Wow, we sure had a lot of name drops in the last chapter, didn't we? Queen May XII, Warreington, Radio Free Mareseyside, Tribute, Liverpole, Showffield, Comet... It's almost like the cosmic level designer had way too many ideas and is now realising that there isn't enough time in my short little story to fit them in, so now you get them all dumped on you at the same time, and then ten or twenty thousand words from now I can point back here and go "hah! Foreshadowing! See?"

To describe Showffield in a word, it would be shitty. The smoke from the industry blacked out the sky into permanent night, so the lighting was shitty. It filled the air with irritant particles, so the air was shitty. I ended up cutting a strip off one foreleg of my jumpsuit to make a mask, so now my jumpsuit was shitty too. (Shooting Stars used her blanket, and Full House had an actual scarf. Stupid prepared bastards.) We passed a lot of what used to be golf clubs and parks, so our cover was shitty. Comet's trail went cold as soon as we hit roads, so Stars' mood was shitty. And don't get me started on the ponies there.

The megaspells sure did a number on this place, because I don't remember passing a single intact building on our way in. The streets were criss-crossed with shoddy edifices built from scrap, but nothing currently inhabited, until we got to the wall. It figures that a slaver town would build a great big fucking wall to stop their slaves getting away. It was, however, just as shitty as everything else. I went up to one of the panels and wedged a hoof behind the corner. It came away with next to no effort, and soon broke off completely, it was so rusty. I pulled out my gun. House came over and pushed it down before I could pump it.

Stars frowned and tilted her head. "I still don't get what's with you and that toy."

"The darts explode. Watch!" I went to try again, and House grabbed the gun off me.

"Not now! You'll give us away!"

"Sheesh, fine." I snatched it back off him and holstered it. "Maybe you guys are learning something about subterfuge."

Stars came over to the bit of the wall I peeled off and peeked inside. She looked around for a second, then backed off. "Alright. Don't go anywhere..." She lowered her head, and then looked like she was constipated. Look, I know everything here is shitty, but do you really need to add to it? Before I could articulate that quip, stuff happened. A disorienting flash of light filled my eyes, and then I was somewhere else. The direction and colour of light had changed - instead of dim white daylight from around the edges of the smoke, there was a dim orange ambient glow. We were behind some barrels in an alley between two shitty shacks. House looked just as stunned as I was, but Stars was already surveying the scene.

I found the hole in the outer wall - the one fleck of white in the otherwise omnipresent dystopia brown. I clicked then that Stars had teleported us through the wall. "Hey, why did you make us hike when you could ha-" House jumped on me to muffle my shouting. Stars ducked. Plodding, menacing thumps rose from the industrial din in the background. They stopped, and something sniffed the air.

"Wossat?" Whatever it was, it had a voice like a truck engine. It was about as smart as one too, since it just walked away after a couple of seconds of drooling vacantly.

House let me go. Stars peeked around the side of the barrels again. When she was satisfied that it had gone, she turned back to me. "It would have exhausted me. The energy required for a teleportation spell is a function of distance and familia-"

"Yeah, okay, I get it, you suck. Good answer." She thumped me in the ribs and went back to checking out the scene.

It didn't sound like anyone else was coming, so we darted to the next cover, a wedge of railings and upturned concrete by the edge of the crater. Oh, did I miss the crater? Well actually I'm only just getting to the crater now. At the middle of the road, the ground just stopped, and beyond was sheer drop. I don't know if it was made by balefire or just excavated after the war (probably started by the former and finished by the latter), but the centre of town was entirely within the crater. The rim still had streets, the remains of buildings, and scrap to bridge gaps, and was being patrolled by what might as well have been tanks on two legs. They drooled, they had paired, curved horns on their heads, and they all carried pole implements big enough to comfortably play golf with an entire pony. Minotaurs, House said. He saw me reaching for my gun and stopped me before I even touched it.

In the crater was the entire industry of Showffield. Fragile-looking catwalks perched over bubbling vats of molten metal, casting a glow all the way up and all the way down. Entire buildings had been taken, probably from all over the city, and either dropped wholesale or reassembled brick by brick in the hole. Metallic impacts and mechanical roars echoed from the crater. It hurt to look over the edge, since all of the fumes were concentrated into a single column. Between the heat and the smoke, it was impossible to judge how far down it went, and even made judging the width a tough task - I couldn't properly see the other side, so ballparking from the curvature of the rim, I'd say the pit occupied the entirety of the former city centre.

"So. Plan?" The improvised mask concealed my glee at not being the one that blundered in underprepared.

Stars thought for a second, then turned to me. "You've got the goggles and keep bragging about how good at infiltration you are, why don't you go first?" I slumped. I wasn't sure how to feel about this. "If you get caught out, just glide over a crucible and the updraft should carry you all the way to the top. Even if you do suck at flying." I could tell she had a shit-eating smug grin under that mask. I wanted to blow her face off there and then, but I was close enough that I'd probably blow my own face off too.

I sighed, stashed my glasses, and pulled the goggles off my forehead. "Fine, I have to do everything myself..."

While the back of the nearest minotaur was turned, I dashed for the next alleyway and started checking doors. The first one was an ashy mess of a corner shop with skeletons scattered around. I found some packaged food, but in this place, I didn't trust it. While I was inside, the same minotaur had gone back across the alley, allowing me to skip across a makeshift bridge to the next one. I nearly slipped crossing it. Trust these guys to somehow make a steel mill less safe.

This alley was largely blocked up with rubble, so I climbed up it to crawl through a smashed first-floor window. I was in a stained bathroom. A skeleton was lying next to the toilet. What a way to go - on the can when the megaspells fell. He must have been taking one hell of a shit. I went downstairs. The floor was mostly caved in, with rotted planks and ruined furniture dumped on the basement. There were shelves full of non-perishables and other supplies. The back wall had been eroded off, by time or labour, and I had a clear view through to the smoke and crucibles. I dropped in to the worst balefire shelter ever and tested the flashlight. Still worked perfectly. I pocketed it and the spare batteries, and poked my head through the back wall. Storm drains and sewers criss-crossed the rock face, providing a framework to hang these ridiculously unstable catwalks from. I suspected they doubled as quarters for the slaves. There was a platform just below the non-wall that looked simple enough to drop down to. I turned back and flew upstairs.

Whoa, did I just fly? It wasn't very far, and I had some rubble to climb on to help me, but holy shit, I flew. Chuffed at my unintentional accomplishment, I went to a bedroom window and looked out. House and Stars were still hiding behind the same wrecked street utilities. I got the torch out and shone it directly at them. House must have seen it first, because he pointed, and then they started moving when the minotaur's back was turned. I returned to the bathroom to wait for them. They both looked queasy climbing over the toilet. I was just like, big deal, it's a dead guy and his hundred-year-old dump that's long since decayed into nothing.

We went downstairs to the missing wall, and one by one, dropped to the level below. At this edge, it was so dark that I didn't worry about the possibility of being seen. A foreman was silhouetted against orange-lit smoke about fifty feet down a catwalk. He looked like a pony with breathing apparatus, but it might have just been an equiomorphic gas mask. The noise was enough here that we could talk at a conversational volume and barely hear each other. We moved along the rim to a junction between some primary drains, cut open by the crater. The drains themselves were caved in, and had some supplies stashed in the short length there was. Some guns, some ammunition, a few bottles of what might as well have been used fryer oil, and some baton-looking things that strapped to the hoof. I pocketed one out of curiosity. Stars was too far into her tunnel vision to lecture me about theft and crap.

We lay down in a gutter to minimise our profile and talk tactics.

"Now what?"

"I think I'll see if these guys have any cigarettes."

"Seriously, House? You want to smoke here of all places?"

"It's probably less toxic than whatever else is in the air."

"This is true."

Stars hit the ground with her forehead. "We're getting distracted."

"Alright, alright." I did that thing where you stare into space or look out the corner of your eye when you're thinking. Why do ponies do that? It's weird. "If I was a Speed Radiator in a steel mill..."

Stars sighed. "Steel Ranger..."

"Stars, don't be ridiculous, this is obviously a steel mill. Now where was I... Dammit, you've gone and derailed my train of thought. Good job. Now I'm thinking about wasteland economics." She slumped her head on her forelegs. "It's a valid question! How is an operation like this supposed to be profitable? Slaves don't need wages but they still need feeding, and then you have the capital investment of capturing them in the first place, and while you can recoup some of the losses from selling anything you find on them, they still have to provide a return on investment through labour. Then there's the fact that you can't use exclusively slaves, and presumably the foremen and guards and management have to be paid. And then there's the fact that you need a market for your product. I mean, I could be wrong, because I've only been up here for two days, but I don't think there's much of a market in the wasteland for raw steel. Unless that's where all this power armour is coming from. Say, are you Stone Radishes customers of these guys?"

Stars glared at me, then gagged me with my mask.

"More important to ask would be what would they do with a Steel Ranger," House said. "If you guys are the knights in shining armour you say you are around here, if they caught one of you they might have it in for you."

"That's what I'm afraid of..." I could hear the shake in her voice. "Come on. Let's find a way to go deeper." I'd just finished pulling cloth out of my mouth when she stuffed it back in. I must be getting predictable.

We didn't see a way down from our side of this level. There was probably some way down on the other side of this catwalk, but House and Stars didn't want to risk raising an alarm by dealing with the foreman. I didn't want to risk losing a dart in molten steel, so I agreed with them. After a couple of minutes of useless searching (House didn't find any cigarettes either), the foreman started walking towards us. We hid. I took aim, House took a prone version of his stance, and Stars... y'know, preparing to do magic doesn't look very interesting. I can only guess that's what she does, because there were a load of guns around she could have picked up, but no, she just sat in cover and squinted at the guy. Anyway, the foreman stopped next to the edge looked over the side. We waited. Stars pulled my hoof away from the trigger. Twice.

A cable pulled taut, bringing it into our view. The shimmer of heat made it impossible to tell what way it was moving, if at all. A hook came into view from the end of the cable, followed by four other cables, branching out in all directions. Then there was a large heap of shiny blocks, reflecting the orange glare of the crucibles below. The movement shuddered, and the steel ingots lowered a foot. The foreman jumped back in alarm when it tilted towards him. Two blocks fell off and rattled on the catwalk. The platform stabilised, and continued rising. The foreman kicked the ingots off the catwalk, and presumably on to the heads of the poor bastards who let it slip. There's another thing for the economics of the operation to consider! Counter-productive brutality! Those slaves are just going to end up dropping that platform, the job doesn't get done, and then they'll probably all get whipped until they can't work for the rest of the day.

The ingots must have missed, because they didn't drop it, the foreman went back to his station in the middle of the catwalk, and the platform came back into view a minute later, sans ingots. I broke cover and jumped on it, and reluctantly, the others followed. With the extra weight, it started dropping more quickly. Stars threw the spare length of her blanket over me.

"Oh... oh, I didn't know you felt like that about me..."

"I'm trying to hide your great big orange ass, you idiot, now get your head down."

"Did you just call me fat? You just called me fat! What the hell, Stars?"

She sat on her haunches and looked up at the sky. "Sun and moon give me the strength to refrain from casting this wretch into the fiery pit here and now..."

"What was that you called me there? Hey!" Before I could badger her further, House shoved himself between us.

We rode the lift most of the way down. The air didn't really change in quality. Even if we were below some of the more noxious crucibles and furnaces, we were further from (comparatively) fresh air. To make things worse, the deeper we went, the hotter it got. I was already sweating profusely, and House was probably baking in that long coat. The maze of gangways, platforms, suspension lines and catwalks only got more convoluted with depth. Occasionally a blue crackle would cut through the orange haze, inevitably followed by a scream. A volt whip, House said. They use them in Fillydelphia too. One of them was followed by a particularly guttural howl, and a metallic snap. A bleeding pony fell past us, limbs waving limply. I couldn't even tell if it was a mare or stallion before it simply wasn't - there was a wet slap and a shriek when it hit molten steel. The body burned away in seconds. Stars had to step back on the plate and cover her mouth. Maybe I overestimated the price of slaves? They seem pretty replaceable.

We held on until we could see the bottom and disembarked on the layer above, in an old sewer maintenance room sliced open by the crater. Stars jumped off first and ran into a corner. House ran after her, and I peered around out of curiosity. She heaved a few times, then yanked the cloth off her face and ejected her breakfast. House looked away, then at me, and waved a hoof at me with a glare. Maybe he was telling me to keep watch. Fuck that, this is way more interesting. Stars panted a couple more times before wiping her face and pulling the cloth back. House gave her some water, which she gulped down with gusto. She sat for minute while she recovered. "I do not want to stay here any longer than I have to," she said, shaking her head, and she got up.

We got lucky with the timing. We retreated down a low tunnel, shoddily carved out of the original sewer, and on behind some piles of steel. A few seconds later, a guard passed where we were, and stood where we disembarked, overlooking the loading of the next platform. It's possible some of the slaves saw us and just didn't care. We moved on quickly.

The lowest level opened out, with a lot of (probably unsound) overhang. There were much wider tunnels, probably excavated by slave labour. Torches lit part of the way, and then they just stopped. A cart full of coal sat at the mouths of each of these caves. The tracks continued to the floor of the pit, leading to a maze of ramps and winches and miserable malnourished ponies, but they never went into the caves. There was a skip nearby. A guard dragged a limp slave to it, then lifted him on her shoulders and tossed him in. There was a dull thump, but no pound of empty metal. I guessed there more bodies in there.

A group of slaves started heading our way. We hid behind the cart first, then realisation dawned that they were probably looking for the cart, so we ran for the cave. Stars led, horn lit and pointed to the ground. We hurried past the limit of the torches, and then slowed up. The whirrs and clanks of heavy industry reduced to echoes. Stars yelped as she hit a wall. She brightened her light, and we found that the cave turned. She hit me when I chuckled. Anger issues, girl!

We lost sight of the central pit, and stopped running. I took out the flashlight and started pointing it at stuff.

"The heck is this for?" House panted in a particularly accented moment.

"It looks like a mine... there's no tracks though. Maybe they just have ponies carry the coal..." I could hear the whimper in Stars' voice.

While they stated the obvious at each other for a few minutes, I strayed further into the probably-mine. I wasn't sure where I was going with it, but it was better than listening to the pair of them. I stopped when I heard something that wasn't annoying companions. I flicked the torch around, looking for it. It sounded like dull padding in a rapid rhythm. It was getting louder, so I stepped back and to the side. I turned the torch off and stashed it. Then I got a whiff of... was that wet dog?

The padding reached a crescendo, and I saw Stars' light glint in the eyes of something. Before I could react it had skidded past me, stopped and then turned back to direct its attention at me. Yep, this was definitely the source of the smell. I backed up to the wall, and it started sniffing me profusely. A wet nose got uncomfortably close to my chest and face. Then, it licked me. It was absolutely gross. Could have been wetter, but still smelled absolutely vile. The others must have heard this, because the light got brighter. When it hit the right angle, it lit up a pair of big blue eyes, looking right at me. They blinked. I realised that the rest of this thing was black, because I still couldn't pick out an outline. I caught a twitch somewhere above and behind the eyes - an ear perhaps? It was big and pointy, and it kept flicking between sideways and upright. I smacked myself when I put the pieces together.

"Oh hello!" I reached out and rubbed its nose. It blinked, and I could hear something brushing the dirt. "You are just adorable! Who are you?"

"Snowy!" I jumped when he spoke.

"You can talk?"

"Yeah-yeah! All the coal puppies can talks. Snowy real good at talking!"

"Yes you are! Yes you are!" I scratched him under the chin. His tongue hung out, and I heard thumping, which I can only guess was his leg hitting the ground repeatedly.

"Coal puppies?" Stars tilted her head.

"Maybe related to hellhounds? I don't know. Did you have diamond dogs here before the war?"

"I don't think so..." While they continued to debate the obvious, Snowy rolled over, and I started scratching his belly. He was easily big enough for me to use both hooves with loads of room.

"Snowy don't know. One day ponies dig hole. Then we make deal! Coal puppies dig lotsa coal, and give it to the ponies, and the ponies give us food!" That explains it! That's quite ingenious actually, one half of the slave's capture cost is recouped from sale of possessions, then the other is made up for in feeding contract workers.

I pouted and thought. Then I hopped up on Snowy's belly and started scratching under his chin again. "Say. Might Snowy have seen a pony in big metal armour somewhere around?"

He rolled back on to his front, throwing me across the cave. I threw out my wings in time to land mostly upright. "Yeah-yeah! Snowy see tin can pony come into caves. He no look too good. Then other ponies find him and bring him back, so it okay!" Stars stifled a squeal by throwing her hooves to her mouth. "They go upstairs to boss pony's house. Snowy no go up there because it bright and hot."

Stars huffed and heaved, but not like she was about to blow chunks. More the kind of, dripping absolute white-hot fury kind of heaving. "Snowy. Thank you."

"It Snowy's pleasure!" The big goofy mutt tilted his head, and I went back to rub his chest. It was so incredibly fluffy, like, right up there with clouds kind of fluffy. He made a happy noise and wagged his tail some more. A faint ringing echoed from the cave mouth. The ringing quickly spread, coming from points at regular intervals on the ceiling of the caves. There must have been bells on a chain, too dark to see. Snowy's face lit up. "Din-dins!" I took that as my cue to get out of the way before he bounded past us. House was less lucky, and he got bowled over. He was no worse for wear though. He cursed under his breath as he replaced his hat. I heard rumbling in the distance. Stars was already making a beeline for the cave mouth. House and I hurried after her, before we became din-dins too.

Now, see, this is what I mean about high-and-mighty types like Steel Rangers being too dumb for their own good. Stars just walked out of the cave and started looking for a way up without even attempting to be discreet. Since cover was just out of the question at this point, we tagged along with her. A pile of black and mottled grey fur was falling over itself at the skip. One of the carts of coal was just starting its gruelling ascent to the furnaces. Stars marched right up to one of the hapless slaves and hoisted her up by the collar. She barked something at her, and she pointed a quivering hoof upwards. A guard was heading for them. House reared up and flung a card at him in the same motion. He had another one sailing by the time the first one was embedded in the side of his head. The second one slashed his visor, and probably his eyes. Stars let the slave down gently.

She flashed her horn, popped out of existence, and reappeared on the far side of the cart. I looked at House, we shrugged, and vaulted it to follow her up the tracks. They spiralled in a sadistically steep fashion. I was wearing myself out just walking up them, and those poor bastards have to push a coal cart up here. They levelled out on a platform adjoining a drain with furnaces rebuilt inside. A guard spotted her. She'd levitated the volt whip from him as soon as he faced her, and had him on the floor with two smacks around the head with the handle. The string of crackling blue vanished. Unicorns OP, holy shit.

With the same stamina she'd walked the hills with, she was ascending staircases and ladders so fast that we lost sight of her. We climbed two more levels, on the first one finding two unconscious guards and lots of trembling slaves, and on the second... well. There was a prefab building set in the rock face above us, and from the outer wall there hung a pair of broken chains. Immediately below were the other halves of the chains, attached to shackles on a travesty of a pony. You could barely tell that he was originally white. His face and silver fringe were smeared brown, the darkest around the remains of his broken horn. He was smeared with black dust and splatters of red, fresh blood dribbling from his mouth and dried in many other places. Fur had fallen off some places, leaving weeping sores. His front was greyed from exposure to the smoke, and his forelegs hung behind him at a clearly incorrect angle, like they were only hanging on with sticky tape. Shooting Stars was standing over him, propping up his head.

"Comet! Comet, say something!" I moved closer. House stood behind me.

"Stars... I knew you'd come..." It was like thinking you could hear words from a rolling bucket of gravel. Stars sniffed and lowered her head, touching foreheads with him. She waved her horn at nothing. She had a grimace from ear to ear.

"We're gonna get you out of here, okay? You're gonna be okay, just hang in there!"

Comet attempted a chuckle. His teeth were bloodied, and it came out as more of a cough. "I think I've done enough hanging for one day." I can tell who got all the sense of humour genes in this family.

"No! Stay with me!" Stars dragged me over by the bags and took my last water. Bitch.

"Don't. Water is for the living." Stars growled, and shoved the bottle at his lips anyway. When she took it away, he coughed and spluttered, and most of it came right back out, stained red. "Stars..."

"Just drink!"

"Listen." She gave a long, wet sniff. "Forgive these souls. They know no better." Comet coughed. Stars might have said something else, but she trailed off. She held his head close and did the forehead-touch-not-quite-cross-horns thing again. Comet smiled, then his head rolled back, and he breathed no more.

"How is he?" House whispered back to me.

"Doing the fucking can-can, what do you think?" He rolled his eyes and resumed his watch. I was amazed we hadn't been bothered yet.

Heavy breathing drew my attention back to Stars. Her whole stance heaved. I lowered my head to try and see her face. She must have seen me out of the corner of her eye, because her head snapped up at me. Her horn sparked and crackled. I reached for my gun with a brow raised in query.

She nodded.

Level up! Fucking really? Way to break the mood, story New perk: Dog Lover

Canine wild animals will not attack you. Occasionally, objects you throw will be returned by one.