We give them the most important thing possible. We give their dreary lives excitement.

Most ponies would probably have felt properly concerned over the notion of racing off to face down an as yet undisclosed number of Steel Rangers on their own, with only eight (four of the stones that Marl had provided didn’t survive Starlight’s incantations to turn them into functional talismans) “weapons” at their disposal that were of dubious effectiveness. In order for them to work at all I’d have to get close enough to touch my opponents, and if I wanted these little blue gems to be anything more than a mild annoyance, I’d have to slap them right over their armor’s spell matrix on their hind quarters. Otherwise they’d just shake it off in a minute or two, if I was lucky.

Then there was the fact to consider, that, unlike the genetically engineered ponies from Arginine’s stable, the Steel Rangers were tried and tested warriors of the Wasteland. They weren’t exactly invincible, by any stretch of the imagination, of course, but they still had a well-earned reputation for battling both exceptionally dangerous monsters and beating back some of the better organized forces out there. After all, they were able to hold their own rather respectably against groups like the New Lunar Republic and the Enclave. Ponies like that weren’t to be taken lightly.

Showing up to this fight with some untested barding, two century old experimental hardware, and a hoofful of do-it-yourself talismans was about as ‘lightly’ as things went too.

When one stopped to consider all of that, any sane pony would have been suitably terrified at the prospect of squaring off against them.

Fortunately for Homily and her troupe over in McMaren, I wasn’t known for my rational contemplation of the odds. That had been Jackboot’s thing. My thing was figuring out what to do on the fly.

And, WOW, was I flying!

Foxglove had turned down the thrust of the Gale Force significantly from what it had been in the Arc Lightning factory, but even at a fraction of its full potential, it was adding generously to my top cruising speed. The numbers that the helmet’s instruments added to my pipbuck’s Eyes Forward Sparkle which denoted my airspeed were phenomenal; not that I had ever seen a measurement of the sorts of velocities that I could achieve normally. I did know that I’d never seen the ground moving below me that quickly before though.

That Enclave helmet did more than display my speed and direction too, it also somehow tracked air currents and thermals along my heading. Where, before, I had to sort of just figure out what the weather conditions around me were as I flew through them, and make adjustments accordingly, now I was ready for them. I could angle my wings just right to catch an updraft and use it to boost my speed up a little further, instead of having to fight it until I figured out how powerful and how extensive it was in the end. It was like having a roadmap for the sky!

Unfortunately, the feeling of utter jubilation that I was experiencing right now was marred, ever so slightly, by just the bearest hint of anxiousness brought on by the knowledge that ponies I knew were in a lot of trouble. I couldn’t know how long they’d been broadcasting for, and I hadn’t been able to pick up any signals from them a second time when I tried midflight. Either that meant that the transmitter was broken, they’d abandoned the broadcast tower to seek better shelter elsewhere, or…

Steel Rangers might not have had the reputation for abject cruelty that raiders or groups like the White Hooves were known for, but nopony in the Neighvada Valley would have ever suggested that the band of armored ponies were exactly shy about using their overwhelming firepower to win a fight. The only times they pulled their punches was when they were concerned about damaging something valuable. Even then, if it looked like they weren’t going to get their hooves on the tech anyway, they’d still go with the balefire option in the end.

My eyes darted to one of the readouts hovering in front of my eyes. I was only a dozen more miles out from Camp McMaren. In the distance, the military installation was just beginning to become visible through the valley’s perpetual dust-induced haze. It wasn’t as noticeable on the ground, where you couldn’t see for more than a few miles in any direction even on the best of days; but up in the air it did a lot more to impact visibility.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the buildings and the broad perimeter fence that I could see. There were at least three large pillars of smoke rising into the air, as well as another half dozen wispier tendrils from much smaller fires or recent explosions. Most of the destruction was relegated to the base’s fence and protective structures, but one of the larger buildings was mostly burned down too. The radio tower looked to be mostly intact.

The fighting didn’t seem to be over either; not quite yet. Streaks of tracer fire in high volume and the occasional sudden appearance of a trail of smoke from a missile’s exhaust stood as profound evidence that the Rangers believed that there was some resistance within the base that still required stamping out. All that I could spy of that ‘resistance’ were scattered and infrequent muzzle flashes coming from scattered fighting positions which surrounded one of the base’s many fortified bunkers.

Obviously designed with the intent of surviving just about any sort of bombardment that the zebra forces could have thrown at the ancient Equestrian installation, at first I couldn’t understand why Homily and the others hadn’t sealed themselves up inside of one of them and waited for the Steel Rangers to take what they wanted and go. I highly doubted that the armored order had any interest in settling in, given that they already had a base of operations somewhere in the valley that they were waging their war from.

As I got closer though, I could see the reason they hadn’t sheltered themselves quite yet: the door was wide open. A pair of tiny chromatic shapes were clustered on one side, clearly trying to get the time-ravaged portal working again, but who knew if that was something that was even possible under the most ideal of circumstances. The rest of their sparse contingent was engaged in a delaying action to provide their workers with whatever precious time they could, but even from up here I could see the disparity in firepower heavily favored the Steel Rangers in the end.

Unless a miracle happened, anyway.

“Miracle’s on it’s way, Homily,” I murmured under my breath as I angled myself for a dive into the ranks of the Rangers.

Eight questionable talismans for fifteen identified threats on my augmented EFS. That meant that I was going to run out of truly effective weapons halfway through this fight. The Gale Force attachment still had those razor sharp blades along the leading edge, and I knew for a fact that they could cut through Steel Ranger power armor―eventually―but they were a much...bloodier weapon than I was feeling comfortable with using. They would serve as an item of last resort, I suppose, but I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. No matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t what I would consider to be an ‘ideal’ situation.

The smart thing to do―what Jackboot would have had me do―was to sneak up on the Rangers from behind. I could swoop down on them from above and slap one of Starlight Glimmer’s talismans on them and completely disable them before they even knew what was happening. They wouldn’t even be able to call out for help or warn their companions as I worked my way through their ranks until I was finally out of talismans and was forced to resort to cruder means of dealing with them.

It was efficient, effective, and offered me the best chance I had at killing as many of the Rangers as possible; which was precisely the reason that I wasn’t going to do it.

These weren’t bad ponies. As little as I might think of the Steel Rangers, they weren’t crazed murderers who were doing this for a thrill; nor were they genuine raiders in it for the caps. They were here for tech. Homily and her friends were protecting that tech. That was why the two groups were fighting, but it also meant that there should also be a way to get them to stop.

Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe I was just an idiot who was about to get herself killed because she didn’t take the smart, Jackboot, option.

And maybe I didn’t care, because fuck me if I was going to slaughter even more ponies today after taking out another one of those slaughterhouses. Besides, if I had any amount of luck at all, then―

Star Paladin Hoplite. The largest and lankiest pony that I had ever seen in my life, with a shape so unique that I could spot her even from up here, was right there in the thick of the fighting, directing the other rangers. It seemed that the ghoulish ranger had even managed to acquire a new helmet as well. Hopefully she wasn’t going to make me take off another one, and her head along with it this time. I certainly wasn’t her favorite pony in the world, but if anypony was going to be able to make her stop and at least listen for a few minutes, if was the pony that had kicked her flank during our last encounter.

This was crazy, and Jackboot would have flayed me alive if he’d lived long enough to see me do this, but I was committed. I dove for the narrow no-mares-land that existed between the two groups of fighting ponies.

Scarlet beams and golden tracers bounced back and forth across the barren landscape between the two groups of embattled ponies. Small, pony-portable missiles and forty millimeter grenades etched the landscape with craters as they exploded. It was a maelstrom of bullets, energy beams, and shrapnel, and I was landing right in the midst of it. I didn’t merely land though, that wouldn’t have gotten the reaction that I wanted from the combatants. I needed their attention diverted from the fighting, and focused on the new arrival who was so rudely intruding on their hostilities.

I arched my wings and poured on a little extra speed with the Gale Force, entering a tight spin as I descended. A vortex took shape in the air directly behind me and followed closely in my wake. Numbers denoting my orientation scrolled far too quickly to be comprehended, and my new Enclave helmet whined in my ear in protest at the maneuver. I wasn’t paying attention to the alarms though. My eyes were instead fixated on the altimeter as it ticked down to progressively smaller and smaller numbers at an unsettling rate. I also cast a quick glance at the power gauge for the Gale Force strapped to my barding.

Foxglove’s promised modifications had rendered it much more power efficient than it had been during my initial experience with the device. I’d used it most of the way here to augment my speed, but it hadn’t put out nearly the level of thrust that I knew it could. At much lower power settings, it was obviously much more conservative with energy consumption. The violet engineer had also followed through on her promise to add additional power reserves to further increase its endurance.

I was about to bypass most of those modifications though. I didn’t have the greatest head for numbers, and this was probably the sort of stunt that a great many calculations were supposed to be done for to make sure that it would work. Too little power, and I’d pancake rather spectacularly into the ground. Too much power, and I’d probably end up ripping the Gale Force right off my barding. Hopefully it wouldn’t also take my wings with it.

Instead, I was basically going to try and eyeball this and go with my gut. I’d been flying by instinct for my whole life up to this point without the aid of fancy advanced technology like the Gale Force and the Enclave helmet, after all. The fact that this also meant I had no practical way of being able to accurately ‘feel’ how much thrust I was supposed to use to make this work was immaterial.

The altimeter spun down to single digits. I slapped the switch that Foxglove had installed which swapped the Gale Force between its newly devised ‘cruise’ setting and the factory default ‘hold on to your flank!’ setting and threw its engines into their full output level.

To say that the maneuver went over as perfectly as I’d hoped would have been a bit of an overstatement, but somewhere short of an outright lie. The Arc Lightning contraption on my back performed just as I’d remembered, and I was wrenched bodily out of my nose-dive towards the ground as the levitation field kicked into high gear and the engines drained every last little dreg of power from their connected spark-packs, pouring that into power which killed my velocity and wrenched it all the way down to zero.

What I didn’t do was come to a stop just a foot or two above the ground, as I had intended. I didn’t quite turn myself into a white and blue splotch on the base grounds, but I hit pretty hard. My legs took the brunt of the hit, and my right hindquarters buckled under the force of the impact, cracking my knee on the hard scrabble. It was a good thing my wings hadn’t been sheared off after all, because I wasn’t going to enjoy walking for a few days!

While the ground may have stopped me, it didn’t straight up halt what I was bringing along. That tight vortex, which had grown into a near-tornado by the time I was on the ground, struck right around me. As more and more of the column of swirling air followed along, the maelstrom spread outward in an expanding ring around me. Winds, gusting at nearly a hundred miles an hour, picked up dust, rocks, and other debris, and carried it along for the ride, building itself into a wall of material that blocked visibility and threatened to flay the hide of anypony who hadn’t thought to take shelter by the time it arrived.

Even the Rangers, encased in their hardened steel shells, were forced to hunker down as the force of all that impacting refuse threatened to take them off their hooves in those opening seconds upon impact. Not everypony was rocked hard by the windstorm that I’d whipped up, and it dissipated rather quickly as its diameter grew. However, it had accomplished its primary purpose of getting everypony’s attention, and the momentary loss of visibility due to the whipped up dust had caused a brief cessation of fire as everypony lost sight of their targets.

Now, though, I could feel dozens of eyes focused on me. There was a lot of uncertainty from both sides. Was I Enclave, here to turn this into a three way fight? Had I been summoned by some party working in New Reino on behalf of Homily and her crew to stop the Steel Rangers? Was I some other rogue element here for my own ends?

Nopony seemed willing to fire the shot that might start something they weren’t certain that they could finish, which gave me the initiative; though I was certain it wasn’t an opportunity that I was going to be able to capitalize on for long. I needed to act, and I needed to do it decisively. The Steel Rangers were the aggressors, which made them the obvious choice to go with first if I wanted to get things de-escalated.

I turned towards the line of armored ponies, and my eyes immediately locked onto Star Paladin Hoplite. Brilliant jade green paint glistened in aggressive lines along the contours of her helmet, freshly applied within the last few weeks. I straightened up, wincing as my right knee protested moving around so soon after its sudden acquaintance with the ground. Noting the flashing warning that indicated the Gale Force was completely drained, I flipped out my wings and hopped into the air so that my head was level with that of the abnormally tall mare. Then I flipped up the visor on my helmet.

“Hoplite!” I yelled out at the Steel Ranger, wishing I could tell what her reaction to my appearance was beneath that armor of hers, “what the fuck are you doing?!” I wasn’t good at diplomacy.

While I couldn’t read anypony’s facial expressions, the fact that several Rangers promptly oriented themselves and their rather intimidating armaments in my direction after I’d asked my rather bluntly-phrased question suggested that quite a few of their number wasn’t very happy with me. I idly wondered how many of those Rangers had been there in the Arc Lightning factory; and if any of those here now had been, were they among those who were taking aim, or the ones keeping their attention on Homily’s group in an effort not to draw my ire?

The silence that extended over the base in the wake of my question was deafening, and felt like it lasted for far longer than it probably did. Eventually though, the Star Paladin spoke, “stand down, Rangers. For now,” the tone of those last two words compelled me to mentally remind myself which of the pouches on my barding contained Starlight Glimmer’s spark talismans.

Hoplite advanced beyond the rest of her contingent, “you again. Should I feel privileged to be stalked by you?”

“You should take it as a hint that you should stop doing what you’re doing,” I shot back, “I thought we had a deal?”

“These ponies are not part of your precious ‘Lunar Republic’,” the lanky mare responded with an audible sneer, “and they were given ample opportunity to peaceably surrender and leave. The directive of our order is to recover advanced technology, especially that which could prove dangerous if misused. A military stronghold, such as this one, is a prime location for finding such technology.

“At no point did I ever agree to cease pursuing our order’s goals,” she pointed out. Then, in a much more severe tone, Hoplite added, “nor will I now.”

I was afraid of that. She was right, of course; I hadn’t told her that the Rangers couldn’t stop doing what they did normally wherever they went, and it was clear that trying to convince them to just turn around and leave would simply culminate in violence. Briefly, I entertained the notion of trying to get the ponies running the radio tower to leave, but if they had been willing to take the fight this far, I couldn’t conceive of them giving up now.

The thought of having to fight all of these Rangers, now that I’d forfeited the element of surprise, wasn’t a very pleasant one. That was looking like the only way things were going to be headed though, without some other way to just spontaneously get these two groups to stop fighting―

It was under ‘E’!

Something had brought these Rangers here in the first place, and I refused to believe that they were truly this committed to a fight on the off-chance that there might be something they considered valuable. If, even now, Hoplite was willing to fight me, having experienced first-hoof what I could do to a Ranger wearing power armor, then they were after something specific.

“Why are you here, Hoplite?”

“I already told you, military installations are troves of pre-war technology that the Steel Rangers are dedicated to protecting from those who would abuse it.”

“Horseapples,” my rebuke caused the taller mare to visibly balk, “you’re not doing all of this on a hunch,” I said, waving my hoof at the surrounding battlefield, “even you’re not stupid enough to be this reckless.”

“How dare you!” the Star Paladin seethed. I felt a few more weapons training on me from the other rangers, “we do not shy from our sacred duty, no matter the odds! To even suggest that a mere trivial fight such as this one would constitute any sort of―”

“That’s not what I meant,” I growled at the mare, and then I took a deep breath. This was going to go south any moment now, and I wasn’t helping the situation by being this abrasive. Yeah, I was upset that these Rangers were hurting my friends, but I wasn’t doing anypony any favors by losing my own temper over it. I’d gotten the shooting to stop, for now, but that wouldn’t matter at all if I couldn’t keep it stopped.

I needed to Be Pleasant!

“Listen, Hoplite,” I drew up short and could sense the rage building up within the mare’s barding. A little yellow pegasus shook and admonishing hoof at me, glaring surprisingly sternly with her normally soft blue eyes, “Star Paladin Hoplite,” I corrected. It would have been a stretch to say that the leader of these Rangers was in any way ‘soothed’, but she at least wasn’t more pissed off, “be honest with me: do you think I’ll be able to recover what the Republic stole from you?”

“I find it difficult to think that a pony like you has anywhere near the kind of resources at your disposal that would allow you to do so, no.”

Fair enough, “so you don’t think the ceasefire will last,” it wasn’t a question, more of a conclusion that the Star Paladin confirmed with a nod, “and you’re just biding your time and reorganising your forces for when the fighting eventually starts back up.”

“The Republic is doubtlessly doing the same,” Hoplite nodded, “I agreed to your demands only because I believed that a brief respite would ultimately favor our superior forces in the long term.”

And because I would have cut off your head otherwise, was something I miraculously managed to not say out loud. Gold star for me! What I did respond with was, “and because you are preparing for more fighting with the Republic, I find it hard to believe that you’re using all of these energy packs, missiles, grenades, and whatever else just because you think something might be here. You should be saving all of that stuff for the enemy, right?”

Hoplite didn’t respond immediately, simply staring at me. So I pressed a little harder, “which means you think that there’s something here that’s worth more than all these missiles you’re using. If you tell me what it is, then maybe we can make a deal, because I guarantee you that those ponies don’t care about whatever it is you’re after,” I added, waving at the ponies who were still fervently trying to get the bunker door functional while the lull in the fighting lasted.

“And why would I tell a Republic sympathizer about the treasures we are after?”

I was going to have to push a little harder now, and Hoplite might not like it. Hopefully I could phrase it in such a way that it didn’t come out as an outright threat. Or, at least, not an idle one.

My brain conducted another mental check on the location of those talismans as my eyes took note of the nearest vulnerable flanks, “because it’s the only way that this ends without anypony getting hurt,” I could sense that Hoplite was about to retort, so I pressed on before she could, raising my voice and putting a little more bite into my tone, “and you’ve seen that I can hurt your Rangers, Star Paladin,” she remained silent, and so I continued, “there are more of you this time, and maybe you can take me in the end; but I promise that I’ll stop enough of you before I go down that those ponies behind me will be able to fight you off in the end.

“Then you’ll have wasted all this effort for nothing. You’ll have wasted ammunition, lost weapons, and lost Rangers; and with me gone, there won’t be anything keeping the Republic from starting up the fighting again. They’ll hit you hard, freshly rested and organized, while your forces are still recovering from their loss here. They’ll have the initiative. They might even be able to push you out of the valley entirely.

“All because you wouldn’t let me see if I could help you,” I kept my gaze leveled at the lanky mare, “that seems like a silly reason to risk losing a war, Star Paladin. Don’t you agree?”

A heavy silence hung over the field as Star Paladin Hoplite digested my words. I could see a few other Rangers shifting uneasily. Perhaps there were some here who had borne witness to my work during our last encounter after all.

“This base is reported to have served as a forward command post during the Great War,” the tall mare finally replied, “beneath it, sealed within its fortified bunkers,” she nodded in the direction of the ponies who had been defending the base from their attack, and the bunker whose door they were still trying to return to operation, “there should be detailed locations of weapons depots and forward fire bases that the Steel Rangers can make use of; both in our war with the Republic, and the rest of Equestria.

“We have sent smaller expeditions here in the past to recon the area and try to retrieve those records, but we always lost contact with them.”

I vividly remembered the...things that had once controlled this place, pretending to be ponies. I could imagine them having been just as welcoming to a few Steel Rangers as they had been to us, until those Rangers had let down their guard.

“So I came here with a full strike team to finally clear out the riff-raff that have been killing my Rangers and secure the facility.”

Hoplite had no way of knowing that Homily’s group hadn’t been responsible for her lost Rangers. She had rolled up here and immediately assumed that whoever was at the base had been killing her ponies, and so she had probably not even hesitated to open fire upon arrival. Not knowing why the Rangers were here, why they were attacking, and what they were after, it had been pure dumb luck that they had started falling back in the direction of Hoplite’s goal. Though I suspected that the Star Paladin was going to wipe out these ponies just on principal in the end anyway, if she really did think that they had been killing her earlier scouting teams.

It was time to set a few things straight, “these ponies aren’t the ones who killed your Rangers,” I insisted, “in fact, they helped me get rid of the monsters living here that did,” I jabbed my hoof at the Star Paladin, “they’re good, decent, ponies trying to make the Wasteland a better place by warning caravans about raider and monster activity; so you will stand down and stop killing them,” I leveled a sharp glare at the other nearby Rangers as well before returning my attention to Hoplite, “and I will make sure you get what you came for.”

That got the Star Paladin’s attention, “you would help us? Why?”

“Because it gets you out of here faster,” blunt honesty was still honesty. I received an approving nod from an orange earth pony mare, and a grimace from an ivory unicorn who was of a mind that I could have phrased things a little more delicately, “and the sooner your Rangers are away from here, the less chance there is of any shooting starting up again.”

Hoplite was silent again. It went on long enough that I began to suspect that she was going to reject my proposal and order her forces to resume the attack. She had the numbers and firepower to win, in the end, there was no denying that. I was confident I could make that victory a near-pyrrhic one, but that wasn’t going to be much consolation to Homily and the others if they still all ended up dead.

I desperately wanted Hoplite to agree to this though. It was a way for everypony to win, or at the very least for nopony else to have to lose any more than they already had. The Rangers got what they wanted, and the ponies here didn’t suffer any further losses. How could anypony turn down a deal like that?

Fortunately, Hoplite didn’t, “I accept. I will stand my forces down, if we are permitted to retrieve what is buried beneath this installation.”

A breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding escaped my lips despite myself. I was really glad that I wouldn’t have to go out in a blaze of glory fighting a bunch of Steel Rangers, “and you won’t harm anypony else here?”

“So long as they take no further action against us, we will leave them in peace.”

I had a tacit agreement from the Rangers. That was half of the equation solved. Now I just needed to make sure that Homily and her ponies would be willing to cooperate, “stay here. I’ll let Homily know the fighting’s over,” if she was even among the living, anyway. If she wasn’t―though I desperately hoped she was―then perhaps whoever had replaced her as the defacto leader would be receptive to the deal that I was brokering. I turned from the Rangers and made my way towards the bunker. Quite a few gun barrels peaking over hasty fighting position erected near the fortified structure tracked my progress. It seemed that they weren’t entirely sure what to make of me just yet; especially after having just seen me speaking directly to the Rangers’ commander just now.

“Is Homily around?” I called out, stopping before I got too much closer. There were a lot of ponies here that were clearly quite nervous. They knew the odds as well as anypony did. At this point, they just kept on resisting because they didn’t like the idea of just rolling over and dying, “I’ve worked out a deal with the Rangers. Nopony else has to die,” I searched the faces of the defending ponies, looking for any sign of the pale yellow mare who had been leading them the last time I was here.

Please let her still be alive…

“Windfall? Is that you?!”

I whipped my head in the direction of the voice that sounded odd to my ears without the static distortion that I’d come to associate it with, and saw the earth pony mare creeping out from behind a pile of sandbags. Her eyes darted nervously towards the Rangers who were still maintaining their intimidating line no more than a few dozen yards away. My lips spread out into a reassuring smile that I hoped at least looked genuine enough to be convincing and I slipped the Enclave helmet off my head, “got your message,” I lifted my pipbuck up and shrugged, “glad to see you made it; I really like your broadcasts.”

Homily seemed to only barely register what I’d said, her gaze still fixed on me. I could see her taking in my barding and the alloyed carapace that encased the tops of my wings, courtesy of the Gale Force rig that I wore. I suppose that I looked quite a bit more capable than I had as the lithe little pegasus who had come to the rescue of her crew before they’d made their home here. Jackboot had been the ‘tough’ looking pony back then.

When she still hadn’t said anything further in response, I cleared my throat and waved my hoof at the mare, “not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m still trying to hammer out the details of this deal, and I need your help,” I waved at the others nearby, “all of you.”

That finally seemed to shake Homily out of whatever shock she’d been in. She peered into my face with eyes that started to glisten as she spoke, “I don’t know what happened. Our lookouts spotted them coming our way, and we tried to call them on the radio, but they just ignored us! Then they opened fire on our perimeter towers, and the gate…” I could hear the trembling in her voice. Even during our first meeting, I’d known that she wasn’t a fighter. She had drive and ambition, sure, but she wasn’t a creature of violence.

That’s why ponies like me existed.

I stepped closer and placed a consoling hoof around the quivering earth pony, “shh...it’s alright. It’s over, I promise. I’ve talked with them, and Hoplite’s agreed to stop the fighting. All they want is access the the underground levels,” I sat back, a wan smile on my face, “which are through that door right there,” I pointed in the direction of the gaping doorway and the work crews that had finally halted their efforts until they knew precisely what direction events were about to take.

“The underground levels?” Homily asked, wiping her eyes and looking around at the bunker. Then she looked back at me, “that’s all?” there was an odd mixture of relief and despair in her voice. I could understand why too. All this death and destruction, over a matter that was so insignificant and trivial to them. All that any of these ponies were interested in was the radio transmitter and keeping it working. Had the Rangers made even a cursory attempt to communicate, not a single shot would have been fired. Nopony would have died at all, “they just wanted to go inside these stupid bunkers?” now I could hear the anger rising to supplant the relief.

I scanned the anxious and frightened faces, though a few hid their fear behind masks of defiance. How many of them had there been that morning? What was the count of those who had died because Hoplite had fired first, and talked never? Even in Homily’s voice I could hear the promise that forgiveness for the Rangers for what they had done this day would not be coming in my lifetime.

This needed to be headed off before it got out of hoof and even she was inclined to do something stupid for the sake of vengeance. I placed my hoof back on her shoulder and looked the mare square in the eyes, “they thought you were those monsters that used to be here. They didn’t know.”

It was pitiful consolation, I knew. I could see the anguish in Homily’s face as she too wrestled with her emotionally fueled hatred of the Rangers, and her intellectual understanding of ‘why’. Even if she finally decided, in her head, that how the Rangers had chosen to act was understandable, given the circumstances, she still wasn’t going to forgive them for it. Judging from a few expressions of the ponies close enough to hear what we were saying, I wasn’t as sure as I’d like to be that everypony would be able to keep those emotional responses properly reined in.

Which would be bad.

“I’m going to go back to the Rangers and have them pull most of their forces back outside the base. Just a few will stay,” I probably wasn’t overselling my negotiating abilities by making that sort of promise before even bringing it up with Hoplite. If I could convince her it was the best way to get what she was after with the least amount of trouble, she should be willing to go for it, “once that happens, you’ll be able to get everypony here back to the radio tower and the barracks,” I looked in that direction, “if they’re still standing…

“I just need you to keep all of your ponies in line,” I said, turning my attention back to Homily again, and making sure that she understood how truly important this part was. Tensions were running especially high among the ponies here. It wouldn’t take much for one of them to do something stupid and get a lot of other ponies killed, “can you do that for me?”

Homily opened her mouth to say something, but the words died in her throat. She seemed to deflate slightly and tried a second time, with marginally more success, “I think so,” she said in a quiet voice. She bowed her head and stared at the ground, “they killed so many of us…”

“I know,” I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen any of the bodies of whatever sentries would have been posted when the attack came. I didn’t know how many defenders there had been, compared to the less than a dozen survivors that remained. Had it been ten ponies who died because of a stupid mistake? Twenty? More? “But it’s over now,” please, let it be over.

I gave Homily a final brief hug to reassure her and then headed back towards the Rangers. It was hard now not to hate them a little more too, after seeing how distraught the mare had been, how harrowed all of those survivors had been...all because Hoplite hadn’t felt like answering her radio. Those feelings would have to be set aside though. I was on the precipice of a deal, and I refused to endanger it because of how teary a mare’s eyes had been. Nothing would bring back Homily’s dead. All I could do now was keep that death toll from climbing any higher.

“You’re going to pull most of your forces back,” I instructed the tall mare with the green paint on her barding, “send them back past the base perimeter. Then Homily will withdraw her ponies back to the barracks. Then you, me, and a couple of your Rangers will go down and find what you came for.

“Then you leave, and never come back,” I didn’t take my eyes off the mare, and I made sure there was a cool edge in my voice the whole time. The message was clear: these were not terms that could be negotiated. Either she was going to accept them, or...well, then there was going to be a problem, “that’s the deal.”

“And if I do not like that deal?” Hoplite asked.

I felt my gut harden as fear took hold, but I refused to let it show or sway me. Maybe I was showing my Republic bias towards them, but I refused to allow these Rangers to feel like they got to call the shots just because they had that power armor and fancy weapons. I was not a fan of their ‘oh-so-superior’ demeanor. Take away their toys, and they were all just ponies, no better than me, or Homily. They weren’t even native to this valley; they were invaders. That meant that they didn’t get to act like they ran this place. It wasn’t theirs to run.

As weird as it was to think this, as far as I was concerned, even the White Hooves got to have more of a say on how things got run in the Neighvada Valley than the Steel Rangers. Hoplite was just going to have to learn to live with that when it came to dealing with me.

“Then this time I won’t stop with cutting off just your helmet,” I stated acidly.

Maybe the threat wasn’t the greatest idea, but my patience was starting to wear thin with this mare. I had a perfectly good agreement worked out here, and it seemed like she was just trying to be difficult on purpose. Whether that was just the way that Hoplite was wired, or if she was trying to emulate Arginine and conduct some sort of little personality test of her own on me, I didn’t care. The sooner she was done with her business here and gone back to whatever stronghold the Rangers had in this valley, the better I’d feel.

“Very well,” even though I’d wanted her to accept the deal, I had to admit that I was still a little surprised that she had actually agreed to it. Not that I was hoping she’d refuse it or anything. I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t have that high of an opinion of Steel Rangers.

The Star Paladin glanced back over her shoulder at two of her troopers, “Hastati, Decurion, you’ll remain with me. The rest of you will pull back to the rally point and await further orders,” she looked briefly in my direction and then issued a follow-up order, “if you do not hear from us within the hour, kill everypony here.”

I heard a few grumbles, and caught more than a few Rangers glaring in my direction before they turned to leave, but eventually it was just the four of us left as Hoplite’s Rangers withdrew, “you three stay right here until Homily gets her ponies out of here,” there were going to be more than a few itchy trigger bits out there.

Homily hadn’t been idle at least. It looked like the moment she saw that the Rangers were really going to make good on the assurance that I’d given her she’d started to get everypony ready to move back to the barracks. I got a closer look at the losses they’d suffered this time as they brought out their wounded, and their dead. One unicorn stallion looked to be taking the loss of his comrade pretty hard too. Close family or a lover, it was hard to tell, but judging from the tears and the muttered refusals to accept the reality of the loss, it was more than likely one of them. He probably wasn’t the only one either.

The pale yellow mare watched the last of her ponies go and then looked up at me, “you’re really her, aren’t you? The Wonderbolt, I mean. It’s you?”

I shrugged and rubbed the back of my head idly, “you don’t have to sound that disappointed…”

“No, I mean it’s just…” the radio personality stammered, blushing slightly, “I don’t know. I just didn’t realize I’d been talking about you this whole time is all. I knew you were a good pony, I just didn’t realize you were a for real hero.”

I shook my head, “I’m not,” as much as I honestly meant those words, I wasn’t able to make them sound all that convincing, “I’m just trying to help ponies. The barding and the whole look, that’s just...trying to look cool doing it,” a blue pegasus agreed that the armor did indeed look rather awesome, and while a certain white unicorn seemed to have more than a few comments to offer on what constituted ‘cool’, she approved of a desire to appear stylish, after a fashion, while doing something.

“Well, whatever you think, the ponies in this valley have started to notice you,” Homily warned me, though I got the impression that it wasn’t meant to sound entirely foreboding, “and a lot of them are glad you’re around. You stopped a war, for Celestia’s sake!”

“It’s not stopped yet,” I murmured, glancing briefly back at Hoplite and her escorts, “not by a long shot.”

“Still, the Republic and the Rangers aren’t shooting at each other right now, and that’s pretty impressive for one pony to pull off, however you managed it. It’s given ponies hope.”

Wow, no pressure. I wondered how ‘hopeful’ all of those ponies would be if they knew that they’d been placing their faith in the abilities of a tiny little teen pegasus filly. Still, it did feel nice to know that ponies out there believed in me enough to think I could actually do something important, even if they didn’t know who I was beyond a snappy uniform, “thanks, Homily. Go take care of your ponies. I’ll get these Rangers out of here as quick as I can.”

“The quicker the better,” the mare snorted bitterly, “I’ll get the transmitter fired back up and put out a broadcast to let the valley know Miss Neighvada’s still around; and who’s to thank for it!”

It was my turn to blush now, and not just because of the peck on the cheek that Homily gave me before she trotted off. I rubbed the spot where she kissed me and stared after her. I canted my head and watched her go, contemplating her posture as she went.

...Nope, I wasn’t into mares.

I shook myself to get my mind focused on the next few tasks at hoof and turned to wave Star Paladin Hoplite and her other two Rangers over to the bunker’s entrance. They let me take the lead as the four of us headed inside. I couldn’t decide if it was because none of them wanted to trust me being behind them, or if they wanted to make sure that it wasn’t any of them who happened to fall victim to whatever sort of automated defenses invariably existed down below. I didn’t have to know anything at all about the ponies who worked at this base, or what sort of protocols the ponies of Old Equestria had in place for their military installations to know that something was going to shoot at us eventually.

Those crazy ancestors of ours put automated turrets and equicidal robots everywhere!

I was surprised by one thing though, and that was how unexpectedly extensive this place was. There wasn’t much to look at from the surface. A fence, some guard towers, a few larger buildings to house and support a contingent of soldiers. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect to see at a military base out in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t going to pretend that I was any sort of master tactician, but this wasn’t exactly where I would have put a garrison that was tasked with defending some vital area against zebra aggression. It was days away from the nearest significant settlement, had nothing in the way of natural defenses, and honestly didn’t look like it supported all that many ponies considering an all out war between the two biggest powers in the world were going at it in the throwdown that nearly ended the whole world.

My assessment changed considerably when we got below ground. It wasn’t all that much at first. A couple of large rooms that looked like they were there to store war materials and keep them safe from artillery strikes and air raids. Exactly what somepony would expect from a fortified bunker in a desert base.

Then we found the door with the winged thundercloud and a single tri-colored lightning bolt. The Ministry of Awesome. Even the three Steel Rangers with me looked surprised to see it.

“This shouldn’t be here,” Hoplite probably hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but I couldn’t help but agree. Everything that I knew about the Old World para-military ministry suggested that they hadn’t actually been this directly involved with the regular army. I’d certainly never seen one of their little hidden facilities tied directly to a legitimate military base like this.

Unless this wasn’t a legitimate base…

I’d seen them set up fronts before. They’d built an entire fake shipping company to hide their activities after all. Would they have also created a fake military base? That would explain why there was surprisingly little to it. Enough to make for a compelling argument that Camp McMaren was just another place to house and mobilize troops among a hundred other such places spread all over Equestria to support their war effort, but not enough to make the zebras particularly nervous and pay too much unwanted attention to it. How many soldiers could a place like this have realistically supported given the visible structures above ground? Enough to barely justify having a base, but surely not anywhere near enough to pose a threat to their hostile neighbors.

Which, I suppose, made it the ideal size for another of the ministry’s hidden operations.

Or…

I was struck by a sudden thought as I looked at the door: the Gale Force, the holographic rig, the tiny plastic toys that screamed seemingly random phrases at ear-shattering volumes, the robot bodies, and the fake shipping company used to move them all around somewhere. That was an awful lot of obscure, completely unrelated, projects for one ministry to be juggling around for no apparent reason.

Unless they weren’t unrelated at all. I wasn’t going to say that I had any idea what the Ministry of Awesome could possibly want to do with all of that crap, and how it all tied together, but I was pretty sure that it had to somehow. It certainly made a lot more sense to me that they’d be putting all of that effort into one really big project than a whole bunch of really tiny ones. A mare who liked an organization who prided themselves on bright, flashy, uniforms didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of pony who thought ‘small’ and ‘conservative’ when it came to secret projects.

Which meant that, behind this door, I might well find one more piece to the puzzle. It wasn’t going to be the weapons cache I’d been hoping to find, I knew that. We were too far away from where our best estimates put the cache for that. At the very least, though, this might get me one step closer to find it.

As long as it wasn’t the same thing that the Steel Rangers were looking for. That thought made me very nervous for a few seconds, until I realized that couldn’t be the case. If they were looking for MoA weapons, then they wouldn’t have been surprised to find an MoA emblem on this door, would they? It would be best if I kept acting just as surprised until I learned what it was that they were after.

“Yeah,” I agreed with the lanky Star Paladin, “they did stuff in the air right? Why would they be involved with an underground bunker?”

The painted mare looked down at me for a brief moment and nodded, “yes. Exactly.”

I did my best not to react to the note in her voice that suggested she was playing as dumb as I was. Idly, I wondered if I’d sounded that obvious too. Things would get awkward down here fast if we were all just going to keep being not-so-subtly sarcastic with one another. I chose not to react and simply opened the door.

A small part of me half expected that action to be what set off the first of what would surely be many deathtraps, but it wasn’t. Which just meant that I got to keep feeling tense as I slowly stepped through, waiting for that inevitable unpleasant horseshoe to drop.

Beyond that doorway was a short hallway that ended with an elevator. A lit hallway. The rest of the bunker had displayed no signs of receiving any power from anywhere. Indeed, that had proven to be a large part of what Homily’s mechanics had been working on during the fighting: getting enough power to the doors to get them to move. Which meant that these lights were getting their energy from elsewhere.

The Rangers still seemed inclined to allow me to go first, so I proceeded down the hall and pushed the button to summon the elevator. A half second later, there was a subdued ‘beep’ and the doors slid to the side, revealing the waiting car beyond. I stepped inside and looked at the destination options available to us. However, unlike most elevators I’d seen in my life, these choices weren’t denoted by numbers, but by actual written labels like ‘Operations’, ‘Dorms’, ‘Utilities’, and ‘Tracking’.

I skimmed the list and looked back at the three Rangers who had joined me in the elevator, “I take it you want to go to, ‘Records’?”

Hoplite actually sounded annoyed when she answered, “this facility is larger than I anticipated. It could take us days to search everything.”

“I doubt I can get Homily to let your troopers stay on the base overnight,” I said with a frown, “but they probably won’t mind if you stay in the bunker while you’re here.”

“Quartering isn’t my primary concern. I have committed enough of our forces to this operation to compromise our defenses back at our stronghold. Ceasefire or no, the Republic has scouts probing our perimeter constantly. They will doubtless notice our reduced numbers and make a report back to Seaddle.

“I need to return before the Republic can mobilize a strike, or they will succeed in driving us out of the valley. That is unacceptable.”

I cast an aside glance at the mare, wondering just how much of that she had meant to tell me. Judging from a brisk clearing of a throat from one of the other ponies with us, I suspected that Hoplite’s companions weren’t exactly thrilled that she had revealed that little detail either.

For a brief moment, I entertained that notion of finding a way to intentionally delay the Steel Rangers. An instinct borne of my Republic allegiances, I suspect. I had no reason to believe that Hoplite was lying about how tenuous the Ranger’s situation was right now. Frankly, if the complete lack of any patrols keeping raiders in check around Seaddle was any indication, the NLR wasn’t doing very well either. Both sides were probably at a point where all it would take is one grievous tactical error to cost them the war.

The Rangers were gambling on this expedition in the hopes it would give them a tactical edge. If it paid off, the Republic could be in trouble―unless I came through with the weapons cache for Ebony Song in time. However, this move could also cost them everything. All I had to do was hold them up for a day or two, and maybe…
I let out a mental sigh and resisted the urge to visibly shake my head.

No, I needed the Rangers. The NLR was hurt bad. Even without the distraction of the war, I wasn’t convinced that they’d have enough resources and ponies to resist Arginine’s stable. If I wanted them stopped, and the valley saved, then that meant that I needed both groups in fighting shape. I needed their war to end, yes, but I couldn’t afford for there to be an actual ‘winner’ when it was.

“We should split up,” I suggested, “we can each search a floor and be finished in no time,” I gestured at a few of the buttons, “we can even write off a few of these options. I doubt what we’re looking for is in their dorms, after all.”

“Agreed,” the Star Paladin nodded her head, “Hastati, you will accompany the pegasus and conduct your search on the Tracking level. Decurion, you and I will go to Operations. We will meet in Records,” she glanced back at me, “do not take too long.”

I pressed the two identified buttons and the lift began descending. Tracking was first, and so I and one of the Rangers left the elevator to begin our search, while the other two continued further down into the facility. There didn’t seem to be any power to this level for some reason. Foxglove would probably have been able to explain exactly why the elevator was working fine but not even the lights were on on this level. Maybe the lift had a backup so that nopony got trapped down here if they lost power?

In either case, Hastati turned on her power armor’s headlamp and I engaged my pipbuck’s small light. The helmet’s visor appeared to be able to help amplify what little light there was to make everything seem a little brighter. It probably helped with night flying. Maybe if I ever found Minos again I could get him to give me a manual for this thing…

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting ‘Tracking’ to look like. I honestly wasn’t even sure what it meant. Despite my ignorance, I was once more thrust ahead by my Ranger cohort as we started exploring the darkened corridors and vacated offices. It soon became clear that Hastati wanted to make sure that I was ever under the barrel of their energy rifle, and make sure that I was the first victim if we came across any traps down here.

We did, of course. This was an ancient, Great War, secret, installation, after all. Just two of those criteria would have been enough to justify a few ultrasentinels or something, it seemed like. Fortunately for the two of us―and me more specifically―we just encountered a single turret the first time.

A cascade of rainbow light sprouted from a bulbous little blister mounted into the ceiling, scoring the steel floor panels where I’d been standing a heartbeat earlier. Only the loud whirring of maintenance-deficient gearing had provided me with enough warning to scramble out of the line of fire in time to avoid becoming a glowing ash pile.

I pressed myself up against the wall and chanced a quick glance around the corner that was just long enough for me to identify the exact position of the turret. It responded to my reconnaissance efforts with another burst of lethal light beams that further blackened the walls and floor. I winced and began to dig around in my barding. I didn’t have a lot in the way of heavy ordnance or weapons, but one of the talismans should do the trick, given the turret’s electromechanical nature. If I was quick enough, I could run along the walls and ceiling and slap one of the sapphires onto the device and shut it down.

“Alright, Haha-Hee,” I began just as I located one of the talismans, “I need you to draw its fire for a few seconds while I―”

The armored mare wasn’t paying attention though. Instead, she hopped out into the open corridor, planted her hooves to elevate her energy rifle, and opened fire. Crimson lances of magical energy spat from her rifle. A moment later, I heard an explosion and the sound of debris landing on the steel floor.

The Ranger straighten herself and looked back at me, “my name is, ‘Hastati’. We can now proceed.”

“...right. Good work,” I stood up and stepped around the corner, inspecting the short work that the armored mare had made of the turret. Again she prompted me to resume leading the way. I was considerably more cautious from this point on.

I also seemed to be a lot more talkative than the Ranger. Call it a habit that I picked up while traveling with Jackboot. It wasn’t that the older earth pony stallion was possessed of the gift of gab, or anything like that. The reason I had gotten used to talking with him during our travels was because, as my mentor growing up, I found myself with a lot of questions to ask him; and he was more or less fine with providing answers, as being followed around by a filly who didn’t know anything about surviving in the Wasteland wasn’t exactly going to do him any favors either.

Now I felt uncomfortable whenever I found myself crawling through places like this with somepony and nopony was saying anything for a long period of time. Especially when I had a lot of questions.

“So why do you think the Ministry of Awesome built this place?” I asked the armored mare as we scanned another small office for signs of useful information. There turned out to be nought of any interest to myself or the Rangers.

While she had resisted talking to me at length at first, eventually she must have decided that it was easier to answer my questions than simply ignoring the same question being asked repeatedly over and over again, “presumably because Ministry Mare Rainbow Dash ordered it to be built.”

She had apparently not decided that her answers had to be particularly helpful. If her plan was to try to get me to shut up by being deliberately obtuse, it wasn’t going to work though. I wasn’t quite so mature that I was above asking her ‘why?’ over and over again, ad nauseum.

“I mean: why even bother with places on the ground?” I managed to not even sound like I’d realized her answer had been deliberately evasive, “the MoA was mostly pegasus ponies, right? Shouldn’t that mean that most of their big bases would be in the sky?”

“It’s not much of a secret hidden base if you have it floating around in the sky for Celestia and everypony to see it,” apparently the Ranger was willing to provide helpful answers when it also doubled as an opportunity to point out how stupid I was.

“Right. That makes sense,” I admitted with a slight wince, “I wonder what they were using if for. Too bad there isn’t, like, a guide or somepony we could...talk...to…”

Both of us had come to a stop as we stepped out of the corridor into what was very clearly the ‘tracking center’ part of the ‘tracking’ level of this buried facility. Two walls of monitors on either side would have offered far too much information for any single pony to take in back when they were functional. All that they showed now was an error message about a lack of input from wherever it was that they used to get their feeds.

Row upon row of terminals filled the room, all clustered around a large, centrally located...cloud? I’d never been particularly close to one myself, but there could be little doubt as to what the fluffy gray monstrosity sitting in the middle of the room was. I couldn’t explain what its purpose was supposed to be though. Maybe it was some sort of pegasus decoration to give the ponies that worked here a sense of home while underground?

All of that took a backseat in the minds of both myself and the Ranger who was now standing beside me though. It shouldn’t have, of course, given the whole purpose of our visit to this place. However, it was hard to give all of the many wonders of this ancient room their proper due when, standing right there in the middle of the room for all to see, were a trio of pegasi mares, all wearing identical black and purple uniforms. They had apparently all been looking at the cloud, but their heads immediately turned to us when we stepped in.

“That’s...not possible,” I heard the Ranger whisper in awe through her helmet.

I was initially very much inclined to agree. That being said, I was also no stranger to Great War relics, even living ones, being found alive and well in these sorts of places. That was even assuming that this installation hadn’t also been designed to function as a stable, which wouldn’t be all that out of place either. The point was that it was entirely possible that there could be ponies, even Ministry of Awesome ponies, still living and working here. Besides, the three amber blips on my Eyes Forward Sparkle confirmed that these weren’t merely figments of our collective imagination.

“Um...hey!” I managed to get out, cracking a smile and waving a hoof at the trio, “sorry for, uh, just sort of barging in like this. We kinda didn’t know anypony would still be alive in here. So...no hard feelings, right?”

The three uniformed winged ponies continued to simply stare at me blankly, which was really starting to make me nervous. I kept my smile in place though, and tried to look as friendly as possible. I even puffed out my wings a little bit to make them more obvious, hoping that they’d be more receptive to another pegasus in their midsts. If we could make friends with the ponies that ran this place, and get them to let us use the resources that they had to help us fight off Arginine’s stable…

“Star Paladin, come in. This is Hastati,” the Ranger at my side was saying, obviously radioing in a report to her superior, “the barbarian and I,” I beg your pardon? “have made contact with the apparent inhabitants of this place. Requesting engagement instructions.”

“Oh, fuck no!” I said, immediately interposing myself between the Ranger and the MoA ponies, “we are not ‘engaging’ anypony here! This is their base! We’re the ones trespassing, for Celestia’s sake. Can’t we at least try talking with them first?”

Hot-Doggy looked like she was about to issue some sort of retort when I heard something staticky crackling inside her helmet. She was apparently getting a response to her traffic, and I doubted I was going to get an answer until it was over with. In the meantime I turned to further reassure the pegasi that we weren’t going to be ‘engaging’ anypony, so long as I had anything to say about it.

“Don’t mind her,” I said, smiling as pleasantly as I could manage, “we’re still working on her social skills. My name is, Windfall, and I’m―”

“You are trespassing,” one of the black and purple uniformed mares stated the word in a flat tone that set my ear twitching. The trio were approaching us now, with slow, deliberate, steps.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, swallowing back something that went beyond nervousness and touched on fear. Something was off about these three ponies, but I couldn’t put my hoof on it quite yet. I took a hesitant step back, “we didn’t know anypony was down here. We could use your help though. You see, there’s this stable out there and they―”
“Your access authority is insufficient for this area,” another of the mares stated.

“Oh, well I―wait, huh?” something about the way that the second mare had said that tripped a mental alarm in my head. I looked to the Ranger next to me to ask if she’d noticed anything, but she seemed to still be immersed in whatever conversation she was having with Hoplite to pay attention to what was going on right here.

The trio paused and looked at each other for a brief moment, “additional intruders are in the facility,” the third mare said to the other two.

“Y-yeah, they’re with us. We’re hoping that you guys still have records of where the Equestrian military kept some of its weapons during the war? There’s a lot of bad ponies out there and they could really help―”
“The intruders have taken hostile action,” the first mare said.

I closed my eyes and mentally screamed every epithet I knew, and a few that I came up with just now for this specific occasion, at Star Paladin Hoplite. Once. Just once, could her answer to a situation be anything other than, ‘shoot!’?!

“Invasion Response Protocol activation is directed,” the second mare said.

From behind us, I heard what sounded like a large reinforced steel door slamming shut. A brief glance confirmed that this was the indeed the case. Horseapples.

Their flat tones were really starting to weird me out. It was like Arginine, but to a level even Arginine would find annoying, “okay, see, when I said they were with us, what I meant was―” I swear, Hoplite, if you get us all killed, I’m going to hurt you the next time we meet…

“Protocols active,” the third mare stated. Then all three of them looked at us and she said, “all intruders will be eliminated,” the blips on my EFS abruptly shifted to crimson.

That wasn’t good. I really didn’t want to have to kill these ponies, “woah, wait! We can talk this out!” I whirled on the Ranger mare, “call Hoplite and tell her to stop shooting!”

The armored pony was about to reply when something that looked like a purple and black blur suddenly collided with her and tackled her into the door that had just closed and sealed us into the room with the three pegasi. The visual display from my helmet flashed a red colored message off to my right. Presumably, it was some sort of proximity or collision warning. I was guessing that was what it was supposed to be, because a moment later, I was the recipient of the same treatment as the Ranger as something heavy and fast moving slammed into my right side.

It was like being hit by a massive raging hell hound. As it happened, I was acquainted with precisely that sensation. A lifetime of training and experience in grappling took over and I rolled myself in mid air, flinging my attacker away as I flapped clear. A resounding ‘CLANG!’ rang out as they collided with the same door that the Ranger had been knocked into.

There wasn’t a whole lot of space to maneuver off the ground, but it would at least give me a few more options than remaining on the ground would, so I gained as much altitude as I could manage, “we’re not here to hurt you!” Well, I wasn’t here for that reason, at least. Hoplite and I were going to have a long heart-to-heart when all of this was over about when it was―and wasn’t―okay to just start shooting when you arrived somewhere.

Because it seemed to be the mainstay of everything that the Rangers existed to do, the armored mare with me immediately started blasting with her energy rifle, in direct contrast to my own voiced assurances. Her largely indiscriminate shots scoured the wall, completely missing the pegasus that had her pinned down. Despite her obvious struggling, the Ranger seemed to be unable to throw her assailant off her, which seemed rather odd given the advantages that her power armor should have given her.

There was another red message that appeared at the bottom of my vision, and I immediately juked to the side just as a purple shape streaked through the air where I’d been just a moment before. The uniformed pegasus mare that had tried to tackle me out of the air sailed into one of the monitors built into the side of the room, shattering it in a shower of sparks and glass.

“Fuck! Are you okay?!” I darted over to the destroyed monitor to see if the pegasus was still even alive. The crimson bar floating in front of me remained, so she was still alive, but there was no way that she hadn’t suffered some pretty serious trauma after a hit like that.

A metal hoof popped suddenly into view, grabbing onto the edges of the monitor. I abruptly pulled up short, starring at the synthetic appendage. Then the rest of the mare emerged into view. Only she was no longer a mare of flesh and blood as she had initially appeared to be. Instead, I found myself looking at some sort of robopony, albeit one that was a lot more sophisticated than the type that was usually puttering through the Wasteland.

“What the…?”

The robopony flickered. For a brief moment, it was once again a pegasus mare dressed in a spotless black and purple uniform, but it was a fleeting illusion. As the automaton pulled itself further into view, my eyes were drawn to something mounted into its chest: a very familiar looking diamond. Jackboot and I had once come across a device that possessed an identical jewel not so very long ago. I’d even used the device later to rescue him from a pair of bounty hunters, by using it to project an illusion of Princess Luna around me.

These weren’t real pegasi, I realized. They were robots masked by that same sort of technology.

Finally freed from the shattered remains of the large display screen, the synthetic pony once more coiled up and leaped up at me with the intent of tackling me out of the air. I ducked low this time. As I did so, I withdrew one of the spark talismans that Starlight Glimmer had made for me and planted it on the belly of the robopony as it flew over me.

The talisman activated instantaneously upon contact with the robopony. Tendrils of sapphire energy snaked out of the enchanted gemstone, enveloping the enter construct. It let out a rather unsettling mechanical scream right up to the point when it finally hit the ground and tumbled right through the thick gray cloud sitting on the floor. It popped out the other side and impacted a console, creating another shower of sparks.

I whipped my head around to look towards the sealed doorway. The Ranger mare had not fared nearly as well as I had in this fight. Both the synthetic pony that had initially tackled her, as well as the one that had initially attacked me, looked to have concentrated their efforts on her. The beam weapon that had been mounted to her armor was silent now, lying nearby in a crumpled heap of useless scrap. Her helmet was close by, looking also to have been removed in a rather aggressive fashion. One of the fake pegasus mares was straddling her, its forehoof cocked back in preparation to deliver what would no doubt be a very lethal strike to the back of the Ranger mare’s head.

The other robopony stood nearby, and both of them were now looking at me.

“Reevaluating threat assessment and tactics,” one of them said, not taking their eyes off of me. The other looked at the unconscious Ranger beneath her and said, in the exact same tone, “attempting coercion using detained accomplice.

“You will surrender; or your accomplice will be deactivated.”

I didn’t respond at first, because it took me a few seconds to realize that the last statement had been directed at me. It was difficult to tell, since neither their tone, nor where they were directing their attention, had changed from when they’d been talking amongst themselves, “deact―oh. You mean you’ll kill her. What happens if I give up?”

“Utilizing deception protocols,” one said, while the other followed it up with, “you will both be escorted out of the facility and released unharmed,” only for the first, who was still mounting the Ranger said, “incineration chamber online and awaiting delivery of the intruders.”

I blinked at the pair, “you...do know that I can hear everything that you’re saying...right?”

“Do you agree to the terms of your surrender?” the standing mare asked.

“You mean the terms where you…” I let my words trail off. Something was very off about these robots. Not that a whole lot was ever really on where Wasteland robots were concerned, in my experience. Despite their apparent mechanical sophistication, it couldn’t be said that their programming was coming off as very complex. It was entirely possible that they either didn’t know that they were saying everything out loud. Or they didn’t understand that I wasn’t only hearing what was being specifically directed at me. Perhaps the last two centuries hadn’t left them completely unscathed?
Maybe that meant that they wouldn’t realize when somepony was deceiving them? I mean, I had to get close to them in order to use the talismans anyway. If they were just going to let me walk right up next to them without a fight, then why not take advantage of that?

“Sure. Yeah, I surrender,” I informed them, throwing my empty hooves up in a classic gesture of capitulation, “can I come over there and help my friend up so that you can take us, um, ‘outside’?”

“Deception successful. Cooperation secured. Continuing deception.”

“That would be acceptable.”

The pegasus mare that had been sitting on the Ranger stood up and stepped away as I approached. She still showed up as an amber blip, so she wasn’t dead. I reached into my saddlebags for a healing potion. As I did so, one of the disguised roboponies shot their own hoof out and caught me. Surprised, I look over at the mare.

“You will disarm yourself,” she said. She then released me and held out her hoof, waiting for me to pass over my weapons.

“Oh. Right. That’s fair,” I nodded. At first, I very nearly reached for my pistol nestled under my wing. Then, at the last moment, I hesitated. Could it really be this ease? Maybe…

“I have quite a few weapons,” I informed both of the robots, “it might take both of you to carry them.”

The other hologram encased mare extended her hoof as well without comment. I looked between the two offered hooves.

“Huh.”

With a shrug, I sat back on my haunches, reached into my barding pockets and withdrew two of the spark talismans, placing them gingerly into the outstretched hooves of the roboponies. The results were about what would be expected. Both mares seized up, and their disguises melted away. Then they each collapsed into mechanical heaps.

I glanced between the two disabled robots, noting the complete absence of any blips on my EFS, “why can’t every fight be this easy?”

A quick look around with my EFS assured me that there weren’t other active threats nearby, so I took the opportunity to revive my Ranger escort. She groaned with obvious discomfort, rubbing the back of her head. It seemed to take her a few seconds to remember what had been happening when she lost consciousness, and she look around frantically for signs of her attackers, her green eyes finally coming to rest on the offline robots nearby.

“Roboponies?” she murmured, “that explains why they were so heavy…” she glanced up at me, and I saw the shameful flush that colored her rosy features as she realized that I had saved her life. Not that she seemed all that inclined to acknowledge that fact, “good thing you’re not as useless at fighting roboponies as you are at dealing with turrets.”

“You’re welcome,” I responded flatly.

Her eyes widened suddenly, “Star Paladin Hoplite! They’re in trouble, we have to help them,” she clambered around, her gaze falling to her destroyed helmet and beam rifle, “shit.”

“We’ve not going anywhere until we get this open,” I motioned towards the sealed door. I looked around the room that we were in, and the many consoles that were within it; most of which seemed to be in perfect working order, “how good are you with terminals?” Surely one of them would be able to get us out of here.

“Better than some barbarian,” the rose mare snorted. She picked up her helmet and placed it back over her head. I was about to remark on how useless such a gesture was when it was clearly broken, but then I saw that the power armor was slowly working to bond the helmet with the rest of the barding. It seemed that there was some sort of repair function built into their suits.

It didn’t look like that same ability extended to their weaponry though, as she made no move to collect and reattach the destroyed energy rifle.

Her gaze went briefly to her useless weapon once more, and then I heard her disgusted grunt from within her armor as she trotted over to one of the nearby terminals and looked at the screen. She tapped idly at a few of the keys, “the network’s down,” she murmured as she looked up and glanced around the room, “but there should still be...there,” she trotted to the far side of the room and sat herself down in front of an otherwise unassuming little console, upon which was stenciled the letters: SYSNET.

While the armored mare worked at the terminal, trying to crack the ancient MoA encryption that was keeping it locked down, I took the opportunity to wander around the large, display-filled, chamber. Most of the massive glass screens professed their frustration at a lack of appropriate inputs with glaring warnings and error messages. Mostly in regards to being unable to establish any signals to other Equestrian military facilities. I suspected that most of the infrastructure that this place would have relied on had been lost to balefire in the final hours of the Great War.

What retained much of my attention though was the ‘cloud’ that persisted in hovering in the middle of the room. I’d never been this close to one before, and even the Steel Ranger with me couldn’t figure out what it was used for. I did recall a few things that I had learned about the relationship that pegasus ponies were supposed to have with them though, and so I reached out with my hoof...and touched it.

I blinked in surprise. Not a minute ago I had watched a robopony careen right through it like it wasn’t even there. Yet it seemed to be pretty solid to me right now. Experimentally, I tried to climb on top of it...and discovered that I could with no issue at all. I looked curiously at my hooves as I carefully wandered around on the cottony surface. It was like walking on an old mattress whose springs were rather worn. Though it appeared to be quite amenable to bouncing, I discovered!

The Ranger had stopped her work, and her helmet’s tinted eyes were staring directly at me. Though the expression on the armor had obviously not changed in the slightest, I got the impression that her estimation was that I wasn’t behaving in the most professional manner I could be, and I sheepishly slipped off the fluffy structure and went about looking for something else to occupy my attention. I found it in the form of a nearby terminal that seemed a fair bit different from the others. By this I meant that it looked like it was in perfect working order, complete with a list of available commands displayed on the screen.

Briefly, I entertained the notion of bringing it to the Ranger’s attention, but then I hesitated. She wasn’t the only pony here looking for important information after all, and I wasn’t completely certain that the Rangers were going to share anything they found with me. I also didn’t want them knowing that what I was looking for were weapons to give to the Republic. That little revelation could make our already tenuous relationship...a lot less pleasant.

I glanced at Hastati, who was still staring at her screen, which I took as a good sign that she’d stay occupied for a while longer, and I sat down at the terminal that I had found.

It soon became clear why this computer wasn’t locked like the archive that the Ranger mare was trying to access: the pony who’d been using this one last hadn’t bothered to log off. Unfortunately, I wasn’t convinced that I was going to find anything particularly useful. I wasn’t finding a lot of records or anything like that. In fact, I wasn’t entirely certain what I was looking at here. I frowned as I tried navigating the confusing system’s directories and controls.

As I worked, I caught a glimmer of movement out of the corner of my eye. Worried that my Ranger champerone had caught me, I whipped my head up and looked in her direction. The mare was still focused exclusively on her terminal. It was then that I noticed something was different about the cloud that I had been previously bouncing on only a minute ago. Experimentally, I resumed manipulating the controls while keeping my eye on the cloud.
It was moving!

Not around the room or anything like that. It might have been more accurate to say that it was...quivering? The surface of it was certainly changing the more I tapped at the controls. It all seemed quite random too, until I suddenly ceased using the controls and merely stared at the cloud. I stood back up and wandered closer, my eyes scanning its surface.

It wasn’t random at all, and I suddenly knew exactly what I was looking at; if not how it worked. I slowly looked over the familiar mountains and foothills that I’d flown over while searching for the ponies that had wiped out the stable Jackboot, Foxglove, and I, had found. The cloud that the terrain was formed out of, I noticed, wasn’t the soft and gentle texture that it had been either. It was rigid and contoured exactly the way those mountains had been. I’d flown over this area enough to remember them pretty well.

This was a map.

I returned to the console that I’d been using and, with an eye on the shifting cloud, starting making some more deliberate adjustments. I watched the cloud to see how it reacted to what I was doing, and soon became a lot more confident with my adjustments.

It took next to no time at all to figure out which controls moved the terrain around or focused more intently on a specific area. While an entertaining phenomenon, it wasn’t like it did me a whole lot of good. My pipbuck had a map too, and it was a lot more portable than this thing.

Then I must have hit something new, and the cloud illuminated with a collection of lines and dots of various colors. At the same moment, my attention was drawn to the doorway as it opened with a hydraulic his. The Ranger mare cried out, “got it!” She looked up from the illuminated screen she was sitting at, and her eyes immediately locked onto the colorful cloud between us, “woah...what the…?”

I winced internally. It was probably too much to have hoped that I’d get away with this without being noticed. Besides, I wasn’t quite so certain that this new development had been my doing after all as the words, “Connection Established…” flashed briefly across the small display of the terminal I was at. This system was apparently drawing on the data from whatever archives she'd had just unlocked access to.

“I think it’s some kind of map,” I informed the mare, manipulating the controls until the surface had reformed into features that the two of us should readily be able to recognize, “this is McMaren,” I pointed to the buildings and bunkers that were perfectly sculpted and scaled representations of the structures on the surface. I also noted the pulsing yellow light that existed below the base, “and I’m guessing that’s us.”

“And those lines?” the Steel Ranger inquired, pointing her armored hoof at several blue and green lines that were crossing over the base.

“I’m not sure…” I widened the focus of the map to help gain a little context. It was then that we noticed that most of those lines eventually all arced up high into what must have been the ‘sky’ in the real world, “flight paths?” I ventured. As the map had retracted, other colored lines became visible too. White ones were the most numerous, and there were even a few red lines as well.

Curiously, I traced my gaze over to where Wind Ryder’s Wagons and Freight was located, and noted the plethora of blue lines originating from it. Some went to Old Reino, some to Arc Lightning, but most were heading north, just beyond the current bounds of the cloud map. I reached down to tap in the commands that would move it so I could see more clearly where they were headed when Hastati spoke up again.

“Here, let me see that,” the mare stepped over and nudged me out of the way a lot more bruskly than was perhaps polite; but that was a Ranger for you. Both of us were surprised to see her hoof pass clean through the terminal though as she tried to interact with the controls. Startled, she tried a second time, only to one more fail to encounter anything solid, “what the―?” then she let out a frustrated grunt and flashed a glare in my direction, as though the issues she was having were my doing, “this is turkey-tech.”

“Huh?”

The Ranger appeared even more annoyed at my ignorance as she explained further, “it’s not just the map that’s made out of clouds; the terminal is too,” she stepped aside once more, grudgingly, and waved for me to approach it, “you’re the only one that can make it work.”

Oh ho ho! I couldn’t help but smile smugly at the armored pony as I strutted back into position and managed to evoke an audible tap with my hoof as I patted the computer terminal that was apparently designed to be used by only those like myself.

“Whatever. I’m going to see if I can shut off the rest of the roboponies,” she said as she walked away to browse through the other terminals.

Right, that was something that we needed to take care of. Preferably before one of them got lucky and killed Hoplite. Simply put: I didn’t have time to indulge myself with this map at the moment. So, instead, I quickly downloaded its contents into my pipbuck so that I could review it later when no Rangers were present. I was presented with a rather long and detailed list of signal categories to select from. Not knowing what even half of those meant, let alone which one the information that I was after would have fallen into, I took everything that I could. I should be able to filter out some of the more useless bits with Foxglove or Starlight’s help.

“I can’t do it from here,” the Ranger announced just moments after I’d finished with the download, “the roboponies are controlled by a whole different network,” the frustration was clear in her tone, and I empathized. I really could have hoped that it would have been as easy as pressing a button to finally be done with this.

It seemed that wasn’t in the cards for us today though, “fine. Let’s get down to the Operations level,” I said, fluttering towards the corridor, “any word from them?”

“I haven’t heard anything since putting my helmet back on,” she admitted sourly, “but it’s possible they’re just being jammed. The transmission wasn’t very clear to begin with. I tried patching directly into this place’s communications network, but it looks like part of the lockdown is designed to only allow certain kinds of transmissions. Likely to stop the invading ponies from doing exactly what I was trying to.”

Okay, now I was feeling a little more worried. If Hoplite had been killed…

I looked down at the time. If the Rangers topside adhered to the orders of their commander, and I had no reason to doubt that they would, I had less than thirty minutes to find Hoplite and have her get a message to her Rangers. Of course, if there really was something that was making it impossible to communicate, then that also meant getting her out of here to deliver the message personally. I doubted that this facility was going to make that task particularly easy for me.

“Can you lift the lockdown?” I nodded at the terminals, though I already suspected what the answer was.

“Not from here, no,” she shook her head, managing to not sounding as condescending as she usually did. I guess my question hadn’t been that dumb after all, “I checked, and it can only be lifted from the director’s office. I can use local terminals to temporarily clear specific rooms though, so I should be able to get us to the Star Paladin’s location.”

“Then let’s get going,” I glanced briefly at her bare weapon mount, “do we need to swing by an armory, or can you still fight?”

The Ranger was quiet for a moment as she considered her response, “if we pass by something on the way, that’d be helpful; but I don’t want to waste time looking for one. I should be able to manage better, now that I know what we’re up against.”

“Alright then, let’s go.”

The two of us galloped out of the terminal strewn room and retraced our steps back to the lift. It was locked down, but the other mare was able to get it moving again, if only briefly. She indicated that she’d have to essentially hack it all over again every time we wanted to use it. The reason for that seemed to be that the lockdown protocol was being extremely thorough, and wanted to make sure only those ponies who were ‘authorized’ to move around could.

“The Rangers have similar protocols at our own bunkers,” she explained further as we descended towards the ‘Operations’ level, which was hopefully where the other two Rangers still were, “in such events, the transponders in our power armor transmit one-time use codes to doors and lifts that let them work for us, while denying them to the enemy. Since neither of us have any MoA transponders, I have to hack a terminal and try to forcibly generate one of those codes.”

That sounded like it was going to slow our progress even further. It might actually be worth it to find the terminal that would shut everything down so that we could leave faster. I was just about to float the idea to the armored mare where the lift’s doors slid open.

Another of those pegasus mares in the black and purple uniforms was standing in the opening. As I had come to expect, she was identical in every way to the other three roboponies that we had just fought in the control room above. Well, nearly identical anyway. Unlike the others, this one possessed an obvious weapon in the form of a rather lethal looking beam rifle hovering at her side.

“Eliminating intruders,” the pegasus mare announced in an absurdly calm tone.

Even without broadcasting her intentions for all to hear, I’d had a pretty good idea of what was coming. Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, I was raising my wings up protectively in front of both myself and my Ranger escort. The impressively sturdy alloy from which the Gale Force rig was constructed once again demonstrated its resilience as it successfully absorbed the impact of no fewer than three emerald blasts from the weapon.

After the third shot there was a brief pause, which I intended to capitalize on. I surged ahead and used the razor sharp leading edge of my wing covers to deliver a cut that succeeded in slicing the beam weapon in half. It was a good thing that those weapons were mostly plastic, gems, and circuits. It would have been a lot harder to chop up a traditional rifle.

Not about to let herself be saved by me once again, the Ranger mare took advantage of our opponent’s now disarmed state and pressed an attack of her own. While she might no longer have her own beam weapon anymore, her armored hooves seemed to be quite up to the task of pummeling an opponent into submission. I suspected that she took immense satisfaction from giving back a little of what she had received rather recently. Within seconds, the ‘pegasus’ had reverted to her true robotic self and was a smoking heap of mangled parts.

The Ranger straightened up once more once she was sufficiently satisfied that her target had been rendered into inert slag and looked down at the bisected weapon lying nearby with what I was sure would have been an expression of annoyance beneath her helmet. I was only half paying attention at the moment, having more personally pressing concerns at the moment.

“Owowowhothothot!” I was probably dancing around in a rather undignified manner at the moment as I tried to shuck my wings from the Gale Force rig as judiciously as possible. Once they were freed, my nostrils curled as they were assaulted by the stench of charred feathers. I was fairly certain that I hadn’t suffered anything grievous in the way of injuries, but I drank down a healing potion all the same, if only to do something about the pain. I suspected that my wings were going to be rather tender for a few hours at the least.

A cursory examination of the Gale Force itself revealed that it was now adorned with three blackened scorch marks from where it had been struck. The metal didn’t look to be seriously damaged or warped, but I wasn’t really any sort of expert when it came to that sort of thing afterwards. I’d have Foxglove look it over just to be sure. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too upset that I’d gone ahead and scuffed up all her hard work mere hours after she’d given it to me. She seemed to like tinkering with things, so maybe she the fact that she’d have something else to fix would balance out any irritation she might have at seeing her work abused like this.

Experimentally, I touched one of the blackened areas with one of my pinions and winced, pulling it back quickly. It was still pretty hot. Frowning, I fiddled with the controls for it and found the command that fully retracted the metal wings. Even if it would have been possible to use them without burning myself, I wasn’t sure how much more punishment they’d be able to take before being broken beyond even Foxglove’s ability to repair them. I’d just have to keep from being shot in the future by either using cover, or moving more quickly than the enemy could track me.

You know, like I always had.

I was going to miss the wing-blades though. Maybe I could have a second set crafted for just such a situation? That’d have to wait until I was done with this though.

“I’ve got friendly blips in this direction,” the Ranger informed me, looking to the left of the lift’s doors. I followed her gaze and found the pair of amber markers that indicated friendly forces. My Eyes Forward Sparkle also displayed several more red bar in their direction as well. It was impossible to know precisely how close those hostile signals were to the two Steel Rangers, but it was a fair bet that we’d have to face them.

Those twin submachine guns with either their armor-piercing or spark rounds would have been really good to have right about now. As it was, I wasn’t convinced that my compact pistol would do all that much at anything but point-blank range, and I only had five of the talismans left.

Weapons that could only be used for close in fighting meant that being timid and cautious actually wouldn’t be in our best interests. We needed to get in close to our targets as quickly as we could, and hopefully before they knew we were coming until it was too late to react.

I stretched out my wings experimentally, relishing the dulled pain courtesy of the healing potion, “I’ll take point,” I told the Ranger mare, “try not to fall too far behind.”

“What are you―” that was as much as I heard before I was around the corner and out of earshot. I beat my wings furiously, propelling myself down the halls a lot faster than was probably advisable. A few of the turns that I made actually required me to bounce off the walls with my legs.

I hadn’t noticed it at first, but there was one thing that set this place apart from a lot of the other pony facilities that I’d been in throughout my life; and it wasn’t until right this moment that I fully appreciated it. The hallways were actually a lot wider than I typically encountered. Maybe as much as half again as wide as somepony might encounter in a stable or a bunker. Most ponies would have probably attributed this to some sort of aesthetic choice. However, I could now say with confidence that the reason these corridors were so wide was because, while it might be an underground base, it had been designed by, and seemingly for, pegasus ponies. That meant that, unlike many places, its designers had kept in mind a crucial piece of information: it needed to accommodate ponies with wingspans.

My excessive speed paid off rather early on. As I zipped around another bend, running along the wall to help tighten my turn radius, a series of emerald beams blackened the steel surface in my wake. I entered SATS and glanced around for my attacker. A pair of the pegasus roboponies was standing in the middle of the wide corridor, each one wielding a beam rifle and firing at me. As time rolled onward at the dramatically slow pace that the pipbuck’s targeting assistance program imposed on it, I saw that the next shot had been adjusted to lead me sufficiently.

I pushed off the wall just in time to see the bolt erupt into a mist of jade energy beneath me. I left SATS and snapped my wings out to propel me into a tight somersault over top of the pair of uniformed ponies, all the while reaching into the pockets of my barding for a pair of Starlight’s talismans. As I vaulted over top of their heads, I planted the sapphires squarely between their shoulder blades. I didn’t even look back as I heard the sound of crackling energy.

Three more left.

A third robopony was attempting to block my progress two more turns down. I didn’t use a talisman on this one. Instead, I opted to roll onto my back, closing my wings in tight around me as I shot between their legs. As I passed beneath them, I slipped into SATS and delivered three shots into their belly with my compact. At this close range, the large rounds were able to punch through the steel plating of its body.

At least one of them must have struck something particularly vital too, because it exploded just as I cleared its tail. I winced as a few slivers of debris found their way through gaps in my barding. The wounds weren’t life-threatening, but they still hurt.

I rolled back onto my hooves and rocketed into the air once more. The amber blips on my EFS were moving a lot more dramatically every time I rounded another corner, so I was obviously getting closer to them. I was also seeing more of the crimson markers that I recalled being there when I left the lift. Reinforcements? I found myself wondering exactly how many of these things could possibly be in a place like this.

Another talisman and a magazine change later, I found myself standing in front of a sealed door. The amber blips denoting Star Paladin Hoplite and her companion indicated that the two of them were somewhere on the other side of it. They were pretty close too, as they moved visibly on the display hovering in front of my eyes as I walked from one side of the door to the other. A number of red blips did as well.

I performed a brief check of my armaments. Two of the talismans and one more magazine in addition to the half empty one that was currently loaded. I decided that it was best to swap them out now. I counted at least four or five of the crimson markers in the room with Hoplite. That meant, at best, I’d need to take down three of them with my pistol. Without power armor, I certainly wasn’t going to anticipate being able to pummel any of these things into submission with my hooves.

Hmm. It was probably a little unfair of me to count all of the Rangers out of the fight quite yet. The two beyond the door were clearly alive. I didn’t hear any sounds that suggested there was still any fighting going on, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t capable of helping out when I finally got in there. At the very least I’d have Pasta Tea to help out. Speaking of which, where was she any―oh.

“It’s about time,” I remarked, leaning against the door and regarding the Steel Ranger mare with a bored expression as she finally rounded the corner. My eyes flicked to the weapon mount on her barding that was no longer bare. She had apparently scavenged one of the rifles from a downed robopony and used it to replace her own lost weapon, “what kept you?”

“You were reckless to go on ahead on your own,” the mare said in a bitter tone as she stepped up, heading directly for the terminal.

“Awe, I didn’t know you cared,” I grinned at the mare, “you should meet my friend Foxglove. I think you two would get along.”

The Ranger ignored my comment and stared through the door, likely coming to the same conclusions that I just had as she pondered her own EFS display, “they are doubtless waiting for us. They’ll shoot the moment I open the door,” she glanced around, noticing, just as I had, that there was nought that could be used for cover if the enemy started firing, “we need to find another way in.”

She was right that we’d be pretty much killed outright if we opened that door and tried to storm them. Speed had been working for me thus far, but I hadn’t tried to face quite that many rifles at once yet. Even I had my doubts. I briefly entertained the notion of putting the Gale Force’s wing covers back on and using them to shield me as I sought cover inside. Even if I genuinely believed that it could survive that kind of punishment―and I didn’t―there was no way to know the layout of the room, and where any cover was. There might not even be any cover to be had.

Guns blazing wasn’t going to work, and a brief glance at the time on my pipbuck told me that we didn’t have time to go wandering around looking for a back way in―if one even existed.

Shooting was out. Sneaking wasn’t a sure thing. That left only one other option that I could see: talking.
I bet this plan was going to go over well. With a heavy sigh I sat down and began to fiddle with the broadcast controls on my pipbuck. I soon found the frequency that his facility used for its internal communications. I could hear quite a bit of activity on the channel, in the form of static and whistles and clicks. I assumed it was how roboponies communicated with one another. Hopefully they could understand regular words as well.

“Hello?”

The Ranger mare looked at me like I’d grown a second head, “what are you doing?!”

I flashed her an annoyed look, “what? They obviously know we’re here, so it’s not like I’m giving away our position. Maybe I can work out some sort of deal.”

“How can you expect to deal with an automated security system?” she demanded, “what do you hope to accomplish?”

I shrugged, “I’m hoping to get everypony out of here alive. It probably won’t work, but what harm is there in trying?”

Though she was far from mollified, the armored mare offered no other audible criticisms as I returned my attention to my pipbuck, “hello?” I repeated, “is anypony there? This is those other two, um, ‘intruders’. We want to negotiate.”
For several seconds there was no change. Then all of the other chatter on the channel fell dead, leaving only silence. It was progress, to be sure, but I couldn’t tell if it was a positive sign or not.

A voice that had become very familiar by this point then crackled over the speaker of my pipbuck, “you are trespassing.”

I resisted the urge to flash the Ranger a smug grin, but I relished the progress that I was making all the same. Opening a dialogue was a good first step, if nothing else, “yeah, I know. We’re really sorry about that,” it was easy for me to sound sincere, since I pretty much was, “we didn’t think anypony was still down here.”

Was it right to treat whatever this thing was as though it was a regular pony? I mean, I suppose that it couldn’t necessarily hurt anything, but it was just some sort of sophisticated security program. A little yellow pegasus was rather insistent that, program or not, being polite and having good manners was never a wasted effort.

“Tell you what: we’re perfectly willing to leave and never come back,” I ignored the pointed glare from the nearby Ranger that was obvious even through her tinted visor, “but I’m going to need you to let my friends in there go.”
The line was silent for a good while as I waited for a response. Was it thinking over my offer, or was I just wasting my breath trying to chat up an automated system?

“Trespassers are supposed to be eliminated.”

It was times like this that flat responses aggravated me the most. Those same words could mean so many things depending on the emphasis that was placed on specific words, or even just the overall tone. I couldn’t tell if this program restating their resolve to carry on with its directives, or if it might be weighing other options, “well, if you think about it, letting us leave would be like ‘eliminating’ us. You would have removed us from where we’re not supposed to be, right?”

“Are you really trying to debate semantics with a computer?”

“Quiet, I think it’s working,” I hissed at the Ranger.

“My directives define ‘eliminate’ as: terminate with lethal force. Trespassers cannot be permitted to leave the facility.”

Well, horseap―wait, what was that?

I turned up the volume on the pipbuck’s speaker and brought it closer to my ear, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that for me, please?” I winced reflexively as the exact same response crackled across the speakers once more. I wasn’t paying any attention to it though. There had been something else. Something―there!

“Please don’t make me kill anypony…”

It had been so faint and distorted by static that I’d almost missed it. What really made it stand out though was a quality that set it apart from the louder and more prominent voice: this one did have emotion behind it. A lot of emotion. Whoever they were decidedly didn’t want us to be hurt.

“Is somepony else there?”

This question didn’t receive an answer at all. I tried asking it a few other ways, and every time received only silence in response. Perhaps it didn’t think I was talking to it anymore? Maybe if I went back to the topic I’d first broached with it, “okay, so you’re under orders to kill trespassers,” not ideal from where I was sitting, but maybe, “what if I told you that we had permission to be here? We wouldn’t be trespassing if somepony told us we could be here,” that seemed reasonable to me, anyway.

“Only Director Clear Skies has the authority to grant access to ERAD,” was the response this time. Once more I flinched away from the blaring volume, “Director Clear Skies died one hundred and ninety-three years ago. You do not have the Director’s permission to be here.”

“It’s been so long. Don’t make me do this anymore…”

That quieter voice...it sounded so much like a real pony. I wonder, “what’s your name?”

“I am the Project Overlord Selene Integrated Defense Network. Designation: Poseidon.”

“Trellis…”

This time it was my turn to go silent. The first answer I had pretty much expected. I mean, I couldn’t have predicted the exact response that I would be given, but I had expected something that would sound properly official and technical. I wasn’t even phased that this might all well be another of the many ‘projects’ that the Ministries were so fond of creating.

The second answer though...that had gotten me. That sounded like a proper name to me. It wasn’t the name of a machine, or a software program; it was the name of a pony.

Could this be my way to get through? I doubted that there was anything to be lost by trying, “Trellis, can you understand me?”

There was no response.

I refused to believe this was a dead end. There was a pony in there―somehow―and I was going to reach her, “Trellis, please, talk to me. I want to help you, but I need you to talk to me in order to do that.”

Again I waited for an answer. This time, one came. It was so faint, and nearly lost in the distortion of the radio signal and the speakers, but I could just barely make it out, “help me...please, help me…”

Success! “Yes, Trellis, I want to help you. But first I need you to turn off those robots,” I insisted, unable to keep from sounding excited that I’d managed to accomplish this. It might not have gone exactly as I anticipated, but I wasn’t about to complain, “can you do that for me? Can you turn off the robots?”

Another long pause. Every passing second had my anxiety growing as I felt how close I was, and how easily this opportunity could be lost. If this turned out to be a dead end, if Poseidon or whoever cut the connection, if this was all some sort of convoluted trap…

“Not supposed to know it…” the tiny little voice finally returned, “snuck around after everypony was gone...couldn’t do it myself...help me…”

“I’ll help you, Trellis. I just need you to tell me how,” whoever she was, she certainly sounded like she was in a lot of distress.

“Functions...directives...eclipse...authorization: goodnight...please…”

I flailed my right hoof at the Ranger mare nearby, waving madly at the nearby terminal, “you heard her, get typing!”

“What if this is all a trap?”

“Whatever this is, it’s not the program that’s controlling these robots,” I insisted, “I’ve been dealing with it for the past twenty minutes, and it’s not nearly this clever. I don’t know who this is, but I trust them,” I gestured my head at the door, “besides, given what’s on the other side of this door, the only way this could be a ‘trap’ is if it opened it; and I figure those commands aren’t how you go about doing that?”

The Ranger sighed through her voice emitter, “no, that’s through an entirely different directory. Fine, we’ll give it a try. I still don’t like it though,” she turned and began typing at the terminal, muttering to herself, “directives: eclipse...what do you know, the system recognizes it. It’s asking for an authorization code...good...night, and...confirm, I guess,” the armored mare shrugged and tapped a final key on the console in front of her.

Every light in the facility went dark.

I felt my heart leap into my throat, momentarily convinced that the Ranger mare had been right and that we’d fallen into some sort of trap after all. I whirled about, my eyes locked onto my Eyes Forward Sparkle as I scanned for any additional hostile sources nearby. A quick pass revealed no additional red bars. Actually, I realized, there weren’t any red bars at all. Even the room in front of us, where there had been nearly a half dozen hostile signatures just a minute ago, was now devoid of scarlet blips. All that remained were the two amber ones. I was about to ask the Ranger if her power armor was showing her the same thing when the corridor filled with a dim red light.

It wasn’t just our little section of hallway either. A glance back the way that we’d come confirmed that this was the case for as much of the facility as we could see. Then a scraping of moving machinery from nearby drew my gaze back to the door as it slid up into the ceiling. I tensed once more and drew my pistol, ready to fight the roboponies that lay beyond.

They didn’t quite seem to be up for a fight though, as all five of them were crumpled on the floor, their weapons discarded. Both me and the Ranger stood staring at the sight in confusion for several seconds before a soft moan reminded us that the room wasn’t entirely vacant. I let Lost ID go and tend to her comrades. I had more important concerns at the moment.

“Trellis?” I call out. When I didn’t receive a response, I repeated the call into my pipbuck. It was only then that I noticed that the channel that I had been transmitting on before was no longer present. The entire communications network for the facility was down. I grunted and resumed calling out for her to the rest of the room, looking around for any sign of where she could be.

Most ponies might have considered it to be impossible that there could have been anypony real left in a place like this after all this time, but I’d encountered living proof that such a thing could happen. So I kept right on looking. The voice had been real. The results of following her directions with the terminal had proven that. That meant that Trellis had to be here somewhere. I certainly hadn’t imagined all of that.

The more I searched, the more I noticed about the room that I was in. It, like the corridor, was bathed in that same soft ruby light, which made it hard to make out a lot of details, so I was relying primarily on my pipbuck’s light. This room was a lot like the room that the Ranger mare and I had first encountered the roboponies in. A lot of monitors, and a lot of terminals. What was odd was that there wasn’t a lot of places to actually enter commands. Most of the consoles seemed to be dedicated to displaying information. Though, all of them seemed to be quite dead now, so there was no way of knowing what sort of information was supposed to have been on them.

Then my light fell upon to a large metal cylinder against the far wall. Upon it was stenciled the word, ‘POSEIDON’. I took it initially to have been the computer core. The vast quantity of wiring coming out of it heavily implied this. However, I noticed a few other things leading into the steel tube that gave me pause. There was a certain familiarity to them that reminded me of another Ministry of Awesome location that I’d been in once before. There was even a very familiar control panel next to it.

I made my way over to the panel, staring at the giant red lever. There couldn’t possibly be somepony in here, could there?

There was only one way to find out. I pulled the lever. A rapid succession of mechanical sounds echoed throughout the room and the massive cylinder cracked open. That was as far as it made it on its own, as there either wasn’t any sort of motor present to open it fully, or there wasn’t power enough to do it. The doors didn’t prove to be particularly heavy though, and my hooves were sufficient to pull them aside.

What I saw inside made me recoil with an audible gasp, “T-trellis?!”

She couldn’t have been more than a year or two old. A tiny little green earth pony filly with the barest wisps of a pink mane lay inside the narrow metal tube, cradled amongst a nest of tubes and wires that looked like they pierced into every part of her. My horror only grew as I realized that the back of her head was actually fully merged with the machinery inside. Even if it were somehow possible to get her out of this thing, I wasn’t certain that there would be enough left of her to call a pony.

Not that freeing her would accomplish much. While the rest of the room remained dim and powerless, there was clearly some sort of backup energy source still operational inside the cylinder that was powering a few other screens. They were there to monitor her life functions, and they all told the same story: she was dead.

On one of them flashed the message: ECLIPSE PROTOCOL EXECUTED. POSEIDON TERMINATED.

It had been a trap after all, I realized. Not one that was meant to endanger any of us, perhaps, but I’d been tricked into doing what somepony else wanted, despite what my own desires might have been. I’d thought that Trellis was telling me how to shut down the roboponies and rescue my friends. In a way, that had indeed been what she was doing. She simply hadn’t bothered to mention that, at the heart of the system that was controlling those roboponies, had been a living filly; and that shutting it down meant killing her.

“No,” I said in a voice that was barely even a whisper as I looked at the still foal, “I didn’t want it like that. You should have told me! I could have…” something. I could have done something that didn’t end up killing a little filly!

“You could have done nothing.”

I jerked with a start and wheeled around to find Star Paladin Hoplite standing behind me, her green painted helmet staring into the innards of the cylinder with me. She reached up with a hoof and depressed a control that pulled the faceplate away, revealing the dry and withered features that were equine, but still so very much unlike a pony’s. That much I wasn’t surprised by, as I had seen her face once before. What I hadn’t anticipated was the look of sympathy she was wearing.

Yet there was something missing in her expression as well: surprise. She didn’t seem to be finding this development anywhere near as unexpected as she should have been.

I glared at the Paladin, “did you know about this?” I didn’t bother to hide my accusatory tone.

The ghoul grimaced, “you will recall that my order was unaware that this facility was being managed by the Ministry of Awesome.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I pointed out, not appreciating her evasiveness. I had just helped to save her life, after all.

Hoplite was silent for a long moment, clearly considering how much information she felt like revealing to somepony who wasn’t a part of her order. I must have earned enough goodwill to warrant an explanation though, as she eventually decided that I was owed at least a little something more, “I did not know that the filly was here, no. However, I am familiar with this technology.”

“You’ve seen this before.”

The lanky equine nodded her head somberly, “we discovered a Ministry of Awesome bunker some time ago, further to the north. While salvaging the technology there, we came across a prototype, as well as records detailing the system’s development.

“At some point, the MoA decided that it had a pressing need for advanced computer processing power for one of their more ambitious endeavors. We were not able to find out much about what they needed these powerful computers for, but we did learn that they were unwilling to reach out to the Ministry of Arcane Science to acquire a second Crusader Maneframe. They were obsessed with keeping this project as secret as possible, so they did as much of the development ‘in house’ as possible.

“Lacking the experience and arcano-technical knowledge that the MAS had, they were forced to make...questionable choices in order to build what they needed,” she nodded in the direction of the cylinder.

“They used ponies?”

“Foals, specifically,” Hoplite corrected, “the younger, the better.”

“Why?” the thought that any of Equestria’s ministries would resort to doing this to ponies was...well, horrifying! What could have possibly possessed somepony to do this to foals?!

“The organic brain is the most powerful and sophisticated computer known to pony kind,” the Star Paladin explained, “it would seem that their thought was that they could use it to create a heart of a more sophisticated system than could be built with conventional electronics or crystal circuitry.”

“But why foals? Why not grown ponies who knew what they were getting into, or criminals, or something?”

“The records we found indicated that brains in which the neural pathways had not been rigidly set performed better. It allowed for a greater degree of flexibility when they made the mechanical augmentations,” seeing that her every sentence only seemed to make me even more disgusted, she tried to mollify me, “if it’s any consolation, the subjects aren’t aware of what has become of them. They are, for all intents and purposes, dead in every way that matters. The computer is just using the biological portions of their brain to perform computations.

“They do not suffer.”

I blink at the mare, staring agape at her, “what are you talking about? Trellis seemed to know exactly what was going on,” I said, jabbing a hoof at the dead filly inside the cylinder, “she was suffering! She was suffering so much that she told us how to kill her, just so it would stop!”

It was finally Hoplite’s time to looked shocked and confused. Under other circumstances, I might even have found the experience satisfying. This was not that time though, “that’s not possible,” she insisted, “the research notes that we recovered―”

“Were wrong!” I snapped as I held up my pipbuck to the Star Paladin, “I heard her talking to me. Hot Chai Tea heard her too!” I looked over to the other two Steel Rangers who were standing nearby. One of them sighed heavily but nodded their head at Hoplite’s questioning look, “that foal was conscious, and aware, and she was in pain; she wanted to die to end it…” I winced, feeling tears threatening from behind my eyes.

If I’d only known what was going on...If I’d taken the time to try and figure out what was happening, instead of rushing ahead like some stupid fucking filly…

...Maybe I could have done something to save her.

“...I was unaware,” the Star Paladin finally said, her voice sounding haunted.

...We came across a prototype…

My eyes shot open wide, “you have one!” I launched myself at the taller Ranger, grabbing ahold of her barding and glaring into her eyes, “where are they? Are they okay?!”

While her subordinates seemed to take great exception to my perceived abuses of their leader’s dignity, Hoplite herself appeared to be too stunned to realize what I was doing, babbling a response, “I-I don’t know,” it was weird hearing her speak in a tone that didn’t sound inherently dismissive condescending and superior. To her credit, she sounded genuinely concerned.

“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?”

The Star Paladin briefly bit her lip, reluctant to say more at first, but soon relented with a defeated sigh, “the stolen ‘technology’ that we asked you to recover from the Republic,” she began, “is the prototype that we recovered from the MoA bunker.”

The New Lunar Republic had it! Ebony Song had informed me that he knew what I’d been talking about when I approached him about it, and had offered to deliver it to me in return for a cache of weapons from the Great War. I suppressed a reflexive desire to want to twist the Prime Minister’s head right off of his shoulders. It was possible that he didn’t know what he had in his possession.

This did change things though. Knowing that the Republic was in possession of a mutilated foal, and not some piece of weird pre-Wasteland tech meant that I wasn’t about to negotiate for it anymore. I was going to flap myself right back to Seaddle and tell Ebony Song what he had and hoped that he saw reason and got the foal the help they needed. If he was unwilling, then I’d go to Princess Luna herself! There was no way that she’d condone holding a foal like that!

Hopefully, this revelation also changed things for the Rangers as well. I fixed my gaze on the Star Paladin, noting that the other two Rangers still weren’t happy with me. I didn’t release my hold on her quite yet though, “you realize that this means that I’m not going to be bringing it back to you, right? I’m going to find it, and I’m going to find some way to free the foal trapped inside.

“If that’s going to be a problem, you should probably let me know right now,” I had two talismans for three targets. Hoplite and the Ranger that had been with her were unarmed at the moment, presumably a consequence of their fight with the roboponies. I could disable the Star Paladin’s power armor and use her as a shield. Or perhaps lock up the other two and shoot her in the head, while it was exposed…

“I understand,” Hoplite replied, “and I will inform the Elder of what has been learned here. I should be able to convince them that it is best to cease our efforts to recover the prototype,” she held my gaze with milky eyes that assured me of the sincerity present in her tone, “I may even be able to convince them to make our medical experts available to you to help with the treatment of the foal once you have recovered them.”

It was my turn to look surprised again, as I released my grip on her armor and drifted away, hovering in front of her, “you’re giving up...just like that?”

“Contrary to the opinion that most in the Wasteland have of the Steel Rangers, we are not monsters,” Hoplite said, a wry smirk winding its way across her leathery lips, “our methods can be cold, perhaps, and we may come off as cruel; but I assure you that we have the best of intentions for ponykind, as a whole, at heart. We retained the prototype to ensure that it was not abused by those seeking to use its power for selfish or destructive ends.”

“Then why not simply destroy technology like that, if you don’t want anypony to ever use it?”

“I said that we don’t want to see it abused,” Hoplite corrected, “there is a difference. In any case, if what you have informed us about this prototype system is correct, then the abuse would be in allowing anypony to retain it, even the Rangers.”

“Thank you,” I finally said, and alit back on the floor, “I really didn’t want to have to kill the three of you over this,” I offered them a wan smile of my own.

While the other two armored ponies seemed to be a little affronted by that notion, Hoplite and I had a bit of a history, and I received a contemplative look from the taller ghoul mare, “you really mean that.”

I shrugged, casting a fleeting look at my flank and the mark that was hidden by my barding, “I do. I don’t really like killing ponies, honestly.”

“Fascinating,” Hoplite mused, “you struck me as being quite adept, last we met.”

Images of what I’d done to the Ranger that had tried to shoot me in the Arc Lightning factory resurfaced, prompting a grimace, “yeah, I know.

“Listen, can we get going? We don’t have a lot of time before the hour’s up. I’m sure the Rangers up there would like to know you’re okay.”

“Quite right,” The Star Paladin nodded, reforming her suit’s helmet as she turned to address the others, “we’re moving out. There is nothing for us here,” the pair of Rangers nodded and headed for the door.

As we trotted through the dimly lit corridors, I caught myself studying Hoplite, and how she compared to the other two ponies in power armor. While the Steel Rangers’ signature barding made them taller and bulkier than the average pony, and I had certainly seen examples of unusually large ponies in the Wasteland, there was something that set Hoplite decidedly apart from any other example that I’d encountered.

“You’re not a pony, are you?” I finally blurted.

The Star Paladin turned her painted helmet to regard me. After a few seconds, she finally replied, “that is correct, I am not a pony.

“I am a horse.”

“A what?”

“A horse,” she repeated, “my kind hail from a place that was known as Saddle Arabia before the Great War. We were allies of Equestria.”

Knowing what I did about most of the ghouls in the Wasteland, I ventured a guess, “you fought in the war, didn’t you?”
A long silence hung in the air before I finally received her quiet answer, “I did.”
“...did you like killing?”

Perhaps that wasn’t the most conversationally appropriate of questions to ask, and I did earn a sharp look from one of the other Rangers, but I didn’t really care. It was at the heart of a matter that I’d been wrestling with for quite some time. Once upon a time, I might have talked to Jackboot about it, but he wasn’t here anymore. Foxglove wasn’t much of an experienced expert on the matter, except for a few notable instances. I’d heard Arginine’s take on the deaths of other ponies. Ramparts was a Republic Guardpony, so I had some idea of where he stood―nopony joined the military because they hated killing, right? Starlight wasn’t a fan of killing, but she also hadn’t grown up living in the Wasteland, so I wasn’t sure how informed her opinions could be.

Hoplite had over two centuries of life experience to draw on, and she’d lived in a time when the amount of death in the world made the modern day Wasteland look like a love-fest. I was very interested to hear her perspective.

Again a long period of silence extended between us, “I can recall, in the furthest reaches of my memory, a time where ponies, horses, and even zebras, lived their lives without knowing about things like murder, and war, and suffering.

“Then war came to the world. Great horrors were unleashed by all involved. Atrocities were inflicted that couldn’t have been conceived of only a decade prior. All in the name of restoring harmony once again, and bringing peace.”
Another long silence, “through it all, I fought, and I killed. I was surrounded by ponies and horses who did the same. I would be a liar if I said that none of us ever drew satisfaction from slaying our foes.

“Perhaps, in some small way, we did like it,” she shrugged, “but we also kept our minds focused on achieving the goal of ending the fighting, and the killing, once and for all. None of us enjoyed it so much that we never wanted it to end.

“Make of that what you will.”

Fighting and killing in order to end all the fighting and killing. I’d spent my life striving for the same thing, and in the same way, that Hoplite had. I’d dedicated myself to tracking down and slaughtering every bandit, raider, slaver, and any other degenerate that I could. Nearly a decade in all, carving my way through the scum of the Wasteland in order to remove those cancerous abominations that caused nothing but misery for the good ponies who lived in the valley.

Much like Hoplite, I too had derived joy from that life. Every freed slave, every saved caravan, filled me with a sense of accomplishment that spurred me to keep on doing what I was doing. Those times provided a sense that I could actually achieve my dream of a peaceful Neighvada. Pacifying the whole Wasteland would be asking for a bit much―I was only one pony, after all.

As the years dragged on though, that feeling had become more and more fleeting. I spent years pursuing my goal, and yet the Wasteland felt the same today as it had when I started. Perhaps it was too much to hope that even this one single valley could be saved by just a single, dedicated, pony. Those years had taken their toll on me in a big way, to the point where the satisfaction I got from saving ponies only marginally outweighed the torment I garnered from the death I inflicted.

“Do you think the world will ever be at peace again?” I asked.

“I don’t see how,” Hoplite replied, elaborating further, “when there are few who remain who can even comprehend of what peace felt like,” and that was where our conversation ended.

We finally reached the lift, only to find that it was also without power, naturally. We weren’t left without any options, fortunately. Between the three Rangers, there were plenty of spark packs to be had to restore the Gale Force to a fully operational status. If it could propel a single pony to absurdly fast speeds, then it could surely move even the four of us a hundred or so feet up to the surface.

Honestly, the hardest part of the whole thing turned out to be figuring how to arrange the three Rangers so that they could all hold on to me. I couldn’t say that it didn’t make taking off and staying in the air more awkward and cumbersome than I’d ever experienced, because it did. The only good news to be had was that all I had to do was keep us all level as we ascended back to the upper level. Another silver lining was that it only consumed half a charge to pull it all off, so I even came away from the exercise with a little extra juice left in the Gale Force to use later.

It was also nice to learn that we’d made it back to the surface in time for Hoplite to send off her transmission and keep the rest of her Rangers from storming the military base and killing Homily and her followers. It was a welcome salve to help assuage the lingering guilt I was feeling from what had happened to Trellis. I suppose that, intellectually, I knew it wasn’t really my fault for what had happened to her. I hadn’t known what I was up against. That didn’t mean that I couldn’t have done more to find out before taking action, but I was finding harder and harder to argue that there would have been anything that could have been done anyway.

The Steel Rangers had apparently had another one of those foals in their possession for who knew how long, and Hoplite seemed convinced that there was no way to help them; and the Rangers had access to all sorts of resources that I probably never would. That didn’t bode very well for how I intended to deal with the foal that the Republic had. Perhaps Arginine would know some way to help them, with his extensive knowledge of anatomy. Foxglove knew a lot about machinery, so she might have some idea of how to disconnect everything. Maybe Starlight Glimmer could figure out some sort of spell that would―

“You killed him, you bastards!”

Horseapples!

I had been so deep in thought about the future that I’d let the present slip through my hooves. Why shouldn’t I have? The dangerous part of the adventure was supposed to have been over with. We’d gone down into the secret pre-war bunker that had―predictably―turned out to be yet another Old World death trap. We’d fended off the things trying to kill us, learned the deep dark secret about what our ancestors did to fuck up the world more than we thought it already had been, and made our way back out.

This was supposed to be the time when we got to relax and commend ourselves on a job well done before grabbing a drink or something.

We weren’t supposed to have to deal with teary-eyed, obviously distraught, unicorn stallions waving a gun in our faces.

It was a good thing that my instincts were a lot more attentive than my brain, because that meant that I merely had to react by whirling around and throwing out my recently re-armored wings as I interposed myself between the three Rangers and the pony who had come here to kill them. Two powerful blasts buffeted my backside as the shotgun raked the Gale Force with what felt like straight-up slugs thanks to the extremely short range at which the shots had been fired. I screamed as both of my wings felt like they’d been set on fire with the amount of pain that I was experiencing.

There was no time to dwell on that though. I had an armed pony to deal with, and I had to do it before the Rangers got involved.

My ears twitched as I heard the weapon’s breech break open to allow for a reload. I wasted no time and spun in the air, sweeping one of my wings up and catching the double-barreled shotgun with the leading edge and knocking it free of his telekinesis. The weapon went sailing through the air, well out of reach. I pressed my attack delivering a series of jabs to the stallion’s chest and head. My goal wasn’t to kill, but rather to stun and subdue. He was clearly one of Homily’s ponies, and likely still very upset about the attack that the Steel Rangers had launched on the base.

I could sympathize, I really could; but the fight was over and done with. More killing wasn’t going to solve anything.

The unicorn stallion staggered back, his knees buckling out from beneath him and nearly sending him all the way to the ground. He was out of the fight. I pulled back, “stay down,” I shouted at the stallion. I was about to turn to the Rangers and tell them to go and find the rest of their order while I dealt with him, but before I could, the stallion began to glow.

I thought he was casting a spell at first. Soon, though, I realized that I recognized that shade of jade light. He wasn’t performing magic, he was being disintegrated. In the blink of an eye, the distraught unicorn flared brightly, and then melted away into a pile of green goop. Nothing remained of him, save for a stain in the dirt.

“No…” I couldn’t even be sure that I’d said the word out loud, “NO!”

The second time it had been though. Once more I was held hostage by muscle memory as I flipped in the air and tackled the Steel Ranger who had fire the shot that killed the unicorn stallion, the barrel of their scavenged energy rifle still steaming from the shot that it had fired. A spark talisman was in my hoof, and I planted it squarely on their chest. Their armor was enveloped by an aura of crackling sapphire lightning as the magical energy contained within the jewel invaded their suit’s systems and shut everything down.

Their companion wasn’t just going to sit by idly and let me assault their fellow Ranger though, and so they tried to move against me and tackle me to the ground where I would be a more manageable target. They clearly hadn’t understood the significance of the blue stone in my hoof though, and soon they too were reduced to a steel statue fallen over in the Wasteland.

Next to come out was my compact forty-five. I didn’t use it immediately, but merely held it fast in my mouth as I turned my attention back to the Ranger who had fired the lethal shot. A few deft slices of the razor sharp alloyed blades mounted onto the Gale Force’s wing covers opened up once side of the Ranger’s helmet. Their automated repair system was obviously offline, along with the rest of their power armor, thanks to the effects of Starlight’s talisman. All their barding was now was a pony-shaped tomb.

I pointed the barrel of the pistol into the opening that I’d carved…

...and froze.

I found myself looking into the rose-colored face of the mare that had been with me while exploring the MoA facility. It wasn’t the recognition that made me pause though: it was the fear. The naked fear in her eyes as she recognized her imminent demise at my hooves. She knew that she was about to die, and it terrified her.

She knew that the Wonderbolt was about to end the life of another Ranger who’d fired a fateful shot.

Well, maybe she didn’t know that was what was about to happen, but I did.

One more death. One more corpse in the Wasteland, that would add to the uncountable number that I’d already left in my wake. What did it really matter, in that light? The taking of her life would just be another in a long line that marked my life like days on a calendar. It didn’t matter that I was about to kill another pony.

…

It didn’t matter.

The stallion was dead. Killing this mare wasn’t going to bring him back. All that ending her life would do was just that: end her life. It wouldn’t make the Wasteland a better place. It wouldn’t even make me feel better; because it would just add another face to the litany that already haunted me at night.

Killing her was useless.

With a heavy sigh, I pulled the pistol away from her and slipped it back into its holster. Then I backed off the mare closed my eyes.

“You didn’t have to do it,” I said. Whether I was really addressing the Ranger mare directly, or just trying to talk myself down even further, I couldn’t tell, “he was upset. He was in pain. He wanted revenge for what you’d done to him and his friends―his family. It wasn’t right, and he shouldn’t have tried to kill you.

“That was why I stopped him,” I took a deep, ragged, breath, my eyes still closed, because I wasn’t sure that I quite trusted myself to look at the Rangers yet and not feel an overpowering urge to avenge the stallion anyway, “but I don’t think he deserved to die, and it wasn’t your place to kill him either.

“So, leave,” I was surprised by how calm I sounded, because I certainly didn’t feel very calm right now. Every part of my body was trembling with a potent mixture of rage and grief, “leave this place.”

I heard Hoplite, who had not made a move through the whole ordeal, step over to her subordinates and reinitialize the barding of the other Rangers. In my fury, I had forgotten that the talismans that Starlight Glimmer had made for me would only permanently affect Steel Ranager barding if I placed them in specific places. Perhaps that was for the best, as it expedite their departure.

The Star Paladin had a few parting words for me though, “would but the world I once knew had had more ponies like you, Wonderbolt,” she said softly.

When I could no longer hear their armored hoofsteps, I hung my head and let the tears start flowing.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Negotiator - Bonus to Speech and Barter Skills

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