I've got a weapon for every situation. Hunting, protection, cold blooded murder...hotblooded murder...

I didn’t envy whatever Wasteland therapist eventually got tapped to sort out Starlight’s emotional issues later in life when she suffered her inevitable complete psychotic break. It was hard to say if she genuinely believed this second robopony could also be her long-lost daughter, or if she had just lunged at any possible escape from the emotional torment of her recent loss. Honestly, I didn’t know what to make of recent developments either. It was all a little much to take in, and I was still mostly operating off of the various bits and pieces I’d been cobbling together as I came across little oddities in my travels.

Fortunately, this new ‘Moonbeam’ seemed to be very well acquainted with a lot of those little details that I was lacking, and was more than happy to fill in all the gaps in our collective knowledge. We all gathered in the cosy little tool room to listen as the robopony finished up her minutes-long hug-a-thon with Starlight.

“So...first things first, I guess,” the synthetic pony started, shifting a little uneasily beneath our gaze, clearly not accustomed to having an audience, “I’m the real Princess Lu―er...Moonbeam, rather. What you saw up there?” she pointed in the direction of what I presumed was a now thoroughly wrecked opera house, “that was a remote. Ebony Song found it...somewhere. I don’t know exactly. He had it before he found me.

“I was just, sort of, controlling it. Well, not me, really,” she amended softly, “it...did most of the work…”

“‘It’?” Starlight pressed from where she sat near the robopony.

Moonbeam’s mechanical body actually seemed to shiver, “the...thing in my head,” oddly enough, it was her chest that she touched when she said this, “the voice. It’s always there, and it keeps telling me to do all of these things...these really bad things,” she turned and looked, almost in desperation, at Starlight, “and I don’t want to. I want it to stop and leave me alone, but it just won’t!”

“It’s the AI, isn’t it?” the pink mare breathed, once more gathering the robopony into her embrace, “those damn MoA bastards changed the program, didn’t they?”

“Can you do anything to fix it?” I asked the pink unicorn.

She shook her head, reluctantly, “I don’t know nearly enough about programing to do anything like that. I’d be genuinely surprised if anypony still alive did,” then she turned back to her daughter, “but we’ll help you, Sweetie. I swear we will. I won’t rest until you’re all better.”

Ramparts cleared his throat now, having remained very silent through all of the exchange up to this point, “not to be the asshole here, or anything, but...she is a robot. You know that, right? That’s not actually your daughter.”

Starlight looked like she was about to hex the stallion with a particularly heinous incantation, but Moonbeam interjected before she could, “it’s okay, Mom. He didn’t mean anything by it. They told us to be ready for this kind of reaction at The Facility,” she looked to the rest of us, “I get that you’re skeptical. I would be too. So...well, I guess there’s no harm in letting you all know the whole truth,” she glanced back to her mother and the two exchanged a long look. Finally, Starlight nodded.

The robopony settled back down to the floor, neatly tucking her legs beneath her body and bowing her head. Foxglove, Ramparts, and I, all looked at one another in confusion before our attention was drawn back to the synthetic pony be a series of clicks and the whirring of servos. Before our eyes, panels along the spine split apart and folded away, exposing much of the robopony’s interior.

“Fair warning,” Moonbeam said, “I’m not going to win any beauty pageants any time soon, heh…”

As close as she was sitting, I noted that Starlight Glimmer was very pointedly look anywhere but the newly formed opening. My own curiosity would not be denied though, and I went ahead and crept close enough to peer inside. I chastised myself for the all too audible gasp and my obviously revolted recoil from what I’d seen. My reaction reduced me to a blushing mess as I stammered over an apology. Moonbeam brushed it off though.

“It’s okay. I know how I look. I think I cried the first time I saw myself,” Foxglove and Ramparts did a much better job of keeping the worst of their reactions in check than I had, but they were both clearly shaken by the sight as well. Starlight looked pretty haunted as well, refusing to look anywhere but the wall until she heard all of the robot’s panels lock back into place.

“Um…” I began, sheepishly, “...so, what, you know...happened to you?”

“I did,” the pink mare responded in a hoarse whisper, “I happened,” she wiped her eyes and nose, regarding the rest of us once more, “we were trying to create new magicks. New spells to help win the war. That meant experimenting with potentially unstable arcane matrixes. It’s pretty common for those sorts of things to unravel halfway through the spell, which can create what is essentially ‘chaos magic’.

“As the name implies, it has unpredictable effects. Most of those effects can be mitigated by the right wards, but certain precautions are meant to be taken with ponies in ‘delicate conditions’, like pregnancy, for example.”

“Why didn’t you take those precautions?” Foxglove asked as cautiously as she could, not wanting to sound critical, in light of the subject matter and the individual’s present.

“...I didn’t know I had to,” Starlight admitted, bitterly, “I was so focused on the work…

“I didn’t know I was pregnant until I was starting to show…” she swallowed and buried her face in her hooves, “by then...it was too late. The...the damage...the magic, it…” she couldn’t continue.

Moonbeam, however, seemed to have a much calmer disposition on the matter. She reached out and placed a consoling hoof on her mother, “it’s okay, Mom. It was an accident. Heh...I was an accident,” Starlight was shaking her head vehemently now, trying to form coherent words, but Moonbeam continued, “oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I know you and Dad wanted foals someday. I just meant that you weren’t trying at the time. Well,” she added with an afterthought, “I guess you were obviously still doing the sorts of things that result in foals, but not with the intent of having them right then.

“You probably should have been more open-minded about anal,” Seemingly despite herself, one of Starlight’s sobs shattered into a cackling laugh that she suppressed. Foxglove’s violet cheeks somehow managed to blush despite her coloring. Ramparts offered a mild shrug. I simply sat and tried to figure out what she’d meant, “oral was an option too, you know?”

“Moonbeam!” Starlight gasped, though it was hard to miss the faintest hints of a smile trying valiantly to work its way onto her cheeks, “You are three years old! Where did you learn about that stuff?!”

“Heh...I was three years old...the last time we saw each other,” Moonbeam replied, her tone growing a little more somber now.

“Were you awake this whole time?” I ventured, unable to keep those desperate pleas from Trellis out of my head. A foal, trapped awake and aware for two centuries, the whole time growing desperate for death. Certainly, for the moment, Moonbeam seemed a lot more calm and rational, but I wasn’t sure yet how much of that was an act.

However, the robopony shook her head, “no, not that whole two centuries. I wasn’t active when the bombs fell. In fact, I didn’t ‘wake up’ until Ebony Song stole me from the Steel Rangers. Up until then, I was essentially inert. I’ve been awake since then though,” she once more looked back at her mother, “which puts me in my twenties, in case you were wondering. I think that’s old enough to talk about ways to avoid having surprise foals with my mother, hmm?

“Especially when I never thought that I’d ever see you again.”

The pink unicorn threw herself upon the robopony in another embrace that looked tight enough to have risked crushing the life out of a flesh and blood pony, “me too, Selene, me too…”

“Selene?” I said, quirking my head slightly, “I thought your name was, Moonbeam?”

“Selene is an old crystal pony word for ‘moon’,” Starlight supplied, relaxing her grip and wiping at her eyes once more, “I use it as her nickname.”

“It’s more creative than Dad’s pet name for me,” the robopony said before growing silent for a moment. Then she looked to her mother and asked, hesitantly, “I...suppose it’s too much to hope…?”

Starlight could only shrug, fidgeting with her hooves, “I don’t know what happened to your father. Maybe he made it to a stable. Nopony here even knows what happened to the Crystal Empire,” I shook my head in confirmation. The state of the Wasteland beyond the valley was largely an unknown in all directions. For reasons that I’d never honestly bothered to figure out, Neighvada seemed rather isolated, news-wise, from the rest of the world for some reason.

“I understand,” Moonbeam nodded. She peered around at all of us, and then cocked her head, “we might want to continue the rest of this conversation on the move. They’re starting to sift through the rubble. Ebony Song’s going to want to make sure I survived,” the robopony rose up onto her elegantly articulated legs and started walking towards the room’s exit and the corridor beyond, “we’ll want to be long gone before then.”

That was a pretty good suggestion, honestly. We very quickly gathered our possessions and fell into step behind Moonbeam. I was still small enough to manage to squeeze in beside the slightly built robopony without much trouble, “if you don’t mind me asking: if you could have left at any time, why didn’t you?”

“Where would I have gone?”

I didn’t have a good answer ready right away, admittedly. I suppose that I was thinking of Moonbeam as having been Ebony Song’s prisoner, but that might not have been a completely accurate interpretation of their relationship, now that I thought about it.

Before I could form a follow-up question though, Moonbeam continued, “besides, The Program was what was calling the shots most of the time,” she said bitterly, “I was just along for the ride, especially at first.”

“At first?”

“When Ebony Song woke me up,” she explained as we all continued to follow the underground passage, “back then I was just a little foal who didn’t know what was going on, or where I was, or what had happened to my mother,” she spared a quick glance at the pink mare. For her part, Starlight looked like she was pondering some choice punishments for the dark hued unicorn stallion if she was ever fortunate enough to cross his path again, “I just sort of...retreated back into my own head. I just let the voice do whatever it wanted.

“I was aware though, of everything. It might have been in control, but it was still my brain. At first, I didn’t understand what Ebony Song was up to. As time went on, I started to understand more about what he was doing. Even then, I didn’t see much of a reason to do anything about it.

“Mostly because I didn’t see a better alternative,” I heard an audible sigh escape the robot, “and...I mean, just seeing the faces of those ponies when they came by to get ‘guidance from the Princess’? My being here was really important to them.

“It gave them hope. I didn’t want to take that away from them.”

“But, it was all a lie,” I pointed out, “did you really think that false hope was better than the truth?”

“Everypony prefers to be lied to,” Moonbeam replied, “they want to believe that the world is a better place than it really is. It’s how they can keep going, even when everything is complete shit―”

“Moonbeam; language!” Starlight admonished from behind us. Then she winced and cleared her throat, “sorry. Habit...I guess you’re old enough to curse now…”

Moonbeam turned to look back at her mother for a few seconds before continuing to speak with me, a little smile touching her mechanical lips, “―even when everything is complete crap,” she spared another brief peek at her mother, “so, yeah, I was okay with letting them think that I was the real Princess Luna.”

“What about the war with the Steel Rangers? Your being here kept that going, you know?”

An audible snort was emitted by the robopony’s speech synthesizer, “the Steel Rangers kept it going on their own. They hadn’t even realized what I truly was before Ebony Song stole me from them. They could have left at any time and let the war end.”

“They were concerned that Ebony Song would abuse you, and they were right: he kind of was,” I pointed out, “I’m not saying the Rangers are great ponies, but maybe if they’d known what you really were―”

“And who says they eventually didn’t?” Moonbeam interjected, stunning me to silence, “I had access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters in the valley, and my brain has a super sophisticated computer wired into it. Did you think I never once tried to reach out to them?

“I told them exactly what I was, and that they needed to stop what they were doing,” she said, not hiding her bitterness on the matter, “I bet you can guess what their answer was…”

“No, but...I thought…” my words faltered as I thought back on my conversation with Star Paladin Hoplite. She had appeared genuinely surprised to learn what Princess Luna was.

“I’m guessing that the Rangers said something very different when you met with them?” Moonbeam probed, very quickly gleaning the answer from my expression. Another derisive snort, “liars in the Wasteland. Shocker.”

I suppose that it really wasn’t one, of course. Nor could I really deny Moonbeam’s conclusion where the desire to be fed lies was concerned. I’d long maintained a very selective view of Jackboot, after all. Those facts aside, that didn’t necessarily mean that I had to like any of it, or agree that it was really the best course of action.

Just because it was something that a silly little filly like me did, that didn’t mean that it was a healthy attitude to have, “if ponies don’t like the reality of the world, maybe they should try and change it, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.”

The robopony glanced down at me, her pink eyes seeming to study me for a long while, “change the world. A fine idea. I wonder why nopony ever thought to try that before…”

I frowned and looked away, casting my gaze forward. Even I didn’t miss Moonbeam’s mocking tone. Yeah, okay, so it was a bit of a simplistic ‘plan’, if it even deserved to be called that; but that didn’t mean that I was wrong! Sure, just because I didn’t know how I was going to do it…

Not that changing the world was going to be much of an option if we allowed everypony to be slaughtered before we could even try. Getting the Republic’s help had just gotten a whole lot harder, so that was just one more hitch in that plan. There was still the Steel Rangers though, they were a force to be reckoned with. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Rangers and The Wonderbolt were on excellent terms, and Moonbeam obviously had a poor opinion of them as well, but the way I saw it: the Rangers owed me.

Besides, Arginine’s stable wasn’t going to just stop at exterminating the Neighvada Valley, they would eventually carry their genocidal campaign beyond the mountains. Even the Rangers had to see the advantage to confronting a threat when it was at its most vulnerable, and that was right now, before they’d mobilized and launched their invasion. If Arginine didn’t think that the Rangers would be quite enough, then we could explore other options as well.

I did still have the coordinates for that weapons cache…

“This tunnel leads us somewhere safe, right?” I finally sighed. Before we could do anything about Arginine’s stable, we had to get out of Seaddle.

“Safe? Nowhere is ‘safe’ in the Wasteland,” the robot quipped, “but there are passages that lead out of the city. I don’t suppose you have any sort of immediate destination in mind?”

“We have to meet up with Arginine first, south of the city,” I glanced at the compass displayed near the bottom of my field of view, frowning as I noted our northbound heading. The exact opposite direction that we were supposed to be traveling to meet up with the larger gray stallion. There wasn’t any way that we could get a message to him either to tell him where we were.

Or even that we were alright. He’d doubtless heard the explosion, if nothing else. I started to worry about how long the stallion would hang around and wait for us to track him down. Would he head back to his own stable if he thought we’d failed?

“Hmm,” Moonbeam paused for a brief moment and I noticed her pink eyes flickering in rapid succession. When the strobing ceased, she then immediately forged on ahead at a brisk pace, “we’ll need to take the subway tunnels. This way,” she hesitated for a few seconds, “oh, and keep your weapons ready.”

I exchanged a concerned look with the others, “why? What’s down there?”

“Ghouls, mutated critters, the odd security bot,” the metallic mare responded simply, “nothing too dangerous. Just, you know, keep your eyes peeled.”

A frown creased my lips as I fell into step beside the robopony. While none of that sounded like anything that was worse than what I’d spent most of the last month fighting―indeed, this would be comparative foal’s play―I still wasn’t looking forward to fighting anything while confined down here underground. I hated not being able to fly…

Two hours later, our group finally made our way out of the pitch black catacombs of the ruined city’s subterranean transport system, out into the pitch black night that still hung over the surface. Even though I knew that we were far from ‘safe’, as Moonbeam had previously noted, just being up on the surface again instilled within me a sense of relief. With a grateful sigh, I flexed my wings out to their fullest span, wincing only slightly as the motion exacerbated my shoulder where a ghoul pony had been gnawing on it half an hour ago. Absently, I rubbed the aggrieved joint and muttered a disparaging opinion of the rotting corpses.

I was far from the only pony to have a new bruise or two after that short jaunt through the tunnels. Fortunately, nopony had suffered any serious injuries. Even so, we all took a few minutes to give each other a quick look over to ensure that nothing had been missed. I caught Moonbeam narrowing her glowing eyes at one of her articulated legs before showing it to Foxglove, “this’ll buff out, right?”

The mechanic turned her practiced eye to the dented paneling on the limb and started her appraisal. Having been given a clean bill of health by Ramparts, I instructed everypony else to stay put while I went for a flight to track down our remaining companion. I was feeling pretty anxious by this point, thinking that two hours was a long time to have expected Arginine to wait for us before simply giving us up for dead.

Once in the air, left with only my own thoughts and no distractions as my eyes watched my EFS for any sign of an amber blip, I couldn’t help but notice my mounting apprehension. I was very worried that RG had already moved on already. What perhaps was surprising about these feelings, was that the concern wasn’t specifically related to his passing on all that he knew about the state of the surface to the ponies in his stable. A few months ago, that would absolutely have been my chief concern: that Arginine was revealing valuable intelligence to ponies who were threatening the Wasteland. But now?

I just didn’t want to leave.

And not just because of the kissing and stuff. I honestly still didn’t see what the big deal about sex was. It was just that being around RG was different than it was with the others. He felt more...genuine, somehow. Not that I thought anypony else was lying, per say, or hiding things from me. But, unlike them, RG didn’t phrase things like he was trying to protect my feelings or make me feel better because he thought I was down. Everything he said, and the way that he said it, were plain and direct. It was what I needed to hear, even if not what I wanted to.

It was refreshing, and I knew I needed it. I could rely on him in a way that I hadn’t found very common.

He was kind of like Jackboot, in a way. That old stallion hadn’t been prone to sugar-coating things either. Having a pony like that in my life kept me...flying level. I didn’t want to lose that, not again.

My thoughts were interrupted when an amber blip finally flickered into existence in front of my eyes. I hadn’t realized how shallow I’d been breathing until that massive, relieved, sigh fell out of my lungs. Even before I’d landed, I knew it was him. After all, there were scant few denizens of the Seaddle Ruins who’d be happy to see The Wonderbolt. I dove for the ground and fluttered in to land outside of the ruined apartment building. Cautiously, I did one more quick scan of the area to see if my Eyes Forward Sparkle detected any nearby threats. When it came up clear, I ventured inside.

“RG?” I called out, loud enough to be heard within the building, but not so high a volume that the sound would carry beyond the block. My gaze was locked onto the golden bar hovering before my eyes as I watched it twitch and start to move around. Then I heard the sound of debris grinding beneath heavy hooves as the familiar imposing form of the massive stallion filled the doorway.

I flitted up and embraced him with a kiss before I was even aware that I’d done anything. It took the stallion a moment to realize what was happening, and I felt him return the kiss. Even I could tell that it was more of an afterthought to him. Something he was doing because he recognized that I needed it. But that was okay, because, apparently, I did.

A few seconds later, I released him and alit back on the ground, “you waited,” I cringed inwardly at the note of surprise in my tone.

The stallion nodded, “longer than I had at first intended when we parted in the city,” he admitted. I found myself cocking my head, pondering whether he might actually be developing something approaching ‘fondness’ for me if he’d actually been willing to change his plans like that for my sake, “but when I heard the explosion, I recalled from the Old Reino incident that it could possibly take you a more considerable amount of time to make the rendezvous,” or I’d set a precedent.

I rolled my eyes, “yeah, things didn’t exactly go well.”

“You failed to secure the support of Princess Luna,” the stallion concluded.

“Well...nooo,” I stressed as I thought how best to explain recent events to him, “we got her support. She’s just not...her. Luna, I mean. Not really,” the stallion quirked an eyebrow, “you know what? It’s probably better if Moonbeam tells you herself.”

“Moonbeam?”

“Yeah. Come on, the smart ponies are thataway,” I jerked my head and leaped up onto the stallion’s back side, “they’ll be better at explaining what happened than I am.”

“Invariably,” the large gray pony breathed as he began walking in the direction that I’d indicated.

I crossed my hooves and lay my head upon them as my ride made his way through the crumbling ruins, keeping a passing eye on my EFS. Our passage should go largely unimpeded, at least where the local gangs were concerned. Even violent sociopaths needed to sleep, after all. That still left the routine threats posed by rampaging roboponies and nocturnal critters though. Most of those wouldn’t prove to be nearly as dangerous as a coordinated ambush by Vipers or a similar group, so I wasn’t particularly concerned.

My gaze fell to the pipbuck on my fetlock, and I figured that it had been a while since the last time I tuned in to either Homily or DJ Pon3 and caught up on current events. I selected the Manehattan-based- personality first, as I suspected that most of what ‘Miss Neighvada’ would be talking about would involve me and, after recent events, I wasn’t feeling like indulging in anything self-serving. I’d much rather have heard about somepony experiencing successes right now.

So I tuned it to the northeastern broadcaster, “―truth is never easy, my little ponies,” my ears immediately perked up, my eyes growing wide with surprise, as I heard the quaiver in Pon3’s deep voice. Clearly, I wasn’t going to be hearing about any particularly uplifting news, “but your ol’ pal, DJ Pon3, swore that he’d bring it to you, no matter how bad it hurts. And make no mistake, listeners, this story is going to hurt. Bad.

“I can’t explain it, and I, of all ponies, don’t want to believe it, but reports have surfaced that our very own Stable Dweller might have...no,” there was a pause for a heavy, ragged, sigh as the announcer steeled himself for what he was about to say, “the Stable Dweller did...wipe out the town of Arbu.”

I blinked, gaping at my pipbuck. Of course, I had no idea where Arbu was, but the way that DJ Pon3 was talking about it, and that he’d called it a ‘town’, was suggestive that this wasn’t some Manehattan bastion of criminals or whatever. I strongly doubted that he’d be talking about it like this if its destruction was good news, at any rate.

He wasn’t done though, “I don’t to know why she did it, my little ponies. I won’t pretend that I can come up with a justification for…” there was another pause as he fought to get the word out of his throat, “slaughter, like that. I...I just don’t know. It’s hard to see your heroes fall, I know. I’ve seen a few in my time, my little ponies. It does happen, and it doesn’t get easier.

“But don’t let this tarnish the good that she did in the past! The Stable Dweller was a good pony once. She just...lost her way. Some ponies...they just do.

“Be careful out there, listeners. If you see the Stable Dweller...keep clear of her. When I learn more, I’ll pass it on. Until then, my little ponies, stay strong, and please...don’t lose your way,” there was a short burst of static, and then Sweetie Belle’s melodic voice drifted in over the speakers with a somber love ballad that suited the tone of the previous broadcast all too well, in my opinion.

I turned off the pipbuck’s radio. The Stable Dweller wiped out a whole town full of ponies? It was hard to imagine. Or, rather, it should have been. Unfortunately, I found the notion all too plausible. I still remembered the old broadcasts about the Lone Ranger, and how he’d very quickly gone from being a treasured Manehattan hero to becoming public enemy number one.

More than that, I still remembered Notel, and how far I’d let myself slip in so many ways. The outright execution that I’d committed there. Idly, I wondered how long it would take for the news of my actions there to make their way back to Homily, and how high her opinion of me would be then.

Never mind Santa Mara. While I’d done nothing to the citizens there, it didn’t erase the expectation from them that I might have lashed out at them. Celestia knows that there was a part of me―a nearly overwhelming part―that had wanted to lash out. To punish them for what they’d done. Had they heard about whatever early reports DJ Pon3 had made about the Stable Dweller?

How close had I come to becoming just like her: wiping out a whole town? I could have. It had felt so easy in those crucial seconds, to just let myself loose and punish those ponies. How many of them would have survived my rage? Would Miss Neighvada have been giving a ragged broadcast of her own to the valley about the now-rogue Wonderbolt, the newest scourge of the Wasteland?

I wanted―maybe even needed―to believe that the Stable Dweller hadn’t just gone off her rocker. I wanted to believe that she’d seen something in the ponies of that town that had pushed her over that same edge that I’d been teetering on the brink of. Slavers, rapists, cultists―something. I needed them to have been involved in something that would have provoked the Stable Dweller. Both because I didn’t want her to be a bad pony, and because I needed to know that how I’d felt―that what I’d very nearly done―wasn’t so unprecedented.

That it wasn’t because I was destined to be a killer. That they were thoughts that could happen to anypony.

After a broadcast like that, I could most certainly use a pick-me-up. Hearing Homily singing The Wonderbolt’s praises would do just the trick, and so I started dialing in the McMaren radio transmission tower. However, before I could, I saw a message pop up on my EFS indicating that I was receiving traffic on the frequency reserved for my conversations with Homily. Curious about what she could want to talk to me about, I switched over to the comm channel and answered it, “hey, Homily, what’s up?”

“DID YOU JUST KILL PRINCESS LUNA?!”

Arginine whipped his head around upon hearing the staticy outburst, regarding me critically, “what?! No! I didn’t kill anypony!” I protested, looking between both my ride and the pipbuck, somehow feeling like I was being confronted by both ponies simultaneously. Then I thought for a brief moment about the Republic soldiers that we’d had to fight, “okay, I mean, I killed a few ponies,” I admitted reluctantly, “but none of them were the Princess; she’s fine! She’s with me. Kind of. It’s complicated.

“Who’s saying I killed her?” even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I found myself already having a pretty good idea of who would be saying that, and why. Ebony Song had just lost his fake Luna-bot, and the sophisticated filly-computer hybrid that was controlling it. It’s not like everypony in the city hadn’t realized that the palace had exploded either. The first question on everypony’s mind would obviously have been in regards to whether or not Princess Luna was alright, and as the Prime Minister no longer had any way to produce her, the simplest explanation to cover up his decades-long deception was to announce that she’d been killed.

By me.

“Prime Minister Ebony Song just finished making the announcement that The Wonderbolt launched an all out assault on the palace and killed Princess Luna! Have you lost your mind, Windfall?! What were you thinking?!”

I don’t know what I was more insulted by: the fact that Ebony Song had pinned this all on me, or that Homily, of all ponies, wasn’t even questioning it! Honestly, that last one really hurt, “I didn’t kill her!” I shot back, “it turns out that she didn’t even exist. Princess Luna never actually came back, it was just a robot that Ebony Song had that looked like her so that he could have himself made into the Prime Minister and retain power without needing to worry about elections,” no, that didn’t sound like a crackpot conspiracy theory at all…

“Look, I can prove it, alright? You remember how I told you about the computers the Ministry of Awesome was building using living foals? Princess Luna didn’t have one, she was one. It was Starlight’s long-lost daughter this whole time,” funny how this was not sounding any less crazy or far-fetched the longer I went on, “I’ll bring her by, she’ll confirm everything.”

“...you realize how all of that sounds, right?”

“Yes. Yes I do,” I’d been living it, and it even sounded like a bad Dash trip to me!

There was a long pause, then, “I’m trying to build Miss Neighvada as a source of news that ponies in the valley can trust,” I could tell that Homily was making an effort to speak very diplomatically about this, “I can’t go to my listeners with what you’ve just told me, and expect to be taken seriously. Not right now, and not without proof.

“You understand what I’m saying, Windfall? Miss Neighvada won’t be able to defend The Wonderbolt. Not yet,” there was the sound of Homily taking a deep breath, “I won’t demonize you, but I also can’t just say nothing about what the Republic is broadcasting either. Ponies would notice Miss Neighvada being silent on a really important bit of news, and they’d wonder why.

“Clear your name, and do it fast. Please.”

“...I’m not a villain, Homily. You know that, right?”

For several seconds that felt like they dragged on forever, there was silence. Then, “I hope so.”

The communication link went dead. The soft sound of the crackling static was deafening. I felt my teeth starting to grind in the back of my mouth. Of all of the ponies in this valley who I should have been able to count on taking my side in all of this, I’d have thought Homily would be at the top of the list! How many times had I saved her life?! How much had The Wonderbolt done for her cause?

But now, when I could have used her help, she was going to turn me away, because she was worried about what it might do to her reputation with some random ponies out there in the valley? I wasn’t even asking her to do all of that much; just let ponies know that The Wonderbolt hadn’t actually assassinated the leader of the New Lunar Republic!

I was asking her to tell ponies the truth! But because that ‘truth’ was a little hard for some ponies to readily believe, Homily was just going to let me flap in the wind while Ebony Song’s broadcasts turned the whole valley against me. I was going to be turned into the greatest villain that Neighvada had ever known, and there wasn’t going to be anything that I could do to stop it. Not without a powerful advocate.

Even if I could get Moonbeam to McMaren, and have her tell her story, there was no guarantee that would do anything. It would turn into the word of some mare that nopony knew, against the Prime Minister of the NLR. Why would anypony doubt his version of events over her’s? I needed a credible power backing my side. I needed the Steel Rangers.

Yeah, sure, they were largely regarded as the mortal enemy of Princess Luna and the new Lunar Republic, but they were also well-known. As the ponies that Ebony Song had robbed, they might even have more physical proof that would demonstrate that Luna hadn’t been real, or at least knew where I could find that proof if it existed. Their word might at least help convince ponies who weren’t part of the Republic. Old Reino and a few other settlements had been skeptical enough to not come fully into the fold of the ‘Princess Returned’, so they might at least be swayed.

Frankly, I couldn’t think of what it would take to convince the minds of Seaddle residents that I hadn’t killed their princess. Those ponies had ‘seen’ her with their own eyes, after all. They’d lived in her city for decades. They’d grown up knowing her and hearing her ‘voice’ on the radio every day. There might not be anything that The Wonderbolt ever could do to earn their trust back; but that couldn’t possibly be the case for the rest of the valley. I could still salvage my reputation. I had to.

Ponies had to be willing to trust me, or they’d never believe my warning about the threat from Arginine’s stable.

“I am eager to hear the details about your meeting with Princess Luna,” the large gray stallion remarked as we continued through the city, “clearly your encounter was more...enlightening than I could have anticipated.”

“Something like that,” I mumbled, once more cradling my head in my hooves.

Arginine was indeed quite fascinated by Moonbeam, and the feeling seemed to be quite mutual. The genetically augmented equine regarded the concept of merging ponies with mechanical bodies with a certain level of Arginine-like ‘giddiness’. I wasn’t entirely certain if he was more fascinated by the physiological implications, or the notion that ponies from before the apocalypse had already been pursuing roads that he saw as inevitably leading towards ‘perfect ponies’.

“The limitations of the available genetic material have long proved a hindrance to our development,” the stallion commented, “the deliberate fabrication of synthetic bodies perfectly suited to our needs would have been an ideal means by which to accelerate our plans.”

“So then why didn’t you?” I asked, not sure if I liked the idea of his stable having been comprised of hyper-intelligent robotponies. How they were now was going to be a challenge as it was.

“We lacked material resources,” he replied simply, “organic bodies grow themselves, and require only a steady supply of nutrients. Our stable’s life support systems were designed for exactly that function. Producing cybernetic bodies would have required refined metals, gemstones, and many other physical components that were unavailable to us. Certainly not in the quantities that an invasion would require.”

“Ah,” that answer didn’t really make me feel any better.

“So, it’s true then,” Moonbeam said, cocking her head up at the larger pony, “your stable really does want to wipe out all of ponykind?”

“We seek to ensure that a better class of pony thrives in the new world,” RG responded with the practiced ease of a pony who had been answering this same question for a while now, “ponies who will not lead us into destruction, like our forebears.”

“Hmm.”

I blinked, as did a few others, and looked at the synthetic pony, “that’s all you’ve got to say: ‘hmm’? He just said his stable wants to kill everypony!”

Moonbeam regarded me with her glowing pink eyes. She lifted up an articulated hoof and began to slowly examine it, “I’m living in a shell that was built by a ministry of warriors, with my brain connected to a computer that’s designed to control combat drones. When I was reactivated, after almost two centuries, the very first thing that anypony asked me to do, was fight, and kill ponies. Since then, I’ve been ‘leading’ a nation in a war, for nearly two decades.

“Believe it or not, I don’t really hold a very high opinion of most ponies right now either…”

“Selene…” Starlight said in a quiet gasp, clearly just as surprised as the rest of us were to hear her say how much she seemed to sympathize with the viewpoint of Arginine’s stable. Of course, when she put it like that, I was hard pressed to find fault with her views.

Still, “Ebony Song was an asshole,” I said, “and , yeah, it looks like he had quite a few other assholes supporting him,” it was ludicrous to think that he’d have been the only pony in the whole of the Republic to know about the truth behind ‘Princess luna’. Those soldiers in the palace certainly hadn’t seemed the least bit surprised by the revelation, and I suspected that many of the other high ranking ponies in the government could have been in on the scam too, “but you have to know that they’re the exception. I mean, look at us!”

The robopony glanced at me with her glowing pink eyes, “weren’t you looking to get me to help you fight his stable? Would you have come to see Princess Luna even if you didn’t need the Republic to help you fight?”

Oh. Right. Okay, so, maybe not a great angle for me to have taken. Fortunately, Ramparts was there to bail me out, “we did want your help to fight, yeah,” or, maybe not. I flashed a frown at the earth pony stallion, but he ignored me, “but it wasn’t specifically you that we wanted to enlist. It was ‘your’ blessing―really, Ebony Song’s it turns out―to let Republic soldiers like me stop combating the Rangers and work on stopping Arginine’s stable. You, personally, wouldn’t have been involved.

“You don’t have to be, even now,” he continued, gesturing towards Starlight, “you and your mother can absolutely go your own way now, since all she was after was finding you again,” he regarded the pink unicorn mare, “you still want to go find that Crystal...Empire, right? Learn what happened to your husband?” she nodded, and Ramparts looked back to Moonbeam, “you’d like that too, right? Paying respects to your father, after all this time?”

I opened my mouth to protest. The last thing that we needed right now was to send away our group’s most potent user of magic right after finding out we’d not be getting the NLR’s support against the augment ponies threatening the valley after all. Moonbeam herself would likely prove immeasurably useful too, come to think of it; and not just where the Steel Rangers were concerned. This was when we needed ponies on our side the most.

But, before I could actually say anything, Ramparts turned to me now, “and I know that Windfall wouldn’t want to keep you two from leaving either, since we’re not here to force anypony to do anything that they don’t want to. We’ll find help elsewhere. Isn’t that right, Windfall?”

My jaw snapped shut with an audible click as I bit back my already prepared rebuttal. I looked squarely at the uniformed soldier, not at all thrilled to have been backed up into a corner by him, especially when he knew how dire our situation was becoming. Still, I was supposed to be the ‘good’ pony, wasn’t I, in contrast to Ebony Song’s coercion. That meant letting my companions come and go as they pleased, no matter how useful their skills would prove. The ponies with me weren’t conscripts. I couldn’t treat them like such.

“Yeah,” I finally said, though a little more tersely than was probably prudent. I cleared my throat and went on, “you two don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You don’t owe us anything.”

“You’d really be okay with us leaving; just like that?” Moonbeam asked, her synthesized voice managing to inflect a little surprise.

I caught Ramparts’ expression, and took a deep breath, ready to say what the earth pony was clearly expecting from me. Then I got the sensation that a little orange mare was making some not-so-subtle coughing sounds. I could also feel Arginine’s gaze upon me as well. There was a brief moment of hesitation in my mind as I underwent a mild internal struggle.

When it was over, I had the answer that I was ready to give, “well, no,” I said, earning a frown from Ramparts, but I went on anyway, “I would understand your wanting to leave, sure, and I’d let you two go, of course; but I wouldn’t be okay with it.

“This valley is about to be in a fight for its very survival. If we lose, then the whole Wasteland could be threatened. We need every advantage, every resource, that we can get our hooves on. With the NLR in the state that it’s in right now, we need those resources now more than ever,” I shrugged, “and you two are a resource,” I caught the mirrored narrowed eyes on both mother and daughter, and briefly wondered at how familial traits could be passed on to a machine before pushing through their disapproval, “we all are. I’m a resource, Foxglove’s a resource, everypony.

“It’s going to be...a war, I guess. Not just some little tussle with a band of raiders. Arginine’s stable is tough. They’ve already slaughtered hundreds of ponies―”

“We had examined over three thousand specimens by the time of my departure,” Arginine noted.

“―thousands! They’ll kill tens of thousands more before the end. The whole surface population, probably, since even RG can’t think of a reason that they’d let zebras and griffons and any other race go on existing.

“So, yeah, as important as the two of you are, I really wouldn’t be ‘okay’ with you two leaving,” I sighed, “I’d understand, sure; and I certainly wouldn’t try and stop you. I don’t know if there’s anything more I could give to either of you to convince you two to stay, but I’m willing to match any price you name if that’s what it takes,” I looked between the pair, hopefully. Though, since Starlight Glimmer now had exactly what she’d been after, and everything else she wanted was in some far off part of Equestria that I’d never heard of, I couldn’t think of anything that I could hope to use to barter for her assistance. Moonbeam would doubtlessly go with her mother, since nothing was tying her to Neighvada either.

This...wasn’t their home, or even their time. I couldn’t even think of why it would be their problem.

Even now, I could see that little hint of regret in Starlight’s blue eyes. She was going to leave. She’d feel a little guilty about it, sure, but she had her own shit to deal with. The world she’d known had already been destroyed. Everypony she’d ever cared about or loved―save for Moonbeam―was already dead. There wasn’t anything left for her to save anyway.
And, Moonbeam, I suspected that she’d have just as soon been away from this place as well―

“Alright.”

I blinked. As did Starlight and Ramparts, both regarding the synthetic pony with surprise, “you―wait, what?” I babbled, trying to parse out the robopony’s response.

“Alright; I’ll stay and help.”

“Why?” I immediately berated myself mentally for the blunt question. What did it matter ‘why’?! She was going to help; let the robopony’s reasons be their own!

Though it seemed that Starlight was also quite curious to learn her daughter’s reasons for the surprising revelation, “I don’t understand…”

Moonbeam, sensing the familial tension, ended up addressing her mother’s curiosity more than my own as she turned to regard the unicorn mare, “I get why you want to go back to the Empire. I really do. I felt the exact same way.

“When I first woke up. You’ve been awake for...weeks? Months?” Starlight nodded absently, still perplexed by her daughter’s decision, “it’s been almost twenty years for me, Mom. I’ve spent my whole life in this valley, with these ponies. I’ve been watching over most of them for that time,” she turned to look at me now, “and I do care about what happens to them.”

I quirked an eyebrow, “so what was all of that you said before about not wanting to fight anymore?”

“I don’t want to be used to fight,” the robopony corrected gently, “I’m a pony, not a weapon. If all you wanted to do was be like Ebony Song and wield me like some sort of high-tech cudgel, I would probably have left. I mean, if I can’t trust the ‘hero’ of Neighvada to be a decent pony, then what hope is there really for everypony else?” her synthetic lips seemed to crack a faint smile, “but you were honest with me about why you wanted me to stay.

“That’s more than I’ve ever gotten from anypony before. So, for that, and because I don’t want to just let all the ponies I’ve watched grow up over the years die, I’ll help you,” then she turned back to her mother once more, “but it’s alright if you still want to leave. I’ve had years to get over Dad; and you, come to think of it. You haven’t. Maybe it will help you to go and say goodbye. I’ll come find you when we’re done here.”

Starlight’s mouth started to move, wordlessly as she tried to formulate a response. The conflict raging just behind her eyes was palpable. Yet, in the end, it seemed that she resigned herself to the fact that this decision wasn’t really a decision at all. After all, what mother would chose to immediately abandon the daughter that she had just found after looking so fiercely for her. With a sigh, and a resigned smile, she said, “well...Sunburst has waited a couple centuries to be found. I’m sure he’ll be able to wait a little longer,” she looked to me, “we’re both staying.”

The robopony leaned over and hugged the pink unicorn who leaned into the embrace. The gesture evoked an audible ‘aww’ from Foxglove. Meanwhile, I found myself the recipient of an approving smile from Ramparts, and a decidedly awkward peck on the cheek from Arginine. At my questioning look, he merely mumbled, “positive reinforcement,” and straightened himself back up.

“Great,” I said after what I felt was a suitably appropriate amount of time for everypony to finish bonding, “so we’re all going to stick things out until it’s over. The real question is: what’s our next move? Do we go right to the Steel Rangers, or should we find those weapons and see what they actually are? Heck, they might not actually even be there, for all we know…” two hundred years was a lot of time for some random prospector to have stumbled upon the cache by accident. It could very well turn out that we were chasing ghosts, and finding that out only after making promises to our allies about possessing a trove of armaments might not go over well.

“The Rangers might want to be our next stop,” Foxglove suggested, “I get the impression that the NLR is going to be a little out of sorts after tonight,” she glanced to Ramparts, who offered a nod of confirmation, “the Rangers might take advantage if they don’t know we already got Moonbeam out. And if they do know, they’re probably packing up to leave, since she was the whole reason they were even in the valley in the first place.”

The violet unicorn had a good point. Either to avert an assault or to catch them before they vacated the valley, we needed to get incontact with the Steel Rangers as quickly as possible. The weapons could wait. I noticed that Moonbeam looked like she had a few reservations about the plan though, and I asked her about them.

“They kept me powered down in their basement for decades,” the robopony said sourly, “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think they’d try to do it again. I don’t think you can appreciate how many of their knights and paladins my―er...the NLR’s soldiers have slain over the years.

“Do you really think they’ll be willing to leave here with nothing to show for it?”

I nodded, though not as confidently as I might have liked to, “Star Paladin Hoplite promised me they would.”

“And the Elder?” Moonbeam prompted. At my blank expression she pressed a little harder, “because they’re the pony who has the final say in a Ranger chapter. I’m sure you believe that Star Paladin was being completely truthful about how they’d want to do things; but it won’t be their call.”

“It can’t hurt to have her as an advocate though, right?”

Moonbeam shrugged, “it will or it won’t,” was her less-than-helpful conclusion, “I just want you to be aware that the six of us are going to be walking right into the heart of Ranger territory with a Republic Courser,” she directed a hoof at Ramparts, who was still wearing his silver and midnight blue barding, “and a piece of hyper-advanced Old World tech,” she indicated herself.

“If this goes wrong, it’s going to go wrong hard.”

That...was a valid point. There were a few measures that our group could take to mitigate the risks though. If I could get word to Hoplite herself, I might be able to get her to play intermediary and arrange for us to meet at a neutral location to talk. Preferably someplace where our group could have at least some sort of minor advantage, just in case. If things went wrong, then we could have Starlight teleport us to safety.

I glanced at the pink mare’s horn and noticed the thin patina of black soot that coated it, frowning. She was going to need a bit of rest, I recalled. We needed to stop leaning so heavily on the magical crutch she offered the group, or she wouldn’t be able to offer it for much longer. Maybe getting those hooves on the weapons first wasn’t such a bad idea after all…

No. I wasn’t really convinced that, even with advanced firepower, that the six of us would be able to fend off a whole chapter of Steel Rangers. After all, if they knew we had what they’d been after for so many years, what need would they have to worry about the Republic? If they did decide to fight us, and win, then they’d just have all those weapons for themselves. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what use they’d put them to, but they hardly had a reputation for being saviors of the common pony in Neighvada.

We’d meet them as we were, and trust that Hoplite was as honorable as she seemed, and that we could find a way to retreat if things got too hot. Like we normally did. Besides, the Wonderbolt was currently sitting at two and oh when it came to dealing with the Steel Rangers. Three and oh if I wanted to count our first tussel at my family’s old ranch. Maybe that little bit of reputation would tilt things in my favor if anypony got any funny notions into their heads.

The question, then, was where exactly to meet them. I thought for only a few moments before the answer hit me, and a smile wound its way across my lips. Really, there was only one place that anypony could hope to have the best home field advantage:

Home.

Which meant I had some calls to make...

Three days later, I finally caught sight of my family’s old homestead once again. Bittersweet memories swam through my head. I left my grounded companions behind and flew on ahead of them, almost subconsciously, drawn back to what remained of the place of my birth. I alit in my old room, which sat open and exposed to the Wasteland by a rocket impact launched from the back of a Steel Ranger. The battle between Ramparts’ squad and the Ranger probing element had been brief, to be sure, but their weapons had ravaged the ancient ranch house in short order.

At least, what hadn’t already been defiled by the White Hooves eight years prior.

I slowly trudged around the scorched interior, kicking idly at bullet casing scattered on the floor. My mind’s eye overlayed the rose-tinted memories of how the room had looked in a far distant, happier, era. Ma tucking me into bed. Pa building me a shabby little dollhouse to play with. My brother hiding said dolls…

A burning sensation behind my eye prompted me to remove the old Enclave helmet and rub at it, all the while struggling to ignore the tingling in my nose. I tucked the helmet under my wing and stepped out into the hall beyond. Even now, after all this time, and knowing that they were all long dead, I felt like I was intruding into the rooms of my parents and elder brother. I’d hardly ever seen inside of them as a little filly. That made it hard to see them as they had once been, and so the desolation was much more pervasive.

I made my way downstairs, sighing at the sight of the very nearly opened up side of the house that had borne the brunt of the Ranger attack. The interior walls were similarly scarred by bullet holes and black scorch marks. A reflexive shudder went through my spine as I wandered through the kitchen. There were no bodies any longer, but the blood was still evident, if heavily faded. Somehow I managed not to retch, even as echoes of those agonizing wails reprised themselves in my memory. Even now, I didn’t know if they’d tortured my father to get me to reveal myself, or just because those White Hoof fucks had enjoyed hearing him scream.

Just as I was about to step out the back and survey the old barn where I’d hid, I felt my wing quivering. Curious, I peaked around and soon discovered that it wasn’t my wing that was shaking, but my helmet. I frowned and brought it back around for a closer examination. I soon realized that it wasn’t really vibrating, but that there was a sound playing over its speaker system. Cautiously, I slipped the helmet back on to listen.

The sound turned out to be just a repeated melodic series of beeps, but that turned out to be just one of several anomalous things going on with it. There appeared to be a visual component as well, though it wasn’t anything like my usual Eyes Forward Sparkle. The aesthetic was...darker, more angular. Enclave. My eyes darted immediately to the text blinking in the upper-left corner.

>>TRANSPONDER LOCATED

Transponder? Where?

I craned my head upwards, looking around quickly in an effort to track the signal that my helmet was picking up. If this thing was picking up Enclave signals, that suggested that one or more of the elusive fliers was prowling around nearby. A frown creased my face as I thought about how little I wanted to have to deal with an Enclaver right now, when there were going to be Rangers in the area sometime in the next twenty-four hours, provided that they received Homily’s broadcast, and were willing to accept my terms…

There was no telling how the Steel Ranger delegation would react to seeing a patrol from the Grand Pegasus Enclave flitting about in the area. I suspected that there was little hope that they’d chalk it up to the genuine coincidence that it was. Worst case scenario, the Rangers decided that the winged Wonderbolt had Enclave connections―like every pegasus was assumed to in the Wasteland―and decided this was all an elaborate trap. The perpetual animosity between the two technological powers made the Ranger’s war with the New Lunar Republic look like a lover’s spat.

The sooner I found the source of this signal and convinced them to leave the area the better. Now why couldn’t I seem to find out where the damn transponder was coming fro―

…

I finally found the source. Only it turned out to not be coming from above at all. It turned out to be originating from below, somehow.

“The basement?” I actually spoke aloud, taken aback with bemusement at the notion that I was picking up an Enclave signal from what had to be the most counter-intuitive of places. What was an Enclaver doing in my basement?

There was only one way to find out. I lifted into the air, keeping my hooves just off the ground, and drifted through the house to the basement stairs. Pausing at the top, I frowned and took out my compact semi-automatic. There was next to zero possibility that this was some sort of ambush being directed at me specifically, but I couldn’t come up with a lot of benign reasons for a member of the xenophobic fliers to be holed up in my house. It was thus best to be prepared.

Slowly, I gliding down the stairs, keeping the pistol pointed ahead of me as I quickly surveyed the cool, dark, cellar. This had served as the primary storage location for much of the ranch’s wears as they awaited transport to nearby markets or, in the case of cheeses, were aged the appropriate length of time. The White Hooves picked it clean, of course, just before moving on to their next victims. All that remained now were empty shelves and broken barrels.

It was also lacking in bars, either golden or scarlet. My pipbuck insisted that nopony was down here. Yet, my helmet remained convinced that it was picking up an Enclave signal. I kept my gaze locked upon the symbol hovering on my visor as I advanced upon it, slowly. Frustrated by the darkness, I turned on my pipbuck’s flashlight. If I thought that shedding light upon the situation would provide any answers, I was sorely mistaken. Indeed, it only evoked more frustrations.

There wasn’t anything there. My light, and the dot denoting the transponder, fell upon a blank wall.

I spit the weapon back into its holster with an annoyed grunt. A wall. My helmet had brought me to a wall. It wasn’t even a particularly interesting looking wall! Every other scrap of masonry down here at least had shelving lining it to give it some character or use. Where I’d been led to was just...empty…

My brows furrowed as my head listed to the side. Why was it empty? I looked to either side, noting the rows of shelves that existed only a few feet in either direction. It seemed more than a little odd, thinking on it now, that this portion would have been left devoid of precious storage space. It was simply a waste, honestly.

Out of curiosity, I glanced back up at the stairs and shined my fetlock-mounted light along the ceiling, mentally tracing out the layout of the house above. I was directly below the kitchen right now. Specifically, I should have been right about where the doorway was leading out to the cattle pen and the barn. Right past here would have been a small porch…

...A porch with a stone foundation.

I found myself wondering now if that foundation extended below ground level. My light focused upon the bare wall, I leaned in closely to the stonework, drifting to either side to compare it to the masonry the shelves were built against. That was when I saw it: a faint seam. A nearly invisible line etched along the stones that denoted new―well, newer―construction that had been added later. Whoever had built it had done exemplary work. If I pulled away even just a few feet, I was hard pressed to pick out the exact spot where an edge had once existed. The stones themselves were of the same nature and shape, but the mortar looked like it had been applied a little more thickly.

Somepony had walled up whatever my helmet was picking up back there. Now I just needed to decide if it was going to be worth my time to get at it. I certainly couldn’t deny that I was more than a little curious to learn what the Enclave could possibly have buried in my family home, and why. Heck, how long had this been down here? Did this predate the end of the war?

Well, if nothing else, it would probably be a good idea to at least find a way to turn off that transponder. I wasn’t sure if it was Something that the Steel Rangers would be able to detect, but considering how familiar they were with the Enclave and their technology, I wasn’t really willing to take that chance.

So...the question was now: How did I knock down a stone wall? I could wait for the others to get here and avail myself to either Starlight’s magic, Moonbeam’s servos, Foxglove’s lance, or Arginine’s bulk. Those were all perfectly cogent courses of action that would strike anypony as being perfectly reasonable.

I wasn’t sure if I imagined it or not, but I felt the sensation of five little ponies collectively face-hoofing as I revved up the Gale Force and slammed my way through the stonework like an alloyed wrecking ball. The wall turned out to have been much thinner than I’d anticipated, and I ended up having to peel myself off of the basement’s genuine foundation, and the missing shelves. If I ever managed to find out where the Gale Force’s inventor was buried, I’d need to remember to visit and commend her on building a truly rigorous piece of equipment. I could see why Rainbow Dash had been so smitten with it!

The pipbuck light was back out now as I examined the little covy that I’d revealed. It took no time at all to locate the only object of note in the nook, and the indicated source of the signal: a small wooden chest. I fluttered my wings to clear them of rock dust and wooden slivers and bent down to examine the ancient container more carefully. It wasn’t particularly large, honestly. Little more than a small footlocker. Experimentally, I tried to lift it. It had a little bit of weight to it, but nothing truly substantial.

I wrenched it from its tomb and flew it upstairs so that I could get a better look at the crate and its contents in the daylight, so that I didn’t risk missing anything in the darkness of the basement. I set it down in what was left of the living room and lifted the lid, a little surprised that it hadn’t been locked. Though, I suppose that if somepony was going to go through all the effort to seal it away behind a false wall, it probably wouldn’t occur to them that it would really need to be locked.

Inside was something that was both immeasurably surprising...and half expected.

After all, what would have been emitting an Enclave transponder, if not a set of Enclave barding?

I drew out the armor, taking in its deep purple and black color scheme that I had never before seen this close before. Indeed, I’d only ever in my life caught fleeting glances of the high flying pegasi at a great distance. Only proper members of the cloud-dwelling nation could get anywhere near the thick overcast clouds without risking being struck down by their automated defenses. A warning that Jackboot had drilled into me to great effect shortly after I began flying. I rarely ventured far above the tops of the tallest buildings that I’d ever seen, not knowing exactly how forgiving those defenses were, but reasoning that they obviously didn’t strike down ponies walking along the roofs of buildings.

Idly, I wondered if this transponder might be my key to accessing that cloudy domain…

A snort escaped my nose as I shook my head. It wasn’t as though I’d make it very far once I got challenged by a patrol. Besides, I didn’t have any business in the Enclave, and nothing I’d ever heard about them suggested that they’d be the least bit interested in helping out the residents eeking out a living on the surface. No, it was best I just find out how to silence the transponder permanently and let Foxglove see if she could make some use out of the material.

I noted that the sole source of electronics from which the signal could be coming from was what appeared to be some variant of pipbuck built into the barding’s left foreleg. Sleek and black, the device matched the aesthetic of the rest of the suit perfectly, but it looked far too small to be capable of performing all of the tasks of a proper pipbuck. Likely a slimmed down military version. It probably didn’t even have SATS, looking at it.

It was still working, which was quite surprising, given its age. Though I did receive an immediate message alerting me to the near-depleted state of its internal power source. Fortunately, it was similar enough in design and function to my own fetlock-mounted computer that I was able to navigate its menus until I found the setting that would turn off the homing signal. Curious that it was on at all, given how weak it had been. My helmet hadn’t even registered it until I was just a few yards away.

Perhaps its last owner hadn’t lived long enough to turn it off?

They’d lived long enough to record a few logs though. I quickly got what files I could find transfered to my own pickbuck. There weren’t many of them, but I found myself hoping that there might be even a few answers present on them.

That last act seemed to have been what finally took the last few motes of power from the device’s power source, and it finally died completely, the screen fading to opaque blackness. I glanced at my own pipbuck, double-checking to make sure the transfer had been successful. It announced that four new audio files had been added to its database.

Having pretty thoroughly retread my home in an effort to get every possible ounce of sentiment out of it, and figuring that my companions wouldn’t arrive for a decent while yet, I made myself comfortable on the back porch and cued up the first of the logs. Time to find out how Enclave equipment made it into my family home.

The first file started with the quiet hiss of static that denoted a recording was being made, but that nopony was talking yet. Then there was a heavy sigh, and a young stallion’s gentle tenor came over the speakers, “...I guess...well, if you’re hearing these things, and you’re Enclave: fuck you. I hope the Lightning Rods malfunction and fry you on the way back up. If it’s somehow you, Mom...I’m not sorry for what I did,” there was a brief pause as they swallowed, “I don’t care if it was ‘stupid’ or ‘meaningless’ or whatever. It was the right thing to do,” he chuckled, “guess I’ll be your namesake after all, heh…”

“Also...I stole McGillicutty and McGee. I know they were special to you, but I figure they deserve to do some real good in the world instead of just gathering dust in your room. So...yeah. You can ground me if I ever make it back alive or whatever.”

“If you’re a surface pony,” the disembodied voice said in a slightly more chipper tone, though the tinge of regret was still audible behind the faux levity, “greeting from above the clouds! And...for what it’s worth: I’m sorry for what we did―what we’re still doing. We could be helping, and we’re not.

“...we probably never will,” he added with a dejected sigh, “but...I want you to know, for what it’s worth, that there are some of us in the Enclave who want to. Just, not a lot of us. I’m not making excuses. I’m just letting you know how it is.

“If it means anything―if it matters―I tried to make a difference. Both up there, and down here with you. I did try. I hope that’s enough.

“...sorry.”

The recording ended with a sharp click, leaving me in silence once more. I stared at my pipbuck in wonder. Obviously, I had fully expected to hear that they were a member of the Enclave, but the notion that one of their reclusive order had gone rogue and come down to the surface like that wasn’t what I thought I’d hear. At most, I’d figured that they’d been a last survivor of some lost patrol or something.

Spurred on by my curiosity, I went ahead and started up the next recording. This time I was greeted with haggard breathing right off the bat from a pony who was clearly in a great deal of pain, “aargh! Okay…” he swallowed and hissed through his teeth, “I was an idiot. You were right, Mom. You were right. I wasn’t ready, and neither are the surface ponies. The first ones that didn’t just run away at the sight of me...well, they shot me instead.

“I guess they’re still holding a grudge, even after a hundred years…” another pained gasp, “I got clear, but…” he sighed, “there’s a lot of blood, and I’m out of potions.

“There was a...building―old house―that I spotted from the air. Going to see if I can make it there. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Find a potion or two.

“If I don’t...then I guess you get the satisfaction of being right. Like you always are…”

Well, obviously the house that he made it to was this one. Odd though. While I didn’t know for certain how long ago my family had settled in this place, I was fairly sure that my grandparents hadn’t been the first to run the ranch...I suppose that this pegasus must have gotten here a short time before my ancestors restored it. Caravans, passing in the night, or something like that.

I played the third log.

“Not dead yet,” the tenor voice of the long dead stallion began, “but I can’t take credit for that. It turns out that not everypony hates us on principal. The house I found wasn’t empty. Good thing too, since I passed out before getting all the way there. The current occupant found me. A Miss Ayrshire. Nice mare. Reminds me of you, Mom: she called me seventeen different words for ‘stupid’ the moment I told her what happened,” he chuckled.

“She patched me up pretty good. Knows her stuff. Still, I won’t be going anywhere for a day or two. Not sure where’d I’d go anyway,” the stallion sighed, “I can’t go back home, and it’s pretty clear that not a lot of ponies down here want my help either.

“I don’t plan on giving up though. Somehow, I’m going to help. I’m going to make the surface better. I am―”

“Who are you talking to?” I heard a mare call out in the background with a decidedly reproachful note in her voice, “you’re supposed to be resting! You must have more feathers than sense in that head of yours!”

“Uh oh...um, just talking to myself! Must still be delirious or somethi―” there was a sharp click the recording stopped.

I sat there in silence for several long moments. I wasn’t any sort of expert on my own genealogy going back all the way to before the Great War or anything like that, but I did still recognize the name, ‘Ayrshire’. She’d been long dead by the time of my own birth, but my ma had known her, and had mentioned the name a time or two while telling me and my older brother stories about the family. She was my great-gran. That had been the voice of my great-gran in the recording.

Would that mean that I’d hear more of her in the next log?

The last recording started out very differently than the others. A voice that sounded much too young to have been the stallion from before was speaking, though definitely still male, “...woah. Neat!” there was the sound of scraping and scuffling suggesting somepony was handling the device and its associated barding rather roughly. Then the youthful voice spoke again, but with a rather distinct affectation that reminded me of when I’d give my dolls their own voices and personalities while playing, “command, this is Sky Raider Whipper Wind! I’ve sighted the enemy; requesting permission to engage,” then the colt swiftly shifted into another role, “krrrk! Damn it, Whipper Wind, return to base! You’re a loose cannon!” the pseudo-suave, yet cockey tone from before returned, “oh, I’ll unloose my cannons alright! Bambambam!”

I covered my mouth with my hoof in an effort to stifle my laughter so that I didn’t miss any of what was being said. Though my ear did twitch at the name. Hadn’t Whipper Wind been the name of my―

There was a loud crashing sound and a pained groan that came over the speaker. A moment later the colt, having dropped all affectations and sounding much like I remembered whenever I’d realized I was going to be in a lot of trouble soon said, “uh oh. Um…”

“Whip! What in skies above are you―” this was the older pegasus stallion from before, I realized, “oh. Heh,” I heard heavy hoofsteps getting nearer, “you’re supposed to be cleaning up the attic, not making it messier. I see you found my old barding.”

“This was yours?” the colt asked in wonder.

“In a former life,” I heard the stallion say in a somber tone. I heard more sounds of scuffling as I envisioned the barding being removed and folded up once more.

“I never knew you were in the Enclave! What’s it like in the clouds? Is it true that there are big balls made of gold and silver up there like Ol’ Coot says? Why’d you leave?” the colt spouted one question after another in quick succession, to the point that I found myself wondering if he was even interested in getting any answers to them.

Finally, the stallion cut him off, “that’s enough,” he said in a terse tone, snapping the colt to silence, “none of it matters, and I don’t like talking about it. That’s the end of the matter.”

“But―”

“I said that’s enough,” the stallion snapped. There was a moment of silence, then, “go check on the brahmin. I’ll clean this all up.”

“Okay, Pa…” the dejected colt mumbled just before I heard tiny hooves walking away. In the distance I heard a quiet, “oh! Hey, Ma. Nothing’s broke; I’ll be in the barn, bye!” the sound of hooves moving at a much faster pace faded away, replaced by another heavier set.

“I see he found your old barding,” a mare said, who I recognized as being the same voice as had belonged to my great-gran in the last recording. Her tone was just as stern too, “I’ve told you a few times to get rid of it. It’ll just cause trouble if anypony around here finds it. You know there ain’t a lot of love for your old comrades around here.”

“I know. I just...it’s hard to let go of it.”

The mare sounded much closer now. When she spoke this time, it was with a tenderness that I’d yet to hear from her, “it’s been gathering dust up here for years. You’ve told me you can’t go back,” she chuckled, “in fact, I believe you’ve made it pretty clear you don’t ever intend to leave…” her words became more serious again, “I don’t want him finding these things again. I don’t want him taking after you, and going looking for trouble because of some fool notions of being a ‘hero’.

“I want him to stay safe, and happy...and here. Like us.”

“Alright,” the stallion said after a long pause, “I’ll figure something out.”

“Good,” the mare said before I heard hoofsteps walking away, “lunch’ll be ready in half an hour,” her steps faded away.

There was the sound of more rustling as the remaining stallion presumably went about clearing whatever mess the colt had made. This went on for several seconds, then, “oop! Have you been recording this whole time?” he sighed, “that foal...it’s been so long...how do I even turn this damn thing back o―”

That was the final file, and yet it left me wishing that there might have been many more. Like Ayrshire, I’d recognize the name Whipper Wind too. He’d been my gandpa. A pony that I’d never met myself. My mother had talked about him a lot though. Brash and headstrong, according to her, and he hadn’t been much inclined to put up with ponies trying to bully others. She told me how that attitude had eventually led to his death at the hooves of a band of local raiders when he refused to pay their ‘protection fees’. In the end, his sacrifice had been the impetus to get other local farmers and ranchers to band together and drive that gang out, so he’d been regarded as a bit of a local hero after the fact.

I’d never known that he’d been the son of a pegasus. Nor, I now realized, did I even know how that stallion had died. Or what his name had been! I probably never would, either. My mother might have known, but…

It was frustrating to know that there would forever be so many mysteries. Not that I’d ever been inclined to think much about my own heritage. It had hardly seemed like it really mattered all that much. At least, until I’d found out that my ancestors had a habit of standing up for other ponies. The realization actually instilled within me this tiny little feeling of familial pride; like I was carrying on a tradition that I hadn’t even known existed.

Jackboot would probably have had all sorts of comments to make on those feelings, and I couldn’t deny that what I’d recently learned from these logs was hardly a resounding endorsement of that sort of mentality. It certainly didn’t seem conducive to a long life. But, come on! That pegasus had been so driven by the idea of helping that he’d abandoned everything he’d ever known in an effort to help others. Sure, it turned out that they didn’t seem to actually want that help, but he’d still made that sacrifice for them! Who’s to say that he didn’t make the world a better place? He at least seemed to have made my great-gran happier. That was something.

Intent mattered. I refused to believe that it didn’t. Maybe I was a little biased on that idea, considering my own choices in life; but I didn’t care. More than a few ponies had made a lot of sacrifices on my behalf up to this point too. My parents, Jackboot, even most of my companions had either chosen to, or been forced, to give up something important to them in exchange for helping me. I had an obligation to make that mean something.

It wasn’t just about me anymore. Too many other ponies had given too much for it all to amount to nothing. I wouldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t.

The files now reviewed, I once again returned my attention to the contents of the chest. The pipbuck-like device was completely dead, but I suspected that Foxglove might be able to find some use for its parts. The violet and black barding was in decent shape, despite its age, but I already had a rather robust set of armor that I felt had a much more appealing color scheme. I didn’t have a use for a second Enclave helmet either.

Then two identical objects caught my eye, buried deep at the bottom of the chest. I reached in and picked them out, turning one of them over curiously in my hooves. At a quick glance, they had looked to be some sort of bracer. Which struck me as odd, since the Enclave barding had already had integrated leg protection built into it. An after-market bracer seemed a little redundant. However, upon closer inspection, it was clear that the device wasn’t armor, but some sort of weapon. It wasn’t built like any power hoof that I’d ever seen though, despite the fact that it quite clearly attached to a pony’s foreleg.

Another curious little feature was a pair of names that had been stamped into the steel surface of each device: ‘Bucky McGillicuddy’ and ‘Kicks McGee’. I’d idly wondered what the pegasus in the recordings had been talking about in that first log. Now I knew. Not that the revelation helped me understand all that much about the objects. I could identify that there was a barrel affixed to each of the bracers, but there wasn’t an obvious port for either a magazine or even a firing mechanism. Parts of them jiggled slightly though, suggesting that there were moving parts associated with the devices.

They slipped on simply enough, and even sat in such a way that accommodate my pipbuck. I suppose that was to be expected, if they’d been designed with Enclave barding in mind, and the pegasi utilized similar fetlock computers. Attaching them didn’t really seem to instill me with any great sense of how they operated. I did notice that my Eyes Forward Sparkle insisted the weapons were loaded though, and inexplicably were each capable of firing a dozen shots. Not that I had any idea of how to do that.

There was no trigger-bit, or even a button to press on the casing. Nothing that suggested how I was supposed to fire the weapons. If that was what they truly were. I mean, they had ‘ammo’ somehow, but how was I supposed to fire it? It wasn’t life they’d even make particularly good melee weapons since they didn’t cover my hooves themselves. They didn’t seem to get in the way of hoof-to-hoof fighting though, so that was something.

Experimentally, I lifted into the air and took up a defensive stance that I’d developed for while in flight. I cocked back a hoof to deliver a punch to see how the weight would affect things. That was when I heard a sharp ‘click’ from the device. I froze, glancing at it. It seemed that the sudden motion had dislodged something. No...that wasn’t right. It had engaged something! The outer steel sleeve had shifted back with the momentum of my motion, exposing a previously obscured spark pack of the sorts most magical energy weapons used. It was fed into a host of sophisticated looking mechanisms that if probably would have taken a pony like Foxglove to understand the workings of.

A little more mindful of the direction that I was facing, and having an inkling as to what was about to happen, I swung the hoof forward in a single punch. Sure enough, the casing slid forward and the odd looking weapon discharged with an echoing boom, sending forth an orange bolt of energy approximately the size and shape of a Sparkle-Cola bottle. The projectile very quickly left sight entirely as it streaked out into the Wasteland.

“Whoa,” I breathed as I once more stared at that curious contraptions.

“Windy!”

I turned at the sound of Foxglove’s frantic yell and found that my grounded companions had finally arrived at my old homestead. They had their weapons drawn and were scanning the area, prepared to face any threat that they might encounter. Of course, I could see no crimson markers on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. It took me only a couple of seconds to realize that they’d heard the sound of me testing out the weaponized bracers that I’d discovered and assumed I must have been under attack.

“It’s alright,” I assured the small gang of ponies, flitting over and flashing them all reassuring smiles as I pointed at my forelegs, “just trying out some new artillery I found. Neat, huh? Apparently they’re family heirlooms!”

Everypony very quickly relaxed their guard. Foxglove fawned over the weapons, managing to very quickly discern a lot more about their operation and capabilities from just a few minutes of scrutiny that I’d likely have ever managed on my own no matter how much time I was given. Towards the end, she was even muttering quietly to herself about ways to better integrate their capabilities into my barding and the Gale Force. I was perfectly happy to let her tinker, if for no other reason that it was nice to seen her relaxed and content once more.

Ramparts didn’t hang around the house proper for very long, electing to perform a quick patrol of the surrounding area. I was quick to point out that I could have done it much more quickly than an earth pony could have, but he insisted, “you just got home. You shouldn’t have to leave so soon.”

Something about his tone dissuaded me from pressing the issue after that. It wasn’t until he was out of earshot that the words finally clicked. How long had he been in Seaddle before he’d learned that he might have to leave it for good? He hadn’t even been able to say a proper goodbye to Yatima and his son before having to part their company again for who knew how long? I was certain that those two would be fine. Summer Glade would take care of them and get them to New Reino safely.We’d have to swing by there some time soon to make sure that Ramparts could see that for himself too.
Maybe I could ask Homily to find some way to get a message from them?

Starlight Glimmer, on the other hoof, clearly had no intention of going another step further that evening. She found the remains of a couch in the den and all but collapsed into it. Meanwhile, Moonbeam started poking about the ruins of the house, exploring. There wasn’t a lot of deliberate intent behind her search. Mostly it just seemed like she just wanted to see it. Considering she’d spent most of her life never leaving Seaddle, I guess it was understandable that she’d find even a crumbling ruin like this a little fascinating.

“Your home is...pleasant.”

I snorted and craned my head up to look at Arginine, “it’s a wreck,” I countered, gesturing at the scorch marks and bullet holes. Then I sighed, “but, yeah; it used to be really nice. Someday...I don’t know. Maybe I can fix it up,” not that I really knew all that much about carpentry and home repair. I killed things. I didn’t put stuff back together.

“It’s weird,” I went on, not sure if I was really speaking to the large gray stallion anymore, but feeling like I needed to talk nonetheless, “I’d always thought of this as my house. I never even thought about leaving it. I was going to grow up here, and take over someday. Me or my brother, anyway. Even when I was with Jackboot, I kept thinking about how ‘someday’ I’d come back here for good. Rebuilding this place was my goal for the future.”

“Your words imply that your intents have changed.”

“Maybe? Probably. I don’t know,” I shrugged, “things are changing so fast these days that it’s hard to figure out what kind of future I can have anymore.

“I just found out my great grandpa was an Enclave pegasus,” it was still an odd thought to wrap my head around.

“Does that revelation about your ancestry have a bearing on our immediate plans?”

“I mean, no, but…” I shook my head and groaned, “I don’t know what to make of it, I guess. I know it shouldn’t matter. I never knew him. I did find some old logs of his,” I tapped my pipbuck, “what I learned makes me wish that I had known him though. I think he’d approve of what I’m trying to do,” a heavy sigh escaped me, “trying being the operative word,” I said as a deep frown creased my face.

“The loss of the Republic’s support will severely impact the likelihood that the surface will be able to repel our invasion,” Arginine agreed. I didn’t miss his choice of pronouns either. It was easy to forget that his interest in helping me was rooted heavily in his own desire to see the ponies from his stable face the most significant resistance possible, thereby proving beyond a doubt exactly how superior to surface ponies they were. Losing out on the help that the NLR could have given to such a counter-force meant, to him, that their victory would be...tainted, in a way.

“We’re no beaten yet,” I assured him, “there’s still the Rangers and New Reino,” while not a true martial power in the same way that the power-armored ponies or Luna’s military forces were, the casino barons of the city-state of New Reino had wealth enough to outright buy a truly formidable army formed from every mercenary band and gun-for-hire that lived in the valley. Getting their help would be foal’s play, especially with ponies like Summer Glade to vouch for how much of a threat Arginine’s stable was to their bottom line. If all they figured they had to do was throw caps and bits at the problem in the form of disposable mercenaries to keep ponies coming into their city to spend their money, they wouldn’t hesitate.

I was also pretty hopeful that I could get the Rangers on our side still. On top of them owing me a lot for ending their war with the Republic, I figured that I should be able to sweeten the pot by pointing out that Arginine’s stable would undoubtedly be a veritable treasure trove of Old World technology. Those ponies should start chomping at the bit to get a piece of it.

“Indeed,” the larger stallion acknowledged, then paused for a moment before looking at me with a, what was for Arginine, curious expression, “you are not despairing over this setback as much as I might have presumed based upon my past observations of you.”

I snorted, “I did most of that during the flight here,” I admitted, “but, yeah, I get what you mean. What happened in Seaddle really sucks, and for a lot of reasons for a lot of ponies, but I also know there’s nothing I can do about that right now. I just need to keep focused on what I can do, and what went right. Like reuniting Starlight with her daughter,” it was a silver lining I was determined not to lose sight of amid all the other recent dark clouds I’d encountered recently. One of the few things that had gone as right as I had any right to expect it to have. All things considered.

Bringing a mother and daughter back together after being separated by two hundred years was nothing to shake a hoof at, right?

“I’ll wait to see how things go with the Rangers before I think about actually breaking down into a deep depression,” I smiled up at the stallion to accentuate the joke. Though, in the back of my mind, I was desperately hoping that it was a joke. If, for some reason, I couldn’t get Hoplite and the Steel Rangers on board…

...best not to think about that. Positive waves, Windy. Put out those positive waves.

“We should get settled in for the night,” I said finally, shaking myself free of those nagging doubts, “the Rangers will be here in the morning to talk.”

Footnote:...

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