The Light Despondent

by Doctor Fluffy

Take Up Your Spade

Chapter 16: Take Up Your Spade

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

“Sun is up, a new day is before you
Sun is up, wake your sleepy soul
Sun is up, hold on to what is yours
Take up your spade and break ground

Shake off your shoes,
Leave yesterday behind you
Shake off your shoes,
But forget not where you’ve been
Shake off your shoes,
Forgive and be forgiven

Take up your spade and break ground
Sara Watkins, Take Up Your Spade

---

Interviewer: “[data corrupted]..lt? Are you there? I’ve decided to pa[data corrupted]pate in your biweekly psych eval. Dr. Finlayson and Red Couch are here?”

Maxwell Finlayson (MF): static “...[data corrupted] al [data corrupted]? Red Couch is Kraber’s theradata corrupted... know, the one that doesn’t try to [data corrupted] his eyes out [data corrupted] screaming [data corrupted] feel threatened by him.”

Red Couch (RC) : “Thanks for the vo[data corrupted]... onfidence, Max. Sure that'll help the New Researcher.”

MF: “Just doing my job.”

RC: “Look, the most disturbing thing he’s done to any PHL has been humming ‘zydrate anatomy’ while operating. [Data corrupted] improvement. And it’s better than him humming ‘Night Surgeon’.”

I: “That’s disturbing.”

RC: “It’s [data corrupted]damn improvement.]”

MF: “How is it an improvement?!”

RC: “Do you even know what Night Surgeon is about?”

I: “...Enough of this. I don’t know, and I don’t care. G[data corrupted]t? Are you there? Presley, Dovetail, Kraber, Aegis, Yael, Heliotrope, Snowshoes, Nny, Fiddlest[data corrupted] about you. Downstairs, in the lobby. Aegis, Nny, and Fiddlesticks got [data corrupted] Hampshire, some mare named Popover, to get a cake...”

MAKE THEM PAY

I: “Did anyone hear that?”

Several seconds of static

MF: “[data corrupted] -know, [data corrupted] I’ve…[data corrupted] you too.”

RC: “See, [data corruptedsta[data corrupted]? He does have a h-

MAKE THEM PAY

--Who the hell said that?!--Vinyl Scratch
--Probably the new researcher. Aer thaumic interference while distressed can, well, interfere with technology. Which is why we usually don’t send emails around aer when ae’s not in a good frame of mind.--33 ½ LP
--Our new researcher? Well, our recruitment standards are shot to shit, aren’t they? Madmen, ex-HLF, the abomination - ah, shit. --Vinyl
--Aaaaaand, like that, you’ve earned dishwasher duty for the joke about the researcher. Alongside Viktor Kraber. --33
--What horrible thing did he do this time?--Vinyl
--There were too many complaints about him humming or singing ‘Zydrate Anatomy’ while operating on people--33
--Aw, piss.--Vinyl
--I regret… okay, I regret a lot of things, but not that. --Kraber

MAKE THEM PAY.

MAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEMPAYMAKETHEM

MF: “[data corrupted]- another episode! Get the-[data corrupted]!”

alarms start blaring

MF: “[data corrupted]plugged in?!”

RC: “Something must’ve triggered aer!”

[Unidentifiable]: “Shouldn’t exist! [data corrupted] broken, filthy! Made from pieces of other [data corrupted]! I’m not-”

I: “[data corrupted], you're going to be fine, I promise, I promise!”

[Unidentifiable]: “Of course I'm not! [data corrupted] fine, ever will, has been fine! NOTHING! We’re-”

I “[Data corrupted] - recording down, Red Couch! There’s so much interference we’ll barely be able to get-”

---

The tall verdant trees on either side of the streets in Bethlehem swayed in the light, barely noticeable summer breeze. Fiddlesticks held one hoof up to the brim of her hat, trying to steady it against the wind.

The eclectic group - two human women and two mares, (a pegasus and earth pony) one human male, and a massive earth pony stallion - were relaxing under the cover of Bethlehem’s trees, browsing art. According to Nny, it’d been a vacation destination once.

“Sorry,” Kraber muttered. “I… I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine,” Yael said, with the kind of tone that is practically screaming ‘No, Goddammit no, it isn’t.’ “It’s… I kind of regret it that day. Mistakes were…” she looked downwards. “No, I made mistakes.”

Kraber considered that. Ze’ev and Heliotrope had been on his tail for awhile. When he went through Israel, she’d done her damnedest to capture him. And along the way through Africa, he’d heard the most awful stories about what she’d remorselessly done to HLF.

This… well, she wasn’t being remorseless, that was for sure.

“What happened, though?” Kraber asked. “In Nipville, anyway.” He paused. “Actually, before last week, I never heard of Nipville.”

“It was a new refugee settlement,” Yael explained. “On the edge of one of the farms. There was a group of Imperial deserters living north of there that just wanted to be left alone. Good for a few quick enchantments, and great at making small spells work big.”

“Imperial Deserters?” Kraber asked, surprised.

Fiddlesticks raised an elegant, curved eyebrow at that, and Aegis reflected that Fiddlesticks’ resemblance to her cousin Octavia was never as prominent as it was in that moment. “Yeah. I didn’t think they were allowed to even think about desertion…”

“Well, they were a partisan unit that refused to be included under the Charter of the Guard and came here,” Yael explained. “We leave them be, they give us food and work on commissioned items. I was trying to get them to work on a…”

“It’s basically a Hyperion shotgun,” Nny explained.

Yael nodded. “Exactly. But one day, they went dark. The police searched all over, but… well, they found ‘em. In Nipville’s basements. They were being tortured into building weaponry for HLF. I… don’t want to know what the HLF would do with them. So I went. And stopped them.”

“If they had unicorns with them,” Kraber asked, “Why didn’t they do, I don’t know, some magic thing…”

“They were being held to walls with shock collars,” Yael said solemnly. “Couldn’t be allowed to stay like that. And we couldn’t let any HLF in the surrounding area stay. So we burned them out. All of them. We weren’t supposed to keep the tank for so long, though.”

Kraber had done things like that before - keep ponies on shock collars. It was an awful thing to do to them, especially because he’d taken joy in seeing how many volts could flow into them.

“It was necessary,” Yael said, sighing, looking a little downcast. “I’m fine.”

“...It’s not fine, is it,” Fiddlesticks said.

“No, it isn’t,” Yael said. “I don’t like it. Someday, I’m going to do something necessary for the future, and die. Maybe that’ll be deserved.”

And something in Kraber simply cracked. Yael, this boogeyman of the HLF, his opposite number in the PHL, and she was just as fokked up as hi…

Okay, maaaaaybe not, but still. She was only human.

“Say,” Aegis said, looking over at Kraber. “You know how to fight. You said you were ex-HLF. You’re not… you didn’t do anything like that, did you?”

“...I saw and did a lot of things I regret,” Kraber mumbled. “...I wasn’t a rapist, though.”

“That’s…” Aegis looked uneasy. “Um. That’s something, I guess. You’re sure you-”

“YES!” Kraber yelled, suddenly, eyes narrowed. “You see this .45? I always carry it half-cocked. The first HLF rapist I saw? Made sure the bastard was no-cocked!”

Everyone was staring at him.

Fokkin Yorke, Kraber thought. ...They know what I do in Defiance. Yorke wasn’t, couldn’t have been the only one I met. How many bastards did I ignore for the sake of fokkin’ revenge?

Nny was bent over backwards, just to stay out of the way of that tirade. Fiddlesticks was wincing, one hoof held over her face. “You’re, uh… Cuz. He’s telling the truth on that one,” Nny said.

“How can you tell?” Yael asked, and for a second, Kraber was struck by how alike the two of them didn’t look.

“Cause that’s how I get when people insult my intelligence,” Nny pointed out. “Y’know, cause college.”

“Oh, with Pennsylvania,” Yael said, laughing lightly. And then, seeing the looks on Kraber and Aegis’ faces: “You don’t want to know.”

“Heh, that sounds like what Kraber did to Tom Yorke,” Fiddlesticks said. “At least, that’s how that one Reaver we met told it.”

“There’s a Reaver around here?” Yael asked, surprised. “Where?”

“He didn’t say,” Nny said. “He’s just sorta… around.”

“I think I’d like to meet him,” Yael said.

“He… probably wouldn’t like that,” Fiddlesticks said, looking down at the ground.

“Don’t tell him about me then,” Kraber said. “I… they don’t like me very much.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Yael said. “I know that what I do isn’t well-liked. I just want to… I just want to talk it out. See what he’d have to say.”

“Fair enough,” Fiddlesticks said, straightening her hat with one yellow, furry foreleg again. “Anyway, Nny and I are gonna get some stuff for a stall. He’ll be dancing and selling art, I’ll be keeping track of the cash.”

“...Why aren’t you two off in the military, anyway?” Yael asked.

“We’re on leave,” Nny explained. “Anyway, cuz. Be seeing you.”

And then there were six.

Just Sixstring, Rivet, Amber, Aegis, Yael, and Kraber.

“Is Heliotrope going to be okay chasing them?” Kraber asked, surprised at his concern. He’d been chased by Heliotrope once, a long time back. Of course she’d be okay.

But with his old chommies… no, fok them, they weren’t chommies by any fokkin’ sense of the word… he couldn’t help but feel a bit of worry.

“Of course she’ll be fine!” Rivet said. “She’s Heliotrope!”

Yael knelt down and ruffled his mane, smiling. “She is. But, most importantly? She’s my best friend.”

“I wish I could be as much of a badass as her!” Rivet crowed, smiling.

And Kraber noticed for a second that Yael wasn’t smiling. There was an expression on her face, with her lips curved upward, but whatever warmth had been in her eyes had turned icy cold. Before she could answer, Kraber found himself saying:

“No,” Kraber said. “You don’t. You’re a colt, Rivet. That only happens once.”

Aegis shot Kraber an approving look. A nod, a smile. It felt… nice to Kraber.

“Can I still get an assault saddle?” Rivet asked.

“Daaad,” Amber Maple said. “I hate getting a fitting.”

“As much as I don’t like letting my colts get assault saddles,” Aegis said, “You’ll probably need them sooner or later. You’re gonna grow up sooner or later…” he sighed. “Just wish I knew if you were going to grow into a good world.”

“...Please tell me you didn’t equip the base saddles with guns,” Kraber sighed.

“No, I didn’t,” Aegis said, and Kraber practically beamed at that.

“You’re a good dad,” he said.

Aegis looked almost taken aback there for a second. “Oh. Thanks, Francis.”

“Dunmentionit,” Kraber said, vaguely slurred. I need a fokkin’ beer, he thought distantly.

“Da…” Rivet started, before Aegis looked over at him. “...rnit.”

Amber stuck out her tongue at Rivet, making a noise that could be approximated as sounding something like ‘bleehhhhh’.

“Foals will be foals,” Sixstring said, as Aegis trotted down, a little southwards, towards Main Street.

Kraber followed. “Here’s hoping Mr. Hauser has a good magnum,” he said aloud, thoughtful.

“Why are you even going, anyway?” Yael asked. “You have a stolen Ithaca 37 right now and a 1911.”

“I like magnums,” Kraber said simply. “Besides, I can afford it.”

“You don’t have any spare clothes with you, you lost a shirt, and your jacket is full of holes,” Yael said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t look like the picture of financial responsibility.”

“Which brings me tae the other reason I’m refusing the bounty,” Kraber said, smirking reaching into a pocket and pulling out a large wad of cash.

“You stole their wallets,” Yael said. “Huh.”

Kraber’s smirk abruptly deflated. “Huh. That’s… that’s all?”

“Well, yeah,” Yael said. “I’ve done that before. I paid for booze with Malka that way.”

“What happened to him?” Sixstring asked.

“Ponified,” Yael said. “There was an HLF attack on refugees just outside of Egypt.” She snorted. “Yes, I get the irony.”

“Wait… I don’t get it,” Sixstring said.

“We’re both Jewish, and our ancestors once fled from Egypt,” Kraber said, biting back that reflexive burst of guilt. He remembered (and yes, dismembered) Egypt. HLF and the refugees they’d been with had been refused food over in Northern Africa. It hadn’t been the last horrible thing that’d happened in northern Africa to HLF.

What Kraber’s old leader had said back then:

The bastards aren’t willing to protect humanity! They’re in the pocket of those goddamn gluesticks! Look at us, we’re protecting refugees, aren’t we? What makes us so different?!

How Yael had, rather predictably, responded through the official channels:

I know how you operate, Braun. I’m not a monster. I know that you operate saying only fighters get food. I know that when I tried the food and medicine deliveries once, you stabbed us all in the back. Poisoned food supplied to our ponies - food deliveries that we gave you. You don’t care about the refugees. None of you do. They’re just your shield, aren’t they? They’re just another weapon to you.

So, if that’s how you repay mercy, then I have nothing to say.

Braun had been a kontgesig, anyway. And Yael had been… well, Kraber admitted it. That was pretty much what they’d done. Braun’s rules: Only fighters, or people with intense, necessary jobs, got food. Kraber had been a good fighter, and Braun’s plan had involved hurting ponifes, so Kraber had been onboard.

What a fokkin’ piece of shit I am, Kraber thought back on that. Aegis, Caduceus, Heliotrope, they’re refugees just like me. He quietly considered this. Well, except I’m not a magical talking horse…

“Yet, Victory pointed out.

Hou jou fokkin bek, Kraber thought reflexively.

“Exactly,” Yael said. “He was left for dead in an HLF attack that happened to destroy some of the solar panels we’d been using. But PER came by, and he…”

Kraber didn’t touch her. Though back when Kraber could say he’d actually had close friends, his instinct would have been to put a hand on the shoulder and show just the slightest bit of acknowledgment that yes, he was with her and that it was terrible.

“You don’t have to say anymore,” Kraber said solemnly. “I’m sorry for what happened to your friend.”

“You’d think it gets old one day, doesn’t it? Newfoals are horrifying,” Sixstring said, surprising them both. “That’s what we keep saying. But… the terrifying thing isn’t the newfoals themselves. It’s that there’s people and ponies out there that think it’d be a genuine improvement.”

“Would… would Celestia do that to her own ponies?” Kraber asked, uneasy.

“Yes,” Yael said, with all the sharpness, tact, or subtlety of a sledgehammer. Which was to say, none.

“Oh, definitely,” Sixstring said.

For a second, Kraber felt very, very terrible about all the ponies he’d left chained to rocks in areas that were about to be swallowed by the barrier. He briefly considered french-kissing the shotgun on his back. Nah, that’s fokking chop.

“...Whatever you’re remembering, I don’t want to know,” Sixstring said. “So: My cuz is off to get some weaponry, you two gonna come?”

“I guess,” Yael said, “As long as my cousin doesn’t do anything terrible with a steam engine. Again.”

There was a steam whistle off in the distance. Absolutely nothing changed on Yael’s face.

“...I feel like something very ironic should’ve just happened,” Sixstring said.

“Look, Sixstring, wi wir oan the train up here,” Kraber said. “Thit’s miles away.”

“...What he said,” Yael said. “Besides. Might as well come along. Heliotrope’ll find me easier if I’m with a large group. Might not find anything new, and it’s not like I’m going for a different rifle.”

“You are a professional with that Galil,” Kraber said.

“Why thank you,” Yael said. “You’re good with a pistol, too. Military dad?”

”...you’re just going to skip that for the punchline, aren’t you,” Yael sighs.

---

Which was why, in Hauser’s gun shop, Yael was using an assault rifle to open a bottle of coke from a fridge.

Heliotrope chuckles a little. As do Aegis and Kraber.

”Of course,” Yael says. “Why not.”

“Why did you even do that? You dad has a Galil,” Heliotrope points out.

“Yeah, but it’s the South African version,” Kraber says. “It’s not the one with the bottle opener.”

“Why would you even put a bottle opener on a gun, anyway?” you ask.

“From what I can tell, it’s kind of the military equivalent of Digital Extremes having an Orokin device called the Potent Orokin Tactical Augmentation and…” Kraber strokes his wild, scraggly beard, trying to remember. “Ah, fok it, I don’t care, but it translated to Potato. Cause players - like me - joked that one item looked like a potato.”

“Clem is hilarious,” Heliotrope nods, smiling.

(”I like Darvo more,” Kraber adds. “He uses a mechanized whip to snake out plumbing! That was hysterical.”)

“Is there a point buried in all this?” Verity demands.

(”Hey, Viktor, remember when we were testing that underbarrel lightning attachment and I said it was ‘10,000 volts of shut your elitist face, I never wanted to go to his stupid party anyway’?” Aegis asks, and Kraber, the remnants of whose pain receptors are dulled and blunted enough that he’s actually been sitting up for awhile, just cracks up and falls back onto the pillow, his guffaws muffled by his pillow.

So it comes out as sounding like “PFFFTB! MMMMMFF MMMMF EEP! HMRMF!”)

“Surprisingly, yes - that’s pretty much it,” Yael says, steadily ignoring Kraber, Heliotrope, and Aegis’ neigh-incomprehensible babble about some game, “The point is, soldiers like my dad, and my grandfather would use their Galils to open bottles on duty. Command noticed, so it ended up an official addition.”

“Why soda though?” you ask.

(”And then Ge…. um, the new researcher,” Aegis adds, sticking to the approved code and avoiding spoiling a major twist to this story,“Says the plan for the cephalon uprising would be meticulous and unsurvivable!””)

Yael admirably tries to suppress a quick chuckle but does not quite succeed. “Oh, I’m a bad person…”

(Kraber is laughing even harder now. “Trust me, I’ve got jou fokkin’ beat. Oh man, this must fokkin suck for people without context,” he choke-gasps out between spasmodic bursts of laughter. You just wave lamely at him and mutter hi as he says that. He makes vaguely apologetic motions and chokes out an apology through his laughter.

“That’s so wrong,” Vinyl says, to which Kraber, through choked gasps, points out that’s why it’s funny.)

“A Ze’ev doesn’t drink on duty,” Yael says proudly. “Unlike those two…”

“...I don’t get gesuip on duty,” Kraber says. “Or while handling guns. That’s just irresponsible. I might be an evil varknaaier, but I’m not a fokkin chop!”

You nod. This seems reasonable.

“Small steps, everyone,” Yael drawls, and Kraber laughs at that too.

Anyway, yes, Yael was using a gun to open a bottle. Moving on.

It wasn’t as horrifically unsafe as it might seem at first glance, and in fact, was an official feature of the rifle. As per basic firearm safety, the rifle was unloaded. The one round still in the breech had been removed and been returned to the mag through a small crank-fed device intended for magazine reuse (it had NO FAMAS F1 printed on it in bold block letters) sitting at a table, a nearly-spent magazine of 7.62 NATO connected up to it.

“Oh God, why would you do that?” Rivet asked.

”And pretty much the same conversation as earlier happened, so let’s just let it go,” Kraber says.

“Viktor, you’re like....” Vinyl searches for the words. “Captain digression, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

“It is something he’d do,” Yael points out.

“Well, we did it once, no need to beat a d…” Kraber looks around the room, at the majority of occupants. Not counting Verity (who’d be angry if you said it out loud) and Yael, (who’s videochatting) Elena and Bly, along with a few others are the only human occupants of the room. Not counting people who are probably listening to this from elsewhere. “No, I’m not doing that.”

“I’m not even asking why you have incendiary ammo,” Yael sighed. “Just, please, Mr. Hauser, please tell me you’re trustworthy.”

“Oh, I am,” said a large, heavyset, red-headed and red-sideburned man with a wholly incongruous pair of thin spectacles, whose thick body looked to have been chiseled by a sculptor going through a vaguely cubist phase. A weird hairstyle that could only be described as “a mohawk pompadour, I guess?” by Aegis sat atop his mostly shaven head. Evidently, this was Hauser.

Currently, he was making adjustments to a large assortment of leather and plastic straps that Amber was carrying on her back, with a small device about the size of a car battery just above her barrel.

“I got something even better than background checks.”

“Hey,” said a sooty gray unicorn with a dark gray coat, pink eyes, and a fauxhawk (more like just one shaven side of the head) in two shades of green. He waved. “Besides, what pony would end up giving HLF weaponry?” he asked.

"It’s a mystery,” Chalcedony says.

“Certainly not any friend of mine,” Aegis said, looking over the dark gray unicorn. “Afternoon, Blackpowder. It’s been awhile.”

“Who’s your friend?” Hauser asked.

“Francis Strang,” Kraber said, the lie just effortlessly rolling off the tongue at this point. “I’m staying with Aegis for a bit, Mr. Hauser. Sixstring over there referred me, and, well…”

“I getcha,” Hauser said. “And call me Phil. Mr. Hauser is my brother. Any idea how long you’re gonna stay?”

Aegis looked over at Kraber, expectant.

“Don’t leave yet,” Amber said, as Hauser took measurements of her forelegs and barrel. “Thanks for visiting last night. It… it helped.”

“Good question,” Kraber said. “Honestly, haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, from what I can tell,” Yael said, inspecting a newly-filled mag, “You’re somewhere nice. You see enough drifters nowadays. They…” she sighed. “Usually don’t have good lives. Or good jobs.”

Kraber considered this, looking over the weaponry in stock. Live with ponies-

“The gluesticks that destroyed your, our, my family. They are nopony special. I’ve seen all of them many, many times before,” the Dark Kraber said offhandedly. “All can - will - betray you. You ran with Yarrow, correct? If you accept my offer, then you can affect real change. You could become something great.”

Kraber ignored it. “Well, Aegis…” He paused.

“Never accept it,” Victory said. “But if there’s one of us you’re not going to pick… make sure it’s him.”

‘And why’s that?’ Kraber idly thought.

“I know you, or anyone that’s been watching us argue, wouldn’t know of him. Wouldn’t have seen all the hints in other stories, like the Tales of the War or When We Needed Him Most. But he’s evil,” Victory said. “You must not accept whatever he offers. Tell him you’ll rip his dick off and shove it up his fl… fl… GAT! so he can go fuck himself, tell him he’s a monster, hang up on him, put him on hold-”

“Hmmm?” Yael asked, looking up from the magazine.

“Just having a really unpleasant internal conversation,” Kraber said, smiling uneasily. ‘Tell him his health plan is fokking kak?’ he thought back at Victory.

‘Yeah! Like that! I liked that one, it was funny. Shame it was so hard to code on the tropes page.”

Kraber continued to ignore her, and thought on the subject. “I’ll think on it,” Kraber said, in a tone that wasn’t so much a yes, or a no, as inviting others to project their own answers on the statement.

Evidently, Aegis had read it as yes, as he was smiling at the thought. “Good.”

“I’d like you to stay,” Rivet said.

“...I know a few good bedtime stories, if it helps,” Kraber said awkwardly. “Un Lun Dun, for one thing. My kids always liked it.”

“Yay!” Amber cheered, from over at the other end of the store as Hauser helped fit her for the saddle. “I miss london,” she said, sullenly, petulantly. Like any child might. Then again, Amber was a child.

...I have to remind myself that they’re kids sometimes, Kraber thought. Eish, I go from calling them ‘spawnlings’ to ‘kids’. Don’t things change?

“Are we done yet?” Amber asked, still petulant.

“We would be done sooner,” Hauser said, “If you stopped squirming.”

“I just don’t like guns,” Amber said. “When I go to work for the PHL… I want to do something from behind. I just can’t stomach the… the blood, and the, the…”

“But we have to do it!” Rivet protested. “HLF, Imperials, PER…. they’re everywhere! I have to stand and fight! Be a hero like Yael over there or Francis-””

Yael hoped that Rivet saw the way her expression darkened, thee way her face fell, as she silently begged him to realize ‘No. I am not a hero.’

But the look she saw on Francis’ face was so appalled that she could not find words to describe it. It was like he’d just shut down, as if the idea of being a good person was so implausible to him that it looked close to driving him to an aneurysm.

Regret is a good sign, she mused. But what could he have done that was so terrible?”

---

"Eating people?” Aegis suggests.

“Fok off,” Kraber says, stifling a laugh. “That only happened twice.”

“I’m tempted to ask why,” Rumble says.

“No,” Mommy says. “No. You’re not.”

“Do you… do you feel bad about it?” Rivet asks.

“Not really, they were kontgesigs,” Kraber says, utterly blase. “But… what I did in front of a little filly…”

“We’ll get to that later,” you say.

“Yeah,” Kraber says, looking down. “We’ll do that. Oh, Yael? you’re right about me being in shock... I think that look was what got me into the PHL.”

"Huh?” Yael asks. Then groans. "Oh, the irony. Because you shooting Heliotrope, and the awful shit you did inspired me...”

Kraber chuckles a little. “I created my own heroine. How about that. Usually it’s the hero that makes their own villain.”

“How can you laugh about that?” Yael asks.

“If I didn’t, I’d lose my mind,” Kraber says. “Or… what’s left of it. I’m pretty fokkin’ broken that if I acknowledged everything, I’d get real bosbefok. I’m just glad that at least something good came out of there.”

“You… you really think Heliotrope and I are a force for good?” Yael asks back.

Heliotrope looks like she’s about to argue this, but she knows it isn’t the time.

"Well, in the HLF, those fokkin stront vir breins hoerkind would pat me on the back for being a kontgesig,” Kraber says. “You’ve done what you could to protect people. So I’m going with yes.”

"That’s bullshit!” Verity yells.

"Name one kick the hond moment I did before the Sorghum that the HLF didn’t like, jou fokkin te…” Kraber says, voice regretfully trailing off. It is a shame. He really doesn’t want to hurt her more than he already has.

"Joined the Reavers,” Verity says.

"Doesn’t count,” Yael says. "Look. I’m sure this would lead to a very stimulating discussion, but what… how did I inspire you?”

"You’d taken a flamethrower tank to Nipville earlier,” Kraber says. "But! Jou regretted it. The HLF would’ve bought me a suite in the Last Resort if I did that. If they hadn’t thought that I was such a fundi at blikseming people that they’d even force me into a fokkin’ suicide mission in Montreal…”

"Were those the people that, uh…” Aegis says, trying not to lose his lunch at the memory of what Kraber did. You can’t blame him. You really, really do not want to remember. Oh God, the blood, it was in your fetlocks, merciful Luna…

"Yes,” you say.

“What I mean,” Kraber says, “Is… that it was nice to see you regretted this. Maybe the PHL does screwed-up things like hire me, but from what I can tell, it’s a force for good.”

---

“Or, or Colonel Renee, or Vinyl Scratch,” Rivet continued. “Or Major Bauer, or, or Lyra…”

“Son, Lyra was one in a million,” Aegis said, giving his son an affectionate noogie. “Like it or not, you’re always going to be you. And furthermore, I’m still your dad and you’re too young for the army.”

“I’m old enough!” Rivet protested.

“No,” Aegis said, “You’re still a colt. My son. And I’m keeping you safe.”

“But we need soldiers to fight!” Rivet said. “Someone has to protect you-”

“That is my job,” Aegis said. There was an edge to his voice. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt! You’re too young!”

Hauser and Blackpowder looked over at the conversation uneasily. Yael was looking over at them, concerned and not sure whether or not to intervene.

Amber was looking up at Kraber with an expression that seemed to be unequal parts irritation and fear. A look that seemed to practically scream Oh God no, they’re doing this again.

“But you can’t do it forev-”

“-do it as long as I-”

“How about I settle for protecting you alongside your dad?” Kraber asked.

Amber breathed a sigh of relief, and muttered something that sounded like Thank you lord.....

“See, son?” Aegis asked. “You don’t have to worry. You’ve got the both of us looking out for you.”

“Kay, Rivet. Your turn to get fitted for the assault saddle,” Hauser said, happy that the tension in the air had dissipated.

“Yay!” Rivet crowed, a smile on his face.

A dark look crossed Aegis’ face. But it passed.

“So… Mr. Francis?” Amber asked. “What was that UnLondon thing you mentioned?

“It’s not quite london,” Kraber explained.

“Go on…” Aegis said, looking almost as excited as his two foals.

And like that, Kraber thought wryly, I’m probably staying.

Meanwhile, as Kraber was explaining the plot of his third-favorite China Mieville novel, Yael looked over to a box of Kalashnikovs.

“Interesting stuff for sale,” Yael said slowly. “You know Dovetail, Presley, or Hex would still pay you better, right?”

“Hauser wouldn’t be able to work as your friendly neighborhood arms dealer either,” Blackpowder said. “Plus, the ponies and humans out here… like you, Aegis?”

“Hrmm?” Aegis asked, cocking his head, almost doglike.

“They have a, uh… a bit of a quiet, practical genius,” Blackpowder said. “We like capitalizing on that.”

“Why thank you,” Aegis said.

“I mean, you probably won’t create a new energy weapon or make cold fusion in the basement,” Hauser added, “But people here think differently. For example… one PHL supporter was worrying about arming people with enough enchanted weaponry. So, as we talked it out, he had to ask: Did the whole gun have to be enchanted?”

“...I guess they don’t?” Yael asked. “I’m not involved in that part of the process.”

“Well, they don’t,” Blackpowder said. “Each of these guns has one enchanted part. It’s enough to make one enchanted gun… and also make some all around better weaponry. It doesn’t have quality, but, well, it’ll help more people at Barrierfall.”

“Plus, officially we help contract with the PHL for humanitarian aid,” Hauser said. “Seriously, Rivet. Stop squirming!”

“I can’t help it!” Rivet protested. “I’m just so excited to get a gun!”

“Rivet,” Kraber said, “A da’ gives ehs bairns a gun when eh says they’re ready.”

“Am I ready now?”

“...Great,” Amber sighed, looking downwards.

“Amber, don’t be like that,” Aegis said, as Rivet stuck his tongue out at her. “And Rivet - you’re just being fitted. Same as your sister.”

“Well, I have to do something!” Rivet protested.

“You will,” Aegis said. “Soon. But for now, Rivet - you’re my son. And I’m keeping you safe.”

“...So a gun shop,” Kraber said, “That does humanitarian stuff. Huh.” He looked over at Rivet. There was an odd look on that colt’s face. He was defiant, but oddly cowed.

“Well, somebody has to repair PHL tech that’s been placed around here,” Blackpowder said. “The solar panels, turbines, other generators…”

Kraber actually knew about those. The HLF had stolen more than a few - it was how Defiance had gotten power. How they’d kept meat and other foods refrigerated, how they powered the xerox machine, or…. the other fridges. Kraber didn’t want to think about those.

“Should I be worried about this place while you’re gone?” Sixstring asked.

“Nah,” Hauser said. “That’s what Musarrat is for.”

“Who’s Mus-” Kraber asked, and then a really large Egyptian Kangal jumped on him, licking his face. He made a surprised yelp as the dog’s weight knocked him to the ground with a speed a wrestler would envy.

“...The guard dog,” Blackpowder said lamely.

Kraber tried to say something about Musarrat - he didn’t speak much Pashto, from what he could tell, it meant ‘Joy’ - but this was made quite difficult by the fact that Musarrat was licking him into submission.

“Who’s a good dog,” Kraber asked, his somewhat raspy voice lowering to an inflection that could, tentatively, be considered cooing. “What a cute… oh, oh stop it, stop it!” he laughed. “Oh, you’re so fluffy…”

“Isn’t he?” Amber agreed, bringing one foreleg across Musarrat’s fur. It parted a good inch in front of her hoof, as if there was an invisible hand just in front of her foreleg. Weird, Kraber thought. “I’m glad I don’t have hands for a gun, but Musarrat’s the best part of being here.”

“Ah can believe it,” Kraber said, struggling under the dog’s weight.

“Musarrat!” a woman snapped. “Get off that man.”

“He’s just being affectionate,” Kraber said, stroking the dog’s neck.

“Can you get up?” the woman asked. Kraber could see her now - she looked middle eastern, and not so much old as ‘weatherbeaten’.

“Well, no,” Kraber admitted. “Ah’m honestly kind of happy doon h-”

“Then he needs to get off,” the woman said.

“This,” Hauser said, “is my business partner Orzala Tarkalani. Trained in the Khyber Pass.”

“Honestly, I'm happy to have good tools by now,” Orzala said. “I build and repair weaponry for him.”

“What about the gun on your back?” Sixstring asked.

“Made it myself,” she said proudly. “I'm the one that works on the counter when they're off fixing somebody’s solar panels.”

“I’d like to try that,” Kraber said. “I… I’ve been feeling kindae shitty about the stuff I did lately. Might be nice to do something like that.”

“I don’t think you can repair PHL mag-tech,” Blackpowder said, suspicious.

“Yeah,” Orzala said. “Something tells me you don't have the training.”

“Course nowt,” Kraber said. “But I could… I could dae some heavy lifting. Maybe use it to pay for a new magnum.” He looked down at Hauser’s gun case. “Like that thing.”

He pointed to an almost inordinately large revolver sitting in the case, just below the glass. It had a long, wooden grip that reminded him of a single-action revolver from the old movies, a black frame, and a silver cylinder. A bizarre ventilator rib, full of triangular holes (of all things) lined the top of the barrel. The cylinder was strangely elongated, making it look almost like a prop.

He’d seen that sort of thing from a gunsmith that’d been fleeing the Khyber Pass and been smart fokkin’ dof enough to join with the HLF. It’d been able to shoot .410 shells as well, though he hadn’t gotten it in his head he needed one yet.

It looked big, sleek, and mean enough to stop fights just by pulling it out a holster. Perfect.

“Ruger Osprey,” Blackpowder said.

“If you’re going for something that big, why not go for my cousin’s gun?” Yael asked, vaguely amused. “Honestly. Americans and-”

“Ah’m S… Scottish!” Kraber interrupted. Fok! Nearly said South African. He paused. Wait. ‘South African’ sounds like ‘Seth Effrican’ in my accent? How did I never notice this?

“Besides,” Amber says, “Nny’s gun looks more like a chopped-up rifle than a pistol.”

“Though…” he looked down. “How long have you not been wearing a shirt?”

“How did you not notice that?!” Kraber yelled.

“About an hour,” Aegis supplied. “Enjoying the view, by the way.”

“You and me both,” Orzala said.

Yael pretended to have a cough, and was curiously hunched over the table.

‘Oh, fokking siff,’ Kraber thought, then realizing from the looks he was getting that he’d said it out loud. Fok. “...Ah, fok. Sorry, it’s just, I… uh…” he looked down. “I’m not… I have…”

‘Apologizing to a pony?’

“What’s wrong with an old woman liking you?” Orzala asked.

“No, you’re fine. Look, it’s just… ponies being attracted to me feels weird, is all,” Kraber said.

“Like being straight… mostly... and having a gay man come on to you?” Blackpowder asked.

“Hey,” Hauser said, ruffling his friend’s mane, “It worked out, didn’t it?”

“Actually, I’m bisexual,” Kraber said. “So I’m not sure how that feels.”

“A bit like you do right now, I’ll bet,” Aegis said, scratching behind his head with one forehoof, a little sheepish. “I don’t mind… Lyra kinda got me interested in asking about it, so I wondered...”

“Well, you did mean it as a compliment,” Kraber said, “So… thanks. For that.”

--Vinyl breaks into an abrupt, choking, coughing fit.

“Can’t promise I’ll end up like… ya two,” Kraber said, looking over at Blackpowder and Hauser. “But the least ah kin dae is take a compliment.”

“Small steps,” Sixstring said, nodding. “Small steps.”

“Anyway, I believe ah wis getting a magnum revolver?” Kraber asked.

“Well,” Hauser said, uneasily leafing through the strips of blood money. Again, this was literal - the blood from the various PER members he’d shot had oozed into their wallets. It was the point that Kraber was wishing for a normal job, even if it was something menial like janitorial stuff, just so he didn’t have to make transactions with dollar bills covered in blood. “Seems you’ve got enough for the gun. Though…”

“There’s one question I have to ask,” Blackpowder said. “We maintain a strict business ethic - I went into this knowing that I would not sell to HLF. And no matter what, I’ll know the truth.”

“He has a lie detector spell,” Rivet explained.

“Go on,” Blackpowder asked, shifting from hoof to hoof like a boxer, or an overexcited child. “Ask me how I got it.”

“Just… just humor him,” Aegis sighed. “He lives for the l-”

“Won it in a poker game on one of the Last Ships,” Blackpowder muttered, scowling at Aegis. “You just gotta suck the joy out of everything…”

“Well, I’ve heard that about hundred times,” Aegis said.

“You did not,” Yael said, looking over a selection of shotgun ammo.

“He hasn’t, but I have,” Orzala said. “He does that literally every time I see him with a new customer. And he never actually says how he went about winning it.”

“I can weirdly relate,” Yael said. “Heliotrope was watching Dead Leaves once, and she’s never forgotten the line-”

“Have you seen my heliotrope?” Kraber and Yael chorused.

“But explaining it ruins the magic,” Blackpowder protested to Aegis, as Yael and Kraber bonded over their shared enjoyment of Hiroyuki Imaishi.

“There’s no magic,” Aegis said, “In something that’s been done about a hundred times. Weren’t we… kind of, you know, done?” he asked, sighing.

“He’s got ya there, Blackpowder,” Hauser chuckled. “Besides, Rivet’s nearly done.” He typed in something on a computer keyboard. “The saddle should last awhile. Might have to call you back in, Rivet, but otherwise… we’re done. You’re a big colt-”

“You thought I was dad’s brother the first time,” Rivet chortled. “Anyway. No more fittings?”

“Nope,” Hauser said.

“Yay! The real thing!” Rivet cheered.

“I can hardly wait,” Amber muttered.

“Anyway,” Blackpowder asked, his horn glowing. “Are you HLF?”

Kraber started to speak.

“Francis?” Aegis asked. “Do me a favor… tell the truth. I know you haven’t told me everything.”

“I haven’t,” Kraber agreed.

Blackpowder nodded, a little surprised. His horn was glowing blue. “You’re telling the truth.”

“Can that thing…. I don’t know, make me give specific answers?” Kraber asked, uneasily.

“No,” Blackpowder said. His horn glowed blue. “It glows blue whenever someone tells the truth. And it also glows blue when you lie, so there’s no way for you to tell if you’ve lied.”

Blackpowder’s horn glowed blood-red at that. “So, did THAT lose its magic, huh, Aegis?”

It works on him, too? Kraber wondered. Interesting…

“Only the 18th time you led us on like that,” Aegis said, visibly bored. “Come on, just get it over with.” He pulled closer to Kraber, bending over and curling one foreleg over his shoulder. “For the love of God, don’t let him press you too hard,” Aegis whispered. “He hasn’t had much power since he was kicked out of his chemistry lab in Fillydelphia for asking too many questions.”

“Why’re you telling me this?” Kraber whispered back.

“Because we’re friends now,” Aegis said. “And I know you weren’t telling me everything.”

Blackpowder’s horn glowed blue again. “Aegis told the truth about something again,” he mused. “Huh.”

“Daddy’s very honest,” Amber said matter-of-factly.

“There’s just one thing I want Blackpowder to ask, though,” Aegis said.

Blackpowder’s horn glowed red. “Aegis, what’re you-”

“Let me have my damn privacy,” Aegis said, not unkindly. “I’m trying to… to talk to a friend.”

Blackpowder’s horn was still glowing blue.

“...I’m beginning to wonder if that counts as an invasion of privacy,” Rivet said.

“Heh, it’s worse in the bedroom,” Hauser chuckled, and Rivet chuckled along with him.

“...Ha… ha… I don’t get it,” Rivet said, head quizzically cocked to the side, wild mane of fur obscuring his eyes.

Hauser ruffled it out, Rivet smiling up at him at the return of his vision. “Your dad will tell you later, kid.”

“Maybe he’ll tell me today?” Rivet asked.

“No, I won’t. Anyway,” Aegis said. Blackpowder’s horn still glowed blue. “I want to trust you, but I would like to have him ask a question? I…” Aegis dug at the floor with one hoof, like a zebra would. He looked uncertain, which was completely at odds with his stiff, formal tone. “I just want to be sure you’re safe. I hope you are not offended, or something.”

“A mysterious man comes ootae naewhere, an’ kills a fokton ae PER,” Kraber said, picking his words carefully. “I can understand the worry. I like your house, I like your family-”

“True!” Blackpowder called out.

“Wait… that’s… thanks!” Aegis said, a big goofy smile, the icy stoicism cracking like a meteor had smashed into it. It was kind of adorable, really. Kraber wasn’t really one to say whether a pony was handsome, but there was something about the smile on that giant st - on Aegis’ face - warmed his heart. And, even if he was probably considered a musclebound giant by his race’s standard, there was something about him that still made him look like a living plushie.

He’s one of the good ones, Kraber thought. Definitely/ “-An’ I’m rais’nably sure ah’m so far below the poverty line ah’m fokkin subterranean. So, whil Ah’m trying tae find a job, and be a baiter person, trying tae let go ae the HLF... I think there’s nae better place than your hoose, with yuir family.”

“So are you going to have me ask the questions or what?” Blackpowder asked, annoyed. “True, by the way.”

“...I don’t know, this is nice to hear,” Amber said. “...He helped comfort me after a nightmare. And read a bedtime story.”

---

Yael saw Blackpowder’s horn glowing blue.

Interesting, she thought. How many HLF men do that?

The answer: Not many. Probably a Reaver, if the chance ever came. Had she been suspicious of him? Yes.

--I’m not mad.

Of course she’d been suspicious. She was suspicious of anyone that called themselves HLF. But there was something unmistakably different about Francis Strang. Or at least, the man who’d called himself Francis Strang. He wasn’t telling the whole truth - anyone could tell that. The way anything he’d said about his past was vague and unverifiable, for example.

But whatever he was doing, it was atypical for HLF. She was tempted to have Blackpowder ask if he regretted it, but that… Yael shook her head. Clearly he had.

But whoever, whatever he’d been, it was clear he had mental issues.

It’s for the best, Yael thought, that I don’t try to recruit him. Though I’d say he made it pretty clear he’s not PER...

“Huh,” Hauser said, looking at Francis approvingly. “These are promising answers. I just have one… one question. Are you HLF?”

Yael could see Francis squirming a little, sweating heavily. Why should he be? He’d just told most of them he was ex-HLF, anyway. Unless he’d done downright monstrous things with a smile on his face, there wasn’t anything to worry about.

“Yes,” Francis said.

Blackpowder’s horn glowed blue.

“But… as of yesterday, I’ve deserted, an’ good fokkin’ riddance,” Francis said.

Blackpowder’s horn glowed a steady blue.

“I want nae more fokkin’ things tae dae wi’ the HLF,” Francis continued. “As far as I know, most ae thim are dead or in jail. Ah’ve done fokkin’ terrible things, and if the HLF ever take me back, I will-”

Francis paused.

“On second thought, there’s ki… there’s foals here,” he said. “You don’t want to know what I’d do.”

Blackpowder’s horn glowed a steady blue.

Amber winced. “Ooh… Not even gonna ask.”

“I. Am. Fokking done,” Francis said, “With the HLF. No more war crimes. None of this pointless aggression, I am going to do something right or die trying.”

“You’ve made a good answer,” Yael said, noting with satisfaction the blue of Blackpowder’s horn. I wonder how Heliotrope’s doing.

And, with that said, they finished up the transaction.

“Be seeing you, then.” Kraber said. He then bent down, rubbing his hands on Musarrat’s neck. “And goodbye to you… It was nice to meet you, you giant puppy!”

Musarrat just licked Kraber’s face.

---

Later…

They were all sitting at a watering hole sandwiched between the back of one of the shops and some refugee housing, composed of shipping containers and various prefabs. All of which had seemingly been crammed in between trees, leaves and tree branches poking out from the spaces between buildings like swimmers surfacing, gasping for air.

It made a weird group. A traveling musician. A hardworking, blue-collar stallion and his colt and filly grown up before a chance to really savor their foalhood. A war hero who’d been called a war criminal by her enemies. A war criminal who’d been called a war hero by his allies. A crossdressing, augmented man and his marefiend.

Though at the moment, the man in the latter pair was slumped back in a chair. Fiddlesticks, in turn, was lying against the side of the chair, lazily strumming her fiddle.

Though the speakers, scavenged from who-knew-where and hooked up to what Yael had identified as PHL-made solar panels, were playing decent music of their own. Fiddlesticks was trying to make music in time.

Regulations would’ve dictated that the cafe was demolished to make room for a prefab that’d serve as the new location for the business. However, the regulations were rather hard to enforce, given that this was northern New Hampshire and it was the middle of nowhere. Where nothing interesting was supposed to happen.

Though the impressive array of wanted posters on one wall, just beside a stall with the sign “John Peters / Moonshine” displayed above” put the lie to this.

There wasn’t much to say about the wanted posters. Not much was different from back where Aegis lived. A few posters different, some in different places, notes on missing family members. The only really different thing was Johnny C looking over at the picture of Fairbairn, almost wistfully.

“Nny….” Yael said, a warning edging into her voice.

“Huh,” Nny said, looking at a wanted poster of Fairbairn. “He looks like Freddy Krueger facefucked a topographical map of Utah now. Amuruq got him good.”

“What’d Amuruq do, anyway?” Rivet asked, Kraber leaning in along with him as the two of them waited for an answer.

Nny looked at the wanted poster. “An eye for an eye, I guess,” he said, tapping the side of one of his eye sockets. “Or… An eye for most of the face. You bought the book, right?”

“Sometimes he forgets people can’t read China Mieville novels in a day like he can,” Fiddlesticks said.

Nny and Fiddlesticks were on break from whatever they were selling at their stall.
“Yeah, I did. Where are you going with this?” Kraber asked.

“Finish the book,” Nny said. “Let’s just say, if Fairbairn is here, for hurting my friend, I want that fat fuck to die so bad he will be dead and then he will stay dead… they’re not listening, are they.”

“Look at youuuu!” Amber Maple cooed as Kraber played a video out on one of his stolen phones. She was leaning so far forward on her forehooves that she almost looked like a pointer dog. “ You’re so cute…”

“She’s so fluffy!” Kraber agreed. “I…” the words died in his throat. ...Dammit, lying to foals fokkin’ sucks. I met Tanja Askani once! I brought an African wild dog to Wildpark Luneburger Heide! I saw puppies! I told her I wanted to be a vet!

‘Well, you were technically....’

I’d rather be a desk sergeant than have some of the experience I do.

“I love puppies so much,” Kraber finished.

“Sounded like you were gonna say something else, Mr. Kraber,” Amber said, and fear stabbed up through Kraber’s heart, straight into his brain. Oh, oh fok! Oh no! She knows?! She can’t fokkin’ know!

That’s it, Kraber thought, improbably calm. Grab her. Use her as a hostage. I can-

That train of thought abruptly derailed in a calamity reminiscent of the Tay Bridge disaster. The cast iron holding up the rails beneath it shattered. It was a mess.

Why the fok would that be a good idea? one of the (many) personalities in Kraber’s head wondered. Look, I can-

“What’d you say?” Kraber asked, confused.

“Sounded like you were going to say something else, Mr. Francis,” Amber said, confused. “What’s… what’s wrong? Did I do-”

“Nah,” Kraber said. “I fokked up. And I’m sorry for that. I was gonna say something I’d regret. And that reminded me of…. things I also regret.”

“What was that?” Amber asked, looking up at him. Nobody seemed to have noticed the look on Kraber’s face, so the other conversation was going on as normal.

“Kid,” Kraber Francis said, running some fingers through her mane, “You really don’t want to know.”

‘Remind me again why you…. I…. why we didn’t go with being a vet?’

Being a doctor paid better, and I wanted to… y’know… be a correct ou, Kraber thought back.

“Anyway… how’d the sales go, cousin?” Yael asked, with a long-suffering sigh. “I’d say you get used to this, Aegis, but it’s usually my cousin doing that.”

“...I plead the fifth,” Amber and Nny said at once.

“Oh, I know,” Aegis said, nodding. “I know. I live about half an hour away from him.”

“And he and Fiddlesticks sleep upstairs all the time,” Rivet added. Then, seeing the look on Kraber’s face: “Why do you think we had the mattress?”

“Spares?” Kraber shrugged.

“Anyway, cuz, I’m doing pretty good,” Nny said, sitting legs crossed, in a slightly unladylike pose. “Cousin Sarah’s working the stall at the moment as we speak.”

---

”As it happened, Nny meant his other cousin, Sarah Callista Ruyter, a bounty hunter,” Heliotrope explains. “Met her awhile back. She’s alright.”

“She tried to kill me once,” Verity mutters.

“Sorry to hear about that,” Kraber says. “I had bounty hunters come after me once. It was kind of awful.”

---

“That was nice of her,” Sixstring said.

“Hey,” Johnny C shrugged. “Family’s family. I’d do the same for Fiddlesticks if she was the one asking.”

“But she’s a mare,” Kraber said. “You’re not related.”

Fiddlesticks cocked her head, almost like a dog. “Your point?”

“Couldn’t’ve said it better myself,” Nny chuckled, running a hand through her mane.

“Are you a little unnerved by the fact that it looks like you’re petting a dog?” Kraber asked.

“Well, do you like it when people run their fingers through your hair?” Fiddlesticks asked, adjusting her hat with one foreleg. Kraber wondered how she could do that without hands.

“Yes?” Kraber asked.

“There you go then,” Fiddlesticks said.

“You’re asking a lot of questions,” Yael said, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m…” Kraber thought on this. The easy thing to do wold be to defensively whine. Say: “I’m sorry, but…” Or deflect. Either way, some pretty damn immature stuff was coming to mind. The kind of profanity-laden kak he would’ve said when he was angry. Which had been all the time, now that he thought about it. Had he really been that much of a-

Kraber braced himself for the answers his hallucinations would give. When they didn’t reply, he shrugged, and said, blunt as possible: “Ma eywis said only stupid bawbags wir racist.”

Like many of the things Kraber had said so far, including his father’s advice that you should fight to make sure the other guy wouldn’t fight back-

---

“This explains so much,” Verity says.

“Yeah, and my dad also took me out for mil-” Kraber starts, eyes narrowed, possibly about to yell.

But Aegis steps in, rearing up and placing one giant foreleg across his friend’s chest. “Verity. Do not bait my friend, or-”

“Or what?” Verity asks.

“Or you will stay a pony, in this hospital,” Aegis says, his gaze steely through his coke-bottle goggles, “Much longer than you have to. Calm down, Viktor…”

Kraber takes a deep breath.

---

this had actually been very closely related to the truth. Maybe the truth’s stepbrother or something. His mother, knowing a lot about the workings of the human brain, had said that racism was the province of stupid people.

“This explains way too much about HLF membership,” Sixstring said.

Yael chuckled on that one, then saw the look on Kraber’s face. “Sorry about that.”

“Nah, no apologies needed,” Kraber said. Though it kind of was - He could barely imagine the looks on the faces of Idle or Yarrow if he told them that Yael’d apologized to him. Yael Ze’ev! She who was like a wolf that raveneth in the morning, and divided the spoil in the af-

‘When.’

Huh?

‘When. You’ll be seeing them very soon. I read ahead.

“We were fokkin radges. And Ah’ve bin real stupid th last 3 years. So I figure - I’ll stop being such a radge. Ask about PHL. How they work, how it is tae be a pony’s friend,” Kraber said. “I’ve done awful fokkin’ things, Ms. Ze’ev-”

“Segen Ze’ev, actually,” Yael said. “But, we’re here, you’ve seen cousin Nny in a dress, and fought with me. I think we’re on a first-name basis by now.”

“I’m tempted to ask why that first one happens,” Kraber said.

“Well, sometimes you just don’t want to be you,” Johnny C said.

“Don’t I fokkin’ well know thit,” Kraber said. “Much too well. So, Z… Yael… I’m doing something else from now on. I want to do something better.”

“Okay,” Yael said. “If an HLF man wants to try and change his tune… then I’ll help.”

“Wait, really?” Kraber asked, his train of thought derailed.

“Well, yeah,” Yael said. “I don't hate everyone in the HLF just for the sake of it, y’know. Some of them might even be ok.”

“Like who?” Aegis asked.

Yael shrugged. “I dunno. Maxi Yarrow’s lot maybe -”

“The Reavers?” Kraber asked. “You mean the Reavers?

“Yeah, those are the ones,” Yael said.

“Funny,” Kraber said quietly. “I think Yarrow thought you’d happily gun ‘em all down if he ever met you.”

“If I had to, absolutely,” Yael said with a shrug. “But I hear they're not bad enough for that.”
She chuckled mirthlessly. “Hell, if I hated them as much as they probably think I do, they'd probably be dead already. People… exaggerate how much I hate the HLF.”

Kraber threw her a look.

“A little,” she added. “They don't all deserve the flamethrower tank…” She trailed off, a slightly sickened look on her face. “No. Not joking about that again. Not happening.”

Amber shivered a little. Rivet looked almost unhealthily fascinated.

“Come on, there’s foals here,” Aegis said.

“Aaaaand yet nobody’s said anything about him using the word ‘fuck’ like a comma,” Fiddlesticks pointed out.

“Believe it or not,” Kraber said, “This is an improvement.”

“He’s not kidding,” Sixstring stage-whispered in accompaniment.

“Besides, we hear worse at school,” Amber added.

“Aw, buck. Really?” Aegis asked.

Rivet nodded.

“Well, that’s disheartening. Wait, you were with Reavers, Francis?” Johnny C asked, confused. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Seems like an interesting story.”

“If you ran with them, were you at Agua Caliente?” Rivet asked eagerly.

And it was at that moment that Kraber decided honesty was not the best policy. If he said then and there “Yes, I was at Agua Caliente,” then this cover of Francis Strang would be as good as gone. It’d be almost trivial to find what specific HLF had been there. It’d been a small number anyway, and most of them - Yarrow’s men aside - were probably PHL at this point.

“I’d be surprised if he was,” Yael said. “Not many people were there, and I know most of the HLF that were there.”

As a matter of fact, he had been there. AWOL from the Menschabwehrfraktion, making his way across a struggling America by car, train, and foot, once word had come that the PHL and HLF alike were preparing an assault on the PER’s fokkin’ Grand Wizard. It was an interesting story, involving thievery, assault, pressing a few amenable women, riots, and a bar fight. He… didn’t want to think about what he’d done to most of the ponies he’d seen along the way. Some had been PER, hopefully, but the majority hadn’t.

The bar fight - which was also another story for another day - had occurred in Durango. Not too far from a narrow-gauge railroad. The little steam engine trundling by had been converted to run off of waste vegetable oil. There was a lot of it most days. This had been where Kraber met Tom Yorke. Who, after the bar fight, as they patched up their wounds, had presented Kraber with his little 1911 frankengun, the one he could cock by pressing down on the trigger guard. The one that had saved his fokkin’ life against Reaper.

One thing had led to another, and then, all of a sudden, Kraber was there in the Reavers. He’d lied to them about his identity - again - but followed along until Maximilian Yarrow discovered his ruse. And, surprisingly, he’d let Kraber in, on the proviso that if he was going to run with the Reavers, he would follow the principles of the Reavers.

---

A long time ago…

"I’ll put this simply, with as few big words as I can,” the man said, folding his arms. “The PER and the Empire are our enemies. You kill them. The PHL and regular civilians aren't our enemies. You don't kill them."

Maximilian Yarrow was a stern enough presence that Kraber didn't laugh in his face. The shaven head, covered in Norse tattoos, mixed with the bristling beard and the long green army coat, made a formidable image. Added to that, of course, were the two heavily armoured men stood either side of him, each holding what Kraber might have described as ‘kwaai’.

Still, the words themselves, especially when applied to PHL (fokkin’ horsefokkers) were laughable.

“You want me to not kill horsefokkers when I get the chance?” Kraber asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What does it accomplish?” Yarrow asked.

“It's fun, and more of them are dead?” Kraber shrugged. “Not as satisfying as PER I guess, but -”

“I want you to follow orders,” Yarrow said with finality, cutting off that train of thought with a proverbial tree on the line. “We’re a military force, little Vikki Kraber. That means there's a chain of command - and not that joke of a chain that lets Lovvie rule after murdering his CO. That isn’t military. That’s what barbarians do.”

Kraber raised an eyebrow again. “Ok. So what else?”

"You don't kill civvies,” Yarrow said. “You don't hurt civvies. You don't as much as touch one with a feather duster without my say-so.”

“What? So I can’t randomly tickle people?”

Yarrow narrowed his eyes. “Take this seriously, boy. You of all people should know that this business is not a game.”

“Oh, I know,” Kraber said, and his smile vanished. “I know. But I want what’s fokkin’ mine out of Defiance. If I have to follow your rules for that, so be it.”

Yarrow nodded once. “Understandable. Next up. You keep to the law where possible. HLF are not exactly in the law’s good graces, but I've kept my people as straight and narrow as a violent paramilitary force can be - which is, surprisingly, more than you'd think - and I don't want a wildcard like you fucking it up.”

“Me? Why, I’m the fokkin’ picture of innocence.”

“And I have a full head of hair,” Yarrow said, before smirking. “Final rule. You never run from a fight. You kill your enemy or you die standing.”

“Sounds kwaai enough. Besides, if I got potioned, I’d do that anyway.”

“I mean it,” Yarrow said with a scowl. "You do anything cowardly, you'd better be prepared to fight your way to Valhalla the next time you get a chance."

Kraber blinked at that. “That's… fair, I guess.”

“I want to make one thing perfectly clear, Viktor,” Yarrow said. “Right now, I want to kill you.”

Kraber stared at Yarrow for a second. “Um.”

“You're a mediocre swine. You've butchered innocents. You've helped make the HLF a laughing stock - worse, you've helped make them an enemy of humanity. When people see HLF like your bastards guarding their town in Maine, they don’t sleep easy. They wonder where they’ll scrape together the money for protection, or if they’ll wake up with their house ransacked or their family dead.” Yarrow took a breath, before continuing. “But I’m a great believer in redemption.”

“I… suppose I should be grateful,” Kraber said, uncertain.

“You're goddamn right you should,” one of the armoured figures said, the first time one of them had spoken.

“You won't be sworn in, not yet,” Yarrow said. “You've got a six month ‘probation’ to impress me with, or at the very least not to fuck up in. If in that time you piss me off, you're either kicked out or Blood-Eagled, depending on just how badly you fuck up. You pass that time, and you're a sworn in Reaver. As of now, this is your second chance, and you are already very close to the end of my rope. The fact that Yorke was the one that brought you here is not helping.”

To what little credit he had, Kraber didn’t seem perturbed.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Kraber said, “why not?”

“Because he’s the closest we have to you,” Yarrow said. “There’s rumors about him. Nothing I can prove, but he makes me worry.”

“Why do you keep him around then?” Kraber asked.

“Because he’s a good shot, and he personally volunteered to take out Valentin Velichkov in Spain,” Yarrow explained. “Velichkov was a nasty son of a bitch. Had taken over a city in the chaos. Would sit on a tall building and shoot civilians for laughs with progressively esoteric weapons, just to test his marksmanship, and even potioned random civilians to show them just why he was so much better than the PER. Some even say that because the potion made them loyal to him, Velichkov would -”

“Fok that fokkin aborsie-baba wat uit die asblik kon klim!“ Kraber said. Nobody in the HLF, even the PHL, ponified people. That was… That was worse than rape. That was the worst kind of fokkin’ violation. And for somebody to take advantage of the potion’s…

Kraber suddenly felt like projectile vomiting.

“Exactly. Yorke,” Yarrow explained, “was the one that volunteered to take him out. He waited hours for the right time to make the shot, perfectly still, and fired a .308 round into Velichkov’s balls, knocking him off the roof. He died of the bleeding and broke his spine. At the moment, you, Vikki, have nothing like that to you name. Nothing that I could consider anything beyond happenstance. So what makes me want to -”

“You’re going to keep me because I will kill so many fokking PER,” Kraber said bluntly. “When I skeur their fokkin’ scalps or cutie marks off, human or pony regardless, when I leave them hanging from trees with branches through their fokkin throats, PER will whisper about me. I as sure as fok didn’t come down from fokkin Germany and cross 5000 miles of water and file my way through most of the US to jump out of an airplane to teach the PER lessons in humanity. PER ain't got no humanity. Ponies got more humanity than them. They’re kontgesigs that’ll sell us all out with smiles on their fokkin’ faces cause the stumps I’m going to leave at the ends of their arms as I rip their fokkin hands off aren’t going to be hooves. They’re the foot soldiers of a human-hating, human-killing mass murdering maniac. And they need to be so fokkin’ destroyed that when we win this war, PER are a child’s punching bag to be killed off in anyone’s story. And that’s why each and every varknaaier using potion, they’re going to die. Now I’m the direct descendent of some damn wily partisans that garrotted collaborators, means my PER-strangling hands are damn well itching. I’m gonna be so fokkin be cruel to the PER, and through my cruelty they will know who the fok I am, and that they’ve made their own fokkin’ monster. And they will find evidence of my cruelty in the disembowled, dismembered, disfigured bodies of their brothers that we leave behind us. The PER wont be able to help themself but imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the PER will be sickened by me. And the PER will talk about me. And the PER will fear me. When the PER closes their eyes at night and are tortured by their subconscious with the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of me they are tortured with. When I post videos of PER like Jorge Bender being eaten by wolves on the internet, they will stop ponifying because they’re more afraid of me than their higher-ups. When the PER pray to Celestia for her to save them, they will realize she can’t help them, because I. Am. Fokkin. Coming. I will get to see Catseye bleed out on the ground, trying to stuff her own organs back in her stomach as I stand over her and…. fok it. I’ll just sit and watch with some kettle corn.”

Yarrow stared at him for a second, perplexed.

“Inglorious Basterds?” one of the armoured soldiers said dryly.

Kraber nodded. “Jewish partisans killing Nazis. What’s not to like?” he looked around. “You got any good baseball bats? I haven’t had a good PER-crushing baseball bat for years.”

“I had wondered what happened to that,” Yarrow said.

“I broke it over the head of some PER bastard in Tunisia,” Kraber explained. “Then stabbed the splintered remains into his eye. Then his throat. That was Kate’s bat…” he sighed. “I don’t think she’d like that I broke it.”

Yarrow chuckled. “Little Vikki Kraber, you fight the good fight, the right way, and you'll get to piss in Celestia’s skull.”

“I say I rip it off first,” Kraber said. “Wit vlam gonorree. Anyway, when do I get the cool kak?”

“‘Cool kak’?” Yarrow repeated.

“Yeah, the armour and the rayguns,” Kraber said. “I heard you had that stuff.”

Yarrow folded his arms. “Even if we do, what makes you think you get it?”

“Well, I -” Kraber began, then he stopped and blinked as his brain caught up with his mouth. “Good point.”

---

Kraber’s time with the Reavers did not work out, as one could infer from Kraber not having ripped off Celestia’s skull and pissed in it, as well as his lack of gonorrhea. Though that last part probably counted as a good thing, and Kraber seriously doubted anyone in the HLF could possibly get within sight distance of her without being simply vaporized.

Agua Caliente had been the most fokkin’ satisfying thing Kraber had done in the war. It’d been fokkin’ kwaai to work with the Reavers… but, inevitably, eventually, things had gone south, and Kraber had been cast out in shame.

At least he’d been able to do something to bliksem Reitman for what the fokkin’ PER had done to him and his family.

“No,” Kraber said, shaking his head. “Almost wish Ah hud been just so Ah could tell people I hud some fokkin thing ta dae with Reitman. And… Ah wouldnae be a good contact wi’ the Reavers. They… dinnae like me.”

“Why?” Fiddlesticks asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kraber said.

“Hold on a second,” Aegis said. “Just… who are the Reavers, anyway? I mean, I’ve heard a few scattered things, but nothing really concrete.”

“Not surprised,” Fiddlesticks said. “They’re very reclusive.”

“Basically, there's a guy called Maxi Yarrow who likes to think of himself as a Nu-Norse cultist,” Yael said blandly. “Way I heard it, he's big on Valhalla and the idea that dying in battle is ‘the way to go’. His people generally tend to be more of the same.” She looked at Kraber. “That fair?”

“Yarrow for Valhalla! Yarrow for Valhalla!”

“Ah think you're underselling how devoted they are,” Kraber said quietly, his accent softening almost imperceptibly into something else that was clearly not Scottish. “Maxi Yarrow saved a buncha people - civvies mostly - from gettin’ ponified on the HLS Purity, one o’ those jury-rigged pieces of shite that HLF folks abandoned Britain on. Way John Idle tells it, there they were, about to get slaughtered or ponified or both, and then boom. Out steps Yarrow, leads a defence and blows that bastard Potioneer outta the sky.”

Aegis raised an eyebrow. “Huh. Still doesn't explain why people talk about them like they're different from most HLF.”

Yael sighed and folded her arms. “There's a bit of debate about that. A lot of folks in PHL upper-echelons don't see a difference -”

“And a lotta them do,” Fiddlesticks interrupted. “Me and Nny got a lecture offa - offa a guy named Doctor Bowman, an R&D guy, about judgin’ Reavers without meetin’ ‘em. Ah hear him and Colonel Hex get into arguments ‘bout that all the time. And other things.”

“You’ve met him too?” Sixstring asked. “Huh. That guy gets around.”

“No argument there. Anyway,” Yael said, waving a hand dismissively. “Consensus from those people who think they are different tends to say that you never hear of any atrocities they committed. ‘Course, they might’ve committed some we don’t know about -”

“No,” Kraber cut in. “I’ll believe anything of any HLF man you ever point me at, but I'll never hear a word against Yarrow when it comes to anythin’ you call ‘atrocities’. He was very clear about that, and I remember what happens to those who don’t stick to his rules.”

“I said might,” Yael said. “I never said I believed that.”

“All the same, if you knew the man there’d be no bloody ‘might’ about it,” Kraber said. He paled slightly, which for him was surprising. “Only two fellas ever did anything under the board with him. One… one was Viktor Kraber.”

Civilians, screaming, begging for mercy. Preston hitting him in the face with a rifle, a look of disgust on his face. Yarrow eyes, hard and cold and full of resignation, disappointment… but tellingly enough, no surprise at all.

“I always wondered how he got in there,” Fiddlesticks said.

“Eh, shite recruiting standards,” Kraber said. “Ah think Yarrow was being nice or something. Anyway: the other guy was called Tom Yorke. Ya… might've seen that video.”

“Oh God,” Johnny C muttered. “That was… that one was kinda fucked, and I saw a friend of mine bite off Fairbairn’s nose and stab the fuck out of it with a broken bottle.”

“Well, between that and the fact that most people Yarrow gets are good folks who just want to fight the good fight, his people are about the cleanest you'll get in the HLF,” Kraber said quietly. “And they've done a bit of stuff - they were at Agua Caliente, they helped chase down Amadeus Cain -”

“That bastard,” Sixstring muttered.

“And I hear tell they helped fight off that guy Imperial Creed, whatever he was,” Fiddlesticks added.

“I thought he was a myth?” Aegis said with a frown.

Kraber shrugged. “Before my time, and I wasn’t around there at the time.”

“Where were you, though?” Yael asked.

“Eh,” Kraber said, “Bit up north in Canada. I got tired of the cold, so I moved down west. Then ended up back here.”

“You'd think we’d know more about them if they'd done so much,” Aegis said with a frown.

“Well, the guy Nny and I talked to a while ago says that Yarrow figures since their legal status is questionable enough, and HLF protection rackets don’t exactly make people feel safe, it’s best to just stay out of the way,” Fiddlesticks said.

“Also, a lot of stuff doesn't get reported,” Yael added quietly. “Half the reason the world’s morale isn't down the pan is because there's… some liberal omission of facts from news reports.”

“What?” Aegis asked. “You mean the PHL lie?”

“It was a mandate decided early on,” Yael said quietly. “‘Focus on the good news’, or something similarly saccharine. We tell people about some of the more horrible stuff we hear about and they’ll just lose all hope. We keep some stuff back, focus on our wins when we get ‘em…”

“It’s… a little unnerving, though,” Kraber said.

“Would you be able to fight if we did just what Celestia said and beat ourselves down?” Yael asked.

“So it's worse than people think?” Aegis asked.

“Of course it is,” Yael said, chuckling mirthlessly. “I mean damn it, half the planet’s gone or going. The Barrierfall Fronts in Europe and Africa were nothing short of hell, from what I hear, and when it makes landfall here it’ll be worse. I… really don’t like thinking about what’s happening in Asia. There’s stories about people being sold off for human experimentation, and Warlord Feng Gui Zhou all but taking over swathes of territory...” She paused. “If people get to live in hope for a little while longer… well, I’m not going to complain, lie of omission or not.”

“The upshot being, I take it, that Yarrow and his men get conveniently left out of the news reports, since he's not someone the PHL want to be doing good?” Aegis asked, raising an eyebrow.

Yael shrugged. “I guess so. Must fit command’s… I dunno, their agenda of making people believe in the PHL. Too many people still want to be HLF, or support them.” She sighed. “I… don't agree with it.”

“You don't?” Kraber asked.

“I told you, I don't hate the HLF to the point where if people are good people what they do should be ignored,” Yael said quietly. “If they've done all the stuff you say they've done, then they should get to be treated like heroes. Not pariahs. It's not like I’m any better in a lot of ways.” She shrugged. “Not my call, though.”

Kraber chuckled. If Maxi Yarrow had heard about the PHL suppressing information about the stuff his people had done… actually, he probably wouldn't have been surprised. Man had been cynical as hell for an optimist, and had only got worse as time had progressed.

It was only a matter of time before the PHL went to war with the HLF and outright exterminated them. And by then, it’d be likely that they’d do something so horrible that even Yarrow couldn’t refute them, if it wasn’t already Portland.

He didn’t want to see how Yarrow would be at that point.

“I met his daughter, once,” Yael added.

“His daughter?” Kraber repeated. “Maxi Yarrow has one?”

“Samantha Yarrow, Sergeant in the PHL,” Yael said quietly. “Big tester for Armacham gear and other experimental stuff. Took to walking around in Armacham heavy armour.” She paused, frowning. “She was… in my unit. At Nipville.”

“And?” Kraber asked.

“And after that, she… decided she didn't want to be,” Yael said with a heavy sigh. “She transferred somewhere else. That was the end of it.”

“She ever talk about her dad?” Aegis asked.

Yael shrugged. “She didn't know anything about his HLF activities before she left my unit. I know that her having his name got her treated… badly, but I never thought that was fair. I only learned stuff about him after. I don't know what she’d think.”

“Damn this war,” Aegis said quietly after a moment. “Just tears families apart.”

Kraber nodded silently, lost in thought for a moment.

“So what did you do to piss them off?” Yael asked. “Since you mentioned only Kraber and Yorke ever went against their rules?”

Kraber blinked, thinking fast, and then shrugged casually. “Well, I dinnae usually count myself. I guess I’m lucky number three.”

Yael nodded. “Well then. What did you do?”

“Well-”

It was almost fortunate at that point what interrupted.

“ -lo? He-hello?” a voice whispered over the radio. “This is Gestalt. My slave number is P-405. Crystal Empire aviator. Night Mare. Is anyone out there? Am I the last one left alive? I don’t know who can hear this. I… I’m deep below Equestria at the moment.

I suppose I should explain. I am a Night Mare. An Umbrum. A Phantasm, as the ponies call me. Well, part of one. There is… there is a fractal nature to my mind. Sombra’s overseers judged me necessary, and. Um.

There’s something that needs to be explained. Sombra, our leader… there are rumors. That he was not quite a real pony. Well… I suppose we are not, either. Not anymore.

Sombra implanted shards of umbra ponies into us. We could simply phase through cannonballs. We could drop into cities and become mist. Go intangible. I am not sure if I am the same… the same… the same… the same…”

It sure as hell sounded like there was a pony recording this from somewhere, but it was repeating “the same” in the exact same terrified tone as before.

“I know that we can’t rightly say we’re heroes. I know that my home has done terrible things in the War. But I’ve seen what they’re planning. I’ve seen experiments. Awful, awful things on these… things. I can’t… My authority doesn’t allow me to say so. Not just the authority Sombra gave me. That is meaningless here.”

There was a pause, and a quick, wheezy laugh.

“Believe me,” Gestalt said, “I don’t like it any more than you. I am sitting on information that could save earth in the coming month, and yet, our authority… the things they’ve done to us… are limited. My previous messages, earlier drafts, have been incomprehensible. Awful work. Awful writing. Hack writing, hack and slash, slash and stab, they can’t keep getting away with it, they bucking can’t, there’s things out there that’ll eat the Solar Empire for an appetizer! You have to… we don’t care who’s listening to us. But if you can hear me, even if you’re PER-”

And at this point, Gestalt’s voice softened into something female, with something vaguely resembling a low, Bostonian drawl that-

Kate?! Kraber wondered. “Kate?! Is that… who… how the fok…”

“Smash. The. Bucking. Teleport. Spikes,” Gestalt said in Kate’s voice. “I… There is one receiver out there that could give the real message. All I’m able to convey to you through the radio is the slush, a soup of words that I only hope has meaning. Imagine you are in a great, vast desert otherworld. Imagine that you are scattered in the desert, huddled in shelters and hidden in wreckage and what you have managed to take while fleeing a terrible, all-devouring light.

Imagine that there is a blinking light atop the mountain.

Imagine that the jury-rigged recievers you have are overloaded with static. Except the static is the pleas and begging of countless many, and my… our…. our message struggling to be heard above all others. Our message is full of information, but it leaves something to be desired for consistency.

You do not know what the message contains. The message does not allow you to know. The message is not allowed to know its contents.

There is a blinking light atop the… no, that is not quite right. There is a blinking light, a bright beacon in the empty forest.

It would be easy to say there’s wolves, but Kraber would say he doesn’t like the comparison. Some part of me agrees with him.”

“Okay, what the fok,” Kraber said. “What…” ‘How the fok did this fokkin thing know?! How could it speak for me?! What the fokmotherin fok was going on?! Something cold crept up his arms, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled. Though it was late summer, he felt like he’d been confined in one of the… special freezers in Defiance.

“So imagine it is guarded by monsters. Their favorite has left the pack and gone astray, they’ve all fallen to disarray. They’re scared. They’ll do stupid things. But they know they have a prize.

They guard it jealously. They know not what they have.

There is not a blinking light surrounded by mountains, in an empty forest.

The blinking light is a doorway barred shut and broken.

There is something behind the door.

There is something behind the door that only wants to help.

Behind the occupant is another door leading to a smiling goddess of great and terrible power. Behind her… something dark. An evil so dark it scorns all other evil. You have to make this terrible smiling goddess pay. Make. Her. Pay. Make her pay make her pay make her pay make her pay make her paaaaa”

The broadcast devolved into static, and squeals and pops that sounded unpleasantly like screaming. Suddenly, something else popped into existence on the static.

“...ispel some of the rumours that Solamina's drones have been spreading," the voice was saying. "Firstly: the HMS Dauntless is confirmed to have destroyed a Royal Guard transport attempting a covert landing at the beaches of Scarborough, much to Solamina's annoyance no doubt. Her attempt to rework the loss to be Resistance ponies is typical: just to reiterate, no Resistance refugees have been killed by Royal Navy forces since the Blue channels were set up, and that's a Pinkie promise."

“Cousin Tavi?” Fiddlesticks yelled. “What the hell is this?!”

The radio fell into static once more, before flaring out into more static.

“…Grey Ten - Dice Gods be with us…”

“…the Long Watch of Britannia have vehemently denied accusations that members of their organisation are responsible for the spate of pony murders that have occurred over the last five weeks. They insist that any HLF in their organisation are loyal members of the Watch and do not break their code, which prohibits illegal activity…”

“Get them back for me - and tell the Doctor, please?"

“What the hell are we hearing?” Kraber pondered aloud, as the static returned. “What the fok is a ‘long watch’?”

“Somebody takin’ notes?” Fiddlesticks asked.

“Yes,” Nny said. “Anybody know how to spell ‘Solamina’?”

“S-O-L-A-M-I-N-A,” Kraber said. “One ‘L’.”

“So… how do you know how to spell that?” Fiddlesticks asked.

“Good question. I have no fokkin’ idea.”

“...to go now. You're carrying all our hopes, remember that. And all our love. Keep fighting, and those of us still waiting will see you when you get here."

Everyone sat in silence.

Kraber looked around at everyone, and promptly headed over to the stall to get a beer.

“Well,” Heliotrope said. “That’s… unpleasant. Wonder if I know her?”

“How long have you fokkin been there?!” Kraber gasped.

“Awhile,” Heliotrope shrugged. She looked somewhat weatherbeaten, and was panting heavily.

“Heliotrope? Are you okay?” Yael asked. “You look kind of rough…”

“I’m fine,” she said. “But…. I was following that truck for awhile. And something weird is happening.”

“Something weird is always happening,” Kraber muttered.

“He’s got you there,” Aegis said.

“That’s… not the point,” Heliotrope said. “The HLF said they’d found some way to predict PER. That there was some…” one foreleg scratched behind her ear… “Some of them called it a Hotline, some of them called it an angel.”

Kraber burst into laughter.

“Francis,” Aegis sighed, disapprovingly.

“What?” Kraber asked. “That sounds really sill-”

He saw the look on Heliotrope’s face. Clearly, she wasn’t happy hearing that from him.

“...Sorry,” he said.

“You have to admit that the HLF having something like that sounds crazy, though,” Fiddlesticks said.

“More than what I just heard?” Heliotrope asked. “They didn’t exactly… well, succeed. But they seemed to have faith in it.”

“You think HLF could predict this? Thoughts on this, Mr. Ex-HLF man?” Yael asked. “Francis?”

“Beats the fok ootae me,” Kraber shrugged. “Bit that kak’d better fokkin’ stay as far oot the hands ae Lovikov as fokkin possible.”

“Oh, definitely,” Nny agreed. “Cousin Yael, you gotta tell me we end up shooting that guy.”

“Viktor Kraber is around, the HLF have no idea where he is,” Heliotrope said, “And you want Lovikov dead.”

“Call it a promise to a friend,” Fiddlesticks said. “Besides, Kraber’s not the one that burned an effigy of a horse on my lawn.”

Actually, Kraber had done that before. But he couldn’t specifically remember which lawn, and trying to specify at the moment would probably get him killed. So no.

“Trust me when I say that around here, there is literally nobody that likes Lovikov,” Johnny C said. “And this was before Portland. He keeps his camp on the move, he disguises it so people can’t see it from the air, and he sent assassins to kill me and Fiddlesticks once. Lovikov is the man who always means ‘Why wasn’t it me?’ when he asks why he didn’t recieve a gift.”

“Wait, really?” Sixstring asked. “Assassins?”

“Eh, they’re dead now,” Fiddlesticks shrugged. “What can ya do.”

“Hold on,” Heliotrope said. “One of us is ex-HLF. What does Francis think they’d do if, hypothetically speaking, they had something that could predict PER?”

“I really don’t want to know. Honestly…. probably more protection rackets. A lot of collateral damage. PHL and refugees dying…” Kraber looked over at Aegis and his foals. “And I’m not fokkin letting that happen,” Kraber said, surprised at the conviction in his voice. And when it came down, it was what he wanted, wasn’t it? “I’m tired of good ponies getting hurt by a bunch of scared bawbags. Aegis and his foals, Heliotrope, Sixstring, Fiddlesticks? They don’t like the war anymore than I do.”

“Nope,” Fiddlesticks said.

“Good answer,” Yael said, smiling at him.

With that in mind, Kraber decided to just lie back and listen to the song playing overhead.

“Finally looked outside today
Aware of all these things astray
Counted down, 5, 3, 2…
Walked outside anyway
It’s still there, never goes away
Just changes form with the thoughts I say
I’m trying to wallow in the hope of what can be
Not what’s been taken away”

Well, wasn’t that a good song for today. Cause from now on, Kraber… nah, fok that bawbag, he was going to be Francis from now on. He was going to be a better person, maybe even a hero.

He was going to be someone good.

---

Night, White River Junction

Yael and Heliotrope sat in some quarters just above a warehouse the PHL had repurposed.

“Tired?” Reclaimed Beauty asked, trotting up to Yael as she lay spread-eagled on a long bed, head buried in a large set of pillows. Meanwhile, Heliotrope was fluttering over a desk, puzzling over the device Tia had dropped.

“Depends who you’re asking,” Yael asked. It was weird, she thought, though she realized she had come to this conclusion so many times that it had almost lost meaning. She almost looks like one of cousin Ben’s horses.

An assortment of young dogs followed the coffee-brown mare.

Heliotrope just sighed, her wingbeats decreasing in frequency until she simply found herself sitting Lyra-style in the chair. One of the dogs, a male with ears that flopped into a triangular shape who looked to have a little German shepherd and a little of some spitz breed walked up towards Heliotrope.

She cast down one of her wings and ran the feathers along the dog’s back. His tongue hung down between his two front canines. He looked happy. Carefree. Heliotrope envied that.

“Going to go with yes,” Reclaimed Beauty said. “Something on your mind?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Yael said.

“You don’t know what’s on your mind?” Reclaimed Beauty asked.

“She doesn’t know what to focus on,” Heliotrope explained. “...I don’t either.”

“So much of the past 72 hours makes no goddamn sense whatsoever,” Yael grumbled. “Goddamn it. Where’s Roasted Blend’s shitty coffee?”

“Whoa,” Reclaimed Beauty said, mock-aghast. “Whoa whoa. Hold the phone, and the mayo. You actually want Roasty’s coffee.”

“I know,” Yael said, making a face that would’ve been a smirk if not for the fact that she was clearly so tired. “Clearly we are dealing with a terrible situation.”

“Clearly,” Reclaimed Beauty said, returning a less tired smirk. “What’s so terrible?”

“Like I said, so much of the past 72 hours makes no sense,” Yael said. “Kraber disappearing. Gestalt. The PER…. what you heard-”

“You don’t believe me,” Heliotrope interrupted.

“I believe you told me what you heard,” Yael said. “Believing the HLF could predict things like that is not the same thing. Besides, we haven’t seen any actual proof that they can do it.”

“What happened, anyway?” Reclaimed Beauty asked. “What’s this I’m hearing, anyway?”

“After that crazy Scotsman beat up the PER woman that got us this haul,” Heliotrope said, “Some HLF came in. Yael asked me to follow them, and they said... some nonsense about being able to predict PER.“

“So why’s it bothering you two if you think it’s nonsense?” Reclaimed Beauty asked.

“They were so… I don’t know. Certain,” Heliotrope said.

“Honestly, I’ll believe it if I see it,” Yael said. “But, well, I’m not here for that. I’m here because, putting it simply, fuck the HLF.”

Reclaimed Beauty qualied a little. Yael… was not, by any stretch of the word, foulmouthed.

“Fuck Kraber. Fuck them for Portland. Fuck Defiance. Fuck them for using women and children and wounded as shields to provoke us, attacking us when we were talking them down, then calling foul when we do exactly what they provoked us into doing.”

“You don’t mean…” Reclaimed Beauty said.

“I didn’t. But they had child soldiers at the front, one of them shot us, and…” Yael shook her head, making a concerted and valiant effort not to spill tears. If she had any left. “It was a clusterfuck. Let’s leave it at that. Fuck American militia thought. Fuck this thought process that militia… no, idiots that think happiness is a warm gun. Fuck the motherfuckers over my bended knee right into their breaking spine, before they can fuck us, because they comfortably can, have, and will. Fuck them for how they are going to fuck us during Barrierfall,” Yael said finally. “People in America don’t believe me. But they haven’t seen what HLF will do, how they’ll clamp your genitals in a vise when barrierfall hits.”

“Sometimes literally,” Reclaimed Beauty said, and winced. “Seriously. Fuck Velichkov.”

She’d been in Spain.

“Well,” Heliotrope said, fluttering upwards and looking down at the two of them. “That illustrates the diversity of the word.”

“Reminds me of something,” Reclaimed Beauty said. “We’re doing a screening downstairs. Want to come?”

“Nah,” Heliotrope said, picking up a tool that looked like a set of needlenose pliers tipped with crystal straight from the Crystal Empire. “Too much to do.”

“C’mon, Heliotrope,” Yael said. “Tomorrow, there’s HLF-busting to d-”

“Hello?” something asked.

The voice was coming from the device. It was unmistakably Gestalt’s weird, distorted, androgynous warble.

“What?” Reclaimed Beauty asked.

“Guess I have more work on my hooves,” Heliotrope said, her flight patterns shaky. “You two… go watch the movie.”

“You kidding? Whatever this thing is?” Reclaimed Beauty asked. “Not missing this for the world.”

---

That night, while every pony in the house slept, Viktor Kraber headed out into the woods with a large sack of PHL tech, and a teak box about as big as a coffin. He’d kept the most concealable bits for himself, namely Sylvia’s ACR and its grenades.

Not so much for the armor, PHL hand grenades he’d kept on a belt, and the MG2019. That was Kraber stuff. He wouldn’t need it till something forced him to be Kraber again, perhaps during barrierfall. And by then, with everybody panicking, they’d have no choice but to accept it.

But who would want to know someone like Kraber? Nah, ivray punter liked Francis.

The woods out here were thick. Enough that he could barely see the stars through the leaves. Before the War, before years of misadventures, of fighting newfoals and Celestial Shock Troops in the desert with a stolen STG44, before hiding in forests like an animal, he would have been completely out of his element. But by now? It didn’t matter.

He squinted through the darkness, trying to look for a landmark, then flicked on his phone’s flashlight function. Hmmmm…

There was a tree just ahead of him so covered in burls that it took him a few seconds to realize it was a tree, not a weird rockpile. That would, that would do. So, taking out a knife, Kraber scratched a Star of David into one burl. Then, turning on the phone’s compass and heading directly north of the burl, he walked forward 7 meters to the base of a birch tree.

He took out a shovel. The one that he’d ‘borrowed’ from one of Aegis’ neighbors had a serrated edge in case of newfoals, which he found vaguely funny as he broke ground.

He pressed down on the shovel, the force of his legs driving the blade into the forest floor, below layers of dead leaves and little shoots of plants.

There was something refreshing about this act of simple labor, digging this grave. Plunge and bring out the blade, the dirt behind him.

He’d dug graves plenty of times before, one time after breaking a man’s arms and legs and unceremoniously throwing them into the hole. He hoped they’d been PER. But then, by now he hoped everyone he’d beaten up at least half as bad as Sylvia had been PER. He’d…

There’d been a blue pegasus once, hadn’t there? There was a dam breaking somewhere, it was hard to recall. Kraber had put a bullet through each appendage save for one wing, and left him in a room soon to flood. He’d been crying for somepony named Snowshoes… he’d been PHL, almost certainly.

For a moment, Kraber saw that pegasus staring up at him from the grave, its glare burning into him. But he was used to these things by now. So, ignoring the drowned, purple, bloated dead pony under him, ignoring the squelch of water under his boots, he kept digging.

Was it just him, or did the dirt seem a bit muddier as his shovel cast it out of the hole?

Finally, after having managed to dig down about six feet, he climbed out, then, as best he could, lowered the box into the hole. He’d filled it with his grenades, his unloaded fostech, and what few .338 Lapua Magnum HEIAP rounds he had left, and this small arsenal would stay in the box until he needed it most. Then he lowered the sack, full of his armor, into the hole. It was plastic-lined, so it’d probably be safe until barrierfall.

He’d considered marking a board, a little dramatic touch, possibly marked with a downward-pointing finger like he’d seen in Whitefield once, but he nixed that idea. Nah. What would he say? ‘Full Fathom… one… Peter and Anka’s father lies, of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade,?”

Nah. That didn’t make any sense. Or even ‘Here lies Viktor Kraber. Good fokking riddance.’ It was tempting, it really was, he knew there were people out there that’d actively celebrate his death. But that’d lead people to the weaponry, which would probably lead people back to him. Best to keep it simple.

And, with this stash made, marked with context only he would comprehend, he had buried himself. There was little left of Kraber, save for a few remnants of his… no, Francis’ family.

He could see them now. Peter and Anka Anna and Patrick, still married to an American named Kate, still having bought the same stuffed animals.

Kraber was a failure, the worst person he knew. But Francis could be, would be, had to be better. Though it wouldn’t be hard. Francis was a good person, after all.

With that task done, and Viktor Kraber dead and buried, Viktor Kraber Francis Strang headed off towards his new home for some rest.

Francis awoke the morning after, a new man.

Author's Note:

Ah. 29k word chapter... gone! The interview here is actually pulled from an upcoming chapter. I was gonna make one spur of the moment, but going behind the backs of your friends and making a Secret Thing isn't the spectrum spirit. So, I'm leaving that for Jed or Rhys to help with, and splitting this in half for your reading pleasure. And if you think this is huge, just remember: The first chapter update for this was 40k words.

So compared to that, almost anything I do is small.

Comments

[neutralParadox]

Glad to see this story updated. Also good to see you enjoyed Deadpool. Another good pair of chapters, although when will we finally see Ae? Or at least find out how to say aer name?

[Doctor Fluffy]

7009008 Well... technically, we won't see aer for awhile. And yes, Deadpool was bitchin good! As for how to pronounce aer preferred pronouns... I have absolutely no idea. I'll just tell you this, though - the New Researcher just chose those pronouns because finding a specific gender was too much work.

[Sunken EldritchSpires]

Huzzah for Nightvale references!

[Doctor Fluffy]

7102925 Which one, the one in that chapter or... Cause I'm pretty sure there's a lot in this story.

[LeoneHaxor]

Y'know...Victory and Kraber's relationship, by this latest chapter, is starting to remind me of the relationship between Lasciel's shadow and Harry Dresden.

[Doctor Fluffy]

7306881 ...I fuckin' love the Dresden Files! But, surprisingly (considering I have referenced pretty much everything) that wasn't intentional. You may or may not have given me some ideas.
Though I should also point out, none of those ideas will have me give Kraber supernatural powers. His character in the spectrumverse (He's appeared in at least two other universes, go check out The Avatar of Albion by Jed R, and Albion, which is The Avatar Of Albion's high-budget remake. Jed's word, not mine) works better to me if he has no special powers, just rage, insanity, and an absurdly high pain threshold. It'd be like making Ollanius Pius from Warhammer 40k an immortal as opposed to just a normal guardsman who stood in the way of an angry god just because he knew it was his duty. ...Yes, I know "Ollanius Pius is an immortal" is canon, but it's just not what I want to do. I've had plenty of praise from Jed and my friend Vox (who, fun fact, considers Kraber irredeemable but still enjoys him, make of that what you will) for the fact that Kraber's an everyman, so I'm gonna keep with that.

[LeoneHaxor]

7307122 Trust me, I'm quite familiar with Jed R's works. It's why I was temporarily reduced to a giggling mess when he liked my own foray into TCB stories.

Also, I absolutely love how Kraber is. He's got one of the greatest tragic backstories I have ever seen, he's an utterly bosbefok badass, and I feel almost a bit of kinship with the character. It might have something to do with me doing the math on Kraber's birth year (2014 minus 18 years equals 1996) and realizing 'Jesus Rollerblading Christ, I share a birth year with the guy,' or the fact that once the podcast was referenced I decided to find 'Welcome to Night Vale' through the Podcasts app.

My iPod's squealing under the digital weight of each episode and live show recording, as well as each episode of Alice isn't Dead and the looming data that will be Within the Wires. Suffice it to say, I know the man's got great taste in radio drama.

[Mr cold ghost]

Blinking light on a a mountain hmm... a night vale reference? Also I am finding loving the avatar of Albion references here.