Our few days of being semi-officially off duty went by too fast to even notice. I spent as much of that time sleeping as physically possible, but as cruel fate would have it, my brain decided it was time for another episode of insomnia. Given the last few days it was hardly a surprise, but that didn't make it any less frustrating.

Not to mention there were about a hundred things I'd rather do than just lay in bed and continue to let every negative memory I had of Liese percolate in the back of my mind. Every time I'd done or said something mean to her kept replaying in my mind. There weren't many times, really, but I remembered the time I tattled on her for smoking to our parents, and the time I did the same thing when she started sneaking off at night to meet some boyfriend. She'd been pretty pissed, and looking back on it now as an adult, I wished I hadn't done it. It wasn't like it changed anything anyway, and just made her mad at me and our parents.

And I couldn't tell her I was sorry now.

As if anyone said they were sorry for anything like that twenty years later anyway, but it was the only thing I could think about for at least a day.

Fortunately, I was given a distraction not long after. Despite the strong dissatisfaction Amy had levied against Talon Company, she never said anything to the others in our squad about trying to get a medical discharge, and instead just told me in private that she was going to take Lita's advice and try to learn to shoot left handed. If that didn't work out, well, it would be up to Serge or Heidi to decide what to do with her. Which in turn would no doubt fall to me as the platoon medic to decide, but that was a rickety bridge I'd cross when my wings were clipped and I was shoved onto it.

Regardless, with little else to do but lay in my cot and stew on unpleasant memories, I volunteered to come with her to the shooting range to observe and maybe get some practice as well. It wasn't difficult for Serge to get ammo dispensed to us for the occasion, and the range wasn't booked for the next few days, so that worked out for a change.

I opted to just let Amy use the ammo they'd dispensed to me for the first day, since I knew she'd need as much practice as she could get, and because I still only had my dinky pistol anyway so I'd have to borrow her rifle to even practice. I guess nobody in the armory remembered the name Longtalons meant a broken rifle so the ammo would be useless to me. Otto and Sam still ran it as far as I knew, and you'd think an episode like that would stick out in their memory, but I counted my blessings and just carried on observing Amy while she practiced.

I'd brought a notebook with me to take notes, but as the exercise went on I wasn't really sure what I was even supposed to be writing, so I ended up just jotting down notes about accuracy while entertaining the idea of trying to sketch her while she was formed up with her rifle. It wasn't hard to put that idea out to pasture though, partly because I wasn't an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but largely because it seemed like the kind of thing she'd take poorly if she discovered it. It admittedly would be a little creepy to find.

As if keenly watching her as she snapped off a couple hundred rounds with the rifle wasn't a little creepy in its own right. She didn't seem to mind, if she noticed, but I did at least try to make it a genuine observation instead of it just being a griffon watching a griffoness as she formed up to empty magazines into crudely painted plywood ponies.

The most obvious observation was that, as expected, her accuracy left a lot to be desired. Despite taking an inordinate amount of time positioning herself at the line, leveling the rifle and trying to zero it in, fully half of her shots missed the cutout completely or slapped holes outside the borders. She gave the wooden mare a new haircut with several shots that came close to snapping off her horn or hitting her skull. Amy likely would have fared a lot better trying to go for center of mass hits, but I sure as hell wasn't going to try to give the trained soldier pointers when I was just a nobody outsider.

After every magazine, she grew visibly more frustrated, letting her tail swish and switch as the scowl on her face hardened. Even the shots that hit the mark didn't do much to improve her mood, so I decided to keep my distance and my beak shut.

There were other little things I tried to focus on instead. She fumbled to load the magazine the first few times too, but got the hang of that quickly enough. The dance she did was also a little funny the first time the gun ejected a hot bullet casing that flew into the neck gap of her breastplate, but by heroic effort I snapped my attention back to my notes instead of letting out a snicker. There had to be a left handed rifle somewhere they could issue her that wouldn't have that problem.

A little more worrying was the just barely perceptible uneasiness as she tried to hold the rifle steady. I could only tell by watching the tip of the barrel, but there was a clear oscillation as it dipped down before she snapped it back up. It could have been from her trying to maintain her balance in an unfamiliar position, or trying to find the best way to grip the gun, but it could also be from some lingering damage to her central nervous system. It was a little farfetched, given she had no other glaring symptoms, but I couldn't rule it out completely after a grenade blast. If her accuracy never improved despite training for weeks or months, that would be a bigger warning sign, and something I wouldn't be able to cover up in any report I presented to the lieutenant.

After she finished off the tenth magazine that had been issued to us, she gathered them up in a bag and gestured for me to come with her to check the target.

“Doesn't look good, does it?” she murmured as she stuck a talon from her good claw through a bullet hole in the pony's forehead.

It really didn't. Maybe a third of the shots she fired hit the mark, and even I had better marksmanship than that with a stationary target and all of the time in the world to aim. “It's your first time trying to shoot like this. It'll take time to get used to it.”

“I guess.” She shoved the target, but it was too firmly secured to the ground to move. “But what's going to happen the next time we're in an engagement? At this point we'd be better off if Carmelita gave me her LMG since I'm not fit to do much more than lay down suppressive fire like this, but I don't think I could even carry it.” She brushed a singed feather on her neck and grumbled something about the rate of fire meaning a billion white hot bullet casings.

“If we're lucky the worst of it is behind us for a long time. I doubt Brimstone will have another chance to escape any time soon, and everyone is going to be on high alert. Not to mention the reduced manpower is likely to mean we won't see any field assignments for a while either.”

She sat and rubbed her bad wrist. “I hope so. I knew this was going to be hard, but it's like starting over completely. Pretty sure I'm left eye dominant too. I'm going to have to relearn everything about shooting.”

“You'll get the hang of it, I'm sure,” I said. It was a hollow gesture, I knew, but the best I could offer.

“I hope so,” she repeated, not sounding very confident. “Anyway, I'm going to go talk to the quartermaster and see if they do have any left handed rifles. If not, I'm going to have to figure something out with the ejection ports. Getting surprised by that in a firefight is going to get someone killed.”

That was a morbid thought I didn't want to dwell on as I got up to follow her back to the armory. I felt bad for her for a few reasons, but the best I could do was stick with her while she tried to work through it.

Aside from offer that medical discharge if she did ask again...

The next day started out much the same, with the two of us heading off to the shooting range so Amy could get in more practice. We spent maybe an hour of me sipping coffee while she snapped off shots from another half dozen magazines, with only a marginal improvement that I could see. Like the day before, most of the shots were scattered high, with only around half actually hitting the plywood pony. In Amy's defense, pretty much any of the shots that did hit would have ended a fight with the pony, but one of the things I'd had drilled into me over the years was that going for head shots was likely just to waste bullets. Real ponies didn't sit still.

As she ejected a magazine and fiddled with the sights on her rifle, I set aside my empty coffee cup and decided to voice my concerns. It wasn't like there was anything I knew about shooting that she wouldn't, but if nothing else it would break up some of the monotony and silence.

“Are the sights aiming too high?” I asked, trying to ease into it.

Amy glanced up for a moment before returning to making adjustments. “Not exactly. I'm just trying to find a way to adjust them so I can hold the gun comfortably. My damn leg keeps cramping up.”

Oh. Well, that would explain a lot. Except that she'd been consistently shooting high for days, and she could have adjusted for that by now. “Yeah, I bet that would make it hard. It just seemed like you weren't going for center of mass, so I thought the sights might have-”

“The sights are fine,” she insisted as she slapped another magazine into the rifle.

I barely had time to cover my ears before she finished unloading ten rounds into the pony, this time getting a little more lucky and drilling the pony in the forehead right below her horn with three of the shots. The others blasted her ear off and punched a hole through her eye.

“Finally,” she blurted out, lowering the rifle.

“So, are you going for head shots?”

Amy tapped her forehead. “Head or horn. After that unicorn and the grenade, I started thinking that I need to be able to disable a unicorn even if I don't kill them.”

Okay… “Well, yeah, that makes sense, but if you're having to learn to shoot again, shouldn't you start with something easier? Shooting a unicorn's horn is going to be almost impossible in live combat.”

She shrugged. “I'm having to learn to shoot all over again so I might as well learn to do this while I'm at it.”

This seemed like a bad idea, but she was already pretty pissed at her performance so I didn't press it. Maybe it was something I could bring up with Serge later and he could have a talk with her from a position of authority. Or maybe that would make her just as mad.

I gave up and backed off to let her continue her practice, but only just made it back to my cup on the ground when I saw a brown griffoness flapping toward us at a clearly urgent pace. A knot started forming in my stomach, and it wasn't just from drinking black coffee without eating anything.

Leigh dropped to the ground in front of me and didn't bother with pleasantries. “Kaz, get Amy and meet us back at the base right away. We've got an emergency.”

Pony. Goddesses. Dammit.

What happened now? Did somebody find an undetonated balefire bomb in the basement of the bumper cart arena? Were Steel Rangers storming the gate? Was Fillydelphia literally on fire? Did Red Eye run out of toilet paper?

“Move it!” Leigh jumped back into the air and left without another word.

I looked back over to find that Amy had caught on that something was wrong, and she was already collecting her spent magazines.

Bloodfeathers. So much for not having any major problems for a while.

The news we got when we rejoined the rest of the squad was both less alarming than I expected, and yet more disturbing at the same time. Apparently, the slaves over at the Fillydelphia mall decided to band together and declare a riot, halting all work and demanding their freedom. How they could have thought that would lead to anything remotely positive was beyond me, as I still vividly recalled Stern's speeches to those who were dragged into the city. Rioting meant death, and as sure as she said it, orders came from her down to round up the majority of the garrison to go stomp the uprising.

A slave riot meant that nobody in Talon Company was likely to be hurt for a change. The slaves might have access to power tools, and might have even managed to break into an armory or two to steal some guns, but they were a bunch of disorganized half-starved ponies with no training and only desperation on their side. They'd probably have wasted a lot of their energy and ammo repelling the initial attempts by the guards to retake the mall too, so a counterattack from Talon Company would be swift and devastating.

And… that was where my stomach started twisting in knots again. I'd killed a few slaves in my years out of necessity. The stable reclamation rebellion came to mind, and aside from my fuck up that got Leigh shot by a robotic turret, the slaves stood no chance. Even if Stern didn't order every slave executed, there were going to be dozens and dozens of casualties, and I wasn't going to be allowed to help them. Captain Stern would be here, and if she knocked Amy senseless over just asking a question I didn't want to know what she'd do to me over “wasting” medical supplies on people with no value.

So, naturally, my anxiety levels were skyrocketing by the time we drew close to the massive mall. All told there were about forty of us, a mixture of first, second and third platoon now that the recent casualties had royally screwed the patrol and organization schedules. A giant flock of griffons that no doubt would have struck terror into any other slaves who saw them soaring overhead, and a show of force that would strongly encourage the next batch of would be rioters to think twice.

The mall itself had clearly seen some fighting. Basically nowhere in Fillydelphia was free from the signs of battle, even discounting the damage the balefire bombs did two centuries ago, but smoke rose from what looked like fresh cracks in the roof. Dozens of bullet holes had punched through the roof not far from where we landed, leading me to think twice about our chosen landing zone, but I had no choice but to stay in formation. Even as we stood there, the rhythmic thump of a high caliber weapon echoed from beneath us, and I balled my talons up reflexively at the thought of one of its bullets emerging beneath me.

Leading us was none other than Stern herself, followed by First Lieutenant Freija Ironclaws, who both strode forward to meet a pony that emerged from a roof access door not far from the landing zone.

“What's the situation?” Stern demanded.

The large and greasy green stallion grunted. “It's a mess, that's the situation. All of those damned raiders Protege brought here are working together to hold the place hostage. They took the offices and a few minutes ago broke past the barricades to take the armory.”

Raiders? Oh, right. This was where all of the Bloodletters had been placed. That explained a lot about how they were able to take the mall, and mean this wasn't going to be so simple.

“How many?” Freija asked.

“I dunno. Maybe three, four dozen all told. A dozen killed in their initial assault, but we lost half as many. We're trying to retake the offices now but the bastards aren't making it easy.”

I hadn't seen Stern smile many times, but whenever she did something bad followed. “Then leave it to us. We'll show them why slaves don't riot.”

My stomach lurched again. Here it came…

Greasy pony scuffed a hoof on the roof, leaving a long trail in the dust that had settled. “Actually, ma'am, Protege sent me here to request that you hold back for now. He wants to try to retake the mall himself first.”

Stern's smirk evaporated into a boiling hot scowl. “What? Why did he even send for us if he's going to do this himself? And clearly your security team is not up to the job or we wouldn't have this problem in the first place!”

The stallion backed up a couple of paces. “Yes, ma'am, I know, but he's worried about the other slaves. We've got dozens more here who aren't involved and he's worried that the loss of labor would be too much to risk yet.”

Stern could yell very loud, and for the next minute she did a lot of that as she, Freija and the pony argued about the situation. Finally, much to my utter shock, she shouted, “Fine! He has an hour. If he's not up here in exactly one hour to personally tell me that the situation is resolved, we're going to solve his problem for him no matter how much collateral damage there is.”

She spun around. “Everyone spread out and take up positions around the mall. Gain what intel you can and prepare to attack on my orders. Go!”

So we went. In a single fluid yet chaotic mass, we lifted off and started circling the mall in search of somewhere to take up sniping positions. Serge led us in a giant, slow arching flight around that took us past an open court covered in smoldering debris, a burnt out bookstore that was probably destroyed in the war, and finally to settle on the roof of an ice cream parlor across the street from the mall. From there we couldn't get much of a view of the fighting going on inside, but it was perfect for catching any raiders who tried to leave from a loading bay on this side of the mall. I was sure that between all of the Talons deployed here, every conceivable exit was covered.

On the roof of the mall across from us, another squad landed and fanned out to cover roof doors and skylights. Among them was a familiar spotted griffoness. Amy's sister Valerie crept over to cover the loading bay from above, but whether she noticed us or not, she didn't let on.

Amy definitely noticed, given the little sharp breath she took. I glanced over, just as Amy glanced back before breaking the unintended stare.

Great. The last thing we needed was for Amy to feel like she had to live up to supergriffon standards because her sister was here. Maybe we'd end up separated if we were called in to attack, though the odds of that seemed low given she was right here with us.

Minutes trickled by at an agonizing pace, like watching syrup dry. Or… paint drip out of a bottle. Or… whatever the fuck slow thing people made quaint little sayings about when they weren't riding on an adrenaline high strong enough to kill a minotaur. I had no clock or watch or any other way to keep up with how long before Stern's ultimatum expired, but Leigh would certainly know over the radio the moment the order came due. That could come any second. Or tens of minutes later.

Time lost all meaning, only punctuated by a distant gunshot or brief flutters of movement I spotted through windows. Those moments that broke the agonizing monotony kept me on edge for minutes longer, but soon enough it was right back to squirming and wiping my sweaty palms on my coat. At this rate it wouldn't take a bullet to kill m-

A bright flare erupted from the roof fifty meters past Valerie's squad, followed by a rush of wind that caught my wings and almost bowled me over, carrying with it dust and little stinging particles of vaporized plaster. I just managed to right myself and wipe the dust from my eyes when I heard Stern shout the order to attack over Leigh's radio. Serge repeated the order unnecessarily, and we all launched into the air.

So much for waiting an hour for them to solve their own problem. At least the anxiety wouldn't kill me now.

Fortunately, we weren't the first squad through the new opening.

Unfortunately, the gunfire started immediately after Valerie's squad dipped inside, so I knew it was going to be hell all the same. At least I spotted a couple more squads flocking our way as we reached the ragged opening left behind by the skylight detonating, so we'd have more support soon.

We emerged into a smoke and dust filled multiple tier food court that had just been rudely reminded it was a war zone. By that point Valerie's squad had already shocked the defenders enough that they were too busy falling back and firing at the Talons now at ground level to bother shooting up at us on our descent, but I weaved in the air after Amy all the same to avoid giving them any obvious targets.

The reprieve was short lived as our descent took us all down to the ground floor after them. We landed in the chaotic aftermath of the raiders' escape, using the upturned tables as makeshift concealment as we took up positions to secure the ground floor behind the vanguard assault. The occasional wayward shot zipped overhead or ricocheted from one of the support columns, but the fighting had already moved on by the time we even got settled in.

Serge waved a claw for us to move up and I cursed under my breath.

We bounded over the tables and started toward a nearby escalator to use it as cover on our way deeper into the mall and the sounds of gunfire. Shadows of more griffons flapping overhead and behind us played across the upturned chairs and tables. We reached the escalator and Lita scanned the room beyond. She signaled that it was clear ahead.

Serge raised his cybernetic claw again for us to advance again, but before he could finish, the growing commotion behind us was replaced by a female shouting, “Hey! That's Longtalons! Hey! Hey! We need a medic up here!”

Wait, what? I hadn't seen anyone in Valerie's squad take a hit and nobody else went in before them. Did one of those stray shots hit someone just now? Did I just miss something on the way down?

Serge nodded to me. “Leigh, go with him. We'll hold this position.”

We darted back into the air and rushed to land on the nearest space on the floor above, instead of risking flying in a straight line back to the balcony and giving a sniper free aim at us.

As soon as we made it around the corner back to the squad that called for me, I realized that we had, indeed, missed something. Quite a lot, from the looks of it.

The raiders had evidently set up some kind of torture room here for the guards and other staff in the mall that they captured. A unicorn stallion was lying in a massive pool of blood with a bullet hole in his head. Several raiders, identified by their garish dyed manes and tattoos, were in much worse shape, with severe crushing injuries or bullet wounds covering their bodies. Chains affixed to the walls indicated where some of these ponies had probably been restrained, but more alarming was the dark coated griffoness stretched out in front of the last set of chains.

“Hurry up, she's hurt bad,” someone from the squad surrounding her stressed as I tried to pick my way past the pools of blood covering the floor.

That was an understatement.

Even a cursory glance made my stomach turn. She was covered with bruises and small cuts, but that was nothing compared to her wings. The demented ponies holding this mall hostage had broken them. Not just once or even a few times, but they had very deliberately shattered almost every bone in both wings. An anvil and hammer nearby told me all I needed to know.

If I found the pony responsible, I was going to give him or her that hammer as an enema.

It took me a moment to calm down enough and forget the flash of searing hot desire for vengeance surging in the back of my mind to do anything. But the worst part was that I didn't even know what to do. She needed to be transported to the clinic immediately, but doing that without aggravating the injuries wasn't going to happen. And fuck me eleven ways, it looked like another ten hour surgery ahead of me, and even with that I knew there was no chance she was ever going to fly again. Even if we managed to get the bones back in place, the ligaments and tendons were going to be so fucked up we'd never get it sorted out where she'd be able to flap them properly again. She'd be better off if we amputated them.

“Leigh, see if you can organize a medical evac here. Find out if anyone is at the clinic. If not I'll need to head back there with her. There's probably going to be more casualties coming in anyway.”

As she set to work doing that, I started digging in my medical kit for pain killers. It was the best I could do for her now, though I wasn't sure how much it was needed. Despite the tears trailing down her cheeks, I could tell she was out of it. Probably delirious from the pain.

Even so, giving her the shot made me feel like I was doing something useful, so I wasted no more time.

“Wait a second, this is Ragini, isn't it?” one of the other squad members said.

The name sounded familiar, but so did literally everyone's name in Talon Company, so I kept examining her. Her wrists were pretty banged up too, but didn't look broken. Probably from the restraints.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. Shit. You think that means Protege is dead?”

“If they caught her like this he must be. She wouldn't have abandoned him.”

Okay, yeah, now that was familiar. The uneasiness returning to my stomach intensified a dozen times over. Both because the situation here was even worse than I realized, and because Ragini was important enough to have been assigned as the personal bodyguard to Red Eye's personal student. If anyone accused me of incompetence, this would be the worst time. Even if they didn't understand I couldn't do field surgery to fix a hundred broken bones the size of their pinky talons!

Leigh tapped me on the shoulder. “Evac is on the way. Three minutes out. Dr. Clawmarks is at the clinic now.”

So much for getting me off the hook by returning there to handle the injuries.

A blue griffon in the squad waved back down to the escalator. “We'll hold here until evac picks her up. You two get going. It's probably going to be messy up ahead and they'll need you.”

Yeah, so much for getting off the hook…

Sure enough, he was right.

Proceeding past the food court and back into the central halls of the mall uncovered a great deal more carnage. Dead or dying ponies of a dozen colors and dispositions littered the halls, benches and dry fountains we passed on our way to reunite with the squads that had moved on ahead of us. The scent of gunpowder and freshly vaporized concrete was ever present. Distant gunfire grew closer as we bounded over obstacles toward the center of the mall, as did the screams of the occasional pony unlucky enough to get caught in the open.

We rounded a corner past an old clothing boutique now outfitted with the bars and chains of a prison cell and emerged in another open foyer spanning three floors. We skirted around a pair of dying raiders that had been to tossed against the counter of some electronics shop and formed up behind a set of massive columns.

Above us, at least two squads were fanning out and trying to take up sniping positions overlooking the ground floor. It seemed that the assault had stalled out here for some reason.

“What's going on?” Lita asked as she pulled back into cover and looked to Leigh.

Leigh adjusted something on her radio and held up a claw. “There's a fortified position ahead. The armory is on the third floor here and the raiders have it locked down. Captain Stern is bringing in heavier firepower to break past it.”

Like, what, a rocket launcher? I looked back over at the twitching and groaning ponies at the counter before trying to find something else to rivet my attention to. The crack on the wall ahead was good. Anything to distract me from all of the injuries I wasn't allowed to treat.

Maybe one of them was the pony responsible for the wanton cruelty inflicted on Ragini. That made it a little easier to ignore their cries for help.

...but only a little.

An explosion shook the floor above, shattering what was left of the windows and shaking another heavy layer of dust from the ceiling above down onto us. Renewed fire followed suit and the squads above began to funnel toward one of the hallways at the top level. We all stared at each other dumbly.

“The raiders are pulling back and Captain Stern is ordering us to push forward,” Leigh explained. “Surveillance is tracking them now and they're trying to circle back around to the west side. Captain thinks they're going to try to escape through the loading docks there.”

“You heard her, let's move,” Serge ordered. He spread his wings and led our advance up to the third floor.

We passed three more dead raiders in the fortified hallway above, shredded by the frag grenade someone tossed past the barricade they'd been manning. They'd all attempted to turn and flee, but didn't make it far before the confined blast crushed them and scything hot fragments shredded what was left. The barricades were in little better shape and didn't even slow our charge.

Beyond the hallway was… not an armory. It was an access hall leading to another overlook above another fountain. This must have been the side leading to the loading docks Leigh-

A chaotic mess of shrill screams, squawks and the deafening roar of a heavy machine gun opening up assailed me all at once. I fell to the ground out of sheer shock, but wasted no time checking myself for wounds before digging my claws into the cracks between floor tiles to drag myself after the rest of my squad as they jumped behind whatever was close and offered concealment.

The machine gun fire returned, this time turning lower to chew up the concrete pillars beneath us that everyone was trying to use for cover. The pattering of fragments spalling off the ceiling just beneath us echoed behind the unending stream of high caliber bullets discharging. Someone else screamed...

Against all better judgment, I peered over the bench I was hiding behind to see two machine gun emplacements on the floor across from us, on either side of the room. Platforms of scrap metal elevated them above the floor and more slabs had been riveted together in thick layers to provide some cover for the ponies manning them. Sparks flew as bullets glanced off the metal facades. It would take a lucky shot or something a lot stronger than our rifles, much less my pistol, to punch through it.

Laser bolts stabbed at the gun emplacement on our side of the room, leaving crisscrossing blue afterimages in my vision. Serge tried to walk the shots into the vision slit, hammering the emplacement half a dozen times, but didn't make it before the weapon swerved our way. The bench exploded and a lot slammed into me all at once, but I again had no time to check for wounds before diving to the ground. Someone else screamed. My wing spasmed as I tried to fold it up again. We scattered and dove for the nearest remaining cover, but there wasn't much left up here! A giant pot containing a dead tree was all I could spot nearby, but it wasn't going to stop a .50 bullet any more than that bench did!

“Valerie!”

I spun around and peeked out of my hiding spot as much as I dared to locate Amy.

She clambered over the counter of another shop, and to my horror, began running back toward the balcony we'd just been forcibly evicted from. Out in the open!

I traced her path ahead to find… Valerie. Sprawled out on the ground. No chance I could tell how badly-

The machine guns turned back toward us, and the floor shook from more impacts. The wall behind Amy erupted in plumes of plaster and concrete. She jumped and weaved, but if she stopped to grab her sister she'd be hit a dozen times before she could blink!

So I jumped too. I leaped out of my cover and snapped off shots at the turret targeting her. The small cartridges did just as little as I expected , but for once I got exactly what I wanted and the gun swiveled to track me as I rose higher in the air. Stabs of pain shot through my left wing with each flap, but the adrenaline I was swimming in let me ignore it in my attempt to draw their fire my way. I felt half a dozen bullets pass so close the wind whipped my feathers. Another glanced off my armor before ricocheting into the ceiling above.

“Kaz, are you nuts!?” Lita screamed.

But I ignored her. I whipped around and fired off the rest of the magazine in my pistol, with the same lack of effect but keeping the heat on me. More lasers and bullets hammered the makeshift armor from around the room. A pony let out a pained whinny. Amy had Valerie and was dragging her back to the shop, so I just had to find some way to-

I wasn't sure how I ended up on the floor, but the throbbing pain in my cheek and shoulder coupled with the fact that I was next to another support column gave me a hint. The machine gun wasn't shooting at me anymore that I could tell, so stopped thinking and jumped up. I had to get my bearings so I could get to Amy and Valerie-

The wall behind me exploded in yet more shots, and I ran. I didn't know where I was going, but for the moment it didn't matter. If I stopped, I died.

Where the fuck was the shop?!

I skidded to a stop behind a low wall next to some kind of empty display and hugged the ground. The wall shuddered as shots punched straight through it as if it weren't there. If I'd been sitting or standing, I'd have taken the shots head on…

What was I supposed to do? If I got up, I'd die. If I stayed here, Valerie would, and probably Amy too. Someone else had to take the heat off of me, or this was hopeless!

“Medic!” Amy screamed over the din. Something in my gut clenched. She could have been hit too. Both she and Valerie could be dying, and I was just sitting there.

I snatched open my medical kit and dug out a potion, which I sucked down. The pain in my wing, shoulder and face faded. If I was going to make it, I had no choice but to get back in the air. I'd be too slow on the ground, and I'd never find my bearings fast enough.

The fire resumed the instant I returned to the air, so I poured on all the speed I could muster. As it turned out, rushing around an enclosed room, even one this large, at maximum speed was very challenging. I weaved past a column and rose to throw off the gunner's aim. I swerved back around and dove, trying to find the shop.

“Kaz, get down!” Lita shouted again.

There! I swung around toward her voice, and saw the dark shop across the room. All of the way.

I made it halfway.

This time when the gunner opened up, my foreleg exploded in pain and my whole body shook from the impact. I lost control and banked over to slam into one of the obnoxiously common pillars in the room before tumbling down to the ground. My foreleg exploded in pain again as I caught myself with my claws and fell into a rolling tumble, but I was so disoriented I took ages getting back to my feet. Everything hurt and I couldn't twist my right claw like I was supposed to. Any second I expected another hail of high caliber bullets to gut me, but I didn't know which way to run!

Something grabbed me by my tail and snatched me off my feet before I'd even fully gotten to them. Before I knew it, I was in a dark alcove of some kind, head still spinning and nausea starting to well up in my stomach.

“Hurry up! She's not breathing!” Amy practically screamed into my ear.

Oh. Shit, I was in the shop now. I'd made it. I took the weight off my wounded leg and spun around. “Where is she?”

Amy grabbed me by the sleeve and yanked me further in, around behind a stack of boxes that some slave probably erected to give themselves a sliver of privacy. What I saw made a ball of concrete form in the pit of my stomach.

She'd switched on a small gem lamp that the former slave installed, which cast a faintly flickering yellow glow down on Valerie. Blood was everywhere. I realized now I was even standing in it, and that the ruined mattress beneath the griffoness was utterly soaked. A single hole in her breastplate the size of my thumb gave me a small chill when I saw it. Fuck if this didn't look familiar, but I knew deep down that it wasn't like last time. Last time, she took the bullet in the lung and was still cognizant. Now, her eyes were glossed over and she was entirely unresponsive. As Amy exclaimed, she wasn't breathing, and a quick check confirmed that she had no pulse.

“Do something!”

“I'm trying!” I shouted back as I snatched the releases on her breastplate and peeled it away to reveal a glistening mess covering the under suit. I had no doubt she'd been hit in the heart or aorta this time. The sudden loss of blood pressure had her out cold, and it was going to be a fight to get her breathing again even after I gave her a potion.

Pain shot up my leg as I tried to reach for my medical kit, and I had to switch to the other one to awkwardly wrestle it free. It was fine. I could just pour the restoration potion into the wound and it would regenerate the damage. Even losing almost all of her blood would be okay. I'd have to relieve the pressure in her chest and give her CPR afterward, which wasn't a sure shot by any stretch, but she had a chance. I just had… just had to…

“What? What's wrong?”

I stared down into my medical kit, which looked worse than Valerie. A multicolored sea of potions mixed and sloshed together in the bottom, boiling away into multicolored vapors as the magic released. Fragments of shattered glass stabbed through the packing material and even the outer canvas covering.

I didn't understand. What could have-

The pillar. Prancing pony princesses on parade, when I hit the pillar I landed on the medical kit and shattered every potion bottle. I didn't have any potion to give her.

Valerie was going to die.

Amy took the medical kit from me. Her eyes widened. “Wh-what? No. No, no, no!” She upended the bag and let what was left of the potion run out onto her palm. She tried to drip the remains into Valerie's chest wound, but if there was any effect it was too small to see.

There was no way I could save Valerie. I couldn't fix a tear in her aorta under battlefield conditions. If this happened in the damned clinic with her on an operating table she'd probably die. I couldn't fix this.

Amy took me by the shoulders. “You're a doctor. You can fix things without potions. Do something. Hurry!”

“I-I can't!”

“What do you mean you can't!? Do something you motherfucker!” She shoved me back a step.

Valerie was going to die. I knew it, and deep down Amy had to know it too. But for her sake, and deep down mine, I tried anyway.

I pushed past her to grab my medical kit and dig out the surgical tools. Valerie was unconscious, so there was no point in trying to keep her comfortable. Whatever I was even going to do. I needed x-rays to even know what the full extent of the injury was, and just slicing her open wasn't likely to improve the situation at all. I had to control the bleeding in case it was somehow less severe than I expected. I grabbed the gauze from my kit and analyzed the situation-

Wait. On a hunch, I rolled her onto her side and confirmed my fears. Her back was soaked with blood too, and while the entry wound might have only been the size of a talon, the exit wound was three times its size. An exposed rib had been pulverized by the bullet's exit, and her lung had been torn badly.

Pony goddeses did my leg hurt, but I pushed past it to do something.

There was so much blood I could barely tell what I was doing, but I clamped the torn arteries I came across. For a moment I had a small glimmer of hope, since it looked like maybe only her lung had been hit like last time.

The hope didn't last long, and vanished when my claw found her aorta. I couldn't see it from all the blood in her chest cavity, but I could feel it. The bullet had torn the artery, and no doubt within seconds she'd bled out enough to lose consciousness and the pressure would have collapsed her lungs. There was just no way to come back from this.

My bloody claws trembled over her, but there was nothing more I could do.

“Kaz. Kaz, don't stop. Don't stop. It's not too-”

“She's dead, Amy.” I didn't even realize what I was saying until I had. “There's nothing else-I-I'm sorry, but-”

“No! It's not too late! The medical evac. That's right, the evac should be here now. I can go get them and they'll have more-”

I stepped back and insisted, “We're pinned down here, and even if they got here right now there's nothing they could do. She's gone.”

Amy's beak hung open as she fought to find some other excuse or way to bring her dead sister back. She just shook her head and started retreating. Retreating back toward the open kill zone.

“No. No, no, no. No, we were going-going to...” She snatched up her rifle from the ground and flicked the fire selector to full auto. “These ponies. These damned ponies are going to-going to pay for this!”

“Amy, wait!” Getting herself killed wasn't going to bring Valerie back!

She leaned out and started unloading the rifle into a target outside of my field of view. I hobbled over and started to reach for her tail to return the favor of dragging her out of certain death's way, but a series of deafening booms beat me to it. Muffled whinnies came as soon as the machine gun fire ceased. Two more booms. Then two more.

I crept around to see a team of two Talons wielding anti-materiel rifles perched on the railing across from us. They each worked the actions of their rifles and discharged another volley into the machine gun nests, but by this point the ponies were either dead or had abandoned their now useless barricades.

The heavy weapons Stern called in. They got here just in time to clean up the mess that she made by ordering a premature assault against a fortified position.

I hobbled past Amy, who was struggling to reload her rifle, and made a break for the hallway we'd entered from. Maybe I could get to the evac team now and get more potions. It was too late for Valerie, but I knew there were others that had been wounded, and they might still have a chance.

My own leg could wait…

The cleanup operation didn't take long after we broke past the gun emplacements, and I had the fortune of tending to the wounded instead of having to participate in it. Given Amy's state, Serge opted for our team to stay behind and keep the foyer secure while I worked and the rest of Talon company swept the mall. I expected to get a thorough bitching from him over breaking cover like I did. Both Amy and myself. I guess that would have to come later, under more sedate circumstances.

I never got a full report on what happened during the rest of the assault, but I heard another explosion a few minutes later. News filtered back our way that someone had found Protege alive too, but that he was in critical condition. Despite my fears that I'd be saddled with treating a dying slaver of high status, he'd been carted off to the slaver hospital for treatment, leaving me with just our own casualties. The arrival of Zella and Yvonne was a great help too.

My anger and contempt at the situation grew with every injured griffon I helped treat, but I had to bury it all when I caught sight of the black and white plumage of Captain Stern fluttering down next to me. I didn't look up from the materials I was repacking into my medical kit.

“Report, private. What's the situation with the wounded?”

A lot worse than it needed to be due to your impatience. That was the situation, ma'am.

Of course, I didn't say that, and just rolled the last of the gauze up enough to stuff into the bag. My leg was feeling much better after I took another potion from the evac team.

“Four casualties. One killed in action. Three have been sent back to the clinic for treatment. Two walking wounded.” Myself exempted.

If she felt anything at learning that someone else was killed, she didn't let it show. She just nodded once. “Carry on.”

Yes ma'am, fucking ma'am.

Fortunately, she flapped off without another word and left me to finish collecting my things. As I put my medical kit back on, the glint of metal caught my eye, resting near the pillar I slammed into just tens of minutes ago. My pistol. I'd forgotten about it completely, and I honestly couldn't believe that I found it. I tried the slide and magazine release. Probably undamaged too.

At least I didn't kill anyone dropping it this time. Even so, I removed the magazine to be safe, tried to eject the chambered round and found it empty, and slid it into its holster.

“What a disaster,” I muttered.

Which was an understatement in many ways. I plodded back over to the shop where Valerie's body still rested, now covered in a black tarp that I'd dragged from an adjacent holding pen. My doomed attempt to save her kept replaying in my head, as did the way I just blurted out to Amy that she was dead. It took several minutes to really die, even with an injury like she'd suffered. Maybe as many as five to ten minutes to reach the point of brain death and no return. If I'd had another restoration potion, maybe I could have still saved her. And it couldn't have been more than two to three minutes between her being shot and me reaching her. While for all practical purposes it had been too late, in a strict sense it wasn't. I told Amy it was, because I was afraid if either of us stepped back outside we'd die too. By all accounts it would have been almost impossible to reach the evac team in time, but not completely impossible.

I stared down at the motionless shape beneath the tarp. It was all academic at this point. No amount of second guessing myself was going to bring her back.

And again, I felt a strange emptiness at the thought of her death. Like Liese there was no real mourning, and instead just guilt. But it really wasn't the same. I barely knew her. We'd talked a few times over the years, but that was nothing compared to how I'd worked with Amy consistently for over five years by this point.

Speaking of whom, I was much more worried about her. The last I saw of her, she'd thrown her rifle off into one corner and was curled up in a different corner, where Serge was trying to talk to her.

It should have been me talking to her, I knew. I was the one who couldn't save her sister.

...but then, maybe it was best for it to be someone else. Serge might not have been the most eloquent griffon in the world, but he couldn't be any worse than me at trying to console someone.

I blew out a sigh and tried to figure out how to tie the tarp around Valerie so we could move her body, and caught sight of Isaac ambling into the shop. He pointed a talon at her, then his thumb back at himself.

“I could use a hand with her if you don't mind.” He nodded. “Thanks.”

I felt terribly guilty for even thinking it, but I was glad I had an excuse to leave. Between moving Valerie and helping with the wounded at the clinic, I couldn't stay here forever. I felt very guilty, but I was glad that someone else was talking to Amy right then.

Maybe later after I had some time to think about it and she'd had some time to come to terms with what happened, it would be easier.

Later came sooner than I expected.

There wasn't much to do at the clinic. By the time I got there, Adelaide and Yvonne had already patched everyone up, so I was mostly giving everyone another check over before signing off on paperwork to release them. They'd all make full recoveries. Nobody knew where Ragini had been taken, but it must have been to the slaver hospital or Red Eye's personal physician. Either way, not our problem.

When I returned to base, Serge told me that Amy had gone off to the incinerator to attend whatever ceremony had been arranged for Valerie. Given that there had been so many funerals lately and that she was the only casualty this time, it didn't surprise me that there hadn't been any large announcement or organization for her.

I was a little surprised at the haste of burning her body, but maybe Stern wanted to bury the whole incident as fast as possible.

In any case, when I arrived at the incinerator, I found a thin stream of smoke wafting from its smokestack and banked to avoid it before settling at the small side entrance that I'd used the last few times I'd been here. Aside from the practical reasons to avoid the smoke, it felt disrespectful to fly through the fumes in the event it was really from Valerie…

It was hard not to reflect on how much I hated this place as I stood at the door. The incinerator, Fillydelphia as a whole, and the specific room I'd been in so many times to watch someone be laid to eternal rest.

Inside, I found an all too familiar sight. A single griffoness pressed into the corner of the dumping room, staring out over the red glow of the burner pit. She didn't acknowledge my arrival, so I stepped inside and cleared my throat. “Hey, Amy.”

“Hey.”

It was a start. I circled around to back against the same wall and face the pit. “If you don't want to talk, I… I can go.”

She didn't look at me, and didn't say anything more. She didn't tell me to leave either though, so…

“I know it doesn't mean much, but I'm sorry. It hurts, I know.”

Still nothing.

“...maybe I don't, really. You and Valerie were closer than Liese and I ever were. As much as it hurt me, I know it must-”

“Kaz?” Her voice was weak, as if she'd worn it out.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Silence fell as she commanded, broken only by the odd crackle or pop of debris in the incinerator burning. A twisting pain formed in my chest. I wasn't helping, and should have known better than to come. I'd done enough to let her down.

“Wait.”

I paused halfway through standing up. “Huh?”

“I didn't say leave.”

The position I stopped in was awkward and uncomfortable, but I held it for a while regardless, unsure of what to do next. Finally, when my legs started to cramp, I sank back into a seated position. Again, the silence returned.

I didn't know how long we'd be there, and minutes passed with neither of us saying anything. A lot more were likely to follow, but as much as I hated this place… if it's what she needed, I could give her that much.

Level Up - Level 13!

Combat Veteran – All attacks that target you directly have their damage reduced by 1d10 per rank.