This next piece reminds me of something my husband said: Friendship is like a violin. Even if the music stops, you'll still have the strings

“...one final connection and...there!”

The violet mare hopped back from her creation with an eager expression on her face, her left hoof outstretched in triumph as she presented her latest creation to the select group of ponies present in McMaren’s broadcasting building. Her audience all locked their gaze on the product of her labors, which resembled a rather badly mangled computer terminal, and waited expectantly.

Nothing happened.

Foxglove held her victory pose for almost ten whole seconds, her grin becoming more and more strained as the seconds dragged on, until finally she scoured at the device, “―the hay?” she lashed out with her hoof and delivered a sharp kick to the monitor, “come on you glorified scrap pile―!”

Whether genuinely brought to life by the mare’s percussive maintenance, or the object’s little joke had finished running its course, the machine finally came to life, lighting up with an extensive array of lights of all sizes and colors as the crystalline circuitry powered on. The terminal’s enlarged monitor, which was actually four of them of varying sizes arranged in a rough rectangle, flashed green and then black before filling briefly with lines of scrolling text. After a few seconds, all that remained was a steadily blinking cursor that appeared after the words:

>> AWAITING INPUT

“That’s more like it,” the emerald-eyed mare grumbled as she cast one final pointed glare at the stubborn machine.

“So...what exactly is this thing going to do?” Ramparts asked.

“Hopefully,” I felt myself smirk slightly at the emphasis that the mechanically-minded mare placed upon the qualifier, “this will let us make sense of all the data that we’ve been gathering on those pipbucks of yours,” she pointed a hoof at me and Ramparts, “the stuff we gathered from that bunker where we found Starlight, Wind Ryder’s, the MAS hub in Old Reino, and even what Windfall pulled from that MoA facility beneath us; there’s a lot of stuff to go through and make sense of. If we tried to do it ourselves, it could take months, or even years. Maybe longer if we get distracted by things that we mistake for important that are meaningless.

“What this is designed to do,” she patted the terminal cautiously, as though concerned she might bump it back into silence if it were to be manipulated too roughly, “is seek out linked data points and collate them into something sensical. Hopefully,” there was that word again. This time it wasn’t quite so amusing though, “it’ll have something to do with that weapons cache the Republic is after.”

I noticed Starlight Glimmer grimace out of the corner of my eye, “I suppose it’s too much to hope that your plan is to just destroy them?”

All eyes in the room turned to the pink unicorn mare, but it was Ramparts that actually said something, “of course we’re not going to destroy them. We’re turning them over the the Republic so that they can use them to repel the Steel Ranger threat and begin securing the valley,” the earth pony stallion turned towards me, “right?”

That...had indeed been the plan. I suppose that there wasn’t a reason that it couldn’t still be the plan, even if some aspects of it had changed, “the Rangers have agreed to withdraw from Neighvada as long as we get the MoA computer from the Republic. Hoplite assures me that the Rangers don’t want it back, because of what’s inside of it,” Starlight gave a firm nod of agreement with her own hardened features, “but they don’t want the Republic to have something like that either.

“But we’ll need those weapons to fight off RG’s stable anyway, and I trust the NLR with them more than one of the local mercenary groups.”

“Hmm,” it was obvious that the purple-maned unicorn wasn’t thrilled with my answer, but she at least seemed to accept it. I couldn’t imagine what she had against the Republic, given her very short tenure in the Wasteland, but I made a note to talk to her about it at a later date.

In the meantime, we had more immediate concerns, “so how do we get our answers?”

Foxglove motioned for me and the earth pony stallion to approach, “I just need to plug your pipbucks into the ports here,” her horn began to glow, holding up a pair of cables which ended in adapters designed to interface with pipbucks.

The pair of us held out our left forelegs and allowed out fetlock-mounted devices to be hooked up the the machine. Each time a cable was attached, the computer emitted a pleasant tone and a line of text flashed across the monitor announcing that a properly calibrated interface had been established. Once both pipbucks were connected, Foxglove tapped out a series of short commands and executed the program that she’d written for the occasion. Both the array of four mismatched screens mounted onto the computer, and my own field of vision, filled with line after line of scrolling numbers and text as Foxglove’s creation sifted through the massive quantities of collected data. All the while, the violet unicorn monitored the terminal’s progress.

“Wow,” she said in a breathless voice, “there’s a lot more data here than I expected,” she jabbed at the keyboard and isolated one of the screens for her own use while the other three continued to display more streams of incoming data, “Windfall, what have you been up to? There’s...wow.”

“Jackboot and I got around,” I said with a shrug.

“I’ll say,” the mare continued to direct her creation, and singled out another of the monitors―the largest one―as a location to display what I took to be the machine’s output. There wasn’t all that much printed out on it just yet, but the list was growing, “these are what the computer has identified as relevant data points,” she informed us, studying the text.

Then the mare frowned, “or...it was supposed to be,” she murmured before turning her attention back to the console she was working, “maybe I accidentally called up the junk file…”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s just,” the unicorn sighed as she gestured at the display, “look at what it’s calling up: whistles, holographic costumes, recreational flight assistance modules. These aren’t components for weapons. They’re...theme park attractions, or something.”

“Horseapples,” I trotted over and peered over the unicorn’s shoulder at the monitor, “we pulled all of this data from encrypted government computers, some of which were inside secret facilities that the general public weren’t even supposed to know were there. There’s no way in Celestia’s blighted Wasteland that they were shipping toys around the valley in secret like that!”

“Well I don’t know what to tell you,” Foxglove said in a defeated tone as she sat back from the console, “but that’s the stuff that the computer is saying is the connected data from your pipbucks: the MoA was dealing in recreational commodities.”

“I don’t buy it,” I insisted, “it’s a cover. It has to be; and why not? The Ministry of Awesome has been hiding everything up to this point.

“Where was it all going?”

“Well, that much I can tell you,” Foxglove went back to the keyboard and turned one of the monitors into a map that looked a lot like what my pipbuck would show, “the Wind Ryder flight hours for all of these deliveries converges right here,” she tapped at an amber box on the map, “and the tracking data from the bunker under us confirms that there was a lot of traffic going to and from this location, though none of it came directly from Old Reino.”

“We already knew they took roundabout routes to hide their tracks,” I pointed out, adding, “and there’s no reason to do that with ‘toys’. Unless Rainbow Dash was running some sort of underground charity for foals,” I had intended for that last bit to be humorous. My joke fell flat with at least one of my companions though.

“Before or after she stuffed them into computers?” Starlight very nearly growled.

The rest of us were silent for a few uncomfortable seconds until Ramparts finally reached out a consoling hoof to the unicorn mare, leaning over to mumble something into her ear that seemed to sooth her. For the moment, at least. I was honestly debating what to do with the pink unicorn when we went to our audience with Princess Luna. While there would certainly be advantages to having a pony present whom the princess would recognize as a way to legitimize our petition for her to relinquish the stolen computer, the last thing we needed was an irate unicorn there spouting a lot of vitriol―if justified―epithets while we tried to negotiate with the Republic’s ruler.

I could empathize with how emotionally taxing this all was for Starlight, I really could. I knew exactly what it was like to know that members of your family were suffering while you felt powerless to do anything about it. It wasn’t a position I’d want anypony to find themselves in. That didn’t mean that it was going to help our efforts for Starlight to keep those emotions simmering at the surface like this.

“We have the coordinates,” I went on in an effort to get us back on track. We had a mission to complete, after all, “and they’ll be our next stop after Seaddle.”

Foxglove reached over and disconnected our pipbucks from the computer that she’d built, “I’ll keep this running through the data a bit longer to see if it can find any other connections,” she paused and raised a hoof, “which reminds me, actually: I made an interesting discovery with Homily while we under her console…”

I looked at the unicorn with wide, unbelieving eyes, “―are you―? Foxglove, do we really need to hear about how your bang session went?”

Well that certainly got everypony’s attention! Even Arginine, of all ponies, was gaping at the violet unicorn mare―I mean, it was an Arginine ‘gape’, but still. The violet mare sputtered and spurted as she stumbled over her own surprise in an attempt to respond before finally finding her voice again.

You wouldn’t think a purple pony could blush, but you’d be wrong, “I―we―! That’s not―! Working! We were working under her console! Sweet Celestia, Windfall!”

“Not when I found her she wasn’t,” I murmured as an aside to Arginine. The stallion quirked a brow in my direction but otherwise kept my confidence as the other members of our group recomposed themselves.

“As I was saying,” Foxglove said, clearing her throat as she continued from where I had interrupted her, “I noticed while I was working,” her gaze lingered on me for a second as she stressed the word. I said nothing, “that the cabling leading to the transmitter tower was a lot thicker than it probably needs to be.”

“What’s significant about that?” Ramparts pressed the violet unicorn.

“For the most part, the range that a radio tower has is determined by two things: it’s height, and the wattage being pumped into it. This base’s tower is pretty tall―which is why Homily wanted to use it in the first place―which is what lets it reach most of the valley.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming,” I noted, and received a nod from Foxglove.

“But, I’m getting the impression that it could potentially reach a lot farther if it had more generators powering it,” she shared a knowing look with me, “and there were quite a few dead generators with the one that I got working the first time we were here.”

“What kind of range are we talking about here?” Starlight piped up.

Foxglove shrugged, “if the mountains surrounding the valley weren’t in the way, maybe all the way to Manehattan.”

“Why?” Ramparts asked, “I mean, if the mountains were going to stop the signal anyway, why go through the trouble of setting them up with all that power?”

“Honestly, there’s ways around that,” the mechanically inclined unicorn explained, “the right kind of relay towers could actually feed off the raw power of the transmission and use it to retransmit the signal over the mountains. Honestly, that’s not the best way to do it. Relay towers work a lot better if they have their own dedicated power sources; but it’s possible.”

“If it’s such an inefficient way to do it, then why bother?” Ramparts asked, “it sounds like it’s actually a lot of extra trouble.”

A thought occurred to me, and I ventured an answer just as Foxglove began to shake her head in ignorance of a plausible answer, “because I bet a power generator requires a lot more resources. You have to order them, set them up, maintain them,” I glanced at Foxglove, “these things that use the power of the transmission they’re relying; I’m guessing they don’t need a lot of care? They sound like they’re pretty much just metal towers.”

“There’s some circuitry,” she corrected, “capacitors mostly. But, you’re right, it’s stuff that can last a long time without anypony looking in on it.”

“Something that would be easy to keep off the record and hide way off the beaten path,” I received a nod from the violet mare, “like most everything else the Ministry of Awesome has in this valley.”

“But why?” Foxglove asked, “what would the MoA want with a radio tower that can reach across all of Equestria? Especially when the MASEB already exists? Heck, the MASEB towers were already an MoA project!” she pressed further, referring to the massive monolithic towers that dotted the distance mountain ranges ringing the Neighvada Valley, and were the source of DJ Pon3’s own broadcasts.

She had a point. It was rather odd that the Rainbow Dash would direct her ministry to set up two completely independent means by which to broadcast across Old Equestria. There was the sound of a throat clearing from Starlight Glimmer as the pink unicorn mare raised a hoof.

“Actually, while the towers themselves were built by the MoA, the Emergency Broadcast System was a Ministry of Arcane Science endeavor. We routinely let other organizations use the system to send message traffic though.”

It was starting to make a little more sense now, “as secretive as the MoA was being here, I doubt they’d want to use another ministry’s equipment to send their messages,” I received a nod of agreement from the purple-mane mare.

“They could have set this stuff up in the sky though, right?” Ramparts asked, point up with one of his hooves, “that’d be a super easy way to keep this all a secret, right?”

“Perhaps,” Foxglove agreed, looking pensive, “I couldn’t get a really good look at that pegasus terminal down below―being made of clouds and all. I know what kind of materials it would take to make the kind of relay they’d need. Maybe they just can’t replicate them with their ‘cloud tech’ or whatever.”

“In any case,” I said, “I don’t think how they built this little network of there’s is nearly as important as why. I don’t suppose that anypony has any ideas?”

“Sending message traffic without the other ministries knowing it,” Starlight supplied almost immediately.

“Wouldn’t it just be one-way traffic though?” I pointed out before looking at Foxglove, “or would this relay network work just as well receiving messages?”

The violet unicorn shook her head, “not unless whoever was answering was also generating a lot of power through their own broadcaster.”

“If you’re going to have a net of super radio towers all over the place, that’s not much of a ‘secret’ broadcasting network,” Ramparts shrugged, “at that point, they might as well use the MASEB towers.”

“What good is purely one-way traffic though?”

Nopony had an answer for that one right away. I was starting to really sympathize with Starlight’s frustration where the Ministry of Awesome was concerned. The number of questions that we were compiling where their pre-Wasteland activities were concerned was becoming quite daunting, honestly.

“We’re not going to come up with all of the answers to a two century old secret in one morning,” I sighed, rubbing my temples with my hooves, “what’s important right now is that we have what we need: we know where the MoA was most likely keeping that weapons cache. When we get to Seaddle, we’ll give the coordinates to Ebony Song in exchange for the computer they took from the Rangers.

“It’s early enough that we can start out today if everypony’s ready,” I looked around the room, meeting the gaze of each of my friends in order to gauge their readiness.

“We’ve wasted enough time here already,” Starlight said in a sour tone, “I say we leave now.”

I managed to suppress my frown. I reminded myself that the pink unicorn was quite eager to track down her missing foal. It wasn’t like I’d never let desires like that drive me to try and rush into things. In a way, she did have a point though: we had spent more than enough time in McMaren recovering. We were all fed, rested, and resupplied as much as we could ever reasonably expect to be. At this point, spending another night here would essentially just be wasting time.

“Alright,” I nodded, “everypony get packed up. We’ll meet at the front gate in an hour. I’ll go and let Homily know we’re leaving.”

“I’ll come with you,” Foxglove offered. With only the most mild of eye rolls, I agreed and the pair of us left to seek out the yellow mare while the rest of our party saw to gathering our equipment.

“Want to say goodbye to your marefriend?” I said, casting a sly glance at the violet unicorn as we heading for the base’s broadcasting station.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” was her terse reply, “it could be weeks, maybe even months, before we see each other again.”

I arched a brow at the mare, “you make it sound like this is serious. Are you two going to be, like, a for real item?”

“I hope so,” Foxglove said, sounding a little sheepish this time, “the last time I was here, things were pretty crazy, but we got to talking while I was helping her fix up the radio tower. She knows her way around a multimeter. It’s been a long time since I could ‘talk shop’ with somepony,” she shrugged, “it was nice,” she smiled now, “and so’s she.

“She’s kind of like you, in a way,” the mare added, grinning at me, “she’s doing what she thinks will help fix the Wasteland. I think you two should spend more time together, honestly. You might be good for each other.”

I shook my head, “I wouldn’t want to impose. I’m happy for you two, I guess.”

“You guess?”

I frowned slightly, fumbling for the right words. Where was Arginine when you needed him? “I mean, I am happy you found somepony you care about. I just feel bad that you two are going to be spending a lot of time apart,” I thought for a moment before venturing, “though, I guess there isn’t any huge reason you couldn’t stay if you really wanted to.”

The violet mare didn’t respond immediately. When she finally did speak, it was in a slightly wistful tone, “Homily said much the same thing, actually. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, if only briefly. It was pretty tempting: being offered a place to settle down and make a real life for myself.

“Eventually I’ll do just that,” she amended firmly, “but for right now, I think I can do a lot more to help by sticking with you,” she said, smiling down at me, “at least until we stop Arginine’s stable.”

“You don’t have to do that, you know. It’s okay if you want to stay,” getting the chance to build a life with somepony you cared about wasn’t something everypony got in the Wasteland. I actually felt a little guilty knowing that I was the reason that Foxglove was passing up such an opportunity.

“I want to help,” she insisted, “you and Homily are both doing important work, sure; but she’ll get along without me for a while,” the unicorn mare shifted and nudged my shoulder with hers, “but you can’t seem to make it a full day without breaking half your equipment. If I stayed behind, you’d only make it half way to Seaddle before you were out of working weapons or serviceable barding,” her grin was the most smug and self-satisfied expression that I’d ever seen the unicorn mechanic wearing.

I opened up my mouth to retort, but thought better of it as my brain flashed a series of images from the last few weeks that served only to prove Foxglove’s point, “fair enough,” then I thought for a moment and added, “have you thought about, maybe, building stuff that doesn’t keep breaking all the time…?”

The smack upside my head that comment earned me had been well worth it.

“Santa Mara is just visible on the horizon,” I announced as I fluttered back down into the midsts of my companions, “we should be there by late afternoon, at the latest.”

“Sounds good,” Ramparts nodded from his position at the front of the column of grounded ponies. I noted the odd tone that had colored his words and briefly considered commenting on it. A look from Foxglove and a slight shake of her head dissuaded me.

She leaned in close and murmured in a low voice, “he’s nervous about meeting his foal.”

Ah, that was right, Ramparts had yet to see Yatima or his son since she’d given birth. Indeed, he’d only learned that he was a father because I’d been the one to deliver the news. I recalled also the discussion that the pair of us had had regarding the part that the brown earth pony might play in their lives going forward. Or rather, what part he might not play. I had yet to learn if he’d made a clear decision on that point.

He hadn’t voiced any objection when I’d made the announcement that we’d be detouring through Santa Mara on our way to Seaddle at least. I suppose that didn’t mean that he was necessarily looking forward to the meeting with his newly acquired family though. Not that allowing him the opportunity to meet them had played a significant role in my decision to make the detour. The fact of the matter was that I wanted to get my hooves on some of the latest news from the Republic. I’d been out of the loop for the better part of a month, and Homily’s own sources were limited for the time being.

Tentative plans were being made by the ponies of McMaren to try and get the tracking systems that lay beneath their hooves operational again, but considering how much of their operation had seemed to be dependent upon the foal-powered-computer core at the facility’s heart, there wasn’t a great deal of optimism floating around that notion. Even if they did manage to get the hardware powered up, Foxglove was positive that using standard computer terminals to process the collected data would severely limit the equipment’s capabilities when compared to what they had been during the war. It was hard to say if that would make the effort to restore them worthwhile or not, but expectations had been thoroughly tempered by that assessment nonetheless.

So, in the meantime, we would need to rely on word of mouth from the locals to know what was going on. The broadcasts that we’d started picking up once again from Princess Luna’s daily addresses weren’t proving to be particularly informative. It was amazing exactly how little could be said over the course of a thirty minute news update about the State of the Republic.

Things certainly seemed to be heating up out east though, according to DJ Pon3. Something about the Enclave stirring up trouble in Manehattan, and a rather devastating explosion in Hoofington. Combining those updates with what I knew about Arginine’s stable, and it all felt a little surreal at times. It was like the whole Wasteland was priming itself for a whole new apocalypse or something.

Like the world ending once already hadn’t been quite enough for the powers that be…

I glanced back over my shoulder at the other two members of our party. Arginine was taking up the rear guard position, touting his refurbished and re-tuned magical energy rifle. Foxglove had spent a little bit of time gushing over the alterations that he had made, and even offered a few suggestions of her own. The result was a weapon that appeared to have very little in common with what had been popped off the assembly line once upon a time. The barrel had been elongated for increased range, a secondary focusing chamber designed to make it more energy efficient had somehow been wedged in front of the stock, and the rifle now possessed cooling pipes running along the weapon’s receiver to keep it from melting after just a half dozen quick shots...again.

Unfortunately, Foxglove had been unable to further upgrade my own arsenal as well. In fact, I’d managed to do such a number on my submachine guns that she’d sadly had to scrap one of them in order to restore the other to working condition. So as not to leave me with only the single barrel, she had balanced out my battle saddle with the carbine that I’d acquired in Old Reino.

Neither weapon was voice activated any longer, unfortunately. However, I was still spared the requirement of a trigger bit. What Foxglove had been able to do was wire the weapons into the gesture controls for the Gale Force and add a few additional motions to the base program governing it. I now found myself able to fire the weapons with a mere wave of my hooves. She’d also managed to retain my variety of ammunition choices as well, though with some caveats. Because of the servos she’d had to cannibalize to get me two weapons, I was now limited to only certain types of ammunition for each weapon.

Each of them would fire regular rounds in typical fashion, but my 10mm submachine gun only had the addition of hollow-point and explosive rounds―both in limited quantities. The carbine had armor piercing and spark rounds―also in short supply.

I was going to forever mourn the loss of my other submachine gun. It had been at my side―quite literally―for many years. But the carbine promised increased firepower, and even slightly better precision at range. Though, given how I tended to fight, I wasn’t sure how much that was going to play a factor in future conflicts.

Nothing much had changed for the other three members of our group. Despite a considerable amount of urging from Foxglove, Ramparts hadn’t let her touch his own firearms. They were typical Republic military fair, but the stallion seemed to find their performance quite adequate, and had grown very comfortable with the way that they worked. Similarly, Starlight was only just starting to get the hang of her simple shotgun, and we were all loath to disturb that progress by complicating the operation of the weapon.

Even the violet mare’s own selection of weapons saw little change. Other than replacing the tip of her lance with an aperture that allowed for a wider variation in the focusing size of cutter, she hadn’t changed all that much about it. Her rifle was also simplistic enough that there wasn’t much that she could rightfully change about it. Nor did she seem inclined to. Like Starlight, she didn’t see herself as a ‘fighter’ either, and seemed to consider augmenting her own weapons to be a waste of time and resources.

“It’s like gilding a pipbuck,” she’d explained, “I mean, you could, I guess; and it’d look really shiny. But it doesn’t make the pipbuck any better.”

I actually thought a custom-finished pipbuck would be pretty awesome, but I’d gotten the idea. It wasn’t like she was somepony I tended to lean on in a fight anyway. I had Ramparts and Arginine for that if the need arose. Hopefully it wouldn’t, and our trip had certainly been quiet enough over the past couple of days that I was starting to find myself thinking that it very well wouldn’t be something we’d need to concern ourselves with for a while yet.

That thought proved itself to be a very dangerous one to have as we got nearer to the town.

Santa Mara wasn’t a large settlement. Indeed, it was a little smaller than Shady Saddles, and served mostly as a waystation for southbound caravans that didn’t mind taking the longer, easterly, route to New Reino in order to lessen their chances of running afoul of the White Hooves that were more active in the western areas of the valley. Time was money to merchants though, and so the vast majority were willing to risk the chance of an attack in exchange for the much quicker turn-around that going via Shady Saddles afforded. There was at least enough of the small-time, more timid, caravaners who didn’t mind the delay to keep a community like Santa Mara afloat though.

So while it wasn’t any sort of bustling center of commerce and industry, it was still a thriving community of ponies that, nominally, enjoyed the protection of the New Lunar Republic. Arrivals could be expected to see a few Republic soldiers standing around the perimeter, making their presence known and offering some assurances of security to the locals as they went about their daily business. The town’s ‘market’, while only a few small stalls built out of train cars, was always replete with a respectable selection of goods of value to both a passing caravan and the local residents alike. There was even a couple of bars that offered rooms to travelers.

It was a pleasant little speck of life in an otherwise bleak Wasteland.

Usually.

Today was a different story.

I didn’t even put my hoof on what was off at first. It was probably because I was so used to seeing deserted ruins and empty Wasteland that I didn’t even notice the quiet of the place. My ear was twitching, but it took me a long while to realize what was setting it off. Then Ramparts brought that first clue to my attention.

“Where are the sentries?” the brown earth pony stallion wondered aloud as we reached the edge of the perimeter wall. Though, ‘wall’ was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. Santa Mara itself was built upon the bones of an old train yard where cars and engines were once serviced. Several of those engines and cars had been present when the yard was abandoned in the final hours of the Great War, and had been repurposed by the ponies who later made this their home.

A collection of flatbed freight cars had been turned upon their sides, their sturdy bulk forming a defensive bulwark around the heart of the settlement. Firing platforms and lookout towers had later been built upon the foundation that those initial cars provided, and were usually occupied by lookouts.

That did not seem to be the case today, however.

We should have been stopped long before now by at least one Republic soldier asking what business a group of heavily armed ponies who were carrying no obvious cargo had in a place like Santa Mara. I mean, as much as the notion might irk me a little, we did look quite a lot like a motley band of raiders wandering around in the Wasteland looking for trouble. Hopefully my signature bright blue barding and Ramparts genuine Republican Guard barding would have been more than sufficient to stop us from being molested too heavily by concerned Republic patrols, but we still should have been at least approached by them at some point before getting anywhere near this close to the settlement itself.

The lookout towers and fortified walls were also quite devoid of ponies.

“Where are the town ponies?” was Foxglove’s follow-up question.

That was a good point as well. Santa Mara wasn’t anywhere close to being as crowded as Seaddle or New Reino, of course, so none of us were expecting to see throngs of equines milling about in the streets. At the moment though, there was nopony about. Not a single soul could be seen even beyond the perimeter wall of freight cars.

All five of us exchanged looks. This was...bad. Santa Mara was a small place, but even so, it would have taken more than your typical Wasteland gang of bandits or slavers to have wiped out everypony. The White Hooves could certainly have mustered up a raiding party of sufficient size and power to have overrun the place. It would have been the biggest settlement that they’d hit in over a decade, to be sure, but it was hypothetically possible.

That didn’t make it probable though. Not a peep had been heard out of those painted ponies since Jackboot had taken down their leader. Presumably they were still trying to sort out who would be in charge. If they had settled who was running the show now though, it would make sense that their new chief would want to demonstrate their power by hitting a big target and taking a lot of plunder and slaves as a way of further justifying their claim to leadership. Santa Mara was small enough, and distant enough from serious Republic support, to make an ambitious raid like that feasible, despite being so far away from the White Hoof’s usual stomping grounds.

Of course, there was the little fact that, had this truly been a White Hoof raid, there should have been a vast number of obvious signs of that. Their targets were left covered in blood, bodies, and most especially: paintings of white pony skulls on just about every available surface. I saw none of that here. While they might be under new leadership, I seriously doubted that those tribal warriors would have completely changed up their whole way of doing things in just a couple of months.

No, this wasn’t the work of the White Hooves.

I could think of one other group that was known for nabbing ponies and not leaving behind much to go on though. My gaze wandered back to Arginine. The large gray stallion caught me looking at him as I asked the silent question. I could see that his mind was currently working along the same line of thought, but he eventually issued a curt shake of his head. He didn’t think that his stable had been responsible for whatever had happened here.

Somehow, that disturbed me even more. A third group operating in the Neighvada Valley that could wipe out a settlement? As if there wasn’t enough on our plates to deal with as it was…

Then I spotted it: a blip. I felt my lip pull back in a sneer when I noticed the crimson hash mark on my pipbuck. Ramparts had picked up on it too and we nodded to one another. Hit them hard, hit them fast, take them by surprise, and get some answers. On the earth pony stallion’s signal, I shot up into the air, vaulting high over perimeter wall, as the Republican guard pony sprinted through the open gate and rounded the corner of a boxcar that had been converted to serve as a barracks of sorts for the Republic soldiers usually present.

Both of us drew up short in surprise when we caught sight of the source of the blip. Ramparts was surprised because, of all of the possible adversaries that he could have envisioned, and what they’d be doing in the middle of the town at this moment, he clearly hadn’t anticipated seeing a silver unicorn mare lounging leisurely in a deck chair in between two sets of torn up railway tracks, calmly sipping a Sparkle Cola RAD. She glanced in his direction and reached a hoof to her face, tipping up the sunglasses that she was wearing.

“Mmmm...” her lips spread in a hungry smile as her eyes traced over the earth pony, “well aren’t you a tall drink of stallion? The two of us are going to have to have a talk later, over some drinks...and then under the sheets,” she purred as she took another sip from her bottle, “but I’m sorry to say that I’m waiting on somepony else at the moment,” she turned her head upwards and waved.

“You know, for a pegasus, you don’t make very good time getting places.”

My mouth was hanging slightly agape. I actually recognized this mare. I’d seen her once before, after all. It felt like years had passed since that night. She certainly wasn’t a mare that I had genuinely expected to run into again.

“You’re a bounty hunter,” I said before I could stop myself, and then promptly snapped my mouth shut.

The mare arched an eyebrow and inclined her head, “indeed! My reputation precedes me, I suppose…”

I’d forgotten that she couldn’t have recognized me from our first meeting, since I’d been heavily disguised at the time as Princess Luna, courtesy of the holographic projection device that Jackboot and I had recovered from a secret Ministry of Wartime Technology installation. It had not been a long encounter, to be sure, as the device didn’t possess a lot in terms of endurance.

I recalled too that she hadn’t been working alone. A small zebra stallion had been present, and the two of them had seemed to be operating as a team. He currently wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and my pipbuck insisted that nopony else was around. It was possible that he had died since then, or simply left her company. I wasn’t going to operate on that assumption though. This whole setup just screamed, ‘TRAP!’, and we’d almost certainly already walked ourselves right into it. Now was the time to be ready to get out the moment it was sprung…

“Yours certainly does,” the mare continued as she stretched herself out on the chair, “Miss Wonderbolt. Yours is a name that’s on the lips of many a pony in this valley,” her otherwise pleasant gaze sharpened, taking on a predatory glint, “and not all of them speak it with reverence. You’ve made enemies, little filly. Powerful enemies.”

“What did you do with the ponies of Santa Mara?” I asked tersely. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other three members of our group making their way into the center of town now as well, curious about what Ramparts and I were up to. Foxglove instantly looked just as surprised as I was to see the familiar mare. The bounty hunter spared her little more than a cursory glance as she took note of the new arrivals. The violet unicorn had likewise been disguised when they’d met.

Her eyes lingered quite a bit longer on Arginine, widening noticeably, “woah…” she sat up a little straighter, an impressed whistle escaping her lips. The mare glanced at Ramparts again, “sorry handsome, but you just got bumped to the back of the line,” she folded her hooves under her chin and grinned in the direction of the larger gray unicorn, “two horns, huh? You got two of anything else…?” she leaned her head to the side, her gaze drifting down the unicorn stallion’s legs.

I cleared my throat rather noisily, glaring at the bounty hunter, “what. Happened. To the townsponies?” My words came out in the next best thing to a snarl as my fetlocks flexed against the bracers linked to the operation of the weapons at my side.

She waved a dismissive hoof in my direction, still staring at Arginine as she bit her lower lip, “they’re fine. Don’t worry your feathered little flank over them. You’re the one in trouble, after all,” she ran her tongue over her lips as she directed her next words at the tall gray stallion, “do you have a name, or should I just call you, ‘lover’?”

“Alright, let’s just stay focused!”

“Curse it, Pritchel, stay focused!”

I was struck by surprise at the unanticipated echo that my rebuke acquired, from a source that wasn’t actually all that far away from where I was hovering. My head immediately whipped in the direction of the errant sound, only to find myself looking at nothing at all, save for a vacant rooftop. There was the briefest moment where I entertained the notion that, somehow, the words had been a figment of my imagination.

Then―It Was Under ‘E’!―I spied the scuff marks.

Most ponies never stopped to ponder how dusty the roofs of buildings got in the desert climate of the Neighvada Valley. Spending most of your life drifting above everypony’s heads gives you a rather unique perspective of the world―literally; and I had become quite used to seeing the thin film of dirt and grime that time and the climate had rather uniformly draped over the top of every Wasteland structure.

So imagine my surprise when I saw the hoofprints, and the accompanying smudge of cleared away dust that suggested somepony had dragged themselves across part of the top of a train car. The air seemed to shimmer, briefly, not unlike when looking at something down a road that was baking in the desert heat. Another sound that might have been somepony swearing under their breath could be heard, and then I watched, stunned, as more hoofprints suddenly appeared on the roof, accompanied by the resounding clangs of hooves on the metal surface that suggested somepony was sprinting across the roof even now.

Yet I could see nothing at all.

Then the sound ended as the prints met with the edge of the car.
Somepony had been there, and they were invisible. Nor did their presence seem to register with my pipbuck. My ears began to swivel around as I contemplated the implications of this new information. I’d already been pretty convinced that there was a trap here waiting to be sprung. Now I had a clue as to the nature of it. How many more undetectable ponies were watching us at this very moment?

Enough that this large silver unicorn mare felt comfortable enough with the situation to be waiting for us lounging on a chair in the middle of the tracks, that much was obvious. She was certainly an imposingly large example of ponykind, no question there; but surely even she didn’t think that she was a match for a whole squad of armed ponies with no barding or weapons on her own.

However, if there were a few dozen invisible guns trained on our heads at this very moment, that certainly tipped the odds somewhat in the mare’s favor, didn’t it?

I had to work hard to fight my old habits and not launch myself at this mare. That was traditionally how I dealt with threats, after all: take them out as quickly as possible. In those instances, I’d at least had something approaching a vague notion of what those threats actually were. There were far too many unknowns right now, and mine wasn’t the only life on the line. My gaze drifted briefly to my friends before scanning the surrounding rooftops, taking in how many ponies could be taking aim at them right now.

Thoughtless action wasn’t called for right now. Maybe it would come to that but, at least for the moment, this mare seemed interested in talking. Talking was good. Talking meant that nopony was killing anypony. I could appreciate that.

“Pritchel, is it?” I inquired, taking pains to keep my tone calm and level. The annoyed glared she was giving the direction that the last of the noise had come from made it pretty clear that she didn’t much appreciate having the secret of her hidden assets let out of the bag this early into our interaction, “if you know me, then you should also know that the ponies I’ve made enemies of,” and I could think of a few groups right off the top of my head, to be fair, “aren’t very good ponies.

“You strike me as an honorable mare,” Be Pleasant! “And I want to believe that we can work something out without anypony getting hurt,” I slowly started to descend to the ground so that I could look at the mare at eye-level. As tall as she was, this meant that I still had to stay a foot or so off the ground.

The silver unicorn gave a frustrated grunt and climbed off of her seat. I found myself having to ascend slightly once she’d stood up. If I didn’t know any better, I might have sworn that she was a pony from Arginine’s stable with how massive of a mare she was. Her horn began to glow, and a large sledgehammer drifted out from under her lounger, floating over to rest across her shoulders. Apparently she hadn’t been as ‘unarmed’ as I’d initially suspected.

She stared down at me, frowning, as she seemed to consider what I’d said. Then she snorted, “it’s your friends that concern me,” she just about snarled, “s’all over the radios. The Wonderbolt is all buddy-buddy with the Rangers.”

“We are not―”

“Apparently,” she pushed through my objection with a growl, “she can even just trot up and talk them out of attacking settlements. That’s what Miss Neighvada’s been saying anyway. The Wonderbolt just showed up, gave the Rangers a hoof, and they left.”

“I stopped the attack,” I said evenly, doing my best not to look visibly intimidated by the larger mare. It wasn’t very easy, let me tell you; and I’d faced down hell hounds! “In my book, doing it without leaving a body count is a plus.”

“Well, in my book, passing up a damn good excuse to rip apart Rangers like that, and then helping them, makes you just another Steel Slut!” she just about spat. I wasn’t able to keep myself from flinching away from the sheer vitriol wrath in her words. The silver mare straightened up, sneering down at me, “so anypony offering caps for your head is aces, s’far as I’m concerned.”

How had this somehow gotten to be so personal with a mare I’d only met the one other time, and hadn’t even introduced myself to back then?! I was certainly grasping that she had a chip on her shoulder―in addition to the hammer that was as big as my head―where the Steel Rangers were concerned, but I felt it was really unfair for her to characterize my relationship with them the way that she was. I’d hardly call Hoplite and I ‘friends’ of any sort, and it wasn’t like I’d never killed any Steel Rangers. Even if I did regret doing it the one time that I had…

“I’m trying to end a war,” I seethed through gritted teeth, finding it growing progressively more difficult to contain my annoyance in the face of somepony who just seemed dead set on making themselves my enemy. This was supposed to just be a simple little layover in a quiet town in the middle of nowhere on our way to Seaddle. None of us had expected it to turn into a whole ‘thing’.

We still had yet to find out who was behind this whole ordeal, for Celestia’s sake! “Look, somepony’s paying you, right? Let me talk to them; work something out.”

The mare snorted again, saying nothing. Her violet eyes looked to her right, and I found myself following their gaze. I felt my throat tighten as I caught sight of an older earth pony stallion stepping out from behind one of the boxcars. In the back of my mind, I noted that he was only just now registering as a blip on my pipbuck. Though it served to reinforce my paranoia regarding exactly how many ponies could have us surrounded by now without either Ramparts of I knowing, I fought to keep myself from looking around in panic. Besides, I was a little more concerned with who we were up against than how many of them there were, because I’d just received my answer as to whether or not talking was going to be an option.

“We could work out your surrender,” a gravely voice suggested.

The stallion was older, about Jackboot’s age, maybe a little more. His coat was pale blue and his mane was in the middle of transitioning from golden to ivory. A light machinegun hung on his right side, being fed by a belt of ammunition tucked onto his left. What caught my eye most of all though was his barding. It was a very distinct style, that I was quite familiar with, and the sight of it filled me with a sense of resignation. This was going to turn into a fight, and a lot of ponies were going to die, and there wasn’t going to be anything that I’d be able to do about it.

This was personal.

The Lancers had come to call.

Still, though there was little hope of resolving this without spilling a lot of blood, I had to at least make a token effort. I knew it wasn’t going to work, but if I didn’t at least try, I’d feel a lot worse about how this was going to go down, “you guys tried this once before,” I pointed out to the older stallion, “it didn’t go well then. I can promise you it won’t end any better this time.

“Unless you walk away right now.”

A rasping chuckle from deep within his throat greeted my warning, “if we were anywhere else, and if you were anypony else, I wouldn’t doubt that, little filly,” the earth pony mused, his words sounding like he was speaking through a mouth made of sandpaper, “I underestimated you before,” he nodded, his eyes wandering over me in an appraising fashion, “I suspect most ponies do. This time, though…”

He raised a hoof a waved it behind him. A second later another pair of ponies appeared, a unicorn stallion dressed in the barding of a Lancer mercenary...and a zebra mare.

“Yatima!” Ramparts’ single word betrayed his simultaneous concern for the mother of his colt, and the raw, unbridled, hatred that he was feeling towards her captors. There was a moment where I was certain that it was going to be the brown stallion who’d be the one to fire the first shots. His eyes certainly flashed with nothing short of a desire to unleash bloody vengeance on the two mercenary stallions. Fortunately for all of us, his military discipline kept him rooted at my side and his mouth off of his trigger bit.

“Ramps―!” the mare’s own outburst was cut short by her unicorn handler, who wrenched her roughly back with his magic, a revolver pressed ominously to her temple. She bit her lip and kept herself quiet, though her pleading eyes continued to drift between Ramparts and I.

“...I’ve made certain that we came prepared to take you in without a fight,” the stallion said, his lips spreading into a hungry grin.

I glared at him, seething inwardly. Yatima wasn’t the only pony in Santa Mara, of course. I had little doubt in my mind that the Lancers had the rest of the town’s inhabitants under their guns too. How they were masking themselves from my pipbuck was still a mystery, but it hardly mattered. The question had just become one of how many innocent lives I was willing to jeopardize by resisting.

That answer was an obvious and resounding, ‘zero’ of course. Not that I felt particularly compelled to just give myself over to these mercenaries, “I’m guessing that the deal is that you’ll let everypony go if I just surrender?” I heard the sharp intake of breath behind me from Foxglove. My wing briefly flipped out and signaled for her to remain calm.

The stallion shrugged, “not the most original plan, I’ll admit, but effective.”

“And what assurances could you possibly give that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?”

He started laughing, “kid, this town is Republic property. Sooner or later the NLR’s going to run my crew out of here whether we like it or not. Trust me, I’d just as soon be long gone when the Guard shows up to find out why they’re not getting their daily reports from the garrison here.”

I glanced back at Ramparts, and I caught the nod from the earth pony. With the current ceasefire in effect, it might even be easier for the Republic to send a respectable force to investigate Santa Mara. They weren’t likely to show up in the next few minutes, obviously. Honestly, it could be days. Even trying to delay be a few hours on the off chance that response force was just beyond the horizon probably wasn’t going to go over well with the Lancers here.

“The Republic’s going to remember this,” Ramparts growled.

“Look at me trembling with fear,” the stallion drolled, “oh, no, wait; that’s just my arthritis acting up,” he chuckled mirthlessly, “the NLR doesn’t venture to where we operate, pal. How pissed off they’ll be doesn’t concern me,” he returned his attention to me once more, “so, what’ll it be? Are you going to drop your weapons, or am I going to have to drop your striped friend?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For the briefest of moments, I contemplated accepting his offer. Give myself up into their custody and suffer what would undoubtedly turn out to be a rather lengthy string of indignities before they felt they’d finally exacted enough of their revenge and decided to end my left in some sufficiently gruesome fashion. In the grand scheme of things, that was actually a rather low price to pay for the lives of several dozen ponies whose only crime seemed to be their proximity to a mare that I’d known for a brief period of time.

It wasn’t that I thought my life was worth more than anypony else’s, and I certainly didn’t think that it was worth more than a whole town full of ponies. Honestly, I think I’d be perfectly content to die if it meant saving the lives of others, no matter how grim that death might be. None of that was why I was going to refuse his offer.

What I couldn’t tolerate was the notion that a group of ponies like this would get exactly what they wanted, and suffer no repercussions for it. That stallion was right, after all: the Republic wasn’t going to be able to punish them for what they were doing here. They were going to escape down south, or out east, or wherever, and nothing was going to be done about it. In the meantime, they’d have the mare they were blaming for their woes in their clutches, and doing to me whatever they wanted.

They’d win, while the only losers would be me, my friends, and whoever in Santa Mara had been hurt when they’d taken over like this and set up their trap. At some point in the future, these mercenaries might even try all of this again in an effort to hurt somepony else.

Surrendering wasn’t going to make the Wasteland a better place. Talking might have, but these ponies didn’t want to hear it. That left just the one option: fighting. Though there was still a little question of exactly who I needed to worry about more: the Lancers, or the brick house of a mare in front of me.

I felt the corner of my mouth quirk up in the barest ghost of a wan smile and I glanced over at the silver bounty hunter and said in a low tone, “if I told you that I’d be willing to give myself up if you went over there and bashed that zebra’s head in, would you do it?”

The unicorn blinked in surprise, a look that was mirrored by Ramparts. Fortunately, the stallion was too stunned to voice his own objections. The mare recovered and glared at me, “I ain’t a murderer, you stupid bitch.”

“Ah, I see; you just work with them. My mistake,” before she could say anything more, I asked, “do you even know why the Lancers are after me?” I doubted very much that she’d asked or cared, given how inclined she seemed to be towards hating me, so I made the question rhetorical, “I stopped a few of their goons from raping a mare and selling her and her filly into slavery.

“They want me dead for that,” I shrugged, “because that’s how the Wasteland works,” my smile grew a little more, though it remained sad, “and here you are helping them. I like to give ponies a chance when I can, so I’m going to give one to you.

“I’m going to stop every Lancer here,” once again the large silver unicorn seemed taken aback by my flat admission, “that’ll probably mean killing a few of them. I’m going to try to leave some of them alive this time, but it’s hard to promise that sort of thing,” I looked the mare in the eyes, imparting to her the importance of my next words, “please don’t try to stop me. I want to believe that you’re not like them. I want to not have to kill you. You seemed like a decent sort the last time we met.

“Not a lot of decent ponies in the Wasteland these days.”

I looked away from the agape unicorn, who was still processing what the little filly had just said to her and glared at the older stallion, “you want me? Fine. I’m coming over.”

The stallion sneered in satisfaction, “good choice. Now, just drop your weapons and―”

My wing flipped a switch on my back. Anypony might have been forgiven for thinking that I was disconnecting my battle saddle and preparing to shuck it off. Anypony who didn’t know about the Gale Force rig that Foxglove had integrated into my reinforced Wonderbolt barding, that is. All it took after that was a flick of my forelegs.

A unicorn would have been jealous of my ability to do the next best thing to teleporting across this town. The older Lancer leader didn’t even seem to realize that things had gone off script until it was too late. The unicorn holding Yatima certainly figured out that something had gone awry about the time he caught a face full of hooves as I delivered a double-buck right into the base of his horn at the maximum available acceleration that the flight assistance rig would offer. My wings flared out at the moment of the impact, and the magical levitation talismans built into the metal ‘feathers’ of the rig brought me to a sudden stop, hanging in the air.

Momentum did the rest as the unicorn stallion was sent sailing backwards from the force of the blow. His body went tumbling along the ground until it finally slammed into a rusted out train car. He was an earth pony by that point though, the jagged remains of his freshly severed horn bouncing aimlessly off the wall of the nearby boxcar. One visible threat down.

The older stallion was only just starting to realize that something had gone wrong as I wrenched a tiny little orb off of one of the little external retainers of my barding and dropped it to the ground. I then wrapped my hooves around the startled zebra mare and flexed my forelimb once again just as the earth pony was bringing his machine gun to bare. In another blink of an eye, I was right back where I’d started at by Ramparts’ side, gently easing my trembling passenger to the ground. Once more the stallion had to wheel around in order to reacquire me in his sights.

I turned to look at him, acting as though I’d expended hardly any effort at all to do what I’d just done, staring at the stallion with a bored expression, “you don’t want to be standing there,” I warned.

The pale blue earth pony blinked and looked down. It was only then that he noticed that little metal apple that was lying at his hooves. His eyes went wide with terror and he scrambled to escape the blast. He was only partially successful. While he did manage to survive the blast, it wasn’t without taking some pretty significant injuries in the process. He’d probably make a full recovery in time though.

Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I flipped myself backwards in midair, ducking just beneath the swing of the large hammer being wielded by the bounty hunting unicorn. With a frown, I spun to the side and struck her across the face with a kick from my hind leg. It wasn’t enough to do a whole lot of harm, but it certainly seemed to get the mare’s attention. It also provided me with the leverage that I needed to flit out of her immediate reach.

“I don’t want to fight you!” I yelled at the mare.

“Not everypony gets what they want,” she shot back just before charging at me.

She drew up short as a blinding streak of crackling sapphire energy arced across her path. Both of us spared a quick glance at the source of the errant bolt, and spied the large gray genetically augmented stallion with his beam rifle hovering at his side, wrapped in a golden telekinetic aura. The bounty hunter snarled, taking a tentative step back.

A high-pitched whistle sounded from the roof of one of the buildings. I knew in an instant that it wasn’t a good sound for me or my friends. It seemed that the Lancers were about to come at us with the full force of the trap that they’d set. I spun around in the air, panning my gaze over every rooftop and open doorway that I could, feeling my frustration only growing as I continued to spot not a single threat with my Eyes Forward Sparkle.

That state of affairs didn’t last for long though, and soon there were blips aplenty visible at the bottom of my vision as Lancer mercenaries poured out of the train cars in which the residents of Santa Mara dwelled. Even knowing that it was coming didn’t seem to be enough to truly prepare me for the feeling of dread that gripped me deep down as I saw dozens of armed ponies materialize out of hiding around us, their weapons trained and ready to fire. I wanted to scream and cry foul of whatever tactic they’d used to cheat my pipbuck’s Eyes Forward Sparkle, but that seemed like a moot point at the moment.

We were surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. For all practical purposes, the Lancers had us dead to rights. No, that wasn’t quite right. They had me dead to rights. My friends weren’t the focus of this whole ambush, I was. At least, I hoped that was how this was supposed to play out.

“Fall back!” I ordered my companions, even as I used the Gale Force to rocket ahead.

I didn’t have a fully formed plan just quite yet, only the barest hint of a framework: keep the Lancers shooting at me while my friends got to cover, regrouped, and came up with a much better course of action than the phenomenally stupid thing I was doing! Of course, with so many guns present on the other side of this fight, my best option was to get up close and personal to force them to risk shooting one another if they wanted to use all of that firepower.

The first Lancer that I connected with was an earth pony mare who was clearly quite upset that I wasn’t playing my part in what was supposed to be something akin to shooting bloatsprites in a barrel. In such a scenario, the bloatsprites weren’t supposed to fly out of the barrel and pummel you with their bare hooves, after all. However, I wasn’t a bloatsprite, and so I saw nothing at all wrong with accosting the mare with a series of rapid jabs to her head and jaw.

Firmly stunned by my opening volley, I slipped one foreleg down beneath her armpit, while using my other as leverage around her neck. A Gale Force assisted flick of my wings spun me around and allowed me to hurl the dazed earth pony at another nearby Lancer while I rocketed in the other direction to engage a pair of unicorns brandishing machetes and pistols.

There was something cathartic about hoof-to-hoof combat. It kindled those distant memories of my early life with Jackboot as he taught me the finer points of the down and dirty brawling that he’d learned growing up. I would find out much later in life that those had been the rough and tumble techniques developed over decades of slaughter by the White Hooves. However, by that time, I had long since evolved what I’d been taught into something new and personal. My wings afforded me a third dimension of operation that no earth pony or unicorn could properly fathom, and it had only seemed natural to apply what I was learning in the way of fighting to how I was learning to move as well.

It almost wasn’t fair, honestly. These mercenaries knew a thing or two about fighting, obviously. Their whole livelihood was based on it, and while I wouldn’t consider the vast majority of them to be any sort of masters of up close combat, most of them certainly knew enough to be able to best just about any random raider they were likely to come to blows with. I was in a league far above their usual opponents though. Even if I’d been grounded, I could have taken any one of them in an up close fight, maybe even two of them early on, before fatigue set in. As it was, these mercenaries weren’t just facing off against a mare who was better at hoof-to-hoof combat, they were fighting somepony who could move like nothing that they’d ever encountered before.

I didn’t have to have my hooves on the ground. Nor did I need to restrict myself to merely trying to move around them to the left or the right. I could tumble over them as high up as I wished to go. I could instantaneously shift my direction of travel in any direction at the drop of a hat with nothing but a flick of my wings. It was like they were all trying to fight a gust of wind, only this gust of wind packed a vicious double-buck that left one pony after the other crumpled on the ground, groaning in agony.

In the early minutes of the fight, I didn’t even take a single hit, my pipbuck’s Sparkle Assisted Targeting System permitting me to slow down time and anticipate their moves even as they were making them and respond appropriately. While there was the rare occasion in which I needed to discharge a round or two from the weapons mounted at my sides in order to keep the more adventurous lancers from getting too bold, most of my fighting was restricted to punches, kicks, and throws, as I flowed from one mercenary to the next.

Constant movement was crucial, as lingering for more than a second meant inviting a Lancer to start taking shots at me. This, unfortunately meant that I was rarely able to spare the time necessary to ensure that each of my targets was put down for the duration of the fight, and I found that more than a few of the ponies that I’d beaten on were getting back up to their hooves and looking to make a better go of round two now that they had an idea of what they were up against.

At the onset, I’d known that this wasn’t a sustainable solution. Their numbers were many, and I was just one filly. Things were honestly made all the worse by the fact that I couldn’t focus on one target long enough to be certain they didn’t get back up, because that meant having to fight them all over again later. I might have been good―I may even Be Awesome!―but I couldn’t Be Enduring forever. Fatigue started to catch up with me in the worst way as I felt my hits begin to soften, and my agility taper off.

It was no surprise when one of the ponies I was fighting managed to shrug off my attack and even catch me with a kick of his own that sent me reeling. The blow itself was a little thing, and barely hurt at all through my barding. It was enough though. Enough to knock me away from a fellow mercenary, and finally make me a viable target for every Lancer who’d been pining for a clear shot at me.

The WHIP-CRACK of a rifle shot rang out. In that same instant, I felt the sensation of somepony flicking me in the leg a fraction of a second before the whole limb exploded into nothing but pain and agony for me. I cried out before I could help myself and recoiled even further away from the pony that I’d just been fighting. It was the exact wrong move to make. Even more removed from their fellows, I became the target of nearly every armed Lancer with a firearm as they all opened up on me.

Reflexively, I dropped to the ground and flipped up my wings to cover my body. The alloyed shell of the Gale Force range in perpetuity as hundreds of rounds struck is sturdy surface and deflected off. I was not completely spared the wrath of the Lancer’s fire, of course. The force of those impacts was left unbuffered, and slowly began to force me back, staggering on my wounded leg. Not every round was intercepted by the alloyed wings that I was cowering behind either, and I reeled as several errant bullets punched into my reinforced Wonderbolt barding.

When I felt that I could, I raised a wing just enough to uncover a barrel of one of my weapons and snapped off a burst or two. These were largely blind efforts, and proved quite ineffectual. I was pinned down with no hope of escape. The moment I moved my wings out to fly away, I’d be riddled. Staying put wasn’t an option either. I could feel the wing coverings of the Gale Force buckling in several areas as they were ravaged by the Lancers’ onslaught.

I was entertaining the notion of making another charge at the nearest mercenary, even knowing that I was feeling tired and hurt enough that it wasn’t going to be a very fruitful second wind even if I could muster one. Anything was better than just sitting here being pounded with gunfire waiting to die though. Hopefully my friends had managed to get away safely…

There was a bright blue flash that very nearly blinded me and I became suddenly aware of the fact that I wasn’t alone. Stunned to the point that I completely forgot about the horde of Lancers surrounding me, I gaped in awe at the pink unicorn mare who was suddenly standing beside me, glaring daggers at the mercenaries.

“You’re an idiot,” Starlight Glimmer snarled at me through tightly gritted teeth as she maintained her focus on what I very quickly identified as some sort of magical energy barrier that was surrounding us, deflecting away the incoming fire from the Lancers. Not that they seemed to be particularly deterred by the sudden appearance of the unicorn mare or her defensive barrier.

It did seem, however, that my intention of attracting the attention of every Lancer in the town had achieved resounding success. Indeed, there did not seem to have been a single eye spared for the rest of my companions after the mercenaries realized that the one little pegasus filly that they were here for had seemed intent on delivering herself right into their clutches, one beating at a time.

This meant that none of them were facing those friends of mine, who were now finished organizing themselves within the makeshift bunker that they’d fashioned out of discarded rails and thick wooden ties. A bunker from which they had nearly perfect lines of fire on the Lancers.

Shimmering bolts of deadly indigo energy and golden tracers split the distance in a volume that was truly impressive, considering that all of it was coming from just a couple of ponies. Stallions and mares screamed one after the other as they were cut down from behind. The surprise was short lived, as the mercenaries not caught in the opening carnage of those first few seconds were very abruptly made aware of their fatal error in judgement. Their attention lifted from me and Starlight as they sought cover from Arginine’s and Ramparts lethal suppressive vollies.

It was the moment that the pink unicorn had been waiting for, it turned out, as she dropped the barrier that she’d summoned and instantly enveloped my world in cyan light. The next thing I knew, I was sitting slumped on the ground on the other side of the bunker that I’d seen. Yatima was nearby, huddled up against her beau and keeping herself as low to the ground as possible. Foxglove was upon me almost immediately, shoving a healing potion into my mouth and a fresh set of spark-packs into the Gale Force.

“What were you thinking?!”

Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure who was reprimanding me, because it had sounded like every one of them had yelled some version of it at me simultaneously. I scowled at all of them, “I was ‘thinking’ you guys would run further than ten fucking feet!”

We really weren’t all that far from where we’d stopped upon seeing the silver unicorn mare. Admittedly, I suppose that I hadn’t been as clear as I could have been in my desire for all of my friends to put as much distance between themselves and Santa mara as possible. I certainly hadn’t thought that they’d go the next best thing to nowhere at all!

“We weren’t just going to leave you behind,” Foxglove insisted pointedly even as she fished out a couple of tools and started to fix a few of the more important components of my gear that had been damaged in the fighting.

“Well, that’s just great,” I muttered, peering up at the pair of stallions who were still firing on the Lancers, though much more conservatively now that we were all clearly receiving fire as well, “now we can all die together!” It wasn’t going to take the mercenaries long to surround and overwhelm us like this. There was a lot of them still left standing, and as good as some of us were at fighting, the odds were frankly hopeless.

“I don’t suppose you can just teleport us all out of here?” I asked, glancing at Starlight.

The pink unicorn frowned and shook her head, even as she was pulling out one of her grimoires and flipping through the pages, “not any distance that would help,” she found the page that she was looking for and scanned over its contents. She closed her eyes in concentration for a brief moment before shooting a beam off with her horn, striking both Arginine and Ramparts. Before I could ask what she was doing, I felt my jaw grow slack as both stallions seemed to blur before my eyes.

It wasn’t that my sight was failing. The pair of ponies were simply now moving so quickly that my eyes couldn’t fully track their movements. Their speed was such that they might as well have each been three or four ponies providing suppressive fire. I peeked over the top of the bunker and watched as the Lancers experienced a moment of panic brought about by the unexpected uptake in outpouring fire and withdrew a considerable distance in order to seek out better cover.

That burst of energy was rather short lived, it seemed, and it was only a matter of seconds before both ponies were once again solid forms. They were also visibly exhausted as the stallions slumped down to the ground, panting. Arginine was so tired that his face looked like it was displaying actual emotions!

Though it was Ramparts who glared at Starlight, “thanks, but maybe ask before doing something like that next time?”

“I would also appreciate the opportunity to give consent before being enchanted,” Arginine grumbled before swapping out the spark pack in his rifle for a fresh one.

“So what’s the plan?” Foxglove asked as she finished making the last of her hasty repairs on my equipment.

“Well, it was for all of you to get clear of the kill zone that the Lancers had set up before they slaughtered us to a mare,” I responded sardonically, unabashed by the glare I received from the violet mare, “but now I guess we’re just going to have to settle for killing as many of them as we can and hope they fuck off before they overwhelm us,” which was an outcome that I was frankly dubious about. This was a disciplined group of professional mercenaries. They weren’t going to do anything stupidly reckless that would give us the kind of opening that we’d need, “unless anypony has any better options?”

“We could try Singing.”

I rolled my eyes and glared at Starlight. Alright, so I hardly had a wing to flap on when it came to reprimanding anypony for giving a sarcastic response, but I still wasn’t particularly amused by the pink unicorn’s poor attempt at humor. I looked to the others, “anypony have any actual better options?”

“I’m being serious,” Starlight Glimmer insisted, frowning at me, “we should try Singing,” it wasn’t just me who gave her dubious looks this time. Everypony was now staring at the mare as though she’d grown a second head. Upon seeing our reactions, Starlight let out a thoroughly exasperated sigh, “reformation spells and Singing? So you’re telling me that ponykind forgot basically everything from before the war?”

“Starlight, you can’t seriously expect singing a few silly songs to do anything to help our situation?”
Foxglove at least made an attempt to be supportive towards the other unicorn mare, “I mean, I guess a little singing might boost our spirits while we fight?”

“Not singing,” Starlight groaned, “Singing! Capital ‘S’, Singing!” somehow, she still seemed surprised by the collection of blank looks that she received. She unleashed a final frustrated scream and put away her spell tome, marching towards the lip of the bunker that they’d thrown up, much to the dismay of the rest of us, “just follow my lead! You’ve got to―”

And then, Starlight started...singing…

“Hey! Wait! What are you―?!” the rest of my objections were interrupted by a silver blur in the corner of vision, and a crimson-hued alert from my helmet’s proximity warning system. My wing went up just in the nick of time to stop the attack from driving through to my head, but the blow from the massive sledgehammer was still powerful and unexpected enough to send me tumbling flank over fetlock to the far end of the bunker.

Oh, right, the bounty hunter. I’d very nearly forgotten about her in all of the excitement. How kind of her it was to remind me of how rude I was being by ignoring her…

Foxglove made a noble attempt at avenging me, but the mechanic mare wasn’t nearly as skilled in close quarters combat as her silver opponent. She managed to achieve a few brief moments of surprise with her eldritch lance that allowed her to gain an impressive amount of ground initially. Her advantage was short-lived once the larger mare recognized the weapon for what it was and comprehended the nature of the threat it presented. It cost her a few new nicks on her sledge, but she soon had Foxglove in retreat as the smaller unicorn mare scrambled away to keep herself from being smashed into purple paste.

As much as Ramparts and Arginine might have wanted to do something to help, their attention was preempted by the need to provide Starlight Glimmer with covering fire as she continued to inexplicably stride towards the mercenaries that had us surrounded. This left it my responsibility to deal with Pritchel and her imposing bulk.

My lips pulled back in a defiant snarl as I launched myself at the other mare, adding in an assisting burst of acceleration from my freshly recharged Gale Force rig. She tried to bat me out of the air with a swing of her hammer as I neared, but a well-timed roll deflected most of the force of the hit and allowed me to follow through with a buck aimed at the mare’s head. Much to my chagrin, she caught my leg with her forelimb and stopped my strike cold. The worst part was that she hadn’t even looked like it’d taken her all that much effort to do so.

Unicorns weren’t supposed to be so physically tough. They were supposed to rely on their magic to carry them through life and neglect becoming super strong. This mare was cheating!

Pritchel and I found ourselves both looking in the direction of the pink unicorn mare who was inexplicably gripped in the throes of a song. The larger silver unicorn cocked an eyebrow at the sight, “tell she’s not―”

“―she is,” I responded in resignation. Then that brief moment of solidarity built upon mutual bewilderment passed and the two of us recalled that we were, in fact, currently embroiled in a fight to the death and resumed glaring at one another. I flipped away just as her hammer arced through where I’d just been and immediately strafed to the side in an effort to get around and strike at her flanks where she would, hopefully, be less able to effectively defend herself.

It turned out that this bounty hunter hadn’t just been working on building up muscle mass, she was also remarkably agile. I was pretty sure that she was using some sort of spell to artificially improve her reflexes, because it didn’t seem to matter how quickly I tried to fly around her, she was able to respond just as quickly and intercept my blows. She wasn’t just fighting defensively either. For every hit that I tried to land on the mare, I was forced to evade one in kind.

I shot up into the air after my fourth failed attempt to successful hit my opponent in order to put a little space between us and give myself some time to think. However, my attention was immediately pulled away from my fight with Pritchel to the patently unexpected sight of Starlight―of all ponies―working her way through the Lancer mercenaries one by one. The culmination of all of our conversations and training sessions had not left me with anything approaching a flattering appraisal of the pink unicorn mare’s combat capabilities. Frankly, I felt that Foxglove was a phenomenally better fighter than Starlight had any hope of ever being.

So, imagine my slack-jawed shock as I watched the pink unicorn veritably prance her way from one mercenary to the next.

Granted, she didn’t seem to be “fighting” them in any way that I was familiar with. Her shotgun still tucked away snugly in its scabbard at her side, the mare was instead electing to zap each mercenary in turn with magical cyan blasts from her horn. She wasn’t doing so with any particularly lethal incantations either, so far as I could see.

Honestly, it looked to me like she was toying with the mercenaries, more than anything. One mare toppled over in the wake of the flash of magic that enveloped her, a tangled knot of decorative ribbon woven through her legs. Her next victim, who had been about to open fire on her with a pistol that was clutched in his mouth was surprised to find himself covered in golden goo as he bit down on what had, only a moment ago, been a trigger, and was now a banana. The fruit-covered face of the stunned stallion was a mask of unbridled shock, right up until the moment it dissolved into a pile of sparkling blue dust, courtesy of a energy bolt from Arginine’s rifle.

Starlight had moved on by that point though, her horn aglow as she transmuted the ammunition of the next mercenary in her path into kernels of corn. Those kernels promptly began to pop in rapid succession, terrifying the Lancer into a scrambling mess who couldn’t seem to get her battle saddle off fast enough in order to escape whatever was happening to her.

It was ridiculous, I thought as I darted back down to once more engage the muscled mare before she decided to make a move on any of the others. Starlight seemed to have things well in hoof―for now―with Ramparts and Arginine providing overwatch with their precision fire to keep the Lancers not being actively confronted by the pink unicorn from getting too brave. I could have wished that she wasn’t being quite so reckless as she was going about it, but I couldn’t really complain about the results. Not that it made me feel any better about what she was doing.

I trusted the pair of stallions with us to keep her alive long enough for me to thump her flank once this was all over. Honestly, who in their right mind could possibly have thought that singing was a viable combat strategy?! Ponies from the Old World were certifiable if this was how they’d dealt with their problems.

No wonder the world had ended…

Pritchel was kind enough to drag my thoughts back to our bout as she once more lashed out with her hammer. This time I ducked beneath her swing, intending to try and get under her and hope that this vector of attack provided me with more success than my previous efforts. It was actually rather aggravating to find myself fighting somepony who wasn’t content to let me beat their flank into submission in a matter of seconds. I didn’t usually have to work this hard to beat a single pony.

I don’t know why I thought that this attempt would have produced different results than any of my other recent failures. Just like the last several times, the silver unicorn was able to dance away from my attack and offer a dangerous repost with her hammer. I wasn’t going to make it quite so easy this time though, and changed things up by actually letting the bounty hunter land a glancing blow on my alloyed wing covers. I grunted with the pain of the impact, but capitalized on the fact that taking the hit had permitted me to keep in close to the mare. My hope was that the fact that I didn’t need as much build up to my next attack would mean that she was less able to parry it.

My plan mostly worked. I didn’t get the sort of fight-ending hit that I might have hoped for, but Pritchel had indeed found herself unable to completely avoid my attack this time. My hind legs lashed out viciously at her front left knee as I kicked away from her sledge’s follow-up swing. I heard her snarl at the strike, but it didn’t look like it had done much more than irritate her. Still, a hit was a hit, and I wasn’t about to let go of even this meager advantage quite yet.

I dove back at the mare. The resounding clangs of metal striking metal filled the air, threatening to drown out the sound of even the nearby gunfire, as my wings met the mare’s hammer blows. Even though I did my best to keep the hits as oblique as possible, I started to feel a kinship with Sapi’s anvils as I continued to get pounded on for every strike that I managed to land.

Yet, inexplicably, over the din of gunfire and pounding metal, Starlight’s incessant singing managed to penetrate into my ears.

I grit my teeth and whirled as tightly as I could. This time, the silver unicorn’s swing...missed. Her violet eyes widened as she realized that she had managed to somehow miss the target that was very nearly right on top of her. Honestly, I was a little surprised myself, given the beating that I’d been taking up until now. There was zero hesitation as I jabbed and kicked at the mare’s joints and soft tissue. My body weaved in and around the bounty hunter, managing to slip just around the head of her massive metal sledge. I couldn’t really explain it. There was just….something, that was helping me to time and avoid her attacks. It was like everything was happening according to a specific…

...Rhythym…

Through it all, was Starlight’s enthusiastic singing:

Celestia help me, but despite my every cogent thought to the contrary, I wasn’t able to keep myself from joining in with that crazy pink pony on the next chorus. A pair of nearby baritones suggested that Arginine and Ramparts had fallen prey to the tune’s pervasive nature as well, and all of us joined Starlight’s next refrain:

All five of us must have looked and sounded utterly ridiculous, singing the way we were while in the grips of this fight for our very survival. It was the most ludicrous time that any one of us could have picked to start chanting some ancient-sounding ragtime ditty, but Celestia damn us if it wasn’t helping somehow!

Starlight Glimmer was continuing to lead us in reciting the lyrics to the song that, to my conscious knowledge, none of us had ever heard before but somehow still knew the words to, even as she cast a multitude of cantrips and minor evocations that either disabled her opponents outright or rendered them combat ineffective for long enough to be easily dealt with by the stallions watching over her. Yatima was even murmuring the words to the song and had apparently worked up enough courage of her own to help Ramparts by reloading his rifles for him as their magazines ran dry.

Foxglove had regrouped as well, and was currently doing her best to help me deal with the silver bounty hunter in our midsts. While not a pony that I would have considered to be capable of effectively contributing to a fight with a mare like Pritchel, it seemed that the violet mechanic wasn’t having as difficult of a time fighting the larger mare as she should have. Both her lance and her rifle flew about her, gripped by her magic, as she wielded both as though they were spears. Pritchel was finally forced to give up ground as she found herself unable to contend with both myself and the unicorn mare slicing at her with the magically burning cutting tool that was inflicting more and more gouges on her own weapon.

Once more I received a warning from my helmet’s display, this time from behind. I spun in the air, curling my wings around me, and felt something light and metallic strike their alloyed shell. My eyes caught only the barest flicker of a crimson blip on my EFS, and shimmering striped limbs, before any sign of what had attacked me was gone completely from sight. I recognized immediately what it must have been, of course. The invisible individual that had been perched on top of that train car earlier was back. Only now I was pretty sure that it was, in fact, that zebra stallion that I’d seen with the bounty hunter when Foxglove and I had been negotiating for Jackboot’s release.

In a token effort of retaliation, I flicked my right forelimb and sent a short burst of rifle rounds arcing through the air where I’d seen the shimmer. He was certainly long gone from that spot by now of course, and I knew that. Still, I felt inclined to demonstrate to him why it would be unwise for him to get particularly adventurous where I was concerned. I didn’t have to know exactly where he was when I had the option of simply filling a general area with bullets and letting the laws of probability do the heavy lifting where hitting a target was concerned.

Pritchel took exception to my attack on her zebra compatriot and I was very promptly engaged with the bounty hunter once more.

Almost on reflex, all four of us―and Yatima, as well―echoed Starlight’s melodic vocables. I felt a resurgence of energy as I flung myself back at the unicorn bounty hunter. Foxglove, too, wore an expression on her face that suggested she had caught her own second wind for this fight. Pritchel, on the other hoof, was letting her fatigue finally show. Her magenta eyes glared at the two of us as she continued to strike with her hammer, but found herself unable to land a solid blow with the weapon.

Her zebra companion continued to make a nuisance of himself as he darted around the periphery of the fight, peppering not just myself, but my companions with darts. I darted through the air in an effort to intercept them, dividing my attention between the bounty hunter and her striped partner. Under normal circumstances, doing so would almost certainly have meant losing this fight. However, with Foxglove managing to conduct herself surprisingly well under the circumstances, the two of us were able to maintain the upper hoof and keep pushing the silver unicorn back.

Pritchel staggered back in the face of a combined strike from both myself and my violet companion. She distanced herself from the pair of us and brought her hammer in front of her, defensively. The defiant glint in her eyes melted away a second later. I soon realized why when I noticed that Starlight Glimmer was no longer out and about skirmishing with the mercenaries. She had returned, standing triumphantly atop the mound of rails and ties that comprised the defensive position my companions had erected. Flanking her on either side were Ramparts and Arginine, each with their weapons trained squarely upon the large silver mare. Even Yatima was standing boldly, with a stern glare directed at the bounty hunter.

“And now you see what Singing brings…” the pink unicorn mare behind me sang, letting the last note linger into silence through her broad, satisfied, grin. She slowly stepped down the inner edge of the bunker and glanced in my direction, “told you.”

“Yeah, no, we’re still going to talk about this whole thing later,” I said in a slightly sour tone to the rather smug looking mare before returning my attention to bounty hunter once more, “it’s over, Pritchel. Surrender.”

The larger silver mare stood before us, wordless, as she continued to breathe heavily. Her coat glistened with sweat, and I caught sight of the slight tremor in her limbs as her muscles threatened to give out right then and there. Whether she was ready to admit it or not, she was out of this fight. I was just hoping that she was a big enough mare to admit it―no pun intended.

For several long seconds, I was genuinely afraid that she wasn’t going to give in. I really didn’t want to have to kill her. While I knew that it would more than likely have actually been either Ramparts or Arginine that delivered the lethal shot that ended her life, I’d know that I’d still feel just as responsible as if it had been my hoof on the trigger.

Finally, with an drawn out sigh, the mare released her telekinetic hold on her massive sledge and let the heavy metal hammer drop to the ground with a resounding CLUNK! She sat back on her haunches and held up her forelegs in a token gesture of surrender, “this is fucking bullshit,” she grumbled, favoring Starlight with a glare, “the fuck kind of spell was that, anyway?”

It was the pink mare’s turn to look defeated now, “nopony remembers Singing, really? It’s official: the future totally sucks.”

The comment drew a raised eyebrow from Pritchel, but I headed off any comment she might have made with a pointed question of my own. However, it wasn’t directed at the bounty hunter, “are you going to give yourself up too, or are you going to make tracking your invisible flank down into a whole...thing?” I really didn’t want to have to play Bronco Polo with that zebra to keep him from getting up to any mischief.

The silver unicorn mare cracked a smile and rolled her eyes, saying loudly to her surroundings, “the fun’s over, Medica; time to play nice with the Steel Slut!”

I narrowed my eyes at the mare, and was about to retort when I caught sight of a shimmering shape appearing startlingly close to where I was standing. Foxglove gasped and very nearly fell over herself trying to back away from the slightly built zebra stallion that was now right in front of her. Arginine’s energy rifle shifted instantly to the zebra, while Ramparts kept his own rifled trained squarely on the bounty hunter mare. Starlight didn’t look to have been particularly amused by the demonstration of the zebra’s stealth abilities either.

However, it was Yatima’s reaction that surprised everypony.

“Medica? You?!”

The striped stallion smirked at the other zebra, “greetings, Dearest. I trust that you missed me terribly?”

“Don’t you ‘dearest’ me, you―!” the mare sputtered, tripping over her words in her growing ire as she advanced on the stallion, who was wisely stepping backwards so as not to allow the obviously irate mare within strangling range, “does this mean―?! The whole time those brutes had me, you were―! The whole time―THE WHOLE TIME―the whole time?” in the span of two seconds near the end, the young mare’s tone had managed to transition from surprised, to wrathful, and then circle all the way back around to numbly curious. It was actually rather impressive.

“I was there the whole time,” the spry stallion admitted, “and I would have let no harm come to you. You know this.”

“I know you’re a sniveling little worm of a stallion who I should never have entertained the notion of marrying!” Yatima snapped, “where is my son!”

At this, the striped stallion’s lip curled into a barely suppressed sneer, “your little half-breed cur is safe,” he responded cooly, “everypony is safe,” now he glanced in my direction, “harming the residents of this town was never the intent,” he wiped his nose and sniffed.

As much as whatever drama these two zebras had going on was interesting, and I was definitely going to get some of the details on it later, there were bigger issues that needing addressing first; the welfare―and location―of Santa Mara’s population chief among them. I looked back at Pritchel, “where are the residents, and what did you and the Lancers do to them?”

“They’re fine,” the silver unicorn assured me, “they’re tied up in their homes,” she glanced over the lip of our defensive position at the dead and indisposed mercenaries, “and no longer under guard, it looks like.”

Although I knew what the result would be, I chanced another look around the town, my attention focused squarely on where blips should have been showing up on my EFS. While I could now she several indicators marking the locations of ponies, they corresponded only to the locations of the Lancers that I could see. There was no sign of anypony in the surrounding boxcars.

Anticipating my next comment, the bounty hunter added, “Medica did some zebra voodoo that hides things from pipbucks,” she shrugged, “couldn’t have you seeing all those Lancers, after all.”

“Foxglove, Arginine, check the town,” I said. Both ponies nodded and cantered off towards the nearest car. I looked back at the bounty hunter, “those mercs looked pretty serious about shooting Yatima earlier,” I pointed out, “I find it hard to believe neither of you ‘intended’ for anypony to get hurt.”

“They wouldn’t have, if you’d just given yourself up like you were supposed to,” the unicorn shot back, “you’re the one responsible for all of this,” she added, nodding at the bodies strewn about the town.

“You don’t get to put this on me!” I snarled at the silver mare, “I didn’t take a whole town full of innocent ponies hostage! I didn’t put a gun to a mare’s head! I didn’t decide to put my lot in with a group of ponies who are just a bunch of slavers pretending to be ‘respectable’ mercenaries!

“This was all on them,” I very nearly spat in the bounty hunter’s face, then growled, “and it’s on you for helping them.”

Pritchel sneered down at me defiantly, “so now what? Are you going to execute us yourself, or give us over to the Republic to do it?”

I found myself glancing reflexively back at Ramparts. He wasn’t a very happy stallion, that much was obvious. It was hard to blame him. He’d been more personally involved with this confrontation than even I had, given that his family had been placed under threat in all of this. Add to that his professional outrage at having a settlement under the protection of the New Lunar Republic placed under threat, and you had the makings for a pony who probably wouldn’t mind tying the noose that would be used to hang these ponies himself. She was right, of course, the Republic would certainly kill all of these ponies for what they’d done when they got their hooves on them.

How did I feel about that? I’d given Pritchel and her zebra companion the option to surrender in lieu of killing them. Had I really done that just to hoof them over for execution? That wasn’t effectively all that different than just putting a bullet in their heads myself, and I didn’t want to do that.

Could I really let them go, though?
Pritchel wasn’t much of a concern, herself. She was a bounty hunter, and not a particularly bad pony. She had a personal grudge against me that I didn’t quite get, but I knew enough to know that she had a few details wrong. I was confident that some talking would iron things out between us.

The Lancers were another matter. They’d only gotten more bold since the last time they’d tried to exact their vengeance on me. I shuddered to think of what they might try next time in the face of their failure here. It was probably too much to hope that this was over, after all. Killing them hadn’t worked last time either, of course. There was no way I’d be able to talk them down…

It seemed that things weren’t quite over between me and the Lancers though.

The older cyan stallion from before was back on his hooves. I spied him standing back up beyond Pritchel. He was glaring daggers at me as he reached a hoof beneath his barding and withdrew a small metallic device with a pulsing red light.

“You fucked up now, bitch!” he yelled at me, drawing the attention of all of us. Holding the device aloft in his hoof, his lip curled back in a sadistic grin, “now, everypony dies!” he lowered the object, raised his other hoof, and brought them together to depress the pulsing dot of light.

It was a detonator. I didn’t know to what, precisely, but it didn’t really matter, did it? The stallion hadn’t exactly been keen on idle threats up to this point, so if he thought that whatever he was about to do would kill ‘everypony’, I was inclined to believe him. Not that there was much I could do to stop him from all the way over here. The Gale Force was fast, but even it wouldn’t get me there in time to snatch the detonator from his hooves.

I could escape. Save myself. Honestly, it was either that or staying put and dying with the rest of the town.

My heart froze as I saw our demise impending.

There was a flash of cyan light. The stallion’s hooves clamped together. A blaring, warbling, wheeze of noise echoed across the railway tracks that ran through the middle of the town. Everypony, most especially the Lancer stallion, looked down at his hooves.

He was holding a deflated rubber chicken.

A second, larger, flash of light eclipsed him, and suddenly Starlight Glimmer was standing in front of him, scowling at the older stallion. A book was floating at her side, the pages it was turned to glowing with ethereal light, “I am so sick of dealing with assholes in this future,” she said in a low, grumbling, tone. A moment later, before the mercenary could react, the aura surrounding the pages of the floating grimoire leapt first to her horn, and then beamed directly into the cyan earth pony’s brow. He gasped and his body went rigid, his mouth agape in a wordless scream.

“Starlight!” I yelled out, jetting over to the pair, yet not sure what I would do when I got there. I certainly wasn’t about to try and forcibly disrupt the spell, for fear of being caught in its effects.

Just as I arrived, whatever spell that the pink unicorn was casting came to an end, and the cyan earth pony collapsed limply to the ground. At first, I was convinced that he’d been killed outright. I gaped at Starlight in surprise. Not that she’d killed a pony who had, just moments ago, apparently tried to blow up what I presumed to be the whole town; but rather that she―after all her lamenting otherwise―might have killed somepony outright. In fact, I couldn’t think of a moment where she’d killed anypony or anything since we’d revived her. She certainly was shy about her views on violence being anathema to her entire world-view.

Sure I found the concept of her level of desired pacifism laughable. I mean, I hated killing as much as the next mare, but I understood that sometimes it was necessary under the right circumstances. I’d just recently started re-evaluating what those circumstances were. However, I did still feel a lingering admiration that the pink mare had those kinds of principals. If I was seeing the death of those ideals right this moment, well, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret that traveling with us may have effectively corrupted Starlight like that.

Before I could say anything, there was a gasp from the stallion that drew my attention. It seemed that the Lancer hadn’t been killed after all. I wheeled around and took up a defensive stance, ready for the older earth pony to try and make some other sort of threatening move. While it should have been quite obvious that trying anything further was a useless effort, I recognized that this was a stallion who had just demonstrated that he was desperate enough to slaughter an undetermined number of bystanders just to spite me.

Ponies with that level of personal grudges didn’t let anything go just because the odds were stacked against them. I was going to be ready for anything.

The stallion blinked up at me and Starlight and then looked around at the state of the town. His features fell as he slowly raised himself up into a sitting position, one hoof idly rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, “looks like I made an awful mess of things. I’m really sorry about that,” he directed his gaze to me now, his expression the perfect embodiment of regret and contrition, “I shouldn’t have blamed you for the mistakes of my ponies. I knew what they were doing, and that it was wrong. I should have tried to stop it. This was all my fault, and I’m very sorry about that.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he continued, apparently completely oblivious to my own look of stupefied incomprehension, “but I promise that I’ll do whatever I can to make up for my mistakes, and those of my Lancers,” he extended his hoof, “my name’s, Lucerne. It’s nice to meet you, Wonderbolt,” another sheepish half-smile, “I just wish the circumstances had been better.”

My gaze darted between his outstretched hoof and his apologetic features. It was uncanny. Either this pony was the most gifted confidence stallion to have ever existed in all of pony history, or he felt genuine regret for what he’d done. It was patently unbelievable.

“Starlight,” I said out of the corner of my mouth, not taking my eyes off of the Lancer, “can I have a word with you please?” keeping my gaze locked on the stallion, I gloated backwards, away from him, as the pink unicorn and I retreated to a distance that would allow us to exchange a hushed conversation in private.

“Could you please tell me what the fuck is going on?! Why is he like this now? What did you do to him?”

The unicorn mare rolled her eyes, “I reformed him, obviously.”

“‘Reformed’, nothing; he’s a completely different pony!”

“He is exactly the same as he was,” Starlight insisted, “only now, instead of wanting to be selfish and violent, he wants to be helpful and friendly,” she frowned at me, “I don’t understand what your problem is. He’s a model citizen now and will never be a problem for anypony as long as he lives. Isn’t this a good thing?”

“I…” what was I supposed to tell her; ‘change him back’? I certainly didn’t want that. She was right: this is just about exactly how I would have wanted a pony to react to being summarily defeated. He was cooperative, showing feelings of contrition, and actively offering to make amends for his wrongdoing. I literally could not have asked for more out of the stallion. Like Starlight said: he was the postercolt for how ponies should behave towards one another.

All it had taken was a zap to the brainpan.

“I’m going to leave you two to talk things out,” the pink unicorn mare said as she turned away and began trotting towards the nearest incapacitated Lancer mercenary, “I have a long day ahead of me,” she said with a resigned sigh, rubbing her horn and adding, “it’s going to mean another rough morning too, I can tell…”

I felt a half-hearted protest die on my lips as Starlight headed off. I wasn’t completely convinced that I felt ‘good’ about how she was dealing with the Lancers, but what kind of alternatives was I being presented with here? I glanced back at the cyan stallion, who was still looking at me was a tentatively hopeful expression as he gave me a friendly little wave. It sent an uncomfortable shiver down my spine.

“I’ll...get back to you,” I finally said before jabbing a wing in the direction of Ramparts and his...marefriend? It looked like the Republican officer was making half-hearted attempts to keep his striped companion from getting into a physical confrontation with Medica, “right now I’ve got to deal with a...thing. Over there. Yeah,” violence-inducing drama was something I could much more readily understand than...whatever it was Lucern was showing me right now.

What did that say about me? That was an existential question for contemplation much later down the line. Right now? Domestic drama!

Even Pritchel looked to have settled into watching the show unfold before her, righting her recliner and making herself comfortable upon it as the two zebras continued to bicker. She noted my approach, and I saw her expression sour somewhat. Ah, right, the whole ‘Steel Slut’ thing. Perhaps I could nip that in the flank before partaking in the entertainment. Ramparts seemed to have things in hoof for the moment. Or, at least, wasn’t feeling like letting things get outright violent any time soon. He certainly wasn’t making an effort to intervene.

“S’up, Steel Sl―” the bounty hunter began. However, I was having none of it anymore.

“Alright!” I snarled at the mare, glaring balefully at her, “I get it: you don’t like the Steel Rangers. Frankly, I can think of a dozen reasons right off the top of my head why you and anypony else in the valley could possibly hate them. All our bits on the table? I don’t particularly care for them either! As far as I’m concerned, the valley would be a much better place without them.

“Here’s a news flash: I’m trying to get rid of them!” Pritchel recoiled in surprise at my outburst, which gave me no small amount of satisfaction, “and I’m this close to doing it,” I said, bringing my wings about in front of me and moving them to bring the two foremost pinions on either appendage to very nearly touch, “if that means giving them a helping hoof once or twice in order to get them to stop slaughtering innocent ponies and usher them on their way? So be it.

“You’ve got beef with the Rangers. Who doesn’t? If you’ve got such a problem with them, then tell me: what are you doing to get them out of the valley?” not that I was going to give her a chance to provide an actual answer, even if I thought she had one, “oh, nothing? Nothing at all? But I’m the ‘Steel Slut’ for being the only mare in this whole damned valley who is trying to get them out of our manes so we can go back to dealing with our own shit.

“Yeah. That seems reasonable,” I flicked a wing dismissively in her direction, “especially coming for a mare who get’s off helping slavers. Do me a favor and don’t open your mouth until you’ve decided to stop sucking Lancer cock and come up with something constructive to say.”

That...was actually quite satisfying. Feeling a little better for having vented, it was now time for me to partake in the little lover’s spat unfolding before me.

“So, tell me, Dearest,” Medica was saying, with a smug expression that simply begged to be beaten off of his muzzle, “how have your parents reacted to your decision to debase yourself with a pony, of all things?” he cast a sly leer at Ramparts, “fitting, I suppose, that he should be brown…”

“How have your parents reacted to learning that their ‘prodigy’ of a son is a conniving incubus?!” Yatima spat bat with a startling level of vitriol for a mare that I’d only know to be timid and demure. Even her beau looked surprised. There was the barest hint of a smile on his face as well.

The striped stallion rolled his eyes, “there is nothing nefarious about flattery, Dearest; and it is no fault of mine if it requires mere compliments to lift your tail,” he once more smirked at Ramparts, “I’m sure you can attest to how quick she is to present herself in the face of a passing kind word, no?”

“Why you―!” Yatima very nearly threw herself bodily at the slightly built zebra. This time, however, Ramparts was not inclined to even make a token effort to restrain her. Indeed, he looked to be about half-tempted to join the assault himself.

He hadn’t seemed to note Medica’s stance though. I recognized it as a variation of one of the styles that Jackboot had taught me as a filly. What that suggested about the history of how the White Hooves had developed their hoof-to-hoof techniques was a question to be answered by scholars who actually cared about those sorts of things. All that mattered to me was that the bounty hunter was a lot more prepared for a fight than I thought either of the other two equines realized. Medica didn’t have to hurt the mare. He was poised perfectly to deflect her aside harmlessly. Yatima would be largely unhurt by the effort, but I suspected that Ramparts would be rather incensed to see her tossed about so casually.
If the slightly-built zebra thought that he was a match in a fight for a stallion nearly twice his weight class, I knew that this was a fight that I didn’t want to see start. Medica had thus far proven far too sly and sneaky to make a blunder like intentionally goading himself into a fight he thought he couldn’t win in moments.

I zipped in between the trio, wings splayed out between the spatting former lovers―or so I assumed from the context of their taunts. Yatima and Ramparts found themselves thwarted by a wall of alloyed metal thoroughly dented and scoured by battles, while Medica was on the receiving end of the glare that I was leveling at him. The stallion’s smirk melted away into a disappointed scowl. It was only now that I could see that one of his hooves, which had previously been hidden from my view by his body, had been subtly snaking its way to one of the pouches on the odd harness that he was wearing.

His hoof slowly rose up to his nose, which he wiped as he sniffled, his own glare growing slightly more intense as it darted briefly to my pipbuck, “Wonderbolt,” he acknowledged, his tone taking on a slightly more nasally timbre.

“Where is Yatima’s foal?” I asked in an even tone.

The striped stallion grumbled, sniffed, and then finally pointed to one of the train cars nearby, “the cur is within,” then he shifted his glare to the mare behind me, “safe.”

“Ramparts, isn’t it about time you met your son?” I said without taking my eyes off of the zebra in front of me, “today has kind of sucked so far. Let’s make it a little better by adding in a happy family reunion.”

I could feel Yatima behind me, battling with herself between her desire to verify the safety of her child, and her hatred for this other zebra. There were a few mumbled words from the earth pony beside her, and finally the pair cantered off towards the indicated car. In a few seconds, it was just me and the bounty hunters.

A fact that both Pritchel and her partner seemed to note as well. No concerted effort had been made to disarm either bounty hunter, and neither of them was particularly seriously injured. With all of my companions otherwise occupied, it wouldn’t be much of a risk for them to capitalize on their advantage and try to take me on right here and now.
However, they were just bounty hunters, “this had to have been one of the easier jobs you’ve had,” I began, folding my wings back in snugly at my sides, “just sit and wait for me to show up, say a few words, and let the Lancers do all the work. What’s your rate for something like that?”

The silver unicorn mare snorted, taking out her own half-finished Sparkle-Cola RAD from earlier before drawing out a second and tossing it my way. She took a long sip of the drink while her partner backed away and started rubbing his eyes, “that’s certainly how things were supposed to go,” she admitted with a wry smirk in my direction, “leave it to a Steel...the Wonderbolt,” she amended upon noting my scowl, “to make things interesting for her enemies.

“Honestly, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be that easy; but the Lancers were calling the shots. All we were paid to do was track you down.”

“About that,” I said, popping off the cap from my drink and pocketing it before taking a small sip. It’s been months since I’d had one of these, They were certainly a step better than the standard Sparkle Cola, even with that odd little aftertaste that I was pretty sure wasn’t really ‘radishes’. I’d have to remember to ask Starlight about that. If anypony knew what a for-real radish had tasted like, it’d be her, right? “How did you know we’d be by here?” it wasn’t like I’d been broadcasting my plans for the whole Wasteland to hear.

“It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out,” Pritchel chuckled, “the whole valley knew you were McMaren, what with Miss Neighvada giving your dock the verbal licking of a lifetime for the last three days,” I grimaced. It hadn’t been that bad, “seriously, are you fucking that mare, or what?”

“I’m not,” I grunted, then realized what I’d said and scowled at the bounty hunter again.

“Ooh,” the unicorn cooed as she stroked her chin and cast her gaze about in the direction that my other companions had wandered off in, “don’t tell me: I want to figure this one out for myself,” she glanced at her zebra companion, “any wagers?”

“Anyway,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to push the conversation in a direction that I preferred, “knowing where we were isn’t the same as knowing where we were going. How’d you guess Santa Mara?”

“That was a bit of an educated guess, I’ll admit,” the larger mare acknowledged, sipping her drink, “fifty-fifty shot as to whether you’d go north or south, of course. However, I knew you had a thing for the Rangers,” she pointedly ignored my glare this time, “and I knew you were traveling with a Republic mook. So, north seemed like a the better guess.

“Additionally, I knew that said-mook had a loin-biscuit here. A pony as oh-so-noble as The Wonderbolt wouldn’t be the sort to not stop in and let her companions see their family, I figured. Thus…” she shrugged and finished off her radish-infused soft drink. The zebra sneezed and backed away further.

I frowned at the unicorn, “how could you possibly know that Yatima and her son were here, or that they were connected to Ramparts?”

“Oh, Sandy and I go way back,” the mare smiled, waving her hoof dismissively, “that mare has to be, like, the proudest aunt in the whole Wasteland. Seriously, she’ll tell everypony who’ll listen―and even anypony who won’t―all about how the Wonderbolt personally saved her friend and newborn foal, who―as fate would have it―is also her nephew. And you can best believe that she’s been bragging about how her big brother has been the Wonderbolt’s ‘right hoof stallion’ ever since Miss Neighvada broke that news.

“Honestly, it was pretty obvious that all we had to do was stick close to that zebra mare and you’d show up eventually. Then, boom; trap: sprung.”

It was at this precise moment that I first decided that it was perhaps plausible―even probable, in fact―that there was a reason that heroes hid behind monikers like, ‘The Security Mare’, or ‘The Stable Dweller’, or even ‘The Wonderbolt’, and that maybe―just maybe―they didn’t like the names of the ponies close to them getting out to the public, on the off chance that any enemies that the hero was making might decide that using the friends and families of their companions was a good way of coercing or ensnaring said hero in a dastardly trap―much like this one. Perhaps hogging all of that credit for themselves alone was a means of further protecting the ponies closest to them. Honestly, at the moment, it felt like a very reasonable course of action that anypony with more than two functional brain cells worth rubbing together would have thought of almost immediately.

They probably heard my epic facehoof all the way over in Manehattan.
Windfall. You. Idiot, “I’m a dumbass…”

Pritchel, in what had to be her first demonstration of restraint, managed not to grin merrily at my callosal fuck-up. She simply shrugged and smiled, offering a non-committal, “eh…you’re young. Young ponies make mistakes all the time.”
In my own defense―which felt very flimsy at the moment―the concept of hiding the identities of my closest companions to help safeguard the safety of their loved-ones hadn’t really been much of a concern, like...ever. Everypony I had ever loved or cared about was dead, so it hardly mattered to me if my greatest adversaries knew who I was. The same thing went for Starlight Glimmer, whose every mere acquaintance was the better part of two centuries long gone.

Even Foxglove didn’t know the exact location of her own underground stable, and she hadn’t been very concerned with forming any meaningful bonds since before meeting Jackboot and I. There wasn’t anypony that could really be used to get at me through her. Arginine fell into this category as well, though for slightly different reasons. Assuming that the stallion was even capable of feeling emotionally close to anypony―and he repeatedly insisted that he wasn’t―I’d sooner help anypony who tracked down his stable and threatened to wipe them out; so everypony knowing who he was didn’t present a problem either.

However, I had forgotten that this wasn’t the case with Ramparts. He wasn’t like the rest of us: ponies forever removed from our homes and families in one way or another. He was the closest thing to a normal pony that existed in our group: he had a home, a family, a full time job―which I supposed he was on extended leave from, or something? He was probably in for a good scolding when he eventually got back―he was a stallion who actually had things to lose if the right ponies found out who he was and took exception to his choice of traveling companions.

I didn’t even know the full extent to which that was the case. I’d only very recently learned that he had a sister, after all. I had never thought to ask about his parents, or any other siblings he might have. Aunts and Uncles. Grandparents. Cousins. Foalhood friends that he was extremely close with, maybe? The point was that there was likely a highly lengthy list of ponies that could be in danger right now, and I didn’t have the slightest clue how long it was. Even if I did though, the answer was already an obvious: ‘too many’. The three names on that list that I did know about was too many, as far as I was concerned.

I was going to have to have a long talk with Ramparts once things settled down.

The approach of Lucerne served as an unwelcome reminder that there was another of my companions that I was going to need to have a long talk with about a rather important topic. However, it looked like I was at least going to be initially spared having to interact with the unsettling stallion, as he was instead intent upon talking with Pritchel. For her part, the larger unicorn mare didn’t initially look like she was looking forward to this conversation. Given that her employer was about to talk with her after what was undeniably a disaster of a job, I could well imagine expecting some unpleasantness.

Of course, the bounty hunter had yet to experience Reformed Lucerne, like I had. She was about to though, “Miss Pritchel, I would like to offer you my sincerest apologies for what happened today,” it was...interesting, seeing this from the outside; watching the unbridled confusion as the silver unicorn lost all control of her features in the face of words that nopony could have ever possibly predicted coming out of anypony’s mouth. Seriously, nopony talked like this, or genuinely felt this way. It was...ethereal, or something.

What was more, he just kept right on talking, as though Pritchel didn’t look like her brain had locked up completely; with every additional sentence only serving to compound her state of stupefaction, “I shouldn’t have let you place yourself in danger like that for something that was my own personal problem. That was wrong of me. I also shouldn’t have mined the town with bombs without telling you―or at all, really,” he added with an apologetic look my way, “you could have been seriously hurt, and I sincerely regret that. I know this won’t make up for all the wrongs I’ve done you, but I hope you’ll see it as a token of an honest effort on my part to do better in the future,” the cyan earth pony reached into his saddlebags and took out several sacs of caps, passing them over to Pritchel, who was too stunned by the events unfolding to properly use even her telekinesis, and had to resort to accepting the boon with her bare hooves.

The weight of the bags of money seemed to be enough to rouse the mare from her stupor, and she whipped her head down at the payment, gawking, “this is, like...eight thousand caps!” she stared wide-eyed at the older earth pony, “the agreement was for half this, and we failed!” she flailed a hoof in my direction, as though the cyan earth pony had somehow yet to realize that the target of his efforts was still alive and free, “have you lost your mind?!”

The stallion smiled and shook his head, “you tried your best, and that’s all that matters,” he insisted, “and the rest is to let you know that I hope there won’t be any bad feelings between us in the future for putting you in a position where you could have gotten seriously hurt.

“Please let me know if there’s anything else I could possibly do to make up for my poor conduct today.”

Pritchel was silent for a moment, then she looked over at me, “what. The. Actual. Fuck.

“What did your friend do to him?” she thought for a brief moment, “and does she take requests? I know a few casino bosses in New Reino who I’d like to see get a dose of whatever she gave this guy.”

“Yeah, no,” I shook my head and frowned, “I’m going to talk to her about whatever...this is,” I said, gesturing to the stallion. Then I did a double-take when I noticed that the unicorn mare had regained a very specific glint in her eye that she’d had earlier when we first arrived.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should get to apologising to the rest of the town,” he flashed the pair of us another sheepish smile, “and I doubt that’s going to be a pleasant experience. Still, it has to be done, so…” he shrugged and started to trot off towards the nearest boxcar, only to have his departure immediately arrested by a purple aura wrapping itself around his tail and rooting him in place.

“Not so fast, Pops,” Pritchel very nearly purred at the stallion, “I believe we were discussing ‘making up’?” she stood up and started to slowly circle the earth pony, eyeing him hungrily. If she were a manticore, I’d have been certain that she genuinely intended to eat him. As it was, I was starting to feel more than a little uncomfortable about the intensity of the attention that she was paying to him, “no better way to do that than by making out, in my experience.”

She turned and headed off for a boxcar which had a glowing neon sign hanging above it marking it as being the ‘Sleeper Cars’, which I knew to be the local inn of sorts for ponies passing through, “let’s go put your ‘lance’ to work ‘earning my forgiveness’!” the stallion let out a startled yelp as he was bodily dragged behind the mare, his face a mask of confusion. It quickly shifted to embarrassment as her telekinetic aura migrated further beneath the tail it held.

Medica took an interest now, attempting to voice protests of his own between mucus saturated sniffles and sneezes as they passed by him, “Pritchel, no―I…stars...” he ended with a defeated sigh as the pair vanished from sight into the collection of train cars that had been welded together in order to form the inn.

I looked between the zebra stallion and the inn, “should we...do something about that?” I asked, gesturing with my bottle of RAD.

“It would not be wise to deny her when she is in this state,” the stallion muttered bitterly just before another sneeze wracked his body. He noted the bottle clutched in my wing and his lips creased in a frown. His mouth opened for a brief moment, as though about to say something, then he changed his mind and instead offered, “sleep well,” he cast one final glare in my direction―focused specifically on my pipbuck―and trotted off.

Odd how ominous he’d made those last two words sound.

For a few seconds, as I polished off the cola, I idly wondered if I should have let the two bounty hunters who helped to set up this trap go that easily. I mean, it wasn’t like they seemed very intent on doing anything further to me or my friends at the moment, and I guess they’d been paid already, so they had no professional reason to want to do anything further. Pritchel did seem like the type to hold a grudge, but nothing in the last few minutes had suggested she wanted to hurt me any time soon over what had happened here, specifically.

Honestly, I had other concerns to occupy my thoughts. Like finding out how much progress Arginine and Foxglove had made in freeing the locals.

The answer turned out to be: a fair bit. When it came to freeing the townsponies and disarming the bombs that the Lancers had placed, the two were proving to be a dynamite team―...I swear I’m not trying to pun like this on purpose! The residents of Santa Mara were appropriately grateful for the rescue, certainly, and quite impressed―for the most part―that our tiny little group had been able to take on the vastly superior numbers that the Lancers had arrayed against us.

It felt really good to be helping ponies like this again. I mean, I know that I’d gone through nearly this exact same thing just a week ago with the ponies of McMaren, but it still felt really great. It wasn’t even the accolades and praise that were being heaped on me. Just seeing the indescribable relief on everypony’s faces…

“Um...Windfall?”

I blinked and looked up at the large gray unicorn stallion. It was then that I realized that I’d been rubbing up against Arginine’s side. I offered up a coy little smile and shrugged. Hey, it wasn’t my fault that he felt so good to rub up against! If he didn’t want me being this close to him, then he should find a way to stop smelling so good and looking so enticing. I mean, look at him...standing there...like a stallion...and I mean, a stallion stallion!

...My stallion. My stallion who used his super-knowledge of pony body stuff to know exactly where to put those stallion lips of his...

I was rubbing up against him again; which I once more contend was not something I could be held liable for doing. If stallions were going to look, feel, and smell, this good, then I couldn’t be responsible for my actions! I mean, I bet he even tasted good...confirmed: the lick test returned conclusive results that RG does, in fact, taste exquisite…

But, ever the thorough mare that I was, I couldn’t very well leave this unverified without extensive investigation...somewhere else...away from other mares...like that purple one that was giving me a concerned look with those emerald eyes of hers. If she thought that she was getting My Stallion, she had another thing coming!

“RG, I need you to help me with something,” I said, not taking my eyes off of the other mare as I pressed the larger unicorn stallion towards the exit, “you can manage things here on your own right...um, you?”

“Windy, are you feeling alright?” the interloper asked, acting all innocent. I knew better though. He’s mine, you hussy!

“We’re just fine,” I said firmly, leaving no possible doubt to the veracity of my statement, “you just keep doing...whatever it is you’re doing here.”

Her emerald eyes darted briefly to the equally confused looking residents, “you mean freeing these ponies?” I saw the jealous glint in the eyes of the other mares though, and while the stallions looked tasty enough, I’d already picked mine out of the herd. I might come back for one of the others later once I was done with this one.

“Yeah, that,” I flip a wing lazily in their direction and more urgently guided My Stallion out the door, “see you later...you!”

Once outside, and away from those other stallion-poaching-mares, I flitted up into the air and alit upon My Stallion’s back, spreading myself over his sinewy flesh and burying my face into his scruff, inhaling his scent as deeply as I could. My whole body shuddered and I locked my wings around his sides as tightly as I could, “Mmmmm…” I stand corrected. Fuck relieved looking expressions on pony’s faces. This was the most amazing feeling in the world!

“Are we not being discrete anymore?” My Stallion asked, glancing back over his shoulder at me as best he could.

“Stop talking,” I sighed before using a hoof to turn his head around, pointing at the inn, “go that way. Quickly.”

Oh, wow…! It was hard to put into words what it felt like having My Stallion’s body undulating beneath me as he galloped across the center of town. I found myself wishing that the town had been a lot larger, and even momentarily debated instructing him to just run around in circles for a bit so that I could keep feeling those muscles rubbing up against my loins. Sweet Celestia!

Of course, doing that would delay the main event, wouldn’t it?

“Is there some trouble in this place?”

“Stop talking,” I repeated to My Stallion, filling my lungs with his scent once again, “inside.”

Obediently, My Stallion pushed the door open and entered the inn. I finally perked my head up and looked around. Finally, my gaze fell upon an open door leading to one of the guest rooms. I reached out and nudged his head in that direction, “in there.”

My Stallion hesitated and pointed with a hoof, “are we not concerned about them?” he asked, indicating a trio of bound ponies in the middle of the lobby, “or perhaps that?” he shifted his hood slightly so that it was pointed at the bomb lying on the floor right next to the two jealous mares and the Not-My-Stallion.

I let out a frustrated moan. My Stallion wasn’t going to be able to focus with a distraction like that, was he? Frankly, neither would I, knowing that those two mares would be right outside, thinking about poaching My Stallion from me, those whores!

“Fine!” I said in a long, exasperated sigh. I flipped off of My Stallion’s back and landed between the bound ponies and the bomb. A deft double-buck sent the explosive device out the door, and earned a trio of high-pitched muffled squeals from the ponies, “relax,” I snapped irritably, “C-4’s inert, and the detonator is a chicken,” the ponies retained their terrified expressions, but now possessed an added element of confusion. Next out were my wings, and the razor blades that lined their leading edges. A few carefully executed strokes relieved the ponies of their bonds.

I reached into my saddlebags, threw a hundred caps or so at the presumed owners of this inn, and jabbed a hoof at the door, “now get out! And hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, or a bridle, or something on the door!” I darted back into the air and snaked a hoof into the collar of My Stallion’s jumpsuit, “happy now? Let’s go!”

Still wearing a confused look on his face, My Stallion obediently trotted into the room that I’d selected, at which point I bucked the door shut and―finally―reveled in having My Stallion all to myself, away from the prying eyes of those jealous mares.

“Windfall, are y―!”

I wrapped myself around My Stallion’s neck and silenced whatever meaningless prattle he was about to spew with a firm kiss. He seemed a little surprised at first, but he was hardly in any sort of position to distance himself from me like this. I pulled myself against him as tightly as I could, nuzzling him enthusiastically. The feeling of him up against me was...enthralling! In fact, the only downside was all of this stupid barding that was in the way…

“Get this shit off me,” I hissed, fumbling to undo the straps and clasps that retained my armor in place. There was just so much of it. Why had I allowed myself to wear all of this? It wasn’t conducive to being with my Stallion at all. Neither was his own jumpsuit, “get that shit off you,” I tried, rather unsuccessfully to divide my efforts between disrobing both myself and my Stallion, with limited success.

Eventually I managed to disentangle enough of my gear that most of it fell to the ground with a loud thunk. I’d apparently missed some of the straps that I was supposed to get, and undid a few that I should have left alone. The kevlar pieces over my chest and withers had remained stubbornly in place while the rest of my equipment fell away. I momentarily struggled further with it before giving up. I had the important bits off, and that was all that mattered.

I immediately turned my focus to My Stallion, and getting rid of his own clothing. It was hard to focus with his scent filling my nostrils with every breath. My cheek was essentially glued to his neck as I found myself unable to keep from rubbing up against him, which prevented me from seeing exactly what my hooves were doing as I tried to peel back his jumpsuit.

“Windfall―”

The moment his lips were open, I was pressing my own up against them, reveling in the taste of him. The softness of his flesh against mine. It was intoxicating. I needed this―needed him―like I’d never realized.

My ear perked as I heard a mare’s muffled moans and screams coming from nearby. These were soon accompanied by the sounds of furniture thumping against the thin metal walls of the train cars that the rooms had been fashioned out of. Visions of Foxglove and Jackboot floated into my head, brought on by how similar the sounds were to one another.

Any other time, those memories might have stirred within me feelings of jealousy and rage. This time, though, I felt...warmth, and an immutable desire to recreate those memories, right here and now, with My Stallion. I needed to have happen to me what was happening to that mare in the other room. I needed to feel what she was feeling.

I broke our embrace, “fuck me, RG,” I demanded, breathlessly, just before burying my face near his ear, “make me scream like that!” I needed that sensation more desperately than I could ever remember.

“Windfall, I don’t think I can―”

“I can fix that!” I slipped around the stallion in an instant, “I’ve heard that mares sometimes do this thing with their mouths, and I’ve never done it before, but I figure it can’t be that hard to figure out―”

“Windfall!”

My body went rigid, my vision clouding with a golden haze as My Stallion seized me with his telekinesis. For the briefest moments, a similar foggy sensation that I was only just now aware of that was present in my head cleared enough for me to register his tone: he was angry. My Stallion―no...Arginine, didn’t get ‘angry’; certainly not with me. I soon found myself floating in front of the large gray stallion, who was indeed glaring at me with a critical gaze.

I was helpless before him. Exposed. He could do whatever he wanted to me right now. The mental haze returned and my head piled up with a hundred different things that I wanted―needed―him to do to me right now. I bit my lip as those fantasies manifested in my head and brought back those warm, stirring, feelings within me.

“You are not acting rationally,” the stallion said, having regained his regularly level tone, “I am concerned about this behavior. It is atypical.”

“We’ve done it before,” I pointed out, squirming in frustration against his hold on me as it was preventing me from getting nearer to him. I needed to be touched by him―by somepony! I needed him near me. Over me. In me. Now! “I want to do it again! You said you would!” I felt my frustration starting to boil over into anger as My Stallion continued to refuse to cooperate in the face of my indomitable logical argument.

“I have indeed attended to your amorous desires, in an effort to mitigate your stress levels.”

“So what’s wrong this time?! Mitigate me, already!” I was snarling at him now as these desires within me continued to grow, spurred on further by the sounds of gratification that were continuing to spill in through the walls. It wasn’t fair that she had a willing stallion…

“Your actions are clearly aberrant,” My Stallion insisted, “I am concerned that intimacy might exacerbate the situation.”

“I’ll exacerbate you if you don’t start fucking me right now!” I screamed, “if you won’t do it, I’ll find a stallion who will, you bastard! Let me go!” I writhed and struggled within the golden field that still held me, feeling my limbs starting to pull free little by little.

The unicorn stallion’s horn flared brighter and I felt my limbs freeze in place once more, drawing out another outraged roar that was probably supposed to have words in it somewhere; I forget. Didn’t he understand how much I needed his help right now? These feelings and desires were just so...powerful. They weren’t even pleasant anymore. They’d stopped being pleasant a while ago, and had crossed into the realm of agonizing.

Through it all, I knew how to make them stop. I knew that they’d go away if My Stallion would just help. Me. Why wouldn’t he do it? Stallions were supposed to like doing this sort of thing! Stallions have been making passes at me for years in an effort to let them do this with me. Well, here I am! So why won’t you do it, you fuck?!

I struggled, and I snarled, and I roared. I’m positive that there were insults and death threats in there somewhere. I couldn’t tell you what they were specifically, and I wasn’t positive that they had all been intelligibly articulated through all of my screaming; but I was confident that he’d at least gotten the idea through all of it. Yet, none of that had moved him in the slightest. He’d stood there, impassive, holding me aloft with his magic, until the worst of my tantrum subsided.

For it did subside. My rage spent itself after several minutes as the physical pain began to overwhelm me now. It hurt so much, and I couldn’t stop it. Arginine could, but...he wouldn’t. No matter how much I threatened or begged him, he wouldn’t do what I wanted him to. Tears started streaming down my face as the agony mounted, and threatened to surpass what I thought I could bare.

“Please…” I begged, trembling in his telekinesis as my body became saturated by the pain, “help me…”

“I shall,” the gray unicorn nodded. I gasped with relief through a sob the wracked my body at the prospect of being freed from this torment, “but not in that way,” my face fell as confusion overwhelmed my features. Then I saw the Med-X needles that he’d extracted from his saddlebags.

“This should suffice until I have discovered the nature of your affliction,” I didn’t even feel the pricks of the needles as they pierced my flesh.

I’d had Med-X before, of course, many times. I knew what to expect as the drug worked on my body to dull the pain. That wasn’t the case this time. What would have made me completely forget about bullet holes and shrapnel wounds under any other circumstance did nothing to soothe the agony I felt now. Tears resumed streaming down my face as I began to despair. If even drugs couldn’t satisfy, then what hope was there?

My thoughts became foggier...more difficult to focus on. The pain remained in all of it torment, but I could feel myself slipping from consciousness as the Med-X proceeded to enact the secondary effects that it carried with it in larger doses like the one that Arginine had just given me. I was losing consciousness. I could only hope that when the world finally vanished from my clouding vision, that it took this pain with it…

I was vaguely aware of moving through the air, and something soft being pressed up against me wings. A few moments of very focused examination of my surroundings informed me that I’d been placed on the room’s bed. My legs started jerking briefly as the remainder of my barding was finally removed. I tried to move, but my body felt heavy and numb, even if the discomfort I was experiencing had abated at all. Would it last forever?
It certainly felt like it would.

“Don’t leave…” I pleaded as the last vestiges of awareness started to ebb away. I hurt, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t stop. I was scared.

My words sounded soft and distant to my own ears. For a moment, I wasn’t even sure I’d managed to say them loud enough to be heard. Then there was a deep, reverberating sound, “I shall not.”

Then the world went dark.

Foot Note:...

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