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

RG seemed to take my words to heart during our trip north. While it was clear that the robust unicorn stallion greatly resented the two of us for a whole host of reasons that didn’t just have to do with us holding him prisoner, he was quite cooperative all the same. I couldn’t tell if he believed that he was going to be able to genuinely lure either me or Foxglove into a false sense of security with his behavior, or if he just wasn’t the sort to derive satisfaction from pissing us off on principal; but either way, he wasn’t going out of his way to be antagonistic. Well, not overly antagonistic at any rate. The slate gray pony had a great many derisive observations about the two of us that he wasn’t shy about sharing when the opportunity arose.

Oddly enough, I think I would have been a little more tolerant of his verbal abuses if they were the sort that I would have expected to hear from a typical raider or other criminal type that I might have captured out in the Wasteland. Threats about what somepony would have liked to do to us if they ever got free, promises to ravage our bodies and flay our hides, hints that they had friends who were prepared to inflict unmentionable suffering on our friends if they ever got word out, that sort of thing. I was ready to handle that sort of banter and brush it off as the idle prattling of a pony who knew they were powerless to actually do anything. The ramblings of a bruised ego that had no other outlet.

This unicorn though…he was different. There was no—or at least hardly any—personal malice behind the sort of stuff he was saying to us. His comments were more…clinical, and somehow that made them very unsettling in their own right. Perhaps it was a little because he never said anything about either me or Foxglove specifically, but directed his remarks towards all of ponykind in general. Or, as he often referred to them: ‘the chaff’. Foxglove had asked what he meant by that label, but my agricultural background had allowed me to supply the answer for her. As far as RG and his fellows were concerned, the ponies of the Wasteland needed to be collected, sifted, and then disposed of appropriately, like a farmer might do with so many bushels of wheat.

His cold dispassion with regards to how he viewed the lives of others chilled my gut. I’d known psychopaths in my time in the Wasteland, but even this was very different. Your typical crazed bandit who enjoyed killing genuinely enjoyed killing. They regarded other ponies as playthings that were meant to be used for their own sadistic amusement. That wasn’t how things were with RG. The unicorn didn’t talk about it as though it were some fond pastime. For him, it was more of a duty—a noble crusade—that he had undertaken for the good of the world.

It was a flavor of crazy that I had yet to encounter before, and so it was very hard for me to just brush it off and ignore. As such—and despite my better judgement—I often found myself actually engaging our prisoner instead of avoiding his jabs like I should have. I just needed to understand why he was doing any of this; how anypony could have reached the state of mind that he had and not come off as certifiable. I mean, he was crazy, no doubt about that, but it wasn’t the kind of crazy that I could understand.

…if that makes any sense.

“…what does that even mean, ‘invalid’?” I sputtered in response to Arginine’s latest comment.

“It means that no care at all was taken by your progenitors during your creation,” the unicorn informed me in a bored sounding tone that I had come to recognize as his ‘let me explain again why I’m superior to you’ voice. I felt my frown deepening, “which is only to be expected, as they would have had no access to the equipment to sequence out proper offspring.”

“Proper-!” it took a lot of effort to cut my outburst off, but I somehow managed it. Before I said another word, I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down a little bit. It wasn’t easy, “you don’t need to be ‘sequenced’, or ‘designed’, or whatever, to be a ‘proper’ pony,” I insisted through gritted teeth, “ponykind has been around for, like, ever without needing all of that.”

“Yes, and things went so well,” RG noted, casting a surreptitious eye out over the sprawling desolation around us.

“It was a war, and the zebras were involved too. What did it matter what kind of ponies we were?”

“It could have mattered in all sorts of ways,” the stallion explained, “had we been stronger, we might have won before balefire or megaspell technology was even developed. Had we been smarter, we might have devised alternative energy sources for both ponies and zebras that took coal and gemstones out of the equation. Had we been better ponies, there might have still been an Equestria today,” his tone had become rather somber as he’d talked, until it bordered on maudlin.

“Even all of that overlooks the conflicts that threatened our race so many times before; some of them internal in nature,” he went on, “with matters left in the hooves of invalids, an event like the Great War was inevitable. Only by becoming better ponies can we avoid them in the future.

“We have very nearly perfected ponykind,” Arginine asserted firmly, “soon we will be ready to remove the inferior strains such as yourselves and rebuild, and never again will our race know such tragedy.”

“Because genocide wouldn’t be ‘tragic’,” I quipped at the unicorn which earned me a cringe from him this time, “you can’t seriously be suggesting that you killed all of those ponies to help ponykind!”

“You seemed to be quite willing to kill the other day when you believed that you were helping other ponies.”

My jaw slammed shut with an audible sound. I stared down at the unicorn from where I was hovering above. I was silent for several long seconds before I finally found my voice again, “that was different.”

“Of course it was,” he nodded, “you killed to save what you thought was a single pony. We are working to save the entire species,” he glanced upwards and held my gaze for a moment, “clearly, it is we who are in error.”

Foxglove joined into the conversation now, “if you’re kind is so damn clever, why can’t you come up with a way for us all to work together instead of getting rid of us?”

Arginine didn’t seem to be the least bit phased by the violet mare’s piercing question, “for the same reason that you would not allow a worn out piece to remain a part of a larger machine: when it finally breaks, the machine will be useless. You must swap out the defective part for a more functional one, or it will only lead to disaster.”

It seemed that Foxglove didn’t have much to say in response to that. Unfortunately, neither did I. He was clearly still wrong, and had a warped view of how the world should work; and I intended to work very hard to stop all of the other ponies like him, but I was hard pressed to find any way to make him see how wrong he was and why. It was looking more and more like there wouldn’t be any way to reason with this pony or his comrades, which meant that violence might be the only option that was going to be left to me when it came time to deal with them.

I didn’t want to have to kill them all, but if that was the only way to save the Wasteland…

Another chill ran down my spine as I noticed how very similar my train of thought was mirroring the words that the slate gray unicorn stallion had just spoken to me. I refused to admit that it made us the same though. For one thing, I wasn’t the aggressor in this case. I hadn’t found some group of ponies and just brazenly decided that they needed to die off because that was what I believed would help the rest of the world. My response was reactionary in nature: I was defending others against a threat that had made the first move. If Arginine and the other ponies from his stable were willing to stand down and leave ponies alone, I’d let them be too.

If they persisted…well, I guess that I’d just have to go on doing what I knew I was good at; whether I liked it or not. These unicorns were clearly very dangerous. Ignoring the threat that they posed really wasn’t going to be an option.

Not for somepony who was playing at being a Wonderbolt, at any rate.

“I’m going to scout ahead,” I said, ignoring the irritated look from Foxglove as the mare recognized that I was rather unceremoniously ejecting myself from the debate and leaving her to mind our prisoner on her own. I wasn’t overly concerned with her ability to guard herself against physical danger. The both of them were unicorns, so she should be able to hold her own for at least a brief amount of time against any sort of magical assault from the stallion, and she was armed with her lance as well if things went south. Besides, I was the one with the detonator for his collar, and RG knew that. If he wanted to survive an escape attempt, I was the pony that he had to neutralize, not Foxglove.

A few deft flaps of my wings propelled me further ahead of our small troupe, as well as granting me significantly more altitude to get a better lay of the land. I kept the other two in sight, but only barely, as I loped through the air. This verbal sparring match had just been one more in a long line since the three of us had set out for Seaddle. Unfortunately, it had also ended rather typically for such exchanges, with Arginine emerging as the ‘winner’ of the argument by means of running Foxglove and I out of coherent rebuttals.

In fairness, the stallion was arguing from a position of many years of whatever indoctrination was drilled into his head, while the violet mare and I were still probing out the specifics of that indoctrination. Until that time, we probably were going to end up losing our arguments, but only until we figured out exactly how to present our perspective in a way that the stallion couldn’t refute. It was going to take some time, and I understood that, but that didn’t mean that it still wasn’t frustrating to lose out in the meantime.

I found myself wishing—not for the first time or the same reason—that Jackboot was still around. If anypony could debate the merits of killing, it would have been that weathered old stallion. After all, he’d been a White Hoof. Who knew about slaughtering other ponies more than they did? He might have been able to put himself on RG’s level and shut him down. I couldn’t quite do that.

What I could do was relax with a little music.

I looked down at my pipbuck and began to fiddle with the controls to bring up the radio function, when I noticed that there was a new frequency listed on the display in addition to the expected station hosted by the far off Manehattan disc jockey. What was more was the name that my fetlock mounted device associated with the new signal: Neighvada Valley Radio. Curious, I maneuvered the pipbuck’s dial and selected the peculiar broadcast.

The speaker came alive with the closing chords of a Flanky Valli number that I recognized. A few seconds after the last notes died away completely, there was a subtle burst of static, and then the sound of somepony manipulating a microphone. My ears perked as a familiar voice propagated from the pipbuck’s speakers, “oh, uh, welcome back listeners! That was, ‘Cherry’ by the Four Phases. I, um, want to once again say a big ‘thank you!’ to everypony out there listening to our inaugural broadcast! Also, please spread the word around to anypony who might not yet know about us. Nothing against DJ Pon3, but sometimes it’s nice to hear about what’s going on right here at home, and not about some mare who crawled out of a stable near Manehattan, am I right?

“So that’s why I, Homi-uh…I mean, Miss Neighvada, am here to let you ponies know what’s happening in our beloved little valley!”

I blinked at the pipbuck. I knew that I’d recognized the voice of the mare crackling over the speaker. It looked like Homily had finally gotten the radio tower in McMaren up and running again. I canted my wings and started arcing around in a wide perimeter of our group to ensure nothing was coming up behind us either while I continued to listen to the broadcast.

“Starting off—I mean, this just in,” the mare stressed, “it looks like some White Hooves are raiding along western route between Shady Saddles and Seaddle. Travelers are encouraged to use the east road through Santa Mara until further notice. We’ll keep you advised when the trouble’s cleared up, so stay tuned!”

I frowned. It sounded like the White Hooves had managed to reorganize themselves rather quickly despite everything we’d done to them recently. That was troubling. It sounded like we’d want to be detouring as well, since that was the road that I had planned to take us along after leaving Shady Saddles. Diverting east was going to add nearly a whole week to our trip, but I really didn’t want to tangle with a band of White Hooves with a prisoner in tow.

“In other, more positive news—depending on what kind of pony you are—it’s sounding like Manehattan might not have a monopoly on aspiring heroes,” my ear twitched as I found myself paying more attention to the broadcast now, “according to some contacts that my associates have in New Reino, there’s a costumed crusader going around the area helping ponies in need.

“I know, right? New Reino, of all places has a genuinely good pony in it; who knew? Of course, if there’s any place in the valley that needs a good pony or two, it’s that place!”

That was welcome news actually, I thought to myself. Between ponies like Tommyknocker and griffons like Scratch, that city definitely needed a pony hanging around who could balance out the scales and do some good. The next time I found myself back there, I’d need to make a point of finding them and shaking their hoof. Maybe even ask if they needed any help.

Curious that I hadn’t heard anything about them while I’d been there though. Not that I’d really been looking, but you’d think that I’d at least have come across some sort of clue in passing.

The next words out of Homily’s—I’m sorry, Miss Neighvada’s—mouth nearly made me fall out of the air, “apparently she calls herself ‘The Wonderbolt’, and according to the rumor mill, she dresses the part too! Far be it for me to criticize anypony’s fashion choices, especially when they’re going around helping mothers and their fillies get away from mercenary ‘guards’ who lack any scruples, but I’ve got to say that it takes a brave mare to run around saving lives and making enemies while wearing a uniform.

“If you’re listening, Wonderbolt, my hat’s off to you—not that I wear a hat. Stay safe out there, and keep up the good work!” there was a pause, and then, “that about wraps up the news we have right now, so I’ll bring back the music, I guess. Once again: keep listening and tell your friends!” there was the faint sound of somepony rummaging around on a desk and then music began to play. However, it was quickly silenced. There was a hushed, “dammit!” that I was sure had not been intended to be heard over the broadcast and then Homily came back on over the speaker, “And now, The Ink Plots!” again there was rummaging and the music returned where it had been abruptly paused.

I wasn’t even listening to the music though. My mind was busy racing as I processed through what Homily had just informed the whole valley. It wasn’t any sort of concern about her having possibly put a target on my flank or anything. I was doing that all on my own well enough just by wearing the Wonderbolt barding. My trepidation was more borne out of a sense of discomfort at having been branded as a ‘hero’ at all. That wasn’t how I thought of myself. Indeed, I was still very much grappling with the whole ‘my destiny is to kill ponies’ thing. Not for a single moment had I thought that I could approach any sort of notion of being a savior of ponykind. Or, for that matter, a genuine Wonderbolt.

That position was best left to better, more deserving, mares like the Mare-Do-Well from long ago.

I’d need to catch one of DJ Pon3’s broadcasts sometime too in order to find out what that ‘stable mare’ thing that Homily mentioned was about. Given what I’d just learned about the sorts of ponies who could dwell in those pre-war bastions, I couldn’t help but be concerned about the notion that RG’s might not be the only Stable with ‘kill all surface ponies’ directives.

Still in a bit of a daze at the idea of becoming a mare of note in the Wasteland, I veered back towards the others and started to descend. From the sound of things, Foxglove was in the process of losing yet another argument about the morality of mass murder with the stallion. The violet unicorn mare certainly seemed happy to see me return at any rate.

“How’s it look?”

“All clear,” I assured her, “but it sounds like we’re going to be taking the long way to Seaddle,” at the mare’s questioning look, I held up my pipbuck and elaborated, “just heard a news broadcast: White Hooves are between Shady Saddles and Seaddle.”

Foxglove frowned, “great. Well, there’s no help for it, I suppose.”

“White Hooves,” Arginine mulled the name of the tribe over in his mouth for a few seconds, his gaze suggesting some deep thought on the matter. Then he glanced up at us, “the invalids with the bonemeal markings? An entire society devoted to destruction and mayhem,” he regarded Foxglove with a satisfied smirk, “yet one more example of why it is best to remove obsolete strains from the world.”

Clearly the large stallion was seizing on something that he felt was relevant to whatever discussion he had been having with the violet mare before I arrived. For her part, Foxglove’s grimace suggested that it was not the first such allegory that she had fielded during their discussion. She glared at the stallion, “that has nothing to do with genetics!” she snapped in response, “they’re raised to be like that! They are perfectly capable of being decent ponies.”

“Yeah,” I chimed in, feeling rather qualified to weigh in on this specific topic, “in fact, the stallion who raised me used to be a White Hoof! Jackboot might not have been perfect, but he still helped ponies when he could, and he never did anything like the other White Hooves did after he left,” I looked to Foxglove for support of my assertion, and was a little surprised to see her hesitation. I knew that the two of them hadn’t gotten along at first, but clearly they had made up at some point. It was puzzling to see her trepidation upon being put in a position to endorse the stallion that had quite apparently become her lover at some point.

Eventually she did offer up some praise for him though, “he gave his life to save us. He even turned on other White Hooves to do it,” she confirmed to our prisoner, “and even you have to admit that sort of thing is an admirable quality in a pony.”

The admission didn’t seem to cause Foxglove any actual pain; though it was hard to be certain given how strained the words had been. I frowned slightly at the mare. We’d need to talk about this later privately, because her reserved attitude didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at the moment. I wanted to chalk it up to some form of grief, but that wasn’t really the sense I got from her posture. She was talking like I would have been if somepony had asked me to list the qualities I admired about Cestus.

“Oh, but of course,” there was no missing the mocking note in Arginine’s voice, “our stable is always looking for those who are willing to betray their own in order to aid outsiders.”

“What?” I snorted in disgust, “are you saying that Jackboot was wrong to turn against the other White Hooves? You just got through talking about how they’re bad ponies! Doesn’t that mean that Jackboot did the right thing?”

“The morality of his actions don’t factor into it,” the stallion sighed, as though he were a teacher having to lecture a mentally deficient pupil, “as Miss Foxglove pointed out, morality is taught, not bred,” before the unicorn mare could jump in and seize upon his minor concession, he pushed on with a caveat, “however, what does have genetic components are concepts of loyalty and devotion. Hormones and neurochemicals produced within the body in specific and proper proportions can make ponies more or less likely to support the society of their birth.

“As our desire is to create a whole and peaceful Equestria, we obviously want to select against any ponies who are likely to lack a strong sense of allegiance to ponies in general. So,” he looked at me, “yes, in that regard: this ‘Jackboot’ of yours is not the sort of pony that we would have found desirable, no matter how ‘good’ he may have been later in life. That radical shift in personality suggests an instability that could have made him capable of nearly anything.

“Physiologically speaking, there would have been nothing to keep him from regressing back to whatever violent and psychopathic mindset he possessed earlier in life,” Arginine snorted, “frankly, he’d have been just as likely to rape you as save you in that sort of manic state.”

“You’re wrong,” I growled at the stallion, “Jackboot wasn’t like that. You didn’t know him. He was a good pony.”

Once more I looked to my violet companion for support, but she wasn’t even paying attention to our conversation anymore. Her gaze was directed far into the distance, as though she was actually forcing herself not to acknowledge me or this conversation. Again I frowned at the mare and redoubled my resolve to find a private moment to talk to her. Being so obviously divided like this in front of the prisoner wasn’t likely to keep him from feeling doubtful about his chances of escaping. If he saw an opportunity to turn one of us against the other, he was smart enough to take it; and he might even be clever enough to exploit it somehow.

I certainly wasn’t going to give him any help; but I wasn’t feeling nearly as confident about Foxglove at the moment, given how little she was working to support me against the stallion even now. I’d already seen her opinion of Jackboot shift rather dramatically in the past from a hate-to-love relationship.

Like Arginine had just said: some ponies were just prone to experiencing drastic changes in perspective under the right circumstances. Was Foxglove another one of those sorts of ponies? Was there a chance that she could start to sympathize with our captive in the not-too-distant future?

The prospect of having to watch over the both of them for signs of trouble didn’t exactly fill me with a sense of relief.

“I will concede that I do not have all of the variables to consider,” the slate gray stallion nodded, “but if his shift in allegiance was as drastic as you suggest, it still makes ponies like him undesirable for the purposes of my Stable’s efforts.”

“You mean genocide?” I snapped, “I’d think you and the White Hooves would get along great in that case. They love senseless violence just as much as you do.”

This retort earned me another eye-roll from the stallion, “There is nothing ‘senseless’ about our efforts. They are meticulously calculated. Our directives come down from Stable-Tec and have been soundly planned out for nearly two hundred years by the brightest minds that our Stable could produce.”

Foxglove wheeled around and glared at the larger pony, “you keep talking about ‘Stable-Tec’. Do you really expect me to believe that they ordered you to kill everypony?! That’s crazy! They were all about saving ponies, for Celestia’s sake!”

The violet mare sounded like she had taken personal offense at the notion that the Old World company might have been involved in something so sinister. I kept my mouth shut on the matter. In the years that I had traveled with Jackboot before meeting Foxglove, I’d seen a few Stables that hadn’t been quite as fortunate as the one of her birth. As best I could tell, not all of them were as happy and benign as the place that she’d come from. I wasn’t going to go so far as to label Stable-Tec as being outright ‘malicious’ when it came to the lives of the ponies who’d trusted them with their lives; but it was clear that certain…’liberties’ had been taken in a few instances.

That being said, I had to agree with Foxglove that the concept of a population that had been directed to exterminate all other ponies sounded more than a little counter-intuitive, even in the face of some of Stable-Tec’s more aberrant projects. Why bother saving ponies if you were just going to kill them all anyway? There would hardly have been any point to something like that.

Arginine smiled at us and held up the pipbuck on his leg, “perhaps you would like to hear the words straight from the Director’s mouth?”

Foxglove snorted, “So instructions from Director Scootaloo are behind what you’re doing? I don’t believe it.”

“May I?” the stallion glanced at me and motioned at the fetlock-mounted device. I nodded, keeping myself ready in case he tried anything. The stallion tapped through some files on his pipbuck. A short time later, we heard the familiar crackling of an audio recording playing.

The tired voice of a young mare began to speak, sounding worn and defeated; yet at the same time determined to get through what she clearly regarding as a difficult task, “Hello, this is Scootaloo. CEO of Stable-Tec,” her words up to this point sounded almost mechanical, as though she had recited these phrases hundreds of times. As she continued, I figured that she probably had, “I’d like to start off by congratulating you on your appointment as Overmare of Stable 128.”

There was a long pause, and a sigh could be heard through the recording, “it’s looking more and more like these Stables are going to be something that actually have to be used, and not just a precaution. If that really is the case―if you’re hearing this―then...I’m sorry―we’re sorry. We weren’t good enough―we made too many mistakes that can never be corrected.

“We’re trying to save as many as we can, but it’s never going to be enough,” the voice of Scootaloo gave a defeated sigh, “so, now it’s up to ponies like you. You’re the future of Equestria. I just hope...I hope that you do better than we did―that you are better. I don’t have the right to ask this of you; not after everything we’ve done,” under her breath she added more quietly, “after everything I’ve done…” then she cleared her throat and spoke more clearly, “but, please, for the sake of everypony―for the sake of Equestria―please...be better ponies.

“Please…”

The recording issued an audible ‘click’ and the pipbuck went silent.

“Be better ponies,” Arginine quoted in near reverence, “that was the primary directive issued to our Stable. We have worked and strived to become just that for nearly two hundred years, to the limit that the available resources of our Stable would allow. We are stronger, smarter, more magically powerful, than any pony that had ever lived.

“We are better,” he stressed the word proudly, puffing out his chest, “than any pony before us,” he said with a satisfied sneer at the pair of us, “and we will not stop until we have adapted ourselves to become the best that can possibly exist. That is the mission that was given to our Stable for the sake of Equestria’s future.”

“I’m going to keep in mind that this is coming from a stallion who is currently being held captive by a pair of ‘invalid’ mares who completely obliterated your whole operation,” I said to the stallion, sneering at him in mirthless glee. I was rewarded with a glower from the larger stallion.

“Data scatter,” he muttered with a dismissive wave of his hoof, “the end result will not be affected by this minor upset. We have already been operating for months without significant issues.”

“Well, all of that’s about to change when we get Princess Luna after you,” I shot back at the stallion, “unless you think your ‘perfect ponies’ can actually beat a genuine Princess,” I smirked at the gray pony, watching as his self-assured expression faltered for a brief moment, “she’ll send your whole Stable to the moon or the sun or wherever as soon as we tell her about what you’re planning.”

Arginine didn’t have a response ready for this little revelation, and that helped immensely to rekindle my determination. I could only wish that Foxglove had been an equally enthused. Unfortunately, once more the violet unicorn mare wasn’t looking quite as assured as I could have hoped. This was getting ridiculous!

“Hold up here, RG,” I nearly snarled at the stallion. If he found the edge in my voice out of place, the golden-eyed unicorn didn’t give any indication, “we’re going to rest for a few minutes.

“Foxy,” by now I was a little better at keeping the irritation out of my voice, but it wasn’t completely gone as I addressed the mare, “can we talk in private for a minute?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, Windy,” the mare nodded, following my slow glide out of earshot of our prisoner, “what’s up?”

“That’s what I want to know,” I said flatly, noting the confused look in her emerald eyes, “what’s with you? We have to be on the same side, here.”

“What are you talking about? I am on your side!”

“Then act like it,” I growled at the mare, glancing briefly back at the stallion to make certain that he wasn’t listening to us, “every time I try to gain some ground with this guy, you’re never there to back me up. Not on Jackboot, not about the whole ‘orders from his Stable’ thing; what gives?”

Foxglove winced and looked away, “yeah, sorry. It’s just…”

“What?” I was becoming more than a little frustrate by now. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten a straight answer out of the mare. It had probably been months by now! “Foxglove, for Celestia’s sake, if there’s something wrong, then tell me! This stallion is dangerous, and the two of us need to be on the same page and be able to really trust each other, or he’ll get the drop on us.

“So, out with it: what’s wrong?”

“Windfall, I…” the words continued to hang in the other mare’s throat, unspoken.

“Damn it, Foxy!” I snarled in frustration, “Out with it!”

“Jackboot attacked me! He tried to rape me!” she finally blurted, and then immediately clamped her hooves over her mouth like she hadn’t meant to speak at all. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes as she looked at me, awaiting my response.

I sat there, dumbfounded, my mind working futilely to comprehend what the other mare could have been talking about, “what? No, I saw the two of you in the Stable,” I glared at the mare, “you two were going at it, and it sure looked to me like you liked―”

“No, before that,” she shook her head fervently, “something must have happened to him in McMaren,” the unicorn continued, obviously not relishing this conversation, “he was...I don’t know, different. He was going to...do things to you,” she shuddered at the memories.

“What kind of things?” I wasn’t sure that I believed the mare at this point, but I was having a hard time trying to figure out what her angle was if she was making all of this up. Jackboot was dead, so what did she have to gain by tarnishing his memory like this if it was all a lie?

“The kind of things that a stallion like him shouldn’t be allowed to do to a young mare like you,” Foxglove said firmly, “he would have used you, Windfall, and trust me: I know what that’s like. I was trying to protect you, I really was,” my deepening frown was obviously making the unicorn a little less sure of herself in hindsight. It was only right that she should feel so uncomfortable, given how this conversation was going.

“Protect me from what? A stallion that cared about me?” I wasn’t quite seething, but I was well on me way to doing so.

“He didn’t love you, Windy, that’s what I’m saying! He just wanted to use you.”

“And when he let himself die so that you and I could escape the White Hooves,” I growled, “exactly how was he using me then?”

“I―” the words died in the other mare’s throat, leaving her mouth hanging open uselessly. Slowly, her gaping maw closed shut and she bowed her head.

I glared at the mare for a long, silent, while before speaking again, “it’s not enough for you that you got to know Jackboot in a way I’ve only ever dreamed about, but now you’re trying to destroy my memory of him too? Why? What sick game are you playing at? What kind of pony steals away a stallion that she knows another mare loves, and then―after he sacrifices himself to save them―goes around trying to destroy her memory of him?”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Foxglove insisted, tears starting to stream down her cheeks as she once more fought to meet my gaze, “I swear, Windy, I’m not trying to do that! You just don’t understand―you didn’t know what he was really like!”

“I knew him for over eight years!” I snapped at the mare, shocking her back into silence, “you knew him for, what? Two months? Three?” the unicorn offered no response, bowing her head once more, “but, no, of course I’m not the one who knew what he was ‘really like’,” I scoffed, “you’re pathetic.”

“Windy…”

“When we get to Seaddle, you should probably leave,” I said in a cool tone.

“Windy, no, I―”

“Well, then tell me why you even want to stay?” I snapped once more, “so you can not support me in front of RG? So you can tell more lies about Jackboot? So you can keep questioning every single decision I make?

“What’s even the point of having you around?!”

Foxglove winced with each question, but when I finally paused long enough for her to answer me, she wiped her eyes and fixed me with all of the resolve that she could muster, “I’m not leaving, Windfall; because I know you need my help,” I rolled my eyes and snorted, but she remained unfazed, “it’s true! Whether you can see it or not, I really do just want what’s best for you, and I’m not going to abandon you.”

“Why do you even care so much?” I demanded of the violet mare, “what am I to you?”

“You’re a good pony,” she said quietly.

I blinked, not expecting the statement.

“But, sometimes,” Foxglove continued, “that’s not enough. Good ponies can make bad decisions―and that’s not their fault. Nopony’s perfect. I want you to keep being a good pony, because there are too few of them in the Wasteland. So I’m going to stay at your side and keep you flying straight, as it were,” the unicorn tried to muster a wan smile and very nearly succeeded.

“I’ll stop talking about Jackboot,” she went on, “we knew two different ponies where he was concerned. But, if his memory is what helps keep you centered, then I won’t say anything more about him.

“And, you’re right, we do need to stand united against Arginine. I’ll do better about that,” she frowned, “it was just...the message he played. The one from Director Scootaloo...that couldn’t be what she really meant, could it? I mean...she sounded so...defeated in that recording.”

“There’s more than one way to be a ‘better’ pony,” I insisted, feeling my ire beginning to ebb. I hadn’t quite expected Foxglove to feel the way about me that she had admitted. Coming on the heels of discovering that there were other ponies in the valley who were trying to put me forth as something of a public ‘hero’ gave her words a slightly different connotation too.

There were a lot of ponies starting to invest themselves in my own personal success. I wasn’t sure how I really felt about that.

“Yeah, I suppose there is,” she didn’t sound as though she had been completely convinced, but Foxglove was at least less unsure than she had been. She looked up at me, “so...I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

“Alright,” I nodded.

“We good?”

“We’re good,” I reached out my hoof, and Foxglove tapped it with her own, “so are we ready to go and back that genocidal asshole into a metaphorical corner?”

Foxglove smiled and wiped away the last of her tears, “sounds like a plan.”

Shady Saddles. Sweet Celestia, it’s been...I didn’t even know how long it had been since I’d last been back here. Had I even met Foxglove yet? Jackboot and I used to come by here on an almost monthly basis back in the day. Hopefully the contacts that he and I had nurtured during our tenure in Neighvada hadn’t dried up since the last time I’d dropped by.

Not that I was planning on staying long or doing much during this visit. Top off on supplies, sell some of the tech and weapons we salvaged from RG’s friends, and try to get the latest updates on what was going on between the Republic and the Rangers. Getting either of them to help fight Arginine’s fellows would be good, but finding some way to broker even a temporary armistice between those two powerful factions while a much larger threat was dealt with would be infinitely better. Maybe I was dreaming too big for my own good, but after seeing what those ponies could do to someplace as defensible and well-equipped as a functional Stable…

The first order of business was getting ourselves some funds. Fortunately, I knew how to go about doing that while simultaneously getting the pulse of the area. It would just require a trip to the local tavern, and a visit with the proprietor, Sandy.

Shady Saddles wasn’t a large settlement, not when compared to places like New Reino and Seaddle. There might be two or three hundred ponies here on any given day; and half of those were merchants and their cohorts who were just passing through.

That being said, for such a lightly populated place, I certainly felt like there were a lot of ponies around today who didn’t have anything better to do than stare. It was even odds as to who was drawing the most attention: me, or RG. Certainly we each had our own merits where spectacles were concerned.

The brightly colored unitard done up in the brilliant blue and gold of the Old World Wonderbolts had been remarkably well preserved in the hidden bunker. As such, it shown rather brightly even in the muted light of the overcast sky. It was quite obviously atypical barding when it came to Wasteland protection. If anything, it looked for suited to performance work than any real utility. Combine that with the barding in question being worn by a stark white pegasus with an aqua and teal streaked mane and tail, and I was well aware of how colorful a figure I cut in a crowd, even among pastel ponies.

On the other hoof, the stallion walking at my side through the street was, well, walking at my side. I wasn’t exactly soaring high above the crowds while I was here―it just wasn’t the polite thing to do in town―but I didn’t have my hooves on the ground either. I was floating a comfortable distance above the ground, as I typically did, and yet RG’s head was level with my own. This didn’t even begin to address how high he was towering over all of the other ponies around us!

It wasn’t until this moment that I had truly appreciated the gray stallion’s size. Up until this point, I had only had myself and Foxglove to compare him to, and neither of us were large ponies when all was said and done. Foxglove was significantly bigger than I was―a fact that I attributed to her Stable upbringing with its better medical care and access to quality food―and RG was much larger than she was, but Jackboot had been bigger than either of us too. As had Cestus, come to think of it.

None of them would have compared to the genetically enhanced unicorn stallion though. Seeing him stand head and shoulders about even the most robust pony that we passed forced me to pause and consider his earlier assertions about being physiologically superior to the typically Wasteland inhabitant. He...wasn’t wrong. He was much larger, vastly more broad in the chest and flanks, his coat practically shimmered when compared to those of other stallions...he just looked better. The other ponies that we were walking past seemed to notice this also. No surprise there.

A few of them noticed the slave collar too.

That was actually a factor that I hadn’t considered, I thought as I nibbled on my lip. Slavery was nominally illegal in Luna’s Republic; and Shady Saddles was nominally a part of that Republic. Politically, things could get...eh, murky, when it came to that sort of thing, but the two places had codes of laws that basically mirrored one another in any event. That meant that slavery was illegal here.

Arginine was hardly a slave, of course. He was my prisoner. Not that I even remotely resembled any sort of law enforcement official that belonged to any of the various factions in the valley. I wasn’t very likely to be believed if I tried to pass that line off to anypony who challenged me; especially when that somepony was likely to be a member of the guard themselves…

It was a problem that I was unlikely to be confronted with by some random member of the public who were currently ogling us, but it was still something I needed to be thinking about before I was put on the spot. If a guard confronted me about RG’s collar, best case: I was simply forced to release the stallion. In which case, all I had to do was wait for him to go somewhere where I could safely nab him again and then drag him directly to Seaddle. It would be a pain, but not a situation I couldn’t recover from easily enough.

Worst case: I was arrested for practicing slavery. That could cause problems, not the least of which was allowing RG to get away free and clear and warn his Stable about their operation being discovered.

Glancing around, I zipped over to a small stall along the side of the road and made a quick selection before tossing an energy rifle into the lap of an understandably surprised old mare. I was easily paying a hundred times the value of what I’d just bought, but there was something to be said for peace of mind. A second later I was back with RG and Foxglove. I looped deftly around the large stallion’s head several time before settling back to where I’d been only a few seconds earlier. Both of my companions looked about in surprise, and that was when they both noticed the tartan-patterned scarf that was now loosely wrapped around RG’s neck, completely obscuring the explosive collar on his neck. It clashed pretty brazenly with the white jumpsuit that the unicorn was wearing, but adhering to the contemporary fashion trends hadn’t been high on my list of priorities when I’d grabbed it.

The new garment didn’t do much to dissuade gawkers either.

“Sandy!” I called out the moment the three of us entered the town’s only bar. Being that the day was soon to begin ebbing its way into the twilight hours, the main room was only just starting to show its first signs of life, with the patronage mostly consisting of those looking to catch an early meal before retiring early. The brown unicorn mare looked up from where she had been serving a couple of customers.

When her eyes found me, I saw them cloud with confusion briefly. No doubt, I was a far sight removed from how I’d looked during my last visit. I was also in considerably different company. Of course, how many pegasi could the bartender really know? So it wasn’t long before recognition finally did dawn on the mare’s face. At which point she smiled warmly, though a corner of her mouth was curled in clear consideration of the sight that she was seeing.

“Windfall,” she finished serving her patrons and walked towards us, letting her eyes wander first over my attire before venturing onto my companions, “digging the costume. Starting a traveling circus?”

“Ha ha,” I let out a mocking laugh before landing in front of the mare and briefly shaking her hoof, “I just wear it because it matches my eyes,” I futtered my eyes at the mare in jest and then looked down at my Wonderbolt barding, “this is just temporary. My other barding...wasn’t wearable anymore. I’m actually hoping you can help me with that. Some ammo and healing potions too, you know, the usual.”

“Indeed,” the brown unicorn nodded, “I’ll put word out for what you need. Cash or trade this time? Actually, I don’t suppose you came across any more Jennyson out there? That client who bought the last crate contacted me a few weeks ago. You won’t believe what he’s willing to pay for the stuff; it’s nearly Special Reserve prices!”

“Ooh,” my eyes lit up at the mention of the spicy beverage, “speaking of, I don’t suppose you sold all of that stuff, have you?”

“Sorry, girlie,” she shook her head with a wan smile, “long gone, I’m afraid.”

I frowned briefly and sighed, “oh well. Yeah, I’ll keep an ear out for that donkey stuff, but don’t get your hopes up. And it will be trade,” I motioned to Foxglove and the violet mare produced a half dozen energy rifles for the bartender. Sandy’s eyes widened as she collected one of the weapons in her own telekinetic grasp and examined it.

“Woah,” she exclaimed as she regarded the weapon, “I’ve never seen a design like this one before. Is this zebra tech, or...no,” she narrowed her eyes at the stock, “Stable-Tec? Since when did they build weapons like this?”

“Something tells me they weren’t pre-Wasteland designs,” I said, “but they work well enough. Interested?”

“I’m sure I can find a buyer,” she nodded, “how many do you have?”

“Seven, including that one.”

“Alright, I’ll have a price for you by nightfall,” the bartending mare assured me. Then she glanced around once more, trying to look past our trio, “when do you think Jackboot will be by? I had a pony in here a few weeks ago asking about him,” she said a little more quietly, “it sounded like trouble, and I wanted to give him a heads...up…”

Her voice likely trailed off in response to the expression on my face. She seemed to sense the revelation before I actually spoke it aloud, “he died,” I said simply.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sandy at least sounded genuinely sympathetic, “he was a good pony,” I caught myself glancing in Foxglove’s direction, half daring her to snort or otherwise express her disagreement with that assessment. Her expression remained impassive though, “but I guess that makes my warning moot,” she shrugged.

“Have a seat. First round’s on me.”

“Thanks, Sandy.”

The three of us settled around a table off to the side of the large room, and we soon found it host to four shots of Wild Pegasus whiskey. I smirked, in spite of myself. I suppose that it was no surprise that a pony who tended bar in the Wasteland in a place frequented by those who routinely braved its perils knew a thing or two about proper toasting to fallen comrades. It was soured only by the fact that RG wasn’t exactly a ‘comrade’ that I relished sharing a toast with.

Still, anything to maintain the fiction, I suppose. So I passed everypony their drink, leaving the fourth alone in the center. Looking at the violet mare, and once again daring her to renege on her earlier promise, I lifted my small glass, “to Jackboot.”

She didn’t say anything, but Foxglove did at least raise up his own glass in her magical green grip before setting it back down on the table. The gray stallion did and said nothing, merely staring intently at the glass and giving it a curious sniff. So I drank alone. It was actually fine. Of the three of us, I was the only pony qualified to appreciate the sort of stallion he was, wasn’t I? He hadn’t been a perfect pony, but who was? Whatever his faults, he made me the mare I was today, and that counted for a lot in my book.

I snaked out a wing and drew in RG’s drink too. I wasn’t even sure if his kind did drink, but I certainly wasn’t going to waste perfectly good alcohol on a monster like him. The guards in Seaddle could give him a stiff drink right before they walked him out to the headsmare when they were done interrogating him. That would be suitable enough for a pony like him.

Sandy came back by not long afterwards with some food and additional drinks, as well as to update us on our other orders, “so, the food and potions are done,” she confirmed, “and it’ll leave you with about six hundred bits left over, eight hundred in caps if you’d prefer?” I shook my head, “alright, bits it is. However, if you’re hoping for barding,” she eyed my wardrobe with an apologetic shrug, “I don’t think I’ll be able to find anything in your size―for a pegasus―on such short notice…”

“That’s fine,” I assured her, “I didn’t really expect you to. I’ll pick something up in Seaddle”

Sandy nodded, “that’s what I figured. Oh, if you didn’t already hear, one your way north be sure to―”

“―take the east route,” I finished for the mare, smiling, “I heard the broadcast.”

The mare smiled and nodded, “I don’t know why somepony didn’t try to set up a real local radio station sooner,” the bartender mare said, “nothing against DJ Pon3, and respects to the Princess’ broadcasts too, you know; but there’s something to be said for having a real news source in the valley. Information like that travel warning could save lives.”

"It is pretty cool,” I nodded in agreement, then smiled at the mare, “actually, Jackboot and I are the ponies that helped ‘Miss Neighvada’ get to McMaren to set up the tower,” I boasted, sitting up a little straighter in my chair, “Foxglove was there too,” I gestured at the violet mare who gave the barmare a little wave of her hoof and a wan smile.

“No foolin’?” she stepped back and looked me over, “the little filly who was knee-high to a rad-roach what seems like yesterday? You’re just making yourself all sorts of useful, aren’t you? Keep that up and you’ll make yourself into a bona fide hero,” she chuckled to herself and started to walk away before something made her stop. She looked back at me, her eyes scanning over my barding a little more closely than they had earlier. Fixing me with an accusatory look, her horn glowed and I felt one of my saddlebags start to lift up slightly while she peered beneath it at my flank. No, not my flank, but the winged lightning bolt that was sewn into the barding where a cutie mark would be on a pony.

Her eyes went wide and she let the back fall as she look back into my eyes, “you...you’re the―no!” her lips began to part in a look of disbelief, “you’re not―are you?”

I was sitting very still now, thrown off by the simultaneously bemused and surprised expression on the brown unicorn mare’s face, “not...what?”

Sandy leaned in very close, as though to keep our conversation between us, even though her voice was certainly loud enough to carry, “are you The Wonderbolt? The one that Miss Neighvada keeps talking about on the radio?”

“‘Keeps’?” I’d heard the broadcast a few days ago, but reception had been spotty in some of the places along our route. Plus, I’d been a lot more interested in finding out more about the new pony who was causing a stir in Manehattan. If there were other Stables like RG’s, I wanted to know as soon as possible. So far, it sounded like they were just another Mare-Do-Well or Lone Ranger stirring up trouble; and I fully expected them to burn out in the near future in a similar fashion.

The way Sandy was talking though, it sounded like Homily was out to make me a local version of those ponies, whether I deserved that sort of fuss or not.

“Oh yeah,” the brown unicorn went on, grabbing a nearby stool and sliding it over to make herself more comfortable while she chatted, “do you even realize who you saved in New Reino?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked at Foxglove, who had no help to offer either, though her meeting with the mare and her filly had been briefer than mine, “Summer Glade? As in the wife of Skinny Galician? Of the Galician Triplets?” my blank stare was the only answer I could give, which seemed to exasperate Sandy to no end, “oh, come on! They own 3-Some Caravans, and contract out to like half the independent caravans in the valley! They’re like the wealthiest family in Seaddle, and you saved the lives of two of their members!

“Windy,” Sandy was laughing now, spurred on by my ignorance, “The Wonderbolt saving Summer Glade and her filly is the news in the valley! When word got out what happened, the Lancers lost their contract with new Reino, since, you know, the Galicians have a lot of pull with the casino barons there―being the suppliers of most of their food and booze and all that,” she chuckled mirthlessly, “plus, the family’s put out an open invitation for ‘The Wonderbolt’ to come by their mansion in Seaddle anytime she wants.”

“You, my dear filly,” she poked my nose with her hoof, “are famous.”

I blinked―several times―before I was finally able to find my voice once again.

“Oh.”

Okay, so maybe that was a thoroughly underwhelming reaction to the news that Sandy had just shared with me. In my defense, I was still trying valiantly to process everything that she was saying and understand the implications. Part of me was also a little bit upset with Summer Glade for not having made any mention of who she really was―not that I’d cared to ask, granted. Admittedly, even if she had told me who her late husband had been, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much to me at the time.

Knowing the movers and the shakers in the valley wasn’t anything that I’d had to concern myself with. Jackboot was the one who had secured work for us, and I’d been perfectly content to let him deal with the details while I focused on what I was good at: killing things. That probably wasn’t going to be much of an option for me anymore, especially if my goal was to get powerful groups to work with me to stop the ponies from Arginine’s stable.

“‘Oh’, she says,” the bartender was shaking her head with a heavy sigh and a smile that could possibly have been described as patronizing, “sweetie, you’re adorable. Don’t ever change,” her attention then went to my companions, her eyes lingering a bit longer on the absurdly large stallion, “I don’t think I’ve met your friends,” she said, inviting an introduction.

“Right,” I gestured with a wing at the violet mare, “this is Foxglove. Jackboot and I helped her out a while back and she’s been tagging along ever since,” then I motioned towards the golden-eyed stallion, “and this is RG. We’re taking him to Seaddle,” I debated exactly how much detail I wanted to go into where the odd looking unicorn stallion was concerned. Of course, Sandy was a long-time business partner who had a lot of connects in Shady Saddles; so if anypony was in a position to offer helpful information and advice, it was her, “he’s part of a group that’s been abducting a lot of ponies in the valley,” I opted to leave out the genocide, lest I find myself having to actually defend the stallion against anypony who knew somepony whose death he might have been responsible for, “we’re going to deliver him to the Republic for questioning.”

Appropriately, Sandy’s expression, which had been one of curiosity previously, grew hard as she regarded the gray stallion. Doing as much business as that unicorn did with traders in the valley, she was very likely one of those ponies who, in fact, did know somepony that Arginine’s Stable had killed in their perverted quest for perfection.

“Saving defenseless fillies and mares, and cleaning up the Wasteland,” the bartender favored me with a smile of approval, “you are really are bucking to make a name for yourself in the valley, aren’t you?”

I felt my cheeks heating up slightly at the praise. I cleared my throat and offered a small shrug, “just helping out a little.”

“Uh huh,” Sandy held my gaze for a few moments longer, seeming to consider something. Then she said, “you’re heading Seadlle way, right?” I nodded, “I don’t suppose you can help out a friend of mine?”

“What kind of help?”

“Well, she’s in a ‘motherly’ sort of way―and far along at that,” the mare tapped her belly to emphasize the point, “honestly, she probably shouldn’t be traveling at all―not that she’ll listen to me,” Sandy added in a tone that hinted at many a futile conversation on the subject, “the father’s a city guard, and he just sent word that he can’t make it here for the birth after all; so she’s determined to go to him.

“None of the caravans are willing to take her along the way she is, and I’m not comfortable with her hiring some random merc to watch over her. I don’t suppose you’d be willing? She can pay, I’m not asking for charity; and I’ll do a little better on the price for your supplies too,” the unicorn mare regarded me hopefully, “what do you say?”

Jackboot would have said ‘no’ without a second thought. I could even see the uncertainty in Foxglove’s own expression. It was understandable. A pregnant mare was a liability in a lot of ways, especially if she was as far along as Sandy was suggesting. There were a whole lot of reasons to turn down the offer, no matter what the pay was.

“I really don’t think I can,” I began, “I’m going to have enough on my plate as it is watching this guy,” I nodded my head at the engineered stallion nearby, “we’re probably not the safest group for her to travel with.”

“I know I’m asking a lot,” the bartender agreed, “and like I said, I don’t think she should be going at all! She’s pretty adamant though,” she added, looking a little concerned, “I’m actually half worried that she’ll go off on her own if she can’t find anypony to go with her.”

Oh, horseapples. Foxglove was looking at me now, and I could see the conflict in her emerald eyes. Like me, she would just as soon have refused to take the mare along for the same reasons I was privately entertaining. On the other hoof, if the mare really did try to go it alone…

It wasn’t my responsibility to look after that mare, and if she did something stupid that got her killed, that was her own business. That’s what Jackboot would have certainly thought. I wasn’t Jackboot though, was I? I didn’t sit back and let things sort themselves out where ponies who needed help were concerned; no matter how ill-advised my interference was. It was arguably the whole reason that Foxglove was a free mare. It was also why RG was in my custody and would provide me with the leverage I needed to get the Republic moving against his Stable for the good of the Wasteland.

I needed to face facts: I was stupid and impulsive, and I had a real problem when it came to helping ponies without thinking.

I was pretty sure I’d heard somewhere that admitted that you had a problem was the first step on the road to recovery. However, nopony had ever gotten around to mentioning what the second step was―or if there even were any other steps involved at all. So, I guess I’d reached the end of the road to rehabilitation; and gone nowhere in the process.

“Fine,” I sighed in resignation, “where and when should we meet your friend?”

Sandy’s face brightened at my agreement to help out and she threw her arms around me in a brief but firm hug, “oh, thank you! You have no idea how relieved I am right now. She runs a little shop here in town, I’ll let her know the good news this evening and have her meet you right here first thing in the morning. Again, thank you!” she hugged me a second time, “are you hungry? I’ll be right out with something!”

Before I could get out another word, Sandy went cantering off to the kitchen in the back of the bar to fetch us something; leaving Foxglove and I to exchange looks while RG remained largely uninterested in what had been discussed.

“You know that’s not a good idea, right?”

I sighed, “yeah, I do. But she needs help, and we’re heading to Seaddle anyway.”

“That’s not the point, Windfall, and you know it,” the violet mare sighed. She jerked her head in RG’s direction, “she’s not safe with us.”

“You heard what Sandy said: her friend was going to end up trying to make the trip on her own! That’s got to me more dangerous than going with us.”

To this, the unicorn didn’t have an objection that she could voice. I agreed with Foxglove though: this wasn’t going to make our jobs any easier during the trip. It was the right thing to do though. It’s what the real Wonderbolts would have done.

At least, I liked to think so.

Sandy came through like a champ that evening, securing us a small pharmacy’s worth of medical supplies and enough food to feed a whole caravan on its way to Seaddle. Bullets hadn’t been nearly as plentiful, unfortunately. From what the brown unicorn mare said during the course of her apology for the shortcoming, it sounding like there was a general shortage of ammunition of all types afflicting the valley at the moment, especially in the Seaddle area. The reason was fairly simple: the New Lunar Republic was getting ready to launch a major offensive against the Steel Rangers and was buying up all of the warfighting supplies that they could get their hooves on.

Personally, I felt that it was about time the Republic got serious. The Steel Rangers had been a problem in the valley for over a decade by now, and had been in a perpetual state of conflict with the Republic since their arrival. It was like they had come to Neighvada specifically to fight with Luna’s newfound Equestria! I wasn’t going to pretend that made any amount of sense to me, since I was under the impression that Luna used to be in charge of the Steel Rangers way back before the bombs fell, but there you have it. If the Republic was really ready to get serious and finally push the Rangers out of the valley, good on them!

However, the related shortage of grenades meant that Foxglove was also short on materials with which to manufacture the specialty ammunition that I was growing attached to using. We’d just have to make due, and I was confident that we at least had enough to see the three―or rather four now―of us to the Republic’s capital. Once we were there, and I had a chance to talk with the Princess, I was hopeful that I could secure a steady source of supplies.

In the meantime, I was with Foxglove and RG in front of Sandy’s bar conducting my final inspections of my weapons prior to our departure when I heard the brown unicorn mare step outside. I looked up from my compact .45 to see that the bartender was not alone either. As I had been expecting, she had brought her friend―as promised. However, it was only now that I realized that I had been rather remiss in asking about any real details regarding this ‘friend’ of hers. Which would explain my look of surprise when I saw that Sandy was accompanied by a―as expected―visibly pregnant zebra mare.

Honestly, I hadn’t actually known that any zebras lived in Shady Saddles, much less operated any shops. Similarly, I could not recall ever seeing any zebra guards in and around Seaddle; and I’d spent enough time there to feel that I would have noticed such a thing.

Foxglove looked to have been equally surprised by the discovery, but it was the large gray stallion with us whose reaction bore the most thinking. If the genocide inclined unicorn had, up to this point, been affecting an air of indifference to how ‘invalid’ ponies like those who lived and worked in Shady Saddles went about their lives, his interest had become thoroughly piqued now. His golden eyes were the largest and most attentive that I’d ever seen them as he regarded the mare that we were to escort.

The zebra seemed to notice his rather intent gaze, which stirred within her some feelings that were competing rather brashly with her own reaction to seeing a pony as unique as Arginine was. She shied a little closer to her friend, “um, greetings. Sandy tells me you are Seaddle bound and willing to take along company, yes?”

“Yes,” I replied a little absently as I flashed the gaping stallion a glare of my own until he took notice and recomposed himself. Only then did I regard our new charge more amiably and offer her a warm smile, “sorry, yes, hi! My name’s Windfall. This is Foxglove and that’s RG,” I indicated each in turn with a wing. The violet unicorn mare smiled and waved; the stallion adopted his usual blank expression, “what’s you’re name?”

“Yatima,” the mare answered with a slight bow of her head towards Foxglove and I. Then her eyes went back to Arginine, with a side glance or two at her brown friend, “he is the...bandit?” she looked to each of us for confirmation.

I thought for a brief moment and then shrugged my shoulders. Close enough as far as the zebra was really concerned. There wasn’t much need to burden her with a whole lot of details, “basically. He’s our prisoner, yeah,” I hopped up into the air and tugged at the stallion’s scarf, revealing the explosive collar clasped snugly around his neck and then holding up my pipbuck, “but don’t worry, he’ll be on his best behavior,” I darted around in front of his face and glared into his golden eyes, “or else; isn’t that right?”

He returned a defiant stare of his own for several long seconds before responding with silence and a barely perceptible nod. It was probably the best I was going to get out of him for the moment, but it was good enough for me. I drifted down and smiled back at the zebra, reassuringly, “see? S’all good!”

“Is he a...pony, yes?” she inquired cautiously, looking over the odd looking unicorn stallion, “if so, I do not recognize his breed…”

“RG’s...a little mutated,” I said. Though I wasn’t looking at him, I could feel the stallion’s baleful glare upon me in reprisal for my answer.

“I see.”

I tapped my hooves together as the silence between all of us that followed Yatima’s words drew on longer than I was really comfortable with, “so...we should get going? You’re packed, right?”

“I am,” the striped mare indicated her saddlebags. She then turned back to the barpony and the two exchanged a brief hug, “thank you, my friend. This was very kind of you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Sandy insisted, waving her hoof at the three of us, “they’re the ones who agreed to do this. Otherwise I was of half a mind to close up the bar and take you myself! That’s my niece or nephew you’ve got kicking around in there, after all!

“Not that I’m any better with a gun than you are; so I’m sure we’d just both have ended up dead…” she added with a wry smile at the zebra.

“Indeed,” Yatima snorted. Then she looked up at me, “and I do thank you as well, Miss Windfall. You are doing me a great kindness. I know well the liability I am. I will endeavour to be as little a burden as possible.”

“We’ll keep the pace slow,” I assured her, “all I ask is that when the shit hits, you hug the ground until it’s all over, alright? Leave the heroics to the professionals.”

“Agreed,” the zebra bobbed her head.

On my own, I could have gotten from Shady Saddles to the Seaddle ruins in a little over ten hours; and that was at a relatively leisurely pace. Constrained by the speed at which most ground-bound ponies could maintain, I would have been looking at four days along the shortest route. Unfortunately, that route was―according to Homily―swarming with White Hoof raiders. Maybe if it had just been the three of us I could have convinced myself to say ‘fuck it’ with the risks and taken the west road anyway. After all, I was still a little aggravated where the topic of the White Hooves and their continued existence was concerned.

Much like with the ponies from RG’s Stable, I was quite confident I could kill vast quantities of those painted ponies and still have gotten a sound night’s sleep without needing copious quantities of alcohol to do it.

However, that wasn’t something I was going to risk with Yatima in tow. So, the east road it was, which would have been six days at a brisk pace. With the pregnant mare and the considerations for her health and comfort, we were looking at eight. Even that was assuming that we didn’t encounter anything the seriously held us up.

...Or I could kill RG, cut off his head, take it to luna as proof of the threat, and be back in Shady Saddles by this time tomorrow.

Ugh...even just thinking about doing that made me want a drink. I’d just pocket the thought for use as a threat against the stallion later if he started proving to be difficult. Given his reaction to Yatima, I was coming under the impression that was a distinct possibility. What had all of that been about anyway? He’d never looked at anypony that way before; not that I’d ever seen!

I asked him about it during the trip, while Foxglove was chatting up the zebra.

“I’ve never seen one before,” the stallion responded, a note of embarrassment sneaking through his otherwise flat tone.

“A zebra? Well, I guess they are pretty rare in Neighvada. I’ve only seen a few myself,” I said.

“I meant a pregnant mare,” RG corrected, his discomfort growing slightly. Then he added, “though, I have actually not seen a living zebra either. Only their pictures from our history texts.

“I thought they’d be bigger.”

I blinked at the gray unicorn, “whoa, wait. Back up,” I fluttered along next to the stallion’s head, fixing him with a dubious stare, “what do you mean you’ve never seen a pregnant mare before? How is that possible? You must have seen one; at least in your own Stable!”

Arginine frowned at me, “we do not breed as invalids do,” the unicorn scoffed, “even after so many decades of careful selection, there is too much detritus lingering in our genes. Until we have perfected ponykind, it would be detrimental to our efforts to allow for genetically inferior offspring to be born through random chance,” his face adopted a sneer as he spoke those last words.

I grimaced at the stallion’s rhetoric, “so then how exactly do they make little ponies where you come from? Or were you born an fully grown asshole?”

His amber eyes flashed at me before quelling and supplying a straight answer, “once a satisfactory genome has been sequenced, it is injected into a sterile ovum and incubated in a maturation chamber so that the developing fetus can be continually monitored for errant mutations of its cells.”

I blinked at the stallion, “you’re grown in a tube?”

Another brief glare, followed by a resigned sigh, “if that is the only way your inferior mind can comprehend the process, then yes: I was grown in a...tube.”

Well, in fairness to the stallion, I had sort of left him the opening for that little jab of his, so I was going to let it pass without retort. I wasn’t going to pretend that I understood everything that he had told me as fully as I might have liked, but I’d followed enough of it to get a good idea of what was going on. Which did leave me with another question though, “but you still have sex right?”

Arginine looked at me like I’d just slapped him across the face, with a mixture of horror and consternation. There was even a tiny mote of revulsion mingled in there somewhere, “why would we?”

Somewhere in the back of my brain I was distantly aware that my expression at that moment must have almost perfectly mirrored the one he had worn just a few seconds ago. Probably for much the same reason: the very nature of the question sounded patently absurd! Why would you have sex? Because it was sex! Okay, so, yeah, I’d never had it personally, but even I knew I wanted to have it eventually! Just about every other pony I knew had had sex at some point in their lives.

It was sex, it was what ponies did―and zebras, come to think of it! I was pretty sure every other race did it too, frankly. For fuck’s sake, even radroaches had sex!

A better, more realistic question, would have been, “why wouldn’t you?” Given the opportunity, of course.

Which was pretty much exactly how I ended up framing my response out loud. Not the most sophisticated reply, I was forced to admit, but it was about all I could manage when confronted with a good looking―that was an objective observation, not a personal appraisal mind you―stallion who looked positively confounded by the notion of engaging in intimate relations.

Arginine’s expression contorted into mild irritation, “we are engaged in a struggle for the very future of ponykind. We do not have the time for such distractions.”

I blinked at the stallion and frowned, “you mean to tell me that the Stable obsessed with creating a whole race of ‘super-ponies’ considers sex a ‘distraction’? I’d figure you guys would be all about popping out as many foals as possible.”

“In the fullness of time,” the gray pony sighed, “that will indeed be the case. However, as I have previously stated: our geneticists have yet to satisfy themselves with the sequences of the current population. Until such a time, future generations must be very carefully crafted. As such, we do not practice more...natural birthing methods.”

In its own little twisted way, that did make sense. But still, “and none of you even get...urges?”

“They were curbed during my sequencing,” Arginine said simply.

What a sad existence, I thought. It might explain a few things though, “well, we don’t have tubes out here, so pregnant mares are a thing. Get used to it, and stop staring. You’ll creep her out.”

“I was not staring,” Arginine insisted defensively, “I was merely intrigued by what I perceived to be a physiologically fascinating feature.”

“Well, do it with a little more blinking and a lot more subtlety,” I glared at the stallion, and was rewarded with seeing him blush slightly and avert his gaze. Good, that should head off any problems before they began and let me focus on our surroundings while Foxglove worked on keeping our charge at ease.

Though most of my attention was kept on Arginine, in order to make certain that he kept his gaze civil, his mouth shut, and his whole self distant, I did spare some time during our trip to get to know Yatima a little better. I couldn’t deny being a little curious about her myself, if to a much less creepy and disturbing degree than the engineered unicorn’s interest. Zebras weren’t what one could call a ‘common sight’ in the Wasteland, so far as I noticed. They were around, certainly, but they weren’t something you expected to really see anywhere all the same.

Kind of like me, in a way. Pegasi weren’t a bit a dozen either.

The difference was that I was at least a pony, and thus a native of the Neighvada Valley. Yatima would have had to have come here from somewhere else; and from what I knew, the zebra lands were way off to the south. She didn’t just wander into the valley on a whim; that mare would have had to go through a lot of effort to make it here; and while I was generally polite enough to let ponies keep their more painful secrets to themselves, that didn’t mean I stopped being curious.

As I sort of expected, Yatima was more than a little vague on the ‘whys’ of her journey north into pony lands. The ‘hows’ involved boats―whatever those were―and signing on to various caravans as a cook. She admitted that she didn’t know a whole lot when it came to weapons and fighting, but she was capable of taking all sorts of combinations of dregs that were dredged up from the ruins of an Old World pantry and turning them into a respectable meal. Given what she managed to do with our travel rations and a few sprigs of what I had written off as a few wasteland weeds that first night, I was inclined to believe her. Cram had never tasted like that before!

She was certainly a pony’s-pony, er...pony’s-zebra anyway. She was able to tell us a great deal about the other ponies that she’d traveled with since leaving the zebra lands. Looking back on things, she weaseled out quite a bit of my own life story while we were talking. Not that there was much I tended to hold back. Even those few topics that I had used to keep mum on, like my feelings for Jackboot, were fair game these days. It wasn’t like the old stallion was around to overhear me or anything; and Foxglove already knew nearly everything anyway.

What I did learn was that the guard who Yatima said was the father of her unborn foal wasn’t actually a zebra at all, like I’d assumed. He was an earth pony serving in the Lunar Guard. According to the striped mare, he’d actually grown up in Shady Saddles, which was where the two of them had met. He’d been a regular at the little cafe she’d set up, and had been quite the charmer. She’d responded to his flirting with extra servings of the day’s special, and one thing had led to another from there.

When Luna had returned, the stallion left for Seaddle to enlist and fight for her. Apparently, Yatima had been willing to close up her small cafe in Shady Saddles and go with him to the larger city, but he’d talked her into staying. At the time, the Steel Rangers had been attacking the Republic capital with regularity, and he’d believed it would be safer for her to remain down south. They saw each other every few months when his patrol routes took him through the smaller town.

Judging by her condition, the two of them had certainly made the most of those infrequent visits.

Yatima wasn’t precisely sure how much the addition of the new foal into their lives would affect the father’s opinion where their living situation was concerned; but the two of them were going to have some time to think about it, according to the zebra mare. Her foal was due in another four weeks or so, and she had no intention of traveling back to Shady Saddles until it was a couple months old, at least.

Our trip was going pretty well...up until the third day. That was when things got...complicated.

I think it was mostly my fault. I let myself get distracted while talking to Yatima. I was the pegasus, and even more than that I was the pony who was nominally there to do any of the fighting if a threat showed itself. My eyes should have been locked onto the Eyes Forward Sparkle of my pipbuck during the whole trip for when something showed up.

But I wasn’t paying attention, was I? I was gabbing away with a friendly mare.

They were almost on top of us when I noticed anything; and even then I didn’t realize that we were in trouble until a pair of stallions rose up into view ahead of us, and far closer than I liked.

“Y’all might want to go ahead and hold it right there,” A robust black stallion announced as he stepped out from behind a rocky outcropping. Another stallion, this one a unicorn, shimmered into sight next to him. Both boasted battle saddles bristling with automatic rifles. Even as Foxglove and I instinctively squared off against the pair, the violet unicorn mare placing herself between the stallions and Yatima, I could hear additional hoofsteps coming from behind us. Turning my head slightly, I saw two more ponies moving around to flank us.

We were in a lot of trouble; I could tell that instantly. But several little alarms going off in my head suggested that things were even worse than they initially appeared. On the surface of it, this whole thing might have looked like your typical Wasteland robbery, and it did have a lot of the hallmarks of one, that was true; but there were a few things about it that didn’t sit well with me.

The first thing was that these four had opted to talk first, rather than shoot. Looking at it from the point of view of these armed stallions, I could see why they might have decided that they could risk giving up their element of surprise if things devolved into a firefight. It was obvious to anypony looking at us that only Foxglove and I were armed in any way. RG might have been big, and I spied the two stallions behind us that were closest to him keeping wary eyes on the massive unicorn, but he lacked any weapons. On top of that, Yatima was also quite visibly pregnant. Realistically, they had us outnumbered two to one in a straight up fight. Corpses were easy to rob, but prisoners could easily be sold for more caps than whatever gear they were carrying was worth.

On the other hoof, I would have been a very tempting and logical target. Floating up in the air, armed to the teeth when compared with the others, and sporting a pipbuck on my leg. I would have represented a threat that should have been too big of a risk to deal with. The smart choice would have been to pop my oblivious ass in the head like I so richly deserved, and then confronted Foxglove four on one and forced a virtually guaranteed immediate surrender.

Experienced raiders didn’t run the sort of risk these fellas had that I might notice them with my EFS and give them a tough fight. Unfortunately, these guys didn’t look like amateurs either.

Amateurs didn’t wear matching barding like they were. The four stallions wore armor that looked very nearly like a professional uniform of some type. More than that, it was a color scheme and a design that I recognized; and that was when the knot began to take shape in the pit of my stomach.

These were Lancers.

The same mercenary group that Sandy had informed me lost its most lucrative protection contract recently, through the actions of yours truly. The idea that a group of the very ponies who had a bone to pick with me just happened to find me on the road being a coincidence didn’t even cross my mind. It wasn’t like I’d taken any efforts to mask my movements, not that there was much I could do to accomplish that. Catching up wouldn’t have been hard either, with Arginine and then Yatima in tow to slow me down. They had come looking for me, and now they had caught me.

These weren’t even just four random lancers either, I realized. Three of them, I recognized; and they clearly recognized me in turn.

“I told you you hadn’t heard the last of us,” the unicorn that had materialized seemingly out of thin air snarled, glaring up at me with deep brown eyes that I recalled peering into not so very long ago outside of New Reino, “now it’s your turn to do the smart thing and throw down your weapons.”

Despite my growing fear and anxiety at our obviously precarious predicament, I felt my lips cocking into a wan little smirk, “hey, handsome,” I said dryly, “you’re wearing something soft under that barding, I hope” this was hardly the time for jokes, but at the moment this little bit of ill-timed humor was the only thing keeping me calm enough to refrain from doing something rash and getting all four of us killed. If anything, it was going to buy us a little time. Time for what, I didn’t know; but extra time was never a bad thing under any circumstances.

“You wisecracking bitch,” an earth pony behind me snapped, “I can’t wait to shut you up, you fucking cunt!”

I glanced back at the irate Lancer briefly before addressing the unicorn once more, “he has a mouth on him, doesn’t he? Is he always like that?”

The unicorn shrugged, “you get used to it.”

“If you’re all done catching up,” the black earth pony that had spoken initially growled at the pair of us. The unicorn frowned and averted his eyes under the hard glare of the pony that I took to be the leader of this little band. Then the earth pony looked up at me and that cruel little smile he’d had when he introduced himself was back, “I take it you know why we’re here?”

“I have a theory or two,” I said evenly. Beneath me, I sensed Foxglove growing significantly more concerned about the ponies closing in around us. She was doing her best to shield Yatima, but it was difficult in our surrounded state. For his part, RG merely peered dismissively at the four ponies like he did when regarding any invalid. Given how hesitant these Lancers were being to approach his massive bulk and getting any closer than was required, I’m sure he didn’t feel very threatened.

I wish I could say the same for myself. Despite my bantering, I knew this was bad.

“You cost us a lot,” the black pony went on, “and that doesn’t even bother us near as much as the disrespect you showed the Lancers. Nopony pushes us around in this valley,” he said gravely, “in neighvada, we do the pushing.”

“So what do you want,” I was anxious for him to get to the point. That way I knew what sort of options I’d have in dealing with these ponies, “if you wanted me dead, we wouldn’t be talking, would we?”

The earth pony narrowed his orange eyes at me, “maybe I want you to know why you’re dying,” he suggested. After a brief, tense, moment, he smiled and shook his head, “you’re right. Killing a pony like you isn’t enough, Wonderbolt,” it was obvious from his dismissive tone that he didn’t think much of the monicker, “you need to become a lesson to others. A symbol of why you don’t mess with the Lancers. Kabar?” he glanced over at the unicorn standing next to him.

The unicorn’s hard started to glow and a slave collar floated out of his saddlebags, clasped in a mahogany magical aura, “I brought you some new jewelry,” then his eyes went to the other three ponies with me, “we even have enough so that you and your friends get to wear a matching set.”

“So drop your weapons and make this go smoothly,” the jet earth pony smiled confidently as he gave his commands, “and nopony will have to get hurt...too badly,” he added with a knowing look at myself.

I allowed myself to drift down to the ground and landed gently, “go on, Foxy,” I said gently to the very concerned looking unicorn, “do what he says,” I was already nibbling at the straps that secured my own twin submachine guns to my barding, “everything will be fine.”

“Not likely, you feathered whore,” that earth pony behind us spat, “ooh, I’m looking forward to giving you the fucking you deserved, you damn bitch!”

I flashed that pony a hard look, doing my best to keep myself calm in the face of those taunts. Of course, he was pretty confident about his position where the two of us were concerned, and so he wasn’t very intimidated. That was fine. Perhaps a different angle was called for in this instance, since overt aggression was just going to get us killed.

After all, the last time I’d gone up against these three ponies I hadn’t had any of my weapons with me. That meant that the couldn’t know about the rather unique modifications that Foxglove had made to my girls, and nopony could spot my compact .45 while my left wing was folded unless they knew exactly what they were looking for. There would also be a few things they probably didn’t know about Foxglove’s armament either.

I finished removing my battle saddle and held the pair of weapons out on my extended right wing, “Foxy,” I said very quietly so that only the unicorn mare and the zebra she was shielding could hear me, “keep you lance ready,” I then stepped away from the mare, slowly making my way towards the earth pony with the fowl mouth and his silent friend.

Be Pleasant!

I smiled sweetly at the pony, “you’re a real sweet-talker, you know that?” I didn’t sound that sarcastic, but he clearly recognized my lack of sincerity, “truth be told, I kind of have a thing for ponies that talk dirty,” he scowled skeptically at me, “it’s true. I used to hang out with this one White Hoof stallion; he had a way with words too.

“Tell you what,” I purred as I got closer. He didn’t take a full step back as I approached, but he didn’t entirely stand his ground either, wondering what my angle was. Both he and the pony next to him kept their weapons trained on me, “I’m going to let tall dark and kinky over there collar me,” I nodded at the unicorn stallion and winked before looking back at the verbally abusive earth pony, “but I figured you’d at least like first crack at the loot.

“These here are a very nice pair of submachine guns,” I said, holding the weapons a little higher so that the other ponies could get a good look at them, “ten millimeter, loaded with hollow-point rounds,” the two ponies looked mildly startled when they heard the sudden whirring sound come from the submachine guns. Of course, I wasn’t wearing them, and I had no trigger bit in my mouth, and clearly none of my pinions could be manipulating anything on the weapons. I continued speaking as though I’d heard nothing out of the ordinary, “fully automatic,” I said slowly and clearly, “for continuous...uninterrupted…” my blue eyes found the violet unicorn mare, and her wide emerald eyes and subtle nod confirmed that she understood what was about to happen, “...fire.”

Both barrels of the dangling weapons began slinging bullets.

Without the bracing afforded by the straps that would normally have secured them to my sides, there wasn’t a lot of accuracy or consistency in their stream of bullets. They just sort of saturated the vague region in front of them with lead; which was perfectly fine for my purposes. None of the four Lancers had been expecting anything of the sort, of course. Voice-activated firearms like these were hardly a staple of the Wasteland.

I had managed to get close enough to the earth pony stallion with the colorful vocabulary such that he was hit with the initial salvo of bullets with their specifically crafted tips. Holding the submachine guns up as high as I was, the hollowpoints missed his armored barding entirely and struck him in the head and neck. The results were...decisive.

As the weapons executed the verbal commands that I had surreptitiously issued and poured on their uninterrupted fire, I pivoted on my forehooves and flung out my right wing, casting that stream of fire in a wide, flailing arc of bullets. The other pony that had been nearby was struck by one or two rounds, but they caught him in the kevlar weave of his armor and the fragile lead rounds failed to penetrate and inflict any serious wounds.

Of course, merely getting struck by bullets of that caliber at such a close range, even if they didn’t pierce flesh, still caused considerable pain and surprise. It disoriented the stallion enough that I was afforded ample time to draw my concealed pistol and engage my pipbuck’s Sparkle Assisted Targeting System. Two round were cued up and had little trouble finding his temple at this range.

Foxglove had not been idle either. As soon as my weapons had begun firing, the black earth pony and his unicorn companion had locked their eyes on me and begun to bring their weapons to bear on the source of the gunfire. This meant that none of them were watching the unicorn that had already discarded her rifle and had been holding onto only a mere ‘staff’ when all hell broke loose.

The violet mare ignited the tip of her eldritch lance and hurled at at the earth pony. He must have noticed it out of the corner of his vision, because the black stallion made an effort to bat the staff aside with an armored hoof. However, he clearly had not recognized the weapon for what it truly was, and his action didn’t yield quite the results that he had hoped that it would. The brilliant tip of the cutting tool dimmed for a brief moment as it sunk effortlessly through the steel plating of his vambrace and the soft flesh beneath.

He didn’t even scream at first. The slice had been so quick and smooth that his nerves hadn’t had the time to let his brain know that things were going wrong before they were cut away. It wasn’t until his eyes noticed the outstretched limb drop away that he realized how much he should be hurting and the pain was finally able to manifest.

The black stallion’s horrified scream drew the attention of the nearby unicorn as well, who found himself caught between the known danger of a mare holding a pair of wildly firing automatic weapons and the mystery of whatever had afflicted his partner. He chose to ensure that whatever was harming the earth pony near him wasn’t going to be an immediate threat to himself. Which meant that he wasn’t moving to dodge out of the way of the hail of bullets I was sending their way.

Neither of the two madly sputtering weapons scored any direct hits; not at this range and with no effort to direct their fire. By the time they had run themselves dry, the only damage I had managed to inflict looked to be a single round that had skipped off a rock and shattered; a piece of which had caught the unicorn stallion in his hind leg and staggered him. That was more than I needed though.

Casting the spent ten millimeters aside, I flared my wings and swept them back in a powerful stroke that sent me rocketing towards the pair. The pistol in my mouth bucked continuously as I poured fire onto the distracted ponies. Most of the rounds embedded themselves in their barding, but a few penetrated through and caused significant damage. The unicorn collapsed with a groan just as his own rifles opened up briefly on Foxglove and the zebra mare. I heard somepony scream, but I didn’t have the time to spare a look if I wanted this fight to end.

I overshot the downed unicorn and wrapped myself around the black earth pony. Clamping my hooves around his head―Be Strong!―I wrenched hard with my legs as a well-timed beat of my wings lent themselves to the effort, and felt the telltale popping of several vertebrae in the stallion’s neck as they detached from one another. His pained scream cut out suddenly and the dead weight slipped out of my grasp. I remained there, hovering in the air above the scene, looking at all four Lancers to make certain that they had been dealt with.

Foul-Mouth was missing most of his head where the fragmenting rounds had done their due diligence. His partner was wide-eyed and still, a pool of blood growing around his head and slowly seeping into the dry, cracked, Wasteland soil. Blacky here sure wasn’t going to be getting up again with his head canted at a right angle like that. As for tall, dark, and magical...a pained groan suggested that he wasn’t completely down and out yet. I ejected the spent magazine from my pistol and loaded in a fresh one. The unicorn―Kabar, the other stallion had called him―was only just starting to struggle to his hooves by the time I had the slide forward again and the weapon pointed at his head.

“Don’t move,” I said around the grip in my mouth. He looked up at me, his brown eyes confused for a brief moment before he comprehended his new situation. He sighed and hung his head, holding up a hoof in a gesture token surrender, “Foxglove?” I called back over my shoulder.

“Yatima’s hurt!” the unicorn announced. A moment later, “she was shot in her shoulder. It doesn’t look that bad…”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on the unicorn, “alright, do what you can,” to the stallion I said, “this didn’t go as well as the first time, did it?”

“No,” he admitted, a wan little smile touching his lips as he glanced at the three corpses of his companions. I didn’t hear much malice in his voice, just resignation. He was a professional and experienced pony, after all. He knew when a cause was lost. The real question, was whether or not his comrades thought the same way, “is this going to be over now?”

He snorted and shook his head, “you know it won’t be,” he admitted, looking up to meet my gaze, still without any fire in his eyes, “before this,” he gestured at the dead stallion next to him, “it was just us being annoyed. Poaching ponies like we were was a violation of the protection contract we’d signed with New Reino. We knew that it was only a matter of time before we were found out and lost it,” he shrugged, “the Lancers have been going more thug than real mercenary for a few years now,” I didn’t miss the somber tone of the admission.

“You’re just the mare that blew the whistle on us first. So, yeah, we were going to get you back―it’s the principal of the matter, you know. But now? Wonderbolt, you just killed three of us, including Captain West’s favorite lieutenant there,” he jerked his head at the dead black stallion, “the others’ll hunt you to the ends of the valley for this.”

I felt my shoulders droop. The last thing I needed was to be hunted by a group of some of the best equipped mercenaries in Neighvada. It had been bad enough when it had been just the White Hooves out for my blood. At least they’d have to be careful about operating inside Republic territory. The Lancers could move unfettered, since they weren’t criminals―technically, anyway. My life had just gotten a whole lot harder, and it wasn’t even my fault.

I groaned, “is this really what I get for going easy on you before?” I glared at the unicorn, “if I’d killed you that first time, there wouldn’t have been anypony around to say who’d stopped you, would there?” Summer Glade would have known what happened, and her filly; but she’d also have known enough to keep quiet about the details. With the power and influence that she had, all she’d need to do was suggest the casino barons of New Reino hire on somepony else to handle the town’s security if they wanted to keep doing business with 3-Some Caravans. The Lancers would have lost their contract, and they’d have had a vague idea about why, but they’d never have known it was me.

“That’s true,” he confirmed with a nod, “you’d have been free and clear and we’d have been none the wiser.”

That wasn’t fair, I thought ruefully. I wasn’t supposed to be punished like this for being a good pony who didn’t kill when she didn’t have to! Was this really what I was going to get for letting some ponies live even after I’d clearly beaten them into surrender? What was I supposed to have done once I got them to drop their weapons and barding; kill them anyway?

Jackboot probably would have. I didn’t want to be that kind of pony though. I really didn’t want to be a killer.

It’s what my cutie mark is telling me, though. Isn’t it?

“I spared you,” I said, looking at the pony as I once more floated back to the ground, “you’d given up, so I spared you.”

He nodded, “you did,” his smile grew slightly, but it wasn’t a warm, happy, thing. It was resigned, “it was a nice thing you did for us. Rare trait in the Wasteland, kindness.

“I figure there’s a reason for that.”

“I could take you prisoner,” I said. Even as I made the suggestion, I knew it wasn’t feasible. Foxglove and I already had one pony to look out for, and Yatima as well. Besides, what were we going to do with him in the long term? If we handed him over to the NLR, they would just kill him as a raider or let him go due to a lack of evidence unless I felt like sticking around to serve as a witness in some kind of trial.

“Is that really what you’re going to do this time?” he looked at me, unconvinced. He saw my hesitation, “I didn’t think so.”

“I don’t like killing ponies.”

He snorted, “you’re very good at it,” the unicorn noted, once more pointing out the nearby corpse, “I don’t envy the next group of Lancers that finds you. They won’t have any idea what they’re really up against,” he let out a sad laugh, “I already fought you once and I wasn’t prepared!

“You’re going to make some real waves in this Valley, Wonderbolt. Part of me wished I’d be there to see it.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” and I really didn’t.

“And I don’t want to die,” he laughed dryly before his expression sobered up once more, “but nopony gets what they want in the Wasteland, do they?”

I looked at the unicorn for a long moment. I truly did want to spare his life. He wasn’t a bad pony, not really. Well, aside from the whole ‘trying to enslave innocent mares’ thing―I wasn’t going to nominate him for Princess any time soon. He just sort of...he had a way about him that made it hard for me to actually hate him. It was too bad he couldn’t have been more of an overt asshole like Foul-Mouth had been.

He was right though, ponies never got what they wanted in the Wasteland. Just look at me? I never got to be with the pony I’d loved. I didn’t get to keep my mother after finding her after all those years. I hadn’t gotten to grow up all safe and happy on our farm. Nothing I had in my life was anything that I’d ‘wanted’. I guess...I guess that was how the Wasteland worked. Jackboot had tried to teach me that, once upon a time. I suppose I hadn’t taken it to heart like I should have.

Fuck this place.

I depressed the trigger on the compact little pistol. The slide bucked in my mouth. Kabar’s body went limp, his brown eyes glazed over and looking out into the distant Wasteland without seeing it. Without a word, and fighting an urge to scream at the universe for making me be this kind of pony, I holstered the firearm and turned away from the defenseless pony I’d just murdered.

Without the unicorn to let any of his friends know what had happened out here, it could be weeks before I heard from any Lancers again. Here was hoping that they took the hint though and gave me a wide berth from now on. They wouldn’t though, probably…

Foxglove was staring at me, her eyes wide with surprise, “Windy...you―”

“How’s Yatima doing?” I really wanted to talking about absolutely anything else right now. I also wish I had thought to stock up on alcohol before leaving Shady Saddles. I’d correct that oversight at the next available opportunity.

I could see that the zebra mare was still laying on the ground, her face contorted by pain as she groaned through gritted teeth. I could see the crimson smear of blood on her striped coat that marked where she had been shot. However, it was clear that the wound itself had been treated, as I could spy no signs of a bullet hole and there were two empty healing potion vials lying on the ground nearby. There was even a syringe of Med-X, “what’s wrong with her?” she couldn’t possibly still be in pain from the wound.

“I don’t know,” Foxglove said in a frantic tone that was bordering on panic, “I’ve checked her all over, and there aren’t any other gunshots or anything! I don’t know where she’s hurt…

“Not..hurt,” the striped mare sadi through panting breaths, “the baby! It’s coming!” her face creased with deep lines as what looked like a spasm wracked her whole body. When she opened her eyes again, she was clearly terrified, “it’s too soon,” tears streamed down her face, “it’s too soon!”

Foxglove’s eyes went even wider and she looked over to me, “the gunshot...her body’s trying to get the foal out because of the shock!”

Oh, horseapples.

“What do we do?”

The violet unicorn mare threw up her hooves in surrender, “I don’t know!”

“Well...just, deliver it,” I ventured.

“Deliver it?! Damn it, Windy; I’m a mechanic, not a doctor!”

“Well you have to do something.”

“Me?! Why me?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know. You’re the one who’s had sex and grew up in a Stable. I figure you know something about how making foals works…”

“I...ugh!” the mare threw up her hooves in surrender and crouched down next to the panting zebra, “um...do you feel okay? Maybe try not to breath so hard? You might hyperventilate. Maybe.”

“It’s too soon,” Yatima repeated between breaths, though much more quietly than before; almost like a mantra, “it is much too soon…”

“It’ll be alright,” Foxglove assured the mare, stroking her now sweat soaked coat, “we’ll do...something,” she then looked over at me, her expression betraying her clear lack of any notion of what that ‘something’ might be. I certainly didn’t have any notion. I knew less about how ponies worked than she did. Neither of us really knew anything about medicine or what made ponies tick beyond the basics…

...but Arginine did. My eyes went to the stoic gray stallion who I could not recall having done anything at all during the fight. He and I were going to talk later about his being more helpful in a firefight, but right now he was the closest thing we had to a doctor.

“RG, help her!”

The large stallion narrowed his golden eyes at me, “I do not know anything about birthing foals. I have explained this to you.”

“But you know how ponies work,” I countered, fluttering over and jabbing a hoof pointedly into his chest. I hated that I had to be hovering in order to do this, “you’ve taken enough of them apart,” I growled in a low tone, “so help her!”

He leaned his head to the side and looked past me at the quivering zebra. He studied her for a few moments and then returned his attention to me, “it is possible that a paralytic would stop the muscle contractions and halt the birth,” he suggested. Just as my expression began to become hopeful, he followed up with, “however, we possess no such pharmaceuticals. We cannot stop this.”

“What if we just...hold it in?”

The gray stallion arched his right eyebrow, but said nothing as he continued to stare at me. Yeah, that was a stupid idea.

“Um...guys? It’s coming…” Foxglove informed us, “I can see part of its mane...wait,” Arginine and I turned to look at the pair of mares, “no, it’s the tail,” the unicorn looked up at us, concerned, “I don’t think that’s right…”

Yatima shook her head, speaking between spasms, “no,” she confirmed, growing more anxious now, “it should be hooves first. Something is wron-aagh!” she screamed, convulsing in pain and unable to speak further.”

I swooped down to Foxglove’s side, looking between the two mares, “what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” the unicorn said, gently massaging the zebra’s belly while she glanced at beneath the striped mare’s tail, “but she’s right, I think foals are supposed to come out forehooves-first. That’s definitely a tail though. It’s backwards.”

“Is that bad?”

“Well, it sort of stopped coming out any further,” Foxglove bit her lip, “she’s pushing...but nothing’s happening anymore,” she looked at me, frightened, “I...think it’s stuck.”

“Please,” Yatima begged between ragged breaths, her features contorted with pain, “you must save it! Please!”

“I…” I had no idea what to do. This wasn’t anything that I had any experience with. I looked back at RG, “what do we do? How do we get the foal out of her safely?”

The gray stallion sighed, “I have told you―many times―I have no experience―”

“You know how ponies work!” I screamed at the stallion, zipping up to his face once more, “so let’s hear it Mister Super-Smart-Uber-Pony; how do we get the foal from inside Yatima to outside Yatima, if it’s stuck?”

Arginine glared at me for several long seconds. Indeed, that seemed like it was all that he was willing to do, and I was preparing for another tirade when he supplied an answer, “if the foal is indeed unable to pass through the natural passage, then an alternative is to simply extract the foal surgically.”

“Cut her up,” I said bluntly, looking dumbfounded at the stallion, “you want to cut her up to get it out? That is unacceptable! We’re going to find a way to save them both.”

“No, I think he’s right,” Foxglove said from behind us. I was about to give her a scathing lashing with my tongue for deigning to agree with the murderous mutant pony when she elaborated, “I knew mares in the Stable who’d given birth that way. I don’t know exactly how it was done, but sometimes doctors do have to go ahead and cut into the mare.”

“You can do that?” I asked the violet mare.

“I couldn’t, no,” she shook her head, “I’d have no idea what I was doing. I’d cut an artery or something.”

I looked back at Arginine. He certainly had experience cutting up ponies. The question was, “can you do it without killing her?”

“Hypothetically,” I didn’t like the way that the stallion was stressing that particular qualifier, “I would be able to excise the foal from within the zebra’s womb without causing any significant damage to either her or the unborn foal. Compared to some of the procedures I have undertaken, it would be a relatively simple undertaking.”

“Do it.”

“Why should I do as you command?”

“Because otherwise I’ll pop your head like a yukka-fruit,” I snapped, jabbing my hoof at the pipbuck strapped to my fetlock.

“If you kill me, both the mare and her foal will die,” he pointed out.

“They’ll die if you just stand there like a lump,” I shot back through gritted teeth, “but I’ll sure feel a lot better this way! The real question is if you’re willing to die just to try and spite me?

“I’ve seen ponies die despite everything I could do,” the image of my mother headless corpse flashed through my mind, enticing a tear to begin clawing its way from beneath my eye. I fought it back down, “I’ll get over it,” I continued on in an icy tone, “how well do you think you’ll get over being dead because you wanted to be a stubborn asshole for five seconds?”

The stallion held my gaze for several long moments, all the while my hoof was hovering just about the button that would end his life. Just as I thought he was about to make me push that button and kill my second helpless pony of the day, his amber eyes went to the violet unicorn, “I’ll need your lance,” he said evenly, “you may also want to administer additional doses of analgesic―the Med-X,” he added flatly after the confused look he received from Foxglove.

She picked up her eldritch lance in her magic, but looked to me for final confirmation before actually passing it to the stallion. I nodded and kept back from the trio of ponies. I wasn’t going to be able to be any help here; and I intended to be out of immediate reach of the stallion if he took this as an opportunity to become suddenly treacherous.

Arginine ignited the tip of the lance and studied the glowing cutting implement, “can this be made more precise? The cuts must be kept as narrow as possible if they are to be closed later.”

“Um, yeah, here,” the violet unicorn mare’s horn glowed as she made the adjustments. I saw the glow shrink down into a mere point of light, “that’s about as low as I can go with it and still be stable,” she informed the stallion, “it’s meant to cut metal, not precision surgery.”

“Obviously,” the gray pony frowned, studying the implement closely, “I shall make do,” then he glanced over his shoulder, “but I make no guarantees about the results under these circumstances.”

“Just save them,” I said. If Yatima did end up dying, I probably wouldn’t kill RG. At the end of the day, what was happening right now wasn’t his fault. He was, however, her only hope.

“Injections here, here, and here,” the stallion directed the Med-X syringe that Foxglove had clutched in her emerald magic. The mare gave the injections as indicated, and then the larger stallion set about making his incisions.

I watched as, even with the proportionally comically large cutting tool, the white-maned stallion made quick, deft, slices into the striped abdomen of his impromptu patient. Yatima was still breathing hard and fast, but her groaning had subsided since the last round of painkiller had been administered. Foxglove divided her time between helping Arginine and comforting the distressed mare.

Seeing ponies getting cut up in such a fashion, I learned, was very different from seeing them getting cut up by whirling machetes and flying shrapnel. I was hardly any stranger to blood, guts, and entrails. Disemboweled corpses didn’t even impact my appetite anymore. But watching RG slowly working his way deeper into Yatima’s insides turned my stomach. Perhaps it was because of the dispassionate way the stallion was doing everything. I understood that in Arginine’s case, he truly didn’t care for the zebra or her foal; but it was a little unnerving all the same.

“Cutting into the uterine wall―ugh, naturally,” the stallion gave an exasperated sigh.

“Oh Sweet Celestia!” Foxglove gasped, and hurriedly dove into her saddlebags and began tossing out her cleanest rags and towels and zipping them to the zebra’s abdomen with the telekinesis.

“What?” I perked up, suddenly very aware of how much more anxious the violet unicorn had gotten. I drifted over to get a better look and my heart caught in my throat at the sight of the massive quantity of blood flowing from the zebra, which Foxglove was frantically trying to staunch with her makeshift bandages. The stallion seemed rather nonplussed by the whole affair, “shit! RG, do something!”

“There is nothing to do,” he replied, “it is a placental rupture. It will abate. The zebra is in no danger.”

Foxglove paused, “no danger? There’s blood everywhere!”

“And most of it has already be cleared away, with little returning,” the stallion pointed out. Indeed, I could see that the amount of bleeding had subsided quickly, and was now little more than a trickle, “there was a significant chance of this happening without access to the proper scanning equipment. The procedure is nearly done,” Arginine set back into the mare, the lance bobbing in his golden magical grasp as he continued to enlarge the incision he had made into the uterus, “that should suffice.”

He set the eldritch lance aside and began to gently part the two sides of the cut he had made with a delicate touch of his hooves that I would never have expected from so large a pony. Something from within the opening began to glow with a soft amber light that matched the magical aura around RG’s horn. A few moments later, a tiny pony shape began to emerge from the opening. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t look much like a zebra. It was striped, to be sure, but instead of being white, the little foal’s primary coloration was a deep rust color. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t really have assumed that Yatima had met a zebra out here in the middle of pony territory, should I?

Arginine floated the newborn foal over to Foxglove, who quickly took hold of it in her own magic and sought something clean and dry to wrap it in. Meanwhile, the stallion was sorting out several healing potions, dribbling their contents along the seams that he had cut as he carefully merges both ends together in a makeshift suturing technique, “there will be a significant chance of rupture,” he cautioned, “She should not walk for several days to be safe,” he checked to be sure that I had been paying attention, “I rarely put my patients back together, you understand.”

I grimaced at the reminder, “right. We’ll build something to carry her with,” I started looking around to gauge what we’d have work with where building a carrier was concerned when Foxglove spoke up once more.

“Um, guys? He’s not breathing,” she announced anxiously.

Yatima craned her head around, her eyes wide and frightened “what? No...spirits, no!” She tried to paw her way up onto her hooves to get at the tiny bundle that Foxglove was cradling. Arginine effortlessly kept her down with one powerful hoof on her side, “let me up! Let me up, curse you!” she snapped at the stallion.

“If you move, you will begin to bleed internally and you will die,” he stated firmly, “Miss Windfall had stated that that is an undesirable outcome,” he glanced up at me, seeking confirmation that I wanted him to keep the distressed zebra restrained.

My attention was on Foxglove and the newborn foal though. Dead? It was really been born dead? My heart sank. This was my fault, I realized. She’d gone into premature labor because of a gunshot wound that she’d received when I resisted the Lancers. If I’d cooperated with them…

Yeah, they were going to do all sorts of things to me, and probably Foxglove too, that I didn’t care to think about too in depth, but Yatima probably would have been left mostly alone, being so far along like she was. If for no other reason that because her foal would have represented yet one more pony they could have sold as a slave. Things would have sucked―a lot―but the foal would have lived. My mother survived years as a slave in the clutches of the White Hooves. Surely I could have made it long enough to find a chance to make an escape that wouldn’t have endangered others.

I hadn’t been thinking about that though. I’d just been thinking about how I could get away safely. I’d almost completely forgotten about how vulnerable the zebra was in her condition.

This was my fault.

...I really had killed two innocent ponies today.

No. I wasn’t going to let this happen, “save it, RG,” the stallion quirked a brow and looked at me, “I said: save it!”

He frowned, “you cannot honestly expect―”

“You will shut the fuck up and do what I tell you or I will blow you up right now you piece of shit!” I screamed at the stallion, “you know how ponies work, so make that one work!”

If two ponies were going to die today, what did a third really matter? “Now, RG!” my hoof hovered ominously over the detonation controls on my pipbuck.

The stallion glared at me, keeping his hold on the anxious striped mare, “Miss Foxglove? Please restrain the mother. Then pass me the foal,” The violet mare complied, wrapping herself comfortingly around Yatima and cooing at the frantic mare as she levitated the unmoving foal to the gray stallion. Arginine peered down and began to examine the little lifeless pony.

“Apneic...no flexion,” he mumbled to himself, and then took on a pensive expression, “but...not cyanotic. Hmm,” he bent his head down and placed his right ear to the foal’s chest; an ear which effectively covered the newborn’s entire chest. After a few seconds, he straightened up and then kissed the foal.

No...that wasn’t it. At least, I didn’t think so. For a brief moment, his mouth covered the foal’s whole muzzle and he gave a brief light puff He did this two or three times before pulling away again and vigorously rubbing the little colt between his hooves. As great as the size disparity was between Arginine and the foal, I was once again impressed with how light the stallion’s touch could be.

As I watched the stallion work, I became aware of somepony sobbing nearby. It was Yatima, weeping into Foxglove’s chest, repeatedly stating how much of a fool she had been for leaving Shady Saddles. She wasn’t wrong there. She really should have listened to Sandy and stayed put; but even I knew this was hardly an ideal ‘I told you so’ moment. She’d suffered enough for her mistake, in my opinion. The hard part now was going to be keeping her from finding some way to kill herself before we got to Santa Mara. If she really wasn’t going to be able to walk anywhere for a few days, we certainly weren’t going to take her with us all the way to Seaddle. I hoped she knew somepony in the little waystation of a village who could look after her. Because Foxglove and I weren’t going to be able to just hang around twiddling our hooves while she recovered. We would need to keep going so that we could deliver Arginine’s head to the Princess and get her to commit the Republic to fighting the stallion’s stable.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. So, between the Lancers, that little foal, and now Arginine, I was going to be responsible for the death of six ponies today. I guess, on the average, that was close to a typical body count for me on the days when I had them.

So much from trying to fight fate.

My hoof began to manipulate the controls on the collar’s transmitter that would set off the charges, just as I had promised I would if Arginine failed to revive the foal.

Then I heard a faint little cry.

I perked my ears up and looked at the stallion. He was no longer rubbing the foal, but instead staring at it as the tiny little hooves slowly flailed in the air and its cries grew steadily louder. Foxglove and Yatima were looking up at him as well. The zebra mare was still crying, but her tears had made a rather sudden shift from despair to joy as she extended her hooves eagerly towards her newly revived foal. A golden glow gently deposited the little colt into them and both mares held each other close as they gushed over the little pony.

Arginine looked up from the heartwarming sight, holding my gaze, “satisfied?”

I reset the commands and removed my hoof from the detonation controls. On the whole, no, I wasn’t anywhere close to satisfied. But, right now, at this exact moment, under the circumstances, “it’ll do.”

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Smooth Talker - +1 to Intelligence for the purpose of dialogues.

Woot! 500k words!

Oi...way too much happened this fall. Ran me out of my 3 chapter buffer. Quieted down again, so hopefully I can get back on track and resume posting twice a month.

Tell you what though, you know what's hard? Knowing how to deliver a child, but writing for three characters who don't. It was really hard to parse out what I knew, compared with someone who had never even received what little they teach kids in a high school health and wellness class...

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated

I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around! You can see what I'M capable of, heh; professional assistance is clearly needed here!