Chapter 12: The Enemy

Editors/Co-Authors
Jed R (Special thanks for more things than I can count. Like damn son)
TB3
Redskin122004
VoxAdam

“...who would ever suspect that they were no longer the mind behind the other end of their internal conversations. The other voices have become self-aware."
Johnny C, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

“Hey! Wait! What you learn today! That we are not! The fuckin’ enemy!”
The Death Set, The Enemy

Chalcedony: [Sighs. She sounds tired.] “The subject is amazing. From a biological standpoint and a psychological one.”

C: “The crystals seem to have triggered a substantiation operation in its body, naturally growing into something like human fiber-optic cables, which have woven themselves into its alicornal tissue. It’s like…

C: It’s as if this isn’t sleep. It’s as if the subject has put itself into a hibernation state and is re-engineering the body it took into an approximation of a computer. It might very well be able to survive having its head explode.”

C: “I won’t. It’s too valuable an asset, and that sort of trauma will surely impact its productivity and utility to PHL R&D. Considering the subject’s origin, I cross-referenced it with the results from those consultants hired by Crowe Labs to examine the totem-prole retrieved by Fiddlesticks and Mr. Jonathan C-”

I: “His first name is actually ‘Johnny C’. The C doesn’t stand for anything, and his surname is Heald. He also uses the report to keep him awake when he doesn’t feel like buying coffee.”

C: Right. The results are similar to the totem-prole examination. The alicornal tissue has grown its way out of the spinal cord and brain in several places similar to the prole, but it also appears to be suffering from moderate crystalitis.”

C: “It’s… not so much a disease as a reaction, sort of like an allergy. But not really. Sometimes, a pony’s alicornal tissue can grow in response to strong enough connection to localized magic, clumping in places and forcing crystalline tumors out of the body. There’s hippologists in Equestria that have surmised that this is where crystal ponies come from, but Brighthoof would take umbrage with me saying that she or her husband were masses of tumors to rival Gil Alexander, and it was used as propaganda during the War, so… no. It’s only a theory, mind - there’s several other possibilities. The fascinating thing is, the subject is gradually becoming something like a crystal unicorn, which shouldn't be possible. Crystal Pony legend states that they received their physiology from strong connections with the Earth, which unicorns like me don’t have. I’ve had Irving, Salonen, Heliotrope, and even Vinyl Scratch of all ponies suggesting this as an augmentation process, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. There’s too many unknowns at the moment.”

I: "That’s a good call. And good on you for keeping Irving and Salonen under control... [sighs] Sometimes I feel like I’m herding cats. But on the subject of her… crystallization… I don’t believe we’re in a position to say what’s impossible. Weren't they mythical until a few years before the War?"

C: "So were humans. I guess the Doctor was right - there are more things in heaven and Earth… some of which maybe we wish we hadn't seen. Anyway, the crystals, alicornal tissue, and nervous system are bonded on a cellular level. It's the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. We're not allowed to have cell phones in there because ae seems to be subconsciously influencing them.

C: “It is, but it seems to be content to look at viral videos and illegally download comics as it restructures itself.”

C: "Considering where the subject came from, it has a fair bit of trauma. It's best to let it rest. Much as it can. I’ve had various psychologists examine it as well."

C: “It’s brilliant, for one thing. Though that should be expected given its origins. But… it’s fragmented. It seems to have little identity of its own, and seems to varyingly love and hate everything. It’s a mix of disparate personality traits. It is also fascinated by the concept of having physical sensation, painful or otherwise.

C: “Sometimes it yells ‘Yay! It burns!’ when touching something hot. This will be quite detrimental to its long-term health and the effectiveness of the PHL. If possible, we’ll have to restrain it for its own good.”

I: "I must disagree on the subject of restraints but you’re right. Our new researcher must be kept calm - I’ve seen the concepts ae’s been working on. Far as I'm concerned, we should be keeping aer as comfortable as possible. I'd recommend you for that duty, but others, like Sebastian, have said you've been skittish. Outright hostile sometimes around aer…”

C: “Forgive me if I find the idea of a sentient, ambulatory totem prole that needs enough thorazine to drop an earth horse to be even remotely workable nerve-wracking. It doesn’t affect my work, sir.”

C: "I hate what created it! Crystal ponies melted together, human memories, and then the subjects forms out of that fucking mess! Brighthoof’s husband might be in there, Heliotrope might have been responsible for part of it, and… I have friends that were ponified, Colonel! I know Crystal Ponies that could never find the bodies of their loved ones! Their minds might be in the subject too! Can you imagine how it feels, wondering every day what could’ve happened to your friends, then seeing this abomination that somebody cauterized and stitched together?!"

C: "It's not that, it's that it… aer… everything about aer’s existence is a transgression, ae said so aerself, created through suffering! It's more than that, it's an abomination exponentially worse than any newfoal or totem-proles. You're talking about something that makes Equestria’s worst atrocities, of thousands of - thousands of things… look tame, and I've heard of things…”

C: “My problem isn’t with th… aer. You can tell aer that if you want. Or don’t. It’s just what it… ae… represents. The final confirmation that ponykind isn't worth saving. None of it. Not anymore.”

C: "It's a book by Douglas Adams. The Doctor - Dr. Bowman, that is - gave me a copy."

C: "There's a race there called the Krikkitmen. They were once the loveliest race in the universe - friendly, polite… and completely isolated from the rest of creation. They didn't know there was a rest of the universe - their world was hidden by a dust cloud that obscured their view. 'Til a spaceship crashed and showed them there was a ‘rest of the universe’."

C: "They discovered the rest of the universe was a thing - and they decided they didn't like it. It didn't fit their ideal. It had to go. They became xenocidal maniacs because… I dunno. They were afraid, and fear breeds anger."

C: "We are like the Krikkitmen. This situation is just like that - except we can't just close the book and pretend we don’t exist, that we never could do things like… well, like we've done. We’re real. This is real."

C: "Maybe I am. I'm not even supposed to be here anyway. It's - ah, hell, it doesn't matter."

C: "I would, wouldn’t I? It doesn't matter. I just… have a lot to think about. Maybe more than I'd like. I might request a few weeks leave."

I: “Fair enough. But we all care about you, Chalcedony. You take a good break. You’ve earned it.”

Kraber yawned, leaning back against the shipping container that formed much of Aegis’ house, and found that he was, bizarrely, happy. There was a blue sky overhead, someone was flying a plane, (Huh? Must’ve been a small one) the clouds were blue and fluffy, and the maple tree overhead swayed in the breeze. As did the old bald tire that Aegis' foals used as a swing.

--Nobody had been able to get any use out of the thing, so I just kept it, Aegis explains. --Some people that called themselves HLF-

--He did, Aegis says. --Anyway, Moore said I was hoarding it, and I told him ‘you want a tire balder than your skull? Go ahead. Put that shit on your car, I ain’t responsible, it’s not my decision.

Amber was lying inside it, hooves hanging downwards, an impatient expression on her face.

That picture of Aegis on the container above seemed to shine in the sunlight. There was a windmill nearby, gently spinning in the breeze.

He was still reading Lyra’s diary. Today was almost the perfect representation of summertime peace. Well, save for a lot of things - like the wanted posters plastered on a nearby telephone pole, and the large community building that seemed to serve everyone in this little shantytown.

Kraber had noticed a poster there, with a picture of an absurd, stylized gunlike shape reminiscent of a Remington ACR that looked to be covered in weird technological bits, with an oddly large magwell, a weird attachment over the barrel, and exposed wires and a battery in the stock. PHL rifles didn’t look like that, of course, but it got its message across. “Found any stolen PHL tech? Any PER devices? Bring them to the PHL!”

Ja! That sounded befok! Might be nice to get some of the PHL tech off his hands. As did the wanted posters nearby. Kraber took a weird, perverse sort of enjoyment from reading them. It meant easy money for whenever he left and headed west - he’d earned himself more than a few rations by bringing bodies into various government offices. He could nail anomalous newfoals like Quickblade, or The Bride and Groom, two newfoals that had been ponified on their wedding day that still roamed the country, ponifying and murdering. He could find particularly veragtelike PER like Patrick Fairbairn and the young royal guardspony Shieldwall...

Patrick Fairbairn was a fat man with a beard and auburn hair so scraggly that no single hair seemed to be the same length as any other. The most distinguishing features he had were… Oh, sweet merciful fok, that was the most afskuwelike face he’d ever seen. He had a prosthetic nose awkwardly fixed over a hole where - according to legend - someone had torn off his original nose, and so many stab wounds that his face looked like old leather. He was uglier than Kraber’s father, for God’s sake.

Which was not a statement one made likely. Kraber’s father - a short, stocky man with thick muscular shoulders that made him look almost as wide as he was tall - was really ugly.

Shieldwall was a piebald earth pony whose eyes were such a pale, pale blue that Kraber thought for a second that he hadn’t been born with eyes, not until he saw the pupils. He had a dirty-brown-blonde close-cropped mane, and a cutie mark of an iron-gray stained with purple. Rumor had it he’d gotten his cutie mark for potioning somebody. Course, there were more infamous PER on the wall.

There were plenty more as well. Moliere Bernhardt, an HLF man who infamously hid in the underground of any city that would take him. Loving Sun, Tia McCreary, and… Huh?

It said Merciful Light and Rio Deneter. Something about that seemed familiar. Hadn’t Caduceus mentioned something like that? There was a lot Caduceus hadn’t told him. But then, Kraber hadn’t told her anything but kak. He wondered how she was doing, surprised to find himself so sympathetic to a pony.

Guess I’ve changed a lot, Kraber thought, looking over at Rivet pushing Amber Maple in the tire swing, watching as she kicked her forelegs and hindlegs back. Like Peter and Anka used to do, like any kids…

He idly looked over the HLF bounties. He could go after HLF who’d decided on the nom de plume of “Old Skinner,” apparently there were a few. There was one that asked for someone to bring one of Yarrow’s Reavers in for questioning, but he doubted anyone would follow up on that one.

“Bounty hunter, eh?” asked a bald man with orange-tinted spectacles. “Too bad we can’t turn them in, eh?” He pointed to Aegis.

“Shut up, Moore,” Aegis called over, half-jokingly. But there was an edge to his voice that promised he’d knock Moore’s block off if he said anything more.

“Still,” Moore said. “I would like to see that one.” he pointed to the picture of Yarrow. “Real HLF men. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Still,” ‘Moore’ said. “Lot of people on that list. Lot of people I’d see taken away.”

Aeron Grant - Alias: Atlas Galt, Thenardier Guard commander; John Birch, Thenardier Guard; Aaron O Donnell, ex-IRA, leader of the Sons of Macha; Kagan Burakgazi, Medard Janvier, leader of Taskforce Paris; James Millard Oakes, Taskforce Paris lieutenant; Viktor M. Kraber; Leonid Lovikov, Menschabwehrfraktion leader, extremely dangerous, Ivan Bliss-

Okay, suddenly the prospect of selling the armor and Fostech didn’t look too befok. Because there, right on the wall, was a blurry cell-phone photo of Kraber wearing the Eel mask, its eyes a blurry lime-green, PHL armor stolen from Imbeault, and holding his MG2019.

‘Wanted for questioning in relation to the Portland Disaster, the extermination of every newfoal in Maine Medical, theft of PHL tech, mass murder, extreme property damage, and a poor Scottish accent.’

That was kak! Kraber’s scottish accent was fokkin kwaai! Though maybe he did need more practice at it. Ja. Definitely. But, seriously? Ivan Bliss, the alias he’d thrown together only two nights ago, already had a wanted poster. And with all the stuff he’d stolen.

“Thing is,” Moore said. “They know Bliss is an alias. They know he has a PHL gun, and they even think he’s Kraber…”

Yeah, selling that stuff was sounding really untenable at the moment. Filing the serial numbers off… that’d be more conspicuous then, wouldn’t it? Wait. Did it have serial numbers? Worst came to worst, he could…

He puzzled that over. What could he do? It was a matter of time before Aegis found out about the stuff in his duffel bag.

“I still think it’s weird,” said a wiry Irish woman that lived not too far from Aegis. From what Kraber could tell, her name was Julie MacAllan.

“What, Mr. Heald?” Amber asked, yawning, one hoof to her mouth. Still, she actually looked well-rested. “Everyone thinks he’s weird.”

“Well, that goes without saying,” Julie said. “Just… all of you. Going to synagogue. The horsies getting religion.”

“‘Curious more than anything, Julie,” Aegis rumbled, a slight smile on his face. This was an everyday routine with Julie and her husband, an unremarkable-looking bearded irishman with a peg leg. Apparently, they’d met on the Mercy Ships over to America.

“Fair enough,” Julie said. “It was nice to see Sixstring again. Can we expect you out building more things later?”

“I’ll bet you can,” Aegis said. “I got the day off… but then, well, guess the military might call again. Officially, I’m on leave, but with some of the stuff I hear about…”

“I’m Francis Strang,” Kraber explained. “Sixstring’s the one that got me here. Are the refugee camps around here that bad?”

“Hey, it’s Johnny C!” Amber yelled, pointing with one hoof towards an incoming truck. But, oddly enough, there was a woman behind the wheel, stepping out. She actually looked pretty familiar, when Kraber thought of it. ‘Janeesi? Who names their kids that?’

A wide-brimmed stetson covered the stranger’s untidy mop of pink hair, underneath which Kraber could see an almost clownishly painted face with blue, spiralling makeup on the cheeks, and long, incredibly pretty eyelashes. She was in an old cosplay of Trickster Jane from homestuck, wearing a yellow and orange dress with blue trim, with a skirt that puffed out. He was also wearing pink and blue striped tights, along with a pink wig, and there was blue spiralling makeup on her cheeks.

Though there were two odd, eyecatching aspects of the stranger. Right under her lower lip was a layer of faint scarring, horizontal and vertical, vaguely curved lines that ended in sharp points, like someone had cut or burnt a representation of the lower jaw of an animal over hers. Rather incongruously, there was a tattoo on her surprisingly large right tricep, reading “Poor Life Decision;”

“Actually, he just likes cosplay. Got a bunch of costumes back home,” said the pony who’d taken the seat next to him. “And ballet.”

“What can I say, it’s fun dancing to her fiddle in this,” the woman apparently - named Johnny C shrugged, pirouetting on one leg. Kraber saw a patch of scarring like melted, slightly lumpy wax on the back of his neck.

“Ah, he can barely control himself,” Fiddlesticks said, a mischievous smile on her face. “Or she can’t. Isn’t that right, Joanna C?"

"Wha-" Johnny C started, before falling back in his seat, Fiddlesticks running her hooves over him. "You're Joanna C, you're Joanna C..." she singsonged.

Johnny C? Kraber wondered. That sounds familiar. Weren’t we in a shadowcast of Repo: The Genetic Opera once?

Yeah. This was definitely the same Johnny C that had played Grave Robber to Kraber’s Repo Man. The same one that had been in a photograph with him and Terrance Zdunich. How strange, really. They’d gotten on well back then - Nny had said he was an inspiration, actually - but now Kraber couldn’t find any common ground behind them. Well. He could. But Nny would hand Kraber in if he let something slip.

“I find we’re better off not questioning that,” Sixstring said, trotting out from the shipping container above Aegis’ house.

“Good to see you again!” Johnny C laughed, shaking Sixstring’s hoof with his hand.

“Who cares?” Johnny C asked, clapping a hand to the back of Sixstring’s head, right in the middle of his mane. “Anyway, synagogue’s pretty soon. Let’s get moving. We might even meet my cousin! Elijah - well, Rabbi Beckett - says he was interested in meeting you and your family again.”

“Friend of mine from North Conway,” Sixstring explained. “He paid for my train ticket with some blood money.”

“It, uh, actually wis blood money from Portland,” Kraber explained. “Guy goat ponified and nailed in the head, and the blood leaked intae his wallet. I tossed his ID back on his body - figured the family would need some way tae identify him...”

“Shit,” Fiddlesticks said. “You were in Portland? Heard it got bad over there. Th’ HLF bombarded a damn city. And there were rumors Kraber went into the city too…”

“Shit, he was there?!” Kraber himself gasped. “Sounds terrible. I was lucky to get out when I did. I saw… I saw people dead halfway through ponification. Fokkin’ awful.”

“Grotesqueries, man,” Johnny C said solemnly, swerving the truck slightly. “I feel you there. I once saw a man’s artificial hip explode out through his-”

“...huh,” Fiddlesticks said. “Well. That’s a hell of a first impression. Paying for a music partner of mine with a dead guy’s money.”

“Yeah, well,” Kraber said, “The dead guy didnae have many financial prospects.” He slid into the backseat of the truck, still reading Lyra’s diary.

Aegis and Sixstring, however, had been unable to fit in the truck, so they'd settled for the bed immediately behind the cab, next to several boxes marked “ART WALK.”

There was an Ithaca 37 shotgun on the floor of the truck, next to a nice-looking rifle with a strange underbarrel attachment. Kraber idly checked the marks on it:

Fabrique Nationale Herstal - ИЖМАШ ‘Leshiy’. Manufactured in Yakutsk, Russia, 2022. Also scratched on the lower receiver, probably with a knife, were the words “For your hard work, Nny! - Vera Low”

At least, he presumed it said ‘Low.’ It looked as if someone had gotten a little more than halfway through a ‘w,’ then stopped for some reason.

An FN Leshiy, Johnny C had explained, after rattling off all its features, like being able to change its caliber from 5.56 to .308 to .50 Beowulf, its hyper-burst functionality, self-cleaning, self-repair, the gas regulator that could change the fire rate (which was linked to an LCD readout just under the sights, or its blowback shifted pulse. “Went through hell to get the thing,” he’d explained, patting it affectionately. “Ah, old Vera…”

“Seriously? Yuir gaun with that?” Kraber asked. “Is that… do you name them like dolls or something?”

“Nah, it’s just the name of the Russian woman that sold one to me by that abandoned train in Alaska,” Johnny C said, patting the rifle again. “‘Sides, I call it Helen Frances after Gramma, God rest her soul. My fuckin’ MK-107 got shattered by a Newfoal. Had to use some Ulfberht. Thing was heavy!”

A large magnum revolver you could hunt elephants with in one hand, a sword coated in blood in one hand. Canterlot. Canterlot again. Fighting the mad convie - newfoal, why would you call ‘em convies? Who did that anymore?[ preacher Sol Invictus.

For the umpteenth time, and certainly not the last, Aegis wondered: ‘Who is this man living in my house?’

The first reaction to a crying foal being to walk in with a .45 automatic, then comfort her. Odd, not-quite-Scottish accent. What did it all mean? He’d been stripping that gun like a sleeker, more angular M16 with precision - clearly he knew how to use the thing. He seemed military. And what else was in that bag?

‘He seems nice enough,’ Aegis thought. ‘But I know he’s not telling me everything. He’s telling me a lot, though… I think he’s trying to disarm me.’

“That’s it! That’s why you were so familiar, you were those PHL guys that were up in Alaska! The ones that stole all that stuff from an Imperial science team! I bought your book last night!”

Actually, part of the reason that Johnny C - or Joanna C, as Fiddlesticks kept jokingly insisting - was familiar was because he’d worn that exact costume back at AnimeBoston. Even back then in the HLF, it had been hard not to admire the story.

And of course, retrieving some strange Equestrian device, that had gotten in the news.

“It was a favor for some friends moving up there,” Fiddlesticks explained. “Ended up resurrecting a steam loco, fighting off Newfoals, and bringing back a totem-prole,” she said, reaching into a saddlebag, using her hoof TK to pull out a photo of a group of smiling ponies, Americans, and Russians atop a recently restored steam locomotive. Johnny C was in the cab, holding a strange rifle with wood furniture, face covered in smoke, and a woman sat in the tender. The side of one Fiddlesticks, looking tired, sat on top of the boxcar, a warm-looking blue scarf around her neck. Somehow, a Newfoal had been impaled on the rusting cowcatcher. An inuit man held a squirming black puppy.

“This one PER bastard named Joseph McCreary,” Johnny C explained. “I decided it was his stop. Damned weird trip, I can tell you that. I think we actually saw…”

“Yeah,” Amber added, and the sarcasm in her voice could peel paint, “What did you see?”

“Reindeer,” Johnny C said simply. “The Equestrian kind, I mean. Huge eyes and all. Everyone assumed it was just psychic overflow from the ‘prole, or just thought I’d saw an actual reindeer in the forest and I was tired out.”

“We never did find out what Sharon hit back then,” Fiddlesticks mused. “I mean, it looked like a girl-”

“Way you told it to me and my sis,” Rivet said, “You left that part out.”

“There’s a lot of things we couldn’t explain back then that ended up turning our reports into stuff the top brass read for laughts on the coffee break,” Fiddlesticks said.

“That too. I mean, it was a pretty harsh battle, but they had the same, ah… the same proportions, you know? I’d swear on it. I mean… look, Francis, you’re the only other human than Nny in here. Do you ever mistake ponies for Earth horses?”

“Never,” Kraber said. “They have huge heads and eyes. I mean, Aegis back there is huge, but he still looks like a pony.”

“If it was...” Amber started uncertainly. “I mean, there’s still Cousin Troubleshoes, but he’s a special case.”

“And they could be right, but I fuckin’ well know what I saw,” Johnny C said, not missing a beat.

“So do I,” sighed Fiddlesticks. “Made sure to make a note of that little tidbit in my report, I tell ya, but goin’ by the lack of feedback since, I’m supposing the higher-ups didn’t think much of it. Ah, well. It would be nice to imagine Celestia’s Sword was unsuccessful in finishing off all the jolly people of the North...”

Johnny C frowned. “What happened to that bitch, anyway? We haven’t heard from her in quite a long time… Then again, word from the folks in the Resistance was, the Tyrant used her more to clean up house, back on the homefront, rather than here on God’s green Earth.”

Fiddlesticks thought about it. “Rumor has it she died during the Battle of Thunderchild, with Lyra personally taking her down.”

“I find that hard to believe. Cornered Imperials still like scream shit such as ‘the Queen will sic her Sword on you’ before going down, from time to time.”

“Meh, that doesn’t mean anything. It’d serve the Tyrant’s purposes to keep a boogeyman alive,” Kraber said. ‘I have no fokkin’ clue what anything these two said meant…’

“She’s outright sadistic,” Aegis said, struggling to be heard from his place in the back of the pickup truck, and everyone looked at him.

“I mean, think about it,” Aegis said. “This war, it’s…. it’s not even smart. She doesn’t care about her little ponies-” (Oh, the sarcasm was palpable) “-or Harmony, or whatever. She just wants control.”

“You and me both,” Fiddlesticks agreed. “They tried to get us to look at the totem-prole, pose like Great White Hunters with an elephant. Didn’t quite work…"

“Heh,” chuckled Johnny C, “Amaruq just said ‘Not touchin’ that prole with a ten-foot-pole,’ and we all cracked up laughing on the tender, so they used that. Course, it wasn’t so funny as to why he’d said it...”

“Well, uh, there was this unicorn named Spurred Weld that fell asleep on guard next to it after we got the train going, and started screaming ‘ABOMINATION!’ and having flashbacks to the Crystal War and hyperventilating,” Johnny C explained, "He kept having nightmares about getting dissected… psychologists said it was PTSD. Some kinda trigger.”

“Never liked totem-proles,” Fiddlesticks said with a shiver, ignoring Kraber and Amber Maple. “Things were always watching you. Still, least we were all fine, and the survivors got to celebrate with shrimp and grits…”

“You too?!” Johnny C asked, suspiciously. “How’s a Scotsman like you from Glasgow–”

“... Hud a bunch ay American friends,” Kraber explained, and Johnny C could tell from Kraber’s voice just what happened to them.

As they drove by Mount Eustis, an old ski slope that had been bisected by the interstate and never managed to truly regrow, with a strange rounded house off in the distance, the whistle of a diesel locomotive down in the little river valley Littleton was situated in, the helicopters and pegasus messengers flying overhead, the billboards for HLF and PHL factions, Kraber tried and failed to stifle a short laugh.

“Well, whit does thae C stand fir?” Kraber asked absentmindedly, thumbing through that journal of Lyra’s that Aegis had lent to him. He was only looking through it cursorily, but there were three entries he’d read last night and near as memorized that had stood out to him.

The wind blew through his hair. It felt weird on the scraggly, uneven forest of stubble where his thick beard had once been, but he didn’t mind.

Besides, the New Hampshire air, a summer’s day, outside an actual house with a fan, having actually slept well? This was… nice. Peaceful, even.

Oh wow, never thought that was something I’d end up including in any diary of mine. Work used to be this great big parasprite which chomped up the spark of life and always made more of itself, know what I’m saying? But ever since this all went down, it’s actually started to seem almost appealing. A friend of mine said awhile back that work’s only work if someone makes you do it. I disagree. I say that it’s only work if you don’t enjoy it. And this’ll be fun!

Celestia did tell me a diplomat’s job is, first and foremost, a job, with all the responsibility which that entails. Honestly, I still can’t quite believe she said ‘yes’ to me so quickly. I knew she’d let me be the second pony to go through that gateway. Who would they pick for Ambassador? Catseye? But from there to a full-on ambassadorship… she must know about my track record, there’s no way she wouldn’t.

Twilight once said that the Qu, scratch that, Princess, she was a princess back then, had a tendency to thrust her students into unexpected tasks. If so, guess I ought to feel flattered at her trust in me. Wonder what she’s got in mind, exactly?

This was the mare whom so many saw as their saviour, the proverbial ‘messiah’? A mare barely out of her college years, with little drive for work or ethic to push herself? Certainly not in the same line as Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, whose father had made him study for sixteen hours every day from a young age. Hell, he’d…

He’d been the same. Fok. An unassuming college student with lots of interests that spent a lot of time fokkin’ around, and then found himself with more responsibility than he’d ever dreamed of and stepped up to the challenge. Well, that was… that was an odd revelation. Granted, he hadn’t saved the world, he’d made it worse, but it was hard not to see similarities.

I’m still having trouble sleeping, and it’s got Bon-Bon worried. Been having weird dreams lately. I haven’t really been able to get a good night’s sleep since I got to Earth. Before I decided on anthropology, I studied a lot of unconventional magic. I mean, somepony had to, right? When I was studying under Professor Shriek – a very handsome stallion, though he always smelled like mushrooms – all the other professors would always tell me to stop focusing on quackery. Ha! Look at me now, you old stuffed saddles! That’s what you get for saying I wouldn’t amount to anything!

(‘This fokkin’ bakvissie is the one the PHL use to rally themselves?’ Kraber thought, bemused, but he kept reading.)

All week I’ve been hearing about something terrible over in Boston. There was this poor woman, she took the potion as a cure at a Conversion Bureau. Turned out, she was transgender. So the resulting Newfoal (yes, they call them foals, like they’re reborn or something) came out as a stallion. And she said she was happier as a stallion. That she’d be the father she was meant to be.

I’m not an expert on trans stuff, but that’s so many kinds of wrong! I can’t get over that. I can’t let it go. Why are we even doing this? What’s the point? I don’t think anypony anyone could rightly call what happened a success.

Her husband and daughter are pissed, though. They’re angry at Equestria for creating the potion, they want change, they…

They don’t want activism. They want war. I tried to reach out to both of them, but they don’t want to talk to me. There’s gonna be trouble with these people, I know it.

I’ve seen enough war, but I hope to Faust that there isn’t another. Celestia’s… she wouldn’t drag us into another one, right? The last one was terrible enough. Mom and dad…. I miss you so much. Our princess queen wouldn’t want to get into another one, would she? Nopony could be that foolish.

We’re lucky not to have the same amount of wars as humans… If so, I’d like to stop them. Make peace. And I won’t just make a desert and call it that. I’ve had enough of that sort of thing.

‘So,’ Kraber had mused last night as he read it, ‘Lyra wasn’t onboard with the potioning.’ Well, more than ‘She wasn’t onboard.’ These were, almost word for word, some of the same concerns he and a lot of HTF members had voiced back before the war. Then, comtemplatively... So…’

A great void had opened up in him last night. Reading the journal, seeing the mare that the HLF hated, all of that had effectively destroyed any hate he might have had for Lyra at any point. ‘What the fok have I been doing? We… We’re the HLF. We hate the ponies for turning our chommies and loved ones into fokkin’ zombies. So if the mare the PHL rallied around hated the potion and feared it, and if she’d dedicated her fokkin’ life to…’

Try as he might, he couldn’t understand from that why the HLF had gone after the PHL. They had ponies in their ranks, but….

That was it. That was all of it. When the PHL had been marketing magic-enhanced utilities (like that pegasus Macroburst’s works) and had a goddamn oil rig, had been making shield disruptor grenades, the HLF had gone after them, tried to tear down the kak that held the fokkin’ nation together, all because some of it had been made by ponies.

Fokkin chopkonts. Going after somepony like Aegis cause he looked like the enemy. Well, he was a father himself, and what’d it make all those HLF that dragged their kids into every pehrer look like? Kontgesigs, that’s what. Aegis kept his foals safe, while HLF put kids in harm’s way.

’No, worse,’ he thought, ‘We’re jealous, aren’t we? Of all the PHL’s done...’

A year in the future, not long before barrierfall and being sent to help evacuate New England, before appropriating a steam locomotive and punching through the white mountains on a mad dash to White River Junction, he’d bring up the concern to Cheerilee, who’d suggest it to Discord.

So much has happened in the past week. I haven’t been able to record much. I… I think I’ll make a list. Yeah. It’s, uh, kind of hard to organize my thoughts when somepony tried to murder me I’m public enemy number one

… Equestria left Bonnie and I to die. They knew. They bucking knew. About the riots, in advance, even. Mycroft was right, they planned it all! The evac notices came right before the Three Weeks, like they knew it’d happen. They… I don’t know how I know. They never sent an evacuation notice to me like they did with Bright Wonder or Errant Flight. There was a Royal Guard that picked up a bolt-action rifle from a dead HLF guy in her telekinesis and shot me! She wanted to… (unintelligible scribbles)

Getting shot…. it hurts so much. Ow ow ow ow ow. I managed to shield myself a bit, though. Thank Faust for that. I pulled the bullet out.

I can’t believe this. They want me dead. The ponies that… It all makes so much and so little sense. This was the intent from the beginning. Equestria wanted the Three Weeks of Blood. They wanted to kill me have me come back and stop the ‘foalish indulgence’ cos’ they bucking thought turning humans into bucking zombies and wiping out their

Is… what’s happened to my home? What happened to my friends?! Twilight, Pinkie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, they’re monstrous! I… Oh Faust. They wanted to use that bolt-action to make it look like an accident, didn’t they? They… They don’t care. They never did. All the agitation, it’s been intentional, I can’t

This continued on for awhile. Someday, Kraber thought, If this kwaai book gets published, I hope that they leave in the parts that were struck through. I mean, if Anne Frank’s diary is her insight, and we read it for that, well… the strikethroughs are as much part of Lyra’s insight as the parts she wrote. This here is a broken mare that doesn’t know what to do.

I don’t… Am I angry? Sad? Betrayed? I don’t even know how to feel. I'm in shock. It's like everything good's gone, and the rest's been turned upside down. And now, the portal… It’s expanding. CERN is gone, and most of the people on the campus are dead. There’s riots all over Switzerland, that crazy bastard Viktor Kraber blew up the Graz Conversion Bureau and the Ganz Conversion Bureau, and the world’s just falling apart.

Kraber smiled fondly, remembering Graz. That had been a good day. MG34 from a stash in hand, cutting the newfoals, Imperials, and fokkin’ PER to bits, a Bureau blown sky-high…

...And a lot of innocents dead. Families. Innocent ponies. PHL. Kerels. I really fokked that up, didn’t I? Kraber thought. ‘It wasn’t so great. I… Hurt innocents. I didn’t help as many people as I’d like to think that day. Fok, I think I just bliksemed a lot of people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

Guess this is how the world ends, the diary continued. Ponies like me and the PHL are the closest, and humans are gonna run scared. We’re gonna get hurt, and people like Kraber are gonna do a lot of the hurting. I’m scared, more than I’ve ever been, even more than I was when the Crystal Empire’s siege golems invaded Manehattan. I think I’ll be alright - I’ve got a bodyguard - a big, stocky human marine. He used to be an embassy guard in France. Seems like he has a marefriend… While he had every reason to kill her, he didn’t. He’s a good soldier, but he’s a kind man too

Well, he is, but buck it. That isn’t important. I have to find a way to make this all okay. There’s a lot of people in the PHL, pony and human alike. They’re looking up to me. They want me to say something. Me! I can’t...

No. I have to. Even if I can’t do anything, even if I’m just a silly unicorn and a fringe scientist, I can’t sit around (on my flank or no!) while Catseye and that nutcase Reitman think that turning every human into mindless little drones is ascension of some kind, while humans like Viktor Kraber and the damn Carters do their best to kill every pony in sight. I’m going to do it. No matter what the PHL becomes, I’m going to do it. Maybe I’m not up to it. Maybe I’m a pervert, maybe I’m lazy, maybe I’m all the things ponies like Catseye called me on their worse days. Buck it, I totally am! But somepony has to, and I’m going to do it.

That had stuck with him, and he couldn’t stop looking at that entry. In fact, this was the second time in about 16 hours that he’d read it.

‘Somepony has to, and I’m going to do it.’ Right after he’d been cited as an utter kontgesig. And then, this mare, this silly bakvissie with plenty of sexual hangups, had gone on to fight a war. She’d stepped up. She’d fought.

He had too, but… Fok, he was tuning himself kak. That just rang hollow. If she could make what she did, what could he do?

Unfortunately, he’d been shaken from this entry by a rather bizarre answer from Amber Maple.

“My parents actually named me Johnny C. On my birth certificate, it actually says Johnny C Philip Heald.”

“And my middle name’s my dad’s first,” Johnny C explained. “First name’s… sort of my uncle’s? So I guess I’m Johnny C Heald the Third. Could be Rader, but, well...”

“We don’t talk about Grandpa Rader,
A man with the people skills of the average gator.”

“Ah, that explains it,” Kraber said, as if that revelation held the answer to a great secret of time.

"Wait, what did you say was funny?" Rivet asked. “I mean… you were almost gonna cry earlier.”

"I mean all this. Ah'm in a lorry with a huge pony in the backseat, there's three vaguely anthropomorphic equines in here, and it's the end ay the wairld. And the driver dressed up like a girl from Homestuck.”

And, thinking back to college yet again, of that pugnacious, alcoholic, irresponsible, drug-addicted yet innocent-by-comparison med student that he once was, Kraber said: “Whit the fok would I think ay all this if I just goat dropped intae this in college? If suddenly, foo, it’s college-aged me in this brain, knowing whit’s happening?”

‘He sure as fok wouldn’t be all that happy, that’s for sure,’ Kraber thought to himself.’ He’d probably freak out, have a panic attack… go catatonic… headbutt someone in the balls and kick another person in the face...’

“You… you wouldn’t take it all that well, that’s for sure,” Rivet said.

“That’s fir defo,” Kraber agreed. “Dinnae think ah’d consider mahself the same species whin ah saw mahself.”

“Wait, which one would think that? Your past self or your present self?” Rivet asked, confused.

“Yes,” Kraber said. “Hell, if ah showed you a photo ay ehs, ya’d think the same.”

"Tell me about it," Johnny C said. "Still, I'm happy to have met Fiddlesticks... You ever wonder if we've gone crazy?"

"Why would I?" Kraber asked, and then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world: "Ah wis crazy a long time before this."

There was an uncomfortable silence, as they drove through the shantytown by the lake, the one built from the long-abandoned motel, passing through hordes of dirty refugees, their stalls and shops built uncomfortably close to the road.

So this was where he probably would have ended up if not for Aegis’ kindness. That was… disheartening. Kraber could see what Sixstring had been talking about, the place was a fokkin’ horrible umkhuku. Everyone was packed into the old, crumbling motel buildings, there were old shipping container stacks nearby, and outbuildings were clustered near the pond, so precarious that it looked like they’d collapse. One truck in the parking lot looked to have a missile pod from a downed helicopter mounted on board.

There were a lot of stalls lining the ancient motel, its roof patched with corrugated metal, cardboard, clapboard, and whatever else could be found.

“So… That’s where you’d have gone without cousin Sixstring,” Rivet said, trying to put on a brave face. “I don’t think you’d have liked it there.”

The silence there never quite died, even when they got to the synagogue. They all made their way out, Johnny C – and, before he knew it, Kraber – opening the doors to let the ponies inside trot out. What the fok, why not, it was polite.

“Wasn’t this a church before?” Sixstring asked, looking up at the massive beams that criscrossed the ceiling. “Huh. Those’re odd.”

“They’re to keep the roof from falling in on itself,” Aegis explained. “Old building.”

“Which is why dad helped pay for them,” Johnny C explained. “You’ve seriously never been here, Sixstring?”

“Nah,” Sixstring said. “I… well, religiously speaking, I wasn’t sure what to think.”

Instinctively, Kraber scanned the patrons. Almost everybody looked to be armed, but nobody looked all that dangerous, except...

There was one woman there - a woman with really nice hips - that gave Kraber pause. Tall, with a dancer’s build, nice hips, brownish skin, and lustrous black hair. She was wearing a red jacket, like the one from that Guardians of the Galaxy movie, over full armor, some of which appeared to be repurposed and reforged Royal Guard armor. A lot of it was forest-green, made to blend into the woods of New Hampshire, though it looked better in dark gray. She had a light red jacket, a Jericho 941 at her hip… and she was tall. Taller than Kraber, even, by two inches. An old Galil, the kind you could use as a bottle-opener, sat nearby, and there was…

“Cousin Nny!” Yael Ze’ev laughed, holding Johnny C up, hugging him off the ground. “It’s been way too long!”

“Cousin Yael!” Johnny C laughed, lifting her up as well. Quite an odd sight, considering that Johnny C was barely more than five feet tall, and Yael was about eight inches taller. “This, uh, this is my friend Aegis’ cousin Sixstring - pretty sure you haven’t met him.”

Fokkin’ fokkin’ fok me, Kraber said. He remembered Ze’ev. How she’d sworn to kill him once. How they’d seen each other in Agua Caliente before. How she’d suspected him and only been slightly put off by the Boston accent he was trying to ape.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sixstring said. “I don’t even know what any of this entails, though. I’m just… curious.”

“You might go and like it. Who knows? If you don’t, it’s none of my business,” Yael shrugged. “And it’s so good to see you again, cousin Nny! Here I was, thinking I’d have to steal another lobotomized biological computer to see you again.”

“Give me time,” Johnny C said. “I mean, I’ve looted a lot of stuff from PER, but never anything like that.”

“Maybe you can bag enough for us to get a nice dinner. Or your daddy can make some more shoo-fly pie,” Yael suggested.

‘This guy, this crossdressing little moegoe, is cousins with Ze’ev?’ Kraber thought. ‘Fokkin’ hell, how’s that work?’

“I didn’t know for awhile either,” Aegis says. “It… it was kinda surprising.”

”Eh, I don’t blame you. You’re from a place that has chowder and cheeseburgers everywhere. And your dad was raised eating shrimp and cheese grits with bacon,” She took a look at Johnny C’s makeup, cosplay dress, and brightly colored wig. “Looking good today, by the way.” She then kneeled to the ground, putting herself somewhere close to eye level with that yellow pony. Unheard of in the HLF, but then, PHL were just different. “So, Fiddlesticks Apple?”

“Nice to meet you again,” Yael said. “I’m just… I’m glad you’re feeling better this time. Last time we talked, well...”

And this is the person that people in Defiance say we should be terrified of? Kraber wondered. She’s… he thought for a moment. It was hard to think of someone that nice as being an enemy.

“-Cause a good human that’ll keep you safe isn’t that easy to find,” Heliotrope said.

“Come on, we just live together, and…” the words died in Johnny C’s mouth. “You’re just fucking with me aren’t you.”

“Noooo… yeah, I am,” Heliotrope said, with a light chuckle. “I totally am.” She looked over at Aegis. “Haven’t seen you since Reykjavik. Are the foals okay?”

“Never again,” Aegis said solemnly, his head inclined downward. “I promise, foals. It’ll never happen again.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Aegis said. “It… it all turned out alright. Yeah. That’s what the foals keep saying. Yeah.”

“It barely turned out alright,” Yael said, and for a second, this warrior woman almost taller than Kraber, looked… afraid. Vulnerable. It was as if some presence to her had just leached away.

I could take her in a fight, Kraber was thinking. Betting she knows Krav maga? Might be interesting to learn.

But he didn’t heed that part. He’d probably get his gat handed to him. Even with her in that state, remembering whatever had happened in Reykjavik, it was hard not to be intimidated by Yael.

“We thought we could’ve killed Celestia there. And then… she left. Said some nonsense words over her sister’s petrified body and left. We failed, and we couldn’t’ve done anything anyway,” Yael said bitterly.

“It’ll get better,” Heliotrope said. “You never know what R&D will do next…”

‘Fok me up the gat,’ Kraber thought. ‘Yael Ze’ev and Heliotrope! Oh, God, if you’re listening, just kill me now–’

“Nah. that’d be silly. I think it’s more like what I’d imagine God saying,” Kraber explains. “It’d be a terrible fokking world if God decided to ova to me.”

“I know!” Kraber says, shocking her slightly with his agreement. “What? You thought I was grenade-fishing for compliments again? Besides, I hallucinated a lot earlier. Could be anything, really. Anyway, in a way, I almost wished the PER had come. Now, blikseming PER? That’s a public fokkin’ service! Plus, it’s just hilarious making kontgesigs like that suffer…”

“Course there are,” Kraber says. “As long as there are PER, I will smack the shit out of them.”

“Should I be disturbed that you two are talking like that in front of children?” Elena asks, scooching back a little.

“And God, how I wish none of them had to. Anyway,” Kraber says, “The sad thing about being good in a pehrer is that after awhile, it’s hard to not be in it. Isn’t that right, Verity?”

“Anyway,” he continues, “PER? Could deal with that. This shit, next to a woman that would flay me alive?”

“That’s Francis Strang,” Aegis explained. “He’s staying in my house till he gets a job.”

“You look familiar,” Yael said, looking Kraber over as he tried not to shake. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

“Ah, I can sympathize,” Kraber said, though inside, he was shaking. He didn’t like thinking of himself as a manipulator. People like Lovikov, that capitalized on your fear to make you an utter kontgesig? He fokking hated them. Still, fokking with the truth was useful.

“I was thinking the same. Coulda gone anywhere else, but this was the closest synagogue I could think of.”

“There’s places in Maine, and Laconia,” Yael said. “Why are you here?”

“Guess I liked the mountain scenery,” Kraber said. “Plus, it was on the rail line. I’d been hoping to keep heading west. Buy tickets to as far away from the Barrier as possible, do odd jobs… Maybe get to the west coast.”

“Huh,” Yael said. “Another pilgrim. Hear there’s a lot of prospects out there. Say, you look…” There was a tightness in her body, like a coiled snake. “Familiar. Have we met?”

”Ah well. It’d have to come out - but fok it, it was coming out on my own terms. I’d had to tell my parents from a hospital bed… though to my credit, I’d put a lot of those kontgesigs that bliksemed me in the same hossy. And I got more flowers and chocolate than them, so that was kwaai. Which sorta muddles this moral a bit.”

“I like it,” Verity says. “Huh. Guess maybe we’re not all that different…”

“Look,” Kraber said. “I know who you are. And what you do. I saw footage of you up in Canada.” Well, he’d heard a lot about her. How could he not? “I feel like you’ll be seeing a lot of me,” He continued. “Hell, we’ll be going to the same synagogue. But… I feel like I need to tell you this. I’m ex-HLF.”

“But…” Kraber said, holding a hand out in a handshake, “I’m ex-HLF fir a reason.”

“Ivan Bliss was Kraber,” Yael interrupted. “That bastard somehow managed to convince his way into PHL, steal equipment, and…” she sighed. “It’s been a long couple days.”

Fok me in the keyhole, they know! Kraber thought, trying to resist a fight-or-flight reaction. “What do you mean?”

“What she means,” Heliotrope said, “Is we’ve been run ragged. Nearly court-martialed, sent here, and trying to tell people whether or not a man that killed what might’ve been the biggest threat to the city next to Lovikov himself has a goddamn massive bounty.” She looked pointedly at Kraber. “You weren’t with him, were you?”

“No,” Kraber said, unnerved at the certainty in his voice. “He and Kraber deserve to die in the most painful way possible. I’ve heard some PHL ponify PER that’ve pissed them off-”

“Not,” Yael said, “On. My. Watch.” The coldness in her voice could’ve cooled off near everyone in the state.

“Wait. What, really?” Kraber asked, to Heliotrope and Aegis’ nods of assent, and Yael’s tightly restrained anger. “That’s great. That’s brill’nt.”

“You’re not going to go back, are you?” Heliotrope said. “I can tell. Just… promise us you won’t. I like that little assurance.”

“I promise,” Kraber said. “Besides, if I get back, I’ll only get the traditional HLF greeting.”

“Oh, I wish I was that lucky,” Kraber said, an uncomfortable grimace on his face as his hands inched towards his groin.

“You’re alright, Mr. Strang,” Heliotrope said, a bemused look on her face. “You’re alright.”

This being close to July 30th, it had come time to read Parshat Masei. From what the rabbi had said, they’d be doing a long reading - 35:9 to 35:34.

“It may not exactly be a suitable thing, but it seems fitting,” Rabbi Elijah Brackett explained. “All of us - we’ve done bad things in this war. And some of us, well… we merely haven’t done them yet. I confess, I have an… acquaintances, one that saw wanted PER eating at his cafe. He poisoned them with a smile on his face.”

“But as a result, they weren’t truly punished. He just killed them in cold-blood. They were PER, and while I can’t criticize him for it, they could have been anyone, really,” Elijah said. “Which brings me to today’s reading, Parashat Masei. It is, in fact, about murder.”

In his own way, though, his prayer was a plea. Sure, it was…. it was, when you got down to it, just acknowledging the existence of God, but in his own mind, Kraber was thinking ‘Dear God, please let me live through this and without coming out feeling like a kontgesig.’

“Like cousin Sixstring said, I was curious,” Aegis explains. “Equestria’s closest thing to a goddess has been rather unapproachable lately, so I’d wanted to c--”

“Heita, Lieutenant. Howzit?” a pause. “Oh? Yeah, she beat me up. It hurt.” A short, laugh. “Ah, man, fun times. Cept for nearly dying. Well, yeah, again, but it hurt less this time. Okay, ja, I was… ja. But, well, guess that’s part of the fun.” Another pause. “Well, what do you mean? These things are usually hilarious when I survive them… okay, yeah. The alternative is going crazier.”

“Right,” Kraber says. “Sure. I’ll put you on the horn. Aegis, can you pick up the laptop I got? Yael and Heliotrope are on the phone, and they want me to put them on videochat.”

“Once you go through some of the shit the six of us have,” Aegis says, an almost wistful smile on his face, “That sorta thing stops mattering.”

“We rammed a skyliner once. In a stolen potioneer ship. Alright,” he says, hooves hovering over the keyboard, keys pressing randomly-

“Eh, wouldn’t be all that unlikely by PHL standards,” Vinyl says. “I once saw a man resurrect a dead dog by slapping him with a magic glove.”

“I don’t know, maybe labradors are easier to resurrect from the dead or some shit?” Vinyl shrugs.

“I’d think that was dachshunds,” Kraber says. “Or maybe valhunds. I’ve always liked valhunds. Least it wasn’t a cat and someone’s son.”

“That never goes anywhere well,” Lunar Phase adds. “There’s plenty of stories about-”

“Wait, you’re not going with the Pet Sematary reference?” Aegis asks, confused. He has opened up facetime on the laptop. Yael’s picture is on the computer.

“She’s not,” Vinyl confirms. “We had to read so many classic stories back in college about unicorn archmages that tried to raise the dead. And somehow, the professors made them super-boring. S’why I dropped out.”

“I feel ya,” Kraber says. “Even old Ter Voorde did that. We could be discussing necrotizing fasciitis or something, then-”

“I’m not even going to question this shit anymore,” Verity sighs. “I’m a talking horse, a talking unicorn with a blue mane is talking to Sharlto Copley about pet sematary and necromancy, and he’s getting a call from a war criminal, and a larger small horse is using a keyboard without fingers. That’s it. Fuck it. Either I’ve gone insane, this is hell, or I’ve put up with so much torture in hell that I’ve gone insane.”

“No, what he’s actually doing,” Vinyl explains, “Is using hoof TK. We can’t hold everything in our mouths.”

“Vinyl!” Lieutenant Yael Ze’ev laughs, as her face and Heliotrope’s flash into view on the screen of Aegis’ laptop. “Been awhile since I heard some of your beats. And just Yael works. I’m off duty.” She leans back in her chair, next to Heliotrope, who’s sitting on a chair nearby just like Lyra.

Heliotrope takes a swig of scotch. “And… failing to get drunk. So, I heard Kraber was telling the story of how he joined the PHL?”

“Heliotrope said she wanted to hear,” Yael explains. “I was around for a lot of it, anyway. So I thought I might as well give my perspective at points. And make sure you’ve got me right.”

“Hey, I’m more likely to make myself look like an irredeemable kontgesig than do that,” Kraber says.

“That’s what I was worried about. Besides,” Heliotrope adds, flying into view of the camera, hanging almost upside down like Lunar Phase does in her sleep, (“Is that racist?” Lunar Phase is wondering right now) with a wrench in her teeth. An old jumpsuit of hers is stained with grease and residue of unidentifiable components for PHL machinery. “There was that thing with Richard Hatch. Figured I could help with that, too.”

“Ooh, good call. You figured that out way quicker than I did,” Kraber says. “Aegis? Take it away.”

“Oh great,” Verity groans, facehoofing. “Richard Hatch. As if this wasn’t convoluted enough. Can I get sedated again? More importantly, can he?!” she points at Kraber.

get human religion. Honestly, Kraber, your Torah seems more like a historical record than a holy text at points.

Still, I can understand the merits of reading one. I don’t think I’ll convert, much as it intrigues me.

As it happened, Kraber speaks Hebrew, so he translated Masei to me and the foals later. There were a bunch of laws about murder in biblical times there. Something about refuge cities.

Not sure it worked, and it reminded me a bit of old Earth Pony traditions, back during the Windigo’s Winter, or the old concepts of Unicorn Honor.

… Look, I went to college, okay? I learned some of that stuff there. And yes, Vinyl, the profs actually did manage to make the stories about Unicorn archmages using ancient windigo burial grounds-

-to bring their sons back from the dead boring. I know. It shouldn’t be possible.

“Before we pray, commence the service,” Rabbi Elijah said, “ There is… there is a matter, both spiritual and physical, that we cannot ignore.”

We all know what it was. Hell, every synagogue, every place of worship left on Earth… it’s hard not to touch this.

“I pray for our brothers and sisters, fighting the Barrier, and already consumed by that great corruption, that affront to God,” said Rabbi Elijah, his sudden vitriol surprising the man I knew as Francis here, who edged back an inch or two. “Those who are drink the corruption at her teats are thus drunk themselves. As they drink, the purple corruption eats away their souls. Perhaps in the metaphysical sense, but definitely in the physical sense. It drinks all that is them, their likes and dislikes, their faults and foibles, all that makes them good and bad. Does it make them good, as the PER would say? NO! It simply wipes them clean, creates an empty slate where there once was a person! And their fate is not to become valued, but simply to be disposable. To clog our rifles and guns with bodies, to blunt our blades with blood and bone!”

“Amen,” Francis said reverently. Yes, I’m still referring to Kraber as Francis here.

Small wonder human religion had lasted so long with adherents at that level of energy, I thought.

“They’ve taken our homes, our families… but when they get here, they won’t take us. It’s my hope, my dream that when we shatter the barrier with the help of the PHL–”

“What the hell are you doing here, you damned gluesti–!” someone called out.

“He came,” Francis said, “Cos’ he was curious. Cos’ he’s got a healthy respect, and doesn’t think xenocide’s the answer.”

“I’ve heard that sort of thing before,” I said, acutely aware my foals were looking up at me. That, that gave me strength. “Believe me, we’re not happy with Newfoals either. They’re a replacement – and a terrible one. Just imagine waking up every day, knowing that your immortal ruler’s gone mad, and she does not tolerate dissent. And that she likes zombies better than you. That the zombies think they’re better than you. More pony, or whatever. Can’t imagine it… being a minority, among them, in your own home.”

“That,” said the rabbi - Elijah Brackett, evidently- “Sounds terrifying.”

“It is!” Amber - my Amber, poor filly - called out, almost on the verge of crying, it sounded like.

“He’s right,” Francis said. “By God, he’s right. Besides – the Barrier’s magic. Not optimistic ‘bout how easy it’d be tae break it. And… not all of you might like that Aegis is here. But sure as hell he’s not going back. Might as well get used to a father like him staying around.”

“And every pony I’ve talked to like that,” Francis added, “None of them like Equestria or want to go back. So whoever called him ‘gluestick’? Lay off him, he’s lost enough.”

“In fact… how about we pray for the ponies on earth as well?” Yael suggested. We all looked at her, surprised.

“Good God, they’re making them big nowadays!” Kraber said. “Don’t they–”

“So have I, for that matter,” Rabbi Elijah said. “I believe I wrote one here somewhere…” he cleared his throat.

I don’t really remember much of what he said. There was, of course, a translation in the book, though, but I can remember that. It said: May the ponies that have escaped to our home and hate their ruler be shielded from misfortune, may they not be taken back to their home. God, shield them from those that would hurt them or take advantage of them, and those that would deport them under the pretense of rescuing them. Protect them from enemies, human and pony alike. Let them find sympathetic humans that would help them survive and defend them, instead of HLF. Protect them from all evils, human and Imperial alike.

”I was really surprised to find myself hoping they didn’t get their hands on you,” Kraber says. “You were… okay, I’d gotten plenty of ponies be nice to me. But you were the nicest.”

“I paid the tickets – you just saw a bergie, and let him stay in your house. Just on one recommendation from your cousin,” Kraber says. “I fokkin’ well needed the tough love from ponies like Socket Wrench or Caduceus, or whoever that pegasus that punched me in the knee was. Wouldnae have listened otherwise. Besides, Amber, Rivet? Yael? Heliotrope?”

“Thanks,” Kraber says. “For accepting me too. So, uh… should I describe what happened in the service, or should jou? I mean, I remember what happened, I remember what i thought, but–”

“Eh, go ahead,” Yael says. “Services are long - it’s best to keep this stripped-down.”

“Works for me,” Aegis shrugs. “I keep going, you cut in where need be?”

It was a weird service. Not exactly upbeat. The rest of this was about murder, after all.

The idea of having cities of refuge where one could find a trial, the idea of the tools that made someone qualify as a murderer. Nobody would disagree that guns counted here, I think. And potion, well, the rabbi said that counted as murder too.

(“He said ‘Think of them as dead if it helps, but it’s worse than murder.’ And then he said there was nothing wrong with killing PER, you were probably avenging someone,” Kraber adds. “Great fokkin’ thing to hear him say. It… It’d been awhile since I heard someone say I did a good thing.”

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t that good. But every little bit helps when your self worth is low.”)

Much of the rest of it was about justice. Or so the translation went, anyway. Part of what I remember was that it says that only blood could redeem blood.

“And, like all those things, the punishment for the crime of murder has changed,” the rabbi finished. “Some would suggest death.”

Amber Maple and Rivet cringe, and you look at him, more than a little disturbed. “...What?”

“You were going to commit suicide outside and I didn’t know?!” Heliotrope yells. “Shit! I… I should’ve…”

“Holy shite,” Aegis whispers, hugging Kraber. “I’m glad you were out there, though.”

“Eh, it’s fine,” Kraber shrugs. “Not the first unsuccessful suicide attempt I’ve made. First time I tried, I got distracted by a cherry brainfreezy at the gun range.”

“...That really doesn’t make it better,” Aegis says, still holding onto Kraber. “Wait, why the hell were you on a gun range?!”

“I got bored so a friend invited me for recreational shooting,” Kraber explains. “Grayson and Howie took me along - and Howie, he brought an 8-gauge double barrel, and dared me to fire both barrels.” He winces. “It hurt.”

“I’ll bet it did,” Heliotrope says. “Are you… Are you okay now, though?”

“I thought I was an unforgivable bastard just doomed to be evil the rest of his life,” Kraber says. “I mean, the rabbi didn’t say it, but it was… he didn’t help. I just remember thinking…”

‘Someone up there wants me to suffer. Wait, am I the manslayer or the blood-avenger? I’m getting mixed messages here,’ Kraber thought.

“But… it reminds me. Of a story I heard, a long time ago in Beit Sefer,” the rabbi continued. “A long time ago, there was a man named Eliezer. A vicious, vicious murderer. And one day, he realized what he had done.”

“He asked people to pray for his soul! The way I was told it in beit sefer, he even asked dogs! Who, from what I can tell, usually have good advice. I don’t know how this worked, but you know how children’s stories are. And none of them would pray for him, cause it was his own fault.”

“Eh, just need to step out,” Kraber said, walking past Sixstring, who was looking up at him, moderately concerned. “Need some fresh air.”

Murder was unforgivable in Judaism, because you couldn’t very well ask the ones you’d killed for forgiveness. It wasn’t as if Kraber could somehow find every newfoal he’d tortured, murdered, or burned alive and ask them for forgiveness. Not that he’d want to, anyway. They were newfoals, basic level fokkin cannon fodder. That was true. But… Eliezer, whoever that was, he’d done nothing to fix what he’d done.

And neither had he. Nobody would miss me, nobody would care, Kraber thought as he pushed open the doors. Hell, when Aegis and his family found out who he really was, after a forensic team pulled his corpse into a morgue, they’d actively celebrate. Maybe his family would too.

Kraber walked out to the stairs, one hand on the railing. He looked down the barrel of the revolver, and shrugged, finger on the trigger guard as he put it to his chin.

Nothing to live for here. Nothing to miss. No more dreams for him. No more being alone. He was going over the stars. Something had gone wrong with him, nobody cared, and…

“You… you don’t know what it’s like!” Kraber yelled, not sure if he was yelling or thinking at the hallucination of his son. “You couldn’t even imagine…”

“I’m stuck as a newfoal, I’m not allowed to imagine,” Peter said. “Of course I can’t. But please, Daddy, just listen to me!”

“No! There’s nothing I can do! I’m a bastard! I’m… I can’t… I’m not a doctor, I’m bosbefok! I shouldn’t be allowed to–”

“You’re not crazy!” Kate pleaded. “I mean, look at us! We’re having a perfectly sane discussion!”

“... Hmm, good point,” Kraber said. “I guess you’ve been straight with me all this time...”

“Good on that - it was a big step in your character arc, very meaningful, I’m sure the readers loved it,” Victory said, looking far more battered, covered in blood, a bruise covering her remaining eye that was so thick it looked like she could barely see. “But they’re right! INDEEDYDOODY! Killing yourself isn’t the answer! The only answer is finding a potion and drinking it down!”

“Oh, you know that was for the best,” Victory said dismissively. “You’re happy all the time! What more could a little filly want?”

"You're dead," another voice said, and a dark armoured figure stepped out of the shadows. "Choosing life, Viktor? Is this life? Doesn't fokking look like it to me."

"Oh fokking great," Kraber said, groaning. "What is this, party in Viktor Kraber's head, all crazy hallucinations welcome?! Have I lost so much that I can’t even have my own PTSD? I just wanted… to enjoy… a service… AT THE SYNAGOGUE! Why is this so hard?!"

"Perhaps not," the Dark Kraber said. He looked at Victory. "Hello again."

"Death stalks all beings, you fokking abomination," the Dark Kraber said, his hand going to a sword sheathed at his side. "And I am yours. Five of your heads adorn my wall already - I’m eager to make it six for six."

"Oh don't have a conversation in my fokking head," Kraber groaned. "Please. I just wanted to go to synagogue!"

"Prayer won't do anything," Victory said. “What use is it when you serve a being of near-absolute power?”

"On one thing, I agree with the abomination," the armoured figure said softly, folding his arms. "I have fought beside a God, and killed many things that called themselves such. They were puny. Prayer is not devotion, the performance of your purpose is."

“So, uh, Kate,” Kraber said. “Remember when we were playing Hotline Miami and the game asked if I enjoyed hurting other people? Please. Do that. I… I’ll take that more easier than these kontgesigs not shutting the fok up. Drown these kontgesigs out. I wouldn’t even mind.”

“Even I can’t shut them up,” she sighed. “You’d need a lot of drugs for that…”

"You might as well lobotomise yourself," the armoured figure said with a chuckle. "Or do what the abomination suggests, it's the same fokking thing. We are part of you, Viktor. Accept it. Remember who you a-"

"[I remember...] (Remember what you did to Katie) Remember who you are... [I remember!] (Remember what you did to her!) See your knife!”” Victory sang. "See it glide! See it slice! A-who's your Night Surgeo-”

“Don’t listen to them!” Kraber heard some… thing say. It sounded like Emil. “The only peace you’ll find is down a gun barrel, or back in the–”

“You see?!” Victory asked. “This is exactly what I’ll protect you from when you turn into me!”

“Both of you!” Kate yelled. “Leave my husband alone! You… Viktor’s a good man! He–

“And I’ll… I’ll do my best as a father,” Viktor had said, looking up at her father.

“Positive,” Viktor said. “I love Kate, Mr. Baldwin. I… Seeing her is just like coming home. Of every girl I’ve met, she’s… she’s just Kate. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone else, and it’d be a pleasure to be her husband. And if anyone comes after her, well… I’ll punch the shit out of them.”

“I like you, son,” Kate’s father said, ruffling Viktor’s shaggy brown-black hair. “And I know you have done that. You didn’t know?”

“Joe, then… I’m a bad person. I know that much. But on the other hand, a kid needs a daddy that’ll be there for them. One that won’t be stoned or drunk at any given time. Gonna try my best.”

The withdrawal symptoms had been outright hellish, but he’d gone through with it. For Kate. For his unborn children. Because he loved her, because she made every second of his life, every urge to be a bastard just float away.

Because, above all, Kate, the way she was so sweet, the way she could just… just click with him… made him better. Plus, she liked all his college friends Erika, Polo’ Polmont, Gray, Howie, Terry, Strychnine Jones, Helen, Zo, Stretcher Burt, Corinne, Frank, Eva, Heather, Zanna, Miranda… and it was reciprocated. They adored her, and adored Viktor for adoring her, adored how she was up for anything their little gang would do. Plus, she was a fan of Repo: The Genetic Opera and thought it was funny that Kraber had eaten his roommate once. How could he not love someone like that?

“ Oh, don’t lie to yourself,” Victory said, “ He’s shot children and foals, he’s committed unspeakable crimes! He deserves ponification!”

"He has sought vengeance," the armoured figure countered, "as is his right and duty. His only crime is faltering now. You decry me, Viktor - but I survived my horrors. I continue - I serve. If you end yourself now, what does that say?"

"But I am alive," the Dark Kraber retorted, chuckling, "which will be more than can be said for the cowardly former HLF man, too scared to walk the path he trod to its glorious end and too scared to seek forgiveness, futile as it is. Don't you claim to be stronger than me, Viktor? You don't fokking look stronger from where I'm standing."

“I guess I’m not,” Kraber said. “After all, it takes a strong man to murder children, kill thousands… and absolutely convince themselves it doesn’t fokking matter. Your denial systems must be fokkin’ great, huh? You’re never going to change, right up till the moment that someone skullfucks you with a chainsaw.”

"My 'denial systems' are 'great' enough that I never sat outside a place of worship planning to end my life so soon after choosing to begin it anew," the armoured figure pointed out. "And when my death comes, it will be in battle, not mewling and battling shadows that congregate in my own mind. That, at least, comforts me." He paused for a moment. "I confess would have preferred to meet you on the field, if not as brother, than as righteous, misguided enemy. That would be preferable to this... mewling weakling I see before me.”

“Quiet, shadow of a broken mind,” the Dark Kraber said. “You're not real. Just this poor, broken, sad little bastard’s defense mechanisms and self-hatred. I’m realer than all of you.”

“Yes,” the Dark Kraber said. “You forget. I know you. I know everything you’ve been through. Because, right here? Right now? This PT world? It’s already happened for me. I’ve seen it before. What will happen in Defiance, what will happen in Montreal, what will happen in Boston.”

“No,” Kraber said. “You're just some fokked up hallucination. You're not real!”

“Even if you cling to that belief, just look at yourself, Viktor. The path you’re on - that puts you just that much closer to becoming the abomination. Even if you somehow prevail, I’ve told you before. Joining the PHL will only make you their rabid dog on a leash. I’ve seen plenty of PHLs in my time. Joining me, surrendering yourself and this world… the PHL could only accomplish a fraction of what we have all done. It is for your own good.”

Kraber didn’t speak for a second, and then he laughed. It was a high-pitched, hoarse, wheezing, unhealthy laugh at that.

The Dark Kraber, the colossus, was suddenly standing in front of him at the foot of the stairs. There was a look of moderate confusion on his face.

He trailed off, uncertain what to add to that. To his surprise, the Dark Kraber was apparently unrattled by the comparison. The colossal figure merely folded his arms, looking almost bored.

"Believe what you want of me, Viktor Kraber. I do not wish ill to you,” he said. “Nor does the abomination, though its idea of 'good' is far different from mine."

The armoured figure sighed. "You saw the death of Victoria Kraber. She was strong. A worthy counterpart. If you will not listen to reason - and I will continue to hope that you do - then at least I would see you survive. I would see you thrive. I would see you become the best you can be, so that when we meet in the flesh..."

“Skullfuck him with a chainsaw, just like you said!” Victory suggested. “.Go on! Do it!”

"You will be welcome to try, Viktor," the armoured figure said, shrugging its massive shoulders. "I would welcome the attempt, and the challenge. But you can't very well do it if you kill yourself now."

“Hate to say it,” Kate said, “But he’s right. If you took responsibility once, if you made things right with us... you can do it again. Isn’t that right, Viktor?”

“But, on the other hand, Eliezer never did anything to make amends for his murders,” Kraber heard the rabbi continue from inside the synagogue. “He never took responsibility. All he did was ask for others to help him, instead of trying to help them and atone. If someone does wrong, and works to fix what they’ve done, honestly asks for forgiveness, it’s a moral obligation. If, I believe, the person honestly wants to make up for what they did.”’

“You make whatever choice you want,” the Dark Kraber said, almost amicably. Suddenly, he reached for a compartment in his armour. “Just remember - there is a fundamental difference between Celestia and I.”

And he pulled out a multi-coloured, shimmering mane that glistened slightly, even though it was splattered with blood.

Kraber blinked at the mane - hallucinatory as it was - and chuckled weakly. “Needs a good hair wash.”

The Dark Kraber chuckled as well, whether at the joke or the weak attempt at bravado Kraber couldn't tell, and then he - and his trophy - were gone.

“Ok, I’m gonna come straight out and say that I’m very glad any stories where those guys come here for real aren't canon,” Victory said with a wide-eyed expression. “If nothing else, the tone would be waaaay too ‘dark and apocalyptic’ to be fun.”

“Look, this is all confusing as hell for me, let alone you,” Kate said. “And I’m a figment of your imagination.”

“Well, if you ever feel the need to be comforted…” Kate said quietly. “Just remember… Blueberry Torte wishes he could see you.”

‘Try to make up for what I’ve done, huh?’ Kraber thought as he closed the door and stood on the steps outside. ‘And… Blueberry Torte, huh? Who the fok is Blueberry Torte?’

Seemingly unbidden, Kraber imagined himself hugging a family of Newfoals - no, convies, his head buried in a strange mare’s mane.

“It’ll be alright, Kate!” Kraber pleaded, stroking her thick mane. “I promise, it’ll be alright…”

She could barely speak. She was crying, gesturing to the Webley at Kraber’s hip with one hoof, hugging him with the other.

“No, no,” Kraber said. “I’m going to be there for you. No matter what. This time, I promise.”

“Can you?” she asked. “After what happened? After… oh, it was just hell! It was like being trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up fro-”

“I promise,” Kraber said, this time more insistently, tears streaming down his face, into his beard, “I’ll be there. No matter what we have to do, no matter how long it takes, I still love you. And I never stopped.”
The people around him, Converted, BDF, and Dead Men-
‘Who are these people? And… who did we lose? Is Elliot okay? Kraber asked. Then, unbidden: ‘Who’s Elliot?’

“I missed you so much!” Kraber said, making sobs of his own, burying his face and beard in his Converted wife’s mane, just above her left foreleg.

“Hands and hooves in the air! Your false god is a travesty before the one true monarch!”

There was a God! Fok what the rabbi had just said about murder. This wasn’t murder, this was cleanup.

“Oh, life’s fokkin’ lekker sometimes,” Kraber said, smiling, very glad he’d brought those pistols with him. He needed to unwind, after all… But they would have noticed him having walked outside, wouldn’t they? Quickly, he tried to think of all the building’s entrances and exits. He needed to surprise them, after all…

Oh, this would be fun. He unholstered his revolver, and… ah, damn! His revolver only had a few spare rounds – he’d used most of them up on Reaper. Well, good thing he had the .45...

The Light Despondent

by Doctor Fluffy

The Enemy / Roller Mobster