"Karma's a real bitch. You'd be wise to remember that."

Waking up in unfamiliar surroundings with no recollection of how I’d arrived there or how much time had passed was becoming such a staple of my life that it didn’t even bother me anymore. And that really bothered me.

The rafters above me were indicative of the haphazard ‘new’ construction undertaken by ponies after the war, with no concern being given to what structural engineers of old might have insisted be done to ensure buildings adhered to the safety codes of the day. The wood bore holes and remnants of rusted nails and screws that suggested this was the second, or maybe even the third or fourth, building that they’d been a part of. The panels of the corrugated steel roofing each retained their own unique saturation of rust, suggesting that they’d been subjected to very different amounts of exposure to the elements during their respective lifetimes before being brought together in this structure in the recent past.

Beneath me, I felt some sort of mattress. I slowly moved my right foreleg, and felt it bump into something soft and slightly damp. Looking over, I realized that I was actually laying upon an old couch. A bundle of rags had been balled up to provide support for my head. The faint smell of grease and oil testified to what their former purpose had been. I was still too tired and groggy to object to the grime though.

The shed was dimly lit. A single bulb hung precariously in the center of the room, dangling from a crossbeam. This wasn’t the only source of light though. Out of the corner of my vision, I spied a second glowing source and carefully turned my head to the left. I spied a large table that had its own lamp mounted above it. A pony seated in front of it was just turning around to look at me, brushing a few errant strands of brown mane out from in front of her green eyes.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Foxglove greeted, a look of relief on her tired face. Just beyond her, laying on the table, I spied a partially dismantled Gale Force, along with a sea of other scrap, parts, and tangles of odd wiring. It wasn’t just the table, but a generous portion of the floor around the violet unicorn’s workstation that contained such materials too. The mare appeared to have made herself quite at home in the short time that she’d been here.

“Foxy…” I managed to mumble, though the single name sounded rather weak even to my own ears. My lips tightened into a grimace, “how long was I out?”

The mare rose from her seat and stepped closer, squatting down at the side of the couch, “you’ve been here for two days.”

My eyes widened and I instinctively jerked up in an effort to get myself up, “two days―?!” and immediately regretted what I’d done as I slumped right back against the mound of oil rags when my hooves gave out from under me, “...ugh.”

“Easy now,” Foxglove shook her head and chuckled to herself, “you’re over the worst of it, but Arginine suggested you take it easy for another few days,” that brief glimmer of amusement faded from her features now, “you took quite a beating out there, you know.”

Memories of the fight began to filter back to the front of my mind, “...Moonbeam. Is she―,” Foxglove bit her lip, her eyes briefly darting towards the only door leading out of the small shed. The unicorn mare hadn’t said a word, but just seeing the look in her eyes...I knew it wasn’t good, “what happened?”

“...Starlight hasn’t told us much,” she began, her words sounding hollow, “she’s been pretty broken up. The Rangers brought all of you here.”

That was unexpected, “the Rangers?”

Foxglove nodded her confirmation, “about four of them, led by that ghoul mare from Arc Lightning. She said that she owed you, and that this was just the down payment. Whatever that meant,” she was silent for several long seconds, her gaze looking to the other room again, “they did what they could, but…”

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I felt my stomach knotting in anticipation of the answers that I might receive. There was a lot about the fight that was just a black hole in my head. Had I done something to really hurt Moonbeam?

...Had I used that program to dominate her?

It was then that I realized that I’d been subconsciously rubbing my pipbuck. Foxglove didn’t seem to have noticed though, “she’s...I don’t know,” the mare offered mekely, “the ghoul said that, in the middle of the fight, Moonbeam experienced some sort of ‘shut down event’. Everything stopped working,” another brief pause as Foxglove fixed me with a knowing expression, “and I mean everything.”

My words caught briefly in my throat. I was sitting up again, “is she...dead?”

The fact that Foxglove didn’t immediately offer up a counter to my worst-case assumption had to have been one of the least reassuring moments of my life, “I genuinely don’t know, the engineer admitted, “her body is ‘alive’, technically―the talismans that sustain it are magical, so they’ll keep going even without a constant source of power. But her brain’s controlled by a computer, and that’s...well, it’s not working. At all.”

I swallowed, my gaze once more briefly darting to my pipbuck. Foxglove noticed the move this time at least, “no, we don’t think it was a result of that virus of yours,” I jerked and looked up at the unicorn mare. My hoof moved to shield the pipbuck from view, like I was a foal who’d been caught with something she wasn’t supposed to have, “but I would like to know where you got it from, Windy.”

“I found it. In the office of the pony who ran that hangar we found,” as guilty as I felt, hiding anything from anypony at a time like this was certainly out of the question; not when Moonbeam’s life was at stake. At least, I hoped that there still was a life to even be ‘at stake’, “there were some holotapes too…” I reached for my saddlebags, but they weren’t on me, of course. Then I caught sight of a collection of disks wrapped in an emerald glow next to me.

“I know, I’ve already listened to them. I thought they might give me a clue as to how to help Moonbeam,” her lips were quirked in a slight frown, “and they kind of did. They made me take a closer look at that virus you had, at least.”

“And? Have you figured out a way to fix her?”

Foxglove took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “Windy, I’m just an engineer. I could build a computer terminal from scratch, sure, but I’d be really hard pressed to program it without a lot of manuals on how to do so. Unfortunately, there aren’t any manuals for something like Moonbeam,” I felt my already faint hopes dwindling even further, “just trying to figure out what that program would have done is pushing the limits of what both me and Homily know about computer programming.

“And what we are learning, well...it’s not pretty,” she fixed her gaze on me now, “it’s a really good thing that you didn’t use that program, Windy. That little worm wasn’t just a way to hijack Moonbeam. It would have effectively erased her.”

“What?!” I felt myself grow even paler beneath my ivory coat. I’d almost...oh, sweet Celestia!

Foxglove nodded, “Homily and I aren’t sure about every detail of how it works, but when we looked over the code we noticed quite a few interesting things about it. Neither of us are master hackers, you understand, but we know enough to recognize what programs will generally do.

“That ‘Goodnight Moon’ virus is a brutal one,” the mare went on, “it would have reset the computer in Moonbeam’s brain so that it gave Selene full and complete access to every part of it; which included the parts that make Moonbeam...well, Moonbeam. Her brain would have become nothing more than hardware for the MoA’s AI. With nothing left to house her personality or memories.”

My hoof went to my mouth to stifle the gasp. I really had almost killed her! It didn’t matter that I hadn’t known that’s what the program would do, I had come so close to ending the life of Starlight’s daughter―twice!

“I’ve honestly been wondering about how the MoA was intending to use Moonbeam and the AI in her head to control the drones,” Foxglove continued, “it seemed weird to me that they’d let the AI take a backseat this whole time, when it’s clearly what they were most interested in. I asked Arginine about it, to see if he could think of a reason for letting Moonbeam have full control most of her life if all they wanted to do was override her later.”

She rolled her eyes, her lip curling into a tiny smirk, “his response was a whole lot of ‘Arginine-speak’ that used a lot of medical words, but I got the gist of it. He thinks that Moonbeam might have been ‘laying the foundation’, in a way. Young minds have to grow and develop before they’re capable of complex thoughts. He thinks that the AI might not have been able to do that on its own, and so the Ministry decided to let her brain grow using normal means. If they’d used her brain for the AI right from the get-go, the neurons wouldn’t have been arranged complexly enough to let it become as powerful as they needed it to be to control all those drones.

“It’s pretty disgusting,” she shook her head, “and it’s times like this, learning what our ancestors were capable of, that I’m wondering if it wasn’t actually a good thing that the world was destroyed. Could you imagine what life would be like if the ponies who were ready to do that to foals had actually won the war, and the Equestria that they’d built to do so was still around?”

Not that I had a high opinion of the morality of a lot of the ponies who lived in the world today either, but I found it hard to counter Foxglove’s point. Most of the records that endured from before the Wasteland certainly tended to suggest that Equestria might not have been such a great place after all. Certainly not the Equestria that had developed megaspells, disintegration beams, and equicidal roboponies. It kind of made me start to wonder if it was even worth bringing the old world back at all, “So, you’re saying that that program was supposed to be used on her eventually?”

“Well, one very much like it, anyway,” the violet unicorn said, “the core of it has a lot of the hallmarks of high-end Ministry of Awesome software; but there are signs of significant edits that were made to it later. Most of the changes are centered around rewriting the security protocols and access credentials. Somepony wanted Selene to answer to ponies who weren’t the MoA.”

“I see,” in the furthest reaches of my mind, I recalled the sight of the secret basement that lay beneath Wind Ryder’s. The signs of a fight that had broken out between the ponies working secretly for the Ministry of Awesome, and some unknown attacker. Nightjar had also very clearly been some sort of mole as well. Not for the zebras though, I was pretty sure.

Not that two century old spy games did a lot to help our situation right now, “so what can we do?”

“At the moment? Not much,” Foxglove admitted, “Homily has her ponies looking over the code right now. It’s a longshot, but that program gives us a look at what makes Moonbeam’s operating software tick and how to alter it. There’s a chance―a small one―that maybe we can find out how to restart Moonbeam’s brain again.”

“Will that make her all better? I mean, I’m no doctor or anything, but can somepony really be okay after you turn their brain off and turn it back on again?”

The mare shrugged, “with any normal pony, I’d say that it was a stupid idea; but Moonbeam is so far from ‘normal’...I don’t want to just do nothing,” she looked back towards the door again, “I don’t think Starlight will be able to survive us trying nothing…”

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s probably lost her only real family for good after only just getting them back,” the violet unicorn mechanic sighed, “how’d you do?”

I’d descended into a drunken, murderous rage, that culminated in a suicide attempt, “I should talk to her.”

“Good luck.”

Foxglove receded from the edge of the couch and returned to her workstation, lifting several tools with her magic and resuming the repairs that she had been doing when I’d awoken. I, very gingerly and carefully, eased myself off of the couch, noting the slew of minor aches and pains that still lingered. None of them were particularly acute, but I certainly was of a mind to keep from exerting myself for the foreseeable future. Given that I’d emerged from a fight with a purpose built war machine, I suspected that I was extremely lucky to have gotten off as light as I had.

As I approached the door leading out of the corrugated shed, my ears twitched. At first, I thought that I heard somepony talking from inside. I immediately recognized the voice as being Starlight Glimmer’s, but it took me a little longer to realize that she wasn’t actually talking to anypony; she was singing. It had been difficult to tell, because there wasn’t much of a melody in the way that she was reciting the lyrics. Her quivering words made it sound like she was only just barely managing to get them out at all.

I hesitated with my hoof upon the door, wondering if it really was wise of me to intrude at a time like this. Not that I could envision anything improving much in the near future. According to Foxglove, we’d all been in New Reino for two days. If she was still singing lullabies after all that time, I couldn’t imagine that she’d be stopping any time soon. I felt it was important that I at least try to be there for my friends, especially when they were going through hard times. So I softly eased the door open.

Moonbeam’s bulky alloy steel form lay inert upon the ground of the garage that lay beyond the shed behind me. Unlike where I’d woken up, this room was a clear remnant of pre-Wasteland construction. In here, like in the smaller room, a sea of parts and tools covered most of the floor, though a clear spot appeared to have been hastily created for the alicorn robopony. A larger set of double-doors suggested how the steel mare had even been moved into here in the first place.

A panel on her backside had been removed, and a tangle of wires was spilling out of it, meeting up with a small bank of spark batteries and a computer terminal. The pink form of Starlight Glimmer sat, awkwardly cradling the angular metallic head in her lap. Her hoof was gently stroking the contours of her head and neck. The unicorn’s cheeks were noticeably damp with tears.

I let the door close behind me while keeping myself as close to it as possible so as not to further intrude upon the scene. The singing mare’s eyes didn’t so much as twitch from the robopony alicorn’s features at my entry. Which, honestly, only served to make the tense situation all the more awkward. There was no doubt in my mind that Starlight was fully aware of my presence, but she wasn’t sparing me even a cursory glance of acknowledgement. For my part, I kept as silent and still as I could, simply watching events play out until their eventual conclusion.

Starlight paused, swallowing hard as a silent sob wracked her body. Her lips then strained in an effort to continue to form words. Eventually, she let out a small resigned gasp, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her head was held high now, her lids closed and no longer looking at her daughter. After one final deep breath, she managed to find the strength to finish the lullaby.

The last word finally out, the pink mare seemed to deflate, her body bending low of the alloyed head cradled in her embrace. I could see her shoulders quivering, even though I couldn’t pick up any audible sounds of crying. My own gaze passed over the robopony. It looked like a completely lifeless automoton, save for the faint glow that was coming from the opened panel on its backside. My pipbuck’s Eyes Forward Sparkle didn’t see fit to assign a marker to Moonbeam’s body.

Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence that persisted after the end of Starlight’s song. I cleared my throat, “hey, Starlight,” I began, meekly, “I, um...I just came to find out how you were holding up―” I visibly cringed even as the words came out of my mouth. I wanted to actually punch myself hard enough in the face to break my own jaw, just to keep myself from saying anything that inane ever again. ‘How she was holding up?’ Her daughter might be dead, you useless moron!

How do you think she’s ‘holding up’?!

“I mean, I―” I cupped my face with my hooves and grit my teeth, letting out a low, exasperated, groan, “...is there anything I can do to help?” Even that sounded hollow and vapid, but it was at least a much better opening than asking how a grieving mother was ‘holding up’. This might all indeed have been a huge mistake after all…

Starlight didn’t offer an immediate reply. In fact, she didn’t even look up from where she was continuing to stroke her daughter’s neck. Then, finally, in a whisper so low that I wasn’t even sure that I’d heard it at first, she said, “...take her place.”

She slowly raised her head, and in my cowardice, I averted my gaze, staring at the ground, “why couldn’t it have been you that died out there?” she breathed, her blue eyes streaming with tears. Then, as though she was only just hearing her own words, she shook her head and looked back at where her daughter’s holographically projected face would be, “I’m sorry. This...this wasn’t your fault. Not really. It’s just…”

“I know,” I nodded, “it’s okay,” I took a chance and slowly edged myself closer to the pair, “and, believe me, Starlight; if I thought it would work, I’d switch places with Moonbeam in a heartbeat. I really would,” again I looked down at the vacant steel facade, “I didn’t want this to happen.”

Starlight sniffled loudly, “it happened so suddenly,” she said in a gentle whisper, “one moment, she was kicking you, and hitting you, and...then she just...stopped. She stopped fighting, she stopped moving, she stopped standing, and she just...fell. Like a puppet whose strings were all cut.

“They think―Foxglove and her radio friend―they think that Moonbeam found a way to shut her AI down. Only it―” her body was wracked by another sob, this one much more audible than all of those before it, “she shut everything down, Windfall! Selene, her body...her brain.

“And I don’t know if maybe she did it on accident because she didn’t know how dangerous shutting Selene down would be…” she swallowed, “or if she knew exactly what would happen by doing what she did.”

It was a like somepony had sent a lightning bolt down my spine. The thought that Moonbeam had made a conscious choice to end her own life in order to save mine hadn’t been one that I’d even considered. I didn’t know exactly how much of Moonbeam’s mind and consciousness was wrapped up in the AI that helped her to operate her body―anypony who did know had been dead for two hundred years. If I had known what the cost of Moonbeam stopping Selene from within would have been...would I have done things the same way, I wondered?

“I didn’t want her to trade her life for mine,” I assured the pink unicorn, “but Selene had to be stopped. She was dangerous. Who knows how many more ponies she would have killed if Moonbeam hadn’t...if anypony hadn’t...stopped her.”

Starlight nodded, sniffling some more, “I keep trying to remind myself of that,” she said weakly, “but, in the end...seeing her like this...I don’t think I care. Because she’s gone, Windfall. My little baby girl is gone, and…” she let out a shuddering sigh, “and now I just...don’t care.

“Every piece of the world I knew is gone now. My home, my friends, my family...everything, it’s all gone.”

I closed my eye and took a deep breath, nodding slowly, “I know how you feel,” I heard Starlight issue a derisive snort and shake her head. She opened her lips, about to issue what I was sure would be a scathing rebuke of my sympathies, but I cut her off before she could, “no, I know exactly how you feel, Starlight, believe me.

“I lost both my actual, and my adoptive family―I lost the first stallion I ever loved―within five minutes of each other. My whole world came crashing down around me in a single moment,” even after all this time, I felt my eye start to burn with threatening tears at the memory, “you feel like you just want to give up, because what’s even the point anymore?

“The point is that it’s not always just about you,” I shrugged, “we do a lot of things because we love somepony else. I loved Jackboot. So, when he gave his life to save mine, I had to figure out if I loved him enough to not waste the second chance he gave me.”

I looked at the pink unicorn, “now, you need to decide if you love Moonbeam enough to help the world and the ponies that she sacrificed all of this to protect. She didn’t have to stop Selene. She chose to, because she didn’t want to hurt the ponies of the Wasteland.

“I won’t tell you what to do with your whole life. Nopony has the right,” I acknowledged, “but I will ask you to at least help us stop the stable ponies threatening the valley. I know that this isn’t ‘your’ world, and that this isn’t your fight as much as it is ours, but we still need your help.

“Foxglove and Homily are working on a way to see if we can still help your daughter; and no matter what you choose to do, they still will,” I assured her. Yeah, I was getting pretty desperate for help right about now, but I wasn’t quite at the point of using a mare’s daughter as leverage to get that help, “but it’d mean a lot to us if you said ‘yes’.”

“No.”

There hadn’t been even a moment’s hesitation in the mare’s response, which actually threw me a little. I mean, I’d been open to the possibility that Starlight might not continue to aid our efforts, but I thought that she’d at least have pretended to consider it! It even took me a second or two to manage to stammer out a response, I’d been so caught off guard, “I-I mean, you don’t have to give me an answer now. You’re still upset, I get it, but maybe if you took a day or two to think things over―”

“Do you think that I’ll be over Moonbeam’s death in ‘a day or two’?” the pink mare growled at me, prompting me to take a reflexive half-step back, my ears flattening in shame. Okay, when she put it like that, it sounded pretty lame, I’ll admit, but― “Why should I even try to save any of you monsters anyway?! Ever since you woke me up, all I’ve seen is ponies killing other ponies, ponies enslaving other ponies, and levels of hate and animosity towards one another that make griffons look damn-near altruistic!

“Arginine’s stable might have the right idea after all,” she seethed, “because I sure haven’t seen a lot lately that makes the ponies of this valley worth keeping around,” the mare held her glare on me, and despite myself, I cowed away and backed off. I was just so surprised by her words. Part of my mind wanted to insist that she hadn’t meant them, and that she was a distraught mother speaking entirely from grief rather than a genuine belief in what she was saying.

Then I thought about what she’d experienced since being revived. She’d been pretty upset with me when I’d killed the two raider that she’d paralyzed in the Seaddle Ruins outside of the city after we’d first met. I couldn’t imagine that she was particularly thrilled with the Steel Rangers or the leadership of Seaddle itself with regards to how they’d treated her daughter all these years. Recalling her haunted expression when she’d seen the mass grave at Santa Mara…

Maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe that she’d finally given up hope. I don’t suppose that it’d taken so much more than that to push me to the brink a time or two either. One of those times had even nearly resulted in my taking my own life. It’d been largely chance that I’d found something to keep me going and, unlike Starlight, I had a lot of emotional investment in the valley of my birth. I’d spent a lifetime getting to know the ponies here, and seeing that―despite its occasional violent detractions―there was a lot to learn to appreciate about Naighvada.

It was home for me, and I was going to do everything that I could to preserve it and make it better. None of that was the case for Starlight though and, at the end of the day, I couldn’t hold that against her. Nor should I entertain the hope that I might be able to make her ‘come around’ and change her mind. Now, so soon after losing her daughter―perhaps for good, I had to admit―was not the time to even try. If that time even ever did come, it would likely be too late to do our fight against Arginine’s stable any good.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I swallowed, nodding somberly. I turned around again to return to the room where Starlight was, pausing for a moment as I reached the door, “if you need anything, just ask,” the mare didn’t respond. I sighed, and returned to the shed.

Foxglove looked up from her workbench. I guess my expression told her most of what she’d have asked about how my talk with her went, “that bad, huh?”

I shrugged and walked back over to the couch, slumping back down onto the worn cushions, “she’s hurting. I can’t blame her for that,” I was silent for a moment, then, “she’ll probably be leaving us soon. She said she’s not going to help us out anymore, anyway. I don’t think she’s going to change her mind about that any time soon either.”

The violet unicorn frowned and sighed, “I was afraid of that,” which meant that we were now down two members of hour group in just a few days.

Hopefully some of our other efforts offered some encouraging news, “How’s the recruiting going?”

I couldn’t say that Foxglove’s grimace was particularly encouraging, “not well,” wonderful, “without the money we were hoping to get from selling what we hoped you’d find in that ‘weapons cache’, we can’t hope to approach any of the larger mercenary groups. There are still plenty of ponies around New Reino with guns who aren’t affiliated with professional groups who are looking to earn some drinking money though, so Ramparts is trying to at least recruit some of them.

“But it’s much slower going, because he’s having to vet ponies one or two at a time, as opposed to hiring dozens of seasoned pros in a go,” she paused, “he thinks it could take months to get the numbers we need.”

“We don’t have months,” I reminded her, to which she nodded her agreement. I buried my face in the cushion and stifled an aggravated groan. So much had been riding on our hope that the hangar had actually been a cash of valuable weapons. Yeah, true, what had actually been there was surely worth hundreds of thousands of caps in the long term if the right buyers could be found; but that was another one of those things that could take months to arrange. High-end mechanical parts and electronics were worth a lot of caps if they were in good condition, but only certain ponies bought that kind of stuff, and almost never in bulk.

Weapons, on the other hoof, were a fast-moving item, and were in high demand by everypony, everywhere! We could had turned a cache of good condition weapons into caps in days. Heck, we probably could have just traded them directly to the mercenary companies for trained ponies! As it was, that hangar was the next best thing to useless to us. In fact, with Moonbeam down for the count, it was now completely useless because we no longer even had a way to even use those combat drones to help us fight!

I stifled a second, louder, groan with the couch cushion. Then I took a deep breath and peeked my head up, “how bad is our money situation, anyway?”

“Bad enough that we couldn’t waste anything on an actual hotel to stay in,” the unicorn informed me. She gestured around at our surroundings, “this is Homily’s old place from when she used to live here. Since she’s made McMaren her new home, she’s letting us use it,” it was only then that I noticed the collection of pillows and cushions piled in a corner of the shed which had clearly been built up as a bed. One other that looked like a more recent construction was arranged nearby.

“I’m trying to help out by doing odd jobs for ponies that need things fixed up,” Foxglove pointed out several objects that were in various stages of reassembly, in addition to my Gale Force rig, “but it’s honestly barely enough to pay for food and stuff. Honestly, it’s Arginine who’s managing to really pull in the caps while we’re here.”

Okay, that caught me by surprise, “really? What, is he working as a doctor or something?” the stallion knew enough about ponies to make a pretty good one, in my opinion; and that was certainly a job that frequently carried a high cost for services, so he might be able to make a good living doing it. He’d certainly been a big help in McMaren, as I recalled.

“Something like that, I think. He said that he’s helping a group of ponies make instructional documentation.”

“Like books or something?”

“I guess,” the mare offered with a shrug, “he’s Arginine, so it’s hard to hold a real conversation with that stallion, but whatever he’s doing, it pays a couple hundred caps a night, and it’s not anything dangerous or illegal, so I don’t really care. We need money, and he’s a big help with that.”

It was hard to argue that point. I’d try and get some more details out of him later on, but it wasn’t hard to believe that Arginine had a lot to offer when it came to information. A stable pony with a proper education like him? There were probably all sorts of ponies who were willing to cough up a lot of caps to learn what he knew about a wide range of topics, even aside from his detailed knowledge of anatomy and such.

“Well, at least something’s going right,” I mumbled. Though, it was certainly only a small help. We were going to need a lot more than a couple hundred caps a day in order to get everything we needed for the fight that lay ahead of us. A fight that was fast approaching, if what Ramparts had told us before was any indication, “any additional word on what Arginine’s stable is up to?”

“Nothing concrete,” Foxglove said, “Homily keeps hearing about the increase in White Hoof sightings, but nopony is going into a lot of detail about whether they’re raiding groups or refugee groups. Ponies either turn and run at the first sight of them, or wipe them out without hesitation.

“We’re pretty sure that the group that we saw couldn’t have been a raiding party though,” she paused, “and, yeah, given what happened when we rescued you, I can think of a reason or two why groups with foals might be fleeing the area, but…”

It was too bad that we didn’t still have Jackboot around to ask about that. He’d have known better than anypony what exactly was likely to happen in the aftermath of a change in leadership. His sister had run him out of the tribe, sure, but nothing that he’d ever said about it―granted that wasn’t ever much―had suggested that he’d been just one of many who’d been expunged while the new chieftess consolidated her power base.

On the other hoof, his sister had still at least been a legitimate contender, having had the same father that he did. However, in Whiplash’s case, both she and her son had died; meaning that there hadn’t been any obvious heir. Unless the White Hooves were uncharacteristically more civil in their political discourse than they were regarding every other aspect of their lives was concerned, there had to have been some sort of struggle for power among the more powerful members of the tribe. If that struggle hadn’t been a violent one, I’d eat my Gale Force rig.

So, yeah, there was a lot to suggest that all we were seeing where the increase in sightings was concerned was the result of that struggle being resolved, and a lot of losers having to leave for their own good…

...but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that we couldn’t overlook the other reason the White Hooves might be moving out of the valley.

“Yeah. What does Arginine think about that theory?” He knew his stable better than any of us, after all.

“He acknowledges that the White Hooves were near the top of their list of targets when they started making moves on the surface,” she said, “but he was also pretty dismissive about the idea that they’d have let so many survivors escape.”

That was true. One of the hallmarks of the ponies from his stable up to this point had been that they tended to be terrifyingly thorough about wiping out their targets, and leaving nopony behind to tell the tale. They were well-organized, well equipped, and frighteningly well trained in what they did. The video feed of their assault on that other stable testified to those facts. My only saving grace had arguably been the fact that my flight presented them with a set of tactics that they didn’t have the training or experience to effectively counter upon an initial meeting.

Of course, this had also been back when they were trying to keep their existence a secret to avoid having the surface organize against them. I’d let that secret out of the bag by announcing it to the whole Wasteland during my interview with Homily. Maybe they weren’t as concerned with leaving no survivors as a result?

No, I frowned, shaking my head at the thought. Their goal was the complete and utter extermination of every pony that dwelled in the Wasteland. Whether they cared about ponies knowing they existed or not, they had a vested interest in leaving nopony alive after an attack anyway. Unless this was part of some sort of psychological tactic or something? Letting them spread fear, and getting us all to hold up in a few isolated places for safety so they could wipe us out with just a couple of attacks?

It was an idea, I suppose, but I wasn’t any sort of expert on large-scale campaign tactics, let alone whatever sort that his stable might choose to use, “I need to talk with Arginine. Any idea where he’d be at right now?”

“He went out to get a bite to eat before work just a little while ago. You can probably still catch him. He usually stops at a sandwich shop on the corner by Flash in the Pan.”

My gaze darted to a small gap between the walls of the shed and its ceiling, noting the darkness outside, “is it super early or something?”

“Actually, it’s a little past eight at night,” the unicorn smirked, “he works nights.”

“Huh. Alright,” I crawled off the couch and looked around for my stuff. Foxglove was kind enough to point out my saddlebags and help me strap them on, along with my compact .45 and its concealed holster. New Reino wasn’t a super dangerous place, not any more than Seaddle at least, but it still had its less-than-savory types, especially at night. I headed back towards the door leading out to the garage, which was the only way out of the building entirely, and paused to look back over at Foxglove, “want me to pick you up anything while I’m out?”

“Nah, Ramparts should be back in a couple hours. He usually brings by dinner before heading over to Yatima’s.”

That’s right, I’d sent the former Republic soldier’s...wife? Marefriend? Foal-mama? Whatever, I’d sent her here from Seaddle along with access to my personal savings that I had stashed away to help her get established. In hindsight, I guess it would have been a much better idea to hold onto those thirty-thousand caps so we’d have them to hire mercenaries. Of course, there was no way that she’d spent all of it, so I could certainly take back most of it.

That was something to talk to Ramparts about later, “alright. See you later then,” and with that, I slipped out into the garage, and made very awkward and quiet progress the rest of the way out of the building, pretending that I didn’t see Starlight singing another lullaby to her daughter’s mechanical body.

Once outside, I stood still and silent for several long seconds, taking in a deep, relaxing breath, as I looked out over the brightly illuminated jewel of fun and frivolity that was New Reino. Just from looking at the ponies milling around, even at this late hour, and listening to the sounds of activity, you’d never guess that there were any dangers on the horizon that threatened everything here. You’d never suspect that, just a few days travel north, an entire nation was imploding. For better or worse, ponies were going about their lives, and just enjoying themselves as much as the surrounding gaming establishments, bars, whore-houses―and their pocketbooks―would allow.

There was something refreshing about it. It was a reminder that life still yet existed in the valley; life that was full of enjoyment. I even felt a smile spread across my face as I trotted towards it all.

It’d been a long time―it honestly felt like years―since I’d been in this city; and my last visit had left more than a little bit to be desired, consisting of a barroom brawl, and impromptu assassination, and a suicide attempt. And despite the dark cloud of an invasion that may or may not have currently been underway, and our stymied efforts to combat it, this visit didn’t currently have anything in it that I could see lending itself to a repeat of those events.

My planned events for the evening were to have a chat with Arginine―my stomach’s timely rumble suggested I also make it a point to join him for a meal―and then maybe talk with Ramparts too so I could get a better idea of exactly how our recruitment efforts were going. After that, maybe I could even check in with a few of Jackboot’s old contacts to see what they might have that could help us out.

Crowded though the city might be, and as lively as it was even at this hour, Arginine’s signature coloration and bulk was a hard sight to miss as he sat at the roadside food stand, munching at what looked to be a Cram sandwich clutched in the golden glow of his telekinesis. I smiled and sauntered up, slipping onto the seat beside him, “howdy, stranger. Buy a girl a drink?”

The stallion paused in his chewing and glanced at me in silence. He then swallowed down the bite in his mouth and nodded his head, “your required time to recover from serious wounds is significantly above average. I have a theory that pegasi may have much higher metabolisms, which help to facilitate quicker healing. As you have deprived me of the opportunity to conduct a thorough physiological analysis, a definitive answer will never be reached.

“Though, you have consistently proven to be a singularly unique individual in other aspects as well.”

“You know, sometimes I think you’re only interested in me for my body,” I sighed, while languidly stretching out my wings, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know I have a great body; but sometimes a mare wants to know her stallion cares about what she thinks too,” I smirked, poking my tongue out at him.

“I have not been conservative with my praise of you tenacity and dedication in the past.”

I rolled my eyes, “good enough, I suppose,” then I leaned up and gave him a peck on the lips, “this time,” I warned. I made myself more comfortable on the seat and nudged him in his side with my elbow, “now buy me dinner. I’m hungry.”

“After two days of unconsciousness, I have little doubt of that. Mister Ham Hock,” he waved at the owner, “a serving of the day’s special and a Sparkle Cola, if you please; on my tab will be fine.”

“You have a tab?” I raised my brow at the stallion, genuinely intrigued.

“Mister Ham Hock’s establishment is conveniently situated on my route between Miss Homily’s former residence and where I have found employment,” the stallion said by way of an answer, “as the entirety my earnings are deposited with Mister Ramparts every morning for use in our recruitment efforts, I am left to purchase my evening meal on credit. I cover the debt in the morning with the pay I receive for my performance at work while stopping for my meal before retiring to bed.”

“Foxglove mentioned you found a job pulling in the caps,” I remarked. The proprietor already had my meal ready and served up―which I supposed didn’t take long when the ‘special’ was the contents of a can of Cram slapped between two pieces of barley bread―and I reached over to open up my drink, “something about making instructional stuff?”

“Indeed,” Arginine confirmed with a nod, “I was approached soon after our arrival with a proposition to participate in the creation of sensory media for general distribution.”

“‘Sensory media’?” I quirked a brow at the stallion.

He frowned, “I admit that I am largely unfamiliar with the devices―they were not present in our stable―but they are a product of unicorn magic that allows for the retention and viewing of memories and experiences?”

“Memory orbs? You’re making memory orbs?”

“That was the name ascribed to them, yes,” the stallion said, “a typical evening consists of a group of us performing various tasks, then our recollections of the activities are siphoned and placed in the memory orbs, which are then distributed to ponies who wish to learn to perform those tasks.”

“Huh. That...actually sounds like a really incredible idea,” while never having delved into a memory orb myself, I did know as much as any Wasteland denizen about how they worked in a general. The little glass spheres contained something like distilled memories of a pony, and they could essentially be ‘relived’ by another pony later. I’d never heard of them being used for academia, but the notion sounded like it had merit. Seeing a pony do something, or listening to a description of something was one thing, but to actually live through an activity? I figured that had to be the quickest way to learn any new skill, didn’t it?

“And they pay you that well for it?”

“I am still forming a comprehensive grasp of the economics of the Wasteland, so I will reserve an opinion on the objective quality of the pay that I receive for the investment of time and effort I am putting into my work,” he said, “but I am to understand that I am earning significantly more than Miss Foxglove for an equivalent number of hours invested.”

“Wow. Maybe we should see if they have some openings,” I suggested, now quite intrigued, “if all three of us worked there, maybe we could really solve our money troubles.”

Arginine paused to consider what I’d said, “I suppose that I can make an inquiry with my employer. Some of our material does involve group performances. If you would like, I can procure a sample for you or Miss Foxglove to view so that you can get a more accurate idea of what is typically involved. I have been informed that it isn’t for everypony.”

“That’s fair,” I nodded, before finally turning my attention to my sandwich. Yeah, it was just Cram and stale bread; but after two days without a meal, it was some of the best tasting Cram that I could remember eating. Much to even my own surprise, I found myself desiring a second helping when the first vanished far too quickly.

Determined to make the second portion last for a respectable amount of time, I resumed conversing with Arginine, “so, I also wanted to bounce some ideas off you about your stable,” I began, “if they were to make a move on the surface, how likely is it that they’d hit the White Hooves before anypony else in the valley?”

“I am obligated to remind you that I was not a part of my stable’s military component. As a result, I was not privy towards any specific information regarding their strategies and planning meetings. Anything that I would tell you in regards to answering this question would be purely speculative.”

“Yeah, well you still know your stable better than any of us, so speculate away.”

“Very well,” Arginine said, giving me a slight nod of his head, “in that case, given the intelligence about the White Hoof organization as being highly competent surface warriors, yes, they do represent what would be considered a 'high-priority target'. While their technical proficiency is rather low when compared to groups like the New Lunar Republic or the Steel Rangers, there is no denying their much higher aggression quotient.

“If it were my place to plan the invasion, I would elect to exterminate them first, before turning to the rest of the valley,” he finished.

I nodded my understanding even as I took a single bite of my sandwich and considered what he had said, “okay. So now let’s talk numbers. There are a lot of White Hooves,” not that anything like a genuine census had ever been done to get an exact count, but they were certainly one of the larger groups around. Even if you didn’t count their slave population, “how realistic would it be for your stable to be able to completely surround every White Hoof camp and get them all without any of them getting away?”

Arginine didn’t immediately answer this time. I glance aside at him, and saw that his features were drawn in genuine thought about my question. Finally, “I do not know our exact force count. However, my duties on the surface did require me to be aware of population sizes and locations for sites designated for sample collection.

“I am also familiar with my stable’s production capacity. If the extermination is indeed underway at this time, then I will admit that it is unlikely sufficient forces could be fielded to effectively surround and isolate every White Hoof population center that we knew about,” he admitted, “and there is also the possibility that a few elements existed that had not been known to our initial scouts; or whose positions had changed. Our findings were that some White Hoof groups were migratory.”

“Their raiding parties and warbands, yeah,” I agreed, “They’d move around a bit to keep the NLR from being able to organize against them while they were raiding settlements,” I took another bite and thought over what he’d just told me, “so, it is possible that some White Hooves could be escaping your stable’s attacks?”

“If they have accelerated their timetables as they were laid out when I was informed about them,” Arginine acknowledged, “then it is possible that they do not have the numbers required by the established invasion plans.”

“Alright. What would their next target be? I assume it’s Seaddle?”

“They were the next highest threat, yes. The New Lunar Republic was a much more significant threat than New Reino, as I understood it,” he thought for a moment, “I suspect that that reality has changed as the result of recent events, but I do not know if that will be accounted for in regards to the priority of targets. In order to maintain ignorance of our existence, our scouting missions have been small and infrequent. It is possible that my stable is largely unaware of the recent changes.”

“How long?”

“That I am unwilling to speculate on,” he said, shaking his head, “there are far too many variables to consider that I have no knowledge of. The best answer I can reasonably give you is: ‘when they have run out of White Hooves’.”

“Great,” I sighed, “so some time between tomorrow and next year,” I finished off my sandwich.

“I am skeptical that an entire year would be required to deal with the White Hooves, but I will agree that there is no way to construct a reliable timetable that would be of use to us. All that we can do is move as efficiently and effectively as possible and hope for the best.”

“Hope, huh?” I flashed the stallion a wan smile, “I don’t know if you’ve been paying a lot of attention recently, but we’re running pretty short on hope, RG.”

I pushed the empty plate away, and slumped forward, leaning my head upon my crossed forelimbs, “even if we had a whole year to prepare, we’ve run fresh out of options to fight your stable off with. The NLR imploded, the Rangers are all but wiped out thanks to yours truly, we don’t have anywhere near enough caps to hire the local mercenaries, and a thousand super-duper Old World Ministry of Awesome combat drones designed to win the Great War were just rendered useless because the one pony that could work them might have just died―also mostly my fault, by the way,” I buried my face in my hooves now, letting out an exasperated sigh, “I’ve run out of options, RG. There’s nothing left to do.”

Arginine was silent for a moment, then, “are you giving up?”

I let out a mirthless chuckle, “oh, you have no idea how much I want to, RG,” I admitted to the stallion. I couldn’t say whether or not I’d have said as much to any of the other ponies in our group―even Foxglove―but Arginine was different, “I mean, could you really blame me? You didn’t think we had a good chance of winning this fight even when we thought we could unite the whole valley against your stable.

“Well, it turns out that we can’t. As of two days ago, we officially lost every single option we had as a retaliatory force. We’re now down to the six of us―er, five, no, four―and whatever ponies actually bother to show up to Shady Saddles because of Homily’s broadcast.

“Care to be straight with me and give me your opinion on the odds of us actually beating you guys?”

The stallion was silent, not even looking in my direction.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” I stared glumly at my empty plate and the bottle of Sparkle Cola sitting next to it. Things were looking rather bleak right about now. We were genuinely out of options, and our doom was fast approaching. Did that mean that I was going to ‘give up’ though? Well, I suppose that the answer to that was a little more nuanced, “am I going to tuck tail and run? No. I can’t say that’s really my style, after all,” another deep, resigned, breath, then, “but, I am still kind of giving up on the idea of us having a chance.

“I’m going to Shady Saddles. I’m going to see how many ponies actually show up. Then...I’m going to march us all right to your stable…” I snorted, “and ‘hope’,” my lips spread in a wry grin, “if we’ve got any luck left, all of your ponies will be out slaughtering White Hooves, leaving the stable largely unguarded. Otherwise…”

I shrugged helplessly. Then I looked from the Sparkle Cola to the pony running the food stand, “hey, Ham Hokey! You serve anything stronger than Sparkle Cola here? I recently rediscovered a reason to drink again, and I’ve got a lot of sobriety to make up for!”

“That won’t necessary, Mister Ham Hock,” Arginine interjected, “we are done for the evening, and will be taking our leave. Thank you for the meals; I shall return in the morning for my usual, and to settle my account,” and with that, the much larger stallion began to not-so-subtly push me out of my seat and onto the road, earning an annoyed glare for his efforts.

“Hey, what gives?”

“Drunkenness ill-becomes you,” he said, gesturing for me to walk with him of my own accord, which I grudgingly did, despite still feeling like having that drink, “and it routinely leads to a marked drop in performance. I will acknowledge that circumstance have fallen short of expectations recently, but that is all the more reason for you to be operating at your best.

“So, I am going to make an effort to ‘lift your spirits’, but without the use of actual spirits.”

I sighed, “Arginine, I appreciate the thought, but what exactly do you think you could say or do to make me feel any bet―!”

My words were interrupted quite suddenly by the application of the large unicorn’s lips to my own. Though initially shocked by the unexpected kiss, I very quickly recovered and leaned into the embrace. When we finally parted, I glanced wryly up at the stallion, “...okay, I’ll admit that helped. A little. It doesn’t fix any of the stuff that’s gone wrong though.”

“That is not my intent. However, I would like to point out that a pony in a despondent state is less likely to come up with effective solutions to difficult problems.”

“So, what, we’re going to make out until I finally come up with a better plan?”

“That is a crude oversimplification, but not entirely inaccurate.”

I rubbed my chin, feigning a pensive expression, “I don’t know, it could take hours for me to come up with a new plan. Maybe even all night.”

“The quantity of the investment of time is not a factor that concerns me,” the stallion replied. I almost even missed the slight twitch at the corner of his lip that on any normal pony would have been an actual smile, “and I am dubious that you could have seen fit to make plans since waking up.”

“Don’t you have work tonight?”

“My employer will simply have to understand that I had other obligations which superseded my duties with him,” he stepped on ahead and looked back over his shoulder, “unless you would rather not?”

I grinned at the stallion and pranced up along side of him, “oh, I’m not complaining; lead on!”

So, yeah, spending a few hours making out with Arginine wasn’t going to have any great effect on our situation. But he was right that it was certainly going to make me feel a lot better! I couldn’t conceive of myself coming up with any amazing plans while lounging in the afterglow of a makeout session, given what I knew we had to work with, but I certainly wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity.

“Where are you taking us anyw―”

“Hey, big guy,” I found myself interrupted by a golden earth pony mare with an orange mane, who had slipped into view from somewhere off to the side. She wasn’t alone either, it seemed, as I also spied two other mares―a white unicorn and an chestnut earth pony―nearby who were also making eyes at the tall stallion next to me, “so...my friends and I were wondering if you were free tonight?”

There was a tiny little part in my brain that entertained a scenario where I drew the pistol tucked under my wing and put a new hole in all three of their collective heads, but I refrained from making that fantasy a reality.

...barely.

Fortunately, these three clearly had no idea who they were propositioning. Yeah, I had to―only under pain of death, and even then only grudgingly―admit that these three mares were a good looking bunch. I was sure that most other stallions would have jumped at their proposition, the risk of waking up with a missing organ be damned! However, my RG was not ‘most stallions’, so I simply stood back and tried not to look too smug as he responded.

“My apologies, madams, but I will be occupied this evening,” he inclined his head in my direction, and it appeared that the three other mares only now seemed to have even noticed my presence at all.

However, goldie there seemed to not be one who was so easily deterred. She covered her initial disappointment almost immediately and sidled up even closer to Arginine, very pointedly and none-too-gently nudging me out of the way, much to my rather vocal protest, “a stud like you doesn’t need to settle for one little filly when he can have three grown mares now, does he?” she leaned in and nuzzled him on the neck, whispering in his ear, “I bet she can’t even take what a stallion like you has got; but we can…”

Well darn. I was really looking forward to visiting New Reino without murdering anypony, but oh well!

Arginine responded as expected, however, before I even needed to lift my wing, “I am not ‘settling’, nor does the prospect of obtaining quantitative superiority particularly intrigue me at the moment. Now, as I have already stated: I will be occupied. Please stand aside, ladies,” he said, looking coolly between the three of them.

Looking properly dejected, the golden earth pony frowned and retreated back to her friends. Meanwhile, I extended my wings and daintily fluttered up to alight upon Arginine’s backside, making myself comfortable. I stuck out my tongue at the mares, while flicking them a particular pinion from one of my wings, “you heard the stallion: suck it, skanks! RG? Onward!” I used my hind hoof to deliver two playful taps to Arginine’s flank. The stallion nodded once more in deference to the mares and began walking away.

Though I did hear them whispering amongst themselves for a few more seconds before we left earshot, “I can’t believe he turned us down!” “Never meet your heroes, I guess…” “I don’t remember any of the mares being that young…”

I wasn’t paying them much attention though. Honestly, I was still kind of basking in the notion that Arginine, even when being so brazenly propositioned by three gorgeous mares, chose to stay with me! I mean, yeah, it wasn’t like he was as driven by his libido as most young stallions, but still. Then a thought occurred to me, “hey, um, RG?”

“Yes, Windfall?”

“You know that those three were offering to have sex with you, right?”

“That was my interpretations of their allusions, yes. Though it is reassuring to know that you drew the same conclusion from their circumspect propositioning as I had. I find myself frequently frustrated by how indirectly most ponies address certain topics.”

“Uh...yeah,” I nibbled on my lower lip for a few seconds as I thought about how I wanted to word my next question, “so...like, does that sort of thing happen a lot? Mares approaching you out of the blue, I mean.”

“I assume you are referring specifically to mares with which I am unfamiliar broaching conversation with me spontaneously for the purposes of casual intercourse?” he asked, craning his head around to look at me. I blinked in return, a dull ‘uhhh…’ escaping my slack jaw as I tried to parse out what he’d said. Arginine rolled his eyes, “no. Events like the one which just transpired are infrequent,” then he thought for a moment, “though they have begun to occur with narrower intervals over the past few days.

“My working theory is that it is a result of my habitual routine. I follow a nearly identical route and schedule from day to day. As a result, any mares who also have routines which take them into proximity with me are more likely to encounter me on a frequent basis. My understanding of social dynamics is that the anxiety of introducing oneself to a stranger is lessened with each subsequent encounter of that stranger over a period of time. Thus, it is only natural that, after having presumably seen me every evening for the last two weeks, mares who felt an instinctual attraction upon first sight of me have felt more emboldened to initiate contact upon realizing that they will be presented with numerous opportunities to engage with me in the future.

“Does that make sense?”

I uncrossed my eye and forced myself to nod, “...I assume so. And you’re never...tempted?”

“As I have stated to you in the past: I do not form romantic attachments to other ponies, nor do I possess what could be described as a ‘sex drive’. Sexual stimulation is physically gratifying, yes, but in much the same way that a soft mattress is. And the latter talks less about their former coital partners.

“In truth, those mares would have enjoyed a much greater chance of success in ‘tempting’ me by offering a hot shower with water that didn’t reek of lead and rust.”

That last comment managed to earn a genuine laugh from me, as well as put those lingering concerns of mine to rest. I mean, I was at least fairly confident about what Arginine’s answer would be, but...well, it was nice to have confirmation. After all, he was a good looking stallion who’d been in a city that was home to a lot of good looking mares―many of whom were professionally great at pleasing other ponies. I...couldn’t compete with them like that, and I knew it.

Perhaps it said some things about me that the only stallions that I could keep to myself were apparently an older stallion who would have risked being executed on the spot if he’d shone his bare back to another mare, and a stallion who had the carnal desires of a cabbage. I couldn’t honestly say that realization was doing a lot for my self confidence right about now. After all, one of my ambitions in life was to have a family someday. That wasn’t a fantasy that would become reality if I didn’t know how to keep a stallion’s interest.

Not unless I wanted to settle for tall, dark, and verbose over here, at least. But, thus far, he hadn’t shown himself to be the ‘family stallion’ sort; and not just because he had that whole notion of ‘all ponies on the surface are genetically inferior trash’ mentality going on.

“Fair enough,” I finally said aloud, pushing that train of thought from my mind. Ideal romantic partner or not, Arginine was honest enough that I at least didn’t have to worry about him feeding me a bunch of lines in order to dupe me into going to bed with him. There was something to be said for that, “so, where are we actually going?”

“Here,” he replied, coming to a stop.

I looked over in surprise, “the Flash in the Pan?” I said dumbly, looking up at the casino’s sign, “why here?”

“My employer saw fit to set me up with a room here so that I could conduct my work in peace.”

“Wait, you get paid a lot of money and you get a free room at one of the better casino-hotels in town? Seriously, you really need to hook the rest of us up with this gig of yours,” I dismounted and padded along at his side as the two of us strode in through the main doors. I’d been to this place quite a few times before in my life. It had been one of Jackboot’s preferred recreation spots, and was where I kept my savings―until I’d effectively bequeathed it to Yatima, anyway.

We wound our way around the gallivanting patrons and past the reception desk in the lobby, “Good evening, Mister Arginine, back for another―” I glanced over and spotted the casino’s main greeter, and part owner, Double Down, waving over at us. She jerked to a stop when she seemed to notice me at his side, her eyes growing wide with surprise, “Windfall?”

I suppose that it had been a while since she’d seen me. In all honesty, given that I’d sent a zebra mare running here about a month ago with the passphrase to get to my lockbox, she could be forgiven for assuming that I’d even died and had passed on my modest wealth to somepony in need. So, I flashed the mare a broad smile and gave her a friendly wave in return, “hey, Double-D! Long time, no see! We’ll catch up later, okay?” I then bolted up the stairs after Arginine.

“Wow, did she look surprised to see me,” I chuckled, “I wonder how many other ponies in the town will react like that to hearing I’m back?” It was then that I took notice of the fact that we’d actually ascended all of the way to the fourth floor of the casino’s hotel. The floor that maintained the more prestigious suites, and which had a price-tag to match. Arginine was standing in front of one of the doors, pulling out a key from his saddlebags with his telekinesis, “you’re joking.”

Arginine unlocked the door and then paused, looking over at me with a questioning expression, “I beg your pardon?”

“A High-Roller Suite? You’re put up in a High-Roller Suite?!”

“...yes?”

I blinked and shook my head, pushing my way into the room ahead of the stallion, “I have got to watch one of these spheres you’re making; sweet Celestia!”

I’d never―ever―set hoof in one of these suites before in my life. Yeah, sure, technically, I could have afforded to stay in one for a few nights every once in a while while I’d been working with Jackboot, but it would have cost me about every cap and bit I’d managed to squirrel away for that whole year! I’d never been brave enough to spend that much money all at once before.

Though, now seeing what I’d been missing out on, I started to understand why some ponies did. This place was less a hotel room, and more like a well-furnished apartment. There was a living room, dining room―with a full kitchen!―and a bedroom that was larger than the ‘apartment’ that Jackboot and I had shared in Seaddle for all those years. There was even―oh, Celestia, was it? Yes!―a bathroom―with a tub large enough to comfortably fit a hellhound!

“...I think I’m in love,” I said, slumping against the doorframe as I peered longingly at the porcelain swimming pool.

Arginine stepped past me and approached the tub. He stood before it, looked back at me, and I saw his lips quirk in that ‘smile’ of his, “the hot water talisman works, by the way,” then, by way of demonstration, his horn began to glow and one of the spigots began flowing with steaming water.

My rump dropped to the floor, “I’mma marry it.”

The stallion actually snorted at my comment, and then proceeded to turn on the spigot for the cold water and even the collective temperature to a level that was enticingly warm. I could hardly wait to get in when it was finally full enough, and just let the magically heated water soak into my coat, leaching away both the Wasteland grime, and the tension in my body. I let out a long, contented, sigh, and lay down upon my belly, nestling my head on my folded forelegs on the tub’s edge. My wings hung out to either side of my body, floating calmly upon the warm surface, “I live here now…”

I heard the water splish and splash as Arginine somehow gracefully slipped his own bulky body into the bath along with me. Something cool dribbled along my shoulders, eliciting an initial annoyed flinch, but then a pair of strong hooves began to work the shampoo into my fur, and my brief annoyance ebbed quickly away beneath the ministrations of the unicorn stallion in the form of moans of pleasure, “oof...I’mma marry you if you keep that up for much longer,” I said amidst a few grunts as his hooves encountered my knotted muscles and expertly ground them away in surprisingly tender fashion.

“That sounds suspiciously like a long-term commitment,” he noted in a detached tone as he continued to thoroughly work his way down my spine, “one which requires you to live through what could otherwise be considered a noble heroic sacrifice. Shall I assume, then, that you are in the midst of devising a battle plan which does not rely on you charging heedlessly into a stable full of genocidal ponies bred for the purpose of exterminating you?”

“Less talky; more rubby,” I sighed, waving my hoof at him dismissively. Though, in fairness, I was taking his words to heart. Yes, taking out the stable was the surest way we had of stopping their plans that I could see. It was the repository of all of the equipment that they needed to breed their ‘better’ race of ponies, and presumably where they also kept all of the knowledge that they’d gathered on how to go about doing that. One way or another, it had to be destroyed.

Leading a blind charge in there just to be able to say that I’d made an attempt before I died wasn’t going to cut it though. I needed to make that attempt really count. So what if a lot of ponies like the Steel Rangers and Ebony Song were selfish asshats who didn’t want to considered the ‘greater good’ that was everypony in the Wasteland? If I let myself fail without making a genuine effort, then I was dooming ponies like Summer Glade, Homily, and anypony else who was a good, decent, sort to death out of spite, in an effort to prove that I wasn’t an asshat.

I wasn’t that kind of mare. Or, at least, I didn’t want to be that kind of mare.

I was certainly the kind of mare who liked back rubs though, wow…

Arginine’s hooves ran slow, concentric, circles along my ribs and withers, to either side of my spine, and I felt myself audibly purr in response. Something tickled me behind my left ear just before I felt a burst of warm breath wash over the side of my neck. Before I could react, Arginine was nibbling gently along my nape. I sighed, craning my head to the right reflexively, giving the stallion greater access as he made his way down to my shoulder. My wings weren’t touching the water any longer, rivulets of water dripping down upon the surface.

My breathing was coming more heavily now, my mind racing to process everything that was happening, between the teeth gently nipping at my clavicle, and the fetlock rubbing along my inner thigh. This was starting to move a little bit beyond ‘making out’...

...and I was okay with that.

I tucked my wings and rolled suddenly beneath the stallion, bringing us muzzle-to-muzzle. There was a second or two of hesitation as I locked my eye with his. Arginine could be generously described as ‘dispassionate’ by most of the ponies who encountered him. His features were severe and stoic, his voice was low and a little gravely, and he sort of felt like he was looking through you when he spoke. However, I recognized him to be quite the opposite of dispassionate. In truth, he was a very passionate stallion. Just, in his own, Arginine way.

Most ponies didn’t put a lot of thought into what they did from moment to moment. Yeah, most ponies did things with a purpose, sure, but those reasons were very rarely critically reasoned out. Arginine was the kind of pony who thoroughly analyzed everything that he said and did, to ensure that it was the absolute ‘best’ course of action. He couldn’t not do that, because that was how he was raised from birth. His whole purpose in his stable had been to carefully examine and select the objectively ‘best’ parts of the subjects that were brought to him, no matter how minute the improvement.

He brought that same approach with him everywhere that he went, and put it into everything that he did. Arginine put more care and attention into every word he spoke, and every step that he made, than most ponies put into even the most important things in their lives!

If that wasn’t ‘passion’, then I didn’t know what was.

I saw that in his eyes right now: those synapses firing at the speed of sound, as he thought of all of the best possible ways to make me feel better, and to pull me out of the slump that the last few days had put me in. Because he wanted me to be the best pony that I could be too. Arginine was doing his best...for me.

My muzzle darted up, landing a kiss on his, and holding it there, as I drank in the taste of this stallion who was putting so much effort into trying to make me feel good. I knew that he felt physical pleasure, even if he didn’t have the energy left to waste outwardly showing it; and I felt him responding now, responding like I’d never known him to before.

It caught me off guard at first, when I felt his tongue brush up against my teeth, but that new sensation sent a tingle running through me that I needed to feel more of. I let my jaw slacken, and allowed him into my mouth. It was a warmth, a dampness, and a taste, that sparked something deep inside. I slipped my forelegs around the bag of the stallion’s neck and hugged him close. We were forced to part, with great reluctance, for brief gasps of air before once more reattaching ourselves to one another.

I gasped suddenly, breaking out latest embrace, as I felt his hoof brush up against my thigh once more, gently massaging itself between my nipples and nethers. Then it began to linger along my backside…

My whole body spasmed as he touched up against something the was startlingly sensitive. Startling in that he’d managed to find it himself. I’d known about it for a few years now. Water splashed over the edges of the tubs and spilled onto the floor as a result of my sudden jerk. The second time he found it, I was a bit more prepared, and merely chirped.

I put my fetlock in my mouth and bit down on it to keep myself from repeating the embarrassing sound aloud. The other option would have been to tell Arginine to stop doing what he was doing; but I didn’t want that, so I was left with alternating between gnawing on my hoof and gasping for breath. Then Arginine sent my brain into an overload by leaning in and resuming kissing me down the side of my neck again.

Before I knew what I was doing, my wings were wrapped around him, my face was buried into his shoulder, and I was panting heavily, mewling like a newborn brahmin calf. Finally, I managed to wrestle some amount of control away from my hormones and begin to process thoughts again, “wait!” I gasped. Much to the utter chagrin of most of my more base desires, the stallion I was latched onto complied and stopped what he was doing. I took a few more deep breaths, organizing my words, and said, “not here. Bedroom.”

“As you wish,” Arginine replied. He waited for a bit, then, “...are you going to let me go, or…?”

“Once my body stops shaking,” I murmured in response. Admittedly, it took long enough for me to finally bring myself to release the unicorn from my grasp that I was feeling a little embarrassed about it. I mean, he was a good looking stallion. In fact, he was literally the best looking stallion that was genetically possible; and that little primal part of my biology that was designed to get mares like me to seek out the healthiest stallions possible and make with the healthy foals was not subtle about pointing that out.

It had been really easy to overlook those aspects of him when he’d just been some mass-murdering bastard that I couldn’t wait to pass on to the proper authorities―if such a thing really existed in the Wasteland. However, that line had blurred a fair amount over the months. I guess that I hadn’t truly quite ‘forgiven’ him for what he’d been a part of for so long; but the fact that he was doing so much to help us put a stop to it certainly counted for a lot. Besides, if a White Hoof like Jackboot could change, then why not Arginine?

...I wonder if our foals would have blue or amber eyes?

I winced and shook my head, throwing the thought out. Easy, girl; stress relief is one thing, but let’s not let ourselves get carried away here! That at least managed to cool me off enough to let go of the stallion and slip out of the tub.

Arginine’s magic procured a pair of towels from a nearby shelf and they danced around us, gripped in his telekinetic field as they dried us off. His damp, slate gray, coat glistened in the light, highlighting his genetically perfectly toned physique; and I was suddenly once more batting away those thoughts of amber-eyed pegasus foals. A process which became a lot harder to continue doing as the stallion stepped nearer and began to nuzzle my cheek and neck. My eye closed as I leaned into him, feeling his silky-soft fur against mine.

“Oop!” I gasped as my hooves unexpectedly lost contact with the floor. Opening my eye again, I immediately noticed that I was wrapped in the golden glow of his magic, being cradled in front of him as we left the spacious bathroom and headed for the master bedroom and its waiting mattress.

Of all the ways that I’d ever woken up before, none of them had ever quite been like this! For one thing: I had apparently been smiling the whole while that I’d been asleep, and my lips were actually a little sore from it. Other parts of me were sore too, come to think of it, and I found myself not wanting to immediately move upon regaining consciousness. Though, it was really weird to be both stiff, and yet feel so incredibly good all over at the same time.

And sweaty. I also felt really sweaty. Indeed, most the the mattress and the sheets all felt damp with sweat and reeked of mine and Arginine’s musk. Not that I particularly minded, especially when I played back in my head everything that the two of us had been doing to get that lathered up in the first place. I chuckled to myself and let out a contented sigh at the memories. It had been like Arginine took the events of our first night together, and had found a way to extend them on for nearly two hours…

To include the sex part. I wasn’t sure how or when he’d figured out the trick there, but he’d managed to make that last a lot longer too; and this time it had felt amazing! I was no longer wondering what ponies found so great about it anymore; I’d figured it out. Or, rather, Arginine had figured it out.

“Good, stallion…” I murmured, smiling broadly. My hoof reached out across the bed to search him out, but when I couldn’t find any sign of his massive bulk where it should have been, I finally opened my eye and looked around. Much to my frustration, I was alone in the wide bed. Though I could still see the gnarled spot on the sheets where the unicorn had clearly been laying some time ago.

Then my ear twitched as I heard somepony stepping into the room. Arginine was rubbing himself down with a towel, his dripping mane and glistening coat testifying to the shower that he’d apparently just finished taking, “ah, good, you are awake,” he nodded at me as he stepped over to the bedside, “I apologize if this comes off as abrupt or rude, but I received a message from my employer earlier,” I perked up now, looking a little concerned, but the stallion waved off my trepidation, “he was understanding of my need to forgo my usual workload, but he has asked that I come in briefly this morning to review future projects.

“I agreed to his request. I trust that you do not have an objection?”

Truth be told, I was a little disappointed that the two of us wouldn’t be getting in a second go this morning―and maybe a third...but I could understand. As much fun as it had been, and as much I might have been tempted to, we all had bigger concerns than getting in another rut. Arginine’s job was what was keeping our recruiting efforts afloat. Our shenanigans last night had already cost us a few hundred caps in earnings; I couldn’t ask all of us to give up any more just because I wanted to get laid.

“Yeah,” I said with a resigned sigh, leaning up for a kiss, which Arginine seemed willing to oblige me with, “I suppose I can give you a pass this time,” I then flashed him a wry smile, “but we’re doing this again soon, understand?”

“As you wish,” he inclined his head slightly in agreement. Then he passed me his towel, “I left the bath full for your use. I will see you in a few hours,” and with that, he took his leave.

I let out a relaxed breath and lay back down on the mattress, rolling onto my backside. It was then that I cringed slightly as I felt the stiff and matted fur of my back rub against the sheets stiffly. While Arginine’s offered solution as to how we could have sex without risking a pregnancy had seemed like a good idea at the time, it had certainly come with a few drawbacks. I groaned and returned to my belly as I reluctantly extracted myself from the bed. My hind legs legs moved a little awkwardly at first as I adjusted to the sensation of muscles that had never ached before, and eventually I just settled for fluttering all the way to the bathroom.

True to his word, the tub was still filled with pleasantly warm water and a collection of soaps, shampoos, and even a few perfumes had been laid out for my use. My brow quirked as I wondered why a stallion would have had so many products whose packaging suggested that they were intended for use by mares, but I quickly dismissed the thought. A pony like Arginine was hardly the type to be concerned with what others thought of his preferences regarding soap scents; and besides, this was the Wasteland after all. I doubted that the casino had a wide selection to offer its guests anyway.

Not that I was complaining, mind you. It felt like it had been forever since I’d been able to pamper myself like this! It almost made me wish that I was in Shady Saddles with the money to spare for a day with French Tips. I let out a laugh as I thought about the veritable conniption fit that the mare would suffer if she saw me now. The little filly who’d used to visit her every few weeks for a mane styling and a hoof polish had certainly been through the ringer since my last visit.

Although, I should still see somepony about getting my mane trimmed anyway. It was starting to brush against my shoulders again. In not much longer, it’d start feeling uncomfortable under my helmet and whipping my ears while I flew.

Once I’d bathed and rinsed all of the sweat and, uh, stallion...stuff...out of my coat, I took my time exploring the suite. I didn’t have anywhere pressing to be, although I figured that I should eventually at least check in my Starlight to let her know I was still doing alright. I still needed to speak to Ramparts too, come to think of it. All of that could wait for at least a little while longer though. In the meantime, I’d never been in one of these sorts of rooms before; and I figured I’d get my fill while I was here.

It certainly had a lot to recommend it. The refrigerator worked, and was pretty well stocked with food and Sparkle Colas, of which I took one and popped the cap. The absurdly large quantity of chocolate syrup and whipped cream had been a little puzzling, but then again, these rooms were geared towards wealthy ponies and those sorts were known for being weird and eccentric anyway.

I continued to look around the suite, noting that most of what was in here didn’t really stand apart from what anypony tended to find in the wider Wasteland, if only in slightly better condition. The sofa and comfortable chairs of the living room all looked faded and well-used. There wasn’t as much water damage as one tended to see, but I spotted more than a few pretty serious stains where it looked like somepony had spilled something sticky on the leather cushions and not gotten around to cleaning it up.

The same went for the table and chairs in the dining room. Though those weren’t so much stained as they were badly scuffed up. Again, nothing that was highly unusual in itself. A couple of centuries of moving things onto and off of a wooden table was bound to leave a little wear and tear. Granted, a lot of those scuff marks made it look like somepony had been repeatedly grinding their hooves into the wood, which did seema little odd. What, did everypony who’d rented this room lean on that table with their forelegs or something?

I frowned upon entering the bedroom that we hadn’t used last night, noting the wide assortment of candles present. I suppose that it made sense to have a few around in case the casino’s generators went dead for some reason, but that was a lot of candles; and most of them looked like they were regularly used too. There was no way that the lights stopped working often enough to justify lighting them this frequently. Whoever it had been was also pretty messy about it too; I saw dribblers of wax all over the floor and most of the bed. When was the last time that a maid service had been through here anyway?

Arginine’s and my musky scent still hung heavy in the master bedroom, faintly rekindling a few thoughts and memories from last night. Aside from the twisted sweaty sheets and a pillow or two that had been knocked to the floor, this room actually looked pretty well taken care of. Though those sheets could certainly do with a wash now. Out of curiosity, I set about looking for any spare changes of linen that might have been left in the room. At any other hotel in the Wasteland, I wouldn’t have wasted my time; but this was the sort of suite used by the rich and fastidious, so I suspected that there was a possibility.

My search of the closet did, in fact, reveal the presence of a couple of additional sheets that looked remarkably serviceable. Although, my attention was quickly drawn away from them to something that was a little more noteworthy: the clothing. At least, I mean, it was nominally ‘clothing’. Most of it wasn’t anything that I’d have chosen to wear in public, but there was no accounting for the taste of some ponies. I had my doubts about some of it though.

The yellow and pink uniform of an Old World nurse was of particular note. And not just because it looked like it was missing quite a lot of material that I was sure those uniforms had. Admittedly, I’d never given the uniforms a particularly thorough examination when I came across them in Wasteland ruins, so maybe I was mistaken. In any case, I thought it was a little weird to find one hanging here. Then again, I guess that yellow and pink were perfectly fine colors for a mare to wear if she wanted to have something stylish. I wasn’t sure about the black and white maid outfit though. There was no way that was meant for casual attire, was there?

My gaze fell onto the next article, which was a saddle and bridle composed of satin and sheer lace. Okay, yeah, I at least had a good idea of what that was used for, I thought, feeling myself blush slightly as I briefly pictured myself wearing the ensemble. It’s not like that sort of thing would have gotten a rise out of Arginine anway―

...Wait, was that barding? I drew out the last set of garments, which looked to be made out of supple black leather and steel studs. I frowned as I felt how malleable and thin most of the outfit was, leaving me a little dubious about the amount of protection that it could have offered. The leggings at least seemed sturdy enough though. With a little shrug, I figured that there was little harm in trying the barding on just to get an idea for how it fit. I certainly didn’t have any plans on swapping out my current barding for this thing, but it might give me an idea or two for alterations to recommend to Foxglove.

I’d certainly never worn legwear that went this high up, that’s for sure! The fit was snug enough around my legs that I was pretty sure their height was not merely a consequence of my small stature, they were just generally pretty tall, brushing up against my flanks and armpits. Still, I had to admit that I was enjoying the support that they offered to my fetlocks and joints.

The torso protection was certainly marginal, at best. The black leather conformed to my torso snugly enough―maybe even a little too snug, as it was pushing my teets down and fluffing them up a bit―that it wouldn’t interfere with my wing strokes while flying. The chest ‘protector’ wasn’t much to look at though: a steel ring joining four studded leather straps together. And the less said about the headgear, the better. It was just a black leather cap that reminded me of the old hats I saw in Old World police stations, just without the badge, and with a lot more steel studs which I was positive at this point were just a fashion statement and not meant to augment protection.

I wasn’t sure why it included a riding crop either. All hitting anypony with that was going to do was sting their rump a little bit. What was the point of that? So, yeah, aside from the boots, it seemed like a pretty dumb get-up to me. Although, I had to admit while admiring myself in a mirror, I wasn’t entirely hating the look of me in black leather…

Ah, well, it was time to stop exploring and start actually working. I’d track down Ramparts, find out where our recruiting efforts stood, and then discuss the best ways that I could help the others out; be it scouting out promising recruits, or get a job working with Arginine to bring in more caps. So I replaced the ‘barding’ and left the room.

Early morning―or extremely late at night, depending on how you viewed three o’clock―was when the casinos of New Reino began to finally quiet down again after a rowdy night. Most of the patrons were sleeping off their fun from the previous night, or freshening themselves up so that they could head into work and earn more of the money that they’d need to blow at the gaming tables that night. As I stepped out into the Flash in the Pan’s lobby, I noticed Double Down wiping off her desk as she awaited her relief so that she could retire to her own bed. Remembering how I’d intended to touch base with her, I floated over to the mare and grinned, “g’morning, Double-D! It’s been a while. How’ve things been?”

The mare look over in surprise, but her expression soon melted into a pleasant smile as she recognized me, “Windfall! It has been a long time, I suppose. I trust that you enjoyed your evening with Mister Arginine?”

I felt my cheeks warm a little as I sheepishly rubbed the back of my head, “uh, yeah, you could say that.”

The mare favored me with a wry expression, “I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type to go for a stallion like that.”

“I know he can be a bit...rough at first; but you get used to it.”

Double Down cleared her throat, “so I’ve heard. I guess we all like what we like; not my place to judge. Just...surprised is all,” I frowned at the mare, but before I could ask what she meant by that, she changed the subject, “anyway, when you see your father, can you let him know that I have something to discuss with him?”

I blinked at the mare in confusion for several long seconds, my earlier questions vanishing from my mind, “who?”

“Uh, your father? Jackboot? I assume he came to town with you.”

“Oh. Right. He…” I swallowed. Even after all this time, that wound apparently hadn’t quite healed up as much as I’d have liked, “he died. Saving me from the White Hooves.”

“Oh. I’m sorry; I didn’t know,” the receptionist said. She even looked genuinely concerned for me, which I appreciated. By the nature of his past, and the risks that it brought when interacting with the residents of the Neighvada Valley, it made sense to me now why Jackboot had tended to keep all of our contacts at hoof-length. I’m not sure that it was even fair to say that he had any genuine ‘friends’ among the ponies that we worked with. I’d never felt quite so reserved, true, but I couldn’t say that I felt particularly close to anypony that I’d met before Foxglove either.

Even Double Down fell into the ‘business associate’ category in my head. Even if we weren’t close though, it was nice to hear somepony expressing real sympathy on Jackboot’s behalf.

“It’s fine―I mean, it’s not, but...you know what I mean,” I offered a meek shrug, “so, what did you need to talk with him about?”

The mare bit her lip, “well, if he’s dead, then what I was going to talk about doesn’t really matter anymore. Although...since he is dead…” she hesitated, rubbing the back of her head in uncertainty, “I mean, I don’t want to come off as callous or anything, but you and I do need to talk about his...account.”

I blinked at the mare for another second or to. Then a mirthless little snort escaped my nose. Unbelievable, “he left an unpaid tab? Really?”

“What?” the mare balked in surprise, “oh, no! Actually, it’s kind of the opposite. He’s had a lockbox reserved here for years,” Double Down stepped away from the counter briefly and returned with a few sheets of paper that I recognized as lockbox lease agreements and invoices. As I maintained one with The Flash in the Pan too, I was familiar with them. The mare examined one of the sheets more closely for a brief moment before pushing it towards me, “with his death, all of the contents revert to you,” she cleared her throat, “I know this is probably the shittiest way you’d want to get it, but…”

“No, I understand,” I said, not really looking at anything that was written on the sheet of paper. It wasn’t a surprise to me that Jackboot would have made me his beneficiary. I’d made him mine, after all. It occurred to me right now that I’d have to change that though. I’d probably set it up so that everything went to Foxglove if anything happened to me now. Or maybe Homily, so that she could try and do some good with McMaren, “I guess...just fold everything into mine?”

“Um, sure, I can do that,” the mare nodded, “do you want me to continue with the investments?”

“The what?”

“The investments,” the earth pony repeated, drawing my attention to another sheet of paper, “your father left standing orders on how to handle the funds he left in there,” apparently she finally saw the look of incomprehension on my face and smiled politely, “I guess you were pretty young when he set all of it up.

“We don’t just look after the money and stuff you give us for safekeeping here. Most of the casinos are willing to invest your funds for you in merchant enterprises, shops, and in loans. In exchange for letting us do this, we waive the lockbox fee, and you keep ninety percent of the earnings.

“Jackboot has had us investing his caps according to his instructions for almost a decade. Here’s the earnings reports and balance sheets,” she slid more papers towards me, “like I said: we can keep doing things his way if you want. Or you can change things around―”

“Two hundred thousand?!” I blurted. My eyes scanned the balance once more, in case I’d missed a decimal point or three. However, it became clear that I’d read the amount correctly, “he has two hundred thousand caps here? How’d he manage that?!”

Double Down pointedly cleared her throat again, drawing my attention to the few passing patrons yet remaining in the casino who’d had their attention drawn in our direction by my outburst. I flushed and made it a point to lower my voice from here on out, “if you’ll look over the records, you’ll see that he’d been making regular deposits; and his investments have been paying some modest dividends. Jackboot is a part owner in three casinos in New Reino―a small part, to be sure, but all the stakeholders receive a proportional share of the profits.

“Over time, those shares build up,” she finished.

Looking over the balance sheets she’d passed me, I could see what she meant now. The deposits made by Jackboot himself amounted to somewhere between five hundred and a thousand caps every month―the earnings from our trips around Neighvada after we’d paid for food and ammunition and such. But, in between those deposits were additional weekly payments from this casino and two others that I recognized. Those amounts started out pretty small―a couple dozen caps. But the more recent entries were in the hundreds, every week.

It left me speechless. An income like this...most ponies could live a pretty comfortable life on what was being deposited into Jackboot’s account on a regular basis. What was even more surprising was that it apparently didn’t even require him around to be doing anything. His account here had grown by almost two thousand caps since he’d died! If he’d lived another decade, making the deposits he had been, I estimated that he’d have nearly half a million caps, with weekly payouts in the thousands. He’d have been living like one of New Reino’s casino barons!

...And now it was all mine.

Just over two hundred thousand caps had just become mine.

“...I can have my army,” I muttered as the thought finally clicked in my head. My lips spread into a grin and I looked up at Double Down, “I can hire my army!”

“Um, sure?” the mare offered in an uncertain tone, “I mean, those caps aren’t physically in the lockbox right this moment, just so you know. They’re invested with the casinos, but if you want me to I can have them bought out in the next couple of days...if you’re sure you want to do that…”

I opened my mouth to reply, but then shut it almost immediately. The conversation with Foxglove was still pretty fresh in my mind: the casino barons were already hiring most of the mercenary bands in the valley. Nearly a quarter of a million caps was a lot of money, sure, but it was a couple zeros shy of what those ponies could bring to the table. Having this cash might not solve all of our problems like I hoped. It was certainly going to be a huge help though. I’d want to talk with Ramparts about how we could best use it to get our hooves on decent fighters.

“How many caps are in there right now?” I asked, glancing over the invoice to try to find the number myself.

“Jackboot insisted that twenty thousand be kept as liquid capital for quick access,” the earth pony informed me.

“Give me half of that,” I’d bring the money to Ramparts and let him see how far he could make that amount go, then we’d have an idea of how much the rest of it would get us. I’d also have him or Foxglove get in contact with Homily to see if she knew any ways to make good use of some of the money. I had a feeling that setting up an expedition to get the drone hangar and McMaren’s control room working together again was going to take at least some financial backing. She might even have the contacts to make sure a shipment of weapons could meet us in Shady Saddles, “then keep doing whatever it was that Jackboot was having you do with the rest.”

“Okay,” the mare shrugged. She collected the papers and headed into the back, where the entrance to the casino’s basement―and its secure vault―was located. She returned a couple of minutes later with ten tightly wrapped logs of caps, “if it’s no trouble, try to lose it all at our casino, alright?” Double Down chuckled, flashing a wink at me.

“No promises, but it’ll all be going to a good cause, trust me!” I said just before I darted outside. This was outstanding! First I get to have the best sex of my life, and then Jackboot turns out to maybe have accidentally saved the whole Wasteland for me! I brought up my pipbuck and cued in Ramparts’ tag. Even if I was going to be waking him up, he’d have to admit that the news I had was worth spreading immediately.

“Hey, Ramps! Where you at? I’ve got some good news!”

“...Windfall?” the stallion’s response came back after a couple of seconds. So, at least he was awake, “Foxglove mentioned you were up and about again. How are you feeling?”

“A lot better than I was a day ago,” I hovered in the air just above the bustle of the town’s sparse early morning pedestrian traffic, “we need to talk. Where can I meet you?”

“I’ve got a booth at Moonshiner’s Bar and Grill. I’ve been using it as a sort of ‘office’. I’ve pretty much finished all the interviews I’m likely to have tonight, so we can talk there. Or I can come back to the garage if it’s something that needs privacy…”

“No, the bar’s fine. I know where it is,” a lot of years of drinking had familiarized me with most of the better known establishments in the settlement; and drinking with Jackboot had introduced me to the lower-key ones as well. The place that Ramparts had picked was seedy enough that it left me with a good idea of the sorts of ‘applicants’ we’d been reduced to recruiting. Frankly, those ponies were probably just one notch about outright raiders. Hopefully, our newfound affluence would allow us to raise our standards a good bit.

I twirled around and started winging my way in the direction of the place that Ramparts had named, “be there in a sec. Windfall, out!”

A few ponies cast curious glances skyward, just missing the white and teal blur that buzzed overhead. In only a handful of breaths, I found myself touching down just outside Moonshiner’s. Just as my hoof was about to open the door though, I hesitated. Visions of how my last visit to a bar in New Reino had ended flashed through my mind, souring my previously optimistic mood. That had been a different me though. There wouldn’t be any bar fights today.

With a deep breath, I entered, and was immediately pummeled with a hundred different memories and impulses, all triggered by the atmosphere within. Alcohol, cigar smoke, rancid food, and the stench of unwashed ponies all assailed my senses. My first impulse, even now, was to walk right up to the bar and request a bottle of Wild Pegasus. I fought that impulse though. Drinking wasn’t what had brought me here today. Maybe there’d be time for a few celebratory rounds with the others later, but for right now, it’d have to wait.

Instead, I scanned the walls around the edge of the main room. The brown earth pony stallion waiving in my direction was easy to spot and I trotted over to him. Ramparts looked me over as I took my seat and smiled approvingly, “you must be part rubber, the way you keep managing to bounce back like this.”

I flashed a smile at my friend, “nope; just your typical stubborn bitch who doesn’t like to be told what to do. And that includes staying in bed to get her rest.”

“Fair enough. So, what’d you need to talk about so urgently?”

“I wanted to get an idea of how the recruitment’s going. Foxglove gave me the short version earlier, but I wanted to get the whole picture from you too.”

Ramparts was already nodding his understanding, “well, you must already know our money situation, and I’m sure Foxy told you about how the hiring binge that the casino barons have been on recently isn’t making things any easier for us,” he noticed my slight frown, “so, yeah, things are going pretty slow,” the stallion pulled out a slip of paper and slid it across the table towards me, “here’s a list of what I’ve gotten us so far, and how much it’ll end up costing.

“Just so you know: I can’t say I have a lot of optimism,” he continued as I took the paper and gave it a look over, “none of the ponies who’ve signed on are genuine ‘veterans’ or anything like that. Most of them are little more than thugs who are looking for a reason to get out of New Reino now that a lot of mercenaries are showing up. They think it’s the barons doing some huge crackdown on crime or something.

“I’m also having to sell this whole thing to them as a ‘prospecting mission’ to a recently discovered stable near White Hoof territory in order to get them signing on. None of these ponies are very interested in ‘fighting to defend the valley’ and all that. With a stable raid, I can promise them the chance that there’ll be valuable salvage for everypony to split.”

“How’s that?” I looked up at the stallion, frowning more deeply now, “hasn’t Homily been blasting the situation across the valley with her radio tower? These ponies have to at least be smart enough to know that it’s not going to help them if we’re all slaughtered to to a mare. I’m not expecting everypony to join up and fight for free, I guess; but I at least figured they’d have gotten enough of an idea from broadcasts that it’s in their best interests to help out even a little.”

Ramparts nodded, but his own features were drawn in tight lines as well, “yeah, but that only matters if ponies are actually listening to those broadcasts; and the truth is that most aren’t. Not really.

“Ponies in the Neighvada Valley have been living under the ‘imminent threat’ of White Hoof raids all their lives. As far as they’re concerned, Arginine’s stable is another group just like the tribals: they’ll attack ponies who get too close, but merc groups hired by the barons and Republic soldiers will keep anything really bad from actually happening anywhere important,” he grunted, “which is mostly true, since it’s not looking like the casino barons are planning to actually do anything with the ponies they’re hiring. They’re just bolstering New Reino’s defenses ‘in case’ those stable ponies come here after all.”

“That’s stupid,” I growled, “those stable ponies are nothing like the White Hooves!”

“I know that, and you know that; because we’ve seen it. But, short of that, how is anypony else supposed to understand what’s at stake? Because, the fact is, most ponies don’t understand. What Arginine’s stable is trying to do...it’s not something that ponies know how to handle.

“The White Hooves and raider groups attack ponies because they want supplies, weapons, and slaves. Ponies can understand that, because that’s just a very extreme version of: ‘ponies wanting things’. Everypony wants things. Food, booze, a comfortable place to sleep; things. Ponies like that are even easy to stop, because you can either bribe them with different things, or kill enough of them that they stop thinking the cost is worth what they’ll loot.

“But Arginine’s stable just wants to kill everypony. They don’t care about loot, and I get the impression they’re not too concerned with how many of their own will die in the process either. There’s no way to negotiate with that, and it’s not enough to just put on an intimidating display to make them back down either. It’s less like they’re a group of ponies, and more like they’re some sort of force of nature; like a sandstorm or something.

Of course, you can’t fight a sandstorm with guns and bullets, and everypony knows that too. All you can do is hunker down and wait for it to blow over.

“That’s what most ponies seem to want to do about that stable: if they can’t be bought off like normal raiders, then they’ll just wait for it to blow over.”

“Everypony will be dead if we let that happen!”

Ramparts waived his hoof uselessly at the rest of the bar, sighing, “hey, if you want to try to convince everypony that―even though ponies survived the literal end of the world―and have endured centuries of near-constant raiding and plundering, that one little stable is finally going to be what does them in, then be my guest,” I grunted, but slumped back into my seat. The stallion had a point, which was honestly what made it all the more frustrating.

Seeing that I wasn’t going to take him up on his offer, the former courser sighed, “look, I get why you’re frustrated. I feel the same way. But, the fact is that most ponies don’t believe how big the threat is because they’ve never imagined a threat like it before. So, until those stable ponies actually show up in the valley and exterminate a town or two, we have to settle for them thinking they’re not a huge deal, and finding ways to motivate ponies to help us out.”

That certainly wasn’t an appealing though. I certainly didn’t have to explain to Ramparts that if things got to that point, it was probably too late already, “so what exactly are you telling ponies to get them to sign on?”

“More of the truth than you’d think,” he offered with a shrug, “I’m telling them that there’s a group of stable ponies causing trouble out west. I’m telling them that these ponies are well armed and that there’s a lot of them,” though there were certainly a lot of details missing, I had to admit that his account was a broadly accurate assessment of our target, “I’m assuring them that the expedition won’t head out until we’re confident that we have the firepower to overwhelm them, and that everypony who survives gets a full share of the salvage.”

I looked back at the paper, “and this is all you can get with that sales pitch?” the list only had a couple dozen names on it at the moment. Hardly enough ponies to send up against the likes of Arginine’s stable. Ramparts’ offer of salvage rights on top of their pay should have been a big draw. The stable in question was obviously still operational, which meant that the equipment inside was most likely in good condition, which would give it a much better price on the open market when compared with the inert scrap most prospectors recovered from deserted stables in the valley.

The earth ponies grimaced, “the list of the ponies who even bothered to apply isn’t much longer,” he grumbled, “like I said, most of the ponies looking for work like this are already being snapped up by the casinos. We’re basically just getting their rejects.”

“So, it’s not actually a lack of interest, it’s a pricing issue,” I concluded, rubbing my chin as I looked at the list again. Ramparts had included a brief summary of the gear that the ponies were bringing, and most of it left a lot to be desired. Small caliber pistols and light to no barding more often than not. Nopony with the sort of firepower to be relied upon to go up against the firepower I’d seen Arginine’s stable packing.

“A little of both,” Ramparts shrugged, “but a bigger up front offer would certainly spark more interest. Professional ponies aren’t in the habit of taking gambles for what could turn out to be marginal pay. Knowing that they’ll get enough caps to keep them living as comfortably as they’ve grown accustomed to will persuade them to sign on; with the salvage becoming more of a ‘performance bonus’ than anything else,” he agreed, “but with your last expedition a bust, we’ve been having to make do with whatever Arginine can bring in with that teaching gig of...his…” the stallion’s words began to trail off as I started depositing bags of caps on the table. When all ten thousand were neatly arranged in front of him, Ramparts blinked in stunned surprise, looking up from the small fortune into my broad smile.

“Where’d you get this?”

“It’s my inheritance, apparently,” I replied, “and there’s twenty times more where that came from. Turns out that Jackboot was a very shrewd pony where money was concerned.”

“Twenty times…?” Ramparts looked into one of the bags. He then slipped it into his saddlebag, looking down at his pipbuck as he did so. His jaw went slack and he turned back to look at me. I stared back, bobbing my brow suggestively. I then took out the copy of the ledger that Double Down had provided to me for my new account and passed it to the courser. He looked at the paper and let out a long whistle.

“How many ponies do you think we can get with that?”

Ramparts wasn’t able to give me any hard figures, of course. But, he was optimistic that he could wrangle up somewhere just north of five hundred ponies, if given enough time to reach out. He didn’t know exactly how long ‘enough time’ would be, however, but that only dampened my own optimism just slightly. After having the best sex of my life, and solving our money troubles in just a few hours, I wasn’t about to let this sudden shift in fortune be tarnished by little details like the logistics of finding enough mercenaries to fill the ranks of our soon-to-be army.

I simply left the earth pony stallion to sort out the details as he went out to put a few last minute buzzes into the ears of the right ponies to ensure that he’d have more applicants that evening. In the meantime, I returned to Homily’s former home in order to let Foxglove in on the good news. Wouldn’t she be surprised!

My hooves touched down just outside the double-doors of the garage and I pulled one of them open. A massive steel head turned to face me, a pair of brilliant pink eyes flashing in my direction while a projected face spread wide in a grin.

“Well, look who’s back! Where’ve you been, Windfall?”

“I―bu―ho―” a lot of questions collided into one another in my mouth as both my brain and my jaw worked feverishly to try and organize them into coherent sentences. In the end, however, I was forced to settle for an incredulous, “but you died!” which, admittedly, wasn’t the most dignified of declarations.

The robopony’s grin broadened even further, stretching to impossible proportions with the benefit of her artificially projected features and she shrugged, “I got better.”

My gaze shot immediately to the pair of unicorn mares standing beside the alloyed alicorn. Starlight’s puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks suggested that she’d undergone a renewed boudt of crying―this time presumably out of profound relief and joy―while the violet mechanic was looking the smuggest that I’d ever seen her. Once more articulating my profound conversational acumen, I jabbed a hoof at Moonbeam while glaring at Foxglove, “explain!”

She had herself a good laugh at my expense first, which I suppose had been well earned, but then waived me over and gestured at the terminal that I’d seen hooked up to a previously inactive Moonbeam when I’d left last night, “I can’t take all the credit. Homily and her team helped out a lot, but you had a hoof to play in it as well.”

“Me?” why did I sound like I’d just been accused of committing a heinous crime? Moonbeam was up and moving around again, this was great news! What did it matter how it happened?

I suppose that it mattered to Foxglove a great bit, actually, because she launched into a liberal explanation that I genuinely did do my best to follow―but a lot of it was just me nodding along and thinking very hard about looking like I understood what she was saying, “well, you and that virus you found in the hangar,” the violet unicorn corrected.

“But you said it would have done really bad things to her,” I pointed out. Though, I couldn’t imagine that Moonbeam would have been any worse off than she had been a few hours ago no matter what had been done to her.

“The way that code was written? Oh yeah! She’d have been little more than one of those typical malfunctioning roboponies, killing everything in sight as ‘enemies of Equestria!’ and all that,” somehow, that didn’t help to provide any clarification. Seeming to sense this, Foxglove endeavored to catch me up on what they been up to in the garage while I’d been with Arginine.

“But all of that code provided Homily and I with all sorts of insight into what made Moonbeam’s electronic systems and her AI function. Using it as a base, we went ahead and basically swapped all of the variables around to make it essentially do the opposite of what it was designed to do.”

“Howsat?”

“The original worm was designed to give Selene full run of Moonbeam’s brain. We reversed it so that now, Moonbeam is the one in the driver’s seat,” she beamed at me.

“Selene’s gone?”

“No,” this time it was Moonbeam who spoke up, drawing my gaze to the towering robopony, “but she’s in a pretty major timeout.”

“Unfortunately,” Foxglove cut in again, “Selene also controls the base code that lets the mechanical parts of Moonbeam’s brain do what they need to do in order for her organic parts to function. With enough time and effort, it could hypothetically be possible to reverse-engineer a wholly separate program that will be able to do that job,” however, she didn’t sound super confident about that, “but, until then, this should work just fine.”

“So, like, can Selene take over like she did before, or…?” it was great that Moonbeam was all better, don’t get me wrong; but if she could turn on us again at any given moment…

“Nope, she’s locked up good this time!” the robopony assured me.

Foxglove provide the elaboration, “the AI is partitioned off. It’s like computer ‘jail’, and there’s nothing she can do about it from in there. Selene isn’t even receiving any more input. There’s no chance of her being able to take over again. Like we said,” she glanced over at the alicorn, “Moonbeam is the one in complete control now, from here on out.”

Finally, Starlight glimmer broke her silence and entered into the conversation, “I…” she bit her lip and swallowed, “I know I said some things that weren’t kind earlier―”

“It’s alright,” I insisted, and I meant it too, “you were hurting. I understand,” I favored the mare with a smile to show her that there weren’t any hard feelings between us. I knew better than most how easy it was for somepony to stop thinking clearly when they lost somepony important to them suddenly like that, “and I still wish you guys well, wherever it is you decide to go.”

“Uh, I believe you said we were all rallying in Shady Saddles, right?” the metal mare said. Sensing my surprise, Moonbeam elaborated, “look, I’ve spent most of my conscious life in this valley. Yeah, I’ll admit that I can think of a few unpleasant things that I’d like to see happen to ponies like Ebony Song, but I’ve been watching over the ponies of Seaddle for over a decade.

“They don’t deserve what Arginine’s stable has planned for them,” her pink eyes shifted down to her mother, who was now looking somewhat reluctant to meet her gaze, “and I’m not going anywhere until I know they’re safe.”

I got the impression that there was a lot that had been said during a discussion that I’d not been present for, and I could imagine that there might be a rehashing of parts of it between the mother-daughter pair at various points in the future. For the moment, though, it seemed that Starlight was willing to acquiesce to her daughter’s demands and nodded her own assent, “we’re staying,” she confirmed, “for now,” that last bit earned an eyeroll from the alicron, but no additional comment.

This day was just getting better and better! Finally, everything was falling into place! “Fantastic!” I gushed, “oh, and guess what? I’m rich!” this earned me a few dubious looks, “I mean, Jackboot was rich, but now I am!” I whipped out the balance sheet and passed it to Foxglove, who took it in her emerald telekinesis to review for herself, “two hundred thousand caps!

“We can hire all the mercenaries we need!” Starlight and Moonbeam both craned their heads to glance down at the paper that the mechanic was reading, and all three sets of eyes grew noticeably wider upon confirming my claims, “I’ve already told Ramparts. He’s coming up with our new recruiting strategy for tonight,” we’d be getting our army to fight those stable ponies, Moonbeam was all better, she and Starlight weren’t leaving after all.

Could this day get any better?

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I turned around to see that the stallions had finally returned. Ramparts was looking properly surprised to see that Moonbeam was back up and about. Arginine’s expression was as stoic as ever, appearing as though he was merely acknowledging that the robopony had moved from lying on the ground to now standing erect, “I was looking everywhere for this,” the brown stallion stepped forward and picked up a tiny piece of equipment. Then he glance up and seemed to only then notice Moonbeam, “oh, and you’re all better too. Neat,” then his lips broke out into a smile and he hoof-bumped the robopony, “I guess even the mares in this group made out of metal are part rubber,” he chided, looking over in my direction.

Arginine stepped over to me, where I immediately leaned in for an affectionate nuzzle, “Mister Ramparts informed me of our recent windfall―” he stopped abruptly and blinked, looking almost outwardly flustered at his unintentional pun. He audibly cleared his throat and quickly schooled his features, “er...your endowment,” he cast a glance over at a snickering Foxglove, “so, I imagine that my vocation is no longer necessary; nor was your expressed interest in it?”

I shook my head, “afraid not, RG; but I want to thank you for trying so hard to help. It means a lot to me,” a throat cleared from behind me, “to all of us,” I added.

The unicorn stallion floated out a memory orb with his magic, “not having been informed of the change in our financial situation until just a few moments ago, I had already precured an example of my work for your viewing. Is there still a cursory curiosity, or should I return it along with my letter of resignation?”

“I mean, you brought it all this way, and I’m still curious to see ‘teaching’ Arginine in action,” I said, taking the orb from him, examining it while the cool glass sphere was balanced on my pinions, “but that can wait. I really want to celebrate right now! So much is finally going our way, I feel like we need to celebrate.

“What does everypony say? I know the hour’s not ideal for partying, but this is New Reino; somewhere there’s an open bar serving drinks and good food. Who’s in?”

Unfortunately, most of the crowd wasn’t looking super keen on the notion. Ramparts stifled a yawn, which Foxglove caught from him almost immediately afterwards, “sorry, Windy, but I just got back from spending all night at a bar. I’m going to need to take a rain check on that one.”

“And I just spent the last few hours staring at lines of code,” the violet mechanic offered in an exhausted tone, “I’m still seeing semicolons everywhere I look. I just need to lie down for a bit and collect my thoughts, but I’ll meet you there later?”

“I’m game!” Moonbeam chimed in, immediately receiving a reproachful look from both her mother and Foxglove, “what?”

“Well, for one, you can’t even drink,” Starlight pointed out.

“I can still be there to be supportive!” she protested.

“In another…” Foxglove leaned over to the computer terminal, which I only just now realized was still connected by a tangle of wires to the opening on Moonbeam’s back, “ninety minutes. We just rewrote most of the program that runs your body. This debug scan is important, alright? I don’t want you suddenly conking out because a parenthesis got left out somewhere.”

The robopony let out a frustrated groan, “fineee…”

“Nah, I understand,” I sighed. I glanced around at the rest of my friends, my lips curled in a frown. Unlike all of them, I wasn’t winding down at the end of a long day. I was feeling fresh and awake, and eager for an opportunity to express how relieved and happy I was finally feeling after not being in a position to feel that way for so long.

“But you two should go,” Foxglove informed us. Her horn retrieved the memory orb from my wing and she shooed us towards the door with her hoof, “have a few drinks, talk, live it up a little,” she then considered who she was talking to, “or, Arginine can at least watch while you live it up. We’ll all hang out here, take a nap, and join you later,” she hefted the orb, “but I’m going to go ahead and take a gander at this,” she said, staring in a playfully critical fashion at the larger gray stallion, “because I have been dying to find out what he’s been up to to earn all those caps.”

“Are you guys sure?” Drinking with Arginine was certainly a lot better than drinking alone; but I would still have liked to celebrate with everypony.

“Positive,” Ramparts insisted, “don’t worry, we’ll all go out together later as a group. Just let us recover a bit before we do,” the earth pony then eyed the orb as well, “I’m pretty curious about what’s on there too, to be honest. Those only work with unicorn’s though, don’t they?”

“Technically, no,” Starlight said, drawing a questioning look from the rest of us, “it takes unicorn magic to activate them, true; but it’s possible for the unicorn in question to invite additional viewers, or that can simply act as a bridge to connect the orb to a pegasus or an earth pony without watching it themselves.”

“Really?” the brown stallion remarked, his interest piquing further. He looked at Foxglove, “can I watch it with you?”

I frowned, “I mean, we could all just hang out and watch it at once, I suppose…”

“Personally, I really wouldn’t recommend having more than two ponies interacting with one of those at a time,” the pink mare cautioned, “they’re really designed to only be used one-on-one, after all; group interactions have a chance of causing some ‘spillover’,” she frowned and shook her head, “you don’t want that, trust me.”

Foxglove looked over at Arginine, “how long does this memory last?”

“Approximately two hours,” he said.

“That’s a bit long for everypony to just wait around and watch,” she had a point. The violet mare looked back at me, “you and RG can at least go out and get something to eat. By the time you get back, this should be just wrapping up and we can let you and Starlight have a go,” she glanced over her shoulder at the other unicorn, “if you want to, that is?”

Starlight shrugged, “I may as well, sure.”

“It’s settled then! You all grab a bite and then we’ll swap out who gets to watch Arginine’s teaching debut.”

On cue, my stomach grumbled a bit. I suppose that I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast with Arginine, and that had been hours ago. Plus, I was still recovering from being unconscious for a couple of days. So, I nodded, and turned towards the door, gesturing to the taller stallion as I past him “alright, let’s go, RG,” before I was completely out the door, I looked back at the others, “don’t spoil anything you see in there! I want the full, unadulterated experience when it’s my turn, okay?”

“You got it,” Foxglove smiled, “come on, Ramps, let’s get comfortable and plugged into this thing.”

“Celestia, if you’re listening, please let there be plenty in there to use against Arginine for at least a few months,” the brown stallion muttered with a grin as he and the violet mechanic slipped out of sight into the attached shed. Starlight rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Moonbeam, but I was already out of earshot by the time they started actually talking.

“So,” I began, once we were back outside, “since you just stop by that sandwich shop every day, I’ll pick where we eat. Now that I’m loaded, there’s a place that I’ve always wanted to eat but could never bring myself to pay for.”

“Shouldn’t we be reserving your newfound wealth for the purposes of recruitment?”

“Relax, I’m taking us out for dinner, not going out on a shopping binge,” I reminded the stallion, rolling my eyes, “although…” it probably wouldn’t hurt to have an outfit that wasn’t packed full of kevlar and ceramic plates. Well, that was a discussion for later. Right now, it was time to grab a bite from one of the most renowned restaurants in Neighvada: La Stride.

Although, knowing the reputation of that place, I was betting that they weren’t necessarily going to let the two of us in just because I was waving around a sack of caps. Certainly not while I was still looking like a feathered tumbleweed that had just blown in from the Wasteland. Those two baths hadn’t trimmed my mane and tail, nor buffed out my hooves and evened out the feathering around my fetlocks.

We did have two hours to kill, and there was no way that eating would take up all of that time…

“We need to make a stop first,” I informed the stallion, and instead led us towards a salon that I knew about. Arginine obediently followed in my wake, “both of us could use a good grooming…” I examined the broad shouldered stallion more closely, and only then noticed that he...actually didn’t look bad off at all, it seemed. His coat was actually pretty even and his mane, while long, appeared to have been trimmed with some care not too long ago, “...or, maybe just me then,” I ended up finishing my thought, my brow furrowed and a follow-up question hovering on my lips.

“Welcome back, Gini!” a mare declared from just outside the The Curry and Comb, the salon that I had been guiding us to. I was silently mouthing over the name in confusion as the mare continued on, “and who’s your new friend―oh, Windfall! It’s been a while,” the golden unicorn mare said upon recognizing me.

“Yeah, I’ve been out,” I managed to stumble over the acknowledgement even as my brain was still trying to sort itself out regarding her initial greeting, “you...know Arginine?”

“Gini? Sure! Well, not for very long; but he’s been a regular for the past couple of weeks.”

“Regular?” I looked at the stallion, “you never struck me as the vain type. What gives?”

The stallion’s lip drew thin in his unique display of annoyance, “the performances for my job required frequent attention to maintain a presentable appearance.”

“Oh, right. That makes sense,” I suppose that if he was going to the focus of attention for as long as two hours, he’d have to at least look presentable.

“Ha! Scrubbing down this big lug every day has been the next best thing to a full time job in and of itself!” the mare said in a mirthful tone. Then she finally seemed to get a clear look at me and made what I considered to be an unnecessarily dramatic gasp. I was already quite aware of how rough I looked, thank you very much, “Clouds above, Windfall! You are a sight!” she leaned into the salon and raised her voice, “Sideburn! Code One!” she looked back at me and gingerly started ushering me inside, “he’ll get you all taken care of in no time, don’t you worry. Gini, you go have a seat and I’ll be right with you.”

Normally, I’d have had no trouble at all relaxing in a place like this while a pony cut and styled my mane and tail and then took some clippers to my coat to get it all smoothed out. Getting pampered like this had been one of the pleasures that I’d used to regularly indulge myself in, after all, and I only now realized how much I truly missed it. However, I found myself a little bit distracted by the conversation that the stylist was having with Arginine over in the station across from mine.

“A light day at the office for you last night, eh?” the golden mare giggled as she started brushing out his coat, “or was most of it from your perspective?”

“I did not perform last night,” Arginine responded politely, though I heard the faint uptick in his tone that suggested he would rather not have been having the conversation at all, “I used the evening to entertain Miss Windfall.”

“Ohhh?” the mare cooed far more suggestively than I was comfortable with. I don’t know why she’d immediately drawn that conclusion―even if she happened to be completely right―from what he’d said just now. Maybe he’d been ‘entertaining’ me with an amusing anecdote; she didn’t know!

“And how would some other mare―maybe, moi?―go about arranging for some…private ‘entertainment’ with you, hmm?”

I snorted hotly in her direction before I’d even realized what I was doing, which drew looks from all three of the other ponies in the salon, and caused me to blush and avert my gaze as a result. Fortunately, Arginine was ready to come to my defense, “I am a personal acquaintance of Miss Windfall. I do not engage in any for-profit activities outside of my normal work hours.”

“Oh, so you two know each other?” she glanced between us.

I managed a curt nod in confirmation, “we’re together, yes. As in: we’re a couple,” I said with a bit more confidence, knowing that I’d have the gray unicorn’s support in this. Maybe now she’d stop flirting with him like that.

“My, my! Aren’t we progressive?” the stylist remarked with an air of surprise, “I’m not sure I’d be able to handle a relationship like that,” she seemed to consider the thought for a bit, “though, I guess there’s something to be said for bragging rights if a mare gets to call a stallion like this one ‘hers’,” the unicorn favored me with an appraising expression, “and now I’m wondering what you’ve got going on to keep him…”

My blush was back, masking my mounting confusion. ‘Progressive’? What, because I was a pegasus and he was―mostly―a unicorn? Did she think that he was some sort of mutant because of his size and odd secondary horn? I mean, I suppose that technically he was a ‘mutant’ in the strictest definition of the term. That could be seen as an odd match. It certainly made a lot more sense than any of the other possibilities that I could think of.

Though, if she thought it was weird for a mare to get close to a pony who had been ‘mutated’ in some way, then why had she been flirting with him so aggressively a minute ago? Unless that was just how she was. Admittedly, I’d never seen her around stallions very often. She’d certainly never come on to me; so maybe it was just a thing she did by way of teasing her male clients.

“By the way,” the stylist mare said to Arginine, seeming to change the subject, “when can I expect to see your next piece?”

“I am not privy to the distribution details,” the stallion informed her politely, “but my understanding is that there are four performances as of this morning that have yet to be made available to the public. I have no knowledge of what the timeframe for their release and sale will be. You would be best asking Mister Domino directly. He makes those determinations.”

“Fine, fine! I’ll make do with the few I’ve already got. For now,” the mare said with a dramatic sigh, “but you must at least know who the other ponies in them will be, right? Do any of those four have Remington in them,” she asked plaintively, biting her lower lip expectantly. Interestingly enough, the stallion tending to my own mane had seemed to pause, leaning his own head a little closer to hear the answer. Wow. Apparently I really had to watch one of these orbs…

“I believe I worked with him in one of them, yes,” Arginine nodded, “obviously, I cannot disclose any details. You will have to watch the orb for yourself in order to learn the specific contents.”

“Oh, it’s enough just to know he’s in one,” she said, licking her lips, “I could watch him for hours…”

“Ditto,” Sideburn murmured under his breath before finally getting back to evening out my mane.

Seeming to have been sufficiently satisfied regarding the subject of Arginine’s work, the conversation after that point meandered across the typical gossipy fair that I’d come to expect from this salon in the past. The current rising performers in the various casinos―and which barons they’d felated to get their start. The saucy details on the personal lives of their other clients, who occasionally were even not referred to by their actual names in order to protect their identities. There was even the odd inquiry or two into what I’d been up to since my last visit. My answers to those questions were a lot more reserved than I had tended to be in the past. Mostly because I wasn’t keen to have my currently high spirits curtailed, and a lot of what I’d been through in the past few months was quite depressing.

Today was about feeling good.

A fresh trim and brushing, along with a robust hoof polish had certainly helped with that! Sideburn had opted to take a few ‘artistic liberties’ with my mane while he’d been cutting it down like I asked him too. He’d had to use some styling gel and extensions, but he’d constructed a side fringe that would drape over the scarred over socket of my right eye. It meant not having to wear the eyepatch anymore if I didn’t want to, while still diverting attention from the injury in public.

I was willing to give it a try, if nothing else. Though, I had started getting used to the patch.

“Well, that’s the first step taken care of,” I declared once we were back outside of the salon again.

Arginine looked down at me with a slightly narrowed gaze, “the implication in that statement is that there are additional steps before actually getting to our meal.”

“I mean, we need to be dressed appropriately too, silly,” I sarcastically informed the stallion. Sensing that there was another reminder about avoiding frivolous spending, I headed him off, “relax, I’ve honestly already got a dress that should work. I just need to have it quickly pressed, since it’s been packed away in my saddlebags for ages. You, on the other hoof...you’ll need at least a vest or something...”

The large stallion offered up another token reprimand about spending money that was supposed to be reserved for recruitment, but I waived it away. At most I was robbing us of a single additional recruit. There was no way that one more pony was what was going to turn the tide in this fight.

The red dress that had been bought to help me get the drop on Tommyknocker was still in passable shape; it was just a little sandy and creased like a crumpled piece of paper. However, that was nothing that a little steam and some magical treatment from a seamstress couldn’t fix right up in less than a minute. Suddenly, I had a slim little number that was perfectly satisfactory for wearing to a place like La Stride.

Arginine’s wardrobe took a little bit longer to put together. Mostly because it was a bit of a battle just to find clothing that would fit him without looking outright ridiculous. The tailor let us know that custom clothing could be made and ready in about a week, but I wasn’t even sure we’d still be in New Reino by then. Besides, I wanted to go out tonight. In the end, we had to settle for a smattering of accessories: a collar and bowtie, some fetlock cuffs, and a pair of gaiters for his hind legs. It was sparse, but Arginine’s unflappable stoic demeanor made just those scant accents feel like a complete formal attire on their own.

Once he was fitted with the final piece of his new ensemble, he gave the cuffs a cursory examination before looking over at me with an expression that wasn’t quite annoyance, “is this satisfactory? Or should I assume that you would like to seek out some jewelry next?”

Actually, some earrings or a necklace didn’t sound half bad―oh. He was being sarcastic. I mean, his tone hadn’t sounded sarcastic―his tone always sounded the same to most ponies―but I knew Arginine better than he thought I did. Instead, I simply rolled my eye and smiled at the stallion, “don’t tempt me. I might put you back in a collar again. Something leather and studded with a little heart that says: ‘Property of The Wonderbolt’,” he looked even less amused than usual, but that only enticed a laugh out of me, “we’re good to go, RG,” so I paid the tailor and we―finally―headed for the restaurant.

Of course, even I knew that a place like La Stride wasn’t really the sort of place that took just any walk-in off the street. Usually, you had to make reservations, but there was no guarantee that we’d be able to get in tonight if I went that route. Showing up dressed the part, ready to lay on the charm, and pass a few piles of caps to the doorpony would increase our odds of being able to get a table for two tonight. I had a sales pitch all ready to go in my head by the time we were walking up to the entrance, drawing the attention of a very well-dressed azure stallion who looked properly indifferent to us.

I opened my mouth to begin greasing the wheels when the doorpony’s eyes somehow only just then seemed to register the towering Arginine. His stoic expression vanished in an instant, replaced with bewilderment at the sight of the larger unicorn. Doubtless, he was feeling pretty intimidated by my companion’s size. After all, the doorpony was no lightweight himself. Briefly, I debated the merits of trying to intimidate our way through the situation, but decided that might not be the best way to go about cementing our reputations around town. Flattery and caps should be more than enough to get us through this.

“Oh wow, it’s really you!” the blue stallion said in an awed tone before I could even open my mouth. He swallowed and cleared his throat, “I’m a, uh, fan of your work,” he offered in a low tone, glancing around. Then he noticed me and recomposed himself, casting a cursory glance at a notebook on the dias nearby, “you’re not on our reservation list, obviously,” he informed us rhetorically, but with something about his tone that suggested this might not be the insurmountable obstacle that it should have been, “but I know that the owner would love the chance to meet you too, so I think we can find a table for you and your…”

“Marefriend,” I supplied, hooking a wing around Arginine’s right foreleg.

“Oh! Erm, right. Of course,” he looked around and waived over another member of the staff, “she’ll show you to your table. Enjoy your meal.”

As we were taken to our seats, I cast a curious eye at Arginine. The notoriety of those orbs that he was making were enough on their own to get us into this place, because the owner is a fan of them? Suddenly, I wanted to get through this meal really quickly in order to get back to the garage and watch it for myself!

Judging from some of the looks that I noticed he was getting from a couple of the other patrons, it wasn’t just the staff that recognized him. Although, I could also imagine that Arginine’s physique was enough on its own to garner some of those reactions, especially from the mares. Sorry, ladies, this stallion is very much taken!

“I’ll tell you what, RG, if making those orbs gets you these kinds of connections in just a couple of weeks, I think you really will have to see if you can get me into this gig with you,” I said as an aside to the stallion as we were seated at our table and passed the menus. It was all that I could do not to outwardly flinch upon seeing the prices for just the appetizers. It was hard not for me to see the items on this menu in terms of how much ordinance that same amount of caps would get me.

A five course meal here could have armed a squad of caravan guards―and that was before factoring in the cost of a bottle of their pricier wines. Sheesh!

Of course, this place wasn’t serving up finely seasoned Cram or styled Fancy Buck Cakes. This restaurant enjoyed the highest grade fresh produce that the New Lunar Republic could provide, shipped down here as quickly as possible at the premium cost that represented. Anything you ate here was probably picked from the field within the week, and that was no easy feat!

“I will remember to ask about your employment when I return to work,” Arginine promised me as he peered through his own menu. The crease in his brow deepened ever so slightly, “I am unfamiliar with many of the words contained in this document. Is this some form of surface dialect?”

“It’s Old World Fancy, actually,” a sultry voice said from nearby. Both of us turned to see a lithe silver unicorn mare dressed in a deep blue satin gown. Her deep black mane was done up in long braids, laced with golden thread and diamonds. Amethyst eyes rimmed by flowing lashes were locked onto Arginine as she approached our table. She extended a scrupulously manicured and polished hoof to the stallion. With only the merest of hesitation, Arginine accepted the offered limb and gave it a polite tap with his muzzle.

The mare smiled at the gesture and lowered her hoof, still not looking in my direction, “good evening. My name, is Britannia, and I’m the owner of La Stride,” Arginine nodded and went to open his mouth but the mare didn’t let him speak, “and you, are a stallion who I’ve been meaning to extend an invitation to dine here for some time now. Please forgive me for the oversight,” she bowed her head in a brief show of supplication before raising it again. Only now did she seem to take notice that a second pony was seated at the table with Arginine. I could only assume that it had something to do with my thinly narrowed gaze and bristling pinions.

“...and you are…?”

“Windfall,” I stated tersely, not liking the way that this mare seemed to be throwing herself at my stallion. Okay, yeah, she was pretty, and probably very rich, and everything like that; but, “I’m The Wonderbolt. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“Really?” the unicorn mare said in a slightly skeptical tone, “I thought you’d be...older. Huh,” she shrugged and looked back at Arginine, “well, I shan’t take up too much of your time entertaining your guest here,” her horn began to glow and she floated out a small folded piece of paper, passing it to the stallion, “but please do come calling on me later. There’s much that I’d like to...discuss with you, in private. In the meantime, I can at least show my appreciation for all that you’ve done by making your meal here complementary,” she chuckled, “and do take advantage of my offer. I’ll find a way for you to compensate me later, I’m sure,” and with that, the mare walked away from our table, though with a swish of her hips and tail that removed any doubts that I might have had about the intent of her proposition.

“Well, that was pretty brazen, flirting with you like that right in front of me,” I groused, taking a few seconds to smooth out my plumage once more.

Arginine blinked and glanced at me, “she was flirting? Fascinating,” he resumed looking after the withdrawing unicorn, though I could tell from here that his expression was more calculating than captivated, “the predilection for you surface ponies to to be so subtle about your desires for sexual copulation with others is something I genuinely may never understand.”

“‘Subtle’? You thought that was subtle?” I drawled at the stallion, “RG, she did everything but just outright invite you back to her room for sex!” I rolled my eyes and looked back at my menu, “what was that paper she gave you anyway?”

I heard the crinkling of the note as Arginine unfolded it and read the contents aloud, “The Gilded Bit, Room three-oh-two, any night after eleven,” he said in his usual, uninterested, monotone, while my own gaze drifted slowly back out of my menu, “I have my own crop and tack, but bring spurs. Zoh-zoh.”

“‘Zho-zho?’” my face scrunched up in confusion. He passed me the paper to look at and I rolled my eyes, “XOXO. Hugs and kisses,” there had also been a heart drawn after the mention of the spurs. That mare had some pretty niche wardrobe preferences. Right up there with whoever had stayed in Arginine’s suite before he got it.

“Ah,” Arginine nodded before withdrawing the paper and folding it away into his cuff. He paused and thought for a moment, “I wonder if I’ll be permitted to borrow a pair of spurs for an evening…?”

I balked at the stallion’s question, “you’re not seriously thinking of going?!”

“...But she said that during the visit she would seek compensation for our meal tonight.”

For several long seconds, I was stunned to silence. Then I proceed to rub my brow in an effort to massage away my incredulity, “you have got to be the dumbest smart pony I’ve ever met, RG. You will not go to her suite, got it? Not tonight, not any night,” I was still trying quite hard not to think about which of them the mare had intended to have wearing the spurs during their intended encounter in her room. My success was quite limited.

“As you wish,” he said in response with a mild shrug of his shoulders. Then he picked his menu back up and resumed looking through the selections.

It was time to steer our topics of conversation to something that didn’t involve him sleeping around with random mares in New Reino, “so, you adapted well to becoming a working pony in the big city. With the kind of caps you’re bringing in, you could even have supported a family here. That’s not easy to do in a big city like this.”

“I will remind you that I was designed to excel at anything that a surface pony can manage to do,” Arginine pointed out, somehow managing to not sound boastful while saying it. To him, he was simply stating an objective fact, like that the sky was cloudy, “earning caps has proven to be a relatively trivial matter. If it were not necessary for the fulfillment of our mission, it wouldn’t be worth my time to accomplish.”

I smiled at the stallion, “and what exactly would be worth your time, if you didn’t have an obligation to us? An ‘obligation’ you’ve ultimately chosen of your own accord, I might add.”

He grunted a reluctant acknowledgment of the point, but still answered my question, “a true challenge of my abilities would be finding means by which to improve the capabilities of the ponies living on the surface,” he paused, “assuming that you are not all exterminated by my stable,” he amended.

“Assuming that, of course,” I rolled my eye, “but do go on.”

“In my stable, our techniques and equipment allow for new generations to be tailored according to the knowledge and information that has been acquired from our studies. The only limitations for what can be accomplished is our own knowledge,” the stallion began, “nothing is particularly challenging about this, honestly. You compare genetic sequences and use the objectively better one, and it produces a better pony,” I had some thoughts on his definition of ‘better’, but I held them back in the interests of hearing where he was going with this thought.

“However, I am finding that it is significantly more taxing on my faculties to determine how far an inferior population can be improved through external stimuli and the application of information. In this, there are two limiting factors that must be considered: the inherent genetic limitations of the population of which nothing can be done about,” that sounded like an insult...or seven. It was hard to tell, “but there is also the second limiting factor: my own ability to apply the stimuli and knowledge effectively. When there is a shortfall, it is not always due to a failure on the part of the subject’s genetics, but in my own ability to transfer the information.”

“You aren’t an easy pony to understand sometimes,” I nodded.

“As I have been informed by several individuals recently,” the stallion grunted with a frown, “but there is more to that as well. There is obviously a...language barrier, for lack of a better term, that I am having difficulty overcoming when trying to communicate. Not merely one of literal language, but also of culture and values. I cannot be expected to be able to effectively communicate until I understand the thought processes of those I am speaking with.

“This is where the true challenge lies, and it is upon myself to overcome it, not others. I am finding the prospect quite...thrilling,” Arginine concluded.

I smiled at the stallion, “are you sure you’re not just trying to find out what makes us tick just so you can go back to your stable and tell them all of our secrets?” I joked.

“Knowing your thought processes will have a negligible effect on my stable’s ability to exterminate the surface population.”

My smile dissolved into a grimace, “remind me to talk to you about humor sometime.”

“Oh! Actually, I have been receiving some instruction on humor from my employer,” The stallion offered, sitting up straighter in his chair. If I hadn’t known him any better, I’d have thought he was excited, “I have even learned a joke, recently. Would you care to hear it?”

Arginine telling a joke? One way or another, this was going to be funny, “hit me.”

The stallion paused for a moment, “an ironic choice of metaphor that may become apparent in a moment,” I quirked an eyebrow as the Arginine cleared his throat, “now for the joke: what instruction is given to a mare who has sustained two periorbital hematomas?”

I blinked, “two what?”

“There is little point in relating the instructions; as she has already received them twice and failed to perform the task acceptably!”

He looked over at me in anticipation, clearly expecting me to burst out into laughter at any moment, and becoming more and more perplexed as to why I wasn’t. Slowly, I ventured, “are...periodical hematoads…black eyes?” the stallion’s face twitched into an Arginine version of a cringe and he nodded, “okay. Alright, now I get it. That’s uh...not funny actually.”

“It’s not? Curious. It is one of my employer’s favorite jokes, and my coworkers always found it amusing.”

“They always laughed at the joke of the pony who gives them money? Fascinating,” I said drolly.

“...Ah. I had not considered that aspect of their reactions,” he bowed his head in consideration, then, “that would certainly explain their contradictory opinion on his appearance when he’s not in proximity. I had believed that they were exhibiting signs of some for of memory disorder.

“I wonder if they make contrary statements about myself when I am absent? I should ask them about that.”

I snorted, “oh, please let me be there when you do,” Arginine’s placid agreement to allow me to be present brought my mirth up to a full on laugh, which I very quickly covered up with a request to have the wait staff come and take our orders. Once I had myself under control again, I looked over at the stallion, “now, let me tell you some real jokes…”

I wasn’t going to lie, part of me wanted to go straight from La Stride back to Arginine’s suite. As it stood, I was quite keen on finishing off the night there anyway after checking back with the others and getting a gander inside that orb for myself. Once that particular itch was satisfied, I was going to drag Arginine back to his suite and scratch a few more while he still had access to the room. He’d doubtlessly lose it once he quit his job. Though, now that I thought about it, there wasn’t any huge reason that he absolutely had to quit doing his current job, even if we were flush with cash.

It wasn’t like there’d be a lot of privacy for us inside the garage or the shed, after all…

The stallion drew up to a sudden stop, blinking. I was about to ask him if something was wrong, and then he blurted, “oh...the bloatsprite was holding the brick! From the previous joke you’d told!” He turned his head to look back over his shoulder at me, “I rescind my prior assessment: those two jokes are indeed quite amusing when considered as a pair, and not judged on their individual merits.”

I was laughing too hard to hear most of what the stallion was saying though, “then you’ll love the one I know about the singing radroach!”

Arginine opened one of the garage’s large front doors and strode inside. It was only then that I decided it was time to finally slide off of his back and touch back down on my own hooves, “hey, Moonbeam. Hey, Starlight. Are they done with the orb yet?” it had been nearly the two hours that the stallion had claimed the stored memory lasted for.

“Not that I know of,” the pink unicorn mare informed us, “but I guess that should be any time now,” she peered up at Arginine, “so...what exactly is on that thing?”

“Yeah, after hearing some of the sounds coming from that room, I’m wondering if I need to find a way to get in on it too,” the robotic mare said. She was no longer connected to the terminal, and all of her panelling had been closed back up again, which I took to be a sign that Moonbeam had been ruled completely fit for duty. I guess super resilient mares sort of ran in the group.

I walked over to the door leading to the attached she and placed my ear to the door. I didn’t hear much of anything at the moment, so I pushed it open and poked my head inside. Ramparts and Foxglove were both curled up on either side of the old couch in the middle of the room, the memory orb glowing between them. My nose curled slightly as I detected a hint of...something, that was mingled in with the stench of grease and solder that otherwise permeated the tiny room.

Shrugging the passing anomaly aside, I stepped in the rest of the way and headed for the pair. Curiously, Foxglove seemed to be breathing a lot more heavily than I would have expected from somepony who was just laying down on a couch. Ramparts too looked like he was trembling. Whatever they were experiencing, it seemed a little more intense than a simple lecture or something. They should be waking up any moment now for me to ask about it...ah, there it was!

On cue, the violet mechanic’s green eyes fluttered open. She then let out a gasp, panting much more overtly, now that her consciousness had been freed from the grip of the little magical orb. It looked like it was taking her some time to process the change from a wholly mental world back into the physical one, but after a few more seconds, I watched as she vehemently recoiled away from the orb and just about fell over the side of the couch for her trouble, “―the FUCK!”

Furiously, the mare started to wipe at her mouth with her hooves and gag, as though she was trying to physically scrape something vile off of her tongue. I wondered if she hadn’t accidentally licked the moldy grease-stained cushion that she’d been laying on. My mouth opened to make exactly that comment, but the mare hadn’t even seemed to notice me yet. She was still glaring balefully at the memory orb, snarling at it, “I’m going to kill that fucking stallion! ‘Gag on it’?! I’ll gag you with your own testicals, you bastard!”

“Huh? What are yo―?” but Foxglove was already charging out of the room. I gaped after her in confusion. Then I noticed that Ramparts was conscious too. His reaction seemed to be quite different from the mechanic’s though. Where she’d been broiling with fire and fury, the stallion by contrast seemed to be almost haunted. He swallowed back a lump in his throat while staring at the inert orb laying in front of him. He reached out and pushed it slightly further away, as though it was somehow dangerous.

He then made to get up, but almost immediately hesitated. He carefully lifted his chest off the cushion, peered beneath him, then slowly lowered himself down. His brown eyes looked in my direction only briefly before locking back straight ahead of him. He cleared his throat, but his words were still gruff when he spoke, “I’m, uh...I could use some privacy, please,” he managed to get out. He glanced back towards the door, where I could hear a garbled mixture of screams and epithets coming from several of the ponies beyond, “you might need to sort that out.

“Good luck.”

I waited, but the stallion said nothing more. Still trying to process everything that had happened, I eventually found myself further drawn to the commotion coming from just outside. I had no idea what I’d missed, but Ramparts was right that it seemed that there was something that I needed to deal with before somepony killed somepony else―for whatever reason!

Just as I turned to leave, I heard Ramparts blurt, “I could use a rag, please. Before you go,” the stallion still wasn’t looking in my direction. Quirking a brow and very tempted to ask a lot of questions, I reached over and passed one of the cleaner swatches of cloth I could find to him. I opened my mouth to ask him the first of my many questions when I heard the sound of something heavy and expensive shattering from beyond the door.

Questions could wait, I guess. So I zipped back out into the garage. There, I found Moonbeam and Starlight looking on, stunned, as Foxglove writhed and snarled explicatives from within a golden globe of magic that kept her suspended in the air. A visibly―even to layponies―confused Arginine was regarding the violent violet mare with trepidation as she struggled against his telekinetic containment.

“You’re dead! You hear me?!” Foxglove was screaming at the stallion, “I’m going to cut off your dick and shove it so far down your throat that it’ll come out your ass! Then you can know how it feels, you bastard!”

Annoyed now, the larger gray stallion regarded the mare, “I am perfectly familiar with the sensation of rectal penetration by a falace.”

“Foxglove,” I blurted, glancing between the two, “what are you doi―” then what Arginine said finally processed and I was staring blankly at the stallion, “wait―what?!”

Even the raging unicorn held in his thrall seemed to have been momentarily taken aback by his comment, but it only seemed to stall her ire, not diminish it, “then I’ll follow it up with a fucking missile and detonate it!”

I shook my head and glared at the pair. This was ridiculous, and getting us nowhere. We were all friends and comrades here, there was no call for this sort of thing. So I darted up between the pair, “alright, time out! Both of you settle down. Arginine, we’re going to talk about the rectal-falace thing later, but for now,” I turned to give Foxglove my full attention, “what’s wrong, Foxy? What happened?”

“He raped me!”

The room became deathly silent for the next several seconds. Now much closer to the violet mare, I could see that her emerald eyes were red and puffy, her cheeks soaked with tears. Her every seething pant was wracked by silent sobs. This was more than mere anger and rage. She’d been hurt. Badly.

I just couldn’t quite figure out how though, “what? How? When? He’s been with me for the last two hours―”

“The orb!” the mare spat, “he’s not ‘teaching’ anything! He’s fucking some mare; and the memory’s from her perspective,” Foxglove wailed. She’d wrapped herself up in her hooves, still floating above the floor in Arginine’s magical grasp, “two hours...he and her―I―went at it for two...hours!” she was shaking her head slowly from side to side, her eyes closed tightly, “and...because she liked it...I liked it…” she gasped as the sobs ceased to be quite so silent any longer, “I couldn’t get out of the memory...I was trapped...I had to do what she did...go through what he,” she spat in Arginine’s direction, “put her through.

“For two hours…”

Oh.

Starlight, Moonbeam, and even Arginine, wouldn’t have known about Foxglove’s history. They didn’t know about her first months in the Wasteland. Lured into the clutches of vile stallions who had offered the desperate former stable pony shelter and food, but instead plied her with alcohol and drugs until she became a tool to avail themselves with in order to satisfy their more base desires. Culminating in her eventual sale into outright sexual slavery. She’d spent years being used and abused by stallions.

Now...it had all happened to her again, inside that orb.

But...that couldn’t have been Arginine in there, could it? He’d said that it was an instructional piece. Besides, how and why would he have extracted memories of himself having sex with some random mare?

I turned around to look at Arginine, so many questions burning in my mind, “Arginine, what’s going on? Is Foxglove telling the truth? Was that a memory of you f―” the word caught in my throat as my chest tightened. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. After all, Arginine―of all ponies―wouldn’t have been with other mares, would he? “With...another mare?” I finally managed.

“Yes,” the stallion replied simply, much to my own stark surprise, “her name is Venus, and she is a frequent partner in the productions that I’m involved in.”

“...productions that you…” I still couldn’t say the word, “are ‘together’ in―in bed?”

“Usually. Though many productions involve other pieces of furniture. Some use none at all.”

“...whyyyy?” I finally blurted, “you said they were instructional pieces!”

“Indeed. They instruct ponies in the various means, methods, and partner arrangements for when engaging in sexual congress.”

“Porn?” Starlight said from the other side of the garage, in stark amazement, “you’re telling me that ponies are using the memory orbs to make porn?” Arginine shrugged curtly. The pink unicorn gaped at him, and then started chortling, “oh...Sweet Celestia. I can’t begin to tell you guys how much I want to be able to go back in time and tell this to Twilight Sparkle to her face. Maybe I can! Does anypony know if Canterlot Castle’s still intact? There’s a wing of the Royal Library I want to visit!”

As amusing as Starlight Glimmer might be finding this, Foxglove most certainly was not; and, frankly, neither was I, “...how many?” I asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“How many mares have you been with?”

“I don’t know,” the stallion said.

I glared at him, “don’t give me that! A stallion like you, who’s all about analyzing stuff? There’s no way you didn’t keep count. How many!”

“Any answer that I was to give would only be a speculative estimate,” the stallion insisted, “most of my memories of the encounters are extracted; I do not retain the ones that are taken for distribution. I have only been permitted to keep a few for reference and educational purposes,” he shrugged, “I was quite naive about copulation techniques and varieties, as it turns out,” he thought for a moment, “to that end, I would like to extend an apology for what was―in hindsight―an appalling performance on my part during our initial copulation. I was ignorant of the existence of a female climax event.”

My cheeks burned, “that’s not the point! Arginine, are you telling me that you’ve―literally―just been fucking around with every mare in New Reino since you got here?! That’s how you’ve been earning caps?”

“There were stallions, as well,” he amended, which drew a raised brow from Starlight and blew a fuse somewhere in my own head, “and I will assume that you are being hyperbolic when you assert that I have engaged with ‘every mare’. While I can’t give you a firm count, I am confident that sufficient time has not passed since my arrival here to actually have engaged in sexual congress with every―”

“Not the point!” I yelled at the stallion, who abruptly shut his mouth, flashing me an annoyed look. I took a deep breath, trying to calm and organize my thoughts. The golden glow from behind me crept into my vision, “and put Foxglove down!” Obediently, Arginine complied. Everypony watched the mare as she was lowered once more to the ground to see if she would lash out at the stallion once more. However, she seemed to have spent most of her fury―for now. Instead of charging Arginine, she made her way back to the sleeping shed, with Starlight’s guidance as the pink mare came to her side.

Ramparts had crept out by now too. He cleared his throat, very pointedly not looking in the direction of the large gray stallion as he slowly made his way to the door, “looks like things are settled here. Good. I’m uh...going to go back to Yatima’s apartment. I, um...need to...erm...reaffirm a few things about myself.

“See you guys in the morning!” and with that, still very obviously looking anywhere in the room that wasn’t Arginine, the brown courser slipped out of the garage.

I blinked after the earth pony and then my mind returned to the matter at hoof. With a heavy sigh, I lowered myself back to the ground. It was only then, with my hooves once more on the ground, that I realized that I was trembling. And why shouldn’t I be? Arginine, the pony that I cared about―and who I thought had cared about me, if in his own little ‘Arginine’ way―had been sleeping around with other mares? Did it make it better or worse that he didn’t even know how many he’d been with? Or that he didn’t even think that I cared?

“Why, RG? Why’d you do it?”

He blinked in mild surprise, as though not understanding how I couldn’t have grasped the obvious answer to such a simple question, “the recruitment of combatants that you directed Mister Ramparts to undertake required liquid capital to progress. Miss Foxglove concluded that, with the local barons already engaging in mercenary contracting of their own, we could not afford to merely sit and wait for your return with the cache that you were searching for. I was encouraged to seek employment, and so I did. A stallion presented himself to me, suggesting that I could earn a prodigious sum of caps by selling memories of sexual encounters for viewing by the public.

“Our company was in need of caps; and I was being offered a generous sum of for what seemed like minimal effort. So I agreed to his offer.”

I buried my face in my hooves. Of course he’d agreed to the offer. What was sex to him, but a little ‘physical stimulation’? “So then why did you tell us they were ‘instructional material’?”

“Are they not?” to his credit, Arginine sounded genuinely surprised by the notion that those orbs hadn’t been educational in nature. His brow furrowed slightly, “why else would anypony wish to view such material if not to learn from it for their own benefit?”

“Why would a pony want to know what it felt like to have great sex with an attractive mare or a handsome stallion?” I deadpanned, “it’s a mystery…”

“...ah. I had not considered matters from that angle,” Arginine paused for a moment, “has anypony considered the prospect of removing the intermediary of the orbs and simply paying for the sexual services of those mares and stallions directly? That seems like it could be a lucrative business strategy as well. Perhaps I should mention that to my employer…”

Oh Sweet Celestia, how dumb could this genius possibly be? Though, that did sort of bring everything home for me. Arginine hadn’t known that this would hurt me―he couldn’t have known―because he didn’t think about sex any differently than I thought about flying. He’d even said just as much to me back in McMaren. He’d warned me about this exact thing. I’d shrugged it all off, because I thought I could handle that.

I’d been wrong, it turned out. It did matter to me. Of course, I couldn’t be mad at Arginine for how I was feeling about something he’d warned me about from the outset. This wasn’t his fault. It was mine.

Which wasn’t to say that realization made it any easy to remain in the same room as him right now, “right. You should go and do that,” I said, sighing heavily, “thanks for coming out to dinner with me, RG. Good night,” I turned away and headed towards the attached shed.

The stallion was silent for a moment, then, “good night, Windfall.”

As the door closed behind me, I heard Moonbeam lean in towards the unicorn for a stage whisper, “dude, you fucked up…”

I wasn’t going to concern myself with Arginine anymore though, not tonight. Instead, I intended to focus my attention on the violet mare who was currently curled up on the bed in the corner of the shed. Starlight was sitting beside her, soothingly brushing her hoof through the mechanic’s auburn mane. She looked towards me with her baby blue eyes and tried to muster up some form of reassuring smile, but it was a paltry effort. I padded over and tried to do my own best to help out the mare. I’d known her longer than Starlight, so there might be something that I could do to bring her back out of this.

“Foxglove…” I began, struggling to find the right words, and faltering myself in the attempt, “Arginine, he’s...he’s an idiot. He didn’t mean to―”

“I’ve been raped more times that anypony could possibly be asked to count,” Foxglove said, cutting me off. My mouth slammed shut at the abrupt statement, not sure if there even was a way to respond to that. Even Starlight he paused her stroking of the unicorn’s mane, gaping in shock, “but that...that was worse than all of them put together.

“I’ve been drugged, tied down, threatened, coerced into sex in every possible way since leaving the stable,” the violet mare murmured, occasionally sniffling and wiping her eyes as they teared up, “but at least all those times, I had my own thoughts. I knew I didn’t want it, and that I hated the ponies doing it to me, and I could curse them and think about all the ways that I’d punish them someday for what they were doing to me.

“They might be taking my body, but I still had the one thing that no amount of rope or knives to my throat could get: My. Own. Damn. Thoughts,” now she turned and glared at me through her anguished emerald eyes, “but not that time!

“While I was in that thing,” she jabbed her hoof towards the couch and the memory orb that still remained there, “I wasn’t having my thoughts. I was thinking what she thought; and she wanted it!” a wave of sobs wracked the mare, overwhelming her ability to speak for several long seconds, while all that Starlight and I could do was sit there, like useless lumps, and watch until she recovered enough to continue, “she liked what Arginine was doing to her, and wanted him to keep doing it! And because she liked it, I liked it! I wanted it―even while a tiny part of me insisted that I didn’t.

“But I couldn’t tell where her thoughts began and mine ended half the time!” she wrapped herself up in her legs and curled into a tight little ball, quivering on the mattress, “...I could feel him inside every part of me...and I didn’t want him to stop…”

“―and I can’t get that feeling out of my head! It’s a part of me. It doesn’t even feel like it was some other mare,” she wailed, clutching at her head as though she were considering trying to physically rip the experience from her brain, “I can still feel my longing for him to do all those things to me that I’ve never wanted anypony to do to me like that!

“He stole the one thing I still had left,” the mare wept now, “...he took my own damn thoughts…” and with that, she stopped speaking further. She simply buried her head beneath her forelimbs and cried.

...and all I could do was sit there and watch. How did I help my friend? If she’d been physically assaulted by some stallion I could have gone out there, given him a sound throttling and brought her back his testicals as a trophy. But that wasn’t the case here. Everything was―literally―all in her head; and the worst part was that none of it had been malicious. I could go and beat the snot out of Arginine, sure; but what would that accomplish? He hadn’t known that what was on there would be a problem for Foxglove, and not just because he hadn’t known about her life in New Reino either.

There were ponies all over the city paying out caps to buy those orbs and experience what was on them. As far as Arginine had been concerned, this had been no different than bringing us home a Cram sandwich. There’d been no malice. He’d just been doing exactly what we asked him to.

But that didn’t change the fact that my friend was hurting, and I still didn’t have a way to make her feel better. I didn’t have a way to make it all go away.

Or did I? I glanced back at the memory orb, and then at Starlight Glimmer beside me. I silently motioned for her to come with me as I took the conversation to the opposite side of the small room. In a hushed tone, I said, “...you’re good with magic, right?”

The pink unicorn mare looked up at me, and her mind almost immediately grasped where I was planning to take this conversation, “you want me to take out her memory of the memory?”

“Can you do that?”

“Short answer? Yes,” my expression brightened but the mare immediately held up a hood and shook her head, “but the long answer is: that that’s a horrible idea, and I really don’t want to do it.”

“Why not? Look at her,” I gestured at the weeping ball of violet mare, “how do you not want to help her?”

“Of course I want to help her! But that’s not going to do it,” she protested, “if anything, it’ll make it worse,” at my dubious expression, the pink unicorn rolled her eyes in exasperation, “I can’t just take out the memory itself. If I do that, then she’ll still have all the memories of her wanting to see what’s inside the orb she’s been asking Arginine to bring by.

“What do you think she’ll do once she ‘forgets’ that she already saw inside the orb she was so super excited to look in? I’d have to track down and find every little memory of when she mentioned the orb, or heard somepony else mention the orb, or mention what Arginine was doing to earn caps here―probably even that Arginine was earning caps here. I might even have to go so far as to remove the memories of her even mentioning getting a job to Arginine, or needing caps.

“By the time I was done digging out everything that could trigger a cognitive relapse event or cause a psychotic break because her brain couldn’t reconcile conflicting thoughts and memories, there’d be so many gaps in her mind, she’d probably start questioning how much of what she did remember was real because she had lost all context for what few memories she had left!

“Memory orbs were designed for the retrieval and storage of specific events a pony wanted to preserve without danger of later forgetting them” Starlight insisted vehemently, “extractions that had little to no danger of creating cognitive conflicts later on. Heck, most ponies immediately went back and relived the stored memories just in case!

“What you’re asking me to do is MoM levels of dangerous here,” I quirked a confused brow, not getting the reference, but she went on, “and so I’m not going to do it. I get that this really sucks for Foxglove right now, but breaking her mind even further isn’t the answer,” she paused and took a deep breath, her expression becoming more sympathetic, “there isn’t a healing potion for the brain, Windfall. I’m sorry.”

“So then what are we supposed to do?” I looked over at Foxglove, flinching every time I saw her body convulse with another suppressed sob. I hated not being able to anything to help my friends. It made me feel the next best thing to useless. If I couldn’t save one pony, how was I supposed to help the whole valley?

Starlight shrugged, “be there for her. I know it sucks, but there really isn’t much else that we can do. Not that’s safe anyway,” I saw her eyes dart to the door leading into the garage, “trust me; when you start looking for easy solutions that you think will make everything better...you forget to look at all the angles.

“There aren’t any miracles, Windfall.”

“In the Wasteland? Tell me about it…” I looked at Foxglove once more and let out a heavy sigh. Somehow, this night had taken a turn. I guess that the Wasteland had figured that everything was just going too well for us, and this world couldn’t abide me being happy.

Of course, it hadn’t counted on me being the stubborn mare that I was, “look after her for me, will you?” I turned and started for the exit.

“Where are you going?”

“Out. The night’s still young,” I noted the mildly disapproving look from the pink unicorn mare, and I could understand it. One of my closest friends was hurting, and I was going ‘out’? Yeah, I’m sure that didn’t seem like the most noble thing that I could have been doing right now. But, as had been made very clear to me, there wasn’t anything that I could accomplish here. So, if I couldn’t make Foxglove feel any better, then the least that I could do was make myself feel better.

...and I was long overdue for a drink.

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