//------------------------------// // Chapter 30 // Story: Friendly Fire // by Starscribe //------------------------------// True to Sunset's word, Eric and the rest of their party arrived before nightfall. They stumbled inside in a daze, with even the savvy Jackie walking in wide-eyed and staring. Katie was in front, collapsing on the nearest cot and staring down at her hands. "This place can't be real…" "That's how we felt," Jacob said, rising to his hooves to greet them. None had belongings, except Eric with his sketchpad. Vagabonds and pilgrims. "You must like it down here, Jackie. Bats like caves, right?" "Oh yeah." Jackie grinned with her strangely pointed teeth. "Just give me a few hours and I'll be hanging from the stalactites and dropping down to suck the blood of unsuspecting ponies." She reached into her pocket, pulling out a store bought package of beef jerky and holding it out towards him. "Hey Jacob, want some of my—" The smell hit him like a brick to the nose, a brick that had been left in a corpse for a few weeks. He gagged. "I didn't know jerky could go bad like that!" "It didn't." Jackie tossed it into her mouth and chewed exaggeratedly. "But freaky bats can eat meat." "Don't torment him, sis," Katie called. "Also, you don't know that! You don't even have a tail yet." Danielle nudged his leg from behind, and he straightened. "Eric, you should know…" He gestured to the pony half-hiding behind him. "Danielle got smaller." Eric looked down, eyes widening. He dropped to his knees, reaching out. She hugged him, and Jacob looked away, focusing on the others. Katie kicked vaguely out towards him. "How are the hooves, Jacob?" "I'm still falling over sometimes," he admitted. "But it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be." "Told you!" She hopped up onto her hooves without swaying, or even needing to catch herself on the back of the cot. "It isn't so bad. Even if it looks weird." "Not forever," Danni called up towards them. "You'll be like me before you know it. A tiny, useless pony." "Do you regret being part of the jailbreak?" Eric asked, rising. "No." She sighed. "Someone had to get those ponies out. I just wish those bastards hadn't broke the mirror. I'd already have my body back otherwise." “Well they did.” Jacob sighed, shifting from one hoof-leg to the other. “I wish we still had it too, believe me. I think I’d finally take them up on the ‘go all the way so we can change you back’ offer now.” “I wouldn’t.” Katie touched the side of her head with one hand. “I might have hooves, but my head is still the same. Ponies have smaller heads—how do you think everything fits?” “Easy.” Danielle kicked at the ground, her voice bitter. “Just dump out everything and replace it with little rainbows and singing flowers. It stores much more compact than a complex society with its own history and…” she trailed off. Of course none of them were taking her seriously. Whatever else they might be, ponies had nearly turned Earth upside-down. If anything, it was only their depiction in the “propaganda” that was oversimplified. Ponies might have a different social default, but he only had to look at Sunset to discredit any suggestion that they were in reality what they had been in cartoons. Ponies know how to fight a war. They’re fighting one now, against my old civilization. The fact he thought of it that way terrified him almost as much as Sunset Shimmer’s fire had done. Jacob had never been overly patriotic, but he had thanked his veterans and he believed in the ideals that had founded his country, and western democracy in general. The real question is whether I can help ponies fight my own country and actually be fighting for the ideals I thought my country stood for. It wasn’t an easy question for him to answer, not when in his mind the FBI had been the ones to fire the first shot. When Harley ran, and a dozen guns were pointed at him, Jacob’s mind had been made up. Harley saved me from another cell in that prison. Jacob said farewell to his friends, then walked away down the hall to stew. This building might be the capital of a great city one day, but for now it was empty and unfinished and would give him the privacy to think. Long hallways were lit at regular intervals with white, featureless light. His own hoof steps sounded loud and unnaturally echoey in even the widest hallways, not to mention strange. Two legs could not make the correct-sounding pattern with hooves, so he never sounded like a pony. He didn’t sound like a human either, which made perfect sense. I gave that up months ago. What would Michelle think of him now, stupid tail and all? Would she laugh and embrace him anyway, or treat him like a monstrous freak as the government did. Because it’s trying to keep people safe. The prison was cruel and inhumane, but it worked. 10,000 out of 350 million was remarkably successful in terms of casualties. Sunset had sounded like she was doing something important. Now that his own government (at least, perhaps others too) had declared open war by destroying Unity, what would Sunset do? Hiding in deeper crevices waiting for death didn’t seem to be the answer. “Hey,” someone called from behind him: Eric. His short friend was now nearly a foot taller than Jacob, and despite being spindly seemed thick by comparison. “You got a minute to talk?” “Sure.” Jacob slowed down a little for him to catch up—not that he needed to. Pegasus ponies were the fastest breed, everyone knew that. “What’s up?” “I wanted to tell you about something. Wanted to know what you thought, before I told the others.” “Sure.” He stopped and turned. They were in an empty stretch of stone corridor, lights occasionally flickering overhead. The ground was rough, and everything smelled damp. It’s probably not good I can’t smell the ‘horse smell’ anymore. “What is it?” Eric shuffled about, glancing down the hallway around them in both directions. When he spoke, it was in the quietest, most nervous whisper. “Sunset sent a secret message to the surviving pony leaders. I used Harley’s password to read it.” Jacob’s eyes widened. He had known Eric to be quite ruthless when it came to information security—a few years back, when the club had tried to make an RP MUD of their own, he had logged the passwords from test accounts and used them to teach a painful lesson in not reusing passwords. Jacob had been one of those affected, and it hadn’t made Eric popular. Hacking, or guessing, or whatever he had done to learn Harley’s password, sure didn’t sit well with Jacob. You didn’t steal from someone who had saved your life. “What did it say?” Eric hesitated. “You ever feel like they aren’t telling us everything?” Jacob rolled his eyes. “We just had this conversation before you arrived. We already know the ponies are keeping things from us. Based on the pattern we’ve been seeing this whole time, I’d take a guess that they’re not telling us things that they think might be damaging somehow. Or at least something that would make us less useful.” Eric nodded, then dug out a slip of paper. “Read it.” He did, as quickly as he could. He passed it back when he was done, having committed the basic ideas to memory already. “Earth colony in a state of rebellion,” he repeated. “Protect the refugees who have taken this world for their home.” “Yeah.” Eric slipped the paper back into his pocket. “So what colony are they talking about? Not Unity, it wouldn’t make any sense for us to be the colony. We followed Celestia’s rules, at least the ones they told us.” Jacob now understood why Eric had been nervous about being overheard. He did hear activity coming from somewhere in the building, many footsteps moving closer. Had the ponies discovered the theft already, and now they were here to punish? No, they were still far away. Probably on the ground floor. No one was coming for them. “It sounds like Sunset is saying the whole planet is a colony. But what sense would that make?” “Maybe the ponies are alien invaders?” Eric suggested. “They consider us conquered already, even though we’re not?” “No.” Jacob shook his head vigorously. “They haven’t really acted that way. Maybe the show was something an invader would’ve done, but the rest…” He trailed off, thinking back to the rescue missions, to the hundreds of ponies that had died to save painfully-small-feeling numbers of humans in exchange. “What about the refugee thing?” Eric didn’t give him much time to think. “They’ve always used that word, and they all have different reasons why.” He was right again. Jacob had to grip onto the wall to stop from toppling sideways on his hooves. He had to remind himself it was only his second day with them. I can still adapt. “They make sense together. Refugees flee… something, and they make a colony somewhere else when there’s nowhere for them to go. The ponies seem to think that colony is Earth.” Eric’s eyes widened. “How old did Harley say the Light Tenders were?” “Ancient Greece. The Masons claim to be that old, but there’s no proof.” Eric’s enthusiasm was undimmed. He started pacing in the hallway, his wings twitching and flapping about to punctuate his words. “A pattern doesn’t need to be true to exist. If the ponies believe it, that’s all that matters.” “Before you got here, we were trying to figure out why humans only change into ponies around magic, where there are so many other magical creatures out there. It might also explain why they’re so determined to help us, and maybe even why they felt justified barging into Earth and screwing things up.” The sound of distant activity hadn’t stopped—pounding footsteps were now very near. Jacob turned, just in time to see a large crowd of soldier-ponies. The ponies passed down the hall, not even looking at them. Those who still had enough humanity were carrying crates, while those who didn’t were just standing guard. “I’ll investigate.” Jacob hurried forward, as quickly as he could with stumps instead of feet. “Yeah.” Eric slipped back around the edge of the hall, out of sight. Jacob didn’t resent him: he had long known Eric didn’t like to put himself in danger. We didn’t feel like we were in danger before. It didn’t take him long to clear the distance to the end of the hall. Even so, with as fast as the soldiers were moving, he only caught the tail-end of the group, where Sunset and a few pony soldiers were shepherding a group of the most helpless, uncoordinated ponies Jacob had ever seen. Even as he watched, one fell on her face, exclaiming in a barely-audible pony voice, “Cy-y-y-ka!” Sunset answered in the same language: "Держись, недолго осталось!” She helped the struggling pony to her hooves. The pony snapped at her hand, but Sunset was too quick to bite. He might not understand the words, but he did recognize the biohazard logos on some of the crates, and the expensive-looking lab equipment. “Guess your mission went well,” he said, just loud enough for Sunset to notice him. “You could say that.” His fears she would be angry melted almost immediately. She rose, stepping over some of the ponies and letting the crowd gradually move away from them down a different hall in a direction Jacob hadn’t explored yet. The soldiers took one glance at her, then continued on. She wasn’t flying, but her wings still glowed a little of their own accord, along with her horn. “I’ve been studying humans since I first came to Earth. Celestia wanted me to study war. Rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.” He glanced once more at the retreating backs. “If you need the room Apple Bloom gave us for your new lab…” Sunset smiled, patting him gently on the shoulder. “We already had one. They just didn’t know who they were working for. We can’t risk their discovery and destruction before they finish their work.” Sunset turned, walking away after them. The way her hair billowed about behind her seemed to tell him that she didn’t expect him to follow. Things might be much less formal in Imperium than they had been in Unity, but now she had even more ponies to supervise, not less. Not only that, but she was a princess. The more of a pony he became, the more significant that seemed. He spoke up anyway. “Sunset, are you going to kill my sister?” That stopped her. She turned around again slowly, expression shocked. “What are you talking about?” “I have a big sister, Michelle. She’s a senior right now at my old school,” Jacob continued, unable to meet her face. There was too much fire in her eyes, fire that he couldn’t help but fear would be turned on him next. One did not provoke the sun, even when you had a just cause. “Is fighting back going to hurt her? Do I have to kill one family to save the other?” He was crying. Jacob didn’t cry in public, or at least he hadn’t. He cried now, though, imagining his sister burning as the warden had done. Sunset embraced him. He didn’t try to pull away, despite his misgivings. The heat that radiated off her wasn’t aimed at him, and her greater size wasn’t a threat either. Jacob knew in that instant he was safe, without knowing how he knew. “I won’t fight my war with innocent ponies, Jacob. We’re fighting the ones who murdered the ones who came to save.” “There won’t be endless prisons where we treat our captives like animals and wait for them to waste away. The worst that we’ll do is show them the truth.” She let go. “Let them see their own reflections and see if they want to keep hurting us.” Jacob blinked as she pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of one sleeve. “W-what does that mean?” His voice cracked, but he forced himself to keep going. “When ponies say we’re ‘refugees,’ what do they mean?”