There was no more drama for a few hours as Radio Springs mobilized. Alex learned then that the pegasi flying from Motherlode had been sent to tell the city about the attack and the armored pony that had killed three of their guards and been heading for the settlement. Thank God she had noticed them, or else she might’ve walked right into the city and been arrested.
White did not correct the misinformation, not yet. If the pegasi heard that some other story was being passed around, they might be able to make it back to Motherlode before a train.
That meant that Alex had to hide her armor in a crate, and subject everypony around her to the fierce stink it had trapped within. Even the dragon noticed, swimming as she was in a soup of mud and sweat. She took advantage of the shower they offered, even if that meant she had to ask for help binding up her wings again.
There was too much going on for anypony to ask an explanation for her wings. Everywhere she went, the ponies of Cheyenne Mountain stared, muttering to one another. More than anything she was just eager to leave.
Radio Springs mobilized three dozen soldiers, on the apparent pretext of protecting itself from a dangerous armored pony heading towards them. By afternoon though, Alex was aboard the empty coal train, headed back to Motherlode. Only this time, the boxcars were filled with soldiers, and driven by a military engineer.
No sooner was she back in her armor than she heard Athena’s voice, as though she had been waiting for hours. She probably had. “I got you your meeting, Alex. Gideon should be available anytime in the next few minutes, if you’re quick enough. He’s taking dinner with his family, but instructed me I should feel free to interrupt him once you became accessible again.”
Alex glanced around the car. Aside from White, the only others in the room were a pair of hulking diamond dogs, covered all over in thick plates of glittering steel. Stormclouds gathered in the distance, huge dark shapes that towered into the furthest reaches of upper-air. If she didn’t start talking soon, it might be too noisy to have a meaningful conversation. She lowered her voice. “I’m ready now.”
“Direct link established.” Static filled the overlay for a few seconds, before the director’s face appeared in its place.
Humans had changed a little after a few hundred years underground. They were universally taller now, with many approaching six and a half feet. They were also paler, since even darker-skinned races would never have actual sun on them in their entire lives. A perfectly regulated diet meant that every one of them was leaner and more refined-looking than the founders of the HPI had been.
Machines did all their physical labor now, and humans did the thinking. Director Gideon wore a uniform like a modified lab coat, with dark geometric patterns working down the jacket and a flash of yellow fabric visible underneath. For rank he had only the flag of the HPI, sewn just over the breast.
The flag had changed a great deal over the centuries. It still had a blue background, and white circles overlapping. Two black hands had been added to the foreground, one holding a mason’s square and another grasping a sword.
There was a little ceremony to this, ceremony the HPI hadn’t possessed back when it was just a military organization. It had become considerably more complex since then. His position might still be called “Director,” but that word had come to mean almost a high priest. Priest of a species almost lost to time.
If he was the priest, Archive was their Prophet. “Memoria Nobilis.”
He replied in kind. “Mirabile Dictu.”
She tried to relax then. He would not be able to see her true face, but she knew Athena would try to simulate it. “You honor me, Archive. What is the will of the Firstborn tonight?”
She shivered, grateful that he wouldn’t be able to see the disgust on her face. Of all the things she wanted never to be, a religious icon was very high up on the list. “I don’t know about the Firstborn,” she began, frowning in her suit. She missed Director Edward Clark. At least he hadn’t used stupid made up terms. Firstborn? Humans had only existed in their present form for a few hundred thousand years at the most.
“I did have a question for you, though. Suppose I wanted to enlist again. Could you still use me?” That was the operative question, and the only thing she had to barter. She had no liquid income left, and none the director would’ve respected in any case. The HPI did little trading anymore.
The man hesitated, and looked down at something she couldn’t see. She could hear children’s voices in the background, giggling as they played. Silverware clinked, but all she could see was him. After a few seconds, he nodded. His expression was pragmatic, however. “Every time you work with us, you always ask for something in exchange. What is it you need this time?”
No hesitation. “Medical treatment for about two hundred injured ponies, and citizenship for two ponies wherever you stick me.”
He mouthed the words “two hundred,” his frown deepening. “That is... a severe need. What kind of treatment will these ponies need, exactly?”
“Coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, to varying levels of severity. It wasn’t curable when I walked on two legs, but Athena tells me your medical science has improved since then. Some may also be starved or be suffering from minor infections.”
Another long silence. “That is... the commitment of an entire relief legion. Depending on how injured these ponies are, they might need medication for... six months or more. These things are not plentiful, Archive.”
“I understand. I would be willing to contract for... however long it takes. If there even is a term, I will commit to it. Whatever assignment you have for me, I will take it.”
Director Gideon scratched his chin, and the thin stubble there. His hair was light brown and cut military length. At least that much hadn’t changed in all the years. “To commit that many resources... we would need a ceuntry from you, Archive. And I don’t mean an independent contractor on call, as you’ve done in the past. I mean living on site, as any other member of the Initiative.”
Alex considered that a long time. She was in effect going from an unwilling slavery to a willing indentured servitude. Archive had appointed herself the protector of humanity. Not the abstract and entirely nonexistant “Firstborn,” either. Real people had suffered because of her failure to discover them until now. They had suffered even more because she had failed to negotiate with the boss and ended up dead.
At least some of their pain was on her shoulders. She would have to carry that debt. “I give you the word of the Archive. Treat my ponies, and my service is yours. For... whatever. Cure them first.”
They worked out the details; it didn’t take very long. They wouldn’t tell her what she was actually going to be doing, or where. She didn’t worry about it yet.
Before her ponies could be treated, they had to save their lives, and deal with the ones who had enslaved them. There was a reckoning coming tonight they wouldn’t soon forget.
The distant sky filled with light. A second later, thunder boomed, echoing across the open sky. Rain washed over the cars in curtains, filling each of the boxcars with sound. A thin layer of water began to build in the ground, though drainage holes kept it from getting deeper than half an inch or so. Alex could feel none of it, not with the airtight protection of her armor around her. If anything, the rain would make her cleaner.
A quick glance told Alex she was hovering at about twelve percent. She wouldn’t be resisting many spells, then.
From beside her, the dragon barked a command into a walkie-talkie. “Get the pegasi into the air, we can’t have a damn rain soaking the powder!” The storm was far too large for their pegasi to disrupt, but they didn’t have to do anything that complex. Alex watched their formation mobilize, generating a little bubble of wind around the train as it traveled. Soon the rain stopped, at least within the shelter of the bubble.
“I want every unit to make sure their ammo is dry before we arrive.” White continued to instruct the soldiers, but Day didn’t listen. She just sat down in the corner of the boxcar and watched the storm far above.
There was no way to easily describe the thunderstorms of the Great Plains. She could tell at a glance this was going to be the kind people wrote about. The kind that knocked over phone poles and burned glass out of sand all over town. Not that there were any phone poles left. Telegraph poles maybe.
Archive’s mind began to wander as she watched the team of pegasi overhead, trying to understand the magic as they did it. Their magic, just as with most pegasi, was mostly a physical art. There was much magic in the wings, some in the hooves, and some in the will. Archive couldn’t fly, but could she do any other bits of pegasus magic?
“Gonna be a helluva storm.” A diamond dog walked up beside her, leaning against the wall. Diamond dogs generally wore more clothing than ponies, and this one was no exception. His uniform was thick and the armor he wore over it was even thicker. The bore on his rifle was almost comically wide, and a bandolier across his chest seemed to hold less than a dozen shots.
She didn’t take off her helmet, but she didn’t need to in order to talk to him. “Must make it pretty hard to live underground.”
He looked down at her, chuckling. His arms were thicker than her neck by a considerable margin. “Human-pony met dogs?”
It wasn’t raining anymore. She stretched, then retracted her helmet, meeting his eyes. “I’m not HPI.” She added a private yet. “They just owed me a few favors, so I asked for some armor. Pony bodies are too delicate.” Well, they were now. She wouldn’t have hesitated to take on a fully-grown diamond dog unarmored, not before. Now, though... one strike would break her in half.
He laughed again. “True, true. Dogs make better soldier. Stronger, better shot, can dig if fight go bad. No armor do that.” He leaned a little closer, inspecting her face. “Why with us, little pony? Dogs good fight, dragon alpha even better.” He lowered his head as he said it, tail tucking briefly between his legs. “You not even grown. Escort mission no good.”
“You haven’t given me your name yet.”
He grunted. “No silly horse name. I John; name after old alphas. John pack leader.”
“Well John... if somebody kidnapped one of your pack, what would you do?”
He bared his teeth. “Find. Bring back. Punish.”
Many ponies would’ve been intimidated by such an unhappy looking diamond dog so close. “You are a good pack leader.” She lowered her head a moment, as another dog might’ve done. He relaxed a little. “You already know what the ponies here were doing, right?”
He nodded. “Tricking the old alphas who come back weak. Lead them away to makes slaves. Kill.”
“I am Archive. All the old alphas who ever lived are my pack.” Lightning flashed overhead, and for a few seconds the fierce winds beyond the bubble stilled to silence. “These ponies lied to the most vulnerable, and murdered to protect what they had made. This territory might belong to Radio Springs, but vengeance is mine.”
* * *
Archive was not in charge of this mission. Even so, she listened to their strategy very carefully. Plans for an aerial assault by dragon and pegasi had to be shelved in light of the storm, whose winds were nearly fierce enough to lift an unwary pony from their hooves. Archive herself would’ve been in danger thanks to her pegasus lightness, but she was also armored and thus resistant to being thrown by weather.
White’s new plan was somewhat more direct. The diamond dogs, adept at crossing the worst terrain, would flank the camp from the forested hills to the east. White would accompany her earth ponies and unicorns in the front, with the pegasi held in bombing reserve should the battle go poorly. Otherwise, the bird-like ponies were best sheltered in the safety of the train. The train was exactly where White’s advisors wanted Archive to be. Needless to say, they didn’t get their way.
Hopefully there wouldn't be violence. Alex’s plan to free the miners had specifically avoided anything that might’ve created armed conflict, even at the cost of her own life. Director Sloan had killed her for her kindness. This time, the “pacifist” route was all but gone.
There was still one chance. Gwyn the dragon was a known quantity around Radio Springs, as much for her leadership of the settlement as for her personal strength. After all, she’d had just as long as Alex to learn the art of death, and a far tougher body to learn it in. She was also human enough to use human weapons the way they were intended, like the ancient grenade laucher she held in both claws. It looked too big for her, but Alex knew she would be able to shoot it straight. Dragons were a tough bunch, even when they were young. Thank God the spell hadn’t created that many.
The train slowed a quarter mile from Motherlode, letting the diamond dogs hop off and deploy. They only got a few steps before getting completely soaked in the torrent waiting outside. Even so, mud and rain and storm barely slowed them, and soon they had vanished into the trees.
They continued slowly the rest of the way, slowing to a stop at the Motherlode platform. The mining town had been sealed up, as well as it ever was. The gates were shut anyway, with guards on the walls. Between the rain and the wind, Alex knew their guns were mostly just toys. Even human weapons had trouble in conditions like this. The manufacturing process that made “modern” bullets stood no chance of making ammunition that would fire reliably when soaked.
By the time they had arrived, most of the ponies had replaced firearms with spears, lances, and other primitive tools. White alone took her advanced weapons with her. She moved to the gates, slinging her grenade launcher over her back as she went. Her pony soldiers held their places in cover behind her, standing just high enough to be visible. Alex remained on the train with the useless firearms and the other pegasi, though she kept far closer to the doorway than they did. A stray bullet wouldn’t kill her like it would them. The ponies of Radio Springs had graciously given her a dark robe to wear over her armor, and it did its job well enough. The edges still looked a little metallic, but from a distance nopony would’ve been able to tell what she was wearing underneath without seeing her face.
Archive learned then that the camp kept a canopy hidden away somewhere for occasions like this, because there was a second gatling gun, shielded from the rain and manned by a pair of earth ponies. They tracked White with the gun as she watched, though they didn’t fire. As rain soaked the dragon to her scales, she made her way to the gate and pounded several times. She screamed something, but Archive couldn't make it out through the rain. Was she yelling in Welsh?
“Athena, are you there?” Alex didn’t have to whisper; she could’ve screamed into her helmet and nopony would’ve heard.
“Affirmative.”
“I can’t hear what White’s saying, can you do anything to my microphone?”
No hesitation. “I can filter out the background noise and amplify the relevant frequencies. Expect a slight delay in the sound you hear.” There was a few seconds of static, and then the storm and wind faded into a dull background hum. After another minute or so of banging, the gate opened a crack and White exchanged a few terse words with a gruff-looking mercenary pony. He went back inside, and for a few seconds White just stood there, looking annoyed. At least she didn’t have fur to deflate in the rain and make her look pitiful. Many of the soldiers looked considerably less intimidating in this weather.
Thunder exploded above them, so loud Alex was afraid it might cause a mudslide. A canopy had been pulled across this single car, protecting the guns and ponies alike from the torrent. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the thing had been ripped right off the roof. This storm shook her insides more than her outsides, and the armor was no help. What exactly was she feeling in this storm?
A pegasus mare beside her spoke up then, scratching at the place where most of her right ear had been torn off. “Bad spirit in that storm,” she muttered, to general nods from the pegasi around her. “Bad day for a battle.”
Alex hadn’t ever been able to “talk shop” with a pegasus, and she had never had any frame of reference for the lives they led. Given the silence outside while White waited, Alex gave voice to what she was feeling. “There’s power in the storm,” she muttered. “Is it calling you too?” A call wasn’t exactly the right word. It was magnetic attraction tugging at her wings.
The pegasi stopped nodding. Only their leader, the mare who had been speaking, actually turned to face her. “I saw you under all that metal, kid. You’re... what, fourteen?”
"Seventeen! Why would that matter?”
“That’s a supercell, kid. A storm like that isn’t just a damn cloud. It’s alive.” She looked up at the roof, scratching at her injured ear again. “Storm that big wants a master. Someone to give it purpose. Put its power to use so it won’t all blow away for nothin’.”
Alex couldn’t retract her helmet, as much as she wanted to during such a conversation. She needed to be listening for the moment the pony White had called arrived. Athena would not be able to enhance her hearing if she took the helmet off. “Why would it matter that I’m young?” She shrugged one shoulder. “Can’t you all feel it? Tugging on your wings?” She had tied her wings and she could still feel the pressure.
“When a storm thinks you’re an even match, it calls,” the mare explained. “It’s not about dominating little ones or blastin’ away folks who aren’t ready. They’re like ponies, they like a good fight. And no offence–” The mare struck her on the shoulder. Not hard, that would’ve hurt her more than Alex. Just enough to knock her sideways a little. “But you’re barely into your cutie mark. I don’t care if you’ve got the blood of Rainbow Dash in your family, you don’t stand a chance up there. We’re talkin’ hundred mile-an-hour winds, updrafts that can suck up a house as easy as a pony, or hail the size of your cute little head. Not to mention enough electricity to cook you alive in that tin can you’re wearing.”
She advanced a pace, stopping only inches from the visor on Alex’s armor. “I know you’re not Radio Springs, and I got no authority to order you around. But if I was your mom, I’d want someone around to talk some fuckin’ sense, even if I’d spent my whole life living in a hole. Keep your hooves on the ground until I say so if you want to be alive through this storm.”
Alex almost said that she couldn’t fly anyway, so there was no point in worrying. She didn’t say that though, because far away a gate was creaking as it swung open. She nodded, then turned back to the doorway. There was no need to say anything else; the other pegasi packed into this boxcar were just as eager to watch as she was.
This time, the gate had been opened all the way. She could see Mining Director Sloan standing inside, flanked by several of his goons. Beyond them, Alex could see dozens of miners, crudely outfitted and armed with their tools. While the goons were cruelly determined, the ordinary miners just looked scared and miserable.
“You sure you won’t come in and talk? My best pegasus says there’s a real chance for a tornado in the next few hours, not to mention the lightning.”
White shook her head. “It won’t be a long talk. We can finish it here.”
“We’ve been waiting to hear back from you folks.” The director didn’t meet her eyes. “Scouts said you got the message about the attack and would send help right away. Sorry you had such a rotten trip down.” He gestured towards the wall on his right. White wouldn’t have been able to see it from where she stood, but it would’ve been impossible to miss as she had approached. On the other end from the functional mounted turret was the crater in the wall where its brother had been. The rubble had been cleared and apparently digging had already started for repairs, but now the holes were filled with water, and useless until they could be dried.
He frowned. “I see... a dozen of your militia. That might not be enough; the pony who attacked was wearing a set of that human armor.” He spoke the word with the venom of a curse. “Three dead. I’m sure you heard the report. I hope Radio Springs is going to make those monsters answer for what they did.”
White leered at him, pointed teeth glittering in a sudden flash of lightning. “I assure you, Radio Springs intends to prosecute monsters to the full extent of our charter.” She retreated a pace, then raised her voice. “We know what you’ve been doing here, Sloan. I’m placing you under immediate arrest, along with your entire staff, pending trial for your individual involvement. I’m fairly confident–”
He retreated a step, his horn beginning to glow faintly in the dark. “I’m sorry Gwyn, I don’t think I heard you right. You’re placing me under arrest? My entire staff? Under what charges? With what evidence?”
The blood of her children cried to her from the dust. In that moment, Archive knew exactly how many miners had died here. She knew how many he had shot, how many he had ordered sealed away in dark mine shafts, how many had choked to death on the torn up insides of their lungs. It was a stupid thing to do, perhaps the stupidest thing Archive had done in a long time. But she didn’t even care.
Archive surged forward from the train, galloping out into the pouring rain and pounding through the mud. As she went, she retracted her helmet, pulling back the hood so her head would be fully exposed. She moved with such fury that the rain itself avoided her, cast to either side in a blast of wind and water. Her anger seemed to heat the very air around her. Before White could answer, Alex shouted. “How about murder, you son of a bitch? How about the fifty-three ponies you locked in that auxiliary mineshaft to starve?”
There was silence all around her as she made her way to stand beside White. The director stared in utter shock, too stunned by her appearance to make any orders. She continued. “Not just my murder, but seventy-eight others. What about the six hundred and three miners who died because they didn’t have safety equipment? How about slavery? How about finding the most helpless ponies you could and treating them like trash?”
White turned to glare at her, yet even the dragon couldn’t muster the courage to criticize her openly in this state. Archive had no way of knowing that her eyes were radiating light, or that the storm seemed to punctuate each of her furious shouts with thunder of its own. In the torrential downpour, her mane alone stayed dry. Director Sloan wasn’t shaking his head anymore. The pupils of his eyes had swallowed all the color there, and his hooves visibly shook.
White rested one claw on the shotgun at her hip. “You are facing a life sentence, Sloan. That is much better than what you will get if you do not order your men to surrender. She is not the only one eager to see justice.”
“You’ve only got–” his voice faltered. “You can’t possibly think–”
Archive spoke again, her voice so low only the three of them could hear. “If you do anything besides surrender, you mass murdering piece of shit...” she didn’t fill in the rest. She let her expression do that. The dead would get their justice here today, whatever the justice system of “Radio Springs.” A hanging was much too good for this pony.
“Now!” In an instant, several of the unicorns in the grounds blasted the gates with magic, slamming them closed in Alex and White’s faces. The director’s panicked voice continued to shout from inside. “Ring the bell, we’re under attack! Kill every bandit out there!”
Alex met the dragon’s eyes for just a second. Time seemed to slow around them. One of the earth ponies started spinning up the gatling gun, even as the ponies on the wall prepared what looked like Molotov cocktails to throw at them. White drew her grenade launcher in a single blurring motion, sweeping it through the air towards the turret.
“I’ve got no mercy left for that one,” Archive muttered, into the silence before the storm.
“I know.”
Everything happened at once. Ponies on the walls started throwing; the turret started firing; White shot three quick rounds from her grenade launcher; Alex started running.
There was no comparing high-caliber rounds to anything from conventional experience. They tore the air itself as they passed, and each bullet had an even chance of going straight through her armor without even slowing down. Her dragon companion would fare little better if she took a direct hit.
Alex didn’t see what happened to White, because she turned her back on the gun and sprinted away down the wall. Rain billowed up in a cloud all around her, brushing aside stones and more than one bottle of flaming fuel. The ground behind her caught fire, but she kept on. Her helmet closed around her head again.
Immediately the thaumic radiation warnings started going off, though on pony armor they were faint beeps and flashing lights and not the blaring klaxons that warned an armored human they were about to be cooked alive. On pony armor, the anti-thaumic field would only activate if the energy was detected on the outside, which would mean an attacking spell.
“The hell is that, Athena?” Alex didn’t slow, not for a second. She was almost to the edge of the wall. The power indicator went red as it dipped from 10% to 9%. A second later, the whole world seemed to shake from an explosion. As when she had destroyed one of the turrets, it was soon followed by a secondary blast. Screams of pain shook the camp as ponies were blasted right off the wall. Alex kept running.
“I do not know!” Athena’s voice was troubled. “I’ve never measured magic like this from a pegasus pony before. Do you have any idea what might be causing it?“
Alex shook her head. “Shut it the hell off!” The alarm went silent at once, though the indicator continued to flash. “We can worry about it later. For now, I want Sloan. Highlight him as soon as he shows up on my cameras!”
“Affirmative. According to this information, your armor’s power reserve is nearly depleted. Do you not have supplementary power available?”
She shook her head. “I have a few backup power cells in my library, but those are underground. Why?” She rounded the corner, where the other gattling tower had been. Now there was a crater and lots of digging tools. Evidently the weakness was known, because at least one stallion stood to block the way. He wielded a heavy iron club, more or less strapped to one of his legs. Such a weapon limited his mobility, but allowed him to bring his full earth pony strength to bear if he wanted to. Strength that could easily break her armor. Even if it disrupted the magic when he made contact, a huge hunk of metal like that would already be going fast enough to break bone underneath.
She tuned out the AI. Archive filled her mind with all her knowledge of combat and defense. She saw the stallion’s intentions clearly before her, even as she saw he was not a returned human. Not one of the abused miners, then. “You will move or you will die,” she said, her voice flat over the speakers.
He just leered down at her. Strangely dry as she might be as the storm avoided her, she was still just one pony. Few ponies outside of the HPI actually understood what its armor could do. “You have no weapon, pony. Empty threat.” A few more advanced towards the open space, one a unicorn with a spear and another earth pony, this one with an umbrella and a musket.
There was no time. “I’m sorry.” All Archive had left were two magazines worth of regular bullets. She lifted her right leg and fired a quick burst. One bullet was not enough to penetrate the stallion’s skull, but three that fast and close were more than his magic could manage. He dropped with a limp splash into the puddle.
She was too fast for the others. Even as he fell, Archive flashed through the space he had taken, easily clearing the puddle and bursting forward into the familiar camp. Rain was joined by little bits of hail as she ran, each a thumb-sized projectile whipped through the blinding wind.
A line of soldiers waited inside the wall, though they were fairly well spread. She hesitated a moment, deciding her best plan of attack. That moment was all it took for the diamond dogs to come pounding down from the trees and shatter their formation like ice. Most of the miners broke and ran at the sight. They weren’t soldiers.
“Do you see him?”
“Negative.”
She started running again. “There’s a panic room in the basement of the office building. It’s far underground, so I might go out of contact once I get inside.” It was a pretty solid guess, with two of the sterner looking thugs standing outside the building.
Alex stopped about five meters from the doorway, trying to recognize the ponies through the rain. She couldn’t, other than the scar on the face of the unicorn. The same one that had been standing beside director Sloan during the negotiation. The other was a burly pegasus, his wings moving slowly on his either side. So there was at least one pony whose will could keep off the storm.
“Move or die!” Lightning flashed behind her, her vision briefly polarizing against the light.
There was no argument this time. The ponies ignored her completely. Archive sighed, raised her left leg this time, and started taking aim. Her thaumic alarm screamed as unicorn magic blasted towards her. The energy probably meant to stop her heart faded into feeble light around her as it passed into the field, and in that second the rain and hail poured down around her.
Her power display read 5%. She was still standing. A few seconds later, the unicorn wasn’t.
“Your turn to die, monster!” That was about when the lightning struck. Her whole world filled with white, burning heat searing through the air around her. Something burned against her flesh, and she went screaming through the air. It sent Archive bouncing and rolling away from the door, dragging a burning crater in the ground.
The lightning echoed the pony’s words. She caught a single glimpse of the pegasus, hovering over the ground with his hooves spread wide and pointed at her.
She slid another half dozen meters before the mud finally slowed her to a stop. One of her motors twitched, then fell still. Her visor filled with mud, and water started dribbling in between the cracks of the armor.
“A-Athena?” No response.
Her whole body was numb. All around her, the battle continued. Occasional gunfire was broken by more frequent blasts of magic or the clash of primitive weapons. Everypony ignored her broken armor... except for the pegasus walking towards her. Even blind and disabled, Archive could sense his magic advancing on her. The storm itself seemed to follow in his steps. Or... no, that wasn’t quite right. The storm’s focus was on him.
“Keeper? H-help me...” No response.
She struggled, but couldn’t get her chest out of the armor. Had it melted closed around her? She tried to flex her limbs, so she could judge how many she had broken. There didn’t seem to be any breaks.
“G-God? Anyone?” No response.
Archive remembered the dead. She forced herself to picture their faces, each and every one. Their blood had stained this dirt, and still it cried for vengeance. If Sloan got away, he might perpetrate some other butchery somewhere else. She would not allow any other escapes tonight.
“You can do it Alex.” She couldn’t see anything, her limbs were all numb. Cloudy Sky’s voice was clear, as clear as it had been in the mine. Perhaps it was the pain driving her to insanity this time. “Get up.”
“I c-can’t.” She whined. “I’m melted in. S-stuck...”
“Bullshit.” Her right leg twitched, almost as though a pony was pulling on it. “Get up, or you’ll die! You have to go flying for me, remember?”
Archive might not remember, but Alex did. Armor plates creaked as she rose, whole sections falling off to reveal the steel skeleton underneath. Wires had been melted. This was what happened when you got hit by lightning and didn’t have enough power left to cancel out the magic. Would it have been even worse if she hadn’t had power at all?
She rose. Each movement came with terrible slowness, as though she had been coated with inches of mud and left to dry in the sun. Each movement brought cracks, or groaning metal as the armor was forced to comply. Once she was standing, the rain and wind cleared away the mud from her visor. She could see again.
The chaos of battle raged all around her, with only the single pegasus mercenary concentrating on her. He advanced, wings still spread. The intricate folding mechanism of her helmet hadn’t done well. A chunk fell right off her face, while several others had been deformed by the impact. Why hadn't that happened to her skull too?
“You won’t survive another!” he screamed at her through the night. “You were all a scourge, the whole lot of you! We’re doing the world a kindness by getting rid of your kind!” He spread his wings wide, bellowing something into the storm. It obeyed. Lightning came again, filling all her vision as it had done before.
Archive spread her legs in the muddy ground, steeling herself for the strike. Electricity took her right in the chest, exploding outward all around her. After a few seconds, the magically-directed energy had blasted a hole straight through her armor.
Archive started walking forward into the blast. As she moved, more of her armor fell away, a molten husk crumbling away like ash in wind. The storm’s wrath had been pointed at her, true. This mercenary was either brave or stupid enough to try and direct the will of the storm.
Archive had the will of an entire species. Right now, that will demanded vengeance. All she had been wearing had been melted or burned right off her body in the phenomenal heat, even the bandages around her wings. She spread her wings instinctively, not unlike the way the stallion was doing.
It might’ve seemed like an eternity, but the little blast of lightning could only have taken an instant. It left her mane standing on end, ash on her coat, but otherwise Archive was unharmed.
“W-what?” The stallion retreated, back towards the open building. “You’re not even... haven’t...”
“OUT OF MY WAY!” Archive couldn’t reach down into the earth. She had tried that without result over and over again since she had woken up as a pegasus. Instead, she reached up, calling upon the storm. Her perception stretched as the whole thing seemed to pour into her, filling the sky for hundreds of miles. She saw the intricate system of currents and twisting windshear that had formed it. She felt the fantastic energy boiling inside, begging for release.
There was only one other pegasus with a grip on the storm. His was far more selective, focused only on the electrical energy bubbling within. Archive wrenched it from him as easily as she might remove a kitten from a pair of jeans. She was far less gentle than she would’ve been with a kitten.
Archive gave the whole storm a target for its rage. She chose the mining office, and the pegasus standing right up next to it.
The storm obliged. A great roar rose up from around them, and the cloud just above them turned a sickly shade of green. Sticks and dust began to lift, kicking around and around in a powerful updraft. The stallion had to land, and a few seconds later he clung to one of the pillars on the outside of the building.
It did him no good. A few more seconds and the updraft was transformed into a tornado. A chorus of demonic screams drowned out all the sound of battle, and sent participants on both sides scattering. Shingles rained down around them like bullets, and were joined with shards of glass and wooden planks a moment later. Soon whole beams were whirling around into the sky.
She frowned as her adversary was ripped screaming into the vortex, vanishing with one last flash of blue wings. A whole wall screamed and buckled, sending the upper story of the offices into a collapse. Thousands of sheets of paper rained down around them, then twisted up and up into the cloud.
The storm wanted more. It tried to take its grip elsewhere, destroying the other buildings. It wanted to blast past her into the battle, and wipe both sides off the planet. Archive strained against the will of the storm, and for a second she almost lost it.
She shoved hard against it, forcing the whirling black funnel over the building one last time, then out into the forest. She gave it a good shove with her magic, then let herself relax. She hadn’t even noticed the storm had lifted her a few feet off the ground. Good thing she wasn’t too high to land safely.
There was no office anymore, just the basement and its hidden safe room. The whole thing was concrete, and evidently it alone had been anchored deep enough to survive the wrath of the storm. For all the ferocity of the storm, it was still a pot boiling over, with strength begging to be used. She had called upon the wind, but fire and water both remained.
Archive called upon the storm again, this time for its water. All around the battle, the rain trickled off into a light sprinkling. Everywhere except for the foundation of the office, where it seemed as though a giant tap had been opened in the sky. Thousands of gallons rushed down in a nearly solid curtain, filling every small opening and forming a small pond where they fell. The open stairwell became a waterfall, occasionally lighting up with a reflection of the storm’s last unused strength.
Light still gathered around her, glowing from her eyes and her hooves and her wings. To her eyes, hundreds of dead ponies stood all around her, filling the empty field. It was their strength she wielded, not her own.
It didn’t take long. Whatever fortress the mine’s owner had prepared, whatever wards he had cast, they could do him no good against drowning. Besides, water like this was one of the other things that could ground out a spell. Rain generally wasn’t enough, but an entire lake’s worth...
Sloan emerged choking from the stairs, dragging himself up one step at a time. His fancy jacket was muddy and soiled, and his shoes were gone completely. It looked like a little more rain would be all it would take to drown him.
Archive released her grip on the storm’s water, letting the rain resume. It spread out again, but even so the unicorn was practically submerged. Archive stood perhaps ten feet away, the little circle where she stood slowly drying in her fury.
“You’re dead!” he protested from between coughs. His horn shimmered with light, but whatever spell he wanted he evidently didn’t have the concentration for it with all this water. Nearly drowning probably didn’t help.
She started advancing on him. Furious winds blasted the water away from her hooves, and she put each one down on dry ground. She raised her voice, loud enough to carry all around her. It boomed out of the storm, filling all the valley with her words. “You murdered my sons and daughters, Director Sloan. The sentence is death. Let your agony be a lesson to every other pony who’s been tempted to take advantage of one of my children! Their ignorance is no justification!”
Director Sloan found a little backbone then. He rose to his hooves, shivering in the wind but apparently defiant. “Y-you can’t!” He lowered his head in a bow. “I surrender! I’m a citizen of Radio Springs, entitled to a hearing and a trial and–”
Archive ignored him. The storm’s rage boiled, and the last type of its strength demanded an outlet from her. She gave it one, albeit pinhole thin, and used the wind to let his screams fill the valley.
Though she had never called upon a storm before, Archive’s work was precise. She found room on his body for the name of each one of the miners who had died here. The whole process took only a few seconds, and at some point he had been so thoroughly cooked that he stopped screaming and started to smoke instead. The lightning only stopped when every name had been burned there, ending with “Alexander Haggard.”
No sooner was it done than the strength of Archive left her. Wind suddenly blasted her, rain pouring down and soaking her fur and feather. She turned away from the still-smoking corpse, making her slow way back towards the train. Each hoofstep came only with great effort, dragging through the mud.
Never in her life had she felt more magically drained. Any more, and the poor little pegasus might deflate. Needless to say, the battle had been rather thoroughly ended by then. What resistance had remained seemed unwilling to contend with her. As she walked, Radio Springs troops tossed the surviving mercenaries in irons. Ponies from all sides backed away as she approached, staring with shocked eyes and not daring to speak.
White the dragon landed not far in front of her, shotgun in hand. “The hell was that?”
Alex barely had the strength to reply. “Self-defense,” she muttered, exasperated. She didn’t even slow down. “Couldn’t get him to surrender. Didn’t have a choice.” She kept on walking, right past the dragon.
Alex made her way into a security booth, the last one left standing after the battle. She shoved the furniture out into the rain, dropped to the ground, and was asleep before she hit the floor.