Pony Gear Solid

by Posh

12. In the Mud and Sinking Deeper

Fruit farmers were meticulous in their theming, in Twilight's experience. Just as apples, or depictions of apples, could be found everywhere and on everything at Sweet Apple Acres, so too were cherries emblazoned on Cherry Hill Ranch's signage and structures. A sign in front of the barn greeted visitors with a pair of ripe, plump, ruby-red cherries. An enlarged, horizontally flipped version of the same image was stamped halfway up a silo behind the barn, all to loudly announce "HERE BE CHERRIES" to customers and workers alike.

And who wouldn't need to be bombarded with cherry imagery to figure out what's grown here? Not like there's a cherry orchard literally within walking distance.

No wonder Cherry Jubilee and Applejack had bonded at that rodeo.

Also behind the barn was an automobile, painted pale blue and emblazoned with Pegasus Wings's baleful alicorn on its driver's-side and passenger's doors. It was big, even by human proportions, with thick tires, a cabin tapering down from a protruding rear section, and bits of armor plating stuck to its front and sides. On its roof was a hole big enough to fit a human torso through, and an empty notch where something was clearly meant to be mounted. Snake identified the car as a "Humvee". The name was silly, and merited a laugh, but Twilight had gotten all her giggles out in the cherry orchard, and had none left to spare.

Hitched to the back of the car, above the rear bumper, was a motorcycle, all polished black and chrome, with the word Triumph emblazoned in flowing script. "And a damn nice one, at that," Snake remarked. "Vintage 1960s." He leaned over to examine it, running his hands over the glossy finish. "The car, I can understand, but this... What the hell is this doing out here with it?"

"Back-up vehicle, maybe?" said Twilight. "Just in case something goes wrong with the, er... 'Humvee?'"

Snake shrugged. He patted the leather seat, let his hand linger there, then pushed away and looked at Twilight. "Let's open up the car, see what we find. Front doors. You take the left." He drew his pistol and rounded the right side of the Humvee

Twilight went left, to the frontmost door on her side. The handle was too far above her head to reach with her hooves – she would have to use her magic to trick it open. She paused look at the logo first, her head tilted and her eyes squinting.

Huh. It does look like Princess Luna.

Twilight wrapped her aura around the handle, counted down from three, and flung the door open; on the other side of the car, Snake did the same, and they saw each other through the open cabin. Snake scanned the interior, his pistol gripped in his right hand and his finger away from the trigger. When he was satisfied that the car was empty, he nodded to Twilight, holstered his gun, and climbed inside.

Twilight did the same, although it took a little more doing for her than for Snake. She managed to place her forehooves on the driver's seat, and she pulled herself up and into the car with a grunt of effort. The interior was spacious and roomy, with comfortable seats and luxurious upholstery that seemed a misfit for a troop transport. Between the two seats was a black column – a rifle, propped vertically on its stock in a rack – and in front of the driver's seat was a wheel. Twilight immediately recognized it as a steering mechanism.

And those pedals down on the floor are for acceleration and deceleration. The little stick thingies between the seats must be the hand brake and the gear shift, and these gauges and buttons on the console...

Some of them she could intuit; the fuel gauge was easy enough to find. Others she couldn't understand at a glance. The student in Twilight wanted to fiddle with the buttons until she understood their precise function.

Then again, that could cause more harm than good.

"Hello," Snake murmured to her right. "What have we here?"

Twilight glanced in his direction to see him reach for the rifle and remove it from the rack. Visually, the gun reminded her of the rifles she'd seen humans carrying, but its configuration and aesthetic were quite different. Where the other rifles of that type had brown, wooden furniture, this one was sleek black plastic and metal, with a skeletal stock attached to the rest of the gun by a hinge. The barrel was shorter, and tipped with a fat cylinder that didn't look like an integral part of the gun. Twilight took it for a suppressor, like the one Snake's tranquilizer pistol had.

"What'cha got there?" she asked.

"MRS-4. Haven't seen one of these since my mercenary days." He chuckled. "Arms Material. Discount guns for the less-fortunate soldier of fortune."

"What does that mean?"

Snake ejected the gun's magazine and pulled back the bolt, sending an unspent round spinning through the air, then rested the gun underneath his armpit, holding the barrel in his hand. "Arms Material was a gun manufacturer a few decades ago. They made their living selling unlicensed derivatives, mostly to mercenary forces that couldn't afford better. Got sued into oblivion by FN Herstal over their MRS series." He waved the gun's barrel for emphasis. "Figures that Pegasus Wings would get their hands on 'em, given what we've seen of their resources so far."

"Hm." Twilight tapped the fuel gauge with the tip of her hoof. The needle remained stuck on Empty. "So what's it doing sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere like this?"

"On-site procurement means you never question why a gun is wherever it is. I'm not gonna look this gifthorse in the mouth." Snake eyed the weapon's barrel suspiciously. "Be a hell of a thing if it's I.D. locked, though."

Twilight was about to ask what "I.D. locked" meant before she caught herself. Get Snake talking about guns, and for all you know, he'll never shut up about them.

"I'm not seeing anything significant on my end," said Twilight. "What about yourself? Besides your new toy, I mean."

The remark prompted Snake to set the rifle down on the passenger's seat and start rummaging around his side of the car. There was a compartment on the dashboard; he popped it open, stuck his hand inside, and retrieved two spare magazines that looked like they'd fit his rifle.

"Besides your new toy and ammo for it," Twilight clarified.

Snake ignored her, pocketed the magazines, and stuck his head into the car's hoofwell.

Or "footwell," I suppose. 

"I'll be damned," he muttered.

"What is it?" asked Twilight. "There a whole pile of discount guns down there?"

Snake rose from the footwell and looked at Twilight, his face showing no sign that the joke so much as registered. Silently, he lifted something from beneath the car's seat and held it out for inspection.

Twilight's breath hitched at the sight of the cyan feather.

"She was here." Snake's voice carried a note of surprise. "Good thing I didn't have money on it."

A pink aura shimmered around the feather and gently pulled it out of Snake's hand. Twilight held it up to eye level and spun it slowly in the air. She tried to think of something analytical to say, some insight that would give them a clue as to what had happened, something that would magically lead them to find Rainbow Dash alive and well

But the only thing that ran through her mind was an infinite loop of you're here you're here you're here you're here you're here.

She set the feather in her hoof and held it tightly against her chest, shutting her eyes.

I'm so, so sorry for thinking that you weren't.

"Hey. Are you still with me?"

Twilight blinked back nascent tears and set the feather down on the driver's seat. "Just needed a moment." She backed out of the car and shut the door with her magic, then circled around to the rear bumper.

Snake joined her presently, leaning against the right side of the bumper, the motorcycle's length between him and Twilight. He reloaded the rifle he found, raised it to shoulder level, and aimed at a spot off in the distance. With a squeeze of the trigger, it emitted a muffled pop, and an empty casing flew from the side of the gun. Snake lowered it and gave the receiver a cursory glance before nodding with satisfaction.

 "Having fun?" asked Twilight. Her voice was a little higher, a little thicker, than normal. She cleared her throat.

"Just giving it a spin. Should work fine." Snake flicked on the rifle's safety and leaned against the back of the Humvee, resting his butt on its bumper. "Guns like this always make me nostalgic." He leveled the gun at the ground and aimed down the sights, and for half a heartbeat, he looked ten years younger to Twilight.

"Yeah." Snake smiled faintly. "Just like old times."

Twilight allowed a hint of a mischief to ply the corner of her lip. "I'm so happy you managed to make a friend on this trip, Snake."

Snake returned the smirk before resuming his typical expression of stoicism. "Alright, enough of that now. So we've got an answer to the question of whether or not Rainbow Dash was ever here. That's all well and good, but it also raises further questions." He gazed across the farm, to the nearby cherry orchard.

Questions like "where did she go?" and "why isn't there any trace of whoever brought her here?" The car was sitting abandoned behind the barn of a deserted cherry farm, part of a town beset by soulless monstrosities who used to be the town's residents. That wasn't lost on Twilight at all.

"I suppose you'll want to search the ranch," said Snake.

"You disagree?"

"Now that we have a shred of evidence, and we're not hoping we get lucky?" Snake tucked the rifle's stock beneath his left armpit and scratched his bandage idly. "Someone came out here, someone brought Rainbow Dash out here, and someone specifically challenged us to meet them out here. We get here, we find the town populated by zombies—"

"Golems."

"And besides their mode of transportation and a single blue feather, we don't find any sign of the person who wanted us out here in the first place." Snake didn't break his stride on account of Twilight's interruption. "No, the situation's changed. We should stick around a while."

She gave him a grateful look and nodded. "Glad we're on the same page."

For once.

"Let's be sure about that." Snake's hardened gaze fell on her. "Because even with that evidence, there are still more unknowns here than I'd like there to be. Signs indicate that she was here, and that, if nothing else, someone from Pegasus Wings was too."

"Trenton?"

"Safe bet. But not a certainty." His gaze flitted down to the rifle briefly. "Trenton had to have something in mind when he sent that balloon, some idea of how things were going to go down. Let's assume that, whatever his original plan was, he scuttled it when he got here and saw Dodge in its current state. If I were him, I'd do what I could to scout the place out, get the lay of the land. So let's say he drives out here, parks the car behind the barn, and reconnoiters the area."

"And if he was smart," said Twilight, "he would have brought Rainbow with him, to keep an eye on her. Whatever her injuries, there's no way she'd let them stop her from making some kind of escape attempt. Trenton wouldn't give her the opportunity to do that."

Snake chewed his lip. "Alright. So now it's a matter of retracing their footsteps and picking up a trail." He cursed. "Tracking. Not my strong suit."

"If it helps," said Twilight, "there are a couple of obvious places we can eliminate. The house, the barn..."

"Uh-huh. The house is empty; the barn is closed." Snake scowled. "Or so we were told."

"You don't believe that... uh, the 'Operator...' was telling the truth?"

"I'm not taking a word from him at face value. He's an intelligence operative, and I distrust those on general principal." He turned his head and spat. "Spies. Never come right out and say what you mean when you can settle for dropping a vague hint and watching people chase their own asses trying to solve it."

"Starting to sense some hostility here, Snake."

Snake glowered at her. "Don't get cute."

Why the hay not, Mr. In-Point-Of-Fact-Neither-Of-Us-Is-Standing?

While she saw his point – there was a lot about the Operator that made her skin crawl, not the least of which was that niggling familiarity – the fact remained that he worked for the Princess; he was in Dodge on her business. That alone meant that they were on the same side, that they could trust one another... right?

The burden of being a smart pony – you never know if your paranoia is justified, or if it's just your healthily active imagination running rampant.

"He knew a lot more than he was telling us." Snake pointed with the barrel of his rifle, first at the barn, then at the not-so-distant knoll where Cherry's white farmhouse stood. "There's got to be something in one of those that's worth seeing."

"Fair enough," said Twilight. "And even if we don't find any sign of Rainbow, we might stumble upon some survivors of whatever happened in town. Cherry Jubilee, maybe."

Snake looked perplexed. "That a name, or a dessert?"

"The owner of the ranch. I didn't see her out in Dodge during the fight. Maybe she survived out here."

Snake sighed in disapproval. "Twilight..."

"I know, I know." Twilight raised one hoof placatingly. "But Cherry's a friend. I'm not saying that we throw everything else away, but I can't go looking for Rainbow Dash on her land and not keep an eye out for her too."

For a moment, Twilight thought that Snake would press the issue, but instead of the counterargument she was expecting, he let out another sigh. "Fine. But make no mistake, we've got enough problems to manage without adding a second goddamn search-and-rescue mission on top of everything else. If we find Rainbow Dash without ever finding this other friend of yours, then we're calling it a day."

Twilight let herself relax. She truly wasn't sure what they'd do if they were once again at odds. "Alright."

Snake was silent for a moment before continuing. "One more thing we need to be clear on." He pushed off from the bumper and stood at his full height, looming over Twilight, and thumped the car's rear with his fist.

"I'm pretty sure I can hotwire this into running. Provided there's enough fuel for the trip, we could probably ride it all the way back to Ponyville." He glanced up at the sun and squinted. "I'll give it 'til sunset. If we don't find anything by then..."

The unspoken suggestion raised her ire again – apparently, Snake was going to insist on staying at loggerheads over this. "I thought you said that things have changed now."

"They have," said Snake. "But not so much that I'm willing to compromise the mission on account of a damn feather. We have a clue and a sense of direction, but if it looks like it's going nowhere, then I'm pulling the plug and we're going back."

"You can," Twilight said, pivoting toward him. "But I'm not going anywhere until I find my friend."

Dead or alive, she might have added.

"And is that what she would want from you?" Snake's voice remained level and cool. "In the castle, when she was pinned under that rubble, she told you to forget about her, to take Spike and run. You know her better than I do, so correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound like someone who'd want you to endanger your town and your other friends on her account."

Twilight opened her mouth to retort, and found she had nothing to say. The answer, of course, was no. Rainbow Dash could be pig-headed and self-centered, but her ironclad loyalty meant she displayed a startling sense of selflessness where her friends were concerned. Would she expect Twilight to try everything in her power to find and rescue her? No doubt. Would she want Twilight to do that if it meant compromising their friends, their home, their very country?

Not for her sake. She's too noble for that.

Snake turned away, toward the barn, and lifted the rifle. "Think it over. For now, let's eliminate the obvious."

The big, double-doored front entrance to the barn was closed tight, but to the right was another door, smaller and pony-sized. Gripping his new rifle in his right hand, Snake knelt, reached out with his left hand, and gave the door a tentative push. It shook, but didn't open.

"Feels like it's barred from the inside. Ugh, my kingdom for a P.A.N. card." He pressed his hand against the door again and leaned against it.

"You know, if it's bolted from the inside..." Twilight lowered her voice. "Wouldn't that suggest that there's somepony inside to bar it?"

"Pretty hard to lock a door from the inside when you're on the other side of it. At least, in my experience." Snake returned his left hand to the support the gun's barrel and glanced at her. "Couldn't a unicorn do that though?"

"Theoretically? Sure. But using levitation to manipulate an object without a clear line of sight is tricky business, especially if you're physically separated from it by some great distance, or even something as simple as a door. Bolting a door shut from the other side of it would require clear recollection of all the objects involved in the action, from the door, to the bolt itself, even the—"

"I get it, thanks," said Snake, ignoring Twilight's frown at being interrupted. "Either way, this door's pretty solid. I don't see myself kicking it down." One of his hands drifted to a pouch on his belt. "Still got some C4, though. I could always blast it open."

"Or," said Twilight, indelicately shouldering past Snake. "You could save it for something more important." Her horn shimmered. As arduous as the day had been, as taxing on her energy reserves as the fight in Dodge was, she could still manage a shockwave spell with sufficient force to break down a barn door.

"Hang on." Behind her, Snake knelt, and braced his rifle against his shoulder. Twilight could just barely make out the end of his suppressor in her peripheral vision. He was covering her, of course, which was smart, and she was used to him carrying and pointing guns all over the place, beside or behind or in front of her – not that she especially liked having guns around, but she'd acclimated.

Still, having the end of the gun that the bullets came out of so close to her head made her skin feel all prickly.

"Alright," he said quietly. "Go for it."

The ball of light appeared, collapsed, and burst outward again with a sound like thunder; the door shattered into a conical burst of splinters that shotgunned into the barn. Her aura sparked around her horn again, and another light shone from the tip – a simple lighting spell this time. Immediately, she could tell that something was wrong with the barn, something dreadfully wrong that puzzled and unnerved her. A familiar combination of anxiety and adrenaline flushed through her system.

Behind her, Snake grunted. "Don't barns usually have floors?"

It was an impertinent question, but a correct observation. By the pink light of her aura, Twilight could see that the floor of the barn was now an ovular pit, its sides slick and black, yet tinged a sickly green. It didn't fill the whole floor; the barn's interior was rectangular, and its corners – including the corner in front of her – still had islands of earth jutting over the pit, their edges curved inward. At the bottom of the pit was a multicolored mist that swirled with different hues, red and yellow, blue and orange, green and white and purple and pink.

The sight of it made Twilight's burgeoning anxiety burgeon even more – there was something disturbing about it, perverted, unnatural. Sweat beaded on her brow, and tickled her skin as it slid down her face. Snake didn't look like he was feeling it; he was stolid as ever as he took in the barn's interior.

There was just enough room for the two of them to stand inside the barn together, though rather closer than she would have preferred. Twilight tried to ignore her companion's uncomfortable proximity and craned her head down, narrowing the light from her aura into a thin beam of white, and casting its glow into the pit in front of her. The fog was dense, impenetrable by her light, but as she swept her light from one side of the pit to the other, she came to an unsettling realization.

"This pit is perfectly symmetrical," she announced to Snake. "The walls, the curve of the ellipse, the slope of the pit's sides... its geometric dimensions are exact."

"I don't know what's funnier, that someone went to all the trouble of digging a perfectly symmetrical hole, or that you can figure that out at a glance. " Snake sounded amused.

Twilight wasn't. She swallowed. "I don't think this was 'dug out.' Not with shovels, anyway. This was done with magic."

"By a unicorn? Someone like you?" Snake asked. He knelt at the very edge of the pit and gazed inside, his eyes tracking the movement of Twilight's spotlight, and his rifle's barrel resting against his shoulder.

"Yeah. A very gifted and disciplined unicorn, with extraordinary focus. Powerful, too, to make that much mass just poof away."

To anypony who could have created that mess in Dodge, something like this would probably be a cakewalk.

"Hey, Twilight." Snake pointed at a spot below the barn's main door, several feet to their left. "Shine your light over there. Looks like some kind of a—"

His sentence became a cry of surprise as the ground beneath his front foot gave suddenly, and he fell forward. Twilight shouted his name and leaped toward him, hoof extended for him to catch, before realizing that she hadn't secured herself to anything. Gravity pulled them down together; they rolled in a tangled ball of hooves and hands and feet and firearms down the side of the pit.

Snake struck the bottom with a thud and a grunt and a squish, releasing his grip on Twilight's hoof on impact. Twilight landed on top of him, sprawling across his chest and shoulders. His body, partially obscured beneath the layer of fog, cushioned her, but she ached in a dozen places from the trip to the bottom of the pit.

Still, judging by the way Snake was groaning, he got the worse end of it.

 "You okay?" Twilight smacked her lips, tasting blood – she must have bitten herself.

That'll canker up nicely. 

She placed her forehooves on either side of him; the ground felt light and spongy. The fog shifted around her legs, swallowing them up to the fetlock. Twilight lifted her top half off of Snake's body, concerned about pressing down on him with too much of her weight.

"Back hurts," groaned Snake, bracing his elbows on the ground and lifting his torso slightly. "And I landed in something wet. Not mud – texture's all wrong." He rose until his head was of a height with Twilight's, their faces awkwardly close together.

Snake narrowed his eyes. "Wanna move?"

"Ah, heh... sorry." Twilight scurried backward off of him, her hooves throwing up wisps and puffs of fog.

Snake rose ponderously to his feet, cracking his neck. His sides and shoulders and front and... heck, his whole body... was covered in translucent green gunk that sloughed off in thick, snotty ropes. Snake looked himself over and stretched his arms to his sides, and that formed a thin membrane of gunk connecting his elbows with his ribs, making him faintly resemble a flying squirrel.

Snake looked at either arm and made a disgusted sound. "Yeah. Definitely landed in something wet." He glanced at the rifle, which was similarly caked in goo, and grunted. "I really hope this thing doesn't jam after this. Cheap-ass Arms Material garbage..."

Twilight raised one of her hooves to her mouth to hide a smirk, only for it to die when she saw a strand of the same mucousy substance connecting her hoof with the ground.

"Guh!" She flailed her hoof to shake the mucous off, and the strand whipped back and forth in the air with every movement. "Gross gross gross gross ew ew ew ew ew ew!"

Snake watched, chuckling.

Twilight glared at him; her horn flashed, and her magic scraped the substance off her hoof, flinging it back to the ground. "What is this stuff, anyway?" she muttered.

Her horn shimmered and a gust of air blew a hole in the layer of fog beneath her. She aimed her light through the hole. There was more green gunk coating the ground, but it was covering something something else, the spongy carpet that Twilight was starting to realize was not just more earth. Twilight's horn flashed again, and a gust of wind blew through the barn, displacing the fog and tossing Snake's bandanna around his head. Ignoring his annoyed cry of surprise, Twilight peered closer at the surface she was standing on.

Beneath her hoof was a triangular flap of jet-black something that was coated in green gunk. Other flaps lay draped across the pit, all radiating out from a central point in the middle. Twilight lifted one of the flaps with her magic; it was surprisingly light, considering its size. The bottom half was smudged with dirt, but she could see the same jet-black coloration, tinted slightly green by a film of mucous that had seeped beneath it. Twilight probed it with her hoof, and it gave beneath her, squishing inward. It had a different texture to it than what she was standing on, though. The surface beneath her hooves was spongy; this was firmer, more rubbery, still soft, but with less give. It felt like a hard-boiled—

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

"This was an egg." 

"An egg? What do you..." Snake trailed off as his eyes caught sight of something behind Twilight. He shifted his body and raised the rifle to his shoulder again. "So, about what I was saying before we fell..."

Twilight looked at what had captured his attention. Her ears folded with dismay.

Behind her, running directly underneath the barn's big double-doors, was the yawning mouth of a cave, its highest point maybe inches taller than Snake. And, unlike the smooth walls of the pit, this one had scratches and furrows running along its sides and roof. The pit had been dug out using magic. This tunnel had just plain been dug out.

"You think whatever hatched from this egg did that?" Snake asked, his voice dropping to something a few decibels above a whisper.

"I don't know. I don't want to know." Twilight backed away slowly. "I'd really just like to leave now please."

"No argument here. Walls are slick, but not too steep. With enough of a running start, I think we can climb 'em."

"Right. Right. Okay." Twilight swallowed. "On the count of three?"

"Every time we do that, something bad happens," growled Snake. "Let's skip that step this time."

She almost laughed – Snake's superstition was cute. She dug her hooves into the ground, coiled her legs—

And a low, droning buzz from the tunnel entrance made her freeze. There was an indistinct shape just past the mouth of the cave, where nothing had been just moments before. Twilight swept her light at the source of the noise, and saw something hanging in the air: a familiar creature, insectoid and equine at the same time. Black chitin covered its body instead of a furry coat, and its eyes were blue and spherical. Gossamer wings buzzed blurrily, suspending it in the air, and its limbs dangled limply beneath the rest of its body.

She heard the click of Snake flicking off the rifle's safety. "The hell is that?"

"A changeling," whispered Twilight. "Why...?"

Snake grunted softly. "Don't suppose it's friendly?"

"Let's find out." Twilight raised her voice to address the changeling. "We didn't come here looking for a fight. We're just trying to find our friend, okay? Do you understand me?"

The changeling's glassy eyes rolled toward Twilight, seeing her, yet looking through her. Its mouth drooped open, and green, foamy saliva dripped from wickedly pointed fangs. A familiar gurgling sound escaped its throat. Twilight met its gaze and sucked in a shocked breath.

Those eyes.

The changelings she remembered from Canterlot had beady, blue-green eyes. They had no pupils or irises, yet they were vivid in color, and expressive. There was shrewdness behind them, intelligence, maybe even emotion. But these eyes were dull, lifeless, and pale. They were sallow orbs of faint blue, bulging wide against an expressionless face, showing no intelligence or feeling.

And Twilight couldn't help noting how similar the color was to the desaturated coat of the mindless stallion who had staggered down the saloon steps after her.

"Snake." Twilight backed away a step, her heart hammering. "I think that changeling's been bled!"

The changeling let loose a feral snarl and flew toward Twilight, jaws wide. Snake fired twice, catching it its middle with both rounds. Green fluid sprayed in the air, and chips of its carapace flew from the point of impact. Its body jackknifed and dropped to the ground, where it lay invisible beneath the fog cover.

The brief silence that followed was broken almost immediately by dozens of pairs of gossamer wings beating at once, and a column of airborne changeling golems shot toward them from the mouth of the cave.

"Run," Snake snapped. "I'll cover you!"

Twilight ran – no, she galloped. The pops and hisses of Snake's suppressed gunfire were lost beneath the drone of the swarm's wings, but she could still hear the sounds of bullets shredding through them, and their bodies dropping to the ground. Snake's fire kept the changelings' attention squarely on him as Twilight reached the edge of the pit. Her hooves scraped against the walls, and momentum carried her up, tossing clumps and bunches of dirt with every flailing step.

She was halfway up, her exit almost in reach, before her hindhoof slipped and she skidded down the slope, her hooves scrabbling vainly. The exit receded, farther and farther, and Twilight cursed herself, wishing she had something, anything, to bring herself closer to it. A rope, a ladder, some tool, some way to go from one spot to anoth—

She felt like hitting herself. Twilight Sparkle, you utter one hundred percent FOOL.

Pink-white light filled Twilight's vision, and she felt the familiar sensation of weightlessness as her mass passed through the ether. An instant later, she materialized back on the on the spot of land beside the barn entrance, looking down into the pit. She whirled, her aura alive, and saw Snake backpedaling rapidly, emptying his magazine into the oncoming swarm of changelings.

Many fell. Not enough.

The bullets keeping the golems at bay cut off when the magazine ran dry. Snake roared as they came within striking distance, catching the nearest changeling with an elbow. Then he was backpedaling again, his left hand fumbling at his holster for his pistol.

With a silent apology for her stupidity, Twilight focused her aura on Snake, and he vanished and reappeared beside her, his pistol halfway drawn. The column of changelings kept on traveling forward, and slammed into the back wall of the pit.

Snake blinked, looked himself over, looked at Twilight, and looked at her horn. He slid his pistol back into his holster. "Huh. Forgot you could do that."

"Yeah, join the club!" she snapped.

They quickly made their exit from the barn, back into the heat of the frontier summer. With no door left to close, and nothing to cast an adhesive spell upon, Twilight settled for tossing up a magic barrier in the door frame, sealing off the barn in time for the column to regroup and throw itself against the transparent pink shield.

A bruise formed at the changelings' point of contact. Snake swapped out his magazines, loaded a new round, and leveled the rifle at the door in anticipation of the barrier falling. Then the main door exploded outward, and a second column of changelings sallied forth, sweeping toward Snake and Twilight.

Twilight dropped the pointless shield at the barn and recast it as a sphere around herself and Snake. Both columns of golems came to a halt inches away from striking it, and shot into the air, coalescing into a swollen, buzzing ball directly above the barrier.

"Well," said Twilight. "This is eerily familiar."

Snake sat; he curled his legs so that his knees pointed upward, reclined as far back as he could inside the barrier, and aimed his rifle toward the sky. "I still have some C4 left. I'll plant it here; you teleport us away the instant they hit the barrier, then you drop it before they have a chance to regroup. I set off the bomb, and we take out a bunch of them at once."

"And then?"

"We find out if I have enough bullets for the rest of them."

Gallows humor. She could practically feel the hemp around her neck. "Do we count to three?"

Snake looked sidelong at her.

"Fair enough," she said.

The center of the ball began protruding downward, forming a stalactite poised directly above the middle of Twilight's shield. The changeling at the very tip met Twilight's gaze with its own; its eyes flashed, and for a split second, Twilight saw a sneer of contempt on its muzzle. It opened its mouth and screeched, green spittle spraying onto her barrier.

Twilight tensed. Beside her, she heard rustling as Snake reached into his pocket for another bomb. She held the gaze of the changeling above her, defiant.

Her eye contact was broken suddenly when a shiny blur slammed into the changeling at the tip of the spike from behind. It sailed over the barrier, arced downward, and slammed the changeling into the dirt, skidding with it and coming to a halt.

"That's a—" Snake rose to a kneel, gawking at the new arrival. "A pegasus?!"

Rainbow Dash!

But that hope died as soon as Twilight glimpsed the sun glinting off the burnished gold armor encasing the pegasus's body, the matching greathelm covering her head, the crest of red feather crowning it, the butt of the spear curled under her right foreleg, and the brown saddlebags marked with a blazing sun and a waxing moon.

A smile broke across Twilight's face – it wasn't Rainbow Dash, but it was a welcome sight regardless. "She's with the Royal Guard! The others must have gotten a message to the Princess!"

The first pegasus was quickly followed by a massive wedge of shining gold that thrust into the center of the changelings' stalactite, severing their formation in two. The wedge broke and engaged both groups of changelings, encircling them and cutting them off from one another. The air was filled with battle cries and sprays of green as they thrust and jabbed and stabbed with their lances. The golems fought ferociously, but they were on the defensive, caught off guard by the impetus of the pegasi's charge. The guardsponies fought relentlessly, showing no signs of breaking. They were tough, well-trained, and well-drilled.

And, most importantly, they outnumbered the changelings.

"Hey! Sister!" The pegasus who had led the charge hovered above Twilight's barrier, her lance smeared green from the head halfway down the haft. Her words were muffled by her greathelm. "Why don'tcha put that horn to use?" Then she spread her wings and soared into the melee.

Why not?

The barrier collapsed into a flickering light at the tip of Twilight's horn. Firing wildly into the thickest fighting seemed a poor idea, so she picked her targets more carefully, aiming bolts at stragglers, at golems who became separated from the melee, who tried to withdraw and regroup. Her attacks weren't charged enough to kill, but they stunned and staggered the golems long enough for Snake to finish them off. He fired in bursts of one, two, three rounds that blew Twilight's targets out of the sky without missing once.

Golems dropped like hailstones, splattering against the ground, some twitching, some not. Twilight avoided looking at them whenever she could, keeping her mind as focused as possible on picking her targets and firing. Fire. Stun. Fire again. They're not alive. They don't feel pain. They're mindless. You're doing them a favor. What is death but a kindness?

She fired, stunned a golem, and rifle rounds shredded its head and body until it dropped from the sky, struck the ground, and spasmed in its death throes.

If this is kindness, then I have no stomach for it.

A mass of changelings separated from the melee, a ragged stream of ten or twelve. Most were wounded, some perhaps fatally, but they clung together all the same. They formed a tight wedge and shot toward the nearby orchard, vanishing past the treeline in seconds. Above, the Royal Guard finished off the last of their brethren, their green-smeared spearheads glinting in the sun with each thrust.

A tactical retreat. They're providing a diversion while a small number of them withdraw into the orchard. The Operator was wrong; these golems were nowhere near mindless.

This realization did nothing to ease Twilight's sense of guilt.
 
It was over in seconds, and the pegasus with the red crest on her helm dropped lower to the ground, beating her off-white wings to keep herself hovering a few inches in the air. She held her lance in front of her, placed one hoof against its butt, and collapsed the haft into a far more manageable length. She slid it into a notch beneath her saddlebag, where it hung securely against her side.

A telescopic spear? That's... kind of ingenious, actually.

The mare's forehooves, now free, hooked underneath her helm, and she wrenched it off. Her mane was vermilion, striped with goldenrod on its left side, and plastered to her head and her neck with sweat.

Twilight took a step toward her, hooves clinking against the spent cartridges that littered the ground. "You are a sight for sore eyes. Thank you so much for—"

Without looking, the mare held up a gunk-covered golden hoof, silencing Twilight.

Twilight snorted. She was very tired of being interrupted today.

"Alright, fillies and gentlecolts, let's see some ranks in that sky!" the mare barked. The pegasi did as instructed, falling into straight, even columns in the air, ten ponies high and twenty ponies long.

"So!" Her back was turned, so she couldn't see the mare's face, but Twilight could hear the grin in her voice. "How was that for a little break in routine, huh? Finally tracked those bugs down, got a chance to get our widdle hoofsies wet. Who's feelin' good about themselves now, huh? Sing it out!"

"KILLJOY COMPANY, MA'AM!" their voices boomed in unison.

With far less enthusiasm, a single voice droned "Killjoy Company," tacking on a "ma'am" as an afterthought.

"That's what I like to hear!" Red Crest kicked off the ground, hovering with powerful strokes of her wings. "And after a long day spent gettin' sand in our feathers and a good fifteen-minute ass-kicking sesh, I'll bet you want nothing more than to tuck in to those delectable G-rations and snuggle up in your bedrolls. Am I right or am I wrong?"

"WRONG AS HELL, MA'AM!"

"I could go either way, ma'am," called the same dissenter.

"That's what I really like to hear," crowed the mare in charge. "So here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna stick eyes and ears in every direction, hunker down, and scour this frickin' ranch like steel wool on a bathtub. Speakin' of, Steel Wool!"

"Ma'am?"

"Stop whining. It's unsexy. Prince-Blueblood-on-a-bender unsexy."

"Yes, ma'am," Steel Wool said, with just a hint of insolence.

"So here's today's special!" The mare pointed commandingly at the company. "Teams A and B, spread out along that treeline and keep a close watch. Do not go in. That's C-Team's job. C, scout the orchard. Nice and easy, nice and slow. If you encounter the enemy in force, then fall back and regroup with A and B. Clem, keep your ponies from sampling the crops; I frickin' mean it.

"D, E, give me a flyover; watch the orchard from the air. Same rule as A and B applies: you do not go in, or I will find the nasty-assiest griffon with the nasty-assiest claws in Griffonstone and personally ensure that she fingerbangs each and every one of your mothers.

 "The rest of you, you're a-scourin' and a-hunkerin'. F, the town; get a look at those trains. G, the farmhouse. Both of you are responsible for search-and-rescue. You find civvies; you bring 'em back here; if they're injured, stabilize them however you can before regrouping here, and Jingles can give 'em more thorough treatment. You find buggies, you fall the hell back, get reinforcements, and go kick their asses in force. I-team, thanks to your wingmate's bitching, you get the fun duty of poking around inside that barn. That's where this bunch came from, so there's probably an entrance to their hive down there. Find it, watch it, report back to me. Don't go in. Ask D and E what happens if you break that little rule.

"And J? Perimeter duty. Get up high, keep your eyes open. You see anything suspicious, sing out." She finally paused. "Questions?"

Not a word of reply.

"And that is what I really frickin' LOVE to hear: zero backtalk!" Her hooves ping-ping-pinged as she clapped. "Good talk; now do as you're told."

"MA'AM!"

The pegasi broke into squadrons, flying off to their assigned duties. A thick mob flew toward the orchard in a V-formation, disintegrating into smaller groups and veering apart from one another. Two more groups of twenty each soared toward the barn and the farmhouse; another flew toward Dodge, and the last simply flew straight up, forming a wide ring that rotated slowly in the sky.

That left Snake, Twilight, and the mare alone, on a spot of earth littered with changeling corpses and spent cartridges. The mare kept her back to them, though, even as a trembling wing unfurled from her body, tucked into a gap in her armor, pulled something free, and raised it to her lips. She tossed her head back quickly, sighed, and tucked the object away again.

Snake and Twilight exchanged a look. He made a gesture with one of his hands, curling his middle three fingers but splaying his thumb and little finger, tilted his head back slightly, and jerked his hand toward his mouth.

Twilight raised an eyebrow.

Snake held the gesture for several seconds, but eventually dropped his hand to his side with a rumbly sigh.

The mare finally turned around, and to Twilight's surprise, was smiling a wide, easy smile that didn't quite reach her amber eyes. "So hey, small world, huh? Who'da thunk I'd run into Shining Armor's kid sis all the way out in the frontier?"

So they weren't expecting to find us.

Twilight sagged in response to the mare's words. Her hope for rescue or reinforcement diminished, and she exchanged another look with Snake.

"Shining Armor?" he mouthed. "Seriously?"

She shot him a withering stare before addressing the guardsmare again. "Uh, yes, that's me." She waved. "Hiya."

The mare chuckled. "You were best mare at his wedding, right? What was your name? Starlight... Shimmer?"

"Twilight Sparkle," she said, in a tone that matched her flat, bemused expression.

She did her best to ignore Snake's snicker.

The mare laughed. "Close enough? Heh." She kicked off the ground and flapped her way up to Twilight, shifting her greathelm from her right foreleg to her left. "Hell of a night, that wedding. Lot more punching and 'pcheew-pcheew'-ing than I was expecting. Reception wasn't quite as much fun, but the DJ was pretty great." She tilted her head at Twilight curiously. "Come to think of it, didn't you and me make out for, like, fifteen minutes at that thing?"

Twilight stiffened, and blushed brightly enough to be seen from orbit. "Excuse me? No! We did not – I did not—"

"You sure?" The mare stroked her chin, unintentionally smearing goop across her face. "Because I coulda sworn I made out with some unicorn at that thing, and if it wasn't you, then—"

 "I. Did not. Make out. With anypony. At my brother's wedding." Twilight said through gritted teeth.

"Maybe you should have," Snake muttered. He had his rifle's magazine in his hand and was fiddling idly with the gun's receiver. "A little action might've done wonders for your mood."

"Nopony asked for your input!" Twilight yelled, her face burning brighter.

Snake didn't so much as look up from his fiddling.

"Alright, alright, no harm in checking," said the mare. "Now that I think on it, I'm pretty sure that unicorn was, like… white. Or maybe teal? I was pretty drunk anyway, so my memory is not to be relied on. But just so you know, if you, uh, wanna make up for lost time later—"

"Who are you?" Twilight snapped, making the mare recoil in surprise. "Look, I'm grateful and all for the rescue, but despite you knowing me by sight and reputation, I have no idea who you are! So maybe some introductions are in order before you start propositioning me!"

"Ah... right," the mare stammered. She fluttered back down to the ground and refolded her wings. "Well, uh..." She coughed, cleared her throat, and grinned again. "You have the honor of addressing the one and only—"

"Captain Killjoy!"

"Damn it all, Steel Wool!" The one and only Captain Killjoy fumed at a steel-gray pegasus with a shiny silver tail and a pair of lilac-colored eyes. "This better be good."

Steel Wool saluted halfheartedly. "The inside of that barn's been dug out completely into this weird, foggy pit. And you were right about there being an entrance to their hive, or whatever. We found a big tunnel." He shrugged.

"You didn't notice the egg?" Twilight interjected.

Killjoy looked at Twilight over her shoulder. Steel Wool stared blankly at her. "Egg?" they asked at the same time.

Twilight looked between their confused faces. "Beneath the fog. You know how the ground's all spongy and rubbery? That's the remains of some kind of egg. Whatever hatched from it dug out that tunnel, most likely."

Killjoy whistled, giving Twilight a sly, flirtatious look. "Smart, cute, and she makes my guardsponies look bad. You're just the complete package, aren't you, Sparkle-Sparkle?"

Ugh. Twilight cringed.

"Egg," Steel Wool scoffed, kicking the dirt and frowning. "Like I'm supposed to know—"

"Yes! You are supposed to know what's in the barn! That was literally the job that I gave you and the rest of your screwball team!" Killjoy facehoofed, groaning. "You get half a gold star for finding that hole in the ground, private. Now go stare at it some more before I reinstate corporal punishment all over your ass." She peeked up at him from behind her hoof. "And remember your orders. Or else."

"Right. Fingerbanging. Perish the thought." Steel Wool took off back toward the barn.

"He's really not a bad kid," Killjoy muttered. "Just needs a personality transplant. In the worst way." She shook her head as she turned back to face Twilight. Her sweaty mane stubbornly refused to uncling from her skin.

Twilight rifled through her mental dictionary to find a definition for "fingerbang," but found nothing. Is that, like, when a species with fingers makes a gun shape with its hand and goes "bang"? What kind of punishment is that?

"So as I was saying." She tried for another grin. "You're addressing Killjoy of the Canterlot Royal Guard, Aerial Division. Captain Killjoy, if you please."

Steel Wool, still in earshot, coughed into his hoof. "Brevet."

"I seem to recall dismissing you, private!" Killjoy snapped without turning to look at the other pegasus.

Steel Wool fluttered away with a sardonic smirk.

Killjoy sighed. "Technically I'm properly addressed as 'Brevet Captain Killjoy'." She added air quotes over 'brevet' with her hooves. "Normally, I'd just be Sergeant Killjoy of the Royal Guard, but Captain Your-Big-Brother booted me up to a temporary officer's commish before he sent us out here. I wanted to be Colonel Killjoy, but apparently our ranking system only goes up to captain. Stupid rule."

"How difficult that must be for you," said Twilight.

"Ah, it ain't so bad," said Killjoy, missing or ignoring Twilight's sarcasm. "I get a fancier helmet, authority to appoint officers as needed. And you'd be surprised how much tail even a brevet captain can get out here."

"None whatsoever?" said Snake.

Killjoy's face fell, and she mumbled a string of inarticulate syllables. Twilight felt the urge to hoofbump Snake, alongside the urge to throw poor Killjoy a bone. "Well, whatever your rank, it's a relief to see some friendly faces out here."

Even if they're led by a horny drunk. 

"I gotta ask, though, what's a company of Royal Guardsponies doing out in the middle of the frontier?"

Killjoy looked back up with a glint in her eye, and she grinned. "We're huntin' changelings."

Snake glanced at the small pile of broken bodies that accumulated beneath the melee. "And how," he muttered. "Any reason why? Or is this some kind of xenophobia thing?"

Killjoy twitched an ear. "Hey, they invaded us. They attacked Canterlot a few months ago and almost won, even against the Princess. We're here to stop them from trying that again."

"Their queen impersonated my brother's fiancee, Cadance, put him under some kind of mind control, and tried to marry him and take over Equestria," Twilight explained in a quiet voice. "She left Cadance and I for dead in the tunnels beneath Canterlot Castle, and would have gotten away with it if we hadn't escaped and unmasked her."

She recalled Cadance's state when they met below the castle, the Queen's callous gloating, and the vacuous stare of her brother on the dais. The thoughts made her simmer with anger. She never wanted that to happen again... yet she couldn't find it in her to want the changelings dead for what they did.

A glob of green gunk dripped from the tip of Killjoy's spear and splashed at her hooves.

Clearly, Princess, you disagree.

Snake looked at Twilight from the corner of his eye, then at Killjoy. "Fair enough. You won't get any judgment from me."

"I take that as an apology?" Killjoy's devilish smile returned. "No harm done. Glad you understand."

Snake shrugged.

The guardsmare cleared her throat and again addressed Twilight. "Rumors floated up to Canterlot about changeling sightings out in the frontier, ever since a few weeks after the wedding. Isolated reports at first, easy to dismiss as jittery settler ponies jumping at their own shadows. Then they started getting more frequent, more specific. Suddenly, they weren't so easy to dismiss, so we were dispatched. Of course, until today, we haven't been able to track down and engage them, but we've seen plenty of their handiwork. Everything between here and Haysweed Swamps is deserted. Homesteads, trading posts... I figured the changelings were making their move out here, pushing west, just a matter of time before they took on Dodge or Appleloosa. Looks to me like I was right, a day late and a bit short." She hung her head.

"Don't be too hard on yourself. You did kinda save us just now," said Twilight.

Killjoy perked up and winked. "Aw, that was no sweat. The life of a guardspony is one of constant sacrifice and casual heroism. When we're not pacing, of course." She eyed the makeshift bandage around Snake's arm. "Besides, if you don't mind my saying so, you look like you were overdue for a good turn. You both look like crap. Especially you, big guy, no offense." Killjoy beat her wings and fluttered toward Snake. "You got a name?"

"Call me Snake."

"Solid Snake," Twilight added.

"Solid..." A smirk ticked up the corner of Killjoy's lips, and she snickered. "Heh. That means 'penis'."

Snake muttered angrily and glared at Twilight, who turned away to hide a small, yet triumphant, grin.

Guess "Shining Armor" isn't so silly after all, is it?

"So, Solid Dick, tell me – how'd you get this?" Killjoy lifted Snake's forearm in her hooves and pressed her face close to the bandage, drawing in a noisy breath through her nose.

Is she... sniffing him?

"It's a bite," said Snake, yanking his arm away. "It needed attention. Made do with what I had on hand."

"Using a gross rag and..." She breathed deeply, wafting the vapors from the bandage toward her nose with her hooves. "What appears to be corn whiskey. Hardcore, but I think I can do you one better." Killjoy craned her head up to the sky, stuck a hoof into her mouth, and whistled sharply. "Hey! Jinglebell! Got something that needs stitching!"

One of the pegasi circling overhead dropped to ground level. Jinglebell was a stocky stallion, with a purple coat several shades darker than Twilight's, and a bright yellow tail poking out the back of his armor. His gear was the same as his comrades, but his saddlebags were emblazoned with red crosses, with a matching one cresting his halfhelm.

"What can I do for—" His eyes found Snake, settled on the bandage around his arm, and widened, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. "Sweet merciful Maiden of the Stars, what is this?!"

"A bite! Treated with some gnarly field med." Killjoy smirked. "Your absolute fave."

Snake opened his mouth, but Jinglebell shoved his hoof in it to cut him off. "Silence, you," he snapped. "You have forfeited your right to speak."

Murderous intent spilled from Snake's eyes toward the pegasus.

Jinglebell shoved his muzzle right up against the wound, millimeters away from the cruddy bandage. "By Celestia's sun-kissed flanks, you must really want an infection," he muttered. He withdrew his saliva-covered hoof from Snake's mouth and dropped to the ground, clicking his tongue. "Your wound cries out for sterile bandages and sutures and what do you give it? A dish-rag that looks like it was soaked in dish-water."

"I didn't have sterile bandages and sutures," growled Snake.

"Excuses, excuses. And what did I say about your right to speak?" Jinglebell reached into the cross-marked saddlebag on his back and tugged out supplies: the bandages he mentioned, thread, a needle, and a bottle of clear fluid that Twilight took as antiseptic. "Well, never fear. Your hero has arrived."

Killjoy slapped Jinglebell on the back with a snicker. "Your confidence inspires, my good little pony." She smirked at Twilight and jerked her head to the side. "C'mon, I gotta make some rounds – let's you and me chit-chat while these two have their fun." She stepped away, beckoning for Twilight to follow.

"Uh, well..." Twilight glanced at Snake. "Are you... gonna be okay here, Snake?"

"Oh, he'll be better than okay after I'm done stitching him up," muttered Jinglebell. He looped a length of thread through a needle held between two feathers and grinned at Snake.

Snake's glare promised bloody retribution upon Twilight.

"He'll be fine," said Killjoy. "Jinglebell's needlework is second to none. His bedside manner, on the other hoof..." She shrugged and smiled helplessly. "Hey, nopony's perfect. Now, c'mon. Girl talk time."

Killjoy sidled against Twilight. Her armor, heated by the desert sun, was hot against Twilight's coat, and the oily smell of pony sweat was overpowering, making Twilight pull away. Oblivious or apathetic to her discomfort, Killjoy looped one of her forelegs around Twilight's and guided her away.

Killjoy's first stop was the farmhouse. The walk wasn't especially long, just long enough for Killjoy to kill time by probing Twilight about her presence in Dodge. After eventually managing to wriggle her leg free of the pegasus's grip, Twilight recounted the events of the last two days, condensing where she could, omitting what was irrelevant. She started with finding Snake in the woods, and hurriedly explained the existence of Metal Gear and the presence of the Pegasus Wings army.

Her description of the human mercenaries got a knowing chuckle out of Killjoy. "So there's a whole universe full of homos out there, huh?"

Twilight, not sure what in the hay a "homo" was in this context, but annoyed at being yet again interrupted, channeled her chagrin into a glare.

"Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt," said Killjoy when she glimpsed the look Twilight was giving her. "It's just nice to be right. I always knew there was some truth to Slaymare, not like that Daring Do crap the foals love."

Twilight rushed through a retelling of the fight in the castle. Predictably, Killjoy pressed Twilight for details on the IRVING battle, intrigued by the prospect of the Elements of Harmony fighting a fire-breathing robot, but Twilight breezed through it, not seeing the relevance. More relevant were the injuries sustained by Spike and Rainbow Dash, and something about the way she spoke of them – or perhaps something on her face – prompted Killjoy to offer her tiny silver flask to Twilight.

"Thanks," Twilight said in a thick, choked voice. Her eyes were misty. When had they gotten misty? She furiously rubbed them and sniffed. "But no thanks. I'll take water if you have it, though."

Killjoy snorted. "This shit's so weak it may as well be water."

Twilight stared flatly at her, but her bemusement was offset by a hint of a smile.

"Fine, fine." Killjoy dug around in her saddlebag, retrieved a canteen, and tossed it to Twilight. She caught it with her magic and took a long swig. "Y'know, you got a cute smile, Sparkle."

Twilight finished her pull and shoved the canteen into the other mare's armored chest with a clang. "My brother is your boss, remember."

"Which means I have a shot at marrying into royalty. Kinda. Sorta." Killjoy grinned and replaced the canteen in her saddlebag.

From there, Twilight hit the key moments – the meeting with the Mayor, Ponyville being isolated, and the balloon with the blue feather that started the whole wild goose chase.

Hearing about the balloon seemed to draw Killjoy into some memory. A wistful look crossed her face. "Y'know, I've seen Rainbow Dash fly before – she's a hell of a mare. I tell you what, it'd take a lot more than a falling castle and a hole full'a rubble to kill somepony with as much concentrated awesome as her." The mare smiled. "We'll do what we can to help you out."

Twilight, grateful, finished the story with a quick summary of the fight in Dodge, omitting any mention of the Operator. It occurred to her that the mission the Princess had sent him on, the one he refused to disclose, might have to do with the changeling presence in the frontier, but neither he nor Killjoy showed any sign that they knew of the other's activities, much less that they were working together.

And besides, he was heading away from Dodge while Killjoy was heading toward it. His business must have been done by the time Snake and I showed up.

No, whatever he was up to, whatever involvement his mission had with the incident in Dodge, it was something probably best kept under wraps. She didn't like the Operator, didn't particularly trust him; the mess in the "closed" barn certainly seemed to justify Snake's paranoia regarding spies. But she trusted Princess Celestia, and whatever faith she placed in him and his mission would have to suffice for her.

"The ponies in town were the victims of some sort of dark magic," said Twilight to an increasingly alarmed Killjoy. "Ancient spells that can draw out somepony's soul – bleed it out – and leave their bodies behind as these husks called golems. I've, um..." She hesitated. "I've read about them. In books. In a book. In a book about magic—"

Killjoy headed her off, rushing in front of her and dropping back to the ground. "So those effed-up bodies up in town – no cutie marks, colors all washed out – you're telling me that was you and your Dick-buddy that killed 'em?"

Twilight nodded meekly. "They were feral. Murderous. There wasn't any way to help them, and no way to escape without..." She coughed. "We lured most of them into the saloon and burned it down with them inside."

"The fire, yeah. We saw it from miles away and beat wing getting to it." There was some new look in her eye – Twilight couldn't say what it was. "Damn, Sparkle. I can't believe..."

Twilight didn't say anything.

Killjoy took to the air again, cursing. "I'm sorry they made you do that. Damn those bugs."

"What makes you think it was changelings who hit Dodge?" Twilight asked.

"Seriously? You mean besides the swarm of them that tried walloping you just now?" Killjoy took a quick swig from her flask. "Those bodies confused the hell out of us, but after hearing your story, it all adds up. You've seen them in action; you saw what they did to your brother. They suck out love. Who's to say they can't suck out souls too?"

Specious reasoning. From a drunk, no less. Then again... Twilight had assumed that only a unicorn could pull off the kinds of magic she'd seen on display in Dodge. Drawing out souls, carving out that pit in the ground... but it wasn't as though unicorns were the only sapient creatures in Equestria capable of using magic, was it?

But the Operator said that having the power to do that meant nothing without the knowledge – where would the Changeling Queen have gotten the knowledge of those dark magics?

And surely she wouldn't be so monstrous as to bleed her own kind to make golems.

By then, they'd drawn close to the farmhouse. Pegasi buzzed like shiny golden bees around the perimeter, peering through windows or standing guard at key posts on the roof, at the front door, and in the backyard. Their telescopic spears were extended in hoof.

One of the guards at the front door – a mare, startlingly white with yellow eyes and a blue feather crest on her halfhelm – flapped over to greet them.

"Captain," she said as her hooves touched down and her wings folded. There was an intensity to her gaze, a sense of command, of authority and professionalism, that Twilight didn't get from Killjoy.

Killjoy nodded to the mare. "Talk to me, Goose."

"We've secured the house. All indications are that it was inhabited up until recently – within the last several days. There's a calendar on the icebox in the kitchen; the last day marked off was Sunday, the 27th. No sign of bugs anywhere, upstairs or down. No signs of violence, no struggle." She paused. "However..."

"Talk to me, Goosefeathers; you know I hate suspense."

"There's a survivor locked in the basement. A civilian." Her eyes softened. "We've been trying to coax her out, but I don't think she trusts us. And the way she's talking, it sounds like there's something seriously wrong with her. Psychologically, that is."

"Did she give you her name?" asked Twilight.

Goosefeathers glanced at her, and looked her from hoof to head. "We've asked, but she just responds with vague remarks and cryptic poetry."

Twilight looked at Killjoy, and Killjoy at Twilight. "It might be the ranch's owner," said the unicorn. "Cherry Jubilee."

"How do you figure?" asked Killjoy. "This Cherry Jubilee prone to crazy talk?"

"I mean, it could also be one of her workers, or somepony from town, but nopony I met the last time I was out here acted the way you're describing. And it is Cherry's house." Twilight shrugged. "Let me talk to her; maybe I can get her to come out. She's a friend."

Killjoy chewed her lip pensively before nodding. "Alright. You're with me. As you were, Goose."

The front door led into a hallway that branched off to the left, with a doorway to the kitchen in front of the house's entrance and, further down the hall and to the right, another doorway to the house's living room. The hall itself ended with a locked door, where two guardsponies were vainly entreating somepony to come out.

"It's alright," said one of the pegasi, a gray stallion. "We're with the Royal Guard—"

"Outside your jurisdiction!" cried a shrill, muffled voice from behind the door. "No permits! Unwanted! Show me your mark of office, or away!"

The two guardsponies exchanged a confused look. "I can do that, sure," said the same stallion, "but not unless you open the door for me. How about you come out, and we can talk face-to-face?"

"Faces mean nothing! Souls speak to one another when bound together by chain and yoke, and a half-forged link is better than none! You're no link; you wear no yoke; you are not me; I am not thee; away, away, away!"

Killjoy trotted toward the guards, Twilight beside her. "Sounds like this could be going better," the captain mused to Twilight.

Both guards turned at the sound of Killjoy's voice and snapped to attention.

"At ease." She nodded to the adjacent living room. "Go secure that couch for a spell."

With a crisp nod, the guards left Twilight and Killjoy standing in front of the door.

"Here goes," Killjoy muttered. She knocked twice on the door, leaving little globs of half-dried changeling goo, mixed with sand, on the chipping red paint. "This is Captain Killjoy of the Canterlot Royal Guard. We're here to—"

Hysterical laughter cut her off. "Captain of the cocks and the hens pecking about on my land, strutting and scratching and digging! I'll scratch you back, wait and see. I'll scratch you like a buck in the woods, dig deep in the sodden earth and lay your carcass out for the festering banquet!"

 Killjoy glanced at Twilight out of the corner of her eye, and huffed. "I'm sorry you're so distraught, ma'am, but—"

 "Beasts all over the shop! Silver and fire will do for 'em, but lead will do for you just as well!" She broke again into hysterical laughter.

"Is your name Cherry Jubilee?" Killjoy shouted.

Behind her, the guardsponies were peeking through the sitting room doorway, curious and perplexed.

The laughter died abruptly. Gentle whimpering rose to take its place "No yoke, no link, not part of the chain, no friend of mine... Cherry, Cherry, Cherry Jubilee, how do you know—"

"I have a friend of yours here." Killjoy nodded to Twilight, and took a step backward.

Twilight gulped and pressed her hoof against the door. "Hello, Cherry Jubilee. It's Twilight Sparkle. Do you remember me?"

Silence greeted her, before a strangled voice spoke back. "No friend to me. No friend of mine. False and foul, a liar I name you. Run off and never return. That's your nature, isn't it?"

There was an ominous snapping sound behind the door, a click that Twilight couldn't quite place.

"Cherry, I don't understand. I don't want to leave. I want to stay and—"

"You want to stay? Your promise renew? Then I've a gift for you! Lead and powder, shot and shell, enough to send a faithless mare to hell! The party favors you deserve!"

Twilight's eyes widened – that ominous click suddenly made a lot more sense. She whirled, caught Killjoy around the neck, and pulled her down to the ground just as part of the door's middle exploded into splinters.

How does she have a gun?!

Pellets caromed off the walls and ceiling, leaving scratches and scores in the unpainted wooden paneling. The guardsponies, drawn by the noise, rushed back into the corridor. At the sight of their captain lying prone on the floor, with Twilight's body covering hers, they moved in closer. Killjoy froze them with a shake of her head, and motioned frantically for them to get away. They quickly obeyed.

Killjoy was dusty, but unharmed, although if the snarl on her face served as any indicator, she was decidedly pissed off. She started to rise, but Twilight bid her to stay down with a firm press of her hoof upon her shoulder.

"She's scared, that's all," Twilight murmured to Killjoy. She shook her head, clearing dust and debris from her mane in a powdery cloud. "Give me a chance to talk her down."

Killjoy started to retort, but the look on Twilight's face made her bite down on the rest of her sentence. Swallowing hard, she nodded, and stayed low to the ground while Twilight stood.

The hole in the door was roughly half the size of Twilight's head, its sides jagged and splintery. Radiating around the hole were tinier holes, akin to pinpricks. Part of Twilight's research from that morning was devoted to studying firearms, so she could deduce from the damage to the door that Cherry's weapon was a shotgun. Where she could have gotten it and how she was using it, Twilight couldn't begin to guess.

She lit her horn with a pale white light and shone it through the hole. A pair of wide-open, bloodshot eyes stared back at her from behind the sights of a twin-barreled shotgun.

Two barrels. For two rounds.

Of which Cherry had fired one, or else the hole would have been bigger.

Play it cool, Twiley. 

She stayed a pace away from the door, and spoke as calmly and soothingly as she could. "Cherry, do you remember me?"

Cherry thrust the shotgun through the hole, toward Twilight, who quickly conjured a shield in front of her. The shot never came. Twilight kept the shield up anyway.

"False friends and foes alike," Cherry whimpered. "Not links in the chain. No yoke. Away with you. It ought to come natural."

Twilight took a hesitant step forward. The barrel of the shotgun rested on the bottom edge of the hole, and was shaking in Cherry's grasp. "I'm not going anywhere, Cherry. I'm not going to leave you alone." Another step closer, and she could reach out and touch the door. "You're my friend, and I'm yours. Remember? There's nothing false about it."

The quaking of the shotgun intensified.

"I'm going to drop my shield now, okay? Please don't shoot." The light in Twilight's horn winked out, and her shield vanished with it. Her hoof trembling, Twilight reached through the hole in the door and touched the shotgun's still-warm barrel with her hoof.

"Look at me, Cherry." Twilight spoke softly, kindly, to avoid provoking another outburst of anger. She pushed the shotgun back, gently, and felt no resistance from Cherry. The weapon lowered, and Twilight could see the rest of Cherry's face – her cheeks, streaked with dirt, and her eyes, bruised and tired. From behind came the sound of gold-shod hooves scraping against wood.

"Do you recognize me?" Twilight summoned her inner Cheerilee and smiled in as gentle and maternal a way as she could. "Do you remember me now?"

Cherry blinked once, and her eyes started to focus on the unicorn's face. Cherry blinked twice, and the wildness in her eyes abated. "Twilight. Twilight Sparkle. Applejack's..."

"Yes, that's right." Twilight nodded. "Applejack's friend."

"You came for her. I remember you coming for her." Cherry fell onto her haunches, her eyes going unfocused, and laughed a dry, humorless laugh. There was a clattering sound, too – the shotgun dropping to the floor. "She doesn't appreciate that."

I don't suppose she did, did she?

"I'm going to open the door now," Twilight said, keeping her voice soothing. "Okay?" She stretched out with her aura, found the bolt holding the door shut, and unlatched it. Stepping back, she took the doorknob in her hoof pulled the door outward.

Immediately, she was hit with an overpowering, feculent reek. She recoiled, scrunching her nose and gagging. It smells like an outhouse in there.

But Cherry had been in there since Sunday. Of course it'd smell like an outhouse.

Cherry Jubilee was naked except for a green saddlebag hanging over her right flank. Her luscious red mane was a knotted, sweaty tangle, the yellow headband she usually wore discarded. Much like her face, the rest of her body was filthy, her coat covered in dirt and... stuff that I hope is dirt.

At her hooves was the shotgun that nearly blew Twilight and Killjoy away – a heavily altered mutant of a weapon, customized for a pony's use. The trigger guard had been enlarged to accommodate a hoof, as were the triggers themselves, and a U-shaped groove was carved into the wooden stock, allowing the weapon to be held beneath the armpit.

Did she modify this herself, or was it like this when she got it?

Twilight floated the shotgun away from Cherry and passed it back to Killjoy, releasing her magical grip when she felt hooves around it. "We'll just keep that away from you for now," she muttered. To Killjoy, she said "Be careful with that. I think there's still a live round in there."

"I'll be as gentle with it as a newborn." Killjoy whistled softly. "Never even seen a gun up close before."

Twilight wordlessly pulled the gun away from Killjoy, ignoring the mare's protest.

Maybe I'll just hold on to it myself.

Cherry Jubilee ran a dry tongue over parched lips and looked the unicorn in the eye. "You shouldn't be here. You gotta run, you understand? Before they cut you up with misty blades and leave your bones to bleach."

"Not gonna happen." Twilight stepped closer to Cherry, fighting the urge to gag at the stench coming through the doorway. She extended a hoof toward her, slowly, ready to pull back if Cherry showed the slightest sign of discomfort or rejection.

She didn't. Twilight's hoof rested on Cherry's shoulder, and she drew the older mare into a gentle embrace. Cherry sank against Twilight and breathed a sigh – of relief, of contentment? Twilight couldn't say.

Twilight stroked Cherry's back. "Everything's going to be just fine."

"It ain't. It ain't. You don't understand. You can't understand." She pulled back and touched Twilight's cheek with her hoof. "You ain't a link in the chain. Not even a broken one. You can't know."

"Know what?" Twilight placed her hoof over Cherry's. "Help me understand."

"They – they wriggle in my mind like graveworms; they whisper to one another. Echoes of dyin' screams, an' the urge to rip and burn. I don't know where it ends an' I begin. I..." Cherry drew in a shuddering breath.

The mare spoke in riddles, vaguaries. They meant nothing to Twilight. But they meant something to Cherry; she spoke earnestly, as though it were imperative that Twilight understand. Were they the mad ramblings of a terrified pony, and nothing more? Perhaps.

But I doubt it. And she deserves the benefit of that doubt.

Twilight looked back toward Killjoy. With a disappointed glance at the floating shotgun, the captain came forward to take Cherry's other hoof.

"Let's get you out of there," said Twilight.

Together, they guided Cherry away from the basement.

"No frickin' way." Killjoy whirled away from the mantel, grinning excitedly at Twilight and Cherry as her wings pomf'd open. "She's related to Hickory Switch? The Hickory Switch?!"

Twilight looked up at Killjoy, blinking confusedly. She sat on the long, blue couch in the middle of the living room, facing toward a finely carved mantel that was etched with stylized, smiling cherries. Tacky as heck, but then again... fruit farmers...

Beside her, Cherry stretched out on her side, greedily drinking from a tin canteen of water graciously donated to her by one of the pegasi. Her shotgun and saddlebag rested on the floor, leaning against the bottom of the couch, along with Killjoy's cumbersome greathelm.

"Uh." Twilight's muzzle scrunched. "Sure? What are we talking about?"

Killjoy stepped aside and pointed her hoof at an enameled red jar resting on top of the mantel – an urn for somepony's ashes. Twilight squinted, and could barely make out the lettering etched into its surface.

Twilight looked quizzically at Killjoy.

Killjoy, dancing in place like a sugared-up schoolfilly, squealed. "Hickory Switch! Commanding officer of the E.U.P. Hickory Switch!" Her wings twitched excitedly, and she hovered an inch off the ground, forehooves wrung together and vibrating with excitement. "Order of Hurricane, first class! Decorated for battlefield valor five times! A general by the time she was forty! The last pre-Pax war hero in Equestria! C'mon, you know this stuff, right?"

"Military history is not an area I've devoted much time to," said Twilight dryly.

And there's nothing heroic about being a murderer.

Killjoy floated in the air and folded her forelegs in a huff. "Well, take my word for it, I guess. She resigned when the Platoons folded into the Guard thirtysomething years ago, but her name still commands respect back in Canterlot. I remember hearing she died a few years back; me and my bunkmates all poured one out for her. Hell of a lady. A true hero." She smirked at Cherry. "You're, what, her granddaughter or something?"

Cherry suddenly choked on a gulp of water and spluttered, spraying droplets all over the couch and the floor. Twilight patted her on the back as she coughed out the water, and glared disapprovingly at Killjoy.

Killjoy, tapping her hooves together sheepishly, fluttered away. "Think I'll, uh, just... go over here for a while."

"Do, please." Twilight's scowl followed Killjoy until she passed from her line of sight, at which point she raised her lips back to a smile for Cherry. "You alright?"

Cherry's throat rumbled as she cleared the last of the water from it. She smiled weakly at Twilight. "Auntie can't protect nopony now."

Something about the way she said that chilled Twilight. "Do you feel any better? Do you think you can talk about what happened?"

Cherry's eyes drooped shut, and she rested her head on the couch cushion. "You'd need to be in the chain to get it. Fix you with a yoke, an' you'll understand. Short o'that... you'll never know. Words're too clumsy to tell it right."

"Can you try anyway?" Looking at the state Cherry was in, being "fixed with a yoke" seemed like something to avoid.

Cherry nodded shakily, her eyes opening halfway. "A train came on Sunday. That was the start of everythin'. Don't know if trouble came on it, or jus' simultaneous, but one way or another..." Cherry snorted. "Trains never come 'round no more now that there's Appleloosa."

There was a little bit of the mare Twilight knew, in her eyes and in her voice, as she said that.

"The workers were off in town. It was jus' me out here, tendin', eatin'. Then..." Cherry started to shake. "I heard it. The music. The song." Tears pooled in the corners of her cloudy eyes and streaked down her cheeks. "Echoing off the walls of my mind."

Twilight wiped them away with cautious strokes of her magic. "What song?"

"Song of rot, of bloody morrow. Song of ash and salt and sorrow." Chattering laughter rolled from her throat. "A choir of one, and two, and ten, and a hundred, wailing in agony, wailing in harmony, wailing in my mind, drownin' out thought, silencin' self. I don't—"

"Cherry. Stay with me."

Cherry blinked up at her. The cloudiness in her eyes faded. "I don't remember the melody," she whispered. An empty chuckle followed, then another long, shuddering breath. "I don't remember nothin' but the shallow bite of the razor, cuttin' cross my everythin', cuttin' me to the quick."

Twilight stroked her cheek as the Operator's lesson rang in her memory. "Something tried to take your soul, didn't it? To bleed you."

Cherry hiccuped. "Shallow cuts for Cherry Jubilee, but the others bled like stuck pigs. I..." She whimpered and curled her legs against her body, her hooves tight around her stomach. "It hurts, Twilight, it hurts so bad..."

Twilight's stomach turned at Cherry's gruesome simile, but she suppressed her disgust and patted Cherry's head comfortingly. "I know. Shh, I know."

"You can't." Cherry laughed another bitter laugh. "The razor crossed the road, shallow shallow shallow cuts, but it didn't sink in, didn't bite deep. Felt it deep, felt it inside, but not in me – in them. Cherry got cut, but didn't bleed out. Do you understand?"

Cherry lifted her body off the cushion and gripped Twilight's shoulders, her jade eyes boring into Twilight's. "It stopped. It let me be but I felt it stick the rest..." Cherry pressed her face into Twilight's chest. "An' I still hear 'em in my skull, the thoughts and feelings of a hundred dyin' ponies..."

Not knowing what else to do, Twilight just cradled the mare as she fell apart completely and wept into her coat. The act comfortably familiar, even nostalgic. Twilight wondered why for a moment... before recalling a late night, ages ago. A young Spike had woken terrified and inconsolable and crawled into bed with her, bawling while Twilight whispered words of comfort and drew him close.

The pain once more crept toward her; Twilight shoved it away. She clutched Cherry closer to her chest, willing herself to stay together, for Rainbow's sake, and for the sake of the mission.

Fate provided a distraction in the form of Killjoy, who climbed over the couch's backrest and dropped onto the cushion to Cherry's right with a slight, springy bounce. "I hope you're fluent in gobbledygook."

"I wouldn't quite categorize it as gobbledygook," said Twilight. With effort, she kept her voice from breaking. "There's meaning behind her words. Just that she's the only one who knows precisely what that meaning is." Her ears perked at the sound of hoofsteps approaching, and she turned toward the doorway in time to see Goosefeathers and the pegasus medic, Jinglebell, enter the room.

"Captain," the white mare said gruffly. "Jinglebell and the homo are here to see you."

"Stop calling me that," Snake, yet out of sight, grumbled. "Why do you all keep calling me that?"

The sound of Snake's voice made Cherry's ears twitch, and a shiver ran through her body. She pulled her head away from Twilight, her face inscrutable.

Twilight blinked – that was the same word Killjoy used to describe the human mercenaries. "Why do you call him that?" she said to the captain.

Killjoy tilted her head at Twilight. "C'mon, don't play dumb. You've read Slaymare, right?"

"That's a... comic book?" It sounded vaguely familiar. Perhaps it was one of those grown-up, sex-and-gore-filled comics Spike would occasionally bug her to buy for him in Canterlot – there was only one store in Ponyville that sold comics, and they only carried child-friendly fare.

"Comics aren't really my thing, sorry."

Killjoy and Jinglebell both gasped, as did the other guardsponies standing in the hall, and even Goosefeathers was surprised enough to break her stoicism and arch her eyebrows a bit.

Killjoy smacked her face with her hooves. "Shining Armor's sister has never read the most acclaimed adult graphic novel of all time? Sheesh. Remind me later, and I'll make sure to get you a copy. Pretty sure everypony in the Guard keeps one on hoof wherever they go." Killjoy sighed and looked at Goose and Jinglebell.

"Goose. Explain to the nice filly what a homo is."

"Ma'am." Goose pivoted toward Twilight. "A homo is a genetically engineered, super-intelligent mutant gorilla with enhanced strength, speed, and combat abilities. They were introduced in Slaymare, issue four, where they were bred by the villainous Mooselini as cannon fodder, part of his plan to rebuild the Elken Empire in the Marediterranian, but they revolted, shaving the hair from their heads as a sign of their newfound independence. They ended up shooting Mooselini and his mistress, and hanging their bodies from a—"

"Alright, that's enough; don't want to give too much away. Spoilers and all." Killjoy saluted. "Obliged to you, Lieutenant. You're dismissed. Jinglebell, what've you got for me?"

Goose returned the salute and headed back to the house's front door.

Jinglebell grinned. A tiny bit of thread poked out between his front teeth. "Stitched him up gooooood."

Snake stepped into view, arms folded around his rifle, and ducked inside the living room. Wound around his forearm was a fresh bandage in place of the rag from the saloon.

"Mooselini," Snake muttered disgustedly, shaking his head. "I give up."

Killjoy eyed the bandage. "A-plus work, Jingles. Is there anything else, or did you really feel like you needed to leave your post to tell me that you did your job right?"

"No, there's more." He stepped into the room, and Killjoy hopped off the couch to greet him. "Lieutenant Clementine wanted me to report something to you."

"Clem's with C-team. You're J. You don't need to run reports for him."

"That's what Lieutenant Strudel said, too. But Clementine was, um..." Jinglebell rubbed his neck. "Insistent."

"Gonna have a talk with them both about the chain of command later," Killjoy muttered. "Well, as it happens, I'm glad you're here; saves us all some time. Got more work for you. Hope you don't mind."

"Please tell me it's not more bad field med."

"Nope. Severe dehydration and exhaustion, probably among other things that I probably can't pronounce. First things first, though; gimme your report."

Jinglebell gave Twilight a quick look and guided Killjoy into the corner of the room. The two began speaking in hushed tones.

Snake watched them with detached curiosity, then shrugged and stepped in front of the mantel, leaning his back against it. He glanced at the shotgun, then at Twilight, and the mare in her embrace.

Twilight jerked her head toward Jinglebell and Killjoy. "Do you know what that's about?"

Killjoy briefly glanced at Twilight, frowning.

Snake shrugged again. "Got me. An orange pony pulled the medic aside while he was stitching me up and whispered at him for a while. Then a green pony dropped down and they all started arguing together. Until I reminded them that I had a half-stitched bite on my arm and an itchy trigger finger."

Cherry's right ear swiveled toward Snake as he spoke.

Twilight frowned. "You didn't seriously threaten the guardsponies who saved our lives, did you?"

"Of course not. I just made an observation about the finger that I use to pull triggers on guns. Like the one I was holding right then." When Twilight's frown deepened, he rolled his eyes. "You don't think I'd actually have shot them, do you?"

"Nah." Twilight smirked. "You're a lot of things, Snake, but I'm, like, ninety percent sure that level of cold-blooded stupidity is beneath you."

"Go straight to Hell," said Snake, in a tone that approached playfulness.

Twilight stuck out her tongue at him. "How's the arm?"

Snake rotated it to show off the job that Jinglebell had done. "Feels a lot better now, I have to admit. Not quite nanomachine fresh, but it doesn't itch and sting so bad." He gestured at Cherry. "Who is that, by the way? You make a new friend?"

"Found an old one," Twilight corrected. "This is Cherry Jubilee. Cherry? Can I introduce you to—"

A cold laugh from Cherry interrupted Twilight. "Introduce the old gray mare, the toothless serpent, to Cherry Jubilee? No need, no need, no need."

Snake inclined his head toward Cherry. "What the hell is wrong with her?" His voice was perfectly calm, but his posture and muscles tensed.

"She's been through a lot. I can explain later, but—"

"No need for words. I know what you are." Cherry pulled away from Twilight and spun to look at Snake, her grin a skeletal rictus and her bloodshot, clouded eyes leaking tears. She thrust a forehoof toward him, jabbing it in the air repeatedly as though it were a sword she could thrust through him. Cherry leaned forward, and her top half tumbled off of the couch; she cracked her chin against the floor, splitting it open, and a thin trickle of blood dripped onto the floorboards as she dragged her hindquarters off the couch and crawled toward Snake.

The noise of her chin striking the floor startled Killjoy and Jinglebell; they stopped their conversation, and turned their attention to Cherry. Both moved forward with caution.

"A beast at bay in crimson snow," Cherry rose to her knees, then to her hooves, her legs and body shaking. "Brother-son of the one-eyed hound, slithering on his belly down a path paved with corpses. The last and least of the snakes not created by nature!"

Snake's right hand tightened around his rifle. His left reached for the holster on his hip.

Twilight jumped from the couch and interposed herself between Snake and Cherry – at that close range, there was no way he'd miss a shot with that rifle, "discount crap" or no. She placed a placating hoof on Cherry's shoulder. "Cherry, calm down. He's not gonna—"

"He's drowning in time!" Cherry shrieked, whirling on Twilight with a mad, fiery gaze. "And you, you flail and gasp to keep your head above water, but the longer you stay with him—"

Twilight heard the hiss of Snake's suppressor, and Cherry recoiled from the impact of a tranquilizer dart in her neck. Immediately, her eyelids drooped; her jaw hung open, tongue lolling out its side. She swayed left, then right, then left again, finally toppling over, completely still.

"Yeah, not taking any chances," growled Snake. He held his tranquilizer gun at the hip, having drawn and fired it in a single fluid motion.

Killjoy stepped forward, Jinglebell at her side, and knelt next to Cherry. She glanced at Snake, lips parted slightly. "You didn't..."

"She's alive," Twilight said hurriedly. "Just unconscious. Tranquilizer gun."

"Tranquilizer... gun?" Jinglebell felt Cherry's pulse, then tapped his chin and hmm'd. "Instant sedation from a distance – like a zebra blowdart in firearm form. Don't suppose you'd be willing to part with it – performing physicals on certain needle-shy guardsmares would go far more easily if I had one of those."

Killjoy looked away, mumbling, and busied herself paying careful attention to a loose thread on one of the couch cushions.

Twilight couldn't help a soft chuckle, but it died when she turned to look at Snake. He'd holstered the tranquilizer gun again, and stood with his rifle hefted, eyes locked on Cherry, as though he expected something to happen at any moment. And there was something in his eyes, something she had never seen before. Snake, the imperturbable rock, looked shaken. 

If only slightly.

"What's the matter?" Twilight asked.

His eyes flicked toward her. "Zecora," he said. "Back in the forest, she called me something. A name, a phrase. 'A snake not created by nature.'" He nodded at Cherry. "Same thing she called me just now."

"What does it mean?"

"Not important. Point is that Cherry isn't the first to call me that." His cheek curled into his mouth, between two molars, and he rolled it around for a moment before continuing his thought. "For that matter, neither was Zecora."

"Who's this Zecora?" asked Killjoy, looking away from the couch.

"A zebra. She saved my life the other day."

"So what does that have to do with her?" said Killjoy, stepping closer to the unconscious Cherry and frowning at her. "Maybe they're both mind-readers?"

"That's probably not quite the case," said Twilight. "For either of them. But now that you mention it, I think that there may have been some kind of mental influence going on here." She knelt next to Cherry and ran her hoof over the sleeping mare's mane. "Cherry talked about hearing music, and having other ponies' thoughts in her mind. Feeling sensations that they felt. I think she's a part of some kind of shared mindspace, and I think that's the source of a lot of her mental trauma."

"A form of changeling mind control, maybe?" said Jinglebell. "We've seen it before."

"Yeah, me too." Snake grunted. "Mass hypnosis and brainwashing using music as a medium."

"I wouldn't take that talk about music too literally," said Twilight. "Most of what Cherry said sounded figurative, and Shining didn't say anything about hearing music when he was under the Queen's influence."

Though that could just as easily mean that the inverse is true – that this form of mind control uses music, and that the Queen is not involved.

"You know, it wasn't just music that she mentioned – there was this other phrase that she used, too," Twilight muttered. "She kept talking about a chain, and she said something like 'a broken link is better than none'. And she said that I wasn't a link in the chain, and I'd have to be one in order to fully understand her."

"Figurative or no, that doesn't need much interpretation," Snake interjected. "She's talking about some kind of hive mind."

Twilight gazed at the sleeping mare as she thought back to her ramblings. Wriggling in her mind, not knowing where she began and ended, feeling the same sensations and emotions as others...

Twilight's eyes lit up with sudden realization.

I guess I don't need to be fixed with a yoke to understand after all.

"That's exactly it. A hive mind." All eyes were on her now. "Doesn't that fit with everything we've seen so far? I mean, the golems we've been fighting – they're supposed to be mindless, but they don't act mindless. Feints, ambushes, coordinated maneuvers – none of it has made sense up until now. Something is controlling them – making them act in unison. A dominant consciousness, or will. And Cherry was, or is, connected to it."

"You mean a hive consciousness, controlled by a central intelligence, rolling into town and assimilating everyone it sees into itself?" Snake smiled wryly at some private joke. "Wonder why it decided to lop off Seven-of-Dodge here instead of keeping her in the collective."

Blank, uncomprehending stares and awkward silence were the only response he received.

Killjoy arched an eyebrow at Twilight. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

Twilight shrugged and shook her head.

"Not so fun when you're not in on the joke, is it? All those years in Alaska with nothing to watch but UPN finally paid off." Snake's satisfied gaze drifted from one face to the other. A long and arduously awkward silence settled on the room, broken only by the occasional shuffling hoof or quiet cough.

Until a thin, high voice, a tinny screech that grated on Twilight's ears and chilled her to the bone, cut through the silence.

"I get it."

Snake snapped his rifle to his shoulder, Killjoy shoved Jinglebell behind herself and unfurled her wings, and Twilight scrambled away from Cherry, jaw hanging open. A shimmer of pink surrounded her horn.

Killjoy turned and called over her shoulder. "Goose! Gonna need a couple more bodies in here!"

A chuckle like the rattling of dry, brittle bones came from Cherry's mouth. Her hooves scraped slowly against the floorboards as she rose to stand on quaking legs. She twisted her neck to look over her shoulder; her half-lidded eyes found Snake, and her lashes batted, not quite in unison.

"Do you think I'd look good in silver spandex?"

Twilight didn't look to see Snake's reaction. She kept her face as steady as she could, but her heart hammered in her chest as adrenaline filtered into her system. Behind her, hooves pounded against wooden floorboards as Goose and the others stormed into the room.

Cherry turned her uneven gaze to Twilight and smiled a slimy smile. "The funny man and the clever pony. What an unlikely, yet potent, twosome. You're pretty good – far moreso than your blockhead brothers." The pitch in her voice descended as she spoke, normalizing into something approaching Cherry's tone.

"So it is you." Twilight arched her back. "Never thought I'd meet the Changeling Queen again after my blockhead brother sent you and your hive packing."

"'Her Radiance, Queen Chrysalis,' to you." She turned to face the group head-on, drawing herself up; the quaking in her limbs subsided, and when she spoke next, it was in a voice infused with cold steel. "You will address me with courtesy, Twilight Sparkle. You owe me that much after everything you've deprived me of these past several months. First Canterlot, then my little ponies – what have I ever done to deserve such shabby treatment from you?"

Killjoy drew herself up and took a step forward, wings splayed wide. "I'll show you shabby treatment, you chitinous bitch. You're gonna answer for the lives you took here."

Chrysalis replied with an incredulous laugh in Killjoy's face. "Am I supposed to find you intimidating, drunky? Maybe you ought to go home and sleep this off."

The guardsmare snarled and lunged toward Chrysalis, only for Twilight to bar her way with a hoof. "All you'd be doing is hurting Cherry."

Chrysalis snorted. "That's rich. Where was that bleeding-heart sentimentality when you were burning my golems alive?"

"They weren't alive. Not truly," said Twilight, as much to convince herself as Chrysalis. The faint stench of burning flesh and hair wafted past her nose. "Living like that is no life at all."

"Don't tell me that living as a gibbering lunatic is any better. What kind of life do you expect Cherry to have after this?" She laughed that hideous, piercing laugh again and turned her gaze to Snake. "You'll do it, murderer, won't you? What's another corpse among thousands to you? Pull that trigger, and set her free."

Twilight spared Snake a quick glance – his rifle and shooting stance were rock-steady, but his finger was curled away from the trigger, and didn't so much as twitch.

Chrysalis scowled. She bit down hard on Cherry's lip and spat out a thin wad of bloody saliva at Snake's feet. "Twilight Sparkle's piety must be contagious. Do you think you can save her, murderer, is that it? Do any of you?" She swept her hoof across all assembled. "Because if you do, then that is just precious. Honestly, if you don't do it now, then sooner or later, she'll do it herself. Why not save her the time and trouble?"

She was alone and traumatized. She had a gun and at least two rounds for it. If we hadn't found her when we did...

It sickened Twilight to think that Chrysalis might be right. Cherry's mind and her very soul were compromised. Violated. How did somepony come back from that?

Chrysalis cocked Cherry's head and blinked, again out of sequence. "It chafes, doesn't it? Knowing you can't help Cherry. Knowing you can't save her. So you ought to be asking yourself what the odds are that you can save anypony you care about. Most of all, her." She grinned a bloody-gummed grin. "That is, after all, why you're here, isn't it? Certainly not for sweet, sweet Cherry, but for Rainbow Dash – stout of heart and delectably loyal. And mine, all mine, to break and devour." Her dry tongue ran over her parched lips with a sandpapery rasp. "Oh, just thinking about the banquet that awaits... if Cherry could salivate properly right now, her mouth would be a veritable Neighagara Falls."

Twilight tried, and failed, to hide her surprise. She can't possibly...?!

"Twilight," Snake said, turning his head in her direction. "She's trying to manipulate you."

"Of course I am! And it's working, isn't it?" Twilight's change of expression seemed to delight Chrysalis, who laughed and clutched her hooves to her heart, wringing them together tightly enough for them to tremble. "After all, a true true friend would never abandon a friend in need, would she? So come and join us, down below, where Rainbow Dash awaits, yet alive and unspoiled. If you hurry, you might just be able to save her from becoming another Cherry. You can even bring the murderer if you'd like. We wouldn't want to exclude him."

She turned Cherry's gaze onto Killjoy, whom she regarded with a look of contempt and disgust. "On the other hoof, if this drunk or any of her buzzards set hoof in my home, I'll rip Rainbow Dash in two, and let you choose which half to keep."

Killjoy snarled. "I swear to Celestia, I'm gonna—"

"Wait." Twilight took a slow, measured step toward the possessed mare. Chrysalis knew about Rainbow being in Dodge, might have been holding her hostage, and was apparently shrewd enough to infer that Twilight was in Dodge specifically to get Rainbow back. On top of that, she was assuming that her devotion to her friends was powerful enough to override her inclination toward common sense and logic.

My actions up until now would certainly seem to bear that assumption out.

It stank – reeked – of a trap. But that wasn't the only thing about the situation that was strange. Not even the biggest. Everything about Chrysalis, from her actions to her words, was just... off.

She shows an undue interest in my friendships. She knows things about Snake that she shouldn't. The mass mind control, the soul-bleeding – those aren't abilities she's demonstrated in the past. And Cherry...

Chrysalis batted bedroom eyes at Twilight, waiting expectantly.

Why is Cherry not a golem when even the changelings in the hive are?

"You bled everypony in Dodge, but not Cherry," said Twilight. "You even bled your own kind, turned them into mindless golems. You violated them and claimed their souls for who knows what, but Cherry survived when nopony else – when no one else – did."

Chrysalis gave a soft, almost sated, laugh, but those big bedroom eyes showed a faint flicker of doubt. "Why, I needed to give you my invitation somehow, Twilight dear."

"You can't call me clever and then try to feed me a stinker like that." Twilight's suspicions only deepened. "You were going to bleed Cherry just like the rest, but you stopped. Intentionally. You spared her – why?"

Chrysalis responded with glib laughter that was just a tad more nervous than it should have been. "Spare her? Haven't you been paying attention? Look at her, Twilight; listen to her talk. What, exactly, have I spared her from?!"

"You're dodging the question," said Snake.

"Quiet, murderer," Chrysalis snapped. This time, the smug look did not return. "I haven't given you leave to address me."

"Answer her." Snake sidled closer to Twilight, keeping his rifle trained on Chrysalis. "Why did you—"

Chrysalis clenched her teeth together, reared back, and slammed Cherry's forehooves into the floor, filling the room with the sound of splitting boards as they cracked underhoof.

"I said QUIET!!!"

She held the word until her lungs emptied, until Cherry's voice sounded strained and raw. Panting, sweating, seething, she glared at Snake, at Twilight, and at the guardsponies. No one moved; no one spoke. No one was daunted.

Chrysalis had lost whatever initiative she had, and she knew it.

She wasn't expecting that question. She didn't want me to ask that question. All this talk about Rainbow, all this mockery, and the timing of her possessing Cherry... I don't think she wants me to think too deeply about it.

What the hay was she hiding?

Chrysalis inhaled deeply, exhaled, and straightened her posture, reassembling her poise into a semblance of what it was. "Well." She smiled. "Only one way to make this more awkward."

There was a beat before she whirled and dove for the shotgun, reaching it before anypony could react. Chrysalis wrapped Cherry's hooves around it, and pulled it close to her body. With one hoof, she reached for the gun's trigger guard.

With the other, she angled the barrel toward her chin.

Twilight acted before she could loop her hoof through the trigger guard, seizing the gun with her magic and pulling it out of reach. Then a lance of pink light struck Cherry in the back of the head, and she sprawled on her belly with a thin wisp of smoke curling up from the back of her mane. She fell silent, save the sound of steady, even breathing, and did not stand back up.

Twilight sighed with relief. Not even a murder by proxy. Count this as a win.

"That gun," said Snake. "Toss it here."

Not one to toss weapons willy-nilly, Twilight floated the gun to him instead. Snake snagged and opened it, and shook two red shells – one spent, one live – out and onto the floor. He shut the gun again and turned it over in his hands, inspecting the trigger assembly carefully.

"No one thought to safety check this?" he asked.

Twilight once more felt like hitting herself. Another second slower and Cherry's blood would be on my conscience...

"You know how often we encounter guns on the job?" said Killjoy defensively. "Never. Forgive me if we're unfamiliar with the protocol."

"Then consider this a free lesson. This thing's an accident waiting to happen." He held the barrel and offered the gun stock-first to Killjoy. "Keep it unloaded, and don't let her have it back."

Killjoy gave Snake a dirty look and tucked the gun under her foreleg, muttering vaguely to herself.

"Captain," said Jinglebell softly, pressing a hoof to Killjoy's shoulder. "Changeling possession or no, that mare still needs medical attention."

"Right." Killjoy looked at him and jerked her head toward Cherry's body. "Look her over, treat whatever needs to be treated. Then get back to your post." She turned to Goose. "Lock this house down. If the Queen can possess Cherry at will, then she's a liability. Look after her, but keep eyes on her at all times. It wouldn't hurt to tie her up, either."

"Ma'am." Goose and her guards trotted toward Cherry, standing behind Jinglebell while he went about his work, starting by scrutinizing the little wisp of smoke from Twilight's blast.

"And you two." Killjoy leveled a serious look at both Snake and Twilight. "Step outside with me. We need to talk."

Sentries on the porch snapped to attention at the sight of their captain, but Killjoy dismissed them into the house, leaving her alone with Snake and Twilight.

"What do you think?" Killjoy asked. She rubbed her nose and sniffed. "Was she being straight with us?"

Twilight exchanged a look of unease with Snake. The human shook his head minutely. It miffed her, agreeing with him, but there was nothing logical about taking Chrysalis at her word.

"There might be an element of truth to what she's saying," said Twilight carefully. "There's any number of ways the Queen could have found out about Rainbow being here, and she could easily have put two and two together when she saw Snake and I show up. Whether she has her or not, she can use the promise of finding her to bait me into a confrontation."

Which seems like something she's keenly interested in doing. Someone has a grudge.

"There might..." Killjoy bit her lip. "There might be more than just an element of truth to what she said." She shuffled her wings and blew a nervous breath. "C-Team found bodies deep in the orchard while they were scouting. Changelings. More than a dozen. There was some kind of fight, and if they weren't on the losing end of it, they at least got as bad as they gave."

"Wasn't us," said Snake. "We skirted around the orchard to get to the barn. Never went all that far in."

"I didn't think it was," said Killjoy. "These bodies weren't like the ones in Dodge. They were carved up by some type of blade." She looked at Twilight. "You talked about a ninja before."

Trenton. Guess it was him after all. No surprise there.

"But more importantly," said Killjoy, "there were hoofprints in the changeling goop. A mare's hooves, looked like, unshod, and heading deeper into the orchard away from the scene of the fight." She hesitated. "And where they end, there's a trail of blue feathers leading back to a tunnel in the ground."

Snake must have been right – Trenton left to scout the ranch and took Rainbow Dash with him. They went into the orchard and were ambushed; Rainbow tried to escape, only to get captured by the changelings. She would have tried to fight them off, but in her condition, they'd have overwhelmed her easily.

And the feathers... The changelings wouldn't have known that we'd be coming out here, but Rainbow might have assumed... or perhaps Trenton told her about the message he sent. Either way, it could be she decided to leave a trail for us to follow – or anypony who tried coming to her rescue.

But why would the Queen direct her golems to capture, not kill, Rainbow Dash? There must have been some other reason for it.

Snake peered closely at her face. "What are you thinking?"

Twilight craned her neck up at him. "The Queen has an obvious grudge against me. I'm sure that grudge extends to the others; we all had a role in stopping her. So why did she capture Rainbow Dash when the golems found her in the orchard, instead of just killing her on the spot?"

"She could be interrogating her," Killjoy suggested. "Or even drawing out the execution. I mean, it depends on how pissed off she is versus how hungry she is, but if Rainbow Dash is as much of a meal as she suggested, then she could take her time, savor her, before stomping her out. She could make it last for days. Longer."

"Torturing her for simple revenge? Pedestrian for a supervillain." Snake shook his head. "No, there's something bigger going on. After all, there had to be some reason she was collecting souls in Dodge."

"Obviously," said Twilight. "But what does that have to do with...?"

Comprehension dawned on her; the pieces fell into place, and she once more felt the urge to retch. She didn't need Snake to finish the thought to know where he was going with it.

Chrysalis wanted Rainbow – wanted her soul for whatever it was she was after. If she knew that Rainbow was the Element of Loyalty's bearer, then surely her soul would have some unique property that would make it worth collecting. And if that was the case, and all she wanted Rainbow for was her soul...

Then there wouldn't be any reason to keep her around for long. She could be lost already. By going down there, all I'd be doing is giving her the chance to add the Element of Magic to her collection.

She started to shake. Her legs threatened to give way; her heart beat faster, her lungs worked harder to keep up. Killjoy watched her piteously. Snake was a rock.

Maybe that's what this was about all along.

Was the Queen actually holding Rainbow Dash hostage? Maybe, maybe not. Was she using the promise of finding her to lure Twilight into a trap? By her own admission, yes. Was there any logic in walking into that trap?

None whatsoever.

But logic wasn't what brought her to Dodge. Logic demanded that she ignore Trenton's summons and focus on the defense of Ponyville, on getting back on track to finding and stopping Metal Gear, on accepting Rainbow Dash's fate and focusing on saving as many lives as she could. She ignored it. She ignored Snake's exhortations, ignored the voice in her own head that echoed him. Faith brought her to Dodge – faith, and principle, and instinct. Was it logical to walk into what was probably a trap set by Trenton? No. Was it logical to walk into what was definitely a trap laid by Chrysalis? Definitely not.

Would Rainbow have let that stop her, if their positions were reversed?

She told me to leave her behind in the castle. And she'd probably say the same thing now, if she could. Snake was right about that. But if she were in my place, and I in hers, she'd move the sun and the moon both to get me back, regardless of what I said. Even if that meant walking into a trap laid by an archenemy.

Twilight breathed deeply, slowly, held the air as long as she could, and exhaled through her mouth. She breathed again, and her legs stopped quaking. She breathed again, and her heart slowed down.

Because that's the kind of pony she is – brave, noble. Loyal. Above all else, loyal.

So, would Twilight walk into a trap a second time, in the faint hope of saving Rainbow Dash, in defiance of logic and common sense?

I could never live with myself if I didn't at least try.

"Maybe she is gone. Maybe she's not." She looked at Killjoy; concern was written in the pegasus's amber gaze. "Maybe Chrysalis is lying to get me where she wants me. Or maybe she's telling the truth. It doesn't matter. I have to go down there and see for myself."

Snake was silent, but his jaw clenched hard enough that the whole lower half of his head seemed to tremble.

Killjoy, though, sighed. "Semper fidelis, right?" She shook her head with a sad laugh. "You're Shining Armor's sister, alright. Loyal to her friends past the point of reason."

"Are you gonna try and stop me?" Anger crept into her voice – she wasn't sure she liked that dig at her brother.

"No no, not at all," said Killjoy hurriedly. "That wasn't an insult. I mean, you wanna go down there – knock yourself out. But hear me out, alright? 'Cuz at the very least, we can try and play it smart."

Twilight's temper simmered. "I'm listening."
        
Killjoy drew closer, the beginning of a smile bubbling on her face. "Look. The hive that hit Canterlot was estimated at four hundred, give or take. Right? Even with the losses they've taken today, from us and from your ninja friend, we're still looking at roughly two-to-one odds if it comes to a fight."

Twilight nodded, wondering why Killjoy would be smiling in the face of such dire odds.

"So I'm saying we fight them on our terms. My terms." She couldn't hold back the grin. "You're looking at less than half the forces under my command, Sparkle. When we figured that the changelings were going after more populated areas, I detached the pegasi and led them personally to Dodge. The rest I sent to Appleloosa; they should have arrived by now. Unicorns and earth ponies, three hundred strong."

The smile made more sense now. Here I was worried it was just fatalism.

Killjoy continued, the excitement in her voice ramping up. "I can have a flier there in hours to summon them here, and I can have the full detachment accounted for by dawn, provided they travel through the night. We cooked up a plan for storming an underground hive, too, in case we ran into one. The unicorns'll use some kind of ground-penetrating sonar whatsit spell to map out the hive – hell, they could even whip up some kind of defense against whatever that hypno-bleeding shit the Queen used against Dodge was. Then we go in, together, and clear 'em all out in close quarters."

It wasn't a bad plan, in principle. But if the Queen was down there, if she had the ability to bleed souls en masse, then she could wipe out Killjoy's entire force in moments, effortlessly, perhaps regardless of whatever defenses they came up with. They were all vulnerable.

Myself included. 

And there was one other obvious problem with her plan. Unexpectedly, Snake was the one to state it: "We don't have until dawn to wait."

Twilight blinked at him. "Does that mean you're with me?" Part of her hoped he would say yes. Another, more realistic part, dreaded what he would actually say.

He took a long, hard long at her before answering – and his answer didn't please her. "It means that we don't need to be here anymore. Let Killjoy gather her forces and storm the hive while we take the Humvee back to Ponyville and plan our next move. This isn't our fight."

It was more in line with what she was expecting... although "our next move" was certainly an odd rhetorical choice on his part, lone wolf that he was. "This isn't your fight, you mean. My friend is here, in danger, and I'm not about to abandon her."

"We're not abandoning anyone." Snake shifted his rifle to his right hand and curled his left against his waist. "Look at the big picture, Twilight. Leave Dodge and Dash to Killjoy while we finish our own fight. They can handle this."

"He ain't wrong. We can wrap this up no problem, Sparkle." Killjoy's voice was earnest and pleading. "We'll get Rainbow Dash out of there, I promise, and once we're done out here, we'll hoof it to Ponyville and back you up in your own fight."

"Thank you. Sincerely. I believe you when you say that, I do." Twilight forced herself to smile. "But I'm sorry. I have to do this myself."

Snake scoffed. "Don't be an idiot. You'll get yourself killed."

Twilight replied, softly, almost whispering. "So be it."

Then she started down the path to the barn. An odd feeling of serenity washed over her; her hooves felt almost light, the dirt beneath them feather-soft.

Like walking on clouds.

"Twilight," Snake called after her. She ignored him, kept her gaze forward, kept putting one hoof in front of the other. His heavy footfalls thundered behind her as he stormed after her.

"Twilight!" She felt his hand over her withers.

Twilight whirled and slapped his hand away, glaring.

Snake stared down at her. The hand she'd struck was curled into a fist, but she could discern a slight tremble – it must have hurt him more than she thought it would. "You told me before that you weren't going to martyr yourself for Rainbow Dash," he growled.

Twilight flushed angrily. "That isn't what this is about at all!"

"Could have fooled me." He appraised her with a steely look. "You walk into that hive, and you probably won't come back out. You swear you're not looking to die?"

Twilight pursed her lips and nodded curtly.

"Then drop it. There's no reason for us to be here. Dash or no Dash, this isn't our fight." Snake gestured back toward the farmhouse, where Killjoy hovered in the air, watching the two of them argue. "It's theirs. Let them handle it"

"I..." Twilight looked away. "I can't do that."

Snake sighed with exasperation. "Damn it, you're going in circles here. Just what the hell are you trying to prove?"

"It's not about proving anything either!"

"Then why—"

"Nopony should have to die because I screwed up!"

Snake froze and fell silent. There was a slight widening of his eyes – another rare outward sign that he'd been caught off guard.

"I underestimated the danger in the castle." Twilight fought to keep her voice even. "I didn't realize the kind of threat we were up against, and I nearly got everypony killed. Rainbow could be lost, and Spike..." Her fight failed and her voice broke when her mind, unbidden, summoned an image of Spike with a tube in his throat.

He had no business being there. He was too young, too vulnerable. I let him come along because... because he had something he needed to prove. Because I wanted to give him the chance. It was stupid. It was careless. I promised myself I would protect him.

And she failed him. Just as she could still fail Rainbow. The list of loved ones slain on the altar of her own carelessness would only grow, if she let it.

But it wasn't just her loved ones she'd endangered.

I should have checked the other train. I should never have left Stovetop alone. She died by herself, swarmed by golems, and it's all... my...

Snake wasn't the only one with an ever-growing body count. Only, he killed by his own hand. She killed through failure – indirectly, to be sure. But as far as she was concerned, that made her no less complicit in the death of Stovetop, in the deaths that could still await Spike and Rainbow Dash.

I didn't kill them myself. But I may as well have.

She felt light, dizzy; the feeling of overwhelming stress and panic returned, nearly boiled over. Twilight fought it down, and fill her lungs with air.

"This is my mistake, and I have the chance to make it right." Killjoy fluttered closer as Twilight spoke, like a glittering golden butterfly, with a look of sympathy on her face. "I don't want to die here, Snake. but I'm not leaving my friend in other ponies' hooves while they clean up a mess that I made. I don't want—"

"What do you want, Twilight?" Snake spoke with quiet intensity.

Caught off guard, Twilight could only stammer. "I... I want..." She screwed her eyes shut tightly and the faces of her friends, laughing, smiling, happy and safe, flashed behind her closed lids – memories of better days.

"I want Applejack and Rainbow Dash to get into a shouting match that they laugh about afterward over a bottle of cider. I want Pinkie Pie to see how many cupcakes she can fit in her mouth at once, and I want her to ignore me when I warn her to pace herself. I want to listen to Fluttershy conduct a bird choir; I want to get a hooficure with Rarity; I want to watch Spike grow up and fall in love with somepony..."

"His own age?" Snake offered.

"Attainable." She opened her eyes to look at Snake, but her vision was too blurry to see the look on his face. "And you know what? All things being equal, I would love the chance to ask you about that albatross poem of yours over coffee." She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Because it sounds weird, and I would really like to know what the context behind it was."

Snake stifled a chuckle, which somehow got one out of her.

"I want my life back, Snake." Twilight sighed. "I want everything to just... just be okay again. But that all seems so far out of reach now. Maybe it is. Maybe forever."

In only two short days, her entire world had been upended, perhaps irrevocably so. The world had gone wrong, and she didn't know whether she could ever make it right.

"What I want doesn't matter, Snake. I have a duty, as much to my friends as to Equestria. I have to go after Rainbow. That's my burden. My obligation. Not Killjoy's, or the Guard's. Or even yours." She took a deep breath. "I won't ask you to come with me this time."

Snake tilted his head at her. "You didn't ask last time."

"No. I didn't." What else could she say to that?

Down the path was the barn, with its broken front door, and a squat blue rectangle that she recognized as the Humvee. The orchard, too, with its canopy of pink leaves, was not so far away. "You can go if, you'd like. Back to Ponyville, or after Metal Gear in your own way. I won't hold it against you. Rainbow and I will be alright with Killjoy. We'll find our own way home."

She meant it, too – there was no manipulation in her voice. No ulterior motive in her mind.

I called you my friend once, and I meant it. But I haven't treated you like one. I hope I can make up for it.

"Thank you for everything, Snake. I know you didn't want to come with me, but for what it's worth, I'm glad you did. I wouldn't have survived Dodge without your help."

"You won't survive now without my help." Snake looked past her, toward the barn, chewing his lip. "You got a plan, at least? How to find her, how to get back out?"

"I have... ideas. Ask anypony; this isn't the first time I've had to go looking for a friend in a network of subterranean caverns." She had an inkling of the kind of magic Killjoy was planning to use. She could enter the hive through either one of the entrances they knew about – in the barn, or in the orchard – and use a crude version of the same "sonar whatsit" spell to help her navigate both into and back out of the hive. And she had an idea of what to look for, too.

Chrysalis is vain, ostentatious – she'd set aside a place of prominence for herself in the tunnels. A spacious chamber she could use as a court. I find that, I find her, and with her, Rainbow Dash. Maybe. Possibly.

"I'll be alright. But it's sweet of you to be concerned."

I'm not sure I deserve it from you.

Giving him one last sad smile, she resumed her walk back to the barn.

She didn't hear footsteps behind her, but she did hear wingbeats, feathers rustling as Killjoy landed and walked beside her. "Do you need to—"

"I don't want to talk about it, Killjoy," Twilight interrupted quietly.

Killjoy shut up and instead took a swig from her flask.

Chrysalis may well have been expecting her to venture into the hive from the orchard entrance. That in mind, Twilight chose the barn – a choice that Chrysalis may also have anticipated, but dwelling on that possibility would only lead Twilight down a paradox of infinitely alternating possibilities, so she shouted down the obsessive, perfectionist voice in her mind that usually governed her actions and stuck with her choice of the barn.

A pair of sentries were stationed at the barn's ruined front door. They stood aside at the sight of Killjoy, but Twilight felt their eyes on her as she passed inside. She knew many of the guards who patrolled Canterlot Castle proper by name, and they her, but these guards were unfamiliar. They knew her by name, by reputation... or, in Killjoy's case, strictly by reputation...

"Starlight Shimmer" indeed.

But they didn't know her truly, and she didn't know them. That was a pity. A few kind words from a familiar face might have made what she was about to do go that much easier.

Snake had followed her from the farmhouse – the Humvee was parked behind the barn, after all, so one way or another, they were heading in the same direction – but had kept his distance during the entire walk. Her last glimpse of him came just as she was about to enter the barn; he was standing in the middle of the beaten path, watching her. He was still close enough for Twilight to see the tiny orange glow between his lips, and the faint curls of smoke wreathing his head.

She fought back the urge to extinguish the cigarette, and slid down the slope of the foggy pit. Gross as it was to once again sink her hooves into the slime, the change in temperature from the blistering heat to the cool shadow of the barn was a slight relief.

The broken door allowed a thick window of yellow light into the pit, illuminating more than a dozen pegasi, arrayed in front of the tunnel and staring intently at its entrance. Killjoy touched down beside Twilight, her wings tossing up wisps of displaced fog, and bemusedly asked them what in the hell they were doing.

"Staring, ma'am," said a gruff, olive-colored stallion in the center of the line of guards. "At the hole in the ground."

"Your orders, ma'am," added a pony Twilight recognized as Steel Wool. "You literally told me, and therefore us, to go stare at the the hole in the ground. On penalty of mother-fingerbanging."

"And we'd like to avoid the fingerbanging, if at all possible, ma'am," a third mare chimed in.

Killjoy facehoofed, and, to accentuate her frustration, facewinged at the same time. "Out, out, out."

The guards looked at her, saluted as one, and dutifully floated from the pit and out the door.

"Quirks aside, every team in this wing has their heads on straight. Every single one of them." She peeked at Twilight from behind her feathers. "Except I-Team. Why, Sparkle? Why is I so irritating?"

"I wish I could tell you."

"Oh, you're funny; you're so so funny." Laughing sarcastically, she stood up, ignoring the gunk on her hindquarters, and shook off her wings. "That's a... that's a big tunnel. I wasn't expecting it to be quite that... big. And dark. Big and dark. Do you get the feeling that it's staring back at you? And what is with this fog, for Celestia's sake?"

Pertinent questions. Twilight could identify with them. "I couldn't tell you what's up with the fog. But the size of that tunnel probably owes to whatever dug it out. Which, I'll remind you, hatched from a very large egg, which you are currently heel-deep in." Twilight's horn flashed, and a triangular flap from the egg emerged from the fog behind them, sickly green in the light of the sun.

Killjoy tapped her hoof gently against the ground, and chuckled ill-humoredly. "Oh, I'm gonna have to fight whatever came out of this aren't I?"

"One of us probably will." Twilight shrugged and smiled blandly. "Most likely me."

"About that..." Killjoy trotted closer. "You sure you wanna do this? I mean, you got a good hunch, your plan sounds... sound... and I can't begrudge you the sonar thing. But even ignoring the bowel-loosening prospect of fighting whatever dug that out..." She nudged her shoulder against Twilight's. "Whatever that hocus-pocus was that got Dodge, you're just as vulnerable to it as they were."

"So are you and your ponies," Twilight replied. "I have the advantage of being pretty decent at hocus-pocus myself. I'll be alright."

Killjoy hesitated. "Yeah, well... that's not gonna do you much good if you starve to death down there. Or die of thirst." She reached back and undid the straps on her saddlebags with her teeth, and shrugged out of them, stepping back. "Those are for you. There's rations, a canteen, knife, spade, rope, spare spearhead, not that you'd really need that. And Slaymare. My own copy."

She could take or leave the comic, but everything else sounded fairly important. No doubt Killjoy would need it more. "I can't—"

"Hey, don't argue. Everything in that bag, I can replace. But, um. There's only one of you. You know?" She shuffled her hooves and smiled, blushing lightly. "Plus, it'd look pretty bad on my record if Shining Armor's kid sis died on my watch. So do me a favor, and, uh. Don't."

Twilight returned the smile, levitated the bags onto her back, strapped them on, and nodded.

"Thank you. I mean it." Then she turned back toward the tunnel. "Now or never, I suppose..."

Yet she waited. She waited for footsteps, for the incoming smell of tobacco and sweat, for the growling cynic to chase her down and insist on going with her.

He never came.

And that's... how it ought to be, I suppose.

Twilight put one hoof in front of her. Then another.

"Take care, Sparkle-Sparkle." Killjoy was not so far behind, yet her voice sounded faint and distant all the same.

With a last deep breath, Twilight shuffled the bags on her back and passed inside the gaping black maw of the cavern.