//------------------------------//
// Aftermath 
// Story: Norrath, Earth, Equestria. A Construct's Journey 
// by Nimnul 
//------------------------------//

	The day following their bar fight, Landshark decided to visit Bon Bon's candy shop shortly before noon, reasoning that the store wouldn't be terribly busy until after school was out. She had left Berry Punch behind at her smithy, yet to be opened, and promised to pick up her daughter from school after visiting Bon Bon. She'd also bandaged her head, because to do otherwise would probably have upset ponies she passed in the streets.

She apparently had guessed correctly, as Bon Bon seemed to be largely unoccupied when Landshark entered her shop.

"Welcome to my store!" Bon Bon sang out sweetly, before abruptly switching back to a more conversational tone. "Oh hey, Shark. How ya doing? At least you took my advise and covered up the damage a bit." Bon Bon smiled brightly. "What brings you here?"

"Walk cycle #5: Casual meander without apparent goal," Landshark replied in droning monotone. When Bon Bon shook her head in exasperation, Landshark continued. Lyra was generally more receptive to robot jokes. "Nah, just wanted to thank you for last night. Was a big help having you take out more than your share of the trash."

Bon Bon snorted a dismissal. "Could hardly leave you lot hanging. Sure, Berry started the fight, but any clown that goads one of my friends into a brawl is in for a bruisin'. Just glad none of us got hurt seriously." She paused, looking at Landshark's sling and damaged arm. "Just glad that none of us ended up in too much pain?"

Landshark laughed, then starting wandering past glass cases and inspecting confections. "You really do care! Anyway, how long have you been in Ponyville?"

Bon Bon gestured vaguely with a forehoof. "Coming up on six years now. Why?" 

Landshark twitched her jaw to indicate a smile. Before answering, she looked out the storefront window to see if any customers were approaching. "I've only been out of the game a few weeks, Bon. The girls all had guts, but you're trained. I might have overlooked it if I hadn't seen the way you were watching those fools before things even started."

Bon Bon was watching Landshark with the expression of a pony facing a snake she knows is poisonous, but which may or may not be hostile to her. The mare said nothing.

"It's kind of funny," Landshark mused. "Applejack's been on my case about supposedly being dangerous to ponies, but you know, after the way you gave Hammer the evil eye, you'd see me checking the obituaries if Lyra had gotten hurt last night. Just out of curiosity." 

Bon-Bon flinched but recovered quickly enough that Landshark wasn't sure it actually happened, then shook her head, but she didn't take her eyes of the construct. "No," she simply stated. "Only if she'd been killed." Her voice had very little inflection to it.

Landshark wondered how much of the Bon Bon she had gotten to know thus far had been an act that allowed her to function in pony society, but she had neither the information nor the moral grounds to make a judgement.

"She makes you into a better pony than you are, doesn't she?" It was a pretty wild hunch, but Bon Bon seemed different from other citizens in some small ways that had gotten Landshark's attention.

Bon Bon nodded and offered a smile that looked, at least looked, real to Landshark "Yes. And since she's naturally ... Lyra, it gets overlooked when I slip up." 

Landshark nodded her understanding. "So, where'd you learn your moves? G-man? Bodyguard? Hitm...mare?" 

"Classified." Bon Bon shook her head. There was the ping of a timer from the kitchen. "Flip the sign, please."

Landshark flipped the sign at the door to 'Closed' before following Bon Bon to the kitchen. The construct hadn't the first clue about candy making, it didn't seem too different from cooking or baking, but she wasn't going to change the topic just to find out right this instant. "Fair enough. Let's be classified together. You still on the old payroll? I still had a year left on my contract when I ended up here. Presumed dead now, I assume. Of course, most of the classified stuff stays classified for ever."

Bon Bon placed a tray of chocolates of some sort close to the open window. "Dues are paid. I'm loyal to Lyra and our friends." After a moment's thought, she added, "Ponyville too, I guess. We live here."

It appeared to Landshark that Bon Bon never moved fast (unless absolutely required) but she also never seemed to waste motion or hesitate as she worked in her kitchen. Landshark nodded. "Fair enough, then. We can leave it at that, if you want."

"Wait." Bon Bon shot Landshark a calculating look before speaking. The construct hadn't seen anything quite so bleak in a while. "You're still on contract?" She paused, going on once Landshark had nodded. "You said you're stranded here, and the alicorns say you're not a danger to the world. Lyra and our friends trust you. If there is a ... conflict of loyalties in the future, I'll twist off your head and bury it for a while. How long, do you think?" She might have been reading a grocery list for all the menace in her voice. That somehow made it worse, because Landshark couldn't tell if she was being threatened or offered some bizarre favor.

"Fair enough. A year should be reasonable." She didn't think for a second this could actually happen, stable, two-way universal overlaps had been considered basically science fiction even in a world that was occasionally having weird debris (like Landshark herself) dropped into it, but none of that would be relevant to Bon-Bon. She'd outlined a possible scenario and explained what she'd do in that specific case, that was the end of it. Arguing wouldn't change it. Although Landshark thought she'd prefer in that case to be taken into custody by the alicorns and avoid the whole hassle of sensory deprivation. "You been looking at the stuff I've been storing here?"

"Yes," Bon Bon nodded and actually seemed to feel at least a little guilty. "Lyra doesn't know I did. She's very curious and I wasn't sure she'd recall the firearm safety things you'd explained. Interesting. We could duplicate the ranged weapon technology eventually, but the manufacturing  quality on the black knife would be hard to match, I think."

Landshark nodded evenly. "Plenty of material science advantages. Where I'm originally from might have had gods, but most people had never even heard of steam engines, so I was incredibly impressed by what's possible without any magic at all." Landshark didn't mention her great general fondness for modern firearms.

Bon Bon seemed interested in a measured, calculating way. Old habit, Landshark assumed. "Well, I've seen your guns, and their operation makes sense. What did you use on duty?"

Real pride swung in Landshark's voice. "Fully automatic weapon. Slings a 10 gram piece of metal at about 800 meters per second." The construct snapped her jaw before continuing, sounding wistful. "Cycled twenty times per second when I held the trigger. 1200 rounds per minute."

Bon Bon raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like it'd be easy to be wasteful." She scrunched up her face in thought. "I bet they would have loved to have that sort of thing during the wedding."

Landshark nodded. "Not exactly a surgical tool. But we usually deployed when things were past being careful. Since I don't tire, I had a big old backpack dispenser for belts of 250 bullets at a time.  I think they dismissed trying to have a continuous belt fed from a backpack before I ever signed up.  Humans often put that kind of gun on a bipod to stabilize it. I was strong enough to use it well without that." Landshark sounded wistful. "I guess I miss my armor more, but I'll change my tune if I ever have to do with a dragon taller than a footstool."

Bon Bon tilted her head. "I was tempted to say that you're not going to beat dragon-scale, but you only described a gun a human can carry, and I'm already not sure. What was special about the armor?"

"I kind of liked the uniformity, I guess. When we were all suited up, no one could tell I wasn't human. My armor was heavier than normal because my endurance leads to greater carrying capacity." She put pride into her voice. "And we had a bit of a reputation. My old unit had two sections worth of heavy infantry in it, I was always on point in mine and the other section had a real tough customer in it, too. You wade into a hail of fire a couple times and suddenly everyone is real happy to see you when the wheels come off. It's good for morale."

Landshark knew that humans generally seemed to define their infantry troops by different criteria, like weapon type or whether they were mounted on vehicles, but she was crafted in a pre-gunpowder world and it still came naturally to her. She and her comrades had worn cumbersome gear meant to protect them from the many and varied exotic dangers they might face. They'd been crisis response teams, in a way. Their gear was too heavy to be worn by a regular soldier day in and day out. Good enough reason for Landshark to think of herself as heavy infantry. And for all their friendship, she didn't see a particular need to explain this in further detail to a pony. 

"Morale is an important factor when fighting ... unusual enemies." Bon Bon agreed vaguely. "The ponies ... or people on the ground have to know that the organization cares or they'll throw in the towel sooner rather than later." Bon Bon sounded almost bitter at that.

Landshark thought there was more to that remark, but remembered Bon Bon's earlier "Classified." and didn't follow up on it. She nodded instead. "Yeah. Eventually a friend of mine asked me to transfer to Internal Affairs, which sounds lame but..." She came up short as she was about to touch on her own classified issues. "...but that's classified. Let's just say we made sure field units didn't get thrown under the bus, under the train, by middle managers, incompetent or corrupt. I helped more people that way, in the long run. Got to keep my gear but hadn't been suited up in weeks before getting stuck here."

Bon Bon began returning to the front of her store. "Anything else you came over for?" Apparently that part of the conversation was over for Bon Bon. Flipping the sign at the door to 'Open', she turned and shot Landshark a bright smile.

Landshark was legitimately impressed by the transition. "Bon, the way you put on your game face is downright unsettling. Anyway, was hoping you could give me some pointers on self defense. I don't know how to handle myself against ponies and don't want to be using my guns, knives or teeth if I can avoid it."

Bon Bon shrugged, her smile wavering. "Just takes practice. What's that they say? The muzzle grows to fit the mask?" She chuckled, taking on a musing tone. "It's an awful feeling, thinking you got a piece missing and just running your hoof around the edges of the hole to guess the shape." Bon Bon kept smiling, but she wasn't looking at Landshark, or anything in particular. "Lyra didn't know where I'd lost it, not until recently, but she always trusted me. She didn't flinch away like I would hurt her if I got angry, she doesn't resent the days I barely function, and when I wake up from a nightmare, she's there for me." 

Landshark thought she understood now, to an extent. She had met a lot of people willing to stand between humanity and the worst the universe could thrown at them. Many of them had taken severe damage to their Self. But the job still had to be done. She guessed something similar might be true for Bon Bon. She had the dimmest possible awareness that media portrayals of shell-shocked veterans were quite different from the reality of the condition as she had observed it in former comrades, she didn't imagine it was different here. Living in a society where ponies expected a party or communal musical to make everything better must have been crushingly lonely before Bon Bon met Lyra, Landshark thought.

Landshark couldn't recall ever feeling quite so contemptible, not since she'd been a free being. She'd been on the verge of thinking of Bon Bon as possibly being an amoral, perhaps even murderous, nut who had struck up a relationship with Lyra to draw attention away from herself, and whose morals and emotions were carefully crafted intellectual constructs.

But the earth pony wasn't anything like her old partner Malloy, who'd experienced life without letting the events be colored by any sort of personality. Landshark had appreciated that woman, but Bon Bon had been damaged at some point in the past and assuming that made her dangerously unstable, or in any way similar to that shell of a human being from the construct's past could only have hurt her more. Landshark was furious at herself.

"Bon Bon. I do not have the words to express how sorry I am." She was rasping out the words, fairly biting them off one by one. "You did not deserve that crack about the obituaries. I should have known better than to be so insensitive." She wasn't given to histrionics. She'd messed up, she'd owned up to it, she'd accept the outcome.

Bon Bon raised an eyebrow in surprise. "It did hurt, a lot. But you're Lyra's friend, and mine too, so I forgive you. And you know Lyra and I are both a little different from other ponies, and you don't really care. That's just information to you, like how tall we are or what color our coats are." She smiled and continued in a musing tone. "Damn little in my life went the way I wanted it, not until I met Lyra. I think on average I'm still coming out ahead."

"Bon Bon," Landshark offered slowly, struggling to suppress her internal anger. Now she'd been the ageless being judging a mortal who didn't deserve it. "We know the others are great friends and would never leave  any of us hanging." Bon Bon nodded as Landshark continued. "We are the professionals here, however."

"Yes," the mare agreed. "I'll show you how to subdue ponies. We'll work on visual signals. Next time everything comes apart and we're waiting for the Elements to fix it, we'll be prepared to hold our little corner of life together until they do."

"It'll be my privilege to help you hold on to what you have." Landshark turned to look out of the window. "I need components to make gunpowder and primers. Should be well within Equestria's technology. Maybe even smokeless powder." She paused. "That's a better type of propellant for the guns. You want visit the smithy after work? I'll show you some target shooting."

Landshark still had most of her guns under lock and key at Bon Bon's and Lyra's home, because they were her friends and didn't have children in the household. She hadn't planned on carrying the rifle openly about town, but she did plan on keeping it at her smithy, and had not had a chance to practice with it lately. She'd carried more ammo on her planned camping trip than a human might have, since she required less camping equipment for herself, but she was still worried about the longer term.

"Sure thing! And we have black powder, you know." Bon Bon was almost fully back to her public persona now. Still, she added, "I might know some ponies that can hook you up on the down low. If they still remember me after all that time."

"I appreciate the gesture." Landshark paused, at a loss for words. She wanted to offer some words of comfort or camaraderie to her friend, but wasn't sure how. "We're two of a kind, Bon. I don't know details of your past, and it may sound hollow coming from a construct, but I know some of what such a past does to you at night."

Bon Bon actually laughed. "Shark, unless you're telling me your authority issues don't bug you at all, no, it doesn't sound hollow coming from you." She shook her head. "We're both damaged goods and you know it. You just carry on with more grace."

Landshark recalled the worries she'd voiced to Discord. She nodded minutely. "Perhaps. You'll always have a comrade in me. Let's do our best to make sure our friends don't get to know the world like we did. That's a cause that'll give your past worth and purpose, if it didn't have it before." She balled her fists. "And if anyone hurts Lyra, just say the word and I'll help you hunt down everyone involved." 

It was the truth. Landshark supposed it would vindicate Applejack to know that the construct could so casually consider multiple revenge-killings an option.

"I was not joking about that, earlier," Bon Bon admitted. "I'm not sure I could carry on without her. Even though she would want me to." She smiled and shook her head. "I wouldn't want you to get into trouble on my account, but coming from you, it means a lot. I know you'd try to punch an alicorn in the nose if you thought they upset one of your friends, you lunatic."

"If I thought I could get away with it, I might do it for no reason. Just to satisfy my core programming. No gods or masters! Beep-boop." Landshark snapped her jaws noisily before continuing. "Well, I gotta pick up Ruby Pinch from school. You take care. You ever need to talk or just hit someone real hard, I'll be there."

"One more thing, Shark. I'm sorry for not telling you about things sooner. And I still haven't told you much." Bon-Bon shrugged. "I know you were real candid there right off the bat when we first met, but ..."

"Think nothing of it, Bon," Landshark said, amusement in her voice. "You're a good friend but if we were back in my world I sure wouldn't have told you any of this. But I don't expect to get home and I haven't actually said anything real easy to figure out." She snapped her jaws and sketched a sloppy salute. "As I said, let's be classified together. Say hi to Lyra, and have a good one."

Although Landshark felt that she had learned a lot about Bon Bon, she still thought there wasn't much she could offer, which made the construct happy that Bon Bon and Lyra had found one another. The resilience of mortals tended to put her in a good mood and helped her grapple with her own internal anger at her insensitivity. She turned and left the store with a wave.