“I never understood all those HLF guys that just look at us like we’re… I don’t know, committing blasphemy, pissing on holy relics or whatever. They just look at us and decide we’ll become newfoals for working with forces beyond our understanding. Still, these are the kinds of people who believe windmills could stop the Earth’s rotation, so take them with a grain of salt. Me, though, I see magic as an opportunity. There are limitless possibilities, and we can use them against newfoals to our hearts content. I say go all-out! Get mad! We have the technology, we have the power, the manufacturing capacity to turn newfoal charges into meatgrinders. Mark my words - we will be forced to slaughter them as she gains a billion more humans. We will call for weapons great and terrible, cross lines we hoped we’d never be in the vicinity of. For anything west of the Barrier to survive as we’re pushed up into America’s heartland against the Rockies, for the Russians to survive as they’re thrown deeper and deeper into Siberia, we’ll need to become armies unto ourselves, each man or woman, mare or stallion capable of staggering a newfoal charge singlehandedly. And I will be happy to oblige the tools of that trade.”

Sebastian Irving - Head of the PHL's R&D Weapon Division, Grail War Branch

"I have the worst job in the world. Being up in space may be the dream of every adventurous child out there, but it’s really not what it’s cracked up to be.”

“The routine is the same everyday - wake up, eat, check for our next shipments, check on the satellites, contact ground control, try to keep ourselves occupied, and rest. Can’t really do much else. Keeping up on the news is just too depressing.”

“The war is only getting worse. Every day, the crew and I can only watch as the Barrier keeps on growing. Another city or town disappears every day, I feel like I'm gonna be sick, and I've soaked up enough radiation that my hair comes out in clumps. Still... the military, the people need these satellites up. There's a good chance this is all that will be left of humanity. Depressing, isn't it?”

“But we made our choice, and we’ll stick by it till the end. And if the PHL wins… well, I'd like to think, we made a difference in the end. Not bad for the daughter of an oil driller and a housewife, huh?”
Doctor Erin Kimball, astronaut maintaining telecommunications satellites

It was the end again. The last day that the people of France could have pretended to have anything remotely similar to a normal life.

The students stood there. One teenager, a boy named Jean Kirchstein, had found a nailgun, god only knew how. They’d stood behind barricades of desks, huddled in classrooms. The windows had the curtains pulled down. “We have to stay until help arrives!” the teacher pleaded, trying to keep Kirchstein away from his nailgun.

Their hooves clip-clopped through the hallway. She didn’t know how, or even why, but they were smiling.

“Dominic!” the teacher yelled. “Help me get this nailgun away from him!”

“I’m not Dominic!” she had said, like a petulant child. “I’m Dominique!”

“I don’t care! He’s gonna do something he regrets with that!”

“Be quiet!” Henri hissed. “They’ll hear us!”

“Teacher’s pet!” someone else yelled.

“Look!” the teacher pleaded. “Just stay put! Just-”

A vial of potion sailed through the open door, splattering on the floor. Everyone recoiled, the teacher jumping back…

...But not quickly enough. Drops of the potion splattered over his leg.

“Don’t touch that!” the teacher screamed. “For the love of God, don’t-MERE D’UN DIEU!” he screamed, collapsing on the leg that had been potioned.

“What’s… what’s…” Dominique stammered.

“MY LEG!” he screamed, choking up blood. “It’s…. OH, DEAR JESUS WHY?!” he tried to stand up, his leg slipping from his battered and overstretched shoe to reveal a hoof. “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!” he screamed, frantically batting at the offending leg, now covered in pinkish fur. “NO! PLEASE GOD!”

The noises he made weren’t anything like what a human should make. Terrible, rasping bellows as the potion spread up, his body reshaping. Sickly cracks issued from his legs, then his waist-

“Jean,” he said, mustering the minuscule amounts of calm that he could. “I need you take that nailgun, take that nailgun, and… hold it to my throat...!”

“N… n… no!” Jean stammered, tears in his eyes. “I can’t! I…”

“Jean!” the teacher said. “Please! For-” the potion moved on to his lungs by now, and his face seemed somehow as pliable as clay. “The-” But what he was about to say devolved into scratching, wet wheezing gasps, bloody scraps of his organs issuing issuing forth from his mouth. HIs eyes grew wider than they had any right to be, and he began to smile. It was somehow worse than the rictus of agony that his face had been. It spread like ooze, as his face lengthened into an equine snout, his lips and cheeks splitting apart. For a terrible moment, his bloody upper and lower jaw, red with torn and bleeding muscle, were visible, protruding from the front of his face, before the fur swallowed it up. His eyes grew so huge that they seemed they would explode out his sockets, dangling over his mouth. And yet he kept smiling.

“So good,” he whispered like a mantra. “So good so good so good so good…”

When it was all over, a stallion with unfortunate pink fur stood in front of them. “Come on… take the potion!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “GO ON, TAKE IT! TAKE YOUR MEDICINE!”

He jumped into the minuscule puddle, attempting to splash it around, that lunatic smile affixed to his face.

“FUCKING PONIES!” Dominique screamed. “You… you monsters!”

“Hold on!” someone screamed. “I’m coming! Just stay put!”

“It’s… it’s a pony!” Jean said. “Not gonna miss this time-”

“Don’t shoot!” she screamed. “I don’t have any vials! I’m going to help!”

“It’s Cheerilee!” Jean gasped. “I trust her!”

“Oooh, more help!” the pink-furred stallion giggled childishly. Goosebumps ran across Dominique’s arms.

“I’ve seen enough of them trying to help,” Dominique said, and ducked out. She slid open a window and landed on the ground, running. She caught a glimpse of the pony who claimed to be rescuing them, a magenta mare with a light pink mane, and three flowers on her flank.

But, as she hit the ground, she heard the phut-phut-phut of a nailgun firing...

She couldn’t remember how long she ran, through the streets of Paris. All around her, cars were crashed, or backed up, turning busy thoroughfares into parking lots, people rushing through alleyways, screaming in horror. Planes flew through the air, cleaving through ponies. Dead bodies littered the streets, and the bodies of the pegasi she had so adored dropped from the sky, bleeding from grievous wounds.

Paris, and her childhood along with it, were in their death throes.

As she dashed through the streets, she saw a rather elderly man extending a hand to a wounded pegasus with glassy eyes, only for him to shrink and twist within his clothes, his eyes expanding, as he collapsed in on himself to form an earth pony. He laughed, almost hysterically, as if he was trying to convince himself he was happy. It sounded like glass shattering.

The glassy-eyed pegasus laughed, even as they coughed up parts of their organs, blood spilling from wounds and the stump of one wing. As if their own life had no meaning if they could ponify even one person.

And yet she still ran, her dress fluttering in the wind as she raced towards her parents house. Off in the distance, she could hear thunderclaps. No, not thunder. Gunshots. Ponies screaming. Was this a nightmare? This couldn’t have been real, it was so sudden! One moment, the city was at peace, the next it had descended into chaos. Buildings exploded into rubble, unicorns fired blasts of force that brought down edifices that had seen centuries of history, and all around her, humans fell, shifting into ponies.

“Mommy and Daddy had to be safe. They had to be! They’d know what to do, they’d know what to do… they could help her escape!” she remembered someone saying, then realizing that she’d been

Finally, she made her way to her house, picking up the key under the dog statue and opening the door.

The house was silent. It seemed clean. Too clean, even. Her parents were never that clean.

She heard them laughing. Giggling, even. What? Had she walked in on something? Had they-

“OhHhHhHHHHH Dominic!” her mother screamed, in a high, piercing falsetto that scratched away at her ears. “You should try this! It feels wonderful!”

“Can you hear it, Signal?” her father asked. “They’re calling to us… it’s beautiful.”

“I don’t even know why I tried to stop them!” an unfamiliar man added. “It’s… it’s so beautiful being a pony!”

No. It couldn’t be. They turned into more of them! The newfoals… she’d seen them. People that had been sick, afraid they were doomed, or just taken in by the siren song of Equestria. As if Celestia had exuded a suggestion spell to make going to the Bureaus more attractive.

“I’m not Dominic,” Dominique said. She was a girl, she hated being a boy… “Not Dominic. Not Dominic,” she repeated crazily. She looked around, seeing a uniform on the floor. A rifle sat on the floor.

A unicorn big enough for a small child to ride stepped out from behind a corner, a vial of something purple in its mouth. No. Not juice. Potion.

“I don’t have to worry about anything ever again!” her father laughed, and Dominique knew that if he threw the potion at her, she’d never be herself again. She’d be worse than dead. The rifle was on the floor there… she had to. She had to.

She remembered. As they advanced, her father ready to potion her with a smile on his face, she picked up the rifle and pulled the trigger.

She was young and small, of course. Unable to control the recoil. At that range, it didn’t matter. The rounds shredded her parents and the unfamiliar man, probably a soldier or policeman, ripping apart their organs in the space of seconds.

She trembled as tears fell from her eyes, clutching the rifle as she collapsed to the ground.

".. I’m sorry." she said in a low voice. “I’m… so… s… s… SORRY!” she burst into tears, curled up on the floor, unwilling to go upstairs. As if the bodies formed a barrier of some kind that prevented her from going upstairs.

There was the sound of foot steps as a dark shadow formed over her.

“... Mother of God, those must be her parents,” she heard someone breathe. “She shot them… after they were ponified.”

“The poor child,” another man sighed. “I’m taking her with us. No way am I leaving her here!”

“We don’t have the resources to evacuate!” someone else protested. “We-”

“Janvier,” the man interrupted, “It’s one little girl. Are we meant to just kill ponies above all else? We’re not to lose our humanity as well! We can’t just leave her here!" he sighed. “Dammit, Janvier. If we don’t do the right thing, if we don’t save people… then what are we? We’ll never be heroes. We’ll never be defenders of humanity. We’ll never get the military backing we need, because we don’t deserve it.”

"All we need to do is find a way to break that barrier and let the nukes fly. This is survival at any cost, we don’t need to save those that can’t fight," someone else said. Their command of French was rather poor. "But if you must, you can take her just this once."

"Thank you."

“Easy now,” said a man, hoisting her over one shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

Dominique’s vision swam before her eyes, growing watery.

“I’m Louissaint,” the man said. “Don’t worry. The HLF will take good care of you…”

She woke up, breathing heavily.

Hands? Still had them. Hooves? Still none. Still human. Not… not in France.

In fact, it was a long distance from France, from that school full of the children that were probably newfoals by now… or worse. Part of the PHL. That made you a newfoal in all but name-everyone in the HLF knew that. Being PHL was like selling your soul.

Hadn’t stopped Louissaint, the ‘Mad Doctors’ Viktor Kraber and Kagan Burakgazi, or Angus Reid.

She lay somewhere along the Great Lakes, near an old copper mine. She lay on a car stripped for parts next to a burnt-out ruin of a house. The woman there, a far cry from the youngish boy she had once been, would be unrecognizable to anyone that remembered her from France.

Rather tall, and rail-thin. Her hair shaved on one side, dyed purple and red. Wearing the castoff clothes common to HLF members, and a crude kevlar vest with visible pieces of metal sat on her chest. Uncomfortable, but it worked. Bizarrely, she was wearing a wetsuit, half-unzipped. But it made sense - Kraber himself had innovated it as a cheap anti-potion measure. And yet, despite the hard look that had found her, despite the onset of male puberty, she’d managed to cultivate an image of femininity.

She sat on the hood of a car, a Kalashnikov made from a truly ridiculous array of spare parts and rechambered for .50 Beowulf next to her. She’d known little but war for most of her adolescence. She knew everything about survival, and she’d been fighting so long it felt as if she knew nothing but war. Nothing but running, the fear of potion-bombing, hiding like rats in abandoned buildings and in wildernesses. She knows near-everything about survival, about growing up...

Save for being a teenager.

She looks off into the wilderness, the hills lined with trees and full of abandoned copper mines that her HLF unit, Taskforce Paris, had taken for their own use.

In the mines, the huge warren of tunnels that had been dug out, you can find ponies strung up. Nailed or riveted to support beams. Graffitos in blood. Bulletholes in the walls. Oversized casings, of a size more commonly found ejected from heavy machineguns or enormous hunter’s rifles. A mongrel armory of weapons, sledgehammers and tools, homemade machine guns made from power drills and metal odds and ends and stolen parts, the rare .50 Beowulf AR, sacrificing magazine capacity for the power so desperately needed to be competent against Equestria’s magically shielded troops, homemade weapons and zipguns more comparable to cannons than personal firearms, milisurp and frankenguns from countries and companies erased by the barrier.

It has gone unnoticed simply because top PHL warriors (The Knight of Germania, the Blue Spy, Viktor Kraber, Cheerilee) and taskforces simply had more pressing worries or had simply sauntered off to hidden PHL operation centers, which, frustratingly enough, the HLF had proven unable to locate. Though there were whispers of a new UN/PHL/U.S initiative, wiping out PER and HLF alike. Safety was doubtful, but the tunnels they had chosen to hide in were a labyrinth-it’d be easy to get lost.

In some hiding places, there are a few working cars made up from a mish-mash of assorted stolen parts. Painted in electric-blues, yellows, reds, and dark brown-gray-blacks. Adorned with trophies of past hunts and purges of ponies, newfoals or not. Driven by rough-looking men and women, boys and girls who have had their chances to be childhood cut short, who have also taken trophies. Cutie marks sewn into jackets. Jackets from hides. Necklaces of horns, collections of oddly diminutive pegasus wings. Unreliable electricity, all the denizens of the town, the scum, hiding in its bunkers, every space repurposed for storehouses, or bunks packed so densely together that it’s a wonder anyone can walk between the things.

Yet, in this town, a great number of the bunks have been… taken. Newcomers, HLF from another unit who are seeking refuge after fleeing from a PHL unit tasked with cleansing the country of HLF and PER alike.

They’d needed new blood, ever since Angus Reid’s defection took half their men. They’d gotten hill folk, crazy survivalists, scared people from outlying towns who never had the displeasure of being in proximity to the Barrier that were downright terrified of ponies, telling rumors that even the most fanatical members had thought to be total bullshit.

It had come as something as a surprise. A year ago, Taskforce Paris’ leader, a French veteran named Janvier, had been talking about liberating a town from the PHL, and how the citizens might be so happy when the HLF liberated them from the oppression, and then, without warning as he was drinking his morning coffee, Angus Reid (a normally rather sedate Scotsman) had burst into a profanity-laden tirade lasting for so long it seemed impossible he hadn’t taken a breath. He had then left, taking his rifle, his claymore, and much of the unit with him. It had ripped a hole in the unit, and other HLF members had joined in. Tamika had nearly joined, but she’d made the right decision and held back.

“Dom!” Tamika called over. “We need you inside - Janvier got another speech in the works! Says he’s got something big planned!”

“Really?!” Dominique said, the corners of her mouth moving up ever so slightly. She headed off, ready for the slaughter.

In another time, a safer, older time, it would have been madness to see a soldier young as Dominique, or to see teenagers armed with rifles such as these, fighting in the streets, fields, and forests of America. Especially one in the HLF militia. And yet… it was necessary.

They had all come from a variety of backgrounds, races, and creeds for one purpose: To find every pony on earth, stop the invasion, and slaughter them all. They hadn’t sold themselves out like the PHL, betraying humanity for that stupid merry-go-round-toy Lyra Heartstrings! And for that, they were pure! They were humanity’s true protectors!

And yet, Dominique found herself doubting that. Angus had raised good points in his speech. Or perhaps it was more of a rant. What had they done? Besides keep guns and shoot up ponies? Bombing headquarters like that idiot in Portland, Oregon, who attacked a munitions plant that could have helped?

The two of them made their way through a hidden entrance into a mine, negotiating through its winding tunnels, passing by the traps, carefully making sure not to step on the tripwires or hidden pressure plates made to dismember intruders. A bit extreme, yes, but the HLF was justifiably paranoid.

And then, they found it. Their hideout, once a silver mine. They walked into the improvised mess hall, its craggy walls lined with posters and propaganda from a thousand places that no longer existed, in languages that now had no place to have originated. Throughout the room, people chattered excitedly in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, every dialect to have come from Europe.

"Just who are these PER fuckers anyway? How fucked up does one have to be to betray their own species?" one Portuguese woman asked.

"Sad, useless traitors," answered an American.

“LOYAL DEFENDERS OF TRUE HUMANITY!” Janvier called, his voice ringing out in the small cave. He always started speeches like that. Everyone fell silent, hanging on his words. “We have found another PER outpost… this one not too far. I realize that Angus Reid’s betrayal has caught us off-guard, and the new men and women we have joined forces with are unfamiliar.”

The new men and women he referred to were the remnants of Glanzon's Gluemakers, widely regarded as one of the first HLF units. The best-trained. The most angry, because, after all, they'd come from Switzerland. They’d been the first to lose their homes, and lost thousands of places they’d come to call home on their exodus from Europe, and they'd been decimated in the last week or so by PHL forces. They’d been unusually persistent in wiping the HLF out, the goddamn Gestapo. Wiping out humanity’s true defenders to serve it up on a platter for Celestia, no doubt.

“They are heroes, though! They have fought longer than any of us, fought on every front from Geneva to Maine! I, for one, welcome them. They’re certainly better at keeping themselves pure and human than those disgusting, horsefucking PHL traitors…”

True. True. But something about it put Dominique on edge. It was an honor to meet them! They were Swiss, they'd seen more of the war than anyone!

And yet... She'd heard something. One of them had said Angus had been hit with a mind control PHL weapon, the same kind they'd nailed Viktor Kraber with while he was hospitalized. Something that subverted him to the side of ponies, eventually making him a newfoal in all but mind. That couldn't be right, could it?! Angus had been... He'd understood her. He knew people that grew up trans and understood her, defending her from those few HLF members that hadn't cast aside their prejudices to fight off ponies.

"Finally! We’ve barely killed any in the last week!" One of the Gluemakers said, almost petulantly.

“And I know that when we find the PER, our new friends will show no mercy!”

They all cheered, the Gluemakers more vocal than anyone.

“Not too long ago, we attacked a PHL convoy,” Janvier said, enjoying the enthused gasps from everyone. “And we found a new PHL weapon!”

“BULLSHIT!” someone from Glanzon’s Gluemakers yelled. “You’ll ponify us all with that thing!”

“The magic that leaks from it isn’t in concentrations that can harm us!” Janvier said. “But… it’s undeniably effective. We’ll use it in the operation planned tonight.”

He paused, then continued, letting everyone’s excitement over a new op grow. “The PER have taken over a Dead End, just last night,” Janvier continued. “However! This one has been… subverted… by the pony-pounders. It’s a PHL outpost, through and through. A goddamned company town.”

He looked in the direction of the Chinese refugees in the mess hall, hoping to anger them. It worked.

“The PHL have barricaded off the factory, but the PER have hostages, and they’re saying that they won’t ponify them if they’re allowed access to the factory’s equipment. The PHL, those goddamned horsefuckers, they’re probably negotiating as we speak. We’re not gonna let that happen, though,” a smile crept across Janvier’s face. “We find them. Kill every pony and horsefucker in there, save it from the PHL for people that deserve it. And we take the weaponry in the factory for ourselves.”

For some HLF members, PHL weaponry, even the lowliest, most primitively enchanted weapon, ere as a commodity.

The Gluemakers cheered, roaring in delight. They had huge smiles on their faces.

Still, something seemed off to Dominique.

The Gluemakers were professional! They'd fought on every front, triumphantly showing the world they were right when the Barrier destroyed Geneva. They'd nearly gotten official military backing, or been military backing if it wasn't for the so-called Knight of Germania. They were the closest they had to-

A proper military unit? Implying that we ourselves are not? That even though we’ve embraced the apocalypse, it doesn’t seem to have hit everyone else as hard? That we are doing Something Wrong?

Meanwhile, in Detroit...

Abraham Svec hated Dead Ends. He hated the ugly concrete walls. He hated the guardtowers. He hated that they were seemingly designed to be evacuated. He hated that it was essentially a quarantine zone, to be sealed off in the event of a mass potion attack and then blown to smithereens.

Most of all, he hated that they seemed to be the future. So bleak, so hopeless… his future. Having to raise his daughter there, living in fear with his wife until the evac order came or they were ponified, or until they were pushed into the sea… Oh lord, what’d happen to his brother Dalibor?

He shook it off. He had to worry about the now.

“What do you think?” asked Yael Ze’ev, an Israeli PHL woman with a customized Galil 7.62mm SAR, fitted with Khvostov 7G-02 and Birdseye enchanted modifications.

A stallion named Touchdown,, a dark red unicorn with a slicked-back black mane and yellow aviator sunglasses, stared through the binoculars, levitating them to his eyes. “The members the PER have manning the guardtowers look pretty ragged. I wish we had the Blue Spy, though...”

“Easy on her. Changeling magic ain’t easy. Besides, Heliotrope’s doing the best she can,” Johnny C said, staring through the reflex scope on his Leshiy rifle, an FN FAL with an AN94’s blowback shifted pulse and hyperburst systems. And experimental runes, of course. A pony poked his way out from behind a rock, off in the distance. Those wide, staring eyes, happily fixed on something none of them could see? Expression of disgust for its surroundings? Definitely a newfoal. “Ja. That’s PER, ne? Can’t tell if the newfoal’s recent or not.”

Gunfire rang out from inside the Dead End, then an explosion.

“Still people there,” Abraham said. “The factory’s still holding out.”

“Nooit, that’s civvies,” Viktor M. Kraber said, looking through the sight of his new LMG, an MG2023 Advanced Individual Support Weapon. AISW for short. He’d regretfully stored his NTW-20 somewhere safe, as Vinyl had suggested - quite rightly - that it would have been ludicrously terrible to maneuver in an environment like this. Granted, the LMG would too, but he’d been scheduled to test it. “Doesn’t sound like PHL-”

There was another explosion in the distance, and the buzz of a minigun. “MY SPLEEN!” a human screamed.

“Okay. That’s the PHL then,” Kraber said.

Yael breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. We’ve still got something to save.”

“Thank God,” Abraham breathed. “Won’t be easy getting them… I don’t like tight spaces that much.”

“That’s normal,” Johnny C said. “Pretty damn claustrophobic. Sarge? What do you have to say?”

“Got bad memories of tight spaces,” Kraber said. “Actually, I just fokking hate having a spiet there in general.”

“Mind telling why?” Yael asked.

“He minds,” Aegis said, as Kraber silenced her with a piercing glare. Nobody (or nopony in this case) wanted to ask what the two of them were hiding.

“So…” Johnny started. “A lot of us have been wondering something. How did you get out of the hospital so fast?”

Kraber and Aegis looked at each other, trying to come up with an excuse, whispering in each other’s ears.

Then, with a completely straight face, Aegis looked over at Yael and said: “Nanomachines, son.”

Kraber looked off to the side, desperately trying and failing not to giggle through the hand over his mouth.

Everyone just stared.

“You’re shitting me,” Yael said bluntly.

“Of fokking course we are!” Kraber laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try us,” Yael said wryly.

“No, trust me, there is ‘crazy’, and there is ‘goddammit that did NOT happen I can’t comprehend this what the hell I stopped being able to even a long time ago’,” Aegis said, saying the entire sentence in a quick monotone, with as few commas as he could manage.

“It’s the second one!” Kraber stage-whispered.

A voice crackled over their earpieces. “Coming in hot, everyone.”

“Right then, Heliotrope. Signal us when ready. The ponies Naturals, Zombies or Subverted?” Kraber asked. There were two types of newfoals - the stupid, zombie-like ones suitable only for meatshield rushes and absorbing bullets, or Subverted. Those were the really smart ones, who seemed like they could have almost been normal, healthy ponies… if not for the fact that burning hatred for everything they once were was so ingrained in them that it was as natural as breathing.

“Zombies,” Heliotrope said. “Definitely zombies. PER can’t afford Naturals.”

“Oweh,” Kraber said. “Wait for us. We’ll meet you up there. There’s something very special I need to do when we get there.”

Dominique actually liked Dead Ends. They were a big source of manpower for the HLF, after all. She was convinced (or rather, had convinced herself) the reason America so loved the PHL was that they hadn’t lost enough to see what the ponies truly were.

The mission was a simple exercise to liberate one from the PHL and PER. Kill everyone.

She could get behind that. It was on what had once been the outskirts of a proud coastal city, but had now swelled to terrifying size. It accommodated refugees from America’s east coast, those who were fleeing while the fleeing was good, and, surprisingly enough, Eastern Europeans.

As they had driven up to it, looking for the Dead End, Dominique stared in amazement at how Detroit had grown. From what she’d heard, Detroit had been all but dead before the War, but now, now it was somewhere close to its old glory. There were cars in the streets, old factories were back in operation, and trains were actually returning. Houses had been patched up, and it actually appeared to be somewhat healthy. Though the Dead End, known as Derelict Row, drew her attention the most. It was a city unto itself, crowded with concrete buildings in every area they could muster, with a field to serve as a killing-field in the event of of an inevitable newfoal rush.

It all seemed a little too… permanent. The Dispossessed, as many refugees were called, were an odd folk. They carried little, spread out little, rarely held on to any possessions save for money, firearms and ammunition, clothing, and the rare heirloom. From what she could see of the city, though, as they drove through, the Dispossessed of Detroit had been rather more… spread out. There were actual decorations on the streets, Chinese lanterns swinging in the wind from wires from window to window. A disgusting PHL mural featuring that goddamn merry-go-round toy Lyra, surrounded by other notables of the PHL (Cheerilee, Marcus Renee, Vinyl Scratch, Rebecca Kleiner and Thunderwing) with a setting sun in the background, pointing at a statue of Princess Luna. Someone had even doodled Viktor Kraber and Aegis in, likely within the past week after hearing about their contributions to slaughtering the PER. There was also a series of the Dragons of the East, with each member, including the geldos, looking like they were posing for a movie poster. The irony of seeing their North Korean member protecting crying children alongside the American guy from a swarm of newfoal pegasi wasn’t lost on her.

In another lifetime it might have been inspiring. But… it was celebrating goddamn horsefuckers! Ponies, even!

There were even… there were even houses, parasitic architecture studding the walls of the monolithic Dead End that had once been full of abandoned buildings They looked a bit better constructed than what you’d expect - actual heating! Railings on the scaffolding used to get from place to place! It would be a nightmare to pack up. Materials and space were going at a premium these days. Though there were vague signs of packing up to leave, here and there. The city was buzzing with activity.

As such, it had been hard for the various HLF infiltrators (referred to as ‘Jockeys’ by someone with no sense of irony) to find an area of Detroit’s underground that they could sneak through that wasn’t already occupied by squatters.

As such, they had to cut through particularly disgusting areas of the sewers, past the lowest of the low, crouched in shanties built in whatever alcoves they could find.

They blended in fairly well, though the PHL gun was kept in a duffel bag. It would have drawn too many of the wrong questions from the people in the city.

All of them fanned out, heading for the entrances that their agents had marked for them.

“Today’s the day!” said one man from Glanzon’s Gluemakers that Dominique was with, a man holding what looked like a rusty brazilian open-bolt automatic .50 BMG rifle. “We kill those PHL sonsabitches. We take their weapons. And we finally take our place as humanity’s true protectors.”

A purple-pink pegasus named Heliotrope dropped into the Dead End, wings folded against her body. She was wearing an ancient, out-of-date Equestrian flightsuit, one that she’d smuggled to Brazil on the Mercy Ships. However, it had been modified with layers of protective enchantments, many of which had been inscribed onto tiny belts crisscrossing the suit. She'd designed it herself from the cloaking runes she'd helped install on ships back during the Crystal War. The trained eye could see them, but it wouldn’t be easy.

The Dead End, an ugly concrete mess of a place just across a river from an old, refurbished factory built on an island in the middle of the river, drew closer and closer.

She unfurled her wings slowly, gradually breaking in midair as she made her way to the ground.

She weaved between buildings and improvised bridges, at one point having to clutch her wings tighter to her body than ever before, narrowly squeezing her way through a narrow gap between two bridges. Filthy liquids dripped down from pipes, some newly made, others scavenged from who-knew-where. PER with flashlights patrolled nearby, bandoliers of potion around their barrels. She had to be careful, though-the slightest reflection of her, and she was b… fucked.

The mission parameters were simple-drop in from the clouds, find an entrance.

Without a sound, she touched her hind legs to the ground, folding her wings against her body once more. She spat out the trigger for the silenced 9x32mm rifles on her assault yoke, trading them out for a knife.

“Kraber,” she whispered, “I’m at the manhole on Szpilman Alley. There’s three newfoals guarding it.”

“Go in skop, skiet, and donner,” Kraber whispered back. “Just be quiet with it. We’ll know when you do that.”

“Right.”

She stalked up to them, a shockingly un-equine motion. She wasn’t predatory or anything (though she confessed a certain pleasure at remaining silent and unnoticed) and yet, thanks to years of training, it came naturally.

As did what happened next. She waited for the right moment, when they were looking away from each other, one Newfoal apparently disgusted by a PHL poster nearby, mentally stroking himself off to his own hatred. There were no witty remarks, there were no one-liners… just a splash of blood as she drove her knife into the newfoal unicorn’s head.

“Wha-” one Newfoal whispered, only for Heliotrope to spread her wings, the thin blades she wore on her wings cutting through him. She jumped up, spinning in midair, and cleaved through the other newfoal’s throat.

She took a rag out of the bag she wore on her neck, and wiped the blades down. She knocked lightly on the manhole cover.

There was another set of knocks.

“Kraber,” Heliotrope hissed. “Good to see you and why the hell do you have that BFG?!” she glanced at the unfamiliar LMG on his back, like an MG2019 but bigger and meaner, with an inexplicable addition underbarrel.

“When it all goes to kak, I want more than a good .45 automatic,” Kraber whispered as he pulled himself out, gesturing to the heavy 28-gauge Colt Quetzalcoatl revolver on his hip. “Now-”

The door nearby opened, revealing a newfoal levitating a cup of coffee. He stared in shock.

“Yes, yes he is,” Heliotrope said smoothly, walking up to the newfoal. “A good friend of mine has a question.”

“Have you seen my heliotrope?” Kraber asked, clicking his heel to release the hidden knife in his boot, then kicked the newfoal in the face.

What the knife did to the newfoal's face was better left unsaid.

“Did we have to do that?” Yael asked, annoyed.

“No, but it was funny,” Kraber said. “Always wanted to say that!”

“How the hell do you keep your rank?” Yael sighed.

“Fokked if I know,” Kraber sighed, looking over his team.

“Honestly, it’s a good question,” Touchdown said, teleporting into view in a brief flash of green. He’d been named Touchdown either by his own choosing or by virtue of uncannily prescient parents. In Equestria, it could be either. He’d been a former college hoofball star, well-valued thanks to being so huge he looked almost deformed.

They were a motley unit, formed to exterminate and clear out HLF and PER units. They were formed to kill that would ponify anyone that could fight, rile the Americas up into anarchy where they were more concerned with fighting each other and surviving than winning and living, those that would joyfully embrace becoming newfoals and-

Well. It didn’t bear thinking on. Everyone had lost someone or somepony to them, seen the atrocities.

A variety of backgrounds. Crumbling language barriers. But when it came time to clean out the PER, they worked as one. They’d been tempered by their experiences into cold hard steel, honed to deadly sharpness.

And, by bizarre coincidence, all the humans in the squad happened to be Jewish.

“Alright everyone. Today… we’ve got simple orders. Clean out the PER, protect the factory, secure the scientists, and...” Kraber said, savoring the next words like chocolate, or a fine dessert wine from South Africa like bon courage red mouscadel, “Kill all the PER in sight. Except anyone or anypony they have in line for the potion. Use the new weaponry only when things are go to hell in a handbasket. Which they fokking will.”

He mournfully ran one finger over the MG2023’s stock. He was looking forward to testing that thing. It had a Tracking Point Xactsystem scope capable of tagging targets, and an experimental underbarrel Tesla weapon mounted underneath. Like most thaumic energy weapons, it was heavy, hard to reload, and overly complex, but it was invaluable for piercing shields. It also seemed to fire more rounds than the magazine could hold, but he'd decided not to rely on that. On the subject of the rounds, those were all enchanted in the receiver so the tesla weapon would arc to anything they hit. The applications, Kraber was sure, were near-limitless.

The 28-gauge (or 14mm) Colt Quetzalcoatl revolver had been outfitted with accurization runes and a small onboard spell generator that could fill the shotgun ammo with wax, turning them into slugs… which, combined with the explosive properties of the pellets, made it essentially a miniature cluster bomb launcher. He’d also affixed slugs to the tips of some of the rounds he’d made through this process, and kept them on special speedloaders.

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Aegis chided him.

“Well, yeah. But PHL factory? Rumors of Big Fokkin’ Guns? PER attack? This don’t feel right,” Kraber said.

They had practiced with all their weaponry, even the most experimental ones. Kraber and Johnny C had become highly familiar with their new guns. By the end of the mission, they would likely be old hands with the things.

“The hell do you work this?” Dominique asked, looking over the bizarre PHL gun. It was, putting it simply… a mess. There were indicators, exposed wires and thick tubes, strange protrusions that she decided were called ‘modules’, and, bizarrely, picatinny rails. The batteries it used, PHL-made cells that held more energy than should be physically possible (At least, that was what Taskforce Paris’ resident ‘scientist’ said) and as such, they were equally opaque. A large red notice on it declared it to be an ‘EM-62 Electrolaser’, though how the PHL had reduced a laser to such a size was beyond her.

“Don’t fiddle with those!” James Millard Oakes (or ‘Overdose Oakes’, as he was known to the HLF) whispered. “You want to melt all of us?”

It was all Dominique could do not to drop the thing like a hot potato. They were entering the Dead End through the water treatment plant to the north.

And so there they found themselves, sneaking through tunnels, crouched down, weapons ready.

Pop culture would have you believe that a silencer is a magic tube that reduces the sound of gunfire to a gentle whisper.

Thankfully, the PHL’s arsenal was magic, so it actually did work like that.

Kraber fired his .45 into a a PER member’s brain. It was unenchanted ammunition, at least at the moment - magic ammunition tended to be anything but subtle. Which was why Kraber had gone for powerball ammo.

Aegis, meanwhile, stabbed the other one, this one a yellow Earth pony newfoal.

“But… we’re both…” the newfoal whispered. Aegis looked down at him and stomped on him with his hooves, crushing his larynx.

“Sick of that speech,” Aegis whispered.

“You and me both,” Kraber said, sighting in another PER member, carefully resisting the urge to mutilate him in the nastiest way possible. That was an HLF tactic- PHL got things done. First and foremost. Another headshot.

“Hey, what’s all the noise?” one PER member asked, stepping out of the door. “Oh, b-”

Kraber didn’t think. He whipped out a knife, throwing it at the man. He’d normally try for the throat, but this was panic throwing, pure and simple.

So instead, the knife embedded itself in the PER man’s balls. For a moment, the pain appeared to silence him, his alarm at Kraber’s intrusion turning into a rictus of agony. That was all Kraber needed, his pistol brought to bear with the man’s head. He fired, crumpling the man against the wall.

“Touchdown,” he whispered, “Any news on the hostages the PER has?”

“There’s a few eighteen levels up, in a building…. seven meters away,” Touchdown said, concentrating his unicorn magic to enhance his senses. “Sarge? You sure this will work? Rescuing hostages, and then getting to a factory?”

“We’ll need manpower,” Kraber explained. “I know Dead Ends. There’s always a weapons locker nearby, and…” he sighed. “Fuck the infiltration if need be. Nobody in here deserves to be dragged off to hell-”

A common euphemism for ‘returned to the Solar Empire’, one that sent shivers running down the respective spines of Touchdown, Aegis, and Heliotrope, inconceivable as it seemed for the last two to be so afraid.

“-Or turned into one of the fokking nzambi.”

“You just want bloodshed, don’t you?” Yael asked.

“‘Course I fokking do,” Kraber said, keeping watch with his silenced .45. “But no way am I letting anyone suffer more than they have to when I could have done something.”

“So it’s your guilt?” Yael asked. “Of all the times you-”

“Shut up, both of you. Keeping him from killing everyone is my job,” Aegis interrupted. “Look. Both of you raise good points, you really do. But if you get into an argument, then… we’re in the middle of a PER den. Do either of you want to get them all ponified?”

Kraber and Yael looked at each other, ashamed.

“Secondly,” Aegis said. “Viktor… you’re my friend. You know that. But if we brought anyone along, well… they’re not infiltration specialists. They might just give us away and get us all ponified, and then Celestia-I mean, the Tyrant-could figure out certain… things.”

“Son of a fok, you’re right,” Kraber sighed.

“What do you mean?” Abraham asked. He, Dalibor, Touchdown, and Johnny C had not been in Boston-rather, they’d been assisting in the evacuation of New England, over in western and southern Vermont, before Kraber had left on that train to go to Boston.They’d heard hundreds of stories about Boston, which had been classified on a level restricted only to soldiers that had been in the area, or the highest echelons of command in the War. Though there were rumors that there was something, some great and terrible secret so world-shaking that it could only be trusted with the highest in command…. and, improbably, Kraber and Aegis.

“You don’t want to know,” Aegis answered. Then, upon seeing the rather predictable looks he was seeing: “No. Really. You don’t want to,” he continued, punctuated by a nauseated, hateful, physically sickened look on Kraber’s face. “Just hearing about it from him was bad enough. And shut up, all of you! You want to bring the PER on us?!”

The water treatment plant was full of strange, arcane machinery. Lights blinked between huge, massive tubes, and the lights flickered overhead.

A light flickered nearby, revealing a logo like a bizarre apple-core shaped cloud.

“Macroburst,” Oakes spat. “That goddamn…”

A lot of America knew of that pegasus-he’d revolutionized seemingly every power plant in America, creating cleaner and more efficient power through pegasus magic.

Something about that didn’t feel right to Dominique. The HLF frequently tapped into local power grids, so they’d probably used something of his… Angus Reid had brought this up when trying to get her to leave with him and various others, last year just before Christmas.

But…

The HLF was human! It was pure and true! Even if you used something from Macroburst, even if there was something on the news about some victory from the governments that sold themselves to the PHL (Like every country that hadn’t been eaten by now) the HLF was the only way to go that didn’t involve being a pony-pounder. They were right, they weren’t selling themselves out...

But was that so good?

“When was the last time we were like that?” Angus had asked a year ago, taking a swig of whiskey and flicking off the portable TV after news of a PER attack on a refugee train in Kazakhstan, one that Russian PHL forces had successfully repelled. “In the news, hailed as heroes? With people looking up to us, wondering if they could ever be so brave?”

Dominique had said that while she couldn’t remember that, she’d pointed out that they shouldn’t worry - the humans in the PHL and anyone that allied with them were horsefuckers, sellouts to the goddamn geldos taking over their world, and they were-

“Stop,” Angus said. Dominique’s reverie had been brought to a screeching halt so suddenly, that single word so sudden that her eyes darted across the room, between the PHL-modified machinery, looking for the source of his voice. But he wasn’t speaking, of course-this was how the memory had gone. “Dominique. Those aren’t your words… they’re Janvier’s. They’re Batshit Birch’s,” he’d said, referring to a famously deranged Thenardier Guard convinced he’d seen ponies kidnapping people before the War. “The HLF’s words. Are you gonna speak your own words, or speak what you’re told?”

He’d been implying he’d go turncoat and join the PHL. But… she had to stay with the HLF. Ponies had destroyed her home and countless other places. Ponies had turned her friends and family into grotesque parodies of themselves.

How could she forgive that?

The pointman, a scrawny, bearded, twitching man with an almost blunderbuss-sized shotgun, opened the door…

Only to find themselves in an old lobby that might have once been sterile at some point. It was decorated in throwaway, cheap furniture, a lot of which might have once been taken from a junkyard. Good furniture was hard to come by these days, being grabbed up under an ever-growing swarm of refugees.

Regardless, it was a fairly large room, full of desks and small cubicles. The terrible, eye-assaultingly, sickeningly bright carpet from the seventies was stained with unidentifiable mess. At the other end, behind a barricade of desks, there crouched a trembling man.

“Should I shoot him?” Oakes muttered.

But that was lost in what was about to happen.

“Oh thank God!” the man gasped, holding the Super V rifle that seemed to be standard for this Dead End. It had the PHL symbol emblazoned on it, alongside numerous odd bits and bobs. The armor he was wearing looked to have been scavenged from someone else, judging by the bloodstains and how loose it hung on him. His helmet hung at an odd, jaunty angle. On top of that, he was wearing a light blue jumpsuit, also covered in blood. “Reinforcements! Wait…” he glanced at the HLF, their rough-looking gear and weaponry. “You’re HLF. I know you’re not in the mood, but the PER are here! We need all the help we can get!”

He might have been PHL, but something about those words struck a chord with Dominique. She motioned forward, ready to help….

“Please!” he yelled. “The lab’s only barely holding out! They’ll run out of ammunition soon, and there’s people getting ponified in here! The longer they hold out, the more people get ponified to serve as reinforcements, and the more they’d need help!”

He was begging. Pleading, even.

“Go to hell, horsefucker!” one of the Glanzon’s Gluemakers men yelled, pulling out a heavy revolver and firing.

Even Dominique got in the action, and before anyone could tell her not to, to undertake all the little rituals that’d come up with to protect themselves from the thaumic radiation, she grabbed the PHL gun and fired.

“Wha… ?! Sixty-two?! How did you-?!” the man gasped out as he dropped down behind the desk, whole and unharmed.

“SHIELDS!” the Gluemaker screamed, and everyone else in the HLF cursed. PHL magic shields had been the bane of many a unit as they changed everything between the two groups.

If magical shields had a rating system and the Solar Tyrant Royal Guards were the standard shield strength, then the PHL took them far beyond that. The bigger varieties could stop antitank rounds dead, even stop an (unenchanted) rocket attack in its flight. They’d been used to devastating effect during the Battle of Defiance, virtually destroying the HLF’s ability to resist the PHL. Even the few stolen PHL weapons the HLF had stowed in Defiance had been stonewalled.

The HLF had reacted to them predictably, by gobbling up more and more high-caliber weapons to use against them, and quietly cursing their use while trying to take pride in the fact that they ‘hadn’t sold their souls to the goddamn kickstands.’

Unfortunately, their pride was not bulletproof or explosion-proof.

“...You know what?!” the man screamed. “FUCK YOU! FUCK ALL THE BIGOTRY YOU SONS OF BITCHES HAVE, YOU’VE DOOMED US ALL!” he ran out a nearby door.

“Should we… follow him?” one HLF member named Haymoss asked.

“No, he’s just one man,” Janvier said. “We got more important things.”

“Saving people from ponification?” Dominique suggested.

“...They’re pony-pounders, they don’t count,” Janvier said dismissively. “No. What we’re looking for…. are those delicious PHL weapons in the factory. The ammunition and guns they somehow use when we’re forced to use…” he hefted his rifle, a .50 Beowulf AR, “These ungainly things. This could be an advantage we might use to win the war… to take America back from those goddamn horsefuckers and show the country the right way to fight the ponies.”

“...I’m telling you, I heard gunshots!” someone said, walking closer. “Look. I remember stealth games from when I was human-”

“That’s disgusting!” said someone else.

“Bear with me,” the first person said. “There’d always be guards that’d say ‘is it the wind?’ or something when monkey-me was sneaking up on them. Now, since when does the wind sound like bullets or humans screaming?!”

No.

They were trotting.

“Oh, shit,” Dominique whispered as the HLF around her held their weapons, ready to fire.

Dalibor opened one of the supply closets, shoving the dead PER members in, as Touchdown focused his horn at the floor, cleaning up the blood. He focused his horn, attempting to listen in on PER communications.

He decided not to tell anyone how many people had been ponified since Yael convinced them to get to the factory and take out the PER on the offense. Kraber and Aegis would never forgive themselves.

Meanwhile, down the hallway, Abraham, Kraber, and Johnny C were shooting newfoals.

“We any closer to the factory?” Kraber asked.

Heliotrope reached into her saddlebags, pulling out a map of the Dead End, almost microscopically detailed. She stared at it for a moment, then pointed to their location with one hoof. They were in one of the new concrete tenements-the bridge to the lab, and the wall where the PER were forming a garrison.

“Let’s hope they’re not making a portal station,” Heliotrope whispered. They knew what that meant- a portal station was certain doom for a city. The whole place would get bombed, and then bombed some more, and then, for variety’s sake, bombed again. Then scoured by PHL cleaners with special flamethrowers or tesla weaponry, then gassed in ‘sensitive’ areas to decontaminate it of the potion.

The next ten minutes passed without incident. The eight of them negotiated the narrow corridors, stabbing and shooting PER until-

Alarms blared. Suddenly, the lights in the corridors were flashing red, and a hijacked PA system burst into life. They all looked around frantically, assault saddles readying, rifles aimed.

“We have been infiltrated!” someone screamed, in what was undoubtedly the high, piercing tones of a newfoal. One of the ‘zombie’ types.

“The fuck?!” Dalibor swore.

“I TOLD you,” Kraber sighed, a weary smile on his face as he unlimbered his MG2023. “Let the good times roll, everyone.”

“An alarm? Already?!” Aegis hissed. “Dammit!”

“But who could have-” Yael started. She sighed, then looked at Kraber.

“How the fok is this my fault?!” Kraber hissed. “I’ve been right here the whole fokking time!”

“They are in the water treatment plant! All hooves are commanded to acquire new resources-”

Dalibor, Johnny C, Abraham, and Yael shared a Look. It was the look of one that had realized they were well and truly screwed, practically part of the uniform for humans and ponies not affiliated with the Solar Empire.

Kraber didn’t have it. “Yael,” he said, shaking in anger, “We all know what that means. Remember when you and Aegis said to get to the lab, take out the defenses on the wall, and kill the PER? Now it’s a rescue mission.”

“Good decision,” Aegis said, sheathing his dagger and activating his assault saddle, letting the twin F3-Thunderlords on his back fold outward. “Let’s do it. Not a moment to lose.”

He heard trotting up ahead. The sound of stampeding. A smile broke out across Kraber’s face. “And I say we go back to the place I wanted to earlier. Seems closer.”

Aegis knew that smile. That was a ‘Let’s kill lots of ponies’ smile.

And for the first time in awhile, he felt like he welcomed that.

“Where the fuck are they coming from?!” Dominique yelled, firing the PHL gun, watching as its beam stabbed through another horde of newfoals. “They’re coming out of the goddamn walls!”

Dominique was so sure that the new foals were not an issue anymore, but then remembered just how much land the Barrier had swallowed up before the ‘Pause’, and a lot of PHL and military forces were spread thin in trying to keep them back.

Of course a few would sneak through, and they targeted any city they deemed worthy of anarchy and they had hit quite a few innocent people on the way to the Motor City.

“Die fuckers!” a Gluemaker screamed as he used his shotgun to blow away several new foals, only for a unicorn to rip apart one of his sleeves and douse it with potion. Dominique froze as she saw the famous HLF soldier grabbed several of his grenades and pulled the pins, fighting through the pain and threw himself into the horde, most of them opening their legs to catch him with their smiling face, only to get blown to bits as the man’s suicidal charge into them.

“Dom! Snap out of it, girl Keep fighting!”

Callery Pear hadn’t understood the plan. He’d wanted to ponify the humans right then and there, save them the trouble and give them enough power to storm that blasphemous PHL facility and destroy the disgusting magic/technology hybrids that were being made there.

But he’d been told that humanity was desperate to keep their own from being ponified, so this would force them into what his commanding officer, a newfoal himself, called a ‘sadistic choice’. They could either risk an outbreak and kill off their population and lose one of their largest cities, or voluntarily cripple their war effort. And if they took too long, they could just ponify everyone and storm it already.

A human, Polish if the Earth Orientation classes he’d taken were correct, was screaming at him from behind her door. Just because he’d ponified her sister Ramona. She was happier, wasn’t she? Sheesh, humans were so narrow-minded about these things. Just like that armed human over there, the one with the… huge… guns...

Oh, bu-

“KABOOM, BABY!” Kraber yelled, firing his revolver into the earth pony with the pear cutie mark. Blood spattered the ceiling, and the bloody remains of the four ponies next to him. Remains of his stomach decorated the wall.

They were in what might have once been a hallway, and was still lined with apartments-but at the other end, there was a narrow homemade bridge leading to another building where, if the sounds of lighter gunfire were any indicator, there were more humans holed up.

“INTRUDERS!” a PER pony screamed. “It’s the HLF, so they shouldn’t be much of a-” He gazed up at Kraber with his heavy revolver and massive LMG, the huge earth pony stallion with the assault saddle behind him, along with the short, stocky man firing off his rifle, and the Israeli woman with the somehow ramshackle-looking rifle. “Oh NO.”

“Well, he’s technically right,” Johnny C said, firing his Leshiy into that pony, a single round beheading him like a tiny guillotine. “I mean, Kraber there is-”

“I quit that fokking kak a year ago!” Kraber said, almost conversationally, firing the Quetzalcoatl again, splitting another PER pony in half, along with the three or so behind him. The wooden door burst into splinters, embedding themselves in a charging horde of newfoals. They screamed, and Kraber fired again into the mass of them, the explosive pellets of the revolver ripping through each of them, awkwardly chopping off limbs, leaving massive holes in the barrels of newfoals, and disorienting the ponies and humans behind them. Like clockwork, Yael, Aegis, and Johnny C fired their weapons semi-automatically, downing them with a bullet or two each. “God DAMN I love this fragnum!” Kraber laughed.

“...Fragnum?” Johnny C asked, scoring a headshot on a PER member taking cover in a doorway. The .308 round punched through the concrete, obliterating the man’s right shoulder blade. The forensics guys would claim ‘it looked like he was attacked with a gun that shot angry wolves.’

“Ja,” Kraber said, “Cause it’s a magnum… and it shoots flak… or frag...” He looked confused for a second, and fired again, nailing a PER man with a shotgun, one that he knew from experience to be loaded with improvised grenades full of ponification potion. The PER man’s chest caved in for a second… then erupted outward into a fountain of gore, the explosive buckshot pellets inside the wax slug punching their way out his stomach, impacting against the walls and at least one unfortunate newfoal.“ The newfoal’s right legs were blown clean off, along with most of his stomach, and he screamed, hopping backward on the stumps, then keeling over. “Huh. Should it be ‘flaknum’ then?”

“Flaknum doesn’t have the same ring to it,” Aegis said, squeezing his mouth down on the trigger for his Thunderlords, the rounds ripping through even more newfoals. “Hey. Wait, you’re German, don’t you call those hand cannons zimmerflak?”

“Don’t we have more important things to worry about?!” Yael asked, as Johnny C kicked a door off its hinges, releasing a polish woman and several other people inside. “Like all the newfoals?” She fired the Galil, headshotting another pony. “Besides. Call it a flaknum, and it throws off the reference to Borderlands.”

Johnny C sighed, kicking open yet another door. “You really aren’t as above it all as you think, are you?”

Yael responded to this by shooting a grenade from her Metal Storm 3GL at one of the supports for improvised neon sign on the building across from them, exploding a pegasus pony and sending the sign plummeting to the ground, pinning at least three unfortunate newfoal pegasi as it fell to the ground… and crushing four earth ponies on the ground, before the sign burst into sparks, electrocuting and immolating several more ponies in the immediate area.

“Gonna take that as no…” Johnny C said.

“Take this!” Kraber yelled, tossing his silenced .45 to the Polish woman. “You know how to use a 1911?”

She frantically nodded yes, holding it in a two-handed grip, and fired two rounds into a newfoal’s head. “Need more ammo! You only threw me one pistol with one mag, you-”

“Sorry, it looked cool at the time!” Kraber apologized, firing the Quetzalcoatl again, literally splitting a pegasus in half. The pellets, held together by the magic wax in the slugs, exploded outward, ripping apart the wall and several newfoals. Within the space of a second, he was standing next to the Polish woman, thrusting the belt for his .45 and the pouch for his magazines onto her waist. “Take good care of this.”

She nodded as Kraber reloaded, slamming the speedloader into the cylinder and flicking the Quetzalcoatl shut. Which was incredibly unsafe, but the runes on the revolver kept the cylinder perfectly aligned. “There’s a locker nearby, full of PHL guns,” she said. “In case of an emergency. I think the newfoals are trying to get in and destroy the guns.”

“That’s what Abraham, Dalibor, Heliotrope, and Touchdown are for,” Kraber explained. “They’re securing it as we speak.”

“...you sure you brought enough men to do that?” a teenager asked.

“Mmm. Good point,” Aegis said.

Meanwhile, Kraber was switching to his shotgun, a Kel-Tec KSG. He fired, aiming at another PER man with a shotgun, this one aiming at them from a high window on the building on top of them.

“I mean, it’s not very fair for the newfoals, is it?” Aegis continued.

The buckshot obliterated the PER man’s left shoulder, sending him twirling around like a drunken ballerina, then suddenly, impossibly, falling out the window, onto the flaming neon sign. “...Or that guy. I mean, fok…” Kraber said, listening to his screams.

“Quick! More humans fighting from the east side of the plant!” A voice called out, Kraber and the others stared at one another, frowning as the new foals continued onwards passed below them.

“Other humans?” Yael asked, dread on her face, listening as she heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. Kraber frown as he listened in as well.

“Well fok.” Kraber growled, “I know those kak sounding zipguns.” he paused, listening carefully. “.50 BMG, firing that slowly… FOK! Those are the-”

“HUMAN LIBERATION FRONT, BITCHES!” Oakes screamed out as he shot a new foal in the face.

“We have to fall back!” Dominique cried out as the PHL gun began to glow brightly in her hands. She froze up, recognizing the tactic of a gun being ripped from her hands, only for the glow to vanish and hear a cry of a new foal as his horn exploded in a gory mess. Dominique stared at the gun in shock, then the newfoal clutching a hole in his head where she could see his brains. There a smile on her face before she leveled the gun on the new foal and killed him, splattering him all over the floor. “Never mind. Say what you will about the PHL, they know guns.”

“Yeah, fucking glue! Keep running into our bullets you useless pricks!” an HLF woman laughed.

“Not so fucking useless now, are we?!” a turkish man yelled.

“Silence human!” a unicorn cried out as she threw up a potion vial into the air, but instead of letting it drop, she hit it with a spell that caused it to explode.

“Watch out! Scatter!” Oakes cried out as he took cover, while a majority of them had protection a few of them had that ripped off. He roared in anger as several of the Gluemakers began to wither on the ground, their cries of pain as they changed against their will. Several shots later and their cries stopped.

Dominique blinked at the shift of mood, they were winning and now they were struggling to survive as a new wave came rushing forward. She stared as they flowed in, their smiles on their faces causing her to think back to being a little girl.

They rushed forward, intent to change them and become slaves to their mad queen.

“No…” Dominique raised her gun and began to fire, only to hear a familiar click. She stared at the gun, she fumbled to reload with one of the strange batteries as the horde got closer. She looked to the others and saw them taking cover, reloading their weapons as quickly as they can. It was then she realized that she was in front of the group, her weapon being the game changer in the fight.

And she was all alone.

“Well?” she asked, her voice quiet. “Come at me, if you think you’re hard enough,” she whispered, taunting them.

And come they did. They rushed at her as one, and Dominique fired again and again, blue beams of some kind of energy issuing out the muzzle, exploding any newfoal they hit.

But then, as she was turned in one direction, killing a newfoal off to the side, stomping on him just to keep him from potioning her, she twisted, her gun brought to bear...

As she watched an earth pony new foal pull back her leg to throw a potion at her, only for something to hit her in the head and bounce in front of the charging horde.

It was a grenade. Worst of all, it glowed-a clear indicator of…. of…

She didn’t have time to think about it. Dominique threw herself behind cover and clamped her hands over her ears.

*BOOM!*

Dominique slowly pulled herself from cover after a moment, the ringing in her ears dying down as she looked out of her cover. She couldn’t help but gawk at the gory scene before her.

Blood and guts strewn everywhere, painting the machines and walls in red. Several of the new foals were still twitching, others were still moving forward in an attempt to do their duty, coughing up the remains of their innards. “For… Celestia…” one whispered. “Humans… must… convert…”

There was barely anything left of it below the ribcage, and its fur was so stained with red it was impossible to tell what color it was. It looked like bits of somepony’s stomach were stuck to its barrel.

She shot it in the head with her magnum revolver.

She swallowed as the sound of heavy footsteps echo from behind the dead new foals, watching as a burly and bearded man in heavy armor walked into the room. He was loaded up with a shotgun, a large machinegun resembling an MG2019 (and thus resembling an MG42) mounted above an odd weapon of inscrutable purpose that must have doubled the weight, and a heavy revolver.

A very familiar and hated man.

“Well… well… well…” The man said as he stomped on a dying newfoal’s head, crushing it under his boots. “Look at what the fokking lion dragged in. Dominique. We meet again. But this time, who would have thought I would be the one saving you?!”

“Victor Kraber…” Oakes spat in anger as he saw a pony and three more humans fall in behind him, taking cover behind the various machines strewn across the large plant area. “And he brought friends.”

“Overdose Oakes too? Huh. Nice to see you too, pielkop.”

“Give it up traitor.” Janvier growled, many of the HLF members pointing their weapons at him and the others. “You are outnumbered here.”

“Stiffle. When have you ever known that to get a rise out of me? Honestly, I’m just stopping by to say hi. Second, I’m not outgunned!” Kraber said with a smile as he hefted his MG2023. “Wanna see what this big fokkin gun does?”

Oakes only smiled as nodded to Dominique, who quietly finished loading her weapon before hefting it up and pointing at Kraber. “Not quite as big as yours, but just as effective.”

Kraber blinked as he stared at the gun in the teen’s hands, before giving off a bark of laughter. “Ha! I remember that gun! Fun to shoot, but it still has so many fokking issues! Believe me, bakvissie, you don’t want to be holding that gun for much longer unless you know how to purge it.”

“Easy.” Dominique growled as she triggered the ‘EM-62’ gun, hitting Kraber in the chest, only to see a blue shield to appear around him. The handguard seemed a little hotter now.

And all he did was smile, a really condescending one.

“Tell me, you fokking scared little boys and girls… why do you think we don’t use those fokkin District 9 guns in the PHL?” Kraber asked with a laugh, Dominique felt the gun began to shake. “At least… ones not ready for the field.”

Dominique threw the gun away as it began to turn red hot at Kraber, who only kicked the weapon aside and watched with interest as the gun’s plastic and metal furniture literally melted, the electric components sparking and then, all of a sudden, exploding. Kraber only looked back to HLF as they stared at shock at their secret weapon melting before their eyes.

“Shame too, good gun, unstable magic enchantments.” Kraber levelled his own monster gun at them. “Mine doesn’t do that by the way. And it can punch through walls, and electrocute you.”

Janvier gritted his teeth, watching as several of his men began to back away in fear. The most dangerous of them, Viktor Kraber, the man who’d blown up several bureaus on his own, killed most of the ponies in his hometown, slaughtered newfoal rushes on his own with a stolen PHL gun, made impossible shots with his .50 revolver, survived the Battle of Fethiye and Battle of Istanbul, was already deadly in his own right. He had shields to protect himself, he had armor piercing rounds that made their own look like peashooters, he had magic on his side. They’d made a monster worse.

It’s not fair. Dominique felt tears stinging her eyes. We… We suffer for years. We lose good men to this. And the PHL just waltz in and take it over! Is there anything those goddamn geldos won’t steal from us?!

“So. What’s it gonna be?” Kraber asked with smile.

“I’ll die before I join you!” one Gluemaker yelled. “You… you sonsabitches are one and the same with the PER!”

The five PHL members, including the Polish woman, and even a few HLF members, stared at him.

“...What... the... fok?” Kraber breathed.

“So, you were wondering how he was the sane one for the HLF?” Aegis asked Yael, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry for doubting you,” Yael said, staring in shock. Then she looked down to Aegis. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll pay up…”

“Yes! I needed more beer money!” Aegis cheered.

“Yeah, that’s right!” the Gluemaker yelled. “I know what you did to the Carter girl, you goddamn horsefuckers! You turned her into one of those zombies, and-”

“ALRIGHT, SHUT THE FOK UP, STRONT VIR BREINS! GAAN KAK IN JOU MA SE MOER!” Kraber roared at him, Quetzalcoatl revolver in hand, momentarily cowing the Swiss man into silence. “WE… DO NOT… PONIFY PEOPLE, JOU PIELKOP! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD, WE DO NOT MAKE THEM ZOMBIES, AND IF YOU SAY THAT AGAIN, I WILL FOKKING SHOOT YOUR BALLS OFF AND FEED THEM TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD DOGS! And secondly, Verity Carter is still the same old Thenardier psychobitch she always was! And she was actually-”

He frowned as he looked at the windows. “FOK! Everyone, get down!”

Dominique screamed as the windows exploded as new foals rushed into the plant, everyone pointing to the ceiling as they began to fire on the what could only be the final rush.

A massive white earth pony stallion with a red bandanna and a brownish-black mane, and two humans, a tall woman, a short man with messy golden-brown hair burst in the door, and began firing. Dominique took out her revolver and hid under a desk, watching as the two groups fought off the horde.

It couldn’t be different from night as from day.

The HLF sprayed and prayed, firing their surplus and ugly homebrewed rifles into the newfoals, taking ponification potion, screaming and laughing, pouring bullets into the pegasi. They didn’t do anything to help each other, they sometimes fell back further and further from one another until they found themselves alone and surrounded. Easy pickings.

Kraber and the PHL fought back in silence. Well, everyone but Kraber did. Only talking when they needed to, covering each other when they reloaded. The pony jumped to the humans to take potion hits, even when it was unnecessary. The humans kicked off any new foals that tried to take down that huge pony they worked with in close quarters. Predictably, Kraber would kick them in the face as he fired his heavy LMG. All as a single, effective, military unit. Behind them hiding behind a desk, a redheaded polish woman fired a .45 pistol.

“Kill them!” Janvier screamed in rage, pointing at the PHL. “We can take their weapons from their corpses!”

“ARE YOU TUNING ME KAK?!” Kraber yelled incredulously. “Janvier... Just think for a moment, do the right thing for once in your fokking life before I decide to do to you what I did to Lovikov.”

“...Boss, are you sure?” one woman asked. “You know what he did.”

Normally, this threat worked on HLF members-Captain Lovikov’s disturbing, bloody fate outside that hospital had been a sort of boogeyman to HLF units. Even Verity Carter had been afraid of that when Kraber first discovered her in PHL headquarters, even as terrified and confused as she had been to find herself on four legs...

Unfortunately, Janvier was a particular kind of crazy.

“Fucking bastards!” Johnny growled as his shields flared to life, bullets hitting his shields as he took aim at a HLF and drilled him between the eyes.

“I told you this was a bad idea!” Yael yelled.

“I knew they were crazy, but I didn’t think they were gebore uit jou ma se poephol want haar fokken kont was te besig!” Kraber yelled back, jumping behind a large machine. “Seriously, what the fok! Gan kaak n’ aap, fok jou en jou hele familie, loop naai jou hand, sit jou kop in die koei se kont en wag tot die bul jou kom holnaai! Jou ma naai vir bus-geld en loop steeds, jou bliksems! Jy lyk soos die nageboorte van 'n vark wat deur die hoenderkak gesleep was!”

Aegis’ jaw dropped. That was too much, even by Kraber’s standards. In the crowd of HLF, one woman, presumably one with an understanding of Afrikaans wilted at the tirade.

“What’d he say?” Dominique yelled.

“You don’t want to know!” she yelled back.

“Ignore them!” Kraber shouted as he sprayed the bullets into the bodies overhead. “Their weapons aren’t worth kak, and neither are they!”

“Fuck that shit!” Yael yelled, firing the grenade launcher at them, but the HLF just scattered the moment she pulled it out and aimed at them.

“No, screw this!” yelled the woman that had just understood Kraber. “What are we even doing?! This is stupid, and-”

Janvier shot her in the face, and she fell over. “Another goddamn betray-”

“Staan op jou kop dat ek in jou poes kan kak, jou poes in n vark se gat!” Kraber yelled, and fired the Quetzalcoatl at Janvier’s groin. It was in shotgun mode this time.

Blood, fragments of bone and the crappy metal-lined ‘kevlar’ Janvier wore, and pubic hair exploded out everywhere, splattering the HLF standing nearby and blowing apart anything between his bellybutton and the knees. Janvier’s torso actually flew up a foot or two, even as he screamed in agony, and he landed facefirst on the floor. HLF members beside him were thrown to the floor, their limbs shredded by the shrapnel and the force of the explosion, screaming in agony. A Glock, converted to .50AE, landed on the floor.

Wow, those things really are built tough, Johnny C thought.

“I have been wanting to do that for three years, jou bliksem!” Kraber yelled, even as a new foal threw himself at him, just to get backhanded and blown away with his shotgun.

“...More than you deserve, you prick,” the woman said, hand to her head as she clutched the bloody gash that the bullet had dug as it curved around her skull. Pulling out a heavy pistol, a vaguely Mauser-like gun that PHL referred to as the ‘Lolife’, she shot Oakes in the head as he laid dying on the ground.

She rushed over to the PHL, picking a Brazilian .50 BMG rifle that a ponified Gluemaker had been carrying, and taking cover, firing into the mass of newfoals.

“You working with us now?” Aegis yelled, firing his Thunderlords into several more newfoals.

“Might not like it-” she fired the ungainly, rusty rifle over the table, as it split an unshielded newfoal in half- “But I’m not working with the assholes that shot me in the head for disagreeing with them!”

“They are thinning out! Finish them off!” Kraber roared out, firing off his LMG, everyone in the plant shredding the remaining new foals.

“Join-” one started only for his head to vanish in the mist of blood and bone from the Polish woman’s .45.

Another rushed at Yael, but she dropped it with a .308 round from her Galil.

The MG2023 blazed in Kraber’s hands, its heavy .338 Norma Magnum rounds ripping through newfoals. Then, suddenly, it stopped firing. And Kraber smiled.

“EAT THIS!” he yelled, pulling that odd secondary trigger on the weapon….

And suddenly, a miniature thunderstorm burst out of the bizarre secondary attachment on his LMG, the one that had likely added twice the weight. Lightning crackled all over the room, splattering several newfoals into pink mist, frying any newfoals unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. Their muscles spasmed, leaving them shaking, stuck in place, and the PHL used this opportunity to rip through them.

The HLF could only stare in shock and horror at the weapon Kraber wielded, before they continue to fight for their survival against the new foals.

And the mess of bodies continued to pile up.

“Think they’re alright?” Abraham asked, as the five of them walked down the silent corridor.

Well, mostly silent. They could hear noises not too far away.

“...You hear that?” Heliotrope asked.

“I smell that,” Dalibor said. “Ozone, blood, burnt fur and flesh….”

“Screaming, don’t forget the screaming…” Heliotrope added.

He and Heliotrope looked at each other. “Yeah, our friends are alright.”

Beside them, Touchdown bucked open a door, releasing a crowd of filthy, trembling residents. They looked down at him, almost instinctively cringing in fear… before realizing that he wore a heavy assault saddle, and he was standing near several humans with weaponry. As an equal.

“Oh thank God!” one man gasped, hugging him around the neck, kissing him in joy. “PHL!”

Touchdown blushed slightly. “Thank ya kindly, sir. We’re looking for the weapons locker.”

“Good luck,” said a girl that looked like a Pacific Islander of some sort, Touchdown wasn’t sure. Not that he was one of those ponies that thought all humans looked alike, he just didn’t know much about the Pacific, which he considered a real shame. “I heard some newfoals were trying to break that door down and destroy the guns…except... one of them was my brother.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dalibor said, shaking her hand. “Abe and I lost our parents to the Potion.”

“But not my daughter,” Abraham added. “Thankfully.”

“...Daughter? Parents?” asked someone else, a stocky man who looked to be of Nordic descent. “How old are you two?”

“Eighteen,” Abraham said.

“I’m sixteen,” Dalibor added.

“Oh, this war,” the man sighed. “That it brings kids to those levels…”

“And trust me,” Abraham continued, and reached over his back, unlimbering the odd-looking weapon on his back. “I promise you, none of you are going to lose anyone else today.”

“You mean it?” the Pacific Islander asked, watching curiously as Touchdown bucked open yet another door, only to get mobbed and hugged by a crowd of humans… and a few ponies as well.

“I swear on the Torah I brought out of Prague,” Abraham said, raising his shotgun.

“You’re not going to pump it?” another woman asked.

“And waste a perfectly good round?” Abraham asked back.

Silence rang out in the plant, the two groups stared at one another.

The surviving members of the ragged HLF, tired and exhausted, looking worse for wear and dosed in blood. Across from them was the PHL, clean and standing tall, their armor and weapons glowing with magic.

“So,” Yael said, looking them over, “Do we have an understanding?” She then glanced at what little remained of Janvier.

“If not…” Kraber reloaded his LMG, making sure they heard the metallic click. “I can change your mind.”

The Gluemakers, those few that remained scowled at him and his crew, spitting in his direction before turning to leave.

Only to stop as a few of the HLF members remained behind, Dominique included.

“Why are you here?” the bleeding woman asked, wincing as several of the members tried their best to clean her wound.

“To save people.” Kraber said, staring directly into her eyes. “To keep the clean water flowing for the city. To keep the new foals from hitting us from behind. A score of things really.”

All of them stared at the PHL members before they walked up to them.

“Please… Let us join you,” she said.

“Hey! Just because they-” one of the Gluemakers began to stalk up to them, only to back off when Kraber and the others pointed their weapons at them.

“Oh shut up!” she scowled at the Gluemakers, “Fucking Swiss fuckers and their useless fucking-”

“Easy, Tamika, don’t aggravate the wound,” Dominique said. “You are lucky to be alive. I mean, I can understand if it was a nine, but… man had a lolife!”

“Trust me, he was one. And I can treat that,” Kraber said, kneeling down beside Tamika.

Dominique scowled at him, but Kraber ignored her, reaching into one of the various pouches. “Let’s see… gauze. Gauze… Here.” he pulled out a roll of gauze, and a pair of tweezers, then knelt down by her side, peering at the bleeding head wound. He squinted. “Doesn’t seem to be anything in there… that’s good.” He placed the gauze on her forehead, tying it around, watching the stain spread across. “I think you’ll be fine. And don’t peek at this for fifteen minutes, otherwise you’ll keep bleeding.”

“Sometimes I forget you were a doctor,” Yael said.

“Eh, that? That’s child’s play,” Kraber said dismissively. “Honestly, I wanted to be a writer and make radio dramas. I was gonna transfer out, then Kate got pregnant, so…” he shrugged.

“I’m… sorry it ended up that way,” Yael said.

“Eh, don’t be,” Kraber said. “I loved being a dad.”

“You’re still good at it,” Aegis pointed out. “Anyway… Let’s get going then.”

“Do we get fancy guns like yours?” asked one of the remaining HLF members.

“Not yet. First, we don’t have any to spare, second, you’ll have to learn not all the ponies are out to kill us--”

"Bullshit! They are spies, man!" one HLF man shouted.

"Yes, ‘spies’ that spend most of their time protecting humans from becoming unthinking golems and killing newfoals,” Aegis growled at him, his saddle-guns pointing at the HLF man. “Honestly, I’d think we have a lot in common. I don’t like Equestria anymore than you do. Hell, I’d say I hate it more.”

“Oh, trust me,” Kraber agreed, “He does.”

“You’ve never nearly lost your kids to fascism, or had your wife go insane, seen strikebreaking straight of China Mieville’s nightmares, as Kraber put it,” Aegis continued. “Seen surveillance devices go up on every block. You’ve never seen your neighbors carted off for no reason and practically lobotomized when they came back. You’ve never had your queen turn into a raging, deranged-” he paused. “Wait. This is America. All presidents get a bit crazy,” he joked. “But…. you’ve never seen your home just invert itself like that. You don’t hate Equestria or ponies. You don’t know what either of those things are.”

“Enough of this,” Johnny growled, scowling at the remaining HLF, reloading his gun and holding it at the ready. “We don’t have time for your shit. Either help us purge the zombies or leave.”

The few HLF that refused to stand with the others scowled, many of them wanting to fight them but after seeing a mere four soldiers of the PHL fighting against a horde many times their size and walk away cleanly stayed their hands.

Dominique swallowed as she watched the two groups stare off at one another until Tamika gave a painful smile and stepped next to them.

Many of them soon followed her example as they stood next to the group until all the remains was herself standing between the two, alone again. She swallowed as she looked to Kraber and his team, remembering who the current leader of the PHL was.

“Hold on!” someone screamed. “I’m coming! Just stay put!”

“It’s… it’s a pony!” Jean said. “Not gonna miss this time-”

“Don’t shoot!” she screamed. “I don’t have any vials! I’m going to help!”

“It’s Cheerilee!” Jean gasped. “I trust her!”

“Cheerilee…” Dominique said quietly, looking at them. “What did she do to become the leader of the PHL?”

“Other than bang the Commander silly with that shapely ass of hers?” Kraber said with a grin, causing Aegis to facehoof, an almost embarrassed smile on his face.

Many of the HLF hissed in revulsion at his words.

“Well, she does have a nice ass,” Aegis conceded. “But it’s because she loves children, she nearly died for it when the war kicked off. She does a lot for the PHL, for the people in the crossfire and with nowhere to turn to. For being a badass mare able to face against the Tyrant. And punching the shit out of her. For all the kids in our army, she’s practically a second mother.”

Dominique felt tears run down her face. If… if only she’d stayed. If only she’d trusted Cheerilee. If only....

“Now I got one question for all of you. What have you done like that?” Yael asked. “Do what she did? Sacrifice your time and life to teach children, to teach them the wonders of both magics and science? Teach them right from wrong? Teach them to be brave and proud of themselves? Teach them…”

Kraber looked down, frowning somewhat. Aegis placed a hoof on his back, somewhere above Kraber’s waist. He knew what that look meant.

And Kraber placed a hand in Aegis’ mane. “Thanks, bro,” Kraber said, not quite smiling as he remembered that day.

“Viktor Kraber…” Cheerilee looked up at him, a frown on her face. “There’s a lot of warrants for your arrest. A reward, even. There’s people that want you executed.”

“Guess that’s what I deserve, then,” Kraber sighed.

“But… I have a question. There’s a lot of people, both humans and ponies, and at least one zebra that say they owe you their lives. Such as Kiki Palmer, Astral Nectar, and… Dancing Day.”

“Who?” Kraber asked. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t ask their names.”

“I see. Well, Astral Nectar and Dancing Day are two unicorns… Astral Nectar is blue-black, and has a telescope cutie mark, and Dancing Day has a yellow and orange mane and green coat, I think her cutie mark is… ballet hoofshoes?”

“Ah, them,” Kraber said, not sad, not happy, just collapsing, not sure how to feel.

“Why’d you do it?”

“I’d… had one of those days,” Kraber explained. “A terrible day. I lost a man I loved, I’d burned PER alive in tents, I… I killed a family.” He choked, sobbing. “And then, that goddamn fokking kontgesig Lovikov decided it’d cheer me up if we stopped a bunch of people on the highway and put the fear of the HLF in them. Maybe find some ponies, maybe get some… presents from motorists,” Kraber explained.

“Lovikov wasn’t exactly the smartest, was he?” Marcus asked.

“Dear God, you don’t even want to know,” Kraber sighed, laying his head on the table. “Promise me, when you see him… fok bullets, fok knives, just make him suffer. And then, at the checkpoint we made, I opened up the trunk, and…. I know it seems bosbefok, but I saw... I actually I… I saw my wife and kids in those two ponies. For a moment, it was Kate, Anka, and Peter staring up at me, and they were…” he sobbed, slouching down. “They were disappointed in me. They weren’t even angry, just pitying me, and it was worse for that! I just… I tried to pull the trigger, I tried to tell myself they were evil, ‘cause that’s all I knew, and it just didn’t work!”

Marcus and Cheerilee looked at him, unsure of how to feel.

“And… even if they weren’t, I’d realized there. Even if I’d suffered, I’d done just as bad to more ponies than I want to know, so I… I couldn’t take the guilt. I just let them go and shut down afterwards. I … was wrong… I thought I was the hero, I thought… you know what? My mother’s family were partisans during the second world war,” Kraber said. “They had to flee Germany, they were partisans in Poland. Smuggled arms into the Warsaw Ghetto, hid in forests with stolen or borrowed equipment. I was raised on my grandmother’s stories about that, you know. I hated Defiance, but I took it all in stride. I thought I was being like my great-grandparents, but… turns out I’m not the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa. I’m just a rabid wolf that hurts everyone.”

“I see…” Cheerilee whispered, looking at him in a new light, Marcus standing behind her with a frown on his face and his gun in hand, pointed straight at Kraber’s head. “What do you want to do with your life now?”

“I want to fight… I want to fight for a true cause… I don’t want to be bosbefok, I don’t want to just be a killer.”

Cheerilee tilted her head, looking into his eyes before giving him a beautiful smile filled with warmth and compassion. “Then fight for us. Let us guide you, let us give you a chance to hurt the real enemy that took away your children and wife. Be our tip for our spear, free those trapped souls enslaved by the Tyrant.”

“You want me to be the same fokking killer?”

“I want you to be a soldier, not a wild beast. I want everyone to see that we can use everything we have at our disposal.” Cheerilee gave him a sad smile “I want you to be on the PHL, because I want everyone to see that even the most apparent sinful of people can have-”

“Forgiveness.” Kraber finished, looking at Dominique as she let the tears flow. “We all have sins in this war, some may haunt us for the rest of our lives. But it is ours and we have to atone for it. Cheerilee has her own demons, but she still smiles for those children whenever she can. She hates that many of those kids she had died in the line of duty. Even now, she beats herself up for being too slow, losing one of her kids against the Tyrant.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. I think one died in her forelegs, a French kid named Jean I think?” Kraber did not notice the stiffening of Dominique’s posture. “One of the first kids she ever saved during the start of the war, almost died doing it. The eldest, practically became her son that day, guided the other kids that came into her care. I think it struck her hard to lose him that way. But she needed to stay strong in front of the others… Until she was alone at least.”

“Jean…” Dominique whispered, remembering the brave boy from her class with the nail gun. Even with a fearful look, he gave them such a confident smile to keep them from worrying. Dominique sniffed as she walked over to them and stood behind Kraber, wiping her eyes with her sleeves.

“You knew him?” Aegis asked.

“We… we went to school together,” Dominique explained. “He… God knows where he got that nailgun, but I couldn’t trust Cheerilee,” she explained. The HLF members surrounding her stared in shock-they’d never heard this story, and Louissaint had made it clear that nobody should ask about it. “I just… I never got to say goodbye! Or… or anything!” she sobbed.

“By Luna’s mane,” Aegis breathed. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“What would you know?!” Dominique yelled. “You’re just an earth po-”

“My wife went crazy. Nearly brainwashed my foals,” Aegis said.

“...What?” Dominique asked.

“We’ve all lost someone,” Yael said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve lost a lot of my friends.”

“I lost my family farm, my home and some of my best friends,” Johnny C added. “Trust us. We can understand.”

Kraber smiled as they shared an understanding, while loss was not a good thing, it still brings people together. He turned to the HLF before he stepped towards them.

“Well…” Kraber said quietly, raising his eyebrow at the few remaining left, “I am giving you chance to leave, intact and whole. Apparently, I’m good at the whole ‘mercy’ thing. Befok, right?”

They all looked at him, intrigued.

Kraber stepped forward, a hard look on his face. “But if you come back, thinking you can get a drop on me or my team, or just want to kill the smart ones here. Then go right ahead and we can finish this here and now. And I promise… if you do, I will actually think you’re a threat this time.”

“Just stick close, don’t shoot him or any ponies with the assault saddles, and we’ll be golden,” Yael said.

“...Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Kraber said, whistling.

“Don’t mention it,” Yael said as they headed for the wall, and the factory. “And… I’m sorry. For doubting you.”

“What do you mean?” Kraber asked.

“You handled yourself… a hell of a lot better than most, that’s for sure,” Yael said. “I’ve seen rock-steady recruits that go… Bosbefok, right?”

“Shell-shocked, otherwise nuts?” Kraber suggested. “That what you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly it! They do that right when they get in a real engagement,” Yael said. “But you… you had control. And you were a good shot. I can respect that. Besides… there’s another reason I have to apologize for doubting you.”

“And that is?”

“I doubted you cause you were ex-HLF, but I was seeing it the wrong way,” she said. “You’re not unreliable because of it. You’re reliable because you’re committed.”

“Thanks so much,” Kraber said, smiling slightly. Not bloodthirsty this time - it actually seemed, dare Aegis say it… happy? “It’s just been awhile since I got such high praise.”

Aegis coughed.

“Sorry!” Kraber apologized. “It’s just, well... you’re my best friend! I’m not used to having anyone besides you have faith in me!”

“I believe in you,” Johnny C said.

“Seriously?” Aegis asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Okay, I doubt him, but he’s a solid guy,” Johnny C said.

“IT’S AN EXPLOSION PARTY, BABY, AND EVERYONE’S INVITED!” Touchdown yelled, firing the LMGs on his back into the newfoals. “WE GOT PRESENTS FOR EVERYONE!”

The humans they’d rescued scrambled for the guns in the weapons locker, emptying every bullet into the newfoals that were running at them, screaming the saccharine inanities that might have constituted curse words for them. Abraham fired his strange weapon, bursts of flaming shrapnel exploding out its four barrels, shredding through the newfoals.

And yet they kept coming.

Thankfully, they had a whole lot of guns, and the Dead End residents they'd rescued had been gobbling them up-along with tons of ammunition. Weapons of every type blazed in the hands of the residents and the PHL, or in the mouths of what few ponies they'd been able to find.

One pony, a red unicorn, had been tied to a chair, as newfoals beat him for his 'betrayal'. He now wore an assault saddle, mouth clamped down on the triggers, bullets staggering and outright exploding any newfoals in their path.

"You know what this means, right?" Abraham asked.

"Yeah," Touchdown said, flexing under the massive assault saddle he wore. "See how those goddamn marionettes like it. CHARGE!”

Calling the Wall a nightmare would have been inadequate somehow. There was a huge killing-field between it and the Dead End's mass of buildings, specifically built to take out pegasi, or rushes of newfoals heading at the wall, which would have made a good defense...

...had the newfoals and PER not taken that too. Many of the defenses were brutalized by the newfoals, at least until one human had convinced them to use them to bombard the factory ahead.

The bridge between the two was a crumbling no-man's-land of wrecked trucks and exposed rebar under the concrete.

"How the hell do we take that?!" Tamika whispered.

“Easy,” Kraber said, turning on his radio. “Hey, Abraham?”

“Sir?” Abraham asked. “What’s up?”

“Well, he … kind of recruited some HLF defectors,” Aegis said sheepishly.

“...Again? Seriously?” Abraham asked. “...What crazy plan do you have?”

“Well, we distribute some of the defectors we have so we can take over the Wall,” Kraber said, pointing to the wall of the Dead End directly facing the river. It bristled with defenses-miniguns, oversized shotguns that were practically cannons, and explosives, all made to make sure that any newfoals clamoring up against the walls would be reduced to paste.

Beyond that was their original goal-the factory that the PER had been besieging. The surrounding air bent from a dark pink magical shield, and its own turrets were firing off at the Wall…

Which would have been good if the wall didn’t have a shield of its own. Both were engaged in a battle to whittle each other down… though the PER’s shield looked a bit too strong for comfort.

The PER was pretty much destined to fail, Dominique decided. Having humans in your ranks alongside newfoals and ponies that don’t even consider them sentient is a recipe for disaster.

It was almost insulting how easy it was to kill them. The ponies in their ranks had been given priority for gear, so what few humans they had that could be a threat at (comparatively) long range were easily dispatched by her friends and the PHL.

Well...

Much as she hated to admit it, the PHL made them look like they were playing around with old rifles from when ‘wasting ammo’ constituted ‘firing more than one shot’. Even the ponies! They’d found about seven more that had managed to barricade themselves in, adding to the number of the goddamn merry-go-round-toys.

The men were getting antsy and trigger-happy about it, though those two Czech brothers had made it clear in no uncertain terms that if they shot their friends, (Their friends, Dominique thought, amazed and disbelieving) they would come down mercilessly.

Only an idiot would have killed soldiers so effective, though. Dominique hated to admit it, but the PHL ponies were very, very good shots. Even though most of them had scarcely any way to aim.

“...How do you aim that, anyway?” she found herself asking the pegasus she knew to be named Heliotrope, watching as the slow yet heavy rounds from the two rifles mounted to the sides of her barrel.

“There’s targeting talismans linked up to a headset,” Heliotrope explained.

“Always wondered about that,” Dominique said. “Why… why are you being so accommodating?”

“I was there on Kraber’s first week in the PHL,” Heliotrope said. “The man was desperate, damn near no one was willing to forgive him… ‘cept for Aegis, Johnny, and a couple others. Though they were a bit unnerved after what Kraber did to Lovikov.”

Dominique nodded. Who wouldn’t be? It had been all over HLF circulars for awhile, and there’d just been so much blood and bits of brain everywhere, and even Kraber had admitted he’d gone too far.

“Putting Lovikov’s head where he did, well, it didn’t exactly make him seem likeable,” Heliotrope continued. “It was an impressive resignation, but… he was just so lonely. So, if you join, someone’s gotta welcome you.”

“I’m not joining the bloody PHL!” Dominique yelled.

“So you’re going back to the people that shot your friend in the head for not wanting to do a suicidal order,” that short little Czech guy named Dalibor said, sarcastically.

“...He makes a good point,” Abraham pointed out, firing his old Kalashnikov full-auto into a gaggle of newfoals with potion, careful to keep away from any drops of the purple liquid.

“...It’s… it’s just… you’re working with the same creatures that are trying to kill us!” another ex-HLF member protested.

“We are, yeah,” Abraham said. “But… they’re our friends. They’ve fought alongside us, they hate the Queen Bitch and they’ve suffered for all that they’ve helped us.”

“And there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here!” Touchdown exclaimed.

“Well, yeah,” Heliotrope said. “Besides-” she cut loose with a burst of full-auto, “Home just isn’t home anymore. Like what my friend Fiddlesticks said. But here? All of you? You’re still a hell of a lot nicer than there.”

Dominique pondered that. “...Really?”

“Well…” Dalibor said, firing his 4Sure Ballistics rocket launcher up at the wall from behind, into a particularly large group of newfoals.

“You can work at it,” Heliotrope said. “Trust us on that. But Equestria’s downright hellish, and the Queen Bitch is just always teetering on the edge of a villainous breakdown or the use of lethal force. ”

Kraber, Johnny, and Aegis fought as one along the Wall, each covering the other. None of the three of them went without some cover on their backs. They fought as one, kicking, shooting, or punching any newfoal or PER member that came within forty feet of them, a bitter tornado of violence.

Behind them, the ex-HLF like Tamika followed, spraying their weapons at close range into the newfoals that came running toward them. Their .50 BMG slugs punched through newfoals, only stopping when they ran into rare shields.

On the ground, to their right, their other allies-such as Dalibor and Abraham Svec, Touchdown, and Heliotrope, or the ponies and humans they’d rescued, blazed away at the PER standing by on the ground.

“You’re not worth ponifying!” one newfoal unicorn screamed, jumping behind a minigun. It was blasphemous, human, a killing tool, but… he had no choice. No potion equalled no options to savethemfromthemselves-

Aegis nailed him through the head with one of the Thunderlords on his back, sending him tumbling to the ground.

Where potion grenades, vials of ponification potion, and whatever else the PER could muster were thrown at them, Touchdown’s ‘drone’, the automated floating shielded assault saddle he’d created, would block them. He fought alongside the PHL and civilians down below, a second drone floating nearby, shielding him or any PHL out in the open.

It seemed all but unstoppable, a great wave of resistance crashing against the PER.

Until disaster struck.

A human PER member burst out a door, holding a vial of ponification potion to Yael and another woman, this one a young human.

“Just shoot the fucker!” Tamika yelled, aiming her .50 BMG rifle at him.

“Wait, wait,” Aegis whispered to her, holding a hoof out, stopping her. “Trust me, he’s got something really clever planned.”

“You think I’m going to listen to an earth pony?” Tamika asked.

“No,” Aegis said, “I think you’re going to listen to Kraber’s reputation.”

“You shoot me, and they both get ponified! Choose one within the next couple seconds!” the PER member yelled at Kraber. “AND DO IT IN THE NEXT COUPLE SECONDS, OR I PONIFY THEM BOTH! I’M WARNING YOU!”

“I know who to ponify,” Kraber said, holding out both hands as he clicked one of his boots. “Me. I’ll take on the potion myself. Both of them… just please, let my friend and that girl go!”

“I’m… your friend?” Yael asked.

“Well, since you’re so willing, how about I PONIFY ALL THREE OF Y-”

Kraber kicked him in the balls, causing a resounding crack as his pelvis shattered.

Though Kraber had also clicked his boot, meaning that a knife had slipped out from just underneath the toe. It drove up through the man’s groin, just behind his testicles even as Kraber’s boot crushed them. Blood oozed out the PER man’s massive wound like it was coming from a hose, dripping out his pant legs and staining them red.

As Kraber ripped his boot out of the man’s groin, drawing a large hole through the crotch of his pants, the man’s bloody testicles fell out.

Even Kraber stared for a second at that, before shrugging, grabbing the man’s head in both hands, and dropkicking him in the face so hard he flew off the wall into the river below.

Everyone, PER, ex-HLF, and PHL alike just stared for a moment. So, taking advantage of the confusion, Kraber whipped out his KSG and fired a round into the newfoals, staring silently in shock. “THAT IS HOW THE PHL HANDLES HOSTAGE SITUATIONS, KONTGESIGS!” Kraber yelled.

“Oh thank God!” the girl gasped, dropping to the ground, panting. “Thought I’d be… one of those zombies…”

“By kicking people so hard their testicles fall off?!” Aegis asked Kraber.

“And then kicking their faces, but, well… yeah,” Kraber said, pumping it again, the shotgun’s pellets shredding through a newfoal as they exploded, then went on to explode another newfoal behind him, exploding as some of them bounced off the floor. “Think we can get that on a t-shirt?”

“Sonovabitch got my Galil!” Yael yelled, dropping behind cover. “...Idiot that I am, I-”

“It’s fine,” Kraber said. “We all make mistakes sometimes. Here. I got this shotgun,” he said, handing it to her.

“Thanks,” Yael said, taking it in both hands, then raising an eyebrow. “You gonna forget the ammo too this time?”

The Polish woman glared at Kraber.

“It was just the one fokking time!” Kraber yelled. “And…” he reached onto his back and gave her a bag full of shotgun shells. “Here. For the love of God, do NOT be fokking gentle with the pump of that thing. It’s a shotgun, don’t treat it like a delicate instrument.”

“Got it,” Yael said, popping out of cover, and firing it into another newfoal. “Damn. This ain’t half bad. How many rounds does this hold?”

“Fifteen,” Kraber answered, switching to the MG2023 and firing a short burst through eight newfoals running at him, killing them instantly.

“Damn,” Yael said, aiming the shotgun at a pegasus with a potion cloud, one circling through the air, heading directly at them. “This is a good gun,” she observed, turning along the wall to a group of newfoals Kraber was already putting down with his MG2023-

BOOM

An explosion rocked the wall, and they all looked down to see Dalibor Svec, standing behind cover a decent distance from everyone, a massive 4-barreled rocket launcher over his shoulder.

“Dammit, Dalibor!” Johnny C yelled down.

“Friend of yours?” Dominique asked.

“Define friend...” Johnny C said.

“Dal!” Touchdown called over, tugging Dalibor’s sleeve with his mouth. “We gotta go!”

“What?” Dalibor yelled over. “You can’t be within four meters of this thing, or-”

“Fuck the rocket launcher, we gotta go! They’re sending some assholes our way!” Touchdown insisted, pulling on Dalibor even harder.

“What’s-” and then Dalibor stopped. “Oh, FUCK.” Dalibor whispered.

It looked like their last gasp-all the newfoals that had been converted from people Kraber and his group hadn’t saved.

Kraber would later lament just how many he hadn’t saved. Not… enough, he’d sigh, whispering, his face wet with tears.

But for now, none of that mattered. What did matter, though, was getting out of there, away from that charge of stampeding hooves. all of them wearing bandoliers of potion, pegasi not concerned with flying, all of them ready to crush them under their hooves, if they were lucky… the unlucky ones would just get absorbed into that charge.

“RUN!” Yael yelled.

“What’s so messed up about…” Kraber peered over the wall, seeing the massive newfoal stampede heading for them. “Oh, son of a fok!” He emptied his MG2023 into the stampede below, leaving its 65-round drum almost empty, then activated the Tesla module.

Lightning lanced out from the underbarrel weapon, electrocuting the newfoals below … and, to Krabers horror, not utterly decapitating it. Because there were more coming.

“How many of the fokking zombified varkpoes ARE there?!” Kraber yelled.

“This Dead End was huge!” Yael explained. “And we were pretty late! Now we gotta go!”

Kraber reloaded,

“Oh, not this shit again!” Aegis yelled, biting on one of Kraber’s hands and trying to drag him away.

"I'm just trying to reload!" Kraber protested.

"Yeah, and I'm the king of england!” Johnny C yelled. “We HAVE to go! I’ve seen you fighting, are you trying to die?!”

“You can martyr yourself later, just go!” Yael said, placing a hand on his shoulder as he finished locking the belt in place.

“...You’re right,” Kraber said. “I’ve been trying to kill myself at this far too long. And that’s… they’re looking pissed. Not many of em have potion, so that means-”

A ball of fire shot past them, impacting the wall and leaving a massive hole in it.

“Yeah. We should fokking run,” Kraber agreed.

“Here’s hoping they have better guns in the factory!” Johnny C yelled.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Yael and Kraber asked at once, simultaneously staring at each other.

“Ah, fok it. Race ya!” Kraber yelled, dashing off, quickly followed by Aegis, Johnny C, and various human and pony refugees, and their cadre of ex-HLF.

“Fuck!” Dalibor yelled, tripping over a piece of exposed rebar as he pelted off down the bridge. “Ah, fuck it!” he yelled, clutching his ankle. “My fucking leg!”

“Dal!” Touchdown yelled, turning around.

“He’ll slow us down, just leave him!” an ex-HLF man called over.

“Screw… that!” Touchdown yelled, turning around, and galloping in Dalibor’s direction, the wall of newfoals rushing down the bridge practically howling in excitement at the sight of one of the ponies that betrayed them.

“BETRAYER!” a sea-green unicorn screamed.

“SHUT… UP!” Touchdown roared, levitating a derelict car with his telekinesis, and throwing it into the newfoals.

That same unicorn grabbed it in his own field, and threw it back.

Aw, hell, Touchdown thought, galloping around the car for Dalibor. “Come on!” Touchdown yelled, skidding around the wrecked area of bridge, picking Dalibor up in his mouth. “I gotcha!” Touchdown mumbled through the mouthful of clothes.

Still, it was hell on his neck. “Hold on, Dal!” Touchdown yelled, casting off both assault saddles and levitating Dalibor onto his back. “I got you!”

“Touchdown, what’re you-”

“Hold on to my neck, and just run!” Touchdown yelled, galloping down the bridge, his assault saddles hovering in midair, spraying bullets into the newfoals behind them. Ahead of him, the ex-HLF members Kraber had somehow convinced to join them were rushing onward, heading into the doors of the factory. Even Kraber and Aegis were ahead of them, holding open the doors as they fired into the charging horde of newfoals, Aegis’ Thunderlords and Kraber’s MG2023 blazing into the horde. A few HLF men and women stood by, and Johnny C had taken cover behind a wrecked car, firing his Leshiy and its grenade launcher into the newfoals.

“Come on, Touchdown!” Abraham yelled, firing off the Kalashnikov he’d kept since the Massacre.

“I got this!” Touchdown yelled, putting in a final burst of speed and rushing to the doors.

Behind Touchdown and Dalibor, newfoals were tripping over the corpses of their compatriots, bleeding heavily… and yet they STILL kept coming.

“JOU BLIKSEMS!” Kraber yelled, his MG2023 hosing down the newfoals. “YOU WANT US?! YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE US?”

Beside him, Yael also stood, urging refugees in, firing the Galil. Hadn’t she lost that? Dalibor thought.

The humans and ponies they’d saved were like a flooded river surging into a narrow canyon, urged on by the PHL and even a few HLF.

“We’re wating for Touchdown and Dalibor!” Kraber yelled. “We are not fokking leaving our friend behind!”

Even though they’d only known each other for a little over ten minutes, somehow, the ex-HLF men and women could sympathize. It was funny how Kraber, the last person on earth that you’d expect to keep it together… anytime, really, could be so commanding.

Kraber fired a three-round burst from the MG2023, obliterating a newfoal pegasus with a potion bandolier that was heading for Dalibor.

Dalibor smiled, and gave him a thumbs-up.

“That’s it!” Kraber yelled. “COME ON AND STOP DYING AT ME, JOU BLIKSEMS! I’VE PICKED MORE THREATENING STUFF THAN YOU OUTTA MY ASS-HAIRS, JOU PIELKOPS!” he yelled, firing again. “Touchdown! Get ready!”

“Oh, fu-” Touchdown whispered, throwing up a shield specifically calibrated to be electricity-proof.

“EAT THIS, JOU VARKNAAIERS!” Kraber yelled, and activated the tesla weapon underbarrel. Once more, lightning exploded out from under the barrel, electrocuting any newfoals in the vicinity, exploding several into pink mist.

Kraber laughed hysterically. “YOU SEE WHAT YOU GET?!” he yelled, not noticing the black pegasus speeding at him, carrying a vial in its mouth, a look of the utmost hate in its eyes. “JOU-”

“Viktor, watch out!” Yael yelled, whipping out a pistol and shooting the pegasus in the head.

“...My God, she was so close,” Kraber breathed, his tirade momentarily forgotten. “Oh, thank you so much!”

“You saved me, I saved you, now we’re even,” Yael said. “Now-”

Just then, Touchdown and Dalibor burst through the gates, into the waiting factory behind them.

“...Run?” Kraber asked.

Yael looked back at the newfoals charging at them. “Run,” she agreed.

The two of them pelted back in the direction of the factory, their weaponry banging at their sides as they headed for the factory. The moments seemed to blur together, and for those few meters as they dashed through the fence, then to the open door in the factory, Kraber felt like he was running through very thick oil.

If only… he… could go… faster.

Finally, panting, clutching their hearts from exertion, they threw themselves through the door of the factory, collapsing on an L-shaped couch that might have been artistic and new at some point, but now looked incredibly dated.

“...Long… fokking… run…” Kraber panted, practically sinking into the cushions, one arm on Yael as she placed one behind his neck-

Wait, what? When had that happened?

“Oh, thank god you’re alright! I was worried not all of you would make it!” gasped a woman walking in, carrying a small iPhone. She was thirty, or thereabouts, her skin an indeterminate, slightly brown color. Her hair was thick and lustrous, seemingly composed entirely of great slick black curls nearly five times the size you might expect. “Pleased to see…” her eyes swept over everyone in the room, from the two ragged-looking PHL soldiers that were a bit too close together, to the two huge stallions lying over, exhausted from the run, to the small, rather unassuming pinkish-purple mare with the assault saddle and wing blades, all the way to the refugees and-

“HLF?!” she yelled. “You brought HLF in here?”

“They asked!” Kraber protested, holding up both hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“Don’t worry, Kraber kept them all in line,” Yael reassured her.

“I did?” Kraber raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised.

“You coordinated an assault on the Wall and we haven’t been ponified,” Yael said. “I think that counts.”

“....Huh,” Kraber said thoughtfully.

Aegis plopped himself on the couch next to them, and Kraber and Yael leaned back against him. “So… who are you?” Aegis asked, confused.

“Miranda Severance, PHL biology,” the woman said, holding out a hand. “Pleased to meet you. We’ve been holed up in here for awhile, now…”

“Who else is here?” Aegis asked.

“Me, Sebastian Irving-”

Kraber drew in an excited gasp of almost childlike glee, eliciting shock and horror from everyone in the surrounding area.

Outside, Dominique watched the newfoals as they crashed against the walls of the factory like waves, ranting and screaming about the defiance of the ‘Betrayers’, and how the One True Monarch or Her Solar Magnificence or whatever term they were using today, and everyone inside had a chance to catch their breath.

It was amazing just how insane the past few hours were… and just what the PHL had access to in their pursuit of bigger, more violent weaponry.

“How long until they breach the place?” Yael asked.

“Not long,” said one of the scientists inside. “They’ve been taking a pounding all day.”

“We had better make the most of this then,” Yael said.

“Well, it’s a weapons factory,” Aegis said, looking over at Yael. “I got one suggestion: Arm yourselves.”

He wandered off, his hooves clopping off in some direction.

Dominique sighed again, watching the newfoals below, trying not to imagine who they might have been, or who they might have left behind. That rarely ended well. Besides… it wasn’t like the potion left much to guess with. The recent ones might carry some article of clothing-an armband, a shirt, a hat, an armband, a watch, a necklace, earrings-but by the time they got to Equestria, were pumped for information, then sent to die, there was nothing of the sort left.

One thing was for sure. Judging by the clothes these newfoals had, they’d been broken men, women, and children. The scraps of shirts or pants or scarves they wore looked like they’d been dragged through the muck, shot a few times, or were so covered in patches or beaten to crap that they were nearly unrecognizable.

And yet, the goddamn ponies had taken even that little from them.

“How do you stand it?” she asked the Israeli woman-Yael?-who was standing by a desk, looking over a large bullpup rifle vaguely resembling a gray and blue Steyr AUG. She carefully inspected it, looking over the manual on the table below.

“...superheated polymer-tipped 6.8mm round with exotic capabilities,” she said. “Huh. They’re working on a new kind of bullet,” she mused. “Not exactly smart, but that depends on how well this works.”

She held the bullpup rifle in both hands, aiming it at a whiteboard.

“Hey! I asked a question!” Dominique yelled.

“...Excuse me?” Yael asked, scowling at her. “That’s pretty rude, you know.”

“Sorry,” Dominique said unconvincingly, “It’s just… I have a question. How do you stand it?”

“What?” Yael asked.

“Working with ponies,” Dominique asked. “How’d you do this from the beginning?”

“Well, that’s a terrible question,” Yael said. “You might as well just ask how it feels being Jewish.”

“Wait, you’re Jewish?” Dominique asked.

“By some really weird coincidence, every human in the squad is,” Yael explained. “Kraber goes to synagogue, Abraham and Dalibor have their own torah, and Johnny C used to go to synagogue in Bethlehem.” she paused. “New Hampshire, not… not the Middle East.”

“...Huh,” Dominique said. “You still didn’t answer my questions.”

“Well…. we had ponies, diamond dogs, zebras just flooding through the Mediterranean,” Yael explained. “A lot of them came through Israel. Now… Israel’s… was... a downright paranoid state. I admit that. But… the stories…. the stories we heard,” she looked out the window. “Equestria wasn’t a paradise before the War. They told us about the most brutal strikebreaking I’d ever seen, about the explosion of the Great Equestrian-”

“What?” Dominique asked.

“Oh, don’t get Heliotrope to start on that,” Yael sighed. “Goddamn catastrophe. I know how easy it is to think of them as all targets, but…. trust me, you know what the average refugee looks like?”

“Sure. It’s like the world’s been ripped out from under them,” Dominique said.

“Now imagine that a hundred times worse,” Yael explained. “It was like… everything had betrayed them.”

“Damn right we did,” Heliotrope said. “Celestia turned out to be a raging, hormonal bitch with no ability to empathize with her subjects or even see an entire species as sentient, she fucking killed everyone and turned a skyliner I worked on into a deathtrap, she… There is nothing, on this world or another, that could ever make me forgive her,” she continued. “She dragged my friends back to Equestria. She turned some of them into fucking zombies. And… then, and then Kraber tried to kill me.”

“I said I was sorry!” Kraber yelled over.

“Eh, it’s… not important,” Heliotrope said. “So when I ended up in Israel, we’d… we’d given up hope. We had nothing left.”

“So… we couldn’t not help them,” Yael said. “Besides. They’d said that if we accepted PHL help… we could destroy the Barrier, cause they had magic, we had the resources to make it better. We’d seen them at their lowest, and even with all the abuse they got-from people like you, I might add-they still just wanted to help without zombifying us.”

“But… what about Verity Carter?” Dominique asked, confused. “She ended up as a PHL newfoal...”

“PHL newfoals don’t exist,” Aegis said, walking up to the two of them. “Man, Kraber was laughing for weeks after that, I’ve never seen him laugh so much. And she’s not a newfoal, she was-”

BOOM

Everyone slid into cover almost seamlessly, Yael shouldering the odd bullpup she’d taken. It felt a lot lighter than its large frame should be, but that was PHL tech, she supposed. She stared through the red dot sight, looking at one of the Dead End’s buildings…

To find that there was a man standing on one of the buildings, holding a four-barrled 4Sure Ballistics rocket launcher, firing into the newfoals that were pounding against the building like a stormy sea.

"How about that," Heliotrope said. "There's still people out there."

"There's still time to do something," Yael said, caressing the odd bullpup with its odd tubing, various circular protrusions, and glowing sky-blue lights.

“Professor Irving, I presume?” Kraber asked.

“Please tell me you’re not here to ask me to make aerosolized Rule Breaker. Again,” Sebastian sighed, greased hand palming his equally greased face, exhaustion clearly showing through. “You already know about the inci-”

“No, no. I understand,” Kraber said, throwing up both hands. “I… thanks for the security footage. Fok, but that was messed up!” He shivered.

“When you, of all people, think that’s messed up, I think I should take that as a bad sign,” Sebastian remarked in a deadpan tone.

To people that kept tabs on PHL weaponry, Sebastian Irving was a living legend. He’d been behind most, if not all of the PHL’s enhanced weaponry from the beginning. He’d started as a low-level desk jockey with big dreams but none of the funding, but worked his way up through the PHL thanks to those very same ideas. Kraber was an avid user of his work- “Rainmaker” grenades that split in midair, bullets that boiled the target’s blood to the point they exploded from the pressure or died from exsanguination, literal Bolter rounds, magnetizing grenades that coated an area in sticky metallic powder and then crushed everything unfortunate enough to be caught in it into a compacting ball, ordinary looking weapons that seemingly could fire hundreds upon hundreds of bullets without reloading, acidic, incendiary, or electric bullets, a proposed sawblade-launching weapon, guns with the ZX-1’s “replay” function (It had proven popular among PHL ponies), railguns, spread rocket launchers, gyrojet rounds, portable MIRV grenades, singularity grenades, improved mines, a PEPS system for use in nonlethally dispelling riots, lasers… . Almost every rune, every bizarre concept the PHL used had Sebastian’s fingerprint or the hoofprints of his team on it. It had been him that was behind the modified MG2019 and the F3-Thunderlord.

Every weapon concept from him had his mind and soul poured into it. There were stories of him going a week without sleeping to get a new weapon perfect and out on production. He would receive letters from PHL soldiers, poring over their feedback to create a weapon that would satisfy all their desires. Kraber had done that several times, once for the aerosolized ‘Rule Breaker’, another time while consulting with Ogunleye Futuristics to make his new NTW-20, another time while talking about the possible utility of thermite guns after a drunken rant about HLF pyros.

And there Kraber and Touchdown were, talking to him.

“...experimental weaponry, you say?” Kraber asked, a dangerous gleam in his eye. “Tell me.” he placed his MG2023 on a table nearby. “Think you can make this even better?”

“Is that a Kasparek design?” Sebastian asked, moving towards the weapon and inspecting it with his eyes and hands. “Looks like something from Warframe…”

“Orokin prime weapon, right?” Kraber asked. “Or the Gjallarhorn, I guess.”

“It does, yeah,” Sebastian said, a slight smile on his face as a glint of undefined emotion entered his eye. “What’s it do?”

“Think of it like the thermite gun from The Order 1886, except with lightning, and bullets instead of pellets,” Kraber explained. “I want to test it with HEIAP rounds later.”

“Exquisite! That can be arranged later, after we’re done with our current predicament... So, what do you need?”

“Well, I’m planning to be at the final battle, and I aim to give the Queen Bitch one hell of a repair bill,” Kraber said. He paused for a moment. “Say… can you work on this NTW-20 I have back in Boston?”

Sebastian adopted a thoughtful look for about half a second. “Give me the time, materials, and schematics,” Sebastian said, a feral grin growing wider and wider on his normally passive face, “And I can make you a weapon to extinguish the sun.”

“And I’d like the ZX1 function,” Touchdown said.

“Alright, I can add that in,” Sebastian said, an eyebrow raised slightly a moment later. “But, you sure? I have this spread rocket launcher you might want to try…”

“Go on…” Touchdown said, smiling. “Link it up to my headset, and we have a deal.”

“...Oh, and can Aegis get the same improvements that my gun’s getting?” Kraber asked. “I… I don’t want to hog all the fun. Plus, Christmas is coming up and I’d like to do something nice for him.” He paused. “Also, he said he wanted a new shield generator.” He paused. “Ooh. What’s that shotgun over there?” he asked, pointing to a shotgun that looked like a Neostead with an oversized pump.

“That… Is the NS2023...,” Sebastian said proudly. “I wanted it to be 10-gauge, but 12-gauge just has more… modularity, you know? It’s like an NS2018, but you flick this switch here-” he paused for a moment, flicking a little switch and watching as purple lines spread across the pump- “And pumping it charges the ammo and makes it explosive! Just don’t use it with tasers. The tests were… unpleasant.”

“So it’s like the shotgun from that reboot of Syndicate,” Kraber said.

“Well, yeah. What do you think inspired me?” Sebastian asked. “Not a good game, but the guns…”

“I liked the COIL laser,” Kraber agreed. “Fired it semiauto, but… the altfire… loved it a lot! And that… what’s the revolver, the one that totally wasn’t .600 caliber, the one Axel Torvenius did that looked like the Blade Runner gun?” Kraber asked.

“I liked the minigun,” Sebastian said. “I still want to get that thing into production… think I have a few prototypes lying around in here actually.”

“Wait, seriously?” Kraber asked.

“Yes,” Sebastian nodded. “Can’t think of a better time to test any of this, can you?”

“Hell no I can’t!” Kraber agreed. “Say… Any improvements you can do to my Quetzalcoatl?”

Face lightning up, Sebastian nodded. “There are, in fact. While it’s still experimental, it’s pretty much ironed out. All it needs is a little…” The smile on Sebastian’s face could be described as little more than predatory. “Field-testing…”

The newfoals were irritated beyond all belief. They pounded on the windows until their hooves cracked, they screamed denunciations in the name of Celestia that were profoundly hypocritical as they had never been to Equestria, they screamed until their throats bled. They threw whatever debris they could in the direction of the factory, screaming like spoiled children when it didn’t work and they couldn’t make any more humans ‘more happy’.

Maybe somewhere in their minds, there was a little bit of happiness, some part of themselves buried away beneath the conditioning from the potion. The newfoals pretended it didn’t exist-rather, some actually enjoyed it. They enjoyed hearing the screaming of what they’d once been.

They were sure the humans inside would be happy to hear the beautiful sound of their filthy, disgusting human nature screaming in agony. And if they weren’t, well… they’d come around. Even those Betrayers would see the light eventually! And the humans could only hold out so lo-

BOOM

Several newfoals vanished in a shower of blood. Out walked a huge white earth pony with two massive weapons on his back, the barrels smoking slightly.

“We’ve got work to do,” he said, and fired again into the newfoals. He was joined by a human, of about average height, and wearing a gas mask painted to look like a wolf’s head.

Oh, buck. THEM. Kraber and Aegis.

While most newfoals weren’t allowed to do the smart thing and run, the few PER humans and ‘Subverted’ were, running screaming from the madman and madstallion with the LMGs. Behind them stood a human woman with a short, heavy black and blue bullpup rifle, and above them, a purplish-pink pegasus flitted from side to side, firing off from an assault yoke, artfully dodging any spells coming their way.

Sometimes, the two humans would duck near the large white earth pony stallion, taking advantage of the shield that appeared around his barrel.

The retreating ones didn’t last long, as snipers on the factory roof fired off their weaponry, newly enhanced by the PHL. The bullets rammed through their upper bodies, though a suspicious amount of the human PER members were actually shot in nonlethal areas. Not for mercy, no-they were forever paralyzed. Those that lived, anyway.

Humans and ponies with guns poured out every door, their guns poking through each window, and the bridge erupted into chaos. At the front were the lanky gas-mask wearing man and a huge white stallion, pouring bullet after bullet into the ponies in front. It seemed that bullets couldn’t fire as rapidly as the two of them were firing, the .338 Norma Magnum rounds obliterating any newfoals in the way.

The human, Kraber, laughed hysterically as he fired, shifting to a massive shotgun when his machinegun ran dry. He pumped it, enjoying the satisfying shunk-click as he pumped, briefly charging the buckshot and letting loose small walls of explosive shot into the newfoals, splattering them across the massive charging horde.

And alongside them, there was a veritable army. Ex-HLF, with their stupidly over-calibered homemade rifles, found themselves effective once more with the last-minute, temporary enchantments and improvised Khvostov 7G-02 modifications hastily remade to accommodate .50 BMG or .50 Beowulf. The HLF’s .50 BMG rounds practically split newfoals in half, and PHL ponies were aiming massive cannons and missile launchers that had been carried up to the roof. Behind a huge ventilation unit, Dominique held a revolving grenade launcher, one that she presumed to be an enhanced Milkor MGL. But something was unique about the grenades. ‘Rainmakers’, they were called.

In midair, they would explode into several more grenades, raining down on the newfoals below.

Some part of her wanted to reduce Kraber, and the PHL standing near him to paste. The damn horsefuckers…. But , on the other hand, she was standing next to a unicorn named Touchdown. He’d equipped himself with a pair of massive rocket launchers, sending out at least eight rockets from each launcher with each trigger pull. Next to him stood Dalibor Svec, holding a Remington ACR with a Metal Storm 3GL and an above-mounted crossbow, dashing over to his friend and reloading the launchers where need be.

While firing off his assault saddle, Touchdown also controlled two… remotes? Drones? Both of them were floating gun platforms with shields that would block potion vials or offensive spells, and he would send them floating across the battlefield, spraying newfoals with bullets while blocking anything inbound. Dominique could see the words ‘wolf’ and ‘saint’ written on each.

Next to him, an unfamiliar green earth pony from the factory with a massive harness-mounted gatling gun, emptied it into the newfoals below. The bullets would make whistling noises upon leaving the muzzle, and explode into the newfoals. Body parts and blood exploded from the ground like geysers wherever his bullets hit.

It was incredibly useful… and, much as she hated to admit it, she needed it. Try to shoot him, she’d have everyone (and everypony) on the battlefield descend on her like hungry wolves.

Beside her, Tamika fired off the .50 BMG rifle she’d taken in the fight with the PHL, aiming into newfoals. “Hey, guess what?!” Tamika yelled joyfully. “They explode!”

Oh, the PHL weaponry was so gloriously overpowered-she recalled Kraber referring to it as “Blomkamp-ish overkill,” and right here, it wasn’t hard to see why. Everyone, firing from the roof of the factory seemed to have enough individual firepower to gut an entire HLF unit ‘s numbers. The more she thought about it, the more surprising it was that the HLF had survived so long at the Massacre of Defiance.

And it was hard to imagine going back to a pipebomb launcher after tasting the power of the Rainmaker. Come to think of it, couldn’t these be added to an auto grenade launcher? Oh lordy, that’d be so much fun to shoot. So…. much… destruction… Hell, she could join the PHL on the benefits of this weaponry alone. Anything that could create something like this to be used against invaders, she decided, could not be evil.

And something about what Yael said… just resonated with her. For the first time, she could see the determination in Touchdown’s face, as he slaughtered the newfoals below.

Below, near Kraber, Aegis, Heliotrope, and Yael, Abraham Svec stood, firing off a weapon that looked like a flamethrower-but Dominique was told later that it was actually a thermite gun.

For the first time, she felt something like… hope? The entire factory, and a few rooftops back in the Dead End, were opening fire on the newfoals with everything they had, turning the bridge into a massive killzone.

Was this what winning felt like? Dominique asked herself.

Out at the front door of the factory, it was pure madness. New foals literally rushed into the barrel of their guns, and Aegis found himself startled as newfoals jumped in front of his Thunderlords.

Of course, the Thunderlords simply ignored the newfoals, bullets punching through them and knocking them backwards about a foot, before continuing into the steadily dwindling newfoal horde ahead. By now, he, Yael, Kraber, and Heliotrope were spattered with blood, but they kept fighting.

Yael’s bullpup rifle was truly a sight to behold. It would leave massive, gaping wounds in newfoals, the plastic-tipped rounds shredding newfoal limbs off, leaving them hopping backwards on their bloody stumps…. and, to Kraber and Yael’s shared excitement, the rounds crackled with electricity, leaving the newfoals spasming and shaking as they tried to scream.

Heliotrope strafed the newfoals below, emptying her LMGs into them. She’d disappear, her invisibility flight-suit hiding her from vision and confusing the newfoals, only for her to reappear on the supports of the bridge, behind cars, or in the middle of the fray, bullets ripping through them. She wasn’t a pony for the heavy LMG-style assault yokes that most PHL pegasi favored-rather, the heavy low-velocity Russian weapons that usually adorned her yoke were some of her best friends.

But she could see the appeal as she sprayed into the newfoals below. A newfoal pegasus, murder in his eyes, flew after her, and she winced-

Only to watch them explode all over her. She turned back, punching through a pegasus mare with her forehoof. As she did so she watched Kraber give the thumbs-up, loading a new round into his revolver then reloading his ridiculous LMG.

She then yelped, diving over the edge of the bridge and skimming the water, ramming both hooves through another newfoal pegasus’ skull. Another volley of missiles from the Dead End and the factory rammed into the bridge. A newfoal, all but one of their legs blown off, trailing blood like some kind of weird reddish-pink rain, flew by her screaming, and splashed into the water.

“DON’T TOUCH ME, BETRAYER!” he screamed, even as the water dragged him under.

She shivered and moved on. “A little warning next time?!” she yelled into her headset.

“Sorry!” Kraber apologized. “You’re going to want to see what we have planned next, though…”

As soon as she streaked up into the air, climbing up to one of the factory’s highest smokestacks, she aimed at the newfoals below and fired. It was so satisfying to have newfoals so enclosed-usually, they just bore down on a position singlemindedly. But now? The newfoals had death in both directions. Their only hope was to ponify more-and, though she noted with sadness that some of the ex-HLF they’d ‘hired’ had been ponified, it was nowhere near enough to replace their numbers.

Below, her friends, new and old, were making mincemeat of newfoals. Kraber pumped his Neostead, sliding the pump forward-and-back in the reverse of the usual action, bursts of yellow-purple stabbing out the muzzle. Where he fired, newfoals exploded, sending limbs flying left and right, splattering him and Aegis’ shield with blood. He was almost completely red now.

As soon as the shotgun ran out, he switched to his revolver, holding it in a two-handed grip and firing into whatever newfoal came his way. Any newfoal it hit was blown backward, gaping holes in their stomach. Often with huge missing awkward stumps, only stuck to their legs by strands of muscle.

Those were just the ones it hit. The explosions would shred through newfoals in the vicinity, as the revolver punched through them, killing anywhere from two to even five newfoals that were close enough. Yael would scoop up the stragglers, firing her bullpup and cutting through arteries.

“They’re nearly gone!” Aegis yelled.

“Well, let’s help them out!” Kraber yelled back. “Everyone close your eyes!
“You mean-” Aegis started.

“HELL YES I DO! COME ON, JOU FOKKING VARKPOES!” Kraber yelled, as he and Aegis let loose a blast of electricity from their MG2023s.

And the world became burning brightness. A sickly sweet smell, like raw meat on the grill, wafted up.

They’d be glad they hadn’t seen the carnage. But the electricity from the tesla weaponry mounted underbarrel had cooked almost every newfoal left on the bridge, arcing to the bullets that the guns themselves had enchanted with a spell to attract and intensify lightning.

However, it had also ignited the alicornal tissue of some newfoals on the bridge. Wings of pegasi, horns of unicorns, hooves of earth ponies, all had turned into bombs like miniature firecrackers, shooting fire and sparks of pure concussive force out in all directions. What few were left were shuddering, shaking and failing to scream in agony as the current passed through their bodies.

Everyone took advantage of it, firing into the massed newfoals. Kraber whipped out his Quetzalcoatl, Johnny C pulled out a new Colt revolver that was essentially an updated LeMat, and…

Every weapon blazed into the newfoals, and, for a moment, it was so crowded with muzzle flashes, bullets, rockets, and grenades raining down that it was near-impossible to see.

There was not much of anything left. What remained of the bridge-what hadn’t been obliterated through rocket fire or enchanted munitions-was painted in blood, some of which dripped through rebar-covered holes. Severed body parts lay everywhere, and a leg had been wedged into one of the supports for the bridge. The concrete ahead of the PHL and ex-HLF was littered with spent casings. There was an odd burnt-hair smell wafting up from the carnage.

The wind gusted over the wreckage, and they all looked at what they’d wrought.

They’d won.

They’d won!

“FINALLY!” Tamika cheered, thrusting her .50 up into the air, holding it by the rear portion of the stock. She abruptly realized just how ridiculously heavy it was, then put it down. She cheered all the same, fist punching up into the sky.

Dominique heard someone yelling something sappy in French: “FINALLY, WE WIN! WE’RE.. WE’VE DONE IT! WE’VE DONE IN HOURS WHAT ONCE TOOK WEEKS!” She realized that it was her, and found herself smiling, laughing and cheering along with the rest of them.

“It… is it over?” Aegis asked, collapsing to the ground. “Luna, what a long day…”

“Oh, lord yes,” Kraber sighed, panting as he sat down against a wrecked car. His MG2023 dropped against the ground. The newfoals were gone, the PER were gone, and the Wall had been taken back. “Booze?” he asked, reaching into his pack for a bottle of kentucky bourbon.

“Booze,” Aegis agreed. “Thanks for not bringing that rotgut.”

“Eh, special occasions,” Kraber sighed. “Besides, I’m kind of… losing my taste for that. It’s fokking siff...“

“At last, you finally get good taste in alcohol,” Yael laughed. “Mind if I dip in?”

“Sure, go ahead. Heliotrope, you want any?” Kraber asked.

“Ah, what the hell. Why not,” she sighed.

“Just before I do this though….” Kraber flipped his gas mask up, letting his beard spill out down his chin and neck. “Thanks, Yael.”

“For what?” she asked, surprised.

“You saved my life,” Kraber said. “Got that pegasus kakfokker heading for me, and… and you had my back.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, a faint smile on his face. “That means a lot to me.”

“You’re welcome,” Yael said, looking over at him. “And… you did pretty well in command.”

“Huh,” Kraber said, a little surprised. “Well, how about that.”

All in a day’s work. Kraber could hear the sound of helicopters and huge planes flying in, emergency services arriving. There… off in the distance. Yellow helicopters. In another time, he might have made a joke about that, but for now, all he wanted was to rest.

“You’re welcome,” Yael said, accepting the bottle. “But Lord… What a day,” she said, taking a big swing of it.

“Agreed,” Heliotrope said, lazily fluttering beside them. “So many… newfoals…” she yawned.

All around them, the HLF they’d co-opted were laying back, similarly burnt out, reloading their weaponry.

“So… what’re you guys going to do now?” Kraber called over.

“Join you, of course,” Tamika said, “If we did anything but that, we’d be real assholes.”

Yael raised an eyebrow.

“...Right. Yeah. But you… you saved lives. You’ve done in a day what would takes us weeks, and a whole lot of bodies. And you have better guns.”

“Good thing coming on, y’know,” Kraber said. “It’s the last chance, really.”

The helicopters landed all over nearby, most of them ignoring the bridge. A good thing too, considering how beaten up it was.

For now, they were safe.

Dominique didn’t know what awaited her. She didn’t know what the PHL would probably say, what they’d do.

The PHL had proven themselves to be quite upstanding, though. Kraber had actually… he seemed more together, somehow, and Johnny C, while a bit odd, had still proven to be dedicated. They were an odd lot, but a likeable one all the same, despite what she’d believed.

She still hated Aegis, Touchdown, Heliotrope. But… the more she thought about it, none of them were that bad. Aegis was rock steady, trustworthy, and strong. Touchdown was… considerably less steady, but downright unstoppable, and Heliotrope had… she’d been pretty nice too. Surprisingly enough, she found herself liking them.

It… wasn’t them, she decided. They just happened to look like the enemy, so I saw them as targets.

“You alright, though?” Heliotrope asked, as she lay on the ground, Johnny C using her as a pillow. “This… must not be easy.”

“Honestly, I’m more worried about how Tamika took it so well,” Dominique said. “But… all of this. I must’ve done awful things, and I’m… I’m sorry. You and all of them seem nice, anyway, but I just…”

“Kraber was the same way when he joined, you know,” Heliotrope said. “Same with Angus Reid, or even.... hell, even Kagan Burakgazi. Especially him. But you won’t regret this.”

“No, I totally want to go back to hiding in caves with this awful patlik gun,” Dominique sighed, pointing to one of the .50 BMG rifles sitting next to a man who’d deserted with her. “Back to only being able to dream of mustering anything like… like this.” She paused. “This what it feels like to be a good person?” she asked, watching personnel spill out of the helicopters, and isolated pockets of survivors climbing up to the roofs of the concrete buildings, cheering and waving the flags of their countries, absorbed or not.

“Yeah,” Heliotrope smiled. “I guess it is.”

“Huh,” Tamika said, walking over to the three of them. “Not used to being a hero.”

“It’s a good time to start, then!” Kraber called over.

“Eh,” Dominique said, watching the human and pony PHL troops heading for them, looking in amazement at the carnage they were wading through, “I think it’s worth a shot. So, Yael, you ever gonna tell me what happened to Verity?”

“Oh, I remember that!” Kraber exclaimed. “Haven’t laughed like that for a long time! So there I was in the PHL headquarters in NYC, when suddenly people notice that Bon-Bon’s gone wandering off again. So I try and follow her and what do I find but-”

Author's Notes:

You know, I did warn you this would happen.
I apologize for the confusion and the unique format, but the chapter was like stupid long, so we split it! A more conventional chapter should be coming by the end of... next week, I think. Be prepared for some big changes, and my apology for the fact that the previews I made earlier are not going to happen. I'll explain why in the next chapter, because... spoilers are afoot. Or is it... AHOOF?
But... again, thanks to everyone for this. I love all you guys.
And no. I'm not revealing what happened to Verity.
Gun-related explanations:
* I did not make up the Homebrewed .50 BMG open-bolt rifles. No, really. That's a thing.
* If you're wondering how 'Fragnum' is a Borderlands reference, BEHOLD: THE FRAGNUM!
* If you haven't played Syndicate, you're... not missing much. It wasn't very good. But it does have a hell of an arsenal!
* The bullpup rifle Yael gets is meant to be the Hard Light. If you didn't pick up on it, I don't blame you-I wasn't sure how to describe the Hardlight, and it's kind of an obscure quote.
* The "4Sure Ballistics rocket launcher" is this thing. But it can't engage targets in space, from earth or shoot rockets that travel at 45 times escape velocity. I mean, I liked Elysium, but that was just stupid. The chemrail, which at least in part inspired the MG2023, however, was not.