//------------------------------//
// Chapter 23 
// Story: Friendly Fire 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

The safehouse wasn't just a safehouse, but an armory. Harley led them to a closed door that looked like all the other bedrooms, and unlocked it with her Unity ID card.

The room practically hummed with magic. Harley stopped in the doorway, glaring back at Jackie and the others. "The rest of you stay out. This room is hot."

"This is horse shit, Harley."

"You should've seen how we got out of Unity," Jacob muttered.

She ignored him. "Why the hell can't I come with you? You're taking a known traitor and a unicorn who can't levitate, but there's no room in your squad for an infiltrator who actually knows what she's doing?"

Harley looked sympathetic. "Jackie, we'll be underground the whole time. There won't be any chance for stealth either, we'll be blowing the defenses to hell before we even start. There's no reason for you to be there." She gestured behind her with one hand. "Two earth ponies, for breaking our way through. The traitor we need to find our way.

"So what about him?" Jacob recoiled, though very little of her anger seemed aimed at him directly. "At least I can shoot straight! You know how to shoot, Jacob?"

"No," he admitted. "And I don't want to."

"See! If you can take a useless kid you can take me!"

Harley turned away, walking along the room. It was perhaps fifty feet square, with tall metal lockers on the perimeter. She opened the first one, where a vaguely humanoid manikin served to hang several bits of jewelry and fine cloth. Jacob would've guessed it as some kind of fancy LARPer's costume, except that his horn itched just to be looking.

Harley folded her arms. "Jacob won't be part of the infiltration—he'll be hanging around in back in case we need healing. Can you turn an exploded sack of meat back into a pony?"

From just beside him, Avery winced. Jacob still didn't know how much of her near death she remembered, though he hoped it wasn't much. Jacob did remember, and still had nightmares. "She wasn't that bad."

They ignored him. "Jackie, we'll need you soon. The way ponies have been running things isn't going to work anymore. Sunset lived, and she's already making changes. I don't know much more than that. But I have a feeling breaking rules back in Unity is about to be the least of their worries. Just… hold on a little longer, okay? You won't be any use to anypony if you get killed in action on an assignment where you couldn't even help."

She slumped against the doorway. "Fine. Just… you better come back safe." She shut the door behind her, leaving Danni, Elise, Harley, Stalwart, and himself in the armory. 

"So what is all this stuff?"

"We've been modernizing," she muttered, slipping the necklace from around the dummy and around her own neck. "Equestria has been peaceful for so long that only its princesses remember how to fight a real war."

"You could say that again." Danni walked over to the locker, watching closely as Harley put a bracelet on each wrist, then slung the cloak over her shoulders. It was quite small, only hanging to the small of her back. Would've been a perfect fit for a pony though. "Didn't changelings get an army to their capital and almost win?"

"They did." She spoke through gritted teeth. "Ponies didn't even have an army back then, just the ceremonial Solar and Lunar Guard. They knew more about looking fancy and pulling chariots than they did about fighting."

The pony beside him was timid and nervous, as she always seemed to be when addressing anyone else in the safehouse. That, and a powerful sense of guilt. "Are you talking about that pony TV show? The one made for little girls?"

"It's real," Jacob said.

Harley froze halfway to the next locker, laughing. "What the oversimplifying unicorn beside you means to say is that propaganda is based on true events. It paints Equestria as more of a paradise than it really is, glosses over some of the mistakes while emphasizing the strengths of some of Equestria's ruling elite. Humans have had countries do that before too, trying to get people to move in. 'Come to Equestria, with no heavy metals in the rivers and sunny weather on a schedule. Stop by for a postcard at our scenic POW camps.'” She slammed the next locker open, her whole body tense. "Jacob, get over here. You're next."

He approached. "What does all this do?" Maybe Harley would relax a little if they changed the subject.

She did. "Before I got distracted, I was trying to explain the way ponies have been learning how to fight again. Humans… might not be equal to a skilled pony in their element one for one, but that's not how you fight. You've got powerful hardware, an infrastructure that's constantly innovating, and emotional endurance few equestrian ponies can manage." Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at Elise.

"Unfortunately, ponies can't change their nature. They haven't been hardened like humans, so they came up with magic to do it instead. These are the tools we've been using to help reduce our casualties." She leaned down, wrapping the necklace around his neck. A cool gold chain, with an uneven shard of quartz at the end. "This first one powers everything. Unicorns charge them with magic, but I don't know how. These bracelets… they bring stability, wrapping magic around the human illusion so it doesn't crumble as easily. Only the spellcasters usually wear them." The bracelets tightened around his much-smaller wrists, not sliding off right away as he had expected. They were also made from gold, and seemed to glow with the same yellow as his magic once he put them on. "Last is Celestia's mantle, and the protection of the sun." She settled the clasp around his neck, where it hung a little bigger on him than the one she was wearing. All white cloth, but with gold thread around the edges. "Stops bullets, poison gas, even explosives. So long as you've got magic to fuel it. If you run out, it's just rags."

"This… explains some things," Avery muttered.

"I'm sure it does, bastard." Danielle shoved her way past the pony. "Harley, is any of this useful for the ones with earth pony magic? I've checked, I'm already bulletproof."

"Unicorns often innovate for themselves before they aid their friends." Harley skipped several lockers, giving nothing to Avery. Jacob thought that was a tactical mistake, but didn't say anything. "But they have come up with one useful innovation. They're quite difficult to make, so… don't lose these. There might not be any more without Equestria." She removed another necklace from inside, with a chunk of rock hanging from a rusty-looking chain. It was a chunk of obsidian, glowing as though red hot. Jacob felt no heat as she walked it past him to Danni. "Put this on."

She did. "What is it?"

Harley shrugged. "I don't know how they're made. What they do is let you stay connected to the earth no matter where you are. While you wear it, your magic is nearly inexhaustible. 

"Seriously?" Danni looked down at the necklace, flexing one of her hands. "Woah." She stumbled back, eyes widening. "It's… so big…"

Harley shrugged again. "It's worth your weight in bits a hundred times over." She opened the next locker, then sighed. "Only one here. You two decide among yourself who wears it."

"We just decided." Stalwart nodded at Danni. "You're still human, you're more fragile than I am."

"Says the cat horse." Danni didn't argue though, tucking the necklace under her shirt. It was still visible as a faint glowing from within. She cracked her knuckles. "Let's kick some ass."

"Sunset should be here any minute." Harley sat down on a bench in front of a set of drawers, opening each in turn. She removed little brown wrapped squares, along with a box of electronics. She worked quickly, her hands moving with total confidence as she put things together from the plastic box and stuck each piece into another package.

Jacob gaped, stumbling backward. It wasn't as though a few more feet would make a difference if she screwed up. "I-is that…"

"Humans are so clever," she said. "We'd have already lost if we couldn't turn their weapons against them."

Jacob didn't reply, because at that moment he felt something building in the air. The sensation came first from his horn, though it spread rapidly through his whole body. "Hey, clear the center of the room," he called, on a hunch. "I think they're about to get here."

"Yep." Harley was making a little pile of armed explosives, each one complete with a faint green LED blinking in rhythm. "Good call, kid. That's exactly what that is."

Light grew in the empty space between two benches, along with enough magic to put pressure on Jacob's forehead and make his whole body shake. Instinct demanded he look away, shield his eyes from whatever was coming. He ignored it and watched anyway.

Air exploded out from the center, ruffling their clothes and slamming the open lockers closed, and suddenly there were three more people in the room with them.

One was another earth pony, apparently wearing a similar necklace to the one Danni now had, and little else. Another was about as human as Jacob, though he lacked a horn or wings.

Then there was Sunset. Jacob actually fell, slumping down a locker and onto the floor. Equestria had another Alicorn.

Sunset still wore something like a human disguise, though it wasn't doing a very good job. Her horn had grown another foot or so, and her hair looked like it was on fire, rising up around her in plain defiance of gravity. Orange light like the embers of a pyre hovered around her, seeming to keep her a few inches off the ground.

The wings might've been doing that. One full and healthy, larger than Eric's or any other pegasus pony's. The other charred and burned, mere bones. Yet light surged around them, burning the same shade as her horn.

Harley swore loudly, stumbling onto her knees and lowering her head. "R-Regent? I didn't know you'd been promoted."

The light of the teleport faded, though Sunset's unnatural brilliance remained. Jacob felt an unnatural heat radiating away from her, and the room started getting warmer.

Someone banged on the closed door. Someone with Jackie's voice. "Is everything okay in there?"

Sunset sighed. "Not in any way I imagined, Harlequin."

Jacob could feel what had driven Harley to bow: magic was power, and power like this was impossible to ignore. But before he could straighten, the one who had been Sunset just shook her head.

"Nobody do it. Princess Celestia has given me no title. You don't need to bow."

"But…" Harley got to her feet, retreating towards her pile of bombs. "How is that possible?"

"I couldn't explain." Sunset finally landed. The charred wing had black marks that seemed to make it onto her back, wrapping around her shoulder. It hurt just to look at. But if Sunset Shimmer was in any pain, she didn't show it. "Not to you." She looked away, towards Avery and himself. Only just then did Jacob realize the earth pony was cowering behind one of his legs. "We have no time to waste. Pony, are you the one called Elise Avery?"

She nodded.

Apparently she had been right to be afraid. Something yanked her out from beside him, so fast Jacob had to catch himself against the wall. Elise screamed as she was lifted into the air, limbs kicking vainly at nothing. She stopped mere inches from Sunset's face. "Do you know what I had to see, Elise?"

The pony squeaked, too weak to form words. Everyone else was frozen, Jacob included.

"I watched ponies killed by the ones they had come to save. I heard foals scream as they were crushed to death." The air got hotter, from “no air conditioner” to “summer in Death Valley.” Sweat started to soak Jacob's shirt through, but that hardly seemed to matter. "Do you know what that's like?"

Jacob had no idea how Elise still had the strength to speak. With such wrath in front of him, he wasn't sure he could've done anything more manly than piss himself. Yet Elise spoke anyway. "Yes. I thought that was what I was volunteering to prevent. I was wrong."

"You were." Sunset dropped her. Jacob jerked, but he was too slow to catch her. Or… maybe not, because her fall stopped. She practically floated the last foot or so.

But some of the heat was already gone from Sunset's hair, as though it were settling back under gravity's familiar grip. "You don't agree with what happened." Sunset sounded as though she were getting weaker. "You stayed inside to try and keep the signal blocked. But you didn't warn us. If we had known, we could have taken measures to protect ourselves. Ponies who were dead would be alive." She turned her back on Elise.

"No, you aren't the pony who murdered my friends. You're just a pony who stood by and watched."

"There's a special place in hell waiting for me I'm sure." Elise coughed. "But if you send me there, you won't be able to rescue the contaminated still trapped in containment. At least wait until I get you in."

"You only wish." Sunset walked away from her, towards Harley. "One day, when this war is over, I'm going to make sure you get a meeting with the family of every pony who didn't come home." 

She shook her head. "Harlequin, are we ready? Equestrian citizens are counting on us."