“It's obvious that kindness and good temper aren't part of this religion.”

The thing about spending a lot of time out in the Wasteland, is that it gives you a sixth sense about when things are…off. You become accustomed to certain background sounds and sensations. Like insects. Insects are a big one. They’re everywhere, and they’re always incredibly noisy. Except when there are all sorts of things moving around. That’s when they get all quiet on you, thinking you’re after them.

If you remain still for long enough, like when you’re sleeping, all of that noise comes back. It doesn’t wake you up though, because you’re used to it. You expect it to be there, in fact. When it’s not there, that’s when you notice it. The silence can even be enough to wake you up.

It did as much for me tonight, though I didn’t know at first that was what had woken me up. I’d half expected to find Windfall fetching me to take my shift on the watch. That wasn’t the case though. In fact, the Pegasus was actually fast asleep herself right next to me.

My features immediately settled into a frown, and I was about to wake the flier up and berate her. Then I noticed that Foxglove was laying nearby, watching the fire. She took notice of my recently awakened status and put up a reassuring hoof. It certainly made me feel a little more at ease to know that there was somepony on watch. I was still curious as to why it wasn’t Windfall or myself though.

Quietly, I stood up and walked over to stand by Foxglove, who herself stood up and took us a bit further away from the other sleeping ponies. Correction, actually, I noticed. There was only one sleeping pony, and that was the Pegasus. Our stallion friend was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Cestus?” I asked the unicorn.

She nodded her head behind the nearby rock face, “taking a piss.”

Once again I felt myself relax a little bit more. Not all the way though. There was still something that felt off to me. My instincts were telling me that it was still too quiet out here. I stared out across the Wasteland, watching my Eyes Forward Sparkle very carefully. There weren’t any blips out there that the pipbuck could detect. I’d seen it lie to me before though. Not that I believed that there was an army of invisible zebras out there at the moment.

“I thought I was going to be on the shift after Windfall,” I didn’t quite sound accusatory, but my tone still suggested I wanted to hear a good explanation for why my orders had been discounted in favor of an undisclosed change that I had slept through.

“I wasn’t tired,” the unicorn answered. She then immediately yawned. This drew a dubious look from me. The mare shrugged.

“You think I’ll do something,” there wasn’t an immediate denial of my theory from the mare. She just looked at me for a few seconds, and then cast her gaze back out on the Wasteland, “so, what, you’re just never going to sleep again?”

“I can sleep when Windfall’s on watch,” she replied.

I let out a deep sigh and nodded. I offered an apologetic smile to the mare, “I turned Windfall down for sex last night. If that helps.”

“She told me,” the unicorn nodded, and finally met my gaze, “and I’m grateful for that. Thank you.

“It doesn’t change a lot about you and I though,” again she averted her gaze. She was quiet for a moment, then, “I think about killing you. A lot,” that statement certainly grabbed my attention, and I favored the mare with a shocked look, which she either pretended not to notice, or simply didn’t care about as she went on, “almost did it tonight, in fact.

“Just poke you in the temple with my lance. Poke,” she illustrated the comment with a delicate tapping of her hoof on a nearby rock that was about the size of a pony’s head, “problem gone. I’ll come up with a story to tell Windfall later.”

Well. How did somepony respond to that?

“I’m…glad you decided not to.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Foxglove finished before turning around and heading back towards the fire. I sighed and bowed my head. Before I could come up with a response, I heard the unicorn say, “you can go back to bed. I’ll be fine for the rest of the night.”

As though I could sleep now after hearing that! I turned to face the mare, hoping that I could find some combination of words that would help to at least begin the process of smoothing things over between us. Getting her to the point where she wasn't coming up with ways to murder me and my sleep would be a nice start.

“Oh, horseapples…”

Those weren’t the words that I was planning to use to curtail Foxglove’s equicidal ideations. That was just my instinctive response to the half dozen red blips that I saw lining the bottom of my field of vision the moment I turned around. Monsters, robots, or raiders, I didn’t know and I wasn’t going to waste precious seconds trying to figure out. What mattered now was action.

“Ambush!”

I screamed the word at the top of my lungs as I charged for my weapons and gear. There was no way that I was going to get my barding on, but I could at least snatch up one of my guns. I repeated the word at least two more times before I gave up keeping count; I just continued to say it as loudly as I could in an effort to wake up the sleeping It took Foxglove precious seconds of paralyzing comprehension before she finally made a move to fetch her own weapons. Unlike me though, she didn’t have any indications about where the attack I was warning against was going to come from.

Her reaction was to back up against the vertical stone outcropping that bordered our camp site as a way to limit the avenues of potential hostile approach. Her attention was focused outward from there, in my direction, with her eldritch lance and newly acquired rifle hovering in front of her. I couldn’t fault her tactics. For somepony as new to this whole way of life as she was, they were remarkably sound and thought out. It just so happened to be that it was exactly the wrong thing to do for this specific situation.

It wasn’t monsters or robots, I soon discovered. Even as I tried frantically to warn the violet mare about the direction the impending attack was going to come from, a distinctly pony-shaped figure leaped down from the lip of the rocky outcropping and fell upon the unicorn. She screamed in shock and pain, and her lance swung about wildly in an effort to slice off the pony accosting her while at the same time not inadvertently carving up her own flesh with its indiscriminatory tip. I instantly deviated from my course to collect some weapons of my own and threw myself at Foxglove’s attacker. The collision sent both me and the hostile pony tumbling to the ground.

I got back onto my hooves as quickly as I could and squared off against my opponent. Then I froze.

The pony that stood up in front of me was of the earth pony persuasion, and a mare. That wasn’t what had propelled me to inaction though. It was the streaks of brilliant white paint that criss-crossed her rosy pink body and covered the lower portions of her legs. She was a White Hoof. We were being attacked by White Hooves!

“Horseapples!”

Though I had very loudly thought the epithet in my mind, it had not been me that said the word aloud. It had been uttered from somewhere above me on the stone protrusion that we had sought for shelter, and was quickly followed by, “go, go, attack!”

Other ponies were leaping down into the camp now, and I found myself giving up a lot of ground as the new arrivals tried to tackle me to the ground as they landed. Unfortunately, I was unable to maneuver my way to my weapons during my evasions. I did at least find myself back near Foxglove though. While the unicorn may want m dead in a very ambiguous and general sense, she was unlikely to try and kill me at this precise moment. Which was more than I imagine could be said for the tribal ponies attacking us right now. So, that was something.

“Kill the mares if you have to, but she wants the stallion alive!” somepony called out.

Oh, well, that was interesting. I decided to ignore the fierce glare I received from Foxglove as she too heard the orders that detailed the enemy’s disposition towards us, and the arguably more favorable circumstances that I was subject to. Presumably because I had once been a White Hoof. The unicorn had little need to worry; the only reason hat Whiplash would have ordered me to be taken alive was so that she could have the pleasure of killing me herself later. If we survived this but still ended up captured, Foxglove would eventually be rewarded with the opportunity to see my corpse. There was little doubt of that.

So, putting out of my mind the realization that the only pony near me who had overtly orated a desire to kill me was my ‘ally’ in this fight, I squared off against the four painted ponies that were surrounding us and slowly pushing us back towards the cliff face in order to deny us any avenues of escape. That did leave two blips unaccounted for though…

A white-streaked stallion went flailing through the air just beyond the ponies encircling us, landing squarely in the fire that was only barely still burning. An explosion of sparks and embers were thrown up into the air by the unfortunate stallion’s impact. The cause of his impromptu flight made itself apparent in the form of a flash of white darting in and delivering a very devastating looking double-buck straight down onto that same stallion. The cracking of ribs and bones joined the snapping of tinder and sticks as the White Hoof stallion’s chest was completely caved in by the force of the airborne dive.

His screaming stopped very abruptly.

“What the-? Nopony said anything about a pegasus!”

A unicorn mare who had been advancing on Foxglove and I whirled around, a shotgun levitating in the topaz grip of her magic. Blasts rang out as she fired shots off into the night sky in an effort to catch the darting pony with the dangerous spread of the pellets. Recognizing the very real and imminent threat to Windfall, and seeing an opening I might not get later, I seized upon the opportunity and charged the mare. Her companion next to her, a seafoam green unicorn stallion with a white mane, tried to intercede using his spear.

Those were weapons that I had been using since I was a foal, and I had been well drilled in the drills that were taught to White Hooves. It took little effort for me to avoid his thrusts and actually latch onto the weapon with my teeth. A fierce jerk shattered his magical field that had been holding the spear, and released it to my control. A quick toss and a rear up onto my hindquarters permitted me to grasp the weapon in my forelegs and spin around with it. The barbed blade of its tip connected with the shotgun and swatted it to the ground. Of course, the maneuver also ended up placing me directly in between the two ponies, who were quick to capitalize on their advantage. The mare I was able to briefly parry away, but the stallion managed to wrap his hooves around me and bring me to the ground.

One pony I could grapple with and confidently best in ground combat. However, it was only a moment before the mare joined in. They both rained blows down on me, focusing on my shoulders and hips. They weren’t trying to kill me, as per their orders. They wanted me unable to fight. I tried to writhe around as best I could, but to was hard to deny the both of them a clear shot at any one time.

There was a loud gunshot from nearby, and my ears tingled with the clap of air being parted by a bullet whipping past me. A rapid series of metallic clicks announced that the mechanical action of a rifle was being manipulated. Oh, sweet Celestia, tell me that Foxglove wasn’t trying to shoot them off me!

Some angry yells and the telltale clashing of steel on steel suggested that the unicorn may actually have been a little two preoccupied with the remaining two ponies that had been left squaring off against her to worry about what was happening to me. That didn’t mean that a poorly aimed shot couldn’t still be hazardous to my own health though.

“Death from above!”

Windfall’s battle cry was concurrent with the wing-powered right cross she used to dismount one of my attackers, so I suppose that the Pegasus wasn’t ‘calling’ her attacks so much as she was identifying them as they occurred. Strictly speaking, it could even be argued that she was attempting to confound her opponent, as that particular strike had come from their side. In any case, the stallion was rocked by the blow and fell off of me. Which was all the chance that I needed to turn the tables on the remaining unicorn mare.

I twisted my hips and threw my hind legs around her waist, clamping down tight around her midsection. The startle mare was still a little disoriented by the sudden flyby that had taken out her partner, and so she wasn’t ready for what was coming. With a sudden flex of my abdomen, I succeeding in bring the mare in close and hugged her head to my chest with my right hoof while I braced myself with my left. A quick twerk of my hips started to roll the roll the both of us to the right, as I pushed off with my free hoof to encourage the direction of travel. A second later, I was mounted atop the stunned mare, and I wasted little time before delivering three solid blows to the side of her head.

Those three were all that I had time for before my attention was drawn by a pained cry from Foxglove. I glanced up to see that the violet unicorn was not doing as well as she could have been. That wasn’t to say that the two White Hooves facing off against her were having an easy time of things. They both bore a few blackened cuts from where Foxglove had managed to land glancing slices with her lance. None of them had been a clean hit though, and her markmareship wasn’t fairing any better either.

At the moment, she was currently fighting what looked to be a magical battel with her unicorn attacker for control of her eldritch lance, and she seemed to be losing as her emerald grip was slowly replaced with pink. Meanwhile, the earth pony mare had wrestled away the rifle and while it was blessedly out of ammunition by now and the White Hoof had no additional round with which to load it, the sturdy weapon was making for a decent club with which to beat the violet unicorn into submission.

I jumped up onto my feet and immediately ran towards the fight in order to intercede on Foxglove’s behalf, only to be intercepted by the spear wielding unicorn that Windfall had only just knocked off of me a few second ago. Blood dribbled down his chin from a split lip, but he seemed otherwise no worse for wear from the blow he’d received. He didn’t have his spear this time, but he was a capable fighter even with just his bare hooves it seemed.

The unicorn lunged at me, throwing wide, arcing, swings at my head. I was forced to hop back several times in order to avoid and deflect the incoming blows. He wasn’t all that bad of a fighter, but he did seem to have a tendency to let himself lose track of others around him. For the second time, a blur of white struck the unicorn from the side while he was focused on me. Windfall went for his throat this time, lashing out with one of her hind legs as she streaked by and catching the horned stallion just below his jaw. As close as I was, I heard the sickening ‘CRUNCH!’ as his head twisted with too much force for his muscles to compensate for, and the base of his skull became detached from his spine. Without a word, the pony fell over dead as the Pegasus that had kill him continued to arc by on her way to regain altitude.

Once more I was allowed to continue my charge in an effort to come to Foxglove’s rescue. The violet unicorn had completely lost control of her lance by now. Fortunately for her, the pony that had stolen it from her didn’t seem to know how to operate its deadly cutting tip, and so was merely using it as an inert metal staff with which to beat the mare. Both White Hooves hammered mercilessly at Foxglove with the weapons that they had stolen away from her. All she could do was curl up and protect herself as best she could.

Unlike the unicorn that Windfall had just felled, the horned White Hoof warrior wielding Foxglove’s lance had much better situational awareness. She saw me coming out of the corner of her eye and turned to confront me. Foxglove’s weapon of choice was now turned against me. I was glad that this time it was not being wielded by somepony who fully understood its operation and capabilities. With wide arcs of my forelimbs, I swatted the steel shaft aside as I closed with her. The unicorn gave ground, keenly aware that their party’s numbers had dwindled significantly since the onset of their ambush. She was even casting the occasional glance skyward in an effort to spot the Pegasus that had been harassing them with her sudden, and deadly, appearances from the surrounding darkness.

While I wasn’t able to close to an effected distance with my opponent, it looked like the evening of the odds was all the aid that Foxglove needed to get back up onto her hooves and offer a more profound resistance to her own attacker. She wasn’t pushing the earth pony back, but neither was she getting pounded as she had been. Her horn was glowing again, and I noticed that the holsters of my folded barding near the fire had taken on an identical glow as Foxglove went for my weapons as a means to better defend herself.

The mare I was fighting seemed to take notice of this too, and saw the writing on the wall. If Foxglove got out some additional firearms, between herself, the darting Pegasus, and I, we would be able to make short work of these two remaining tribals. If they were going to have any hope of even surviving this encounter, they needed to thin out our numbers, and quickly. Which looked to be exactly what she had in mind.

“Screw this!” she snarled, and I saw something affixed to her withers begin to glow with the rosy hue of the White Hoof unicorn’s magic. It was hard to identify the object in the faint light of the glowing embers that were all that remained of our campfire as it went sailing overhead. Halfway through its arc though, I heard the rather easily recognizable ‘TING!’ as the spring-loaded spoon of a grenade detached itself from its explosive charge and flipped off into the night. The metal, apple-shaped, bomb itself bounced off the ground near a distracted Foxglove as she focused on the earth pony accosting her.

That earth pony took notice of the grenade though, and quickly backed away from the unicorn. Of course, since the violet had apparently not seen the orb land, or heard the arming mechanism detach, she had no idea why she was being given a reprieve, and made to attempt to get out of harm’s way either. She’d be dead in seconds, and never know why. Calling out a warning wouldn’t help much either, since Foxglove wouldn’t even know where the danger was coming from. She’d be as likely to run closer to the grenade as she was to get away from it.

Horseapples!

I pulled back from the White Hoof I was fighting and galloped towards Foxglove. It was a stupid thing to do, and I realized that. In order to get to the violet unicorn, I was going to have to practically run directly over the grenade. There wasn’t going to be any time for me to really get Foxglove to a safe distance to avoid the worst of the shrapnel. The best that I’d be able to do was tackle her to the ground. As close as the two were going to be to the explosion though, we’d be just as likely to die from the concussion wave alone.

“Get down!” if I’d hoped that the warning would do anything to motivate Foxglove to help me get her out of harm’s way, I was sorely disappointed. All the mare did was looked at me with a shocked expression as I threw myself onto her and rolled her to the ground. We came to a stop, face to face, with me on top of her. The unicorn still looked utterly surprised as I flattened myself out as best I could to lower our profile before the explosion.

Well, if I had to die, at least I’d be doing it on top of a mare. There were worse ways to go.

“No!”

I never did find out who yelled it. I thought that it had to be Windfall, given the circumstances that existed at the time. It didn’t sound anything like the flier though. The stress of combat had a way of doing things to a pony’s memories though, so it could just have been my own ears plating tricks on me as my heart raced in anticipation of the impending grenade blast.

The Pegasus was certainly close enough for me to have heard her yelling.

True to the form that she had demonstrated throughout this fight, the flier swooped in from above at a breakneck speed. I didn’t see her with my own eyes, as I currently had my head buried next to Foxglove’s as to not catch any fragments of semi-molten steel in my brain. My other senses allowed me to piece together what likely happened though.

I didn’t have much of a baseline by which to measure Windfall’s flight speed when it came to what a typical Pegasus was capable of. I’d only seen Enclave pegasi and the odd Dashite in passing, and rarely when they were doing much more than hovering or just lazily flitting from one place to another. I counted myself fortunate to have not witnessed their combat speeds, as I couldn’t envision too many scenarios in which I would be doing so as either a bystander or an ally of either category of Pegasus.

That being said, I was confident that Windfall’s top speed were best described as ‘very fast’.

In this specific instance, for example, the vortex formed in the air above as the young Pegasus mare arrived was enough to send my mane whipping around my ears; and she had to have been a good six feet or so overhead when she arrived. Her wings were obviously quite powerful too. A maelstrom of dirt and rocks erupted around Foxglove and I as the flier used a furious flurry of her wings to bring herself to a nearly instantaneous stop above our heads.

At first, I couldn’t conceive of what Windfall had been thinking. Of the three of us, she was the one who had the best chance of living through this fight. She couldn’t have been killed by the grenade blast from where she had been, and the White Hoof warriors that had attacked us were clearly ill-equipped to combat a flying threat in these low light conditions. She could have come at them from out of the darkness at any time and taken those two by complete and deadly surprise at her leisure. There was no need for her to die in the explosion with us; other than for solidarity’s safe, I suppose.

“Windwall!”

I also supposed, later, that I severely underestimated what a pegasi’s wings were capable of. The dust storm that she brought to life with her pinpoint stop and beating wings possessed an incredible amount of force, it seemed. Not only did it kick up a wall of dirt and rock, it threw back the grenade as well.

There had not been so much time left on the explosive’s fuse that the steel apple was sent hurtling back all the way to the ponies that had thrown it intact. The grenade detonated in midair, which was honestly the worst place that it could have gone off under normal circumstances. An airburst robbed Foxglove and I of the mitigating protection that the ground itself would have offered, by limiting the direction of a vast amount of the shrapnel the explosion would have produced. By all rights, the two of us should have been ripped to pieces; Windfall as well.

Of course, these were far from normal circumstances. Not only did the whirlwind that Windfall kicked up succeed in hurling the grenade away from us, but it also caught the superheated slivers of metal that were propelled in our direction and sent them shooting off harmlessly to either side. Even the pressure wave that would have played all sorts of havoc with our internal organs was mitigated down to a mild tremor.

None of this was the case for the two White Hooves who were not fortunate enough to find themselves shielded by Windfall’s conjured barrier. A pair of muffled screams made it through the chaotic swirl of the small sandstorm as the painted ponies were ravaged by shrapnel from their own grenade.

Windfall ceased the violent flapping of her wings and alit on the ground beside us. Within seconds, the maelstrom she’d created dissipated and the air cleared as the detritus that it had picked up settled back to the ground. I cautiously poked my head up to look around. I saw Windfall, her white feathers and coat glowing with a faint orange light from the nearby fire pit, as she looked out upon the devastation that she had wrought. The two White hooves were on the ground. The unicorn lay completely still, while the earth pony writhed and groaned from the pain of the many cuts that she had just received.

The Pegasus began to approach the survivor. Either to finish her off or interrogate her, I didn’t know. If delivering the killing blow had been what she was after though, the Pegasus was robbed of that chance. A dark blur of motion dashed into view as somepony else entered the fight. The new arrival grabbed up the moaning mare by her crude leather barding and cocked a hoof back.

“Huh, wha-? No, wait, what are y-”

The crippled White Hoof’s desperate plea was cut off by the sound of a hydraulic piston rapidly shifting position just as the new pony’s prepared punch connected with the side of the mare’s face. Bones shattered and the White Hoof’s body jerked and went limp. It was then released and allowed to slump to the ground. The pony then turned around, and I was finally able to make out the face of Cestus in the dim light. He’d certainly taken his sweet time getting here! Exactly how far had he felt he needed to go to take that piss of his?

“Jackboot?” I heard Foxglove say softly in my ear.

I turned my head to look at her, just about touching my nose to hers, “hm?”

The unicorn was glaring at me with her emerald eyes, and the next words out of her mouth came out in a near hiss, “get. Off. Me.”

“Huh?” then I remembered that I was basically straddling her, and that the unicorn was generally not fond of my being in proximity to her, “oh, right,” I gingerly got up onto my hooves and stepped off of the prone mare, who very promptly created as much distance between myself and her as possible while she went to retrieve her weapons. I glanced around, my eyes watching my EFS very carefully to see if there was any sign of other White Hooves nearby.

Nothing but yellow blips were visible. Though that didn’t mean that there weren’t still dangers nearby that were beyond the pipbuck’s range. I permitted myself to at least relax a little bit, now that the immediate danger was over. All the same, my next course of action was to get my barding and weapons on. Windfall and Foxglove both followed suit. Cestus was already completely dressed in all of his gear, I noticed. Prudent of him, even if he had just been going out to relieve himself.

He was walking among the other bodies, inspecting them to make sure that they were actually dead. I stepped up beside the earth pony, looking through the gear that these White Hooves had brought with them. Standard raiding fair, from the looks of things. Limited food and water; they weren’t planning on staying out in the Wasteland long. They were here to find a target, deal with it, and then get back home; no distractions. I recalled what had been said by one of them at the outset: they’d been here to get me, and ‘she’ had wanted me alive. There was no doubt in my mind that the ‘she’ to which they had referred was Whiplash.

This wasn’t the first time that she had sent somepony to deal with me. That White Hoof agent in Seaddle had been a lot more subtle about things when she’d revealed me to the city’s inhabitants as a member of the hated tribe. It looked like my sister had figured out that I hadn’t been executed after all, and was continuing to try to get at me. What was even more concerning was that it looked like she had access to a frightening amount of information about me. These ponies had been after me specifically, and I refused to believe that this little band just happened to run into us out in the middle of nowhere like this.

Had they been tracking me somehow? If Whiplash had agents in Seaddle, then she certainly had to have a set or two of eyes in New Reino. They could have gotten word back to my sister that I was operating in the area and arranged for me to be tailed. I was going to need to talk with Windfall about expanding her scouting sweeps during the day and to carefully investigate places somepony could be watching us from.

Hopefully these sorts of Wasteland run-ins weren’t going to become a recurring thing. Tonight had been far too close for my comfort. If I hadn’t woken up, Foxglove would have been taken completely by surprise, and the rest of us might have followed suit. The only one who might have survived would have been Cestus, and only because natured had called at the right time.

I glanced at the younger earth pony, “took you long enough to get back here, must have been one hell of a piss.”

The stallion glared at me as he kicked over one of the corpses and poked at it with the power-hoof strapped to his leg, “I was busy taking out their second wave. You’d have been fighting a full dozen if it weren’t for me,” he informed me, a smug smile spreading across his face, “you’re welcome.”

I frowned at Cestus, but didn’t say anything more. I hadn’t seen quite that many blips on my Eyes Forward Sparkle when the fight had started. There had only been the six crimson threats. My eyes wandered over the camp, and I counted the five painted corpses. That left one unaccounted for, but I couldn’t think of where I’d even seen the sixth during the fight; and I still had yet to nail down an exact range for the Old World device. Who could say that there weren’t a lot more White Hooves out there that I hadn’t been able to see?

So I simply grunted an acknowledgement and left him to look over the rest of the bodies while I checked on the mares.

Windfall was adjusting the last of the straps on her battle saddle as I approached, “good work out there,” I nodded at the carnage that the Pegasus had wrought upon our attackers. There was no doubt in my mind that things would have gone very differently for us if the flier had not been here to provide all of her timely airborne interventions, “the dust storm thing is new. What else are you hiding from me?” besides concealed .45 pistols, of course.

The young mare flashed a broad grin, “well, there is something I’m calling the ‘Mare Cross-Missile Massacre’,” she sat back on her haunches and immediately began using her hooves to demonstrate a series of aerial movements, “it’s where I come in at a really low angle and open up on the target with alternating bursts from my girls as I do a wide-angle barrel roll. If I use the green or blue bullets, it’ll look really cool!” then a thought occurred to her, “it might look even more awesome if I have each gun fire a different type…” the idea had obvious appeal to the flier.

I raised an eyebrow, “why are you calling it that? There aren’t any missiles involved,” I pointed out.

Windfall shrugged, “yeah, I know; but it sounds really neat to yell out,” then, by way of demonstration, the Pegasus struck up a dashing pose and yelled out, “Mare Cross-Missile Massacre!”

I winced in response; less so from the volume of her battle-cry than the fact that it existed at all. With a frown, I regard the mare, unimpressed, “yeah, about that: maybe don’t announce what you’re about to do when you’re going to do it? It just tips off the enemy and lets them react to it.”

“Which is why I use really awesome names,” the Pegasus insisted with a stubborn nod of her head, “how’s somepony supposed to stop an MCMM when they don’t even know what it is? Especially if they’re expecting missiles, and instead there are bullets.”

“Could you at least yell it out after you’re done doing it?” I asked her with a resigned sigh. First it was the one-liners, and now this. I knew that Windfall was capable of being serious when the time called for it. I just wished that she filed ‘life and death fights’ as those times which required the sort of grim serious that they deserved. I wasn’t even sure I could blame these developments on DJ PON3’s tales of the Lone Ranger, since I’d never heard any clips of the former Steel Ranger announcing what he was about to shoot raiders with.

“What's the point of yelling out how they’re about to die if they’re not alive to hear it?” Windfall demanded with a pout.

I pressed a hoof between my eyes in an effort to suppress a headache I could feel being brought on by the sheer volume of objects I wanted to raise with the mare, “Windy…”

“Fine! I’ll do it the lame way,” she relented with an aggravated groan.

“Thank you,” I massaged my temple and took advantage of the minor concession to change the subject, “now be so kind as to make sure we’re really alone out here, please.”

The Pegasus finally sobered up to the respectable degree and nodded, “on it,” she cracked her neck with a couple sharp twists of her head and shot up into the air, leaving behind a cloud of dust and grit. In less than a second, all I could see of the flier was the yellow blip sliding across my field of vision, and even it vanished not too long after.

My attention then went to Foxglove, who was scrutinizing her eldritch lance as it hovered in front of her, gripped in a viridian aura. She flicked the cutting tip on and then off again several time, scrutinizing it and grimacing when she noticed that it would briefly sputter when it was first engaged. The unicorn powered the lance down and laid it on the ground in front of her. A number of tools drifted out of saddlebag and she settled down to make the adjustments that she’d judged necessary.

“You doing all right?” I asked, craning my head as I ran my eyes over her back and flanks. She’d looked a little stiff as she settled herself down onto the ground, and I hadn’t seen her drink a healing potion. The mare had certainly taken a beating during the fight, but none of her obvious injuries looked to be all that serious. Some bruising, the odd cut or two. She was going to be sore for a while.

“I’m fine,” was the unicorn’s curt reply. She didn’t even look in my direction, her attention focused on the tiny screws that she was carefully removing from the tip of the lance. Once she had it apart, she brought each piece in close so that she could examine them. One of these pieces she gave a little extra attention in the form of a brisk cleaning with a rag.

When Foxglove noticed that I was still watching her, she shifted uncomfortably, “is there something you want,” she winced slightly and amended her question, “…to talk about?”

“Just making sure you didn’t get beat up too bad in that fight.”

“It’s nothing,” Foxglove insisted. Finally satisfied with her efforts to refurbish the pieces that were troubling her, she assembled the lance.

“You wouldn’t let that fly from Windfall,” I noted, “let me just check you over and make sure there’s nothing serious…”

I’d barely even taken a full step closer to the mare before I found myself staring nearly cross-eyed at the glowing bead of light that was the cutting tip of Foxglove’s lance as it darted to just half an inch from my forehead. It seemed that the unicorn had correctly diagnosed and dealt with the weapon’s deficiency, as there hadn’t been even the slightest flicker from the magical cutting tip as it burst to life.

I immediately took several steps back. Foxglove’s lance stayed close, drifting down until it was a few inches from my chest. My eyes continued to watch the lance’s proximity to my body with keen interest as its owner growled at me, “don’t…come near me.”

“Alright, alright,” I took another couple of steps back away from the unicorn and sat down. Then I frowned at her, “you’re welcome, by the way. You know, for saving your life.”

There was another brief glint of anger in the violet mare’s eyes at my comment, but her lance retreated back to her side and she powered it down once more. Laying it to rest on the ground, the unicorn picked up the rifle now and began to give it a thorough inspection as well. Her magic manipulated the bolt, ratcheting it back. I watched in silence as she then scrutinized the mechanism, though with a much more frustrated look than the one that she had worn while she had been dealing with her lance. While the action had not sounded as smooth as it could have been, to my ears it hadn’t been bad enough to warrant that sort of scowl.

Foxglove’s magical grip played around with the bolt a little bit more, moving it back and forth as she inspected it from various angles. Her brow began to furrow progressively deeper as she went about looking at the mechanism and how it moved within the weapon.

Eventually, I realized what she was trying to do and cleared my throat, “there’s a lever on the left side,” I said. The mare looked at me, raising her brow. I elaborated, “there’s a little lever…switch thing on the left side of the carrier. Flip it to the middle position to get the bolt assembly out.

“Make sure the safety’s in the middle position too,” I added hastily.

Foxglove stared at me for a couple more seconds. Then she looked back at the rifle. I heard two soft ‘clicks’ and then I saw the bolt slip cleanly out of the back of the weapon. The unicorn’s expression suggested that she had sort of hoped that I had given her incorrect information. I could hear the faintest of grumbled thanks from the mare.

“The bolt unscrews,” was my follow-up advisory.

There was another pause from the unicorn, and then I heard metal rubbing up against itself as her magic twisted the two components of the weapon’s firing mechanism. In a few seconds, the mare was holding the bolt and carrier in two separate telekinetic fields. Her rag floated back into view and she began running it over the two pieces.

I flashed the mare a wry smile, “I thought you knew everything there was about guns and such. You sure did a number on Windfall’s pieces.”

My reward was a scowl from the unicorn, “we had submachine guns in the stable armory. We didn’t have rifles like this.”

“So then why get it, if you didn’t know anything about it?” I frowned at the mare.

Another sharp glare, “it was all I could afford after getting everything else we needed,” that did make sense. Our finances weren’t in the greatest of conditions at the moment. Perhaps I should have dipped into my reserves back in New Reino to make sure we had quality gear. Not that I would enjoyed explaining where I’d come up with a few thousand extra caps.

“Since when do you know anything about rifles anyway?” Foxglove grumbled, “you just use pistols…”

“I was expected to know how to use a lot of different kinds of weapons growing up,” my father had needed his son to be one of the best warriors that the tribe had, and that meant being able to proficiently use just about any weapon that I was likely to come across. There were, of course, some things that I had taken to better than others, “I just prefer pistols. The ammo’s cheap, and they’re easy to hold. Not all of us can pick things up with our mind.”

“That’s not quite how it works,” the unicorn informed me, but she didn’t press the issue. Her gaze shifted to something just behind me.

My ear twitched at the sound of approaching hoofsteps. I looked over to see Cestus coming up. He was carrying a few pouches of rations and a box of shotgun shells in his mouth. The bounty from our attackers was deposited on the ground near me and the dark stallion glanced between us, “am I interrupting anything?” He noted the vast distance between the two of us.

Foxglove was suddenly a lot more concerned with her firearm maintenance, and I cleared my throat, “just checking our gear,” I told the younger earth pony as I reached down to paw through the gear he’d brought back, “anything particularly interesting?”

“Junk mostly,” he informed me, “looks like they were still on their way to raid something when they stumbled into us.”

“This wasn’t no stumble,” I informed the stallion, turning my attention away from the bags of dried fruit and jerked meats, “they’re after me,” it’s only fair that this pony knew what he’d gotten himself into by agreeing to come along with us. He’d know to keep his eye out for White Hoof scouts as well, and the more sets of eyes we had looking for that sort of thing, the better. The revelation seemed to surprise Cestus.

“How can you be sure?” he furrowed his brow at me.

“Heard one of them say as much,” I answered. None of us used a shotgun, and I supposed that the one that the White Hoof mare had tried employing against Windfall must have not been worth taking, or he’d have brought it with him too. We’d at least get a few caps for the shells, and they hardly weighed anything. I put them into my bags.

“Why would White Hooves be after you?”

I chuckled, “I’m sure I pissed them off somehow,” while Cestus needed to be ‘in the know’ to a degree, there was hardly any reason for him to be apprised of the whole story. There wasn’t any way to know how’d he react to the knowledge that I had once been a member of the uniquely painted tribe and that its current leader was my estranged half-sister, “you know how they can hold a grudge.”

“Yeah,” he nodded before looking around the camp once more, “so what now?”

“Hope you got all the sleep you needed tonight,” I sighed, not looking forward to what our best course of action was, “because it looks like we’re setting out early this morning.”

“Is that wise?” Cestus inquired, a cautionary note in his voice, “we might run into more of them in the dark.”

There was a chance of that, yes, but, “this wasn’t a random raiding party. They were looking for me, and they came right up on me. At the least, they have a scout trailing us. Right now, that scout is either keeping watch, or making their way back to Whiplash to report what happened. We want to be somewhere else as quickly as we can in either case.

“The more we keep the scout moving, the less chance they have of finding time to get a message off; and if they’re already gone, we might be able to lose them entirely if we’re as far away from here as possible when they come back looking for us.”

Cestus nodded, “I take your meaning,” he dipped his head beneath his duster and withdrew a second power-hoof that matched the one he was already wearing. He slipped it on and tightened the straps of the melee weapon before throwing out a test jab with the hoof. Right on cue, the hydraulic assist engaged and a steel block shot out a few inches beyond the tip of his hoof just as the jab reached its apex; then it began to slowly retract at the mechanism reset itself. Satisfied, the stallion looked back at the two of us, “so when do we leave?”

I glanced over at Foxglove, who was already sliding the reassembled bolt and carrier into the back of the rifle. She locked it forward and flipped the small levers back to their original positions. The unicorn then stood up and slung the weapon across her back. Her eldritch lance floated up off the ground and slid into its own carrier at her side. Then she regarded the two of us expectantly.

“Right now, I guess,” I said with a slight shrug of my shoulders. After a brief glance at the map on my pipbuck to get my bearings, I pointed in the direction of our travel, “that’a’way. Windfall will catch up soon enough,” the three of us started walking off into the darkness.

Had we kept to our original itinerary, we would have arrived at the stable which was our destination in the late afternoon to early evening hours. Thanks to our expedited departure that morning though, it was barely noon when we caught our first sight of the structure that had proven itself to be the very pinnacle of Old World engineering. The Stables had endured through balefire and time, and a few remained functional even to this day. There were a few that did not, of course. The reasons were varied, but not every Stable kept its occupants as safe and whole as their designers had intended.

It looked as though this was going to one of those very exceptions that had not performed to the hopes and expectations of those that had built the massive subterranean shelter. To say little for the desires of those poor souls that had once thought of it as their home. I had kept Merrybell’s description of what she and her brother had borne witness to in my mind as we got our first glimpses of the Stable’s location. The tale that she had told me of deception and murder at the hooves of strange looking ponies.

While I was no stranger to carnage and even the aftermaths of genocides enacted against settlements, I was surprisingly not quite as prepared as I had thought for the…scale involved. In my mind, I had envisioned a few dozen, maybe even as many as a hundred bodies scattered around the entrance. Defenders struck down during a valiant stand against their attackers, and a few fleeing inhabitants who had not fled quickly enough when their sanctuary had finally fallen. That I was prepared for.

But this…

Sweet Celestia, who could have been prepared for this?

Hundreds. Many hundreds of bodies. They were laid out in a half dozen neat little rows. It wasn’t until the four of us got closer that I realized that the rows had not been haphazardly arranged. The bodies had been organized into distinct classifications: blank flanked fillies, blank flanked colts, adult mares, adult stallions, old mares, and old stallions. Each row had further been split into two segments. One section was comprised exclusively of earth ponies, and the other one of unicorns.

Windfall was utterly outraged at the sight. She swore retribution at whatever group had perpetrated this heinous crime, and anypony that might be so vile as to offer them even the most tangential of assistance. Foxglove was horrified beyond the capacity to express herself. Easy to understand that. She’d been a stable pony herself once. The ponies here could just as easily have been the ponies from her own stable. A deeply troubled darkness that appeared in her eyes suggested that she was now very actively wondering exactly how her former home was holding up. I wondered if she was going to ask us to take a detour on our way back to New Reino.

Cestus was a little disturbed too by the sight. He’d surely seen a good deal of death in his time; but if I wasn’t prepared to handle this scale of wanton slaughter, then how could anypony else possibly be?

There would be time to be properly disgusted by all of this later though. Right now was about deriving as much meaning from these deaths as we could. I looked closely at a couple of the first bodies that we came to. Something began immediately clear to me: these ponies had not died during the fighting. They likely hadn’t even died while they were conscious. The only wound that I found on any of the corpses that I came across in these disturbingly exact rows was a single round puncture wound that had been delivered to the side of their necks, just behind and below the hinge of their jaw. It was a deep wound that descended all the way to the base of their skulls.

What was more: there was no deviation between the placements of this wound. It was in exactly the same relative position. There was no way that these ponies had been awake for these executions. Even if they had been bound and helpless—which, there was no evidence that this had been the case—some of them would certainly have at least been squirming or writhing around in some sort of desperate and futile attempt to escape their inevitable death. That was how ponies worked for the most part. Those that had put these stable ponies down had been given victims which were completely unaware that they were about to die.

This hardly lent any explanation as to the motive behind any of this. There had clearly been a very specific purpose though; there had to be. Between the clinically efficient method of execution and the eerie categorization of the bodies, nothing about this could have been done on a whimsy. These ponies had been killed for some specific reason. What was more, Merrybell had informed me that other inhabitants had been taken away from here. That suggested that something had set those ponies apart from the rest of their companions. Of course, without any examples of the ponies that had ‘made the cut’ to look out, there was no real way for me to figure out what that was.

Was there?

I look over at Foxglove, who was staring out over the field of neatly arranged ponies with distant and cloudy eyes, “Foxglvoe. Foxglove,” I grunted in frustration, “hey, Foxy!” that at least seemed to get the mare’s attention. She looked at me, though it was hard to say whether or not her mind had quite returned to wherever it had retreated to yet, “Stables have a roster or something of all the ponies that lived here, right?” I continued to receive the same blank look from the mare. Another irritated grunt escaped my throat, “Fox!”

This made the mare jerk, and she shook her head and swallowed, “huh, wha? Oh, right. Um…yeah, yeah there’d be census reports. Personnel files.”

“Good. Let’s go find them,” I started making my way towards the Stable’s entrance, “I want to know how many ponies they took, and why they took those ponies.”

My gaze then went to Windfall, “they had to have gone west,” I informed the Pegasus, “and there were a lot of them. They have to have left a trail. Don’t follow it too far,” I sternly cautioned the flier as I saw the hungry look in her eyes, “I just want an idea of where they came from,” I wasn’t about to tangle with a group that was capable of wiping out an entire stable like this. The alabaster Pegasus nodded and darted off.

Then I looked at Cestus, “you go ahead and see what you can find out that Scratch wants to know. I bet this proves that I wasn’t just spouting shit though, huh?”

“No. No, this is…something all right,” the earth pony nodded and began walking among the bodies, getting a closer look at one or another of them as he went.

I looked back at Foxglove, “let’s go,” I started for the entrance to the massive bunker. While she might have been the born and bred stable pony, I’d delved into enough of them to know the general layout. I wasn’t going to need her to guide me around in there. I’d just need her expertise to get the information I was looking for from their computers.

Assuming that she was going to move from that spot. It wasn’t the unburied ponies that seemed to be giving her pause this time though. Her gaze was specifically locked on me, and I could clearly see the reluctant look on her face. Foxglove didn’t want to follow me into the dark and cramped interior of the stable alone. Oh, for Celestia’s sake!

I pulled out Full Stop, my new 10mm, and my knife and tossed them all at the mare, “here, take ‘em! Congratulations, you’re armed and I’m not. Can we do this now?” My outburst earned me a reproachful look from the unicorn, but she finally picked up all of my weapons with her magic, placed them in her bag, and followed behind me at a respectable distance. It was the best that I was likely to get from the mare. So be it; at least she was coming.

We paused at the open entrance of the stable. The massive cog that was about as thick as a pony was long was rolled off to the side, leaving only the distinct opening of one of the sprawling structures. It was set apart from any other stable that I’d yet come across though, in that there had been additional alterations made to the entrance. A couple of large pieces of machinery had been constructed just outside, with several paths of duct work feeding from them into the stable beyond. I glanced questioningly at the unicorn.

“Ventilation system,” she informed me, “it circulates the air from deep inside the stable so that the carbon dioxide doesn’t build up on the lower levels. I told you that just opening the door wouldn’t be enough for something like this,” she reminded me.

I nodded and continued on my way. Foxglove only took a few more steps though before she came to another halt. Thinking that the unicorn had rekindled her reservations where traveling with me were concerned, I turned to reassure the mare of my innocent intent one more, when I caught her rather intently studying part of the machinery, “what’s up?”

She poked her hoof at a boxy section of metal that was protruding slightly from one of the machines, “this…isn’t part of the original construction,” she announced, “everything else is steel,” she traced her hoof over the rest of the exterior of the massive air circulation device before coming back to rest on the part that had caught her attention, “but this is aluminum.”

I frowned at the contraption. It all just looked like metal to me. I remained silent as Foxglove prodded the box with her hoof. Then her horn lit up and as screwdriver floated out of one of her pockets. She began to diligently pry at the edges of the protrusion. To my surprise, it popped off almost immediately, as though hardly anything had been holding it in place at all.

Almost instantly, I curled my nose as my senses were assaulted by a rather pronounced stench. It was sickly sweet, and yet had a very rancid aspect to it that seemed determine to linger in my nostrils no matter how fiercely I snorted out the offending smell. Foxglove was reacting in similar fashion. With a hoof clamped tightly over my nose, I leaned in to take a closer look at the contents of the box that the mare had dislodged, “did something crawl in there and die?!”

The unicorn was shaking her head, pointing at a pair of cylinders mounted inside the box, connected to one another by a small valve, “something was being pumped into the stable,” she explained, shifting her hoof to indicate the portion of the ventilation equipment that the box had been attached to. I saw now that it had been covering up a square piece of mesh, “that’s the intake,” she said, “this stuff would have been spread all over the stable.”

“They were gassed?” Foxglove nodded. I wondered how many of the ponies inside the stable had even been aware that they were in danger before falling unconscious. Speaking of which, “is this stuff still dangerous?” I took several steps back from the exposed containers even as I awaited a response.

Again Foxglove shook her head, “I doubt it. Two containers and a regulator means it had to be mixed while it was being released. I bet it breaks down pretty fast once it’s in the air,” her theory was supported by the fact that neither of us had passed out yet, even being as close as we were.

It made a certain amount of sense too, “they’d need it to go away pretty quick so they could go in and pull everypony out before they woke up again,” I surmised. Foxglove agreed with my rather grim assessment.

That level of forethought, the methodical nature displayed by the laid out bodies…I wasn’t so sure this was the first stable that these ponies had hit. Foxglove would come to the same conclusion soon too, if she hadn’t already. Her expression suggested that she was thinking about exactly that.

“The records are probably in the Overmare’s office, right?”

It took the unicorn a couple seconds for the question to register. Then she nodded, “yeah,” we continued inside.

I’d been in stables before, yeah; but I had to admit that I’d never been in one that felt quite so…alive; and yet was just as dead as any that I’d ever scoured. Every light fixture was on, and bathed the corridors in a soft white light that glistened off the polished metal walls. Signs announcing the locations of the various stable amenities shown brilliantly. The doors slid swiftly and smoothly open; most of them hardly making any of the squealing and grinding noises that I had come to associate with the portals, dying a slow neglected death after centuries without maintenance. Meanwhile, the machinery in this place had probably all been serviced within at least the last month.

Anypony could have been forgiven for thinking that the place would be deathly quiet, what with all the residents arranged outside. On the contrary, the whole places hummed and purred with activity in a way that I hadn’t considered as every piece of machinery worked to help keep the facility alive. Lights buzzed, climate control systems cycled on and off at the whims of the computers controlling them, the miles of power conduit buzzed with energy as it fed all of the hungry life support systems with power from the reactors located far below. Honestly, the noise was almost unbearable. For a moment, I couldn’t understand why anypony would have designed a place for ponies to live that was so damned noisy. Then I realized that it probably wasn’t actually all that noisy at all under normal circumstances.

A few hundred ponies talking, laughing, working; who would have heard any of the noises Foxglove and I were being bombarded with beneath all of that? The sounds of a thriving society would have stopped anypony from noticing any of it. That society was gone now. Only the stable remained. Given a few decades of wear and neglect, and it was surely start to quiet down as it died a death much slower and sadder than those its citizens had.

It didn’t take us long to reach the Overmare’s office. They were typically kept rather close to the entrance of stables. Whether it was so they could be the first one out the door if disaster struck, or to make sure that nopony left and jeopardized the stable’s location, I didn’t know. Like the rest of the stable, the office was tidy and clean. The desk was a little cluttered with reports and files that had probably been part of the mare’s daily workload. There were a couple of picture frames as well. One showing a handsome unicorn stallion posing with a mare in his arms as both of them smiled at the camera; he was dressed in a black suit, and she in a white dress and veil. The other photo showed an older couple.

Foxglove pointedly ignored the personal effects of the mare that had worked here as she sat down in the chair in front of the terminal and began tapping at the keyboard. She hadn’t even needed to enter a password, as the Overmare had not logged herself out. I kept a respectable distance from the unicorn, despite how much I wanted to be able to be up close in order to get a clear look at the files that she was accessing. Foxglove was at an emotional tipping point as it was. I didn’t need to make things worse, and her unusable to me, by triggering her with my proximity.

I watched from near the wall of monitors that dominated the back of ever stable Overmare’s office as Foxglove navigated her way through the myriad of directories and files that the terminal contained. After less than a minute, I saw several strings of characters scroll in front of my eyes every quickly. I caught a few key phrases that made sense to me though.

>>REMOTE LINK ESTABLISHED…

>>INCOMING TRANSMISSION!

>>UNPACKING DATA…

Then there was an incomprehensible list of things that flashed by in less than a second. I blinked several times, feeling a little disoriented by the wave of text, “what in the…?” Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it all stopped, and I heard my pipbuck beep.

>>TRANSMISSION COMPLETE.

I glanced down at the pipbuck’s screen and saw that there was a new file on it. I tapped the screen and opened up the directory. I was confronted with what purported itself to be a list of seven hundred and nineteen names. Presumably, this was the list of inhabitants that I had asked Foxglove to get me.

She confirmed as much, “there. That’s everypony that was alive as of three months ago when the records were last updated,” the unicorn informed me without taking her eyes off the screen. Even though she claimed to have finished doing what we were here to do, she continued to drum her hooves over the keyboard rather furiously. Before I could ask what she was doing, the unicorn spun around and glared at me.

No, not at me, I soon realized. She was looking past me. I turned my head and saw that the bank of monitors behind me were now alive and the dozen black and white screens each showed images of ponies wearing the distinctive barding of a stable dweller. In the upper left corner of each of the screens were a number and a short series of three letters which I presumed would identify the location of the camera. Of course, with no point of reference to go off of, it was hard for me to say where anypony was.

“What are we watching…oh,” my question was soon answered by some activity on the upper left most screen. The camera’s number was ‘7’, but the three letters were ‘ENT’. The entrance. A couple of ponies dressed in black and blue barding with the number ‘137’ and the word ‘SECURITY’ stenciled across their backs looked to be chatting idly with one another when one of them found their attention drawn to something off screen. Both of them looked at whatever it was for several seconds, not looking to be overly concerned at first. Then there was a sudden burst of action as each of the security ponies went for their weapons, only for several brilliant lances of light to dart across the screen, passing cleanly through their bodies. The two guards collapsed immediately, dead.

In a few other screens, I could see a pony of two looking suddenly off to the side at the same instant the bolts of energy had crossed in front of the camera. Most of ponies didn’t react at all, and those that had looked to soon dismiss whatever it was that had caught their attention in the first place. Somepony must have noticed the scene though. Thirty seconds later lights began to flash on all of the screens and ponies became obviously concerned as they started to frantically look around. More armored ponies galloped past the cameras, running through the corridors with their weapons either in their mouths or floating close by their sides. Soon there were more streaks of light on the upper left monitor, interposed with the occasional spark as a lead slug ricocheted off the metal floor of the stable.

The firefight went on for nearly five minutes on the monitor while the other screens showed ponies hurrying in throngs to other parts of the stable, ushered urgently by several more security ponies. Then something started to go wrong. It was subtle at first. Ponies were expected to stumble or trip when they were rushing in large groups like that; and I saw it happen a few times on this feed. However, the instance of such missteps started to climb rather sharply as time went on. Ponies started to sway on their hooves as they walked, or right out lean on the walls for support. Some just fell. Those that stopped to try and help them help were soon lying down next to them and making no effort to get back up themselves.

By the sixth minute since those two first security guards had been struck down, not a single pony could be seen moving in the entire stable. Everything on every monitor was still for ten minutes. At minute sixteen, there was movement on the camera watching the entrance again. Dozens of unicorns—at least, they looked like unicorns at first—started filing by in orderly pairs. They were dressed in what were obviously uniforms that bore a rather pointed resemblance to stable attire, though with some alterations that I’d never seen before.

They were big too. Easily a full head a shoulders above your average pony. Sure, I’d seen the odd earth pony who was built like a Brahmin during my time in the Wasteland; but they were the exception, not the rule. I was watching at least forty of the tallest and broadest unicorns that I’d ever seen march down the corridors of this stable. They strolled through the unconscious ponies, almost like they were ignoring them. Then, suddenly, just as the last of them had entered the stable and reach the first fallen ponies, they all levitated one of the unconscious ponies into the air, turned around sharply, and then started marching back for the entrance carrying their charge.

A great many trips were made like this as the invaders emptied the stable of its inhabitants. They moved without hesitation or misstep; as though they were already familiar with the layout of the stable. Indeed, I had been informed by Merrybell that this was not their first time. I wondered if the footage of their initial visit still existed…

Foxglove tapped a key on the terminal and the images all halted. A few more commands followed, and then suddenly we weren’t watching a dozen different parts of the stable, but a single enlarged scene that was being played out in concert across all the monitors. While a little grainy, the enlarged still did permit up to see a few details that had been unclear while the feeds were restricted to their own assigned screens. I immediately spotted the detail that had prompted Foxglove to single out this particular image though. One of the invaders took up nearly the entire view of the camera as the stallion walked at a slight angle towards it. His head was held up straight and erect as he approached. Clearly visible in the center of his forehead was his horn.

Or, rather, both of his horns.

I snorted in amazement. Even I’d had my doubts about what the little filly had told me about these ponies. After all, it had been crazy, right? But, sure enough, I could see the proof right here in black and white, “a second, smaller, horn right below the big one,” I said under my breath as I recalled her description.

“That’s not possible,” Foxglove insisted, despite the evidence that existed to the contrary. She turned back to the terminal and I saw the scene shift to another camera. The angle wasn’t quite as ideal as the last one had been, but it did offer a profile of another of the ponies. This one had an identical horn arrangement. A few more taps at the keyboard and another scene change. Four more followed, and each one showed the same thing: a unicorn stallion or mare with a dual horn.

“They’re all unicorns,” I noted. Not a single smooth forehead seemed to exist. It was an observation that was support by their unanimous use of magic as well.

“They’re not unicorns,” Foxglove insisted.

I rolled my eyes, “two-icorns, whatever. They’re boneheads that can use magic,” I earned myself an angry glare from the violet mare, but I waved it away, “I’m going to go and check the bodies; see who they took and maybe figure out what they were after,” I informed the unicorn, indicating my pipbuck, “you going to be alright here?”

“I’ll be fine,” was Foxglove’s terse reply as she continued to watch the screens.

This stable could have been her stable; that what she was thinking. How many years had she been gone now? This tragedy had happened mere weeks ago. For all the unicorn knew, her own former home had been cleared out long ago and everypony she’d ever known was dead or worse. That was going to mess with her until she found out for sure one way or the other.

“If you want,” I offered, “we can swing by your old stable. Make sure they’re alright.”

Foxglove finally tore her eyes from the array of grayscale monitors and looked at me. For the briefest of moments, as she processed what I had just said, I saw a very thankful, and significantly relieved expression on the violet mare’s face. Only for a moment though. Then she remembered who she was with, and that perpetual cool expression that she had reserved for me returned. She refused to let me see her in anything approaching a vulnerable state, “if I ever figure out where it was, sure.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

She showed me her bare fetlock, “sold my pipbuck, remember? It had all my map markers,” she returned her attention to the videos playing in the Overmare’s office, “if I ever recognize any terrain while we’re out here, I’ll let you know.”

“Right,” I headed for the door, “when Windfall gets back, I’ll send her and Cestus inside to start searching the place,” my gaze went briefly to the scenes of strange looking ponies still carrying out the unconscious stable residents, “it doesn’t look like they were concerned with looting. Might be some valuable salvage still left.”

Again, Foxglove looked at me, her expression suggesting that she was about to object. As though what I were proposing was some sort of grave trespass against this place. Then she seemed to realize that, like so many of the other old world shelters in the Wasteland: this was just another dead stable now. What were such places for it not to recover valuable Old World artifacts and tech to sell to the highest bidder? So, instead she said nothing and allowed me to leave without the rebuke she had wanted to make.

When I stepped outside again, I saw that the Pegasus had apparently returned from her scouting trip. She was speaking with Cestus in a rather animated fashion, much as she had been doing during our trip out here up to this point. What was different this time was that the young earth pony looked like he was actually talking back to her as well. He even looked interested in what the flier was saying.

Whatever Windfall was saying, if it had Cestus interested, I had to hear it. I also wanted to get her report on what she had found.

“-and, of course, stupid raiders like they were, they totally bought me whole, ‘poor lost little mare’ routine,” the Pegasus briefly took on a pouty and demure expression as she batted her blue eyes at the stallion listening to her story before her face broke out in a broad grin, “then I threw back my cloak and gave ‘em both barrels, wide open!” Windfall struck a pose and proceeded to make some sort of noise with her lips that I suppose might have sounded something vaguely like somepony’s loose interpretation of automatic weapons-fire. Sort of.

Cestus chuckled, something I had begun to doubt that he was capable of, “definitely sounds like those ponies didn’t know who they were messing with.”

“You have no idea,” Windfall beamed at her singular audience, “I haven’t even told you about the time I fought a hell hound! That bitch was as big as a barn!”

“Are you also going to tell him about the time you accidentally glued your wing to your forehead for three days?” I chimed in, drawing the attention of both ponies, as well as a wide-eyed stare with Windfall. I smiled at the two of them, and then regarded the earth pony stallion, “she looked like she was saluting everypony that walked by. We finally got some turpentine to dissolve it. Dissolved most of her fur and feathers too.

“Called her ‘my little ghoulie’, because she looked like a ghoulified Pegasus for weeks until her feathers grew back. Did you know she has a birth mark in the shape of a dick on her-”

“Shut up!” the flier snapped. My, it was impressive how much of her blush could make its way past her coat.

Windfall looked absolutely mortified. Interestingly enough, Cestus didn’t look as amused as I would have though by the story either. In any case, I had managed to break up their little conversation and create an opening for what I had to say. I looked at the Pegasus, “any luck?”

The young mare composed herself a little, flashing a small embarrassed look briefly at Cestus before looking once more at me, “hooftracks and wagon furrows, a lot of them,” she nodded, “they lead through the mountains for about fifteen miles, but then they reach a road and vanish. Can’t tell which way they went from there. It forks a few places in either direction too, so…”

“Dead end,” I nodded, not bothering to hide my disappointment. I had really been hoping to get a more solid lead on where those ponies had gone.

Something told me that they’d be showing up again though.

“You two go head inside and give the place a good look over,” I instructed the pair, “medicine, ammo, anything else that’s either useful or valuable,” I thought for a moment, “pick out some nice rooms to. We’ll be staying here tonight,” why camp out in the open when there was a perfectly viable stable to sleep in; and one that was hardly run down at all, to boot?

They nodded and headed for the entrance. As they began to leave earshot, I heard Windfall resume regaling Cestus with tales of her accomplishments. I rolled my eyes and turned my attention to the grim task that I had set for myself.

In their own macabre way, those double-unicorns—or two-icorns, or whatever I was supposed to call them—had made my task much easier than it might otherwise have been. With over seven hundred names and bodies to compare, it could have taken close to an hour just to confirm whether or not a single file matched any of the corpses present. As it was, I was able to instantly narrow the number bodies that I needed to search by heading over to the section that corresponded to the gender, pony type, and age of the record I was looking at. This left me with anywhere between thirty and sixty bodies, instead of hundreds.

Not that being able to sift through the roster more quickly made the task any less grim.

I’d made it through twenty names before I came upon my first missing pony. It was an older unicorn stallion that was listed as having been the stable’s chief surgeon. The next was an earth pony mare teacher. An earth pony stallion that had worked in the stable’s security department. A unicorn stallion botanist. A unicorn filly that hadn’t even gotten her cutie mark yet.

What the fuck? None of these ponies seemed to have anything in common with each other. Well, actually, that wasn’t entirely true, I realized. A few looked like they had been small family groups, but most of them had no relationship to the others, nor any related skills. Admittedly, it seemed like most of them had held highly regarded positions within the stable. If not for the odd colt, filly, or stay-at-home spouse, I might have figured that what they’d been after were highly skilled laborers. Those outliers had me wondering though.

I was also a little put off by another trend that I was noticing: gaps. There were narrow little gaps in between some of the bodies that she been laid out in their neat rows. Initially, I thought that perhaps additional subcategories had been arranged. As I progressed through the roster though, I decided that this was not the case. Instead, I concluded that these empty spots were where the missing ponies I was coming across on my pipbuck must have been lying before being singled out and loaded onto the wagons that Merrybell and her brother had seen.

This was further evidenced of cut up stable barding that could be found near each of the tiny gaps. It immediately struck me that this was not the first time I had come across missing ponies, discarded clothing, and abandoned valuables.

The ponies that had done this had been responsible for more than just this single stable after all. Though, why leave ponies behind here, and not at the caravans that they had hit?

When I had finally compiled my list of those that had been abducted rather than killed, I found myself left with a lot more questions than answers. I made a note to share my findings with Foxglove. She was a lot better at figuring out puzzles like this than I was, and she also knew more about stable life. There might be a connection here that I wasn’t seeing that she’d notice.

A quick glance at the sky related just how long I had spent picking through these corpses. It was time to go inside, take in a meal, and consider getting a good night’s sleep. Maybe all of this would make more sense with a clear head in the morning, rather than the tired mind that I was using now.

It looked like the others had taken note of the late hour as well. I found them already gathered in the common area eating. The food wasn’t from their rations though; they obviously had come across the stable’s pantry in their travels. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and jugs of something that was certainly the color of beer, but possessed a much sweeter odor.

When she saw me walk in, Windfall shot up and fluttered over, offering me one of the large glass jugs, “you have to taste this stuff!”

Looking at the Pegasus a little dubiously, I took the offered drink and gave it a deep sniff. It was obviously alcohol of some sort, but there were other scents as well. There was a hint of some sort of spice, but beyond that was something more recognizable: apples. Or, rather, something that reminded me of the apples that the NLR grew. This smelled much sweeter though.

Experimentally, I took a sip of the caramel colored fluid. My eyes went wide and I stared at the container, “whoa.”

“I know, right?!” the Pegasus darted back to where she had been sitting before I’d walked in and picked up what I presumed to be her own helping of the liquid, “it’s amazing!”

“It’s called ‘cider’,” Foxglove said by way of explanation.

I took a much more generous gulp of the tasty drink, and then looked around at what the others had laid out between them, “found the kitchen, eh?”

“Yeah, but most of the stuff there was rotten,” the flier said with a grimace and a wrinkle of her nose, “all of the doors to the coolers had been left open,” then her expression brightened again as she waved a hoof at the food, “but then we found the garden! There’s a whole level of this place that just grows things!”

“My stable had one two,” the unicorn confirmed, “I guess it’s a common stable feature.”

Not that I’d noticed really, I thought; recalling my delves into abandoned stables in my past. Though, those were places that had either outright failed or merely been abandoned after their purpose had been served. Until recently, this place had been thriving. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that facilities that grew food with a common feature of stables that were meant to keep going for this long.

Why Stable-Tec had not seen fit to equip all of their stables in this matter, I couldn’t say.

Windfall indicated my allotment of the food that they had gathered, and I took my seat between her and Foxglove. The unicorn was a fair distance away, I noticed. The Pegasus also seemed to be sitting much closer to Cestus, and the two of them were soon engrossed in conversation with one another again.

“What’d you figure out?” the violet mare asked between bites of some sort of crunchy orange stick.

I shook my head, “not much,” I admitted, “some of the ponies they took, I can understand: doctors and techs and stuff like that. Things a stable would need to keep going; but some of them,” I shrugged in resignation, “they were just…ponies. No important jobs, or skills. Some of them were just foals,” I regarded the unicorn with a deep frown, “why take some foals and not others?”

Foxglove was clearly confounded by my findings too. She scooted slightly closer and asked to see my pipbuck and the list of missing ponies. I brought up my findings and gave her my arm. The unicorn tabbed through the profiles, looking thoughtfully at them. After going through the list three times, she finally let out a frustrated grunt and released my pipbuck, “I don’t get it either. Most of those seem completely random.

“I’d say they just wanted ponies to be slaves, but…”

“Why go out of their way to take ponies with special skills, but only some of them; and then grab ponies with no skills, but kill most of them?” I finished the unicorn’s thought, which was the same one that had been bothering me since I’d gotten the list together.

The unicorn nodded, “it doesn’t make sense; but this can’t have been random. There’s something we’re not seeing.”

“What else is there? These were the files that those ponies had access to, right?” I pointed out, “we saw on the video that none of the ponies here were in any condition to be questioned, so the selection had to be made off these records.”

Foxglove considered that for a while, but then she slowly shook her head, “no…that can’t be it,” at my questioning look, she elaborated, “those records are kept on the Overmare’s computer,” she said, “and I watched all of that footage, and not once did they access her computer while they carried her out.”

“They were here before though,” I pointed out, “they got this list back then and made their choices before coming back.”

“I went over those videos too,” Foxglove said, “and they didn’t get the Overmare’s files. They went to the clinic to get…medical records…” the mare’s voice trailed off as her eyes went wide, “…we’re looking in the wrong place!”

She shot up and started trotting towards one of the doorways leading out of the common area, which had a broad illuminated sign above it that indicated that it was the direction a pony needed to go to reach ‘Medical’. Both Windfall and Cestus had broken off their own private discussion to look curiously at the mare just as I was. Foxglove focused her expression on me, “medical records are different from census data,” she explained, “if there’s a connection, we’ll be able to see it with those files. Come on!”

I stood up and followed the mare, waving for the other two to remain put, “you two just stay put, we’ll be right back,” neither raised much of an objection and went back to exchanging stories about their travels through the Wasteland.

It didn’t take the two of us long to reach the clinic. Foxglove did take several minutes trying to force her way through the myriad of passwords that protected the patient files though, as well as the access logs. The unicorn located the exact records that had been given to those strange looking ponies and quickly set about getting them on the screen for us. Both of us were pretty surprised by what we found though; Foxglove somehow more than me.

“Genetic profiles?”

I looked to the unicorn, waiting for her to elaborate on what the medical term meant, and how it could help us get to the bottom of this mystery, “what’s a ‘genetic’?”

“It’s...” the mare frowned and considered how best to explain her findings, “they were basically looking at family lineages,” I could understand her confusion now. How did knowing a pony’s ancestry help when picking out slaves?

“That’s it?”

“Well, I mean,” another sigh, “you can use a genetic profile for a few things, I guess; but the two most common things you do with them are figure out who's a foal's real parent, if there’s ever any doubt; or you can identify a body if it’s been badly mutilated. Stuff like that.”

That hardly sounded useful to the ponies who’d raided this stable. There had to be more to it than that, “and ‘uncommon’ uses?”

The mare sounded a little more uncertain now, “I’m not really sure, I don’t know a lot about this stuff. I’m not a medical pony.”

I bet that a few of the ponies that had used this data to make their selections had been though, “but a pony who did know about this stuff,” I asked, “they’d be able to figure out a lot about a pony?”

Foxglove gave a little shrug, “I think they’re supposed to be able to figure out everything. Your genes are a schematic for who you are. A pony who knew this stuff and what it meant could look at these files and, without knowing anything else about you, be able to tell your height, eye color, pony type, and anything else.”

“So, if you were looking only for very specific ponies, this is all that you would need,” I had found the method to their madness at least. It was a place to start; not that it told me specifically what they’d been after. Maybe if we ever came across a pony who did know this stuff, they’d be able to tell us what the connection was.

She considered the statement, not fully convinced of where I was going with it, “I guess? But what kind of slavers are this picky about their slaves?”

“I guess they’re not after slaves,” I admitted, disgruntled to have to let go of the most obvious motivation I had for what happened here.

“So, in summary,” Foxglove’s horn began to glow and a bottle of red soda floated out of her bag. There was a pop and a soft hiss as the cap was flipped off by her telekinetic grip, “there are a group of really powerful not-unicorns going around and murdering hundreds of ponies so that they can abduct a few dozen for their own weird reasons,” she took a long sup of the beverage, “wonderful.”

She certainly had a way of putting things into perspective, “yep. At least now we know that they’re out there,” I pointed out, “we even have video footage of them, so we can take that with us and show it around. Let ponies know what to look out for.”

“Do you think that’ll help?”

“I don’t see how it could hurt.”

Foxglove seemed to accept that observation and took another sip of her soda, “Cestus has gotten a lot more talkative all of a sudden.”

It took my brain a few seconds to shift gears and catch up to the shift in the subject of the conversation. Not that I particularly minded the change from what we had been discussing. Pounding my head against that cognitive brick wall was getting exhausting, “yeah, I noticed. I guess he’s the type that needs a day or two to get used to ponies.”

The unicorn snorted, “certain ponies,” at my raise brow, “he still won’t give me the time of day; but he’ll hang on Windfall’s every word.”

Oh. Oh! Hmm, not sure how I felt about that. It was bad enough when the Pegasus had simply being trying for the stallion’s attention. Now that she had it? Suddenly, I was rethinking my instructions for them to remain in the common room…alone, while the two of us were here.

Seeming to grasp where my thoughts were headed, the violet mare took another drink, “you are so jealous.”

“I’m concerned.”

“About who? Cestus? The pony your friend sent with us that will be leaving the moment we get back to New Reino and we’ll probably never see again? Or Windfall, the mare you practically raised and agreed with me that she should be interested in anypony else but you?

“If they’re going to happen, I say let it,” the mare’s tone then shifted down slightly, though it was still loud enough for me to hear the words she said under her breath, “no reason neither of us should get a ride from him…”

I frowned at the unicorn, “I thought you were for the mares?”

“I prefer mares overall,” Foxglove corrected very clearly, “that does not mean I can’t still appreciate a good looking stallion.”

“You think he’s good looking?” I quirked a slight smile, “didn’t you also say he looked like me?”

The violet mare glowered at me, “I said he looked like a younger version of you. Obviously, you got really ugly in your old age.” She flashed me a disgusted look and went back to drinking her soda.

I still allowed myself a chuckle at Foxglove’s expense before my mind went back to the prospect of Cestus and Windfall getting…close. The unicorn had made a fair point: if they did, it could only be temporary. The stallion would be on his own way in a few days, and the Wasteland was a big enough place that we could reasonably go the rest of our lives without ever bumping into him again. Honestly, the worst that could happen was the Pegasus coming down with a foal…

Which wasn’t a particularly great outcome. Windfall was our trump card in a fight, and a pregnancy would take her out of it for several months. Traveling with a newborn would cause problems too. She’d also want to stop drinking, I supposed; and as much as the flier threw back in a given day, I did not want to deal with her detox episodes.

“I’ll be right back.”

Foxglove didn’t say a word as I excused myself. She just drank her Sparkle Cola RAD.

As I approached the common area where I had left the two young ponies, the sound of faint, muffled, giggling made its way to my ears through the corridor. When I emerged into the open room, I very quickly spotted the source. It seemed as though I had arrived not a moment too soon. There wasn’t anything too explicit going on, but it looked like things might have gone that way in the fullness of time.

Windfall noticed my arrival first. The stallion with her hadn’t spotted my arrival, as his attention was far more focused on nibbling at the base of the young mare’s ear. That’s where his lips were, at any rate. His hooves, or at least one of them, was on its way to somewhere far less innocent.

This was stopping, right now. I strode into the room, my hooves smacking quite audibly against the steel flooring. At the same time, I rather loudly cleared my throat, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

The Pegasus blushed and placed a hoof on Cestus’ shoulder as she struggled to straighten herself up, “Oh! Jackboot! Um, no, we were…uh…”

The stallion’s reaction was quite different. He lifted his head for only a couple brief seconds to glare in my direction and say, “yes, now go away,” before he leaned his head down to Windfall’s neck and started nuzzling.

The flier’s soft gasp and the subtle biting of her lower lip suggested that she was not at all averse to this contact. She did look back in my direction though and tilt her head in a ‘come back later’ fashion before wrapping the stallion up in her wings.

My irritation level instantly increased several times over at both Windfall’s casual dismissal, and the earth pony’s rather dismissive statement. He was certainly not going to take that tone with me while doing that to the filly I’d raised right in front of me. Not that I would have been any happier about finding out this was happening even if I couldn’t see it. Or knowing implicitly that it was a thing that could happen.

No grubby stallion like Cestus was going to be placing his hooves on my 'daughter', was what I was saying.

“Windfall, I want you to do another quick flyover of the area,” I said, not bothering to hide my annoyance, “make sure nothing big is in the area looking for a new den.”

The Pegasus gave an exasperated sigh, but I saw her remove her wings from around the stallion nibbling on her, “…fine,” again she very gently pried Cestus away from her.

While he lifted himself off of the flier slightly, the earth pony did not let her go completely. Instead, he fixed me once more with a hard stare, even as he spoke to the Pegasus, “don’t listen to him,” he told Windfall, “he doesn’t really think there’s anything out there. He just doesn’t want you enjoying yourself with somepony like me.”

My eyes narrowed at the pony, and not just because he had correctly identified my motives. It was not his place to question what I told Windfall to do, “I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” I growled at the younger earth pony. My gaze went back to the flier, “check the area, now.”

Windfall nodded. To Cestus, she said, “it’s fine. I’ll just fly a couple laps around the stable and be back in a few minutes,” she finished extracting herself from beneath the stallion and set about fastening the straps that had been undone at some point before my arrival; likely by the earth pony so that he enjoyed easier access to the Pegasus while they…’kissed’.

I didn’t much appreciate that sentiment either, frankly. Hopefully, by the time she returned, I’d have come up with a more permanent way to separate them.

While Windfall put her barding back together, Cestus straightened up and faced me. Again though, his words were directed to the mare, “I’ll go pick us out a room. One with locks.”

My nostrils flared. This pony was trying to goad me into a fight, I realized. Did he think that beating me in a brawl in front of Windfall would impress her somehow, or just humiliate me enough to cause me to back off entirely? If I didn’t rise to his bate, did he hope I’d look weak enough in front of her to make her stop obeying my commands?

Honestly, it wasn’t going to matter, because this young punk didn’t know what he was getting himself into. I smiled at the stallion, “you and I are going to have a talk.”

“I don’t think so, you old-”

I just sort of assumed that the next words that were going to come out of Cestus’ mouth weren’t going to be flattering. It had very little to do with why I punched him though. I had planned to hit him no matter what his next response had been. This stallion wanted a fight? Fine. I was willing to give him a fight. We’d see how much Windfall fancied him when a pony twice his age ground him into the floor without breaking a sweat.

My hoof strike caught Cestus square in the side of his jaw. He had clearly not expected me to either hit quite so hard, or perhaps move that fast. I felt the force of my blow fall off abruptly about half way through the contact as the stallion rolled with the punch. He threw his head to the side as he simultaneously took a step back and fell into a defensive stance.

“Whoa, hey!”

Neither of us paid Windfall much attention. The younger earth pony managed to look both simultaneously thrilled that he had succeeded in drawing me into the open confrontation that he had wanted, and disgusted that he had not seen the first blow coming in time to completely avoid it. He was very quick to respond with a rebuttal strike though.

Unlike him though, I was prepared to receive blow. Or, rather, I thought I had been. The right jab I saw coming and parried it aside rather deftly. The left jab that followed was handled much the same. I had to admit though, that Cestus had managed to fool me when the right cross his arm cocked back to deliver turned instead into a second left jab. It popped me square in the eye before I could respond. Not a particularly devastating hit, but it was enough to make me give up some ground.

Young, impatient, sure of himself, Cestus took full advantage of this brief stumble on my part and pressed additional attacks. He tried the same pattern again, and this time I managed to turn away all three of the strikes. On the second left, I even took a step into the punch, and brought the crown of my head right into his exposed muzzle. The stallion howled and recoiled with the pain. It didn’t take him long to recover though.

His response came in the form of a leap this time, as the dark hued earth pony threw himself at me. I chose to rear up and catch him, with the intent of wrestling him to the ground and putting an end to this little display with a submission hold. It seemed, though, that Cestus had anticipated what to expect. Instead of trying to tackle me, like he had appeared to be doing, the earth pony took hold of my right foreleg and turned himself into my body. This put me in a rather perilous predicament with a couple of options: throw my weight forward to out-leverage him and end up on top which could very well completely dislocate my shoulder; or, allow myself to fall backwards and try to roll with him to keep the weight off the joint.

Though it would provide him with a momentarily advantageous position, I chose the latter. The fall wasn’t as controlled as would have liked, and I grunted with a good deal of pain. Cestus outweighed me by a bit. Not much, but enough for me to notice when I hit the ground. I immediately began to pummel the stallion with blows from my left hoof, but I couldn’t get the best of angles on him and likely did little more than cause some light bruising.

Cestus responded by wrenching himself to the side, which put a considerable amount of pressure on my shoulder. I felt something in the joint pop, though I don’t think that it had become completely dislocated. It sure hurt though! I responded by biting the stallion on the back of his neck. Cestus screamed, and I immediately felt his grip loosen enough for me to extract myself and kick him away. Both of us rolled onto on hooves and squared off in preparation to close this distance once more on our own terms.

Only, it was at that moment that a microburst manifested itself in the form of an armored white Pegasus.

Windfall zipped in from the sidelines where she had never stopped demanding that we stop our fighting and slammed into the floor between us. As she did so, the Pegasus executed an impossibly tight spinning maneuver, after several revolutions of which a massive gust of wind was thrown back into both mine and Cestus’ face. Both of us were blown nearly five yards back by the force of the wind.

Just as quickly as it had arrived, the tumultuous air current dissipated, leaving behind only a panting and irritated Pegasus. She flashed the pair of us aggrieved looks, “what is wrong with the two of you?!” not interested in hearing actual responses to the rhetorical question, the flier wheeled on Cestus, “Jackboot’s like my father, you’re not competing with him, so stop acting like it! And as for you,” it seemed that I was not immune to a rebuke from the mare either, “I’m going to kiss stallions. I’m probably going to do other things with stallions too.

“Deal with it.

“Now,” she straightened herself out and started heading for the exit, “I’m going to do a flyover. Try not to kill each other while I’m gone,” as she stepped past Cestus on her way out the door, and said in a low tone that I still caught, “and just for that little display? You can forget about needing a room tonight.”

I permitted myself a victorious smile, which I was very careful to hide from Windfall when she cast me a parting reproachful look on her way out. When she was gone, Cestus and I looked at each other for a long while as well, though neither of us said a word. We knew how this was going to go: he was going to keep pursuing Windfall, and I was going to keep standing in his way—if only out of spite now. Things might come to blows again. We’d just need to make sure we did it while Windfall wasn’t around.

Then I very carefully—because my shoulder actually probably was partially dislocated—turned around and started walking back towards the stable’s clinic; leaving Cestus to tend to his aching jaw and bleeding nose. I made sure that I was far out of earshot before I let myself hiss and grunt and limp the way that I had been want to all this time. My shoulder really hurt! Though I was loathe to admit it, I was starting to get too old for this sort of shit. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before I had to finally admit that I couldn’t hack it anymore and retire somehow. Not that I had nearly the wealth I’d hoped to have by this point.

I had just found an intact stable though which hadn’t been looted in the slightest…

That had never been something I’d ever come across before. If I bankrolled an expedition to strip the place using the funds I did have, I might be looking at a couple hundred thousand caps worth of material here. I’d have to take the time to do a proper inventory. Or, just take the easy road and sell the location to Scratch for an upfront payout. Maybe ask for a cut of the profits?

Eh, that was for the future. Getting Med-X, and other potent drugs to take the edge off, that was what I needed to worry about now!

When I finally stumbled into the clinic, Foxglove was still sitting at the terminal where we had discovered the medical records. She looked up at me, surprise in her eyes as I groaned and nearly fell through the open portal, “Celestia! Are you alright?”

“Nope,” I admitted, partially crawling towards the nearest medical cabinet. Hopefully the doctors here had kept their medicines in places that were low and easily accessible by ponies that were close to the floor.

“What happened?” the unicorn asked as she moved out from behind the desk and came over to help me stand up. The two of us limped to one of the exam beds, where I very gratefully slumped onto the surface and sighed with relief as all of the weight and tension was finally taken off my joint.

“Got into a fight with Cestus,” I breathed, relishing the sweet relief, “find me some Med-X, please. Pretty sure my shoulder’s not seated right…”

The unicorn frowned at me, but she did trot over to a cabinet mounted high onto the wall, “why did you two fight?”

“He called me ‘old’. Didn’t like that,” then I grimaced and added, “and he was touching Windy.”

“He was…? Ah,” the mare levitated a pre-filled syringe out of the cupboard and removed the plastic cap. She tapped the side with her hoof and returned to my bedside, “was he…forcing…?”

I could lie and get the unicorn on my side, I thought. She’d take that lance and geld him right this minute if I suggested that the other stallion had been taking advantage. Of course, a little orange mare fixed me with a baleful look when I considered that option. I sighed, “no. She liked it,” ooh, that was a bitter admission to make.

“Hmm,” I winced as the needle slipped in just behind my shoulder, and then I sighed as the pain went away, “I see why you punched him. How dare he touch her in a way that she liked,” she glanced towards he door, “so, uh…how exactly was he touching her?”

“Nibbling on her ear, kissing her neck, putting his hoof…wait,” I lifted my head and frowned at the mare, “why does that matter?”

“Hmm? Oh. No reason. Just curious,” the hovering empty syringe floated away and vanished into a red box mounted on the wall. Then she looked back at my shoulder and began to poke at the joint gently with her hooves. I could feel the pressure of her touch, but thanks to the drugs, there was no pain, “yeah…feels a little out of place.

“I’ll get you a potion.”

“No need for that,” I insisted, “just pop it back in; it’s not completely dislocated.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Foxglove shook her head.

“I do,” I insisted. Carefully, since while there was no pain I was still aware that the joint was damaged, I rolled onto my side to expose the shoulder, “place you hooves there and there,” I pointed to the prescribed locations. Hesitantly, the unicorn did so, “now, just push.”

“Push?”

“Push,” I nodded.

Still looking a little dubious, the mare began to put her weight into the side of my shoulder. Despite the Med-X, I could tell that she wasn’t using nearly enough force, “no, push,” I insisted. There was more pressure now, but it was still well short of what there needed to be. I groaned with frustration, “for Celestia’s sake, I said pu-AAARRRGH!”

She pushed.

I suppose I was just lucky that she stopped when we both heard an audible ‘POP!’ echo through the room.

With a relieved gasp, I collapsed back onto the mattress and sighed, “thank you.”

“Are you sure you're okay?” Foxglove gently traced her hoof over the joint, “that sounded aweful.”

“It was a healthy aweful,” I assured her.

“If you say so,” she stepped around and leaned in close to my face, “we should do something about that eye too. Looks like the brow got split,” the unicorn turned and walked over to a nearby sink where she started the water running and fetched a clean cloth over with her magic. I touched my hoof to the brow just above my soar eye and looked at what I came away with. Sure enough, there was a little smear of blood.

Foxglove returned with her damp cloth and sat down in front of me. She peered intently at the cut as she dabbed at it with her floating compress. I winced and pulled back slightly. The Med-X wasn't doing anything for my head, and the proximity to my aching eye prompted me to reflexively wince. The unicorn responded by using both of her hooves to clamp my head in place.

“Don't be such a foal,” she chided, “it's just a little cut.”

I frowned at the mare but didn't say anything. I shut my eye and let her wash out the dried blood with the damp cloth. Honestly, I was not so much put off by the mild irritation that her ministrations brought on as I was by her close proximity and her touch. Only a few days ago I had assaulted her, and very nearly succeeded in forcing myself upon this mare; all because I'd lost control. What if that happened again? It wasn't like I completely understood how I'd managed to slip the first time.

My mind circled around and around as I did everything I could to think about anything and everything else besides the unicorn sitting in front of me. Maybe that was all it would take to keep myself under control. I certainly didn't feel like I wanted to do anything like that to her again. Why would I? She was cute enough that I did use the mental image of her as personal material on occasion; but as much as this mare despised me? We'd never happen. Foxglove was just a distant fantasy, and I was basically fine with that; much in the same way that I had been when Windfall and I had first met the unicorn.

She hadn't cared for me all that much then, either. Her affinity for mares paired with her learned distrust of any and all stallions in the Wasteland had been the root of that implicit animosity those first weeks. Recently her feelings towards me had grown more justified.

I felt the cloth drift down from my brow and start to brush up against the side of my cheek. My face scrunched up in confusion. I hadn't been hit there so what was...?

My eyes opened so that I could see what Foxglove was doing; and then they grew very wide. The unicorn was nuzzling me! The violet mare's head was touching mine, very gently rubbing up against me.

“Uh...Foxglove?”

The mare jerked and pulled away with startling speed. Her hooves, which had still been supporting my head dropped away and I very nearly fell off the table at the sudden shift in my center of gravity. I stared at the rather embarrassed looking mare and she found something very fascinating about the cloth still held in her magical grip.

She cleared her throat, “ah...that should do it,” the mare swallowed and tossed the rag into the sink, “I'm going to go, um...somewhere,” and that was apparently all the explanation that I was going to get regarding that bizarre bit of behavior. Without looking in my direction, she turned and started gingerly marching for the exit.

I straightened myself back out on the examination bed, still slightly bemused as I watched her leave, "I'll...just sleep here tonight, I guess,” I was not too keen on walking anywhere right now anyway. This bed, while not as nice as those I was sure to find in the stable's private quarters, was still a far sight better than the ground, “can you at least help me out of my barding before you go?” I flexed my recently re-socketed arm weakly to demonstrate my handicap. It was going to be sore in the morning…or whenever the painkiller wore off, come to think of it.

The violet stopped short of the door, still not turning around to look, “your shoulder...right,” I saw her bite her lip as she seemed to very carefully consider her response, “I...should be able to do that,” she turned around and, without quite looking at me, set her horn aglow. She briefly peered at my barding, and then she did a quick little double-take. Her horn flared brighter, but her confounded look remained.

When I finally realized what she was trying to do, I elected to explain before she got any more frustrated and blew out her horn—if unicorns could do such a thing, “actually, that won’t work,” Foxglove shot me a confused look, “this is modified zebra barding,” when the unicorn still didn’t understand what I was talking about, I elaborated further, “most zebra armor has a…curse? Put on it. Stops the straps from being manipulated by magic.

“They didn’t want a bunch of unicorn ponies to be able to dismantle their barding in the middle of a fight. It has to be undone by hoof.”

Foxglove was suddenly looking a lot less certain for some reason, and I could swear that I saw her cheeks starting to flush. It was hard to really tell beneath her violet coat though. Then, with a deep frown and a shake of her head, “I am not undressing you with my hooves,” she stated vehemently. You’d think she was making some sort of solemn promise to herself the way she was saying it.

“Just undo the straps below my withers, I can get the rest,” I insisted. I could do most of them with just the one hoof without putting too much stress on my injured joint. It would just be the ones close to my armpits that would be hard without bending my legs in ways that I wasn't comfortable with at the moment.

The mare considered the compromise for a few long seconds. Then, “alright. Lie down. Don't move. Don't look at me.”

That seemed like a rather unusual list of condition to have a couple of buckles loosened; but then I remembered that my presence made her uncomfortable anyway. I wasn't sure how to classify the nuzzling that I'd been the recipient of a minute ago. As long as she got those straps off though, I wasn't really going to argue about the methods; so I lay down on my belly and closed my eyes.

This was weird, right?

For what felt like nearly a minute, I didn't hear or feel anything. If it hadn't been for my pipbuck's EFS enduring despite my shut eyes, I wouldn't have even known that Foxglove was still in the room. Eventually I felt her hooves on my back as they fiddled with the straps there. It took her a good while to get them released, which I attributed to a combination of her lack of familiarity with barding in general, and her reliance on simply ‘thinking’ her problems away with her magic. She must have been having a terrible time of things to, since I even felt her pause a time of two and just keep her hooves there before she resumed.

Eventually though, I felt one came loose, and then the other, “thanks, I can get the…” One of Foxglove’s hooves was still in contact with me though, running down along my side before stopping at the buckle near my right flank. I craned my head to look at the unicorn, “um…I said-”

“I said don't look,” the mare snapped.

I spun my head back around, confused. This was...very weird, right?

“I know,” the mare added in a slightly calmer tone; though she sounded...off somehow, “I’m just going to get a couple more is all. Then I’ll leave,” as quietly as she said those last two lines, I couldn't be entirely certainly that she'd been speaking to me.

O…kay. This mare could barely stand to be in the same room as me. In fact, less than a minute ago, she hadn’t wanted to help at all. Even now, it felt like she was barely ‘helping’, really. Her hooves still weren’t actually doing anything with the barding straps. They were just sort of…there, moving around them as they traced out the contours of my back and hips.

Finally she released the buckle there and slid the strap out through it. After that though, things got weird...er, as she reached down around my thigh and placed her hoof near one of the smaller, secondary, straps that was used to size the barding, and not remove it, “whoa, Fox, that’s not a-”

“Just a few more,” the unicorn assured me, though it didn’t sound like she was being very sincere.

“But that one isn’t-!” and that was not a strap!

Those were words that my brain tried to get my mouth to say, but somewhere along the way they got tangled up and eventually lost in the massive collision of reactions and emotions that precipitated as the unicorn began running her hoof up against something that was very distinctly not a part of my barding. I stared at the mare, looking for the telltale sign of the joke that she was playing. I saw none. Indeed, what I did see on the unicorn’s face was a very intent expression directed against my flanks.

Then an odd little smile touched the corner of her mouth as she withdrew her hoof. If I thought that she was done with her cruel little joke, then I would be seriously mistaken. She was just getting started, it turned out. Once again, her horn began to glow. I furrowed my brow and was about to reiterate the magic resistant nature of the barding that I was wearing; except that, once again, my throat lost the capacity to form coherent words, and all that came out was something akin to, “tha-wha-oh-whoa!”

She wasn’t using her magic on my barding.

Saffron had done this a time or two during our sessions. Given the other sorts of activities that I engaged in with the Stable 69 whore, it hadn’t been a highlight of my night back then. Just a quirky little activity that allowed me to appreciate how a unicorn mare could be accommodating to her stallion even while she was all bound up in a bridle and cuffs. Of course, back in those days, I was a regular recipient of a mare’s attentions in ways that were far more delightful than what Foxglove was doing right now.

These were not those days. I certainly wasn’t going to ask her to stop, now was I?

It made no sense, there was no reason for it, and this was quite obviously my mind engaging in a full on psychotic break complete with visual and somatic hallucinations. Fine by me!

While Foxglove’s magic worked its, well, magic, the mare continued to use her hooves to unfasten the remaining straps that secured my armor in place before pushing it to the floor where it fell into a heap. Then the unicorn started to crawl up onto the table with me. It was a small medical examination bed, so it was hardly designed to accommodate two ponies, and so the violet mare stumbled a time or two; but she was determined. As she ascended, she bent her head down and took several deep inhalations with her nose pressed up against my body.

Well, if we were going to go through with this…for reasons, I guess? Then I was going to at least go with the flow. I tried to wrap my hooves around the mare and draw her towards me, but the moment I touched her, the violet unicorn jerked and went rigid. What she was doing with her magic ceased instantly, and I instead found myself violently pinned back to the bed with an unseen force. I stared up at Foxglove in surprise.

“Don’t. Touch. Me,” the mare hissed.

I blinked several times, “um, but I thought…”

Foxglove winced, as though she was in physical pain, “I know what you must be thinking, but you’re wrong,” she insisted, “it’s not what it looks like. So, don’t touch me. Don't look at me. Just…” she groped around in her mind for what she wanted to say, but seemed to come up against a mental wall, “…just don’t, okay?

“I’m not doing this for you.”

The invisible weight that had been pushing down on me lifted, but I made no move to prop myself back up; electing to remain lying on my back. I felt as though I was getting some rather extreme mixed signals from this mare. The way she spoke, it was like she very much resented what was happening; like when I’d been coercing her in New Reino. I wasn’t doing that now though. At least, I was fairly certain I wasn’t forcing her into this somehow. Was I?

“Fox, we don’t have to-” my mouth was suddenly sealed shut by a glowing green band.

“Don’t talk either,” Foxglove hissed, glaring at me.

This was really weird, right? If nothing else, it was certainly a rather surreal moment being on the side that was restrained while this was happening.

Think she has a riding crop?

Whiplash was not helping matters.

What Foxglove had resumed doing with her magic, though? That was helping matters. I sighed and allowed myself to relax. If this was going to happen, then oh well!

What was more, it looked like that was even only the pregame show. When the unicorn mare had finally managed to get herself situated over me on the table, she lowered her hips and, with the aid of her magic, guided herself down.

She…felt…great! Maybe it was the decade having gone without, or maybe Foxglove was genuinely a pleasure to be inside. All I knew for certain was that I didn’t care. I was perfectly content to lay there and take it.

My ear twitched a little, and I noticed that she was actually mumbling something to herself that I was barely able to make out:

“…It doesn’t mean anything…it doesn’t mean anything…” over and over again.

What was that supposed to mean?

I seriously considered breaking the unicorn’s ‘no talking’ rule; even if that meant risking her wrath. Though, I was also very strongly against saying or doing anything that was going to stop whatever it was that was going on here. Physically, I was quite amenable, and I felt that it showed quite evidently. I wasn't hearing any critiques from the unicorn, at least.

Mentally, though...things were more complicated. While the mare's every action suggested that she was into this; there was a very different story being told by her words and her facial expressions. Part of her looked like she actually despised all of this. Which didn't make any damned sense! This had all been her idea; so why was she acting like it was the last thing she wanted? I certainly was doing anything to force her hoof here...was I? My mind combed over every detail of everything that had happened in the last few minutes in an effort to sniff out any moment where I might have said or done something that could be viewed as coercing Foxglove into this situation; but I came up with nothing.

This had all been the violet mare's choice.

So why was she acting like it wasn't?

“Hey, guys, are you still—Goddess' horseapples!”

I sat bolt upright, my wide eyes going immediately to the open doorway, and the young pegasus mare that was scampering out of sight back around the frame. Foxglove too looked like she had been caught off guard by the flier's unexpected arrival, and she stopped moving. She didn't immediately leap of of me, though I could sense the battle waging within her as she contemplated doing just that. Finally, I took the initiative and rather firmly pushed her off to the side, in a clear indication that the two of us were done with...whatever the fuck this had been.

“Windfall! You're back...early?” how long had it been exactly since I'd sent her on that scouting round?

“Um...sure?” was the disembodied reply from the pegasus as she spoke to us from the corridor, “so...I didn't see anything,” very quickly she added, “in the Wasteland. Or here. I didn't see anything here either,” there was a very long bout of silence where nopony said anything. I looked over at Foxglove, but she was actually leaving the room altogether, heading for the clinic's washroom. I guess the unicorn was just going to take herself out of the conversation completely. How nice of her. It wasn't like she hadn't contributed to any of this, but, whatever.

“Thanks for taking a look,” I cleared my throat and headed for the door. I peered around the corner, and saw Windfall looking down at the floor. When she noticed me, the flier idly fussed with one of her wings, “need anything else?”

“Nope,” she responded very quickly, flashing an awkward smile, “all good! I'll take first watch. I'll come by in a few hours.

“I'll be sure to knock,” she added under her breath. Then she turned and walked very quickly down the corridor before I could say anything else. Not that there was much I could think to say to the pegasus. How was I supposed to explain what she'd seen when I couldn't explain it either?

Hopefully Foxglove would be willing to shine a little light on what all of that had been about now that she'd been shocked out of her...trance? I didn't know. I turned back into the clinic and headed for the washroom. Inside, I could hear the sound of somepony running the shower.

I tapped my hoof on the door, “Foxglove?”

“Go away!” was the sharp rebuke from the mare on the other side of the door.

What in the-? What had I done?! Judging by the unicorn's frantic tone, you'd think I'd tried to rape her again. I considered pressing the issue, but then my ear twitched as I heard other sounds as well. Putting my head to the door, I was able to make out the distinct sounds of a mare enjoying herself just beyond the sound of the running shower. These sounds were easy enough to recognize as I had heard them much more clearly from this specific unicorn only a few nights prior.

I pulled back and frowned at the door. It seemed like Foxglove was far more concerned with finishing matters than talking about what had just happened. Well, good for her. It wasn't like I wasn't a little riled up myself. Although, Windfall’s unexpected arrival had cooled things a little in that department. Hearing Foxglove having a go at things just beyond the door was rekindling those feelings though...

With a frustrated growl, I turned to leave the clinic. Being out here when the unicorn finished up was probably going to go badly for me somehow; especially if she came out while I was 'taking care of things'. It looked like I was going to need to find a room after all.

Limping out the door, I left in search of some suitable quarters; all the while muttering about crazy unicorns and their impossible to understand mood swings.

Footnote:...

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