It was about justice, about doing what's right. And that act of goodness, that's ours. All the good we've done. That's ours and ours alone.

While I had been quite confident in the justifications for how I’d split our group up when we departed my old home, I had to admit that I was having second thoughts about the whole mess by the time McMaren came into view. None of that had anything to do with my upcoming dealings with Homily or anything like that. It was more that, as our trip wore on, I very quickly realized that I hadn’t managed to pick the best ponies to engage in conversation with. In fact, in between the scattered awkward attempts at failing to start a dialogue, nearly all of our trip passed in silence.

I hadn’t really expected that though. I mean, I might not have really thought things through much in terms of what I might have to say to either Starlight Glimmer or Moonbeam. After all, those two were both ponies largely out of time that I couldn’t relate to much. They were from a very different world than I was. I didn’t know anything about magic the way that the pink unicorn did, and my list of questions about what it was like being a robopony only went so far before I was left with questions so ridiculous that I’d rather have left them entirely unasked as opposed to opening my mouth and looking like an idiot.

Honestly, I had figured that the two of them would spend most of the trip reconnecting, and I could just sort of listen in to their bonding and learn about the both of them. That was certainly how things started out in the first few hours, as Starlight posed a few probing questions to learn what her daughter had been up to since waking up in ‘the future’, as she had put it. These lines of conversation hit dead ends pretty quickly though, as Moonbeam was quick to point out that she had spent the last twenty odd years as a puppet despot that a tyrannical stallion was using in his bid to retain his grasp on the power he felt he was in danger of losing; and that the artificial intelligence wired into her brain had been in control for most of that time.

As a result, Moonbeam insisted that she had not developed any hobbies, or made any friends, or found fulfilling employment since ‘waking up’. Meaning that she had nothing new to tell her mother since the last time the two of them had spoken, two hundred years ago. Since Starlight had spent those intervening centuries in a form of stasis, she didn’t have much to tell her daughter about either. Nor did she seem to yet know how to approach the fact that her ‘little filly’ was not one anymore.

It was...agonizing...to listen to the two of them trying to pick up their lives where they’d been left off, and failing spectacularly. There wasn’t much that I could think to do to help them out either. Yeah, sure, I could kind of relate to the whole ‘being separated from a parent you assumed was dead’ thing; but my own reunion had fallen pretty far short of even the ‘bittersweet’ mark that theirs had achieved, in my estimation. Both of these ponies were still alive after more than a day, so they were already doing a lot better at this whole thing than I’d managed to. So I spent most of our journey staying up out of earshot, ‘spotting’.

And I was doing that, certainly. Though, my thoughts did wander quite a bit while I was doing it.

Maybe it wasn’t the most productive use of my time, and somepony could certainly make the argument that I was getting a little ahead of myself, but I spent most of that time thinking of what I’d do with my life once we’d defeated Arginine’s stable. After all, quite a few things had changed since the last time I’d formed my tentative plans for my adult life. Which, admittedly, was fast approaching, if it wasn’t already here…

Rebuilding that old house, getting the ranch back in order again...I was starting to doubt how feasible that all really was. Especially with the Republic in the turmoil that it was in. Miss Neighvada was broadcasting daily updates on the state of the NLR in the wake of Princess Luna’s ‘assassination’. There had been a predictable amount of panic in the immediate aftermath, and martial law had since been declared. That wasn’t doing much to fix things though.

Ebony Song was likewise making continuous announcements of his own, trying to settle everypony’s concerns, but it didn’t sound like he was having a lot of success. His plan to build Moonbeam up as the real Princess Luna was coming back to bite him in the flank. The Princess Returned was supposed to have eventually fixed the whole Wasteland, and now she was gone. Ponies’ faith that the New Lunar Republic could endure without the guidance of the same Luna for which it had been named was buckling. These fears were compounded by the steady rise in raider activity within the Republic’s borders. Ebony Song had consolidated the Republican Guard in Seaddle itself in an effort to ensure he’d be able to stay in power as the NLR’s new ‘regent’. This meant that there wasn’t anypony left to keep the peace elsewhere.

Towns like Shady Saddles and Santa Mara didn’t have robust guard forces, since they’d come to rely on getting their protection from the Republic’s own soldiers. Now those soldiers were gone, and the local raiders knew it. I’d lost track of the number of farms that were reported as being razed to the ground. The only safe place left in that whole part of the valley was Seaddle itself. Naturally, ponies were flocking to it in droves, seeking the protection its defenses offered.

Of course, a sudden swelling in the population, coupled with the destruction of so much of the surrounding food supply was a disaster waiting to happen. There wasn’t a full on crisis yet, not after just a little over a week, but only a fool could miss the writing on the walls. Seaddle was a powder keg, and it was going to go off any moment. When it did…

The bottom line was that the valley wasn’t going to be the same place I remembered as a filly. Trying to get the ranch running again in whatever eventually emerged once everything inevitably melted down...just didn’t seemed like a plan that stood any real chance of working out. I’d need to start thinking about real options available to me, and not the sentimental dreams of a child who’d been trying to fool herself into thinking her life would ever be like it had been in the ‘good old days’.

Looking at my skill set, the glaringly obvious choices seemed to tend along the lines of caravan guard or mercenary. Maybe part of one of the new town guards that were invariably going to be popping up now that the Republic’s soldiers weren’t fulfilling those roles. Something that favored a mare who knew her way around a gun.

The problem with that was...I didn’t know that I wanted to be that kind of pony my who life. My cutie mark be damned; I didn’t want to spend my whole life killing ponies! Maybe I couldn’t have a herd of brahmin and a quiet life on a farm, but I still wanted to settle down with somepony and have a family someday! I couldn’t do that if I was traipsing around the wasteland following merchants…

I supposed that I could just not do anything at all and let whatever stallion I eventually fell in love with bring in the caps while I raised our foals. That was a possibility. Not that I really felt comfortable with the notion of not doing anything for a living...I mean, if I was being honest, there was this part of me, way deep down, that was honestly loving what was going on now.

Not the violence and the mayhem, no! That was utterly disheartening, and I hated that I’d had a hoof in it. No, I meant the stuff that I was doing right now. Heading off to McMaren to clear my name and then going to search for the weapons we’d need to save the valley while my friends searched for ponies willing to help us fight? That part I was enjoying; the helping out the ponies of the Wasteland. Even if nopony really seemed to either know or care that I was doing it.

That wasn’t quite fair, I suppose. There were ponies who knew what the Wonderbolt was up to. Ponies like Homily and her compatriots in McMaren for starters. Even if Miss Neighvada had been pretty quiet about me in her broadcasts over the last few days that I’d been listening to them. I knew the reason for that, of course; and I was on my way to fix it. Then it would be back to business as usual, and her news updates would once more be reminding ponies that there was a mare out there trying to bring them a little peace, and a bit of hope.

The praise wasn’t why I was doing this, but I couldn’t honestly deny that it didn’t feel good being recognized as a hero. I was even finally starting to believe that I was one!

I caught sight of our destination long before the pair of ponies beneath me, thanks to my aerial vantage point. Even though it hadn’t been all that long since the Steel Ranger attack, I was pleased to see that a little bit of progress had been made towards recovering from it. That might actually have been an understatement, I amended. If I could see visible signs of improvement from this high up and this far off, that was actually indicative of a tremendous amount of work that the ponies there had gotten accomplished! There looked to still be a lot left for them yet to do though, if the collection of tentage on the base’s parade grounds was any indication. I hadn’t realized that the barracks had taken such a big hit during the attack…

Wait a minute. No it hadn’t! I’d been in there myself; the barracks was fine, and had hardly looked inhabited! Heck, given the losses that the ponies at the base had suffered when the Rangers had hit them, they should have had no shortage of space to bed everypony. So then why were there all those tents? And was that...construction? Yeah, it was! They were using the rubble of the destroyed structures as masonry materials to build a second barracks right next to it!

What was going on?

I dipped down low and related my findings to Starlight and Moonbeam. For all the good it did. Starlight was more interested in hearing how close we were, and that an end to their walking was close at hoof. Moonbeam, well, didn’t have much to say on the matter, since she didn’t know any of the ponies there. Honestly, neither of these two had the history with the ponies of McMaren that I had. Foxglove would have been a lot more interested.

In fact, now that I thought about it, I was only just now realizing that something had slipped my mind while breaking our group up. I’d sent Ramparts to New Reino in no small part to reunite him with his wife and child. It was only at this precise moment that I remembered that Foxglove also had a pony that she was close to, and might have liked a chance to see again. Though, even if I had remembered that, I wasn’t positive that I would have changed things around. Her knowledge about New Reino was too valuable to waste by bringing her here and only sending the stallions to New Reino.

It was something to keep in mind for later though, finding a reason to bring the violet unicorn back here. I could certainly appreciate the value of having somepony at hoof to confide in and, er…relax with. I was definitely looking forward to getting all of this over and done with and getting back to Arginine.

I might not have been the Republic’s favorite mare right about now, but both Windfall and the Wonderbolt had earned no small amount of goodwill with the ponies of McMaren. I’d saved their flanks no less than three times in the last year, after all. If the reports of my alleged assassination of Princess Luna had mussed any manes here, Homily’s insistence on waiting to hear from my side of the story before passing judgement was keeping whatever animosity might be present in check. Not that I got the impression from the warm welcome we got at the gate that I was on anypony’s ‘shit list’ around here.

Miss Neighvada herself was even there to greet us in the sunflower-hued flesh. While a lot of eyes of the gathered ponies who might have also heard of my imminent arrival had obviously been focused on my trademark blue barding initially, everypony’s attention very quickly, and understandably, shifted to Moonbeam in short order. While roboponies weren’t a rarity in the Wasteland, friendly ones were hardly common, and automatons with the kind of sleek chassis and eloquently articulated limbs that she had were simply unheard of. Well, almost.

Those kinds of features might not have been as surprising to the ponies of McMaren, I supposed, as my eyes caught sight of what could only have been a merchant cart passing by us on its way out of of the gate, and the neatly organized collection of robopony parts that it was laden with. I blinked at the sight in mild surprise. A more thorough observation of the old military base soon revealed that it looked a lot less like a fort, and more like a...town. Those tents, I soon realized, weren’t homes―well, not all of them, anyway―they were a market!

“You ponies have sure been busy,” I found myself murmuring under my breath as I took in the new sights of the old military base. I followed the utterance up with an inquiring look to Homily, “this place looks way different from how it did a couple weeks ago.”

The earth pony mare offered up a proud little smile as she too reviewed the newfound hustle and bustle of what had only recently been a small little radio station outfit, “I do have to admit, it’s more of a response than I thought we’d get this soon. Though, I’ve actually been laying the groundwork for a while now.”

“Oh?” I pressed as the four of us began to walk deeper into the base’s interior, heading for the radio tower.

“Well, yeah. Don’t forget: this whole thing started out as much as a business venture as it did my desire to give the valley a reliable source of news. It’s not like everypony that came with me was doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. They’re skilled professionals, some of them with families back in New Reino who need to be taken care of.

“The bits to pay them needed to come from somewhere,” she pointed out.

I’ll admit, I hadn’t really thought about that. I mean, even Jackboot and I hadn’t worked for free. I wouldn’t classify much of what we did as the sort of thing that collected a regular salary or anything, but we collected bounties and sold valuable gear from our quarry to keep ourselves in food, bullets, and booze. Obviously the ponies here weren’t going out hunting bounties on raiders and such, but I hadn’t thought about where they got their funding from exactly. A point I sheepishly admitted to Homily.

“Well, at first everything we needed was being paid for by Scratch. He was the primary backer behind all of this,” the mare reminded me, adding, “he even hired you and your friends to come get us out of that first tight spot of ours, remember?”

That day felt like years ago, but I did remember how Jackboot, Foxglove, and I had rescued Homily and her comrades from the bandits holding them for ransom. Then I recalled why it was that Homily was probably not getting the regular stipend from her griffon benefactor anymore. That night was not one that I looked back on with a lot of fondness. In my defense, such as it was, I hadn’t been in a very good place, emotionally, when I’d tracked down and murdered the casino baron in his office. In hindsight, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have done it, if given a chance to live that day over.

Granted, there was a lot in my life that I would have done differently, but shooting Scratch did make the top ten on that list. His death hadn’t fixed anything. It hadn’t even made me feel better in any meaningful way. Never mind that I hadn’t even thought about how much I might have been hurting other ponies by doing it. Ponies, it turned out, like Homily, who I liked to think of as being my friend. Scratch wasn’t, and probably had never been, anything approaching a ‘good’ individual; but I’d come to learn that if I was going to kill any living creature that didn’t ascribe to my ideals of what was ‘good’, then I was going to be killing things for a long time…

Homily’s question had, fortunately, been rhetorical, and she went on, “when he died, the caps dried up quickly,” the yellow mare explained, “I’ve been spending the past few months trying to come up with ways to make more, but there wasn’t a lot of options. Honestly, this all came very close to having to be shut down,” she said somberly, “then the Ranger’s attacked and...well,” she let out a heavy sigh, “as much as I hate saying it, that attacked saved this place.

“We never would have known about the Ministry of Awesome installation under our hooves if they hadn’t showed up. The tech down there is mostly perfectly preserved, and that’s not super common in the Wasteland,” she explained, “advanced electronics is a niche market, to be sure, but it’s also a very lucrative one if you know the right ponies. And I happen to know those ponies. I put the word out to prospective buyers and merchant companies, hired some additional muscle to keep us safe for when word got around to less desirable groups…

“...and all of this sort of happened almost overnight,” she waved her hoof at the tentaged market square, “the buyers came in to get the salvage we were selling, and a wave of vendors followed right on their tails, ready to sell us stuff in order to get a share of the caps that we’d all just made,” she chuckled a little to herself, “they’re sort of like leeches, like that; but they’re leeches selling Wild Pegasus and Sugar Apple Bombs, so I don’t mind.”

“If I didn’t know any better,” I finally piped in again, while looking around at the familiar bustle of ponies haggling over wares, “I’d say this place was a town or something.”

Homily paused in her tracks, seemingly caught off guard by my observation. Then, after several long moments of thought, she let out a surprised little laugh, “heh. I...think it might be,” she looked back at me, wearing a bewildered smile, “I never really thought about what went into building a settlement before, but…” she looked around once more, “this does seem to resemble one now.”

“Should I start calling you Mayor Homily?” I teased.

“Oh, sweet Goddess, no,” the mare groaned, “I’m too busy just being Miss Neighvada! I don’t have time to run a whole town.”

“Well, you’re going to have to find the time,” I pointed out, “after all, this is just the start. How long do you think it’ll be before those ponies working for you just bring their families up here once they figure it’s safe and they miss them? This base will be crawling with foals soon enough. That means you’ll need a school too. Maybe a clinic for when ponies get sick or hurt. Or to help deliver all the new foals that’ll follow, what with the families being together again.

“Face it, Homily, the ponies here are going to need a leader. Or, at least, somepony to keep them organized and feeling safe.”

The mare let out another defeated moan, “this was supposed to be just a small news gig! I’m just a voice on the radio; I really don’t think I have what it takes to be in charge.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short. I bet you could do it if you tried,” then I added, “unless you know anypony better qualified?”

Homily snorted and resumed walking towards the broadcasting station, “not unless you want the job!”

My brain stalled out for several seconds as I processed what the earth pony mare had just said. Me? Me? In charge of a town? She couldn’t possibly have been serious. I decided that she must have, in fact, been making a joke and managed to get out a laugh that only sounded mildly forced, “ha! Sure, right; I’ll get right on that after I’ve saved the valley from certain destruction at the hooves of a hoard of genetically modified genocidal psychopaths…”

I eased up a little bit as I heard Homily laughing now too, “I guess your plate is rather full at the moment. Speaking of,” she continued, shifting the topic of conversation, “let’s go ahead and get at least one thing taken off of it. ‘Miss Neighvada’ is currently off the air for another hour or so, so I’ve got plenty of time to talk with you and your friends about what happened in Seaddle,” she looked back, her gaze darting briefly to Moonbeam’s metal form, “I’m sure it’s going to be...interesting.”

It had stabbed deep into my soul when I’d received the first message from Homily about the stories coming out of Seaddle concerning ‘Princess Luna’ and my part in her ‘death’, and that the earth pony had believed that I’d do something like that. If I was being honest with myself, a lot of that pain sprung from the personal knowledge that doing something ‘like that’ wouldn’t actually have been out of character for me. I’d assassinated several ponies in my life. Recently, even. I’d killed ponies because they’d offended my sensibilities and I wanted them removed from existence.

Perhaps there might have even been circumstances under which I actually would have murdered Princess Luna. Just because I couldn’t think of them at this moment didn’t mean that those circumstances didn’t exist at all. Assuming, of course, that it was actually even possible to kill the genuine article. Presumably, the real immortal goddess, wherever she actually was, wouldn’t be particularly easy to remove.

In any case, it must have spoken wonders for Homily’s respect for me that she was willing to hear out my and Moonbeam’s side of the story, as fantastical as it sounded. Even knowing the bona fide truth of the matter, and having had the facts confirmed through multiple sources over the months, I still found myself sitting in stunned silence while the robopony spoke her piece in the broadcast building. I could tell that the yellow earth pony was a little dubious at first, but her skepticism began to slowly melt away as Moonbeam broke down the details of what had happened to her over the years as the ‘ruler’ of Seaddle. Many of which were things that even I hadn’t known.

“When I first ‘woke up’,” Moonbeam recounted, “I was scared and confused. The last thing I’d remembered was speaking with Miss Tweehu―er, Treehugger,” if robots could have blushed, she might have right there, “she’d told me that I was going to be taken on a trip, and I’d need to be put to sleep before we left. I didn’t understand at the time what that really meant. I managed to figure out much later that what they were doing when I was ‘asleep’ was working with the AI wired into my brain.

“Those integrated electronic components have blessed me with a nearly perfect memory that I can review like a holotape. At least, the parts of it when I’m me. When Selene is running things, not so much.”

“Selene?” Homily prompted, sounding a little surprised at the mention of the name.

“That was what the staff kept calling the AI,” the robopony explained. I heard Starlight growling low in her throat at the knowledge that even her pet name for her daughter had been appropriated and soiled by the ponies that had abused not just her trust in them, but her own daughter as well, “I don’t know a lot about what I get up to when it’s running things. Either it’s not storing that stuff in my brain, or my conscious mind can’t access it if it is.

“I’ve reviewed what interactions I can remember having with the facility staff several times over the years, with the benefit of age, and I’m thinking that the Ministry of Peace was completely unaware of what their MoA counterparts were doing with us.”

“Us?” Starlight prompted, “you mean the other foals? They were using all of them?”

“Not all of them, no,” Moonbeam corrected, “as best I can figure, the project was started with genuinely good intentions by the MoP. Rampant experimentation with new chemicals whose properties weren’t yet fully understood and the creation of new magicks using untested spell matrixes were resulting in a number of unanticipated medical complications, especially for expecting mares. A lot of those complications were mild, on the whole, and could be treated easily enough with conventional medicine.

“Obviously, there were more...extreme defects, as well,” I saw Starlight flinch away at that, even though I couldn’t see any sign that her daughter might have been trying to single out their own situation or place blame. This would likely be a source of discomfort for the pink mare for a long time to come, and understandably so, I suppose, “I think it was those cases, like mine, that the Ministry of Awesome took an interest in. Specifically ones involving similar conditions to the one I suffered from.”

“Can you think of why that might be?” Homily pressed from around the pencil in her mouth that she was using to take notes. She’d need to sort through everything later when she put her broadcast for the evening together. Telling the valley everything might have been a bit much to take in, and likely go over more than a few heads. She’d need to sift through everything she was told here in order to frame it all in a way that would be easy to both understand and, more importantly, believe. None of this explanation was going to do any of them any good if Miss Neighvada’s listeners all decided that she was full of horseapples.

“I don’t know what exactly was wrong with the others, medically,” Moonbeam admitted, “but if they were being used in the same way that I was, I assume they were similar to how I was, physically,” another hard wince from Starlight. Homily asked for more clarification, “when I was born, my brain was whole and intact, but it was...deficient? The neurons were there, and they were otherwise healthy, they just weren’t firing like they should have been. Even my heart and lungs barely worked on their own.

“The treatment, if you could call it that, involved surgically implanting a computer into part of my brain, which contained an artificial intelligence. The idea was that this software program would stimulate the neurons of my brain to get them to do what they were supposed to be doing naturally. Like a crutch, but for my brain. The software program was reported to be completely benign,” Moonbeam’s synthetic lips pulled back in a grimace, “in at least my case, that statement was...misleading.”

“Windfall mentioned over her pipbuck that it could control you,” Homily prompted, to which the robopony nodded.

“It has direct control over every function of my brain, which includes moving and talking, obviously. Though, I don’t think that taking control of my own body is its primary purpose. After all, there isn’t necessarily much that I can do like this that can’t be accomplished by a typical robopony equipped with the same sophisticated AI that I am.”

“So then why bother doing all of this?” this time I was the one to ask the question.

“I’m not sure,” Moonbeam admitted, “it honestly seems like an incredible waste of resources,” I noticed that I wasn’t the only mare with a quirked eyebrow upon hearing this statement, “I don’t know the actual limitations of the AI, but do know that it is capable of far more than Ebony Song was using it for. His understanding of it was actually extremely limited. After all, he was a politician, not a computer expert. He had it running in a very simplistic way, using strict guidelines that he set. I could only say certain things and give certain responses to questions,” I recalled the interaction that I’d have with Selene as Princess Luna, and how she’d only said a few things in response to specific statements.

“I think he was concerned that any improvisation might have given away his act. However, I am convinced that this program is capable of a great deal more. After all, effectively operating an organic brain is not something that I think of as ‘simple’, even for a computer. If this AI is capable of that, then why wasn’t it being used to operate the nation’s security roboponies? Equestria could have fielded an army of hyper-intelligent robot soldiers,” Moonbeam pointed out, “the war would have been over at that point.”

“Maybe that was what they were planning to do with you,” Homily posed, “turn you into a weapon?”

My eyes darted to Starlight Glimmer as I saw her nostrils flare and her face harden with barely contained fury. She said nothing out loud, but I got the distinct impression that she was internally heaping another mountain of curses and epithets upon the Ministry Mare who’d been running the project that had done this to her daughter.

“Perhaps,” the robopony sounded more than a little unconvinced, “but why would it need a foal to work?”

Homily shrugged, “maybe you act like an amplifier,” she offered in an offhoofed tone.

Moonbeam stared at the earth pony, her glowing pink eyes slowly pulsing, in what looked very much like a brief series of stunned blinks, “what?”

The yellow mare seemed a little less sure of herself now as she tried to explain what she had meant, “well, I mean, I don’t know how brains work and all that―I work with radios. But, I’m assuming that if the computer in your brain can work with it at all, there can’t be a whole lot of structural differences when you get right down to it, right?”

“Neurons operate in an arguably similar fashion to transistors, yes,” Moonbeam supplied, still sounded a little guarded as she tried to follow Homily’s train of thought.

“Well, with electronics―and specifically radios―you can use two things to boost your transmission range: more power and a longer antenna, which is basically just more metal. Sometimes it even helps to fold up the antenna into a compact shape,” she tapped her hooves together nervously, “but I don’t know if that’s how your thing works. I was just thinking out loud.”

“No, it...there is merit to that theory,” Moonbeam said, her synthesized voice sounding distant, “a computer’s capabilities are effectively limited by the number of transistors they have access to. The more transistors they have, the faster they can operate, and the more they can do at once. With the number of neurons that a brain holds, a computer that used them as its processor...it would be very powerful indeed.

“I’m honestly not certain what its limits would be…”

“Well, it’s at least capable of running a multilevel underground facility and a few dozen roboponies,” I offered in an effort to be helpful in a conversation that I was honestly only barely following.

“What?” Moonbeam asked flatly, staring at me.

“Well, I mean, a pony who was just like you was operating the MoA bunker under this base, and when they, um...turned off, all the systems went dark and all of the flying roboponies that had been trying to kill us stopped moving. I mean, that AI was pretty much controlling everything in there. It was honestly kind of freaky,” I gave a small shiver as I recalled my interactions with the robopegasi and their off-putting conversations that they’d had with themselves as though I couldn’t hear them when they weren’t speaking directly to me. Alright, so maybe the AI hadn’t been a genius when it came to lying and stuff, but it had to be pretty hard for even a computer to control all of that stuff at once on its own, right?

Then I noticed that Moonbeam was still staring at me, her metal and plastic face a mask of shock and surprise, “what? I already told you all about that place. It was the whole reason I went back to Seaddle to speak to you, er, Princess Luna. I told you all about how the computer that ran it was powered by a foal. Remem...ber...?”

Then it hit me: I’d told Princess Luna. I’d told Selene, and not Moonbeam!

“Oh, horseapples,” I winced hard as I buried my face in my hooves, banging them against my forehead.

Moonbeam had apparently given up on the idiot pegasus trying to beat some smarts into her own head and whipped around to look at Homily instead, “there’s a pony like me under this base? Why didn’t you say so sooner?!

“Where are they?”

Unfortunately, the sudden shift in both topic and tone had caught the yellow mare off guard, leaving her to sputter through an attempt at an answer. She would have gotten one out in another second or two, but it seemed that Moonbeam wasn’t interested in waiting even that long to hear about her kinsmare. With a burst of speed and grace that even a pegasus like me found enviable, the robopony mare flowed out of the broadcasting building and darted outside. I zipped out after her.

“Moonbeam, wait!” honestly, I was surprised that she did.

“Where are they?” she demanded, “are they okay?”

I bit down hard in an effort to stifle any thoughtless answer I might give. If Trellis really was another one of the foals from the same place that Moonbeam had been treated, then they might have known one another. They might have been friends. Even if they hadn’t been, the two of them had a shared experience that would have served as a bond between them that nopony else could possibly have understood.

They were kindred spirits. Or rather, would have been kindred spirits.

But I’d killed her. I hadn’t understood what I was doing, and I hadn’t meant to. I’d essentially been tricked into doing it by Trellis herself. But would Moonbeam understand that? I’d only known her for a little over a week, of course, so I couldn’t know how she’d react. She had a right to know the truth though, and I had no right to be the one to hide it from her.

“Her name was Trellis,” I began, being more careful with my choice of words and my delivery than I remembered ever being when talking to another pony, “the Ministry of Awesome was using her to run a hidden facility under McMaren. Unlike you, she hadn’t been sleeping for two hundred years or whatever. Her AI had been running that whole time.

“I think she was ‘awake’ for a lot of that time too,” I went on, a little more quietly as I recalled my―tragically brief―interaction with the foal, “we were being attacked by the roboponies and automated defenses. A lot of ponies were in danger. I asked her how to turn off the defenses.”

Moonbeam had been completely silent up to this point, merely staring at me with those glowing pink irises of hers. It was hard for me to meet them now, “she gave me a code to use.

“It killed her.”

I couldn’t look her in the eye when I said it. Which only made me feel even worse about the whole thing. I hadn’t known what I was doing. I hadn’t known who or what Trellis really was. I hadn’t really known all that much about Moonbeam or what she’d been through, despite what Starlight had revealed to me between her multiple cursings of Rainbow Dash. Intellectually, I knew that I had no reasonable blame in what happened. What I had done had been in the interests of saving the lives of others; and had I known what my actions would cost, I’d have moved the mountains that ringed the valley in an effort to find another way.

Yet, ultimately, I’d been the one to tell Hastati how to kill Trellis.

“I’m sorry.”

It was a pathetic pair of words to use, but it was all I had.

It felt like an eternity had passed, waiting for a response from Moonbeam, “I see. Thank you for telling me.”

There’d been no sarcasm there, but I still felt compelled to explain myself further, “I didn’t know that you didn’t always remember what Selene saw and heard,” I said hastily, “I thought I’d told you about it, I swear! I wasn’t trying to hide this from you, really.”

“I know,” the synthetic pony nodded, “and I’m sorry for getting worked up back there,” her eyes passed over me, and that was when I noticed that the other two mares were out here with us too, “I’m just...I know what it must have been like, is all.”

“It’s alright,” Homily said, a sad smile on her face. She nodded her head off to the side, “I can show you where we buried her. You can pay your respects, if you’d like, or…” my own gaze followed the direction that the yellow mare had indicated, and I spied the cemetery that had been cordoned off in a section of the base. Another common feature of a town, I noted absently. Though, one that seemed to already be far too large for a settlement that was still so young.

“No, that’s fine,” Moonbeam insisted, “I’m alright. I would like to examine this facility though; get an idea of the capabilities that my AI might have.”

“Actually,” the yellow mare began, drawing all of our attention to her pensive tone, “I think that there is something down there that you should see.”

The three of of exchanged confused looks.

“Yeah...that’s not ominous,” I heard myself murmuring under my breath as the four of us stood in front of a rather intimidating looking door located in what could best be described as an ‘out of the way’ corridor on the facility’s Utilities Level. Even back in its heyday, during the war with the zebras, I found it rather unlikely that this area of the underground base would have seen a lot of hoof traffic.

What was particularly notable about the heavily reinforced metal hatch though wasn’t its location, but rather the stenciled words written above it:

S.E.L.E.N.E Control.

“We spent the first few days after the attack mapping this place out as best we could,” Homily explained, “after what the Rangers had done to our defenses, we wanted to see if we could actually move everypony down here so we’d be better protected.”

That made a certain amount of sense, I supposed. McMaren was surrounded by a lot of open ground that took a lot of ponies to cover when it came to sentries. This place had only the single entrance as far as I knew. That pretty severely limited the avenues of approach for an attacker. Yeah, you ended up trapped with no way to escape if things got bad enough, but that could happen even above ground if the enemy had sufficient numbers. At least down in this place, Homily’s ponies could keep themselves alive long enough for help―specifically me―to arrive and bail them out.

“Ultimately, we decided not to though,” the yellow mare continued, “not any time soon, at least. With the computer down, nothing seems to be working, to include the ventilation system. If we had to close ourselves off down here, we’d suffocate within hours.

“This place’s reactors were all tied to the computer, and we’re not sure how to go about getting the power to work independently. So instead we’re going to see if we can get another of the generators topside working to give this place some juice. There’s certainly plenty of parts available for us to use.

“Anyway, because there’s no power yet, we’ve had to cut our way through most of the doors that were closed when Windfall shut this place down. It’s slow going, but we were making steady progress. Until, that is, we reached this door.”

“What’s so special about this one?” I asked. I mean, yeah, it certainly looked a lot sturdier that most of the other hatches in this place, but steel was steel, right? I couldn’t see anything about it that suggested a torch―or perhaps an eldritch lance like Foxglove had―couldn’t eventually cut through it and reveal what was on the other side.

I was about to say just as much when Homily reached out with her hoof and touched the door. Or, rather, she tried to touch the door. Her hoof never managed to actually make contact with it though, instead stopping about an inch short, coming to rest against a shimmering wall of cyan energy radiating out from her hoof’s location. She accentuated her point by more forcefully pounding against the field, sending out brilliant ripples that faded away as they washed over the door’s surface.

She withdrew her hoof and glanced between the three of us, “that’s what’s ‘special’.”

I blinked, “oh.”

The door’s reaction to the contact had managed to pique Starlight Glimmer’s interest though, and the pink mare began studying the field of magic quite intently. She proceeded to prod the barrier herself, with both hoof and horn in her effort to divine its nature, “definitely a ward of some sort,” she mumbled, more to herself that for our benefit, I suspected, “an enchantment would have dispelled by now. No sign of runes carved into anything,” she added as she scrutinized the surrounding surfaces, “so it’s probably being generated by an object of some sort. Since there’s nothing obviously magical out here, I’d say whatever is sustaining the field is also inside of it.”

“So then how would anypony get in?” I asked.

“I can think of a few ways, actually,” the unicorn explained, “any unicorn who knew the matrix key could take the barrier down instantly. It could even be tonally activated, which might be more likely given that I’m guessing this place had a lot more pegasi than unicorns. Though, if they wanted this thing to be really secure, they’d have it tuned to specific ponies.”

“So how do we get in?” Homily posed, “assuming that’s even possible.”

“Well of course it’s possible,” Starlight responded, adding a slight roll of her eyes, “but without a lot more information, I can only make guesses. If it’s a tonal lock, then somepony just needs to speak the passphrase. I assume that there’s a record of what it would be somewhere, maybe on a computer in the office of a high ranking pony who worked here. That’s a best case scenario, honestly.

“If it was gene-locked, then we’ll need a pony who had access. Given that I’ve never heard of a pegasus living for over two hundred years, and the unlikely possibility of finding such a pony frozen in stasis like I was, that’s probably not going to happen,” she added with a wry smirk, “it’s possible a direct descendent would work though.”

“If a pony who worked here survived, they went to the sky,” Homily pointed out, “so any descendant would be with the Enclave,” her tone made it clear that idea was a complete non-starter, to which I had to very much agree. I’d have been the only one of us that was even capable of reaching Enclave territory, and I’d have been shot on sight almost as quickly as any other ground-bound pony who’d have tried to breach their defenses.

Trying to find a passphrase was at least a possibility. Obviously, none of the computer systems were operational at the moment, but if and when the McMaren ponies got the generator they were working on connected into the local grid they could start looking. I supposed that there was nothing that made getting through this door a huge priority. I mean, yeah, I was pretty sure, judging by how quiet and intently that Moonbeam had been staring at her stenciled name above the door that she would very much like to get through in the very near future; but the fact was that the door wasn’t going anywhere.

There probably wasn’t a faster way to get inside, unless, “could you get rid of the barrier?” I asked the unicorn, “you know magic and stuff really well, right?”

Something that I had said apparently evoked a brief eye-twitch from the pink mare, “yes, I do; but the fact that you’re even asking that question means that you clearly don’t know ‘magic and stuff’.”

“Of course I don’t,” I replied in my own slightly exasperated tone, fluffing out my pinions, “I have wings, not a horn.”

“My point is: getting rid of a ward like this isn’t as simple as just zapping it. If it was, then they’d be pointless, wouldn’t they? It’d be like a lock that you could open with any old nearby stick. Wards like this one are keyed to very specific patterns, be they sound, or biology, or even magic. Trying to force anything with the wrong pattern would go badly. Very badly.

“With a few weeks, or maybe a month, of study and testing I could probably break through, sure,” she added, making it clear through her tone that we should all feel rather impressed by such a revelation. But, since I had heard that some ponies could open locks with pieces of wire in a little less than a minute, I wasn’t in any particular state of awe over the notion of taking a whole month to open a door, “but my understanding is that we don’t have that kind of time, right?”

We did not, I was forced to agree. With Starlight and Moonbeam in tow, it was going to take the better part of two weeks to both track down the weapon cache and meet back up with the others in New Reino. Delaying that by a whole month just to open a door in an abandoned Ministry of Awesome bunker wasn’t acceptable to me. I turned to Homily, “how long will it be before you get the power back on, do you think?”

The yellow earth pony stroked her chin pensively, “honestly, running the cables is going to be harder than getting another generator working. It’s not like we had a lot of that stuff lying around. We found some cabling leading from this bunker to...somewhere, but most of it’s buried pretty good. Digging it up will take a couple months, probably.

“I’m actually thinking of putting out an order to have some scavengers grab us some from Old Reino, now that it’s safe to prospect there,” the mare flashed me an appreciative smile, “so, maybe a couple weeks? I’ve already got a couple ponies here who know a thing or two about getting around Old World computer firewalls, so we’ll be able to access most of the archives pretty quickly once everything is back up and running.”

“Well, that sounds like a plan then,” I thought out loud, “we’ll head out in the morning to go find that hidden cache, meet up with the others, and then come back here. By then you’ll be able to open...the…”

All three of us went silent as we had all turned to look at the warded door which had so frustrated the efforts of the McMaren ponies to breach it. Only now, it was open. Moonbeam was standing there, in the open doorway, staring into the interior, her gaze riveted on something that we couldn’t see from where the three of us had been discussing our options.

“Oh.”

“How did you do that?” Starlight demanded in a borderline incredulous tone. Understandable, I supposed, as her daughter had apparently found a way to bypass the ward in considerably less than a month. Not that Homily and I weren’t also very curious to learn her secret.

“I just touched it,” Moonbeam replied, distracted. She hadn’t so much as twitchced her glowing pink eyes from the interior of the room beyond the door. I fluttered into the air and peered over the top of her. What I saw left me rather speechless as well. Not because I was struck by the significance of what was inside, but more because I honestly had no idea what I was looking at.

Homily seemed to at least have an inkling though, “that’s one weird looking robopony charging station,” she noted. It was only then that I noticed some of the structural similarities that the machinery in the room did have in common with the little vestibules in some Old World structures that were used to hold security robots in a state of hibernation. Though even I could tell that there was a lot more going on here than simply charging spark batteries and uploading commands.

It also looked more than a little like the room that I’d found Trellis in.

“If the ward dropped the moment you touched it,” Starlight said, “that means it was keyed to you. But I don’t understand. This place is some kind of secret MoA tracking station or whatever. Why would they have a room here reserved specifically for you?”

“Not me,” the robopony corrected, shaking her head before pointing a hoof to the stenciled letters above the door, “the AI,” she took a step into the cramped confines of the little room beyond the door. She immediately froze as fluorescent lights flickered to life overhead. This, seemingly despite there being no power for any other lights in the rest of the dead installation.

“How…?” Homily began in confusion.

“It’s not drawing power from the facility,” Moonbeam informed her in that same detached tone, like she was working off of a vague memory, “this room is powered by the same generators that run the tower. That’s where the buried cables go,” she glanced to her side, at the small computer terminal that had also booted up when the lights turned on. I could see the screen from where I was hovering. It was prompting her for an activation code of some sort.

Moonbeam reached out to the keyboard with one of her synthetic articulated hooves and slowly, and deliberately, tapped at the keys, mumbling as she did so, “En. One. Gee. Aich. Seven. Em. Four. Are. Three,” she entered the sequence of letters and numbers and then confirmed them with a subsequent command. All four of us were still as we waited with rapt attention for the response from the little terminal.

>>ESTABLISHING CONNECTION TO HANGAR…

>>...

>>ERROR! NO RESPONSE FROM HANGAR CONTROL!

>>N1GH7M4R3 PROTOCOL ABORTED.

Silence hung in the air for several long seconds as we continued to stare at the screen to see if the terminal did anything more. Then we were all startled as Moonbeam visibly shook herself, as though she’d just awoken from a daydream. Her pink eyes flickered several times as she look around at her surroundings, almost as though for the first time, “where…?” she hurriedly backed out of the room, nearly bowling me out of the way in her haste, “what’s going on?” the mare demanded.

“You tell us,” Homily said, gesturing to the terminal.

“I…” the synthetic mare seemed paralyze for several long seconds, her eyes once more flickering in rapid succession. Then, “I need to leave,” and with that, she trotted quite briskly away from the mysterious little room and made her way towards the facility’s exit. The rest of us exchange brief glances with one-another before Starlight and I took off after her. Homily remained for a while longer, citing her desire to more carefully examine the contents of the room to see if she could better divine its purpose.

Despite the numerous pleas from her mother to do otherwise, Moonbeam neither stopped, nor even slowed her progress, until she was well outside the bunker that disguised the underground installation’s entrance. At that point, not only did the robopony stop, she effectively collapsed, burying her face in her hooves as she proceeded to, of all things, hyperventilate.

Starlight’s maternal instincts appeared to kick in at that point, and she swiftly maneuvered to her daughter’s side, laying down beside the synthetic pony, “it’s alright, sweetheart. It’s okay. Just breathe.”

The unicorn mare’s words seemed to be doing at least some amount of good. Moonbeam leaned into her mother’s side, and her breathing eventually began to slow until it had returned back to its normal, nearly undetectable, levels. For my part, I was a little torn between offering my own words of support, and not wanting to intrude on what had been the most familial moment that I’d seen the two of them share since their initial meeting.

Though there was certainly a part of me that would rather have been anywhere else in the Wasteland right now, rather than watching somepony get to have the sort of touching reunion with their long-lost parent which I had been denied all those months ago. It was an uncomfortable feeling, being both happy for, and jealous of, a robopony...filly...thing. In the end, I settled for maintaining both my silence and a respectful distance as Moonbeam recomposed herself.

“I didn’t even feel it that time,” I heard the synthetic mare say, “Selene...she took over, and I didn’t even feel it! She’s not supposed to be able to do that,” I heard her add in little more than a whimper, “they told me I’d have total control…that Selene couldn’t come out unless I let her,” her fore-hooves clenched, gouging deep furrows in the hardscrabble with disturbing ease, “but, I mean, what kind of sense does that even make, right?

“Two-year-old me thought that sounded perfectly reasonable, sure, but now? An older and wiser me has to ask: why would anypony even design a ‘helper AI’ with the ability to override a pony’s conscious thoughts, unless they meant to be able to use that function when it suited their needs, and not the pony being helped?”

“If I’d known any of this, I swear to Celestia I wouldn’t have enrolled you in that program, Moonbeam,” Starlight assured her daughter, embracing the distraught robopony in an aggrieved hug of her own, “I should have known better,” she insisted through gritted teeth, “I just...they said they could help you, and I...I was just so desperate!

“I did everything wrong when it came to you,” the pink unicorn continued, burying her face in the side of the metal pony, “I experimented with unstable magic without taking precautions against getting pregnant. Then I ignored the warning signs of my pregnancy while taking those same risks. Then I enrolled you in the first experimental procedure that promised to help without asking even basic questions. Then I didn’t even notice they’d switched you with another foal for months!

“I failed you at every turn,” she was openly sobbing now, which honestly only added further to my initial discomfort, “it’s all my fault, and I’m sorry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I am so sorry, sweetheart!

“If I knew how to fix this, I would in an instant…”

“You didn’t do this to me,” Moonbeam replied, softly, returning her mother’s embrace, “Selene is the Ministry of Awesome’s fault, not yours. Besides…” the robopony’s mouth opened, as though she were going to say something more, but then it slowly closed once more. From her position, Starlight Glimmer wasn’t able to see her daughter’s face, but I could. Made out of plastic and metal as it was, it wasn’t quite as expressive as the face of a typical pony, but the designers had seen fit to include enough basic articulation that I saw the brief look of...what looked to me to be a lot like genuine fear, before she managed to school her features into something a little less intense, her pink eyes very briefly darting in my direction.

She abandoned whatever thought she’d been about to express, and simply resumed the embrace.

This was about the point that my discomfort levels reached their peak, and I turned around to leave and give the two of them the privacy that they were entitled to at a moment like this. That was when I noticed that Homily had returned to the surface as well, and had taken up a rather respectful distance from the pair also. I fluttered over and landed beside her, “you’re already done looking over the room?”

“Hardly,” the yellow earth pony mare sighed in a defeated tone, “but everything went dark again about a minute after Moonbeam left. Then the ward went back up and kicked me out,” she peered over at the pair of despondent mares, “I guess it needs her nearby to work at all. But I’m thinking it can wait a while,” her gaze shifted between myself and the base’s radio tower, “which works out, because it’s getting close to Miss Neighvada’s next broadcast.

“Care to join me?”

“Really?” I hadn’t intended to sound quite as surprised by the invitation as I ended up sounding.

“Sure! After all, we’re about to clear your name. You should get a chance to speak in your own defense at least,” the mare flashed me a broad grin, “besides, with everything you’ve done for us, you are long overdue for an on-air interview!”

Homily made a few final slight adjustments to the equipment while I did my best not to look as nervous as I felt. I’d never been part of anything like this before where I was going to be heard by a huge audience. I had yet to find a part of the Neighvada Valley that couldn’t hear the yellow mare’s broadcasts. Even ‘Princess Luna’s’ old announcements couldn’t be heard everywhere in the valley.

It didn’t help that I was very much aware of how important this interview was going to be. For the better part of a week, the big news story being passed around was that the Wonderbolt had assassinated the ruler of the New Lunar Republic. I was, without a doubt, the most hated pony in the valley, even in places that the NLR didn’t hold dominion over. Places like New Reino might not have technically been integrated parts of Luna’s Republic, but that had a lot more to do with politics than anything else. As far as I knew, the ponies there had still believed that Princess Luna was the real deal, and that she was actually going to end the Wasteland and bring back the Equestria of old.

Sitting here now, and knowing that my defense of my actions was going to amount to: everything ponies had known for the last two decades was all a lie and Prime Minister Ebony Song had been running a massive con on everypony this whole time, was going to be a decidedly hard sell, to say the least. If there was any silver lining to be had, it was that Moonbeam had been able to provide Homily with pretty much every detail about the whole affair, which meant that the mare also knew everything that she needed to poke some very big holes in Ebony Song’s story.

That being said, I wasn’t so naive as to think that this one broadcast was going to completely fix everything. ‘Luna’ had been a very important part of a lot of ponies’ lives. She’d been their one real hope that all of the suffering and strife of their meager existence in the Wasteland would soon come to an end. False or not, I’d still taken that hope away from them for good. A lot of ponies weren’t going to thank me for doing that, even if that hadn’t been my intent.

After all, I’d been one of those very ponies who’d been so sure that Princess Luna would ultimately be the salvation of the Wasteland. The hate and loathing I felt for Ebony Song for betraying that trust that I’d placed in her was what so many others were going to be leveling at me, no matter how this went. The best I could hope for was probably to at least divide their ire between us and water it down enough that nopony did anything too rash when I showed up in town.

“So, the way this will work,” Homily said in a gentle tone, “is that Miss Neighvada will go on, and she’ll do her broadcast and expose everything that Ebony Song did. After all of that, I’ll introduce you and then you and her will just have a friendly chat. This isn’t going to have any sort of ‘gotcha!’ questions. Just a relaxing talk between friends, okay?”

Despite her assurances, I still swallowed nervously, “yeah, sounds good. Umm,” I raised a hesitant hoof, and Homily gestured for me to continue, “did you just talk about yourself in the third person?”

The mare blinked, and then smiled, “oh, that, heh. I tend to think of ‘Miss Neighvada’ as somepony else, since she’s more of a...character, I guess, that I play while I make broadcasts, and not the real me.”

“Wait, what?”

“Well, it’s kind of nerve wracking to be speaking to so many ponies. I’m an engineer, not a newspony! I wasn’t ever supposed to be the pony doing the actual talking, but the pony I hired to be the ‘voice’ of this whole endeavor, well, he didn’t make it to McMaren at all,” she gave a sad little shrug, “so I’m just here doing the best I can. Miss Neighvada is what I imagine a well-informed pony should sound like, but I wouldn’t say she’s very much like how I am when I’m talking to ponies for real; like I’m doing with you right now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The mare canted her head suddenly and placed a hood on her headset. She held up the other to me in a gesture to be quiet, smiling, “and here we go...”

Then, in an instant, the young mare seemed to transform before my eyes. Her body loosened up as she leaned herself over the control board, cozying up to the microphone as though it had taken her out to dinner at a fancy club. Her face was almost sultry as she took a deep breath and began her broadcast.

“Good evening, Wasteland! Sorry for keeping all you lovely ponies waiting so long, but I hope you at least enjoyed the selection of music that I personally put together for you to keep you all company until I got back. It was all for a good cause, I promise you, because Miss Neighvada has just come into some information that is going to shake everypony to their very core!

“Now, I’m going to preface this with: what you’re going to hear from me is going to be very hard to swallow. It is. I wasn’t sure that I was going to believe it when I first heard it! But, I have seen the evidence with my own two eyes, everypony, and I’ve checked my sources forwards and backwards. Even so, it’s going to sound more than a little bit crazy when I tell you what’s up.

“A few of you out there aren’t going to believe it no matter what,” her tone shifted down to a slightly more serious note, “and even more of you aren’t going to want to believe it. I know I didn’t,” Homily flashed a brief, almost apologetic glance, in my direction, “but what we all want to believe, and what the truth is, aren’t always going to be one in the same. We’ve experienced that before, my lovely listeners, and I’m sure we will again.

“All I can ask is that you listen to what I’m about to say, and then remember how Miss Neighvada has never steered you wrong before. Remember why I started broadcasting in the first place. Keep our history, our relationship, in your mind. Please, just do that thing for me.”

Her smile returned now, “well, after all of that build-up, I’m sure you’re all just about frothing at the mouth to hear what that news is, aren’t you? Well, here we go: My little ponies; Princess Luna was not―let me repeat that―not assassinated. Not by the Wonderbolt or anypony else.

“Because she wasn’t even real to begin with…”

I’ll admit that I did a lot of drifting in and out while Homily―or rather, Miss Neighvada―regaled her audience with a recounting of the events of the last week. Having actually lived through the story she was telling, I didn’t find it quite as enthralling as I hoped her audience did. Instead, my attention was being more firmly held by watching this...stranger sitting on the other side of the microphone from me. This wasn’t the same mare who’d given that first, hesitant, broadcast all those months ago.

This wasn’t even Homily, like she’d said. I was watching the Miss Neighvada, the Wasteland’s newest radio diva, speaking to the valley, full of her loyal listeners, and I was seeing her do so with a natural looking grace that seemed so foreign to me.

Well, maybe that wasn’t strictly true. At the risk of coming off immodest, I knew pretty well that I was indeed quite talented in a few areas. I had yet to meet a raider that could match me in a fight, after all. I’d even gone hoof-to-hoof with Steel Rangers, and my fair share of Wasteland monsters as well. I’d not rated myself super high in that regard for quite a long time, growing up with Jackboot. Mostly because the older earth pony had been objectively better at just about everything than I was.

That had given me something of a warped perspective where my level of skill was when compared to the ‘average pony’, because I’d never really seen a genuinely average pony in action. I’d only known what Jackboot could do, and what the bandits that we fought could do. Since I always came out on top of the bandits, but never quite measured up to my guardian, I pegged my abilities as being mediocre, at best.

Then I’d met Foxglove. A mare with a passable skill with some weapons, but who was certainly nowhere near the fighter that I was. She’d balanced that out with a level of mastery in quite a few other areas that I’d never be able to match, to be sure, but that was about the time when it started to dawn on me that, when it came to fighting, I was good at it. Great even.

That being the case, I suspected that it was well within the realm of possibility that a lot of ponies―perhaps even Foxglove herself―regarded my aerial combat abilities as being very graceful, in their own right. But, that was the result of a lifetime of practice, and quite a few missteps along the way. That wasn’t really the case with Homily though. She’d only been playing the part of Miss Neighvada for a couple of months. And, by her own admission, this wasn’t something that she had planned on doing as a career. Yet, somehow, she’d made more than a merely modest show of it.

To me, that was impressive. She was genuinely good at something that clearly lay well outside her innate talent with electronics. That was something that I couldn’t relate to. As much as I resented my own aptitude, I was good at what I did because I was supposed to be good at it. Not that I was being dismissive of the years of tutelage that Jackboot had given me to further that mastery. I simply couldn’t see myself being any good at something other than fighting and killing. As much as I might liked to have been.

Nevermind that I’d never given any thought to what other skills I’d have liked to try and master if even given the chance…

“...and now, my lovelies, I’d like to announce a truly special treat―for all of us!―I have, with me in the studio today, the one and only Wonderbolt herself!”

I snapped out of my little reverie just in time to catch Homily’s introduction and broad smile, as she gestured for me to finally speak up. I hurriedly cleared my throat and leaned into the microphone as close as she was, noting in the back of my mind how close it was putting my face to hers. If I hadn’t known better, I might have been of the mind, from ‘Miss Neighvada’s’ very inviting eyes, that she was luring me into a kiss.

Indeed, it was only now that I remembered that I wasn’t completely firm on all the details of exactly how exclusive Homily and Foxglove were…

“Hey, Ho―er, Miss Neighvada,” I hastily corrected, my face creasing into an apologetic grimace at the yellow mare. Her warm smile didn’t so much as falter for a moment though as she urged me to continue, “it’s good to be here. Thanks for giving me the chance to clear my name,” I felt my nervousness slowly beginning to ebb away as I spoke. It was feeling less like I was talking to a valley full of ponies, and more like it was just the two of us having a conversation, which I’d had with Homily several times.

Of course, this was my first time speaking with her alter-ego. I was finding her to be much more, erm...intense company than her more reserved counter-part.

“Honey, with as many times as you’ve pulled my flank out of the fire? How could I not! In fact, with as much as you’ve done for this valley over the years, I’m sure that there’s a lot more ponies than you think who feel the same way,” she pointed out before using that statement as a segue into her first question of the interview, “after all, you’re a Neighvada native, isn’t that right? And you’ve been helping to clean up this valley since about the time you learned to fly, if I’ve heard correctly.”

I was actually genuinely surprised that she’d known that. It certainly didn’t sound like she was really guessing with her questioning tone; merely prodding me for details about what she already knew the broad strokes about. So I told her. That was about when this started to feel less like any sort of ‘interview’, and a lot more like the late night talks that I had with RG.

I told her about my parents, and how they’d been killed by White Hooves. I talked about being taken in by Jackboot, and how he’d taught me to look after myself and had set me on the path that I was on now: fighting bandits and slavers and such. I talked about the first pony that I’d really helped: Golden Vision, and how she’d eventually met her end by choosing to commit suicide over being used as a sex toy by a Republic senator. Homily didn’t press me for a lot of details about that, but was gracious enough to confirm for her listeners that the NLR’s system of ‘indentured servitude’ had been rife with exploitation and abuses.

“Of course, now that we know this was a system that was created by a loathsome little fuck like Ebony Song, I guess it’s not really all that surprising the NLR would have what was essentially a way to enslave its very own citizens,” Miss Neighvada sneered, “I don’t think any rational pony out there can honestly believe that the real Princess Luna would have been okay with doing that to her own, devoted, subjects, could they?” she said, speaking more into the mic than to me. Then she slipped back into her warm, interviewer, demeanor, “I think it’s safe to say that you’ve pretty much devoted your whole life to helping other ponies. That’s pretty amazing, actually. Does being a hero really pay the bills?”

“Some days,” I couldn’t help but chuckle a little, mostly thankful to be on a lighter topic, “mostly it’s hocking the gear that raiders had on them. Since most of what they have came from merchants they robbed, there’s usually something worth a decent amount of caps. I’m not going to be moving into a New Reino casino penthouse any time soon,” that earned a laugh from Homily, “but I don’t miss many meals, no.

“Honestly, I’m not even spending a whole lot of caps these days anyway. When the first thing you do rolling into town is stop a Ranger attack or kick out a bunch of mercenaries holding the ponies there hostage, you end up getting a lot of things ‘on the house’, like dinner and a bed. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a single cap in McMaren, now that I think of it.”

“Like we would ever consider making the mare who practically founded this place for us pay for anything!” the other mare grinned, “but it’s nice to hear that the ponies of the valley still manage to hold onto their sense of decency and gratitude even in light of everything going on these days. With tensions running so high, I was ready to see ponies getting a little more tight-lipped, even towards the Wonderbolt.”

“Nah. I mean, I can’t complain,” I shrugged, “I’m not expecting a free ride for what I do. I’m not fighting very hard to stop ponies from thanking me, mind you,” we both shared a mirthful chuckle, “but I’ll pay a fair price if somepony asks me. Even if I’ve just finished saving their flank from a raider attack thirty seconds ago. I’m not doing this to get rich.”

“Care to tell our listeners why you are doing this then?” she prompted, “I’m sure there are ponies out there who are suspicious of anypony who comes off as being a little ‘too’ altruistic. They’ll think there’s a hidden angle.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but stopped myself short. I’d been about to give my usual ‘I’m doing this because it’s the right thing’ shpiel, but then thought better of it. Because that would have been a lie. At least, according to Jackboot, it would have been. He might have been a cynical old stallion, but he’d known ponies better than I did. There wasn’t any such thing as genuine altruism, after all, was there?

So, I instead took a moment to compose my thoughts, and then gave a more ‘Jackboot’ answer to the question, “I’m doing this for me,” I shrugged, “I care about other ponies too, of course, but at the end of the day, I keep thinking about one thing: what my life would have been like if the White Hooves hadn’t raided our farm. And I know that it would have been a happier life. I’d have grown up surrounded by ponies who loved me, my hooves wouldn’t be stained with blood, and I wouldn’t be covered head to hoof in scars.

“I shouldn’t have had to grow up knowing what the inside of a disemboweled stallion smells like, but I did,” Homily grimaced, but allowed me to keep talking, “assuming I live long enough, I’m going to have foals of my own one day. I don’t want them to have to know what that smells like either. So, here I am, trying to help turn the valley into a place where ponies don’t have to grow up learning how to kill more ponies than they can count just to get by, because I don’t want my own foals to have to do that.

“Am I’m being naive in thinking that can even happen at all? Maybe,” I shrugged, “but it definitely won’t happen if I don’t even try. So here I am, trying.”

Homily was nodding now, a smile stretched across her features, “I think our listeners would find it hard to disagree with that. Any immediate plans in that regard?”

I blinked at the mare, “uh...you mean about foals?”

“Ha! Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about any potential ‘Mister Wonderbolts’ out there,” she laughed, eyeing me with a knowing look that made me do a quick mental check of how probable it was that Homily knew about my romp with Arginine in the barracks during my last visit, “but I’m sure a lot of our listeners who have seen your cute little flank in the flesh would rather not have their own personal fantasies dashed on the rocks of reality, so we can keep it to your plans regarding making the valley a safer place. For now, at least,” she finished, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

...Was she coming onto me? And what was that about my flank being cute?

I regarded the mare for a long moment, slightly more convinced that she, in fact, did know more about my personal life than I felt she should have. However, I took the out that she was gracious enough to offer, “well, small time raiders and such aren’t my biggest concern right now. Like you’ve mentioned to your listeners, there’s a new threat to the valley coming from the west―”

“That group of crazy stable ponies who want to ‘purify the Wasteland’, you mean,” Homily elaborated for the benefit of our invisible audience.

“Exactly. Them. Well, I finally figured out where they are,” I tapped my pipbuck, and the Steel Ranger data that it contained, “which means I can take the fight to them. Hopefully before they’re ready to move in force.”

“You’re not thinking about trying to take them on on your own?” the other mare said with a note of genuine concern.

I shook my head, “hardly. Please, Miss Neighvada, I know my limits,” mostly, “I have friends in New Reino right now working on recruiting ponies to help with the fight. Meanwhile, I’m actually going to be going out to secure the caps to pay anypony who’s willing to fight with us,” I shrugged, “I may not be doing this for the money, but I’m not going to ask anypony else to put their lives on the line for nothing.”

Homily’s eyes widened, “that sounds pretty ambitious,” then a thought seemed to occur to her and she leaned closer into the microphone, “I bet having some NLR soldiers there to help you protect the valley would have been really nice. It’s a shame that Phony Song up there in Seaddle is too conceited to want to do anything that might actually help the Republic’s citizens,” she winked at me and I stifled a laugh. It sounded like somepony was trying to sow the seeds of a revolution or something.

Maybe I could even help her out a little in that regard, “well, that was why I was even in Seaddle a week ago: I went to negotiate with who I thought was ‘Princess Luna’ to get the Republic’s help doing just that. That was when I found out about the scam that Ebony Song was running and put a stop to it. I tried to get the Rangers to help too, but it turns out they’re not much better,” I shrugged, “not that much of a surprise, I guess, given their history.

“Still, I felt like giving them a chance to do the right thing. Not every Steel Ranger is an irredeemable asshole, surprisingly,” then a thought occurred to me too, and I leaned into the mic, flashing Homily a knowing look, “just like I know that there are a lot of NLR soldiers who care more about keeping the people of Seaddle safe from danger than following somepony like that liar, Ebony Song,” I received a very approving smile and mimed clap from the yellow mare.

Homily was back up close to the mic again, “hey, Wonderbolt, hypothetically, if there were NLR soldiers out there who thought saving the valley was a more worthwhile endeavor than propping up a tyrant, where could they go to join up with you?”

That was a good question, actually; and this was an angle I hadn’t really considered. I’d honestly written off the entirety of the Republican Guard in the wake of what had happened in Seaddle. Obviously, Homily felt that there might still be some ponies among them who’d be willing to help. In hindsight, that wasn’t all that hard to imagine, seeing as how Ramparts was still helping me. I might not get the forces that I’d been hoping for, but if there was even a chance that as few as a dozen or so guardsponies would sign on…

“We’ll be staging in Shady Saddles,” I said into the microphone. It gave us a good ‘jumping off’ point for Stable 126, “anypony who wants to sign on should meet us there,” I did some quick math in my head, tallying up travel times for what I still had yet to do, “we’ll be moving out in about four weeks.”

“There you go, my lovelies: meet up with the Wonderbolt in Shady Saddles in a month if you feel like making a difference in the valley; or if you just want to earn some easy caps getting rid of murderous trash,” she added with a grin. Then she look past the mic at me, “I wish you the best possible luck, Wonderbolt. We all do.

“And I hope you’ll come back here once you’ve cleared out that stable for another interview. Until then, I again thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me, mine, and the valley at large. I know my audience does too,” she held my gaze for a moment longer before turning her full attention to her equipment, “I’m sure you’re anxious to get in a good night’s sleep before going out to fight the good fight, and I know I could use a little shut-eye myself. So, goodnight, Wonderbolt, and good night my little ponies; see you again in the morning,” she flipped a few switches on a nearby panel and I heard the faint melody of a Songbird Serenade song wafting from her headset as she removed it and set it aside.

Homily took a deep, cleansing breath, and leaned away from the mic, a contented smile on her face, “I think that went pretty well.”

I narrowed my gaze at the mare, “yeah. What was that about my flank? Also, why are we encouraging ponies to fantasize about me?”

“Huh?” Homily blinked. Then she burst out laughing, “oh, that, ha! Sorry, it just sort of slipped out,” she spread her lips in a broad grin, “it’s a compliment! I mean, it’s not cuter than Foxy’s, but I’d definitely rate it in the top five I’ve seen in my lifetime,” she offered by way of what I was sure she thought sounded like an apology, “top three if we’re only including McMaren,” she added with a wink, “and top one if we exclude stallions.”

“Wait...there are two stallions here with cuter butts than mine?” Why was I suddenly upset by this revelation? I didn’t want to be higher on Homily’s list of cute flanks! I didn’t even want her to have me on her list at all! I mean, I guess I was kind of flattered, but―ugh! Stop it!

Homily offered a helpless shrug, “what can I say? I’m partial to earth ponies. They just have so much more back there to...HMMPH!” she finished with a gutteral sound that came out as a cross between a grunt and a sigh, leaving me regarding her with a confused expression. The mare recomposed herself and smiled, saying no more on the matter.

Thankfully.

I took the opportunity that the lull offered to redirect the conversation away from my ass―which was a thought that I’d never imagined having to form―and back towards more substantial matters. I winced at the flank-related pun my mind spit out and powered through, “thanks for doing this. The interview, I mean,” I said, “and for helping out with the recruiting.”

The other mare gave a dismissive little wave of her hoof, “this doesn’t even put a dent in what I owe you,” she insisted, “until McMaren’s ponies have saved your life a few times, I don’t want you to hesitate to ask us for any kind of help; whatever it is,” then she frowned, “heck, I’m just sorry we don’t have any ponies we can spare to help you fight,” her expression was genuinely regretful on that point, “I’ll keep putting the word out though. If we find ourselves with any extra caps, I’ll send them along to add to your warchest, at least.”

It was my turn to lean back and sigh this time, “if you told me a year ago that I’d be trying to build my own personal army, I’d have told you to stop spiking your Wild Pegasus with Albronco Cleaner. I’m fifteen! Generals can’t be fifteen!”

“Elephander of Mastodon started leading armies at sixteen,” Homily offered, “besides, if ponies are willing to follow you, what does it matter how old you are?”

“Who?”

“General from way back, long before the war. Heh, long before Equestria, even,” at my quirked eyebrow, the mare shrugged, “whoever used to run this place on the surface had a bunch of books about old generals. Before we found that bunker I didn’t have much to do between news broadcasts, so…”

“And you’re saying everything worked out fine for this...Ella-whoever?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, then almost immediately cringed and added, “well...I mean, he died pretty young, but he basically never lost a battle, so there’s that.”

“Great,” not that I knew a lot of ponies in my life who’d been fortunate to die of anything as mundane as old age anyway. Still, “I don’t want to be some great warlord,” I insisted, “I don’t want to be a leader of ponies. I just...I don’t know,” I finally said, defeated, “I want ponies to be safe and happy.”

“So do I, Windfall,” Homily reached over and patted my shoulder. I looked up and saw her sympathetic smirk, “and who knows: maybe it’ll even happen in our lifetimes!”

“Maybe,” I agreed, a little disappointed in myself for how half-hearted the word had sounded even to my own ears. The radio pony had been right about one thing though, I thought as I stifled a yawn, it was about time for me to go off to bed, “I better get some sleep. I have a long few weeks ahead of me.”

“Sounds good,” Homily slipped out of her seat and began to tidy up the broadcast room, “I’m going to finish up some things here and do the same. Oh, and stop by the mess tent and grab a bite on your way. I haven’t seen you eat since you got here!”

She had a point. One that it seemed my own stomach had only just become aware of as well, as it responded with a curiously timed grumble, prompting a snicker from the other mare and a blush from myself. So, I excused myself and swung by the base’s dining area to grab a bite to eat.

It was a much larger and livelier place than I remembered it being during my last visit to McMaren. That likely owed to the merchant population that had seen fit to take up residence in order to take advantage of the base’s newfound riches, and servicing the ponies exploiting them. A tailoring stall had popped up, as well a couple of arms and barding dealers too. There were even signs of a few ambitious ponies who seemed determined to find out if they could make something grow on the abundance of open land. I was pretty skeptical about that, myself. Unless you had access to a lot of water and fertilizer, getting anything worthwhile to sprout in the valley was an uphill battle.

Yet, despite the abundance of new faces, there was still more than enough of the ‘old guard’ McMarens yet left on the base who seemed more than willing to make something of a to-do about my presence. It wasn’t quite to the levels that I’d experienced after repelling the Ranger attack during my previous visit, but I still received more than a few cheers and was the subject of a toast or two. I didn’t find myself lacking for drinks, that was for sure! I barely had time to finish the one in my hooves before two more would get shoved in front of me. This was when I discovered that I wasn’t nearly the drinker that I’d been only a year ago.

Ammunition and grenades seemed to trickle into my saddlebags too as I ate. Because of course the ponies here had been listening in to Miss Neighvada’s latest broadcast. There was also the odd promise from ponies that they’d find a way to be in Shady Saddles in four weeks, which I was quick to express my appreciation for.

If anypony there thought that it was the slightest bit odd to be offering to follow a teenager into battle, they weren’t voicing those concerns anywhere I could hear them. Which was just fine with me, as I was just starting to enjoy having something go right for a change! After back-to-back setbacks in the ‘army building’ department like I’d had, I really needed a win to help balance things out. Hopefully, Foxglove and the others were experiencing similar good fortune.

In fact, now that I thought about it, it couldn’t hurt to call in and get an update on their progress. Maybe I was pushing my luck by doing so, but my curiosity wouldn’t stand to go unsated once the thought entered my head. So I dialed in Ramparts’ pipbuck tag and contacted him.

“Hey, Windfall,” came the stallion’s staticy voice in response, “heard the interview you gave. Glad to hear you all made it to McMaren safe. We’re still about a day out of New Reino.”

I frowned, “I thought you’d have been there by now. Did something happen?”

“Nothing serious,” the courser assured me, “stopped to help a caravan that got hit.”

“Was it bad?”

“Could have been worse. According to the caravan master, it was just a few bandits. That does remind me though; he told me he saw something very strange the other day: White Hooves.”

I felt my blood run cold at the mere mention of their name, “I guess you’re far enough West for that,” I reasoned, “and the NLR isn’t patrolling anymore,” not that they’d been doing all that much of it while they’d been actively fighting with the Steel Rangers. I still didn’t like hearing that the tribe was active so near New Reino. Apparently they’d managed to get themselves organized again after Jackboot had killed off their chief, “it’s a miracle they didn’t hit the caravan. If they were close enough to see the White Hooves, then its certain the White Hooves saw them too.”

“That’s what was strange,” Ramparts said, “According to the caravan master, the White Hooves did see them. They just kept right on heading east,” both of us were quiet for several long moments. I was trying to wrap my head around the idea that a raiding party of White Hooves could have laid eyes on a plump and juicy caravan loaded down with valuables and chosen to not attack them. Then Ramparts hit with with an even more astonishing revelation, “and they had foals with them. Young ones, he said.”

“Captives?”

“He didn’t think so.”

“White Hooves don’t bring their foals on raids,” I heard myself saying out loud, not that the Republican Guard stallion needed to be told this fact. White Hooves did, of course, bring young warriors along with them to gain experience and let them start building their reputations within the tribe, but they didn’t bring ponies young enough to be described as ‘foals’. They kept their young safe and sound back in their camps until they’d been sufficiently trained and prepared to handle themselves in a fight.

So, if those White Hooves weren’t on their way to launch an attack on something, then what were they doing this far east? They had to know that the valley proper wasn’t safe for a White Hoof. Anypony who found them and saw their brands would kill them without a second thought. Which suggested that whatever had driven them this far was something they felt it was worth that risk to avoid.

I decided that I’d voice my most hopeful theory first, “maybe some ponies that the new chief doesn’t like very much?” I offered. Jackboot had found himself exiled after all when his own half-sister came to power. It was possible that the disorder caused by Whiplash’s death was finally over with, and the new chief was purging their enemies. That could have prompted a family or two of White Hooves to leave for more distant lands. Jackboot had fled all the way to Manehattan.

“Maybe that’s all it is,” I could have wished that Ramparts sounded a little more certain that was indeed the case. I got the impression that he, too, had not missed the other, less desirable, possibility: that those were White Hooves fleeing from an external threat. Like, say, a certain group of stable ponies who were advancing on White Hoof territory. Stable 126 was a lot closer to White Hoof lands than the major Neighvada settlements. If Arginine’s stable was going to start their campaign of extermination somewhere, the tribals made sense.

If they were already mobilized and on the move…

“I’ll let you know if I hear about more White Hoof groups being spotted,” he told me.

“I’d appreciate that. I’ll make sure Homily knows to keep her ears open too. You guys take care of yourselves.”

“Will do. Good night, Windf―huh? Oh. Foxglove wants me to tell you that she thinks your flank is very cute too,” I could hear the slightly exasperated tone of the stallion as he was compelled to pass on the message.

I buried my face in my hooves and sighed, “thank you, Foxy,” I replied.

“Oh, for...and Arginine says that he agrees that...‘it has visually pleasing contours...that are inviting of prolonged viewing...and vigorous...I am not saying that,” I could actually hear a mare cackling herself into hyperventilation in the background, “because it’s Windfall and I’m not saying that! No, I’m not going to let you say it either! Because then those words will have been sent through this broadcaster and I won’t be able to talk to Windfall over this pipbuck again without feeling dirty, that’s why! Fine, ‘vigorous touching’, whatever,” there was a brief pause for an exasperated sigh, “are we done now?” he was clearly addressing the pair of ponies with him.

“What, no opinion from you?” I prompted in a monotone voice, wishing that I could somehow dig a hole in the hardscrabble surface and stuff my head into it.

“I’m a married stallion,” he reminded me, “I’m not allowed to voice my opinions about other mares and the cuteness of their flanks.”

“I appreciate that.”

“But,” oh, sweet Celestia, no, “if I wasn’t married―and about ten years younger,” he added with a cough, “I suppose I’d say that it’s―”

“G’night!” I snapped, turning off the transmitter. I sat there shaking my head. There was at least that tiny little feeling of appreciation at my friends’ attempt to end our conversation on a note of levity. However, I couldn’t avoid pondering the implications of the news that they’d passed on forever. I was really hoping that those White Hooves were just running from an internal tribal purge. Because if it was the other most likely alternative…

“...we might not have four weeks.”

Footnote:...

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