Ponies called me a hero after what happened at HELIOS, but I left that battle scarred by fear, and have allowed that weakness to govern my actions.

It was dusk by the time I’d finally recomposed myself. There were a lot of reasons that this was probably a mistake. First and foremost was the fact that it turned out that I was bleeding. The stallion’s shotgun had apparently been more than even the Gale Force had been up to handling at that extremely close range. The reason that my wings had hurt so much was because some of the shot from those blasts that I’d intercepted had punched through both the rig’s armored covers and my wings. The bleeding wasn’t particularly severe, but it was probably something that I should have addressed before sobbing my stupid little heart out.

A lot of things had caught up with me, I guess. I’d had a busy week, after all. Finding out what I’d inadvertently done to Trellis and then being unable to keep that stallion alive had put me over the top, but they hadn’t been the core of what had gotten to me. I was still really bothered about how I’d been acting while I hadn’t had my cutie mark, honestly. There was a lot that I wasn’t proud of during that time.

I’d abandoned my friends, turned a blind eye to a pair of ponies in trouble, and very nearly tried to leave a whole caravan of ponies to die. That wasn’t who I wanted to be.

Of course, there was a lot to be said for how little I wanted to be the kind of pony that I’d been before that too.

Foxglove might have been jumping the gun a bit with the color scheme she’d put on this barding she’d made me. If recent events had proven anything, it was that her faith had been grossly misplaced.

I retracted the damaged wing covers as best I could, but it was obvious that Foxglove was going to need to conduct some pretty extensive repairs when we met up again. Then I drank down a healing potion to close up my wounds. My wings were still sore, and I didn’t feel like flying. My knee was feeling a lot better though, so I was able to tolerate the long walk back towards the barracks.

Even in the twilight hours, the damage that the base had suffered during the Steel Rangers’ attack was very obvious. A few guards were on duty once more, atop some hastily constructed berms built out of the rubble of the towers that had once stood there. It would be quite some time before they were rebuilt, if they even ever were. Homily had sounded determined to stay when last we spoke, but there was no telling how many of her followers felt the same way after the events earlier today. This place was a long way from any sort of support if something like this ever happened again.

If Homily thought that she could keep relying on calling me here for help, she might find herself being disappointed. Whether or not ‘The Wonderbolt’ would even exist tomorrow was kind of up in the air at the moment.

On the bright side, I was fairly sure that I’d garnered enough good will to justify asking for a place to sleep, and maybe even a meal. I paused for a moment and then thought better of the food. I actually wasn’t feeling very hungry right now.

“Windfall, you’re back!”

I turned my head in the direction of the familiar voice that frequented my pipbuck’s speakers and offered the pale yellow earth pony mare a wan smile and a wave, “hey, Homily. How’s everypony holding up?”

“They’re still a little shaken,” she admitted, “those Steel Rangers came out of nowhere and hit us without warning, hard. We lost a lot of good ponies trying to pull back to those bunkers,” she added, her features darkening as she recalled the experience. She wasn’t used to that level of death and destruction.

I wasn’t sure if that was something I envied about her or not. For better or worse, fights like that didn’t shock me much, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. My pipbuck was kind of on the fritz for a while.”

The pale yellow mare gaped at me, “are you kidding? Windfall, everypony here knows that they owe you their lives! For some of us this was, like, the second or third time you pulled our flanks out of the fire!

“You’re The Wonderbolt; you’re a hero!”

“The Rangers killed another pony,” I said, numbly, trying to deflect the praise that the mare seemed to insist on heaping upon me. I wasn’t in the mood for something like this, “a unicorn stallion. I don’t know his name. I think he lost somepony in the fighting…” I’m sure that really narrowed it down, I thought acidly.

Homily winced, “we noticed that Tack Weld was missing a while ago. We thought he was at his husband’s grave,” she sighed, “I guess not. What happened?”

“He came at them with a shotgun. I stopped him. Then the Rangers killed him.”

Homily swallowed, “and then what’d you do?”

She wanted to hear that I’d avenged her friend. She wanted to know that justice had been served and that the ponies responsible had been punished. I wasn’t going to be able to give her that though. All that this mare was going to get from me was the truth, and I expected that it was going to hurt.

“I let them go,” I replied simply, “and then I cried.”

Without waiting for her response, I pushed past her and headed for the barracks. Either Homily knew I wasn’t in the mood to talk any further, or she was just too disgusted with me to to say anything further. I knew that I wasn’t feeling very good about myself at the moment in either case.

Letting that Steel Ranger off the hook like that flew in the face of everything that I’d ever come to know about how the Wasteland worked. It ran contrary to my own fucking personal code of ethics, for Celestia’s sake! When somepony did something vile and wrong, like murdering an unarmed stallion, I was supposed to put them down. Not just because I was The Wonderbolt, but because that was how you made the Wasteland a better place!

...Only I wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

I was feeling myself having doubts about the course of action that I’d taken. Was letting them go really the better answer, or had I somehow managed to fuck up even worse than if I’d simply shot her in the head? Hoplite had clearly expected me to do just that. She hadn’t even made any effort to stop me, much like when I’d killed that Ranger back at Arc Lightning. The ghoulish Star Paladin knew how things were done in the Wasteland, and that the rule was: ‘an eye for an eye’.

I’d violated that fundamental principle, and I was feeling that sense of creeping doubt penetrate into every little corner of my mind. Of course I’d made the wrong call. How could a stupid little filly like me, who was flying around pretending to be some kind of ‘hero’, have possibly made the right call regarding something like that? It was ludicrous.

Face it, Windfall: you don’t have any business trying to ‘fix’ the Wasteland. You’re the most broken thing in it!

I wasn’t even going to be able to help whatever foal was trapped in the computer or whatever it was that the Republic had stolen from the Steel Rangers. Why did I think that I’d be able to do something as complicated as that, when just a few days ago I hadn’t been able to keep a small group of former slaves from trying to burn two ponies in a bonfire?

It just wasn’t going to happen.

When the rest of my friends got here, I’d pass the reins on to one of them and let better ponies than me figure out how to finally make things right. Maybe Ramparts, since he probably had some pull with the Republic. Starlight sure seemed like she was capable enough to come up with something clever.

All that I knew for sure was that it wasn’t going to be me.

The barracks was large enough that there seemed to be plenty of rooms that didn’t have anypony who’d moved into one of them. Of course, I was pretty sure that a fair number of those ‘occupied’ rooms would be cleared out soon enough once the belongings of their former owners were claimed by the survivors of the Rangers’ attack. I found a place that was as far away from the rest of the residents as possible. Not that there were many ponies in the building at the moment. Most of the ponies on the base were still cleaning up and taking care of the wounded.

Or burying the dead, of course.

I shucked off the barding and tossed it rather unceremoniously into a corner, out of sight. While it probably wasn’t very nice of me to mistreat something that Foxglove had obviously put a lot of effort into making for me, I didn’t want to be confronted with that blue and gold color scheme right now. Maybe if she repainted it I could look at it again without cringing.

I climbed up onto the grimy old mattress and curled up into a ball. The tears didn’t return, since I’d already cried out everything that I had. Even so, I couldn’t get myself to fall asleep right away, no matter how still I lay or high tightly I closed my eyes.

Frustrated, I reached out and pawed around for my saddlebags. I was pretty sure that I still had a bottle of whiskey in there. Black out drunk sleep was still sleep. During my search, I felt my hoof brush up against something soft. I drew it out and inspected the material.

It was a black denim shirt. The one that Jackboot had worn nearly constantly in order to hide the White Hoof brand on his backside that would have spelled his death if anypony in the valley spotted it. The tangible reminder of my lost mentor rekindled that dull ache in my heart, and though my eyes were fresh out of tears, I could feel them start to burn once more. I didn’t tuck the shirt out of sight though. Instead, I drew it out completely and hugged it tight against my chest.

“I wish you were still here,” I whispered into the fabric. His scent still clung to it, even after all this time, “you’d know what to do.”

I lay in that two century old bed, clinging tightly to that shirt as though it would somehow allow me to feel the embrace of its former owner. For fleeting moments, I was even able to fool myself into thinking that he was still here, and that I really was holding him. They lasted for only fractions of a heartbeat, and that dull ache only seemed to grow with each instance as I was reminded that he wasn’t here, and never would be. Still I clung to that smelly old shirt, relishing those moments as they reminded me of a simpler time in my life. A happier time.

It was in one of those moments that sleep finally found me and offered the chance to lose track of my worries for a few hours.

I awoke with a start, though this time it wasn’t because of a night terror. It was something far more mundane than that: somepony was knocking on my door. Not having woken up from unconsciousness brought about by a near brush with death, my mind sharpened very quickly upon being roused, and so I immediately recognized the earth pony stallion standing in the open doorway with his hoof gently tapping on the treated wood. That wasn’t to say that I wasn’t still very surprised to see them though. They were a pony that shouldn’t have been able to be standing there right this moment, I would have though.

“Ramparts?” I asked dumbly, more out of bewilderment than anything else. There was no mistaking the Republican officer, still wearing his rather distinctive barding. Unless I had rather severely overslept, to the point that I was fairly certain any reasonable pony could have been forgiven for thinking that I was dead, the brown stallion should still have been a few days away from Camp McMaren.

“G’mornin’,” he greeted, cracking a smile upon seeing my reaction. He stepped into the room and sat down, “I s'pose Foxglove’ll be ticked at me for spoiling the surprise, but I figure that somepony around here’d let it slip sooner or later anyway.”

I blinked at the stallion, “you guys were just a couple days south of Shady Saddles when I left,” that statement was more for my benefit than his. Ramparts knew exactly where’d he’d been when all of us had met back up. I was just trying to wrap my head around the scope of what a group of ponies had managed to accomplish by way of overland travel without the aid of either wings or a Gale Force rig, “it should have taken you over a week to get here!”

“Probably would’ve,” he nodded his agreement before frowning slightly, “as it was, I’m of a mind that we probably could have let ourselves take a bit longer to get here,” at my quirked brow, the guard pony finally decided to let me in on the secret to their impossible accomplishment, “Starlight Glimmer just about burst her horn teleporting us here. As it was, both Foxglove and Arginine had to use some sort of bonehead trick to let her use their magical reserves, or whatever.

“I’m not an expert in how unicorn’s do their thing,” he shrugged, “I’m sure one of them could tell you better than I could. I was just along for the ride,” not that I believed I’d understand it any better than Ramparts had, “long story short: all three of them are down for the count, but otherwise alright. Homily has a few of her own unicorns looking after them and treating them for ‘mana burn’―whatever that is.

“They should be up and about by morning, they tell me,” I was certainly relieved to hear that! I’m not sure my conscience could take the weight of learning that any of them had crippled themselves trying to get here fast enough to help me. The guilt would probably kill me, “but they’ll also have a doozy of a hangover.”

I let out the breath that I hadn’t been aware I was retaining upon hearing that the three of them would be fine. The knowledge that all four of my traveling companions were close by once again, combined with the frail certainty that nothing was going to try to kill any of us in the near future, allowed for a very different weight to slowly begin to ebb away also. We were all together, and we were safe. It seemed like meeting those two conditions hadn’t been done very frequently of late.

There was still a small nagging little bundle of tension that remained, centered around the knowledge that a foal was suffering, trapped in the unawares grip of the Republic that I had to do something about; and call me selfish, but I suppressed it―for the moment. If all three of our unicorns were down for the count, then it wasn’t like we’d be able to get out of here anytime soon anyway. Seaddle was our next stop, to be sure; but our departure wasn’t imminent.

They’d endured for two centuries, another day or two wouldn’t make a difference one way or the other. Either there’d be something we could do to help them when we got there, or they’d gone beyond the point of no return a very long time ago.

I grimaced and shoved that macabre thought out of my head. There was going to be plenty of time for depressing thoughts later. Right now, I wanted to find something happy to focus on: finally catching up with a friend. At least, I guess he was a friend; so far as me and ‘friends’ went anyway.

“That’s good to hear,” I said with a nod, “and I’m glad you’re all safe,” I offered up a wan smile, “I know that rushing off on my own probably wasn’t very smart; it’s just…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” the Republic guardpony assured me, “if I heard that my squad was in trouble, I’d charge right into Tartarus itself to help them out. Foxglove explained what you and Jackboot already went through to help the ponies here; and it’s not like I haven’t heard the same broadcasts that you have,” he tapped his own pipbuck, smirking at me, “Miss Neighvada’s important for the valley; she brings us closer together than I think even she realizes.”

I cast the stallion a questioning look and saw his smile broaden, “ponies are social creatures,” he explained, “we like belonging to groups, or herds. That’s why we form communities at the drop of a horseshoe. All sorts of communities, like Seaddle and New Reino, and even the White Hooves, Vipers, or other ganger groups. We want to feel like we’re a part of something.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong about that,” his smile soured a bit now, “except that those groups also give us all the reason we need to exclude ponies. They’re part of a different herd, so they’re not ‘one of us’,” he intoned sarcastically, “sometimes we let those differences stop us from seeing those other groups as ponies just like you and me.

“You don’t need me to tell you what that leads to,” I did not, “but…” Ramparts started to brighten again, “that’s where Miss Neighvada comes in: she’s not broadcasting to just New Reino, or Shady Saddles, or Seaddle, or anywhere else. She’s broadcasting to the whole valley. When she goes on those airwaves, for just a minute or two, we’re not our own, small, petty, little herds. It’s like we’re all a part of her herd, because everything that she’s saying is meant for all of us. For a moment, we’re all just: Neighvada.

“It’s a little thing, I know,” the earth pony shrugged, “but you can’t accomplish big things without doing all of the little things that make them up.”

I sat on the bed, blinking at the brown stallion, as silence settled over the room at the conclusion of his little monologue, “I didn’t peg you for a romantic.”

Ramparts snorted, “that cheesy, huh?”

“No, I liked it,” and that wasn’t a lie either. Maybe I was just as naive as the brown stallion was, somehow, but I found myself drawn to the idea that there was a chance that peace could come to the valley; even if it was through something as unlikely as a few daily radio broadcasts. It was a ludicrous notion, of course, but a pony could still dream.

“Yeah, well,” he signed, deflating a little as he continued, “that was also what everypony thought was going to happen when Princess Luna returned. The Goddess Herself come back to us to rule over Equestria and restore the land back to its former paradise.

“How could everypony not have flocked back to her?”

“Why didn’t they?” I’d been little more than a newborn foal when Princess Luna had returned to the world and taken up residence inside Seaddle. The ponies of the Commonwealth-turned-New Lunar Republic had cheered and celebrated, predicting that the Wasteland would cease to exist in a matter of days, or weeks at the most.

It had persisted of course. As had the gangs, and the various raiding tribal groups that operated on the fringes of the valley. A few names had changed, a couple of uniform styles, and a law here or there. Other than that...it had continued to be business as usual. Everypony was supposed to have flocked to Luna’s banner and unified under a New Equestria, once more ruled by an immortal alicorn deity; just as had been the case in the fargone days of old.

That hadn’t happened of course, and I’d not been very politically minded at the time to ask why that wasn’t the case. By the time I did concern myself with such questions, the answer seemed to revolve around: ‘because it wouldn’t change anything’, as scant little had changed.

“A whole lot of ponies did,” Ramparts informed me, “most of the ponies who lived near Seaddle came to the city in droves. The population doubled within the year,” I hadn’t known that, and hearing it now only further added to my confusion about why such a migration would have stopped.

“They were drawn by the promises of renewal, and the restoration of Old Equestria, of bringing the good times back to the world.”

“So what happened?” I asked him.

He shrugged matter-of-factly, “nothing happened; which is kind of the point. Ponies were expecting miracles―a quick fix by a goddess who’d clap her hooves together and undo the Wasteland―but all they got were some speeches and radio broadcasts.

“And a new war.”

Ramparts sighed a shook his head, “it didn’t take long for ponies to become disenfranchised. When all of their problems weren’t instantly fixed the moment she returned, a lot of ponies stopped feeling like she mattered.”

“That’s stupid,” I said with a frown, “even if she is a goddess, that doesn’t mean that she can undo the Wasteland with a spell or something. All of her broadcasts talk about how it’ll take time and hard work and stuff.”

The guard pony nodded, “unfortunately, when a lot of ponies have to spend most of their time and effort making sure they don’t starve to death by the end of the day, that doesn’t leave them with a lot to spare for ‘rebuilding Equestria’.”

Okay, that made sense. My own family had been on the cusp of such a state while they’d been alive. As much as my parents endorsed the return of the princess, I had to admit that I never saw either of them taking off time from working the ranch to go and volunteer their services to the Republic to undertake Princess Luna’s initiatives.

There was simply too much that needed doing to make sure that they’d be able to feed and care for themselves.

“A lot of ponies don’t think she’ll be able to pull it off,” the stallion concluded sullenly.

“What about you; do you think the princess will be able to do it?”

“I have faith that she will, in time,” he nodded, “the war takes a lot of her attention and consumes most of the resources the Republic has. Once it’s over, things’ll get better,” and I could tell he believe it too. A good stallion, a romantic, and a true believer.

It was too bad he was taken.

Speaking of which, “do you plan on settling down with Yatima when the Rangers leave?”

I guess he thought this constituted an abrupt change in the subject, as it looked like the question had taken him by surprise. He recovered quickly though, and a warm smile touched his lips, “maybe, I guess?” he shrugged, “it’s been so long I’m not sure I’d even know what ‘settling down’ looked like.”

That was a fair point, though I certainly had cultivated my own ideas of what a life would look like later in life, “you know: get a place together, start a farm or something, make with the foals. Settle down.”

“You sound like Sandy,” he said with a mirthful chuckle.

I cocked my head for a brief moment, my lips pursed. Then a few bits of conversation with the barpony from about a month or so back filtered to the top of my mind, “...Sandy’s your sister,” I guess I’d never asked if she’d had any family. It hadn’t felt like it mattered much if she did or not. I felt kinda bad for not trying to get to know her a little better through all those years of doing business with her. We'd just never lingered in Shady Saddles for more than an evening when it had just been Jackboot and I.

“Half-sister,” Ramparts corrected, “Mom was a bit of a ‘free spirit’. But, yeah. Sandy doesn’t want to have anything to do with, as she calls it: ‘pooping out a tiny poop factory’, so she decided that she was going to hang all of her maternal fulfillment squarely on the tail end of whatever mare eventually caught my fancy,” he bowed and shook his head, though I still saw a smile spread out across his muzzle, “which was why she never missed a chance to nudge any mare she could get her hooves on in my direction.”

“To hear Yatima tell it, you were the one who came on to her,” I pointed out, recalling my brief talks with the zebra mare while we were escorting her from Shady Saddles.

“Well, I mean, it didn’t start that way,” the stallion said, almost defensively, “at first I was just making polite conversation with the mare who was bringing me my lunch. She was one of a few ponies who worked in the bar back then.

“It wasn’t until two weeks had passed that I noticed she was the only mare who ever brought out my order,” he shared a knowing look with me, “which struck me as a little far fetched to be just a coincidence, if you take my meaning. Zebra or no, when a mare with a firm figure and that enticing little sway in her hips goes out of her way to be the one sauntering up to your table and then slowly walking away with that little tail flick that says, ‘I want you to lift this and pin it back between my ears while you―”

Ramparts abruptly snapped his mouth shut, his eyes widening slightly. For a brief moment, I wondered what was wrong with him. It was then that I became aware of the fact that I could feel that my ears were flushed in concert with my cheeks. The rugged earth pony stallion seemed to have noticed this too; and he had simultaneously realized that he was talking with a young filly half his age.

He cleared his throat rather thoroughly as each of us averted eye contact for the moment, “―backrubs. I gave her a backrub.”

“I know what sex is, Ramparts.”

“Right,” he idly rubbed the back of his head, still not meeting my gaze, “anyway, long story short: it turns out that Sandy was the one making sure Yatima always went to my table, and had been telling her that I was always talking about how cute I thought she was.

“I mean, she was cute, sure―pretty, even―but I hadn’t ever said that to Sandy. So, yeah, I started flirting with her, and she started flirting with me―even more―and one thing lead to another until, well...backrubs―”

“Sex.”

“―sometimes there were actual backrubs!” Ramparts affirmed insistently, “but also, yes, there was sex.”

“I kind of figured that much from the foal she had,” I remarked in a droll tone. I was not a filly, regardless of how old I might be, “you still haven’t answered my question, by the way.”

Ramparts took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “noticed that too, did you? Don’t get me wrong, I do like Yatima, and not just...being with her―”

“Fucking her.”

“Okay, see, now you’re just doing this on purpose,” he glared at me accusingly.

“Noticed that too, did you?” was my level reply, “please stop talking to me like I’m a foal. I know what sex is. I’ve walked in on it before. Believe it or not, I even intend to have it one day. So can we please talk like we’re both adults?”

“...Right. Fair enough. Sorry.”

“Continue,” I prompted.

The stallion took another preparatory breath and resumed from where I’d interrupted, “I enjoyed...the sex, that we had, yes,” there, that didn’t kill you, did it? “But I also like just sitting and talking with her too. I just…”he sighed, “I just don’t know if I have what it takes to raise a family.”

I felt one of my eyebrows just about rise up off the top of my head, “aren’t you a battle-hardened Republican guard pony who’s part of Luna’s elite forces or something? I think you can manage changing a diaper…”

“It’s more than that,” he responded, “and pretty much exactly related to that: I’m a soldier. I fight, and I kill; how am I supposed to use those skills to play with my son?”

My eyebrow had yet to descend, “teach him to shoot? Duh? A little hoof-to-hoof combat wouldn’t go amiss, either. Maybe some demolitions so that he knows what to do around mines and grenade traps.”

Ramparts shook his head, snorting derisively, “I don’t want my son to grow up to be a killer. I want him to have a life worth living.”

I suppose that the silence that greeted his comment was what had prompted the earth pony to once more look up at me. When he finally did, I saw the regret clear in his eyes. It was too late, of course. His words had hit me like a double-buck to the loins.

Of all the ponies who traveled with me, I would have thought that Ramparts would understand me the best. He may have known me for the least amount of time―after Starlight Glimmer―but he and I had a lot more in common. We were both genuine warriors, and we were both dedicated to removing threats from the Wasteland. Ramparts was doing so under the direction of the NLR military and his princess; while I was guided by a deeper, more personal, philosophy that had been shaped by both my mentor and my personal experiences growing up.

In either case: fighting was what we did. Killing was a part of who we were. It was ingrained so deeply within us that it might as well have been the bones of our bodies.

Did that mean that I derived pleasure from it? No. I didn’t like doing it, but it was who I was, and I struggled every day to reconcile that fact. I knew full well that I was performing a very delicate psychological balancing act as I tried desperately to mitigate the growing despair that existed precisely because I didn’t enjoy killing but knew that it had to be done.

It didn’t help at all that I was even now going through a more recent mental crisis after having spared the life of a Ranger who’d killed a defenseless pony because I could no longer reason why it did have to be done. Losing that particular mental battle wasn’t an option, as it would call into question the justifications that I’d used for hundreds of ponies that I’d killed during my life.

There would be no living with myself if I lost that internal struggle, I knew that much for certain, at least.

Yet here was the one pony I had left in my life that I should have been able to count on as a sympathetic ear; or perhaps even a replacement mentor from which to draw on their superior number of years of experience living this sort of life. Without Jackboot around to keep me flying level, Ramparts was the next best thing. A pony who was suppose to know how necessary killing certain ponies was.

So how was I supposed to deal with hearing him describe this existence as not being worth living?

I think he was starting to realize some of that too as his lips started murmuring in a stammered clarification, “Windfall, I―that’s not how I meant it to sound. I’m sorry,” I said nothing. What was I supposed to say? “I just...you, of all ponies, know how hard this kind of life is. I’ve seen what it does to ponies when they’ve been at it too long: it breaks them.

“Sometimes they just shut down. It eats away at their soul until there’s nothing left. Others, well, they stop seeing ponies as ponies. Killing becomes like breathing to them; they just get numb to it,” he snorted, “if those ponies are in the ruins, we call them a ‘raider’. If they’re wearing a uniform, we call them, ‘sir’.

“Then there are the ponies who just break down completely. They rage, or they cry, or they just lose their grip on reality,” he shook his head sadly and then looked up at me, “you do this for long enough, and you end up as one of those three. You don’t get to lead a normal life ‘after’ this.”

Another hit to my gut as I felt all of my plans for a tidy little ranch out in the Wasteland overrun with foals, while me and a faceless stallion sat on the porch and watched them play, crumble into oblivion. It couldn’t be true, could it? Could I really never have my cozy, pleasant, little life full of happiness and joy? Hadn’t I earned a happy ending, after everything that I’d been through?

“That’s why I don’t want this for my son,” Ramparts finished softly, gently, as though he were afraid that his words could cause me to break. He may very well be right about that; though I desperately hoped he was wrong about everything else, “I want him to have better than I’ll get.

“And it’s why I don’t know if I’ll stay with Yatima,” he said even more delicately, as though speaking too loudly might break him, “I don’t want to poison her with whatever I bring back with me. She’s a good mare. She sees so much beauty in the world. I don’t want to tarnish that.

“I’ll support them for the rest of my life,” the stallion affirmed resolutely, “but I doubt very much that I’ll be a part of it. It’s for their own good.”

“Why?” I finally managed, my voice barely reaching above a whisper as I found words at last, “why can’t ponies like us be happy?”

“...because we’re bad ponies, Windfall.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. My rest had apparently been enough to replenish my body’s supply of tears, and they were flowing freely again down my cheeks.

“No,” I insisted through clenched teeth, “no, I’m not!” I spoke with the feigned confidence of somepony who had to believe what they were saying was true, even though they knew it wasn’t, “I’m not a bad pony!”

I felt the mattress quiver as somepony else climbed onto it next to me, “yes, you are,” Ramparts said softly, causing me to cringe even more deeply as another sob wracked my body. I was about to protest again, even more vehemently, when I felt him place his foreleg around my shoulders and hold me tight, “and that’s okay.”

Abruptly, my sobs halted with a start as I looked up at the stallion in surprise. He was smiling down at me. It was a kind smile, but there was an unmistakable sadness to it―a regret―that was echoed further in his eyes, “it’s okay that we’re bad ponies. The world needs bad ponies who are willing to do bad things, but for the right reasons.

“It’s not easy, and I don’t think it was ever meant to be easy; but you can tell how important something is by how hard it is to do,” he gave me another tight squeeze, holding me to his chest for several seconds, “and what we do is perhaps the most important thing there is.

“The evil that we do today, prevents evil from befalling a good pony tomorrow.”

My sobbing began to abate, and I felt no further tears trying to slip out from around my eyes. I sniffed loudly and wiped my nose, processing what Ramparts was telling me. The faintest glimmer of a smile tugged at the corner of my lips as I imagined Jackboot coming up with something very similar to tell me in just this sort of setting.

“What we do is important, Windfall; but it’s hard, and it’s brutal, and it will scar us deeply for the rest of our short, miserable, lives,” I needed to talk to Rampart’s about his pep-talks. They left a lot to be desired, “now you tell me if you want your little colt or filly to endure what you have in your life? Do you genuinely want them to go through all of that?”

“No,” I said adamantly, wiping at my eyes and brushing the black patch that covered over the sear socket where one of them had once been. I most assuredly didn’t.

“Exactly,” he nodded, “we endure all of this so that, one day, hopefully, our foals, and the foals of everypony else, won’t ever have to.”

“You’re getting all romantical again, Ramparts,” I said, smirking up at that stallion, “you know the Wasteland won’t end in our lifetime.”

“Probably not,” the brown earth pony conceded with a shrug as he let me go and slipped back off the bed, “but I like to think that the more I endure in my life, the less there’ll be for somepony else to deal with later. That this suffering is penance for the sins of our ancestors, and that it’s finite in the fullness of time,” he said, and then snorted, “but even us lowly earth ponies aren’t strong enough to carry the whole world on our shoulders all at once. A pitty that.

“Feeling better?”

I thought for a moment and then nodded, “yeah, I am. Thank’s, Ramparts,” then I grimaced as I wiped my eyes and nose again, embarrassed by the foalish display that I’d just put on, “I guess I’m not as grown up as I thought I was, huh?”

The stallion smiled, but it wasn’t a condescending or patronizing one. It was very genuine, “I’ve never met a pony that was too old to have themselves a good cry every once in awhile. Especially not a pony who does what we do.”

The Repulican guard pony took a deep breath and stood back up, “I’ll go ahead and let you get back to your nap or whatever. I didn’t mean to chat you up too much like this; just wanted to let you know the rest of us were all alright,” he headed for the door, “come find me in the morning, we’ll grab a bite and talk some more if you want.”

I wiped away at my eyes and nose and nodded at the stallion, “I think I’d like that.”

“Good night, Windfall.”

“Good night, Ramparts; and thank you,” the stallion closed the door behind him, leaving me alone with my thoughts once more. They were quite bittersweet. It did feel nice knowing that there were other ponies in the world that did recognize that killing ever bad ponies wasn’t something to necessarily be proud of lifestyle to wish on anypony else. For the most part, it seemed like Ramparts felt much the same way that I did about the job he had. If that was the case, then I suppose that I was in good company.

It was really too bad that he was taken. Though, I guess it had sounded like he wasn’t exactly planning on making him and Yatima an exclusive thing, despite their foal together. Maybe that meant he and I could…

Wow, Windfall; lewd much? He had to be, like, twice your age! Of course, so was Jackboot, and that sure hadn’t stopped me from having those sorts of thoughts about him. I guess older stallions were my ‘thing’.

I wonder if Ramparts likes younger mares…?

This probably wasn’t a very appropriate line of thinking, especially since I hadn’t picked up on the brown earth pony putting out any sort of hints that he thought of me that way. That being said, I was still very pretty tense from the last few days, and our little conversation hadn’t been quite as inspiring as I think the Republic officer had meant it to be. A little personal attention wouldn’t go amiss tonight, in the name of relaxation. It had been a long time since I’d gone about this, as life hadn’t afforded me many opportunities of late.

What it had afforded me tonight was a chance to entertain slightly different thoughts while I went about it. Sorry, Jackboot, but I’m going to entertaining myself with a slightly younger earth pony stallion tonight...

The next morning, when we heading out to breakfast, at Ramparts’ insistence, I donned my Wonderbolt barding. I kept the Gale Force’s wing covers tucked away as best I could to prevent ponies from seeing the extent of the damage that had been done to them as I had used my body to protect a small band of Steel Rangers from one of the McMaren ponies. Given the company that I would be keeping, I felt that would be the wrong kind of message to send.

It quickly became obvious to me why the Republican soldier had made me don my barding. Though I was fairly certain that everypony would be able to recognize who I was―given the distinct lack of other pegasus ponies on the base―the brilliant blue and gold color scheme drew ponies to me like bloatsprites to a brahmin carcass. I was very quickly overwhelmed by all of the thankful ponies who couldn’t seem to find enough ways to express to me how grateful they were that I’d come to their rescue and drove off the Steel Rangers who had been slaughtering them.

I felt that it was a bit of an exaggeration on their part to characterize what had happened as me ‘driving off’ anypony, but it wasn’t like I was being given the chance to correct them, so I let it stand. Hopefully Homily phrased things a bit more accurately when she made her broadcasts about the incident. The last thing I needed was for Ranger patrols that I came across attacking me out of some sort of skewed obligation to restore the blow to their pride at the idea that a lone teenaged mare routed a whole platoon of Rangers just by showing up.

Was this how legends got started? Perhaps I needed to go through my library of DJ Pon3’s accounts of the various saviors of the Manehattan Wasteland and take them in with a renewed perspective on how quickly and easily things could be exaggerated in their retelling.

Eventually the novelty of my presence died down enough for me to make it beneath the collection of tarps and canvas that served as the base’s interim cafeteria, as the hardened structure that used to serve that purpose had been demolished by the assaulting Rangers. Efforts appeared to be underway to construct something a little more permanent nearby out of the rubble and a mortar concoction. Homily’s ponies were obviously very dedicated to their home.

“Windfall!” I turned my head at the sound of my name, which was rather distinctive from the dozens of ‘Wonderbolt’s that I’d been getting up to this point. I spied the pale yellow earth pony trotting towards me from the cafeteria. She grabbed my hoof in hers, shaking it briskly before she apparently felt that giving me a full on hug was more appropriate. I reciprocated tentatively, not certain if this was something I wanted to encourage in my other fans.

I wasn’t used to this kind of attention; not that I was hating it, per say. It was just...new.

“Are you feeling better?” Homily asked earnestly when she finally broke away, her eyes searching mine for confirmation, “you seemed kind of, um…” she bit her lip as she fumbled for a good word to express the earlier terseness I’d used during our last conversation. I was in the middle of mustering an apology when Ramparts jumped into the conversation.

“She was just a little tired, is all,” he explained, smiling at the other mare, “it was a long flight to get here, after all; then, dealing with the Rangers…” he waved his hoof in a manner that suggested Homily should understand exactly how taxing such things could be.

The yellow mare indeed nodded eagerly, glad to have a delicate way of asking her question, “exactly!” she looked from Ramparts back to me, “I hope you slept well?”

“I’m fine,” I wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not right now. I was certainly feeling markedly improved from yesterday. Being out here, seeing that there was life yet still in McMaren, despite the attack, was actually doing a lot to help that too. Ramparts had been right, it seemed, “just hoping that there’s some breakfast left?”

“Of course! Right this way,” she turned and barked at the other ponies, “clear a path for the Wonderbolt, please!”

I cringed and was about to inform her that that sort of thing wasn’t necessary but, before I could even open my mouth, the tide of ponies had broken apart almost instantly and created a narrow corridor of bodies that funneled us right into the center of the dining area. Somepony at the other end was already setting out plates of scrambled...something, and water. It smelled good though.

Nor, it seemed, was I going to be dining alone. Ramparts was going to be joining us, and clearly Homily was going to make it a point to entertain the ‘guest of honor’ as it were. However, there was one other pony seated already, nibbling contentedly at his breakfast: Arginine.

Recalling what Ramparts had said about the state of our three magically inclined companions last night, I glanced back at the earth pony stallion, only to find that he appeared just as surprised to see the larger stallion present. The genetically engineered pony glanced up from his meal, taking note of the crowd and the associated disturbances. His eyes fell to me and he gave a polite nod and a little wave of his hoof as we approached.

“You’re up,” Ramparts sounded genuinely surprised.

“I recover quickly,” was Arginine’s terse reply, “Miss Foxglove and Miss Glimmer are being tended to. They should be conscious by tomorrow morning. Their burnout was quite severe.”

I grimaced, looking over at Ramparts who, for his part, patted me on the back, “not your fault,” he insisted, “I kept telling them there wasn’t any reason to worry,” he held up his pipbuck, “I had your tag, after all,” then he thought for a moment, “though we’ve seen that even losing that doesn’t mean you’ve bought it.

“You’re a tough mare to kill.”

“So I’ve been hearing,” Homily interjected as she gestured for the two of us to be seated as she picked out her own place on the long metal bench that had managed to be salvaged from the rubble of the old mess hall, “Mister Arginine here has been catching me up on everything that you’ve been up to since you left; including a lot that I never heard about!

“Did you really get rid of all the radiation in Old Reino?!”

“Um, yeah,” I answered, looking between the two stallions, unsure of exactly how much more famous I was willing to let Homily make me after she was done gathering up what would doubtlessly turn into hours and hours of broadcasts worth of stories about my travels, “it was just some old robots using faulty spark reactors or something. They’re offline now, so no more rads.”

“And he said that Foxglove told him you and Jackboot took out the pony leading the White Hooves?”

I winced at the memory. There was a lot about that day that even Foxglove likely didn’t know, and so she couldn’t have told to RG and, by extension, Homily. The yellow mare didn’t know that she was poking at such a tender wound; though she was obviously gathering from my reaction that she’d trod on something sensitive. She was a perceptive one, that Homily.

She swallowed and bowed her head, “I’m sorry about Jackboot. I know he was important to you.”

“He was the hero that day, not me―not the Wonderbolt,” I said hoarsely, glancing over at the mare with a gaze that was a little cooler than perhaps she deserved, “so if you want to talk about that on one of your broadcasts, make sure you tell everything: he was a former White Hoof, and he went there to rescue me, and he sacrificed his life to kill their leader―his own sister―to make sure that they never came after me again.

“A White Hoof did that, do you understand?” I felt my throat nearly close up as I choked back my bubbling grief. This wound was not nearly as healed as even I might have thought, “Jackboot was a White Hoof, and he was a good pony―a hero.

“You tell ponies that, or you tell them nothing at all, understand?”

Homily nodded slowly, reaching out a hoof to lay over mine as she looked at me, “yes, Windfall, I understand. I promise you: Neighvada will know who they have to thank,” a wan smile spread across her face, “I kinda owe him my life too, you know?”

I nodded and looked back down at my plate as I tried to will all of the sorrow and grief welling up within me away. It wasn’t easy. Homily seemed to decide that the moment for her interviews had passed and excused herself, “I should probably go ahead and write out those broadcasts so they’re ready to go,” once more her hoof lightly touched mine, “if you need anything at all, just let somepony know. They’ll get it for you.”

“Thank you,” was all I trusted myself to say at the moment. I was regaining control though; slowly but surely.
“I’m going to go and check on the mares, make sure they’re comfortable; see if either of them could use something to eat,” Ramparts said, slipping away from the table as well, and taking his plate with him, “I’ll be in the barracks if either of you need me,” I nodded but said nothing.

Soon it was just me and a silent Arginine, sitting alone at a table in the middle of a bubble of onlookers who were doing their best not to look like they were staring at us. Me, because I was the hero who’d saved their lives, and Arginine because he was, well, Arginine.

The large gray stallion seemed content to sit quietly and eat. I, on the other hoof, needed a distraction, “I found out what the Republic stole from the Rangers,” I informed the larger stallion, “and the Rangers have agreed to stop trying to take it back.

“All I have to do is get it away from the Republic and the war’ll be over,” who knew that a war that had waged for well over a decade, and cost the lives of an uncountable number of ponies could be ended by something as simple as removing a metal cylinder from somepony’s possession? It was both sardonically humorous, and terribly frightening.

Had the ponies and zebras of old fought over a matter that was equally as trivial and easily solved? I didn’t know the details about that ancient war that had ended the world, but knowing the reality of this one, I was terrified to learn whether all of this suffering was for some ridiculously simple matter that could be solved in an afternoon.

I wasn’t so naive as to believe that more than a decade of animosity and bloodshed would be forgotten overnight, of course. The Steel Rangers would not be welcome in the Neighvada Valley―not that they were generally welcomed anywhere, as I understood it―for a very long time to come. Yet, even so, ending this war was a tremendous step in making this whole region of the Wasteland a more peaceful place to live. Combine that with the crippling of the White Hooves, and the imminent defeat of the ponies from Arginine’s stable once an alliance was brokered; and maybe Ramparts’ dream of a happy valley could actually come to fruition in our lifetimes after all.

“Then we can unite the valley against your stable. If all goes well, it’ll all be over in a few weeks.”

“In that case, perhaps I should begin getting my affairs in order,” the gray stallion finally said, “I have been putting together what Captain Ramparts referred to as a ‘bucket list’,” his bags briefly glowed and a small pad of paper drifted out, setting down on the table in front of me.

At first I thought that he’d been making another of his rather dry and easily overlooked jokes, but then I remembered that he only really made those when his life was in imminent peril, to diffuse the tension that he was feeling. A cursory study of the pad further reinforced the notion that the stallion was being completely serious. Arginine did not put this much effort into his humor, though right now I could fervently hope that had just this once.

“What the fuck, RG?!” I gasped, looking at the contents―the absurdly brief list of contents―on the pad of paper, “you’re not still thinking about killing yourself if we beat back your stable, are you?”

“Not immediately, no.”

“RG, come on, I really don’t need this shit right now,” I was still teetering on the verge of blowing my own Celestia-damned brains out any day now; I was in no fit shape to help somepony else cope with their own suicidal ideations! It sure as fuck didn’t help that a few of the things on his list are things that I’d have put on a bucket list of my own if I’d ever thought to make one―

“...wait a minute,” I looked up from the pad to the stallion, “‘copulation’? ‘M and S’?”

Arginine merely regarded me with that stoic expression of his, “you informed me that repeatedly engaging in sexual congress for the purpose of producing a significant quantity of offspring was one of your paramount goals in life,” I shrunk down into my barding as best I could to hide my blush. He hadn’t spoken very quietly; or at least as quietly as I might have liked, given the subject matter. How could the most unarousing description of sex possible by ponykind make me feel even more embarrassed than if he’d just announced for all to hear that I was interested in getting my brains fucked out until I was knocked up, in those words?

Honestly, I think it was just the raw clinical way that he had put it. As though there was nothing more intimate about it than, say, brushing out my tail. I liked to think that I had reasonable expectations about what sex would be like, and I wasn’t anticipating this whole world-shattering event, but I refused to believe that it was quite as mundane as Arginine made it sound. I highly doubted that ponies would have been doing it often enough to ensure a hardy future generation if it were quite than bland.

“My curiosity has been piqued sufficiently to wonder about the experience,” Arginine finished.

I buried my face under my hooves, trying my best to ignore the staring ponies around us. I swear to Celestia, if I got propositioned while we were here, somepony was dying. The pony trying to get under my tail, Arginine for making the announcement, me from embarrassment―somepony was dying!

“And the ‘M and S’ part of it?” I asked, already dreading the possible answers I might receive to the cryptic addendum.

“A stallion and a mare,” the large gray pony replied matter-of-factly.

My head shot back up as I stared wide-eyed at the stallion, “at the same time?!” I blurted.

Arginine opened his mouth to respond, but then hesitated as he considered something, “is that an option? Hmm,” he retrieved the pad and scribbled an additional note, “I had intended only to copulate with a mare and then a stallion separately in order to compare the experiences; but I had not thought to consider combining them as well. I thank you for pointing out the oversight.”

“You should try two mares at the same time, too!”

Scattered jeering and laughter joined the pony from the crowd who had volunteered the contribution. Then I saw Arginine nod and the hovering stylus held in his telekinesis added the suggestion to his pad.

“That’s it, we’re leaving!” I jumped out of my seat and darted over the table pushing at Arginine’s side. I wasn’t nearly strong enough to actually forcibly move the much more massive stallion of course, but my desire for him to make the departure with me was quite clear. He packed away his pad and stylus and stepped off the bench he’d been sitting on, preceding me as we left the eating area and headed back for the barracks. Only then did I cease my shoving and drift around to hover next to him as we walked.

“You are uncomfortable discussing reproductive acts, and yet you desire to engage in them,” anypony who’d never met me before today could probably have been forgiven for believing that the color of my coat was scarlet for the amount that I must have been blushing by this point, “I am finding this to be atypical, as Miss Homily had little issue discussing the specifics of sexual congress with mares,” stop talking, stop talking, stop talking! “She was actually the one who broached the notion of including a homosexual encounter on my list―”

“Shut up!”

Thankfully, he did, but I could tell that he was also a little annoyed at my outburst. I took a deep breath and tried to clear away some of my discomfort regarding the topic. He had a point after all, it was silly to be feeling this way. Foalish, even. If I was going to keep insisting on telling ponies I wasn’t a filly, then I needed to at least try and act like a grown pony, didn’t I? That included when talking to, and listening to ponies talk about...backrubs.

Oh, for fuck’s sake; now I was doing it?!

I took another breath. Sex. I had to at least pretend to be mature when talking about sex. Even when it was with my friends.

“Sorry,” I finally said, “I’m just...going through a tough time right now. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, and I’m stressed. I’m not mad at you.”

“I accept your apology,” Arginine said, “and I offer my own. It was not my intent to upset you. I was merely pointing out an aberration in an attempt to understand it. We do not have to, if the topic is too sensitive for you to deal with at the moment.

“As Captain Ramparts has offspring of his own, I will direct further questions towards him in order to draw upon his expertise on the matter.”

I snorted, “I don’t know if having a mare pop out your foal makes a stallion ‘an expert’ on having foals.”

“That is a valid point,” the larger stallion acknowledged, “but he should at least be knowledgeable concerning the physical act of copulation from a stallion’s perspective.”

“Five caps gets you ten he just talks about backrubs,” I muttered under my breath.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing,” I shook my head and sighed, “look, can we talk about something else, please?”

“Is there a topic that you had in mind?”

Actually, there was, now that I thought about it. I zipped around in front of him and prompted the stallion to stop as I landed in front of him and looked up into his amber eyes, “I wanted to say, ‘thank you’, in case I hadn’t told you that yet. Thank you for saving my life, like, however many times you’ve done it by now. Thank you for agreeing to help me save the ponies in this valley from being killed by your stable. Thank you for actually believing in me, even when I wasn’t willing to believe in myself,” it felt really good to get this out there in the open. Though, admittedly, this was the easy part. What was coming up next would be a bit harder.

“And, also, I’m sorry,” I hung my head now, unwilling to meet his amber gaze for this, “I’m sorry for how I treated you after we met. Not for taking you prisoner,” I was quick to point out, “because, at the time, you were a threat,” I saw him nod his own confirmation of the fact, “but after that, I realize I wasn’t treating you a lot like a prisoner. I forced you to help me, and fight for me, and risk your life to protect me. I was using you, like you were my slave or something.

“I thought of you like a slave,” that hurt to admit. As much of my life as I had spent persecuting and even exterminating slavers, acknowledging that I had so easily slipped into that very same mindset made me sick to my stomach, “you were just this...thing, and you were only worth having around if you were useful to me; like a gun or some barding.

“It was wrong of me to do that, no matter who or what you were to me. You were a pony, and not an object. I should have turned you over to the Republic like the prisoner you were,” I rolled my eyes and frowned, “I mean, I know that if I had done that, then you wouldn’t be with me now, and I wouldn’t have gotten to know you, and you wouldn’t have been around to save our lives like you have. So while, in the grand scheme, it turned out to be a, um, ‘good’ thing that I took advantage of you like I did, that doesn’t excuse it or mean it was the right thing to do,” was I rambling? I was rambling. Wrap it up, Windfall, “so, yeah, it was wrong, and I’m sorry; but you don’t have to forgive me, or anything.

“I just sort of wanted you to know I regret doing it, is all.

“Sorry.”

Once I was finally done getting all of that off my chest, silence hung in the air between us. I felt my face scrunching up into a cringe as I waited for Arginine to deliver his own clinically cold assessment of exactly how much of an ass I had been during our time together. It would have been about as much as I deserved; probably would have been letting me off easy, to be honest.

Instead, I got, “I accept your apology.”

I looked back up at the stallion, “you do? Why? I was a complete bitch to you.”

“Overlooking the fact that, logically, I have precisely no grounds upon which to stand regarding the treatment of captive ponies, in light of the acts I have performed on captured ponies, there is only one aspect to your own experience that concerns me anyway:

“You are striving to improve. You are endeavoring to be a ‘better pony’. You know where I stand on that point, and the value I place upon such a goal.

“Again, logically, I cannot fault you for being less than perfect,” he continued, “as I have also acknowledged that myself and the rest of those who are of my specific genetic strain also fall short of the bar that our engineers have set for ‘perfection’ in ponies. In that regard you and I are very much alike. We have failed to meet the goals that we have set for ourselves. We recognize that failure. We then channel that recognition into a drive to make improvements. It is that aspect that I find admirable about you.

“You do not need to apologize to me for being less than perfect, Mi―Windfall,” his lip twitched ever so slightly as he recalled the preference I had indicated when he was addressing me, “it is enough that you continue to strive to become a better pony, and to share that spirit with others. That is all that is of consequence to m―!”

It took me a few seconds to realize that the reason that Arginine had stopped talking so abruptly was because there was something in the way. Specifically, it was me. Kissing him. On his lips. Using my lips.

I―apparently―couldn’t help myself. Could anypony blame me? I wasn’t even talking about the fact that, yes, as a maturing and hormonally aware mare, Arginine was in possession of several rather attractive aesthetic features and bone structures. For Celestia’s sake, he had been designed to look good! I’d been able to very easily overlook that for the longest time because, frankly, it was hard for me to feel attracted to to a genocidal psychopath, no matter how well sculpted his hind quarters were. Of course, since I’d gotten to know him better over the past few months, and begun to see him less and less as a monster, the more I’d begun to notice that he was, objectively, good looking.

Putting his hoof-picked good looks aside though, there was one other fact that was a lot harder for me to dismiss: he was also one of the few ponies in my life who respected me. He was never patronizing, he didn’t look down on me because of my age, or treat me any differently because of it. Arginine regarded me, in a lot of ways, as a peer that was equal in standing to himself. He trusted my judgement, and he held me to a standard of conduct. He treated me like an adult.

Foxglove saw me as a little filly who was prone to getting herself into trouble and needed looking after. She didn’t trust me to make good choices when it came to personal relationships, or anything like that. Even Ramparts didn’t see a grown mare when he looked at me. He wasn’t quite as bad as Foxglove was, because he seemed to respect how capable I was in a fight, but our conversation last night had made it clear that he still wasn’t able to put aside my age.

Meanwhile, Arginine had never once been even remotely phased by my youth. He just cared about what I could do, and how I conducted myself. He was a lot like Jackboot that way, honestly. The older rust-colored stallion had allowed a young pegasus filly to follow him into some of the most dangerous places in the Neighvada Valley during the years that I’d been with him, because he knew that I was capable of both looking after myself and even looking after him if things got rough enough, despite my youth.

So, yeah, I kissed him. I kissed the good looking stallion who respected me and had repeatedly encouraged and complimented my abilities and my determination. Maybe that had been a mistake. Maybe I was acting a little impulsively.
Maybe it would have been a much better kiss if Arginine had actually kissed back.

I pulled away, awkwardly, as something approaching rational thoughts finally started to flow through my head again. The larger gray stallion was simply standing there with that trademarked impassive expression of his, staring back at me. His eyes betrayed his surprise though. I was becoming quite adept at reading him despite his own best efforts, whether he might realize it or not. I wasn’t a complete expert though. I couldn’t quite tell if he was surprised that anypony had kissed him at all, or if he was just surprised that it had been me.

“Sorry,” I said, drifting away slowly, as feelings of regret began to grow within me. Maybe I really was just a silly little foal if I couldn’t control myself in these sorts of situations.

“I suspect the fault lies with myself,” the stallion replied, “I am not versed in the nuances of courtship rituals. If I took any action or made any overtures that indicated a desire to copulate with you at this time, I apologize. It was not my intent.”

“It’s not you, it’s me―not that I’m breaking up with you,” I very quickly added. Too quickly, I realized, and tried to recover. Of course, that only seemed to make things worse, “because I’m not breaking up with you, because we’re not together. I mean, obviously we’re together, out here, but we’re not together-together.”

“You are referring to a sexually active relationship.”

“Yes. We’re not in one of those.”

“Was your action just now an expression of a desire or willingness to enter into such a relationship?”

“No! I mean, I guess that, normally, a kiss like that would have meant that…”

“However, you intended it to have an alternative meaning?”

“Yes,” Arginine continued to stare at me, waiting expectantly for me to share that very alternative meaning with him. I was absently aware of the fact that I was kneading my hooves together and stopped it by crossing them over my chest, “it was me saying ‘thank you’...for all of those nice things you were saying about me.”

“I suspect that it must be confusing, when courting other ponies, to have the same action express both ‘thanks’ as well as a receptiveness towards copulation.”

“Interpersonal relationships are complicated, it turns out,” I muttered under my breath.

“So I have observed,” the stallion nodded, “is the practice of offering apologies for transgressions, even if they are only perceived on the part of the offending party, an important facet of such relationships?”

“Yeah, it’s important to let ponies you’re with know that you didn’t mean to hurt them,” I acknowledged.

“I see. Thank you for that information. I will keep it in mind,” he glanced past me at the barracks, “have you taken the opportunity to look in on Miss Foxglove and Miss Starlight Glimmer yet?”

“I haven’t, actually,” I admitted, very glad to have a different topic of conversation, “let’s see if they’re awake yet.”
“It is extremely doubtful that either of them will be conscious after what they endured to get here.”

“I’d still like to see them anyway,” I said as I fluttered towards the doorway, landing just inside the building. Arginine followed in my wake, directing me towards the room that the unicorn mares had been taken to rest in while they recovered from their exertions.

Ramparts was indeed in there with them, just as he had said he would be. He’d made himself comfortable in between the pair of occupied beds to either side. Spread out in front of him, lying in pieces upon a spare bed sheet, were the components of one of his rifles as he went about the process of cleaning the pieces to get it back in perfect working order. He looked up at us as we stepped into the room and smiled, touching his hoof to his lips and nodding at the slumbering mares.

“Not that they’re likely to wake up no matter how loud we talk,” he said in what could be described as a none-too-quiet stage whisper. He then jabbed his hoof in Starlight’s direction, “which is good because that one’s a pretty powerful snorer.”
Indeed, even now, I could hear a noticeable nasally sound coming from beneath the covers on the indicated bed. I also noticed that her normally pink horn looked to be coated in the patina of char. A grimace creased my features as I contemplated the cause. My gaze then shifted to the violet unicorn mare in the other bed. Foxglove looked to be sleeping just as soundly, if much more quietly, as her temporally displaced counterpart. I walked over to her bedside and sat down, looking at the sleeping mare’s face; which, even in her unconscious state, looked to be drawn with worry.

She worried about me, a lot, for better or worse. I’d be the first to admit that I found her attitude a bit overbearing, and more than a little annoying at times. She treated me like a foal more often than not, I felt. It was annoying.

That wasn’t to say that I didn’t appreciate that she did care about me. Maybe I felt that she could go about it better, but that didn’t take away from the fact that her heart was in the right place. It wasn’t like I didn’t act foalish from time to time either, which probably wasn’t helping her to think of me as a grown pony. I’d do better about that in the future.

I smiled at the mare. The future was a nice thing to think about, insofar as having a future to think about at all was appealing. There were some details that would need to be worked out once this whole issue with Arginine’s stable was dealt with. Like what all of us would do. Ramparts would obviously go back to the Republic and continue with his military career where he’d left off. I guess Starlight Glimmer would go out and try to find out what had happened to Moonbeam or whoever. I wished her luck with that.

I’d go ahead and try to put together that perfect little future of mine, in spite of what Ramparts had said regarding what ponies like me could hope to expect where a happy life was concerned. There were exceptions to every rule, after all, and I was hardly a typical mare. Arginine was planning to kill himself; but hopefully I’d find a way to get him to weigh other options. If he was committed to making a list of things that he wanted to do before ending it all, and he was willing to add to it as he found more interesting things to try, then I guess all I needed to do was make sure he added a lot of things to that list that would take his whole life to do.

Foxglove, well, her I wasn’t sure about.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have a lot of options. I could think of a dozen ponies in Seaddle, Shady Saddles, and even New Reino, who would be thrilled to have a pony with her knowledge, skills, and training, around. She could write her own ticket in just about any settlement in the Neighvada Valley, and probably the rest of the Wasteland out east if she was so inclined.
She just hadn’t ever expressed any interest in doing anything of the sort to me. Everything that she said and did made it seem like all she wanted to do was stay at my side, helping me. It wasn’t like I didn’t appreciate the thought, but there was no way that was going to happen. I had my own plans for my own life. Foxglove needed to start thinking the same way. I got that she’d had a bad experience on her own since leaving her stable, but she needed to get over that. Maybe that was a cold way to think about it, given what I knew about what she’d been through in New Reino, but that didn’t stop it from being the truth.

I’d have to remember to talk to her about that after she woke up. Maybe not immediately after, but certainly before we’d beaten off Arginine’s stable so that she had time to think of a plan for her life.
I sighed and turned from the mare, heading for the door again. Before I left, I glanced at Ramparts, “you’re sure you’re good to keep an eye on them?”

The brown stallion waved a dismissive hoof, “I can promise you I never get tired of looking after pretty mares,” he said with a wink, prompting me to roll my eyes, “go on, look around, talk with ponies, bask in their praise. Don’t worry about us.”

“Thanks,” I nodded, getting ready to head out when Arginine made me pause as he stepped into the room and walked up to Ramparts. Curious, I stood in the doorway and watched to larger gray stallion.

Ramparts seemed to be a little surprised as well, quirking an eyebrow as the gray stallion approached and came to a stop just in front of him. Then Arginine said, “Captain Ramparts, I wanted to express to you my gratitude for your assistance to Windfall in her quest to save the ponies of the Wasteland.”

“Um...you’re welcome?” the stallion replied, glancing between Arginine and myself. I could only shrug, as I hadn’t expected this either. Honestly, I wasn’t sure even after hearing it what the larger stallion was getting at. It seemed a little out of place for him.

“I am trying to further develop my interpersonal skills,” he said. Ah, that explained a few things, “and establish the proper context for this,” before either myself or―especially―Ramparts could react, Arginine had bent down and kissed the smaller brown earth pony square on the lips.

Ramparts’ eyes just about bugged out of his head as the startled stallion recoiled from the larger gray pony, “woahheywhatthefuck?!” he said before performing a series of spits and aggressive wiping of his mouth with his hoof. Then he glared up at the stallion, “dude, not okay, okay? I’m flattered, but damn; warn a pony first!”

“I was merely expressing my gratitude for your assistance.”

“Yeah, I get that, but seriously, let’s just stick to hoof-bumps, alright?” the brown stallion said, holding up his hoof in the proper position for just such an exchange. Arginine nodded and proceeded to, very mechanically, tap his hoof against that of the Republican guard pony’s, “there. We’re square. You’re welcome, or whatever,” The larger stallion turned and left the room, walking past me and not seeming to notice my own wide-eyed stare as he departed. When I looked back at Ramparts, he said, “what was up with that?”

“I have no idea,” I lied, “probably just a weird stable pony thing. You know how weird they are,” that seemed to satisfy the stallion, “I’ll go talk to him about it. Bye!”

I darted out of the room and flew around in front of Arginine, glancing past him at the doorway that I’d just come out of to make sure that we were far enough away to talk without being overheard before addressing Arginine, who was looking at me with a curious expression, “okay, so, you know how I told you that ponies said ‘thank you’ by kissing each other?”

“I suspect from Captain Ramparts’ reaction that I am lacking in proper technique,” the larger stallion mused, “I’m confident that I will improve with time.”

I winced, “I’m sure you would, but...let’s say that we just put a pin in the whole ‘thank you kiss’ thing, huh?”

“Is there any particular reason you believe that it is not a good idea for me to continue to try and further develop the skills and techniques for dealing with the ponies of the surface? Given your position on the matter of my intention to euthanize myself, I would have thought that you would be in favor of exploring those topics which would be involved with leading a long life among the ponies here.”

Yeah, Windfall, why shouldn’t he be trying to act like a normal pony by doing the things you told him normal ponies do with one another? A rather impatient orange earth pony mare was giving me the stink eye.

“That...is...correct,” I winced. You can’t have it both ways, Windfall: either pony up and stop acting like a foal, or you don’t ever get to be mad at anypony ever again when they treat you like one. I let out a defeated sigh. Time to come clean, “but, the thing is, I may have given you some incorrect information,” Arginine said nothing, merely regarding me expectantly as he waited for me to clarify my mistake. Being mature sucked, “so, kissing another pony isn’t how you say ‘thank you’, at least not between ponies who are just friends, or whatever it is you and Ramparts are. Couples might, but that’s because they’re, you know, couples.”

I took a deep breath, “before, when I kissed you, I wasn’t saying ‘thank you’. I mean, I had already actually said it, of course, and I meant it; but the kiss...the kiss was...I don’t know,” I sighed, shrugging my shoulders.

Arginine didn’t say anything for a while, leaving me to hover in front of him looking uncomfortable for what felt like a lot longer than it probably was. Then, finally, he said, “do you want to hear what has both perplexed and aggravated me the most about interacting with the ponies on the surface?” his question seemed to be a rhetorical one, which was actually rather unusual for Arginine, “it is their obfuscation. While I had, at first, believed that it was a trait particular to yourself, I have come to identify it as being endemic among all surface ponies. It would take me a considerable amount of time and effort, I suspect, to determine the origin of such a practice and the purpose behind it; but, in the meantime, it is proving to be a source of great annoyance for me.

“In my stable, ponies speak plainly. There is little point in veiling one’s desires or intentions from others when it is known that you will be working closely with them for a protracted period of time. Only by being upfront and open can a sufficient level of trust be established that allows for an efficiently functioning cooperative endeavor. That does not seem to be the case on the surface. I regard this as a flaw, and a significant one,” his tone became a bit more critical now as he regarded me, “and it is clearly one you possess.

“I have acknowledged, truthfully, that I am not inherently bothered by your flaws. However, I will not abide your embracing of them after you have recognized them as such. I suspect that you are now seeing how such methods of communication are a hindrance?”

I winced, “yeah, I get it. If I can’t say what I mean, I shouldn’t say it at all.”

“It is more than that, Windfall: If I cannot trust you to mean what you say, then I simply cannot trust you. Period.”
Okay, that did hurt. Nor could I really argue that point. I wasn’t sure that I’d even want to. I wanted my friends to trust me. I needed them to, “you’re right. I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?”

“Why did you kiss me, Windfall?” well, as long as he was going to make it easy for me to make amends, “truthfully.”
A lot of different answers that I could have given wound through my head. Jokes, deflections, outright lies, all competing to be the first thing out of my mouth in order to make this whole thing go away. Through it all, Arginine’s voice range in my ears: ‘truthfully’. That orange mare wasn’t about to let that word go anywhere any time soon. After everything we’d been through together, he’d earned the truth.

He deserved the truth; from me, most especially.

“I like you,” I admitted.

“Do you not like Miss Foxglove, or Miss Homily?”

“They don’t make me feel the way that you do,” the more I spoke, the easier it got to say these things. Like the dam had finally burst and now everything could come tumbling out. Yet, all the while I was speaking, there was that growing concern that, once I’d gotten everything out into the opening, I’d be rebuked. It had happened that way with Jackboot. Hearing something like that again was the last thing that I needed right now. That didn’t stop certain things from needing to be said though, regardless of the potential consequences, “you don’t treat me different because of my age. You believe in what I’m doing, and you’re supporting me, even though it means fighting your own stable. A lot of ponies want me to succeed, sure; but I don’t think most of them genuinely believe I can,” even Hoplite had admitted that she hadn’t thought I could pull off what I’d promised to do. Foxglove wanted me to pass this off to the Republic as quickly as possible, presumably before I found some way to fuck it up beyond the ability of somepony else to fix things.

Homily, after having personally seen what I could do, hadn’t thought that the uniformed pegasus mare going around the Wasteland and helping ponies might have been the same pegasus mare that had helped her; as though the valley was rife with pegasus mares. She hadn’t thought that the young filly she’d met could have been doing all of those impressive things that she broadcasted all the time.

“Nopony has made me feel the way that you do in a long time,” not since Jackboot. I slowly drifted down to the floor, bowing my head, “I like it, and I don’t want it to stop. I get that you don’t feel things the same way that the rest of us do though, and so I’m sorry for kissing you. I shouldn’t have.”

I felt a hoof lift my chin up so that I was looking into Arginine’s eyes. Once we were looking at each other, he took it away, “I appreciate your honesty, Windfall. Thank you,” I resisted the impulse to look away, “now it is my turn,” and here it was, the rebuke that I had been dreading. I’d face it like a mare though. I wasn’t going to look away, no matter how much I wanted to.

“Nothing that I have said or done up to this point has been influenced by any motivation on my part to kindle intimate feelings towards myself from you. As I have previously explained: the impulse to form deep connections with ponies for the purpose of sexual reproduction is not something that I possess. I am physiologically incapable of ‘falling in love’, or even from becoming infatuated with anypony.

“That does not preclude me from recognizing noteworthy accomplishments or acknowledging admirable traits in others. To that extent, I will share with you the admission that, were I capable of feeling emotionally close to anypony, I suspect that you would be at the top of the list of candidates,” my eyes widened, and I felt my cheeks flush. Okay, this hadn’t been the way that I’d anticipated this conversation of going. That being said, I could still hear a ‘but’ coming at the end of this.

“But,” called it, I thought with a defeated mental sigh, “in spite of that, I feel compelled to share with you an advisory that you exercise caution where your own feelings are concerned,” and here it was. Be strong, Windfall. Just like when Jackboot had done it, the world wasn’t going to end. As long as I didn’t run off and do anything stupid with any White Hoof spies, it should even turn out better than the last time too, I thought acidly, “for I understand that an emotionally reciprocal bond is important to most when engaging in a sexual relationship, and I would be incapable of providing such if you insist on continuing to pursue this.”

I blinked.

Wait. What.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hoarsely, “I think I must have stroked out for a second. What did you mean by ‘if I continue to pursue this’? Are you...not turning me away?”

I identified that little twitch of his eyebrow that betrayed Arginine’s frustration with having to repeat himself. Sorry, buddy, but if you were going to keep talking the way that you did, you were going to have to get used to doing that, “I am attempting to temper whatever expectations you may have regarding an intimate relationship. I cannot, and will never, ‘love you’ in any way that you may either be familiar with or anticipate. It is up to you whether or not this caveat is acceptable.”

Another startled blink. He wasn’t turning me away! I’ll admit, it wasn’t exactly the most romantic way I’d ever envisioned a stallion expressing their own feelings for me, but he had explained why that was the case. Of course, he’d also put it on me to decide if that was a trait in a stallion that I was willing to settle for. Though it wasn’t like Jackboot had ever gotten all touchy-feely either, and I’d loved him.

“That’s fine,” I blurted, unable to keep the surprise that I was feeling from coloring my words, “yeah, no, I’m good with that,” I paused for a moment, “so...we’re together now?” was that how this worked?

“That does seem to be the arrangement that we have come to,” Arginine pointed out. He thought for a moment and then shrugged, “in light of the outcome, I suppose that kissing Captain Ramparts was worth it, in hindsight. Though I suspect that he might have a differing view on the matter.”

“Wait,” did he mean that, “you knew that I was lying?!”

There was now a much more visible frown on the gray stallion’s face, “while I may not be an expert on surface pony social interactions, I am indeed perfectly aware that kissing is not an acceptable method of expressing platonic feelings of gratitude between mere associates.

“I was not, ‘born yesterday’, as it were.”

“You...you tricked me!” I jabbed a hoof accusingly at the stallion.

“There was no deception of any consequence,” Arginine insisted, “I merely carried an expressed falsehood that you presented through to a conclusion that I reasoned you would be unappreciative of, for the purposes of prompting a confession of your deception.”

“You wanted me to admit that I’d lied,” I winced, rubbing my head with my hoof. Seriously, we really needed to work on trimming back his vocabulary, “fair enough. I deserved that. I’m not sure if Ramparts did, but…” I shrugged, “he’ll get over it,” I narrowed my eyes at Arginine and pointed my hoof at him again, “you, I’m keeping an eye on.”

“Better an eye than the collar,” the stallion quipped, then added as he stroked his chin with a hoof, “though I suspect that I should have inquired more deeply into whatever possible eccentricities you might have regarding achieving a state of sexual arousal before completely dismissing the involvement of such things,” my jaw went slack and I felt my cheeks starting to burn again, “Miss Homily and I had a rather involved discussion before your arrival.”

My mouth opened and closed several times, wordlessly, before I finally caught sight of the crinkling at the corner of his eye. My embarassment shifted very abruptly to consternation, “oh, I am not sure how much a like ‘joking RG’,” I grumbled, “I thought you only did that when you were feeling tense?”

“I have just entered into my first committed relationship. It can be argued that many would find such an milestone to induce a moderate amount of stress,” the stallion pointed out. I glared at him and he shrugged, “I am perfectly capable of deriving amusement whenever I choose to. Besides, it is clear that while I am not significantly affected by this change in our paradigm, you have been experiencing an elevated level of anxiety related to it.”

That was mostly fair, I admitted with an audible sigh, “I guess. It’s been a really fucked up month for me in general. I’ve been going through a lot. My father died recently, I’ve been struggling with how I feel about killing ponies―even the bad ones―I did some things I wasn’t proud of when I didn’t have my cutie mark. I’m just...tired,” I hung my head and shook it slowly. I needed a break; a real break. Heroes didn’t get to take vacations in the middle of their fights to save the whole world, though, did they?

Again I felt Arginine’s hoof reach beneath my jaw and lift my head back up. I sighed and was about to tell him that I didn’t need another pep talk. I’d been getting those all day from ponies. Yeah, I got it, I’d done a lot of really great things that a lot ponies appreciated. Yay, me! That wasn’t it this time. I was just so damn tired of doing those things. Not that I wanted to stop; the world was still in danger, and I wasn’t just going to give up on everypony, no matter what. That didn’t mean that even a hero like the Wonderbolt didn’t need a little time to collect herself before going back out into the meatgrinder that was the Wasteland.

I was about to say all of that, or something very much like it. However, when I opened my mouth to express those feelings, I discovered that I had an Arginine in my way. Specifically his lips were in the way of my lips. There was only the briefest pauses on my end of things as my brain dealt with the unexpectedness of what was happening. It passed quickly though, and I very eagerly leaned into the embrace.

This marked the first time in my life that somepony had ever kissed me, and I mean really kissed me. This was no little ‘thank you’ peck on the cheek from Homily, or a ‘goodnight sweetie’ from my mother. This was a stallion, kissing me, on the lips, and meaning it. As much as Arginine could mean it, of course. Not that I noticed a difference, since I had no metric to compare it to. Every other time in my life when I’d kissed a stallion, they hadn’t been into it at all.
Arginine felt into it this time though!

I pushed my way deeper and deeper into the embrace. Before I knew it, I was reared up onto my hind quarters, balanced by my spread wings, my hooves finding their way around the gray stallion’s well-muscled neck and shoulders. A need to breathe was what finally drew me to break things off, but only just long enough to refresh myself before I pounced right back onto him. As before, this time the stallion was receptive. It lasted even longer the second time, and when we finally parted, I allowed myself to take several deep breaths, leaning my forehead against his as I did so and relishing the feel of his body against mine. I couldn’t deny a tiny feeling of amusement in the back of my mind as I noted that even when I had fully extended myself vertically as far as I could, Arginine still had to dip his head ever so slightly to accommodate me.

“That was nice,” I said breathlessly.

“I have no informed opinion either way,” I cracked open an eye and peeked at the stallion. He caught my critical look and amended, “I am lacking in sufficient data points to make a worthwhile declaration regarding their quality.”

I spied the eye crinkle and straightened up a little more, “lacking data points, eh? I thought you were some sort of researcher, or whatever. You’re supposed to be all about gathering data. Shame on you,” two could play this joking game!

“You raise a valid criticism,” he nodded solemnly. Then he looked around the hallway, “a controlled environment is also essential for ensuring that only valid data points are collected and to mitigate outliers. We should endeavor to locate a more suitable location for this research.”

“I think I have an idea,” I mused before vaulting over him and alighting onto his back. I lay down along his spine, my forelegs draping over his shoulders and encircling his neck as I buried my face in the scruff of his mane. I canted my head to the side and whispered in his ear, “third door on the right,” the stallion nodded and began walking towards the indicated room. My wings snapped out once more, flinching occasionally in an effort to keep me centered on the larger stallion’s backside.

Once inside, I bucked the door closed behind us and leaped over top of the stallion, floating down to stand on the bed. This time we were able to kiss without looking completely ridiculous. Insofar as nopony would stumble onto us. I was not going to argue that it wasn’t a little silly that I had to be perched atop of furniture in order to not be in some sort of awkward pose to kiss my new coltfriend.

I had a coltfriend! Arginine waited patiently as I burst into a giggling fit in the middle of the embrace at the thought, “sorry,” was all I said in a rush as I leaned back into him.

Kissing was one of those things that I had really only known intellectually before now. I’d kind of been firing from the hip when I’d planted one on Jackboot, and there hadn’t been a lot of feedback there. With Cestus―as little as I liked to think about that night―he’d been the one doing most of the kissing―and...touching. I suppressed a shiver at the memory.

The point was that I hadn’t really known what to expect, or what it would be like. Arginine wasn’t any sort of expert when it came to intimacy―so far as I knew, anyway; so I didn’t know if I was experiencing objectively great kissing. It was the best I’d ever had, and it did genuinely feel good!

Everything about it was wonderful. I never knew that ponies could have a...taste? That was the only way that I could think to describe it. A distant corner of my mind idly wondered if everypony ‘tasted’ the same, or if this was a ‘flavor’ unique to Arginine. In either case, I was finding that I liked that smokey sort of...what was that? Scallions and...radroach? Oh. Nevermind. That was just breakfast. Well, not all of it was breakfast. There was definitely something beyond all of that that I couldn’t quite place as being any sort of actual food.

His scent though, that wasn’t artificial. The memory of it filtered back into my thoughts from that drunken night we’d shared together when the two of us were so sure that we were going to die out there in the middle of the Wasteland from radiation poisoning. There was less sweat and grime this time, but that heavy musk endured, and I took it in with every inhalation of air as we stood there.

Not that I found myself able to stand for very long. Apparently I became a little too relaxed at some point and my hindquarters gave out from under me as I lost my footing on the springing mattress. Arginine managed to compensate and avoid breaking our embrace, and followed me all the way down as I rolled back onto the bed. I squirmed a little as the Gale Force poked uncomfortably into my back between my wing joints, but that annoyed grunt was eclipsed rather abruptly by a gasp that I hadn’t meant to let out as the stallion’s lips moved away from my mouth and found purchase on the side of my neck. To prevent further outbursts, I bit down on my lower lip, and felt my limbs reflexively coiled up around the stallion’s neck and chest.

I couldn’t help it. Something about the mixture of the silky soft texture of his lips, mingled with the occasional brush of hard enamel sent a series of quivers shooting up and down my body that made me feel...I don’t know how I felt; but I didn’t want it to stop. More than that: I wanted more! I wrapped my forelegs around the back of his held and held him to me as he nibbled, shifting from my lower lip to using a pinion to muffle the high pitched little gasps that wouldn’t be contained.

Arginine tried to wander further down to my clavicle, but we found that my reinforced kevlar and ceramic barding made things a little difficult. No longer willing to tolerate the Gale Force poking me, and frustrated at my armor for daring to deny me the opportunity to experience further pleasure, I gently pushed Arginine away and started fighting with the straps holding it in place, “get this off me!” I hissed.

Odd how a lifetime spent donning and doffing barding could suddenly go completely out the window. The entire concept of the ‘buckle’ and how they functioned seemed to leave my brain completely as I fumbled with the straps holding my armor in place like it was the first time that I’d ever beheld them. Fortunately one of us still had some semblance of composure and an amber telekinetic field enveloped the half dozen or so fasteners that kept my barding snuggly affixed to my body. The sturdy kevlar shell that protected my abdomen was freed and peeled away as Arginine deposited it neatly in the corner of the room.

That stallion needed to work on his priorities. Screw neatness! I reached up and took hold of his head, pulling him back down to where he’d left off when he’d encountered my barding. My wing went right back into my mouth as fresh tingles of pleasure washed over me. Every time I was about to adjust to what he was doing, the stallion moved elsewhere and I was again hit with a pulse of renewed pleasure. My clavicle, my chest, my belly―which kind of tickled a little. Then he was at my―woah! Okay. Feeling somepony do that to my teets was...weird. Not ‘bad’ weird, no, but it wasn’t making me feel quite like when he’d been kissing on other parts of me. It was arousing, sure, but also...I didn’t know. It was hard to describe.

I wasn’t going to tell him to stop though!

Then I felt Arginine pull away and look down at me as I lay on the bed, still waiting for some parts of me to stop tingling, “you are finding this sufficiently satisfying?”

“Oh, Celestia, yes…” I purred, wrapping my wings around to my abdomen and brushing the tips of my feathers along the regions that the stallion had been tending to, relishing the fresh trembles they evoked, “I thought you said you’d never been with anypony like this before?”

“I have not,” Arginine once again confirmed with a nod of his head.

“So then how do you know what to do?” A white unicorn mare with an exquisitely styled purple mane was likewise quite eager to learn how an alleged novice seemed to know his way around a mare so well. A cyan pegasus and an orange earth pony were also peeking over her shoulders as she awaited the answer―which those two of course weren’t actually interested in hearing for any particular reason. They were just...curious. For curiosity’s sake.

“The central nervous system contains a number of nerve clusters that lay close to the surface of the epidermis. Properly stimulated, these clusters can produce feelings of intense physical pleasure or euphoria. When a pony is already receptive to entering a state of arousal, those feelings of pleasure further reinforce the level of arousal being experienced and―”

I groaned in annoyance and once more grabbed the stallion and drew him into another kiss that silenced him. When we broke away again, I said, “shut up. Stopped caring. You’re a smart pony; I get it,” another kiss, then, “I don’t suppose you know where any more of those clusters are?”

“The auricular branch of vagus nerve just behind the ear, the accessory nerve clusters along the superior trapezius muscles, the―”

“So what are you waiting for?!”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, “accessing those regions of your body will require the removal of the rest of your barding.”

“Oh, for―!” I once more pushed the stallion away and resumed struggling with the barding that was proving to be uniquely stubborn. Thank Celestia Arginine was here or I’d probably die trapped in the thing at this rate!

The kevlar armor was tugged off my forelimbs before I found myself rolled over onto my belly as the remainder was peeled off. Again the large gray stallion seemed insistent on folding it up with precision and care. All the while I buried my face into the mattress and groaned in frustration.

Then he was standing over me, and I immediately tensed up. Not with fear or concern, but with anticipation. He seemed to know what he was about, but I didn’t know exactly where he was going to strike next until he did and so I―there was a sharp intake of breath as his pursed lips made contact just at the base of my left ear. Reflexively, I found myself craning my head to the side to allow for easier access. Those pleasant little trembled returned, traveling down the length of my body as Arginine demonstrated that, novice though he may be in the affairs of intimacy, he sure seemed to know what made ponies tick!

I kneaded my hooves into the mattress as he moved about from one spot to the next, tacking my tension and anxiety and fatigue as he went. In their place, the stallion left only pleasure, and a the feeling that I was somehow only made of butter, with no stiff or rigid parts at all.

Something was stiff though, and it was poking me around my hips. I turned my head, glancing back with eyes that simply refused to reach a state beyond half-lidded as Arginine nibbled on my rotary cuff. Oh. Right. That.

That part had escaped my mind somehow. It had my full and undivided attention now though. Sweet Celestia! I mean, I’d certainly seen them on stallions before, and I knew what they were used for and the role that they played in things like this. Intellectually, anyway. I’d seen the act of sex a time or two in my life, so I was familiar with the mechanics of it all. There was something a little different about being this close though.

I mean, that thing was supposed to go in me? That thing? In me? I wasn’t any sort of genius when it came to matters of mathematics or physics like Foxglove was, but I couldn’t help but feel like there was some part of this equation that wasn’t balancing out here. Unless somepony showed up here with a measuring tape or a ruler to show me how everything was supposed to line up, I was going to remain dubious.

Arginine must have noticed that I was focused on something else besides what he was doing and followed my gaze, “my apologies,” he said, shifting around so that he was no longer in contact with me, “I did inform you that my physiological responses to arousal were intact. I will be more mindful in the future.”

“No, no, it’s alright,” I said, though I’ll admit that there was a note of doubt in my voice that even I heard plain as day, “I’m…” I took a deep breath, “I think I’m ready. Let’s do it. Let’s do...it,” oh, sure; suddenly I couldn’t say the ‘s’ word anymore. Real mature there, Windfall.

I winced and ground my teeth, “fuck me, RG!”

Okay, yeah, no. That didn’t really make me feel more adult about this. Arginine seemed to be of a like mind, as he was staring at me with what was, for him, a rather dubious expression. I buried my head in the mattress and sighed, “sorry. I’m not going to say it like that again; but I am ready to try it,” I lifted my head and looked back at the stallion, “if you are?”

He glanced down briefly between his legs and then looked back at me with a nod, “I am sufficiently engorged for copulation,” he responded matter-of-factly.

My head was buried back in the mattress again as I groaned, “could you please not talk about it like that?” that buttery feeling was starting to leave me. If we didn’t go about it soon, I was probably going to end up passing on the whole thing, which I kind of felt like would be a waste, given how much the two of us had already done. If I got this out of the way and over with, that would be one less nagging little thing gnawing at me while I was back out there in the Wasteland.
It would also make for a decent card to play against Foxglove the next time she started treating me like a foal.

“How would you prefer that I characterize it?”

“I don’t know,” I growled into the bed sheet I was clutching to my head in a vain effort to bury myself in order to escape from the awkwardness of this conversation, “just make with the you getting inside of me before I lose my nerve, please.”

“Very well.”

Suddenly I was filled with that sense of trepidation again as I became acutely aware of Arginine shifting his body over top of me as he got into position. I lifted my head and took a deep breath to steel myself against whatever was coming, repeatedly convincing myself that this wasn’t any sort of big deal. Thousands of ponies did this all the time, every day, all over the Wasteland. It was perfectly natural. My parents had done this―at least twice, as the existence of me and my brother testified.

…

Okay, thinking about my parents doing this wasn’t a good call after all.

My brain hit a snag and I took in a sharp breath as I felt a hoof gently brush aside my tail. It was only then that I was aware that I was folding my hind legs together as well. Swallowing back my reservations about this whole affair, I let out the breath that I was holding and forced myself to relax my legs, slowly spreading them apart to allow him...access.

I’d never felt so vulnerable and exposed in my whole life. It was a little…scary wasn’t quite the right word, but it was in the ballpark, I suppose. It was exciting too, though.

There was another start as I felt Arginine once more leaning down to nuzzle the side of my head, his lips putting pressure just behind and below my ear. I felt some of that tension ebb away as I sighed, relishing the sensation of that tingling again. Then, much to my embarrassment, I jerked and lurched forward the moment I felt that alien sensation of contact beneath the base of my tail.

I cringed and flipped a wing across my face to hide my expression as I mentally chastised myself. Yes, Windfall, you were going to feel him there, because that’s kind of where you asked him to stick it! Make up your mind and get your act together!

“Sorry,” I murmured, still veiling my head behind the pinions of my wing as I very carefully slid back to where I had been before my attempt to climb down the other side of the bed, “just...slowly, please.”

“Very well,” the stallion said softly into my ear.

This time I moved my tail out of the way on my own, and as a means to thwart any further involuntary betrayals on the part of my subconscious, I locked my knees onto the edge of the mattress so that I couldn’t make another lurch like that again. I even went so far as to stretch out my forelegs and plant them to keep myself rooted to where I was on the bed.

At least this time I didn’t immediately jump when I felt the stallion make contact again. I did have to remind myself to stop tensing up the muscles in my nethers so tightly though. It was a bit of an uphill battle though. Nothing that I’d ever experienced had prepared me for the feeling that was evoked by something slipping into me like that. As requested, Arginine kept the progress slow, reacting to each of my involuntary gasps as my resolve continued to waiver for brief flashes.

Despite my own best efforts and intentions, I was still inching my way along the mattress every time the stallion straddling me tried to go deeper. It was...painful? Not in the same way that a bullet or stab wound was, of course. More akin to stretching out a cramped muscle, I guess. And there were that mixture of pleasure involved as my body began to recognize that this was a thing that was supposed to happen, and that it was something that was also supposed to make me feel good. It was uncomfortable, but in a...good way?

Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered to devote a whole lot of brainpower towards thinking about this objectively. I was too busy being overwhelmed by a lot of sensations and emotions at the moment.

Either because even Arginine had a limit to what he was willing to tolerate where my timidity was concerned, or he recognized how much I was struggling to try and settle into what was happening, the stallion pinned me to the bed by clamping his jaws down over the base of my neck. Not in a way that was meant to cause me pain, my brain’s initial interpretation to the contrary; he was just using my own body as an anchor so that I couldn’t keep shifting away.

To tell the truth, feeling his teeth placing pressure onto those muscles like that kind of helped me get more into this too. It was clearly where another of those nerve clusters were, because I was unable to keep myself from moaning, and my back arched sharply in response. Finally, Arginine was able to penetrate the rest of the way. I hiccuped when I felt him connect with something inside me; and, much to my own dismay, it sounded like a chirp, more than anything else. I covered my mouth with my forelegs and cringed. At least I could count on Arginine being discreet enough never to bring that up in public later…

I inhaled sharply again as I felt something new now. Granted, nearly everything that I was going through was ‘new’, but this was something that was accompanied by pretty much the first time during these escapades that I’d heard Arginine make any sounds as well. The stallion let out a low grumble, the sound reverberating through the flesh of my neck that he still had gripped in his jaws. Hot, damp, breath rolled over my coat as something warm and slick started spreading through my insides. The stallion straddling me let out several long, deep, breaths as that feeling inside grew.

After a few more seconds, Arginine released his hold on me, and I felt myself slump back down to the mattress, waiting for whatever was supposed to come next.

Apparently, what came next was Arginine easing himself out of me and off the bed. I had to admit that the departure was a much smoother procedure than the insertion had been. It probably had something to do with that slime that was coating everything...and kind of seeping out of me a little.

I looked up at the stallion expectantly, “now what?”

Arginine stared at me and quirked his eyebrow ever so slightly, “there is nothing further to do; we have copulated successfully.”

I blinked at the stallion, “...wait...that’s it?” the stallion nodded, “that’s it?!” that was what ponies were so eager to do all the time? That was what stallions had kept propositioning me for all these years? Talk about not living up to the hype!

Once again my head was buried in the crumpled sheets of the bed, this time so that they sufficiently muffled the very loud exasperated scream that I felt compelled to release. There was no reason to clue the entire barracks into my disappointment.

It wasn’t that the whole experience had been a let down. That entire first part with the kissing and nibbling and nipping had felt wonderful! Even when Arginine had been moving inside me had triggered so many pleasant tingles that I’d never imagined feeling.

What was really bothering me was that I had wanted it to last a lot longer than it had! Now I was just feeling more stressed than I had been before. Well, frustrated, really, I guess. It was like there was the itch somewhere in my body that desperately needed to be scratched or I was going to go out of my freaking mind!

I couldn’t believe that ponies went through this all the time. It was amazing that anypony ever had foals at all, if you asked me…

“Oh, fuck me!” this I yelled out at the top of my lungs as I suddenly shot bolt upright in the bed, a cold, sinking, feeling gripping my gut.

“Even I don’t recover that quickly,” the stallion very nearly grumbled, “additional coupling will have to be delayed for another ten minutes or so…”

“No! Horseapples! Foals!” I snapped at the stallion in quick succession, “does this mean I’m going to have foals now? Or in however many months or whatever? Do foals happen every time?”

“Impregnation and gestation are not subjects with which I am well-versed,” the large gray stallion said, shrugging his shoulders, “ponies in my stable are gestated artificially. Fertility rates are not a concern of our engineers at this point.”

I clapped my hooves to my face and stifled a second aggravated outburst. Ramparts, Foxglove, or Starlight would all know the answer to my question; but I was loath to bring it up with any of them, lest it lead to some rather pointed questions about why I wanted to know. Well, maybe I could ask Ramparts and not have him make a big deal about it. Of course, there was no way to be sure that he wouldn’t let it slip to Foxglove.

Not thinking through the possible consequences of my actions like this was definitely on her list of things that ponies who weren’t mature enough to make informed decisions would do; and she would be right.

“I’m an idiot,” I groaned.

“I don’t think it happens every time,” I said, taking a deep breath in an effort to calm myself down, “I think that Ramparts and Yatima were having sex for a long time before she had her foal. So maybe you have to do it so many times in a week or month or something…”

Another, much more subdued groan escaped me as I looked up to the heavens and shook my head, “fighting and babies, Jackboot; I really wish you’d taught me about fighting and babies…” I could ask Lancet when we got back to Seaddle, since we’d be heading there soon anyway. He could given me all the disapproving looks he wanted to so long as he didn’t tell―an implant! He’d mentioned something about an implant the last time I saw him!

I added that to my mental ‘to do’ list.

“So then I take it that you do not want to engage in a repeat performance today?” Arginine asked.

I shook my head, “not until I can make certain it’s not going to lead to me popping out foals at an inconvenient time,” I insisted, “I want foals, yeah, but later. Not now. ‘Now’ involves a lot of fighting and stuff, and I don’t want to be changing diapers while we’re in the middle of a battle.”

“That is hyperbole,” I wasn’t sure if the stallion was asking me a question or merely stating for his own peace of mind that I was not the kind of pony who would actually take the time out of an ongoing fight to the death to deal with some shit-filled cloth.

“It nearly made me hyperventilate is what it did,” I mumbled, cringing as I dabbed a hoof at my nethers, “what is this stuff?”

“Seminal fluid,” Arginine answered simply, “it contains the genetic contribution from the male necessary to cause impregnation of a fertile female.”

“Baby juice. Great,” I lifted the substance to my face and gave it a sniff. Funky-smelling, “I don’t suppose if I just bounce around on this bed for a while I can shake it out of me?”

“I find that to be a highly unlikely outcome.”

“Figures,” I wiped my hoof on the sheets and then bundled up the linen with the notion to at least clear away the excess. I paused, however, “you know what, I think I could really just use a shower,” if nothing else, some nice warm water would really help to relax me. Though perhaps this was the sort of situation that warranted a cold shower to help shock me back into a more level state of mind. I looked over at the stallion, “how about you?”

“I washed shortly after my arrival at the specimen evaluation facility we dismantled,” he replied before glancing briefly down between his legs and wrinkling his nose, “but a ‘touch-up’ would not go amiss.”

“I’ll scrub your back if you scrub mine,” I offered as I trotted for the door.

“I am a unicorn. I have no issues washing my backside.”

I rolled my eyes at the stallion, “fine, whatever; then would you mind helping me at least?”

The stallion shrugged and started heading over to join me at the doorway, “it occurs to me that is likely an implied duty expected of ponies who have pair-bonded.”

I flashed a playful frown at the taller stallion as I leaped into the air so that I could look him leveling in the eye with a feigned glare, “are you saying that being with me feel like work?”

Completely unphased by my reaction, Arginine replied in a droll tone, “the sum total of my time spent in your company has required a phenomenal expenditure of effort on my part when compared to what my duties were while working in the research lab. Looking after your wellbeing, Windfall, requires a lot of work.

“Compared to what I’ve already been through since meeting you, ensuring you are in a sufficiently hygienic state is the least trying of the burdens I have been required to bear.”

My eyes had glazed over halfway through all of that, but I was pretty sure I caught the gist of the message, “okay, so I couldn’t keep track of all the insults in there, but I’m going to assume there was was one of them every few seconds or so. Lucky for you, I’m still really tired, so I’m not feeling like coming up with a creative enough punishment right now. Rest assured that retribution is coming though, and that it will be swift and terrifying.”

“I have no doubt. I can barely cope with the fear such a threat evokes.”

I narrowed my eyes even further. As good as I was getting at figuring out Arginine, sarcasm was proving to be the hardest to identify. Most of what he said sounded sarcastic; but that was usually because he was saying something in a way that made it clear how inferior we were to deliberately engineered ponies like himself. Jabbing him in the chest with each word I said, “swift...and...terrifying.

“Now let’s go get cleaned up. We smell like a barroom bathroom!”

In the end, I settled for the warm, relaxing, shower, instead of a cold, invigorating, one. The deciding factor was that I was, in a word: filthy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken the time to give myself a thorough cleaning. My tail, especially, was a matted, tangled, mess that required a lot of very painful brushing to straighten up. My mane was getting a lot longer too, I noticed, once I had it all washed out. I’d need to get it trimmed down back into my preferred buzz cut soon.

Arginine was making himself invaluable once he’d finished giving himself a quick lather and rinse. He’d already rather recently taken the time to get his coat in line, so he was soon helping to rub my own hide down with a pair of magically guided brushes, working the soap in and the grime out. I was basically able to just stand under the shower head and bask in the pleasantly warm water while the stallion did all of the real work.

There was a flutter of excitement within me when those brushes slipped inside my thighs and touched up around my navel, but I quickly fought the reflex to shy away. After all, we were a couple now. Besides, it was pretty clear to me that Arginine wasn’t looking to start anything again. A shame, really. I’d encountered ponies playing around in showers before. They’d looked like they were having fun.

It wasn’t like the two of us had anything important to do today…

I sidled up to the larger gray stallion and started to nuzzle his chest and as much of his neck as I could reach without flying or raising up on my hindquarters. The brushes hesitated and I felt Arginine crane his head down. I tilted my own head, in anticipation of some more kisses or nibbling from my new coltfirend.

“You desire copulation?”

An annoyed snort escaped me as I frowned, “no. Not until we can make sure I don’t get knocked up, at least,” I reminded the stallion, “but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t mind some more of that ‘nerve stimulation’,” I added, throwing in a slight purr as I started delivering soft kisses of my own along the stallion’s chest.

“I see. I had anticipated that you would only require a limited amount of stimulation to maintain an optimal mental state,” I glanced up, my brow furrowed as I regarded Arginine, noting the distant, calculating, look in his golden eyes, “finding appropriate instances to provide additional stimulation might prove problematic during the course of our typical operations; especially without a definitive means to predict when you will be required to deliver optimal performance.”

“Wait, what? RG, what are you talking about?”

He glanced down at me, “I had hypothesized that only the occasional erotic session would suffice to maintain your level of confidence. While I am not objectively opposed to providing you with more frequent encounters, I am concerned that they might present a distraction if they happen too often. We must ‘keep your eye on the prize’, as it were, and not anticipating our next physically intimate session,” he considered for a moment and then added, “perhaps if you could explain if your current initiation is borne out of a sense of need, or merely a frivolous desire for additional pleasure?”

“I mean, well, of course I don’t need more...intimacy,” I had to admit that the way he kept talking about what we did was already starting to bother me, and this was only the first day. That didn’t seem to bode well, “do you mean you don’t want more? I thought you said you enjoyed doing this stuff too?”

“While it is true that I derive physical pleasure,” he acknowledged, “it isn’t significantly greater than the pleasure I receive from a good meal,” being compared to breakfast wasn’t doing a whole lot of good for my self-esteem, “as for my personal desires: intimacy holds no interest for me.”

That didn’t make sense. If he didn’t care about doing that kind of stuff together, “then why did you kiss me back there? Or do any of that other stuff?”

“Because I judged that it would improve your attitude,” the stallion responded unabashedly.

This left me with my jaw hanging slack as I stared at him, “...what?”

“In the time that I have been in your company, I have noticed that there is a correlation between your mental state and your martial and conversational performance. The better your ‘mood’, the better you perform overall,” he explained, “as we will soon be embarking onto the next leg of our journey, and your mental state was greatly diminished after your encounter with the Steel Rangers, I endeavored to improve it”

I stared up at the stallion, slowly backing away from him, not quite sure if I believed what I was hearing, “you’re saying that you did that stuff to make me feel better about myself?”

“That is correct,” he nodded, “it appeared to be quite effective. You are currently significantly more responsive and optimistic than you were when you first arrived to the cafeteria this morning.”

Those warm feelings that I’d been having just a few minutes ago were cooling quickly. In fact, a lot of me felt like it was growing numb the more I heard, “you thought I was sad, so you...you did all that so I would feel better?

“You...you gave me a pity fuck? A Celestia-damned pity fuck, RG?! Is that really what that was?!”

“Certainly not,” Arginine replied, sounded offended by the notion, “I am incapable of feeling ‘pity’. I merely sought to stimulate endorphin production to interact with your limbic system for the purpose of lifting you out of your depressive state,” he must have seen my eye twitching with the barely contained rage that I was feeling. I was not in the mood for his vocabulary right now, “I intended to use sex to make you feel better,” he amended.

“THAT’S WHAT A ‘PITY FUCK’ IS, RG!”

In spite of my rather obvious rage, Arginine merely looked annoyed. For a moment, I thought that he was about to once more counter that he didn’t actually feel the emotion ponies described as ‘pity’, despite that being so far beside the point that it could even see the point from wherever it was! I was, frankly, beside myself. I couldn’t tell if I was angry, devastated, or humiliated, right now. The first time that I’d ever really been with a pony, a pony that I had thought genuinely cared about me, in his own, weird, Arginine, way, and it turned out that he just done all of that to give me what amounted to a confidence boost because he’d seen me moping around this morning.

The worst part was, that as much as I was pissed at that gray stallion right now, it paled in comparison to how angry I was at myself. Because I hadn’t seen it coming. Worse than that: I’d deliberately ignored the fact that Arginine had all but told me that it was coming. No wonder he was confused that I was mad at him. He’d said right from the beginning that he didn’t care about me like that, that he didn’t love me―that he couldn’t love me. I’d been so preoccupied by the fact that a good looking stallion, who’d been saying nice things about me, had said that he was willing to do with me what stallions did with mares they cared about, that I’d completely blanked on what he was telling me and tricked myself into believed that he did care about me like that.

He’d never been shy about what I was to him though, not since the day we met. I wasn’t his special somepony. I wasn’t his marefriend. I was a hypothesis that he was evaluating. I was the alternative to fixing the Wasteland that might not require wholesale slaughter of the current inhabitants.

I was just a possible answer to a variable in an equation that it was his life’s work to try and solve. Nothing more, and nothing less.

To him, sex was just that: sex. I was the one trying to make it into something more. This was my mistake, and not his.

The next time I spoke, I’d managed to rein in my rage; now that I’d finally identified the deserving target, “sorry,” I sighed, “you tried to tell me what this was from the beginning. I forgot. You didn’t deserve to get yelled at like that.”

“May I assume that agreeing with that assessment will not incur further wrath from you?”

I snorted, “yeah. I’m getting used to discovering how much of an idiot I can be sometimes,” I rolled my eyes after a brief moment’s thought, “most times.

“I just...I really wanted to believe that somepony cared about me.”

“I have observed that Miss Foxglove seems to value your well-being greatly,” Arginine pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s not quite what I meant.”

The stallion nodded. Sensing that our bathing session was largely over, he finally reached out with his magic and shut off the flow of water and put away the brushes and remainder of the soap, “I suspected as much. In that regard, I estimate that you are correct: nopony we know of harbors romantic feelings for you,” I leveled a flat look at him, and he was naturally unphased, “which is not the same as saying that nopony ever could. I submit to you the argument that you have not been devoting any significant effort towards locating a romantic partner. Is that correct?”

“Well, I mean, no,” I admitted, “I’ve kinda been busy with other things,” like saving the world. That left surprisingly little time for dating, it turned out.

“Which makes it ridiculous to bemoan a lack of suitors, when you have been seeking none.”

“I get it, I’m stupid,” I didn’t bother to hide the caustic note in my voice, “can we move on now?”

“You’re intelligence is not being called into question at the moment,” I narrowed my eyes at the stallion. As a pony experienced in deciphering ‘RG-speak’, I didn’t miss the implication of his words that there had been moments when he had called my intelligence into question. I’d have to stay alert for the next time that happened, “but this does highlight the point that I was making earlier: you are prone to bouts of despondency,” I glared at him and provoked a mild sigh, “you frequently become depressed,” okay, that seemed fair.

“I cannot make a clinical diagnosis without performing a battery of tests and evaluations that I do not possess the correct materials to conduct nor, I admit, without considerably more training in the field of psychiatry,” I fought against the glaze starting to form over my eyes, sensing that he was eventually going to get to an important point that I could understand. Smaller words. I swear, with Celestia as my witness, I was going to get this pony to use smaller words if it was the last thing I did, “however, based upon my observations to date and the breadth of knowledge that I do possess where neurochemical production and imbalances are concerned; I am not convinced that the cause of your depression is clinical.”

“So that’s...good?”

He shrugged, “after a fashion. I believe that your depressive states have a much more straightforward source: you are traumatized,” I frowned at him, “insofar as you have been subjected to death, suffering, and grief on a nearly constant basis for what I understand to have been most of your life. Given what I had experienced of the Wasteland in just my short time with you, I consider it a testament to your character that you have endured as long as you have. Most would have turned to substance dependence―alcohol, chems―or perhaps have taken their own life by this point, I would imagine...”

If Arginine couldn’t read minds, he could clearly read faces. What he’d said had caught me so off my guard that my shame must have been pretty obvious. Everypony drank, or otherwise indulged, in the Wasteland. Figuring that out about me wasn’t particularly impressive. However, nopony, and I mean nopony, knew about what I’d been about to do in New Reino before I’d heard Summer Glade’s scream through my window. In hindsight, I now realize that Arginine hadn’t thought that he was talking about me specifically. He’d been describing the characteristics about ponies suffering from a specific condition. I just happened to tick those same boxes.

“I see,” the stallion went on, in a slightly more subdued tone, “so I am correct then?”

“It’s not like I’m the only pony who’s suffered,” I said dismissively. I had no illusions that I was anything special. You couldn’t spit in the Wasteland without hitting a pony who’d lost somepony important to them. The ponies of McMaren had just lost a lot of ponies they cared about yesterday.

“I wasn’t suggesting that you were. I am sure that many of them suffer from depressive states as well,” I actually found it annoying that Arginine didn’t sound patronizing right now. Honestly, he didn’t even sound as condescending as he usually did. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t sound a little condescending; but that was just how he sounded, “however, yours is the one that concerns me.”

“I thought you said that you didn’t care about me?”

The stallion grumbled, finding himself repeating himself again, “will I shed tears of grief should you die? No. Will I empathize with you in times of anguish and sorrow? No. In those respects, I do not ‘care’. However, as I have invested a considerable amount of time into aiding your efforts to create a better Wasteland, inhabited by a better breed of pony, I would be rather aggravated at the wasted effort should you perish by your own hoof before producing qualitative results.”

“You’re using me.”

“As you once used me,” my ears perked up as I heard the closest thing I’d yet seen in Arginine that approached genuine anger, “as you continue to use me. As I imagine you will use me in the future, and you should; only a genuine idiot does not make the best use of the resources available to them in order to achieve their goals.

“Yes, I am using you,” he confirmed, “I am using you to test whether or not the methods employed by my stable are truly the best, as we believe them to be,” he fixed me with a hard glare from his amber eyes, “and I am defying you to prove them wrong.

“And to that end, I have made myself available to you, placing my expertise and my abilities at your disposal; as it is the only way I can conceive of to give you a ‘fair chance’. I fully acknowledge that the scales are still very much tipped against you, as you are confronting the combined efforts of hundreds of ponies who are, quite literally, designed to beat you. It is merely the best that I can do, under the circumstances. You have seen what we are capable of, and what we will accomplish if we are allowed to succeed. You, more than anypony, know what the stakes are.

“Which is all the more reason for you to avail yourself to all of the advantages that I can provide. Whether it is intelligence regarding the locations of our staging areas, our physical and magical capabilities, our likely plans of attack, my own physical and magical prowess to aid you in confrontations, or even physical comforts to mitigate the effects of the stress that you incur during this endeavor.”

Arginine was silent for a while after that, and so was I, as I started processing everything that he’d just told me, “the enemy you face is powerful, Windfall, and they are determined. They will not flinch, they will not hesitate. They fight for the very survival of all of ponykind. To face them, you must be ready. You must be focused. You cannot have given into despair.

“Will you let me help you? Or am I wasting my time?”

It was finally my turn to say something again, to answer Arginine’s question. The problem was that I wasn’t sure I had an answer at the moment, “I...I don’t know,” it sounded about as lame as I felt, and was clearly not what Arginine had been wanting to hear from me.

“Then come find me when you do,” he said as he started for the exit, “but I do not recommend that you delay for long.”

I watched him leave, knowing that he meant what he said: if I didn’t come back with an answer, and if that answer was that I didn’t want him like that, he was going to leave and go back to his stable. If he did that, well...he knew enough about what my plans were to stop them cold. He had no incentive to keep my activities a secret from the rest of his stable; he’d tell them everything.

Either I told him ‘yes’, or I had to put him down.

This wasn’t helping with my stress levels.

I needed some advice. Preferably from a pony who knew a thing or two about making tough calls that could affect the future of a fight. I needed to talk to Ramparts again, and I needed more than a pep talk this time. If nothing else, a second pony to help me take out the powerful gray stallion wouldn’t go amiss. I left the showers, draping a towel over my back and extending my wings to help them air out. The warmth had long since left the water, and it was quite cold now; but I welcomed the chill it had taken on. It mirrored how I was feeling in my gut right about now, with the choice that I was facing.

I peaked into the room where Foxglove and Starlight were sleeping, expecting to see the brown earth pony stallion still sitting with his disassembled weapons. However, he wasn’t there any longer. I frowned, wondering where he might have gone to. One of his rifles still lay in pieces on the floor, so he shouldn’t be gone for long. Perhaps he just ducked out to visit the little colt’s room. In which case he’d be back shortly.

So I slipped inside, intending to wait for his return so that we could have our little chat. It certainly wasn’t one that I was looking forward to. I snorted, muttering under my breath, “I can just hear it now: hey, Ramparts, RG is offering to let me use him for sex to make me happier, otherwise he’s leaving to go back to his stable. Should I let him fuck my brains out, or do I just blow his all over the wall? By the way, I only have a few minutes to decide; no pressure!”

“Do you Wasteland ponies have to make everything about life and death?”

I hit the roof. No, seriously; I leaped into the air so high that I actually dented the plaster in the ceiling with the top of my head. The result was an immediate downward plummet to the floor with a rather uninspiring landing. When I was done groaning and rubbing my head, I peered up at the pink unicorn mare who was leaning over the edge of her bed, looking at me with a concerned expression on her face.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll live. I think,” a headache wasn’t going to help things. Neither was having Starlight overhear my current dilemma, “I thought you were still out,” I gestured at her blackened horn.

The mare snorted, gently rubbing her hoof along the afflicted horn, “not my first burn-out,” she craned her neck to get a look at Foxglove on the other side of the room, “but it might be hers. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that juniper berries don’t exist anymore?” I shook my head. It was more of a guess really, as I’d never heard of them before, “in that case I don’t think I can help her much when she wakes up. Sleep is going to be her best friend for the next day or two,” she winced and rubbed her forehead, “ooh...my grimoires for an aspirin…”

“Would a healing potion help?” I asked, walking over to where hers and Foxglove’s saddlebags were stacked, but the unicorn mare waved me off.

“No magic. It’ll actually aggravate things. It’s fine,” she looked at me a little more sternly now, “but what’s this about sex or death? I’m assuming I misheard something, but I’m terrified that I didn’t. What’s going on?”

I cringed beneath the concern in her voice. It was a familiar type of concern too. I’d heard the same thing from Foxglove when she’d found out that Jackboot wasn’t actually my father, and that he was just some old stallion who kept a young, nubile, pegasus mare with him as a companion. Starlight thought that somepony was hurting me, because I was just a filly, and filly’s needed to be protected. I didn’t want to have this conversation.

Of course, I couldn’t not have it now, could I? The radroach was out of the bag. Now I just had to find some way to phrase things so that she didn’t ask a lot more questions, or read into things more than I wanted her to, while I waited for Ramparts to get back and have the real conversation with him, “it’s nothing important,” that orange mare was giving me all sorts of dirty looks right now. Mature, Windfall; you’re supposed to be mature. I groaned, “except that it is,” Starlight quirked an eyebrow, looking at me expectantly with her deep blue eyes, “RG thinks that I’m not dealing with a lot of things very well,” I said, opting to talk about the root of the issue at hoof, rather than the details of the ultimatum itself. She just needed to know enough to be satisfied, I wasn’t looking for advice from the pony two centuries out of her own time. What could she know about the Wasteland?

“He says that I’m depressed, and that he wants me to get help. If I don’t, he’s going to leave,” I shrugged, grimacing, “the trouble is, if he leaves, he’ll go back to his stable and start helping those ponies again. I can’t let that happen. Hence…”

“...the ‘kill him’ part, I get it now,” she nodded her head, a frown creasing her own features, “is he right? Are you depressed?”

I snorted, “who knows? Maybe. Probably. Who isn’t out here,” I waved my hoof in the air, indicating the Wasteland at large. I took a breath, noting that Starlight was still watching me expectantly, seeming to sense that there was something that I wanted to add. She’d be right, “I mean…” I cast a wary eye in the direction of Foxglove’s bed to make sure she wasn’t conscious to hear this, “I may have tried to kill myself. Once. I didn’t though,” obviously.

I wasn’t sure how I expected Starlight to react. Given her pre-war origins, I guess I sort of thought that she’d be horrified or aghast that somepony would think about doing something like that. What could she know about life in the Wasteland, after all?

I’d have been wrong, though. She was remarkably calm about it. Empathetic even, “I see. I’m glad you didn’t, and not just because I’d still be sealed in that hibernation pod,” neither of us were able to muster much more than token smiles at the attempted levity. Then she hit me with a bit of a bombshell, “how were you going to do it? I used pills.”

My eyes widened in stark surprise as I stared at the unicorn, “...a gun,” I replied, listlessly, still not sure I’d heard her correctly, “are you serious? You tried to kill yourself?” Starlight nodded soberly, “why?” She hadn’t grown up in the Wasteland. She’d lived in a time when the world was whole. What could have been so bad about her life in a world like that that she’d seen suicide as the best alternative?

“A combination of reasons,” she shrugged, “it was shortly after Moonbeam was born. The delivery had been pretty rough, and I was kept in the hospital for a few weeks so they could keep an eye on me. Moonbeam’s condition was pretty serious too, and it was immediately obvious that she wasn’t going to have a normal life―if she had a life at all. It was touch and go in the beginning. I barely saw her between all of the medical procedures they had to keep performing just to keep her alive. That put a pretty big strain on our marriage, which was already pretty shaky, to be honest.

“The war was escalating more and more every year, so the pressure was always on Sunburst to come up with results from his research. I barely saw him much at all; and now I was going through a time when I needed him most. It wasn’t his fault, though. I told him that I was fine so that he wouldn’t be distracted worrying about me. His work was important. The Ministry didn’t want to hear that he was falling behind because of ‘personal matters’. They’d kick him off the project, maybe try and get him replaced at the Academy entirely. That would have devastated him,” her eyes started to glisten with tears of heartache, and I heard a slightly timbre in her voice, “then the postpartum kicked in,” another wan smile and anemic chuckle, “the doctors were so focused on Moonbeam’s problems they weren’t paying very close attention to me.

I felt like I was just a useless distraction between Sunburst’s work and my daughter’s problems,” the unicorn shrugged, “if I was gone, that’d be one less thing for anypony to worry about. So, I started hoarding the medication they were giving me. Once I thought I had enough, I popped them all at once and hoped for the best―or worst, depending on how you look at it.

“Of course, I wasn’t a doctor. I didn’t know what I was taking. I just knew that taking too much of anything like that was a bad idea,” she sighed, “I just ended up with a really bad stomach ache; but it got the attention of the staff there nonetheless. They watched my medication more carefully, and I got a daily visit from a counselor.

“It helped,” she looked down at me, “I know it’s probably not much compared to what you’ve been through, but I felt like my whole world was ending and I didn’t know what to do.”

I was quiet for a while. I could relate to what she’d been through. Sure, I hadn’t thought I was losing a child, but I did seen my mother die in front of me, unable to do anything to stop it. I’d watched the stallion who raised me sacrifice himself to save my life. I’d killed, and seen death on a scale that Starlight couldn’t comprehend. If she hadn’t thought that she could handle what comparatively little that she’d been through, then I suppose it was some minor miracle that I’d only tried to end things the one ineffectual time.

“I’m willing to try and remove your cutie mark again, if you’d like,” Starlight went on, sounding reluctant, “removing it twice like that though...I won’t lie: it’s going to get rougher before it gets better.”

“No,” I shook my head, “I’m not going through that again,” I stated firmly.

“I know it was rough, but if your mark is driving you to suicide―”

“It’s not the mark!” I said, snapping at the mare more tersely than I’d meant to, and wincing as a result, “sorry. It’s just...removing it didn’t help.”

“You need to give the process time,” Starlight insisted, “it can take months, sometimes, to adjust fully to your new life. With proper and continuous supervision and counseling, I believe that you can make a real change―”

“I killed a pony,” I said, startling the unicorn to silence, “even without my cutie mark, I shot a pony dead. In cold blood,” that seemed to shock her even more. The trickle was turning into a flood though, and the rest of the story started flowing, “he tried to burn a mare alive, along with her brother.”

“That doesn’t sound like ‘cold blood’ to me! You saved their lives!”

“I stood there and watched!” I snarled at the mare, heedless now if I woke Foxglove up or not, “I watched them tie that mare up, knowing they were going to murder her just because she said something their leader didn’t like. I watched her brother, their doctor, threaten to die with her if they didn’t let her go. They didn’t care. They were going to murder them both. And I was just going to stand there and let it happen!

“I didn’t care! I didn’t want to help them,” I was trembling now, tear welling up behind my eyes and poking around my lids as I recalled the memory with sickening clarity, “I watched better ponies than me save them, when I knew that I could have without breaking a sweat.

“I hated myself. I hated myself so much more than I hated anypony in that town. They were just morons who didn’t know any better than to do what the pony they trusted to lead them told them to. I knew better though,” I snarled, before growing quiet, “or I thought I did.

“So, the next morning, I shot their leader from three hundred yards away, in the back, when it didn’t even matter, like some sort of assassin. Like a murderer.”

Now I finally looked at Starlight Glimmer again, “I don’t want to become that again. I’m keeping my cutie mark. It’s not making me kill,” I said in a choked tone, “I know now that’s just who I’m am deep down.”

“I’m sorry,” the pink mare said in a hushed tone, “I thought it would help.”

“I know,” I sighed, “everypony’s trying to help.”

“You make that sound like it’s a bad thing,” Starlight noted. I responded by snorting and rolling my eyes, “where I come from,” she winced and restated, “when I come from, ponies do that, you know? Help. It’s not because we don’t think somepony couldn’t do it on their own, we just didn’t think they should have to. It was just what ponies did for each other. We didn’t want anything for it. We just wanted to help another pony, because we could.

“But I’m going to guess that the way Arginine is offering to ‘help’ you isn’t something you’re comfortable with?” I squirmed slightly beneath her gaze and offered a silent nod, “have you tried telling him that, and seeing if there’s other things he could do? Like listen to you talk about the stuff you’re telling me?”

“Do you really think that would do me any good?”

Starlight shrugged, “do you feel better now than when you first came in?” I did actually, the bump to my head notwithstanding. I nodded, “I’m sure Arginine can listen just as well as I can. In my experience, that’s all a counselor really is: somepony who listens. Maybe they occasionally offer advice, but mostly it’s about being somepony who’s there to let you know that somepony cares enough to listen to what’s bothering you.”

“What if he’s not willing to believe that’s all I need?”

The pink pony frowned, “if he’s not willing to give sitting there and listening a try, then he’s not much of a friend, and maybe you’d be better off without him around. Not that I’m particularly okay with the whole ‘shooting him in the head’ thing. If he says no, could you come back here so we can hash out a Plan B, please?”

I rolled my eyes as I stood up, “no promises, but I’ll think about it,” Starlight wasn’t thrilled, but she didn’t try to stop me, “thank’s,” I said, heading for the door. I paused just before leaving, turning back to the mare, who was making herself more comfortable on the bed, “and Starlight?”

“Yes?”

“If you want to talk about Moonbeam or something...I’m willing to listen.”

The mare’s features spread out in a wan smile, “thanks, Windfall. That means a lot.”

I nodded and left. While I didn’t know exactly which room Arginine had selected for his personal use, there were only so many blips on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. I managed to pick out where the large stallion was staying very quickly and stood in front of the door. After some debate as to exactly how dramatically I wanted to play this, I sighed and tapped my hoof on the door. A moment later, the door swung open.

Arginine was closing up the last of his saddlebags, apparently having just finished his packing. He peered up, looking in my direction, inclining his head slightly, “you have impeccable timing,” he studied me for another couple of seconds, “should I take the lack of firearms as an indication that you are in fact intending to avail yourself to the physical comforts I am offering?”

I took a deep breath, “I’ve come to a decision, yeah,” I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, “get on the bed.”

The larger stallion arched a brow and stood up from the bags on the floor, climbing into the neater of the two beds in the room. He watched me expectantly as I approached and hopped up into the bed with him. Without a word, I laid down on the mattress, leaning against him and resting my head on his shoulder. My coat and mane were still pretty damp from the shower, but Arginine didn’t given any reaction. That was pretty much how the pony was. He didn’t react. He didn’t judge, not outwardly.

“Shall we begin, then?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. The stallion started craning his head down to kiss me, but I stopped him with a hoof and gently pushed him away. Confused, Arginine stared at me, a questioning look in his eyes, “no. Not like that.”

I smiled, closed my eyes, and snuggled closer to the stallion’s side before finally saying, “you want to hear the story of how I got my cutie mark?

“It all started when I met this pony named, Jackboot. When he found me, my home had just been destroyed by a group of White Hooves. My parents had told me to hide in a hay bale so I’d be safe…”

Footnote:...

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