I walked up the steps wearily, the thought of getting punted out of a window again muttering to me in the back of my head. Lifting my PipBuck to my face, I eyed my EFS. Two people inside.

After doing a double take over both my shoulders, I brought a hoof to the door and knocked twice, steeling myself for a buck to the face or a gun to my mouth. But neither of those came. I checked the piece of paper and glanced down the block of ramshackle homes.

Each house was a ruined hand-me-down from the past, their breached ceilings and crumbling walls patched up with metal plates or nailed shut with planks of warped wood. There wasn’t a splotch of color anywhere – just like the rest of the city. And the wasteland.

On my way there, I nearly lost myself in that lonely maze of dilapidated dwellings. There, the sounds indicative of life were drowned out by the wind, moaning through the gnarled steelworks that rose up above me. Something was suffocating the liveliness of that place, and I just couldn’t put a hoof on it.

I had seen it in the marketplace – the fear in everyone’s eyes when a certain word was said or a certain name was mentioned. There, in that quiet neighborhood, it was everywhere.

I pressed my ear against the door, my face darkening as the light bulb that hung above it flickered and died for a moment. I heard something. Cocking my head, I peered into the lacerated glass of the eyehole just above my muzzle.

“Oh shit …” I heard someone whisper.

I pursed my lips and knocked again.

Hooves clopped against the door on the other side and a mare squeaked, “H-hello?”

“Hi, I’m looking for …” I glanced at the note I held in my hoof. “Daintybelle? Are you Daintybelle?”

There was a long pause. “Y-yes, yes that’s me. What do you want?” the mare asked in a trembling voice.

I cocked an eyebrow as I spoke.

“I need to talk to you,” I said, tucking the note into my chest pocket.

Another anxiety ridden pause. “Right now,” I added with a sigh.

Hooves scrambled behind the door, and a second later, it creaked open, and two terrified eyes stared back at me.

“Who’s that?” I heard a stallion shout from the other end of the house. The mare glanced over her shoulder, closing the door slightly.

“N-nopony important, dear!” She gulped, muttering, “I hope …” Daintybelle poked her muzzle out the door, her eyes darting back and forth as she checked and double-checked that I was alone.

I looked over my shoulder absent-mindedly and saw nobody. She caught sight of the pistol holstered around my chest, biting her lower lip.

The mare gave me a sheepish once over as a heavy breeze blew our way, my black peacoat and DD’s scarf flapping in the wind. “W-why are you here? D-did I do something wrong?” she stammered.

“I just need to ask you some questions,” I replied, watching her every feverish move.

She gulped, looking a little pale as she nodded slowly. The mare pulled her winter coat closed and stepped out the door, shutting it quietly it behind her.

“Listen … if this is about earlier …” she whispered, biting her lower lip as she glanced over her shoulder at the door. “I was going to pay – I swear! I’d never swindle anypony … never, ever – ever.” She looked up at me, shaking. “Please, you gotta believe me!”

She acted like it wasn’t the first time we’d met – or at least the first time she’d ever been in a situation like that.

“Wait, what –”

“Come on …” she whined. “Please, I swear to God I’m telling you the truth! I-I’ll pay double this week, if that’s what you want,” she pleaded with me.

The wind ruffled my peacoat, and the light bulb above us flickered once more. I opened my mouth to reply, but she beat me to it.

“I’ll … I’ll … I’ll do anything,” she whimpered, turning slightly and lifting her tail. “Just don’t make me disappear!”

My eyes widened at that.

“No – you got me all wrong!” I rested a gentle hoof upon her shoulder consolingly in an effort to calm the trembling mare. “I’m not one of them.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “I’m a merc. All I want is my caps and the faster you can help me, the faster I’ll be out of your mane,” I said, trying to sound like Night Sky. A lopsided smile stretched across my lips. “I’m not here to make you … uh … disappear.”

The blood returned to her face, and she sighed with relief, leaning against the door.

“Oh thank God … I thought you were one of them, and ...” She shook her head, still tense. “Never mind. What … what do you need?”

“I just need help finding the pony who mugged you.” Her expression flickered for a moment. Then she nodded. “Do you know a pony named Candy Cane?”

She froze, her ears perked. The mare was wary of the sound of hooves shuffling behind the door. I watched her eyes dart frantically to her side as she pulled her hood over her head.

“No, I don’t,” she replied, nodding her head at me.

I lifted a brow, regarding her with uncertainty. Then my eyes forward sparkle blinked with a blue dot.

Someone was listening to us. Her husband.

I expected her to turn around, open the door, and reassure him that she wasn’t in danger. But she led me away from the doorsteps so that we faced the street. That conversation was apparently supposed to be between only us, and us only. She probably didn’t want him to worry.

I gave her a sideways look as the mare’s eyes darted to the door … again … before continuing.

Daintybelle's voice was barely audible over the wind.

“S-shit -” she hissed. “I thought ...” Daintybelle feigned composure, asking, “You’re with Grifter, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

The mare pursed her lips, and nodded back, slowly, as if the answer to my question physically pained her. I cocked an eyebrow as she whispered so that only the two of us could hear, “Yes, I do. She … st-stabbed me last night.”

I eyed, gloomily, the dried splotch of crimson that had stained deep into her winter coat. “She tried to kill me … she … she tried to kill me.

“Then she took my caps and ran off with them before I could pay him. Pay Grifter. I was going to pay … but she had a knife! Said she’d cut me if I didn't hoof them over! But … but she cut me anyways ...” Daintybelle shook her head, shaking uncontrollably. She repeated, “I was going to pay … I swear. I told you … I was going to pay. But she cut me … You … believe me right?”

I sighed with growing impatience.

“Yes. Now do you know where I can find her? Did you see where she ran off to?”

She nodded, uneasily.

“Y-yes … s-she went out a window. She’s fast, you see? I saw her heading to the Old Factory District, I think ...”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“You think?”

She nearly jumped.

“No … I-I know.”

Nodding to myself, I asked, “I don’t come here often. I’m sort of new to this city … came here from down south. Where’s the Old Factory District?”

Daintybelle’s eyes darted away from me once more.

“J-just follow the main road east of the brothel – the Sultry Scullion – and you’ll get there,” she whispered in a voice I barely heard. “I go there often. Down the road I mean, it’s by the market.”

The door behind us cracked open, and a stallion peeked outside. Daintybelle didn't turn.

The stallion asked, “Is he …?”

“No. No he’s not.” Daintybelle replied, keeping her eyes trained on me. “He’s helping me with … what happened yesterday.”

Her husband’s apprehension allayed somewhat as he slowly holstered his pistol in his coat.

“Those fucking Palominos … why can’t they just piss off?” he grunted, stomping a hoof in the snow.

“Palominos?” I cocked my head at Daintybelle. “Wait … this Candy Cane mare’s a Palomino?” Her husband looked like he’d never heard that name before.

Daintybelle blinked twice.

“Y-yes. She works for them ..."

I glared at the snow.

“Candy Cane, eh?” her husband muttered, “Damn Palominos … how’re we supposed to pay them their damn tax if they already took the money we owe?!” He shook his head. “After nearly killing my wife here, one of their boys came around here earlier, wondering why we were late this week. I fuckin’ wonder why …”

Daintybelle dabbed her hoof nervously in the snow.

I narrowed my eyes at him and growled through my teeth, “Tax?”

Her husband grumbled bitterly, “Protection money. We pay them so they don’t run us out. So the Blood Brothers or the Pikes don’t run us out … and take our things.” He chuckled, grimly, “As if there’s anything left to take from us anyways … we don’t got much around here. Not anymore ...”

I uttered a dark chuckle, rolling my eyes.

“Why even steal from ponies you’re already taking from?”

“Hmph.” Her husband folded his legs across his chest. “They’re a real hooffull of shit, that’s why!”

“I don’t understand why you ponies don’t just kick them out,” I said, “You don’t have to deal with their shit …”

“If it was that easy …” the stallion began, trailing off. He shook his head. “If it wasn’t for them keeping East Eden’s hounds outta this part of the city, I wouldn’t even pay them a single cap. But this isn’t the first time they’ve tried taking more than what we owe …” He turned to Daintybelle. “I’m thinkin’ that Candy Cane mare that mugged you was the same pony that tried wringing us out last week, too.”

Daintybelle hesitated, nodding quickly as she stared at her hooves in silence.

“Is ... is she going to be okay?” I asked.

Daintybelle trembled uncontrollably as her husband wrapped a leg around her. I watched curiously as her shivering refused to abate.

She was mortified.

He looked at his wife with soft eyes, rubbing her shoulder with a hoof. She just shied away from his gaze.

“Daintybelle’s still shaken up after what happened yesterday. She nearly bled out.” The mare hung her head in turmoil.

I stared with dark eyes, shaking my head at the bloody hole in her coat.

"Fucking Palominos ..." her husband began, "Someone oughtta teach those thugs a lesson."

Daintybelle's eyes widened.

“You shouldn’t say that out loud –”

“NO! I’m tired of this! God-damned tired!” Daintybelle wrapped her hooves around him, but he shrugged her off. “I swear I WON’T let those bastards HURT YOU AGAIN!”

“HEY!” I shouted abruptly, and the two fell silent. “I’ll find this mare. I’ll find her. I’ll make her pay,” I said, as I unholstered my pistol, checking its safety.

Daintybelle’s husband gave me a cold hard stare before nodding.

“Thanks … and good luck. I’d keep that heater hot if I were you … those Palominos like to play dirty.”

I nodded at him, but my jaw clenched as I remembered Grifter’s orders.

'I needed her alive.'

Daintybelle watched me as I left, following me with anxious eyes.

She cupped a hoof over her mouth and turned away.

I barely heard her voice whisper beneath the wind.

“They like to play dirty alright …”

I walked along a well-trodden, frozen road, cracked and broken by centuries of ice and countless hooves. Rising ominously before me was the immense, confusing sprawl that was the old industrial district. The titanic, blocky metal faces of ancient manufactories, once the lifeblood of Poneva's industry, were now as dry and inert as the ponies that were probably buried right beneath me.

But where there were once busy sidewalks and wagon-clogged streets, there were only weary wastelanders and scrap metal shops. Those shops, built around heaping piles of scrap and possibly useful junk, bought and sold scavenged parts and scavenged machines. Doodads of all kinds of doods and dads were on sale at every corner.

Naturally, with people being attracted to shiny things, other shops would spring up nearby too. A few eateries, thrift shops, gun shops, a blacksmith, and even a potion shop were built into the remnants of factory buildings that hadn’t collapsed. While more densely packed than the market I was at earlier, that place was far more pleasant. We were certainly farther away from the Palominos’ turf, and I couldn’t see any black hats anywhere.

Shivering briskly, I joined the ponies that wandered the swap-meet, glancing every now and then at a shiny part that caught my attention or some piece of machinery that I had never seen before. Everybody’s attention seemed to be drawn elsewhere, however.

‘Lucky me,’ I thought.

‘She was just here.’

A pair of ponies were scrutinizing with grim curiosity a trail of blood that had frozen into the tracks of some wounded pony. The trail was erratic and suggestive of a painful limp. Some of them weren’t even hoofprints. Every now and then there was an imprint of a shape vaguely reminiscent of a pony punched into the snow. Big dumb Dawdleshoes had shot her in the leg after all, it seemed.

One such imprint lied just outside of the potion shop’s door.

I trotted up to the pair of onlookers. My ears perked.

“What happened here?” I asked, eyeing the pony-shaped crater.

“No idea,” replied a mare, who dipped her hoof in the bloody slush. “But it’s been here for a few hours now. It’s frozen solid.”

I tapped my chin with a hoof. “Do you know anybody who might’ve seen whoever did this?”

A stallion pointed a hoof at the door to my left, a meticulously hoofpainted sign that said, in a vaguely understandable language … ‘la … booteele … magic’ … rocking gently in the breeze. “We’re right outside Madame Mistelle’s shop. She probably saw what happened,” he said, shrugging.

Thanking them, I trotted past the two, and pushed open the potion shop’s door. As I soon stepped inside, I was struck in the face by an atmosphere entirely different from the one outside.

It was warm in there.

I blinked several times as I took in the room around me. I hadn’t felt warmth against my coat ever since I left my stable.

At the far end of the shop, there was a fireplace … without firewood. Magical firelight danced across my face as I walked past a series of shelves stocked full of colorful potions and strange concoctions that didn’t really look safe to drink.

A heavily-accented, robotic voice droned behind me.

“Greetings, sir, bienvenue à La Bouteille Magique.”

“HOLY SHIT!” I gasped, backing away from the floating, four-armed robot. My flank bumped into a shelf and a potion tumbled to the floor. In a blur of chrome limbs, the robot lashed out at me –

- and caught the potion an inch above the floor.

“Do be careful, sir, you quite nearly bruised your hindquarters,” its flanged, synthesized voice said politely. The hovering robot’s frighteningly long two-pronged arm replaced the potion back on the shelf before retracting back into its metallic shell.

“I-I-I’m …” the word ‘sorry’ was lost on my lips as an alabaster mask ambled into view.

“I do apologize, Monsieur Melanger can be rather inconspicuous at times,” said a mare’s voice. Her ornate mask fascinated me as well as the strange accent that complimented her startlingly pleasant voice. “He tends to catch ponies unawares – with good intentions, I assure you,” the mare added in the silkiest of voices.

A unicorn mare in a faded, yet elegant dress foxtrotted down the aisle towards me, bowing her head at me and lifting her dress with a curtsy. “I am Madame Mistelle. Welcome to the Bouteille Magique, where you may purchase from a vast selection of potions to your fancy!” The rosy lips over where her own lips should’ve been smiled with genuine hospitality. Though it was impossible to tell what face she really wore beneath that mask.

I stared at her for a moment, bewildered by the masked mare.

“I … uh …” I cleared my throat, trying not to make uncomfortable faces at her strange, ornate mask. “Do you own this store?”

“Own, no. But I do preside over the exchanges that occur here, so perhaps it would be appropriate to say yes,” she cooed, her soft, long brown mane bobbing gently upon her shoulder. “I do not think I have seen you here, before. I often watch the ponies outside during my breaks, but I have not seen your face.”

‘Well I can’t see yours,’ I wanted to say as I stood there rubbing my leg uncomfortably.

“Why is it that you look so anxious?” she asked, reading the lines on my forehead.

I watched the green eyes that glistened behind her eyeholes nervously. “Sorry, I’m just … no offense, but why are you wearing that mask?”

Her head cocked slightly at me as if I had just said the strangest thing ever. Then the unicorn gasped, and went stiff.

She dabbed at her chin, rather … adorably. “Oh! This mask?” She ran a hoof against its pale surface, uttering a soft, ladylike chuckle. “I sometimes forget that I am wearing it. Forgive me if I startled you; most ponies who see me are used to my peoples’ anonymity. It is merely a tradition in my culture to wear one when around others.”

‘A tradition?’ I wondered. I didn’t know it was tradition anywhere in Equestria to wear masks like that. I’d never seen that in any of our books either – but then again, I never did pay much attention to Equestrian history …

I cleared my throat, straightening out the discomfort in my face.

“You’re not from here?” I asked.

“Hmm,” she began, “Well, I was born an Equestrian but raised a Rôānian. My family was originally from the nation of Roan, but they have lived here since before the Great War.” My eyes widened at that.

Nowhere in my life had I even heard about a nation called Roan. Nor did I know that there were other nations on this continent besides Equestria and the Crystal Empire.

It struck me just how limited and hoof-picked our history books were. “Roanian?” I played with the word on my tongue. “Where I come from, all we ever knew was Equestria. I’m sort of new here,” I began, lifting up my right forehoof. She saw my PipBuck and nodded, thoughtfully. “My name is Red Dawn.”

She probably smiled behind her mask. “Ah! A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Red Dawn!” Madame Mistelle purred, curtseying once more. “I assumed you were somepony else. I confess: I was actually shocked by your lack of knowledge. You wear the coat of a Palomino soldier - what they call a ‘made pony’, but you do not strike me as one.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

She muttered, the sting in her words belying her mask’s polite expression, “You do not carry yourself like a deceitful rogue.” She cupped a hoof around her mask’s lips, giggling softly. “You are far too polite to belong to such a clan of traitorous brutes.”

Madame Mistelle let out a couth sigh.

“Alors,” she purred, her civility returning, “How is it that I can help you, Red Dawn?”

I stared at her … face … the only thing visible beneath it all were her green eyes.

I couldn’t get my mind off that mask of hers. It was like her voice was trying to match the face she wore. Or maybe that face was trying to match her voice. Hell, it creeped me out speaking to an inanimate expression that grinned at me even when her tone implied that she wasn’t. For all I knew there could have been a mutant beast beneath that mask.

Or a stallion.

I shivered, blinking away the images in my head. “I was wondering if you knew anything about the blood outside your store?”

“Mais bien sûr … there was a remarkable amount of commotion outside, not too long ago,” she replied in her charmingly foreign accent.

My ears perked. ‘May ben, what?’

Madame Mistelle uttered a couth whinny. “A pony came through here while I was holding the door open for Monsieur Melanger as he carried in today’s shipment of reagents. She was fleeing somepony and – oh goodness, and I saw the blood! My, she was injured! I offered her a health potion to which she generously accepted before returning to her course!”

Celestia, was she wordy.

I pursed my lips, trying to hide my exasperation.

“You saw her? What did she look like?”

She touched her chin, pondering for a moment. “She was a unicorn, with the most sumptuous mane of red and white, and a coat of maroon, like a bottle of fine rosé de pomme. Pretty she was, but I had not the chance to ask her from whom she was running. She was in quite a hurry.”

“I’d imagine so …” I muttered.

“Excusez-moi?”

I cleared my throat, smiling sheepishly. “Oh, nothing. I was just going to ask if you saw where she ran off to?”

Madame Mistelle nodded, murmuring to herself as she recalled. “Indeed, I did.” She cocked her head so that her voluminous brown mane bobbed in front of one of her eyeholes. “Are you a friend of hers?”

“No,” I growled, “She mugged a pony earlier today and nearly killed her. I can’t let her get away with that.”

The tone of Madame Mistelle’s voice belied the smile upon her face. “Did she now?” the mare murmured softly. She shifted on her hooves in what I perceived to be thought. “She was indeed fleeing from something.” Madame Mistelle swept her delicate mane to the other side of her face as she turned to Monsieur Melanger. “Apportez-moi mon monteau, s’il vous plait.”

“Très bien, Madame," the robot droned before returning with a coat slung across one of its long, spindly arms.

“Merci. Please follow me,” she said to me, buttoning up her winter coat before starting for the door. “So you are a mercenary?”

I thought for a moment, but shook my head. “No. I’d just hate to see her ruin someone’s life over a bag of caps.”

“How noble of you.”

“It’s just the …” I almost said, ‘the right thing to do’. I frowned at that. “It’s just that bad ponies need to get what’s coming to them.”

Madame Mistelle uttered a terse chuckle.

“Were it so easy, my friend. But the fine line between good and bad is rather blurred,” she intoned, her voice almost a whisper. My ears perked curiously, as she enveloped the doorknob with a green magical field. “Most ponies do not trust my kind. They think we are all … ‘bad ponies’ … the Silver Horseshoes usually keep to their own. But I am an exception, I suppose.”

I froze.

I remembered Sterling mentioning the ‘Silver Horseshoes’ to me a few days earlier. I also remembered them being mentioned in the same breath he mentioned the Sunny Days Company.

My muscles twitched slightly as I decided against reaching for my holster.

She worked for the plantations. The same one the Palominos murdered for.

But she was … helping me?

I shuffled nervously upon my hooves, my brows furrowed.

“So you’re a … uh … Silver Horseshoe, huh?”

The unicorn glanced over her shoulder. “Yes …” Madame Mistelle replied, rather drably. “To foster better relations with our Equestrian peers, I’ve volunteered to preside over this shop.”

I wasn’t sure how much more my brows could scrunch together. I wondered what kind of strain there was between her kind and ours that made mending it so necessary. But so long as that robot didn’t impale me, any hostilities she might have held for me – having Equestrian blood and all, were either well hidden behind her mask or virtually non-existent.

It really was as if she was trying to be the ‘good pony’ her kind apparently wasn’t.

We trotted outside, Madame Mistelle’s magic lifting her dress delicately above the snow. A few yards down, she stopped and pointed a hoof. Stretching off and into the distance was a labyrinth of blocky, rusted over buildings and blackened smokestacks.

“I followed her here, fearing that she would collapse from exhaustion. She did instead keep running.” She lifted a hoof at the broken asphalt trail that led into darkness. “Down this road I saw her disappear, amongst the abandoned General Arcanics factory complex. Such are buildings with many places to hide; I would be utterly shocked had she not taken refuge in one such location.”

There weren’t many lights down there.

‘Great.’ My eyes glazed over the immensity of the factories beyond. “She could be in any one of those, huh?”

Madame Mistelle turned slowly to me with her ever-smiling visage. “She may be. I hope I was able to help.”

I shrugged off a shiver that ran down my spine as I eyed her mask. For all I knew she could have been sneering at me as if I was about to walk into an ambush.

I stared at her for a moment, trying to discern her body language. But she stood entirely still. Madame Mistelle was virtually unreadable. I wondered if she was leading me to a trap.

The polite smile on her mask told me otherwise.

I smiled back. “Yes, thank you.”

"Tout le plaisir est pour moi,” she cooed, politely.

I didn’t have idea what that meant, so I just gave her another sheepish smile and started down the road.

I paused and looked over my shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting a Silver Horseshoe to help … anybody. I’ve been told that you guys work for Sunny Days?”

Again, she was silent. “Some of us do,” Madame Mistelle replied. The mare waved me goodbye.

“Alors, au revoir – et bonne chance – good luck, friend.”

I nodded, trotting down the broken road.

“Dis! Red Dawn!” I turned as she waved a hoof at me once more. “Do be careful, now. The Silver Horseshoes have yet to reclaim all of the industrial district’s manufactories.” She glanced at Monsieur Melanger. “Not all of their security systems perished when the megaspells came.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks again.”

I snorted, gazing into the cradle of Poneva's industry. The balefire hadn’t left much alive when it came. Even a long ways away from ground zero, Spring Song’s cottage was still destroyed.

How much worse could it have been in the city I assumed that the zebras were actually targeting? Almost everything around me that hadn’t been renovated or jury-rigged was a burned-out husk.

How bad could it be?