bent, and then cracked.

    Gradually, the suit slowed as its power waned, and Brimstone fell back from the body of Brutus, pulling at the strap to drop the suit's main torso section off him before it locked up. Finally, I could see the devastation that had been wrought to my friend. His body was blackened, torn through the armour's holes, and bleeding profusely.

    Around us, slaves began to drop down into the plaza square. Protégé, Coral, and Sunny slid down the slope of crushed debris at the head of two dozen armed slaves and ex-soldiers. As the raiders reeled from the death of their leader, my friends and those willing to fight for their freedom pushed hard, powering past where we lay to reach the survivors on the ground floor. Bloodied, shaken, and terrified, they slowly began to stagger out from the cells, crying and traumatised from the massacre. All around us, I could see the mutilated bodies of those the raiders hadn't taken prisoner.

    Glimmer and I leaned against one another. Brimstone limped and fell against a pillar. He lay back, battered and exhausted, finally having a chance to let out his breath.

    And then Brutus got up.

    I couldn't believe my eyes were seeing this. Convinced I had fallen unconscious and was in a dreamstate, I watched the nightmare rise.

    On his back, the remaining vials were blinking red, as I saw them furiously pumping something into him. Pale grey substances and glowing chemicals swam with filthy blood in their tubes as the drug cocktail was forced into the body. Limbs thrashed and moved in furious spasms.

    Then the screaming began. Oh, the screaming.

    Before, he had an electronic tinged voice, but as he stood and I saw the ruin that flopped and fell from where a head should be, the emitters on what remained of his neck attempted to project a battlecry, but ended up as a banshee's scream, if played through a digital nightmare of static and white noise mixed with an organic gurgling and stomach churning sucking. There was no skull left! The loose remnants with one baleful eye fell across his shoulders, still connected to the machinery in his body.

    “What in Equestria...” Glimmer breathed from beside me, rapidly reloading her rifle.

    Brimstone stared in what may have been the first look of fear I'd ever seen in his eyes as Big Brutus' implants drove him to fight long after he should have died. I couldn't bring my mind to even consider what Brutus himself now felt or thought.

    Directed by some sort of intelligence, he turned to view his opponent, claws ceasing their twitching to shear shut with purpose, Brutus hurled himself at my friend. Moving faster than before, as if the organic limits had been removed from how far he could go, Brutus slammed into Brimstone, and slashed at him again and again with those claws. 

Behind him, the raiders cheered their Warlord continuing the duel. Every grasp sent Brimstone reeling, as without Mac's armour he was driven back by the lightning attacks of the...cyborg? Robot? I had no idea what Brutus even was now!

    Brimstone, in a desperate move, rammed his shoulder into Brutus' hips and clenched his legs around both of the claws. He tried to hold them down, weighing his whole strength into it as he wrestled and flung his bodyweight, trying to drag Brutus to the floor. But without the suit, without the powered strength, it was never going to be enough. I'd seen this very thing proven before.

    Big Brutus was stronger than Brimstone Blitz. He didn't tire out. Injuries didn't decrease his heights of power. Now, those broad shoulders shifted and the thick metal forming the joints began to whirr and hiss as Brutus widened his arms. Slowly, then easily, he broke Brimstone's grip. Heart in my mouth, I witnessed Brutus sweep around and up, lifting Brim atop one of his claws and slamming him to the ground.

    Twisting in the air, Brim managed to land on his side rather than his face and then roll his big body to retreat. His blocking hooves were battered away, his guard opened and reduced him to frantic dodging from each snap of the minotaur's cutters. Brim was stumbling, limping, losing.

    The roar of the Bloodletters echoed around the Mall. Their immortal leader returning to life before them. The god they believed in fighting again. The sights and sounds drove them to new heights of frenzy, as raider after raider dropped into the plaza. They rushed from the upper levels or swarmed out from the back corridors to the site they knew would be the final battle. They wanted to taste it, share in its bloody glory.

    “Find cover! Get the survivors safe! You! Get out of there, you'll be left behind!” Protégé dove aside as buckshot scattered around him, firing up at the level above us as he crawled and rolled behind the ruins of the fountain to reach the pony he'd shouted at and pushed them to get away. Around him, slaves tried to help the injured and weak away. Ponies carried others on their backs or dragged them by biting rags. Those who could move fled back to their cells, as the raiders descended, firing as they came.

    Seconds later, they met the slaves head on. Muscular raiders leapt and bounded into close combat, raising blades and spikes ahead of them or blasting with shotguns and submachine guns. We met them with rifle fire and chattering pistols, before they swarmed among us and it became every pony fighting for themselves. A mixture of close range firefight behind what little cover existed to the levels above between bouts of brawling and clashing weapons.

    “Forget about meeee?”

    Glimmer shrieked beside me as a machete dropped down over her back. Spinning, I saw her armour broken and falling off her as it cut the straps holding it on her body. Below that, a long and deep cut began to bleed over her white coat.

    Wildcard limped toward us. His body was coated in shrapnel, including one penetrating through his cheek like some enormous piercing. Then he raised a hoof and took in the chaotic war around us all. From the skies above to the ponies rolling over and over one another mere feet away.

    “Don't you have to love what I've crafted? Ol'Brutus thinks real 'straight-forward' like. I've got the eye though, see?” He tapped an exposed eyeball with the tip of his blade, “I see the beauty in chaos.”

    “Glimmer!” I tried to pull my sister away. I could see one of Brutus' dropped healing vials, maybe if...

    A rock dropped on it, courtesy of Wildcard's magic.

    “Awww. Too bad. It's not even yours! Ever think about that? No, always so concerned with your own wants, not mine! Why never me!? Why never me, daddy, huh? What do-” He paused, then seethed with fury, “I'M GONNA MURDER YOU!”

    Glimmer screamed in agony as she, through some incredible force of will, pushed her slashed body up and galloped a short distance to put herself out of reach of Wildcard. Immediately, she collapsed, her back opening as the wound was twisted. I could see tears in her eyes from the pain, I could-NO!

    Magic grabbed me. I was yanked toward Wildcard through the air, no matter how much I struggled. That machete floated worryingly.

    “You never saw it last time, pink dream! You didn't! Maybe you don't hate me enough yet to do what I want, huh? Ever think about what I want in life? It's always you, you, you! Well I'll make you see me!”

    I felt his blade over my throat. Tears dropped off my cheeks. Not again. Not again! Oh Goddesses, no no no!

    “You think it can't happen? What about everypony else I've killed today who won't find their family again? They'll just disappear, unimportant! It's only the names you know that's important, right? How many of you out there stopped caring about the nameless ones until one whose name you know was threatened?”

    I felt my skin part near my windpipe. It was going deeper, running across. Blood dripped down my neck. Glimmer's eyes turned to horror, as I saw her reaching into her pack.

    “So here's one for you! One you'll all fucking care about!”

    I felt his muscles tense. The second blade touched my back. Slice and impale. I could feel my scars being broken as they went for the same places. Terror gripped my heart enough that I couldn't even scream or beg. To my right, Brimstone was stricken down by Brutus, slammed through a piece of skyship hull. I could see Protégé spot me, but he was pinned down, panic in his eyes. Coral Eve was staggering, her horn surging with uncontrolled energy, having overused her magic. Please, somepony-

    A blue flare exploded from the end of Glimmer's rifle.

    I saw the bullet fly true, just like she said it would. I felt Wildcard's head twist and the machete start to push deeper before yanking off me to let him spin in the air as the talisman-enhanced round she had given Diamond erupted from the heavy rifle.

    Dropping me, Wildcard spun on the spot as it slammed into his shoulder and tore a huge chunk of flesh clean out.

    Then it hit the wall behind him, detonating on the concrete rather than inside Wildcard's flesh.

    Wildcard finished his spin, bowing at the end of it, despite one leg standing uselessly from its destroyed shoulder. His magic flared brighter, as telekinesis wrapped around the dead limb, acting like a magical brace to move it by his mind instead of his body.

    Then he just smiled, like he didn't even feel pain like the rest of us.

    “Saving that one, huh? Oh how obvious, pink dream. Trying to end our little feud with the very bullet you gave to the stallion I killed? What made you think I wasn't waiting for that? Come oooon! I can fight with a wound, can you? Well?”

    Falling to the ground, I tried to back off quickly, but my tail was tugged back by telekinesis. Glimmer's mouth hung open in disbelief that her enhanced bullet hadn't done it.

    “C'mere, runt!” Wildcard lifted me upside down by the tail, as my whole view inverted and the blood started to run to my head. He was red, coated head to tail in gore, his own and his that of his enemies. He had been blown up twice, had lost most of his shoulder, been burned to the muscle on his back, but he was still happily smiling.

    “What are you?” I whimpered at him.

    He smiled at me, before licking the side of my head like a big dog, “I'm the most sane pony in the room.”

    His machete drew back. I screamed as it began to spear forward.

    Sunny careened into the side of the blade, tackling the flat part to knock it aside before pushing onwards into me. I felt myself clutched and rolled with before being thrown away. Hooves came down near my head as three ponies fought with empty guns above me. Sunny got herself up, bucked a raider, stole his pistol, and blasted every shot it had at Wildcard. The meaty unicorn danced and advanced around each one.

    “What are you doing!? You're not even supposed to be here! Aren't you meant to be dead long ago or something, you little shit?”

    Weapon empty, Sunny kicked me to get me moving.

    “Murky, get out of the plaza, before-”

    She shrieked. Her body went stiff as Wildcard's lightning-like spell struck her from behind, before falling on the spot, stunned and twitching.

    “Fucking told her.” Wildcard spat on her, before recovering his machetes, “Now, back to our regularly scheduled not-so-fucking weekly killing.”

    He turned menacingly toward Glimmer, before breaking into a run. I fired my grapple-gun, only to have it slapped from the air by a magical surge. Sunny was immobile. I couldn't hear the others. I could only see Glimmer frantically reloading her rifle, panic on her face and pain in her eyes from her back being moved while wounded.

    She fell backwards as Wildcard leapt and descended, both machetes rose. Glimmer brought her weapon up, braced on the ground beside her.

    “You already used the special one, pink dream! The cliché's dead! So what if you just-”

    That same blue flare erupted a second time.

    I saw the look of surprise on Wildcard's face Genuine surprise. I saw him try to react, try to twist, but it lacked the speed of his apparent foresight from before. The magically enhanced round blasted through his grinning mouth. Wildcard's brain exploded out the back of his skull.

    He landed short of her, falling dumbly every time he got up. I could see the empty space inside his skull dripping nausea-inducing fluids.

    “But...but you only had one. The special one...”

    Glimmerlight leaned on the bin, the rifle dropping from her grip.

    “I made one before for Diamond. What made you think I couldn't make another?” She forced a grin. “What's wrong? Not dramatic enough to pull the same trick twice?”

    Wildcard fell to the ground, balancing briefly on his hind legs, then all four.

    “That's...not how it works. It was...his...”

    He reached out with a hoof, before wobbling and falling over in a curled-up heap, his eyes glazing over, as what had happened to the back of his skull finally caught up to whatever drove him to keep speaking.

    Finally. Whatever had given him his almost supernatural perception was-

    My body froze as he suddenly sat up and looked around. That empty skull, in a way I'd never understand or be able to explain how it was possible, bobbed and turned.

    His eyes found mine. They held a far away look, wide with tiny pinprick pupils that shivered and turned in opposite directions.

    “You're not going with them.”

    Then, he laughed. A horrible, maddening, choking laugh of unrestrained glee and sadistic joy. Even as everypony in the area turned and unloaded every single round they had into his spasming and dancing body, he laughed.

    Even after he had fallen, and his throat long made silent, that laugh continued to echo around the Mall above the battle, wavering back and forth from ear to ear and leaving me with a cold sweaty dread on the back of my neck.

    My sister stood up, limping over to support herself on me. Despite the hell going on around us, she took a second to get her breath, tying a bandage around herself, before looking down at her rifle.

    “Rest easy, Rough Diamond. Your pink dream's gonna' do better now. Just like you did.”

    I didn't know what else to say. Instead, I just hugged her side as I helped a stiffly-moving Sunny bandage her up, sheltering at the side of the plaza as the battle swept into it and ponies began to run around the area we'd just fought in. Raiders and slaves fell from the balconies, getting up to keep fighting more as everything spilled into the centre for the end.

    “Help! Help!”

    Ponies fled in all directions as raiders cut down those resisting in the plaza. Surrounded, running out of ammunition and running low on fighters, the Mall's defenders were being depleted at a horrifying rate and in often even more horrifying ways. Any left in the open were being cut down. Few escaped.

    We'd managed to pull back into a couple of shop cells on one side, but the raiders controlled the upper levels, and had turned the entire plaza into a vast melee. Clubs, auto-axes, knives, and pistols were swung, fired, and thrown just to keep the hordes out. Behind the front line, lay the rest of the survivors we'd found from the massacre down here before, along with any slaves that Protégé hadn't been able to get up to the aid station in time, possibly the only other defended place in the entire building.

    Behind Sunny, a raider slashed with a knife and she yelped as it sunk into her shoulder. She fell with the brute, smacking him again and again with the butt of her rifle. Protégé shot two, before the third bowled him over. A couple of ex-soldiers turned to fully automatic on their rifles and sprayed at the swarm of feral ponies, expending all their remaining ammunition to give us even a hope of keeping them out for a few seconds longer.

    Brimstone Blitz, without his armour, wounded, and on his last gasps of energy, clasped his hooves around Brutus's waist and swept him to the side, powering the monster into the pillar beside the cell. In return, the taller body he was holding began to wildly buck and kick, impacting on Brimstone's head with its metal elbow again and again until the raider let go.

    He was the only one of us still outside the cell, still 'protected' from the rest of them by Brutus' commands to be his prey alone. Even as I watched from my place behind a cash register in the shop cell, I realised that was the truth. Prey. Brimstone was outclassed now, bereft of his armour.

    Spinning, one of those claws swung down at the earth pony, who only barely ducked out of the way, being just clipped. Even that touch was enough to buckle his shoulder and drive Brimstone to the floor. Snapping forward, Brutus stamped and drove down again and again to Brimstone. Those claws impacted on his ribs, his skull twice, three times.

    They went for his midsection, aiming to cut. To snip. Twisting to avoid, Brimstone left himself open and the claw descended.

    The dull noise felt wickedly sharp as Brimstone fell. He toppled to the side, was caught and slammed into the ground hard enough to buckle the paving beneath them.

    Then, he lay still. Very still.

    The slaves seemed to pause. Those he had saved stared out at the pony they had rejected, now defeated. Glimmer was screaming something. I just stood in shock.

    All that planning and even the armour, but Brutus had still won. The minotaur might be dead, driven only by implants that didn't know when to turn off, but he had still won for his raiders.

    “Let’s go!”
   
    Protégé screamed out to everypony, pointing at Brutus. With Brimstone clear of his massive assailant, a firestorm tore into the minotaur from everypony without a raider coming at them. Glimmer, Sunny, and Protégé fired, as did I with Rarity's Grace, for what it was worth. Bullets sprung off armour or bit into flesh, driving Brutus in the wall. Roaring, Brutus fell against the concrete, coating it in blood and sparkling liquid as he used those metal arms of his to shelter from the gunfire. One by one, our magazines and weapons ran dry, while the beast remained standing.

    Then he came for us all.

    I had seen him go for others, but seeing this headless, machinated beast charging for all us ponies made me fear my mane would turn white with fear. Brutus surged through the raiders. One sweep of his arm sent four others crashing aside.

    Coral Eve exploded into the plaza from our cell, sending the raiders hurtling back out the doors at a speed that broke bones and snapped necks. Turning to the beast, she grit her teeth and lit her horn. Brutus charged and her magic slammed forward with what sounded like the sonic booms the Skyships made.

    Brutus was thrown over. He got up, he charged.

    Her horn flared, screaming her lungs hoarse as she hit him again and threw him end over end.

    She hit him again and again. Every time, he would get back up and every time she would grow less powerful. The pain on her face was clear, her horn glowing dangerous, sparking and ready to burst the spell.

    “I...I don't know if I can.” Coral seethed, as Brutus began to stomp toward us, building speed again.

    One last effort from Coral sent a blast so strong that even some slaves were caught up in it by accident, blasting Brutus head over hoof, hurling him onto the fountain's remains. No different, he got up and continued his efforts, stalking toward us. Then running, then leaping. I saw those claws extend, ready to descend.

    An enormous red figure came down from above him, leaping from the fallen rubble. Using his weight, the size of his body, Brimstone Blitz landed atop Brutus. Weary, but fired up, seeing us in danger, he cast aside the snatching claw and drove Brutus to the ground enough that he could get a grip on the machine. Roaring, half in rage and half in pain, he lifted Brutus clean from the ground and used his hind legs to unsteadily rush them both in the opposite direction from us, stomping over some of the raiders recovering from Coral's magic to plough Brutus through a wall.

    “GO!” He screamed, before the minotaur could recover.

    Protégé charged from the cell, revolver firing and reloading as fast as he ever had, before waving his hoof to the others.

    “Come on! Get the survivors clear to the stairs! Get them out of the plaza!”

    He ducked and lifted a charging raider over his head, driven to combat feats I'd never seen him do by sheer adrenaline; before turning to execute them on the ground. Behind him, others moved out. Coral was lifted by two slaves, as Sunny got her new-found team to help cover Protégé. With them, the injured and the raiders' newly freed prisoners began to sprint for the stairwell, led by the ex-soldiers, now grabbing raider shotguns from the floor.

    The raiders were getting up again. They were regrouping even as we put down as many as we could from Coral's attacks. I tried to help Glimmer to the stairs, before another team of raiders began to fire from above.

    “Protégé!” I screamed, pointing at the raiders now taking pot shots at us. How many of them were there!?

    Below, with us, they were furiously charging again to our weakening ranks. We didn't have the ammunition to truly kill them all after Coral's magic, and we were paying that price now. Close combat was their speciality, and very quickly they began to hurl themselves into us again. If we fell, the aid station would too. We'd come this far but we were just being overwhelmed.

    At the edge of my vision, I saw Brimstone being thrown clear of the shop again.

    The stairwell was blocked by the raiders above, pinned down. Deep in my throat, I felt blood begin to gather and bubble in my lungs. Before I knew it, I had to fall and clutch my stomach as the dust kicked up got into my airway, as the Battle of Fillydelphia's smoke and smog kept my sickness high. Gasping for air, I tried to get to the side, throat burning.

    We were going to die here. After all this time, all this distance, we were going to die.

    I was going to die.

    I didn't...I didn't want to d-

    “Into them, my ponies! Throw them out!”

    That was List Seeker's voice.

    Above us, the raiders on the balcony were suddenly very distracted and then screaming. I saw other heads emerging. Other ponies. The sick, wounded, and scared.

    The ponies we'd been protecting.

    Anyone who could possibly swing a hoof or throw a scalpel was joining in. Raiders mercilessly cut down the first ones, a submachine gun tearing through four slaves, but two or three other ponies would fall on them. I saw the badly hurt, the protected, forcing themselves into the fight for their own freedom. I saw Unity, List Seeker, Weathervane, Cosh; the nurses and doctors, Blunderbuck and his assistants, and every other pony who could move their hooves hurl themselves into the fight. I saw a raider fall with only a magical spark as Weathervane numbed every limb on his body. I saw List Seeker cough up blood even while forcing his body to give just one more strike. Just one more swing with a metal pole. Unity held a cooking pot in her magic, that she swung with a fearful desperation at any raider who came within her magic's reach.

    They surged around the balconies to protect the ponies who had been dying to defend them, before pushing down to the plaza.

    Protégé reloaded and charged in. At point blank range, he shot raider after raider, leading the defender force to join up with who we had once considered non-combatants. Slowly, we became a grouped force, one that made a counter-attack.

    Along with them, I found myself joining in, my last effort of the battle as I saw just one more act through with my sickened body. With a cry, I went with those running forward. Leaping on the back of a raider, I beat my aching hooves on his skull, wishing I had my old metal ruler, the weapon of kings! Coughing even as I did, hacking blood onto his neck, I struggled to hang on as he tried to throw me off, before two ponies piled on him to end his struggles. Noose and Lemon, my old FunFarm bullies, fell upon the raider with a gang-style beatdown, not caring for me being there. They had freedom from slavery on their minds now. Another pony caved in the raider's head with a full cash register he'd pulled to strike with.

    The ponies around us took that as their moment. Our one hope.

    One last breath to be taken.

    And they fought.

    I didn't know who had done it, who had inspired them, but together, we took the fight to the raiders. All of us, friends and comrades. A propped up Glimmerlight and a protective Coral shot and blasted ponies away from the stairwell, as Protégé organised those coming back in to fight as one. Surrounding the centre of the plaza, we lashed out, worked together, and fought for our freedom. Many ponies had been put here by these raiders, many had lost friends to them. I witnessed Glimmer throw an energy grenade to Protégé, who with unerring accuracy sent it flying through a small gap in a shop window to kill off an outpost of raiders inside. I saw Coral scream and hurl four raiders into the air, where Sunny picked them off like a sport shoot. I pulled a wounded pony from harm by looping my grapple around him and using the winch to tug him away from gunfire. From near the entrance, a burst of furious laser fire tore through the raiders, as the malfunctioning but shifting body of Mister Peace somehow managed to operate for one brief moment. Briefly, as he saw me, one metal arm raised in a salute.

    Yet behind me, came that electronic howl.

    Six raiders and slaves were crushed as Brimstone and Brutus came into the melee. Hooves and claws smashed and dodged, forcing raider and slave alike to scatter before them. Both were moving slower now, from damage or exhaustion. Compared to the opening stages, they seemed lethargic and striven to make each blow connect. The effort to move on Brimstone's face was painful to see, as was the body of Brutus being torn up by his own cybernetics trying to go beyond what his body could cope with.

    Yet Brutus was still winning.

    Together, they grappled, wrestled, and threw one another across the plaza. Brimstone got a hoof against Brutus' damaged shoulder and slammed it again and again against the wall, before Brutus rose up and slammed down. Clutching his skull, Brimstone was knocked toward the stairwell, where slaves, many of them terrified of him as much as Brutus, screamed and backed into a corner.

    Brimstone saw them, the same ones who had insulted him out of fear before. The same ones who had stayed back in terror in their cell. They begged him to go away.

    Brutus collapsed atop Brimstone, those claws reaching for his limbs, aiming to snip them clean off. Brim held on to Brutus, staying inside the reach of those claws, straining and struggling to push the beast back from these ponies behind him. I could see Brim's teeth gritted, his eye clenched closed. His limbs were shaking, his body weakening.

    “Go...run! RUN! I can...hold him.”

    The ponies were frozen in fear.

    Brimstone couldn't hold him long. Big Brutus showed why he had his name, as he lifted and sent a claw over Brimstone, aiming to get to the slaves, before gurgling some word from those emitters around his ruined neck, words without a mouth.

    “Ponies! MINE!”

    The claw raised, and the slaves screamed. Brimstone, held still, unable to move or risk being slashed in two, watched Brutus try to reach them. A deadlock of immense strength between them holding both rock solid.

    Trying to remain hidden, I fought to take my eyes off it, but found them held glued by the horrible sight. My friend dug his hooves in, trying to hold Brutus still, trying not to let that claw get around his own waist, or the other one reach the ponies behind him.

    “MINE!”

    The claw dug into the concrete and ripped chunks free, nearing them.

    “MINE!”

    Shots powered into Brutus' back. They didn't have any discernible effect.

    Brimstone Blitz lowered his head, keeping it pressed against Brutus' chest, keeping away from the claw, keeping the minotaur in one place. Baring his teeth, I saw his one eye open. He could see all I could, see ponies fighting and dying for something. For a chance. To see the weak fighting the strong.

    Somehow, I just knew that he saw what he wished he could be to the others, and it lent him the strength. The strength to give them a chance, no matter what.

    Roaring, ducking down, he pressed with all his might in a new direction. Lifting Brutus from beneath, he pressed the monster directly upwards to break the deadlock, lifting the beast a good ten feet off the floor. With one mighty heave, Brimstone threw Brutus directly upwards.

    The claw shot out, seeing its target, the head of the old Warlord. Even as he was in mid-air, Brutus didn't stop. He saw the opening and threw his body out in the only way it could while off the ground, by swinging one of those mighty arms down before he could land, closing toward Brim's head.

    I didn't even hear my own scream. Only felt the pain in my burning throat as it emerged.

    Brimstone didn't dodge.

    Experience prevailed. He anticipated it. He threw his whole body around the cutting tool as Brutus descended.

    Both of the mighty warlords came crashing down. Rolling, clutching the claw tightly, Brimstone threw himself away from the slaves and dragged both of them over and over onto the ground. Ducking the other claw, he flung his whole weight over, tugging the first arm with him, using his own weight on top of his strength to overcome Brutus' strength through sheer experience and technical skill to flip the beast over. He came to a rest atop Brutus with the claw arm in his hooves before sitting, ripping and straining his muscles like never before to pull at the arm.

    I'd seen him lift a buffalo, out-wrestle Chainlink Shackles, and kill a pony in one strike, but here he sought to quite literally tear a heavy metal fixture clean out from something stronger than he was. Arcing his head back, roaring like a dragon, he stepped one hoof on Brutus' back before ripping. The minotaur belched static and roared in tandem, the free arm unable to traverse that far back on its clunky hydraulics to reach behind himself or lift both their weights alone. Brimstone made a sharp pull, then another. Then one almighty tug.

    In a spray of fluid and sparks, Brutus' arm came clean off. Brim turned it, using it like a weapon to slam onto Brutus' back. The claw at the end opened and closed, malfunctioning with vicious power, before Brimstone upended it, waited for it to open, and pushed it around Brutus' midsection.

    The claw closed, and in an electric screech that felt like it burst my eardrums, the cybernetic figure of Brutus flailed, broke, and split in two beneath its own weapon. Tearing upwards, Brimstone ripped out the power source at the centre, built around a heart forced to keep beating, before crushing it beneath his hoof and roaring to the heavens above, the claw falling from his grip as he threw the broken body to the raiders. As the mighty beast's carcass crunched and tumbled amongst them, Brimstone himself stumbled and fell to his knees, head low and bearing a vicious look.

    Around us, raiders were stopping. They saw their warlord, their god, fall. They saw the split figure on the ground, the crushed heart, collapsed head, and the torn limb.

    Stolen of their leader's presence, the raiders seemed to freeze, to lose interest. They howled, cried, fumed like pack animals, half-broke and half-bickered. Just as Brimstone had said, they floundered in their rage, stolen of their intensity.

    That was when the slaves made their move.

    Myself, Glimmer, and Brimstone played no part in the remainder of the Siege of the Mall. Together, wounded or sick, we limped and clutched to the edge of the war. Around us, Protégé, Sunny, and Seeker led the Mall to victory, as they finally managed to push out of the plaza amongst the heartbroken raiders. The last of their warlords, the last of the Big Four, were finally gone.

    And with Brimstone's last mighty duel, the Bloodseekers became history.

    And finally...finally, the Mall was clear.

    It had been bloody. It had cost us enough that the floors were forever stained with the bodies of those who wanted freedom, but we had done it.

    I witnessed the ponies stuck on the ground floor emerging. They moved around Brimstone. He was tilted and weary, utterly spent and looking like every one of his long years had suddenly come crashing down on his shoulders. Even as he tried to stand, his legs gave out and his massive body fell to the side, landing against the ruins of a pillar. His one eye turned as his whole body rose and fell from heavy breaths, silently regarding those who had spurned him. Ponies he had put in this city.

    Slowly, the mare who'd been in range of that great claw moved forward and tearfully hugged him.

    As the last raider fled, and as we watched them strafed in their retreat by the Enclave, we saw figures on the rooftops turning to leave as Glimmer's radio intercepted those much sought after messages.

    Orders to leave the Mall alone, that it was consuming too many resources from the bigger war. Outside, we could see the slavers on the nearby rooftops beginning to move away from us.

    The Battle of Fillydelphia was not over. Not by a longshot. The city burned and wreathed itself in the fires of battle between slavers and pegasi that carried across every street we could see. Stern and the Enclave were locked in a deathgrip of violence that was growing more desperate and bitter by the hour. It would rage for hours to come and be the backdrop for anything we did now.

    But for one small moment, in one comparatively small building, there was a victory. Our victory to keep who we could safe from the hell outside.

    We'd done it.

    Somehow, under the full war and an invasion of those who had held fear over ponies in here for years, we had done it. We had done the impossible. I hadn't seen any of my friends die. We had taken ponies in and we had protected them, held on to our care and healing specialists.

    We were heroes. All of us. Surrounding me, ponies cheered, clapped hooves, and hugged one another. More than a few, even ones who had spurned my wings, screamed to me or patted me on the back as they went to their own friends. We had survived.

    Then, beside me, Glimmerlight collapsed.

    In the aftermath, I found myself sitting outside the aid station.

    Glimmer had been rushed inside by Brimstone, who now sat opposite me with a very nervous-looking nurse trying to tend to him. The big raider was lying on his side, his eye half-closed and looking close to dropping into a deep sleep. Pink welts covered the massive rends Brutus had made in his body, where Weathervane had used intense healing magic to try and close them. Black bruises showed up through his course coat, and half his face looked swollen. It was becoming clear that Brim's fighting was, for now, done.

    I'd met him as a raider seeking redemption with little hope of ever managing it. How far he'd come.

    How far we'd all come.

    Earlier, we'd watched in on Glimmer, but as more and more wounded had come, we'd been ushered out. The moaning and crying from inside the room told of how crowded it had become as things ended. One sight of that room had effectively killed the sense of victory. It had been all I could do to keep the RadAway I'd drank down.

    Over half of the ponies who had come here for salvation were now dead. Another quarter badly hurt. Of those who couldn't fight, a full third of them had been slaughtered in the plaza floor at the start by Brutus.

    We'd won our right to be left in peace for now, but it had cost us dearly.

    Something Wildcard had said struck deep when I realised I was only thinking of Glimmerlight in there right now, not the dozens of others calling for potions or help.

    With a light squeaking of a broken wheel, I heard the approach of Mister Peace. Turning the corner into the aid station area, he slowly trundled toward us with Unity perched on his arms.

    The moment our eyes found one another, I was up off the ground, and she was down from his arms; as we ran into one another's hooves and held on tightly. I was crying. I was pretty sure she was too, as we just held on. Even those few seconds of exertion sent my body into weary pain, and our tight embrace slowly faltered into a tired leaning.

    Behind her, Mister Peace continued his own repairs to his chassis with great care, now looking a good deal less pristine than he had before. His screen was still badly flickering.

    “Murky. I...I...” Her voice stammered under sobs, and yet I found my own did too. My tears simply ran down her back. In pain and relief in equal measure. I felt her eyes wet against my neck as I saw the bloodied bandages around her shoulders and a vicious bruise on her back. I wasn't much better, even after a couple of high strength potions.

    “Glimmerlight, is she-” Unity started, then stopped as she leaned back and looked me in the eyes, “Mister Peace said she was, um, hurt.”

    I looked down, my wings drooping, “We-Weathervane says she lost a lot of blood a-and because there's s-so much radiation in the air from the dust we all need RadAway but...” I gulped, “she can't take RadAway.”

    Unity bit her lip, “Is she-”

    “I don't know. The radiation’s making it hard. Weathervane's working on her personally, brewing up some RadPurge. We couldn't stay in there. Weathervane ordered us out, even Brimstone. The only one he couldn't get to move was Coral Eve. She's by Glimmer's side.”

    Neither of us really knew what to say after that.

    “It's still a win for us.” I choked out.

    “I know. We saved so many. Just doesn't feel like it. It's foolish but I always sorta' hoped we'd not let anypony die at all. They say it's worse outside.”

    In the distance, away from our brief peace, I could hear the roaring flames surging through the city, and the steady but unending thump and rattle of bombing runs and anti-air fire. The slaves caught out in that, I just couldn’t imagine it. We'd even heard rumours of living shield tactics.

    “And the orb.” Unity continued, looking pale and withdrawn, “Shackles got it from us, right under our noses. I know it's not our only way out but just...Aurora trusted her spell to stop the memory nexus to me before she died a-and the orb was always to be our way to round it all off. He wants us, but who's to say he won't find another two ponies years down the line, after we're gone? Aurora died thinking I'd stop it forever. I know she understood I wasn't expected to do anything heroic but...”

    Unity paused and sighed, “Sorry, I'm tired and rambling and worried...”

    “S'ok.” I had to take a few seconds to gather my energy to speak any more, “f-for all we know, we might get it back when we go for the foals, right? Shackles might be...and we can steal it off him.”

    Her hoof lightly rubbed my shoulder, before she rested half on the wall and half against my side, “What happens, happens...I suppose. Too tired to think more than a few minutes ahead. Just hope for your sister, Murky. Whichever way it ends, we still did the right thing here, today.”

    Slowly, I felt Unity and I lean on one another as tiredness crept over our bodies, and stayed like that for however long it took. Minutes may have turned to hours. I may have dozed, or sketched aimlessly. I looked at the drawing I had done of my friends. I could see myself, Coral and her son beside Caduceus, and then Unity beside me. Behind them all, Brimstone towered above Glimmerlight, who was grinning beside Coral.

    I had at least one more I wanted to add to it, but I just couldn't bring the energy to do more than randomly draw lines in the vague shape of Skyships and wings after the first. Unity watched, but said nothing. Around us, other ponies concerned for their own friends began to filter in to wait. Every so often, some would sigh in relief, while others sadly trotted away. More than once, some Enclave strike would rattle the foundations of the Mall or the thud of cannons would come from nearby. We only sat in fearful silence amongst it, waiting for news.

    Finally, at last, Weathervane exited the aid station. All three of us stood quickly as he looked at us directly.

    “She's awake.”

    No force in the world could have stopped me leaping onto that stretcher to hug my sister. Ahead of all the others, I buried my muzzle into her shoulder, wings stiffly trying to flap behind me as I cried and cried, yet laughed and smiled as I felt her ruffle my mane with a weak hoof.

    “Hey, lil'bro...” she said weakly, tiredly, “next time we party my way, okay?”

    “I'm just so glad you're okay!” I held on to her hoof, sitting beside her on the bed.

    “Couldn't let go yet. Still gotta find you that dashing stallion.” Glimmer smirked, before turning to the side and seeing Brimstone there, holding out a hoof to bump one of his, “Nice work, partner. How come you're the one who was fighting most, and yet I'm the one in bed? How do you do it?”

    “Glim.” Brimstone nodded his head. There was something specific about the way he worded it.

    “Ever the eloquent one.” Glimmer giggled, then seemed to regret it as she grimaced at the movement in her back, before her view found Coral.

    The older mare stood with her eyes tellingly red.

    “Coral, I'll try to be better in time for-ngh, for going after Chirpy and-”

    “Hush,” Coral's hoof landed on Glimmer's shoulder, “you've done enough.”

    Those words, shades of what she had once said to dismiss her help, now sounded entirely different. They came with a small smile and a recognition. It was all Coral needed to say, and all Glimmer needed to hear.

    “Hey, Unity. Keep lil'Murky out of trouble, will you? Big sis' is gonna be in here for a while, just remember to occasionally poke fun at him about Protégé and I'm sure he'll get by.”

    Unity chuckled, before reaching forward to hold Glimmer's hoof briefly, as I groaned.

    Glimmer nodded to the side, “Speaking of Mister hot flanks himself.”

    I saw Protégé limp his way into the aid station. Weaving around the rushing nurses, he approached us with Sunny in tow.

    “Glimmerlight, how are you feeling?” He asked, his voice measured and polite as always, even as he looked and sounded drawn and exhausted.

    “Like I've taken some Buck while drunk and accidentally bedded a Hellhound.”

    “An improvement, then.”

    “Oi...” Glimmer laughed, then gasped, “Ow...”

    Protégé smirked, clearly as relieved as anyone else.

    “We've been keeping eyes out, but it seems the radio intercept was right, we're being left alone. Means we finally have a chance to do what we needed,” his eyes crept to Coral, “go after the foals. Now's the time we can go on the offensive, while Blunderbuck finishes that bomb. We'll need a raiding party, a small group of those still healthy to go to Shackles' den, the one with the mining just outside it. We suspect the foals are there.”

    “Then you know I am going.” Coral Eve trotted around the bed to face him.

    “Of course, but there was one other thing. We had a brief visitor leave us a message when Sunny and I were out by the front just now. Someone I never thought I'd see again.”

    All eyes were on Protégé.

    “So, who?” Unity asked.

    Protégé hesitated, almost as though he didn't believe it himself.

    “Xenith.”

    Nopony spoke, as he read aloud a note in his hoof.

    “When the sky returns, make your attempt.”